A Reaper's Vale

by Abby Ebon

"He's dead, Jim." Only this time Bones is wrong, and Jack Harkness is a dead man who won't stay dead. Bones is a Grimm man who can't die at all; Spock is only a man half-human, and James is a name that died with Jack. JackHarkness/Grimm!McCoy, Jim/Spock

3. Life On Mars

A Reaper's Vale

Abby Ebon

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Disclaimer: I do not own the following, "Doom", "Star Trek", "Torchwood" – and, just in case it comes up – "Doctor Who".

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Life On Mars

Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) Olduvai Research Facility

2046, Mars

Jack wakes up, and it isn't like waking up from death, but it sort of is –is this, is the cold and alien cryostasis, he's woken up but he isn't quite himself yet. He doesn't know who he is, where he is, why he is where he is. It's like the worst hangover ever, he even feels sick, shaky and cold and sweating, and his head is pounding.

"What is this Dr. Grimm?" Someone asks, male, sharp and dangerous, in a way that makes Jack want to get away from him as fast as he can. He's not feeling up to getting in a fight.

"This is someone who can help, a survivor, if we are very lucky." A woman, and Jack can't help but relax, things are never too terrible if women are about. Women make everything better. There was some kind of scientific paper about it once, so Jack's not being biased. He opens his eyes, and cringes, it's too bright, too lab like. Jack slides his eyes shut and hopes he can will himself to open them again.

"A survivor of that? Out there? Those monsters?" That's important, very important.

Jack remembers it, Mars, he's on Mars. He's not alone here. He's got Surak and Tolk'n, and his babies, Tal'n and T'Khut where are they? He moans, to make a noise, to let himself know he's alive he's not utterly broken yet.

"When..?" He thinks it's more of a slur than a word, and he opens his eyes – and there they are; there are the bones of his beloved Tolk'n and his little girl T'Khut named for the moon of Vulcan. He breathes in and out, slow, slow, slow, and remembers monsters. Those bones are old, so old. Whatever else he is, he is too late.

Jack reaches for Surak and feels…empty, an alone that echoes between mind and bone, strange how in almost a hundred years you can forget what it feels like to be alone in your own head. It had to happen sometime, Jack knows and isn't that stupid. He was always going to live longer than Surak. He just didn't know if he wanted to.

Now he doesn't have that choice, Surak is gone, their wife Tolk'n is gone, and their little girl is gone – Jack hopes Surak got away with Tal'n.

"Did he just speak English?" That sounds a lot like surprise. Jack opens his eyes again, looking at those that surround him, he's not surprised to see their military bearings, and the woman is Dr. Grimm. He looks at her, blond, slender and frail looking, but she looks at him with hope; like he can save her, answer her questions. Jack feels like laughing, but if he does, it will be with hysteria and he won't stop until he dies – and when he comes back, he knows something will have broken in him. So he doesn't laugh, yet.

Let her have her hope, it's more than Jack can offer her right now. He doesn't think he has any.

"When is this?" Not where, he knows where; Mars and someone had done something stupid.

"2045, if that means anything to you." It does, but the man who stares at Jack clearly doesn't expect it to. That's the kind of man who doesn't see people as being worth much unless they are valuable.

"Matter of fact, it does, means you're all idiots." There are four of these military types, and one Dr. Grimm. Brawn over brains was never good for species survival, nature tended to revolt against it.

"Can you tell us what happened here before? On Mars, the 24 chromosomes, the…the people here, were you one of them? What's your name?" Dr. Grimm pays no mind to the men, except for Jack. A small part of Jack can't help liking having her attention centered on him. With his wife and daughter's bones not quite across the room from him, it makes him feel like shit. Tolk'n would have only smiled quietly, accepting and loving him for who and what he was– and he had loved her, maybe not as much as Surak at first, because Surak had just happened – but with Tolk'n he'd learned to love, to share in that love.

"Sure, I can tell you lots about it. If you really want to know. Those bones you've got sitting there? That right there is my wife and child, Vulcan, which isn't human, but I don't think you know what the Vulcan are yet. Explains the 24 chromosomes to you, I'm sure. Alien, never been human, not from Mars, but the House had a settlement here to make me happy. Call it an anniversary present. They've never been human, but me? I'm sure you know what I am exactly, I'm human, but you aren't quite I am genetically, yet, give yourselves another three thousand years or so, maybe you'll play catch. " Jack tries to stand, but he's not ready yet, Dr. Grimm and some military stud with brown hair and eyes like hers eases him back down to sit.

