Artistic Temperament [fic]
Title: Artistic Temperament
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating(s): G
Pairing(s): Allusions, mainly Jack/Doctor
Prompt: 17. Brown for
fanfic100
Word Count: 825
Warning(s): Not meant as an AU, but can be read as one.
Summary: Jack's not quite gotten the hang of painting...
When all is said and done the Doctor is an artist, one Jack admired distantly, in dusty books and cool white galleries, and personally, those times he was able to watch over his shoulder as he created masterpieces and worked miracles.
Jack was his model for a while and though the sketches and cartoons the Doctor produced seemed a little beautified, aimed at a romantic ideal rather than reality, Jack tried to live up to them, so that when his portrait was completed, with one last flourish of oils and brush, it would reflect reality. It was only much later, when he thought himself scorned, and tried his hand at playing the painter, that it occurred to him that portrait did tell the truth. Those times he sat for him, the Doctor had looked, chosen an angle, and drawn what he saw. And what he saw, what he chose to commemorate, was the best and most beautiful part of him.
It is not a two-dimensional caricature of what Jack could be if the universe were a perfect place; it is a facet of him which glitters and catches the eye, a point of view of someone who, it turns out, actually knew him very well.
Though he has taken up the pencils and the paints, he’s not the Doctor and it will be centuries before he can come close to competing. Especially given his ambitions.
The Doctor had a trick (a party piece, if we were to talk of music) - one of those abilities you do not envy or crave for yourself, but rather crave to see others perform endlessly. He would take colours, every colour imaginable, every shade of every shade thinkable and would spin them together to create a pure, blinding, breath-taking white. It wasn’t paints he mixed; it was light.
He has seen the Doctor do it since re-discovering him, but his style has changed and even if Jack were still a model the Doctor no longer seems inclined to draw or paint him, disturbed by his composition. It was performed and Jack watched, but it lacked that quirky, off-centre flair and, more importantly, Jack knew it was not performed for him.
And so he goes on playing the artist, pretending to be aloof, the cat who walks by himself and prefers his own company - an act learnt from his beloved Doctor, now so fallible and nowhere near as distant - and begins to sketch. He can’t quite get the angles right yet; his ex-model Suzie, and Ianto, whose face he still can’t get right no matter how close up he gets or how many senses he uses, are proof enough of that.
But he has found good models; there’s one who might be his Galatea, as Rose was to the Doctor. Though Jack has decided not to take that path; the Doctor is so busy mourning her and those ideals he believes lost he hardly looks up to draw his new model, too certain that she will be found wanting (or perhaps afraid that his Rose had perfection because he hadn’t eyes for anyone else; that to consider Martha for too long will mar his memory of that perfect statue). It makes Jack’s heart ache, because Martha, with her dark eyes and daring smile, glows in a way even his novice hands could capture. Imagine what the Doctor’s could do. He may try one day, if she leaves the Doctor and their paths cross again, but perhaps not; Martha could all too easily become an artist too.
He’s practiced for many years now, worked on perfecting his technique, and he’s getting good, no doubt about that. But he still can’t quite pull off that old trick of the Doctor’s. He manages once in a forget-me-not blue moon, but too often he finds he was mixing paints and inks and other colourful stains and ends up with brown instead.
He complains as such to one of his models, one of those few times he can articulate it. She understands what he means, he thinks; she has seen the Doctor’s work, albeit fleetingly. She rolls her eyes and gives him a pitying smirk, the one that makes him feel he’s missed something obvious and that she could be an artist someday, tapping out binary to create colour and form and shape - maybe she already is, doodling when he looks the other way - and tells him that that is what’s so good about his work. Humans are by tradition limited to mixing that God-awful brown with their paints; Jack is able every now and again to do something no other human can do; mix the colours together, each last one, and make white. The rarity of it, she tells him, just makes it all the more beautiful.
He smiles at her and takes up his brushes again. It’s refreshing to hear from another viewpoint every now and again, even if she doesn’t quite get it.
