Torchwood/Dr Who - fic - The Torchwood Girls, Part 16, Nine/Rose/Jack/TARDIS, PG-13/12
Fandoms - Torchwood/Dr Who/Pat Barker’s Regeneration
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 16/20?
Author - laurab1
Characters/pairings - Jack, Dr W H R Rivers, Nine/Rose/Jack/TARDIS
Rating - PG-13/12
Length - approx 1480 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, 2.12 Fragments, 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 - "Time isn’t linear; it’s circular; the past, present and future all exist, all at once."
Disclaimer - alas, none 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 Part 15
cast list and story bible, for my own peace of mind
end of Part 15
"...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.
***
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
Part 16
He has to start with the nature of time, Jack realises, sat in Rivers office, mid-December, 1917. Then he can explain all the rest. Spreading out this part of his story over a few days might be wise. “Anything we say in here, stays here, Rivers. It has to. No notes, either. Official Secrets Act business, really, but I need you to understand. So I’m gonna tell you all of it. Okay?” he says first, though, in a commanding tone.
“All right, Jack,” the doctor agrees, pushing his glasses back, “I understand. Go on.”
“Time isn’t linear, Rivers,” Jack begins, using his hands to explain. ”It’s circular; the past, present and future all exist, all at once. So, you can be born on a terra-formed Earth colony planet, in the fifty-first century. With the right equipment, you can run cons in 1941. Then, you can die, and resurrect on a space station, in the year 200,100. With me, so far?”
“Yes, Harkness.”
“Right. Cardiff, where I’m based,” he continues, “is built on a rift, a tear in the fabric of time and space. The Crown agency I work for has responsibility for dealing with everything the Rift spits out at us.“
“Does this agency have a name, Jack?” Rivers asks.
“Oh, yeah. Torchwood. Founded by Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, in 1879.”
“And what would this... Rift be spitting out at you?”
“Anything at all, from any time and anywhere. But we need to start in 1941,” Jack says. In the middle of yet another war.
“When you were running confidence tricks?” Rivers is only half sure what he should be asking, Jack can hear.
“Yeah. The con I was running went wrong; the details don’t matter.” Jack has to take a breath before the next part. “Dr Rivers, would it surprise you to learn that we are not alone in the universe?"
Rivers himself also has to take a breath, prior to answering him. “It would not, Jack,” he soon says.
Jack allows himself a smile. “Good, thank you. Because what does matter is that I met a humanoid alien known only as the Doctor and his friend, a late twentieth century London girl called Rose Tyler. They fixed my mistake, saved my life, took me aboard.” Hoping that Rivers decides not to question his sexuality, not entirely unconventional, but certainly illegal, by the standards of the times, Jack adds, “Then I fell in love with both of them.” A pause, before the next part. “And the Doctor's time and space ship, the TARDIS."
Rivers’ eyes go really wide, and Jack revels in having surprised the man. “You are not talking about the normal appreciation a man has for his motor car, are you, Harkness?” the doctor manages to ask, after a couple of minutes.
“Oh, no,” Jack replies, smiling. "I’m talking about a temperamental old thing that doesn't work properly, stuck as a police call box from the 1950s, because her chameleon circuit's broken. But she's beautiful, all sweeping coral curves, and alive. Time And Relative Dimension In Space; she’s bigger on the inside."
“Alive? A ship?” Dr Rivers chooses to wonder about, from all that Jack just threw at him.
“Spectacularly so.” Memories of… making love with the TARDIS come back to him, and from that place, Jack finds the grin of his which has too many teeth.
“Is the TARDIS telepathic, Doctor?”
“Yeah. She in your head?”
“Yes, sir. Very much so.” A wicked grin.
“Oi! No flirting with my ship!” the Doctor warned.
“She sentient, then?” Not that lack of sentience necessarily precludes flirting.
“What do you think, Captain?” The Doctor looked him straight in the eye, and walked over to the console.
In Jack’s head, the TARDIS pulsed, happily, seemingly indicating that she really didn’t mind being flirted with. Considering that response, Jack slowly, repeatedly, stroked a hand up and down the coral strut he was stood next to. The pulsing became more intense.
Then it was like all the other telepathic sex Jack had ever experienced.
Which is a lot.
“Jack?” Rose whispered to him, eyes wide. “Did you just do what I think you did?”
