Fic: Hello, Major Tom II
I'm sorry, grimorie -- I have no excuse.
Hello, Major Tom, II -- One Month After "The Peacekeeper Wars"
Fandoms: Farscape/Jack Harkness (Doctor Who, Torchwood)
Characters: John Crichton, Jack Harkness
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Farscape "The Peacekeeper Wars", post Torchwood series one, mild Doctor Who series three.
Summary: grimorie asked for a sequel to Hello, Major Tom set one month after "The Peacekeeper Wars"
Thanks: Thanks to somedaybitch for the good catch.
***
"Man, every time I think the universe is infinite ..."
Jack Harkness jerked his head up from the cup in his hands, and watched the only living, breathing piece of his past left, lean casually against the bar next to him. Funny how that happened to be a man born three thousand years before Jack's time.
"Help me hold on to my shaky sense of order, and tell me this isn't a coincidence." Commander John Crichton, lost astronaut, and distant childhood hero, grinned down at Jack.
"Well," Jack began slowly, trying to shake off his surprise. He was supposed to be the one doing the surprising, but at a last minute twinge of nerves he'd opted to try and lose himself in a bar instead. "Would you buy sort of yes and sort of no?"
"Explain that one to me, Captain."
"I was in the area -- that's the coincidence part. Could be I also remembered you were here and thought I'd wander through ... just out of, I don't know, curiosity."
"Curiosity," Crichton echoed, amused.
"I ... huh," Jack paused and looked back down at his fingers as they tapped an unconscious rhythm on the cup. "Curiosity, yep. I just wanted to see how you were, I guess. I actually wasn't planning on talking to you."
"Gonna stalk me from the shadows?"
Jack laughed and rolled his eyes at himself. "Something like that."
"Well, lucky for you I'm less likely to try and blow your head off than I was last time we met." Crichton waved over the barkeep and asked for a raslak.
Jack watched the thick, oily liquid ooze into a glass, and his lips twisted in disgust. "Please, tell me you don't really drink that stuff."
"It's not too bad, once you get past the taste, and it killed any taste buds I had cycles ago."
"No kidding," Jack muttered, keeping a wary eye on the drink.
Crichton jerked his head towards Jack and said to the barman, "It's on him."
Jack gave him a skeptical look and sat back in his chair.
"You did promise to buy me a drink, right? I mean, I've got a few holes up here," Crichton tapped his temple, "and a few things scrambled, but I don't know how possible it is to forget the blue box."
"Not very. And, yeah, I did promise. I'm a man of my word."
Crichton caught the bitterness in the last sentence and gave Jack an unnervingly steady look.
"You know," Jack said quickly, trying to head off any sort of insightful discussion Crichton might have been inclined to start, "I spent a fair few years on Earth keeping the alien secret, trying to let everybody be innocent just that little bit longer. And, I tell ya, buddy, that wasn't an easy job. Then you show up with your crew, and next thing, everybody and their uncle's digging up extraterrestrial bits and bobs and pressing buttons and flipping switches and it took a hell of a lot of retcon and a good five years to fix that mess."
Crichton smiled and shrugged. "I wasn't actually planning on going back."
"Just planning to stalk Earth from the dark side of the moon?"
With a loud laugh, Crichton bowed his head. "Something like that. It all happened sort of fast. Sorry about the mess, Captain."
"No problem." Jack waved his hand and picked up his cup. "Everybody had bigger distractions a couple years later."
"Bigger than me returning from the dead with aliens in tow?"
"Oh yeah."
"Do I even want to know?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. 21st century is when it all changed." Jack was aware he was starting to sound morose again, and he tried to shake it off. He drained his cup and set it down on the bar with a thump.
"Need another? I'll buy this round." Crichton waved the barkeep over again. "What're you having?"
"Just water."
"Well that's a lousy way to try and get drunk."
"I wasn't after drunk."
"Alright." Crichton appeared to let the matter drop and nodded at the barkeep.
The pair drank quietly for a moment, though Jack couldn't quite stop himself from sneaking glances at Crichton. Meeting the man would always hold an element of the surreal for Jack.
History was one thing, and Jack knew Crichton's history inside and out, but reality was always something else. Something that never really stopped surprising him. But, honestly, it was usually a good sort of surprise. History books just never have the right sorts of color or the important details -- like how in God's name a man could drink raslak, and what his laugh sounded like, and how he brushed his thumb across his lip when he was thinking, or what madness or contentment looked like in cool blue eyes. Jack was glad he finally got to see the contentment, because frankly, he'd had nightmares about the madness.
