This is Atropos Too

Ripeness is all - The theme for Season Three of Doctor Who?

2007-06-29T11:11:15Z

"Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all"
King Lear, William Shakespeare

"Everything has its time"
The Face of Boe

Throughout Season Three we have seen a number of antagonists who have fallen from grace in their attempts to extend their lifespan in a Universe where Entropy rules:

Lazarus, who sought to be eternally young and strong;
The Family of Blood, who sought Timelord "immortality";
The Master himself, a serial offender, having raced through his own regenerations and stolen and traded for others, and lived as a rotting corpse for a long stretch in the 80s

Jack alone of the "immortals" has not chosen his fate, but even he is suffering for it - the Doctor knows that his very existence is "wrong".

Elsewhere the universe continues in the long cycle of birth, decay and death; The Face of Boe has lived long past his natural lifespan, but knows that it is time to die, having saved humanity and passed on the message to the Doctor;
The Conglomeration of Chantho's race is extinguished by time itself;
Even the Universe itself comes to a natural end, the galaxies collapsing, the stars going out, ushering in a last senility of dark and cold...

So what of the Utopians? We see admiration of the Doctor and Jack for their will to survive, but for how long can they struggle against the death of the universe and their race without doing harm to themselves and others? Should even they accept that the long life of the human race has come to and end, and like John Smith, close their eyes to end the cycle?

That is why I would like the Toclafane to be the Utopians, struggling so hard against the darkness at the end of life that, like Lazarus and the Master they become monsters, and by destroying their ancestors, destroy themselves...

Story: Hornblower - Deptford Dolls

2007-03-12T14:25:11Z

Title: Hornblower: Deptford Dolls

Author: Atropos

Summary: Acting Lt Kennedy requests an interview with the Captain...

H.M.S. Indefatigable, Mediterranean, May 1799

"Now, Mr Kennedy, there is something you wish to report to me?"

Acting Lieutenant Archibald Edmund Kennedy stood at attention in the great cabin of the Indefatigable. Before him, his captain, still wrapped in a silk dressing gown, was already at work on what, judging by the scrawl, must be the carpenter's accounts, while his steward, Tregorran, was engaged in laying out water, soap and a well stropped razor.

"Sir, I think what I have to say best spoken and heard in confidence."

Captain Sir Edward Pellew looked up from the papers in front of him and met his fifth lieutenant's eye for the first time.

"Do you indeed. Well, short of a raft towed a fathom behind us, I know of no place on the ship where that state could be sought, and none where it could be desired. You did not join the service for privacy and delicacy of mind I trust? Tregorran, leave us. Bring coffee in 10 minutes. Now, sir, we are alone, will you be able to bring yourself to speak frankly?"

Captain Pellew might well be dismissive of the need for privacy - but then, to Kennedy's certain knowledge, he had been practising his own discreet encounters in this very cabin. He must at the very least be wary of any private approach, must suspect the mark that Kennedy aimed at in this interview, and fear it.

"Sir, you have recently taken a prize from me, and I wish to know your intention regarding its fate."

"I beg your pardon!?"

"I believe you carried it by boarding in the vicinity of Valletta harbour on the 16th last."

Kennedy had indeed found his mark, confirmed by the sudden rush of blood to the captain's face, and the roar with which he summoned the marine sentry.

"Sergeant Bowers, pass the word for Lieutenant Hornblower, directly!"

Kennedy swallowed hard, but his voice did not tremble. "That will not be necessary."

The Marine hesitated in the doorway, torn between obedience and curiosity, just long enough for Pellew to reconsider.

"Belay that. As you were, Russell."

They were alone again, with the issue at hand open and on the table between them. A table on which, as Kennedy now reflected, Horatio himself may have lain scant hours before. The thought was galling, but only steeled his resolve.

"I can assure you sir, that Lieutenant Hornblower has shared no confidences of any kind with me since we first made Valletta. He is possessed of more discretion than is perhaps entirely wise in the circumstances, and more than you seem to credit him."

"How in God's name do you... ?"

"If I had no guide but suspicion, your reaction would have been confirmation enough. But I have eyes, and wits, and an - unusual - degree of education in these matters." Kennedy leaned forward and hissed, "I can smell you on his skin."

Pellew sat, heavily, and in the silence that followed, years seemed to settle on him. His reply, when it came, was more quietly bitter than Kennedy had reckoned for.

"I am disappointed by your vulgarity, Mr Kennedy. I had little thought you could stoop to soil your fingers with blackmail. What is your price? Your commission is assured. My fortune is wide and deep enough to satisfy the most prodigal greed. Have you been calculating the worth of every prize we've taken before bargaining for an extra share?"

"Only of one." Oh, Sir Edward, you shall learn the depths to which I have stooped soon enough. "I have a price, and one you may strive harder to meet. I know you have taken him, and I have no claim that would be upheld in any prize court in this world. But I know a little too much of the whims of men of power, and I will not see him come to harm. This is my price. If you prove unworthy of the trust you have taken on, if on your part he lose sleep, reputation, advancement, well being, if his eyes so much as water in the smoke, then I will make your life an unsupportable hell on earth."

This was the moment for which he had prepared through long sleepless nights for the past few weeks, when he must trade information long hoarded, like miser's gold, and place his own secrets and reputation in another's hand. He placed both hands palm down on the table to steady himself, and leaned forward to bring his face within a foot of Pellew's.

"I am no peacher, I won't need to mire your name in the lobbies of Whitehall - I had some rather more select and private houses in Deptford and the Strand in mind. Do him harm and my word goes out to every madge, cully and roaring boy on the town, and the next time a certain 'Truro Mary', darling of the Fleet, takes herself to London for a night of sport in the knocking kens, she'll find a cooler welcome in her old haunts than she was wont to."

That shot had just as clearly hit home - Pellew's face had at first flushed a furious red, but at the mention of the carefully stored pseudonym, it had drained white with recognition. Kennedy ploughed onward before the lady in question could muster wit enough to interrupt his flow. "Abuse the trust placed in you, and a dozen bobbish lads and 'prentice boys will swear to the bench that the Captain offered a guinea and a handkerchief to lie with him and play with his baubles - you will spend the rest of your life wondering if the next arse you fondle is in your pay or mine. You think I don't have the power? You but dip your toes in a world where I have learned to swim."

Kennedy's head swam, his knees felt weak, but his voice remained steady and implacable. "And if you so much as hint to any man or woman, or any officer of this ship the substance of this conversation, I will swear you myself for a pederast, even if I have to swing with you."

It was done. Perhaps, Kennedy belatedly realised, it would have been wiser to have his retreat planned before hand. He had bearded the lion in his den, but this feat would be somewhat undermined if his legs were now to collapse beneath him. With no exit line prepared, and his powers of improvisation exhausted, he had no choice but to wait Pellew's barked response.

"Are you done? Then sit. Now!"

Kennedy's legs folded obediently and abruptly - luckily enough with a chair somewhere beneath him. Pellew rose and paced, pale with shock and anger, but not, it appeared at a loss for words. "Never, in all my long years at sea, have I heard such obscene insolence from a commissioned officer to his captain's face. Where - who? Who has been filling your head with these extraordinary phantasies, boy?"

"No phantasy. Perhaps the next time Poll Pinkerton decides to decorate one of his intimate receptions with a half-dozen pretty thugs in paint and powder personating Cupid, it might be wise to look a little closer at the lads beneath the gilt and paper wings."

"But that was - more than, at least..."

"Seven years ago. I have a very good memory for a - face. And as you may now appreciate, I am very good at keeping secrets." he paused, reflected, "Perhaps too good for my own happiness."

"But what in God's name leads you believe that I would harm..."

"You are the Captain. He is your most junior officer."

"Ballocks. You are - were, damn it - are - my most junior officer."

"He lies about the bruises on his wrists!"

"Of course he bloody well lies - a mark on the wrist is a great deal less disfiguring than a rope burn about the neck! Oh hell. Those are not marks of resistance, I assure you. Anything but!"

