Word are spaces between us…
There are few words that cut into Jack Harkness like a knife; but those that do leave a gaping wound, as though someone twisted a serrated knife in his guts. Some are innocuous while some are the hardest words to say. But as time goes on, he still can't get them to stop hurting.
Words, even the lack of words sometimes, are the spaces that hold people apart. A reliance on words to prove affection, to put one in a place, to hurt…. It seemingly does nothing, yet it creates a rift in which there is a sort of vacuum for emotion. Once the words are said, they can never be unsaid, and they linger forever, hanging in space and time. Especially for some who have longer life spans than others.
The first word which cuts him to the bones and leaves his soul bare and bleeding, no matter how true, is freak. He is a freak of nature, of time and space. A fixed point in the universe, and Jack Harkness had abso-bloody-lutely no say in this decision. He equally loves, hates, thanks, and curses Rose Tyler for her parting gift. He loved, fiercely, in those last days. He accepted his fate and went into the void screaming defiance against an unbeatable foe. Yet he came back, alone on a dying satellite filled with the stale smell of ashes and metal. He will never forget the feeling of utter emptiness he carried with him for so long, as he will never forget that word, uttered so many times across so many lives. Uttered by lips he used to love. Freak…
The second word that haunts Jack like the ghosts of Charles Dickens's Christmas tale, is love. He has loved, will love, and will always love. He loves, oh how he loves, yet he keeps that love secret. Keeps it locked away in the darkest recesses of his damnable heart. Because love is so brief and yet so never-ending. He still loves his wife, even all these years after her death. He loves all the ones who have touched his life, brief glimmers of sunshine and starlight in the void. He will always love his Doctor, no matter how the Time Lord treats him. It is something which Jack pushes away, now, yet something within him clings fiercely to those he loves. Perhaps in a few millennia he will find it in his heart to share that love, dying slowly inside of him, but until then, when he hears those words spoken to him, he shudders inside, feeling that hole grow deeper.
The third word which Jack can't bear is don't. There are may reasons for this, people leaving, dying, angry at him, hating him. Pleading with him. But the ones which will haunt him all his long life come from the 456. The don't you dare's, the don't go's. And his own, horrible admission. Simply don't. And it is something he can never take back, and will never forget.
Those who love Jack die, always. Never will there be someone to keep hold of, no one to cling to, nothing to stay stable and sane in a life he can't even comprehend the longevity of. All he has are the words they leave behind, echoes of times long ago and far away. The one thing which separates him from the rest of the universe. The freak, loved and unloved, and always pleading with those he loves. Don't…