Chapter Text
Aaron Burr has always prided himself on his Sensibility. It was his anchor in the ever-shifting chaos of his life, his most defining trait. Which is why, as he sits at the edge of deserted docks, his bare feet dangling into the barrier of salt water, just barely dipping into its breach and thinks he sees a man with a fishtail where his legs should be in the near distance, his first thought is that he must've gone entirely mad.
Isolation will do that to a fellow, he supposes. It has been some weeks since he escaped from his life in New York, instead deciding to settle close to the border of Massachusetts. And since he is not looking to make good relations with his neighbours anytime soon, it has been a good while since he's spoken with another person.
It was bound to happen, Aaron silently laments. He's just slightly shocked that his gradual descent into utter madness has culminated into an insane hallucination of a fish-man adrift at sea.
He wonders if it is meant to have some deeper meaning—be reflective of his inner mental state, perhaps. Aaron does feel rather untethered most days, like he's been left hurt and abandoned by life.
The tide shifts slightly and a faint, wounded garble rises from below in the form of an odd cooing noise, soft and pitiful at the jostling. It is carried to Aaron's ears by a convenient gust of wind and makes Aaron frown, a sharp pang of sympathy tightening in his chest. Against all logic, his heart aches for the strange, injured being.
It is a hallucination, of course, because otherwise, Burr would be a particular brand of bastard for letting the poor thing suffer as long as it has in his inactivity.
Then, the sound resonates again, soft and wounded, tugging him in like the pull of a tide. Aaron lets his eyes roll shut before opening them once more. The creature certainly hasn't blurred into nothingness as hallucinations are surely due to do. Instead, the fish-man bobs in the water, its movements only slight as it succumbs to any pull from the gentle currents.
...What if it is real?
The thought is absurd. Impossible. Aaron has heard nowhere of a unique species of human with tails for legs, but the question probes in his mind.
Aaron stares at the swaying fish-man for a few moments longer before he relents, rising to his feet and brushing off his trousers. The back of his legs feel sore from the unrelenting wood of the old docks.
He allows himself to graze a cursory glance across the abandoned dockyard, half-hoping someone might appear and confirm the impossible sight below—or at least think him about to commit suicide and try to stop him from throwing himself into the ocean, chasing after a hallucination.
There is, however, very predictably—no one.
Before he can second guess himself, Aaron steps off the edge of the dock, lowering himself into the water with a graceless splash. The cold saltwater bites at his skin and he immediately regrets not stripping to his underclothes.
The creature is much farther than Aaron had anticipated, the tide that had once simply risen to the brim of his waist, now nips at his breast. "You're not real," he says to the figure as though trying to convince himself. "You're a trick of Sir Aaron Burr's mind; an abject symptom of his extended solitude."
But then he gets close enough to see the sheen of peach-coloured scales glinting in the cloud-muddled sun. He notices that the fish-man's chest rises and falls in weak, shallow breaths that whittle into low, plaintive whines.
Aaron tensely reaches out to poke at the creature, flinching violently when its eyes snap open and it begins to stare at Aaron with wide eyes of an unearthly shade that Aaron can't quite place. It is unblinking and impossibly alive.
"Blessed Mary, Mother of Our Lord and Savior," Aaron breathes, his voice barely above a whisper. "You're real."
The creature merely blinks up at him, assessing.
Aaron drags the fish-man from the sea with monumental effort. The process is clumsy and consists a lot of Aaron blindly stumbling around in deep water. By the time he manages to haul the creature to the dock, he is fully soaked through and his arms tremble uselessly beside him from exertion. Each breath he takes feels ragged, as though he has dragged the sea itself.
He collapses limply near the side of the creature, his waterlogged—well, everything sticking uncomfortably to his skin. A faint breeze comes and it makes Aaron break into a shiver, though he faintly notices as he stares down at the fish-man.
It lies motionless, and its peach-coloured tail is not one single colour as much as it is a grand collage of them—Aaron notices. Up this close, Aaron can see the finer details of the creature's form: the delicate webbing between its fingers, the gills that slit down the skin of its neck and flutter apart weakly with every pull of breath. From its torso and up, otherwise, it appears fully human in structure.
