Thanks a lot for reviews! Hope I'm not too depressing:)


Chapter Seven

Completely and Totally Lost


"A manual?" I turned to Jack and looked at him cautiously, suspecting another joke. "Does the time-and-space ship have a manual?"

"All ships do," Harkness said angrily. "User's manual. And it has to be here… somewhere."

"Yeah," I nodded, "Sure. Have you even seen that ship? I mean – the whole ship? It is ginormous! We can look for the manual till the end of time. And even if we'd found it, will it be written in English?"

"I suspect it will be written in Gallifreyan," Jack said. "Why?"

"I can't read Gallifreyan!"

"Yes you can." He smiled. "The TARDIS is translating for you; in your head – all the time."

"I am translating for myself – in my own head. Right now I am translating your English; which is not my first language by the way; in my head, into the words I understand," I said. "I found some books in the library here, and I couldn't understand a word of them. There were even books written in symbols I've never seen before in my life. So – no instantaneous translation, sorry."

"I wouldn't be so sure," he winked at me. "Unless you speak Boeshanesean as well."

"What?"

"My language. I'm speaking it now."

"No, you're not!"

Jack shrugged slightly. "I am. You just assumed it was English. What is your first language, anyway?" he asked.

"Polish," I growled back at him.

"Well then, say something in Polish," he encouraged me; a wide and bright smile across his face, blue eyes glimmering. He was way too handsome, and at times he seemed very dangerous. Ever since he regained consciousness I didn't feel completely safe with him – he was like a domesticated panther – he could go berserk at any moment. His mood swings were worse than mine. I glared at him.

"Oh, pocałuj mnie w dupę!" I growled, irritated.

Harkness laughed tilting back his head.

"Are you sure?" He winked at me again. "I'd rather be kissing your mouth… for now."

I didn't blush, because I don't blush easily. And I was too angry to blush anyway. Scared too. Just a little bit.

"Are you having fun?" I snapped. "Because this is not funny! Unless we find a way to pilot this ship, we can never go home. We can never go anywhere. And, I don't know, but, how long do you think we can survive here? There's void outside. No air, no warmth, nothing. And we have to breathe. We have to eat."

"I don't think we'll run out of air anytime soon," Jack shrugged slightly. "But food might be a problem."

"Yeah!" I sighed. I glared at the dashboard, cluttered with weird tools and wires. Every passing minute was making it look more and more beyond-repair-ish. Even the ship's melody had changed – there were long moments of almost complete silence. I was under the impression that the TARDIS was dozing off now and then, as if too tired to struggle. She was keeping us warm and relatively safe, but what would happen if and when she gave up? The almost absolute zero temperature would creep inside and kill the both of us. Or we could lose the air.

Jack must have reached the same conclusion as he threw the spanner across the steering room and sat heavily on the rugged settee.

"I used to know this mechanic once," he said bitterly. "Claimed that with a little TLC you could fix almost anything. Sure, he didn't fix our relationship… although TLC was nice. Things he could do with his hands. Magic fingers, I called him. Tried to teach me mechanics, but… Never paid attention." Jack sighed. "But I fitted the extrapolator here, you know?" he continued. "Yeah, that didn't end well. But it wasn't my fault either. Oh, damn, the Doctor made it seem so easy! A spin here, a switch there, an occasional hammer to the console, and there it was. I have flown many ships in my life, but this… I just don't know where to start."

He sounded honest now – for a change. He was probably just pretending, for my sake; all the jokes and winks – keeping up appearances if you like; trying not to scare me even more.

"Can we send a distress signal?" I asked sheepishly.

"We could," Jack answered gloomily from his settee. He threw a piece of plastic he had in the other hand across the room – it hit the wall and ricocheted back towards the console.

"Let's do it then," I said.

"It's just, space is not exactly a small place," Harkness grumbled. "We can be thousands of light years away from anyone who'd be able, and willing, to help us. Or it could be the Daleks listening."

I clenched my fists and halted my breath for a very long while. Then I exhaled slowly.

"Let's assume we've found the manual, then…" I started.

Jack closed his eyes.

"Oh, who am I kidding!" he exclaimed. "It takes a Time Lord to fly this dammed box, and I'm no Time Lord! Neither are you! None of us is a fuc…"

He jumped up so suddenly I gasped, and reached to his left wrist. He had a wide leather wristband there, rather worn and ancient-looking. He lifted the flap. There was a small screen underneath – nothing fancy – just something resembling an old-fashioned digital watch. Green numerals were flicking across the narrow screen. Jack stared at them for a while.

"I'm stupid!" he said after a while. "Can you believe it?"

"What?"

"My vortex manipulator." Jack said, still glaring at the wristband. "I've got a time machine as well. I've had it all the time! Now, it's a bit rough, and a bit unpredictable, but, to think about it, so is the TARDIS. We could get out. We could go back to Earth."

