trobadora (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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wintercompanion2009-07-15 12:52 pm
trobadora) wrote in wintercompanion2009-07-15 12:52 pm
Entry tags:
trobadora: Stillness (Jack/Ten) [PG]
Title: Stillness
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trobadora
Characters: Jack, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG
Warnings/spoilers: Vague spoilers for Children of Earth. Angst.
Challenge: Summer Holidays
Prompt group: 11: future - carry on - purpose - trial
Summary: This is the moment when something breaks.
A/N: Many thanks towojelah, suaine and cathexys for the help.
~*~
Captain Jack Harkness, Defender of the Earth. Had such a nice ring to it, didn't it?
But at what cost?
The Doctor stands at the edge of the crater, staring at the rubble, the remains of the Hub.
A cold fist is clenching his stomach, clenching his hearts.
He hadn't been there. Hadn't had a choice – hadn't known about any of this until it was too late. Communications blocked, and time itself? His Time Lord senses had been no help at all. Even now the timelines are hopelessly tangled, as they often are around Jack.
The Doctor might normally notice a major event like this, but around Jack, there’s no such thing as normal. There's no telling whether something's going on, not from a distance. Not even for a Time Lord.
Now it's too late, and all that's left is grief. There's nothing he can do here, now.
Nothing at all.
Gwen hasn't said so, but it's clear enough: Jack is out there somewhere, trying to find oblivion, trying to find a way to live because he can't stop living.
Because he has no choice.
In the Doctor's head, a voice echoes: I refuse. The Master, rejecting the future, rejecting himself. Choosing his own end.
No, Jack wouldn't do that, even if he could. But sometimes having that choice makes all the difference. The Doctor knows only too well.
Even Time Lords are not immortal. Even regeneration is ultimately a choice. And it matters that it is: The Doctor's been there himself. Even at the end of the Time War, his people, his own family erased from history as if they'd never been, he alone left to bear witness, even when he could barely look his new self in the face, he'd always known he was choosing to live.
It's always a choice. You choose to live, every day you go on, every day you continue.
Jack doesn't even have that much. He is propelled forward, with or against his will. It makes no difference. He lives.
The Doctor looks up at the rainy Cardiff sky, extending his senses.
Jack is immoveable. Fixed. He's a Fact; nothing will, nothing can alter that. The universe - time and space - will bend around him: He cannot be changed, so they must.
The Doctor can feel him, always. Jack is the magnetic north for a Time Lord’s senses, the North Star of temporal mechanics. Time changes everything; Jack alone remains untouched. He's the stillness at the centre of time itself. When the Doctor concentrates, he can feel the universe spinning around that centre. He can feel the timelines circling, twisting and bending, splitting and joining, forming beautiful fractal patterns around Truth's event horizon.
When he's feeling whimsical, the Doctor imagines his own species developing with that in existence. It would have been their beacon, their guiding light. A world, a mythology, a culture built around that Fact. How would they have reacted, discovering who and what it truly was? How would they have dealt with the knowledge?
Truth itself, embodied in a mere human.
Even a Time Lord can hardly comprehend it. Even a Time Lord ran away rather than acknowledge the impossible, accept the immutable, the Fact that never should have been.
But Jack is human. He lives, he feels, he breathes – and that small human mind has to live with what he’s become, has to carry eternity and bear it somehow. Even a Time Lord would stagger; even a Time Lord would break.
He imagines, for a moment: Every terrible thing he sees, every terrible thing he does - he'll always know there will be more. Because there is no end; there is never an end. There is only this: eternity, stretching ahead of him. And nowhere to run.
Time Lords aren't mortal in the human sense, but after many lifetimes, they do have an end. Infinity is beyond them. But Jack must carry it. He must; even if he breaks, even if everything in him splinters, he has no choice.
He must go on.
This? This is just one of those moments: One of those moments when something breaks.
And there is nothing, nothing at all he can do.
Except perhaps later, when Jack is ready.
When everything that can break has broken, and there is nothing else left, there is a moment of grace. A moment when you stop. Stop looking, even for pain, even for oblivion.
Jack is not there yet, but he will be.
And when that last shard of self shatters, the Doctor will be there. This he swears to himself.
Perhaps then, he can help him pick up the pieces.
Perhaps.
~end~
Author:
trobadoraCharacters: Jack, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG
Warnings/spoilers: Vague spoilers for Children of Earth. Angst.
Challenge: Summer Holidays
Prompt group: 11: future - carry on - purpose - trial
Summary: This is the moment when something breaks.
A/N: Many thanks to
wojelah, suaine and cathexys for the help.Captain Jack Harkness, Defender of the Earth. Had such a nice ring to it, didn't it?
But at what cost?
The Doctor stands at the edge of the crater, staring at the rubble, the remains of the Hub.
A cold fist is clenching his stomach, clenching his hearts.
He hadn't been there. Hadn't had a choice – hadn't known about any of this until it was too late. Communications blocked, and time itself? His Time Lord senses had been no help at all. Even now the timelines are hopelessly tangled, as they often are around Jack.
The Doctor might normally notice a major event like this, but around Jack, there’s no such thing as normal. There's no telling whether something's going on, not from a distance. Not even for a Time Lord.
Now it's too late, and all that's left is grief. There's nothing he can do here, now.
Nothing at all.
Gwen hasn't said so, but it's clear enough: Jack is out there somewhere, trying to find oblivion, trying to find a way to live because he can't stop living.
Because he has no choice.
In the Doctor's head, a voice echoes: I refuse. The Master, rejecting the future, rejecting himself. Choosing his own end.
No, Jack wouldn't do that, even if he could. But sometimes having that choice makes all the difference. The Doctor knows only too well.
