24) And Who Might You Be?
Oct. 21st, 2013 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starjargonA/N- This chapter is rated a solid PG-13/ T. It deals with the appearance of one Captain Jack Harkness in the lives of the Ponds. It’s a tie in for previous and potential future chapters, but not altogether necessary if the rating makes you nervous.
If you do read it, please let me know what you think. This is my first serious attempt at the Captain. Thank you!
They were in a tavern on the third crater of Zulon, waiting for their husbands at the end of their girls’ day. River was trying to get her mother to ignore her injured ankle, which she had twisted running from a rabid creature known as an abaoun. Eventually, River had convinced the creature that a pond full of fish would be a better place to scout for a meal. Suddenly, a man approached them, tall, brunette, and with the distinct swagger of someone used to getting his way. River was married to a man with such a swagger.
“Can I buy you ladies a drink?”
River and Amy looked up.
“Only if you sit next to me,” said River flirtatiously.
“Love to. Gives me a chance to get to know you. And for you to get to know me.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Oh, I already know men like you.” Her voice dropped flirtatiously.
“Do you? What do you know about men like me?” He sat down in the stool next to River.
“One word- Trouble.” She turned toward him with a smile.
“Only to women like you, who I suspect like trouble.”
“Hmm. You have no idea,” she replied with a smirk.
“Waiting for someone in particular?” He glanced around to see if she was attached and to whom.
“Always.”
“Well-“
“Please, do not complete that sentence with “your waiting’s over.” And, Melody Pond- you’re married!” said Amy- quite irritable and flat out cranky after her long day.
Within an instant, both River and the man had their guns out and pointed at each other.
“Whoa. River, what’s happening?” Amy asked- suddenly very afraid for her daughter- who promptly ignored her.
“So I guess this means I won’t be getting a refill, then?” She stood protectively in front of her mother, judging the best way to disarm the flirtatious stranger.
“It means that just as soon as I get a clear shot I will drop you so fast the other patrons won’t know what happened.”
“Ha- That would be quite an accomplishment. And what did I do to warrant such special attention?”
“You killed a very good friend of mine.”
“Possible. I have been told I have psychopathic tendencies. And I am supposed to be in prison for murder.”
“Time off for good behavior?”
“More like an open- door policy. Well. I say open door. More like guards very willing to open closed ones with the… right persuasion.”
“Cute. I’ll almost feel bad about killing you.”
“Oh, you are fun. If the situation were different, I’d almost let you.”
“Well now, this little chat’s over. Care to move to your right a little? I know how attached Jem is to that particular chair. I’d hate to have to pay for it.”
“No no, I know Jem likes the mirror behind you. So please- if you could avoid falling back into that when you crash to the floor- he’d be most grateful.”
“River! Tell me, what’s-“
“Stay back, Mother. Obviously, this man is unstable. Thinks I killed his friend. And look at his eyes. He has absolutely no qualms about shooting me right now. If he thinks he can shoot faster than me, that is.”
“Wait- mother? River? She called you Melody Pond.” His confusion almost threw off his guard.
“Yes she did,” replied River- still not blinking at the weapon pointed at her.
“You’re the woman who killed the Doctor.”
“Only once,” said the Time Lord himself, entering the door behind them. “Besides- I got better.”
“Doctor?! Is that really you? Love the new look! How’ve you been?”
“Oh, you know- new worlds, new body, running, dying. Same ol’ same ol’. Though I’d feel a lot better right now if you’d stop pointing a gun at
my wife.”
“She’s the woman who- wait, what?!”
All of a sudden he felt the sting of a sword against his neck and a gun at his back.
“Oh, of course it would be you. Captain- would you do me a great favor and put down the gun you currently have pointed at my daughter?” said Rory, dad mode in high gear as the man turned his head slightly.
“Centurion! Looking good. So- I’m assuming the box opened for you eh?” He lowered the gun, holstering it with a look at Rory. Then he turned back to River.
