Torchwood Fantasy Series 3 Challenge Episode 4, "A Cold Dark Place"
Title: TFSC3 Episode 4, "A Cold Dark Place"
Author: DarkenTwisted
Rating: PG
Length: 2,988 words
Warnings: Spoilers for TW Post 2:13 (slash m/m content.)
Dark subjects; Angst, Suggested sex, death, unpleasant images. Please don't read it if you don't care for it.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Numerous OC's played by guest actors.
Summary: Two weeks ago I posted The Torchwood Fantasy Series 3 Challenge.
My answer to the puny miniseries the beeb turned the actual series into.
I took it upon myself to write episode four. Jack is forced to relive some of the most painful moments of his many lives.
Guest appearances by actors from other fandoms, Merlin, Robin Hood.
Meticulously betaed by the lovely robinfanatic.
Any errors that fell through the cracks are all mine.
I have invited anyone interested to submit an episode by using the suggested prompt as a title or story prompt.
Interested in writing an episode? Go here!
Disclaimer: All Characters belong to BBC, BBCWales, BBCAmerica. Original characters are my own creation. Their discription and likenesses belong to the guest actors I envisioned playing their roles.
“A Cold Dark Place”
By
DarkenTwisted
The blowfish alien ran as he was chased by the dark figure in the flowing greatcoat. He stopped at the graveyard entrance and ran up the path, staying close to the tombs and trying not to let his heavy breathing give him away.
The sound of footsteps growing closer scared him and he started running again. Out of breath, he knew it would be a matter of moments before the Torchwood leader captured him. He had to buy some time. He looked around, his large fish-like eyes settled on a metal post in the wet ground. He grabbed it and pulled it out without another thought and waited for his pursuer.
Jack rounded the corner and looked up in horror, too late to see the young frantic alien leap out with his makeshift weapon. The inertia carried the Torchwood agent directly into him.
Jack's eyes went wide with shock as the rusty rod entered his chest. The young alien's facial expression echoed that of the man he just murdered.
"No, no, no!" he said as the former time traveler collapsed in front of him. He cradled Jack's head in his arms. "I'm sorry, hang on...please…don't die!"
"It's ok," Jack managed to speak between pained breaths. "Just pull it out."
"No, I can’t! You'll die!" the alien cried in such a human way.
If he weren’t dying, Jack thought to himself, he just might feel sorry for the little, intergalactic hooligan.
“It's ok, really. Just pull..." Unconsciousness took hold as Jack slipped away from the loss of blood.
"Oh no!" the alien panicked. He looked frantically around to see if anyone was looking. He had to find a place to hide the body. His eyes settled on the crypt. He opened the lid on the vault and with effort fueled by desperation, he tossed the former Time Agent's lifeless body into the concrete box and slid the lid back. "I'm sorry, I’m so sorry!” he said as he ran away.
***
Jack revived screaming, as he felt the sharp pain of the rod in his chest. All was dark around him, which terrified him more than feeling the sticky warmth of his life trickling away. It reminded him of a place he never wanted to remember again. He passed out and died with it in his mind.
Death 1...(5197)
Exterminate! The metallic alien voice grated in his ears. He had steeled himself for death but nothing prepared him for the burst of energy that felled him. Every cell in his body was on fire, as he felt his muscles convulse with shock. He felt the life drain out of him as he slumped against the bulkhead of the station. He had done his job and he was ready for whatever came next after his strange, short life.
Moments later, a familiar voice filled his ears as renewed breath filled his lungs. "I am the Bad Wolf, I create life."
"Rose?" He smiled as he ran to the floor of the satellite where the TARDIS and his friends were. He wondered for a second how he could have survived the lethal blast of the machines but he didn't care. He sprinted to the upper level just as the metallic grating sound of the TARDIS dematerializing met his ears. "No!" he shouted at the empty spot. “You can't just leave me here." He felt the tears well up. "I'm alive you guys, you can’t just leave me."
