Jack's Team
Seriously, I can barely believe this. One fic a day for the last three days? Good grief. And check the word count, people.
Fandom: Torchwood (what else?)
Rating: R
Warnings: Fair amount of angst, swearing
Word Count: 4000
Summary: Jack's known a lot of members of the Torchwood Team. There have been so many... (Semi-sequel to Jack's Fear)
Prompt: 026. Teammates.
Jack's Team
Jack still remembered them all. There had been so many people coming and going through Torchwood Cardiff over the years, but he remembered them all. From the first group, who’d treated him with wary suspicion and dozens (though if had felt more like hundreds) of tests to make sure he was human, through all the fleeting replacements and additions, those who’d lasted less than a week and those who’d only moved on to even greater things, those who’d given up and begged to be allowed to forget and those who’d taken their memories to the grave as the most valuable of all their treasures, those who’d been corrupted and those who’d been selfless, those who’d thought they were invincible and those who’d never had the confidence to take a risk, those who’d thrown everything away to save their own skin and those who’d sacrificed themselves for the world, or their team, or just one person. He’d seen it all, and he kept them locked away safe in his head.
He’d watched Torchwood change. The first ones had been so hung up on rules and regulations, terrified and blustering to hide it, half of them not really believing in the reasons for their existence. So different from his teams. They’d all been full of love and excitement and energy, not believing, but knowing what they were there to do, explorers without travelling, adventurers and inventors and discoverers of the unknown. He’d led them into the thrill of it all, chosen them for just that, watched them reach out and find that there was joy out there for the taking. He’d loved every one of them for being brave and daring and clever. They would have even done the Doctor proud.
But they hadn’t all been like that. Back in the early days, there were some Jack had hated. Some who threw Torchwood’s motto in his face when he’d tried to stop them from stealing alien tech and murdering its owners. If it’s alien, it’s ours. He’d really come to despise that phrase.
They were usually the ones who went on to great things at Torchwood London. Ruthless and greedy, with all the makings of a top Torchwood executive. He was glad to see the back of them. And gradually Torchwood Cardiff grew a little more to his liking. He’d taken a look at the others, but it was Cardiff he came back to. The fact that he’d stopped here with the Doctor once had nothing to do with his liking for the place.
He stayed in the background most of the time. Torchwood Three’s eccentric American alien-expert, lurking in the shadows and making sure that the records didn’t really show how long he’d been there, avoiding the sort of involvement that would make people realise quite how different he was.
But it hadn’t taken long before things had got to the point that the Torchwood team was in almost constant flux. People in, people out, people dead, people replaced, people fired, people hired, and just Jack in the middle, waiting.
The Rift had slowly begun to get more volatile. They’d gone from one event a year to one every couple of months, maybe even two, and Torchwood Cardiff was finding the sort of people it could make its own. Jack had crept out of the woodwork and taken up an active role, their eccentric American alien-expert revealing now that he was handy with a gun and thought fast and could outrun any of the others around then, as long as he wasn’t wearing his coat. He’d put up with having other people in charge - they dealt with all the orders from Torchwood London, called all the shots, and invariably talked down to him, but that didn’t matter, because he was working with two or three others (never much more than that - it was only Cardiff, how bad could things get?) who liked him, and enjoyed his company, and fought reliably at his side in the thick of things. One of many, but learning to love every second all the same.
He’d realised, way back then, that the Doctor wasn’t the only one who had adventures. Torchwood became more than just somewhere to pass the time while he waited to hitch a lift. He regained a little of his sense of purpose, lost so long ago, and started to let traces of the old Jack show. The incorrigible flirt, the daring adventurer, the rogue, the liar and the thief who’d been so in love with life. And his teammates - not his team, not yet, still just one of the many - had loved him for it.
And it was strange, but things hadn’t changed much from there. Though he was a leader now, he kept on going out into the fray with his teams, more part of them than of the Torchwood he was meant to be obeying.
But he would never be content to sit back and give orders and let the others take his risks. He’d had leaders like that, and they’d all been disasters. Deaths and failures had become the norm when they’d been in charge, and for all Jack’s efforts he hadn’t been able to save everyone he’d loved. But there had been others who’d done the same as Jack and shared their teams’ adventures. They were the ones he remembered most fondly.
It had been with one of them as leader that Torchwood Cardiff had finally known stability. For three years, three blessed, wonderful years, they’d had one team. No fatalities, no replacements, no change. They’d been brilliant together. They had given Jack almost everything he had now - even his position as leader had been because of them.
