Learning to Fly

Again, another song-inspired ficlet. This one came to me at work, when R Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly came on the radio. I do not own yadaya...

The whole of Torchwood Three knew about Jack's obsession with roofs. They didn't, however, know that he used to jump from them on a regular basis. Travelling with the Doctor, Jack knew that in several millennia from when he was born, humans would have evolved enough so that they could fly. It hadn't bothered Jack, until he realised that he was a human of the non-flying kind, and in several thousand millennia would be the only one who couldn't fly.

So, in 1929, Jack had decided to learn to fly. He figured it would take up a lot of his time, energy and deaths, and after all it was going to one day be necessary. So he took himself onto the roof of a building and jumped.

The death was painful. But that didn't deter him from doing the same thing the next night, or the one after. In fact, he did it every night until he was called up during the Second World War, over a decade later. He hadn't made much progress, but the belief and determination was there.

The skill of learning to fly was put aside until 1982. With the British preoccupied with striking and fighting yet another war (they were always fighting, it seemed), Jack decided it was time to start learning to fly again. Jumping from the top storey of a car park wasn't the best way to spend his Saturday nights, but he was able to stay alive for slightly longer each time.

When Alex died and Jack took over control of Torchwood Three in 2000, he decided to postpone the flying practice. He didn't resume it until after Ianto's death in 2036. He had lived a long life by Torchwood standards, but that didn't stop Jack missing him every day. So he began the flying again just for the momentary peace that the deaths gave him.

Jack used Ianto's stopwatch to time himself how long it took between leaving the roof and hitting the ground. Year by year, the time got longer. It was a gradual process, restricted by the decades at a time he'd postpone the practice for one reason or another, but when you have forever, it seemed irrelevant. And by the time it was necessary, Jack was a fully-flying human.

And he loved every minute of it.