Fic: Mercy of the Fallen (1/4)

[tardis_stowaway]

Title:  Mercy of the Fallen (1/4)
Author:  TARDIS_stowaway
Rating:  Teen
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Nine, Jack/Ten, Jack/original character
Spoilers:  Through Children of Earth and The Waters of Mars.
Warnings:  Descriptions of violence
Disclaimer:  I am not the BBC.  The Doctor, Jack, and all other characters you recognize are not mine.
Summary:   If wishes were horses, this spaceship would be even more crowded and smelly. Trying to escape his past, Jack instead comes face to face with it in the form of the Doctor, on the run from his own recent tragedies. 

Author's notes:  Bottomless thanks and cookies go to my fantastic beta reader, wendymr .  Her patience is every bit as impressive as her super beta skills.  The title comes from the Dar Williams song of the same name.  You can listen to it via YouTube here.

 

Chapter 1

Parnialus Station, Earth year 2012

Jack Harkness opened the door to the reactor control chamber, sending acrid smoke flooding into the corridor where he stood.  He doubled over coughing and nearly turned away.  Anyone in there should be dead.  Still, someone had been alive in that chamber a few moments ago, working to stabilize the overloading reactor core from this level while Jack had worked on it from the space station’s bridge, which he'd commandeered immediately after the first explosion.  Comms were down, so he’d never found out the name of the engineer, but their combined efforts had saved the lives of every man, woman, child, and sentient robot on this outpost.  The reactor would now hold long enough for a full evacuation with time to spare, time enough to attempt even this fairly hopeless rescue mission. 

Jack stepped into the chamber, a jumble of collapsed equipment hellishly lit by flames and flashing mauve light. He felt the sting of radiation from the damaged reactor.  Bodies of the crew slumped here and there like abandoned dolls.  Jack could barely see through the smoke, and the ominous creaking from the ceiling suggested that a cave-in might be on hand.  It was a nightmare world, not at all what he’d been expecting when he arrived at this station for a little shore leave.
 

*            *            *            *            *            *            *

Starship Rambler Belle, twelve hours earlier

 
“There she is.  Parnialus Station.”  Captain Suriana Pollves gestured grandly at the window.  A rather utilitarian-looking space station was just coming into view orbiting over a planet covered with aggressive swirling clouds.

“Your home, right?” asked Jack Harkness. (That wasn't the name he'd given Suriana or anyone else for the past two years, nor was it his birth name, but however much he tried to change, that was still how he thought of himself.)  

 “That’s what my paperwork says.”  She shrugged.  “My clan’s there, and I love them even when I want to throw them out the airlock.  The food’s less terrifying than some of the places where we dock, since most people there are Meeviopites like me.  It's always a treat to visit Parnialus, but the station ain’t home.  Ever since I was an itty-bitty thing my feet have been itching for the stars.  This station, it’s nice, but it’s dull. The ‘bots bring ore up from Parnial—that’s the planet—we ship it out, that’s about it.  It’s a nice place to raise a family, real safe and friendly, but I prefer this ship.  Even if she did lose gravity right in the middle of dinner time.”  The last phrase was spoken loudly and with an emphatic thump on the instrument panel, as if to make sure the ship heard.  The Rambler Belle wasn’t AI, at least Jack didn’t think so, but that didn’t deter Suriana from talking to it.  Suriana would probably make friends with a rock if nothing else were available, chatting away in her folksy accent of Galactic Standard that Jack found adorable, if occasionally difficult to interpret. 

“Understood.  What’s the plan for when we dock?” 

“We unload, then you’ve got two nights of leave.  I’ll spend tomorrow making deliveries, checking on the goods I’ve already arranged to buy, and looking through the markets for any extra bargains.  The next morning you help restock supplies and get the new payload in.  I hope you’re up to exploring on your own, ‘cause I have someone else I want to spend those two nights with.”

Jack laughed.  “I see how it is.  A sweetheart in every port, huh?”

Suriana swatted at his arm.  “You rascal!  It’s not the same here as at Xolmch.  These people are special.”

“People?  Figures that it takes more than one to satisfy you when I’m not around,” Jack leered.

