This time when Jack went through the doorway created by the portal device, he got a bit of a surprise when he found himself plunging into a pool of water. His abrupt belly flop into the water made him lose his grip on the device and he experienced a moment of panic when it slipped from his fingers.
By this time his head was underwater and he frantically looked about. Luckily the portal device was floating just a bit ahead of him and he kicked with his legs to propel himself over to where it was slowly sinking. He grabbed it, feeling relief at the tactile feel of the device in his hands. It was only then that he realized that he was sinking fast due to the weight of his clothing.
He started moving his arms in an attempt to propel himself upwards, but it seemed to be a losing battle. The water was a deep blue in color and crystal clear, but Jack felt like he was trying to move through it in slow motion. He felt his chest burning from the lack of air and he looked upwards. The light seemed to be receding as he dropped lower. He shoved the portal device in his pocket. The coat may be weighing him down, but he was damned if he was going to get rid of it. He tried to untie his boots, but the cold of the water was making it difficult. The lower he sank, the darker the water got. He needed to breathe and he knew the moment he did, he'd drown. Oh, he'd revive, but unless he washed up somewhere with air, it was going to recur over and over again. Perhaps this was a fitting end, to not survive the experience and perhaps finally be united with his own Ianto, he reflected as his vision began to dim. The burning in his chest was hurting as he held onto the last bit of air that he had in him. Thoughts of why he had come to this universe were retreating as he finally had to inhale. The fluid rushed into his mouth and nose and as he coughed, air was expelled, only to be replaced by water.
As he sank down towards the sea bed, Jack Harkness died, the fish scattering as he dropped past them to the sand below.
The young fisherman was on his daily rounds of checking the tribe's traps when something caught his eye. It was a bundle of something dark against the sea floor bed. He peered down, his eyes used to searching out items against the murk. The sun had set some time before but he was still out on his rounds, it being the best time to come through this area and check for a good catch. It looked like some sort of flotsam that no doubt had come from the land mass not too far from here. He frowned thoughtfully before looking upwards. The sky above him was dark; the rich red of the sunset had dimmed as night had fallen. He looked towards the end of his trap line and decided to disregard whatever it was for the moment. The tribe relied on his bringing in the nightly catch. There were little ones to feed.
Pushing off from the line that was marking the trap he had just checked, he used his strong limbs to propel himself forward. He made his way down the line, resetting traps that had been sprung and setting the bait again for the next day. The catch was good this evening, and he released the fish into a net he had attached to his belt. They would eat well.
It was on his way back towards home that his thoughts went back to the detritus on the floor bed. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he was going to have to get rid of whatever it was. It was too close to one of his traps, and it was one of their busiest traps. He began to worry if it would cause problems for the tribe by scaring away some of their tastier catches. He looked up again, shaking the hair out of his eyes as he judged the time based on the sky above him. It was now full dark, and only his superior night vision allowed him to see anything at all under water. Going back would delay him a bit, but the potential of losing the next day's harvest was troubling. The fisherman decided to swing back and deal with it, rather than cursing himself the next day for letting it be just so he could get back home earlier. Sighing heavily, he reluctantly turned back, hauling his now heavy net over his shoulder as he swam back the way he had come.
When he got to the trap he was glad he had turned back. The local fish were avoiding the area, so whatever it was that was down there was definitely a problem. He dove downwards, using economic strokes to propel himself swiftly down to the floor bed below. When he reached the sand, he skimmed over it lightly as he made his way to the bundle that was crumpled on the ground.
He reached it and stopped abruptly, shocked beyond belief. It wasn't garbage at all, but a strange body. The fisherman prodded it, but the body was limp. It was also oddly dressed, wearing more clothes than the young man had ever seen on one person before. Rolling the body over, he saw it was a man. But a man like he had never seen before. He also appeared to be dead. The fisherman stared down into the pale face curiously. Either way, if the man was dead, he deserved a better burial than this. Nodding to himself, the fisherman reached down and got a good grip on the strange fabric. Tugging experimentally, he saw that it would hold, so he pushed off the sea bed with a powerful stroke and started hauling both the body and his catch back to port. Muscles flexed as he swam swiftly through the dark waters towards home, the strength in his arms more than able to sustain the drag of his burden as he sped through the water.
Jack Harkness gasped back to life and a woman screamed somewhere in the room. He sat up abruptly, water pouring out of his mouth as he choked the remaining liquid out of his lungs. Opening his eyes, he realized he couldn't see anything at first and he reached out to figure out why. Fabric fell away from his face and he found himself lying on an elaborate bier. He looked in the direction that he had heard the cry and saw a beautiful woman staring at him in horror. He smiled tentatively at her, trying to reassure her that his coming back to life was normal. Well, normal for him.
The woman was a little lower than he was and he looked down in surprise. He was on a platform that was floating on water and it swayed as he shifted his weight. The reason why the woman was lower was because she was in the water. She had been decorating the edge of the bier with exotic flowers and he briefly marveled at the beautiful colors of the flowers that surrounded him. They were unlike anything he had seen before and he looked up from the trail of scattered petals at the edge where her hands had been fastening another flower to her shocked face.
"Hello," he said softly, not wanting to scare her more than she had been already. "Sorry to frighten you."
