Fic: Devil may care (11/30)
Title: Devil may care
Author: sagestreet
Pairing: Jack/real!Captain Jack Harkness (mentions of past Jack/Ianto; some Ianto/OC)
Rating: PG
Warnings: language
Summary: Jack returns to 1941 to rescue the real Captain Jack Harkness. But while the two of them are circling each other, uncertain as to what they want, they fail to notice the dark clouds gathering on the horizon …
Previous Chapters: The story starts here.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Soundtrack: Catch Me If You Can (Soundtrack) No. 1 Title Sequence
11. Chapter: Where there's smoke
Having read his fake CV for what felt like the hundredth time, the Captain decided to have a lunch of leftover pancakes and cold tea and eventually settled down on Jack's bed, flipping open the book he had picked from the shelf. It was a well-thumbed old paperback by Saint-Exupéry, whose 'Night Flight' he had read and loved when he had been little more than a boy and whose 'Wind, Sand and Stars' had kept him sane in between sorties.
Vaguely wondering why Jack owned an English translation of a French book when it was obvious he would have been able to read it in the original without difficulty, the Captain flicked to the first page, realizing, with a slight sense of disappointment, that it was a children's book.
He was about to put it away when he noticed the first illustration: a picture of a hat, no doubt … Only that, on closer examination, it turned out that it was supposed to be a snake digesting an elephant.
The Captain laughed out loud, laughed at this funny little drawing in a way he hadn't laughed in months, possibly years, strangely relieved and almost liberated.
Then he read on, curious to see what this odd children's book was about, and forgot everything around him: all the strange things he had seen in Jack's living room, the spaceship that was parked in a field somewhere in the Welsh countryside, his fuzzy, pain-addled memories of their drive through Cardiff, and even his initial disappointment at not having been allowed to join the Weevil hunt …
And so it happened that he had just finished reading about the Little Prince's (not-quite) death and, like the pilot-narrator, was feeling caught somewhere between melancholy and hope when the door to Jack's office upstairs was flung open with a loud bang and the man himself came climbing down the ladder a few moments later. "Hey, you all right? Owen's waiting for you in the medical bay. Says he wants to give you your second shot."
"Oh, right." The Captain quickly put the book down and got up.
"I suspect he wants to do it now, so he can sleep in tomorrow," Jack grinned. "Sorry it took us so long, by the way. Chased a Weevil halfway through Cardiff," he added.
"Won't that be on the front page of every local newspaper by tomorrow?"
"Oh, it won't. Trust me. Eyewitnesses tend to … forget …" Jack let his voice trail off, his eyes holding an almost dangerous sparkle for a split second. "Ianto's already seeing to that … By the way, how about you and I head down to the shooting range later, have a bit of fun?"
ΨΨΨ
A little later, Owen went through his usual routine of jabbing the Captain's arm, calling him a dozen different nicknames (among them 'Her Majesty's secret field agent') and making odd jokes about the vaccine being 'shaken, not stirred'. Having thrown the box of sticking plasters at his patient, the doctor then proceeded to ignore him completely, all the while muttering sullenly to himself. (Apparently, he was still sulking because he had just lost an entire Sunday to hunting down a creature from another world.)
The Captain, for his part, had just put his shirt back on and was about to leap off the exam table when suddenly an all-too-familiar sound cut through the silence of the Hub.
They both flinched.
"Bloody hell! Four Weevil alarms in three days! Stupid buggers must be losing it," Owen hissed at no one in particular.
Moments later, Jack's form appeared behind the railing of the medical bay. "Owen, there seems to be another one. If we hurry up, we can still catch up with Gwen and Tosh on their way home and pick up Ianto from wherever he's 'interrogating' the eyewitnesses."
To the Captain's surprise, Owen suddenly managed to look very busy, grabbing a file folder from his messy desk and quickly flicking it open.
"Oh, come on, Owen. You've tried to pull that trick yesterday already," Jack sighed, a small exasperated smile creeping across his lips.
"It's not a trick, Jack," the doctor replied indignantly, trying to avoid meeting his boss's eye. "You said you wanted me to take another look at this Pharm thing and make sure I had all the paperwork ready for when your old chum Martha turns up."
Jack gave his medic a look that spelled disbelief. "Says the king of avoiding work."
