for ambitious_woman Back to Earth, 1750

[quitehomoerotic]

There's something about Earth.

Out of all the places out there, all the little planets in the sky, Earth just has something special. He wanted to go back, and he hated that he wanted to go back. He'd ran away from there for a reason; he couldn't cope with it any more. It wasn't like he was even born there, sure he spent over a hundred years there, kicking his heels, saving the place on countless occasions, but it shouldn't matter so much to him! But there he was, sitting on some dirty transporter, wondering about getting back.

He couldn't go back though. He couldn't go back to there and then and the people he left and the people that left him. He'd ran so far across that planet to get away from the things that hurt, but it was just too small. Impossibly small and those troubles were right behind him, peering down from him from above. Guilt weighing down on him that he just couldn't escape.

So he stayed away. He stayed away and kept quiet. Frequented corners of dingy bars and found solace in the bottom of a bottle.

But it wasn't what he wanted, and pretend as he might that he was okay with wallowing, he wasn't. He wanted to be doing something, anything, and that damn feeling that Earth was where he should be just wouldn't quite go away.

That's when he realised; he had only one option. Go back. But not now.

It's also when he realised that he had to fix what had been broken for over a hundred years. He had to get himself back in the game.

Out in space and with the resources on the various ships he'd found himself travelling on, it was surprisingly easy to happen upon the little components and tools he might need. He'd never found them on Earth, but then he never did have that sort of luck. It took a while, but he got there, bit by bit amassing what he needed until finally he could sit down and with care take apart his vortex manipulator and put it back together again with new and renewed working technology.

He could go anywhere.

But where? Earth, of course. But not a place he'd been, not a time he'd been. Somewhere new, but somewhere that would be enough to comfort him in knowing he was 'home'. So he didn't make a decision as such, he just put in some parameters to avoid (Cardiff being the biggest), and he pressed the button and hoped for the best.

When he arrived, without even needing to check he knew he was on Earth. It had that smell, that slight mix of something in the air that always seemed to be there, no matter where or when you were. Good, he thought, good. This was good. He didn't check when or where he was, that could come later. For now he'd explore (and he'd forgotten how nice that could be).

So that's what led him to walking around a vast (and likely very private) garden, lined with intricate designs of flowers and plants. French, he suspected. That was okay, he hadn't been to France in a long time.

Maybe he'd enjoy this.

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[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"Know them? How could I not know them. They have shadowed my steps since I was a child and they shadow them still."

Her gaze tilted slightly, but no. The tick of clockwork brought no one else with them. She refused to be disappointed. So many years had passed now, and she had grown accustomed to facing them down on her own.

Which meant she refused to stand idly be behind Jack. She stepped around so that she met level with his shoulder. Her gaze flickered to his gun. It stood as full proof of his strangeness.

"Behind that mask is a man of clockwork. And it ceased to haunt my sleep long ago."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

A man of clockwork?

His eyes moved to her face for just a moment, his own etched with confusion. But it couldn't be. This was the 18th Century, not the 51st! He listened to the ticking, that old familiar ticking, and he glanced down at the weapon that stuck forth, robotic and unmoving. Little cogs stuck to the end of it and blades turned.

"... No way!" he said, sounding a little like an excited teenager.

He lifted his hand and pulled the mask and wig from the head. What he saw behind it made him grin from ear to ear.

"Oh would you look at that," he said in awe of the clockwork droid in front of him. "Now what you're doing here I don't know. Nice clothes by the way. Bit elaborate for something like you but still... nice."

Turning his head back to Reinette he questioned. "You say you've seen these things before?" It didn't add up. How could it possibly be here. "And what do they do? Just watch you?"

Already he was stepping to the side and putting his hands on the droid, manhandling it to the side to reach the back.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette was so startled by Jack's reaction to the creature that she felt the confusion lip to her face. She did not even bother to mask it.

"Jack," she directed, briefly concerned. "Watch its --"

But the arm was already trained on her again, the sharp, grinding motion now hauntingly familiar.

"They follow me," she finally answered. "Search -- me. They reach into my memories while I sleep. When I was a child the experience fashioned itself into odd dreams. I am not ready yet."

She looked to the cold glass face again.

"Or so they say."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

What she said didn't add up with what he knew of the droids. he loved these droids. He had one in his house. So did all his friends. He'd once got told off by his Dad for taking theirs apart and modifying it (even if it did make it function better).

"They search you?" he said, his own confusion as obvious as hers. "Hey less of that!" he said in annoyance as the arm swung in her direction. "Really."

Behind it, Jack was already lifting the coat and un-tucking the shirt at the back. "Access panel," he explained without really explaining, "just about... here," he tugged and shifted and a piece of the glass came loose, allowing him to reach into the winding cogs and gears.

