Jack did not sleep that first night. How could he even try? He didn't. He didn't even venture towards the excuse for a bed because that would be admitting, and admitting wasn't something he was about to do.
Walls and bars were not something that Jack Harkness had ever been known to allow to confine him, and so he had no intention of allowing them to do so now. Within hours of his being confined, he was planning and plotting for a way to end it.
But as the night took hold and Jack knew only by instinct that the rest of the city around him slept, Jack couldn't help but consider the place he'd been stolen from and the woman with whom he'd been with.
Reinette.
In the darkness of the room and when the candle burned out, he looked out the crack in the wall and he thought of the day before. It had been a good day; he'd noted that at the time. But perhaps even then he hadn't realised the extent of it. And more than that, he remembered what he'd said to her, and that he'd told her he'd take her away today. And he'd broken that promise. He thought too of how he'd spent the previous night. It was stark in comparison to his position now, and highlighted just how unexpected his life always was.
He wondered if she thought he had left without a word. She surely had no idea where he could be?
But it wouldn't last, he told himself, and when light came he'd continue his task. And he'd get out.
And so the night became day, but it didn't end and it seemed no time at all until another night was close and upon him.
He plotted still, of course, and it was on his fourth day that he made his move. He'd procured paper by way of bargaining with one of the servants who delivered food, and he'd written a note and offered a bribe to get it sent to Reinette. It should reach her and if his plan worked as he hoped, then so should he.
So day five, one day after his note left the Bastille, he waited until the dark of night and when he heard the last doors lock, he got to work.
Within the hour, he had managed to leave the confines of his cell and of the Bastille itself and after secreting himself away within the streets of Paris for a matter of hours, he made his way back to Versailles.
On the forth day, Reinette ordered the linens changed.
She could not explain her initial hesitation to do so. It was nearly of a day when the sheets would have been otherwise. But something in the action seemed a full admission that Reinette had accepted his absence.
That wherever Jack had gone to, he would not immediately be returning.
It caused a strange, gnawing sensation somewhere in her core. After all, until that moment Jack had not been the sort to simply disappear. Even after their arguments, even when he left? He always met her gaze squarely as he did so. There was no mystery there. And they always managed to speak plainly of the events afterward.
The linens changed and with nothing but herself to take to bed, it should have meant that Reinette slept. But instead she found her head merely more cleared for thought. The smallest, darkest of which she did not fully wish to consider.
She had told Jack plainly in London that she was certain if they became to memorable, he would leave. It spoke to things like reason and distance and security. It could be argued that they ignored that. But she had come to believe, privately, that perhaps she had been wrong. Or that at the very least they grew past such ideas.
She considered, again and again, the events o their day together.
Had Jack run?
Would he return?
She had been to the bench once. Only once and when he was not there she had not gone back.
Louis seemed to sense her mood, even if they did not speak of it. But he was kind, and solicitous and made an effort to spend time with her both publicly and privately. His latest mistress made a fine show of being offended, but for the moment Reinette could not be bothered to engage in childish games.
Jack wasn't naive enough to think it would be that easy. He didn't expect that his letter got to Reinette. In fact he'd filled it with veiled lies that he expected she'd see through, and things none but her would understand, so that if it should end up in hands but hers it might throw the people that hoped to keep him down off the scent.
But at the same time, Jack wasn't one to hide. He put himself in the line of danger, he was well aware of that, and the same went now; he wouldn't shy away.
And that's why he found himself again in Versailles. The light was just lifting, early morning, and he stormed the halls of the palace. He was shouted at as he walked, of course, made well aware of, but he didn't care for that, nor the fact he was none too ripe after a series of days confined.
But even with all he'd seen, Jack Harkness sometimes had too much confidence. He'd found that before but it was a hard pill to swallow. Storming in didn't always work, the 4-5-6 had proved him that. And again, as it had been then, it proved his stumbling block.
He headed with purpose to Reinette's rooms and knocked the door open firmly. But inside, there was no Reinette. There was, however, standing with his back to him, a man while though he'd heard much of and though he'd even encountered, he'd never truly seen, nor ever spoken to.
The King.
He should have known, of course. He should have expected it. The King certainly had done. And when the doors closed behind him and Jack saw the line of guards that were already waiting in the room, he realised it had all been a trap.
It had seemed to surprise the King when Jack laughed. It unsettled him, that was for sure. They spoke though then, held an actual conversation and it became so much clearer to him. Because though he thought it nothing? That time at the Yew Tree Ball, Louis had seen him. He'd seen Jack unmasked and so when he returned? He recognised him. In fact Jack had been watched ever since he'd got here for something he hadn't done until mere nights ago.
Louis told him he'd hoped to keep it simple, but Jack had seen to that being impossible. And so things would get harder.
And so they did.
Restrained as before by the mass of guards Jack was again hit until unconscious. And what came next? Was much worse.
