Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, Part 3a of 4
Title: Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,
Part Three A-When You Tell Me that You Love Me
Author: veritas6_5
Fandom: Torchwood and just a little Doctor Who
Rating: M for adult situations
Pairing: Gwen and Jack
Words: 12,663
Warning: Bad dreams
Classification: Ten years from now.
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst, new life
Disclaimer: All characters belong to BBC and RTD. I mean them no harm. No copyright infringement is intended. I just take them out to play with them. I’ll put them right back.
Beta: karaokegal, the finest ever
Summary: Maybe there is somewhere to go from here, after all.
A/N: This was originally intended as a one-shot, but the second and third parts didn’t want it that way. Now there are three parts and a coda. Please review. I’m reposting all the parts together for the sake of coherence.
Part Three-When You Tell Me that You Love Me
Without fanfare, Jack moved in, and it seemed to Gwen that they inhabited the secluded little house as if they had built it for themselves. Gwen felt in her deepest being that this life-changing thing was really meant to be. She was completely aware of the effect Jack had always had on her, and she reveled in letting herself be consumed by it.
It was getting easier for Gwen to realise, finally, that she was free to be with Jack. When Jack had looked into her eyes and said that without her, he couldn’t see any usefulness to his long life, she felt like he had opened a window into a brighter universe than the one she’d been living in for the past three years, and she was now flying free in that wonderful space. She had never allowed herself the luxury of enjoying Jack’s attention before, and it was exhilarating.
Since Jack had reappeared in her life, she often thought about how different this relationship was from her marriage to Rhys. She had loved Rhys with all her heart. He was devoted to her. He had withstood those early days of her job with Torchwood, when she had lied about everything to him. When he learned the truth, well, most of the truth about her job, he had managed to assimilate what she told him, and accepted her for what she was and what she did. In Rhys, she had what few women ever get to experience, an uncompromising, unquestioning, unconditional faith that let him overlook what she knew to be her most serious faults: her pride, her selfishness, her fears that someone, someday, would find out just how insecure she was.
Gwen had spent a lot of effort in her first months at Torchwood trying to find ways to keep her powerful attraction and attachment to Jack from changing the way she looked at Rhys. Jack’s persona was so overwhelming that anyone else was bound to come second when he was in the equation. Jack must have recognised and understood her inherent pride, selfishness, and insecurities-he seemed to reflect them right back to her from inside himself. Gwen had felt that she and Jack were so alike, each trying to convince the world that they had none of those faults. It made them vulnerable, especially to each other.
Then Ianto Jones had happened to Jack, a coup de foudre, a thunderbolt from nowhere, and Jack had given Ianto a totally new perspective. Jack adored everything about Ianto, from his pale Welsh complexion to his deep voice and his shapely arse. Ianto was a beautiful boy, Gwen admitted, and he had grown up in terrible circumstances, but his spirit was pure, and she’d loved him too. He had become her close friend, her confidant, and her second reason for continuing to resist Jack’s persistent overtures. ‘Quaint categories,’ indeed. Gwen knew what she saw. She could tell that Ianto was clearly smitten with Jack. Of Jack’s feelings, she wasn’t so sure.
Accepting Jack into her life also meant that Gwen accepted his quirks and foibles, and she suspected that there would be some interesting discussions coming up between them, once the first warm honeymoon months were over. Jack remained an enigma wrapped in a paradox. There were still so many things he didn’t say, wouldn’t broach. The worst part of it was that she didn’t even want to ask him any of those difficult questions now. She just wanted the bliss to continue unchecked. She didn’t want the peace that they were sharing to be disturbed.
She didn’t know what started that train of thought, but as she sat on the beach, watching Jack swim in the bay, she huddled deeper into her jacket. Mid-September was surprisingly cool, and she knew when he got out of the water and into the chilly air, they would rush home to a warm shower, and the rest of the afternoon in bed. The very thought made her shiver. She swallowed hard, and hugged her arms to her chest. Making love with Jack was such an intensely pleasurable sensation (made all the more precious to her for the delay in consummation). He was so tender with her, and such a generous lover, that Gwen thought that she had never been so content.
Her life had bloomed to a degree that she wouldn’t have believed possible. She had been very lonely in her first months in northern Wales, and seriously wondered if she had made a tragic error just trying to get far away from Cardiff. She met her next door neighbour, Mrs. Owens, and hardly anyone else. Her personal tragedies had turned her inward, made her life small. Jack’s apparently newfound gregariousness saw to it that as a couple, they made new friends all over town. He had even managed to angle a part-time job for himself, teaching two sections of physics at the university.
Once Louisa Owens figured out Gwen-and-Jack as one unit, she proceeded to insinuate herself into Jack’s good graces. Jack turned his attention to enlisting her to enlarge their new circle of friends. Jack had even been accepted into Mrs. Owens’s group teas, the only man so honoured, and he delighted in their gossip as much as they delighted in his showy charm and old-fashioned gentility. He loved those older women, and loved being adored by them.
Of course, in the confines of a small neighbourhood in a small town, there was also an undercurrent of wonder about the nature of their relationship. Gwen declined to discuss it. Most of the women knew she had been widowed, although some ungenerously assumed that Jack was a gigolo. He roared with laughter when he heard that rumour, and started growing a pencil-thin moustache. Gwen had shaved half of it off him one morning when he was asleep.
After weeks of making love in the afternoon, in the morning, and all through the night, Gwen thought surely at some time, the frequency of their need for each other must necessarily decrease, but it didn’t. She would wake in the night and find him watching her, and when he saw that she was awake, their desire for each other would heat up again, the craving, adoration, friction, skin-to-skin contact, feathery kisses, thrusting, angels in song . . . Sometimes she could look at his face in repose and simply marvel at his beauty, the glorious perfection, the glow, the luscious scent that was only Jack’s, the fine smoothness of his skin, the blue eyes that could burn with desire and also comfort her with deep understanding . . . his long fingers on her body or twined in her hair . . .
Gwen was shocked from her reveries by the cold drops of water falling on her face. Jack leaned over her, wrapped in his big towel, grinning, his lips blue from the cold. “Want to go home?” he said, through chattering teeth. “That might just be my last swim this year!” Gwen got up from her spot out of the wind, and they ran for home, stumbling in their haste to get quickly to that hot shower, and each other.
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
The breeze was particularly chilly that night, blowing the curtains away from the sills, and Jack pulled the covers up over Gwen’s shoulders. It was probably going to be one of the last nights they would be able to keep all the windows open at night. Gwen had fallen asleep early, lulled by the soughing of the wind through the trees in the garden. Jack stayed awake a bit longer, reading. As he reached to put his book down, and turned to look at Gwen as she slept by his side, he felt a warm flush rise in his face, and considered how they had nearly missed each other. He had loved her for more than twelve years of her linear time, and he still saw her as that curious, tenacious PC who had found a way into the secret spaces of Torchwood.
I want to call the stars down from the sky,
I want to live a day that never dies,
I want to change the world only for you,
All the impossible, I want to do.
I want to hold you close under the rain,
I want to kiss your smile and feel the pain,
I know it’s beautiful, looking at you,
In a world of lies, you are the truth.
Her eyelashes made shadows on her freckled cheek, and he reached out to push her hair off her neck, resisting the urge to kiss her awake. He had been with enough partners in his time to wonder what it was that made her so special to him, in this time, in this place. There had been many men and women in his life, he had made outstanding memories with some of them, but everyone else, and everything else, were eclipsed by the surge of emotions he felt when he thought about Gwen now. Touching her, breathing the same air, gave him a sense of security that he had lost . . . years and lifetimes ago.
He wondered if he might eventually have found that elusive security with Ianto, but his life had been drastically altered by circumstances completely out of his control. Roaming disjointedly across the universe after the disaster of the 456 had emphasized only his extreme inability to settle, literally or figuratively, anywhere, and he eventually realized that it was Gwen who drew him back to Cardiff again and again.
I want to make you see just what I was,
Show you the loneliness and what it does.
You walked into my life to stop the tears,
Everything’s easy now I have you near.
Jack turned off the light, slid down into the bed, and pulled the blankets up around his shoulders. He spooned Gwen from behind and held her loosely. He draped one arm over her, and she took his hand between her breasts. He breathed her in deeply, the scent of her clean skin, her shampoo, not quite able to fall asleep.
He was disturbed from his restless half-sleep by Gwen’s twitching and tossing in the bed, whimpering softly at first, then crying out. He tried to calm her, but she woke, startled, with a shuddering gasp. “I’ve got you, Gwen. It’s ok, I’ve got you,” he soothed, but she was deep in her dream, and couldn’t see or hear him, although her eyes were wide open.
