Chapter Text
At first there was only darkness. Darkness and the slippery squirming of bodies pressing against him. It’s hot, and he cries out in distress with the others. There’s a blinding flash that makes the horde of bodies lurch away in one seamless mass.
Small pellets fall in, grinding between their skins unpleasantly. They all wiggle around even more, whining out their discomfort. Then the world shifts. Up and down, back and forth, they slide with the motions, gliding over each other. The rough pebbles still scrape between their skin, but one falls into his mouth. It crumbles under his small teeth and makes him freeze. It’s new. Savory with a salty aftertaste. He’s still rolling among the countless others, but for the first time his mind is focused. He has no words or thoughts to express this instinct, only the will to follow it.
Now, tumbling against the others, he searches for the pellets. He catches a few, and accidentally nibbles on some of the others. They squeak when he does, but it doesn’t hold his attention. Light appears again, he cowers with the others as his eyes ache from the brightness. They’re falling, and the bodies he was pressed against drop away from him. Something smacks his face. It stings.
There’s space now, and he’s still falling, but not as fast. His eyes are adjusting, blurry and stunned from the exposure. But color, color and vision is another revelation. Blobs, the others, are floating down alongside him. They’re all white and thrashing around frantically.
He startles when something meets his back, lashing out at it. It gives beneath his attempts easily and he turns on his belly to face it. It’s softer than he thought. More forgiving than the others or the occasional hard wall. He reaches out to pet his palm along it’s surface. The white grains filter through his fingers. A body falls on him, the weight and feel more recognizable. He isn't spooked this time.
They slide off him, coming to a rest where their tails still touch. They look at each other. Up close, their eyes don’t struggle to focus. Both are completely white. Eyes, the hair on their heads, the scales on their skin. Even their translucent fins. Curiously, he stretches his arm out to the other. Their hair is short, soft tufts. It moves smoothly against his hand. The other touches him too, running hands along delicate, mushy scales. They touch his neck, where the water filters in and out. He hisses, and the other backs off from it, diverting to the fins of his ears. Those are sensitive too, but he tolerates it to pursue his own exploration.
A few pellets float down around them, the other flinches back from them, but he snatches one from the water. It seems less salty. He hauls himself over the other to grab at another. The other is more curious than frightened now, trying to catch their own pellets. They aren’t very good at it. The water, and pellet, swish away at their clumsy and overly forceful movements.
He snatches another one, and sees the other still struggling. The blobbed others have caught onto the pellets as well, racing each other to the nearest ones. Something weird, another unfamiliar feeling, rises in his chest.
He stuffs his fist, still holding the pellet, into the mouth of the other. They gag and growl. He pulls his empty hand out, and watches as the others' eyes light up. Then they’re both racing to each pellet, clawing at the sand to heave themselves just a bit faster than the other.
Soon the pellets around them are gone. He growls, the sensation in his belly aggravated in its dissatisfaction. The other, his other, still circles near, twisting their head back and forth. Beyond the white sand and blobs of the others, there are only dark blue walls. He looks up towards the light still shining down on him. It’s painful, overstimulating. But against that light are small black dots. He knows immediately what they are.
His eyes are attracted to another blob at the other side of the tank. It’s kicking with its tail, making bigger jumps with each attempt. He’s not the only one that noticed.
Then the race is a different kind. Less one of luck, and one of strength. Who can get to the pellets before there are none left. His other is strong, it only takes them a couple jumps before they’re flying. They’re one of the first to begin feasting on the pellets at the top. He takes longer, but is safely in the middle of the pack, able to get his own share of pellets.
When they’re all gone the confusion sets in. He can’t find his other. For some reason, it’s important to him. He needs that other. He goes up to different blobs, but each one is just slightly off. He notices a few of the others doing the same, racing around and checking faces.
He does find his other. They’re sleeping at the bottom, half buried in the sand. He lays down next to them, draping his tail over theirs. They lean back against him in response. It’s warm.
That is how their first months went. Together in the tank, the others waited dutifully for each delivery of pellets. They formed groups, pods, who shared the pellets among themselves. Although some groups melded together, it was always just him and his other.
Their vision got better. He could see all the faces clearly from one end of the tank to the other. But the light at the top of the tank never stopped being painful to look at. Their sense of smell took the longest to develop. He enjoyed the smell of his other the best. It made him feel safe, shielded.
They all got bigger. Tougher too as their scales started to harden from their softness. Wrestling became common, a way for them to test their limits and establish a hierarchy. His other was so much stronger than him, easily the natural leader between them. He didn’t mind, he knew his other would use his strength to protect them. His other would even let him win, sometimes.
They molded their relationship together, with every hiss and purr tuning them more finely to this inexperienced dance. Huffing as they tussled, and cooing as they discovered how to pet and groom each other in tender affection.
It was a small, sheltered existence, but it was a comfortable one. They had each other to play with and care for. With his other, he didn’t have fear. Not like that first day.
This was not a dream that would last. Something splashed into their water. It was new. The lime green spread across every corner of the tank. Some of the others were panicking as their pod members tried to console them. His other just curled themselves around him, holding tight.
When he woke up, he was somewhere else. His other was gone. But he was not alone. He recognized some faces, but not others. A couple were from the same pod as before and clung to each other. They eyed each other with apprehension, a tense air between all of them.
Then the pellets came. The routine returned seamlessly, and soon the others grouped together into new pods. He did not forget his other. He couldn’t understand why these others have returned to acting so… so normal. Don’t they remember? Can’t they feel something is wrong?
He sleeps alone, but it’s harder now. Colder. There’s no one to protect him. His back tingles as he lays, as if something was creeping up behind him at any second. His lack of sleep causes his eyes to hurt perpetually, sore and raw in their sockets. He doesn’t get as many pellets either, simply not having the energy to compete the way he needs to anymore.
