vail-kagami: To Wander, Between the Stars, Part 1a/3 (Jack/Ten) [R]
Title: To Wander, Between the Stars (1a/3)
Author:
vail_kagami
Beta:
nightrider101, the super-fastest beta ever!
Challenge: AU
Rating: R (overall)
Spoilers: Series 3 Finale
Warnings: Violence, mentioned rape
Summary: Jack never made that con in 1941. Instead his broken vortex manipulator strands him in the twenty-first century, where he finally meets the Doctor - who's been a prisoner of Torchwood for a long time.
Note: Unfortunately I had to split the first part into two posts because it's just a tiny little bit too long. So this story will have two chapters in at least three parts. I'm sorry I have to take so much space again.
The first time Jack ever saw him he was saving the world. Given the circumstances the other man was in that was more than a little bit impressive.
-
He realised that he’d been cut off from his usual life for too long when he started to refer to himself as Jack Harkness even in his mind. He was thinking of himself as Jack Harkness. More and more he became Jack Harkness - not the man the name had belonged to so long ago (How could he? He’d never met him.) but the man he pretended to be: Jack Harkness, traveller, adventurer, charming and unusually open minded man from the twenty-first century.
He kept travelling the world, fighting boredom and claustrophobia. One world wasn’t large enough for him to not feel trapped. How could it be? He was trapped.
It wasn’t just travelling. He was hunting; for aliens, for technology, for a chance to leave. In this century Earth was getting invaded all the time, and in nine out of ten cases humanity didn’t even notice. The scanner of Jack’s wrist device still worked for a limited range and so he used it to run from one crashed alien ship to the next space tourist, always hoping to find something that would help him fix his vortex manipulator, or at least offer him a lift off this planet.
He never found anything of use. Aliens got away before he could reach them, and the technology left by accidents or violence was too broken or too primitive to fix his complicated tool. It was frustrating: this century was full of important moments in history that he’d been in the area countless times while working for the agency, but somehow he had managed to get stranded in a decade that was entirely devoid of time agents.
Sometimes he was simply too late - he got to the place of a crash and found nothing, as if someone had been there before him and taken it all away. It wasn’t that unlikely - this planet liked its aliens and had eccentric collectors, obsessed by extraterrestrial life and laughed at by the rest of humanity. But neither of them could have the technology to find all these promising pieces of alien origin before Jack could, and more often than once he had the feeling that someone was laughing at his expense.
So he began to search not only for the technology but also for the ones who stole it. At least he would have liked to. Truth was that he had no trail to follow. He always arrived too late to witness them taking anything, and they never left any trace.
He felt like he was chasing ghosts. Sometimes he wondered if this life that was forced on him made him lose his mind.
-
He became Jack Harkness but that didn’t mean he liked Jack Harkness. It drove him crazy being confined in once place for so long, in this narrow minded, restricted, boring age.
Over the years he had his share of lovers, even friends, but he fought with tooth and claws against getting used to this life. He didn’t want it. He wanted to go back to the life he was used to.
It felt like his life was running away from him, the years he had passing by without a chance to fulfil their potential. There was an alien invasion in London one Christmas - he was in Spain. (Later he returned to look for the weapon that had destroyed the spaceship, never finding it.) The Christmas star one year later was destroyed and left nothing of use to him, and he never found out who had been responsible for the draining of the Thames. The Judoon had to take the bloody hospital up to the moon when they came, well out of his reach. There was UNIT but Jack never got along well with stable employment and pay-checks, and his attempt to get into their facilities and steal the alien technology they had scavenged didn’t only fail pathetically but also told him that they didn’t possess anything of use to him.
His adventures were smaller now. Nothing he saw, nothing he did could convince him that his life wasn’t wasted here.
It wasn’t that he was homesick (unless he counted the cosmos as his home). It was just that he had once had all of time and space at his mercy and now couldn’t settle for anything less.
-
Jack Harkness, Captain: The name he had chosen for his con in London 1941, the name of a deceased war hero. Jack identified with the name now, but he was no hero. He was a con man.
Once he had wanted to be a hero. That’s why he had joined the time agency. But the agency had no use for heroes. They needed men who could do what was necessary as opposed to men who did what was right. For that reason he had been accepted: Jack was such a man. He had learned that quickly enough, and let go of the person he wanted to be without even waving goodbye.
-
Maybe a part of him still wanted to be a hero. (The little boy that was eternally searching for his lost brother.) Maybe he had chosen that name for a reason other than because it was convenient.
