Chapter Text
Your heart was beating fast as you swam through the waters as fast as you could go, the humans chasing above on their tough as rock beast trying to catch you. You were quite fast, one perk of your species but your awareness of your speed lacked. Easily being reminded of it as the side of your tail slammed against some corals as you tried to dodge them, moving way too fast to dodge them in time.
But you still hit them, and you hissed in pain as you could feel your tail being scratched by the corals. Stupid brightly colored parasites! You ignored the pain and continued moving, each move in your tail making pain run through your spine worse. It was exhausting, but you weren't safe. You could hear the boats moving above the waters, moving against and bobbing on the waves.
Adrenaline ran through your veins as your mind went blank, your focus purely in front of you as you dashed through the waters, fighting against the few currents trying to push you back. You had no chance to think, all you could do was just swim as far away as you could. Far from these evil beings that kidnapped the life from the area you had gotten familiar with all these years.
Doing your best to dodge the rocks and corals, swimming under few and around some others. But the humans on the beast had it easier. You fought against exhaustion while the humans just controlled the beast and let it do the exhausting part of moving against the waves. You didn't know what the humans were doing, all you knew is that they were chasing you and very obviously wanting you enough to chase you so long already.
You weren't even sure how long they had been after you, but you didn't really care about that since you had to escape from them. You didn't know what happened to those who had been captured, or did you want to find out.
The exhaustion weighed you down, your body felt heavy.. but you couldn't stop, not now. They were still after you, hot on your tail. And it didn't help how you could see the sky above the waters slowly change colors. You couldn't see well when the waters were as bright as they are during the day, so you had to get rid of your pursuers. And quick.
But with the exhaustion and pain on your tail, your chance of escaping was slim and getting smaller by the second. You weren't moving at your full speed anymore, not sliding through the waters quickly with ease. You were slower, forced to slow down so you wouldn't collapse from the exhausting so easily. But even at your full energy, you had no chance of escaping. So how could you escape while being so much slower?
By Hiding.
The sun was rising, exhaustion weighing on your bones, humans too close for comfort, the best you could do was slip out of sight and hide somewhere. So you did that. Swimming as quickly as you could, closer to the sand filled bottom before doing the sharpest turn of your lifetime behind some rocks that were tall enough to reach out of water and perfectly sharp at the top, you hoped they were enough to injure the beast. Your eyes scanned desperately everything in your sight behind the rocks, landing on a small cave looking thing. Not thinking, you dived head first into it. If there was something in there then hell with it! If you get caught, whatever is in there can get caught too!
Pushing your body into the cave, then dragging your tail along with your claws pulling all of your fins and tail as much as you could. It wasn't big, barely fitting you but it could hide you. But to ensure your safety, Your tail camouflaged with the rocks around you to hide yourself within the tiny cave, hoping it would be good enough.
…
There was no noise, no moments expect those of the waves. It was silent. Too silent… you took a deep breath through your gills, waiting, hoping that the humans got tired of chasing you.
But that was just a foolish wish as you felt your tail being grabbed. Forcefully getting yanked out of your hiding place, something being tied around your tail and digging into your scales. You fought, scratched and bit everything you could. Hoping you would hit a human. But you were unlucky, feeling yourself being pulled away from the sandy depths by your tail. Dragging you higher from deep below the waves till you were nearing the surface.
If something in you wasn't panicking before, it is now! You struggled and hissed, wailing as you tried to escape the thing around your tail. But to no avail, your wails dying down into cries of desperation when you breached the surface and as the rope dug into your scales worse without the water holding your weight anymore, just hissing at the light hitting your eyes. You felt yourself slightly drop as whatever had its hold on your tail lessened its grip, only to hiss in pain as you landed in a big and very very painful net. Carrying you out from above the waters and onto the beast full of humans, out of your home, out into the bright air, out of your comfort zone. You cried out, begging to be released back into the ocean but the humans showed no pity. All you could do was struggle and cry as they had you in the net. The net which was much bigger than you which made it obvious that they had captured much larger beings than you in it, or multiple beings of your size. Either way, you didn't like it. Not one bit.
You cried and struggled against the net's hold on you, the net digging into your skin and scratching the newly formed bruise part of your tail painfully. It was not gentle, it held you without remorse as if you deserved to be treated like this. All you had ever done in your life was existing, so why did the humans want you? You or your species wasn't that special, you know that your species is spread across the waters and easy to find it looking in the right place at the right time.
