FIC: Torchwood (drabble) - "Jack's Heritage"

[fajrdrako]

Title: Jack's Heritage
Challenge: challenge: heritage
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: Cross-posted to my LJ and tw100.



Jack's Heritage

Jack's first life was light-years away and millennia in the future. His second was that of the Time Agency: a created universe, twisted, magnificent, ultimately worthless.

Then Earth, World War II, and the TARDIS, followed by abandonment, loss, Victorian England. He picked up customs and manners quickly, from people, books. Then there were the motion pictures; the talkies; technicolor; Gary Cooper, Richard Burton, Harrison Ford. Jack drank it up eagerly, studying every nuance. The film industry made his past out of bits of light and sound.

Celluloid heritage: it served him well, for a life he could call his own.




~ ~ ~

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

oooh... this is so true. Jack is such a hero these days it's hard to remember that it is really all a con. He may no longer be a coward, but that doesn't make who he is today any more of a real person than he had been before

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Jack is such a hero these days it's hard to remember that it is really all a con.

It's a fabrication. I don't think it's a "con" in that his purposes are not self-serving - and are, in fact, exactly what he says they are. I think it's true that "the 21st century is where it all changes" and Jack is trying to prepare the world, or perhaps to stave off disaster as long as the world is still unprepared.

His purposes are heroic. And to a large extent he's not lying about who he is any more - he uses a name not his own, granted, but he hasn't made up an elaborate cover story, he just lets himself be the mystery leader of Torchwood. Which he is. He talks - at least to his team - fairly casually about meeting aliens, having sex with aliens, knowing what will happen, knowing things no one else on earth knows... having been pregnant. What they make of it is unclear. Presumably they all think Jack is full of it, but he amuses them.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

ahh, you are right.. It's not really a con, but its not rooted in the truth either. I think he relishes being the 'mysterious leader' and likes that air of mystery and confusion it creates. Or maybe its just that I like it so much I'm projecting...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It could be that I like it so much I'm projecting, too. But it's at least based on canonical evidence, and it makes for a very pretty and interesting package all together.