The Mortal Years (6 of 6)
Aug. 6th, 2010 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
humantalesTitle: The Mortal Years
Author:humantales
Fandom(s): Torchwood/Doctor Who
Genre: and Pairings (if applicable): Gen with het, slash & multiples
Characters: Jack Harkness
Rating: PG-13
Betas:quean_of_swords and Goofy
Spoilers: Through Children of Earth and Flesh and Stone
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Jack wasn't always immortal. Jack's life from the invasion until he meets Rose Tyler.
6. Conman
Khael had always been something of an odd duck in the Black Squadron. He was very good at what he did, but it rarely leached over into his personal life. In order to hide, he used Mitri as a guide and took on a persona of a hard-drinking troublemaker, always ready for a fight, no diplomacy, only interested in indulging his pleasures. He found the lifestyle wasn't so bad--the drinking helped him forget on the bad nights when the loneliness got to be too much, the fighting helped release all of the pent-up anger, and, well, he'd always been up for sex with anyone. Now, he found himself expanding his repertoire into the non-human and wondered why he'd waited so long. Tentacles were really something else.
However, he wasn't as aimless as he was pretending to be. He needed a way to get his memories back, or at least to find out why they'd been taken. That meant he needed to find something the Agency wanted more than it wanted to keep that secret. That wasn't easy to find.
Khael finally got the clue he needed. He'd been on the periphery of a bar fight that had left one of the planet's leading lights dead. He hadn't been involved even indirectly in the death, he'd been dodging and avoiding the flying bottles, but he was one of the few who were caught. He was sentenced to death, and had pretty much given up when he noticed one of the executioners, a man named Grigor, giving him the eye. His best come-hither smile, a muttered conversation, and a corpse was executed instead of him.
Grigor had a wife, Tatie, who enjoyed variety. They insisted that Khael spend several days with them, in order to avoid being caught again. It wasn't a hardship; they were a lovely couple and as much fun to talk with as to have sex with.
It was as Khael was leaving that Tatie said, "Do you want to get at the Agency?"
Khael turned and looked at her. "I'd prefer not to go to another execution, especially mine. Why?"
She bit her lip. "You'd have to be careful, but they're really careful about their image. You start playing fast and loose as a Time Agent, and they'd . . . Well, I'm not sure what they'd do, but it'd get their attention."
Khael thought about it. It wasn't a great idea, but it was better than any others he had.
The first thing he needed was a ship, one with time-travel capabilities. That led him to the Chula shipyards, for the best ships available. Here he ran into his first problem: he fell in love. These were ships crafted perfectly for what they were intended to do, a dream to pilot, difficult to damage and easy to repair when necessary, beautiful to look at and a surprising list of amenities available. They were completely out of his budget, but it was so tempting to just hire himself out as a pilot and stop fighting.
As he was making the rounds of the different sellers, trying to determine who would be willing to accept non-monetary compensation, or a percentage of earnings, a woman started shopping. She had the money to buy half the ships available, but knew nothing about them. She simply wanted a ship to take her where she wanted to go, but it had to be expensive.
Khael waited until she'd purchased her ship from Roalf the Honest. It was a lovely little ship, with everything he needed and the sweetest AI Khael'd ever dealt with. To his relief, she walked into the nearby bar to celebrate her purchase and show off. He gave her time to fend off several would-be partners and then walked over to her. "Gorgeous ship you've just bought," he said as he slid into the seat next to her. "Lot of power; wish I had one just like it."
She smiled. "I love a . . . ship with power," she said as she finished her drink. Khael gestured for the bartender to give her another. "Are you here to buy?" she asked.
"Nah," Khael said with a shake of his head. "Just love to see a good ship, and he's got some beauties. Early retirement, you know; have to have something to fill the day." He stuck out his hand. "Matt Howard," he said, introducing himself with the name he was currently using.
Her smile was lazy and appraising. "Dara," she said. "You're a bit young to be retired." There was a hint of a question.
Khael shrugged. "Over ten years with the Time Agency is enough, I think. Not a big spender, so I've put plenty by."
