Fic: "Ynys Echni" [Torchwood, Jack/Jack: PG]
Title: Ynys Echni
Author: Shane Mayhem
Rating: PG (there may be a swear word)
Pairing(s): hints at Jack/Jack, Jack/Ianto
Warnings/Notes: Spoilers for "Adrift" and "Children of Earth." Unbeta'ed...sorry.
Summary: Jack visits Flat Holm one last time. (Written for at_the_ritz monthly challenge: Children of Earth.)
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
--T.S. Eliot "Ash Wednesday"
He loses himself in the slap, slap of waves against the sides of the ferry. The sea churns grey and misty around the sides of the boat, glinting silver where the weak diffuse sunlight filters through the low sky. If he's still enough, he can feel the rhythm of the great breathing ocean in his diaphragm, or in his ever-regenerating cells. Most people would find it calming, comforting. But to Jack it is almost mournful--a reminder of the vast emptiness of life, the loneliness of this tiny and meaningless planet. It aches in him like the heartbeat he can never escape.
The island looms nearer, crouched on the horizon like a sentinel gazing dully and eternally out to sea, its back to him, its shoulders hunched. The fog lifts a bit, drawing away from the green crest of the small landmass, revealing it a bit at a time as the ferry approaches. He watches the sharp-toothed rocks known as The Wolves become more distinct shapes off the northwest corner of the island, poised as they have been for thousands of years, as though waiting for unlucky ships to try to pass. The sight tugs at his mind and sparks a thought that chases itself through dark empty corridors: how all of human history is marked out with events of great tragedy, ragged and grim as the rocks. He thinks of how many ships lie at the bottom of the Bristol Channel, through accident, storm, and war. How humanity struggles onward, tragedy to tragedy. Adapting.
It should be inspirational.
Jack is tired of adapting. He's so tired of surviving everything.
He doesn't say a word to the ferryman when they moor at the island's small dock, but pays him with double the amount he requires and walks off toward the steep path up the island's flank. The man doesn't seem to mind; it's as though he were aware of his part in an ancient cycle, and he accepts the oddities of his single passenger as he has for years, silent and stoic as Charon himself.
Jack reaches the top of the cliff and stands for a moment, eyes closed in the patchy light, trying to feel the warmth of the sun. It is faint, like a dying breath, embattled by the high sea wind. He tips his head; he can smell the subtle traces of grass and rock sea lavender, the silence of a place where humanity has remembered Nature. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can sometimes imagine he's standing on the edge of the world.
A distant foghorn brings him back, and he shoves his hands deep into his coat pockets, angling inland towards the stone stairwell that will take him down beneath, into darkness.
~
The strange and miserable victims of the Rift are mostly quiet today. He can hear the odd cry echo down the damp halls, stifled and distorted by the heavy stone. The sounds seem to pass right through him, stinging his numbness only a little. His boots fall heavily on the uneven cement; he wends his way through the corridors instinctively, until he stands before an unmarked door. He puts his hand on the cold, rough metal, pondering how funny it is, that a year ago he sealed the room's occupant in, just as he'd done for hundreds before, and imagined his heart was breaking. Imagined that this, so soon after the deaths of Tosh and Owen, had been the worst pain he thought he could feel.
He feels the pitiful echo of that pain now, but it's just a ghost, a bittersweet memory. He opens the door, making its rusty hinges groan.
The room is small, as they all are, containing only a bed, bedside table, and chair. There is one window--Jack's long-ago attempt at a kindness that he hoped would somehow balance his own grief and guilt. It is small, barred, and high up on the wall, looking out barely above ground level. The natural light it lets in is hardly enough to pick out the corners of the dim space, but the room's occupant sits, as he always does, on the edge of the narrow bed, gazing up at it.
After a while, he turns to look at Jack and his eyes, just for a moment, are the same color as sunlight. Shadow outlines the gaunt planes of his face, and his smile.
"Hello." Jack isn't sure how it is that he manages to smile back, but he always does. He remembers somehow, how to arrange his face. How to lie.
"Hello."
John Doe's voice is low and soft, rusty at the edges. The smile in it is genuine. He's always pleased to see Jack, no matter how infrequently that might be. He stands, aware on some subliminal level of an antiquated and polite code of behavior he should be following, and the halting stiffness in that motion tugs at something within Jack, again.
Jack's feet carry him closer; he's not sure why he's here, except that he must feel he should leave no stone unturned now in confronting his own failure, his own shame. Or perhaps it's because the young man before him is the only one who unequivocally, unconditionally forgives him, no matter what he's done.
