There is a beat of silence. Jack stares down into Ianto's half-open, motionless eyes.
John puts his hand gently on Jack's shoulder.
Suddenly Jack tears John's hand away and sets upon Ianto like a madman, renewing his efforts in spades... totally manic.
"No! NO! He's not... his heart is strong, he wants to live... can't you see that? Come on, Yan. Come on, baby! Zap him again! Do it... DO IT!"
They do. And Jack works, feverishly. He locks his lips over Ianto's and starts mouth-to-mouth. It is frantic, passionate... the kiss of life.
"Come on, breath! Goddamn it, you bastard, you never backed down from anything in life... now fight!"
He slaps Ianto's face, hard. His head lolls. He smacks him the other way. "Fight, Goddamnit!"
From the bottom of the great well we can see a light that rockets toward us in the blackness, as we soar upward from the pit. We see Jack yelling, but his voice is distant, windlike.
"FIGHT!" Jack screams, his voice breaking.
Then something incredible happens. Something they will never forget as long as they live. Ianto coughs once, weakly, and his hands clench in a spasm.
Jack sees it and his expression becomes beatific. "Come on, Yan. You can do it... fight your way back, baby..."
The others look on in wonder as Jack wills this man back.
Ianto starts to cough, weakly at first... then more violently as he draws air into his lungs. Jack crouches over him, rubbing his limbs... trying to re-establish circulation. It is like a difficult birth. Ianto comes hacking and howling back into the world, wet and naked and fighting for breath.
Jack puts the oxygen mask over his face and he draws breath after agonized breath. He pushes his wet hair back from his face with his trembling hands, and watches him breathe. Colour is returning to her skin as he lies there, gasping weakly.
John, Owen, Toshiko, Jammer, the others... they're all grinning, crying, beaming... gazing at the miracle of his rebirth.
Tears are streaming down his face Jack says in a whisper, fierce and harsh "You did it, Tiger."
.
…
.
.
Later Ianto is sleeping peacefully. Jack is hovering over him, attentive. They are alone in Jack's tiny cubicle. Perhaps twenty minutes have passed. Ianto is completely swaddles in blankets, except for his face, and looks like a waif.
Ianto's eyes flutter and open. The first thing he sees is Jack, bending over him. Jack can't help himself. The tears break again and roll down his cheeks. Ianto seems terribly fragile, but bright and aware. He smiles, faintly... touches Jack's cheek. "Hey... big boys don't cry, remember?"
"Hi, Tiger."
"Hi, tough guy. I guess it worked, huh?"
"Course is worked. You're never wrong, are you?" Jack said like it was an accusation then he smiled softly "How d'you feel."
"I've been better. Next time it's your turn, okay?"
Jack's expression turns inexplicably grim. "Well, you got that right."
.
.
.
Monk's fingers insert acrylic scleral lenses under Jack's eyelids so he can see in the fluid helmet.
Jack is wearing the SEALs' deep suit. Everybody is grouped around, buckling and zipping. He is hyperventilating with an oxygen mask, part of the procedure for transitioning from air to fluid breathing. Monk, on his stretcher, is presiding. The resident expert. Ianto is wrapped in a blanket, still looking wan and frail. He doesn't have the strength to resist Jack's will, but he's trying.
"No, Jack, no... not you."
"Who then?" Jack replies without looking at him.
Ianto looks around at the others. Sees their eyes. The fear. Has his answer.
Jack lowers the helmet over his head. John clamps it down. We see what's driving him... his sense of responsibility for these people, for not being able to prevent this situation.
He touches Ianto's cheek, one last time. Ianto sees his fingers are trembling. Then he puts on the gloves. John is strapping a KEYPAD UNIT onto Jack's forearm. Ianto wants to scream... to stop this madness.
"So I'll hear you, but I can't talk?" Jack asks.
"The fluid prevents your larynx from making sound. It'll feel a little strange." Owen says.
"Warning you now, folks, I'm a lousy typist." Jack says, then a beat "The moment of truth, huh?"
His breathing is shallow and tense. He looks at Ianto. The eyes of a condemned man. Ianto squeezes his hand. He takes a deep breath.
"Okay. Let's rock and roll."
Monk gently cracks a valve on the suit's feed line. The breathing fluid (3M fluorocarbon emulsion FX-80) swirls into the helmet. Jack reflexively raises his chin. The liquid fills toward his mouth.
Monk instructs gently "Relax now, Jack. Just keep breathing as it fills... don't fight it. Take it in. Just let yourself take it in."
Suddenly, there's nothing in there to breathe but liquid. His eyes go wide, instant panic. He starts to thrash. Chest heaving.
