TW: Ghost Story (PG-13) 13/18
Title: Ghost Story 13/18
Author:
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing and Characters: Jack/Ianto, The Doctor, Torchwood, the other Torchwood, OCs, A THOUSAND ELEPHANTS, et cetera.
Length: 70,070
Spoilers: Oh, let's say the whole Rusty era of DW+TW, just to be safe.
Ghost Story
by Mad Maudlin
13. nights of insult
The grave was deep, maybe twenty feet deep, nine or ten feet long-though of course it was narrower at the bottom, you couldn't help that when you dug by hand. The raw smell of the living earth filled the air, and Jack fought to look up, to look his...whatever he was...in the eye.
Brother. Enemy. Memory. Victim.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, hardly able to push the words out.
Gray-and it was still a shock that it was Gray, the boy peeping out so obviously from under the man even after all this time, even with all those scars-looked at him with burning eyes. The same eyes Jack remembered, or used to remember, except it had hurt so much he'd taught himself to forget. "I want you to suffer," Gray said fiercely, nostrils flaring. "I want your life."
He then took a step back and then spread his arms wide, encompassing the field and the forest with the gesture. "This is Cardiff. Twenty-seven AD. The city will be built here over the next two thousand years. Your grave will be the city's foundations. Your blessing of life becomes a curse." For the first time, he smiled, a beautiful smile that reached his eyes and filled them with a grim light. "Each time you revive, with a throat full of earth, each time it chokes you afresh and you thrash on the edge of death...you think of me."
I always do, Jack wanted to say, but it would've been a lie. He hadn't thought of Gray for a long, long time.
Then Gray shoved him, and Jack couldn't catch his balance with his hands and feet in chains, even if he'd wanted to fight back; he fell, and the world narrowed to the damp earth under him, a narrow door of sky above. And his brother standing far above, bathed in sunlight, like an angel, John lurking just visible to one side. "Fill the grave."
"No way," John said flat-out.
"Then the detonator on your arm gets activated," Gray growled.
John looked down, like he was waiting for a hint, a strategy, a signal. And Jack had the funny idea that if he gave the right sign, John might just throw off decades of maladjustment and malaise, even if it got him blown to pieces. Hell, maybe he really was in love.
But Jack wasn't going to get anyone else killed today. He nodded, gently, and John's mouth quirked up for just a moment before he dropped the ring and picked up the shovel. Jack looked at Gray, staring down from on high, and thought I love you and I forgive you and I accept this. But he couldn't put any words together, couldn't think of anything that would break through the weight of time and failure. Nothing would be enough. Nothing had ever been enough.
Except, maybe, this.
He shut his eyes just before the first spadeful of earth landed on his chest.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-
There is no elegant way to be buried alive, except perhaps for those yoga masters who can put themselves in a trance like living death. No ordinary amount of calm can stand up to the basic mechanisms of biology: when you breathe in that first speck of dirt, you will cough, and every whooping breath thereafter will make you cough again, and again, and sometimes you will retch from the pain of it and sometimes your whole body will try to double over, curl in and protect itself. And eventually you will pass out from coughing, long before the weight of the soil compresses your chest into your last exhalation. Before it grows heavy enough to crack skull and ribs and hips, crush organs and blood vessels, settle into a heavy shell that completely entombs you.
Jack did his best to keep his mouth shut, though, and John, to make it quicker, aimed for the head.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Jack came back to a universe of pain and little else; he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't even blink his eyes. The weight of the earth didn't even leave enough space for his heart to beat; all his blood had pooled in crushed capillaries and bruised organs, anyway. He waited to die again, waited for his oxygen-starved neurons to stop firing and his cramped muscles to stop trying vainly to contract. Come on, he urged his body, come on, give me another break, let me go.
And then a small voice in the corner of his thoughts, a tiny and definite Other, cut through the haze of pain.
It said softly, I don't think it's going to work like that.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Who are you? Jack asked, bewildered and desperate, and for a moment I was completely stumped as to how to reply. I had long addressed Jack the way you might shout at characters in a film, because I'd resigned myself to the fact that he was never going to hear me. And he chose now of all times to talk back?
Call me Eiron, I eventually said, acutely aware of the absurdity of introducing myself after a hundred and seventy-seven years. Though I would also answer to Jiminy Cricket.
Well, that right there explains why I've never heard from you before, Jack thought weakly.
Our body was a wreck, every nerve ending sending out its own hysterical alert to the damage, while safe in the watch I could feel the spear in Time starting to shift again. One kind of pain lessening while another held steady. But the energies that had kept us alive for so long were blocked, stymied, by the very weight of earth that had killed us; our body couldn't heal, so it could not come back to life, but no longer was it entirely dead, either. Only mostly dead, you might say, and without hope of miracles.
And Jack was mysteriously, mercilessly conscious for it. And somehow he could sense me. This had happened before, I remembered, when Abaddon failed to devour us; but that had lasted mere moments, so quick it might as well have been a dream. Somehow, I did not think that this time we would get such a quick reprieve.
What are you? Jack asked me, which was such a complicated question that I very nearly laughed at him. I don't think I've been down here long enough to start having psychotic breaks.
It's been six hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds, I said. And I...I suppose you could call me a friend.
Well, I hope you're a friend, Jack thought, because this is a bad place to have an enemy.
We were encased in the earth, caught on the edge of life, and now I finally had a chance to talk to Jack frankly. I had...well, not quite all the time in the world. More like one thousand, nine hundred eighty-one years, four months, nineteen days, four hours, seven minutes, and twenty-three seconds.
Until what? Jack asked, making me realized how perilously thin was the line between thought and thought-as-speech in this peculiar conversation.
Until the rest of Torchwood starts looking for you, I told him. Assuming they noticed the moment John took us through the Rift, of course. Assuming they weren't too busy-or dead-to start a search. Assuming they had the first clue where to look.
How do you know that? Jack asked incredulously.
And that's when I really did laugh. I don't think you'd believe me if I told you.
