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checkingout2015-03-17 09:21 pm
alifetime) wrote in checkingout2015-03-17 09:21 pm
Entry tags:
There Once Was a Man Who Could Never Die
Who: Jack Harkness and you!
What: In all the madness going around, Jack is trying to help those he can while not losing himself in the ghosts that cluster around him.
When: From 17-28
Warnings: Jack Harkness is a warning in and of himself. That said, Jack hasn't always led a pleasant life. Mentions of blood, gore, hauntings, death, trauma, etc. Can switch to brackets or prose to suit your prefs!
[March 17-22]
He barely glanced at the group of men in the mirror he passed, paid even less attention to the rose petals that drifted from their mouths. It wasn't that Jack didn't remember them, he did. It wasn't that he couldn't look them in the eyes. He could.
It was that he knew they weren't real. They were people he had been laughing with in the moments before the faeries had come. The dead man who lurked at their edges was disregarded along with them when he caught their image again in the polished tabletop. The boyfriend if he remembered rightly. Yeah, he remembered them. He had done what he needed to, what saved all of them. It was he did. It was what he always did.
They were growing stronger, every hour or every day. Jack had the bad feeling that things were going to get worse before they got any better. Those he had met in this place where the ones he hunted now: Thea, Clara, Harry, and the Doctor, but he wasn't going to turn down anyone if they needed him.
Anything to distract him from the long dead that were waiting in the shadows. Movie star smile fixed in place, he headed for the figure down the hall.
[March 23-28]
It wasn't just the name of 'Jack' that he heard following him down the hallways, echoing through the rooms, but the multitude of names that had been his over the years. His brother trailed along behind him, trying to touch his hand and hold on... the same hand that had let go of him long ago. A pack of small children waited up ahead of him, clustered together as if they were the sole survivors when they had really been a sacrifice.
He fell into one of the chairs by the fireplace, chin propped on a curled hand as he watched them come closer. Gray was first, of course he was. His own little brother who's hand he let slip from his own. Behind him came the children, those that Earth had sacrificed. He counted off all eleven of them that had been taken. Clement McDonald wasn't there. Their little hands went through his as they tried to touch him and pull him along.
"I had to. The Indonesian flu would have mutated and killed twenty-five million people. They thought I wouldn't care, that I was cold enough to be able to do it."
Estelle Cole lifted a hand and waved to him.
"All you wanted was to spend the rest of your life with me," he told her. To a watcher, he must have looked like a madman talking to empty air by the check-in desk. "It was what... 1935? It was the Astoria Ballroom. You were so beautiful. We said we would be together until we died. Then I saw you again in 2007, and you thought I was my son. You kept my picture all those years."
Near her lurked another man, one that Jack could never deny. Someone he had loved enough to tell things to that he wouldn't another for at least a few decades.
"It was 1927, and you stole my visa. It all ended so badly."
Its only his name that Angelo whispered, holding out a hand to him.
"Then you thought I was the Devil because I couldn't die. How many times did you let that crowd kill me? Shouldn't I be haunting you instead of you me?"
The old man limped around the corner, Jack sighing heavily. He tried to smile and failed badly.
"It was 1898. Hello, Anthony. You're looking much older. I keep going on, I keep living on. And everyone else just dies."
What: In all the madness going around, Jack is trying to help those he can while not losing himself in the ghosts that cluster around him.
When: From 17-28
Warnings: Jack Harkness is a warning in and of himself. That said, Jack hasn't always led a pleasant life. Mentions of blood, gore, hauntings, death, trauma, etc. Can switch to brackets or prose to suit your prefs!
[March 17-22]
He barely glanced at the group of men in the mirror he passed, paid even less attention to the rose petals that drifted from their mouths. It wasn't that Jack didn't remember them, he did. It wasn't that he couldn't look them in the eyes. He could.
It was that he knew they weren't real. They were people he had been laughing with in the moments before the faeries had come. The dead man who lurked at their edges was disregarded along with them when he caught their image again in the polished tabletop. The boyfriend if he remembered rightly. Yeah, he remembered them. He had done what he needed to, what saved all of them. It was he did. It was what he always did.
They were growing stronger, every hour or every day. Jack had the bad feeling that things were going to get worse before they got any better. Those he had met in this place where the ones he hunted now: Thea, Clara, Harry, and the Doctor, but he wasn't going to turn down anyone if they needed him.
Anything to distract him from the long dead that were waiting in the shadows. Movie star smile fixed in place, he headed for the figure down the hall.
