A Torchwood Christmas Carol
a Torchwood story
by RoadrunnerGER
Disclaimer: The usual, the BBC owns them, unless they are willing to give them as Christmas present to us. A Christmas Carol is written by the adored Charles Dickens. This is to honour both of them and the actors playing our favourite characters so well.
Summary: "You'll be haunted by three spirits," the apparition told Jack… Captain Jack gets scrooged. Enjoy.
A/N: Hello, and Merry First Advent! Welcome to the Torchwood Christmas Special 2008. LOL It's A Torchwood Christmas Carol, featuring Captain Jack Harkness as Scrooge! Meet all your favourite characters, old friends and new enemies in this adaptation of Charles Dickens's Christmas classic. Expect the three spirits on the following Advent Sundays.
Enjoy! And have yourselves a happy Advent season. :)
A Long Awaited Encounter
Captain Jack Harkness was not as dead as a doornail: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
Since his escape from the future he encountered many deaths, but not one ever lasted, so whatever was particularly dead about a doornail, it could not be applied to Captain Jack Harkness.
As it happened that the device that brought him to the planet Earth of the year 1869 of its supposed superior inhabitants called human race did not work anymore Captain Jack was stranded there with no way to get back to where he came from or to contact the one who had been there with him.
And time was passing.
Time.
Time was relative.
Time was said to flow and could be measured in different units.
Time was supposed to be a straight thing.
Time was divided in past, present and future.
Time was a constant in the universe.
Time was fragile.
What happens when the effect exists before the cause?
Time should never lead to a paradox.
Time passing could be perceived in different ways.
This was a day of the year 2007 that did not seem to pass at all. While some people hurried around, going shopping or preparing a business meeting, feeling like time would fly, it would not pass for others.
Captain Jack Harkness slumped into the chair at the head end of the table after their debriefing.
He was exhausted.
And he was one of those who thought this day would never end.
When the rift-alert sounded they were one man short because Owen still was at the hospital at that time, recovering from his fight with the weevil in the combat cage. So each of them had to give everything to keep the Millenium Bugs in check that came through the rift in a whole swarm. Jack called their species Millenium Bugs since he fought one on New Year's Eve 1999 to 2000. He remembered that night like it was yesterday. Hey, he had shouted, coming in through the cog door. When you joked about the Millennium Bug, I didn't realise it was gonna have 18 legs stacked with poison. Anyone home? Hey! You know you're supposed to party like it's... The words had died in his throat and not a minute later Alex was dead and Jack the heir of Torchwood Cardiff.
That New Year's Eve had been one of the nights that had put him off parties of any kind. Jack knew how to enjoy himself but major events like New Year's Eve, Easter, or Christmas, feasts he never experienced while growing up, held no attraction for him. He knew that they were the most important holidays of the people he was living among, but he never had been part of them.
Back when he was young Jack knew other holidays, so he could understand what fascinated the others about them, but the traditions and religions they celebrated were not his own. As Jack never got involved with someone so close that he would be made a part of the feast he had no emotional connection to them.
So he was happy for his team members that they enjoyed the holidays and happy with himself as long as he was left alone.
Jack was so bloody tired and that was not only due to fighting the Millenium Bugs. He was tired in a more universal sense. Whenever a major holiday approached he became tired of his own existence. Being forced to live on when he had to let go of anyone he cared for was torture for him. So he withdrew to the point that he hurt others with it. But he remained oblivious, so the behaviour continued year after year.
The proximity alarm sounded and the cog door rolled open to let Owen in. Everyone looked round in surprise. None of them had expected to see him so soon at the Hub but they still greeted him affectionately. Well, at least the girls showed their affection, Gwen running up to him and pulling him into a bear hug that made him wince and Toshiko beaming up at him from her workstation, offering him to order him some of his favourite takeaway or coffee.
Coffee was Ianto's cue.
The young Welshman appeared on top of the stairs leading to the kitchen area. Searching Owen's gaze he held up a big mug and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Owen nodded appreciatively and Ianto went to pour him a cup.