Okay, Jack thought, mostly to himself. Never too early to go mad.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Time slowly began to slip away from him. He didn't really sleep, not in the physical sense, but his attention faded in and out. It wasn't as if there was anything to mark the passage of time: every day, every moment, was darkness, silence, stillness, and pain.
Besides, if he wanted the countdown, he just had to ask his conscience.
One thousand, eight hundred fifty-three years, Eiron supplied on cue, three months, four days, twenty-two hours, thirty minutes, eighteen seconds.
Thanks, he thought vaguely. Wouldn't want to lose track of the count.
Any time.
He ought to be more worried about the talking to himself, but couldn't muster up the energy; the constant pain was exhausting, and the amount of time stretched out in front of him was unfathomable, more than ten time longer than he'd already lived--
Eleven times, Eiron put in. Well, eleven and then some.
So you're a calculator as well as a speaking clock?
Well, if you'd rather I didn't say anything...
Jack would've laughed if his ribcage hadn't been crushed. Did I just get snubbed by my own hallucination?
I didn't mean it, Eiron said, and he actually sounded contrite. I wouldn't...I'm not going to just, you know, leave you like this.
You can't, Jack pointed out. We're stuck.
That is true.
I appreciate the sentiment, though, he added. And he did, even if he wasn't entirely sure he deserved it.
As if he'd heard that last bit, Eiron chuckled affectionately. What are hallucinations for?
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
I let Jack have his fugues, at first; sometimes I even indulged in a few myself. It wasn't as if we had much else to do, except talk to each other, and frankly I found that awkward and he found it weird. What was I going to tell him? You're secretly an alien; I'm your alter ego and I've been watching you your entire life; I've been plotting to run away with your boyfriend. I mean, I could convince him of it, since it was the truth, but did I really want to?
Did he deserve that, trapped in stillness and silence, with all those centuries spread out ahead of us? Could I honestly tell him that, if I'd been a bit quicker about things, he would currently be alone?
At first I let Jack have his fugues because they were harmless enough, and because we needed some space from one another. But the years piled up, agonizingly slow, and the longer Jack let his mind drift the more I worried. It wouldn't do any good to survive this burial if the future Torchwood just dug up a drooling vegetable.
Wake up! I called to him, eventually, and felt his mind snap back into focus. On the pain, yes, but also on me. Good. Was starting to get a bit worried there.
What's the count? he asked groggily.
One thousand, five hundred sixty-four years; eight months; two days; fourteen hours; fifty-two minutes; forty-one seconds, I rattled off.
Jack's reaction was immediate. Are you telling me I just dozed off for two years?
Hence the worrying.
What've you been doing? he asked, like he'd forgotten I was meant to be a figment of his imagination.
If I'd had eyes, I would've rolled them. Well, since the Anglo-Saxons have arrived, I thought I'd compose some alliterative verse. Would you like to hear any of it?
Only if it involves some strapping Viking warriors and a couple of half-naked shield maidens, he grumbled.
What about inappropriate use of the horned helmets? I offered.
Ow. No, thank you.
Your loss. I could feel his attention drifting again, and struggled to find something that would hold it. Can I ask you a question?
...okay, Jack said warily.
Damn, now I had to think of a question. If you could be anywhere else in Time and Space right now...
Jack snorted at me, at least mentally. Easy. Twenty feet up..
I meant in general, I said peevishly. The one place you'd want to be.
He thought about it, and in a general way I sensed him turning over memories, some faded and some burnished from frequent revisiting. I don't think there is a place, he finally said. Just people. Home is where the heart is and all that.
What people, then? I pressed. Tell me about them.
There's a lot of them.
Pick one.
Jack was starting to get suspicious. You're awfully pushy for an hallucination.
Shall I let you catch up on your beauty sleep, then?
He understood my meaning; I could feel him ruminating on it. Then he said, quite casually, So I once dated this guy with no mouth...
-\-\-\-\-\-
Time passed.
...and she says, 'I'm pregnant,' right before I jump in the water, he was explaining. I mean, I realize there's no good time or place for that kind of thing, but I was handling dangerous explosives and she'd already been bitten and-are you even paying attention?
Because there only thing worse than talking to yourself was, apparently, ignoring yourself.
I'm here, Eiron said. I didn't want to interrupt.
Okay. Just checking.
It had been, according to his speaking clock, something like six hundred years, and Jack wanted to shift. Not even really move; he'd gotten over the compulsion to thrash against the heavy earth centuries ago. He just wanted to shift a little bit, maybe change the angle of his shattered hip so it wasn't throbbing quite so sharply. He sometimes thought he could feel the bones, three pieces of ilium and two of ischium, the splintered-off knob from the end of the femur, all nestled in a pulp of damaged muscle and ligament and pinching the sciatic nerve just so. It wasn't the single most painful part of his body, but it was the most nagging, because he increasingly felt that if he could just move an inch or so, maybe even less, he could shift the bone fragments and release the pressure.
One inch. His whole world came down to one inch, if he let it.
So after you'd killed the leopleuridon, Eiron prompted him, and Jack dragged his mind back to the story.
Right. So afterwards we talked...I mean, we'd been careful, but they still haven't invent a halfway decent contraceptive by 2009, so it was bound to happen. But Lucia was so convinced that nothing had to change, nothing between us had to change, and of course she was going to keep it. It was so easy to forget she was Catholic sometimes. I let her convince me...she'd known what I was coming in, she'd seen me die so many times, and I thought she really understood, you know, really accepted it. Hell, sometimes I still don't understand it, so I don't know what I thought she could really do.
Eiron asked, So she was Catholic but she didn't want to marry you?
She wasn't a real good Catholic, Jack said. Meat on a Friday, sure, but no abortion. Or maybe it wasn't even a Catholic thing, maybe it was just her. She was-passionate. Single-handedly perpetuated about half the Italian stereotypes you ever heard of. She fell in love with Melissa the moment she skipped her period and nothing was going to change her mind.
I thought her name was Alice?
That came after.
Oh.
