who fic: "Sleeper, Awake" (Jack/Rose, PG13)
title: Sleeper, Awake
author: fannishliss
pairing: Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
rating: PG13
words: 4677
summary: After so many years alone, Jack finally runs into a friend.
for mahmfic, who listed Jack/Rose among possible pairings of interest, and also prompted with deep sleep, shaking, headstrong, thank you, blue sky. An April Swap present, finally finished Mid-May. Hope you enjoy!
=====
There have always been flophouses, skid rows, opium dens, and perhaps there always will be: the last refuge of the tortured soul who can no longer resist the slide into oblivion. Call it a sickness, call it a weakness, a lack of moral fiber, or call it the last sane choice of one whose sanity is too painful to endure any longer - the call of nepenthe was too insidious for a man like Jack Harkness to refuse any longer.
He lay in what appeared to be a deep sleep. For as long as his credit was good (and Jack’s credit, after living so long, was really, really good), his body would be cared for by assiduous cat nuns. That was the way it was done in Nonanova York. And really, he told himself, what was the point of worrying? He had no fear of bodily harm - a man who’d been killed by Daleks, buried alive, blown up, sealed in concrete - a flophouse was nothing to him.
And Nonanovaine was good, really, really good. It left him feeling no pain, which was the least one should expect of a highly refined narcotic. Beyond that, it gave him startling visions, whirling discs and clouds of rainbow light. Nothing nightmarish - just beautiful abstractions of birds and fairies and butterflies and maybe a few amorphous sea creatures - but not the kind that sting. Jack watched the undulations of wings and sighed in relief. Nothing to think about, nothing to fear - nothing to regret.
The cat nuns turned him every few hours and changed out the bags from the catheters.
He lay there for a long, long time, a head without a body, a body without a head, a dream without a dreamer, a dreamer with no real dream.
When the shooting started (Jack had always known that nothing good could last forever; sooner or later, there would unavoidably be shooting), the drug drip stopped. The cat nuns ran away. The life supports retracted, and Jack woke up from a bender that may have lasted decades - he hadn’t really made note of the year he’d drifted into the place, and he had no idea what year it was now, except to wonder if it was the end of the latest in a long line of Yorks.
The cat nuns had turned him. Electrostim had kept his muscles taut. His eyes had been opened and periodically exposed to bright light. His nutrition had been carefully monitored and calibrated. Jack sat up and stretched, and felt fit and strong. It was strange how much better he felt now, after years supposedly squandered in the cold embrace of vice, than he’d felt when he’d collapsed after one too many versions of what passed for the good fight.
Of course, he wasn’t dressed. The cat nuns were all gone, but he remembered just enough about the simple wake-up protocol. The locker underneath his bed was programmed to open to his biometrics. He hopped down from the table, and it didn’t take long to resume the trappings of the living, cleaning out the locker and loading his pockets and holsters. Fully kitted out, Jack bounced once or twice on his toes, and jogged easily out of the room where he’d lain insensible for an untold number of years.
Jack could hear the shooting more clearly now. Sporadic fire echoed down the stairwells as Jack made the long journey up from the sub-basements where he and the other sleepers had been housed.
His legs were strong and toned from the stim. Tuning out may have been one of the best decisions he’d made in his long life. Running toward a firefight would seem to be the opposite, but Jack couldn’t quite shake the habit of so many lifetimes.
He made his way farther up the stairwells, hugging the walls and wondering how far below ground level he’d been housed, how long it would be before he had any hope of exiting the building, and whether he’d have to actively return fire or if he could get away with avoiding it. If only he’d been fast enough to follow the nuns when they had bolted. The disoriented sleepers reluctantly shaking into wakefulness on the hundreds of mattresses around him had been no help at all, and he figured they would make it or they wouldn’t. It wasn’t really his fight.
But what was his fight? Why was there a fight at all? Why a firefight in a building full of sleepers?
Jack vaguely remembered how he’d strongly been encouraged to secure any assets elsewhere before “going to bed,” as the cat nuns had put it. He’d packed away one change of clothes, a wallet containing all his ID and account information, his vortex manipulator, and whatever weapons he’d been sporting at the time. Jack Harkness was a man who traveled light. Had the other sleepers foolishly packed their valuables into these lockers?
Maybe they had. Or maybe the sleepers themselves were the valuables.
Jack saw it in a flash: someone had sold out the sleepers, probably for ransom, since the sleepers had to be wealthy to afford the cat nuns’ prices. Supposedly the sleeper location was a closely guarded secret, a vow of silence taken by the nuns to protect the identities and safety of their blissed out comatose charges. The nuns had nothing to lose and everything to gain for their discretion; the sleepers were an nearly limitless cashflow, and their only expenses were the cost of storage space for hundreds of living bodies; upkeep on the machinery that delivered nutrition, stim and drugs; and staff to monitor and turn the bodies and to dispose of those who eventually died of old age or whatever internal diseases broke them down. Jack remembering signing a “do not resuscitate” order, standard for sleepers who had no guarantee they’d survive the length of sleep time they’d paid for.
Jack had always wondered when he’d awaken -getting the nuns to agree to bring him out only when his designated next of kin came for him had been the trickiest part of the arrangement. Clearly, the Doctor had never come, but then, Jack had not really expected him to.
Jack could hear the firefight just in the floor above him now. He’d been stealthily making his way up, carefully not getting winded, and the fight had slowly but surely been making its way down. It would not be long now before Jack and the fight, two star-crossed mates, would be reunited.
No one but Jack had emerged from the sub-basements. Jack figured that the sleepers were more likely to cringe on their beds than attempt to defend themselves. It wasn’t like a bunch of heavily drugged sleepers were all that motivated to fight for their lives.
The levels that were fighting back might not be part of the cat nuns’ operation at all. Jack had no way to know, except that he did remember the tasteful, gleaming entry level where he’d signed in. Though, of course, that had probably been an entirely different building, now that he thought about it. He had to assume that the midtown address where he’d signed in was far too valuable to wasted on the storage of technically living corpses.