Jack had watched the scene standing with his arms crossed over his chest at the glass walls of the board room. His abrasive posture was something he assumed subconsciously. Even though he knew how to use his charms or his scary side to achieve what he wanted in the field he seldom could bring himself to show his true emotions.
Still that did not mean that he had no emotions.
Jack had deep and powerful feelings. Unfortunately he had learned that he had to control them. So he dealt only superficially with any kind of relationship. His exuberant behaviour mostly was cursory.
Now he saw Ianto and Owen go down to the vaults. He had an uneasy feeling that Owen intended to go to the cages where Janet, their resident weevil, was locked up. Maybe he needs that confrontation, Jack thought. He's in so much emotional pain. I can understand why he tried to extinguish it by fighting with a weevil. I shouldn't have sent him undercover into that fight club, but he was the only one they did not know yet.
Owen had lost the woman he loved. Again.
Jack knew how that felt. He knew it only too well. He never wanted to experience it again.
Toshiko settled back down at her workstation and Gwen sank into the sofa diagonally behind her. Jack saw them talk and joke with each other. Ianto emerged from the vaults and joined them. They seemed to have a lot of fun.
Jack yearned to be with them, but he did not allow himself that luxury. As much as he loved them as much did he know that he should not get too closely attached. It was an oxymoron. Jack could not explain it, but even though he felt drawn to his team he also felt an overpowering urge to avoid them.
He did not know how much time he had left with them. He had to prepare them for the fight he knew lay ahead of them. Because it was likely that he would not be here anymore when the time came to fight.
Jack had waited for so long. The man he waited for could arrive any day now. And when he came he would go with him.
Once more Jack's gaze was drawn to his team. Owen was back from the vaults now and they all sat together, joking and laughing. Graciously Ianto rose from his seat and went over to the spiral staircase. He came up to the catwalk and Jack knew where he was headed. A few seconds later Ianto entered the board room.
"You coming downstairs?" he asked. "You're obviously not busy, so you have no excuse this time."
"I don't feel like socializing," Jack said.
"I'll make us coffee," Ianto offered. "Industrial strength."
That was an offer he could not withstand. "Thanks, Ianto. I'll be with you in a few minutes, okay?"
"Okay."
Ianto left and, after standing and watching for a short while longer, Jack left the board room to join his team.
"What are your plans for tomorrow?" Gwen asked, looking at Tosh, but directing her question to all of her co-workers.
"I'll go and visit my mom and tad," Ianto said.
"I'm invited to a Christmas party," Tosh told them. "Former fellow student invited me. I met her at the supermarket. It's funny. I haven't seen her for years, but we could still talk just like the old days. So I'll go, I think."
"I'm going to celebrate with Rhys and his family," Gwen told them. "What about you, Owen?"
"Nothing special," the doctor grumbled. "Meet with a friend, I guess."
"Jack?"
She's not nosy, is she? Jack thought. "I'll keep an eye on the Rift," he said.
"Oh, really? You're not serious, are you?" Gwen said heatedly. "I thought Ianto invited you to come with him, to his family."
Ianto blushed crimson red. Jack could see the blood rise in his cheeks. The truth was that Ianto had wanted to ask Jack to accompany him, but did not know how and shied back from doing it, so this was the first Jack had heard about the offer.
He was stunned.
He never doubted that they cared for him. He knew they did. It had just never occurred to him that any of them would want to invite him to come along for something special like a Christmas dinner. To Jack's mind those were occasions usually reserved solely for their family, and probably closest friends, and although he got on well with all of his team, he would never have thought to include himself in that category.
"We could still have our own Christmas party here," Gwen suggested. "Each of us brings something to eat, we order something in addition, and then we'll have a good time together before we go to our respective parties."
"Speak for yourself, PC Cooper," Owen grumbled. "As long as there's no Rift alert tomorrow, I'll be out of here as soon as I can."
