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Title: Far from home
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,751 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for [livejournal.com profile] fffc March Special Bingo Card - Prompt 9 - Sunkissed
Summary: Jack finds himself in unknown territory, far from home.

Jack gently set down his small rucksack on the narrow bed and looked around the room. It was sparsely furnished, and everything was the same shade of pale grey, as if the furniture itself were trying to camouflage itself into the walls. There were no windows, and no spare spaces where he could have laid out his possessions, meagre as they were. Everything he cherished was in that small bag, the only reminders he had of the home he'd left behind. This place was as far removed from the bright sandy shores of Boeshane as he could get.

He glanced across at the second narrow cot in the room and felt a clenching in his stomach. It felt strange sharing a room with someone else. He hadn't shared a room with anyone for a long, long time. Not since he'd been a kid with Gray. What would it be like, living with a complete stranger? Coming here to be a cadet for the Time Agency had felt exciting and new, but now the reality of all that would entail was catching up with him.

He spun around at the sound of the door swishing open with a hiss. A tall youth with a shock of dark brown, almost black, hair stood there.

'Hullo. I'm Eli. Looks like we're bunk mates, you and I,' he said, tossing his own rucksack on the cot and flopping down on it, bouncing and testing its springs. 'You got a name?'

'Jack,' he replied. It wasn't his real name, but rather a shortened version that would serve just as well. He felt strange in this strange place. The last thing he wanted was for other people to think he was strange on account of his name. Something short that didn't attract attention seemed like a good idea.

The boy frowned at him as he looked him up and down. 'Are you human?'

Jack laughed. 'Of course I'm human.'

'Oh,' Eli said. 'I wasn't sure. You're just so... I mean, I've never seen anyone with skin as dark as yours.'

Dark? Jack found the notion odd, though he could see that his complexion was darker than the boy sat in front of him. Rather, he though the lad was overly pale, his skin so fair it was almost translucent, in complete contrast to his hair.

Sunkissed. That was the word his mother had always used. He couldn't be anything else. Boeshane was such a little place, and yet vast at the same time. There was nothing but miles and miles of sand dunes and long rugged beaches. Almost all of his time when he wasn't doing chores or schoolwork was spent outdoors. As a kid he'd played amongst the dunes with the other kids in the village, as well as with Gray. As he'd gotten older, he'd taken to walking long stretches of beach on his own, scouring the shore for trinkets and sea glass. Other times he just wanted to be on his own, or to trek as far as he could before sundown to see just how far those dunes stretched inland and what lay beyond them. He'd often thought maybe his brother might be out there somewhere, just beyond his line of sight. If only he could walk a little further, just over that next dune, maybe he'd find him. Instead, all he'd found were more dunes; endless miles of them. The village was hemmed in on both sides, on one by the raging blue sea, and on the other an ocean of sand.

'I spent a lot of time out in the sun,' he replied.

Eli 's eyebrows disappeared into the lowest reaches of his long dark fringe. 'You mean you grew up on a planet?'

Jack frowned again. The way he had said it made it sound so wondrous. 'Didn't you?' he replied, sure he'd misunderstood.

'Oh, gosh no. I was born on a waystation out in Astral Six. My family have lived there for five generations. We studied some of the planets in the local system at school. I even went on an excursion to one once. It was so strange being stood out on the planet's surface in the middle of space and able to breathe. I'd never felt heat from a sun before that. And wind. Not a burst ventilator, but actual wind.'

Jack felt stunned. He was only just beginning to learn how big the universe really was. Could there really be whole families that had grown up in the vacuum of space and never stepped foot on real earth? Looking at the boy's pale skin again, he could begin to believe that such things were possible.

'How many other cadets here are from waystations?' Jack asked.

'Oh, loads. Most of them, probably. Waystations, orbiters, inter-star colonies. The Agency don't normally go out very far to recruit. A couple of local star systems and that's about it. Not a lot of planets out there. That's what my cousin told me, anyway. Andwar was picked up as a cadet three years ago. He's a probationary agent now. Got a proper tail and collar with a full Time Agent and everything. You musta been real lucky if you're here. How far is your home from here?'