"We all have our moments of creativity and genius," Owen declared with an air of self-importance.
"Yeah, right …" Jack muttered, an ironic lilt to his voice. "Okay, you can stay. You can entertain the Captain while we're away … No goofing around. Are we clear?"
"Don't worry. I'll keep a Golden Eye on him," Owen smirked, and then they were left alone.
ΨΨΨ
It turned out that it wasn't easy to make small talk with Dr. Owen Harper. Courtesy seemed to be a foreign concept to the man, and he kept rebuffing all attempts at conversation made by the Captain.
"So, can you show me one of these … uh … Weevils?" the Captain had asked him as soon as Jack had left.
"Jack would have my bollocks if I did that," the doctor had muttered distractedly. "Scaring civilians with the Weevil is his favorite part of the entire hiring process."
The Captain had smiled at that. "It's been a long time since anyone called me a civilian," he had said as a conversation starter.
But Owen hadn't taken the bait. "Wha'ever …" he had muttered, before ignoring his patient once again.
Currently, the man was thumbing through the file folder in his hand. The thing had a small red sticker on its cover saying: Torchwood employees are reminded to always label the case files correctly. I. Jones, Archivist.
Consequently, there was a large square label in the bottom right corner of the front cover, on which all the necessary file information had to be provided. But instead of filling out the respective columns for case number, date and classification status, Owen had scrawled 'Roberts, Meredith' across the back cover of the folder in an almost illegible chicken scratch, that marked him as a true disciple of Asclepius.
The Captain cleared his throat. "I couldn't help but notice that Jack was hurt pretty bad yesterday," he tried to engage the other man in conversation again.
"Oh, he's had worse, trust me," Owen replied absent-mindedly.
"I really don't mean to pry, but he seemed to have a, uh, really bad headache."
"Ah, well … he gets those … occasionally …" The medic didn't even look up from his folder.
"So, he's fine?" the Captain asked, feeling the knot of worry in his stomach begin to dissolve.
"That scratch on Ianto's cheek was worthy of a physician's attention; Jack's 'injury' wasn't! Trust me, I know what I'm doing. The man's as fine as he'll ever be."
A few long minutes ticked by without a word.
"So … I guess gun practice is off for today, then?" the Captain inquired eventually. "Jack wanted to take me to the shooting range later," he added quickly by way of explanation.
Owen still didn't look up from his work. "If Jack tries something funny in there, just punch him in the face," he stated matter-of-factly.
"Uh … somethin' funny?"
But the Captain didn't get to ask the doctor what he had meant by that cryptic remark because, at that moment, the man's phone suddenly started ringing.
"Yes, Jack? … What? … No! Of course, I'm still at the Hub. What did you think?! That I'd swan off the minute your back was turned? … That was just the one time! … What? … What did Gwen say now? … What, again? Heaven knows who she's seen up there! I'm pretty sure there's no one on the Plass or anywhere near the tourist off- … Look, if she insists, I can check out the CCTV," the doctor sighed, turning around and punching something into the keyboard attached to his strange monitor. But whatever the man had expected to flash up on the screen didn't appear, as the thing showed only static. "Fuck … CCTV's down again," he muttered. "Well, it's not my fault, is it?!" He was practically shouting now. "Oh, just tell her to shut up, Jack, or I'll start treating her for paranoia," he grit out angrily and cut the connection, slamming the phone down on his cluttered desk and inadvertently knocking over one of the three half-empty cups on it.
Cold coffee spilled all over the documents littering the desktop.
"Shit," he exclaimed. "Shit!"
What followed was a desperate rescue operation as they both scrambled to save as many sheets of paper as possible.
Between the two of them, they somehow managed to avert a complete disaster by clearing the desk of all the items on it. Owen mopped up the coffee with a balled-up t-shirt, and the Captain did the actual clearing part, quickly picking up one object after another and holding it up for the other man to dab at with his makeshift rag.
The variety of items on the desk ranged from coffee-stained documents to pens with their ends chewed off and a pile of photographs of a dead body. (They had spilled from the folder Owen had been holding earlier, the Captain realized.) Furthermore, there was a dirty scalpel, a stale cookie, a stethoscope, and a pornographic magazine, the front cover of which showed a female nude, the Captain realized with an awkward sense of discomfort.
