When the Day Met the Night, Torchwood fanfiction
Title: When the Day Met the Night
Author: modern_epitaph
Pairing: Jack/Estelle, Owen, Gwen
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers for "Small Worlds" 1x05, canon death
Word Count: 2071
Summary: Inspired from the song "When the Day Met the Night" by Panic at the Disco. Slight AU from canon just because I set Jack and Estelle meeting in Cardiff instead of London, but otherwise it sticks mostly to canon. Some dialogue taken from the episode Small Worlds. Thanks to lone-wo1f for beta-reading.
1943
Around him, others danced. The men in their dress blues twirling their women around in circles. The band’s upbeat tune grated on Jack’s nerves. He couldn’t bring himself to do it - to be happy and carefree. He’d seen too many wars; seen too many of his friends die. In Jack’s long life, the only constant was himself. The only person he could trust was himself, and even he let himself down occasionally. He forced down the urge to run up onto the stage and smash the trumpet until it was unrecognizable.
He took a deep breath and ordered another shot of whisky. He didn’t often indulge himself with alcohol, both because with his quick metabolism, it didn’t much affect him, and because when he did drink enough to feel numb, his tongue refused to cooperate with his brain telling him to keep quiet. He was sure that he had, on more than one occasion, told a stranger about dancing in front of Big Ben, of traveling to Raxicoricofallapatorius, and even about the rift that ran straight through Cardiff’s centre, sometimes including a story of the blue box that fueled up there as if the rift carried so much petrol.
As he threw back the shot, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. Turning around, he quickly noted the happy dancing couples before looking at the woman before him. She was beautiful. Brunette curls tucked up under a smart hat, the flush of subtle makeup and a wicked smile. There was something about her eyes…
“Care to dance, soldier?”
Jack considered. “Not much of a dancer, me,” he lied.
“Not to worry, I can lead,” she said with a grin and a wink. She dragged Jack onto the dance floor. He quickly took the lead in the foxtrot and led the woman around the room with the rest. When the song was over, she giggled into his shoulder, out of breath, and he allowed himself a smile.
“If you’re not much of a dancer, I’d almost be afraid to see you after a few lessons! I’m Estelle, by the way. Estelle Cole. And you are?”
“Harkness. Captain Jack Harkness.”
“So, Captain Jack Harkness, care to buy a lady a drink?” He indulged her and she followed him to the bar. She pulled out a cigarette and lit the end. “Smoke?” she offered.
“Thanks, but no. One habit I never got into myself.”
“Ah, just as well. I should quit, I can hardly afford these as it is. This bloody war raising the price of everything around here.”
The mention of the war brought Jack out of the brief reverie the dancing and drinks had put him into. His back stiffened, and he stared at her. His eyes caught hers and suddenly he couldn’t look away, couldn’t think of anything but the deep brown of her eyes. She started fidgeting under his intense gaze.
“When are you shipping out, then, Captain?”
“Sometime next week, I imagine.”
“Well then, we’d better make the most of the time we’ve got, haven’t we?” She grabbed Jack’s hand and made her way to where her coat had been checked.
“Wait, no - I should really stay with my men, Estelle.”
“Your men will be fine without you for one night, Captain. They hardly need a babysitter. Besides, I don’t mean anything funny, just want to go out and get some air. All the stale cigarette smoke in here, you know.”
Jack sighed and slipped her coat over her shoulders, pulling his cap onto his head. They stepped outside.
+++
Jack and Estelle walked alongside the bay, where the only sound was the quiet waves slapping against the breaker wall. They stopped where Jack knew the Millennium Centre would stand in a few decades’ time. It was the time he spent around the bay that he thought about the Doctor the most. Besides the war, the only thoughts he spared for another living person were for the Doctor and Rose Tyler. Where they were now, he had no idea. Jack crawled his way through the 19th century and was waiting for them as patiently as he could through the 20th. Was he so easily forgettable? His thoughts strayed to the vortex manipulator on his wrist.
Damned thing doesn’t even work.
“What doesn’t work?”
Jack started. “Nothing, sorry."
