Author's Note: One more installment to go. Sorry it's taking so long, I hope to get that up shortly.

Chapter Eighteen: Ergo Sum

He didn't know precisely when he had hit the water. It had happened so fast that in his mind, one moment he had been crouching casually on the edge of the boat, and the next he was wrestling with tentacled water monsters twenty thousand leagues under the sea.

It occurred to him, in this moment of mortal coil, that he had never in fact read anything by Jules Verne. He remembered seeing one of his novels in the box that Greg hid in his closet, under coats that had fallen off the hangers. He had snooped around Greg's place after his friend had fallen asleep in search of the secret box, which contained a wealth of history that was too painful for the man to face at that time. But Nick had wanted to know. He had wanted to know the video games Neil liked to play other than Mario Kart. He wanted to know the words Neil wrote in his three journals that Greg never opened. He wanted to see the clothes Neil had worn before he'd turned a hospital gown into a fashion statement. He wanted to know the books Neil read.

He had seen so many things in that box, prying despite the fact that he felt as if he were opening a tomb and robbing someone's grave. So many games, so many journals, so many books…

But all Nick could remember was that one title by Jules Verne. The Sea Serpent.

In the midst of their struggle, with one strong kick upward, he exploded to the surface, between two wave crests, until the water washed over him and he was pulled down again. He had succeeded in gulping in what little oxygen he could, but it wasn't enough. He somehow knew that it wasn't nearly enough.

Something long and rubbery slid around Nick's neck, threatening to snap it. Nick couldn't see a thing in the murky waves, and the chill in the water began to bite at his white skin. Whatever he struggled with, it fought hard, but Nick fought harder. Every once in a while when he'd crack his eye open, he'd see a white flash. It came and went, but the third time he saw it, he propelled his fist forward and came in contact with something solid and smooth. Pain radiated through his knuckles and up his arm.

And that's when he first realized that he wasn't dealing with a mythological beast, which was potentially the product of his panicked brain after he'd inexplicably fell into the water. He was dealing with something solid, something real… Something human.

He seized the shoulders of his attacker, but his thumbs slipped against the wet cloth. They wrestled under the water, and Nick tried to maintain his strength, but he was running out of oxygen, and they hadn't broken the surface in what felt like too long a time. He grew weaker and weaker, and clawed at his assailant's face even as his head was spinning. His fingers curled around something rubber as his head felt lighter than the water, and he was thinking No, very emphatically, as if by willing it he could somehow make it happen. This isn't how it goes down. I can't die tonight, not this way, not now. I refuse.

But despite his furious thoughts, he couldn't help but fall, fast and deep, into the depths of Lake Mead…

The sky was a bright blue, with scattered, fluffy clouds. They sat at a café table in a meadow surrounded by cherry trees. It was strangely quiet, apart from the occasional bird chirping and the rustling of leaves as the wind wove in and out of the trees. The air was cool, and the sun was warm, and the grass was greener than Nick thought grass could be.

"Is this the other side?" he guessed, remembering the old adage.

"That depends on your definition," said his companion, whose elbow was on the round black table, his chin resting on his fist as his eyes focused on Nick, as if seeing straight through him.

"The grass," Nick commented. "It's greener."

"It always is," Neil replied, a tiny smirk capturing his features. "You're quite the character, Nick Stokes, do you know that?"

"How do you mean?" Nick asked.

"When you were ten, you chased your sister up a tree. She walked one of the branches like a balance beam and you followed. But she was a trained gymnast, and you were just her dorky little brother. You fell. Broke your arm in two places, and fractured your knee." He paused. "What would you say if I told you that you were supposed to die that day? Rest in a coffin that was only four feet long."

"I'd say I'd rather be cremated," Nick replied. "I've tried the coffin thing and it's not how I'd want to spend the rest of eternity."

"Oh, come on, it's not so bad!" Neil exclaimed, leaning back in his chair. He gestured at the meadow. "More spacious than you'd initially guess, don't you think?"

