sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-18 12:05 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-18 12:05 pm
Entry tags:
Torchwood and Doctor Who snippets
Title: Torchwood and Doctor Who Snippets
Rating: PG-13 for language and sexual themes.
Notes: So, I cleaned out my LJ the other day (I clean when I'm nervous) and found a whole bunch of old fic snippets I'd never got round to doing anything with. I thought I might as well archive them here. These aren't going to go any further, I think, but they were fun to write and I may as well share them, eh?
Warnings: None.
Originally posted 8.3.08
***
A story that was probably going to be Nine/Rose, about Rose's discovery that the Doctor had the deciding hand in the Time War.
Shortly after they left Utah -- so shortly, in fact, that they were still in transit -- Adam took Rose aside while the Doctor was distracted with the TARDIS.
"What is it?" she asked, as he pulled her along the hallway to the room the Doctor had given him.
"There's something I think you should see," he said, taking a small black machine out of his bag. "When we left, I sort of...appropriated some archives. Nothing alien! Didn't have the space."
He fiddled with the machine and a screen unscrolled from the top.
"What is it then?" she asked.
"Film footage. Only the last forty years or so. I...thought I'd get another look at the Dalek."
She shivered. Not out of fear, not exactly, but the Daleks had strange meaning for her. She iddn't like that she could feel sorry for a ruthless mass murderer.
"It includes the footage of the Doctor and the Dalek," he said, pushing play.
She watched and listened, eyes wide, face in the careful immobility she'd learned from the Doctor. She listened to her Doctor raving like a madman, saw him grinning like a killer. All she really recalled later were two things, however -- one was the look of naked fear on his face when he saw who he was trapped with. She'd never seen pure, untempered terror in the Doctor's eyes before -- not even when (on many occasions) he'd thought they were both going to die.
The other was a handful of words, not even the worst he'd said.
"Ten million ships on fire, the entire Dalek race wiped out in one second. I watched it happen. I made it happen!"
Adam clicked the case shut sharply and looked at her.
"I want to know what kind of a man we're traveling with," Adam said. "I want you to know. He's a mass murderer, Rose. Xenocide."
"The Daleks and the Time Lords died together," she whispered, and then she bolted from the room, Adam calling after but not following. Down the hall, into the control room --
"Hi-ya. How's the new pet settling -- " he managed, before she collided with him, arms around his shoulders, only his body against the central console preventing them from falling.
"What's this for?" he asked, arms automatically going around her shoulders. "You didn't think I'd really have left you to get cemented or something, did you?"
She pressed her face into his jumper, burrowing her arms under his coat. He smelled undeniably alien, never even close to human, but she'd grown used to that. One of his hands stroked the back of her head.
"I'm sorry," she said, into his chest. His double-heartbeat was stupidly comforting.
"For what?"
"I knew you were alone," she said, against his jumper. "I didn't know you thought it was your fault."
He tensed, she could feel it, and his hands touched her shoulders, pushing her back gently.
"Who told you that?" he asked.
"Nobody, I -- " she saw the look on his face and swallowed. "Adam showed me what happened in the cage. He has a tape -- "
The Doctor's jaw tightened. He brushed past her but his hand caught hers, pulling her along with him. Down the hall again, through the door to Adam's room without knocking.
"Give it to me," he ordered, and when Adam stared stupidly at him, he took the video-player out of his hand. He clearly knew how to work it; his long, agile fingers found the eject and slipped a tiny disc out of one side.
"It's only archival -- hey!" Adam said, as the Doctor neatly snapped it in two. "That was ten years of footage!"
"Now it's rubbish," the Doctor said. He put the two pieces in Rose's hand, closed her fingers around them, and left the room.
"That wasn't necessary," Adam whined, while Rose stared down at her hand. She squeezed and felt the pieces fragment further.
She found him down the corridor and around a corner, in the dimmer part of the TARDIS near her own room. He was standing with his head pressed against the smooth, cool wall. She watched as he slammed his fist against it. Then, typical of the Doctor, he leaned back and winced, shaking his hand out, and stroked the wall apologetically.
"Doctor," she said quietly. He rested his fingers on the wall still, his head bowed. She came forward slowly, until she was standing next to him. His eyes darted sideways, but he didn't turn his head. She didn't know what to say; any kind of effort at pretending she understood would be stupid, and she knew trying to give him absolution would be suicidal.
She reached up instead and stroked his head, rubbing her thumb across his temple.
"I don't think I am responsible," he said, his voice strained and harsh. "I am responsible."
He slid down on his haunches, still pressed against the wall. She stroked his hair and pulled his head against her hip.
"I didn't want you to see," he said, voice vibrating into her thigh. "I didn't want you to know."
"Did you think I could forgive a Dalek and not you?" she asked. "You're my Doctor."
He shuddered and she grasped him by the shoulder, pulling him upright. She slipped her hands under his jacket again and held him, always a little startled at how thin he was, how he wasn't really all that tall when you stood next to him. It was like most of the time his personality expanded him to larger-than-life, and now he was shrinking in on himself, trying to fit into a small, unnoticeable place.
An intro to the requisite Jack Wants To Seduce The Rest Of The TARDIS Crew story.
Sex took a lot of thinking about.
Contrary to popular (read: the Doctor's) belief, Jack was not interested in fucking anything that moved. He definitely wasn't interested in fucking anything that didn't move; no more lazy lays for sunny Jack. Just because his horizons were broad didn't mean they were blindingly so.
By the fifty-first century aliens were very much a fact of life. The human race, having conquered its own sexual insecurities, was well on its way to making a reputation for itself. Jack had once seen graffiti on a loo wall that read "For a good time, call a Human". While it might be Xenist, it was also more or less true. Humanity seemed proud of the fact. It was probably a human who'd written it.
Here was the thing: humans bred sexually. They evolved on a planet where more offspring meant more chance of survival. Not all ecosystems worked that way. There were races that bred asexually, races that had forgotten how to breed and grew new members in labs. There were of course races that had more than a binary sexual system, some had five or six genders, but those all had strict social rules about who slept with whom. Most didn't seem to have the gene that sometimes made certain individuals attracted to their own gender, or some fairly incompatible gender, or some very incompatible gender.
Human beings were the only race in the universe that went camping, and one of the few who had a significant population of homosexuals and bisexuals. Jack couldn't help but think there was some kind of link there, even if it made for some really bad puns.
But if an alien had an erogenous zone and a reasonably functional method of stimulating a human erogenous zone, there was a human out there who was willing to give it the old college try, by god. And clearly that was all the Doctor had on his mind when Jack admitted he was from the fifty-first century and the Doctor got that look on his face. That Oh, you're from that century look.
Jack was up for a casual fling. He was up for a grope or a kiss or dinner and dancing with any willing soul that pinged him as even remotely attractive, and plenty who weren't but seemed like they'd be good in bed or interesting to talk to. That was just fun. But he didn't wreck homes, he didn't push, and he didn't do serious relationships without a whole bucketload of thought first.
You'd have to fill the entire TARDIS with thought before you fully identified all the issues and ramifications of seducing the last of the Time Lords. Besides, there was Rose to think about.
I was reading about people being horrified that writers called the Doctors "nine" and "ten" in fics, so I thought I'd write one where Rose gave them names. This is as far as I got.
In her head she gave him nicknames, mostly just to keep things straight, because "the doctor and the other doctor, you know, the one with the messy hair" got a bit old after a while.
She called the first one (not the first one, actually, just her first one) Nick. He looked kind of like a Nick, with a big nose and stick-out ears and a nice smile. A bit mad, a bit of a daredevil, but really very solid and dependable in the end. Someone with his feet on the ground no matter how high in the stars his head was.
She called the second one Doc, which was not original but was different from Doctor. Doc was the smart, quiet one in all the movies. The Doctor wasn't quiet, really, but Doc was a lot quieter than Nick in a kind of brain-ish way she couldn't define.
Rose always thought that Doctor (Nick) was really her Doctor because he was the one who saw her first and they'd gotten to be friends together as Rose and Doctor (Nick) before Doctor (Doc) came on the scene.
Except that now, more and more, she thought of Doctor (Doc) as hers. Not even comparatively, just, hers. If a pretty alien girl smiled at him, hers. If he was a little too nice to a human man they picked up on an adventure somewhere, hers. She'd been perfectly happy to share Doctor (Nick) with Captain Jack, and she wasn't even sure how far that sharing had gone between the pair of them, but Doctor (Doc) was hers and nobody else got to share with her.