"You're saying you're from the future?" There is doubt there, but that's reasonable.

"Yes. Yes that's exactly what I'm saying, now, Dr. Grimm, where is my ship?" Jack Harkness is no linguist, but he knows what he's speaking now wasn't English as he learnt it, just as the English now wasn't any kind of English two thousand years ago in England. He knows. He had to live it and learn it.

EDESNE is near; he can feel her, hear her. His head isn't entirely empty of echoes.

"Your ship…?" Dr. Grimm frowns, and it's clear enough she hasn't seen EDESNE. That's to be expected, if EDESNE doesn't want to be seen, she isn't the sort of ship to do hiding by halves. You have to know how to look for her to find her.

"We need to get out of here." Jack is sure of that much, putting Vulcans on Mars had to be one of the worst ideas in history ever. There is now some kind of sickness here, passed infected body to wound. It came about because of Jack, because Tolk'n had wanted a child from Jack, a partly human child.

Only Jack wasn't quite human, he knew that – but hadn't thought about it, hadn't thought it through; that he couldn't die, that something in him was wrong. That a Time Lord like the Doctor had loved Jack Harkness but hated that fixed point in time for a reason – something in Jack wasn't him, but sick, twisted, evil.

It had been given life by Tolk'n who had mixed DNA and infected what she had sought to make anew, a life, evil which sought out the evil in others chromosomes. Turning the very stuff of life into something to be feared, the Doctor's worst nightmare which he had never warned Jack of.

It was his making, this…evil. It would warp and twist everything, when Tolk'n had only had the best of intentions at heart for him, for them all. Jack took what they said about the best of intentions and hell to heart.

"Is it just you here?" Jack asks, because he has to be sure.

"It should be. I ordered the rest evacuated to Earth through Ark. It should be us and Pinky and Dr, Grimm here all alone. Only it isn't, there are monsters out there that Dr. Grimm wants you to help explain; only you've been on ice for God knows how long. So I don't see how you can help, whoever or whatever you happen to be." Muscled and big, the man in charge looks to his men, all three of them. The odds Jack knows have been against them from the start and maybe this man is just starting to realize that.

"I am Captain Jack Harkness – and I'm getting our asses out of here. Those things as you call them, the monsters? Those used to be people. They got infected. Not everyone can be infected, but they're looking for…for someone like themselves to carry on the mutation. Not everyone can be a carrier. Or, should I say, not every carrier reacts to hosting the chromosomes the same way. Most can't make it work right. It was meant to be a gift. Something wonderful…." Jack doesn't look any of them in the eyes, and let them make of what they want out of what he says. Dr. Grimm frowns thoughtfully, touching him, keeping herself beside him, letting him know it's alright simply by her hand on his back alone.

He misses Tolk'n fiercely, an ache that hammers between in heart and head, but he dares not look to where her bones sit, holding their child protectively, hand out stretched to defend against something none of them ever saw coming.

Jack wonders if she ever got into cryostasis; or if her last act was to protect Jack and their daughter from the monster in his DNA that had wanted to make Jack into something to truly be feared.

"Kid, Duke, we'll head out to check the ARK, if we've got to get off Mars, Mr. Harkness, we do it my way. Not by some ship no one has ever seen, or knows where to find." His words make it seem to be the last word on things, a sure thing. Jack can tell the two them will never get along.

"Sarge?" The brunette with Dr. Grimm's eyes speaks up, frowning in confusion at his commanding officer.

"Reaper, get the Captain and your sister moving as soon as you can. Keep our asses covered." A nod is all the answer 'Sarge' takes, and he leaves, taking what Jack recognizes as a Bio Force Gun with him. It explains how they got the bodies that Jack takes note of, twisted and ruined. A fixed body beyond repair, there is no helping those who are infected. They are monsters – as good as dead.

There had been no way to heal them; no Vulcan technique could save them from what Jack's DNA had done to them.

"Captain Jack Harkness, I'm Doctor Samantha Grimm, this is my brother John – whose Marine unit apparently dubbed Reaper, lame, but what can you do about little brothers?" Jack lets himself smile without bringing to mind his own brother.

"I'm sure he's worth the all trouble he gets into." And that's probably plenty, with the look Sam shares with her brother, fond and exasperated.

