Norman wa so tiered...still, he couldn't sleep at all. Not after seeing that he just saw, not after realizing hoe beautiful the night sky was from his window. His his pajamas, he got up his bed and glimpsed outside. In the mist of the night... he wondered why he choose this life for himself. 

 Until now he did his job the best I could but...after seeing a mermaid, that mermaid for the first time he realized that he wasn't actually free. He was tied now by so many responsibilities, by his memories and expectations. 

How was he going to conduct communication investigation in a mermaid that couldn't even talk? Actually could she talk at all? He sighted at the sight of the Polar Star... what the hell was he doing? 

Father I- The histories you told me at night...are real. It might be childish but I want to know her 

He smiled at his wounded hand: funny wasn't it? Weren't mermaids supposed to be really seductive creatures? She wasn't seductive at all! She even bit him! Still...he knew that the light and the grow that her tail produced attacked him in some way...

Still, he wasn't sure that kind of attraction was that...was it wonder, like a child who sees something for the first time? Did he actually found her attractive? He was so confused.

That's great Norman! You never had a girlfriend  in your life and now you think you are in love with a mermaid that just bit your hand? Am I a masochist?   

Still, here was no time to be in such considerations. The sun was almost up and Norman didn't sleep a single minute, how great. Afterwards he wanted to see her, see if those FMI guys didn't do anything rude to her...they were quite suspicious. He dressed himself up and took all this paper into his paste. 

When Norman arrived at the lab, nor Gilda nor Don here there. After all he arrived quite early, and he took the opportunity to check if everything was all right with the mermaid, who was in the  complementary room. She was still asleep but when he pick his gown to enter the room she woke up and distanced herself from him. 

Norman smiled at her

" Good morning! Are you all right?" - She didn't seem to understand anything he said and she had a half scared and confused expression on her face. Norman sighted and tried another approach.

He pointed his hand into her wounds and made a hurt face and than, using his hands, he imitated the gesture he used to wrap the bandages around her yesterday and pointed back at her. He feel so much like a fool now, like a clown at a circus...

She just looked at him even more confused. He made quite a defeated face and went next to the aquarium, leaned against the glass, looking strait into her eyes.

" Ah...you really don't understand me, right? They want me to conduct communications experiments at a being that can't communicate...still, she must have a language to talk to another mermaids?"

Since she couldn't understand him, she was thinking out loud like he usually did. After all, talking to himself did help him organizing his toughs. She made quite a strange face as he wondered that she might be thinking looking at a human with two legs and white hair, just like him. 

In some way he knew that actually understanding her would be and still was part of the fiction world he loved to live as a child. Since he was really little, his father always read him a history before he went to bed and he always loved to hear him. 

After all, he was a bit weird since the start: he never liked to play with the other kids, he never was interested in that they did or that they played. Even when he was in college and he was quite popular along the girls, Norman always felt out of place...like he wasn't supposed to be there.

He was always quite lonely, but he didn't mind the silence of his existence

He never felt the need to stay by someone's side, to be with someone

The closest thing he felt as human closer was he love he felt for his Dad and he knew that was a different kind of love. Still, he was overthinking this, right? All he needed to do was to talk right into the door in order to write his report about the test sample. 

It sounded so wrong calling her that...

" So, you're quite early Norman? How unusual of you! Did you found something interesting about it?" - Damn! Vincent always showed up like that, without warning! 

" Yeah...I don't think I can say I found out anything, but she doesn't make one sound. I know my job here is too try to decode some kind of language that mermaids might have, but she refuses to say anything..." 

" Do you think they don't have a language? Do you think she is the last mermaid and so she was so need to communicate with other mermaids?"

Norman looked into his paper. It seemed wrong that she didn't have a communication system. After all he finished his communication degree with the highest grade ever and he learned that even animals have some kind of communication.

Every being needs to communicate, because for more solitary they were, communication in a key element in life, in human relations, in everything. But he had no clue that might be a communication between mermaids. 

" I'm sure she had a type of communication, boss. I'm just waiting for her to make a sound or something that I can use to begin my work, just that"

" Do you want me to call Cislo and his man to see if they can get a reaction out of her?" 

Oh...Norman knew he was crossing the line and he knew it. Vincent always liked to play with him for some good freaking reason, and he didn't know why. Still, he wasn't going let him win this game. After all Norman was really good hiding his true intentions and feelings. 

" No thank you! I have a quard always behind my back everywhere I go so I think that's enough for me. After all I won't want to go back to step one when it comes to interaction techniques" 

" I understand...you really are against violence right Norman? Even if sometimes is necessary" 

Now that really pissed him off

" People say violence is needed because thinking about other options is harder and takes more work and effort! Thankfully you hired a man who doesn't give up easily "

" Yes I did, and I won't bother you anymore...good work, Norman" 

As Vincent walked out of the room, Norman sighted: now he failed at containing himself and he was quite emotional...that was wrong with him? He wasn't usually like that. People in college eve called him the "ice prince" for how he always kept his cool... 