Jack had nearly reached the level of active fighting now. He wanted nothing more than to just get out of the building, so he began to charge more quickly up the stairwell. Someone spotted him and fired, but he dodged and fired back, stunning the shooter, who collapsed and slid down a few stairs. Jack vaulted the body and kept running upwards, clinging to the walls and returning fire whenever necessary.
Maybe he should just get out of the stairwell and hide on one of the floors? At least then he might have a better idea what level he had reached. The coded entries on the doors leading out of the stairwell meant nothing to him.
Carefully Jack slipped through an exit and darted down a hallway. It was dim and dusty. Maybe part of the building was abandoned. That was good; it increased his chances of escaping.
He found a closet and slipped inside. He crouched there for a while, in the darkness, alert and listening. The fighting seemed to die down. He could wait a while longer.
He sat in the darkness and waited. There was a lull in the fighting, as far as he could tell. He left his closet and re-entered the stairwell, creeping stealthily upwards again. If the attackers were after the sleepers, they wouldn’t bring them back up the stairwell, they’d use the elevators. Jack wondered if there was any way he could help defend the helpless sleepers, but he couldn’t imagine it. He was alone and had no idea of the size of the invading force, the layout or defensibility of the place, or even his general location. Plus, he had only a limited amount of charges for his stunner. Retreat in this case was the better part of valor, so Jack stealthily retreated, telling himself that if he saw an opportunity to do some good in the situation, he would take it.
He soon got his wish. Though the fighting in the seemingly endless stairwell had died down considerably, he heard shooting a little way above him. If the different types of ammo were a reliable indication, there were three attackers firing bullets and one defender returning with stun charges. Jack figured he was on the side of whoever wasn’t shooting to kill. As quietly as he could, he ascended to the defensive position.
Someone had dragged a steel desk partially out into the stairwell and was firing from behind it. As Jack approached, he heard a body fall, and fewer slugs were raining down from above. Jack carefully edged to the center of the stairwell and fired two quick charges, catching both remaining attackers. Relative silence fell, most of the attackers having moved far down toward the lower levels from whence Jack had emerged.
He called out to the defender behind the desk in Basic: “You no hurt me! Me friend!” The Tarzan movies of the twentieth century had always made him laugh because of their unintentional invocation of future Galactic Basic.
“You show me friend,” came the voice from behind the desk, a strangely familiar voice, a woman’s voice, with a human, Earth inflection.
“My name is Jack Harkness,” he called in English this time. “Don’t shoot.”
He cautiously approached the defender’s position. The top of a woman’s head, two brown eyes peered over the edge of the desk.
It was Rose Tyler.
“Rose?” he said. Nothing really surprised him anymore, but he had to admit, it was a bit of a surprise.
“Jack!” she gasped. “I found you!”
Jack felt a rush of warmth as he realized that someone had finally cared enough about him to come looking.
“Hugs and kisses later,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”
“We should try to hold this position until the police arrive,” Rose said. “I want to make sure the attackers are all caught.”
“Let the police worry about that,” Jack advised.
Rose frowned. “I’m gonna stay right here and do my part.”
“Are you a vigilante now?” he asked.
“Not according to my badge,” Rose said.
“What badge?” Jack asked. Torchwood? Time Agency?
“ACERAD,” Rose said. “In case that means something to you.”
“It doesn’t,” Jack admitted.
Rose fired twice into the stairwell and brought down two more attackers who had tried creeping up from below.
“A Charitable Earth Reconnaissance and Defense,” she said. “Dorothy McShane? She’s one of the club.”
Jack had plenty of questions for Rose that would need to wait. Right now, monitoring the stairwell was top priority.
Fortunately, they’d didn’t meet up with any action they couldn’t handle before the police arrived. Jack and Rose were hustled out of the building, and the police recognized Rose as the agent who’d reported the attack. Rose submitted a neural record of the evening’s events, which more than satisfied the police, and Rose led Jack out into the night of Nonanova York, where they caught a cab back to the hotel where she was staying.
Rose ordered some food and a bottle of wine from room service.
“ACERAD pays well, I guess?” Jack said, taking in the grandeur of the spacious penthouse suite.
“A Charitable Earth was entirely designed to fund and protect the survival of the human race in perpetuity,” Rose said. “Its agents live well for a reason.”
“And ACERAD cares about kidnappings?” Jack asked.
“We balance two concerns: human well-being and the security of our investments. This moment for Nonanova York was precarious financially. The outcome of this attack was a crosspoint.”
Jack studied Rose’s face. She was so calm, so implacable. “And you’re some kind of expert on these crosspoints now?”
“Yeah,” Rose said with a sigh, and threw back her drink. She closed her eyes for a moment as she swallowed, then released a deep breath and opened them again.
“It’s good to see you, Jack,” she said. “Sight for sore eyes. I’m kind of surprised it took us this long for me to find you.”
“Big universe,” Jack said.
“Not so big, when you see the big picture,” Rose said. She looked a little tired, but, mostly, she just looked good.
“You haven’t aged a day,” Jack said. “How long has it been, Rose?”
Rose looked away. “A long time. You know how it is. Crossing, crisscrossing, it’s hard to keep track.”
“But I thought you’d gone…” Jack said, not knowing exactly what to say.
Rose nodded. “Time ran faster there, you know,” she said. “It wore him out, in the end. Him, but not me. Some joke, right?”
“Oh, Rose,” Jack said, and he marveled at himself, how the ache of loss was always new.
“Time,” Rose said, not without bitterness. “Time was on my side in the end. He had a coral, a tiny bit of coral, and that’s how I got back.”
“A coral?” Jack said, confused.
