Disclaimer: I have no rights whatsoever to the "Doctor Who" universe; they rightfully belong to its creators. They are gods there. Please, don't smite me down for my insolence, as I do not profit from my stories in any other form than eternal joy.

A continuity note: This story is preeceded by following episodes of "Doctor Who - Virtual Series 5": 1 - "Past Future Continuous", and 2 - "The Art of Forgetting."

A little foreword: Tiny (it is a little word, isn't it?) =)

DOCTOR WHO

VIRTUAL SERIES 5 – EPISODE 3

THE AUGUST SKY

.1. Just an Ordinary Day

He had found a bar stool in one of the countless rooms, full of dust, cobwebs and rubble, scattered along numerous side-corridors. He had no idea who has brought the stool to the Hub. He suspected Owen, though. It didn't matter anyway; what mattered was that when seated so high, he could comfortably watch the inside of Donna's sarcophagus. With one foot on a mesh floor and another upon the stool's leg-rest, with hands burrowed deep in his pockets, and with the coat's collar put up against the cold, he was exhaling white puffs of breath, looking down, through a thick glass of the lid, at a sleeping woman in her icy coffin.

He had never expected something like that. Especially because it was his own reaction he didn't bargain for. His own feelings. For the last few years he had been realising with increasing clarity, that he had become a dispassionate cynic, an arrogant buffoon, a calculating egoist, a cold-blooded killer. He wasn't a good man. No, this adjective had never suited him. Brave, smart, dedicated, devoted – yes. But not good. A long life – an endless life, artificially stretched in time, like butter spread on too much bread – did not help at all. All those deaths; oh, he had been dying so many times, but he never really died. Sex without gratification – that was his life. With all the passing years he had been losing, losing and losing people he cared for. And with all the lost people he had been shedding little pieces of his own heart. He had less and less feelings to give away, hence he had been hiding them more and more providently. Colder and colder. More and more alienated.

Oh, Rose, you hadn't thought it through, doll. Oh my pretty, naïve, silly Rose. If only you knew that I've been having dreams in which I was killing you. As if your death could overcome the curse that has been put upon me. Bad dreams. Oooh, dreams I am worth of.

And now he was there, sitting on the bar stool, wrapped up in a thick, military issue coat, his feet getting cold in his heavy boots, with a diamond of a tear in the inner corner of his left eye, and with his mouth twisted in disbelief.

Is it me? Is it still me? How did you manage to change me? You drew tears out of stone; you shattered a glass jar covering that little piece of my heart which survived centuries, millennia.

It is Wednesday, late July, a beginning of the 21 century; just an ordinary day, except for a fact, that Captain Jack Harkness has a tear in the corner of his eye. If you will not survive, if you die; no – when you die; all of it will be lost, gone, dissolved in time. Another unmoored rope. A little less tears up his sleeve. A little less feelings. A little less emotions. A little less humanity.

That is why you cannot die, Donna Noble! You are not allowed to die!

Her face, seen through the frosty glass, seemed unreal, as if made of wax. Tiny indicator LEDs, placed beneath the lid inside the sarcophagus, cast changeable, multicoloured dots of light upon her pale cheeks. Donna's hair, around her head on a foam pillow, burned like a corona of a supernova star. Her arms, entwined with translucent capillary tubes, rested in a mattress's indentations. Her feet were bare. They were covered with a layer of white frost. She wore colourful, stripped pyjamas. Her chest wasn't moving.

It is not a stasis chamber; we named it all too well; it is a sarcophagus, it is a casket, it is a...

Coffin.

Jack leant back and for a moment he stared at a dark ceiling beyond the metal lampshades. The lonely tear immediately rolled towards the outer corner of his eye and seized an opportunity to escape onto his cheek – warm on his cold skin. Jack took a deep breath, clenching fists hidden in his pockets.

He had no clue as to why he continued visiting the Freezer. It was a compulsion just as pointless as counting flagstones. He had refused to move the sarcophagus into a vault; he kept it in the Freezer, encircled by dusty implements and rusty, water-stained walls. And he was coming here every day. Still, his stubborn presence couldn't change a thing. That was why he never visited Grey. Never. He never visited his lost and found brother. So many of his people had died, and he scoffed at cemeteries, tombstones and commemorative benches. Dust in the wind, nothing but the darkness on the other side; wash it down, forget it, make busy with life, get on with new connections to the world, charm new people, use them, lose them, wash it down and forget.

Oh, Donna Noble; funny, cheeky, mad Donna; for some reason I imagined that you could understand me, that you could rest your hand upon my heart, kiss me deeply and say a few special words, that would fix me. For some reason I imagined that you were the key to Jack Harkness, his salvation.

He didn't think kindly of her the first time he met her. Oh, cynical Jack thought then, that the Doctor must have lost his intense sense of style that seemed to be his trademark in the past. Rose Tyler – gorgeous. Martha Jones – gorgeous. Donna Noble - a screaming symptom of diminished self-confidence; a background, plain wallpaper you wouldn't even notice. People like Donna were everywhere – crowd in the streets, passers by, nameless victims. He isolated from them more and more; they had nothing to do with his people, his world, and his bloody, cocksure, calculated, cold greatness.