He switches tanks every few months, the time between each trade becoming longer than the last. The faces change each time, sometimes new or old. Pellets get bigger. He loses a tooth every now and then. It’s frightening at first, but new ones come in. They’re a lot sharper than his last ones.
He never manages to get a fair share of the pellets, but he survives, and somehow, even manages to grow. He never bulks up the way some of the others do, but he grows long. His tail easily propels his light body, making a weak, but fast, composition.
He never meets his other again.
He loses track of the switches, each time a repeat of the same events. Then, as he growls at one of the others that snatched a handful of pellets right from him, he sees it. It makes his face go slack as the other stuffs their face victoriously. Across the bridge of their nose, a splatter of orange. It’s beautiful. He tries to reach out, to feel that mark, but they scratch his hand and dart off.
From then on, he notices small touches of colors on the others. A tint of yellow on an earfin, a couple blue scales on a tail. None of them let him get close, so he searches through the shedded scales wafting through the water. No luck, they’re all just normal white scales.
Then, after his frantic scrambling for the colorful scales of others, he comes to the realization that he should have color too. He looks at himself often, contorting himself to examine every inch. For so long, there’s nothing. The others get more colorful, but he remains bare. He worries and frets, trying to pick at patches of his scales to find the colorful ones. He only bleeds.
It starts with a burst of dark, indigo purple. Well, maybe not a burst. A couple scales. But they fill him with pride. They’re notably harder than the surrounding white scales, and when he flexes them under the light they turn a brilliant lilac. Even though it took a while for them to show up, they spread quickly, up his tail and down his arms. Some of his scales come off in small sheets, revealing whole new chunks for him to preen over.
The others go through the same, and as the areas reveal themselves many new patterns are pieced together. Stripes, spots, dapples. Some are whole colors with tasteful accents around their limbs and fins. They perform memorizing displays as they curl and flaunt their plumages.
His scales create dark, marbled stripes across his body with a thicker line down his spine. His fins match with the same dark indigo as the markings. He’s beautiful.
There are several more exchanges of tanks. Each time he admires the other’s tails and colors, and catches others appreciating him in return. It’s an exciting time, a time to praise and flatter one another.
Groups start to dissolve with the white scales, until it’s only the single pod of all of them. They still form a hierarchy, but it’s loose, not as important as it was before the colors. Their collective focus is caught by their plumage. This on it’s own is a relief to him, there's rarely any fights or challenges.
But the best improvement is that he doesn’t always sleep alone like he used to. Now the snug, pleasant warmth of bodies surrounds him. It feels so familiar, in a weird, bittersweet way he can’t quite identify.
The colors continue to spread through them all, and then they only have small clusters of white scales, if any at all. Even their hair has grown out of all it’s whiteness too.
Then lime secrets through the tank, just like it has many times before. It’s during a cuddle pile, and most of his companions, most of his pod, don’t so much as twitch. As it reaches him, he simply closes his eyes and lets it take him.
This tank is different. There’s no sand, and it’s bigger. His group has been halved, but they're all faces from his previous tank. Some are distressed, whining and finding the glass bottom disagreeable. He lets himself rest on it, even with the unusual texture making his place on it unstable.
The pellets still come, and that calms them. One of them is determined about not touching the glass, and opts to rest on the backs of others. He likes it when they choose him, the weight is secure and makes his mind quiet.
He’s sleeping better now than as long back as he can remember. But he still finds himself pacing the length of their tank, a nagging in his mind that he’s supposed to be looking for something. Something important.
It’s a while after one of their feedings. His pod is at the bottom, dogpiled and dozing. He’s doing laps around the top, trying to make his movement gentle to not disturb them. The light is still at the top of the tank, he knows not to look at it.
A vibration. His tail falters and he pauses, listening acuity to the silence. He starts to sink down to the bottom, but he doesn’t dare move.
He doesn’t realize what happens for a moment. He was listening for a second disturbance, and then he couldn’t see. The light, it turned off.
There’s a metallic click from the side of the tank. A ray of light. He feels the shifting of his pod through the water. With a single, gentle kick, he coasts toward where the sound came. He’s careful to stay under the surface as his eyes dilate and his blood accelerates. It’s an intense arousal he thinks he has only experienced once before. The edge of the tank opens. It only ever opens a sliver for pellets or the green, but it opens wider than that this time. Something reaches in. It touches the water, making the smallest of ripples.
He’s not in control anymore. His body lunges, his hands off the steering wheel. He digs in his claws, they drive in deep and the thing yowls. With a snap of his tail, he drags it in. Darkness floods back in, but he doesn’t think he would be able to see anyway. All of his focus is on his tongue and in his nose. It’s salty, salty and tinted with rich iron. He bites down on the source and snarls around it. This growl is deeper, coming from somewhere in his chest as opposed to his throat. It’s struggling, but he drags it further down, barely having to kick. It’s heavy, but it’s movements are feeble.
He senses the others circle above him as he settles on the tank floor. Their anxious, hungry waves deepen his growl. They do not approach. The thing’s struggling end. He eats.
It’s not long after the thing stops moving that the light turns back on. Red has pinkened the water and he can see the others now. The same place above him opens. A figure looks down at him. It smiles, and makes a noise. It’s a gross noise, grating and uneven. He hisses. It carries on with the sound, but it’s cut off as the lid closes again.
He looks back towards the others, still hunched over his food. It seemed they were scared back when the thing opened the lid. One creeps towards him, and he bats at them. If he shares with one, he will have to share with all.
They didn’t have many rules, but the most important was respecting a claim on food. You don’t steal pellets from another’s hand.
And this was one hell of a pellet. It was huge, and delicious in a way he didn’t know pellets could be. Inside there were different textures and treats. Some tasted even more heavily of iron, some were more like goop in his hand. One was long, and no matter how much he tried to pull it out, there was always more.