Oddly enough, Owen didn't seem too embarrassed by the Captain's discovery. He didn't even try and hide the thing, giving his patient a knowing grin instead. "Careful, Spitfire! Don't cut yourself on the broken cup."
"I won't," the Captain replied quietly.
"Well, we all know what can happen when one gets … distracted," Owen suggested, giving the Captain a conspiratorial wink and setting the magazine aside.
"We should probably throw away the shards," the Captain said even quieter.
They worked silently side by side for a few minutes.
"I think that was all," the Captain stated finally.
"Oh, you know what?" Owen sighed. "Sod it all! Let's step outside for a smoke."
ΨΨΨ
The Captain stepped out of the tourist office (that, as it turned out, served as a front for the Torchwood Hub) and into the dark summer night. The black water of the Bay was lapping gently at the quay, and the air smelled of rain. Apparently, the downpour had just stopped, the wooden planks under the Captain's feet still glistening with a sheen of moisture in the pale light of the street lamps. But it wasn't cold at all - a pleasant, quiet summer evening.
As he turned his head and glanced up, he noticed the futuristic outlines of the buildings surrounding them. And just like that, the vaguely familiar feeling of being out of place, out of time and out of breath hit him like a fist to the stomach again. Quickly lowering his gaze, he tried to focus on the entrance to the tourist office. 'Calm down! You know you're in 2008.'
"Stupid picture, isn't it?" Owen's voice asked somewhere beside him.
The Captain blinked. "Uh … picture?"
"The skull. On the door."
'Oh, right,' the Captain realized, stepping closer to the entrance door.
Whoever had spray-painted the morbid picture on it, didn't seem to have any taste in color. The thing was a pale shade of green, that seemed to be glowing dangerously in the dark. A blotch of sickly, yellowish color screaming out into the blackness of the night, its pallid basic tint lending it a ghastly, ashen quality.
The Captain found himself strangely drawn in by the expanse of vile green, the skull's empty eye-sockets pulling him in like two powerful maelstroms, down into the vortex of nothingness, into the abyss of annihilation, grotesque, toothy grin seemingly laughing at him, providing the roaring background music to his fall. It almost felt as though the picture were reaching out to him, overwhelming his senses and overpowering his mind, mocking him and making him shudder, making him hear voices, have visions and sense … sense … He took a deep breath. Was that still the smell of fresh paint? Or was it something else entirely? A foul, putrid stench … like something decomposing … a rotting corpse … the pungent smell of the plague … the smell of …
"Creepy, innit?" Owen's voice interrupted his train of thought.
"Yeah," the Captain admitted shakily, tearing his eyes away from the door.
And at that precise moment, he saw it: a shadow. Right above their heads.
He had been sensing it for a couple of minutes already. A strange presence.
And now he had seen it. Out of the corner of his eye. For the fraction of a second. Behind that railing. A human form, flitting away like a ghost.
"There's someone up there!" he exclaimed. "Did you see him? That shadow?"
"No."
"I swear there was someone up there just now, listenin' to us."
"So?" Owen shrugged. "Probably just some bloke walking his dog late at night."
"But shouldn't we at least check him out?" The Captain made a step toward the stairs he could make out a little further down the quay, fully intending to run after this mysterious stranger. There was a voice in the back of his mind, telling him that there was something going on. Maybe it was just instinct, a soldier's gut feeling, but he had often relied on it, and it had never let him down.
"Oi! Where the hell do you think you're going?" Owen was suddenly blocking his way, hands on his hips.
"I just thought I'd …" The Captain's voice faltered. If there had been someone, that person would probably be gone by now.
"You can't just run off like that."
"Says who?"
"Says me. And I'm in charge," Owen pointed out importantly. "You're a Rift victim. You're not supposed to be running around already."
"Oh, come on," the Captain insisted. "Just a quick dash up there and-"
"No." The medic wasn't moving an inch. "I forbid it. And I outrank you."
"Yeah? How?" The Captain felt his lips curl in an involuntary smile. Usually, he didn't flash it around like that, snide remarks and envious stares from other airmen having taught him to keep tight-lipped on the matter of his promotions. (It was enough that people kept going on and on about him being 'a bloody Yank' behind his back, grumbling that the higher ranks were 'reserved for Britannia's best and noblest.') But this time, he couldn't resist; it was just too tempting to tease the other man. "I'm a Group Captain. How exactly do you outrank me?"
