Archive of Our Own

And this gray spirit, yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought

Ulysses, Lord Alfred Tennyson

“It was the heat of battle.”

Arthur likes to pretend he’s beyond heartache. Maybe it’s the trauma. It’s easy to say you can’t have your heart broken a second time when the first time was on a beach staring your mentor in the face taking in the fact that your mother was dead.

He’s told women this before, in his younger years. “You can’t break me, I promise.” One day one of them, maybe playing coy, had laughed as she’d pulled him down on the bed and replied “I doubt anything could break a big guy like you.”

He knows now how wrong they both were.

“It was the heat of battle,” she says. An excuse for a kiss that he knows she has to have meant. Her face is pale and stoic. One of the greek tablets she carries around sometimes.

He hides his clenched jaw behind a smirk. “You don’t mean that.”

When she smiles back at him it’s guarded. “You needed something to fight for.”

This is how, at the ripe old age of nearly 32, Arthur learns that his heart is still capable of breaking.

∫

Mera could not pinpoint it really, if you asked her. The reason she could not watch Arthur and Orn spar any longer. Could not bare the sight of the bastard king being smashed against the rocks, trident broken.

It’s too much violence, maybe. The world of water is not a world of mercy. She’s lost people, they all have. Between the poison seeping in from the surface world, sacrifices, skirmishes. The girl who once looked too closely at the king. Maybe Mera’s tired of it.

The jellyfish she’s been donning peel themself away. They cannot understand her, she knows that. Despite all their knowledge and might, the secret of the animals remains one of the few left to be uncovered.. She suspects they could feel her heartbeat though, when so close to her beating chest.

The betrayal of it does not even hit her until she has him by her side in her ship. Until they are zipping through water, and he says something with just the tone and inflection of his mother. “This is what Atlanna did,” a voice in the back of her head whispers. “And you know what they did to her.”

That is a wound that still aches. The loss of her mentor, her teacher, her friend. Maybe that’s her reasoning. Arthur has so much of his mother in him. And she cannot lose Atlanna a second time.

∫

He does not intend to befriend Orm.

Sure, he is his brother, but it feels that way only in the vaguest sense of the word. Like a neighbor who you barely ever see except for that one time when their mail gets put in the wrong box and you have to give it to them.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” he asks, often. Often, Arthur does not have an answer.

He does not think he has a code, necessarily. Not the way Bruce does. Or Diana. “It just didn’t feel right” isn’t a statement one should engrave. And yet, it didn’t. And he was his brother. So they locked him up in the tower.

“Like Anne Boleyn,” Arthur notes, one visit.

“Who?” Orm asks.

“She was a queen who… Nevermind. Surface dweller stuff. You wouldn’t be interested.”

Orm frowns, as if thinking about it. Then he smiles. “No, tell me,” he says. “I want to know.”

Arthur looks his brother over. There’s barely anything to do in the room. No games or entertainment or whatever the Atlantean version of TV is. He wonders if the softening is because of this, if he’s become his brother’s main source of entertainment.

So he sighs, and continues his story. “There’s a… Let’s call it a kingdom, up there. Called England. And a long long time ago this guy named Henry ruled-”

“Henry?” Orm asks, incredulous. “That’s a terrible name.”

“Says the guy named Orm.”

“I’ll have you know Orm is a very prestigious and traditional name for kings around here,” Orm replies.

Arthur chuckles. “Sure, sure. So Henry came to power when his brother, Arthur, died.”

Orm raises an eyebrow. “So you were also given the name of a king?”

“Not that king,” Arthur replies. “I’ll tell you the story of King Arthur another day. So Arthur died, leaving behind his widow, Catherine. And so when Henry became king, he married Catherine-”

“Like you and Mera?”

Orm can’t know what’s happening outside the tower he’s been locked in. Obviously he doesn’t, or else he wouldn’t have brought her up, but her name alone sends a small wave of shock through Arthur’s body. In a flash he’s back under the Ring of Fire, staring at her, dressed in jellyfish, as Orm says the word “betrothed.” Longing and hurt and all of the above.

“What?” Arthur asks. “What? No. First of all, you’re not dead. Second of all, we’re not getting married.”

“But you will.”

“No, we won’t.” Arthur turns away from his brother with a sigh. “She doesn’t even--”

“What? Like you?” Orm asks. “She doesn’t have to like you, Arthur. She just has to do her duty. Besides, I’m certain half the reason she turned against me in the first place was so she didn’t have to be my queen.”

Arthur shakes his head. He wants to explain things to Orm. Things about grey areas. About the places where the ocean meets the shore. Outside the bar. The beaches of Sicily. The dock, where his father waited for so many years.

“Sure,” he manages. “Anyway, Catherine and Henry couldn’t have a son. And they sure as hell didn’t love each other, probably because marriages that come from places like that usually don’t. So Henry fell in love with someone else. A lady named Anne Boleyn.”

“So how’d she end up like me?”

“When Henry divorced Catherine, he created a lot of enemies. And when he and Anne had a child, people began to claim she was a witch. So when he eventually fell for someone else, he locked her in the tower and eventually beheaded her.”

“That sounds like what they did to our mother.”

