I shared this idea on the Discord but thought I’d put it here, too (preemptive angst warning, sorry): Lost In Your Eyes Tarquin time loop fic where he goes back to the start of his journey over and over again any time anyone dies (I imagine the first day he doesn’t believe it. He has dreams like this all the time. But then he gets through one day. And then another. And then realizes that maybe this is real? And after the first loop and first successful save he realizes that maybe there is a chance. Maybe this is his second chance) and finally gets a chance to save everyone…!
…Only to wake up from some kind of coma or something and figure out it’s all fake. He never managed to save anyone. They’ve been dead for years.
I imagine him finally getting onto land and seeing Amanda again. He saves her life by protecting her and falls unconscious - he wakes up in a hospital. He’s drowsy and confused but he asks the first employee he sees about Amanda - only to get a response that they don’t know any Amanda… He is in denial about this the entire time.
Eventually they let him out and he searches for her (and the rest of his crew). She has to be out there somewhere - there has to be some reason no one came to visit him. Maybe they were waiting for him. He saved them, after all.
I imagine he runs into Amanda’s mother, who is not happy to see him, and she tells him that Amanda’s been dead for years and it’s his fault, angry that he would even suggest that she could be alive after all this time and give her false hope, and Tarquin is just devastated.