***
He jerked as his injured chest swallowed air. The pain was excruciating but the fact that he was still trapped in the cramped vault made him sick.
He tried to raise his hands to remove the metal rod from his chest but the shallowness of the vault held them tight to his side. Sticky wetness soaked his greatcoat as he felt himself growing weaker again.
The rod had definitely pierced his aorta and with each beat of his heart, more of his life slipped away. He remembered the first time he felt his own mortality betray him before it did once again.
Death 2...(1892)
The air off the shore of Ellis Island was thick with sweat and desperation as Jack Harkness prepared to step off the boat and enter the vast hall writhing with the flotsam of humanity. He came to America in hopes of tracking down the elusive Doctor. Any semblance of the man would do, as long as he could just see him again.
He stood in line with the rest of the immigrants and waited to get passage into the new world. He was roughly pushed into the man in front of him and mumbled an apology. The feisty looking Irishman turned around, his cheeks reddened with anger. “Watch who you push around there, Yank.”
“I said I was sorry!” Jack spat in return. Any other time he would have so asked the bloke on a date. He could have melted in the man’s brilliant green eyes but the look on his face flashed danger, as did the knife in his hand.
Without warning, Jack felt the pain in his chest as the young man brought his lips so tantalizingly close to Jack’s and his emerald eyes smoldered hate. “Well, mate, maybe sorry isn’t good enough.” He disappeared into the crowd as Jack lay dying with the young man’s knife buried in his chest, surrounded by terrified bystanders.
He woke up in the morgue, naked on a porcelain table, screaming as embalming solution entered his living body. The mortician had left the room and he tried his best to free himself from the nightmare.
He managed to remove the cannula from his carotid artery but not before a significant amount of the arsenic laden fluid entered him. He passed out as his body seized and the convulsions hit, and died the second time that day.
Reviving again, he managed to get himself off the table, wrapped up in a dirty sheet, and entered the night. He always bragged that he was the first man to reach America on his back but never expounded as to how.
***
Matthew entered his mind as he awoke the third time. His face was as plain as day in front of Jack's eyes and he so wanted to reach out and touch his former lover’s silken blonde mane again. He remembered the day in the hub when Dr. Matthew Glendale and Elyssa Frost became more than just friends and co-workers.
Death 346…(1917)
“She’s not going to stop, you know,” Matthew said with a bemused smile on his handsome, blonde bearded face. His pale blue eyes twinkled as he placed the electrodes on Jack’s forehead.
“Why did I agree to do this again?” Jack looked at his friend grinning.
Matthew patted his hand. “Because we agreed that the research we are doing might help someone. We know you can’t die, Jack. We just need to find out why.” He changed the subject from their unpleasant task with a faint smile, “Drinks after?”
“Your place or mine, blue eyes?” Jack smiled lustily.
“Mine actually, you pervert,” Elyssa interjected. “We have a lot of data to go over, you two. No time for small talk.” She tossed back a stray lock of her wavy brown hair and stood next to Matthew. “All is in place. Ready if you are, Jack.”
“It’s always business with you, isn’t it, ‘Sparky’,” Jack teased. “I’m looking forward to seeing you let your hair down instead of making mine stand up!” He sobered as he eyed his friends. “I’m never ready for this.”
Elyssa’s blue eyes glistened as she got ready to flick the lever. “I know. Who is? Time to die again in the name of science, Jack Harkness.” The acrid smell of burning flesh and ozone assaulted Jacks nostrils as the current hit and he died while watching his friends’ pained expressions.
Later that evening, as he lay in bed with Matthew and Elyssa naked on each side of him, Jack wondered how he entered such an odd existence. Matthew turned and smiled sleepily, “Penny for your thoughts, lover?”
“I was just thinking. I can’t die. I want to be with you both forever but I can’t. Someday you’ll be gone and I’ll be alone again.” He wept softly as he spoke.
