Fic: Wrecked, solitary, here--
Title: Wrecked, solitary, here--
Characters/Pairings: Jack
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for brief nudity, language, and violence
Length: 2100 words
Summary: He finds himself alone, surrounded by the dead, at least once every few decades, like some kind of ever evolving time loop.
Spoilers: Jack back-story spoilers through S2
Author's Notes: Title is from the Emily Dickinson poem, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain." Death is ever present for the man who lives forever.
Live long enough and history repeats itself. Cycles of life and death, love and loss, hope and despair. He finds himself alone, surrounded by the dead, at least once every few decades, like some kind of ever evolving time loop. He wonders if the universe is telling him “Get it right this time, Harkness, and we won’t have to do it again.” And every time it happens he wonders what he did wrong.
***
He stumbles out from under the tree-root as soon as the things pass and starts calling for his brother. He has to be here somewhere. Gray’s a smart little kid, always wins at hide-and-seek. He’s safe. He has to be. “Gray! You can come out now! It’s over.” He remembers how the older kids would tell stories about the monsters who came from over the dunes to steal children, remembers how his little brother would have nightmares about them. He remembers Gray crawling into his bed, and him saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” Gray would say that he couldn’t. And he’d say, “Of course I can. I’m your big brother, aren’t I?” And Gray would make him promise. And he would.
Gray has to be safe. He made a promise. He checks every hiding spot he knows, calling, yelling, screaming for his little brother. He doesn’t even look at the bodies at first, because Gray can’t be one of them. He’s just hiding somewhere, and when he finds him, his little brother is in for it. And then he does start looking at the bodies, because maybe he’s playing dead, or is hurt and needs help. But none of them are moving, none of them are breathing. None of them are Gray.
He runs home. Gray’s probably there, and Dad is probably making him a snack while Mom fusses at him for tracking sand across the floor. He runs home as fast as the wind and finds his mother crying over his father’s body. The first thing she says to him is, “Where’s Gray?”
***
The chronometer in his wrist strap says it’s the year 5076, Standard Earth Calendar, and year 34, month 10, day 22 of his personal timeline. With the time hopping and the danger of getting caught in loops, he’s always taken comfort in the steady increase of days on his personal counter. But not this time. The last time he checked he’d only been 32. And the last time he checked had only been a couple hours ago. They were celebrating the success of the latest mission in classic Time Agency fashion. Someone had dug out a case of 20-year-old, vintage 5345, horaxberry wine, and he had been happily chatting up a gorgeous new recruit, idly wondering if he’d look good with an extra pair of arms (they were certainly working for the newbie) when his boss had motioned him over. “Duty calls,” he’d said with salacious wink, “but I’ll see you later.”
He can’t remember what happened after that. After all, it was two years ago. His boss is sprawled naked next to him in the bed, dark curls covering her face. He’s naked as well, the clothes he remembers last wearing mix with hers in a trail leading from the bed to the partially open door. So, sex then. Wouldn’t be the first time. It would be the last, if the gaping hole in her chest were anything to go by. But (and he isn’t sure if this is good or bad) other than one hand, which had landed in the congealing pool when he sat up, there’s no blood on him. He can hear music coming from the main room, where the party should’ve been in full swing, but not voices. The sinking feeling in his gut turns into a fearful certainty when he spots the arm in the doorway. Oh, it could be someone just passed out in the hall, one too many glasses of wine. But it isn’t. He looks back at his boss’s body, and he knows that blast pattern. The Time Agency holds the patent on that weapon, and only Agents have it. It is then he realizes his blaster is in his hand, battery indicator flashing that it had been recently fired.
Two years of his life gone, his friends dead, and he is holding the smoking gun.
***
Well, it had certainly been an interesting life. Shorter than he’d hoped, longer than he’d expected. He sure as hell hopes the Doctor’s got the Delta wave going, because dying while failing to save the universe just doesn’t have the right panache. He’s out of ammo, literally back against the wall, and the Daleks intone, “EXTERMINATE!”
“I kinda figured that,” he says, and holds out his arms to welcome Death. He hopes Death will be a hooded figure who speak in all caps like in the books, and then his life is flashing before his eyes (which is like the books and it makes him strangely happy), and then there’s nothingness.