Tears running down your cheeks as your cries turned into those of pain. You could feel the net moving, but you didn't care. You struggled against the net, not caring that it was only making it hurt worse. You didn't want to be there, and even the humans knew that. You hissed in pain and yelped as you felt your body drop once again.
With a splash, you were in water again. Except it wasn't your home. It was a glass cage that barely gave you enough room to move in, especially with the net still draped over you. You hissed once again, glaring through squinted eyes at the humans who paid you no mind, keeping you in the tank trapped. The rising sun hurting your eyes as you hissed and scratched at the glass. If you had more strength you would jump out of the tank and back beneath the waves, but you couldn't. The best you could do was climb out of the tank but even then the net would drag you down and the humans would notice you before you even got over the glass wall. Not to mention how messed up your sense of direction became without the darkness to shade your eyes, even if by some miracle you got out of the tank without the humans realizing, you would just be the same as a corpse. Trapped in a net, Floating in the waters helplessly till it was all gone.
So You instead chose to just sink down to the bottom of the tank, tiredly glaring at the humans walking around. Adrenaline still rushing through your veins, your instincts telling you to swim away, but you couldn't. So instead you sat in the tank, sulking, watching the humans carefully while doing your best to not pull on the net anymore than necessary. Doing your best to keep at least most of them in your sight, but that was impossible as always at least five or more out of your view. Especially with the light bleeding into your eyes more and more as the sun rose, it was becoming painful to just keep your eyes open.
But even still, you Hissed out everytime one got too close for your liking, but they gave you no mind as they walked past you. The seconds turned to minutes, before soon the sun was high in the sky. The brightness hurt your eyes and you felt drowsy, your instincts telling you it was time for you to sleep as it was day already. But no, you weren't safe. Who knew what would happen if you fell asleep here? Maybe they would kill you, maybe they would cut off your fins and then throw you back into the ocean. You have seen them do that to sharks! You didn't want to experience that too!
But the exhaustion on your bones and the sun making you sleepy, no matter how much you fought against it, your eyes eventually slipped shut. Your mind going numb with sleep, your body forcefully relaxing into the tank. Your whole existence being carried away to the land of dreams as your real body was trapped in the tank of a boat filled with evil humans.
When you woke up again, you were still stuck in a tank. But a different one this time. The tank this time held fake kelp, some very sad looking rock formations along with few other mers. But they were smaller than you, about just barely ¼ of your size. But it seems like all of them had much more energy than you. Even if they all looked so sickly..
Through half lidded eyes, you could see them hugging each other desperately for comfort while staring at you and the humans walking on the other side of the glass wall of the annoyingly well lit tank. You made no attempt to move to them, you had no energy to try to waste doing so and your body was still sore. Not to mention you just barely could make out the fact there were many tiny mers and not just one weird looking blob. And that how it went for the few days.
The group of mers sticking together and doing their best to keep from letting each other be taken, but to no avail. Swimming away or fighting the hand grabbing them didn't work, they always lost and one or two of them always got taken. It was… sad.
Sympathy wasn't something you usually showed, mostly because the waters could be cruel to those who give out kindness freely. But this wasn't the ocean, not a sea, not a lake or a pond. It was a tank. One humans controlled. It wasn't the natural place you were born in, it was something your instincts weren't used to. So no rules that molded your instincts had no reason to exist here, so the next time you felt the disturbance by the hand of a human in the water, You hissed out a warning as it reached for the tiny mers.
But the hand didn't heed to your warning, so you lunged for it the best you could and used your claws to dig into the skin. But just before you could sink your teeth on it, it was out of the water, just leaving a taste of iron in its place just as you could hear cries of a child. But you didn't care. You moved in front of the mers that were still in the tank, just barely able to make out the blurry figures on the otherside of the glass. The smaller mers didn't even deserve to live through this. You weren't sure of their species, but you had a feeling they weren't full grown which concerned you. But the best you could do was keep them from dwindling any more than they have already, as long as you were there. They were safe.
To no surprise, the next night a few humans came and dragged you out of the water and pinned you to the ground. You hissed and struggled against them, but to no avail. You couldn't gain your strength back with the laughable garbage food they gave you. So you were useless against them. Useless as they ripped out your claws, leaving you with barely enough that your body could regrow back. But it would take long, so much longer than it should with the conditions you were forced into.