Estelle looked out over the water. “It’s really lovely out tonight, isn’t it, Jack?”
Looking at her, he hummed an agreement. She took his hand in her own. “You’re freezing,” Jack said. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He inhaled deeply, breathing in her soft perfume. She leaned up and kissed him.
“Estelle, I --”
She pulled back quickly. “Oh, Jack, I - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean -- I’m really not usually this forward with men, I swear.”
“Estelle, it’s just this damned war. It’s got me distracted, I’m sorry.” It wasn’t the entire truth, nor was it really a lie.
“I just saw you sitting at that bar alone and I thought - I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry, Jack.”
He looked down onto her face, the moonlight leaving shadows, softening her sharp cheekbones. He looked into her brown eyes and saw flecks of gold in her irises. Jack brought his hands up to Estelle’s face.
“Don’t you break my heart, Jack Harkness.”
He leaned down and kissed her.
+++
Jack Harkness never expected to fall in love. After his time in the TARDIS, he was certain he would never find the kind of companionship that he had had with the Doctor and Rose Tyler. When he’d woken up on the game station surrounded by death, he had felt so very alone. Making it to Earth had been nothing short of a miracle, but once Jack had discovered his immortality, everything had changed. He watched as those around him, his friends, his wife, grew old and died. His wife. He hadn’t thought about her in years. The pain was still too raw. Though they weren’t together long, Jack knew she must have noticed that he didn’t age a day in their time together. When she came down with consumption, he realized what he had to look forward to for the rest of his life -- to live while those around him died.
He knew he couldn’t do that with Estelle. Couldn’t do that to Estelle, or to himself. He wasn’t sure how much heartache one man could take in his life, however long that life might be.
“Jack? Jack, are you out here?”
He stretched his arms and popped his shoulders, pulling himself to rest on his elbows. Estelle found him resting on a shady patch of grass and joined him with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits.
“How you have time to keep up a garden like this, I’ll never know.”
“It’s not much really,” Estelle smiled shyly, taking a sip of her tea. She leaned over and gave him a soft kiss on his cheek.
Leaving Estelle was going to be one of the hardest things he’d ever have to do.
+++
“Promise me you’ll write?”
Jack smiled, “Of course I will. As often as I can, I promise.”
Jack pulled Estelle close and kissed her as if it would be the last time. As if it was the last time. It was. He boarded the train.
2008
Jack Harkness had spent over a century waiting for the Doctor to arrive in Cardiff. He was proud of what he had helped Torchwood to become, but that hole in his heart that had been filled by opening the doors to the TARDIS and stepping onto alien soil had slowly grown larger and larger. The rift through Cardiff became more active and irritable, spitting out more than Jack could keep up with.
It was when he got a call from Estelle about the recent fairy sightings that he took a deep breath from his hectic life and let her voice calm him, ground him. He hesitated in bringing Gwen along to Estelle’s lecture, but she had insisted, and he was secretly grateful for the company. He grinned inwardly as Estelle showed off her slides, growing irritated at Gwen as she scoffed at the photos.
+++
“Well I suppose one person’s good could be somebody else’s evil.”
“…that’s what his father used to say.” Jack’s gut twisted. He saw the surprise on Gwen’s face, but he couldn’t keep the hurt off of his own. He quickly changed the subject.
At Estelle’s, Jack noticed Gwen looking through Estelle’s photos and knew what was coming.
“This is you.”
“Sorry, no.” The lying came easy to Jack, a fact that he grew more and more uncomfortable with. It shouldn’t be easy to lie to his friends, even harder still to lie to Estelle every day. But it was easy to tell Gwen that the picture in her hand was his father.
“They were inseparable.”
“Then why did they part?”
“Just happened that way.” He hoped she would drop it, but he knew better. He caught her outside talking to Estelle and knew that they were talking about him.
He warned her about the fairies and pulled her close, looking into her eyes; those brown eyes that had saved him from despair. After all those years she still fit perfectly in his arms and he couldn’t help but place a kiss on the top of her head. He silently wished for Gwen to look away, to give them a private moment. He reluctantly let her go and followed Gwen out of the garden.