“Well, now. Seeing as the Doctor and the Roman seem to trust you- Captain Jack Harkness. Hi,” the sometimes- Torchwood agent offered silkily, reaching out a hand toward River.
“Stop it,” growled the Doctor and Rory simultaneously.
“Doctor River Song. Tread lightly Captain. My husband gets ever so jealous.” River introduced herself with a smug smirk, holstering her own gun once more.
“Only means you’re worth getting jealous over,” added Jack seductively.
“Hmm. You have no idea.” Her voice lowered to match his.
“I’d be willing to learn.”
“I’ll bet you would.”
“Will someone please explain to me what’s going on?” asked a very confused and frustrated Amy Pond.
Jack turned toward her, smile dazzling- “Captain Jack Hark-“
“Don’t you even think about finishing that sentence, Jack.”
“I’m just saying hi, Centurion.”
“Well, I know what you mean when you ‘just say hi,’ and I won’t have you saying hi to my wife.”
“Your wife? The girl from the box?”
“Amy Pond,” offered Amy- smiling as she reached out to shake the Captain’s hand, who bent down and kissed it.
“Williams,” insisted Rory in this instance, sheathing the sword he’d brought when he’d called Amy midday and heard screaming.
“Now- can you please explain to me, Captain- how do you know my husband, and the Doctor, and why did you pull a gun on my daughter?” Amy asked, slightly less irritable now that amusement had begun to settle in.
Jack eyed her speculatively.
“You and the Centurion, huh? Definitely worth waiting for.”
He then turned his gaze to River.
“Nice daughter, too. Gorgeous. You sure you’re spoken for?”
“Completely,” said River, more than a little pleased at her husband’s face- although, she had to admit, had he not seemed slightly jealous, she would have had a different answer for the captain- just to test the Doctor’s boundaries.
“So, Captain, which sounds about as legitimate as my husband being a Doctor by the way, why do you keep calling my father Centurion?”
“Ah-“ interjected the Doctor, not realizing exactly where his wife was when he came to meet her, “Spoilers.”
“What’s that mean?” a confused Jack questioned.
“It means, River and I don’t always meet in the right order-“
“So you can’t give away each other’s timelines. Got it. Like another relationship I know of,” Jack said pointedly.
“Well- you and I are mostly linear,” the Doctor remarked offhandedly.
“You still haven’t answered how you know everyone,” commented Amy, very intrigued by this man who seemed to know so much about her friend and husband.
“Jack travelled with me- a long time ago. Got killed in a battle against the Daleks; my other companion took the Time Vortex into her head and brought him back- now he can’t ever die.”
“You mean, he’s like you two- he changes?”
“No, he means, no matter what happens- be it suffocation, getting shot, drowning, or getting hit by a ‘stray’ javelin, I don’t stay dead.” He glared at Rory.
“In my defense- it was stray! I figured I needed to know as many types of warfare as possible.”
“Javelins in the 20th Century?!”
“You try standing outside a box for a few millennia and see if you don’t get the smallest bit bored. Not that I wouldn’t do it again,” amended Rory, catching the slight hurt in his wife’s eyes. “River, suffice it to say, there was a point where I didn’t die for a few thousand years while I waited for Amy- I was dressed like a Roman Centurion because at the time it made sense. I met Jack after I accidently killed him. Twice.”
“Accidently- you aimed at my head!”
“You tried to open the box!”
“Well- I travelled with the Doctor. Something says ‘Do Not Enter,’ anyone who knows him knows- you enter!”
“So, what happened after that? He just was fine and you stopped killing him?”
“Basically… and then we sort of… hung out. For a century or five. He’s a timetraveller as well. It happened in a different order for me.”
“Let me tell you- the trouble this guy could get into.”
“I kept out of trouble…”
“Yeah, and there I was, to fix that. Anyway, speaking of trouble, Doc- explain to me how you have a wife like this and I don’t know about it.”
“Oh, it all happened so quickly- I met her, we went out for a few hundred years, then she made an honest man out of me.”