I guess motherhood made Lucia realized what she had to lose. What I didn't. Or maybe we'd just been together long enough that she was starting to notice her own laugh lines. I mean, I've got laugh lines. I've had the same ones since 1869. I thought she understood about me because she'd seen me come back a few times, but I guess there's different kinds of knowing. When Lucia really understood about me, about how it is for me, she started getting catty, withdrawn, keeping Melissa away from me...and then one day she quit Torchwood and told me to stay away from her daughter. Hers. It took me five years to pry them out from under cover.
Five years, and Melissa-Alice-didn't even know her own name, didn't even recognize him. Lucia's bitterness hadn't abated either; in fact, seeing him again had seemed to make it worse. She'd already had gray hairs by then, and she'd threatened to shoot him if he interfered. Alice was going to have a normal life, she said. Alice was going to be safe.
How is that different from your other kids? It took Jack a minute to realize it was Eiron asking an honest question.
The others...either I ran before they were born or after I'd had a few years to play house. I always ran and made sure they never knew...even though I kept an eye on them from a distance. But their mothers never knew, is the thing. Lucia knew. And this time, she was the one who ran away from me.
What happened to them? Eiron asked.
Jack sighed, if only in his mind. Richard died at Dunkirk. Sarah died in a train accident. William's in a nursing home with advanced dementia. A lot of my grandchildren are dead, too. It comes with the territory.
But Alice reached out to you, right?
She did. Which in a lot of ways made it worse. Around when she started college, she figured out a few things about Uncle Jack...I'm not sure if she really cared that much or if she was just pissed off at Lucia for lying to her. We had a few good years, Alice and me. I got to feel like a dad for a while.
But then she'd had Steven, and she turned out to be her mother's daughter. Eventually, she'd understood, too, and Jack was alone again.
You're never alone when you've got a voice in your head, Eiron said, and if he'd been real Jack might've said he sounded a bit choked up.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Time passed.
Jack, I called into the darkness.
There was a flicker of consciousness, a muted mental grumble.
Jack! You're not sleeping through your birthday.
That did it. His thoughts unfolded like a flower. Birthday?
Yes. Your millenial, to be precise.
That should've evoked shock, or at least something, but mostly he started trying to do the math. He was never good at math. I've been down here eight hundred twenty-three years, then?
Eight hundred twenty-two years, nine months, twenty-eight days, five minutes and six seconds, I said. Many happy returns.
God, I hope not.
I don't think God has very much to do with your returns; I'm just wishing you happy ones.
-\-\-\-\-\-
And time passed some more.
Tell me about Torchwood, Eiron asked.
There's not much to tell. But Jack needed to keep thinking, couldn't drift away again like he'd done around the time of the Norman Conquest; he'd missed two Henries that way. I work there. I save the world so other people don't have to. Fragiler people.
Is "fragiler" even a word?
Are we playing Scrabble? Besides, I'm pretty sure if I knew, so would you.
Eiron sighed. So tell me about it. What keeps you there? Sentimental value?
Please. I'd hardly spend a hundred and ten years on a job out of sentiment.
So you say.
I started because I needed the work, Jack said. I stayed because the work needed me. Sometimes it was interesting. Sometimes it was even fun. Sometimes...sometimes they just needed somebody to hold the knife, and I did it so somebody else didn't have to.
Fragiler people.
If we're allowing that as a word, yes.
He didn't have to say it, but talking was better than drifting away, so he added: I realized something, last year...I didn't have to stay. Not all that time. I thought I stayed because I didn't have anywhere else to go, but if I'd really wanted to...I think it was inertia, partly, that kept me coming back. Partly it was loneliness.
But partly you really did like the work. Do like it.
Partly. Maybe even mostly.
Even when it's terrible?
Sometimes...sometimes, even then. Because somebody would've had to do it, and if I can take that burden...sometimes that makes it okay. Sometimes that gets me to sleep.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Tell me about your team, I asked the darkness, because I needed to hear it. Because I needed to remember, too. Hiding in silence for hundreds of years...
They're amazing, Jack said warmly. They're brilliant. I want to strangle at least one of them at any given moment.
Is that how you know they're brilliant?
Sometimes. Sometimes...
He was losing his train of thought again. Tell me about Gwen, I asked at random.
Gwen is...oh, shit. Gwen is everything. Sometimes I think Gwen would be better at my job than I am. No, scratch that-she was definitely better at my job than I am. She remembered to sign things and kept the paperwork in order and people don't get so nervous when she smiles. She's absolutely terrifying when you get between her and Rhys.
Unless she invites you in.
She never asked, though. She always held back.
So did you.
Because I wasn't going to screw things up for her.
Not even when she and Owen--?
That was her mistake to make.
But you were jealous.
I wouldn't say jealous.
So jealous.
I was angry. Angry that she'd throw away something I can't ever have.
A long-distance trucker?
A boring life.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Tell me about the Doctor.
Why?
We need to remember.
Jack didn't want to remember. The memories hurt, with seven hundred, eighty-seven years, one month, ten days, seventeen hours and twenty-two minutes to go. The memories felt too far away. I've been sort of in love with the Doctor for about a hundred and forty years.
A hundred and forty plus one thousand, one hundred...
Don't start.
Sorry.
I went to a psychotherapist in the eighties, once. Had to Retcon the hell out of her afterwards, but I told her I was in love with a distant older man and I'd lost my father at a young age and I was in a stressful work environment. She gave me the number of a dominatrix. And you know what, if she'd had big ears and dressed like a U-boat captain...
It's not thing to be ashamed of. He saved you. He saved us.
He did. Saved us when we didn't even know we needed saving.
(I knew I needed saving.
Who's telling the story?) I was chasing the man I wanted to be, though. Not the man he was. I did more to betray his faith in me while I waited for him than I would've done if I'd given up and found myself a cave to be a hermit in. But I was trying. I'm still trying. It's just that I realized I've got no one else to tell me not to shoot.
Interesting metaphor.