“Yeah, Rose,” he said, grinning shamelessly. “Wasn’t she gorgeous?”
“I do not think I wish to know precisely what your reminiscence concerned,” Rivers says, to Jack’s grin, and they share a brief laugh.
“Probably wise!” Jack replies. “Anyway, we had four great months, relative time, together. Then, in the year 200,100, we wound up fighting these enemies that were supposed have been destroyed, but somehow they'd survived. And they wanted to turn everyone on Earth into them.
"The Doctor sent Rose away, to keep her safe. But she came back, the headstrong girl. I came back from the dead for the very first time, heard the TARDIS' engines, but I was only able to see the ship leave.
"So there I was, stuck on a space station, all on my own.” Jack can see the questions about how he felt at the time in Dr Rivers’ eyes, but he ploughs on, just to get to a decent stopping point: “I had the means to try and catch up with them, though, and aimed for London, 2006, where I figured they’d gone. Arrived in Cardiff in 1869, instead, with the time travel and teleport functions on my device both burnt out, because the journey was so long.” At that, he falls silent, closes his eyes, remembers the sense of loss and abandonment he felt.
“Harkness?” Rivers says, after giving him a few minutes.
“Yeah?” Jack opens his eyes again.
“We can continue with this tomorrow.” Rivers' voice is gentle.
“Thank you,” Jack says, shaking his hand, and leaving.
***
The following day, they start with 1879. Rivers listens intently, as Jack details the story of the Institute’s foundation: Prince Albert’s love for the Torchwood Estate, the werewolf, the light chamber, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, mistletoe, the Doctor and Rose, Sir Robert McLeish. He ends with the words he knows by heart:
“‘...Although we may not speak of these events in public, they'll not be forgotten. The sacrifice of, the ingenuity of his father; they will live on. I have seen that Great Britain has enemies beyond imagination, and we must defend our borders on all sides. I propose an institute to investigate these strange happenings, and to fight them. I would call it Torchwood. The Torchwood Institute. And if this Doctor should return, he should beware. Because Torchwood will be waiting.’”
“As will you, Jack?” Rivers asks. “In this institute which has someone you love as its enemy?”
“Yeah, Rivers,” Jack says. “I've been with Torchwood since 1899. He’s gonna turn up in Cardiff again at least twice, and I wanna be there for the second time. Then I can ask him what the hell he did to me.” Jack then becomes quiet, lost in the memories.
“Would you like to discuss that, Harkness?”
In reply, Jack reels off some of his deaths: Shot through the heart, on Ellis Island; bottle through the stomach, in a bar brawl; fell off Beachey Head; trampled by stampeding stallions, on Exmoor. “It’s always a shock, coming back to life; my heart starts again, I take this huge breath of air. But, God, the light is so bloody welcome, after being trapped in the dark.”
***
With everything out in the open, Jack feels strange. Somehow, and unusually, for him, it’s almost like he’s “lost” part of himself, by exposing so much.
“Write, Harkness,” Rivers suggests. “Contribute to The Hydra, the hospital magazine. You certainly have enough stories to tell.”
Writing does appear to be what everyone else is doing, judging by the few back issues he’s read; so many of the war poets have pieces in there. So Jack acquires himself a blank, leather bound journal, pencils, a fountain pen and a bottle of ink.
One day, he sits at the desk in his room, pen filled, book open. “Scientific Romances,” the title page soon reads. “And Possible Things,” Jack then adds, in the words of his own time, and Earth colony planet - on the Boeshane Peninsula, the alphabet they used was still Earth Standard Latin. With the book a named item, a thing of power, Jack begins to fill it with more words, increase its power. He starts with an altered version of his first night in the TARDIS; dancing, flirting and a little lovemaking...
Finished, Jack looks over his words. Is he doing the same thing as the Doctor, fictionalising events which had happened? Maybe he is. It’s similar, at least. The slight difference is that, as far as the Doctor was concerned, at the time, John Smith was recording his strange dreams, of impossible things. But Jack, even though part of himself is also “missing”, knows for sure that the things he’ll describe in his journal did actually happen.
Possible Things, indeed.
Note - "scientific romance" was the term used in the early 1900s for what we now call science fiction. The French for "novel" is "roman"
Continue to Part 17
crosspost:
torch_wood
torchwood_fic
galactic_conman
better_with_3
vintagemiltary
dwfiction
new_who
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 16/20?