"Well … er … er … Shit! Gwen is so much better at this arguing thing than I," Owen muttered. "Er … I outrank you because … because … because I'm a medical doctor?" he suggested eventually.
"And medical doctors have been giving the orders since … when exactly?"
"Since … er … always," Owen pouted. "Besides, I'm older than you."
"Well, I'm taller. Does that count?" the Captain grinned. "Also, I could probably outrun you anytime."
Owen's gaze quickly traveled down the Captain's long legs. "And I'm … erm … I'm … I'm … I'm armed," he seemed to remember suddenly. "And I won't hesitate to shoot you in the knee if you try to leg it," he muttered childishly.
"Oh, right. I forgot. That's the way things are handled here at Torchwood," the Captain quipped, feeling his grin widen even further. "To you people, shooting each other comes as natural as shakin' hands."
For a second, an expression of surprise flashed across the other man's face, surprise and perhaps a dash of guilt. Then he said, "Look, I really don't think Jack would be too happy with us chasing around the city. We haven't prepped you for all of that yet … And there probably wasn't anyone up there, anyway."
But the Captain knew what he had seen; he had sharp eyes. "There was definitely someo-"
"Well, then they're gone by now."
"Then let's hope that it was just some Welshman walkin' his dog and not someone eavesdropping on us," the Captain sighed.
He turned around again to look out over the dark Bay. 'Strange,' he thought. 'The water is probably the only thing that hasn't changed since 1941.' But then, that was a stupid thought. Of course, it had. It looked the same, but that didn't mean it was. Everything was in flux; nothing ever stood still. And one couldn't bathe in the same river twice.
"We came here for a quick fag," he could hear Owen grunt. "So, a quick fag it is. And then back to work." The man was already leaning against the chain railing, searching his pockets for his cigarettes.
Maybe it was just out of habit, but the Captain slid his hand into his pocket too, fishing out his deformed cigarette pack and remembering suddenly what had happened to its contents.
Owen looked up at him with a questioning glance. "Empty? Here, take one of mine," he offered.
"Gee, thanks."
The Captain took a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth and started to instinctively pat down his suit pockets. "I don't have any matches," he admitted around the unlit thing.
Owen held out a smallish white lighter to him. On its side, the words 'Vote Saxon!' were printed in bold black letters.
For a few moments, it was completely quiet, the low click-click of the lighter and the gentle, but relentless murmur of the waves being the only sounds that could be heard. They smoked side by side, silently staring into the darkness.
The second he had inhaled, the Captain had felt the smoke travel into his lungs like a warm sigh of relief. (How had he managed not to go mad without smoking these past few days? He hadn't even thought about it that much, he realized, living off the adrenaline of this place and all its madness.) Still, he would have preferred his own strong, unfiltered cigarettes over the ones Owen had generously shared with him. 'Wouldn't have put him down as a menthol guy.'
The Captain dropped his gaze to the gently rippling surface of the Bay where he could see the blurry reflection of his own slim form, his brilliantined hair almost the same color as the dark, troubled waters below. He couldn't, however, see the reflection of his face, hidden as it was behind the plumes of white smoke that were curling lazily from his lips, turning him into a tall, faceless ghost. The Captain felt himself shiver at the sight of this spectral double of himself, this surreal reflection in the constantly moving mirror of these waves, that kept lapping at the quay's supporting pilings like Time itself, quietly gnawing away at them and wearing them out. It was eerie to see himself in these black depths, he realized. This silent doppelganger, this dark omen of …
"You're not going to run on me, are you?" Owen broke their silence, eyeing him suspiciously from the side. "'Cause Jack would be royally pissed off with me, you know."
"Why would I do that?" the Captain smiled. "We've already established that whoever was up there is long gone."
"Oh … I dunno … With you, one never knows …" Owen sucked on his menthol cigarette, seemingly hesitating for a moment. "With you pilots!" he stated finally, spitting the word out like an insult. "You are a special breed. Unreliable. Not to be trusted. One minute, you're here; the next, you're gone …" He took another drag from his cigarette, slowly blowing out the smoke. It seemed as though he were hesitating again. "Thing is, you're not the first one to have flown here through the Rift."
"Oh." Well, that explained a lot.
