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

5. Tricks of our Enterprise

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".

Notes; this is the last chapter and ties together on Deneva in 2267 with the "neural parasite" from Ingraham B, and a question I've always played with about where did the Doctor's daughter Jenny go?

Given the "hive mind" likeness, I'm thinking that the neural parasites could be the origin of the Borg (in 2381 Borg attacked and destroyed Deneva)… Deneva was where Jim's brother Sam lived with his wife Aurelan and son Peter (and two other sons, sometimes named Alexander and Julius)

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

Tricks of our Enterprise

EDESNE

2267

There is a ringing like bells that fills the normally calm heart of EDESNE. Jack Harkness jerks awake from where he lounges asleep in a chair that wouldn't be out of place under a 26th century cross-planetary corporation CEO's rear end.

The better for ass-kissing, Jack had always thought. It was not the most uncomfortable seat upon which to sleep. Jack Harkness has never heard the phone within EDESNE ring – and it does so about three times before Jack gets up and picks it up off the hook and brings it to his ear.

"Hello?" Jack asks into one end, looking about at EDESNE's interior somewhat nervously. It felt as if he was being watched. Or as if EDESNE has been waiting for this call – it's funny, although the Doctor's TARDIS had always looked like a blue police box, Jack couldn't recall the phone that had hung near the TARDIS's console ever ringing.

Or maybe it had, and he just was now too tired to remember.

"Hi, Jack – you don't know me yet, but trust me when I say it's good to hear your voice." It was a woman, relieved sounding and breathless, Jack blinks and rubs his eyes, wondering if he was still asleep and all of this was a very strange dream.

"Alright…a pleasure to meet you, Miss?" Jack tried to teasing rather than tired, but he could hear how successful it sounded – and it wasn't pretty. She makes no mention of it, she's not paying attention to his attempts at flirting…and that tells Jack that this is serious, dangerously so. He begins to pay attention.

"My name is Aurelan Kirk now, it was once Jenny – I was the Doctor's daughter. I need your help, Jack." Jack knows that the Doctor had had a family, he'd met the Doctor's wife after all – but never, never had Jack met one of the Doctor's children or grandchildren for all that he had known that the Doctor had had them.

As protective as the Doctor was of the universe and righting the wrongs done to people both human and alien – of his family, Jack guessed he was even more so. It was, perhaps, why the Doctor had kept his name so secret – to protect the ones he loved.

It was good to hear that someone else from the Doctor's personal life had survived – and apparently thrived enough to get married.

"You've got it." Jack Harkness vows, and when EDESNE lurches into action and rumbles and roars like a lion around him, he doesn't blame her.

"We'll find you." Jack promises, but there isn't anyone on the other end of the phone anymore.

EDESNE grinds to a halt, not where Jack wants to be – but where he needs to be. In that much EDESNE is like the TARDIS. Jack doesn't flatter himself to think he's like the Doctor – he's just a man who doesn't die. The Doctor did die, but Jack will be damned if he let's the Doctor's daughter die.

Jack's surprised when he opens EDESNE's door and finds the beaches of the Aurelius Ocean.

"This is Deneva." Jack looks back upon EDESNE and finds he is surprised again. EDESNE stands naked upon the sunny and warm sands of Deneva, the chameleon circuit – cloaking device - camouflage unit, call it what you will – Jack only knows that he's never seen EDESNE like this.

Sleek and silver like a giant's bullet, standing a little taller than he is, but sinister. Jack wonders if the TARDIS unit was designed to be something like a weapon, for surely they can and have done devastating damage. Jack feels a little breathless at the sight of it. Like seeing a sentient bomb; it might go off, it might not, and it all depends on if you piss it off.

"Alright, alright, I'll find her – you…you stay here, hear me?" What kind of response Jack expects from EDESNE, but he doesn't get any. He only looks over his shoulder one last time before EDESNE is out of sight. He hopes he doesn't find out what happens if he doesn't come back.

