InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "sweet moses in a handbasket"

Rose M. Tyler (jeopardysfriend) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-08-18 23:40:00

Entry tags:

!shelved, day 19, jack harkness, location: gym, rose tyler

Who: Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness
What: Rose wants answers
When: Day 19, around 10:00pm
Where: The gymnasium (or just outside it)
Rating: Be safe, go with R
Status: Active

Rose read Jack's reply and closed her journal. It had been a long day. A good one, overall. Spending the day playing dragons and Ninja Turtles and Tag and reading stories and having snack time... She really had enjoyed the day surrounded by six year-olds. Each one so different, each one having fun in their own ways, depending on where they were from, and what time period.

Now, though, it was late, and nearly all the children had worn themselves out. Rose walked through the room, pausing at each cot and making sure if the child wasn't asleep, that they didn't need anything. From time to time she stopped, rubbing Dora's back gently or brushing back Andy's wild curls. With any luck at all, this would go like most experiments and in the morning, they'd wake to find the children had resumed their adult forms. But for now, she would make sure they were taken care of.

But her eyes kept drifting, and she stopped and watched the little boy from Gallifrey sleep. It was definitely John Smith's miniature. From his little brown trenchcoat to the itty bitty red Chucks on his feet, if he were any more John Smith she'd probably cry. But she couldn't disregard what she'd read in his journal, either. She couldn't detect the hearts beating beneath the tiny blue suit, no, but how many from Earth knew of TARDISes? And what were the chances that she'd learn more of Gallifrey from a six year-old than the man she'd traveled with so far?

She longed to touch him. To smooth back that lock of brown that fell into his face, or to soothe his sleep in some way or another. But she feared he might be a light sleeper, and there'd be far too many questions to answer. Questions Sarah Jane could apparently answer but she couldn't.

But there might be one person who could. The one other person besides the Doctor that she trusted. And she didn't trust herself to ask the Doctor. Not without exploding in temper, waking the children, and having even more questions to answer.

So she made her way outside and sat against the wall, close enough that she could hear if someone from inside called her, but far enough outside that she could breathe. And she waited.

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capt_harkness
2009-08-20 07:07 pm UTC (link)

"You do," Jack replied. Well, she did mostly, right? There wasn't too much of him that had changed dramatically. Personalities but deep down, both men were still the same Doctor. "He is and he isn't the same man -- but he'll always be the Doctor. I don't think he could be anything but no matter how strange it sounds." Jack would have loved to hear that Rose thought him similar to the Doctor in their words.

They hadn't meant to hurt her and Jack had never intended it to hurt her so badly. And, really, the fact that Jack was in on it should have told them they should have covered their tracks a lot better. Jack was involved, but was following orders -- a man Jack thought more of than anything in the world. Rose should have known Jack would do whatever the Doctor said.

He could tell the kiss didn't make things better, but for once didn't try to push his luck further. Instead, he just held her, whispering words of comfort in her ear and wishing he knew a bit more Welsh. That was what always calmed him down any more.

"I can't..." Jack shook his head. "It's from your future. Your very near future." Jack closed his eyes, resting his chin against the top of her head. "You won't look at me the same."

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jeopardysfriend
2009-08-20 07:31 pm UTC (link)

"But I didn't know he could... He never told me. I thought... And the other day I asked, and he said he could... But not...like this." Her words were broken, her voice was weak. None of this made any sense.

But in some ways, it made all the sense in the world. All of the pieces were coming together, finally. The picture in the middle of the puzzle was visible, and though she didn't enjoy the image, she felt some comfort in knowing it was there. "It really is him, then," she said quietly. "They're the same man. He's the one who comes after the death cheat."

She leaned her head against him, quieter now as she thought. He couldn't die? And it was an event that had happened in her time. "I was there?" she said quietly. "When...this happened? All of it?" Fine, he couldn't give her details. Whatever. She still wanted to know. "I'd never look at you differently. Not a bit."

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capt_harkness
2009-08-20 08:25 pm UTC (link)

Her words were broken but Jack didn't know what to say that could pull Rose back together. All he could do was hold her close and hope that bit was enough... even if it didn't feel like it was. Jack rhythmically rubbed her back, trying to pass on whatever bit of comfort he could give her, but feeling as if he were failing in that regard.

"Yes, they're the same man," he said simply. "One in the same."

But the Doctor had said no more lies, by omission or otherwise. So, it seemed, Jack was going to be the one to break the bad news to her. He just hoped she could completely handle it.

