Davy Jones’ Locker || Solo
Content warnings: reference to sibling death
Dave solves a problem in the past and finds a problem in the present.
2008.
“Sorry Dave. I just can’t make it out there.”
Dave rubbed his face, staring in frustration at the pixelated skype window. “You heard from Joaquin, then? Didn’t pick up.”
Mason sighed deeply, shaking his head. “Joaquin’s dead, man. He got fried by an out of control spellcaster six months back. He was trying to help -” The screen froze and the staticy call was too unclear for Dave’s ears without the lipreading “-half the street. It was a mess. What about Selena?”
“You told me to try her last time and she nearly gutted me like a fish,” Dave replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You sure there’s no one else nearby?”
“You know I don’t just have a magic connection to every other slayer, right? Guess you’ll just have to call an exorcist for this one, man. Or take on the rusalka twins yourself.”
Dave nodded curtly, and flashed a sharp smirk at Mason. “Don’t let me keep you from your elder vamp fun. Next time we grab a beer, you’re gonna have to tell me all about this one.” Mason chuckled, but his body looked tired and beaten down, too long on the trail and too little success to keep the heart warm. They threw around a couple more jokes before the internet completely crapped out, and it was only when Skype had frozen half way through disconnecting that he looked down at his list of names, hunters of all stripes and exorcists alike, and drew a thick, crushing line through the last name on the list.
----
2021.
The first time Dave had stood up on the deck of his boat and realised he no longer knew which direction was north, he had fallen right into the water. Knowing his cardinal direction was as natural as knowing to breath, and to lose it, even briefly, had been terrifying.
Relying on his GPS to get him back to land for the first time in decades had been even worse, especially when thirty minutes into his journey back to land, he wasn’t anywhere near land.
Now, as Dave hauled up a net heavy with squirming fish onto the deck, he didn’t even try to work it out from the stars or skies above. He reached for something he’d once been sure he’d never touch again.
It was, apparently, Adam Walker’s compass that was destined to guide him home.
----
2008.
As Dave marched to the water, they were waiting. Two women, red hair entangled with algae, their band camp t-shirts clinging to their frames. One of them had a deep bend in her neck where it had snapped, the other had eternally bleeding fingers, torn up by the dirt she’d tried to climb out of. They stared at him expectantly, like old friends. Their pale eyes bored into his, asking, ‘Think you can do better this time?’
Dave touched his side tenderly, wincing at the taped up rib there. He didn’t. He could only see himself doing worse. They stared at him anyway, and he stared back, walking right up to the water’s edge. It was only when his quarry screamed and tried to run that Dave looked away from them at all, and he threw the man - barely past boyhood - onto his knees, where the water lapped at his legs. The violent movement dislodged his gag. “I didn’t mean to! Janice!” The young man begged, struggling to try to stand up with his bound wrists and slipping in the mud instead. “If I knew what was going to happen, what would happen to Sarah, I would have stopped - Sarah, I didn’t know! It was just a prank! I’ve changed since then, I have a family! Please-”
The two women, two ghosts, stared at him impassively. Dave stared at them, waiting for something, anything. They weren’t lacking in eagerness, these Rusalka. A dozen dead in a year. Families torn apart, lives destroyed, a village that would never be the same. They stood there, regarding Eric Jackson in their water, but yet, they did nothing. Dave looked at them, remembering the stories told to him while he cracked open crabs to eat as a child. His shoulders fell.
“Haven’t I done enough?”
------
2021.
The compass, which pointed to one’s home, did not, as Dave had thought, pointed to Texas. The first time, Dave had reasoned the if it was pointing north to Texas, then he could work out the angle to White Crest from there. It wasn’t until Dave had made land on the edge of Canada when he realised how far wrong he was.
The compass pointed to something in White Crest. Over and over, it lead him back to the rocky shores near the docks, so that he could bring it back to be tied up. Over and over, as the jetties grew closer, Dave toyed with following it all the way to wherever it led. He thought about it over and over. Tried to imagine what his home was in White Crest. A grave, a bar, a tiny crop of rocks that caught the perfect amount of sun for lakeside fishing?
Each time, by the time his boat was moored, his courage had left him and the compas was tucked away out of sight. He thought about it as little as he did his new feathery scar on his face. Which was to say, all the time, but only in a superficial way. Cowardice had become a coat as comforting as his pelt, and that was just as true today, as he turned to walk along the coastline instead.
He walked until he caught the scent of death, rancid in his nose, and hurried towards it instinctively. Tucked behind a rock lay the pale corpse of a young man, drenched with water but not yet bloating.
----
2008.
He watched them the entire time. They watched him, slowly walking closer, their dead eyes piercing right through his soul. The thrashing stopped, then the breathing, and at long last, Dave felt the last tiny vibration of Eric’s heartbeat against his skin. The rusalka stood right before him, and despite their last altercation, he did not flinch. Their hairs dried and shimmered as if freshly washed, their clothes found form again and lost their green sheen, and both women’s eyes returned to a rich hazelnut brown as warm colour flushed their cheeks. For the slightest second, they felt alive.
“We have our justice. Goodbye, sealskin.” She said, as their bodies turned to mist, finally at peace. Dave looked down at the fresh corpse bobbing against his knee, blood still seeping from the bite in its shoulder. Whoever Janice and Sarah had been in life, their unearthly remains hadn’t deserved their justice, nor their peace. He turned away from the body and the water, his arms trembling with exertion as he waded out.
One life to prevent a bloodbath. Dave wasn’t sure the math made it worth it.
-------
2021.
Dave rolled over the body carefully, gently wiping seaweed from the young man’s face. Blue lips spilled water between them. The body’s fingers were scraped up and bleeding, grazes covered his forearms. Drowning had been a struggle, right up to the end. His shirt was askew, so Dave tugged it down to offer the man some decency as he called the hotline to report his morbid find. He touched his pocket absently
Peeling away more seaweed away from the body, Dave paused at the ankle. A deep bite had torn into the man’s leg. Not the bite of something looking to eat, but a killing bite all the same. Dave leant down and sniffed the wound closely. Wet dog. Something mammalian had done this. Hell, if Dave was a betting man, there’d be money on it being a someone.
“What the hell did you do to make someone drown you?” He asked it, pulling out his phone to take a picture, in case he could use it later. The corpse, like most, didn’t answer.