This isn't Jack's first trip to Deneva with EDESNE, but before – he'd always thought she'd stopped here to soak in the Denevan crystals and dilithium. He didn't know exactly what a ship like EDESNE ran upon, whatever source of energy it was, it wasn't anything that Jack had ever seen put into any kind of engine. He remembered though, all too well, how the Doctor had treated his TARDIS as if alive – and maybe that was so.

If EDESNE came to Deneva for the sunshine and warmth and beaches like Jack looked forward to, he wasn't going to argue it.

Yet, just this once, on a warm summer day with blue skies…the beaches were empty. Despite the heat, Jack got a cold sticky feeling in his gut at the sight of all that empty sand. A boardwalk, charmingly wooden and rustic led to the sidewalks and streets of the city. Jack didn't know its name, but as he walked along he saw no one. It was eerie, he'd seen abandoned ships of all kinds – he'd visited ghost towns, and deserted planets. Yet a whole city was something else. He wished he knew its name.

It was just strange and creeping quiet, street after street.

"Oh, no…" Jack rubs a hand over his face, as if to hide from the sight. A school, with no kids in the school yard – and Jack doesn't know if it was a school day, or if school was even in session in this season on Deneva. Yet he knows he can't walk past this. He has to see, had to make sure, or he'll always wonder and worry at it, enough to have nightmares for a lifetime.

Jack Harkness goes in, and sees much what he expected. The halls are empty, the lockers and school things in disarray, as if someone had had a panicked temper tantrum. He's grateful for the fact that wherever the people went, the kids seemed to have gone with them – there isn't any blood here, no bodies of innocents.

His eye catches a name on the door, Aurelan J. Kirk…Jack wonders if that J. stood for Jenny, the Doctor's daughter. He has to find her, has to help – somehow – Jack doesn't pause to ponder if it's right or wrong to go poking though her stuff, for surely if she was in a rush to get to safety and expected someone to come to help her she would have left a clue on where she – and everyone – went.

Jack only takes one look inside, and knows - Aurelan had been a history teacher. Jack can't help the chuckle that bubbles out of his mouth, if it sounds hysterical to him – no one else is around to hear – and that's the problem. Jack takes a look around, searching for a lesson like clues, and he sees a paper – a map of the underground sewage system.

It's a hope, and Jack clings to it. He knows he's gotten lucky, or maybe it's EDESNE who knows him perhaps better than he knows himself. Knows he couldn't walk away from a children's school - knows too, somehow, that Aurelan taught here. Jack doesn't question it – he takes himself to the nearest manhole (and stifles a giggle that proves he needs to find people, quickly, or start worrying about his sanity) and drops down.

The world below the city is a maze, cold and damp – the flip side of the sunny warmth above – yet, somehow…it feels safer.

"Don't move." Pressed against his lower back is something, and if the voice is anything to judge by – it's dangerous.

'Safe - so much for that feeling….' Jack thinks to himself with a roll of his eyes.

"Whoa, whoa, now - don't do anything hasty that you might regret – I'm here to help." Jack looks over his shoulder and sees a boy. For just a moment that boy is another, and Jack is on Tarsus IV with James and orphans. He blinks, and the boy is still blue eyed and sandy haired and pale – but no James.

Jack had heard of what happened to Tarsus IV, the rescue, the handful of survivors out of so many victims, and he hadn't had the heart to go looking for one child that might not have survived. It might have made him try to convince EDESNE to go back and change things, over and over, stuck in a loop that did nothing to fix anything but hurt the heart more and more.

"What…what's your name?" The boy demands it, looking upward at the manhole nervously as if he expects someone to follow Jack down. It makes Jack think that this is not the first encounter of this kind that the youth has had.

"I'm Jack Harkness, I've come to help out the daughter of a old friend of mine. Her name is Aurelan Kirk. Do you know her?" Jack keeps his voice calm, warm and friendly. Just like a passing good natured neighbor. Warily, the boy nods. It's just a little bit of trust – and that's all the reason that Jack needs to help him.

