Work Text:
Rewind
by Quinn Harper
Prologue
Captain Jack Harkness sat alone in his dark office behind his heavy, cluttered desk, the finely sculpted planes of his face lit by a small circle of light spreading out from the lamp at his elbow. Two exquisite crystal glasses, half filled with a mysterious amber liquid occupied a prime location both on the desk and in Jack’s mind. Those who knew him would likely have bet he was contemplating brandy but they’d have been wrong. Not that Jack hadn’t been known to indulge in a glass or bottle of brandy on occasion, just not tonight. Tonight was all about paying tribute to an old friend.
The team was all gone. He’d sent them home hours ago for various reasons. Tosh because she deserved a bit of time off after the fear and craziness she’d suffered today, not to mention her grandfather's big party. Jack smiled suddenly at the thought of the lovely Asian woman standing in the middle of her huge extended family throwing rice, her face alight with pleasure. It was a good thought.
Gwen he liked to send home whenever he could. She was the only one of them with a real, honest to goodness normal style life and Jack wanted to keep it that way. He honestly didn’t know how long she’d be able to hold it together. God knew he didn’t understand Rhys. If Gwen was his woman….Jack gave a twisted smile and lifted one of the glasses in a mocking toast. Of course she wasn’t his woman…but if she had been, he’d have had better things for his woman to do than to spend her days and nights with another man.
Owen had gone home to nurse his wound, loudly complaining about the hazards of the job and how he'd not figured on having to worry about being shot by one of his mates. Jack shook his head in wonder and took a drink. He would have lost that bet too, the whole cyber thing not withstanding.
Ianto...well, Jack didn't know why he'd sent Ianto home except that he'd desperately wanted a little time to himself, time to drink a toast to a real American hero, to collect himself and...and what?
“Sir…”
Jack started at the unexpected voice, the drink sloshing onto his hand. Was that Ianto? Yes, it had to be Ianto, because no one else ever called him ‘sir’. Besides, he knew the rest of team was off doing what the Torchwood team did on their time off. Of course, that didn’t explain why it was Ianto. Ianto was supposed to be gone with the rest of them.
Jack stood and headed into the other room to confirm his identification. Yes, it was Ianto, still impeccably dressed in a dark, tailored suit, crisp pink dress shirt, and stylish tie even this late hour. His impassive face was illuminated by the bank of glowing monitors arrayed before him that helped the team keep track of the pulse of the city, his voice as always, cool and carefully neutral. Jack wondered vaguely if it was the continual and deliberate attempt to keep him at a distance or a particular note in the polite voice that immediately set Jack on edge.
He sometimes thought it was truly astonishing that even after his role in that horrific fiasco with the cyber-Lisa Ianto could still come off as aloof rather than penitent. Jack supposed it could have been as much a defense against the condemnation of his teammates as anything but the Ianto puzzle still kept him awake nights, wondering how he could have missed something like that in his own house. He lived here for God’s sake and had never suspected a thing. And maybe that was what really grated; maybe that’s what fascinated him about Ianto still – that there were unexplored depths to him, things he kept secret from the team, kept secret even from his commanding officer. That thought made Jack grin wryly even as he surveyed the pin-sharp tea boy, as Owen liked to call him. //Pot, kettle, black, Jack.//
Except that he was their commanding officer. He was supposed to have secrets from his team. They were the men in the trenches, so to speak and they were most assuredly not to have secrets from him. Secrets kept from him had tragic consequences that took a long time to overcome...if ever...if it was even possible. In some ways, Jack knew, the team would never be the same again.
He was so lost in mulling over the question of whether the healing process would build a stronger bond of trust among them or simply create festering wounds over time that Jack didn’t hear Ianto’s next words, forcing the other man to repeat the question a bit more sharply. “Sir, what did you and Tosh do when you went back in time?”
“We danced,” Jack replied, with a absent shrug. It was just dangerous when your people kept secrets. You never knew when those secrets would come inconveniently popping out.
“Is that all?” Ianto asked expressionlessly, glancing across the room to meet Jack’s narrowed gaze.
“No,” Jack said and crossed his arms over his chest. “We had drinks as well. Come on, Ianto. Spit it out. What is this all about?”
“Well, sir…” Ianto said. “I think you changed history.”
Jack flinched visibly, the words triggering a surge of rage deep in his gut and he stalked across the room, nearly vibrating with his anger. “That’s. Not. Possible.” He said very quietly, unconsciously using the size of his body to intimidate the other man. “Not. Possible.”
“I see,” Ianto murmured, remaining disappointingly remote and unintimidated. “Well then perhaps you have another explanation for why this photo has changed? Sir.” He tacked on the ‘sir’ as though it were an afterthought and Jack glowered at him, still simmering. But the rage soon gave way to a helpless sense of melancholy. It was just that he had so badly wanted to do just that. If there had been anything he could have done to save Captain Jack Harkness....he shivered, recalling the way the Captain had stood there, watching Jack walk away, and then the crisp military salute, and then nothing but dust and memories.
Jack swallowed the bittersweet images and leaned over Ianto’s shoulder to look at the bank of monitors, standing close enough to feel the heat radiating from the other man. A jolt of shock stole the breath from his body and he blinked and straightened as he stared at the sepia tones of the picture glowing faintly on the computer screen. “What the hell?” He muttered. “Where did you get this?”
“I found a picture of the manager of the dancehall when we were trying to find out what happened to you and Toshiko, sir,” Ianto explained. “I was just getting ready to close it down when I realized the picture and article in the newspaper had changed. That looks a bit like you, sir, and you are mentioned in the article….”
