[fic][dp] Lights Move On A Chalk Line
Title: Lights Move On A Chalk Line
Author: magistrate (draegonhawke)
Sliding Scale of Slash: Explicit, Jack Harkness/Sam Tyler
Rating/Warning: M/Sexual content; dubious-to-the-point-of-non consent
Beta Warning: Unbeta'd. You clicks your LJ-cuts and you takes your chances.
Fandoms: Life on Mars; Torchwood; Final Fantasy VIII
Summary: [Sam's POV] You end with dogs and start with delusions. Sometimes the hardest part of all of this is knowing what's going on.
Days of fever, cold fingers across his forehead and a voice that was not his own, melted slowly to the back of Sam's mind. In their place came flecks of other senses: oil smoke, rough brown walls, weight and fur against his skin. He had vague recollections of light and dogs and fear, but they were distant. The world was cool on his face and flickering.
The first few breaths of wakefulness he disregarded because they didn't make sense. He spent the days drifting, waiting for one flat or another to materialise around him. When he finally came to, eyes open and done dreaming, he'd realised they never would. This was somewhere else.
He was conscious of a presence to his left, but it didn't really register until a hand brushed his forehead. "Awake?"
He'd had all sorts of dreams--REM dreams and acid dreams and waking dreams, and he'd thought for so long that his life in 1973 was a dream as well. This seemed different. He could read a solidity in the world around him, a gravity that kept his shoulders on the bed and his mind behind his eyes. "I think so."
Jack moved, reaching off somewhere and bringing back a clay lamp. Sam winced away from it; even the short yellow flame was uncomfortably bright.
"Sorry," Jack said, placing it to one side. Beyond the pool of its light an assortment of other flames burned, placed in no particular pattern that Sam could discern. "Welcome back to the land of the conscious. How do you feel?"
"Tired," Sam said, letting his eyes track across the ceiling. It was dark, shadows and wisps of smoke; the thick lines of arches curved to low points. The walls curved down over them, terminating at a dirt floor. He was lying on a pile of furs which smelled like dried leaves. "Where are we?"
"Same planet," Jack said. "Different time. Thousands of years before Time Compression began, and way up north." He smoothed the fur by Sam's shoulder. "Long story, really. We're borrowing one of the Halls of the Thorlgard. They're out for the night; won't be back until sunlight. Which gives us..." he checked his wrist device. "...about a month and a half, now."
He shifted his hand, debating whether or not to sit up. Jack took his shoulder, apparently ready to assist.
"You're familiar with this area?" Sam asked.
"Only recently. That Hell book," Jack said, as if that explained everything. "Neat little historical tidbits."
Sam nodded. "Ah."
He shifted forward and Jack moved closer, supporting Sam's weight. "Easy does it. There," he said, checking over him. Sam pushed his own hand into the fur; something as simple as sitting up made the world waver at the edges, and inertia seemed to want him down again. Jack noticed, at least, and was holding him up. He was the steadiest thing in the world around him. "You good?"
Sam inhaled, waiting for the vertigo to pass before he responded. It felt good to be conscious, at least--the air in his lungs, the overwhelming silence. It was only them, the crackle of a nearby fire, the occasional creaks of the building around them. "What happened?"
"You got attacked," Jack said. "Time dogs." He made a noise that might have been a laugh. "We're really going to have to break you of that."
Sam gave an answering chuckle, and pulled his legs in. They obviously hadn't seen much use; he could feel individual muscles trembling. "I take it we broke the loop."
"Yeah," Jack said, and didn't say anything else.
Sam looked around the room, picking out shapes in the lamplight. The dirt floor was swept, punctuated by piles of furs, piles of bags, and a large clay-brick furnace at the centre. The door was composed of slats of something--wood or rawhide or possibly bone--with what looked like a curtain of fur beyond it. Not the most inviting place they'd stayed. Not the worst place, he supposed, either.
After a while, Jack's hand moved. "How's your head?"
Sam blinked. "I'm a bit lightheaded," he admitted. "Mostly sore."
"You've been lying there for a while," Jack said. "Tried to make you comfortable, but...."
Sam nodded. "I think I'd like to stretch my legs."
"Right." Jack's hand moved, sliding across his back to tuck under his arm. "Ready?"
Sam gathered his feet, letting Jack pull him up into an impressively tilting room. He corrected his centre of gravity on instinct, nearly causing Jack to stumble as his inner ear and the outside world came to a new and radically different agreement on where the floor was.
"Whoa." Jack's hands tightened, and Sam could feel his stance widening. "Careful, there. Don't exhaust yourself."
"Do you think I'm going to?" Sam asked.
"Knowing what you've been through, yeah." Jack loosened his grip, letting balance take over from support. "Ten minutes, tops."
Then maybe I shouldn't be walking at all, Sam thought, but didn't bring it up. He could feel bloodflow returning to whatever capillaries he'd been lying on, and while he appreciated rest he also appreciated the oxygenation of his cells. He tested each foot, getting used to the sensation of being vertical again. For several seconds it seemed incomprehensible that anyone managed to move about like this. Bipedal locomotion was not one of evolution's better moves.
Then the unsteadiness receded, the ground seemed a bit more solid, and he could turn his head without fear of the world continuing to turn when he was finished. He rolled his weight onto one foot, taking a hesitant step.
Jack followed at his elbow, not close enough to suggest that he thought Sam was going to fall any second, but close enough so that if he did, he wouldn't hit the ground. After three more steps without incident, Jack nodded. "Getting the hang of this?"
"Like riding a bicycle," Sam remarked, and took the last two steps he needed to reach the wall.
Unfortunately, the walls weren't much more interesting up close. He did note a hanging fur partitioning something off; Jack caught him looking at it and waved in its direction. "Cellar," he said. "Tiny little shed off this main building. All the heat from the furnace gets trapped in here; they keep all their perishables in there. Natural deep-freezer."
"Economical," Sam said.
"If you live on the Trabian tundra you learn to be," Jack said. "I can see why they go south for the winter."
Sam made just enough noise to let Jack know he'd heard him. He looked across the room, letting his hand drag across the wall as he walked along it. It might have been curved the wrong way to catch him, but the illusion of stability was almost as good as stability itself. "Why not stay there?"