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating(s): G
Pairing(s): Allusions, mainly Jack/Doctor
Prompt: 17. Brown for
fanfic100
Word Count: 825
Warning(s): Not meant as an AU, but can be read as one.
Summary: Jack's not quite gotten the hang of painting...
When all is said and done the Doctor is an artist, one Jack admired distantly, in dusty books and cool white galleries, and personally, those times he was able to watch over his shoulder as he created masterpieces and worked miracles.
Jack was his model for a while and though the sketches and cartoons the Doctor produced seemed a little beautified, aimed at a romantic ideal rather than reality, Jack tried to live up to them, so that when his portrait was completed, with one last flourish of oils and brush, it would reflect reality. It was only much later, when he thought himself scorned, and tried his hand at playing the painter, that it occurred to him that portrait did tell the truth. Those times he sat for him, the Doctor had looked, chosen an angle, and drawn what he saw. And what he saw, what he chose to commemorate, was the best and most beautiful part of him.
It is not a two-dimensional caricature of what Jack could be if the universe were a perfect place; it is a facet of him which glitters and catches the eye, a point of view of someone who, it turns out, actually knew him very well.
Though he has taken up the pencils and the paints, he’s not the Doctor and it will be centuries before he can come close to competing. Especially given his ambitions.
The Doctor had a trick (a party piece, if we were to talk of music) - one of those abilities you do not envy or crave for yourself, but rather crave to see others perform endlessly. He would take colours, every colour imaginable, every shade of every shade thinkable and would spin them together to create a pure, blinding, breath-taking white. It wasn’t paints he mixed; it was light.
He has seen the Doctor do it since re-discovering him, but his style has changed and even if Jack were still a model the Doctor no longer seems inclined to draw or paint him, disturbed by his composition. It was performed and Jack watched, but it lacked that quirky, off-centre flair and, more importantly, Jack knew it was not performed for him.
And so he goes on playing the artist, pretending to be aloof, the cat who walks by himself and prefers his own company - an act learnt from his beloved Doctor, now so fallible and nowhere near as distant - and begins to sketch. He can’t quite get the angles right yet; his ex-model Suzie, and Ianto, whose face he still can’t get right no matter how close up he gets or how many senses he uses, are proof enough of that.
But he has found good models; there’s one who might be his Galatea, as Rose was to the Doctor. Though Jack has decided not to take that path; the Doctor is so busy mourning her and those ideals he believes lost he hardly looks up to draw his new model, too certain that she will be found wanting (or perhaps afraid that his Rose had perfection because he hadn’t eyes for anyone else; that to consider Martha for too long will mar his memory of that perfect statue). It makes Jack’s heart ache, because Martha, with her dark eyes and daring smile, glows in a way even his novice hands could capture. Imagine what the Doctor’s could do. He may try one day, if she leaves the Doctor and their paths cross again, but perhaps not; Martha could all too easily become an artist too.
He’s practiced for many years now, worked on perfecting his technique, and he’s getting good, no doubt about that. But he still can’t quite pull off that old trick of the Doctor’s. He manages once in a forget-me-not blue moon, but too often he finds he was mixing paints and inks and other colourful stains and ends up with brown instead.
He complains as such to one of his models, one of those few times he can articulate it. She understands what he means, he thinks; she has seen the Doctor’s work, albeit fleetingly. She rolls her eyes and gives him a pitying smirk, the one that makes him feel he’s missed something obvious and that she could be an artist someday, tapping out binary to create colour and form and shape - maybe she already is, doodling when he looks the other way - and tells him that that is what’s so good about his work. Humans are by tradition limited to mixing that God-awful brown with their paints; Jack is able every now and again to do something no other human can do; mix the colours together, each last one, and make white. The rarity of it, she tells him, just makes it all the more beautiful.
He smiles at her and takes up his brushes again. It’s refreshing to hear from another viewpoint every now and again, even if she doesn’t quite get it.