“Remind me to tell you, sometime, when you have a little time on your hands,” she rolled her eyes, “about how the Time Lords enslaved the other sentient Gallifreyan species, namely, the ancient corals. Communal species, brains the size of oceans, vortex sensitive… the Time Lords didn’t like the competition.”
“So, this bit of coral - it was from Gallifrey?”
“Part of his Tardis - a parting gift, or something.”
“And, it was alive?”
“Gallifreyan corals are fractal, like. This was was part of his own Tardis… if we could awaken Her, She would rebuild herself.”
“And did you? did she?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Rose said.
“But how did you find the tech? And how did you cross the void?”
Rose gave Jack a long look. It was the same kind of look the Doctor had used to give him - the weary, knowing look of omnipotence that knows too much to act, omniscience too involved to make up its mind.
“We didn’t. We never found the tech. He didn’t have enough time: human lifespan. After he was gone, I carried Her, until, at last, She became a part of me.”
“What?” Jack said, in awe.
Rose stared at Jack, and in her eyes there was something so old and so knowing yet so mysterious, that even Jack had to look away.
“She’s part of me,” Rose said, looking down. “Can’t we just leave it there for now?”
“Okay,” Jack said dubiously.
Rose rattled the ice of her drink. Jack sucked through his teeth.
“Wow,” Rose said. “I really never thought of him as social lubricant.”
Jack gave her a disbelieving look, and then began to howl with laughter. Rose caught it, and before they knew it, they were both laughing helplessly. In Rose’s mind, it was her husband, lowering at her like a kid from behind a fierce pout. In Jack’s, it was the supercilious gaze of the short-haired, blue-eyed Doctor he had traveled with for one fateful year out of his thousands - one year he’d been truly happy. Rose had known him then. They had been friends.
A friend was something Jack longed for. He’d lost so many over the years that it had become terribly difficult for him to engage. Now, here, was Rose, who had known him before; not before everything but before a lot of it. The Doctor had known him then, too, but Jack couldn’t bear the thought of seeking the Doctor out only to see that look in his eyes, the look of nauseated horror at the anomaly Jack had become. Would he turn such a look on Rose, too? Jack doubted it.
After they finally caught their breath, they just looked at each other, and Jack decided to go for it.
“So, you’re immortal now too?”
“Yeah,” Rose sighed.
“How do you stand it?” he asked in a whisper.
Rose laid her hand on Jack’s. “I’m not alone. I have Her.”
“I don’t ... have … anyone,” Jack admitted, in broken tones.
“Well, now, we could have each other,” Rose said, hesitant, but honest. “If you want.”
Jack stared at Rose, and stared, until she blushed and smiled. “What?”
“Oh, darling,” he said, “I want. But, I thought you’d probably want to look for him.”
Rose shook her head. “I’ve never stopped looking for him. But there’s no point looking if he doesn’t want to be found. When the Daleks were putting out the stars, I could always find him - maybe not the proper him I needed right then, but always, I could find him. Now - not a trace.”
“He’s gone dark,” Jack agreed. “Rumors of his death abound. But I don’t buy it.”
“Nor I,” Rose said sadly. “Still, if he wants to hide, let him hide. Eventually he’ll either find us, or we’ll find him.”
“It is a big universe,” Jack said.
“How many times have you found him already,” Rose said drily.
Jack wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sure. It gets kind of complicated.”
“We’ll find him,” Rose said. “Til then, I think it would be lovely if we could stay together.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Me too.”
Jack and Rose wandered out to the balcony. The skyline of Nonanova York was a wonder in itself. Flying cars, soaring spires, it was the very image of the glamorous future humanity had always dreamed of.
“I want to see your Tardis,” Jack said. “I miss the old girl. It’s been a long time.”
Rose laughed, a strange little laugh. “I told you, She’s a part of me.”
“I don’t understand,” Jack laughed.
“Let me finish my mission here, and I’ll carry you with me back to Old Earth - if you want.”
“Twenty-first century London?” Jack said, grimacing as he shook with a horrid shiver of lives lost then.
“Actually, Ace prefers Nineteenth-Century Paris,” Rose laughed.
“Oh!” Jack said. “That does sound nice.”
“It’s not bad,” Rose said.
“How much work do you have to finish up?”
“I just have to get tomorrow’s news, the stock market trends, and then I’m done here, after the police are satisfied,” Rose said.
“Nothing more to do tonight?” Jack said, flirting by sheer force of habit. He was taken a little by surprise when Rose moved into his space.
“Nothing more for work,” Rose said, hopefully.
Jack looked into the familiar face, the deep brown eyes and their flashes of gold. He could smell the old familiar scent of Rose, and wondered how easily she could detect the scent of his interest.
“I can,” Rose said, “easily. And I’m way more psychic now than I used to be.”
“Oh!” Jack said. It was his night to be taken aback.
“Do you mind, Jack, if I make a small assay?” Rose asked.
“No,” Jack said, though he wasn’t sure what she meant.
“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt,” Rose smiled. She laid her hands on his shoulder and closed her eyes. Jack felt something radiating out from her, and it felt familiar. It felt maybe a little like the Doctor - that weird thing he did when he was sensing aspects of a moment that humans were too much ape to sense - or maybe a little like the Tardis, that humming omniscience that had sometimes sent a soothing stroke down Jack’s spine when he most needed it.
A faint golden glow emanated from Rose, and was gone before Jack was really sure what he was seeing. Rose opened her eyes, and the glow in them faded to brown as he gazed.
“All is well,” Rose said. “You are loved. Lie with me tonight.”
Jack could hear the overtones of another entity speaking along with Rose.
“Who is this?” Jack said. “Who’s speaking?”
“You once knew me as Bad Wolf,” Rose said. “I’m still Rose, Rose Tyler from the Powell Estates, the same Rose you knew a long time ago, just - a little more now.”
The overtones faded back, but the mention of Bad Wolf was alarming. Even though he didn’t feel directly threatened, Jack could still sense the something more.
