Impossible

The impossible man talks to the only one who will never judge him, never forget him. The only one who always listens.

Play Me Dear part 2

The second thing he was aware of when he woke up was that Jack had sedated him. He’d been so stunned by Jack’s words that he hadn’t even reacted when Jack raised some kind of gun and shot him – he had just gone blank, and then the world swam into blackness.

It was still blackness, actually. He opened his eyes, and that helped a little but the room was still mostly filled with darkness with a small sliver of light showing under the door. It was just enough for him to realise he wasn’t at the Hub or anywhere else he knew; everything was cold cement unless it was cold steel (okay so that did indicate the Hub but he knew every inch of that place, every inch, and there was nowhere there like this), and it gleamed.

Cement shouldn’t gleam, not unless it’s been repeatedly cleaned within an inch of its life, and he finally pinpointed the reason why he was so uneasy. After the warehouse, what he’d heard, what Jack had confessed to – well, the knowledge that he had a secret bunker that was so thoroughly cleaned raised issues he’d rather not think about, especially when he was the one trapped in it.

Strictly speaking he wasn’t tied down in any way. Now that he had established where exactly he was (or wasn’t), he tested his limbs and found he could move freely. The smell of new fabric reached his nostrils as the material creased around his knees and elbows, bending around his limbs as he levered himself upright. His hair was damp on the back of his neck, his wrists and head no longer hurt. He practically screamed ‘clean’ as much as the disturbingly gleaming room did. And he hadn’t been awake for any of it.

He wondered, briefly, if he would be feeling quite this calm if it had been anyone other than Jack who took him, who washed the blood off him and apparently replaced his blood-stained suit with a new one – all while he was asleep. Or sedated, or stunned, or whatever the term was for that particular weapon. Perhaps when he saw Jack again he’d ask what it was, where he’d gotten it – and of course, why they were here.

The scuff of a footstep outside the door had his head whipping around to see a shadow outside. Speak of the devil he thought irreverently, and braced himself for what would doubtless be an onslaught of light. Eyes shut tight against the glare, he waited for the light. So focussed on one sense, he almost missed the sound of the door opening in the darkness.

“It’s alright,” Jack’s voice said from the doorway, soothing in its familiar cadence. “You can open your eyes. Light will slowly return at a pace your eyes can automatically adjust to without pain. Sorry about the accommodations – I don’t have a lot of room here, and no beds. How are your wrists?”

Ianto opened his eyes mostly out of surprise, and found that the light under the door was in fact quite dim and low to the ground. In its pale reflections from cement and steel, he could just make out Jack’s shape – sans coat – leaning against the doorframe.

“The sort of place you only go to work, sir?” he asked, still unnerved by the gleaming cleanness of it.

Jack chuckled, and the low familiar tone set him at ease. “Exactly. Here, let’s get you standing.”

Jack’s silhouette strode over to him and extended its arms, and he automatically took the offered assistance. Jack easily pulled him to his feet, flush against his body so he could feel the muscles trembling with a tenseness that belied his Captain’s easy tone.

“Sir?” he asked, concern filling his tone. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just...good to see you, Ianto,” Jack rumbled hesitantly, the sound carrying more through his chest to Ianto’s ears than from his lips. “It’s good to know you’re alive.”

“Yes sir, you retrieved me from those people,” Ianto reassured him, frowning when the muscles twitched again indicating he was thinking about something else. “Sir?”

He looked up into eyes filled with more pain than Jack had ever shown, more broken than Jack had ever seemed. He couldn’t stand seeing those emotions in the only man he would ever love, and reached up to kiss them away. Jack’s hands instantly tightened around his arms, roughly trying to pull him closer than they already were even as his lips melted around Ianto’s, soft movements drinking in everything Ianto had to give. The contrast of demand and submission showed him more than any expression or word could just how worried Jack had been. It was so quintessentially Jack – experienced lover, inexperienced at relationships.

“Let me love you,” Jack whispered against his lips, pleading – but he didn’t need to beg, Ianto would always give Jack this. Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t tease him first.

“But there isn’t a bed,” Ianto pointed out, flashing Jack a cheeky smile in the light he hadn’t even noticed brightening.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Jack grinned in return, but it looked more like the macabre smile of a skull and Ianto lost the will to continue to tease.

“Love me, Jack,” Ianto whispered, and surrendered.

The Party Never Ends

The music pumped through the air, soundwaves almost visible in the dust raised by the bass rumbling through every object in the vicinity. Everywhere he looked there were bodies writhing to the encompassing beat, losing themselves in the ecstatic simplicity of dance. Plenty of stimulants and hallucinogens were making the rounds, augmenting the already intense experience of the permanent party that occupied half the moon. People flew in and out of the other side, but here there was only the music and the movement.

