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veneralice · 12 days ago

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the artwork used in the header is “the reconciliation of the montagues and capulets over the dead bodies of romeo and juliet” by frederic leighton!

divider by @cafekitsune ! all credit to the original creator of the divider!

ma meilleure ennemie / rafayel

After having to come to terms that Rafayel is both the worst and best thing that could ever have happened to you, there’s only one thing left to do. Realize that the past does not matter. And accept that what you feel for Rafayel isn’t fated, because no matter who you were, you’d love him in every lifetime.

content warnings: reader as mc, reader remembering her past after meeting rafayel, 3rd myth mermaid rafayel because yum, abysswalker lore is kinda mixed up with my 3rd myth assumptions idk just take it heres comes the airplane (zig-zags the fanfiction-spoon towards your mouth), rafayel MAY be a little ooc, some miscommunication trope, reader is kinda self-deprecating in the beginning because i was listening to “i’m your man” by mitski sorry guys, verbal fights, reader is obtuse, idk . let me know if there’s anything i forgot LMAO. also as always probably not completely canon-compliant because the lads lore is too damn confusing for me (yall got any videos breaking it down????????)

You don’t understand who he is at once.

In the beginning, it had been a simple mission. Two paths crossing naturally because of an incident. You were chasing after a threadbare connection to the murders you had been assigned to, anything that would have made sense of the mystery unfolding in front of you. You were a full-fledged Deepspace hunter, with all the responsibilities that came with it, and you were determined to make that count. All the blood, sweat and tears you had dedicated to this vocation had all paid off the day they handed you your uniform. You were determined to serve that uniform with dignity.

Under that guise, he slips the bonds of fate and reunites with you again. Mysteriously, lightheartedly. An important witness who just so stumbled on the hunter assigned to the case. An accident arranged. You just don’t know that yet.

It’s when he really begins to penetrate every aspect of your life that your brain kicks into overdrive. You’re sensitive to every interaction, dizzy with déja-vu. It doesn’t help that he seemed to look at you as if he knew exactly what was happening. Imagine a doctor who’s sat on your sickbed, and he refuses to give the life-altering diagnosis. Out of pity. Out of fear. Whatever reason he can conspire so that he can keep on dangling the truth away from you. For a very long time, you cannot even think of the possibility that you’re an experimental mouse in Rafayel’s maze, and he’s studying your reactions. Delineating from his own past what he expects and does not expect from you. You’re too busy trying to find a way out.

You don’t realize at first that the familiarity you associate with his pretty face runs deeper than just a red-scaled fish won at random at a booth. You barely even make the association that he’d taught at your university, during your preparatory education for the job. It’s Tara who points it out in what was supposed to be some normal girl-talk. He’s gorgeous, after all, and Tara one of your closest friends. You indulge her gossip every now and then from the fringes of the social circles you still entertain. Professor Rafayel, she’d said, excitedly snapping her fingers as the name rolled of her tongue. You’d sat up arrow-straight, although for a different recognition than the one Tara was experiencing at the identification. That’s who he is. He teaches art history, I think. Wasn’t that one of your electives?

You knew him. You knew him beyond a capacity of words, unable to formulate why his eyes pierced deeper into your brain than some of your most familiar childhood remembrances. You turned the name over in your mind, like the childhood game you’d always won at, playing Memory with your actual memory. It was unbearable.

He had been creeping up on you for a very long time, like an ailment, or a slow-working poison. One of the first few things they force you to go through at the beginning of a hunter education is basic self-aid classes, where they teach you not to exacerbate the spreading of the poison by moving or exhausting yourself. Movement meant blood circulation, and a heightened blood circulation meant a quicker way for the poison to reach all the vital areas it needed to kill its victim. What precious immune response your body could have mustered up is quickly squashed by you running, running, running. You were running after the truth, running after your memories, running after what it meant that Rafayel had fallen in love with the idea of you. But not really you. Of that, you were certain.

It’s the very first accusation you hurl at him when Rafayel finally has to confront the possibility that your memory may be returning. What little barriers your mortal mind possessed are quickly torn through as your past life crashes through it like water breaking apart a dam. You remember the piercing sensation of your nervous system trying to commit suicide from the flood of experiences it was recovering, and Rafayel’s gentle hands trying to cradle you, wanting to help you, and you remembered the way you had pushed him until his back had hit the mahagony closet that decorated the corner of his room. Neither of you were particularly violent. But what had been the most vivid impression of that day was the screaming you had then subjected at each other, an eternity’s worth of pent-up anger, and resentment, and love lost and regained. It hadn’t taken long for Thomas to crash into the room, disturbed by the noise he had heard upon his arrival into the studio, and he’d torn the two of you apart from - well, what was it? You would never raise a hand to hurt Rafayel, and you didn’t do so in that fight. And Rafayel, past life or not, would rather die than ever inflict pain on you. But there was a desperate fumble of fingers, the tearing at whatever flesh you could grasp, the urge to claw open his chest to prove to yourself that it couldn’t possibly be true, that your chest didn’t contain the proof of a deity-level heist. And Rafayel, lovelorn Rafayel, didn’t lift a single hand to defend himself. Just shouting, and shouting, and shouting. You barely even remember the way Aunt Thalia herself had to drag you out of that room, probably called by Thomas, who by then had been panicked at the intensity of the fight.

It was heartbreaking, the way Thalia’s face only evoked the memory of her nephew’s. They looked too alike. Even looking at her had wanted to make you yell anew. And she, too, looked at you as if she knew that her appearance only made you want to crumble with the shame of what you had done to her, her family, and her home.

You remember, then, she had said. The tone in her voice had sounded entirely too sad and forlorn for you to continue to hold on your anger. It dissipated, like foam on the water, like your memories eroding over time. Glass smoothed to treasure. You sank deeper into the cushion of her expensive car, turning to look through the tinted windows. Your parting gift is the sight of Rafayel stumbling out to the porch, his face wet with tears, watching you go. It’s a sight that haunts your nightmares from then on. Yes, you told her. Yes, I remember.

To say it was a betrayal would be an understatement. What you feel haunts you to your bone marrow, curdles the blood in your veins. You spent way too many nights tearing at your hair, torturing your scalp for the memories that stir below it. Ignorance really was bliss. Whatever feelings had been growing in your heart for Rafayel are quickly dampened by the realization that no matter how much he loved you, you could not let it ruin him further. He was chasing a dead girl, that’s all it was. You’d end it here and there. It can’t undo the damage you’ve done, but it could cut him free at last. Of a bond he didn’t want. Of a love he had conjured for someone else.

Your heart fights your brain’s assumption. After all, you never once asked him. During the fight, he had never mentioned your shared past, not once. His concern had been real and current. Your brain shuts your heart up pretty quickly. He’d been watching you for so long, after all, long enough to determine whether you acted like the bride he had chosen so long ago, before he decided to re-introduce himself. And he’d never told you the truth. Instead, you’re forced to grapple with a bone-crushing guilt that threatens to swallow you whole. Your fault, your fault, your fault.

It’s your fault that Lemuria is dead and gone. It’s your fault that Rafayel’s only memory of his home is constrained to the few paintings he allows himself to reminisce over. It’s your fault that once again, Rafayel is forced to wander the earth alone.