Orm’s been doing that lately. Saying “our.” It’s a bridge, Arthur thinks. Broken and fractured like the one leading into Atlantis. But a bridge nonetheless.

Arthur nods. “It’s hard to be a woman in a world ruled by kings.”

Orm considers it, like it’s a thought he’s never had before. Finally, he sighs. “I suppose it is.”

∫

The surface is a world of waste.

It is not that Mera does not see this. It is all just as she was taught. They’ve had cameras on the surface for decades now. The surface dwellers her and Arthur pass as they travel through Sicily use unnecessary tools that she knows are more harmful in their existence than could ever be helpful in their use. A restaurant up on a hill advertises fish that Mera knows have dwindled in number nearly to extinction. Trash lies in each room. Compartmentalized away, so the surface dwellers do not have to think about it.

It is a world of unforeseen consequences.

But on the boat as she patches Arthur up, he tells her of the single fishermen. Who have been going out on the ocean for years now, both in Maine and in Italy, who treat the ocean like a formidable friend. They are not the enemy, he explains.

Suddenly, Mera feels an overwhelming pang of guilt for stealing one of their boats.

“Who is our enemy, then?” she asks, although the ever-pulling magnetic sensation of being near him is starting to take a toll on her, as she’s not sure the question is even still about the surface dwellers.

When Arthur’s eyes pull away from hers to point out a larger industrial fishing boat on the horizon, she hears Atlanna’s screams. “The big guys,” he says. “My dad always said not to trust a guy with a net larger than he can throw.”

Mera thinks it’s over. “That’s good advice,” she says.

She keeps her eyes to herself after that.

∫

“I raised them as friends,” Arthur’s mother tells him, one night over microwaved s’mores in the lighthouse.

She’s talking, of course, of Mera and Orm. The children she got to raise. Arthur will admit it hurts hearing her tell stories about what he missed out on. But that’s partially why he’s been asking. The missing. Maybe if he hears enough about Queen Atlanna and Orm and Mera it will help him piece back together the heart that fractured when he was only a child.

“Well they aren’t now,” Arthur says, and he slams the door to the microwave a little too hard as he puts in another s’more. “And not just because of me. He was secretly tracking her for who knows how long before she saved me.”

“And are you two…?” Atlanna asks, eyes that curious teasing blue of a summer’s day. “Friends, that is?”

Arthur snorts. “Depends on who you’re talking about. Orm - maybe, I don’t know. Mera…. also maybe, I don’t know.”

She smiles. “So it doesn’t really depend on much, after all?”

“Go on,” he says. “What were you saying?”

Atlanna turns her head out to the water. A little less polluted after Orm’s warning. A little darker and more dangerous in the cold of the winter. “They’d play together. I’d read to them. They’d even nap together, little heads curled up next to each other. I thought it was important, you know, if they were to be married. I didn’t want them to feel like me…”

Arthur’s gut tightens at even the mention of the man his mother ran away from. Who’d put so much poison into Orm. Into Atlantis. “But they didn’t love each other,” he says.

“Unfortunately, Atlantis could care less,” Atlanna replies.

The microwave beeps.

∫

The moment they return to Xebel, a page arrives at Mera’s door. He’s a frail kid, barely old enough to be serving. She wonders how many they must have lost in Orm’s foolish war if someone this young is already a page.

He coughs as she opens her door. “Your father, King of Xebel, has requested your presence in the throne room.”

Mera bows her head in thanks. “What for?” she asks.

“His highness did not say.”

Perhaps she is to be exiled after all. Mera imagines her life in the hidden kingdom, at the bottom of the trench. It may not be so bad. A worthy price to pay for saving both worlds from mutually assured destruction. Besides, surely Arthur would be able to sneak her out of there. She could live on the surface, for a while. Get used to eating roses.

Ah yes, Arthur. Another matter entirely. She can’t entirely shake the memory of his kiss. Not the one in the heat of battle, but afterwards. The top of her head. Something so gentle and kind, all the silver linings of his person. Something she hasn’t felt in a long time.

When she arrives in the throne room, she finds her father donning a smile. He holds a shell in one hand, tossing it up and down in the air from atop his throne. This pauses, of course, when he sees her.

“Mera, my dear, come closer,” he says.

She bows a greeting and obliges. “What is it you wanted to see me about? Am I needed for the peace treaties in Atlantis? Or has Atlanna wished to see me? Or-”

Her father chuckles. “Someone sounds excited.”

“Just happy,” she promises. “Relieved, really. That you are safe. That this pointless war has ended.”

“That you are not in exile?” he asks, and Mera can’t help the flash of fear that crosses her face. “Relax, my dear. That is, of course, off the table. You have curried favor with the new King of Atlantis. It would be a mistake to punish political savvy of that kind.”

She breathes a sigh of relief, and bows again. “I am thankful, father. You have no idea-”

“I have actually called you here to discuss something regarding that political savvy. You see, my dear, I have come to the realization that I raised a much smarter girl than I’d thought.”

Mera smiles at the praise. A rarity in this throne room. “How so?”