And there’d only been the three of them. Charles, sent in by Torchwood London, meant to be in charge but always willing to listen to Jack’s advice. He had experience dealing with alien tech, was a genius when it came to divining something’s purpose and how to use it. Quick to slam down against breaking the rules, but only for show. He’d been as keen as Jack to throw the rulebook out of the window and just get the job done.
Dai, younger, quieter, always deferential and respectful, but ready to be wild and adventurous given half the chance. In some ways, when Jack thought about him now, he reminded him of Ianto. Or Ianto reminded him of Dai. They’d both been (both were?) quick and clever and incredibly useful to have around. Dai had been that team’s medic, though, and had needed Charles’s help to keep the archives in order. Jack could never be bothered with that.
And then Jack was the third. He’d chipped in with the alien tech, thrown out helpful information whenever it was needed, and trained them both in many different ways. And the combination had worked. They’d been through the best and the worst together. They’d dealt with everything the Rift could throw at them for three years, and cleared up after the teams that had come before them, too.
Of course they’d had their failures, and their mistakes. But Torchwood London never got to hear about them. There’d been a lot that Torchwood London didn’t know.
They hadn’t known that Dai had accidentally lost two alien weapons in the city one night, on as simple a task as chasing a Weevil, and they hadn’t been recovered until, so many years later, Tosh had seen them on sale in the window of the Cardiff Forbidden Planet, and had promptly gone in and bought them. They hadn’t known that Jack and Charles had discovered a group of aliens passing for human in one of the poorer areas of the city and had simply let them be when they realised they were harmless (Jack still got a Christmas card from the children - still sent one, too). They hadn’t known that Jack couldn’t die, and that some of their achievements had been directly down to this. Fair was fair, his team then hadn’t known that, his team now (with the exception of Gwen) didn’t know that, and Torchwood London (or what was left of it, at least) still didn’t know that. And they hadn’t known that, way back then, all three members of Torchwood Cardiff had lived in the Hub and slept together in the bed beneath Charles’s office.
Jack had always been good at keeping secrets.
He looked back on that period with a few pangs of nostalgia and more than a few of grief. It had all ended badly.
He could still remember every detail of the night Charles had died. Everything had started off well enough - Dai had been working out how to describe their roles in six different ways, and had paused after proclaiming Charles “Grand Master” and himself “Witch Doctor”. Jack had simply raised his eyebrows and waited.
Dai had grinned at him wickedly, and said, “Office Pet.”
“You are dead,” Jack had told him, and pounced on him. They’d ended up chasing around the Hub until Dai collapsed laughing on the couch and Jack had taken revenge with three or four kisses. Then he’d settled down with his head in Dai’s lap, one leg drawn up with his foot on the cushions, the other dangling over the side of the couch. Dai had sat stroking his hair, while Jack smiled, eyes closed, and muttered, “Office Pet, huh? Kinky.”
Charles had come over with drinks at that point, handing Jack his usual glass of water then saying, “Move your legs, Harkness.”
Jack had just grinned and moved so that Charles could sit down, stretching one arm along the back of the couch behind Dai’s shoulders, and then had put his legs over Charles’s, crossing them comfortably and lying stretched out in both his lovers’ laps. Charles had laughed and patted his legs, then sat back to drink and relax.
They’d sat there in companionable silence for a long time, enjoying the normality of it all. Jack understood the irony well enough now - Torchwood, normal? But to them, as it was to him now, the Hub had been home. The alien tech lying scattered around the place was their equivalent of a book picked up and forgotten, a photo unframed, a letter yet to receive its reply, all the usual clutter of any normal house. That was well enough for him, but the others?
When the phone in Charles’s office had rung, none of them had moved at first. Then Charles had sighed and given Jack’s legs a light shove, saying, “Let me up, then.”
“Tempted to keep you here,” Jack told him, but removed his legs anyway.
Eavesdropping on Charles’s side of the conversation had never yielded any useful information, so Jack and Dai had placed bets on the call (passed on by the police) being a hoax at most, while their leader discussed the situation. Charles, when he got back to them, had recommended that they investigate. Recommended. He’d stopped giving them orders after the first six months, when they’d been trying to recover a Fotsali shield device and Jack had narrowly saved them from disaster by telling him, flat out, that shooting the thing was just plain stupid.
So they’d got themselves ready and gone to investigate the report, which was compiled of various strange sightings, a small group of people behaving erratically, and four disappearances, all from the same area within the last month.
It had turned out to be a drugs ring, and though most of the gang had fled when they’d burst onto the scene, one was far gone enough (stupid enough? Violent enough? It didn’t matter) to pull out a gun and open fire. His aim was terrible, firing six shots and missing by miles. Except for one bullet, which was an accident more than anything else. It took Charles in the chest, straight through his heart, and there was nothing Dai could do to save him.
