i bring you the last chapter of COV. enjoy (:

PART IX, COLLECTOR OF VOICES

Suho stands in shock on the banks of the river, staring at the blond boy floating in the water.

He’d come to wash some clothing several days later when his name had been called, and he’d looked up to find someone looking back at him.

His gaze trails down the boy’s slim body and his eyes bulge where the soft pink skin melts into pretty gold scales.

“I must dreaming,” Suho mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “Am I seeing things? Do merpeople exist now?”

The merboy folds his arms and the corner of his mouth quirks up. “Didn’t you ever wonder where Chen came from?” he quips, more amused if anything else.

Suho’s brow creases. “Chen?”

Luhan chuckles, but his expression is somewhat melancholy. “I’m surprised the fool from the river told you nothing.”

Suho drops the clothes he’s holding. “You must be pulling my leg,” he says accusingly. But deep down he’s not sure of anything anymore. Luhan can almost hear the gears in his brain grinding.

“He wasn’t one of you, was he?” Suho continues.  “He didn’t have, well…” He waves a hand at the scaled half of the merboy’s torso.

“A tail?” Luhan raises an eyebrow. “No, he didn’t. Don’t you want to know the truth?”

“Truth? What do you know about Chen? Who are you?”

“Luhan. Just Luhan, and Chen was the boy I fell in love with summers ago.”

Suho is still sitting on the river banks at midday, sun beating down on his back and no more tears to cry. Luhan has long gone and the river is his only company.

“Why are you telling me this?” Suho had asked at the end. “You didn’t have to go out of your way to do so.”

Luhan shrugs. “I thought you should know,” he’d replied. “Since Chen didn’t tell you. I just want you to know that our worlds have always been made to be separate.”

And to think all Suho had done for Chen was turn him away. He’d confused his own feelings for Kris with Chen’s, the one who’d given himself up so the love who had never returned his feelings could live instead.

His heart weighs the most for Luhan; the most unrequited of all, and now he’d lost the small merboy Sehun so Chen could have a chance to return home.

Suho repeatedly pieces it together in his head. He can’t imagine the anguish Luhan must be feeling, to have his most dearest things stripped away.

“At least you are strong,” he sighs, staring at his rippling reflection in the water. “You looked so broken and alone, yet you didn’t even shed a tear.”

“Did you ever think he didn’t shed a tear because he couldn’t?” a voice asks. “The people of the sea cannot weep.”

Suho glances up and scrambles back so fast he trips on the wet rocks and lands on his behind, throwing up his hands to shield himself from the monstrosity rising before him.

He is half man, half sea serpent; all rich dark skin and lithe muscle that become scales of midnight black. Blazing dark eyes smoulder as the rest of the spiny lengths emerge and arrange themselves neatly in the water, the last of it curling around Suho’s fearfully struggling body.

When the prince realizes his efforts are futile he stops moving, and the dark coils relax enough for him to move.

“W-what do you mean, he can’t?” he stammer. Perhaps he will wake up soon, and today will have never happened.

“That’s all there is to it.” It’s a horrendous voice, low and hoarse and gravelly, like one of the head chefs who had smoked one too many cigars in his lifetime. “Can you imagine the pain that boy is in, and being unable to release it?”

Suho shoves the snake-like tail away and crawls further towards land. “Who are you?” he demands.

The beast in the river laughs at him and Suho wants to cover his ears with his hands. “Are all humans this amusing?”

“Don’t come near me,” Suho mutters, although he is positively shaking, “you spawn of the– ”

And then it suddenly dawns on him, and he feels sick to the stomach.

“You’re Kai,” he chokes out. “You’re who Luhan and Chen made deals with! You… you’re the one who has Sehun.”

“Why, yes,” Kai sneers. “I merely came on a whim to see the human who caused two fools to come into my lair to bite off more than they could chew.”

“Please let Sehun go,” Suho pleads. “You don’t know how much he means to Luhan.”

The leviathan laughs again, as if the entirety of the situation was incredibly funny. “Of course,” he says simply, and Suho’s heart flutters with hope. Kai hisses something in an unintelligible serpentine language.

The water beside him ripples and two small sea serpents breach the surface, each with their bodies wrapped around the arms of a little merboy with green scales. A third brings up the rear before all three disappear back into the water.

“I hate you,” the tiny boy sniffles. He crosses his arms and pointedly turns his head away.

“So you say on a daily basis,” Kai comments dryly. He wraps his pronged tail around Sehun’s waist, lifts him up and flings him at Suho. “You want this runt? He’s yours for the right price.”

