Torchwood/Dr Who - fic - The Torchwood Girls, Part 13, Jack, Joan, OFC, Nine, TARDIS, PG
I posted parts of this during the week, and here are all those bits, now in context.
Fandoms - Torchwood/Dr Who/Pat Barker’s Regeneration
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 13
Author - laurab1
Characters - Jack, Joan Redfern, OFC, Nine, TARDIS, Dr W H R Rivers
Rating - PG
Length - approx 2060 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, DW: to 3.11-13
Summary - Jack’s assigned to the care of Dr W H R Rivers. Thanks to his obsession with war heroes, he knows the man has also been looking after one of the soldier poets who actually survives, Siegfried Sassoon, sent here as a result of his protest against the war.
Disclaimer: alas, not all of these people are mine
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
Part 1, including art (original version)
Part 2 (original version)
accompanying art by _medley_
Part 3 (original version)
Part 4 (original version)
Part 5 (original version)
accompanying art
Part 6 (original version)
Part 7 (original version)
Part 8 (original version)
Part 9 (original version)
Part 10 (original version)
Part 11
Part 12
end of Part 12
In another Sopwith Camel, and possibly against his better judgement, Jack undertakes a couple more successful bombing missions.
And then the nightmares start.
Added to that, Jack cuts himself from the rest of the squadron; his men are used to him being very tactile, and notice that he’s being less so. He doesn’t want to go back in the air, and he’s extremely easily startled. The squadron’s medic gives Jack a diagnosis of neurasthenia, and he’s shipped back to Great Britain for treatment and recuperation.
On the 23rd of November 1917, Jack’s admitted to the officers’ psychiatric hospital, Craiglockhart, in Edinburgh.
***
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
Part 13
“Joan?”
“Yes, Eleanor?” Joan puts down her pen. She looks up from the desk to see her own second in command (appointment made August the 10th, 1914) hovering in the office doorway.
“There’s a… telegram.” Eleanor’s hesitant, which is extremely unusual for her. And the look on her face is the same one Joan saw on her own, every time she looked in the mirror, for all of 1900, after she lost her husband. Dear God.
“About who?”
“Jack. He’s been sent back to Britain. To hospital,” Eleanor says, coming all the way in, and taking a seat.
“Hospital?” Joan’s so glad she made him tell the girls that he can’t die. Well, she thinks she is. “Let me see.” Eleanor hands her the telegram. “Craiglockhart,” she reads. Oh, Lord. What happened to you, Jack?
“They’ll think… I don’t know what they’ll think, Joan, if he has to discuss details of our work, and his… situation. And then they’ll take him even further away from us.”
“I suspect that whatever happens depends on his doctor, Eleanor, but I do not think Jack would allow that outcome to occur,” Joan replies. “I hope it does not.”
“And if it does?”
With the catch in Eleanor’s voice, Joan makes a decision. “There is no ‘if’ on this matter, Eleanor. We will ensure that outcome does not happen. Jack will come back to us.” Either after his treatment, or after the war.
There’s now a grin on Eleanor’s face. “What are you smiling at?” Joan asks.
“You, Joan. That resolve’s... incredibly attractive. I’m off to the firing range, now.” She squeezes Joan’s hand with hers, and sweeps out of the office, wearing her new trench coat, Jack’s holstered revolver on her hip.
Joan glances at the device strapped to her own wrist. She then reads the telegram again, and makes plans to go to Edinburgh.
***
Jack’s assigned to the care of Dr W H R Rivers. Thanks to his obsession with war heroes, he knows the man has also been looking after one of the soldier poets who actually survives, Siegfried Sassoon, sent here as a result of his protest against the war.
“What did you do, before the war, Jack?” Dr Rivers asks him, on November the 25th, when his file has finally arrived.
Jack’s been people watching, and trying to come up with an answer to a question that he expected to be asked. One that doesn’t mention “save the world from aliens, and their stray tech, on a regular basis.” Or maybe he should say that. Would certainly get him completely out of the war. Where he’d end up was an entirely different matter, and one that really didn’t bear thinking about. He has enough circling around in his head at the present. However, he had finally settled on something he could say.