“So, how come I wasn’t invited to the wedding?”
“Alternate timeline. On top of an American Pyramid.”
“Ah- and her parents?”
“I can speak for myself, Captain. I’m part Time Lord- complicated gift of the time vortex-“
“I know the feeling.”
“Yes, well, I can regenerate. The rest is simple. I was kidnapped as a baby, brainwashed to kill the Doctor, used my remaining lives to bring him back once I did, then pretended to kill him again so the universe will stop chasing him. Meanwhile, I ran away from my trainers and grew up with my parents. See- simple,” she ended with a nonchalant shrug.
“So, basically, all I’m hearing is- the Doctor got married and I still haven’t thrown him a stag party!”
“NO- Jack. That’s not…” The Doctor didn’t know whose look to fear more- his friend’s or his wife’s.
“Mummy dear- the Captain has a point. Despite your own rather magnificent send off, you’re welcome again, I never got one of my own.”
“It just sounds so wrong when you say it like that,” remarked Rory, still thinking of the baby he’d held not so very long ago- a problem all father’s face, he just faced it a few decades early.
River, Jack, and Amy took over the conversation for a while, planning some type of party the Doctor was sure to regret. He especially regretted the fact that River was old enough to have a fairly sizeable list of his old friends. He was planning his escape when he was pulled out of his reverie by realizing the conversation had shifted.
“I’m sorry, Captain. You are very charming in your own right; you just make me inexplicably uncomfortable. Yet, it’s something I’ve felt before.
I can’t explain it. Are you sure you haven’t been to the third moon of Umbar?” asked River, confusion written across her features before Jack shook his head, also trying to remember any connection to the woman in front of him.
“Jack’s a fixed point. His immortality makes for a very unpleasant sensation in people who have time itself flowing through them. That probably accounts for the feelings you’re having, dear,” explained the Doctor, a slight thrill going through him at yet another reminder of his and his wife’s similarities.
“So, is that why he can remember Rory, even though you reset the universe?” asked Amy- upon whose lips River placed a finger, stopping her mother from wreaking even more damage on her foreknowledge.
“Probably.”
“You’d be surprised how many different times never existed that I remember. I was around for a year that never was- the Doctor really did look his age, then, unfortunately. I still felt the love though, Doc. Then there was this whole period where time stopped moving for quite a while. Funny- I joined a resistance group who were convinced something was wrong. Never met the leader, though I did help capture this woman who was said to have something to do with time colliding like it did. Nasty character. Madame indeed.”
He looked at the silent faces around him, realizing he must have said something wrong but totally ignorant of what.
“Something I said?”
“Like I said, Jack- alternate timeline. Churchill was the Emperor.”
“So you were there! And you didn’t even bother to look me up and say hi.” Jack faked offence.
“Bit busy,” the Doctor mumbled, then smiled when River took his hand.
“Anyway, I want to know more about this time you spent with my father, Jack,” said River anxiously.
They talked long into the night, finally retiring to the TARDIS where Rory and Jack used med bay supplies to heal Amy’s ankle. Rory continued to defend his character against the Captain’s innuendo and somewhat different memories while the Doctor took them into the vortex. They sat around in the comfy chairs room and the TARDIS suddenly started playing music.
“I’ve told that man that’s the jukebox, not a sweets machine a hundred times!” groaned River, making to get up.
“Oh, leave him. I like this song,” said Amy, swaying slightly to the music even as she turned her attention back to Jack.
They reminisced for a while longer until Rory suddenly heard one of his and Amy’s special songs; he pulled her up and waltzed lazily around the room, enjoying a quiet evening in after a full day of handling the Doctor all by himself.
Jack opened his arms and River accepted his invitation.
“I have a feeling you dance very well, Captain.”
“Well, I’ve been dancing for quite a while, Doctor Song. Gained a lot of experience.”
