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In the bright blue ocean, close above a pretty coral shelf, two sharks swam. Or, maybe, one shark, and one monster.
Gray wondered if something had been wrong with him all along. He wondered if really should be sharks like like him left after all. Now that he knew what it felt to have his fins torn off, they seemed almost not to be his. He wondered if he had deserved to loose them for good.
As the two friends swam together, Barkley spoke. "Why didn't you take it?" he asked Gray.
Their flanks were slightly more distant than either would have preferred, but it made sense, they'd hardly seen each other in the past few moons. The Seazarian was just so busy.
Barkley looked up at Gray, and the megalodon could feel huge eyes tracing along the scars that marked the spot where he had once lost his fins. Thorny flesh marked by slices that should have killed him. That had killed him. That had only appeared because something had gone wrong.
Gray looked back at the dogfish, suddenly aware that Barkley was now hardly larger than his magically reattached fin. "What?" he distractedly asked.
"The job," Barkley said, as if that had been obvious. (Maybe it should have been.) "They wanted you to lead, maybe the ocean could have been a bit less choppy for a day if you'd just did what they asked. Maybe… maybe they would have listened to you a little easier."
He sighed and drew closer, knocking green flank to blue. Gray didn't even move slightly at the touch.
Gray didn't pretend he knew what Barkley went through. As a dogfish there were plenty of fish in the sea that would never seen him as worthy of leading the oceans. What Gray did know, however, was that he would not have been able to do half as much to help sharks like his friend if he'd been in charge. Back home in Coral Shiver he'd been a monster, and he knew that becoming the type of leader who banned mixed shivers and told small sharks that they were basically tuna would have just proved it.
"I wanted you to lead," Gray said casually, though the churning in his stomach would have made the wildest of feeding frenzy look like a pup cuddled up in greenie, "and I wasn't sure I was ready for it."
"Why?"
Because you're the shark around here, I'm just the corpse that found a new way to float. Because the water has smelled like my blood since I watched my fins fall off. Because I know I never say the right thing for people who need help, and you do.
"I just wasn't. I thought you were a better fit, the place needed a new look," Gray lightly bumped his friend, and though Barkley laughed, Gray couldn't miss how far off track he'd been sent by the simple gesture. When they were younger it would have been nothing, but now that Gray's tail was reaching full strength, and his sewn on fins were so long that they felt they could trace the ocean floor, it was something.
"The place already got a new look in that battle," Barkley joked, though it wasn't funny to talk about such violence that way, "What am I, the diversity hire?"
"Um, do you want to be?" Gray asked
Barkley shrugged his fins, "What else would you call me?"
"My friend?"
"Besides that."
There was a pause as the two friends kept swimming, tail swishes fighting against the gentle flow of water around them. The coral was oddly quiet today, but Gray had a feeling that Trank or his buddies were listening, ready to tell their Urchin king the problems the shark world was having. Gray shook himself out of the thought of violence, and his scars ached along his fins.
"A good leader," Gray finally said, though he'd had the answer clear in his head the whole time. Better than a monster like me could be. He wondered if swimming as fast as he could would knock his fins back off, he wondered if he deserved it. "You had good ideas, we've hardly had any bloodshed since it happened."
"Besides the salmon run," Barkley joked- or maybe asked, it was hard to tell if he could see where Gray's mind was, "But they volunteer for that."
There was a lull in the conversation as they both remembered what had led them there. Kicked out of their Shiver, stupidly joining with someone who wanted half the ocean dead, breaking away in time to get friends killed, facing delicious cloud after delicious cloud of blood lost until it started to smell like death instead of food. Until it started to smell like Gray's own blood, when his fins were torn off.
"I'm glad you think I have good ideas," Barkley finally spoke, shaking Gray out of his memories before they turned into teeth grinding, "I'm glad you're my friend."
"I'm glad you're my friend too," Gray said, and though he meant it, the words came with difficulty. Barkley didn't deserve to have to deal with him, a monster from the depths of the ocean and the depths of the Sparkle Blue. Barkley was too good for that, too kind hearted and understanding of other shark's emotions, too accepting of those that were different. He was going to get himself hurt if he kept hanging out with someone like Gray.
It had never been the dwellers like Trank that they had to avoid trusting, it had always been the ancient sharks. Sharks like Hoccu, like the old Seazarian (now dead and eaten, may the Sparkle Blue drag her fins down), and like Gray. Sharks who wanted power, who saw others as lesser because of their birth, who had come back from dying with their fins magically reattached and their blood returned. Sharks who didn't deserve the power they got, or the influence they had, or the blood in their veins, not as much as those who really helped anyway.
