Torchwood Files
Chapter 38: Captain Jack Harkness, part 1
A/N: This is a very short chapter to introduce the next section. I was very disturbed by how Jack acted in this episode, and this is the explanation that I've come up with. I hope you like it. Enjoy.
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As soon as he walked into the Ritz dance hall with Tosh, Jack knew something was wrong. His vision blurred. Something attacked his mind. He slammed up his mental walls, cringing at the headache he knew he would have from doing it so quickly and without the proper preparation. He pulled Tosh into a dance to cover any awkwardness as his training kicked in.
As a Time Agent, he had had years of training in keeping people, creatures, and machines out of his head, but for certain situations, when he knew he wouldn't be able to hold his walls completely, he had another option. Quickly and ruthlessly he cordoned off parts of his mind, his self, the parts of him that meant something. Torchwood. His history in the future, both as a Time Agent and as a Companion of the Doctor. His daughter and grandson. He wouldn't be able to hide his age, but he tried to block away parts of his history since arriving on Earth.
Last of all, he shoved all of his memories of Ianto, all of his feelings, his conflicts, his hopes and dreams and wishes, needs and wants and most of all love, everything to do with the man except his name into a small box in his head that he locked painfully tightly with a mnemonic only to be broken when Ianto looked him in the eyes again.
His boxes stacked safely away behind closed doors in his mind, Ianto's and the Doctor's boxes behind several more layers than the others so that they would be the last to be breached in the event of an all out psychic attack, he cleared his head and joked with Tosh, ready to fight whatever threat loomed. He became a new man.
He felt the temporal shift as it happened. His mind briefly grew fuzzy before it cleared. He looked around and saw a time he never thought he'd see again, a time that felt like home.
"They're not ghosts," he reported to Tosh, looking up from his Vortex Manipulator and indicating the soldiers and their sweethearts dancing around them. "It's a simple temporal shift. And it's beautiful!" He laughed delightedly, his grin huge.