Torchwood fic ahead. Continue at your own risk.
DAMN THOSE TIMELINES!
by Gypsylady
I know a lot of folks on my flist are uninterested in my fanfiction. So I won't be offended if you don't
DAMN THOSE TIMELINES!
by Gypsylady
features Jack (with guest appearances by pretty much everybody)
Spoilers for "Fragments," "The Unquiet Dead," and "Journey's End."
Summary: Lorannah's timeline established that Jack was in Cardiff for at least one Doctor siting before the one that we saw at the end of Torchwood Series One.
Rating: G
I wish to thank my betas, verasteine and alba17
Disclaimer: The usual, not mine, all BBC's, blah blah blah. Don't sue me. I'm just playing.
Cardiff, 1869
He was stumbling back to his rooming house, unconcerned about the weather, ignoring the falling snow and barely heeding the sounds of passing carriages. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he knew he had to do it soon. What money of the period he had had on his person when he slammed into this gods-forsaken city in this gods-forsaken era was rapidly depleting, between his overpriced lodgings and the whiskey he was imbibing nightly, and sometimes daily. He still felt the long-simmering burn of resentment at being abandoned, left behind on a space station full of corpses and silence. Yes, he had found two survivors hiding behind electrical panels, crouched and shivering amid the wires. But he had had no desire to return with them to their Earth, their century, their lives. His own had been disrupted, then dismissed, and he was determined to find out why a man he had trusted more than he had ever trusted a living soul, even more than his own parents and long dead brother, would have dismissed him so cavalierly.
As he side-stepped a slow-moving hansom cab that seemed to be carrying tourists, he mused that he had undoubtedly been left for dead. It wasn't as though he'd gone into that last battle expecting to live through it. So for his companions, expecting him to be deceased was valid. But that didn't make him hurt less, or resent it less, or forgive it less.
When I find him, he swore to himself, first I'm going to kiss him, then I'm going to kill him. It was a fair sequence of events. Time Lords didn't die, as a rule. That much he knew from his training in the Time Agency. They died when they were old, tired, and ready to make their own decision about dying. A Time Lord regenerated. So all he'd be doing to the Doctor was forcing him to assume another face. He liked the face the Doctor wore last time he'd seen him. He'd miss it. But Jack Harkness was one pissed off former Time Agent and he was, by all the gods, going to force a dramatic regeneration on this particular Time Lord, just to make sure he knew how Jack felt. Then he'd kiss him again and make up with him and they'd settle their differences. And Jack's Vortex Manipulator, the wristband mounted device he had swiped from the Time Agency and that allowed him to travel through time and space, would be fixed. The TARDIS could fix it, he was certain, even if the Doctor's ubiquitous sonic screwdriver could not. Then he could either join the Doctor once again on his amazing time ship, or he could go off on his own adventures.
But first there were some personal scores to settle.
He belched and tasted the combination of good whiskey and bad food come back to haunt him. He stopped to consider what his options might be. He could go back to the rooming house, sleep until he was hungover, then sleep until the hangover was gone, then get more good whiskey and bad food and repeat his day. Or he could try to clear his mind enough to decide on a different plan of action. Shaking his head, he started walking again. He didn't have a clue what he could do other than wait here in Cardiff and bide his time. The Doctor always came to Cardiff. He just had to wait.
Satisfied that he had come to a decision, he set out once again for his rooming house, but a familiar sound made him stop in his tracks.
Someone had once described the sound of a TARDIS engine to him as combining the sound of rusted springs with the wheeze of a dying 20th century Ford diesel engine. To Jack's ears, though, the sound was more melodic. He'd heard a G'santdjian diva use the sound of the TARDIS engine as the basis for an aria in which she mourned and eulogized her lost love, the scene ending with her own very real suicide. The reviewers raved and praised the work. Jack had left the two day long performance with a toothache and a strong desire to strangle the partner who had dragged him along. (The partner, then going by the unlikely pseudonym Sam Hammer, later admitted he'd dragged Jack, then going by the equally unlikely pseudonym Lucius Huang, to the performance as a practical joke.) But he had come to understand how the sound of a TARDIS could imply love, peace, and loyalty.
So Jack was pretty sure he could identify the sound of a TARDIS engine from this far away. He stopped, suddenly cold sober, and took his bearings. The sound was coming from his left. He gauged the distance at about a mile. Turning in the direction of the sound, he hurried along the street. He tried to run but the combination of slick pavement and his equilibrium being slow to catch up to his intellectual sobriety left him unceremoniously on his seat in the middle of the street. He slowed to a fast walk.
