InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "There is no mercy."

Shannon Rutherford (ballerinadreams) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-05-05 13:28:00

Entry tags:

!dropped, day 06, jack harkness, location: gas station, shannon rutherford, the doctor (ten)

Day Six - Evening
Who: Jack Harkness, the Doctor, and Shannon Rutherford
What: Chance meeting with a healthy side of Weevils
When: Day Six, evening (after sun down)
Where: Gas Station/Convenience Store
Rating: TBA but probably at least PG-13
Status: Active

Karma was a real bitch. As well as the previous day had gone for Shannon, by the end of the evening, it had turned right back around and today was not much better. As if it wasn't bad enough not only waking up naked with a complete stranger, she'd compounded it by letting herself fall into the belief that he had been someone else entirely, only to turn around and insinuate that he was a rapist and a stalker. That whole situation had been beyond embarrassing and she didn't like to think about it. Way to start off on the wrong foot. Then the whole thing with Dean had gone downhill far faster than it had gotten to the top of the hill to begin with and that made her stomach unsettle with nerves when she thought of it, so that too was pushed away.

She'd gone to the gas station yesterday to stock up on water and breakfast bars, but she'd gotten interrupted pleasantly by getting sidetracked by the travel-sized toiletries and then by meeting up with Domeki again. She'd all but completely forgotten to finish stocking her backpack. Now, it was fucking cold outside and her stomach was rumbling with hunger, not to mention the fact that she was thirsty. So, Shannon layered the tank top she'd arrived in with a long-sleeved shirt she'd found at the thrift store as well as her own sweater and lastly the hoodie pulled down over the whole of it all. The hood was pulled up over her head and the strings drawn tightly to keep the cold off her head and ears when she walked the short trek alone to the gas station, with her chin tucked down and her arms around herself as she shivered.

As soon as she was inside, she untied and pushed back the hood, shuddering against the cold as the door closed behind her. Her eyes went briefly to the trash can she and Jay had lit a fire in a few days ago. It seemed like forever since then. Shannon wasn't terribly in love with the idea of going back out in the cold very soon, so actually, she didn't think that starting a new trash can fire was such a bad idea. She could hang out here for a little bit and warm up before going back. And one of these days, when the weather wasn't so shitty, maybe she'd actually remember to steal the trash can to make a fire back at the museum...

Crossing the convenience store, Shannon picked up a bottle of lighter fluid and a few packs of the car-wash towels she'd found before, making her way back to the trash can. She ripped open the packages of the towels and dropped half of them in before squirting them with lighter fluid and picking up a lighter from the counter. Striking it, she lit one end of one of the remaining towels and when it went up, she dropped it, too, into the trash can, the bottle of lighter fluid wrapped in it, and scrambled back in time to avoid being in the line of fire when the flames shot up into the air from inside the trash can. Once the flames had calmed a little, Shannon started picking up broken pieces left over from the stool that had been and dropped them into the fire. Standing in front of the trash can, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to keep warm, Shannon suddenly realized how very, very alone she was in this horrible place, no matter what Sam Winchester said to make her stop crying two nights previous, nor what Jay told her to keep her from starting to cry earlier that same day.

"God, I hate it here..." she mumbled to herself, dipping her head slightly to catch some of the fire's heat on her face.

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fromgallifrey
2009-05-07 10:34 pm UTC (link)

The Captain, it appeared, thought he would yet again turn on the charm and try and work his ways on Shannon. "Jack," The Doctor scolded, he didn't even need to say what he was thinking - he was certain after so many encounters with Jack thus far, Jack was fully aware what his tone implied.

"Old fashioned? I'd say it's more like a classically designed model," his brow crimped a bit wondering if Jack really meant to call the old girl old-fashioned. She was, after all, traveling in a time millennia before she was even invented.

"Of course it exists," He wasn't quite sure where to expound upon beyond that. Was this really the right time to tell her that he'd two hearts, a respiratory bipass system and the ability to regenerate? The Doctor was thinking not quite yet.

The Doctor was about to remark about the novelty of his TARDIS when he stopped short -- was that some rattling just outside the window? "Shhhhh - he said, raising a finger to his lips and making eyes at Jack to try and direct his attention.

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-07 10:59 pm UTC (link)

Shannon blushed slightly and smirked back at Jack. Without looking back at the Doctor when she heard the scolding tone in his voice, she moved to tuck her hair again with her free hand. "I don't mind," she said simply. Because what woman would mind that sort of attention from a good looking, self-assured man like Jack?

"What's it look like on the outside?" Shannon asked, looking back at the Doctor. "You drew the inside..." she pointed out. Her eyes flitted back to Jack and she smirked again, raising her eyebrows. "I'm starting to believe just about anything. I meant 'seriously' the coat," she clarified. "It's a bit much, don'tcha think?" Being a bit flirtatious herself, Shannon winked at him and opened her mouth to make another remark on his sense of fashion before being interrupted by the Doctor shushing them both.

She shut up immediately and strained her ears for whatever sound the Doctor thought he'd heard. For a few moments there was nothing, and then she, too, heard a rattling sound outside. And then, a second later, a low sad-sounding wail. Shannon froze. She knew that sound already quite well. It was the sound that the Weevils, as Jack had called them, had made to call out to one another. Her breath caught and then she sighed. "I'll get the beer..." she muttered with a frown and a roll of her eyes.