He has to.
He doesn't remember who he is.
"How are you feeling?" Jack asks, after a moment, hesitantly seating himself on the bed. John Doe remains standing, but his eyes are alert, aware. Present. It's not always this way. Jack smiles again, and regrets it an instant later as the expression on the young man's scarred face becomes serious, watching him.
"I'm fine, boss. What's happened?"
"Nothing," Jack says, too quickly. But the injured pilot is sharp today, and he's not buying it. Jack finds himself wishing he'd found him in one of his less-conscious periods, when the green-gold eyes turn hazy and distracted, when the mind churns in far-out spaces beyond the reach of language. Jack wants to be anywhere but in the present.
"Everything," Jack whispers, and feels it, the bubble of shame and hurt rising again, stinging his eyes with tears. God, not here. Not now. He turns his head quickly and wipes aggressively at his eyes, but John Doe has seen it and Jack feels the bed gently give way as he sits down beside him, waiting.
~
He's a symbol of how cruel Chaos is. Jack supposes he should accept that when one is destined to live forever, even the mathematically impossible becomes possible, but he still doesn't see how it's fair, just statistically, that he should have responded to one of the mini-Rift spikes one day and found the burned and bleeding pilot washed on the rocks of Steep Holm like flotsam from a shipwreck.
It was, he feels, as though the Universe were echoing the Doctor's own sentiments about him, punishing him, steadily ripping apart who he was and trying to transform him into someone else.
How horrified and betrayed Jack had felt, when the injured man had not died, but rather taken those awful breaths, fighting to survive. He sometimes feels it even now, watching him in his less lucid moments as he tries so hard to remember, to recognize where he is and what is happening to him, fighting tooth and nail to recover an identity that Jack feels is destroyed, tarnished, and worthless. He wishes he could tell the pilot to give up, to let go of reality and slip away. But John Doe is a fighter, and he doesn't know how empty and hopeless the world outside is.
He remembers Jack, mostly. He thinks he remembers kissing him, though he won't outright say it. He thinks Jack is there to help him. He thinks they are going to save each other. Sometimes Jack feels like he would say anything, do anything, to make that terrible spark of hope in the pilot's eyes smother and die. But he never does. He smiles and plays along.
Until today.
~
Jack isn't sure why, but it all comes out. His voice sounds odd to him--breathless and halting, as though he's forgotten the words for things, as though it were he who'd forgotten for a moment who he was. He tells John Doe about the 456, the children. He tells him, eventually, about Ianto. He tells him about Steven.
His voice gets flatter as he talks, running out of emotion, headlong into the almost-comforting space of hollowness. He's almost whispering as he finishes, his fingers twisting and twisting one of the brass buttons on his coat.
"I betrayed her."
"You made a command decision."
"I ruined their lives. All of them. They could have been happy."
"With those creatures killing them all off? Doesn't sound like it."
"I had no right to make those sacrifices for them."
"You're their leader."
Jack stands, suddenly. A tiny spark of anger. "You've never--you don't know--"
It passes, though, as quickly as it came, and he finds himself staring out the window, just as John Doe had been. He can see where it could be mesmerizing--that one brightness in all the dark room, in all the dark world. He turns quickly away and spots dance in front of his eyes.
"No. I don't know." It's so quiet it's almost a whisper, as well. The keen golden eyes are looking up at him, full of a muted sadness. But still that fucking hope. "But I...can imagine. Sort of."
Jack's mouth twists wryly. There is a moment, intense and brief, when he wants to ask John Doe just what he does imagine, all those hours and days and weeks and months he's sat here alone, staring at the light of the sky barely visible outside his tiny window. He thinks of asking him what he's struggled to discover about himself, whether he remembers the night at the Ritz, what he thinks of Jack. Who he thinks he is. He could pry him open, he thinks, and lose himself in someone else's pain, someone else's trouble and optimism. He could try to find something worthwhile about this place again, sit down on the bed beside the young pilot and try to see what he sees, in that small square of light. His heart beats hard and his stomach twists uncomfortably, just on the verge of that old feeling of discovery.
But he remembers Ianto's face, gazing up at him as he died for Jack, begging him to remember him, even in a thousand years.
He knows that in a thousand years, the memory of that feeling of love will be like the memory of flying to the pilot in the dark room: a vague itch that makes him stare into foreign faces the way John Doe stares at his tiny sliver of sky, wondering how to get back there.