Continued here
Author: sagestreet
Pairing: Jack/real!Captain Jack Harkness (mentions of past Jack/Ianto; some Ianto/OC)
Rating: PG
Warnings: language
Summary: Jack returns to 1941 to rescue the real Captain Jack Harkness. But while the two of them are circling each other, uncertain as to what they want, they fail to notice the dark clouds gathering on the horizon …
Previous Chapters: The story starts here.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Soundtrack: Catch Me If You Can (Soundtrack) No. 1 Title Sequence
11. Chapter: Where there's smoke
Having read his fake CV for what felt like the hundredth time, the Captain decided to have a lunch of leftover pancakes and cold tea and eventually settled down on Jack's bed, flipping open the book he had picked from the shelf. It was a well-thumbed old paperback by Saint-Exupéry, whose 'Night Flight' he had read and loved when he had been little more than a boy and whose 'Wind, Sand and Stars' had kept him sane in between sorties.
Vaguely wondering why Jack owned an English translation of a French book when it was obvious he would have been able to read it in the original without difficulty, the Captain flicked to the first page, realizing, with a slight sense of disappointment, that it was a children's book.
He was about to put it away when he noticed the first illustration: a picture of a hat, no doubt … Only that, on closer examination, it turned out that it was supposed to be a snake digesting an elephant.
The Captain laughed out loud, laughed at this funny little drawing in a way he hadn't laughed in months, possibly years, strangely relieved and almost liberated.
Then he read on, curious to see what this odd children's book was about, and forgot everything around him: all the strange things he had seen in Jack's living room, the spaceship that was parked in a field somewhere in the Welsh countryside, his fuzzy, pain-addled memories of their drive through Cardiff, and even his initial disappointment at not having been allowed to join the Weevil hunt …
And so it happened that he had just finished reading about the Little Prince's (not-quite) death and, like the pilot-narrator, was feeling caught somewhere between melancholy and hope when the door to Jack's office upstairs was flung open with a loud bang and the man himself came climbing down the ladder a few moments later. "Hey, you all right? Owen's waiting for you in the medical bay. Says he wants to give you your second shot."
"Oh, right." The Captain quickly put the book down and got up.
"I suspect he wants to do it now, so he can sleep in tomorrow," Jack grinned. "Sorry it took us so long, by the way. Chased a Weevil halfway through Cardiff," he added.
"Won't that be on the front page of every local newspaper by tomorrow?"
"Oh, it won't. Trust me. Eyewitnesses tend to … forget …" Jack let his voice trail off, his eyes holding an almost dangerous sparkle for a split second. "Ianto's already seeing to that … By the way, how about you and I head down to the shooting range later, have a bit of fun?"
ΨΨΨ
A little later, Owen went through his usual routine of jabbing the Captain's arm, calling him a dozen different nicknames (among them 'Her Majesty's secret field agent') and making odd jokes about the vaccine being 'shaken, not stirred'. Having thrown the box of sticking plasters at his patient, the doctor then proceeded to ignore him completely, all the while muttering sullenly to himself. (Apparently, he was still sulking because he had just lost an entire Sunday to hunting down a creature from another world.)
The Captain, for his part, had just put his shirt back on and was about to leap off the exam table when suddenly an all-too-familiar sound cut through the silence of the Hub.
They both flinched.
"Bloody hell! Four Weevil alarms in three days! Stupid buggers must be losing it," Owen hissed at no one in particular.
Moments later, Jack's form appeared behind the railing of the medical bay. "Owen, there seems to be another one. If we hurry up, we can still catch up with Gwen and Tosh on their way home and pick up Ianto from wherever he's 'interrogating' the eyewitnesses."
To the Captain's surprise, Owen suddenly managed to look very busy, grabbing a file folder from his messy desk and quickly flicking it open.
"Oh, come on, Owen. You've tried to pull that trick yesterday already," Jack sighed, a small exasperated smile creeping across his lips.
"It's not a trick, Jack," the doctor replied indignantly, trying to avoid meeting his boss's eye. "You said you wanted me to take another look at this Pharm thing and make sure I had all the paperwork ready for when your old chum Martha turns up."
Jack gave his medic a look that spelled disbelief. "Says the king of avoiding work."
"We all have our moments of creativity and genius," Owen declared with an air of self-importance.
