FIC: Torchwood - 'Forgotten' (1/1)
Title: Forgotten (1/1)
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Adam, the Torchwood team (with references to Jack/Ianto)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Warnings: Spoilers for the Torchwood episode 2x05 "Adam" and 2x12 "Fragments".
Notes:2,827 words. With heartfelt thanks to my beta-readers jadesfire2808, lunacy_gal, and kensieg. Cross-posted to torchwood_fic and torch_wood.
Forgotten
The time before consciousness was not death; no language had words to describe it. Adam never remembered what it was like afterwards, except for the loneliness of the void. All he knew was that he woke with fear and a craving for love. He thought it had happened that way each time, even without a clear memory of what came before, or other lives, or other people. There was no knowledge. There was only instinct.
He was without form, and he flew.
It was like a moth to the flame, worshipping the light, looking for warmth. There were places - islands in time, islands in space - where love and intelligence called to him. He went towards the strongest of the calls, looking for strength of numbers and a place to fit in. He believed he had found other planets that way in the past, other thought-forms, but it was like a dream he could not quite recall. Concepts came back to him when he encountered physical worlds, ideas like 'people' and 'bodies' and 'places'. The closer he came, the more real they seemed.
And so, this time, he found Earth.
There were loving hearts everywhere. Some broken and dysfunctional, some warm and open. He raced along patterns of neurons and nerve endings, tasting and exploring. It was overwhelming. There were so many of them. It was like being a dandelion on the wind, not knowing where to land. It was like seeing a field of flowers, or a thousand rainbows, or the stars in the sky. It was lovely, but it didn't touch him back. It didn't try to reach for him. It didn't even know he was there.
He had no idea how long it took to master the concept of a single body. Time was an abstraction he couldn't understand, though it meant a lot to these people, with their schedules and their wristwatches. They divided reality into past, present and future, and built their lives around these ideas. Adam was fascinated.
He wanted love. In order to be loved, he had to be seen. If they couldn't imagine him, they couldn't remember him. He needed them to give him form. Not knowing how to take the first step, he floated in the noosphere , looking for a place among their minds to belong. He wondered if it had been like this before. He wondered if there had ever been another time.
Were there others of his kind, elsewhere in the universe?
If there were, how would he know?
Perhaps these people of Earth were just like him, each beginning their lives as he did, in shapeless form, and then forgetting what it had been like to live without bodies.
Adam learned about sound and music and whispers. He learned about families and sports and television. He encountered a life-form called a dog - lots of love there, but oh, so limited, so ephemeral, it couldn't hold him in its transient memory. He learned that people grew from small beings to large ones, until their structure fell apart and they ceased to be any more. He learned this, and more, in a nanosecond.
He learned about houses and money and power and jobs and hunger and sex and sometimes it was all overwhelming in its richness. It was all so important, so full of meaning and emotion to these people. Each of them was distinct and individual, and every one of them had connections to others.
He wanted to belong.
And then he found the one man among these people who was like no one else.
His name was Captain Jack Harkness. He did not live in linear time, like everyone else on the planet. He had been to the future and the past, back and forth, many times. He saw things with a perspective no one else had - a knowledge of the future combined with an understanding of the past. He knew he would not die. Unlike most of the people Adam had found, he had no qualms about killing when necessary, but had no taste for it either.
Captain Jack Harkness burned with an energy so strong it almost blinded Adam. When his metaphorical eyes became accustomed to the light, he saw that Jack was unique in form. Life-force melded with cosmic fields of energy and motion. The man was a quantum event.
And oh, the love in him. It warmed like starfire. It accepted the universe around it with joy and pain and such intensely human emotions that Adam lost all sense of himself. This was what humanity meant - he understood it at last. He basked in the force of its aura. If Adam had been human, he would have said he had fallen in love. Being what he was - neither fish nor fowl - he was working on the shaping of the of 'human' as manifested so ironically by this time traveller with vortex energy inside his every cell. A little bit of universal existentialism made flesh.
And what flesh it was.
When he got used to the sensation of being near Jack, he realized with excitement that now, at last, he could take form. He could become a person himself. He made motion into matter and matter into substance. He was - tossup here, make himself a man rather than a woman, why not - he was a man fashioned in such a way that Jack would like him and desire him. He ran among Jack's memories, so many of them, memories of childhood with a brother, adulthood with the thrilling, dangerous Captain John; adventures among the stars and in the timestream, beautiful women and frightening monsters and quick jokes. Such passions! Death on a space station among Daleks and humans, awakening to find his heart broken. America, India, World War I and World War II, Torchwood, dancing with pretty girls in London and freezing in trenches in France. All the people he had loved, so many of them: an acrobat so beautiful he took the breath away, an alien with big ears, another with brainy specs, a dark-haired wife, a woman who loved fairies; soldiers, dancers, a teasing girl with a huge laugh ... Adam drank it all up. There was such life in Jack. Such memories.