He told me when not to shoot. But he still knew how to wield the knife himself. If I had half that wisdom...
Well, by the time they dig us out we're going to be twice his age.
Huh. You're right. I'm going to have to rub that in.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Talk about Tosh, I asked, and waited for Jack to stir. Talk about her mind. You're always a little afraid that she's smarter than you.
Our thoughts were slowing down; it seemed to take too long, and barely any time, for him to answer, not afraid. I know she's smarter than me.
She can build a sonic screwdriver from stone knives and bearskins.
Probably. She could probably fix my vortex manipulator for me if I asked her. I know she's smarter than me because she can get there from here-I could do this stuff in the fifty-first century, you know, when you can pick up interociter kits at the corner shop. Tosh can do it when she has to machine all the parts herself from scratch.
I still kind of want to stab Harold Mace in the eyes on her behalf, though.
Me, too. But then again, if he hadn't been such a bastard, if he'd seen her for what she was, we wouldn't have been able to pry her out of UNIT's clutches with a blowtorch.
Yeah. Still. Eyes.
Oh, yeah. With a rasp.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
It comes to him like a dream, slow as the centuries, barely distinguishable from his own thoughts, even though they are his own thoughts. Talk about Owen. Remember Owen.
Owen's like an onion. He reduces people to tears with surprising alacrity.
And he has layers.
Right. Layers. Armor.
He's almost as good an actor as you are, isn't he? Throwing out static at the world because he can barely handle his own feelings, let anyone anyone else's.
God forbid anyone know he has a heart under there. Thought...pot and kettle.
I wasn't going to say anything.
I wanted to save him. More than anyone but Gray, I wanted to make things right for him. Maybe even because of Gray. They're my family now, too, and I didn't endure that year to give up on them so easily.
And that's why we're going to survive this.
That's why we've got to remember.
Two hundred forty-six years, eight months, nine days, seven hours, forty-five minutes, twelve seconds.
Forever.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
We will remember this. We will remember all of this.
Remember the first day we stood in the Hub, hating the very air of the place, and accepted blood money because it wasn't like we'd never compromised before. Remember the last moment, John halfway carrying us, a gentle brutality considering what he was about to take away. Remember standing in the silence after we'd mopped up the blood and frozen the bodies and the century had turned, thinking I could walk away and not walking anywhere.
Remember the dodgy handle on the urinal in the Employees Only toilet, not that anyone but Employees Only could ever get in there. Remember how long it took to wire up the invisible lift.
Remember fighting with Suzie, day in and out, not because we actually disagreed (well, mostly) but because it was fun, because once upon a time she was beautiful as well as brilliant. Remember the first time Tosh kicked a bad guy in the face. Remember dragging Owen into work, hung-over and barely functional, because tough love is tough. Remember the look on Gwen's face when she saw the pterodactyl.
Remember the passwords to the alien morgue, because we will not have a third chance to obtain them.
Remember the passwords for the Rift manipulator. Remember the combination to the safe.
Remember Ianto stalking us across Cardiff, so desperate he was almost honest, so goddamn young. Remember his first day on the job, trying not to say he is here to make the coffee and look good in a suit because we couldn't articulate any more coherent reason to let him in. Remember the first time we teased him and he sassed us back, the little smile at our shocked expression, and believe that it was genuine even if nothing else back then was.
Remember You're the biggest monster of them all.
Remember not to put liquids in the rubbish bins.
Remember the first kiss, when he was practically shaking from nerves, and how he seems to think we can't tell he'd never been with a man before us. Remember the last kiss, on the way upstairs to meet Tosh and Owen. Remember dancing at the wedding, cheek-to-cheek, as he only would when the entire party was already in the process of being Retconned. Remember what we did to that wedding dress.
Remember that we could lose him any moment. That we have already lost him and are on third or fourth chances. Remember that we will hurt him. Remember that he is an easy target. Remember that he will probably forgive us anyway.
Remember that he can make us human. Remember that he can set us free.
Remember him.
Please, remember.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
The spade plunged into his stomach, and Jack's thoughts coalesced and swirled, because pain was pain but this was new pain, this was different, something had changed--
He gasped in dirt through ruined lungs, and died. By the time he'd come back, he was out of the earth entirely, exposed under a gaping wound of a sky. Air felt thin and insubstantial, practically a vacuum, and ghosts danced in front of his eyes, Charles and Alice-they were talking to him and he realized he had to speak again, even though he was having a hard time putting words together, putting himself together after centuries in pieces. He had to remember how to move his mouth. "What. When?"
"His mind's addled. Get us a carriage."
"Isn't he supposed to be Aberystwyth?"
"And what on earth is he wearing?"
He tried again, sinking his fingers into the spring grass for support. "When is this?" he asked. They ignored him.
They dragged him to his feet, eventually, and they took a carriage back to the Hub, and he watched Cardiff roll by--a Cardiff of coal smoke and bowler hats he had thought long gone. Stared at Alice and Charles, no matter how they squirmed and snapped at him for it. He was surrounded by ghosts. Maybe he was the ghost.
"Stop that," Charles snarled, and Jack realized he was scraping his feet against the floor, monotonous motion, just because he could.
By the time they got back to the Hub he was starting to think more clearly, though his hands and legs still shook for reasons that had nothing to do with his health. They set him down and fixed him a cup of tea, which may have been the greatest kindness they ever showed him; he didn't drink it. Charles was here but Emrys wasn't-yes, there, a newspaper on Alice's desk, 7 May 1901. "I've crossed my own timeline," he told them, until they listened. "You need to put me in the vaults. Freeze me for a hundred and seven years."
They'd hated him and they'd used him and they were narrow-minded and they were cruel. But even then, they were Torchwood.
"Alice is dealing with your contemporary self at the moment," Emilie said as Jack clambered into the chamber. "How long must we set the time-lock for?"
Jack shut his eyes and tried not to remember the suffocating crush of dirt. Tried to remember everything else. "One hundred and six years, ten months, twenty days, five hours, and twenty-five minutes. Give or take a few."