“Please,” Jack entreated. “I want to understand.”
“A Tardis lives in the Vortex - just as you and this Rose live there. The Tardis you knew still carries her Thief, but this Tardis is her daughter, a Tardis with a human mother of blood and bone.”
“Your Tardis is your daughter?” Jack gasped.
“I create myself,” Rose intoned, and the glow shone forth from her eyes.
“That’s impossible,” Jack said.
“No,” Rose smiled, “just very, very transtemporal. Do you really want me to draw you the diagram?”
“I guess not,” Jack said.
“Because you smell really good, and this future looks nice,” Rose said.
“Which?” Jack said.
“The one where I take you to bed,” Rose said, drawing Jack’s lips to hers.
He kissed her and pulled away. “I feel like I’m trespassing.”
“If you’re trespassing, he should at least give me a sign,” Rose joked.
“Yeah,” Jack said, but Rose felt good in his arms, soft, warm, human, and welcoming.
“I know you loved him, Jack,” Rose whispered. “I love him too. But I love you, as well. Can’t we just love each other, here and now?”
Jack looked into the place where the ache had been, where he hoped the years he’d spent dreaming would soothe the pain, and oddly enough, it had. The wounds were still there, but scarred over and numb.
But Jack was awake now, alive, and Rose was in his arms, and she wanted him. If this was a mistake, he’d made many worse.
He lowered his lips to hers, and she kissed him, knowing him, loving him. She tasted purely human, but a ripple of something flowed into him where their bodies touched.
“I want you,” Jack admitted.
“I want you, too,” Rose said, with a smile. “I always did.”
“As if you could see past him to me,” Jack scoffed.
“I could say the same of you,” Rose pointed out. “But that’s not how it was. There was always something there - friendship, love - something between us, throwing sparks. I remember.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, a little embarrassed. “You belonged to him, though. I never had a chance.”
“I belong to myself,” Rose said. “And now’s your chance,” she added with a saucy grin.
They lay down together on the comfortable bed, smiling at each other.
“I’m not sleepy,” Jack said. “I’ve just woken up from a very long sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy, either,” Rose said. “I don’t know what it is about immortality. When you’re mortal, you sleep away a third of your life, but when you’re immortal, you’re lucky if you can catch a wink.”
“Too true,” Jack agreed. “He never could sleep either.”
“Yeah,” Rose said, “but my husband slept like a log.”
Jack scowled. “It seems so unfair, that he finally gave himself to someone, and that he had so little time to enjoy it.”
“We made the most of it,” Rose assured him.
“Would it be weird,” Jack asked, “if you told me what he was like?”
“It’s not so weird,” Rose said. “You knew him. You know what he is like. My husband was him, really the same person. He was just a little more human. He slept, he got hungry, he got old. He was still brilliant, hyperactive, headstrong, a risk-taker. He never stopped.”
“I’m glad,” Jack said. “I’m just sorry it was over so fast.”
“I still hope he’ll come looking for me. Us.”
Jack wondered whether to tell Rose the rumors that the Doctor had taken a wife. He figured she already knew them, if she was in touch with other members of “the club.”
“I met her once,” Rose said. “A lovely person, but she was so sad underneath. I think a lot has happened to him since we knew him.”
“A lot has happened to all of us,” Jack said.
“Jack,” Rose said. “I’m sorry you’ve been so alone.” Rose kissed him, and pulled him into an embrace.
Jack tried to burn it into his memory: the smell of Rose, her softness, the careful way she touched him. He felt her presence at the door of his mind, and let her in. She came in gently, like a soft glow of afternoon light into a cozy room. It had been so long since someone had loved him so sweetly. She could see what he wanted almost before he did. She enveloped him, encouraged him, and almost before he knew it, she had him at a fever pitch, bringing him over the edge and holding him as he fell.
Jack felt apologies rushing to his lips, but Rose shushed him. “Nothing to prove, Jack, not to me. We have all the time in the world.”
They lay awake for a long time, catching up. In the morning, Jack woke to find Rose finishing up with the morning news feed, satisfied with what she found. She then contacted the police to make sure her neural record from the night before had been accepted; it had.
“Are you ready, then?” Rose asked, after they’d finished up.
“Yes,” Jack said. “Lead on!”
Rose walked over to Jack and put her arms around him. “You may find this a little disorienting,” she warned.
“What?” he said, and the world dissolved around them. With a shock, Jack realized that it wasn’t that Rose had a psychic link with her Tardis - she had become her own Tardis. They were one and the same. As Rose held Jack, an opaque golden bubble of pure light grew around them. Jack didn’t feel the burn of the vortex like he did with the manipulator. He was perfectly comfortable, and he had no sense of their hurtling passage through time. It was no more exciting than riding an exceptionally smooth elevator - except for the fact that the miraculous journey was occurring solely under the power of a woman who had once been no more than a young Londoner who demanded something more from her life.
“You’re not frightened,” the Tardis entity said from within Rose’s body.
“No - thank you,” Jack answered. A querulous smile appeared on Rose's glowing, hybrid countenance, and he realized he was one of the few people in all of creation who could ever begin to understand who and what Rose had somehow become.
The golden sphere began to fade and Rose stepped away from Jack. They were standing in a homey Parisian apartment, tall windows letting in sunlight, filling the golden room with blue sky.
“Rose!” a honey blonde woman cried out, rising to hug Rose.
“Hiya Ace,” Rose said, kissing her friend on the cheek. “This is Jack Harkness. Jack, Dorothy McShane, aka Ace, CEO of A Charitable Earth.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Jack said, gently taking Ace’s hand.
Ace breathed in pointedly, beaming at Jack. “The pleasure is all mine, fifty-first-century boy!”
“I wanna be in this club, all you girls do is gossip!” Jack laughed.
