I love writing in second person, but it doesn't work as well for a lot of pieces so it's been a long time since I've used it. Thought I could try it out again with a quick thing for what is (so far) my favourite episode. I haven't put Carter in this, because I like to think about the crushing loneliness he would have felt otherwise.
Sometimes you like to think back on the horrible events in your life and laugh, humoured by your eternal string of bad luck and the irony of only having survived thanks to a small amount of good luck, but this is definitely not one of those times. The only thing laughable about this is the fact that you've never really thought about how much you hate the ocean until now, vast and blue and incredibly empty, didn't fully understand the danger even when Atlantis was still beneath its surface and threatened to fall victim to it.
You've never been in a real air crash before. Sure, you've been in crash-landing Jumpers and Wraith cruisers being shot out of the sky or blown up from the inside (usually by your hand) and hive ships falling apart out in deep space due to huge battleships that are also falling apart, but none of those really counted as a crash by conventional Terran means. There is something distinctly different about going down over the water with a proper pilot at the helm, screams of mayday, mayday ringing in your ears over the klaxon wails of the ship as it shakes itself apart, and then there is a mighty thud as you finally hit the water.
It's dark when you wake up, the pale lights of the Jumper's controls illuminated like ghosts and giving you your only source of light. It's only as you're pulling yourself up off the floor that you consider the wrongness of it, some fuzzy part of your brain telling you that waking up on the floor of a spaceship isn't normal, but you don't really consider it until your head throbs and you spot the splotches of darker shadows on the floor, and oh, god, your head is going to start killing you in a second. A voice crackles to life in your ear (not for the first time, you think, though you can't quite remember) and it takes you a second too long to think Zelenka before you respond, trying to sort out the lethargy in your brain as you wake Griffin and focus on whatever Zelenka is trying to tell you, and it is then that you finally notice the water.
You've never felt anything quite like it. You've had panic, yes, the sense of impending doom at every drop and turn (especially in Pegasus, the place never gives you a break), but this is something on an entirely different level. Maybe it's your concussion, maybe it's natural, but there is something about being stuck in a broken ship and sinking remarkably quickly into an unexplored ocean surrounded by more water volume than you really care to think about that makes you feel like maybe you're going to just have a heart attack and drop dead, and then possibly restart your own heart to do it again. The numbers don't really mean anything when you bring up the HUD other than really fucking deep oh god we're so screwed, and then the glass behind it cracks with a sound so sharp it buries into your very soul.
It also has the added effect of clearing up a little of your sluggishness, so it becomes just a little bit easier to stay a step further ahead of… well, ahead of 'stationary', or 'sinking into the freaking ocean', though it's no use staying ahead of yourself if your plan doesn't work, even one as basic as 'shut the bay doors before it floods and you drown', but Griffin is one step ahead of you again and jumps back into the cockpit before you even have a chance to think of how you can fix the wiring within the next ten seconds, because he's military and he's practical and he's selfless and he's dead, now, because he had to save your dumb ass in this piece of shit Jumper, and there is a long moment, when you hear the glass break and the water rush in and it would be deafening if not for the Jumper's hull design, that you forget how to breathe, that you forget what real feels like, because surely this can't be it, but then the rush of blood clears from your ears and your senses swim back into focus and you begin to prioritise, like you've been taught to, wait until you're safe to grieve.
That is, until you turn around to take stock of your surroundings, and indeed find yourself surrounded. You've always hated the size of the Jumpers, their thick metal walls pressing in on the tiny little cabin, made that much worse by the thick darkness broken only by the weak glow of a couple of the components, and you wonder how it's possible to even still be panicking as much as you are, surely you've exhausted your adrenal glands by now so it doesn't make sense to still be freaking out and okay, alright, it's not that small, you've been stuck in worse, you just need to take deep breaths and calm yourself down and not think about the billions of gallons of water and several atmospheres of pressure bearing down on your little tin can. You close your eyes, count up to ten, count back down, take deep breaths and there, that's not so bad, maybe you can handle this.