"Hold him." Monk yells "Hold him. This is normal... it'll pass in a second. You're gonna be okay. We all breathe liquid for nine months, Jack. Your body will remember."
Ianto grabs Jack's shoulders, steadying him. He finds his eyes, the look calming him. He's passed into a realm from which he has already returned.
His spasms subside. He begins to "breathe" normally. He gets a goofy look of wonder on his face, not really believing what he's experiencing. He is alive, alert and quite completely drowned inside the FBS helmet. He grins.
Gives a big thumbs up.
Ianto picks up a microphone. "Can you hear me okay? (another thumbs up) Try your keypad."
Jack taps out a brief message. FEELS WEIRD - YOU SHOULD TRY THIS prints out on their portable monitor.
"I already have, Twpsyn." Ianto smiles.
They help Jack to the edge of the dive platform. Jammer and Owen lower Little Geek into the water and Jack grabs onto it. Owen yells right up next to his helmet. "I redid Little Geek's chip the same as Big Geek! He should take you right to it. All you gotta Ianto crouches at the edge to watch Jack submerge."
Jack looks up at him as he drops away.
In a few seconds, Ianto can't see him. His chin quivers, minutely.
From far below, Torchwood is a faint tiara of lights, above in the blackness. A single moving light appears above, at the edge of the cliff, and starts down. It grows large, resolving into Jack, free-falling down the wall.
He gathers speed as Little Geek's vertical thrusters drives them down.
Jack looks down. Between his feet he can see a short way down the wall in the glow of his single light, and beyond that an unfathomable blackness. The wall unrolls upwards out of the darkness like a convoluted gray drapery. He looks up. The lights of Torchwood are gone. He feels more alone than he has ever felt.
He types out: CANT SEE YOU
Ianto's voice comes through with those velvety vowels "We're right here with you, Jack. Your depth is 3800 feet. You're doing fine."
Jack comes upon the twisted wreckage of the crane, hanging against the wall like a forty-ton yo-yo at the end of the umbilical.
.
.
Everyone is grouped around the monitor screen, watching Jack's telemetry. Jack types out: GOOD DEAL ON SLIGHTLY USED CRANE. They watch the depth meter counting down.
"4800 feet. It's official." Monk says softly.
"Jack, according to Monk here, you just set a record for the deepest suit dive. Bet you didn't think you'd be doing this when you got up this morning." Ianto tries for levity.
The screen print out: CALL GUINESS.
They laugh.
So far so good.
Seconds
Later Owen says "One mile down and still grinnin'."
.
.
Jack is a tiny spider dropping down the wall in a pathetic little pool of light. The wall is sterile brown-gray, devoid of life at this depth. Looking down, as the light shrinks to a star and vanishes in the blackness yawning below.
.
.
Ianto has the microphone gripped tightly, and the lightness in his voice is a bit brittle. "8500 feet, Jack. Everything okay?"
"Ask him a pressure effects." Monk prompts him "Tremors, vision problems, euphoria."
"Ensign Monk wants to know how you feel." Ianto repeats to Jack.
COLD.
"Big baby" Ianto croons.
HANDS SHAKING. HHARD TO TYPE.
"It's starting." Monk says softly "It hits the nervous system first."
"Keep talking, Ianto." Toshiko glares at Monk "Just let him hear your voice. It doesn't matter what about."
"Don't forget Jack, you're being graded on spelling as well as sentence structure, so concentrate, okay?" Ianto kids, then takes a long pause "Jack, I... uh, there's some things I want to say. It's hard for me. I'm not of those softy, gooey-centre-type people. It's not easy, you know, being a cast-iron prick. It takes discipline and years of training. A lot of people don't appreciate that."
Ianto has somehow tuned out the others in the room. In his mind he is with Jack, out in the darkness. But it wasn't all bad. I know that. You remember that bike trip... we rode the Harley up through Oregon? It took me a week to get the bugs out of my teeth, but I've never been happier. It was the most... free... I've ever felt. I'm sorry I can't tell you these things to your face."
.
.
Jack is visibly trembling, gritting his teeth... holding on as the vice-grip of pressure takes him.
He listens to Ianto's voice "It's pitiful. I have to wait until you're freezing in the dark and there's ten thousand feet of water between us. I guess I'm babbling. I'm sorry."
Jack struggles with his keyboard.
YOU ALWAYS DID TALK TOO MUCH
.
.
Somehow Ianto's smiling and on the verge of tears at the same time.
"Two miles down and still grinnin'" Owen crows "Comin' up on the big ten thou'."
"Bottom's still a mile and a half down." Tosho warns.
.
.
.
BLAM!
Jack jerks as his dive light implodes. He still has Geek's floodlights.
He falls on.
.
.
"12000 feet. Jesus, I don't believe he's doing this."
