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Mac watches the sub hit the water and slowly start sinking. Jason gives a little wave and smile. There isn't a lot of Aeson in Jason, he takes after his mother (whoever she was) in his looks but Mac suddenly flashes back to another time, another little wave, and not for the first time a pool of dread settles in his stomach.
Mac has had a bad feeling ever since Jason got the idea in his head. These waters have proven treacherous before, they have stolen a good man from them once already.
Technology has advanced a lot in the last twenty years, he reminds himself. Jason's sub is less fragile, less prone to errors and failures than his father's was. Jason is a better pilot than his father was too, he pilots like he was born to it. Possibly because he spent so much time around the boats as a boy.
These thoughts are little reassurance.
“Watch over him, Mother,” Mac murmurs to himself under his breath. He is not a religious man. He does not believe in the Christian God like his father had, or the Old Gods his mother had, or even the Greek Gods as Aeson had. But, Mac decides, if there is anything out there, any spirit capable of guiding and protecting, it would be his own mother. Edie MacDowell had so loved the boy from the moment she had pulled a half-frozen Aeson and Jason from the water.
He watches the top of the sub disappear them moves over to the video screens. There's not much to see at this point besides a slowly darkening screen. Jason hadn't wanted the cameras on for this, his purpose is personal not scientific, but Mac had insisted. They (he) need some kind of link to the sub so they can know the moment anything goes wrong. Mac had also argued that video proof of the crash will finally allow the case file on his father's death to be closed. The police no longer care, the case is twenty years old and Aeson is long declared legally dead. There had been little double what had happened to him even without a body. Still, Mac thinks (hopes) it will provide the closure Jason so obviously needs.
It's not so long, yet also an eternity, before the speakers crackle on, “Mac.”
“Jason,” he speaks calmly but his brain is already whirling. The depth gauge shows Jason is only a fraction of the depth he must go before he reaches the ocean floor, why is he contacting them already?
“Two hundred meters and everything's fine. Stop worrying.”
“What makes you think I'm worrying?” Mac asks somewhat defensively.
“You're always worrying,” Jason answers, Mac can hear the humor in his voice even over the microphone. “Don't. I'll be fine. I promise.”
You can't promise that, Mac thinks but the words loosen the knot is his stomach all the same. Jason goes quiet after that except for the occasional check-in. The longer they go without issue the more Mac begins to think that perhaps he'd been a bit paranoid afterall.
It tightens right back up when the ocean floor comes into view. “Be careful, Jason,” he whispers to the screen.
There is nothing at first. Rocks, algae, nothing out of the ordinary. But then a flash of rust-orange. Jason notices it quickly and adjusts his course to follow the debris trail. Mac has to close his eyes and just breathe for a moment when the words The Oracle come on the screen.
He spares a moment to think what Jason, too, must be feeling. But damnit he'd lost his best friend, a man he had once come to see as a brother . He allows himself this moment of grief.
Because he'd known Aeson was dead. There was no way to survive a crash that deep under the water, the pressure would kill you as surely as drowning would. And even in the (absolutely, completely impossible) chance he'd survived, Aeson would never have abandoned his beloved son. So yes, Mac had known Aeson was dead, but now he knew and it was somehow more painful.
Choppy static from the speakers brings him out of his pain quickly.
“M..... Com....”
“Jason!” Mac answers. The screens are flickering, whatever is happening, he is losing connection to the sub. “Jason, what's happening. Give me information.”
Nothing.
The video screen turns to static.
“No.”
Mac is frozen in disbelief. He can't breathe. He can't... Jason is...
“No!”
A hand grips his shoulder reassuringly. Selene, the ship’s doctor, stands behind him. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” she warns. “All we know is that we've lost communication with Jason's sub. It could be nothing more than a broken... communication array.. or whatever,” Selene snaps at him.
“You watch too much Star Trek,” he huffs but recognises the wisdom in her words.
“Yes, well, you hardly keep me around for my vast mechanical knowledge. Now, bring your boy home.”
Selene had been wrong.
So, very, very wrong.
They don't have to wait twenty years for confirmation this time. The mini-subs were a new technology when Aeson had gone down, the one he'd been piloting one of very few in existence.
There happen to be a team of marine biologists working nearby. Jason is well known for his skills in the circles he runs in. Archeologists and biologists alike need his particular skill set and it helps that he is well liked. It doesn't take more than a quick explanation and they're are coming to Jason's (Mac’s) assistance.
Jason's sub comes into view on their cameras and at first it seems undamaged. Mac allows himself a brief bloom of hope. Perhaps it was a power failure? Jason would be uncomfortable, he'd be running low on air by this point, but he would be alive .
But then the front of the sub comes into view and he cannot stop the sharp keen that builds in the back of his throat. The front window is smashed. Selene’s arms wrap around him as the camera moves closer to the opening. She's shorter than he is but he offers no resistance as she pulls his face into her neck.
“Don't look, Mac,” she whispers. “Don't look.”
Her hands press hard on his head but he can't help himself. At the last moment he raises his head defiantly.
“No body,” comes over the speakers.
It's the word “body” that gets him (oh god, Jason, a body, Jason is a body , he's dead , oh god).
His stomach rebels and bile rises in his throat. Instinct tells him to bend forward more than any sort of thought process but he gives little care as the contents of his stomach covering his and Selene’s shoes. He feels cold. Numb and disconnected from the world around him.
Someone touches his cheek then his neck, the touch burns like fire. He's vaguely aware of leaving the control room, of being guided back to his own room on the ship. His shoes are removed but Mac's eyes stare at his desk unseeing.
He and Jason had been here mere hours before. The trip was to be standard procedure, they'd been over it a hundred times before but Jason had seen his worry and humored him. He'd even had that snarky tone all children seem to take on with their parents when they are made to repeat things they already know and consider obvious.
“I never told him,” Mac suddenly realizes. “I raised him from a baby, and I never told him he was like a son to me.”
“I'm sure he knew,” Selene tells him gently.
Mac is not so certain. If Jason had known, if he had felt loved and wanted enough, would he still have felt the need to go in search of his father's craft? If Mac had been good enough , would he still have lost Jason? If he had been enough of a father, would Jason still have chased a ghost?
No, he thinks. He could have been, should have been, better.
Selene moves herself into his view. Her hands grab his own limp ones and she squeezes them in an effort to be comforting. Mac cannot meet her eyes though, the shame of guilt burns too brightly, and his gaze slips away to stare at the bed.
Jason's book sits face down on the coverlet, waiting for an owner that would never return. Mac let's off a sob at the sight. Jason had owned that book for over a decade, the spine is now so cracked and white the title is no longer legible.
A tear escapes his eye, then another, and another. Like a broken dam, once he's started he can't stop and he collapses forward. Selene catches him and pulls him to her.
“He's gone, he's gone ,” Mac whimpers. She just holds him, pets his hair, and let's him cry.