Aaron lets his hand hover uncertainly over the creature's shoulder, his instinct to test and prod to ensure that he isn't making all of this up warring with his sense that the creature may very well attack him, somehow.
"Can you... hear me?" Aaron assesses softly, his voice trembling with his uncertainty. He isn't sure the creature speaks—or understands—language.
He heard no legible calls when it had been soaking quite unfortunately in the seawater. Instead, words had been replaced with the otherworldly sound of the creature's wounded groans.
The fish-man makes no move to respond, but those wide, transcendental eyes slowly shift to meet Aaron's gaze. They are nothing like anything Aaron has seen before, a unique contortion of colours that seem to shift with the light, like the ocean depths themselves. The creature stares for a long moment and Aaron stares back for that same length, utterly entranced.
Then, the creature blinks once, slowly and deliberately in a motion that decimates the lull that had come over them. It whines, soft and plaintive—sounding something between a whimper and a sigh.
Aaron's chest tightens at the sound. "Oh," he murmurs, allowing for his gaze to sweep over the fish-man's body for a source of the evident injury. It doesn't take him very long to find it: a jagged tear of flesh along the delicate skin where its tail gives way to its torso. Dark, viscous blood oozes from the wound, staining the dock's weathered wood.
Panic rises in Aaron's chest. He has knowledge of how to treat wounds—entirely thanks to his time in the military—he just worries on how well he'll be able to treat it, considering it is on some wholly foreign being.
And to even be able to treat it... Aaron casts his eyes towards the long, winding hill trail that his house sits upon and then back to the fish-man as he weighs his options. Ultimately, after a few seconds of deliberation, Aaron decides he must somehow manage to bring the creature into his home. The dock is no place to treat such a wound, and his house—as isolated as it is—offers shelter, privacy, and the very few medical supplies he keeps on hand.
Aaron's going to bring it, he decides firmly. He just has no idea how in the world he's going to manage to get it there.
Aaron looks back down at the injured creature, his thoughts racing. He doesn't have time to deliberate further—the way the wound sluggishly oozes blood with every pull of shallow breath from the creature feels like a countdown.
"I'll get you somewhere safe," Aaron says, for the sport of it more than anything else. Aaron's grandmother always told him that if you speak something into the universe, it has more of a chance to come true, though. So he supposes it's for that reason, too.
Dragging the creature across the dock is wholly out of the question; the jagged wood would do little else by worsen the agony—and spread the wound further apart at worst. The distance between Aaron's house and the docks is long, and the creature is far too heavy to carry alone.
Aaron stands, his muscles protesting loudly after the whole ordeal with the water. He quickly scans the dockyard, looking for anything that can help and spots an old supply shed a long ways off.
...How very convenient.
Aaron looks down at the creature and assures it lowly. "I'll be back."
And starts towards it with the bustling of a man running out of time, relief washing over him in waves. His mind already improvising what may be inside of it, and how he could think to make it into an impromptu stretcher.
As he rounds on the worn thing he notices the distinct lack of a lock on it and wonders, with dismay, if it has already been looted. Then, he throws the doors apart and finds that it has, however, across all the people who have likely been here to whisk items away, there lies a handcart in the far corner with a ball of net secured within it.
Needless to say, Aaron does not deliberate on how very coincidental it is that the handcart and net are the only two things within the shed and rushes back over to the fish-man, laying the net beneath the creature with care and wincing quietly at the low whimper it makes when Aaron adjusts its weight.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, his hands trembling as he secures the net around its body, creating a makeshift sling.
With great effort, Aaron is able to hoist the fish-man onto the handcart, his breaths hitching and ebbing as the creature's tail glints faintly in the light. He still half expects the thing to vanish, actually being a boulder or something and leaving Aaron nothing but a man drenched in seawater and half mad.
