![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trace_of_scarletFic: Angels In The Architecture
Fandom: Torchwood/Discworld crossover
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2974
Warnings: MAJOR MAJOR TRIGGERS for burial alive. Seriously, guys, I am really not kidding about the triggers. Some spoilers for the Torchwood series 2 finale, none for Discworld.
Notes: This has been three years in the writing. I hope it’s worth it. Beta’d by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
plum177 and innerbrat, both of whom deserve a barrelful of cookies each.
Summary: Jack Harkness has been buried – sometimes alive, sometimes dead – under Cardiff for centuries. Eventually, this was bound to attract attention from someone who TALKS LIKE THIS.
He thinks, lying lonely in the dark, that maybe this is it: maybe this is the end. This time, for all time. He even manages a smile at the thought of it, until finally the pressure crumbles and the world drops. He is left, choking in the swallowing dark.
He opens his eyes, unknowable hours, days, months later, and bites his lip frantically in an effort not to scream into the smothering, shifting damp coffin that surrounds him. The acrid copper tang is sharp in his mouth, reminding him both that he is alive and that he is searingly, achingly thirsty. Water, he thinks: where will I get any of that down here? Though since this is Wales...
When the rain comes (and oh, how it comes: rolling through the earth in a Noah-defying torrent), it is too late: the air in his tiny prison has long since run out, leaving him suffocating and friendless in the dark.
It is a long time before he wakes again.
The next time that he splutters into life, more of Wales’ ever-present rain is seeping inexorable through the ground. He licks the filthy water from his lips, wondering ironically if he can die of Legionnaire’s Disease, but this time knows better than to open his eyes. It doesn’t take him long to die again.
The next time that his life-force flickers like a guttering candle is the second time this century, although of course he can’t know that. It’s a frail few moments, fragile as glass and quickly shattered, and he cannot bring himself to mind when the candle finally gutters out.
YOU SEEM TO BE MAKING RATHER A HABIT OF THIS.
Jack Harkness sat up in greyness to stare at the skeletal figure before him, blue eyes meeting tiny blue supernovas in the sockets of a skull.
“Duly noted,” he managed, each syllable like a stone in his throat. “Do they have drinks, where I’m going next?”
I FEAR YOU MAY BE BEGGING THE QUESTION SOMEWHAT, said Death. HOWEVER... I HAVE ATTEMPTED TO PROVIDE.
It – he? – proffered a wicker picnic basket of the kind generally found in books containing several cheery and intrepid children and animals as written by Enid Blyton. Rather than lashings and lashings of ginger beer, however, Jack found inside a very large flask full of water with a useful cup thoughtfully supplied. Said cup was ignored in favour of simply pouring water straight down his throat and not stopping until it was all gone.
“Thanks,” he said finally, swiping at his lips. “So, tell me: what does happen next?”
YOU TELL ME.
Jack stared. “You are Death, right?”
INDEED. One skeletal hand fussed with the black robe as if embarrassed. AND YOU, FOR THE MOMENT, ARE DEAD. Death paused for rather longer than Jack felt was strictly necessary.
NO-ONE ELSE OF YOUR KIND TREATS THIS STATE AS A KIND OF TEMPORARY EMBUGGERANCE. IT IS RATHER ... DISCOMBOBULATING.
Death paused again, but Jack had apparently discovered the first thing in centuries that had successfully rendered him speechless, and wasn’t being helpful.
NO WRY LAUGHTER? NOT EVEN A SMALL IRONIC CHUCKLE? The skull sounded ... disappointed. SHOULD I PERHAPS COME IN AGAIN?
Jack was by now pretty certain that he’d finally had it. There were all those stories of people who’d been locked up going mad, right? He’d just experienced a slightly more ... interactive version. All he had to do was to lie back and wait to die again, and shortly he’d be discovering if he could regenerate sanity, which was something he had occasionally wondered about but never really wanted to find out for sure.
On the other hand, if talking to a skull counted as conversation – and it did in Hamlet, so he at least had Shakespearean precedent – this was looking to be the most he’d get in several centuries, possibly several millennia if he wasn’t lucky, and on current evidence he probably wouldn’t be. (At least, he thought it was in Hamlet – he’d seen the original performance, but during that scene had been in the middle of a very complicated attempt to flirt with the author without getting him killed, which had sapped his attention somewhat.) Anyway, that being the case, he’d better make the most of it, since being crazy and dead were, right now, infinitely more pleasant – if even more confusing – than being alive.
