Original Post Date: September 2011
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Jack, vague mentions of Jack/Ianto
Warnings: Angsty. Post CofE, AU for MD.
Notes: I don't know what possessed me to write angsty Jack, but oh well. Here it is.
Summary: " It's summertime on the planet below, or at least it is in the Northern Hemisphere ." Jack didn't go back for MD, but finds himself watching Earth from an alien cruise ship.
I am making no money from this, all characters and ideas belong to their original creators, no harm intended.
A PARODY OF FORGETTING
It's summertime on the planet below, or at least it is in the Northern Hemisphere where the people he knows – knew – are still going about their daily business. Their business is probably still trying to save the human race, as his was once upon a time. From what he knows they really do need saving this time – the human race and those things they call society and civilisation; things they set such importance on, however ill-informed and archaic they may really be. All those quaint, human, 21st Century ideals need saving, but that isn't is his responsibility any more.
He doesn't belong there: he owes Earth nothing and planet Earth owes nothing to him. They had done each other enough ills. He has moved on.
Jack wondered sometimes – for he was still Jack; Captain Jack Harkness… a name which meant so much and yet nothing: a convenient name chosen almost at random, a handsome soldier in 1941 he had known only for a night, but whose name he had used for years, before the man had been born and for years after, a name and identity intertwined with the their 20th century in particular – about the people he once knew.
About one man in particular. Another man who didn't belong but felt the need to protect that funny little planet which seemed to know almost nothing of the worlds outside of its atmosphere but whose people would become so important one day. Another man who seemed to have deserted it.
In the absence of the one who fixes and heals, those in positions of power must make decisions and sacrifices that they believe will be the best way solution to the problem, whatever the cost.
In the absence of the Doctor, Captain Jack Harkness had made decisions which had killed his lover and grandson, estranged his daughter and left him with a painful reminder in the form of a woman. A woman he had seem grow and change and become someone special, but one whom he could now not bear to look in the eye.
Gwen Cooper had wanted Jack to stay for her, but in her he would see only the absence of Ianto, her children would remind him of the loss of Stephen and in her actions and her family he would see the shadows of his mistakes and a constant reminder of what he could never have.
He has lost everything: the small amount of family he had left (his brother, his daughter, his grandson), his lover, his home and every physical reminder of over one hundred years of memories. He has nothing to go back for. It's time for him to move on.
It's summertime on the planet below, but the cruise liner is heading for the wintered plains of Axlaguh, where an ex-Time Agent with a coat from a backwater century of planet Earth would be enough of a novelty at the nightly Balls to let him throw himself into a bottle of spirits and a lively dance, and forget the life which gave him painful memories and a comfortable coat, even if it is for a little while.
He knows he will never truly forget, but an attempt at - a parody of - forgetting was enough.