The bride of the Sea God is gone. You are all that remains.

You can’t even tell anyone. Who’d believe you? A therapist, perhaps, would indulge your ravings, but that would only get you a private suite in the mental asylum. You may as well put the strait jacket on yourself. Whatever survived of Lemuria lives on in the fairy tale books told to children, in the occasional lecture of a professor teaching about folklore, in the family bond between Rafayel and Thalia. No, no one would believe you. And you cannot go to Rafayel. You cannot ever see him again.

But that’s not on fate’s cards for you. Of course not.

The first social outing you let your friends convince you to attend (which was a New Year’s Eve, your favorite celeberation of the year, which in and of itself should be sick and twisted. Couldn’t you have see him again on Christmas Day or something?), you manage to end up right back where you started. In a soul-gripping stare-off with the man who knows every inch of your mind, all your dark and light corners. He looks at you like a man haunted. He’s a ghost attending a hanging, and you feel the noose closing around your neck. Whatever torture the retrieval of your memory is forcing you through, Rafayel has already lived through it. He already had to stew in his own memories, since he didn’t have the luxury of losing them as you did.

Sweet Simone who has no grasp of social cues at all, who’s already drunk out of her mind, says then, “You already know each other, right? Rafayel, please make sure she dances tonight! She’s not allowed to pout today!”

And with that, Simone plucks your hand and places it into Rafayel’s. You both flinch at the motion, an ironic reenactment of the father’s bride giving over his daughter to the groom. Tradition, too, is a kind of memory. You stare up into Rafayel’s eyes, stumbling into him as you’re pushed into a makeshift dancefloor, which is really just Tara’s living room. Neither of you breaks the hold. Neither of you comments on the fact that this is the first real interaction you’ve had in weeks. You silently place your other hand on Rafayel’s shoulder, and he places his on the your waist, the fingers fitting perfectly into the curve there. Like it’s made for him. Like his body remembers.

Rafayel’s sunset colored eyes darken noticeably. You make a point of ignoring that reaction, and let yourself be guided into the dance. You don’t want to talk. You don’t want to verbalize that gut-wrenching feeling that you’ve confirmed every prejudice Lemurians ever had about humans; like the human you were, all you had given him in return for his love and devotion was agony and despair. You want to apologize for making him fall in love with you. You want to yell at him for deceiving you. You weren’t the woman he fell in love with, and you wouldn’t turn yourself into her. But at the same time, the woman you were at the moment wanted to weep with the loss of him.

How mortal of you to be so irrational. How expected of you that your brain and your heart are in an ever-warring conflict.

The silence between you is palpable. Instead of initiating conversation, you angle your head around, taking in the scenery. Tara’s apartment is unrecognizable. There’s an actual disco-ball hanging from the ceiling, a tacky, glittering planet Simone had found in the thrift store a block away. She loved to frequent it, and the friend group was often blessed with some kind of trinket or piece of clothing she managed to scavenge every time a fresh batch of donated stuff was displayed in the store. The kitchen is lined with cheap booze, the expensive stuff hidden in the guest bedroom. The door there is locked shut using a passcode, and the group chat, signaling your friends’ drunkenness, keeps asking what that passcode is, since no one seemed to remember in their intoxication that you could scroll up and check past messages. There are alumni here, some you recognize and some you don’t. You even catch a glimpse of Xavier and his hunting partner turned romantic partner, but they quickly disappear behind the curtain that hides away the door to the balcony.

Truthfully, it was your fault Rafayel was here. You were the one who had introduced him to Tara after she had made that connection between Professor Rafayel and Painter Rafayel. No one even knows he’s the reason you weep into your pillow after night. No one could know the truth, so you hadn’t even bothered creating a story that would legitimize a falling-out. In their minds, he’s still just Rafayel, who may or may not be sweet on you. To Tara, he was just a friendly face whom she associated with you. But he didn’t have to attend.

So you finally ask, “Why did you come?”

You’re still not looking at him. You keep your eyes fixated on Simone, who’s knocking back yet another round of shots with Leila, a Deepspace hunter from a different, lower-ranking squad. Leila’s face is already taking on a greenish hint that reveals she cannot keep up with Simone’s voracity. Someone should have warned her that Simone drinks like a sailor, but you guessed it was too late for that. Your fixation on the girls is the only reason you don’t start collapsing in Rafayel’s hold; you want to come apart at the seams below his touch, disappear in the waves of emotion. Below the hand that grips his shoulder, Rafayel’s shoulders rise in tandem with his chest as he sighs out. “You know exactly why I’m here. We should talk.”

We should talk. That so doesn’t cut it. You make the mistake of turning your gaze on him and immediately regret it. His eyes, as changing and churning as the sea, reflect the light sparkling off the cheap discoball, but at the moment, all they’re reflecting is the helplessness in your own. This is exactly why you didn’t want to see him. Although you are proud enough to not want to demean yourself because he doesn’t see you as the person you actually are, you aren’t strong enough to claim that he leaves you untouched. It’s always his eyes. You sink into his gaze like an anchor disappearing beneath the waves, deeper into the ocean’s embrace. You think of a lost city and an unfinished ceremony. That pushes you to tear your eyes away, just in time to see Leila rush off to the bathroom. Simone, meanwhile, has moved on to a new victim, although Nero appears to be an unwilling one. Despite being in a loud, packed to the brim room full of party-goers, he’s actually reading a book on wanderers. “Maybe me blocking you on all social media and cutting you out of my life wasn’t a clear enough message. I don’t want to see you. And I don’t want to talk to you.”

Rafayel’s fingers guide your head back to him. It’s a gentle gesture, bespeaking his tenderness, yet the expression on his face is anything but. It’s the same expression he had when you pushed him away on that doomed day, both physically and emotionally. “You’re human,” he says, his tone dripping with bitterness. He speaks the words as if they are sufficient explanation alone for your stubbornness. “You don’t understand what it feels like. Maybe you can live on and pretend that night never happened. But I can’t, and it’s killing me. You don’t even care that I’m standing here because another second without you is torment to me.”

You suppose you’re acting like a hypocrite, because the words hurt. You physically recoil. You catch the unhappy glint in Rafayel’s eyes before he methodically wipes it away, his emotions like paint on a canvas. Sweet Rafayel, always showing the knife but never intending to stab. Because he loved yoo too much. You admonish your brain. No, because my past life tied him to me against his own will. He remains a careful artist, creating a narrative that befits him. Your heart - his heart, the one you stole like the thief you are - painfully pounds in your chest as you lean in and tell him, “You should’ve expected this when you gave your heart to a human. But I’m not her, Rafayel. I will never be her.”

You step away, ending the dance. But Rafayel’s hand slips down, until his fingers are clenching your wrist, painfully encircling it until it feels like a handcuff. Normal you would have broken the hold, maybe punched him if he was a strange drunkard in a nightclub. But you are changed, remade. The melancholy of the past hangs over you. You are not strong enough to be free of him. “No, you are not,” he bites out. It’s clear you’ve hurt him. You forget that your words are knives, too. “You never were.”

