It was so quiet at night; the quiet ticking of mechanics, the quiet
sounds from the only other sentients in the place - the pterodactyl
flapping about high in the rafters of the base, the weevil down in the
basement prisons howling to itself, the tapping of homeless fingers
against the glass of the jar that sat on a low shelf in Jack's office.
Feet up on his desk, Jack sipped his martini and stared at the hand
behind the glass, thinking, remembering; the fear and pain of death,
the shock of being brought back to life, the worst agony of being
abandoned. He had wondered around Satellite Five for weeks,
finding small piles of dust everywhere - hundreds and hundreds of
Daleks wiped out of existence. He had no idea how. He had
no idea why he was alive or what had happened to him. After six
weeks he'd taken up Nisha's gun, stuck the thick barrel in his mouth
and blown his brains out through the back of his head. And again
he'd come back to life, not a mark on him, not even so much as a
headache. His scream had echoed around the cold, metal structure,
his only company except for the computers and the archives - recordings
of people who no longer lived.
Getting the transmat working had taken months. He'd had to scour
the station for the parts he'd needed, crack the computer language and
re-set the co-ordinates, work out where to go because he didn't like
the idea of dying over and over in the vacuum of space. In all
that time he'd probably gone a little crazy, started having
conversations with himself, discussing subjects such as the fickle
nature of Time Lords, the advantages of having a spaceship in
situations such as the one he was in, and close to the end of his stay
he recalled having the ultimate debate with himself regarding the
answer to life, the universe and everything. It was also the
longest he'd ever gone without sex, or he assumed it was, and that
usually sent him slightly mad at the best of times.
The con was the only thing he really knew how to do, and so that was
what he returned to. And long story short, he'd reached Earth
again, late 21st Century, and Torchwood had found him. An
institute set up by Queen Victoria to watch for the Doctor and his kind
and to ensure no harm came to Earth by his hand. It amused Jack
that she'd banished the Doctor and Rose from her Empire, hundreds of
years before Rose's birth, right in the heart of the kingdom. And
very little amused Jack nowadays.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the monitor on his desk light up,
white text on a blue screen, and a mechanical voice say, just as the
text appeared,
"Warning. Intruder, section B2 - mortuary.
Warning. Intruder, section B2 - mortuary. Warning.
Intruder, section B2 - mortuary…."
Swapping his drink for his gun, Jack pushed back his chair and went out
to the main control grid, checking the visual monitors. The
mortuary looked empty, no movement, nothing that shouldn't be
there. In fact, none of the cameras scattered around the base
showed any activity except for the weevil in the cell. Yet still
the alarm declared its warning. Jack reset it, gave it a
five-minute stand-by and headed down the metal stairs to the basement
sections.
It was colder in the mortuary than the rest of the complex, warmer in
the cells. Jack paused with his back to the wall, took a breath
and stepped into the cooler of the rooms. The curved brick
ceiling, tiled walls and wooden floor, with the wooden fronted coolers
at the end where Suzi's body was stored. There was nothing here
that was out of the ordinary for this place, this was what the CCTV
camera showed them, and the camera didn't lie. Jack turned, the
air escaping him in a sudden rush as in the dim light he saw what was
against the far wall, tucked behind the camera's 180 degree view.
A blue police box, out of place and out of time. A myriad emotion
crowded upon him, filling his head and his heart, momentarily blanking
his vision.
If the TARDIS was here, so was the Doctor.
He turned quickly, scanning the long room again but there was no one in
sight. He took a step towards the door but found himself
unwilling to once again let this ship out of his sight. Would it
vanish again? Reaching out he tried the door but it was
locked. His key was in his desk drawer. Could he bear to
leave, to go fetch it? He heard a sound, like a combination of a
whimper and a groan, turned to glance at the doorway and realised it
had come from his own throat. The Doctor was close by, most
likely somewhere in the base, exploring as he always did when he
arrived somewhere new. After so very long feeling nothing but
anger, hurt and betrayal, Jack was shaking with the climax of it; every
lonely moment, every dark night, every second he'd spent fighting his
way back from two-hundred-thousand years in the future. The
Doctor. The only man - being - ever to reduce Captain Jack
Harkness to suicide. He hated him so passionately it burned
within him. But at the same time, the love he'd felt for him had
been as equally amplified. How close had he kept the Doctor's
severed hand? How desperate had he been to protect it when Clarys
had unknowingly taken hostage the only thing that meant a damn to Jack?