The sound of the TARDIS had long faded when he turned a corner and saw it. There was no evidence of life around it, and Jack decided to hide and wait. Crossing timelines with an earlier generation of the Doctor wouldn't do him any good, so he hoped to see either the face he knew or one he couldn't recognize.
When he heard screaming from a short distance away, he knew that was where he had to go. As he approached the theater which was rapidly disgorging horrified patrons, he slipped behind a parked carriage to watch. To his delight, a few moments later he was greeted by the sight of Rose Tyler, his Rose Tyler, the one he dreamt about ... well, his and the Doctor's Rose Tyler ... okay, mostly the Doctor's Rose Tyler but Rose Tyler nonetheless ... in a stunning, period appropriate outfit, racing out behind a man and a young woman who were dragging an elderly and apparently deceased woman between them. He held back, not wanting to interfere until he knew more about what was going on. But it was difficult for Jack to hold himself back, when all he wanted to do was throw himself at Rose and hug her and kiss her and ask where the hell the Doctor, that rat bastard, was.
The two people loaded the apparent corpse into a waiting hearse. Rose was questioning them, checking the woman for a pulse. Suddenly, the man came up from behind Rose and slapped a cloth over her mouth and nose. Jack was already on his feet ready to run to her defense, but he hesitated a moment to examine the other two people. The man was obviously the undertaker, and he looked inconsequential. The girl, however, had an air of the supernatural about her. He studied her face, seeing concern and fear. The man ordered her to load Rose's still form into the hearse. Jack started toward them when he saw the Doctor race out of the theater.
His Doctor. HIS Doctor! Despite the imminent danger to Rose, Jack's heart sang. He started towards the Time Lord, who had just climbed into the carriage he'd been hiding behind. The Doctor had not seen him. Jack was sure he'd been directly in the Doctor's line of sight for at least two seconds, but the Doctor seemed to have stared right through him. Before he had a chance to get up close to the Doctor's face, another man leaped into the carriage.
Jack recognized the other man from posters he'd seen in the past few days. It was Charles Dickens. And Jack's hope fell to the ground and seemed to be burrowing even deeper.
It was his Doctor, all right.
It was his Doctor from close to a year before Jack had met up with him. This Rose was still innocent, a bit frightened by all the wonders she was seeing. She was spunky (Jack almost snorted when that word crossed his mind) and brave but not yet at complete ease with the hectic and frequently dangerous world she was introduced to by the Doctor.
In other words, this Doctor wasn't the right Doctor. Which might explain why he could look right through Jack. It might be that the timeline was protecting itself. He'd never heard of such a thing, but Time Lords weren't well known, even to the Time Agency.
Before he had a chance to consider the consequences, Jack took off after the carriage. He had recognized the hearse and knew where the undertaker's business was. He knew a few shortcuts available only when traveling on foot, and he was sure he would arrive either before or at worst at the same time as the carriage. The event he was witnessing had been relayed to him by Rose as a curious anecdote. He couldn't interfere or participate, but he could observe. It might be fun, since he knew that at least the two people he cared for were sure to survive.
He slipped behind a bush and watched as the carriage pulled up outside the undertaker's home. He saw the Doctor and Charles Dickens demand entry and then bully and push their way into the house. His last sight was the determined and unhappy face of the servant who had been helping the undertaker kidnap Rose. In telling the anecdote, Rose had described her as a sweet and strong young woman, and while Jack might have initially doubted the description of the girl's psychic abilities, upon seeing her he thought it would be fun to go back later and meet the girl, find out just how psychic she really was. Then the door was shut and Jack realized this was the last he would be able to see.
He started the long walk back to his lodgings, trying to remember the rest of the story Rose had told and trying to imagine what was going on inside the undertaker's home at that moment. When he remembered what would eventually be the outcome, he almost turned back. The house would go up in a fireball as the servant sacrificed herself to prevent a race of gaseous aliens from coming across the Rift, the break in the space-time continuum that ran through Cardiff, and taking over Earth. That serving girl shouldn't die just because she was able to communicate with an alien life-form. He wondered if, perhaps, he could go back and rescue her after the Doctor and Rose had made their getaway from the house. Surely that wouldn't cause a paradox. He could rescue her and...
And what? he asked himself. He was nearly penniless and rescuing a servant in this culture would only put more strain on his expenses. Yes, she was pretty and yes, it would be fun to play with her for a while. But he would only be playing. She was willing to die to protect the Earth. She deserved better than Jack Harkness playing with her.
