Title: We Walk
Author: Electro Club
Characters: Jack, mentions of Ianto and Gwen
Rating: PG
Spoiler: Children of Earth
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making money.
A/N: HUGE thanks to the beautiful, wonderful and kind Blue Fjords, without whom this would've never been done. 3 You're awesomesauce (learned that from you!). Thank you. :) And also to all my f-listies who red this beforehand and said it was worth working on it. You guys rock.
I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with how this came out. It seemed better in my head. But I guess this is the best I can do right now. And thanks to my awesome beta, it is a lot better than it originally was. :)
A/N²: Forgot to mention this fic was inspired by another story, by a Brazilian author names Andréa del Fuego, published on the book 'Presentes Futuros', or Future Presents. Wonderful book, that one. And wonderful story!
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He's on Anybal.
The fourth of a four planet system existing peacefully under the kind light of Zeta and Teta, the two suns of Vermaelen. The suns take turns in the sky; while the first one flaunts its blazing figure, the other hides behind purple grass hills that stretch as far as eyes – human eyes, at least – can see.
It's sometime after year 5 billion. Slash apple, slash… Something. He forgot how to keep count of that. It's a famous year, though. Somewhere, some thousands of years ago, a planet was extinguished, and the first hints of light from the distant explosion have just reached this system, blurring and painting the two suns' sky. It's beautiful.
If he remembers this right, for the next twenty years Earth's final act will stain the yellows and oranges and reds of the suns with its magnificent purple and pale blue shades.
It's like having a rainbow sky.
He feels something landing feather-like on his head – then his shoulders and the tip of his nose, and he looks up to find flakes of the purest white starting to speckle Anybal's colorful landscape as they fall.
It's raining spores.
It's a famous phenomenon around here. Happens every once in a while. When comets cut past Anybal's sky, they leave spores over the atmosphere that fall like snow drops. Delicate, small things that melt and immediately disintegrate when in contact with warmth. These comets are small parts of planets that died a long time ago, expelled from the whole to travel across the galaxy, leaving trails of anonymous existences and erased lives over Anybal.
He's seen all this before, but it's different this time; it tugs at some raw point, deep down in him. There are familiar voices and faces traveling like stardust in these lights, spreading billions of years of history and memories across the universe.
There are tiny bits of him in those bleak, cloudy blues.
And someday, he thinks, it will be raining Earth here, too.
He'd like to believe that the reason he's here is to watch the planet he made a home of once burn for the sheer pleasure of seeing something beautiful. But it's not.
Earth's destruction had been an awfully melancholic spectacle since the very first time he saw it, as a boy newly recruited by the Time Agency, who'd only heard of Earth through history books. He wondered, then, how many secrets were being lost forever, or if there were still any cords somehow connecting him to that place, turning into ashes with what was left of the dry, dead carcass of that legendary planet.
If only he knew.
He notices the Anybalians are starting to come out of their homes and gather around.
It's been a while since he last met an Anybalian. He'd forgotten the gorgeous beings they are. Part animal flesh, part bits of water; skin the color of the deepest blue of Earth's oceans, eyes of an arid hazel that remind him of Boeshane after a storm.
Anybalians were the first aftermath of men giving in to the undisputable fact that life is too short to be spent with their feet rooted to only one planet. The first human hybrids to ever be identified. With their ancestors, though, they only share a faint physical resemblance.
There is no blood running in their veins; it is water, conducting electricity that keeps their hearts beating. They breathe through two large pores on their collar bones and they don't speak. Not the old-fashioned way, , here, is a rude and primitive practice, obviously no match to the accuracy and power of thought. They can make sounds, yes – moans and groans and filthy noises when something hot presses and rubs against their cool skin. But it's not how they communicate.
They can literally look into you. And it's a sensation both scary and fascinating.
Essentially, Anybalians function through a rather odd combination of mechanical impulses and mental sensitivity. What humans would've classified as 'freaks' are, in fact, evolution. And when they direct their eyes towards the sky, they can see beyond the kaleidoscopic lights, through the time and space separating their present from the billions of years of existence that gets to them as the last breaths of dying worlds.
Maybe that's why he's here. He could use some company.
He knows what's there, too, can see their faces, hear the distant voices that echo in the dark. They're always following him, wherever he goes. His ghosts. He's scared.
For longer than he can remember (and that is saying something), he's been running in circles, always turning around the next bend, over and over, in the hope that one day he'll foil the ghosts. He thought that if he could only keep on moving, until it became impossible to distinguish any familiar pattern or remember his own name, then he'd be able to find some kind of peace.
In the end, he only came to the irrevocable conclusion that there is no such thing as far enough.