It was frenzied and hypnotic and he wanted so much to lose himself in it, but he was here for a reason. So while his body moved to the beat in a sinuous dance that would have made paid professionals sit up and take notice, he also moved through the crowd, looking for his target.

Falaros Niverrah. Eliminate or destroy.


Basic orders, but they'd given him a partner anyway - he'd be arriving on a later flight, but he'd taken the opportunity to get to The Party early when it came up. The partner would be mostly cleanup anyway, cover for his presence so no one took notice of either of them. No one was alone at The Party.

He spotted his prey and stopped traversing the floor, stripping off an already soaked with sweat shirt and losing it to the crowd. Falaros was surrounded by his usual bevy of admirers, skin shining in the myriad of lights that flitted across and sometimes through the dancers - a trait of his less than human heritage. It was very attractive, he decided as he watched the light play across his skin in a mesmerising display, unconsciously drifting closer to the subject of his stare. It came as something of a surprise when Falaros' eyes flicked up to meet his and hold them, interest in his target's gaze. He allowed his appreciation for Falaros' body to show in his, licking his lips and putting on a show with his body to show exactly how flexible he was. And when he met Falaros' eyes, there was a fire there that had nothing to do with the imperative beat and everything to do with a far more primitive rhythm.

Oh yeah, he was awesome.

Falaros left his circle and moved over to him, matching his rhythm as they moved together to the beat that vibrated through their bodies, threatening a cardiac arrest if they weren't already inured to the arrhythmia. A breath apart, they moved like sex on the dance floor, never quite touching. Falaros' circle reformed around them, keeping their distance now as Falaros' conquest for the night became obvious. Still, they made an attractive picture - light shining off Falaros' skin even as it glinted off the sweat covering his own torso, pants clinging to well-shaped legs and clearly outlining even in the half light his significant assets.

He allowed a smirk to cross his face as they danced. Hook, line and sinker. Piece of cake.

Reborn

He'd always had a talent for surviving anything the world had to throw at him. The doctors had called him extraordinary as the ranks of their subjects dwindled and he remained alive. A miracle, they said, and poked and prodded him even more until he couldn't remember his name - he used the Roman numeral on his door. Until he couldn't remember where he came from, and made agony his hearthstone. We want to know your limits, they said as he screamed; we want to know how far the human body can go.

On a night of fire and pain and panic, they set in motion just how far he would go. They tried to erase all the evidence, but he refused to be erased - he would not fade with history and memory. Even though the darkness called so sweetly, he would not be swayed. Because these things that called themselves humans and heroes and saviours could not be allowed to continue the subjugation of His people.

So he waited, and planned, and waited until the rot was clear to all who cared to look, and then he made them look. Monster he may be, but he was the sword that would strike down those far worse, the shield to protect the innocent masses from reprisal. He wasn't innocent, never had been. Never would be. So he had died for the ideal, the idea of freedom.

He'd never died before, not quite. But in Evey's arms, handing over the decision to someone who was inside the system but had also been outside and could make the decision without vengeful hatred colouring their perspective, full of the bullets of Mister Creedy's most loyal - he gave in to the blackness.

And then he woke up. He remembered. In the clarity of the agony he was born in, he remembered all the other times he'd died for a cause that was just, for a people who could and would be so much more. He remembered the man who wasn't a man, the girl who had been Time, his loves and his losses. And this time he didn't cry, because by now he knew that's how it was, and he had made peace with his fate.

And in the rubble of Parliament House, an undying man who had been called many names and made someone else's his own started to climb out of the tomb of his own making into another new world.

Burden of Innocence

It was always the same: the pain followed by death (rinse and repeat as many times as necessary), and then she would come to clean him up and put him back together - sometimes literally. He never asked and she never told him whether it was on His orders or her own will, and he was infinitely grateful for every visit, cherishing each one as if it were the last. While she worked they would talk - or she would talk if he couldn't - and it was always about small things, the things in life they had taken for granted and now recalled with a clarity that could have been painful if it wasn't shared.

"Do you remember October mornings?"

"I remember... On really cold ones, the air sparkled when the sun rose, because of frost overnight. Just for a minute, the world was made of rainbows. Then the sun evaporated it all."

"Oh God yes. Do you remember October 29th 1997? The coldest October day on record in London!"

"It was even worse on October 17th 1993 in Scotland. And don't even get me started on before records."

She laughed, he grinned; meanwhile her hands were busy with a sponge and a bucket of water, wiping the charred skin from his new flesh.

"At least the apples were good that year."

She laughed again, because if she didn't she might think about what she was doing and cry.

