Salt the Earth: Five Drabbles on a Theme
Title: Salt the Earth: Five Drabbles on a Theme
Author: Kita
Rating: R
Summary: Post-COE. Where do you go when your world has ended but you can’t die?
A/N: Dark, but if you watched that mini-series, you can surely read this. Un-beta'd, and written in a daze.
*
He visits only in shadow, without his coat. Brings her alien puzzles, and broken bits of tech not yet invented. She solves them all with studied focus and a gap-toothed smile.
She is five.
Seven.
Ten.
At twelve she tells him, “Mother says I’ve become too old for imaginary friends, and too smart for fanciful tales.”
She drops an origami swan into his palm. Her smile is sad, but still full of earnest hope. She will look at him this way when she dies for him.
Toshiko, he thinks, you’ve always been just smart enough.
He does not come back.
*
He finds Owen in bars; before the love of a good woman mellowed him, before her loss embittered him. So drunk, tomorrow will be just a blur of fist and bruise.
It’s five against one when Jack leaps, dispatching three without effort. Laughing, Owen takes out the rest.
They spill out the back door together, stumbling into darkness.
“Thanks, mate. Buy you a pint?”
Owen’s face is unlined. Jack hesitates before nodding.
“You took quite a hit from that bottle.” He’s eyeing the already healing wound on Jack’s neck. “Gonna get yourself killed that way.”
“No,” Jack says. “Not today.”
*
Sweet and fumbling in the University toilet stall, trousers around their knees.
“I’ve never-” on that red, pouty mouth and Jack’s vision blurs.
Only me, it was only ever me
He takes the boy back to his hotel. Kisses him to the bed, sucks him helpless, fucks him from behind until he screams.
Jack brings him off three times before he falls asleep, clinging to Jack’s neck.
Ianto likes Tabasco on his eggs, which is good, because the handmade retcon Jack carries now is bitter and obvious.
“Eat your breakfast, gorgeous,” Jack orders.
Ianto blushes and does as he’s told.
*
The church sign reads Cooper-Patel Wedding.
Big eyes, dark hair, and a long white dress. She looks like her mother. Jack has to turn away.
“Jack!”
He stops and a gray haired Rhys stares at him.
“Long time,” Rhys says. “You look…”
“The same?”
“She forgave you anyway, you know. Years ago.”
Jack can’t quarry speech from the rocks in his chest, but he nods, eyes stinging.
“I never did.” The ‘you coward’ is left unspoken.
“I didn’t think you would,” Jack says. And he smiles.
“You coming in, then?”
Jack shakes his head no.
“I didn’t think you would.”
*
With his whole team gone, he cannot stop thinking about her. The rhythm of space reminds him of the Tardis, and behind his eyes, he sees her every night.
“Rose,” he whispers, as she melts against him, body trembling and hopeful.
Even the last time he saw her she shone with innocence, despite all she had seen.
Done.
He presses his mouth to hers, cups her face in his hands. Lets his palms slide down to her neck.
He wraps his fingers around her slim throat, and she gasps, eyes wide.
She thrashes, she fights.
Jack squeezes until she stops.
-End