"I think...I want to go home after all. I'm sorry."

He hadn't been able to think of anything else - even if it would make them worry about him, at least it would get Haru and Rei and Nagisa away from the ocean and the Thing. They'd just think it was for a different reason than it actually was. But every instinct in his body was telling him to take his friends and run far away from the open water, where he couldn't see the bottom and the creature could drag any one of them under at a whim. A pool felt so much safer. In a pool he could always see the other end, could always see the bottom - it wasn't endless, like the sea, like nature's waters. A pool was contained. Controlled.

"Makoto...OK. I'll go tell Gou and Amakata-sensei."

He'd let Haru handle that, unable to bring himself to look anyone in the eye. Thankfully, when Haru had declared the training camp over and they were going home, no one said anything about it. Not to him or within his hearing, anyway. There had been a brief exclamation of confusion from Gou, but Nagisa had put a hand on her arm and led her away to speak in private and Makoto's ears burned red at the thought that he had to explain to her and Sensei that they were running away because Tachibana Makoto was a big scaredy-cat and was acting like a child. But that was better than them knowing the truth, wasn't it? And it was certainly better than letting them stay near the danger. But it didn't stop him feeling like a burden to them.

In surprisingly little time, they'd called Coach Sasabe who'd agreed to meet them that afternoon and take them back soon enough, and had diligently packed away all of their belongings again. Gou left for a short time to 'say goodbye to onii-chan', but soon enough, they were waiting by the docks for the boat, their bags piled high before them. If Coach Sasabe said anything when they came, Makoto didn't notice, lost in thought and only shaking himself out of it when the boat bumped into the docks as they moored. He bowed deeply in apology before they all parted ways, promising to be up early the next day for practice at the pool.

The walk home was a silent one and Makoto declined when Haru asked him if he wanted to come over for a while, and then promptly felt bad about it, because Haru was reaching out to him and he didn't do that often anymore. Hadn't, in fact, for quite a while. But Haru had waved off his apologies before muttering a quiet 'see you tomorrow' and going into his house.

The house was quiet when he walked in, his parents and siblings seemingly out for the day, for there was no reply when he called out "I'm home". He set his bags down in the hallway, feeling a little lazy about unpacking, and wandered into the living room. It was rare for him to experience this sort of quiet and solitude - the house was always lively and bustling with activity and outside of it he was usually with Haru and the rest of his friends. And, truth be told, he wasn't really the sort of person who enjoyed being alone either. But, he supposed, sometimes it was good to be alone, with only the silence and his own thoughts for company. He had a lot to think about after all. And with a deadline looming in the distance, he couldn't afford to bury his head in the sand.

He sprawled out on the sofa, burying his face in one of the cushions before turning his head to the side, allowing his gaze to drift listlessly around the room, roving over the walls, the ceiling, the TV cabinet with its little mementos and framed pictures surrounding the appliances, interspersed between DVDs and such. His eyes lingered on the photos, the ones at the front being fairly recent ones of Ren and Ran, but there were a few older ones from when he was very little pushed to the back that he hadn't seen for such a long time that he'd pretty much forgotten they existed. A lot of family and Haru.

He reached over and picked one up, to find that it was a very old picture of him and Haru together. In the photo, he couldn't have been much older than one, judging not only from his size and attire, but also the fact that he was leaning against Haru to keep standing. The equally young baby-Haru in the picture was sitting, squinting against the sun into the camera, with his chubby legs splayed and bowl of cake held between them, cream and frosting smeared around his mouth.

And the baby-Makoto in the picture...was kissing him, little mouth pressed against his best friend's cheek. Huh. He stared at it, captivated.

"Makoto, you're home! I thought you'd be camping for longer."

He started at the sound of his mother's voice, not having heard her come in. He dithered, unable to think of an excuse - he hadn't really thought of what he'd say to his parents. But thankfully, she didn't dwell on it before getting distracted by what was in his hands.

"Oh, what are you looking at? I remember that! My, it's been such a long time." she laughed, "That was your first birthday - look at what a chubby baby you were!" She took the picture out of his hands and sat down, cradling it in hers. "You had such round cheeks, people were forever kissing them and poking them - you seemed to think that was the normal thing to do, haha. This one was taken by Rika, she has a small collection of them, you know - you two were always kissing each other, it was so cute. But she took most of them with her and only gave me this one. I should probably ask for copies of a few more - I think I'll email her."