Maybe it was because she'd been with him since he changed, was really the only person he'd known since becoming the kind of man he was (or something; he muttered sometimes about his identity and she didn't ask). Both carried the burden of whatever they had done to destroy the Daleks, but Doc carried it as a matter of course, not as a weight that might snap his bones if he gave in.
"You're looking devious," he said, glancing up from where he stood, spread-foot for balance, in front of the TARDIS controls. "Plotting a coup?"
"A coup of what?" she asked.
"Hostile TARDIS takeover."
"TAR-jacking."
He crossed his wrists and rested his head on them, leaning over, a portrait of despair. "All the races in the universe and I picked the one that invented puns."
"Don't they have puns where you're from, then?" she asked.
"We did, but we got 'em from you," he answered.
***
This was going to be a fic about Rose and Ten visiting a planet where gender-roles are reversed and people are shocked that Rose lets her man run around with his wrists showing.
"I don't do costumes," the Doctor said. "I come as I am."
Rose crossed her arms. It was hard to look stern when you were standing in front of one of the wardrobe's racks, because the wardrobe had everything you could imagine in it, and Rose couldn't imagine what the Doctor had ever needed a Pierrot hat for.
"But you have all this clothing," she said.
"Well, you pick things up here and there," he answered. He brushed back the corners of his jacket and shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers, a move he did when he was embarrassed or amused. It was totally natural; the slight brush back, the flick of the jacket's hem, and his hands hooking in his pockets. She couldn't imagine...the other Doctor, the one she still thought of as her Doctor, doing it, but it was natural and graceful now.
"But it's fun," she said.
"Is it?"
"Yeah. Like playing dress-up as a kid. Don't you want to really disappear? Not just show up in some other time, but show up and look like you belong?"
"Takes too much time, after a while," he said.
"But once or twice couldn't hurt."
"I don't do costumes," the Doctor repeated. "This is what I like."
"Don't you get tired of wearing a suit?"
"No," he replied, with just a hint of sullen playing around the corners of his mouth.
"Fine then. Don't get dressed up, but I'm going to."
He smiled, then, and she saw her Doctor for just a fraction of a second. "Yes, you should. If you like it, I mean."
"Right. Where are we? And when are we?"
"Krz'aaak," he said.
"Krz'ak?"
"No, three a's."
"How do you know I didn't say three a's?" she asked, annoyed.
"Aaak. Aaak. At the back of the throat," he said, touching his own throat in demonstration.
"And when? I mean, what should I wear? What're the women like on Krz'aak?"
"Very enjoyable," he replied.
"Doctor!"
"Aesthetically! And they're very nice people."
"What do they wear."
"Oh, well, um." He considered her, then the racks of clothing. He grabbed her hand (awkwardly, his palm across the back of hers, her Doctor did it better) and led her down one of the long aisles, into the dimmer corners of the room.
"This," he said, taking a comfortable-looking pair of trousers off the rack. "And this..."
"This? Really?" she asked, holding the shirt up to her body. It clung to her curves without even being worn.
"Right, and..." he took down a coat as well -- short, elegant and fitted. In all, Rose thought, the women of Krz'aaak (three a's) must be some of the most comfortable, chic people she was likely to meet. "There you are."
She held the clothes against her body, studying her reflection in one of the dull, half-mirror steel surfaces in this part of the ship.
"I think I'll look all right," she said. "Sure you don't want to slip into something more comfortable?"
"I'm as comfortable as they come," he replied, and left her alone to change.
Ianto's views on the team. NO idea where this was going.
In spite of the fact that Owen once helped execute the wreck of Ianto's former girlfriend and Ianto once shot Owen in the shoulder (and yes, he was aiming, hours and hours on the firing range after the others had gone, just so he would have an excuse not to go home to emptiness and gnawing, yawning pain) -- in spite of the gunplay, in other words, Ianto often found Owen the easiest person to get along with in the Hub. Owen could lie with the best of them but Ianto wasn't worth the effort, since he didn't have anything Owen wanted. Owen was past master at finding the tender places in one's ego and jabbing a finger into them, but since Ianto never reacted -- except for once, see above re: shooting him -- Owen had learned it was pointless or perilous to try it on the tea boy. Owen was entirely undependable, but Ianto never depended on anyone, so that never bothered him.
Tosh was sweet but oddly prickly sometimes, and Ianto got the sense there were depths there that would frustrate anyone who actively tried to uncover them. Gwen...he liked Gwen a lot, knew she was smarter than she often acted, but god she was so...she made him feel so cynical and old, and yet also as if he wouldn't change outlooks with her for the world.
And Jack, of course, was just ridiculously complicated and sometimes when he tried to straighten it out in his head he ended up having to take five minutes in the Information Centre upstairs just to get a breath of fresh air.
The good parts of a fic I was working on about Ianto discovering old tape-recordings of Jack during WWII, administering retcon to shell-shocked soldiers.
Ianto has a lot of time to spare, when he's working in the tourist office. There are reports to go over and such, of course, but that hardly fills the days when there's nothing-much-doing and he has to be the public face of Welsh Tourism, as if a tourist has ever shown up on his doorstep.
He has taken this time and sculpted it into something useful, whether or not the others are aware of it; Tosh might be, if she monitors his sites-visited or has a keystroke logger on the upstairs computer. He has cultivated contacts, in government and the police, which he knows Jack's aware of because Jack often asks him to make use of them to get Torchwood's butt out, as it were, of the proverbial sling.
Torchwood being what it is, he collects people, people who know about time and history. Antiques dealers on e-bay, especially those who sell pocket-watches and military ephemera; Historians; Physicists poking into the way time and space work; military re-enactment buffs. One of his acquaintances buys old cameras with undeveloped film in them and carefully makes prints to see what was worth photographing fifty, eighty, a hundred years ago.
People read what he says about time, mostly theories and conjecture, and sometimes they correct or disagree, which is always educational. You can get far more out of a person who wants to prove you're wrong than if you just tried to interview them. Others are impressed by his breadth of knowledge and diversity of acquaintance. His logical skepticism and cold reason attract the intelligent, those less obsessed with collecting alien artefacts than they are about analysing things truthfully and unromantically.
He never talks about his work. Most of them think he's an understimulated graduate student.
***
"What's going on up there?"
Ianto turns to the CCTV camera Jack must have been monitoring and shakes his head, shrugging.
"You need help?"
No, I'm fine, he mouths at the camera.
"Yell if you do. By the way, order lunch around noon, would you? Sandwiches. It'll give you an excuse to come down. I don't think you've seen what Gwen's wearing today. It's like Christmas for all of us."
Ianto smiles, nods, and shoves the menu up to the lens.
"Number three, no peppers," Jack answers.
Ianto notes it down and emails the rest of the team to ask what they'd like.
Me anticipating Ianto's smartassery.
This should not be so difficult.
Jack is good at flirting, good at making people feel desired, feel desire. He's had a lot of time to practice.
But everything he says, which would make Tosh stutter and Owen stammer and Suzie -- well, clock him one -- just bounces into some secret place in Ianto Jones' head and gets thrown back to him as return fire. He's sure Ianto doesn't intend it, but he's just unable to keep his smartarse mouth shut. Must've been one of the few bright rays at the joyless, characterless London Torchwood branch, Ianto's mouth.
Jack has never, ever encountered someone who doesn't react to him sooner or later. He's never met someone he can't make blush. It's not normal.
And then one horrifying evening when Ianto carries the pizzas in, Jack remarks, "Pizza and dessert. I like the service around here."
"Hot dessert costs extra, sir," Ianto says.
And just like that, Jack feels heat rush to his face. He hasn't felt it in years but the sensation of a blush spreading across his cheeks is unforgettable.
Ianto catches his eye as he sets down the food, smiles, and walks away.
The start of a Torchwood/SJA crossover, post-Journey's End.
Three days after the universe wasn't destroyed, Jack found a file folder on his desk where one had definitely not been the night before.
There was a tidy label in Ianto's handwriting -- they could print them up, of course, but it was faster just to write them and Ianto was in favour of efficiency over flair, despite the glorious pink shirts. It read:
SMITH, SARAH JANE
The cover-page inside the folder was Torchwood standard-issue, at least since Ianto had arrived.
AGENT OF RECORD: JONES, I.
