| Date: 13 January 2008
Characters: Jack Harkness, Kurt Harding Location: hotel, outside Link to IJ: thread #35830 |
 He was walking away from the dining room and out of the hotel. He had a cup of tea in one hand and was humming softly under his breath. When he spotted someone headed the same direction as him he pulled the door open for them, and held it. It got him out of the way, and kept the door between him and them. He did not, however, turn instantly into an asshole. "Nice night." |
 "Isn't it?"Kurt grinned, warm and a little bit cheeky. "Hi there. You're working as a doorman here?" He was joking. |
| "Not if it means you're going to give me a tip," he said, and inclined his head. "Get out, I'll follow you." |
| "Doubt I'd have any money that'd be any good to you anyway," Kurt chuckled, swinging easily through the doorway and pausing at the other side to wait for Jack, automatically scanning the surrounding area while he waited. |
| "I was a lot less concerned with currency than unsolicited advice." He followed Kurt out, and let it swing shut behind him. |
| "Advice?" he said, tensing up just a little. |
| "It was a pun on tip," he said, eyebrow up. |
| He relaxed again, but not all the way. "Right." Because he'd thought for a moment that maybe Brant had been talking about him and warning Jack that Kurt was on the warpath. (And there were far too many names for the same man in that thought.) He took another look at his other self. The clothes suggested early 20th century, though that wasn't much to go on since he'd barely changed his basic outfit for centuries. No real way of telling if that was Brant's Jack just by looking. "You wanna sit down with that tea?" he suggested, jerking his head towards a nearby bench. |
| "Lead the way," he drawled. He was being cautious, but that was just the way he was. He had no idea where this guy was from, or when. Alternate timelines being involved complicated the issue even more. As long as he stayed out of reach and the guy was in sight, though, he'd avoid full fledged paranoia. |
| Kurt grinned, and led. No point arguing, and he basically trusted himself. Especially a him from his past. He flopped onto the bench, leaning back into the corner and stretching an arm out along the back. "So..." he drawled. "I don't need to ask your name, so the obvious question would be, when are you from?" |
| Well, what was Jack going to do, anyway? Shoot him? He settled on his edge of the bench, pivoted inward so he was at least half-facing Kurt. "Before you," he answered, and drank his tea. |
| "You know, I got that, strangely enough." Kurt grinned. "Just, that doesn't narrow it down a hell of a lot. Still calling yourself Jack, right?" |
| "Sure doesn't," he agreed, and returned a Kurt's grin. He was better rested. Apparently being in a better mood made him difficult in an entirely different way. |
| "All right then," Kurt pondered, not exactly bothered because it wasn't like he desperately needed to know. He raised his eyebrows, eyes twinkling at his other self. "What shall we talk about? The weather? Because there doesn't really seem to be much of that around here." |
| "There doesn't," he agreed. "That's the problem with talking to yourself. You know everything I do, and you can't technically tell me anything I don't already know." This conversation was going to make his head hurt. "What are you calling yourself now?" That at least would make talking easier. |
| "Kurt Harding. And no jokes, please." He inclined his head to one side. "Why can't I tell you anything you don't already know? Or are you just worried about mucking up timelines?" |
| He looked confused. "What jokes? About your name? What's funny?" He really didn't get it. Shrugged anyway, and moved on. "Mucking up timelines and because I'm just plain not sure I want to know." |
| Kurt chuckled. Well, really he shouldn't have expected another version of himself to make a joke he hadn't got either. "Don't worry, it was just that the Doctor had himself a little laugh at my expense and I really didn't want to have to go through all that again!" He looked at Jack straightly, blue eyes serious. "Wasn't planning on telling you details of your own future. Just thought maybe I could give you reassurance, you know?" He was talking about finding the Doctor again. |
| "What doesn't the Doctor make inappropriate jokes about?" he snarked and, yeah, his tone was light but he wasn't really amused. He lifted both his eyebrows at Kurt, over the rim of his cup. "About what?" |
| Kurt shrugged. "Anything. One thing in particular springs to mind, but you said you didn't want to know so I'm not mentioning specifics till you ask me to." |
