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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[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."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Oh you'd be surprised just how long I can keep quiet," Jack said, giving her a sidelong glance and a half smile as he stood in front of the mirror.

He turned his head back to it, and watched her through the reflection instead of staring right at her. As though that way it would afford her some sort of privacy. A silent respect for the knowledge she was imparting. He could tell it was personal. But then experience with the Doctor always was.

At the same time, he absorbed her words. He listened and analysed them; what they must have meant. Through a fireplace, through a mirror. Time windows. Leading to one central location, he theorised. But why? And where? 51st Century somewhere, maybe, considering the robots. But that barely told him a thing.

"Most people would find the Doctor pretty unbelievable," he said into the mirror, before turning his had to look at her again.

"But some people know better."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"Indeed," she murmured, pulling herself away from her own thoughts else she get lost in them.

What was not lost upon Reinette that until this moment she had spoken a great majority of the words between them.

"And I have no doubt that you count as one of them."

She tilted her head to study Jack once more.

"How did you come to know him?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack laughed, though it wasn't really a laugh at all. He turned his head back to the mirror, but looking at it there was no way of hiding. He just saw them both. It wasn't enough. So he shook his head and glanced down at the floor.

"Oh that was a long time ago," he said with a half sigh. "Long time ago. We were both so different then."

He didn't quite know why, but he felt he ought to be honest. or at least somewhat. It was again unsettling. Jack didn't frequently do honesty.

"It was an old job I used to have," he went on, "guess you could say our lines of work crossed paths. Got sort of swept up in it."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

He would not look at her.

Reinette noted it, though she did not force the issue. Instead she merely turned, so that when he did finally search for again he would find her face rather than her reflection.

"I wonder at your work, then, and if it had any part in bringing you here. And at my own world, that cogs and gears and sightseers cannot leave it be."

Which, really, was not what she intended to say.

Work had very little to do with it, and she was dealing in more than assumptions.

"He is an easy man to get caught up in."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Oh not any more," Jack said, and he almost sounded saddened by it. "Guess you could say I'm unemployed at the moment."

He took a deep breath, as though he was gathering himself, and he turned his head so as he could see her properly.

"Oh you can say that again," he smiled. Fondness in his tone, for the Doctor. Unmistakable.

"Looks like you're used to sightseers dropping in."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"We are both, then, at a crossroads. Who we were and who we will become." Her smile was raw, and there was real mirth in her voice. "Uncertainty is the most inconvenient companion, is it not? And quite the inhospitable bedfellow as well. It keeps running off with my sleep."

She was not entirely sure why she said such things to this man. Only that she did.

Again, that voice. The tilt of his smile as he spoke of the Doctor. It caught her in a way that she could not fully explain. As if it were not her at all.

"I know you," she spoke out of turn to their conversation. With little warning she closed the space between them and pressed a singe hand to his cheek. "Somehow I know you."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack looked off again. He didn't like who he was now and he didn't like to think about who he'd be. He had forever, he had no choice but to be someone. And he had no idea who that person would be. She really could have no idea how close she'd hit to his own personal truth.

"Oh I know that," he said. Sleep was so often few and far between, even on his best of nights, and then even when it was achieved it was full of unwanted dreams.

Jack didn't often share himself. He didn't open himself, so perhaps that was why he could see that that was exactly what she was doing. He felt, if nothing else, that deserved a respect.

Her following sentiment though, more than threw him. "What?" he swallowed hard and his eyes (but not head) moved to acknowledge her hand on his face.

"I've never met you," he whispers. But there feels as though there's no weight in his words.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"Nor I you," she agreed, even as her hand continued to cradle his cheek. She could feel the way the touch was altered with each word spoken. "But that does not ---"

Then something sparked.

And understanding fully dawned.

If it was the touch. His expression or merely his presence was difficult to say.

Perhaps because she was laughing. her hand slipped away."

"Dancing."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Dancing"?

He was surprised, and quite obviously still confused. There was no full understanding there in him, and no understanding of the leap she could have made to reach it.

"I'm not much of a dancer," he said, but with a tone that implied he once might have been. In more ways than one.