"If you let me, I'll close the manhole's cover, alright? What's your name?" Jack doesn't wait for the boy's go-ahead; he covers up the one entrance – and one exit. The thing the boy has at his back is a phaser. Jack can't tell if it's type-1 or type-2, he only sees that it isn't a type-3, a so called phaser rifle. Such a thing can stun, heat, kill, or disintegrate living beings. Jack swallows his mouth feeling like sandpaper.

"I'm Noban. I'll take you to her, to Aurelan." Jack nods, and the Noban puts away his phaser into a belt he wears about his waist, looking a little comical, like a miniature cowboy. Jack sees his serious expression and wary eyes and doesn't say anything, following the boy like a disproportioned shadow.

There's a steel door ahead and Noban knocks away on it in a code, and it's opened up by another boy – this one with dark hair and dark blue eyes. He looks at Noban who nods toward Jack. There's something about those blue eyes that is frighteningly familiar. It's like the Doctor's eyes, eyes that had seen the best and worst of worlds – and held it all together and dared the universe to throw something at him that he couldn't walk away from.

Those were the eyes of the Doctor at his darkest. It breaks Jack's heart.

"He wants to talk to your mom, Peter – says he's here to help." Noban sneers toward Jack, as if he certainly doesn't think Jack can do something as useful as that. Jack manages a shaky grin for this grandson of the Doctor – even as he wonders if the Doctor ever held him, ever knew he was born, ever was a grandfather for him.

"That so, doesn't look like much." Peter remarks, and it isn't one that Jack is meant to respond to – so he doesn't. Almost grudgingly, Peter opens the door wider, and Noban and Jack slip through.

"Mom's this way." Peter announces, as he goes – and expects Jack to follow. Noban keeps to the steel door, watching them go – his phaser in his hands, they don't shake. Jack thinks of old stories, stories of a Peter Pan and his Lost Boys. What's out there that has them hiding like this?

Aurelan Kirk is a lovely dark haired woman, whose sons all have what Jack think most likely fair hair under the sun. She's reading a nap-time story to two twins; little boys that Jack doesn't doubt are hers. They cuddle against each other like puppies. It isn't until she finishes that she gives each of her little boys a kiss on the head and walks to where Peter and Jack are just outside the little room that Aurelan has made into a bedroom – what it was before, Jack thinks was probably a boiler.

"Jenny…" Jack shakes his head, for that isn't her name – and Jack never called her that, but at that name Aurelan smiles warmly, opens her arms and hugs him to her tightly. As if he's the long lost son of her oldest friend – not the other way around. She kisses him on each side of his cheeks, and Peter's eyes flick away, a small blush crossing his freckled face.

"Jack…hello, it's so good to finally meet you." Aurelan holds onto his arm as if she can't let go of him. He understands it; they are the last ones who knew the Doctor, who had a Time Lord shape them.

"What's happened here…Aurelan?" This time he uses the name her son Peter won't frown at him so much for.

"An invasion of sorts ….or the beginning of one, have you heard of Ingraham B?"

"We got a cargo that originated from there with a few stops along the way, out there is a neural parasite - during day time it's safe enough. Natural light seems to keep them away, that's where my Sam is right now, out there looking for food for all of us. They…I think they are the beginnings of what becomes the Borg." The Borg, now those Jack knows of – has had nightmares of.

"The neural parasites look like this; we've only seen them attached to their hosts. Like hand-sized brain cells, yes? What's more there is a hive mind going on here, a communication between them I've never seen anything like. It's been going on, as far as I can tell, for about two hundred years…" Jack wonders how Jenny, the Doctor's daughter came to be here, perhaps stranded without a ship of her own she'd made the best of it. She'd made a life for herself and lived it as the Doctor had never really had a chance to.

Jack shakes his head, putting away thoughts of how the Borg has terrorized countless quadrants and how these people here suffered terror and pain. There might be a connection – there might not be – but Jack's determined to save as many as he can, here and now.