So... better make conversation, then.
I TRY TO BRING A BIT OF HUMOUR TO THE SITUATION, BUT IT NEVER SEEMS TO WORK FOR ME.
“Look, I’m –” Jack started, and paused. “Wait. You already know who I am, right?”
CORRECT. BUT I UNDERSTAND YOU PREFER TO BE REFERRED TO AS CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS, YES?
“Yeah. So... if I’m still not permanently dead, why am I seeing you? Beyond the obvious reason, I mean.”
WHICH IS THAT YOU ARE INSANE? Death delicately removed a non-existent particle of dust from the scythe’s improbably-gleaming blade. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CONSIDERED A TERRIBLE JUDGE OF THESE THINGS, BUT NO, CAPTAIN HARKNESS, TO THE BEST OF MY UNDERSTANDING YOU ARE NOT CURRENTLY INSANE.
“Well. That’s ... probably good, then,” Jack decided. “So seriously, why are you here? Or why am I here? I’ve never seen you before, I know that.”
I DO NOT ALWAYS TURN UP TO A DEATH IN PERSON. A BODY NEEDS SOME OFF TIME. Pause. IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING.
“Right,” he said, for lack of anything better.
YOU APPEARED TO BE MAKING A HABIT OF DYING FOR LONG PERIODS, BUT NEVER PERMANENTLY. IT WAS ... I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD BEST UNDERSTAND IT AS BEING LIKE A SORT OF ITCH. I FELT I SHOULD INVESTIGATE.
“Ah,” Jack grinned, suddenly. “You mean you were curious.”
...YES. Death fussed with the scythe again. I AM TOLD THAT THIS KILLS THE CAT. I CAN ONLY HOPE OTHERWISE.
“It’s a figure of speech. It means it will get you into trouble.”
I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS WILL BE THE CASE.
“...It’s probably different for you,” he conceded. “Being Death, and all.”
INDEED.
“Look,” Jack said as a thought occurred, hope suddenly naked and unashamed, “Can you make me dead? Permanently, I mean?”
I DO NOT KILL PEOPLE, CAPTAIN HARKNESS. AND YOU ARE ... Death seemed to deliberate on the wording. A PERMANENCY IN TIME. A STAR ADRIFT.
SORRY.
Jack shook his head, jaw clenched. “Can you at least get me out of the ground, then? There’s stuff I really should be doing right now. Well, in the future. Sort of thing.”
I AM NOT PERMITTED TO INTERVENE DIRECTLY. THERE ARE RULES.
“But indirectly?”
I AM NOT PERMITTED TO INTERVENE. SOME RULES EVEN YOU CANNOT BREAK, CAPTAIN HARKNESS. Something about the tone of voice contrived to indicate that the subject was very permanently closed. Jack sighed.
“Well, what next, then?”
Death appeared to ponder this briefly. CARE FOR A GAME OF SNAP?
Jack blinked. “What?”
OR PERHAPS HAPPY FAMILIES? POKER IS TRADITIONAL, I BELIEVE, BUT CRIPPLE MR ONION IS DEFINITELY OUT.
“Er.” Given his history, Jack was not used to being at a loss. It was almost refreshing. “Well, I guess Strip Poker wouldn’t exactly be your style...”
HA, said Death politely. Jack gave it up as a bad job, which was another thing he hadn’t had to do for a while.
“You any good at Scrabble?” he asked.
He had almost successfully convinced Death that ‘sexierest’ was in the dictionary when he woke up.
This time, being alive is much harder: he’d almost forgotten the pressure, the sodden cold and the stink. An intrepid earthworm slimes its way past his ear and he nearly screams, instead clenching his fists frantically and closing on a stone. It hurts, but so does everything else.
He wonders what that was, the vague haze of weirdness lurking in his memory like a bad dream of a dream. It isn’t somewhere he’s used to going when he dies.
Suffocate often enough, and you learn to feel when you haven’t long to go. Unsurprisingly, as far as Jack knows, it’s a trick no other humans have yet mastered. He closes his eyes and takes long, shallow breaths as he waits to die again.
WELL. THIS IS NICE, ISN’T IT?
This time, Death had brought a table, set with drinks and a meal.
“I thought you’d only come to see what was going on?”