STATUS: ONGOING
FILE TYPE: INDIVIDUAL
FILE UNDER: PERSONS OF NOTE
SEE ALSO (Individual):
SMITH, LUKE
DOCTOR, THE
LETHBRIDGE-STEWART, GORDON, BRIGADIER
SEE ALSO (Organisation):
UNIT (GENERAL)
NELSON-STANLEY, EDGAR (TORCHWOOD ONE, 1948 - 1983, RET.)
SEE ALSO (Alien Life-Forms):
Time Lord
Dalek
Slitheen
Gorgon
SEE ALSO (Case Reports):
BUBBLESHOCK INCIDENT (Agent of Record: Sato, T.)
MAGNETIC POLE-REVERSAL (Agent of Record: Harkness, J., Cptn.)
The case-reports section ran to two columns. Jack sighed and turned over the page. Apparently he wasn't the only one who was keeping track of Sarah Jane Smith anymore. Also, apparently his google-fu was not as powerful as Ianto's; shouldn't be shocking, considering that for the past hundred and fifty years Jack had been without a computer at all, and before that he'd been used to intuitive spider programs that could modify and enhance simple searches in ways 21st century researchers could only dream of. There were entries on the first page that even Jack hadn't known about.
The second page was a summary, short but dense with information. A row of photos at the bottom showed Sarah Jane, the boy she'd called her son, two other young -- very young -- people, and a house. Sarah Jane's, he assumed.
The third page was a series of digital images, though they were obviously scans of old hardcopy photographs. The young woman in the images must be Sarah Jane, which meant that the man with her was the Doctor, though not any incarnation Jack had encountered. He looked old and grim -- but, it had to be said, very fashionable. Near the bottom of the page she appeared several times with a slightly younger, slightly happier-looking man in a terrible battered coat and a huge muffler. Jack smiled fondly. She'd spanned a regeneration; must be one hell of a survivor. Not that he hadn't known that already from surveillance.
The fourth page was confusing, a series of thumbnails -- birth and inoculation records, school history, adoption papers. He flicked back to the first page. Luke Smith, adopted then -- and not legally either. The papers were good but they weren't perfect. Sarah Jane had faked up papers for a boy who apparently, according to the search histories, hadn't existed until a year ago.
The fifth page made his blood run cold.
TORCHWOOD STANDARD PROCEDURE
APPREHENSION AND RETENTION
"FREE AGENT" OPERATIVES
Torchwood One's apprehension and "retention" (imprisonment) guidelines for individuals who were taking Torchwood's duties on themselves. Below that were similar guidelines for human-hybrid individuals and escaped "experiments".
Both had been implemented originally under the founders of Torchwood; he'd been a retainee, and he knew what it meant. In the lower right corner was a post-it, again in Ianto's hand:
Jack, we need to talk.
***
"These aren't in effect anymore."
Ianto hadn't been expecting Jack's voice, certainly not at that volume, and he managed not to spill coffee all over his trousers purely by reflex-speed; he started, then jerked backwards and tipped the cup the other direction. Espresso ran all over the front of the machine instead, but at least that was easily cleaned.
"I'm putting a bell on you," he said, before turning around.
"These," Jack said, holding up the Apprehension and Retention protocols. "Burn 'em. They're not part of what we do."
"Yes, somehow they didn't seem your style," Ianto drawled. "Hence the post-it."
"You've been researching Ms. Smith."
"She's a former companion of the Doctor, and she's running what amounts to an auxiliary branch of Torchwood out of her suburban home. Seemed prudent. Especially in light of her mysterious new adopted son."
"You think she's dangerous?"
Ianto shook his head. "I think she's an opportunity."
Jack hesitated, which was gratifying. "What?"
"I'm a researcher, Jack. It's what I do. Information-sharing."
"We're a secret organisation. We don't share."
"If Cardiff had known the full scope of what London was doing -- if Whitehall had bothered to inform us about the Pharm..." Ianto shrugged. "Besides, we're going to declassify sooner or later."
"What?"
"Someday we're going to get out into space and meet some aliens and I hardly think it likely the astronauts are going to be the only ones allowed to know about it. It's fine to run about now, retconning people and breaking most civilised laws, it's what we have to do. I understand that. She's a pacifist by the way, did you know? Won't carry a gun."
"Yeah, she mentioned it."
"Seems pointless to me, but there you have it. Anyway, when we're not needed in that capacity anymore, there are two ways Torchwood can evolve."
Jack crossed his arms. "And those are?"
"Espionage, or research. Forgive me if I'd like to gently steer the attitudes of Torchwood agents to come towards the latter."
Jack frowned. "Espionage?"
"Xeno-espionage, more properly. Information gathering of a more...hostile sort. So I thought perhaps sharing would be best," he continued hurriedly, before Jack could speak again. "I'd like to interview Ms. Smith. And provide her with some of Torchwood's information."
These are two variations in ways that Jack could have seduced Nicholas; I decided against going that route, as Nicholas was perfectly fine where he was.
We do not unplug machines we do not know the function of.
Nicholas's Handwriting: "of which we do not know the function."
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Nicholas just always assumed it would be Ianto, and not Jack. Jack is his Captain, and while Ianto was once Mr. Jones, they're closer than he's ever been to Jack, as much as he idolises him.
But Ianto has pulled a long shift, and gone home to sleep in his own bed. Gwen has not pulled a long shift but she has got another life to look after now and Jack insists she needs her sleep. Martha has Tom, and Nicholas knows how easy it is to lose a sense of perspective in Torchwood, so he and Ianto double-team her to make sure she goes home at a reasonable hour, emergency apocalypses notwithstanding.
Nicholas, on the other hand, has no such reason to leave and so he stays, working his way through the to-do list in his head that is still fairly long. They really need a technician, because some of this computer stuff just can't be fixed by them, but he repairs the little things as he can and with Jack's help.
Jack is buried in wires under a Hub platform, just his legs sticking out and occasional sparks flying, and Nicholas is holding a flashlight above him so that he can see what he's doing, when something shorts out and there's a brief jerk of legs and smell of burning flesh and Nicholas sighs and pulls Jack's lifeless body out from under the platform. He gets a bottle of water, makes himself a cup of coffee, and sits down next to Jack to wait. There's the familiar gasp-and-flail a few minutes later.
Nicholas mutely holds out the bottle of water, which Jack drinks, and waits for him to get his bearings. It's always a bit traumatic when Jack dies, but he's gotten more used to it.
He thinks that this is the first time Jack has died since Tosh and Owen died. Jack is clearly thinking the same thing.
"All this life," Jack says to himself. "I'd give it away if I could."
"I'm torn," Nicholas replies. "It must be terribly lonely and sad. But at the same time...the things you must have seen. The things you will see."
Jack looks at him.
"I'd take your place if I could, Jack," Nicholas says, and then Jack is kissing him, lips thrumming with life, hands warm and tingling on either side of his face. He touches Jack's shirt, questioning, and Jack breaks the kiss.
"I just exist," Jack breathes against his cheek. "I need -- I wish -- I wish I could know I was alive."
It isn't anything like love or even whatever it is Jack and Ianto have, but Nicholas knows that this is a service he can provide, this is something he can do for his Captain, out of a different kind of love, the love he has for Torchwood. He shifts from the awkwardness of crossed-legs to kneeling, his head slightly higher than Jack's, and kisses him again. Jack gasps and makes a desperate unhappy noise and kisses back.
***
An alternate take on the same idea.
We do not interrupt Jack's private conversations.
Jack picks his moment a week later, after he and Ianto have had some kind of very intent discussion and worked out some complex issue over Gwen. Torchwood specialises in complex issues and it's amazing how many of them are caused by Gwen.
This one has nothing to do with Gwen, however, as Jack gently walks Nicholas back into a wall in a shadowed hallway. He puts one hand on the wall and leans close, but there's no malice in it. And he talks softly in Nicholas's ear.
"Understand," he says, "That I'm saying this out of respect for your twenty-first century sensibilities. And that if we were in another place and time, I wouldn't have bothered saying them. I wouldn't have had to bother."
Nicholas nods.
"The thing is, you're the closest to having a sane life of any of us. You go out. You seem to have friends. You don't seem to resent leaving them when I whistle."
Jack whistles low in his ear, and Nicholas smiles.
"And I don't want to...sully that. But at the same time, that makes you the only other person I could say this to," Jack continues. His other hand settles on Nicholas's arm, thumb sliding across his jacket. "I want you."
