Conner pulled himself out of another pool. At least this cave was entirely dry. They'd started this mission almost twenty hours ago, and Conner was exhausted from all of the swimming and wading through water. He needed a break.

"I think this is as good a spot as any to rest for a few hours." He suggested to La'gaan, who had climbed out of the pool before him.

The Atlantean looked around, surveying the area. The cave was smaller than most they'd been through, with stalactites hanging from the ceiling. But it was secure and it was dry. That was enough for them. La'gaan would never admit it to Conner, but he was exhausted as well.

"I guess we should stop for a few hours. Don't want you falling out on me, chum." La'gaan smirked.

So they settled down for the night. They had no supplies and no way to make a shelter. This was never meant to be an overnight mission. The only bright side was that the team would have had to notice their disappearance. Soon a rescue would be on the way. With that thought in his mind, Conner laid down on the rocky floor. He curled up on his side, one arm tucked under his head as La'gaan did the same a few feet away, his back to Conner.

It took Conner a long time to fall asleep, despite the fact he felt extremely fatigued. The cave floor was hard and uncomfortable. Water dripped down from the stalactites above. His companion, however, didn't seem to have any trouble. Only minutes after they bedded down for the night, he could hear La'gaan snoring softly.

Conner didn't remember falling asleep, but when he woke up he was warm. Too warm for someone who had fallen asleep on a cold cave floor in a soaked wet suit. He cracked a heavy eyelid open and found La'gaan's face uncomfortably close. Their noses were almost touching, and their breath intermingled. He tried to move and pull away from the Atlantean, but their arms and legs are tangled with each other's so the only thing he managed to do was wake La'gaan up.

For a moment, he simply froze. He felt like he'd been caught in some unspeakable act, though he couldn't say what. Conner watched La'gaan's eyes slowly open. It took him a few moments to fully wake up. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the dim light of the cave. He yawned. And then, finally, he seemed to realize who it was he was sleeping next to, limbs knotted together.

"Neptune's beard!" La'gaan said, trying to untangle his arms from Conner's. "What are you doing, chum?!"

"I was sleeping! What are you doing?" Conner challenged. He hadn't been the one who scooted three feet over to cuddle La'gaan.

"Sleeping!" La'gaan sat up quickly, crawling back a foot or two.

"Then explain to me how you ended up on my side of the cave." Conner said as he sat up and stretched.

"Explain how you ended up on my side!" La'gaan shot back.

"I wasn't!" He argued. "Look. How about we just forget about it and move on?"

La'gaan narrowed his eyes at him, then huffed and looked away. "...fine. Let's move. Hopefully, the team is looking for us by now."

"I'm sure they've been looking for a while now at least." He knew they were. Kaldur got nervous when he was out of contact with his teammates. The tunnels had made radio communications impossible. And since they hadn't reported in at all last night, there was some cause for worry. Conner only hoped they could find them in this maze.

"Just wait here 'til I get breakfast." La'gaan said before diving into the water. He returned a few minutes later with four fleshy pink fish that didn't appear to have any eyes. They somehow managed to look more unappetizing than the puffer fish. Yet Conner doubted these were toxic. (At least, he hoped they weren't.)

"I can't wait to get out here and get a burger." Conner said as he eyed the fish. "I'm never eating fish again."

"Get over it, shark bait. It's all we've got right now." La'gaan said as he held his hand out for Conner's knife again. He made quick work of the fish, beheading them with one stroke and removing their tails with another. The fins were next, and then he chopped them into smaller pieces. He didn't bother separating the organs from the meat. It all went in together, much to Conner's dismay. Stomaching the raw fish was no easier the second time. He struggled through the meal while La'gaan was finished in just under a minute.

He watched the Atlantean as he ate, since he'd rather not look at the pink fleshy mess that was his breakfast. La'gaan seemed to be on constant alert. His eyes flitted towards the water as if he was expecting an ambush at any moment. (It was a valid fear. They had no idea where they were, much less where the enemy was.) And, for whatever reason, he kept shifting his left ankle underneath his leg. When he wasn't covering it up, he was rubbing it as if it was hurting him. Conner frowned slightly. Had the ankle pouch been more than a pouch? Was it a brace to cover an injury?

"What's wrong with your ankle?" Conner finally asked, shuddering as he swallowed a mouthful of cave fish.

"What?" La'gaan snapped to attention, his hand clamping over his ankle as if Conner had suggested he cut it off. "Nothing. Why?"