The meaning of that is lost on you. This time, you shake free. You refuse to let him see your tears. Turning on your heel, you abandon Rafayel once again. As you always do.

How to explain what you felt? How to explain that your heart was beginning to burst open like a blossoming flower because of what you felt for him? How to make sense of the feeling that even though he made sure to find you again, you can’t be sure he loves you for what you are and not what you were? It’s not in you to doubt his intentions. Although you are slow at it, even your brain is beginning to understand why he took your memories during your time as a princess of a vanished city. Even slower, you are coming to terms with the fact that Rafayel’s love for you had been pure and without regret when he had given you the sea god’s heart. But you cannot find it in yourself to accept it.

You cannot find it in yourself to live on a sacrifice you never had intended for him to make. It should have been you.

It only takes three steps to reach the kitchen slash makeshift bar, but Simone is long gone. When you swivel your heart around, deluding yourself with the poor excuse that you’re looking for Simone, a quick scan of the room reveals that Rafayel is gone as well. Must have melted back into the crowd. The relief you feel inside your chest transforms into grief rather quickly. You are a strange creature, vibrating like in a metronome into two wildly different directions. Never stopping. Never changing.

You shake your head, flinging away the thoughts. You decide to tap Nero’s shoulder, cupping a hand around his ear so he can hear you yell, “Where’s Simone?” He cringes away from the loud sound, but helpfully points to the main bathroom. You give him a thumbs-up in thanks, which he only acknowledges with a nod before returning to his book.

At least one person here was enjoying himself. Even if he wasn’t really taking part in the celebration.

You slip into the bathroom, then turn the lock so no one else can enter. You’re not the only guest aside from Simone. Both Tara and Michaela have made themselves comfortable, with Michaela lounging in the bathtub fully clothed and Tara kneeling next to a puking Simone. You stare at them in disbelief. “Since when does Simone throw up from drinking?”

Michaela laughs. “You’d be throwing up too, if you realized the orange juice you’d been chugging was actually Malibu Beach.”

“What?”

Tara, having finished tying up Simone’s hair, shrugs. “First hint should have been the suspicious burning down the throat, but I don’t think Simone was paying much attention,” she drawls out. She’s not exactly sober, either. “She was just focussing on hydrating. Nero told her it was important to stay hydrated, because it helps when the alcohol is broken down inside your body. I don’t know. That’s what she said.”

“Shouldn’t we, like, drive her to the hospital?” You gesticulate wildly with your hands to the door, as if anyone needed clarification on what you meant. You are still hazy from your interaction from Rafayel. Your heart is still on that dance-floor. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Tara eyes Simone, who’s dry-heaving now. It’s Simone herself who speaks up. “Am fine,” she manages to choke out. Her fingers clench and unclench around the toilet bowl. She doesn’t sound particularly believable. She’s a skilled topic-changer, though, clearly embarrassed, since she’s never been this drunk. “How was your dance?”

You cast your eyes to the ceiling, at the paint separating from it, eager to fall like confetti. You imagine that fall, swirling, swirling. Coming down. You are out of your body and in it all at once. “Lovely, Simone. Thanks for asking.”

The new year comes with a loud, yelled out countdown from the party guests. You girls huddle around the intoxicated Simone, hugging each other as the count reaches zero and the new year is ushered in. There’s a shout, and lots of whoops and hollering. Even Simone manages to spit out a “yippie!”, without ever raising her head from where it’s hanging over the toilet.

You lean your head on her shoulder, rubbing circles into her back to comfort her. Tara’s and Michaela’s encouraging comments for Simone to straighten up and have some water fade into the background, forced to the edge of your perception as you think about Rafayel and what it would have felt like to kiss him as a new year’s celebration. It’s a wish you shouldn’t entertain. A fantasy that won’t come true. But Rafayel is right. You’re a human, destined to want what you cannot have, desperately trying to reach it anyways. If you hadn’t extricated yourself from Rafayel, you would have smothered him with it, that feral, violent attempt to keep him. Everything you’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.

Perhaps that didn’t make you as different from her as you thought in the first place.

You remember the days before the ceremony. While your descent into Whalefall City had been tainted by fear and unwillingness at first, every second you had spent in Lemuria’s embrace and Rafayel’s vicinity had managed to coax out the embers of your old faith. Like a fire being stoked, you had come to accept what giving your heart meant to Rafayel. And you would have done it. You’re not quite sure when the decision hit you. In fact, in the time you had spent with Rafayel before the ceremony, one moment had started blurring into one another, becoming a blend of pure happiness. You stopped asking him to take you to the surface. You stopped trying to evade his questions.

Instead, you had found yourself opening up in a way you had never done before.

Your upbringing had never allowed for real bonds and relationships. You had been a lamb, although a particularly pretty one, destined to land on the chopping block. Only they hadn’t given you the dignity of blindfolding you, so the sight of the knife had made you panic. That panic is erased the second you begin to bask in Rafayel’s affection. Because whether you had wanted it or not, Rafayel was falling in love with you. Perhaps neither of you had realized that a simple agreement would turn out to be a consuming, everlasting love.

All you had been thinking about was how to stay in that moment forever.

Although Rafayel had told you shortly after your migration to the deep sea that he didn’t like being touched, that quickly changed due to the warmth of your tenderness. He’d begun to let you trace the paint adorning his skin, retracing where the veins raised up to kiss his skin. Hand-holding is something you both quickly become accustomed to. One day, he finally is able to completely surrender to you. He falls into your embrace, pillowing his head onto your lap, and does not move. It’s the ultimate sign of trust he can give you.

He puts himself into your hands.

You had cradled his face, and you knew then and now that you’d never hold anything as precious as him ever again. He was the most delightful, most important part of your life now. Not many people were able to change their minds like this. A more modern diction would call it “a complete 180”. You begin to bend for Rafayel, stretching to accommodate his existence, his love. Your heart yearns to become his, that final step that would erase all boundaries between the two of you. There is a Lemurian song, old and melancholic, that describes love as the union of two souls to become one pearl forever. True love does not need mortal bodies. It persists forever, in any shape it can take. A bond eternal. You find that fitting. As your fingers softly trace their way down his cheekbones, the look in Rafayel’s eyes tells you that his every want mirrors your own. Without intending to, you have become one.

Rafayel reaches up to catch your fingers. He tugs your left hand to his lips, dropping a kiss into it, as if the need to kiss you was as natural as the need for your lungs to require air. “You’re very silent today. I thought we decided to discard this fake sense of politeness and etiquette, and just speak of what we think.”

“I’m not thinking of anything except you.” In another life, you may have blushed. In this life, you keep looking at him straight-on, willing him to see. How much he plucks at your heartstrings, to the point where you’re sure every creature of the ocean can hear the melody of worship they create. “‘Tis pleasant here, and we are together, and the sun is setting. I’d bottle this moment for eternity if I could.”

Rafayel’s beautiful face takes on a mellow expression, one you cannot decipher. Despite the fact that he is a young god, and he has bared his soul to you, there is still an entire culture, an entire life that seperates the two of you. But all he says is, “You need not bottle it. We can stay like this forever. In fact, I wish for it to be so, and you are not permitted to leave me.”