Jack’s free hand glided over Matthew’s naked chest, making him smile at the slight tickle. The doctor grabbed his friend’s hand and kissed it, staring into his eyes. “We have today, Jack and we have each other, all three of us. It’s more than we could ask for.” His smile put the former time agent at ease. Matthew looked over at their girlfriend, nestled in Jack’s arm and dreaming. “She looks so peaceful when she is sleeping.”
“So do you,” Jack mused, as he kissed the man lightly on his forehead. “I love you, Matthew.”
The young doctor rested his head on his arm as he looked longingly into the face of the man he adored, “I love you too, Jack.”
“Now that we all love each other can we please get some sleep?” Elyssa broke in, eyes still closed. “Or do you boys have something else in mind?” She found out, as both her lovers’ lips sought hers in a sudden fit of giggles.
***
He revived with the painful thought in his head, a continuation of the previous one, but struck with melancholy. It was a memory he didn’t want to relive, the day he lost all three of them.
Death 429…(1917, six months later.)
It was a mission like any other: track down alien device, find alien device, bring back alien device for study and storage. Only this device was a weapon that went off before the team could deactivate it. Jack took the brunt of the explosion, which wrecked the underground lab and killed him instantly.
He resurrected, only to find that his friends were not as indestructible as he was. The impossible angle of Elyssa’s neck told the whole story, as did the blank expression on her lifeless face. Groans coming from the other side of the destroyed lab gave him a glimmer of hope. It faded quickly when he pulled the jagged piece of metal from his friend’s ruined torso.
Jack cradled the dying man in his arms, as Matthew looked at him with worry. The sucking chest wound made it hard for the young Torchwood medic to speak. “Jack…Elyssa…look after her…please…she’s carrying our child.”
“Shhhh, just lie still, Matthew.” Jack was crying as he kissed his lover’s lips for the last time. “Everything will be all right.” He didn’t have the heart to tell the dying man that the woman they loved was already dead and the baby they would have fathered together was gone with her.
“Don’t lie to me, Jack. I’m a doctor…remember?” The medic smiled sadly, “I love you. Don’t forget that…either of you,” then his light blue eyes went dim forever.
Jack looked over at Elyssa’s lifeless form, then down at Matthew’s. “We won’t, my darling…I won’t.”
***
He screamed hoarsely as precious seconds of renewed life slid by. His fingertips tore as he tried to scratch his way out of the tomb that encased him. The smell of blood assaulted his nostrils. When he thought about it, this wasn’t the worst situation he had ever been in. Two thousand years under Cardiff took that trophy. He hoped to God his stay in this prison would be shorter. At least the only smell of death here was his.
Death 794…(1945)
He wandered aimlessly around Europe after losing his friends. Jack always wondered how he had the odd knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He still couldn’t get over the fact that the young German soldier gave him up to the Nazis.
He ended up in Dachau with a pink triangle pinned to his shirt. The starvation, lice and filth was bad enough but what was to happen to him made facing the Daleks a walk in the park. He was taken to a room and surrounded by the SS.
For hours they beat, stabbed, choked and raped him, taking delight in the fact that he just wouldn’t die. He recognized the soldier who turned him in, as he looked down the barrel of the young Nazi’s luger. His world exploded as the bullet shattered his skull.
He awoke to the smell of decay and human waste. He was trapped under an immense weight and couldn’t move. To his horror that weight turned out to be the bodies of hundreds of corpses in the mass grave he was tossed in. For hours, he tried to claw his way out in his weakened state. Finally strong hands grabbed him and he was freed from the hellish trap.
He ended up in the back of a troop transport with other former prisoners. It was Sunday, April 29 and he was going home. He ate an entire box of K-rations handed to him by a cute American soldier and promptly threw up.
***
As usual, with all things Jack, it didn’t take long before one of his brief thoughts turned to sex. He imagined with the right scenario how this might be kinky. Or may be it was just blood deprivation to the brain that led him down the weird path of thought. After all, death and sex had become synonymous in a way, for the Torchwood leader.
Death 869 …(1975)
It became a game with him and Kate Reed. The first night they experimented with erotic asphyxiation, things got carried away and she discovered his dirty little secret.