He set out to reshape Jack's perceptions, to add himself to Jack's recollections. Adam, the trusted friend. Adam, always reliable and sexy and smart. Adam, the first one to turn to.
He found himself at a dead end in the labyrinth of Jack's mind. It would not hold him. He fell away, insubstantial under the weight of the other, realer loves. He tried again, but true experience replaced him, over and over. Why? Jack's memory encompassed so many lovers, why not one more? One tailor-made to his tastes? One willing to do anything for him, be anything Jack wanted him to be? What was wrong with Jack, anyway?
Adam gave up, shrugging, finding instead a place where he would be a better fit. Torchwood gave him an entry-point, so he inserted himself into the Hub. Trusted colleague rather than trusted lover - when he was stronger and more secure, he could change that. With any luck, Jack might change that himself.
So he went to work on the other members of the Torchwood team. Inside Owen he found a tempest of anger and bitterness and bewilderment: he soothed it, taking away the memories of Diane and of Katie and putting peace in their place. He moved on to the archivist, the tea boy, finding a being as malleable and useful as himself, who fit himself into the spaces where he was needed. He looked at Toshiko the scientist, so clever and lonely, so quick to accept his love. He took away her inhibitions and her shyness. He made her a sexual dynamo. This was going to be one hell of a ride. He drank up her vibrancy and looked for more.
This was his home. He belonged at Torchwood, saving the world from aliens, an indispensable member of the team.
But there were flickers in the images that he created. He had to keep adjusting the subjective reality he had made for them. He caught himself in a miscalculation - he had to fit the cop too quickly into the pattern, and he saw only that she was very much in love with Jack. So were they all, each in a different way. He didn't notice she had a fiancé. How had he missed that? It wasn't disastrous - he feared for a moment that the fiancé would blow his cover, but it was clear that he didn't know enough about Gwen's working life to make any trouble. Crisis averted.
Adam became more careful. He tried again to infiltrate Jack's mind, raising the most traumatic memories he could find - early memories, because childhood was always the worst time. He played on Jack's guilt over the fate of his brother, something already recently brought to the forefront of his mind by his old partner, Captain John Hart. For Jack, this was excruciating.
But he still did not turn to Adam as his confidant, friend, or lover. Why not?
Adam had done everything right. Why didn't Jack want him? Love came easily to Jack - why had he none for the man at his side?
Infuriated, Adam blundered back into Jack's psyche, metaphorically punching down walls, kicking furniture and emptying drawers in his search. Why, why, why don't you love me? Let me in, let me in!
Then he stumbled over a sexual image so strong, so deep, so powerful that he sank to his knees in horror.
Ianto.
Jack and Ianto. Hot, rapidfire memories of sexual encounters - some recent, some less so. Jack and Ianto pushing each other against walls and fumbling with clothes. Jack and Ianto spending long languorous hours in bed together, finding comfort in touch. Laughing as they played, caressing and teasing. Quick glances shared in public when others weren't watching. A vivid image of Jack saying to Ianto, "I came back for you."
For you. For you. Non-corporeally, Adam wept. Why for Ianto? Ianto was nothing. Why not for him?
If Ianto was his rival, he had to be eliminated. All's fair in love and war, and Adam was prepared to be ruthless. Since Ianto had no idea that he was fighting a battle, it was not difficult to infiltrate his mind. It was intelligent and orderly, atop a blistering layer of volcanic emotions. Simple to walk in and take over. How had Adam missed, before, all the erotic thoughts centred on Jack? Perhaps the archivist was more devious than he had seemed. Adam had underestimated him.
Well, then, easy to remove the threat forever.
Ianto had been waiting for Adam in the Hub. Ianto - bright boy that he was - had been reading his own journal, realizing that what he had written did not match his memory of what had happened. He had not written about Adam, because Adam had not existed. He saw that Adam was - well, perhaps he didn't realize yet that Adam was not human, but he could see that Adam was not what he seemed. A fake. A speck of lint on the fabric of reality.
Adam thought: I'll give you something to preoccupy you, teaboy, and it won't be fucking Jack.