Author - laurab1
Characters/pairings - Jack, Dr W H R Rivers, Nine/Rose/Jack/TARDIS
Rating - PG-13/12
Length - approx 1480 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, 2.12 Fragments, 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 - "Time isn’t linear; it’s circular; the past, present and future all exist, all at once."
Disclaimer - alas, none 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 Part 15
cast list and story bible, for my own peace of mind
end of Part 15
"...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.
***
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
Part 16
He has to start with the nature of time, Jack realises, sat in Rivers office, mid-December, 1917. Then he can explain all the rest. Spreading out this part of his story over a few days might be wise. “Anything we say in here, stays here, Rivers. It has to. No notes, either. Official Secrets Act business, really, but I need you to understand. So I’m gonna tell you all of it. Okay?” he says first, though, in a commanding tone.
“All right, Jack,” the doctor agrees, pushing his glasses back, “I understand. Go on.”
“Time isn’t linear, Rivers,” Jack begins, using his hands to explain. ”It’s circular; the past, present and future all exist, all at once. So, you can be born on a terra-formed Earth colony planet, in the fifty-first century. With the right equipment, you can run cons in 1941. Then, you can die, and resurrect on a space station, in the year 200,100. With me, so far?”
“Yes, Harkness.”
“Right. Cardiff, where I’m based,” he continues, “is built on a rift, a tear in the fabric of time and space. The Crown agency I work for has responsibility for dealing with everything the Rift spits out at us.“
“Does this agency have a name, Jack?” Rivers asks.
“Oh, yeah. Torchwood. Founded by Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, in 1879.”
“And what would this... Rift be spitting out at you?”
“Anything at all, from any time and anywhere. But we need to start in 1941,” Jack says. In the middle of yet another war.
“When you were running confidence tricks?” Rivers is only half sure what he should be asking, Jack can hear.
“Yeah. The con I was running went wrong; the details don’t matter.” Jack has to take a breath before the next part. “Dr Rivers, would it surprise you to learn that we are not alone in the universe?"
Rivers himself also has to take a breath, prior to answering him. “It would not, Jack,” he soon says.
Jack allows himself a smile. “Good, thank you. Because what does matter is that I met a humanoid alien known only as the Doctor and his friend, a late twentieth century London girl called Rose Tyler. They fixed my mistake, saved my life, took me aboard.” Hoping that Rivers decides not to question his sexuality, not entirely unconventional, but certainly illegal, by the standards of the times, Jack adds, “Then I fell in love with both of them.” A pause, before the next part. “And the Doctor's time and space ship, the TARDIS."
Rivers’ eyes go really wide, and Jack revels in having surprised the man. “You are not talking about the normal appreciation a man has for his motor car, are you, Harkness?” the doctor manages to ask, after a couple of minutes.
“Oh, no,” Jack replies, smiling. "I’m talking about a temperamental old thing that doesn't work properly, stuck as a police call box from the 1950s, because her chameleon circuit's broken. But she's beautiful, all sweeping coral curves, and alive. Time And Relative Dimension In Space; she’s bigger on the inside."
“Alive? A ship?” Dr Rivers chooses to wonder about, from all that Jack just threw at him.
“Spectacularly so.” Memories of… making love with the TARDIS come back to him, and from that place, Jack finds the grin of his which has too many teeth.
“Is the TARDIS telepathic, Doctor?”
“Yeah. She in your head?”
“Yes, sir. Very much so.” A wicked grin.
“Oi! No flirting with my ship!” the Doctor warned.
“She sentient, then?” Not that lack of sentience necessarily precludes flirting.
“What do you think, Captain?” The Doctor looked him straight in the eye, and walked over to the console.
In Jack’s head, the TARDIS pulsed, happily, seemingly indicating that she really didn’t mind being flirted with. Considering that response, Jack slowly, repeatedly, stroked a hand up and down the coral strut he was stood next to. The pulsing became more intense.
Then it was like all the other telepathic sex Jack had ever experienced.
Which is a lot.
“Jack?” Rose whispered to him, eyes wide. “Did you just do what I think you did?”
“Yeah, Rose,” he said, grinning shamelessly. “Wasn’t she gorgeous?”