He'd like to say that there isn't much left of the old days, but the truth, as well as the problem, is probably that there is too much. Running away is not the same as escaping, and that had been, he reckons, his mistake. To think that he could just jump on a space ship and it would all be instantaneously water under the bridge.
That's the thing with guilt; it never completely fades. Lasts for as long as conscience itself. And it doesn't matter how fast you run or how far you go, it's always there, lurking like a shadow and staining every new memory with the recollection of what's gone. And every once in a while (probably more often than he's like) it snaps, and brings it all back on an unbearably violent rush, unmercifully making his insides clench and his breath falter.
He left Earth to try and find an old piece of him, to go back to the days when he made a life of conning others, as well as himself, and fleeing, always fleeing, gloriously and unscathed. It should be easy, he thought. He didn't consider, though, that he'd lived one same life, that life, going by that one name, for longer than he'd been anyone else before. So much that it changed him. It molded who he was and at some point he actually ended up becoming the mask he spent so long hiding behind.
That one Jack Harkness.
Captain Harkness wasn't just a skin he could peel off to get into a different one. It glued to him, penetrated deeper. It's funny. Except it isn't, not really.
And he… liked it.
Even at the darkest pits of the furthest galaxies, there was always this little voice dancing in the back of his skull, reminding him of everything he wants to forget.
Of everything he wants desperately to go back to, but doesn't think he can.
Jack. Jack. Jack.
And it always said so in a soft Welsh accent.
They died, and I'm sorry, Jack. But you cannot just run away. You cannot run away.
Oh, yes, I can. Just watch me.
He was a coward, then. Well, partly desperate, partly destroyed, but also a coward. He left because there was nothing on Earth that didn't feel like a graveyard, no face that didn't seem painfully familiar - nothing that wouldn't eventually end. But outer space, it turned out, wasn't so different. He could pretend, for a while. But truth inevitably dawned in him.
Once you take off, you can never stop, can never settle. If you do, reality will catch up, eventually, and you'll have to face the facts - and doesn't that beat the purpose?
There's no way to be completely free, or completely at ease, when you're running away. Because you can't forget that you are, first and foremost, doing exactly just that: running away.
And as he takes a deep breath, inhaling Anybal's scent of wet lawn and sandalwood, he thinks he's finally growing tired of this.
He looks around him, at the dozens of Anybalians spreading across the place. There's something mournful, almost afflicted, in the way they stare at the sky. They're paying their final respects to the people they bred from. Like in a funeral.
He hadn't been so certain why he ended up here until just now. He needs his funeral, too. Before he can take another step, he's got to bury his ghosts, before they finally drive him mad. He's been walking the fine line between his quaint way of life and insanity for way too long now.
If he's not ready to forget yet, then maybe it's time he gives up and starts moving forward. If he can't fix it, he can at least move on. Well, he can try. It's been so long that, most of the time, he can hardly remember why it is that it hurts so much. All that's left is the maddening sensation of having the ground roughly pulled out from under his feet, or the acute feeling of his heart tearing apart as it sank. And then he had to run.
But he doesn't want ghosts anymore. He wants the memories instead.
So one day you'll see me dying, of old age, and you'll just keep going.
Yeah.
We better make the most of it then.
He never did keep going. He balked, gave up, pretended to be over while resentment ate him inside and made him bitter.
He did keep his promise, though.
He never forgot.
Don't forget me.
Never could.
A thousand years time? You won't remember me.
Yes, I will. I promise, I will.
He closes his eyes and remembers waking up entangled on navy sheets and legs that used to kick him awake in the middle of the night. The smell of Cardiff's rain invading the bedroom as the cool breeze swayed the curtains, sending the lightest of shivers down his spine. He remembers a warm body curling up next to his, and a strong heart beating under a panting chest, alive.
He remembers a warm feeling of satisfaction and belonging and rightness. His version of happiness.
He remembers all they fought for, and all they died for, and how it was all for nothing if he wasn't there to make it worth something.
And Jack needs those memories more than he can explain - more than he can even understand.
He's just not ready to be anyone else, not ready to forget. Not yet.
One day, when he's finally worn out by exhaustion and beaten by time, he'll shut his eyes for the last time, and the man Jack Harkness, and many more that came before and after him, will be left behind. He'll finally release his ancient soul from its immortal cage, and rest.
All those faces, names and stories, all the lives that persisted and existed in eternity through him, will cease to be. He'll burst into a thousand lights and burn from the inside out, like planets and stars in the skies of Anybal. His very own supernova.
And just like that, amorphous and faceless, they will all be extinguished.
One day.
Fim.