Chapter Text
Chapter 0: Coastal Kids
At first light, the shoreline was still half-asleep, wrapped in a pale blue hush. Only the gulls were fully awake, circling low over the harbor as if urging the sun to rise faster. The boats, moored in a loose, rocking cluster, tugged at their ropes with quiet impatience. Along the narrow strip of sand, figures moved: practiced silhouettes preparing for the morning tide.
Among them was a small girl, no taller than the empty crates stacked beside the pier. Her bare feet sank into the cool sand as she hurried to keep pace with the fishermen. The eldest among the crew, handed her a coil of rope nearly as big as her torso. She hugged it against her chest, wobbling under its rough weight but refusing to let a single loop slip from her arms. The men pretended not to notice her struggle, though the corners of their mouths twitched in quiet amusement.
“Careful there,” one of them said. “That rope’s older than I am.”
She didn’t answer. Words required breath, and she needed all of hers to keep the rope steady. She hauled it to the shadow of a boat painted in flaking blues and whites, the oldest vessel in the small fleet, and dropped it with a thud that sent a puff of sand into the air. Then, chest puffed with triumph, she brushed her hands against the sides of her shorts, leaving faint imprints of salt and fiber.
The fishermen moved with unhurried rhythm, the rhythm of people who had known the sea longer than they had known themselves. They loaded crates of crushed ice, checked nets for small tears, patted the sides of the boats as if soothing restless animals. The girl followed in their wake, darting between them to collect stray floats or untangle abandoned lines. Every so often, one of them would place a gentle hand on her shoulder and steer her away from something too heavy or too sharp. Still, she found ways to help, ways that mattered to her, at least.
When the boats were finally ready, the tide had crawled higher, licking the undersides of the hulls. The fishermen climbed aboard one by one. Before stepping into their vessel, the eldest crouched down to the girl’s height. His weathered hand rested briefly on her crown.
“That’s enough work for today,” he told her. “We’ll be back at dusk when the haul is full. Go on, go play.”
She nodded, and watched. The engines coughed awake, sending ripples across the water. The boats drifted outward, shrinking into small specks against the widening morning light. Only when the last wave of their departure reached her feet did she turn away.
With the adults gone, the shore belonged entirely to her.
She ran across the stretch of sand, her earlier fatigue dissolving into laughter. Shadows of clouds raced her along the beach, and she tried to outrun them, leaping over bits of driftwood and lines of washed-up seaweed. The wind filled her loose shirt like a sail, urging her forward.
At the far end of the beach stood the skeletal remains of an old jetty. Boards warped, nails rusted, but still sturdy enough for someone light. She climbed onto it, each step producing a hollow thud. From the tip of the structure, she could see everything: the town behind her, shuttered fishermen’s shacks, and the faint outline of the departing boats beyond the horizon.
She held her arms out to either side, balancing as the sea wind tugged at her hair. If she leaned forward just enough, she could pretend she was flying. The tide below whispered secrets she was too young to understand, the kind that only revealed themselves after years spent listening.
For now, the world was simple. The boats had gone. The day was hers. And the sea, deep, restless, ancient, kept watch over a small girl on an aging jetty, imagining herself tall enough to reach the sky.
🌺
The tide had crept further in by the time she grew tired of balancing on the jetty. The sun, hand still hesitant on its climb, cast soft streaks of gold across the water. She hopped down from the last beam, sending a small spray of sand into the air as she landed.
It was then she noticed someone further up the shore.
He stood half in shadow beneath the leaning spine of a weather-beaten boathouse. A thin breeze tugged at the loose sleeves of his yellow jacket, the color so bright it looked almost foreign against the subdued tones of sea and sand. His hands were shoved into his pockets, shoulders relaxed in a way that suggested he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere in particular. Not working, not waiting, just drifting.
She had seen older boys before, usually hauling nets or shouting across the docks. They existed at a volume she found too loud, too insistent. This one was different. He was simply there, as though the shoreline had grown another shape and given it breath.
He noticed her at the same moment. His blue eyes caught the light, a flash of color like a shard of sky fallen into the wrong place.
“You okay?” he asked, voice low and unsure, like he hadn’t spoken yet that morning.
She blinked at him. The answer was obvious: she was standing, she wasn’t crying, she had both her shoes somewhere nearby. Still, a flicker of curiosity tugged her forward.
She approached cautiously, feet scuffing the sand. He crouched a little so he wasn’t towering over her, though even then the difference in height was dramatic. His skin was tanned, the kind of deep bronze that came from summers spent outdoors with no obligation to shade. A jagged scar marked the bridge of his nose, pale against the warmth of his complexion. He was young, too, though there was an edge of maturity to him. Sixteen, perhaps. Nevertheless, there also existed a softness to him that drew her closer without too much fear.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She hesitated. Words always felt like pebbles on her tongue, too heavy, too many edges. She wasn’t sure yet if this boy was someone she wanted to give one of her precious few to.