"Some do. But this is the land of Thor, the Resolute." Jack waved at the ceiling. "And Thor brings His own herds for them to hunt. Look at these things."
Sam turned back, letting his eyes track up the curve of the walls again. They were stitched together from stretched hides--and judging by the seams as they meandered above his head, the animals so employed had to be gargantuan. Thor's herds. Standing at what might have been the torso of one, where it had been cut across the shoulders to form a seal to the ground, Sam could barely identify the tapering tail spinning high above him.
Come to think of it, the spinning couldn't be normal.
"I think," Sam said, stepping back and immediately regretting it, "I should probably--"
"Easy," Jack said, catching him before he fell. "Like I said, temporal stress like that takes a long time to heal. You want to lie down?"
He tried to gather his feet under him, which had only the effect of making his legs more unsteady. "I think... that might be best."
"Right." Jack knelt, sweeping up Sam's legs and carrying him toward the makeshift bed. Sam leaned back--he'd be more inclined to worry about his dignity if he could accurately place which way was up.
"Sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry for," Jack said, laying him down. Sam pushed his hand into the floor, letting his fingers sink through the fur and trying to convince himself that he was stationary. "Trust me," Jack continued, "I've had days when I couldn't tell which end was head and which end was feet."
Sam managed a Heh at that, but barely.
He closed his eyes. Odd colours were blossoming in fractals at the edge of his vision, and it was easier to keep his stomach settled when he didn't have that extra bit of nonsensical input. "You always seem to be the one standing."
He hadn't meant to say that.
He pulled his arm across his stomach. From somewhere down a tunnel--odd things, tunnels; he could have sworn there weren't any, where they were--he could hear Jack say, "Not quite."
The world's tilting slowed to a gentle rocking, and it was easier to keep his eyes closed. "I think I may drift off," he mentioned, and it fell into the same distance Jack's words had come from.
"That's good," Jack said, fainter now. "You rest."
He laid a hand on Sam's shoulder. It faded to pressure, then silence, then sleep.
-
When next he woke, Jack was doing something noisy and inscrutable to a stand of pots by the furnace. Sam watched for a few minutes before discovering he could sit up on his own; the instant Jack saw him move, he put two things down, picked up what might have been a lamp, and clambered over.
"Here," he said, holding out the lamp. "Soup. And the closest I could find to a sippy-cup."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Surely I'm not that far gone."
Jack grinned. "Better not to take any chances."
"Hm." Sam accepted the food, and Jack slipped behind him to prop him up. The stuff in the lamp was warm and thick--the overwhelming top note was meat, but he could taste oils and something vegetative. He grimaced as he swallowed; his throat was scratchy and dry.
"Sorry," Jack said. "I'm not much of a cook. This is mostly stuff I scraped together from the storeroom."
Sam eyed him over the lamplid. "We're taking from someone's winter stores."
"This is one of a number of buildings that house--at a guess--at least three hundred, people." Jack shrugged. "We're two people. What're they gonna miss?"
Sam lowered the lamp.
"We fit right into their religion, Sam," Jack said--and, on seeing Sam's scepticism, continued. "I read about it! They left offerings for 'travellers from beyond the crust of ice.' Sometimes they'd come back to their homes after a long night and find that these travellers had moved in, left them blessings, and moved on. Have you ever been the origin of a pre-existing legend?" He smiled, eyes bright in the lamplight. "It's an odd feeling, and you never get used to it."
"That hell book?" Sam asked.
"The very same."
The look on Jack's face was almost frightening, how it bordered on recklessness. Sam glanced away, quickly, before forcing himself to look back. We fit into religion here. Fit into history on Lusuosa. That hasn't ended well for us.
"How do you know that what you're doing is right?" Sam asked.
Jack's smile faded. "You do your best. And if that doesn't work, you try harder next time."
Then Jack looked at him, a long, searching look as though he was questioning... something. In 1973, it would have been his sanity. Now, Sam had no clue.
Jack broke away first, getting one of the lamps they were actually using for light. It was burning low, flickering fitfully. "Are you all right?" Sam asked.
"What? Me?" Jack disappeared toward the back shed, vanishing for a moment into the gloom. "Fine."
He emerged with a small jar, cradling the lamp in the crook of his arm. Sam tried to get some indication of what it was--unfortunately, it seemed that this civilisation hadn't perfected the art of labelling. At least, not in symbols he could see. "What is that?"
"Stuff for the lamps," Jack said. "Or it will be, once it melts. Here--" He extinguished the lamp he held, pulling the lid from the jar and tilting it. The room's light danced against a white-yellow surface, shiny but nonreflective. "Look at this," he said, drumming two fingers against the tallow. "Frozen solid. Burns fine, but try getting it into anything."
"Keeps well," Sam observed.
"I'll bet. Talk about refrigeration." He tossed the jar up, caught it, and set it by the furnace to melt. Two more were already lined up next to it, and he took the one farthest to the left. "...can I ask you something?"
Sam nodded. "Of course."
"You trust me, don't you?"
Sam blinked. Jack was devoting his attention to the task at hand--whatever that was. He didn't look up. "Is there any reason I shouldn't?"
"That's not an answer," Jack said. He prised the lid from the tallow-jar, filled the lamp he'd set down, and worked its wick to a good length. "I just want something simple. Yes or no."
Sam watched him as he stood, lighting the lamp from one of the sconces. Jack was asking more than he'd asked--but the specifics were, as usual, hidden. "Yes."
Jack had braced himself for the answer. Sam could read it in the way he moved, the too-careful handling of the lamp. Even the flame barely flickered.
At this point it makes no sense for me not to, he thought. Jack set the lamp aside, letting the silence grow. We've made our mistakes, we've tried to fix them. And regardless of whether or not I do, as you've pointed out, we're stuck with each other. My only question is, why are you asking now?
"Come here," Jack said, going to the door. He pushed the panel out, a bit, revealing a crack of darkness between the hanging hides.
