Torchwood/Dr Who - fic - The Torchwood Girls, Part 15, Jack, Joan, OFCs, Nine, Rose, PG-13/12
Fandoms - Torchwood/Dr Who/Pat Barker’s Regeneration
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 15/20?
Author - laurab1
Characters/pairings - Jack, Joan Redfern, OFCs, Dr W H R Rivers, Nine/Rose/Jack/TARDIS
Rating - PG-13/12
Length - approx 1800 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, DW: to 3.11-13
Story summary: While Jack Harkness serves in WWI, and suffers the consequences of doing so, Joan Redfern and some more very smart women save the world from aliens.
Chapter summary - “Cambrai, then, Jack?” Rivers asks, pushing his glasses back, and getting his pen ready.
Disclaimer: alas, not all of these people are mine
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
Previous parts:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14
Parts 1-10 are new versions, posted 4-6/6/08, Parts 11 onward, I'm happy with the posted part.
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
end of Part 14
”How was your latest telepathy lesson?” Rose asked.
Jack looked at the Doctor, and got a nod of, “OK.” They both put their tools down, and stopped trying to repair the TARDIS’ console. “Useful. Very useful,” Jack replied. “I managed to block him all the way out, for the first time.”
“Wish I could do that, sometimes,” Rose whispered in Jack’s ear, making him smirk.
“He’s doing very well, Rose,” the Doctor said. “I’m rather proud of him.”
“That the best you can do? Rather?” Jack replied, matching the grin on the Time Lord’s face.
“How did you block him out, then?” Rose asked Jack.
“I made this semi-alive coral reef,” he told her. Then explained, “Think a sneaky old timeship gave me a bit of a hand, somewhere along the way.” Jack ran a hand down the strut he was nearest to. “Not that I didn’t appreciate it, beautiful.”
The TARDIS hummed at him, and he smiled.
It’s that last bit of the memory that Jack takes with him, as he tries to sleep, his newly-formed shield in place.
***
Part 15
After a week which has included three blowfish, Joan and the rest of the women draw up a schedule for visiting Jack. “I shall go in December,” Joan decides.
“That’s probably wise,” Penny says. “He could be scared by an immediate change.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Joan agrees. “If we create this schedule now, I can tell him who he should expect.”
“And what happens when we’ve all been to see him, Joan?” Eleanor asks.
“We just go back to the beginning, of course. I do hope it does not come to that, though.”
But Joan suspects it probably will.
***
Loos is the next battle Jack recounts to Rivers, at the beginning of December.
“The commanders called it ‘The Big Push’, I remember.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. ”Hell, it was a complete mess, a total disaster.”
“In what way?” Rivers asks.
“Bad weather, yet again. What the hell did we do to piss off mother nature quite so spectacularly?” Jack wonders, half rhetorically. “Anyway, photos taken on recon sorties, by my squadron, and others, showed that in the area which was going to be attacked, the Germans had considerably strengthened their defences, adding three lines.”
“Did your squadrons carry out any attacks, Jack?”
“No, other squadrons bombed the railway, until the weather got so bad that they couldn’t see what they were firing at, and the recon squads couldn’t get the intell to the bombers. Shortage of supplies, lack of men, all added up to a hell of a loss.”
***
“How far have you got, Jack?” Joan asks, when she comes to see him again.
They’re outside, walking around the grounds of the hospital. It’s cold, but he needed some air. “It’s the Somme, next, Joan. The bloody Somme,” he tells her, sighing.
“I have something for you, Jack,” she says, reaching into her coat pocket. “We drew up a timetable for visiting you.” She holds out a piece of their yellow paper to him.
Jack takes it, and reads:
Joan - December, Eleanor- January, Jennifer - February, Penny- March, Amy - April, Harriet - May, Joan -June et cetera
“You expecting me to be in for a while, Joan?” he asks, looking down at her.
“We hope you will not be, Jack, but if you are, the timetable is in place.”
“Yeah,” he says, folding the piece of paper in half and putting it in his pocket. “Well done. Now, you gonna tell me what you’ve been dealing with, down in Cardiff?”
“Blowfish,” she says, and fills him in.
Listening, Jack realises just how much he misses Torchwoood. The sooner he’s better, the sooner he can go home.
***
The day after Joan’s visit, Jack does indeed start on the Somme.
“Your squad did recon work, again?” Rivers asks.
“Yeah. Got myself a new boy and a new girl, especially for the occasion,” Jack says, with a half a smile. “Captain Mark Earnshaw, a photographer, and a Farman MF-II. Yet another incredibly ungainly machine, but she did her job. We had air supremacy until September 1916, because we had more planes, but then Germany got more planes, and took it from us. The only things we would have been taking pictures of by then were muddy fields, anyway.”