And, reflecting that Rose had really destroyed his code of non-ethics, he sighed and trudged on. He was nearly at the rooming house when he heard the explosion.
"I need to get out of here," he said to himself. "It'll be at least a couple more years before he shows up again. Maybe I'll head to London for a while. Give the stage a try. Acting, yeah, that's the ticket. Maybe head to New York after that."
TARDIS, early 21st Century, by Earth reckoning
The Daleks were defeated. Davros was going to go down with his ship. The planets were mostly all back where they belonged. The Doctor and his team of Companions had saved the day.
"But what about the Earth?" Sarah Jane Smith asked, sounding concerned and maternal as usual.
"I'm on it!" the Doctor replied fiercely. Into his communication system he barked, "Torchwood Hub, this is the Doctor. Are you receiving me?"
Jack could hear a familiar and welcome voice. "Loud and clear," said Gwen. "Is Jack there?"
The Doctor glanced at Jack, wondering if the man had as many love lives as he had lives. "Can't get rid of him," he told Gwen. To Jack he added, "Jack, what's her name?"
Jack smiled proudly. "Gwen Cooper."
The Doctor returned his attention to Gwen and he was suddenly struck by her appearance. "Tell me, Gwen Cooper, are you from an old Cardiff family?"
"Yes," she said. "All the way back to the eighteen hundreds." She looked to the young man standing beside her, whom the Doctor assumed was the Ianto Jones Jack spoke about so much. Ianto looked as confused as she did.
The Doctor glanced at Rose. He saw that she was seeing the same thing he was. "Thought so," he said to her. "Spacial genetic multiplicity, eh? Funny old world."
As the Doctor and the others got on with the business of saving the Earth, Jack felt as though a pile of bricks had been dropped on him. So much was suddenly clear to him.
And he thanked all he held sacred that he hadn't gone back for Gwyneth, the servant girl who had been willing to die to protect the Earth. Because if he had, then she never would have come back to him in the form of Gwen Cooper. He felt briefly like he might want to claim paternity of his second-in-command. But it was irrational and silly. When he got back to Cardiff, though, he swore to himself, he'd let her know how proud he was of her. Of both of her.
by Gypsylady
I know a lot of folks on my flist are uninterested in my fanfiction. So I won't be offended if you don't
DAMN THOSE TIMELINES!
by Gypsylady
features Jack (with guest appearances by pretty much everybody)
Spoilers for "Fragments," "The Unquiet Dead," and "Journey's End."
Summary: Lorannah's timeline established that Jack was in Cardiff for at least one Doctor siting before the one that we saw at the end of Torchwood Series One.
Rating: G
I wish to thank my betas, verasteine and alba17
Disclaimer: The usual, not mine, all BBC's, blah blah blah. Don't sue me. I'm just playing.
Cardiff, 1869
He was stumbling back to his rooming house, unconcerned about the weather, ignoring the falling snow and barely heeding the sounds of passing carriages. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he knew he had to do it soon. What money of the period he had had on his person when he slammed into this gods-forsaken city in this gods-forsaken era was rapidly depleting, between his overpriced lodgings and the whiskey he was imbibing nightly, and sometimes daily. He still felt the long-simmering burn of resentment at being abandoned, left behind on a space station full of corpses and silence. Yes, he had found two survivors hiding behind electrical panels, crouched and shivering amid the wires. But he had had no desire to return with them to their Earth, their century, their lives. His own had been disrupted, then dismissed, and he was determined to find out why a man he had trusted more than he had ever trusted a living soul, even more than his own parents and long dead brother, would have dismissed him so cavalierly.
As he side-stepped a slow-moving hansom cab that seemed to be carrying tourists, he mused that he had undoubtedly been left for dead. It wasn't as though he'd gone into that last battle expecting to live through it. So for his companions, expecting him to be deceased was valid. But that didn't make him hurt less, or resent it less, or forgive it less.