YES. WELL. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn Death looked embarrassed.
I THOUGHT YOU COULD DO WITH THE COMPANY.
“I’m not complaining,” Jack assured him hurriedly. “Just ... surprised, is all.”
PEOPLE USUALLY ARE. Death indicated the table. I HOPE CURRY IS ACCEPTABLE.
Jack, about to ask if this was a date, found even his mind rebelling at the thought and settled for just grinning broadly instead. “Curry’s fantastic, thanks.”
And it was: he hadn’t realised before just how hungry he was. He took a seat opposite Death and started to eat. Death did not appear to be eating, but the pile of curry on his plate vanished steadily. Jack decided it was probably rude to ask where the curry was actually going, and that in any case he was almost certainly happier not knowing. Besides, it would have meant stopping eating, and that was not something he felt at all inclined to do just at present.
“So,” Jack said, finally putting down his fork, “Just out of interest, can you tell me when it is for me at present?”
I BELIEVE YOU WOULD CALL IT 1666, said Death. THE YEAR OF THE SPOILED PRAWN.
1666... Jack considered. “Great Fire of London, wasn’t it? I saved that maid in Pudding Lane, and wound up dropping her off at that great little club on Dengxes III. She was fun.” He grinned again. “And very grateful.”
THAT WOULD BE THE ONE, YES. I BELIEVE SHE DIES IN BED IN SEVENTEEN YEARS’ TIME.
He frowned. “Only seventeen? That’s a pity.”
SHE WILL BE ENJOYING HERSELF AT THE TIME, IF THAT’S ANY CONSOLATION.
Jack brightened. “Really? Well, that’s more like it, at least.”
I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT THINK SO.
“Yeah. Hey, you don’t know how long I’ve got until I wake up again, do you?”
Death pulled out what Jack expected to be an hourglass and what actually looked more like a rather battered, wobbly egg-timer from somewhere in the voluminous depths of his robes and peered at it critically.
NINETY-SEVEN YEARS, FOUR MONTHS AND TWELVE DAYS, I BELIEVE. HOW LONG WOULD YOU LIKE IT TO BE?
Instinct suggested that the answer should be ‘as long as you’d like me to be’, but Jack was pretty sure Death wouldn’t understand. Besides, he himself wasn’t sure what Death actually meant.
“Come again?”
YOU ARE IN MY DOMAIN, CAPTAIN HARKNESS. HERE, I DECIDE HOW TIME PASSES.
“Oh, okay.” Common sense dictated that he return to life and get it over with as soon as possible, but common sense was an area that Jack was even less at home in than Death was with bare-faced innuendo. He considered. “’bout an hour?”
VERY WELL. AND IN THE MEANTIME?
He’d swear the skull was looking at him hopefully. Jack took another drink of the water. “What did you have in mind?”
He was within three squares of winning at Snakes And Ladders when his time ran out.
Knowing what was coming and when has made this awakening a little easier, even if it hasn’t made it any more pleasant. Everything hurts, even his face, but the sharp pain of the rock curled tight in his fingers gives him a focus, a beacon. He attempts, this time, to lift his arms, simply to see if he can. The weight is as intense as it always has been, but something in him knows that the force he needs is no more than that he needed to open the shackles he once wore for a year. He takes the longest, slowest, deepest breath he possibly can, and heaves.
Logically, he knows, it shouldn’t be possible for the world to fall in: down here, there isn’t enough space. It happens, nevertheless.
He stood up, and would have kicked the nothingness if there were anything there to kick. He spat the dirt out of his mouth and tried to swear, but his voice wouldn’t obey and he settled instead for thinking the expletives.
I HAVE BROUGHT TEA.
Death was still sitting at the table with their game of Snakes and Ladders laid out before him, but this time there was the addition of what Jack was certain was his blue and white Torchwood mug, filled with just the right amount of steaming tea. He sipped, sipped again, and spat out the disgusting mixture of tea and dirt until his mouth was at least relatively clear.
Death was still watching him.
“Sorry,” Jack said, wiping his mouth with his clenched free hand and knowing that he wasn’t.
IT’S QUITE ALL RIGHT. Death indicated the game in front of him. WOULD YOU LIKE TO FINISH?
