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There was a moment, just one quick second, when he couldn’t see the sky.
Water was rushing around him, pulling him this way and that, ripping his charge from his arms. He didn’t know where he was. Nothing made sense. He tried to breathe, but all he could taste was the salty liquid. His throat closed up. He reached for the sun, to the light.
He found darkness instead.
All at once, he saw flashes. His life, the choices that led up to that moment. Leaving home. Maddie forces him to take the Jeep. The various odd jobs he’d picked up around the country, all the way down to Peru. Finally making a choice about his life, about his destiny.
Falling into firefighting, meeting the 118. Becoming a true part of the team, growing up, becoming a family. Actually what family means. Growing close to his best friend and…
Christopher.
His eyes snapped open. He’d made it to the surface, to see the sky, to breathe real air. But he was still in the water, the ocean. Why was he in the ocean? What happened?
He was pulled down again, something catching on his foot, yanking him under the water again. He struggled to get free, but it didn’t matter.
Darkness again.
More greatest hits. Parental neglect. Bullying. Getting fired on the roof. Bowling ball to the face. The fire truck explosion. The embolism. Finding out that he wasn’t coming back to the 118 yet, regardless of what records he’d broken.
And then… Two women on a beach, sitting by a bonfire, relaxing. Two men laughing while sparring with bladed weapons in front of a great forest. A man and woman together in bed, tangled in sheets, dark and light skin perfectly contracting. A thin man at a desk, dozing away on top of file folders.
He hit the surface again, this time in control of his body. A string of light hung above him, and he barely grabbed it to avoid being pulled under again.
Air finally hit his lungs, and he gasped. He was still alive, he wasn’t dead yet. And now he had to save Christopher.
Seeing Christopher in Eddie’s arms finally let him break down and collapse into the arms of his team, his family. Bobby’s arms tightened around him to keep him from hitting the ground fully, while Hen kept calling out encouragement to keep him awake and aware. At this point, there was no way he could fathom staying conscious. Every part of him ached. His arm burned where he’d been sliced open.
Eddie turned around to face him, Christopher firmly in his arms, eyes filling with tears that the proud man would never let fall. The look Eddie gave him spoke volumes to how much he’d failed the young boy and his father. And at that moment, Evan Buckley decided that he should have drowned in the tsunami.
It was clear in the aftermath that no one really thought about what he’d been through. Maddie had picked him up at the field hospital after the rest of the team was forced to return to search and rescue, and Eddie had finally left with Christopher to take him home, relieved of duty to see to the care of his son. Maddie had brought him back to his apartment building, brought him upstairs and gave him a glass of water, then left to wait for Chimney.
They all left him alone.
Buck had been through hell, just like most of the city, had walked for ten hours looking for Christopher, stopping to help people, and they just left him. Maddie barely had asked if he was ok before leaving him in his empty apartment.
With darkening thoughts, Buck dragged himself up to his bed, doing everything he could to ignore the ache in his leg. That was the only part of him still in pain, an idle part of his brain thought. But he was so focused on curling up into his bed and blocking out the world that he didn’t entertain the thought.
He just dropped off into an exhausted sleep.
His dreams were weird. He saw a group of people sitting around a table in a modern cabin. A cellphone lay open but he couldn’t hear if there was anything being said. Slowly the image faded, but it stuck with him, several times during the night.
It was a welcome reprieve to the multitude of nightmares about drowning that kept flashing through his head.
The next morning brought some light to his darkened world. Eddie brought him Christopher. Eddie trusted him with Christopher. He didn’t hate him.
Before leaving, Eddie had been clear with him. He was trusting him with something precious, and he knew Buck would do anything to protect him. The day prior had proven that. In those words alone, Buck could breathe again. The weight of the water engulfing his chest felt like it had receded a bit.
He spent the day with the young boy, who was still exhausted from their adventures from the day before. They watched some TV, built some very questionable rockets with Lego, and talked about anything and everything. When Christopher woke with a nightmare after dozing off, they sat together on the couch talking about everything from the day before. Nothing was fixed, the nightmares would remain, but they could talk.
That evening, Eddie came to get Christopher, but he also brought dinner with him. For the first time in what felt like weeks, he ate with someone. They didn’t talk about the tsunami or Christopher’s nightmares. Instead, they talked about some of the rescues that Buck had missed, and how he couldn’t wait to come back soon.
