Torchwood/Dr Who - fic - The Torchwood Girls, Part 18/20, PG-13/12
Fandoms - Torchwood/Dr Who/Pat Barker’s Regeneration
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 18/20
Author - laurab1
Characters/pairings - Jack/OMC, Joan Redfern, Harriet Derbyshire, Tommy Brockless, Toshiko Sato, OFCs
Rating - PG-13/12
Length - approx 1800 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, 2.3 To The Last Man, 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 - a morning after the night before, and how Torchwood Cardiff dealt with Tommy Brockless in June 1918
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 Part 15
Part 16 Part 17
cast list and story bible, for my own peace of mind
end of Part 17
Peter shows Jack what happened to him in France. Jack uses on the kid techniques the Doctor used on him, when they were repairing his broken mind. They go from mouthing to whispering, and from whispering to actually speaking. It’s an intense situation, very emotional. When Peter does manage to speak, they kiss. Jack only intended the kiss to be one of congratulation, but it turns deeper, taking both of them by surprise.
That night, they sleep in the same bed. But all they do, though, is hold each other close. Jack still can’t manage anything more intimate, and he doesn’t want to damage all the good work he’s just done, either.
***
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
Part 18
The following morning, the sun’s peeking through the curtains, and Jack is still holding Peter in his arms. They’re both lying on their sides, like spoons, in a drawer. Peter looks down at the arm slung gently across his waist. He carefully removes it. This stirs Jack, and Peter turns to face him.
“Good morning, Jack,” he says.
“Good morning to you, too, Peter,” Jack replies. “Nice public school accent you’ve got there, kid,” he adds, with a little smile.
“Thank you,” Peter responds. Deciding to be bold, he then asks, “What happened to you, Jack?”
Jack’s silent for a good few minutes. “Life, and the war got the better of me. Then I had a plane crash,” he eventually says, sliding his hand in Peter’s, and holding it tightly. “My Sopwith Camel was shot down by a German Albatross at Cambrai, last November.”
Peter pulls their joined hands out of the bed, and places them on top of the covers. He did enjoy the kissing, and being held close is very nice indeed, but… He stares at the hands for a while, before looking at his companion, and saying, “I’m not queer, Jack.” At least, I don’t think I am.
“Neither am I,” Jack instantly replies.
“Then what was what we did, last night?” Peter asks, confused.
“How can I put this?” Jack wonders, pausing for a few seconds. “Okay, Peter. It’s like this,” he soon says. “I don’t do labels; if the person’s hot, they’re hot. It doesn’t matter to me what gender they are. Or what gender they aren’t, for that matter. Hell, they don’t even necessarily need to be human. You, Peter, are hot, and human. That’s what I need, right now.”
“Would you kiss me again, Jack?” Peter asks, when he’s finished processing all of that.
“Sure thing, Peter,” Jack replies. He pulls their joined hands to his lips, and kisses Peter’s knuckles. Letting go, he then says. “C’mon, sit up a minute.” Peter does as asked, and Jack unbuttons his pyjama shirt. “Gorgeous chest,” he says, smiling at Peter.
Then Jack tumbles him back down on the bed. He cups Peter’s face in his hands and kisses him on the lips. He’s not quite as gentle as he was last night, demanding more of a response.
Peter gives as good as he gets. Amid Jack’s grinning claims that the all-conquering Harkness charm gets everybody, in the end, Peter considers the fact that he may well be queer, after all.
***
The war had arrived in Cardiff in December 1914, with the opening of St Teilo's Military Hospital. Now, in 1918, the nurses claim to have been seeing “ghosts”. On the 20th of June, Joan and Harriet make yet another visit to the hospital, to investigate what they suspect is a time-shift. The Hub’s machinery had already identified a fracture in the Rift, and as such two slices of time have been crashing into each other.
Harriet’s using the Rift Energy Scanner, a modified Geiger counter. The remarkably light machine is hung around her neck, on a strap. Joan’s scanning with Jack’s Vortex Manipulator; the magic watch, that seems to do everything.
Except make the tea.
“Nothing so far,” Harriet hears Joan say. “Are you getting anything on that?”
“Well, hold on a tick.” ‘There’s something,’ Harriet thinks, watching the needle rapidly flick across the dial. “Yes, follow me, Joan.” They continue down the staircase.