Reinette arose early that morning, if only because she still had difficulty sleeping. She was hardly dressed before Louis sent a missive requesting she receive him, which of course there was no question if they would. But the played the game, between them. And they played it well.
For a man that always heard yes, she knew quite well one of the things that drew him to her was the possibility she might say 'no'. Until, of course, the time she had actually said it. That still did not sit well between them, even if they made a fine show of otherwise. But eventually knew was confident it would fade, even with Louis. Especially with Louis. He was far too distractable in the physical sense.
He came early as promised, it must have been immediately after morning mass. Normally Louis avoided such collisions of what was generally viewed as sin and soul. But he came, none the less. And Reinette pressed their coffee in the usual way as they discussed the events of court and the comings and goings there.
Eventually talk turned to her daughter, whom Louis was extremely fond of. He mentioned the day, then. That it was sure to be a lovely one. And even though Reinette was not one to be so quietly manipulated she had to agree to both of his points. And so mother and daughter spent the better part of the morning walking and in the company of her favorite fat duck.
When she returned, it was to news of a commotion in the halls. A man seen very close to her rooms. With a sharp gaze she pressed questions to people that would never meet her eyes.
Did he wear a coat? No, hardly that.
What of something on his wrist? No, nothing like that.
Was he attractive, with dark hair? Never. Bruised and stinking and surely just another peasant gone missing.
Reinette thought of the country baker that had lost himself in the halls of Versailles just the year before and frowned.
When she finally saw Louis again, she pressed the same questions towards him. He merely laughed, unconcerned.
He was gone six months before, Reinette reminded herself quietly. It had yet to even be six days.
Jack wasn't afraid of pain, it was a fact that seemed to unnerve his captors. He came to after being beaten again to find himself again within the darkened walls of the Bastille. It hadn't quietened him though, and he shouted and raged, throwing insults and sarcasm at all who would listen. Still though, they were instructed to stay quiet and so they did, leaving him with nothing but frustration and annoyance at his being ignored.
He was met with punishment, again direct instructions from the King. And he was taken and flogged. Though they said nothing, he could see in the eyes of his captors how uncomfortable it made them that while it hurt him, it didn't seem to effect him. But then they had no idea what he'd been through. They had no idea truly who he was.
It all changed after that though. A fear that couldn't help but be displayed when he saw that they no longer intended to take him to the cell in which he'd inhabited before. No, they took him somewhere much worse.
It was into the bowels of the building that he was lead. An area that it seemed less used, or at least forgotten. No natural light there, and a smell that could be realised from quite a distance. It smelt of death and decay and rotting waste.
Jack didn't like the darkness, not when he couldn't remove himself from it. He didn't like enclosed spaces. His experiences of being buried alive and encased in concrete will do that to a guy. And so when he saw where he was to be put, the only feeling he could display was panic.
There was a grate on the floor, barely visible in the candlelit halls, and it was lifted to reveal a small set of steps down which Jack was all but dragged. The ground was barely that, water logged from the moat outside and infested with rats and waste. He fought the captors but with his weakness from the last few days compounded with the fact he'd been flogged, he had no energy to fight back.
And so he was shackled by his ankle to a chain to the wall and he was left there. In that hole of dirt and mud, with no light and little space. The grate above was closed and the door ahead locked with a heavy slam.
And through it all there remained no sign of Jack, no indication of when he might return. A though to which she countered to herself again and again? That he as under no obligation to do so.
She told herself he had not intended to. That is planning their next trip together he had unintentionally stumbled across someone that genuinely required his assistance rather than merely his company. That it had indeed been his assistance she required the day she met Jack was studiously ignored.
Or perhaps, she considered, his path had managed to cross the Doctor's. Despite his certainty it would not. Perhaps they were together even now.
The least flattering whisper simply that he found someone or someplace that amused him more. That Reinette did not allow herself to linger on. But the words had been thought, and could not ever fully go away.
But there remained other, pressing matters.
She knew she had been distant the last months at court, and that her very position there was threatened because of it. Exhausting thought it may be, and the illness it would bring her too inevitable? Reinette could do no less than conquer it.
It was time to do so. To redefine her role and to challenge everything that was understood.
Time passed, though Jack didn't know how much. Weeks, he thought, though there was no way to gauge it. There was no way to even measure the passing of the day. No light and no moon. No window to see either. No natural air. It felt, to him, as though he'd been taken from time and left drifting in the void.
The summer warmth outside the Bastille helped things breed within it. A healthy supply of rats and enough waste for them to feed on. There was no dignity in it, in the small confined spaces where Jack was all but forgotten. His only measure of time was the bucket that would be lowered with water and stale bread. It seemed to him that was roughly every two days or so, though even that was imprecise and not accurate to use as any sort of marker.
There were few people that moved about above, and so calling or shouting would do little good. It was a forgotten little hole in which he'd been put, and he had no choice but to wait it out. It wasn't something he could escape from, even Jack Harkness had his limitations.
Outside, in Paris, life continued, and a month passed and so did another, and Jack hadn't moved from his hole.