And then in the nothingness is a golden light, shimmering and fiery, and he’d swear it’s Rose’s voice that says, “I give life.” Before he can object or argue or even ask a question, he’s dragged back to his body, and it hurts as lungs that shouldn’t have breathed again fill with air, and a heart done beating stutters into a rhythm and the blood that had begun to pool in his lower extremities is suddenly forced upwards into a brain whose synapses had, well, gone dead. That first breath, that first gasp of life tears through him, and he knows he was dead, and he knows he’s not anymore. And if he’s alive, maybe the others are too. Maybe there was a timeshift. But there’re piles of dust where there were Daleks, so maybe it was something else.
If anyone else is still alive, if anyone knows what happened, it’ll be the Doctor, and he’s already turning that way when he hears the unmistakable sound of the TARDIS. It shouldn’t be there. The Doctor sent Rose home, and he runs like he hasn’t run in years, because he can tell the sound is not the sound of the TARDIS arriving.
He roams the Game Station for days, looking for someone, anyone, hiding in a cupboard or a closet or in one of the games. He’d even be happy to find a Dalek at this point. Any form of life. But the Daleks are dust and the rest are dead. The Doctor and Rose are gone, and he’s left with the bodies. Twice is a coincidence, he thinks. Three times is a fucking pattern. His days become their own pattern. When he wakes, he sends a message that he’s up there and alive, hoping that the Doctor will get it and come back for him. Then he starts the search for survivors and recovery of the dead. He makes himself search at least ten levels a day. Then, courtesy of 60 well-stocked Big Brother houses, he drinks himself into oblivion, sleeps, and does it all over again.
Fifty days later, he sits in front of a camera, bottle in hand. “If anyone gets this and gives a fuck, there are one-hundred and fifty-three bodies on Floor Zero of the Game Station. Some of them died to save humanity. Some of them just died. I thought that was important once. Can’t tell which are which now, though. Anyway, they probably have families somewhere, so come get ‘em if you want ‘em. The Daleks are dust, and I’m getting the hell out of this tomb. Here’s to the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire.” He takes a swig. “Doctor, if you see this, I’m heading for Cardiff, late 1969. I’ll see you there.”
He thinks he must’ve spent too much time flying with the Doctor, because when he lands, he’s off by a century.
***
Rose petals. What kind of sick joke is that? They’re all dead, and all he can taste are roses, cloyingly sweet on the back of his tongue, the perfume-scent of them overwhelming in the heat. They were his men, his charge. He should’ve been able to protect them. And if he couldn’t, he should’ve died alongside them, but he failed even in that. (It’s not until he’s back at Torchwood many months later that he’s able to piece together what must’ve happened, about the child in the village and the faeries. The mara. Whatever you wanted to call them.) He’s certain the universe is playing one big, terrible game with him, using good, unsuspecting people as pawns. Or maybe they’re not pawns. Maybe they’re his wager and he keeps losing. It’d be easier if he knew the rules. For all he can tell, the universe is dealing cards while he’s throwing dice.
Anyway, he’s too old for this. Seventy-five at last check. He should be enjoying retirement on some sun-drenched resort world where lithe young things bring him drinks in tropical fruits while he scandalizes everyone with tales of his exploits. Instead here he is, looking not even half his age, stuck in a boxcar in the Punjab (and he’s sure Torchwood sent him on this useless mission just to get him out for their hair for a while), and the smell of death is quickly growing stronger than that of roses.
***
It won't be the 21st century for another year, technically.
Technically, he's just Torchwood's unkillable flunkie, paid largely to die repeatedly.
Technically, he could walk out the door, mix into the crowd partying above, and never look back.
Technically, he could leave them all there, and let London sort out the mess when Alex failed to make his weekly report.
Technically, he could send the Hub into lockdown and even London wouldn't be able to get in without destroying everything inside.
Technically, he isn't even born yet.