They never spoke about Him, or what happened to him, or what was happening to the Earth. That was their reality, and if it became their everything they just might break. The others had their own ways of coping - Francine depended on her anger and outrage at being tricked, becoming increasingly bitter and withdrawn; Clive reverted to childish optimism and idolisation of his family, refusing to see Francine as anything but his wife and Tish as anything but his innocent daughter - but Tish had been young and idealistic and when her illusions of the world were shattered Jack had been the only one to tell her it was okay to feel hurt and that it would pass.

He was right, but only because she had him. Where her family became insular and set themselves against the world, Jack showed her how to look over life and see the bad and the good - and there was so much good she'd missed before she met him. She was halfway to acceptance when He found out about their little talks and decided to punish them both.

She had to watch, this time. And every time she made a sound, every time she so much as flinched, more pain was added to his agony. It was unbearable. It shattered her acceptance and taught her to hate with a fire that never died.

But she still came afterwards, hosed down his cell and held onto him as he screamed his body back together. For once, as she sponged away the blood from the new flesh and he caught his breath, she didn't speak and she didn't smile.

"I'm sorry," he croaked after she carefully slid water down his throat, and she looked at him sharply, surprise breaking through her encompassing rage.

"What?"

"I'm sorry you had to see that," he said, a little smoother this time as his throat regenerated. "I'm sorry you had to watch His cruelty. He likes an audience."

"But it was my fault, because of me! All the things He did to you, because I-"

"No, it wasn't. None of this is your fault, and it is more than you should be asked to bear. I'm sorry that this is your burden, and I'm sorry that this is so unfair - but I'm not sorry for you."

She looked at him incredulously, ready to disbelieve him - but he never lied. Not once in all their talks had he lied. As his words sank in, she examined them with all the intelligence that had led to her success, turning them over without emotional bias. And, as she peeled away the shock and the rage and the guilt, she realised they were true.

She should not have had to see that - it was His fault, He made her watch, He did everything, and He did not need an excuse. She was...just an innocent bystander.

Now she couldn't look away from him, from blue eyes that had seen to the heart of her and regretted only the circumstance. Shock filled her and held her immobile, body and mind, until he spoke again.

"Come here."

Mechanically, she followed his direction, stepping up until she looked up into his eyes from only inches away. His head tilted forward and for a panicked moment she thought he was going to break all the bonds of trust she'd laid and kiss her but - no, he did, but it was on the forehead and full of all the affection of the closest friend, all the love without the merest smudge of desire, and it broke something within her. Her guilt, the whetstone of her own self-destruction, shattered inside her as she broke through her shock. She clung to him, pressed against his chest as she cried for her own innocence and the ruin of her former life through no fault of her own, and he stood and soothed and pressed kisses to her head and let her mourn for should-have-been. He was her rock, her steadfast anchor against everything that tried to destroy her; he was her constant, and she would never let him go.

Broken Perspective pt 4

Some people would call Jack Harkness a broken man - I couldn't tell you for sure, but he has every reason to be. After the Year That Never Was, there was only a handful of us who knew what had happened, who could talk to each other without sounding completely loony. Jack was one of us, and even if I was a bit on the outside...well, I heard things didn't I? Tish would wake up silently sobbing from the memories of what she saw done to him - silent because if she made a sound whatever it was would get worse, just for her. Not that she's the one who told me, because after all, I wasn't there, and because I wasn't there I was somehow apart even if my family was technically together again. But Jack's been over a few times, and left as soon as I showed up with a saucy grin and a wink of bright blue eyes - but my sister or my mum or even sometimes my dad will be drying tears. He's good at acting, is our Captain. I think the only one who'll ever know whether or not he's broken is himself.

Vichyssoise

I haven't been writing for a while, so I've decided to put up a little taster of a RP I did with a friend. Warnings for torture...yes, mainly for torture.

Broken Perspective pt 3

Some people would call Jack Harkness a broken man - and they'd be right. Isn't it wonderful? Captain Jack Harkness, constant of the universe, and he's in pieces on the floor. My floor. I'd laugh if it weren't so pitiful - no wait, I'm laughing anyway, it's hilarious! Humans weren't made to live for very long, and the Captain has been alive much longer than he should. Not a patch on Timelords of course, but nothing is. So the Captain has been stretched and prodded and died and loved and had them die...over and over again...and just between you and me? He was already broken when he came to me, too many friends in the ground and too many lies on his tongue. Oh yes, Jack's broken. I made sure of it.

Broken Perspective pt 2

Some people would call Jack Harkness a broken man - but I couldn't tell you if they're right. I probably should, right? I'm Jack's...something...so I should know? But I don't. No matter how much I think I know him, there's always something left, something that is so at odds with everything else I know, and I'm back where I started again. I've only barely scratched the surface, and however much he protests that's all there is, I know there's something deeper there - if only I could reach it. If you want to know if Jack's broken, you'll have to ask him. Good luck getting a straight answer.