"Yeah, right …" Jack muttered, an ironic lilt to his voice. "Okay, you can stay. You can entertain the Captain while we're away … No goofing around. Are we clear?"
"Don't worry. I'll keep a Golden Eye on him," Owen smirked, and then they were left alone.
ΨΨΨ
It turned out that it wasn't easy to make small talk with Dr. Owen Harper. Courtesy seemed to be a foreign concept to the man, and he kept rebuffing all attempts at conversation made by the Captain.
"So, can you show me one of these … uh … Weevils?" the Captain had asked him as soon as Jack had left.
"Jack would have my bollocks if I did that," the doctor had muttered distractedly. "Scaring civilians with the Weevil is his favorite part of the entire hiring process."
The Captain had smiled at that. "It's been a long time since anyone called me a civilian," he had said as a conversation starter.
But Owen hadn't taken the bait. "Wha'ever …" he had muttered, before ignoring his patient once again.
Currently, the man was thumbing through the file folder in his hand. The thing had a small red sticker on its cover saying: Torchwood employees are reminded to always label the case files correctly. I. Jones, Archivist.
Consequently, there was a large square label in the bottom right corner of the front cover, on which all the necessary file information had to be provided. But instead of filling out the respective columns for case number, date and classification status, Owen had scrawled 'Roberts, Meredith' across the back cover of the folder in an almost illegible chicken scratch, that marked him as a true disciple of Asclepius.
The Captain cleared his throat. "I couldn't help but notice that Jack was hurt pretty bad yesterday," he tried to engage the other man in conversation again.
"Oh, he's had worse, trust me," Owen replied absent-mindedly.
"I really don't mean to pry, but he seemed to have a, uh, really bad headache."
"Ah, well … he gets those … occasionally …" The medic didn't even look up from his folder.
"So, he's fine?" the Captain asked, feeling the knot of worry in his stomach begin to dissolve.
"That scratch on Ianto's cheek was worthy of a physician's attention; Jack's 'injury' wasn't! Trust me, I know what I'm doing. The man's as fine as he'll ever be."
A few long minutes ticked by without a word.
"So … I guess gun practice is off for today, then?" the Captain inquired eventually. "Jack wanted to take me to the shooting range later," he added quickly by way of explanation.
Owen still didn't look up from his work. "If Jack tries something funny in there, just punch him in the face," he stated matter-of-factly.
"Uh … somethin' funny?"
But the Captain didn't get to ask the doctor what he had meant by that cryptic remark because, at that moment, the man's phone suddenly started ringing.
"Yes, Jack? … What? … No! Of course, I'm still at the Hub. What did you think?! That I'd swan off the minute your back was turned? … That was just the one time! … What? … What did Gwen say now? … What, again? Heaven knows who she's seen up there! I'm pretty sure there's no one on the Plass or anywhere near the tourist off- … Look, if she insists, I can check out the CCTV," the doctor sighed, turning around and punching something into the keyboard attached to his strange monitor. But whatever the man had expected to flash up on the screen didn't appear, as the thing showed only static. "Fuck … CCTV's down again," he muttered. "Well, it's not my fault, is it?!" He was practically shouting now. "Oh, just tell her to shut up, Jack, or I'll start treating her for paranoia," he grit out angrily and cut the connection, slamming the phone down on his cluttered desk and inadvertently knocking over one of the three half-empty cups on it.
Cold coffee spilled all over the documents littering the desktop.
"Shit," he exclaimed. "Shit!"
What followed was a desperate rescue operation as they both scrambled to save as many sheets of paper as possible.
Between the two of them, they somehow managed to avert a complete disaster by clearing the desk of all the items on it. Owen mopped up the coffee with a balled-up t-shirt, and the Captain did the actual clearing part, quickly picking up one object after another and holding it up for the other man to dab at with his makeshift rag.
The variety of items on the desk ranged from coffee-stained documents to pens with their ends chewed off and a pile of photographs of a dead body. (They had spilled from the folder Owen had been holding earlier, the Captain realized.) Furthermore, there was a dirty scalpel, a stale cookie, a stethoscope, and a pornographic magazine, the front cover of which showed a female nude, the Captain realized with an awkward sense of discomfort.
