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In the reality we know, a Time Agent and con man named Javic Piotr Thane took the name of Captain Jack Harkness from a dead man.
In another, a reflection of this one…that name was claimed by his brother.
Gray Thane was a small child when a vicious and sadistic alien race assaulted his tiny home of the Boeshane Peninsula in the 51st Century. Running for safety, his big brother lost grip of his hand…
…and Gray, under the name of Captain Jack Harkness, spent a lifetime in Hell, desperate to find his hand again...
Rescued by the Time Agency during his late teenage years, by the time he was found Gray had gone mad. Tortured until he learned to love pain, isolated until life became cheap, he clung to reason alone by clinging to hope. Hope for an end to his suffering, hope to be free…hope to see his home and his family again.
Hoping against hope that he and his brother would be reunited.
Growing into adulthood under the care of the Time Agency, Gray became one of their best agents—a hit man of the highest caliber, conducting kill after kill under the Agency’s orders. Though a skilled assassin, Gray proved to be difficult to control given his unbalanced mental state, and since the Agency was, first and foremost, a business dedicated to profiting off the manipulation of timelines, he walked a knife's edge between being an asset and a liability.
Everything came to a head just prior to Gray's deployment to World War II. Having discovered two years of his life missing, in bits and pieces, Gray was searching for answers when he was sent to kill a man by the name of Captain Jack Harkness.
Instead of completing his mission, Gray became attached...and when he refused to complete the job, discovered this wasn't the first time he'd become emotionally involved with a particular assignment. Hence the loss of two years of his life and dozens of others--friends, lovers, found family he could not bring himself to hurt. Innocents who, when he gazed into their eyes, saw just enough of the precious few peaceful and happy memories he had that harming them became unthinkable.
The Agency had a contingency plan, of course, seeing to it that Harkness died, but Gray escaped before he could have his memories stolen again. To remind himself of what he lost, and to evade the Time Agency, Gray took the identity of the man he'd loved for barely a day and swore revenge. He was ready to burn the world down around him, just to get back at the Agency...
...until Gray, now Jack Harkness, met a young man by the name of Mickey Smith in the middle of the Blitz, and a man calling himself the Doctor.
The story isn't so different from the one we know, save that Harkness wasn't looking to sell a harmless empty ambulance, but rather change the programming of the nanogenes that had escaped so they would kill. Bearing witness to the Doctor's miracle and moved by both his and Mickey's pleas for mercy, rather than try to seize on the bomb that would hit the area and divert it to cause more casualties, he did as his counterpart had and removed it to safety. Rescued by the Doctor, he went on to join the Time Lord and Mickey as his companion.
From there, give or take, little else changes. Mickey inevitably takes into himself the heart of the TARDIS, restores Jack to life, and life becomes his permanent condition until he one day finds himself leading a small group to protect Cardiff from the alien threats of its local rift in time and space. Though he struggles to control his emotions and curb his violent impulses, he has learned he can channel his darkness into something positive: protecting what is his. Charismatic and brilliant Toshiko Sato, mild mannered physician Owen Harper, mother hen Suzie Costello, resourceful aide and lover Gwen Harper, and the compassionate former police officer Ianto Jones—while Gray still searches, still hopes, still clings to what little good and reason remains in him after all he has endured and longs to find his brother again, this is the family he holds close. These are the ones who stand by him as he struggles with the rage that has poisoned him and the desire to expel it in blood.
It’s a relentless battle, but he doesn't fight that battle alone. He has his team, he has his work...and somewhere, out there in the universe, he knows he has the Doctor.
In another, a reflection of this one…that name was claimed by his brother.
Gray Thane was a small child when a vicious and sadistic alien race assaulted his tiny home of the Boeshane Peninsula in the 51st Century. Running for safety, his big brother lost grip of his hand…
…and Gray, under the name of Captain Jack Harkness, spent a lifetime in Hell, desperate to find his hand again...
Rescued by the Time Agency during his late teenage years, by the time he was found Gray had gone mad. Tortured until he learned to love pain, isolated until life became cheap, he clung to reason alone by clinging to hope. Hope for an end to his suffering, hope to be free…hope to see his home and his family again.
Hoping against hope that he and his brother would be reunited.
Growing into adulthood under the care of the Time Agency, Gray became one of their best agents—a hit man of the highest caliber, conducting kill after kill under the Agency’s orders. Though a skilled assassin, Gray proved to be difficult to control given his unbalanced mental state, and since the Agency was, first and foremost, a business dedicated to profiting off the manipulation of timelines, he walked a knife's edge between being an asset and a liability.
Everything came to a head just prior to Gray's deployment to World War II. Having discovered two years of his life missing, in bits and pieces, Gray was searching for answers when he was sent to kill a man by the name of Captain Jack Harkness.
Instead of completing his mission, Gray became attached...and when he refused to complete the job, discovered this wasn't the first time he'd become emotionally involved with a particular assignment. Hence the loss of two years of his life and dozens of others--friends, lovers, found family he could not bring himself to hurt. Innocents who, when he gazed into their eyes, saw just enough of the precious few peaceful and happy memories he had that harming them became unthinkable.
The Agency had a contingency plan, of course, seeing to it that Harkness died, but Gray escaped before he could have his memories stolen again. To remind himself of what he lost, and to evade the Time Agency, Gray took the identity of the man he'd loved for barely a day and swore revenge. He was ready to burn the world down around him, just to get back at the Agency...
...until Gray, now Jack Harkness, met a young man by the name of Mickey Smith in the middle of the Blitz, and a man calling himself the Doctor.
The story isn't so different from the one we know, save that Harkness wasn't looking to sell a harmless empty ambulance, but rather change the programming of the nanogenes that had escaped so they would kill. Bearing witness to the Doctor's miracle and moved by both his and Mickey's pleas for mercy, rather than try to seize on the bomb that would hit the area and divert it to cause more casualties, he did as his counterpart had and removed it to safety. Rescued by the Doctor, he went on to join the Time Lord and Mickey as his companion.
From there, give or take, little else changes. Mickey inevitably takes into himself the heart of the TARDIS, restores Jack to life, and life becomes his permanent condition until he one day finds himself leading a small group to protect Cardiff from the alien threats of its local rift in time and space. Though he struggles to control his emotions and curb his violent impulses, he has learned he can channel his darkness into something positive: protecting what is his. Charismatic and brilliant Toshiko Sato, mild mannered physician Owen Harper, mother hen Suzie Costello, resourceful aide and lover Gwen Harper, and the compassionate former police officer Ianto Jones—while Gray still searches, still hopes, still clings to what little good and reason remains in him after all he has endured and longs to find his brother again, this is the family he holds close. These are the ones who stand by him as he struggles with the rage that has poisoned him and the desire to expel it in blood.
It’s a relentless battle, but he doesn't fight that battle alone. He has his team, he has his work...and somewhere, out there in the universe, he knows he has the Doctor.
