Chapter Thirty
Guadalajara, Earth, 5093
The force of exiting the Time Vortex threw Jack from his feet, knees crashing to the ground, the impact making his teeth clack together as his hand was ripped from Lorna's. Bungling the landing landing – unexpected travel by Vortex Manipulator tended to scramble one's mind –, by the time he had twisted himself into a defensive position, the muzzle of a gun was pressed against the nape of his neck, cold and authoritative. Somewhere behind him, Lorna was being sick. The wet sound of her upending the contents of her stomach on the floor made him angry, and his fingers twitched for the knife he kept on his person; since the Doctor didn't allow him to carry guns – a small price to pay for the life he now led – he had taken to slipping small, near undetectable weapons on his person.
A knife here.
A garotte there.
Just little things discreetly placed about his body so as not to disturb the fit of his outfit.
Jack considered that what the Doctor didn't know couldn't hurt him and, in the event of a life-threatening emergency, he wanted the security that weapons gave him.
"Move for a weapon and you won't speak for a week," a dark voice threatened.
Slowly, Jack raised his hands.
"Where's Lorna?" A small whimper and a choked off sob reached his ears. He tried to turn his head but the gun dug into him, twisting his skin. Gritting his teeth, he stilled. "If any of you hurt her, I'll –"
"What?" The same dark voice, filled with anger and brushed with familiarity, scoffed. "Kill us? That's your MO after all, isn't it? Unlike you, Thane, we don't kill the innocent."
Jack twitched but the gun kept him in place. "What the hell are you talking about?"
A snort. "Like you don't know."
He really didn't, though he wasn't about to hand them that information yet; let them think he held more cards than he did and he might figure out a way to get him and Lorna to safety. Not pursuing the conversation, he risked turning his head to catch sight of Lorna who looked terrified. Holding out his arms, she dashed past Pyl, who was flicking vomit off her shoes with a look of disgust on her face, and threw herself against Jack, pressing her face into his neck; too terrified to scream or cry, her breath took on a thin and reedy nature, a panic attack certain to sweep over her if he didn't do something. Cupping the back of her head, he murmured soothing nonsense, letting the tone of his voice wash over her as his eyes flicked around the room he was in.
Cold fear sent his stomach plummeting to his aching knees as he recognition set in.
Arrivals.
For nearly ten years, mission after mission had brought him back to this very room with its landing pad that was specifically calibrated to soften the landing. Back when he had been a respected Time Agent – though some would argue he had never been particularly respected given how often he bedded fellow agents, admin officials, cleaning staff, and prisoners – he would have already stepped off the platform and handed his Vortex Manipulator over to the waiting technician so they could recalibrate it and make sure he had only gone where he was ordered to go. The sound of him chatting merrily if the mission had gone well wouldn't have been unusual, nor would the sight of him stalking off with dark clouds on his face if the mission had been a failure, leaving his partner behind to deal with the preliminary reports.
As he knelt on the hard ground, Lorna trembling in his arms, he searched his mind and tried to remember everything he could about the room and think of a way out.
"Thane." Agent Pyl dragged the top of her boot over the edge of the pad, scraping off the remnants of vomit, her eyes sweeping over Jack, who tightened his grip on Lorna, keeping her face turned away. "Your Vortex Manipulator."
"I'd rather keep it."
"I'm sure you would," Pyl said, unamused. "But it doesn't belong to you. Now hand it over, unless you'd like us to take it from you?"
A muscle beneath Jack's eye twitched.
Reluctantly, he reached around Lorna and began the laborious process of unbuckling the manipulator. It was his only sure-fire way out of his situation and when he surrendered it, he would be left without his surest means of escape; however, he was acutely aware that they were quite willing to cut it from his arm if he refused. Vortex Manipulators were the single-most important piece of technology the Time Agency possessed and he had stolen his when he left – or so he assumed; his actual departure remained a mystery to him, falling as it did within the two years of his life that were missing from his mind but he doubted they had simply let him walk out with one.
Tugging on the buckles, it loosened from his forearm and slid down into his waiting grasp. Letting it sway from his fingers, he extended it towards Pyl and flashed her a sharp grin over the top of Lorna's head.
"It's a little sweaty," he said. "Sorry about that."
Pyl took it, her delicate nose wrinkled, and she passed it to –
"Well, I'll be damned. Mila, is that you?"
A short woman with red hair that was turning grey at the temples gave him a small wave as she carefully pocketed the manipulator. "Hey, Javic."
"Agent Opuan." Pyl's anger snapped through the room like a whip. Mila jumped, face dropping into serious lines, eyes skidding away from Jack's. "He's here to face charges, not to have chats with old friends."
"Yes, ma'am; sorry, ma'am."
Jack glanced up at Pyl. "Can't we do both?"
"You will be silent until you are spoken to, Agent Thane," she warned him, stepping onto the platform and crouching, putting them nose to nose. Jack's hand tightened on the back of Lorna's head, her body stiff and his side warm where her terror had loosened her bladder. "We've waited a long time to bring you to justice. Your silver tongue won't be able to help you now."
"If I remember correctly," Jack said, voice pitched low and mouth curving with faint mockery that was making the Doctor roll his eyes somewhere. "You enjoyed my tongue once upon a time."
His head cracked to one side, cheekbone knocking against the top of Lorna's skull, and pain echoed along his jaw. Pyl stood up and unclenched her blood-speckled fist, angry colour slashed high across her cheeks.
"Be quiet," she hissed.
Slowly, Jack brought his head back around, smoothing his hand over the top of Lorna's head to soothe the impact. Eyes locked on hers, he mimed zipping his mouth.
"Move," she ordered.
With sharp stabs of fire shooting down his legs and Lorna clinging to his neck, he managed to get to his feet. The fury of pain in his knees made him long for the TARDIS's medical bay but the thought of home sent his mind skidding in the direction of Mickey. The world spun at the thought of Mickey in the Gamma Forest, gaping at where Jack had been as the Vashta Nerada descended on him; he hoped that the Doctor, Rose, or Zoe had enough sense to keep their heads about them and only panic once they were safely inside the TARDIS. His fingers tightened on Lorna, hefting her higher up his body, pushing those thoughts away. If he let himself think on Mickey and his friends, he risked losing the control he needed if he was going to survive whatever the Time Agency had in store for him.
Stepping off the raised platform, he glanced behind him to put a face to the person holding a gun to him and paused. "Harlan?"
"Fuck you," Harlan replied.
Jack stared, taken aback, before turning back around. He used to go for drinks with Harlan every Thursday when they were in the same time period and had introduced him to his wife, serving as best man at his wedding, but the look of hatred rooted in his old friend's eyes unnerved him. Off to the side was Mila Opuan who was only a few years older than he was and shouldn't be greying yet; then there was Uriel who had never particularly liked him but who appeared to like him even less now. Only four of them were in the room with him and the lack of noise outside the doors bothered him, even as he kept his thoughts from his face.
Whenever he had let himself think of what might happen when his past caught up with him, he hadn't imagined a warm welcome but he also hadn't expected it to be so frosty.
Mouth throbbing from Pyl's fist, he turned his face into Lorna's hair and spoke quietly. "How you doing, sweetheart?"
"I'm scared," Lorna whispered, tears tracking a path down her face, fingers clenched tightly in his shirt. "And I peed."
"Ssh, it's okay." He pressed a kiss into the smoke-scented warmth of her hair, trying to chase away the shame as Pyl nodded at the other agents and the door opened. Something sharp and painful jabbed him in the back – Harlan's gun – and a grunt fell from his throat before he started moving. "None of that matters. I promise nothing bad's going to happen to you. I won't let it, okay? I'll get you home."
She whimpered and clung harder. "But what about the shadows?"
Mickey.
The thought of him sent an aching desperateness that made every part of his body.
"My friends are taking care of it," Jack said, hoping that was true. "You don't need to worry about that either. All you need to think about is what sort of ice cream you want when we're done here. Any flavour, it's yours."
Lorna sniffed. "What's ice cream?"
