Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	Ich+Ich - Vom Selben Stern
Entry tags:	fic, fic: dw/tw

Fic: Before I Sleep
Title: Before I Sleep
Summary: Time and life blur. Sometimes Jack's grateful, sometimes he's not. But no matter what, he has to live with it
Spoilers: Mild ones for Last of the Time Lords
Rating: None
Word count: 1037
Note 1: Thanks for my two lovely betas, mara_202 and xwingace, who betaed this in record time and even though RL got in the way
Note 2: Inspired by the the word 'bifurcate' on tw_wotd_fic and written for the ficathon at notsobigheaded. It's actually denial!fic for that revelation regarding Jack because I am shallow and hate RTD right now.
Fic Masterlist: Here.




But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep

- Robert Frost



*


The first thousand years are the worst; after that he's getting away from Earth as fast as science lets him. It's only after another millennium that he comes back, realizing how much he missed the green moon of his childhood, the solar system teeming with life. It seems like it was only yesterday that he saw mankind set foot into space for the first time.

He travels the galaxies, watching the little apes called humans, always fighting for survival. He helps when he can, and his tendency to go where trouble awaits lets him bump into the Doctor more times than he can count.

Time travel is a dangerous thing, but they're professionals and smile gently when they hear the same stories over and over again. Different companions (he's taken that habit, too, it helps him keep track of time) and things yet to come are overlooked as best as possible. Two lonely creatures, always moving on. He never meets any other Time Lord, and that depresses him even more than it does the Doctor.

He still has a job to do, he realized so many thousands of years ago, when the Toclafane almost destroyed mankind. But he has time.

He watches humans ascend and evolve, sees them scatter all over the galaxy, sees them descent, devolve and live in caves like their long forgotten ancestors did. Humanity always survives, and that's fantastic. It's hope, and besides time that's all he has.

There're legends about him. The Lonely Wanderer he's called; worshipped and feared throughout the universe. Yet the statues he finds are of an old, wise man, never anything like him. He never ages beyond that one grey hair.

Time and life blur. Sometimes he's grateful, sometimes he's not. But no matter what, he has to live with it.

He screams in pain when his knowledge is too heavy a burden, sometimes for years. The Doctor knows. Jack can see the same pain in his eyes (and later in his mind, when he's had more practice), and the TARDIS knowingly shares his pain. But death will come for both of them, too. Maybe it has already, but Time itself keeps them bumping into each other. He never dares to time travel again, fearing what he could miss.

Entire eras, entire evolutionary pathways of humans pass him by sometimes, but they all know him, all show their respect when they realize, know instinctively, what he is. The Wanderer Who Helped, the ascended beings call him. He barely recognizes some of them as the apes who thought it was a good idea to climb down from the trees (again).

He's there when mankind's cradle burns, but the Bad Wolf keeps him away from this Doctor and Rose. It's for the best anyway. He sips a Martini surrogate (their fancy names change too often to learn them), feeling the mental pull of another traveller calling him.
Once he saved the creature without a name in his own place of birth, not knowing what kind of effect it would have on an alien like it. He never wished his curse on anyone, yet he couldn't undo it. The Face of Boe, as it had called itself after a memory it had found in his mind, blinks at him now, sharing his telepathic pictures of such a young Rose, such a lonely Doctor.

Fortunately his heart had forgotten how to break a long time ago.

"I have a message for the Doctor," he tells Boe, this creature so eager to fulfil its destiny, serving the One Who Gave Life. He envies the alien for its faith. All he has are doubts.

Eons pass and he's still there, standing and watching, fiddling with history, right in the middle of time. He understands now why Time Lords were afraid of facts. It scares him, too. The universe turns beneath his feet, and he can feel it. He spends a few hundred years as a madman, then a few more as a hermit and finally a blissful millennium as the God of some backward planet before he remembers who he is and what he set out to do.

The universe slowly gets darker and its inhabitants more desperate, but humanity is still there. He puts a beacon on the barren remains of what once was the Eye of Orion, waiting in the dark, calling the last living things. They'll tell stories for centuries, he knows, telling the skies are made of diamonds here, that Utopia is where the human race survives the cold and the dark.

For a long time, no one comes, and he waits. He has time.

He smiles when the shabby remains of life land in a rocket he helped launch such a long time ago. He knows what they'll become if he doesn't fix this. The paradox machine at the other end of the universe should be strong enough to do this, and he is so old now that even the Reapers recoil in horror.

He's woven into mankind's history, as is Utopia, and they believe everything he says. He's the one who helped them fly, after all. They discard their ideas about migrating into spheres; they won't become Toclafane. It's tricky, handling two parallel time lines like this, but he's had enough time to learn. A very long time.
In the end, their brothers come, because he called them as well. Ascended long ago, they sing to their lonely brethren, help them to shred their bodies, whispering about the Birth of a New Universe and the Great Beyond.

When mankind leaves for the last time, it's so beautiful Jack simply sits in the dust and cries, alone at the end of all things.

The Face of Boe once said they were the creatures that God had forgotten. Jack really hopes He'll take another look at the room before He turns off the lights and decides whether or not to reboot.

Still sitting in the dust (after days? Centuries?), singing and golden light surrounds him suddenly and warmness embraces him. Rose, with the power of the Vortex, glides closer, tears streaming down her cheeks and her hands inviting him to grab them, to follow.


Jack Harkness laughs. Not God, but it'll do.