Back again [fic]
Title: Back Again
Character[s]: Jack, the team
Rating: PG - 13
Word Count: 506
Notes: Thanks as always to
laliginfor betaing, encouragement and everything else.
Jack gasps, or would gasp if he had a body. He has - he doesn’t know what he has, what this form is or what it’s made of any more than he knew at birth that he was made of meaty flesh with channels of blood coursing through him, all of it carefully structured around a skeleton of delicate bones. For all he knows it could simply be a state of mind, him being here.
The darkness that surrounds him is almost an object in its presence and sheer solidity. Jack feels he could reach out and touch it if he tried - or felt, thinking about this place one Thursday night prowling the streets of Cardiff town - he can’t feel it now, can’t think or feel anything…it’s not as though his tries are barred, denied. It’s as if he has no wish or inclination to feel and therefore can’t.
He knows, in much the same way he knows that he’s dead that there are others in the black with him. He can’t hear them, he can’t see them - he just knows. He also knows that they’re close enough to touch, if he can touch. Somehow, even after he comes back from here, trying to touch one of them seems…wrong. Almost indecent. It shouldn’t happen. He shouldn’t do it. It’s in his bones (if he actually has those) not to; even if he tried to they would disobey him.
For all that - for all the dark and the vague loneliness that this place, this plane is made up of, despite all the others huddled around him - it feels strangely right. Like the satisfaction that comes after a meal when you’re hungry, really hungry for the food. This was meant to happen. And in that there is an odd comfort. Like coming to bed at the end of a long day (before this stuff started fizzing through him and he started to skip between the two like moving in between rooms), just falling asleep and letting all the worry go…
Like whatever was coming out of the dark for him. Whatever it is can come and get him now. He can’t care, even if he wanted to.
But then…then in this world that’s neither hot nor cold he feels a strange, too familiar warmth moving in his blood, threading through his body and - no, no, nonononoNO! He can think. He’s thinking. Feeling. That means-
He gasps again, except this time he has lungs and there’s air too and it feels just a bit too sharp against his throat. There’s something in his hand (definitely not there anymore). Gwen’s ankle. He starts to see and they’re all staring down at him, surprise and horror, even Gwen who should know better and it sounds like every alarm in creation is going off around him.
He sits up and he’s back in among the mess of things - and from the look of it they’ve screwed up big this time - which, for his team is saying a lot.
“What have you done?”
Character[s]: Jack, the team
Rating: PG - 13
Word Count: 506
Notes: Thanks as always to
laliginfor betaing, encouragement and everything else.
Jack gasps, or would gasp if he had a body. He has - he doesn’t know what he has, what this form is or what it’s made of any more than he knew at birth that he was made of meaty flesh with channels of blood coursing through him, all of it carefully structured around a skeleton of delicate bones. For all he knows it could simply be a state of mind, him being here.
The darkness that surrounds him is almost an object in its presence and sheer solidity. Jack feels he could reach out and touch it if he tried - or felt, thinking about this place one Thursday night prowling the streets of Cardiff town - he can’t feel it now, can’t think or feel anything…it’s not as though his tries are barred, denied. It’s as if he has no wish or inclination to feel and therefore can’t.
He knows, in much the same way he knows that he’s dead that there are others in the black with him. He can’t hear them, he can’t see them - he just knows. He also knows that they’re close enough to touch, if he can touch. Somehow, even after he comes back from here, trying to touch one of them seems…wrong. Almost indecent. It shouldn’t happen. He shouldn’t do it. It’s in his bones (if he actually has those) not to; even if he tried to they would disobey him.
For all that - for all the dark and the vague loneliness that this place, this plane is made up of, despite all the others huddled around him - it feels strangely right. Like the satisfaction that comes after a meal when you’re hungry, really hungry for the food. This was meant to happen. And in that there is an odd comfort. Like coming to bed at the end of a long day (before this stuff started fizzing through him and he started to skip between the two like moving in between rooms), just falling asleep and letting all the worry go…
Like whatever was coming out of the dark for him. Whatever it is can come and get him now. He can’t care, even if he wanted to.
But then…then in this world that’s neither hot nor cold he feels a strange, too familiar warmth moving in his blood, threading through his body and - no, no, nonononoNO! He can think. He’s thinking. Feeling. That means-
He gasps again, except this time he has lungs and there’s air too and it feels just a bit too sharp against his throat. There’s something in his hand (definitely not there anymore). Gwen’s ankle. He starts to see and they’re all staring down at him, surprise and horror, even Gwen who should know better and it sounds like every alarm in creation is going off around him.
He sits up and he’s back in among the mess of things - and from the look of it they’ve screwed up big this time - which, for his team is saying a lot.
“What have you done?”