The weather cooled and so did the water that pooled in the cell, it froze on cold nights, and froze around him, cooling and hurting his body. His body that already had become weak and worn. It hurt to sit and hurt more to stand. The shackles on his ankles that had once been tight were now loose and wore at his skin when they touched it.
Contact with the rats and the waste had infected him and given sores to his skin that stank and grew. And all he had, was the hope of a piece of bread every few days.
That and knowledge. Ah yes, he had knowledge. Because, if nothing else came, the revolution would. He knew that. Years, yes, and a great deal of them. But he had nothing but time, of course, and he could lie to himself and pretend it was fine. And he would get out.
Another and another and then two more still. Five months since Jack Harkness pressed a kiss to her shoulder and disappeared.
There was a practical acceptance now.
There had been no conversations and there had been no promises. Jack owed her nothing more than he had already shared and really, truly perhaps it was a gentle reminder of the first lesson Reinette learned. That everything, especially what matters, is fleeting.
As the fifth month stretched on, Reinette could not ignore the quiet awareness that crept upon her or fail to mark the occasion. A year since they met on a rare mild morning of early winter. Time was confused now, their story no longer so linear. But she could not help but consider this the beginning of their time together.
It was much, much colder a year to the day when she stood next to the tree and watched it. As if even now he might reappear. He did not, and the only conclusion that Reinette drew as she returned to Versailles was that is would be a long, hard winter. She could feel it.
Even the necklace she still wore out of sight, her lone nod to sentimentality seemed chilled. It no longer sat against her skin as warmly as it once had.
She fully threw herself into the activities at court now. There was the school, or course. The porcelain factory and patterns to be approved. She sponsored several new artists and slowly, deliberately become so invaluable to Louis politically that he could never think to send her away.
Five and a half months and it wasn't the starvation that took him, though it was a factor that took its toll. But it was a disease; something transmitted by the rats that took solace in the dark and the damp as the weather changed. Something that had got into his system through a cut and infected his blood. It had killed him within days.
But then he woke.
He woke, lying in a pool of his own waste, and his body was his again, muscles restored and body renewed. But it was no escape. It was no way out because there was none. He had found for him a bucket of water there that must have sat for a day at least.
Alive again, and so the cycle continued. It seemed to take less time for him to weaken now, his muscles soon wasting and stomach soon becoming starved. It was harder to fight it now, and as the months past, another two, three, he lost himself to a delirium brought on by his surroundings.
He ceased to be recognisable as himself, and a large part of him was glad at that. His hair grew and became matted and dirty, and his stubble grew to a beard, unhampered and unruly.
And he began to learn when it was night. He knew from the cold. The ice in the water and the pain it would bring. And that was the cycle of his days.
She was right about the winter, Reinette soon discovered. Though she took little pleasure in it. The season was especially vicious, and ultimately she knew it was only a matter of time before she fell ill.
Reinette pushed herself too hard, she knew that. She did not ask, rather demanded too much of a body that had ultimately failed her since the first time she fell ill at school at the age of seven. But if illness was inevitable the at the very least she could exhibit fierce control over the time she was not.
It was sudden. Sometime after her birthday and when the weather was its most bitter. It brought with it the familiar fever and migraines, Louis' concerned but distant presence and the familiar parade of doctors and their bleedings. It was two months before she was fully recovered. Two months before she could stare down the court and their whispers and remind them she was not yet gone.
At least, she reminded herself, spring would soon come.
She still thought of Jack, more than she might have thought so many months removed. Reinette was practical, and knew that while time did little to heal most wounds it was capable of diluting them. It was how she filled the space between the Doctor. How, when she told Louis their liaison must end she could speak confidently to him that he would be all right. That soon he would not even recall the force of his reaction now.
Thus it hurt less to consider now where he might be, and what he might be doing.
Jack stood on a roof of an office building in Cardiff. He looked out towards the bay in the near distance, and the Bristol Channel out beyond that. The breeze was cool against his face and he could smell that smell, a scent that was distinctly Cardiff. His city. His home. But the calm was displaced by a cloud up ahead. A cloud that appeared from nowhere and darkened the sky. It rained down until around him it fell like streaks of black and he was locked in darkness.
And then he opened his eyes, and he was again in that cell, in that hole. Alone.
The nightmares came more often. Twisted dreams that confused his mind and made him forget where he was. They weren't always bad, sometimes they took him somewhere, a moment in a memory that faded as he recalled the truth of his location. It didn't seem to be always with sleep, but they were waking and lucid and he wondered what was real and what not.
It had been ten months.
Another month after that and someone finally came down. They held a candle and the light of it burned into his eyes. He shrunk back from it, balled and huddled into the corner in which he'd barely moved from, but for to struggle to get the food that would sometime be brought.
It had seemed to shock the captors to find he was still alive. He'd pleaded then, asked for answers or just to leave, but it had been met with laughs and taunts and it seemed to fuel their urge to take him for what he hadn't had since he'd arrived. He was flogged again then and the whole experience was blurred and marked only by the sting of pain.