“Ah. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Well, what about you? Long life of a Time Lord,” he looked her up and down, smiled, and corrected himself, “Lady. You must have had quite a few private lessons in your time.”
“We can hear you,” reminded Rory grumpily.
River laughed heartily. “Actually, Mr. Harkness, my husband’s is the only name on my dance card.”
Amy and Rory’s heads both jerked up at that statement, not believing what they were hearing. They had spent a lifetime hearing Mels’ insinuations and flirtations, the rumors and her own suggestive boasts. Although, given who Mels was, they shouldn’t really be surprised that nothing was ever as it seemed with her.
Jack backed up, surprised. He spun River around with a look of shock on his face as she just laughed at everyone’s reactions.
“I don’t believe you- what about all those stories Amy was telling me about the wild girl from Leadworth? And you went to Luna U! Let me tell you, the anti- gravity parties alone…”
“Well, pushing boundaries isn’t the same as crossing them. Besides- I’ve been hearing stories about the Doctor since the day I was born. Even when they were training me to hate him, he was always so much more than a just a man to me. Then came the romanticized stories from Amy about a hero who could claim time itself. No one else would have ever compared.”
He pulled her into him once more, laughing light- heartedly.
“I believe that was the sound of my heart breaking, Mrs. Song.”
“Somehow I believe you’ll survive.”
“This is the third incarnation I’ve met of him where he knows me. If I could survive that-”
“Jack, are you trying to steal my wife now?” asked the Doctor as he sauntered into the room, smiling at one of his oldest (in more ways than one) friends.
“More like trying to steal my husband, dear,” River replied as the Doctor cut in rudely, grabbing her waist away from Jack and pulling her to him. “Careful, Captain. I’m an only child who doesn’t like to share my toys.” She winked before putting her arms around the Doctor’s neck, batting him on the shoulders for his possessive display.
“Now this is just unfair,” said Jack, smiling at the Doctor’s same possessiveness- a quality he had had slightly with Rose but had lacked when Jack had found him again travelling with Martha but which he secretly found endearing.
“Come dance with me, Jack,” offered Amy.
“Anytime,” he grinned, actually keeping a surprisingly chaste distance between the two of them as he remained conscious of the good friend off to the side he hadn’t expected to ever see again.
After a couple of days, during which armies were defeated, planets renamed, and the Doctor’s stag was thoroughly planned out much to his only slightly- feigned horror, the Doctor dropped Jack off on a distant planet. As he turned once more to say his goodbyes, he gave Amy and River tight hugs, and one long- lasting one to the Doctor, before he turned and very seriously saluted Rory.
“Glad to see you got everything you wanted, Centurion. No man deserves it more. OH! By the way, here’s how to contact me. Let me know if you ever need anything. I still have that debt I owe you.” He gave Rory a card.
“I told you, you don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do. So much. To both of you,” He looked toward the Doctor.
“I think you and I are far beyond debts, Jack,” remarked the Time Lord. A look passed between them, and Jack nodded slightly before making his way out.
“Ladies, lovely to meet you. Looking forward to seeing you soon.”
“Oh, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing quite a bit of one another, Captain,” River couldn’t help adding.
“Counting on it.”
As they took off into the vortex, Amy and River turned to each other and laughed, delighted in the new friend they had made and the way one lone 51st Century immortal could fluster their husbands so easily. River couldn’t shake the feeling she somehow knew him, and Amy couldn’t deny the fact she was intrigued by the man who knew her husband and her Raggedy Man so well; plus she remembered an encounter with a future River and the Doctor, in which they had seemed so close with him.
It seemed that now that they’d met him, Captain Jack Harkness was here to stay.
If you do read it, please let me know what you think. This is my first serious attempt at the Captain. Thank you!
They were in a tavern on the third crater of Zulon, waiting for their husbands at the end of their girls’ day. River was trying to get her mother to ignore her injured ankle, which she had twisted running from a rabid creature known as an abaoun. Eventually, River had convinced the creature that a pond full of fish would be a better place to scout for a meal. Suddenly, a man approached them, tall, brunette, and with the distinct swagger of someone used to getting his way. River was married to a man with such a swagger.