“Well?” Joan asks, closing up the Manipulator, as they come to a halt, at the next landing.
Harriet looks at the scanner again. Definitely something. “We're pretty close. This way.” Walking off again, they bump into a nurse, frightening the poor girl. But the nurse does tell them she’s seen three “ghosts”, today, in the ward.
“Could you show us, please?” Joan asks, after encouraging the nurse with talk of her being brave. It sounds like the kind of thing Jack would say, Harriet thinks.
“Of course, and thank you, ma’am,” she replies, and takes them to the ward.
***
“Mind, half of this lot see things anyway,” the nurse says, leading them through the hospital.
Looking at the young men lying so forlornly in the beds, Harriet considers Jack, up in Craiglockhart, with the visions of burning to death in a plane crash swirling around in his head. Thank God he’s not having those dreadful nightmares anywhere as often as he used to.
She’d visited last month, and Jack had recognised her from his past. Their encounter in the Hub last year had happened to him thirty five years ago. “I wasn’t there long enough to pay much attention to the place,” he’d also told her.
He’d flirted with her, just a little, and Harriet smiles, thinking of what his reaction would have been to the painting they saw through a hole in an exterior wall, last time they were here: Britannia; barely clothed, windswept hair, and ripping a union flag in half. She’d noted that in her report, along with the noise they’d heard, ‘the roar of great engines.’ Louder than aeroplanes.
“Soon as they're better, they'll be sent back to the Front,” continues the nurse.
Yes, they will be. Better being a relative term, of course. The officers get a different version of better applied to them, but these poor boys are like lambs to the slaughter. “Field Marshal Haig's order. ‘Every position must be held to the last man. Each one of us must fight on to the end.’ Whenever that is. Joan.”
“Come on,” Harriet’s CO says, pulling her out of her contemplation.
Their equipment directs them to a storeroom, whereupon the needle flickers extremely rapidly indeed across the dial. Then there’s the brightest light Harriet’s ever seen, and a noise that sounds like aircraft.
“We're right on top of it!” she yells to Joan, over the racket.
“Hello?” Joan asks, when it’s relatively quiet.
They can then see a young Oriental woman, and a man who is dressed just like the soldiers in the ward, in pyjamas and a uniform jacket.
“Tell them,” the woman urgently says to her companion, as they crouch on the floor.
“Tell us what?” Joan asks.
“Tell them what to do. You're the only one who can stop this. If you don't, it's the end of everything! Tommy!” She sounds frightened.
It takes several seconds for him to react, but the man now identified as Tommy then rises from the ground and comes towards them. “Take me. I'm in there in the ward, in 1918. You have to take me so I can be here now. Just take me!” he exclaims.
The lights and noise are repeated, and the people disappear.
“There they go, back to their own time. Well, we’d better go and find this boy, then, Joan.”
***
Back on the ward, they locate their target. Joan approaches him, saying, “Tommy, I think you'd better come with us.”
“Why?” he asks, obviously confused.
“Don't worry. I'm Joan,” she replies, “and this is Harriet. We'll look after you.”
“Who are you?”
She and Joan look at each other. “You need to tell him,” Harriet whispers.
Joan nods to her. Turning back to Tommy, she says, “We're Torchwood.”
“Where are we going?” Tommy then asks, now apparently agreeing to come with them.
“Somewhere safe,” Joan says. “Trust me.”
Tommy climbs out of bed and gets his uniform jacket on. They lead him away, with Joan saying, “It’s all right. Keep going. Don't look back.”
At the moment they get Tommy out of the ward, Harriet does look back, and she sees who must be the Tommy they just saw among the lights and sound. He looks back at them, watching himself being taken somewhere. Does he know where? Fortunately, the nurse helping him back into bed doesn’t see them.
***
Tommy says nothing on the drive back to the Hub. They get him inside, and hand him over to Penny.
“Tommy, I’m Dr White. I need to ask you some questions and examine you, if that’s all right?”
He nods in reply. Hearing Tommy tell Penny that he was born in 1894, Joan and Harriet leave the medical bay.
***
In Joan’s office, over cups of tea, the women debate exactly what they are going to tell Tommy regarding why they’ve brought him to Torchwood.
