Word count: ~2.5k words

Important chapter!!! I've had the idea for this chapter thought out since the conception of this fic, and it feels so nice to get to write it. Pre-planning things have never been my strong suit, and I didn't get to hint at certain things as much as I wish I should've, but that's okay!

Warnings: discussions of "death"

"It can be broken?" Keefe asked. "Hell yeah! Let's go curse breaking!"

"It's not that easy," Linh said, "there's a location we must swim out to, but we don't even know its exact location."

"A place?" Sophie asked.

"It has to do with the nature of our curse," Linh replied. "We've always been treating it as a contract: trading your humanity and memories for "fresh start", however it seems like it's quite literally a contract."

"What does that mean?"

Marella held out a bottle that had a note in it. "Paper contracts—this paper is completely irrelevant, I just randomly found it—but the gist is that there's some secret place where the contracts are stored. I guess somehow, every time a contract is made, the physical thing appears in that location. If we can find our contracts and tear them apart, I think we can become human again. Maybe even get our memories back."

"Oh, get memories back?" Fitz asked. He glanced at Sophie, then Keefe. "Isn't that good? It means if we're late, it should be fine?"

Marella sighed. "Hard maybe. Best to not risk wasting time. But as Linh said, we don't really know its exact location. I know it's somewhere super far east though."

"East," Fitz murmured, "somewhere in the ocean?"

"Something like that."

Sophie turned to Fitz. "We don't know how long we'll be out there, are you sure it's a good idea for you to come with us? I don't want you to drown or starve or—"

"Fitzy's coming with us," Keefe said, draping an arm over his shoulder.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily," Fitz said, taking hold of her hand. He pressed his lips to her palm, looking at her with so much love she could explode. "We'll get the boat, and then we'll head out."

She nodded. "O—okay."

~•~•~•~•~•

"Y'know, it's really convenient how we all just flock here," Keefe mused. "Makes it real easy to find a person."

"I spend as much time here as I do my own home," Biana replied, not even bothering to look up at them as the three walked into the shop, more preoccupied with scrolling through her phone as she laid against Dex's shoulder. "You say all this, but the rest of us have been coming to this shop since like—middle school."

"Ooh, what was Foster like?"

"Not that different, really. More shy, though. I bet you were a menace in middle school."

"Hey! We weren't talking about me!" Keefe protested, raising their hands in defense. "I have never been a menace!"

Not for the first time, Sophie wondered about what kind of life Keefe had lived before they'd been turned into a siren. Endless creativity, a knack for making jokes, they would have definitely stood out. A baby face starting to wear off, she wondered how they would have looked. Acne from growing up? I bet they didn't have to deal with acne, I bet they would have been blessed unlike the rest of us normal people, she mused.

Maybe they would have had a lot of friends, they definitely weren't afraid to speak up, unlike she had been. Friends... had Keefe lost friends?

"Maybe even get our memories back," Marella had said.

An old previous life... had they ever been in—would Keefe—

"Hey, Foster," Keefe called out, resting a hand on her shoulder, "isn't there that thing you wanted to show Biana and Dex up in your room?"

Show them something? Her gaze caught Fitz's, who smiled at her reassuringly. Oh. Right. She had to tell them.

"Oh?" Biana said, raising an eyebrow, "showing us something?"

She nodded, not trusting her own voice yet. She walked to the stairs, gesturing for both of them to follow. An inhale in four steps, an exhale in three. By the time she'd gotten to her room, she carefully got her breathing in order. She already managed to tell Fitz, which gave her the courage to continue.

"I need to tell you something. I'm sure you both—but mostly Biana have noticed that things have been a little odd. I'm going to explain everything."

And so she did. From beginning to end, she explained how she'd really met Keefe (barring the whole kiss thing), to a slight explanation on siren lore, to the fact that she needed to leave for a while if she wanted to remain human. To their credit, both of them said nothing, just stared at her with wide eyes. It was only when Sophie provided them visual proof by submerging herself in the bathtub water did Biana finally say something.