| "How about you go with that thing springing to mind." He looked suspicious and his voice had taken on a rougher, harder, edge. |
| Kurt frowned a little. "Sure you want to know?" |
| "Spit it out," he growled. |
| He studied Jack carefully, aware of something more than his usual paranoia going on here, but with no way of pinpointing the cause. Then he relaxed deliberately and said calmly, "You're gonna find him again. The Doctor. And he'll get over the problems that made him leave you behind in the first place. Eventually. He'll always be a bit of an asshole, but you'll work it out. Does that help any?" |
| "It beats the hell out of hearing I waited in Cardiff for the jerk to show up for the rest of eternity, for damned sure." |
| Kurt grinned. "Yeah. Really wouldn't have minded someone telling me that at your point - whenever your point is. Mind you..." He ran his eyes over Jack's outfit again. With that and the attitude, Kurt was fairly sure he was from earlier in the 20th century rather than later. "You may have a bit of a wait still ahead of you," he finished apologetically. |
| "I got that idea," he drawled. Somehow still sounding really rough, and really blunt. "I met myself once already." |
| "Ah. Which one? I gather there are a few of us around here!" |
| "Given that you're the second one I've met, that sounds like a good guess. I don't know which one. Older than me, younger than you." |
| "Ah. Could be the one Susan met." And Brant. Unless that was this one. He leaned his elbow on the back of the bench and rested his head on his hand. "You run into a kid named Brant at all?" |
| "Her name didn't come up." Not that that meant anything. He finished his tea, put the empty cup between them and lifted his eyebrows. "Nope." |
| "Hell, there's probably about a dozen of us. We should have a party! Anyone named Jack Harkness. Or, you know, anyone who has been or will be Jack Harkness. Just think, all that pretty in one room!" He didn't pursue the Brant thing. He had a really strong feeling this wasn't the right Jack. |
| He lifted both his eyebrows. "That sounds like a recipe for a shoot out or an orgy. Hard to tell which." |
| Kurt burst out laughing. "Both at once?" he suggested. "Not like being shot would stop any of us, is it?" He sobered suddenly. "Well. Except those from Before." |
| "Yeah, and that might stop us all." |
| "Yeah. Fuck. You get so used to it. It's easy to forget there used to be a time you could die and not come back." |
| "Not there yet," he said, precisely. Because like hell he was going to let himself die. Of course he had complicating circumstances. |
| "Well, no. It took... a while." About a century. A century of living and dying and living again, until everyone he'd known had grown old and died. That was about when it really began to sink in. |
| Yeah, he was about 20 years off that mark, too. "Yeah, well, apparently I've got all the time I could ever need." |
| "Yeah." Kurt remembered the early 20th century. It hadn't been much fun, alone and immortal and nobody, but nobody, to talk to about it. He reached out and put a gentle hand on Jack's coat sleeve. "You okay?" |
| He couldn't lean back without falling off the bench, and he wasn't the flinching sort. He did tense up, though, shift the arm not on the bench or being touched around himself and generally had his posture turn defensive. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks for asking." he quirked a faint grin. |
| Kurt backed off at once, leaning back and returning his arm to the back of the bench. He chewed at his lower lip, considering Jack's defensiveness which was over the top even for what he remembered. "Really?" he asked softly. Hell if he was going to back off verbally as well. He wanted to know what was wrong. |
| He sighed and rolled his eyes. "I'm starting to feel like this place is some sort of psychoanalysts wet dream," he bitched. Bitchily. "I can't die, I'm stuck in the 1900s, I've got no clue what the fuck's going on, or why, I get knocked up at stone-fucking-henge, and then I end up in some sort of time-bubble with more versions of myself than even Ianto Jones' wildest, wettest, dream, and I could really use a drink and an atom bomb." |
| It took Kurt a moment to work through all of that information, but once he had, a lot of things suddenly made a lot of sense. And he froze. Then he said casually, avoidantly, "You've met Ianto? Here? It'd be nice to see him again." |
| "Yeah, I did," he agreed. "Nice guy. Not bad looking. Way, way, too maternal." |
| "Comes in useful, though. He's amazingly efficient at cleaning shit up. And looking after people when they need it." He grinned wickedly. "Not to mention pretty damn incredible in bed." |
