George's first thought as he wakes up is 'why the fuck am I swaying?'. He always found a cave or something secure to sleep in and never let himself be carried by the waves, so why the hell was there a steady, slow, but constant swaying.

George's second thought is 'oh shit, oh no' as memories of before crash into him like a tidal wave.

Him meeting dolphins, the ship, him saving Niki, him getting caught, the mysterious faceless man, and him passing out all rush through his brain, making him nauseous.

"Don't panic George." he whispers to himself, deciding now would be a good time to check his surroundings. His eyes crack open slowly, and he sees that he's in what looks to be a clear box. It's the same length as him, but the fins of his tail tip over the side a little bit. The water is deep enough for him to be fully submerged, but it's still not enough. He can't even turn around in this thing.

With a small sigh of relief, he realizes there's no top on it, so he doesn't just have to lay there, but that relief is just as rapidly replaced by the sheer terror of his situation.

He looks around, elbows propped up slightly to give him more of a chance to see, but not enough to take his head completely out of the water.

He's in what seems to be a small room, made of wood. There's a large table across from him, and some windows that have pale cream blinds on them. Warm sunlight filters through said blinds, making the room glow a soft pale orange. A large, darker wooden door was across the room, and thankfully, George noticed that it was closed.

The room reminded him of all the shipwrecks he'd explored. It was a favourite pastime of his, a way to escape his life and to see what the human world was like.

Although, it looked quite different when it wasn't sunk. The blinds weren't shredded, the windows weren't broken, the wood wasn't dark and dead looking, and there was a rather significant lack of barnacles and clams all over it. To George, it almost felt homey.

Almost homey, if it wasn't owned by bloody humans, those of which had kidnapped him.

George turns his head to the side slightly, and his fear is doubled instantly. Somehow, he'd failed to notice a man sitting on a chair a few meters away from him.

George backed up, but forgot he was in a glass box, and smacked his elbow behind him. He hissed in pain, sitting up and bringing his elbow to his other hand, holding it like it was precious.

The man must have heard him, for his head snapped up and stared at him.

George stared right back.

This human looked weird. His clothes were weird, he wore a dark green (?) coat over a white blouse, dark pants paired with big boots. But that wasn't the part he thought was weird. What he did think was odd, was the mask that covered most of the man's face.

It was porcelain white, with a smiley face painted (or carved? he couldn't tell from where he sat) on it. It reached just above his mouth, so he could still see his smile, but the rest of the man's features were covered by it.

Dark blonde fluffy hair poked out from behind it, somewhat curly, and obviously sunkissed.

He even had dark black earrings, one of the ears having an extra small hoop on them.

To George, the man looked so...different, but that was to be expected, considering they came from completely different worlds.

The man, whatever his name was, sat up. He scratched his chin awkwardly, his black leather fingerless cloves glinting in the sun, and smiled a lopsided smile.

"Hi, um, my name is Dream." the man said, somewhat quietly, but firmly.

George narrowed his eyes, curling his tail into himself.

Dream sighed, "Um...what's your name?" George did not respond.

They sit there in awkward silence for a few minutes, George's heartbeat never slowing down.

George felt like he might throw up at some point, but he'll cross that bridge when it comes to it.

All that is heard are the occasional creaks from the ship, and the muffled voices of other pirates outside the large door. That makes him all the more scared.

George was so stupid. Why did he save that bloody dolphin? Of course, he doesn't regret saving Niki, he's glad she's safe, but he also wishes he had been smart enough to figure out another way to help her or to not have even been in that situation at all.

But now, because of George being a dumb little idiot, he was going to die. He'd probably be cut up into fish bits, or something sickening like that. The thought made him shiver slightly, but it was unnoticeable due to the shaking of his hands that had been happening since he'd woken up.

"So I guess you can't speak English?" Dream says, interrupting George from his frantic thoughts.

George's head snaps up again, not even realizing that he'd been looking down at the water, and glares at the man again.

Dream coughs slightly, "That was a dumb question. If you can't speak English, you probably can't even understand what I'm saying. Why am I even talking, jesus christ this is awkward." Dream laughed warily, his fingers tapping on his clothed leg rhythmically.

George's mouth parted in surprise for a second, before snapping it shut. His glare just deepened, which caused Dream to sigh and sit back, resting his head against the wooden wall.

Was this human stupid? Merfolk were gifted in being able to speak any languages of the area they presided in.

