Jack of Lanterns

"It's not about fighting. It's about changing something - us, them, the world. Sometimes fighting's just the best way to get there." -  Jack, proving that once a Summer courtier, always a Summer courtier.

Jack of Lanterns  is the new identity of a man once known as Javier "Jack" Ochoa. Rest of description to come.

Appearance Note: Something of a retcon to his last physical description.

In either form, Jack wears a black wife-beater and keeps his cargo pants tucked into combat boots. He's also known to wear a horribly ratty trench coat, stained with blood and possibly consisting of more patches than original material. While in the hedge, he has a shoulder holster for an old revolver – having no license for the gun, he doesn't risk wearing it in the real world

Durance Note: None of this section is in-game knowledge. Jack himself doesn't remember most of it. It's here for posterity purposes.

Like most elementals, Jack was made – forged, really. He and a handful of other unlucky souls found themselves thrown into a furnace with the various molten components that would make up their new forms. The fires seared them to the soul, and when they were plucked out to cool, a portion of each one's humanity had been replaced with the essence of metal itself.

The reason for this horrid transformation would become quickly apparent: the Keeper wanted them to work with metal – specifically, iron. There were fences to be built, swords to be forged, and the Keeper could not touch the metal itself. So, it had found a work force, infused them with the materials of their new occupation to allow them to do what it needed, and set them to it.

Day and night the group labored, receiving only the barest moments of rest and scatterings of food. They constructed wrought-iron fences and gates, all twisted and spiked. They forged swords for the Keeper's guards, once-men and -women much like themselves. They even sculpted great and terrible décor for the Keeper's inner sanctum - a dangerous and hubristic reminder of its power to guests. And in all this, they found that they could do astounding things with metal – make it bend and twist without hammers or heat, for instance – but found just as quickly that the metal was removing who they were. Talking to guards or other servants, Jack would find that he had a very sudden difficulty with body language, with sarcasm, and with various emotional cues. He was treated as little more than a tool by the Keeper and, increasingly, the other servants around him. He thought that soon, he really would be little more than a glowing wrench or hammer.

That is, until he met Oliver.

Oliver, or Ollie, as he liked to be called, was the Keeper's favorite plaything. He was a beautiful boy, seemingly sculpted from pure porcelain. Their first chance meeting was during one of the Keeper's lavish parties; Ollie was on display for the guests to gawk at and, for the right price, have their way with. While he paraded around the room, posing for this gentry and that, his eye caught the metal man peeking through the doorway. It certainly wasn't love  at first sight – but opportunity. Ollie saw in Jack a way to remove the ennui that persisted in between the dreamily surreal sex and the nightmarishly surreal torture (which may also have been sex). So, when he got the chance, he introduced himself.

The relationship was rocky at first. Ollie would sneak off to find Jack and use him as a plaything, much as his keeper did himself. Jack didn't quite realize that it wasn't honest interest – all he knew was that this changeling was going out of his way to interact, so it must mean something.

Over the weeks, and then months, Ollie and Jack would take what chances they could to sneak off from their positions and see each other. A lot of the time they'd end up lost in the castle's garden maze, where Ollie would force Jack to entertain him with stories or the occasional foot massage. Ollie would often hound his companion with crude sexual advances toward Jack, finding the lantern's inability to reciprocate (or, really, understand) absolutely hilarious. Sometimes, though, they'd just end up locked in a storage closet talking about  anything.

Ollie kept the spark of humanity glowing in Jack. Just when he thought he was going to lose himself, he had made a connection – a friend, a partner, maybe even a lover. No matter what pretenses they made for their meetings, Jack and Ollie never felt quite as alone or quite as scared (or quite as bored, in Ollie's case) when they were together. They were happy, even. As happy as they could be, all things considered. And it was that happiness, that love, that  humanity  that brought all those slowly fading memories back to the forefront of his mind.

That's when Jack decided that he and Ollie would escape.

It was an awful idea.

Home Again

Jack returned to the real world covered in cuts, bruises and dried blood. In one hand was a revolver, enchanted with the glamours of the Fae. He slumped against a tree, hopeful to catch his breath after that... that...

His eyes shot back to the bushes from which he had emerged. The memories slipped away with the rustling of the leaves in the wind. All he could remember was that there  was  another world, and that someone back there needed him. Someone important. No face sprang to mind, a name just on the tip of his tongue... someone.

Jack traveled around a bit before stumbling across the freehold located in Happy Valley. Here, he was tossed into a tumult: changelings selling other changelings to the Fae, murders on the freehold grounds, and a mounting paranoia verging on xenophobia. He helped how he could, furious that changelings could fight against each other after everything they'd been through. Soon, (one of) the culprit(s) was caught and brought to justice. Dancing in the light of the villain's funeral pyre, Jack became the Summer King.

He never stood a chance when the invasion came. A Fae and his army of changelings-no-more tore the castle to the ground. Jack stood with the rest of the Summer Court to hold them off, but to no avail - in the end, many of the friends he had made were killed before his eyes. Jack's reign ended with him as one of three remaining Summer Courtiers. He was lost in the hedge for three days after that, a wreck, physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Upon the rise of the Doctor to Autumn King, Jack disappeared into the night.

Months later, he's returned. The heat of his Summer anger is now the soft fire of Dawn's hope, and it's this hope that lets him face the freehold again.

Associated Tarot Card:  The Tower

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