“Pretty much, yeah!” Rose laughed along, and she was so familiar, so lovely and so beloved, that Jack couldn’t help believing his life had just taken a dramatic turn for the better.
author: fannishliss
pairing: Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
rating: PG13
words: 4677
summary: After so many years alone, Jack finally runs into a friend.
for mahmfic, who listed Jack/Rose among possible pairings of interest, and also prompted with deep sleep, shaking, headstrong, thank you, blue sky. An April Swap present, finally finished Mid-May. Hope you enjoy!
=====
There have always been flophouses, skid rows, opium dens, and perhaps there always will be: the last refuge of the tortured soul who can no longer resist the slide into oblivion. Call it a sickness, call it a weakness, a lack of moral fiber, or call it the last sane choice of one whose sanity is too painful to endure any longer - the call of nepenthe was too insidious for a man like Jack Harkness to refuse any longer.
He lay in what appeared to be a deep sleep. For as long as his credit was good (and Jack’s credit, after living so long, was really, really good), his body would be cared for by assiduous cat nuns. That was the way it was done in Nonanova York. And really, he told himself, what was the point of worrying? He had no fear of bodily harm - a man who’d been killed by Daleks, buried alive, blown up, sealed in concrete - a flophouse was nothing to him.
And Nonanovaine was good, really, really good. It left him feeling no pain, which was the least one should expect of a highly refined narcotic. Beyond that, it gave him startling visions, whirling discs and clouds of rainbow light. Nothing nightmarish - just beautiful abstractions of birds and fairies and butterflies and maybe a few amorphous sea creatures - but not the kind that sting. Jack watched the undulations of wings and sighed in relief. Nothing to think about, nothing to fear - nothing to regret.
The cat nuns turned him every few hours and changed out the bags from the catheters.
He lay there for a long, long time, a head without a body, a body without a head, a dream without a dreamer, a dreamer with no real dream.
When the shooting started (Jack had always known that nothing good could last forever; sooner or later, there would unavoidably be shooting), the drug drip stopped. The cat nuns ran away. The life supports retracted, and Jack woke up from a bender that may have lasted decades - he hadn’t really made note of the year he’d drifted into the place, and he had no idea what year it was now, except to wonder if it was the end of the latest in a long line of Yorks.
The cat nuns had turned him. Electrostim had kept his muscles taut. His eyes had been opened and periodically exposed to bright light. His nutrition had been carefully monitored and calibrated. Jack sat up and stretched, and felt fit and strong. It was strange how much better he felt now, after years supposedly squandered in the cold embrace of vice, than he’d felt when he’d collapsed after one too many versions of what passed for the good fight.
Of course, he wasn’t dressed. The cat nuns were all gone, but he remembered just enough about the simple wake-up protocol. The locker underneath his bed was programmed to open to his biometrics. He hopped down from the table, and it didn’t take long to resume the trappings of the living, cleaning out the locker and loading his pockets and holsters. Fully kitted out, Jack bounced once or twice on his toes, and jogged easily out of the room where he’d lain insensible for an untold number of years.
Jack could hear the shooting more clearly now. Sporadic fire echoed down the stairwells as Jack made the long journey up from the sub-basements where he and the other sleepers had been housed.
His legs were strong and toned from the stim. Tuning out may have been one of the best decisions he’d made in his long life. Running toward a firefight would seem to be the opposite, but Jack couldn’t quite shake the habit of so many lifetimes.
He made his way farther up the stairwells, hugging the walls and wondering how far below ground level he’d been housed, how long it would be before he had any hope of exiting the building, and whether he’d have to actively return fire or if he could get away with avoiding it. If only he’d been fast enough to follow the nuns when they had bolted. The disoriented sleepers reluctantly shaking into wakefulness on the hundreds of mattresses around him had been no help at all, and he figured they would make it or they wouldn’t. It wasn’t really his fight.
But what was his fight? Why was there a fight at all? Why a firefight in a building full of sleepers?
Jack vaguely remembered how he’d strongly been encouraged to secure any assets elsewhere before “going to bed,” as the cat nuns had put it. He’d packed away one change of clothes, a wallet containing all his ID and account information, his vortex manipulator, and whatever weapons he’d been sporting at the time. Jack Harkness was a man who traveled light. Had the other sleepers foolishly packed their valuables into these lockers?
Maybe they had. Or maybe the sleepers themselves were the valuables.
Jack saw it in a flash: someone had sold out the sleepers, probably for ransom, since the sleepers had to be wealthy to afford the cat nuns’ prices. Supposedly the sleeper location was a closely guarded secret, a vow of silence taken by the nuns to protect the identities and safety of their blissed out comatose charges. The nuns had nothing to lose and everything to gain for their discretion; the sleepers were an nearly limitless cashflow, and their only expenses were the cost of storage space for hundreds of living bodies; upkeep on the machinery that delivered nutrition, stim and drugs; and staff to monitor and turn the bodies and to dispose of those who eventually died of old age or whatever internal diseases broke them down. Jack remembering signing a “do not resuscitate” order, standard for sleepers who had no guarantee they’d survive the length of sleep time they’d paid for.
Jack had always wondered when he’d awaken -getting the nuns to agree to bring him out only when his designated next of kin came for him had been the trickiest part of the arrangement. Clearly, the Doctor had never come, but then, Jack had not really expected him to.
Jack could hear the firefight just in the floor above him now. He’d been stealthily making his way up, carefully not getting winded, and the fight had slowly but surely been making its way down. It would not be long now before Jack and the fight, two star-crossed mates, would be reunited.
No one but Jack had emerged from the sub-basements. Jack figured that the sleepers were more likely to cringe on their beds than attempt to defend themselves. It wasn’t like a bunch of heavily drugged sleepers were all that motivated to fight for their lives.
The levels that were fighting back might not be part of the cat nuns’ operation at all. Jack had no way to know, except that he did remember the tasteful, gleaming entry level where he’d signed in. Though, of course, that had probably been an entirely different building, now that he thought about it. He had to assume that the midtown address where he’d signed in was far too valuable to wasted on the storage of technically living corpses.