Jack struggled to hold her until she focused her eyes to recognise him. Her arms were clutched across her chest, and she was curled up tight. Her breathing was raspy and jagged until she seemed to gain some control, relax, and sip from the glass of water that Jack had fetched for her.
She returned the glass to him with shaking hands, and he climbed back into the bed, pulling up the duvet to warm her, holding her close as she trembled in the aftermath of her dream. She laid her tear-stained face against his chest where she could feel the comfort of his heart beating against her cheek.
Jack ran his fingers through her hair. He loved touching her hair, and it seemed to settle her. “What was that?” he inquired softly, letting the strands trickle through his fingers.
She couldn’t answer him for a long minute, and finally murmured, “Bad dream.”
“Want to talk about it?” he said.
“Fear,” she said in a low tone. “Fear and death.”
Jack knew words were useless. He just held her, rocking gently until he felt the trembling ease and the tension begin to leave her body. Her hands were cold, and he pressed them against himself, twining his legs with hers to warm her feet. He wanted her to feel safe, comforted, and loved.
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
Jack tried to talk to her about the dream in the morning, but Gwen retreated into a place he couldn’t reach. She was mostly silent, but he saw tears slipping down her cheeks from time to time. She slumped in her chair holding, but not reading, a book. When Jack pointed out that the book was upside down, he drew a small smile from her, but she simply turned the book around and continued the pretence of reading.
He paced the small room, helpless, and finally leaned over, kissed the top of her head, and lifted her out of her chair to settle her next to him on the couch. “Was it about Rhys or Anwen?” he said.
Gwen startled for a moment. “Why would you think that?” she said.
“You were devastated. You would only say it was about death,” he responded.
“No, it wasn’t about . . . them.” She shook her head.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head on his shoulder, and rubbed her cheek against his throat until she felt/heard the rumble of his voice. “Stop that,” he said, “talk to me.”
“There were these metal rods,” she admitted, “impaling me, and my blood was all over me, and pooling at my feet. I couldn’t move. I was desperate, lonely, frightened. I felt like I had lost everything I cared about.” She pressed closer against him, and took a deep breath. “I’m glad you were holding me when I woke up.”
He held her tight, stroking her hair until she pulled away. She exhaled through a smile, “I don’t know where that fear came from. I haven’t lost you. You’re always there for me. We’ve barely been apart from each other long enough to use the loo . . .”
“Feeling smothered?” he inquired, turning his head and craning to look into her eyes.
“Oh, no, Jack!” She knelt on the couch next to him, capturing his face between her hands, “No, how could I?” She opened his shirt and pushed her arms around him under his clothing. “I can’t get enough of you!” She leaned in to kiss him behind his ear, nipping at his earlobe, and, licking down the side of his neck, murmured “salty,” and nibbled around to the front of his throat, and down across his chest . . . as he pushed her hair aside and whispered into her ear.
She let go of him only long enough to unbuckle his belt, unbutton his flies, reach into his trousers with her hand, and then it was just a maelstrom of discarded clothing, and a teasing and giddy race to the seclusion of the bedroom.
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
Jack was still holding her loosely afterwards. Relaxed, slightly sleepy, Gwen drawled into Jack’s closest ear, “If you really loved me, you would make me a big cup of tea.”
He roused himself only enough to wave a careless hand over her face and say, “Presto, you’re a big cup of tea.”
She giggled, which he found unreasonably charming, and he got up from the bed and went quietly into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When he returned with two mugs of tea, she had pulled the sheets on the bed taut again, and propped the pillows against the headboard so that when he climbed into the bed, she could lean back against him in her favorite (sitting-up-in-bed) position. They sipped at their tea, and he asked again.
“I need you to talk more about your dream, Gwen.”
“Jack,” she said. “It was a bad dream. Let it go. Don’t you ever have bad dreams?”
He snorted, “Of course I do. And sometimes it’s the pizza or the curry.”
“We didn’t have pizza or curry,” she said. “It was just a bad dream. But the utter desperation of being alone, unwanted. That was the hardest thing.” She snuggled tighter into his arms.
“You do know how important you are to me?” he asked.
“You brought me tea,” she said languidly, sipping from her cup.
“Are you afraid I’ll leave you?” He tensed and could tell that she felt the change in his body. He thought it was the thing she feared the most, that she wasn’t going to be enough, that eventually he would run.
She shook her head, and a little of her tea spilled on him. She patted him dry with one corner of the sheet. “No. You promised,” she said softly.
“Think I’m trustworthy?”
She turned around, putting her mug down on the table. “Yes, I do. Aren’t you?”
He smiled tightly. “Trying to be.” He knew that was what she needed to hear. He needed to find a way to make her understand that it was true.
She twisted around fully to look into his eyes. “Am I making it hard for you, with these dreams?”
“No. . . no, not at all,” he said deliberately.
“Is it difficult? I know this shouldn’t be happening.”
“I’d rather be here with you,” he paused, “than anywhere else without you.”
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
When her nightmares returned the next night, and with increasing frequency over the next weeks, Jack began to worry more seriously. When he could get her to talk about it, Gwen always described a horrific descent into death. Every time the nightmare came, it was different, and each time she woke, screaming or moaning in terror, it took her longer to shake off the effects.
She dreamed of drowning, being dismembered, being immolated, and worse. Helpless to prevent any of it, unable to move, in crushing darkness, alone except for a laughing voice shouting epithets and insults. The worst thing, she insisted, was the feeling of being lost, alone, abandoned.
“Gwen,” Jack said, finally, after one particularly difficult morning after, “I think we need to do something about this. I want you to talk to someone, maybe Martha?”
Gwen studied her movements carefully as she pulled on her clothes, and bowed her head. “Martha, ok, but no one else. I’m so tired,” she sobbed. “And I’m scared,” Gwen insisted. “We have to wait until she’s at home so she can talk freely.”
Huddled in her chair while Jack phoned Martha that night, Gwen was exhausted, afraid to sleep, and had drunk enough caffeine over the course of the day to make her shaky. After some initial banter, he explained the purpose of his call, and Martha asked a few questions. Jack answered her, explaining what Gwen had been able to recall. Martha teased out a few more details, and then Martha said, “Jack, do you want me to come up there this weekend?”
Jack cast a quick look at Gwen and said, “Yes.” Decisively. “Soon as you can.”
“What do you mean?” Gwen hissed. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“Not just a doctor. Martha’s a friend,” he said fiercely. “As soon as you can,” Jack repeated. He snapped the phone closed.
Gwen moved from her chair to his welcoming arms, and settled herself against him. “I don’t want to go to sleep tonight.”
“Martha can’t get here before week’s end . . .”
“I’m not going to sleep,” she said firmly.
“I can think of a number of things to do with you that will keep you awake,” he suggested with a sly grin, kissing her hand, and taking her fingers into his mouth one at a time. “I’m sure I can amuse you all night long.”
Soon, she pulled herself out of his arms. “I’m taking the first shower tonight. You used up all the hot water this morning.” Only a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel, she came into the bedroom, hair wet, skin fragrant and dewy from the shower. Jack was lounging naked on the bed, a pillow across his hips. He handed her a glass half full of amber liquid. She sniffed it. “That’s whiskey, Jack,” she protested. “I don’t drink whiskey.”
“Tonight, my love, you drink whiskey. You drink as much as you can, and I promise you, tonight there will be no dreams.”
“I’ll only be drunk, Jack,” she scoffed. “And oh, the hangover . . .”
He soothed her with his hands, and tipped the glass to her lips. “I’ll be here with you, all night. Hell, we’ll drink together.” He poured liquor into a second glass, saluted her with some words in a language she’d never heard, and took a sip. He nudged her to drink again.
“What did you just say?”
“I wished you a long and happy life. Now let’s drink.”
“You don’t even get drunk,” she complained, choking after a fiery swallow.
“Oh, but I do,” he said. “It just takes longer, and we have lots of time.” He pulled her onto the bed, threw her towel to the floor, and pressed his naked body against hers, “lots of time.” He was already aroused and their lovemaking was slow and sweet. She closed her eyes, and he distracted her for a time.
