Fic: Of Lucid Dreams and Dying
Title: Of Lucid Dreams and Dying (One Shot)
Author: redknightalex
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: This deals with character death and the events of “Children of Earth: Day Four.” Yup, you've been warned.
Genre: Angst, Character Study, and rather dark.
Word Count: 1,368
Summary: What if Jack could see into the darkness beyond life? What if he could play in it like a kid plays in a sandbox, free of the worries of life and a cycle that would always repeat itself? What if he liked it there?
Oh, and it's un-betaed (sorry for the mistakes) and I own nothing. Characters belong to RTD, BBC, and company. Etc etc etc.
Author's Note: It always bothered me the way Jack was resurrected on CoE Day Four: it was peaceful, as if he had just woken up from a dream. Every other time we see him resurrected, he gasps for life and is severely confused for at least a moment or two. This is my explanation.
He never told anyone but Jack had, somehow, managed to control the darkness he sees and feels whenever he dies. He could, at times, control how much he remembered before his death, how much he felt upon awakening, and how long he stayed under. He liked to call it “lucid dying”.
It first happened as he was working for Torchwood proper, while one of his selves was locked away in a freezer and the other was traveling with the Doctor. He had found that he was dreaming, in a sense, of what caused him to die and, at that moment, he figured it wasn't worth living again, at least for a little while longer. So he stayed dead, if only for another minute more than he should have, and ever since then he worked on his lucid dying every time he remembered to do it.
There were times when his death was so traumatic that he never got the chance. Other times he didn't care. Most times he didn't want to. But the times he did investigate the darkness, did allow himself to almost “dream”, were interesting, for lack of a better word. And it was then that he started to actually feel the darkness of death that surrounded him.
For the longest time Jack was afraid of it, afraid of what it could mean, afraid that it was the universe saying that this darkness, the thing that everyone fears, could never be his. It was like a mocking call from death itself and when both Suzie and then Owen complained of the darkness, Jack laughed inside. Oh how they could never understand what he saw, what he felt, how he went through that darkness every time he died. Every bloody time.
Once his fears were quelled, only after a few hundred deaths, he went on to explore the darkness, to see if there was anything in there, to see what he could do with it. He found, to his amazement, that at times he could sense the world around him, feel the things that were being done to his body, while at other times he could relive a life, a person, a death, a resurrection. He could even control these more lucid times of his deaths. He rather enjoyed it on occasion. It was a break from life itself.
It helped him most when he was stuck underneath the ground, or frozen inside of a concrete block, and he could stay inside the darkness for one more minute before he felt the dirt or concrete in his lungs. His sanity, his only solace, was the darkness that forever embraced him. That is, until he started to question it.
When the gas killed both himself and Ianto, he knew that this time, this one time, he truly wanted death. He never wanted to wake up and face the reality of what had happened, what he had done, the events that he himself had set into motion so many years ago. Then he had had no conscience, no soul, no morality. Slowly, over the years, he had gained it, put into overdrive by one, single, marvelous man, and now....
He basked in the darkness, in the nether world that was after the world that beckoned, called, yearned for him. Now they realize, he thought as he felt his soul feed off of the pain and suffering in the cold, how valuable he is, how much they need him, how they erred by trying to kill him and, in doing so, destroyed Torchwood. In a way, he had become the human Doctor they needed when the latter never came through. He chuckled to himself. He was Torchwood and they had destroyed everything.
Through his lucid dying, he felt his body being moved and instead of waking, of telling the disturbers not to move him, or Ianto, he just let them carry him away. He felt the darkness of death bleeding into him and it took control. He let himself be taken over by it and in that sorrow, in the pain of it all, he let himself mourn for he knew that, when he awoke, the world would need him and not the broken man he knew he was inside. He had failed. He had failed the world, he had failed Torchwood, he had failed his ideals, and, most of all, he had failed him.
Ianto. Ianto Jones. The man who had brought Jack's sanity out of the darkness and into the real world, the man who had taught him what a real cup of coffee should taste like, and maybe even the prospect of at least one life well lived, well loved, well cherished. Jack had never had that, had never imagined having that after Gray, but Ianto had made him wonder if, perhaps, that was something he could have, that he was worthy enough to have at least one life worth living, worth fighting for.
