RETURN TO THE SEA
サスケ & ナルコ

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Sasuke would rather go home and play with his favourite toy dinosaur than sit around waiting for the stupid fish to bite. Being rescued by a Fish-girl however, that sounded a bit more interesting. SasuFemNaru. Slight KibaHina and other minor pairings.

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~:: CHAPTER 3 ::~

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'Our ways of talking and acting are very similar;
it's as if we have known each other all along'

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They talked.

Considering she had almost drowned him, Naruko was very insistent on taking the first shot at introductions, and his ears were glued to her hesitant, scratchy voice; she had learned some of her Japanese from her father, but most of it she had picked up from hiding under docks and listening to village fishermen on the west coast of Japan. Some of her language was rather colourful.

She told him about how her 'tribe' lived, how their society worked (apparently they didn't have a specific name for themselves). She explained the matriarchal hierarchy, one she was part of. What they ate, how they communicated with sonar (she called it 'echoing'). Most of all, she talked about her own life.

How much she liked sea anemones and jellyfish despite the high she got from their stings, the thrill of a shark hunt, and how boring conversations with whales were. Apparently turtles were much more interesting, even if they couldn't actually communicate with one another with words.

She talked about her friends, and teasing squids and octopus into squirting their ink when she was younger. Racing each other through the corals in her more tropical home, and making trips out to islands, and watching baby sea turtles diving entering the sea for the first time. Then being scolded for being so far away for days in succession by their parents.

She told him about her mother's protective streak, and taking trips to the Arctic Circle with her father when she was learning how to use her sonar. Then about the trip home from such training, when she had met him. Of course, talking about her family led to a conversation about her finding a partner.

"Partner? Do you mean a husband?" he asked.

She didn't really explain the relationship very well, and he knew that most animals didn't have long term relationships the way humans did. He wasn't calling her an animal specifically, but he had seen a lot of correspondences with animals from what she had told him. Naruko frowned at the question obviously confused by the term for a few moments.

"I think it's the same... the old hag told me a little about your lives, but we don't spend as long deciding as humans do... We spend a few weeks, sometimes only days, talking to each other, and if we get along, that's it. You're partnered. The rest can be dealt with later; we live longer than surface people do so there's no rush to get along immediately..." she shrugged her shoulders, dipping her cheeks below the water once again.

"So... you're married? How does that work for fish-people?" he asked; she didn't seem to mind the name he'd given her kind, she'd even started using it herself a few hours ago.

Naruko shook her head as she pulled back out of the water.

"No. I don't have a partner yet; the whole tribe is getting anxious cause I'm supposed to have one before the old hag can give me control of them. It's like an initiation into adulthood or something see? But... it's kinda not-simple for me..." she replied, very vaguely.

The relief in his chest was strange when she said she didn't have a partner, he didn't really know what to think of it.  He rightly guessed that it was an indicator he wanted to know more than her name but... she was half fish. Long distance relationships were all well and good, but half-fish was a little too much for him to stretch his mind around.

Thinking that however, snapped a lot of things into place for him; it was that he supposed, that prompted his next enquiry.

"How do you get married then? You never answered that" he prompted.

Naruko fidgeted in the water, suddenly seeming very self conscious; he had to give her a mild glare before she finally gave in and gave him an answer.

"Well, there's a period every season when we all gather at a shallow trough with oyster beds close by; if we find someone we take a liking to, then... Well, we let them know, and if they reciprocate, then we both go out and found a pearl we think reflects them..." she started, after a sigh of resignation.

Sasuke noted that she was being vague on the letting-the-other-know part, but he didn't interrupt just yet. She was still busy explaining.

"...Then we swap them for a few days and swallow them. Then we swap them back, swallowing them again. The pearls react with stuff inside us, and when we swap them back, that triggers the start of our reproductive organs to work with our partner's. Swapping them means we're recognised adults not only but the rest of the tribe, but physically as well, even if we can't actually breed until we're about thirty seasons."

Finishing, she dunked her head under water for a little longer than normal, and he took that to mean she was a little embarrassed. He supposed it was a fairly private sort of question though. He still wondered about it though... He waited until she re-emerged from the water pool, and then asked again.

"How do you let someone know? That you want to marry them? I can't really see you getting down on a knee, considering you don't have them...?" he asked, trying to keep it as less-prying as possible.

He'd always found you got more information from people if you pretended not to be interested, and from what he'd picked up about Naruko in the past few hours,  she wasn't really someone who picked up mind games. She seemed smart enough, but she was still a little dense in a way. He was right; she fell right into the tiny trap.

"Huh? Oh, you just talk or something. Our fins have ink in that changes colour in too, so you can always get a better idea with that. If you like someone enough, find them interesting or what, you kiss them on the nose. That creates another affect with stuff in the body and stops the fin changes so that..."

