Chapter Text
^the playlist I made for this story^
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The nets were made of wire, thin enough to appear invisible when thrown overboard. Some were damaged, snapped in places where the strongest of the creatures had managed to break through, though few accomplished a full escape.
The last time one escaped, it had taken two people with it, and they had never come back up from the water.
Erwin used that line a lot to scare his students into shutting up and listening to him whilst they were out training: "The last men who weren't paying attention were dragged down under the water and torn apart."
It usually did the trick, at least, it used to do the trick. But the kids were older now than they had been when he'd first become their teacher. Erwin's story was becoming all too familiar, and everytime Erwin started telling it, one of the kids - Eren normally - exclaimed, "Shut up, Smith, you can't scare us with that old shit."
The problem was, Erwin didn't just want to scare them; he wanted to make them realise that it was serious, that they couldn't piss about on the boats daring one another to jump overboard when the creatures could have been right below them.
All it took was one slip.
"Let's just set these nets out," he said this time, exasperated from the last four hours of trying to control the kids on his boat. "And then we can begin back to the harbour for dinner." The ocean was rocking them sideways, and Erwin was aware of the light disappearing from the sky. They'd have to get back to the harbour in the next hour to avoid being out in the dark.
Eren was already gathering a large net in his arms, Armin and Mikasa following his lead. Erwin had tried to talk to them about acting of their own accord instead of waiting for Eren to do something first, but it hadn't been all that successful. For whatever reason, they worshipped him.
From where he gripped the wheel, Erwin watched them go through the steps he had taught them, turning around sharply at a thud on the stern of the boat. A hand remained on the wheel, arm twisted behind himself awkwardly, and he steadied himself at the sight.
He was silent, still. His eyes stung in the salty wind and his skin was prickling with the start of a rainstorm.
The kids hadn't noticed the creature on the back of the boat yet - thank god. The last thing Erwin needed was them screaming and running about.
But the creature had definitely noticed them.
Its eyes darted from Armin to Mikasa, Mikasa to Eren, then across to Erwin. It had huge pupils, making its eyes seem almost black, and the thin ring of a blue-grey iris was pale enough that it could have been mistaken for white.
It made no move towards any of them, but no move away, either. Just continued to move its eyes frantically from the kids to Erwin like it was trying to calculate something.
From where it lay, torso on the boat, tail in the water, it was undeniably one of them. If the tail wasn't enough of a giveaway, the scales on its sharp face surely were. They were a fascinating colour, a sort of fluorescent white that reflected the green-blue of the ocean. Its mouth was fixed into a frown, lips a deceptively soft shape covering what Erwin knew was inside.
He'd seen the sharp, pointed teeth of these creatures before, more times than he wished he had.
Erwin felt the wheel fighting against his grip, the wind trying to pull them off course, and pulled hard to keep it where he wanted, but he didn't take his eyes off the creature. He was worried what it would do if he stopped watching.
It couldn't have been all that difficult to pull one of the kids off the boat.
Their parents had trusted Erwin with them; what would it do to them to hear that their kids had been mangled to death in the sea?
The creature turned its head to look behind itself, raising up on its arms as it moved.
When it turned back, its pupils were impossible larger. There was no colour in its eyes at all now.
Then, all at once, it lurched forwards and clambered completely onto the boat, tail glimmering, skin so pale it was blue under the fading sunlight. It was not all that graceful, its tail making moving out of water a challenge. The definition in its muscles as it moved only further reminded Erwin of the strength it had. Sea water sloshed as its tail left the water, splashing into the boat.
Though he flinched and took a sharp breath, Erwin didn't move from his hold on the wheel as he glanced towards the three kids (okay, so they were teenagers, but still acted like kids most the time) and said loudly and steadily, "I need you guys to abandon the nets and go the to bow. Now."
Their heads snapped towards him and at the same time, the three of them gasped and then started to exclaim that there was something on the boat - "it's gonna kill us! We're gonna die! Oh my god, Smith, it's gonna kill us!" - as if Erwin wasn't already aware of how amazingly close it was to him.
"Now," he repeated firmly. "Get to the bow."
Mikasa grabbed Eren's arm and Armin took hers, and together they fled to the far end of the motor boat, which wasn't all that big.
Erwin was already looking at the creature again. It hadn't moved since landing fully on the boat, and he couldn't work out what it wanted no matter how hard he tried. He thought through everything he knew, everything he'd been told since he was a child first learning of the sea creatures, but none of it covered what was happening at that moment.
No one had ever told him this was a possibility.
The creatures didn't just wait. They never stayed still, never came near enough to be seen unless their prey - humans - were trapped and their kill was guaranteed.
