Title: Castles Made of Sand
Author: Miss Peg
Rating: PG
Characters: Jane
Summary: Like sandcastles, life can be destroyed in many different ways.
Prompt: I was sat on a beach watching people build sandcastles, I'd been rewatching Red Tide with my parents and so the plot bunnies started multiplying.
Notes: This is my first proper Jane fic, the first time I've ever written a story from his point of view. Please forgive me.
''Cause on and on and on he goes dancing on the grave, Of what he thought was still alive on and on and on he goes, Dancing in mansions made of twigs and castles made of sand'
The tide teetered ever so closer as the sun began to set over the evening. Jane stood on the edge of the beach with his black loafers in his hand and his toes resting on the precipice between wet and dry. Each wave travelled a little further in land, engulfing his feet quickly. The bottoms of his trousers rolled up around his ankles to avoid the splash of new waves.
He watched the water for a while as each wave crept up on the earth and devoured it like a hungry man might eat a burger from a back alley trash can. He turned on the spot, watching with starry eyes as the water exploded in a hole further along the beach. A small tower built of sand collapsed into it, taken prisoner by the wave until the tide trekked back towards the ocean, leaving behind the destruction. He walked slowly through the shallowest part of the water until he reached the land that had been shattered by the expanse of water. He reached into the white wisps of foam to retrieve a small paper flag that signalled the sand home of some king and queen, created earlier that day by a child playing on the beach.
He thought of Charlotte, his beautiful little girl and in his mind's eye he watched her fill a bucket with sand, pat down the earth and tip it up, only for the castle to crumble before the bucket had reached its upright position. She tried and tried, each attempt ending up very different to what she'd imagined, until finally she learnt how to build a sandcastle. Something that she'd never had the chance to do. He'd wanted to take her to the beach, to take her on vacation somewhere nice, he'd wanted to do all sorts of things. He just hadn't had the chance, hadn't made time for the chance.
The sand that once was a child's castle ran through his fingers, sticking to his skin like limpets securing themselves on rocks. In the hours he'd spent on the beach, trying to get information about the young woman's death, he'd seen people come and go. All ages, all walks of life, all travelling the same stretch of sand in order to achieve something. That old man building castles with his grandchildren, that teenager learning to surf, that small child taking their very first steps into the cool depths of the ocean. None of them cared for the dangers around them, in that moment, as they got lost in the enjoyment of life.
He'd watched later in the day, as families picked up their half-eaten sandwiches and empty bags of chips and traipsed towards the car park, or the few homes dotted along the edge of the shore. He'd seen a couple of boys destroy walls of sand they'd built and used as forts, along with a boat they're carefully crafted in the beach.
How easy it was to destroy anything made of sand. How easy it was to do the same with life.
Sometimes you destroyed your life with your own bare hands, like he had done five years earlier. He'd made a mistake, trampled all over the name of a serial killer and for what? To catch him? To show the world that he was the greatest psychic that ever lived? To feed his own ego? A question he still struggled to answer. If his life had been made of sand, he would have been the one to walk all over it, destroy it with his hands and feet before anyone else could do it for him.
Like the girl. Not even sixteen. She'd already witnesses more death and struggle in her short years, living with a drunk for a father and helping to bring up her siblings. Killed mercilessly by her best friends. They destroyed her castle.
He watched the water continue to ascend up the beach, washing away pebbles, catching his feet as he bounced around in the edge of the ocean until he came upon another sandcastle. Three towers built together with a fourth sitting on top. He knelt down in front of it and closed his eyes, listening to the water as it smashed through each wall. When he opened them again, it was gone. The space he'd found full of sand, was now empty, lifeless, the same as every other patch of sand on the beach.
He wondered what would one day happen to him. If he wasn't killed by Red John or accidentally shot on some other CBI case, that was. He didn't expect his death to be at the hands of another, nor did he expect it to be at the hands of himself. That ship had sailed and he'd chosen not to ride it. Instead he would go naturally, he imagined. The same was as those castles sitting on the beach, thankful that nobody knocked them down, expecting to survive until the next day. Then the water comes. The world's biggest destroyer. No, he wouldn't be murdered and he wouldn't commit suicide, he would be washed away like the castles made of sand.