“You have placed a king on the throne of Atlantis, one who knows very little about how politics work here. You sacrificed quite a bit for him, gave him the key to his power. He trusts you, implicitly. You have given us an opportunity far greater than the one I had previously arranged with Orm. Because now, if seas are willing, you have given us control of the Atlantean throne.”

The weight of his words hit her the way a shield had, a day when Orm played too rough when they were younger. Blunt force to the stomach. Betrayal, almost. Carelessness. Mera wonders if there is something in royal men that makes them incapable of finding empathy with her.

Immediately, she turns away from her father to face one of the windows. She will not let him see the tears that crowd the corners of her eyes. Surely he knows her feelings about marriage. About love. He must. He has to. For he knows all that has happened to plant them there.

“I will not be betrothed again,” Mera can hear the way her voice is quaking. This is not the voice of a princess. This is the voice of a scared little girl who watched her mentor dragged away into the pit, who screams blended together with hers in one last moment of solidarity. Who taught herself that to love was to betray her kingdom.

Through the window pane in front of her, she spots her father smile again. That uncanny-valley smile he cannot seem to shake. “Of course not.”

“I know you’re going to tell me it’s dishonorable and--” she pauses for a second. “What?”

“I said of course not,” he declares. “I’ve seen the error in it. We do not need another blood feud on our hands.”

Mera turns away from the window to look him over. She can’t tell if he’s joking or not. He’s not one to fool around, but this has been a custom since before the fall… Surely he doesn’t love her that much.

“Despite all of our strengths…” her father continues, fingers grazing the sword sheathed in his belt. “We are still prone to the weakness of emotion. Poseidon knows that’s the reason I have spared you. Love-marriage seems the way to avoid the inevitable side effects of that weakness for the time being.”

Weakness. Duty. Two words that have raised her, parented her, governed her. She was more a princess than ever a child or a daughter. It did not take long into adolescence for her to begin to question the nature of her parents relationship. Were they allies? Business partners? Enemies? Or did she ever become, as he put it, his weakness?

Mera does not smile, but she knows her eyes betray her happiness anyways. “I agree, father.”

“However…” he twirls around the shell in his hand again. “A promise still was made between Atlantis and Xebel.”

Mera’s breath falters in her chest. A fog fills her head. She hears the screams of Atlanna once more. The cold metal of her father’s armored gloves gripping her hands as she watched her be taken away. For love. For duty.

“Father!” she finally manages.

He puts the shell down. “Yes, yes. You will get yours and I will get mine. I am no fool, Mera. I’ve seen all I needed to. Your betrayal. Your alliance. That happy smile on your face.”

She swallows. “And if he does not love me?”

“A highly unlikely possibility.”

Mera tries again, more forcefully this time. “But if he does not?”

He shrugs. “Well then you must make him, mustn’t you? Worm yourself into that half-breed heart. Do something dutiful for the kingdom that has decided not to punish your betrayal.”

Mera grits her teeth. “Yes, father,” she says. Her bow is shaky.

When she returns to her room that night, she fights the urge to throw up.

∫

“Your mind is elsewhere, isn’t it?” Vulko asks, as he pins Arthur to the ground with just a spear.

They’re in a training ground, somewhere close to the ring of fire. No armor. No trident. Just simple weapons. Like the old days.

“Am I going to be engaged?” Arthur asks, staring up not at Vulko but the thousands of feet of ocean above. If he squints he thinks he can just barely see the sun. That warm friend he’s been neglecting lately.

Vulko raises an eyebrow and helps Arthur up. “Well, my king, that is entirely up to you.”

“Is it?” Arthur asks. “I was under the impression that Orm and Mera were not exactly looking forward to their marriage.”

“Different circumstances,” Vulko replies. “That was a clause in a trade agreement made when they were children. In the wake of the new alliance there is no need for a clause of that sort.”

“Oh.”

Vulko studies Arthur carefully. He wonders if he can see inside his skull, at the way his heart seems to have wedged itself into a particularly dark corner of space behind his brain. “Disappointed?”

Arthur shakes his head. “No. No, it’s- It’s a good thing. To marry for love.”

“Ah,” Vulko smiles. “You’re thinking of your parents.”

“A June wedding.” Arthur agrees. He moves to pick up his spear, discarded in the sand a few feet away. As he pulls it out, it makes a crunching sound. The millenial part of his brain says “same.” The Atlantean part wonders how many other spears have touched this sand. How many of those heroes are gone now.

He turns back to Vulko and smirks. “You sent your RSVP, right?”

Vulko readies his spear to go again. “Of course.”

∫

Mera considers her father’s proposition for a night. The victory dinner commences, table seated with politicians and advisors and royalty. Atlanna sits at the head of the table, newly returned and barely-aged. Arthur sits to her right.

There’s feet and feet of table between them. Xebel at one end, Atlantis at the other. Every important person in between. Even the imprisoned Orm has been welcomed back, and he sits on the other side of his mother. When their eyes meet, a cool current runs through the room.

He was a gentle soul once. She remembers this. In the days when his father was far too busy being a king to be a parent. Atlanna’s influence had touched them all. After the death of her mother, as war befell both Xebel and Atlantis, she was sent to Atlanna’s household for care. There she met him, and they quickly became playmates. Chasing dolphins and braiding toys out of sea grass.