"You don't know what ice cream is?" She shook her head and looked up at him, cheek resting on his shoulder. "Well, that means you're in for a treat. When all of this is over, I'm going to take you for the best ice cream in the universe. How's that sound?"
"Good," she whispered.
"Hmm, what was that?" The gentle tease helped lift his own spirits, and the smile that slipped across his face warmed the cold parts of him. "I didn't hear you."
"Good," she said, louder.
Jack caught a laugh before it left his throat, delighted by her smile that remained visible for only moments before she remembered herself and tucked her face back against his shoulder. Arms wrapped around him, he kissed the top of her head and hoped he was going to be able to keep his promise. With her settled, fears temporarily soothed, Jack turned his attention back to his surroundings.
The building he was in was as familiar to him as the TARDIS was becoming but the differences to when he was last there were pronounced. In his time, the headquarters of the Time Agency was one of the most beautifully designed buildings on Earth; its architect had spent twenty years simply designing it, sketching and sketching and creating 3D images until she was happy with the final product, yet even during construction she would tweak things here and there until it was an aesthetic marvel. The first time Jack saw it as an eighteen-year-old recruit, he had been stunned and unable to walk inside until Pyl, laughing at his expression, took his arm and pulled him into where the interior decorating was purposefully aimed at making people feel comfortable.
The Time Agency was a public organisation and, as such, they offered tours to the general around the less security-heavy facilities, so they knew the value of appearances.
That was why Jack knew something was wrong.
Even though he was in the headquarters – and he knew that he was –, his surroundings were filthy, decayed, and scorched. On the walls, black marks were seared into the solid stone from what looked like blaster fire but as there were doorways that crumbled in on themselves, archways slumped, and rubble spilling out of filled rooms.
Jack guessed that a bomb had gone off.
To his eyes, it looked as though a war had taken place within the confines of the building and the thought was startling. Due to the nature of their work, the Time Agency was capable of detecting threats against their existence with ease because they rewrote their timelines; whenever a threat breached the door, one agent – no one knew who in order to protect them from betrayal – would travel back in time to prevent the attack using a series of codewords to verify the truth, thus erasing themselves from existence as the timelines shifted. The fact that someone or something had attacked headquarters and somehow prevented the chosen agent from travelling back in time to change the outcome was frightening.
Jack had always thought the Time Agency invulnerable. It had been a gleaming beacon of human achievement. The mastery of time travel and then the subsequent legislation of it opened avenues of exploration and endeavour that had previously been cut off to them and helped propel the human project deeper into space through the recovery of lost knowledge and ideas. To be picked to join the Time Agency was one of the highest honours and the competition was fierce: millions of peoples from across the colonies applied for only a handful of positions and Jack remembered the day Pyl had come to his door to recruit him with painstaking clarity.
His application happened on a whim. Looking for a job as his mother had stopped working years before, grief making her unreliable and his father's pension only stretched to the barest of necessities, he had found work in one of the factories that made bolts for land vehicles, a dull but moderately well-paid job that helped him pay off a few of his mother's debts and allow himself a handful of luxuries.
Desperate for something more and an escape from the grey atmosphere of his home, he submitted his application during a shift break and thought nothing more of it until Pyl appeared. No one had ever told him why his application had been successful enough to invite him to the initial testing – as only a few hundred were – but it didn't matter at the end of the day. He had passed the first test consisting of a personalised visit to measure his reaction to the news of his success; had he burst into tears or displayed any excessive emotion as some did, he would have been immediately cut from consideration as the Agency liked their employees in all departments to be calm and collected in the face of extremes.
Jack had opened the front door to Pyl, listened to where she was from, and responded with a single, less-than eloquent, "huh."
"What happened here?" Jack asked, the sound of their footsteps echoing in the empty, damaged corridor. "Was there an attack?"
"Javic," Mila hissed, skin flushing. "This isn't a joke."
"I wasn't making one," he said. "What happened – ow! Stop hitting me, Pyl!"
Blood trickled from his nose that joined his jaw in a throbbing swell of pain.
"No one wants your sense of humour, Thane," Pyl informed him, dust drifting in the sun that flowed through the shattered windows. "Keep quiet unless you want the situation made significantly worse for you."
Harlan scowled. "Why are we even bringing him in? You should've killed him on sight."
"The Director's orders," Pyl said, sharply. "If you've a complaint, you're free to take it up with him."
Brief discourse over, they continued walking and Jack felt a small hand touch his face before the blood was dabbed from beneath his nose. Glancing down, Lorna had taken the top of her dress and was pressing it delicately against his bruised nose, letting the blood soak into the material. He smiled and murmured his thanks, her kindness a sweet thing amidst the uncertainty, though it did little to relieve the knot of dread that tightened in his chest at the growing idea that he was being blamed for the Time Agency's destruction.
And it wasn't as though he knew if it was true.
From the moment he had woken up in a grimy medical centre strapped to a biobed with a painful gap in his memories, he had known his past was going to catch up with him. He hadn't waited to see who else was in the building, afraid he was under attack; stripping the medical equipment from his body, throwing on his jacket, and leaving via the window, he had disappeared into the streets of Hong Kong, hidden by the bright lights and busy crowds. Lying low had been difficult but necessary, the pain in his head worse than anything he had felt before. Worried as he was that people were chasing him, not knowing who had done what to him, he had rested for as long as he felt was safe before the fog and pain in his mind lifted long enough for him to activate his Vortex Manipulator, taking himself to the 29th century where he had spent a further three months recuperating in Islamabad, trying to piece together what had happened to him.
Shopping in the local market one day, haggling with a vendor over the price of some fried tofu, he had caught sight of Pyl moving through the streets and panic seized him. Pyl typically dealt with the 35th to 39th centuries and it was too early for her to be walking around 29th century Pakistan; leaving the vendor abruptly, he ducked behind the outdoor shops and set his manipulator to random, disappearing into the 18th century for a very short stay as the lack of plumbing in Poland at the time made him uncomfortable and frustrated.
And around and around he bounced, never staying in one place too long, making sure to cover his tracks, never entirely sure why he was running from his fellow time agents but knowing, in his gut, that it was the right thing to do.
Then he had met Rose Tyler.
Jack was only supposed to have been in the 20th century for a few weeks, long enough to fell his merchandise – such as it was – and then he planned to go somewhere warmer and away from Earth for a time, explore the colonies as best he could. But Rose Tyler hanging from a barrage balloon had been so unusual and so unexpected that he couldn't help but find out what she was doing, letting himself get swept up into her life with her mad friend and baffling sister. Had the Doctor not immediately thought himself capable of something better, disappointed in him without even knowing him, and had Zoe not greeted him like an old and cherished friend, perhaps he wouldn't have stayed but they were intoxicating and he had fallen in with them like he had always promised himself he wouldn't do.
Better alone was how he used to live until he crossed paths with the TARDIS and her occupants.
Day by day, the Doctor, Rose, and Zoe had chipped away at the barriers erected around him until he had been folded into the messy, loving family like he had always been there. Their love had made it easy to forget what he was running from, and he had started to get complacent; his new life on the TARDIS gave him a false sense of security as he stood in the shadow of the Doctor's protection. Very few people were willing to risk the wrath of a Time Lord once they knew what he was but there was no sort of life to be had living in the Doctor's shadow forever, and part of Jack was relieved that his past had finally caught up with him as it meant he no longer had to look over his shoulder every time he left the TARDIS.
I've had a good run, he thought, willing himself not to cry as the life he loved threatened to slip from his fingers. Done more than most, seen things people back home wouldn't believe. It's been fun.
"Questioning your life choices, Thane?" Harlan whispered in his ear, the hot moistness of his breath making Jack's skin crawl. "I would, if I were you."
"If you were me, you'd know I've got no regrets," Jack replied. "How's Lydia, by the way?"
"Fuck you," Harlan growled, pressing the gun into the small of his back and twisting. "Get her name out your mouth."
Jack arched his back away from the gun. "Oh, come on. You're not upset I slept with her first, are you? It's not like you didn't know that when you started dating, or has she finally told you about that weekend in Cancún?"
"Harlan," Mila warned from the side. "Don't."