Chapter One
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Fourteen
Author:
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing and Characters: Jack/Ianto, The Doctor, Torchwood, the other Torchwood, OCs, A THOUSAND ELEPHANTS, et cetera.
Length: 70,070
Spoilers: Oh, let's say the whole Rusty era of DW+TW, just to be safe.
Ghost Story
by Mad Maudlin
13. nights of insult
The grave was deep, maybe twenty feet deep, nine or ten feet long-though of course it was narrower at the bottom, you couldn't help that when you dug by hand. The raw smell of the living earth filled the air, and Jack fought to look up, to look his...whatever he was...in the eye.
Brother. Enemy. Memory. Victim.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, hardly able to push the words out.
Gray-and it was still a shock that it was Gray, the boy peeping out so obviously from under the man even after all this time, even with all those scars-looked at him with burning eyes. The same eyes Jack remembered, or used to remember, except it had hurt so much he'd taught himself to forget. "I want you to suffer," Gray said fiercely, nostrils flaring. "I want your life."
He then took a step back and then spread his arms wide, encompassing the field and the forest with the gesture. "This is Cardiff. Twenty-seven AD. The city will be built here over the next two thousand years. Your grave will be the city's foundations. Your blessing of life becomes a curse." For the first time, he smiled, a beautiful smile that reached his eyes and filled them with a grim light. "Each time you revive, with a throat full of earth, each time it chokes you afresh and you thrash on the edge of death...you think of me."
I always do, Jack wanted to say, but it would've been a lie. He hadn't thought of Gray for a long, long time.
Then Gray shoved him, and Jack couldn't catch his balance with his hands and feet in chains, even if he'd wanted to fight back; he fell, and the world narrowed to the damp earth under him, a narrow door of sky above. And his brother standing far above, bathed in sunlight, like an angel, John lurking just visible to one side. "Fill the grave."
"No way," John said flat-out.
"Then the detonator on your arm gets activated," Gray growled.
John looked down, like he was waiting for a hint, a strategy, a signal. And Jack had the funny idea that if he gave the right sign, John might just throw off decades of maladjustment and malaise, even if it got him blown to pieces. Hell, maybe he really was in love.
But Jack wasn't going to get anyone else killed today. He nodded, gently, and John's mouth quirked up for just a moment before he dropped the ring and picked up the shovel. Jack looked at Gray, staring down from on high, and thought I love you and I forgive you and I accept this. But he couldn't put any words together, couldn't think of anything that would break through the weight of time and failure. Nothing would be enough. Nothing had ever been enough.
Except, maybe, this.
He shut his eyes just before the first spadeful of earth landed on his chest.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-
There is no elegant way to be buried alive, except perhaps for those yoga masters who can put themselves in a trance like living death. No ordinary amount of calm can stand up to the basic mechanisms of biology: when you breathe in that first speck of dirt, you will cough, and every whooping breath thereafter will make you cough again, and again, and sometimes you will retch from the pain of it and sometimes your whole body will try to double over, curl in and protect itself. And eventually you will pass out from coughing, long before the weight of the soil compresses your chest into your last exhalation. Before it grows heavy enough to crack skull and ribs and hips, crush organs and blood vessels, settle into a heavy shell that completely entombs you.
Jack did his best to keep his mouth shut, though, and John, to make it quicker, aimed for the head.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Jack came back to a universe of pain and little else; he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't even blink his eyes. The weight of the earth didn't even leave enough space for his heart to beat; all his blood had pooled in crushed capillaries and bruised organs, anyway. He waited to die again, waited for his oxygen-starved neurons to stop firing and his cramped muscles to stop trying vainly to contract. Come on, he urged his body, come on, give me another break, let me go.
And then a small voice in the corner of his thoughts, a tiny and definite Other, cut through the haze of pain.
It said softly, I don't think it's going to work like that.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Who are you? Jack asked, bewildered and desperate, and for a moment I was completely stumped as to how to reply. I had long addressed Jack the way you might shout at characters in a film, because I'd resigned myself to the fact that he was never going to hear me. And he chose now of all times to talk back?
Call me Eiron, I eventually said, acutely aware of the absurdity of introducing myself after a hundred and seventy-seven years. Though I would also answer to Jiminy Cricket.
Well, that right there explains why I've never heard from you before, Jack thought weakly.
Our body was a wreck, every nerve ending sending out its own hysterical alert to the damage, while safe in the watch I could feel the spear in Time starting to shift again. One kind of pain lessening while another held steady. But the energies that had kept us alive for so long were blocked, stymied, by the very weight of earth that had killed us; our body couldn't heal, so it could not come back to life, but no longer was it entirely dead, either. Only mostly dead, you might say, and without hope of miracles.
And Jack was mysteriously, mercilessly conscious for it. And somehow he could sense me. This had happened before, I remembered, when Abaddon failed to devour us; but that had lasted mere moments, so quick it might as well have been a dream. Somehow, I did not think that this time we would get such a quick reprieve.
What are you? Jack asked me, which was such a complicated question that I very nearly laughed at him. I don't think I've been down here long enough to start having psychotic breaks.
It's been six hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds, I said. And I...I suppose you could call me a friend.
Well, I hope you're a friend, Jack thought, because this is a bad place to have an enemy.
We were encased in the earth, caught on the edge of life, and now I finally had a chance to talk to Jack frankly. I had...well, not quite all the time in the world. More like one thousand, nine hundred eighty-one years, four months, nineteen days, four hours, seven minutes, and twenty-three seconds.
Until what? Jack asked, making me realized how perilously thin was the line between thought and thought-as-speech in this peculiar conversation.
Until the rest of Torchwood starts looking for you, I told him. Assuming they noticed the moment John took us through the Rift, of course. Assuming they weren't too busy-or dead-to start a search. Assuming they had the first clue where to look.
How do you know that? Jack asked incredulously.
And that's when I really did laugh. I don't think you'd believe me if I told you.
