The Shape of Grief (Tarzan/Little Mermaid: Ariel & Jane)
Title: The Shape of Grief Author/Artist: dropsofviolet Fandom: Tarzan/The Little Mermaid Pairing/characters: Ariel and Jane gen; past Tarzan/Jane Rating: PG-13 Warnings: character death; blood; transformation Prompt/challenge you're answering: Ariel and Jane: transformation of some kind (genderswitch? body swap? species shift?)
Excerpt: She thinks that there is an animal out there choking and crying and probably dying, but she doesn't realize that it's her.
Only the third day and I am already posting late. *fail*
There is absolutely no way that this makes sense. Her gloves are soaked with blood and it's not hers, and she can still see the last look he gave her before his eyes dimmed and the leopard turned to her. She ran and slid and skated across the trees without thinking, letting the gloves rip on the vines, because it doesn't matter, it never mattered, she just thought it would be nice to wear them when she got married--
She thinks that there is an animal out there choking and crying and probably dying, but she doesn't realize that it's her.
Jane dives into the sea.
*
When she wakes, her lungs feel thick and she doubles over and coughs and coughs until she throws up, and there is something very wrong about the way that her vomit hangs in the air, and so she faints again.
When she wakes again, there is a red-headed girl supporting her head on her lap. The girl is most certainly not wearing enough clothes for civilized company, and Jane would be somewhat scandalized except that she had worn nearly as little when she was with Tarzan. It has been ridiculously easy to shuck off the whims of society.
"I'm Ariel," the red-headed girl says, stroking Jane's hair. "Are you okay?"
Jane coughs again, deeply, but she can't throw up anymore. She feels... heavy, damp.
"I don't know," she admits, and from the corner of her eye she can see Ariel's tail twitch in amusement.
She plays that thought over again in her head before bolting upright, or trying to. She stops midway in utter agony, putting a hand around her waist to support herself. The gloves are gone and she feels... something like... fish scales around her waist.
Jane screams a primal scream.
*
"A human, really? How curious," Ariel says, smiling and wondering if the story Jane tells is true. They've never had a human here before and there are a million questions she wants to ask, but she sees that this is hard on Jane, who has just lost her husband, after all.
She has to know, anyway, so she pulls the silvery instrument from her bag and asks.
"What's this, then?" she asks.
"A fork?" Jane says incredulously, in her oddly-accented speech, and Ariel feels better. Just a strange sort of amnesia, then. This girl was never a human or she'd know about dinglehoppers.
She takes her home to meet her family, but it takes a while, because Jane seems to have forgotten how to swim.
*
The king is soft-hearted and has no problem taking in a poor, amnesiac subject, even one he's never seen before. The real problem is the fact that Ariel and Jane don't end up getting along very well at all.
Ariel is still very much a child, Jane thinks. She idolizes the human world, and the prince, and she doesn't believe that Jane was really human, either, which is quite upsetting. She doesn't seem to realize how much she grieves her family when she runs off, either. She believes what she believes, damn the consequences.
Jane doesn't want to be Ariel's mother, and Ariel doesn't want her to be, either. After a few arguments, Jane learns how to keep to herself. She swims around the palace and the underwater city, absorbing knowledge of her new home. Sometimes she gets caught up in the heady joy of research, but she falls back down quickly when she remembers her last expedition.
She can't figure out how to go home, or where home is. Home was with her husband in the jungle, but there is nothing left for her there. Home used to be in London, but she couldn't go back there with any ease, either.
She hates being a mermaid. There is a lot to explore here, but they are so insulated in the cold, wet deeps.
*
She makes a friend-- a little clownfish. His name is Sammy, and he's a little hyper, but he likes the stories she tells him about Tarzan and Life Above. He believes her when she tells him she was human. He believes anything.
One day Sammy tells her about the Sea-Witch. Jane is sure that it's utter nonsense, something only the silly merfolk can believe in, but she thinks about it a lot. None of this has made sense from the start. Why not... why not magic?
When she asks, Sammy takes her to the cave, but he won't go in.
*
She is the scariest... thing that Jane has ever met, but she makes the promise anyway, and nearly drowns before she reaches the surface. When she collapses onto the beach, chest heaving, she pulls her legs to her chest and doesn't stop shaking for an hour.
Then she gets up, legs wobbly, and wonders where she left her clothes. She thinks this is her island-- she hopes so-- but then again, no humans lived or visited there, so it might be better to be somewhere else.
Jane begins to walk through the shifting sands, her pace quickening. She only has a week.