"And if I just..." he twisted his fingers against one of the cogs, "...if I can remember..." was it the one on the left or the right? It was the-- no, that one there.

He tugged on a cog inside, shifting it slightly from its position. Soon after all the other cogs slowed to a stop and the droid slumped forward, turning itself off.

Withdrawing his hand he held a small brass wheel between his fingers.

"There we go!"

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

She watched Jack's actions with undisguised fascination.

Even as her mechanical shadow slumped forward Reinette was making her way around it in three even strides, coming to a stop just before Jack.

Her eyes drank in every detail of him.

"You, sir, just became interesting."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack shifted to a position that was far too casual for the clothes he was wearing. He stood, one arm leaning against the shoulder of the shut off droid, the other against his hip.

He was excited. He used to love these machines. He even built his own mini one from scratch from a bunch of rejected parts his dad had brought home in a box. A little mouse that went round in circles.

As she stopped and spoke, the smile that was already on his face tripled in size. He was quite obviously very pleased with her declaration.

"Good," he said. "Took long enough."

Straightening up, he reached out his hand and held the cog towards her. "The key," he said. "This thing's nothing more than a big toy. Nothing to worry about."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"You act as if that were somehow my fault," she quipped lightly, despite the present circumstances. "I am not to blame for your own inadequacies." Her smile was the only evidence of her teasing intent.

Reinette extended her own hand, aware of the places Jack's skin met her own as she accepted the small cog. If felt warm withing the palm of her hand, the very opposite of the chill outside. She turned it over once, then twice. Sunch a small thing to take down something so large. It seemed they had the potential to be the same after all, despite her denials.

"We are in no way the same."

When she closed the space between herself and Jack this time, it was in no way a game or entertainment. Her free hand moved to brush his cheek, seeking understanding.

"Did he send you?"

She had seen, in his mind, his ability to change his features the way others might change clothes.

"Or are you him?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Inadequacies?" Jack repeated with a smirk and a raise of an eyebrow. "Well that's a new one." He was rather confident of the fact that in many ways, he had no inadequacies.

The hand on his face didn't falter him, but the question did, a little.

"Did who send me?" His face etched into a frown. "Who are you talking about?" Quietly demanding.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Her thumb traced over his cheekbone in a long, even stroke. She was feeling for what rested beneath.

Her palm then replaced it, fully resting against his cheek. He was warm, almost dangerously so. Reinette's mind was flooded with memories of cool skin pressed against her own.

They were not the same.

"The man from my fireplace," she explained, risking the truth to the air. He would leave soon, after all, and it would not matter. "The Doctor."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Nothing that Jack could have imagined could have prepared him for the words that poured from Reinette's lips. For the name she spoke. Two words that meant so much to him. A name that logic says she shouldn't possibly know.

For the first time since they met, he was genuinely floored. His face lost its grin and the bravado behind it fell away to nothingness. His skin paled a shade and he took a sharp step backwards.

"No," he said, shaking his head a little. "No. You don't- you can't- The Doctor? The Doctor's been here?"

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette bristled slightly, an instinctual reaction to being told there was anything she might not do. Her eyes remained on Jack, the paleness of his complexion suggesting a softness and vulnerability that stood in stark contrast to the man of gear and glass next to him.

Her hand drifted down slowly, reclaiming its place at her side.

"I assure you that I can. And that he has. We first met when I was never years old, at my home in Paris." Her chin lifted slightly. "Though he has been noticeably absent of late."

Again, she studied Jack as understanding dawned.

"You know him."

The word know seemed to hold a great deal of meaning as it settled between them on the cool tiled floor.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack straightened slightly. He should go. He really should. Not only might there be timelines to consider (and who knew what his being here had already done to those) but there were other things too.

"This was just supposed to be a trip," he said, insistently speaking his thoughts allowed. "Just a little trip. I wasn't going to get involved. There wasn't supposed to be..."

He trailed off and shook his head. How could he have spent so long looking for the Doctor and now when he was effectively trying to hide... he couldn't.

The Doctor.

But which Doctor?

He really needed to know. How much potential damage was he doing just by being here?

"What does he look like?" Jack asked, sudden. "I know it might sound like a strange question but please, answer me."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette lifted her skirts and deftly closed the distance that had been spreading between them steadily ever since her recent revelation. She was close enough to see each and every shadow that played against his features. It seemed to her as if there were more of them there.

"Supposed to be," she repeated. "Surely what is 'supposed to be' already is." Though she held great stock in discipline and hard work, Reinette could not help but believe in fate as well. With her past, how could she not.

She continued to study Jack, actively watching how he was changing before her. He was a different man than she first met in the garden. Not so far from the question that plagued him now.