"Hey, I came to help her, this kind of thanks I'm going to get?" Reaper rolls his eyes, not taking Jack seriously, there is teasing in his tone and Jack thinks he could get to like these two. Seducing siblings can have its benefits.

"We had been handling things fine here. We didn't need help, not that you've helped, I think your…Marines have made all this worse." Sam sneers just a little bit at the bodies of those former Marines. It's obvious she isn't the kind of Doctor used to dealing with fresh human or former remains.

"Could be…" It isn't arguing its agreement, thoughtful but worried. John Grimm wants out of here, and he wants out with his sister alive. Jack likes him for that, a lot. He tries to stand this time and gains a measure of stability; Sam hovers over him, nervous and careful, as if afraid of both helping and hurting at the same time. He wraps an arm around her shoulder and keeps them both steady as he learns to walk again one step at a time.

He sees it when they pass where C-24 is bottled and capped; she takes three vials and tucks them into her lab coat pockets. Jack says nothing; he knows her kind of curiosity. It was meant to save lives, and if it found the right person, a good person, a person like Jack, it could do more than save a life. It doesn't matter if Jack likes it or not, it's his legacy, its Tolk'n's too. Let Sam Grimm do with it what she wants. Jack only hopes she ends up being is as smart as she thinks she is. Some people surprise Jack like that.

Jack would hate having to steal back his own DNA when she looks at like it's an elixir of life. It's most flattering. Jack Harkness knows his vanities and vices and virtues, and knows too, that sometimes it's hard to see one without the other.

They make it to the Ark and that's when Jack stops dead, he sees what others do not, he sees EDESNE and feels cold and hot all at once.

They've ripped her guts out and tied them between Earth and Mars, made her into their teleportation Ark. EDESNE is so much more. They probably just thought that they were taking rocks from one of Mars's strange pillars and detected a pulse of energy between two points, didn't know why, but thought to use it to their advantage if they could.

"Oh, baby…" Jack goes to her, forcing John and Sam to either follow him or let him go to her on his own. Hurt or not by cold sleep, frozen down to his very DNA. He's aware that they are at either side of his elbows, but his attention is all for the stone pillar split down the middle. He touches her, and her chameleon circuit skin shivers, warming under his hand into her proper coral colors.

"That's a good girl, it's alright now, I'm here … what have they done to you baby?" He can guess. It makes him sick and furious.

"What…what is this?" Sam looks upon EDESNE wide eyed and awed, learning too late her true nature and beauty. She shines and bleeds. Jack's got to put her back together; he's got to do what's right because he can't leave her on Mars like this. EDEDNE is the Ark though, and she's the only way John and Sam Grimm are getting home. Jack hates having to introduce her to these people, people who may have hurt his baby girl.

"This? She is this, she is one of the very last of her kind, been called a lot of things these beings have, as many names as dimensions and spaces and places as they've disappeared into and came out of. This is EDESNE, the last, we think." Her coral shines like the old aurora borealis in the North of Earth, but there are Southern lights too; it's all solar winds and a planet's atmospheric weather. Both magnificently beautiful and terrifyingly powerful, the Time Lord's had a bit of lore like the Green Flash of old Earth sailors, that where there is an aurora borealis, a TARDIS had crossed that way.

"Sam." John Grimm – a man who calls himself after the Reaper, should not sound so strained and sick. Jack looks- and Sam goes still and silent, wide eyed, there is something dead that looks like it wants very much to hurt them.

"Time to go, yeah, guys?" It's Jack's turn to grab them up in a hurry, pulling them along as he slips into EDESNE's insides and takes his place at her console, urging her to put herself back together. She's a good girl, solid and dependable, and does the best she can to do what Jack asks.

Jack knows he risks a time ram the size of Belgium if the two parts of EDESNE don't "recognize" each other as separate parts of a whole. It's worth the risk and when he shuts his eyes tight and nothing happens, he opens them with a glad cry. So much for humpty dumpty, fires and frying pans – Jack gets out just seeing how EDESNE looks, and he supposes John and Sam get out wondering where they are.

"Is this Earth?" There's a gun shot, and Sarge comes into view with a scowl to match every inch of his anger. Jack doesn't have to answer John now, so that's something worth saving time about.

"You brought it here!" Sarge shouts down at Jack sparing not a glance for the black body-sized box. It's too bad he lacks imagination; one never knows what's in a box until it's opened.

