Fic: Omnipresent
Title: Omnipresent
Summary: Behind his eyes, Arcadia burns
Characters: Jack
Spoilers: None, just one quote from 'Doomsday'
Rating: None
Word count: 431
Notes: Betaed a bit with help from jadesfire2808, but my brain was half asleep when I wrote this, so concrit is (of course, as always) welcome. Probably not very interesting, but it wanted out. Written for tw_wotd_fic for the prompt 'Omnipresent'.
Fic Masterlist: Here.



"I was there at the fall of Arcadia. One day I might even come to terms with that."
- The Doctor

---

Behind his eyes, Arcadia burns.

Its deserts, the scalding heat of the pure white plains feels warm against his skin, even here, in the sanctuary of his memories. Jack has come so far since the Spice Farm of his parents, but Arcadia will always burn behind his eyes. The sun, blazing harshly onto the deserts of his home is still the most beautiful thing he ever saw.

Now Arcadia burns behind his eyes.

The great plains boiling away as he watches their sun expand, devouring his home, his life, leaving only a scared boy behind.

The Time War came and he wanted to fight, to die to defend everything he ever knew. That grim determination saved his life, but not by choice. He averts his eyes from the viewscreens, not strong enough to watch the Super Nova's blaze any longer. Behind his eyes, Arcadia burns; and he is light years away, a simple trooper on a Battle Cruiser.

His home is the ultimate sacrifice, they tell him, the billions of settlers the ultimate price of war while he lives, breathes, survives.
The Time Agency books the Fall of Arcadia as a necessary evil, and he wonders when entire planets became pawns in this galactic atrocity. They let Arcadia burn, and now it screams inside his skull.

Who are their supposedly almighty allies - unable, unwilling perhaps, to save the innocent, yet powerful enough to blow up a star? Which race is cold enough to leave nothing but scorched, empty space behind, just to stop the advancing enemy? The power of Gods, but a desperation that makes him dread what else there is to come.

He'll find out who's responsible, find out who is to blame for his nightmares, no matter how well the Agency protects its secrets.

He wakes up two years later without any memories of them, knowing that he probably found out what he was looking for before they took it away again.
But they couldn't take it all. Some things are just burned in too deeply into his mind to be erased. Behind his eyes, Arcadia still burns. It becomes his strength, his reason to go on. He leaves his life behind, the one thing he loved consumed by fire, the people he trusted taking all his belief.

He can still feel the desert wind brush through his hair sometimes. In his nightmares he stares at the red, hot mass of pure energy, waiting to be consumed. He always wakes up screaming.

No matter how far he runs and how much he sees, behind his eyes, Arcadia will always burn.