"Why are you telling me this?" Nick asked.

"Because it's true," Neil explained, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward again. "Or, at least, it could be true. In some other reality, Nick, you died that day. If you had fallen off the left side of the branch instead of the right, you would have cracked your skull open on the big branch five feet down. Or if your sister hadn't been there to catch your arm just as you fell, you would have picked up enough momentum to break your neck."

Nick's nose twitched, but he said nothing.

Neil continued. "Fast forward to April 4th, 2002. You were thirty-two, and a confrontation with a trigger-happy psycho put your thread on fate's blade yet again. And that wasn't the first time you had a gun in your face, was it, my friend? The only thing that stood between you and this place was another person's will. What if you'd never been interrupted?" He leaned further forward, as if his next words were a whisper. "What if Nigel Crane finally became you?"

Nick recoiled. "What game are you playing here, Neil?"

"May 19th, 2005, a simple coin toss—"

"Don't go there," Nick interrupted. "I'm sick of it."

Dutifully, Neil obeyed and closed his mouth, blinking at Nick blankly. And then, finally he said, "You're not supposed to die today either, Nick."

Nick frowned. "I thought… that's what this whole thing was all about?" He gestured at his surroundings.

Neil was shaking his head. "Nope. That's not what all this is about at all."

Nick looked up at the perfect blue sky and focused hard. He knew that somewhere far beyond that, there were stars, and planets, and suns deeper and further away than he could ever fathom. "I can't help him," he said. It was a quiet fact that he had known for months, and yet he continued to try.

"You underestimate yourself," Neil said. "You've helped him plenty."

"I can't," Nick said. "Both my parents are still alive. I never knew my grandparents. I have never lost anything… Not like he has."

Neil's eyes refocused on something over Nick's shoulder. "I think someone would disagree with you on that."

Nick turned to see what Neil was looking at and the meadow dissolved around him and instead, he sat in the bleachers at a ballpark, watching some team in red playing some team in blue, and not too sure who he was supposed to be rooting for.

Beside him sat a ghost that hadn't haunted him for months. Lately, the disturbances in his head had subsided. The poltergeist had been sleeping, but it was still there, deep beneath the layers of his conscious mind, and here was the evidence, his grief incarnate.

"I know you still miss me," the incarnation said, watching the red team pitch far below them.

Nick couldn't look at him. "What's with this ghost parade? Either let me die, or wake me up. I'm tired of playing games, Warrick."

"How do you feel about watching one? Come on, Nick. How many times have you wished you could kick it like this with me in the months since I've been gone? Just you, me, the players and the field."

"And crackerjacks," Nick insisted. "It ain't a ballgame without crackerjacks."

Warrick cracked a dry grin. "I always thought you were a hotdog man myself."

"That's not some crack, is it?" Nick dared. "Because I'm not afraid to hit a dead man."

And then, Warrick laughed. "No jokes, Nick, not from me. You know you'd never hear that kind of thing from me."

Nick fell quiet. He looked out at the two teams, swinging bats and running bases, and felt so far away from them. He couldn't even hear that tell-tale crack when the ball finally connected with the bat. Everything was disconnected. As if the players existed in one reality, and he and Warrick were in another.

And then, the question rose to the surface of his consciousness, his heart lurching, afraid of the answer. "Is any of this real?"

"I don't know much about philosophy, Nick," said Warrick. "You know me, I was more of a hard science guy. All that stuff about what's real and what isn't always went way over my head when I took that course in college. Who was that guy? That guy who decided that the only thing that we can know for sure is real is our own thoughts? Who was he?"

Nick shrugged, completely at a loss. He'd never taken a philosophy course in his life. He'd taken anthropology instead to satisfy that requirement. People were much more interesting to him than long-dead Greeks who had nothing better to do than think all day.

"If I recall," Warrick mused, his voice suddenly remarkably loud, "the very fact that you're asking if this is real proves that at least something here is. Or, no, wait…" Warrick frowned, then smiled, turning to look at Nick with those bright blue eyes. "Now I'm confusing myself."