He had no idea. Ships came every so often to bring supplies to Boeshane, but mostly they were self sufficient, and people certainly didn't come and go. You were born there, lived there, and died there. He was probably one of the few villagers ever to actually leave.

He probably had been lucky, in all fairness. The people who'd come to Boeshane had been travelling on a supply ship that had docked for two days to drop off supplies. They'd visited the local village to kill some time, wandering through its small market and open air schoolhouse. If his teacher hadn't caught him out, trying to get that synchronizer working, trying to hide it in his lap under the desk, he might never have been spotted. He'd always loved tinkering, and their neighbour had offered him a few market credits if he could get the thing working again. He'd thought it would be nice to spoil his mum and use the credits to buy her some of those fancy spices she loved but couldn't afford.

His teacher had been annoyed, but struggled to continue to be angry when he'd already finished all the sums she'd assigned. Truth was he found school boring. It didn't help that the class was made up of such a broad range of ages. Trying to keep that many kids occupied, even though there were less than two dozen in all, couldn't be easy, and he was close to the eldest. Once class was over, the men had asked him how old he was, and whether he knew how to fix other things. Being slightly arrogant at the time, he'd listed off a dozen things, and how he'd built the fastest sandskiff, winning their annual feast day race two years in a row. The men followed him home and spoke in hushed tones with his mother for a while before coming back out and asking him if he'd like to train to be a Time Agent. He didn't know quite what one was but he'd said yes anyway. It sounded a lot more exciting than any job here in the village.

'You'll have time leave home and train at the academy,' they warned him.

'Give him time to think about it,' his mum had said, gripping him gently by the shoulders. They agreed to let him have the night to think it over, but that if he agreed, he'd need to be at the docking point at first light.

It didn't take him long to decide. 'They said Time Agents travel all across the stars, Mum. I could go and find Gray.'

There was a sad smile on her face. He could tell she appreciated the gesture, but had resigned herself to the fact that Gray was gone. He didn't care. He knew deep down he wasn't gone, only lost. He intended on making up for having let go of his hand, to bring him back home. He'd been up most of the night unable to sleep, and was out at the docking point before the sun was even up. He'd made his goodbyes and promised to write every day.

He didn't think he'd have missed his home so much, but after three weeks travel on that supply cruiser, he ached to feel the warm sun on his skin again. He got the feeling it was going to be a long while before he saw it again.

 

'You're very short,' Eli remarked.

Jack took offense to that. 'I haven't finished growing. Mum says I've got inches yet.' Not that she'd see them, he thought. He'd go back and visit her one day. 'She said my dad wasn't full grown until he was seventeen.'

'You're not seventeen yet?'

Jack puffed himself up. The men who'd taken him with them to the academy had warned him. "We don't normally recruit boys who haven't yet reached their seventeenth cycle. You'll be one of the youngest we've ever sent to the academy."

'I'll be sixteen in half a cycle,' he replied.

'You're only fifteen!' Eli exclaimed. 'Crikey! They must do things differently out on the planets. If you get through the academy training programme, that'll make you one of the youngest Agents ever.'

Jack suddenly felt very self conscious. At home he'd been full of himself and his own abilities, popular with everyone. The Face of Boe. He'd been so proud of that. Now he was going to be singled out for a dozen different reasons. He was glad he'd changed his name. Eli didn't strike him as the kind of boy who could keep his mouth shut for long. Soon everyone would know his story, whatever he made it.

'Don't look so worried, Eli,' said, coming over and clapping him on the back. 'This will be fun. Hard work, but fun. There's even a pass to a local orbiter city every third weekend. Apparently all the girls hang out there trying to get the attention of cadets, especially since they're the only girls we're likely to see for a while. They'll go crazy for you with your tanned skin. You'll be exotic. I'm kinda jealous. Maybe you could share the girls with me, hey? You are old enough to like girls, aren't you?'

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