"You look good, Commander."
"John. You're supposed to call me John."
"Yeah, and you're supposed to call me Jack and I don't think I've heard that today."
"I don't know if I told you this before, but you're kind of a pain in the ass, Jack."
"Oh, I'll grow on you." Jack grinned as Crichton laughed again. He really had a great laugh -- there was something endearingly goofy about it. "And, you do look good."
"Better than last time, at least."
"Night and day, pal."
Crichton smiled again and put down his glass. "Let's get out of here. It's no fun drinking with a guy who's trying to drown his sorrows in water, and I'm supposed to be on a shopping trip anyway."
"Man, I remember the last shopping trip," Jack reached up and rubbed at his cheek bone. His first run-in with Crichton had almost ended ugly when Jack took a rifle butt in the face.
"Ever get over that hero complex?"
"I was never a hero."
Crichton raised and eyebrow. "Uh-huh. 'Cause any Joe off the street's going to spend five years worrying about the innocence of a few billion strangers."
"It could happen. Nice save on that whole galactic war thing, by the way," Jack told him pointedly as they walked out into the bright afternoon.
Crichton narrowed his eyes and looked away. "Just trying not to get dead."
"Maybe that's what I was doing, too."
"If you say so."
"Yep."
The Commander's shoulders tensed slightly and his eyes darted restlessly across the street. With a sigh, he hooked a thumb in his belt and started off down the road. When Jack didn't follow along immediately, Crichton turned and jerked his head. Jack raised an eyebrow, but Crichton was off again, and Jack had to jog a few steps to catch up with him.
Neither man said a word as they walked. They wandered slowly down the street, looking in on shops, but for a guy supposedly shopping, Crichton didn't seem very interested in picking anything up. Jack, for his part, just followed along quietly, willing to see where the Commander might be leading him, and frankly, he was sort of enjoying being aimless for a time. It'd been a while.
The Commander finally paused at the edge of a large market square and squinted up at the sky. "Thanks," he said gruffly, breaking his long silence.
Jack cocked his head and pondered Crichton for a moment. "For what?"
"For doing what I couldn't. I couldn't keep all this from Earth. I tried, but in the end ... I don't know."
"I ... sure. Sure, John." Jack took a step into the market and looked over a cart of vegetables. "Maybe ... maybe that's why I was doing it, too."
"Why?"
"Because I saw your eyes. I saw what an Earth without innocence looked like." Jack shrugged, a little embarrassed suddenly.
Crichton looked down at his boots, then back up and across the market. "I didn't like what that looked like either. They're not ready."
"They're getting closer."
Crichton snorted softly and they started walking again, more companionably with the odd silence finally dispelled. "I don't know if that makes me feel better or if it scares the crap out of me."
Jack brushed a hand through his hair and turned his attention back to the street. "So, are you actually shopping, or are you, I don't know, hiding? You didn't piss off your wife, did you? Oh, and congratulations, by the way." He slapped the other man on the shoulder and grinned.
Crichton gave him a crooked smile. "Thanks. You know, Jack, it's a little unsettling how much you know about me."
"I only know the things historians think are worth mentioning, and let me tell you, they don't usually include the things that experience has taught me are the most pertinent."
"What? Like 'don't wander up to the crazy guy and introduce yourself'?"
Jack laughed. "Yeah, that should have been a footnote somewhere."
"Lesson learned, I guess. And you only had to be knocked flat on your ass to learn it."
Rolling his eyes, Jack settled into walking at Crichton's side. It was odd how familiar that felt. Or maybe it wasn't quite so odd. After all, he'd travelled with the idea of Crichton for most of his life.
"So ... this shopping thing?" He asked, aiming for stable ground again.
"I'm baby shopping. My son." Crichton glanced at Jack with a soft smile and eyes bright with something like wonder.
Jack couldn't help but grin back; joy could be insidious like that. "How old is he now?"
"A month. He's beautiful."
"How could he be anything else? He's got a pair of absolute lookers for parents," Jack leered, looking Crichton up and down.
"Do you ever stop?"
"Not really. But, I'm growing on you, right?"
Crichton eyed him skeptically. "Maybe. Hit on my wife, though, and I'll kill you."
"I really don't doubt it."