“I ran a branch of a Crown agency, in defence of Great Britain and the Empire,” Jack tells the doctor, voice quiet, but looking at him, across the large wooden desk.
“Crown? Are you not American?”
“No, I just sound it, doctor. Don’t really know quite what I am, anymore.”
“When did you join up?”
“August 1914. Right at the beginning. Like I’d always planned to.” He whispers the last sentence.
“What happened to you in France?” Dr Rivers asks, giving no indication as to whether or not he heard the end of Jack’s reply.
“Dr Rivers, I think what didn’t happen to me in France would probably be a more useful question,” Jack says, laughing bitterly. Okay, so he’s avoiding answering. Because it hurts to even think about it all.
“Answer the question, please, Colonel,” the doctor orders.
“Isn’t it all in there?” Jack asks, indicating the file Dr Rivers is reading through.
“Yes. But I want you to tell me, Jack.” He sounds more sympathetic, now.
Jack’s done all of this before, yes. But this is different to how he and the Doctor worked through Jack’s Time Agency issues, and the Gallifreyan’s Time War trauma. He figures he is gonna have to talk about his unique condition, but he needs to assemble it all in his broken and battered mind, first. “Not today, Dr Rivers,” he finally manages, “not today.”
“Very well, Harkness,” the doctor says, with a sigh. “You can go.”
“Thank you,” Jack replies, rising from his chair, and leaving the office.
***
Back in his room, he sits on his bed, and remembers.
Jack opened his eyes, and swore.
He and the Doctor had done a fair amount of work to repair Jack’s mind, and the Time Lord had now begun to teach him shielding skills. They had been doing this third session for more than an hour, and he was getting frustrated over something which seemed so simple! They were sat on the floor of the TARDIS’ console room, legs crossed, fingertips of their hands on each others’ temples. Just gently touching, at the moment, maybe even caressing, only a little, but not pressing.
”C’mon, Captain. Try again,” the Doctor said, his eyes remarkably soft.
“I am tryin’!” Jack protested. He closed his eyes again, and leant back against the coral strut behind him.
With that contact, the TARDIS slipped into his head a little more, and Jack greeted her. Then they did press their fingertips against each others’ temples, and Jack once more felt the Doctor enter his mind. The idea was, if Jack could manage to close off this deeper, more intimate telepathic link in a certain way, the same exercise would make the everyday stuff easier to deal with. On the days when he really couldn’t cope with the racket in the Doctor’s head, and didn’t know how to make it better, Jack would be able to push the Time Lord’s presence from his mind, and to shield himself.
“Focus me in your head, Jack, like we said. Focus, push me away, and create a mental shield,” the Doctor instructed, yet again.
“All right, I’m focussin’, I’m focussin’!” He breathed deeply, and concentrated.
Slowly, the Gallifreyan script; letters and numbers all spiralling around on top of each other, that Jack had been visualising as the Doctor’s presence began to appear in his mind. When the script was completely visible, the Time Lord’s presence fully focussed, Jack let it settle.
“Okay, Doctor, you’re here. Again,” he said, eyes still closed.
“Good lad, Jack,” the Doctor replied. “Now what’re y’gonna do?”
Jack wanted to push the presence away, all in one go, and that’s what he attempted to do, for a second time, trying to visualise using his hands to get rid of it. Didn’t work, though. “Not that, obviously,” he said, a little defeated, as he felt the presence assert itself again.
“Do it in bits, then, Captain, and slowly.”
“All right.” Jack thought for a few seconds, and then tried a new tactic. He pictured unfurling the spiral into a long line of characters, and making the letters and numbers disappear, one by one. But that method required significant mental effort, and he didn’t have sufficient energy left to create the shield. Opening his eyes, Jack took his hands from the Doctor’s temples, and brought them to his own, pulling away the hands sat there. “Enough, Doctor,” he said.
“All right, Captain,” the Doctor allowed, and opened his eyes. “That’s further than we’ve got before, though. You did well.” The Time Lord kept hold of one of Jack’s hands, and moved to sit beside him.
“Thanks,” Jack said, with a little smile, and trying to slow his breathing. He could feel the TARDIS help him to calm down, as well.
“Welcome,” the Doctor replied, grinning back at him.