Maybe that was why he told himself he targeted time agents for his cons out of vengeance because the agency had stolen his memories - as if losing a little money would hurt them. And as long as he didn’t identify himself they didn’t know he was acting out of vengeance anyway and the message was lost. He couldn’t fool himself.
He was a con man because he wanted to make money the easy way, and because he liked feeling more clever than someone else. Time agents he targeted because the agency had money. There was nothing heroic or romantic about it. And had revenge really been the reason the redemption of that fact would have been negated by the fact that he had stolen other people’s memories himself while working for them, over and over again.
The lady he had stolen his spaceship from had not been a time agent.
Stuck on Earth for years without adventures to distract himself with Jack had to face the fact that he was not a good person, and probably never had been. So it was probably just fair that the Chula space-junk he had wanted to drop in the Second World-War air raid of London exploded inside his spaceship before he could even get there. He’d managed to teleport away in the last second but some weird disturbance in time and space had thrown him to Cardiff in the year 2001, and killed his vortex manipulator. Since then he’d been stuck here, completely unable to appreciate the justice of his fate.
-
His travels started in Great Britain and since had led him to every corner in the world. Jack had looked for useful resources in New York, the Sahara, the tropical rain forest, Russia, China, Japan, in Australia and on Mauritius. Contrary to public belief in the United Kingdom alien invasions were not limited to their capital - Tôkyô got visitors other then Godzilla after all and most aliens preferred to park their spacecrafts in places that offered room and a chance that no one would stumble over them anyway. A desert for example - something of which England was frustratingly short of.
So Jack saw a lot more of his species’ original planet than he had ever seen when he’d had the chance to go from one place to another in the blink of an eye. But it was in London that he finally got in contact with extraterrestrial technology of the highest standard, and standing in a hall beneath Canary Warf while outside another race of aliens threatened to destroy the planet he didn’t know if he should laugh or take out his gun and shoot everyone in sight.
And it wasn’t even Christmas.
-
The organization was called Torchwood. Jack had heard of them - they had left their traces on the internet, but nowhere else. His search had led nowhere for a long time.
Until he got the idea to check out the place that had been in the centre of the Dalek and Cyberman invasion one year before. Jack had missed the Daleks, a race he’d thought extinct, by being in Norway at that time, and for once he wasn’t particularly sorry. At that time he’d had enough trouble hiding from metal men and trying not to be ‘upgraded’.
The place had just been reopened, but Jack had soon found out that there was another secret level beneath the building that had been in use all the time. Getting into the secret facility shouldn’t be too hard, with his skills and his experience as an agent.
Or so he’d thought.
In the end it probably only was the fact that he was friends with the leader of the organization that had kept him from being shot on the spot after he’d been caught.
“This is Torchwood Two,” his old friend explained as he led Jack through the corridors, right after their initial altercation. The other liked violence, always had, and Jack was just too happy to deal out some after he discovered who it was that had stolen the alien technology from right under his nose for bloody years. “We moved in here after the first one was destroyed. Most of the underground rooms had remained intact, and our old place was getting a little crowded. I go by John Hart now, so make sure to call me that when my staff is around.”
“And you’re running this place.” Jack still couldn’t quite believe it. “How did that happen?”
“I got pulled here during a fucked up time jump and my vortex manipulator broke.” Now, didn’t that sound familiar? “That was eleven years ago. I got a job at Torchwood which wasn’t hard with my experience in the field and quickly made my way through the ranks.”
As far as Jack could tell that meant he had either slept with a lot of people or killed a lot of people. With ‘John’ both was equally likely, and he suppressed a shudder at the thought of his former partner in charge of an organization as powerful as Torchwood seemed to be. He liked him well enough, was quite happy at the prospect of finally bedding someone with a little creativity again, but he wouldn’t ever be stupid enough to turn his back to him if he had something the other wanted.
That back was suddenly being pressed against the wall with a strength that wasn’t betrayed by John’s slight stature. The kiss was hard and passionate and Jack melted into it for a long moment. (It felt like coming home.) A sense of deja-vu washed over him - for a second he was standing in a corridor in the agency’s HQ, or even in some rainy alley during a mission when they really didn’t have time for this. John was a piece of the life he wanted to return to and finding him seemed to bring Jack a little closer to getting there.
“With all this alien and future stuff stored here you must have found a way to fix your VM, right?” he gasped out once he’d managed to break away from the kiss. His heart sank when John snorted in response.
“I wish. The stuff we have here isn’t that advanced, and there wasn’t much left of my VM in the first place. We might be able to put some of the pieces together to get into space at least, but time travel is a bit out of the question. Our authority when it comes to that matter says there’s no way to build a time machine out of the stuff we’ve got here.” He grimaced, for a second lost in his own thoughts
“Well, space travel is still better than being stuck on this planet,” Jack tried to cover his disappointment. “How far a range do you manage?”
