Work Text:
Dory looked around and around, but nothing seemed familiar. She had no idea where she was or how she'd gotten there or what she'd been doing. She turned, and turned again, yet still nothing. She felt the water flowing faster over her gills as she began to panic.
Panicking felt familiar. Oddly, that comforted her.
Ooh! There was a coral nearby! Maybe somebody was home and could tell her where she was or where she'd been or where she was supposed to go. She began swimming in that direction.
Dory looked around, but suddenly she had no idea where she was. She'd never seen this part of the reef before. She didn't think she had, anyway.
Hey, look, a coral not two body lengths away! Maybe someone there could help.
"Hello! Anybody home?" she called, swiftly closing the distance. "Can you help me? I think I'm lost. Hello?"
She poked her head in one of the gaps, but the coral was empty.
Dory looked around, but didn't know where she was. She was in a coral, obviously, but whose? There was no one else here. Ooh! Maybe it was hers! It didn't seem familiar, but it was clearly someone's home, and she was the only one here. She started to explore, in case something turned out to spark her memory.
Distantly, she heard a voice calling, "Dory! Dory, are you out here? Hey, has anyone seen a blue fish recently? Dory!"
Dory, Dory...why did that sound familiar? Oh, hey, that was her name! Maybe whoever was calling had come to visit her! She swam out.
"Hello! Over here! Yoo-hoo!"
A clownfish turned toward her and began swiftly swimming in her direction, scolding the whole while.
"Dory! What have I told you about coming so far from the anemone alone? You know you have problems finding your way back on your own! When I got home from escorting Squirt back to his father, Nemo was all alone with no idea where you'd gone! What do you have to say for yourself?"
"Um...I'm sorry?" she offered. He certainly seemed angry at her, but she couldn't remember what she might have done wrong.
"On the way back, I want you to think about what might have happened to Nemo, all alone with no way to reach either of us," the clownfish told her sternly, though from the way his fins had relaxed she could tell he wasn't quite so angry anymore.
"All right," Dory agreed cheerfully, glad to have found someone who seemed to know what was going on. "Can I ask you a question first?"
"Of course." He paused, then prompted, "What did you want to ask, Dory?"
"Oh! Right. What's your name again? I seem to have forgotten, happens to me a lot," she explained. At least, she thought it did.
"You don't remember?" She shook her head. "I'm Marlin."
"Marlin? That's a--" A swarm of memories flashed through her mind: befriending sharks, a sole light in the cold dark, racing through jellies, riding the current, nearly being eaten by a whale, nearly being eaten by seagulls. Returning Nemo to his father. Accompanying them both to their home. To her home. "Marlin! You're back! I remember now."
"Then maybe you can tell me what you're doing so far from home." Now that she remembered him, Dory could tell he'd been worried about her. Marlin did tend to get angry when he was worried. He didn't like not being in control of everything very much.
"I didn't mean to," Dory explained as they swam back toward--she hoped--a familiar part of the reef. "It's just you'd been gone so long, and you know how bad my memory gets when you're not around."
Marlin sighed, and she could see in the set of his fins that he was no longer mad at her. "You've been doing so much better, even when you go to visit Bruce.... I thought you'd be all right for a few days."
Dory shrugged, unconcerned; remembering more than a minute or two at a time was still something of a novelty to her. As far as she could remember, anyway. "I guess it still wears off, it just takes longer."
"Right. It seems there's no way around it: next time, we all go."
They swam on in silence.
"Marlin?"
"Yes, Dory?"
"Thank you for coming to find me."
"Oh. Well, um. You're welcome."
"Dad! Dad, come quick!"
"Nemo? Nemo!" Marlin swam swiftly toward the sound of his son's voice, fearing he knew not what. Another diver, perhaps, or an unfriendly shark. Intellectually he knew now that Nemo was smart and resourceful and could take care of himself in situations they'd never even imagined...but that didn't make him any less afraid of what might happen.
He pulled up short when he found Nemo and Dory alone, no danger in sight.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"It's Dory," Nemo said, sounding worried even though nothing was visibly wrong.
"Hi, there!" Dory said cheerfully. "Your son Charo here was just telling me about you. Hey, you're a clownfish, right? Will you tell me a joke?"
"Not again," he groaned. "You've barely been gone an hour! How could you have forgotten already?" Marlin swam back and forth, thinking. "She was fine earlier. Did she hit her head on something? Or get stung by jellyfish again? Maybe having had all of that poison in her system before has left her extra-sensitive even now that she's used to the anemone. Did you see anything?"
He thought he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to face Nemo, he and Dory were blinking innocently back at him.
"No, nothing," Nemo told him, but something seemed off. Marlin resumed his pacing, but kept part of his attention on the pair even as he continued thinking out loud.
This time, he was able to turn swiftly enough to catch Dory slapping Nemo's lucky fin as they both tried not to laugh.
"Ah-ha! This was all just a trick, wasn't it? 'Let's pull one over on poor old Marlin, see if we can make him worry about nothing.' Well, I'll tell you, I am not amused!" He paused, preparing to launch into a stern lecture, and noticed the identical--cheerful, despite knowing they were in trouble--expressions on Nemo and Dory's faces. He felt his anger melting away almost against his will. How could he stay mad when they were looking at him like that? "Don't do it again," he concluded weakly.
Not that he expected it to do much good. Nemo had always been high-spirited--he was a lot like Coral that way--but since Dory had come into their lives he'd grown positively incorrigible. Still, he was undeniably happy, and his pranks were never actually harmful to anything other than Marlin's nerves, so he didn't have the heart to object.
Though he did make it a point to add "The Fish Who Cried Shark" to the bedtime story rotation.
Nemo arrived home from school to what was rapidly becoming a familiar sight: Dory was teasing his dad, who was pretending to be annoyed and not on the brink of laughter.
A lot had changed since his dad had crossed the ocean to find him. He was allowed to do more; sometimes he could tell that his father really wanted to stop him, but now he usually let Nemo go ahead with just a warning to be careful. Marlin had actually lightened up all around; he'd begun playing and joking more, instead of only when the two of them were safely alone and near home.
And, of course, now they had Dory living with them. She wasn't at all what he'd imagined having a mother would be like--more a friend or a big sister than a parent. She was too goofy to be an authority figure, sometimes seeming even younger than Nemo. He liked having her around. She was a lot of fun, and Nemo could tell she was good for his dad.
Except for that time she'd disappeared for a few days, of course. Then, Nemo had gotten a glimpse of what his father must have been like when he'd been taken off to the tank. He felt bad about that. He hadn't meant for anything like that to happen, and it had all ended well, but he didn't like what he'd put his father through. He liked even less that just before he'd been taken he had been mad enough to want his dad to suffer.
But then, if he hadn't insisted on swimming out to that boat, they never would have met Dory. And he would still have to go everywhere with his father.
So it was confusing. Because he hated what he did, but liked how things turned out.
As he watched his father chase Dory around the anemomenone, Nemo decided he was thinking too much. He'd much rather join in.
So he did.