They had placed him then, bleeding and sore, back in the hole. Again, he'd been left.
Spring came again, as it always did, and Reinette welcomed it.
There was a particular need for it this year, as she still slowly recovered from her illness. Her hair and skin refreshed by the sun. Her gowns began to fit as they should once more.
There could be no doubting her influence now. And those that thought the dissolution of her physical relationship with Louis would prove her downfall were proven wrong. If anything their bonds were now stronger. For Louis could be an indifferent ruler at his worst, and he needed her passions and attentions. He might argue when she exhausted herself, but never once did he actually ask that she stop.
And then it was a year since she last saw Jack.
An entire year.
It was all too easy to mark the day. Reinette had always been conscious of time since her childhood and the first night the fireplace spun. She was aware of it now. One year to the day since the one they spent together.
She found herself walking the labyrinth, imagining how this one was different for him than the last. She wondered if he was happy. Because if he recognized it or not, he deserved that.
That's how long it had been. How long since Jack was last free, since he'd spent that memorable day with Reinette. It seemed like lifetimes ago to him now. It was all he could do to remember, but he did. That's how he filled his time by sinking back into his own mind. He remembered. He remembered the times, small, he remembered the people that were gone. The thought of the Doctor, of his team, of Ianto. He thought of all the people he'd loved, all gone now.
And he thought of Reinette. He hoped she was well, hoped she didn't resent him for disappearing as he did.
He hoped.
But hope waned, because it became harder to see through, harder to have any clarity at all.
He was ill again. He had been for a long time, but it was consuming him now. He didn't move, not from the place against the corner. Should food or water be delivered he barely had the energy to retrieve it. His body began to shut down. He'd have died already if not for some inbuilt ability to stay alive a little longer. The universe taunting him that little bit more.
But it could only go so far, and 8 months after he'd last died, he was dying again. Slowly, slowly, he started to give up.
Hot and festering and disease ran rampant in the poorer streets of Paris. Louis would not be persuaded to go near her for some time. Since he was a child he carried an overwhelming fear of death, which made it all the more difficult for him to comprehend Reinette's soft acceptance of it.
What would he think now, to know she could name the precise day?
It occurred to her often she had never pressed Jack to answer how. She supposed she never might now. She did not think it required all that much imagination.
Versailles never managed the seasons well. For all its beauty it was poorly conceived. The winters were bitter and the summer all but unbearable. A cool bath had done little to bring comfort, and even in her simplest, lightest gown of muslin there was no denying the oppressive heat. Sweat caught beneath her stays, impossible to reach. Reinette had little choice but to ignore it.
She retired to her rooms for the most oppressive heat of the afternoon in an attempt to avoid it. Reinette was there for several minutes before a bundle of papers left sitting at her writing desk caught her attention.
Curious, she moved to examine them.
The writ she recognized, the familiar seal cut into the wax. The accompanying note, left in an anonymous hand. And the description of a man. With each page her breath stilled until there was no air left at all.
Nothing left at all but a single, carrying word.
Jack.
She lifted her skirts and ran to Louis chambers, past courtiers and guards. Not caring for the sight she made.
The only indication that Jack had to alert him he'd been kept for over year was that heat had returned. It made the air around him fragrant with the stench, and though it was the norm to him now, he was dimly aware of it, somewhere in the back of his mind, that part of his mind that still tried.
There was little of it now, trying. He lay against the corner wall simply because he could do little else. He couldn't move, his muscles wasted, his eyes barely saw in the darkness. He still wore the same clothes with which he'd been thrown in over a year ago. Or at least what once were clothes. They were worn and torn and crusted with waste and dried blood where months ago he'd been flogged.
He was a shell of a man he once was. Haggard and hollow both inside and out. He hoped now for the death that he knew must be near, just to rid himself for a while of the pain in his muscles and in everything he held.
Louis was far from alone when Reinette entered his rooms, but he knew enough of her to all but immediately dismiss his advisers. They left, eyes wide and gossip already on their tongue. As if she had not already made enough of it.
Then they were alone. Then, the words came.
Masks were for hallways and ballrooms, not for here. Every bit of her distress was evidenced on Reinette's features. She did not have the thought to hide it as she ignored the gentle familiarity of the space and the man before her. There was no comfort in it now.
Indeed there was a great deal less. Words like hurt and distrust came far too easily. The writ. His seal. His signature.
Jack.
What had he done?
A misplaced glance at a truck in the far corner sent Reinette there. She knew people and their thoughts far too well not to follow the gaze. She pulled it open only to find a familiar coat. She wrapped it about her arms like armor only to discover something far more disturbing beneath. His wriststrap.
Whatever had been done to him, wherever he now was? There would have been no escape.