+++
He doesn’t remember the drive to Estelle’s -- the buildings blurred past the windows of the SUV. He pulled to the curb and barely turned off the engine before running to the front door and yelling her name.
Around the back of the house, Jack stopped short. All the breath left his body. The woman he had loved for sixty years, dead on the ground in front of him. No. Not Estelle.
“Looks like she died from drowning,” Owen said quietly. “Rest of the garden’s dry as a bone.” Gwen stood next to him, not moving.
Jack knelt down next to Estelle’s body and closed her eyes. Those eyes had held such life just the day before; now that light was extinguished. Jack felt as empty as he had before he met her. He pulled her into his arms and held her close, refusing to believe it.
“It wasn’t your dad that was in love with her all those years ago, was it? It was you.”
“We once made a vow. That we’d be with each other ‘til we died.” His voice trailed off into a whisper. It was a vow that he knew he would have never been able to keep, but full of hope that he foolishly held onto. He felt tears running down his cheeks and kissed Estelle softly on the forehead before laying her gently in her garden. He held back a sob.
“I need a drink.”
+++
He should have known that Gwen wouldn’t drop the subject until she was satisfied. It was one of the qualities that had drawn Jack to her in the first place, but now he just wanted to be left alone with his thoughts and his scotch. Instead, he told her stories that he had never shared with anyone, never intended on sharing with anyone.
After Gwen left his office, he climbed down into his bunk and laid his head on his pillow. He thought back to the night he met Estelle, the dancing that took him away from the whisky he was drowning himself in. Lying under trees in the garden drinking tea. Her brown eyes that saved his life. He wished for the Doctor to come and take him away from Cardiff, away from Earth, away from all the painful memories it held.
Tear after tear slid down his face, darkening his pillow, as he thought about the time he had wasted. He wished Estelle had known the truth about him. It was hard to be around her and listen to stories about his father when all the time he wanted to stop her and yell No! That was ME that you loved. That was me that loved you. Still loves you, Estelle.
“Still love you, Estelle,” he said to no one.
Author: modern_epitaph
Pairing: Jack/Estelle, Owen, Gwen
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers for "Small Worlds" 1x05, canon death
Word Count: 2071
Summary: Inspired from the song "When the Day Met the Night" by Panic at the Disco. Slight AU from canon just because I set Jack and Estelle meeting in Cardiff instead of London, but otherwise it sticks mostly to canon. Some dialogue taken from the episode Small Worlds. Thanks to lone-wo1f for beta-reading.
1943
Around him, others danced. The men in their dress blues twirling their women around in circles. The band’s upbeat tune grated on Jack’s nerves. He couldn’t bring himself to do it - to be happy and carefree. He’d seen too many wars; seen too many of his friends die. In Jack’s long life, the only constant was himself. The only person he could trust was himself, and even he let himself down occasionally. He forced down the urge to run up onto the stage and smash the trumpet until it was unrecognizable.
He took a deep breath and ordered another shot of whisky. He didn’t often indulge himself with alcohol, both because with his quick metabolism, it didn’t much affect him, and because when he did drink enough to feel numb, his tongue refused to cooperate with his brain telling him to keep quiet. He was sure that he had, on more than one occasion, told a stranger about dancing in front of Big Ben, of traveling to Raxicoricofallapatorius, and even about the rift that ran straight through Cardiff’s centre, sometimes including a story of the blue box that fueled up there as if the rift carried so much petrol.
As he threw back the shot, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. Turning around, he quickly noted the happy dancing couples before looking at the woman before him. She was beautiful. Brunette curls tucked up under a smart hat, the flush of subtle makeup and a wicked smile. There was something about her eyes…
“Care to dance, soldier?”
Jack considered. “Not much of a dancer, me,” he lied.
“Not to worry, I can lead,” she said with a grin and a wink. She dragged Jack onto the dance floor. He quickly took the lead in the foxtrot and led the woman around the room with the rest. When the song was over, she giggled into his shoulder, out of breath, and he allowed himself a smile.