Exactly what they are doing then hits Harriet. “Whatever we say, we’re abusing the fact that the poor boy is shell-shocked,” she says, glancing around her colleagues. “You do realise that, don’t you?”
“As much as it pains me to say so, Harriet,” Joan then says, placing her cup on its saucer, “we are taking advantage of that very fact. Penny will tell Mr Brockless that he will be helping the Empire. Which is precisely what he was doing, anyway.” She pauses, takes a deep breath. “And then we cryo-freeze him.” A look that Harriet can’t give a name to goes across Joan’s face, she then says, “Right, ladies, some of Jack’s whisky, before we go and record this incident for the archives.”
***
Eleanor’s the best artist among them, so Harriet sits with her, and describes the Oriental woman. When the sketch is completed, Harriet takes it to Joan. The two of them finish detailing today’s events. Joan writes a label for a box: “Eyes-only documents. FAO Torchwood commander overseeing case 1918/T B.” When the ink is dry, Joan folds up the papers and puts them in an envelope, which she then places in the box. As she picks up the lid, a small Rift-storm suddenly appears around the object. The storm takes the lid from her hands, and places it on the box by itself. The lights then vanish again, and Joan puts the box on her desk.
“Well,” Harriet says, looking at the other woman, who’s as surprised as she is. She picks up the container. Wondering, Harriet tries removing the lid. It doesn’t want to budge.
“Harriet?” Joan says, looking at her.
Harriet thinks for a couple of minutes. “Temporal lock, I reckon,” she then offers. “Tied in with the Rift frequencies at the hospital, and the slice of the future that has been crashing into our time.”
“Could you write that up, as well?” Joan asks, taking the box from her and attaching the label to it. “See if Penny’s done, too, please?”
“Will do,” Harriet replies, rising from her chair. She opens the door and leaves Joan’s office.
She doesn’t envy Penny her specific task in the slightest, telling Tommy what they’re going to do, because they will need him at some unknown time in the future. The only thing Harriet can hope is that the whole experience does not break Tommy’s mind even further.
They are probably saving him from dying on the Front, but that’s incredibly small consolation.
Continue to Part 19
Title - The Torchwood Girls, Part 18/20
Author - laurab1
Characters/pairings - Jack/OMC, Joan Redfern, Harriet Derbyshire, Tommy Brockless, Toshiko Sato, OFCs
Rating - PG-13/12
Length - approx 1800 words
Spoilers - TW: general series, 2.3 To The Last Man, 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 - a morning after the night before, and how Torchwood Cardiff dealt with Tommy Brockless in June 1918
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 Part 15
Part 16 Part 17
cast list and story bible, for my own peace of mind
end of Part 17
Peter shows Jack what happened to him in France. Jack uses on the kid techniques the Doctor used on him, when they were repairing his broken mind. They go from mouthing to whispering, and from whispering to actually speaking. It’s an intense situation, very emotional. When Peter does manage to speak, they kiss. Jack only intended the kiss to be one of congratulation, but it turns deeper, taking both of them by surprise.
That night, they sleep in the same bed. But all they do, though, is hold each other close. Jack still can’t manage anything more intimate, and he doesn’t want to damage all the good work he’s just done, either.
***
The Torchwood Girls
by Laura
Part 18
The following morning, the sun’s peeking through the curtains, and Jack is still holding Peter in his arms. They’re both lying on their sides, like spoons, in a drawer. Peter looks down at the arm slung gently across his waist. He carefully removes it. This stirs Jack, and Peter turns to face him.
“Good morning, Jack,” he says.
“Good morning to you, too, Peter,” Jack replies. “Nice public school accent you’ve got there, kid,” he adds, with a little smile.
“Thank you,” Peter responds. Deciding to be bold, he then asks, “What happened to you, Jack?”
Jack’s silent for a good few minutes. “Life, and the war got the better of me. Then I had a plane crash,” he eventually says, sliding his hand in Peter’s, and holding it tightly. “My Sopwith Camel was shot down by a German Albatross at Cambrai, last November.”
Peter pulls their joined hands out of the bed, and places them on top of the covers. He did enjoy the kissing, and being held close is very nice indeed, but… He stares at the hands for a while, before looking at his companion, and saying, “I’m not queer, Jack.” At least, I don’t think I am.