He’d never share his toys, though. Fiercely protective of the few things he could rightfully claim as his. After their betrothal, she became one of those things. And for the most part she did not mind. Love in the eyes of a ten year old prince and princess is nothing more than going through the motions. He’d kissed her the afternoon after the announcement, and part of her would always think it was just to show others he was not totally alone.

But then Arthur was discovered. And Orm changed. And Atlanna was dragged away in chains to the trench. And Mera, at a tender age, learned that love was something that existed beyond the bounds of a marriage, something dangerous, poisonous, overwhelming. Something that could bring destruction to a woman.

Arthur catches her eye across the table. Seaweed floats in stained glass at eye level all around them. Decoration. She watches him smirk, rip a piece off, wrap his salmon in it, and shove it in his mouth.

They are a full table away from each other, but she is tempted to scold him, tell him he’s making a fool of himself, until Atlanna laughs at the act and does the same. Mera raises an eyebrow. Arthur winks at her.

“What is so amusing, my dear?” her father asks her suddenly, much too loudly. Quickly, the table turns to her. With that the fun comes to a halt, although the Atlantean royals do not seem to have received the message.

Mera looks her father dead in the eye, hoping her polite smile is enough to hide the fire behind her eyes from the rest of the table. “I believe we have just been introduced to a surface custom,” she says.

“Yeah!” Arthur agrees, voice also much too loud. The table turns his way, spectators in a sharply dangerous sport. “Up where I’m from we call it sushi. Well, not exactly this, but something along these lines. With more rice.”

Her father smiles, in the same way he had in the throne room. “Well, Mera, my dear, why not ask our new king to show you how it’s done.”

Arthur stands up. Mera turns her burning gaze towards him. Stay in your seat, she begs. Stay, stay, stay, stay--

When he reaches her side of the table, he puts a large hand on her shoulder. She knows he means it to be a comfort, but she can’t help but flinch at his touch. Suddenly, Arthur’s grip on her lessens. She meets his eyes and receives a message of apology. A message that she quickly turns away from.

Arthur grabs a handful of seaweed from a nearby vase and spreads them on the table in front of Mera. “Well, to start off you’re gonna need some of this.”

Under the gaze of the table, Mera does as she’s told. She places bits of salmon within Arthur’s seaweed and begins to roll lengthwise.

“Not like that.” Suddenly, Arthur’s hands are on hers, guiding her rolling. Mera’s eyes widen. She looks away from her food and finds herself in the path of Orm’s gaze. He shakes his head at her.

I thought you didn’t want an engagement, his eyes seem to tease.

Mera gives an imperceptible shake of her head, hoping he understands her message: I don’t.

Orm makes a small gesture to the rest of the table. Well, they will give you one, after this.

“And just like that, you’re done,” Arthur finishes. Mera stiffens as he pulls away from her. She can feel the eyes of the table on them, bright and fierce like the lights of a ship as they search through the water for danger or treasure.

“Thank you,” she manages. He smiles at her, and suddenly she’s filled with the overwhelming desire to cut the fluttering wings in her stomach so they may fly no longer.

This is the day she swears to break two hearts.

∫

They cross paths far too often for Arthur to consider it accidental. No matter what she says, it can’t be.

She’s wandering the royal halls at the same time he is. He spots her playing with otters down below as he kayaks with his dad. And he swears he can see her sometimes at sunset, if he just looks at the horizon long enough.

His dad claps him on the back one day. “You look like me,” he says. “Always squinting out at the water.”

He’s not drinking quite as much anymore. Instead he just sits in the bar, slightly tipsy, and watches the news. Someone’s always on the TV talking about something. Sometimes about him. Sometimes Deal or No Deal is playing and the bar is screaming at the hubris-filled contestant and Arthur finds himself staring at the women with the red hair and the briefcase that says “17.”

And then, after someone’s convinced him to down one last shot, he walks home to the lighthouse, warmth in his belly. The night is cold -- not nearly as cold as the waters of Atlantis, but cold nonetheless. The human half of him pulls his jacket closer to his chest as he leaves the bar and walks past the docks.

A noise behind him. Arthur turns to see nothing but shadows, but he swears he catches a glimpse of someone out of the corner of his eye.

Then something comes charging at him, all drunken haze and broken glass. A man with a pot-belly and something sad behind his eyes. Arthur knows this fisherman, has seen him around town from time to time, catches growing ever-smaller. He looks in the direction of his attacker and spots the pawn shop, where a familiar net hangs in the window.

Arthur flips him onto his back. The bottle smashes into pieces on the street. For a second, everything is calm. But the next--

The fisherman is lifted into the air. Water tendrils extend from the ocean, wrapping around his neck like lithe fingers. His eyes bulge out of his head.

Immediately, Arthur lunges forward. He does not have his trident, nor a spear or armor, so instead he makes his hand a blade to cut through the the heavy arm of water. This man does not deserve death, despite Arthur’s suspicion that seeking it was his motivation for the attack. He deserves a warm meal at home, for the fish to return, for the embrace of his wife. All the simple things in life.