Jack tipped up the mug for a longer drink and saw the tea slop gently away from the faint remains of the word ‘TWAT’ that Owen had scrawled there weeks ago with magic marker and which multiple patient scrubbings from Ianto had thus far failed to entirely remove. A great wave of homesickness washed over him, quickly receding to leave only anger. When he’d gone into the ground he’d known that he deserved it, but right here and now he knew that he had a job to do, that Gray would not simply wander off through the stars and that if his brother retained even a single functioning brain cell he’d –
He’ll go for them, Jack realised with a sudden blinding clarity. Because they’re mine.
Death was still sitting there watching him with an uncomfortably steady blue supernova gaze.
OPEN YOUR HAND, CAPTAIN HARKNESS.
Jack looked at Death, and then down at his clenched left hand, and then up at Death again.
“I want to go home,” he said at last, feeling impossibly weary. “I just – I can’t take much more of this.”
I KNOW. One long moment, and the skull nodded. YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO. NOW, CAPTAIN HARKNESS... OPEN YOUR HAND.
His fingers did not want to open but something in the cadence of Death’s voice demanded it, leaving him staring at what wasn’t a rock at all.
“...I’d swear I didn’t bring that with me last time,” he said, looking numbly at the filthy, flashing device lying smugly in his palm.
STRICTLY SPEAKING, YOU STILL HAVE NOT BROUGHT IT. IN ALL TECHNICAL SENSES, YOU ARE NOT HERE. Death shook his head sadly. IT REALLY IS VERY DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN IN YOUR TERMS.
Jack slumped at the table. “What year is it?”
THE YEAR OF THE BRUISED LICE, Death said. THAT IS, 1888.
He produced the wobbling egg-timer once again, scrutinising it carefully. AH. YES, I THOUGHT AS MUCH.
This odd pronouncement – even by Death’s standards – made Jack raise his head slightly. “What?”
Stonily, NOTHING.
Jack eyed him. “No, go on.”
IT IS NONE OF YOUR CONCERN. Death paused, then went on in a tone which – if it weren’t so ominous by default – could almost have been described as ‘bright’. SCRABBLE?
Jack sighed. “If I must...”
Oddly enough, playing a pointless board game was strangely calming, if vaguely soul-destroying. Jack attempted to cheat by using as many non-Earth dialects as possible, only to be foiled when Death insisted on retaliating by using languages Jack had never even heard of. The one called Überwaldean was probably the worst: a single word could use up the game’s entire supply of Ws. Jack was sure it was meant to be physically impossible for a skull to look smug, but at this point Death definitely managed it. The game, being essentially mindless as it was, left Jack’s brain with time to run around in circles like a trapped hamster until it calmed down, although the fact that Death had left the egg-timer on the table beside him – and occasionally peered at it critically – was somewhat off-putting.
Jack knew he was just about to win with ‘orgasm’ on a triple-letter score when the egg-timer paused dramatically, wriggled and slowly turned over with a faint, slightly apologetic tinkling sound.
TIME’S UP, CAPTAIN HARKNESS.
He sighed and put down his tiles. “Well, at least I won this time... ‘Nother game when I’m back?”
ONCE AGAIN, YOU APPEAR TO BE BEGGING THE QUESTION.
“...I don’t understand.”
I AM ASSURED THAT YOU WILL NOT BE BACK. FOR THE TIME BEING.
Death coughed, which was an experience in and of itself: Torchwood could only dream of breaking that many laws of physics. I HAVE NOT INTERVENED, YOU UNDERSTAND.
Jack began to grin. “Of course you haven’t. Well, in that case... Thank you. For the game, I mean.”
OF COURSE. IT HAS BEEN ... AN EXPERIENCE, CAPTAIN HARKNESS.
“No kidding,” Jack said, still grinning. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”
I GUARANTEE IT.
Pause.
WELL, GOODBYE THEN.
Jack stood and saluted smartly. “Be seeing you, good-looking.”
It was almost worth several thousand years of being buried underground, just to see the look on Death’s face.
~*~
Once again he is alone in the dark, but this time the world rumbles overhead. He knows that he is cold and that everything hurts, but this time he is content to lie back and take careful slow breaths as he waits. His hand closes again over the signaller, reminding him of Death, and the other angels in the architecture of the world, and the ways in which they can not intervene in the lives of mortals and even non-mortals.
He breathes, and thinks, and breathes again, and when the light hits his face and they finally, finally bring him out of the coffin in which he has lain for millennia, he is still smiling.