The mad grin was one of the things that Jack loved about this alien, and their hands were right there, held tightly. He pulled the Doctor’s hand to his lips, and kissed the back of it. “Thank you,” he repeated.
And promptly earned himself an eye-roll. “D’you ever stop, Captain?”
“What d’you think?” Jack asked. Closing his eyes, he held onto the hand, and leant his head against the Doctor’s shoulder. They could always try again, in a day or so. Plenty of time to get this right.
***
The next day, at 10 am, Jack is back in Dr Rivers’ office, some of his experiences in the war organised in his head.
“What happened to you in France, Harkness? When did you arrive?” the doctor asks.
“August the 7th, 1914. In a de Havilland BE-2 biplane. God, she was ugly,” Jack tells him, silently apologising to the plane. Again.
“You chose the Royal Flying Corps over the Army?”
“I can fly, Dr Rivers, there was never any question about which branch I was gonna sign up with.” Or even which squadron he wanted to be in. The third shall be first, read the English translation of the motto of Number Three Squadron, RFC; they’d been the first squad to have planes, rather than balloons.
“I assume not, Colonel. Your squadron was at the very first battle of the war?”
“Yeah. Mons, 23rd of August, 1914. We got battle honours. Can’t quite remember what for, exactly. Probably just staying alive, I should think.” Jack laughs, but it’s rough, and bitter.
“Then Neuve Chapelle, in March 1915?”
Jack takes a sip of his glass of water. “A proper, planned offensive. Noisy as hell, that one. And the weather was awful. The photographs taken by the RFC squadrons showed how badly defended the nearby German lines were. And then we couldn’t safely get the intell in the photos to the commanders.”
“Resulting in losses of 12,000 men on both sides, I remember.”
“I guess, Dr Rivers.”
“You had leave, that summer?”
“Yeah. I went home,” Jack says, and finds a real smile, from somewhere. “I went back to Cardiff, and saw my women.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
“They’re intelligent and beautiful, doctor. What d’you think?”
Dr Rivers smiles back at him, and Jack thinks he’ll be okay, with this man helping him to get better.
***
Joan arrives in Edinburgh on November the 26th.
Two rail journeys, three hours on the train from Cardiff to London, and then another eight from London to Edinburgh, before she finally stepped onto the platform at Waverley Station. One of the Torchwood agents who still works at the estate meets her off the train, and takes her to a hotel.
And then to Craiglockhart, the following day.
Joan meets Jack in a lounge. It breaks her heart to see him, and so many other men so quiet, so broken. She knows most of them of them would not normally be like this. They’re former public school boys, rowers, rugby players; they’re used to noise.
But that’s just the point. The extreme noise they’ve encountered, the things they’ve seen have made them like this.
Jack holds her close, very briefly, and kisses her hair. The only thing he’ll tell her, though, is, “Plane crash, Joan. Really nasty, too.”
“Who is your doctor, Jack?” she asks, looking up at him, and trying not to cry. You died, didn’t you? And your poor brain still hasn’t properly processed that fact. Oh, Jack.
“Dr Rivers. He’s good, Joan. I like him.”
“Do you trust him, Jack?”
“Yeah,” he replies, and Joan thinks he’s understood what she means.
“I would like to meet this Dr Rivers, please.”
“All right. Let’s go find someone who can arrange that.”
***
Joan’s ushered in Dr Rivers’ office, and offered tea. She introduces herself and they talk about how her meeting with Jack went. She then takes a deep breath before she gives her closing speech, in defence of her captain:
“Whatever tales Jack tells you about his work and himself, Dr Rivers, however strange they may be, please do not assume he is even more unhinged than this dreadful war has rendered him. I warn you, do not send him... elsewhere. Our agency needs him back, and relatively whole, at some point.”
“I am accustomed to the strange and unusual, Mrs Redfern,” the doctor replies. “I have seen many things, in the course of my work and research. I also count HG Wells among my friends.”
Thank God. Jack will be safe, in the care of this man. “Please look after him, Dr Rivers,” Joan says, rising from her chair.
“Of course, Mrs Redfern.”