His voice drops, low and not -- urgent, precisely, just...full.
"I want to have you. Like a pet. Like a toy. I want to play with you, Nicholas, let Ianto unwrap you like a gift. Just once or twice. Well. Maybe three or four times. I want you to run when I whistle." Jack inhales, and it's like he's trying to breathe him. "Ianto might think you belong to him, but you're nobody's dog. Not yet," he adds with a grin. His hand slides down, settling on Nicholas's hip. Nicholas thinks he's taking his cues from the fact that Nicholas hasn't bolted yet. "You say no, there's no consequence. You say yes, there's no strings. Up to you. I'll ask Ianto's permission after I get yours."
No assumption that Nicholas would say no; but then Nicholas deduced long ago that Jack is as much confidence man as captain.
"Want to play?" Jack asks. That's his offer -- a game, with Ianto and Jack. A fun game. He already loves them, that'll never change, but lust can be misdirected pretty easily, when your mind is on your matter. And he can exercise his fascination, let Jack teach him a thing or two. Maybe even Ianto will. Ianto's full of surprises.
It'll be like his crush on Martha. Something charming that he can enjoy.
With his boss. And his boss's Captain. Oh, shit.
This is not an offer that you can answer with "I'll think about it." It's yes or no. Jack exhales against his lips, slowly.
"Yes," he says, and then, "Captain."
Jack's laugh is subtle and breathy.
This was going to be a crossover with Good Omens called The Immortals Club. It never really took off.
The wedding was held on the first reasonably fine day of 1884, and the fact that Miranda went along with Jack's idiotic scheme was only proof that she was the woman for him, till death do them part. (Well, he knew how that would go, but then so did she, and she'd still said yes, she said yes!)
"We can get your dress in London," he said, talking excitedly, still riding the thrill of the night before, asking her to marry him, forming in his mind the idea of building a real life, of being an ordinary man with a wife and a home. He took a huge bite of eggs and continued. "I'll have my suit tailored here, I know a guy. We can get flowers in Cardiff to match the dress."
"White?" Miranda asked, a mischevious look in her eye. He paused mid-chew.
"Up to you?" he ventured. "I don't care, it's only symbolism. I mean obviously I care what your wedding dress looks like, unless you don't want me to come along, but I'm pretty good about picking out this kind of -- "
He stopped, because she was laughing at him.
"I'll go to London and see what the fashion is, and if I like white best, I'll get white. You stay here -- we can't both leave the Rift at the same time, can we?" she asked sensibly. "Do you want a winter wedding?"
"I -- " he hesitated, because it was maybe a dumb idea. On the other hand, Miranda was well-known for not laughing at Jack's dumb ideas, which sometimes turned out to be genius ideas in disguise. "I thought maybe we could...I mean you can't plan anything with the Rift around."
"No, that's true," she said solemnly, eyes dancing.
"So I thought, we'll get your dress and my suit, and the first nice day in spring -- "
" -- when everyone can come, oh -- yes, Jack!"
"We could just -- grab a priest -- "
"Grab a priest!" she laughed.
"And -- and get married, in the park, somewhere nice and green," he finished, beaming. "There's a photographer's shop on Greyfriars, we can have our picture taken."
The other women of Torchwood were horrified; they might be the original pre-sixties feminists, but they still lived in a world where a woman's wedding day was a sacred occasion. Miranda steadfastly ignored their pitying expressions and instead spent all winter finding ways to show off her engagement ring.
Jack made a bargain with the local C of E vicar, an understanding soul, and soon they were wed.
Miranda died in the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 (so did Jack -- three times -- but it didn't take). He got leave from the war in time to come back to her, which was good; she stroked his hair and kissed him and made him promise not to be bitter that she was going to have an adventure he wasn't allowed on. She died hearing him laugh, which is how she would have wanted it.
He tried not to be bitter, he really did. And at least in time the hurt faded, until what he remembered most was her smile and the way she could catch anything that moved in a footrace and his stupid, wonderful idea to marry her on the first fine day in 1884.
Later -- over two millenia for him, though only a hundred years for Earth -- he realised that the day he was married he was standing not at all far from where he was also buried. It had a sort of cyclical charm that threatened to send him over into hysterical sobbing laughter, but instead he sensibly went and made Ianto make him a cup of very strong coffee.
***
Jack kicked alcohol in 1924. It wasn't very dramatic; it was boredom more than anything, and the fact that drinking oneself into oblivion felt too much like dying after a while.
That was what he told himself, at any rate. The truth of the matter is that Leona, head of Torchwood at the time, sat down with him one morning while he was nursing a hangover and told him that Torchwood could be indulgent or it could be punitive, and it was Jack's decision which it would be.
Jack stared at her in shock. "You'd lock me up again?"
"Jack, there are political forces here well beyond my control. I don't want to lock you up any more than I want to see you passed out in a gutter three nights in five, but I won't have a choice. You could leave Cardiff, of course -- "
"No."
" -- but we'd find you, you must know that. You could be kept on the edge of starvation indefinitely, weak and ineffective, chained, down in the darkness. That's what they'd like. That's what they'll get, and they'll go through me to get it, if you continue to be a security risk."
Leona was a small, hard-eyed woman with a habit of tapping her fingernails on the wood of her desk that Jack found endearingly compulsive. She could kill a man with a single shot from the maximum impact distance of three separate firearms, and she spoke eight languages. She never, ever laughed, and she was one of the only people ever to equate Jack's flirting with harassment. It was a dark few years at Torchwood while she was head, but she did keep the mortality rate down.
"Or you can straighten out your life and continue to be a productive member of Torchwood, enjoying the freedoms we've granted you," she said.
He gave her a bitter look. "Well, thank you Torchwood, I'm so very grateful."
"Don't be petty, Jack."
"Petty? Do you know how long I've worked this job?" he asked.
"Jack," she said patiently. "Arguing with me will get you nowhere."
***
1936 saw Jack Harkness working undercover as only Jack could, by being the loudest man in the room. What a pretty petit lord you would make, Jack, and wouldn't you like to go to the big city, get out of Cardiff for a while, and spend some money?
It was expedient to get out of Cardiff just then, as some people who shouldn't be asking questions were, well, asking questions. So Jack was dining at the Ritz in London, playing bait for Nazi sympathisers who, it was rumoured, were trading in alien weapons they oughtn't to have. And that was where he met Crowley.
Jack didn't know what kind of creature Crowley was and didn't care; it was just nice to be able to talk to someone who understood. Crowley was much older than him, Jack knew that at least, but Jack had lived more -- he was real and human and warm, whereas Crowley was something Other, and didn't much deign to come down to Humanity's level. Except for people like Jack.
***
Sometime in the eighties, Crowley brought a date ("No he isn't." "Yes he is." "He is not." "Well, he wants to be." "He doesn't!") and Jack would have felt like a third wheel, except that Fell remembered him, and anyway never made anyone feel like a third wheel. After that they were three. Three is practically a society. Jack took to calling it the Immortals Club.
***
When Fell and Crowley were in Cardiff, which wasn't all that frequent, they went down to Jack's favourite pub (it closed in 2009 and reopened as a chain burger bar, sad day) and Crowley sampled the local Welsh microbrews while Jack scoffed chips and flirted with Fell, who drank tea composedly and smiled at everyone.
***
In 2015 the Doctor got stranded on Earth for eighteen months and they relaxed the rules to allow near-immortals to join. It felt like treason because the whole point was knowing you were never going to die, but the Doctor was lonely and he made a good drinking companion.
Sometimes the fortuneteller girl happened to be around, and Crowley would buy her a Coke and talk serious business with her at a booth while Jack and Fell got into metaphysical arguments at the bar and the Doctor, if he was around, smiled sadly at them.
***
In 2290 Cardiff was leveled with the permanent closing of the Rift, and time went sideways for just a few months. When it righted itself Jack found that the last thing to fall through the Rift before it closed forever was a man named Ianto Jones, who'd disappeared from Wales completely in 2012. It was ten years before they noticed Ianto wasn't aging, and Crowley actually invented a ritual for inductment into the Immortals' Club.
Fell said it was scandalous and Satanic, and Crowley said this was the point, and Jack stood back a little with his arm around Ianto's waist and let them bicker. By then they were working out of London, so the Club was a pretty regular thing, barring Ianto's frequent trips to Russia to deal with the alien colonists who'd settled on the Steppes.
