regained: day 122 (quest)
taken: day 123
witnesses: Ichirou, Sayid, Yukine (viewed; day 127, isabel's memoryshare game)

In a whirl of robust and unimaginably complex machinery, the bathysphere descends into the ocean. The cacophony of moving gears and pistons, loud enough to hurt your ears, is mercifully silenced upon the total submersion of the spherical craft. You're standing with your mother and father on either side of you, hands interlinked with theirs, peering out the single circular window as the journey begins. You and your family are the only passengers. There's no conversation. Your parents glance at each other, grip your hands a little tighter now and then, sometimes share smiles that seem full of a meaning you can't grasp, but say nothing. Even though you're curious and have a lot of questions you'd like to ask, it doesn't feel right to break the silence by yourself, so you don't. You just stand there between your mother and father, watching fish swim by in the water outside and thinking about where you're headed.

Euphoria. Euphoria, the underwater city that your parents have talked about for ages. The prospect is huge, exciting. You wonder what it'll be like, what sort of friends you might make, what there was to see so many miles from the surface world. You're seven years old and you're not afraid at all of the future. You have no reason to be. And for awhile, the journey is a pleasant one. The powerful lights mounted above and below the bathysphere's window illuminates the ocean depths that you're traveling through. You see a lot of interesting and colorful fish for the first time. You can even see Euphoria itself at one point, a cluster of softly glowing lights off in the distance.

But then something goes wrong.

A muted, watery grinding sound from the outside of the bathysphere. Intermittent, then constant, then increasing in severity. Alarms abruptly begin to blare and wail. And then seawater starts to trickle in. First from one source, then another, then another and another until there's no way for you and your family to plug them all with hands and feet. (You all try anyway.) The trickles become streams, then gushing leaks. The water inside the bathysphere rises from a puddle to ankle height. Euphoria is still so far away. You're very, very scared, but you try to be brave. You can tell that your parents are scared, too, and they aren't panicking. You have to follow their example.

The water creeps up your legs, to your chest. Your mother and father lift you up to sit on their shoulders. Your head brushes the curved ceiling of the bathysphere. You start crying when that happens, no longer able to help it. The vow you made to stay calm in emulation of your parents is easily broken.

The bathysphere continues to move through the ocean towards Euphoria. By the time it's near enough to be distinguishable as a city, the water is up to your parents' necks. It slips over the top of their heads a few minutes later, forcing them to hold their breath. When the bathysphere soon fills completely, you have to hold yours as well. Your hands cover your mouth, pinch your nose shut, oh god oh god you can't let any of it out—!!

Lungs burning, heart racing, overwhelmed with fear and panic, you black out.

You awake coughing and sputtering an unknown time later inside Euphoria. You're drenched and cold; it's an effort to sit up and you immediately vomit seawater into your lap when you do. Waterlogged luggage is scattered all around. Your head hurts from the bright lights of the city, from the sounds of bustling civilization. Throngs of strangers crowd in, some inspecting the now-empty bathysphere that's docked nearby but most just gawking. You see your parents laid out on the ground, prone and still. You call out to them, crawling nearer, but they don't stir. No matter how much you shake them or how loudly you sob for them to wake up, they never move.

They're dead. They drowned. You're alone. When the epiphany finally sinks in, there's only room in your head for a single, anguished thought that replays over and over:

Why couldn't I have died, too?!

✿ content + consequences
● What his family looked like.

— His parents were both different shades of blonde, but only his mother had gold eyes. His father had blue ones.
— Both were pale-skinned, about equally tall and in their early middle ages.

● They were en route to Euphoria via a bathysphere when the vessel somehow malfunctioned.
● He only survived, and narrowly at that, because his parents raised him up to give him the last of the air.
● This memory explains how he ended up at the Little Brothers' Orphanage.

— It also answers the question of whether he was abandoned or not.

● There's a lot of grief, survivor's guilt, and suicidal inclinations that aren't coped with at all.
● Jaguar will value himself even less as he takes on the full brunt of traumatic loss and survivor's guilt.

— If he hadn't been prioritized, his parents might have lived.
— It's a dim comfort to realize that he hadn't been discarded like he had previously believed.
— However, the realization won't be enough to change his negative perception of the event.
— He doesn't think he deserves to be loved if it leads to others putting themselves in harm's way for his sake.

● Jaguar will regain a strong, but manageable fear of drowning upon taking this memory.

Edited 2015-06-03 07:30 am (UTC)

tba.