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capt_harkness
2009-05-07 11:18 pm UTC (link)

Oh, yes, he had heard the tone -- but Jack was also quite good at ignoring the scolding tone. Particularly when he'd heard it so many times before. And besides, as Jack pointed in Shannon's direction, she was enjoying it -- or so his expression stated.

Jack had meant to call the TARDIS that, if only for what she looked like, not implying that the machine itself was old fashioned. "It looks like... well, it looks a Police Call Box, circa nineteen-sixty." Jack, once more, smoothed down the greatcoat, and posed, as if checking himself out in a mirror. "It's not at all 'a bit much'. First of all, it's an officer's greatcoat." He pointed to the shoulders. "Captain by the braidings. And is the authentic, genuine article from nineteen-forty. And warm as helltoo."

He'd heard the sound too and had already flicked his gaze towards the window when the Doctor made eye-contact with him. And the sound. "They're mourning," Jack muttered under his breath. "They're... not used to deaths amongst their numbers. It's the cry of mourning."

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fromgallifrey
2009-05-07 11:31 pm UTC (link)

"I haven't quite got round to fixing the chameleon circuit yet," he said, trying to defend the appearance of his TARDIS for the moment. He could fix it if he wanted to. Perhaps he was just used to the Police Box exterior by now. Perhaps even liked it - made it quite easy to find the TARDIS when he wanted to.

Jack was back to talking about his coat - and from the looks of it, he had another case of flirtatious revelry on his hands. Again. He'd been too slow this time - next time he'd better nip it in the bud.

"Mourning. The Doctor repeated, letting the term roll around his mind. "There's no need to kill them, Jack. Who's idea is that? No reason they can't just be herded off out of town and into the forest once we have the right tolls..." The Doctor's mind was flitting to the pharmacy - perhaps there they'd find the correct compounds of Weevil repellent.

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-08 12:51 am UTC (link)

Looking back and forth between the two men, Shannon's eyebrows remained arched both with curiosity and amusement. It was almost as though they were having a silent tiff with one another; if she didn't know better, she'd think they were trying to impress her and while she wasn't sure about Jack, she felt she knew the Doctor well enough to know that if he'd wanted to impress her, he wouldn't have waited this long to try it. It was always amusing, though, to watch two grown men gently trying to one-up one another. At least it looked like that to her.

Her focus went to Jack again when he started talking about the coat again, defending it, she supposed. To each their own. It wasn't really what she'd consider at all fashionable, but he seemed proud of it and it suited him, somehow, so she gave him a tight-lipped, slightly amused grin and nodded. "Looks warm," she repeated appreciatively. Even as she said it, she went back to rubbing her hands together over the trash bin fire.

While Shannon had initially - and even just then - thought that the sound was sad, she hadn't really thought about it until Jack said it out loud. The creatures were mourning their lost comrades. It seemed grossly primitive, but at the same time, so intelligent. Shannon's eyes flitted downward guiltily. She hadn't hurt them before, at least. She felt better about that now even if the credit had gone to Dean for distracting them by spraying the beer; she'd wanted to beat them around the heads with a tree branch. Suddenly she felt very badly about that.

The Doctor's comment caught her attention again, though, and she looked not at him, but at Jack. "You never did say what you needed, I don't think," she said softly. "For the concoction you'd mentioned for them. Nothing here would work huh?" Shannon really, really didn't like the idea of sleeping in the gas station all night, but she had a feeling maybe only the beer thing was going to fly with somebody like Dean. It wasn't that she didn't want to spend time with the Doctor or, for that matter, Jack - even if she didn't know him at all, really - but the idea of spending the night coaxing them into wedging her between them on a grungy, sticky floor rather than back on her carefully hand-swept floor in the museum with Sam keeping her warm didn't make her very happy.

"So what do we do?" she asked, looking back at Jack and raising her eyebrows. "You're the expert, right? Will they just go away...?" Or are we stuck here for the night? she thought but didn't actually ask.

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capt_harkness
2009-05-08 10:47 am UTC (link)

"Never said I didn't like it, now did I?" Jack shot back. Hell, he did like it, but it didn't mean he wouldn't give the Doctor a good ribbing every now and then over it either. The silent tiff was more like an ongoiong argument between them -- Jack still didn't understand why the Doctor believed a simple 'hullo' was equivalent to flirting. A hello was nothing more than a hello. Really.

Jack was proud of the greatcoat and it did suit him: an out of time coat for the man not of his own time. Fitting, if one really gave it much thought. "I could help with that," Jack said, an impish smiling settling on his face. He took a step towards her and the makeshift flame, dropping his arm around her shoulder with a full-on grin. "More than enough extra body heat to go around." Now the Doctor could chide him for the flirting.

The smile faded from his face, however, as the talk turned to the Weevils. "I don't know. I've only heard the sound several times before but there's no mistaking it. I've heard of several who are killing them, mostly because they don't know what they are. They're alien and aggressive, of course the first reaction is murder." Jack drew his lips into a thin line, looking at the Doctor. "I've never killed one. Captured, yes. Studied, yes, but not killed." As if to say 'my Torchwood wasn't the bad one'.

"There's two options. Either I can go out there and distract them long enough for you both to escape or we stay here the night." His arm dropped from Shannon's shoulders as he backed away, slowly walking through the aisles. "If there was anything like mace around here, it would be a decent start. Cleaning supplies too would help but the problem is pressurising it."

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