"Hello." Jack spun, gun raised, finger itching to squeeze the
trigger when he saw the lanky man in a brown suit with beady eyes like
a beaky bird and grinning like an idiot. "Fancy bumping into you,
right here. What are the odds?"
"Are you him?" In the void between them his voice sounded as hard
and cold as the damp brick ceiling and the grey tiled walls.
"Am I who?" But the grin was slowly fading, the light in the eyes
going out. And Jack knew, because in the dark orbs he could see
the universe winking back at him like it was about to come up with the
punch line to some great cosmic joke. "You know I am." The
expression saddened. "I'm sorry, Jack."
"No." Stepping forward, lowering his weapon, he shook his head. "You don't get to apologise."
"Come on." Hands outstretched in appeal, hands so very
familiar. "If I can't apologise, we'll both be stuck here,
staring at one another in this awkward almost silence for the rest of
time."
"Unless you just take off. Leave me here. Again."
"I didn't know you were alive. I know you died. I saw it on
the monitors, I saw them kill you, watched them kill you. Because
of me. I didn't tell Rose because she'd been through so much
already."
"And what about what I went through?"
The Doctor came forward, narrowing the physical gap between them. "I can't turn back time…."
"Yes, you can!"
"But not for you. No more than I can bring back the memories they
stole from you. We stopped off at this spaceport, a thousand
years in the future and not a million miles away from Earth and I heard
a story about a Captain and a con and I knew it was you. Since
then I've been searching for you. Never thought I'd find you
defending Earth though."
"Why not? I died for it once."
"And the inside of the TARDIS - the Bad Wolf - brought you back. I had no idea until we stepped about that spaceport."
The need to know was the one overwhelming factor stopping him from just
initiating the fistfight he was desperate to throw the first punch
of. "The words in that sentence made sense but not in that
particular order. Care to explain what you just said?" The
Doctor's hesitation pushed that just that little bit further and he
reached out, grabbed the Doctor's wrist. "Tell me why I can't
die!"
"What?" The note of suspicion and hint of anger in the other's
voice was a surprise and it rekindled Jack's own like a spark to
kerosene.
"Tell me why I can't die! I never asked to be immortal."
The Doctor moved his head, left to right. "No…."
"I sacrificed myself willingly for you and for her and this was my
thanks! I don't want this." The hard set of the unfamiliar
features gave this new face a hint of the old one.
"Immortality isn't natural, Jack, it shouldn't be messed with."
"You think this is my fault?! Think I woke up just in time to see
you leave without me and decided to get my revenge by not dying anytime
soon? Want proof?" Tightening his bruising grip on the
Doctor's wrist, Jack lifted his gun to this temple -
"NO!"
- and pulled the trigger. The bullet cracked open his skull,
sluiced through his brain and excited, breaking his head open like a
hardboiled egg. There was no pain. Every nerve in his body
short-circuited and he dropped like a puppet to the ground, at least he
presumed that he did, because when he opened his eyes he was lying on
the cold wood floor, the Doctor kneeling beside him, fingers in his
hair, not caressing but searching, presumably for the bullet wounds now
miraculously healed. It was a nice feeling all the same.
Fathomless eyes were regarding him with what felt like the worry of the
whole universe. "Promise me that you won't do anything like that
again."
Jack pushed himself up, hesitantly accepting the Doctor's hand. "Are my promises worth any more than yours?"
The Doctor nodded slowly. "It would seem so."
~
Feeling like the universe was pulling the last vestiges of strength and
willing from him, Jack led the way up the metal staircase to his
office.
"What is this place?"
"A branch of the Torchwood Institute."
"Torchwood?"
"Long story short? A group dedicated to gathering up alien tech and using it to arm human kind."
"How about short story long?"
Jack glanced behind him as he stepped onto the mezzanine. "Some other time, okay?"
"Okay. How about where are we?"
"You don't know?"
"The TARDIS has been acting up recently. Not that that the time
matrix was ever the most reliable of things but recently…" he trailed
off.
"We're in Cardiff, just above the rift as a matter of fact and speaking
of that, where's Rose?" He saw a shadow pass over the Doctor's
face and felt a frisson of sympathy.
"Trapped in a parallel universe. She's with her Mum and her Dad,
albeit a different version of her Dad, a more successful version, and
Mickey. So she might not be happy, most of the time, but she's
alive. And she's loved."
Jack nodded. "She's always that." He had to work to keep
the sliver of jealousy from his voice, and knew he'd failed when the
Doctor said quietly,
"Don't think you weren't."
He almost laughed. "Oh, don't worry. I know I wasn't. We flirted, if you remember, nothing more."