Reinette stood silently as Louis, now just as distressed at the sight of her reaction, fumbled through his words and his reasoning. A dance. Misplaced attentions. What could only be translated to Reinette's ears as damaged pride. Coldly she reminded him of all his other attentions, all the countless other women she had done nothing too other than a few sharply made opinions.
It was because of her. All that time, he watched.
It was all beyond ridiculous, and ----
His next mishandled confession left Reinette cold.
She moved to stand in the space Louis' next breath would come from. There was no mistaking her anger.
"You put him underground?"
What came next was a flurry of words and action. She demanded Louis write Jack's pardon then and there, informing him she would deliver it to the Bastille herself. He attempted to object, of course. But a few more well placed words brought him to silence.
And then she was in her carriage, two of Louis' strongest footmen following behind. She left him with no promises of when she would see him again, if at all.
They stared, at course, as she entered the guardhouse and demanded to be taken to Jack's location. There was no mistaking the king's seal. They attempted to object when her intention to follow them down into his cell was made clear. It only took a look to silence them now.
Reinette climbed further into the darkness, gaze already searching for Jack.
Walls and bars were not something that Jack Harkness had ever been known to allow to confine him, and so he had no intention of allowing them to do so now. Within hours of his being confined, he was planning and plotting for a way to end it.
But as the night took hold and Jack knew only by instinct that the rest of the city around him slept, Jack couldn't help but consider the place he'd been stolen from and the woman with whom he'd been with.
Reinette.
In the darkness of the room and when the candle burned out, he looked out the crack in the wall and he thought of the day before. It had been a good day; he'd noted that at the time. But perhaps even then he hadn't realised the extent of it. And more than that, he remembered what he'd said to her, and that he'd told her he'd take her away today. And he'd broken that promise. He thought too of how he'd spent the previous night. It was stark in comparison to his position now, and highlighted just how unexpected his life always was.
He wondered if she thought he had left without a word. She surely had no idea where he could be?
But it wouldn't last, he told himself, and when light came he'd continue his task. And he'd get out.
And so the night became day, but it didn't end and it seemed no time at all until another night was close and upon him.
He plotted still, of course, and it was on his fourth day that he made his move. He'd procured paper by way of bargaining with one of the servants who delivered food, and he'd written a note and offered a bribe to get it sent to Reinette. It should reach her and if his plan worked as he hoped, then so should he.
So day five, one day after his note left the Bastille, he waited until the dark of night and when he heard the last doors lock, he got to work.
Within the hour, he had managed to leave the confines of his cell and of the Bastille itself and after secreting himself away within the streets of Paris for a matter of hours, he made his way back to Versailles.
He had a score to settle. And he was not happy.
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She could not explain her initial hesitation to do so. It was nearly of a day when the sheets would have been otherwise. But something in the action seemed a full admission that Reinette had accepted his absence.
That wherever Jack had gone to, he would not immediately be returning.
It caused a strange, gnawing sensation somewhere in her core. After all, until that moment Jack had not been the sort to simply disappear. Even after their arguments, even when he left? He always met her gaze squarely as he did so. There was no mystery there. And they always managed to speak plainly of the events afterward.
The linens changed and with nothing but herself to take to bed, it should have meant that Reinette slept. But instead she found her head merely more cleared for thought. The smallest, darkest of which she did not fully wish to consider.
She had told Jack plainly in London that she was certain if they became to memorable, he would leave. It spoke to things like reason and distance and security. It could be argued that they ignored that. But she had come to believe, privately, that perhaps she had been wrong. Or that at the very least they grew past such ideas.
She considered, again and again, the events o their day together.
Had Jack run?
Would he return?
She had been to the bench once. Only once and when he was not there she had not gone back.
Louis seemed to sense her mood, even if they did not speak of it. But he was kind, and solicitous and made an effort to spend time with her both publicly and privately. His latest mistress made a fine show of being offended, but for the moment Reinette could not be bothered to engage in childish games.
Her thoughts remained elsewhere.
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But at the same time, Jack wasn't one to hide. He put himself in the line of danger, he was well aware of that, and the same went now; he wouldn't shy away.
And that's why he found himself again in Versailles. The light was just lifting, early morning, and he stormed the halls of the palace. He was shouted at as he walked, of course, made well aware of, but he didn't care for that, nor the fact he was none too ripe after a series of days confined.
But even with all he'd seen, Jack Harkness sometimes had too much confidence. He'd found that before but it was a hard pill to swallow. Storming in didn't always work, the 4-5-6 had proved him that. And again, as it had been then, it proved his stumbling block.
He headed with purpose to Reinette's rooms and knocked the door open firmly. But inside, there was no Reinette. There was, however, standing with his back to him, a man while though he'd heard much of and though he'd even encountered, he'd never truly seen, nor ever spoken to.
The King.
He should have known, of course. He should have expected it. The King certainly had done. And when the doors closed behind him and Jack saw the line of guards that were already waiting in the room, he realised it had all been a trap.
