DOCTOR WHO/TORCHWOOD: The Distance Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (Chapter Six)
Title: The Distance Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
Chapter: Walk Away (6/6)
Characters/Pairing: Rose/Jack, Gwen and Owen, mention of the Doctor
Word Count: 2505
Rating: PG
Summary: Sometimes Jack can avoid his past, and sometimes parts of it land on his doorstep in exactly the wrong combination.
Notes: Written for bytheseaside for the available_very winter ficathon. Set (in the Doctor Who timeline) between "The Doctor Dances" and "Boomtown", and in the Torchwood timeline, in season one, between "Ghost Machine" and "Cyberwoman".
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood, and I'm not making anything off this. Just for fun, guys.
<< Previous Chapter
I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don't know your history,
if you don't know your family, who are you? -Mary Pipher
"This building, on the left!" Owen called from the back seat, a little louder than Jack thought was strictly necessary. He glanced to the left, spotted a blonde girl racing down the fire escape of what looked like an abandoned building, and hit the brake hard on instinct before conscious thought even had a chance to kick in. They all lurched forward, Owen falling against the seat in front of him, Jack nearly thumping against the steering wheel. Gwen, who had taken the opportunity to put on her seatbelt earlier while muttering about the likelihood that they would all crash and die, was fine.
Jack could have taken a moment to recover, but instead he shoved open the car door without even turning the car off (or putting it in park, he realised a moment later, though he noticed Gwen reaching over to do that out of the corner of his eye) and raced for the fire escape, just in time to catch Rose at the bottom. Well, maybe catch wasn't the right word. It was more like she jumped the last several feet to the ground and thumped into him, almost knocking them both over.
Jack caught himself before falling down, wrapped his arms around Rose to steady her too, and let out a relieved laugh, pulling her into a hug. "Rose! You're alive!" He winced as soon as he said it. It was generally best to avoid pointing out that her survival was ever in doubt in the first place.
"Of course I'm alive," she said, pulling away from him without hugging back - which was enough to give him pause. "Not sure you will be in a minute..."
Jack stared at her, as she started for the open door of the building she'd just run out of. Now that he looked at it, the door was open. No, broken, more than open, like something had... battered it down... "What?"
"There's another one of you here, no time to explain, will you just come on?"
Jack swore a little, because of course it wouldn't be so simple as just getting her to safety. Not with Rose bloody Tyler, always determined to save the universe or just one little person, whatever she could manage. And of course she'd had to run into him, past him, future him, whichever, he was almost certain he'd rather she didn't know him at that point in his life. He rushed into the darkened building after her, just as Gwen and Owen tumbled out of the car and raced after him like a pair of very purposeful puppies, guns in hand.
Rose started a little, hearing their footsteps, and blinked at them for a second, though she was still moving into the house. "Who-"
"Rose," Jack sighed, "meet Gwen and Owen. Someone will explain later." Hopefully someone not him. Though he'd settle for a version of him who happened to know what the hell was going on.
Rose eyed the two of them dubiously, while Gwen and Owen stared at her with "who the hell are you?" expressions Jack was almost certain perfectly matched the one he'd given them not that long ago. Rose finally swung back toward Jack with an expression that was not in the least encouraging itself.
"You run off and leave me on my own while there's some mad snake-dog... thing on the loose, and then while I'm busy running for my life, you just go... swanning about picking up strays?"
"There's a difference between swanning about and trying to..." He trailed off as Rose turned away again and continued into the building, paying barely any attention to him. He grimaced and glanced to Gwen and Owen before following her, trying to ignore Owen's raised eyebrows, Gwen's bemused smirk. Neither of them were his problem, at least until some fuzzy far future. He'd worry about their opinions and questions then.
"You could have told me about the vicious dog thing before you ran off," she said over her shoulder.
"I was hoping I'd be able to-"
"Oh, getting him to tell you anything important is like pulling teeth," Gwen said with a teasing smile. When Jack turned to frown at her, she added, "From a bear."