Suriana rolled her eyes, which were set just a little too far apart to be human.  “Oh, they’ll have me tired out by the end, believe me.”

“Shall we get a head start?” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and drawing her against him.

“Sure thing—as soon as you’ve finished the inventory of those lamps we picked up on Xolmch like you said you would.  Parnialus is a bit too cramped to want much of the big furniture, but the built-in lighting’s lousy so they’ll buy every lamp we have, plus all those Tsoo vases. Tsoo-period ceramics are all the rage with the collectors around here.  Pre-spaceflight Raxacorricofallapatorian stuff would've sold even better, but just try getting any of that in this quadrant without paying with more arms and legs than I happen to possess….”

Jack held up his hand.  Suriana could go on about her antique business for hours if given an excuse.  “I’ll go do that inventory now so we can make time for more interesting activities.  I suggest you clear your schedule.”  He ran a hand down her back and let it rest on her bum. 

“Nuh-uh.  The captain gets to make the plans, and last I checked I'm the only one who gets to be captain on this ship.” 

“Understood, ma’am.”  Jack saluted cheerfully.  He liked not being captain. Captains were responsible when things went wrong.  He was responsible for moving heavy objects, maintenance, odd jobs, and keeping Suriana occupied. He was good at all of those, and a small interstellar antiques business didn’t produce many more complicated problems.

“That’s right, cabin boy.” She smirked.  “Now that that's settled, I like your proposal.  See you in an hour.”

She planted a kiss on his lips.  Jack responded with enthusiasm. 

“One more thing.  If you’re leaving, I’d appreciate if you tell me.”

Jack gaped at her.  “Who said I was leaving?” 

“I’m not blind, you know.  Whenever I've mentioned stops after this one, you start looking all closed down.  You came with good references, but you didn’t work with any of them for more than a few weeks.  You’ve been with me two months. If now’s the time you gotta go, fine.  Don’t just leave me wondering where you got to when it comes time to load up.  It’ll slow up my schedule and drive me six sorts of crazy with wondering what sort of trouble you found.”

“I…haven’t decided yet,” Jack said, truthfully.  He knew he should leave soon, before he got any more comfortable and attached than he already was, but he didn’t really want to, not just yet.  Despite her warm personality, Suriana didn’t ask too many questions, and she was tough and capable.  He needed to be around people who weren’t easily broken. 

None of his Torchwood team had been fragile, and it hadn't saved them.  He should really go before Suriana went the way of Ianto and all the others who'd gotten too close to him.  Still, it wouldn't hurt to put it off one more stop, would it?  His time with Suriana had been his longest stretch without major trouble since he left Earth, and there was no reason it was likely to end just yet.

“That’s fine, sugar," Suriana assured him.  "You’re welcome here as long or as short as you like.  Just figure it out soon, and whatever you choose, do try not to get arrested or blow anything up while we’re here.”

 

*            *            *            *            *            *            *

 

Parnialus Station

 An instrument panel exploded, showering Jack with sparks.  Giving up and retreating, Jack stumbled over an arm.  One of the bodies had moved.  Somehow, the person was alive and dragging himself across the floor.  Jack heaved the survivor over his shoulder  with the strength of adrenaline and staggered out into the corridor, sealing the door behind him.  He hurried through the corridors until he found an emergency equipment storage locker.  The man over his shoulders wasn’t breathing regularly, so Jack set his charge on the floor and jammed a breathing mask over his face as quickly as possible.  While the oxygen started flowing, Jack beat out the sparks from the man’s charred shoulder-length hair and battered dark clothes. 

Checking his patient’s wrist, Jack felt a pulse racing strangely…but the people on this station, however close to human they looked, were mostly Meeviopites. Jack had never felt Suriana’s pulse do anything like this, but he didn’t know what changes might happen under stress, nor did he know what constituted normal for any of the other humanoid species that might be present here.  The man still wasn’t breathing, though, and that couldn’t be right.   Time to see if mouth-to-mouth worked on this species.  Before Jack could pull off the breathing mask, however, the man suddenly took a huge gasping breath, then another.  After a third breath he opened his eyes, the only part of his face visible through the breathing mask.  Jack’s jaw dropped.   