Sehun is a lot heavier than he looks, Suho discovers as he gets the wind knocked out of him by the boy’s sheer weight. He safely catches him but as soon as he tries to set him down Sehun throws his arms around the prince’s neck and blubbers into his shoulder.

“Help me,” he whimpers loudly. “Please don’t make me go back to him.”

Suho shushes him and pats his back comfortingly. “I won’t,” he whispers. “I promise. But what were you thinking when you went to him, you silly child?”

“I just wanted my friend to come home…” Sehun seems nothing unlike a human boy, but Suho can see exactly why Luhan holds him so close to his heart.

Maybe it is because Suho feels he owes Luhan for being the catalyst that returned Chen to the sea; or maybe he is at fault for Sehun’s predicament with Kai, but it is something inside him that floods his system with the courage to make his next decision.

“Name your price,” he declares.

Kai tilts his head in curiosity. “Are you not afraid?” he mocks him. “Do your kind not spin nasty tales about creatures like me?”

“Tell me what you want,” Suho takes a breath to steel his nerves, “and you can have it.”

A self-satisfied smile spreads across Kai’s face until the tips of fangs peek out from beneath his lips. “I don’t deal with humans, so you ought to think yourself lucky,” he says. “You can give me two things instead of one.”

He comes closer and Suho feels Sehun squirm uncomfortably in his arms. Kai leans down to his ear. “The first being the love of the man you are wedded to, because in my eyes, you don’t seem to want it anymore.”

“Then take it,” Suho says flatly.

“Aren’t you aware of the implications of such a decision?”

“I was wrong about him from the start. I don’t love Kris.”

“I see.” Kai hums. “The second, then. You are a man of many fine qualities, my dear prince. But in my world there is only one that I lust for, and for that very reason they call me the collector of voices.”

Suho’s fate is a tale for generations to come. They speak of how he became mute after his betrothal to the prince Kris, and they speak of how he was unable to explain how he came to be so.

Legends pass from mouth to mouth and become twisted out of proportions as they are wont to do; and it now goes that Suho had actually made an unholy sacrifice to the devil in exchange for Kris’s heart.

After all, where did the mysterious boy from the river go?

And thus Suho was scorned by both royal families, unable to even bear the sight of his face, and so they cast him out. To keep the alliance between the two kingdoms Kris was offered the naval commander Tao in place of Suho, and all was well again.

But every child knows that the shamed prince had then thrown himself from the tallest cliffs, and his body swept away by the seas below.
 

But what they don’t know, is the ending.
 

Luhan doesn’t know why he’s agreed to go and thank Suho, but he blames it on Sehun’s persistent begging.

“Don’t be so mean!” Sehun had pouted at him. “He can’t talk anymore, you know, so you should be nice to him– ”

“I know,” Luhan had groaned back, his hands in his hair. “Please stop telling me– ”

“Lu, why do you have no manners– ”

“If I go, will you leave me alone?”

“…Only if I can come too.”

There is a splash in the water ahead and Luhan suddenly notices something drifting down. He swims faster to catch up with it and approaches what is an oddly familiar face, dressed in a white tunic and trousers.

It can’t be.

He whips around to find Sehun behind him, trying avidly to see past the older merboy.

“What is it?” Sehun asks, confused. “What’s happening?”

Luhan grabs one of his wrists and pulls him in the opposite direction. “We’re going home.”

“Was that Suho?” Sehun asks. He pulls at Luhan’s amber tailfins.

Luhan is brooding again, sitting deep in thought and staring off into nothing.

You’re more observant than you should be, he thinks, but he doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud.

“Well, I’m old enough now so you should tell me everything! And don’t do anything stupid,” the little merboy yells at him.

Later that night, when even Luhan’s grandmother has retired, Luhan lets out a deep sigh and props his face up on his hand. Sehun looks up from the table where he is scribbling pictures of Suho on a piece of seaweed.

“I’m sorry, Sehunnie,” Luhan says sheepishly. “I wasn’t thinking very clearly earlier. I should have told you it was Suho that I saw.”

“I already know, you dumdum.” Sehun starts drawing a little figure of Chen next to Suho.

“Despite his decisions, his heart really was in the right place,” Luhan murmurs, more to himself than anyone else. “If things hadn’t turned out the way they had, and if Chen was happy with him, I honestly think I would have let him go.”

“Lu, you have to stop thinking sad things,” Sehun says.

“You’re right.” Luhan wanders over and pats the tiny merboy on the heat. He probably owes Suho more than he would like to, considering the prince had traded not only his voice, but Kris’s love, for Sehun’s freedom. He’d essentially condemned himself for their happiness.

“I never got to say sorry to Chen either,” Luhan mutters.