[March 23-28]
It wasn't just the name of 'Jack' that he heard following him down the hallways, echoing through the rooms, but the multitude of names that had been his over the years. His brother trailed along behind him, trying to touch his hand and hold on... the same hand that had let go of him long ago. A pack of small children waited up ahead of him, clustered together as if they were the sole survivors when they had really been a sacrifice.
He fell into one of the chairs by the fireplace, chin propped on a curled hand as he watched them come closer. Gray was first, of course he was. His own little brother who's hand he let slip from his own. Behind him came the children, those that Earth had sacrificed. He counted off all eleven of them that had been taken. Clement McDonald wasn't there. Their little hands went through his as they tried to touch him and pull him along.
"I had to. The Indonesian flu would have mutated and killed twenty-five million people. They thought I wouldn't care, that I was cold enough to be able to do it."
Estelle Cole lifted a hand and waved to him.
"All you wanted was to spend the rest of your life with me," he told her. To a watcher, he must have looked like a madman talking to empty air by the check-in desk. "It was what... 1935? It was the Astoria Ballroom. You were so beautiful. We said we would be together until we died. Then I saw you again in 2007, and you thought I was my son. You kept my picture all those years."
Near her lurked another man, one that Jack could never deny. Someone he had loved enough to tell things to that he wouldn't another for at least a few decades.
"It was 1927, and you stole my visa. It all ended so badly."
Its only his name that Angelo whispered, holding out a hand to him.
"Then you thought I was the Devil because I couldn't die. How many times did you let that crowd kill me? Shouldn't I be haunting you instead of you me?"
The old man limped around the corner, Jack sighing heavily. He tried to smile and failed badly.
"It was 1898. Hello, Anthony. You're looking much older. I keep going on, I keep living on. And everyone else just dies."
no subject
When he felt her draw closer into him, he pulled himself a little more securely around her. She felt broken to him, but a lot of people did. A lot of broken things washed up on Jack's shores and he took care of them as best he could. As best he was able.
"You don't have to forgive him, Thea," Jack murmured quietly. A hand pulled away long enough to fish a handkerchief from his pocket and press it gently against her cheek as she looked up. The smile he wore was kind, patient.
"What you do have to do is stop hating. Hate never really serves a purpose except to eat at a person. I can hear it in your voice, see it in your eyes. It stops a person in time, Thea. You can't go on with hate like that."
He chased one last tear with the handkerchief and touched a fingertip to the curve of her cheek. "You're better than that hate. You're Thea. That makes you unique, special, powerful. You are not Malcolm Merlyn, Oliver Queen or anyone else. What they've done shouldn't and can't rule who you are. Who you will be. Whoever this Sara is that you're seeing, if it wasn't your fault, would she know that?"
no subject
Her lips pulled in a small smile at the handkerchief. It seemed silly and old fashioned and she didn't even think people carried around handkerchiefs anymore. But if they suited anybody, it was Jack.
The smile was quick to fade though as she listened to his words. She hated Malcolm Merlyn. She hated him more than she thought she hated anything else. Maybe even more than she hated Slade Wilson. And she felt so tightly wound around it that she wasn't sure she could separate herself from it. It had become such a part of her in such a short amount of time, she didn't know if she could shake it.
She blinked away tears, still looking up at him. "I don't know if I can," she said quietly. "Sara was my friend. Malcolm gave me a drug that made me follow orders without remembering them. He made me kill Sara and I didn't know about it for months." She searched his face, gauging his reaction, and added, "I don't know how to not hate him."
no subject
Jack's hands cupped her face in them. The gentle smile he had never faded. She reminded him some of Alice, his real daughter. Even had some of the same features. But he'd never really been there for her due to who he was, what he did and what he was. None of those would make for a good relationship.
"You look at yourself one day and say 'I don't want to be this anymore'. You realize that you're destroying yourself and those around you by holding onto that hate. That you make him more important than he is and rules you more. Hate is just as much a tool for manipulation as love is."
He tapped a fingertip to her nose as if she were a small child in his lap instead of a fully grown one.
"You're too pretty to hate someone. Puts lines on your face."
no subject
She lifted a hand, bringing it up to curl long, slim fingers around one of his wrists, like she needed to be anchored to him. And maybe she did. She felt like she needed something stronger and better than her to hold onto, something that resembled hope and let her believe that maybe it would all be okay. And Jack was just that for her.
"You sound like you're speaking from experience," she said, and it was punctuated by a slight sniffle. He had her laughing just a moment later, though, like he always did. He was so much better at cheering her up than her brother was.
"Impossible. Queens don't get lines."