“I do not think I wish to know precisely what your reminiscence concerned,” Rivers says, to Jack’s grin, and they share a brief laugh.
“Probably wise!” Jack replies. “Anyway, we had four great months, relative time, together. Then, in the year 200,100, we wound up fighting these enemies that were supposed have been destroyed, but somehow they'd survived. And they wanted to turn everyone on Earth into them.
"The Doctor sent Rose away, to keep her safe. But she came back, the headstrong girl. I came back from the dead for the very first time, heard the TARDIS' engines, but I was only able to see the ship leave.
"So there I was, stuck on a space station, all on my own.” Jack can see the questions about how he felt at the time in Dr Rivers’ eyes, but he ploughs on, just to get to a decent stopping point: “I had the means to try and catch up with them, though, and aimed for London, 2006, where I figured they’d gone. Arrived in Cardiff in 1869, instead, with the time travel and teleport functions on my device both burnt out, because the journey was so long.” At that, he falls silent, closes his eyes, remembers the sense of loss and abandonment he felt.
“Harkness?” Rivers says, after giving him a few minutes.
“Yeah?” Jack opens his eyes again.
“We can continue with this tomorrow.” Rivers' voice is gentle.
“Thank you,” Jack says, shaking his hand, and leaving.
***
The following day, they start with 1879. Rivers listens intently, as Jack details the story of the Institute’s foundation: Prince Albert’s love for the Torchwood Estate, the werewolf, the light chamber, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, mistletoe, the Doctor and Rose, Sir Robert McLeish. He ends with the words he knows by heart:
“‘...Although we may not speak of these events in public, they'll not be forgotten. The sacrifice of, the ingenuity of his father; they will live on. I have seen that Great Britain has enemies beyond imagination, and we must defend our borders on all sides. I propose an institute to investigate these strange happenings, and to fight them. I would call it Torchwood. The Torchwood Institute. And if this Doctor should return, he should beware. Because Torchwood will be waiting.’”
“As will you, Jack?” Rivers asks. “In this institute which has someone you love as its enemy?”
“Yeah, Rivers,” Jack says. “I've been with Torchwood since 1899. He’s gonna turn up in Cardiff again at least twice, and I wanna be there for the second time. Then I can ask him what the hell he did to me.” Jack then becomes quiet, lost in the memories.
“Would you like to discuss that, Harkness?”
In reply, Jack reels off some of his deaths: Shot through the heart, on Ellis Island; bottle through the stomach, in a bar brawl; fell off Beachey Head; trampled by stampeding stallions, on Exmoor. “It’s always a shock, coming back to life; my heart starts again, I take this huge breath of air. But, God, the light is so bloody welcome, after being trapped in the dark.”
***
With everything out in the open, Jack feels strange. Somehow, and unusually, for him, it’s almost like he’s “lost” part of himself, by exposing so much.
“Write, Harkness,” Rivers suggests. “Contribute to The Hydra, the hospital magazine. You certainly have enough stories to tell.”
Writing does appear to be what everyone else is doing, judging by the few back issues he’s read; so many of the war poets have pieces in there. So Jack acquires himself a blank, leather bound journal, pencils, a fountain pen and a bottle of ink.
One day, he sits at the desk in his room, pen filled, book open. “Scientific Romances,” the title page soon reads. “And Possible Things,” Jack then adds, in the words of his own time, and Earth colony planet - on the Boeshane Peninsula, the alphabet they used was still Earth Standard Latin. With the book a named item, a thing of power, Jack begins to fill it with more words, increase its power. He starts with an altered version of his first night in the TARDIS; dancing, flirting and a little lovemaking...
Finished, Jack looks over his words. Is he doing the same thing as the Doctor, fictionalising events which had happened? Maybe he is. It’s similar, at least. The slight difference is that, as far as the Doctor was concerned, at the time, John Smith was recording his strange dreams, of impossible things. But Jack, even though part of himself is also “missing”, knows for sure that the things he’ll describe in his journal did actually happen.
Possible Things, indeed.
Note - "scientific romance" was the term used in the early 1900s for what we now call science fiction. The French for "novel" is "roman"
Continue to Part 17
crosspost:
torch_wood
torchwood_fic
galactic_conman
better_with_3
vintagemiltary
dwfiction
new_who