Erwin felt like he was an ignorant child all over again.
His fingers were gripping the wheel so tightly that they ached.
It was opening its mouth, its gorgeous, awful mouth, and Erwin moved to reach for the knife in his belt. The pointed teeth were so beautifully terrifying that he almost wanted to let the creature use them. He curled his fingers around the leather-wrapped handle of his knife.
The creature made an alarming sound, its eyes now trained onto the blade. It lifted a slender hand to shield its face but made no move to attack.
Erwin was lost. If this creature wasn't there to kill them, what the hell was it there for? Surely it wasn't stupid enough to present itself to its own hunters.
Sure, he didn't know a lot about their brains, but he knew they had one.
He could hear Eren, Mikasa and Armin struggling to calm themselves down at the other end of the boat, but they were as safe as they could be.
He kept a firm hold of the knife but didn't remove it from his belt, and mainly to himself, mumbled, "What the hell do you want?"
Its eyes widened, black as coal, and its mouth hung half-open for a long moment before it spoke.
"My mother."
Erwin wasn't sure whether it was the voice, the words, or the fact that it knew how to speak which alarmed him the most, but his mind went blank as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. How this training session in the waters they so often frequented had turned into an encounter, face to face, with one of the very creatures he was training the kids to kill was beyond him.
"Your mother," he said monotonously.
It was staring at him as it had been for some time, ignoring the kids now. "My mother," it repeated. Its voice was softer than Erwin had expected, though how could he ever expect it to talk? They had been told specifically that they didn't understand English.
Well, clearly this one did.
"You want your mother?" He asked, and despite his efforts at remaining calm, his voice shook.
"Yes," it responded. "You took my mother."
Erwin thought about offering himself to this creature as an apology. Like, we killed her so why don't you kill me? But how could he possibly tell it that his crew had murdered its own mother? If anything was going to provoke it to violence, that was it.
"I don't know where your mother is," he answered instead.
Tilting its head, it kept its eyes securely on him. "You took her."
Erwin wanted to scream. No one had told him how to handle this situation and there was no one else here to help other than three kids who were not far enough along in their training to be of any use. Hell, Erwin had been professionally capturing the creatures for the best part of fifteen years and even he hadn't a clue what to do.
"You're not safe in these waters," he said.
"You took my mother," it repeated. "I watched you take her."
"You - what?"
"I watched you take her in one of those - those...nets." The word was said with such malice, such visceral hatred, that it made Erwin physically wince.
He couldn't begin to imagine how much it must hurt to have those wire nets tangled around them, cutting into skin and scales until they bled, until they couldn't breathe.
"You're going to suffocate if you stay out of the water much longer."
Rain was getting heavier. They needed to head back to the harbour, but that wasn't an option as long as this creature remained on the boat.
It glanced around itself and then back at Erwin. "Why did you take my mother?" Suddenly its voice was weak and childlike, face softening until it looked scared.
"Please, I need to go back to shore. Will you get off my boat?" His heart was thudding so loud that he could barely hear the wind. It felt like his entire chest was moving with each beat.
The creature had taken on a pleading tone, and fuck, it sounded so human that Erwin was having a hard time figuring out who was the enemy. "Take me to my mother."
He wanted to cry or laugh or something because there was no way this was happening right now. There was no way he was standing there on a boat with three teenagers, having a conversation with a creature that had probably killed at least one person.
"I don't know where she is."
It bared its teeth, and Erwin worried it was going to make a move for him, but it stayed where it was.
Then, after a couple of seconds, it pushed itself back with its hands and slid off the boat and into the water, and then it was gone.
Erwin stood frozen in place with the knife tight in his hand, staring ahead at the dark ocean where, moments ago, that creature had disappeared into.
Then he turned back to face the wheel and yelled, "Kids, finish setting out the nets! We're going back to the harbour."
He watched them attach the nets to the hooks on the buoys next to the boat, could see their hands trembling as they worked on the knots. Even Eren, who usually hid any fear, was struggling to steady himself.
They were mumbling between themselves as Erwin steered them back to shore, growing more excited and less frightened the further they got from where the encounter had been, and by the time the boat was tethered in the harbour, they were bounding out of it and running inside to tell the story to anyone they could find.
Erwin sat for a few minutes on the boat, eyes on the stern where the creature had been, its magnificent tail laying across the surface, glimmering with water under the slow-setting sun. He wanted to convince himself that it hadn't happened, that he had somehow hallucinated it, but there was no chance of that with how loud Eren, Mikasa and Armin were being.
No, undoubtably, he'd had a conversation with one of the sea creatures, and he'd somehow survived it.