"He deserves it," he spat.
"That's for Raphio to decide," she said, speaking as though she was taming a beast. "Come on, I'll take him from here." Harlan didn't move. "I can make it an order if you want, but I'd rather not."
"Fine," he said, furious, reminding Jack of a bull preparing to charge. "But don't go all soft on him or I'm coming after you."
"Threaten someone who cares." Mila took up position behind Jack as Harlan stalked off, shouldering past Pyl in his rage. "You might want to start choosing your words more carefully. Harlan's been pushing to kill you since the beginning."
"I just asked him about Lydia," Jack said. "I don't see the harm in that."
"Lydia's dead, Javic," she said, a crack of surprise snapping through him. "She died in the attack. Harlan found her body beneath the rubble. He hasn't been the same since."
"Jesus," he breathed. "That's awful."
Mila pulled a face. "Come on, man, don't be like that. You had to have known your actions would have consequences. You're not an idiot."
"Mills, I'm telling you, whatever caused Lydia's death, I'm not responsible for it," he argued quietly, cautious of catching Pyl's attention. They were waiting outside what had once been the cafeteria and Uriel was murmuring something into his Vortex Manipulator; clearly, they were waiting for something or someone. "She was my friend. You know that."
"I don't think you meant to kill her," Mila confessed, "but I also don't think you lie awake at night torn up about it. After what you did...hell, I'm not sure I ever really knew you. I'm not sure any of us did." Jack tried to make sense of her words, frustrated there wasn't enough information to form an accurate picture. "Just don't rile Harlan up too much, okay? He's been the most determined in the efforts to capture you and has pushed really hard for your execution."
"You mean that's not been decided on?"
"Not yet," she whispered, looking at Lorna's small face, startled when she realised the child was watching her. "Listen to me, if you want to have any chance of living to see tomorrow, if there's anyone you love like Harlan loves Lydia, then keep your mouth shut and be respectful. You don't have to die today if you're clever, so be clever, Javic. Please."
Jack swallowed. "Why are you helping me?"
Her laugh was soft and tired. "We were friends once, I don't believe everything they've been saying about you, I'm tired of constantly being dragged back to the Agency...pick a reason, it doesn't matter. If you die today or not, it's not going to change my life, so I can give you a little kindness."
"It's appreciated," he said, softly.
"Make the most of it."
Rubbing a hand absently up and down Lorna's back, he thought of Lydia with her blonde hair and wide smile and absolutely filthy laugh. The knowledge she was dead struck him hard. The memory of her twirling around the dance floor at her wedding was pushed to the forefront of his mind, along with how happy and besotted Harlan had looked as he said his vows. Losing her explained the angry, brittle Harlan that now existed and Jack found his mind drifting to Mickey again, wondering how he would take it if Jack turned up dead. Unable to bear the thought, he closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of Lorna's hair.
It wasn't fair.
He and Mickey were just getting started. A few months was long enough to plant the seeds of what was to come but not so long as to see them sprout and grow into anything sturdy and rooted; it was love between them – at least Jack was in love – and the memories of their evenings and nights together where he patiently let Mickey set the pace, enjoying the tentative exploration of his body with hands and mouth, Mickey shying away from actually having sex but getting closer and closer the more his desire grew and the more confidence he gained that Jack wasn't pulling some twisted and elaborate prank on him. He thought of the conversations they had that ranged from the ridiculous to the intimate, loving how Mickey's fingers would absently play with the back of Jack's hair, not realising he was doing it only to blush when he did, yanking his hand back as though burned.
He wanted more of that.
He wanted more of everything.
And not just with Mickey but with the Doctor and Rose and Zoe and Jackie too.
It had been so long since he had anyone he wanted to call family and then he met three wonderful idiots in a beautiful blue box and got everything he had ever dreamed of and more.
It's okay, Jack thought, wishing they could hear him. I love you, and it's okay.
Of course none of it was okay. If Mila was right and he kept quiet – unlikely given his current understanding of his character – then the chance of him getting out alive of whatever awaited him was higher than immediately suspected; however, he doubted that the Time Agency – at least whatever remained of it – would have gone to such trouble tracking him through time and space simply to let him go. He might survive what was to come but his freedom was lost to him, and he supposed the best he could hope for was a comfortable prison cell where the Doctor might be able to track him, if he was lucky.
If not...
"He's ready," Uriel said.
Jack opened his eyes.
Shoulders back, chin up, he thought, giving Lorna a reassuring squeeze. Don't let them see your fear.
The doors opened to what had once been the cafeteria. Able to seat up to 1000 people at a time, the room echoed as they walked in. Part of it had opened onto the street outside, the slight shimmer of a perception filter stopping people from peering in, and he considered simply jumping out of the gaping hole as a potential escape route but without his Vortex Manipulator and with Lorna to think about, he wouldn't get far. Instead, he turned his attention onto the man behind the table.
Director Cal Raphio.
Jack could count on one hand the number of times he had spoken with Raphio in his near decade at the Agency and his presence now was not a comforting one. At his side was Nia Kahn, one of the youngest and more talented agents in the agency's history; Jack remembered meeting her for the first time when she was a bright-eyed recruit and the memory made him think of Zoe the first time he had met her – not the older version of herself but the younger, sweeter one. In the shadows behind both Raphio and Kahn, Harlan lurked like a caged beast waiting to be let out, and Jack was sharply reminded of the werewolf at Torchwood House.
He tightened his grip on Lorna, arms aching, and came to a stop before the table.
Silence cloaked the room, and Jack wondered who was going to speak first.
"Javic Thane for you, director," Agent Pyl said as though he wasn't capable of seeing what was before him. "As ordered."
"Good work, agent, thank you." Raphio examined him over the desk before rising, the once hard muscle of his body having given away to something softer and more comfortable. He rested large hands on the table and stared at him. "We've been looking for you for some time, Thane."
"Sorry for the inconvenience," Jack said.
"Still with that smart mouth of yours," Raphio noted, stepping around the table. His eyes flicked to Lorna. "Someone take the child. She's in the way."
"She's not going anywhere," Jack said, angling his body defensively "I don't trust any of you with her."
"We're not you, Thane," he replied. "We're not murderers."
Jack snorted. "None of us have clean hands. We've all killed in the line of duty."
"Not like you," Raphio said. "Not any of own."
"Listen, I feel there's been a misunderstanding here, so why don't we – ow." He was able to avoid knocking his head against Lorna's that time but pain pulsed in his cheek, Raphio's fist impacting in the same spot Pyl's had. Blood filled his mouth, and he took a quiet joy in spitting it on the floor between their feet, tentatively probing with his tongue to feel that his teeth were still in place. Between his cheek and his nose, he was beginning to get a headache. "That was rude."
"Stop hitting him," Lorna exclaimed, voice high and reedy. "Leave him alone."
"Shut her up or I will," Raphio threatened.
"It's okay, Lorna," Jack said, words slurred from the swelling on his face, tearing his eyes from Raphio to manage a bloody smile at her. "Some people never grow out of hitting others. It's very rude and not something for you to do."
"Watch yourself, Thane, lest you make the situation worse for yourself."
Jack caught the roll of his eyes in time – a bad habit picked up from the Tylers – and tried to ignore the pain running across his face. Getting punched was one of his least favourite activities to do with a fist and he was vain enough that he worried about fractured cheekbones or dislocated eye sockets or – even worse – a broken nose, but everything felt more or less all right; at least Lorna didn't scream when she looked at him. He watched Raphio retake his seat, silence pulling around the room again; Jack waited, needing more information before he figured a way to get Lorna out of danger and to safety.
"Fourteen years," Raphio said, words echoing around the room. "That's how long it's taken us to put back together what you broke."
That was surprising. "It's been fewer for me."
"I imagine it has," he said, twitching his fingers and throwing a picture of Jack hanging out of the TARDIS in Cardiff the day Margaret Blaine tried to tear open the rift. He was grinning and gesturing at the Doctor – whose big ears and leather jacket twisted nostalgia through him – and Mickey, who he had only just met, was standing with his arm around Zoe as Rose chewed on the end of her long scarf. "It appears you've been keeping yourself busy. That was quite the night in Cardiff. 21st century, I believe."