The eyes were ice blue and deep enough to drown in.  Jack knew; he’d done it before.  Right now, those familiar eyes were practically sparking with fury. 

The Doctor yanked off the breathing mask and tossed it aside.  “What the hell did you do that for?” he growled. 

“I just saved your life!” Jack said, feeling rather surprised by that fact himself.  The smoke in the reactor chamber and the breathing mask (and wasn’t that funny given how Jack had met this Doctor?) out here had kept him from getting a good look at the Doctor’s soot-darkened face.  No wonder he hadn’t recognized him under that mysteriously long hair and without his trademark leather jacket…and something else he’d never seen this Doctor without.  “Where’s Rose?” Jack said, tensing himself to dash back into the fire.

“Rose…friend of yours?  If she was in there, she’s dead.  I’m sorry.”  The Doctor’s voice was brusque but sympathetic, without a trace of recognition.  “Don’t go charging in there after her.  It was stupid enough coming after me.  You coulda been killed.” 

“You’re not the only one tougher than he looks, Doctor,” Jack said wryly.

The Doctor examined Jack with new interest.  Suddenly his eyes widened as he pressed back against the wall, farther from Jack.  An unconscious movement, probably.  “What are you?” 

Jack allowed himself a second to close his eyes and swallow before trying to speak.  Of course.  Even not knowing him, the Doctor could see.  “A fixed point.  That’s what you’ll tell me, later.  A friend.” 

The Doctor nodded, accepting the twisted timelines with the smoothness of an experienced time traveler, though his guarded posture suggested that he didn’t yet trust Jack completely, or perhaps was just thoroughly discomfited by Jack’s immortality.  Then his face shifted, growing pinched.  “Do I do this to you?” 

“No!” Jack insisted.  “It was an accident.  A mistake—not yours—and it was made out of love.”  Remembering Rose and what little the Doctor had eventually told him about the events on the Game Station, Jack felt a little guilty at how often he’d cursed his immortality lately.  Only a little, though. 

Whatever made up its surface, the road to hell led to the same place.  He could never blame Rose, and he'd given up blaming the Doctor for this particular problem, but sometimes good people did bad things.  (And sometimes not-so-good people who were trying to be better did things so unspeakably awful that they could never atone, but that was another issue.) 

The Doctor didn’t look entirely convinced at this exoneration, but he let it slide.  “I can forget this meeting if I need to avoid a paradox.”

“Thanks.”  Jack stuck out his hand.  “Captain Jack Harkness.”

“Captain, eh?  What sort of ship?” The Doctor shook Jack’s hand firmly.  Jack mentally kicked himself for using that title in his introduction rather than the pseudonym Suriana and his other recent acquaintances knew him by, but it felt wrong to give the Doctor a name other than the one he’d held in the TARDIS.  Also, his current pseudonym would raise questions of its own.

“It’s an honorary title at the moment.”  Jack had thought about getting a ship, but if he had the freedom of his own transport it would be too tempting to go back to Earth, just to check on the people he’d left behind.  He dared not do that.  Besides, Jack suspected he was harder to track as a hitchhiker or hired hand than a ship owner (even a hitchhiker who occasionally found himself in charge of averting disaster…some habits were hard to break).  Anonymity was important. He’d been avoiding the pinstriped Doctor for over two years now. (Or was it three?  More?  He didn’t really know how long it had been since he’d left Earth, and he didn’t care.)  A Doctor who didn’t know him yet, on the other hand, would have no lectures he didn’t need or sympathy he couldn’t bear.

The lights in the corridor flickered, and somewhere nearby a warning klaxon sounded. “We should go.  It’s not safe here, and the evacuation fleet won’t wait for me forever.  Where’d you park the TARDIS?”

“Deck five, storage area three.”

Jack drew back.  “Shit.  One of the explosions vented through there.  The hull breached and everything in that storage area that wasn’t destroyed was sucked into space.”