Sam stood, picking his way across the floor, catching Jack's arm when it was offered. Jack picked a fur from its pile, sweeping it across Sam's shoulders. Sam accepted the makeshift coat without protest--his energy was spent trying to untangle the lines of thought Jack wouldn't spell out.
"We're not going anywhere," Jack said. "You can see it from here. Ready?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't know what I'm ready for."
Jack smiled, and pushed the door open.
Sam grit his teeth for a gust of wind, but none came. Cold rolled through the door in slow eddies, pressing against the hide as Jack scanned the horizon.
"There," he said, jabbing a finger at the dark sky, his other hand taking Sam's shoulder to pull him closer into line-of-sight. "Let your eyes adjust; it's a bit off to our right."
Sam followed the line of his arm. Some distance away, sketched in dark lines against the night, the skeleton of a much larger hall was rising. It was still possible to make out the angles of pulleys and supports, broad expanses waiting to be walled and tarred.
"See that?" Jack asked, pulling him in to follow the line of his arm. "That's the hall of Gemeheim. From that building, the Thorlgard forge an empire that stretches to the ocean and the pole. Then the Centrans unleash some kind of 'holy disaster' and wipe out everything. Almost nothing of the Thorlgard is left. No survivors, no technology, and the only artefacts are bits of clay pots, stone and bone tools, and the occasional hide scroll squirreled away in buried troves. The only information that survives is in their logs and holy books--the only things they ever bothered to write down."
Sam laid a hand against the bone of the threshold, pulling away and letting his weight rest on the door. So where we've come from, all this is gone. Why show me?
"It's what we call a safe period," Jack murmured. "Nothing but high-impact events contaminate the timeline. Anything we do gets wiped out in that disaster; we don't have to dance around." He inhaled, breathing in the night and cold air. "You know where we are, Sam?"
The tundra was quiet and empty, and its unfinished hall ached against the sky. This place was timeless, and only one answer came to mind.
"We're nowhere."
-
Between headaches and dizzy spells Sam occupied himself as best he could. The chores to perform around the hall were minimal--troughs had been carved outside for the disposal of waste, and Jack insisted that he be the only one to brave the elements--and while Jack mended clothing and repaired shards of pottery to earn their keep, Sam quickly discovered that he was largely inept at each task. (All Jack would say on the subject was "I've had time to practice.")
Nothing marked the passage of day to day. No sun rose or set. The only notable progress was the duration for which Sam could stay awake, and his improving balance on his circuits around the room.
By the time Sam worked up the curiosity to ask how long they'd been there, he'd begun to feel like a fish in a bowl, swimming in circles. Jack was working with more pots and jars at the corner of the furnace he'd adopted as his kitchen, and didn't have to check his wrist device to answer. "A couple of weeks, linear Earth-style time." He put a handful of something into a cup and poured water over it, either mashing or stirring it with the bone from something's... something. It was impossible to identify the anatomy. "Might be able to leave, soon."
Sam folded his arms. He was next to the furnace, watching Jack at an odd angle. It was hard to read his expression over the peat-and-coal glow of the fire. "You could sound happier."
"I just don't want to jump the gun," Jack said. "Better safe than sorry, you know the sitch when the reactor is down." He grimaced as though he were aware of how many aphorisms had died to form those statements, but wasn't sure what to do about it. "I don't want to leave before--"
Sam would have bet money that Jack was finding some way of blaming himself for this situation. Unfortunately the only person to bet with was Jack, and he didn't think it would be terribly politic of him. "Before I'm better."
Jack finished stirring and discarded the bone. He looked at the cup for a moment, as if wondering whether he'd forgotten something, then got up, walked to near where Sam sat, and crouched down again, holding out the concoction. "Better safe than sorry."
Sam took the cup, swishing the liquid. It smelled sharp, but not unpleasant. "What is it?"
"This and that. Tea, vitamins. It'll help."
Sam nodded. "Cheers."
"I've been meaning to talk with you," Jack said.
Sam swallowed, and set the cup aside. Of all the admissions Jack had ever made, this was one of the more unexpected. "What about?"
Jack started to say on thing, and changed it at the last minute to "Stuff." He looked away.
"Particularly?"
Jack's hand traced nervous circles on the dirt floor. He looked up again, freezing his eyes onto Sam. "Us."
Sam's gut twinged. He focused attention away, for a moment--on the rustle of the fire, the texture of the clay mug.
After a moment Jack stood and stepped away, poorly concealing a glance toward the door, one hand working nervously at his cuff. "Look, I--"
"Jack." It was easier to stop it--at least for a moment. He felt like he'd swallowed clay; it lingered at the back of his tongue, collected in flecks against the lining of his stomach. He set the cup aside, and pulled himself up on the wall of the furnace. Standing was good. Standing meant he could walk away.
"We should be past this," Jack said.
"Past what?" Sam asked, aware that it was a useless question and asking it anyway.
"Just seems like we've had plenty of opportunities to... not screw up." Jack shrugged, pulling his shirt off over his head and tossing it toward his coat. Sam turned, examining the furnace brick beneath his hand.
"It's not exactly that easy."
A rustle of fabric. "Sam," Jack said, voice stern.
"It isn't," Sam said, and had too many reasons. Because this is who we are, what we are, when we are. We're the products of our times. ...maybe that means something different for you.
Two footsteps and Sam looked up; Jack was beside him, and Jack's hands were on his shoulders, and Jack was slipping his coat down and off his arms and covering his mouth with his own.
For a moment Sam could hear the silence. Beyond the crackling fire, the world was still and empty; they were alone in the bitter cold. Jack let up, let the air creep between them, and Sam pulled it in. "What are you doing?"
Jack's eyes were intent, almost animal with something Sam couldn't name. "What do you want me to be doing?"
Sam couldn't comprehend the question.
"Do you want me to stop?" Jack asked, eyes sharp enough to cut through the outside ice. "Say 'stop' and I will."
He moved in again. Sam swallowed, looking past Jack's shoulder--one of the lamps was burning down, its shadows looming higher. Jack pushed him back against the furnace, the bricks warm against his shirt. He could feel the fire's heat crawling up around him, smell smoke tingeing the air. He closed his eyes.