"Brought what?" Dr. Grimm asks, stepping into Sarge's space, getting between Jack and the larger man. John eyes are on Sarge and he's got a good grip on his gun.

"That knight out of hell! It showed up with you, didn't you notice?" Sarge's sneer speaks of their idiocy. They brought that thing to Earth, Jack knows, and that must be against the rules. He doesn't think it's imposable for something to hang onto EDESNE, he'd clung to the Doctor's TARDIS. Not a death he'd care to repeat, but the evil that's spawned from his DNA is already dead – it just doesn't know how to stay dead.

"Was a bit busy, sorry…" Jack pats EDESNE gently, comforting and proud of her for preventing a Belgium-sized abyss in space, time and dimensions. She's his clever girl.

"Sorry? You will be Ice-Man, we've got to do a clean up." Reaper goes pale and sickly. Jack frowns between the siblings. A clean up suddenly sounds sinister, more of a sweeping execution, instead of picking up a mess... Jack hopes he's wrong and bites his tongue to keep from leaping to conclusions.

"Sir, no, sir we don't need to do that, my sister – Dr. Grimm, and the Captain, they've found an answer." Reaper speaks up, swallowing down his clear discomforting distress and disgust.

"Clean up? What are you talking about? Now that we've got evidence that the infected can chose between its hosts, and that it's seeking out a certain sort of genetics, we can stop it without resorting to that measure!" Dr. Grimm rallies to her brother's words and meaning, her outrage plain on her pale features.

"Sarge I found Pinky!" Duke comes out, holding onto a man with no legs, who looks at Dr. Grimm with small hope.

"Ah, good of you Duke!" Sarge takes aim for Pinky, whose eyes are wide open and staring.

Jack stands on unsteady footing, shaky in every movement. He wants to yell and draw down this madman's attention on him and run away with EDESNE to someplace far away that Sarge could never hope to follow. He can't, he knows what bad shape he's in, and EDESNE just put herself in one piece after being split in two and put between two planets. She'll need time to heal a wound that wide and gapping.

"Survivors, Sarge! I've found uninfected survivors, lots of them!" The Kid chimes in, walking into the conversation without taking heed of any warning in the tones the Grimm siblings have taken against Sarge.

"Very good, Kid, precede to execute them. We can't risk the infection reaching the surface and spreading." Wide eyed, Kid looks at Sarge as if he's just starting to see the crazy in him.

"Sir?" It's very soft, uncertain; the boy looks so young – no wonder they call him Kid. Jack can't stand for it. He starts to shake his head, to say something – anything. Sam looks to John, begging her brother to say something, do something, to get through to his commanding officer.

"You heard my orders." Sarge waves, as if expecting Kid to go off and do as told just like that.

"No, Sir, that's not needed!" Reaper steps into Sarge's space, but Sarge pays him no mind. His eyes are only for Kid. Who hasn't moved, who stares at Sarge in sick disbelief.

"Kid?" Sarge frowns, and not knowing if he can trust his own men, not knowing who is and can be infected and can't be. He's scared, Jack can get that. A Marine is supposed to follow orders, but the Kid isn't.

"No!…No, I won't, Reaper... they are non-infected humans, I'm sure of it!" With one startling sound he's dead, just like that, the Sarge has executed him without a word. Jack shakes because there wasn't a warning or need for it.

"Stand down, sir, you're relived of duty." Reaper's got a gun against Sarge's head, and Duke's got one on Reaper – but Pinky's got one on Duke.

"You too John?" Sarge flicks his eyes on Reaper, to Dr. Grimm who stands in front of Jack. What Sarge thinks of Jack is plain on his face. That's alright with Jack – he's not thinking much better of himself, but worse of Sarge for sure.

"Don't cross that line Reaper, there's no going back from it." Duke warns, and Picky laughs – half of a man, maybe, without his legs, but he's holding off a free for all bloodbath. Man's got spunk and guts and Jack likes him.

"You'd be surprised what you can live through." Pinky warns, dry and dire too.

There isn't a lot Jack can do, four guns are far too many – but he doesn't say anything when he sees the hell knight staring at him. He stands and shakes and hopes he looks good enough to eat.

Come on, come on, come and get me big boy.

