Estrella looked at Lucas as she endured the surrounding pressure and saw him stop before the hole that looked ominous in the darkness of the ocean.
He turned around and she thought he smiled at her before she became shocked as he let go of his only mean to breath down here. Her heart constricted and she could only force herself to trust him to avoid running to him and in her panic interfere with what he was trying to do.
In the following period with time feeling interminable to her, as she hoped that he would succeed before he killed himself, she fixed her gaze on him, unblinking, and saw a sight that made her heart plummet.
********
After Lucas let go of his only way to get air this deep in the ocean, he spread his arms as if to embrace the seas or the world. He held his breath and, ignoring what was behind, he focused on his inside. The heat in his bones that had been clashing with the cold in his flesh almost felt like two lovers about to kiss under this pressure which, even with his now superhuman constitution, he couldn't be indifferent to.
With the weight outside and the reactions within, he started suffering.
'Blood.'
Indeed, his blood, the normal guy in the family, was not doing well. It was having trouble conveying the little bit of remaining oxygen to the places in need. The body under duress without enough supplement started to demand it.
Lucas, feeling breathless, started discharging gases from his suffering lungs. When he became unable to produce anymore bubbles, the feeling of asphyxiation became even stronger, what with the pressure that wanted to push the sea water in his air way through his mouth. And a few minutes of struggle later, it succeeded.
Lucas opened his mouth and the water, as if getting a gateway, hurried inside. He started trembling and at that moment, he felt closer to death than ever.
The two previous times, his body shut down and it was as if he was going to sleep, the eternal kind. It was calm unlike now when he was feeling the pain, his lungs desperately contracting to get breathable elements, his blood crawling in the passageways to try and salvage the situation, his muscles spasming and his bones giving the impression that they would give way at any moment with the whole construct shutting down.
As his heart desperately tried to do its work and push his body toward survival, after a brief peak of a few hundred beats per minute, it slowed down, becoming slower and slower as time went by, and at one point, it stopped.
Lucas stayed still in the water after a few more spasms and his determined expression became peaceful. No more troubles, no more childhood trauma, no more running after things or people to find contentment. Just peace.
********
Estrella, after she managed to shrug off her shock, braved the pressure of the water and approached the only semblance of light she had in her life since waking up in the ice and snow of Antarctica.
Indeed, she had never been amnesiac. She remembered everything, from her life to the tragedy that happened to her that she wished she didn't remember while at the same time wanting to engrave the faces and voices she sometimes dreamed of raining damnation on.
She remembered the way her heart stopped longing for life, with no family waiting for her and no mission to cling onto, not after how they treated her. In her daze, it was only when she heard that voice that the darkness stopped being crippling. It was only when he felt the care and heard that there was at least one heart in this world that longed for her, just her and not her usefulness, that her heart stopped trying to give in to fate.
So, when she woke up to find herself pristine like a newborn, she saw a chance at another life. Even if Lucas wasn't simping for her, she was comfortable with him. Even when they were not talking. If he was to fail and die, even if she didn't accompany him immediately, she would after a self-destructive revenge.
So, in spite of the difficulty, she pushed through just to get to him and try to keep him. She didn't care about the instruction he left. She only wanted him alive.
Unlike Lucas, she was having more trouble taking in the difficult conditions of this underwater world. It took her more than one minute to cross the ten meters between them.
She put her hand on his chest with one last trace of hope but she felt nothing. The heart that used to beat strongly was silent. She looked at his peaceful face and let her tears fuse with the water. Without him, what more could she long for in this world? Even revenge was not appealing.
'Let me follow. I know that under your shell you long to break that loneliness you are so used to.'
As she opened her mouth to kiss him, she welcomed the water that invaded her. Having made peace with her choice, she went through with it calmly.
As she felt his lips in this dark world with only a forsaken lamp shining onto the floor, she held him tight and soon, after enduring the torment, her heart also stopped and they stayed frozen, like lovers that would stay together for eternity.
********
Unseen to the naked eye, while he stopped moving, Lucas was taking a neglected ability of the human body to a new peak. Minuscule bubbles were leaving his skin as the latter was taking the necessary components for his survival from the water, preventing his body from totally shutting down and pulling him away from death.
When Estrella's heart stopped beating, she didn't see her companion's hair which had become white since a while ago start to elongate. He started losing height and slimming down as if the water pressure was finally getting to him as it should have. The changes were slow but continuous.
Finally, his heart started beating again, even if slower than before, slower but deeper and stronger. Without knowing how long it had been, his body left its hibernating state and light came back to his eyes.
Through the latter's, he saw a confirmation to what he was feeling, and on the spur of the moment, tried to enjoy it. Unfortunately he didn't feel any response much less a tongue to battle.
Panicked, he felt her all over before calming down as her heart was working. Even though they were in water, he didn't get the impression that she was suffocating. Thinking back, when he touched her, she lost the trace of rigidity she had before and as he observed her more, she was less uncomfortable under the pressure about 1100 times the pressure of the sea level.
Hugging her, he didn't manage to enjoy the sensation as he looked at the hole he had been trying to ignore since coming here. Unable to feel relieved and instead feeling more and more creeped out with his senses improved once again, he didn't bother to get the meager equipment they used and propelled himself toward the surface like a fish or a torpedo.
Behind him, in the hole light never managed to get into, an eye blinked, or at least the part of it that could be seen through the more than two meters diameter hole showed signs of it blinking. It looked at Lucas like it was there from the beginning and after it saw him go farther and farther up, it left the hole, full of indifference. As it moved, what seemed like a body followed, dark and unidentifiable but assuredly big, bigger than any animal alive presently known to man.
Really, what was hiding under our asses? How much was really known and how much was never even conjectured about?