Stop. What would he stop? They were entangled in too many things. He might have said it, could-have would-have should-have, but this was what they had now, and without that--
Soft sibilants, a hand at his stomach, climbing up the line of buttons on his shirt. He thought What are you doing again, which seemed a ridiculous question and he couldn't place why; then someone was pulling him away from the fire, trading warm brick for cool air, and there was ice outside and he was shaking in the cold.
"I," he began, and that was hard. A hand was resting at the edge of his jaw and he almost leaned into it--needed the support, needed something. "I can't--"
The world was shifting under his feet or he was walking, pulled along like slow gravity, trying to breath. Pulled down like he was being carried, arm around his shoulder, pressure at his knees, then ground and fur and a heavy sort of weightlessness over lidded eyes.
Cold outside and he was shaking, and something fell over him like a warm shadow. His hand moved against the fur and something moved against him, and something smelled like skin and oil lamps and dry leaves. Maybe someone was saying his name.
I'm not--
And it pushed over him, rolling him and drowning him, light pressures on his back his hips his neck his legs stripping pieces of him away until he didn't know where what began or ended. On his side, part of his brain screaming Stop stop stop please stop as though clawing for a lifeboat, but he was deep in the water already and it was hard not to drown. He heard his own breathing like it wasn't a part of him, shredded between his teeth.
He didn't make a sound. He was trying to be nowhere, because it hurt less than being somewhere, because he couldn't fix it because he never knew what hurt. He kept his eyes closed, pushed everything away, trying not to feel the hand steadying his hips, the lips against his spine, the sweat breaking out of his skin. There was tension in him somewhere. Something was stretching and straining; he was shutting down his senses one by one. Close the eyes--ignore the ears--and as it turned out, the one thing he couldn't not do was feel.
And then he broke. It felt like breaking; the supports or restraints or he didn't know what they were any more stopped doing whatever they were supposed to do. A second of freefall, not knowing where or how he'd hit the ground, and then there were arms around him, gathering up the pieces, holding him together.
He was shaking, like he'd just gone through an earthquake and was weathering the aftershocks. It was involuntary as his roaring heartbeat; he couldn't imagine how to shut it down.
He came back just enough to realise that he was trapped between chest and splayed fingers, surrogate control because he'd lost his self-control. Jack was holding just tight enough to keep him there, not tight enough to prevent him from getting away.
He shifted, clenching his shoulders together, clenching his teeth and trying to still. He was wet all over; strands of fur clung to his cheek, moving as breath moved him.
Jack moved behind him, breath warm on one shoulder, and Sam could feel him sigh all the way to the small of his back. "Sam," he murmured, careful and quiet. "Why are you afraid of me?"
Why are you afraid.
He wanted to think he wasn't, because you didn't hang onto people you were afraid of. You didn't let them this close, didn't let yourself rely on them. He knew enough to know that wasn't true.
Why?
He shook and thought about the places he'd grown up in. It's what our fathers taught us. His father, cool and casual, an offhand comment about Pakis and homosexuals that his mother didn't answer. It was an issue of not answering, of Gene and Ray and 1973 and being able to be calm when you were looked in the eye, of DI Chester in 2002 getting caught up in a scandal because it was a slow news day and going home and taking too many painkillers and no one knew why, he was such a resilient young man. It took him until then to realise that he was afraid, but he wasn't sure quite who he was afraid of--himself or Jack or everyone else in every other world.
He closed his eyes, pressed himself into the fur. He couldn't smell it any more; his nose was full of something else, sharp like sweat, the sort of smell that should send him running for a shower but sent him nowhere now. Jack shifted toward him, more weight, more warmth.
He didn't know what to say, and it was almost better that way; with language came reason, and doubt followed hard on reason's heels. He felt like he was dying again, a long slow bleed from something unstaunchable just below his lungs, but the less he thought about it, the more he could hold on.
He'd developed a system, over the years. Marked out conditions and boundaries, established for himself lines he would never, never cross. Now he was so far over one that he didn't know where he'd come down, that he had to re-draw all of his maps. Here there be dragons.
"You know," Jack began, a low rumble at the back of his neck.
He stopped his hand halfway to his ear--he couldn't block it out, shouldn't even try.
"I'd never--" Jack began again, and Sam could imagine it was his voice instead. It sounded as unsure.
The mass of thoughts reached a crescendo and he rolled over, breaking himself free, grabbing one of the pelts and wrapping it around him, fur-in. Momentum carried him to the door, pushing the panel out past the blankets and letting the cold air hit him.
Then he stopped because his feet were bare, and the light from the furnace froze on the hoarfrost. He held the fur more tightly, let it stick to his skin, and waited to shiver.
Off in the distance, the pale tundra made a thin line against the night. The blue of the ice met the black of the sky in absolute demarcation. He wanted to go to his knees.
For a moment he would have walked out, walked until his feet were numb and he'd fallen to the ground in this place without landmarks, until the wind had iced over his skin and nothing warm was left. He stayed because nothing in that was right, because he couldn't run away, because Jack stole up behind him and didn't say I'm sorry or Come back or You're letting the cold air in. He swallowed hard, and pulled in the fur.
In a few thousand years Nida and Quistis and Garden would exist. In a few thousand years he'd be with them, fighting to break the loop, and if this had happened then and unhappened at the reset, there'd still be no going back. Here he was and they were nowhere, in a time which would mean nothing, no records and no eyes left to have seen. A safe period, more than usually condemned, and something whispered from the dark sky to the darkness inside. Perhaps it wasn't good to be so easily destroyed.
More things were spinning in his mind than he could put words to. Anything he said would be casting in the dark, but there was a rising pressure in his throat and he needed--he needed--to say something. The Stop part of his brain was still resisting, whispering No. Keep it in. We sort things out ourselves, but that had been hard at the best of times.
"Help me," he whispered.
And, like that was the cue, like they had a script made for long nights like these, Jack stepped closer. And Sam had every reason not to trust him, every reason to run and just keep running--except that there was no one else here, and he wouldn't survive alone.
Jack was there and quiet, and not yet pressing old wounds. Sam knew he wasn't perfect; they'd proved that too many times. But at his words Jack shifted, and didn't touch him, and promised, "I will."