And it's the knowledge that he will forget, that he'll remember the face but not the exact feeling, that kills the last of something in Jack, and his eyes go dull again, the twisting in his stomach settling into heavy lead. He has already closed his expression into a meaningless small smile when he turns back to the alert young man on the bed.
"How's the pain today?"
The pilot is silent for a moment.
"Not too bad." Cautiously. His eyes are still gazing straight into Jack's, trying to see past the curtains that have suddenly fallen.
"It's probably time for your pills, anyway, though. Just in case."
John Doe doesn't say anything, but he accepts the glass of water that Jack fetches from the rusty sink in the corner, and the three white pills that he gives him. Jack's fingers brush his as he hands over the glass, and he knows it will be the last time he ever touches him.
So he runs his hand up the pilot's arm, to his shoulder, the clavicle sharp beneath his shirt because he's lost too much weight. He smiles reassuringly into the young man's face, and even tries to let his face echo some tiny shred of promise, as though he'll be back, as though he'll be there to help him try to recover his lost life.
And he gives him enough Retcon to send half of that life into complete oblivion.
He watches the pilot struggle to stay conscious under the influence of the heavy sedative Jack's mixed in, unwilling to give up on what he thinks they've begun here today. Jack keeps his hand on his arm while John Doe sinks down onto the bed, dark lashes finally falling closed, shielding Jack from the sight of that hope, that forgiveness, forever.
He leaves him lying there, slack and innocent-looking. Gently, after feeling for the sluggish pulse, he tips Jack Harkness' face towards the light, and then quickly crosses the room, shutting the heavy door behind him.
~
The sun has come out over Ynys Echni, sparkling on the pale blue water of the Bristol Channel. Jack's eyes shift to the horizon, where the ocean begins, a thin line of darker grey against the sky. It's the farthest point he can see--the gleaming waves like a faint shimmer expanding into vastness--and it's not far enough.
The whole planet feels small and cramped around him; it feels old and dying. Even the smell of fresh sea air and the blooming grasses and flowers of the Flat Holm Project can't convince him that there's any reason worth staying anymore. Humanity has changed too little, too late. And so has he. With one last look at the horizon that isn't even visible from the dark rooms underground, Jack makes his way down the bright sea cliff to where his ferryman is waiting.
Author: Shane Mayhem
Rating: PG (there may be a swear word)
Pairing(s): hints at Jack/Jack, Jack/Ianto
Warnings/Notes: Spoilers for "Adrift" and "Children of Earth." Unbeta'ed...sorry.
Summary: Jack visits Flat Holm one last time. (Written for at_the_ritz monthly challenge: Children of Earth.)
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
--T.S. Eliot "Ash Wednesday"
He loses himself in the slap, slap of waves against the sides of the ferry. The sea churns grey and misty around the sides of the boat, glinting silver where the weak diffuse sunlight filters through the low sky. If he's still enough, he can feel the rhythm of the great breathing ocean in his diaphragm, or in his ever-regenerating cells. Most people would find it calming, comforting. But to Jack it is almost mournful--a reminder of the vast emptiness of life, the loneliness of this tiny and meaningless planet. It aches in him like the heartbeat he can never escape.
The island looms nearer, crouched on the horizon like a sentinel gazing dully and eternally out to sea, its back to him, its shoulders hunched. The fog lifts a bit, drawing away from the green crest of the small landmass, revealing it a bit at a time as the ferry approaches. He watches the sharp-toothed rocks known as The Wolves become more distinct shapes off the northwest corner of the island, poised as they have been for thousands of years, as though waiting for unlucky ships to try to pass. The sight tugs at his mind and sparks a thought that chases itself through dark empty corridors: how all of human history is marked out with events of great tragedy, ragged and grim as the rocks. He thinks of how many ships lie at the bottom of the Bristol Channel, through accident, storm, and war. How humanity struggles onward, tragedy to tragedy. Adapting.
It should be inspirational.
Jack is tired of adapting. He's so tired of surviving everything.
He doesn't say a word to the ferryman when they moor at the island's small dock, but pays him with double the amount he requires and walks off toward the steep path up the island's flank. The man doesn't seem to mind; it's as though he were aware of his part in an ancient cycle, and he accepts the oddities of his single passenger as he has for years, silent and stoic as Charon himself.