Her eyes widened, along with his own, when she realised what she had said, and glared at him as she clamped her webbed hands over her mouth. Sasuke remembered very clearly the moment when she had leant over the edge of the boat and pecked his nose, but...!

"You're a fish!" he stated, a little too hurriedly for his own liking.

Naruko splashed her tail down on the water, soaking him from head to toe in the cold substance; recovering from the icy shock, he could see matched confusion on her face, but also irritation.

"It's not my fault! I'd never seen a human before! Besides, you didn't have to find out, but you just had be sneaky and nosey!" she retorted, giving the water another light flick with her tail fins.

He dodged the splash, his mind reeling from the implications of her protest; so it had stuck?! What the heck?! She was half fish! She was a completely different species! That wasn't supposed to work! There was a word for that – bestiality! It was just messed up!

But...! And there was a 'but' here – there was always a 'but' in these clichés somewhere – she said that the nose thing caused a reaction with her fins. She said that was part of attracting a potential partner right? So why did that work with him? She was half-freaking-fish!

Casting his mind back, he couldn't really be certain if it had worked or not; he assumed the fins she was talking about were the spiny ones at the end of her tail, but she hadn't had them back then. Her tail had been more like an eel's, so he had no way of knowing if it had stuck or not...

Then again, she wouldn't be so irritated if it hadn't stuck right? Or was he just over thinking it? Why was he even considering this in the first place? She was half-fish! Unless she could turn herself into a human... Could she turn herself into a human?

"How the heck does that work? Can you turn into a human or something?" he asked, trying to sound like it was only from mild interest, rather than the intense one he was really feeling.

Naruko blinked then dipped her head under water again, before folding her arms at the edge of the pool, and letting out several irritated clicks to herself.

"You really want me to explain this?" she asked, only slightly failing to hide the perk that entered her voice.

He nodded, sending her a firm gaze to back it up; Naruko clicked in irritation to her self again, the fronds on her head-spines twitching as she did, but she started her explanation all the same.

"...alright, from what the old hag told me when I was freaking out, we have the same ancestors at some point, but separated and evolved separately, so were two different species now, but we aren't completely different either. Like how there's different types of fish, but they're all called fish. You following me so far?" she asked.

He nodded; their prehistoric ancestors were the same, so to use an animal classification, they almost subspecies of the same family. It made sense, albeit a little obscurely, but it didn't sound fantastical. It sounded like the relationship humans shared with apes. Except Naruko lived in the sea, not a tree.

"...The ink in my fins isn't really ink; it's poison. It can kill a shark if we get enough into its bloodstream. If we scratch a human though... sometimes it turns them into one of us. My Gramps was human originally, and another of my ancestors; the old hag said that's why I can speak like you and breathe above water, because I've got a bit of human in me. Most of us can't do that at all..." she stated, slowly and calmly.

As he absorbed this information, his hand went to the scratch on his neck; he knew he was a better swimmer than most of his classmates, a better diver, better at holding his breath for long periods of time, better at coping with the deeper depths but... was that why? Because that poison could turn him into one of her kind?

"...it doesn't always work though, more often than not, the person dies. Even if it does work, it's supposedly like learning to flip your tail again. That what the old hag said anyway... That's why my dad was so worried about scratching your neck; there was a chance you'd either turn, or die if he'd scratched you enough" she finished, dipping her head low into the water till the slits on her cheeks were covered, her eyes peeking up at him.

Sasuke didn't know if he should be alarmed by how appealing that thought sounded. He should have immediately refuted it, especially with the dangers, but he didn't. He just wondered if he was, and hoped he wasn't, dreaming.

It sounded so surreal, but hell he was talking to a living breathing 'mermaid'. She didn't really look like the fairytale stereotype, but she was a living legend all the same. How was he supposed to know if she was telling the truth or not?

"So... what do you humans do up on land?" she asked.

Sasuke blinked at the sudden change in subject, but he was grateful for it. The other topic was somewhat mind-boggling. He would give it some more serious thought later, but first...

He was going to get used to talking with Naruko.

---

Naruko didn't understand a lot of the things he mentioned.

School was a completely unfamiliar concept for her (though she did have a very rudimentary alphabet that she promised to show him at a later date), and the appalled face she made when he explained it made him snort with laughter. She sympathised with the loss of his parents, having lost her own grandfather, and he told her about his friends.

She was a little anxious when he mentioned telling Hinata about her, but he quickly reassured her, and she admitted she'd told one of her friends about him too. She enjoyed his stories about Kiba's pranks, and she was absolutely mystified when he showed her the underwater torch he used for night diving.

The concept of light being contained in something brought an expression of awe onto her face, as did the concept of heating food - fire was another thing she had no comprehension of, and he promised to show her what it was (somehow).

