| Date: 16 December 2007
Characters: Jack Harkness, Suzie Costello Location: hotel roof Link to IJ: thread #9519 |
 Jack was having one hell of a week. The past --his past-- was everywhere here. Thick enough to be suffocating and, through a quirk of time and the ironic sense of the universe, real enough for him to be tripping over reminders, everywhere he turned.
He did what he always did when he felt the walls closing in. He found the tallest building in town - in this case the hotel- and stood on the roof. It probably looked arrogant: a literal way of putting himself above everyone around him. That wasn't what it was about though. It was about distance, and space, and most of all perspective. The view from the hotel roof wasn't great, because the building wasn't that tall and there wasn't much around worth seeing, anyway. The lack of a real sunrise just sucked. There was a decent breeze, though, and in combination with having some space around him, at least he could breathe. |
 "So what does someone like you see up here, Jack?" said Suzie softly as she walked up behind him. |
| He pivoted around so fast his coat audibly snapped around his ankles. It took him a second to find his voice. "Ghosts." |
| "I don't imagine you need to come up here to see those." She scanned the horizon. "What's going on Jack? Did something happen with the Rift?" |
| He looked back out over the town and nodded. "Yeah."
It was going to take him a minute. |
| "It's funny, I always thought if anything happened with the Rift it would be, there would be more noise, more light or something." |
| "What's the last thing you remember?" he asked. Then he looked over his shoulder and, without waiting for her answer, asked another. "Do you have your gun?" |
| "Yes, Jack, I always have it - do you," she paused for a second. "We were the only two left in the Hub, I, we were talking about the new boy, Ianto, and then there was some odd power blip in the lower levels, so I went down to take a look. I just, I went down the stairs but they didn't come out in the cells." |
| He nodded, thought back and placed her in his timeline. "All right. Let me have your gun." |
| Suzie had been following Jack's orders for a while now and she started to reach for her weapon, but then she became very still. "Considering that reality seems pretty fucked right now, I'm not sure that's something I want to do." She didn't seem scared, but she did seem very aware of her surroundings at that moment. "What aren't you telling me?" |
| "I'm not telling you that you blew your own brains out in my timeline and I'd like to avoid a repeat. Give me your gun." |
| Now she was scared. "What?! What are you talking about? What do you mean, timeline?" She started backing away from him. |
| "There are a lot of people here, from different points in the time-line. I'm further along than you." His eyes, and his voice, were perfectly scary. "I'm not trying to scare you, Suzie, but I need that gun. Please." |
| "Well, shit, Jack," her voice was getting a little shrill, "if things are that screwed up, how am I supposed to know that you're really someone I should be handing over my goddamn weapon to?" |
| "Okay," he admitted, calmly. "That's fair. How about we both just set the guns aside and sit down."
Jack was spectacularly bad at people. |
| "Any chance we could do the sitting down part inside somewhere?"
She was not ready to ask him about what he'd said about her blowing her brains out. Really not ready. |
| "If you want," he agreed easily. "Have you found the dining room yet?" |
| "In the hotel? I think I saw it; I just wanted to get outside once I realized I wasn't in the Hub anymore." She thought for a moment, "How long have you been here?" |
| "A few days, as far as I can tell." He didn't try to touch her since he'd freaked her out, but he inclined his head back toward the door. "How do you feel about coffee." |
| "I think I'm wired enough right now to kinetically power the entire Welsh coast, but I suspect once the adrenaline starts to wear off I'm going to want coffee very much." She didn't completely turn her back on him, but she did start walking towards the door.
She opened the door and stood there for a moment, looking down and looking back, before she fairly flew down the stairs. When she got to the bottom she did the same thing, pausing in the doorway, looking out and looking behind her. |
| He followed along, moving more slowly, and keeping his pace light and casual. "The coffee's not bad. Ianto's is better, but I'm pretty sure that's bias on my part." He was just chatting, as he followed her down the steps. His eyes were open, he was paying attention. He just wasn't doing it overtly. In fact, the harder she twitched, the more mellow he got. |
| She was still trying to not think about why he had said he wanted her gun. As such things went, it was about as useful as trying to not think of a purple polar bear. Things weren't great, that was true, but she was dealing with it. After a fashion.
"What kind of points in the timeline?" |
| "Different ones," he offered, because that's really all he had. "I don't know how else to answer that question. Are you asking how much spread there is between people here?" |
| "I guess. I mean, are they all within fifty years, or a couple hundred, or something else entirely? What common threads have you noticed?"
She was a hell of a lot more comfortable in this mode. |
| "They seem to be from within about 150 years, and the only thread I've noticed so far is that they're connected to me. That doesn't mean that everyone is," he hastened to add, "just that I'm running into people who are." |
| They had found their way to the dining room. Suzie stopped walking and looked at Jack, "A spread of 150 years and still all connected to you? God, this would end up being about you. That would be just about perfect." |
| "Wouldn't it?" he asked, excessively mildly. He made his way to the coffee station and got busy pouring coffee. |
| "Jack," she said, putting an incredibly large amount of milk in her coffee, "why are you so sure this is something to do with the Rift?" She took a sip.
"What if, well, you tell me I've died. What if that's why I'm here? What if that's why we're all here?" |
| "I think it has something to do with the Rift because the last I remember, the Rift was open. Of course I was also dying, so you might be onto something."
He took a drink of his coffee and half-grimaced. "You'd think the after-life would have better coffee, though." He sighed and put his cup down to the side. "As for you being dead - it's enough to make me nervous, but time's fluid and flexible and diverges into alternate paths and among multiple universes. Just because my Suzie shot herself doesn't mean you're going to." |
| "Do you think you'd deserve good coffee in the afterlife?"
Despite the joke, Jack's suggestion that perhaps she didn't have fatally amateur brain surgery in her future didn't seem to have made less uncomfortable. "You said everyone you've met so far is connected to you in some way. Does that mean, are there other people from Torchwood? Other people who - wait, hold on. Are there people here from different universes?" |
| "There are others here from Torchwood, there are other people here from different universes," he confirmed. "I'm also going to point out, again, that the people I've met being connected to me isn't quite as impressive as it sounds. People gravitate to the known."
"And I hope hell's coffee's better than this. If it's not, I'm staging a boycott." |
| "A revolt in hell. That sounds right up your alley." |
| "And yours, for that matter. Seriously, are you going to be okay?" |
| "Since when has that been a choice for people like us, Jack?" She gave him a quick smile; she probably wasn't okay, but she probably wasn't going to fall apart either. |
| "I'm okay sometimes," he protested. Sort of, and with a grin in response to her smile. "I'll take good enough?" he offered. |
| "Good enough," she responded, her face relaxing just a bit. |