![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So the first line meme got me looking through what I'd written and I came across some things I'd forgotten about but that are basically finished. I didn't post these at the time because I hadn't posted any fic yet and I wanted to post something substantial first. And then I got caught up in writing more and forgot about them...
So here are two drabbles and a double drabble all musing on Jack's immortality. All written around May this year.
Title: Immortality
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
unfeathered
Character: Jack Harkness
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 400 (2 x 100, 1 x 200)
Spoilers: up to End of Days
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: Three separate musings on Jack's immortality
Author’s Note: All written before Season 3 of Doctor Who so rendered a little bit AU by the information revealed in Utopia
Laughing at Death
The first time Jack died, he’d thought the Daleks had somehow just stunned him.
The second time, burning up on re-entry, he’d been terrified. He’d known he only had a tiny chance of making it to Earth alive but three long years alone in space had made him risk it. But he’d died, still alone.
And he’d woken up in the Brecon Beacons. Alive. Whole. Not even burned.
He’d laughed.
The third time, he was less scared. And he laughed again.
The fourth time, he laughed as he was dying.
By the twentieth time, he wasn’t laughing. He’d had enough.
Never-Ending
Jack used to wonder what it would be like to be immortal, back when he was a Time Agent and then when he was a con-man. Wondered what it would be like to live linearly, day after day, year after year, instead of dipping in and out of eras as he pleased.
Now he knows. Now he wonders what it would be like to die, and not come back. Wonders if killing himself would work. Doesn’t dare try, just in case it does.
So he lives and he suffers, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. Life never-ending.
Eternity
Inspired byxwingace's fic Stuck in Traffic at the Magic Roundabout and set in that ’verse.
Three thousand years. Thirty centuries. Forty-three average human lifetimes. One million and ninety-five thousand days.
It’s an inconceivable amount of time, but Jack has lived it.
The despair of trying to conceive it has sent him mad over and over again, sometimes for decades, until he dies somehow and comes back sane. It’s driven him to suicide a few dozen times, but he always comes back.
He laughs when he remembers how hard it was at first just to get through a whole day, trapped in the slow lane, unable to hop to a different time the moment he got bored. If he’d known then that he’d still be here three thousand years later… it wouldn’t have helped. Because he has no choice. There’s nothing he can do but live. Forever. He’ll still be around when the human race has spread itself across countless planets, when the Earth has gone, when everything has died and the Universe is black and cold. He’ll die because there won’t be any air but he’ll come back to die again. He’ll always come back. And it will never, ever end.
It’s inconceivable, but Jack has the rest of eternity to try and comprehend it.
So here are two drabbles and a double drabble all musing on Jack's immortality. All written around May this year.
Title: Immortality
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Author:
unfeatheredCharacter: Jack Harkness
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 400 (2 x 100, 1 x 200)
Spoilers: up to End of Days
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: Three separate musings on Jack's immortality
Author’s Note: All written before Season 3 of Doctor Who so rendered a little bit AU by the information revealed in Utopia
Laughing at Death
The first time Jack died, he’d thought the Daleks had somehow just stunned him.
The second time, burning up on re-entry, he’d been terrified. He’d known he only had a tiny chance of making it to Earth alive but three long years alone in space had made him risk it. But he’d died, still alone.
And he’d woken up in the Brecon Beacons. Alive. Whole. Not even burned.
He’d laughed.
The third time, he was less scared. And he laughed again.
The fourth time, he laughed as he was dying.
By the twentieth time, he wasn’t laughing. He’d had enough.
Never-Ending
Jack used to wonder what it would be like to be immortal, back when he was a Time Agent and then when he was a con-man. Wondered what it would be like to live linearly, day after day, year after year, instead of dipping in and out of eras as he pleased.
Now he knows. Now he wonders what it would be like to die, and not come back. Wonders if killing himself would work. Doesn’t dare try, just in case it does.
So he lives and he suffers, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. Life never-ending.
Eternity
Inspired by
xwingace's fic Stuck in Traffic at the Magic Roundabout and set in that ’verse.Three thousand years. Thirty centuries. Forty-three average human lifetimes. One million and ninety-five thousand days.
It’s an inconceivable amount of time, but Jack has lived it.
The despair of trying to conceive it has sent him mad over and over again, sometimes for decades, until he dies somehow and comes back sane. It’s driven him to suicide a few dozen times, but he always comes back.
He laughs when he remembers how hard it was at first just to get through a whole day, trapped in the slow lane, unable to hop to a different time the moment he got bored. If he’d known then that he’d still be here three thousand years later… it wouldn’t have helped. Because he has no choice. There’s nothing he can do but live. Forever. He’ll still be around when the human race has spread itself across countless planets, when the Earth has gone, when everything has died and the Universe is black and cold. He’ll die because there won’t be any air but he’ll come back to die again. He’ll always come back. And it will never, ever end.
It’s inconceivable, but Jack has the rest of eternity to try and comprehend it.
Tags:
no subject
Because while I can't imagine normal human Jack attempting suicide, I certainly can imagine immortal Jack doing it. Just for some temporary relief. It's not really death for him, after all, not the end. It's just such a horrendously long amount of time that he faces.
And thank you for the compliments! :-)