Owen snorted. Rose grinned at Gwen, while Jack scanned the room in an effort to ignore them all. He took note of the way the hinges and lock on the door looked damaged, a heavy table stationed near it at an angle, the paint on the door scraped like the door had been used to push the table aside... No sign of anyone still here. Except... now that he listened, those could be footsteps upstairs, slow and cautious...
"Am I the only one who hears that?" he asked after a moment.
Gwen and Rose stopped, and Owen frowned, cocking his head to the side as if listening intently. After a few seconds, he shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Nah. Though knowing you, Jack, it could just-"
Gunshots sounded upstairs, three sharp, distinct cracks of a revolver, and a half-second later, something heavy thumped against the wall upstairs, then the floor. All four of them lunged for the stairs immediately, moving on instinct a few scant heartbeats after they registered the sound.
Jack paused at the top of the stairs, taking a second to orient himself and sort out just which room the noise had come from. Rose didn't hesitate for a second, barreling past him and down the hall toward what looked like it had once been a bedroom, before the flat was abandoned. "Jack!"
They hit the open door all at once, Rose just a few steps ahead of the other three, so she slipped into the room easily while they jammed momentarily in the doorway. It would have been comical if it weren't for the angry predator inside the room.
Jack lay flat on his back on the floor, a nightmare on top of him, claws digging into his shoulders and making a bloody mess of his coat, revolver on the floor halfway across the room. He'd wedged a hand into the space between the front of the time hound's shoulder blade and body, which gave him just enough leverage to keep it off of him, keep its teeth from his neck. But the creature twisted and squirmed like quicksilver, his hand slipped a little and it dropped forward heavily, so he only managed to stop it inches from his throat.
For a second, Jack could only stare at himself, older but not by that much, it couldn't be that much, but another man all the same. Sheer instinct and several levels of training screamed at him to get the hell out of the room, the longer he was close to himself the greater the chances of a paradox. Another, slightly quieter part of his brain murmured questions - why would he ever have left the Doctor and Rose, what was he doing here in Cardiff, whys and hows and-
The time hound snarled, a sick, wheezing sound, and twisted free of the other Jack's grip to lunge at him again one last time, wicked jaws agape...
Rose shouted wordlessly, grabbed Jack's blaster from the holster at his waist, and fired. "I swear, Jack, if the batteries aren't working-"
A concussive blast knocked her back, and Jack moved on instinct to grab her, the momentum of the blast thumping them both onto the floor, Rose on top of Jack. She knocked the breath out of him, but he rolled over anyway to place himself on top of her, between her and the time hound, just in case...
And then he registered the sound he'd heard a second after the two of them hit the ground, a soft, wet smack... He slowly lifted his head to see the time hound in a twisted, broken heap at the base of the wall, unmoving, unbreathing, and the other Jack blinking first at the time hound and then at him in breathless surprise. Rose lifted her head too after a second, and stared.
"I've never seen it do that before," Rose said quietly after a moment.
The other Jack coughed, and pushed himself to his feet, rubbing at a lacerated shoulder like it was just sore, and not soaking his coat in blood. "Sonic cannon setting," he said, and then chuckled softly. "Haven't seen that one in ages. Thank you, by the way."
Rose grinned, shoving Jack off her and standing slowly herself. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've had to rescue you, Captain." Jack snorted, and smirked at her, and did his very best not to look his older self in the eyes.
From behind him, he heard Owen mutter, "Two Jacks. Just what I needed to end the day."
"Could be worse, Owen," Gwen said, though slowly. She was doing an admirable job of pretending to be less unsettled than she actually was. "It could be two of you."
*
Jack sent his team down to the hub, told Gwen and Owen not to speak to Tosh and Ianto about it, and wait in the boardroom for him so they could be debriefed. They went, with little argument, though Owen huffed a little and Gwen gave him the look that meant she was going to have a Talk with him at the earliest possible opportunity. He watched them walk away for a few seconds, down toward the door of the tourist information centre, and then sighed, turning back to face Rose and... himself.