This time, you place your hands at his cheeks and lower yourself until your noses are touching. There are no sounds, no noises in the deep sea, nothing but the sharp intake of breath Rafayel’s lungs exert due to your proximity. There is a tiny, arrogant little part of you that is pleased to know you can evoke these kinds of reactions in him. His lungs don’t need air, not really. But you make him want to draw breath. The larger part of you is too concentrated on the fact that your heart is racing, and there is a joy flooding your entire being that is threatening to make you explode at the seams, to float out of existence. “As long as you wish for it to be so, I will never leave you. Do you doubt my intentions?”

Rafayel laughs shakily. His own fingers come up to tangle in your hair. “Of course I do. You’re human.”

You lean down even further, his lips only a width of a kiss away. His fingers tug at your hair, an unconscious urge that tells you the desire inside you is reflected in him thousandfold. What an honor it is to be loved by a sea god. What a blessing. “Liar,” you whisper to him. Rafayel’s response is to raise his head, and then he’s kissing you, and there is no need for words. No need to speak of what you think. Every kiss is a message. I love you. I devote myself to you. I want to be with you.

Of course, this isn’t only where your treachery begins. It’s his treachery that sets in motion the events of you obtaining his heart, his treachery that fools his own people as they never expected from the ruler of its own folk. You at least can accept that Rafayel was acting in the name of love. However, you'd rather he forget his love and live on than make you carry the burden that everything that has ever meant anything to him ceased to exist just for you.

It's those kinds of memories that make you grab your head in the middle of the night as you're forced to relive them. Brain-splitting, deafening. The lines seperating past-incarnation-you and current-life-you blur every time you think of Rafayel, because aren't you the same at your core? Don't you both love him more than anything else in the world? You'd like to pretend you could slide right back into her, fit yourself around her like the last puzzle piece needed. As always, though, you recall how thinking like that made Rafayel turn his back on everyone except you. What had made him selflessly spare you from your fate, twice. Not only did you cheat death on that fateful day when the ceremony went wrong, you did it again when the chance came to return the heart to its rightful owner. Back into your own four walls you went, clueless, protected, and forever seperated. You weep at what could have been. You weep because of what you did to him.

It's those delightful thoughts that float around your waking brain the morning after.

When you slipped out of your dream of the past, you almost had a heart attack because of the arms wrapped around your frame. For a second, your heart had burst out of your chest in exultation, thinking you were with Rafayel, even though rational thought would have made you question why he was here in the first place. The arms in question however are not one set, but two sets of arms, with one belonging to Simone in the middle of the bed and the other belonging to Tara at the other side of it. Michaela had walked home with Leila, who after upending the contents of her stomach felt much refreshed and grateful for the fresh air. Simone could not be trusted to go home on her own, and you would have slept over at Tara's anyways, which is why you ended up in this predicament.

You gaze up at the ceiling of Tara's bedroom, feeling restless. You had no answers for the girls last night, at least no good ones. You couldn't tell them about why there was tension between Rafayel and you. In the end, they had given up their line of questioning and instead turned their attention on Nero, who, after the party was over, still peacefully remained to finish his book. While they pestered him about when it was his time to finally find a partner, Tara had pulled you to the side, and in her eyes you had seen the worry she didn't want the other girls to know of.

Whatever it is that you're going through with him, Tara had said, her tone careful and gentle, I'm sure it can be solved if you guys were to sit down and talk. You taught me that, you know. To always communicate what you feel. And it's worked out this far, hasn't it?

The painful grimace you had turned on her in response ressembled more a cat bearing its fangs than a human person trying to smile. He's not my boyfriend, Tara.

Tara hadn't let that point fly. She kept looking at you with that steady look you'd never expect her to possess, the rare moments in where your friend discarded all humor and told you the truth as she saw it. No, he's not. But we both know he means more to you than that.

Well, she's not wrong. As Tara went to rejoin the group to chase Nero out of her apartment because she was growing tired, you mulled over her words, distressed. Of course he meant more to you than that. He was the air in your lungs and the blood in your veins, the joy in your laughter and the very first tear you cried in grief. If someone cut you open, they'd need no archeological background knowledge that his imprint was marked all over you. There is something at the core of your existence that knew and cherished Rafayel before it learnt to recognize and care for yourself, something that got separated from him during the creation of humanity. Perhaps you're being stubborn and stupid, and the past lives don't matter at all, because you'd find him in every lifetime so you could fall in love with him again. Perhaps being stupid is all you have left. In your heart, you cling to the belief that this is the right thing to do, that a healthy affection cannot spring up from a relationship as sacrificing and destructive like this, from a bond that surpassed all boundaries.

You seek to set him free. You don't want him if it means subsuming his will to your own because of a bond your past life forced on him.

Maybe you're nothing more than an archnemesis, instead of being a soulmate to long for. You dig your fingers into your palms, welcoming the pain, knowing it will never compare to Rafayel's hardships.

You know it will be a quiet patrol when your brain begins to hunt through your newly-acquired memories like a movie reel.

It keeps doing that, as if your brain is trying to cope with its' boredom. It's a little like lying awake at night and telling yourself it's time to sleep now, but then you start remembering the top ten most embarrassing moments of your childhood. Your brain likes to see you suffer. It seemingly has picked up on your general self-depricating mood and now intends to make it worse. In one moment, you're balancing yourself on the red-tiled roof of a small house, and in the next you slip back into the memory of a soft as down bed, while gentle hands cascade down the shape of your body.

It's a bitter-sweet kind of torture. You yearn to envelop yourself in the memory, of the feeling of Rafayel touching you with the same reverence as a devotee in a shrine. It had been a long day of journeying on the surface, where you had pointed out where you had lived, what you had done and what adventures you had lived through. Rafayel, attentive and inquisitive, was eager to learn more about you. Although he tended to do things his own way and mostly denied what you asked for just because he wanted to tease you, he had jumped on the chance to learn more about your life immediately. The smugness that usually accentuated his every behavior vanished. It had made you blush to realize how earnest he was with his interest in you. You felt light as a feather, giddy with happiness.

It would have scandalized his attendants if they knew he ended his day with bed in you. Neither of you cared. You knew the ceremony was approaching fast, and you wanted to spend every available minute with Rafayel, for as long as possible. His touch was reassuring. His gaze had made you melt.

This is what true love must feel like, you had quietly thought to yourself. It feels a little like faith.

"You always disappear so far into your head." Rafayel's melodious voice tore you out of your mindspace. His tone was both amused and wishful. "I wish I could follow you there, discover all the treasures that lie hidden beneath your skull. I'd give anything to know."

"But you do know everything about me. I have not hidden a single thing."

"Yes, I know." Rafayel's face tipped forward. The luxurious room was softly lit by several hanging lamps, in which the glass in-laid with mosaic patterns which created colorful displays on the walls. It painted Rafayel in a mysterious allure that made you think he couldn't possibly be real. It was difficult to fathom that you were in the presence of divinity sometimes. "But I am interested even in the most simple of thoughts. Does it make me sound insane when I say that I want to live inside your head? The way you think and articulate yourself is not only endearing, but interesting to me. And it makes me want to not miss out on a single thing."

