RP for mrsharker

[quitehomoerotic]

It's early evening and in the half light the Bay has a comfortable quiet. Jack sent the team off to have a little social time. They've all worked so hard lately and they could do with it. He went for a walk, somewhere with a high roof and a vantage point for him to look over the city.

He's back on his way home now, taking a slow stroll down Lloyd George Avenue and back towards Butetown and the Bay. Outside the Millennium centre are couples and people milling around, all preparing for an evening of entertainment. It makes Jack smile as he seems them all, all safe in this city he loves so much.

On his way across the Plass he takes a slight de-tour to one of the poster boards, to take a look at just what these people are waiting to see. The sight before him though is not one he expects, and one he's far from prepared for.

The face is familiar, oh so familiar, and his breath gets caught in his chest, taking him a moment or two to realise he isn't breathing at all.

"It can't be," he whispers, but there's nobody there to listen.

Jack's eyes are swimming and he's glued to the spot. This can't be right, he's sure this can't be right. Just an odd co-incidence. Someone who happens to look similar. It has to be. It can't be her.

But it doesn't hurt to make sure. So instead of back to the Hub, Jack heads into the Millennium center and with the aid of the word 'Torchwood', he goes backstage.

Comments

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

She can practically taste the way he's still rolling the terrible thought around and around his head. Even blind, she can still read him at least.

"It has." If they weren't still automatically at ease with one another, she'd feel this was almost awkward. It's not, but it's hard to know what to say, where to go. She doesn't want to regale him with tales of dead friends and the dead children of dead friends...

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

And it's a thought that won't go away. Try as he might. The seed has been planted, and he wonders just what it would be like.

"I could tell you about me... about who I am. If you want to know. But honestly... it's not all good, and," he laughs, weakly, "there's a lot of it."

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

She knows him well enough to know that the thought is haunting him. Frankly, she'd thought his experiences with Dracula's brides would have left him more wary, but there it is, that utter curiosity that got both of them into a great deal of trouble at times.

"I want to know." She squeezes his hand. "Jack."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack's never really been one to let logic rule him, and the same can be said now. Despite what he knows, it really doesn't matter.

He nods a little and sighs. Wondering where to possibly start.

"I'm not from when you think I am. My name... my name isn't even Jack, that's a name I took, but it's the name I go by, have done for a long time. I'm- I'm from the future, Mina. The fifty first century. I used to be something called a Time Agent, a long time ago in a very different life. I met someone, a friend, I travelled with him, there was a battle and I died. Really died, but someone brought me back, brought be back for good. He left me there and I used this-" he takes her hand and puts it on his wrist strap. "Do you remember this? To get back to Earth. But it broke, and I got stranded in eighteen sixty nine. So I was stuck there. I had to keep going on Earth until I could find him."

It's a stream of consciousness, and difficult for him. He's so secretive at times it's just so unusual to give away so much.

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

"Time travel?" Mina's eyebrows climb for her hair line and her fingers move over the leather strap he'd worn for as long as she'd remembered. "And I always thought he was unique--"

Her thought is interrupted by the waiter, bringing over the bottle of wine and pouring for them, presenting it to Jack for tasting.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack frowns slightly. Out of any reaction he could have imagined, that wasn't one he expected. He's all prepared to question when the waiter arrives, stopping him.

He tests the wine and nods, allowing him to pour. Not that it means a lot to Jack, he's not a big drinker, not any more at least.

He waits, rather impatient, until the waiter leaves.

"What were you saying?"

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

"What was I saying?" Her train of thought was interrupted. "That's quite the history, my love, and I appreciate your honesty very much."

It's funny: she's not sure she'd have reacted quite this calmly had he told her all this when they were married. Now, after years of absence, the shock of him being alive was large enough to mitigate any real shock from any other revelations he might have to offer.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"You said you thought he was unique. Who is 'he'?" Jack's voice is urgent and verging on desperate. He can't quite believe she could have already encountered a time traveller. And who? Who could she possibly have met?

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

"Oh! Oh, that," Mina smiles and strokes her fingers along the back of his hand to calm the intensity she can hear in his voice. "I was thinking of a friend of mine. A gentleman time traveler I've known, oh, even since before we met, darling."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. Right. Okay, and uh, who is he?" Jack realises he's being somewhat curt and short, and he back peddles a little.