"Oh, c'mon, Owen. It could be fun! And Jack wouldn't sit down here all on his own."
"Maybe Jack prefers to be alone," Jack threw in. "You'll go ahead and have a good time and I'll take care of the Rift. I guarded it alone for several years before I hired Suzie, so I'll manage for one night."
When he looked around from one to the other to seek their confirmation his gaze also met Ianto's and he stopped.
The Welshman's blue eyes were full of concern and Jack was not sure what to make of that.
"Okay, kids. Everything's silent tonight. Why don't you just go home? Christmas time's a busy time. C'mon. Go!"
And while the others reluctantly left the Hub to go home to boyfriend, parents or Christmas party, Jack stayed behind in his office. He was doing paperwork until the words started to swim before his eyes. Deciding he needed a break Jack went out into the central Hub and to the storage where Ianto kept Myfanwy's food. Jack called the pterodactyl and she flew down to him from her nest. Perching on the handrail of the catwalk she devoured her dinner and enjoyed some of Jack's petting before she took off again. After a glance at his watch Jack decided that at that time the chances of being seen rising from the Plass were slim and so he opened the hatch. Myfanwy shrieked once before she vanished in the night's sky.
"Merry Christmas," Jack grumbled to himself, not being in Christmas mood at all.
When he went down the walkway to return to his office his attention got caught by bubbling sounds and when Jack searched for the source he spotted the jar with the Doctor's hand.
The liquid inside seemed to boil.
"Doctor?" Jack asked tentatively, looking around the Hub. Then he darted to Toshiko's workstation, checking on the CCTV, but he could not find the TARDIS. If the Doctor really was there, and the reaction of his hand was any indication that he was, then the blue police box should stand right in front of the water tower.
But it was not there.
And when Jack looked at the jar again the bubbling had ceased. Had it ever really bubbled? Or had it just been his overactive imagination; fuelled by not enough sleep and, although he would never admit it, the desire to be with people he felt truly close to?
Pouting Jack slumped into Toshiko's chair. This just was not fair. He waited for so long and now all he got was a false alarm.
"It's not fair!" Jack yelled at the empty Hub as he jumped up from the chair. He dropped his voice to barely above a whisper, "It's not fair."
Tired from the struggle with his emotions rather than from his actual day's work Jack returned to his office from where he climbed down through the hatch to his quarters. Still dressed like he was, Jack dropped down on the bed. Before he could even remove his shoes, he was fast asleep.
xXx
A deafening, grinding sound woke Jack not much later. Thrown back by the Hub's walls the Tardis's whine even intensified. Did the ship land inside the Hub?
Almost trembling with anxiety and excitement Jack jumped out of his bed and up the ladder into his office. Looking around he realized that he was mistaken. The Tardis was nowhere to be seen. Once more he went to check the CCTV. Nothing on the Plass either.
"I must be going mad. Hallucinating," Jack murmured to himself. "I'm seeing and hearing the Tardis when it's nowhere to be seen."
That was when he heard a pretty unfamiliar voice, "Can't you see me, Captain?"
Jack spun around, automatically reaching for his gun that was not on his hip right now, but wherever he turned, he could not see the voice's origin.
"No!"
"Then… never mind…"
Jack heard him rummage around and the clatter of tools, then a whine from the Tardis.
"C'mon! Don't be that stubborn!"
And suddenly the Doctor appeared right in the middle of the Hub.
"Doctor!" Jack screamed happily, his voice breaking with joy, and ran down the spiral staircase, fully intending to slam into the Time Lord and hug him.
But he ran right through the Doctor. When his run was stopped by the railing on the walkway over the tidal basin Jack looked around in confusion.
"Doctor?"
"Well, I take it you can now see me," the Time Lord told him in his typical laconic way. "I'm just a projection, Jack."
Still Jack stared at him in disbelieve and shock. It had to be the Doctor, because he came with the Tardis, and who else with a Tardis would know his name and rank, but he did not recognize his beloved friend and mentor in the man he saw standing there.