Author: magistrate (draegonhawke)
Sliding Scale of Slash: Explicit, Jack Harkness/Sam Tyler
Rating/Warning: M/Sexual content; dubious-to-the-point-of-non consent
Beta Warning: Unbeta'd. You clicks your LJ-cuts and you takes your chances.
Fandoms: Life on Mars; Torchwood; Final Fantasy VIII
Summary: [Sam's POV] You end with dogs and start with delusions. Sometimes the hardest part of all of this is knowing what's going on.
Days of fever, cold fingers across his forehead and a voice that was not his own, melted slowly to the back of Sam's mind. In their place came flecks of other senses: oil smoke, rough brown walls, weight and fur against his skin. He had vague recollections of light and dogs and fear, but they were distant. The world was cool on his face and flickering.
The first few breaths of wakefulness he disregarded because they didn't make sense. He spent the days drifting, waiting for one flat or another to materialise around him. When he finally came to, eyes open and done dreaming, he'd realised they never would. This was somewhere else.
He was conscious of a presence to his left, but it didn't really register until a hand brushed his forehead. "Awake?"
He'd had all sorts of dreams--REM dreams and acid dreams and waking dreams, and he'd thought for so long that his life in 1973 was a dream as well. This seemed different. He could read a solidity in the world around him, a gravity that kept his shoulders on the bed and his mind behind his eyes. "I think so."
Jack moved, reaching off somewhere and bringing back a clay lamp. Sam winced away from it; even the short yellow flame was uncomfortably bright.
"Sorry," Jack said, placing it to one side. Beyond the pool of its light an assortment of other flames burned, placed in no particular pattern that Sam could discern. "Welcome back to the land of the conscious. How do you feel?"
"Tired," Sam said, letting his eyes track across the ceiling. It was dark, shadows and wisps of smoke; the thick lines of arches curved to low points. The walls curved down over them, terminating at a dirt floor. He was lying on a pile of furs which smelled like dried leaves. "Where are we?"
"Same planet," Jack said. "Different time. Thousands of years before Time Compression began, and way up north." He smoothed the fur by Sam's shoulder. "Long story, really. We're borrowing one of the Halls of the Thorlgard. They're out for the night; won't be back until sunlight. Which gives us..." he checked his wrist device. "...about a month and a half, now."
He shifted his hand, debating whether or not to sit up. Jack took his shoulder, apparently ready to assist.
"You're familiar with this area?" Sam asked.
"Only recently. That Hell book," Jack said, as if that explained everything. "Neat little historical tidbits."
Sam nodded. "Ah."
He shifted forward and Jack moved closer, supporting Sam's weight. "Easy does it. There," he said, checking over him. Sam pushed his own hand into the fur; something as simple as sitting up made the world waver at the edges, and inertia seemed to want him down again. Jack noticed, at least, and was holding him up. He was the steadiest thing in the world around him. "You good?"
Sam inhaled, waiting for the vertigo to pass before he responded. It felt good to be conscious, at least--the air in his lungs, the overwhelming silence. It was only them, the crackle of a nearby fire, the occasional creaks of the building around them. "What happened?"
"You got attacked," Jack said. "Time dogs." He made a noise that might have been a laugh. "We're really going to have to break you of that."
Sam gave an answering chuckle, and pulled his legs in. They obviously hadn't seen much use; he could feel individual muscles trembling. "I take it we broke the loop."
"Yeah," Jack said, and didn't say anything else.
Sam looked around the room, picking out shapes in the lamplight. The dirt floor was swept, punctuated by piles of furs, piles of bags, and a large clay-brick furnace at the centre. The door was composed of slats of something--wood or rawhide or possibly bone--with what looked like a curtain of fur beyond it. Not the most inviting place they'd stayed. Not the worst place, he supposed, either.
After a while, Jack's hand moved. "How's your head?"
Sam blinked. "I'm a bit lightheaded," he admitted. "Mostly sore."
"You've been lying there for a while," Jack said. "Tried to make you comfortable, but...."
Sam nodded. "I think I'd like to stretch my legs."
"Right." Jack's hand moved, sliding across his back to tuck under his arm. "Ready?"
Sam gathered his feet, letting Jack pull him up into an impressively tilting room. He corrected his centre of gravity on instinct, nearly causing Jack to stumble as his inner ear and the outside world came to a new and radically different agreement on where the floor was.
"Whoa." Jack's hands tightened, and Sam could feel his stance widening. "Careful, there. Don't exhaust yourself."
"Do you think I'm going to?" Sam asked.
"Knowing what you've been through, yeah." Jack loosened his grip, letting balance take over from support. "Ten minutes, tops."
Then maybe I shouldn't be walking at all, Sam thought, but didn't bring it up. He could feel bloodflow returning to whatever capillaries he'd been lying on, and while he appreciated rest he also appreciated the oxygenation of his cells. He tested each foot, getting used to the sensation of being vertical again. For several seconds it seemed incomprehensible that anyone managed to move about like this. Bipedal locomotion was not one of evolution's better moves.
Then the unsteadiness receded, the ground seemed a bit more solid, and he could turn his head without fear of the world continuing to turn when he was finished. He rolled his weight onto one foot, taking a hesitant step.
Jack followed at his elbow, not close enough to suggest that he thought Sam was going to fall any second, but close enough so that if he did, he wouldn't hit the ground. After three more steps without incident, Jack nodded. "Getting the hang of this?"
"Like riding a bicycle," Sam remarked, and took the last two steps he needed to reach the wall.
Unfortunately, the walls weren't much more interesting up close. He did note a hanging fur partitioning something off; Jack caught him looking at it and waved in its direction. "Cellar," he said. "Tiny little shed off this main building. All the heat from the furnace gets trapped in here; they keep all their perishables in there. Natural deep-freezer."
"Economical," Sam said.
"If you live on the Trabian tundra you learn to be," Jack said. "I can see why they go south for the winter."
Sam made just enough noise to let Jack know he'd heard him. He looked across the room, letting his hand drag across the wall as he walked along it. It might have been curved the wrong way to catch him, but the illusion of stability was almost as good as stability itself. "Why not stay there?"
