Dirt
Timeline: Set during Exit Wounds when in 27BC Gray orders John to bury Jack alive.
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or any of its characters. Just borrow them occasionally to have a little play. Hope I don't break them.
The soil poured down around Jack's face. This was going to be bad. In a long lifetime of bad. This was going to be really bad.
But right now it kind of tickled, trickling into his ears, settling into his eye sockets. He twitched.
It was decision time. Closed mouth, struggle to hold his breath for a while, then cough it all in. Or, open mouth, accept the inevitable. Somehow, one thousand four hundred and fifteen deaths on, Jack still clung to life. Even as life clung to him. Closed mouth then.
The urge to breathe was there, but bearable, for now. Throat tight, gurgling, swallowing inside his mouth, breathing without breathing.
The weight was starting to bear down, and he could no longer hear the shovel, just darkness and crunching dirt, it filled his ears, the last sound in two thousand years.
The urge was stronger, stars flashing in his eyes, his forehead throbbing. But life clung on. Let it go when there is no choice, his body said, even if his mind thought, die and don't wake up, let my body be too broken to wake. Two thousand years dead, not two thousand years alive.
He'd suffocated before, well several times actually. Once for fun, even though it wasn't. Never been buried alive, never thought he'd deserve it. I let go of his hand, a sick mantra as he burned to breathe. I let go of his hand, and he suffered, worse than this.
But worse was relative when you're dying. For Jack every death felt like it was the worst, always unbearable. Teetering in the moment when he thought he couldn't cope, and it couldn't get any worse, and then it did. Every, single, time. Because stoicism and manliness meant nothing, pain was pain, no matter how many times you felt it. And suffocation was, well, worse than that.
The air wanted out, carbon dioxide trapped in his lungs pushing out his eyeballs, burning in his chest. Not struggling to breathe in, struggling to breathe out.
Two thousand years. Suffocating again and again for two thousand years. Jack had too much imagination to take that calmly. Beating panic through his body. The illusion of composure shattered. Convulsing, wetting himself, screaming inside, I can't, I can't, I can't.
His mouth popped open, breaking the seal, and the dirt poured in. Body starved of oxygen gasped for air. But there was only dirt. So Jack breathed the dirt in, sucking it down his oesophagus and into his lungs, scratching and burning. Coughing the dirt out and breathing it back in. Over and over, coughing and choking and struggling for air that wasn't there. Air that wouldn't be there for two thousand years.
Blinding light in his head, although there was only darkness. Dirt filled his open eyes, which should have hurt, but all he could think about was breathing. But there was nothing. In a brain starved of oxygen, awareness faded and blurred. And so, in fear and pain Jack died for the first time in the year 27 BC. It was the only way to go.
The second time was worse because there was only pain. Pulling dirt into his lungs. Burning, burning.
The third time less dramatic. A flicker of awareness, more soil down his windpipe. Dead.
A few more times. Until there was no space in his lungs to come alive. He was full. He was the earth.
In the end, there was only death. And that is where Jack floated. In the darkness. Because there was nothing else.
Well this could be worse, he thought and drifted for two thousand years.
Please review.