He softened, sensing her silence for what it was rather than what it wasn’t. “I’m Sebastian,” he said, tapping a finger lightly to his own chest. “Sebastian Solace.”
His surname drifted in the air like something fragile, something meant to be held carefully. She didn’t repeat it, but she absorbed it the way she absorbed the shape of his jacket, the color of his eyes, the quiet of his presence.
He angled his head toward the sand where she had been playing. “You building something?”
She looked at the half-finished mound: part castle, part driftwood fortress, part whatever her hands had decided it to be before distraction called. She gave a tiny nod.
“Can I see?” he asked.
Another nod.
He walked with an easy, loping stride, careful not to step on any of the small shells she’d collected. When he reached her creation, he crouched again, studying it with an intensity that surprised her. He touched nothing. Said nothing for a long moment.
Then, with a gentle gesture, he picked up a piece of driftwood from nearby, a slanted twig stripped pale by the sea. “Maybe this could be a tower,” he murmured, offering it without expecting her to take it.
She surprised herself by accepting it.
He sat in the sand beside her, cross-legged, the bright yellow of his jacket like a small sun settling close to the ground. He didn’t speak much afterward, matching her quietness with his own. Sometimes he placed a shell where he thought one might belong; other times he simply watched her hands work.
She didn’t mind his presence. More than that, she found herself adjusting the castle’s shape so he could see better.
After a while, he asked, “Do you come here every day?”
A shrug. Then, softly, one of her rare words: “Morning.”
He smiled, not the broad grin she’d seen from the fishermen, but something smaller, steadier, like a promise he hadn’t realized he was making. “I sometimes come,” he said. “Not often. But… maybe I’ll try mornings.”
She didn’t reply, but he seemed to understand that silence could mean yes, or maybe, or simply that she had heard him.
For the rest of the day, they remained on the beach, an unlikely pair marked by ten years of difference and stitched together by something even quieter than companionship. When the sun climbed higher and the air warmed, he shed his yellow jacket and placed it beside her to sit on, though she never touched it. She only glanced at it from time to time, as if memorizing the shade.
Before leaving, he brushed sand from his palms and stood. “I’ll see you again,” he said, in a voice that implied he wasn’t sure when but hoped it wouldn’t be long.
She looked up at him. Her reply was only a small nod.
But it was enough.
And as he walked away, the bright jacket slung over one shoulder, she realized she had already added him to her small list of things that made the shoreline feel a little less empty. It felt much more different now, as if it had expanded to hold two people instead of one. He would return, she knew, and when he did, the memory of yellow and blue eyes and quiet companionship would be what greeted her.
🌺
Like salt in her hair, like a scent that refused to leave, like a voice that whispered through the edges of her mind, those memories clung onto her.
The world was vast, endless, and hers to explore. Everything she had dreamed of: freedom, adventure, life beyond the small coastal town, was a thread tied to that memory, fragile but steadfast.
She had imagined herself at eighteen, standing tall with possibilities stretching in every direction, pursuing what he would have wanted for her, carrying the quiet trust of that sunlit morning in her heart.
She would have stayed in this endless dream forever if she had the choice to.
When she opened her eyes again, the echo of wind and laughter was ripped away by the smell of blood. Hot, metallic, thick, and all-consuming. She could hear the faint hiss rising from the barrel of the gun still clutched in her trembling hands. Four bodies lay sprawled across the floor, limbs twisted in impossible angles. She wanted to scream, but no sound came. Only the pounding of her own heartbeat, a frantic rhythm that refused to be ignored.
The siren came first as a distant wail, then as an overwhelming, keening presence, cutting through the fog of her mind. She swayed slightly, gripping the weapon like it was a lifeline, or a chain.
Her thoughts drifted somewhere else, somewhere impossible: she saw him, standing right there. Sebastian. His blue eyes narrowed in a way that hurt more than any blow, the faint arch of disgust curling at the corners of his mouth. Not judgment, perhaps, but disappointment, and that was enough. A strange, unbearable pain pressed in her chest. She had promised him… so many things. She had promised to live, to rise above, to honor the trust of a small girl on a jetty twelve years ago. And now, with four lives gone in the span of a heartbeat, it felt as if she had broken every one of them.
The siren grew louder, closer, but the memory wouldn’t let go. She could almost feel his presence hovering over her shoulder, the weight of expectation, of innocence lost, of a promise twisted by fire, blood, and sins. And even though she knew, knew, that he was gone, truly gone, a part of her would always see him there, watching, silent, disappointed.
Her fingers tightened on the grip of the gun, and the present roared back, relentless and merciless. Everything was too raw and real: the red pooling across the floor, the acrid smoke from the gun, the flashing lights of approaching law enforcement. Nothing else mattered. The world she had imagined at eighteen, one that had belonged to the girl who once ran across the shore laughing, was gone.
All that remained from now and perhaps for the rest of her life was survival…
And the never-ending grip of guilt.