"The question is not strange. He is a man that can change his features just as I might change clothes. I saw that in his mind." Though it was vague, and difficult to touch? It was still there. "He is lean and lithe, and fashions himself after the wren -- dressed in all brown."

Reinette closed the distance again, by a single step.

"You wish to leave?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack ran a hand up and over his face. He shouldn't be here, deep down he knew that. Time wasn't his playground (though he once saw it as such). Time was delicate and could splinter so easily. It could damage. A fixed point shouldn't go walking around as though he had no care in the world.

He shouldn't pretend. And it seemed, he couldn't run.

"It's complicated," he told her with a sigh and a shake of his head.

Most people, Jack would gladly lie to. He felt no need to dignify most with anything near the truth. The truth was a luxury held back for those who needed to know, and those who would understand. He felt that very few would fit into either category. But for some reason he couldn't quite grasp he felt that she fit into one of those categories. Though he wasn't honestly sure which or why.

That thought alone should have perhaps made him uncomfortable.

She described how he looked and Jack closed his eyes. Oh that was the Doctor all right, and his Doctor at that.

The question made his eyes open again, and only then did he realise how close she's got. He wasn't quite startled by it and he didn't move back, but it was a surprise.

"I should leave," he said. But that wasn't to say he wanted to.

He let out a breath that was almost a laugh and shook his head, "Of all the places I could have ended up..."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"You and the Doctor both, so sustained by your wanderings."

Her voice was low, but precise. There was no need to use broader tones when there was so little space between them. Reinette continued to watch the shadows play.

"I cannot imagine finding myself somewhere I did not intend to go."

She did not realize it was a lie until she spoke it. It was so true, for so long, the words fell from sheer habit. But she never envisioned this place. And she did not mean with the man before her.

"Why do you believe that you should go?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack took a long breath in. It was a specific and determined move to compose himself. To bring himself somewhere at least near close to the man he was painting himself to be before. To appear as confident as he knew he could, and to stand behind the masks he so well wore.

He let out a half laugh, "I find myself in lots of places I don't expect to go." In more ways than one.

He didn't have to explain. He knew that. He didn't have to do anything. The manipulator was still on his wrest, he could just press it and leave.

But that didn't seem right. And as well as that, it was possible there was damage limitation that he had to to.

"It's complicated," he said again, gesturing a hand out in front of him. "Me and the Doctor, we don't always do things in the right order. So if he knows you and I didn't know you, or if I did know you and he didn't until after, it makes a difference."

He shook his head again, he wasn't sure he was explaining it well, but how could he explain it well?

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

And yet she understood.

Perhaps it was the nature of her own thought. Perhaps it was the Clockwork Men, pressing themselves into her memories since she was a child. Or perhaps it was a single evening, spent within the Doctor's mind. But Reinette did understand.

Acceptance was another matter all together.

"The Doctor does a great many things with a great many people. To a great many people." She did not need his memories to know as much. Her own were sharp enough, and stung.

"Sometime I would welcome the silence. I would look at the clock and think -- what if I shatter it myself. What if I allow its cogs and gears to slow and fall quiet? Will he come then? Will he end his five year silence?"

But she did not.

"We are not unique Jack Harkness, by far. But somehow I suspect you know as much. Does it really matter then? Knowing me?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Oh he'd been so right when he'd thought she was interesting, hadn't he?

She was perceptive, it seemed. Perhaps too perceptive. Had she travelled with the Doctor? He didn't think so. But she seemed to understand how he worked. And maybe not even understand on the superficial level but understand a little deeper. Understand how people like him and the Doctor had to operate.

It was almost unsettling.

Oh and there was something there in her he could recognise too. A loneliness, perhaps, or a loss. Something not quite tangible, but something definite.

But just as he didn't know everything about her, she didn't know everything about him. She couldn't know everything.

"Oh I'm unique all right," he told her. And he wasn't trying to lord up his own importance by any means. But he knew that his fixed nature combined with time and its delicacies could cause much more damage than any (for want of a better word) normal person.

"It could do," he admitted, "depending when he knows you." He thought a little, curious. "Is he with anyone? When you've seen him, has he ever had anyone with him?"

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette was not entirely sure why she had just spoken as she did to Jack. She had not spoken of the Doctor to another living soul, accepting her mother. And even then it was as a child, when men lived in fireplaces and she dirtied the hem of her nightgown with soot searching for him.

Not even Louis know of him.

Yes, it was obvious that Jack had his own past with the Doctor. But that was no reason to expose so much of her own.

"Sometimes he is with a young girl. Rose. And she seems to have her own companion as well, a Mikey. They all came through the mirror the night of the Yew Tree Ball."

She continued to look at Jack.

"Am I safe, then?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Rose. He was with Rose.