He stared at the picture, feeling a little dazed, as she handed it back to him. His mother carried on talking, but he wasn't listening, her words washing over him as a soothing chatter. There was a slow sort of realisation that began to dawn on him then and in the following days when they celebrate Haru's birthday with fireworks and a messy looking cake that Makoto's mother helped him make with Nagisa and Rei and Gou and the twins (who absolutely insisted on helping decorate, the cake top was littered with mismatched oddments of birthday and Christmas decorations and shaky iced writing). Watching Haru's pleased and surprised face as he blows out the candles and watches their amateur display of fireworks, the way the light reflects in his eyes, that small smile that Makoto treasures, all the little things that make Haru, Haru, that Makoto has painstakingly learnt over the years- it all feels like little pieces of a puzzle slowly coming together inside him. He was on the verge of understanding something colossal, grasping at something just hovering at the tip of his tongue.

Remembering his first meeting with...the Thing...the memory that Makoto had put aside in the back of his mind as a nightmare for years and had successfully forgotten, of when he had made the deal to save Haru's life - Makoto hadn't hesitated then. Hadn't thought of the consequences, hadn't thought of the price, hadn't thought of anything but saving Haru. It had been his only moment of certainty, because no price was too high to pay when it came to Haru.

And he remembered, he had tried before in those early days, just after he had made the deal, to make Haru fall in love with him. Of course, he'd been young and Haru had been young and Makoto hadn't really had much of an idea of how to go about doing something like that. He'd looked to his parents as a real life example, as well as the stories he liked to read - but it was mostly his parents, who had an easy and affectionate relationship with each other, that he tried to take note of, because being in love was something that he had always associated with them. When he'd asked what made them in love with each other, they'd told him that it was the little things they did for each other, the time they spent together and the ways they showed that they cared for each other. Love was accepting someone, caring for them and making them happy.

Makoto had always been a caring boy, by nature, so it wasn't a particularly big adjustment for him to make. Rather, he'd tried to put more into the patterns that were already there. Looking after Haru, always reaching out to him, sharing lunches and ice pops, all of those little things the way his mother and father did things for each other, had started as a child's idea of romance.

But after their first year of middle school, when Haru had stopped swimming, he'd felt instinctively that there was something else going on that had devastated Haru and Makoto hadn't wanted to burden him with anything more. So those little things had stopped being about trying to make Haru fall in love with him and more about trying to pull Haru out of his funk and make him feel better, even as his memory of That Night and The Thing had faded into a half-remembered nightmare. Because Haru's wellbeing and happiness meant to world to him. Had always been the most important thing in his world.

And that was what love was, wasn't it? With a slow click, like gears locking into place, Makoto realised...he loved Haru. Was in love with Haru. Had been for a very long time, since before he'd known what that sort of love was.

Oh.

~#~

He is outside Haru's house. He has no idea what has driven him there, what has led him to ring the doorbell. The sun is bright overhead, casting sharp shadows and a dazzling haze. He can hear the doorbell ring, a loud echoing cavernous sound that resonates in his ears. Again. And again. And again. But the echo is always empty.

"There's no one home."

But the door is unlocked, sliding open under his touch. Strange.

"I'm coming in." A warning, just in case.

There's a goldfish bowl on the floor. Makoto's goldfish. There is only one, a vivid blood red colour, but the shadows are long and growing longer and there is a curious tinkle of a bell in the air. The floor creaks behind him. Haru! He feels...surprised. By his sudden presence? Or the sudden wave of anger that rises up inside him? He doesn't know.

"You're home after all."

"What are you doing here?" He doesn't sound at all phased that Rin is here, in his house. Like he doesn't even care.

"I'm here to challenge you to a race, obviously."

"I only swim free." Haru's face is placid, as always, devoid of any emotion, there is no feeling in those eyes, that look through him, not seeing him, not acknowledging him, looking past him. But the tilt of his mouth is mocking. That stupid, smug, immovable face fuels the rage growing inside him, a rising crescendo roaring in his ears as Haru turns his back on him and walks away. HOW DARE HE? How dare he?

The shadow of the bowl overtakes his legs, the fish are swirling all around him, the ripples of the water casting wavering patterns along the floor, the walls, the ceiling, making the world look shaky. Uncertain. Unsteady.

