to come of age in a dry place - a ficmix
Medium: Television
Fandom: Torchwood
Subject: Jack Harkness
Title: To Come Of Age In A Dry Place: a young!Jack fanmix
Warnings: Spoilers for the whole Gray arc, some language.
Notes: A concept mix exploring what Jack's childhood on the Boeshane Peninsula would have been like: losing his brother and picking up the pieces, the rowdy teenage years and, finally, getting accepted into the Academy.
15 songs, each accompanied by a short ficlet. (Names have been kept the same even though they obviously wouldn't have been calling themselves Hart and Harkness back in those days, just because it was too complicated to change anything.)
someday, we're gonna dance with those liars
01. boy with a coin - iron & wine
a boy with a coin he found in the weeds
with bullets and pages of trade magazines
close to a car that flipped on the turn
when god left the ground to circle the world
~
He loves the water, and the sand. Boeshane is a hot place, but all that means to him now is that he isn't cold when he gets out of the water and goes to play with his father and Gray on the dunes behind the house.
Once he found an old, old coin tangled in the seaweed beyond the breakers and had shown it to his mother, delighted with his discovery. Hardly anyone used coins anymore; more efficient means of payment had been adopted. His mother had smiled her gentle smile and put it on the mantelpiece in a position of honour. He had taken it down later and put it in his pocket without really knowing why.
He supposed he might need it one day.
02. never forgive me, never forget me - akira yamaoka
{instrumental}
~
Later, he would remember exactly three things about that day:
1.) the feel of the sand burning his bare feet - looking at the crimson water and wondering if the things with the hellish faces could still find them if they hid under its surface.
2.) the feeling of looking back and seeing empty space where his brother should be. It felt like falling, and it felt like the start of something vicious and lifelong.
3.) his mother's tears and his father's blood.
03. no roads here - corb lund band
there are no roads here
there are no signposts to guide a man through this dark land
there are no roads here, there is no history
no written law to stay one's hand
~
The peninsula and the surrounding lands were destroyed completely in the aftermath. The aliens had used a substance unknown to that time and place which made those who came into contact with it… it made them wrong.
The day their neighbour tried to beat his head in with a piece of wrought iron, a lustful gleam in his eye, was the day they packed up what remained of their things and headed for the nearest city.
04. weight of the world - black rebel motorcycle club
this is stranger than love or loss
turning back words you face the dawning
no excuse for a wasted life
lightly falling through a whisper of sky
~
The guilt stayed with him. Instead of subsiding, time only added another layer of complexity to the weight on his shoulders - the maturity to justify his self-hatred with logic and reason. He saw it in his mother's eyes when she looked at him sometimes and those times were when he knew it boiled down to one thing and one thing only:
He let go of his hand.
05. someday - flipsyde
if you wanna make it to the top, better start now
so i hold my soul and i die hard
all alone in the night in the graveyard
someday, one day, i'm gonna be free and they won't try to kill me for being me
someday we're gonna rise up on that wind you know
someday we're gonna dance with those liars
~
The Time Agents were among the most respected - and feared - agency of judicial conmen in the galaxy. No one from Boeshane had ever been accepted, admission standards being what they were, but he had already resolved to be the first. He would have access to all the most advanced ships, equipment, and information that money could buy and some that it couldn't. He would have training and skills. He would have a means to go with his motive. He would be able to find his brother and take out the bastards that took him. He could and he would, someday soon.
06. laredo - band of horses
gonna take a trip to laredo, gonna take a dip in the lake
oh, i'm at a crossroads with myself
i don't got no one else
impossibilities at the door
i won't be needing them anymore
oh, is this the first time in your life
it's hard just to get by?
~
There was no water in the city, and sand only in the children's playgrounds. It was coarse and scratchy… not the same at all. Nothing was the same, and yet, nothing really changed. He still dreamed of the future and blamed himself for the past.
07. something to believe in - aqualung
you're spending all your time collecting and discovering
it's not enough
and no matter how you try, you never find the one you want
we stumble into our lives without a hand to hold
and any wonder we need to find
a certain something, certain…
turn out the light
and what are you left with?
i just need something to believe in
~
His adolescence brought a disillusionment that even the destruction of his home hadn't quite managed. He didn't know what he had expected of life, but this certainly wasn't it - a city full of hedonists and people who didn't look much beyond their front doors. The 51st century and, still, no one cared about what was going on outside the borders of their little worlds. He got sick of trying to communicate what exactly disgusted him about the fake livelihood of his peers until one day an ancient saying popped into his head unbidden: 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'.
08. what makes him act so bad - adam green
what did we do to him to make him act so bad?
and what did we say to him to make him say things like that?
~
He made the right friends and got invited to the right parties at the edge of the city. He was the best and the worst of them all - the designer drugs and the pretty boys and girls, they were all his if he only asked for them. He always asked for them.