| "I got the looking after thing, and I'll take your word about how good he is in bed. Look him up, though. Have a good time." |
| "I will." He frowned. "Sorry, I have to ask. Why an atom bomb?" |
| "Because we're in a bubble in time, with time passing differently inside that bubble and not at all otuside it. I wanna know what would happen." He paused. "And because I'm one cranky son of a bitch right now, and explosions sound fun." |
| Kurt laughed. There'd had a lot of times when he'd felt like that. "Interesting idea," he agreed. "Because even if we all died here, would it actually make any difference to the real world? If we get returned to the exact moment we left, then are we really here at all?" |
| "That's one consideration," he agreed. "I was thinking more of 'would it go off with the altered time flow in this place." |
| "This place has an altered time flow?" |
| "So says the Doctor. Passing, but slower, or something. I don't know." |
| "Really? That's... I hadn't thought about it, to be honest." Kurt frowned. He hadn't wanted to talk about it but he couldn't not ask. "Will that - did he say - will the baby be all right?" |
| He lifted both his eyebrows, startled by the question for some indefinable reason. Well, not indefiniable. Kurt had skirted the issue, and Jack had expected him to carry on. "So says the lunatic with a screwdriver." He didn't actually sound bitter when he said that. He was almost amused, even. |
| Kurt smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Probably a blessing in disguise, you being here at this time. If you can stay here till you deliver... How long?" |
| "Longer here than out there." He didn't roll his eyes. "Which answer would you prefer?" |
| Kurt winced. "Here." |
| "About three months." |
| "Fuck. Don't know anyone who's been here that long." |
| "Why would I want to stay here?" he asked, looking bewildered. |
| "Because it's safer." |
| "By what definition?" |
| Kurt swallowed. "For the baby." |
| "It'll be safer for the thing if there's someone around to pull it out of my corpse, yeah. Otherwise, I don' see much difference, except in how long it's IN me." |
| "There's a big difference." Kurt rubbed his face and then rested his chin in his hand again, studying Jack for a long moment. Then he leaned forward slightly, jaw tight. "Jack, I don't know how to tell you this, but... I lost the baby. If you stay here, there's a chance you might not." |
| He looked straight up at the sky, expression fairly well blank. "I'm pretty sure no matter which way I go there's a lot of might involved, but I appreciate the concern." He really did. He was just getting two sets of answers, possibly three, and was just about ready to lock himself in his room, with his gun, and shoot anyone who got within 50 feet from him. |
| "Yeah," Kurt said heavily, watching the tension return full-force. "I just - this is the first thing I've seen here that really could be changed by you staying here. Changed for the better. Though - " he inclined his head - "I don't know if anyone remembers this place once they leave so if you went back not pregnant any more, to the moment you left, and didn't remember what had happened, well, that could be a little disconcerting." He rubbed his face again. "Sorry. Not helping much, am I?" |
| "Changed and stay changed, yeah. I get that and it's reassuring to know you consider it better." If only because he had one fewer person to worry about trying to screw him over, at least in this respect. "Unfortunately, there's at least one divergence in the timeline already and that complicates the shit out of everything. Fortunately it's not something I have to make a decision about; I can't control what happens here, anyway." |
| "Right. You don't know which of us you are, if any. Yeah. Complicated, and not really controllable." He sighed. "Is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?" |
| "That'd be the problem," he agreed. "I'm pretty much fine for the moment, but if you see me - the other one - or Ianto around you can tell them thanks for me. And if you're going in, you can take my cup back for me." |
| Kurt grinned. "I will. I want to talk to both of them. Hell, there's a lot of people here I haven't seen for a very long time." Who he'd watched die, to be exact, but he wasn't going into that. He got up and bent down for Jack's cup. "I'll give you some space, then," he smiled, understanding. "But seriously, you need anything - someone to talk to, someone to watch your back, whatever, give me a holler." |
| "If you see anyone coming up on my back, shoot them," He said seriously. He thought about getting up, but then didn't. He did grin. "I'll see you around, and take care of yourself, too." |
| "Yeah." Kurt winked, saluted, and headed off back into the hotel. |