They bid farewell, and she leaves the office.
crosspost:
torch_wood
torchwood_fic
dwfiction
new_who
galactic_conman
john_joan
Teaspoon
Continue to Part 14
Fandoms - Torchwood/Dr Who/Pat Barker’s Regeneration
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 13
Author - laurab1
Characters - Jack, Joan Redfern, OFC, Nine, TARDIS, Dr W H R Rivers
Rating - PG
Length - approx 2060 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, DW: to 3.11-13
Summary - Jack’s assigned to the care of Dr W H R Rivers. Thanks to his obsession with war heroes, he knows the man has also been looking after one of the soldier poets who actually survives, Siegfried Sassoon, sent here as a result of his protest against the war.
Disclaimer: alas, not all of these people are mine
Feedback is loved and appreciated :) Enjoy!
Part 1, including art (original version)
Part 2 (original version)
accompanying art by _medley_
Part 3 (original version)
Part 4 (original version)
Part 5 (original version)
accompanying art
Part 6 (original version)
Part 7 (original version)
Part 8 (original version)
Part 9 (original version)
Part 10 (original version)
Part 11
Part 12
end of Part 12
In another Sopwith Camel, and possibly against his better judgement, Jack undertakes a couple more successful bombing missions.
And then the nightmares start.
Added to that, Jack cuts himself from the rest of the squadron; his men are used to him being very tactile, and notice that he’s being less so. He doesn’t want to go back in the air, and he’s extremely easily startled. The squadron’s medic gives Jack a diagnosis of neurasthenia, and he’s shipped back to Great Britain for treatment and recuperation.
On the 23rd of November 1917, Jack’s admitted to the officers’ psychiatric hospital, Craiglockhart, in Edinburgh.
***
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
Part 13
“Joan?”
“Yes, Eleanor?” Joan puts down her pen. She looks up from the desk to see her own second in command (appointment made August the 10th, 1914) hovering in the office doorway.
“There’s a… telegram.” Eleanor’s hesitant, which is extremely unusual for her. And the look on her face is the same one Joan saw on her own, every time she looked in the mirror, for all of 1900, after she lost her husband. Dear God.
“About who?”
“Jack. He’s been sent back to Britain. To hospital,” Eleanor says, coming all the way in, and taking a seat.
“Hospital?” Joan’s so glad she made him tell the girls that he can’t die. Well, she thinks she is. “Let me see.” Eleanor hands her the telegram. “Craiglockhart,” she reads. Oh, Lord. What happened to you, Jack?
“They’ll think… I don’t know what they’ll think, Joan, if he has to discuss details of our work, and his… situation. And then they’ll take him even further away from us.”
“I suspect that whatever happens depends on his doctor, Eleanor, but I do not think Jack would allow that outcome to occur,” Joan replies. “I hope it does not.”
“And if it does?”
With the catch in Eleanor’s voice, Joan makes a decision. “There is no ‘if’ on this matter, Eleanor. We will ensure that outcome does not happen. Jack will come back to us.” Either after his treatment, or after the war.
There’s now a grin on Eleanor’s face. “What are you smiling at?” Joan asks.
“You, Joan. That resolve’s... incredibly attractive. I’m off to the firing range, now.” She squeezes Joan’s hand with hers, and sweeps out of the office, wearing her new trench coat, Jack’s holstered revolver on her hip.
Joan glances at the device strapped to her own wrist. She then reads the telegram again, and makes plans to go to Edinburgh.
***
Jack’s assigned to the care of Dr W H R Rivers. Thanks to his obsession with war heroes, he knows the man has also been looking after one of the soldier poets who actually survives, Siegfried Sassoon, sent here as a result of his protest against the war.
“What did you do, before the war, Jack?” Dr Rivers asks him, on November the 25th, when his file has finally arrived.
Jack’s been people watching, and trying to come up with an answer to a question that he expected to be asked. One that doesn’t mention “save the world from aliens, and their stray tech, on a regular basis.” Or maybe he should say that. Would certainly get him completely out of the war. Where he’d end up was an entirely different matter, and one that really didn’t bear thinking about. He has enough circling around in his head at the present. However, he had finally settled on something he could say.
“I ran a branch of a Crown agency, in defence of Great Britain and the Empire,” Jack tells the doctor, voice quiet, but looking at him, across the large wooden desk.
