The Ocean is Deep: An Abe Sapien x Reader Fic.

Jane

There was this girl, we'll call her, Jane.

Where do I start? The harder I try to think back, back to the beginning, the more limitless it seems to go on. Further and further. Almost like there is no beginning. Nowhere to start from. There are just memories, darting back and forth, abruptly and messy. A small girl on the playground, feeling nothing and everything.

Her parents were always fighting, and her father was a drunk back then. She could remember all the yelling and her mother's favourite things, lying broken on the floor. Sometimes she ran out of the house, all the way to grandmother. Yet there was never any comfort to be found. Grandmother assured her that this sort of behaviour was normal, even her bruises. She liked to poke at her bruises, in fact. If none of the other children had them, she would make believe she was special. A creature, whose skin was changing colour on a desolate planet. That was pretty cool to think about. The slight tingly sting of every poke also intrigued her. Now she was a mad scientist and one of her experiments had gone wrong inside the mind of her laboratory. She would study this pain and how much less a fresh bruise would hurt. She was becoming invincible, she was absolutely sure of that. A lot of things didn't hurt her anymore.

Jane was complex, a rebel even before she knew what that meant. During Physical Education at school. She didn't want to be pressured into flapping her arms around like a stupid chicken for silly exercise routines. She ran to the playground and climbed on top of the monkey bars, where no one could reach, and the coach begged her to come down before she hurt herself. Why? She didn't know, no one cared about her injuring herself before. Not when her father pulled a knife to her throat in a drunken game or when her mother backed her into a closet and put all her might into her attack. Just for having fun, like a child should. The coach's pleas seemed stupid, the reason behind them, even-more-so. She hopped off the bars, all the way down, much to everyone's jaw on the floor. There was nothing to fear after all. Especially a bit of pain. Ever since then there had been two kinds of people in her daily routine. People that admired her fearlessness and the people that were jealous of it. Jealous. Of her quiet sufferings creation.

At an early age, she was aware of hardship. She was broken down and built back up with a molten resilience. The people around her didn't know how to deal with that. How to talk to her, how to approach her. She was beaten down all of her life. So, when she felt the lightest touch of manipulation and distrust around another she bolted from their lives quickly. It left them feeling rather entitled. They turned their heads and remarked on how conceited it all seemed to them. What a special girl she thinks she is. Too good for any one of them. In reality, Jane picked up the habit as a survival technique. She had fewer troubles to worry about and more time to search for personal happiness.

You see, Jane would sometimes cry into the cooling veil of the night. Hiding her burning cheeks and soaking eyes. Even those were silent, muffled into careful sniffles. Why was she so silent? Was it not normal to cry over the sad happenings that were present? Why? Over time she felt regret for her own despair and one night, despite how unfortunate life had become, there were no tears to shed. No barreling thoughts of fear in the dark. Only the sound of her sleeping breath.

She related to no one. Yet, Jane had discovered a slumbering euphoria in the smallest of things she ventured alone in. When high school ended, all of her fellow pupils snuggled tightly into their friends and lovers' arms. Whispering empty promises to one another. Like badly written poetry that convinces no one but the kindest of hearts who would never reject the effort. Jane, on the other hand, dodged the breathy murmurs of what a strange and bizarre creature she was. Yet the words fell against her back, growing fainter and fainter. Suddenly it occurred to her, how much power there was in moving forward.