Gray thought about his friend Lochlan the second, the kind and brave king of Auzy-Auzy shiver. If he had stayed, maybe Gray would have considered suggesting him for the job. Not because Barkley didn't deserve it, he did more than anyone in the whole ocean, but because he just deserved the offer so much more than Gray had. He thought about Mari, the Thresher who'd been smarter than the smartest octopus in the ocean, and prettier than a fresh conch shell on a dweller. She'd deserved it too. He thought about Takiza, and the poor departed souls from Coral shiver.
He thought anyone other than him would be a better fit for the job. It had only been offered to him because he was a monster and that had been what the spot needed. Barkley had changed that monstrous position, Barkley was smart and perfect and considerate and as pretty at heart as the patterns of his scales. What was someone like Barkley doing still hanging around someone like him?
"Are you thinking too hard about this?" Barkley asked, "If you regret it you can always ask for a spot in the frenzy, we do votes now you know."
"Nothing like that!" Gray insisted, though his mind wasn't fully on the conversation (maybe that's why the words slipped out), "The ocean just needed something different, hasn't it had enough of Megladons running the place?"
Barkley sped up, swishing to be in front of Gray's face so fast that he had to bank to the side to avoid hitting the dogfish. "You can't still be on that."
Gray swished around, only avoiding slapping Barkley with his tail by accident because the dogfish knew him like the top of his own fin. "Forget I said it then," Gray said, feeling his jaw shudder as he fought the urge to grind his teeth. Maybe if one snapped he could imagine that he was still real, "You deserve the job, that's all I was saying."
"That's not what you were saying!" Barkley insisted, swimming over him so that Gray was trapped between his friend and the colorful coral below, "I know you Gray, you're thinking something stupid."
Gray looked from side to side, trying to find a way to swim away where he wouldn't plow right through something important and intricate and beautiful. He was so good at breaking things just by being around them, and as Barkley tapped his tail on Gray's dorsal fin to remind him to talk, Gray knew that this friendship was another one of those things. He twitched his fins. He didn't want to talk about this. He'd tried so hard not to bring it up, even when the conversation practically begged for it.
Of course something like him would mess it all up.
"Forget it," he half begged, "Please." I don't want to loose you.
"Gray," Barkley said seriously, "I'm part of the council that leads the ocean, and you're my best friend, I have the clearance to know."
"It's not about you," Gray snarled, sounding angrier than he meant to. His fins didn't feel like his, he was scared. Maybe now they were telling his mouth what to do. Maybe one day he'd snap and eat someone he loved. Maybe he wouldn't know what was happening until it was too late. Maybe he'd taste the blood on his tongue and know that something was wrong before realizing just exactly how wrong. Maybe-
Barkley's voice broke him out of his spiral, almost panting as he had to fight to keep up with Gray. (His tail swishes were faster than he'd remembered them being, but he hadn't realized how much just a small departure from casual could effect his friend. He slowed down in guilt.)
"You're my friend," Barkley stressed again, "so it is about me!"
"Come on Barkley," Gray begged, thinking about how his fins had looked as stumps, and how his mind had felt when he'd been told that he was the rightful Seazarian, "I don't- I don't even know where to start. I promise it's nothing."
Barkley didn't believe him, but as he was opening his sharp teeth to ask again, a shark came swimming up to him, calling about an issue with the new voting system among the Orcas. Apparently some of the old ocean sharks were pushing back against their inclusion in the view of the ocean. Something about how "flippers will never be fins," or something so eerily similar to Gray's childhood views that he felt a bite of shame so sharp it outdid all the others gnawing at his gills. Barkley hesitated, but with a drag of his tail along Gray's back, and a promise he'd be back to finish the conversation later so Gray better stay freaking put, he was following the messenger away.
Gray watched him go for a few moments, and then turned towards the open ocean.
He felt bad, but for once he felt bad that he couldn't see his friend anymore. These days, being with him hurt. It reminded him that he was too large for Coral shiver homewaters, too ravenous for Slaggernacks, too dead to see the ocean without a hint of the Sparkle Blue. Barkley swam for all he wasn't, he didn't need an old friend dragging him down anymore. He had to focus on his work, to help better the ocean, to be someone that Gray wasn't.