Title: Is This the Breath I Take?
Author: lollobrigida
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG
Summary: The living burial of Captain Jack Harkness, a reactionary piece to the event in 2x13 Exit Wounds.

***

There isn't a doubt in his mind that this is going to be horrific. The weight of the dirt keeps piling onto his chest heavier and heavier and each shovelful brings up the question again. Is this the breath I take? Is this the big gulp I need?

He doesn't need it, but the question is all the same. Even when he's drowning. When the water is flooding up against his sides and the space between the water line and his mouth is shrinking, the question pushes to the front of his mind. Is this the last breath to take before the flood? Do I hold it in now? Alive for so many years and he still can't remember that it doesn't matter what he does, it never really will because he'll just survive it again.

It doesn't change the fact that he knows this is going to be the worst of them all. The earthy smell floods his nostrils, the dull walls of the grave will just commit him to darkness eventually.

The final breath comes too quick for his liking. The dirt already weighing against his throat and chest, pressing with all that it has in it to leave him no room to take in the air he really believes he needs. It shifts despite him trying to stay still, spilling against his chin and mouth and against his nostrils once more. Shutting his eyes comes next and then the darkness.

It would be easier if this was the Darkness coming for him, but he knows all too well that sort of name isn't fitted for a shallow grave. This is just time passing for now.

It takes him twenty revivals to finally get his body to slow. He thought the panic would be easier to overcome, but after a year in chains, he's not fond of his body being unable to move. That weight of earth upon him though makes it impossible to move. The feeling of insects burrowing alongside of him expecting the rotted flesh, and the decay of clothing only to find him still living tissue no doubt is a disappointment.

He's disappointed too.

Each time he awakens the need to take in air comes and is stifled because he knows opening his mouth will simply flood it with more dirt. Each time he comes back he's forced back into stillness. His heart rate so slow that truly it's any wonder he can still hear it echo in his ears. His lungs barely able to expand to pull in the lack of air, now sit weakened by lack of use and no longer hold anything of worth at all. The thoughts he has are few and far between all of his mental capacities focused on simply not trying to live that he's pretty sure that if he makes it out of here, if John actually comes through, that he won't have to be heavily medicated just to cope with the presence of others around him.

Madness might set in, but the lack of oxygen to his brain is a bigger battle. Keeping that alive, keeping that the way it's meant to be seems nearly impossible. But he manages it because each time he's dragged back from death over shards of sharp glass and the broken bodies of those he never could have saved, he remembers not to open his mouth. He remembers what he has to do should he get out, and he remembers their faces.

Still he knows that time is passing out there without him once more, and despite knowing all the things he would've loved to see... he knows that at least this time he can't mess anything up.

***