As the stream breaks, the fisherman falls to the ground. Arthur’s hand cradles the back of his head just as he hits the street. His eyes are glassy, and Arthur can see himself reflected in the sadness that lurks there.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Arthur says. The fisherman does not respond. He did not expect he would.

Mera steps out of the shadows, dressed in probably stolen street clothes. Black jeans and flannel. Almost like she’s a resident of this little seaside town. Like a grad student visiting home on break from college. Someone he’d ask to grab a drink, despite just having left the pub.

But she is not a grad student. She is a warrior, and a princess of the sea. So Arthur turns to face her with a clenched jaw and eyes burning dark.

Mera’s eyes burn too. “He attacked you.”

“He’s a harmless drunk.”

She gestures to the glass shattered around their feet. Little flecks of light replicating the starry sky on the street below. “Not harmless.”

“I’m good here,” Arthur says. “Go back to the sea.”

“I wanted to talk,” she can’t even finish her sentence without ripping her gaze from his. He wonders if he’s really that painful to look at. He turns his head away from her in response.

Arthur picks up the fisherman bridal-style and moves to stand. “Great,” he says. “I’m taking him home.”

As he attempts to walk away, Mera stops him. Hand on his arm. Her touch burns. “I said I wanted to talk.”

“You’ve said enough.” He shrugs her off, and in the action his heart clatters to the ground, a discarded spear.

“Arthur, please,” Mera tries again, and just his name is enough to halt his breath. His feet stop. God, how he wishes she was just a grad student.

He turns. “That the heat of battle talking again?” he asks.

“I can explain--” she starts.

“I’m taking him home first,” Arthur cuts her off. “If you’re still here when I come back, then we can talk.”

∫

Mera does not often put herself above her state.

Not out of any lack of confidence, necessarily, but more out of what she would call a strong moral compass. She’s seen the way rulers become when they let their selfish desires take control. It was not Orm’s feelings about the surface that had turned her against her betrothed, but rather the way he had let them consume him, until no rational thought was left behind.

So as the sand settles and shaky peace is negotiated between rulers, she folds the memory of rose petals into a clam shell and hides it under her pillow. Atlantis will not lose a queen to passion a second time.

Not that she blames Atlanna. Not really, anyway. But she figures Arthur has enough heart and passion for the whole of the kingdom. She can be the practical one.

It’s his heart, though, that she worries for. She can smell the injury on him when they swim by each other in the royal corridors. Can taste it in the way he will not meet her eyes.

In peace talks, he lets Atlanna take over the details. The nations float around a large circular table. Two delegates from each. Mera does not attempt to catch his gaze. Instead, she lets her eyes snag on his knuckles, the scales of his armor, the ends of his hair.

And then his eyes flick up. And she knows he knows she’s been watching him. For a moment, her tongue tastes roses. The next, a sword between her teeth.

“Dangerous,” she tells herself, as she moves her gaze away from him. “Definitely dangerous.”

As the meeting comes to a close, the topic of trade is brought up.

“It is in the best interest of both parties to remain neutral on the trade stand in Neptune’s Grotto.”

Mera knows this. She’s studied this. Negotiations aren’t easy, especially when they’ve been going on for months, but trade has always been one of the things she’s been best at. Good enough for her father to send her in his stead for talks like these.

But when Arthur looks up at her, the first time he’s even moved his gaze her way since these negotiations started, she feels something burn behind her heart.

“Why will Xebel not just commit to full co-ownership of the trade stand?” He asks, and maybe it’s just her imagination, but his voice sounds hoarse. Like he’s been yelling. Or crying.

And she’s trying to think of a rebuttal, because she knows this, but her thoughts are scrambled, black clouds of octopus ink in the water. Trade stand and Neptune’s Grotto and the way the beat of her heart sounds like the thrumming of a surface-ship’s engine.

Mera somehow manages to look him in the eye without breaking. There’s heat. “Xebel and Atlantis have always treated the stand as neutral territory up until now. It seems not only foolish but hasty to rush into a co-ownership deal when an alliance has just been formed.”

Arthur chuckles, but it’s bitter. “That just sounds like code for Xebel being scared.”

“I-” Mera clears her throat. “We are not scared.”

Hi’s gaze deepens. She will not allow herself to blink. “Prove it.”

Mera can feel her father’s eyes on her. Can see the smile on his face. She knows he’s enjoying the spectacle of it all, how some of both Atlantis and Xebel will see from this something to be made of a marriage between them. A new set of shackles for the both of them.

Fortunately, Atlanna steps in. “Now, Arthur, there’s no need for that. Xebel is a welcome ally, let’s not push beyond our limits.”

Mera wants to thank her, but she cannot even look her in the eye, scared she’ll look up and find that she resents her for breaking Arthur’s heart.

∫

When Arthur returns, he finds Mera still standing there. It’s started to rain, and her black clothes have become slick against her body. She seems unbothered by the shower, face upturned towards the sky. Perhaps enjoying the rhythm of the raindrops on her face. Or maybe she’s stargazing.

There aren’t stars underwater. Arthur has been to Atlantis enough times now to know that much. He’s wondered many times if perhaps Orm’s hubris would have been quelled a bit had he had the chance to take a small fishing boat out into the Atlantic for a night. To be trapped between the sea and the stars. To be crushed by one’s own insignificance.

