James Moriarty - Tempestuous Tides

Chapter 20

New beginnings have to start somewhere, new understandings of the new people in your life. You can regret never telling anyone how you succeeded and failed, you can regret never letting anyone in. Letting people in is a game-changing experience that no one can stop you from trying to embrace.

From across the circular room, they sat around the room, looking at each other in disbelief of the way things had been turning out just lately. So scary and so sudden, that even the most cautious would be caught off guard by this. Such unprecedented acts no one was able to exaggerate or make to become over the top. It was the way it was.

"You know, I never thought I would be telling anyone this. My life story. Well, my background,"

"What do you mean?" Sherlock asked, looking at the water they had just come through.

"I have never had the courage to tell anyone, I have never had anyone to tell or explain it to. I have always been the one people hated in our colony because of the way I ended up,"

"Out of the ordinary?" John questioned, not wanting her to feel like she was too weird.

"Well, if you look at Aella, she is normal, right?"

"Right," Moran rolled his eyes at the idea of her being normal.

"For us, for a siren, normal is a murderer, always willing to kill kill kill. Everything we kill. In my life, I have only ever killed fish for food. Not a human. Everyone has a kill count of how many they have taken. Mine is still zero, sirens, three,"

"You killed three of your own kind?" Moriarty looked at her in a different light, seeing her as something extraordinary.

"Yes, I will explain why. I remember it like it was yesterday. Everyone was doing what they normally do, I had nothing to do but look out to sea, it was the only way I could catch a break from all the people who were pressuring me to kill a human,"

"Why couldn't you?"

"Because I had never had human contact, none at all. So, I only took peoples words for it, only knowing what they knew. Everything they had told me had led to a disaster, so I found my own feet when I was young. I needed to. And, one day, I was just sitting and watching. Not stereotypically like many have suggested,"

"How would you know?" Moriarty asked, not knowing how she knew what was stereotypical for a mermaid.

"I have been on your grounds more than once, I have done my fair share, I learned English in two days,"

"Two days!" Sherlock was astonished, her intellectual capabilities vast. "That means you have a great capability to learn and find new things quickly."

"I do! Which is also why I am very different to everyone else, they are slower on the uptake," she laughed, smiling at how stupid it all sounded.

"Anyway, I was just laying there and I was dragged down to the bottom of the sea. We can go that far down unlike humans. And, I was so shocked that before I knew it I was being bitten by three of my kind. They were trying to kill me, " tears buried her eyelids, falling in fast succession down her face.

"I fought them off, I managed to pull them off even though I was weak. I tore them apart, one by one. When one tried to get away I sought them out and hunted her down, killing her. Everyone saw it and no one messed with me since. But, I might be capable of vicious acts, yet I am a nice person. I am capable of being in love," she looked to Moran, smiling at him to give him the hint. "I am capable of making friends."

She gestured to everyone in the room, standing up on her feet, but they were unsteady making her fall to the ground.

"Are you okay?" Moran asked, checking her legs out for her, giving a medical exam.

"I am being called back, they are trying to find me, and by doing this to me, they will find me,"

"How?"

Without any warning, her body lurched upwards, choking water up out of her body. She was heaving upwards, her body dropping to the ground in an instant.

"What's happening?" Moran spoke, trying to get through to her. She sat up, starting to sing, her tune so high pitched they were forced to cover their ears. Her eyes were beginning him to forgive her, her hands making sure they knew they needed to go.

Moran was refusing to leave her, even though she could take care of herself.

"Go!" Moriarty shouted, pulling him along as they saw people look down the hole they had come through.

For once he was self-sacrificing and making way for everyone else who had been helping him recently, even if he was sometimes too proud to admit he was more wrong than anyone else. All the lives he had taken away, and now he was paying it back through small deeds he would never have done. He eas letting everyone go ahead of him, instead of going first to save himself. 

Unbeknownst to everyone else, he had stayed put, he had stayed behind with Camilla, knowing she needed him. But, she was persistent in him leaving her. Yet, he dismissed her wanting him to leave.

"You need to go!" she cried out again, the pain seeing through her body.

"Tell me what they will do?" Moriarty asked, holding her hand. 

"They will just take me back to the water,"

"No they won't, they will kill you," he snapped, trying to pull her, but she was not budging. 

"Then why did you ask. I told you to leave! If you don't I will be forced to kill you, eat you, while you are alive, so leave before they make me do it," releasing her hand from her grip, she held out a gold ring in her hand. "I found this when diving, I want Moran to have it if I don't make it, I love him. I always will. So, tell him to never forget me, tell him I love him. Please."

"I will." 

He kissed her forehead, leaving her behind, dropping a ring on the ground beside her.

"Moran bought this for me the once, he would have wanted you to have it., he loved you too."