“None at all.”
“What? But you said…”
“I said we might. We have the pieces, but not the knowledge we’d need to put them together in a way that works.”
Jack thought about that while John attacked his mouth again. The fact that they were from the future didn’t give them much of an advance on the natives of this time, as neither of them had known much about how exactly their technology worked. It had been enough that it worked.
Once.
“There is an invasion going on out there,” he reminded John when his hand started feel for a way under Jack’s clothes. He didn’t really mind, but now seemed to be hardly the right time for this.
“I know,” John assured him. “Our best expert is working on it.” He stepped back none the less.
“Your best expert, huh? And that’s not you?” They resumed their walk and soon reached a part of the complex that was less deserted.
It was the alien threat that had called Jack to the city, and the fact that all of humanity was at stake. He knew for a fact that humanity had not been destroyed at this time, so someone had to save it if they wanted to stop history from being rewritten in a most unpleasant way. And Jack had been wondering who that hero would be because it definitely would not be him.
They had left the soldiers that had caught Jack behind to keep guarding the entrance and made their way through long, dark corridors that contained nothing but pipes and wet spots on the wall, causing Jack to make a few sarcastic remarks about the use of their finances. The halls they reached now seemed to belong to a different world: clean, white walls, a lot of glass, equipment of the highest standard. People were running around in a hurry, looking busy and slightly anxious. Many of them were wearing white coats.
“Since you’re the boss here, shouldn’t you be at the centre of events?” Jack suggested, quietly so no one would overhear.
“That’s were we’re going. But thank you for telling me how to do my job. I’m touched by your concern.”
“And I’m touched you deserted your work just to pick me up,” Jack answered dryly. The exchange would have led to another physical fight had they had the time for it. Their relationship had worked like that - they never avoided arguments because those always ended with hot, aggressive sex. Jack wondered how long it would take them to kill each other if the sexual element was taken away.
A large double door led them to the command centre. Monitors and control consoles everywhere, and a number of armed guards watching the exits. They only spared their leader a brief nod as he stepped inside. Everyone’s eyes were on one man leaning over the large table in the middle of the room. He didn’t look up when they stepped closer, didn’t acknowledge their presence in any way. Instead his attention was fully focused on a number of documents spread on the table in front of him.
“Any success yet?” John asked, and Jack nearly flinched at the sudden coldness of his voice. The man didn’t react at all. To Jack’s surprise John didn’t bother him further, just stood back and watched him intently. The stranger’s utter stillness gave Jack the opportunity to take in his appearance.
Unlike most people here he wasn’t wearing a military or scientific uniform but a plain, large, light grey shirt and loose trousers of the same colour. On his feet he was wearing soft, clean shoes by the look of them not meant to be worn outside. His hair was brown, thick and looked ruffled, of his eyes Jack could only make out the long lashes from this angle. He was also very thin. Although the length of his clothes was alright they looked three sizes too big, hanging off his bony frame. Jack estimated that he couldn’t have much more than half of his weight while being as tall as he was. Along with his pale skin and the weird clothes it made him look frail and not very healthy.
Both of them jumped when suddenly the man sprang to life.
“Alright, this is going to work!” he exclaimed. Turned to the console beside him and flicked a few switches, adjusted some settings. “This goes here, and this…” After a seconds hesitation he pulled away the covering and tore out a few wires, connecting them in different places. No one made a move to stop him. After that he had another glance at the documents. “That has been done, this as well. These calculations need to be put into the main computer,” he said and handed over the sheet to a young woman who hurried off with them. “I’m not going to touch the last one,” he added with a frown before crumbling one of the papers and throwing it away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” John said harshly, picking it up and shoving it in front of the man. “That’s important! The fate of the Earth…”
“Has nothing whatsoever to do with this,” the man finished. “This is you trying to have me figure out the calibrations of the Kryk-weapon for you. Nice try.” Before anyone could say another word he pressed a button on the console and the large screen above him came to life. It showed the inside of one of the three giant spaceships hanging over London, Jack suspected, and the furry face and long teeth of an alien that seemed more than a little surprised at the com system activating itself.
The skinny guy waved up at the screen and greeted the alien with a cheerful grin. At least Jack thought he greeted them. Actually he could also have told them a joke - it was impossible to tell because he didn’t understand a word.
The alien answered in the same language.
“You know the rules,” John interrupted the conversation by addressing the man in the grey outfit, completely ignoring the enemy on the screen. “Speak English so we can understand what you are saying!”