Boats and submarines however, she did know of, and they brought an expression of hate to her face. After mentioning dizzy spells and headaches, and feeling confused when they were nearby, he understood – the sonar used by the boats interfered with her own. He suspected that had a lot to do with why her kind avoided humans.

As they talked, he took a good look at her appearance; her tail was that same silvery blue colour, and her fins were a transparent greeny, the tips of the spines that formed them dipped in a dark, oily blue. Dipped her own variety of the poison that could turn him into one of her kind.

The fins on her arms were much the same, sprouting from her wrist towards her elbow down the patch of scales that covered her green-tinted skin of her arm. The same scales covered her barley more than average breasts (he was surprised she even had them since they were typically for mammals), joining her tail at her and exposing her lower back, but for a thin stripe of them where another fin was beginning to form from her spine to her spiny tail-fins.

"That fin on your back, you didn't have that the last time I saw you did you?" he asked, leaning a little closer to peer over her shoulder and get a better look.

"No, that's new... Only the matriarch gets it. It won't finish growing yet though. I'm not an adult yet, so it won't grow till I'm..."

Naruko stopped, her face flushing and looking away from him; he remembered he explanation on fish-people weddings and understood. She didn't have a partner yet, so until she got one, it would stay half formed. Unless he went with her when she left, it wouldn't ever grow. It came with full adulthood, and unless he left, she'd probably never get that.

Speaking of which, when was she going to leave? The thought of it being soon was not a pleasant one. He'd found her again – he didn't want her to disappear again in the blink of an eye. He'd been looking for her for most of his life!

He enjoyed diving, he liked other water sports, he liked his lessons in geography since they covered the specifics of how the currents worked, he liked all the legends and myths he found on the internet, but they had never been his main priority. It had always been her.

Now he had found her, and frankly she was good company; he'd never had a specific idea of her personality, since she had been incapable of human speech when he first met her, but it was a good one in his opinion. He liked the expressions on her face, the roughness of her self-taught speech, her lively attitude...

He just... liked her. A lot, if he was honest with himself. Things may have gone differently if her personality had irritated him, but it didn't. Well, she had her moments when he was trying to explain something, but considering she didn't have legs with which to view the dry part of the world, that was to be expected.

If she had been a human, he'd probably have shoved his tongue down her throat already. She wasn't human though, and that was where his problem was. Sasuke was no virgin – he'd had a couple of steady girlfriends that had lasted long enough for 'that talk' to come up, and be resolved. As such, he was no prude, but he had to admit, she didn't really have a body that he was... 'keen to explore' so to speak.

The only aspects of her that were vaguely human were her finned arms, scale covered breasts, and her gilled face. He quite enjoyed sex, when the chance came around, but not with a fish. He doubted he'd even enjoy kissing her – she probably tasted like a fish too...

And yet... he still felt the hope that she was serious. Dangers or not, the possibility of joining her was too appealing for his own comfort. He'd not even known her for more than a few hours, even if it felt like most of his life. It was a horribly rash thought... but still it appealed to him.

"...Sasuke, I think your brother's looking for you."

Sasuke was jerked form his thoughts by the sudden statement, and glanced at her in confusion. Having a look at the air hole in the roof of the cavern, he could see the bright glare of morning, and swore. He'd stayed out all night without realising it – Itachi was going to have him under lock and key for a month for this!

"How can you tell?" he asked curiously.

"...I can hear an echo that feels like your name. It's pretty far away, so you could get back up to the surface quick enough" she replied, floating back out into the middle of the  pool one he had strapped on the wait belt he usually wore when he was diving.

"I suppose that's my cue to leave then..." he sighed.
"I'll stick around here okay? I can't get close to the shore. I don't want no-one else seeing me but..."

She left the obvious 'I want to see you again' hanging in the air, and he shot her a small smile in reply as he slipped into the water. Following her as she flipped on ahead with the powerful fins on her tail (pausing for him to catch up) Sasuke noted that the water seemed a lot clearer this morning.

The nearby sea ports made it cloudy most of the time, but not today. It didn't feel cold either, despite his brother's constant warnings; not once in his life could he remember the sea being cold.

---

"This has to stop Sasuke. I don't want you diving any more. Not out in open water like that. Just because the doctor said it benefits your immune system doesn't excuse this behaviour! Do you have any idea how worried I was last night?!"

Sasuke continued staring out of the window of the hospital; after he had reunited with his brother (very angry brother); he had predictably been whisked away to hospital. It wasn't a new thing – he'd been in and out of hospitals since he was a child thanks to his weak immune system – but Sasuke didn't want to listen to Itachi at that moment.

He had more important things to be thinking about than his brother's insecurities! He'd finally found Naruko, he knew her name. He knew he wasn't crazy. He had also been told that they were, for all intents and purposes, engaged in her world. That was a lot to think about...