He suspects this is why he was never truly able to believe he was a prince of anything.

“You’re still here,” Arthur says. Not a question, but a statement.

Mera frowns at him. “I didn’t think you’d take so long.”

“Guess you don’t know everything about me.”

He can see Mera’s jaw clench. “I never claimed to know you.”

“But you claimed to be my friend. My ally. My…” Arthur’s sentence trails off. There is not a label for what he thought they might become. He just knows heat, kindness, magnetism. Roses on his tongue and her lips on his. “Or maybe that was all just the heat of battle as well.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” Mera’s gaze is hot in the pouring rain. “I do not antagonize the true King of Atlantis with a light heart.”

Arthur can barely hear his words over the pounding of his heart. “Not a fool, then. You knew what you were doing.”

“Like your surface dwellers,” Mera responds. “I have been irresponsible. I took action without caution. Without self-preservation.”

“So it didn’t mean anything to you?” he asks. He looks at the smashed bottle on the ground and sees the fragmented reflections of himself.

“It’s not that Arthur, it’s-”

“It’s what? Duty? Politics? Some other word from Greek or Latin? God, I’m so tired of Greek and Latin.”

Mera turns her gaze to the ground, to the broken shards. She crouches down to pick one up. Arthur wants to beg her to be careful, for a moment. But he doesn’t.

“It meant something,” she answers, finally, quet. “And people could tell. And from that moment I could hear plans being made.”

Arthur wants to turn away from her, walk away from all of this. But he doesn’t. Instead, he crouches on the ground beside her, and joins her in cleaning up the shards of glass. He doesn’t look at her while she speaks, instead watching his own reflection in the tiny mirrors, wishing he could make his face as unreadable as hers.

“Plans?” he asks. His voice is rougher than intended.

The glass in Mera’s hand slips, for a second. On reflex, Arthur grabs her hand to check the damage, but he finds nothing cut, nothing bleeding. Atlantean blood. Right. It’s only then that he realizes it’s the first time he’s touched her since the sushi. It still burns. Like whiskey down his throat, but worse. More comforting, more addictive, more dangerous.

If she feels his touch she does not show it, still staring stone-cold at the ground. “You should have seen the smile my father greeted me with when we returned home. So proud of his daughter. For giving him the kingdom of Atlantis.”

Arthur takes that in. An anger grows in his belly, fueled by the alcohol. A tear hits the ground and mixes with the rainwater on the pavement, maybe Mera’s maybe his. Arthur can feel the swirling motion in his gut.

“But my mom and I-” he starts.

“He thinks you are weak,” Mera cuts him off. “The both of you. She has already proven her disloyalty once. And you are a half-breed who knows nothing of Atlantean customs. One who was a fool enough to trust me.”

Her words sting him. He knows they aren’t her own. At least, he’s fairly sure they aren’t. Mera had always been the one to see more in him than just the bottle in his hand and the content of his blood. “Fine,” he says. “So what? I’m a half-breed fool with the trident.”

Mera nods. “And for that they will never depose you. But my father also knows the ways in which I am weak.” She clenches her fist, and her fingers dig into Arthur’s. His breath catches.

“Mera,” Arthur starts, voice unexpectedly soft. “You are one of the strongest people I have ever met.”

When her eyes meet his, only then does he realize how much she’s been crying. The rain hid it well enough, as did her drenched hair, but there’s a redness there that only comes from tears. “I should be in exile. Because I am weak, because this…” she squeezes his hand again. “You… they will use us to control each other.”

Arthur’s eyes darken. “You don’t know that. It doesn’t have to be that way. Can’t we just trust each other?”

“You shouldn’t trust me,” Mera whispers. “I will always put my duty to my kingdom first.”

“Actions speak louder than words.” Arthur’s breath is a fog in the cold night. “You may say you were fine with marrying Orm. For ‘duty.’ But you’re also the reason he’s behind bars.”

She shakes her head. “No, that was you. It was all you.”

“Mera, I would still be downing pints with my dad and avoiding Bruce Wayne’s calls if you hadn’t begged me to come kick his ass.”

“Or you would be dead,” she adds.

He manages a smile. “Or that. But you can’t tell me all the stuff you did was just for selflessness.” He might be imagining it, but he thinks he sees the corner of her mouth sneak upwards. Just a little bit. “Come on,” Arthur continues, standing up with an outstretched hand. “Let me buy you a drink.”

∫

Mera’s never been inside a bar before.

She knows their ancestors drank. When they still lived above the surface. Grapes were one of the only things that grew well in the Mediterranean, and wine was abundant. However, once they were swallowed by the waves, it became a useless past time.

Still, she knows enough to know Arthur spends a good portion of his time here. And there is a sort of comfort to it, in the way everyone waves to him as they step inside. The way even the fierce warrior-looking men in leather who sit at a table near the corner shoot a smile their direction.

The way the bartender sees Arthur and immediately says “Back again?” and then upon catching sight of Mera, “And you’ve brought a friend?”

