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for ambitious_woman Back to Earth, 1750

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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Jack continued to step towards her, hands reaching out to nip in again each time she withdrew. He continued too, to laugh, and to grin at her words, eyes creasing as she spoke.

"Such accusations!" he said in mock shock, laughing even as he spoke the words.

Though even while he was laughing, he was aware, and as his hand reached out again to grip her waist he heard the twist of the door in the distance. His head didn't turn to it, but he did act.

He stepped forward, and leading as though in a waltz, he stepped her back towards the alcove they'd previously occupied. The hand that would pinch instead embraced and pushed against her back to press her to him and with her back to the wall and his back to the open corridor he leaned in and kissed her again, and continued to do so as he heard the footsteps echo as they got closer and fade as they passed.

When the echo returned to nothing, he lifted his head back again and smirked, "Sorry, what was that you were saying?"

There was the wall, and then there was Jack. Of the two, one was far preferable. When Reinette allowed her body to fit against him this time, there was far less effort in it.

Delicate, innocent and little indeed.

The sound of footsteps were hardly audible from her position against the wall. That was his responsibility now -- one he was filled with particular skill -- and that left Reinette with little to do but focus on Jack.

She also owed his a certain measure of repayment.

Her mouth still moving easily with his own, she considered how effected she had been by his own touch. The man had pinched her, twice. One hand slipped into the narrow space between their bodies and past the fine fabric of his shirt to rest on warm skin. She palmed it, her fingers splayed with gentle pressure.

Only then did it occur to her it was not any nip or pinch she was repaying at all, but the soft touch to her cheek prior.

To feel the touch of a hand against his skin was a shock to the senses. It was good, far too good, far too nice to just be touched again. He never was touched too often. He was distant and for good reason. But there were always those, the odd few that he held himself with. It had been longer than he knew.

For a moment, his breath caught and it might have quite easily registered in the kiss. He scolded himself inside; he should have been adept enough to stop that. But he wasn't as practised as he once might have been.

And for another moment, he was terrified. Just a brief rush of endorphins as he realised that he was opening. Opening himself to smile, to laugh, or just to feel, and he'd stopped himself from feeling for so long. It was frightening to think what he'd open him up to by allowing any of those things again.

His forehead touched against hers and he took a long breath, his eyes pushed tightly closed. He focused himself on the touch of her hand, just for a pause, just to allow himself to drink it in and burn it to memory.

"Time to go," he said, and there was uncertainty and struggle even in those three words. "Time I went."

His attempt to sound more forceful and solidify the sentiment... didn't really work.

Reinette stood utterly still, her own eyes shuttered closed as well. When she did breathe, she could feel both their bodies move with the effort of it, the connections between them still sound.

Something had changed between them. Something tenuous and difficult to grasp. She understood that touch, which however brief had brought a sense of healing to her? Had somehow had the opposite effect on Jack. Something had been opened, raw and wide. He might as well be bleeding onto her. Her gown with be stained with it. Because Reinette understood that kind of pain. She had lived it. Blood stained sheets taken away time after time after time and for all that she hated them. For all that her weaknesses were laid bare? They were substantial. Real. It was something she could even hate, when it was needed.

But this was invisible. It tucked itself into the few spaces between their two bodies and was already pushing them apart, but it was invisible all the same. Nothing to see or to hate or to attack. Thus there was nothing left but onesself. To hate. To attack. To see.

And then you find yourself planning your day as to not encounter a single mirror.

He did not want to hear this from her. She could not imaging exposing herself to say it to him.

Reinette opened her eyes.

"Do not give time more credit than it deserves. I grow increasingly wearly of it."

Her voice was low and direct.

"If you wish to go, merely say so."

Were Jack a stronger man, he might have been able to do what he felt he ought and easily step away from Reinette. But then he never was as strong as he painted himself to be. And now, especially now, he was only just held together at the edges. He was cracked and it took little more than a gentle tap to make him fall apart.

He didn't open his eyes, even as she spoke, and even as he responded.

"I didn't say that," he said to her, evenly. It wasn't that he wanted to go, and he didn't want her to think that, though of course she would and he'd be foolish to think otherwise.

Finally, he opened his eyes, and the air felt cold as his vision focused.

He knew, really, that he shouldn't ask. He should just go, that'd be the right thing to do. The proper thing to do. Stay away, it's not fair to expose people to him.

But still... he asked.

"What do you want me to do?"

Still she did not pull away. Not even the offending had that had seemingly been the cause of this breech. Reinette supposed that to anyone walking past they would still look as if they were locked in an embrace. She fount that it no longer mattered.

Reinette looked up, meeting Jack's gaze evenly.

"Until this night, I cannot remember the last time that I laughed. Wat do you think?"

Her expression shifted slightly under the shadows.

"And perhaps that is selfish. But we are all at our core selfish creatures and at least I can have the grace to admit it. I would have you stay Jack. I would have you walk the slow path with me, at least for a while. Because unlike every person in that ballroom you would fully comprehend that that means if only because you know there is more. I would talk to you, and have you talk to me. Perhaps I could inspire you to laugh as well."

