Air Pocket
Scribble for the word ‘pockets’
by Gumnut
5 Jun 2004

He gasped as the current caught him, forcing the little remaining air from his lungs in a stream of bubbles and replacing it with icy cold water. He was moving, he knew that much, but the all consuming pain in his chest as water tracked into places it had never been welcome, forced his attention away, strangling thought.

Numb though his fingers were, he could still feel the rough rock scraping skin as he desperately fumbled for purchase to stop his headlong plunge into darkness. The faint icy blue light of escape and with it, freedom, was dwindling fast behind him.

Crap.

His vision was failing him and his head throbbed, the lack of oxygen and the godawful pain in his ribcage tipping him towards oblivion and the death that would surely accompany it.

Not like this, goddamnit!

He desperately tried to kick towards the surface, only to wrap his head around a rocky protrusion in the dark. Water roared in his ears as the bright flash of pain lit up his fading nerves.

He fought.

He fumbled.

His fingers broke a surface, his knuckles rapping against a rocky ledge.

Feeling the last chance he may ever have, he grabbed.

The current lifted his feet up, drawing his body out to its full length, hanging against the frail anchor of his fingertips.

He pulled, the last of his oxygen deprived strength failing as unconsciousness beckoned. Only pure stubbornness kept him alert.

Two agonising seconds later, his face broke the surface to join his fingers.

It wasn’t much, and it bounced the sound of his own desperate coughing gasps for air back at him, the solid rock of the cave ceiling inches away from his face.

Air pocket.

Only a delay to death.

God.

He took it for what it was, and breathed deeply, clinging hands cold white as his only purchase against the current, which still whipped at his body.

Damn, Daniel anyway.

But he knew it wasn’t the archaeologist’s fault. He had no one to blame but himself.

Himself and his own stupid sense of justice, his inability to sacrifice a child for any reason.

He would rather sacrifice himself.

And he had.

Now all he had to do was follow through.

But his own innate sense of survival fought for him the entire way. Jack O’Neill did not give up with out a fight.

The air was already beginning to thicken, the oxygen replaced with his exhalations of useless carbon dioxide. Time was running short.

But if there was one air pocket, there may be others.

Hope springs eternal.

With a deep breath of the last of the air available, Jack let his fingers slip.

And the current spun him into the dark.

**********
FIN.