InsaneJournal

Jack Harkness didn't sleep anymore.

With sleep came nightmares and guilt of days gone by and he couldn't afford to feel any more guilt for the mistakes he's made in the past. As many times as he'd told himself to let it all go, it was harder than hell. No matter how far he ran and how long he had been gone, nothing would bleach the sins off his skin. While the stain of blood was still sticking to his hands, he wasn't letting it show nearly as much as he had that night in Wales when he'd left Earth behind. He had believed that was for good, leaving the planet, but he had been fooling himself and ... well, there really wasn't anyone else to fool anymore, was there? And that was his fault too.

Time seemed to run much slower on Earth than it had for him out in the stars. He had spent a great deal of time hopping from space bar to space cantina, galaxy to star system, hopping his way from ship to ship and bed to bed and for what? In the vain hope that he could somehow outrun the guilt, outrun the misery and outrun his shame as his own actions. However, these things didn't nearly hold the same luster as they had when he was in the Time Agency.

Jack just wasn't that man anymore.

He had told Ianto once that he wasn't sure where his place was. It had taken losing him to realize where his place had really been all along. Now Jack felt even more out of ease and out of place in the one place that he had always felt at home -- the stars. So he really had no place to call his own, so what was he to do? He had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.

Right now, Jack was sitting in his rented quarters on the Nebulous Galaxy and he was trying to get his wrist strap in working order. Jack had commandeered some 49th century tools and had set himself to work on getting it right again. Right now, all it was good for was tethering him to sonic signals and teleporting him from one place to another. While that was alright at first, Jack wasn't satisfied and was tired of relying on the signals of inferior ships and technology to get him where he wanted to go. He had been working for quite some time and he thought that maybe he was finished. It was making the same sounds that it used to, beeping in the ways that indicated it was online and in working order. Jack stared at it for a long minute, the thing spread out on the table before him as if it was going to grow legs and walk away.

What was he hoping to accomplish with this? Where was he even going to go now? He didn't know. Jack stood up and made his way to the bed, picking up the great coat that he'd laid out there and pulled it on. He adjusted the collar and looked back over his shoulder at the wrist strap sitting on the table. He exhaled slowly and walked over, picking it up and strapping it back onto his left wrist. He made sure that he had his sonic blaster (he really had missed that thing when the Doctor had stolen it) and shoved it into the pocket inside his coat. He took one look around the room. "Sayonara," he said and pressed the red & green buttons together.

In a moment of vertigo and his eyes clutched tight, Jack took a step forward and lost his balance down several stairs to the concrete. He opened his eyes and looked around whilst sitting on the stairs. Was that really ... he quirked a brow at that. "FAO Schwarz ... " he said out loud, standing up and dusting his coat off. He looked around him and noticed something odd but nothing out of the ordinary. At least he was on Earth. The 'WHEN' was the issue. "New York City," he groaned, reaching up and scratching the back of his neck. "Lovely."