“Can I buy you ladies a drink?”
River and Amy looked up.
“Only if you sit next to me,” said River flirtatiously.
“Love to. Gives me a chance to get to know you. And for you to get to know me.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Oh, I already know men like you.” Her voice dropped flirtatiously.
“Do you? What do you know about men like me?” He sat down in the stool next to River.
“One word- Trouble.” She turned toward him with a smile.
“Only to women like you, who I suspect like trouble.”
“Hmm. You have no idea,” she replied with a smirk.
“Waiting for someone in particular?” He glanced around to see if she was attached and to whom.
“Always.”
“Well-“
“Please, do not complete that sentence with “your waiting’s over.” And, Melody Pond- you’re married!” said Amy- quite irritable and flat out cranky after her long day.
Within an instant, both River and the man had their guns out and pointed at each other.
“Whoa. River, what’s happening?” Amy asked- suddenly very afraid for her daughter- who promptly ignored her.
“So I guess this means I won’t be getting a refill, then?” She stood protectively in front of her mother, judging the best way to disarm the flirtatious stranger.
“It means that just as soon as I get a clear shot I will drop you so fast the other patrons won’t know what happened.”
“Ha- That would be quite an accomplishment. And what did I do to warrant such special attention?”
“You killed a very good friend of mine.”
“Possible. I have been told I have psychopathic tendencies. And I am supposed to be in prison for murder.”
“Time off for good behavior?”
“More like an open- door policy. Well. I say open door. More like guards very willing to open closed ones with the… right persuasion.”
“Cute. I’ll almost feel bad about killing you.”
“Oh, you are fun. If the situation were different, I’d almost let you.”
“Well now, this little chat’s over. Care to move to your right a little? I know how attached Jem is to that particular chair. I’d hate to have to pay for it.”
“No no, I know Jem likes the mirror behind you. So please- if you could avoid falling back into that when you crash to the floor- he’d be most grateful.”
“River! Tell me, what’s-“
“Stay back, Mother. Obviously, this man is unstable. Thinks I killed his friend. And look at his eyes. He has absolutely no qualms about shooting me right now. If he thinks he can shoot faster than me, that is.”
“Wait- mother? River? She called you Melody Pond.” His confusion almost threw off his guard.
“Yes she did,” replied River- still not blinking at the weapon pointed at her.
“You’re the woman who killed the Doctor.”
“Only once,” said the Time Lord himself, entering the door behind them. “Besides- I got better.”
“Doctor?! Is that really you? Love the new look! How’ve you been?”
“Oh, you know- new worlds, new body, running, dying. Same ol’ same ol’. Though I’d feel a lot better right now if you’d stop pointing a gun at
my wife.”
“She’s the woman who- wait, what?!”
All of a sudden he felt the sting of a sword against his neck and a gun at his back.
“Oh, of course it would be you. Captain- would you do me a great favor and put down the gun you currently have pointed at my daughter?” said Rory, dad mode in high gear as the man turned his head slightly.
“Centurion! Looking good. So- I’m assuming the box opened for you eh?” He lowered the gun, holstering it with a look at Rory. Then he turned back to River.
“Well, now. Seeing as the Doctor and the Roman seem to trust you- Captain Jack Harkness. Hi,” the sometimes- Torchwood agent offered silkily, reaching out a hand toward River.
“Stop it,” growled the Doctor and Rory simultaneously.
“Doctor River Song. Tread lightly Captain. My husband gets ever so jealous.” River introduced herself with a smug smirk, holstering her own gun once more.
“Only means you’re worth getting jealous over,” added Jack seductively.
“Hmm. You have no idea.” Her voice lowered to match his.
“I’d be willing to learn.”
“I’ll bet you would.”
“Will someone please explain to me what’s going on?” asked a very confused and frustrated Amy Pond.