Mera steps forward. “Yes. I am prince-”

“She’s a grad student,” Arthur answers for her. “From Princeton. We go way back.”

The bartender raises an eyebrow. “I thought you went in-state.”

“I did. We, uh, did undergrad together.”

Mera does not understand what most of these words mean. Grad? Princeton? Undergrad? Are these classes of surface-dwellers? How do they know who is who? Is there some skill she will be expected to display to prove it?

She looks to Arthur for an explanation, but he just smiles and orders. “Two shots of rum, please.”

“Not wine?” Mera asks.

Arthur shrugs. “Doesn’t feel like that kind of night.”

“What kind of night does it feel like, then?” She doesn’t intend for her words to come out as flirtatious as they do, but she supposes that’s the weakness in all of this. The pull is magnetic, the moon and the waves. So when Arthur’s only answer is to hand her a small glass full of golden liquid, a bit of disappointment fills her gut.

He downs it in one swift movement. “Ask me after I’ve had too much.”

Mera mimics his movement, shooting back the liquid. It burns down her throat. And tastes terrible. Like poison, pollution, garbage, like--

And then, slowly, a tickling begins. Warmth bubbles up from her jawline. The world goes slightly soft and smooth. She can feel the shackles she keeps so tightly around her thoughts begin to loosen. With another shot, her words become less restrained. With another:

“I wasn’t sure if you were real for the longest time, you know,” she tells him, after he’s cut her off, because apparently three shots is the safe amount for a first-time drinker, and also apparently this is dangerous, maybe, sometimes.

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “How so?”

“I mean, I knew they’d taken Atlanna away,” Mera continues. “But a bastard son no one had ever seen? It just sounded so fake. Like an excuse to punish her for not wanting an engagement.”

“Well, I’m quite real.”

She frowns. “I know that now. I knew that after Steppenwolf.” She sighs. “The little prince from the stories. All grown up.”

Arthur studies her for a second, then downs another shot. As the liquid runs through him, he shudders a little bit. When he opens his eyes again, there’s something new behind them, something Mera only slightly recognizes. “How close were you with my mother?”

“Very,” she answers. “She was always with Orm and I, when we were children. We were friends because of her, really. She’d always said it was important we stay friends, that it would be easier that way.”

“It?” he asks, eyes dark.

Mera turns away from him. Something there is too intense. Not a wanting, like she’d expected this far in, but a sadness. A darkness. Remainders of the trench, buried in both of their hearts. “Our betrothal. It was decided long before we were born.”

“Did you ever, uh…” he clears his throat. “My brother and you…?”

She closes her eyes, letting the memory run through her. It had been hurricane season. The oceans were swirling and hot and she was in the dark. It had been a pact between the two kings, she suspects. They’d known how attached she was to Atlanna, and so had let her blame them instead.

Orm, being what he was, had become a confidant. Perhaps not her friend so much anymore as her partner in grief. So when they snuck down to a long-forgotten seaweed bed and he’d kissed her, she’d thought might as well on our own terms and let herself fall into the rush of it all.

And then, in the after, he’d told her something terrible. Dug up some dark slimy part of himself, poisoned by his father, from the space under his gut and handed it to her. As if because of what they’d done she could no longer turn against him.

Sometimes I think she deserved the trench.

She did not think it was evil, just misguided, jealous, lonely adolescence. Shaped by the political climate of fear and politics that they’d been raised in. Shaped by her own willingness to just accept whatever truth was told to her.

She never told Orm that it was him, not her, who had drew the killing blow against Atlanna’s last desire for an alliance between them.

Mera winces. “Once,” she manages. “We were teenagers. It was before I’d known… I expect your full judgement. I know I’d give the same.”

Arthur shakes his head. “No judgement,” he promises, to her surprise. “Hey, if I took a shot for all the mistakes I made in high school…”

“You’d have had too much.”

His eyes meet hers again. Sadness finally replaced by a softness. “I might’ve already,” he says.

There it is again. That tug from the boat. Different from the heat of the battlefield. Like the kiss on the head, afterwards. This is the weakness. The part that tickles more than it burns. Mera finds herself leaning in. Closer, closer. Giving in to the consequences.

Arthur stops her, a hand on her shoulder. “Looks like you have too,” he says, and Mera hopes she hides her disappointment well (although she suspects she doesn’t).

“I guess so,” she replies.

∫

Arthur takes her to the lighthouse.

She’d protested, at first, saying she was perfectly capable of swimming home by herself. But every time he’d say “Fine,” and walk away, she’d run to catch up with him, and fill his head with every spontaneous thought that seems to have crossed her path along the way.

“They’re all wrong, you know? They’re so wrong,” she says, when they reach the steps leading up to the lighthouse. “My father, especially. I couldn’t manipulate you, you’re like… You’re so… I doubt anyone could.”

Arthur considers this. Her words tickle a part of him, though, that screams out a loud You’re wrong. There was a reason his answer earlier was trust and not you couldn’t. He already knows she could. That he’s never going to be able to close the hole she’s wormed into his heart.

And then there’s also the memory. Something similar. Years ago. Right before…

“You could,” Arthur says. And his mind whispers Dangerous. “And I would let you.”