Jack had nearly reached the level of active fighting now. He wanted nothing more than to just get out of the building, so he began to charge more quickly up the stairwell. Someone spotted him and fired, but he dodged and fired back, stunning the shooter, who collapsed and slid down a few stairs. Jack vaulted the body and kept running upwards, clinging to the walls and returning fire whenever necessary.
Maybe he should just get out of the stairwell and hide on one of the floors? At least then he might have a better idea what level he had reached. The coded entries on the doors leading out of the stairwell meant nothing to him.
Carefully Jack slipped through an exit and darted down a hallway. It was dim and dusty. Maybe part of the building was abandoned. That was good; it increased his chances of escaping.
He found a closet and slipped inside. He crouched there for a while, in the darkness, alert and listening. The fighting seemed to die down. He could wait a while longer.
He sat in the darkness and waited. There was a lull in the fighting, as far as he could tell. He left his closet and re-entered the stairwell, creeping stealthily upwards again. If the attackers were after the sleepers, they wouldn’t bring them back up the stairwell, they’d use the elevators. Jack wondered if there was any way he could help defend the helpless sleepers, but he couldn’t imagine it. He was alone and had no idea of the size of the invading force, the layout or defensibility of the place, or even his general location. Plus, he had only a limited amount of charges for his stunner. Retreat in this case was the better part of valor, so Jack stealthily retreated, telling himself that if he saw an opportunity to do some good in the situation, he would take it.
He soon got his wish. Though the fighting in the seemingly endless stairwell had died down considerably, he heard shooting a little way above him. If the different types of ammo were a reliable indication, there were three attackers firing bullets and one defender returning with stun charges. Jack figured he was on the side of whoever wasn’t shooting to kill. As quietly as he could, he ascended to the defensive position.
Someone had dragged a steel desk partially out into the stairwell and was firing from behind it. As Jack approached, he heard a body fall, and fewer slugs were raining down from above. Jack carefully edged to the center of the stairwell and fired two quick charges, catching both remaining attackers. Relative silence fell, most of the attackers having moved far down toward the lower levels from whence Jack had emerged.
He called out to the defender behind the desk in Basic: “You no hurt me! Me friend!” The Tarzan movies of the twentieth century had always made him laugh because of their unintentional invocation of future Galactic Basic.
“You show me friend,” came the voice from behind the desk, a strangely familiar voice, a woman’s voice, with a human, Earth inflection.
“My name is Jack Harkness,” he called in English this time. “Don’t shoot.”
He cautiously approached the defender’s position. The top of a woman’s head, two brown eyes peered over the edge of the desk.
It was Rose Tyler.
“Rose?” he said. Nothing really surprised him anymore, but he had to admit, it was a bit of a surprise.
“Jack!” she gasped. “I found you!”
Jack felt a rush of warmth as he realized that someone had finally cared enough about him to come looking.
“Hugs and kisses later,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”
“We should try to hold this position until the police arrive,” Rose said. “I want to make sure the attackers are all caught.”
“Let the police worry about that,” Jack advised.
Rose frowned. “I’m gonna stay right here and do my part.”
“Are you a vigilante now?” he asked.
“Not according to my badge,” Rose said.
“What badge?” Jack asked. Torchwood? Time Agency?
“ACERAD,” Rose said. “In case that means something to you.”
“It doesn’t,” Jack admitted.
Rose fired twice into the stairwell and brought down two more attackers who had tried creeping up from below.
“A Charitable Earth Reconnaissance and Defense,” she said. “Dorothy McShane? She’s one of the club.”
Jack had plenty of questions for Rose that would need to wait. Right now, monitoring the stairwell was top priority.
Fortunately, they’d didn’t meet up with any action they couldn’t handle before the police arrived. Jack and Rose were hustled out of the building, and the police recognized Rose as the agent who’d reported the attack. Rose submitted a neural record of the evening’s events, which more than satisfied the police, and Rose led Jack out into the night of Nonanova York, where they caught a cab back to the hotel where she was staying.
Rose ordered some food and a bottle of wine from room service.
“ACERAD pays well, I guess?” Jack said, taking in the grandeur of the spacious penthouse suite.
“A Charitable Earth was entirely designed to fund and protect the survival of the human race in perpetuity,” Rose said. “Its agents live well for a reason.”
“And ACERAD cares about kidnappings?” Jack asked.
“We balance two concerns: human well-being and the security of our investments. This moment for Nonanova York was precarious financially. The outcome of this attack was a crosspoint.”
Jack studied Rose’s face. She was so calm, so implacable. “And you’re some kind of expert on these crosspoints now?”
“Yeah,” Rose said with a sigh, and threw back her drink. She closed her eyes for a moment as she swallowed, then released a deep breath and opened them again.
“It’s good to see you, Jack,” she said. “Sight for sore eyes. I’m kind of surprised it took us this long for me to find you.”
“Big universe,” Jack said.
“Not so big, when you see the big picture,” Rose said. She looked a little tired, but, mostly, she just looked good.
“You haven’t aged a day,” Jack said. “How long has it been, Rose?”
Rose looked away. “A long time. You know how it is. Crossing, crisscrossing, it’s hard to keep track.”
“But I thought you’d gone…” Jack said, not knowing exactly what to say.
Rose nodded. “Time ran faster there, you know,” she said. “It wore him out, in the end. Him, but not me. Some joke, right?”
“Oh, Rose,” Jack said, and he marveled at himself, how the ache of loss was always new.
“Time,” Rose said, not without bitterness. “Time was on my side in the end. He had a coral, a tiny bit of coral, and that’s how I got back.”
“A coral?” Jack said, confused.
“Remind me to tell you, sometime, when you have a little time on your hands,” she rolled her eyes, “about how the Time Lords enslaved the other sentient Gallifreyan species, namely, the ancient corals. Communal species, brains the size of oceans, vortex sensitive… the Time Lords didn’t like the competition.”