"You were there, but I don't think you ever remembered it later," Jack replied. "I don't even know what all happened. The Doctor sent you back to Earth and I ran off to die. Last man standing I was..." He looked away from her, staring off into the distance, talking about something he constantly relived but never wanted to remember. "One of them killed me and all there was... was Darkness. And then? Then I came back. Woke up and I thought, maybe it had missed me. Maybe its power was dying and I wasn't actually killed. I ran after the Doctor just as the TARDIS disappeared." Jack held up the fake wrist strap and shook his head. "Took one last trip and managed to make it back to earth in about the eighteen-hundreds."

Now for the kicker.

"About ten years later I travelled to Ellis Island. Was shot in the chest. Woke up a few hours later in the morgue. Few more deaths later, one by a javelin... and I learned the awful truth: I can't die."

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jeopardysfriend
2009-08-20 11:19 pm UTC (link)

She genuinely didn't know what to say. He'd silenced her tears, at least, as she listened to the terrifying tale. Jack, her sweet, loving Jack, could never die. And she knew how some would consider that a blessing. Immortality, being able to live through anything... It would sound brilliant to some.

But he looked about the same age as his own daughter. His grandson would grow older than Jack would. His wife, who he'd obviously loved, had died. And Ianto, and Rose herself, would someday die, leaving him entirely alone.

Rose had been forced to come to terms with her own mortality throughout the last two days. Knowing the Doctor would live on long after she'd died, certainly put things into perspective. "What happens now?" She asked, though she knew her words had no true answer. "I don't even know what to say to him. Either of them." That took some thought, too. She had to face not just one Time Lord, but two. And she truly had no idea how.

"I love you, you know that?". Yes, a part of her was angry. But she knew there'd been a reason for Jack to keep his secrets. "I told Ianto you'd gone from Con Man to hero...I just had no idea how much."

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capt_harkness
2009-08-22 06:02 am UTC (link)

Someone needed to say something because Jack was just about all talked out. He didn't know what else he could say, other than wanting to know what was running through her mind right now. The silence wasn't good for Jack, not in something like this.

There was a time when Jack would have thought immortality was really fucking cool. Right now, though, Jack hated it. He hated the number of friends and lovers he'd buried over the years. He hated knowing that everyone he loved was going to die one day and he'd keep soldiering on. He was just as much the lonely angel as the Doctor -- he just hid it a helluva lot better than the Doctor did. Dance with enough people and one builds up the perfect illusion that you don't care. Jack had his system all worked out.

"What happens now?" Jack shrugged. "I really don't know. I don't know what you should say to them and I wish I had that answer. Maybe Ianto'd know, he's the one who, supposedly, knows everything. Or at least that's what he keeps telling me." He sighed, closing his eyes and just took a moment to himself. It was so rarely that he talked about what happened on Satellite 5 that, really, only Ianto knew the truth -- and he didn't even know the whole truth.

Jack opened one eye and then the other, looking down at Rose. "I do know," he said softly, bending down to kiss her forehead. "Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't better off as the Con Man." He shook his head and sighed, thinking of the man who was in the bedroom back at the museum. But had he stayed the Con-Man, he'd never have gotten Ianto in his life, as sappy as that sounded.

"And I love you too," Jack said, the words coming surprisingly easier than they were to say to his lover. Fancy that. "You understand, though... why I didn't tell you, right?"

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jeopardysfriend
2009-08-22 06:17 am UTC (link)

Rose nestled into his hold once more, smiling a little. It was tiny. It was far from the cheerful woman she usually was. It was even a far cry from the bubbly caregiver the children in the gymnasium had witnessed. But still, it was a smile at least. A start. The truth was out, and slowly but surely, the healing would begin. No one could say how long it would take her to come to terms with the secrets revealed in the last forty-eight hours. But at least it could start.

Maybe some wouldn't, but Rose could understand why it was easier to say those special words to her than to Ianto. They weren't intimately close. It was the sort of love one had for a brother or sister, or a very close friend...just with the occasional kissing and the understanding that each found the other unreasonably attractive. That's just the way they were. Time and space and Daleks and dimensions and all sorts of other things between her time and his had torn the two apart, but nothing could ever truly keep her from caring deeply for Captain Jack Harkness.

Did she understand, though? "It wasn't fair," she told him, looking at him carefully. "Putting you in the middle the way he did. And... I know that...well, we shouldn't even be here. Knowing what I do...there should be...I think they were called reapers. Trying to mend the inbalance of time." Boy, did she remember that. She'd never forget the horror that rose into her throat, thinking the Doctor had been attacked for good, dying for her and for her parents. And all of time.

"There's something really wrong about this place, Jack," she finally said quietly. "More than the usual 'we've been kidnapped, oh no'. It's... It's weird. We should probably all be dead for knowing what we do. It doesn't belong, you know? Sigma...you know. Little John. Doctor Junior?" She rolled her eyes despite the situation. "He said how much they could destroy if they really got ahold of the TARDIS. How much trouble are we in, really?"