Tilting his head to the side the Doctor looked Jack over from head to toe.
"Oh!" he suddenly shouted. "Oh, I know… the hair, the suit… you don't recognize me, right?"
Jack shook his head.
"Ah… long story, Rose absorbed the energy of the Time Vortex. That amount of energy running through her head… it should have killed her. I saved her."
"But…?"
"It killed me instead," the Doctor said cheerfully, grinning in an extremely self-satisfied way. "That's why I regenerated." He paused. "Actually, that wasn't very long was it? Quite a short story now I come to think about it."
Mischievously the Doctor grinned at Jack. "Nice place do you have here."
"Thanks."
The Doctor caught sight of the logo on the wall and frowned. "Torchwood? You work for the people who designated their lives to capture me?"
"We're different from Torchwood London. I set this up in your name, in your honour."
The Doctor still looked sceptical.
"So, if you're an projection… where are you? Can I come with you now?" Jack asked hopefully.
"Sorry, no, you can't."
"Why not!" Jack blurted out heatedly. "That's why I waited all those years! Do you even know how long it's been for me? Waiting to find you so that I could get back among the stars! Back where I belong."
With anticipation he stared at the Doctor. This was the long awaited encounter. This was what he had waited for since he arrived on Earth in 1869.
The Time Lord regarded him thoughtfully. "Do you really think that the stars are where you belong?" he demanded quietly. "Jack?"
Jack's features crumbled, then he stuttered, "Wh-what did I do, Doc? D-don't you w-want me?"
The Doctor shook his head gently, his expression filled with pity. "The time's not ripe for our reunion yet," the Doctor said. "I'm just here to talk to you."
"What about? Why did you even bother if you don't want to take me with you?" Jack snapped, clearly hurt by being rejected. "I've waited so long to get back to you… and the Tardis. Why torture me by turning up and not taking me with you?"
Eyeing Jack carefully the Doctor thought about his next move.
"Loneliness," he then said. "You've lived all those years without love. You denied yourself to get attached. That's not healthy."
"You think I didn't love?" Jack said with a laugh.
"You demand love, Jack. I know that you could have had love… several times. But you chose to suffer on your own. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Before I met Rose… I'd been alone for so long. I thought that was what I wanted, what I deserved, but I was wrong. Loneliness is a curse. The curse of those who will live forever. I'm here for your sake so you still have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate."
"You were always a good friend to me," Jack said with a hint of bitterness in his tone. "For as long as it lasted. Until Satellite Five."
"You will be haunted," resumed the Doctor as if he did not hear Jack's jibe, "by Three Spirits."
Jack frowned at him deeply.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Doc?" he demanded to know.
"It is."
"You know, Doc… that reminds me of something."
"Oh, really?" the Doctor faked astonishment. Thoughtfully he put his right index finger over his pouting lips as he propped the elbow up on his left arm that he crossed over his chest. Out of narrowed eyes he looked at Jack. "What could that be?"
"Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol."
Now the Doctor really pouted.
"How could you, Jack?" he complained, pushing his fists on his hips. "Ruin my surprise? Okay, it wasn't exclusively my idea…" he started pacing the walkway over the basin, "but I usually make good use of other's ideas. I do, don't I?"
"It wasn't as thrilling as switching my gun with a banana," Jack teased, "in a life or death situation."
"Technicalities," the Doctor grumbled. "Now where was I, what was I saying? You shouldn't always confuse me!"
"You really want me to confuse you?" Jack taunted with a lascivious grin that had gotten many partner, male and female, into his bed.
"Is this really the time? Honestly, you'd flirt with a cardboard box if there was no-one else, wouldn't you?" Frowning deeply the Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. "Don't confuse sex with love, Jack. Sex is empty physical exchange without emotions necessary. Don't forget that love is essential and with that," he raised his index finger in a professor like manner, "I'm back to what I wanted to say!" He grinned and cheered, "The three spirits, Dickens or not, Ghosts or real, I have no idea, but what is really important is that without their visits…"
"I'll do what, Doc? Die?" Jack scowled. "I mean that's what the ghost in the story threat…"
"There are worse things than death," the Doctor said quietly. "You of all people should know that."