"If she doesn't kill you first."
"But, what a way to go," he said with a low whistle.
Crichton gave him a dark glare, but it cleared quickly and he chuckled. "Ain't it just?"
"Well, now that that's cleared up," Jack clapped his hands together and looked around at the stores, "let's shop for the kid." He glanced over at Crichton in his black leather pseudo-Peacekeeper duds, gun on his thigh, and sighed. "This should be ... interesting."
"Right. Nothing that explodes. I'm not buying my son things that explode. That's what he's got his mother for."
They wandered for a time, with Jack offering fashion commentary on the many tiny baby-like items they dug through, or spinning long, convoluted tales of his adventures or past lovers. Crichton alternated between ignoring him or giving him that unnervingly steady stare when Jack talked himself closer to subjects he'd never intended to bring up, but somehow couldn't stop his mouth from wandering near.
And then Jack made one slip too many, and if he thought about it, he might come up with a reason why he couldn't seem to keep some secrets around this man, but he wasn't sure that was something he wanted to think about.
"So, where's the Doctor?" Crichton asked as they stood in front of a cart selling something that reminded Jack too strongly of the camp slop he ate a few lifetimes ago in India. "I didn't notice a big blue box hanging around."
"I'm meeting up with him again later. I had something I had to do. And you're not supposed to notice the box."
"It's a big, blue Earth police phone booth. Hard to miss."
"It's a disguise."
"Uh-huh, sure, if this was London in, what, 1950?"
"Yeah, and don't think I didn't spend a decade or two looking sideways at every one I walked past," Jack snorted softly and looked down at the plate the vendor shoved in his hand. "I'm supposed to eat this?"
Crichton ignored the food comment. "A few decades, huh?"
Jack pressed his lips together and remained silent as he followed Crichton over to a bench.
"I've been trying to figure out why you've been dogging my steps all day," Crichton began after he swallowed a spoonful of his disturbing lunch.
Jack set his own plate aside and tried not to look at it. "And what did you come up with?"
"You're a little old for hero-worship, you know? And, I'd've thought the last time we met would have knocked that out of you."
"I'm just stubborn like that," Jack replied blandly.
"You're looking for something. Something you think I can give you."
Jack laughed salaciously, "Oh, you can give me something, alright."
Crichton responded with a glare and another mouthful of gruel. "I'm not playing, Jack."
"No kidding." Jack sighed and cast about for a change of subject. "Are you ever coming back to Earth?"
"You know the answer to that better than I do."
"Time, history, it's not static. All I know are the possibilities."
Crichton shrugged and chewed thoughtfully. "Right now, I'd say 'no', but who knows what tomorrow will look like."
"Yeah."
"How long has it been?"
"What?"
"Since we met?"
"Uh ... a while."
"How long, Jack?" Crichton pressed doggedly.
"A very, very long time, Commander."
"And?"
"And what?" Jack asked, his exasperation growing. But Crichton was right, something in him needed something from the other man, and as much as he'd like, he wasn't able to just get up and walk away, and he couldn't tell him the discussion was off the table. It might work with his team, but Crichton was something else entirely. It would almost be like dodging a discussion with the Doctor -- something that was never, ever possible.
"Feels like we've swapped places, Jack. Where have you been?"
"We're not talking geography, are we?"
"I can do this all day, man. I've had my mind frelled by the best of them, and you're not even going to get close."
Jack sat silently for a moment, watching as Crichton finished his lunch. "I died," he said suddenly.
"I guess it didn't take."
With a mirthless laugh, Jack shook his head. "No, it really didn't. Not that first time and not the few dozen times since."
"I see," Crichton said flatly, tossing away his plate and wiping his hands on his trousers.
"Probably not, but it's nice that you're trying." Jack fought off the impulse to pat him on the knee. A pulse blast might not kill him, but it would hurt.
"What is it you do want from me, Captain?"
"I don't want anything. I told you--"
"You came to see me. Whether or not you ever ended up actually talking to me, you did come here to see me. Right?"
"I may have said something like that, yeah."
"So, what were you hoping to see?"
"I don't know, really. Maybe ..." Jack paused and looked at Crichton, studying his face, his eyes, his restless hands as they tapped on the edge of the bench, or fiddled with his holster. "Maybe I just wanted to see something that might remind me I had a life before I died. I used to ... I don't know."
"Did it work?"