Okay, Jack thought, mostly to himself. Never too early to go mad.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Time slowly began to slip away from him. He didn't really sleep, not in the physical sense, but his attention faded in and out. It wasn't as if there was anything to mark the passage of time: every day, every moment, was darkness, silence, stillness, and pain.
Besides, if he wanted the countdown, he just had to ask his conscience.
One thousand, eight hundred fifty-three years, Eiron supplied on cue, three months, four days, twenty-two hours, thirty minutes, eighteen seconds.
Thanks, he thought vaguely. Wouldn't want to lose track of the count.
Any time.
He ought to be more worried about the talking to himself, but couldn't muster up the energy; the constant pain was exhausting, and the amount of time stretched out in front of him was unfathomable, more than ten time longer than he'd already lived--
Eleven times, Eiron put in. Well, eleven and then some.
So you're a calculator as well as a speaking clock?
Well, if you'd rather I didn't say anything...
Jack would've laughed if his ribcage hadn't been crushed. Did I just get snubbed by my own hallucination?
I didn't mean it, Eiron said, and he actually sounded contrite. I wouldn't...I'm not going to just, you know, leave you like this.
You can't, Jack pointed out. We're stuck.
That is true.
I appreciate the sentiment, though, he added. And he did, even if he wasn't entirely sure he deserved it.
As if he'd heard that last bit, Eiron chuckled affectionately. What are hallucinations for?
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
I let Jack have his fugues, at first; sometimes I even indulged in a few myself. It wasn't as if we had much else to do, except talk to each other, and frankly I found that awkward and he found it weird. What was I going to tell him? You're secretly an alien; I'm your alter ego and I've been watching you your entire life; I've been plotting to run away with your boyfriend. I mean, I could convince him of it, since it was the truth, but did I really want to?
Did he deserve that, trapped in stillness and silence, with all those centuries spread out ahead of us? Could I honestly tell him that, if I'd been a bit quicker about things, he would currently be alone?
At first I let Jack have his fugues because they were harmless enough, and because we needed some space from one another. But the years piled up, agonizingly slow, and the longer Jack let his mind drift the more I worried. It wouldn't do any good to survive this burial if the future Torchwood just dug up a drooling vegetable.
Wake up! I called to him, eventually, and felt his mind snap back into focus. On the pain, yes, but also on me. Good. Was starting to get a bit worried there.
What's the count? he asked groggily.
One thousand, five hundred sixty-four years; eight months; two days; fourteen hours; fifty-two minutes; forty-one seconds, I rattled off.
Jack's reaction was immediate. Are you telling me I just dozed off for two years?
Hence the worrying.
What've you been doing? he asked, like he'd forgotten I was meant to be a figment of his imagination.
If I'd had eyes, I would've rolled them. Well, since the Anglo-Saxons have arrived, I thought I'd compose some alliterative verse. Would you like to hear any of it?
Only if it involves some strapping Viking warriors and a couple of half-naked shield maidens, he grumbled.
What about inappropriate use of the horned helmets? I offered.
Ow. No, thank you.
Your loss. I could feel his attention drifting again, and struggled to find something that would hold it. Can I ask you a question?
...okay, Jack said warily.
Damn, now I had to think of a question. If you could be anywhere else in Time and Space right now...
Jack snorted at me, at least mentally. Easy. Twenty feet up..
I meant in general, I said peevishly. The one place you'd want to be.
He thought about it, and in a general way I sensed him turning over memories, some faded and some burnished from frequent revisiting. I don't think there is a place, he finally said. Just people. Home is where the heart is and all that.
What people, then? I pressed. Tell me about them.
There's a lot of them.
Pick one.
Jack was starting to get suspicious. You're awfully pushy for an hallucination.
Shall I let you catch up on your beauty sleep, then?
He understood my meaning; I could feel him ruminating on it. Then he said, quite casually, So I once dated this guy with no mouth...
-\-\-\-\-\-
Time passed.
...and she says, 'I'm pregnant,' right before I jump in the water, he was explaining. I mean, I realize there's no good time or place for that kind of thing, but I was handling dangerous explosives and she'd already been bitten and-are you even paying attention?
Because there only thing worse than talking to yourself was, apparently, ignoring yourself.
I'm here, Eiron said. I didn't want to interrupt.
Okay. Just checking.
It had been, according to his speaking clock, something like six hundred years, and Jack wanted to shift. Not even really move; he'd gotten over the compulsion to thrash against the heavy earth centuries ago. He just wanted to shift a little bit, maybe change the angle of his shattered hip so it wasn't throbbing quite so sharply. He sometimes thought he could feel the bones, three pieces of ilium and two of ischium, the splintered-off knob from the end of the femur, all nestled in a pulp of damaged muscle and ligament and pinching the sciatic nerve just so. It wasn't the single most painful part of his body, but it was the most nagging, because he increasingly felt that if he could just move an inch or so, maybe even less, he could shift the bone fragments and release the pressure.
One inch. His whole world came down to one inch, if he let it.
So after you'd killed the leopleuridon, Eiron prompted him, and Jack dragged his mind back to the story.
Right. So afterwards we talked...I mean, we'd been careful, but they still haven't invent a halfway decent contraceptive by 2009, so it was bound to happen. But Lucia was so convinced that nothing had to change, nothing between us had to change, and of course she was going to keep it. It was so easy to forget she was Catholic sometimes. I let her convince me...she'd known what I was coming in, she'd seen me die so many times, and I thought she really understood, you know, really accepted it. Hell, sometimes I still don't understand it, so I don't know what I thought she could really do.
Eiron asked, So she was Catholic but she didn't want to marry you?
She wasn't a real good Catholic, Jack said. Meat on a Friday, sure, but no abortion. Or maybe it wasn't even a Catholic thing, maybe it was just her. She was-passionate. Single-handedly perpetuated about half the Italian stereotypes you ever heard of. She fell in love with Melissa the moment she skipped her period and nothing was going to change her mind.
I thought her name was Alice?
That came after.
Oh.