Jack had only needed to fire one shot.
“That was murder,” Dai had told him quietly, staring at the body of the addict to avoid seeing the corpse of his lover beside him.
“That was self-defence,” Jack had said, just as softly, though he knew even then that it was a lie.
He’d delayed sending the report of Charles’s death to Torchwood London for as long as he could get away with it, too busy dealing with Dai’s (and his own) grief and trying somehow to fill the void that Charles had left.
He’d got a telephone call as soon as Torchwood London received the report. For Suzie it had been an email. Somehow that was worse. At least he’d been able to argue and shout at someone when it had been Charles. But he couldn’t shout down a computer to tell bloody Torchwood One to mind its own business and stop interfering.
“Harkness?”
“What?” he’d snapped, hating their clipped, controlled speech.
They’d told him, quite calmly, “We’re currently looking at replacements for Mr Tennyson. We expect to find someone within the next two weeks. Until then you’ll have to be in temporary command of Torchwood Three.”
He’d practically been able to feel the disapproval dripping from the phone. Harkness, in control? God help them, things had gone to the dogs in Cardiff if that loose cannon was the best they had left.
“You’re not sending anyone,” he’d spat back, barely reigning in his fury. He rode over them as they tried to speak again, whatever faceless, heartless cog in the machine they were, saying, “I’ll find someone else to replace him. You’re not telling me who to have on my team.”
“You have temporary command, Harkness,” the voice reminded him sharply. “Don’t get carried away. We’ll send up Tennyson’s replacement before long and you can go back to your old job. Bear in mind that any attempt on your part to seize control can and will be viewed as insubordination, treason, maybe even an act of war. And Evans is to report to Torchwood One immediately.”
Jack had been silent for a few seconds, and then said, “No.”
“Christ’s sake, we need him,” the other said, clearly irritated by Jack’s uncooperative attitude. “We’ll send you a replacement medic with your new commander, but we need the best here right now. You have your orders, Harkness -”
“Don’t call me that,” Jack had shouted, because only Charles had called him Harkness. To everyone else he’d just been Jack. Always. And he found himself yelling, “It’s Captain bloody Harkness, and I’m in charge around here now! I need the best just as much as you do, so you can go screw yourself, because Dai is staying here, and I’m going to go out and bloody find the best to work for me from now on. Things round here are going to get bad enough without having some self-important asshole from fucking Torchwood One in charge, who can’t even take a fucking piss without six countersigned bloody orders, reproduced in fucking triplicate and stamped and filed and tied up in so much red tape nobody has a clue what they even are any more! So shut the hell up, back off, and let me do my fucking job, alright?”
He’d slammed the phone down and turned to find Dai standing in the office doorway, watching him expressionlessly. They’d stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Dai’s shoulders started shaking. It took Jack a moment to realise that he was laughing, and then they’d both been howling with laughter, clinging to each other and gasping for breath. Twice they nearly got themselves under control, but both times Dai choked, “Reproduced in fucking triplicate!” and they were off again.
Eventually the laughter had turned to tears, and Dai had whispered, “Oh, Jack, I miss him.”
“Me too,” Jack had told him. He’d grieved for so many people over the years that he’d almost got used to the feeling of loss and loneliness, but Charles’s death had been a sharp, new stab reminding him what he should have felt every time. Not because Charles had been unique in some way - or at least, no more unique than any of the others he’d loved and lost - but because of Dai. Dai who had felt the same, shared everything, loved Charles as much as Jack. Somehow he’d managed to show Jack what his grief had been once.
That was why he kept thinking of that team. They’d brought everything back into focus just when he’d thought the lens had slipped too far. They hadn’t just rekindled his love and joy and all the greater, better emotions he’d become numbed to, but they’d given him back the darker side of life as well - vengeance and fear and grief and rage. And he thanked them for it. Because until they’d come along, he’d been forgetting how to be truly human. Without that extra push he’d never have felt the pride he did now when he looked down from the Boardroom at his team. He’d have been too far gone for Gwen’s fierce sympathy to pull him back again, and he wondered, sometimes, what sort of a Torchwood she would have found if he hadn’t been rescued . Not one to her liking, he feared. Would he have been closer to Suzie, okay with murdering a few people if it was for the greater good? Or more like Owen, seemingly uncaring of other people’s feelings as long as he got what he wanted?
He could admit to himself without feeling conceited that however much worse he’d been, Torchwood Cardiff would have followed in his footsteps down the dark paths. And they wouldn’t have stopped him. Gwen had saved them, too. They questioned him now, contradicted him and disagreed and tried to rein him in when they thought he was going too far. There hadn’t really been anyone to do that since Dai.
