Lee couldn’t tell whether Tarin was more tense or not as they sat there. Maybe he was, she thought. Or maybe it just felt that way because she was paying more attention to him and how he was doing now. She had thought that the claustrophobia issues he had been having since the merge were starting to get better. At least it had appeared that way the last few times they had been in the elevator together. But maybe she had been wrong with how he had reacted to what he saw on the TV.

Now they were getting ready for a big competition. The Japanese woman as well as the main man and woman in the documentary went to this competition. And while going for the world record, she blacked out a few times, and the medical team decided that she couldn’t dive for a few days.

Meanwhile, the man is there as the chief safety diver and is frustrated with what he sees her doing wrong. And so they start training together. And she started talking about his eyes. How they were blue like the sea.

Lee couldn’t stop the quick glance at Tarin. The angle, with him looking at the TV, made it difficult, but she could still see some of the green of his eyes. The fact that this woman had spoken like that about his eyes, on camera…Lee knew that the woman was falling.

The eyes, and what you saw in them, were so important in a relationship, Lee couldn’t help but think. Maybe more so for her than most, but seeing that in the documentary…it proved to Lee at least, that she wasn’t the only one they were important for.

The woman was pushing herself too hard. She was going beyond what was reasonable even for someone of her capabilities. This competition was making her breaking point clear and she was pushing right past it over and over again.

The man was there in an official capacity and he was frustrated with her recklessness. Eventually, after she’d blacked out several times, the medical team made the woman stop.

The two were training together now, and it was plain to see that something was happening between them. That something was developing behind a professional relationship. The woman even spoke about the man’s eyes, and how the color reminded her of the sea.

Everything was building to a breaking point, and when they interviewed the woman’s father, he seemed so melancholy and sad. It made sense, Tarin thought, that this was going to end in her tragedy. People like her had a tendency to push themselves too far, to think that they could go just that little bit extra. Until they simply couldn’t.

Tarin couldn’t help but think again about what Lee had told him about Romania, and all of the other things that had happened. That she’d actually died. By some miracle she’d been saved, and seemed content to be safe…but extraordinary people tended to push themselves to extraordinary lengths.

Wrapping the arm around Lee’s shoulders a little tighter in a little hug, Tarin couldn’t help but comment, ”They’re definitely going to get together.”

Lee leaned her head against Tarin’s shoulder when she felt his arm tightening around her. And smiled slightly at his comment. ”If they’re not already together,” she replied, turning to look at him again. ”I wouldn’t be surprised if they are. You don’t talk about someone’s eyes like that, and look at them like that if there’s not something going on.

“Even if they haven’t done anything about it yet,” Lee continued as she looked at Tarin. ”They already have feelings for each other.”

Was it weird that it was her talking about something like this? Yes, it sure was with her general lack of romantic and relationship experience. But what she did know about it, she knew with her entire being. And those looks that the two in the documentary were giving each other were not what mere training partners would give to each other.

All of a sudden, the competition was continuing, and the Japanese woman managed to make a 100 meter dive. Just one meter off the world record. And then the woman the documentary was about broke the record with a 102 meter dive.

On the final day of competition, the Japanese woman manages to dive 103 meters, another world record.

Followed by the woman going for 104 meters.

Lee straightened up slightly on the couch, squeezing Tarin’s hand that she was still holding as the documentary dragged out the tension with them losing sonar contact with her at 80 meters.

Tarin nodded when Lee spoke. She was probably right. Then again, she probably knew more about these things than he did. Tarin knew next to nothing about relationships. The few he’d had over the years had been short and shallow. What was happening now, with him and Lee was completely uncharted territory and sometimes Tarin felt like he was just along for the ride of his life and it was absolutely fine with him.

The competition was going in earnest now, the two women one-upping each other at every turn. 100, 102, 103…

The female subject of the documentary was going to go for 104 meters. All of the training and support had paid off and it kind of felt like everything was leading up to this moment.

80 meters into the dive, so much shallower than the previous dives had been, the safety team lost contact. Losing contact was never a good thing and as Lee squeezed his hand, Tarin squeezed back slightly, expecting the worst.