"How many are there of you?" Jack asks softly, Aurelan looks toward the steel door as if it's the only thing that stands between them and their deaths.

"Mostly the children, my students, Noban's father Menen…my Sam, our boys and me - all together less than a hundred." Jack had seen that city, empty of people – perhaps those infected by the parasite had been hiding in the buildings while the sunlight was up. How many others who had been infected had been killed?

"I can get you out, all of you – it might be a bit of a tight fit, EDESNE isn't as big as your father's TARDIS was…but she'll get us off Deneva safely." Jack has never really had need to explore all of EDESNE, but he thinks if the Doctor's daughter needed it EDESNE could manage more than a hundred. He thinks of how many people must have built and lived in this city, thousands – maybe more. It makes him sick to think there are so few survivors.

"We'll go, all of us – once Sam and the others get back, pass the word along Peter." Peter, with his dark blue eyes, so like the Doctor's – he just nods at his mother's words, as if he can't imagine why he wouldn't obey her. Aurelan looks after him in sorrow, which she quickly hides.

It isn't the longest wait Jack Harkness has ever endured, and Aurelan keeps him good company, and once the boys and girls who act as a little army of her protectors get used to Jack (he can't say they ever quite warm up to him) he's entertained well enough.

"Was I the only one you called for help?" Jack asks Aurelan, who shakes her head.

"Sam sent out a brief distress call, but there's been no answer to it." What she didn't say was that she didn't think it would do any good, too little - too late. If people got into trouble out here on the fringe worlds… that was usually how things ended. Jack had helped people out here – yet for every planet or ship he helped, there were others – suffering – that he couldn't save. No one – not even the Doctor – could be everywhere at once.

"They're here!" Noban hollers as he pulls hard to pry open the steel door, Peter joins him and they have it open before Jack can go to help. He just stands in the doorway as Sam and his fellow scavengers come in. Sam, Jack can't deny – looks like James, a wilder James, with a mustache, and golden blond hair that hasn't had a haircut and is hanging about his shoulders like a lion's mane.

"My name's George Samual Kirk, not James – James Tiberius Kirk is my little brother, he goes by Jim now though, so I heard on the news comm before it died." Jack Harkness had never thought that James had survived – and this…this was James's family. He'd never felt so lost, no even when Rose and the Doctor had fled from him, and left him to live and die his lifetimes alone through Earth's history.

"Is…is he here?" Jack hears himself ask, but he doesn't' have much hope of it.

"Captain Jim Kirk… here? No, you must be kidding – half the family is here, but Jimmy ran to Earth as soon as Aurelan and I married, he's on the bridge of the Enterprise somewhere up there." There is both hurt and pride in what Sam says. Jack wants to hear all about James, all about the Enterprise – and why had Jack never paid much attention to this boring span of history, before this? Jack shakes those questions away, and smiles as charmingly as he can.

"I'm Jack Harkness, I'm here to get you out of here and off Deneva, as per the lady's request." Jack winks at Aurelan, and if it's half-hearted, he tries not to show it. He remembers advice he once gave James, to never flirt with one-half of a couple and he offers his hand to Sam – and when Sam takes it, he doesn't get it back as Jack leads him to the steal door and does the honors of opening it, bowing Sam and Aurelan out – watching them all go, old and young and all of them trusting him. He won't let them down – it's not a promise, not a vow – it's a fact.

They are out of the sewers and the sunlight is fading with every minute, a pretty and dangerous sunset.

"Where to next?" Sam asks, helping Jack up and out of Deneva's sewer systems.

"The beach, EDESNE is there." Sam looks to the sky, his expression like someone anticipating failing, and death – but determined to try, so others thrive. Jack wraps an arm around him with a grin.

"We can get there." Jack tells him – tells them all, a handful of people out of thousands. They survived that, they can survive this. Jack doesn't know if it's his words or Sam's smile, but they nod among each other, restless and worried – but willing.

Hoping...