"Is this your roundabout way of saying that you don't know what this is anymore than I do?" Nick proposed.

Warrick shrugged. "Aw, what does it matter, anyway? There's no real merit to philosophy. It just makes things more complicated. Let's stick to the simple, Nick. Like why you can't die today."

"Where's Neil?" Nick asked, looking around. "That little bastard was a literature nut, he ought to know what the hell is going on. He was good with metaphors and junk like that."

"Greg just lost Neil," Warrick continued, as if Nick hadn't said anything. "You're the only one he's let in since that happened. And now, you're willing to throw that all away? And for what? So you can sit in the bleachers all day with me, watching two teams that neither of us know play a never-ending baseball game that no one ever wins?"

"No one wins?" Nick asked, looking down at the red and blue players. He looked up at the scoreboard. Bottom of the ninth and zero runs on each side. "Hey, how can it be never-ending?" Nick cried, jumping up and pointing at the board. "It's the ninth inning!"

"It's been the ninth inning since I got here," Warrick replied. "But the game isn't over yet."

"All things end," Nick muttered, falling back onto the bleacher. "And I'm tired of games." His eyes grew heavy and he yawned. "Actually, I'm just… tired."

"The game isn't over yet," Warrick said, as Nick watched a red player step up to the base as the blue pitcher prepared to throw the next ball.

Through half-lidded eyes, he watched the curveball, which he hadn't been expecting at all by the position of the pitcher. He was suddenly terrified that the batter would miss it, and for a fleeting instant, he saw a face under the red helmet, and he smiled at Nick with perfect teeth and a glint in his sweet brown eyes. The curve ball seemed to approach the bat in the slowest of slow motion. Nick watched as the batter turned at his waist, putting all his strength behind the hit, and when Nick's eyes fell closed, he imagined stepping behind that player, placing his hands on those hips, covered in dirt, and kissing that neck, salty with sweat. He could hear his own heartbeat, his own breathing, and he fell away before he saw if the batter had hit the ball or not.

There were voices. They sounded as if he were hearing them through a few solid inches of glass. He couldn't make out words, just scattered muffled sounds, and something was punching his chest. The glass between him and the outside world thinned, and the noise around him grew louder. The rain fell fast and hard like bullets against his forehead. He could still hear the rush of the water, and for some reason, the giggle of his older sister as she taunted him from her perch up in the tree.

"Poor little Nicky can't even play the game properly! Follow the leader, baby!" She laughed and laughed and laughed, and then, like a meteor streaking suddenly across the sky, she screamed. It was a dissonant cord, jarring and irritating like a dozen cats in heat climbing up a chalkboard. And the screams turned to reassuring words, so mature beyond her years, so much older than she had sounded moments before.

"I've got you! I won't let you go. I won't."

But she did.

There was a rush of air, like a whirlwind, and his sister's sobs faded far into the distance, but there was still sobbing of another kind to be heard.

"Five, six, seven…"

The pressure on his chest continued, and he felt like his body was leaking into the ground. It was at that moment that he realized that he was numb all over. Only a half second later he realized that he wasn't breathing.

"Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…"

How am I conscious if I'm not breathing? He felt like he should panic, but he didn't know how.

"Twenty-nine, thirty."

The compressions stopped. Nick was afraid that they'd given up, but then he felt his mouth open, and warmth clashed with his icy cold lips, and it stung like poison, but it was the first time he actually felt something real, other than the chest compressions. Air flooded his mouth, and he tasted stale coffee with a hint of mocha. It flooded his bloodstream and melted him.

There was a pause, and then the hot contact returned, and more warm air burst into Nick's open mouth like gale force winds. The breath trembled slightly at the end, and then the contact was gone. There was a pause.

"He's not responding!" he heard a frantic yell, the voice cracking.