And for a short time he had that. He had spent nights over at Ianto's flat and enjoyed breakfast, with coffee, in bed, lounging quietly on the sofa, or watching bad late-night programmes. For a short time he believed that he deserved happiness and that he had it. Those were the best of times.
Then, suddenly, it was taken away from him, by his own doing. Why must Ianto follow him everywhere? Why must that man be so loyal that he would blindly follow him to a death only Jack could survive? Why must that happiness be taken, stolen, grabbed from his frozen hands? And yet who could he blame? The 456 who only came back because of his actions or the coffee boy who loved him so? No, none of them could he blame, for it was only he that created these events. He killed Ianto Jones.
And when Ianto told Jack that he loved him that was his true breaking point. Everything he had, everything that was worth fighting for, all of the truth he kept denying himself, fell from the lips of a dying man. If only he could stop the truth: the idea that he could have had that life, could have been loved, could have been normal for one lifetime. If only Ianto had not said those three small words.
The disturbers set him down somewhere, probably in a room full of dead, and placed a sheet of some kind over his body. And for each touch, for each feeling his true body gave him, he swallowed up more of the darkness and willed himself not to cry.
The Ancient Greeks were right: hope was truly the worst of all the evils in the world and curse Pandora for all the hope she had ever given him.
It was a time before he felt the sheet removed from his face. Gwen, bless her, had come to find him and Ianto among the dead in the Thames House. It was time to wake up, to remove himself from the darkness that had roughened his soul, and get on with his life: his never-ending, soulless life. He was still the one they turned to when they needed someone without morals, without a heart, and they still had one.
Suddenly, still within the darkness of death, he thought of Ianto and everything that had happened to him, to them, and all within the span of a heartbeat. Then, with a quiet breath, he was resurrected.
The darkness left him and his eyes were full of lights. He looked at them, seeing them, feeling them, breathing in the air, stale and smelling of death, for a moment. But this time the brightness and beauty of life didn't fill him when the darkness receded and he was left with an emptiness that was worse than the sorrow that had once overpowered him.
He laid there, just for a moment, and steeled himself for what was to come. He sat up, thinking, feeling that empty hole in his soul, embracing it completely, and turned to Gwen. He held her as she cried over Ianto's body, trying valiantly to keep it quiet in the hollow room, as he let the emptiness consume him.
Author: redknightalex
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: This deals with character death and the events of “Children of Earth: Day Four.” Yup, you've been warned.
Genre: Angst, Character Study, and rather dark.
Word Count: 1,368
Summary: What if Jack could see into the darkness beyond life? What if he could play in it like a kid plays in a sandbox, free of the worries of life and a cycle that would always repeat itself? What if he liked it there?
Oh, and it's un-betaed (sorry for the mistakes) and I own nothing. Characters belong to RTD, BBC, and company. Etc etc etc.
Author's Note: It always bothered me the way Jack was resurrected on CoE Day Four: it was peaceful, as if he had just woken up from a dream. Every other time we see him resurrected, he gasps for life and is severely confused for at least a moment or two. This is my explanation.
He never told anyone but Jack had, somehow, managed to control the darkness he sees and feels whenever he dies. He could, at times, control how much he remembered before his death, how much he felt upon awakening, and how long he stayed under. He liked to call it “lucid dying”.
It first happened as he was working for Torchwood proper, while one of his selves was locked away in a freezer and the other was traveling with the Doctor. He had found that he was dreaming, in a sense, of what caused him to die and, at that moment, he figured it wasn't worth living again, at least for a little while longer. So he stayed dead, if only for another minute more than he should have, and ever since then he worked on his lucid dying every time he remembered to do it.
There were times when his death was so traumatic that he never got the chance. Other times he didn't care. Most times he didn't want to. But the times he did investigate the darkness, did allow himself to almost “dream”, were interesting, for lack of a better word. And it was then that he started to actually feel the darkness of death that surrounded him.
For the longest time Jack was afraid of it, afraid of what it could mean, afraid that it was the universe saying that this darkness, the thing that everyone fears, could never be his. It was like a mocking call from death itself and when both Suzie and then Owen complained of the darkness, Jack laughed inside. Oh how they could never understand what he saw, what he felt, how he went through that darkness every time he died. Every bloody time.
