Everything changes
by Soledad
Author's note: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the Introduction
We never actually learned anything concrete about Jack's home – or about the "horrible creatures" that invaded their colony. So I've taken a great deal of poetic licence to create a more detailed background.
Living conditions on the planets mentioned are very loosely based on the suggestions of the book "What If The Moon Didn't Exist?" by Neil F. Comins. It's a fantastic book, go and read it.
As for the names: I created a system in which the children are named in the order of the Greek alphabet. So firstborns' names always begin with an A (= Alpha), secondborns' names with a B (= Beta), thirdborns' names with a G (= Gamma), and so on. The –yu suffix indicates a male child, the –ah suffix a female one. Reaching puberty, people were supposed to undergo the naming ceremony, in which they lay down their childhood names, and choose their final ones.
After an idea of aeshna_cyanea.
Chapter 04 – Adrift in a Sea of Memories
The small boy stood on the sandy shore, alone, watching the waves. They were rolling towards the shore, flattening, spraying white gist upon the wet sand, and then rolling back towards the open sea again. He could have watched their tireless moving for hours.
The boy was wearing baggy trousers and a hooded jacket of the same bleached colour as the sand, and a white cloth wrapped loosely around his neck, in case a sudden sandstorm would rise from the not-so-far-away deserts of the mainland. All people living on Boeshane Peninsula went prepared for the storms all the time, as they hit unexpected and without forewarning.
Granstar, as the locals called the massive blue-white sun of the system, was already falling towards the horizon, thus the boy no longer needed the protective sunglasses against its almost painful brightness. They hung around his neck, just above his light cloth scarf – another precaution demanded by the living conditions of a hot, arid planet.
Suddenly, a humming sound could be heard from above, like the humming of angry insects, an entire swarm perhaps, but still far, far away. The boy whirled around and ran. They had lived under the threat of invasion all his life; all children had been taught and trained what to do when they heard that particular sound. So he ran.
Running in the sand was hard; it seemed to suck in his boots, slowing him down. He was relieved when he reached the patch of short, rough grass, almost the same bleached colour as the sand. The grass was about ankle-height and unpleasantly scratchy, but at least it was hard. One could run better there.
He caught up with his sire, who was running, too, dragging his little brother by the hand. The boy was tiring already, his long curls sticking wetly to his forehead. His elder stopped abruptly, tossing the little boy to the older brother.
"Run, Atreyu!" he gasped. "Take Garayu! Keep him safe!"
"No, no, Dad!" the older boy protested. "Come with us!"
"No," his sire said. "No, I've got to go get your mother. Run! You're the firstborn – save your brother. He's your responsibility."
With that, the man whose mere presence had always meant safety to him turned around and started running back towards the township: a seemingly haphazard agglomeration of buildings that looked like a great many portacabins stacked together, yet was nonetheless highly functional and provided the small colony with suitable protection against the often harsh weather conditions of their homeworld.
The humming sound became louder, almost a howling, and it startled the older boy out of his shock. He grabbed the hand of his brother and started running, too, away from the township, as he'd been taught. It had been the general opinion that the creatures – unless they would pass over them like they always did – would go directly for the inhabited area.
Those theories proved terribly wrong on that day. That time, the creatures – streamlined shapes like huge, silver fish – did not pass over them; and there were enough of them to go for both the township and for the people running on the beach for their lives.
Holding the sweaty little hand of his brother as tightly as he could, Atreyu ran. As the A in his name signalled – standing for Aleph, the First – he was the eldest child of the family group, responsible for all younger ones.
At least in peacetime, when that responsibility only included the duty to find them, should they have wandered off from the grassy fields to the further, more treacherous sands.
Right now, however, he was just a frightened young boy.
He ran in stark terror as the huge silver fish in the skies swept lower, spitting whining beams of fiery death, people falling all around them like cut grass. He ran blindly, driven by mindless fear, until he recognized his favourite hideout: a large enough hole in the ground, under the roots of a gnarled old tree. He slipped in, in a great hurry, and then he just sat there, hugging his knees tightly, trembling.
When the noises of death and destruction faded away, he still stayed there for a long while yet, not trusting the sudden silence. Then he finally climbed out – and realized that his little brother was not with him. He could not remember when he had let go of the boy's hand. He simply could not remember.
Anxious about Garayu's fate, and well aware that he had failed in his responsibility towards a younger sibling, he began to retract his steps, hoping to see the boy again.
"Gray? Gray?" he cried out in despair, using the boy's ridiculous pet name by which only his birthmother ever called him. "Gray! Gray, where are you? Gray!"