"No, you spotted me. And now you're making like a shrink, and frankly, that's a whole lot like the blind leading the blind, buddy."
The Commander smirked and glanced off across the square. "You know what we need?" Crichton asked, but didn't wait for an answer from Jack, who thought maybe that was the sort of question he didn't really want an answer to. "We need an explosion or something. Chaos. Mayhem." He turned back to Jack and pinned him with that stare again. "Something to fight."
Jack raised an eyebrow and gave the square his own look over. "Are those Peacekeepers?"
Crichton followed his look and shrugged. "Yeah. PKs are no fun, though. Besides, I think they're all afraid of me now. Blow away half their fleet, a few dozen Scarran dreadnoughts--"
"A moon."
Crichton snorted softly, amused. "The moon was a good one."
"I always admired it."
Crichton scrubbed a hand across his face and cleared his throat roughly. "Yeah. Light off a nuke or two, destroy a planet -- everybody gets twitchy around you."
"We could go say 'hi', be polite."
"You just want to see if they'll freak out," Crichton accused, trying, and failing, not to look like that sounded like fun.
"Well, yeah."
After a moment, Crichton shook his head. "Nah. I've been kind of enjoying the quiet, but it's weird, too. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for everything to go straight to hell again."
"I'm not telling you," Jack cut him off.
"I'm not asking. I'm just saying." Crichton sat forward and braced his forearms on his knees.
"Take the peace while you can get it, I always say. Tomorrow can be such a bitch."
"Cheerful. Thanks, Jack."
"Anytime," Jack grinned broadly.
Crichton sighed and grabbed at the sack at his feet. "I should probably be heading back."
Jack nodded. Time was up. Funny how that always happened, even when you travelled in time. You could go forwards, or backwards, or sideways, live days over again, and yet, at some point, time was up.
"You want to come back? You didn't get much chance to see Moya last time. You can meet my son."
Flattered, and maybe sort of humbled, Jack cleared his throat, surprisingly uncomfortable. "Ah, no, but thanks. I'm probably not the sort of influence you want to expose your son to." He said the last with a small laugh, trying to pass off the joke.
Crichton just snorted. "You know Moya's crew, right?"
With a grin, Jack stood up. "Thanks, Commander. Really. But, I've got to be on my way, too."
"Sure, Jack. Good seeing you again. Without the, you know, running for our lives."
"It's always good to see you. Maybe we'll meet up again."
"I'll look forward to it." The Commander stood and held his hand out to Jack. "I ..."
Jack took his hand and held it warmly. "Yeah."
"No, look. I've gotta say this." The Commander tightened his grip on Jack's hand and stared at him with those piercing blue eyes a guy could get lost in. "I know what it's like to spend most of your life trying to match this ideal of the type of man you ought to be, and I know what it's like to feel like you've missed that mark again and again by a million light-years and more."
"John --"
"I've met you twice, and, it's been weird, Jack. Really frelling weird. And considering where I've been, that's saying something. But, I look at you and I see a guy who tried to get himself lost in a bar, but drank only water. A guy who spent five years trying to keep Earth out of all the dren out here for just a little bit longer. A guy who forgave me and thought maybe I was okay even after I held a gun to his head. A guy who told me to hold on, because it mattered to him that I could. That guy? That guy is a good guy. He's probably screwed up. Maybe he's even screwed up as galactically as I have -- I seem to remember you mentioning almost wiping out the human race?"
"Let's forget that, huh?"
Crichton gave Jack a small smile and dropped his hand. "Sure. Look me up again, Jack. And don't hide in the shadows when you do, huh?"
Jack licked his lips uncertainly and glanced away.
"I can't go where you go," Crichton pressed. "So, you know, I'm gonna wonder, and maybe even, I don't know, worry, or something. You wouldn't want to do that to me, would you?" The small smiled grew to puckish grin.
"Guilt. This is guilt? You're guilting me," Jack accused incredulously. "That's so unfair."
Crichton laughed and slapped Jack on the shoulder as he stepped past. "See you round the universe, buddy."
"Count on it," Jack called after him.
"Work on that hero complex," Crichton tossed over his shoulder.
Jack watched Crichton disappear into the crowd, then looked up into the late afternoon sun, feeling just a touch of melancholy. Then he frowned at himself -- he didn't remember ever being melancholy before he died that first time. Man, he was turning into a sap in his very old age. He shook himself with a laugh and looked back the way the Commander had gone. "Be fantastic, Commander."
