FIC: The Last Immortal Man
Title: The Last Immortal Man
Fandom: Torchwood / Doctor Who
Author:
dt_mad
Disclaimer: I don't own TW / DW or any of the characters in them - more's the pity!!!
Character / Pairing: Jack Harkness / The Doctor (10)
Prompt: #5 - Immortal
Notes: This was written to try and overcome my writer's block. It hasn't been past my beta reader so all mistakes and general crappiness are ALL mine!
Slight spoilers for : TW: COE
Summary: It's hard being immortal
Rating: G
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Immortal:
A thousand years have come and gone but time has passed me by
Stars stopped in the sky
Frozen in an everlasting view
Waiting for the world to end, weary of the night
Praying for the light
Xanadu - by Rush
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I’m Captain Jack Harkness and I’m immortal. I didn’t choose this life, it was thrust upon me in the heat of a war that shouldn’t have been winnable, by a woman who didn’t understand the power she wielded.
It took me a while to discover that I couldn’t die and a lot longer to discover how much it hurts when those you love do. You try to tell yourself that it will never happen but when you look in the mirror day after day and nothing ever changes you know that the only person you are fooling is yourself.
After the first time I lost somebody I loved, the grief threatened to overwhelm me and I promised never to love again, but what is life without love? So I have lived hundreds of years and loved, really loved a precious few, everyone of whom I will never….could never forget.
And now I’ve loved and lost that love again….three times in a day…even for an immortal that is a lot of pain to overcome…..good job I have forever.
I killed a child, my Grandson….even though he never knew that. I had to….and eventually I hope all those who are still alive because of that will realise that I really, truly had no option. If I could have taken his place then I would have done…in a heartbeat…but I’m not a child and only a child would do. Now I will never know if I would ever have had the courage to tell him who his ‘Uncle Jack’ was and how come he never got any older.
I killed the love of the last of my family…my daughter. I placed her in danger everyday she walked this planet because of who I was and she didn’t hate me for it but when that danger became a reality and took her son from her, her hatred was born. I don’t blame her; believe me I hate myself enough for both of us. I doubt there is enough time in her life for her to ever forgive me and I will live with that long, long after she has gone.
I don’t think I deserve another family.
I killed my lover…not directly but he’s still dead and I’m still here. His name was Ianto Jones and I loved him with a passion I haven’t felt for a long time and I just wish I’d told him that more often than I did. He was smart, funny and incredibly sexy in a suit, and he also loved me back and that is what got him killed. His loyalty to me and his insistence that he was by my side when I faced the danger of the 456 meant that I was forced to watch as he died in my arms. I’d kind of hoped that he would grow old with me before…well before he died. He was SO young, we had so much to do, so many places to see, so many adventures yet to have. Now all I have is his tie and his memory and my promise to him that I will never forget him.
I don’t think I deserve to love again.
And yet I know that I will… I already do.... behind the families and the lovers, the pain and the heartache has been my love for Him.I have loved this man since the very first time I saw him and although I haven’t ever, couldn’t ever, tell him how I feel I think he knows.
He knows because he understands….he understands what it is like to live more lifetimes than are normal, he knows what it is like to love and loose those loves. He knows that making the choices about who lives and who dies can turn you into a monster. He knows as well as I do that without love immortality will eventually drive you insane.
I don’t really know how much time has passed since that week on Earth - that week when my actions of years ago bounced back into the present and almost cost the world its children - it has become a meaningless passage of seconds and minutes, each filled with a hatred of what I have become, each filled with the deep pain of losses that should never have been.
I’ve travelled into the stars and not found any answers. I’ve travelled into my soul and found even less.
Even the pain of my own deaths - and there have been many at my own hand since that day - haven’t helped my grief. I am more broken than at any other time in all my long, long life….and I hate it….I hate the gaping raw wound where Jack Harkness once used to be….but I don’t know how to heal.
Another night on another barren planet in another part of the galaxy, another night spent staring at stars that I don’t recognise and remembering. The night is still and would be silent but for my tears.
“I’m sorry.” I tell the stars because there are too many names to tell each of them in turn. It doesn’t seem enough…it isn’t enough… but right now it is all that I have.
A sudden gentle wind rustles nearby and a voice breaks through the silence.
“They know,” it tells me “And so am I Jack, I should have been there for you and I wasn’t. I’m sorry…I’m so, so sorry.”
To the Doctor I am something that is ‘wrong’ in this Universe, an anomaly in time and space and because of that he can always find me. As I hear his voice and turn to see him waiting for me, I’m glad that he is here, glad that I have somebody to share my grief with.
“Doctor” I rise to my feet, inside I want to run into his arms and never let him go but I force myself to walk slowly towards him. He looks sad and tired, like he has fought battles of his own since we last met and my heart aches for him, aches in a way that I had almost forgotten how to. He holds an arm out for me and I take his gentle embrace.
“I’m sorry Jack, I couldn’t be there, I just couldn’t, but I am here now.” He wraps his arms tighter around me and I feel his love for me envelop me, a love that is without question, without boundaries and more than I deserve. “Let me help you.”
I have a long journey still ahead of me but as I feel the gentle brush of his lips against my head and with all the time in the world and the Doctor by my side I know that I have taken the first steps on that journey.