But there was no answer. Nor did he ever find the body of Gray… or that of any other child. There were dead bodies scattered across the grassy field between the beach and the township, but they were all adults. The children were just – gone.
All, save from him.
He started running back towards the township, hoping that he would find his sire, or one of his other fathers… anyone who could help him. They could not all be dead! He was just a boy; he needed the help of an adult, any adult!
Granstar had already sunk behind the mountains when he reached the curved sandstone building that had been the home of their family group, but the skies were still very bright. Bright enough to spot the broken, bleeding body of his sire, lying in front of the house.
He was dead.
Atreyu fell to his knees, and even though deep within he knew that there was no help, he tried to shake his sire awake, pleading.
"Dad? No! Can someone help? Please!"
As if answering his pleas, a woman ran out of the house, her short hair bleached to the colour of the planet's endless sand deserts. It was Bethulah, Garayu's birthmother, the youngest female spouse of the family group. She swept to the body of her senior husband and collapsed over it, sobbing and wailing.
"Fraenclyn? Fraenclyn, not you, too! Please, please, wake up!"
"Mom?" Atreyu said hesitatingly.
She wasn't his birthmother, and she had always disliked him, jealous of his status as the eldest child while her own son was only the third-born, but right now, she seemed to be the only adult alive. She would help him, wouldn't she? He was only a boy himself, still years away from his naming ceremony; he could not manage on his own, not yet!
She whirled around, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him so hard that his teeth rattled.
"Where's Gray?" she demanded accusingly. "Where's Gray? Where is he, son? Where is he? You were supposed to look after him!"
"I've lost him," Atreyu admitted, weeping in grief and shame. "We were running so fast. One moment, his hand was in mine, and then… I don't know… I don't know when he let go. I thought he was there, just behind me!"
Bethulah tossed him away with a force that had him flying to the ground. He hit his head on a stone, and when he felt it, his fingers came back sticky with his own blood.
"No, not my little boy!" Bethulah screamed. "Not my little boy! This is your fault! You let go of his hand, and now he's gone!"
Jack woke up with a desperate gasp for air. The images had been so vivid, so detailed – never before had he been able to remember so much from his childhood. He assumed the constant exposal to the Master's telepathic field must have had something to do with it; because to be honest, that was a last thing he would want to remember: the worst day of his life, when everything came crushing down onto his head.
After that, life had never been the same.
The invaders had all but levelled the little township. They had killed all the adults they could find and taken the children with them on their atmospheric gliders to the mothership hovering over the planet, just outside the atmosphere. No-one had ever learned what had become of the children, or why they had been taken.
As a child, Jack had been told that the invaders were the most horrible creatures one could possibly imagine. In his youthful naïveté, he had believed for many years that they must have been some monstrous, three-headed aliens, capable of breathing poison or spitting fire. Only much later, when he had signed up for the Time Agency, had he realized that they were something infinitely worse.
They were human beings, like the ones they had massacred. Well, not exactly like them. They were – or rather would be – the result of a colonization effort gone terribly wrong.
Their ancestors would settle on an Earth-like planet in the Magna Laternis system, somewhen in the early forty-third century, ignoring the warnings of the scientists that Magna, the system's sun (the same one Jack's people would call Granstar later) had a fifteen per cent greater mass than the sun of the Earth, and even though the planet of their choice was almost three times farther away from it than the Earth-Sun distance, the consequences for non-indigenous life could be very grave indeed.
The colonists would not listen; and the scientists would behold right. Life on the new planet would prove a walking on razor's edge, between runaway glaciation and all sorts of harmful effects of high solar winds, extreme ultraviolet radiation and the increased danger from asteroid and comet impacts that would be drawn in by the larger mass of the primary star.
The colony would barely avoid total annihilation by one or more of those forces, time and time again. And even the survivors, although they would come out of each disaster stronger and more determined than before, would not come out of them unscathed.
By the forty-ninth century, wide-spread mutations would have changed the once human colonists beyond recognition. They would become a bipedal species covered with short, very thick fur to protect them from the ultraviolet radiation, and with visor-like brows and particularly deep eye sockets to protect their sensitive eyes. Thick eyelids above secondary, clear nicking membranes that produced natural lotion to keep the eyes from drying out, would add to that protection.
Basically, they would look like their hominid ancestors had looked millions of years earlier. Like a particularly hairsuite version of homo erectus, only with much bigger brains and without the strong, animal jaws and teeth. Like homo erectus equipped with the highly-developed technology of a space-faring civilization – a technology that included genetic engineering as well, since all those changes, vital though they might have been for the survival of the subspecies, would not have happened in a mere six hundred years.
