Chapter Text
Bilbo had been born to sing.
He had been born to sing and swim and lure and consume.
It was in his very nature, in the very marrow in his bones. Sirens were beautiful in an otherworldly way. Their voices were filled with magic that pulled other creatures and men alike right to them, right to them, right into their claws, right to their doom.
From the moment Bilbo had first hatched, his pod had waited for his first notes as they did every guppy, eager to hear the power he would wield.
But Bilbo’s voice had never come in, his abilities had never manifested as an adult. He had never been enough. After all, what was a siren without a song other than a waste of oxygen?
As a guppy, he had chirped and hummed to his heart’s content, smiling even as he didn’t realise all he was receiving in return was looks of pity or disgust.. Even then his sounds had been weak, fragile things, nothing more than a whisper where they should have been a crescendo of noise, of power.
His mother, Belladonna, had assured him his song would come in, that it would come with age, that his song was simply slow to bloom, after all, Tooks had more magical power than most sirens which meant Bilbo had to learn to harness his properly.
His father, Bungo, had spoken to Bilbo softly, his voice full of patience. But even as he spoke to Bilbo about practicing, about not rushing the gifts he had, there had been clear worry in his dark, luminous eyes.
And then the sea had taken them both away. It had taken them both in one fell swoop, leaving Bilbo with only those who shunned him, who shamed him, only those who had no use, no love, for a broken, pathetic creature such as him.
The attack on the pod, on his parents who inhabited the outskirts with him, keeping him safe from his more bloodthirsty relatives who saw nothing wrong with recycling the nutrients of a deficiency siren, without warning.
Shadows had split from the deep darkness below where the sirens usually resided. Bilbo remembered the churn of the water, the sudden shift from the safety of his pod to the chaos of becoming prey, something most Sirens never had to endure.
The pod’s voices rose in a tumultuous shriek, one meant to freeze the attackers in place, to drown their senses in music that turned into madness.
But Bilbo had not sung. He had not been able to.
Instead, he had screamed. A high, thin and useless sound that put an instant target on his back. He screamed even louder when he felt claws wrap around his tail, trying to drag him down, down, down into the deep, down into the cold, down to his death. There had been so much pain, the sensation of feeling as something tried to tear his throat out. There had been bubbles, and shrieks and the feeling of arms gripping him tight enough to draw blood. Bilbo had been disoriented and confused, trying to swim up to the hands that may have had claws, but they were the claws of his parents. He used all of his strength to stay with them. Just before Bilbo blacked out from the pain and blood loss, he heard his mother shriek one last time. A shriek of defiance, of panic, and he felt the water displaced around him as she launched herself at the monster still clasping him. The last Bilbo saw was his mother fighting for him, fighting with every in her before the darkness and the silence consumed Bilbo and he knew no more.
By the time Bilbo had come too, the battle was over and his pod was gone without a trace..
The water was still thick with his blood and the ruins of the place they had been calling home were scattered around him.
There was no sign of his parents, apart from the few bright scales of his mother’s tail, scales that were covered in blood and had deep gouge marks in them. Bilbo slowly, painfully swam forward until he could reach out and clutch the only thing of his mother that he could see. He pulled the scales close to his chest, his tears came unbidden but unseen as they mixed with the surrounding water.
Bilbo stayed there, bobbing in the water stationary as it flowed around him, as the night turned to day and the water around him turned lighter, and still he stayed where he was, clutching his mother’s scales.
Bilbo was small, injured, and alone and so he opened his mouth to call for his parents to come to him, to find him, but as soon as he tried he felt his throat clench with pain. When he was able to breathe again, he realised he couldn’t make any sound louder than a wheeze. His voice, as pathetic as it had been, was well and truly gone, just like his parents.
The sirens who found Bilbo should have offered comfort when they noticed the bloodstained and ruined scales in his hands, instead, they only looked at him with disdain, with disgust. Bilbo’s family looked at him as though he should have died in his parent’s place and in that moment he wished he had. After all, a siren who could not sing was no siren at all.
His complete loss of his voice was not a wound he would heal from but a weakness he should die for. He had already had a fundamental flaw in his very being, but now he was just wrong. Weak. Pathetic!
They had looked at him like he was their next meal, their sharp teeth gnashing as they looked at the guppy before them.
Bilbo remembered his lesions. He remembered when his grandfather, the Old Took, had been too slow and had been consumed by the pod when a new leader had been elected. He remembered sal guppies who would not make it who had disappeared and their parents had been less hungry the next day. He remembered when injured family members never recovered and become “one with the pod,” as they put it.
Bilbo may not be very old, but he was not stupid and his mother and father had taught him all they could before …
He was smart enough to wait until his relatives started bickering over him before he turned and swam as fast and as far as he could.
He knew his family wouldn’t follow him. He wasn’t worth the energy or the effort it would cost him. Instead, they turned and swam in the opposite direction. Far from the failed excuse of a siren guppy and his parents, who had gotten themselves eaten in his defence.
Bilbo couldn’t help but sob as he swam, with nowhere to go, no one to turn to and nothing to look forward to.
He was just an almost silent siren. A nothing, a nobody and a nobody who had no place in his own world.
Bilbo may have been young, he may have been small and he may have been disabled. But he was determined. Determined to survive. To keep going, to earn. Determined to stay alive like his parents wanted him to.
He felt his stomach grumble as he swam, knowing he had to learn to ignore it. He had used what little inherent magic he had to heal his throat. However, he couldn’t access the rest as he couldn’t swim and so the magic had fed on the energy his body stored from the copious amounts of food he had been able to consume when his parents were hunting for him. The energy he knew he was going to struggle to replenish himself.
He swore to himself, and his parent’s memories that he would learn. He would learn to hunt somehow, he would learn to stalk and ambush. He would learn to survive. He may not thrive, he may not become round and plump like most sirens would, but he would endure.
He would swim, and he would learn and he would grow and one day, one day he would go back and feast on the flesh of those that had left him to die, those that had wanted to feast on an orphan guppy’s flesh.
He would survive for vengeance and vengeance alone if that was what kept him going, kept him alive.
But no matter the reason, he would survive!