There were hard, chewy things too. White when he licked off the red. They had something good inside, but it was too much of a hassle when there were easier parts. He tosses them over to the group waiting behind them. Their excited chirps and trills make him smile.
Something yellow leaks out of one of the sacks, it tastes somewhat like their excrement in the corner of the tank. He plucks it out and hurriedly passes it to an eager face to the left. They’re grossed out too, but accept it nonetheless.
One of the sacks burst open in his mouth and bubbles rise to the top of the tank. He wags his tail in gratification, and does it to the other sack too.
Luckily for the others, he does eventually fill up, after eating most of the treats inside. They enjoy the muscle and scrape off tendons on his leftovers.
As they finish up, they lay together and gnaw on bones. It’s enriching to splinter them to try and lick at any bit of goodness inside. Even he, who is the fullest of all of them, enjoys a bone.
Pellets come. They all share a sense of unfulfillment from them. The bones have been cleaned of any substance, but they lick them to recall that taste. He still circles the tank, sometimes one of his pod will join him, curious to see if they could find another of those things, those heavenly pellets to eat. It doesn't last long for any of them, they’re nowhere as near as patient as he is.
The lime floods the tank again. He doesn’t resist.
He wakes up alone, in a much smaller tank. It’s pitch black, and he wiggles to try and find room. He wheezes, his gills fluttering as he thrashes against the sides. He can just barely turn around. He is alone, and it’s wrong. He whines and cries into the empty space.
Soon, he is overtaken by tiredness.
When he wakes up again, it’s on sand. For a moment, he lets himself enjoy the soft sand he didn't realize he had missed so much. He rubs his cheek and earfin against it, purring. Then he sits up abruptly, keen on figuring out where he was.
This tank is much different than the others. There are structures around the small, rounded tank. Colorful with voluptuous shapes, curving as if in movement. He touches one, it’s hard. He finds big sand pieces, hard and round. Some weirder sand pieces that have been hollowed out on one side and are brittle in his hand. There’s long, green hair around the sides. It’s even softer than the sand.
But what keeps his attention is a hole. It’s made of something similar to the colorful bending forms, but it’s dark blue, and when he hides inside, he feels protected. He stays there as he scrutinizes the rest of his environment.
The walls look different. Glass, still, but the black behind it has a texture. The light above is different too, softer. It still hurts to look at, but it’s not as bad.
He’s still alone.
Then, he’s not. Slight vibrations echo through the ground to where he lays. They get stronger, as whatever it is gets closer to the side of his tank. He ducks his head, flattening himself to the bottom of his cave.
The black parts and more light shines in. His eyes adjust quickly. Standing there is a pellet. One of the things, shorter than the one he ate. It’s there, staring. He meets its eyes. They're brown. It’s hair is black, and it’s skin is a light, coppery tone. His first impression is to feel sorry for such a ugly creature to exist. He’d be embarrassed to present with such dull colors, and no perceptible patterns. His next thought is that this thing is like him.
For a fraction of a second, he almost feels bad about the thing he ate in the tank. But it was so good, the best thing he had ever tasted. If the thing was like him, surely he did it a favor. He wouldn’t want to live if he was as ugly as these things are. It doesn't even have a tail.
It’s still staring at him. It’s hand is pressed against the glass. In a rush of boldness, he lurks out of his hole. He creeps towards the glass, but doesn’t get too close. Now he can see it more clearly. It has the weird tasteless skins on it the other had.
It takes its hand off the glass and leaves.
With the thing gone, he goes right up to opening in the black. The world outside… It’s unlike anything he’s seen. Creamy yellows and deep oranges dominate the room. He can’t make sense of any of the stuff inside. His tank is unfamiliar, but the room is outright alien.
He still gets fed pellets, the small thing likes to watch. He sometimes amuses it with a game, following each other the length of the tank and back. Mimicking one another. It's fun, but he would still rather eat the thing instead. The small thing is always chattering in its nonsense, really, he’d be helping by putting it out of its diddling misery.
Bigger things come in. They chitter back to the smaller thing, and seem to command it as it fetches objects for them. It’s then he realizes that there must be something he’s missing.
He starts listening.
Months past, and the lime only comes when the tank has to be cleaned out. He is never moved to another one, at least that he knows of.
He’s grown to love the second window beyond his own, and the light that comes from that in cycles. There’s a whiter light during the big darkness, but he likes the warmer color the bigger light puts out. He is always sure to be awake to see the transition of stunning colors when it rises and falls.
His hair gets long. It's annoying, but more than beautiful enough to make up for it. He spends time everyday grooming it and detangling any knots.
He can understand the babbling, kind of. The structure is confusing, no matter how much he pays attention. But he learns words. Food, play, no, and yes are all common. He’s proud that he knows many others, too.
He also learns names. The small thing is called Baby, or Charlie. The big things are Momma and Daddy. Daddy is also called Honey. He himself is called Prince.
He isn’t successful with recreating the sounds. It just doesn’t work, not the way it does with them. He can only make growls, whines, purrs. It’s so frustrating, he ends up biting his tongue. The small thing laughs at him when it catches him sticking his tongue out.
He sees the thing, Charlie, everyday, and they play their little games. Once in a while Honey will come in. But really, he likes Momma. They have blue eyes, yellow hair, and light skin. Despite still being so painfully plain, they are easily the most elegant of all of them. He thinks Prince is a weak, unfitting name, but it does feel pretty when Momma says it. Sometimes they sit near him and look at one of their strange objects. It’s a box that opens, but it opens many times.
Whatever keeps them occupied.
Even though he still wants to eat them, well, maybe not Momma, they are his only company. When there isn’t one in the room, it feels colder in the tank.