“And the battle went for another few moths after that?”
“Oh, yeah, Dr Rivers. It went on, and on, and the losses climbed. The RFC lost nearly 800 aircraft and 600 pilots during the Somme.”
“Your squad continued with mainly recon work until the end of 1917?”
“Yeah,” Jack says, as the darkness starts hovering around his mind. “I’m not telling you about that today, though.” I need to organise all of that in my head, first.
“Very well. You can go, Jack.”
“Thank you.” He shakes Rivers’ hand, and leaves the office.
***
In the course of trying to work out how to tell Dr Rivers about Cambrai, Jack remembers certain things.
There’s his joy, when the Sopwith Camels arrived; finally, they’d had bombers. Oh, those planes were beautiful.
But he also remembers something else, something his brain had almost locked away. He remembers the details of burning to death, in his plane, and then coming back to life, in the trench. He hopes Joan’s assessment was right, and he can tell Rivers about his... abilities.
***
That night, Jack’s nightmares threaten. He concentrates, and replaces the images of dead soldiers and burning planes with something better, something more pleasant.
It had been a week since he’d joined them. A week since the Doctor had saved his life.
He must have been making a hell of a lot of noise, last night. He’d woken up, at some point, hearing a voice, to find his light on, and Rose sat on the edge of his bed, looking down at him with a worried expression on her face.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Jack had said, taking her hand, squeezing it. Connection would make the monsters go away. Maybe. He’d tried to give her a smile.
“You all right, Captain?” Rose had asked, squeezing back. “Only, I heard screaming, and it wasn’t him, this time.”
“Just bad dreams, Rose,” he’d replied. He had an idea of how much worse the Doctor’s nightmares must be, compared to his, but put it to one side, for right now.
“Would company help, Jack?” she’d asked.
“Miss Tyler, are you trying to seduce me?” he’d joked.
“No, Jack,” she replied, in a tone that suggested he’d hit the wrong note. “Just trying to be a friend. You still got them, in the fifty-first century?”
“Course we have, Rose,” Jack had replied, suitably chastened, letting go of her hand, and flicking back the covers. “C’mon. I’ll be a gentleman, I promise.”
Rose had climbed in beside him, and pulled the covers back over them. She hadn’t said a word when he’d immediately grabbed hold of her hand again, before switching off the light.
“Thank you,” he’d whispered, aiming it at all three of his new friends.
Now, the following morning, he’d just arrived at the kitchen. After a more restful sleep and another word of thanks, Rose had let him kiss her on the forehead, before she’d gone off to get dressed. She and the Doctor were already in the room; Jack could smell tea, coffee and buttered toast. They were talking, as well. Jack stopped, didn’t go in. They were talking about him.
“Should’ve seen Jack, Doctor,” Rose was saying. “He was almost as bad as you are, sometimes. Just... help him, yeah?”
“Workin’ on it, Rose,” the Doctor said. “Think this’ll help?”
“Yeah, Doctor,” she replied.
Jack decided to go into the kitchen. “Mornin’,” he said, taking a place at the table. “Where we gonna go today, then?”
“Why don’t you decide, Captain,” the Doctor said, getting up from the table.
“Me?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, you. Come and find me in the control room, when you’ve made up your mind. I’ve got repairs to do.” In a flash of black leather, carrying his tea and toast, he was gone.
“He has nightmares, too, Rose?” Jack asked, pouring himself a mug of coffee.
“Yeah, he does,” she replied, and sipped her tea.
“We’ll have to see what we can do to help him, then, sweetheart.”
Yeah, that was a better memory. Jack smiled, put up his shield, and tried to sleep.
***
“Cambrai, then, Jack?” Rivers asks, pushing his glasses back, and getting his pen ready.
Jack takes a deep breath, and begins the story.
“In November 1917, we had Sopwith Camels delivered. Gorgeous planes. This meant Number Three finally became a fighter squadron. I know how much the recon mattered, but this was what I really wanted to do. More bombers, more planes to help stop the German war machine, a faster end to the whole bloody mess.
“Cambrai was the first battle that made real use of tanks. We flew up and down the area on 18th and 19th of November to mask the sound of tanks moving to the battleground.”
Jack drinks some of his water before he recounts the next part.
“On the 20th of November, I and the rest of my squadron were involved in several dogfights with the German Albatrosses. Then, out of the blue, one of the Albatrosses hit my Camel, setting her on fire. And that set my flight suit on fire. Then my skin was melting and I lost control of my plane.