I guess motherhood made Lucia realized what she had to lose. What I didn't. Or maybe we'd just been together long enough that she was starting to notice her own laugh lines. I mean, I've got laugh lines. I've had the same ones since 1869. I thought she understood about me because she'd seen me come back a few times, but I guess there's different kinds of knowing. When Lucia really understood about me, about how it is for me, she started getting catty, withdrawn, keeping Melissa away from me...and then one day she quit Torchwood and told me to stay away from her daughter. Hers. It took me five years to pry them out from under cover.
Five years, and Melissa-Alice-didn't even know her own name, didn't even recognize him. Lucia's bitterness hadn't abated either; in fact, seeing him again had seemed to make it worse. She'd already had gray hairs by then, and she'd threatened to shoot him if he interfered. Alice was going to have a normal life, she said. Alice was going to be safe.
How is that different from your other kids? It took Jack a minute to realize it was Eiron asking an honest question.
The others...either I ran before they were born or after I'd had a few years to play house. I always ran and made sure they never knew...even though I kept an eye on them from a distance. But their mothers never knew, is the thing. Lucia knew. And this time, she was the one who ran away from me.
What happened to them? Eiron asked.
Jack sighed, if only in his mind. Richard died at Dunkirk. Sarah died in a train accident. William's in a nursing home with advanced dementia. A lot of my grandchildren are dead, too. It comes with the territory.
But Alice reached out to you, right?
She did. Which in a lot of ways made it worse. Around when she started college, she figured out a few things about Uncle Jack...I'm not sure if she really cared that much or if she was just pissed off at Lucia for lying to her. We had a few good years, Alice and me. I got to feel like a dad for a while.
But then she'd had Steven, and she turned out to be her mother's daughter. Eventually, she'd understood, too, and Jack was alone again.
You're never alone when you've got a voice in your head, Eiron said, and if he'd been real Jack might've said he sounded a bit choked up.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Time passed.
Jack, I called into the darkness.
There was a flicker of consciousness, a muted mental grumble.
Jack! You're not sleeping through your birthday.
That did it. His thoughts unfolded like a flower. Birthday?
Yes. Your millenial, to be precise.
That should've evoked shock, or at least something, but mostly he started trying to do the math. He was never good at math. I've been down here eight hundred twenty-three years, then?
Eight hundred twenty-two years, nine months, twenty-eight days, five minutes and six seconds, I said. Many happy returns.
God, I hope not.
I don't think God has very much to do with your returns; I'm just wishing you happy ones.
-\-\-\-\-\-
And time passed some more.
Tell me about Torchwood, Eiron asked.
There's not much to tell. But Jack needed to keep thinking, couldn't drift away again like he'd done around the time of the Norman Conquest; he'd missed two Henries that way. I work there. I save the world so other people don't have to. Fragiler people.
Is "fragiler" even a word?
Are we playing Scrabble? Besides, I'm pretty sure if I knew, so would you.
Eiron sighed. So tell me about it. What keeps you there? Sentimental value?
Please. I'd hardly spend a hundred and ten years on a job out of sentiment.
So you say.
I started because I needed the work, Jack said. I stayed because the work needed me. Sometimes it was interesting. Sometimes it was even fun. Sometimes...sometimes they just needed somebody to hold the knife, and I did it so somebody else didn't have to.
Fragiler people.
If we're allowing that as a word, yes.
He didn't have to say it, but talking was better than drifting away, so he added: I realized something, last year...I didn't have to stay. Not all that time. I thought I stayed because I didn't have anywhere else to go, but if I'd really wanted to...I think it was inertia, partly, that kept me coming back. Partly it was loneliness.
But partly you really did like the work. Do like it.
Partly. Maybe even mostly.
Even when it's terrible?
Sometimes...sometimes, even then. Because somebody would've had to do it, and if I can take that burden...sometimes that makes it okay. Sometimes that gets me to sleep.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Tell me about your team, I asked the darkness, because I needed to hear it. Because I needed to remember, too. Hiding in silence for hundreds of years...
They're amazing, Jack said warmly. They're brilliant. I want to strangle at least one of them at any given moment.
Is that how you know they're brilliant?
Sometimes. Sometimes...
He was losing his train of thought again. Tell me about Gwen, I asked at random.
Gwen is...oh, shit. Gwen is everything. Sometimes I think Gwen would be better at my job than I am. No, scratch that-she was definitely better at my job than I am. She remembered to sign things and kept the paperwork in order and people don't get so nervous when she smiles. She's absolutely terrifying when you get between her and Rhys.
Unless she invites you in.
She never asked, though. She always held back.
So did you.
Because I wasn't going to screw things up for her.
Not even when she and Owen--?
That was her mistake to make.
But you were jealous.
I wouldn't say jealous.
So jealous.
I was angry. Angry that she'd throw away something I can't ever have.
A long-distance trucker?
A boring life.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
Tell me about the Doctor.
Why?
We need to remember.
Jack didn't want to remember. The memories hurt, with seven hundred, eighty-seven years, one month, ten days, seventeen hours and twenty-two minutes to go. The memories felt too far away. I've been sort of in love with the Doctor for about a hundred and forty years.
A hundred and forty plus one thousand, one hundred...
Don't start.
Sorry.
I went to a psychotherapist in the eighties, once. Had to Retcon the hell out of her afterwards, but I told her I was in love with a distant older man and I'd lost my father at a young age and I was in a stressful work environment. She gave me the number of a dominatrix. And you know what, if she'd had big ears and dressed like a U-boat captain...
It's not thing to be ashamed of. He saved you. He saved us.
He did. Saved us when we didn't even know we needed saving.
(I knew I needed saving.
Who's telling the story?) I was chasing the man I wanted to be, though. Not the man he was. I did more to betray his faith in me while I waited for him than I would've done if I'd given up and found myself a cave to be a hermit in. But I was trying. I'm still trying. It's just that I realized I've got no one else to tell me not to shoot.
Interesting metaphor.
He told me when not to shoot. But he still knew how to wield the knife himself. If I had half that wisdom...