The annoyed look he got in response was completely lacking respect for his authority.
“They don’t speak English,” he was told. “And since I’m trying to make them see reason, not you, it would be rather stupid to have you understand me but not them.”
“I don’t believe they can’t understand us. It would be irrational to start an invasion without being able to communicate with the locals,” a female scientist said from the background. She shut up when the man glared at her.
“They didn’t come to talk,” she was reminded. “Not everyone in the universe speaks your primitive language.” He turned back to the screen and resumed his conversation with the invading alien, who’d grown impatient over the interruptions. John looked like he wanted to interrupt once again but a quiet voice held him back.
“If you excuse me, Sir, I don’t think there is any risk of them conspiring against us,” a handsome young man said just loud enough for Jack to make out the words. “We will run the record though the translation programs later. He knows that.” John grunted in response but kept quiet, and Jack wondered, not for the first time, who this skinny guy was and why they let him work freely when they so obviously didn’t trust him.
The incomprehensible discussion got more heated while they watched, and at some point the alien on the screen shook his head several times, making sharp gestures with his right hand. The human he was talking to suddenly grew very serious. He said something that sounded like a warning, and flicked another switch on his console. On the screen they could see something on that ship exploding in a rain of sparks.
The alien shouted at the human. The human answered, calmly but with a threatening edge. It bothered Jack that he couldn’t understand what was being said when it was clearly deciding the fate of the world he was standing on.
Then the screen went back. For a moment the room went very, very quiet.
“They’re leaving,” a voice cut though the silence. “All three ships are leaving the atmosphere.”
Everyone cheered at that, though it sounded strangely subdued. The man in front of the screen relaxed a little and only now did Jack notice how tense he had been. Suddenly he looked very tired.
He turned to look at them when John approached him with long steps. Fell to the floor without a sound when a fist connected with his cheek. The attack came as a shock even to Jack, who was well used to his friend’s violent tendencies.
The treatment seemed a bit harsh toward someone who had just saved the world.
“Now, let’s talk about this!” John said, picking up the crumbled piece of paper once again and flattening it. Jack caught a glimpse of it and saw numbers and equations far beyond his understanding.
The man just looked at him while two of the guards picked him up off the floor.
“You know I’m not going to do it,” he eventually said. Finally getting a good look at his face Jack could see that it was narrow, fine boned, his cheeks hollow. The man’s eyes were dark and unusually large. Now the tension was gone from his body he looked even more frail and sick than before.
“You should have learned better by now,” John growled darkly. “A pathetic little calculation. It’s not worth the consequences of disobedience.”
“It is. You’re asking me to give you a weapon that could blow up worlds. I can’t imagine any use of that I would approve of.”
“We need it protect the Earth.”
The guy snorted, so John added: “We’re not going to blow up this world, so what’s it to you?” He got no answer. The other’s refusal didn’t require words.
“Well, have it your way. We’ll see how long it takes for you to come to your senses. I’d say… five, for the beginning. Unless you changed your mind…?”
“I can take five,” the thin man said tensely.
“Okay, ten, then.” Jack could tell from the smile on John’s face that he wasn’t entirely unhappy about the way things were developing. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were talking about.
The other said nothing in response. He also didn’t change his mind.
John watched him quizzically for a moment.
“Make it fifteen,” he eventually decided. “I’ll also ask to guys from level three to stay a little longer.” He gestured to the guards that were still holding the other man. “Take him back to his room.”
The stranger didn’t resist when one of the guards took out a pair of handcuffs and placed them around his impossibly thin wrists. The sleeves of his shirt slipped back and Jack got a brief glimpse of raw and bruised skin before the man was led away.
“He’s your prisoner,” he realised.
“You didn’t notice?” John was looking after the guards, not at Jack.
“You let him save the world.”
“He has his uses.”
“He saved the world,” Jack repeated.
A frown of irritation appeared on John’s face. “You have a problem with that?”
“Why is he your prisoner?” Jack wanted to know.
“Because he’s an enemy of Torchwood. A danger to all of humanity.”
“Uhm…” Jack felt like he was missing something.
“I’ll have to take care of him for a while,” John said, suddenly radiating a professional authority that didn’t suit him. “One of my staff will show you around. I’ll meet you later.”
“I’d rather come with you,” Jack protested. He wanted to know what exactly was going on with that man and what John was up to. Most of all, he wanted to talk to his old friend about a number of things, all connected to the general wish to get away from here.
“You can’t,” John told him. “Not yet. I might need you later.” He waved the handsome young man who had whispered into his ear earlier over and instructed him to take care of his friend. Then he swiftly left through the same exit the guards and their prisoner had taken. The automatic door closed soundlessly behind him.