“Crown? Are you not American?”
“No, I just sound it, doctor. Don’t really know quite what I am, anymore.”
“When did you join up?”
“August 1914. Right at the beginning. Like I’d always planned to.” He whispers the last sentence.
“What happened to you in France?” Dr Rivers asks, giving no indication as to whether or not he heard the end of Jack’s reply.
“Dr Rivers, I think what didn’t happen to me in France would probably be a more useful question,” Jack says, laughing bitterly. Okay, so he’s avoiding answering. Because it hurts to even think about it all.
“Answer the question, please, Colonel,” the doctor orders.
“Isn’t it all in there?” Jack asks, indicating the file Dr Rivers is reading through.
“Yes. But I want you to tell me, Jack.” He sounds more sympathetic, now.
Jack’s done all of this before, yes. But this is different to how he and the Doctor worked through Jack’s Time Agency issues, and the Gallifreyan’s Time War trauma. He figures he is gonna have to talk about his unique condition, but he needs to assemble it all in his broken and battered mind, first. “Not today, Dr Rivers,” he finally manages, “not today.”
“Very well, Harkness,” the doctor says, with a sigh. “You can go.”
“Thank you,” Jack replies, rising from his chair, and leaving the office.
***
Back in his room, he sits on his bed, and remembers.
Jack opened his eyes, and swore.
He and the Doctor had done a fair amount of work to repair Jack’s mind, and the Time Lord had now begun to teach him shielding skills. They had been doing this third session for more than an hour, and he was getting frustrated over something which seemed so simple! They were sat on the floor of the TARDIS’ console room, legs crossed, fingertips of their hands on each others’ temples. Just gently touching, at the moment, maybe even caressing, only a little, but not pressing.
”C’mon, Captain. Try again,” the Doctor said, his eyes remarkably soft.
“I am tryin’!” Jack protested. He closed his eyes again, and leant back against the coral strut behind him.
With that contact, the TARDIS slipped into his head a little more, and Jack greeted her. Then they did press their fingertips against each others’ temples, and Jack once more felt the Doctor enter his mind. The idea was, if Jack could manage to close off this deeper, more intimate telepathic link in a certain way, the same exercise would make the everyday stuff easier to deal with. On the days when he really couldn’t cope with the racket in the Doctor’s head, and didn’t know how to make it better, Jack would be able to push the Time Lord’s presence from his mind, and to shield himself.
“Focus me in your head, Jack, like we said. Focus, push me away, and create a mental shield,” the Doctor instructed, yet again.
“All right, I’m focussin’, I’m focussin’!” He breathed deeply, and concentrated.
Slowly, the Gallifreyan script; letters and numbers all spiralling around on top of each other, that Jack had been visualising as the Doctor’s presence began to appear in his mind. When the script was completely visible, the Time Lord’s presence fully focussed, Jack let it settle.
“Okay, Doctor, you’re here. Again,” he said, eyes still closed.
“Good lad, Jack,” the Doctor replied. “Now what’re y’gonna do?”
Jack wanted to push the presence away, all in one go, and that’s what he attempted to do, for a second time, trying to visualise using his hands to get rid of it. Didn’t work, though. “Not that, obviously,” he said, a little defeated, as he felt the presence assert itself again.
“Do it in bits, then, Captain, and slowly.”
“All right.” Jack thought for a few seconds, and then tried a new tactic. He pictured unfurling the spiral into a long line of characters, and making the letters and numbers disappear, one by one. But that method required significant mental effort, and he didn’t have sufficient energy left to create the shield. Opening his eyes, Jack took his hands from the Doctor’s temples, and brought them to his own, pulling away the hands sat there. “Enough, Doctor,” he said.
“All right, Captain,” the Doctor allowed, and opened his eyes. “That’s further than we’ve got before, though. You did well.” The Time Lord kept hold of one of Jack’s hands, and moved to sit beside him.
“Thanks,” Jack said, with a little smile, and trying to slow his breathing. He could feel the TARDIS help him to calm down, as well.
“Welcome,” the Doctor replied, grinning back at him.