Oh I understand that happen 

Four hours and nothing...Norman finished his empty report with no conclusions at all. All the mermaid did that stand there in the corner with the same face looking at him. It was almost time, for him to leave his work and Don and Gilda look the day off to see their parents back in the country side, so it was only him and her. 

Even the bodyguard who was next to Norman all the time to "protect" him ended hi turn and went back home. Norman got up from his chair and went to meet her once again, the look at her with a bored face.

" You know...you could help me here. If you talked a little this would be faster and better for the both of us, right?" 

She got a bit closer to him, as he leaned on the glass, just like he did before.

" Well, I hope you will eventually talk someday...I fear that if you don't they will have to use force to make you talk and I really don't want that at all..." 

She leaned her hand to the side as she watched Norman passing his pale hand in his snow hair and open up his beautiful cristal deep blue eyes, which had eye rings due to his fatigue from all those night without sleeping.  

" So...please talk tomorrow so this can go well, all right? I'm going to change your bandages and than I will leave, but I'll be back tomorrow to talk to you!"

Norman took her arm and was actually amused of the little resistance she offered him. It was like she did wanted him to exchange her bandages and she had a quite calm face. She was looking into his eyes and he actually felt like she was reading his soul. 

He exchanged all her bandages and he noted that she didn't had any scars at all, which made him wonder if she had regenerative powers, who could heal her organism faster than an ordinary human? Well, that was something he could investigate...

" Well, I see your wounds look better! Isn't that great! Thank you for letting me care care of you!" 

As Norman walked away form the room to leave his gown and prepare himself to go back home, since it was almost 11pm, he turned his back on her to pick his papers. Before leaving he checked the temperature of her water, and the aquarium itself to see if everything was ok, and finally checked the machine who resisted her movements during night, and would alarm him if something was wrong. 

As he walked to the door and opened it to leave, he turned back and to his surprise, the mermaid looked like sad as she glimpsed at him, from the complementary room. Has he seeing things? Still, he turned and waved at her in a goodbye as he smiled, wondering why did he do that, after all...

She couldn't understand him at all...but she...

" Uahhhhh "

What was that? In split of a second, Norman removed his hand from the door, runed back into the room and crashed his hand into the aquarium here a very hurt and confused mermaid that her hand placed on her throat, as if she wanted to talk

" AMAZING! I knew you could talk! That kind of frequency was that? I wonder which one was it, and if I would decipher it... but still" 

Norman make a sad face. He was hoping that he could in some way understand her and the expression she was making, seemed like that she was trying to say his would be something really important...

For a minute he felt so powerless to help her with the problem he couldn't even understand

" I'm sorry, but...I can't understand you... will you be all right if I leave?"

She turned her face away and went underwater. She seemed indeed mad, but she looked also sad to not being able to communicate with him as well. Still, Norman felt like he was bordering her and his eyes were almost closing from all the fatigue he was felling. 

So, this time as he picked up the paper he shoved to the side when he heard her making that weird quite cute sound, Norman looked one last time at her. She has smiling underwater, having him goodbye just like he did not so long ago. 

Her tail was growling like those northern lights up in the sky of the North Pole, making different colors reflect on the  water she was in. He had his mouth wide open and he curved his lips into a smile. Has she also invested in communicating with him? 

In a second Norman allowed himself to daydream and he imagined the craziest thing in his mind as he mentally laughed at himself: What if he bough her into his house? He could place her in his tub...even if it was little...

Well, he actually received a lot of money from his work, so he could by a bigger tug? Maybe a bigger house? The ideia of getting her from that placed seemed so tempting to him. Because he knew that she was doing there.

To everyone in that facility she was a lab rat: she was an experiment and god knows that they would make him to do her in order to get answers. Still, he didn't want to think about such bad things like that. When the time would come he would come up with a solution, at least that was something he was sure about. 

By the time he placed his hand to open the door, so he could go home once again, Norman looked at her, still smiling and glowing at him whit a smile on her face, and Norman gasped when he understood that she meant...was she was trying to say.

Maybe he was projecting his feelings in her actions, maybe he was getting it wrong but it feel so right to him in that moment, that he smiled back at her and left after he said: 

" I'll miss you too, take care"

------------------------ O ---------------------------

Note: This chapter's title is a reference to the song "How to save a life" by The Fray, so I recommend you listen to it while reading! 

Thank you so much for reading this chapter! All the credits for the art , cape and AU ideia and comics of this fanfic are to @mika-hime on Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram! Please go check her fantastic art!

Thank you so much and see you soon!