Ianto's hair was soft under his hands, his skin hot to the touch. (Skin that Jack had so enjoyed touching. Don't think about that; killing Ianto outright would be dangerous.) He went straight to the core of Ianto's psyche, tearing out experience, throwing around random debris. Easy to do enough harm in a microsecond to keep a team of psychiatrists busy for years, but he needed to go beyond that. He needed to damage Ianto beyond Jack's reach or understanding. Make him something so despicable that Jack would recoil at the sight of him. Make him a killer, a pathological killer, a serial killer... Of women, yes. Let him prey on the innocent. Give him a taste for blood.
Ianto resisted, but he was helpless. He had no idea what this assault was. Even if he had known, humans had no shield against such an onslaught. Adam held him like a lover, long after Ianto had stopped struggling. He left him weeping on the floor.
Ianto was broken.
When Jack discovered Ianto's betrayal, who would he turn to, but Adam?
"What are you looking so happy about?" said Gwen, wandering past Adam's desk.
"Just thinkin' about Toshiko," murmured Adam. Nice thought. Would Tosh mind sharing him with Jack? He thought not. She liked Jack, too. They shared sexual fantasies of Jack. She had been eager.
Adam relaxed, waiting for the anvil to fall, the moment when Jack discovered Ianto's crimes and repudiated him.
When the anvil fell, it fell on Adam, not Ianto. Gun to the back of his head. Jack's finger, steady and strong, on its trigger. His voice, filled with overtones of anger. "Talk to me, Adam."
It was Gwen who asked, "What are you doing, Jack?"
"He's not who you think he is," said Jack. "He's been feeding himself into our memories, by touch."
Adam fought panic. Fear was his enemy; if he gave in to fear, the pattern would unravel. He could handle this. Why was Jack not attacking Ianto? It was supposed to be Ianto that he accused of being 'not who you think he is', Ianto the killer. How had Jack misread the picture?
"He didn't exist until two days ago." How the hell did Jack know? What had he guessed?
The others fell away from him, one by one - how was it done? Tosh stood up for him, a little, but Jack got to her. Adam couldn't find the path into their minds, however hard he looked. Jack locked him up where he couldn't reach them. Every pathway was blocked, every door closed, every turn of the mental biosphere a dead end. And whoever he set out to look for, every twist and turn of the path brought him back to Jack.
"I didn't mean any harm," he said.
"You changed us."
"For the better!" Adam could feel Jack's mind close against him. He struggled to get in and met a memory that hit like a blow: Jack kissing Ianto's forehead with love and tenderness.
"Why us?" asked Jack.
He tried to explain. "Your singular mind. That's what drew me here."
Jack's heart was hard. "Good job. It's what we do best... wipe out aliens."
Adam fought the darkness. All around him lights were blinking out. There were cracks in the walls of his world. The holes grew faster than he could patch them. He could feel the darkness coming on. He fell an endless distance, until there was nothing around him. He was still alive, but all the rest was gone. His world. Everything, everyone... except Jack.
Adam was nowhere at all.
"Just me left," said Jack.
Adam had only one bit of leverage... a glimpse of memory he could give Jack. As a gift, perhaps a bribe. Would it earn him a scrap of affection? A place in Jack's world, again? "I can take you back there," he said, "before I die." To the memory of his father. To the turning point in his past.
Jack, one last time, let him in.
Time and timelessness. They were blurring. He joined Jack in Boeshane, feeling the sun and the air of a world he would never visit. He was trying to remember what love had felt like. "Toshiko!" he cried, and it was Jack whose mind answered: "She isn't here any more. She doesn't want to talk to you."
"She loves me."
"You lied to her. You used her."
"What did you do?"
"I put them beyond your reach." That little pill. Retcon. Dangerous, diabolical drug. Jack had a pill for himself, too.
"No!"
"I will be beyond your reach very soon." He was fading. Adam tried to reach for him, but his body no longer had form.
"If you leave me..."
"Yes?"
"You're killing me, Jack."
"I know."
"I love you."
"Bullshit. You don't know a thing about love. You're a liar and a fraud."
Bewilderment. "So are you."
"End of the line. Good-bye."
Everywhere Adam looked, the stars were going out. The world was empty, except for one man. He could feel his awareness fraying. "Forgive me!"
"No."
"I just wanted life."
"You should have left Ianto alone."
A flash of panic. Only one star left now, one light in the darkness, the Jack-light that was about to disappear forever. Jack was going to forget him, too, and there would be nowhere in the cosmos for him to go. "Jack. Remember me."
"No."
Darkness.
It was over. There was no life, no thought, no Jack.
- end -