##
Hello, Major Tom, II -- One Month After "The Peacekeeper Wars"
Fandoms: Farscape/Jack Harkness (Doctor Who, Torchwood)
Characters: John Crichton, Jack Harkness
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Farscape "The Peacekeeper Wars", post Torchwood series one, mild Doctor Who series three.
Summary: grimorie asked for a sequel to Hello, Major Tom set one month after "The Peacekeeper Wars"
Thanks: Thanks to somedaybitch for the good catch.
***
"Man, every time I think the universe is infinite ..."
Jack Harkness jerked his head up from the cup in his hands, and watched the only living, breathing piece of his past left, lean casually against the bar next to him. Funny how that happened to be a man born three thousand years before Jack's time.
"Help me hold on to my shaky sense of order, and tell me this isn't a coincidence." Commander John Crichton, lost astronaut, and distant childhood hero, grinned down at Jack.
"Well," Jack began slowly, trying to shake off his surprise. He was supposed to be the one doing the surprising, but at a last minute twinge of nerves he'd opted to try and lose himself in a bar instead. "Would you buy sort of yes and sort of no?"
"Explain that one to me, Captain."
"I was in the area -- that's the coincidence part. Could be I also remembered you were here and thought I'd wander through ... just out of, I don't know, curiosity."
"Curiosity," Crichton echoed, amused.
"I ... huh," Jack paused and looked back down at his fingers as they tapped an unconscious rhythm on the cup. "Curiosity, yep. I just wanted to see how you were, I guess. I actually wasn't planning on talking to you."
"Gonna stalk me from the shadows?"
Jack laughed and rolled his eyes at himself. "Something like that."
"Well, lucky for you I'm less likely to try and blow your head off than I was last time we met." Crichton waved over the barkeep and asked for a raslak.
Jack watched the thick, oily liquid ooze into a glass, and his lips twisted in disgust. "Please, tell me you don't really drink that stuff."
"It's not too bad, once you get past the taste, and it killed any taste buds I had cycles ago."
"No kidding," Jack muttered, keeping a wary eye on the drink.
Crichton jerked his head towards Jack and said to the barman, "It's on him."
Jack gave him a skeptical look and sat back in his chair.
"You did promise to buy me a drink, right? I mean, I've got a few holes up here," Crichton tapped his temple, "and a few things scrambled, but I don't know how possible it is to forget the blue box."
"Not very. And, yeah, I did promise. I'm a man of my word."
Crichton caught the bitterness in the last sentence and gave Jack an unnervingly steady look.
"You know," Jack said quickly, trying to head off any sort of insightful discussion Crichton might have been inclined to start, "I spent a fair few years on Earth keeping the alien secret, trying to let everybody be innocent just that little bit longer. And, I tell ya, buddy, that wasn't an easy job. Then you show up with your crew, and next thing, everybody and their uncle's digging up extraterrestrial bits and bobs and pressing buttons and flipping switches and it took a hell of a lot of retcon and a good five years to fix that mess."
Crichton smiled and shrugged. "I wasn't actually planning on going back."
"Just planning to stalk Earth from the dark side of the moon?"
With a loud laugh, Crichton bowed his head. "Something like that. It all happened sort of fast. Sorry about the mess, Captain."
"No problem." Jack waved his hand and picked up his cup. "Everybody had bigger distractions a couple years later."
"Bigger than me returning from the dead with aliens in tow?"
"Oh yeah."
"Do I even want to know?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. 21st century is when it all changed." Jack was aware he was starting to sound morose again, and he tried to shake it off. He drained his cup and set it down on the bar with a thump.
"Need another? I'll buy this round." Crichton waved the barkeep over again. "What're you having?"
"Just water."
"Well that's a lousy way to try and get drunk."
"I wasn't after drunk."
"Alright." Crichton appeared to let the matter drop and nodded at the barkeep.
The pair drank quietly for a moment, though Jack couldn't quite stop himself from sneaking glances at Crichton. Meeting the man would always hold an element of the surreal for Jack.
History was one thing, and Jack knew Crichton's history inside and out, but reality was always something else. Something that never really stopped surprising him. But, honestly, it was usually a good sort of surprise. History books just never have the right sorts of color or the important details -- like how in God's name a man could drink raslak, and what his laugh sounded like, and how he brushed his thumb across his lip when he was thinking, or what madness or contentment looked like in cool blue eyes. Jack was glad he finally got to see the contentment, because frankly, he'd had nightmares about the madness.
