Ficlet: On The Streets Of Cardiff
Title: On The Streets Of Cardiff
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 888
Spoilers: Set pre-series.
Summary: If you’re out after dark in Cardiff, there’s a good chance you might run into Captain Jack Harkness.
Written For: Weekend Challenge: Tortured Prompts Department, using “You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square” at 1_million_words.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Cardiff is Jack’s playground, and he knows the city intimately. Not just all of the best and most easily accessible rooftops, although they’re his preferred spots for brooding or watching over his adopted home, but the streets and the parks, the bridges and the alleyways, the industrial parks and the tourist attractions. He knows all the darkest hidden corners where the light from the streetlamps doesn’t reach, the spots that are outside of any CCTV coverage. He even has a pretty fair knowledge of the sewer network, a necessity when tracking Weevils.
In some respects, Jack is as much a part of the Cardiff landscape as the architecture. He doesn’t need as much sleep as most people, and being alone in the Hub makes him restless, so many nights find him walking the streets, alert for trouble but with no particular destination in mind, simply letting his feet take him wherever they will.
If it’s still early enough for pubs and clubs to be open, he might stop in for a drink, or a dance, or to find himself a companion with whom to while away a few hours in mutual pleasure, but mostly he walks, passing other late-night wanderers, perhaps with a polite nod or a smile, but rarely speaking.
Over the past century, he’s watched the city grow and change, buildings getting taller, gas lighting giving way to electric, horse-drawn carriages being replaced by the first motor cars, dresses getting shorter, then longer, then shorter again… He remembers the way it used to be, and sometimes finds himself heading for places that no longer exist, lost in memories of a decade or more ago. Not all of the changes have been for the better. Many beautiful old buildings have been torn down and replaced with ugly glass and concrete monstrosities. Progress is a mixed blessing.
He's a familiar sight to the coppers who patrol at night, although he has little to say to them, and they have even less to say to him. He’s not exactly popular with the Heddlu, which is fair enough since he has a habit of taking over certain crime scenes and driving the police away. They don’t know it’s for their own safety, and trying to explain that to them would likely only make things worse, so he doesn’t try.
There are other people too who recognise him as he passes by, and some of these he’ll pause and speak with. The majority aren’t as human as they appear to the casual eye, refugees, stranded on earth through no fault of their own, unable to return to the worlds they came from. He checks in with them whenever he meets them, making sure they’re okay, always ready to provide them with whatever they might need. They’re his responsibility now, and for however long he remains here while he waits for his Doctor. The century has turned twice, as the girl with the tarot cards told him it would, so he can only hope that his long wait is almost over.
Every so often, someone he passes will look at him as if they’re seeing a ghost, and perhaps that’s understandable. Retcon isn’t a hundred percent effective; memories can return over time, and a certain percentage of the populace are naturally immune anyway. Old lovers, brief flings, encountering him unexpectedly, can be forgiven for thinking him a mirage or a hallucination. Aside from his hairstyle and clothes, he hasn’t changed in over a century, while everyone he’s ever met has grown older, and many have long since passed on. Sometimes he finds himself wondering if he IS a ghost, or a figment of someone else’s imagination, but if he is, he’s not sure he wants to know.
So he keeps walking, pretending not to notice the shocked expressions on the faces of people he remembers as young, vibrant, and bursting with life. He prefers to remember them as they were when he shared their beds for nights filled with passion, not as they are now, older, tired, jaded, worn down by the years that slide past without leaving their mark on him.
In his eyes, they’re still beautiful because whatever drew him to them in the first place is still there, even if it’s become buried beneath wrinkles and greying hair, but he wouldn’t be doing them any favours by showing recognition. They’d only resent him for still looking as young and attractive as he used to, and resentment sours people. He still cares about them, and doesn’t want to damage them, although he’s afraid that perhaps he already has.
There’s no place for him with them anyway, because he’s not like them; he’s a man apart, ageless, deathless, and waiting for answers that only one being in the entire universe can give him. He’s been waiting for a very long time.
Perhaps soon the Doctor will come and take Jack with him, and then he’ll be nothing more than a vague memory to the people of Cardiff, a story to tell their families and friends, of a mythical figure, a dashing hero, once seen, never forgotten. Until then, he has a job to do, running Torchwood, protecting Cardiff, and preparing the people of earth for the future.
Because the twenty-first century is when everything changes, and they’ve got to be ready.
The End