"Time Agent?" Dara asked, looking impressed. The Time Agency had an impressive reputation in the human sectors. "Perhaps you can tell me if I've wasted my money." Her expression said checking the ship out was far down on Dara's list of priorities.
After a very enjoyable afternoon, Dara offered Khael a little trip "to help eliminate all that boredom you must feeling."
Khael agreed and travelled with her until they were out of the Chula system and Dara was trusting him to do most of the piloting. Dara had him land on a planet known for its fashions when Khael struck. "Hey, love," he said," do you mind if I really try her out? I know you don't enjoy fancy flying, but this is an incredible ship. It's just irresistible."
"What about me?" Dara asked with a purr.
"I waited until you were going shopping, dear," Khael said with his best smile.
With an eye roll, Dara said, "Oh, all right. But don't be long; I'll be needing your help in a bit."
"I'll be back in five minutes," Khael promised. He flew a couple of showy manoeuvres--which were an absolute delight--and jumped back in time two weeks. Once there, he packed up all of Dara's belongings and stashed them in a time-locked container with a letter to be sent to her ten minutes after he'd left. Then, he dropped back in on Grigor and Tatie and let them know how to keep in touch. He also asked them to contact Mitri. "The Agency has him on a sensitive assignment," he told them. "I think it's so they can monitor his communications. Still, a message from you won't trigger anything. Even if they do come to ask you questions, you can just tell them the truth."
"It's a dangerous game you're playing," Tatie told him. "If they catch you, it'll be more than two years of memories."
Khael shrugged. "I've been playing dangerous games my whole life. This is just more of the same."
His plan was simple: get into trouble as a Time Agent and let them come after him. He couldn't come up with any way of getting into trouble without them killing or imprisoning him or, worse, taking even more memories. It was Mitri, in a message relayed through Grigor and Tatie, that had the answer.
Run some cons, on the younger or stupider Agents while you're looking for leverage. Self-cleaners. Word that you're out there and causing trouble will get back to them but, since you're not looking for anything more than to be noticed, there won't be a pattern for them to follow. Eventually, they'll have to send someone with some brains or pull or both and then you can bargain. I wouldn't be surprised if, if you cause enough trouble, they don't have me bring you in.
Of course, that's assuming that this plan of yours isn't the stupidest thing ever. My father's trying to find out what happened. Come stay with us. They won't dare try to take you from the compound, and we can find out what's going on. And my sister's decided to join the Church, so you don't have to worry about marrying her any more.
Be careful, would you? I can't look after you now that you've left the Agency. Say the word, and I'll join you.
The sentiment was nice, but Khael wasn't putting anyone else in danger because of him. Gray's hand had slipped out of his; no one else's ever would.
As both Mitri and Tatie had pointed out, what he was doing was dangerous as hell, but Khael had never worried about danger. It was kind of fun, finding the right kind of space junk, a time where he knew the junk was about to be destroyed and one of the younger or stupider Time Agents and bring them all together. The best kind of puzzle. The money didn't really mean much; Khael had never spent much of his salary and had been smart enough to keep it in secret accounts far away from the Agency. It was a great way of keeping score, though.
It was the first time in his life that Khael had no schedule to meet. It was so easy to just drift for days at a time, travelling around and seeing the sights. He'd done some of that as a Time Agent, but now he had no deadlines to meet, no meetings to make. Although a little of it was nice, Khael knew that, as soon as he had his memories back, he was finding something a little more regulated to do with himself.
Other than avoiding the Ukanan systems in any time period, Khael had all of time and space to explore and he loved it. The planet of Shangri-La anytime in the fourth millennium was one giant party, as was the Labyrinth of the forty-seventh century. Pompeii was a wonderful vacation spot, before August 79 at least. Any time and place on Earth was pretty terrific, actually, as long as there wasn't some kind of natural disaster looming. Or the Spanish Inquisition, as Khael decided after getting out of one of their jails before they could start torturing him. They just had no sense of humour about the gods of the cat people.