Jack's eyes closed tightly. It was in his past. A timeline that had gone. He'd never got the full farewell with Rose he'd hoped for. She changed him just as much as the Doctor did and for so long he knew he'd never find her, and for so long he thought she was dead. When he'd finally reunited with her it had hardly been a reunion at al. Far too busy saving the world to be sentimental. And besides, her sentimentality had been mostly saved for another.

He would have liked longer.

Slightly laboured, he opened his eyes again. He should go. He really should go. Especially now he knew this. He should leave before he complicated things.

But go where?

Jack nodded and reached an arm out, touched gently to hers, just below her shoulder. "You're safe," he confirmed, "If you've got the Doctor looking after you, you're safe."

He thought a little on what she said before continuing.

"You said they came through the mirror? Is that here? Can I see it?"

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

The shadows were different now. Reinette was openly fascinated. She suspected they were neither themselves that day. As unsettling as that was, there was something energizing in it. Almost heady, as if she drank too much wine, too quickly.

Why was that, then? Is this what the Doctor left behind?

Reinette glanced down to where his hand touched her shoulder.

"I meant for you. Am I safe for you?"

His wished to see the mirror. Not the fireplace, so freshly moved and still her own. The mirror she could bring herself to share.

She stepped back, and where Jack's hand drifted from her shoulder she claimed it with her own.

"Follow me."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Was she safe for him? Maybe. Was she safe from him? Perhaps the more pertinent question. But he knew the answer. Nobody was safe from him. Danger followed him, even when he walked into it.

He didn't answer. He felt if he did, she'd sense his lying.

Because he'd have to lie.

He took her hand, and though his grip was light, it was still a grip. He nodded, just briefly, and he stepped beside her.

Part of him felt he ought not question or elaborate. She said she'd known the Doctor since childhood. But always the same Doctor? That would signify perhaps there were some meaning and plan behind it all. Some explanation to why a 51st century robot was standing beside them. And whatever it was, he was sure it wasn't over.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

The sounds of the wall still wafted down the darkened corridors. Someone had drifted from the crowded room to a more private enclave for a more personal celebration. Their whispers carried easily, and Reinette's mouth compressed into a firm line at the endearments so carelessly used. It was not the game how she played it.

She often wondered why others did. It was something fundamental, that kept her from them.

Jack's hand still within her own she lead him into the long hallway where she officially met Louis some five years before. She could remember every step of that interaction, every carefully chosen word. For a moment she stood still in the center of the room, letting it wash over her.

When she looked up, her own eyes stared back at her.

"It was those mirrors there that he came through with his two companions."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack could hear the noises as they advanced along the corridor. Familiar to his ear. He paid them no mind. It was nothing to him, and there was no skill in the sound. Merely humans reducing themselves to their animal urges.

Instead he kept focus on the woman beside him. Leading him ahead. And all the thoughts rushing through his mind. The Doctor and Rose.

As they stepped into the room, Jack took a deep breath and a pausing look at the mirror opposite. He looked at their reflections, his and hers. His own looking so strange with the costume he wore.

After a pause, he gently released her hand and took a step forward. His arm lifted, and he uncovered the strap on his wrist. Leather giving way to technology underneath.

He frowned as he watched, and moved closer still, pressing his body sideways against the mirror, his ear pressed to the glass.

"It's some sort of..." he frowned again, shifted back to press another sequence of buttons, before moving to the edge of the mirror, looking for some sort of seam.

A time window. But where did it lead? It was locked, or at least it seemed to be. Access from the other side, but not this.

"It's-" he started but stopped again, looking over at Reinette. He couldn't say what it was, could he? What if she wasn't supposed to know? It reminded him once again that he was somewhere he shouldn't be. Tiptoeing over a timeline he should stay away from.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"Have you lost your words," Reinette inquired in warm tones, risking enough to interject the suggestion of teasing between them. "Careful, else they might disappear behind this as he did. You do not seem the sort to be silent for five years."

She took several steps forward, joining him close to the mirror. Her voice echoed back at her as she spoke.

"When he first visited me, it was through the fireplace in my bedroom." Reinette was quite certain she had no intention of sharing this mere minutes before. How unlike her. "I was only seven years old, and could only see him through the flames where he stood on the other side. I convinced myself it was a dream."

Her fingers traced over the mirror.

"When he came again, several months later, he appeared in my bedroom. I was asleep. I awoke to an Angel in my bedroom battling men of clockwork what spoke in strange, hollow tones. He looked into my mind, though I did not understand it then. He smiled. He defeated them, with the most marvelous words."

Truly, she had not meant to share so much. It made her examine just how long she had held the memory close.

"Even monsters have nightmares Reinette."

She looked to Jack.

"My mother would not listen to such tales the next morning. But the time we next met I had convinced myself it was my imagination."