"I guess this is goodbye, then." The words were out of his mouth before he realised how familiar they were, and only just held back a grimace. Familiar to him, maybe, but not to either of them, and they couldn't know how it ended...
Rose smiled at him, a quiet, sad smile that hurt more than encouraged, which probably wasn't the intention. Jack smiled back cheerfully anyway, like it didn't bother him that he hadn't seen her, not properly, for over a century, or that he'd read her name on a list of the dead not that long ago.
He didn't fail to notice the way his younger self stood a little too close to her, kept looking at her and then at anything but him. Jack could guess his thoughts well enough, though he couldn't remember. When would he lose her, when would he leave her, when would he become this stranger who stood in front of him, why and how and-
"I wish I could say we'd come back to see you," Rose said, "but-"
"Timelines," he said, that old familiar reason for everything he wanted and couldn't have. Rose nodded.
"Yeah."
Jack glanced past the two of them to the TARDIS, halfway across the Plass and practically shining, brilliant blue in the late afternoon sunlight. Some old, desperate, lonely part of him longed to run up to it, throw open the door and step inside and demand to know why he had been left, what had happened there on the Game Station, what the hell had happened to him... But the Doctor wouldn't have any of those answers. Not yet. He looked back to Rose.
"Rose..." He smiled, and reached out to take her hand. "It's been... wonderful to see you." Wonderful. Painful. They could almost be synonyms. He lifted her hand, kissed the back of it, smiling at her through it like this was the first time, standing on top of the Chula ship in front of Big Ben with the bombs all around.
The second he dropped her hand, Rose rolled her eyes, muttered, "Honestly, you can give me a proper goodbye," and reached up to pull him down to kiss her. It started off chaste, but did not remain so for long, and she tasted the same, smelled the same. He tangled his fingers in her hair at the nape of her neck, projecting in every way he could I miss you, I loved you, I love you...
They broke apart finally, Rose a little breathless, and she stared up at him for a second. "That was..." She broke off with a smile, glanced first to the younger Jack and then to the distant TARDIS before taking a step back. "We should go, before the Doctor starts to wonder where we got off to."
Jack took a step back himself, threw an arm up in a salute, and then watched as her lips flickered in another, sadder smile before she turned and walked away.
She didn't get far. A few metres away, she stopped, and turned back to frown at the other Jack, who hadn't moved. "Aren't you coming?"
"Give me- Give us a minute."
Rose watched him for a moment, brow furrowed in concern, but rather than arguing, she sighed and nodded, then started off again, only glancing over her shoulder once or twice. Jack raised an eyebrow at himself, waiting for the obvious question.
"What happened?" the younger man asked finally, meeting Jack's eyes. He could see fear there, wariness and uncertainty and the real question, What will I become?
"If you mean those two years, I still-"
"You know what I mean."
Jack met his eyes for a few seconds more, then looked away. "Long story. Long time ago. And even if I tell you, it won't matter."
"Why not?" he growled. Jack would have worried that he was thinking about punching him, except that even that young, he wouldn't have been dumb enough to touch himself and risk a paradox.
"Because you won't remember." Jack reached into his pocket, pulled out two small doses of retcon, and held them out. After a moment, reluctantly, the younger man extended his hand, and Jack dropped the retcon into his palm, all without either of them touching each other. "One for each of you. she doesn't even have to know. Just... trust me."
The younger one snorted, lips quirking into a humorless smirk. Trust didn't come easily for people like him, especially when it came to his own memory. But then again, if he wasn't going to trust himself...
Jack let him search his face for a moment, blue eyes full of suspicion and inquiry, and had he ever really looked that young, that scared, that hopeful and that alive? It didn't seem possible. He turned away, finally, without another word, and started to walk off, coat catching in the early evening breeze off the bay. He could see the questions in his eyes, but he wasn't going to answer any of them. He had two years of questions, and another century and change on top of that. He could live with one day more.