"He lies to me!"

"He is a 23 year old man, with more sense and experience of the world than you seem to credit him..."

" - not of the world where you would drown him..."

"... and you were a 14 year old child, who, in a Christian city, should not have been whoring for Paul Pinkerton."

"It happens in the best of families."

"Not in mine."

The smart reply evaporated from Kennedy's mouth with his breath.

Pellew's words buzzed unpleasantly in his head. A familiar numb warmth was unfolding him, the narrowing of vision that presaged a fit. The world was going from him, and he was falling into the light that sparkled on the windows behind Pellew's head.

Christ, here we go again. First fit of the year, and it has to be in the Great Cabin... He watched Pellew's lips moving with fascination, hearing nothing but a dull quacking emerged. As he watched, felt something ease in his chest.

As abruptly it was over, and he was still sitting, and Pellew was still speaking, as if nothing untoward had happened, and time was not stitched together like a quilt. Then came the slower realisation that he was not on the deck in a pool of his own piss, with a head full of rocks and a mouth full of blood. Sound rushed back into his ears.

"...drink. I think we both need it."

There was movement in front of him. Kennedy looked down a little nervously. At some point Pellew must have poured a glass of brandy. Two glasses, and was now pushing one across the table towards him.

He drained it in one.

"You are a strange and bold creature, young man. You take a great deal upon yourself."

"I think it behoves those of us who know a little more of that other world to take some responsibility for another's health and happiness."

"If that is so, let us talk for a moment as citizens of that world. You spoke a prize. It was taken in good faith - he didn't fly your colours, nor gave me any reason to believe he was not free to engage with me. You would seem to have no rights to enforce here."

"Then let that rest on Lt. Hornblower's conscience, not ours. My warning stands."

"I don't doubt it! I wonder if he knows the value of what he has traded away. Mr Kennedy, I am a man of my word, in which ever world we meet. Lt. Hornblower's well-being shall be as much my charge as the Indefatigable. Whatever God's will, neither will come to harm by my negligence. He will be as safe in my hands, as I would hope my reputation will be in yours. Will that satisfy you?"

"It will have to."

"Good." Pellew refilled the glasses. "Let us drink to our bargain, as gentlemen."

"As gentlemen and sodomites of honour, sir" said Kennedy, and was pleased to see Pellew splutter and choke.

"Mr Kennedy - satisfy my curiosity, one further question," he said, as he recovered.

"Sir?"

"At Poll's - did I... did we...?"

"Alas, no" Kennedy drained the last drops from his glass. "To the best of my recollection you enjoyed - 'conversation'- with one Will Prestwick, an ostler at the Red Lion in Southwark."

"Well, in the circumstances that may be a blessing. Now, this interview is at an end, and will never be referred to again."

Kennedy rose, a little too quickly to avoid a momentary dizziness. He brought himself to attention.

"As you must know, I cannot let your insolence towards a senior officer pass without censure. You are on continuous watch for the next twelve hours, and will report at two hour intervals to Lieutenants Bracegirdle and Graves, as appropriate."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"You are dismissed. Send Tregorran in with my breakfast."

Kennedy's hand was already on the latch when Pellew called him back.

"Mr Kennedy, that was a singular and suicidal act of loyalty and courage. I only pray that you are capable of such boldness elsewhere in your career. If so, it would appear the Navy has recruited at least one young dog with a set of real balls on him"

"Why, I hope so sir - and not always my own!"

Authors note: Original written in 2002, revised and reposted in 2007

WIP Meme: seems to be going around

2007-03-12T11:41:10Z

Go to page 123 (or 23 or 3 if it hasn't got that far yet) of your current WiP. Read down four sentences. Type out the paragraph that follows.

The outline of cap and coat looming through the veil of fog warned him – officer. He straightened on the bench. But an officer in St James Park, on the right path, in the right area, loitering in right way to attract a certain kind of attention. A riskier prospect, richer meat, armed by class and service pistol, but, oh, far far more stirring, he'd have this one....

Before the thought was fully formed in his head, the familiarity of the tubular figure ,the perculiarity of gait, the flash of a monocle stopped it dead. Bloody hell. Not just an officer – that sodding officer.

I'm on leave. I'm not bloody standing. He can take it out on me back at bloody Arras.

"Do you have a light, Sergeant?"

Story - Torchwood: Finer than Prayer

2007-02-20T18:15:22Z

Title: Torchwood: Finer than prayer
Author: Atropos
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: British Board of Film 18 – for scenes of a sexual nature
Can be read on its own, but also as a sequel to Cleaning Up and Marking Time
With thanks to

fajrdrakofor the great beta.

Summary:
In the hub on the morning after Torchwood limps home from the Brecon Beacons, Ianto is the last but one to leave.
Spoilers for Doctor Who and Torchwood up to and including Countrycide.

"So, next time Jumping Jack Flash suggests a nice weekend team building, back me up when I vote for a five star hotel with paintball and a hot tub... hold still - just –one more second." Owen clipped the last stitch on Ianto's scalp, and leaned back to survey his work. "Yup. Still pretty. Ish." He dodged from side to side, trying to judge the pupils that gazed back at him out of bruised and puffy flesh. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Before Ianto, with bitten tongue and still unsure that all his teeth were secure, could answer, Jack walked through the door, head down. Owen flipped his hand to display the two spread fingers to his boss, who didn't crack a smile.

"Ok. Owen. I get the message. You don't like camping."

"Just concerned about my colleague here." Owen stripped off his gloves and threw them onto the tray. "Isn't that what team building is all about, Jack?" His patient's attention had wandered to the door. "Ianto, look at me. Yeah. I'm still worried about concussion – is there anyone at home to look after you? No, well," Owen had the grace to blush just a little at Ianto's scowl "I guess not."

"Ianto, what time is it?" Jack called over his shoulder as he continued towards the armoury.

Ianto found he could now reel off the figure without the slightest hesitation. "1.50 pm, sir."

Jack didn't pause. "See Owen, he's not concussed, you can stop fussing. I just dropped Tosh off, Gwen is no doubt enjoying the tender loving care of her boyfriend, and I want you both out of here in the next five minutes."

Owen shook his head, and reached for his jacket, "Well, I'm just a doctor, what would I know. Ianto, my son, the oracle has spoken. Keep the ribs strapped tight, take the pills, don't drive - taxi home - and if you feel drowsy, dizzy or nauseous, call an ambulance. Not me." He strode out of the hub with a wave, the only one of them unmarked by their night in the Beacons. Except Jack, of course.

The clatter of cage doors locking in Jack's wake faded. Ianto reached into his pocket for his phone, and thumbed through speed dial to "Starline Taxi - Bute Street", but was suddenly too tired to connect the call. He leaned back in the chair, the phone loose in his hand.

This was so terrifyingly familiar and strange. Sitting alone the creak and hum of the empty hub. Late night, early morning, or a Sunday lunchtime, just like this one. For months it meant time pretending he was still half of a couple, although the anticipation of time with Lisa was somehow more rewarding than the reality. Sometimes the suspense was more infinitely terrifying, as he listened for Jack's return, the cogs of the door, the hissing hydraulics of the lift. He'd deflected Jack's inquiries first with an answering smile, then with flirtation, and when that palled, with his best impersonation of a clumsy adolescent seduction, which seemed to utterly disarm his boss.

Ianto folded his arms on Owen's workstation and rested his head for just a few moments, allowing the sounds to wash over him. For once he was losing the thread of time that seems to pulse through him, and he didn't care.

He hadn't been left alone here since. Since Lisa died and Jack stopped smiling at the dumb sweetness of his regard. He and Jack still spent hours alone together, heads bent over a timed exercise, or a file that Ianto certainly doesn't have clearance to see, or some random artefact hauled out of the archive, Jack tossing aside the Torchwood label to add his own, riper description, suggesting a personal familiarity he can not possible have. It all suggested a kind of trust - except that Jack had never since left him alone here, and no longer offered the smiles and words that used to skirt around desire.