Jack turned toward her, smile dazzling- “Captain Jack Hark-“
“Don’t you even think about finishing that sentence, Jack.”
“I’m just saying hi, Centurion.”
“Well, I know what you mean when you ‘just say hi,’ and I won’t have you saying hi to my wife.”
“Your wife? The girl from the box?”
“Amy Pond,” offered Amy- smiling as she reached out to shake the Captain’s hand, who bent down and kissed it.
“Williams,” insisted Rory in this instance, sheathing the sword he’d brought when he’d called Amy midday and heard screaming.
“Now- can you please explain to me, Captain- how do you know my husband, and the Doctor, and why did you pull a gun on my daughter?” Amy asked, slightly less irritable now that amusement had begun to settle in.
Jack eyed her speculatively.
“You and the Centurion, huh? Definitely worth waiting for.”
He then turned his gaze to River.
“Nice daughter, too. Gorgeous. You sure you’re spoken for?”
“Completely,” said River, more than a little pleased at her husband’s face- although, she had to admit, had he not seemed slightly jealous, she would have had a different answer for the captain- just to test the Doctor’s boundaries.
“So, Captain, which sounds about as legitimate as my husband being a Doctor by the way, why do you keep calling my father Centurion?”
“Ah-“ interjected the Doctor, not realizing exactly where his wife was when he came to meet her, “Spoilers.”
“What’s that mean?” a confused Jack questioned.
“It means, River and I don’t always meet in the right order-“
“So you can’t give away each other’s timelines. Got it. Like another relationship I know of,” Jack said pointedly.
“Well- you and I are mostly linear,” the Doctor remarked offhandedly.
“You still haven’t answered how you know everyone,” commented Amy, very intrigued by this man who seemed to know so much about her friend and husband.
“Jack travelled with me- a long time ago. Got killed in a battle against the Daleks; my other companion took the Time Vortex into her head and brought him back- now he can’t ever die.”
“You mean, he’s like you two- he changes?”
“No, he means, no matter what happens- be it suffocation, getting shot, drowning, or getting hit by a ‘stray’ javelin, I don’t stay dead.” He glared at Rory.
“In my defense- it was stray! I figured I needed to know as many types of warfare as possible.”
“Javelins in the 20th Century?!”
“You try standing outside a box for a few millennia and see if you don’t get the smallest bit bored. Not that I wouldn’t do it again,” amended Rory, catching the slight hurt in his wife’s eyes. “River, suffice it to say, there was a point where I didn’t die for a few thousand years while I waited for Amy- I was dressed like a Roman Centurion because at the time it made sense. I met Jack after I accidently killed him. Twice.”
“Accidently- you aimed at my head!”
“You tried to open the box!”
“Well- I travelled with the Doctor. Something says ‘Do Not Enter,’ anyone who knows him knows- you enter!”
“So, what happened after that? He just was fine and you stopped killing him?”
“Basically… and then we sort of… hung out. For a century or five. He’s a timetraveller as well. It happened in a different order for me.”
“Let me tell you- the trouble this guy could get into.”
“I kept out of trouble…”
“Yeah, and there I was, to fix that. Anyway, speaking of trouble, Doc- explain to me how you have a wife like this and I don’t know about it.”
“Oh, it all happened so quickly- I met her, we went out for a few hundred years, then she made an honest man out of me.”
“So, how come I wasn’t invited to the wedding?”
“Alternate timeline. On top of an American Pyramid.”
“Ah- and her parents?”
“I can speak for myself, Captain. I’m part Time Lord- complicated gift of the time vortex-“
“I know the feeling.”
“Yes, well, I can regenerate. The rest is simple. I was kidnapped as a baby, brainwashed to kill the Doctor, used my remaining lives to bring him back once I did, then pretended to kill him again so the universe will stop chasing him. Meanwhile, I ran away from my trainers and grew up with my parents. See- simple,” she ended with a nonchalant shrug.