"You have—I'm in a dream right now, right?"

Dex sighed. "Unless we're both having a shared dream somehow, then no. This is—Sophie, what do I even say?"

But Biana wasn't as silent, kneeling down in front of the tub, reaching out to grab both her shoulders. "Why didn't you say anything? You've had me worried about you for weeks, and you insisted you were fine, but this is so much worse than I could have imagined! You talk about losing your memories and identity as if they are nothing— Sophie—don't you get that we love you? That we would hate to lose you?"

Sophie reached out, wiping away a couple tears. "I know," she whispered, because she knew it. She knew she was loved, she knew it undeniably, and she would always hate herself for ever having doubts about that. "I know. And I'm sorry. But it all happened, and I need to leave at sea for a while."

"You're family," Dex said, "my parents would totally lend you their boat, even without an actual license. I do trust Wonderboy enough to not wreck their boat."

"And I'm guessing that your parents know?" Biana asked.

Sophie looked away. "Not yet. I don't know what to tell them. I don't want them to think that they might lose another daughter. I can't break their hearts like that."

"You'll have to, you know that, right?"

She sighed. "I know."

~•~•~•~•~•

They went through the rest of the day in a relatively awkward manner, no one knowing what to really talk about. She'd seen Biana and Keefe talk about something with each other, but she was more stressed about how to start having that dreaded conversation. Biana and Dex left early to process things and also so he could ask his parents for their boat, while Fitz and Keefe sat beside her on the couch, attempting to give her moral support.

"I can come with you," Keefe offered.

"I—" she started, but then got interrupted.

"So you can willingly let yourself be used as a target for anger again?" Fitz asked quietly. "You don't have to do that, don't make yourself look worse in front of them. Sophie can handle her own battles."

She wasn't sure how Fitz had initially processed things when Sophie had confessed to being a siren and then running away. She knew that Keefe had brought him with them when they went to comfort her, and she knew that Fitz had punched them in the arm. Neither of them held any resentment after that, if anything, they probably seemed even closer.

"I'm going to go now," she declared, getting up.

Grady and Edaline were in their room, sitting on their bed. She froze, realizing that they were staring at a photo frame. Jolie.

"Mom, dad," she called out, her voice thick. She wanted to step in rather than stand at the door, but her legs were glued to the ground. I'm sorry.

"Come in," Edaline whispered.

Sophie walked into the room, her feet heavy as lead as she had to practically drag them forward.

"I..." she began, then trailed off. "I..." Damn it, voice, work! "I—"

"Please sit, Sophie," Grady said, so she sat on the bed in front of them.

They were already tense, and she hadn't even said anything yet. How could she tell them that—

"There's something you haven't told us, right?" Edaline said, smiling, but everything about her expression screamed sorrow. Even her heart—even her heart flickered blue for a moment. "We know."

"Mom, dad, for a while, I'm going to have to—"

"Leave?" she asked, reaching out to gently touch her cheek. The touch was feather-light, as if afraid of whether the sensation would be real or fake. "We know."

"What do you—"

"We know you're involved with sirens, Sophie." Grady's voice was quiet but cut through the air.

"You—" Her voice cut off. She could only stare up at them.

"We know," he repeated, "of the curse. That you've gotten entangled with it."

You know what that is? She wanted to ask. How do you even know? How did you know I have it? How long have you known?

He sighed, placing the picture frame off to the side. "I think it's time we tell you the full story about Jolie."

Jolie? What did Jolie have to do with sirens?

"Jolie worked at our shop, but she also wanted to explore different things. Of course, we didn't stop her, we wanted her to do things she liked. She eventually started dating. Her—her..." Grady's voice cut off as he looked away, his fists clenched.

"Her boyfriend, Brant, struggled to find a job, and so he eventually ended up finding one with a group of siren hunters, though at the time, we knew them as researchers," Edaline continued.

Siren hunters, she mouthed. Since... even way back then?