"You look good, Commander."
"John. You're supposed to call me John."
"Yeah, and you're supposed to call me Jack and I don't think I've heard that today."
"I don't know if I told you this before, but you're kind of a pain in the ass, Jack."
"Oh, I'll grow on you." Jack grinned as Crichton laughed again. He really had a great laugh -- there was something endearingly goofy about it. "And, you do look good."
"Better than last time, at least."
"Night and day, pal."
Crichton smiled again and put down his glass. "Let's get out of here. It's no fun drinking with a guy who's trying to drown his sorrows in water, and I'm supposed to be on a shopping trip anyway."
"Man, I remember the last shopping trip," Jack reached up and rubbed at his cheek bone. His first run-in with Crichton had almost ended ugly when Jack took a rifle butt in the face.
"Ever get over that hero complex?"
"I was never a hero."
Crichton raised and eyebrow. "Uh-huh. 'Cause any Joe off the street's going to spend five years worrying about the innocence of a few billion strangers."
"It could happen. Nice save on that whole galactic war thing, by the way," Jack told him pointedly as they walked out into the bright afternoon.
Crichton narrowed his eyes and looked away. "Just trying not to get dead."
"Maybe that's what I was doing, too."
"If you say so."
"Yep."
The Commander's shoulders tensed slightly and his eyes darted restlessly across the street. With a sigh, he hooked a thumb in his belt and started off down the road. When Jack didn't follow along immediately, Crichton turned and jerked his head. Jack raised an eyebrow, but Crichton was off again, and Jack had to jog a few steps to catch up with him.
Neither man said a word as they walked. They wandered slowly down the street, looking in on shops, but for a guy supposedly shopping, Crichton didn't seem very interested in picking anything up. Jack, for his part, just followed along quietly, willing to see where the Commander might be leading him, and frankly, he was sort of enjoying being aimless for a time. It'd been a while.
The Commander finally paused at the edge of a large market square and squinted up at the sky. "Thanks," he said gruffly, breaking his long silence.
Jack cocked his head and pondered Crichton for a moment. "For what?"
"For doing what I couldn't. I couldn't keep all this from Earth. I tried, but in the end ... I don't know."
"I ... sure. Sure, John." Jack took a step into the market and looked over a cart of vegetables. "Maybe ... maybe that's why I was doing it, too."
"Why?"
"Because I saw your eyes. I saw what an Earth without innocence looked like." Jack shrugged, a little embarrassed suddenly.
Crichton looked down at his boots, then back up and across the market. "I didn't like what that looked like either. They're not ready."
"They're getting closer."
Crichton snorted softly and they started walking again, more companionably with the odd silence finally dispelled. "I don't know if that makes me feel better or if it scares the crap out of me."
Jack brushed a hand through his hair and turned his attention back to the street. "So, are you actually shopping, or are you, I don't know, hiding? You didn't piss off your wife, did you? Oh, and congratulations, by the way." He slapped the other man on the shoulder and grinned.
Crichton gave him a crooked smile. "Thanks. You know, Jack, it's a little unsettling how much you know about me."
"I only know the things historians think are worth mentioning, and let me tell you, they don't usually include the things that experience has taught me are the most pertinent."
"What? Like 'don't wander up to the crazy guy and introduce yourself'?"
Jack laughed. "Yeah, that should have been a footnote somewhere."
"Lesson learned, I guess. And you only had to be knocked flat on your ass to learn it."
Rolling his eyes, Jack settled into walking at Crichton's side. It was odd how familiar that felt. Or maybe it wasn't quite so odd. After all, he'd travelled with the idea of Crichton for most of his life.
"So ... this shopping thing?" He asked, aiming for stable ground again.
"I'm baby shopping. My son." Crichton glanced at Jack with a soft smile and eyes bright with something like wonder.
Jack couldn't help but grin back; joy could be insidious like that. "How old is he now?"
"A month. He's beautiful."
"How could he be anything else? He's got a pair of absolute lookers for parents," Jack leered, looking Crichton up and down.
"Do you ever stop?"
"Not really. But, I'm growing on you, right?"
Crichton eyed him skeptically. "Maybe. Hit on my wife, though, and I'll kill you."
"I really don't doubt it."
"If she doesn't kill you first."