There was an unusual sharpness in his voice. (That was saying something, considering how the majority of their conversations went.) Part of Conner wanted to just back off and forget it. But the other part was all the more curious. "You keep rubbing it and hiding it under your leg. If you're hurt, you should just say so-"

"I'm not hurt!" The words seemed to echo slightly in the cave, bouncing off the walls until they faded into silence. "It's nothing."

"Then why do you keep covering it up?" Conner pushed. La'gaan's initial reaction did nothing but fuel his curiosity.

"It's nothing." He growled through clenched teeth.

Conner was convinced something was wrong. La'gaan had either sprained his ankle or cut it on one of the rocks. He was just being too proud to admit it. Rolling his eyes, Conner crawled over and grabbed La'gaan's wrist. "Just let me see-"

There was a small struggle between the two of them. La'gaan swore at him in Atlantean and tried to claw at his face. But in the end, Conner won and managed to yank La'gaan's hand away from his ankle.

ΜΙГΑΣ

It wasn't an injury. It was a word. It had been burned into his skin years ago, Conner assumed. The injury had long since healed. But the scar would remain forever. The thin, pale green lines carried a terrible meaning. In his head, he could still hear Kaldur's words. "They are Ancient Atlantean runes...it spells 'impure'..."

He had had no idea that La'gaan had a mark like this. It made his heart sink to the pit of his stomach. When he had first visited Atlantis, one of Kaldur's old school friends had a similar brand across his entire chest. It had immediately sparked a conflict, even within their group of friends. "I...I've seen that mark before."

Growling, La'gaan hid the mark with his hand again. "Yeah. You were there the day Topo got marked. We're a matched set now."

"I thought the Purists were defeated!" Conner protested. This couldn't have happened after they left. Everything had been settled. Ocean-Master was brought down and his followers disbanded. It didn't make any sense.

La'gaan let out a bitter laugh. "You think just because you helped us take down Ocean-Master, that's it? That it's the end of a thousand year conflict? This has been happening ever since Atlantis sunk into the sea. And it's not going to stop because a couple of earthers fought them off."

An unsteady silence overwhelmed the cave. Neither one wanted to speak. Conner felt angry at himself and, partly, at La'gaan. How was he supposed to know that pouch was to cover a brand? With the way he'd been acting, Conner was sure that La'gaan had managed to hurt himself somehow.

"I'm so-" he started, but La'gaan cut him off.

"Sorry? There's nothing to be sorry for, chum. Not much you can do when twenty people are holding you down when you're a thirteen year old kid," La'gaan spat. The words seemed to come without his permission. He looked away again, glaring at nothing in particular.

"...twenty?" Conner repeated. That seemed like overkill. Twenty people for one little kid? Yet, at the same time, he believed it.

"Give or take. There may have been less, there may have been more. Neptune knows I can't be trusted to remember." La'gaan shrugged.

The tale made Conner's stomach roil, and he was pretty sure he'd almost lost his breakfast. "And they just attacked you because you look like...?"

"...the creature from the black lagoon? For the most part, yeah," La'gaan answered.

Conner paused for a moment. "...what's that?"

"The creature from the black lagoon? It's this really old monster movie M'Gann showed me once. The monster looks a lot like me," La'gaan explained, smirking slightly. "It's really stupid, but I like it. Kind of like Hello-"

"-Megan?" Conner finished for him.

The two stared at each other for a moment, then started laughing.

"M'Gann made me watch it sometimes when we were dating, but it's not like I've seen every episode or anything." Conner continued after their laughter died down.

"My friend Blubber back in Atlantis managed to set up a television broadcast with a few channels on it. One of them has nothing reruns of old shows and movies. I've seen every episode." La'gaan said, before adding, "Twice."

Conner burst out laughing again. "Twice?"

La'gaan grinned good-naturedly. "Hey, it was either watch that or actually study! Besides; it's not as bad as some of the other shows we used to watch."

He found it weird that they were actually laughing instead of arguing. It was...nice. The fighting was a lot more stressful than he had realized. Conner didn't think that he had anything in common with La'gaan at all. (Except perhaps a temper and short patience.) Even though it was something as small as an old TV show, it was middle ground.

"At least you got to go to school. I was stuck in a test tube being telepathically force fed information," he said lightly, not wanting to bring down the mood.

"Don't you go to school now?" La'gaan asked him.

"Well, yeah. But most of my education comes from the first sixteen weeks of my life from the Genomorphs at Cadmus." Conner grinned. Technically a six year old in a sixteen year old's body. It was a strange situation, and he knew it. But it was always funny to see how rookies on the team reacted to it.