When I find him, he swore to himself, first I'm going to kiss him, then I'm going to kill him. It was a fair sequence of events. Time Lords didn't die, as a rule. That much he knew from his training in the Time Agency. They died when they were old, tired, and ready to make their own decision about dying. A Time Lord regenerated. So all he'd be doing to the Doctor was forcing him to assume another face. He liked the face the Doctor wore last time he'd seen him. He'd miss it. But Jack Harkness was one pissed off former Time Agent and he was, by all the gods, going to force a dramatic regeneration on this particular Time Lord, just to make sure he knew how Jack felt. Then he'd kiss him again and make up with him and they'd settle their differences. And Jack's Vortex Manipulator, the wristband mounted device he had swiped from the Time Agency and that allowed him to travel through time and space, would be fixed. The TARDIS could fix it, he was certain, even if the Doctor's ubiquitous sonic screwdriver could not. Then he could either join the Doctor once again on his amazing time ship, or he could go off on his own adventures.
But first there were some personal scores to settle.
He belched and tasted the combination of good whiskey and bad food come back to haunt him. He stopped to consider what his options might be. He could go back to the rooming house, sleep until he was hungover, then sleep until the hangover was gone, then get more good whiskey and bad food and repeat his day. Or he could try to clear his mind enough to decide on a different plan of action. Shaking his head, he started walking again. He didn't have a clue what he could do other than wait here in Cardiff and bide his time. The Doctor always came to Cardiff. He just had to wait.
Satisfied that he had come to a decision, he set out once again for his rooming house, but a familiar sound made him stop in his tracks.
Someone had once described the sound of a TARDIS engine to him as combining the sound of rusted springs with the wheeze of a dying 20th century Ford diesel engine. To Jack's ears, though, the sound was more melodic. He'd heard a G'santdjian diva use the sound of the TARDIS engine as the basis for an aria in which she mourned and eulogized her lost love, the scene ending with her own very real suicide. The reviewers raved and praised the work. Jack had left the two day long performance with a toothache and a strong desire to strangle the partner who had dragged him along. (The partner, then going by the unlikely pseudonym Sam Hammer, later admitted he'd dragged Jack, then going by the equally unlikely pseudonym Lucius Huang, to the performance as a practical joke.) But he had come to understand how the sound of a TARDIS could imply love, peace, and loyalty.
So Jack was pretty sure he could identify the sound of a TARDIS engine from this far away. He stopped, suddenly cold sober, and took his bearings. The sound was coming from his left. He gauged the distance at about a mile. Turning in the direction of the sound, he hurried along the street. He tried to run but the combination of slick pavement and his equilibrium being slow to catch up to his intellectual sobriety left him unceremoniously on his seat in the middle of the street. He slowed to a fast walk.
The sound of the TARDIS had long faded when he turned a corner and saw it. There was no evidence of life around it, and Jack decided to hide and wait. Crossing timelines with an earlier generation of the Doctor wouldn't do him any good, so he hoped to see either the face he knew or one he couldn't recognize.
When he heard screaming from a short distance away, he knew that was where he had to go. As he approached the theater which was rapidly disgorging horrified patrons, he slipped behind a parked carriage to watch. To his delight, a few moments later he was greeted by the sight of Rose Tyler, his Rose Tyler, the one he dreamt about ... well, his and the Doctor's Rose Tyler ... okay, mostly the Doctor's Rose Tyler but Rose Tyler nonetheless ... in a stunning, period appropriate outfit, racing out behind a man and a young woman who were dragging an elderly and apparently deceased woman between them. He held back, not wanting to interfere until he knew more about what was going on. But it was difficult for Jack to hold himself back, when all he wanted to do was throw himself at Rose and hug her and kiss her and ask where the hell the Doctor, that rat bastard, was.
The two people loaded the apparent corpse into a waiting hearse. Rose was questioning them, checking the woman for a pulse. Suddenly, the man came up from behind Rose and slapped a cloth over her mouth and nose. Jack was already on his feet ready to run to her defense, but he hesitated a moment to examine the other two people. The man was obviously the undertaker, and he looked inconsequential. The girl, however, had an air of the supernatural about her. He studied her face, seeing concern and fear. The man ordered her to load Rose's still form into the hearse. Jack started toward them when he saw the Doctor race out of the theater.
His Doctor. HIS Doctor! Despite the imminent danger to Rose, Jack's heart sang. He started towards the Time Lord, who had just climbed into the carriage he'd been hiding behind. The Doctor had not seen him. Jack was sure he'd been directly in the Doctor's line of sight for at least two seconds, but the Doctor seemed to have stared right through him. Before he had a chance to get up close to the Doctor's face, another man leaped into the carriage.
Jack recognized the other man from posters he'd seen in the past few days. It was Charles Dickens. And Jack's hope fell to the ground and seemed to be burrowing even deeper.
It was his Doctor, all right.
