[#293] Not To Be Trusted (Torchwood)

[badly_knitted]

Theme Prompt: #293 – Rough Seas
Title: Not To Be Trusted
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Jack Harkness grew up as Javic Thane on the Boeshane Peninsula, and like everyone who lived there, he knew how dangerous the sea could be.



“Never turn your back on the sea.” That was the rule. Living on the Boeshane Peninsular, you learned early to respect the sea, and to never take chances with it. Even when it seemed calm and placid, when it lapped at the beach with a gentle tongue, small wavelets creeping almost shyly up the wet sand, you could never be sure it wouldn’t suddenly grow angry enough to suck someone down into its depths, as if exacting tribute from the humans who had the temerity to build their homes so close to its shores.

Jack hadn’t been Jack back then, of course. The name Captain Jack Harkness had come along much, much later, stolen from an American pilot during the Second World War, but he’d answered to something similar when he was a boy, a firstborn son, an adored older brother, back when he’d had a family… All of that was yet to come, however, far in the past. Young Javic knew nothing of his future as he grew up in a small settlement by Boeshane’s vast, wild oceans.

Like all the children of the colony, once he was old enough, he played on the wide, sandy beaches when he wasn’t in school, or running errands, helping his parents. And like all his friends, he followed the rules. Never turning his back. Never going down to the water’s edge unless he was with adults and the water was calm. Never swimming in the sea, because the currents were too powerful even for the strongest swimmer, with riptides and undertows that would drag the unwary down, never to be seen again. The lagoon was the only safe place to swim, and even then, not on stormy days.

The children played above the high tide mark, searching for treasure in the flotsam and jetsam washed ashore: shells, and driftwood, and the seedpods of the giant trees that grew on Boeshane’s scattered islands, and the coastal areas of the uninhabited northern continent, where storms raged for much of the year, scouring the ground, making it impossible to grow crops in the shallow soil.

Sometimes, after bad weather, they would find the bones of a deep sea Spinnerfish, more like a giant sea serpent than a fish. The bony plates, lightweight and incredibly hard, could be made use of in many ways, fashioned into tools, or decorative objects, or even toys. The children would sometimes fight each other over the best of the bones. That was what had cost Felipe Tanando his life.

It was late in the storm season, the worst of the storms that had pounded the peninsula already past, and the seas much calmer than they had been over the last sixty days or so. There had been a storm the night before, but it had been a mild one, by the standards of the peninsula, winds of no more than fifty knots, waves hardly more than twelve feet high. Still, it had swept the carcase of a Spinnerfish onto the shore, and overnight the Razorcrabs had stripped it of flesh, leaving nothing much beyond bare bones.

The problem was, it had snagged on a jutting rock well below the high tide mark, and would likely be swept back out to sea on the next tide, which was already coming in. That much treasure was, of course, not something the children were willing to leave, so they darted back and forth, keeping their eyes on the sea, snatching up bones and taking them to safety.

A strong wind was getting up, the gusts raising twisting sand devils. Ten-year-old Felipe Tanando had already been in fights with three other children over some of the choicest bones, and he’d lost every fight, so he was bitter and angry. His family had only joined the colony a few months earlier, and although he’d made friends, he still felt himself to be an outsider. He wanted to fit in, wanted to prove himself as good and fast and strong as the other boys, and he decided if he couldn’t get some of the Spinnerfish’s best body plates, then he would have its skull. It was damaged, half of the bottom jaw missing, but still impressive.

This was one of the biggest Spinnerfish Javic had ever seen washed ashore. He would have liked the skull himself, but he already had a smaller complete one he’d found the year before, and besides, he and Gray had salvaged nine of the body plates between them. With the tide coming in and the water getting increasingly rough, whipped up by the wind, he’d decided to let the sea take the rest. The other children had come to the same decision. Already, the incoming tide was reaching within twenty feet of the remaining bones.

“We’ve got as much as we can,” Cavan Lekk called to the others. “We should head home.”

“But what about the skull?” Felipe said.

“The sea’s getting angry,” Javic told the other boy. “Trying for the skull is too risky.” It was a good three feet in length, even missing part of the protruding bottom jaw.

“I want it!”

“It’s not worth the risk, Felipe,” Cavan insisted. “Come on, we need to get off the beach. Storm’s coming.”

“There’s still time before the waves get it,” Felipe insisted, running across dry, shifting sand and beginning to tug at the skull.

Some of the boys looked like they wanted to help, but then a big breaker crashed onto the shore.

“Come away!” Javic called, and when Felipe just kept pulling, he ran down and pulled at the boy. Felipe shook him off, and Javic scrambled to safety.

All the boys saw it happen. Felipe, in his desire for the skull, did what no one should do: turned his back on the sea.

The wave was immense, fully twenty-feet high, and when it receded, bones and boy were gone. There was nothing anyone could do.

Felipe’s body was never found.

Javic never forgot. The sea couldn’t be trusted.


The End