'Nother Snippet: Torchwood
Title: Still Pretty
Character: Jack
Summary: Jack introspection, pre-Torchwood series one. Brooding on rooftops like Batman (he was a drama queen too.)
Warning: Besides the one for drama queens? Abuse of italics. Some impolite language.
It all felt so close tonight. He looked at the lights of the city and they seemed to blend seamlessly with the stars, and he was out in space again, on a ship that could take him everywhere, with people who didn't see him as a dangerous and disgusting deviant without even the decency to keep his shame hidden. People who didn't manufacture shame out of the most natural and human impulses. People who didn't think it right to punish two lovers with a swift and painful death by hanging if they were lucky, or a slow body-breaking sentence of hard labor if they weren't, just for happening to share the same gender - but would call the brutal beating of a defenseless young woman her husband's god-given right.
This planet was so small, so limited and stifling... It was hard to believe his own world had grown from it. Magnificent and uplifting to know on the good days, but he was tired of it now and he wanted to go back to the real world. He wanted to go home, which was fucking hilarious, right? Because home was gone. He'd lost the right to it when he'd let his brother go - his cowardice had been punished by the eternal loss of safety. Nobody would ever hold him close and tell him it'd be all right, ever again, or if they did he wouldn't believe them.
He'd thought, just briefly, that he'd found home again, and sworn not to make the same mistakes. He hadn't been a coward on the Tardis. He'd gone to his death for the Doctor and Rose, but it hadn't stuck. He'd gasped back to life, a coward again, unworthy, and home had left him behind. Again and again over the years he'd tried to bargain it back - he'd been a damned hero, given his life and pain for others and never counted the cost, but the familiar grinding whooshing sound of his safe haven had never come again.
He'd never gone back to his cowardice, but he'd lost his heart along the way. It was so hard to know what the right thing to do was, so he'd hidden his uncertainties behind a cold mask of indifference until he'd forgotten there was anythng behind it. Sometimes a rare soul would cross his path to remind him of a better way. But it had grown harder and harder to change. Jack was an old man. He was cold and ruthless, he played games with lives and hearts, the blood would never wash off of him.
He stood on a Cardiff rooftop waiting for the Doctor to save him from the monster he'd become. The Doctor fixed things - he could fix even this. Jack should never have woken from death on Satellite Five, and if the Doctor would only come and get him, damn it he could take whatever it was that kept the shell of him animated, (a shambling corpse of a once-loving soul, but still pretty) out of him, out, and give him the only peace and safety he deserved. He would. Jack had never doubted the Doctor.
Character: Jack
Summary: Jack introspection, pre-Torchwood series one. Brooding on rooftops like Batman (he was a drama queen too.)
Warning: Besides the one for drama queens? Abuse of italics. Some impolite language.
It all felt so close tonight. He looked at the lights of the city and they seemed to blend seamlessly with the stars, and he was out in space again, on a ship that could take him everywhere, with people who didn't see him as a dangerous and disgusting deviant without even the decency to keep his shame hidden. People who didn't manufacture shame out of the most natural and human impulses. People who didn't think it right to punish two lovers with a swift and painful death by hanging if they were lucky, or a slow body-breaking sentence of hard labor if they weren't, just for happening to share the same gender - but would call the brutal beating of a defenseless young woman her husband's god-given right.
This planet was so small, so limited and stifling... It was hard to believe his own world had grown from it. Magnificent and uplifting to know on the good days, but he was tired of it now and he wanted to go back to the real world. He wanted to go home, which was fucking hilarious, right? Because home was gone. He'd lost the right to it when he'd let his brother go - his cowardice had been punished by the eternal loss of safety. Nobody would ever hold him close and tell him it'd be all right, ever again, or if they did he wouldn't believe them.
He'd thought, just briefly, that he'd found home again, and sworn not to make the same mistakes. He hadn't been a coward on the Tardis. He'd gone to his death for the Doctor and Rose, but it hadn't stuck. He'd gasped back to life, a coward again, unworthy, and home had left him behind. Again and again over the years he'd tried to bargain it back - he'd been a damned hero, given his life and pain for others and never counted the cost, but the familiar grinding whooshing sound of his safe haven had never come again.
He'd never gone back to his cowardice, but he'd lost his heart along the way. It was so hard to know what the right thing to do was, so he'd hidden his uncertainties behind a cold mask of indifference until he'd forgotten there was anythng behind it. Sometimes a rare soul would cross his path to remind him of a better way. But it had grown harder and harder to change. Jack was an old man. He was cold and ruthless, he played games with lives and hearts, the blood would never wash off of him.
He stood on a Cardiff rooftop waiting for the Doctor to save him from the monster he'd become. The Doctor fixed things - he could fix even this. Jack should never have woken from death on Satellite Five, and if the Doctor would only come and get him, damn it he could take whatever it was that kept the shell of him animated, (a shambling corpse of a once-loving soul, but still pretty) out of him, out, and give him the only peace and safety he deserved. He would. Jack had never doubted the Doctor.