After her climax, Gwen took control of Jack. She marked him with love bites high on his inner thighs, before taking him into her mouth. He arched, and she slipped her hands beneath him, cupping his scrotum in one hand and his buttocks with the other, scratching gently at him with her fingernails. He clenched his muscles, and she smiled, letting him feel her teeth. She released him, moved above him, and settled him deeply into herself again, laying against his body. With contractions, Gwen was able to bring Jack to a shivering finish. He took several deep breaths and said weakly, “Did you always know how to do that?”
She giggled and went to the bath to get washing flannels.
“I’m pouring you more whiskey,” he called to her, and she was smiling when she came back and cleaned him thoroughly before climbing back into the bed.
“Do your worst, Harkness,” she challenged, and tossed back a healthy slug. They played all the drinking games they could think of: kissing in between drinks; longer, deeper kisses filled with longing, bigger drinks.
She was right about him, though. The drink didn’t affect him as quickly as it affected her, and soon she was giddy and couldn’t really control her hands. “These aren’t my hands,” she complained, staring at her spread fingers. “I can’t lift the glass, I have to stop.”
Jack lifted the glass to her lips. “I’ll help you, sweetheart.”
She reached out and stayed his hand, pushing the liquor away. “How do you come to be calling me ‘sweetheart,’ Jack?”
“You always had pet names for the others. You used to call Tosh ‘sweetie’ and Ianto ‘pet,’ and Owen . . . well, ok, mostly I remember you calling him a wanker, but you never used a pet name for me. Why was that?”
“You were my boss,” she explained patiently, as if instructing a child.
“I see,” he observed, and turned his sideways look on her. “Are you not my sweetheart now?”
She blushed, “Okay, let’s say I am. When did you start with pet names?”
“I’m not your boss any more. We’re lovers. Don’t you like being called ‘sweetheart?’”
She regarded him solemnly and said slowly, “Rhys used to call me ‘sweetheart’.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologised. “Do you want me to stop?”
“It brings back happy thoughts,” she mused. “Of better times with Rhys, before he got so sick. He really loved me, beyond all reason.”
Jack tilted his head. “I remember telling you that he loved you dearly.”
She nodded with a soft smile. “I know . . .”
Jack looked at her with an appraising stare. “I could call you ‘Pumpkin’ instead.”
“Don’t you dare,” she retorted.
“How about ‘Sweetums’?”
“That’s a life-sized Muppet.”
“ Or ‘Pooky,’ ‘Turtle-dove,’ or, no, I have it-‘Puss’!”
She tried to hit him with a pillow, but was far too drunk to aim it.
“I love it when you call me your sweetheart,” she announced, trying to put her arms around his neck seductively, and almost falling off the bed. He righted her and set her back against the headboard. “Call me your sweetheart again, so I can hear you say it.”
Jack held the glass to her lips again, “Take another sip, my sweetheart.”
She sipped, sighed, and said, “I thought that stuff was foul, but it’s starting to taste really good.” She cocked her head to look at him. “You don’t say it right, you know. It’s sweet-, with the emphasis on pronouncing the ‘t’; -heart, again, you have to hit the ‘t’ just so. Sweet-heart!”
“I’m not Welsh,” he said back to her, “I pronounce the vowels as well as the consonants. Sweet-heart.” He handed her the glass again, and she took it and drained it.
“I’m done,” she announced, and fell over sideways in the bed.
Jack leaned over Gwen, checked to see that she was breathing easily, and settled her more comfortably. He covered her with the duvet, and laid down next to her, taking her into his arms. She was completely passed out, and he hoped that meant that she would sleep peacefully.
Within an hour, Gwen woke up retching, startling Jack into action. He hurriedly pulled the wastebasket up from the floor and she obligingly vomited into it. He held her hair out of the stream, and wiped her face when she stopped vomiting. She turned wide eyes up to face him, and fell over again, asleep.
Late in the morning, she woke him by pummeling him ineffectually with her fists. “I feel like shit, Jack!”
He fended off her blows by holding her against himself. “It’ll get better. Did you dream?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I’m pretty sure I gakked.”
Jack laid his hand against her cheek. “I cleaned it up.”
She nodded, and kissed his hand. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
“I always have,” he whispered.
Every time you touch me, I become a hero,
I’ll make you safe, no matter where you are.
And bring you everything you ask for, nothing is above me,
I’m shining like an candle in the dark,
When you tell me that you love me.
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
The nightmares didn’t stop.
Gwen couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and Jack was relieved on Friday afternoon when he left for Manchester to pick Martha up. After greeting Martha with a hug, walking out to the car park, Martha asked more questions, and he explained as best he could as they drove back to Wales in Gwen’s car. She regarded him clinically. “You look different, too,” she said, finally.
“I’m happy,” he said. “No Torchwood, no responsibility for anyone but ourselves. I’m elated, over the moon. But I’m worried about Gwen. These dreams are not doing her any good.”
“Have you considered asking the . . .” she started.
Jack’s face paled, and he set his jaw. “He made it quite clear that my problems are beneath his notice.”
Martha had never heard his voice colder. She shivered. “What does your empathic sense tell you about these dreams?”
“Not prying. Everyone’s entitled to their own mind.” He glanced at her. “What made you ask that?”
“Well, Gwen told me, when we talked a day or so after your call, that you two have barely been out of physical contact in weeks. How do you manage to maintain your mental distance?”
“Good training,” he growled.
“Touchy,” she observed. “That’s one symptom.”
“Of what?” he asked.
“You don’t usually speak to me in that tone,” she said, somewhat hurt. “I only came up here to help Gwen and you’re gonna get shirty with me?”
Jack drove on in silence.
“Give, Jack,” Martha urged. “You know something.”
More silence from Jack’s side. Martha looked out the window.
His voice was low and tight when he finally did answer her. “I’m pretty sure,” he said in a controlled tone, “there’s been a transference . . .”
Martha feigned disinterest, keeping her eyes on the passing landscape.
“She’s remembering the year-that-never-was.” Jack stated in a flat voice.
“How do you know?”
He kept his eyes on the road.
Martha snorted. “Jack, for heaven’s sake, use that fifty-first century brain you keep in your head! What do you think happens when two organisms are in intimate contact for long periods of time?”
He shrugged.
“She doesn’t know anything about that year. Or did you tell her?” Martha asked him directly.
“I didn’t tell her anything. But she’s reliving the ways that the Master killed me, and she’s going through them as me, in my place,” he admitted. “I thought I was under control, and I’m not even aware that I’m still thinking about it on a conscious level, but somehow she’s getting it from me. She’s so scared, the same way I was scared . . .” Jack turned his eyes from the road for a second to see if she was looking at him. She was.
“What are you afraid of now, Jack?”
“Me?”
“Something is bringing these fears of yours out. It’s been a long time since the year-that-never-was. You say you’re happy and content, but you’re projecting fears at her, and she’s interpreting them as her own dreams. What are you afraid of?”
He drove on, breathing deeply, trying to formulate an answer. “I don’t want to lose her now. If I’m projecting, I have to find a way to stop it. She’s already had to bear too much.”
“So how do we get you to stop?”
In a rare expression of anger, Jack pounded his hands on the steering wheel, “I don’t goddamn know!”
“We could try calling . . .” she began.
He silenced her with a look. “I can’t.”
“I can,” she said.
“You can try,” he challenged. “But don’t be surprised if he refuses.”
Martha rolled her eyes.
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Jack turned the car into the driveway beside the house. Gwen came out the garden door, ran to Martha and hugged her. “It has been far too long since I’ve seen you!” she cried.
Martha hugged Gwen back. “You’re looking well, honey,” Martha said. She turned to raise an eyebrow at Jack, who was getting her case out of the boot. He carried it into the house, leaving the women to come in together, holding hands. Martha lifted Gwen’s hand and examined it closely. “Gwen, you’re skin and bones.”
Gwen snatched her hand back, “Well . . . it’s been hard, Martha, until Jack . . .”
Jack came up to stand next to Gwen, and she slipped a proprietary arm around his waist, lifting her other hand to touch his cheek. She rested her head against him.
Martha observed them together, and a smile curved her lips. “I’ve never seen two people happier,” she said. “It sure took you long enough to get there.”
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Over a simple dinner that Jack set out in the dining room, Gwen regaled Martha with some stories from the drunken night that had, in fact, produced no dreams, but a noteworthy, world-class hangover. Jack chimed in, adding the little details that Gwen had omitted, and they laughed a lot.
The clinical observer in Martha observed that Gwen and Jack were in constantly touching each other; fingertips to cheek, a random kiss, a hand on a leg under the table. He lifted Gwen’s hair to sweep it away from her face when she leaned across the table to make a point. She touched the corner of his mouth to flick away a crumb.