You cradle Rafayel's face into your hand, watch as he hides his face in it. Like a pearl returning to its shell. "You already live there," you whisper to him, your heartbeat too loud inside your ears for you to raise your voice. "You accompany my every thought. Whatever I do, I always imagine you being there, laughing along and making fun. In the darkest of moments, it's your memory that brings me light."

For a moment, nothing happens. But then your palm begins to drip with something, the hot tears searing a path into the skin there. Rafayel is crying. You draw yourself up, alarmed, but he hinders you from any movement by embracing you. "Every time I think you cannot possibly read the wishes of my heart, you prove me wrong," he laughs, the voice shaky from emotion, but filled with genuine joy. His hands guide you towards him, closer and closer, until the hug feels like a cage keeping you in your place. You close your eyes and let yourself be enveloped in warmth, your worries slipping away. A kiss lands on your temple, then your cheek. "Your sincerity is a dangerous thing. It will undo me."

It's with that self-fulfilling prophecy that you tumble out of the memory, falling backwards into present time, landing harshly on the roof. Your spine screams in sensation, the landing echoing in every vertebrae. Ouch.

For a second, you are so dazed from the pain you do not move. That could be dangerous. If these flashbacks hindered you from Deepspace hunting, you could lose more than just your job; it could cost you your life. After making sure you didn’t hurt yourself, you hurl yourself down the roof, deciding that camping out in a higher place will just invite in the possibility of falling from it after another memory.

Your shoes hit the ground fast. You fall into a crouch, eyes still directed on the building you had been keeping watch on. Your constant visits to the Nest had paid off in the end. Supposedly, this place was used for illegal dealings, possibly involving protocores. You were hoping for a connection to the aether core currently being investigated by your department, but you’d take what you get. As long as you get the job done. You’re not a cop, but as long as you manage to write a report at the end that proves you were at least doing anything, Jenna would know you weren’t slacking off. The new moon offers some good cover as you noiselessly weave in and out of the surrounding streets until you find an appropriate hiding place. You then pass your time camping out in the crown of a maple tree, your fingers drumming melodies on the handle of your gun. You’re getting bored.

You almost decide to abandon your post for the night, determined that the tip-off had been bullshit. That very thought almost makes you miss the sight of one limping Rafayel, cradling a wounded arm and sliding along the alley like a stray cat.

For one horribly long moment, your brain finally empties of action. You blank out completely. If it would have been any other time, you would have reeled back from the momentary bliss, excited by the fact that everything was finally silent. But you don’t. You can lie and make up excuses all you want, but your heart knows the truth. Your love makes you drop to the ground immediately, not even thinking about doing it, your steps morphing into a sprint before you reach him.

He recognizes you before you barrel into him. You hadn’t expected to gain such momentum, and you try to extricate yourself from the embrace since you do not want to upset his wounds, but then Rafayel’s hand fists the back of your uniform and crushes you against him. “Rafayel?” you say, uncertain. You hadn’t expected him to react like this.

Rafayel slips in your grip, sliding. You readjust your hold, bearing his weight for him. What the hell was he doing here?

He doesn’t react, at least not in the way you want him to. There is a shaking in his chest that feels like an earthquake, an entirely too sharp rumble which you only belatedly come to understand as laughter. He’s laughing, despite the fact that he’s bleeding out in a random alleyway. Rafayel, who never bleeds without purpose. Rafayel, who knows better than anyone else what the scent of Lemurian blood does. “How ironic,” he manages to gasp out, the harsh sound entirely too close to your ear. You shudder when his nails dig into your clothes, seemingly reaching for the skin there. “I was praying for salvation, and here you are. Is this a joke?”

“Are you being followed? What the hell happened?”

He draws himself up with your support. When you look back at him, the cover of darkness is too heavy to see the look in his eyes. But his mouth is curled into a deceptive version of the smile he had sported in your recollection. “This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof,” he says. You blink at him, not understanding. “I did love you once. And I love you still.”

“You’re delirious.” Your heart is pounding in your chest, clawing at the ribbed jail it’s enclosed in. “We need to get you home.”

He tesrs a hand free from where it dug into your back, which makes him stumble. You move to steady him, and then his hand is cupping your cheek, and Rafayel leans down until the darkness embraces you both. There is no light, no visibility. There is only him. “It’s Hamlet,” he whispers, as if that would clear up everything. “No appreciation for the arts. And here I thought I was your Ophelia.”

“Rafayel?” You ask, nervous. The hand cradling your face slips, and then he does, too, and you almost don’t catch him before he meets the ground. You hold him up with all your might, cradling him against your chest as if he could be safe there, as if that wasn’t one of the many lies you told him.

The glint in the waves should scare you. It should.

You climb down with your awkward human legs, your unwebbed hands finding holding points on the stones where his couldn’t. The mystical sea creature watches as you descend further and further, the tail hidden in the water angrily swatting back and forth like the threatening stance of a cat. You try to not let that deter you. You try to ignore the sharp taste of fear and the knife-like sawing it seems to exert on your nerves. You are the princess of Philos, after all, and if you can’t face one measly Lemurian, than maybe you should never have become princess at all.

You drop to the ground just a few feet away from him. This close, the sight of his face robs the breath of your lungs. He is beautiful. He is more than beautiful. You’ve always been entranced with the description of Lemurians in your books, always eager for any detail you could scrounge up. It just doesn’t compare. It cannot encompass the miracle this young man seems to represent. You shakily raise both hands at him to show him they’re empty. “I’m not going to hurt you,” you tell him. At the raise of his eyebrows, you realize how ridiculous that sounds, so you amend, “Not like I could without you pulling me to my watery death. I realize that. But I have come to help free you from the trap’s grip, and I have brought a knife. I will pull it from my robes if you permit me, and I promise I will only use it to help you.”

His face is dangerously impassive, calm as the deceptive sea before it swallows entire ships whole. You cannot trust the ocean, your lady’s maid cautions in the back of your mind. “Like your promises mean anything to me, mortal,” he tells you, and in his voice, you find he cannot hide his true emotions as he does in the grimace of his face. His anger boils the sea like a stew. You shrink back from that anger, and you miss the way his face softens at your reaction. “But rest assured that if you free me without hurting me, I will not - what was it you said? - pull you to your watery death. I’d much rather be supping on your blood and bones in case you do betray me, so maybe fear that.”

You stare at him, momentarily distracted. “Do you actually do that? I thought that was a myth the priests made up to demonize Lemurians.”

He stares back, stupefied by your lack of appalled reaction to his naked threat. “Does it matter?”

You scratch your cheek. At home, everyone always complained about your level of detachment from human behavior. You were an outlier in the court, the weird tulip in a rose garden. Perhaps that weirdness went even as far as the mystical ways of societal interactions below the sea. “Well, I suppose not. I’m going to pull the knife out now, okay?”

