A Reaper's Vale
Abby Ebon
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Disclaimer: I do not own the following, "Doom", "Star Trek", "Torchwood" – and, just in case it comes up – "Doctor Who".
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To Touch Eternity
Vulcan, Time of Surak
(Roughly 4th Century A.D on Earth.)
Jack wakes from his death with a cough. His lungs burn and his eyes see only an enclosed space of rolling smoke and walls - everything is too close, is invading, and he can't breath. Jack jerks up and crawls for the door, couching and hacking his lungs out along the way. He reaches the inner door and the outer door, and then he's inhaling great gulps and breathing out shakily.
'Phaser fire, not recommended – check, but what a way to go…' Jack thinks groggily, his brain waking up like a firecracker, in fits and starts and the pretty colors he can see behind his eyelids. With a pained moan he bows his head between his arms, cradling his skull on hands and knees.
"James…?" His voice and too rough and quiet, Jack knows as he speaks. He looks up and breathes in, noticing the humidity and the jungle spread out around him.
"James!" Jack cries out, aghast to be alone – to have left that kid alone.
"EDESNE!" Jack bellows, on his feet and in a fury, he rushes in and finds his eyes widening, the brows raised at the impossibility of what he sees being fact. EDESNE is a steaming and smoking wreck, for a ship of her sort to fly herself is within her ability, but to do it without her Captain? It's something Jack would have doubted, if she hadn't apparently done just that.
"EDESNE, please baby, we have to get back." Jack pleads and coos, trying to find a sign of life beyond the pale blinking of the switches.
"Damn it!" Jack curses, bitterly, there isn't a thing that Jack can do, and he knows it.
Jack lingers on Tarsus IV on the kid, James, and he's just stuck here for who knows how long? Not that it should matter on a ship like EDESNE, but it does, because this ship has more personality then most newscasters manage and might just outright refuse to take Jack where he wants to go when it's proven dangerous for his life and limbs.
Tarsus IV was exactly that.
"Where is here?" Jack asks EDESNE aloud, his eyes on the humid jungle beyond his doorway.
An answer blinks on the screen, with a background of dangerous looking jungle: Vulcan.
"Since when..?" Jack asks in outright astonishment, trying hard to hide his disbelief.
The answer scrolls across and under the red lettering proclaiming 'Vulcan', it's in the 300s of A.D.
Jack groans aloud, though there is no one to hear.
"Well isn't that just perfect? We come from a dangerous colony on Tarsus IV with a limited population to a world of radically emotional and genius freaks? Does the phrase from the frying pan into the fire mean nothing to you?" Jack rants and raves, pacing.
He knows he can't stay cooped up in EDESNE, already his nose is dry and his lungs are burning with the urge to escape for smoke free air. If he stays within much longer physically, it'll be dying of smoke inhalation next – and that's just an embarrassing way to go and come back from for someone like Jack.
EDESNE, a little too smugly, gives Jack no response at all.
Jack throws up his hands and stomps out into the jungle.
And runs straight into a Vulcan, they collide with a thump, something like a grunt, a tangle of limbs and a sore bum – only on Jack's part, the Vulcan stands steadily, as if it barely felt Jack run headlong into him.
Jack tilts his head back to see what the Vulcan was staring at, because clearly something is wrong if Jack isn't spared even a glance for his inconvenient place and time.
EDESNE is a vase just big enough for a grown man to crawl into and out of.
In the middle of the jungles of pre-nuked Vulcan.
Captain Jack Harkness just can't win today.
"Are you a God?" It is asked in something between awe and doubt. The asker gives Jack pause, simple clothing belie the fineness of the fabric, the wealth that it proves. Jack has seen family's starve for lack of such, and seen thousands go in search of less in the grips of the desperation that breeds from greed.
"Immortal, yes - omnipotent? Not so much." Jack confesses, just to get it off his chest. He's flippancy is clearly understood from the dark look he's tossed. Jack isn't sure if he should curse EDESNE's universal translator or just stuff it and be thankful.
"Clearly, little fool." That is most surely not friendly, drawled in a lazy threat; Jack stumbles back a bit on hands and knees. All for getting a better look at his inquisitor, then from his boots and fine but simple pants, dark hair tangles about his shoulders, which are slim and sharp, his angled cheeks and his endless black eyes are measuring Jack for worth.
Please like me, Jack thinks half toward the intimidating male standing before him, and half to his own subtle hormones.
Jack smiles shakily up at him, pretending for charm. Something in those dark eyes focuses like a tunnel toward light and the Vulcan bends and catches Jack's face in-between his hands. Very near the physical manifestations of mental focal points that the Vucans are very aware of, and Jack just realized the meaning of.
It's intimate and invading as the dark and rich Vulcan boldly tilts Jack's face this way and that, his focus – Jack realizes as lithe fingers scrape the edges of his blunt ear. It's not pointed. It's not Vulcan, it's all very human. Well, mostly human – Jack isn't as caught up in his genealogy as most galactic citizens, but what has two legs, two arms, five fingers and skin and two eyes and two ears and a nose and tongue that looks human, might be human, usually is.
Except when it's not.
Jack breaths out shakily, and the Vulcan very clearly inhales, very near his face. He breaths him in: it's more intimate a gesture then some blowjobs Jack has given and gotten.