Chapter: Walk Away (6/6)
Characters/Pairing: Rose/Jack, Gwen and Owen, mention of the Doctor
Word Count: 2505
Rating: PG
Summary: Sometimes Jack can avoid his past, and sometimes parts of it land on his doorstep in exactly the wrong combination.
Notes: Written for bytheseaside for the available_very winter ficathon. Set (in the Doctor Who timeline) between "The Doctor Dances" and "Boomtown", and in the Torchwood timeline, in season one, between "Ghost Machine" and "Cyberwoman".
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood, and I'm not making anything off this. Just for fun, guys.
<< Previous Chapter
I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don't know your history,
if you don't know your family, who are you? -Mary Pipher
"This building, on the left!" Owen called from the back seat, a little louder than Jack thought was strictly necessary. He glanced to the left, spotted a blonde girl racing down the fire escape of what looked like an abandoned building, and hit the brake hard on instinct before conscious thought even had a chance to kick in. They all lurched forward, Owen falling against the seat in front of him, Jack nearly thumping against the steering wheel. Gwen, who had taken the opportunity to put on her seatbelt earlier while muttering about the likelihood that they would all crash and die, was fine.
Jack could have taken a moment to recover, but instead he shoved open the car door without even turning the car off (or putting it in park, he realised a moment later, though he noticed Gwen reaching over to do that out of the corner of his eye) and raced for the fire escape, just in time to catch Rose at the bottom. Well, maybe catch wasn't the right word. It was more like she jumped the last several feet to the ground and thumped into him, almost knocking them both over.
Jack caught himself before falling down, wrapped his arms around Rose to steady her too, and let out a relieved laugh, pulling her into a hug. "Rose! You're alive!" He winced as soon as he said it. It was generally best to avoid pointing out that her survival was ever in doubt in the first place.
"Of course I'm alive," she said, pulling away from him without hugging back - which was enough to give him pause. "Not sure you will be in a minute..."
Jack stared at her, as she started for the open door of the building she'd just run out of. Now that he looked at it, the door was open. No, broken, more than open, like something had... battered it down... "What?"
"There's another one of you here, no time to explain, will you just come on?"
Jack swore a little, because of course it wouldn't be so simple as just getting her to safety. Not with Rose bloody Tyler, always determined to save the universe or just one little person, whatever she could manage. And of course she'd had to run into him, past him, future him, whichever, he was almost certain he'd rather she didn't know him at that point in his life. He rushed into the darkened building after her, just as Gwen and Owen tumbled out of the car and raced after him like a pair of very purposeful puppies, guns in hand.
Rose started a little, hearing their footsteps, and blinked at them for a second, though she was still moving into the house. "Who-"
"Rose," Jack sighed, "meet Gwen and Owen. Someone will explain later." Hopefully someone not him. Though he'd settle for a version of him who happened to know what the hell was going on.
Rose eyed the two of them dubiously, while Gwen and Owen stared at her with "who the hell are you?" expressions Jack was almost certain perfectly matched the one he'd given them not that long ago. Rose finally swung back toward Jack with an expression that was not in the least encouraging itself.
"You run off and leave me on my own while there's some mad snake-dog... thing on the loose, and then while I'm busy running for my life, you just go... swanning about picking up strays?"
"There's a difference between swanning about and trying to..." He trailed off as Rose turned away again and continued into the building, paying barely any attention to him. He grimaced and glanced to Gwen and Owen before following her, trying to ignore Owen's raised eyebrows, Gwen's bemused smirk. Neither of them were his problem, at least until some fuzzy far future. He'd worry about their opinions and questions then.
"You could have told me about the vicious dog thing before you ran off," she said over her shoulder.
"I was hoping I'd be able to-"
"Oh, getting him to tell you anything important is like pulling teeth," Gwen said with a teasing smile. When Jack turned to frown at her, she added, "From a bear."