Jack reaches the top of the cliff and stands for a moment, eyes closed in the patchy light, trying to feel the warmth of the sun. It is faint, like a dying breath, embattled by the high sea wind. He tips his head; he can smell the subtle traces of grass and rock sea lavender, the silence of a place where humanity has remembered Nature. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can sometimes imagine he's standing on the edge of the world.
A distant foghorn brings him back, and he shoves his hands deep into his coat pockets, angling inland towards the stone stairwell that will take him down beneath, into darkness.
~
The strange and miserable victims of the Rift are mostly quiet today. He can hear the odd cry echo down the damp halls, stifled and distorted by the heavy stone. The sounds seem to pass right through him, stinging his numbness only a little. His boots fall heavily on the uneven cement; he wends his way through the corridors instinctively, until he stands before an unmarked door. He puts his hand on the cold, rough metal, pondering how funny it is, that a year ago he sealed the room's occupant in, just as he'd done for hundreds before, and imagined his heart was breaking. Imagined that this, so soon after the deaths of Tosh and Owen, had been the worst pain he thought he could feel.
He feels the pitiful echo of that pain now, but it's just a ghost, a bittersweet memory. He opens the door, making its rusty hinges groan.
The room is small, as they all are, containing only a bed, bedside table, and chair. There is one window--Jack's long-ago attempt at a kindness that he hoped would somehow balance his own grief and guilt. It is small, barred, and high up on the wall, looking out barely above ground level. The natural light it lets in is hardly enough to pick out the corners of the dim space, but the room's occupant sits, as he always does, on the edge of the narrow bed, gazing up at it.
After a while, he turns to look at Jack and his eyes, just for a moment, are the same color as sunlight. Shadow outlines the gaunt planes of his face, and his smile.
"Hello." Jack isn't sure how it is that he manages to smile back, but he always does. He remembers somehow, how to arrange his face. How to lie.
"Hello."
John Doe's voice is low and soft, rusty at the edges. The smile in it is genuine. He's always pleased to see Jack, no matter how infrequently that might be. He stands, aware on some subliminal level of an antiquated and polite code of behavior he should be following, and the halting stiffness in that motion tugs at something within Jack, again.
Jack's feet carry him closer; he's not sure why he's here, except that he must feel he should leave no stone unturned now in confronting his own failure, his own shame. Or perhaps it's because the young man before him is the only one who unequivocally, unconditionally forgives him, no matter what he's done.
He has to.
He doesn't remember who he is.
"How are you feeling?" Jack asks, after a moment, hesitantly seating himself on the bed. John Doe remains standing, but his eyes are alert, aware. Present. It's not always this way. Jack smiles again, and regrets it an instant later as the expression on the young man's scarred face becomes serious, watching him.
"I'm fine, boss. What's happened?"
"Nothing," Jack says, too quickly. But the injured pilot is sharp today, and he's not buying it. Jack finds himself wishing he'd found him in one of his less-conscious periods, when the green-gold eyes turn hazy and distracted, when the mind churns in far-out spaces beyond the reach of language. Jack wants to be anywhere but in the present.
"Everything," Jack whispers, and feels it, the bubble of shame and hurt rising again, stinging his eyes with tears. God, not here. Not now. He turns his head quickly and wipes aggressively at his eyes, but John Doe has seen it and Jack feels the bed gently give way as he sits down beside him, waiting.
~
He's a symbol of how cruel Chaos is. Jack supposes he should accept that when one is destined to live forever, even the mathematically impossible becomes possible, but he still doesn't see how it's fair, just statistically, that he should have responded to one of the mini-Rift spikes one day and found the burned and bleeding pilot washed on the rocks of Steep Holm like flotsam from a shipwreck.
It was, he feels, as though the Universe were echoing the Doctor's own sentiments about him, punishing him, steadily ripping apart who he was and trying to transform him into someone else.
How horrified and betrayed Jack had felt, when the injured man had not died, but rather taken those awful breaths, fighting to survive. He sometimes feels it even now, watching him in his less lucid moments as he tries so hard to remember, to recognize where he is and what is happening to him, fighting tooth and nail to recover an identity that Jack feels is destroyed, tarnished, and worthless. He wishes he could tell the pilot to give up, to let go of reality and slip away. But John Doe is a fighter, and he doesn't know how empty and hopeless the world outside is.
He remembers Jack, mostly. He thinks he remembers kissing him, though he won't outright say it. He thinks Jack is there to help him. He thinks they are going to save each other. Sometimes Jack feels like he would say anything, do anything, to make that terrible spark of hope in the pilot's eyes smother and die. But he never does. He smiles and plays along.