He waves a hand to indicate that it doesn’t matter. And you understand what he means: that knife doesn’t matter. The being in front of you was created to hunt everything the sun touched upon, had horrified eons of humanity to the point that their documentation seemed more like horror stories told at a campfire rather than a historical note. This knife would do nothing, would change nothing. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead. But you see the relief flash by in his eyes as he realizes that you are truly going to help, and your heart soars. This is why you came down here. To help a living, breathing entity. To do good. So you carefully, slowly extricate the knife from where you have hidden it in your clothing, and then, under the predator’s watchful gaze, begin to approach him.

The closer you get, the more you understand why humanity fell to these creatures’ allures. His tail reflects every color of the rainbow, pure sunlight contained in every individual scale. It is heartbreakingly wonderful. You do not know of a single thing in the mortal world which could be as lovely as this. As you step closer with your gaze locked onto that mermaid tail, you slip on the algae on the ground, and you shriek as you fall.

You find yourself in the deadly creature’s arms, staring your mortality into the face.

There is no way to hide it for you as talentedly as he does, so when you look up at him, the fear in your eyes is entirely real. This time, you are not caught up in your fascination with Lemurian history, and you remember the threat of becoming his supper. Yet he looks at you with pure amusement, his corners twitching as if he has to hold himself back from laughing. “Well, I do suppose there’s nothing I can do if you decide to become my dinner voluntarily,” he tells you, and in the gentleness of his tone, you recognize he is capable of joking. You unclench your hands from the fists they had balled into on his chest, an instinct born out of your fear. His hands on your waist guide you back to steady ground, and they linger there as you straighten up, just for a moment. Then he draws them back. “Do make sure you’re not just entangling yourself in the trap instead of helping me. I’d have to eat you for survival.”

“Ha, ha,” you murmur, trying to lean into the joke so he can see that you appreciate it. And you do. You’d come down here with a half death wish, tired of haunting the palace grounds. The tone of your life had come to be a monotonous one, boring you to death. There was nothing to lose in the decision to head down to free a possibly feral predator. You either died or you helped someone escape death. That’s all it was.

At least that’s what you try to tell yourself. The entire time you cut away the knots and tangles in the net to free the merman from his prison, you ignore the way his gaze on you makes your heart skip a beat.

When all is said and done, you fling the shredded net back into the land. It disappears behind the treeline you had been climbing down from, swallowed by the greenery. It should not be able to trap another ocean’s creature a second time. “Will I see you again?” you ask. It’s a stupid question, but you cannot hide the yearning in your voice. He truly was a wonder to behold. You expect him to mock you again, to draw up another threat so he can spook you and keep you as far away as possible from the sea.

Instead, you watch as he extends his hands to grab your own, your smaller hand disappearing behind the elegant tangle of his fingers. There are rings adorning his knuckles, each and everyone bespeaking his inheritance. You are still hesitant, but you cannot find it in yourself to move away from someone who holds you so tenderly, fully aware he could crush the bones in your hand down to sawdust. The violence in his eyes is as great as the gentleness in it. “Perhaps when you inevitably fall to your death into the sea, since you do not seem to have the steady gait of a sailor’s legs,” he answers, referencing your earlier stumble. He still doesn’t smile, as if he cannot bring himself to do it. But the corners of his mouths curl, and you find yourself smiling at him anyways, your joy honest and radiant. “I cannot hold you to your promises, as you are human, but you can hold me to mine. If you ever need a friend in the sea, I will return the kindness you have shown me today.”

“So you’re not going to eat me?”

He snorts. “I might still decide to do so,” he says. “But for now, the taste of your lips suffices.” And the man leans in, without forewarning, without any respect for courtesy. As your hand is tugged forward so you can fall back against his chest, you open your mouth to question him on as to what he means, but then he’s kissing you and your realization cannot keep up with the speed of the desire hitting you straight in the face. It wells up in you like a geyser exploding into the sky, unbidden and strangely familiar, and instead of pushing him back from stealing your very first kiss, you let yourself be entwined against this rude stranger and kiss him back as if you’ve done this a hundred times before.

He tastes of recognition and memory and blood.

His sharp shark-teeth dig into your lower lip, softly tugging at it as he breaks the kiss and leaves you behind. You draw in a shuddering gasp as you return to reality. “Exquisite,” he teases, and then your stranger turns and dives back into the waves, gone with the blink of an eye.

You are left behind on the shore with a mind as jumbled as a kaleidoscope, teetering on the edge of a memory that has been taken away from you a lifetime ago. You do not understand. You cannot understand. But you raise your fingers to your lips as if you can still feel the kiss there, as if your body will always know who Rafayel is even if your mind never can.

In this life, you massage away the taste of that freedom’s kiss while you stare at the familiar stranger in the bed.

You do not want to address the irony of the situation, the fact that you remember this specific instance right as you save his life again. Rafayel, sleeping away the pain in his bed, is bandaged up to teeth, every wound having been carefully nursed by you. Truth be told, you should have left the second you were certain he’d survive the night and sleep peacefully, but you couldn’t tear yourself from his side. You stare down at the blanket, down at the fingers that are only a few inches away from yours. They don’t look as elegant as they did when he was still a mermaid tossing in the waves. More roughened and scarred. But they are the same fingers. And they are reaching for yours again.

Even in sleep, even unconscious, even unaware that you’re actually there, Rafayel reaches for you.

Helpless, you strain your fingers to meet his in the middle. You cannot find it in yourself to deny him right now, not after seeing him almost bleed out on his own bathroom tiles. S’all good, he had said. We’re together. Don’t mind going like this. The moonlight, enveloping the room in its light like skimmed milk, glints off the ring on his ring finger, the one you’d given him before you came to realize who you were. Wearing it like a marriage ring. His sleep-drowsy fingers curl around yours awkwardly, curling like a cat’s paw before they finally slot inbetween yours. As if on command, a heavy, satisfied sigh leaves Rafayel’s mouth, and he curls his body into the direction of your joined hands. Finally at peace.

It breaks your heart.

The tears spill over your cheeks before you can stop them, burning as hot as fire, heavy as a promise. You want to shake him awake and apologize, want to tell him that you never intended to push him away like that, that you thought you were doing the best possible thing for him. And haven’t you done the same? the insistent voice in your mind cries out, still enraged with the injustice of the situation. Haven’t you decided for me in the same manner as I am deciding for you right now, when you took my memories away and took away the only chance I had at returning my heart to you before changing that prophecy forever?

You hold his hand tightly, the only thing anchoring you in this world. His bedroom seems to sway like a boat in the waves, and Rafayel is the only stability you can hold on. You breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, as if that truly helps, and you make yourself hold still, to stop the tremors so Rafayel can keep sleeping peacefully.

Does it really matter who you are, when he loves you despite it all? Shouldn’t you love him just for that?

You stare at Rafayel’s face, pondering. You wonder if you yourself can know where her love ends and yours begins, interconnected as you are. Perhaps you’ve been holding up an impossible standard the entire time.

Perhaps you’ve been chasing after the shadow of self-punishment because the light of Rafayel’s forgiveness was too bright.

