who_contest | No rest

Title: No rest
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Jack Harkness (mentions of the Doctor)
Rating: G
Theme: "Rest" from

who_contest
Words: 499
Summary: You can rest when you're dead, they say.
Author's note: written for the doctor who drabble contest, prompt was rest. I am just incapable of writing Jack without making him suffer.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything everything belongs to the BBC.

There is always something – a case, a distraction, something that is threatening to destroy the fabric of the world they live in.

And his friends, his companions, the people that pass in and out of his life at a dizzying speed as if it’s nothing; they drag him along, into a life and a world he never even asked for.

(And they are always there, in ever lifetime, in ever world – the random stranger, the friend that wants to help, the co-worker, the lover. They blend together in the end, becoming one, until a time comes that he can no longer keep them apart no matter how much he tries – and oh God does he try.)

And it’s not just the bad things, it’s the good things too: it’s the fun and the laughter and movies and dancing and they want him there. They desperately want him to be a part of their lives, their world – they don’t understand, they can’t (the things to be grateful for) that he never will be, that he never can be. That he’s just a sad, lonely man that shouldn’t exist passing through their lives without being a part of anything.

He stops – because cases, cases are one thing but this is too much – and turns away, determined not to be drawn in, determined not to feel. (Not like the Doctor who lets them all in and loves them and then screams and cries when they leave and they always leave.) But they’re there and they want him and he just stands and asks ‘don’t you ever get tired, don’t you ever just stop?’ And they smile then, so ignorant and say: “It’s alright Jack we can rest when we’re dead.”

(And they can, of course they can.)

He can’t even rest anymore, can’t even sleep.

Because when he closes his eyes, when he rests, he sees it all, he hears it all – the memories even the ones that have slipped away (and he knows, he knows he’s forgotten more than he remembers.) They overwhelm him and it’s all there, when he rests, when his eyes are closes, it’s just a big mess that no longer makes sense. (Someday it will drive him insane if it hasn’t already.) This, this must be why the Doctor never sleeps because it’s all there in the dark, the Doctor would understand. (Jack hates him and he loves him to.)

There is another saying to: ‘There’s no rest for the wicked.’ But he does not know, does not understand why he too can’t rest. He was a hero once, he knows, he fought at the right side, he died for him (his Doctor), he died for her (his Rose.)

But his friends, his co-workers do not understand.

They say: ‘You can rest when you’re dead.’

And he falls, he’s shot, he’s stabbed, he dies a million different deaths – some he didn’t even know existed…

…and he wakes.

There is no rest for him.

There never will be.