“So, basically, all I’m hearing is- the Doctor got married and I still haven’t thrown him a stag party!”
“NO- Jack. That’s not…” The Doctor didn’t know whose look to fear more- his friend’s or his wife’s.
“Mummy dear- the Captain has a point. Despite your own rather magnificent send off, you’re welcome again, I never got one of my own.”
“It just sounds so wrong when you say it like that,” remarked Rory, still thinking of the baby he’d held not so very long ago- a problem all father’s face, he just faced it a few decades early.
River, Jack, and Amy took over the conversation for a while, planning some type of party the Doctor was sure to regret. He especially regretted the fact that River was old enough to have a fairly sizeable list of his old friends. He was planning his escape when he was pulled out of his reverie by realizing the conversation had shifted.
“I’m sorry, Captain. You are very charming in your own right; you just make me inexplicably uncomfortable. Yet, it’s something I’ve felt before.
I can’t explain it. Are you sure you haven’t been to the third moon of Umbar?” asked River, confusion written across her features before Jack shook his head, also trying to remember any connection to the woman in front of him.
“Jack’s a fixed point. His immortality makes for a very unpleasant sensation in people who have time itself flowing through them. That probably accounts for the feelings you’re having, dear,” explained the Doctor, a slight thrill going through him at yet another reminder of his and his wife’s similarities.
“So, is that why he can remember Rory, even though you reset the universe?” asked Amy- upon whose lips River placed a finger, stopping her mother from wreaking even more damage on her foreknowledge.
“Probably.”
“You’d be surprised how many different times never existed that I remember. I was around for a year that never was- the Doctor really did look his age, then, unfortunately. I still felt the love though, Doc. Then there was this whole period where time stopped moving for quite a while. Funny- I joined a resistance group who were convinced something was wrong. Never met the leader, though I did help capture this woman who was said to have something to do with time colliding like it did. Nasty character. Madame indeed.”
He looked at the silent faces around him, realizing he must have said something wrong but totally ignorant of what.
“Something I said?”
“Like I said, Jack- alternate timeline. Churchill was the Emperor.”
“So you were there! And you didn’t even bother to look me up and say hi.” Jack faked offence.
“Bit busy,” the Doctor mumbled, then smiled when River took his hand.
“Anyway, I want to know more about this time you spent with my father, Jack,” said River anxiously.
They talked long into the night, finally retiring to the TARDIS where Rory and Jack used med bay supplies to heal Amy’s ankle. Rory continued to defend his character against the Captain’s innuendo and somewhat different memories while the Doctor took them into the vortex. They sat around in the comfy chairs room and the TARDIS suddenly started playing music.
“I’ve told that man that’s the jukebox, not a sweets machine a hundred times!” groaned River, making to get up.
“Oh, leave him. I like this song,” said Amy, swaying slightly to the music even as she turned her attention back to Jack.
They reminisced for a while longer until Rory suddenly heard one of his and Amy’s special songs; he pulled her up and waltzed lazily around the room, enjoying a quiet evening in after a full day of handling the Doctor all by himself.
Jack opened his arms and River accepted his invitation.
“I have a feeling you dance very well, Captain.”
“Well, I’ve been dancing for quite a while, Doctor Song. Gained a lot of experience.”
“Ah. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Well, what about you? Long life of a Time Lord,” he looked her up and down, smiled, and corrected himself, “Lady. You must have had quite a few private lessons in your time.”
“We can hear you,” reminded Rory grumpily.
River laughed heartily. “Actually, Mr. Harkness, my husband’s is the only name on my dance card.”
Amy and Rory’s heads both jerked up at that statement, not believing what they were hearing. They had spent a lifetime hearing Mels’ insinuations and flirtations, the rumors and her own suggestive boasts. Although, given who Mels was, they shouldn’t really be surprised that nothing was ever as it seemed with her.
Jack backed up, surprised. He spun River around with a look of shock on his face as she just laughed at everyone’s reactions.