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capt_harkness
2009-08-25 05:50 am UTC (link)

It felt like part of the crisis had been averted with the way Rose cuddled against him once more. It was like he would always be able to calm her down and make her see reason and with an arm around her shoulders, the two of them could face the world head on and come out on top. Jack had told the Doctor from the get-go that he needed to tell Rose the truth and that hiding this was going to be bad for all the parties involved. Turned out (as always) Jack Harkness was correct. As always.

No, they weren't intimately close -- though Jack would argue that he wouldn't mind such a relationship existing between the two of them. But she was, at the very least, like a sister to him and one that he would protect until his dying day. And given just how long that was from happening... Still, Jack may love to kiss Rose but, deep down, his heart was tied to the Welshman back in the museum. Flirt and screw around as he did, his heart was firmly in the hands of one Ianto Jones -- he just wasn't up to admitting that point yet.

"No, perhaps it wasn't," Jack allowed, "but usually the middle is a very fun place to be." Why yes, there was a bit of a leer there. "That's why he didn't want to tell you. And I accepted those reasons because, for all my faults, I know what I was taught at the Time Agency. You don't fuck with Time. That was rules one through six, eight and fourteen point six. But learning about this place as we have? That's why we took the chance." Jack sighed, shaking his head. "He'd risk your ire with him for the rest of your life in order to keep this rag-tag group of people safe. Because he knows that, once you've cooled off, you'll understand."

What the hell? Jack Harkness, marriage counsellor?

Jack shuddered and nodded. "There is. None of us have put it together but part of me thinks they do have the TARDIS under their control. There are different races here and people shouldn't be able to understand one another, and yet we all can. If someone actually fixed the chameleon circuit the Doctor never wanted to fix, the TARDIS could be here and right under our very noses... and we'd never fucking know the difference."

And that, right there, was one hell of a scary thought indeed.

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jeopardysfriend
2009-08-25 02:24 pm UTC (link)

Oh, the crisis had definitely been averted where Jack was concerned. He'd fessed up. He'd confirmed her belief, and her worst fear, and he'd held her through it. She'd survive this, if only because of him. It was more than either of the Doctors could say. And they'd pay for that, if only through her silence and anger.

"Okay, I get it," she all but growled, but the fight was gone from her voice. Fact was, she was exhausted. The emotional strain of the day on top of caring for a bunch of shorties had taken its toll. And then there was little Theta Sigma. Damn him for being precious and winning her heart. "I get it, the world would've, should've fallen apart for me knowing. That doesn't mean I'm not mad, Jack. If it mattered so much, he never should have come near me. He should have kept to himself. And the other one..." She could've even call him her Doctor anymore. That was why 'John Smith' had gone around calling him that. He was the one she knew, John's Doctor wasn't. Dammit, she'd been blind.

Still... "It can't be under our noses," she said with the tiniest hint of a grin. "Or our resident Time Lord would've found it. And I don't mean the adult. I found little Sigma checking out every single doorway we had in this place," she said nodding to the gym behind her. "If they have it, it's concealed some other way. Maybe just above us." Rubbing her temples, she sighed. "I don't know, Jack. We talked and...he's right. Even at his age he knows the power they have if they've got the TARDIS. But how?" Nothing pissed her off more than not knowing. And now there was something new to not know. "She only responds to him. She always has. And he only gives a key to a select few, you know that." Hers was currently on a chain around her neck, where she'd carried it since the day he'd given it to her.

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capt_harkness
2009-08-27 04:56 am UTC (link)

And for that, Jack was very glad. There were a few people here he couldn't deal with being pissed at him and Rose was one of them. Besides, they were like girlfriends and how could they stay pissed off at one another? They couldn't, that's how. Jack, however, didn't know what was going to happen with the aftermath with Nine -- Ten had said he could tell her but it was hard to say about the other Doctor.

Jack could hear the note of defeat in her voice and instead of keeping her where she was, Jack gathered Rose into his arms and settled her into his lap. He murmured sweet nothings in her hair and rubbed her back and did all the things a good lover would do for his woman. "He tried keeping away from you, Rose," Jack said softly. "I know he did and I know he wanted to. All the men in your life will say the same thing." He gently kissed her forehead, tilting her head up so she was looking at him. "That you are an unstoppable force of nature we're all drawn to irrevocably. Yes, even me."

However, Jack had his lover: a man he was absolutely smitten with beyond words.

"Trust me, I know the Doctor's torn this place apart -- six year old self or not. And I don't know the how or what the did to conceal it -- only that they must have and it's driving us all batty. And the more they do to us the easier it is to freak out about things and good god when did I become a voice of reason?" Jack shook his head and sighed. "I know. And when he doesn't give you a key, you latch on to the outside of the TARDIS and hope for the best."

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