That hope is all Jack needs as he takes the lead, past streets that seem to get longer with the lengthening the of shadow at his side. They get to the boardwalk, wooden and weathered, and the sand all around surrounding them – and from behind Jack sees a crowd, shuffling and moaning.

If Jack had ever thought of what zombies might look like, this was a hoard of them – but they were living, and breathing, their faces twisted in agony and pulsing pinkish natural parasites urging them on – on and faster, into attacking.

With every step the people protested it, resisted and cried out against it - but it wasn't enough to make the pain and steps stop.

It was somehow the worst thing Jack had ever seen.

"Come on, let's go people!" Peter yells, seeing what Jack does.

Peter and Jack herd the others, straggling old folk and toddling children along, like they are the sheep and Jack is the sheep dog and the wolves are at his heels. Jack sees EDESNE, sees Aurelan put her hands on shining silver and it opens and the others with her pour in, one by one, and two by two.

It's like seeing what Noah's ark should have been, not simply his family saved – but as many as Noah could have fit within, and all the animals as well. Yet Jack can't save the people shuffling and stumbling and sobbing in pain behind him, following in their footsteps in sand.

"We'll come back for you!" Jack tells them over his shoulder, as Peter takes his hand and yanks on him, urging him along, a little boy hurrying a grown man as much as he can.

Peter sees it when the closest of those infected by the neural parasites grabs onto Jack, as if to keep him with them – he sees it when the pink cell leaps onto Jack Harkness – who screams and keeps screaming, he falls to the sand and writhes as if wrestling with something, twitching and jerking weakly, struggling still. It's because of those struggles and those screams that Peter can't leave him just laying there in the sand, alone and in agony.

"Daddy! Mommy!" Peter fires his phaser, not aiming, but standing over Jack's body and determined to keep a distance between them and him. The distance is inches – but enough, enough for Sam and Aurelan to grab onto Jack and yank him the final few steps into EDESNE – who slams the doors shut once Peter is the last one in.

Jack's screams fill the heart of EDESNE, and it shudders and beats and flings the ship to one of the few people Jack calls friend and means family.

0o0o0

It's a normal day for Doctor Leonard McCoy, until he hears a hauntingly familiar sound, a warning like a grinding and alarm. He looks around and sees a new door, it opens and people are piling into his sickbay, most of them look like they haven't showered in a week – and most of them smell like a sewer.

"Doctor to bridge, Captain - come down here now – we've got, uh, stowaways?" Bones sort of hates that it sounds like he's asking rather than telling, but at least he's done his job in telling Captain Jim Kirk to get his lazy ass down here, now. Bones is not diplomatic or political, he's spent most all of his life either fixing people up or taking them down.

The sickbay is his place – and the only reason he's watching and not reacting is because it's clear that these people need help.

"Stowaways, Bones?" Jim Kirk sounds doubtful, like he suspects this is all a trick to get him down her for a physical or a test of some new medicine Bones wants to give a try.

"Sensors are reading numerous life forms, human." Spock, the know it all – chimes in. It's useful; Bones thinks – but only sometimes – to have a logical Vulcan First Officer in Science.

"On our way, Bones." Jim says, and doesn't say 'don't die' but it comes through loud and clear to Bones. Who isn't really too worried about that – it's almost imposable to kill him, for one – and for another thing, these people are all very young or old and most of them look more confused than Doctor McCoy.

"Where are we?" A boy, older than the two twin boys whose hands he's holding, but not by much demands of Bones.

"The Starship Enterprise, sick bay." The people stop coming through the new door, and Bones peers into it hoping that no more will be making a surprise appearance.

"Don't die, Jack, don't die." It's faint, a woman's voice, pleading. They are tucked into a corner behind a console, because the door is somehow connected – not to a closet which should be all that could fit, but to a whole huge looking chamber – it's very familiar – and so is the name Jack.

"It can't be." Bones says to himself, aloud, as his heart starts to pound in his hears in something he recognizes as panic.