Owen snorted. Rose grinned at Gwen, while Jack scanned the room in an effort to ignore them all. He took note of the way the hinges and lock on the door looked damaged, a heavy table stationed near it at an angle, the paint on the door scraped like the door had been used to push the table aside... No sign of anyone still here. Except... now that he listened, those could be footsteps upstairs, slow and cautious...
"Am I the only one who hears that?" he asked after a moment.
Gwen and Rose stopped, and Owen frowned, cocking his head to the side as if listening intently. After a few seconds, he shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Nah. Though knowing you, Jack, it could just-"
Gunshots sounded upstairs, three sharp, distinct cracks of a revolver, and a half-second later, something heavy thumped against the wall upstairs, then the floor. All four of them lunged for the stairs immediately, moving on instinct a few scant heartbeats after they registered the sound.
Jack paused at the top of the stairs, taking a second to orient himself and sort out just which room the noise had come from. Rose didn't hesitate for a second, barreling past him and down the hall toward what looked like it had once been a bedroom, before the flat was abandoned. "Jack!"
They hit the open door all at once, Rose just a few steps ahead of the other three, so she slipped into the room easily while they jammed momentarily in the doorway. It would have been comical if it weren't for the angry predator inside the room.
Jack lay flat on his back on the floor, a nightmare on top of him, claws digging into his shoulders and making a bloody mess of his coat, revolver on the floor halfway across the room. He'd wedged a hand into the space between the front of the time hound's shoulder blade and body, which gave him just enough leverage to keep it off of him, keep its teeth from his neck. But the creature twisted and squirmed like quicksilver, his hand slipped a little and it dropped forward heavily, so he only managed to stop it inches from his throat.
For a second, Jack could only stare at himself, older but not by that much, it couldn't be that much, but another man all the same. Sheer instinct and several levels of training screamed at him to get the hell out of the room, the longer he was close to himself the greater the chances of a paradox. Another, slightly quieter part of his brain murmured questions - why would he ever have left the Doctor and Rose, what was he doing here in Cardiff, whys and hows and-
The time hound snarled, a sick, wheezing sound, and twisted free of the other Jack's grip to lunge at him again one last time, wicked jaws agape...
Rose shouted wordlessly, grabbed Jack's blaster from the holster at his waist, and fired. "I swear, Jack, if the batteries aren't working-"
A concussive blast knocked her back, and Jack moved on instinct to grab her, the momentum of the blast thumping them both onto the floor, Rose on top of Jack. She knocked the breath out of him, but he rolled over anyway to place himself on top of her, between her and the time hound, just in case...
And then he registered the sound he'd heard a second after the two of them hit the ground, a soft, wet smack... He slowly lifted his head to see the time hound in a twisted, broken heap at the base of the wall, unmoving, unbreathing, and the other Jack blinking first at the time hound and then at him in breathless surprise. Rose lifted her head too after a second, and stared.
"I've never seen it do that before," Rose said quietly after a moment.
The other Jack coughed, and pushed himself to his feet, rubbing at a lacerated shoulder like it was just sore, and not soaking his coat in blood. "Sonic cannon setting," he said, and then chuckled softly. "Haven't seen that one in ages. Thank you, by the way."
Rose grinned, shoving Jack off her and standing slowly herself. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've had to rescue you, Captain." Jack snorted, and smirked at her, and did his very best not to look his older self in the eyes.
From behind him, he heard Owen mutter, "Two Jacks. Just what I needed to end the day."
"Could be worse, Owen," Gwen said, though slowly. She was doing an admirable job of pretending to be less unsettled than she actually was. "It could be two of you."
*
Jack sent his team down to the hub, told Gwen and Owen not to speak to Tosh and Ianto about it, and wait in the boardroom for him so they could be debriefed. They went, with little argument, though Owen huffed a little and Gwen gave him the look that meant she was going to have a Talk with him at the earliest possible opportunity. He watched them walk away for a few seconds, down toward the door of the tourist information centre, and then sighed, turning back to face Rose and... himself.