The Doctor passed by once in a while, and they always convened the Club for him, which made him go sheepish and a little stammery.
Rating: PG-13 for language and sexual themes.
Notes: So, I cleaned out my LJ the other day (I clean when I'm nervous) and found a whole bunch of old fic snippets I'd never got round to doing anything with. I thought I might as well archive them here. These aren't going to go any further, I think, but they were fun to write and I may as well share them, eh?
Warnings: None.
Originally posted 8.3.08
***
A story that was probably going to be Nine/Rose, about Rose's discovery that the Doctor had the deciding hand in the Time War.
Shortly after they left Utah -- so shortly, in fact, that they were still in transit -- Adam took Rose aside while the Doctor was distracted with the TARDIS.
"What is it?" she asked, as he pulled her along the hallway to the room the Doctor had given him.
"There's something I think you should see," he said, taking a small black machine out of his bag. "When we left, I sort of...appropriated some archives. Nothing alien! Didn't have the space."
He fiddled with the machine and a screen unscrolled from the top.
"What is it then?" she asked.
"Film footage. Only the last forty years or so. I...thought I'd get another look at the Dalek."
She shivered. Not out of fear, not exactly, but the Daleks had strange meaning for her. She iddn't like that she could feel sorry for a ruthless mass murderer.
"It includes the footage of the Doctor and the Dalek," he said, pushing play.
She watched and listened, eyes wide, face in the careful immobility she'd learned from the Doctor. She listened to her Doctor raving like a madman, saw him grinning like a killer. All she really recalled later were two things, however -- one was the look of naked fear on his face when he saw who he was trapped with. She'd never seen pure, untempered terror in the Doctor's eyes before -- not even when (on many occasions) he'd thought they were both going to die.
The other was a handful of words, not even the worst he'd said.
"Ten million ships on fire, the entire Dalek race wiped out in one second. I watched it happen. I made it happen!"
Adam clicked the case shut sharply and looked at her.
"I want to know what kind of a man we're traveling with," Adam said. "I want you to know. He's a mass murderer, Rose. Xenocide."
"The Daleks and the Time Lords died together," she whispered, and then she bolted from the room, Adam calling after but not following. Down the hall, into the control room --
"Hi-ya. How's the new pet settling -- " he managed, before she collided with him, arms around his shoulders, only his body against the central console preventing them from falling.
"What's this for?" he asked, arms automatically going around her shoulders. "You didn't think I'd really have left you to get cemented or something, did you?"
She pressed her face into his jumper, burrowing her arms under his coat. He smelled undeniably alien, never even close to human, but she'd grown used to that. One of his hands stroked the back of her head.
"I'm sorry," she said, into his chest. His double-heartbeat was stupidly comforting.
"For what?"
"I knew you were alone," she said, against his jumper. "I didn't know you thought it was your fault."
He tensed, she could feel it, and his hands touched her shoulders, pushing her back gently.
"Who told you that?" he asked.
"Nobody, I -- " she saw the look on his face and swallowed. "Adam showed me what happened in the cage. He has a tape -- "
The Doctor's jaw tightened. He brushed past her but his hand caught hers, pulling her along with him. Down the hall again, through the door to Adam's room without knocking.
"Give it to me," he ordered, and when Adam stared stupidly at him, he took the video-player out of his hand. He clearly knew how to work it; his long, agile fingers found the eject and slipped a tiny disc out of one side.
"It's only archival -- hey!" Adam said, as the Doctor neatly snapped it in two. "That was ten years of footage!"
"Now it's rubbish," the Doctor said. He put the two pieces in Rose's hand, closed her fingers around them, and left the room.
"That wasn't necessary," Adam whined, while Rose stared down at her hand. She squeezed and felt the pieces fragment further.
She found him down the corridor and around a corner, in the dimmer part of the TARDIS near her own room. He was standing with his head pressed against the smooth, cool wall. She watched as he slammed his fist against it. Then, typical of the Doctor, he leaned back and winced, shaking his hand out, and stroked the wall apologetically.
"Doctor," she said quietly. He rested his fingers on the wall still, his head bowed. She came forward slowly, until she was standing next to him. His eyes darted sideways, but he didn't turn his head. She didn't know what to say; any kind of effort at pretending she understood would be stupid, and she knew trying to give him absolution would be suicidal.
She reached up instead and stroked his head, rubbing her thumb across his temple.
"I don't think I am responsible," he said, his voice strained and harsh. "I am responsible."
He slid down on his haunches, still pressed against the wall. She stroked his hair and pulled his head against her hip.
"I didn't want you to see," he said, voice vibrating into her thigh. "I didn't want you to know."
"Did you think I could forgive a Dalek and not you?" she asked. "You're my Doctor."
He shuddered and she grasped him by the shoulder, pulling him upright. She slipped her hands under his jacket again and held him, always a little startled at how thin he was, how he wasn't really all that tall when you stood next to him. It was like most of the time his personality expanded him to larger-than-life, and now he was shrinking in on himself, trying to fit into a small, unnoticeable place.
An intro to the requisite Jack Wants To Seduce The Rest Of The TARDIS Crew story.
Sex took a lot of thinking about.
Contrary to popular (read: the Doctor's) belief, Jack was not interested in fucking anything that moved. He definitely wasn't interested in fucking anything that didn't move; no more lazy lays for sunny Jack. Just because his horizons were broad didn't mean they were blindingly so.
By the fifty-first century aliens were very much a fact of life. The human race, having conquered its own sexual insecurities, was well on its way to making a reputation for itself. Jack had once seen graffiti on a loo wall that read "For a good time, call a Human". While it might be Xenist, it was also more or less true. Humanity seemed proud of the fact. It was probably a human who'd written it.
Here was the thing: humans bred sexually. They evolved on a planet where more offspring meant more chance of survival. Not all ecosystems worked that way. There were races that bred asexually, races that had forgotten how to breed and grew new members in labs. There were of course races that had more than a binary sexual system, some had five or six genders, but those all had strict social rules about who slept with whom. Most didn't seem to have the gene that sometimes made certain individuals attracted to their own gender, or some fairly incompatible gender, or some very incompatible gender.
Human beings were the only race in the universe that went camping, and one of the few who had a significant population of homosexuals and bisexuals. Jack couldn't help but think there was some kind of link there, even if it made for some really bad puns.
But if an alien had an erogenous zone and a reasonably functional method of stimulating a human erogenous zone, there was a human out there who was willing to give it the old college try, by god. And clearly that was all the Doctor had on his mind when Jack admitted he was from the fifty-first century and the Doctor got that look on his face. That Oh, you're from that century look.
Jack was up for a casual fling. He was up for a grope or a kiss or dinner and dancing with any willing soul that pinged him as even remotely attractive, and plenty who weren't but seemed like they'd be good in bed or interesting to talk to. That was just fun. But he didn't wreck homes, he didn't push, and he didn't do serious relationships without a whole bucketload of thought first.
You'd have to fill the entire TARDIS with thought before you fully identified all the issues and ramifications of seducing the last of the Time Lords. Besides, there was Rose to think about.
I was reading about people being horrified that writers called the Doctors "nine" and "ten" in fics, so I thought I'd write one where Rose gave them names. This is as far as I got.
In her head she gave him nicknames, mostly just to keep things straight, because "the doctor and the other doctor, you know, the one with the messy hair" got a bit old after a while.
She called the first one (not the first one, actually, just her first one) Nick. He looked kind of like a Nick, with a big nose and stick-out ears and a nice smile. A bit mad, a bit of a daredevil, but really very solid and dependable in the end. Someone with his feet on the ground no matter how high in the stars his head was.
She called the second one Doc, which was not original but was different from Doctor. Doc was the smart, quiet one in all the movies. The Doctor wasn't quiet, really, but Doc was a lot quieter than Nick in a kind of brain-ish way she couldn't define.
Rose always thought that Doctor (Nick) was really her Doctor because he was the one who saw her first and they'd gotten to be friends together as Rose and Doctor (Nick) before Doctor (Doc) came on the scene.
Except that now, more and more, she thought of Doctor (Doc) as hers. Not even comparatively, just, hers. If a pretty alien girl smiled at him, hers. If he was a little too nice to a human man they picked up on an adventure somewhere, hers. She'd been perfectly happy to share Doctor (Nick) with Captain Jack, and she wasn't even sure how far that sharing had gone between the pair of them, but Doctor (Doc) was hers and nobody else got to share with her.