“Neither am I,” Jack instantly replies.
“Then what was what we did, last night?” Peter asks, confused.
“How can I put this?” Jack wonders, pausing for a few seconds. “Okay, Peter. It’s like this,” he soon says. “I don’t do labels; if the person’s hot, they’re hot. It doesn’t matter to me what gender they are. Or what gender they aren’t, for that matter. Hell, they don’t even necessarily need to be human. You, Peter, are hot, and human. That’s what I need, right now.”
“Would you kiss me again, Jack?” Peter asks, when he’s finished processing all of that.
“Sure thing, Peter,” Jack replies. He pulls their joined hands to his lips, and kisses Peter’s knuckles. Letting go, he then says. “C’mon, sit up a minute.” Peter does as asked, and Jack unbuttons his pyjama shirt. “Gorgeous chest,” he says, smiling at Peter.
Then Jack tumbles him back down on the bed. He cups Peter’s face in his hands and kisses him on the lips. He’s not quite as gentle as he was last night, demanding more of a response.
Peter gives as good as he gets. Amid Jack’s grinning claims that the all-conquering Harkness charm gets everybody, in the end, Peter considers the fact that he may well be queer, after all.
***
The war had arrived in Cardiff in December 1914, with the opening of St Teilo's Military Hospital. Now, in 1918, the nurses claim to have been seeing “ghosts”. On the 20th of June, Joan and Harriet make yet another visit to the hospital, to investigate what they suspect is a time-shift. The Hub’s machinery had already identified a fracture in the Rift, and as such two slices of time have been crashing into each other.
Harriet’s using the Rift Energy Scanner, a modified Geiger counter. The remarkably light machine is hung around her neck, on a strap. Joan’s scanning with Jack’s Vortex Manipulator; the magic watch, that seems to do everything.
Except make the tea.
“Nothing so far,” Harriet hears Joan say. “Are you getting anything on that?”
“Well, hold on a tick.” ‘There’s something,’ Harriet thinks, watching the needle rapidly flick across the dial. “Yes, follow me, Joan.” They continue down the staircase.
“Well?” Joan asks, closing up the Manipulator, as they come to a halt, at the next landing.
Harriet looks at the scanner again. Definitely something. “We're pretty close. This way.” Walking off again, they bump into a nurse, frightening the poor girl. But the nurse does tell them she’s seen three “ghosts”, today, in the ward.
“Could you show us, please?” Joan asks, after encouraging the nurse with talk of her being brave. It sounds like the kind of thing Jack would say, Harriet thinks.
“Of course, and thank you, ma’am,” she replies, and takes them to the ward.
***
“Mind, half of this lot see things anyway,” the nurse says, leading them through the hospital.
Looking at the young men lying so forlornly in the beds, Harriet considers Jack, up in Craiglockhart, with the visions of burning to death in a plane crash swirling around in his head. Thank God he’s not having those dreadful nightmares anywhere as often as he used to.
She’d visited last month, and Jack had recognised her from his past. Their encounter in the Hub last year had happened to him thirty five years ago. “I wasn’t there long enough to pay much attention to the place,” he’d also told her.
He’d flirted with her, just a little, and Harriet smiles, thinking of what his reaction would have been to the painting they saw through a hole in an exterior wall, last time they were here: Britannia; barely clothed, windswept hair, and ripping a union flag in half. She’d noted that in her report, along with the noise they’d heard, ‘the roar of great engines.’ Louder than aeroplanes.
“Soon as they're better, they'll be sent back to the Front,” continues the nurse.
Yes, they will be. Better being a relative term, of course. The officers get a different version of better applied to them, but these poor boys are like lambs to the slaughter. “Field Marshal Haig's order. ‘Every position must be held to the last man. Each one of us must fight on to the end.’ Whenever that is. Joan.”
“Come on,” Harriet’s CO says, pulling her out of her contemplation.
Their equipment directs them to a storeroom, whereupon the needle flickers extremely rapidly indeed across the dial. Then there’s the brightest light Harriet’s ever seen, and a noise that sounds like aircraft.
“We're right on top of it!” she yells to Joan, over the racket.
“Hello?” Joan asks, when it’s relatively quiet.