Once the Diazes had left, it meant that Buck was once again alone in his silent apartment. All at once, he realized just how lonely the loft really was. Sound echoed when he moved, reminding him of being trapped underwater. It was cold, which brought him right back to the cold water rushing over and around him.
Sitting back on his couch, he remembered the deep cut on his arm. He hadn’t bothered to rebandage it, and Eddie had been so focused on Christopher that he hadn’t offered. With a groan, he pulled himself up and headed into the bathroom where all his medical supplies were carefully stashed. Carefully he unwound the bandages, only to find… nothing.
His arm was healed, like he’d never been slashed by whatever cut him in the first place.
Buck blinked and double checked, running his fingers over the area where he’d been cut. It was all smooth skin, looking the way it did before the tsunami, before the truck accident. In fact, he felt better than before.
He rolled up his sweatpants to look at his scarred leg. The scars were still there, deep and ugly, but no pain. He didn’t feel the deep ache that had existed every day since the accident. He felt… normal again. Strong, like before that day.
A knock at the door jolted him out of his thoughts. He’d been standing in the bathroom looking at his arm for nearly a half hour now.
Did I miss a phone call? Who’s here?
He paused before opening the door. If it was Bobby, it could be bad news. Chim, Hen, or Maddie would be okay, but he’d have to hide his arm, since he didn’t bother to bandage the area that should have had a wound. Unless one of the Diazes left something important behind, they’d come back for it in the morning. After all, it was already… almost midnight?
The knock came again. Buck psyched himself up. “Please don’t be bad, please don’t be bad.”
He swung the door open.
One day prior
Spencer Reid had only managed to spend a few minutes on the phone with Booker after his nap-interrupted nightmare, before Derek had been forced to get his attention.
“Pretty boy, we gotta go,” he said, waving a hand in Spencer’s face to get his attention. “We’re all heading out to help with the response.”
Spencer nodded, relayed the information to Booker, and quickly hung up. “Help with the response? You do realize I can’t lift steel beams or do search and rescue, right?”
“What, you being immortal didn’t make you super strong?” Derek whispered to him, voice filled with a barely concealed chuckle.
“It’s a wonder things stay secret around here, what with you just saying things like that out loud,” the genius grumbled. They quickly made their way up to the round table, where JJ was just pulling up images from the tsunami.
“As you can see, there’s been widespread devastation since the first wave,” she was saying, gesturing towards the images.
“First wave?” Emily said, settling into her chair, having come up right behind Spencer and Derek.
“There are usually several waves. The first wave is the strongest, but there will be at least one more, as well as the water receding,” Spencer said, summarizing what they were all thinking. “Which means, this is just going to get worse.”
“These images were captured before most of the cameras were destroyed by the water or other debris.” JJ started cycling through them, showing just how bad the wave had been. They could see first responders climbing a Ferris wheel in several shots, as well as a group of people taking cover on top of a fire truck in the middle of one of Santa Monica’s major streets. Spencer’s eyes were drawn to the firetruck image, which JJ was already sending to everyone’s tablets.
He made a mental note to look more closely at that image, and any similar ones to it.
Within fifteen minutes of them arriving upstairs, plans were being made for teams to head to the Los Angeles area to help with cleanup. Their own team would be delayed leaving for two days in an effort for a staggered response, landing in one of the smaller airports outside of Los Angeles. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant trip.
But then again… There was something about that fire truck.
Present Day
Buck swung the door open.
Standing in the doorway were two men around his age. One was tall and imposing, and could probably bench press him (even though he’d been bulking up since he’d been cleared to after his injury). The other looked more like one of the librarians he’d run into at the library he’d taken to hanging out during his medical leave. He reminded Buck of someone, but he couldn’t immediately place who that was.
“Mr. Buckley?” The younger of the two asked.
“Yeah. Can I help you?”
“I’m Agent Derek Morgan with the FBI. This is Dr. Spencer Reid. May we come in?” The other agent said, flashing a badge that looked official enough. But why would two FBI agents be here? He’d done nothing wrong, especially lately.
“Sure…” Buck said, stepping aside to let them in. “Sorry for the mess, it’s been a long day.”
“A long five months, you mean,” Agent Morgan said, taking a moment to glance around, but not mess with anything. Maybe this was more of a social visit after all.
Buck blinked. “You know about the fire truck explosion? Is that why you’re here?” He shut his door and locked it, before subtly making sure his phone was in his pocket. If nothing else, he knew how to call for help without actually looking at the screen.