Charlie brings a new smaller thing like him one day. They dress themselves in colorful skins, which makes him purr in approval. Just because they are ugly doesn’t mean they can’t make some kind of effort to look more appealing. They chase and hit each other with brittle sticks. He learns the word “kill” that day. It’s a word that makes him hungry.
White scales fall outside the second window. Charlie spends more time away, and the tank seems to always have a chill.
Momma spends more time with their little object in the room. It doesn’t fill the time left behind from Charlie.
In the middle of one cold night, where he is pacing around the edge of his tank, the Honey comes in. They stand a few feet from his tank, examining him. He runs his fingers through his hair apprehensively. The Honey occasionally does this, it unsettles him each time. He doesn’t tolerate it especially long, darting back to his safe place. His fins are pressed tight to his body as he makes himself smaller in his safe space. Even hidden away in the shelter of his cave, the Honey doesn’t leave. They just stand there, backlit against the stray light from the second window.
It gets warmer. Charlie brings in small, colorful things. They’re green with colors that fold open during the day. They promptly learn he likes them, and spends a few days going out to fetch new ones. Even Momma brings him one. They sit outside his tank, weirdly enough in their own little tanks. He lays on the sand to admire them more closely. He wishes he could hold one. He settles for this.
Charlie parades in on a lazy morning, and he does a double take. Charlie has scales, brilliant blue ones. He feels a little bad, maybe the thing just needed more time to grow them out. He comes up to the glass to congratulate him, and to inspect him closer.
They’re clearly trying to flaunt it, turning in circles and waving it around. But something about it isn’t quite right. The scales don't cling to them like they should. Instead they’re just layered over their other skins. How many skins could these things have?!
It makes his belly shrivel up inside of him. He’s not smiling anymore. Just looking on as the thing twirls, his brows furrowed. They’re making that sound again. The high-pitch, erratic one. A shiver goes down his back. The sheet of scales slip off their shoulders. It falls to the ground where it lies limply. His back is tingling, his fins standing to attention. He doesn’t know how, but he is in danger.
He’s back in his cave before he realized he raced to it. He lays as far back and as flat as possible. The darkness of the cave isn’t enough to hide him, but it helps when he covers his eyes to simulate it.
They tap on the glass. He stays still and pretends he’s not alive. He is a rock, just like all the other ones in this enclosure. More impatient tapping. He stays there until it stops and he feels the vibrations become small as they walk away.
He slinks out when the sun sets. It’s as beautiful as it has always been, but he feels ill.
Charlie doesn’t bring the scales back in.
He becomes shyer over the next week. He knows now that there is something very big he doesn’t know, or maybe just doesn't understand. The scales have revealed something significant to him, but he just can’t figure out what this feeling, this instinct, in his belly is trying to tell him. Is he in danger even now? Is he is supposed to be scared?
Why would he be scared? The things come, they feed him, they spend time with him. They should be afraid of him. He knows how weak they are. How easily he could eat them.
That’s when it hits him. He can’t eat them. Not from behind this glass case.
In the glow of the moon he searches his tank, skimming his fingers along the seams. There is no escape. He can’t believe he didn’t realize it before now. He always saw the things as lesser. But he was the one that was trapped. He was the one that didn’t understand anything.
That object Momma always has, he just though she was dumb and found entertainment from staring at nothing. Honey often glanced at that shiny rock on his wrist. What was the rock telling him? What did it do?!
He cowers in his hole, overwhelmed and terrified. His mind runs in circles like a cornered rabbit. He grabs handfuls of his hair and presses the full fists against his eyes. The darkness isn’t as comforting as before.
His behavior is noticed. Momma comes and sits with their back against the tank. He sneaks up and peeks over their shoulder. The box thing is filled with squiggles. He whines and they look back at him. It smiles. It doesn't make his chest and cheeks warm like it used to. He feels nothing. At least he still has the cave.
Time passes. The small thing becomes impatient, angry. It hits the glass now, and makes frustrated, irritating noises. He wants so badly to eat it. To feast on all the treats it’s selfishly hiding inside. To right a wrong he doesn’t fully understand.
The small thing stops visiting. The other things still come around, to look at their boxes or stare intimidatingly at him. He doesn’t meet their eyes anymore.
The lime comes again. He’s huddled in his cave and scared as he’s swept under its influence.
He wakes up and starts to curl his tail. It hits a glass wall, and he knows where he is. He doesn’t open his eyes, he knows he won’t be able to see anything. He doesn’t panic this time, not like before. Just waits, and takes deep breaths through his gills. He doesn’t whine, there wouldn’t be any point. He still wants to, though.
He wakes up suddenly as his body splashes down. He twists around, but the hole he was dumped through is already closed. His fins are flared and he whips back around. Others. He is both relieved and nervous. It’s been so long since he last interacted with another like him.
He hovers in place and takes time to look at them as they all stare back up at him. Then one of the others, twice as long as he, approaches from the pod. Their tail is blue, with thin, dark stripes rippling down its length. They churr out a series of chirps and murmurs. It’s new words, different kinds of words. He knows enough to recognize a language after learning from the things. But, what is it saying? When he doesn’t respond, they warble and use their tail to encourage him down.
He lays down amongst them. They all give greetings and he hesitantly chirps back, attempting to mimic them. His comes out rougher than theirs. He wonders if they all chirp and purr this much. There was mostly growling and purring back from his original pod.
A few of them make a similar erratic noise the things had made. It makes his spine tense up. They stop soon enough anyways, so it’s not a big deal.
There are some smaller and bigger than he is. All of them have their colors. A younger pair has already become bored, leaving the circle around him to wrestle with each other.
The older one that first greeted him stays with him the most. They are patient, if not distant, and slowly teach him their language. He learns what they are. Sirens. The older, the siren, even helps him learn to sing. They spend hours trilling and improvising melodies. He wishes he had known he could make such sounds back when he would be plagued with boredom in his last tanks. His throat becomes raw from reciting words and melodies. It’s the best week of his life.