"I thought I told you to go home." He jerked upright, phone slipping from his hand and clattering to the floor. Jack was leaning in the kitchen doorway, mug in hand.

"Just calling a taxi..." Ianto stooped for his mobile, but a wave of dizziness left him propped against the workstation, shivering, while Jack stepped forward, bent and slipped the phone into Ianto's shirt pocket in one fluid movement. Ianto flinched away from the contact, acutely aware of his own filth, shaking goose-pimpled flesh, damp mud-crusted jeans, hair plastered down by blood and worse.

Jack's face, inches from his, was the same cool mask as the killer of the night before, firing again and again, without hesitation, into the disintegrating flesh and bone around him. Not a tremor, not a grimace. The most single most welcome and horrifying sight of the whole bloody night. Pivoting like a clockwork toy, on an axis of gunmetal. There was still a fine spray of blood across his cheek, but not another mark. Jack Harkness. The Monster.

Ianto groped for his jacket, twisting away apologetically, but Jack wouldn't step back. Instead he placed the mug on the desk at Ianto's side and leaned in closer, closing his eyes and breathing in, deeply. Ianto, burning with humiliation and shame, fought his instinct to knock Jack away.

"God, you smell ..." Jack was hanging over his neck, face transformed, "- so alive..." Before Ianto could pull away, Jack had his fingers buried in his hair, cradling the back of his neck, and inhaled. His eyes, when they opened, were huge, unfocussed, black as ink. Ianto was not even sure Jack can still see him. After weeks when they have barely touched, an awkward pat on the back, the brushes of hands exchanging files, how perverse to chose this fetid moment to show interest. He squirmed away, mumbling,
"Don't... I reek..."

"I used to know that smell so ..." Jack pressed against him, scenting the skin on his throat, his hair, his collar, "I used to hang around an airfield ... Every breakfast, in the mess-hall, you see empty seats, count missing faces, but those who come back –" Jack's hand skimmed Ianto's shirt and hip, shaking "you can close your eyes and find them..." he breathed deeply, pushing his forehead against Ianto's, like connoisseur evaluating a complex wine, "...grass, oil, smoke, sweat, blood, piss, fear, relief – and – so full of life, one more day to live, so ready, so hard..." Jack's palm came to rest on Ianto's cock, through stained denim, and, yes, it was hard and ready. Ianto bit his lip and pressed upward into Jack's hand, just as Jack's eyes refocused. He suddenly jerked away, hands spread, "sorry", blood rushing into his cheeks.

This was the first time Ianto had ever heard Jack lost for words, "I'm sorry..." rapt, out of control. It was exhilarating, terrifying and too good to miss. He snatched Jack's collar and pulled him back towards him, ignoring the creak of his cracked ribs, then turned aside, to bare his throat to Jack's mouth, teeth and tongue.

Jack pushed the shirt from his shoulders, pulling the t-shirt aside, sliding down to his waist, with Jack following them, rubbing his face against Ianto's chest, and belly. His long blunt fingers curled hard into Ianto's hips, his cheek, nose and lips were gentle against the bruises, grazing over his ribs and the strapping there, lapping his naval and the fine trail of hair below, feverish through the denim over his cock.

Jack was speaking. Ianto felt rather than heard the words, vibrating on his skin, "I believe … Seeing… feeling… each part and tag … inside and out." They weren't for him – perhaps they were for long dead pilots in whatever war it was that Jack was too young to have fought.

Ianto made one last attempt to stay unmoved, as if he were elsewhere, not here under Jack's mouth - then twitched, fuck, fumbled his belt and buttons aside and Jack was buried in his groin, eyes closed..

And then all was still. And very quiet.

Ianto was forced to look down and meet Jack's eyes. There was no heat or confusion there. The bastard had rocked back onto his heels, hand still wrapped Ianto's cock, stone stock still except for the merest maddening stirring of one calloused thumb. Waiting for Ianto to make some further disclosure.

He twisted his fingers into Jack's hair and pulled, but Jack shook his head back, like a dog shedding water. He could feel the roots tearing, but Jack still resisted, teeth clenched, for the word.

"Yes..."

Down, deeper, endless, deeper than cunt, tongue wrapped around his cock head, the merest hint of teeth to remind him that he is fucking the mouth of a killer.

Suddenly he was tugging again at Jack's hair, this time in warning, but Jack shook his head in the same curious doglike gesture, tightened his fingers on Ianto's hip, and opened his throat still further.
_____________

Water ran over the Victorian tiles and swirled down through the drains beneath Torchwood, carrying away grass and mud and dried blood and the fine strands of dark hair Ianto had found knotted around his fingers. Trace evidence. Jack had left nothing more damning behind. In three brisk strokes he had licked Ianto clean as a cat, and tucked him away behind the zip, before he had fully drawn breath.

Ianto threw back his head under the steaming flow, and scrubbed until his skin red, and the adhesive strapping Owen had so carefully applied to his chest was lank and swollen.

Jack had just looked up at him, not smiling, quite, but with lips full and slick and curved with satisfaction, as if he had learned all Ianto's secrets from taste alone. Ianto fought the absurd urge to stoop and taste for himself whatever knowledge Jack was licking from his lips. Instead he fled, pushing himself unsteadily from the desk, mumbling, "I have to shower," and leaving Jack on his knees at Owen's desk.

He dialled the combination of Owen's locker, and lifted the sweatpants, shirt and fleece stored there. He brought the bundle up to his face, and tentatively breathed in. Shampoo. Fabric conditioner. Aftershave. The scent of Owen's neck and hair. He raised his head and stared at the man opposite him, in the foxed mirror.

Damp. Bruised. Livid.

Meat.

Alive.

His lungs filled convulsively, with the first ragged gulp of a man dragged from drowning. Living was painful. Coming in Jack Harkness's mouth was agony. For the first time the thought "one more day to live" was an exquisite torment instead of a dull ache. Unbearable and inescapable.

He pulled the fleece hurriedly over his head, thrust his feet naked into his trainers, and raced up a level to find Jack. The lights were off. Jack's door was closed. Ianto stood and listened, blood singing through his ears, but echoes of hub the told him that he was alone.

Author's Note:
All in all, Jack seems to pretty familiar with mid 19th Century American Poetry...

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me
is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

Story: Kennedy, Disconsolate

2007-02-15T10:17:41Z

Fandom: Hornblower

Kingston, 1802

What you must understand, is that in this service, and in this war, when we part, or wish a friend a good day in passing, we say farewell forever. The uncertainty of the profession, of postings, of the very sea itself, make this a necessity.

Unlike the farmer, who raises his hat to his neighbour at his gate in cheery greeting, or the loving husband who busses his good wife before he turns his path to town, a seaman must not look to see even his dearest companion again after the shortest of partings. I have seen a man, a friend, a messmate of two years past, stand in the bows of the launch and wave to his shipmates, as he brings the mail bag to the ship at anchor, and in that very same instant be obscured by a squall, and lost to human sight and knowledge for all time.

Our greetings are effusive and heartfelt. Our partings are perforce, brief, cold and to the point. We say goodbye, and mean it, because we know we may bid farewell forever.

So you will understand why I should consider myself fortunate to have enjoyed my friend's companionship for eight years, separated though we may have been for some short stretch. That is more than any seaman could, or would, hope for.

As I watch him leave this room, to enjoy the fruits of his new station in life, not least the money which burns in his pocket, I know that one night he may shake the hand of a confident, a man dear to him, as he descends to the boat on some commission, and learn hours, days, months later that he is dead, gone beyond recall, and his heart will break.

I also know now that man will not be me, and the realisation is bitter on my tongue and not all the punch in the world will sweeten my mouth today.

