Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/71442.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M
  Fandom:
      Little_Mermaid_(1989)
  Relationship:
      Ariel/Eric, Ariel/Ursula, Ursula/Eric
  Character:
      Ariel_(Little_Mermaid), Ursula_(Little_Mermaid), Prince_Eric_(Little
      Mermaid)
  Additional Tags:
      Smut, 100-1000_Words, Ficlet, Community:_10lilies, Disney, Dark
  Stats:
      Published: 2008-03-28 Words: 759
****** Midnight Tides ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     Ursula spends a night with the prince, and the princess.
Notes
     Written for the LJ community 10lilies.
Legs, sweat. Both are strange and unnatural, but Ursula finds that one gets
used to these things. She expects the little princess is having an easier time
of it, the depths know she was up on the surface often enough to get used to
breathing it. It's a different hide altogether that she wears now, a deeper
transformation than the girl knows. Ursula has not changed herself quite so
deeply: her blood still runs cold, her touch is clammy as a tentacle's caress,
her skin as smooth as liquid. When she wrapped her legs around the prince, so
strong was the memory of her tentacles that she left welts, ghost kisses of her
other body, along his sides, down his thighs.
He's sleeping now, and she stands naked before the tall window, wishing she
could see the stars above as well - the truly immeasurable - the terrible
unknown that she alone among the seafolk did not fear. Almost alone, as it
turns out.
She only just remembers to grab a shifting silk negligee as she leaves the
room, pulled along the marble halls by something akin to curiousity. The bed
she made with the prince has left her unfinished, and a human need she can only
describe as akin to the killing urge moves her restless feet, though this
midnight impatience, towards her closest target.
She thinks of magic as she walks across the quiet halls, dry and smooth and
dead, muttering small spells under her breath, to accustom her eyes to the
darkness, to moisten her disguise's skin; to thank the moon for tides, to keep
the ocean rolling, for Triton might be king of the ocean, but she is still the
queen, as she always will be. A mother never abandons her charge, no matter how
she has strayed.
She finds the princess sleeping, still unaware of what has been done to her
prince. Moonlight slants from the window on her mammalian skin, her soft and
warm skin.
The spells are whispers now, and so Ursula's skin grows warm, the better to
touch the princess's brow with. Her glowing moonlight eyes grow blue, the
better to lie to her.
Her mouth grows moist, the better to kiss her with, and she awakens the little
princess with a start.
'Shh,' she whispers against her mouth, so far from a true love's kiss it breaks
her low current and she laughs, as close to the girl's lips as her voice will
ever again get, and picks up the movement she left in the prince's bed. It's a
strange lovemaking the mammals have, but there are pleasures in every form, and
Ariel might as well learn. She will have something to remember, now, when she
roots in the garden of sorrows.
A bubble, a barely finished thought of sixteen years, but she has already
learned to love, by all reefs. All hearts break sooner or later. It is Ursula's
pet twist - to watch and follow and touch - she's never going back there again,
and reminds herself so, every time she watches a silly romantic hope die.
Both worlds have passed an age or three since Ursula was young.
She only struggles a little, poor fish, and Ursula begins to build her tide, to
draw spells on her skin, until the child pants and gasps this precious
mammalian air, drowning on dry land, among silks and sweat and touch, each
scream or gasp dying in her throat.
Ursula traces Ariel's voice along the base of her throat in whispers, jabbing
her fingers upwards again and again
remember this place
know what you have made yourself into, and for what, and appreciate it,
appreciate what you will lose, and remember
when you lie in my garden, you brat, you fool, you poor weak stupid unfortunate
soul.
She is the queen of the ocean, and she will also be the sovereign, soon.
She leaves the girl asleep among rumpled bedsheets and confused dreams, and
walks back thinking of the way the princess had grasped at her, in the end,
fingers pressing into her borrowed flesh, and her own reaction. She trails the
sweat of desire on the floor as she walks barefoot back through the cold stone,
the dry air, the sleeping people, who dream, each in his own bedroom, the great
dream.
They are only visiting, Ursula and the mermaid, these monsters of the deep.
Tomorrow, she will hear the news. One dreamworld will shatter, and they will
retreat back into the depths; the oceans will rumble, and the men will sleep
on.
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