Her fingers compressed, feather light, against his skin.

"I would see if we might be friends."

Jack's eyes filled and he shifted his head away to the side as if to hide the tears that threatened to appear. It was a shock; he never let himself be so visible in front of people, not like that. He never allowed himself tears in public, and he hadn't allowed himself tears at all in such a long time. He thought perhaps he hadn't the ability to cry any more.

He pulled a hand back and wiped it over his face, letting out a slight laugh. It wasn't an amused laugh, more surprised, shocked.

"I'm not good for people," he said evenly, looking back at her. "People around me, they end up dead. Dead or hurt or broken. And I don't--" his voice started to break a little and he shook his head and took a deep breath, annoyed at himself for losing composure so very easily.

The shift of her hand made his eyes close, just for a blink that lasted too long, and he took a deep breath.

"I'm cursed," he said to her plainly as his eyes again opened. No ceremony or feeling sorry for himself in the words, just utter belief of their truth. "I don't want to curse you too."

Her face tilted to follow the lines of his profile as it shifted. She did not once look away.

"Curses. Prophecies. Fortune tellers." There was something unfinished in her tone, the words precise and clipped. "It was foretold when was a mere seven years old that I would become the lover of a king. I fell into my mother's ambitions and accepted them as my own. I dutifully accepted every lesson, even those my mother had no right to give. I practiced and excelled and truthfully can imagine no other life but this. But you must forgive me if I am weary of it now. I am done living other people's expectations and dressing it up as my life. Even yours, Jack. I find I cannot accept this notion that I would be cursed for you."

There was a brief smile, but it was there.

"I will die one day Jack, and it will have very little to do with your presence here. It will be sooner rather than later if this body has any say in the matter, but we are currently in negotiations. As for hurt, or broken?"

She thought about Louis. About the Doctor. About a great many things.

"Are we not both that already? Let us distract one another, even if only for a while."

Jack listened to her and watched her with interested eyes as she spoke. He didn't shift his head or look away. There was a respect in the way he listened, though it remained silent and under the surface.

"Everyone dies," he said with a shake of his head. His word trails off and the 'except me' was spoken silently in his mind.

He laughed again, that same hollow and empty laugh as before. "You know I think sometimes that's what life is. Steadily breaking you down until it's done with you."

He shook his head. A voice in his mind repeated that he should go, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to listen to it. He didn't want to leave. If he left where would he go? Who would he go to? Would he truly end up better off anywhere else? He didn't suspect so, not really. Not by a long shot.

Taking a deep breath, he looked down and back up again, shaking his head, letting out a laugh that had a much richer quality.

"Yeah," he sighed. "Yeah. Distractions. Can't argue with that. And you know what?" he smiled and touched his hand back to her cheek, "I think you're just my sort of distraction."

"Perhaps it is at that," Reinette agreed. "Life. But at the very least we can take something of it with us."

And she meant that. It was a part of her now. The hectic days and frantic pace and demanding life of court. Reinette had no doubt her life would not been a long one. Illness had dogged her heels since she was removed from her convent school at the age of seven. But make no mistake, it would be a full one.

She was often exhausted. But there was no doubt she was alive.

Jack laughed. And she smiled.

It was as simple as that. There was no calculation or though behind it, only pure reaction. Privately she reveled in it as her smile grew by degrees.

"I shall take that as the compliment I know you intended it to be."

Reinette pulled back, though just barely as she extended a hand.

"Come, Jack. I think it is time for bed."

"Well good," Jack said, "I'd hate for it to be taken any other way." Smiling down at her still, his fingers twisted and he tucked back behind her ear a few strands of her hair that had come loose from its delicate hold.

There was a pause when her hand was held out to his, but it was nothing more than a moment, and he was soon closing his hand around hers.

"Oh now that's quite the offer," he said, a smile in his tone, a little cheeky and delicately teasing.

Again, the touch gave her pause. It was not that Louis had not loved her, and indeed he loved her still. Love, as was often the way with things, not the issue between them. But he was still selfish as only a king could be. In what what he was raised for. And she, is turn, what what she was raised to be. She gave herself fully to him. Filling his days, indulging his whims. Creating entertainments and distractions.

If her fair was out of place --- well, he would not think to return it. He would not do as much for his own. This was the man that thought she desired payment for her bravery after a particularly hard bleeding. That could not remain in the room with her, out of his own weaknesses. It never occurred to him she would far rather have his hand than any bit of money.

No, he would not have given such attention to a few strands of hair.

Reinette kept her steps brisk as she lead them through hallways and back to her own suite of rooms. It had been designed for a Duke and a Duchess that had lost their title after a failure to produce as heir. At their passing, and her own displacement Reinette inherited their rooms. After her own bedroom and a sitting room sat another independent bedroom. She had already instructed a fire be laid there in anticipation.

It was there she led Jack.

Jack no longer paid attention to any of those that they passed in the corridors as they walked. He didn't care about their gazes or questioning eyes. They were nothing more than small amusements, and for now, he was done with them.