He knows as well as the rest of the world that technically doesn't count for shit. The symbol of the thing is what's important. The symbol of the thing, all those tight, thorny nines turning into all those open and inviting zeros; MCMXCIX dropping the ambiguity and becoming simply MM. The symbol of the thing, the sole survivor taking up the torch (ha), the phoenix rising from the ashes of its own immolation. And somehow he can sense this is a pivotal moment.
Torchwood will last through the centuries. He remembers them as a serious thorn in his side, getting in the way of a good con on more than one occasion. And they were insufferably self-righteous, "protect the universe" this and "greater good" that. (Except for that one inter-agency, Torchwood/Time Agency party. Torchwood brought some great toys, and they weren't nearly so self-righteous once the clothes came off.) He's had a hard time reconciling that Torchwood with the Torchwood he's worked for the past century, where the Doctor is Enemy Number One, followed closely by anything else non-terrestrial, and the official policy for enemies is to shoot first and ask questions during the autopsy. It's a policy unlikely to change if Yvonne "if it's alien, it's ours" Hartman gets her claws on London.
And then there's a strange memory. Something that didn't mean anything at the time, just one of those weird things that happens when you're time traveling. He doesn't know when exactly it was - after the Time Agency, before the Doctor. He was walking through the lunar colony of New New Delhi when a pretty young man rushed to him and grabbed his arm.
"Captain! What are you doing here? The meeting with T7 and the Prime Minister started an hour ago."
"I'm sorry, have we met?"
The young man seemed about to say "Of course we have," but instead looked him over carefully, seeming to catalog everything from his shoes to his hair. Then with a bemused expression he replied, "We will," and walked away, laughing quietly to himself as he went. The satchel he carried bore the now oh-so-familiar Torchwood emblem.
In this moment, he could technically change history, just by walking away. But he won't. He'll take charge of Torchwood 3, try to make it into that self-righteous, universe-protecting, greater-good seeking organization he so loathed way back in the future. There's some sort of symbolism there too, he supposes. Some fable or parable or ancient tale rewriting itself. He'll worry about it later.
Now, he'll carry the bodies of his friends and colleagues to the morgue. Alex said the 21st century is when everything changes. Well, it's not the 21st century yet.
Technically.
~fin~
Characters/Pairings: Jack
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for brief nudity, language, and violence
Length: 2100 words
Summary: He finds himself alone, surrounded by the dead, at least once every few decades, like some kind of ever evolving time loop.
Spoilers: Jack back-story spoilers through S2
Author's Notes: Title is from the Emily Dickinson poem, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain." Death is ever present for the man who lives forever.
Live long enough and history repeats itself. Cycles of life and death, love and loss, hope and despair. He finds himself alone, surrounded by the dead, at least once every few decades, like some kind of ever evolving time loop. He wonders if the universe is telling him “Get it right this time, Harkness, and we won’t have to do it again.” And every time it happens he wonders what he did wrong.
***
He stumbles out from under the tree-root as soon as the things pass and starts calling for his brother. He has to be here somewhere. Gray’s a smart little kid, always wins at hide-and-seek. He’s safe. He has to be. “Gray! You can come out now! It’s over.” He remembers how the older kids would tell stories about the monsters who came from over the dunes to steal children, remembers how his little brother would have nightmares about them. He remembers Gray crawling into his bed, and him saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” Gray would say that he couldn’t. And he’d say, “Of course I can. I’m your big brother, aren’t I?” And Gray would make him promise. And he would.
Gray has to be safe. He made a promise. He checks every hiding spot he knows, calling, yelling, screaming for his little brother. He doesn’t even look at the bodies at first, because Gray can’t be one of them. He’s just hiding somewhere, and when he finds him, his little brother is in for it. And then he does start looking at the bodies, because maybe he’s playing dead, or is hurt and needs help. But none of them are moving, none of them are breathing. None of them are Gray.
He runs home. Gray’s probably there, and Dad is probably making him a snack while Mom fusses at him for tracking sand across the floor. He runs home as fast as the wind and finds his mother crying over his father’s body. The first thing she says to him is, “Where’s Gray?”