"It was more, Jack. You know and I know it. Just with Rose in the
middle…" Jack led the way into his office, the Doctor trailing behind
and his tone changed from explanation to exclamation in the space
between his heartbeats, "…hey! This is mine!" Jack didn't
have to turn to see. He knew what the Doctor had found and his
stomach churned his lunch over again. Perching on the edge of his
own desk he watched the Doctor crouching down in front of the jar that
contained his severed hand. He was touching the glass, tapping on
it, and Jack had to bite back the automatic yell that usually
accompanied anyone going anywhere near the jar. "Where did you
find it? Well, I know where you found it, I mean, I know where I
dropped it, but why did you find it?" He paused for a breath and
to align brain and mouth by the sounds of his next question, "Why did
you keep it?"
"It's yours."
"I know, that's what I said, what I asked...." He looked back and
up, over his shoulder, "...was why you kept it." His voice
petered out like he didn't need an answer. "I'm so sorry, Jack."
"You've no idea," he whispered, "how much I want to accept that."
The Doctor stood suddenly. "Then do." Crossing the metre of
floor between the shelf and the desk he stopped in front of Jack.
"Do. Take what you need, what you've been yearning for. I'm
more than willing, Jack, more than happy to give it. I'm not
going to run, not going to leave this time."
The Doctor's hands hung by his sides and Jack had the greatest urge to
reach out and grasp them. "Last time you said… you didn't have
sex."
"I don't, not as a habit. Haven't in a very long time. But
I do, on rare occasions, when I find someone who isn't reliant on
me. I don't sleep with my companions not because of some
physiological problem but because I can't face living in the TARDIS
with a sulking spurned lover. Mind you, there was one exception
to that rule and she was absolutely beautiful and not the reliant type,
if you get my meaning." Jack waited until he paused
expectantly.
"You talk more in this incarnation than you did in the last."
"Really? Sorry. Is it irritating?"
"No." His voice softened of its own volition. "But you
are. You're annoying as hell. It's been such a long time,
for me at least. I'm sure you went the quick way around but I
took the long route, and it wasn't all that scenic believe me.
What's kept me going, what's kept me waiting here close to the rift is
anger, real soul-destroying, sanity-crunching anger. Can you even
understand that?" The Doctor nodded. "Now here you are,
finally, standing in front of me and I don't want to fight you. I
want to fuck you."
"Haven't you been thinking about that too?"
Jack shrugged. "It might have crossed my mind, now and again."
"I'm as up for it as you are…."
"I seriously doubt that."
"Don't doubt me, Jack, please." Still not touching, the Doctor
took the final step, knees knocking the side of the desk. "Don't
ever, ever doubt me again."
The freeze-frame pause might have lasted a second, it might have lasted
hours, but without warning Jack to his feet, one thigh pressing between
the Doctor's, pushing him back to make room while with his other leg
and his arms he stopped the man from moving, gathered the lithe form to
him and smothered the narrow mouth with his own.
~
Ianto stood in the heart of the hub. It was early, too early for
the others to be in but not for Jack. It was never too early for
Jack, he'd come to realise quickly, Jack didn't leave at nights.
Jack didn't sleep.
Except for last night, it seemed.
On the battered couch opposite Toshiko's desk, Jack and a stranger lay
wrapped in one another, covered in a tatty blanket but otherwise
apparently naked. However he might have felt, however sharp the
stab of jealousy, he had to be relieved, pleased for Jack that maybe -
just maybe - this was the owner of the creepy living hand in the jar in
Jack's office. And maybe - just maybe - they had found the one
person in the world who could put a real smile on Jack's face, one that
would thaw the ice in his eyes.
Crossing to the coffee machine, he started his morning ritual, one that
would be missing the usual snug chat with Jack over the first pot of
the day but that might turn out to be even more interesting this
morning.
Deliberately, he dropped the lid of the jug, hoping to wake his boss,
to give he and his friend a chance to put some clothes on before the
others arrived for work.
"Ssh." Ianto turned. Big dark eyes were smiling up at him
from under messy black hair. "He hasn't slept for over
two-hundred thousand years, he deserves a lie-in, don't you think?"
Ianto nodded. Then, as he was lacking anything else to say, he
introduced himself. And to his amazement, Jack's friend pulled an
arm from under the blanket and held out his hand, which Ianto shook,
feeling like he'd stepped into some parallel universe. "I'm the
Doctor."
And suddenly almost everything about Captain Jack Harkness made a lot more sense.
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