He wants to offer a name, but Prince fills him with disgust. The other never offers their name either, maybe they don’t even have one, so he lets it go.
Then one of them is taken. The tank is flooded with light purple. It doesn't knock them out, just makes his bones sag and eyelids heavy. He watches from the corner of his eye as one of the green sirens is dragged out by their tail. The tank is quieter for the next day.
He doesn’t understand exactly what happened, and his older siren tries to explain. It still isn’t making sense, but he can see how distressed they become. He lets it go. It’s not important to know the specifics anyway. He knows they will not see that siren again, and the rot in his belly tells him why.
It’s harder to ignore all the signs after the abduction. The cramped walls, the sirens that hug a little too tightly in corners when the hatch opens for pellets. Even harder to ignore the tired, hopeless gleam in the older siren’s eye when they think he’s sleeping.
But he does his best, diving in and cementing himself to practicing with his older. They become closer, and soon he’s allowed to sidle up to the older when he naps. Their heat seeps through to his scales and he purrs. Sometimes the older will purr back, and cover him with their tail. Those become some of the best naps he’s ever taken.
They start cleaning him routinely. Grooming him. He’s never had it done by someone else before. Well, someone who knew what they were doing. It’s so incredibly nice, the fingers running through his hair and gently scraping down his tail to show the new, shiny scales beneath. He tries to return the favor, and accidentally cuts them a couple times with his claws. He’s especially glad then that the older is so patient.
It’s a disturbing juxtaposition. There’s something dangerous, something terrible looming over all of them, waiting to strike. But at the same time, he has never been more eager to get up and play. He exaggerates it when the older seems more sad than usual. Then, for a couple of minutes, they can sing together and forget where they are.
It’s harder to tell time in the tank, he had taken the second window for granted back at the room. But he knows he’s with the older for a long time.
He knows it would only be a matter of time before one of them was taken. Then one day it happens. The purple comes in, and the older is dragged away from where they were curled around him. His back is cold, and he cannot even muster the strength to look back and watch them go. The hatch closes, they all gain back their strength, and he is alone again.
He stays on his own this time. He tries to connect to others, but none of them are his older. At least they can sing with him.
The loneliness doesn’t last long. Because the day finally comes when he is taken.
He’s laying limp in his tank when something brushes against the end of his tail. It slips under and tightens around. He doesn’t know what to think or feel, a part of him is terrified. So terrified that even if he had the energy, he doesn’t know if he could move. Another part is submissive, accepting. Whatever the horrible thing that’s about to happen to him is, it must be the end. An end to whatever this existence has been, must be something to be embraced.
He clings to that half of his brain. The calm, passive thoughts. His fingers twitch traitorously against the sand, a weak clawing that leaves lines in the sand. The granules glide down and away from his fingers as he’s pulled up against the glass and to the hatch’s mouth.
He leaves the hatch and falls a foot to the ground. There’s no water.
His gills gurgle, it’s uncomfortable, but he’s unable to have the will to care. The floor is cold and grinds against his shoulders as he’s pulled across it. Dim lights are spread unevenly in the ceiling. One flickers weakly, his eyes latch onto it as he’s dragged past. Tired, so tiredly, he bothers to look down at his tail. Two of the things are tugging him along with a cloth wrapped around him just below the fin. It’s cold and wet.
A door screeches open and he passes through. It barely misses his head as it closes, his hair now being pulled between the dirty door and the floor.
He knows he should be feeling disgusted, but there’s a new pressure in his chest. His head starts feeling light. It’s a nauseating feeling, he wants them to stop pulling so he can try to regain his balance. It progresses to pain, a dry, crackling kind inside of himself. His mouth falls open the smallest amount and something in his chest opens.
He’s breathing, but it’s wrong. His chest lifts, and it hurts so much. He tries to hold it down. The things are making those bizarre noises again. Laughing. They’re laughing. It makes him furious, but the return of nausea distracts him. He wheezes and lets himself feel the pain, the ill feeling too overbearing for him to handle.
He comes to a halt. He blinks when he realizes they stopped moving. They come to his side, one of them gets too close. Its breath is hot on his chest as they pick him up. He imagines biting its face off.
There’s something smooth against his back now, but it’s regretfully colder than the floor. A shiver goes up his spine, and something heavy settles against his chest and tail. His eyes float down, they’re bringing thick straps across him.
They bring something dark to his face and tighten it against his skull. It covers his eyes, but it also locks his jaw shut. Despite his chest’s scorching movement, he finds himself desperately breathing in through his nose and grimaced teeth. The things linger around, but then their vibrations leave.
He’s alone and it's dark. Almost like the small tank, but less movement. He closes his eyes and tries to cope with the pain and fear.
Whatever end is coming, he hopes it comes soon.
He’s by himself for a spell, he’s not sure how long. It’s broken as a door creaks open on the opposite side of the room. He feels the smaller vibrations, it must only be one. His breathing is less painful now, but it picks up as it approaches. He can’t see, he doesn't know what's about to happen. It feels like his heart is about to come up his throat. The purple must be fading. His tail flinches as something touches it. It pets him, and he recognizes the feeling as a hand.
He snarls as viciously as he can under the mask. It comes out muffled and pathetic. The thing chuckles.
It’s confusing, whatever it’s doing. Small pricks of pain scatter on his arm as the thing stabs him with something. They tear out a scale from his hip, he stifles his whine and growls instead.
Then it leaves him alone, but he can still feel it moving around. Doing things. Another one comes into the door. They talk in quiet tones. He tries to listen, but it’s been a while since he listened to their backwards speech. He can only make out the word purple. His tail strains against the straps, wanting to lash in frustration. They approach him and he goes still, his fear ratcheting up to his chest once more.