***
The chronometer in his wrist strap says it’s the year 5076, Standard Earth Calendar, and year 34, month 10, day 22 of his personal timeline. With the time hopping and the danger of getting caught in loops, he’s always taken comfort in the steady increase of days on his personal counter. But not this time. The last time he checked he’d only been 32. And the last time he checked had only been a couple hours ago. They were celebrating the success of the latest mission in classic Time Agency fashion. Someone had dug out a case of 20-year-old, vintage 5345, horaxberry wine, and he had been happily chatting up a gorgeous new recruit, idly wondering if he’d look good with an extra pair of arms (they were certainly working for the newbie) when his boss had motioned him over. “Duty calls,” he’d said with salacious wink, “but I’ll see you later.”
He can’t remember what happened after that. After all, it was two years ago. His boss is sprawled naked next to him in the bed, dark curls covering her face. He’s naked as well, the clothes he remembers last wearing mix with hers in a trail leading from the bed to the partially open door. So, sex then. Wouldn’t be the first time. It would be the last, if the gaping hole in her chest were anything to go by. But (and he isn’t sure if this is good or bad) other than one hand, which had landed in the congealing pool when he sat up, there’s no blood on him. He can hear music coming from the main room, where the party should’ve been in full swing, but not voices. The sinking feeling in his gut turns into a fearful certainty when he spots the arm in the doorway. Oh, it could be someone just passed out in the hall, one too many glasses of wine. But it isn’t. He looks back at his boss’s body, and he knows that blast pattern. The Time Agency holds the patent on that weapon, and only Agents have it. It is then he realizes his blaster is in his hand, battery indicator flashing that it had been recently fired.
Two years of his life gone, his friends dead, and he is holding the smoking gun.
***
Well, it had certainly been an interesting life. Shorter than he’d hoped, longer than he’d expected. He sure as hell hopes the Doctor’s got the Delta wave going, because dying while failing to save the universe just doesn’t have the right panache. He’s out of ammo, literally back against the wall, and the Daleks intone, “EXTERMINATE!”
“I kinda figured that,” he says, and holds out his arms to welcome Death. He hopes Death will be a hooded figure who speak in all caps like in the books, and then his life is flashing before his eyes (which is like the books and it makes him strangely happy), and then there’s nothingness.
And then in the nothingness is a golden light, shimmering and fiery, and he’d swear it’s Rose’s voice that says, “I give life.” Before he can object or argue or even ask a question, he’s dragged back to his body, and it hurts as lungs that shouldn’t have breathed again fill with air, and a heart done beating stutters into a rhythm and the blood that had begun to pool in his lower extremities is suddenly forced upwards into a brain whose synapses had, well, gone dead. That first breath, that first gasp of life tears through him, and he knows he was dead, and he knows he’s not anymore. And if he’s alive, maybe the others are too. Maybe there was a timeshift. But there’re piles of dust where there were Daleks, so maybe it was something else.
If anyone else is still alive, if anyone knows what happened, it’ll be the Doctor, and he’s already turning that way when he hears the unmistakable sound of the TARDIS. It shouldn’t be there. The Doctor sent Rose home, and he runs like he hasn’t run in years, because he can tell the sound is not the sound of the TARDIS arriving.
He roams the Game Station for days, looking for someone, anyone, hiding in a cupboard or a closet or in one of the games. He’d even be happy to find a Dalek at this point. Any form of life. But the Daleks are dust and the rest are dead. The Doctor and Rose are gone, and he’s left with the bodies. Twice is a coincidence, he thinks. Three times is a fucking pattern. His days become their own pattern. When he wakes, he sends a message that he’s up there and alive, hoping that the Doctor will get it and come back for him. Then he starts the search for survivors and recovery of the dead. He makes himself search at least ten levels a day. Then, courtesy of 60 well-stocked Big Brother houses, he drinks himself into oblivion, sleeps, and does it all over again.
Fifty days later, he sits in front of a camera, bottle in hand. “If anyone gets this and gives a fuck, there are one-hundred and fifty-three bodies on Floor Zero of the Game Station. Some of them died to save humanity. Some of them just died. I thought that was important once. Can’t tell which are which now, though. Anyway, they probably have families somewhere, so come get ‘em if you want ‘em. The Daleks are dust, and I’m getting the hell out of this tomb. Here’s to the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire.” He takes a swig. “Doctor, if you see this, I’m heading for Cardiff, late 1969. I’ll see you there.”
