Ficlet: The Sound of Dreams
I meant to work on the next Illyria story this past weekend, really I did. Instead I watched Torchwood's End of Days and found myself itching to write this.
Story: The Sound of Dreams
Author: me,
tardis_stowaway
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness, mentions of the Doctor and Rose
Rating: All Ages (Jack is shirking his Innuendo Squad duties)
Disclaimer: The icon might refer to him as my Captain, but that's a lie.
Summary: At the close of End of Days, Jack Harkness hears a familiar sound.
Author's Note: Although I am aware of a certain guest star, I have not yet seen any episodes in Torchwood series 2. Anyone leaving S2 spoilers in the comments will be fed to Weevils. Thanks for understanding!
There.
Could it be?
That sound.
Yes.
The ancients spoke of the music of the spheres. Perhaps they’d heard this sound. He hears the cosmos singing, right here in Cardiff. It’s an opening in the skin of reality, but utterly unlike the dreadful tearing when the Rift opened. That was a wound in the universe, a violation leaking blood and bile. This is the universe’s mouth opening, bursting forth with the air and vibrations and spirit that make up her song.
It’s the sound of possibility. It’s the sound of infinity. It’s the sound of technology and magic. (Is there any difference?) Utterly alien, it’s the sound of home.
He feels that sound shaking his old, old bones. So soon after his deepest death yet, he hears that song and positively quivers with life.
Not sleeping gives him lots of free time. Busy as he is with work, he still finds time for reading, television, these days the internet. Anything for a distraction from the lonely slowness of his path. Sometimes he watched this show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, thanking his lucky stars that at least his brand of immortality hadn’t cost him the sunlight. There was a vampire character called Spike (ridiculously good looking-Jack could sink his teeth into that one any day). Spike once told Buffy that Slayers got killed because on some level they wanted it. A death wish brings death.
Jack had laughed bitterly at that. He might not be the chosen girl, but he’d done some slaying in his time. If dying were as simple as wanting it, he thought, I’d have been peacefully in my grave a dozen times over.
Now, though, he realizes he was wrong. He might have been filled with yearning for the final sleep or sick of slogging through the years, but on some level he always wanted to live. He still doesn’t know if that strange power that shoves breath into his still lungs time and again will let him go if he just wants it badly enough. Jack realizes that he’s never really pushed the limits of his curse, never thrown himself into a volcano or a woodchipper or even a guillotine. He always assumed he held back out of fear. What if he had come back to life without an intact body, forced to carry his head around like a horror cliché or consciousness scattered amongst ashes? What if (perhaps worse) he simply healed and lived on without the promise that he could try harder for death if he ever needed to?
It was not fear at all that kept his death wish at bay all this time. It was hope: hope that he would hear that sound again.
The beloved phantom sound that haunts the quiet drifting moments that are as close as he comes to sleep is real. Real as the floor under his feet. More real than the floor, since that floor could fall away and he doesn’t think he’d notice. Like everything in reality, its meaning is subjective and uncertain. He hopes it means answers. What could they be? What else will he find? A cure? Does he even want that? Of course he does, but not just yet. Not until he follows that sound to its source.
Jack’s persistent heart pounds in his chest at the thrill of the one thing he knows for sure from that sound: the Doctor is here. The Doctor had been his friend, his mentor, his conscience, his comforter, his idol, his partner in crime, his love. Love, not lover. It’s not that Jack hadn’t ached for the Doctor in an utterly unbrotherly way (still aches), but it had never been consummated. There had been Rose to consider, another beloved not-lover, and the time had not yet seemed right. All of eternity theirs to roam, and no time the right time.
Of course it was love. What else but love hurts so much when betrayed?
The sound rushes through him like a wave, jarring loose the old thorn in his side. Perhaps the Doctor had a perfectly valid reason for abandoning him. If it had been betrayal, perhaps he could learn to forgive. Having forgiven Owen for leading a mutiny and nearly destroying the world, Jack was on a roll, forgiveness-wise.
He just defeated a creature of darkness that sure looked like the devil. Now, the TARDIS’s engines ring out like a chorus of angels and Jack finds himself giving thanks to a God he has more reason than most to disbelieve. Not a bearded patriarch passing judgment from a cloud and answering every petty prayer-a consciousness of any sort would be a hard for Jack to accept. Nevertheless, for this one moment in his life he finds it impossible to doubt that something like grace is woven into the fabric of the world as surely as pain.
Something’s moving in the darkness, coming for you, Suzie said, and so it came, but now Jack hears the inimitable sound of something moving through the light and knows he will go to it.
He will follow the Doctor to the end of the universe if he has to.
He will follow the Doctor if it means dying a thousand times (and unlike most who make such a pledge out of love, Jack can back up that promise).
The wind that blows between the worlds gusts into Torchwood, scattering papers and tugging at his hair. The heady storm-smell of ozone teases his nose. Captain Jack Harkness grins with the full joyousness of living and chases the sound of dreams.