...how dare he? How can he just leave?

"Wait!"

Haruka opens the door to leave. The light blinds him.

They are at the pool. He knows without looking that it is Iwatobi SC. Haru is before him, already on the starting block, always ahead of him, always one step in front and Rin feels like he is forever chasing that form as it cuts the water before him.

But Rin has worked hard. Has suffered. Has grown. He'll show him.

But the form in front of him isn't Haru anymore...it's his father, but not the way he remembers from...before...a handsome young man with an easy laugh and bright eyes. Gou's eyes. Instead a child, the way he is in the photo of the relay winners. He looks at Rin with a child's wide-eyed innocence, his smile a child's open delight. And runs away, leaving a tinkling trail of a child's laughter.

Rin follows, his feet tracing the familiar path to the pier that he had raced to meet his father at when he was younger. His legs are longer, he's a fast runner, he should be catching up, but the child's form of his father stays out of reach, leaving Rin to chase his shadow. The tunnel before the pier is dark, and his father is a pale form disappearing into it. He knows how long the tunnel is, can see the light at the end of it, but once he enters its gloom, the light seems further and further and further away, becoming a pinprick that blinks out, leaving him in darkness. And no matter how much he runs, the darkness would not dissipate. Instead it becomes an all consuming void, where even the sound of his footsteps die without echoing.

He stops, knowing instinctually that running is useless. He cannot see, but he knows there is nothing here, for this is not a place, this is nothingness. A vast nothingness, spreading out all around him, above him and below him. And he is trapped, feeling claustrophobic, because despite its vastness, he cannot leave it, does not know how, because no matter how much he runs he will always remain. Right. Here.

He does not know how much time has passed - time means nothing in nothingness, after all. He is only dimly aware of it because the feeling of frustration within him is mounting. But, out of the inky darkness, he hears it, faintly, softly.

A voice. Calling. It is calling his name. He turns, but he doesn't know where it is coming from, doesn't know which way to turn. But it's coming closer. And the voice - it sounds familiar. Like someone he knows, but it takes a while for him to place it, because it isn't a voice he's heard in a long while.

It sounds like his father.

It is when the voice sounds close enough to touch that everything changes. The nothingness is gone, vanished, and he is submerged. The darkness is water and it is raging, heavy, powerful and he is but a tiny, inconsequential speck caught in its wrath.

The shock makes him gasp - he has to swim to the surface! But which way is up? He looks and sees a speckling of light above and kicks his feet, his arms reaching out in powerful strokes. He has never been helpless in water, his second home.

He breaks the surface.

He has a second to glimpse a storm wrought ocean, a sky crackling with lightning illuminating tiny fishing boats being thrown high by jostling waves, but even as his head breaks the water, he can feel himself being dragged down, back into the darkness.

He kicks again, but to no avail. The surface is more than an arm's reach away and getting rapidly further. It feels like there is something containing the strength of his legs and drawing him down into the murky gloom of the deeps - a feeling that there is something for him to find there, something for him to see, that he needs to know. The surface is so far away, but the beam of storm-light remains, not a ray of hope but as if to illuminate the extent of the distance between him and it.

He looks down. He can see the seabed, he is floating above it, still being pulled down, but the descent is slower now. There, sitting in the sand, slowly being overtaken by marine life, is a fishing boat. A sunken, sorry little shipwreck, lonely and forgotten in the midst of the coral, aged and ageless at the same time. Time has no meaning here.

Faintly, he can hear the sounds of someone crying, a distressed, scared, childlike sound that echoes eerily around him. He turns to face it.

"Makoto!"

It is Makoto. But younger. The way he looked the day Haru drowned. Lost. Terrified. He looks small and vulnerable, hugging himself the way he had on that day, when they'd got to the hospital and Haru had been swept away by medics and he and Rin had been left in the waiting room. In those moments - before the nurse had come and started asking him questions and he'd pulled himself together too quickly, even if his eyes had been too wide and his knuckles had been pale from how hard he'd been clenching his fists. It is the Makoto of that between moment that he sees...

Blink.