"Do you know who that man is?" Jack asked, not beneath using the Doctor as a shield. He might be all fluff and light and wounded puppy when someone teased him but he was also the Oncoming Storm and the Last Time Lord, there was weight in his name that the Agency would be fools to ignore. "The one in the leather jacket?"
Raphio picked up a data PADD. "A renegade Time Lord known as the Doctor. The last of his kind according to this information." An eyebrow lifted. "An interesting protector you've found yourself: someone as equally reckless with the timelines as you are."
He laughed. "Say that to his face, I dare you."
"The only conversation I intend on having with the Doctor – should he decide you're worth an attempted rescue – will be a full and frank discussion of your crimes," Raphio informed him. "Renegade he may be but I can't imagine he'd welcome a traitor and a murderer onto his ship."
"You'd be surprised," Jack snarked even as his chest hurt.
His first night on the TARDIS, long after Rose and Zoe had gone to bed, the Doctor had cornered him and, with polite efficiency that had left him feeling cold and fucking terrified, informed him of exactly what would happen if he turned out to be less than what the girls believed he was. And the lingering doubt that made him question his welcome even after everything they had been through together whispered poison into his mind: he was too much work, the Doctor didn't want him around the girls, and Mickey would never love him.
"Sir," Pyl said. "We're wasting time."
"You're right," he nodded, flexing his fist. Jack blinked rapidly, pulling his head back when a bright light shone on him, making sure he was the centre of attention for a grand total of six people: wasteful if dramatic, and Jack did appreciate good theatre. "Javic Thane, you stand accused of treason, sabotage, theft, abandonment, and the murder of sixty-two members of this agency. How do you answer these charges?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Your actions had consequences," Raphio said, repeating Mila's words with a sharp bite, giving him the impression it was something they had said a lot to each other over the years as justification for tracking him down and bringing him to whatever passed for justice in their minds. "Did you expect no one to die when you threw your pathetic little tantrum?"
The treason, theft, and abandonment charges Jack had expected but the mass murder was an unpleasant surprise.
"If sixty-two people died, maybe tantrum isn't the best way to describe what happened," he said.
"If he speaks out of turn again, cut his hand off."
"Whoa – hey! That's –" Pyl stepped close and removed a laser knife. Jack turned Lorna away from the red heat of the weapon, forearm braced across her. "Never mind. Fuck. Just thought the escalation was a bit uncalled for."
"Your actions were uncalled for," Raphio said, holding up his hand to still Pyl. "How do you answer these charges?"
"Not guilty, obviously."
"Liar," Harlan spat, surging forwards, restrained only by Kahn spinning on her heels to put her body in the way. "You're a fucking liar, Javic!"
"I didn't kill Lydia," Jack argued. "Why would I? She was my friend and I loved her."
"Shut your fucking –" he struggled against Kahn who shoved him back into the shadows. "Get off –"
"You deny that you walked into this facility and destroyed the main computer?" Raphio said, speaking over Harlan's increasingly incoherent rage. "That you deliberately and knowingly stranded agents throughout history? Do you deny setting the bombs that killed sixty-two of our personnel? Do you deny that your actions brought about the destruction of the Time Agency?"
The volley of information – new pieces for the jigsaw that was the blank canvas of his missing memory – stunned Jack but he kept his face fixed and controlled, refusing to let them know he had no idea what they were talking about.
"I imagine you're accusing me of these things because you have proof," Jack said, choosing his words carefully. "And it's clear your minds are made up. I was guilty the second you sent Pyl after me. Why even bother with this trial?"
"For personal satisfaction."
"That's hardly practicing the enlightened thinking you liked to tout," Jack pointed out. "The last fourteen years must've been rough for you."
"You can't even begin to comprehend what I've had to do to ensure the survival of this agency," Raphio said, anger buried in the lines on his face. "You tried to destroy us and you failed."
Jack held his eyes, Lorna a heavy weight in his arms that grew heavier with each passing moment.
"Sounds to me that if the government found you at all useful, you wouldn't have fallen so easily by the wayside. Because this –?" He gestured with a hand lifted from Lorna's back, her arms briefly tightening about his neck. "This isn't the Time Agency. This is you clinging onto something that gave you purpose. From the looks of all of this, the Time Agency is over." Raphio's jaw twitched, and Jack's eyes narrowed in on the small giveaway. "I'm right, aren't I? They shut you down, turned you into a failed relic, but you didn't like that. Not that I'm surprised, I suspect you enjoyed controlling time a little too much. Made you feel important."
"Pyl."
Rule one of dealing with people who want you dead, don't antagonise them.
Jack had told Zoe that often enough – her mouth and quick mind getting them into trouble about as much as it got them out of it – and he was glad she wasn't there to watch him ignore his own lecture.
His knees buckled and his arms spasmed around Lorna, grunting in pain as he was forced to his bruised knees. Pyl dug a hand into his hair and jerked his head to one side. The heat of the laser knife warmed his skin before a searing, blinding heat made his vision white out and his throat turn rough from screaming as Pyl sliced his ear off in one clean swipe. Hot blood gushed down his neck before the knife burnt the skin shut, stomach heaving with pain-induced nausea, and he fell forwards, dry heaving, Lorna's feet touching the ground, her thin arms wrapped around him protectively.
"Leave him alone! Just leave him alone!"
"Lorna, I'm okay," he rasped, spitting bile onto the floor. His hand wrapped around her shoulder and, using her body to straighten himself out, he glared up at Raphio. "What the fuck was that for?"
"A reminder of your place," Raphio said, coldly.
Pyl threw his ear down in front of him, making a soft, wet noise on impact. Lorna started crying again, which – now that Jack only had one functioning ear – made it difficult for him to hear what was being said.
Dragging the back of his hand across his wound, trying to assess the damage, agony lanced through him as he rubbed against the cauterised flesh. "Torture's illegal."
"Illegal for the Time Agency that was run by the United Earth government," Raphio said, a pleased smile playing at his lips. "And as you've so helpfully pointed out, we're not under their jurisdiction any more; therefore, the laws don't apply to us."
Jack leaned back, wiping his bloodied fingers across his chest. "That's not how laws work, you idiot."
"Do you want to lose your other ear?"
"Leave him alone," Lorna shouted, small foot stomping against the ground. Jack appreciated her defence but wished she would lower her volume as his remaining ear rung. "You're all bullies, all of you, and I hate you!"
"You can be quiet too," Raphio snapped.
Jack pulled her back into the shield of his arms. "Leave her alone."
"It's like a fucking echo in here," Pyl muttered, exasperated.
"You're right." Eyes swung back to Jack who, in an effort to take the attention of Lorna, decided to throw himself headfirst into the accusations for it wasn't as though he hadn't suspected he had done something reprehensible, believing the memory wipe to be a punishment of sorts. "I don't deny what I've done, but Lorna's innocent." On his knees, it felt as though he was begging for mercy and he hated that feeling. "And, right now, I want to see her safe before you continue with this kangaroo court. If you give me back my manipulator –"
"No," Raphio interrupted, sharply. "I'm not stupid, Thane. Do you really think I'd let you send a message to your Time Lord friend before we're ready to receive him? And it's not your manipulator, you stole it. It belongs to the Time Agency."
Which doesn't exist any more, he thought, frustrated by Raphio.
"I only want to send Lorna somewhere safe," he said, calmly.
Raphio dismissed his concerns with a wave of his hand. "When we're done here, she'll be returned to her time period in the place and time she left it without any memory of what's taken place. It'll be like nothing ever happened for her."
"You can't," Jack argued, panic distracting him from the pain in his knees. Rose had always accused him of having bony knees but he hadn't realised how true that was until all he felt was the rub of them against the hard ground. "Her home's been invaded by the Vashta Nerada. You send her back there and she'll die."
"That is not our concern," Raphio said. "She's of the past. If she's fated to die on that day, then so be it."