Khael decided to visit World War II on Earth; he'd heard so much about it. His accent in English was generally American, so he'd need an American identity, but the London Blitz was one of the archetypal events. Fortunately, a little research showed that there were some American officers serving in the British forces.
He found one of them, a Jack Harkness who was a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force, who was going to die on a training flight in January 1941. Perfect. Khael changed the records so that Harkness's body was never found, and changed his status to Missing in Action. Then, he set himself up as Captain Jack Harkness and inserted himself into a group stationed in London and settled in.
After about a week, he was alerted to a temporal disturbance near his latest piece of junk, an empty, burned-out Chula ambulance. He set off the programmed flight plan and triggered the mauve alert. Then he sat back to wait.
He wasn't surprised when he heard the air-raid sirens, but he ignored them. He knew where the bombs were landing for the next month; none were landing here. He was scanning the skies with a set of binoculars when he saw something hanging from a barrage balloon. An officer was trying to clear the room, and then Khael heard Algy, one of the soldiers, approach him.
"Jack? Are you going down to the shelter?" Algy asked. "Only, I've got to go off on some silly guard duty." Then he spotted the barrage balloon. "Ah! Barrage balloon, eh? Must've come loose. Happens now and then. Don't you RAF boys use them for target practice?"
Khael wasn't really paying attention to Algy, a sweet bloke, but you had to be careful about such things in this culture. Right now, he was paying more attention to the blonde hanging from the balloon. Wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. During the London Blitz. Young and stupid, but probably very well-connected to be able to get away with such non-contemporaneous clothing. He zoomed in on her arse. Still, there were compensations. "Excellent bottom."
The End (for now)
Author's Notes
The Story
Jack Harkness is a fascinating character and a study in contradictions. In writing him, I've made some guesses as to how he's turned out the way he has; this is part of that story. Two of the incidents in this story are alluded to in other stories of mine. The incident with the Sivans is related in "Soldier Boy" and Lydia is introduced in "The Sacred Band of Cardiff".
I made a conscious decision when planning this story to keep it rated PG-13 or, at most, a soft R. One of my biggest fans is my 15-year-old son; I hated the thought of having to tell him, "Yes, I wrote a 28,000 word story about your beloved Captain Jack, but you can't read it because your mother is writing sex scenes." So, the sex is happening "off-screen". And, to be honest, I don't like writing explicit scenes.
This is listed as Volume 1 of The Biography of an Immortal. Because we all know that this is just the beginning of the story.
Names
Jack himself tells us, in Captain Jack Harkness, that Jack Harkness isn't his real name. In writing Jack, especially out of the time we know him in Doctor Who and Torchwood, what to call him becomes an issue. When it came time to "name" him, I had several factors in mind. First, I wanted to keep his initials CJH, since Captain isn't his first name and, so, shouldn't be included in a monogram. Since then, I've changed my opinion; I think Jack does think of "Captain" as his first name, but the sentiment remained the same.
Second, just as languages and cultures change over three thousand years, so do names. However, the two names we're given for Jack's family, and later River Song, indicates that the names haven't strayed too far. Still, I didn't want to give him a name that is common today, but one that is clearly descended from a name in popular use.
Khael is pronounced with a Hebrew ch, a long i, and the syllable el. In Jewish and Christian tradition, Michael is the general of the angels, which made it an appropriate name for a soldier. And its meaning is: "Who is like God", which points to what Bad Wolf does to him. It is my understanding that in Hebrew it is pronounced Mi-cha-el. Just as language and culture change over time, so do alphabets. None of the alphabets used three thousand years ago are still used today; his name is a transliteration.
Jaxom is completely made-up. At one point, I had a person's middle name used as the name a person is called by his family, which means that "Jack" would be familiar; however, that's since changed. The Jaxom, though, stayed.
Horton came about because I needed a last name beginning with "H". I was discussing it with my husband and he said Horton. Then we realized that it had to stay that, because Horton Hears a Who.
For people who are interested in names, Jamin is from Benjamin, Mitri is from Dmitri, Keres is Ceres, Khestre is Chester.