”Oh no…”

Lee could feel Tarin squeeze her hand back. But she couldn’t take her eyes off of the TV. Time in the dive was ticking past, and they keep cutting to footage of her father watching a live stream of the competition.

Lee was dreading what was going to happen next.

And then, finally, they show her swimming to the surface with the safety divers. She breaks the surface, and says she’s ok. But do the judges say the dive was clean and she broke the record?

The judges confer for longer than it feels like they should and then…

She’s done it!

She not only won the competition, but she broke the world record twice!

”Wow,” Lee breathes as the tension in the documentary drops off to a celebratory air. ”I thought that was going to be bad…”

The media cuts to the woman’s Father were absolutely agonizing. Tarin couldn’t imagine how the man could do it. How he could sit there and watch his child do something so absolutely and horrendously dangerous.

Was he watching her die right that moment?

But then the woman was surfacing, signaling that she was okay and Tarin’s breath caught in his throat a little in relief.

The judges conferred, finally declaring the woman the winner of both the competition and the holder of another world record.

Lee seemed to be just as on edge as he was, and as she reacted, Tarin shook his head.

”I was so sure she wasn’t going to come back up… he said, ”Maybe it’s not going to be so bad after all.”

Now that they knew the woman had surfaced, that she celebrated her win, and was now going on talk shows, Lee felt herself relax against Tarin in a way she hadn't been able to for at least the last half hour.

”Maybe it’s not going to be so bad after all.”

Lee swallowed. She still had a bad feeling about the end of the documentary. ”I really hope so,” Lee said.

Now that the competition was over, the woman was going to train with the man at his working school in Africa. A divine school which was located right near an underwater arch. Instantly, her worry that something was going to happen, that this was going to end well increased.

There were media spots now, the woman was doing interviews. They were a couple now, but they were still training. Multiple world records just weren’t enough and they were training in Egypt by a place in Egypt that was apparently more perilous than Mount Everest.

”Some people don’t know when to stop…” Tarin muttered. It wasn’t that he thought that you should never do things that were risky. Everything carried an inherent risk and the rewards were often worth what it took to achieve them. In Tarin’s experience, you thought about things before you did them. It was another reason that the last month of his life had been so bizarre. Thinking about his actions and decisions had been the furthest thing from his mind. It had all worked out though, right?

This though…they’d already seen the person who was best in the world at this sport disappear and the woman herself had blacked out multiple times.

This dive wasn’t as deep as the world record dives, but there were technical aspects about the area that made it more difficult.

For no particular reason, the tension ramped up again as the woman prepared for a practice dive.

The underwater images they were showing of this arch were gorgeous. And part of Lee could understand wanting to go down there to see it. But definitely not while holding your breath the entire time. Scuba diving, or in a little submersible, sure that would be ok. But this arch was 54 meters underwater…

At least they were training and planning properly in Lee’s opinion. They were exhaustively and intensively training, and timing, how long it would take this woman to make the swim down to the depth, how long it would take her to swim across the distance she would need to go to get through the arch, calculating how long after she first dove that the safety diver on the other side of the arch would have to dive to be able to meet her.

Everyone knew what their jobs were, everyone knew where they had to be. And they had plenty of safety divers. They had things timed down to the second.

So why was Lee getting nervous and worried?

And apparently it was time to do the real dive.

Without realizing it, Lee's hand tightened on Tarin's as she watched.

Down the woman went and the timer started. Everything seemed to be going well…

Until the man, who was the safety diver meeting her on the other side of the arch, asked for 10 more seconds when told it was time. Lee's eyes widened slightly.

This…was where it was all going to go south.

Tarin wondered for a moment why this was all playing out like a movie instead of a story documenting the real story of the woman preparing to make the dive.

This had to be it though. The planning was so meticulous, the training had been so precise, the plan had been detailed out to the absolute second. It was exactly the kind of situation in which things went wrong to spectacular and devastating effect.

