Series' title: Tish's Years.
Chapter: Prologue
Character, pairing: Jack Harkness, Tish Jones.
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who Universe.
Plot: At the end of our millennium, as human race is forced to plan Earth evacuation because of over pollution, the ex-Captain Jack Harkness, former Torchwood Three Director, on board his small spaceship, is looking for planet to colonize. He will find in no particular order: an old friend, an unexpected son, a fabulous starship, a sonic screwdriver and a new reason to go on, and among that some suitable planets for humans to move on.
Series' rating: Mostly PG-13 and exceptional NC-17.
Disclaimer: Tish, Jack, the Chula ship, the Tardis, the sonic screwdriver, Torchwood, and some others characters motioned here don't belong to me but to RTD and the BBC, all the rest is mine.
Author's Note: This series is part of the stories I wrote to bring Ianto back. He's not actually in it though, but as for Children of the Past, it's the building of the world he will come back in. Chronologicly speaking this series is set between Jack's and Ianto's Private Archives and Children of the Past.
Beta: tempusdominus10
...
The Valiant. The Year That Never Was. It was a year best left to memory, a year of suffering, humiliations, despair; a year of resistance lost in an ocean of tears…
He woke with a start. To think he'd finally been asleep, for once. That Year had happened so long ago. Why was he dreaming of it now, when he hadn't thought of it in ages?
His compact little bug of a ship had been in orbit for some time now. There was no sign of life down planetside. Most would have marked the place a small, boring round rock, stamped it good for terraforming and moved on to the next one. But his tiny transport was agile, able to keep to sheer cliffs, to dodge flying rocks and the like. A dive beneath the atmosphere would hardly test its limits. Besides, he wanted to see. Something told him there was life down there on this generic, boring round rock. Even before meeting the Doctor he'd respected all life deeply; the only shame was when, like the Doctor, he had to destroy it in order to preserve the greater good; threatening malicious harm against the people he loved was never a good move if you wanted to remain living.
Of course, he'd already decided; he would take this opportunity to dive below the atmosphere and skim the hills, to explore the landscape.
The small Chula ship was so fun to drive.
Three hours later he was still playing Skywalker, following a valley that ran through a large chain of mountain. It was swirling around the planet from south to north in a strange pattern, though the whole place was desolate. It was just stone and sand, no vegetation except some lichens, some higher forms of bacteria, perhaps... There had been sentient life here once, but now only well-dusted ruins poked through the rocks; in essence, no one to have a conversation with. No one to get shot by. No one to be remembered.
He was ready to give up when his scanner beeped at him, shouting its little noise. The signal was faint, but there was definitely something biological down there, and according to the readings, it was wandering around the discarded carcass of an old city. Eyes widening, he quickly worked to recalibrate the sensors, hoping to triangulate a teleport point closer to the source of the signal. He couldn't believe it: there was a Human on the surface. In bad shape, of course; there was far too much radioactivity close to the city centre. The objective was clear, now; preferably painless extraction and then informal debrief, if possible. Why was he here, what was he doing and how?
He looked for other energy signs that could explain this unexpected presence. He finely found one; an old friend with sharp claws.Temporal-spatial residual rift activity. Some people got lucky, he thought, remembering the poor wretched souls the rift in Cardiff had once spewed out like it was having an attack of indigestion.
Teleporting in, he materialised in the centre of the ruined town, not too far from the lost wanderer but not too close either, just in case. One never could know what one was getting into, and for all that he'd seen in his life, he figured it was far more likely he was about to run into some son of a bitch. Some megalomaniacs, he reasoned, had all the luck.
As he stared up one side of a distant cliff face, he spotted a thin figure climbing as much as it could among the ruined city. Hard to tell from this far off, but well, the scan had indicated for Human, so... how long had he been out here alone like this? Had there been others? It hadn't been years or months, that much was clear. The area was far too irradiated to have sustained Humans for any length of time. That left it at two or three days, tops.
"Hello!" he called. Of course, it was just meant to be a calling sound than an actual word.
The shape stopped and then turned, slowly, towards him, standing still for a while as if pondering what to do next.
He began to walk unhurriedly toward her. Yes, his mystery Human was looking more and more like a woman, albeit a woman lost in the midst of an alien devastation hot with rads. He didn't want to frighten her further.
As he watched, she stirred once more, like a deer saved from becoming dog food on the hood of a car. In fact, her breaths were evening out. Then it seemed that she made up her mind all at once, for she began staggering toward him like some dislocated puppet, so fragile, so weirdly graceful.
Tall and slim, she wore a tight skirt, a fitted jacket and mid-heels. In her hand was a purse, the string looped twice and wreathed around her wrist. She looked, desperately, like quite the office girl, if from exactly a time and a place he'd wanted to forget.
Soon she was walking properly, looking straight at him, as if she feared he'd vanish once their visual contact was broken. He'd seen it before. That precious eye contact, that promise of companionship from another person was the only thing driving her forward. The only thing keeping hope alight now, her one heart beating.
Now, abruptly she stopped again. He hadn't expected her to, but still, she was there, in front of him. Staring.
Her face was regular, with a thin nose and big dark eyes blinking like pieces of polished jet glinting in light at him. She was probably young and perhaps attractive, but it was difficult to know the way her skin was burned and ripped.
"Jack? Jack, is that you? I can't believe it… Jack, please…"
He was stunned. The man who had once been Jack Harkness was speechless. He'd left the name when he'd left Earth. It had been like dumping extra fuel from your engines in a crunch to gain altitude, on some level. But you didn't feel gut-punched over spilled fuel; the only difference.
His hand-scanner blipped suddenly, picking up on the mobile in her purse; twenty-first century.
Exhausted, the girl let herself slump on a big stone and began to cry.
"I can't… I just can't…" she sobbed.
Jack came to her and crouched.
"It's going to be okay," he managed to say, just as she threw her arms around him and nuzzled into the small of his neck.
"Oh Jack. That's you, that's really you," she rasped with a days-dry throat. Then she collapsed in a faint from relief.
Jack took her in his arms. She was so light he was afraid to break her, he was afraid it would be too late even for the nanogenes. Regardless, with a press of his finger they were both teleported to the Chula ship, laid her on the couch, as he'd done with Rose so many lifetimes ago. After freeing the nanogenes, he sat back in the pilot's seat, eager to watch them do their work.
She had called him Jack and she was coming from the twenty-first century. If there had ever been a part of his life he would wish to forget, it would have been that century... there had been so many losses. Too many losses, too many painful wounds that were never to heal.
He resolved to look into her purse; found a passport and a letter from Torchwood. A letter signed Gwen Cooper Williams. In it, Gwen stated that Torchwood would gladly accept Tish Jones –younger sister of one Martha Jones- into their fold as assistant and archivist.
Tish.
That girl was Tish. His Tish.
She had been his only soothing during that horrible year, his only comfort. They had faced the Master side by side, together, hand in hand, resisting. Hand in hand. During that year, they had forged a very special thread during that year, linking their minds as one. And they had built upon that thread despite the struggle between the two Time Lords, creating a telepathic bond right under the two men's' highly sensitized noses.
The dreams of the Valiant, then, had not been merely dreams. They had led him to Tish. She had called for him.
To be continued.
Authors Note: Yes, I know. You're going to say that the Chula ship had been blown up in the Doctor Dance's episode. Let say it's just Timey-Whiney sort of going to be explain later on.