“If you’re not much of a dancer, I’d almost be afraid to see you after a few lessons! I’m Estelle, by the way. Estelle Cole. And you are?”
“Harkness. Captain Jack Harkness.”
“So, Captain Jack Harkness, care to buy a lady a drink?” He indulged her and she followed him to the bar. She pulled out a cigarette and lit the end. “Smoke?” she offered.
“Thanks, but no. One habit I never got into myself.”
“Ah, just as well. I should quit, I can hardly afford these as it is. This bloody war raising the price of everything around here.”
The mention of the war brought Jack out of the brief reverie the dancing and drinks had put him into. His back stiffened, and he stared at her. His eyes caught hers and suddenly he couldn’t look away, couldn’t think of anything but the deep brown of her eyes. She started fidgeting under his intense gaze.
“When are you shipping out, then, Captain?”
“Sometime next week, I imagine.”
“Well then, we’d better make the most of the time we’ve got, haven’t we?” She grabbed Jack’s hand and made her way to where her coat had been checked.
“Wait, no - I should really stay with my men, Estelle.”
“Your men will be fine without you for one night, Captain. They hardly need a babysitter. Besides, I don’t mean anything funny, just want to go out and get some air. All the stale cigarette smoke in here, you know.”
Jack sighed and slipped her coat over her shoulders, pulling his cap onto his head. They stepped outside.
+++
Jack and Estelle walked alongside the bay, where the only sound was the quiet waves slapping against the breaker wall. They stopped where Jack knew the Millennium Centre would stand in a few decades’ time. It was the time he spent around the bay that he thought about the Doctor the most. Besides the war, the only thoughts he spared for another living person were for the Doctor and Rose Tyler. Where they were now, he had no idea. Jack crawled his way through the 19th century and was waiting for them as patiently as he could through the 20th. Was he so easily forgettable? His thoughts strayed to the vortex manipulator on his wrist.
Damned thing doesn’t even work.
“What doesn’t work?”
Jack started. “Nothing, sorry."
Estelle looked out over the water. “It’s really lovely out tonight, isn’t it, Jack?”
Looking at her, he hummed an agreement. She took his hand in her own. “You’re freezing,” Jack said. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He inhaled deeply, breathing in her soft perfume. She leaned up and kissed him.
“Estelle, I --”
She pulled back quickly. “Oh, Jack, I - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean -- I’m really not usually this forward with men, I swear.”
“Estelle, it’s just this damned war. It’s got me distracted, I’m sorry.” It wasn’t the entire truth, nor was it really a lie.
“I just saw you sitting at that bar alone and I thought - I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry, Jack.”
He looked down onto her face, the moonlight leaving shadows, softening her sharp cheekbones. He looked into her brown eyes and saw flecks of gold in her irises. Jack brought his hands up to Estelle’s face.
“Don’t you break my heart, Jack Harkness.”
He leaned down and kissed her.
+++
Jack Harkness never expected to fall in love. After his time in the TARDIS, he was certain he would never find the kind of companionship that he had had with the Doctor and Rose Tyler. When he’d woken up on the game station surrounded by death, he had felt so very alone. Making it to Earth had been nothing short of a miracle, but once Jack had discovered his immortality, everything had changed. He watched as those around him, his friends, his wife, grew old and died. His wife. He hadn’t thought about her in years. The pain was still too raw. Though they weren’t together long, Jack knew she must have noticed that he didn’t age a day in their time together. When she came down with consumption, he realized what he had to look forward to for the rest of his life -- to live while those around him died.
He knew he couldn’t do that with Estelle. Couldn’t do that to Estelle, or to himself. He wasn’t sure how much heartache one man could take in his life, however long that life might be.
“Jack? Jack, are you out here?”
He stretched his arms and popped his shoulders, pulling himself to rest on his elbows. Estelle found him resting on a shady patch of grass and joined him with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits.
“How you have time to keep up a garden like this, I’ll never know.”
“It’s not much really,” Estelle smiled shyly, taking a sip of her tea. She leaned over and gave him a soft kiss on his cheek.