It had seemed to surprise the King when Jack laughed. It unsettled him, that was for sure. They spoke though then, held an actual conversation and it became so much clearer to him. Because though he thought it nothing? That time at the Yew Tree Ball, Louis had seen him. He'd seen Jack unmasked and so when he returned? He recognised him. In fact Jack had been watched ever since he'd got here for something he hadn't done until mere nights ago.
Louis told him he'd hoped to keep it simple, but Jack had seen to that being impossible. And so things would get harder.
And so they did.
Restrained as before by the mass of guards Jack was again hit until unconscious. And what came next? Was much worse.
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For a man that always heard yes, she knew quite well one of the things that drew him to her was the possibility she might say 'no'. Until, of course, the time she had actually said it. That still did not sit well between them, even if they made a fine show of otherwise. But eventually knew was confident it would fade, even with Louis. Especially with Louis. He was far too distractable in the physical sense.
He came early as promised, it must have been immediately after morning mass. Normally Louis avoided such collisions of what was generally viewed as sin and soul. But he came, none the less. And Reinette pressed their coffee in the usual way as they discussed the events of court and the comings and goings there.
Eventually talk turned to her daughter, whom Louis was extremely fond of. He mentioned the day, then. That it was sure to be a lovely one. And even though Reinette was not one to be so quietly manipulated she had to agree to both of his points. And so mother and daughter spent the better part of the morning walking and in the company of her favorite fat duck.
When she returned, it was to news of a commotion in the halls. A man seen very close to her rooms. With a sharp gaze she pressed questions to people that would never meet her eyes.
Did he wear a coat? No, hardly that.
What of something on his wrist? No, nothing like that.
Was he attractive, with dark hair? Never. Bruised and stinking and surely just another peasant gone missing.
Reinette thought of the country baker that had lost himself in the halls of Versailles just the year before and frowned.
When she finally saw Louis again, she pressed the same questions towards him. He merely laughed, unconcerned.
He was gone six months before, Reinette reminded herself quietly. It had yet to even be six days.
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He was met with punishment, again direct instructions from the King. And he was taken and flogged. Though they said nothing, he could see in the eyes of his captors how uncomfortable it made them that while it hurt him, it didn't seem to effect him. But then they had no idea what he'd been through. They had no idea truly who he was.
It all changed after that though. A fear that couldn't help but be displayed when he saw that they no longer intended to take him to the cell in which he'd inhabited before. No, they took him somewhere much worse.
It was into the bowels of the building that he was lead. An area that it seemed less used, or at least forgotten. No natural light there, and a smell that could be realised from quite a distance. It smelt of death and decay and rotting waste.
Jack didn't like the darkness, not when he couldn't remove himself from it. He didn't like enclosed spaces. His experiences of being buried alive and encased in concrete will do that to a guy. And so when he saw where he was to be put, the only feeling he could display was panic.
There was a grate on the floor, barely visible in the candlelit halls, and it was lifted to reveal a small set of steps down which Jack was all but dragged. The ground was barely that, water logged from the moat outside and infested with rats and waste. He fought the captors but with his weakness from the last few days compounded with the fact he'd been flogged, he had no energy to fight back.
And so he was shackled by his ankle to a chain to the wall and he was left there. In that hole of dirt and mud, with no light and little space. The grate above was closed and the door ahead locked with a heavy slam.
And there, in that space, Jack would stay.
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Two weeks became three.
Three weeks became a month.
And through it all there remained no sign of Jack, no indication of when he might return. A though to which she countered to herself again and again? That he as under no obligation to do so.
She told herself he had not intended to. That is planning their next trip together he had unintentionally stumbled across someone that genuinely required his assistance rather than merely his company. That it had indeed been his assistance she required the day she met Jack was studiously ignored.
Or perhaps, she considered, his path had managed to cross the Doctor's. Despite his certainty it would not. Perhaps they were together even now.
The least flattering whisper simply that he found someone or someplace that amused him more. That Reinette did not allow herself to linger on. But the words had been thought, and could not ever fully go away.
But there remained other, pressing matters.
She knew she had been distant the last months at court, and that her very position there was threatened because of it. Exhausting thought it may be, and the illness it would bring her too inevitable? Reinette could do no less than conquer it.
It was time to do so. To redefine her role and to challenge everything that was understood.
Again.
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The summer warmth outside the Bastille helped things breed within it. A healthy supply of rats and enough waste for them to feed on. There was no dignity in it, in the small confined spaces where Jack was all but forgotten. His only measure of time was the bucket that would be lowered with water and stale bread. It seemed to him that was roughly every two days or so, though even that was imprecise and not accurate to use as any sort of marker.
There were few people that moved about above, and so calling or shouting would do little good. It was a forgotten little hole in which he'd been put, and he had no choice but to wait it out. It wasn't something he could escape from, even Jack Harkness had his limitations.
Outside, in Paris, life continued, and a month passed and so did another, and Jack hadn't moved from his hole.
