[FM] January - Fake It

Fake it if you don't belong here
Fake it if you feel like affection

It doesn't even matter now.

Sitting in the car. Sitting at that bar. It's all the same now. One endless day dragging on into another endless night. You tried to explain it all, tried to tell him that it wouldn't always be so hard. It wouldn't always feel like you were just drifting about letting the waves wash over you instead of guide you to the safety of the shore. Your smile is supposed to offer some sort of solace, some relief that surely your smile can just disarm that fear.

But you lied. You are lying to him as you sit there in the bar trying to bring up stories of a life you left in the darkness a long time ago. You're trying not to tell him about the pain you go through every single time you come back. You want it to be easy for him, for him to understand that the pain gets easier... that it dulls with time... with love... with the right combination of alcohol and sex. But you know it's just more lies.

So when you sit there in the car beside him and breath in deep, you actually find yourself hoping that this time it might stick. That this time you'll be able to let go and the darkness will swallow you whole. That the pain of life will be just a memory fading like all the other times before it. He's dying beside you and every instinct in your gut tells you that you can save him, that you can make him see that the darkness isn't what he wants.

But it's what you want, and in that moment you envy him for the fact that when he dies he's not going to have to come back.

The darkness comes over you and it's just like it always is. You feel that slip of peace for just a single moment before you're ripped right back to the light of day. Sometimes you almost think your palms might have been cut open from the dragging across the bottom of it all.

Instead you just step out of the car and move down the street. You'll go on pretending you belong... pretending that this life is what you deserve. You'll keep up the lie because otherwise it's just too much pain... even for you.

[MtM] January - Change

Any change, any loss, does not make us victims. Others can shake you, surprise you, disappoint you, but they can't prevent you from acting, from taking the situation you're presented with and moving on. No matter where you are in life, no matter what your situation, you can always do something. You always have a choice and the choice can be power. - John Donne

He's heard it at least a dozen times now, and every time he asks for more information he's not sure if he wants to believe it for that split second or deny it as easily as he knows he should. All the things he's seen and for a moment he wants to say he's seen more than him. That four hundred years of continuity can't measure up to a man born in 5014, who died in 200,100, then lived out another hundred years to bring him to present only to go to the end of existence altogether. That all of that... should amount to more than what four hundred years could've shown one single person.

He never does though. He doesn't pull any sort of rank or argument based on how much more he's seen because he knows just how little he's actually seen, because there is so much more out there.

That's always his point too, and no matter how many times they'd go around in circles, or how many times he could bring up a valid point about something he'd heard of or read in the archives of the Time Agency, none of it could compare to the wars he's survived through, or the anguish he'd seen on the children's faces. Jack could tell him of the wars and the horrors of just how far the human race was willing to go just to survive, but the wars of the past would never change and the way of the future was always changing.

Still deep down all Jack ever really wanted to know was that there would always be a choice to make, and that the choice wasn't going to be to just start over. When things got too difficult, or it was just too much for one man to handle on their own... he hoped that the solution wouldn't be to just wipe it all away. He hoped that in that split second of a choice, it would be made in his favor.