Until today.
~
Jack isn't sure why, but it all comes out. His voice sounds odd to him--breathless and halting, as though he's forgotten the words for things, as though it were he who'd forgotten for a moment who he was. He tells John Doe about the 456, the children. He tells him, eventually, about Ianto. He tells him about Steven.
His voice gets flatter as he talks, running out of emotion, headlong into the almost-comforting space of hollowness. He's almost whispering as he finishes, his fingers twisting and twisting one of the brass buttons on his coat.
"I betrayed her."
"You made a command decision."
"I ruined their lives. All of them. They could have been happy."
"With those creatures killing them all off? Doesn't sound like it."
"I had no right to make those sacrifices for them."
"You're their leader."
Jack stands, suddenly. A tiny spark of anger. "You've never--you don't know--"
It passes, though, as quickly as it came, and he finds himself staring out the window, just as John Doe had been. He can see where it could be mesmerizing--that one brightness in all the dark room, in all the dark world. He turns quickly away and spots dance in front of his eyes.
"No. I don't know." It's so quiet it's almost a whisper, as well. The keen golden eyes are looking up at him, full of a muted sadness. But still that fucking hope. "But I...can imagine. Sort of."
Jack's mouth twists wryly. There is a moment, intense and brief, when he wants to ask John Doe just what he does imagine, all those hours and days and weeks and months he's sat here alone, staring at the light of the sky barely visible outside his tiny window. He thinks of asking him what he's struggled to discover about himself, whether he remembers the night at the Ritz, what he thinks of Jack. Who he thinks he is. He could pry him open, he thinks, and lose himself in someone else's pain, someone else's trouble and optimism. He could try to find something worthwhile about this place again, sit down on the bed beside the young pilot and try to see what he sees, in that small square of light. His heart beats hard and his stomach twists uncomfortably, just on the verge of that old feeling of discovery.
But he remembers Ianto's face, gazing up at him as he died for Jack, begging him to remember him, even in a thousand years.
He knows that in a thousand years, the memory of that feeling of love will be like the memory of flying to the pilot in the dark room: a vague itch that makes him stare into foreign faces the way John Doe stares at his tiny sliver of sky, wondering how to get back there.
And it's the knowledge that he will forget, that he'll remember the face but not the exact feeling, that kills the last of something in Jack, and his eyes go dull again, the twisting in his stomach settling into heavy lead. He has already closed his expression into a meaningless small smile when he turns back to the alert young man on the bed.
"How's the pain today?"
The pilot is silent for a moment.
"Not too bad." Cautiously. His eyes are still gazing straight into Jack's, trying to see past the curtains that have suddenly fallen.
"It's probably time for your pills, anyway, though. Just in case."
John Doe doesn't say anything, but he accepts the glass of water that Jack fetches from the rusty sink in the corner, and the three white pills that he gives him. Jack's fingers brush his as he hands over the glass, and he knows it will be the last time he ever touches him.
So he runs his hand up the pilot's arm, to his shoulder, the clavicle sharp beneath his shirt because he's lost too much weight. He smiles reassuringly into the young man's face, and even tries to let his face echo some tiny shred of promise, as though he'll be back, as though he'll be there to help him try to recover his lost life.
And he gives him enough Retcon to send half of that life into complete oblivion.
He watches the pilot struggle to stay conscious under the influence of the heavy sedative Jack's mixed in, unwilling to give up on what he thinks they've begun here today. Jack keeps his hand on his arm while John Doe sinks down onto the bed, dark lashes finally falling closed, shielding Jack from the sight of that hope, that forgiveness, forever.
He leaves him lying there, slack and innocent-looking. Gently, after feeling for the sluggish pulse, he tips Jack Harkness' face towards the light, and then quickly crosses the room, shutting the heavy door behind him.
~
The sun has come out over Ynys Echni, sparkling on the pale blue water of the Bristol Channel. Jack's eyes shift to the horizon, where the ocean begins, a thin line of darker grey against the sky. It's the farthest point he can see--the gleaming waves like a faint shimmer expanding into vastness--and it's not far enough.
The whole planet feels small and cramped around him; it feels old and dying. Even the smell of fresh sea air and the blooming grasses and flowers of the Flat Holm Project can't convince him that there's any reason worth staying anymore. Humanity has changed too little, too late. And so has he. With one last look at the horizon that isn't even visible from the dark rooms underground, Jack makes his way down the bright sea cliff to where his ferryman is waiting.