"Brass has gone to get the medics!" came a second voice through the storm. He couldn't place either of them, he only knew that they comforted him as well as a warm blanket and a mug of strong Irish coffee in his favorite chair. They sounded like home.

There was another pause. He felt hands against his chest, but there was no pressure. Fingers contracted against his skin, uncertainly, and then the palms were flat against his chest again. "I…" came a lost voice. And then, the hands seemed to remember their purpose. One climbed over the other and Nick felt the heel of a palm firmly against his chest. Every compression was punctuated by a word. "Wake. Up. Dammit. Why. Don't. You. Ever. Listen. To. Me!" He growled, furiously, and continued his count. "Eleven, twelve, thirteen…"

The sounds became like a circus, and he felt ice surge up into his throat and spluttered as it cut into his mouth and poured out of his lips like crystals. And then, suddenly, he couldn't stop coughing, and all the feeling returned to him and his body was immediately on fire, his every pore ringing with sharp pain. It took him a second to realize that he wasn't on fire, and that in all actuality, the opposite was true. He was drenched from head to toe in water, and shivering like a fresh-caught fish.

But before he could dwell too long on this new information, he was gathered up in a suffocating embrace. The person who held him was equally wet, and trembling too, although Nick surmised that it wasn't because he was cold.

Lips immediately claimed his own. Nick recognized them as the lips that had breathed the life right back into him and gratefully returned the desperate kiss, eager to express his thanks. Water drops splashed against his cheek that were far too warm to be from the rain.

When Greg finally broke the kiss and held Nick as tightly to him as he possibly could, Nick couldn't hear what he was muttering over the storm, but he didn't care. Greg's chin was on his shoulder, his hands securely on his back, and Nick still wasn't entirely sure what happened, but he knew that he was grateful beyond measure.

The very second Catherine pointed out the serpent in the water, three things happened inside Greg's head at once. First, he knew exactly what had happened, as if he had witnessed the whole thing himself. Second, he knew that he had to intervene, or the villain would hold Nick beneath the waves until there was no life left in him. And third—

He jumped. Without a second thought to Catherine and her panic, he plunged into the obsidian water and fell beneath the surface, where every sound of the storm was muted. He opened his eyes and realized that he could see nothing at all, and that maybe he had acted too rashly, but there was no time for thinking or planning, he had to do something. He lashed out and made contact with a round, textured object that he knew must be the killer's arm and seized it, yanking hard. He opened his eyes again, trying to see what he was fighting, and saw the white glint off of a diving mask that flashed like lightning. He knew Catherine must have been scanning the water with her flashlight, anxious and ambivalent of what to do.

Something targeted the flashing light and there was an incredible surge of bubbles that erupted as if out of nowhere. In another rare flash of light Greg could make out the silhouette of something falling, deeper into the water as yet another object rose upwards. Greg made a choice and dove deeper, targeting the sinking weight and reached out, desperate to catch him, believing that the body he sought was still alive.

And then, physics took effect, and instead of sinking, the body rose right into Greg's arms, and the younger man, his lungs straining for oxygen, kicked fiercely upwards and broke the surface of the choppy waves. He saw the boat through bleary eyes, but then this image disappeared as the waves whipped at his face and he closed his eyes again, swimming towards the boat with one arm, and holding Nick with the other.

As he continued to swim, he'd look in the direction of the boat now and then. Once, he thought he saw someone hauling something onto the deck. As he drew closer and dared to look again, he saw that it was Catherine, dripping wet and violently cuffing someone in a blue and black wetsuit. He closed his eyes again and continued to swim.

In high school, Greg had always been jealous of the swim team, which his mother never let him join because it was too dangerous. She had barely agreed to let the neighbor's son teach Greg how to swim when he was eight. So partly in order to convince his mother that he would be safe in the water, he took a lifeguard certification course behind her back, intending to tell her when he was finally certified. Unfortunately, she found out about his secret course two lessons away from certification and pulled him from it immediately.