Maybe it was because she'd been with him since he changed, was really the only person he'd known since becoming the kind of man he was (or something; he muttered sometimes about his identity and she didn't ask). Both carried the burden of whatever they had done to destroy the Daleks, but Doc carried it as a matter of course, not as a weight that might snap his bones if he gave in.
"You're looking devious," he said, glancing up from where he stood, spread-foot for balance, in front of the TARDIS controls. "Plotting a coup?"
"A coup of what?" she asked.
"Hostile TARDIS takeover."
"TAR-jacking."
He crossed his wrists and rested his head on them, leaning over, a portrait of despair. "All the races in the universe and I picked the one that invented puns."
"Don't they have puns where you're from, then?" she asked.
"We did, but we got 'em from you," he answered.
***
This was going to be a fic about Rose and Ten visiting a planet where gender-roles are reversed and people are shocked that Rose lets her man run around with his wrists showing.
"I don't do costumes," the Doctor said. "I come as I am."
Rose crossed her arms. It was hard to look stern when you were standing in front of one of the wardrobe's racks, because the wardrobe had everything you could imagine in it, and Rose couldn't imagine what the Doctor had ever needed a Pierrot hat for.
"But you have all this clothing," she said.
"Well, you pick things up here and there," he answered. He brushed back the corners of his jacket and shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers, a move he did when he was embarrassed or amused. It was totally natural; the slight brush back, the flick of the jacket's hem, and his hands hooking in his pockets. She couldn't imagine...the other Doctor, the one she still thought of as her Doctor, doing it, but it was natural and graceful now.
"But it's fun," she said.
"Is it?"
"Yeah. Like playing dress-up as a kid. Don't you want to really disappear? Not just show up in some other time, but show up and look like you belong?"
"Takes too much time, after a while," he said.
"But once or twice couldn't hurt."
"I don't do costumes," the Doctor repeated. "This is what I like."
"Don't you get tired of wearing a suit?"
"No," he replied, with just a hint of sullen playing around the corners of his mouth.
"Fine then. Don't get dressed up, but I'm going to."
He smiled, then, and she saw her Doctor for just a fraction of a second. "Yes, you should. If you like it, I mean."
"Right. Where are we? And when are we?"
"Krz'aaak," he said.
"Krz'ak?"
"No, three a's."
"How do you know I didn't say three a's?" she asked, annoyed.
"Aaak. Aaak. At the back of the throat," he said, touching his own throat in demonstration.
"And when? I mean, what should I wear? What're the women like on Krz'aak?"
"Very enjoyable," he replied.
"Doctor!"
"Aesthetically! And they're very nice people."
"What do they wear."
"Oh, well, um." He considered her, then the racks of clothing. He grabbed her hand (awkwardly, his palm across the back of hers, her Doctor did it better) and led her down one of the long aisles, into the dimmer corners of the room.
"This," he said, taking a comfortable-looking pair of trousers off the rack. "And this..."
"This? Really?" she asked, holding the shirt up to her body. It clung to her curves without even being worn.
"Right, and..." he took down a coat as well -- short, elegant and fitted. In all, Rose thought, the women of Krz'aaak (three a's) must be some of the most comfortable, chic people she was likely to meet. "There you are."
She held the clothes against her body, studying her reflection in one of the dull, half-mirror steel surfaces in this part of the ship.
"I think I'll look all right," she said. "Sure you don't want to slip into something more comfortable?"
"I'm as comfortable as they come," he replied, and left her alone to change.
Ianto's views on the team. NO idea where this was going.
In spite of the fact that Owen once helped execute the wreck of Ianto's former girlfriend and Ianto once shot Owen in the shoulder (and yes, he was aiming, hours and hours on the firing range after the others had gone, just so he would have an excuse not to go home to emptiness and gnawing, yawning pain) -- in spite of the gunplay, in other words, Ianto often found Owen the easiest person to get along with in the Hub. Owen could lie with the best of them but Ianto wasn't worth the effort, since he didn't have anything Owen wanted. Owen was past master at finding the tender places in one's ego and jabbing a finger into them, but since Ianto never reacted -- except for once, see above re: shooting him -- Owen had learned it was pointless or perilous to try it on the tea boy. Owen was entirely undependable, but Ianto never depended on anyone, so that never bothered him.
Tosh was sweet but oddly prickly sometimes, and Ianto got the sense there were depths there that would frustrate anyone who actively tried to uncover them. Gwen...he liked Gwen a lot, knew she was smarter than she often acted, but god she was so...she made him feel so cynical and old, and yet also as if he wouldn't change outlooks with her for the world.
And Jack, of course, was just ridiculously complicated and sometimes when he tried to straighten it out in his head he ended up having to take five minutes in the Information Centre upstairs just to get a breath of fresh air.
The good parts of a fic I was working on about Ianto discovering old tape-recordings of Jack during WWII, administering retcon to shell-shocked soldiers.
Ianto has a lot of time to spare, when he's working in the tourist office. There are reports to go over and such, of course, but that hardly fills the days when there's nothing-much-doing and he has to be the public face of Welsh Tourism, as if a tourist has ever shown up on his doorstep.
He has taken this time and sculpted it into something useful, whether or not the others are aware of it; Tosh might be, if she monitors his sites-visited or has a keystroke logger on the upstairs computer. He has cultivated contacts, in government and the police, which he knows Jack's aware of because Jack often asks him to make use of them to get Torchwood's butt out, as it were, of the proverbial sling.
Torchwood being what it is, he collects people, people who know about time and history. Antiques dealers on e-bay, especially those who sell pocket-watches and military ephemera; Historians; Physicists poking into the way time and space work; military re-enactment buffs. One of his acquaintances buys old cameras with undeveloped film in them and carefully makes prints to see what was worth photographing fifty, eighty, a hundred years ago.
People read what he says about time, mostly theories and conjecture, and sometimes they correct or disagree, which is always educational. You can get far more out of a person who wants to prove you're wrong than if you just tried to interview them. Others are impressed by his breadth of knowledge and diversity of acquaintance. His logical skepticism and cold reason attract the intelligent, those less obsessed with collecting alien artefacts than they are about analysing things truthfully and unromantically.
He never talks about his work. Most of them think he's an understimulated graduate student.
***
"What's going on up there?"
Ianto turns to the CCTV camera Jack must have been monitoring and shakes his head, shrugging.
"You need help?"
No, I'm fine, he mouths at the camera.
"Yell if you do. By the way, order lunch around noon, would you? Sandwiches. It'll give you an excuse to come down. I don't think you've seen what Gwen's wearing today. It's like Christmas for all of us."
Ianto smiles, nods, and shoves the menu up to the lens.
"Number three, no peppers," Jack answers.
Ianto notes it down and emails the rest of the team to ask what they'd like.
Me anticipating Ianto's smartassery.
This should not be so difficult.
Jack is good at flirting, good at making people feel desired, feel desire. He's had a lot of time to practice.
But everything he says, which would make Tosh stutter and Owen stammer and Suzie -- well, clock him one -- just bounces into some secret place in Ianto Jones' head and gets thrown back to him as return fire. He's sure Ianto doesn't intend it, but he's just unable to keep his smartarse mouth shut. Must've been one of the few bright rays at the joyless, characterless London Torchwood branch, Ianto's mouth.
Jack has never, ever encountered someone who doesn't react to him sooner or later. He's never met someone he can't make blush. It's not normal.
And then one horrifying evening when Ianto carries the pizzas in, Jack remarks, "Pizza and dessert. I like the service around here."
"Hot dessert costs extra, sir," Ianto says.
And just like that, Jack feels heat rush to his face. He hasn't felt it in years but the sensation of a blush spreading across his cheeks is unforgettable.
Ianto catches his eye as he sets down the food, smiles, and walks away.
The start of a Torchwood/SJA crossover, post-Journey's End.
Three days after the universe wasn't destroyed, Jack found a file folder on his desk where one had definitely not been the night before.
There was a tidy label in Ianto's handwriting -- they could print them up, of course, but it was faster just to write them and Ianto was in favour of efficiency over flair, despite the glorious pink shirts. It read:
SMITH, SARAH JANE
The cover-page inside the folder was Torchwood standard-issue, at least since Ianto had arrived.
AGENT OF RECORD: JONES, I.