Once his fears were quelled, only after a few hundred deaths, he went on to explore the darkness, to see if there was anything in there, to see what he could do with it. He found, to his amazement, that at times he could sense the world around him, feel the things that were being done to his body, while at other times he could relive a life, a person, a death, a resurrection. He could even control these more lucid times of his deaths. He rather enjoyed it on occasion. It was a break from life itself.
It helped him most when he was stuck underneath the ground, or frozen inside of a concrete block, and he could stay inside the darkness for one more minute before he felt the dirt or concrete in his lungs. His sanity, his only solace, was the darkness that forever embraced him. That is, until he started to question it.
When the gas killed both himself and Ianto, he knew that this time, this one time, he truly wanted death. He never wanted to wake up and face the reality of what had happened, what he had done, the events that he himself had set into motion so many years ago. Then he had had no conscience, no soul, no morality. Slowly, over the years, he had gained it, put into overdrive by one, single, marvelous man, and now....
He basked in the darkness, in the nether world that was after the world that beckoned, called, yearned for him. Now they realize, he thought as he felt his soul feed off of the pain and suffering in the cold, how valuable he is, how much they need him, how they erred by trying to kill him and, in doing so, destroyed Torchwood. In a way, he had become the human Doctor they needed when the latter never came through. He chuckled to himself. He was Torchwood and they had destroyed everything.
Through his lucid dying, he felt his body being moved and instead of waking, of telling the disturbers not to move him, or Ianto, he just let them carry him away. He felt the darkness of death bleeding into him and it took control. He let himself be taken over by it and in that sorrow, in the pain of it all, he let himself mourn for he knew that, when he awoke, the world would need him and not the broken man he knew he was inside. He had failed. He had failed the world, he had failed Torchwood, he had failed his ideals, and, most of all, he had failed him.
Ianto. Ianto Jones. The man who had brought Jack's sanity out of the darkness and into the real world, the man who had taught him what a real cup of coffee should taste like, and maybe even the prospect of at least one life well lived, well loved, well cherished. Jack had never had that, had never imagined having that after Gray, but Ianto had made him wonder if, perhaps, that was something he could have, that he was worthy enough to have at least one life worth living, worth fighting for.
And for a short time he had that. He had spent nights over at Ianto's flat and enjoyed breakfast, with coffee, in bed, lounging quietly on the sofa, or watching bad late-night programmes. For a short time he believed that he deserved happiness and that he had it. Those were the best of times.
Then, suddenly, it was taken away from him, by his own doing. Why must Ianto follow him everywhere? Why must that man be so loyal that he would blindly follow him to a death only Jack could survive? Why must that happiness be taken, stolen, grabbed from his frozen hands? And yet who could he blame? The 456 who only came back because of his actions or the coffee boy who loved him so? No, none of them could he blame, for it was only he that created these events. He killed Ianto Jones.
And when Ianto told Jack that he loved him that was his true breaking point. Everything he had, everything that was worth fighting for, all of the truth he kept denying himself, fell from the lips of a dying man. If only he could stop the truth: the idea that he could have had that life, could have been loved, could have been normal for one lifetime. If only Ianto had not said those three small words.
The disturbers set him down somewhere, probably in a room full of dead, and placed a sheet of some kind over his body. And for each touch, for each feeling his true body gave him, he swallowed up more of the darkness and willed himself not to cry.
The Ancient Greeks were right: hope was truly the worst of all the evils in the world and curse Pandora for all the hope she had ever given him.
It was a time before he felt the sheet removed from his face. Gwen, bless her, had come to find him and Ianto among the dead in the Thames House. It was time to wake up, to remove himself from the darkness that had roughened his soul, and get on with his life: his never-ending, soulless life. He was still the one they turned to when they needed someone without morals, without a heart, and they still had one.
Suddenly, still within the darkness of death, he thought of Ianto and everything that had happened to him, to them, and all within the span of a heartbeat. Then, with a quiet breath, he was resurrected.
The darkness left him and his eyes were full of lights. He looked at them, seeing them, feeling them, breathing in the air, stale and smelling of death, for a moment. But this time the brightness and beauty of life didn't fill him when the darkness receded and he was left with an emptiness that was worse than the sorrow that had once overpowered him.
He laid there, just for a moment, and steeled himself for what was to come. He sat up, thinking, feeling that empty hole in his soul, embracing it completely, and turned to Gwen. He held her as she cried over Ianto's body, trying valiantly to keep it quiet in the hollow room, as he let the emptiness consume him.