Fic: "Let Us To The Battle" [Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness, PG-13]
Title: Let Us To The Battle
Author: Shane Mayhem
Rating: PG-13 for some swearing and drug use.
Notes: Beta'ed by the crazy-awesome neifile7. Gee-whiz info: title is the motto of the 133 Eagle Squadron.
Summary: One month before he will meet James Harper at the Ritz, this is where Jack's life has led him.
There's a small fire glowing in the hearth in the Officers' Mess, lighting the room with a warm glow behind the blackout curtains. The lads are having beer and punch, the air is full of cigarette smoke and the richer scent of pipe tobacco. A garland crowns the molding of the room, and the buzz of talk, laughter, the warbling of a few drunken carols, echoes in the walls. It's a small affair--just the boys and some of their sweethearts, rationed food and plenty of alcohol.
Upstairs in the dark sleeping quarters, Jack can hear the radio switched on below, the small, pure voices of the choir at St. Paul's in London beginning to sing Gabriel's Message. There is no fire lit up here; the marble of the wash closet floor is so cold that it seeps through even the rough serge of his trousers. His fingers clutch bloodlessly at the porcelain rim of the toilet seat as his body tries to force him to throw up again. His burning stomach spasms painfully but nothing comes up. He spits thickly and gasps for a clear breath. His muscles shake. A crash of glass and a rush of teasing laughter from below; someone must've dropped a beer mug. Cardinal sin; now the poor bastard has to drain the next in one. Jack won't be the only one shooting his supper tonight. Not that he's had any, to speak of; he can't remember when he was last hungry. He shakes and heaves again, but the outcome's the same as before. His body just won't get the message, is all. He leans his head on his arm, breathing hard.
He counted three kills tonight, dodging in and out of searchlight-illuminated clouds, following black shapes that seemed like a fantasy in front of his eyes until he was up on them, close enough to see the yellow tail flash and the crooked cross. Tracer rounds in the dark lit after-trails of pain in his head. He fought his way through a nightmare of white and black, thunder in his skull, narrowing tunnels of light before his eyes, and couldn't remember what day it was. He bounced the landing a little, and sat, shivering, in the cockpit until Jem's concerned tapping on the canopy roused him. He dragged unco-operating limbs out of the harness and seat, managing not to fall in front of his rigger, who watched him with wary eyes as he staggered to the mess.
Trying to calm his jiving nerves with a shot of cheap whiskey didn't work out so well. He can still taste it, in the back of his throat and his nose, that half-glass he gulped down an hour ago, and promptly gifted to the Cardiff sewer system. Jack reaches up to pull the string, sending the fruitless result of his purge down the drain. His mouth is dry and his head is pounding like a funeral parade. He knows what he desperately needs, but he can't seem to get up the coordination to go look for it. A pale groan slips out of his chalky, chapped lips, and his head bows before his toilet confessional, soft clink of the crucifix falling out of his undone shirt and tapping against the porcelain, tiny little voice of his shame.
"Jackie-boy, you alive in there?" MacNulty, tapping on the door with a sound like a baseball bat against a breadbox. Not one for physical subtlety, the Irishman. Jack pushes, arms like rubber, and succeeds in collapsing back against the cast iron tub. He tries his voice.
"Yeah."
How long since he's spoken anything but orders on the radio? Seven days, seventeen or twenty tablets of Benzedrine, maybe four hours of sleep, real sleep. Got to the point where he was hallucinating friendly eyes across a dank pub, boyish winks and soft curved lips of welcome. Drinking the pervert out of himself when he found himself watching his fighter boys a little too closely, following taut, youthful movements a little too wistfully across the briefing room. He's their leader, for Christ's sake, and they need him to lead. Anything else is...unthinkable.
The slow wreck of that train of thought is interrupted as MacNulty shoulders the door open; Jack forgot to lock it. He stands there, a dark bulk against the darker room beyond, wreath of cigarette smoke around his tousled head. Jack notices he hasn't changed out of his flying jacket, either. "Christ, look at the state of ya."
"Just a little under the weather, Tom."
"In a pig's eye," is the grumbled response, as MacNulty reaches down and gets his strong arm around Jack's back, lifting him to his feet. The washroom goes into a stall and spin, threatening to drag Jack down in a dizzying spiral to the floor, but MacNulty's arm tightens until his ribs creak and keeps him upright. "Ya look like shite."
"Thanks."