-> Part 1b
Author:
vail_kagami
Beta:
nightrider101, the super-fastest beta ever!
Challenge: AU
Rating: R (overall)
Spoilers: Series 3 Finale
Warnings: Violence, mentioned rape
Summary: Jack never made that con in 1941. Instead his broken vortex manipulator strands him in the twenty-first century, where he finally meets the Doctor - who's been a prisoner of Torchwood for a long time.
Note: Unfortunately I had to split the first part into two posts because it's just a tiny little bit too long. So this story will have two chapters in at least three parts. I'm sorry I have to take so much space again.
The first time Jack ever saw him he was saving the world. Given the circumstances the other man was in that was more than a little bit impressive.
-
He realised that he’d been cut off from his usual life for too long when he started to refer to himself as Jack Harkness even in his mind. He was thinking of himself as Jack Harkness. More and more he became Jack Harkness - not the man the name had belonged to so long ago (How could he? He’d never met him.) but the man he pretended to be: Jack Harkness, traveller, adventurer, charming and unusually open minded man from the twenty-first century.
He kept travelling the world, fighting boredom and claustrophobia. One world wasn’t large enough for him to not feel trapped. How could it be? He was trapped.
It wasn’t just travelling. He was hunting; for aliens, for technology, for a chance to leave. In this century Earth was getting invaded all the time, and in nine out of ten cases humanity didn’t even notice. The scanner of Jack’s wrist device still worked for a limited range and so he used it to run from one crashed alien ship to the next space tourist, always hoping to find something that would help him fix his vortex manipulator, or at least offer him a lift off this planet.
He never found anything of use. Aliens got away before he could reach them, and the technology left by accidents or violence was too broken or too primitive to fix his complicated tool. It was frustrating: this century was full of important moments in history that he’d been in the area countless times while working for the agency, but somehow he had managed to get stranded in a decade that was entirely devoid of time agents.
Sometimes he was simply too late - he got to the place of a crash and found nothing, as if someone had been there before him and taken it all away. It wasn’t that unlikely - this planet liked its aliens and had eccentric collectors, obsessed by extraterrestrial life and laughed at by the rest of humanity. But neither of them could have the technology to find all these promising pieces of alien origin before Jack could, and more often than once he had the feeling that someone was laughing at his expense.
So he began to search not only for the technology but also for the ones who stole it. At least he would have liked to. Truth was that he had no trail to follow. He always arrived too late to witness them taking anything, and they never left any trace.
He felt like he was chasing ghosts. Sometimes he wondered if this life that was forced on him made him lose his mind.
-
He became Jack Harkness but that didn’t mean he liked Jack Harkness. It drove him crazy being confined in once place for so long, in this narrow minded, restricted, boring age.
Over the years he had his share of lovers, even friends, but he fought with tooth and claws against getting used to this life. He didn’t want it. He wanted to go back to the life he was used to.
It felt like his life was running away from him, the years he had passing by without a chance to fulfil their potential. There was an alien invasion in London one Christmas - he was in Spain. (Later he returned to look for the weapon that had destroyed the spaceship, never finding it.) The Christmas star one year later was destroyed and left nothing of use to him, and he never found out who had been responsible for the draining of the Thames. The Judoon had to take the bloody hospital up to the moon when they came, well out of his reach. There was UNIT but Jack never got along well with stable employment and pay-checks, and his attempt to get into their facilities and steal the alien technology they had scavenged didn’t only fail pathetically but also told him that they didn’t possess anything of use to him.
His adventures were smaller now. Nothing he saw, nothing he did could convince him that his life wasn’t wasted here.
It wasn’t that he was homesick (unless he counted the cosmos as his home). It was just that he had once had all of time and space at his mercy and now couldn’t settle for anything less.
-
Jack Harkness, Captain: The name he had chosen for his con in London 1941, the name of a deceased war hero. Jack identified with the name now, but he was no hero. He was a con man.
Once he had wanted to be a hero. That’s why he had joined the time agency. But the agency had no use for heroes. They needed men who could do what was necessary as opposed to men who did what was right. For that reason he had been accepted: Jack was such a man. He had learned that quickly enough, and let go of the person he wanted to be without even waving goodbye.
-
Maybe a part of him still wanted to be a hero. (The little boy that was eternally searching for his lost brother.) Maybe he had chosen that name for a reason other than because it was convenient.
Maybe that was why he told himself he targeted time agents for his cons out of vengeance because the agency had stolen his memories - as if losing a little money would hurt them. And as long as he didn’t identify himself they didn’t know he was acting out of vengeance anyway and the message was lost. He couldn’t fool himself.