“What?” The Doctor stood up faster than Jack would have thought possible and raced to the nearest computer terminal.  “No no no!  It can’t be.”  He typed frantically, scanning the space station for the TARDIS.  The scans came up blank.  The Doctor used some harsh language Jack had never heard from him before and ran the scans again…and again…and again. 

The Doctor turned to Jack, his expression terribly empty.  His voice broke a little as he said, “She’s all I have left.” 

“Hey,” Jack said, taking the Doctor by the shoulders with both hands.  “The TARDIS could have survived that explosion, right?  The station’s sensors can’t be functioning at full power with all those reactor problems.  We’ll get on one of the evacuation ships.  You can get some better scanners and find the TARDIS floating around out there.  No problem.”  He couldn’t resist tucking a lock of the Doctor’s charred hair behind his ear.  (So odd to see that familiar face softened by long hair!  He wondered when and why the Doctor cut it.)  Jack smiled confidently, though he was deeply unsettled to see the Doctor so fragile.  He hadn’t seen this incarnation of the Doctor like this except for their last day together, when they’d thought Rose was dead and then discovered the Dalek fleet.   

“Of course,” the Doctor said, shaking himself.  He ran one last scan, then dashed off towards the ship docks without warning.  Jack followed.

 

*            *            *            *            *
 

The docks were crowded with frightened people and their baggage, but the life support system was stable on this deck and the mood stopped short of panic.  Jack allowed himself just a moment of pride for helping to buy them this time to evacuate.  It hadn’t been enough to save those engineers in the reactor control room, though.   Never quite fast enough, never quite smart enough, never quite good enough…but those thoughts were nothing new, and this wasn’t the time to go through them again.  He scanned the crowd.

“We’re looking for Captain Suriana Pollves,” Jack informed the Doctor.  “Blond hair, almost my height, that sort of orange-ish skin the Meeviopites have sometimes that looks like a really bad fake tan, tough enough to beat a yeti in a fistfight, great smile. Drives a cute little merchant ship called the Rambler Belle.” Some sort of ingrained response to the presence of this version of the Doctor, a vision from what now seemed like an impossibly innocent time in Jack’s life, prompted him to add,  “She’s my latest ride, in more ways than one.” 

The Doctor rolled his eyes.  That, Jack thought, was a good sign.  The Doctor had outwardly recovered quickly from the bleak moment in the corridor.  An even better sign was the woman waving at him from across the crowd. 

“Harry!  Get your pretty ass over here!” she called in Jack’s direction.   

“Harry?  That’s not the name you gave me,” the Doctor said as they elbowed their way through the crowd. 

Jack sighed.  This was going to be embarrassing.  “You’ll know me as Jack.  I needed a new name when I started traveling on my own a while back.  I hadn’t put much thought into it until someone asked me, and I spat out the first thing that came to mind.”      

“Got a surname to go with Harry?”

Jack muttered something unintelligible.   

“What was that?”

Looking at the floor as an alternative to the Doctor, Jack muttered slightly louder, “Potter.” 

The Doctor barked with laughter.  Jack was about to snap something back, but he was finally within reach of Suriana.  She swept Jack into a crushing hug.

 “By goddess Eopi’s tits, you certainly took your time, Potter!  Thought we were going to have to leave without even knowing if you were alive.” 

The Doctor was still sniggering. Jack reached a hand behind his back to flip off the Doctor out of Suriana’s view. He really should have changed his name again, but it hadn’t mattered since he’d taken to the skies,  It had been nice to spend time with aliens who knew Earth only as a low-tech backwater planet that occasionally provided amusement by defeating some of the galaxy’s bullies.  People out here recognized neither his name nor his sins.

“Suriana!  Am I glad to see you!  I want you to meet the Doctor.  He’s a friend of mine, and he needs a lift.”

Suriana raised an eyebrow.  “Oh, I see.  You’re late because you were out picking up men,” she teased.

“Only in the most literal sense,” the Doctor quipped. “Carried me out of a burning room, he did.”  Jack would never cease to be amazed by the Doctor’s lightning-quick mood swings.  Ten minutes ago he seemed on the verge of an emotional breakdown, and now he was bantering (and laughing at Jack’s latest pseudonym, but Jack deserved that).