“No, nothing like that,” Dr. Reid said, turning to really look at Buck. It was almost unnerving.
“Then, how can I help you gentlemen? It’s kinda late, and like I said, it’s been a long day.” Buck wasn’t trying to be rude, he really wasn’t. But he really wasn’t up to getting questioned right now. He just wanted to take a nap.
Agent Morgan leaned against one of the kitchen counters. “We’re actually here about yesterday, during the tsunami. We just need a few minutes of your time, then we’ll be on our way.”
“How did you survive that first wave?” Dr. Reid asked. He hadn’t broken his gaze on the former firefighter.
“I… I don’t know. I grabbed Christopher, my friend’s son, and we climbed into a game booth, but it got wiped away by the force. He was d-dragged away from me. Next thing I know, I’m at the surface, grabbing a string of lights, hearing Chris scream my name.”
The two agents shared a glance. “And you don’t know what happened during the fourteen minutes between when the first wave hit the stand and when you resurfaced for the first time?” Dr. Reid said.
Fourteen minutes? It had taken him fourteen minutes to resurface? But that’s- that was impossible. He’d be dead in under a minute, two tops, considering how hard he’d been hit by the water, which had knocked all the air from his lungs due to the force.
“There- there must be so-some mistake,” Buck stuttered out. “There’s no way it was fourteen minutes. A f-few seconds, maybe, but no person can survive that long.”
Agent Morgan pushed off of the counter and pulled out his phone. “My partner and I actually timed it on the flight here. Just about fourteen minutes. The security cameras in the area didn’t die until twelve minutes later, so we were able to see it, as well as you rescue that young boy, and get him to safety on top of the 133’s fire engine.” He gestured to his phone. “I could show you, but do you really want to see it?” The last comment didn’t get said sarcastically. It was more.. Compassionate, like he was protecting Buck from the images that would just make his nightmares worse.
Buck slid down the wall. “I... I- How?”
Dr. Reid knelt down in front of him with a grace that most wouldn’t have expected of him. “We don’t mean to push. Are you sure that’s all you remember? The water hitting and then you surfacing to save Christopher?”
Buck buried his face into his hands, trying to block out more of the memories. “No. No, I saw something else. I was underwater, getting tossed around,” he whispered. “I remember blacking out. Then I saw… people I’ve never seen before.”
Dr. Reid nodded and pulled something from his pocket. “Did they look like this?” He held up a photograph, creased down the middle. Seven people were crowded into the frame. The agent… and the people from his dreams.
Buck’s hand reached out, touching the photo with fingers trembling from emotion, exhaustion finally catching up with him. “How… Who are they?”
Dr. Reid slowly pulled the picture back. “They are my family. We’re... “ He paused and looked towards his partner. “Derek, how should I say it?” His whisper carried across the apartment.
“Tell him the truth, Spencer. Rip off the bandaid. Remember what happened with Nile,” the other agent answered.
Spencer nodded and focused back on Buck. “You didn’t survive the tsunami. The blackouts you experienced in the water were you drowning. Twice. You’re alive because you can’t die. Like me. Like my family. We’re immortal.”
Buck’s eyes darted between the two men. Then, to their surprise, they rolled up, and he passed out.
“Well. At least you didn’t get stabbed,” Derek said sarcastically.
“Shut up, Derek,” Spencer snapped.
Buck slowly woke, lying on his bed, a cool cloth resting across his forehead. He didn’t immediately jump up and move, instead spending several minutes staring at the smooth ceiling of his loft.
He’d had the weirdest dream, he decided. Two FBI agents came to his apartment and said he was immortal. He resisted snorting at the thought. There was no way he’d be immortal. Of all the people, he didn’t deserve it, not in the least. Especially because he lost Christopher.
Then, he heard movement from below in his kitchen. A quiet crash, actually, followed by a muttered curse from a voice that he didn’t immediately recognize.
Buck pushed himself off of his mattress and moved to the railing. The city lights were bright through his large windows, telling him that he wasn’t asleep for long. But what surprised him was that in his kitchen were the two agents, looking like they were trying to cook something to eat, with his food.
The firefighter slowly made his way down the stairs, not taking his eyes off the two men. He didn’t trust them, not in the least. But… he’d seen those people in his dreams again. Not the man at the desk, but he had a feeling that it was Dr. Reid.
Which left him with a weird combination of feeling disturbed… but also that he may have been telling the truth, at least somewhat.