By the end of the fiftieth century, they would have modified all the technology their ancestors had brought, adapted it to the harsh conditions on their home planet – and would start looking out for a more suitable world on which to live.
They would not have to look very far. It would be known from the beginning that Magna had two habitable planets – the other one only slightly closer to its sun, but its axe tilted in a way that would make one side better suited to support human life. The other side would prove to be a killer desert, completely lifeless and baked hard by the merciless heat of Granstar, but on the shadowy hemisphere life would be possible, even if not easy.
The two planets had semi-synchronous orbits that would put them on the opposite side of the sun all times – a phenomenon astronomers of many species had been puzzling about for millennia. It seemed to be impossible, by all what science could tell about astrophysics, and yet the planets were there and showed no sign of their orbits to become unstable.
The second planet would have also been colonized by then, by a considerably smaller group of people, genetically engineered to deal with the living conditions more easily. People who would want to leave the highly technologized life – and the political machinations – of their planet of origins behind and to lead a simpler, more rustic, more natural life.
Consequently, they would be no match for their aggressive neighbours. They would be like sheep in a slaughterhouse; helpless against their aggressive cousins with all that superior technology – and the superior weapons.
The survivors of the little township on Boeshane Peninsula – and those had been but a handful – had fled to another colony; an even more remote, better hidden one. As their family group had become nearly extinct, Jack had been sent to a brother of his birthmother. He would never see Bethulah again. But her accusations, that he had been at fault in Garayu's fate, would stay with him a life long.
Now, almost two hundred years later in his own, relative time, he still felt that old guilt weigh down on his heart heavily. The perspective of living with it for hundreds, thousands… perhaps millions of years was not a pleasant one.
He got out of his sweat-soaked bed and went to have another shower. Sleep didn't seem so attractive all of a sudden, despite the fact that The Year That Never Was had left him with a bone-deep weariness. He craved sleep like he hadn't wanted it since having been robbed of his mortality, but at the same time, he dreaded the dreams – the nightmares – that would come with it.
He put on some clean clothes and climbed up to the office again, shrugging on his greatcoat (and missing Ianto helping him into it with almost painful intensity). Then he walked out into the main Hub area, uncertain what to do with himself.
Trevor, the leftover of Torchwood London, sitting at Gwen's old workplace now, looked up over his wire-rimmed glasses in a detached manner as he heard his footsteps. Jack could see that he was a young man indeed, the baldness a fashion statement rather than the actual loss of hair. The thin goatee made him look a bit older, but even so, he could not be more than perhaps thirty. His eyes, however, belied his appearance; they had the same haunted look as Ianto's when he accidentally dropped his smooth butler's mask.
The same look that Jack saw in the mirror every morning,
"Trouble with sleeping?" the young man asked quietly, in the manner of someone with ample experience in that area.
"Too many dreams," Jack replied curtly. "Too many memories."
"Yeah," Trevor said with feeling, not taking offence at Jack's brash tone. "Those do tend to give one insomnia."
"It's bad enough for us," Sally Jacobs added, "after only a few years of doing this job. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be for you."
So much compassion, coming from people he considered intruders and usurpers surprised Jack. He took a closer look at the lovely blonde and noticed the same haunted eyes as by Trevor. She just hid it better, due perhaps to the typical female resilience.
"What's yours?" he asked.
"Sycorax invasion," Sally replied with a shrug. "Me, standing on the roof of the Tower of London, ready to jump. Only that in the dreams, the telepathic connection won't break. I jump, and I fall… and fall… and fall… and watch up soaked in cold sweat, at the moment when I would hit up on the ground," she shuddered.
"Canary Wharf," Trevor said, without being asked. "I was in the Rift chamber when the Void Ship opened and the Daleks emerged. I saw them crush the skull of Doctor Singh with those sucker arms of theirs. I hear that cracking sound every time I close my eyes. That, and those… things screeching: Exterminate! Exterminate!"
Jack nodded, suddenly ashamed of his previous reaction to the young man. If anyone, he knew what it meant to face the universe's most determined, most merciless killers.
"Believe me, I know the feeling," he said. "I was killed by them, after all; and that time I couldn't even know that I'd be brought back by…"
"…by Rose Tyler, I know," Trevor finished. At Jack's baffled look, he smiled thinly. "As I said, I was there when the Daleks emerged; and so was Rose Tyler, taunting them, goading about how she had opened the heart of the Doctor's time machine and unleashed the Time Vortex upon the Dalek Emperor and its army, killing them all. After having discussed things with Tosh, Ianto and Mickey, it wasn't really hard to figure out how you've become… well, whatever you are now."