Fandom: Torchwood/Discworld crossover
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2974
Warnings: MAJOR MAJOR TRIGGERS for burial alive. Seriously, guys, I am really not kidding about the triggers. Some spoilers for the Torchwood series 2 finale, none for Discworld.
Notes: This has been three years in the writing. I hope it’s worth it. Beta’d by
plum177 and innerbrat, both of whom deserve a barrelful of cookies each.Summary: Jack Harkness has been buried – sometimes alive, sometimes dead – under Cardiff for centuries. Eventually, this was bound to attract attention from someone who TALKS LIKE THIS.
He thinks, lying lonely in the dark, that maybe this is it: maybe this is the end. This time, for all time. He even manages a smile at the thought of it, until finally the pressure crumbles and the world drops. He is left, choking in the swallowing dark.
He opens his eyes, unknowable hours, days, months later, and bites his lip frantically in an effort not to scream into the smothering, shifting damp coffin that surrounds him. The acrid copper tang is sharp in his mouth, reminding him both that he is alive and that he is searingly, achingly thirsty. Water, he thinks: where will I get any of that down here? Though since this is Wales...
When the rain comes (and oh, how it comes: rolling through the earth in a Noah-defying torrent), it is too late: the air in his tiny prison has long since run out, leaving him suffocating and friendless in the dark.
It is a long time before he wakes again.
The next time that he splutters into life, more of Wales’ ever-present rain is seeping inexorable through the ground. He licks the filthy water from his lips, wondering ironically if he can die of Legionnaire’s Disease, but this time knows better than to open his eyes. It doesn’t take him long to die again.
The next time that his life-force flickers like a guttering candle is the second time this century, although of course he can’t know that. It’s a frail few moments, fragile as glass and quickly shattered, and he cannot bring himself to mind when the candle finally gutters out.
YOU SEEM TO BE MAKING RATHER A HABIT OF THIS.
Jack Harkness sat up in greyness to stare at the skeletal figure before him, blue eyes meeting tiny blue supernovas in the sockets of a skull.
“Duly noted,” he managed, each syllable like a stone in his throat. “Do they have drinks, where I’m going next?”
I FEAR YOU MAY BE BEGGING THE QUESTION SOMEWHAT, said Death. HOWEVER... I HAVE ATTEMPTED TO PROVIDE.
It – he? – proffered a wicker picnic basket of the kind generally found in books containing several cheery and intrepid children and animals as written by Enid Blyton. Rather than lashings and lashings of ginger beer, however, Jack found inside a very large flask full of water with a useful cup thoughtfully supplied. Said cup was ignored in favour of simply pouring water straight down his throat and not stopping until it was all gone.
“Thanks,” he said finally, swiping at his lips. “So, tell me: what does happen next?”
YOU TELL ME.
Jack stared. “You are Death, right?”
INDEED. One skeletal hand fussed with the black robe as if embarrassed. AND YOU, FOR THE MOMENT, ARE DEAD. Death paused for rather longer than Jack felt was strictly necessary.
NO-ONE ELSE OF YOUR KIND TREATS THIS STATE AS A KIND OF TEMPORARY EMBUGGERANCE. IT IS RATHER ... DISCOMBOBULATING.
Death paused again, but Jack had apparently discovered the first thing in centuries that had successfully rendered him speechless, and wasn’t being helpful.
NO WRY LAUGHTER? NOT EVEN A SMALL IRONIC CHUCKLE? The skull sounded ... disappointed. SHOULD I PERHAPS COME IN AGAIN?
Jack was by now pretty certain that he’d finally had it. There were all those stories of people who’d been locked up going mad, right? He’d just experienced a slightly more ... interactive version. All he had to do was to lie back and wait to die again, and shortly he’d be discovering if he could regenerate sanity, which was something he had occasionally wondered about but never really wanted to find out for sure.
On the other hand, if talking to a skull counted as conversation – and it did in Hamlet, so he at least had Shakespearean precedent – this was looking to be the most he’d get in several centuries, possibly several millennia if he wasn’t lucky, and on current evidence he probably wouldn’t be. (At least, he thought it was in Hamlet – he’d seen the original performance, but during that scene had been in the middle of a very complicated attempt to flirt with the author without getting him killed, which had sapped his attention somewhat.) Anyway, that being the case, he’d better make the most of it, since being crazy and dead were, right now, infinitely more pleasant – if even more confusing – than being alive.