The journey up the hill is—decisively—the worst one yet. The handcart's old rusted wheels protest in squeaky groans under the weight of the creature and Aaron's soaked clothes cling to him, chilling him to the bone and making him shiver violently. He has to stop every few steps to catch his breath as his muscles scream in protest, but the soft, pained sounds the fish-man blurbs out spur him on each time.
At long last, Aaron's home comes into view and the modest structure suddenly feels like sanctuary. Aaron stumbles up the steps, dragging the cart behind him, and kicks the door in with the leg that somehow hurts less than the other. The creature's weight shifts dangerously as he manoeuvres the cart inside with little tact, but he manages them both inside relatively unharmed nonetheless.
Aaron doesn't let himself stop, for he worries that if he were to, he'd never be able to bring himself to continue. He deposits the fish-man and the handcart in the centre of his living room and stalks around his house, gathering the supplies he'll need with a single-minded determination.
He returns with an armful of bandages, a cupful of water, and other things, all of which he deposits on a nearby coffee table as he plops down on his sofa chair and drags the cart—and subsequently the fish-man—closer.
He bends over the creature and peers quietly at the wound. Up this close, in clearer lighting, the tear looked much worse than he'd feared. The creature keeps a stuttering rhythm of breathing, and Aaron could hear the faint rasp of its gill fluttering as if the being were struggling for air.
Aaron frowns. There was no time to lose.
He pours the water over the cut, using a spare, shortened bandage to sweep over the wound. The fish-man whimpers as the ragged cloth drags over its skin, keening into the air and jutting its chest forwards in a violent movement.
"Please, peace," Aaron murmurs to it, his voice soft. "It must hurt a lot, but your jostling will do nothing but make it worse."
The creature's eyes snap to his face, stretched wide and shimmering at the edges with crystal-clear tears. Aaron forces himself not to dwell on it and instead resumes with his gentle dabbing at the wound, clearing away the spotty blood for a better look.
The creature lets out little jerks all the while, its thick tail thudding weakly against the wooden floor.
Aaron frowns, squinting at the wound. "Easy."
The skin around the wound—and the bit of scale—was reddened and swollen. Aaron presses lightly around the injury’s border, checking for anything lodged inside and the telltale oozing of infection. Thankfully, he sees nothing but the summoning of more blood from the action.
"Good," he says, more to himself than anything else.
He reaches to the side and retrieves a small crock of honey. It wasn't much, and Aaron mourns his lack of spirits and herbs, but it was one of the few remedies he's heard of that would keep the infection at bay—and it was on hand.
"This will help," Aaron assures the creature quietly, though he doubts it understands him. He dips his fingers into the thick honey and smears a thin, vague layer over the jagged tear. The creature stiffens at the touch, a low, warbling noise escaping it, however, thankfully, it does not thrash.
"Good," Aaron praises, tapping at the creature's waist(?) in a gesture of satisfaction. "You're doing very well."
Once he has the honey sufficiently applied, Aaron moves to wrap the wound in bandages. He does so, having to wind his arms in a loop around the creature's backside many times. Upon the bandages being finally secure, Aaron tests them with a cursory pull and lets out a shaky breath, leaning back against the sofa cushions.
The creature lay still, watching him with slow, steady breaths. Aaron's eyes linger on the rise and fall of its chest, the delicate flutter of his gills... was that a good sign? Aaron hopes so.
"You will live," Aaron says quietly, unsure if he was reassuring the creature or himself.
The fish-man blinks at him slowly, deliberately, its gaze heavy with something Aaron couldn't name. Gratitude? Resignation? Simple exhaustion?
"Rest," Aaron instructs pointedly, standing through the aching in his legs. He turns towards his kitchen, quietly considering what fish-people eat. He hopes bread is in their diet because besides that and a few miscellaneous meats, Aaron doesn't believe he has much else for it—or himself—to eat.
He truly should go to the markets more than he does, he is surely underfed from how frequently he shirks meals, but Aaron cannot bring himself to be in the company of people anymore, and being around the markets leads to a lot of unwanted company.
As he steps away, Aaron hears a warbling sound behind him. He glances back to see the fish-man watching him, trying desperately to lift himself from the cart. Its eyes are half-lidded, but set with determination.