"Strange," Jack said. "I still find it hard to understand myself."
"I'm speaking of a theoretical approach," Trevor said. "You see, I've got a PhD in cybernetic engineering, and while it's still parsecs behind Time Lord technology, I have at least an inkling what absorbing pure temporal energy might do to the human body."
"Well, it's not a pleasant condition, even if it proves useful from time to time," Jack answered dryly. Trevor nodded.
"I'll take your word for it," he said. "I wouldn't change places with your for the world. Dying once is bad enough, but that's the natural way of human existence. Dying again and again, uncounted times, knowing that you'd come back and have to go through that again… it must be Hell."
"That's exactly what it is," Jack muttered, his respect for the younger man going up another notch.
So did his respect for Ianto, who had apparently chosen his people well. Much better than Jack himself, actually, whose record included Suzie, Owen, Gwen… and Ianto himself, who, while highly capable, had nearly destroyed Torchwood Three and the rest of the world with it, out of misguided love.
This was a sobering thought; one in a long line of sobering thoughts he'd had to face since running off with the Doctor.
"Anything interesting going on?" he asked, not quite ready for another round of soul-searching just yet. A Weevil on the loose would have been the right thing for his current mood, but of course the creatures were never around when one needed them.
"No," Sally shook her head. "The Rift is behaving itself for a change. And a good thing, too; I've got a dissertation to finish, and quiet nights are a rare thing," at Jack's intrigued look she added. "I'm studying applied mathematics at the Open University. Tosh said I had potential that would be wasted if I continued on as a glorified phone operator at UNIT's headquarters. My boss disagreed, so I transferred to Torchwood."
"I bet it wasn't as easy as it sounds," Jack said.
"Well, Colonel Mace was a bit grumpy," Sally admitted, "but Captain Price supported my request for a transfer, and it's no secret that in the end the Colonel would do anything Marion Price wants him to do."
Jack laughed. He, too, was aware of the internal gossip about those two – everyone even remotely connected to UNIT was. There had been a reason why Colonel Mace got transferred from the UNIT headquarters to the small base just outside Cardiff, while Captain Price continued working in London.
"Captain Price is a gifted engineer," Sally added, "and she wants women who have the brains to fulfil their potential. She lay on the Colonel's ears as long as I got my transfer."
"Most people wouldn't consider coming to Torchwood a wise career move," Jack said. Sally shrugged.
"Yeah, but most people are idiots who don't know shit," she replied bluntly. "I like it here. Tosh is a genius, Trevor is very inspiring, the work is full of challenges and surprises, and the coffee is to die for – what else would a girl want from life?"
Jack would have several suggestions, but he recognized a rhetoric question when he heard one. Besides, perhaps Sally was right. Perhaps for people like her – or like Trevor, like Mickey, like Ianto – this was really the best environment. They were all broken people who needed to find meaning again, and Torchwood gave them meaning.
Perhaps this was why things never worked for Gwen. Perhaps one needed to be broken in order to fit in. Gwen had always been too wrapped up in herself to allow anything close enough to break her. She broke other people instead; like Rhys. Or Andy, whose friendship and attraction she had used to get what she wanted, without remorse.
Well, that was another problem Ianto had dealt with successfully. Jack knew he would never have been able to fire Gwen, and even less to Retcon her. She reminded him too much of Rose. Not the Rose who had brought him back from the death; the naïve girl who blundered into each new adventure cluelessly, making hasty judgements and demanding action with the impatience of a teenager with a mad crush on an older man – which was what she had really been.
Jack, not the sanest, most considerate person at that time himself, had loved her like a little sister. And even now that she had cursed him to eternal loneliness, he could not be angry with her. She had only meant to help, after all – and had not had the brains to foresee the consequences.
Well, she was gone now, safe in a different dimension (about which Jack still needed to question Mickey), and so was Gwen, for which he ought to thank Ianto. Had Gwen remained with Torchwood Three, she would have gotten someone – or the entire team – killed, sooner or later. She had never been one to listen; or to follow orders. At least now there was well-founded hope that the newly hired members would do a lot better.
Still, all those changes would need a lot to get used to. And, as much as Jack didn't feel like doing anything in that direction, that required a great deal of thinking. Preferably on his favourite rooftop, while looking down at the city.
"I'm going out for a while," he announced to the graveyard shift. "Can you give me a ring when Ianto's back?"
Sally grinned. "Brooding time on the rooftop, Captain?"
Jack grinned back at her. He did not need to ask where they would know about that from. They were working for Ianto, after all.