While Gwen cleared the table and washed the few dishes, Martha took Jack’s arm and pulled him into the lounge. “There is never more than a minute when you aren’t touching each other. I’m thinking about your transference idea. Tell me a bit more about how your empathic sense works.”
“I can control it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You may be trying the best you know how, but it isn’t working,” she said. “I don’t know that much about it, but in my opinion, you’re definitely transjoined.”
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Gwen came into the room and settled into her chair, smiling at them. “What are you two whispering about?”
“We’re talking about your nightmares,” Martha said, “and what’s causing them.”
Gwen’s smile faded, and a pinched look came over her face. “You’ve figured it out already?” She stood up and moved toward Jack.
“Don’t sit with Jack right now,” Martha said quickly. “Jack, you go over there. Gwen, come sit here.”
Gwen touched Jack’s hand as they changed seats, and he gave her a reassuring smile. She sat down next to Martha, and Martha said, “Gwen, you’re looking so much better than you did when you left Cardiff. Is it just time that’s helped you?”
Gwen shook her head, “No, Martha. I was still miserably sad and sorry when I came up here. I really thought I was going mad. I looked like hell, I felt like death. I was trying to follow my therapist’s advice to write about how I felt, and it was a complete and utter failure.” She took a deep breath. “I was almost at the end of my rope. I couldn’t see any future. Then, one rainy day-Jack appeared at the end of my sidewalk.” She flashed him a grateful smile.
“I couldn’t believe it at first. I was sure I was dreaming, that he wasn’t real,” Gwen blushed, remembering her meticulous examination of Jack’s naked body. “I thought I had finally crossed the line, all my ‘repressed’ dreams come true. But it was really him, he had come looking for me.”
Jack started to make a comment, but Martha shushed him. “And it’s been perfect since then?”
“Not exactly,” Gwen admitted. She remembered the hours of intense discussions that had gone on into the night, ending in long hours of lovemaking. She remembered the moment when he had said he loved her, and she knew it wasn’t said to prove anything, wasn’t said in anger. It was tender, and real, and she remembered feeling that he had spoken the truth to her with no intention to mislead or lie. It was just a small moment, but she had opened her mind, her self, to him. The past was behind her, finally. She could breathe again. “There was one wonderful moment,” she mused aloud.
“What moment?” Martha said.
Gwen sniffed away a tear. “Sorry, private thought.” She looked at Jack, and saw his eyes shining. He understood, she was sure. He nodded to her.
“I think I can explain it,” Jack said, holding a hand up to forestall Martha’s comments. Her look told him to stay where he was, and talk. He took a deep breath, and Gwen thought that he looked frightened. For himself, but more for her. “About your nightmares,” he began. “It seems that I’m causing them . . .”
Gwen sniffed her disbelief. “No,” she said, “It’s me.”
From across the room, he made himself look directly at her, “I’m afraid it will kill you if we don’t fix this. Sweetheart, Gwen,” he implored. “you have to believe me. Your horrible dreams, they are my deaths. There are many more. And worse. I don’t want you to have to live through all of them.” He took another deep breath. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” she asked, “Where did you die like that? I mean I’ve seen you . . . die, but not like this!”
He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Can’t explain it,” he said. “I just can’t. Remember the time I was gone? You thought it had been only a few months, but for me it was much longer.”
“You said you had died five hundred times-this, this is what you meant?”
Jack nodded, and put his hand over his eyes, rubbing hard. “I tried to bury those memories, put them where I couldn’t feel them any more. Somehow you’ve found the place in me where I hid them . . . and they’re going to hurt you, love.”
Gwen could only stare at him. “How long have you known?”
He exhaled heavily. “After the third or fourth time. I really tried to stop myself from thinking about it, hide the memories deeper. You still found them.”
“You could have told me.” Gwen turned to Martha. “How can this happen?” She put her hands to her cheeks, which were burning. “I’m not a telepath.”
Martha looked at Jack for his permission, and he nodded at her. “Jack has had training, channeling his natural talents; and you told me something once about an ancestor of yours in Cardiff in Victorian times who closed the Rift . . .”
Gwen scoffed. “That’s a family legend.”
Martha took Gwen’s hands. “Maybe not. Just because you’ve never had testing doesn’t mean you aren’t sensitive. One of the things that makes Jack such a compelling leader is that he’s an exceptionally strong broadcaster. You’ve been in such close physical contact with him for a long time, and he loves you so much, I think you’ve penetrated his barriers.”
“How could I do such a thing?”
Martha tried to explain. “Didn’t you just say a few moments ago, that there was a moment? What was that about?”
Jack spoke. “It was when she decided to let me know her, right after I told her I loved her,” his face coloured, “and she trusted me, really believed me. I felt it in my head, I heard her. I just didn’t put it together.”
“We’ve always had a special rapport,” Gwen admitted, “but I don’t understand why this ‘transference’ didn’t happen with Ianto. You were utterly smitten with him, Jack.”
“I don’t know-I was torn between you and Ianto, confused . . .” He paused, and took refuge in his usual excuse. “You had a life with Rhys, I didn’t want to destroy that.”
“I couldn’t have you, Jack, but I did hope you could be happy. You loved Ianto. I know he wasn’t a second choice,” Gwen said.
“No, not a second choice; an alternate, perhaps,” he insisted. Gwen heard the pain in Jack’s voice. “I did love him. But I’ve loved a lot of people,” he shot a cautionary look at Martha, “I was determined not to interfere with your life. After Ianto died, I couldn’t stand to watch, so I left.”
Martha made a quiet addition. “But whenever Jack came back to Cardiff, he asked about you, Gwen. I told him what I knew, but then it was a few years before he returned again, and in that time . . . so much happened.”
He stood up and paced the room, his hands fisted at his sides. “What I found out, though, was that no matter how far I went, no matter who or what I took up with,” he drew a deep breath, “I wasn’t ever going to find happiness without you.” He gritted his teeth, “Now, my memories are destroying you.” He sank into the chair again, averting his eyes from Martha’s shocked face.
Gwen made wild gestures for Jack to stop talking. “But how are you destroying me? Jack, they’re my dreams!”
“They’re my memories, Gwen,” he said. “When you told me about them, I knew that they were mine.” Jack straightened in the chair. “It’s my fear that you’re feeling. I’ve died, so many ways,” he gestured, “dismembered, impaled, burned.” Martha shook her head sadly as he continued. “At the time, I tried to endure because of the Master’s threats to the Torchwood team, and the Doctor, and the whole world. What kept me sane was the hope of returning to you. Now I’m afraid I’ll lose you.” He leaned his head against the chair back, blinked back tears.
In a world without you, I will always hunger,
What I need is your love to make me stronger.
“What do we do?” Gwen asked, as Martha held her back from going to Jack’s side.
“I told Jack earlier, this isn’t my field,” Martha said. “I think Jack needs to review his barriers, and Gwen, I think you have to find some ways to erect stronger boundaries. I think that these weeks and months of constant exposure to each other has worn down your natural defenses. You both need help. Serious help. Right away.”
Gwen swallowed hard. She felt very small and insubstantial. She longed to . . . what? She didn’t have any idea of what to do. She just wanted it to stop. She wanted Jack’s arms around her. She needed to touch him. She felt her mouth go dry, and began to shake.
Jack took two strides across the room and swept her into his arms. She curled her arms around his waist, pulled him close, and started crying. Martha gave up the sofa to them and soothed Gwen. “It’ll be okay, darling. The dreams will stop. You’ll get back to normal. You just need to get some distance on this, and Jack needs to regain his control.”
Gwen sniffed and swallowed hard. “Jack made me live again. I can’t . . .”
“You know what a dependency is, Gwen,” Martha said quietly. “And you know you can’t afford to be like that. We’ve talked about this before.” Gwen nodded. “When I get home, I’m going to find someone for you to talk to.”
|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Gwen slept through the night after Martha left, but she was pretty sure that Jack didn’t.
“I have an idea,” Jack told Gwen, lolling in bed the next morning. “Martha thinks we should try to spend a little time physically apart, and we have to do that,” he held up a hand to stop Gwen’s protests, “until I can make some arrangements. It’s only a little while, and . . .”
“I don’t want to be apart from you!” she shouted, striking at him with fisted hands. “I’m not going to shut you out of my life!”
“Nothing will ever separate us for long,” he said through his teeth, holding her wrists. “But I have to get hold of myself, enough to stop you from hearing me.”
