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Sifo’s standing up the beach, near the jetty, when the headache starts.
At first he thinks it’s the sun reflecting from the sand, the sea, bright in his eyes. The brightness combined with all these faces of his parents’ friends he’s trying to remember even though they have aged in the years and years that he’s been gone. The stress of the trip to deal with his meagre inheritance and the sleeplessness of the night before. A restless night full of uneasy dreams of the sound of a hurricane that kept thundering through them but dissipated into the gentle wash of the tide each time he awoke.
He feels cold, then hot, tastes the ocean in his mouth and coughs, blinking for a moment at the bright red in his hand before there comes what feels like a hammer blow to his head. He stumbles forward, barely feeling the hands on his arms holding him up, and all he can see is the ocean beneath his feet.
Churning water and a flailing hand, a leg, an arm, the sun a bright wavering circle over his head above the water but when he tries to reach it he can’t, he can’t, he can swim but he’s never been a strong swimmer, his arms and legs are too tired, the force of the current pulling him out to sea too strong, and he’s sinking under the waves as the shore gets further and further away.
Those hands finally pull him upright again and he sways dizzily, looks into his father’s best friend’s eyes and blinks. The man before him flickers and becomes Dooku for just a moment, his eyes closed, his skin pale, his lips blue.
Sifo Dyas has seen drowning victims before, he knows what they look like.
There’s a feeling in him that’s pulling, strong as a rip current out to sea, and he turns, breaking free of the helping hands, abandoning his cloak behind him in the sand as he runs for the beach.
His bare feet slap along the old rickety pier that reminds him of being a young child dodging nets and legs and buckets. Shouts that aren't annoyed at the disruption of children playing, but alarm as he shoves past bodies to reach the end. A single moment of bright fear that lances through him like the sunlight reflecting off the water into his eyes. But instead of being dazed by the brightness all he can see is Dooku sinking under the waves.
He can’t see him from above the water, Dooku is too far away for that, but Sifo can see him, feel him, sinking and struggling against a current that has him caught and is dragging him away. It’s as if Sifo is right next to him in the same water, even though he can only feel the wind against his skin.
And then he hits the water hard, his dive not as smooth as it would have been as a child playing, more of a leap of desperation to get as far out into the water as he can. He still can't see Dooku but he knows he's there.
In the water he can feel the drag of his tunic and trousers as he swims and he fumbles at the knot in his sash for a moment, still trying to kick in the direction the pull is coming from. It comes free at last and he sheds it and his overtunic into the water just as he finds the edge of the rip current.
It’s strong, fast, the water jerking him hard to the side. He nearly falls prey to it for a moment and begins to struggle.
But there’s that other pull still, the one he could feel while he was standing dry on the beach, and it’s going in the same direction as the water. So, instead of fighting it, he turns to swim with it, letting the current speed him, arrowing out to sea faster than he has ever swum before.
He’s going so fast he nearly misses Dooku, would have entirely if he hadn’t swum into his arm and managed to catch hold before he was pulled past. He backpaddles frantically, flipping over to kick against the current as he grasps Dooku’s arm and pulls him above the surface.
It’s difficult, Dooku is struggling against him still, trying to latch on and Sifo can feel himself begin to be pulled under. He remembers when he was a child, his mother telling him that a drowning victim would push their rescuer under just to stay above the water. He can feel that happening now and he kicks hard to get above the water again, to shout to Dooku to stop struggling and just hold on.
For a moment he thinks it won’t work. That Dooku is too desperate, too disoriented, too locked into his fight with the ocean to hear Sifo, but then he stills slowly, his arms wrapped around Sifo’s chest and their legs tangling together.
It’s a bad position to be in, Sifo knows that. He can’t swim like this, can’t kick to keep them afloat or try to get them out of the current, and he can tell that Dooku is fighting to keep from struggling again every time they begin to sink down. The water is still carrying them out towards the harbour mouth and there’s no one else around this far out to help them.
Even if he can get them out of the current he doesn’t think he’ll have the strength to get them back to shore.
Still, he knows what to do. Remembers learning this as a small child and again not too many years ago on a trip to Glee Anselm. He manages to pull himself around in Dooku’s grasp, letting the slickness of the water and the way Dooku is too tired to fight him too much get them face to face. “Turn around,” he shouts, a spray of water turning his mouth salty as he does. He pushes at Dooku and for one moment he sees a flash of fear in the other man’s eyes, feels cold fingers dig tighter into his ribs. “I’ve got you, I won’t let you go but you’ve got to turn around,” Sifo says again, tugging at him. “I can get us out of this.”