Author:
humantalesFandom(s): Torchwood/Doctor Who
Genre: and Pairings (if applicable): Gen with het, slash & multiples
Characters: Jack Harkness
Rating: PG-13
Betas:
quean_of_swords and GoofySpoilers: Through Children of Earth and Flesh and Stone
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Jack wasn't always immortal. Jack's life from the invasion until he meets Rose Tyler.
6. Conman
Khael had always been something of an odd duck in the Black Squadron. He was very good at what he did, but it rarely leached over into his personal life. In order to hide, he used Mitri as a guide and took on a persona of a hard-drinking troublemaker, always ready for a fight, no diplomacy, only interested in indulging his pleasures. He found the lifestyle wasn't so bad--the drinking helped him forget on the bad nights when the loneliness got to be too much, the fighting helped release all of the pent-up anger, and, well, he'd always been up for sex with anyone. Now, he found himself expanding his repertoire into the non-human and wondered why he'd waited so long. Tentacles were really something else.
However, he wasn't as aimless as he was pretending to be. He needed a way to get his memories back, or at least to find out why they'd been taken. That meant he needed to find something the Agency wanted more than it wanted to keep that secret. That wasn't easy to find.
Khael finally got the clue he needed. He'd been on the periphery of a bar fight that had left one of the planet's leading lights dead. He hadn't been involved even indirectly in the death, he'd been dodging and avoiding the flying bottles, but he was one of the few who were caught. He was sentenced to death, and had pretty much given up when he noticed one of the executioners, a man named Grigor, giving him the eye. His best come-hither smile, a muttered conversation, and a corpse was executed instead of him.
Grigor had a wife, Tatie, who enjoyed variety. They insisted that Khael spend several days with them, in order to avoid being caught again. It wasn't a hardship; they were a lovely couple and as much fun to talk with as to have sex with.
It was as Khael was leaving that Tatie said, "Do you want to get at the Agency?"
Khael turned and looked at her. "I'd prefer not to go to another execution, especially mine. Why?"
She bit her lip. "You'd have to be careful, but they're really careful about their image. You start playing fast and loose as a Time Agent, and they'd . . . Well, I'm not sure what they'd do, but it'd get their attention."
Khael thought about it. It wasn't a great idea, but it was better than any others he had.
The first thing he needed was a ship, one with time-travel capabilities. That led him to the Chula shipyards, for the best ships available. Here he ran into his first problem: he fell in love. These were ships crafted perfectly for what they were intended to do, a dream to pilot, difficult to damage and easy to repair when necessary, beautiful to look at and a surprising list of amenities available. They were completely out of his budget, but it was so tempting to just hire himself out as a pilot and stop fighting.
As he was making the rounds of the different sellers, trying to determine who would be willing to accept non-monetary compensation, or a percentage of earnings, a woman started shopping. She had the money to buy half the ships available, but knew nothing about them. She simply wanted a ship to take her where she wanted to go, but it had to be expensive.
Khael waited until she'd purchased her ship from Roalf the Honest. It was a lovely little ship, with everything he needed and the sweetest AI Khael'd ever dealt with. To his relief, she walked into the nearby bar to celebrate her purchase and show off. He gave her time to fend off several would-be partners and then walked over to her. "Gorgeous ship you've just bought," he said as he slid into the seat next to her. "Lot of power; wish I had one just like it."
She smiled. "I love a . . . ship with power," she said as she finished her drink. Khael gestured for the bartender to give her another. "Are you here to buy?" she asked.
"Nah," Khael said with a shake of his head. "Just love to see a good ship, and he's got some beauties. Early retirement, you know; have to have something to fill the day." He stuck out his hand. "Matt Howard," he said, introducing himself with the name he was currently using.
Her smile was lazy and appraising. "Dara," she said. "You're a bit young to be retired." There was a hint of a question.
Khael shrugged. "Over ten years with the Time Agency is enough, I think. Not a big spender, so I've put plenty by."