And Dai had gone barely a week after Charles.
They’d managed to pull things together after a day or two. Carried on with all the routine work, tried to act normal, comforted each other when they needed it. They had been coping, and Jack had been out looking around for new recruits to Torchwood. Not to replace Charles, but to take on the extra work that was too much for them, provide another gun in the field if necessary, another area of expertise.
Until Jack took the next call from the police. They’d phoned as soon as they got the reports. A UFO sighting on the outskirts of the city.
Jack had driven like a maniac to get them there in time - and they’d made it. The thing, horseshoe shaped and utterly stationary in the air despite the whipping breeze, was still in place when they arrived. The police had cleared the area of the few people hanging around, and they were out of sight, alone with their visitors.
They hadn’t come through the Rift. Jack had been certain of that from the moment he’d seen the ship. There were all sorts of bells and whistles (metaphorically, of course) on the ship’s hull, and he’d caught the faint flicker of a shield, so he’d put his gun away and started thinking about how to contact them.
Shouting seemed the best option at the time.
“Hey!” he’d yelled. “Come on down and join the party. I’m sure we’ll be glad to meet y-”
He’d been cut off as a sickly yellow beam of light engulfed him, generated from somewhere between the two ends of the horseshoe. He hadn’t been able to keep talking, and had winced with difficulty as he felt the tingle of scanners.
Dai had shouted, “Jack!” and hurled himself at him.
Jack went flying, hitting the ground hard as he was knocked out of the beam of light. He scrambled up in time to see Dai vanish - just like that! - and the ship follow suit.
After a few seconds he closed his eyes, then opened them again, pulled himself to his feet, and walked back to his car. The police asked after the UFO, and he didn’t even bother with a cover story, just said, “Gone,” and let twentieth century scepticism do the rest for him.
He had lain in an empty bed that night, for the first time in years, and let himself cry for both of them.
In the morning he’d written a brief report, and started packing Charles and Dai’s personal belongings into a myriad of cardboard boxes, all stamped with Torchwood’s logo.
And when Charles’s replacement had finally turned up from Torchwood One, more than three weeks after the telephone call, he’d gone straight back in disgust, and told his superiors that he didn’t know why they bothered - Harkness was as insufferable as ever, doing a brilliant job, and far too busy training his four new recruits to spare any time for him. And it was quite clear that the new recruits belonged solely to him, not to Torchwood. They were his team.
And for a while that’s all they’d been to him. He’d been proud of them, and taken care of them, but he’d seen them as his protégés, his employees, his teammates - and nothing more. He’d held himself apart from them for years.
But even that couldn’t last. When the loneliness had got to him again, the people he’d turned to had inevitably been those he’d recruited. And somewhere along the line he’d found the right balance. So few of the lovers and friends and recruits had lasted even a year, but they’d kept him sane and made Torchwood Cardiff a success, despite London’s doubts.
This team was the best in some time, though. They’d been working together smoothly for months, and though there’d been changes - Ianto, transferred in after Torchwood One went down, and Suzie… poor Suzie - they were possibly the most successful group in two decades or more.
The only trouble was that he couldn’t keep himself from remembering the others - all of them. He remembered how they’d lived and worked and loved, but he remembered how they’d died as well. He hoarded the memories he’d gained of Tosh and Owen and Ianto and Gwen, because sooner or later that would be all he had left. And every now and again he wondered how they would die.
Tosh, beaten by a computer system she couldn’t hack, captured, locked in somewhere and murdered before she could escape? Owen, infected by some alien disease and unable to find a cure in time? Gwen, betrayed by whatever dangerous creature she’d been trying to help? Ianto… All he could think of was that Ianto would go out like Dai, saving someone’s life. Because they’d been so similar - so alike that sometimes when he woke after nightmares, disoriented and still shaking, it took him a moment or two to remember whose arms he was in.
It didn’t make much difference. Sooner or later, they would die, or be lost, or give up, and he would have to try and cope, amongst the frantic efforts of the others to keep going and keep Torchwood running. He couldn’t count on having another Gwen on hand to step in just when they were needed. And how could he replace them? How?
Watching them, he considered the thought that he might have got too involved again. He felt so protective when it came to this group. Just the thought of losing them…
He leant his forehead against the glass wall of the Boardroom, closing his eyes for a few moments and taking a deep breath. If someone had offered him a way to escape, to run away and hide and come back to a new team he didn’t know, he’d have been tempted. But there was nowhere better to be just yet. Torchwood needed him, and here, in this place that had been his home for so long, he felt like he had a purpose.