She wept in his arms, “I’d rather have the dreams. I need you.”
xxx
Part Three A-When You Tell Me that You Love Me
Author: veritas6_5
Fandom: Torchwood and just a little Doctor Who
Rating: M for adult situations
Pairing: Gwen and Jack
Words: 12,663
Warning: Bad dreams
Classification: Ten years from now.
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst, new life
Disclaimer: All characters belong to BBC and RTD. I mean them no harm. No copyright infringement is intended. I just take them out to play with them. I’ll put them right back.
Beta: karaokegal, the finest ever
Summary: Maybe there is somewhere to go from here, after all.
A/N: This was originally intended as a one-shot, but the second and third parts didn’t want it that way. Now there are three parts and a coda. Please review. I’m reposting all the parts together for the sake of coherence.
Part Three-When You Tell Me that You Love Me
Without fanfare, Jack moved in, and it seemed to Gwen that they inhabited the secluded little house as if they had built it for themselves. Gwen felt in her deepest being that this life-changing thing was really meant to be. She was completely aware of the effect Jack had always had on her, and she reveled in letting herself be consumed by it.
It was getting easier for Gwen to realise, finally, that she was free to be with Jack. When Jack had looked into her eyes and said that without her, he couldn’t see any usefulness to his long life, she felt like he had opened a window into a brighter universe than the one she’d been living in for the past three years, and she was now flying free in that wonderful space. She had never allowed herself the luxury of enjoying Jack’s attention before, and it was exhilarating.
Since Jack had reappeared in her life, she often thought about how different this relationship was from her marriage to Rhys. She had loved Rhys with all her heart. He was devoted to her. He had withstood those early days of her job with Torchwood, when she had lied about everything to him. When he learned the truth, well, most of the truth about her job, he had managed to assimilate what she told him, and accepted her for what she was and what she did. In Rhys, she had what few women ever get to experience, an uncompromising, unquestioning, unconditional faith that let him overlook what she knew to be her most serious faults: her pride, her selfishness, her fears that someone, someday, would find out just how insecure she was.
Gwen had spent a lot of effort in her first months at Torchwood trying to find ways to keep her powerful attraction and attachment to Jack from changing the way she looked at Rhys. Jack’s persona was so overwhelming that anyone else was bound to come second when he was in the equation. Jack must have recognised and understood her inherent pride, selfishness, and insecurities-he seemed to reflect them right back to her from inside himself. Gwen had felt that she and Jack were so alike, each trying to convince the world that they had none of those faults. It made them vulnerable, especially to each other.
Then Ianto Jones had happened to Jack, a coup de foudre, a thunderbolt from nowhere, and Jack had given Ianto a totally new perspective. Jack adored everything about Ianto, from his pale Welsh complexion to his deep voice and his shapely arse. Ianto was a beautiful boy, Gwen admitted, and he had grown up in terrible circumstances, but his spirit was pure, and she’d loved him too. He had become her close friend, her confidant, and her second reason for continuing to resist Jack’s persistent overtures. ‘Quaint categories,’ indeed. Gwen knew what she saw. She could tell that Ianto was clearly smitten with Jack. Of Jack’s feelings, she wasn’t so sure.
Accepting Jack into her life also meant that Gwen accepted his quirks and foibles, and she suspected that there would be some interesting discussions coming up between them, once the first warm honeymoon months were over. Jack remained an enigma wrapped in a paradox. There were still so many things he didn’t say, wouldn’t broach. The worst part of it was that she didn’t even want to ask him any of those difficult questions now. She just wanted the bliss to continue unchecked. She didn’t want the peace that they were sharing to be disturbed.
She didn’t know what started that train of thought, but as she sat on the beach, watching Jack swim in the bay, she huddled deeper into her jacket. Mid-September was surprisingly cool, and she knew when he got out of the water and into the chilly air, they would rush home to a warm shower, and the rest of the afternoon in bed. The very thought made her shiver. She swallowed hard, and hugged her arms to her chest. Making love with Jack was such an intensely pleasurable sensation (made all the more precious to her for the delay in consummation). He was so tender with her, and such a generous lover, that Gwen thought that she had never been so content.
Her life had bloomed to a degree that she wouldn’t have believed possible. She had been very lonely in her first months in northern Wales, and seriously wondered if she had made a tragic error just trying to get far away from Cardiff. She met her next door neighbour, Mrs. Owens, and hardly anyone else. Her personal tragedies had turned her inward, made her life small. Jack’s apparently newfound gregariousness saw to it that as a couple, they made new friends all over town. He had even managed to angle a part-time job for himself, teaching two sections of physics at the university.
Once Louisa Owens figured out Gwen-and-Jack as one unit, she proceeded to insinuate herself into Jack’s good graces. Jack turned his attention to enlisting her to enlarge their new circle of friends. Jack had even been accepted into Mrs. Owens’s group teas, the only man so honoured, and he delighted in their gossip as much as they delighted in his showy charm and old-fashioned gentility. He loved those older women, and loved being adored by them.
Of course, in the confines of a small neighbourhood in a small town, there was also an undercurrent of wonder about the nature of their relationship. Gwen declined to discuss it. Most of the women knew she had been widowed, although some ungenerously assumed that Jack was a gigolo. He roared with laughter when he heard that rumour, and started growing a pencil-thin moustache. Gwen had shaved half of it off him one morning when he was asleep.
After weeks of making love in the afternoon, in the morning, and all through the night, Gwen thought surely at some time, the frequency of their need for each other must necessarily decrease, but it didn’t. She would wake in the night and find him watching her, and when he saw that she was awake, their desire for each other would heat up again, the craving, adoration, friction, skin-to-skin contact, feathery kisses, thrusting, angels in song . . . Sometimes she could look at his face in repose and simply marvel at his beauty, the glorious perfection, the glow, the luscious scent that was only Jack’s, the fine smoothness of his skin, the blue eyes that could burn with desire and also comfort her with deep understanding . . . his long fingers on her body or twined in her hair . . .
Gwen was shocked from her reveries by the cold drops of water falling on her face. Jack leaned over her, wrapped in his big towel, grinning, his lips blue from the cold. “Want to go home?” he said, through chattering teeth. “That might just be my last swim this year!” Gwen got up from her spot out of the wind, and they ran for home, stumbling in their haste to get quickly to that hot shower, and each other.
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
The breeze was particularly chilly that night, blowing the curtains away from the sills, and Jack pulled the covers up over Gwen’s shoulders. It was probably going to be one of the last nights they would be able to keep all the windows open at night. Gwen had fallen asleep early, lulled by the soughing of the wind through the trees in the garden. Jack stayed awake a bit longer, reading. As he reached to put his book down, and turned to look at Gwen as she slept by his side, he felt a warm flush rise in his face, and considered how they had nearly missed each other. He had loved her for more than twelve years of her linear time, and he still saw her as that curious, tenacious PC who had found a way into the secret spaces of Torchwood.
I want to call the stars down from the sky,
I want to live a day that never dies,
I want to change the world only for you,
All the impossible, I want to do.
I want to hold you close under the rain,
I want to kiss your smile and feel the pain,
I know it’s beautiful, looking at you,
In a world of lies, you are the truth.
Her eyelashes made shadows on her freckled cheek, and he reached out to push her hair off her neck, resisting the urge to kiss her awake. He had been with enough partners in his time to wonder what it was that made her so special to him, in this time, in this place. There had been many men and women in his life, he had made outstanding memories with some of them, but everyone else, and everything else, were eclipsed by the surge of emotions he felt when he thought about Gwen now. Touching her, breathing the same air, gave him a sense of security that he had lost . . . years and lifetimes ago.
He wondered if he might eventually have found that elusive security with Ianto, but his life had been drastically altered by circumstances completely out of his control. Roaming disjointedly across the universe after the disaster of the 456 had emphasized only his extreme inability to settle, literally or figuratively, anywhere, and he eventually realized that it was Gwen who drew him back to Cardiff again and again.
I want to make you see just what I was,
Show you the loneliness and what it does.
You walked into my life to stop the tears,
Everything’s easy now I have you near.
Jack turned off the light, slid down into the bed, and pulled the blankets up around his shoulders. He spooned Gwen from behind and held her loosely. He draped one arm over her, and she took his hand between her breasts. He breathed her in deeply, the scent of her clean skin, her shampoo, not quite able to fall asleep.
He was disturbed from his restless half-sleep by Gwen’s twitching and tossing in the bed, whimpering softly at first, then crying out. He tried to calm her, but she woke, startled, with a shuddering gasp. “I’ve got you, Gwen. It’s ok, I’ve got you,” he soothed, but she was deep in her dream, and couldn’t see or hear him, although her eyes were wide open.