The weather cooled and so did the water that pooled in the cell, it froze on cold nights, and froze around him, cooling and hurting his body. His body that already had become weak and worn. It hurt to sit and hurt more to stand. The shackles on his ankles that had once been tight were now loose and wore at his skin when they touched it.
Contact with the rats and the waste had infected him and given sores to his skin that stank and grew. And all he had, was the hope of a piece of bread every few days.
That and knowledge. Ah yes, he had knowledge. Because, if nothing else came, the revolution would. He knew that. Years, yes, and a great deal of them. But he had nothing but time, of course, and he could lie to himself and pretend it was fine. And he would get out.
It was all a matter of time.
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Another and another and then two more still. Five months since Jack Harkness pressed a kiss to her shoulder and disappeared.
There was a practical acceptance now.
There had been no conversations and there had been no promises. Jack owed her nothing more than he had already shared and really, truly perhaps it was a gentle reminder of the first lesson Reinette learned. That everything, especially what matters, is fleeting.
As the fifth month stretched on, Reinette could not ignore the quiet awareness that crept upon her or fail to mark the occasion. A year since they met on a rare mild morning of early winter. Time was confused now, their story no longer so linear. But she could not help but consider this the beginning of their time together.
It was much, much colder a year to the day when she stood next to the tree and watched it. As if even now he might reappear. He did not, and the only conclusion that Reinette drew as she returned to Versailles was that is would be a long, hard winter. She could feel it.
Even the necklace she still wore out of sight, her lone nod to sentimentality seemed chilled. It no longer sat against her skin as warmly as it once had.
She fully threw herself into the activities at court now. There was the school, or course. The porcelain factory and patterns to be approved. She sponsored several new artists and slowly, deliberately become so invaluable to Louis politically that he could never think to send her away.
It was not to be considered.
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Five and a half months and it wasn't the starvation that took him, though it was a factor that took its toll. But it was a disease; something transmitted by the rats that took solace in the dark and the damp as the weather changed. Something that had got into his system through a cut and infected his blood. It had killed him within days.
But then he woke.
He woke, lying in a pool of his own waste, and his body was his again, muscles restored and body renewed. But it was no escape. It was no way out because there was none. He had found for him a bucket of water there that must have sat for a day at least.
Alive again, and so the cycle continued. It seemed to take less time for him to weaken now, his muscles soon wasting and stomach soon becoming starved. It was harder to fight it now, and as the months past, another two, three, he lost himself to a delirium brought on by his surroundings.
He ceased to be recognisable as himself, and a large part of him was glad at that. His hair grew and became matted and dirty, and his stubble grew to a beard, unhampered and unruly.
And he began to learn when it was night. He knew from the cold. The ice in the water and the pain it would bring. And that was the cycle of his days.
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Reinette pushed herself too hard, she knew that. She did not ask, rather demanded too much of a body that had ultimately failed her since the first time she fell ill at school at the age of seven. But if illness was inevitable the at the very least she could exhibit fierce control over the time she was not.
It was sudden. Sometime after her birthday and when the weather was its most bitter. It brought with it the familiar fever and migraines, Louis' concerned but distant presence and the familiar parade of doctors and their bleedings. It was two months before she was fully recovered. Two months before she could stare down the court and their whispers and remind them she was not yet gone.
At least, she reminded herself, spring would soon come.
She still thought of Jack, more than she might have thought so many months removed. Reinette was practical, and knew that while time did little to heal most wounds it was capable of diluting them. It was how she filled the space between the Doctor. How, when she told Louis their liaison must end she could speak confidently to him that he would be all right. That soon he would not even recall the force of his reaction now.
Thus it hurt less to consider now where he might be, and what he might be doing.
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And then he opened his eyes, and he was again in that cell, in that hole. Alone.
The nightmares came more often. Twisted dreams that confused his mind and made him forget where he was. They weren't always bad, sometimes they took him somewhere, a moment in a memory that faded as he recalled the truth of his location. It didn't seem to be always with sleep, but they were waking and lucid and he wondered what was real and what not.
It had been ten months.
Another month after that and someone finally came down. They held a candle and the light of it burned into his eyes. He shrunk back from it, balled and huddled into the corner in which he'd barely moved from, but for to struggle to get the food that would sometime be brought.
It had seemed to shock the captors to find he was still alive. He'd pleaded then, asked for answers or just to leave, but it had been met with laughs and taunts and it seemed to fuel their urge to take him for what he hadn't had since he'd arrived. He was flogged again then and the whole experience was blurred and marked only by the sting of pain.
They had placed him then, bleeding and sore, back in the hole. Again, he'd been left.
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There was a particular need for it this year, as she still slowly recovered from her illness. Her hair and skin refreshed by the sun. Her gowns began to fit as they should once more.
There could be no doubting her influence now. And those that thought the dissolution of her physical relationship with Louis would prove her downfall were proven wrong. If anything their bonds were now stronger. For Louis could be an indifferent ruler at his worst, and he needed her passions and attentions. He might argue when she exhausted herself, but never once did he actually ask that she stop.