"Some do. But this is the land of Thor, the Resolute." Jack waved at the ceiling. "And Thor brings His own herds for them to hunt. Look at these things."
Sam turned back, letting his eyes track up the curve of the walls again. They were stitched together from stretched hides--and judging by the seams as they meandered above his head, the animals so employed had to be gargantuan. Thor's herds. Standing at what might have been the torso of one, where it had been cut across the shoulders to form a seal to the ground, Sam could barely identify the tapering tail spinning high above him.
Come to think of it, the spinning couldn't be normal.
"I think," Sam said, stepping back and immediately regretting it, "I should probably--"
"Easy," Jack said, catching him before he fell. "Like I said, temporal stress like that takes a long time to heal. You want to lie down?"
He tried to gather his feet under him, which had only the effect of making his legs more unsteady. "I think... that might be best."
"Right." Jack knelt, sweeping up Sam's legs and carrying him toward the makeshift bed. Sam leaned back--he'd be more inclined to worry about his dignity if he could accurately place which way was up.
"Sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry for," Jack said, laying him down. Sam pushed his hand into the floor, letting his fingers sink through the fur and trying to convince himself that he was stationary. "Trust me," Jack continued, "I've had days when I couldn't tell which end was head and which end was feet."
Sam managed a Heh at that, but barely.
He closed his eyes. Odd colours were blossoming in fractals at the edge of his vision, and it was easier to keep his stomach settled when he didn't have that extra bit of nonsensical input. "You always seem to be the one standing."
He hadn't meant to say that.
He pulled his arm across his stomach. From somewhere down a tunnel--odd things, tunnels; he could have sworn there weren't any, where they were--he could hear Jack say, "Not quite."
The world's tilting slowed to a gentle rocking, and it was easier to keep his eyes closed. "I think I may drift off," he mentioned, and it fell into the same distance Jack's words had come from.
"That's good," Jack said, fainter now. "You rest."
He laid a hand on Sam's shoulder. It faded to pressure, then silence, then sleep.
-
When next he woke, Jack was doing something noisy and inscrutable to a stand of pots by the furnace. Sam watched for a few minutes before discovering he could sit up on his own; the instant Jack saw him move, he put two things down, picked up what might have been a lamp, and clambered over.
"Here," he said, holding out the lamp. "Soup. And the closest I could find to a sippy-cup."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Surely I'm not that far gone."
Jack grinned. "Better not to take any chances."
"Hm." Sam accepted the food, and Jack slipped behind him to prop him up. The stuff in the lamp was warm and thick--the overwhelming top note was meat, but he could taste oils and something vegetative. He grimaced as he swallowed; his throat was scratchy and dry.
"Sorry," Jack said. "I'm not much of a cook. This is mostly stuff I scraped together from the storeroom."
Sam eyed him over the lamplid. "We're taking from someone's winter stores."
"This is one of a number of buildings that house--at a guess--at least three hundred, people." Jack shrugged. "We're two people. What're they gonna miss?"
Sam lowered the lamp.
"We fit right into their religion, Sam," Jack said--and, on seeing Sam's scepticism, continued. "I read about it! They left offerings for 'travellers from beyond the crust of ice.' Sometimes they'd come back to their homes after a long night and find that these travellers had moved in, left them blessings, and moved on. Have you ever been the origin of a pre-existing legend?" He smiled, eyes bright in the lamplight. "It's an odd feeling, and you never get used to it."
"That hell book?" Sam asked.
"The very same."
The look on Jack's face was almost frightening, how it bordered on recklessness. Sam glanced away, quickly, before forcing himself to look back. We fit into religion here. Fit into history on Lusuosa. That hasn't ended well for us.
"How do you know that what you're doing is right?" Sam asked.
Jack's smile faded. "You do your best. And if that doesn't work, you try harder next time."
Then Jack looked at him, a long, searching look as though he was questioning... something. In 1973, it would have been his sanity. Now, Sam had no clue.
Jack broke away first, getting one of the lamps they were actually using for light. It was burning low, flickering fitfully. "Are you all right?" Sam asked.
"What? Me?" Jack disappeared toward the back shed, vanishing for a moment into the gloom. "Fine."
He emerged with a small jar, cradling the lamp in the crook of his arm. Sam tried to get some indication of what it was--unfortunately, it seemed that this civilisation hadn't perfected the art of labelling. At least, not in symbols he could see. "What is that?"
"Stuff for the lamps," Jack said. "Or it will be, once it melts. Here--" He extinguished the lamp he held, pulling the lid from the jar and tilting it. The room's light danced against a white-yellow surface, shiny but nonreflective. "Look at this," he said, drumming two fingers against the tallow. "Frozen solid. Burns fine, but try getting it into anything."
"Keeps well," Sam observed.
"I'll bet. Talk about refrigeration." He tossed the jar up, caught it, and set it by the furnace to melt. Two more were already lined up next to it, and he took the one farthest to the left. "...can I ask you something?"
Sam nodded. "Of course."
"You trust me, don't you?"
Sam blinked. Jack was devoting his attention to the task at hand--whatever that was. He didn't look up. "Is there any reason I shouldn't?"
"That's not an answer," Jack said. He prised the lid from the tallow-jar, filled the lamp he'd set down, and worked its wick to a good length. "I just want something simple. Yes or no."
Sam watched him as he stood, lighting the lamp from one of the sconces. Jack was asking more than he'd asked--but the specifics were, as usual, hidden. "Yes."
Jack had braced himself for the answer. Sam could read it in the way he moved, the too-careful handling of the lamp. Even the flame barely flickered.
At this point it makes no sense for me not to, he thought. Jack set the lamp aside, letting the silence grow. We've made our mistakes, we've tried to fix them. And regardless of whether or not I do, as you've pointed out, we're stuck with each other. My only question is, why are you asking now?
"Come here," Jack said, going to the door. He pushed the panel out, a bit, revealing a crack of darkness between the hanging hides.
Sam stood, picking his way across the floor, catching Jack's arm when it was offered. Jack picked a fur from its pile, sweeping it across Sam's shoulders. Sam accepted the makeshift coat without protest--his energy was spent trying to untangle the lines of thought Jack wouldn't spell out.