Dark circles grace MacNulty's eyes, too--his number one Squadron Leader has been pulling almost as many sorties as himself, double-duty, training new pilots during the day and patrolling for Jerry in every other spare moment. Jack makes it to his desk chair and sits down hard, fumbling the bottom drawer open in the dark. MacNulty lights a lamp with a sigh. "For the love of what's holy, Jack..."
"Just need to calm the nerves." Jack's hackles rise, a bitter taste in the back of his throat, muscles winding themselves tighter until his spasming hand almost can't manage the small vial he finds, under the rank slides and spare pens and the empty whiskey bottle.
"It's not nerves, Jack, it's them feckin' tablets." MacNulty says. He takes them, too--they all do. But no one flies as often as Jack. They all hope the war will be a chapter in their lives, something to tell their wives and kids in the warm glow of family life when this is all over. For Jack, life outside the war is an empty space, full of unseen danger, like the night sky above the Channel.
MacNulty knows this. He's the only one who knows. He sits down opposite, craggy face coming out of the dark into the small circle of lamplight. His brown eyes watch Jack, watch the cold sweat Jack can feel prickling his face, the parched tongue licking the cracked lips. The dead hazel eyes with spots dancing in front of them now. "When are they gonna rotate ya to Headquarters?" MacNulty asks.
"Hopefully never." Jack dares a look up at the Irishman's somber, steady gaze. MacNulty's mouth tugs itself into a flat line at one corner--not a smile, but a grimace of understanding. To take him from the sky, to put him behind a desk in a pressed blue uniform and force him to listen to his boys fight and die without him...to take away the blessed cleansing fire of battle, would be to consign him to void lonelier and more burning than any damnation. He forgets that feeling in the face of the all-important mission, in the roar of his engine and the buoyant lift of his wings. It's a hole inside that aches more than a week of sleeplessness.
"Hopefully soon," MacNulty retorts nonetheless. "Ya've been flying more missions than the whole damn RAF put together, and it shows. Christ, I could practically fit my hands around ya."
Jack makes a noise that's supposed to be a laugh, but it sounds more like a short, sharp moan--breaking off at the end to curl around a sudden, desperate desire for MacNulty to do just that, just so that he could feel the touch of someone besides himself. He shakes his head.
"Once this new flock is trained and pinned, I'll put in for some R and R."
He's more than due for a furlough, but the Germans haven't exactly been accommodating, either, and somehow, the thought of larking about in a hotel somewhere is an incredibly foreign one to Jack. His fingers close very tightly around the vial he's pulled from the drawer. MacNulty looks him slowly up and down, and nods.
"Get some damn sleep, Group Captain," he growls, and stands, thumping a hand softly on the desk in farewell as he turns to rejoin the downstairs festivities, one last pointed look in the doorway for good measure. Jack recognizes a faint brush-stroke of fear in the brusque expression, and it unfolds some sorrow within him that he can't explain.
He tells himself he'll join them later--the lads downstairs, cheerfully celebrating what could be their last Christmas. The singing and thumping of beer glasses has gotten louder, now, and he smiles a little, imagining their flushed faces, the passionate kisses with their sweethearts under mistletoe. He slips his arm quickly out of his shirt, pops the plastic cap off of the tiny syringe in his hand. His fingers are almost shaking too badly to do the deed, but holding the syringe between two fingers like a cigarette, he manages to get his bootlace around his upper arm and tap a hard-beating vein. Takes a deep breath, and with only a little bit of a jab, slips the needle in.
The cool rush of morphine is like the hand of a saint, smoothing away the cares of his overworked muscles and the thready pulse of his amphetamine-addled heart. Jack lets out a breath, slumping in the chair, staring at the molded high ceiling above. Live to fight another day. The syringe vial now empty, he lets his hand fall, tiny clink of glass hitting the floor, tiny shiver of pain in his heart as that blessed saintly hand cradles his weary body. A few hours is all he needs, Jack thinks, bargaining with some entity of the air. Then he'll pop another Bennie and he'll be ready for action again, to shepherd his small flock, those all-too-young lads downstairs, through the slaughter. In the end, that's all that matters.
The bells ring a muffled salute to midnight, Christmas Eve, in the Year of Our Lord nineteen-forty. Jack hears them from thousands of feet up, suspended above the cold dark water as the room grows small and quiet around him, and the world outside expands into a vast and empty sky. His head falls slack to his shoulder at last, relieved of duty for about five hours until the morning sortie. In the dark, the crucifix gleams against his breast, silent as the inchoate utterance that parts his lips: a prayer or a cry, or a plea for some need, beyond the power of words to name.