I was on my feet already. I grabbed his forearm and stared hungrily at the device on his wrist.

"Can you take me home?" I pleaded.

"Yes," he answered. "More or less. It's risky. It's possible. But the TARDIS…"

The lights dimmed for a second, as if the ship could understand his words. There was a long, low note in the air.

"Can we go home?" I repeated.

Captain Harkness looked around. His face was blank, but his eyes glimmered with reflected light – sea-water blue. He touched the steering panel gently and sighed again.

"Well," he whispered. "Think that's only right."

He reached out to me and I grabbed his strong, calloused hand feeling that my heart might just explode. I observed him tapping some commands into the vortex manipulator. My palm got sweaty. I was going home! This absurd trip was to be over soon! I was going back!

"Hold on tight!" Jack said. He looked up for a moment. He took in the ship's interior – all the odd angled pillars, lights, almost organic structures, rusty mechanisms and mismatched technologies. "I'll be missing you, old girl," he muttered. "Still, he wanted you to go quietly. Wouldn't be too happy if I inherited you. The Daleks won't find you here, and that's a plus… Still, it's a waste… Such a waste…"

He wrapped his arm around me. Suddenly I felt safe, with this tall, strong man, taking care of me; his unpredictability and mood swings completely forgotten. I rested my head on his shoulder. I could swear he kissed me briefly on the top of my head, but I didn't mind. I was sad for the TARDIS, but I was also happy to leave it and all the sadness behind. None of it was my world. None of it was my business. I had been kidnapped, and now I was going back. Nothing else mattered.

"The TARDIS," Jack said in a loud, level voice. "The last in existence. The most amazing ship of the most amazing race of people; now gone, forever. Remember her, Ania. Remember the Doctor – in the TARDIS – travelling across time and space. Here ends the greatest adventure of all. Thus ends the legend."

He sighed and pushed a button of his vortex manipulator, and at the same exact moment there was a sound of a bell – low and reverberating through the whole ship. I felt a sudden pull which almost dislocated my shoulder. I looked up and saw Jack being sucked into a whirlpool of blue and silver light. There were whole clouds of radiance swirling behind him, bolts of energy as vast as galaxies, and areas of the deepest darkness – all of them swirling, and twisting, and turning into a lengthy tunnel – a time vortex itself.

Jack was screaming. His fingers dug into my hand; I could feel his fingernails piercing my skin. The vortex howled, and all the time the bell tolled – deep, bass notes, shaking my bones. I wanted to scream, but when I opened my mouth to draw breath there was no air. Jack's face was frosting over; first his eyelashes and eyebrows, then fine hair on his cheeks, then tears in his eyes. At the same time I was burning. I was bathed in the orange light, suffocating. My hand was sweaty and slippery and I knew that I had to let go of Jack's hand, or get torn in half. The pain was unbearable. But I couldn't let go.

I was holding him – I was holding him back. Jack was suspended over the vortex in time in space, and the only thing holding him there was my hand. My burning hand.

The peal of the bell was like a roar of an earthquake now. It was deafening.

The vortex was howling and changing colours – first there was purple glow, then greenish clouds, then sickly yellow sparks, and finally all turned blood red, as scarlet cracks sped across the vortex's walls. Shards of ice broke off Jack's lips as he shouted something, lost in the roar.

Time was falling apart. Space was wrapping on itself, strangling us. And still I was holding on – an anchor between two points in time-space continuum.

He could not go alone! He could not leave me!

Jack's face went pale, his eyes rolled upwards for a moment, as he gasped for breath again. He was dying, I realised, and I was dying as well – nobody could survive this colossal pull of reality being torn apart.

I had to let go.

I opened my sweaty fingers and felt Jack's fingernails tearing long strips of my skin as they scratched my palm.

"I'm sorry," I mouthed.

For a split second his blue eyes widened in terror, as he was floating– weightless and free. Then tremendous power gripped at him and he was gone – snatched out and into the vortex.

I fell backwards, just as the hole in the continuum sealed itself with a negative of a detonation. The bell was still ringing. My arm was on fire, and my hand was bleeding. I struck the floor with the back of my head, but it didn't really matter.

Something went wrong and Jack was gone. And I was alone again. Alone in the TARDIS.

"You couldn't let me go," I whispered.

I wasn't even angry. The shock was just too great.

But I think that was the very moment when I died.

Not really, you know. Not the way you die. I continued breathing and moving and my heart kept pumping blood through my body. I got up from the floor, eventually, and I went to this huge bedroom, and I slept for many hours, because I couldn't cry any more. But something certainly died in me when I lost Jack Harkness.

Hope, I presume.

That moment, when I was still sprawled on the floor, shell-shocked and exhausted, I realised I was never going back. I lost my home. I wasn't Ania anymore. I was just a strange traveller in a strange blue box. Completely and totally lost.

The bell went silent.


To be continued...