Fic: Immovable Object
Title: Immovable Object
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG
Pairing: Jack Harkness/Tommy Brockless
Summary: "For a long time Tommy can't quite understand why Jack carries on this odd little relationship of theirs. Then he realizes, to a lesser degree, he's the same thing to Jack that Jack is to him. He's a constant."
Spoilers: Slight Spoilers for 'To The Last Man' and 'Fragments'.
Author's note: I own nothing and no one, this story is unbetaed, and comments are love
Immovable Object
***
He wakes up and doesn’t open his eyes.
He’s cold, and terrified and empty inside, like he’s just woken from a bad dream, and can’t for the life of him remember what it was. But he won’t give it up. Because he knows reality will be just as bad as the dream. But now, for those precious moments between dreaming and knowing where you’ve woken, he can feel safe.
When he finally opens his eyes he decides he must be dead.
There’s white light, and murmuring voices, and above all he’s not in a trench in some god forsaken field in France.
It takes a minute to realize the voices are saying his name.
“Tommy? Tommy, can you hear us?”
“Yes,” he murmurs. His throat hurts. Maybe he’s not dead after all.
The world swims around him as it slowly comes into focus. There are people behind the voices.
“Do you know where you are?”
Blinking, he tries to sit up, but firm hands stop him. He glances around the room. He’s lying on some sort of operating table, in a small, circular, white tiled room.
“Am I in hospital? Was I shot?”
“No. You’re not dead yet. You’re back in Britain. You’re in Cardiff.”
He tries to sit up again, and this time the hands let him. “How am I in Cardiff? I was in France…”
He’s starting to panic slightly now, though he’s trying hard not to show it. You couldn’t look scared, even around your mates…
“You’re in a place called the Torchwood Facility…”
“Why am I in a facility?! I’m fine! Really, I’m not a coward! Let me go!!”
He’s starting to thrash, and he can tell he’s managed to knock something over from the resulting crash. The man trying to tell him he was in Cardiff had backed away, heading up some stairs, and the hands trying to hold him back…
“Tommy? Tommy! Calm down!”
There’s a strong voice now to go with the hands, and a face…a smiling face, tinged with a bit of worry.
Tommy’s breathing a bit heavily now, and leans back to catch his breath, letting the hands help him.
“That’s it. Can you tell me where you last were?”
“I…I was…”
His eyes are still darting around, looking for the other man, and the tall man in front of him snaps his fingers to bring his attention back to him.
“I was…in France. In the trenches, with my squad…What happened, sir? I swear, I’m not a deserter, I’m not!”
The man smiles again. It’s a nice smile. Lots of teeth…
“I know, Tommy. You got hurt, and sent back here. You’re fine now,” he hurriedly said, as Tommy started to panic slightly again, checking himself for holes and missing limbs, “But you suffered a bit of memory loss. Let’s check, shall we?”
Tommy nodded dumbly.
“Who was your C.O.?”
“Tim. Sergeant Timothy Dalton, Sir. Little Tim, we used to call him. He’s younger than I am…”
“That’s good. Very good, soldier.” The smile became an all out grin.
“I’m Jack Harkness, and this is Torchwood. We’re going to take care of you.”
***
The next couple of days are a bit of blur. He doesn’t understand much of what they tell him, though they explain it several times. They tell him he’s still recovering, but still refuse to tell him from what. He thinks he gets it after the third day.
He notices the man and woman who were here when he became a ‘resident’, as Jack jokingly calls it, aren’t here anymore.
He asks Jack what happened to them. Jack avoids the question.
After a month or so he stops trying to learn everyone’s name. Not many last a week.
Except Jack.
***
On the 12th day he wakes up, Jack isn’t there. He panics. It took the new doctor an hour and a half to convince him that Jack was just away on a mission.
Someone must have told him because after that Jack makes an effort to be there. He only misses a handful of times after that.
***
On the 21st day two things happen. The Second World War breaks out and Jack gets a new coat. It’s blue and wool and he really looks quite good in it.
Tommy says so.
“Thanks. I had one a while back, and I really quite missed it.”
“What happened to it?”
“I guess you could say I left it in a friend’s vehicle.”
“Can’t you get it back?”
“One day, maybe. If I see him again.”
“Is he fighting the war?”
“…In a way.”
“Can we go for a drive? I’m really getting sick of this place.”
“You and me both…but there’s a restriction on petrol and rubber because of the war effort...”
“Oh.”
That cheeky grin again. “But Torchwood has a way around such things. Come on. My coat needs breaking in.”
***
On the 23rd day he asks Jack how old he is.
Jack wasn’t there again yesterday. He was told he was over in Germany, doing…something. He spent the day reading the papers littering the Hub.
When Jack comes back again he looks…Older. But only his eyes. Just tired. He perked up when he saw Tommy, with a joke and chuckle and a slap on the back.
When they’re alone Tommy asks. He’s held off for a long time, because Jack is the only constant he has is this strange place. Jack and the never ending barrages of needles and questions he’s had memorized for weeks. He doesn’t want to jinx it.