"Time Agent?" Dara asked, looking impressed. The Time Agency had an impressive reputation in the human sectors. "Perhaps you can tell me if I've wasted my money." Her expression said checking the ship out was far down on Dara's list of priorities.
After a very enjoyable afternoon, Dara offered Khael a little trip "to help eliminate all that boredom you must feeling."
Khael agreed and travelled with her until they were out of the Chula system and Dara was trusting him to do most of the piloting. Dara had him land on a planet known for its fashions when Khael struck. "Hey, love," he said," do you mind if I really try her out? I know you don't enjoy fancy flying, but this is an incredible ship. It's just irresistible."
"What about me?" Dara asked with a purr.
"I waited until you were going shopping, dear," Khael said with his best smile.
With an eye roll, Dara said, "Oh, all right. But don't be long; I'll be needing your help in a bit."
"I'll be back in five minutes," Khael promised. He flew a couple of showy manoeuvres--which were an absolute delight--and jumped back in time two weeks. Once there, he packed up all of Dara's belongings and stashed them in a time-locked container with a letter to be sent to her ten minutes after he'd left. Then, he dropped back in on Grigor and Tatie and let them know how to keep in touch. He also asked them to contact Mitri. "The Agency has him on a sensitive assignment," he told them. "I think it's so they can monitor his communications. Still, a message from you won't trigger anything. Even if they do come to ask you questions, you can just tell them the truth."
"It's a dangerous game you're playing," Tatie told him. "If they catch you, it'll be more than two years of memories."
Khael shrugged. "I've been playing dangerous games my whole life. This is just more of the same."
His plan was simple: get into trouble as a Time Agent and let them come after him. He couldn't come up with any way of getting into trouble without them killing or imprisoning him or, worse, taking even more memories. It was Mitri, in a message relayed through Grigor and Tatie, that had the answer.
Run some cons, on the younger or stupider Agents while you're looking for leverage. Self-cleaners. Word that you're out there and causing trouble will get back to them but, since you're not looking for anything more than to be noticed, there won't be a pattern for them to follow. Eventually, they'll have to send someone with some brains or pull or both and then you can bargain. I wouldn't be surprised if, if you cause enough trouble, they don't have me bring you in.
Of course, that's assuming that this plan of yours isn't the stupidest thing ever. My father's trying to find out what happened. Come stay with us. They won't dare try to take you from the compound, and we can find out what's going on. And my sister's decided to join the Church, so you don't have to worry about marrying her any more.
Be careful, would you? I can't look after you now that you've left the Agency. Say the word, and I'll join you.
The sentiment was nice, but Khael wasn't putting anyone else in danger because of him. Gray's hand had slipped out of his; no one else's ever would.
As both Mitri and Tatie had pointed out, what he was doing was dangerous as hell, but Khael had never worried about danger. It was kind of fun, finding the right kind of space junk, a time where he knew the junk was about to be destroyed and one of the younger or stupider Time Agents and bring them all together. The best kind of puzzle. The money didn't really mean much; Khael had never spent much of his salary and had been smart enough to keep it in secret accounts far away from the Agency. It was a great way of keeping score, though.
It was the first time in his life that Khael had no schedule to meet. It was so easy to just drift for days at a time, travelling around and seeing the sights. He'd done some of that as a Time Agent, but now he had no deadlines to meet, no meetings to make. Although a little of it was nice, Khael knew that, as soon as he had his memories back, he was finding something a little more regulated to do with himself.
Other than avoiding the Ukanan systems in any time period, Khael had all of time and space to explore and he loved it. The planet of Shangri-La anytime in the fourth millennium was one giant party, as was the Labyrinth of the forty-seventh century. Pompeii was a wonderful vacation spot, before August 79 at least. Any time and place on Earth was pretty terrific, actually, as long as there wasn't some kind of natural disaster looming. Or the Spanish Inquisition, as Khael decided after getting out of one of their jails before they could start torturing him. They just had no sense of humour about the gods of the cat people.