He paused as he stood, eager to be away, to take up the invitation to look for sport in the town. He had the grace to blush, when he asked me if I wouldn't join them, to drink, to play, to mingle sweat in some hired bed, where the whore becomes no more than the euphemism between them. That guilty blush cuts me more than the tremor of anticipation which I see in his hand, the same hand that, oh so briefly, touches the small of William's back as they pass through the narrow door together into sunlight. That blush, and the badly disguised relief that floods his face when I decline.

They are gone. I should have said goodbye and meant it years ago. I have wasted time enough waiting to meet his eyes and see there some longing, anticipation, honest lust. Our couplings have been as sterile and pointless as the writhing of mermaids. And now he will not meet my eye at all, across this table.

This table is sticky with the trails of a thousand spillages, a thousand mugs have rested here, a thousand arses polished the bench my tail rests upon.

The air around me is full of smoke and song and curses and sex, the sounds and smells of the fleet at play, and I am staring at the dusty, sticky rings on the table. The world is a little emptier and silent because I have said goodbye, and meant it.

The potboy scoops the coins from the table and grins. A broad white smile in a bright black face. He turns away, and then back, and smiles again.

I have wasted eight years chasing a chimera.

In an empty world one may still fill an hour or two with song and sunlight and beautiful black boys who smile and wink and promise pleasure. In time that could be more than enough. I have lost a mermaid, but the sea is wide. I might learn to whistle.

Like a fisherman, I place another coin on the table, to catch another smile.

Author's Note:

I read Lieutenant Hornblower and fell in love with the tentative courtship of Horatio Hornblower and William Bush long before the two films were annouced – the sense of absolute security Bush felt in Hornblower's hands on the bloodsoaked decks of Renown, the farcical attempts to find a night's privacy in Portsmouth, frustrated by Whist, promotion and a unintentional proposal. And the notorious two day debauch in Kingston, when Bush and Hornblower spent £200 prize money between them, and cemented a friendship that would last a lifetime.

Lt Kennedy is of course nowhere to be seen. In CS Forester's version of Hornblower's life, Kennedy pursues his own path on leaving the Indefatigable, and is last seen as a flag officer to Admiral Jervis, supervising Nelson's funeral. And this is the version I have stuck to.

But just this once I imagined how this Kennedy, the living Kennedy with many years ahead of him would have reacted if he had been in Kingston on the night of that Great Debauch...

Story: Hornblower, Reflective.

2007-01-10T18:13:17Z

Hornblower, Reflective

HMS Hotspur, Off Brest Roads, 1804

The sea rocks the captain awake, as it rocked him to sleep a few hours before, and will again tomorrow, and the next day and all the mornings stretching out into the weary months of blockade ahead.

For the first few moments he watches the spangles of grey pre-dawn light filtered through the sailcloth that separates his cot from his hutch like cabin. Then he turns to the tell-tale compass on the deck beams above his head, and automatically makes calculations from the heading, the cant of deck, the shuddering of the tiny sloop. Heading north-nor-west., tacking against a north easterly, of perhaps 13 knots. A rough wakening. In the Atlantic, somewhere south of Brest.

It is bitterly, searchingly cold. His breath smokes on the pillow. The sheets, washed only in salt water for the last five months, can never be fully dried; they suck up the damp air of the cabin.

He has not slept ashore in 315 days, and may not again as long as the war and this blockade last. He misses the companionable, yeasty warmth of the crowded gunroom, where in childhood he slung his hammock.

In a surrender to sleepy weakness he wishes he could curl back against another sleeping body, be held against the heat of another's chest, feel sweet-sleeping breath on his neck. As he did, for scant moments only, last night, tangled on the deck.

He curls a little deeper into his cot, the only man among a hundred on this scrapy world of oak who can indulge a desire for a few minutes sleep beyond his ration. He smells coffee, faintly. Idiotically, as there is not a single bean aboard, has not been for several weeks, and will not be for months to come, now that he has to bear the expense of a wife, and a 4 week old son he has yet to meet. His pay will not stretch so far, and so he drinks the same dark hot concoction of burnt biscuit as the hands, made sweeter with molasses. Longing for coffe produces the memory of the scent, and it is almost satisfying.

His prick is piss-proud. Discomfort and a full bladder will soon drive him from the humid nest, but might be postponed a little longer, by wrapping his hand around the shaft, secure and familiar as his 27 years.

Catching trout.

Who once called it catching trout?

Perhaps Adam Larkin, lying face down next to him on the river bank, showing him the fish lurking in the cool shadowed waters and weeds Adam tickling trout, his dark furred arms stretched out gentle into the green and gold, stroking - gently, gently - under the belly of the drowsing fish...

His own hand starts to move, gently, gently ... Ten years at sea, and his hands have never callused, still smooth and too soft, still blistering when he hauls in, or takes his turn at the pumps in hard weather.

Hard weather, which even now shakes Hotspur, wind freshening, rain splattering the deck a few feet above his head. A sudden squall in the dawn light. He is instantly propelled from his cot, and on deck, feet thrust naked into his sea boots, oil skins over night-shirt.

Bush is at the wheel, muffled in greatcoat and comforter, the wind tugging his pigtail this way and that, his broad hands steady to the sloop as she jibs and veers in sudden contrary winds.

The Captain considers the arrangement of sail, the fine balance of forces and planes acting within them, loath to make any adjustment to his first officer's orders, but aching with sympathy for every inch of sheet and canvas. With his hand on the backstay he can feel Hotspur's pulse, thrumming beneath his fingers. The horizon is lost. They are tossed in a small universe of grey water, above and below, salt spray and rain thrown into their faces in equal measure.

Bush is too experienced, too instinctual a sailor not to have smelt the squall in the darkness, and prepared her for the blow. Even now, as the captain hesitates to intervene, the larboard watch is swarming aloft, to shorten sail at Bush's single roar of command.

As suddenly as the squall took them it is gone, scudding away across the Bay of Biscay, to play havoc with the rest of the Channel Fleet. Hotspur is left plunging and yawing on the choppy Atlantic swell.

Now they must start a long beat windward, back to their station at the mouth of the Goulet, to make the dawn observation of Napoleon's fleet at anchor in Brest, as they have every morning for ten months. Difficult enough in good weather, but in these high seas negotiating the Black Stones and the treacherous Petite Fillettes, takes every ounce of attention and skill that the ship and her crew can muster.

Just long enough to dress and take breakfast, even if that breakfast must be cold, as the galley fires were put out before the squall was upon them. His steward, Doughty, is in the pantry, coaxing a little spirit lamp into life, so there will be at least warm water for his tea, and then to shave.

But, as it happens, not tea. Not even burnt biscuit. Salop. He slides into the tiny space behind the table that serves for desk and dining in one and stares remotely into the disgusting murk in his mug.

The last sack of mail to come aboard, a week before, contained many packages for the crew, and only one for him. His letters from home are folded still under his ink well, from Maria, from her mother, long on description of the new-born child...

..I'm a father... I have a son...

... but short of the little purchases that make life on blockade bearable. His entire quarter pay, drawn on the 26th last, has been laid out in the necessary expenses of confinement and lying in. Gin the many mysterious pieces of linen and wool that a baby seems to need. Except, as an afterthought , from his mother-in-law, a tin of salop. If he could just learn to like salop. It's white and slippery. Infant food. But warm. He hates himself for the thought, but he might be tempted, like the poor boy in the story, to trade his unknown child for ten coffee beans. What kind of monster does that make him?

... I do love thee as the lambs, are beloved of their dams...

Last night he lay curled and warm and sated in the space beneath this table, so warm that for a few stolen moments he had feigned sleep, to linger under the weight pressing him the deck. Weak moments, when he could enjoy the breath of another on his neck, allow gentle callused fingers to brush his hair, could imagine, for the space of a few breaths, that he was loved. All too soon that weight and warmth was lifted from him, the same hands pulled a blanket over him, and, wordless, left.

