He thinks, okay, this is it, she's agitating it and it's going to kill us both. It's got him practically cocooned now, he can't breathe against it, and it'll get her too and they'll each wake up somewhere else and maybe he'll never see her again, and that'll be fucking that.

And then it just unravels.

He still has his grip on Nova - and there's Mako beside him, and her otter beside her, all of them fucking plummeting downward, wind rushing loud in his ears, not loud enough to drown out the noise it's making, oh god, fuck - he can still see it towering up over them as he drops, he curls around Nova again, holding onto her as gently as he can.

And then they hit the water.

They sink in way, way too far down, he's already flailing to come back up, kicking frantically, Mako's got her arms and her otter knows what he's doing, there's that at least - but he can see it, it's still thrashing, seeking them out, and they're in its element now, there's no fucking escape.

He fights his way to the surface anyway, because that's what he does. A little snatch of a book he read when he was a kid flashes too-appropriately through his head: Whenever they catch you, they will kill you; but first, they must catch you.