Anger surged through him and loosened his tongue, recklessness surging through him. "I'm glad the Time Agency's gone. You once said that it was our duty to protect the innocent and to seek out lost knowledge, but here you are willing to let a little girl die. You're a monster."
"Says the man more monstrous than us all," he said, simply. "You let your own brother die."
Jack flinched.
There wasn't an inch of his past that wasn't recorded in his agent's file somewhere in the bowels of the Time Agency. Complete transparency was required to be a time agent to make sure there were no hidden skeletons that might cause problems; Gray's death and Jack's guilt around letting go of his hand and not realising it, nearly scuppered his admission to the Agency.
It took five psychiatrists and two hidden tests for him to be signed off as mentally stable before he was allowed to be given a Vortex Manipulator under training conditions, but every six months he was back in the psychiatrist's office answering questions about that day and allowing them to feel certain he wasn't about to steal a manipulator and try and save his brother. It wasn't that Jack had never thought about it but his hand had always stayed its course, never inputting the coordinates, never allowing himself to think too deeply on the what ifs; he had forced himself to push Gray and the guilt that shrouded his memories into a small, dark corner of his mind that, recently, had started to grow larger and larger until it was interfering with his life.
As such, his past was an open book to the Time Agency; yet, until this moment, Gray had never ben used as a weapon with which to inflict damage.
Jack let go of Lorna and lunged off his knees, reaching for Raphio who was behind his desk and, as such, out of reach. Pyl cracked her gun across the back of his head. He fell, twisting into a roll and ending up on his back; bracing against the floor, he slammed his feet into her stomach, sending her off falling back. Harlan surged forward, eager for the opportunity to attack, but Jack dodged the attack by flipping onto his feet, grabbing a handful of the back of Harlan's shirt and throwing him into Kahn. Taking Mila by surprise, he looped an arm around her neck and dragged her, applying pressure as he did so.
"Lorna, quickly," Jack ordered.
Lorna dashed behind a dusty, cobwebbed table that was lying on its side. Jack joined her, carefully placing Mila's unconscious body on the ground. Unholstering her weapon, he aimed a shot above the table and succeeded in setting Pyl's shirt on fire before ducking back down, free hand frantically searching Mila's pockets until he found his Vortex Manipulator.
He thrust it into Lorna's hands. "Put this on, hurry."
"I don't know how!"
"Hand through the hole, tighten the straps around your forearm and wrist." Jack popped his head over the top only to yank it back down again. Pressing the barrel of the blaster against the edge of the table, he opened fire, letting it spray haphazardly in a line to create confusion. "Quicker than that, please, that's a good girl."
"Thane!" Harlan's roar shook the dust in the air. "I'm going to kill you!"
Lorna shook, fingers trembling as she tightened the straps. "He's very angry."
"Well, his wife's dead, and that sometimes makes people angry," Jack said, opening up another stream of fire and a pained yell let him know that he had hit someone; a quick peak around the side told him it was Uriel. "Almost ready?"
"I – yes, yes, I think so."
"Good, you're doing really well," Jack said, encouragingly. Quickly grabbing Mila's knife that was hidden up her sleeve, he caught Kahn as she threw herself over the top of the table, the trajectory of her body dragging them both back. He slammed the knife into her thigh, and Kahn headbutted him before roaring her displeasure. "Ow, fuck!"
Scrambling for his gun, he kicked Kahn in the head and knocked her unconscious. He made it back behind the table just in time to cover Lorna with his body as Harlan tossed a sonic grenade behind the table. He pressed his hands tightly over Lorna's ears and took the brunt of the damage, his one good ear throbbing and ringing, the understanding that he wasn't getting out of there settling in his bones. Without wasting any more time, Jack pulled Lorna's wrist towards him and activated the emergency travel programme that he had updated the location on only recently – thank his lucky stars – and held his thumb down over the button as Pyl appeared behind him, arms looping around his neck, choking him.
Lorna screamed and Jack released the button.
She disappeared in a crackle of dry energy and the fight immediately left him.
"No!" Raphio stepped around the table, fury visible in the hold of his body. A painstick – illegal in all civilised societies – pressed deep into his chest; he bucked and screamed, trying to twist away from the pain. Withdrawing the stick, Raphio crouched before him, nostrils wide, cheeks ruddy. "I should kill you."
"Do it," Jack spat, blood speckling the director's skin, attempting to remove Pyl's arm from around his neck but the pain weakened him and Pyl had always been strong. "If you don't, I'll kill you. Finish what I started."
Mila began to stir, twitching on the ground behind Jack; Kahn dragged herself over, leaving a bloody path left in her wake, while Harlan twirled a knife in his hand, eyes gleaming.
"I believe you," Raphio said, tilting his head back. "But after everything you've put us through, you're due for a little pain yourself before you die. Pyl, take him to the Sensation Chambers. Let's hear him scream."
Jack laughed, bloodied saliva wetting his chin, fear crawling into his gut.
"Of course you brought in the SCs," he said, gritting his teeth. "You've given up all pretence of a legal operation, haven't you? Does the government know you still exist, or are you completely under the radar?"
"Get him out of here," Raphio ordered, turning his back on him. "Kahn, patch yourself up and then see to Uriel. Opuan –" he sighed and shook his head. "What's the fucking point of you?"
Mila scowled even as her skin flooded red with embarrassment, rubbing her neck. She caught Jack's eye as Pyl and Harlan half-dragged, half-carried him to the Sensation Chambers, and looked away, shamed.
Lorna's safe, she's safe, Jack repeated to himself as he was manhandled into a room filled with upright cylindrical tubes that were about as spacious as a coffin and shoved inside.
"Maybe Raphio's right," Harlan said, hand on the door. "Maybe hearing you scream will be more satisfying than your death. And if it's not?" He shrugged, careless. "I can kill you just as easily in an hour as I can now. Enjoy your sensations, Thane."
Harlan's face smirking down at him was the last thing he saw before the door closed, sealing itself shut, plunging him into a bright, painful light before his nerves were set on fire, flayed open, and he screamed.
Powell Estate, London
January 24th 2007
The crash and subsequent scream was so loud that Jackie thought aliens were attacking again.
She shot up out of her bed and was on her feet, grabbing the baseball bat she kept in the corner for security purposes – or ex-boyfriends who refused to take no for an answer – before she reconsidered the wisdom of attacking whatever alien had decided it was a good idea to invade her flat. In all likelihood, it was just the Doctor. The number of coffee tables his ship had destroyed because of his insistence of parking in her living room – it's convenient! - was getting ridiculous, but there was something that made her hold her breath and pause even as her downstairs neighbour thumped on the roof with an angry order to keep it down. Resting her hand on the door handle, she pressed her ear against the door and listened for the telltale sounds of the Doctor's loud fumbling and the girls laughter and Jack and Mickey's baritones.
All she heard was the weeping of a child in distress.
She cracked the door open, wary. "Doctor, that you?"
The weeping continued.
"If this is a trap," she called out, "I'm not goin' to be happy."
Tightening her fingers around her bat, she slipped out of the room and quickly unlocked the front door in case she needed to make a run for it. Edging closer to the living room, she considered how much easier her life was before Rose had dragged home her alien. There was never any need to worry about what might appear in her flat in the middle of the night, or in her washing machine after someone 'fixed' it; she didn't have to worry about her daughter's brain breaking or the safety of both of them as they did whatever it was they did when they travelled through time and space. She missed the days of having normal worries about her children and general life instead of wondering what dark and dangerous things were hidden around the corner.
Swinging the bat up over her shoulder, she surged into the room and froze, staggering at the sight of the small, dark-haired child sitting among the ruins of her coffee table sobbing.
Jackie stared. "Oh no."
The child looked up and scrambled back, kicking pieces of the coffee table out of the way, pressing herself behind the armchair, cowering in the corner.
"Oh, honey, no, it's okay," Jackie said, dropping the bat and hurrying forwards, swearing as splinters made a home in the bottom of her feet. Hopping over the ruins of another coffee table, she knelt by the chair. "Sweetheart, hello. Hi. I'm Jackie. It's okay. I won't hurt you. C'mon now, it's okay."
The child's mouth opened and a lyrical, incomprehensible language flooded from her mouth.