He glances down and sees the faint outline of that weakness, still creased into the oilcloth at his feet.. A single stain, a silver snail track marks the deck. He scuffs it with his foot, dashes the mug to the deck, obliterating the marks with the vile salop, and calls sharply for Doughty to clean it.

As he dresses in the brushed and sponged clothes laid over his cot, he can hear Doughty, through the canvas, swabbing the oilcloth clean. He knows the action was mean and full of spite, and yet has no way to make amends. Even now he is haunted by the wretched scent of coffee, the most awful jest his mind could play. To be so childishly distracted by the want of groceries, when the slightest miscalculation, the merest shift in wind or tide could fetch them all against the rocks within the hour.

Perhaps he can drop a hint to the wardroom, and trade for a little cocoa. At least cocoa, is drinkable, hot, brown and drinkable - they would be unable to refuse a request, however diffident, made by the Captain. A taxation on men only slightly richer than himself, exposing his own poverty to ridicule, or, worse, pity.

It is only as he reaches for the still streaming oilskins that he sees the little package wedged between the pillow and mattress.

Wrapped in lime-washed sailcloth against the damp, tied with a single reef knot.

He handles it with the same caution he would an unspent shell, carrying it to the table, and the skylight for closer scrutiny. Somehow, even as his knife slices through the canvas, cord and paper he knows what he will find.

A pound of green coffee beans. They are spilling out, over his hands, over his fingers, over the table. He is laughing, Doughty is grinning, catching them and sweeping them back into the brown paper bag, with the label of a Plymouth chandler still pasted to it.

A thin scattering of snow coats Hotspur's deck and shrouds. The hands work muffled against the cold, in coats, tarpaulins, blankets.
The Captain is in the crosstrees, for the morning observation of the Goulet and Brest port. He counts six masts, yards un-crossed, the French fleet at rest, in retreat after the action which drove four ships onto the rocks a month before. That wreckage still litters the Black Stones.

The arms of the rebuilt semaphore whirl, the dark smudges of the shore batteries glower down at them, just out of range. Some mornings the gunners try a shot, but today they must be too cold to care, crouched in their bunkers with wine and bread.

Now Hotspur must weather Ushant, and make the long beat back, to peep again at the enemy, so near and so far way, again and again, day after day, week after week, perhaps for years to come. Already, as the Captain climbs back to the deck Bush is calling to shorten sail, preparing to tack. His hands are still on the wheel, reddened by the wind.

William Bush, who hates coffee.
Whose broad dark hands steer Hotspur, safe and true.
Whose one strong arm could hold him suspended between sky and earth.
Whose fingers are hot and searching on his skin.
Who can tie a reef knot as easily in two inch cable as in the cord around a small canvas wrapped package of coffee.
Who silently makes a gift of himself in the darkness.

Hotspur pauses for a long moment as she comes about, as if debating whether to hang in stays and wreck them all, then leaps forward on her new tack.

To the east a dull glory breaks through the low cloud, slanting rays of watery sunlight, picking out the headland, transforming dark rock to gold and green. The smell of damp earth drifts across the sea.

At the same instant Hornblower sees his steward make his way forward, crab-wise across the steeply canted deck, triumphant, a battered tin coffee pot nested within his coat, against his chest, two mugs in his hands.

And happiness, unexpected, unlooked for, sends a tap-root out towards his heart.

For isiscolo on her 4th Fanniversary.
Thanks for dragging me into LJ with your Tentacles of Love!

Extra Bad Wolf reference in Episode 12 of Torchwood

2007-01-03T11:48:35Z

I don't think anyone else has made this connection yet:

"Rhea Silvia", Jack's key code to the Rift Manipulator, was a Vestal Virgin who was raped by Mars, the god of war, and gave birth to twin sons. They were exposed in the forest by their uncle but kept alive by a she wolf.

The twins went on to found the City of Rome, but Romulus killed Remus in a argument, and felt considerable guilt as a result.

This is not only a Bad (Good?) Wolf reference, but its relevance to Jack might relate to his background, as a perpetual soldier (son of Mars), and as the guilty survivor of the death of his close childhood friend.

ETA - or possibly to ideas of abandonment - the wolf keeps him alive but his families (real?, Time Agency, Doctor and Rose) leave him exposed in the wilderness

just dying a little inside ...

2007-01-01T23:21:17Z

...because tonight is the first night in a week that I haven't had access to BB3, and so the finale is out of reach

Torchwood: Marking Time

2006-12-31T12:35:52Z

Title: Torchwood: Marking Time
Author: Atropos
Rating(s): Suitable for 10.00pm on BBC 3
Pairing(s): Jack, Ianto – references to an earlier relationship

Warning(s): Spoilers for Doctor Who/Torchwood up to and including Cyberwoman.

Summary: Marking Time: In which Ianto is introduced to some of many things to be done with a stopwatch

Can be read as a stand alone, or as a sequel to Cleaning Up

Marking Time

The yellowing memo on the board was signed Yvonne Hartman
She’d been that kind of boss. A “People person.”

Take Time for Yourself
You are the “Torchwood Talent” – our people, our greatest single asset, and I am proud to work with you all. In return you should receive the best from Torchwood, including a personalised Development Plan, designed around your specific needs and aspirations. To this end, you should expect monthly One-2-One time with your Line Manager.
Be the Best; Live the Rest.

Ianto doubted even the late Yvonne Hartmann’s ideas of Work/Life balance included One-2-One Time with the Jack Harkness at 11.45 in the frigging pm. Without even the prospect of a meaningless acquaintance-shag to relieve the tedium.

But he waited, as instructed, until Toshiko had closed down her station and swung out of the door with an over-cheery farewell, before tapping on the office window.

"How are you doing, Ianto?”

“Ok.”

Harkness just looked at him, with a steady assessing gaze that made Ianto feel anything but ok, but he didn’t want to give the satisfaction of revealing just how hollowed out he had become, so gritted his teeth, folded his arms and stared straight back. “I'm fine. Really. Is that all you wanted to know, sir? Because, I calculate I’ve been on my own time now for,” he checked his watch, “three hours and fifty minutes.”

“Got anything better planned for the evening, or were you just going to mooch around this place until two again? Seems to me, as long as we are both stuck here, pretending everythings fne, we might as well acheive something useful. Something you might find more interesting than filing. Just one warning. I already know you are good at keeping secrets. What happens next, you share with no one, understand?   I don’t want to find anyone else in this team playing around with this stuff. It stays between you and me. Agreed?”

Ianto nodded, intrigued for the first time, as Harkness unhooked his own watch from the chain across his waist, and held it cupped in his hand. “Could you brew some coffee, please.”

Ianto exploded. “What kind of fucked up test is this? Want to see if I’m grateful enough to still have a job and pulse to jump through hoops? Like me to clean your boots, sir, turn down your bed - or just bend over and spread on command.”

“No. Not right now. I’d just like coffee. Black.” Harkness clicked the button, and sat back, expectantly.

With a grunt Ianto pushed back his chair and slouched gracelessly towards the kitchen, uncomfortably aware that he probably looked like nothing so much a sulking teenager asked to clean his room.

As he waited for the kettle to boil he leaned his head on the wall and surveyed the mugs ranged in the cupboard. Gwen had bustled in to help him brew on her first day here. He had the impression it was the way she was used to making herself feel useful, making tea. WPC Cooper - tea and biscuits and a smile for the Desk Sergeant. She had blushed a horrible shade when he took the purple mug off the tray and placed it back on the shelf. “Not that one. That’s Suzie’s”. She hadn’t volunteered since.

The purple mug was still on the shelf. Next to the Dilbert Mug, (James) and the “World’s Best Mum”, (Eleri), and the “Viva Espana” with the chipped handle (Gwilym), and so on, back into the depths of the cupboard, long past his personal recollection, memory, but all part of the litany he’d heard from James on his second day here. A history of Torchwood in naff ceramic - the Royal Wedding, “I Killed JR”, Snoopy, The Silver Jubilee, the Bay City Rollers, decade upon decade of Torchwood, (“Lesley, Jo, Colin, Fergus, Heulwen, Group Captain Jones, Betty, Mair, Herbert”, back to dusty recesses where strange tins of Lipton’s Empire Blend and ration books lurked.