Agent Morgan looked up before Buck’s foot hit the final step. “Well look who’s up! I made eggs if you want some.”
“Derek went out and bought them himself, Evan. He didn’t take yours. Just in case you don’t like people going through your kitchen, like me,” Dr. Reid said, the last part directed at his partner. The other agent chuckled.
“You barely have anything in your kitchen except for coffee and take out menus, so keep your mouth shut, Pretty Boy,” he snarked.
Buck walked over to the island and sat down on one of the bar stools. “Please don’t call me Evan,” he said, his voice quiet in the space. He caught a glance at the microwave clock. 3AM flashed back at him. “No thank you to the eggs.”
Agent Morgan turned to look at him. “Hey, I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“Derek.”
Buck and the agent looked at Dr. Reid. “Let me talk to Mr. Buckley, please. Can you let Hotch know we made it to Los Angeles by private plane, so he doesn’t expect us tomorrow?”
The agent rolled his eyes, but picked up his phone and headed to his patio. “Spencer, that sounded distinctly like ‘the adults have to talk, go outside and play.’ Joe and Nicky teach you that?”
“Andy did, actually. Go!”
Agent Morgan laughed and stepped outside, making it a point to shut the door tightly. Dr. Reid shook his head ruefully after the man.
“I’d apologize for Derek, but then I’d be apologizing for almost everything he says. It would be my full time job.”
“Are… are you guys partners, Dr. Reid?” Buck asked. There was a part of him that just wanted to get all of the answers, but he also wanted to avoid the elephant in the room, so. Diversions.
“In every sense of the word. Work partners turned… life partners, I think would be the term I’d use. I’ve known him for seven years now I believe,” Dr. Reid said. “And please, call me Spencer. Right now, I’m not here as an FBI agent. It just got us here faster.”
“What are you here for, then?”
“You, actually.” When Buck looked startled, he continued. “No, nothing bad, I swear. We just wanted to make contact with you before you started having more of the dreams. And you will, since the others are going to be delayed getting here.”
Buck looked at him in confusion. “Why am I having dreams of people I haven’t met? Are they people I helped the other day?” He wouldn’t say ‘saved.’ He couldn’t bring himself to even think the word. Not when he couldn’t save the one person he was meant to.
“No, not these people, unlike the twenty seven people you did save.” The man sighed. “These people, they have been around long before you or I were even thought of. They are immortals, like us. And yes, you are immortal. I know you don’t like it, don’t want it, but it’s the unfortunate truth.”
Buck swallowed. “I don’t deserve it,” he whispered.
Spencer fully turned to look at the younger man. “No one deserves it, but we are and we have to accept that.”
He shook his head, looking away. “No, you don’t understand. I should not have this. I’m.. I’m not worth having around. If I couldn’t keep an eight year old boy safe…”
“Mr. Buckley, I am a genius, the youngest BAU agent in the history of the department, and a recovering drug addict. If there is anyone who deserves the least to be immortal, it’s me.” Spencer rested a hand next to Buck’s, not touching him, just giving him the option. “I’ve been where you were. Five years ago, I woke up after having died after suffering a seizure in the middle of a tiny shack in rural Georgia, with a madman looming over me. When the others came to my hospital room to tell me everything, I nearly had them thrown out. If Derek had been there, they would have been.”
Spencer sighed. “It took me years to accept this was my lot in life. And I’m not the only one. One of the others, Booker, also wanted nothing to do with being immortal. For over two hundred years, he tried to find a way to die. Now, he finally has accepted it, but it was a hard fought road.”
The man paused again. “We didn’t choose this. Whether it be fate, or a higher power, or just shit luck, we are this way. And we just have to accept it and move forward.”
Buck turned back to the other immortal. “It’s gonna take a long time for me to accept that as fact,” he said. “But I’ll try. Just give me time.”
Spencer let out a chuckle. “Don’t worry, you have all the time in the world, Mr. Buckley.”
“Buck. Call me Buck.”
Derek and Spencer left an hour later to get to their meeting location with their team. Buck had walked them to the door, getting both of their phone numbers and promising to add them to his phone when he was able to get a new one later that morning.
After the two FBI agents left, Buck had managed to get a solid five hours of sleep, before waking to his front door being opened. When he pushed himself up, he happened to see exactly who was coming in, and let himself smile.
He may not have deserved this newfound immortality (which was a sentence he never thought would cross his mind), but if it meant that he’d be able to spend forever with Eddie and Christopher, he’d take it. After all, they were still his family.