Once the humans were done with their torture, they threw your back into the tank and you sank to the bottom without struggle. You could feel the the tiny mers watching you, but you didn't care. Curling up and closing your eyes once you were laying on the miserable looking sand. You could feel a few small pokes against your scales but you didn't care, not even when you felt the mers snuggle against you. It almost felt like a thank you, but you knew better than to think that, Saying thanks wasn't part of any mer culture.
As the days passed, you did your best to protect the smaller mers but seems like the humans weren't having any of it. On a day during feeding, while the smaller mers ate and as you were doing your best to get rid of the gunk trying to stop you from breathing through your gills. A human, a one single human, grabbed you by your head frills. Tugging it and dragging you out of the sands of the tank to the surface, you yelped but the human just dragged you out of the tank and threw you onto the floor. You hissed out in pain, landing on your arm bit with a sharp snap. The human laughed as the pain forced tears into your eyes, you yelped when the human kicked you. The human kicked, punched, threw and stomped on you. Beating you up while pushing you around on the floor, you were helpless as you got bruised and few of your bones broke from the rough treatment and from the strength of the human.
Just as you were about to pass out, you got thrown into water. Your vision was blurry and the water hurt your eyes, you couldn't move. The water was so filthy, it smelled horrible and you couldn't do anything. So you just floated there and let the current carry you, moving you through the tunnels. Few times you tried to see something or raise your head above the waters to see where you were, only once you managed to do that. From the small glimpse you managed to get, you understood you were in dark tunnels which was fine to you but the green dirty water you were in wasn't as fun. All kinds of gunk covering your body, your gills, forcing you to breathe through your mouth. And the water tasted horrible, you immediately wanted to close your mouth but you couldn't, you needed to breathe somehow.
Breathing through your teeth wasn't fun, but it was better. It kept all of the gunk out of your mouth and when your mouth got covered you used your tongue and lips to do your best to quickly get rid of it. It wasn't optimal, forcing you to taste more of the filth in the water, but you had to. You didn't have the strength to move, to get out of the waters and to the side enough that you could grab onto the walls and hold your head above the horrible waters. But you were stuck floating far from any walls, stuck barely keeping your head above the water to get enough air then what little you managed to get through your teeth. You couldn't help it as you felt tears filling your eyes.
You weren't prepared to die.
You let out sobs as you cried, barely able to keep them down and breathe at the same time. But you managed. Your sobs echoing through the tunnels, cries of suffering. You didn't deserve this, what did you ever do to deserve this? You just wanted to live, to exist. Free in the ocean, hunting and playing with fishes, play tag with other mers, being dumb and tasting things you didn't recognise, swimming away from sharks while laughing, all you wanted was to exist in your home. But this wasn't your home.. It wasn't anywhere close to home…
Floating in the waters as you cried, you wanted to go back home but you didn't even know if you would be safe there anymore. Humans were cruel. How could they be so cruel? Take you from your home and put you in a small tank to watch as smaller mer got taken away, just to beat you till you almost passed out only to then throwing you into waters where you couldn't even breathe. You would die here, alone, without anyone knowing.
Your cries only grew louder, now you were struggling to breathe too thanks to your sobs. You could feel yourself suffocating, feeling lightheaded and wanting to sink into the bottom of the dirty waters to die all alone, hidden beneath the dirty waters. Giving up on keeping your head up, you let your head fall below the water's surface. You could hear some kind of tapping coming closer to you at a fast pace, but you didn't have the oxygen to think properly. Letting yourself sink deeper below the waves, feeling your mind slowly start to go blank as you felt light…. Maybe death wasn't as bad..
then you were being pulled.
Hands on your arm pits, pulling you above the water and off to the side. Pulling you out of the disgusting waters onto one of the side before lifting you onto the edge, hands keeping you out of the water by your waist while a third hand moved to raise your chin with a fourth hand moving to your mouth. Getting rid of the things stuck on your teeth, making it easier to breathe but you were too tired to react even when you got lifted off the edge. Being cradled by four arms as you got carried away, two holding your upper half close with the other two keeping your tail off the ground.