His mother was distraught at his late hours and new habits. When he couldn't stand the disappointment in her eyes anymore, he left her the money he had made on the black market and went to stay with a man he met in a bar two nights ago.
09. fever - adam lambert
oh baby, lights on but your mom’s not home
i’m sick of laying down alone with this fever
my one and only
i wanna get you alone
give you fever, yeah
there it goes
you stole my soul and so…
'cuz, sweetheart
nobody knows
me looking fine, time to be mine
let’s get inside your car, just you, me and the stars
kind of ménage à trois sometimes
~
A natural affinity for sweettalking and a grin that spoke volumes were his tools of the trade. He could make almost anybody believe anything: he wanted to be with them forever, they were the most beautiful creature in the galaxy, he loved them. After awhile, he didn't even feel bad the morning after when all he left them was a hazy memory and, sometimes, a few valuables poorer.
(He never screwed over the people that had connections, though. These people got all of the Harkness charm and none of the budding conartist qualities.)
10. i know what i am - band of skulls
gasoline, saccharine
i got no reason for the state i'm in
but i know what i am
they know what they are
so let me be
~
Compromise was not a word in his repertoire. As he got closer to the Time Agency he worked on his image: a former party boy, now reformed and concentrating very hard on turning his life around. He made sure the street smarts and the roguish charm stayed visible, though, those were big sellers with the recruiters. Personality meant as much in that business as training.
11. whisper - a fine frenzy
running the race like a mouse in a cage
getting nowhere but i'm trying
forging ahead
but I'm stuck in the bed that I made, so I'm lying
but if you keep real close
yeah, you stay real close
i will reach you
~
He sometimes thought, "I deserve better than this," especially when he remembered about the sand and the water. He would look around whatever shitty apartment or abandoned warehouse he was sleeping in and it would seem like he would still be exactly where he was now when he was an old man, working toward a goal that would forever be above his station.
But all he had to do was reach for the guilt that was never far from the surface, remember how he'd failed everyone he'd ever cared about, and he would sigh and get on with getting on with things.
12. desert garden - vast
the stars are far away, i can see them with my eyes
i watch them fade away
like the moments of my life
strange how the houses look exactly all the same
and you're just a slave like me
at least i know it's true
~
Finally, finally. Manipulating his way into the Time Agency hadn't been easy and it had been a long time coming, but he had done it and earned himself a nickname in the meantime: The Face Of Boe. Hometown pride at its most misplaced.
He was one step closer to absolution and maybe a new life, if he played his cards right. He looked out the window of the ship that was taking him far away and watched the buildings fade away into the distance.
13. space dementia - muse
h8 is the one for me
it gives me all I need
and helps me coexist with the chill
you make me sick because I adore you so
i love all the dirty tricks and twisted games you play
on me
~
The Academy was unlike anything he had ever known, mostly in that it was disciplined. He found he didn't think much of discipline, at least not when he was the one expected to behave himself. The lifestyle he'd built up for himself during his teenage years wasn't in any way encouraged, but it was overlooked when it became apparent he was one of the best new recruits in his field. He balanced his studies and his extracurricular activities by holding onto, not guilt this time, but hatred toward the monsters that had ruined his life.
One night, a guy in the bar near his dormitory beat the shit out of him for prepositioning his girl and stopped just in time for both of them to see her stumbling out of the place on another man's arm. He had blond hair and some of the finest cheekbones he'd ever seen, so when he offered a hand up and a drink, he certainly hadn't refused.
14. hey man, nice shot - filter
now that the smoke's gone and the air is all clear
those who were right there got a new kind of fear
you'd fight and you were right
but they were just too strong
~
Jack Harkness and John Hart became something of a legend around the Academy. They could do things no one else could ever dream of getting away with because they were the best at what they did, and what they did in those early days was combat and interrogation. Their methods were always efficient but rarely tidy, and if he sometimes felt guilty about the mess they left behind, well, it was nothing he hadn't dealt with before.
15. the high road - broken bells
'cuz you know and so do i
the high road is hard to find
a detour to your new life
tell all of your friends goodbye
a soldier is bailing out
he curled his lips on the barrel
and i don't know if the dead can talk to anyone
come on and get the minimum before you open up your eyes
this army has so many hands
are you one of us
~
He felt like he was losing himself sometimes amongst the fighting and the fucking. He had never before considered himself a bad man, only a man of opportunity, but he also had never before considered himself a man that was capable of gunning men down in cold blood because they hadn't had the information he needed.
It was a slippery slope and he was still no closer to Gray. He wondered if it was worth it and then decided it didn't matter. It was who he was now and there was no getting away from it; he wasn't even sure that he wanted to.
He had come a long way but he knew he had a longer way to go, still.
if you stay real close, i will reach you
{zip file}