You spent the night thinking about your own inadequacy as you stare at Rafayel resting, the steady rise and fall of his chest serving as a calming influence on your own wellbeing. You return to a sense of calmness, smoothing over the sharp edges of your thoughts as they turn to sea-glass, an ocean-made treasure you can finally gift him, just as he wished so long ago. You don’t let go of his hand once. Ignoring your feelings is too tiring now. You watch as he finally rouses from his dreams, watch the way his eyes squint adorably, his sleep-tousled hair falling over them. It wrenches at your heart, but for once, it’s not a painful feeling. What stings is the way he realizes that you’re still here, and then, the way he freezes when he sees your intertwined hands, as if afraid that if he acknowledges it, you will let go of him. You want to reassure him that you won’t, but you don’t voice it, not yet. You still have to address the elephant in the room. So you say instead, “Good morning, Ophelia.”

He screws his face up in embarrassment. “So that wasn’t a dream,” he mumbles, but he finally relaxes back into the mattress. His satin pillows sink with the weight of his head, cushioning him like your lap did another lifetime ago. His free hand moves to cover his face, rubbing away the night of agony and the last traces of sleep. “I thought my extravagant imagination conjured you up, but you’re here. Talking to me. Did a miracle happen over night?” His voice is sharp-edged, provoking. A defense against your usual cruelties, just as Hamlet began to reject Ophelia as their relationship faltered. You understand the reference now.

You only shrug. “You did say you wanted to talk on New Year’s Eve, so let’s talk. I’m here now.”

He stares at you as if you grew another head, The corners of your lips twitch, reminiscent of a smile. You don’t want him to think you’re laughing at him. “That was ages ago.”

“So you don’t want to talk?”

“I don’t want to just talk,” he hurls at you, a sword drawn up to wield at you. He’s standing on the edge of a cliff, on the precipice of a fall. You see it in his ocean eyes, that wish to trust you anew and believe you are what you claim to be. It’s not in his nature to trust humans, and you’ve only reinforced that stance.

But he hasn’t let go of your hand yet.

You swipe your thumb over his knuckles, watch the goosebumps raise on the skin of his arms, racing up, up, up. You want to follow that path, litter it with kisses and fall right back into that memory of where you loved in full and were loved in return. You can’t let go of the guilt you’ve shackled to this relationship, the guilt you’ve been punishing him with, but you want to try. “I know,” you whisper, not trusting yourself to speak louder. Afraid of breaking apart in his hands. “But let’s start talking first. I thought I’d lose you yesterday.”

“My love,” he sighs. Slipping back into the diction you were thinking of before he awoke, back into a world where you guys were one pearl, one love, one soul. “Please don’t expect me to start believing you’re afraid of losing me when all you’ve been doing is trying to achieve just that. I’ve waited and waited and waited for you to want to talk. I’d have expected fish to start flying and the seas to flood the earth before you ever wanted to.”

You grip onto that joke like a drowning sailor clings to a life buoy. If he can joke, then maybe it means all hope isn’t lost. “Can’t you try to understand me here?” you tell him, and then your voice finally breaks, and you can’t hold yourself back anymore. You’ve spent so much time trying to pretend you were fine, trying to pretend you didn’t need Rafayel’s love. Gaslighting yourself into believing this was the right thing. Rafayel begins to draw himself up, despite all his wounds, and when he lets go of your hand to draw you into his embrace, you finally let him. You pillow your head on his shoulder, his trusted and familiar shoulder, and begin to dissolve into sobs. “Did you think … this is … easy for me? You lied to me … and you took my memories from me… and you sacrificed your entire life for me. And here I sit, trying to bear all that. You’ve lived your life all this time, shouldering this burden, accepting it. But I’ve died and been reborn so many times, and I’m fighting so many memories at once. Did you think I could just slip back into that role, into that soul? Did you think I could bear it, when it feels like I’m building up a sand castle that keeps getting swallowed by the sea?”

Rafayel cradles your head in his hands, holding you up. You don’t rely on your own strength for once. You let him carry your entire weight, the way you’ve never been able to, because all your life you’ve been trying to hold it on your own, struggling with it as Atlas was struggling to hold the sky in the ancient Greek myth. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into your ear, and it feels like he’s speaking into all the hollow spaces inside your soul, the holes you’ve been trying to patch with hatred when all they needed was a little love. “I’m sorry for misunderstanding you so badly. I never realized. I’m sorry.”

You close your tear-blurred eyes, slumping into the hug. He rocks you like a child that needs comforting, not pressuring you once, just sliding his hand over your head in a steady soothing rhythm. You draw in a shuddering breath, and another, and another. He smells like the only home you’ve ever known, the home you’ve been missing in every lifetime, unnurted by the ones claiming to be your family or caretakers. “I can’t be her, Raf,” you weep, clawing your fingers into his hurt shoulder. He doesn’t seem to mind it. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I really can’t.”

His hand stills, the fingers intertwined with the curls of your hair. Resting there, like it belongs there. “But I don’t want you to be,” he says, in the most sincere way you’ve ever heard him speak. It sounds like a vow, and you lean into him, eager to hear more. Your breath hitches. “I’m not the man I used to be anymore. Isn’t that what life is all about? Changing and growing? I can’t pretend that there isn’t a past between us, something that belongs to another time. But I am a different Rafayel, too. A Rafayel that wants to learn about you and fall in love with you all over again. If you let me. Please, please, please let me.”

Can you?

You open your eyes again, trying to orient yourself. When you lean back to look at him as best as you can, his face looks hopeful and open, a look that shakes you to the core and breaks apart the last shackles of your heart. So you nod at him. You nod and say, “Okay. One step at a time.”

The look of joy in his face is so exultant, so bright, that you have to blink away the blindingness of it. You let him lead you back into the light, slowly, steadily. “One step at a time,” he repeats. He takes your hand into his own, kissing the fingertips that worked so hard to bandage him up. You are still unsure, still tentative. But you have never been more certain than you are about the knowledge that you love him enough that you want to try.

So you try.

You let him back into your life, on your own terms this time. You introduce him to your friends a second time, with the only addition of a romantic declaration, where you clarify to your friends that Rafayel and you have been seeing each other. You delight in the blush that dusts across Rafayel’s cheeks, a color as beautiful as the gleaming scales on his mermaid tail. You relearn the map to the other’s soul - how Rafayel doesn’t like sleeping in any other bed than his own, how you have to follow a specific rhythm in the morning before you start your day, how you both used to prefer an adventure but now prefer the comfort of your own four walls. The way you take your coffee. A preference in food. A changed behavior. Who would have known there was an actual scientific endeavor behind love?

But the most freeing thing is being able to talk about what happened between the two of you. There are no accusations, no screaming matches anymore. Like two government officials hammering out the terms of the truce, you try to make sense of what has happened and how it changed you. You watch as Rafayel’s sad eyes trace the shape of a scar between your chest, and he in turn endures your self-pitying thoughts whenever your guilt threatens to crush you because of what happened. Your love is in active metamorphosis, discarding and fashioning new appearances. In awe, you two begin to find common ground again.

It leads you back to the sea, the one place you used to dread.

In the warm afternoon light, the traces of his shoework light up like stars in the sand. Shoes and jacket long forgotten in the house, you follow those steps like a treasure map, the sea breeze kissing your skin as you hurry to meet it. Whitesand Bay cleaves into the earth before you, opening up as a metaphoric maw as it swallows the waves. The tell-tale glimmer of a shimmering mermaid tail greets you, a beacon at sea, a lighthouse guiding you home.