Even Time Lords are not immortal. Even regeneration is ultimately a choice. And it matters that it is: The Doctor's been there himself. Even at the end of the Time War, his people, his own family erased from history as if they'd never been, he alone left to bear witness, even when he could barely look his new self in the face, he'd always known he was choosing to live.
It's always a choice. You choose to live, every day you go on, every day you continue.
Jack doesn't even have that much. He is propelled forward, with or against his will. It makes no difference. He lives.
The Doctor looks up at the rainy Cardiff sky, extending his senses.
Jack is immoveable. Fixed. He's a Fact; nothing will, nothing can alter that. The universe - time and space - will bend around him: He cannot be changed, so they must.
The Doctor can feel him, always. Jack is the magnetic north for a Time Lord’s senses, the North Star of temporal mechanics. Time changes everything; Jack alone remains untouched. He's the stillness at the centre of time itself. When the Doctor concentrates, he can feel the universe spinning around that centre. He can feel the timelines circling, twisting and bending, splitting and joining, forming beautiful fractal patterns around Truth's event horizon.
When he's feeling whimsical, the Doctor imagines his own species developing with that in existence. It would have been their beacon, their guiding light. A world, a mythology, a culture built around that Fact. How would they have reacted, discovering who and what it truly was? How would they have dealt with the knowledge?
Truth itself, embodied in a mere human.
Even a Time Lord can hardly comprehend it. Even a Time Lord ran away rather than acknowledge the impossible, accept the immutable, the Fact that never should have been.
But Jack is human. He lives, he feels, he breathes – and that small human mind has to live with what he’s become, has to carry eternity and bear it somehow. Even a Time Lord would stagger; even a Time Lord would break.
He imagines, for a moment: Every terrible thing he sees, every terrible thing he does - he'll always know there will be more. Because there is no end; there is never an end. There is only this: eternity, stretching ahead of him. And nowhere to run.
Time Lords aren't mortal in the human sense, but after many lifetimes, they do have an end. Infinity is beyond them. But Jack must carry it. He must; even if he breaks, even if everything in him splinters, he has no choice.
He must go on.
This? This is just one of those moments: One of those moments when something breaks.
And there is nothing, nothing at all he can do.
Except perhaps later, when Jack is ready.
When everything that can break has broken, and there is nothing else left, there is a moment of grace. A moment when you stop. Stop looking, even for pain, even for oblivion.
Jack is not there yet, but he will be.
And when that last shard of self shatters, the Doctor will be there. This he swears to himself.
Perhaps then, he can help him pick up the pieces.
Perhaps.
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And this is truly Jack's tragedy. As much as the people who love him want him alive, do they really want it at that cost? Yes, he'd have been dead long ago, given his sometimes reckless actions, but this? This is devastating.
And when that last shard of self shatters, the Doctor will be there. This he swears to himself.
Perhaps then, he can help him pick up the pieces.
He'd damn well better!
Lovely CoE coda!
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Rose really had no idea what she was doing. Not that she could have had, but it's one reason I'd have liked to see more interaction between them at the end of series 4 - I wanted her to react to what he'd become, what she'd made him.
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I'd seriously love to actually get that meeting in canon - it's possible, isn't it? But I'll read ten thousand versions in fic if I can get them - I may write one myself. Some people already have, but there's no such thing as too many, not with something like this. The potential is endless, after all. (You absolutely should, too!)
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I really loved this passage:
Jack is the magnetic north for a Time Lord’s senses, the North Star of temporal mechanics. Time changes everything; Jack alone remains untouched. He's the stillness at the centre of time itself. When the Doctor concentrates, he can feel the universe spinning around that centre. He can feel the timelines circling, twisting and bending, splitting and joining, forming beautiful fractal patterns around Truth's event horizon.
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I'm so fascinated with the things the Doctor said about Jack in Utopia - nearly every Who fic I've written deals with it in one way or another, and yet I never feel like I'm really done with it; there's always more to explore.
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Jack is not there yet, but he will be.
The great thing about writing these two is that when you talk about one, you're usually implicitly talking about both of them.
I want to see the confrontation between the two of them, too. I hear Jack's supposed to be in one of the remaining specials, so I can't imagine how the writers could bring themselves to leave it out...
Jack is one of those things that makes me wonder just how weird Time really is. He can only be so immutable, after all, because otherwise the Time Lords would have always known about him. He's a Fact, but he hasn't always existed. So what does that mean? :) I expect there are about 1000 answers to that, but it's fun to wonder about.
The best part is, it doesn't really matter. A billion years, or eternity--he's a human mind stuck in a Time Lord life. No wonder the Doctor stole a TARDIS and ran for the Vortex. What a nightmare it would be to live a chronological life out under such conditions. But as they've both learned, you can never run far enough.
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Yes! They have so much in common these days, it's eerie.
I'm really hoping for something good if Jack and the Doctor meet in one of the specials ...
He can only be so immutable, after all, because otherwise the Time Lords would have always known about him.
I think it's the same as with the Time Lords being erased from history as if they'd never existed - they weren't just destroyed in one particular time and existed up till then; they were destroyed in all of time. And Jack was inserted in a similar way. (IIRC one of my ficlets actually makes that comparison ...)
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This. Absolutely true and beautiful. I'm looking forward to more.
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Perhaps then, he can help him pick up the pieces.
*sobs* But even if he can, it will only be this time. There's immeasurable pain in store for Jack, and at some point, he'll outlive the Doctor. Given the speed the Doctor is burning through regenerations at the moment, it won't be too long from now - especially measured on Jack's vast life expectancy. And then he'll be even more alone. :(
Beautifully written. Thank you.
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Yeah, Jack's really not in a good position there! It's a pretty horrible fate.
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That explains a lot.
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