He really should clear the cupboard someday and bin the lot.

Harkness clicked his watch again as Ianto placed the coffee on the desk.

“Thanks. How long do you think that took?”

“Ah, so we’re wasting your night off with a time-and motion-study. Want to make sure Torchwood is getting its money’s worth. Want to put in a vending machine instead?”

“Nah,” Harkness inhaled the coffee, and smiled, “the spoiled brats would kill me. Late nights, early starts, death, destruction, alien sex goo, six inches of water underfoot, pterodactyl shit on the desk – they love it. But 8 ounces of lukewarm instant crappuccino with non dairy crème in a polystyrene cup, and they’d cut up rough. Now, seeing you wasted my last night off wrecking my office and giving me a fat lip, and I haven’t even docked your pay, have the decency to answer the question. Exactly, how long do you think it took you to make this excellent cup of Joe?”

“I don’t know...”

“Think. Imagine you know the answer.”

“- Six and a half minutes.”

“Why that number? Why not round it up? Ianto – seriously, I’m not jerking your chain, I really need to know.”

“Oh for Pete’s... It felt right, Ok.”

Harkness turned the watch around so he could read the dial. He squinted at the delicate enamelled figures.

“Six minutes, fifty-three seconds.”

“That’s close. Now, you could have said ‘Five’– or ‘about ten’. Most people would. You didn’t.  Twenty three seconds out. Just as I expected."

"You know how long it makes to make coffee? Good for you, sir."

"No, I always suspected you had a good sense of time. You've just proved it.” Harkness took sip of coffee. “Can you tell what time it is right now?”

Ianto automatically flipped his wrist to read his watch, only to have Harkness slam his arm to the desk. “Don't look. Look at me. Tell me what time you know it is.”

“Midnight. After midnight ...”

“What does just after midnight feel like to you?”

“Dark. Dull. Bloody exhausting. What's the fucking point - what do you get out of this?” He pulled his arm back, but Harkness did not let go.

“Close your eyes. What time does it feel like to you?” Ianto stared into the blue eyes only inches away, sighed and closed his own.

Immediately he was aware of the hub around him, and all its idiosyncratic sounds. The grey buzz of the antiquated scanners in the corner, the orange hum of the generator, the constant ripple of water, never the same second on second, Jack’s pulse, and his, in an uneasy counter rhythm, the echoes of a car – an Audi? Something with a soft suspension - pulling out across the Plas, 50 metres above them... “well past midnight...” and then, with the softest little bump he was slipping further, sliding through the sounds, the lapping roar of traffic, the buzzing streets, the slap of slow black water on the docks, until he felt he was soaring through and beyond the city, on, to the very edge of the turning world – and he knew he was on the rim of a great cog, turning around the sun, whole universes whirling around him, with an endless fall under his feet, and only the pounding of two heartbeats to hold on to and keep from tumbling.

He snatched his hand back, and panted as the vertigo passed. “What the fuck...?”

Harkness seemed a little shaken himself. He glanced down at the single coffee mug, puzzled, as if he was seeing it for the first time.   “You didn’t get yourself one?”

“I didn't think this was social. Jack – what was that? How did you do that? It was...”

“Terrifying?”

“Exhilarating. What the hell did you do to me?”

“You did it.  I - I just had to give you a bit of a push, that’s all. Less of a push than I anticipated...You’re a natural. Temporal Hyper-acuity. Pretty rare. Amazingly Torchwood doesn’t seem to have made it part of the interview process, but I like to keep an eye on people, just in case. Like any talent, you have to learn how to make use of it.”

“I could do that again?”

“With the right training you could know every crumb of time, what it feels like, from the click of an atom to the heave of a star. Know that, and it’s like a map.  In your finger tipsour bones. You can stop time..” Jack’s thumb gently stroked the watch still cradled in his hand, “or slip through it completely.”

A splutter of disbelief reached Ianto’s lips, but stopped there. He stared at Jack, the arcane riddle making perfect sense somewhere in his body, if not yet his head.  “That’s what you’ve been talking about - to teach me? How to reach that place again...” Ianto struggled find the words to describe the glory he had felt on the edge of the great wheel, as the universe turned.

“Yes. But it takes time, effort, to learn how to navigate in that many dimensions. You start by using this.” he tapped the watch again, caressed the button. “You start with tasks that will take your full attention to complete. Like making good coffee. Or putting a clock together. Completing a Puzzle.  The watch is just a control, it helps to calibrate your own, internal, sense of time - like a chronometer on a ship. Soon you always know exactly when you are, as well as where.” Jack grinned. “It was the first thing I learned on the job. My first career that is... Call it Pilot School! Weeks and weeks of exercises, two seconds, two hours, two days at a time, until I could tell you when I was as easily as I could tell which way up.”

“Beats learning how to make coffee.”

Jack drained his mug. “But you make it so well! Make us both another, and we’ll start.” Ianto rose, eagerly this time but Jack raised his hand, with the watch, and Ianto drew breath like a runner on the blocks “Don't rush it. I'm not timing you, you not trying to beat the watch. This is just a tool. Don’t try to count. Put all your attention on the job in hand, do it perfectly. The best coffee you've brewed to date. Then, when you've finised - I want you to stop the watch, and see if it tallies with your perception. You understand. It's the button at the top.”

Fresh drawn water, kettle, mugs, warmed pot, three scoops of Columbian. Still shaking. Fumbled scoop, hands shaking, grounds scattered across the table. Wipe, grounds into hand, into bin, fold cloth. Kettle poised. Wait. Count six. Pour. Stir. Two mugs.

Jack hadn't moved, he still held the watch out in front of him, the chain looped over his wrist. Ianto put down the mugs, reached across, and clicked the stop button.  “Seven minutes. Seven minutes and...”, he trailed off, losing confidence.

“Relax. Imagine you know the answer. Guess.”

Ianto squeezed his eyes shut, and slid back into that dark sense of the world around him. He was lost, with no idea what to say. He guessed, widely, feeling acutely foolish. “Seven minutes and forty-three seconds.”

“Seven fifty seven. Twelve seconds out. A1. See - you’re a fucking born tempro-naut, Ianto Jones!”

Ianto opened his eyes, and checked the watch himself, frowning. Seven fifty seven. The thrill at the sight of the stopped hand was unexpected, inexplicable,.  Then he realised he was still cupping Jack’s hand, and pulled away as if burnt. “Ok. What next.  I can’t make coffee all night – I’ll be on the ceiling with the Pterodactyl.”

“Oh , don’t worry – there are lots of things we can do with a stopwatch.” Jack un-holstered his gun, and placed on the desk “We went through this on the range. Break it down, clean and reassemble.”

+++++++++++++++

It’s 2.57 am. Ianto knows that to the second. Almost to the second. He’s light headed, and for the past one hundred and fifty minutes he’s forgotten to hate Jack Harkness, which is something of a relief, if temporary.

The desk is scattered with puzzles and junk, the remnants of, seven sudoku, two pages of standard Aurelian Cipher drill, a reconciliation of the entire team’s timesheets for the past month, the plug on the toaster, which has been without a fuse for over a month, and now a small flock of origami cranes, which Jack, intrigued by Ianto’s unlikely skill with paper, is determinedly learning trying to fold out of graph paper.

He hesitates over a fold, “Looks a bit like like the pterodactyl.”

Ianto is holding the watch for once, reversing the roles of the past two hours. It’s warm and butter smooth. “She’s a Pteradon, actually.”