He hates that he flinches when they touch him again. It’s more petting. He growls. The hand doesn’t leave.
They talk more, but the words are ones he’s never heard before. Longer, complicated. He’s pricked again, and he hisses at them this time.
The ill feeling comes back, and then he’s gone.
His weight is shifting unnaturally, and there’s a thrum echoing through the floors and into his body. He’s in something different this time. Not a tank. It’s soft and crinkles around him. The water tastes wrong, slightly sour on his tongue and in his nose. He’s still so tired, he doesn’t think he could even summon the strength to open his eyes. The darkness behind them says there’s nothing to see anyway.
His tank, his bag, rocks slowly back and forth. He changes between feeling unsettled and comforted by it in turns.
There’s a void in his stomach, but he doesn’t feel the hunger that should come with it. He finds himself focusing on the feeling. It’s better than the waves of nausea or heaviness of his bones.
He loses track of time before he passes out.
He wakes up as his container is jostled and lifted. He still can’t move. The thing outside grunts and he’s hoisted higher before being dropped down on something. He manages to open one of his eyes into the slightest sliver. The lid opens, a silhouette looms over him. They disappear from view, leaving a stream of light where the lid is haphazardly left crooked. His eye’s try to focus on a shadow past the crack, but they refuse, leaving everything a blurry mess.
It falls shut without his permission. He doesn’t open it again.
The thing comes back, quicker then he would have liked. It slices the plastic around him and slides him out onto a cold surface. His arm drapes off an edge, and he thinks it’s a table. As he starts breathing from his lungs and not his gills, he smells the metal in the air. Similar to what the things taste like, but different in a way that crawls up his spine.
It puts him on his stomach this time, with his head to the side. The thing is touching him, gathering back his hair. Another set of hands flip his tail over. It alarms him for half a second, he didn’t realize there was a second thing in the room.
He calms down just as quickly. Distantly, he grasps that he should be feeling scared, desperate. He tries to rev up some kind of anger or fear. He’s unable to get the energy for either, and his mind drifts back to compliance.
They stop handling him, both sets of hands leaving. Without them, he becomes aware of the rocking again. At least the foreign vibration is further away, he can’t feel it as much.
There’s a click followed by a buzz. The things run something along his scalp, emitting a low hum that reverberates in his skull. A hand goes under his cheek to tilt his head upwards. The sensation starts to feel nice, despite it being done by the thing. It pins his earfin forward as the buzzing goes behind it. It’s uncomfortable, but he’s forced to tolerate it. They turn his head to the other side and finish the rest of his head. Without the buzzing, his head suddenly feels cold, the chill against the metal especially unpleasant.
A hand pinches his jaw and it shifts open. Something smooth and cold slides in and over his tongue. It cranks open slowly until his jaw aches, and then goes a bit further. A finger goes between his lip and gum, oddly smooth in texture. It thumbs over one of his bottom canines.
The finger retreats, a hand is placed on the side of his head. It presses down, smooshing his face into the metal. The fangs on that side dig into his cheek and create pinpricks of pain in the flesh. Another hand returns to his mouth, it feels over the tooth again. It’s replaced by something that scrapes against the same tooth. It grinds against it, slipping as it rubs. Then it seemed to find a grasp, and the hand on his head pushed down harder.
The first tug is light, experimental. The second one is a little harsher and gives him a small twinge of pain. The third is brutal, his eyes flutter open and a guttural noise leaks out from his throat. It burns all the way down to the root and the muscles in his neck weakly twitch.
The searing becomes sharp. From the root it spreads down and into his jaw. He whines thinly when the pulling pauses and they wiggle it around. His tongue trembles, iron starts to register on the tip of it. They rock it back and forth, movement becoming more impatient and rough. The iron gets stronger, and with a sudden pop it floods over his mouth. He gags as most of it drains down past his tongue to his throat. The rest dribbles past his quivering lip.
The pain is unbearable to him, he wishes he could rip out his jaw just to get away from it. The metal claspers begin fumbling on his top canine.
Somehow, this is what reinvigorates him. His tail swings forward a few inches and he snarls deeply. His eyes narrow and he glares daringly at one of the things above him. The lower half of its face is covered, same with the other one that still has its disgusting hand on its face.
The thing with the claspers takes a step back and disappears behind him. The one that stays puts it’s other hand on his back firmly. He wiggles, although it’s mostly just a series of spasms across his body as he forces his disconnected limbs to respond. His head tilts enough for the blood to run out of his mouth more than down his throat.
There’s squeaking behind him, it rattles as it gets closer. The things speak to each other, it’s taxing to divide his attention between listening and jerking his body around. But one word does make it through the adrenaline and fog in his head. Kill. They’re going to kill him, just like he killed that thing a year ago.
From the corner of his eyes there's a glint of metal. With one last hurrah, he wags his tail backwards as much as he can. It’s almost enough for him to be pulled down off the table, his still wet skin aiding him as he starts to slip off. There’s a clang against the ground and the shatter of glass as the other set of hands scramble to grab and push him back on. He snarls again as they haul him back up. The things are cursing at him in their angry, annoying voices. If only he had been heavier to lift back onto the table.
He’s attempting to psych himself up for the next bout of struggling when the room jolts violently. He rolls off the bench onto the floor, the things falling on their backs. They jump up and a red light starts flashing from the corner of the room. Less than a second later, a sound pierces through him and he cringes. They yell frightenedly. One races out, the other picks up something longer and thin from the ground next to a fallen cart. He barely has a chance to react as his arm is snatched. It pushes the sharp end in, he pinpoints the sensation as the same one as before he came here.
The thing ditches him there, strewn out on the floor. He hauls himself forward, not really sure where he should be heading. A shard of thin glass cuts his hand. His vision is still blurry, but he can see glints of the pieces littered on the floor. He uses his arm to try and push the fragments out of his path, they prick and sink into his skin. He growls and continues pulling himself forward. He has to escape.
