onlysayinghello | Entries tagged with [written for]: mind the muse

It doesn't matter what he was doing that day. Either of them could've been miles apart, at various times of the day. Art museums taking in a painting he hasn't seen in centuries or dank underground tunnels with an odor that he prays doesn't linger on the skin. It doesn't matter though, it all stays behind when they enter the door.

Twelve steps to check the water for the cat, and another ten to the couch. Fingertips find their way into hair, curling against knuckles and threading to the join of fingers. Nails drag lightly as the hand pulls away. The briefest contact that means so much more. The weight of a body leans against the backs of furniture pieces letting the day fade into another piece of history. That's all it ever becomes to them. Individual events that make up points in history that they'll look back at with a bit of fondness not for the events themselves, but for the moments when they let those points of existence just exist around them instead of with them.

They push past it, above it, around it, and against it if it seems like the struggle might be worth it. All it takes is a glance, sometimes less but Jack knows that the struggle is sometimes all he craves. That resistance to what was meant to be, that push of a fight making it seem like something is worth the effort. That to chose is more than just a priviledge it's a chance for something new, something different.

All it takes is ten minutes to change the world.

All it takes is one second to make a choice.

All it takes is one breath to change a life.

Fade in, start the scene
Enter beautiful girl
But things are not what they seem
As we stand at the edge of the world

"Excuse me, sir,
But I have plans to die tonight
Oh, and you are directly in my way
And I bet you're gonna say it's not right"

My reply:
"Excuse me, miss
But do you have the slightest clue
Of exactly what you just said to me
And exactly who you're talking to?"

Seeing her on the screen didn't change anything. The woman who stood on the edge of the square and watched the people heading off to their lives only to at some point finish her coffee and head into the crowd where she honestly did seem to just vanish. The feeds did nothing to help him, and all he could do was stare agape at them when Toshiko finally ran the program and picked her out of history itself.

But she had died.

History had written it, and history had left her name emblazoned on it so that so many would know who she was, and what she'd done. History being so important, being so true and honest he had to actually stop to wonder how she'd done it. There was a slight doubt that it was really her, but honestly he'd seen so many things in the past year that for all he knew the Rift had opened and dropped history on his front steps.

Parts of his mind flickered to life, casting faded images upon his memories of things he thought were too surreal to actually be real. Phrases that clearly were of his own saying, but from times he never recalled ever actually being.

-- "This is never easy... it's a risk, and while I do adore taking the big ones with you... this isn't the same as hopping through time. This is rewriting it..." --

His fingers gripped to the edge of the monitor and his silent gesture begged for Tosh to run the feed back. The woman appeared and moved backward through the crowd, steam being pulled in from the air to the contents of her cup and then it would stop rewinding to jump for a moment and be played again.

"It's her? You're sure?"

"Well not really... but I mean does explain the painting we found Jack."

That was the other thing. The other thing he really couldn't explain. It wasn't ever easy to not explain what he was, or who he had been but his image showing up in a painting from a time when he was positive he'd never been to? That was near impossible.

Then again he was an impossible thing.

"I told you I don't even know what that is."

-- "Ladies... ladies... honestly I could give your artist here something far more interesting to paint if you'd allow me the freedom."

"Truly Jack, this shall be fine enough. Just please sit with us." --

Shaking his head he ran his hand over his features for a moment, trying to focus on the image as it played back for him once more. The hand that ran over his nose and mouth moved to his forehead and then into his hair feeling it against his palm. None of it made sense, and the flashes of a life he'd never lived came more frequently, and he was actually starting to grow fearful that all of the traveling through time had ripped a hole in his timeline. That he was now seeping through all his years and his mind was soon going to be just one big ball of twine with all the events of his life tumbling atop the others.

"Run it back again."

"Jack..."

"Run it back again."

It couldn't be her, not here... because he knew that she had died.

Not even the Doctor could've changed that, nor would he have... but part of Jack felt responsible for whatever this was. The memories he had that didn't seem to belong to him, felt like the earmarkings of a book that he'd forgotten he'd read.

Time was something he'd almost taken for granted having so much of it, that the time he lost... the years he knew were taken... it bothered him to believe there might be more out there he was unaware of.

The facts of life and death remain the same. We live and die, we love and grieve, we breed and disappear. And between these essential gravities, we search for meaning, save our memories, leave a record for those who will remember us. - Thomas Lynch - Bodies In Motion And At Rest

Staring into her eyes he's not sure what to believe anymore. He's seen more than a thousand things that could make any man in their right mind question that judgement entirely, but this... for some reason leaves him questioning everything he's ever done. He wants to believe, to trust in the words she says and the way her features fell just barely as she pulled back from the kiss. The kiss... he wanted to laugh it off. To say that he'd been kissed by so many that it was beginning to feel like one long gracing of his mouth upon others. But he couldn't. He couldn't even laugh it off to give her some ease to her mind, because he knew her.

He knew the woman standing there with features so fair and familiar, and he knew her in such a way that he'd almost forgotten how much it hurt to remember. Death was steady. Death was something he knew, and each time he made his way back from the darkness he found another piece of light within him he'd never even realized. If he even put it to his mind he'd have realized just what his body had been doing over the years.

Two years lost.

Two years trying to be healed.

The slowest way possible it seemed, since his body knew what it was supposed to hold within it's core, it knew the basic structure. But he knew as sure as other things that if nanites could get it wrong... the body of a Time Agent was so tangled up into the slipstream that it might not know right from wrong. Truth from the lie.

But he knew her. The blue of her eyes, and the heart shape to her mouth as she knelt beside him watching his features for some sign that he believed her. Perhaps him knowing her wasn't as far of a feat as the way she seemed to know him. The truth was there after all, if he just looked close enough. It was in the way she nearly sighed when he smirked at her a moment before kissing her. She knew him... and not the way most thought they did. The way she knew him... went beyond just two years. Two years that the Agency could pin down sure, two years that they could track from a start and end date.

If he hadn't been the type to have seen the things he'd seen... surely this would've been a lie.

Instead, looking back into her eyes and moving up to brush his hand against her cheek he saw the hesitation in her, the way she resisted leaning into that touch. She fought it, because maybe she worried that he'd forget all over again.

Still he fought it because he still wasn't whole, and what sort of man would he be... to have forgotten her. With a deep furrow of his brow he closed that distance relighting up a memory he'd felt the edges a thousand times but never fully grasped until he could feel the softness of curls beneath his palm and the confident press of her mouth to his.

"My Lady," were the words that fit to the moment, feeling more right than his usual candor. "I'm so glad you remembered me."

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.