“What for?” Sehun asks. He looks at his picture, and realizes he doesn’t know whether he should give Chen legs or a tail. He ponders it for a minute before he settles on drawing two stick-like legs for him, and smiley face too.

“For stuff.” Luhan purposely skirts the question. For forcing Chen to make a decision; for forcing him to choose either his childhood friend or Suho.

He idly watches the fish swim by as he compiles his thoughts together. After all this time, he was really the one who came out the most unscathed.

“I need to go somewhere,” he announces determinedly. He makes for the door while Sehun leaves the table to follow.

“I’m coming,” he says.

“Sehunnie, no,” Luhan hisses at him. He pushes the little merboy back inside. “Stay here or you will get taken away.” His tone of voice means business this time.

Sehun is paralyzed with fear. “Again? L-Lu, are you going back to– ”

The door slams shut.

“What a lovely surprise,” Kai drawls, lips curling into a half-smile. “You again.”

Luhan flicks his tail and bats away a slimy sea snake that had come too close for comfort. The leviathan’s lair unsettles him, the dark and gloomy waters casting shadows over everything in sight.

“I came to ask for one more thing,” he states nonchalantly.

“My, my. Haven’t I become popular lately.” Kai circles him, linking his tail around the blond merboy’s hips, chest, shoulders. The pointed ends come to rest at his throat and ooze foul toxins into water. “And what would you possibly be looking for this time?”

Luhan balls his fists. “I came for an immortal soul.”

Kai howls with laughter. “An immortal soul?” he repeats gleefully. His grating voice echoes off the walls. “The price is high, pretty merboy. Did the death of your precious sea prince teach you noth– ”

“It’s not for me,” Luhan retorts sharply. “It’s for someone else.”

Kai blinks in momentary surprise. He uncoils himself from Luhan’s body and draws away. “Are you planning to offer the little boy again?”

“Keep your filthy hands off him– ”

“Not that I have any use for the silly boy.” Kai snorts derisively and turns his back in distaste. “All he does is play with the eels. So what do you have, then, if not the brat?”

Luhan grabs Kai’s shoulder and wrenches him around so they stand face to face. The blond meets him eye to eye, and stares him down boldly. There is no turning back now.

“Aren’t you the collector of voices?”

epilogue

There is a voice calling his name.

Suho comes to in a strange place where everything around him is light and warm and soft. He stands before a magnificent set of gleaming golden gates, and on the other side, calling his name –

“Chen?”

Chen smiles. “Suho. I see you’ve met Luhan.”

And Suho races up to the gates and grabs the boy’s hands through the bars. “I did. Your voice,” he breathes in wonder. “It’s the same. You were the one who sang back to me, on those days I spent on the shore...”

“Your memory does you justice,” Chen laughs, the dulcet tones clear in the silence.

“Where are we? Oh, Chen, I’m sorry for everything– ”

“Don’t be,” the former sea prince waves it off.  “None of it was your fault. As for this place, it's the realm of the skies. I’ve been here for some time, I think. This world is safe.”

“The…skies?” Suho suddenly touches his hand to his throat. “I can speak,” he gasps.

Chen his head to the side. “Of course you can. Why wouldn’t you be able to?” he inquires.

The human prince’s grip tightens slightly. “After Luhan told me what you did, I decided to give my voice away,” he says, with a touch a sadness at the pain it had brought him, “so that Kai would let Sehun go.”

Chen releases their hands to wipe at the tears b in his eyes. “Sehun? Y-you…” His words trail off, unable to form them in his emotionally overwhelmed state.

“They will be fine. To me, it was the least I could do for them… and you.” Suho caresses his cheeks and presses their foreheads together. “But why are you here? Luhan said mer–”

Chen closes his eyes. “He’s right,” he nods slowly. “My people are destined to always return to the sea.”

There is a moment of silence between them.

“But– ” Suho starts.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chen cuts him off, shaking his head in a satisfied manner. He plucks the hands from his face and smiles once more, lighting up the strong cheekbones and the beautifully expressive eyes Suho fell in love with. “Come home, and we will have all the time in the world to talk.” 

Suho smiles in return, tears dripping down his cheeks, and he takes ten steps back.

Heaven’s golden gates swing open.

done and dusted! :D i made it happy... i think. OTL the ending seems kind of vague to me but kudos to you if you can piece it all together. comments are appreciated and questions are welcomed~

thanks to conchobar, xgetyourswagx, X-li_shierly, letsfly01, upperclass and MaraudingSnitch1314 for upvoting, to future upvoters and to all those who read, subbed and stuck around while i took ages to get this fic written. hugs for everybodyyyyy!