His arm’s muscles stutter as he claws at the ground in front of him. It seems his luck has run out. Whatever that sharp thing did to him, it’s making his limbs tingly and dull again. His fingers won't even curl now.
The ship is rocked again, this time so severely he slides all the way to a wall. The cart shudders along the floor with him, making the worst kind of screeching sound. The tinkling of glass shards rolling over the floor can barely be heard over it. His resulting growl is too feeble to be heard at all.
He stays folded up in that corner made by the slanted floor. His ears hurt from the alarm’s blaring. He closes his eyes so at least the lights will be less overwhelming.
The next movement is so sharp it makes his stomach drop. The whole world shifts down sharply, and a screech of metal against metal drowns out the piercing alarms.
He’s left alone with only the alarms and lights after that. He puts all his addled concentration into attempting to move his fingertips. He can't get more than a centimeter.
The alarms turn off, it takes him a moment to realize with the resulting ringing in his ear. The lights continue to flash, and still no one comes. The deep humming from before has stopped. When he closes his eyes, it’s almost calm in the room. The acute ache in his jaw is more apparent now. He’d still take it over the noise.
There’s a bubbling sound from behind the door he’s slanted next to. There’s a window in it. He tries to tense his stomach into inching him forward. He is not successful. The bubbling stops and starts up in turns. There are muffled splashes behind it too. Then he can see it.
Water starts to seep under the door. It creeps its ways to the corners and forms itself against him. It’s cool and welcomed. Relief settles in his chest, despite not being able to move. The things won’t be coming back. Whatever is going on, even if it’s enough to make them run, he is unmeasurably grateful.
When it finally reaches his neck after a couple minutes, he has to awkwardly transition to breathing through his gills, air sputtering in alongside the water that had risen. The water tastes unusual, excessively salty on his tongue. Curiously, it doesn’t bother him or strike him as unnatural. Not like the colors or impairments the things put into water.
Then he’s fully under. His body is numbed, but now he has the patience to wait for it to come back to him. A smile creeps along his mouth, crooked and toothy. Some blood mists into the water.
The colored alarm turns off, but there’s a window where light still peaks in. He can’t see anything outside of it, just a blue that graduates into lighter colors as it goes up. He watches it as he waits.
It’s long after the room is filled that he regains sensation. He can move his limbs, but his muscles are jittery and give out randomly. He can barely get a foot up before his tail falters and he sinks back to the corner. He waits more until the shaking settles and he can move.
First he settles on the other side of the door as he picks the glass out of his arms. It leaves tiny dots of blood that he licks over. When he has them all out he begins to explore the room.
He finds his hair, wrapped in a bundle with some string. It’s soft against his fingers. There’s a burst of anger as he gathers up some loose strands from the water. He loved his hair. What reason did they have to even be interested in it? Maybe they’d try to wear it, just like the scales.
He lets the locks slip from his fingers. It doesn’t matter anymore. His hair can’t just be put back on. He runs a hand over his head. It’s prickly. His nose wrinkles. Hopefully it will grow back soon. It’s embarrassing not to have it.
There’s a large, rectangular metal box that’s fallen onto the floor. It’s obvious that’s what he was carried in. There’s a white, mushy layer around the inside. The plastic bag is crumpled up in a corner of it.
The tooth catches his eyes from the floor. It’s so much longer than he thought. No wonder his jaw hurts so badly. The root is nearly three times the length of the visible part.
As gently as he can, he tries to put it back. Stabbing pain shoots through the socket and he pulls it out before it’s halfway in. That’s not going to work. He tries again, and gets a little further before giving up. His mouth is bleeding more now. He tries to spit it out, but it just keeps coming. He discards the tooth on the ground and places a finger in the gap, pressing down. It makes it burn more, but alleviates the throbbing. He keeps it there as he moves onto the next room.
The doors are heavy, and he has to push upwards to open them in the crooked room. He freezes when he pokes his head inside.
This is where the blood smell was coming from.
Sheets of scales, much larger than the one the small thing had, are stretched out in frames. There must be dozens stacked against the walls.
This is what was going to happen to him. It must have happened to the others, too. Maybe even the older other, the one whose absence he still felt. He slowly closes the door, backing away from it. He thinks about opening it again, shuffling through the sheets to look for blue with thin stripes. But he can’t bring himself to go nearer. Even looking at the door makes his scales unbearably itchy.
He lashes his tail through the water to dispel the sensation and darts to the other door. It opens more easily to another room. His eyes blink as they adjust to the darkness. This room is weird. It’s elongated with many other doors. He chooses the direction that slants up and swims with long kicks of his tail. It’s so long, he drives forward with stronger kicks. If it wasn’t for the lingering itching on his tail, he would call it fun.
It isn’t long before he finds his first body. It’s floating where the room splits off into two directions. He drags it down and digs in. It’s good. Much better than anything he’s had in a while. But he has to chew on one side of his mouth, and there’s a sour aftertaste. He ignores it, and keeps eating.
It takes longer to eat this one, his appetite is tempered by caution. He listens intently as he chews unhurriedly.
His stomach is uncomfortably full when he gives up, releasing the limb from the absent chewing he had resorted to.
He’s hesitant to leave, even as full as he is. But he can’t stay here. Maybe the things could come back, somehow, and he has yet to escape. The long room ends, and he has to resort to opening doors.
There are many, many more bodies. He doesn't feel bad about abandoning the last one anymore.