Oh, yeah. Jack knew only too well that that was true. His mind threw him back in time, remembering events he had to endure and his throat corded up with emotional pain.
"Insanity, Jack, is a pretty nasty thing."
The Doctor said that as if he was talking about having a flu, but Jack suspected that he was deadly serious. You just never really knew with the Time Lord.
"Anyway," the Doctor said and his image flickered. He fumbled around with his sonic screwdriver and the projection stabilized again. "Expect the first tomorrow when the clock strikes one."
"Why don't they come all together?" Jack asked. "Do you know them? Are they nice? We could get to know us better…"
"Jack!" scolded the Doctor, knowing only too well where the former time agent's thoughts were leading. "Stop it!"
"What? What did I say?"
"Expect the second tomorrow when the clock strikes one."
"Didn't you just say that they wouldn't come at the same time?" Jack chuckled.
"You of all people should know that time is relative, Jack," the Doctor told him. "Still no one wants to waste it, right? Though it's actually not possible to waste it as you can measure but not can it, so…"
"Doc!" Jack tried to interrupt him. The Time Lord lost track of his speech again.
"…as you can neither stop nor speed it up there's also no way to waste it." He grinned manically at Jack. "As little as you can save it."
"So the third one will come at one, too?" Jack mused, sparing the Time Lord the effort of elaborating further and flashing one of his dazzling smiles at the Doctor.
"Yes!" the Doctor shouted, grinning excitedly and punching his right fist into his left palm as he spun around his axis. "The candidate has one hundred points."
So now we're in a quiz show? That thought led him back to television which led him to the game station hosted on Satellite Five and the attack of the Daleks. After that battle he never was the same again… and he was abandoned. Finding himself alone among numerous corpses and heaps of Dalek dust was not what he considered to be extremely funny.
"What happened to me, Doc?" Jack asked, accusingly.
"I'm sorry. I can't tell you."
"What do you mean, you can't tell me?!" Jack demanded, his voice rising with anger. "Doctor! What happened up there? What happened on Satellite Five?"
"I will tell you. When you'll go with me." A smirk snuck back on his features. "Soon the time's ripe and you'll come with me! We'll be back in Cardiff, fuel the old girl up and off we'll go!" he intoned, his gaze prodding Jack to join.
"Into time," the captain said lamely.
"And space!" the Doctor finished with enthusiasm. "Oh, c'mon, Jack. You're not as much fun as you used to be. So my old friend Charles was right."
"Don't tell me you knew Dickens!"
"Did I say that? Didn't I?" He chuckled. "Anyway, it's time for me to go. Energy's running low. The transmission won't last for long now, so I'll better…"
His image flickered again and vanished.
"Go?" Jack mused. "Say goodbye?"
Several minutes later he still stared at the spot where the apparition of the Doctor had been. Was it a trick his mind was playing him? Had it been real?
Jack shivered and did not know why. He was not cold. He was not scared. No need to shiver, actually.
Then he realized what made him so agitated.
Rose!
He swallowed a sudden lump in his throat.
I should've asked him about Rose. I'm sure he'd know what happened to her during the Battle of Canary Wharf. He'd know how she died. Oh, Rose!
Grief tightened his chest. He had not known Rose and the Doctor for very long, but they became two of the most important people in his life. They had changed him… to the better as he believed.
Without them I wouldn't have ended up here. I wouldn't have worked for Torchwood. I wouldn't have rebuilt it. I wouldn't know Tosh and Owen, Gwen and Ianto… Ianto…
For a moment he closed his eyes and tried to chase his anxiety away.
It must've been a bad dream. A waking nightmare.
Regaining his senses he went back to his office and climbed down the ladder. His bed was cold and vacant when he slid under the covers, but it was his own. It gave him all the comfort he could get and it had to be enough.
tbc…