Horror led to fascination, then obsession. Jack knew it was over when other men’s bodies started piling up around town. As the police took her away to her trial and eventual execution, she looked sadly over her shoulder, “They didn’t come back to me, like you did, Jack.” A single tear fell, and it was apparent that she had lost her mind. “Why didn’t they come back, too?”
***
He was growing tired of his forced captivity and even more so of being wet, sticky and having to bear the almost unbelievable pain. Each time he died he could feel himself getting weaker as he recovered. His body used up more iron to compensate the blood loss. He shivered uncontrollably as his limbs went numb from lack of sustenance. He remembered the last time he had the shakes so bad.
Death 1,079…(2000)
Jack returned to the hub with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a party horn in the other. Thanks to Alex he was in charge now. He still couldn’t bring himself to clean up the carnage the former leader caused. He stumbled over the occasional corpse as he clumsily made his way to his new office, mumbling apologies to whomever the person used to be and laughing at the silliness of it.
He popped the top to the bottle and toasted his fallen teammates. He then took a sip and made a face, tossing the bottle to the side. He needed something stronger. He knew where Alex kept ‘the good stuff’.
He took the first of many swallows from the bottle of bourbon and properly toasted his lost friends. He celebrated his new promotion and the new millennium alone, by drinking himself to death.
***
He had long ago lost count of how many times he died and returned. It didn’t matter anymore. He was quite used to it by now, as were most of the people in his life who knew him intimately.
He thought of Ianto. There was always something between them, something about his constant death and resuscitation that troubled him.
Jack always puzzled over the expression on his teammate’s face when he died. It was the same one he always wore when he leaned over his lover waiting for resurrection. It seemed to say, “What if he doesn’t come back this time?”
Death???…(2009)
It was the same look he was wearing now as the lid to the tomb inched open and light made the immortal wince. Ianto sighed and grabbed the metal bar with both hands. As the rod freed itself, Jack felt the wound repair instantly. It was a welcome relief. He died momentarily with his lips hungrily glued to his lover’s.
“How did you find me?” Jack asked, as he wrapped the blanket around himself tighter. Ianto winced at the blood-soaked clothes he was bagging.
“He told us,” the Welshman thumbed toward the black SUV and Jack saw the young alien in the back seat. “When we caught him, he confessed to your ‘murder’ and told us where to find your body.”
Jack looked up as Ianto slipped the hot beverage into his hand. “How long was I...”
“A couple of days, Jack.” Ianto’s brow furrowed. “I was sick with worry. I thought you might have left us again.”
Jack grasped his hand. “Never again!” he smiled warmly, “and not without taking you with me.” He looked at the tomb that was his prison. “It felt like a lifetime in there,” he chuckled softly. “In a way, I guess it was several lifetimes.”
Ianto smiled and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “Ready to go home?”
Jack looked deep into his lover’s eyes and sighed, “Yeah...take me home.”
That night, Jack lay naked in Ianto's arms after polishing off a sumptuous meal of three steaks and a bottle of the finest merlot the agent could afford on his Torchwood salary.
Ianto ran his fingers through his boss’s hair, as he sobbed uncontrollably.
The Torchwood leader looked up through tears and focused on his lover. "Ianto?"
"Yes, Jack."
"Don't let me die again anytime soon, okay?"
Ianto looked down and smiled. He smoothed his lover's hair as he drifted off, crying himself to sleep.
The Welshman looked up at the ceiling and sighed deeply, "I'll try, Jack. I’ll try.”
FiN
Special Fantasy Guest Appearances by;
Blowfish alien...Colin Morgan (Merlin, Merlin)
Irish Immigrant…Jonas Armstrong (Robin, Robin Hood)
Elyssa Frost…Lucy Griffith (Maid Marian, Robin Hood)
Dr. Matthew Glendale…Sam Troughton (Much, Robin Hood)
German Soldier…Joseph Kennedy (Carter, Robin Hood)
Kate Reed…Michelle Ryan (Nimueh, Merlin)