Author: Shane Mayhem
Rating: PG-13 for some swearing and drug use.
Notes: Beta'ed by the crazy-awesome neifile7. Gee-whiz info: title is the motto of the 133 Eagle Squadron.
Summary: One month before he will meet James Harper at the Ritz, this is where Jack's life has led him.
There's a small fire glowing in the hearth in the Officers' Mess, lighting the room with a warm glow behind the blackout curtains. The lads are having beer and punch, the air is full of cigarette smoke and the richer scent of pipe tobacco. A garland crowns the molding of the room, and the buzz of talk, laughter, the warbling of a few drunken carols, echoes in the walls. It's a small affair--just the boys and some of their sweethearts, rationed food and plenty of alcohol.
Upstairs in the dark sleeping quarters, Jack can hear the radio switched on below, the small, pure voices of the choir at St. Paul's in London beginning to sing Gabriel's Message. There is no fire lit up here; the marble of the wash closet floor is so cold that it seeps through even the rough serge of his trousers. His fingers clutch bloodlessly at the porcelain rim of the toilet seat as his body tries to force him to throw up again. His burning stomach spasms painfully but nothing comes up. He spits thickly and gasps for a clear breath. His muscles shake. A crash of glass and a rush of teasing laughter from below; someone must've dropped a beer mug. Cardinal sin; now the poor bastard has to drain the next in one. Jack won't be the only one shooting his supper tonight. Not that he's had any, to speak of; he can't remember when he was last hungry. He shakes and heaves again, but the outcome's the same as before. His body just won't get the message, is all. He leans his head on his arm, breathing hard.
He counted three kills tonight, dodging in and out of searchlight-illuminated clouds, following black shapes that seemed like a fantasy in front of his eyes until he was up on them, close enough to see the yellow tail flash and the crooked cross. Tracer rounds in the dark lit after-trails of pain in his head. He fought his way through a nightmare of white and black, thunder in his skull, narrowing tunnels of light before his eyes, and couldn't remember what day it was. He bounced the landing a little, and sat, shivering, in the cockpit until Jem's concerned tapping on the canopy roused him. He dragged unco-operating limbs out of the harness and seat, managing not to fall in front of his rigger, who watched him with wary eyes as he staggered to the mess.
Trying to calm his jiving nerves with a shot of cheap whiskey didn't work out so well. He can still taste it, in the back of his throat and his nose, that half-glass he gulped down an hour ago, and promptly gifted to the Cardiff sewer system. Jack reaches up to pull the string, sending the fruitless result of his purge down the drain. His mouth is dry and his head is pounding like a funeral parade. He knows what he desperately needs, but he can't seem to get up the coordination to go look for it. A pale groan slips out of his chalky, chapped lips, and his head bows before his toilet confessional, soft clink of the crucifix falling out of his undone shirt and tapping against the porcelain, tiny little voice of his shame.
"Jackie-boy, you alive in there?" MacNulty, tapping on the door with a sound like a baseball bat against a breadbox. Not one for physical subtlety, the Irishman. Jack pushes, arms like rubber, and succeeds in collapsing back against the cast iron tub. He tries his voice.
"Yeah."
How long since he's spoken anything but orders on the radio? Seven days, seventeen or twenty tablets of Benzedrine, maybe four hours of sleep, real sleep. Got to the point where he was hallucinating friendly eyes across a dank pub, boyish winks and soft curved lips of welcome. Drinking the pervert out of himself when he found himself watching his fighter boys a little too closely, following taut, youthful movements a little too wistfully across the briefing room. He's their leader, for Christ's sake, and they need him to lead. Anything else is...unthinkable.
The slow wreck of that train of thought is interrupted as MacNulty shoulders the door open; Jack forgot to lock it. He stands there, a dark bulk against the darker room beyond, wreath of cigarette smoke around his tousled head. Jack notices he hasn't changed out of his flying jacket, either. "Christ, look at the state of ya."
"Just a little under the weather, Tom."
"In a pig's eye," is the grumbled response, as MacNulty reaches down and gets his strong arm around Jack's back, lifting him to his feet. The washroom goes into a stall and spin, threatening to drag Jack down in a dizzying spiral to the floor, but MacNulty's arm tightens until his ribs creak and keeps him upright. "Ya look like shite."
"Thanks."