Jackie reeled back, surprised. "Right. Okay. This has the Doctor written all over it."
Stepping around the mess on the floor, she found her phone and thumbed the Doctor's name, lifting it to her ear. For the first time since she received his number at Christmas, he didn't answer; it rang and rang before clicking over into a rambling answerphone message that segued into a conversation with Jack before the time elapsed and the message beeped.
"Doctor, call me now."
Hanging up, she tried Zoe then Rose then Mickey then Jack and grew steadily more concerned when no one answered. It was unusual for none of them to pick up their phone, and she rubbed her chest to try and ease the worry that settled there.
Something was wrong.
Stormcage Prison Facility
Three Weeks Later
"Rise and shine, Agent Thane, it's shower time."
"You're always so eager to get me into the shower," Jack mused, swinging his legs off his narrow bunk, ignoring the way his back ached, as he had just come off three days of questioning by Raphio and was feeling it. Lifting his head, he grinned at the guard. "See something you like?"
"Bruised and battered doesn't really do it for me," Carlos, one of the nicer guards, said before he unlocked the cell door. "Come on, unless you want to shower with the others."
Normally, a group shower was a pleasant way to start the morning but Jack had met some of the other prisoners in their twice-daily hour's exercise and he wanted to steer clear of them. Murderers, rapists, terrorists, and more inhabited Stormcage and while he was able to get along with most people he didn't want to befriend any of them.
Heaving himself off the bed, he followed Carlos down the quiet corridor, the others still sleeping, and he stepped into the cold turbolift; the prison outfit that had been on his bed when he arrived was supposed to be thermal but it certainly didn't feel like it.
Ignoring the shiver as he ignored his pain, it was on the tip of his tongue to fill the silence with conversation but he was tired and missing Mickey more today than he had yesterday, though he was sure he was going to miss him even more tomorrow as well. Every part of him ached – one part even gave an unpleasant twang every time he breathed – but nothing hurt more than not being around Mickey and not knowing if he was safe and well. He had grown used to waking up next to him, to turning over in his bed and seeing him there, mouth open with the occasional snore slipping out. He missed the ratty T-shirts with old oil stains on them that couldn't be washed out and that Jack might have stolen once or twice because they smelt like Mickey. He missed the rough edge of London that Jack had initially found slightly off-putting when he first met Rose, never having heard an accent like it, but now was a marker of his new home.
"You've got five minutes," Carlos said, outside the shower facilities.
"I'm allowed fifteen."
"Not today you're not," he said with a small, apologetic grimace. "Orders from on high."
"I'm amazed at the level of influence Raphio has here," Jack said, dryly, attempting to hide his disappointment. "Stormcage is supposed to be overseen by the Shadow Proclamation."
"I'm sorry," Carlos said. "It's just the way it is."
"Torture and a lack of rights?" Shamed colour spread across the guard's face, and Jack's eyes dropped to his neck where a thin chain hung. "You're with the Church."
Carlos lifted his hand to cover his religious symbol, colour deepening. "I'm a believer, yeah."
"So are a lot of other guards," Jack pointed out, three weeks being long enough for him to get a lay of the land, and he didn't like what he saw. "Unusual, isn't it?"
"Not really," he said. "Lots of people are believers."
"Every single person in this place?" Jack attempted to lean against the wall but his shoulder was swollen and bruised from being dislocated and then put back into place; he straightened up and coughed, concealing his pained groan. "You know, a friend of mine likes to say never ignore a coincidence, unless you're busy. Thankfully, I'm not busy. Why the hell is the Church providing guards for Stormcage? Where's the Judoon contingent of the Shadow Proclamation?"
"I –" Carlos floundered, mouth moving, before his features hardened. "I don't have to answer your questions. They said you'd do this. They said you'd try and seduce me –"
Jack laughed, delighted. "This isn't a seduction, but I can try that if it'll get me answers."
"Don't." Carlos brandished a painstick between them to stop his approach. "I have orders to incapacitate you if necessary."
"What would that even look like?"
Ten minutes later, Jack regained consciousness ten minutes in his bunk and realised that a painstick to the throat was what Carlos viewed as appropriate incapacitation. Asshole, he thought, glumly, carefully touching his swollen glands, surprised he hadn't died from oxygen deprivation. Though, he wasn't sure what was worse – the fact his throat was swollen as though he had a watermelon lodged there or the fact he hadn't had a shower and crusty bits of blood were sticking to him. Fumbling his way back to a generally vertical position, he did the best he could in cleaning himself up in the small wash station tucked into the corner of his room – sink, mirror, toilet – before giving it up for a bad lot.
Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you.
It was a familiar refrain from Zoe's studies. Not said to anyone in particular but rather as a method of de-stressing that didn't involve running until she dropped or eating her body weight in whatever food she found in the kitchen, she had gone around the TARDIS muttering it to herself on the rare occasions she allowed herself a break. As he stripped out of his uncomfortable clothes to lie on his bed and wait for his throat to go down, he stole the phrase from her and repeated it again and again, surprised to find it actually worked.
Three weeks had passed since Pyl appeared before him in the Gamma Forests – far, far out of the Time Agency's usual travel paths but Jack had discovered that someone was financially backing their small, chaotic revenge plan during his interrogation sessions – and snatched him and Lorna away.
He felt every single moment of those three weeks.
The only bright spot was the knowledge they hadn't been able to track Lorna. They had got as far as Jackie's flat only to find it empty and Jackie gone. He knew that because Harlan wanted to know where she might have gone and had been displeased by his steadfast refusal to answer and the stinging critique of his mother's sexual skills.
Not that Jack had ever slept with Tamara but that was neither here nor there when it succeeding in getting Harlan so angry the veins in his forehead bulged.
Wherever Jackie was – and he hoped it was in the TARDIS – he knew that she had Lorna with her and both of them were safe; it also meant the Doctor probably had a good idea of what was going on. He didn't want to feel the hope that washed through him; yet, with the Doctor knowing who had him, there was now a chance he was going to get out of his rather painful and exhausting situation and see Mickey again before Raphio lost his temper and killed him.
All Jack wanted was to go home, bury his face in Mickey's neck and breathe him in.
If anyone could figure out where he was and how to get there, then it was his friends, but Stormcage was set on an oscillating time rotation pattern that kept it out of sync with the rest of the universe and made it impossible for people to escape and for people to break in. As much as the hope in his chest hurt him – remembering that wonderful day not too long ago when he was certain he was about to die and then Zoe appeared and fixed all his problems – he wasn't able to kill it.
"You look like shit," Pyl's unwelcome voice said from the door. Refusing to move, Jack pointed at his throat and she laughed, a hard, grating sound. "Yes, I read the report. I guess you're not as charming as you think you are."
Not a seduction, he repeats in his mind, frowning at the impact of a packaged tablet on his chest. He held it between two fingers and lifted it questioningly to Pyl.
"Put it in your mouth," she ordered. "I want you to be able to talk. This'll help."
Doubting she would choose to kill him with poison, he unwrapped the square tablet and popped it onto his tongue. The relief was instantaneous, the swelling reducing and the pain ebbing. He coughed, sharp pain like glass grating against his throat, but it was better.
"Why are you working with the Papal Mainframe?" Jack rasped, his voice sounded as though it had been sanded down and left out to dry. "They never approved of our work."
"We have similar goals at this moment in time," Pyl said, simply. "You should choose your friends more carefully."
"The Doctor," he frowned, "This is about the Doctor?"
"This –" she gestured, "is about you. Your Time Lord friend doesn't concern us."
"But he concerns the Papal Mainframe?"
"When you left, you took with you important information," Pyl said. Jack rolled his eyes and folded his hands across his stomach. "Where is it?"
"The same question every time," Jack complained. "Don't you get bored?"
"Don't you get tired of this act?" She snapped. "You might've fooled your new friends with this laissez-faire attitude but I recruited you. I know who you are."