He was a con man because he wanted to make money the easy way, and because he liked feeling more clever than someone else. Time agents he targeted because the agency had money. There was nothing heroic or romantic about it. And had revenge really been the reason the redemption of that fact would have been negated by the fact that he had stolen other people’s memories himself while working for them, over and over again.
The lady he had stolen his spaceship from had not been a time agent.
Stuck on Earth for years without adventures to distract himself with Jack had to face the fact that he was not a good person, and probably never had been. So it was probably just fair that the Chula space-junk he had wanted to drop in the Second World-War air raid of London exploded inside his spaceship before he could even get there. He’d managed to teleport away in the last second but some weird disturbance in time and space had thrown him to Cardiff in the year 2001, and killed his vortex manipulator. Since then he’d been stuck here, completely unable to appreciate the justice of his fate.
-
His travels started in Great Britain and since had led him to every corner in the world. Jack had looked for useful resources in New York, the Sahara, the tropical rain forest, Russia, China, Japan, in Australia and on Mauritius. Contrary to public belief in the United Kingdom alien invasions were not limited to their capital - Tôkyô got visitors other then Godzilla after all and most aliens preferred to park their spacecrafts in places that offered room and a chance that no one would stumble over them anyway. A desert for example - something of which England was frustratingly short of.
So Jack saw a lot more of his species’ original planet than he had ever seen when he’d had the chance to go from one place to another in the blink of an eye. But it was in London that he finally got in contact with extraterrestrial technology of the highest standard, and standing in a hall beneath Canary Warf while outside another race of aliens threatened to destroy the planet he didn’t know if he should laugh or take out his gun and shoot everyone in sight.
And it wasn’t even Christmas.
-
The organization was called Torchwood. Jack had heard of them - they had left their traces on the internet, but nowhere else. His search had led nowhere for a long time.
Until he got the idea to check out the place that had been in the centre of the Dalek and Cyberman invasion one year before. Jack had missed the Daleks, a race he’d thought extinct, by being in Norway at that time, and for once he wasn’t particularly sorry. At that time he’d had enough trouble hiding from metal men and trying not to be ‘upgraded’.
The place had just been reopened, but Jack had soon found out that there was another secret level beneath the building that had been in use all the time. Getting into the secret facility shouldn’t be too hard, with his skills and his experience as an agent.
Or so he’d thought.
In the end it probably only was the fact that he was friends with the leader of the organization that had kept him from being shot on the spot after he’d been caught.
“This is Torchwood Two,” his old friend explained as he led Jack through the corridors, right after their initial altercation. The other liked violence, always had, and Jack was just too happy to deal out some after he discovered who it was that had stolen the alien technology from right under his nose for bloody years. “We moved in here after the first one was destroyed. Most of the underground rooms had remained intact, and our old place was getting a little crowded. I go by John Hart now, so make sure to call me that when my staff is around.”
“And you’re running this place.” Jack still couldn’t quite believe it. “How did that happen?”
“I got pulled here during a fucked up time jump and my vortex manipulator broke.” Now, didn’t that sound familiar? “That was eleven years ago. I got a job at Torchwood which wasn’t hard with my experience in the field and quickly made my way through the ranks.”
As far as Jack could tell that meant he had either slept with a lot of people or killed a lot of people. With ‘John’ both was equally likely, and he suppressed a shudder at the thought of his former partner in charge of an organization as powerful as Torchwood seemed to be. He liked him well enough, was quite happy at the prospect of finally bedding someone with a little creativity again, but he wouldn’t ever be stupid enough to turn his back to him if he had something the other wanted.
That back was suddenly being pressed against the wall with a strength that wasn’t betrayed by John’s slight stature. The kiss was hard and passionate and Jack melted into it for a long moment. (It felt like coming home.) A sense of deja-vu washed over him - for a second he was standing in a corridor in the agency’s HQ, or even in some rainy alley during a mission when they really didn’t have time for this. John was a piece of the life he wanted to return to and finding him seemed to bring Jack a little closer to getting there.
“With all this alien and future stuff stored here you must have found a way to fix your VM, right?” he gasped out once he’d managed to break away from the kiss. His heart sank when John snorted in response.
“I wish. The stuff we have here isn’t that advanced, and there wasn’t much left of my VM in the first place. We might be able to put some of the pieces together to get into space at least, but time travel is a bit out of the question. Our authority when it comes to that matter says there’s no way to build a time machine out of the stuff we’ve got here.” He grimaced, for a second lost in his own thoughts
“Well, space travel is still better than being stuck on this planet,” Jack tried to cover his disappointment. “How far a range do you manage?”