Almost nothing could make him abandon that.
Fandom: Torchwood (what else?)
Rating: R
Warnings: Fair amount of angst, swearing
Word Count: 4000
Summary: Jack's known a lot of members of the Torchwood Team. There have been so many... (Semi-sequel to Jack's Fear)
Prompt: 026. Teammates.
Jack's Team
Jack still remembered them all. There had been so many people coming and going through Torchwood Cardiff over the years, but he remembered them all. From the first group, who’d treated him with wary suspicion and dozens (though if had felt more like hundreds) of tests to make sure he was human, through all the fleeting replacements and additions, those who’d lasted less than a week and those who’d only moved on to even greater things, those who’d given up and begged to be allowed to forget and those who’d taken their memories to the grave as the most valuable of all their treasures, those who’d been corrupted and those who’d been selfless, those who’d thought they were invincible and those who’d never had the confidence to take a risk, those who’d thrown everything away to save their own skin and those who’d sacrificed themselves for the world, or their team, or just one person. He’d seen it all, and he kept them locked away safe in his head.
He’d watched Torchwood change. The first ones had been so hung up on rules and regulations, terrified and blustering to hide it, half of them not really believing in the reasons for their existence. So different from his teams. They’d all been full of love and excitement and energy, not believing, but knowing what they were there to do, explorers without travelling, adventurers and inventors and discoverers of the unknown. He’d led them into the thrill of it all, chosen them for just that, watched them reach out and find that there was joy out there for the taking. He’d loved every one of them for being brave and daring and clever. They would have even done the Doctor proud.
But they hadn’t all been like that. Back in the early days, there were some Jack had hated. Some who threw Torchwood’s motto in his face when he’d tried to stop them from stealing alien tech and murdering its owners. If it’s alien, it’s ours. He’d really come to despise that phrase.
They were usually the ones who went on to great things at Torchwood London. Ruthless and greedy, with all the makings of a top Torchwood executive. He was glad to see the back of them. And gradually Torchwood Cardiff grew a little more to his liking. He’d taken a look at the others, but it was Cardiff he came back to. The fact that he’d stopped here with the Doctor once had nothing to do with his liking for the place.
He stayed in the background most of the time. Torchwood Three’s eccentric American alien-expert, lurking in the shadows and making sure that the records didn’t really show how long he’d been there, avoiding the sort of involvement that would make people realise quite how different he was.
But it hadn’t taken long before things had got to the point that the Torchwood team was in almost constant flux. People in, people out, people dead, people replaced, people fired, people hired, and just Jack in the middle, waiting.
The Rift had slowly begun to get more volatile. They’d gone from one event a year to one every couple of months, maybe even two, and Torchwood Cardiff was finding the sort of people it could make its own. Jack had crept out of the woodwork and taken up an active role, their eccentric American alien-expert revealing now that he was handy with a gun and thought fast and could outrun any of the others around then, as long as he wasn’t wearing his coat. He’d put up with having other people in charge - they dealt with all the orders from Torchwood London, called all the shots, and invariably talked down to him, but that didn’t matter, because he was working with two or three others (never much more than that - it was only Cardiff, how bad could things get?) who liked him, and enjoyed his company, and fought reliably at his side in the thick of things. One of many, but learning to love every second all the same.
He’d realised, way back then, that the Doctor wasn’t the only one who had adventures. Torchwood became more than just somewhere to pass the time while he waited to hitch a lift. He regained a little of his sense of purpose, lost so long ago, and started to let traces of the old Jack show. The incorrigible flirt, the daring adventurer, the rogue, the liar and the thief who’d been so in love with life. And his teammates - not his team, not yet, still just one of the many - had loved him for it.
And it was strange, but things hadn’t changed much from there. Though he was a leader now, he kept on going out into the fray with his teams, more part of them than of the Torchwood he was meant to be obeying.
But he would never be content to sit back and give orders and let the others take his risks. He’d had leaders like that, and they’d all been disasters. Deaths and failures had become the norm when they’d been in charge, and for all Jack’s efforts he hadn’t been able to save everyone he’d loved. But there had been others who’d done the same as Jack and shared their teams’ adventures. They were the ones he remembered most fondly.
It had been with one of them as leader that Torchwood Cardiff had finally known stability. For three years, three blessed, wonderful years, they’d had one team. No fatalities, no replacements, no change. They’d been brilliant together. They had given Jack almost everything he had now - even his position as leader had been because of them.
And there’d only been the three of them. Charles, sent in by Torchwood London, meant to be in charge but always willing to listen to Jack’s advice. He had experience dealing with alien tech, was a genius when it came to divining something’s purpose and how to use it. Quick to slam down against breaking the rules, but only for show. He’d been as keen as Jack to throw the rulebook out of the window and just get the job done.