Aaron's chest tightens and he considers wheeling the fish-man along with him, but he thinks it's about time for him to consider his physical state, so he decides against it.
"I'm not leaving you," Aaron assures it. "I'll just be in the other room. We need food."
The fish-man coos at Aaron, reaching an arm out before it plops down against the metal cart below it, leaving a dull thud to revolve around the room. Aaron stays for a few beats longer before turning back around and sifting through his kitchen with haste.
As he suspected, there is little else but bread loaves and raw meat in stock in his pantry. Aaron grabs two bread loaves and plods back into his living room, finding the fish-man staring at him, eyes frantic.
It calls Aaron near with a soft noise, and Aaron stumbles over, handing it a few days-old bread loaf and keeping the other close to his chest. The creature sniffs at the good curiously, turning the bread over in its palms as it tilts its head to the side, allowing for its long hair to sway enchantingly to one side, revealing the flesh of its neck.
Aaron coughs, startling the creature from its trance and making it look up at him. He fumbles, bringing the bread to his lips and miming chewing, watching as the fish-man mimics him slowly. As it does so, Aaron gets a glance of its teeth, silently noting that they seem mostly human, if not for the sharpness of a few distinct canines.
It makes a pleased sound, its tail thudding against the wood of Aaron's living room floors as it gnaws on the food, and Aaron jolts his hand out, pressing down on the appendage. "Peace," Aaron reminds it quietly. "You could very well hurt yourself."
It chirps, smiling blindingly up at Aaron, unhearing. It, however, thankfully, seems to calm down slightly as it eats for its tail does not jerk as violently as it had before.
Aaron settles on the sofa beside it, eating his own loaf in kind, silently reflecting on the ridiculousness of this whole scene:
He sits on the plush of his sofa eating a loaf of bread—unassuming enough—until one casts their eyes mere centimetres over and catches their eyes on the rusted hand cart that sits beside him and the man with a fishtail for legs that is spread within its bounds, gnawing feverishly on the loaf of bread as though he has not had a single meal for decades and the dry, unflavoured bread were a unique delicacy.
"Control yourself," Aaron says scoldingly, pulling the bread away from the creature's lips. "You may very well die if you continue on like that. I know no remedy for choking."
The fish-man squints at him, frowning, before deliberately bringing the bread to his mouth, and he stares appraisingly at Aaron for any hint of approval. Aaron nods, pulling away and the creature starts again, eating much slower this go around.
They finish their respective loaves in silence and Aaron pushes himself to his feet, heading into the kitchen for something to wash the meal down. Responding with an assurance of his quick return when the creature makes a noise of protest.
"Here," Aaron says, handing the being a glass of water, "drink." He orders, pressing the glass to his lips and tilting his head back, allowing for a few gulpfuls of his own water to breach his lips.
It mimics him easily enough and Aaron finally relaxes long enough to notice that while his clothes have finally started to dry, they are still relatively damp and he needs a change, immediately, lest he want to risk falling ill.
Aaron looks at the fish-man and sees that it is still relatively distracted by the wonder of drinking glasses and so he quietly steps away, thudding up the stairs and retrieving a change of clothes. He pauses for a moment, considering grabbing the creature a shirt in kind before he does so anyways, tossing the shirt onto his bed and stripping himself.
He catches a look at himself in his vanity as he dresses quietly and mourns how his hair sticks to his forehead like limp seaweed. It will take more than a few washes for his hair to ever look the same, its silkiness dulled by his impromptu water logging in the ocean.
Aaron turns away, grabs the spare shirt, and starts for down the stairs, pausing as though struck as he sees the way the fish-man has somehow managed to overturn the cart. He hurries over, his heart sinking as he sees no sign of the being.
And then, there is a small chirp behind him and he turns, only to find his eyes mere inches away from a man's bare, clean-shaven penis. Stunned, Aaron looks up, only to find the creature staring down at him, happily chewing on another loaf of bread it had evidently pilfered from his pantry.
Aaron stares at the creature as though it has suddenly sprung legs.