Oddly enough, Owen didn't seem too embarrassed by the Captain's discovery. He didn't even try and hide the thing, giving his patient a knowing grin instead. "Careful, Spitfire! Don't cut yourself on the broken cup."
"I won't," the Captain replied quietly.
"Well, we all know what can happen when one gets … distracted," Owen suggested, giving the Captain a conspiratorial wink and setting the magazine aside.
"We should probably throw away the shards," the Captain said even quieter.
They worked silently side by side for a few minutes.
"I think that was all," the Captain stated finally.
"Oh, you know what?" Owen sighed. "Sod it all! Let's step outside for a smoke."
ΨΨΨ
The Captain stepped out of the tourist office (that, as it turned out, served as a front for the Torchwood Hub) and into the dark summer night. The black water of the Bay was lapping gently at the quay, and the air smelled of rain. Apparently, the downpour had just stopped, the wooden planks under the Captain's feet still glistening with a sheen of moisture in the pale light of the street lamps. But it wasn't cold at all - a pleasant, quiet summer evening.
As he turned his head and glanced up, he noticed the futuristic outlines of the buildings surrounding them. And just like that, the vaguely familiar feeling of being out of place, out of time and out of breath hit him like a fist to the stomach again. Quickly lowering his gaze, he tried to focus on the entrance to the tourist office. 'Calm down! You know you're in 2008.'
"Stupid picture, isn't it?" Owen's voice asked somewhere beside him.
The Captain blinked. "Uh … picture?"
"The skull. On the door."
'Oh, right,' the Captain realized, stepping closer to the entrance door.
Whoever had spray-painted the morbid picture on it, didn't seem to have any taste in color. The thing was a pale shade of green, that seemed to be glowing dangerously in the dark. A blotch of sickly, yellowish color screaming out into the blackness of the night, its pallid basic tint lending it a ghastly, ashen quality.
The Captain found himself strangely drawn in by the expanse of vile green, the skull's empty eye-sockets pulling him in like two powerful maelstroms, down into the vortex of nothingness, into the abyss of annihilation, grotesque, toothy grin seemingly laughing at him, providing the roaring background music to his fall. It almost felt as though the picture were reaching out to him, overwhelming his senses and overpowering his mind, mocking him and making him shudder, making him hear voices, have visions and sense … sense … He took a deep breath. Was that still the smell of fresh paint? Or was it something else entirely? A foul, putrid stench … like something decomposing … a rotting corpse … the pungent smell of the plague … the smell of …
"Creepy, innit?" Owen's voice interrupted his train of thought.
"Yeah," the Captain admitted shakily, tearing his eyes away from the door.
And at that precise moment, he saw it: a shadow. Right above their heads.
He had been sensing it for a couple of minutes already. A strange presence.
And now he had seen it. Out of the corner of his eye. For the fraction of a second. Behind that railing. A human form, flitting away like a ghost.
"There's someone up there!" he exclaimed. "Did you see him? That shadow?"
"No."
"I swear there was someone up there just now, listenin' to us."
"So?" Owen shrugged. "Probably just some bloke walking his dog late at night."
"But shouldn't we at least check him out?" The Captain made a step toward the stairs he could make out a little further down the quay, fully intending to run after this mysterious stranger. There was a voice in the back of his mind, telling him that there was something going on. Maybe it was just instinct, a soldier's gut feeling, but he had often relied on it, and it had never let him down.
"Oi! Where the hell do you think you're going?" Owen was suddenly blocking his way, hands on his hips.
"I just thought I'd …" The Captain's voice faltered. If there had been someone, that person would probably be gone by now.
"You can't just run off like that."
"Says who?"
"Says me. And I'm in charge," Owen pointed out importantly. "You're a Rift victim. You're not supposed to be running around already."
"Oh, come on," the Captain insisted. "Just a quick dash up there and-"
"No." The medic wasn't moving an inch. "I forbid it. And I outrank you."
"Yeah? How?" The Captain felt his lips curl in an involuntary smile. Usually, he didn't flash it around like that, snide remarks and envious stares from other airmen having taught him to keep tight-lipped on the matter of his promotions. (It was enough that people kept going on and on about him being 'a bloody Yank' behind his back, grumbling that the higher ranks were 'reserved for Britannia's best and noblest.') But this time, he couldn't resist; it was just too tempting to tease the other man. "I'm a Group Captain. How exactly do you outrank me?"