"We're not going anywhere," Jack said. "You can see it from here. Ready?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't know what I'm ready for."
Jack smiled, and pushed the door open.
Sam grit his teeth for a gust of wind, but none came. Cold rolled through the door in slow eddies, pressing against the hide as Jack scanned the horizon.
"There," he said, jabbing a finger at the dark sky, his other hand taking Sam's shoulder to pull him closer into line-of-sight. "Let your eyes adjust; it's a bit off to our right."
Sam followed the line of his arm. Some distance away, sketched in dark lines against the night, the skeleton of a much larger hall was rising. It was still possible to make out the angles of pulleys and supports, broad expanses waiting to be walled and tarred.
"See that?" Jack asked, pulling him in to follow the line of his arm. "That's the hall of Gemeheim. From that building, the Thorlgard forge an empire that stretches to the ocean and the pole. Then the Centrans unleash some kind of 'holy disaster' and wipe out everything. Almost nothing of the Thorlgard is left. No survivors, no technology, and the only artefacts are bits of clay pots, stone and bone tools, and the occasional hide scroll squirreled away in buried troves. The only information that survives is in their logs and holy books--the only things they ever bothered to write down."
Sam laid a hand against the bone of the threshold, pulling away and letting his weight rest on the door. So where we've come from, all this is gone. Why show me?
"It's what we call a safe period," Jack murmured. "Nothing but high-impact events contaminate the timeline. Anything we do gets wiped out in that disaster; we don't have to dance around." He inhaled, breathing in the night and cold air. "You know where we are, Sam?"
The tundra was quiet and empty, and its unfinished hall ached against the sky. This place was timeless, and only one answer came to mind.
"We're nowhere."
-
Between headaches and dizzy spells Sam occupied himself as best he could. The chores to perform around the hall were minimal--troughs had been carved outside for the disposal of waste, and Jack insisted that he be the only one to brave the elements--and while Jack mended clothing and repaired shards of pottery to earn their keep, Sam quickly discovered that he was largely inept at each task. (All Jack would say on the subject was "I've had time to practice.")
Nothing marked the passage of day to day. No sun rose or set. The only notable progress was the duration for which Sam could stay awake, and his improving balance on his circuits around the room.
By the time Sam worked up the curiosity to ask how long they'd been there, he'd begun to feel like a fish in a bowl, swimming in circles. Jack was working with more pots and jars at the corner of the furnace he'd adopted as his kitchen, and didn't have to check his wrist device to answer. "A couple of weeks, linear Earth-style time." He put a handful of something into a cup and poured water over it, either mashing or stirring it with the bone from something's... something. It was impossible to identify the anatomy. "Might be able to leave, soon."
Sam folded his arms. He was next to the furnace, watching Jack at an odd angle. It was hard to read his expression over the peat-and-coal glow of the fire. "You could sound happier."
"I just don't want to jump the gun," Jack said. "Better safe than sorry, you know the sitch when the reactor is down." He grimaced as though he were aware of how many aphorisms had died to form those statements, but wasn't sure what to do about it. "I don't want to leave before--"
Sam would have bet money that Jack was finding some way of blaming himself for this situation. Unfortunately the only person to bet with was Jack, and he didn't think it would be terribly politic of him. "Before I'm better."
Jack finished stirring and discarded the bone. He looked at the cup for a moment, as if wondering whether he'd forgotten something, then got up, walked to near where Sam sat, and crouched down again, holding out the concoction. "Better safe than sorry."
Sam took the cup, swishing the liquid. It smelled sharp, but not unpleasant. "What is it?"
"This and that. Tea, vitamins. It'll help."
Sam nodded. "Cheers."
"I've been meaning to talk with you," Jack said.
Sam swallowed, and set the cup aside. Of all the admissions Jack had ever made, this was one of the more unexpected. "What about?"
Jack started to say on thing, and changed it at the last minute to "Stuff." He looked away.
"Particularly?"
Jack's hand traced nervous circles on the dirt floor. He looked up again, freezing his eyes onto Sam. "Us."
Sam's gut twinged. He focused attention away, for a moment--on the rustle of the fire, the texture of the clay mug.
After a moment Jack stood and stepped away, poorly concealing a glance toward the door, one hand working nervously at his cuff. "Look, I--"
"Jack." It was easier to stop it--at least for a moment. He felt like he'd swallowed clay; it lingered at the back of his tongue, collected in flecks against the lining of his stomach. He set the cup aside, and pulled himself up on the wall of the furnace. Standing was good. Standing meant he could walk away.
"We should be past this," Jack said.
"Past what?" Sam asked, aware that it was a useless question and asking it anyway.
"Just seems like we've had plenty of opportunities to... not screw up." Jack shrugged, pulling his shirt off over his head and tossing it toward his coat. Sam turned, examining the furnace brick beneath his hand.
"It's not exactly that easy."
A rustle of fabric. "Sam," Jack said, voice stern.
"It isn't," Sam said, and had too many reasons. Because this is who we are, what we are, when we are. We're the products of our times. ...maybe that means something different for you.
Two footsteps and Sam looked up; Jack was beside him, and Jack's hands were on his shoulders, and Jack was slipping his coat down and off his arms and covering his mouth with his own.
For a moment Sam could hear the silence. Beyond the crackling fire, the world was still and empty; they were alone in the bitter cold. Jack let up, let the air creep between them, and Sam pulled it in. "What are you doing?"
Jack's eyes were intent, almost animal with something Sam couldn't name. "What do you want me to be doing?"
Sam couldn't comprehend the question.
"Do you want me to stop?" Jack asked, eyes sharp enough to cut through the outside ice. "Say 'stop' and I will."
He moved in again. Sam swallowed, looking past Jack's shoulder--one of the lamps was burning down, its shadows looming higher. Jack pushed him back against the furnace, the bricks warm against his shirt. He could feel the fire's heat crawling up around him, smell smoke tingeing the air. He closed his eyes.