Dai, younger, quieter, always deferential and respectful, but ready to be wild and adventurous given half the chance. In some ways, when Jack thought about him now, he reminded him of Ianto. Or Ianto reminded him of Dai. They’d both been (both were?) quick and clever and incredibly useful to have around. Dai had been that team’s medic, though, and had needed Charles’s help to keep the archives in order. Jack could never be bothered with that.
And then Jack was the third. He’d chipped in with the alien tech, thrown out helpful information whenever it was needed, and trained them both in many different ways. And the combination had worked. They’d been through the best and the worst together. They’d dealt with everything the Rift could throw at them for three years, and cleared up after the teams that had come before them, too.
Of course they’d had their failures, and their mistakes. But Torchwood London never got to hear about them. There’d been a lot that Torchwood London didn’t know.
They hadn’t known that Dai had accidentally lost two alien weapons in the city one night, on as simple a task as chasing a Weevil, and they hadn’t been recovered until, so many years later, Tosh had seen them on sale in the window of the Cardiff Forbidden Planet, and had promptly gone in and bought them. They hadn’t known that Jack and Charles had discovered a group of aliens passing for human in one of the poorer areas of the city and had simply let them be when they realised they were harmless (Jack still got a Christmas card from the children - still sent one, too). They hadn’t known that Jack couldn’t die, and that some of their achievements had been directly down to this. Fair was fair, his team then hadn’t known that, his team now (with the exception of Gwen) didn’t know that, and Torchwood London (or what was left of it, at least) still didn’t know that. And they hadn’t known that, way back then, all three members of Torchwood Cardiff had lived in the Hub and slept together in the bed beneath Charles’s office.
Jack had always been good at keeping secrets.
He looked back on that period with a few pangs of nostalgia and more than a few of grief. It had all ended badly.
He could still remember every detail of the night Charles had died. Everything had started off well enough - Dai had been working out how to describe their roles in six different ways, and had paused after proclaiming Charles “Grand Master” and himself “Witch Doctor”. Jack had simply raised his eyebrows and waited.
Dai had grinned at him wickedly, and said, “Office Pet.”
“You are dead,” Jack had told him, and pounced on him. They’d ended up chasing around the Hub until Dai collapsed laughing on the couch and Jack had taken revenge with three or four kisses. Then he’d settled down with his head in Dai’s lap, one leg drawn up with his foot on the cushions, the other dangling over the side of the couch. Dai had sat stroking his hair, while Jack smiled, eyes closed, and muttered, “Office Pet, huh? Kinky.”
Charles had come over with drinks at that point, handing Jack his usual glass of water then saying, “Move your legs, Harkness.”
Jack had just grinned and moved so that Charles could sit down, stretching one arm along the back of the couch behind Dai’s shoulders, and then had put his legs over Charles’s, crossing them comfortably and lying stretched out in both his lovers’ laps. Charles had laughed and patted his legs, then sat back to drink and relax.
They’d sat there in companionable silence for a long time, enjoying the normality of it all. Jack understood the irony well enough now - Torchwood, normal? But to them, as it was to him now, the Hub had been home. The alien tech lying scattered around the place was their equivalent of a book picked up and forgotten, a photo unframed, a letter yet to receive its reply, all the usual clutter of any normal house. That was well enough for him, but the others?
When the phone in Charles’s office had rung, none of them had moved at first. Then Charles had sighed and given Jack’s legs a light shove, saying, “Let me up, then.”
“Tempted to keep you here,” Jack told him, but removed his legs anyway.
Eavesdropping on Charles’s side of the conversation had never yielded any useful information, so Jack and Dai had placed bets on the call (passed on by the police) being a hoax at most, while their leader discussed the situation. Charles, when he got back to them, had recommended that they investigate. Recommended. He’d stopped giving them orders after the first six months, when they’d been trying to recover a Fotsali shield device and Jack had narrowly saved them from disaster by telling him, flat out, that shooting the thing was just plain stupid.
So they’d got themselves ready and gone to investigate the report, which was compiled of various strange sightings, a small group of people behaving erratically, and four disappearances, all from the same area within the last month.
It had turned out to be a drugs ring, and though most of the gang had fled when they’d burst onto the scene, one was far gone enough (stupid enough? Violent enough? It didn’t matter) to pull out a gun and open fire. His aim was terrible, firing six shots and missing by miles. Except for one bullet, which was an accident more than anything else. It took Charles in the chest, straight through his heart, and there was nothing Dai could do to save him.