She frowns, and the warm fuzz of the alcohol knits her brow together. “Don’t let me.”

They reach the top of the steps and Arthur unlocks the door. “But I trust you,” he says as he swings it open.

Mera follows him into the living room. “Then don’t trust me.”

“But you trusted me,” Arthur responds, turning away from her to pull off his jacket.

“That’s different.” She pulls off her jacket, too, and lays it over the back of the couch, right on top of his. Dark denim soaked from the rain.

Arthur steps forward. “For all you knew I could’ve been just a half-breed drunk.”

She huffs a bit, in frustration. “But the trident-”

“Was a myth. Trust goes both ways, Mera. You trust me, I’ll trust you.”

A fire still burns in their fireplace. Smoke trails up the chimney to the top of the light house. Despite the fact that they’re both soaking wet, Arthur’s skin smolders in the heat from the leftover embers. Or perhaps it isn’t the heat.

He looks down at Mera. There’s something in her gaze that reminds him of the sirens. He’d read the Odyssey as a teenager, and found himself relating to a man adrift in that space between sky and sea. She opens her mouth and he finds himself falling into her, hovering in her orbit, just an inch above her lips.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, and his voice is barely a whisper. Mera nods. “Then let me trust you.”

She leans upwards, then. Into the kiss. Heat and breath and pressure, building up within his gut. Arthur swings an arm around her waist and presses his fingers into the back of her ribcage as she pulls him closer. Her fingers curl in his hair.

He stumbles, for a moment. They pull apart for a breath, and he presses his forehead to hers.

“I trust you,” Mera says, and she draws him towards the couch, fingers working the buttons on his shirt.

Arthur smiles, falling into her gravity as he pulls hers off as well. “Yeah, that was implied.”

When they crash together again, waves on a rocky shore, the smoldering grows. “I trust you,” Mera repeats, with a kiss as punctuation. Arthur draws it out, breathing her in like air, like water, as she presses him down into the cushions.

“I trust you.” His hips rock into hers. Jeans and friction and Mera’s gasp is quickly covered by his mouth on hers once again. His lips move lower, to her jawline, her collarbone.

“I trust you.”

They repeat it, like a mantra. Until the sun rises.

∫

“He will not be controlled,” Mera tells her father, later. They are not in the expanse of the throne room. Her words are whispered in the hallway outside a dinner celebrating the end of peace negotiations. A place where she has the power. “And I will not attempt to control him.”

“You have a duty-”

“To do what? To attempt to claim a throne that is not mine? To betray an ally we have worked so hard to make? To be controlled myself?”

King Nereus frowns. “I am not attempting to control you, Mera,” he says. “I am simply-”

The doors fly open. Queen Atlanna stands, smiling, on the other end. “King Nereus,” she greets, with a bow. Then she moves to hug Mera. “Princess Mera.”

Mera accepts her hug warmly. “Queen Atlanna.”

“The two of you are just in time,” she says, when she pulls away. “We have just one more declaration for you to sign.”

“A new declaration?” King Nereus asks. “Why weren’t we informed of this beforehand? Let’s not add any more time to our already long discussions.”

Atlanna furrows her brow. “This is worth the time,” she promises. “Arthur has asked the kingdoms to come together to outlaw the practice of political betrothal.”

Mera meets her father’s eyes. “Was this your doing?” he asks.

“As I already told you,” she responds. “He is his own being.”

“Actually, it was suggested by the Princess of the Fishermen,” Atlanna says.

“Ah.” Her father grits his teeth. “Philosophers. Well, Xebel shall not be signing. We have our own protocol in place, currently.”

Atlanna smiles. “I’m afraid it’s not up to you, King Nereus. Mera-” she unfurls a scroll. “Would you care to do the honors?”

Mera returns her smile. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Now hold on a second,” King Nereus grips his trident tighter. “I am still King, am I not? You two will not undermine me without consequence.”

“You will let me sign, or you will lose me, father,” Mera says. And it’s not because she doesn’t love her father, but because she does. Because she knows he cannot let her go. “I have already warned you, I will not be betrothed again.”

Nereus struggles for a moment. Then finally, under the gaze of Atlanna, whose sacrifice Mera suspects he was impacted by as well, he nods. “You may sign then, Mera,” he says. “But I will not forget either of your betrayals.”

“It would do you well not to,” Mera responds. “For I am also my own being.”

∫

They return to Sicily, for a weekend.

Arthur takes Mera around the monuments. He tells her the stories he memorized as a child. They talk of empires, rising and falling. How nothing is truly permanent, every piece of marble eventually worn to sand by the crashing of the waves.

They rent a fishing boat for an evening. There is kissing and eating and stargazing. And just when the world feels like it’s grown too quiet, in that liminal space at the edge of sky and sea, Arthur leans over to her, and presses his forehead against hers.

“You’re going to be a great queen, you know that?”

Mera’s eyes widen. “Pretty bold for a first date, Arthur Curry.”

He smiles. Maybe he blushes. “What can I say?” he asks. “Heat of battle, and all that.”

Mera hits him a little too hard. As he goes overboard, he grabs her wrist and pulls her with him. And the two go tumbling overboard together.