“I could have bailed, I guess, but life got on top of me and my brain just froze.”
With the memories, the same thing happens. Rivers has to call Jack’s name a couple of times, to get him to continue.
“You know what, Dr Rivers? Burning to death in a plane crash hurts like hell,” Jack then says, cold and bitter.
“You died, Harkness?” Rivers asks.
“Joan told you I would tell you some weird stuff, didn’t she? And that you’d believe me, wouldn’t get me carted off to somewhere that even my girls couldn’t find, with all their intelligence and resources. This is one of those bits of weird stuff, Rivers. Captain Jack Harkness is the man who can’t die. Well, permanently, anyway.”
Jack chuckles, just a little, but there’s no happiness behind it. He tells Rivers the rest of the story: resurrecting in the trench, talking to Captain Roberts, being checked over by the RAMC guy, being taken back to his base.
“Then I went back in the air, in another Sopwith Camel, dropped some more bombs. Next thing I know, I’m having nightmares of dying in burning planes, again and again and again.”
Jack has to stop, otherwise he’s going to cry again.
Rivers has now opened Jack’s file, and reads:
“Colonel Jack Harkness, Number Three Squadron, RFC, has distanced himself from the rest of his squadron. The men are accustomed to him being very tactile with them, often offering a shoulder squeeze as encouragement, prior to a sortie. They have noticed a lack of such gestures, in recent days. He has no desire to return to air combat, at the Battle of Cambrai, and he is extremely easily startled. Diagnosis is neurasthenia, he is to be shipped back to Great Britain for treatment and recuperation.”
“Then Cardiff got a telegram, and I came here,” Jack says, finishing the story. “What are you gonna do for me, Dr Rivers?” he asks, and Rivers looks up.
“Make you fit for battle, again, Colonel, of course,” Rivers replies.
“Yeah,” Jack says. “Thought you’d say something like that. I’m hardly Sassoon, though, am I? I actually am ‘Mad Jack’.” He doesn’t wait for a dismissal, just leaves.
***
With all the memories churning around in his head, Jack has really bad nightmares that night. The next morning, he starts to work out how he’s going to tell Rivers just what Torchwood does, and the precise details of his inability to die.
Continue to Part 16
crosspost:
torch_wood
torchwood_fic
galactic_conman
better_with_3
vintagemiltary
dwfiction
john_joan
new_who
Teaspoon
Zero Room
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 15/20?
Author - laurab1
Characters/pairings - Jack, Joan Redfern, OFCs, Dr W H R Rivers, Nine/Rose/Jack/TARDIS
Rating - PG-13/12
Length - approx 1800 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, DW: to 3.11-13
Story summary: While Jack Harkness serves in WWI, and suffers the consequences of doing so, Joan Redfern and some more very smart women save the world from aliens.
Chapter summary - “Cambrai, then, Jack?” Rivers asks, pushing his glasses back, and getting his pen ready.
Disclaimer: alas, not all of these people are mine
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
Previous parts:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14
Parts 1-10 are new versions, posted 4-6/6/08, Parts 11 onward, I'm happy with the posted part.
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
end of Part 14
”How was your latest telepathy lesson?” Rose asked.
Jack looked at the Doctor, and got a nod of, “OK.” They both put their tools down, and stopped trying to repair the TARDIS’ console. “Useful. Very useful,” Jack replied. “I managed to block him all the way out, for the first time.”
“Wish I could do that, sometimes,” Rose whispered in Jack’s ear, making him smirk.
“He’s doing very well, Rose,” the Doctor said. “I’m rather proud of him.”
“That the best you can do? Rather?” Jack replied, matching the grin on the Time Lord’s face.
“How did you block him out, then?” Rose asked Jack.
“I made this semi-alive coral reef,” he told her. Then explained, “Think a sneaky old timeship gave me a bit of a hand, somewhere along the way.” Jack ran a hand down the strut he was nearest to. “Not that I didn’t appreciate it, beautiful.”
The TARDIS hummed at him, and he smiled.
It’s that last bit of the memory that Jack takes with him, as he tries to sleep, his newly-formed shield in place.
***
Part 15
After a week which has included three blowfish, Joan and the rest of the women draw up a schedule for visiting Jack. “I shall go in December,” Joan decides.
“That’s probably wise,” Penny says. “He could be scared by an immediate change.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Joan agrees. “If we create this schedule now, I can tell him who he should expect.”
“And what happens when we’ve all been to see him, Joan?” Eleanor asks.
“We just go back to the beginning, of course. I do hope it does not come to that, though.”
