"Grab him! Come on!"

It took the four of them to drag Jack out of the water, up the riverbank, slipping on the mud, losing their grip. That damn coat. Gwen cursed the thing. It was heavy dry, but wet the thing dragged him down like a lead weight. If he hadn't been swept against that buoy, stuck there, he'd have sunk like a stone.

"He's not breathing," Tosh gasped, as they laid Jack on his back. Should they do CPR? Gwen never felt sure. He would come back anyway, whether they did it or not. But it felt so cold to just stand there and wait. She stood and looked down at Jack. His dead eyes in his grey face stared back at her.

"Put him on his side at least," Owen said. Harder perhaps for him, as a doctor, to just stand and watch. When Owen turned him, muddy water ran from Jack's mouth and nose and Gwen shivered.

How long? How long to just wait? And they had to clear up the scene, grab that body before anybody stumbled across it. Owen knelt by Jack, two fingers on his neck, feeling for - waiting for - a pulse. Tosh and Ianto stood with helpless looks on their faces, mirroring the one Gwen felt sure she wore.

How long did they wait? It felt like an eternity. Might have only been a minute. The wind started biting at their wet skin, and they shivered in their soaking clothes.

Then the shock, like every time, as Jack heaved and coughed, spitting out water. They all jumped and relief washed over their wet and scared faces. Ianto dropped to his knees beside Jack, helped him sit up a little, still choking.

Orders. They needed orders. Gwen looked at Jack and saw... something different this time, a haze in his eyes. He seemed barely aware of her, any of them, maybe no idea whose arms were around him. She'd seen him shot and come back perky as a man who'd just had his first coffee of the day. Now he just stared at the water, while he clung to the arms holding him up.

They still needed orders, but they weren't getting them from Jack right now. Right then. Gwen turned to Tosh and Owen.

"We need to clear the scene up before half of Cardiff arrives. Made enough noise to bring them." They nodded and moved out, with last glances at Jack. Gwen looked down at him too.

Ianto was saying, "you're okay" and "you're safe" in a worried tone.

"Ianto, can you get him back to the car yourself?"

He just nodded and started to pull Jack to his feet. Gwen ran off after Tosh and Owen.

~o~

Jack looked up as Gwen walked into his office. He hadn't heard her coming. She carried a small tray with two mugs on it.

"Coffee?"

"Hot cocoa," she said. "Just the thing for people who've been soaked to the skin."

"It's not as if I'm likely to get pneumonia."

"Well I got soaked to the skin too. So, two cups, see." She handed one to him and then sat in a chair on the other side of his desk.

Jack sipped the creamy cocoa, enjoying the welcome heat. In dry clothes now and his warm office, yet he still felt that chill of the water clinging to him.

"The others all left?" Jack asked.

"Yes. They all promised they'd bring your clothes back washed."

"That's a shame." Jack summoned up a grin and Gwen rolled her eyes. She wore one of Jack's shirts, but it was probably the pants that made her shift uncomfortably in her seat.

"We should all keep a change of clothes here, shouldn't we?"

"Yeah, especially you ladies. Outfitting the boys is easy enough, but if I start keeping women's clothes in my closet, people will start to talk."

It came so naturally, the banter, the smokescreen. It soothed, but did it ease? Not really. After she left, after he lay down in his bed he'd see and not see what he'd been seeing and not seeing since they dragged him out of the water.

"Are you okay then, Jack?"

Ah, the smokescreen maybe wasn't so effective. Jack sipped his cocoa. Buying time. Gwen went on.

"You seemed... well more shaken than usual after you..." He doubted she could say it. Say the insane words: 'After you came back to life.'

She'd noticed of course. They all had. Jack didn't even speak for nearly thirty minutes - Ianto told him later how long it was - after he came back. Came back with his mouth tasting of mud, his clothes wet and clinging, and his coat oppressive in its weight. By the time they got him back to the Hub he was just barely up to a feeble gag about all getting out of these wet clothes. But they didn't laugh and he just let them strip him and shove him in a hot shower.

Another sip of his cocoa, then he put the mug down and walked to look out into the centre of the Hub. The water there. After a moment, Gwen came to stand by his side.

He told her.

"It's drowning. There's a million ways to die, and I've tried a bunch of them by now. But that one... Well sometimes, it's like today, no big deal. Fall in the water, drown, get pulled out and come back. But there was a time..."

She waited, didn't push him to go on. He leaned forward on a pillar, resting his forearm on it, his head against that, seeking the warmth of flesh against flesh.

"I even had that coat on. Got my plane shot down, over the English Channel. You know, that thing's so narrow you gotta wonder how unlucky you have to be to actually land in it. I swam and treaded water for, I don't know how long, hours, maybe a day, but nobody came for me. I got weaker. Eventually..."

He stopped and after a moment of silence, Gwen spoke, insane words again.

"You drowned."

"Yes." So thirsty, numb and weak, that it felt like going to sleep as he sank down into the water. For a second, for an eternity, that's what it felt like.

Then the actual drowning part started.

"Some people say drowning is painless, Gwen. Anybody ever tells you that, you send them to me, I'll explain a couple of things."

There was silence again for a moment or two. Jack knew he had to go on. He'd only started the story. Drowning hurt, but so did getting shot and impaled and garrotted and smothered, and poisoned, and any of the other hundred ways to die that he'd tried. That wasn't the point.

"I drowned. And I came back. But I was in the water. So I just drowned again. And again."

"Oh god, Jack." He felt her hand on his arm, welcomed the touch, the heat he felt through his shirt.

"It stopped in the end. It's as if my body gave up trying to come back all the way. But I wasn't dead either. I was... somewhere in-between. And I was aware. In a way. Hard to say what I was aware of." The cold for sure, the pressure. And the dark. "I didn't sink right to the bottom, I must have been suspended part way down." Blind. Deaf. No senses at all. "I don't know how long I was like that. I saw things, in my mind I mean, I couldn't see anything else. Couldn't hear. Sensory deprivation, Gwen. It does strange things to the mind. You don't know if what you're seeing is real. Or if it's memory, or pure delusion."

He'd seen, heard, tasted and touched things which felt like memories, which tasted real, but that he didn't actually remember doing. Can you remember a memory but not the event? That almost gave him hope. That the lost years were still there somewhere, locked away, waiting for the key.

He stood up straight again, pushed away from the pillar and moved to the desk, where he picked up the cocoa. He swirled it in the cup, stirring up the settling powder. Gwen turned from the window to watch him. Still waiting, not pushing.

"I guess I drifted into a current eventually. It carried me to the surface. Then I was picked up. Nice chaps, just heading for a day out on the beaches, in Normandy."

She stared. "You're kidding me?"

He grinned. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn't. "Got shot on Omaha beach the minute I stepped off the boat. It was kind of a rough week to be honest."

The moment was over, the smokescreen back. He looked down at his cooling mug of cocoa.

"Has this got brandy in it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Gwen sighed, seeing the same thing. The moment was over. "Do you want another one?"

"No, thanks. You go home now, Gwen. I'm fine."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure." He sat down again at his desk. As Gwen passed him, she rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment.

"Goodnight, Jack. Get some rest."

~o~

Jack sat on a step, a blanket around his shoulders, watching the water. He held another mug of hot cocoa, this one with a tot of brandy in it. All the lights were on. Darkness was too near to death tonight. Like that death, deep under the sea, mind filled with ghosts, blood turning to ice. Jack shivered and pulled the blanket closer.

They really needed to turn up the heat in this place.