So... better make conversation, then.
I TRY TO BRING A BIT OF HUMOUR TO THE SITUATION, BUT IT NEVER SEEMS TO WORK FOR ME.
“Look, I’m –” Jack started, and paused. “Wait. You already know who I am, right?”
CORRECT. BUT I UNDERSTAND YOU PREFER TO BE REFERRED TO AS CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS, YES?
“Yeah. So... if I’m still not permanently dead, why am I seeing you? Beyond the obvious reason, I mean.”
WHICH IS THAT YOU ARE INSANE? Death delicately removed a non-existent particle of dust from the scythe’s improbably-gleaming blade. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CONSIDERED A TERRIBLE JUDGE OF THESE THINGS, BUT NO, CAPTAIN HARKNESS, TO THE BEST OF MY UNDERSTANDING YOU ARE NOT CURRENTLY INSANE.
“Well. That’s ... probably good, then,” Jack decided. “So seriously, why are you here? Or why am I here? I’ve never seen you before, I know that.”
I DO NOT ALWAYS TURN UP TO A DEATH IN PERSON. A BODY NEEDS SOME OFF TIME. Pause. IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING.
“Right,” he said, for lack of anything better.
YOU APPEARED TO BE MAKING A HABIT OF DYING FOR LONG PERIODS, BUT NEVER PERMANENTLY. IT WAS ... I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD BEST UNDERSTAND IT AS BEING LIKE A SORT OF ITCH. I FELT I SHOULD INVESTIGATE.
“Ah,” Jack grinned, suddenly. “You mean you were curious.”
...YES. Death fussed with the scythe again. I AM TOLD THAT THIS KILLS THE CAT. I CAN ONLY HOPE OTHERWISE.
“It’s a figure of speech. It means it will get you into trouble.”
I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS WILL BE THE CASE.
“...It’s probably different for you,” he conceded. “Being Death, and all.”
INDEED.
“Look,” Jack said as a thought occurred, hope suddenly naked and unashamed, “Can you make me dead? Permanently, I mean?”
I DO NOT KILL PEOPLE, CAPTAIN HARKNESS. AND YOU ARE ... Death seemed to deliberate on the wording. A PERMANENCY IN TIME. A STAR ADRIFT.
SORRY.
Jack shook his head, jaw clenched. “Can you at least get me out of the ground, then? There’s stuff I really should be doing right now. Well, in the future. Sort of thing.”
I AM NOT PERMITTED TO INTERVENE DIRECTLY. THERE ARE RULES.
“But indirectly?”
I AM NOT PERMITTED TO INTERVENE. SOME RULES EVEN YOU CANNOT BREAK, CAPTAIN HARKNESS. Something about the tone of voice contrived to indicate that the subject was very permanently closed. Jack sighed.
“Well, what next, then?”
Death appeared to ponder this briefly. CARE FOR A GAME OF SNAP?
Jack blinked. “What?”
OR PERHAPS HAPPY FAMILIES? POKER IS TRADITIONAL, I BELIEVE, BUT CRIPPLE MR ONION IS DEFINITELY OUT.
“Er.” Given his history, Jack was not used to being at a loss. It was almost refreshing. “Well, I guess Strip Poker wouldn’t exactly be your style...”
HA, said Death politely. Jack gave it up as a bad job, which was another thing he hadn’t had to do for a while.
“You any good at Scrabble?” he asked.
He had almost successfully convinced Death that ‘sexierest’ was in the dictionary when he woke up.
This time, being alive is much harder: he’d almost forgotten the pressure, the sodden cold and the stink. An intrepid earthworm slimes its way past his ear and he nearly screams, instead clenching his fists frantically and closing on a stone. It hurts, but so does everything else.
He wonders what that was, the vague haze of weirdness lurking in his memory like a bad dream of a dream. It isn’t somewhere he’s used to going when he dies.
Suffocate often enough, and you learn to feel when you haven’t long to go. Unsurprisingly, as far as Jack knows, it’s a trick no other humans have yet mastered. He closes his eyes and takes long, shallow breaths as he waits to die again.
WELL. THIS IS NICE, ISN’T IT?
This time, Death had brought a table, set with drinks and a meal.
“I thought you’d only come to see what was going on?”