"But, what a way to go," he said with a low whistle.
Crichton gave him a dark glare, but it cleared quickly and he chuckled. "Ain't it just?"
"Well, now that that's cleared up," Jack clapped his hands together and looked around at the stores, "let's shop for the kid." He glanced over at Crichton in his black leather pseudo-Peacekeeper duds, gun on his thigh, and sighed. "This should be ... interesting."
"Right. Nothing that explodes. I'm not buying my son things that explode. That's what he's got his mother for."
They wandered for a time, with Jack offering fashion commentary on the many tiny baby-like items they dug through, or spinning long, convoluted tales of his adventures or past lovers. Crichton alternated between ignoring him or giving him that unnervingly steady stare when Jack talked himself closer to subjects he'd never intended to bring up, but somehow couldn't stop his mouth from wandering near.
And then Jack made one slip too many, and if he thought about it, he might come up with a reason why he couldn't seem to keep some secrets around this man, but he wasn't sure that was something he wanted to think about.
"So, where's the Doctor?" Crichton asked as they stood in front of a cart selling something that reminded Jack too strongly of the camp slop he ate a few lifetimes ago in India. "I didn't notice a big blue box hanging around."
"I'm meeting up with him again later. I had something I had to do. And you're not supposed to notice the box."
"It's a big, blue Earth police phone booth. Hard to miss."
"It's a disguise."
"Uh-huh, sure, if this was London in, what, 1950?"
"Yeah, and don't think I didn't spend a decade or two looking sideways at every one I walked past," Jack snorted softly and looked down at the plate the vendor shoved in his hand. "I'm supposed to eat this?"
Crichton ignored the food comment. "A few decades, huh?"
Jack pressed his lips together and remained silent as he followed Crichton over to a bench.
"I've been trying to figure out why you've been dogging my steps all day," Crichton began after he swallowed a spoonful of his disturbing lunch.
Jack set his own plate aside and tried not to look at it. "And what did you come up with?"
"You're a little old for hero-worship, you know? And, I'd've thought the last time we met would have knocked that out of you."
"I'm just stubborn like that," Jack replied blandly.
"You're looking for something. Something you think I can give you."
Jack laughed salaciously, "Oh, you can give me something, alright."
Crichton responded with a glare and another mouthful of gruel. "I'm not playing, Jack."
"No kidding." Jack sighed and cast about for a change of subject. "Are you ever coming back to Earth?"
"You know the answer to that better than I do."
"Time, history, it's not static. All I know are the possibilities."
Crichton shrugged and chewed thoughtfully. "Right now, I'd say 'no', but who knows what tomorrow will look like."
"Yeah."
"How long has it been?"
"What?"
"Since we met?"
"Uh ... a while."
"How long, Jack?" Crichton pressed doggedly.
"A very, very long time, Commander."
"And?"
"And what?" Jack asked, his exasperation growing. But Crichton was right, something in him needed something from the other man, and as much as he'd like, he wasn't able to just get up and walk away, and he couldn't tell him the discussion was off the table. It might work with his team, but Crichton was something else entirely. It would almost be like dodging a discussion with the Doctor -- something that was never, ever possible.
"Feels like we've swapped places, Jack. Where have you been?"
"We're not talking geography, are we?"
"I can do this all day, man. I've had my mind frelled by the best of them, and you're not even going to get close."
Jack sat silently for a moment, watching as Crichton finished his lunch. "I died," he said suddenly.
"I guess it didn't take."
With a mirthless laugh, Jack shook his head. "No, it really didn't. Not that first time and not the few dozen times since."
"I see," Crichton said flatly, tossing away his plate and wiping his hands on his trousers.
"Probably not, but it's nice that you're trying." Jack fought off the impulse to pat him on the knee. A pulse blast might not kill him, but it would hurt.
"What is it you do want from me, Captain?"
"I don't want anything. I told you--"
"You came to see me. Whether or not you ever ended up actually talking to me, you did come here to see me. Right?"
"I may have said something like that, yeah."
"So, what were you hoping to see?"
"I don't know, really. Maybe ..." Jack paused and looked at Crichton, studying his face, his eyes, his restless hands as they tapped on the edge of the bench, or fiddled with his holster. "Maybe I just wanted to see something that might remind me I had a life before I died. I used to ... I don't know."
"Did it work?"
"No, you spotted me. And now you're making like a shrink, and frankly, that's a whole lot like the blind leading the blind, buddy."