Instead as he walked with her he kept his mind on the touch of her hand, and how pleasant it felt in his own. It made him ache in so many ways. It wasn't all bad, not at all. It was nice, to be reminded.

They stepped into the room, half lit and warmth radiating out from the fire. It was comfortable. Much more comfortable than he was used to, and much more comfortable than he had had in years.

"Cosy," he said with a smile and a sideways smirk in her direction, before, again teasingly, adding "so which side do you sleep on?"

"I do not take sides. As I have never had to share a bed, I am quite selfish that way."

But she was smiling, and very close to laughing again. She moved over to the bed, smoothing back the coverlet slightly. She liked the idea that it would be slept in. That it would be used and her life would be that much fuller for it.

"But do not worry, you shall not have to contort yourself awkwardly to meet my needs. I shall be in my room."

There was an ease between them, and it allowed her to tease.

"Disappointed?"

Edited 2010-01-14 07:27 (UTC)

If he was shocked by her information, he didn't show it. His head, however, did turn in her direction and follow as she moved to the bed.

He stepped up behind her, and leaned over a little, inclining his upper body in her direction with his hands clasped together behind his back.

"Who said I don't enjoy contorting myself awkwardly?" he asked with a mock level of seriousness in his tone.

He took another step closer, enjoying the repartee. He stood right in front of her again, and looked down to her face.

"Oh I make it my business never to be disappointed."

Oh, but she was weary that it was a business at all.

Reinette did not say as much aloud. Things were far too new for that. And yet there was still a sense that she could. A sense that was tempting and lovely.

And dangerous.

But Reinette could not mind.

Her smile remained unaltered, and her gaze moved over the expanse of the bed before meeting his again.

"And only think how much space I am allowing you to seek your enjoyments in. Such scope for the creative mind."

One which she had no doubt Jack possessed.

Jack laughed again. He laughed as he'd been able to earlier. It was warm and rich and echoed a little around the larger room. His head threw back a little, before falling again forward, and his eyes creased at the edges as he looked at her.

"And I think," he said with a smirk, leaning in as if to share a secret, "it might surprise even you."

But for all his bravado, it had been quite the time since he'd indulged himself in such a way, and he had no real intention of doing so again, even if it was a part of him; it was a dormant part.

Well, for now.

He glanced back to the bed and her, a pointed over the top sort of gaze. "But then... creativity is nothing if you haven't got anyone to... bounce those ideas off."

She tilted her face up towards his own because she too seemed to have a secret to share.

"Only if I am allowed to surprise you as well."

Purposely she allowed the moment to linger. Bodies close and mouths even closer. To leave a person if the space had just grown warmer or if it was the work of the fireplace. The moment stretched on, until Reinette moved quite abruptly to return her attention to turning down the bed.

It was just another form of teasing between them.

"And you have a mattress. Surely there is no better than to bounce both your ideas and person upon?"

Jack's smile again became a smirk, and he took a step over to the bed until he could reach over and press it down as if to test just how bouncy the mattress was.

"Well I'm sure I could come up with hours of ideas on these springs," he said with an approving sideways grin.

"But," he said pointedly, and changed his stance, a little straighter, a little less jovial (though in no way overly serious). It was, to a degree, like that chapter was done and he was writing a new one. A new page.

"But," he started again, took a step in her direction. "Not for now."

He looked again at the bed and back to her and said quietly, "I don't sleep much." An admittance. He could sleep plenty, of course. But he didn't. He didn't like the dreams. There were always dreams.

"I have seen the Doctor's world, in his mind. I would imagine it is very like your own."

Her eyes shuttered briefly, remembering. When she looked up her gaze found Jack's once more.

"So much light and noise and movement. We have all that here as well, true. But here it comes from the people, not the places. So bright, and artificial. It cannot be easy."

It said a great deal that she felt that way.

"When we stop, it stops Jack. It is quiet. No humming or clanking to be heard. Just quiet." Unless the Clockwork was nearby. Reinette reached up on her toes to press a brief kiss to Jack's temple.

"You will sleep."

Jack knew that Reinette's words were meant to provide a comfort for him. So he couldn't tell her then that those times were worse. Silence, utter silence. Because then, oh then he could really think.

Even the Hub had never been silent. There was always the sound of an computerised bleep somewhere, a whir from Mayfanwy as she flew around above, or the constant drip of the nearby water, leaking organic through the building.

Silent was alone. Painfully alone and the only noise then was his thoughts. His mind unleashed on thought and memory.

He nodded, and smiled though it was tight lipped. It wasn't so much an agreement as a refusal to argue. He doubted he'd sleep at all, that night.

"Rest well, Jeanne-Antoinette," he said softly, touching his hand to hers just momentarily before adding, "I'll still be here in the morning."

Something shifted, but it was so fine that Reinette knew even she would have difficulty grasping it. Instead her hand just turned briefly to his touch before falling away.

She watched him through the shadows.

"I shall hold you to that Jack."

And then she was gone.

But only for the night.

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