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John Hart, before that was his name, lived on the Boeshane Peninsula in the 51st century. As a young boy, he lived with his mother, father, and five older sisters. By the time he was eight, all of his sisters had moved away and it was just him and his parents. They lived alone, in the middle of a sandy field, about six miles from civilization.
On the day of the attack, John's parents went into town to get supplies. They left him, now ten, alone in the house. When, at midday, a sandstorm descended on Boeshane, he wasn't worried. Sandstorms were a common occurrence that didn't bother anyone. When his parents didn't return the next day, John wasn't worried—the storm probably delayed them. By the next day, they still didn't come home.
"It's stupid to worry," the boy told himself s he started on the road to the down. "But they're my parents."
As he neared the town, John didn't hear any singing, didn't see any dancing. There were no merchants, no Ood. Instead, he saw bodies, people weeping over them, calling out for friends and family.
"What happened?" he cried, moving through the crowd. "Who did this?"
Of course, he didn't need to ask. Anyone who lived on Boeshane knew how the Creatures could attack any second.
They never did find his parents' bodies. They never found a lot of bodies. The boy that would later become John Hart was only one of many.
His sisters were not able to look after him, one because of poverty, another because of her husband, a third because she was visiting Boeshane at the time of the attack, the fourth couldn't be reached, and the last because of her job.
He was sent to live with another family. Well, it couldn't be called a family. Everybody but Mrs. Hart, a schoolteacher and the matriarch of the family, were killed in the invasion. It was thought that, together, they would heal.
And for a while, they did. At least Mrs. Hart did. The boy, because despite what he went through, he was still just a boy, was trying to live on. But it was hard. Mrs. Hart was an ambitious woman. Mere months after the attack on Boeshane, she took her "son" and left the colony. But she wasn't the person he though she was. They had no money, so she devised plans to get some.
They traveled from planet to planet, stealing and conning species after species. And the boy, for he had no fixed name, not anymore, got used to it. He learned to fake and illness so well that anyone would take him in. as he became older, he could act love just as well. He could pickpocket somebody naked without them noticing. After a while, he gained other skills.
Mrs. Hart wasn't exactly what one would call right in the head. He didn't know if she was this way before the attack, but he didn't really want to know. She got angry easily. Very easily.
The first time he held someone as they died, he was 15. Hart had been caught stealing. She wasn't having one of her good days. She got mad. She took her gun, and illegally carried and purchased weapon, and emptied it into the victim. It was a young girl who was walking home from the market and got stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After that, Hart had taken to calling him "John", the name of her dead son. So far, she hadn't raised a hand against him, and he decided to let her have her fun. But she got angry quicker now. It was like, when she pulled the trigger, something inside her, something that yearned for violence, snapped free.
John, because that was what he went by now, got used to hearing last words. He remembered all the tears, the pleas for mercy, the cries of pain, people begging him to pass on their messages, to not be forgotten.
He got used to this life.
The first time he killed, he was 17.
The first person he killed was Mrs. Hart.
They were, for once, staying in one place. They lived in a small apartment, in a friendly, yet "seedy", part of town. John liked it. They had neighbors, he had friends. While Mrs. Hart was robbing the rich, he had fun with the before-mentioned friends. Well, one friend in particular.
His name was Qac. He was beautiful. And orphan, the same age as John. Qac pronounced him name as a cross between "Jaques" and the sound ducks made.
John and Qac had amazing times together. They were young and passionate. John knew he was young, yes, but he knew it was going somewhere. And that somewhere was love.
Until Mrs. Hart walked in on them. She was mad. She had been drinking. That night she had not gotten any—sex or money. To her, it looked as though John had gotten both. As said before, she was an unstable and easily angered woman. She attacked the cause of her troubled with an ornamental knife hanging on the wall of John's room.
As Qac, bleeding heavily, fell to the ground, John stood up.
"What have you done!" he cried, rushing to her and pinning her against the wall.
His body sagged, and, with no more support, Hart fell to the ground. John sat at her feet, helpless and broken. The light seemed to go from his eyes.
"What have you done?" he whimpered, crawling over to Qac.
"Don't forget me," Qac's weak voice startled him out of his thoughts.
"You're alive?" John's hands were trembling as he reached for his lover.
"For now," Qac groaned.
"No," John begged. "No, stay with me. Stay with me, please."
"I can't," Qac tried to shake his head.
"Please," John coaxed with a shaky voice.
"It was good," Qac became paler by the second. "It was good?"
"Very," John said. "And it will be."
He was trying to stand up and fetch someone. But the hospital was too far away. People were too far way.
"No," Qac took his hands. "Stay."
"But I can save you," John argued.
"You can't," Qac talked through the tears that were threatening to spill. "I'm sorry."
"It's my fault," John looked over at Mrs. Hart with one eye and quickly returned it to Qac.
"No, it's not," Qac said. "It was her fault. You told me about her. She's evil. It's her fault. Not yours. . . her's."
"Qac!" John yelled. Don't close your eyes.
"Sorry," Qac apologized. "Tired."
"Don't speak, save your breath," John pleaded. "Don't sleep."
"I won't wake up," Qac finished for him.
"I love you," John wouldn't cry.
"You, too," Qac said, gripping onto John harder. "Don't be too sad."
"How can I?" John asked Qac.
But there was no response. There was no heartbeat, no breath.
"Please wake up," John was shaking his shoulders. They were getting cold already. "You don't like to sleep in, remember?"
Yes, Qac didn't like to sleep in. but he wasn't sleeping.
"Don't leave me," John threw himself over the body, protecting it, holding it. "Please don't leave me."
John didn't know what to do. All his life, there was someone protecting him. He never had to make such big decisions.
And now he was alone in a room with two corpses. One was his lover's. The other was the woman who raised him from the age of ten and who had killed the man he loved.
But Qac would come back to him. True love always came back. That was what always happened in the fairy tales his mother—his real mother—read him before bed. His mother was always right. And if she said true love would always find each other, than that must happen. Qac would come back. Qac had to come back.
Jack Harkness, at least that was what he introduced himself to John—sorry, David—as, was beautiful. He had sharp cheekbones, a cleft chin, and a head full of floppy brown hair. His smile was sure and filled with straight white teeth. He talked with an accent that screamed of being abroad. But it had undertones of home. Undertones of Boeshane.
Jack Harkness was magical. He was amazing. They got involved. And John thought it was going somewhere. And that somewhere was love.
And that is how John Hart came to be! If you hadn't guessed, John is obsessed with Jack because he thinks he's Qac reincarnated.