YES. WELL. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn Death looked embarrassed.
I THOUGHT YOU COULD DO WITH THE COMPANY.
“I’m not complaining,” Jack assured him hurriedly. “Just ... surprised, is all.”
PEOPLE USUALLY ARE. Death indicated the table. I HOPE CURRY IS ACCEPTABLE.
Jack, about to ask if this was a date, found even his mind rebelling at the thought and settled for just grinning broadly instead. “Curry’s fantastic, thanks.”
And it was: he hadn’t realised before just how hungry he was. He took a seat opposite Death and started to eat. Death did not appear to be eating, but the pile of curry on his plate vanished steadily. Jack decided it was probably rude to ask where the curry was actually going, and that in any case he was almost certainly happier not knowing. Besides, it would have meant stopping eating, and that was not something he felt at all inclined to do just at present.
“So,” Jack said, finally putting down his fork, “Just out of interest, can you tell me when it is for me at present?”
I BELIEVE YOU WOULD CALL IT 1666, said Death. THE YEAR OF THE SPOILED PRAWN.
1666... Jack considered. “Great Fire of London, wasn’t it? I saved that maid in Pudding Lane, and wound up dropping her off at that great little club on Dengxes III. She was fun.” He grinned again. “And very grateful.”
THAT WOULD BE THE ONE, YES. I BELIEVE SHE DIES IN BED IN SEVENTEEN YEARS’ TIME.
He frowned. “Only seventeen? That’s a pity.”
SHE WILL BE ENJOYING HERSELF AT THE TIME, IF THAT’S ANY CONSOLATION.
Jack brightened. “Really? Well, that’s more like it, at least.”
I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT THINK SO.
“Yeah. Hey, you don’t know how long I’ve got until I wake up again, do you?”
Death pulled out what Jack expected to be an hourglass and what actually looked more like a rather battered, wobbly egg-timer from somewhere in the voluminous depths of his robes and peered at it critically.
NINETY-SEVEN YEARS, FOUR MONTHS AND TWELVE DAYS, I BELIEVE. HOW LONG WOULD YOU LIKE IT TO BE?
Instinct suggested that the answer should be ‘as long as you’d like me to be’, but Jack was pretty sure Death wouldn’t understand. Besides, he himself wasn’t sure what Death actually meant.
“Come again?”
YOU ARE IN MY DOMAIN, CAPTAIN HARKNESS. HERE, I DECIDE HOW TIME PASSES.
“Oh, okay.” Common sense dictated that he return to life and get it over with as soon as possible, but common sense was an area that Jack was even less at home in than Death was with bare-faced innuendo. He considered. “’bout an hour?”
VERY WELL. AND IN THE MEANTIME?
He’d swear the skull was looking at him hopefully. Jack took another drink of the water. “What did you have in mind?”
He was within three squares of winning at Snakes And Ladders when his time ran out.
Knowing what was coming and when has made this awakening a little easier, even if it hasn’t made it any more pleasant. Everything hurts, even his face, but the sharp pain of the rock curled tight in his fingers gives him a focus, a beacon. He attempts, this time, to lift his arms, simply to see if he can. The weight is as intense as it always has been, but something in him knows that the force he needs is no more than that he needed to open the shackles he once wore for a year. He takes the longest, slowest, deepest breath he possibly can, and heaves.
Logically, he knows, it shouldn’t be possible for the world to fall in: down here, there isn’t enough space. It happens, nevertheless.
He stood up, and would have kicked the nothingness if there were anything there to kick. He spat the dirt out of his mouth and tried to swear, but his voice wouldn’t obey and he settled instead for thinking the expletives.
I HAVE BROUGHT TEA.
Death was still sitting at the table with their game of Snakes and Ladders laid out before him, but this time there was the addition of what Jack was certain was his blue and white Torchwood mug, filled with just the right amount of steaming tea. He sipped, sipped again, and spat out the disgusting mixture of tea and dirt until his mouth was at least relatively clear.
Death was still watching him.
“Sorry,” Jack said, wiping his mouth with his clenched free hand and knowing that he wasn’t.
IT’S QUITE ALL RIGHT. Death indicated the game in front of him. WOULD YOU LIKE TO FINISH?