“None at all.”
“What? But you said…”
“I said we might. We have the pieces, but not the knowledge we’d need to put them together in a way that works.”
Jack thought about that while John attacked his mouth again. The fact that they were from the future didn’t give them much of an advance on the natives of this time, as neither of them had known much about how exactly their technology worked. It had been enough that it worked.
Once.
“There is an invasion going on out there,” he reminded John when his hand started feel for a way under Jack’s clothes. He didn’t really mind, but now seemed to be hardly the right time for this.
“I know,” John assured him. “Our best expert is working on it.” He stepped back none the less.
“Your best expert, huh? And that’s not you?” They resumed their walk and soon reached a part of the complex that was less deserted.
It was the alien threat that had called Jack to the city, and the fact that all of humanity was at stake. He knew for a fact that humanity had not been destroyed at this time, so someone had to save it if they wanted to stop history from being rewritten in a most unpleasant way. And Jack had been wondering who that hero would be because it definitely would not be him.
They had left the soldiers that had caught Jack behind to keep guarding the entrance and made their way through long, dark corridors that contained nothing but pipes and wet spots on the wall, causing Jack to make a few sarcastic remarks about the use of their finances. The halls they reached now seemed to belong to a different world: clean, white walls, a lot of glass, equipment of the highest standard. People were running around in a hurry, looking busy and slightly anxious. Many of them were wearing white coats.
“Since you’re the boss here, shouldn’t you be at the centre of events?” Jack suggested, quietly so no one would overhear.
“That’s were we’re going. But thank you for telling me how to do my job. I’m touched by your concern.”
“And I’m touched you deserted your work just to pick me up,” Jack answered dryly. The exchange would have led to another physical fight had they had the time for it. Their relationship had worked like that - they never avoided arguments because those always ended with hot, aggressive sex. Jack wondered how long it would take them to kill each other if the sexual element was taken away.
A large double door led them to the command centre. Monitors and control consoles everywhere, and a number of armed guards watching the exits. They only spared their leader a brief nod as he stepped inside. Everyone’s eyes were on one man leaning over the large table in the middle of the room. He didn’t look up when they stepped closer, didn’t acknowledge their presence in any way. Instead his attention was fully focused on a number of documents spread on the table in front of him.
“Any success yet?” John asked, and Jack nearly flinched at the sudden coldness of his voice. The man didn’t react at all. To Jack’s surprise John didn’t bother him further, just stood back and watched him intently. The stranger’s utter stillness gave Jack the opportunity to take in his appearance.
Unlike most people here he wasn’t wearing a military or scientific uniform but a plain, large, light grey shirt and loose trousers of the same colour. On his feet he was wearing soft, clean shoes by the look of them not meant to be worn outside. His hair was brown, thick and looked ruffled, of his eyes Jack could only make out the long lashes from this angle. He was also very thin. Although the length of his clothes was alright they looked three sizes too big, hanging off his bony frame. Jack estimated that he couldn’t have much more than half of his weight while being as tall as he was. Along with his pale skin and the weird clothes it made him look frail and not very healthy.
Both of them jumped when suddenly the man sprang to life.
“Alright, this is going to work!” he exclaimed. Turned to the console beside him and flicked a few switches, adjusted some settings. “This goes here, and this…” After a seconds hesitation he pulled away the covering and tore out a few wires, connecting them in different places. No one made a move to stop him. After that he had another glance at the documents. “That has been done, this as well. These calculations need to be put into the main computer,” he said and handed over the sheet to a young woman who hurried off with them. “I’m not going to touch the last one,” he added with a frown before crumbling one of the papers and throwing it away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” John said harshly, picking it up and shoving it in front of the man. “That’s important! The fate of the Earth…”
“Has nothing whatsoever to do with this,” the man finished. “This is you trying to have me figure out the calibrations of the Kryk-weapon for you. Nice try.” Before anyone could say another word he pressed a button on the console and the large screen above him came to life. It showed the inside of one of the three giant spaceships hanging over London, Jack suspected, and the furry face and long teeth of an alien that seemed more than a little surprised at the com system activating itself.
The skinny guy waved up at the screen and greeted the alien with a cheerful grin. At least Jack thought he greeted them. Actually he could also have told them a joke - it was impossible to tell because he didn’t understand a word.
The alien answered in the same language.
“You know the rules,” John interrupted the conversation by addressing the man in the grey outfit, completely ignoring the enemy on the screen. “Speak English so we can understand what you are saying!”
The annoyed look he got in response was completely lacking respect for his authority.