He’s never once showed you this form ever since you two have met again.

When you finally reach the sea, Rafayel is waiting in the shallows for you. Fully conscious that you are still wearing clothes, you wade inside. You care more about being with him as you care about being soaked. Rafayel angles his head up, looking at you with a mischievous glint in those seafire eyes. Pink like coral, blue like the ocean. Entangled, as you two are. One as a pearl. “Decided to brave the cold water, did you?”

You smile at him, glad for his humor. “Isn’t that what you intended, siren king? Or are you just cosplaying as a rubber duck today?”

Rafayel’s seductive lips curl into a pout, one you want to kiss off of him. “You’re being mean, cutie,” he accuses, and yet his arms reach to pull you into his lap. The scales there can’t compare to a featherbed, but you feel safer than anywhere else in the world. “But yes, I was hoping you found me here. I had a looooong day of being super important at work. Wanna unwind with you.”

“In the water?” you gently prod, proud of seeing his true form again. In answer, he tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear and finally gives you the smile you’ve been yearning to see. “Yes, in the water,” he says. “And if you can’t behave yourself, I’ll drown you.”

“Ha-ha. Brave words for someone I would turn into a five-star sushi meal.”

Rafayel rolls his eyes, but doesn’t quip back. When he looks at you again, his face is the picture of tender joy, a quiet but resilient happiness. A happiness that you’ve helped him rediscover. You touch your fingers to his cheeks lightly, basking in his warmth. “I have to ask you something,” you say slowly, trying to unravel the last threads of your reunion. He leans into your fingers, chasing the touch, so you give in and hold his face in full. “When I told you at that party that I wasn’t the same bride you married eight hundred years ago, you answered that I never was. What did you mean by that?”

“Can’t you tell?”

The question seems like a tease, but his smile is earnest. It’s the expression of a man basking in the peace he has achieved, a true sense of tranquility. The past cannot be shed like a snake sheds it skin to become something new, but it has become a foundation of something entirely better, something that lives in the curl of Rafayel’s lips and the echoes of your laughter. “I was never chasing after your after image, my love,” he finally clarifies. “You and I, we are connected beyond just two souls meeting. I love you for who you are and who you have become. And I love you for the person you have helped me become. Even though the past has interlinked us forever, it’s the present with you I want. I can’t help the person I was before, just as much as you can’t. And we don’t know what the future holds and who we’ll become. But I love you despite all that. What I learn, what I change, what I become is what I want to do with you. I want to build with you. I want to be with you.” He taps a finger against your temples, then slides it down to the curve of your jaw so he can angle your face up. You raise it towards him, towards the sun of your life, the only rise and set you ever want to experience. “Like a pearl, you have a thousand different faces which you still have to explore or are already polishing. And I think the greatest happiness of my life will be in witnessing that with you. It is you. You are my happiness, now and always.”

You place your hand on his heart, and he covers it with his own. For a second, you both become quiet, taking in his words, his heartbeat, the sacrifices that had been made to achieve this reunion. But to reject them would be to void them of meaning, and you refuse to do that when Rafayel has given your life just that. Maybe it doesn’t really matter how Rafayel came to be in your life, or what memories have shaped your bond before you took fate into your own hands. What matters is that you’ve returned to the heart that knows your own, the one that reflects every emotion to you and sees you as you are, and despite all that, loves you anyways.

And besides, it is much better to walk in the light than it is to stumble through the shadows.

“You knew me all along,” you state, the statement a glaring accusation. “And here I thought I was rescuing a handsome stranger.”

The sea is much calmer tonight, not as angry as it had been when you first freed Rafayel from a net’s clutches. His surreally beautiful face turns towards you from where it had been fixed on the sight of the sunset, the golden light only enunciating what was already perfect in your eyes. He looked ethereal - and embarrassed, as if being caught in a lie wasn’t something he was proud of. “And yet you’re here,” he tells you, wondrous. Perhaps not comprehending how you could still stand him, after all that has happened.

You dip your toes into the surf, the train of your dress already drowning in it. He’s staring at the satinous material as it drifts in the waves and exposes the lush flesh of your thighs, the skin he used to kiss. “Yes, I’m here,” you say. You look at him with a smile that is entirely too kind for someone who’s been pulling the wool over your eyes. “What did you think would have happened?”

“I was being treacherous,” Rafayel answers, feeling numb. Steeling himself for rejection. He cannot trust your smile, cannot let himself walk to his own doom. And yet he cannot bring himself to shy away from the careful hand that splays itself along his wrist, then finds his way up his arm. He lets himself be tugged closer to the shore, the one place he as a Lemurian had always dreaded. He despises the land. But he loves you. As you surrender to the water, he surrenders to you, letting himself be pulled out of it. “Our story is not the best. I made you take my heart. I cursed you to this fate. I even took your memories.”

“And yet I fell in love with you anyway,” you tell him, your voice as soft as your caress.

He screws his eyes shut. “You love a memory. ‘Tis all.”

“No, I don’t think so.” You cock your head at him, the sight of it as adorable as always. He remembers your habits as clearly as his own; how you had cocked your head in confusion before you scrunched your face up, as if your entire face was acting in accordance to your brain. The sight tears into him even now, and he doesn’t argue against you, stuck in his devotion to you. “I fell in love without knowing who you were. You were just a stranger I helped, a charming face with a sweet smile. But I fell in love of my own accord, without the memories I had. It doesn’t matter who we are. Our hearts are born with the knowledge of what key opens them up, and my heart will always wait for you. It sings for you.” Your face lights up with a smile, and he can’t help himself from reciprocating. From the darkness within his own chest, his own heart begins to crack open to receive the light you bring him. “It loves you, as I do,” you remind him. “We will learn together who we are. Your love will be the mirror to my growth, as mine will for yours. I am not afraid of that.”

Rafayel is not afraid either. For the first time in his life, he begins to hope.

A hope that there is a happy ending for you both, after all. If meeting again did not have to be tragic, then this love, too, could be something good. That was something worth to live for.

#ׂׂૢ་༘࿐ ALICE IS DAYDREAMING #it started with i’m your man by mitski and it ended with i only have eyes for you by the flamingos #music taste so crazy you’ll find me crying in the club #wrote this so disorentiedly i was just busy with thinking i love rafayel thoughts #so idk if u guys will like it but i enjoyed writing it! HAHA #rafayel my beloved please take this meager offering and come home in the first ten pull #also idk if i resolved the issue at the end nicely but yolo #in the words of my wise woman best friend everything yolo. it’s all yolo.#give feedback pls if u guys want i’ll give u a fat smooch on ur forehead if u do #rafayel #rafayel lads #rafayel love and deepspace #rafayel x reader #love and deepspace #lads #lnds #lads rafayel x reader #lnds rafayel x reader #lads x reader #lnds x reader #love and deepspace x reader #rafayel love and deepspace x reader #love and deepspace rafayel x reader #l&ds #l&ds rafayel x reader

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