You take it one step at a time, mostly because your brain can't handle your usual 'do it all at once' method and oh, yeah, that would be a good place to start. You track down light first, need something to work by, and then you drag out the first aid kit while you try to remember what you know about concussions, which is, surprisingly, virtually nothing, or maybe you know a lot but can't remember it because of the concussion that you're trying to fix – which is just ridiculous, really, but it fits in with your current string of luck. Your next course of action seems to obviously be getting out of the water, but you stop yourself for the moment, double-checking your priorities, thinking of what's more important than getting yourself out–
Contacting Atlantis. Radio. If you can make contact with the surface then even if your plan (whatever that ends up being) to raise yourself out fails, Atlantis will know where you are and, hopefully, be able to find and rescue you. At least you still have your tablet, thanks to whatever infinitesimal glimmer of good luck you've been able to get today, so you plug her in and bring up your controls and work through the quickest way to activate a transmitter that's not ninety-percent water, which actually goes pretty smoothly, but the pleasant surprise of it doesn't last long as you check on the Jumper's power levels, which of course are ridiculously low, and you can't find a way to slow down consumption. The issue of heating doesn't help matters, either; the temperature keeps dropping the longer you're under, thanks again to the endless amounts of seawater, and in want of not adding 'freezing to death' to your list of possible outcomes, you have to waste power keeping the cabin a little above fatal.
You can't think of anything more pressing to do after that, so you get to work on figuring out how the hell you're going to stop yourself from sinking, which takes so much longer than it usually would thanks to your blurry eyes and shaking hands and inability to focus because you think you might be making your concussion worse with all this moving around and panicking and trying to use basic cognitive functions, especially when you add screaming at sea life to the mix. That's really all it could be when you hear the low, grumbling song of whatever is out there, and you don't really want to consider anything other than a strange alien whale pickup up on your transmitter signal, because anything else would be terrifying. Well, more terrifying, because a giant sea monster rattling your ship is pretty horrific in itself, but eventually it seems to give up and swim off and thank god, because that could have been the last straw before you broke down and…
Swimming. Maybe that's the answer; maybe you can get the Jumper to swim, like some pseudo-tin-can-fish-beast. If it can move through space, it should be able to move through water, right? Now you have somewhere to focus your efforts, something to work on instead of just blindly trying to scour the systems for something that sticks out, but it's difficult, slow going, lines of code swimming in and out of your brain like darting fish and you have got to stop thinking about the ocean, because you can hear it all around you and feel the freezing cold of the water and see the darkness, oh, god, how dark it would be this far below, how dense and deep and dark. Sometimes it flickers at the edges of your vision, tendrils of movement that you never quite catch, and it's unsettling more than anything, instilling only a little more fear than you already have, though it's beginning to exhaust itself and make you a little less scared.
You just hate that it had to be water. Of course it had to be water. If you were twelve-hundred feet from rescue (it had to be closer to two thousand now, but you don't care to do the math) on land you could have easily walked it, could have been safe and sound ages ago because they would have been able to find you and even if they didn't you could have saved yourself, but here, under so much ocean, he couldn't do anything, could only sit and hope; hope that his plan worked, hope (in vain, surely) that they might be able to find him, might be able to think of some way to drag the Jumper back up. You hate the ocean, hate Lantea for having so much ocean, hate yourself for offering to test this flight instead of Zelenka like it should have been, hate Zelenka for not fixing it properly in the first place, hate yourself again for considering hating Griffin for not flying it properly.
The Jumper suddenly jolts and trembles, metallic groans filling your ears as you push yourself back up from the floor, your mind whirling through a list of possibilities as to what that could have been when it occurs to you that the Jumper isn't moving anymore, doesn't have the sickening sway of motion it did before. You must have hit the bottom. You've hit the bottom, which means you're not sinking anymore, which means that your chances of survival have increased exponentially and oh, oh, that is such a good feeling, finally a wave of something that isn't impending doom. You're ecstatic with it, euphoria rushing to your head and giving you a faint glimmer of hope, but then you hear the trickle of water again, only this time it isn't your imagination; a glance at the door between the hatch and the cockpit proves that yes, holy shit, there is water leaking in, alarmingly fast and that's just what you needed, that completes this excellent fucking day you've been having, but the moment you stop being pissed about it is the moment you realise the full implications of just what that means.
