Fic Update
Title : THE SPLINTER INSIDE ME
Characters/Pairing: Jack. Mention of Nine, Rose, Ianto.
Rating: Mild PG
Spoilers: General, for 1st Season
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to RTD and to the BBC.
Summary: Written for the prompt for Day Two of redismycolour. The waiting is worse than dying
Your name is the splinter inside me
While I wait
Winter
Joshua Radin
It’s an ache that travels through him like the purest, coldest venom. It’s a hunger that gnaws away at him like a worm feeding on his soul. He can’t stop it or ignore it or pretend it isn’t there.
Who am I? He really has to stop and think sometimes before he remembers and then all he wants to do is forget.
What am I? He can’t even begin to understand what he has become, but he’s grown used to the word ‘monster’. He’s joked, killed and whored his way down the years, always straining for the sound of the TARDIS, always feeling that leap to the heart when he catches a glimpse of a slender blonde and getting quite the reputation for running after tall blokes with close-cropped hair wearing leather jackets.
Oh yes, he has a type, all right, but they have no idea.
Why did this happen to me? What happened to me? Why doesn’t he come?
Each question is a kiss that burns against the skin, like an abusive lover’s. He’s done his best to be the kind of person the Doctor would be proud of. He’s fought to keep to the Doctor’s rules. Except sometimes that isn’t possible and then he worries that his failure is what keeps him alone and abandoned. It’s a question of survival - he has no choice but to survive - but he can’t do any good if he spends years strapped to a vivisection table, so he makes his deals with the Devil and tries to stay on the side of the angels.
He’s fought in wars and watched boys pretend to be men and men get broken and turn into children. He’s faced monsters in human form and every time he looks in a mirror he’s afraid he’ll see the same look in his own eyes. He knows the path he walks is on a knife edge and sometimes he bleeds as he keeps to it. He patches together the threadbare canvas of his conscience and honour and tries to ignore how much harder to do it is each time. He’s cold, so cold, and yearns for the fire that once was his beacon.
He needs the Doctor to come. He needs to see himself reflected in the eyes of someone who knew him before he… changed. He needs to hear someone say “do you remember-“ and find that he can. He needs to be able to say those same words and see that glad leap of recognition in their eyes. He wants to find that sunlit path that was once so easy to follow.
It’s more important now that it ever was, because he thinks he just might be falling in love. He’s done his best not to do it, especially when he remembers the heartache the other occasions caused him. He’d figured he had it all worked out, but he hadn’t accounted for a stubborn, bloody-minded, broken-winged soul crashing into his life, full of disasterously good intentions and showing the kind of promise that draws Jack like a moth to a flame. Ianto was only supposed to be the latest in a long line of bed-warmers but somehow that’s changed. For the first time Jack’s beginning to hope that the Doctor won’t come just yet. And that is something that terrifies him more than anything else.
And all the while the splinter lies deep inside his flesh and fills his life with poison.
Characters/Pairing: Jack. Mention of Nine, Rose, Ianto.
Rating: Mild PG
Spoilers: General, for 1st Season
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to RTD and to the BBC.
Summary: Written for the prompt for Day Two of redismycolour. The waiting is worse than dying
Your name is the splinter inside me
While I wait
Winter
Joshua Radin
It’s an ache that travels through him like the purest, coldest venom. It’s a hunger that gnaws away at him like a worm feeding on his soul. He can’t stop it or ignore it or pretend it isn’t there.
Who am I? He really has to stop and think sometimes before he remembers and then all he wants to do is forget.
What am I? He can’t even begin to understand what he has become, but he’s grown used to the word ‘monster’. He’s joked, killed and whored his way down the years, always straining for the sound of the TARDIS, always feeling that leap to the heart when he catches a glimpse of a slender blonde and getting quite the reputation for running after tall blokes with close-cropped hair wearing leather jackets.
Oh yes, he has a type, all right, but they have no idea.
Why did this happen to me? What happened to me? Why doesn’t he come?
Each question is a kiss that burns against the skin, like an abusive lover’s. He’s done his best to be the kind of person the Doctor would be proud of. He’s fought to keep to the Doctor’s rules. Except sometimes that isn’t possible and then he worries that his failure is what keeps him alone and abandoned. It’s a question of survival - he has no choice but to survive - but he can’t do any good if he spends years strapped to a vivisection table, so he makes his deals with the Devil and tries to stay on the side of the angels.
He’s fought in wars and watched boys pretend to be men and men get broken and turn into children. He’s faced monsters in human form and every time he looks in a mirror he’s afraid he’ll see the same look in his own eyes. He knows the path he walks is on a knife edge and sometimes he bleeds as he keeps to it. He patches together the threadbare canvas of his conscience and honour and tries to ignore how much harder to do it is each time. He’s cold, so cold, and yearns for the fire that once was his beacon.
He needs the Doctor to come. He needs to see himself reflected in the eyes of someone who knew him before he… changed. He needs to hear someone say “do you remember-“ and find that he can. He needs to be able to say those same words and see that glad leap of recognition in their eyes. He wants to find that sunlit path that was once so easy to follow.
It’s more important now that it ever was, because he thinks he just might be falling in love. He’s done his best not to do it, especially when he remembers the heartache the other occasions caused him. He’d figured he had it all worked out, but he hadn’t accounted for a stubborn, bloody-minded, broken-winged soul crashing into his life, full of disasterously good intentions and showing the kind of promise that draws Jack like a moth to a flame. Ianto was only supposed to be the latest in a long line of bed-warmers but somehow that’s changed. For the first time Jack’s beginning to hope that the Doctor won’t come just yet. And that is something that terrifies him more than anything else.
And all the while the splinter lies deep inside his flesh and fills his life with poison.