Yet it's true, Bones knows as soon as he sees them – him – a strikingly lovely woman, with ruby red lips and dark hair like Snow White, her sorrow making her all the lovelier, in her lap is Jack's sweating face, blood is leaking from his eyes – his mouth and nose. Bones doesn't have long. He hurry's over – and who gets in his way but a look alike of his Captain, wilder, and fierce as any beast.

"Out of my way, Jack – Jack Harkness, can you hear me?" Bones gives this Jim Kirk-look-alike he'd never give his Jim, his Jim would know better than to get in his way in the first place. His look is full of all the blood that Bones had shed that of his own and others, and a steel of will that won't be bent.

Wisely, the older Jim Kirk look alike gets out of his way. Bones kneels down next to the first man he called friend and meant it, the man he would have called brother, or father, if he'd allowed himself to.

Jack Harkness opens his bloody eyes and his lips curl into something that could have been a smile if you squinted.

"Reaper…" The word alarms the woman, who looks at him, stricken and so pale. Bones has to wonder who she is to him. 'Later', he promises himself half-heartedly, 'I'll ask him later.'

"Aw, Jack, what have you gone and done to yourself?" Bones looks him over, his words coming out long and drawled.

"Can you heal it?" Bones asks of Jack, taking the other man's hand in his and holding tight, as if he can keep Jack from dying just by that grip.

"Don't know. Hurts, hurts so much. Everything. Bloody parasite tore me up, inside. Trying to, to…" Jack trails off, and Bones gulps for air so he doesn't start to panic. A doctor can't panic, can't hyperventilate, or have hysterics.

"James…" Jack says, broken, and tries to smile, warm as anything.

Bones looks over his shoulder and sees Jim Kirk standing there, still as a statue and pale as if he's seeing a ghost.

"Jimmy?" The Captain's look alike says, and Bones thinks – of course – of course they are family. He sees a smudge of something like sludge, burnt black and charred against the floor of EDESNE. He hasn't the time to find out what it is and cure Jack of it's effects – it looks like Jack and EDESNE wasted that time fighting it – killing it – so Jack could be himself, at the end.

"Sam, Aurelan …who…who is he?" Jim Kirk asks his brother, though he has eyes only for Jack Harkness.

"My father's friend, a hero, Jack Harkness…." Aurelan blushes her fingers against Jack's hair, getting it out of his eyes. Bones knows she's Sam's wife – knows that Sam is Jim's big brother and that's why they look alike. Who Aurelan is to Jack – or who Jack is to Auralan's father – that's a mystery that Bones can't, doesn't have time, to guess at.

"Bones, Bones - you've got to save him." Leonard McCoy curls his fingers to try to feel Jack Harkness's pulse at his wrist, but there isn't one to find. There's nothing there to find. Jack's eyes stare at him – at Jim, and Bones can never ask what's so funny that he's got that stupid smirk on his face.

"He's dead, Jim." Bones says it – but John "the Reaper" Grimm doesn't believe it. He does nothing but sits silently by the body. He'll be here when Jack revives – he has to.

"Captain …Jim…I am sorry for your loss." Spock, it's Spock saying that, and Reaper wants to shut him up, shove a gun in his face and make him apologize for even insinuating that Jack Harkness ever lost to anything.

"Don't say that, Spock." Bones doesn't sound anything like himself, it's because he's not himself – he's Reaper, and he's watched Jack die and Jack….he can beat a stupid neural parasite.

He has to.

Auralan looks at him, at Jack – at Jim, at her husband Sam and at Spock andNyota Uhura. She's waiting too, if only because Reaper is. She doesn't look like she knows what she's waiting for. Gently, very gently as if she's afraid that Reaper will strike her if she's not careful, she closes Jack Harkness's blue, dead eyes.

"Jim…" Nyota's voice is full of pain, and Reaper remembers that she and Spock and Jim had a thing. She and Spock must be hurting for Jim's sake, Jim who was kneeling beside Reaper. He's crying, crying like he'd found something – someone – he loved and lost, and now he's just lost. Just like Reaper.