You're going to drown. Of all the possible ways you could have died in the last two hours, you thought drowning was off the table since you were sealed in here. But no, you never have that kind of luck, and now there's an extra tally on your mental board of 'how many ways could you die horribly in the back of a Jumper sinking into the ocean'. The impact, you think – the impact must have bent the hull out of shape, caused some micro-fissures. There's no way you can fix those, none you can think of as you dive down beneath the water that's already up to knee height to investigate, unless… It's not a real fix, but it will buy you more time. Thank god you're stuck in a space ship and not an actual boat, or you wouldn't be able to tap into life support to boost the pressure, slowing down the leakage until you can think of something better, if you can think of something better.
Your plan to drive the Jumper back to the surface is nearly finished, you think, but you can barely function at this point; your head is still killing you, your eyes swimming in and out of focus because of it, and the Jumper is now colder than you remember anything being in a long time. It had been cold before, though you'd been managing with the little heat the Jumper could provide you, but now that you have seawater to worry about it's nigh impossible to find any semblance of warmth, the water quickly sapping what little you had. It's ridiculous, really; of all the things that could end in your demise out here, it's probably going to be the longest, most painful one. At least it doesn't have the sharp bite that cold usually has, though by this point you'd probably be dull to it even if it did.
It takes much longer than you'd hoped, but eventually you're ready to give this thing a shot. You purposefully haven't thought about what will happen if it doesn't work, but you can't help the tense feeling as you execute the program, can't help the worried flutter in your gut as the engines hum to life and pulse like an old car engine, spluttering as it tries to catch hold, but then it flickers out and you're left in the dark again. Realisation is slow in coming, an exhausted delay before it hits you that it didn't work, that you've wasted precious energy (twenty minutes of it, that's definitely going to bite you in the ass) for nothing, that you're still stuck here on the bottom of the ocean with no escape plan and only half an hour of life support left, half an hour until you're out of air, though at this rate the water will have drowned you before then anyway.
There are many ways you could have died, but you never thought this would be it, cold and concussed and completely alone at the bottom of the ocean. It feels strangely befitting, in a way, as though the universe has known all along that there was no way you'd go down doing something heroic, like taking down a hive ship or saving Atlantis or any other number of self-sacrificing acts. Instead, you're dying because of something completely stupid and mundane, and nobody will cry at your memorial service or talk about what a brave man you were, only that you couldn't save even two people from the simple matter of a malfunctioning ship. At least you're too tired to really comprehend it, too far gone to properly understand the full extent of death. You kind of just want a nap, to rest your eyes for a while, but whenever you lose your grip even a little you drift too far and your mouth fills with water and you're just so tired, so tired of all of this, you're surprised you've even lasted this long.
There is a sudden, strange sound around the Jumper, familiar in the back of your mind but too indistinct to place, and you have a brief moment of irritation, just leave me alone already, before your radio crackles in your ears, Sheppard's voice breaking the silence and it is the most wondrous sound you have ever heard, you have never been so relieved in your life, but then the morbid thought occurs to you that it probably isn't even them, it's probably not a rescue team because that's impossible, they'd never find you and you're too far down, it doesn't make sense, it's probably just your mind playing tricks and wanting it over.
Thankfully, at this point, you couldn't care less. If you're about to open the hatch and drown yourself, fine, you're going to die anyway. But there is a chance, however slim, that it really is Sheppard, and you're willing to take the only option that won't lead to immediate and grisly demise. You fumble for the hatch release, hands too numb to grasp it easily, and pull on it with an invigorating sense of purpose, expecting the grind of it opening and for the water to rush out.
But it doesn't open, stays perfectly silent, and oh, oh no, this can't be happening, not when you've come so far, so close, you wonder if they'd be able to cut the door open from the outside but there isn't enough time, you're going to die with nothing but a broken goddamn door between you and rescue—
Secondary release. Emergency release. Ships always have one and the Jumpers are no different, put in place for the sole purpose of a second chance. It's your last hope; if this doesn't work, you're done for. You take a gasp of air (though there is not much left to take, the water has almost reached the top) and dive down, searching blindly for the compartment with the secondary release and there, you have it, please please please work you swear you will do something drastic if it doesn't, and then there is the beautiful sound of the hatch door opening, water spilling out with it and air taking its place until you are lying on the damp floor of the Jumper and coughing out water and there are warm hands at your shoulders, lifting you up and carrying you out, and then there is only the ride back up to the surface.