Dooku’s fingers loosen and Sifo turns him in the water, getting his arms under Dooku’s and pulling them both back to float.
He’s got water in his mouth again, swallows it and tries to keep any more from getting in as he speaks into Dooku’s ear. “We’re just going to float out of here, just like this. Just relax, be still, and let me get us out of here.”
Dooku will always be Dooku and Sifo knows that. He knows he can always trust it, more than trusting that the light of a star will always be there, or that the currents of the ocean would follow the moon. So he’s ready when, instead of relaxing, Dooku stiffens like a board and tries to turn to scowl at him. He holds on tighter and says “trust me,” before Dooku can argue. Dooku subsides and Sifo doesn’t know if it’s reassuring or a worrying indication of how much energy he spent fighting the current before Sifo got to him.
It’s no time at all and the longest stretch of time he’s ever experienced before he feels the current release them, spilling them into a more gentle pull that’s heading back towards the beach. It’s not fast enough to get them there before they sink though, and he’s not sure he has the energy to turn and kick them back. They’re too far out for other swimmers to reach them either, and Sifo’s not sure how he’ll manage to save them now that the immediate danger has passed.
He’s contemplating his next move, trying to decide if he should tell Dooku that he’s not sure where to go from here, when he hears a shout. Turns his head towards the sound and sees a rowboat coming towards them from the harbour mouth. He pulls Dooku higher and begins to kick, feeling Dooku do the same although it is obvious that he’s nearly spent.
They meet the boat and strong arms relieve him of his burden before pulling him up after, dumping him into the bottom of the boat like the day’s catch. He smiles to himself at the thought and then groans as his world tips again.
Pain hammers into his head, not as strong as the blow from before, but resounding through his skull and down his neck until he can’t do anything but squeeze his eyes shut and groan. It keeps coming, wave after dizzying wave, but there’s no image with it, no visions or feelings pulling him in a direction and he thinks it might just be the aftershocks of what happened on the beach. A reaction he ignored in his rush to rescue Dooku.
The world tips one way as he feels the boat tip the other underneath him and he rolls to the side, heaving and feeling a brackish, watery fluid fill his throat and mouth before he spills it onto the deck.
“-fo! Sifo! Are you injured?”
The voice is distant but familiar and he can feel Dooku’s hand on his shoulder, cold but a solid presence. It rolls him back onto his back and he looks up through eyes that hurt to open to see Dooku leaning over him, the sun behind him lighting on his sopping hair in a halo. “Can’t even look bad after you nearly drown,” Sifo chokes out, laughing and then turning his head to spit more of that brackish water out.
“You’re bleeding,” Dooku says, the hand not on Sifo’s shoulder gesturing at his face. “Did you hit your head?”
Sifo goes to shake his head and groans again as the pain spikes through it. Remembers the bright red of blood splattered in his hand just before he saw Dooku in the water and tries to think quickly of what he can say to explain it away. “Might have,” he says, “or maybe you hit me in the water when I got to you?”
Dooku’s face flashes with guilt before he regains his usual composure and an answering guilt settles deep in Sifo’s stomach. He’ll have to tell Dooku the truth, and soon, the truth about the feelings he’s had just before danger in the past and about the vision he had what can only be a few minutes ago, but…
Not yet. Not here. Not while they have to finish this trip and he’s not sure what’s going on, where these visions and feelings are coming from or what they might mean.
Definitely not in a rowboat in the middle of the harbour while they are both soaked and two of his parents’ old colleagues are a bare arm’s length away, one rowing while the other hovers nearby and watches.
It can wait a little longer, and then he’ll tell Dooku. Then he’ll figure out what to do.
“You saved me,” Dooku says, his voice quiet and grave. “I would not have been able to swim to safety and I did not know what to do once the current began to pull me out to sea.”
Sifo reaches up to clasp Dooku’s hand where it’s resting on his shoulder, ignoring the dull ache that spreads down his neck and shoulders at the movement. “You would’ve done the same for me. I know you’ll always be there to pull me out when I’m in over my head.”