Jack struggled to hold her until she focused her eyes to recognise him. Her arms were clutched across her chest, and she was curled up tight. Her breathing was raspy and jagged until she seemed to gain some control, relax, and sip from the glass of water that Jack had fetched for her.
She returned the glass to him with shaking hands, and he climbed back into the bed, pulling up the duvet to warm her, holding her close as she trembled in the aftermath of her dream. She laid her tear-stained face against his chest where she could feel the comfort of his heart beating against her cheek.
Jack ran his fingers through her hair. He loved touching her hair, and it seemed to settle her. “What was that?” he inquired softly, letting the strands trickle through his fingers.
She couldn’t answer him for a long minute, and finally murmured, “Bad dream.”
“Want to talk about it?” he said.
“Fear,” she said in a low tone. “Fear and death.”
Jack knew words were useless. He just held her, rocking gently until he felt the trembling ease and the tension begin to leave her body. Her hands were cold, and he pressed them against himself, twining his legs with hers to warm her feet. He wanted her to feel safe, comforted, and loved.
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
Jack tried to talk to her about the dream in the morning, but Gwen retreated into a place he couldn’t reach. She was mostly silent, but he saw tears slipping down her cheeks from time to time. She slumped in her chair holding, but not reading, a book. When Jack pointed out that the book was upside down, he drew a small smile from her, but she simply turned the book around and continued the pretence of reading.
He paced the small room, helpless, and finally leaned over, kissed the top of her head, and lifted her out of her chair to settle her next to him on the couch. “Was it about Rhys or Anwen?” he said.
Gwen startled for a moment. “Why would you think that?” she said.
“You were devastated. You would only say it was about death,” he responded.
“No, it wasn’t about . . . them.” She shook her head.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head on his shoulder, and rubbed her cheek against his throat until she felt/heard the rumble of his voice. “Stop that,” he said, “talk to me.”
“There were these metal rods,” she admitted, “impaling me, and my blood was all over me, and pooling at my feet. I couldn’t move. I was desperate, lonely, frightened. I felt like I had lost everything I cared about.” She pressed closer against him, and took a deep breath. “I’m glad you were holding me when I woke up.”
He held her tight, stroking her hair until she pulled away. She exhaled through a smile, “I don’t know where that fear came from. I haven’t lost you. You’re always there for me. We’ve barely been apart from each other long enough to use the loo . . .”
“Feeling smothered?” he inquired, turning his head and craning to look into her eyes.
“Oh, no, Jack!” She knelt on the couch next to him, capturing his face between her hands, “No, how could I?” She opened his shirt and pushed her arms around him under his clothing. “I can’t get enough of you!” She leaned in to kiss him behind his ear, nipping at his earlobe, and, licking down the side of his neck, murmured “salty,” and nibbled around to the front of his throat, and down across his chest . . . as he pushed her hair aside and whispered into her ear.
She let go of him only long enough to unbuckle his belt, unbutton his flies, reach into his trousers with her hand, and then it was just a maelstrom of discarded clothing, and a teasing and giddy race to the seclusion of the bedroom.
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
Jack was still holding her loosely afterwards. Relaxed, slightly sleepy, Gwen drawled into Jack’s closest ear, “If you really loved me, you would make me a big cup of tea.”
He roused himself only enough to wave a careless hand over her face and say, “Presto, you’re a big cup of tea.”
She giggled, which he found unreasonably charming, and he got up from the bed and went quietly into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When he returned with two mugs of tea, she had pulled the sheets on the bed taut again, and propped the pillows against the headboard so that when he climbed into the bed, she could lean back against him in her favorite (sitting-up-in-bed) position. They sipped at their tea, and he asked again.
“I need you to talk more about your dream, Gwen.”
“Jack,” she said. “It was a bad dream. Let it go. Don’t you ever have bad dreams?”
He snorted, “Of course I do. And sometimes it’s the pizza or the curry.”
“We didn’t have pizza or curry,” she said. “It was just a bad dream. But the utter desperation of being alone, unwanted. That was the hardest thing.” She snuggled tighter into his arms.
“You do know how important you are to me?” he asked.
“You brought me tea,” she said languidly, sipping from her cup.
“Are you afraid I’ll leave you?” He tensed and could tell that she felt the change in his body. He thought it was the thing she feared the most, that she wasn’t going to be enough, that eventually he would run.
She shook her head, and a little of her tea spilled on him. She patted him dry with one corner of the sheet. “No. You promised,” she said softly.
“Think I’m trustworthy?”
She turned around, putting her mug down on the table. “Yes, I do. Aren’t you?”
He smiled tightly. “Trying to be.” He knew that was what she needed to hear. He needed to find a way to make her understand that it was true.
She twisted around fully to look into his eyes. “Am I making it hard for you, with these dreams?”
“No. . . no, not at all,” he said deliberately.
“Is it difficult? I know this shouldn’t be happening.”
“I’d rather be here with you,” he paused, “than anywhere else without you.”
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
When her nightmares returned the next night, and with increasing frequency over the next weeks, Jack began to worry more seriously. When he could get her to talk about it, Gwen always described a horrific descent into death. Every time the nightmare came, it was different, and each time she woke, screaming or moaning in terror, it took her longer to shake off the effects.
She dreamed of drowning, being dismembered, being immolated, and worse. Helpless to prevent any of it, unable to move, in crushing darkness, alone except for a laughing voice shouting epithets and insults. The worst thing, she insisted, was the feeling of being lost, alone, abandoned.
“Gwen,” Jack said, finally, after one particularly difficult morning after, “I think we need to do something about this. I want you to talk to someone, maybe Martha?”
Gwen studied her movements carefully as she pulled on her clothes, and bowed her head. “Martha, ok, but no one else. I’m so tired,” she sobbed. “And I’m scared,” Gwen insisted. “We have to wait until she’s at home so she can talk freely.”
Huddled in her chair while Jack phoned Martha that night, Gwen was exhausted, afraid to sleep, and had drunk enough caffeine over the course of the day to make her shaky. After some initial banter, he explained the purpose of his call, and Martha asked a few questions. Jack answered her, explaining what Gwen had been able to recall. Martha teased out a few more details, and then Martha said, “Jack, do you want me to come up there this weekend?”
Jack cast a quick look at Gwen and said, “Yes.” Decisively. “Soon as you can.”
“What do you mean?” Gwen hissed. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“Not just a doctor. Martha’s a friend,” he said fiercely. “As soon as you can,” Jack repeated. He snapped the phone closed.
Gwen moved from her chair to his welcoming arms, and settled herself against him. “I don’t want to go to sleep tonight.”
“Martha can’t get here before week’s end . . .”
“I’m not going to sleep,” she said firmly.
“I can think of a number of things to do with you that will keep you awake,” he suggested with a sly grin, kissing her hand, and taking her fingers into his mouth one at a time. “I’m sure I can amuse you all night long.”
Soon, she pulled herself out of his arms. “I’m taking the first shower tonight. You used up all the hot water this morning.” Only a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel, she came into the bedroom, hair wet, skin fragrant and dewy from the shower. Jack was lounging naked on the bed, a pillow across his hips. He handed her a glass half full of amber liquid. She sniffed it. “That’s whiskey, Jack,” she protested. “I don’t drink whiskey.”
“Tonight, my love, you drink whiskey. You drink as much as you can, and I promise you, tonight there will be no dreams.”
“I’ll only be drunk, Jack,” she scoffed. “And oh, the hangover . . .”
He soothed her with his hands, and tipped the glass to her lips. “I’ll be here with you, all night. Hell, we’ll drink together.” He poured liquor into a second glass, saluted her with some words in a language she’d never heard, and took a sip. He nudged her to drink again.
“What did you just say?”
“I wished you a long and happy life. Now let’s drink.”
“You don’t even get drunk,” she complained, choking after a fiery swallow.
“Oh, but I do,” he said. “It just takes longer, and we have lots of time.” He pulled her onto the bed, threw her towel to the floor, and pressed his naked body against hers, “lots of time.” He was already aroused and their lovemaking was slow and sweet. She closed her eyes, and he distracted her for a time.
After her climax, Gwen took control of Jack. She marked him with love bites high on his inner thighs, before taking him into her mouth. He arched, and she slipped her hands beneath him, cupping his scrotum in one hand and his buttocks with the other, scratching gently at him with her fingernails. He clenched his muscles, and she smiled, letting him feel her teeth. She released him, moved above him, and settled him deeply into herself again, laying against his body. With contractions, Gwen was able to bring Jack to a shivering finish. He took several deep breaths and said weakly, “Did you always know how to do that?”