"Clearly, you don't." He stretched his toes towards the bars, satisfied when his ankles popped. "What do you care about this information anyway? You've survived fourteen years without it. It's clearly not that –"
"I saw your mother recently," Pyl interrupted, her tone shifting until it was conversational. Jack went still, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "She still lives on the Boeshane Peninsula, still in the house you grew up in as a child, still waiting for your father and brother to come home."
Rage stormed inside Jack.
"What are you doing?" He asked, pleased at how calm his voice remained. "Are you trying to make me angry? You know I haven't seen her since I left with you. If you're trying to use her to threaten me, it won't work."
"When I saw her, she spoke about you." Jack's heart fluttered with hope. "Told me how disappointed she was that you survived when the others didn't." The hope shattered. "What must it be like to have a parent who wishes you dead?"
"Barely an inconvenience," Jack lied, the rasp of his throat covering his emotions. "And I'm long past the age where what my mother thinks of me makes a difference."
Pyl made a small, curious sound in her throat. "Interesting. I wonder if you'll react the same when we have Jackie Tyler in –"
Jack was off the bed and had a hand wrapped around her throat before she finished speaking. She spluttered, grasping for balance as the sound of guards came running; he slammed her against the bars.
"Touch her and it'll be the last thing you do," Jack growled.
Satisfaction gleamed in her eyes before he released her, stepping back to avoid the painsticks.
"Little lost boy searching for his mummy," Pyl laughed around a cough. "You're pathetic."
"Fuck you."
It was a break in his display of calm.
He had delivered Lorna somewhere he thought was safe and hadn't had time to think about the danger that would put Jackie in; he only put the emergency coordinates into the TARDIS because he thought he would be the one using the manipulator and he was capable of keeping Jackie safe even if he was injured. Lorna was a scared child and Jackie was capable but still not accustomed to the life her daughters had thrust upon her. If something happened to her because of him, he would never forgive himself, and never seeing Rose or Zoe again wouldn't be a problem as the thought of facing their grief made him shudder.
Jack didn't worry about his own mother. She sounded as broken as she was the day he left the Boeshane, and, though he wanted no harm to befall her, the thought of her death didn't fill him with agony like the thought of Jackie dying; instead, there was a sense of relief that her death would bring, a breaking with the past and an opportunity to turn completely towards the future.
While she lived, he was tethered to his childhood in a way that hurt.
Pyl's footsteps faded, yet the tension of her visit remained in his body.
Jack breathed out slowly.
Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you.
The artificial light of the prison – set to a twenty-seven hour day – began to lower as evening set in, and his eyes welcomed the respite from it, trying to think positively. He supposed, all in all, it wasn't the worst day in the world as Raphio had left him alone, which was a blessing, even if he doubted it would last. Whatever information they thought he had taken with him when he brought the Time Agency to its knees was, he believed, only a smokescreen for their intentions; perhaps Pyl, blinded by her loyalty to the Agency, was unable to see it, but Jack saw that Raphio had seized on an excuse to torture him, letting his hatred spill over, making him scream.
Not for the first time, Jack wished he was able to remember what he had done and why he did it as he had more questions than ever.
One answer he did have though was that he had erased his own memory.
It wasn't the Time Agency that had taken those two years from him but rather himself, and Jack tried to think why he would have done that. He lived his life with the knowledge that information is power; by taking away his memories of those years he had left himself vulnerable and open to attack but, for whatever reason, he had thought it was worth it. Jack wished he had left himself a note, a letter, something tattooed on his skin – anything – to explain why he had done what he did but there was nothing.
"Join the Time Agency, they said," Jack muttered to himself, scowling at the ceiling. "It'll be fun they said." He scoffed, throat hurting. "Lies."
"I don't know, we had a lot of fun."
Jack stared at the ceiling before sitting up and –
"You."
"Hello, Javic." Out of the shadows, deliberately letting the light fall over him to increase the theatre of his entrance stood his former partner. "Or is it Jack Harkness now?"
Jack blinked. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Where'd you pick up that name?" He mocked, ignoring him, hair a darker blond than it usually was and Jack startled at the realisation he was no longer dying it. "Former lover?"
"It's Captain Jack Harkness, thank you," he said, getting slowly to his feet. "I worked for my rank."
"On your knees, I bet," he snorted. "Well, then, I'll be Captain John Hart. We can role play."
Jack stepped up to the bars, remaining just out of arms reach for he trusted John less than he trusted Rose not to be distracted by the smell of chips. "What the hell are you doing here, you asshole?"
"Oh, isn't that nice?" John rolled his eyes, digging into his pocket for the flask Jack had got him for his 27th birthday. "I hear that my beloved husband –"
"We're not married."
"My beloved husband," he continued, speaking louder to cover the interruption, "is being held on charges of – well...everything, I suppose – of course I'm going to come and see what's happening. You've got a long charge sheet to your name, captain."
"No longer than yours in Romania, John," Jack shot back. "What was it you got done for in the 46th again?"
John laughed. "Prostitution and murder. I still blame you for that."
"The target died of a heart attack," he said. "Neither of us killed him."
"I meant the prostitution." John's grin turned wolfish. "It was your idea to have me dress up in that silk underwear." He leaned in, body angling lasciviously in a way that never failed to get Jack hard except, this time, there was no movement below his belt. "You always did like the finest things."
He rolled his eyes. "A wonder I bedded you then."
"Oh-ho!" John pulled back, delighted, and uncorked his flask. "You've got a different sort of mouth on you now. Don't tell me you've become all boring and moral."
Jack watched as he lifted the flask to his lips and drank heavily. "How was rehab?"
"Rehabs," John corrected once half the flask was gone, tucking it away without offering it to him. "Plural."
"Drink, drugs, sex, and –?"
"Murder."
"You went to murder rehab?" Jack laughed, ribs aching. "That's embarrassing."
"I know, right?" John grinned. "A little kill every now and then, who does it hurt?"
"You clean now?"
"Yeah, kicked everything, living like a priest." He leaned against the bars, letting his hands dangle inside, eyes sweeping over Jack. "You, on the other hand, don't look like you're doing so good. Figured you'd gone into retirement. Didn't realise you were kicking around with a Time Lord until Uriel rocked up at my orgy three days ago to tell me you'd been captured."
Jack paused. "Uriel was at an orgy? God, what would that even look like?"
"Like a puritanical mood killer," he complained. "Lectured all of us about the risks involved in multi-partner sex. Idiot wouldn't know anything about single-partner sex, let alone multi. Mila says he's knocking boots with Kahn but I don't buy it."
"Kahn would eat him alive."
"Exactly!" John grinned brightly at him, pressing his face between the bars and Jack almost smiled. "What's it like?"
"I don't know," he shrugged. "I never slept with her."
"Not Kahn, you idiot, your Time Lord."
"Haven't slept with him either."
"Bull-shit," John said. "The chance to bed a Time Lord and you don't take it? You don't expect me to believe that crap, do you?"
"I never said I hadn't tried," Jack replied. "He turned me down. I'm not his type."
John frowned. "You're everyone's type."
"Not his, apparently," he said.
"But there's someone," John noted, narrowing his eyes. "What are they like?"
Jack grit his teeth, not wanting to talk about Mickey with him. "Fine."
"Fine? Fine? God, there was a time I couldn't get you to shut up describing your conquests and the one time I'm actually interested –"
"You were always interested."
"– you go quiet as a bloody church mouse."
"Speaking of churches," Jack said, seizing on the opportunity to change the subject with the one person who might actually give him answers instead of annoying ambiguity. "What's the deal with the Papal Mainframe being involved in the Time Agency? Since when do we work with them?"
"Since you went on a fucking bender and destroyed the Agency," John told him, sticking a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it. The smell reminded Jack he hadn't had a decent smoke in years; the cigarettes Rose occasionally snuck when she thought no one was looking were awful, and he hadn't been able to replicate the very cigarettes John was currently smoking. "You were pretty thorough in your destruction – congrats, by the way, didn't think you had it in you – and it left our esteemed director at something of a loose end. The Church was the only organisation that reached out to help."
Jack repositioned himself to discreetly breathe in the secondhand smoke. "Is it help if it comes with strings attached?"