“Whatever.” Jack pulls the tail and the bird flaps. “I always wondered how that worked!” He stops the watch in Ianto’s hand, reeling off the exact time, to the half second, showing off, although Ianto doesn’t mind, even when his closest score is still nine seconds out. He has rarely seen Jack like this, even on the handful of nights when they fucked on this very desk. Flushed, hectic, reckless; he’d suspect alcohol, but he knows that nothing but water has passed Jack’ lips since one-thirty.

“This”, Jack says, brandishing the slightly lopsided bird, “is the ideal stage one exercise, something you have to lose in yourself to get right, meditative. Stage two, that's the stuff that tricky, the stuff that changes normal time perception completely ... Like rock climbing, or salsa, or sex...” Jack stops, abruptly, remembering who he is speaking to. He drops the paper crane. “Ianto, it’s past three.”

“I know...”

“You really should go home now.”

“Another few minutes... ” He reaches for another square of paper, trying to remember the first fold for a Leaping Sea Bass. Jack pulls the pad out of his reach.

“Ianto, you can’t do it all in a single night.”

“What’s the alternative? Lying awake all bloody night, waiting for the alarm....” Ianto bites his lip, unwilling to give more away. But Jack only nods.

“I know”

“I’m fine, really.”

“I know.”

“That place again, that feeling, when all of Cardiff was laid out around me...”

“... all of time, all of space...”

“It felt as if anything was possible.”

“Ianto, that ‘place’ can drive you mad.”

“Christ, I think I’m going mad here and now. There isn’t any part of me that doesn’t hurt like ... I’m like a beetle with its fucking legs torn off.” His hand closes over the watch, the knurled buttons and winder cutting into his flesh. “What’s the fucking point?” Jack says nothing, but reaches for the watch, his long fingers easing Ianto’s away from the case, but not taking it, so that watch and hand rest within his grasp. Ianto knows he is losing it, that his next words will be choked with tears. “Make it stop, Jack. Make it stop.”

And Jack just folds his hand around Ianto’s - and it is as if all the light in the room suddenly turns and faces the other way. Ianto’s heart skips a beat, then pounds in his ears, but every other sound in the hub is gone. The hiss and tick and hum of the building is dead. A vein is jumping in Jack’s temple. He can’t breathe, daren’t look away from Jack’s icy gaze, certain from the ball-tightening sensation that he is teetering on the edge of a precipice, afraid to fall, afraid not to fall.

“Look at the watch.” Jack’s voice is grating, too deep, too slow to reach his ears, like the grinding of continents. The effort to turn his head, look down at their joined hands makes Ianto shake.

The hands of the watch are still.

Ianto opens his mouth to speak, but the syrupy air won’t fill his lungs.

As, with a shudder that shakes the whole room, the second hand starts to move backwards.

Ianto snatches back his fingers, the watch hits the desk, and all the sounds of the hub rush back into to fill the void.

Ianto picks up the watch. It’s ticking jauntily, hands sweeping in the normal direction. Only the queasiness in his stomach convinces Ianto that he has seen more than a conjurer’s trick. He flips it over, looking for the trick. “You stopped the watch.”

“Did I?” Jack slumps back, paler than Ianto has ever seen him. He reaches for the cold coffee, discards it in weary disgust. “Look at it. 1939 Logines, Air Ministry issue – one of the best mechanical watches ever produced. It’s survived more crashes than I have. You know it didn’t stop.”

“Then you stopped time...”

“I –" Jack winces, rubs his temple as if it pains him, “- twisted it a bit.”

Ianto turns the watch over and over, possibilities tumbling through his head, not sure what question to ask first.

“Ianto, that’s all I can do. I can go to that place you saw, the still point in time, but all I can do, sitting here, is twist it, just a little. It’s like standing on the edge of an airfield without a plane. All I can do is jump a foot in the air and land again. With a headache the size of Utah for my pains. That’s what I meant about going crazy.”

"But I saw it all, laid out to step across..."

“I know.I see it too. But no one can just walk across time. In theory, yes. you could go anywhere. Anywhen. As long as you had a plane that could do the distance. ”

“Back?”

“Is that what you want?”

Ianto just looks at the watch. Back three weeks, and Lisa would be waiting for him in the basement. Back eighteen months, and she’d be at her desk, tongue between her teeth as she concentrated on the figures darting across her laptop screen, tracking ghosts. Two years, and he’d never know her, never know Torchwood, never meet Jack Harkness, just an ex-student, window shopping in the world.

“What would happen – in theory – if I went back...”

“... and saved Lisa? You would be a hero, you'd be happy for an hour or two or three, but you would almost certainly bring about the end of the world as we know it – fire, brimstone and great big scary monsters. But hey, you’re the crazy guy who kept a cyberwoman in the cellar for your , I’m sure you wouldn’t let a silly little thing like the apocalypse get in your way. Your choice.”

“Jack Harkness, you are the biggest bastard on the whole sodding planet. You claim to know how to travel in time, you take to see me the whole fucking universe, and then you tell me I can’t do anything with it..”

“Yep - Told you it could drive you insane, stuck here, day after day, this close to the rift, able to see the most fabulous destinations, always out of reach.” Jack tapped his forehead “I can’t even sleep away the hours anymore, without time seeping into my head. So, I thought I’d spread the joy a little.”

“So all this,” Ianto spread arms encompassed the watch, the debris on the desk, the cluttered office, “all this is pointless. A waste of fucking time. Unless... could we use the rift?”

“Ianto... Ok, it’s like flying. I could teach you the theory of flight, you could suck up every book in the subject, learn the layout of every cockpit in existence, we could spend hours in a simulator, land at any airfield in the world, loop the loop thirteen times and throw up into your hat. But when we open the door and step down we would be exactly where we started. So you get desperate enough, and you stand on the top of a cliff – and that’s all the rift is, the Grand Canyon of the spiral arm - you jump, flap your arms, and for maybe 10 seconds you’re in freefall. Flying. Then splat. Still nowhere.”

“So, you need a plane.”

“Exactly. And that’s why we’re sitting on the rift right now. The biggest scrapheap this side of Alpha Centuri. Sooner or later what we need will just come drifting through here, with or without a pilot. And when it does – we’ll be ready.”

Torchwood: Cleaning Up

2006-12-18T22:01:18Z

Title: Cleaning Up
Author: The Atropos
Rating(s): Suitable for 10pm on Sunday night on BBC 3?
Pairing(s): Jack/Ianto
Warning(s): Spoilers for Doctor Who/Torchwood up to and including Cyberwoman

Summary: The morning after, and Ianto Jones has a long and lonely job ahead of him.

The cold concrete rasped his knuckles to the bone, until it seemed that as fast as he could scrape up dried blood, tissue and hair, he was smearing more of his own onto the floor. The soap and bleach burned his hands, almost as fiercely as saltwater burned his eyes and cheeks. And Ianto Jones knelt and scrubbed, and the cold slime of lemon scent, blood and filth soaked into his ruined trousers.

The Captain had placed the bucket in his hands; “This morning, Mr Jones, you clean up your own shit", and gestured to the yawning darkness of the basement. The others were suddenly engrossed in their work – even that cow-eyed policewoman had the grace not to burden him with the weight of her sympathy as he passed.

Below, he discovered that Torchwood had already done their work. The bodies were gone, leaving only the sticky black pools of their passing. The frame – her frame - lay in pieces, neatly stacked, but his chair and lamp were overturned, kicked to the wall. This is what burglary must feel like, a home trashed, smeared and stinking.

For a few nights in the past year, those scant hours when the hub had emptied, when even Jack had left, to do whatever Jack did in the dark hours, this basement had felt like a home. Sitting in the circle of lamplight, reading aloud, a cup steaming on the table beside him. Until Lisa told him that the smell of coffee made her nauseous.

His flayed hands bled. His knees bled. His eyes burned. His nose ran. And still he scrubbed, inch by inch, foot by foot, bucket by bucket, cleaning his home. Except Jack was right. This was his shit. Other people’s blood, but his shit. He was scrubbing away the stains before Torchwood erased him.