She giggled and went to the bath to get washing flannels.
“I’m pouring you more whiskey,” he called to her, and she was smiling when she came back and cleaned him thoroughly before climbing back into the bed.
“Do your worst, Harkness,” she challenged, and tossed back a healthy slug. They played all the drinking games they could think of: kissing in between drinks; longer, deeper kisses filled with longing, bigger drinks.
She was right about him, though. The drink didn’t affect him as quickly as it affected her, and soon she was giddy and couldn’t really control her hands. “These aren’t my hands,” she complained, staring at her spread fingers. “I can’t lift the glass, I have to stop.”
Jack lifted the glass to her lips. “I’ll help you, sweetheart.”
She reached out and stayed his hand, pushing the liquor away. “How do you come to be calling me ‘sweetheart,’ Jack?”
“You always had pet names for the others. You used to call Tosh ‘sweetie’ and Ianto ‘pet,’ and Owen . . . well, ok, mostly I remember you calling him a wanker, but you never used a pet name for me. Why was that?”
“You were my boss,” she explained patiently, as if instructing a child.
“I see,” he observed, and turned his sideways look on her. “Are you not my sweetheart now?”
She blushed, “Okay, let’s say I am. When did you start with pet names?”
“I’m not your boss any more. We’re lovers. Don’t you like being called ‘sweetheart?’”
She regarded him solemnly and said slowly, “Rhys used to call me ‘sweetheart’.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologised. “Do you want me to stop?”
“It brings back happy thoughts,” she mused. “Of better times with Rhys, before he got so sick. He really loved me, beyond all reason.”
Jack tilted his head. “I remember telling you that he loved you dearly.”
She nodded with a soft smile. “I know . . .”
Jack looked at her with an appraising stare. “I could call you ‘Pumpkin’ instead.”
“Don’t you dare,” she retorted.
“How about ‘Sweetums’?”
“That’s a life-sized Muppet.”
“ Or ‘Pooky,’ ‘Turtle-dove,’ or, no, I have it-‘Puss’!”
She tried to hit him with a pillow, but was far too drunk to aim it.
“I love it when you call me your sweetheart,” she announced, trying to put her arms around his neck seductively, and almost falling off the bed. He righted her and set her back against the headboard. “Call me your sweetheart again, so I can hear you say it.”
Jack held the glass to her lips again, “Take another sip, my sweetheart.”
She sipped, sighed, and said, “I thought that stuff was foul, but it’s starting to taste really good.” She cocked her head to look at him. “You don’t say it right, you know. It’s sweet-, with the emphasis on pronouncing the ‘t’; -heart, again, you have to hit the ‘t’ just so. Sweet-heart!”
“I’m not Welsh,” he said back to her, “I pronounce the vowels as well as the consonants. Sweet-heart.” He handed her the glass again, and she took it and drained it.
“I’m done,” she announced, and fell over sideways in the bed.
Jack leaned over Gwen, checked to see that she was breathing easily, and settled her more comfortably. He covered her with the duvet, and laid down next to her, taking her into his arms. She was completely passed out, and he hoped that meant that she would sleep peacefully.
Within an hour, Gwen woke up retching, startling Jack into action. He hurriedly pulled the wastebasket up from the floor and she obligingly vomited into it. He held her hair out of the stream, and wiped her face when she stopped vomiting. She turned wide eyes up to face him, and fell over again, asleep.
Late in the morning, she woke him by pummeling him ineffectually with her fists. “I feel like shit, Jack!”
He fended off her blows by holding her against himself. “It’ll get better. Did you dream?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I’m pretty sure I gakked.”
Jack laid his hand against her cheek. “I cleaned it up.”
She nodded, and kissed his hand. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
“I always have,” he whispered.
Every time you touch me, I become a hero,
I’ll make you safe, no matter where you are.
And bring you everything you ask for, nothing is above me,
I’m shining like an candle in the dark,
When you tell me that you love me.
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
The nightmares didn’t stop.
Gwen couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and Jack was relieved on Friday afternoon when he left for Manchester to pick Martha up. After greeting Martha with a hug, walking out to the car park, Martha asked more questions, and he explained as best he could as they drove back to Wales in Gwen’s car. She regarded him clinically. “You look different, too,” she said, finally.
“I’m happy,” he said. “No Torchwood, no responsibility for anyone but ourselves. I’m elated, over the moon. But I’m worried about Gwen. These dreams are not doing her any good.”
“Have you considered asking the . . .” she started.
Jack’s face paled, and he set his jaw. “He made it quite clear that my problems are beneath his notice.”
Martha had never heard his voice colder. She shivered. “What does your empathic sense tell you about these dreams?”
“Not prying. Everyone’s entitled to their own mind.” He glanced at her. “What made you ask that?”
“Well, Gwen told me, when we talked a day or so after your call, that you two have barely been out of physical contact in weeks. How do you manage to maintain your mental distance?”
“Good training,” he growled.
“Touchy,” she observed. “That’s one symptom.”
“Of what?” he asked.
“You don’t usually speak to me in that tone,” she said, somewhat hurt. “I only came up here to help Gwen and you’re gonna get shirty with me?”
Jack drove on in silence.
“Give, Jack,” Martha urged. “You know something.”
More silence from Jack’s side. Martha looked out the window.
His voice was low and tight when he finally did answer her. “I’m pretty sure,” he said in a controlled tone, “there’s been a transference . . .”
Martha feigned disinterest, keeping her eyes on the passing landscape.
“She’s remembering the year-that-never-was.” Jack stated in a flat voice.
“How do you know?”
He kept his eyes on the road.
Martha snorted. “Jack, for heaven’s sake, use that fifty-first century brain you keep in your head! What do you think happens when two organisms are in intimate contact for long periods of time?”
He shrugged.
“She doesn’t know anything about that year. Or did you tell her?” Martha asked him directly.
“I didn’t tell her anything. But she’s reliving the ways that the Master killed me, and she’s going through them as me, in my place,” he admitted. “I thought I was under control, and I’m not even aware that I’m still thinking about it on a conscious level, but somehow she’s getting it from me. She’s so scared, the same way I was scared . . .” Jack turned his eyes from the road for a second to see if she was looking at him. She was.
“What are you afraid of now, Jack?”
“Me?”
“Something is bringing these fears of yours out. It’s been a long time since the year-that-never-was. You say you’re happy and content, but you’re projecting fears at her, and she’s interpreting them as her own dreams. What are you afraid of?”
He drove on, breathing deeply, trying to formulate an answer. “I don’t want to lose her now. If I’m projecting, I have to find a way to stop it. She’s already had to bear too much.”
“So how do we get you to stop?”
In a rare expression of anger, Jack pounded his hands on the steering wheel, “I don’t goddamn know!”
“We could try calling . . .” she began.
He silenced her with a look. “I can’t.”
“I can,” she said.
“You can try,” he challenged. “But don’t be surprised if he refuses.”
Martha rolled her eyes.
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Jack turned the car into the driveway beside the house. Gwen came out the garden door, ran to Martha and hugged her. “It has been far too long since I’ve seen you!” she cried.
Martha hugged Gwen back. “You’re looking well, honey,” Martha said. She turned to raise an eyebrow at Jack, who was getting her case out of the boot. He carried it into the house, leaving the women to come in together, holding hands. Martha lifted Gwen’s hand and examined it closely. “Gwen, you’re skin and bones.”
Gwen snatched her hand back, “Well . . . it’s been hard, Martha, until Jack . . .”
Jack came up to stand next to Gwen, and she slipped a proprietary arm around his waist, lifting her other hand to touch his cheek. She rested her head against him.
Martha observed them together, and a smile curved her lips. “I’ve never seen two people happier,” she said. “It sure took you long enough to get there.”
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Over a simple dinner that Jack set out in the dining room, Gwen regaled Martha with some stories from the drunken night that had, in fact, produced no dreams, but a noteworthy, world-class hangover. Jack chimed in, adding the little details that Gwen had omitted, and they laughed a lot.
The clinical observer in Martha observed that Gwen and Jack were in constantly touching each other; fingertips to cheek, a random kiss, a hand on a leg under the table. He lifted Gwen’s hair to sweep it away from her face when she leaned across the table to make a point. She touched the corner of his mouth to flick away a crumb.