"Shut up, Owen. Jack, how you doing?" Ianto slaps at the idiot.
SE LUMINUS THINNGS
Everyone snaps suddenly alert.
"Uh, oh..." Owen says softly.
"What kind of luminous things, Jack?" Ianto asks.
"Maybe it's... you know... them." John suggests.
ITS OK. SQUID. GLOWING SQUID.
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.
.
Jack is in an enormous school of bioluminescent squid, graceful, attenuated creatures less than a foot long. Thousands of then glide in ghostly arcs around him, filling the black void as far as the eye can see. He stares at them in wonder. Reaches out and touches one, catches it, lets it go. Are they really here? He can no longer be sure of his own perceptions.
.
.
.
Another message from Jack: THINK THEYR REAL.
"He's losing it. Talk to him. Keep him with us." Monk tells Ianto.
"Jack, it's the pressure. Try to concentrate." Ianto croons "Concentrate on my voice. Just listen to my voice."
.
.
.
Jack emerges from the school of squid. As he falls, they form a luminous plane of swirling colours above him. He stares upwards, transfixed at the ghostly blizzard of luminescence above him. A spectral form takes shape in the patternless glow... resolving into Ianto's face, a hundred feet wide.
Gazing down at him, his expression sad. His image receded away from him into the darkness above as he falls.
Jack reaches up in anguish.
.
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.
Ianto watches as Jack haltingly types out:
YOUR GOING AWAY
"I'm not going away, Jack. I'm right here, right here with you. This is Ianto, Jack. I'm right here."
"Signal's fading" Toshiko sighs.
"We're losing juice... kill everything we don't need." Owen suddenly says "John, knock out those lights."
Everyone hustles to comply. The room is plunged into darkness, the faces of the group lit only by the ghostly CRT screen.
Toshiko tells them as her fingers move across her own keyboard "Run it through the digital processor, cook it as much as you can."
John checks the gauges and shakes his head. With wonder
"Seventeen thousand feet. Good Christ Almighty, this is insane."
.
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.
Jack is shaking violently, as if with palsy. His eyes keep rolling back, and he's having a hard time staying conscious. He tries to type a message and he can't. The tons of pressure per square inch are short-circuiting his nervous system. Suddenly K-BAM! Little Geek's pressure hull implodes. Its lights go out.
BLACKNESS.
.
..
.
"Little Geek just folded." Toshiko whispers.
"Bye, little buddy." Owen shows dismay at the loss of one of his favourite toys.
"He can still make it." Monk says firmly.
"I know how alone you feel... alone in all that cold blackness... but I'm there in the dark with you, Jack you're not alone..." Ianto seems not to be in the room, but to be with him, seeing what he sees. He is oblivious to the others.
.
..
Blackness.
Then a bright light appears... he's lit a MAGNESIUM FLARE.
It's fierce, flickering glare lights his plunge. Jack discards the stalwart little ROV and free-falls like a skydiver without a chute. Out of control, he hits a ledge and rolls off. Tumbles forward in a cloud of debris. He hits another outcropping, limp as a rag doll. Rocks and sand rain down with him as he continues his descent.
Jack is quivering, teeth locked in a titanic rigor.
He pulls his arms and legs slowly into a foetal position.
In the plunge toward death he has gone he has gone full circle, returned to the womb in which we all breathe the water of life before we know the world of air and light. Still, there is Ianto's voice, faintly in his helmet.
"You remember that time, you were pretty drunk, you probably don't remember... the power went out at the old apartment, the one on Orange Street... and we were staring at that one little candle, and I said something really dumb like that candle is me, like every one of us is out there alone in the dark in this life..."
.
.
.
Ianto grips the microphone. His voice has become a hoarse
whisper. His eyes are intense, focused on a point far beyond the walls of the room.
"... and you lit another candle and put it beside mine and said "that's me"... and we stared at the two candles, and then we... well, if you remember any of it, I'm sure you remember the next part. Jack, there are two candles in the dark. I'm with you. I'll always be with you."
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A tiny flickering light moves down along a vast black wall. Jack falls on in dream-like solitude, a candle in the dark.
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John gently takes the microphone from Ianto's hands and leans close. "How you doin', partner? Still with us, come-back? Talk to us, Jacky boy."
They watch the screen, expectantly.
Nothing. Owen and Toshiko start checking the equipment. Ianto tries unsuccessfully to keep the terror out of his voice. Jack? You hangin' in there? Talk to me, Jack. Are you okay?"
There is an agonizing pause, then the letters appear slowly:
SHAKING STOPED.
FEEL BETER. SOM LITE BELOW.
"What kind of light?"
LIGHT EVYWHER. BEAWTIFULLL
"He's hallucinating badly."