"For fuck's sake, now you're philosophising too?" John blew out a lungful of smoke, pulling his flask out again, shaking it. "Should've bought another of these. Figures you'd be the one to drive me back to drink."
Jack snorted. "Did you ever quit?"
"I was sober for about thirty minutes this morning," he shrugged. "Uriel's such a fucking ass about drinking while travelling. Of all the people to survive your meltdown, it had to be Uriel. Eric! Now, Eric was a guy and a half. He never minded a little tipple here and there, or a fumble in the cupboard. The things that man could do with his hands."
Jack stared at him. "Eric's dead?"
"They're all dead." Cigarette dangling from his fingers, he took a deep drink and belched. "Like I said, you were thorough."
"They're all dead?" Jack repeated, cold. No one had told him that, preferring to lay sixty-two deaths at his feet without further explanation. "I saw Mila when I arrived. Pyl, Harlan, Uriel, Kahn, you."
"There's only seven of us left now, eight, I guess, if we include you, and I doubt Raphio does."
"Seven." Jack sat on the edge of his bed. "I didn't – how?"
"What did you think was going to happen when you destroyed the main computer?" John asked him, cigarette between his lips again. "You stranded most of our agents through time. Some of them died there, others appeared in the rubble and were squashed to death because there was no one telling them not to come back. It was a fucking mess."
Turning from him, Jack rubbed a hand across his mouth. The more information he received, the more pieces to the puzzle he got, and the more confused he became.
"I had my reasons," he said, turning back.
John was as handsome as he had always been but there was no longer an urge to peel his clothes off; Jack looked at him and only thought of how much he missed Mickey. He almost laughed, remembering how he worried monogamy might be problematic for him.
"Yeah, I know." John looked at him, unusually serious, and held his gaze. "Have you found peace yet?"
"What?"
"Last time we saw each other..." he paused, attempting to find the right words. "I thought I'd hear about your body being found or something. Figured you'd either kill yourself or find a way to survive. I'm actually pleased to see it's the latter."
Jack stared at him. "Since when do you care? You've only ever looked out for yourself."
"That's a fucking lie and you know it," John snapped, anger spilling from him. "I didn't go through everything we did because I only cared about me. You think I'd risk my neck for –" he froze suddenly, mouth formed around the word, head tilting curiously. "For –"
Jack raised an eyebrow. "You going to finish that sentence anytime soon, or am I going to have to guess?"
"Get over here."
"Not a chance."
"Javic, you fucking ur'ak, get over here." John reached out and made grabby hands. Jack sighed and stood up, stepping closer but not so close as to be within strangling distance. "Let me see your eyes."
"You want to gaze into them?" Jack asked, sceptically. "You've never been the sort."
"I swear on this fucking flask of hypervodka if you don't shut up and let me see your eyes, I'm going to come in there and rip your other ear off."
"As if you could," he scoffed even as he shifted closer to allow him what he wanted.
John breathed in sharply, eyes staring deep into his. "What did you do?"
"A little bit of botox a few months back," Jack said. "Treated myself after I nearly died. There's this great place in Massach –" he let out a garbled sound as John managed to grab hold of him and yank him forward, forehead smacking against one of the bars. When he opened his eyes, John's face was an inch from his. "Javic, what did you do? You don't – tell me you weren't stupid enough to take your own fucking memories."
Jack blinked, slowly. "What?"
"You goddamn idiot," John hissed, heaving him even closer. "Do you know how dangerous that is?"
His body twisted in a struggle to free himself from John's grip. "Get off me."
"They don't know," John said, thinking out loud. "The others." He laughed, dry and cold. "They've shoved you in here and are torturing you for information that you don't even know you don't even have."
"Wait, what?" Jack squinted at him. "How d'you know I don't have the information?"
"I just do, you overgrown child."
"You know, you really sound like a friend of mine right now," Jack said, trying to regain his balance. "Zoe, you'd like her."
"Zoe Tyler," John said, startling Jack. "I know enough about her to not want anything to do with her."
"Hey," he protested. "Zoe's a delight."
John snorted. "If you say so."
"You going to let go of me now and tell me what the hell's going on?"
John released him and rubbed his head. "This is a disaster. Why am I not surprised? You've always been able to make a bad situation worse."
"Prague, Mumbai, New London, the Dresden Colonies," Jack rattled off a list of John's own messes.
He waved his hand, dismissively. "All fixable. You – oh, you on the other hand, you burn the Time Agency to the ground and then erase your own memories because you couldn't stand the guilt. I thought you had more steel to you than that."
"A lot of people died here," Jack shot back. "No wonder I wanted to forget it."
John's eyes cut to him, face set like stone. "I'm not talking about here. I'm talking about –" he caught himself. "No. I'm not doing this again. I'm not going to be the one to break your heart all over again."
"Why would my heart be broken?"
"If you knew the truth, you'd understand," John said, shaking his head. "How much is gone?"
Jack swallowed and worked his jaw. "Two years."
John breathed in sharply, baring his teeth. "That's everything then. The last thing you remember is what, our mission to Sydney, 43rd century?"
"Spain, 45th."
"Right, so you really don't know anything," John said, ageing in the space of a heartbeat.
"Then tell me," Jack said, pressing himself against the bars and reaching for him. John had the truth and if he spoke it, all the questions Jack had, all the theories he had come up with, would be answered. "Tell me what I'm missing."
"No," he said again. "You took your memories for a reason. You're an idiot for doing it but you decided to do that. I'm not going to tell you anything. Though..." he looked at him, assessing. "You been having nightmares lately?"
Jack frowned, uncomfortable. "Yes."
"I'd bet my cock they're not nightmares but your memories trying to break through whatever back-alley memory block you put on them," John said. "No block is good enough to wipe that much trauma clean away, something always stays behind. You can fight it all you want but, at some point, you need to face what you did."
"People keep saying that: what I did, what I did," Jack said, angrily. "Raphio and Pyl mean one thing, you obviously mean another. What did I do?"
"What needed to be done," John said, not elaborating as he dragged a hand over his jaw, rasping along his stubble. "This makes things complicated. I came to gloat and be all smug but Raphio's going to kill you one of these days and I don't want to be here when that Time Lord of yours comes looking for you. Kahn says he's gone looking for information about your whereabouts with Jim the Fish. Harlan's pissed about that since Jim only contacted him after the fact."
The confirmation that the Doctor was looking for him breathed life back into Jack. Stepping back from the bars, he sat down on the edge of his bed, calmer than he had been in weeks. The possibility of seeing Mickey again warmed him all over, and he sounded lighter and happier when he asked John what he was still doing there if he didn't care. In response, John sighed and rubbed the back of his head, pulling a blaster from his boot; Jack rolled out of the way, the lock blasting open, alarms immediately blaring.
"What the hell did you do that for?" Jack demanded. "They'll toss you in the cell next door now."
"Please." John rolled his eyes and reached into the cell, grabbing him under his arm and pulling him back to his feet. "This isn't the first time I've broken you out of prison. Hope it's the last though. Getting real tired of cleaning up your messes."
"You're the one who came to me," he pointed out, stumbling over his feet. "Do you mind? I'd rather not break out wearing nothing."
"Why not?" John's eyes swept over his naked form. "Naked's still a good look for you."
"Piss off," Jack laughed.
"Piss off? Who the hell says piss off any more?" He grabbed Jack and shoved him towards the wall, spinning, coat flaring around him, as he shot the first two guards that rounded the corner. Jack watched Carlos slump back against the wall, a hole burned through his chest. "You've been spending too much time in the past."
"You haven't been spending enough in rehab," Jack said as another guard died, reaching for the second weapon he knew John always kept on his person. Clawing his way back to his feet, his muscle memory kicked in and it was as it always had been: him and John in the field, watching each other's backs. "In case we die doing this, I want you to know that you're an idiot."
John barked a laugh and laid down cover fire as Jack dashed to the exit. "You still married me though."
"Only technically," Jack argued, forcing the door open just as Pyl and Harlan appeared in the corridor, guns drawn. "And we were drunk."
"Still counts!" John ducked beneath the door and grinned breathlessly at him. "Now, move it!"