The mad grin was one of the things that Jack loved about this alien, and their hands were right there, held tightly. He pulled the Doctor’s hand to his lips, and kissed the back of it. “Thank you,” he repeated.
And promptly earned himself an eye-roll. “D’you ever stop, Captain?”
“What d’you think?” Jack asked. Closing his eyes, he held onto the hand, and leant his head against the Doctor’s shoulder. They could always try again, in a day or so. Plenty of time to get this right.
***
The next day, at 10 am, Jack is back in Dr Rivers’ office, some of his experiences in the war organised in his head.
“What happened to you in France, Harkness? When did you arrive?” the doctor asks.
“August the 7th, 1914. In a de Havilland BE-2 biplane. God, she was ugly,” Jack tells him, silently apologising to the plane. Again.
“You chose the Royal Flying Corps over the Army?”
“I can fly, Dr Rivers, there was never any question about which branch I was gonna sign up with.” Or even which squadron he wanted to be in. The third shall be first, read the English translation of the motto of Number Three Squadron, RFC; they’d been the first squad to have planes, rather than balloons.
“I assume not, Colonel. Your squadron was at the very first battle of the war?”
“Yeah. Mons, 23rd of August, 1914. We got battle honours. Can’t quite remember what for, exactly. Probably just staying alive, I should think.” Jack laughs, but it’s rough, and bitter.
“Then Neuve Chapelle, in March 1915?”
Jack takes a sip of his glass of water. “A proper, planned offensive. Noisy as hell, that one. And the weather was awful. The photographs taken by the RFC squadrons showed how badly defended the nearby German lines were. And then we couldn’t safely get the intell in the photos to the commanders.”
“Resulting in losses of 12,000 men on both sides, I remember.”
“I guess, Dr Rivers.”
“You had leave, that summer?”
“Yeah. I went home,” Jack says, and finds a real smile, from somewhere. “I went back to Cardiff, and saw my women.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
“They’re intelligent and beautiful, doctor. What d’you think?”
Dr Rivers smiles back at him, and Jack thinks he’ll be okay, with this man helping him to get better.
***
Joan arrives in Edinburgh on November the 26th.
Two rail journeys, three hours on the train from Cardiff to London, and then another eight from London to Edinburgh, before she finally stepped onto the platform at Waverley Station. One of the Torchwood agents who still works at the estate meets her off the train, and takes her to a hotel.
And then to Craiglockhart, the following day.
Joan meets Jack in a lounge. It breaks her heart to see him, and so many other men so quiet, so broken. She knows most of them of them would not normally be like this. They’re former public school boys, rowers, rugby players; they’re used to noise.
But that’s just the point. The extreme noise they’ve encountered, the things they’ve seen have made them like this.
Jack holds her close, very briefly, and kisses her hair. The only thing he’ll tell her, though, is, “Plane crash, Joan. Really nasty, too.”
“Who is your doctor, Jack?” she asks, looking up at him, and trying not to cry. You died, didn’t you? And your poor brain still hasn’t properly processed that fact. Oh, Jack.
“Dr Rivers. He’s good, Joan. I like him.”
“Do you trust him, Jack?”
“Yeah,” he replies, and Joan thinks he’s understood what she means.
“I would like to meet this Dr Rivers, please.”
“All right. Let’s go find someone who can arrange that.”
***
Joan’s ushered in Dr Rivers’ office, and offered tea. She introduces herself and they talk about how her meeting with Jack went. She then takes a deep breath before she gives her closing speech, in defence of her captain:
“Whatever tales Jack tells you about his work and himself, Dr Rivers, however strange they may be, please do not assume he is even more unhinged than this dreadful war has rendered him. I warn you, do not send him... elsewhere. Our agency needs him back, and relatively whole, at some point.”
“I am accustomed to the strange and unusual, Mrs Redfern,” the doctor replies. “I have seen many things, in the course of my work and research. I also count HG Wells among my friends.”
Thank God. Jack will be safe, in the care of this man. “Please look after him, Dr Rivers,” Joan says, rising from her chair.
“Of course, Mrs Redfern.”
They bid farewell, and she leaves the office.
crosspost:
torch_wood
torchwood_fic
dwfiction
new_who
galactic_conman
john_joan
Teaspoon
Continue to Part 14