Jack’s answer is complicated, like everything else in this place, but he gets the important bits.
“So, you’ll be here as long as I am.”
“Longer, probably.”
“And you won’t leave?”
Jack starts to mumble something Tommy really doesn’t want to hear, so he stops Jack with a kiss.
He pulls away, unsure. Jack’s the only thing he’s got here, and he’s watched him flirt over the years, really doesn’t think he minds, but still…
Jack just smiles and kisses him back.
Tommy gets put back a few hours late that night.
***
In 1968, or his fiftieth day, depending on how you look at it, there was a new girl on the time. Her name was Susan, and she was what Jack jokingly called a ‘Right Dolly Bird’. Tommy thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
She had bright blond hair, and sparkly green eyes, nails the color of cherry apples and she chewed gum instead of smoking. She giggled at everything he said, and made him feel like a hero again, instead of…
Whatever he was these…days.
She wasn’t there the next time he woke up.
Jack said she couldn’t handle the pressure and quit the team.
Tommy chose to believe him.
***
The days pass faster after that, though routine still prevails.
He wakes up, looks around at the faces, old and new, sees Jack, and relaxes a bit.
He eats, gets caught up on world news, whether he wants to be or not.
Then come the tests, the recitations of name, rank and serial number that he barely listens to anymore.
Then the newcomers crowd around him, always interested, oversensitive, trying to make friends.
Finally, routine is over and the day begins to vary, reaching the point where he determines good ‘days’ from ‘bad’.
The date he’s woken always varies slightly, by about a week on either side of the first time. The team waits for what they predict to be a ‘quiet’ day, though from what little he’s seen, he doesn’t want to be caught up in a busy one.
So most days Jack takes him out. A lot of the time they’ll go to the movies. One time Jack takes him to see something called ‘Star Wars’. He says it’s absolute rubbish, but it’s a timeless movie.
Tommy stares in awe at the special effects with the rest of the matinee crowd. Jack laughs and kisses him.
He didn’t get to see what happened to the Millennium Falcon in the end.
***
Sometimes he wonders why Jack would choose to carry on this strange little relationship they have going on.
Then he realized, that to a lesser degree, he’s the same thing to Jack that Jack is to him.
He’s a constant.
***
The 77th day is special, because the 77th day wasn’t supposed to happen.
He doesn’t wake up from the nightmares he can barely remember anymore, doesn’t wake up on the bed in the medical bay, a doctor shining a light in his face.
He wakes up on the floor of the morgue with Jack kissing him, another man with hair tinged with silver and brow lined with stress standing in the background.
“Jack?”
The cocky grin he’s come to know over the years, and they do feel like years, comes flooding onto a face full of worry.
“Thought we’d lost you for a minute there.”
He gestures to the ceiling.
“Power outage. Long story, nasty beastie all gone now, but it thawed out the cryo pods. Doesn’t matter for most of the ‘residents’, but you...”
He wiped a drop of melted ice off of Tommy’s face and notices he’s shivering.
Pulling off the coat he now almost never removes he wraps it around Tommy’s shoulders and helps him to his feet.
“What day is it?”
“A full four months early for you.”
“Can I still come back when it’s time?”
Pulling off the coat he now almost never removes he wraps it around Tommy’s shoulders and helps him to his feet.
“I’ll talk to Alex, but my guess would be yes.”
Tommy tries to grin back, but his teeth are chattering too hard.
Jack frowns, and wraps the greatcoat tighter around the young man.
“But for now, I’d say our priority would be to warm you up. Cryo-freezing’s a bitch. Reminds me of this one time…Never mind. Come on. Let’s get you into bed.
***
Then on the 81st day, it’s different. Jack wakes him up alone.
“Where is everyone?”
“Gone.”
Jack draws the blood samples as Tommy munches on a piece of pizza, forgoing the usual questioning.
In fact, he doesn’t say much at all. Tommy doesn’t ask what happened to the others.
Jack invites him up to the main office, which is still too organized and neat to properly belong to him.
When he tells him to sit down and pours him a drink he knows what’s coming.
“Is it time? For me to go back.”
“No.” Jack places the drink in front of him. He doesn’t know what it is, Brandy or Scotch, but he can tell he’s going to need it, so he drinks it anyway.
“But that’s what this is about.”
“Yes. And no.”
Tommy’s known Jack long enough to know not to pry too much when he goes into this sort of mood.
Then again, he realizes, he’s known Jack no time at all.
“But you will,” Jack says suddenly, “Eventually.”
And suddenly he realizes why he recognizes this conversation. It’s the one he had with Tina last time he saw her…all those lifetimes ago.
He drains his drink, and stands up. Just before he turns to go he notices a file on the overly tidy desk.
Brockless, Thomas R. - C.F. 1918
Neither one of them speak as Jack puts him to sleep.
***
The next day he wakes to a new face.
“Hello?”
“Just relax. My name’s Toshiko. I’m going to take care of you.”