Leaving Estelle was going to be one of the hardest things he’d ever have to do.
+++
“Promise me you’ll write?”
Jack smiled, “Of course I will. As often as I can, I promise.”
Jack pulled Estelle close and kissed her as if it would be the last time. As if it was the last time. It was. He boarded the train.
2008
Jack Harkness had spent over a century waiting for the Doctor to arrive in Cardiff. He was proud of what he had helped Torchwood to become, but that hole in his heart that had been filled by opening the doors to the TARDIS and stepping onto alien soil had slowly grown larger and larger. The rift through Cardiff became more active and irritable, spitting out more than Jack could keep up with.
It was when he got a call from Estelle about the recent fairy sightings that he took a deep breath from his hectic life and let her voice calm him, ground him. He hesitated in bringing Gwen along to Estelle’s lecture, but she had insisted, and he was secretly grateful for the company. He grinned inwardly as Estelle showed off her slides, growing irritated at Gwen as she scoffed at the photos.
+++
“Well I suppose one person’s good could be somebody else’s evil.”
“…that’s what his father used to say.” Jack’s gut twisted. He saw the surprise on Gwen’s face, but he couldn’t keep the hurt off of his own. He quickly changed the subject.
At Estelle’s, Jack noticed Gwen looking through Estelle’s photos and knew what was coming.
“This is you.”
“Sorry, no.” The lying came easy to Jack, a fact that he grew more and more uncomfortable with. It shouldn’t be easy to lie to his friends, even harder still to lie to Estelle every day. But it was easy to tell Gwen that the picture in her hand was his father.
“They were inseparable.”
“Then why did they part?”
“Just happened that way.” He hoped she would drop it, but he knew better. He caught her outside talking to Estelle and knew that they were talking about him.
He warned her about the fairies and pulled her close, looking into her eyes; those brown eyes that had saved him from despair. After all those years she still fit perfectly in his arms and he couldn’t help but place a kiss on the top of her head. He silently wished for Gwen to look away, to give them a private moment. He reluctantly let her go and followed Gwen out of the garden.
+++
He doesn’t remember the drive to Estelle’s -- the buildings blurred past the windows of the SUV. He pulled to the curb and barely turned off the engine before running to the front door and yelling her name.
Around the back of the house, Jack stopped short. All the breath left his body. The woman he had loved for sixty years, dead on the ground in front of him. No. Not Estelle.
“Looks like she died from drowning,” Owen said quietly. “Rest of the garden’s dry as a bone.” Gwen stood next to him, not moving.
Jack knelt down next to Estelle’s body and closed her eyes. Those eyes had held such life just the day before; now that light was extinguished. Jack felt as empty as he had before he met her. He pulled her into his arms and held her close, refusing to believe it.
“It wasn’t your dad that was in love with her all those years ago, was it? It was you.”
“We once made a vow. That we’d be with each other ‘til we died.” His voice trailed off into a whisper. It was a vow that he knew he would have never been able to keep, but full of hope that he foolishly held onto. He felt tears running down his cheeks and kissed Estelle softly on the forehead before laying her gently in her garden. He held back a sob.
“I need a drink.”
+++
He should have known that Gwen wouldn’t drop the subject until she was satisfied. It was one of the qualities that had drawn Jack to her in the first place, but now he just wanted to be left alone with his thoughts and his scotch. Instead, he told her stories that he had never shared with anyone, never intended on sharing with anyone.
After Gwen left his office, he climbed down into his bunk and laid his head on his pillow. He thought back to the night he met Estelle, the dancing that took him away from the whisky he was drowning himself in. Lying under trees in the garden drinking tea. Her brown eyes that saved his life. He wished for the Doctor to come and take him away from Cardiff, away from Earth, away from all the painful memories it held.
Tear after tear slid down his face, darkening his pillow, as he thought about the time he had wasted. He wished Estelle had known the truth about him. It was hard to be around her and listen to stories about his father when all the time he wanted to stop her and yell No! That was ME that you loved. That was me that loved you. Still loves you, Estelle.
“Still love you, Estelle,” he said to no one.