</center>Author: Linsey
Rating: TEEN
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Dave Mathews’s song “Gravedigger,” nor to any of the Roswell characters…but wouldn’t it be fun if I did?
Summary: How Jesse came to be.
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<center>Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain</center>
Sand skittered across the pavement, drawing and scraping in the silence of the private road. Lone strands of desiccated grass flickered feebly in the breeze to brush against granite, the cracked and broken majority destroyed by the heavy fall of dress shoes, and the puncture of heels from earlier that day.
<center>Cyrus Jones
1810-1913
You live forever in our hearts</center>
<center>Muriel Stonewall
1903-1954
She knew loss far too young</center>
The street lamp’s weak light cast long shadows over the stones, lending momentary remembrances to names faded by the elements before catching the edge of a long, cement slab discarded by a broken down tractor. Soon the cement would be lowered into the six foot chasm by which it lay, but for now, nothing could encase seventeen years of hopes and dreams. A backhoe several feet away, sat empty and dark, waiting; its neglected mountain of loam and sod piled at the edge of the pit, the only marker save for the simple wooden cross at the head of the grave.
<center>Alexander Whitman
1984-2001</center>
A figure approached slowly, steps shuffling due to the affects of time. They called in Old Man Hernández when the tractor had broken down and the backhoe operator refused to work at night. His hands, calloused from years of shoveling, had buried entire generations of Roswell families. Mixed with the sand and dirt, his blood seeped free to mark each passing, leaving behind cracks and ridges to scar his palms. Six feet wasn’t all that much sacrifice to fill when measured against the span of a life.
Totem-silent at the edge of his first grave in years, he stared down at the deep cherry wood, barely visible. Hunching his shoulders against the slap of infrequent rain drops, his eyes traced the brass handles freed from the dust by the streaks of softly falling water. The moisture could not revive the wilted roses that had been cast upon the coffin in tears and heartache, nor could it wash away the accusations and fights that followed the service. The rain was not time, and Hernández knew this.
A zephyr whipped through, spinning a shower of rocky sand to click and knock against the wood below. The air’s desperate moan upset loose petals as the flowers slid from suddenly quaking wood.
Click. Releasing tumblers cracking in response.
Click. Click. Click.
Hernández sang softly to himself, unmoving, unsurprised. “Ring around the rosy…”
Hinges screamed in protest, fighting against opening, fighting against release.
“Pocketful of Posey…”
Blinking and wincing at the faint shine of the lamp, pale features emerged.
“Ashes to ashes…”
The figure gasped twice, coughing on an inhale of dust and rain.
“We all fall down.”
Awkwardly clamoring to his feet, the young man balanced for a moment on the uneven support of satin and pillow to stretch, joints-cracking, into the night. It took a second to recover from three days of pretending, of voided senses. “Thanks for not letting them cut me up.”
Wrinkles deepening around eyes and mouth, Hernández smiled as he lowered a helping hand. “It was nothing, mijo.”
“Nothing?” The young man ignored the offered palm, levering himself over the edge in a graceless fashion. “Did you get a new attitude to go with that new face and voice?”
Hernández laughed, deep tones altering and changing until they no longer fit the features from which they emerged. “Letting them cut you open would have been more trouble that it was worth, Kid. You’d be a bit hard to explain.”
“That’s ‘cause I’m unique,” the teen joked, his grin collapsing as he caught sight of the cross. “Jesus…that’s…”
He breathed hard for a second, jaw clenching. “Didn’t think it would be so hard to see that,” he murmured lamely. “Wish it didn’t have to end this way.”
“You were getting too close to the subjects, kid.” Hernández waved a hand, the coffin lid abruptly slamming shut. “I remember the first time I had to do this. Althur, the asshole, let me actually be buried. Bastard didn’t dig me out for a week.”
“Seriously? That’s fucked up!”
The older man rolled his eyes at the understatement. “Althur was fucked up…as you have already had the opportunity to discover. Guess that explains my complete lack of guilt about never telling him that the reserves finally arrived.”
“Good thing,” the lanky boy murmured, brushing at the streaks of dust marking his jacket. It was an impossible task, cleaning up, the dirt on his hands just creating more of a mess, but he needed time to think, collect. “So what happens now?”
“You go back to watching, and hopefully avoid being the lab rat in a mindwarping experiment this time, and I go back to Hollywood to play puppet master.” A rough palm clapped hard against a thin back, manner meant to be jovial. The ‘reserve’ was not amused.
“And who am I going to be this time? I need to keep an eye on the situation, on my girls.”
Snorting, Hernández transformed, stooped Latino to bald Caucasian. “Getting too close to the subjects, kid. Always getting too close.”
Retaining his original form, the young man waited. Sooner or later a role would be given, a new face assigned. To observe them was his job, the reason he had been sent to this planet. Getting close was the best way to go about it, and the man in front of him knew it. Eyes meeting, he could feel the weight of the other man’s knowledge moving through his brain.
Searching.
Tunneling.
Passing a hand over his now hairless crown, the older man sighed. What else could he do? “Well Kid, how do you feel about being a lawyer?”
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