"Well … er … er … Shit! Gwen is so much better at this arguing thing than I," Owen muttered. "Er … I outrank you because … because … because I'm a medical doctor?" he suggested eventually.
"And medical doctors have been giving the orders since … when exactly?"
"Since … er … always," Owen pouted. "Besides, I'm older than you."
"Well, I'm taller. Does that count?" the Captain grinned. "Also, I could probably outrun you anytime."
Owen's gaze quickly traveled down the Captain's long legs. "And I'm … erm … I'm … I'm … I'm armed," he seemed to remember suddenly. "And I won't hesitate to shoot you in the knee if you try to leg it," he muttered childishly.
"Oh, right. I forgot. That's the way things are handled here at Torchwood," the Captain quipped, feeling his grin widen even further. "To you people, shooting each other comes as natural as shakin' hands."
For a second, an expression of surprise flashed across the other man's face, surprise and perhaps a dash of guilt. Then he said, "Look, I really don't think Jack would be too happy with us chasing around the city. We haven't prepped you for all of that yet … And there probably wasn't anyone up there, anyway."
But the Captain knew what he had seen; he had sharp eyes. "There was definitely someo-"
"Well, then they're gone by now."
"Then let's hope that it was just some Welshman walkin' his dog and not someone eavesdropping on us," the Captain sighed.
He turned around again to look out over the dark Bay. 'Strange,' he thought. 'The water is probably the only thing that hasn't changed since 1941.' But then, that was a stupid thought. Of course, it had. It looked the same, but that didn't mean it was. Everything was in flux; nothing ever stood still. And one couldn't bathe in the same river twice.
"We came here for a quick fag," he could hear Owen grunt. "So, a quick fag it is. And then back to work." The man was already leaning against the chain railing, searching his pockets for his cigarettes.
Maybe it was just out of habit, but the Captain slid his hand into his pocket too, fishing out his deformed cigarette pack and remembering suddenly what had happened to its contents.
Owen looked up at him with a questioning glance. "Empty? Here, take one of mine," he offered.
"Gee, thanks."
The Captain took a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth and started to instinctively pat down his suit pockets. "I don't have any matches," he admitted around the unlit thing.
Owen held out a smallish white lighter to him. On its side, the words 'Vote Saxon!' were printed in bold black letters.
For a few moments, it was completely quiet, the low click-click of the lighter and the gentle, but relentless murmur of the waves being the only sounds that could be heard. They smoked side by side, silently staring into the darkness.
The second he had inhaled, the Captain had felt the smoke travel into his lungs like a warm sigh of relief. (How had he managed not to go mad without smoking these past few days? He hadn't even thought about it that much, he realized, living off the adrenaline of this place and all its madness.) Still, he would have preferred his own strong, unfiltered cigarettes over the ones Owen had generously shared with him. 'Wouldn't have put him down as a menthol guy.'
The Captain dropped his gaze to the gently rippling surface of the Bay where he could see the blurry reflection of his own slim form, his brilliantined hair almost the same color as the dark, troubled waters below. He couldn't, however, see the reflection of his face, hidden as it was behind the plumes of white smoke that were curling lazily from his lips, turning him into a tall, faceless ghost. The Captain felt himself shiver at the sight of this spectral double of himself, this surreal reflection in the constantly moving mirror of these waves, that kept lapping at the quay's supporting pilings like Time itself, quietly gnawing away at them and wearing them out. It was eerie to see himself in these black depths, he realized. This silent doppelganger, this dark omen of …
"You're not going to run on me, are you?" Owen broke their silence, eyeing him suspiciously from the side. "'Cause Jack would be royally pissed off with me, you know."
"Why would I do that?" the Captain smiled. "We've already established that whoever was up there is long gone."
"Oh … I dunno … With you, one never knows …" Owen sucked on his menthol cigarette, seemingly hesitating for a moment. "With you pilots!" he stated finally, spitting the word out like an insult. "You are a special breed. Unreliable. Not to be trusted. One minute, you're here; the next, you're gone …" He took another drag from his cigarette, slowly blowing out the smoke. It seemed as though he were hesitating again. "Thing is, you're not the first one to have flown here through the Rift."
"Oh." Well, that explained a lot.
Continued here