La'gaan smirked slightly. "Least they taught you. I wish someone could have just poured everything into my head when I started school. At least enough to let me catch up to everyone else."

"It doesn't matter too much now anymore, right? We should get moving." Conner got to his feet. He watched La'gaan take the lead again, diving back into the water smoothly. After securing his rebreather, Conner followed after him. They swam on through the dark tunnels with La'gaan's magic lighting the way.

Conner figured that they had slept for at least five hours, plus another hour for food, so that brought the mission count up to twenty-six hours. If the team wasn't looking for them by now then something had gone wrong on the surface. They swam at an easier pace than they had earlier with the hopes of covering more tunnels in their attempt to find a way out. They didn't stop for any breaks and they didn't talk much either, but the silence wasn't tense like it normally was. It was more... companionable.

They certainly weren't friends. But the iron curtain that stood between them had been lifted. Now they each stood on their respective sides, looking over curiously but were too cautious to make the first step towards any form of friendship.

The next tunnel they found went so far up Conner's ears popped. He was sure they were actually getting close to the surface, but he'd also lost track of how many times and how far downward they had traveled too. So it wasn't too much of a surprise to him when they ended up in another small cave.

He hauled himself out of the pool as La'gaan said, "Wait here, I'll go find some food." He had slipped back into the water before Conner even had the chance to say anything.

It wasn't long before La'gaan was back with more of the same fish they had eaten earlier. Preparation and consumption had gone exactly the same, and the fish were just as gross the second time as they were the first. When they finished eating they sat on the ground leaning against one of the many rocks.

"At this rate, we're not going to find out what Black Manta is up to," Conner said, frowning slightly. Their mission had definitely gone awry. Not only had they been spotted when they were supposed to be doing recon, but they'd also gotten hopelessly lost. "We'll be lucky if we find our way out of here."

"We'll find him," La'gaan replied. "I never did get that son of a shark back for breaking my arm."

Conner raised an eyebrow. "When did he break your arm?"

"Years ago, when he attacked Poseidonis to get to the Science Center." La'gaan answered. "I was still just a guppy. My friends and I had finished studying for our exams, and decided to take a break and explore the city. We got trapped underneath some rubble after the explosions and a few of us got hurt."

It struck him then that Conner probably didn't know the full extent of Black Manta's crimes. He had heard mentions of city-states and outlying towns that had been terrorized by the underwater criminal. But he didn't realize just how many people these attacks effected until just now. "I'm sorry."

La'gaan smirked and shrugged. "Just a broken arm. The healers patched it up in a day."

"But they couldn't...?" Conner began, glancing at La'gaan's ankle. His hand was over the scar again, instinctively hiding it from view.

The smirk vanished in an instant. Conner suddenly regretted asking. "No; it was inflicted with magic. Those are a lot more...difficult to heal. And it always leaves a scar."

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. After what felt like an hour of listening to the almost imperceptible sounds of the cave, Conner spoke again. "That attack on Poseidonis...did anyone die?"

It wasn't the most light-hearted subject, but it rejuvenated the conversation. La'gaan nodded grimly. "I think maybe twenty people. Hundreds were injured."

"And who knows what he's planning now," Conner said, frowning.

"We'll find him, chum," La'gaan assured him. "We found him once. We can do it again."

Conner wasn't so sure, but he didn't want to argue the point. They'd had another long day of swimming and squeezing through tight tunnels. He guessed it had been probably forty-five hours since they'd last had contact with the surface. It was beginning to wear on the both of them. They were tired and sick of seeing nothing but rocky tunnels and damp caves. And a couple of small cave fish didn't provide nearly enough nutrients for two young men. Not even La'gaan seemed to be satisfied with their meals. But pickings were slim in this place, and they had to make do. Hopefully they would find a way up to the surface soon. (Or a search party would find them.)

"Let's get some rest," Conner finally suggested.

There was a silent agreement between the two of them to lay with their backs pressed together. Neither of them really wanted to deal with the awkwardness of their last up close and personal encounter. Doing it this way was more of an acknowledgement between the two of them that it might happen again because it was cold and wet, and they could use all the warmth they could get.

Once again, the Atlantean seemed to fall asleep almost immediately. Conner was on the verge when he felt La'gaan move behind him. Instead of his entire back being covered by La'gaan's he felt the Atlantean's face press against his back between his shoulder blades. His arms and hands rested against his back where they were tucked under his chin.

He wasn't sure why but it made him feel warm all over despite the dampness of the cave and the wetness of his suit.