Greg never became a certified lifeguard, but he did learn a few tricks of the trade which benefitted him when he took his scuba diving class in college, away from his mother's influence. And he employed everything that diving, surfing, and his lifeguard training had taught him now. He held Nick securely beneath the arms, keeping his head above water as he used mainly his legs to propel them back to the boat.

When they finally arrived, the man Catherine had cuffed was gone, and she reached down to help Greg pull Nick out of the water and onto the boat, where Greg laid him out flat, checking his pulse and breathing. When he knew that Nick wasn't breathing, he pinched his nose shut and exhaled air into Nick's lungs twice. He checked Nick's breathing again.

"He's unresponsive, I have to do chest compressions," he called up to Catherine, who simply nodded, her face very pale but her eyes stern.

Greg returned to Nick and began the compressions, counting out loud to maintain the rhythm, and trying to be gentle enough to keep from breaking his ribs. He counted loudly and repeated the process, checking the breathing and exhaling into Nick's mouth. After he went through the rounds a few times, he turned to Catherine, horrified.

"He's not responding!"

"Brass has gone to medics," Catherine told him. "Just keep at it, Greg!"

His throat closing up, Greg nodded and returned to Nick. He stared at the body, which looked completely lifeless and a chill trickled down his spine. Nick was laying on the deck of this ship, his skin rubbery and pale, his eyes closed, his chest unmoving, and all of Greg's dreams—the one concerning his grandmother, the one about Warrick, and lastly, the one about Nick—came flooding back to him. In the past, he hadn't been able to prevent what had happened. Maybe he wasn't meant to prevent this.

"I…" He chewed on his lips, his expert lifeguard hands unsure. Why had he seen this? What were his dreams trying to tell him about this moment if not the fact that he was meant to save Nick? Was it just a cruel joke?

Greg set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, furious with whatever cosmic powers were playing with him, but he wouldn't let them win this game, not if he still had a chance to stop it. He pushed on Nick's chest with renewed vigor, fueled by his anger. "Wake. Up. Dammit!"

And then the corpse of his best friend was reanimated, when the icy water spilled from his mouth like vomit, Greg knew that he had done it, that there was a reason after all, and he had succeeded. He seized Nick in a constricting grip that he knew wasn't healthy, but he didn't care, he had his friend back.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not perfect, and I'm scared all the time and that's why, Nick, that's why I haven't been… Oh God, I'm just so glad you're here, I'm so fucking glad that I didn't lose you. I love you so goddamn much!"

Catherine and Greg stood beneath a tent, pulling their blankets tighter around them as the rain continued to fall. The storm would not pause for anything, not even the miracle of a rescued life. Their eyes were watching Nick, sitting on the edge of an ambulance as the medics checked his vitals and made sure that no lasting damage was done to his lungs or brain.

"You went in after me," Greg said, after the silence became too heavy to carry.

She said nothing, but the corner of her lips curled into a sly smirk.

Greg shifted, tugging at the loose threads in the blanket and staring at the cement beneath their feet. His cheeks were flushing, but she couldn't see in this light, and even if she could, her eyes were focused on Nick. Greg couldn't look at her, not directly. Not after what she'd seen.

And then, she spoke. "I only jumped when I saw the bastard break the surface. Someone pulled out his mouth piece." She cast a suspicious glance at Greg. He chose not to correct her. "Anyways, he was trying to swim away from the boat. So I put an end to that. Brass hauled him away before you got back to the deck."

Greg had no response to this. He simply stood there, staring at his shoes, anxious about her thoughts on his behavior. So finally, he decided to bring it up. "What you saw… between Nick and me…"

"What?" Catherine asked, as if she had no idea what he was talking about. "You mean the non-CPR related lip-lock? Oh, honey, don't worry about it." She turned away, grinning, and he heard her mumble, "I mean, it's about time."

Though the rest of his body shivered from the cold, Greg's face was stiflingly warm as he ducked his head and silently agreed with her.

"Cogito, ergo sum,"-- René Descartes