Story: The Sound of Dreams
Author: me,
tardis_stowaway
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness, mentions of the Doctor and Rose
Rating: All Ages (Jack is shirking his Innuendo Squad duties)
Disclaimer: The icon might refer to him as my Captain, but that's a lie.
Summary: At the close of End of Days, Jack Harkness hears a familiar sound.
Author's Note: Although I am aware of a certain guest star, I have not yet seen any episodes in Torchwood series 2. Anyone leaving S2 spoilers in the comments will be fed to Weevils. Thanks for understanding!
There.
Could it be?
That sound.
Yes.
The ancients spoke of the music of the spheres. Perhaps they’d heard this sound. He hears the cosmos singing, right here in Cardiff. It’s an opening in the skin of reality, but utterly unlike the dreadful tearing when the Rift opened. That was a wound in the universe, a violation leaking blood and bile. This is the universe’s mouth opening, bursting forth with the air and vibrations and spirit that make up her song.
It’s the sound of possibility. It’s the sound of infinity. It’s the sound of technology and magic. (Is there any difference?) Utterly alien, it’s the sound of home.
He feels that sound shaking his old, old bones. So soon after his deepest death yet, he hears that song and positively quivers with life.
Not sleeping gives him lots of free time. Busy as he is with work, he still finds time for reading, television, these days the internet. Anything for a distraction from the lonely slowness of his path. Sometimes he watched this show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, thanking his lucky stars that at least his brand of immortality hadn’t cost him the sunlight. There was a vampire character called Spike (ridiculously good looking-Jack could sink his teeth into that one any day). Spike once told Buffy that Slayers got killed because on some level they wanted it. A death wish brings death.
Jack had laughed bitterly at that. He might not be the chosen girl, but he’d done some slaying in his time. If dying were as simple as wanting it, he thought, I’d have been peacefully in my grave a dozen times over.
Now, though, he realizes he was wrong. He might have been filled with yearning for the final sleep or sick of slogging through the years, but on some level he always wanted to live. He still doesn’t know if that strange power that shoves breath into his still lungs time and again will let him go if he just wants it badly enough. Jack realizes that he’s never really pushed the limits of his curse, never thrown himself into a volcano or a woodchipper or even a guillotine. He always assumed he held back out of fear. What if he had come back to life without an intact body, forced to carry his head around like a horror cliché or consciousness scattered amongst ashes? What if (perhaps worse) he simply healed and lived on without the promise that he could try harder for death if he ever needed to?
It was not fear at all that kept his death wish at bay all this time. It was hope: hope that he would hear that sound again.
The beloved phantom sound that haunts the quiet drifting moments that are as close as he comes to sleep is real. Real as the floor under his feet. More real than the floor, since that floor could fall away and he doesn’t think he’d notice. Like everything in reality, its meaning is subjective and uncertain. He hopes it means answers. What could they be? What else will he find? A cure? Does he even want that? Of course he does, but not just yet. Not until he follows that sound to its source.
Jack’s persistent heart pounds in his chest at the thrill of the one thing he knows for sure from that sound: the Doctor is here. The Doctor had been his friend, his mentor, his conscience, his comforter, his idol, his partner in crime, his love. Love, not lover. It’s not that Jack hadn’t ached for the Doctor in an utterly unbrotherly way (still aches), but it had never been consummated. There had been Rose to consider, another beloved not-lover, and the time had not yet seemed right. All of eternity theirs to roam, and no time the right time.
Of course it was love. What else but love hurts so much when betrayed?
The sound rushes through him like a wave, jarring loose the old thorn in his side. Perhaps the Doctor had a perfectly valid reason for abandoning him. If it had been betrayal, perhaps he could learn to forgive. Having forgiven Owen for leading a mutiny and nearly destroying the world, Jack was on a roll, forgiveness-wise.
He just defeated a creature of darkness that sure looked like the devil. Now, the TARDIS’s engines ring out like a chorus of angels and Jack finds himself giving thanks to a God he has more reason than most to disbelieve. Not a bearded patriarch passing judgment from a cloud and answering every petty prayer-a consciousness of any sort would be a hard for Jack to accept. Nevertheless, for this one moment in his life he finds it impossible to doubt that something like grace is woven into the fabric of the world as surely as pain.
Something’s moving in the darkness, coming for you, Suzie said, and so it came, but now Jack hears the inimitable sound of something moving through the light and knows he will go to it.
He will follow the Doctor to the end of the universe if he has to.
He will follow the Doctor if it means dying a thousand times (and unlike most who make such a pledge out of love, Jack can back up that promise).
The wind that blows between the worlds gusts into Torchwood, scattering papers and tugging at his hair. The heady storm-smell of ozone teases his nose. Captain Jack Harkness grins with the full joyousness of living and chases the sound of dreams.