The Finding of Impossible Things
Warning: Major spoilers for Doctor Who episodes 3:8 'Human Nature' and 3:9 'The Family of Blood' and a few minor ones for Torchwood. Oh and one instance of language!
Disclaimer: I own nothing I just play here!
Although at the insurance company at which I work I came across a claim for a 'J Harkness' I got very excited but then found out it was a 'John Harkness' but thats sort of half way there isn't it? Cross between the good Captain and John Barrowman. Anyways...
Jack finds something that he probably shouldn't be reading.
Jack Harkness is having an extremely bad day. All he wants to do is go home and go to bed. But this is his home and he has nowhere else to go. He is so bored that he has checked his e-mail seventeen times which is innately stupid since everyone who ever e-mails him is in the Hub with him, except the odd missive from Torchwood HQ and junk mails about Viagra. His head is pounding so hard and four aspirins haven't even dented the pain. Even Ianto appearing at lunchtime with an unasked for cup of coffee and a BLT sandwich have not lifted his mood. Gwen and Owen have been sniping at each all morning and he can't be bothered to find out what it is all about this time. Tosh is glued to her laptop murmuring something about mathematical triangulation models she could apply to the rift. Sounds to Jack like something the Doctor would say and that just makes his head hurt. So now he is mooching around the Hub, trying to ignore Gwen and Owen, and pretend that he is, in fact, working.
"Post Jack," Ianto plonks a pile of mail down onto about the only square inch of space in the room.
Jack sifts through it uninterestedly. 'Do I want a loan?' he thinks to himself. 'Officially I don't exist so how the hell do I end up on their goddamn mailing lists?' He throws the unopened envelope irritatedly in the direction of the bin, and his hand brushes against the yellowish parcel addressed to him. He picks it up and out of the corner of his eye catches sight of the Hand presses its fingertips against the glass in his direction. He frowns and rips open the package. Inside is a leather bound notebook and a short letter.
'Jack,' he reads, 'I followed a lead and came across this in an antique shop in deepest darkest Devon, and I knew you'd want to see it. Another piece of the puzzle. You really want to read this – Ben.'
Why was Ben sending him this? Ben is a guy he met in an online chat room when he was trying to track down the Doctor. A conspiracy nut in a Torchwood chat room. Jack doesn't tell him where he works. He frowns and drops the letter. Very gently he unties the lace holding the notebook shut and reads the title inside. 'A Journal of Impossible Things.' It doesn't ring a bell. He flicks gently through the yellowed pages covered in black ink then catches sight of drawing that takes his breath from his lung. Rose. He reads a few more words quickly, desperately. 'TARDIS', 'Dalek'. Oh God. Jack flicks back to the start of the journal. It is dated 1913. Who wrote this in 1913?
"Jack?" Gwen sounds concerned. His face has gone white as a sheet. "What is it?"
"Leave me alone," Jack twists roughly away from her outstretched hand. "Get out! All of you get the fuck out!"
Gwen backs away and drops her hand, and looks to Owen who just shrugs.
"Jack?" Ianto asks worriedly.
"Get out," Jack growls at them roughly still staring at the notebook. "Just all of you go please go."
The four of them look at each other and leave as quickly as possible, leaving Jack staring wide-eyed at the book.
The letter is in a different handwriting, softer more feminine somehow and neater. No scribbled drawings, no added notes, simpler. A letter to someone who will never read it and the writer knows this but writes anyway, and hides it among the pages of someone else's journal.
'My dearest John, it would have been your birthday today. I do not know why I think of you every year. I should try not to. Because you are dead and have been for a long time. Yet I still think about the life we could have had, the future the Doctor's watch showed us. Our wedding, our children, growing old together, our lives. And I remember your face when you saw it too. You wanted it to be true. I miss those things I never had John. I wonder where he is and how different my life would have been if I had said yes to him. But it was too hard. It was your face John on a stranger, a completely different man. And he was. And I was too scared to go. But you were a much braver man than he. You died to save everyone, so no one else would die. Because of him. Because you became him. Because you were human and he wasn't. And you couldn't stay, not even for me. My wonderful daydreamer, my bumbling schoolmaster. You told me the Doctor would not love me, but he wanted to. He told me that everything you ever were was inside him somewhere. But there was also the savagery and the danger and everything you were not my gentle John. At times like that I remembered Tim's words; "He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm and the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe."
