Spoilers for Children of Earth!
A/N: I've never written TW before, just a little something that grabbed me and wanted to be written down. I just got into the show with CoE, which is either rotten timing or great timing, I'm not quite sure... at least I know what I'm getting into beforehand. I have since watched the 2nd series (season). Never seen Dr. Who except for some clips on YouTube and reading some fanfic, (and I don't intend to, since I'm not masochistic enough to knowingly get into shows where they regularly kill the main, loved characters off) so I've done the best I can with him. Oh, and I'm not Brit, either. Hopefully I've managed well enough. This could be a fix it, or not, depending on how you're inclined. I'm a sucker for a captivating slash pairing, so I had to do it.
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It's About Love
By Cat Moon
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Captain Jack Harkness looked up as the footsteps that had been echoing down the long, dark hallway stopped in front of his cell. He showed no surprise at the visitor, actually there was no emotion at all on the usually expressive face.
"Jack," the Doctor greeted with a nod, trying to gauge his old friend's mood and failing.
"You know," Jack began with a slight grin. "For a man who's supposed to be in solitary lock down, I'm sure getting a lot of visitors."
"Who else has visited you?" The Doctor asked curiously.
Jack said nothing, merely fiddled with his deactivated wrist band absently.
"Shouldn't you be on earth? In Cardiff protecting the planet from hostile aliens and working with that Torchwood team you created in my honor?" The Doctor was baiting him for a reaction of course; he knew exactly what had transpired the past year of Jack's life.
"I don't do that anymore," Jack answered, some fire returning to his dead eyes. "Let the planet go to bloody hell for all I care."
"Why didn't you contact me, Jack?" he asked more gently.
Harkness pinned him with an intense and knowing gaze. "Would you have helped me?" He broke eye contact almost immediately and shook his head. "I wouldn't ask you to compromise the precious timeline just for my petty problems," he bit out scathingly.
"You know how that works."
It wasn't that the Doctor didn't understand; he knew all too well the pain that being immortal caused Jack. Harkness had lived with it for many lifetimes, lost countless lovers to old age, or early death. He'd made more impossible decisions than any man or even hero should have to make, watched people die because of those decisions, and survived. It had never broken him, not like this. He'd always bounced back and kept on fighting the good fight. Even when his old time agency partner, John Hart, had tried to tempt him to return to a life of cons and debauchery, he'd held fast to the things he believed in. Yet something fundamental had changed in the man now. Over the past few months he'd gotten into more than one scrape and been single mindedly determined to threaten the stability of the universe by getting involved in schemes that were forbidden. Ones that involved messing about with time.
"This is the way it's always been," the Doctor reminded him. "Why now?" What made this time so different?
Jack's eyes rose to meet the Doctor's, red rimmed and filled with a depth of pain that was inexplicable. "Why him?" Jack whispered. "I don't know." And the naked pain and bewilderment in his voice was genuine.
"Why is he so different from all the others?" The Doctor asked, trying to figure out the puzzle in front of him, now that they'd both abandoned the pretense of it being about anything – or anyone else. Just one young Welsh man, someone Jack had only known for a few years. Nothing remarkable, someone who would be quickly forgotten as time marched on. To risk so much for so little didn't seem like Jack at all.
Not that it would stop there. That was the dangerous lure of time travel. Once you succeeded in changing one thing, it became so much easier to go back, do more damage. Change the bigger things. It could be like a drug. Especially when you had as many things to wish you could do over as Jack Harkness.
Jack rose gracefully to his feet, grabbing the bars of his cell in a white-knuckled grip. "Maybe because it's too much. Maybe because I'm tired and sick of it all, and I never signed up for all this!" his voice had gotten progressively louder. "I never asked for immortality," he spat it out like a dirty word. "I did everything I was supposed to do and I'm just…tired of the right thing always hurting. Okay, I probably deserve to lose my family by my own hand, if I'm wrong then they must be too, right Doc? But not him… He didn't deserve to die." Jack slowly sank back down onto the floor. "I want Ianto back," he said so quietly the Doctor almost missed it. "Maybe then I could make sense of everything…" he said, rubbing his forehead as if he was trying to rid himself of confusion or pain.
"I guess there's nothing else to say then," The Doctor noted with sadness. He'd hoped he would be able to get through to Jack, but it wasn't to be. There didn't seem to be anything rational left in Jack to reason with. He started to turn away.
Jack unexpectedly spoke up again. "He's the first one I told my secrets too in… a long time. He stood loyally by my side, no matter how I treated him, or any of them. He understood. He believed in me. And because of his trust and faith, I got him killed."
"Is that what this is all about then?" The Doctor queried, a small kernel of hope returning. "Guilt?"
Jack laughed, but it was more chilling than welcome. "It's about love."
The most unpredictable force in the universe, the one that often made no logical sense. With no rhythm or reason, yet once in its hold most people would be powerless against committing any crime, any betrayal or sacrificial act in its name. The most dangerous power in the entire universe, yet there was no weapon against it. Some people believed it to be mankind's ultimate salvation; others its final destruction. Yet if a Time Lord knew the answer, he would keep the knowledge to himself forever.
"I'm sorry, Jack." The Doctor started walking down the hallway again; regret weighing heavily on his mind. If there was a way to 'fix' Jack, he didn't know what it was. Sometimes… the losses were just too much to recover from. He wasn't sure why, but something made him turn back one last time, for one final look at the man he'd known.
The cell was empty.
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The end
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Final note: Just in case the end confused you; the wrist band, mention of "another visitor" and John Hart are all big hints. ;)