All you let out was a broken sob as you collapsed against the stranger carrying you. It didn't matter who it was, human or not. You weren't in the suffocating waters anymore, but that didn't help you a lot. You were going to die soon enough, this just gave you a bit more time which would be useless in the end. It was fine, death would be kinder than the living world ever could be…
Once again, when you woke up you were in a tank. Though this time it was bigger than the previous two combined, enough room for you to be able to gain enough speed easily to zoom around. Weird.. Why was your tank so much bigger now.. What happened?.. Your mind was foggy, all you remember was being dragged out of the tank… then being beaten up… then… filthy green water you couldn't see in… After that… you couldn't remember…
It gave you a headache trying to remember the details, so you shook off the thoughts for now and turned your attention to your surroundings a bit more. The tank was bigger as you acknowledged earlier, it was also decorated with non fake plants. Which was a surprise. Some rock formations and corals you could use to hide yourself, super duper easy if you got your colors to match the sand too. Even if the sand looked a bit unfamiliar to you, but it was sand nonetheless. The familiar pale yellow tone of sand now was that of a dark shade that reminded you of shadows.
Weird, it didn't feel different or smell and you weren't daring to taste with how just normal sand tasted absolutely awful. You could see some more clearer black thing hidden in the sand, touching it with your good hand a bit and you found it felt like that of eel skin. But unlike eel skin, it wasn't slik. It was easy to grab and it didn't slip from your clawless hands. Pulling it from the sand reveal that it traveled through the tank and was hidden by the sand and only was more closely revealed when you pulled the middle part of the… long eel? No, it wasn't an eel. It didn't seem to be alive and was too perfectly round and long to be any kind of eel.
You inspected it more, bringing it close to your face to sniff it more. Strange scent… so as any smart being, you decided to bite it. Or at least tried to. The thing was very durable, and that annoyed you.
“Stop biting the cable unless you want your tank to stop filtering the water.”
The voice startled you, causing You to whip around in panic as you released the weird eel from your teeth. You could feel your Adrenaline rise even if your body ached. Your gills burned as you sucked in a quick breath, struggling to match the speed of your racing heart. It hurt. Everything hurt.. but you weren't safe. You were never safe. Your eyes scanned everywhere, trying to spot the human taunting you. even with fear running through your veins, you still hissed into the waters in warning. But the voice didn't seem to care.
“Hiss all you want, your not getting out of quarantine early”
The new word haunted you, you had no idea what kind of torture this ‘quarantine’ would be… maybe You'd be starved? Forced to stay on land till you dried out? Maybe you'll have to try to run away from humans with the sun high in the sky.. you kinda did that already.. maybe you would be forced to watch others of your species get killed..?
You didn't know, and that TERRIFIED you.
So out of desperation, you hid. Pushing Your body between the corals and totally not letting out a terrified whimper as you felt one of them snap from your sudden movement as you pushed your body against the sand, all which reminded you of your broken bones and bruised muscles. Your scales working overtime to match the unnatural color of the sand. But Your scales were refusing to set, colors switching through dark shades but not matching. You knew you could, but you weren't matching… Why wasn't your body listening to you.. Did the humans poison You..? Is this what quarantine means!? Poison that causes you to lose control of yourself!!? What if you won't be able to control your gills anymore? You wouldn't be able to breath! What would you do then!? You weren't ready to die! You didn't want to die! You were still so young! You haven't even been able to hunt your first shark Yet-
You.. weren't ready.. Why-.. Why..? Why Are humans so cruel..? Why did they take you..? Why did they want you..? Did they just want to watch you suffer?...
You weren't ready.. You weren't prepared..
Where was your pod..?
Mata..?
Guru..?
…where were your guardians?
You didn't want to die alone.. you weren't prepared to..
Then you were being pulled, not forcefully but more of in a gentle tug. Something Wrapping around your body before you felt hands hugging you. Caressing your fins and bringing you back to reality, causing you to realize you were hyperventilating. Causing your Scales to finally set on dark blue scales to match the dark waters as you tried to camouflage yourself from the mer cradling you. But it didn't do much, dark orange tentacles wrapped around your body and tail leaving you trapped in the gentle embrace as the bigger mer held you. It was… nice. It felt like home..
But it wasn't.
Yet you still couldn't fight back the instinct to cry out for your pod to protect you. You could feel the bigger mer's grip tighten from your pleas, you didn't know if it was hesitancy, annoyance, anger or simply just awkwardness. But they still just simply continued to hold you. Silencing your sobs with coos of comfort till you were too tired to cry out. And even once you quieted down, they still held you. the comfort of the tentacles wrapping around you and the warmth of their arms just enough to lull You into sleep, one filled with comfort and hope more then the fear and desperation every other sleep you have had after being trapped.
So you let go of your fear.
Letting yourself fall asleep in the arms of the unknown mer.