Things Left Behind on Purpose
who_topia: Earth below us/drifting falling/floating weightless/calling calling home... - "Major Tom", Peter Schilling
Jack's familiar with silence. The silence of lying in bed in the middle of the night, darkness pressing in comfortably around him, where the only things that break it are the sound of someone's breathing, the sound of a heartbeat. Recently, that heartbeat has been doubled as often as not, and there's another sound too, the gentle background hum of the TARDIS.
There's the silence that falls right before a storm, or a battle, or a death, the hush as everything dies down and the world's just waiting for disaster.
There's the silence of being the only one left, when everyone he liked and loved and fought with and beside is dead, except for him, the danger's past and he's the only one around to pick up the pieces. Jack learned that one early on.
This silence is different from all of them, though it's got a little of the latter to it. This is the silence of a dead space station spinning miles above a sleeping, oblivious Earth. This is the silence of one heart beating in a place meant to contain thousands. This is the silence of loss, the silence that settles in the moment that a cyclic wheezing, groaning sound dies away, the moment the first home he's had since he was a child vanishes to another place, another time.
This is the silence of loneliness, when he'd always assumed the unspoken promise between the three of them, that they wouldn't ever be lonely again.
The silence of the game station is not one Jack is accustomed to, and one that seems like it might well tear the heart from his chest right then and there. He wants to sit down, right here, in one of the chairs dotting the control room, and wait. He came back once, he's bound to do it again...
But part of Jack knows better, and it's that part that makes him turn away, turn back to go down to the lower levels, because he has things to do before he makes a decision about where to go from here.
He gathers up the bodies. This, too, is familiar. Some of them, he remembers meeting, recognizes their faces, remembers names. Some are complete strangers, but he lays them out gently, sets their weapons at their sides, when they have them, murmurs apologies because the Doctor would have. And can't stop thinking about how he ought to be one of these bodies, and wondering how it is he's not.
And when they've all been laid out, absolutely peaceful in the eerie silence of a ship with all electronics powered down to the lowest level, and nothing outside but deep space, he takes the lift back up to the control room and sits down to wait.
He waits a day and a half, watching Earth turn below the Game Station, the pattern of sunlight and darkness slowly sliding across the surface of the planet.
Any minute now, he'll hear the whirring, groaning approach of the TARDIS. Any minute now, the room will be illuminated by a flashing blue light, a wind will rise up out of nowhere, ruffling his hair and scattering the few papers still lying around the room. The Doctor's going to step out and tell him to hurry up and get in, he hasn't got all day, and Jack's going to step into a room all green and gold and be tackled by Rose almost immediately. He'll kiss her, the Doctor will explain what the hell happened, and then they'll be off again, into anywhere in time and space they damn well please.
He waits. And waits. And they never do come.
Muse: Jack Harkness
Word Count: 611
Jack's familiar with silence. The silence of lying in bed in the middle of the night, darkness pressing in comfortably around him, where the only things that break it are the sound of someone's breathing, the sound of a heartbeat. Recently, that heartbeat has been doubled as often as not, and there's another sound too, the gentle background hum of the TARDIS.
There's the silence that falls right before a storm, or a battle, or a death, the hush as everything dies down and the world's just waiting for disaster.
There's the silence of being the only one left, when everyone he liked and loved and fought with and beside is dead, except for him, the danger's past and he's the only one around to pick up the pieces. Jack learned that one early on.
This silence is different from all of them, though it's got a little of the latter to it. This is the silence of a dead space station spinning miles above a sleeping, oblivious Earth. This is the silence of one heart beating in a place meant to contain thousands. This is the silence of loss, the silence that settles in the moment that a cyclic wheezing, groaning sound dies away, the moment the first home he's had since he was a child vanishes to another place, another time.
This is the silence of loneliness, when he'd always assumed the unspoken promise between the three of them, that they wouldn't ever be lonely again.
The silence of the game station is not one Jack is accustomed to, and one that seems like it might well tear the heart from his chest right then and there. He wants to sit down, right here, in one of the chairs dotting the control room, and wait. He came back once, he's bound to do it again...
But part of Jack knows better, and it's that part that makes him turn away, turn back to go down to the lower levels, because he has things to do before he makes a decision about where to go from here.
He gathers up the bodies. This, too, is familiar. Some of them, he remembers meeting, recognizes their faces, remembers names. Some are complete strangers, but he lays them out gently, sets their weapons at their sides, when they have them, murmurs apologies because the Doctor would have. And can't stop thinking about how he ought to be one of these bodies, and wondering how it is he's not.
And when they've all been laid out, absolutely peaceful in the eerie silence of a ship with all electronics powered down to the lowest level, and nothing outside but deep space, he takes the lift back up to the control room and sits down to wait.
He waits a day and a half, watching Earth turn below the Game Station, the pattern of sunlight and darkness slowly sliding across the surface of the planet.
Any minute now, he'll hear the whirring, groaning approach of the TARDIS. Any minute now, the room will be illuminated by a flashing blue light, a wind will rise up out of nowhere, ruffling his hair and scattering the few papers still lying around the room. The Doctor's going to step out and tell him to hurry up and get in, he hasn't got all day, and Jack's going to step into a room all green and gold and be tackled by Rose almost immediately. He'll kiss her, the Doctor will explain what the hell happened, and then they'll be off again, into anywhere in time and space they damn well please.
He waits. And waits. And they never do come.
Muse: Jack Harkness
Word Count: 611