The Commander smirked and glanced off across the square. "You know what we need?" Crichton asked, but didn't wait for an answer from Jack, who thought maybe that was the sort of question he didn't really want an answer to. "We need an explosion or something. Chaos. Mayhem." He turned back to Jack and pinned him with that stare again. "Something to fight."
Jack raised an eyebrow and gave the square his own look over. "Are those Peacekeepers?"
Crichton followed his look and shrugged. "Yeah. PKs are no fun, though. Besides, I think they're all afraid of me now. Blow away half their fleet, a few dozen Scarran dreadnoughts--"
"A moon."
Crichton snorted softly, amused. "The moon was a good one."
"I always admired it."
Crichton scrubbed a hand across his face and cleared his throat roughly. "Yeah. Light off a nuke or two, destroy a planet -- everybody gets twitchy around you."
"We could go say 'hi', be polite."
"You just want to see if they'll freak out," Crichton accused, trying, and failing, not to look like that sounded like fun.
"Well, yeah."
After a moment, Crichton shook his head. "Nah. I've been kind of enjoying the quiet, but it's weird, too. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for everything to go straight to hell again."
"I'm not telling you," Jack cut him off.
"I'm not asking. I'm just saying." Crichton sat forward and braced his forearms on his knees.
"Take the peace while you can get it, I always say. Tomorrow can be such a bitch."
"Cheerful. Thanks, Jack."
"Anytime," Jack grinned broadly.
Crichton sighed and grabbed at the sack at his feet. "I should probably be heading back."
Jack nodded. Time was up. Funny how that always happened, even when you travelled in time. You could go forwards, or backwards, or sideways, live days over again, and yet, at some point, time was up.
"You want to come back? You didn't get much chance to see Moya last time. You can meet my son."
Flattered, and maybe sort of humbled, Jack cleared his throat, surprisingly uncomfortable. "Ah, no, but thanks. I'm probably not the sort of influence you want to expose your son to." He said the last with a small laugh, trying to pass off the joke.
Crichton just snorted. "You know Moya's crew, right?"
With a grin, Jack stood up. "Thanks, Commander. Really. But, I've got to be on my way, too."
"Sure, Jack. Good seeing you again. Without the, you know, running for our lives."
"It's always good to see you. Maybe we'll meet up again."
"I'll look forward to it." The Commander stood and held his hand out to Jack. "I ..."
Jack took his hand and held it warmly. "Yeah."
"No, look. I've gotta say this." The Commander tightened his grip on Jack's hand and stared at him with those piercing blue eyes a guy could get lost in. "I know what it's like to spend most of your life trying to match this ideal of the type of man you ought to be, and I know what it's like to feel like you've missed that mark again and again by a million light-years and more."
"John --"
"I've met you twice, and, it's been weird, Jack. Really frelling weird. And considering where I've been, that's saying something. But, I look at you and I see a guy who tried to get himself lost in a bar, but drank only water. A guy who spent five years trying to keep Earth out of all the dren out here for just a little bit longer. A guy who forgave me and thought maybe I was okay even after I held a gun to his head. A guy who told me to hold on, because it mattered to him that I could. That guy? That guy is a good guy. He's probably screwed up. Maybe he's even screwed up as galactically as I have -- I seem to remember you mentioning almost wiping out the human race?"
"Let's forget that, huh?"
Crichton gave Jack a small smile and dropped his hand. "Sure. Look me up again, Jack. And don't hide in the shadows when you do, huh?"
Jack licked his lips uncertainly and glanced away.
"I can't go where you go," Crichton pressed. "So, you know, I'm gonna wonder, and maybe even, I don't know, worry, or something. You wouldn't want to do that to me, would you?" The small smiled grew to puckish grin.
"Guilt. This is guilt? You're guilting me," Jack accused incredulously. "That's so unfair."
Crichton laughed and slapped Jack on the shoulder as he stepped past. "See you round the universe, buddy."
"Count on it," Jack called after him.
"Work on that hero complex," Crichton tossed over his shoulder.
Jack watched Crichton disappear into the crowd, then looked up into the late afternoon sun, feeling just a touch of melancholy. Then he frowned at himself -- he didn't remember ever being melancholy before he died that first time. Man, he was turning into a sap in his very old age. He shook himself with a laugh and looked back the way the Commander had gone. "Be fantastic, Commander."
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