Jack holds onto Dr. Grimm's arm, it tightens and the hell knight bolts forward in attack, intent on grabbing a host to infect. Jack brings her down and shoves her into EDESNE, putting his body between her and the attack – Reaper fires and retreats toward Jack, Duke and Sarge scatters and run, the infected on their heels – but Pinky gets grabbed up and the darkness swallows him up along with the hell knight.

Jack grabs Reaper and EDESNE shuts them up inside herself.

The lights flicker, Reaper groans in the belly of EDESNE, and Jack sees the dark blood pooling beneath him. It's a red that's almost black.

"Shot yourself with your own weapon, Reaper?" Jack holds onto the wound, puts down as much pressure as he can muster, but it's in John's gut and there isn't anything to do for him, no medicine can heal this, EDESNE isn't an ambulance.

"Oh, John…" Dr. Grimm fingers the vial and needle, and John sees it.

"No, sis, you can't risk I'll…I'll become that, one of those, I'm not good enough." Jack meets Samantha Grimm's eyes and knows that what John says isn't true. She's a scientist and they tend to test things out before they jump into a situation with a solution. She's either got the faith of a saint, or the smarts of a scientist, but Jack thinks she's one of the rare ones with both.

"John Grimm, you're a good man with good genes, I ought to know – your genes are mine." She sinks the needle into and under John's skin and lets the vial empty into him. They aren't just siblings, they are twins.

Jack watches as Samantha Grimm takes the second vial and gives herself just the same dose as her brother.

"Why?" Jack asks her, wondering why she'd risk herself when she's not sick – it might save John, but it might not. They've both got a little of Jack's DNA in them, and he feels…he doesn't know what he feels.

"I can't let him go through this…this life, alone. We…we're orphans, all we have is each other." Jack kisses her brow as she goes under, the DNA taking her and shaping her, changing them both. They're going to be fixed in time and space and all points of dimension – just like Jack. There won't be any changing them after the fact of it.

Jack watches over them and waits, but when they wake, they aren't monsters – but something more. Something, someone like Jack – he's never let himself get so lonely as to be depressed, but this is…soothing. It's reassuring, not to be alone like he has been. It's not like Surak, but Jack doesn't think he's got it in him to be someone else's t'hy'la.

Not yet. He's got to find out what happened to Surak and his House yet, there is Tal'n to find. Jack isn't entirely without hope.

"What do we do about this?" Sam asks of Jack, touching his hand as if to wake him gently to reality. He ran and hid and kept them alive while others died. He's not proud of it, but Jack will live with that choice.

Better to save a few than to risk certain death, the right combination of genes like Jack's is rare enough, and a gift – best not to squander it.

"You got a grenade in that get up, John?" Jack Harkness asks, and when the Marine nods, he takes it into his hand.

"I'll be right back." People talk about banishing demons, Jack knows – but there is banishing demons and then there sending them back to hell with fire and brimstone. Frankly, Jack doesn't mind lighting them up on their way.

Lockdown was activated by Sarge, Jack thinks. They can't get out but it's as easy as fiddling with the mechanics of the elevator to the surface that EDESNE sits on to get them going on their way.

Jack looks around at the depths of darkness that surrounds him. It moves, and growls, and watches. Jack's never been one to flinch from the abyss, but he's damn well not going to let it follow him like a shadow.

"Fetch." Jack tells the lot of them, his demons, his twisted up DNA monsters.

Jack Harkness lets the grenade go rolling into that seething, breathing dark.

EDESNE opens her maw, and though Jack is cold down to the depths of his bones he'd rather freeze than fry in this hell pit.

"It's done and over." Jack tells John and Sam, wondering all the while just what it is he is supposed to do with them. He feels responsible for them, no doubt about it, they aren't his kids, more like imprinting hatchlings.

"What do we do now?" John asks, burly and brown haired and in need of a shave. Jack could grow to like him and his gruff stand-off ways.

"Whatever we want." And that's the gift and cures of it that these two kids have got to learn, that they can do anything and everything – and no one can stop them, they are the immovable object and unstoppable force given flesh and blood and bone of a fixed time and place in space and dimension.

They aren't only that, they're human too. They'll have to live with what they do and don't do and have done. It's a trick Jack has trouble with still; learning to forgive himself.

Jack's never mastered it, Rose and River Song and Torchwood and the Doctor taught him what the right thing and the wrong thing was, how to be that balance on the blade between good and bad, a monster and man, and Jack only hopes he learnt well enough from them how to teach it to these two.

There certainly isn't anyone else left that Jack could trust to turn this to.