Khael decided to visit World War II on Earth; he'd heard so much about it. His accent in English was generally American, so he'd need an American identity, but the London Blitz was one of the archetypal events. Fortunately, a little research showed that there were some American officers serving in the British forces.
He found one of them, a Jack Harkness who was a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force, who was going to die on a training flight in January 1941. Perfect. Khael changed the records so that Harkness's body was never found, and changed his status to Missing in Action. Then, he set himself up as Captain Jack Harkness and inserted himself into a group stationed in London and settled in.
After about a week, he was alerted to a temporal disturbance near his latest piece of junk, an empty, burned-out Chula ambulance. He set off the programmed flight plan and triggered the mauve alert. Then he sat back to wait.
He wasn't surprised when he heard the air-raid sirens, but he ignored them. He knew where the bombs were landing for the next month; none were landing here. He was scanning the skies with a set of binoculars when he saw something hanging from a barrage balloon. An officer was trying to clear the room, and then Khael heard Algy, one of the soldiers, approach him.
"Jack? Are you going down to the shelter?" Algy asked. "Only, I've got to go off on some silly guard duty." Then he spotted the barrage balloon. "Ah! Barrage balloon, eh? Must've come loose. Happens now and then. Don't you RAF boys use them for target practice?"
Khael wasn't really paying attention to Algy, a sweet bloke, but you had to be careful about such things in this culture. Right now, he was paying more attention to the blonde hanging from the balloon. Wearing a Union Jack T-shirt. During the London Blitz. Young and stupid, but probably very well-connected to be able to get away with such non-contemporaneous clothing. He zoomed in on her arse. Still, there were compensations. "Excellent bottom."
The End (for now)
Author's Notes
The Story
Jack Harkness is a fascinating character and a study in contradictions. In writing him, I've made some guesses as to how he's turned out the way he has; this is part of that story. Two of the incidents in this story are alluded to in other stories of mine. The incident with the Sivans is related in "Soldier Boy" and Lydia is introduced in "The Sacred Band of Cardiff".
I made a conscious decision when planning this story to keep it rated PG-13 or, at most, a soft R. One of my biggest fans is my 15-year-old son; I hated the thought of having to tell him, "Yes, I wrote a 28,000 word story about your beloved Captain Jack, but you can't read it because your mother is writing sex scenes." So, the sex is happening "off-screen". And, to be honest, I don't like writing explicit scenes.
This is listed as Volume 1 of The Biography of an Immortal. Because we all know that this is just the beginning of the story.
Names
Jack himself tells us, in Captain Jack Harkness, that Jack Harkness isn't his real name. In writing Jack, especially out of the time we know him in Doctor Who and Torchwood, what to call him becomes an issue. When it came time to "name" him, I had several factors in mind. First, I wanted to keep his initials CJH, since Captain isn't his first name and, so, shouldn't be included in a monogram. Since then, I've changed my opinion; I think Jack does think of "Captain" as his first name, but the sentiment remained the same.
Second, just as languages and cultures change over three thousand years, so do names. However, the two names we're given for Jack's family, and later River Song, indicates that the names haven't strayed too far. Still, I didn't want to give him a name that is common today, but one that is clearly descended from a name in popular use.
Khael is pronounced with a Hebrew ch, a long i, and the syllable el. In Jewish and Christian tradition, Michael is the general of the angels, which made it an appropriate name for a soldier. And its meaning is: "Who is like God", which points to what Bad Wolf does to him. It is my understanding that in Hebrew it is pronounced Mi-cha-el. Just as language and culture change over time, so do alphabets. None of the alphabets used three thousand years ago are still used today; his name is a transliteration.
Jaxom is completely made-up. At one point, I had a person's middle name used as the name a person is called by his family, which means that "Jack" would be familiar; however, that's since changed. The Jaxom, though, stayed.
Horton came about because I needed a last name beginning with "H". I was discussing it with my husband and he said Horton. Then we realized that it had to stay that, because Horton Hears a Who.
For people who are interested in names, Jamin is from Benjamin, Mitri is from Dmitri, Keres is Ceres, Khestre is Chester.