Play Me Dear

This one is for @TLorie. It's uhm...a bit graphic, so not for the faint-hearted. Or those opposed to slash.

Reminiscence

I remember Earth-That-Was.

I remember its shining cities, glass towers like desperate fingers stretching for the sky.
I remember its powerful planes, white gulls made of cold metal soaring high over earth and water alike.
I remember its monuments, inspirations of engineering and emotion that were meant to last into the annals of eternity.
I remember its natural wonders, wrought by no hand of man but the pure creation and intricate workings of the Earth itself, masterpieces of Mother Nature.

I remember how beautiful it was.

Broken Perspective pt 1

Some people would call Jack Harkness a broken man - but I know better. I've seen him grow from a disillusioned conman into a defender of Earth, through trials most people couldn't imagine. He's survived, and thrived, and built an institution which will protect the human race until it is ready to protect itself. As much as I disapprove of their methods at times, saving the Earth...who can argue with that? Well, the Master. And the Sontarans. Maybe the Nestine... Daleks... Cybermen... Sycorax... Raknoss... Ice Warriors... Okay so a lot of people would argue about that, but it's not like it's their planet is it? Oh, well, no, it's not mine either technically, but I like to think of myself as a sort of honorary Earthling...Earthman? Earthian? What is the correct term for someone from Earth who isn't human anyway? No, never mind, not the point. What was the point again? Oh yes! Jack. No, Jack isn't a broken man, of course not. Why would you even suggest it?

Duty to the Dead pt 2

Jack stared at the piece of paper on his desk, luxury stationery soaking up the blue ink of his signature. His eyes felt like burned holes in his skull, exhausted from too much to do and not enough people to do it any more. There hadn't been enough people for a while now, not really, it was a tight ship when Tosh and Owen were still alive, and since Gray...

He swallowed, that ancient hurt as fresh as the day he had let go of his brother's hand and let him be taken by Them. (Could it be called ancient when it hadn't happened yet in linear time? By subjective time it was nearly two centuries ago, but it technically wouldn't happen for over three thousand years...) He couldn't think of him, not now - there was no time to sort out the Hub with Torchwood overseeing the return of the children, no time to see if anything had survived the explosion. Or the scavenging done after.

Time. He had hoped for more time, even with the job they had. Even with the Doctor and the Daleks and the Weevils and all the other shit they dealt with and defeated and saved the Earth again and again and again... But he'd forgotten, in those final days, that the rules were different for everyone else. He'd forgotten that Ianto was mortal like everyone else, fragile like everyone else; forgotten that Ianto Jones, for all his efficiency and capability was only human. So he'd taken him into the heart of the enemy's camp, spoken proud words in a reckless bluff, and it had taken Ianto Jones away from him - just like that.

His eyes had found the sheet of paper again, rereading that first sentence over and over again. Regret to inform you, Ianto Jones is dead. And with him the last of Captain Jack Harkness's ties to Earth.

Jack's eyes burned in their sockets, but he didn't shed a tear. Captain Jack Harkness wasn't human enough to cry.

Duty to the Dead pt 1

Dear Mr & Mrs Davies,

I regret to have to inform you that your brother, Ianto Jones, died during the recent incident with the alien lifeform known as the '456'. He was present at the confrontation in Thames House, and perished in the retaliation of the '456' which resulted in the deaths of all Thames House's occupants.

Although Ianto was not permitted to talk about his work, I want you to know that he was a highly valued and trusted member of my team, and his loss is a great blow to us all. He has saved us more times than anyone could ever know, and the world will never be the same without him. I know that my life has been the richer for knowing him, and that I will never find another man his equal.

Unfortunately due to the continued sensitive nature of our work, many of his possessions cannot be released. Either myself or my second in command Gwen Cooper will be in touch regarding the handover of what items can be disbursed. In the wake of this incident, I offer you and your family our assistance with anything you might require. Please don't hesitate to call on us. It's the least we can do.

Yours sincerely,
Capt Jack Harkness
Torchwood

What Have You Done

It wasn’t love at first sight, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous; there’s no such thing – what people mistake for love is in fact lust, a chemical reaction to strong emotion or attractiveness. No, the first time I saw him it was in fact loathing. How could something like him exist? It wasn’t right, it violated all the carefully studied laws of the universe I had grown up (grown old?) learning. In all of time and space, nothing is fixed. Everything can be changed...it’s just that some things shouldn’t be. Lynchpins of the universe, turning points that affect the flow of time – and I can see them all. It’s like a map inside my head, the ever-changing landscape of the fourth dimension, and it’s what makes me a Timelord. Beyond the technology, beyond the physiology, beyond the mystique, this is what makes us gods: that we can perceive time as lesser races perceive space.

And he was solid, immovable, immutable. A fact. It made me sick.

I wanted him to be mine.