Title: Memory Keeper
By: lilithangel
Pairings: Jack/the Doctors
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: character death.
Challenge Prompt: Remembrance
Summary: They called him the memory keeper and travelled to find him so their stories would never end.

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The man who had once worn the name Captain Jack Harkness, sometimes with pride and sometimes at his moments of greatest shame, sat in front of an old wooden box, the ship of an alien who had worn many faces but always carried the same name.

The ship was as much his friend as the Doctor was and she had stopped when he did, and all he could do now was remember.

He carried the last spark of her heart the last piece of her life beating in his own and he listened to a song that travelled the universe, the gift of the Ood in memory of the Doctor and the most important woman in the universe.

There were so many memories in his head, so many encounters and adventures, so many lives saved and lost but he regretted none of them. Not after so many thousands of years. The Doctor had taught him that those memories were too precious to regret. After he’d tried so hard to forget them a new old face had found him and reminded him of the honour he carried.

Humans had tried to write their memories across the universe but even stone faded to dust and technology outdated itself leaving only human memory to carry that legacy.

It had been his task to carry the memory of the Time Lords alongside all those memories and he had done so gladly.

He was a storyteller now not a captain. He told the tale of when the planets were stolen out of the sky and the Daleks threatened to end reality itself. He recalled the events that shaped nations and the events that shaped individuals. Of aliens in Downing Street and spheres of death that nearly changed history because by then nobody else remembered that a year never happened. He told them tales of Earth as well, long abandoned but still their touchstone.

Of a demon made flesh whose shadow killed and of the creatures called faerie that cared nothing for humans. He remembered the defenders of Earth and those that led humanity to the stars. Those ordinary people who sacrificed everything to protect their own. His stories contained laughter and hurt because they were woven from history even if the listeners never realised it.

They called him the memory keeper and travelled to find him so their stories would never end. But he could feel himself fading at last as even her spark couldn’t last forever. So he sang his song to the universe and hoped it would remember. He sang until he couldn’t, until all his memories were caught by the solar winds and he could finally rest.

When he closed his eyes for the last time it was to an old new face and he faded into memory with a smile on his.

END

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