But Joan suspects it probably will.
***
Loos is the next battle Jack recounts to Rivers, at the beginning of December.
“The commanders called it ‘The Big Push’, I remember.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. ”Hell, it was a complete mess, a total disaster.”
“In what way?” Rivers asks.
“Bad weather, yet again. What the hell did we do to piss off mother nature quite so spectacularly?” Jack wonders, half rhetorically. “Anyway, photos taken on recon sorties, by my squadron, and others, showed that in the area which was going to be attacked, the Germans had considerably strengthened their defences, adding three lines.”
“Did your squadrons carry out any attacks, Jack?”
“No, other squadrons bombed the railway, until the weather got so bad that they couldn’t see what they were firing at, and the recon squads couldn’t get the intell to the bombers. Shortage of supplies, lack of men, all added up to a hell of a loss.”
***
“How far have you got, Jack?” Joan asks, when she comes to see him again.
They’re outside, walking around the grounds of the hospital. It’s cold, but he needed some air. “It’s the Somme, next, Joan. The bloody Somme,” he tells her, sighing.
“I have something for you, Jack,” she says, reaching into her coat pocket. “We drew up a timetable for visiting you.” She holds out a piece of their yellow paper to him.
Jack takes it, and reads:
Joan - December, Eleanor- January, Jennifer - February, Penny- March, Amy - April, Harriet - May, Joan -June et cetera
“You expecting me to be in for a while, Joan?” he asks, looking down at her.
“We hope you will not be, Jack, but if you are, the timetable is in place.”
“Yeah,” he says, folding the piece of paper in half and putting it in his pocket. “Well done. Now, you gonna tell me what you’ve been dealing with, down in Cardiff?”
“Blowfish,” she says, and fills him in.
Listening, Jack realises just how much he misses Torchwoood. The sooner he’s better, the sooner he can go home.
***
The day after Joan’s visit, Jack does indeed start on the Somme.
“Your squad did recon work, again?” Rivers asks.
“Yeah. Got myself a new boy and a new girl, especially for the occasion,” Jack says, with a half a smile. “Captain Mark Earnshaw, a photographer, and a Farman MF-II. Yet another incredibly ungainly machine, but she did her job. We had air supremacy until September 1916, because we had more planes, but then Germany got more planes, and took it from us. The only things we would have been taking pictures of by then were muddy fields, anyway.”
“And the battle went for another few moths after that?”
“Oh, yeah, Dr Rivers. It went on, and on, and the losses climbed. The RFC lost nearly 800 aircraft and 600 pilots during the Somme.”
“Your squad continued with mainly recon work until the end of 1917?”
“Yeah,” Jack says, as the darkness starts hovering around his mind. “I’m not telling you about that today, though.” I need to organise all of that in my head, first.
“Very well. You can go, Jack.”
“Thank you.” He shakes Rivers’ hand, and leaves the office.
***
In the course of trying to work out how to tell Dr Rivers about Cambrai, Jack remembers certain things.
There’s his joy, when the Sopwith Camels arrived; finally, they’d had bombers. Oh, those planes were beautiful.
But he also remembers something else, something his brain had almost locked away. He remembers the details of burning to death, in his plane, and then coming back to life, in the trench. He hopes Joan’s assessment was right, and he can tell Rivers about his... abilities.
***
That night, Jack’s nightmares threaten. He concentrates, and replaces the images of dead soldiers and burning planes with something better, something more pleasant.
It had been a week since he’d joined them. A week since the Doctor had saved his life.
He must have been making a hell of a lot of noise, last night. He’d woken up, at some point, hearing a voice, to find his light on, and Rose sat on the edge of his bed, looking down at him with a worried expression on her face.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Jack had said, taking her hand, squeezing it. Connection would make the monsters go away. Maybe. He’d tried to give her a smile.
“You all right, Captain?” Rose had asked, squeezing back. “Only, I heard screaming, and it wasn’t him, this time.”
“Just bad dreams, Rose,” he’d replied. He had an idea of how much worse the Doctor’s nightmares must be, compared to his, but put it to one side, for right now.
“Would company help, Jack?” she’d asked.
“Miss Tyler, are you trying to seduce me?” he’d joked.
“No, Jack,” she replied, in a tone that suggested he’d hit the wrong note. “Just trying to be a friend. You still got them, in the fifty-first century?”
“Course we have, Rose,” Jack had replied, suitably chastened, letting go of her hand, and flicking back the covers. “C’mon. I’ll be a gentleman, I promise.”
Rose had climbed in beside him, and pulled the covers back over them. She hadn’t said a word when he’d immediately grabbed hold of her hand again, before switching off the light.
