The Willow Tapes (Tape 178) [The Deep End]

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU (Xander is an FBI Agent.  Universe is vaguely based on Normal Again.)
Summary: Xander and Alex like to keep Agent Rosenberg in the loop.
Word Count: 765
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Death of a minor character (Jesse), drowning

         Most people dream of falling, or being chased.  We always dream of drowning (well, when it’s not the nightmare about the clown).
         There’s no real meaning to it, which is the tragedy of the thing.  But on the other hand, I don’t have to guess as to why we dream.  I’ll paraphrase Mulder—not everything I do, say, think, and feel goes back to that day.  But, to add to that, while it doesn’t rule my life, it changed it forever.
         I forgot how to swim, and never re-learned.  I nearly drowned once when my father threw me in a pool, annoyed by my fear of the water.
         When I was still a teen, I had a few wet dreams, in all senses of the word.  I felt the lady of the sea was always hungry for young men, like both of us were at the time.  It continues to fascinate and terrify me to this day.
         Sometimes Alex or I replace Jesse, depending on who’s having the dream.  Sometimes we have the full dream, as we’re pulled out to sea.  Other times, it’s just watching my companion be dragged away from me, or just drowning alone in the dark sea.
         In the full experience, we don’t realize anything’s wrong, at first.  It’s not until we glance back at the shore and can’t fully make out where the shore is, whether it’s over there or over there, that we realize something is wrong.  The disorientation is pretty constant, when you’re out there, in the water.
         We try to swim back, quickly wearing ourselves out.  Panic doesn’t help, in situations like that.  Everything you knew, everything you’ve been told, goes straight out of your mind, when you panic. 
         We try desperately to hold hands.  We get dunked, once, twice, as the current keeps pulling relentlessly and we have no strength to keep our heads above the water, hands clasped firmly.  In the end, the ocean is stronger and we just can’t hold on.  One of us has to watch as the other is dragged away and slips under the water, never to be seen again.
         I panic a little.  That’s my best friend and I’ll never see him again.  I don’t have long to panic before I’m underwater, and then there’s just the water pressing in all around me, the fact that I can’t breathe, pressure and darkness and water, and I’m disoriented and don’t know where I am and oh-so-very alone.  Alex—I—wasn’t there then, so we’re just alone.  Alone and we’ve just lost our best friend, our only companion.  No matter how hard I try, the surface is out of reach.  Sometimes, just like the land, I don’t even know where it is.  Sometimes I question if it even exists.  And there’s only so much I can struggle.  I’m tired, so very tired, and the cool water embraces me, like a mother, like a lost lover, and I long to surrender even as I desire to fight with everything I have, with the dwindling strength left in me.
         This doesn’t happen in the dreams, normally, but it did in real life: When I wake, I’m lying on the sand at night.  There’s no sign of anyone.  Even if I did pass out and was carried by the current, I wouldn’t have ended up that far on the beach.  Someone carried me, at the very least.
         I’m fairly certain I’m never down there as long as I believe in my dreams.  I wasn’t down there that long.  I guess I floated for a little while, but I don’t know how long I lay there, unconscious.
         To this day, I don’t know when we decided to go out swimming.  That was the last day I spent in California.
         We ran, mum and I.  My mother and I.  We ran.  The notoriety, particularly when one boy didn’t survive, isn’t the sort that we could manage to escape unscathed, so we ran. 
         In the end, we didn’t run far enough, but by then it was all right.  I wasn’t alone.  I’d never be alone again, so long as Alex was with me.  So long as Xander was with me.
         To this day, I’m still uncertain.  Was it a rip current that decided Jesse’s fate?  Was it the ocean herself, taking the sacrifice she felt due?  Or was it actually a creature, a ripple of dark scales in the water?
         I don’t know, but I still fear the water.  I never take baths, only showers, and even that occasionally makes me panic.
         At least I now have Alex.