“So, this bit of coral - it was from Gallifrey?”
“Part of his Tardis - a parting gift, or something.”
“And, it was alive?”
“Gallifreyan corals are fractal, like. This was was part of his own Tardis… if we could awaken Her, She would rebuild herself.”
“And did you? did she?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Rose said.
“But how did you find the tech? And how did you cross the void?”
Rose gave Jack a long look. It was the same kind of look the Doctor had used to give him - the weary, knowing look of omnipotence that knows too much to act, omniscience too involved to make up its mind.
“We didn’t. We never found the tech. He didn’t have enough time: human lifespan. After he was gone, I carried Her, until, at last, She became a part of me.”
“What?” Jack said, in awe.
Rose stared at Jack, and in her eyes there was something so old and so knowing yet so mysterious, that even Jack had to look away.
“She’s part of me,” Rose said, looking down. “Can’t we just leave it there for now?”
“Okay,” Jack said dubiously.
Rose rattled the ice of her drink. Jack sucked through his teeth.
“Wow,” Rose said. “I really never thought of him as social lubricant.”
Jack gave her a disbelieving look, and then began to howl with laughter. Rose caught it, and before they knew it, they were both laughing helplessly. In Rose’s mind, it was her husband, lowering at her like a kid from behind a fierce pout. In Jack’s, it was the supercilious gaze of the short-haired, blue-eyed Doctor he had traveled with for one fateful year out of his thousands - one year he’d been truly happy. Rose had known him then. They had been friends.
A friend was something Jack longed for. He’d lost so many over the years that it had become terribly difficult for him to engage. Now, here, was Rose, who had known him before; not before everything but before a lot of it. The Doctor had known him then, too, but Jack couldn’t bear the thought of seeking the Doctor out only to see that look in his eyes, the look of nauseated horror at the anomaly Jack had become. Would he turn such a look on Rose, too? Jack doubted it.
After they finally caught their breath, they just looked at each other, and Jack decided to go for it.
“So, you’re immortal now too?”
“Yeah,” Rose sighed.
“How do you stand it?” he asked in a whisper.
Rose laid her hand on Jack’s. “I’m not alone. I have Her.”
“I don’t ... have … anyone,” Jack admitted, in broken tones.
“Well, now, we could have each other,” Rose said, hesitant, but honest. “If you want.”
Jack stared at Rose, and stared, until she blushed and smiled. “What?”
“Oh, darling,” he said, “I want. But, I thought you’d probably want to look for him.”
Rose shook her head. “I’ve never stopped looking for him. But there’s no point looking if he doesn’t want to be found. When the Daleks were putting out the stars, I could always find him - maybe not the proper him I needed right then, but always, I could find him. Now - not a trace.”
“He’s gone dark,” Jack agreed. “Rumors of his death abound. But I don’t buy it.”
“Nor I,” Rose said sadly. “Still, if he wants to hide, let him hide. Eventually he’ll either find us, or we’ll find him.”
“It is a big universe,” Jack said.
“How many times have you found him already,” Rose said drily.
Jack wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sure. It gets kind of complicated.”
“We’ll find him,” Rose said. “Til then, I think it would be lovely if we could stay together.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Me too.”
Jack and Rose wandered out to the balcony. The skyline of Nonanova York was a wonder in itself. Flying cars, soaring spires, it was the very image of the glamorous future humanity had always dreamed of.
“I want to see your Tardis,” Jack said. “I miss the old girl. It’s been a long time.”
Rose laughed, a strange little laugh. “I told you, She’s a part of me.”
“I don’t understand,” Jack laughed.
“Let me finish my mission here, and I’ll carry you with me back to Old Earth - if you want.”
“Twenty-first century London?” Jack said, grimacing as he shook with a horrid shiver of lives lost then.
“Actually, Ace prefers Nineteenth-Century Paris,” Rose laughed.
“Oh!” Jack said. “That does sound nice.”
“It’s not bad,” Rose said.
“How much work do you have to finish up?”
“I just have to get tomorrow’s news, the stock market trends, and then I’m done here, after the police are satisfied,” Rose said.
“Nothing more to do tonight?” Jack said, flirting by sheer force of habit. He was taken a little by surprise when Rose moved into his space.
“Nothing more for work,” Rose said, hopefully.
Jack looked into the familiar face, the deep brown eyes and their flashes of gold. He could smell the old familiar scent of Rose, and wondered how easily she could detect the scent of his interest.
“I can,” Rose said, “easily. And I’m way more psychic now than I used to be.”
“Oh!” Jack said. It was his night to be taken aback.
“Do you mind, Jack, if I make a small assay?” Rose asked.
“No,” Jack said, though he wasn’t sure what she meant.
“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt,” Rose smiled. She laid her hands on his shoulder and closed her eyes. Jack felt something radiating out from her, and it felt familiar. It felt maybe a little like the Doctor - that weird thing he did when he was sensing aspects of a moment that humans were too much ape to sense - or maybe a little like the Tardis, that humming omniscience that had sometimes sent a soothing stroke down Jack’s spine when he most needed it.
A faint golden glow emanated from Rose, and was gone before Jack was really sure what he was seeing. Rose opened her eyes, and the glow in them faded to brown as he gazed.
“All is well,” Rose said. “You are loved. Lie with me tonight.”
Jack could hear the overtones of another entity speaking along with Rose.
“Who is this?” Jack said. “Who’s speaking?”
“You once knew me as Bad Wolf,” Rose said. “I’m still Rose, Rose Tyler from the Powell Estates, the same Rose you knew a long time ago, just - a little more now.”
The overtones faded back, but the mention of Bad Wolf was alarming. Even though he didn’t feel directly threatened, Jack could still sense the something more.
“Please,” Jack entreated. “I want to understand.”