And it is the Makoto of now, grown, seventeen, not twelve, but still scared, who turns. He isn't crying, but the terror on his face is the same. There is something about him that makes him look trapped, but Rin cannot tell because his form is shadowed. He finds the shadows that cloak his friend menacing, for some reason - as if there is something lurking inside that darkness. A monster that has a hold on him. When Makoto reaches out to him, it looks like that action alone is a struggle and the darkness around him shifts, an embrace that grows tighter. Rin reaches back, there must be a way to get him out of there. Makoto's eyes are pleading and filled with fear. When he speaks, his voice is muffled, a whispered breath underwater.

"Help me."

He woke up. There was sweat on his face and his breath was short. That dream again.

He sat forward, drawing his knees up to hang his head between them and used his sheets to wipe the sweat off his face. Resting his elbows on his legs, he ran his hands through his sweat matted hair, feeling kind of gross. Holding his breath slightly to check that Nitori hadn't woken at any point because of him, he listened and sighed when his roommate's light snoring continued uninterrupted. Not for the first time, he was glad the kid was a heavy sleeper. Slowly, he got out of bed, grabbing his phone to use as a light, just in case, and padded as lightly as he could out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

The hallways were deserted and silent as he made his way towards the bathrooms to wash his face. The splash of the cool water on his skin was already making him feel better, but he scooped some of it from the tap to drink and hung over the sink for a while before raising his face to look at himself in the mirror, watching the way the rivulets trailed down his face over the contours of his cheeks to drip off his chin.

The Dream. Or perhaps nightmare, given the state he woke up in. Rin had never been one to dream the same thing more than once, but this one had been visiting him a few times since that night at the training camp. And each time he dreamed It, he saw a little more - like a movie that he had to watch from the beginning every time, but each time he got a little bit further in the story. It didn't always necessarily start off the same way - sometimes it was just That dream and others, whatever dream he might be having would somehow turn into It, which was the way tonight's had gone. Though, this had been the first time he had seen Makoto. He didn't particularly understand why.

He knew the voice that had been calling him in the void and seeing that fishing boat...Rin hadn't dreamt of his father this much since his death, even if he thought about him a lot and hadn't really ever stopped missing him. But That Dream...there was something strange about it. Something that made everything feel...not completely dreamlike. Something disturbing. Something that made him wake in a cold sweat, made the hairs on the back of his arms and neck rise up and sent cold shivers down his spine even on humid summer nights. It made his head feel foggy, was affecting his concentration and his training and Rin could feel himself losing ground in nearly every area. His times were lagging, and he was beginning to find himself fighting for seconds and milliseconds that he had easily before. His grades were slowly slipping and what had previously been high As were slipping into boundary marks and Bs. And that made him feel even more frustrated and angry at everything. At himself most of all.

A thought occurred to him. At the summer training camp, when Gou had come to him to say goodbye and that the Iwatobi group would be heading back to train at their own pool. The fact that she'd come to say it pretty much two days after they'd arrived had confirmed his suspicions that Makoto couldn't hack being near the ocean after all, but she hadn't said anything about that to him. Whether through tact or the fact that she didn't know, he wasn't sure, but he knew. It had made him feel worried enough to want to go and check up on him, but in the end he hadn't been able to bring himself to do it, even under the pretence of walking her back to their group and it had made him feel like the biggest coward on the planet.

But they'd talked for a little before she'd left and she'd said something - he hadn't taken specific note of it then and hadn't thought of it since.

"You know, onii-chan...I don't know if it's being near the ocean or what, but I dreamt about Dad last night. It was such a strange dream too...I didn't see him, but it was like...he was calling me. Like he had something to tell me...and somehow, it felt like I knew about the storm before I woke up in the middle of the night because of it. Well, that and Sensei turned over and accidentally slapped me in the face." She laughed a little awkwardly then, as if to diffuse the moment from being too serious and intense, or perhaps because she'd seen the way his face had shadowed at her words. "That's weird isn't it? Maybe I'm gaining psychic powers! Well, anyway, I have to go - I think Coach Sasabe's boat is going to be here any minute and I said I'd only be five minutes with you. Bye, onii-chan!"

Recalling her words - they'd sounded an awful lot like his dream. Was it possible...? And what did any of it have to do with Makoto?

Wow, that was killer - this one is so much longer than my other chapters, it just refused to end. As always, constructive criticism and any feedback is always welcome - this is unbetaed, so if you see anything, please let me know so I can change it.

Next Chapter - everyone is an awkward turtle and shit goes down at regionals!