The woman made the dive. Lee’s hand tightened on his and Tarin squeezed back. Down the woman went, just as they had planned, but the timing wasn’t right. The man asked for 10 more seconds and then went to do his job, to find and rescue the woman.

It was like all of the tension that had been building up from all the other dives snapped at once.

Something was very wrong.

The man went below the surface late, but the woman’s swim was going well. So well in fact that she came out of the arch 10 seconds ahead of schedule. Which, when you’re doing something that is timed to the second to make sure it works, is really not a good thing.

Because when she came out of the arch, there was no one there to meet her and show her where the rope to the surface was. And so she continued swimming horizontally.

Lee’s breath caught. If the woman didn’t start making her way to the surface…

It felt like it took forever, but the safety diver finally was down and saw her. And he did catch up with her. They were making their way to the surface.

Then the documentary cut to the people who knew them, people who were there, other safety divers and those helping with this dive. They had both blacked out before reaching the surface. But, the best that everyone was able to guess what had happened is that before he blacked out, the man had made sure that the woman would reach the surface on her back.

He did not.

That was not the way that Lee had thought this would end. That is not the way that it had felt like everything was leading. She sat up straight, staring at the TV for a moment before rounding on Tarin. ”Don’t you dare ever do something like that.”

Oh yeah. Things had gone very wrong, thought not in the way you would expect.

The woman had actually been ahead of schedule, so when the man had gone down to find her, he’d missed her by about 30 seconds. That ate up valuable time and by the time they’d found the rope to get back to the surface, oxygen had been a problem.

As they’d explained earlier, ascending was the most dangerous part of the trip because if you blacked out and surfaced face down there was almost nothing that could be done.

That’s what had happened to the man, but he’d saved the woman by making sure she floated up on her back.

Well that was terrible.

Still sitting there in kind of stunned disbelief at the way things had panned out, Tarin could only look at Lee for a moment when she sat up and rounded on him.

”Uh…” he said, a little confused for a moment. They’d already talked about how he was never going to do anything remotely resembling the swimming they’d been watching.

Did she mean…?

”Hopefully it won’t ever be an issue.” Tarin said, trying to sort out exactly how he felt about that.

At first, Tarin looked confused when she said for him to never do something like what they’d just seen the man in the documentary do. Which, in a way, was good because it meant that his mind didn’t automatically go to the same place hers went seeing something like that.

Had so many things in her life gone that badly wrong that the first thing she thought was for them to be in a life or death situation and not wanting Tarin to sacrifice himself in an attempt to save her?

Yes, it probably had.

”Hopefully it won’t ever be an issue.”

At least he got there, what she meant. Leaning forward, she gave him a quick kiss. ”I hope not, too, Tarin,” she said, her voice softer than it had been. ”But I mean it.”

Lee was serious Tarin realized. Considering the context he hadn’t ever really thought she was joking, but this went beyond the hypothetical for her.

After a quick kiss she seemed to settle a bit though and as she repeated her insistence that he….what? Let her die to save himself in a similar situation he had to just shake his head a bit at the fact that this was where Lee’s mind had to go. She’d had so many bad things happen. This was that worry she’d talked about earlier, wasn’t it, the need to plan for every eventuality.

”That’s a hard thing to ask someone to agree to, Lee.” he said finally. ”You’ve got Kevin, and your siblings, and all these friends and people who care about you….” he didn’t voice the second half of that comment. It wasn’t relevant.

Tarin did frown though, the documentary currently forgotten ”You already put yourself out on a limb once for me, and that was before all….this.” They still hadn’t given it a label. ” What if I asked you to never do it again?”

Tarin didn’t say anything for a while, he just sat there and looked at her as she looked back.

Yet, when he did speak, it wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear. Of course she knew it was something hard to agree to. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t have been so firm when she said it. ”And like I told you before, that doesn’t mean your life is worth less,” she whispered.

But that wasn’t all that Tarin had to say. ”That’s not the same thing,” Lee replied after a moment, a frown on her face as well now. ”Knowing that there is a risk doing something is not the same as knowingly sacrificing yourself.”