Jack had only needed to fire one shot.
“That was murder,” Dai had told him quietly, staring at the body of the addict to avoid seeing the corpse of his lover beside him.
“That was self-defence,” Jack had said, just as softly, though he knew even then that it was a lie.
He’d delayed sending the report of Charles’s death to Torchwood London for as long as he could get away with it, too busy dealing with Dai’s (and his own) grief and trying somehow to fill the void that Charles had left.
He’d got a telephone call as soon as Torchwood London received the report. For Suzie it had been an email. Somehow that was worse. At least he’d been able to argue and shout at someone when it had been Charles. But he couldn’t shout down a computer to tell bloody Torchwood One to mind its own business and stop interfering.
“Harkness?”
“What?” he’d snapped, hating their clipped, controlled speech.
They’d told him, quite calmly, “We’re currently looking at replacements for Mr Tennyson. We expect to find someone within the next two weeks. Until then you’ll have to be in temporary command of Torchwood Three.”
He’d practically been able to feel the disapproval dripping from the phone. Harkness, in control? God help them, things had gone to the dogs in Cardiff if that loose cannon was the best they had left.
“You’re not sending anyone,” he’d spat back, barely reigning in his fury. He rode over them as they tried to speak again, whatever faceless, heartless cog in the machine they were, saying, “I’ll find someone else to replace him. You’re not telling me who to have on my team.”
“You have temporary command, Harkness,” the voice reminded him sharply. “Don’t get carried away. We’ll send up Tennyson’s replacement before long and you can go back to your old job. Bear in mind that any attempt on your part to seize control can and will be viewed as insubordination, treason, maybe even an act of war. And Evans is to report to Torchwood One immediately.”
Jack had been silent for a few seconds, and then said, “No.”
“Christ’s sake, we need him,” the other said, clearly irritated by Jack’s uncooperative attitude. “We’ll send you a replacement medic with your new commander, but we need the best here right now. You have your orders, Harkness -”
“Don’t call me that,” Jack had shouted, because only Charles had called him Harkness. To everyone else he’d just been Jack. Always. And he found himself yelling, “It’s Captain bloody Harkness, and I’m in charge around here now! I need the best just as much as you do, so you can go screw yourself, because Dai is staying here, and I’m going to go out and bloody find the best to work for me from now on. Things round here are going to get bad enough without having some self-important asshole from fucking Torchwood One in charge, who can’t even take a fucking piss without six countersigned bloody orders, reproduced in fucking triplicate and stamped and filed and tied up in so much red tape nobody has a clue what they even are any more! So shut the hell up, back off, and let me do my fucking job, alright?”
He’d slammed the phone down and turned to find Dai standing in the office doorway, watching him expressionlessly. They’d stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Dai’s shoulders started shaking. It took Jack a moment to realise that he was laughing, and then they’d both been howling with laughter, clinging to each other and gasping for breath. Twice they nearly got themselves under control, but both times Dai choked, “Reproduced in fucking triplicate!” and they were off again.
Eventually the laughter had turned to tears, and Dai had whispered, “Oh, Jack, I miss him.”
“Me too,” Jack had told him. He’d grieved for so many people over the years that he’d almost got used to the feeling of loss and loneliness, but Charles’s death had been a sharp, new stab reminding him what he should have felt every time. Not because Charles had been unique in some way - or at least, no more unique than any of the others he’d loved and lost - but because of Dai. Dai who had felt the same, shared everything, loved Charles as much as Jack. Somehow he’d managed to show Jack what his grief had been once.
That was why he kept thinking of that team. They’d brought everything back into focus just when he’d thought the lens had slipped too far. They hadn’t just rekindled his love and joy and all the greater, better emotions he’d become numbed to, but they’d given him back the darker side of life as well - vengeance and fear and grief and rage. And he thanked them for it. Because until they’d come along, he’d been forgetting how to be truly human. Without that extra push he’d never have felt the pride he did now when he looked down from the Boardroom at his team. He’d have been too far gone for Gwen’s fierce sympathy to pull him back again, and he wondered, sometimes, what sort of a Torchwood she would have found if he hadn’t been rescued . Not one to her liking, he feared. Would he have been closer to Suzie, okay with murdering a few people if it was for the greater good? Or more like Owen, seemingly uncaring of other people’s feelings as long as he got what he wanted?
He could admit to himself without feeling conceited that however much worse he’d been, Torchwood Cardiff would have followed in his footsteps down the dark paths. And they wouldn’t have stopped him. Gwen had saved them, too. They questioned him now, contradicted him and disagreed and tried to rein him in when they thought he was going too far. There hadn’t really been anyone to do that since Dai.