How will he tell Samantha, his sister – the only person he has left?

Jim touches his shoulder, his grip firm, there and solid and real – as if all the rest of it isn't - Reaper doesn't think it's enough –it'll never be enough, he never got to say goodbye, never got to tell Jack just what he meant to him…to them, to everyone he ever saved.

Jim starts to say something, only it's nothing in a language that Reaper knows – Nyota gasps in surprise. His grip on Reaper is hard and yet Reaper can't bring himself to protest.

"What is he saying?" Spock asks, hushed and reverent.

"I…he's saying goodbye, oh, Jim…it's…" Nyota Uhura understands languages better, sometimes, than she does people, and what Jim says is clearly beautiful, full of feeling and that's all Reaper needs to know – at least someone is saying goodbye, for all that Jack can't hear him.

Reaper would want Jack to hear him.

Reaper brings the hand that Jack had held onto as he died, and he kisses it, barely there butterfly kisses, on each finger – and Spock, who must see the palm of Jack's hand, he hisses like a surprised cat.

"What is it?" Nyota asks of him, hushed. There are marking upon Jack's palm, and Reaper and his sister Dr. Grimm never asked about them. It's clear enough that Spock recognizes them- so they are Vulcan after all, Samantha had always had her suspicions.

"The House of Surak, the mark of Aourial, a god out of my people's past – the sunburst, it means they mated while Vulcan was at war, there were three of them – one of them Surak, his wife Tolk'n – and his partner, whose name was never written. Surak came back to Vulcan without them, in mourning…" Spock's voice is faint, but Reaper listens, if this is the only way he gets to know a part of Jack that was kept from him, he'll be greedy.

The starburst is upon the fleshy part of Jack's palm which becomes his thumb; between the two fingers that part for the Ta'al are two lines, bold and proudly put. Reaper's finger brushes them, and Spock speaks up again, as if asked.

"Once, Ta'al was a goddess too, of children, for their arrival brought peace to us by those who wereT'hy'la. They are his children; their names are too small to be read by the naked eye." Beneath the names of Jack's children was a gorge, a scar, a crude half circle upon the center of his palm, Reaper could tell that Jack had done it to himself.

"This?" Reaper demands to know, his voice soft as any threat.

"Shariel, our moon god, a death god - his sign is that, half the moon." Reaper knows what that meant; Jack had seen his wife, his child - dead, bones before his waking eyes. His hope had been faint that Surak had got away with Tal'n without Jack. Yet with his own ears Reaper had heard that Surak had lived, and he wondered at what Jack would have done, knowing that.

"Spock?" Nyota murmurs, hearing in Spock's words what they do not. Spock can not lie to her, and not to Jim, it is not in the nature of his people to lie to loved ones.

"He is my ancestor, Nyota - I am of the House of Surak, by my father Sarek, by my forefather Skon, by my second forefather Solkar, by all of them until Tal'n son of Surak…or, perhaps, this man." Jack Harkness is clearly human, but so too had been Spock's mother Amanda, and Spock found it did not hurt to know he was perhaps not the first born of humans and Vulcan.

"Damn-it, Jack Harkness, you can't just do this!" Reaper hollers, holding so tightly to Jack's hand he doesn't notice when it grips him back, hard, but he does notice when Jack takes a shuddering, shaking breath inhaling, and gasping back to life.

"Finally…you had me worried..." Reaper tells him, and Jack's eyes flutter open, blue and beautiful, his grin heart breaking in his charm.

"I didn't know you cared so much." Jack looks to their joined hands as if it's a normal sort of thing.

"I'll show you how much I care, Harkness." Reaper, he uses their joined hands to pull Jack in close and kiss him breathless, until Jack is clinging to him, murmuring "miss you" and small little things that Reaper hears and loves.

EDESNE hums and it's like a heartbeat, calm and soothing, a heart at home. A ship that's found shelter and more, berth within the Enterprise.

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

End