"Sorry, I just... can you tell me who he is? A name?"

His heart beats ten to the dozen. Could she have really met someone. Known someone, all those years ago.

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

She sips her wine, "And he's been so many different men over the years, for all the sense that makes. He usually goes by John Smith in polite company, but he prefers to be called Doctor."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

If Mina could see Jack's face she'd see him pale and watch his expression fall from his face. He feels winded, like the moments after he wakes from death. He tries to answer, but his throat is dry, raw.

"What does he look like?" He finds himself asking after a pause. Which regeneration, he wants to know. He needs to know.

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

She can hear that all is not well at her words, that he's turned inside out. Is it possible that he knows her old friend?

"He's worn so many different faces in the time I've known him."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack feels practically sick. He's not sure how to cope with this new information.

He finds himself pushing his chair back and standing. He turns, covers his face with a hand, trying to calm himself.

The Doctor is the undercurrent of Jack's life. The man that changed him, that shaped what he is and who he became. The man that took him and turned his world inside out, and that he spent a hundred years looking for.

He doesn't know what to say.

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

She hears him rise and almost panics. "Jack?" she asks, "what's wrong?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

He spins back to her, his voice not quite raised, but still full of emotion. "The man I told you about? The one I travelled with. The one that left me stranded? The Doctor. The man I waited over a hundred years to find. The Doctor. The man I changed my life for. Mina, it's the Doctor."

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

Oh.

Oh, she thinks, oh, god.

No wonder he'd reacted so poorly. No wonder his voice was so strained. To have been searching for so many years, only to find out that the wife he'd kept his secrets from had been maintaining a long-term friendship with the man he sought.

She catches his hands and draws him to sit back down at the table; she didn't need her sight to know that people would be staring. "Jack," she says softly, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack sits back down with a flop, allowing her to guide him. He still can't believe it, can't process it. "And he must have known, he had to know..." Suddenly his attention is on her again. "Which regeneration. Back then, when I was with you, back when I was there. What did he look like then, which face did he wear, which regeneration?"

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

"The him that I first knew him as was not the him that he first knew me as. When we were married, even before then, when I first knew him, he was tall and scruffy." Mina's half-smile is equal parts concern for her husband and affection for their mutual friend.

"He said he'd known me for a very long time, and ultimately when I met him when he was tall and grey-haired in the 1970's, I knew him but he didn't know me."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

That's the bit that matters to him, how he looked when he was around. Tall and scruffy. Jack feels heat in his throat. "Did he wear a suit? A brown or blue suit and a big coat? When I was around, is that what he was like then?"

If he's right, and he thinks he is. Then this adds a whole new dimension to everything.

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

"Yes," Mina nods. "A thin sort of a suit with stripes and messy hair and freckles." She wishes she could see him, the better to figure out what was going on in his head.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack's hand falls down against the table as he shakes his head. "I'll kill him," he suggests. "He had to know I was there. He had to." He knows too that the Doctor in that guise used to avoid him, back before they met again. It must have been then, he considers. Before the Master, before the year that never was. "Next time I see him I'll kill him!" Of course, he won't, but it makes him feel better to say it. "I'll get Martha to call him," he says, half to himself.

He shakes his head. Can't believe any of this. He half wonders if tonight is perhaps just some alien induced hallucination.

"None of this makes any sense."

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

She's fallen silent, letting him wrestle with his memories, with the complicated emotions that had nothing to do with her. Mina sips her wine and chooses not to intrude into his processing: he'd always needed his own space from time to time, and she'd always trusted that he would come and find her when he was ready to join her and their life all over again.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack sighs to himself, trying to piece it all together in his mind. It doesn't fit together, seems so impossible. It'll take a long time to sink in.

He realises, after a while, that he's stayed silent for far too long. This was supposed to be a reunion, not this. He reaches his hand back out and covers hers again. "I'm sorry," he sighs. "This is just... unexpected. The Doctor... he- he means a lot to me."

"Why did you never mention him?"

[mrsharker.livejournal.com]

She's surprised when he touches her hand out of nowhere, almost jerks it away -- she's been alone too long. After a beat to pull herself out of her own thoughts, she turns her hand palm-up and clasps his.

"Evidently." Her half-smile is deeply rueful -- this was going to be just another if-only between then, she thinks. "I suppose simply because it was not precisely appropriate for women to have male friends without a chaperone, for one."