Another heart breaks, I am so much older than I can take, and my affection, well, it comes and goes…

[hey_capn_jack]

{{Backdated to about 23:00 on December 31, 2009; LOCKED to Suzie.}}It's wearing on toward midnight, inexorably pulling the world toward a new year and a new decade, and J... is slinking through the Kashtta Tower as a dog, head held low and a long gnawing pressure courting his gut. Maybe it's hyperbole that he's shaken more than he was since an

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[superiorspectre]

Suzie opens the door, and looks down before she does anything else. Right. It had to be one shapeshifter or another.

She looks tired and unwell, but not much more than usual.

"Come in," she says, and moves away from the door. She rummages in a drawer for a moment, and a pair of new sweatpants -- large and roomy, with a drawstring waist, and tags still on them -- are tossed on her bed. A minute later, an oversized t-shirt follows them -- this one not new, and smelling of fabric softener and faintly of her.

"I'm going to assume you're here because you've got something to say, and not because there's an emergency. So you might as well make yourself..." she looks over at the clearly miserable dog, "as comfortable as you're likely to get, anyway."

[hey_capn_jack]

It's silly to fear, this much, someone you used to be. But something in his hindbrain knows Jack Harkness would never have let things go this far, and if he were faced with the man, in the absence of being able to break or shake him...

He wouldn't be here any more, would he? J, whoever he is now, the nonidentity which came out of too many factors and not enough reason, would be broken and reset like an awkward bone. Functional torture. Maybe if he's terrified, it's because he's had a long line of forces -- Time Agency mind architects, Time Lords with delta waves and Chula with emotion limiters -- all deciding for him who he ought to be.

Any of the available options seem like they'd be satisfying someone.

"I wish..." he starts.

I wish I could have done better. He doesn't finish. He's got honestly no idea who that "I" is supposed to point to -- J, Jack, or Thane.

"...if wishes were fishes, we all could walk on water," he says instead. It doesn't matter. "I came here to explain myself