[torchwood/addi has Feelings about traumatized immortals] Watching my 'vids that capture Jack's voice' playlist and nnnngh I always forget how much the 'I give you absolution, now do the same for me' line from Exit Wounds hurts

One of the many, many things I wish canon had explored (I mean, okay the Big Finish audios and/or the comics concievably could still but I doubt it will happen) is Jack's relationshp with religion in his childhood?

Because I can't help feeling like he believed in Something pre-immortality--and that it wasn't finding out there's Nothing waiting for him on the other side wasn't what made him stop Believing.

I'll always believe it was that day when his father died and his little brother was lost-through what Jack believes was his personal failure. he can't be mad at the universe (and I mean there's something nice there, in him never being Jaded in that way but finding the universe beautiful), but he can't believe in Something that could forgive him

He can't let himself be forgiven, by anyone but Gray. and even after the torture Gray puts him through (which, okay at that point Jack doesn't know includes causing the deaths of two other people he loves), Jack wants his brother to give him the forgiveness he's needed but could never accept from anywhere else

(see also: why I love that John of all people is the one who simply says 'it's not your fault'. the ex who also put him through a lot of shit, who even when they were Good probably wasn't Great, tries to get Jack to accept that his teenage-self being too scared to turn back when Gray slipped isn't something he should sitll be torturing himself for)

ANYWAY I'm still angry about the lost potential of what post-S2 could have been, because boy would I have been WAY happier with That Thing That Didn't Happen...if it had been at the hands of the nameless creatures who took Gray instead of what we got

(given he says 'it's all my fault' in that scene too, boy would it have been some awful wonderful symmetry to have him trying to save the lives of children to try to balance his internal scales for what happened to Gray just to lose the man he loves and still not win and sill not accept he shoudln't carry the weight of the universe on his shoulders)