Hell, it was something he'd probably have shared with his brother had he not freaked out and dragged him up to hospital with the lecture to boot. It was something he wanted Itachi to know, if only to rub it in his face that he was wrong, but preferably to share some good news with him for once.

How was he supposed to do that now? The one time when he could have used some advice form his brother, the first time he would have listened since their parents died, he had to be like this.

"I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself Itachi. Just because I was out all night doesn't make me stupid! I knew I wouldn't get back before the storm hit so I camped out on the island in the cove at the back. You've been there; you know its good shelter. The only reason I couldn't phone was because your stupid satellite phone ran out of power again!" he snapped back in reply.

"Then where were you this morning? I looked there for you, and then you pop up all the way out in the middle of the bay>! If that's your excuse, you'd better come up with another one!"

"I went for a swim! What's so wrong with that?! I do it every morning and you've never complained before! This isn't the fist time I've been stuck out overnight either! Why are you being so obtuse?!"

"Afternoon you two; it's good to see you in your usual boisterous selves"

Both brothers snapped their heads towards the doctor who had entered the room; Danzou didn't bat an eyelid at the hostile air between them, more than used to it after 16 years of being their family doctor.

"Shimura-sensei" Itachi greeted some relief in the slight nod of his head.

"Itachi. I'm happy to report that Sasuke is fine. In the pink of health actually. You've been trying that new version of the fish diet I told you to try, haven't you Sasuke?" the doctor asked.

Sasuke nodded.

"I've been taking some of it raw like you said. Sashimi and that. I'm going to see if I can get a book on shore side plants and see if there are any of those I can eat instead of regular lettuce. Meat once a week at the most like you said" Sasuke replied as the man held his x-rays up for the two of them to see.

He might think Itachi was overreacting, but the truth was he had a lot of strange health problems. As a child he had been susceptible to strong bouts of the flu and even pneumonia like the common cold. He didn't have such problems as much now, but others had replaced them.

His lungs hadn't grown quite as well as they should have, he had very severe allergic reactions to certain foods, and most washing powders and basics like shampoo had the same problems. His eyesight was terrible, especially for things like reading, and of course, there was his body's abnormally high salt intake.

He needed nearly three times the daily amount than that of the average boy his age, and it was slowly getting higher. He was certain that one day he'd be spooning salt onto his food, the same way people did with sugar and coffee.

Danzou had been his family doctor for years, not that he had found any disease that matched what was wrong with him, and after talking to Naruko the previous day... Sasuke was certain he never would. Not unless he got a sample of the poison on her tail spines and made an antidote for it.

He knew better than to say that though, and it wasn't like he liked sweets enough to care about missing out on them. His strange diet was normal for him, as were the frequent x-rays, blood tests, urine tests, and every other test Danzou threw at him during his hospital visits.

"...Then keep it up with this new one, and keep up your diving. Your immune system's gotten much stronger since your last visit. So have your lungs... You still can't take as deep a breath as anyone else, but your capacity for releasing it is uncanny... Never seen anything like it actually, but that's not surprising. You're a very intriguing patient Sasuke" Danzou finished.

"That's it? He's alright?" Itachi asked, his relief clear.

"He's as well as you or I. The only thing I'd advise you to watch is his salt intake... I'd recommend increasing it; if my readings are right, then the absorption rate has gone up again. Try it with half the amount we raised it by last time, and come back to see me in a week..."

Sasuke ignored the two of them as they headed out of the room, Itachi asking questions and Danzou answering them. He was too busy thinking about the implications and source of the problems Danzou was trying to fix.

In his thoughts, he scratched absently at the three marks that had appeared soon after Naruko's father scratched him all those years ago.

The more he thought about it, the more he realised that the option Naruko had given him wasn't an option at all. It was happening slowly, very slowly, but he was already turning into one of her kind. One of the fish people. He had been for years, and he didn't have any say about it.

Was that where his love of the sea came from too? Was that the only reason he felt such a strong draw to it? Or was that just coincidental with his mixed emotions surrounding Naruko? He couldn't say he was certain any more, and that was why he wanted to have a civil conversation with his brother.

He didn't think that was going to happen any time soon though, and despite his confusion he still felt that Itachi had overreacted over nothing. He'd just have to figure through all this by himself for the moment.

To do that's he'd have to find a way out of the house without Itachi's notice, but that wouldn't be a problem. The sea gate would probably be locked out to the main sea from their own inland section of the ocean, but Itachi didn't dive. He didn't know there was another way out, or that Sasuke had found a passable route down the side of the rocks from his bedroom window.

He had to find out more about this, and find out if there was a way to stop the poison in his system, and the only way to do that was to talk to Naruko. He'd probably be in deeper shit with Itachi if he was caught, but it would be worth it.

In spite of his new worries, any excuse to both see Naruko was worth it.