"Something like that, yeah," he admitted. "So, when Ianto gets back…"
"We'll have you informed," Sally promised; then she tossed some card keys to him. "Go, have a good brood. I don't think Ianto would protest against you using his car."
Jack didn't think so, either. Ianto was generous to the fault. He might not let him back to work for Torchwood if he had a sound reason not to, but he would never make an issue of Jack using his car.
He stayed on the rooftop for the rest of the night, barely even shifting positions, trying to adapt mentally to all the changes that had happened during his absence. At least to the changes he had already learned of; he did not doubt that there would be more to discover, and he was not certain that he would like them.
As a rule, he was fairly good at adapting to new situations – what other choice would he have, with everything changing around him time and time again, while he basically remained the same? But he had so hoped that he would be settling in to the old, familiar Torchwood Three routine like into comfortable, well-worn clothes; to get the chance to return to some semblance of normalcy after all that he had gone through. Realizing that he no longer had that option hit him harder than he would have thought.
Day was breaking in the familiar, grey and rainy way – at least Cardiff remained true to itself – and he was so bone-weary that he felt he'd lose consciousness any moment now. He was just about to leave the rooftop and return to the Hub when his phone rang.
A quick glance at the display revealed the caller's ID: he was surprised that it was Martha. He knew that Martha regularly called her family from the TARDIS – having met the formidable Francine Jones he did not wonder why – but he was at a loss why Martha would want to call him. After all, he had made it clear why he could no longer travel with them, and she'd seemed to understand it.
Well, there was only one way to find that out. He answered the call, grateful to have someone to talk to. Half a night alone with his own thoughts had been… tiresome.
"Hello, gorgeous!" he said as cheerfully as he could manage, well aware of the fact that he no longer could fool Martha… or anyone else from her family. "Where are you calling from? Watching the burst of starfire over the coast of Meta Sigmafolio? It's due to happen somewhen… right now, actually. Oh, I remember watching it with that girl when I was still with the Time Agency – it was beyond spectacular, the sky like oil on water… I bet the Doctor has taken you there, just to show off!"
"Jack," Martha interrupted, her voice uncommonly serious, "I'm calling you from the night train. I'm on my way to Cardiff."
"Cardiff?" Jack repeated in a mild shock. "What are you doing in Cardiff, of all places?"
"I'm gonna have a job interview tomorrow… well, that would be today by now, wouldn't it?" Martha corrected herself.
"A job interview?" Jack knew he sounded like a broken record, but he just couldn't wrap his mind around the ideal of Martha leaving the Doctor. Unless… "Has he just left you behind? Why, that self-important, arrogant little…"
"Jack," Martha interrupted before he could have worked up a serious rage on her behalf. "He didn't leave me behind. It was my choice, all right?"
"But why…?" Jack just couldn't understand it. He was sure that Martha had feelings for the Doctor; there were signs for someone with eyes to see; plus, due to his more sensitive fifty-first century senses, Jack could also smell the increase of her pheromone levels whenever she was around the Doctor.
"Later," Martha interrupted again. "It's a little… complicated, and I'd rather tell you about it in person. If you have the time to meet me, that is."
"Oh, I do," Jack grinned mirthlessly. "It seems all I have left is lots and lots of time."
Martha was a perceptive girl. Even though she could not see his face, she could hear the bitterness in his voice well enough.
"It seems it wasn't the happy reunion you'd hoped for during the last year," she said slowly.
"It never is," Jack sighed. "I'll tell you about it when you're here. When does your train arrive?"
"In about twenty-five minutes," Martha replied. "I know it's awfully early, but I wanted to speak with you before I'd go to this job interview, and since you don't sleep much as a rule… I haven't waked you up, have I?"
"Oh, no," Jack assured her. "I was having what Ianto calls my brooding time."
"Really?" there was an almost audible smile in her voice. "What exactly does that include?"
"Standing on a rooftop, looking down at the city and trying to figure out what to do with my life," Jack summarized. "All right, then, I'll pick you up at Cardiff Central. We'll go to a café, have breakfast and chat."
"Works for me," Martha sounder relieved. "See you, then, Jack. And thanks."
"What for?" he asked and disconnected.
The question hadn't been a mere commonplace. Meeting someone who remembered The Year That Never Was would be a relief. Plus, Martha was a sweetheart, who needed his help… most likely in more than just one way. If she had chosen to leave the Doctor, something must have happened. And if she needed help, Jack Harkness would be there to provide it.
He left the rooftop and ran down the stairs with renewed energy. It was a nice feeling, being needed again.
~TBC~