He thinks he must’ve spent too much time flying with the Doctor, because when he lands, he’s off by a century.
***
Rose petals. What kind of sick joke is that? They’re all dead, and all he can taste are roses, cloyingly sweet on the back of his tongue, the perfume-scent of them overwhelming in the heat. They were his men, his charge. He should’ve been able to protect them. And if he couldn’t, he should’ve died alongside them, but he failed even in that. (It’s not until he’s back at Torchwood many months later that he’s able to piece together what must’ve happened, about the child in the village and the faeries. The mara. Whatever you wanted to call them.) He’s certain the universe is playing one big, terrible game with him, using good, unsuspecting people as pawns. Or maybe they’re not pawns. Maybe they’re his wager and he keeps losing. It’d be easier if he knew the rules. For all he can tell, the universe is dealing cards while he’s throwing dice.
Anyway, he’s too old for this. Seventy-five at last check. He should be enjoying retirement on some sun-drenched resort world where lithe young things bring him drinks in tropical fruits while he scandalizes everyone with tales of his exploits. Instead here he is, looking not even half his age, stuck in a boxcar in the Punjab (and he’s sure Torchwood sent him on this useless mission just to get him out for their hair for a while), and the smell of death is quickly growing stronger than that of roses.
***
It won't be the 21st century for another year, technically.
Technically, he's just Torchwood's unkillable flunkie, paid largely to die repeatedly.
Technically, he could walk out the door, mix into the crowd partying above, and never look back.
Technically, he could leave them all there, and let London sort out the mess when Alex failed to make his weekly report.
Technically, he could send the Hub into lockdown and even London wouldn't be able to get in without destroying everything inside.
Technically, he isn't even born yet.
He knows as well as the rest of the world that technically doesn't count for shit. The symbol of the thing is what's important. The symbol of the thing, all those tight, thorny nines turning into all those open and inviting zeros; MCMXCIX dropping the ambiguity and becoming simply MM. The symbol of the thing, the sole survivor taking up the torch (ha), the phoenix rising from the ashes of its own immolation. And somehow he can sense this is a pivotal moment.
Torchwood will last through the centuries. He remembers them as a serious thorn in his side, getting in the way of a good con on more than one occasion. And they were insufferably self-righteous, "protect the universe" this and "greater good" that. (Except for that one inter-agency, Torchwood/Time Agency party. Torchwood brought some great toys, and they weren't nearly so self-righteous once the clothes came off.) He's had a hard time reconciling that Torchwood with the Torchwood he's worked for the past century, where the Doctor is Enemy Number One, followed closely by anything else non-terrestrial, and the official policy for enemies is to shoot first and ask questions during the autopsy. It's a policy unlikely to change if Yvonne "if it's alien, it's ours" Hartman gets her claws on London.
And then there's a strange memory. Something that didn't mean anything at the time, just one of those weird things that happens when you're time traveling. He doesn't know when exactly it was - after the Time Agency, before the Doctor. He was walking through the lunar colony of New New Delhi when a pretty young man rushed to him and grabbed his arm.
"Captain! What are you doing here? The meeting with T7 and the Prime Minister started an hour ago."
"I'm sorry, have we met?"
The young man seemed about to say "Of course we have," but instead looked him over carefully, seeming to catalog everything from his shoes to his hair. Then with a bemused expression he replied, "We will," and walked away, laughing quietly to himself as he went. The satchel he carried bore the now oh-so-familiar Torchwood emblem.
In this moment, he could technically change history, just by walking away. But he won't. He'll take charge of Torchwood 3, try to make it into that self-righteous, universe-protecting, greater-good seeking organization he so loathed way back in the future. There's some sort of symbolism there too, he supposes. Some fable or parable or ancient tale rewriting itself. He'll worry about it later.
Now, he'll carry the bodies of his friends and colleagues to the morgue. Alex said the 21st century is when everything changes. Well, it's not the 21st century yet.
Technically.
~fin~