"We thought it was ridiculous, but Jolie wanted to join him. She wanted to see if sirens were real. We let her go. Their crew weren't making progress, and eventually Brant succumbed to despair. A siren got him, though we didn't know the details at the time."

Oh. Oh.

"And so Jolie grieved, and grew depressed. We did our best to support her but—she eventually found herself drawn to the waters. A siren found her—we saw it happen ourselves. A siren sang, kissed her, but we were too late."

Her heart felt a pang as she thought about her parents witnessing their child being cursed, and being too late. That their adopted daughter too, was cursed.

"We were far away, so we tried running. We probably could have seen the siren who cursed her, but already, Jolie was singing, trying to take Eda too."

Sophie glanced at her mom, who was holding her dad's hand.

"And then months later, working at a local shop, was Brant. Just... there. As if nothing had happened. A drowned man living his life." Grady's other hand clutched at the bedsheet, taking on a dazed, almost haunted look. "I questioned him, but he said he had no idea who Jolie was. When I showed him a picture, he said he recognized her.

"How?" Sophie asked. "You said he was cursed, how did he know her? How was he human again?"

He looked away. "He was the one who passed the curse onto Jolie. And he admitted it too, as if he hadn't been in love with her once. I nearly—"

Edaline rested a hand on his shoulder, gently squeezing it. "We know now, that he's a different person, and lacks the memory of the past, but it wasn't easy on either of us to run across him when we'd thought he was dead. We eventually managed to just sit and he explained to us what being a siren was like."

So Jolie...is a siren, she's not dead. She's a siren. Is she still swimming out there?

The thought that she could run into Jolie had her heart racing. Just how many people were out there as sirens?

"So you know... that I'm one," she said, repeating their words from earlier.

"We had no idea, at first. We managed to figure out that Keefe was a former siren, given that Brant is a former siren, and the similarities. But we had no idea about the curse... splitting between the two of you, that's something we only realized very recently."

"I'm sorry," Sophie whispered.

Edaline pulled her into a hug. "Don't apologize just because of what you felt. It's not your fault for having feelings, no matter how irrational they must feel in hindsight."

She buried her face into the crook of her neck, her body shaking. Not her fault for having feelings... she squeezed Edaline tighter. For several minutes, they sat there, Edaline rubbing gentle patterns on her back, Grady taking a hold of her hand. Her eyes stung, though no tears actually fell. She pulled away, and Grady gently cupped her cheek.

"I want to say that I should come with you," he said, "I don't want to lose a daughter again to the siren's curse. But you're grown up. Not the scared, little kid we took in all those years ago. You know what you're going into."

"I'm still scared," she confessed. "I don't want this to be the last time I see you."

"It won't," he said, his heart flickering between a determined orange and a heartbroken blue. "You'll come back to us, fully okay."

"You'll take care of Keefe, if anything happens, right?"

"Yeah, we will."

~•~•~•~•~•

She got to packing some bags: clothes, lots of easily storable food ("Y'know, I'm sure I could catch a fish for you to cook, Fitzy"), lifejackets (even if she knew FItz could swim and her and Keefe wouldn't need it), just about anything that crossed her mind as something they would need. Fitz met up with Dex to get the boat arranged and make sure it was in proper condition. It felt as if in no time at all, everything was prepared for them to head out. How long would she be gone, she wondered. Hopefully not too long, the thought of being gone for weeks made her almost not want to go.

But she had to. She had to go, or she'd forget everyone and become a siren fully.

"You better get back to us safe," Biana said, pulling her into a tight hug. She turned to Keefe, narrowing her eyes. "You take care of Sophie, and take care of my brother."

Keefe nodded. "I won't let anything happen."

Fitz smiled at her. "We'll make sure Sophie comes back, with her memories. Promise."

Fitz and Keefe both boarded the boat. When Biana pulled away, Sophie turned to her parents.

"Remember we love you," Grady said, "don't you ever forget it."

"I won't forget it."

She had all these people here, helping her. Remembering their love had managed to delay the curse. She wouldn't forget it. She would never forget that she was loved.

Sophie turned and boarded the boat.