And Dai had gone barely a week after Charles.
They’d managed to pull things together after a day or two. Carried on with all the routine work, tried to act normal, comforted each other when they needed it. They had been coping, and Jack had been out looking around for new recruits to Torchwood. Not to replace Charles, but to take on the extra work that was too much for them, provide another gun in the field if necessary, another area of expertise.
Until Jack took the next call from the police. They’d phoned as soon as they got the reports. A UFO sighting on the outskirts of the city.
Jack had driven like a maniac to get them there in time - and they’d made it. The thing, horseshoe shaped and utterly stationary in the air despite the whipping breeze, was still in place when they arrived. The police had cleared the area of the few people hanging around, and they were out of sight, alone with their visitors.
They hadn’t come through the Rift. Jack had been certain of that from the moment he’d seen the ship. There were all sorts of bells and whistles (metaphorically, of course) on the ship’s hull, and he’d caught the faint flicker of a shield, so he’d put his gun away and started thinking about how to contact them.
Shouting seemed the best option at the time.
“Hey!” he’d yelled. “Come on down and join the party. I’m sure we’ll be glad to meet y-”
He’d been cut off as a sickly yellow beam of light engulfed him, generated from somewhere between the two ends of the horseshoe. He hadn’t been able to keep talking, and had winced with difficulty as he felt the tingle of scanners.
Dai had shouted, “Jack!” and hurled himself at him.
Jack went flying, hitting the ground hard as he was knocked out of the beam of light. He scrambled up in time to see Dai vanish - just like that! - and the ship follow suit.
After a few seconds he closed his eyes, then opened them again, pulled himself to his feet, and walked back to his car. The police asked after the UFO, and he didn’t even bother with a cover story, just said, “Gone,” and let twentieth century scepticism do the rest for him.
He had lain in an empty bed that night, for the first time in years, and let himself cry for both of them.
In the morning he’d written a brief report, and started packing Charles and Dai’s personal belongings into a myriad of cardboard boxes, all stamped with Torchwood’s logo.
And when Charles’s replacement had finally turned up from Torchwood One, more than three weeks after the telephone call, he’d gone straight back in disgust, and told his superiors that he didn’t know why they bothered - Harkness was as insufferable as ever, doing a brilliant job, and far too busy training his four new recruits to spare any time for him. And it was quite clear that the new recruits belonged solely to him, not to Torchwood. They were his team.
And for a while that’s all they’d been to him. He’d been proud of them, and taken care of them, but he’d seen them as his protégés, his employees, his teammates - and nothing more. He’d held himself apart from them for years.
But even that couldn’t last. When the loneliness had got to him again, the people he’d turned to had inevitably been those he’d recruited. And somewhere along the line he’d found the right balance. So few of the lovers and friends and recruits had lasted even a year, but they’d kept him sane and made Torchwood Cardiff a success, despite London’s doubts.
This team was the best in some time, though. They’d been working together smoothly for months, and though there’d been changes - Ianto, transferred in after Torchwood One went down, and Suzie… poor Suzie - they were possibly the most successful group in two decades or more.
The only trouble was that he couldn’t keep himself from remembering the others - all of them. He remembered how they’d lived and worked and loved, but he remembered how they’d died as well. He hoarded the memories he’d gained of Tosh and Owen and Ianto and Gwen, because sooner or later that would be all he had left. And every now and again he wondered how they would die.
Tosh, beaten by a computer system she couldn’t hack, captured, locked in somewhere and murdered before she could escape? Owen, infected by some alien disease and unable to find a cure in time? Gwen, betrayed by whatever dangerous creature she’d been trying to help? Ianto… All he could think of was that Ianto would go out like Dai, saving someone’s life. Because they’d been so similar - so alike that sometimes when he woke after nightmares, disoriented and still shaking, it took him a moment or two to remember whose arms he was in.
It didn’t make much difference. Sooner or later, they would die, or be lost, or give up, and he would have to try and cope, amongst the frantic efforts of the others to keep going and keep Torchwood running. He couldn’t count on having another Gwen on hand to step in just when they were needed. And how could he replace them? How?
Watching them, he considered the thought that he might have got too involved again. He felt so protective when it came to this group. Just the thought of losing them…
He leant his forehead against the glass wall of the Boardroom, closing his eyes for a few moments and taking a deep breath. If someone had offered him a way to escape, to run away and hide and come back to a new team he didn’t know, he’d have been tempted. But there was nowhere better to be just yet. Torchwood needed him, and here, in this place that had been his home for so long, he felt like he had a purpose.
Almost nothing could make him abandon that.