It was his Doctor from close to a year before Jack had met up with him. This Rose was still innocent, a bit frightened by all the wonders she was seeing. She was spunky (Jack almost snorted when that word crossed his mind) and brave but not yet at complete ease with the hectic and frequently dangerous world she was introduced to by the Doctor.
In other words, this Doctor wasn't the right Doctor. Which might explain why he could look right through Jack. It might be that the timeline was protecting itself. He'd never heard of such a thing, but Time Lords weren't well known, even to the Time Agency.
Before he had a chance to consider the consequences, Jack took off after the carriage. He had recognized the hearse and knew where the undertaker's business was. He knew a few shortcuts available only when traveling on foot, and he was sure he would arrive either before or at worst at the same time as the carriage. The event he was witnessing had been relayed to him by Rose as a curious anecdote. He couldn't interfere or participate, but he could observe. It might be fun, since he knew that at least the two people he cared for were sure to survive.
He slipped behind a bush and watched as the carriage pulled up outside the undertaker's home. He saw the Doctor and Charles Dickens demand entry and then bully and push their way into the house. His last sight was the determined and unhappy face of the servant who had been helping the undertaker kidnap Rose. In telling the anecdote, Rose had described her as a sweet and strong young woman, and while Jack might have initially doubted the description of the girl's psychic abilities, upon seeing her he thought it would be fun to go back later and meet the girl, find out just how psychic she really was. Then the door was shut and Jack realized this was the last he would be able to see.
He started the long walk back to his lodgings, trying to remember the rest of the story Rose had told and trying to imagine what was going on inside the undertaker's home at that moment. When he remembered what would eventually be the outcome, he almost turned back. The house would go up in a fireball as the servant sacrificed herself to prevent a race of gaseous aliens from coming across the Rift, the break in the space-time continuum that ran through Cardiff, and taking over Earth. That serving girl shouldn't die just because she was able to communicate with an alien life-form. He wondered if, perhaps, he could go back and rescue her after the Doctor and Rose had made their getaway from the house. Surely that wouldn't cause a paradox. He could rescue her and...
And what? he asked himself. He was nearly penniless and rescuing a servant in this culture would only put more strain on his expenses. Yes, she was pretty and yes, it would be fun to play with her for a while. But he would only be playing. She was willing to die to protect the Earth. She deserved better than Jack Harkness playing with her.
And, reflecting that Rose had really destroyed his code of non-ethics, he sighed and trudged on. He was nearly at the rooming house when he heard the explosion.
"I need to get out of here," he said to himself. "It'll be at least a couple more years before he shows up again. Maybe I'll head to London for a while. Give the stage a try. Acting, yeah, that's the ticket. Maybe head to New York after that."
TARDIS, early 21st Century, by Earth reckoning
The Daleks were defeated. Davros was going to go down with his ship. The planets were mostly all back where they belonged. The Doctor and his team of Companions had saved the day.
"But what about the Earth?" Sarah Jane Smith asked, sounding concerned and maternal as usual.
"I'm on it!" the Doctor replied fiercely. Into his communication system he barked, "Torchwood Hub, this is the Doctor. Are you receiving me?"
Jack could hear a familiar and welcome voice. "Loud and clear," said Gwen. "Is Jack there?"
The Doctor glanced at Jack, wondering if the man had as many love lives as he had lives. "Can't get rid of him," he told Gwen. To Jack he added, "Jack, what's her name?"
Jack smiled proudly. "Gwen Cooper."
The Doctor returned his attention to Gwen and he was suddenly struck by her appearance. "Tell me, Gwen Cooper, are you from an old Cardiff family?"
"Yes," she said. "All the way back to the eighteen hundreds." She looked to the young man standing beside her, whom the Doctor assumed was the Ianto Jones Jack spoke about so much. Ianto looked as confused as she did.
The Doctor glanced at Rose. He saw that she was seeing the same thing he was. "Thought so," he said to her. "Spacial genetic multiplicity, eh? Funny old world."
As the Doctor and the others got on with the business of saving the Earth, Jack felt as though a pile of bricks had been dropped on him. So much was suddenly clear to him.
And he thanked all he held sacred that he hadn't gone back for Gwyneth, the servant girl who had been willing to die to protect the Earth. Because if he had, then she never would have come back to him in the form of Gwen Cooper. He felt briefly like he might want to claim paternity of his second-in-command. But it was irrational and silly. When he got back to Cardiff, though, he swore to himself, he'd let her know how proud he was of her. Of both of her.