“A Tardis lives in the Vortex - just as you and this Rose live there. The Tardis you knew still carries her Thief, but this Tardis is her daughter, a Tardis with a human mother of blood and bone.”
“Your Tardis is your daughter?” Jack gasped.
“I create myself,” Rose intoned, and the glow shone forth from her eyes.
“That’s impossible,” Jack said.
“No,” Rose smiled, “just very, very transtemporal. Do you really want me to draw you the diagram?”
“I guess not,” Jack said.
“Because you smell really good, and this future looks nice,” Rose said.
“Which?” Jack said.
“The one where I take you to bed,” Rose said, drawing Jack’s lips to hers.
He kissed her and pulled away. “I feel like I’m trespassing.”
“If you’re trespassing, he should at least give me a sign,” Rose joked.
“Yeah,” Jack said, but Rose felt good in his arms, soft, warm, human, and welcoming.
“I know you loved him, Jack,” Rose whispered. “I love him too. But I love you, as well. Can’t we just love each other, here and now?”
Jack looked into the place where the ache had been, where he hoped the years he’d spent dreaming would soothe the pain, and oddly enough, it had. The wounds were still there, but scarred over and numb.
But Jack was awake now, alive, and Rose was in his arms, and she wanted him. If this was a mistake, he’d made many worse.
He lowered his lips to hers, and she kissed him, knowing him, loving him. She tasted purely human, but a ripple of something flowed into him where their bodies touched.
“I want you,” Jack admitted.
“I want you, too,” Rose said, with a smile. “I always did.”
“As if you could see past him to me,” Jack scoffed.
“I could say the same of you,” Rose pointed out. “But that’s not how it was. There was always something there - friendship, love - something between us, throwing sparks. I remember.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, a little embarrassed. “You belonged to him, though. I never had a chance.”
“I belong to myself,” Rose said. “And now’s your chance,” she added with a saucy grin.
They lay down together on the comfortable bed, smiling at each other.
“I’m not sleepy,” Jack said. “I’ve just woken up from a very long sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy, either,” Rose said. “I don’t know what it is about immortality. When you’re mortal, you sleep away a third of your life, but when you’re immortal, you’re lucky if you can catch a wink.”
“Too true,” Jack agreed. “He never could sleep either.”
“Yeah,” Rose said, “but my husband slept like a log.”
Jack scowled. “It seems so unfair, that he finally gave himself to someone, and that he had so little time to enjoy it.”
“We made the most of it,” Rose assured him.
“Would it be weird,” Jack asked, “if you told me what he was like?”
“It’s not so weird,” Rose said. “You knew him. You know what he is like. My husband was him, really the same person. He was just a little more human. He slept, he got hungry, he got old. He was still brilliant, hyperactive, headstrong, a risk-taker. He never stopped.”
“I’m glad,” Jack said. “I’m just sorry it was over so fast.”
“I still hope he’ll come looking for me. Us.”
Jack wondered whether to tell Rose the rumors that the Doctor had taken a wife. He figured she already knew them, if she was in touch with other members of “the club.”
“I met her once,” Rose said. “A lovely person, but she was so sad underneath. I think a lot has happened to him since we knew him.”
“A lot has happened to all of us,” Jack said.
“Jack,” Rose said. “I’m sorry you’ve been so alone.” Rose kissed him, and pulled him into an embrace.
Jack tried to burn it into his memory: the smell of Rose, her softness, the careful way she touched him. He felt her presence at the door of his mind, and let her in. She came in gently, like a soft glow of afternoon light into a cozy room. It had been so long since someone had loved him so sweetly. She could see what he wanted almost before he did. She enveloped him, encouraged him, and almost before he knew it, she had him at a fever pitch, bringing him over the edge and holding him as he fell.
Jack felt apologies rushing to his lips, but Rose shushed him. “Nothing to prove, Jack, not to me. We have all the time in the world.”
They lay awake for a long time, catching up. In the morning, Jack woke to find Rose finishing up with the morning news feed, satisfied with what she found. She then contacted the police to make sure her neural record from the night before had been accepted; it had.
“Are you ready, then?” Rose asked, after they’d finished up.
“Yes,” Jack said. “Lead on!”
Rose walked over to Jack and put her arms around him. “You may find this a little disorienting,” she warned.
“What?” he said, and the world dissolved around them. With a shock, Jack realized that it wasn’t that Rose had a psychic link with her Tardis - she had become her own Tardis. They were one and the same. As Rose held Jack, an opaque golden bubble of pure light grew around them. Jack didn’t feel the burn of the vortex like he did with the manipulator. He was perfectly comfortable, and he had no sense of their hurtling passage through time. It was no more exciting than riding an exceptionally smooth elevator - except for the fact that the miraculous journey was occurring solely under the power of a woman who had once been no more than a young Londoner who demanded something more from her life.
“You’re not frightened,” the Tardis entity said from within Rose’s body.
“No - thank you,” Jack answered. A querulous smile appeared on Rose's glowing, hybrid countenance, and he realized he was one of the few people in all of creation who could ever begin to understand who and what Rose had somehow become.
The golden sphere began to fade and Rose stepped away from Jack. They were standing in a homey Parisian apartment, tall windows letting in sunlight, filling the golden room with blue sky.
“Rose!” a honey blonde woman cried out, rising to hug Rose.
“Hiya Ace,” Rose said, kissing her friend on the cheek. “This is Jack Harkness. Jack, Dorothy McShane, aka Ace, CEO of A Charitable Earth.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Jack said, gently taking Ace’s hand.
Ace breathed in pointedly, beaming at Jack. “The pleasure is all mine, fifty-first-century boy!”
“I wanna be in this club, all you girls do is gossip!” Jack laughed.
“Pretty much, yeah!” Rose laughed along, and she was so familiar, so lovely and so beloved, that Jack couldn’t help believing his life had just taken a dramatic turn for the better.