It was the watch that undid him, unmarked and shining except for broken strap and the smashed glass on the heart-shaped face was smashed. The sort of gift bought from a catalogue, the sort of thing which Lisa would have loathed, but an 18 year old would wear because she loved her mum.

Ianto retched but there was nothing left in him to bring up – no bile, no tears. Lisa was dead, and he was not, boiled dry by his loathing.

“Feeling better now?”

Ianto’s hand closed over the watch, to hide it, but the broken glass stung, and despite himself he flinched. How long had Harkness been watching him? There was a handkerchief in front of his face, huge, clean, incongruous and smelling of sunlight. The thought of touching it made his skin crawl. He would have spit at it, if he had had saliva left, but instead he took it, and felt an incongruent stab of jealousy. Who launders for Jack Harkness? What keeps his hands so fucking spotless?

“Clean yourself up,” Harkness tossed a bundle of clothing onto the floor in front of him, “and be in my office in ten minutes. And Ianto…”

“…sir?”

“Burn the suit. It stinks.”

+++

The hub had its own rhythms and scents, independent of the humans who passed through it, and after a year Ianto knew them to the minute. Stone contracting and expanding, the tick of the mainframe, the changing quality of air from the Plas. As good as a clock. It was well past midnight. The workstations were dark and silent. The only light spilled from Harkness’s office. Just like a hundred other nights, when he had waited in the silence, for that light to go out, so that he finally go home to Lisa. Or the nights when the light stayed on, and Ianto always found some compelling reason linger in that office, to be in that other, warmer, circle of lamplight, forgetful for just a few minutes. It was one of the few places where he had felt safe enough to sleep, but of course, he never had. On those nights he showered, afterwards, so that Lisa would never smell anything other than soap on his skin when he kissed her good night.

In a few minutes it would be over. He would be on ice, in the vault, next to Lisa, and it wouldn’t hurt anymore. With luck his boss would have the kindness not to waste the last few minutes of his life lecturing him. It’s not as they talked before, so why should he have to listen now. Although better that than retcon, and a daft puzzled look on his face when he died.   Going to his death wearing his executioner’s cast-offs, hanging in ridiculous folds of wool and cotton around his hips, was humiliation enough.

Harkness didn’t look up. He was engrossed in a file – Ianto’s own file, although he barely recognised himself any longer in the photograph clipped to the cover.

“Sit”

“I’d rather stand, sir, if you don’t mind.”

“Now, this is enlightening reading.   You were an Administrative Assistant at Torchwood One. Recruited straight from Oxford, via Adecco, on a temporary contract. Six months later you are one of only 27 employees to survive the Battle of Canary Wharf. Either you run fast, or you hide well, or you are very smart... Know what I think?”

“You know better than almost anyone still living what Cybermen do. What they are. And despite that you brought one of those things into my place. You smuggled a fully functioning Cyber conversions unit into your workplace, reconstructed it and powered it up for over 10 months, putting at risk everyone you worked with. You hid yourself from all of us for 14 months. From me… Frankly your judgement stinks, Mr Jones.”

“Just get it over with. I don’t need know how ‘disappointed’ you are with me. Sir.”

“Oh, sit down, and shut up. “ Ianto’s legs folded under him before he could protest, and it would just look foolish to struggle to his feet again.    Harkness flung down the file, stretched back in his chair, met Ianto’s eyes for the first time. “I always suspected you could run rings around anyone of them...” he jerked his head to towards the darkened workstations. “...if you tried, but this is - magnificent. Stupid, and magnificent. Ianto Jones, you conned me. You sweetly sucked my dick, and conned me, and I’m not only very pissed off, but very, very impressed. So, what am I to do with you?” The smile was disconcerting, wolfish, and Ianto was actually afraid for the first time. “The first man to con Captain Jack Harkness in, oh, well let's just say it's been a long time. You’ve got world-class balls, kid. By rights, I should wipe a few years of your memory, and kick you out of here. But you’re too dangerous to walk the streets, and far too good to waste. So, here it is, here's the deal, one time only offer. Your file continues to list you as Executive Assistant, Torchwood pays for those nice suits, you go on keeping the diary, filing and making coffee. But, after hours, you work with me - applying those devious lying talents to some special projects I have in hand. Watch, listen, learn - and don’t share. This stays between you and me. You had firearms training?”

“Of course not.”

“Figures. I’ll free up some private time on the range… you’ll need it if you are going into the field.”

“…I”

“What? You’ve got any other career plans, right now? Your life full of possibilities, people to see, colleagues to screw over? No, I thought not.   Go back whatever postcode we deliver your payslip too, and get some sleep.   I want you back in on Monday with a full report on the security weaknesses you exploited to get it that thing in here, and recommendations on how we close them. Then we start.” Harkness closed the file, swept it into the drawer and snapped it shut. " Cheer up. It’s not as if you’ll have to pretend to actually like me any more.”

Ianto thought it was impossible to hate anyone as much as this. “Have you ever loved anyone, Jack Harkness?” He watched something dark flicker in his eyes, and the smile faded. If I’m lucky he might just kill me after all. “Have you? Enough to want to die for them… instead of them? Or are you just a killer. Tell me how to look into the face of someone who trusts you, enough to sleep naked next to you - and blow a hole in their head?”

“You tell me.” Harkness unhooked the gun at his side, placed it on the desk between them and opened his arms. “Give it your best shot, Ianto. You know you want to. Here’s your chance to show you’ve got the balls. Pick it up. You were waving it around happily enough last night. Look me in the eye and pull the trigger…”

Ianto remembered the weight and warmth in his hands, and felt a heavy unexpected twitch of desire which disgusted him. He nudged the gun aside with distaste. “Where did you put her?”

“She’s in the vault. She’ll stay here, with us – just as, one day, you will, and Owen, and Toshiko, and Gwen…”

“And you…”

“Yeah, maybe, one day, me too. All tucked up in the bosom of Torchwood. “ Harkness picked up the gun, re-holstered it. “I read her file. People liked her. I wish I’d met her… before. We lost so many people that day, that the missing were listed with the dead.- in ‘the line of duty’ – I think that citation should stand, don’t you? As far as anyone will ever know, Lisa Hallett died in Torchwood Tower, defending the earth.”

“Can I leave now, Sir?”

“...Ok, go.”

Ianto rose, aching every where, but numb. Dying would have been easier than this, shuffling out in borrowed clothes out with no home to go to.

“Wait...” Harness's arm barred his path, held the door shut. For a heartbeat Ianto thought he felt fingers brush his shoulder. He glared, and Jack backed off, just a little. “, “Ianto ... Think about it. You could spend another 50 years alone, holding on to secrets before you find someone to share them with, and they’ll eat you up. Or you can come in here on Monday, and start something new, – and oh, the things I can show you, the places I’ve seen, the times... things no one else on earth has seen. Admit it. However you feel now, you want to know.”

“God, this isn’t something that anyone can just ‘kiss better’”.

“I lost someone in Torchwood One. Someone I once thought was worth dying for...”

Ianto felt a sudden icy draught, as if a door into the abyss had opened up behind him. Inside Jack Harkness, who had never seemed more monstrous- or more human.

“And was he…?”

“He…?   She. She was younger than Lisa. Younger than you.”

“But worth dying for.”

“I don’t know. Is anyone?   But everyday I think of her, sliced away from herself, like your friend. I don’t know if I could have killed her.“ That brush of fingers again, the only human fingers that had touched Ianto Jones in over a year. “But, then, I don’t know if I would have had the balls to try to save her either…”

“Please…Jack... let me go.”

“Trust me on this - time changes everything, in the end.” Jack stepped back. “Go. Sleep if you can. And have that report on my desk at 8.30 on Monday morning.”

This version is unbetaed, but my thanks to skyglass_ and us_addict for their help with the earlier drafts.

Welcome to my fannish blatherings

2006-12-12T17:37:31Z

This is the not too secret space for me to corral the little fanfiction that I write!