So, what had changed? Why was he coming here everyday and stared into her still face, fascinated by the shape of her mouth, her narrow nose, by the shadow of her long eyelashes and by minute wrinkles in corners of her eyes? What did he see in her?

The Doctor? Certainly. She was Donna Noble and she was a Time Lord, she was an incredible coincidence, a quirk of fate. But Jack didn't need to look for the Doctor's shadow in Donna's face. He had the original. He didn't need a copy.

Himself? An irritating question and a disturbing answer, suggesting both his greatness and minuteness. A false answer still. He didn't look for himself in other beings; at times he hated himself so much, he wouldn't be able to love his reflection.

A woman, who saved the world? Well, Rose saved the world, Martha did the same, Sarah Jane kept saving her planet on a daily basis. Each and every of Children of Time contributed that little bit of faith and sacrifice while saving the Earth – heroism was too common, too plain in Jack's cynical world to still provoke his emotions.

What then? Why? What for?

From the moment he had found her unconscious in her mother's house in Chiswick, a tiny bit of blood still congealed under her nose; from the moment he had lifted her from a double bed in her bedroom and carried her to a Torchwood's SUV; ever since he had faced her brilliant madness, her inner strength and fragility – he couldn't stop thinking about her. Ever since he had deposited her into the ice coffin, promising to save her, but deep inside never believing in such possibility, he hadn't been able to leave her for more than a day. He kept telling himself that it wasn't healthy. He kept promising himself to end it. And every day he kept coming back to the Freezer.

Maybe he believed that if he could save Donna, he could save himself?

"No changes?"

Jack winced and swivelled on the bar stool. Harriet Jones, wearing an elegant green two-piece dress, wrapped her arms on her chest against the cold.

"I didn't mean to startle you, Captain," she said. "Martha told me where to find you. I've let myself in. I know the way."

"No, no changes," Jack sighed. "I don't even know if I'm worried or relieved."

She came closer and rested her hand on his shoulder.

"We will find a way, Jack," she said softly. "There has to be a way."

"No, there hasn't."

"Oh..."

"I'm sorry, Prime Minister." He forced a smile and gently patted tips of her fingers. "I'm loosing my manners when I'm here. We should be grateful. Funds you keep pumping into Torchwood are invaluable. But... I can't help but wonder if Torchwood is a right place to search for rescue."

"Torchwood is best prepared and equipped for such endeavour," Harriet stated. "So many times you faced an alien threat..."

"That's just it." Jack got up from the stool, shoving aside his coat's tails. "It's not a threat. It's not a war. Oh, we know war, Prime Minister; we can accept its inevitable causalities. Brave little soldiers. But it ain't no war. It's a mission of hope. And that's not in Torchwood's job description."

"Nonsense! Captain Harkness, you speak as a man, who can do nothing, but kill. And that's just... daft! Had I not know..."

"Prime Minister, Torchwood sends shell-shocked boys into fry and sacrifices them for the greater good. The sheer fact that Torchwood grades good and evil, should tell you a lot about us. Torchwood is a prison and a torture chamber. Torchwood employs euthanasia more often than it offers a cure. Torchwood is a weapon of the Earth. It has always been a weapon. It is a great big cannon pointed into the stars, refusing entry to everything that's alien. Torchwood means xenophobia and xenocide. That's what Torchwood is."

Harried moved a step back. It seemed that her face dropped, as if he put on ten years of life. Only her eyes shone angrily, surrounded by shadows of tiredness.

"I am calling you to order!" she snapped. "It's no time for self-pity!"

"I do not..."

"Yes, Torchwood is an Earth's weapon, I am well aware of the fact, as I used that weapon myself. Torchwood is this planet's shield and sword. Which means that the search for the moral path is your foremost responsibility."

"Moral? Ha!" Jack spread his arms. "I used to be a con-man, Harriet! The only morality I knew served my own personal convenience."

"That was a long time ago."

"Under me Torchwood kept sinking into deeper and deeper darkness, and when I tried to change my ways, I lost two of my friends. How am I qualified to save anybody?"

"Enough, Jack!" Harriet dropped her shoulders, clenching her fists. "Nobody's perfect!"

"Nobody?"

"Do you think he's perfect?" She surprised Jack so much with her question, he stopped still, his blue eyes open wide. "Do you really think so? I bet he doesn't. In that casket over there lies the needle of his moral compass, Jack, and without her your perfect Doctor is but a dangerous natural force, an unpredictable value in an equation, a threat to this country and to the whole world. Just as you are without your men. Oh, you are so much alike, the Doctor and you. Boys and monsters."

"We are not alike!" Jack shouted angrily. "We are not alike; if we were, he wouldn't leave... Shit, sorry... Prime Minister, I'm having a damned bad day. Please, excuse me."

Harriet sighed deeply, moved closer and grabbed his elbow.

"It's terribly cold, here. I wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee... But not Mickey's; the other boy, Ianto, he makes excellent espresso..."

She dragged him towards the Freezer's exit.