“I don’t believe you- what about all those stories Amy was telling me about the wild girl from Leadworth? And you went to Luna U! Let me tell you, the anti- gravity parties alone…”
“Well, pushing boundaries isn’t the same as crossing them. Besides- I’ve been hearing stories about the Doctor since the day I was born. Even when they were training me to hate him, he was always so much more than a just a man to me. Then came the romanticized stories from Amy about a hero who could claim time itself. No one else would have ever compared.”
He pulled her into him once more, laughing light- heartedly.
“I believe that was the sound of my heart breaking, Mrs. Song.”
“Somehow I believe you’ll survive.”
“This is the third incarnation I’ve met of him where he knows me. If I could survive that-”
“Jack, are you trying to steal my wife now?” asked the Doctor as he sauntered into the room, smiling at one of his oldest (in more ways than one) friends.
“More like trying to steal my husband, dear,” River replied as the Doctor cut in rudely, grabbing her waist away from Jack and pulling her to him. “Careful, Captain. I’m an only child who doesn’t like to share my toys.” She winked before putting her arms around the Doctor’s neck, batting him on the shoulders for his possessive display.
“Now this is just unfair,” said Jack, smiling at the Doctor’s same possessiveness- a quality he had had slightly with Rose but had lacked when Jack had found him again travelling with Martha but which he secretly found endearing.
“Come dance with me, Jack,” offered Amy.
“Anytime,” he grinned, actually keeping a surprisingly chaste distance between the two of them as he remained conscious of the good friend off to the side he hadn’t expected to ever see again.
After a couple of days, during which armies were defeated, planets renamed, and the Doctor’s stag was thoroughly planned out much to his only slightly- feigned horror, the Doctor dropped Jack off on a distant planet. As he turned once more to say his goodbyes, he gave Amy and River tight hugs, and one long- lasting one to the Doctor, before he turned and very seriously saluted Rory.
“Glad to see you got everything you wanted, Centurion. No man deserves it more. OH! By the way, here’s how to contact me. Let me know if you ever need anything. I still have that debt I owe you.” He gave Rory a card.
“I told you, you don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do. So much. To both of you,” He looked toward the Doctor.
“I think you and I are far beyond debts, Jack,” remarked the Time Lord. A look passed between them, and Jack nodded slightly before making his way out.
“Ladies, lovely to meet you. Looking forward to seeing you soon.”
“Oh, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing quite a bit of one another, Captain,” River couldn’t help adding.
“Counting on it.”
As they took off into the vortex, Amy and River turned to each other and laughed, delighted in the new friend they had made and the way one lone 51st Century immortal could fluster their husbands so easily. River couldn’t shake the feeling she somehow knew him, and Amy couldn’t deny the fact she was intrigued by the man who knew her husband and her Raggedy Man so well; plus she remembered an encounter with a future River and the Doctor, in which they had seemed so close with him.
It seemed that now that they’d met him, Captain Jack Harkness was here to stay.
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-25 01:17 am (UTC)favorite line:
“I’ve told that man that’s the jukebox, not a sweets machine a hundred times!”
LOL! I literally giggled, quite loudly, in the middle of Starbucks. ;)
keep writing awesome!
no subject
Date: 2014-03-27 02:57 am (UTC)Second, thank you. Most people comment on the story, not on the style itself- which is very helpful. I'm glad you enjoyed it, especially the dialogue, which is my personal struggle!
Oo, and I got favourite lined! I love getting favourite lined! And to get a public reaction- you just made me blush!
I don't know if I will expand on this one directly, but I can definitely see the good Captain making a return visit one of these days.
Thank you again- reviews like this definitely inspire the desire to write more often!
no subject
Date: 2014-03-28 01:30 am (UTC)you're quite welcome, and thank you in turn for the helpful reply- now I know even more about how to write helpful comments for absolutely fabulous writers like yourself :)
::reconsiders inspiring more while gazing at daunting quantity of awesome fics of yours I still have left to read...:: ;)