"Nice to meet you…?" Jack breeches this silence, this focus and stillness, usually Jack would be all for what this dark Vulcan seems to be promising, wild sex in the middle of a hot and dangerous jungle - but usually Jack has a choice – and usually he's smart enough not to tangle with a Vulcan who can break Jack in half and tear off his limbs. He's got a feeling he'll come back from that too – but it'd be a hell of hurt, no doubt.
"Surak. And you will be my very own, little god." Just like that, Surak lifts him to his feet, and Jack takes a rapid breath that fills up the air in-between them. Surak, despite the fine cloth pants and the boots made out of the hide of some predator, isn't wearing much above the waist; instead he's a whirl of black markings and gold skin. There is something very much a warrior in that look he's giving Jack, as if Jack is his to protect and to direct.
"What?" Jack has to ask, because those fingers are still on his face and Jack feels something pushing boldly at the edges of his mind, what makes him Jack. So he thinks he might be excused for a lack of words when someone's playing inside his mind.
"I have been seeking you, little god. You are odd but worthy, and you are mine." A tongue laps from Jack's neck to his jaw. Jack is suddenly very interested in sex, now, thank you.
He thinks, maybe, his hormones had been working –against him – from the start of this.
"Oaky." Jack gulps, and he's okay with this, the tongue, the dark eyes, the pointy ears.
"Mine alone." Surak assures with a purr, quick fingers slipping Jack out of his coat and his shirt, he wiggles out of his pants and his boots, and while bent over Surak gives his ass a quick slap. Jack teases with an eager squirm. It's playful, but there is nothing of play when Surak growls and pounces atop Jack, a heavy weight at his back.
"Wait…?" Jack mutters, trying to slow things down – just a little, so he can get his bearings, he feels lost - he feels unbalanced. But he wants - Surak's fingers pull at his hair and face, urgent. He's here, he's settled and he needs this. Jack doesn't know if that want and need is his or not, and it's a scary realization that sends chills along his bowed spine.
It's a need and want he answers, none the less – willing or nay, with his own.
"We will be one." Surak promises, but his words aren't being spoken aloud.
They are being spoken in Jack's head, and Jack will never forget them.
Jack pants and whines beneath the strength of the body and mind above him, that offers him protection so very willing and earnest - and it's a rush of pain and pleasure that mounts and twists into them both, that rides and is ridden, is given and taken, and Jack has never felt it's like as he's pounded and thrust into, hammered like flame and metal meeting and being born anew.
Mine, Surak agrees, as I am yours. Jack is bound and needed and wanted, and he never realized how much he craved this – wanted this – an echo in his mind, a bleeding between them. It's a wound that won't heal, no matter how much Jack sweats and strains and bleeds and dies.
Dying that is inevitable.
"No!" Surak speaking aloud is strange and new, Jack relishes the sound, even as he knows some stray thought of his inevitable and commonplace deaths had touched Surak. It's a memory of who Jack is, it draws his mind away from that bond with Surak, his limbs feel heavy and abused.
"What have you done to me?" Jack asks, demands, his voice rough and low - dangerous.
"We are one, mind to mind, body to body." Surak tugs at his mind, and something tumbles loose – a familiarly of that name slams into Jack.
"I know who you are." Jack says, and he does, as he remembers.
Surak of Vulcan, the near worshiped savior out of ancient Vulcan, teaching thought –logic - before deed, before action, before emotion. Surak's eyes widen to remember – to see – his own future within Jack's mind. Jack has always wondered how Surak came to know and teach such inner strength, and he wonders if this is how – if it was born out of this…union…between Jack and Surak.
"What was that?" Jack asks it carefully, fearing the answer. He would roll away if Surak was not so near in body and mind, and his hurt would be Jack's own. Surak knows what Jack is asking, about his actions, about his feelings.
"Pon farr, to which all of Vulcan are slave." Surak regrets so heavily, so guiltily, that Jack can hardly breathe.
"Okay, okay." Jack reassures, shaken.
For jack, Surak wrestles control of his emotions, mimicking – learning – the trick to it by following Jack's own wildly flowing emotions. Jack wonders what Surak sees inside his mind.
"You are worthy of me and mine, you are a force of nature tempered by reason." Surak's voice is full of true awe, as if Jack is some kind of god as Surak had asked before; there is no doubt in Surak now.
Unease fills Jack, floods him, and he worries to what he's done. Surak is essential to Vulcan now – and Jack has stumbled into it, must live though it, for he can't – won't leave. EDESNE needs the time to heal, and this point of time is good as any, save there is nothing advanced enough to speed things along.
"The fault is mine, little god." Surak tries to ease his feelings, dares to, carefully brushing his brown hair like a pet to be soothed. Jack can't help but accept that, curling toward Surak and his comfort – his mental heat and presence. Jack knows he'll never be alone in his own mind again.
"Ours." Jack disagrees, or agrees, and Surak smiles as if he sees a life full of Jack as something worth living for.
Jack's heart rises up in his throat, and he closes his eyes, feeling at ease for the first time after a very long time. Maybe it was accident that sent EDESNE here, or more likely by far, she knew he needed this.
He needed Surak, for all that time should have separated them by thousands of years, but did not: had, in fact, twisted upon itself to see them meet.
To where will it lead next? Jack wonders, as if in a dream.
For now, he can wait and see.
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