Jack tipped up the mug for a longer drink and saw the tea slop gently away from the faint remains of the word ‘TWAT’ that Owen had scrawled there weeks ago with magic marker and which multiple patient scrubbings from Ianto had thus far failed to entirely remove. A great wave of homesickness washed over him, quickly receding to leave only anger. When he’d gone into the ground he’d known that he deserved it, but right here and now he knew that he had a job to do, that Gray would not simply wander off through the stars and that if his brother retained even a single functioning brain cell he’d –
He’ll go for them, Jack realised with a sudden blinding clarity. Because they’re mine.
Death was still sitting there watching him with an uncomfortably steady blue supernova gaze.
OPEN YOUR HAND, CAPTAIN HARKNESS.
Jack looked at Death, and then down at his clenched left hand, and then up at Death again.
“I want to go home,” he said at last, feeling impossibly weary. “I just – I can’t take much more of this.”
I KNOW. One long moment, and the skull nodded. YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO. NOW, CAPTAIN HARKNESS... OPEN YOUR HAND.
His fingers did not want to open but something in the cadence of Death’s voice demanded it, leaving him staring at what wasn’t a rock at all.
“...I’d swear I didn’t bring that with me last time,” he said, looking numbly at the filthy, flashing device lying smugly in his palm.
STRICTLY SPEAKING, YOU STILL HAVE NOT BROUGHT IT. IN ALL TECHNICAL SENSES, YOU ARE NOT HERE. Death shook his head sadly. IT REALLY IS VERY DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN IN YOUR TERMS.
Jack slumped at the table. “What year is it?”
THE YEAR OF THE BRUISED LICE, Death said. THAT IS, 1888.
He produced the wobbling egg-timer once again, scrutinising it carefully. AH. YES, I THOUGHT AS MUCH.
This odd pronouncement – even by Death’s standards – made Jack raise his head slightly. “What?”
Stonily, NOTHING.
Jack eyed him. “No, go on.”
IT IS NONE OF YOUR CONCERN. Death paused, then went on in a tone which – if it weren’t so ominous by default – could almost have been described as ‘bright’. SCRABBLE?
Jack sighed. “If I must...”
Oddly enough, playing a pointless board game was strangely calming, if vaguely soul-destroying. Jack attempted to cheat by using as many non-Earth dialects as possible, only to be foiled when Death insisted on retaliating by using languages Jack had never even heard of. The one called Überwaldean was probably the worst: a single word could use up the game’s entire supply of Ws. Jack was sure it was meant to be physically impossible for a skull to look smug, but at this point Death definitely managed it. The game, being essentially mindless as it was, left Jack’s brain with time to run around in circles like a trapped hamster until it calmed down, although the fact that Death had left the egg-timer on the table beside him – and occasionally peered at it critically – was somewhat off-putting.
Jack knew he was just about to win with ‘orgasm’ on a triple-letter score when the egg-timer paused dramatically, wriggled and slowly turned over with a faint, slightly apologetic tinkling sound.
TIME’S UP, CAPTAIN HARKNESS.
He sighed and put down his tiles. “Well, at least I won this time... ‘Nother game when I’m back?”
ONCE AGAIN, YOU APPEAR TO BE BEGGING THE QUESTION.
“...I don’t understand.”
I AM ASSURED THAT YOU WILL NOT BE BACK. FOR THE TIME BEING.
Death coughed, which was an experience in and of itself: Torchwood could only dream of breaking that many laws of physics. I HAVE NOT INTERVENED, YOU UNDERSTAND.
Jack began to grin. “Of course you haven’t. Well, in that case... Thank you. For the game, I mean.”
OF COURSE. IT HAS BEEN ... AN EXPERIENCE, CAPTAIN HARKNESS.
“No kidding,” Jack said, still grinning. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”
I GUARANTEE IT.
Pause.
WELL, GOODBYE THEN.
Jack stood and saluted smartly. “Be seeing you, good-looking.”
It was almost worth several thousand years of being buried underground, just to see the look on Death’s face.
Once again he is alone in the dark, but this time the world rumbles overhead. He knows that he is cold and that everything hurts, but this time he is content to lie back and take careful slow breaths as he waits. His hand closes again over the signaller, reminding him of Death, and the other angels in the architecture of the world, and the ways in which they can not intervene in the lives of mortals and even non-mortals.
He breathes, and thinks, and breathes again, and when the light hits his face and they finally, finally bring him out of the coffin in which he has lain for millennia, he is still smiling.