STATUS: ONGOING
FILE TYPE: INDIVIDUAL
FILE UNDER: PERSONS OF NOTE
SEE ALSO (Individual):
SMITH, LUKE
DOCTOR, THE
LETHBRIDGE-STEWART, GORDON, BRIGADIER
SEE ALSO (Organisation):
UNIT (GENERAL)
NELSON-STANLEY, EDGAR (TORCHWOOD ONE, 1948 - 1983, RET.)
SEE ALSO (Alien Life-Forms):
Time Lord
Dalek
Slitheen
Gorgon
SEE ALSO (Case Reports):
BUBBLESHOCK INCIDENT (Agent of Record: Sato, T.)
MAGNETIC POLE-REVERSAL (Agent of Record: Harkness, J., Cptn.)
The case-reports section ran to two columns. Jack sighed and turned over the page. Apparently he wasn't the only one who was keeping track of Sarah Jane Smith anymore. Also, apparently his google-fu was not as powerful as Ianto's; shouldn't be shocking, considering that for the past hundred and fifty years Jack had been without a computer at all, and before that he'd been used to intuitive spider programs that could modify and enhance simple searches in ways 21st century researchers could only dream of. There were entries on the first page that even Jack hadn't known about.
The second page was a summary, short but dense with information. A row of photos at the bottom showed Sarah Jane, the boy she'd called her son, two other young -- very young -- people, and a house. Sarah Jane's, he assumed.
The third page was a series of digital images, though they were obviously scans of old hardcopy photographs. The young woman in the images must be Sarah Jane, which meant that the man with her was the Doctor, though not any incarnation Jack had encountered. He looked old and grim -- but, it had to be said, very fashionable. Near the bottom of the page she appeared several times with a slightly younger, slightly happier-looking man in a terrible battered coat and a huge muffler. Jack smiled fondly. She'd spanned a regeneration; must be one hell of a survivor. Not that he hadn't known that already from surveillance.
The fourth page was confusing, a series of thumbnails -- birth and inoculation records, school history, adoption papers. He flicked back to the first page. Luke Smith, adopted then -- and not legally either. The papers were good but they weren't perfect. Sarah Jane had faked up papers for a boy who apparently, according to the search histories, hadn't existed until a year ago.
The fifth page made his blood run cold.
TORCHWOOD STANDARD PROCEDURE
APPREHENSION AND RETENTION
"FREE AGENT" OPERATIVES
Torchwood One's apprehension and "retention" (imprisonment) guidelines for individuals who were taking Torchwood's duties on themselves. Below that were similar guidelines for human-hybrid individuals and escaped "experiments".
Both had been implemented originally under the founders of Torchwood; he'd been a retainee, and he knew what it meant. In the lower right corner was a post-it, again in Ianto's hand:
Jack, we need to talk.
***
"These aren't in effect anymore."
Ianto hadn't been expecting Jack's voice, certainly not at that volume, and he managed not to spill coffee all over his trousers purely by reflex-speed; he started, then jerked backwards and tipped the cup the other direction. Espresso ran all over the front of the machine instead, but at least that was easily cleaned.
"I'm putting a bell on you," he said, before turning around.
"These," Jack said, holding up the Apprehension and Retention protocols. "Burn 'em. They're not part of what we do."
"Yes, somehow they didn't seem your style," Ianto drawled. "Hence the post-it."
"You've been researching Ms. Smith."
"She's a former companion of the Doctor, and she's running what amounts to an auxiliary branch of Torchwood out of her suburban home. Seemed prudent. Especially in light of her mysterious new adopted son."
"You think she's dangerous?"
Ianto shook his head. "I think she's an opportunity."
Jack hesitated, which was gratifying. "What?"
"I'm a researcher, Jack. It's what I do. Information-sharing."
"We're a secret organisation. We don't share."
"If Cardiff had known the full scope of what London was doing -- if Whitehall had bothered to inform us about the Pharm..." Ianto shrugged. "Besides, we're going to declassify sooner or later."
"What?"
"Someday we're going to get out into space and meet some aliens and I hardly think it likely the astronauts are going to be the only ones allowed to know about it. It's fine to run about now, retconning people and breaking most civilised laws, it's what we have to do. I understand that. She's a pacifist by the way, did you know? Won't carry a gun."
"Yeah, she mentioned it."
"Seems pointless to me, but there you have it. Anyway, when we're not needed in that capacity anymore, there are two ways Torchwood can evolve."
Jack crossed his arms. "And those are?"
"Espionage, or research. Forgive me if I'd like to gently steer the attitudes of Torchwood agents to come towards the latter."
Jack frowned. "Espionage?"
"Xeno-espionage, more properly. Information gathering of a more...hostile sort. So I thought perhaps sharing would be best," he continued hurriedly, before Jack could speak again. "I'd like to interview Ms. Smith. And provide her with some of Torchwood's information."
These are two variations in ways that Jack could have seduced Nicholas; I decided against going that route, as Nicholas was perfectly fine where he was.
We do not unplug machines we do not know the function of.
Nicholas's Handwriting: "of which we do not know the function."
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Nicholas just always assumed it would be Ianto, and not Jack. Jack is his Captain, and while Ianto was once Mr. Jones, they're closer than he's ever been to Jack, as much as he idolises him.
But Ianto has pulled a long shift, and gone home to sleep in his own bed. Gwen has not pulled a long shift but she has got another life to look after now and Jack insists she needs her sleep. Martha has Tom, and Nicholas knows how easy it is to lose a sense of perspective in Torchwood, so he and Ianto double-team her to make sure she goes home at a reasonable hour, emergency apocalypses notwithstanding.
Nicholas, on the other hand, has no such reason to leave and so he stays, working his way through the to-do list in his head that is still fairly long. They really need a technician, because some of this computer stuff just can't be fixed by them, but he repairs the little things as he can and with Jack's help.
Jack is buried in wires under a Hub platform, just his legs sticking out and occasional sparks flying, and Nicholas is holding a flashlight above him so that he can see what he's doing, when something shorts out and there's a brief jerk of legs and smell of burning flesh and Nicholas sighs and pulls Jack's lifeless body out from under the platform. He gets a bottle of water, makes himself a cup of coffee, and sits down next to Jack to wait. There's the familiar gasp-and-flail a few minutes later.
Nicholas mutely holds out the bottle of water, which Jack drinks, and waits for him to get his bearings. It's always a bit traumatic when Jack dies, but he's gotten more used to it.
He thinks that this is the first time Jack has died since Tosh and Owen died. Jack is clearly thinking the same thing.
"All this life," Jack says to himself. "I'd give it away if I could."
"I'm torn," Nicholas replies. "It must be terribly lonely and sad. But at the same time...the things you must have seen. The things you will see."
Jack looks at him.
"I'd take your place if I could, Jack," Nicholas says, and then Jack is kissing him, lips thrumming with life, hands warm and tingling on either side of his face. He touches Jack's shirt, questioning, and Jack breaks the kiss.
"I just exist," Jack breathes against his cheek. "I need -- I wish -- I wish I could know I was alive."
It isn't anything like love or even whatever it is Jack and Ianto have, but Nicholas knows that this is a service he can provide, this is something he can do for his Captain, out of a different kind of love, the love he has for Torchwood. He shifts from the awkwardness of crossed-legs to kneeling, his head slightly higher than Jack's, and kisses him again. Jack gasps and makes a desperate unhappy noise and kisses back.
***
An alternate take on the same idea.
We do not interrupt Jack's private conversations.
Jack picks his moment a week later, after he and Ianto have had some kind of very intent discussion and worked out some complex issue over Gwen. Torchwood specialises in complex issues and it's amazing how many of them are caused by Gwen.
This one has nothing to do with Gwen, however, as Jack gently walks Nicholas back into a wall in a shadowed hallway. He puts one hand on the wall and leans close, but there's no malice in it. And he talks softly in Nicholas's ear.
"Understand," he says, "That I'm saying this out of respect for your twenty-first century sensibilities. And that if we were in another place and time, I wouldn't have bothered saying them. I wouldn't have had to bother."
Nicholas nods.
"The thing is, you're the closest to having a sane life of any of us. You go out. You seem to have friends. You don't seem to resent leaving them when I whistle."
Jack whistles low in his ear, and Nicholas smiles.
"And I don't want to...sully that. But at the same time, that makes you the only other person I could say this to," Jack continues. His other hand settles on Nicholas's arm, thumb sliding across his jacket. "I want you."
His voice drops, low and not -- urgent, precisely, just...full.