Looking over the bedraggled Time Lord, Suriana told him sympathetically, “Don’t worry, honey.  We’ll find space for you somewhere.  Ro and Lavit are already sharing the spare bedroom, but I can put you on the lounge couch and make Nylia a hammock in the cargo hold.  She’ll like that.”

“Who are these other passengers?” Jack asked.  It had been just him and Suriana on the little ship since she took him on in the Horsehead Nebula two months back, and Jack had liked it that way.  Despite her trade in antiques, Suriana lived very much in the moment, which meant that she let Jack’s past stay in the past. Her company was easy and without emotional demands, which was the only reason he'd let himself stay in one situation for so long.  Other passengers would bring complications and questions.  At least that would make it easier for him to move on at the next port, as he should. 

“Ro!  Bring your sibs and get over here!” Suriana bellowed.  “Harry, Doctor, I want you to meet my kids.  These are the special people I was visiting.”

Kids?  Jack reeled.  She’d said her clan was here, but she'd never mentioned kids.  Then again, Meeviopite families tended to be complex and loose.  Without regard to gender, those not inclined toward day-to-day parenthood let relatives do most of the childrearing and contributed something else to the clan instead. 

Three tow-headed children, two boys and a girl, slipped out of the crowd.  A sick feeling took root in Jack’s stomach, growing up through his throat like a choking vine and blossoming into a white haze of pain behind his eyes.  Suriana was introducing the kids, but he couldn’t hear her.  He couldn’t hear anything around the terrible whistling in his ears, except it wasn’t whistling but screaming.   Steven's screaming—the strange, high drone of his death—filled Jack's mind until there was room for nothing else.  The eldest boy was just about Steven’s height and build, and he was looking up at Jack with an expression of eager trust.  Suddenly he couldn’t stop imagining what Suriana’s sunny face would look like tear-streaked and furious, and it was all too much. 

“I can’t do this,” he burst out, spinning on his heels and walking away without a thought to direction. 

“Harry, don’t be like that,” Suriana pleaded, following him.  “They’re no trouble.  They live with my sister so they can go to school here, but during holidays they’re with me, so they know their way around a ship.”

“You don’t understand,” Jack pleaded.  “I shouldn’t….I can’t….”  He fought to breathe, though he wasn’t quite sure why he made the effort.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, full of concern.

“Everything!”  Jack pulled away from Suriana’s comforting hands and stormed off.   

He got away from Suriana, but before he got much farther the Doctor materialized in front of him.

“You’re going to tell me what that was about,” he said, quietly but firmly.  When Jack  tried to dodge away, the Doctor moved with him.  “Not here, not now, but we’re going to get on a different ship, and before we get off again you’re going to tell me.” 

“Uh-uh,” said Jack, collecting himself enough to speak.  “We find a ship, we find the TARDIS, you leave.  You forget me.  You don’t need to know about this, not yet.”

“I don’t need to know, but I think you need to tell,” the Doctor said, trying to meet Jack’s evasive gaze. 

Jack ignored that.  “We’ll start checking with smaller ships—they’ll be more willing to take a detour to pick up the TARDIS—and go from there.”  He set off toward the closest ship, gazing straight ahead.

“You’re running from something, Jack,” accused the Doctor.

“I know that.  I learned it from the champion,” Jack spat.  The Doctor’s face grew stormy.  They spoke no more of it for the time.

 

*            *            *            *            *            *

 

Umorth Mining Colony, two years earlier

 

 It was the sort of port where having enough money to drink oneself to death was about the best a person could hope for, and that suited Jack just fine.  There were at least a dozen species here, but their faces all blended together under the worn-out expressions and coatings of thick black dust.  Jack's feet trudged along to the same tired beat as the other miners.  He disappeared underground for twelve hours a day and made himself as unmemorable as possible the rest of the time.   

No one he knew would ever find him here among the debtors and the desperate who took jobs on this godforsaken moon.  That was why he chose Umorth as his place to disembark from the ship that gave him a lift away from Earth.  He'd move on eventually, before anyone noticed that his failure to die of black lung or hopelessness crossed the line from unusual to impossible.  For now, though, this was the right place for him.  He had no responsibilities beyond the most menial, and no one depended on him for anything other than pulling his share of the dreary work.