She cocked her head to one side and stared at him in wonder. She didn't reply and he wondered whether she could understand him. His memories were returning and he thought about his last moments that he could remember. They weren't pleasant, but he remembered coming through the portal entryway before drowning in the water. He didn't think he was on Earth. "Can you understand me?" He asked her. When he smiled she pushed off of the bier, obviously startled by something he had done. She swam over to the opposite wall and pressed against it. "I'm sorry," he said again, extending his hand palm up and hoping that it would be seen as a gesture of peace. She called out something in a language he didn't understand, the sound echoing off the walls of the cavern. Jack could hear a response somewhere off in the distance and knew she had called for help. He waited, unable to do anything else for the moment.
After a short time where they stared at one another in an impasse, Jack could hear the sounds of others approaching. From the splashing, they sounded like they were in a subterranean set of caves. He wondered if he had come to a water world where the people lived in the sea. He hadn't had time to look around before unceremoniously plunging into the water, so he didn't know whether there was any land masses around. Wherever they were, at least they breathed oxygen, for which he was grateful. Since the only piece of somewhat stable land was the bier on which he was sitting, he decided to wait and see who came to the woman's call. He looked upwards and saw that there was a luminescent algae that provided light in the underground cavern. The space was some kind of temple, or religious area since the lower walls had symbols and artwork painted below the area where the algae grew. His perusal of the area was interrupted by the arrival of a group of people.
Jack looked in the direction of the opening the people came from. There had to be a good portion of whatever township or village they were in since it seemed everyone from elders to small children had crowded into the passageway in response to the woman's call. Each of them stopped and stared at him as they passed through the opening. Jack stared back before glancing at the woman who was looking more relaxed now that support had arrived. She bobbed up and down gently, the water up to her neck in the deep end of the pool.
An elderly gentleman with long white hair in braids swam towards the bier and stopped just short of it. He peered up at Jack and said something. The vocal sounds were musical, but incomprehensible to Jack. He smiled, this time with his lips covering his teeth since that had seemed to be what had scared the woman. "I'm sorry," he said softly with a regretful shake of his head. "I can't understand you." The man tilted his head to one side as he listened intently to Jack. He raised one tanned hand and gestured towards Jack.
"I don't know what you're asking," Jack said, trying his best to be polite. The man motioned again and he noticed that it looked like he was encouraging him to speak some more. "Oh, right. Maybe you can figure out a way to understand me," he said. "My name is Jack Harkness, and I'm sorry that I frightened the lovely woman over there. I didn't mean to."
A younger man swam up to where the old man was floating and Jack's mouth dropped open. The man had the most glorious head of ginger hair that he had ever seen. But that wasn't what surprised him. Nor was it the powerful muscles in the man's torso and arms that obviously saw a lot of work of some sort. It also wasn't the startling green eyes that stared at him from the tanned face. No, it was the glimpse of a powerful looking large tail that the man had used to propel himself through the water.
Jack glanced around, examining each of the people near him. Every single one of them had a tail. He had landed in a world of merpeople. He took a moment to process that fact before turning back to the younger man with the red hair. For the first time in a very long time Jack found himself feeling intrigued at the possibility of meeting new people. Once upon a time before he had been stuck on Earth he used to enjoy meeting new alien races, and in fact relished it, even when the Doctor had tried to discourage him from doing so. Jack mentally shook those thoughts out of his head as he focused on the two men in front of him. He placed a hand on his own chest, noticing that all eyes were upon him. "Jack," he said, tapping his own chest. He then pointed at the man floating before him.
The man tilted his head in a gesture that was reminiscent of the elder gentleman and Jack wondered if they were related or whether it was a cultural thing. After a moment's consideration, he turned back to the elder and said something incomprehensible to Jack. Others gathered around and were obviously discussing him. The woman who had been scared by his revival moved back towards the bier and he turned to look at her. She also had reddish hair, though it was more of a dark auburn. Jack wondered whether again it was genetic or whether she and the young man might be related. She swam past the group that was in heavy discussion and was soon bobbing up and down in front of him. He stayed still, not wanting to startle her. He also realized that she didn't have any clothing on, so he kept his eyes trained on her face so as not to inadvertently offend. He watched as she carefully examined him, her eyes traveling from his face down his body. It was then he realized that she was looking at his legs. He wondered if there were any people who didn't have a tail here or whether this was the first full human she had ever seen. Without being able to talk to her, he knew any kind of discussion would have to wait.
Talk. He groaned and shook his head, making her move backwards in response. He opened his wrist strap, finding the leather stiff from being in the salt water. In fact, as he moved he felt itchy, his clothes holding all the dried salt water as well. He made a face at the feeling and the woman giggled softly. It made him smile. But as his eyes returned to his wrist strap, he wondered if he could use his vortex manipulator as a translator. It was interesting that he couldn't automatically translate the language from his time in the TARDIS. He could only imagine that he had ended up on a planet that the Doctor had never been to; therefore the translation circuit in the TARDIS didn't have their language available to him. He was never sure how it had worked, other than the TARDIS getting inside his head and dumping a wealth of information in the part of his brain that wasn't being used at the time. But for the most part it had helped him a lot to fill in the blanks for languages he wasn't familiar with from his time in the Time Agency. It did make him wonder, though. As much of what the Doctor got up to did at some point or another.
A cursory examination of his vortex manipulator showed that it hadn't weathered the experience as well as he had. It would take some work to clean up the face and get it working again. He sighed, his hope of being able to understand the tribe fading.