They can then see a young Oriental woman, and a man who is dressed just like the soldiers in the ward, in pyjamas and a uniform jacket.
“Tell them,” the woman urgently says to her companion, as they crouch on the floor.
“Tell us what?” Joan asks.
“Tell them what to do. You're the only one who can stop this. If you don't, it's the end of everything! Tommy!” She sounds frightened.
It takes several seconds for him to react, but the man now identified as Tommy then rises from the ground and comes towards them. “Take me. I'm in there in the ward, in 1918. You have to take me so I can be here now. Just take me!” he exclaims.
The lights and noise are repeated, and the people disappear.
“There they go, back to their own time. Well, we’d better go and find this boy, then, Joan.”
***
Back on the ward, they locate their target. Joan approaches him, saying, “Tommy, I think you'd better come with us.”
“Why?” he asks, obviously confused.
“Don't worry. I'm Joan,” she replies, “and this is Harriet. We'll look after you.”
“Who are you?”
She and Joan look at each other. “You need to tell him,” Harriet whispers.
Joan nods to her. Turning back to Tommy, she says, “We're Torchwood.”
“Where are we going?” Tommy then asks, now apparently agreeing to come with them.
“Somewhere safe,” Joan says. “Trust me.”
Tommy climbs out of bed and gets his uniform jacket on. They lead him away, with Joan saying, “It’s all right. Keep going. Don't look back.”
At the moment they get Tommy out of the ward, Harriet does look back, and she sees who must be the Tommy they just saw among the lights and sound. He looks back at them, watching himself being taken somewhere. Does he know where? Fortunately, the nurse helping him back into bed doesn’t see them.
***
Tommy says nothing on the drive back to the Hub. They get him inside, and hand him over to Penny.
“Tommy, I’m Dr White. I need to ask you some questions and examine you, if that’s all right?”
He nods in reply. Hearing Tommy tell Penny that he was born in 1894, Joan and Harriet leave the medical bay.
***
In Joan’s office, over cups of tea, the women debate exactly what they are going to tell Tommy regarding why they’ve brought him to Torchwood.
Exactly what they are doing then hits Harriet. “Whatever we say, we’re abusing the fact that the poor boy is shell-shocked,” she says, glancing around her colleagues. “You do realise that, don’t you?”
“As much as it pains me to say so, Harriet,” Joan then says, placing her cup on its saucer, “we are taking advantage of that very fact. Penny will tell Mr Brockless that he will be helping the Empire. Which is precisely what he was doing, anyway.” She pauses, takes a deep breath. “And then we cryo-freeze him.” A look that Harriet can’t give a name to goes across Joan’s face, she then says, “Right, ladies, some of Jack’s whisky, before we go and record this incident for the archives.”
***
Eleanor’s the best artist among them, so Harriet sits with her, and describes the Oriental woman. When the sketch is completed, Harriet takes it to Joan. The two of them finish detailing today’s events. Joan writes a label for a box: “Eyes-only documents. FAO Torchwood commander overseeing case 1918/T B.” When the ink is dry, Joan folds up the papers and puts them in an envelope, which she then places in the box. As she picks up the lid, a small Rift-storm suddenly appears around the object. The storm takes the lid from her hands, and places it on the box by itself. The lights then vanish again, and Joan puts the box on her desk.
“Well,” Harriet says, looking at the other woman, who’s as surprised as she is. She picks up the container. Wondering, Harriet tries removing the lid. It doesn’t want to budge.
“Harriet?” Joan says, looking at her.
Harriet thinks for a couple of minutes. “Temporal lock, I reckon,” she then offers. “Tied in with the Rift frequencies at the hospital, and the slice of the future that has been crashing into our time.”
“Could you write that up, as well?” Joan asks, taking the box from her and attaching the label to it. “See if Penny’s done, too, please?”
“Will do,” Harriet replies, rising from her chair. She opens the door and leaves Joan’s office.
She doesn’t envy Penny her specific task in the slightest, telling Tommy what they’re going to do, because they will need him at some unknown time in the future. The only thing Harriet can hope is that the whole experience does not break Tommy’s mind even further.
They are probably saving him from dying on the Front, but that’s incredibly small consolation.
Continue to Part 19