He finds more windows, and he takes the time to approach one. Maybe he can claw it open. He doesn’t comprehend what he’s seeing at first, and has a mental double take. Behind the window is this immense, boundless space. He squints his eyes, but can’t see the end of the expanse. The grey stone, or is it sand, blurs in the distance. He looks up and sees ripples against a faraway surface. And below, below is black. A crevice splits into the grey. Whatever he’s in, it’s hanging over a precipice. At least whatever he’s in hasn’t fallen yet, something inside tells him he doesn’t want to end up down there. The window doesn’t open.
He continues to search the rooms. But there’s nothing to find here, so he has to go back down where he came from. He hugs the opposite wall as he swims past that first room.
It feels even darker the further he goes down. There are a lot more double-doors than before too. They swing open without any handles, most are already askew.
He mostly peeks in and moves on. None of them have exits, only those unopenable windows.
One room stands out. He passes it with a careless glance in, but pauses and does a u-turn to look back in. There are metal boxes, just like the one he was in. The white insides are in a stack that look like they’re melting into the water. The metal boxes are mostly stacked too, but some are placed on shelves or strewn on the ground. He starts with the ones on the ground.
The first couple are empty. His tail lashes in annoyance and knocks one off of a nearby shelf. His whips around as it clangs open on the ground. Empty too.
The metal bookcases had all slid to the side of the room. He has to haul them around to get to the boxes. All he finds is nothing.
He flippantly flicks the lids agape now, not bothering to take them off all the way. Empty, empty, empty.
He’s furious now, growling low in his throat. There’s only one shelf he hasn’t searched. He doesn’t bother to carefully pull it out to where he can get to the boxes like the others. He slips his tail around it and topples it over.
The boxes splay out on the floor alongside all the others. Nothing here either. He would have left, if the smallest twitch hadn't caught his eye. He zeros in on it, and recognizes another bag in one of the thrown containers.
With a slow beat of his tail he glides closer. The first thing he notices is that it’s white. That’s why he must’ve missed it before. He uses a hand to push the lid to reveal the rest of the other.
It’s small, so small. White and small, just like he used to be. He knows the word for them now. Pup.
The bag tears effortlessly under his claws. He hesitates to actually touch them. His hand spans the width of their chest. Gently, ever so gently, he puts a hand under them and lifts them up. They’re not dead, their gills still flutter and they’re warm.
He holds them to his chest. Their head rolls back and he brings up a hand to support it against his neck. The movement of water from their gills tickles his shoulder. A gritty purr stammers to life in his chest without permission.
He stays there, propped up on his tail and cradling this other. This pup. It’s hard to believe he was ever this small. He had to have been.
He wonders if they’re aware of what's going on. The uncolored liquid they used to subdue him this time was especially powerful. He should go to a cleaner room, it might still be lingering in the water here.
Looking up, it’s a bit darker in the room than when he swam in. He should be focusing on a way out before he can’t see.
He leaves the room, both arms supporting them against his chest. Their tail dangles loosely, and he’s aware to not bump it into anything as he swims.
He noses the doors open, very thankful that they’re mostly the swinging kind. It’s tiring, and it seems that this series of rooms goes on forever. He’s starting to have to feel around the walls when he finally finds the outside. Or rather, a hole in the rooms.
Something absolutely massive has pierced though and he is privy to a cross section of the structure. It’s still dark, but now he can see more. Vigilantly, he swims down along the edge of the hole. His grip on the pup tightens and he reminds himself to be gentle.
The hole ends, and he can look up and see what he came from. It’s giant, reaching up and towards the surface.
But it has nothing on the expanse in front of him. Even if he can’t see as far in the night, the sheer space is overwhelming. He loiters there at the edge of the hole. Underneath them is the fissure. To leave, he’ll have to cross it. But how can he do that when just looking at it makes his scales ripple and fins stand to attention. It’s a distinct kind of fear he hasn’t experienced before.
He looks back down at the pup nestled against him. Their face is relaxed. He could almost call it peaceful, if he didn’t know the reason behind their limpness. It’s reassuring anyway.
It’s hard to psych himself up for it. He swims in tight circles, building up courage. Then he goes for it.
What's probably only ten seconds lasts forever, each moment he’s over the abyss stretching as far as it can go. He reaches the other side and plasters himself to the ground, the pup protected beneath him.
The adrenaline works its way through his system. Even after it’s done, he waits a bit longer, intently feeling for any vibrations through the course sand.
Nothing happens and his muscles untense. He adjusts the pup in his arms, and heads away from the gorge, keeping low to the sand.
Now that he’s actually out in the vast openness, there is less awe and more wariness. He’s hyper aware of how exposed he is.
As he swims, tiny hands twitch where they’re curled against him. He wants to stop, and to take time to check on them. But his instincts still tell him to get out of the open. He settles on starting up his purr, louder this time.
The pup twitches a few times more as he swims. It makes him speed up a little each time, despite his exhaustion. Belatedly, he realizes his mouth has stopped bleeding, even if it still tastes slightly of iron.
Eventually, he finds a flat rock that juts out from the sand, a shallow cave formed beneath it. He wiggles in, the opening is a few inches from being too narrow for him to fit in. That’s what tells him it’s safe.
It’s much darker in the cave. He can barely make out the pups' silhouette as he lifts them higher to his face. They whine weakly and he answers with his rumbly purr. He churrs to them as he draws a thumb over their cheek. It’s soft, tender skin.
He’s tired, but as he draws a hand down the back of their head he can feel matts. With a few tugs, he knows they’ll have to be cut out. When he was still white and didn’t have his own pod, he’d sometimes have to do the same. It’s easy to miss knots when you have to groom yourself.
He turns the pup around. They squirm against him, but calm as he rubs his fingers into their scalp, scratching lightly.
He grooms their hair with a mixture of untangling and cutting out the knots with his claws. He can feel the uneven, choppy cuts. It pains him almost as much as his own naked scalp. But he knows that now their hair can grow back healthier than before. When he finishes, he wraps his arms back around them and purrs as he drifts off.