“They don’t speak English,” he was told. “And since I’m trying to make them see reason, not you, it would be rather stupid to have you understand me but not them.”
“I don’t believe they can’t understand us. It would be irrational to start an invasion without being able to communicate with the locals,” a female scientist said from the background. She shut up when the man glared at her.
“They didn’t come to talk,” she was reminded. “Not everyone in the universe speaks your primitive language.” He turned back to the screen and resumed his conversation with the invading alien, who’d grown impatient over the interruptions. John looked like he wanted to interrupt once again but a quiet voice held him back.
“If you excuse me, Sir, I don’t think there is any risk of them conspiring against us,” a handsome young man said just loud enough for Jack to make out the words. “We will run the record though the translation programs later. He knows that.” John grunted in response but kept quiet, and Jack wondered, not for the first time, who this skinny guy was and why they let him work freely when they so obviously didn’t trust him.
The incomprehensible discussion got more heated while they watched, and at some point the alien on the screen shook his head several times, making sharp gestures with his right hand. The human he was talking to suddenly grew very serious. He said something that sounded like a warning, and flicked another switch on his console. On the screen they could see something on that ship exploding in a rain of sparks.
The alien shouted at the human. The human answered, calmly but with a threatening edge. It bothered Jack that he couldn’t understand what was being said when it was clearly deciding the fate of the world he was standing on.
Then the screen went back. For a moment the room went very, very quiet.
“They’re leaving,” a voice cut though the silence. “All three ships are leaving the atmosphere.”
Everyone cheered at that, though it sounded strangely subdued. The man in front of the screen relaxed a little and only now did Jack notice how tense he had been. Suddenly he looked very tired.
He turned to look at them when John approached him with long steps. Fell to the floor without a sound when a fist connected with his cheek. The attack came as a shock even to Jack, who was well used to his friend’s violent tendencies.
The treatment seemed a bit harsh toward someone who had just saved the world.
“Now, let’s talk about this!” John said, picking up the crumbled piece of paper once again and flattening it. Jack caught a glimpse of it and saw numbers and equations far beyond his understanding.
The man just looked at him while two of the guards picked him up off the floor.
“You know I’m not going to do it,” he eventually said. Finally getting a good look at his face Jack could see that it was narrow, fine boned, his cheeks hollow. The man’s eyes were dark and unusually large. Now the tension was gone from his body he looked even more frail and sick than before.
“You should have learned better by now,” John growled darkly. “A pathetic little calculation. It’s not worth the consequences of disobedience.”
“It is. You’re asking me to give you a weapon that could blow up worlds. I can’t imagine any use of that I would approve of.”
“We need it protect the Earth.”
The guy snorted, so John added: “We’re not going to blow up this world, so what’s it to you?” He got no answer. The other’s refusal didn’t require words.
“Well, have it your way. We’ll see how long it takes for you to come to your senses. I’d say… five, for the beginning. Unless you changed your mind…?”
“I can take five,” the thin man said tensely.
“Okay, ten, then.” Jack could tell from the smile on John’s face that he wasn’t entirely unhappy about the way things were developing. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were talking about.
The other said nothing in response. He also didn’t change his mind.
John watched him quizzically for a moment.
“Make it fifteen,” he eventually decided. “I’ll also ask to guys from level three to stay a little longer.” He gestured to the guards that were still holding the other man. “Take him back to his room.”
The stranger didn’t resist when one of the guards took out a pair of handcuffs and placed them around his impossibly thin wrists. The sleeves of his shirt slipped back and Jack got a brief glimpse of raw and bruised skin before the man was led away.
“He’s your prisoner,” he realised.
“You didn’t notice?” John was looking after the guards, not at Jack.
“You let him save the world.”
“He has his uses.”
“He saved the world,” Jack repeated.
A frown of irritation appeared on John’s face. “You have a problem with that?”
“Why is he your prisoner?” Jack wanted to know.
“Because he’s an enemy of Torchwood. A danger to all of humanity.”
“Uhm…” Jack felt like he was missing something.
“I’ll have to take care of him for a while,” John said, suddenly radiating a professional authority that didn’t suit him. “One of my staff will show you around. I’ll meet you later.”
“I’d rather come with you,” Jack protested. He wanted to know what exactly was going on with that man and what John was up to. Most of all, he wanted to talk to his old friend about a number of things, all connected to the general wish to get away from here.
“You can’t,” John told him. “Not yet. I might need you later.” He waved the handsome young man who had whispered into his ear earlier over and instructed him to take care of his friend. Then he swiftly left through the same exit the guards and their prisoner had taken. The automatic door closed soundlessly behind him.
-> Part 1b