Every day he rode the rickety lift down with his team, then trudged through the maze of drilled tunnels and natural caves to the spot they'd been assigned to mine for the veins of rare minerals. In most civilizations advanced enough to set up a colony on an atmosphere-free moon like this, tasks as punishing and menial as this mining would be left to robots, but Umorth's intense electromagnetic field meant that sufficiently shielded equipment was far costlier than living laborers. The work was backbreaking enough that he didn't have to think of anything else during that time. Every night he lay awake for hours, going over his memories of Ianto, Steven, Tosh, Owen, and all the others he'd lost, trying to burn every detail of them into his brain like a brand, an agonizing scar that he'd be able to keep until the end of time.  When and if he fell asleep, he dreamed terrible dreams and woke up sweating or shouting, but he was hardly the only man in the dormitory with demons in his past.  He just didn't let on that his were larger and stranger than the average.

Jack saw his first body about a week after he arrived.  It was wrapped in a tarp and dumped unceremoniously on top of a cart full of ore arriving from the deep levels of the mine.  He initially assumed that some miner had succumbed to the black lung during their shift, but that theory of ordinary death was disproved when he was assigned to unload the body and take it to the crematorium.  He took one end of the tarp and Vig took the other, but the body was so light Jack could have lifted it alone.  This wasn't some scrawny species, though; the booted foot that sagged out of the tarp was huge, attached to a brawny ankle.  Viscous red-orange blood dripped out onto Jack's hands. 

Jack's expression hardened even further.  He bit back the urge to ask questions.  These people were not his responsibility.  It would be better for everyone if he didn't interfere.

Not questioning or interfering was made easier by the fact that he wasn't quite fluent in the local language.  People here spoke Galactic Standard, which was ostensibly the same language he'd grown up speaking, but three thousand years had made a huge difference in the language.  Among other changes, those three thousand years included humankind's expansion to the stars and the subsequent cross-pollination of Standard with words from English, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Arabic, and more.  He'd studied a bit of archaic Standard in Time Agent training, enough to have a conversation without resorting to the wrist strap's translator, but the awkwardness of it was yet another reason to avoid other people.  Jack was quick with languages, so that excuse wouldn't last more than a few months, but he used it for the time being. 

It didn't take long for Jack to see another body, then a third.  Despite his best efforts to remain apart from the other miners, he began to hear rumors that something lurked in the deep levels of the mines, never seen but leaving unmistakable signs of its presence in the form of half-eaten corpses and missing people.   

"They know it’s down there, Management does.  They know, and they won’t do a thing about it. They won’t even put in proper lights in the deep levels.  Blokes down there only have the lamps they carry.  Cheaper to replace miners than install new circuits.  I think management likes having it living down there, because if anyone starts getting ideas above their station, they can be transferred to whatever deep level the thing’s been active on," said Jack's teammate Brodirn.   

"Yeah, except the levels keep getting higher and higher.  They'll have to do something when it's hitting us everywhere," Ap'ha said, sounding like he was trying to reassure himself.

"It's killing more often too.  Used to be maybe one or two a month, now it's every few days, but Management doesn't care.  As long as it stays in the tunnels, they don't give a damn.  It's easier for them to keep the rumors of this thing from spreading off world than to track that thing down in the maze," Quavt said, staring gloomily into zir beer.   

Jack reminded himself again that this was Somebody Else's Problem.  These people were mostly headed for a short and unpleasant life anyway.  He wasn't in charge of tracking down monsters here.  Why bother tracking down monsters anyway, when there were always more?

A bit over a month after his arrival, Jack's team was transferred to level 80, deep in the bowels of the mine.  The other six miners were hurling accusations of misbehavior at each other, looking for a scapegoat to explain their misfortune.  Jack just shouldered his tools and waited for them to come around to the inevitable.  Trying to resist the assignment would bring bad consequences much more certain than the mystery monster that might or might not eat them.  He idly wondered whether coming back to life after being devoured by a monster would be easier or harder than coming back after exploding.  He suspected that coming back from a half-eaten corpse wouldn't be quite so bad, but what if the creature ate the majority of him?  Would he resurrect in the beast's guts instead? 