George knew they hadn't had peaceful contact with humans in hundreds of years, but he had assumed those sorts of things were well known. Back when humans and merfolk were actually friends, their gift of speaking all languages was something extremely useful and was often used to help each other trade with foreigners.

Perhaps their cultures were even more separated than he'd generally thought. That, or this particular human, Dream, he reminded himself, just had no knowledge of merfolk history.

All of a sudden, the large door burts open, and another man rushes in. He has puffy dark brown hair, some pieces of it flipping over a white bandana wrapped around his forehead. His clothes are similar in fashion to Dream's and yet different in style.

Dream stands up, surprised, while George shrinks back down into the water, leaving only his eyes and up above the water.

"Sapnap? What's up?" Dream questions. Sapnap? What an odd name, George thinks to himself.

The man, Sapnap, looks startled at the fact that George was awake, and was staring at him. His mouth opens slightly, letting out a small squeak, as he holds his finger up, unsure of what he was going to say.

George rolls his eyes, making Sapnap let out a breath of air, similar to a dainty laugh.

"Sap?" Dream questions again, and Sapnap turns to him, coughing slightly.

"Right, sorry...sorry for bursting in, I didn't expect him to be awake yet. Um, anyway, Wilbur needed to see you. Something about treating his wound." Sapnap gestures to George, who glares back at him, shifting his arm to cover up the cut on his tail.

Dream sighs, and pats his hands on the sides of his legs slightly, before nodding.

"Yeah, okay, let's go." Sapnap gives a thumbs up in agreement and gives George one last glance before slipping out of the room. Dream goes to follow him, but turns around, his hand resting on the door frame.

They stare at each other for a moment, and George can't help but wonder what the man looked like underneath the mask.

Dream coughs, taps the door frame, and then leaves.

The heavy door creaks slowly before shutting with a loud thump.

George visibly relaxes and pulls himself half out of the water. He sits up and inspects his wound.

Somehow, he hadn't noticed it before, but now that Sapnap had mentioned it, he could feel it start to sting. He recalled Sapnap and Dream's conversation for a moment, how they'd mentioned a man, Wilbur, treating his wound, and rolled his eyes.

He didn't need any puny human medicine to help him.

George willed himself to cry, but it wasn't so easy. After not crying for a while, it was hard to get tears to pop out. After a few minutes though, his eyes started to tear up, and he cupped his hand underneath them, letting them drop into his pale palm.

He moved his tail out of the water so he could see the wound easier, despite the uncomfortable position, and let the tears fall onto the wound. Slowly, the wound started to stitch itself up. It left a pale scar, but George could live with it.

He slipped back into the water and sighed deeply. It had been a while since he'd needed to do that. Making healing tears took the energy out of him. Contrary to popular belief, normal merfolk tears don't heal anything, so if you made a merman cry, those tears wouldn't do jack shit. It was a special type of tears that merfolk could conjure that had healing properties, but it took time and energy to create them.

He remembered his mother mentioning that before. It had become a safety thing for merfolk. No one could just wound them and take their tears, they had to willingly get them, so hundreds of years ago, when humans and merfolk were allies, there weren't really any murders of merfolk to try and get tears. Instead, they paid for them.

It had been a sound system at the time, but it fell to pieces after a while. Humans found new ways to force magic tears out of merfolk. George had heard horror stories of that before, where humans would torture merfolk into giving them magic tears.

He shivered slightly, heart dropping to his gut, as a feeling of sickness overwhelmed him. He hoped that wasn't what was going to happen to him. Dream seemed...not so bad, for a human. But he knew humans were evil, and the blonde-haired man was probably just acting.

Whatever happened though, George told himself not to give up any healing tears. Humans didn't deserve them. Humans killed his family, killed his mother. Humans were bad.

George sunk down into the water, curling up, and started to cry.

- x - x - x - x - x - x -x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x

Hey guys....I am so sorry it's been so long since the last chapter. I feel so bad ;-;

I don't really have an excuse for that, there was just a lack of motivation recently. But heyyyyyy i'm backkkkkkk.

Hope someone missed me lmao.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter! Also, I'll be signing my name off as 'Bee' from now on, rather than 'Bella', because I've made the decision that I feel more comfortable with my nickname rather than my actual name haha.

-Bee

(15/1/21)

(Co-posted on ao3)