Jack stared blindly at the picture of the two men locked in a passionate embrace and was temporarily transported back to that night in midst of the Cardiff Blitz when he’d met, danced with and kissed his namesake, the man who was fated to die the following day. “This is…impossible…” Jack murmured, dazed, switching his gaze to the photo that was lined up next to the one of the couple. It was a head and shoulders shot of the original Captain Jack Harkness, smiling with boyish abandon at the camera. He stared at both pictures for a long time, feeling a ripple of heat at the expression on the Captain’s face. He’d known on one level but perhaps not truly realized what that night had meant to the other man but the look on his face made it clear he’d been transformed.
It took him a while to get to reading the article. He’d been putting it off, assuming it would be the story of a hero fallen in battle, of how he’d courageously fought the Meschershmits, buying his rookie section time to escape…but it wasn’t. If it wasn’t the farthest thing from that, it was close to it. Jack grabbed at the edge of the desk to keep from falling over with the shock as he read.
‘Captain Jack Harkness, former war hero is awaiting trial on charges of high treason. The American volunteer was arrested early this evening when word of the fate of his section was received in the home office. According to a lady quite close to the officer, Harkness was supposed to be having a night out with his crew at the Ritz Dance Hall before their final training flight the following morning. He was, however, observed engaging in conduct unfitting to an officer. Consequently, his section refused to fly with him again. Harkness was grounded, awaiting a new assignment while his section continued with their final test flight. Tragically, the section unexpectedly met with three wings of Meschershmits. The entire section was slaughtered. The home office is investigating the possibility that Harkness arranged the incident to avoid the German’s he knew would be coming. There appears to be ample evidence that Harkness was working with the enemy, including the appearance of a mysterious couple at the Ritz. Witnesses state that the man was in partial uniform, possibly a deserter, and was accompanied by a woman of Nippon descent. The manager, Bilis Manger confirmed that the Japanese woman spent considerable time with one of the pilots discussing map coordinates and drafting equations, lending further weight to the treason charge. The penalty for treason is death.’
Numb and confused, Jack fell back, looked at the picture again, and shook his head. “But that’s not what happened. He died but they all lived. They all lived. And he was a hero. What in the hell happened??” He started pacing, gnawing absently at a thumbnail. “Ianto, this doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t possible.”
Ianto nodded sagely. “Yes, sir,” he agreed. “Not possible. I understand.”
Jack barely registered the ironic comment, too deeply wracked by guilt to care. He shook his head again in denial. "That can’t be right,” he insisted. “Cross check the story.”
“Yes sir.” Ianto snapped into action, quickly cross matching the story across several publications and following it to its conclusion. “Well, here’s some good news, sir. Captain Harkness was eventually exonerated.”
Jack shot him a dark, speaking glance and skimmed the article. The Captain was sufficiently overwhelmed by guilt and grief following the incident with his section to convince someone in the head office that he hadn't deliberately set out to be grounded that day. That along with a complete lack of any hard evidence to point toward collusion led the head office to eventually drop the treason charge. The Captain pled temporary insanity to explain his encounter with Jack away and married Nancy, who had so bravely stood by his side to the end, to prove his point. Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. He was very much afraid Nancy and Captain Jack had wound up siring a whole pack of little Jacks and none of this was ever supposed to have happened.
Jack stared at the wedding photo in the paper. The Captain looked twenty years older, frail and haunted, his eyes sunken, his cheeks hollow. Nancy, in contrast was thriving. She practically glowed in her no nonsense wedding suit.
“This can't have happened,” Jack whispered, unaware he’d spoken the words out loud. "I can't be responsible for this."
"Well, sir, it does appear to be an isolated incident," Ianto observed, sorting through several screens of data and cross checking for consistency with the current timeline. "Nothing fundamental in our present has changed."
Jack looked at him for a long, silent moment. "Ianto...think about that. 12 men who weren't supposed to die died. One man who was supposed to die didn't. How can that not have had a ripple effect? It's probably triggered an anomaly of some sort...keep looking." For a split second, Jack thought of the Doctor with a bittersweet longing. He seemed fully capable of running amok through history, changing things at will and he never had problems like this. Of course, he was a Time Lord. Probably that gave him some special power to alter events or to know what could be changed and what shouldn't be messed with. Or maybe he frankly didn't care.
Ianto shook his head. "The rift appears to have stabilized and I don't see anything else gone wrong, sir."
A long moment of silence fell between them while Jack considered the situation and eventually came up empty. He had no idea what to do at this point.
"I thought I sent you home?" he finally observed.
To his credit, Ianto didn't miss a beat. "Yes, sir. Just clearing a few things up here. A lot happened today."
Jack grunted, an audible non-reply, and blew out his breath on a sigh. "Right...well, keep an eye on things and let me know if anything changes." He turned and headed to his office with single minded purpose. He had to get out. The memories were too fresh, too close, pressing in on him mercilessly, all mixed up with a sickening sensation of guilt underlaid by a wholly incomprehensible secret pleasure in the knowledge that the real Captain Jack had lived after all. He snatched his coat off the hook in his office and shrugged into the enveloping gray folds as he strode through the main room toward the door.
"Where are you going, sir?" Ianto called, his voice clearly betraying his surprise at seeing Jack so soon again and so obviously on the way out.
"Out," Jack shot back without hesitating. "I'm going out, Ianto."
A heavy beat of silence and then Ianto's voice came down the corridor after him. "Very good, sir. I'll just keep an eye on things here."
Involuntarily, Jack smiled. //You do that...//
end prologue