“Thank you,” he’d whispered, aiming it at all three of his new friends.
Now, the following morning, he’d just arrived at the kitchen. After a more restful sleep and another word of thanks, Rose had let him kiss her on the forehead, before she’d gone off to get dressed. She and the Doctor were already in the room; Jack could smell tea, coffee and buttered toast. They were talking, as well. Jack stopped, didn’t go in. They were talking about him.
“Should’ve seen Jack, Doctor,” Rose was saying. “He was almost as bad as you are, sometimes. Just... help him, yeah?”
“Workin’ on it, Rose,” the Doctor said. “Think this’ll help?”
“Yeah, Doctor,” she replied.
Jack decided to go into the kitchen. “Mornin’,” he said, taking a place at the table. “Where we gonna go today, then?”
“Why don’t you decide, Captain,” the Doctor said, getting up from the table.
“Me?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, you. Come and find me in the control room, when you’ve made up your mind. I’ve got repairs to do.” In a flash of black leather, carrying his tea and toast, he was gone.
“He has nightmares, too, Rose?” Jack asked, pouring himself a mug of coffee.
“Yeah, he does,” she replied, and sipped her tea.
“We’ll have to see what we can do to help him, then, sweetheart.”
Yeah, that was a better memory. Jack smiled, put up his shield, and tried to sleep.
***
“Cambrai, then, Jack?” Rivers asks, pushing his glasses back, and getting his pen ready.
Jack takes a deep breath, and begins the story.
“In November 1917, we had Sopwith Camels delivered. Gorgeous planes. This meant Number Three finally became a fighter squadron. I know how much the recon mattered, but this was what I really wanted to do. More bombers, more planes to help stop the German war machine, a faster end to the whole bloody mess.
“Cambrai was the first battle that made real use of tanks. We flew up and down the area on 18th and 19th of November to mask the sound of tanks moving to the battleground.”
Jack drinks some of his water before he recounts the next part.
“On the 20th of November, I and the rest of my squadron were involved in several dogfights with the German Albatrosses. Then, out of the blue, one of the Albatrosses hit my Camel, setting her on fire. And that set my flight suit on fire. Then my skin was melting and I lost control of my plane.
“I could have bailed, I guess, but life got on top of me and my brain just froze.”
With the memories, the same thing happens. Rivers has to call Jack’s name a couple of times, to get him to continue.
“You know what, Dr Rivers? Burning to death in a plane crash hurts like hell,” Jack then says, cold and bitter.
“You died, Harkness?” Rivers asks.
“Joan told you I would tell you some weird stuff, didn’t she? And that you’d believe me, wouldn’t get me carted off to somewhere that even my girls couldn’t find, with all their intelligence and resources. This is one of those bits of weird stuff, Rivers. Captain Jack Harkness is the man who can’t die. Well, permanently, anyway.”
Jack chuckles, just a little, but there’s no happiness behind it. He tells Rivers the rest of the story: resurrecting in the trench, talking to Captain Roberts, being checked over by the RAMC guy, being taken back to his base.
“Then I went back in the air, in another Sopwith Camel, dropped some more bombs. Next thing I know, I’m having nightmares of dying in burning planes, again and again and again.”
Jack has to stop, otherwise he’s going to cry again.
Rivers has now opened Jack’s file, and reads:
“Colonel Jack Harkness, Number Three Squadron, RFC, has distanced himself from the rest of his squadron. The men are accustomed to him being very tactile with them, often offering a shoulder squeeze as encouragement, prior to a sortie. They have noticed a lack of such gestures, in recent days. He has no desire to return to air combat, at the Battle of Cambrai, and he is extremely easily startled. Diagnosis is neurasthenia, he is to be shipped back to Great Britain for treatment and recuperation.”
“Then Cardiff got a telegram, and I came here,” Jack says, finishing the story. “What are you gonna do for me, Dr Rivers?” he asks, and Rivers looks up.
“Make you fit for battle, again, Colonel, of course,” Rivers replies.
“Yeah,” Jack says. “Thought you’d say something like that. I’m hardly Sassoon, though, am I? I actually am ‘Mad Jack’.” He doesn’t wait for a dismissal, just leaves.
***
With all the memories churning around in his head, Jack has really bad nightmares that night. The next morning, he starts to work out how he’s going to tell Rivers just what Torchwood does, and the precise details of his inability to die.
Continue to Part 16
crosspost:
torch_wood
torchwood_fic
galactic_conman
better_with_3
vintagemiltary
dwfiction
john_joan
new_who
Teaspoon
Zero Room