The air was fouler in the deep levels of the mine, the tunnels narrower, and the workers already down there projected an aura of fear even more powerful than their exhaustion.  They always, always moved in teams, not even going off alone to piss.  There were no lights but the miners’ lanterns and headlamps. Three days after their transfer, Jack called out for Brodirn to pass the pulse chisel.  No one answered.  He focused his light where Brodirn had been working, a few steps away at the end of their small group.  There was no one there, just a trail of blood glinting wetly on the floor.  Jack shouted, and the team charged down the corridor, waving lights and equipment.   

When they found Brodirn, his ribcage had been ripped open and his torso hollowed out.  Jack saw the bite marks on his face and legs, automatically estimating the size and shape of the jaws that had seized him (over half a meter wide at the base of a blunt muzzle, wedge-like teeth maybe seven centimeters long).  Whatever had killed him was already gone. Vig, the biggest, most-thuggish person on the team, retched.  Jack grabbed Quavt and went to fetch a cart.  He’d seen worse.  Frequently, worse had been his own body.

Before the team went to bed, a message arrived from Management that their morning assignment was to head back to the exact same spot that Brodirn had died.  The ore didn't vanish because of some bloodstains on the ground. 

"What do we do?" Quavt asked in a hushed voice.  "Do we just let it pick us off, one by one?"

Their eyes roamed among each other, eventually all settling on Jack.  He had never made any move toward leadership, hardly saying a word except when spoken to.  Yet somehow, they were all looking to him to save their lives.  He supposed it was his age.  He'd once assumed the way people just listened to the Doctor was mostly due to the Doctor being a Time Lord and a genius, but as the decades of Jack's life had grown unnaturally long, he'd realized that his own already impressive charisma seemed to be growing.  People unconsciously sensed great age and assumed it meant authority.   That phenomenon had been useful in running Torchwood, but not useful enough, and it was damn inconvenient now.

"What else can we do?" Jack said, refusing to meet their eyes.  Nobody had an answer.

That night, he dreamt that he was feeling his way through thick fog.  A shriek tore open the silence, and a dark shape loomed out of the fog.  It was the 456, horrible heads waving wildly in and out of visibility.  A wave of dread broke over Jack; he knew with the certainty of dreams that it was about to show him the captive child that he had given it so many years ago.  He tried to move away, but found himself frozen in place.  The alien shifted, revealing not a child but Brodirn attached to its body, accusing eyes staring at Jack.

“You gave us to them,” Brodirn accused, but his voice was high as a child’s. 

“No!” Jack shook his head vehemently.  “I did nothing.”

“Exactly,” Ianto’s voice whispered in his ear.  Jack whipped around, but his lover was nowhere to be seen.  He took a step, and that was when he found Ianto.  He was lying on the ground, wearing miner’s gear, a bloody gape where his chest had been.

Jack woke with a gasp almost as sharp as a resurrection.  He pulled the scratchy blanket over his head and tried to think of nothing, or maybe of ore and cheap ale and whatever else normal miners thought of, anything but responsibility and death.  He really, really tried.  It didn't work.

When the team met the next morning, faces gray (or other species-appropriate color indicating feeling unwell), Jack felt sick to his stomach too.  Nevertheless, he cleared his throat to attract their attention.

"Listen," he said.  "Here's the plan." 

He explained it to them, stumbling only occasionally over the words.  Ten hours later, the beast was dead, along with its nest of nearly grown larvae that accounted for its recent  increase in appetite.  Sixteen hours after that, Management had been ousted and a committee of workers occupied their offices.  Seven hours after that, Jack had dodged all attempts to put him in charge and gotten onto a ship headed…somewhere else.  Anywhere he wouldn't have to do any more heroics.  He was quite determined to make this heroism business a fluke.

Six days later, he broke up a criminal organization kidnapping teenage Rrirrilonians into forced prostitution.  He couldn't seem to help himself. 

*            *            *            *            *            *

continued in Chapter 2