Dark circles grace MacNulty's eyes, too--his number one Squadron Leader has been pulling almost as many sorties as himself, double-duty, training new pilots during the day and patrolling for Jerry in every other spare moment. Jack makes it to his desk chair and sits down hard, fumbling the bottom drawer open in the dark. MacNulty lights a lamp with a sigh. "For the love of what's holy, Jack..."
"Just need to calm the nerves." Jack's hackles rise, a bitter taste in the back of his throat, muscles winding themselves tighter until his spasming hand almost can't manage the small vial he finds, under the rank slides and spare pens and the empty whiskey bottle.
"It's not nerves, Jack, it's them feckin' tablets." MacNulty says. He takes them, too--they all do. But no one flies as often as Jack. They all hope the war will be a chapter in their lives, something to tell their wives and kids in the warm glow of family life when this is all over. For Jack, life outside the war is an empty space, full of unseen danger, like the night sky above the Channel.
MacNulty knows this. He's the only one who knows. He sits down opposite, craggy face coming out of the dark into the small circle of lamplight. His brown eyes watch Jack, watch the cold sweat Jack can feel prickling his face, the parched tongue licking the cracked lips. The dead hazel eyes with spots dancing in front of them now. "When are they gonna rotate ya to Headquarters?" MacNulty asks.
"Hopefully never." Jack dares a look up at the Irishman's somber, steady gaze. MacNulty's mouth tugs itself into a flat line at one corner--not a smile, but a grimace of understanding. To take him from the sky, to put him behind a desk in a pressed blue uniform and force him to listen to his boys fight and die without him...to take away the blessed cleansing fire of battle, would be to consign him to void lonelier and more burning than any damnation. He forgets that feeling in the face of the all-important mission, in the roar of his engine and the buoyant lift of his wings. It's a hole inside that aches more than a week of sleeplessness.
"Hopefully soon," MacNulty retorts nonetheless. "Ya've been flying more missions than the whole damn RAF put together, and it shows. Christ, I could practically fit my hands around ya."
Jack makes a noise that's supposed to be a laugh, but it sounds more like a short, sharp moan--breaking off at the end to curl around a sudden, desperate desire for MacNulty to do just that, just so that he could feel the touch of someone besides himself. He shakes his head.
"Once this new flock is trained and pinned, I'll put in for some R and R."
He's more than due for a furlough, but the Germans haven't exactly been accommodating, either, and somehow, the thought of larking about in a hotel somewhere is an incredibly foreign one to Jack. His fingers close very tightly around the vial he's pulled from the drawer. MacNulty looks him slowly up and down, and nods.
"Get some damn sleep, Group Captain," he growls, and stands, thumping a hand softly on the desk in farewell as he turns to rejoin the downstairs festivities, one last pointed look in the doorway for good measure. Jack recognizes a faint brush-stroke of fear in the brusque expression, and it unfolds some sorrow within him that he can't explain.
He tells himself he'll join them later--the lads downstairs, cheerfully celebrating what could be their last Christmas. The singing and thumping of beer glasses has gotten louder, now, and he smiles a little, imagining their flushed faces, the passionate kisses with their sweethearts under mistletoe. He slips his arm quickly out of his shirt, pops the plastic cap off of the tiny syringe in his hand. His fingers are almost shaking too badly to do the deed, but holding the syringe between two fingers like a cigarette, he manages to get his bootlace around his upper arm and tap a hard-beating vein. Takes a deep breath, and with only a little bit of a jab, slips the needle in.
The cool rush of morphine is like the hand of a saint, smoothing away the cares of his overworked muscles and the thready pulse of his amphetamine-addled heart. Jack lets out a breath, slumping in the chair, staring at the molded high ceiling above. Live to fight another day. The syringe vial now empty, he lets his hand fall, tiny clink of glass hitting the floor, tiny shiver of pain in his heart as that blessed saintly hand cradles his weary body. A few hours is all he needs, Jack thinks, bargaining with some entity of the air. Then he'll pop another Bennie and he'll be ready for action again, to shepherd his small flock, those all-too-young lads downstairs, through the slaughter. In the end, that's all that matters.
The bells ring a muffled salute to midnight, Christmas Eve, in the Year of Our Lord nineteen-forty. Jack hears them from thousands of feet up, suspended above the cold dark water as the room grows small and quiet around him, and the world outside expands into a vast and empty sky. His head falls slack to his shoulder at last, relieved of duty for about five hours until the morning sortie. In the dark, the crucifix gleams against his breast, silent as the inchoate utterance that parts his lips: a prayer or a cry, or a plea for some need, beyond the power of words to name.