Torchwood (drabble): The Empty Child
May. 2nd, 2007 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoTitle: The Empty Child
Genre: Torchwood drabble
Author:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fajrdrakoCharacters: Jack/Ianto
Challenge: tw100 challenge: free for all, using #20: Doctor Who titles, #9 in a series of 13
Rating: PG
Words: 100
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: Spoilers for the Torchwood episode "They Keep Killing Suzie" . Cross-posted to my LJ and tw100.
The Empty Child
Ianto thought Jack slept only in his own bed. In Ianto's, he never slept at all.
Then Ianto stayed overnight in Jack's bed, and he did not sleep there, either. Or anywhere else. "I don't need to," was Jack's explanation. It seemed medically impossible, but Ianto accepted it because there were so many ways in which Jack was unusual.
Sometimes he would wake and find Jack lying frozen, eyes wide and filled with pain, like an empty child. Then he would take Jack in his arms and hold him tightly until Jack was able to touch and kiss him again.
~ ~ ~
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 02:05 pm (UTC)Btw, DW, episode 7, will be delayed one week:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2007/05/02/43612.shtml
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Date: 2007-05-02 02:18 pm (UTC)That phrase "like an empty child" seems to fit a certain aspect of Jack so very well. I suppose it's the seeming rejection from the most important person in his existence: the Doctor.
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Date: 2007-05-02 06:05 pm (UTC)Thank you! I'm trying not to do 'the obvious', and trying not to g over scenarios we've already seen. And I think I've finally come up with an idea for "Boom Town".
episode 7, will be delayed one week
Whimper. That's cruel.
On the other hand, it gives me time to finish and post some of those stories I wanted to put on LJ before Jack appears again on Doctor Who, so it buys me time. This is good.
Except I'm impatient and hate to be Doctor-deprived. I'll just have to watch a few old episodes over again.
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Date: 2007-05-02 06:36 pm (UTC)Yes. To paraphrase his comment in "Captain Jack Harkness": Jack needs him. Perhaps even more after that episode, than before.
That phrase "like an empty child" seems to fit a certain aspect of Jack so very well.
I find it a wonderful phrase, a beautifully evocative tragic phrase.
I suppose it's the seeming rejection from the most important person in his existence: the Doctor.
So painful!
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Date: 2007-05-02 07:02 pm (UTC)Anyhoo, another great installment. I like Ianto just accepting it, then trying to do something about it. The description definitely works and this is lovely and bittersweet.
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Date: 2007-05-02 07:19 pm (UTC)So am I. In some ways it's even stranger and more intriguing than the immortality. I find that a lot of fan writers just ignore it and feature Jack sleeping anyway, but it's there in canon, and I don't want to ignore it. I can think of a number of implications: one being that Jack has eight hours more in a day than the rest of us do; another being that whatever he does to relieve stress, it isn't sleeping.
I agree with you about the 'sleep' in Small Worlds not being sleep, and I don't think it was exactly like dreaming - was it memory, or a vision of the past? I don't know what they meant us to make of that, because it looked contradictory, as if they told us he didn't sleep and then showed him apparently sleeping.
another great installment
Thank you.
I like Ianto just accepting it, then trying to do something about it.
Ianto is like that. Both kind and practical.
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Date: 2007-05-02 07:25 pm (UTC)*nods* I've used it a couple of times, and it's on my list of things to go back and explore (along with "what the hell happened in those two years?" and "why didn't Jack get tortured as well?"). With The Wandering Years finally finished, maybe I'll have the time now.
I thought it was a kind of flashback in "Small Worlds." No-one's brain could operate 24/7 for years without some kind of switching off, surely, not even Jack's. And his body would have to get tired, wouldn't it? But the 'not being able to sleep' means that his mind wanders rather than resting. As a mild insomniac, I can relate to the idea that you relive events vividly when you can't sleep and your brain's drifting - maybe Jack's is an extreme version of that?
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Date: 2007-05-02 07:28 pm (UTC)I'll be on vacation, so it gives one less show to worry about while I'm gone.
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Date: 2007-05-02 07:30 pm (UTC)Yes - that's a good one.
and "why didn't Jack get tortured as well?").
We are left to wonder. I would add "Why was he about to be executed?" and "How and why did he leave the military and join the Time Agency?"
I thought it was a kind of flashback in "Small Worlds."
Yes. I see him as - since he is lacking the ability to dream normally - an acute ability for visual recall. Perhaps a kind of meditative state?
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Date: 2007-05-02 07:31 pm (UTC)Oh - good timing! Are you going somewhere exciting?
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Date: 2007-05-02 07:36 pm (UTC)*headdesk*
Maybe the secret is that Jack is actually a Jaffa and needs to kel no'reem on a regular basis instead. Why yes, I do have Stargate: SG1 in my fandom past :) Good grief, there's a cracky crossover for someone to write...
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Date: 2007-05-02 08:02 pm (UTC)What, just one series?
*headdesk*
When it comes to Captain Jack Harkness, there are just too many wonderful fictional possibilities.
Maybe the secret is that Jack is actually a Jaffa and needs to kel no'reem on a regular basis instead.
I will not pretend to understand that....
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Date: 2007-05-03 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 02:22 pm (UTC)(Thinking fondly of that beautiful ocean.)