"I want to have you. Like a pet. Like a toy. I want to play with you, Nicholas, let Ianto unwrap you like a gift. Just once or twice. Well. Maybe three or four times. I want you to run when I whistle." Jack inhales, and it's like he's trying to breathe him. "Ianto might think you belong to him, but you're nobody's dog. Not yet," he adds with a grin. His hand slides down, settling on Nicholas's hip. Nicholas thinks he's taking his cues from the fact that Nicholas hasn't bolted yet. "You say no, there's no consequence. You say yes, there's no strings. Up to you. I'll ask Ianto's permission after I get yours."
No assumption that Nicholas would say no; but then Nicholas deduced long ago that Jack is as much confidence man as captain.
"Want to play?" Jack asks. That's his offer -- a game, with Ianto and Jack. A fun game. He already loves them, that'll never change, but lust can be misdirected pretty easily, when your mind is on your matter. And he can exercise his fascination, let Jack teach him a thing or two. Maybe even Ianto will. Ianto's full of surprises.
It'll be like his crush on Martha. Something charming that he can enjoy.
With his boss. And his boss's Captain. Oh, shit.
This is not an offer that you can answer with "I'll think about it." It's yes or no. Jack exhales against his lips, slowly.
"Yes," he says, and then, "Captain."
Jack's laugh is subtle and breathy.
This was going to be a crossover with Good Omens called The Immortals Club. It never really took off.
The wedding was held on the first reasonably fine day of 1884, and the fact that Miranda went along with Jack's idiotic scheme was only proof that she was the woman for him, till death do them part. (Well, he knew how that would go, but then so did she, and she'd still said yes, she said yes!)
"We can get your dress in London," he said, talking excitedly, still riding the thrill of the night before, asking her to marry him, forming in his mind the idea of building a real life, of being an ordinary man with a wife and a home. He took a huge bite of eggs and continued. "I'll have my suit tailored here, I know a guy. We can get flowers in Cardiff to match the dress."
"White?" Miranda asked, a mischevious look in her eye. He paused mid-chew.
"Up to you?" he ventured. "I don't care, it's only symbolism. I mean obviously I care what your wedding dress looks like, unless you don't want me to come along, but I'm pretty good about picking out this kind of -- "
He stopped, because she was laughing at him.
"I'll go to London and see what the fashion is, and if I like white best, I'll get white. You stay here -- we can't both leave the Rift at the same time, can we?" she asked sensibly. "Do you want a winter wedding?"
"I -- " he hesitated, because it was maybe a dumb idea. On the other hand, Miranda was well-known for not laughing at Jack's dumb ideas, which sometimes turned out to be genius ideas in disguise. "I thought maybe we could...I mean you can't plan anything with the Rift around."
"No, that's true," she said solemnly, eyes dancing.
"So I thought, we'll get your dress and my suit, and the first nice day in spring -- "
" -- when everyone can come, oh -- yes, Jack!"
"We could just -- grab a priest -- "
"Grab a priest!" she laughed.
"And -- and get married, in the park, somewhere nice and green," he finished, beaming. "There's a photographer's shop on Greyfriars, we can have our picture taken."
The other women of Torchwood were horrified; they might be the original pre-sixties feminists, but they still lived in a world where a woman's wedding day was a sacred occasion. Miranda steadfastly ignored their pitying expressions and instead spent all winter finding ways to show off her engagement ring.
Jack made a bargain with the local C of E vicar, an understanding soul, and soon they were wed.
Miranda died in the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 (so did Jack -- three times -- but it didn't take). He got leave from the war in time to come back to her, which was good; she stroked his hair and kissed him and made him promise not to be bitter that she was going to have an adventure he wasn't allowed on. She died hearing him laugh, which is how she would have wanted it.
He tried not to be bitter, he really did. And at least in time the hurt faded, until what he remembered most was her smile and the way she could catch anything that moved in a footrace and his stupid, wonderful idea to marry her on the first fine day in 1884.
Later -- over two millenia for him, though only a hundred years for Earth -- he realised that the day he was married he was standing not at all far from where he was also buried. It had a sort of cyclical charm that threatened to send him over into hysterical sobbing laughter, but instead he sensibly went and made Ianto make him a cup of very strong coffee.
***
Jack kicked alcohol in 1924. It wasn't very dramatic; it was boredom more than anything, and the fact that drinking oneself into oblivion felt too much like dying after a while.
That was what he told himself, at any rate. The truth of the matter is that Leona, head of Torchwood at the time, sat down with him one morning while he was nursing a hangover and told him that Torchwood could be indulgent or it could be punitive, and it was Jack's decision which it would be.
Jack stared at her in shock. "You'd lock me up again?"
"Jack, there are political forces here well beyond my control. I don't want to lock you up any more than I want to see you passed out in a gutter three nights in five, but I won't have a choice. You could leave Cardiff, of course -- "
"No."
" -- but we'd find you, you must know that. You could be kept on the edge of starvation indefinitely, weak and ineffective, chained, down in the darkness. That's what they'd like. That's what they'll get, and they'll go through me to get it, if you continue to be a security risk."
Leona was a small, hard-eyed woman with a habit of tapping her fingernails on the wood of her desk that Jack found endearingly compulsive. She could kill a man with a single shot from the maximum impact distance of three separate firearms, and she spoke eight languages. She never, ever laughed, and she was one of the only people ever to equate Jack's flirting with harassment. It was a dark few years at Torchwood while she was head, but she did keep the mortality rate down.
"Or you can straighten out your life and continue to be a productive member of Torchwood, enjoying the freedoms we've granted you," she said.
He gave her a bitter look. "Well, thank you Torchwood, I'm so very grateful."
"Don't be petty, Jack."
"Petty? Do you know how long I've worked this job?" he asked.
"Jack," she said patiently. "Arguing with me will get you nowhere."
***
1936 saw Jack Harkness working undercover as only Jack could, by being the loudest man in the room. What a pretty petit lord you would make, Jack, and wouldn't you like to go to the big city, get out of Cardiff for a while, and spend some money?
It was expedient to get out of Cardiff just then, as some people who shouldn't be asking questions were, well, asking questions. So Jack was dining at the Ritz in London, playing bait for Nazi sympathisers who, it was rumoured, were trading in alien weapons they oughtn't to have. And that was where he met Crowley.
Jack didn't know what kind of creature Crowley was and didn't care; it was just nice to be able to talk to someone who understood. Crowley was much older than him, Jack knew that at least, but Jack had lived more -- he was real and human and warm, whereas Crowley was something Other, and didn't much deign to come down to Humanity's level. Except for people like Jack.
***
Sometime in the eighties, Crowley brought a date ("No he isn't." "Yes he is." "He is not." "Well, he wants to be." "He doesn't!") and Jack would have felt like a third wheel, except that Fell remembered him, and anyway never made anyone feel like a third wheel. After that they were three. Three is practically a society. Jack took to calling it the Immortals Club.
***
When Fell and Crowley were in Cardiff, which wasn't all that frequent, they went down to Jack's favourite pub (it closed in 2009 and reopened as a chain burger bar, sad day) and Crowley sampled the local Welsh microbrews while Jack scoffed chips and flirted with Fell, who drank tea composedly and smiled at everyone.
***
In 2015 the Doctor got stranded on Earth for eighteen months and they relaxed the rules to allow near-immortals to join. It felt like treason because the whole point was knowing you were never going to die, but the Doctor was lonely and he made a good drinking companion.
Sometimes the fortuneteller girl happened to be around, and Crowley would buy her a Coke and talk serious business with her at a booth while Jack and Fell got into metaphysical arguments at the bar and the Doctor, if he was around, smiled sadly at them.
***
In 2290 Cardiff was leveled with the permanent closing of the Rift, and time went sideways for just a few months. When it righted itself Jack found that the last thing to fall through the Rift before it closed forever was a man named Ianto Jones, who'd disappeared from Wales completely in 2012. It was ten years before they noticed Ianto wasn't aging, and Crowley actually invented a ritual for inductment into the Immortals' Club.
Fell said it was scandalous and Satanic, and Crowley said this was the point, and Jack stood back a little with his arm around Ianto's waist and let them bicker. By then they were working out of London, so the Club was a pretty regular thing, barring Ianto's frequent trips to Russia to deal with the alien colonists who'd settled on the Steppes.
The Doctor passed by once in a while, and they always convened the Club for him, which made him go sheepish and a little stammery.