And then it was a year since she last saw Jack.
An entire year.
It was all too easy to mark the day. Reinette had always been conscious of time since her childhood and the first night the fireplace spun. She was aware of it now. One year to the day since the one they spent together.
She found herself walking the labyrinth, imagining how this one was different for him than the last. She wondered if he was happy. Because if he recognized it or not, he deserved that.
No matter how he might argue with her.
The thought was nearly enough to make her smile.
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That's how long it had been. How long since Jack was last free, since he'd spent that memorable day with Reinette. It seemed like lifetimes ago to him now. It was all he could do to remember, but he did. That's how he filled his time by sinking back into his own mind. He remembered. He remembered the times, small, he remembered the people that were gone. The thought of the Doctor, of his team, of Ianto. He thought of all the people he'd loved, all gone now.
And he thought of Reinette. He hoped she was well, hoped she didn't resent him for disappearing as he did.
He hoped.
But hope waned, because it became harder to see through, harder to have any clarity at all.
He was ill again. He had been for a long time, but it was consuming him now. He didn't move, not from the place against the corner. Should food or water be delivered he barely had the energy to retrieve it. His body began to shut down. He'd have died already if not for some inbuilt ability to stay alive a little longer. The universe taunting him that little bit more.
But it could only go so far, and 8 months after he'd last died, he was dying again. Slowly, slowly, he started to give up.
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Hot and festering and disease ran rampant in the poorer streets of Paris. Louis would not be persuaded to go near her for some time. Since he was a child he carried an overwhelming fear of death, which made it all the more difficult for him to comprehend Reinette's soft acceptance of it.
What would he think now, to know she could name the precise day?
It occurred to her often she had never pressed Jack to answer how. She supposed she never might now. She did not think it required all that much imagination.
Versailles never managed the seasons well. For all its beauty it was poorly conceived. The winters were bitter and the summer all but unbearable. A cool bath had done little to bring comfort, and even in her simplest, lightest gown of muslin there was no denying the oppressive heat. Sweat caught beneath her stays, impossible to reach. Reinette had little choice but to ignore it.
She retired to her rooms for the most oppressive heat of the afternoon in an attempt to avoid it. Reinette was there for several minutes before a bundle of papers left sitting at her writing desk caught her attention.
Curious, she moved to examine them.
The writ she recognized, the familiar seal cut into the wax. The accompanying note, left in an anonymous hand. And the description of a man. With each page her breath stilled until there was no air left at all.
Nothing left at all but a single, carrying word.
Jack.
She lifted her skirts and ran to Louis chambers, past courtiers and guards. Not caring for the sight she made.
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There was little of it now, trying. He lay against the corner wall simply because he could do little else. He couldn't move, his muscles wasted, his eyes barely saw in the darkness. He still wore the same clothes with which he'd been thrown in over a year ago. Or at least what once were clothes. They were worn and torn and crusted with waste and dried blood where months ago he'd been flogged.
He was a shell of a man he once was. Haggard and hollow both inside and out. He hoped now for the death that he knew must be near, just to rid himself for a while of the pain in his muscles and in everything he held.
It seemed a long time coming.
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Then they were alone. Then, the words came.
Masks were for hallways and ballrooms, not for here. Every bit of her distress was evidenced on Reinette's features. She did not have the thought to hide it as she ignored the gentle familiarity of the space and the man before her. There was no comfort in it now.
Indeed there was a great deal less. Words like hurt and distrust came far too easily. The writ. His seal. His signature.
Jack.
What had he done?
A misplaced glance at a truck in the far corner sent Reinette there. She knew people and their thoughts far too well not to follow the gaze. She pulled it open only to find a familiar coat. She wrapped it about her arms like armor only to discover something far more disturbing beneath. His wriststrap.
Whatever had been done to him, wherever he now was? There would have been no escape.
Reinette stood silently as Louis, now just as distressed at the sight of her reaction, fumbled through his words and his reasoning. A dance. Misplaced attentions. What could only be translated to Reinette's ears as damaged pride. Coldly she reminded him of all his other attentions, all the countless other women she had done nothing too other than a few sharply made opinions.
It was because of her. All that time, he watched.
It was all beyond ridiculous, and ----
His next mishandled confession left Reinette cold.
She moved to stand in the space Louis' next breath would come from. There was no mistaking her anger.
"You put him underground?"
What came next was a flurry of words and action. She demanded Louis write Jack's pardon then and there, informing him she would deliver it to the Bastille herself. He attempted to object, of course. But a few more well placed words brought him to silence.
And then she was in her carriage, two of Louis' strongest footmen following behind. She left him with no promises of when she would see him again, if at all.
They stared, at course, as she entered the guardhouse and demanded to be taken to Jack's location. There was no mistaking the king's seal. They attempted to object when her intention to follow them down into his cell was made clear. It only took a look to silence them now.
Reinette climbed further into the darkness, gaze already searching for Jack.
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