Torchwood fic: Because Men Once Went West [Jack/OCs]

Title: Because Men Once Went West
Rating: PG
Pairings: Jack/OCs
Summary: Jack in America in the 1890s
Author's Note: I did a ton of research to write this, and I've still probably gotten stuff wrong; the information I dug up was consistently disturbing and contradictory. I also moved the date of the SF plague outbreak from 1900 (thank you to wordsofastory for informing me of this odd, horrible and poorly-handled event in the first place). This is one of those stories that, while containing no explicitly disturbing content, has a lot of implicitly disturbing content and might be distressing for some folks.
A/N #2: iamshadow correctly points out that, as far as we know, Jack gets shot on Ellis Island, not stabbed. My bad -- in the midst of history research to have a bit of canon fail. So let's just say Jack is a lying liar who lies, yeah?

( By the time Jack gets to Ellis Island, he already knows there’s something seriously wrong with him. )

sundries

- We booked our flights for Dragon*con -- we'll be in on Thursday night around 8pm and leaving Monday around 4pm. We will be doing things away from the con. Patty wants to see the aquarium and an old friend has offered to take us around a bit. Of course, we'll also be doing the whole con drinkies and socializing thing and attending programming of personal interest and then whatever I wind up on.

- I should book my WriterCon flight, as I'm seeing good prices, but I want to wait until the schedule is out and I can make a rational decision about when I should be flying. Also, really, I should just suck it up and fly Thursday night, because crack of dawn on Friday sucks -- didn't we learn this from Dragon*Con last year?

- I have about 800 other con-related things I want to get cracking on -- such as planning out footage I want to get for the pilot, seeing what technology I can get access too for recording, etc. and also some fan-led event stuff and possibly vending stuff for WriterCon.

- Still need to mail the paperwork for the anthology. Today, today! Also I need to send the editor a bio.

- Got it felt so good to get that fic done last night. I've not been able to write like that in a while.

- I've got the Madonna essay all planned out, and I'd like to sit down and do it tonight, but I am not sure that's going to happen.

- I burned my mouth on mini tacos.

- I miss Patty.

- The latest insanity from Republicans that gay marriage is bad for the economy, specifically small businesses? I'm enraged. First, it's just not true, when one considers the studies that have been done on the wedding industry (which is mostly small businesses), but it's more than that. The assertion that the basis on which to allow or disallow a class of people rights has to do with not whether they deserve them not not, not whether they are human or not, not whether they are equal to their heterosexually partnered brothers and sisters or not, but whether it's convenient for companies? It's an attack on the very idea of freedom. It implies workers are property and it has me trembling, trembling! with fury.

- Need to decide if Patty and I are going to the Hewitt reunion. It's not my year, but the school is small and always does all classes things, and it might be a hoot (or a horror). I also didn't graduate from there, but it was ten years of my life. It's a negligible amount of money, so I should just suck it up and do it, right?