Well, by the time they dig us out we're going to be twice his age.
Huh. You're right. I'm going to have to rub that in.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Talk about Tosh, I asked, and waited for Jack to stir. Talk about her mind. You're always a little afraid that she's smarter than you.
Our thoughts were slowing down; it seemed to take too long, and barely any time, for him to answer, not afraid. I know she's smarter than me.
She can build a sonic screwdriver from stone knives and bearskins.
Probably. She could probably fix my vortex manipulator for me if I asked her. I know she's smarter than me because she can get there from here-I could do this stuff in the fifty-first century, you know, when you can pick up interociter kits at the corner shop. Tosh can do it when she has to machine all the parts herself from scratch.
I still kind of want to stab Harold Mace in the eyes on her behalf, though.
Me, too. But then again, if he hadn't been such a bastard, if he'd seen her for what she was, we wouldn't have been able to pry her out of UNIT's clutches with a blowtorch.
Yeah. Still. Eyes.
Oh, yeah. With a rasp.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
It comes to him like a dream, slow as the centuries, barely distinguishable from his own thoughts, even though they are his own thoughts. Talk about Owen. Remember Owen.
Owen's like an onion. He reduces people to tears with surprising alacrity.
And he has layers.
Right. Layers. Armor.
He's almost as good an actor as you are, isn't he? Throwing out static at the world because he can barely handle his own feelings, let anyone anyone else's.
God forbid anyone know he has a heart under there. Thought...pot and kettle.
I wasn't going to say anything.
I wanted to save him. More than anyone but Gray, I wanted to make things right for him. Maybe even because of Gray. They're my family now, too, and I didn't endure that year to give up on them so easily.
And that's why we're going to survive this.
That's why we've got to remember.
Two hundred forty-six years, eight months, nine days, seven hours, forty-five minutes, twelve seconds.
Forever.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
We will remember this. We will remember all of this.
Remember the first day we stood in the Hub, hating the very air of the place, and accepted blood money because it wasn't like we'd never compromised before. Remember the last moment, John halfway carrying us, a gentle brutality considering what he was about to take away. Remember standing in the silence after we'd mopped up the blood and frozen the bodies and the century had turned, thinking I could walk away and not walking anywhere.
Remember the dodgy handle on the urinal in the Employees Only toilet, not that anyone but Employees Only could ever get in there. Remember how long it took to wire up the invisible lift.
Remember fighting with Suzie, day in and out, not because we actually disagreed (well, mostly) but because it was fun, because once upon a time she was beautiful as well as brilliant. Remember the first time Tosh kicked a bad guy in the face. Remember dragging Owen into work, hung-over and barely functional, because tough love is tough. Remember the look on Gwen's face when she saw the pterodactyl.
Remember the passwords to the alien morgue, because we will not have a third chance to obtain them.
Remember the passwords for the Rift manipulator. Remember the combination to the safe.
Remember Ianto stalking us across Cardiff, so desperate he was almost honest, so goddamn young. Remember his first day on the job, trying not to say he is here to make the coffee and look good in a suit because we couldn't articulate any more coherent reason to let him in. Remember the first time we teased him and he sassed us back, the little smile at our shocked expression, and believe that it was genuine even if nothing else back then was.
Remember You're the biggest monster of them all.
Remember not to put liquids in the rubbish bins.
Remember the first kiss, when he was practically shaking from nerves, and how he seems to think we can't tell he'd never been with a man before us. Remember the last kiss, on the way upstairs to meet Tosh and Owen. Remember dancing at the wedding, cheek-to-cheek, as he only would when the entire party was already in the process of being Retconned. Remember what we did to that wedding dress.
Remember that we could lose him any moment. That we have already lost him and are on third or fourth chances. Remember that we will hurt him. Remember that he is an easy target. Remember that he will probably forgive us anyway.
Remember that he can make us human. Remember that he can set us free.
Remember him.
Please, remember.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
The spade plunged into his stomach, and Jack's thoughts coalesced and swirled, because pain was pain but this was new pain, this was different, something had changed--
He gasped in dirt through ruined lungs, and died. By the time he'd come back, he was out of the earth entirely, exposed under a gaping wound of a sky. Air felt thin and insubstantial, practically a vacuum, and ghosts danced in front of his eyes, Charles and Alice-they were talking to him and he realized he had to speak again, even though he was having a hard time putting words together, putting himself together after centuries in pieces. He had to remember how to move his mouth. "What. When?"
"His mind's addled. Get us a carriage."
"Isn't he supposed to be Aberystwyth?"
"And what on earth is he wearing?"
He tried again, sinking his fingers into the spring grass for support. "When is this?" he asked. They ignored him.
They dragged him to his feet, eventually, and they took a carriage back to the Hub, and he watched Cardiff roll by--a Cardiff of coal smoke and bowler hats he had thought long gone. Stared at Alice and Charles, no matter how they squirmed and snapped at him for it. He was surrounded by ghosts. Maybe he was the ghost.
"Stop that," Charles snarled, and Jack realized he was scraping his feet against the floor, monotonous motion, just because he could.
By the time they got back to the Hub he was starting to think more clearly, though his hands and legs still shook for reasons that had nothing to do with his health. They set him down and fixed him a cup of tea, which may have been the greatest kindness they ever showed him; he didn't drink it. Charles was here but Emrys wasn't-yes, there, a newspaper on Alice's desk, 7 May 1901. "I've crossed my own timeline," he told them, until they listened. "You need to put me in the vaults. Freeze me for a hundred and seven years."
They'd hated him and they'd used him and they were narrow-minded and they were cruel. But even then, they were Torchwood.
"Alice is dealing with your contemporary self at the moment," Emilie said as Jack clambered into the chamber. "How long must we set the time-lock for?"
Jack shut his eyes and tried not to remember the suffocating crush of dirt. Tried to remember everything else. "One hundred and six years, ten months, twenty days, five hours, and twenty-five minutes. Give or take a few."
Chapter One
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Fourteen