Jack never cries, not anymore anyways. He ran out of tears somewhere in the last century, the century he spent running from his sins, running from his life. But it wasn't just his life he was running from—it was the lives of those he hadn't saved. Those he'd killed.
He wasn't sure if he could feel remorse anymore, but he was sure that if he did, it might feel kind of like the aching emptiness that his life had become.
--
He had changed his name, lost himself in the desolation of the unpopulated planets for a while. Dying, being reborn with the same regrets as always, and a new sense of disappointment that never faded. It only grew. As did the hole that was sucking out who Jack Harkness once was. He replaced the man he hated with a man he couldn't feel.
After all, a man who can't feel can't be sorry for what he has done. Or hasn't done.
--
He is over six thousand years old. He isn't sure he can remember every one of those years, some have passed in a haze of debauchery, some have passed in solitude, some in fear and pain. Sometimes he remembers the ones he promised never to forget. Sometimes he can even see their faces, hear their voices. He's promised few and far between, but those he did promise, he's failed. Another tick against the man who had never been, or would never be, or had been but never was…
His riddles got more complicated as he aged. He no longer looked young. He no longer looked human. He couldn't remember what human he had looked like before.
Was he ever human?
--
He laughed as he led the charge, fleeting memories, snatches of other fights, other wars, other times and places and lives and people. He roared, killing with no remorse, no thought but the feel of blood and viscera. The cold fear of watching his warriors die in battle, knowing that he had placed them there had dissipated over the centuries. Today, when all was said and done, he would be king of a new empire, which would take worlds and make them submit to his will. He was a god. He could do anything.
He saw an eerily familiar face, but his memories were faded things, only pieces of lives he unconsciously stored. Whoever they were, they were not in this past. They would not be a part of this past.
--
He regrets, again. It is a hollow feeling, devoid of meaning, yet something he tries to understand. He can see them, walking about, going about their lives like the insignificant things they are. He thinks to himself that perhaps he should try to find that good man, that savior he was at one point in his history, and try to be him again. Maybe it would make the remorse go away.
Killing had become hollow, meaningless. Maybe saving would have an emotional response.
--
He had forgotten Jack long ago, but somewhere inside his strange body, his twisted soul and mind, he knew that there was a man once called Harkness. Someone he had been ashamed of, someone he had been proud of. Someone who had tried so hard to please, to make right, to rebel against this cursed life. He sought out the records, but he was millennia removed from Earth and what it had been. He mostly sat in contemplation these days, thinking about what he should become for the next lifetime.
He laughed as he found a name in his head, a list of the dead and the saved that Captain—oh, had he been a Captain once?—Jack Harkness had filed away in that eons-long ago place. There were some names which he remembered better than others, but he couldn't remember them at all past a recognition which was more gut instinct than brain power.
--
Another millennia passes before he remembers fully what he once thought he could be—a savior of lives, a peaceful being. He feels more than ever the weight of his years as he stumbles into the Doctor again. He sees the man six times, in different forms, always recognizable by his mental signature energy. He watches the Time Lords die, and he weeps inside, for he has no tears, for the one he remembers most of all.
He sometimes wishes he had a body that would support itself, so that he could wander, as he did when he was young. He laughs; when was he ever young?
--
He has transcended the need for a true body, he is a creature contained in a life-support unit. He speaks no longer, he only thinks, only communicates telepathically. There is only the significance of not having true vocal chords which keeps him silent. Well, maybe it isn't just that. He knows the power of the spoken word. Something tangible only to those who have seen the passage of language, of time and of evolution.
He is the only one; and none can understand the things he has seen and done.
--
He meets Rose for her first time, wonders if she had always seemed so young or if it was just because he was rounding out his eight millionth year or so. He lost track a while back. Timelines confused it as well. After all, things like being buried under Cardiff—there had once been a Cardiff, and in it he had ruled some organization he cannot recall—for two thousand years seemed to fuck with his mental math. He has heard this tale before, the one about her meeting the Face of Boe. He never thought about it then, because he had been young and foolish and naïve, but he had also been running. Running from his mistakes.
He watched the girl who had cursed him, had blessed him, had loved and hated him so much that she had done this to him… He watched as she laughed, as the Doctor whirled through her life. He could wait to tell the Doctor his secret. It would be his dying act. Because he knew he would die, someday. Everything dies.
--
He is lost in the swell of time, the passing of innumerable years. He finds a hospital, tries to understand why his health—so long a friend of his—is retreating rapidly. No matter. It was only a matter of time. His nurse looks at him warily as she tends to his tank. She can hear his laughter from a distance she is unable to consciously grasp, yet she seems to innately understand at the unconscious level.
He has run out of time, and it makes him so glad to know.
--
He saved a world. He saved many worlds. He saved people. He saved some, and he lost others. He found himself unable to concentrate on the old pains of his misdeeds. His years as a god, his years as an emperor, his years running and hiding and lying and dying over and over and over again. He has to stay strong. He never thought it would end like this; he had hoped, though, that it would end on a good note.
He is insanely relieved to know that the Doctor has finally shown up. He concentrates of his duty, and yet he finds himself forming a voice, forming his last sentence.
--
He has died, and he knows it. Yet the Face of Boe cannot exist within a man, his knowledge too vast for the mind of a mere mortal man. He has a body once more, he has hands and feet and a cock once more. It's nothing but giddy excitement for a few minutes as he figures this out.. He hears something in the dark. Yet this time, unlike the millions of times he died, it seems to be something not malevolent. Something achingly familiar, yet something so far removed from his memories that he knows not the name, the face, hell, he's forgotten how to speak.
But he knows, when he smells the coffee, who it is that has been waiting for him all this time. Of those he had promised never to forget, and had forgotten, he had not been forgotten. Something deep inside of the man/alien/creature/lover/sinner/saint/god/creator/destroyer snapped, a flood of suppressed memories clouding his thoughts, blotting out his senses and his mind as he processes lifetimes of information. He cries out with the pain, the agony, the ecstasy, the memories.
One Ianto Jones, a man who had selfishly loved him, had forgiven him his faults and loved him in spite of them. Ianto Jones greeted him with coffee, and a wry smile.
What took you so long?
I was busy.
Oh?
I had to find out who and what I was. I think I found out.
Well then, if that's sorted…
He holds Ianto, a return to Earth, to a place he promised never to visit, never to forget, a return to love. Even if he hadn't loved Ianto when he was alive, he had found that he loved him now. Perhaps it was enough.
It's always been enough, Jack.
And strangely, Jack, for he found himself feeling much like a Jack right now, figured that it was best not to argue with the Welsh.
--
Umm, I've no idea where this really came from. Not where I was heading at first, but it works.