"You are not a bad man, Jack, nor a heartless war machine," she said, walking close to him, huddled to his arm. "But I will agree with one thing. You are a soldier, Jack. You won't avoid a battle and you won't hesitate to strike. Oh, the world certainly needs its dreamers, doctors, pacifists, bleeding-hearts, visionaries and artists. But it also needs its warriors. It's hard to choose the path that wouldn't swerve into darkness, because war leaves its imprint in all of us. But still we try."

She gave him a pale smile.

"Look at your men, Jack," she whispered. "A boy next door. A police woman. A physician. A lover. A husband. And a man on a quest. You are not a bunch of murderers and torturers. You are simply a first line of defence. Plus, you are... how do you say it? Pretty?"

"Gorgeous." Jack smiled back at her. "Certainly one of the most important qualifications... Oh, we've been in such a good place after the Earth was returned to the Solar System..."

"And now everything seems... bad?" she asked.

"And now it seems that the world is falling into pieces. The Rift's activity increases continually; we are short of resources to control it. And Donna... What are we supposed to do?"

"Don't lose your hope, Jack." She squeezed his elbow.

Harkness paused suddenly, facing her. He had to bend down for their eyes to be on the same level.

"Don't tell me you don't understand, Harriet," he whispered. "You have been there as well. In that dark place. Both of us have been there."

She nodded briefly.

"We are just human, Jack. We have our dark places. And we have strength to resurface."

"She's my surface."

"I understand, Jack," Harriet said. "I'm sorry."

"No!" He shook his head. "Don't say you're sorry; don't even suggest she might not make it..."

"No, Jack." Harriet shook her head as well, greyish hair bouncing around her face. She smiled cheekily. "That's not what I meant. It's just... Donna...? You...? Not very likely."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure." With a shrug he entered the Hub's main hall. "She really fancies me, you know?"

Two bodyguards, standing near the circular gateway; both with their hands folded at their crotch level and with their bodies stiff with Kevlar corsets; providently pretended that they didn't notice Jack, and even if they were to notice him, they wouldn't give a damn. One of the bodyguards, dark-eyed and tawny-skinned, was gorgeous enough to bring a dimple of a smile to Jack's cheek. Ianto glared at him from over the huge pile of files he had saved from a ruined archive. Harkness's smile disappeared.

"You've got some major repairs here?" said Harriet, looking round the Hub – at crumbling walls, yellowish tiles peeling here and there; bunches of wiring crackling with sparks; makeshift scaffoldings in spots where balustrades had collapsed; and shattered mirrors of the water sculpture's column.

"We've got some major problems," Jack corrected. "Ianto, can we count on some industrial strength espresso?"

"Sure. Excuse our styrofoam cups, Prime Minister. What Mickey hadn't manage to break, shattered last Friday. Aah, we don't have any milk as well."

"Never mind, I do not take milk." Harriet gave Ianto a warm smile and then did something so much in her nature, it shouldn't come as a shock anymore. Yet Jack was still surprised to hear her next words: "What about you, boys? Would you like a cup... sorry... a styrofoam cup of coffee?"

Bodyguards swayed slightly in their surprise.

"No, thanks, ma'am, it's OK, really, we're fine, thank you," they babbled. Jack grinned at their embarrassment.

"Nonsense!" Harriet took her industrial strength espresso from Ianto's hands and waved the cup towards bodyguards. "It's an excellent coffee. How many sugars, son?"

After a while both bodyguards stood there completely out of their balance, with one hand still at the crotch level, gripping styrofoam cups in the other. Harriet seemed satisfied with a work well done. She winked at Jack.

"Office?"

He turned his eyes to a brightly lit room upstairs, with what used to be a glass wall, and now was a mass of glass splinters, crunching unpleasantly under his boots.

"I can't guarantee comfort or privacy," he warned. "War has its rights."

"I don't mind," Harriet answered. "Never cared much for comforts and our secrets are not so secret anymore. I can't recall Cardiff being in the media as often as nowadays. The whole country... the whole world is talking about you, Jack. Oh, well, at least I don't have to keep my Welsh connections under the wrappers – I have hundreds of reasons to be here. Shame they're so awful, though."

"Jack, a moment?" Ianto interrupted from behind a row of screens, where he hid after making coffee for everyone. "It's the Rift. Take a look at these charts, ok? Low-pressure areas? See, the computer says such an atmospheric circulation is not even possible."

"That's what I mean," Harriet sighed. "Storms... Are they results of the Rift's activity?"

"Them and much more," Jack answered. "Oh, yeah, the storm is coming, and it won't be an ordinary storm."

"I figure," she sighed again. "This city is unlucky. It's as you were living on a tectonic fault line, just waiting for the earthquake. Only nobody knows that. I feel guilty. We should make it known, I don't know, evacuate people?"

"Evacuation is not an option even for cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, Prime Minister," Ianto said. "And the people know more you would have guessed. It's not London. Please, leave it to Torchwood."

Jack glared at him, but Harriet just smiled and nodded.

"All right. Something tells me I'm leaving Cardiff in good hands."

"Let's go upstairs," Jack said. "What is it you wanted to talk about?"

She looked him in the eye and started up the stairs without a further word.

To be continued...