"I guess this is goodbye, then." The words were out of his mouth before he realised how familiar they were, and only just held back a grimace. Familiar to him, maybe, but not to either of them, and they couldn't know how it ended...
Rose smiled at him, a quiet, sad smile that hurt more than encouraged, which probably wasn't the intention. Jack smiled back cheerfully anyway, like it didn't bother him that he hadn't seen her, not properly, for over a century, or that he'd read her name on a list of the dead not that long ago.
He didn't fail to notice the way his younger self stood a little too close to her, kept looking at her and then at anything but him. Jack could guess his thoughts well enough, though he couldn't remember. When would he lose her, when would he leave her, when would he become this stranger who stood in front of him, why and how and-
"I wish I could say we'd come back to see you," Rose said, "but-"
"Timelines," he said, that old familiar reason for everything he wanted and couldn't have. Rose nodded.
"Yeah."
Jack glanced past the two of them to the TARDIS, halfway across the Plass and practically shining, brilliant blue in the late afternoon sunlight. Some old, desperate, lonely part of him longed to run up to it, throw open the door and step inside and demand to know why he had been left, what had happened there on the Game Station, what the hell had happened to him... But the Doctor wouldn't have any of those answers. Not yet. He looked back to Rose.
"Rose..." He smiled, and reached out to take her hand. "It's been... wonderful to see you." Wonderful. Painful. They could almost be synonyms. He lifted her hand, kissed the back of it, smiling at her through it like this was the first time, standing on top of the Chula ship in front of Big Ben with the bombs all around.
The second he dropped her hand, Rose rolled her eyes, muttered, "Honestly, you can give me a proper goodbye," and reached up to pull him down to kiss her. It started off chaste, but did not remain so for long, and she tasted the same, smelled the same. He tangled his fingers in her hair at the nape of her neck, projecting in every way he could I miss you, I loved you, I love you...
They broke apart finally, Rose a little breathless, and she stared up at him for a second. "That was..." She broke off with a smile, glanced first to the younger Jack and then to the distant TARDIS before taking a step back. "We should go, before the Doctor starts to wonder where we got off to."
Jack took a step back himself, threw an arm up in a salute, and then watched as her lips flickered in another, sadder smile before she turned and walked away.
She didn't get far. A few metres away, she stopped, and turned back to frown at the other Jack, who hadn't moved. "Aren't you coming?"
"Give me- Give us a minute."
Rose watched him for a moment, brow furrowed in concern, but rather than arguing, she sighed and nodded, then started off again, only glancing over her shoulder once or twice. Jack raised an eyebrow at himself, waiting for the obvious question.
"What happened?" the younger man asked finally, meeting Jack's eyes. He could see fear there, wariness and uncertainty and the real question, What will I become?
"If you mean those two years, I still-"
"You know what I mean."
Jack met his eyes for a few seconds more, then looked away. "Long story. Long time ago. And even if I tell you, it won't matter."
"Why not?" he growled. Jack would have worried that he was thinking about punching him, except that even that young, he wouldn't have been dumb enough to touch himself and risk a paradox.
"Because you won't remember." Jack reached into his pocket, pulled out two small doses of retcon, and held them out. After a moment, reluctantly, the younger man extended his hand, and Jack dropped the retcon into his palm, all without either of them touching each other. "One for each of you. she doesn't even have to know. Just... trust me."
The younger one snorted, lips quirking into a humorless smirk. Trust didn't come easily for people like him, especially when it came to his own memory. But then again, if he wasn't going to trust himself...
Jack let him search his face for a moment, blue eyes full of suspicion and inquiry, and had he ever really looked that young, that scared, that hopeful and that alive? It didn't seem possible. He turned away, finally, without another word, and started to walk off, coat catching in the early evening breeze off the bay. He could see the questions in his eyes, but he wasn't going to answer any of them. He had two years of questions, and another century and change on top of that. He could live with one day more.