While Gwen cleared the table and washed the few dishes, Martha took Jack’s arm and pulled him into the lounge. “There is never more than a minute when you aren’t touching each other. I’m thinking about your transference idea. Tell me a bit more about how your empathic sense works.”
“I can control it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. You may be trying the best you know how, but it isn’t working,” she said. “I don’t know that much about it, but in my opinion, you’re definitely transjoined.”
|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Gwen came into the room and settled into her chair, smiling at them. “What are you two whispering about?”
“We’re talking about your nightmares,” Martha said, “and what’s causing them.”
Gwen’s smile faded, and a pinched look came over her face. “You’ve figured it out already?” She stood up and moved toward Jack.
“Don’t sit with Jack right now,” Martha said quickly. “Jack, you go over there. Gwen, come sit here.”
Gwen touched Jack’s hand as they changed seats, and he gave her a reassuring smile. She sat down next to Martha, and Martha said, “Gwen, you’re looking so much better than you did when you left Cardiff. Is it just time that’s helped you?”
Gwen shook her head, “No, Martha. I was still miserably sad and sorry when I came up here. I really thought I was going mad. I looked like hell, I felt like death. I was trying to follow my therapist’s advice to write about how I felt, and it was a complete and utter failure.” She took a deep breath. “I was almost at the end of my rope. I couldn’t see any future. Then, one rainy day-Jack appeared at the end of my sidewalk.” She flashed him a grateful smile.
“I couldn’t believe it at first. I was sure I was dreaming, that he wasn’t real,” Gwen blushed, remembering her meticulous examination of Jack’s naked body. “I thought I had finally crossed the line, all my ‘repressed’ dreams come true. But it was really him, he had come looking for me.”
Jack started to make a comment, but Martha shushed him. “And it’s been perfect since then?”
“Not exactly,” Gwen admitted. She remembered the hours of intense discussions that had gone on into the night, ending in long hours of lovemaking. She remembered the moment when he had said he loved her, and she knew it wasn’t said to prove anything, wasn’t said in anger. It was tender, and real, and she remembered feeling that he had spoken the truth to her with no intention to mislead or lie. It was just a small moment, but she had opened her mind, her self, to him. The past was behind her, finally. She could breathe again. “There was one wonderful moment,” she mused aloud.
“What moment?” Martha said.
Gwen sniffed away a tear. “Sorry, private thought.” She looked at Jack, and saw his eyes shining. He understood, she was sure. He nodded to her.
“I think I can explain it,” Jack said, holding a hand up to forestall Martha’s comments. Her look told him to stay where he was, and talk. He took a deep breath, and Gwen thought that he looked frightened. For himself, but more for her. “About your nightmares,” he began. “It seems that I’m causing them . . .”
Gwen sniffed her disbelief. “No,” she said, “It’s me.”
From across the room, he made himself look directly at her, “I’m afraid it will kill you if we don’t fix this. Sweetheart, Gwen,” he implored. “you have to believe me. Your horrible dreams, they are my deaths. There are many more. And worse. I don’t want you to have to live through all of them.” He took another deep breath. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” she asked, “Where did you die like that? I mean I’ve seen you . . . die, but not like this!”
He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Can’t explain it,” he said. “I just can’t. Remember the time I was gone? You thought it had been only a few months, but for me it was much longer.”
“You said you had died five hundred times-this, this is what you meant?”
Jack nodded, and put his hand over his eyes, rubbing hard. “I tried to bury those memories, put them where I couldn’t feel them any more. Somehow you’ve found the place in me where I hid them . . . and they’re going to hurt you, love.”
Gwen could only stare at him. “How long have you known?”
He exhaled heavily. “After the third or fourth time. I really tried to stop myself from thinking about it, hide the memories deeper. You still found them.”
“You could have told me.” Gwen turned to Martha. “How can this happen?” She put her hands to her cheeks, which were burning. “I’m not a telepath.”
Martha looked at Jack for his permission, and he nodded at her. “Jack has had training, channeling his natural talents; and you told me something once about an ancestor of yours in Cardiff in Victorian times who closed the Rift . . .”
Gwen scoffed. “That’s a family legend.”
Martha took Gwen’s hands. “Maybe not. Just because you’ve never had testing doesn’t mean you aren’t sensitive. One of the things that makes Jack such a compelling leader is that he’s an exceptionally strong broadcaster. You’ve been in such close physical contact with him for a long time, and he loves you so much, I think you’ve penetrated his barriers.”
“How could I do such a thing?”
Martha tried to explain. “Didn’t you just say a few moments ago, that there was a moment? What was that about?”
Jack spoke. “It was when she decided to let me know her, right after I told her I loved her,” his face coloured, “and she trusted me, really believed me. I felt it in my head, I heard her. I just didn’t put it together.”
“We’ve always had a special rapport,” Gwen admitted, “but I don’t understand why this ‘transference’ didn’t happen with Ianto. You were utterly smitten with him, Jack.”
“I don’t know-I was torn between you and Ianto, confused . . .” He paused, and took refuge in his usual excuse. “You had a life with Rhys, I didn’t want to destroy that.”
“I couldn’t have you, Jack, but I did hope you could be happy. You loved Ianto. I know he wasn’t a second choice,” Gwen said.
“No, not a second choice; an alternate, perhaps,” he insisted. Gwen heard the pain in Jack’s voice. “I did love him. But I’ve loved a lot of people,” he shot a cautionary look at Martha, “I was determined not to interfere with your life. After Ianto died, I couldn’t stand to watch, so I left.”
Martha made a quiet addition. “But whenever Jack came back to Cardiff, he asked about you, Gwen. I told him what I knew, but then it was a few years before he returned again, and in that time . . . so much happened.”
He stood up and paced the room, his hands fisted at his sides. “What I found out, though, was that no matter how far I went, no matter who or what I took up with,” he drew a deep breath, “I wasn’t ever going to find happiness without you.” He gritted his teeth, “Now, my memories are destroying you.” He sank into the chair again, averting his eyes from Martha’s shocked face.
Gwen made wild gestures for Jack to stop talking. “But how are you destroying me? Jack, they’re my dreams!”
“They’re my memories, Gwen,” he said. “When you told me about them, I knew that they were mine.” Jack straightened in the chair. “It’s my fear that you’re feeling. I’ve died, so many ways,” he gestured, “dismembered, impaled, burned.” Martha shook her head sadly as he continued. “At the time, I tried to endure because of the Master’s threats to the Torchwood team, and the Doctor, and the whole world. What kept me sane was the hope of returning to you. Now I’m afraid I’ll lose you.” He leaned his head against the chair back, blinked back tears.
In a world without you, I will always hunger,
What I need is your love to make me stronger.
“What do we do?” Gwen asked, as Martha held her back from going to Jack’s side.
“I told Jack earlier, this isn’t my field,” Martha said. “I think Jack needs to review his barriers, and Gwen, I think you have to find some ways to erect stronger boundaries. I think that these weeks and months of constant exposure to each other has worn down your natural defenses. You both need help. Serious help. Right away.”
Gwen swallowed hard. She felt very small and insubstantial. She longed to . . . what? She didn’t have any idea of what to do. She just wanted it to stop. She wanted Jack’s arms around her. She needed to touch him. She felt her mouth go dry, and began to shake.
Jack took two strides across the room and swept her into his arms. She curled her arms around his waist, pulled him close, and started crying. Martha gave up the sofa to them and soothed Gwen. “It’ll be okay, darling. The dreams will stop. You’ll get back to normal. You just need to get some distance on this, and Jack needs to regain his control.”
Gwen sniffed and swallowed hard. “Jack made me live again. I can’t . . .”
“You know what a dependency is, Gwen,” Martha said quietly. “And you know you can’t afford to be like that. We’ve talked about this before.” Gwen nodded. “When I get home, I’m going to find someone for you to talk to.”
|~|~|~|~|~|~|
Gwen slept through the night after Martha left, but she was pretty sure that Jack didn’t.
“I have an idea,” Jack told Gwen, lolling in bed the next morning. “Martha thinks we should try to spend a little time physically apart, and we have to do that,” he held up a hand to stop Gwen’s protests, “until I can make some arrangements. It’s only a little while, and . . .”
“I don’t want to be apart from you!” she shouted, striking at him with fisted hands. “I’m not going to shut you out of my life!”
“Nothing will ever separate us for long,” he said through his teeth, holding her wrists. “But I have to get hold of myself, enough to stop you from hearing me.”
She wept in his arms, “I’d rather have the dreams. I need you.”
xxx