Seems so strange now John, writing down those words that have plagued my dreams for years. Tim survived the War. He came to visit me, a man in army uniform, old before his time. Like so many of the young men I nursed through those terrible years. I saw so many horrors John. Some as bad as what you wrote about in this book John.
This journal is all true. I wish you were here and that we could be laughing over a silly work of fiction written years ago. But he was right. About the Great War, about the shadow across the whole world. And I can't help but think that I would have lost you anyway John, to that War. To his images of mud and wire. So in some ways I am thankful you died when you did. Not many ways though.
Sometimes I feel like someone is watching over me John, and I wonder if it is the Doctor. Does he think of me ever? I wonder what became of him. And that strange girl Martha. Is he facing worse evils now than I ever saw? I pray for his soul. I pray for yours my dearest John. Even though you never really existed to pray for. But for a short while John you did live and I loved you and you loved me.
I hope he finds the happiness he is looking for. Like the happiness we shared for those too short months. I miss you John and I still love you. – Joan Redfern. May 13th 1924.'
Jack bites his lip as tears spring hotly to his eyes. Who was this woman? The journal never mentions her name. Just recounts many adventures of the Doctor. Many many of them long before Jack met him and a lot since Jack lost him. Jack has sat alone in the Hub for the past three days, refusing to answer the phone or open the door to the rest of the team, and just studied this book. He has forty seven e-mails asking where he is and what is going on.
Jack has reread the pages mentioning himself. 'A dashing Captain with a winning smile' was probably the description he liked most. 'Con man with a grudge who would love anything that lived' was possibly his least favourite. But the sketch looks like him. And Rose. He reads of her and it makes him cry every time. But she just disappears. She doesn't die. Doesn't leave him, as if she ever would. She just disappears from the pages. Then this Martha girl appears and this man – the Doctor? – writes of her as a friend, a companion, but not in the same way he wrote of Rose. Jack wipes hurriedly at his eyes and turns the pages of the book again, searching for a clue. He turns to the page with all the Doctor's faces on it. Jack guessed this because his Doctor is there. He turns the page over and studies the whole page drawing. A man in a suit and a long coat, plimsolls on his feet with his hair standing at all angles and a wide grin on his boyish face. But holding his hand beside him is Rose. Looking exactly as Jack remembers her apart from her hair being shorter. Smiling at the man Jack can only assume is the Doctor like he is her everything. Jack recognises that look. He sighs and flicks the pages again. A photograph flutters out of the back of the journal. Jack stoops to pick it up. It is brown with age, creased at the edges where someone has held it. On the back in the same handwriting as the letter Joan Redfern has written neatly, '1913: Far left John Smith - the Doctor'.
Jack turns it over hurriedly while grabbing a magnifying glass from his desk drawer. It is a school shot. An upper class boy's boarding school from the look of it. He leans over the photo and places the magnifying glass over the people at far left of the picture. A woman in Matron's uniform is not looking directly at the camera but letting her eyes stray just a little bit to the man in the schoolmaster's cap and gown beside her. The Doctor. Jack nearly drops the magnifying glass even though he's seen the drawing of this man. He just looks so human. Not a trace of the fire and ice and rage of those long ago words. But Jack agrees with them regardless. That is the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, ancient and forever. But this man is the Doctor and not all at the same time. Something isn't right here. Jack looks up. No, he couldn't of. Jack has seen the Doctor do miraculous things and heard about many more but he couldn't…could he? Human. The Doctor human. If the Doctor can do that…what else can he do? Jack closes the book and vows that he will go on looking, if it kills him, or doesn't kill him – another thing for Jack to get answered – he will find the Doctor. And he will find out what happened to Rose. Because this journal proves it. Impossible things can sometimes come true.
Mostly written because I really loved Joan and John Smith and as much as I love the Doctor I really wanted them to be happy and have the cute babies!
Hit the lilac button and you know what to do:-)