Stop. What would he stop? They were entangled in too many things. He might have said it, could-have would-have should-have, but this was what they had now, and without that--
Soft sibilants, a hand at his stomach, climbing up the line of buttons on his shirt. He thought What are you doing again, which seemed a ridiculous question and he couldn't place why; then someone was pulling him away from the fire, trading warm brick for cool air, and there was ice outside and he was shaking in the cold.
"I," he began, and that was hard. A hand was resting at the edge of his jaw and he almost leaned into it--needed the support, needed something. "I can't--"
The world was shifting under his feet or he was walking, pulled along like slow gravity, trying to breath. Pulled down like he was being carried, arm around his shoulder, pressure at his knees, then ground and fur and a heavy sort of weightlessness over lidded eyes.
Cold outside and he was shaking, and something fell over him like a warm shadow. His hand moved against the fur and something moved against him, and something smelled like skin and oil lamps and dry leaves. Maybe someone was saying his name.
I'm not--
And it pushed over him, rolling him and drowning him, light pressures on his back his hips his neck his legs stripping pieces of him away until he didn't know where what began or ended. On his side, part of his brain screaming Stop stop stop please stop as though clawing for a lifeboat, but he was deep in the water already and it was hard not to drown. He heard his own breathing like it wasn't a part of him, shredded between his teeth.
He didn't make a sound. He was trying to be nowhere, because it hurt less than being somewhere, because he couldn't fix it because he never knew what hurt. He kept his eyes closed, pushed everything away, trying not to feel the hand steadying his hips, the lips against his spine, the sweat breaking out of his skin. There was tension in him somewhere. Something was stretching and straining; he was shutting down his senses one by one. Close the eyes--ignore the ears--and as it turned out, the one thing he couldn't not do was feel.
And then he broke. It felt like breaking; the supports or restraints or he didn't know what they were any more stopped doing whatever they were supposed to do. A second of freefall, not knowing where or how he'd hit the ground, and then there were arms around him, gathering up the pieces, holding him together.
He was shaking, like he'd just gone through an earthquake and was weathering the aftershocks. It was involuntary as his roaring heartbeat; he couldn't imagine how to shut it down.
He came back just enough to realise that he was trapped between chest and splayed fingers, surrogate control because he'd lost his self-control. Jack was holding just tight enough to keep him there, not tight enough to prevent him from getting away.
He shifted, clenching his shoulders together, clenching his teeth and trying to still. He was wet all over; strands of fur clung to his cheek, moving as breath moved him.
Jack moved behind him, breath warm on one shoulder, and Sam could feel him sigh all the way to the small of his back. "Sam," he murmured, careful and quiet. "Why are you afraid of me?"
Why are you afraid.
He wanted to think he wasn't, because you didn't hang onto people you were afraid of. You didn't let them this close, didn't let yourself rely on them. He knew enough to know that wasn't true.
Why?
He shook and thought about the places he'd grown up in. It's what our fathers taught us. His father, cool and casual, an offhand comment about Pakis and homosexuals that his mother didn't answer. It was an issue of not answering, of Gene and Ray and 1973 and being able to be calm when you were looked in the eye, of DI Chester in 2002 getting caught up in a scandal because it was a slow news day and going home and taking too many painkillers and no one knew why, he was such a resilient young man. It took him until then to realise that he was afraid, but he wasn't sure quite who he was afraid of--himself or Jack or everyone else in every other world.
He closed his eyes, pressed himself into the fur. He couldn't smell it any more; his nose was full of something else, sharp like sweat, the sort of smell that should send him running for a shower but sent him nowhere now. Jack shifted toward him, more weight, more warmth.
He didn't know what to say, and it was almost better that way; with language came reason, and doubt followed hard on reason's heels. He felt like he was dying again, a long slow bleed from something unstaunchable just below his lungs, but the less he thought about it, the more he could hold on.
He'd developed a system, over the years. Marked out conditions and boundaries, established for himself lines he would never, never cross. Now he was so far over one that he didn't know where he'd come down, that he had to re-draw all of his maps. Here there be dragons.
"You know," Jack began, a low rumble at the back of his neck.
He stopped his hand halfway to his ear--he couldn't block it out, shouldn't even try.
"I'd never--" Jack began again, and Sam could imagine it was his voice instead. It sounded as unsure.
The mass of thoughts reached a crescendo and he rolled over, breaking himself free, grabbing one of the pelts and wrapping it around him, fur-in. Momentum carried him to the door, pushing the panel out past the blankets and letting the cold air hit him.
Then he stopped because his feet were bare, and the light from the furnace froze on the hoarfrost. He held the fur more tightly, let it stick to his skin, and waited to shiver.
Off in the distance, the pale tundra made a thin line against the night. The blue of the ice met the black of the sky in absolute demarcation. He wanted to go to his knees.
For a moment he would have walked out, walked until his feet were numb and he'd fallen to the ground in this place without landmarks, until the wind had iced over his skin and nothing warm was left. He stayed because nothing in that was right, because he couldn't run away, because Jack stole up behind him and didn't say I'm sorry or Come back or You're letting the cold air in. He swallowed hard, and pulled in the fur.
In a few thousand years Nida and Quistis and Garden would exist. In a few thousand years he'd be with them, fighting to break the loop, and if this had happened then and unhappened at the reset, there'd still be no going back. Here he was and they were nowhere, in a time which would mean nothing, no records and no eyes left to have seen. A safe period, more than usually condemned, and something whispered from the dark sky to the darkness inside. Perhaps it wasn't good to be so easily destroyed.
More things were spinning in his mind than he could put words to. Anything he said would be casting in the dark, but there was a rising pressure in his throat and he needed--he needed--to say something. The Stop part of his brain was still resisting, whispering No. Keep it in. We sort things out ourselves, but that had been hard at the best of times.
"Help me," he whispered.
And, like that was the cue, like they had a script made for long nights like these, Jack stepped closer. And Sam had every reason not to trust him, every reason to run and just keep running--except that there was no one else here, and he wouldn't survive alone.
Jack was there and quiet, and not yet pressing old wounds. Sam knew he wasn't perfect; they'd proved that too many times. But at his words Jack shifted, and didn't touch him, and promised, "I will."