Author: d8rkmessngr
Pairing: Jack/OMC, Jack/?, Jack/Ianto eventually, het and slash
Rating: NC-17 (betaed)
Summary: He left Jack on the game station. Abandoned. But then…he came back…different. An AU look on what happens if things happened differently. Doctor Who 'verse with Torchwood later on. Be sure to read the warnings.


Warnings: Please read each chapter's individual warnings. Some parts down the road may briefly mention non-con, abuse, and/or violence. Dark in the beginning. Please note there are some dark thoughts as my boys are broken…for now. Each chapter will be labeled for your convenience.
Author's Notes: Please note this is an AU that will cross over DW to TW season one. I'm probably spoiling my own story, but it will eventually be Janto. There's a bit of a journey first. I hope you enjoy. I'm working on this and intend to post regularly every other day. And again, I always believe in happy endings. So without further ado…
Disclaimer: RTD and BBC owns them. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Warning For This Chapter: This chapter contains explicit sex, strong language.
Notes For This Chapter: Note there are events here that was referenced in DW's "The Parting of Ways" and DW's "The Empty Child"


Master Fic List: here



Prologue: "I bring life."
Game Station, Year 200,100

'I bring life.'

He couldn't place the voice he could hear tickling his mind. A rush of sensation, memory and real, swept over him: Extermination, death, then the painful release of muscles that couldn't move before, and his first breath.

It was with a gasp that Jack Harkness returned to life, to awareness. He staggered to his feet, shaking fists up already because his last memory was…

Gone.

He blinked, refocused. Still gone.

"Okay," Jack drawled out with a rasp. "I was not alone last time, I didn't order any hyper-vodkas, and I'm not waking up in a bed so…where did everyone go?" Jack glanced down at himself, his t-shirt and vest were flawless; then again, extermination by Daleks never left a physical mark. His pale blue eyes swept out before him and landed on three small, innocuous looking piles of dust.

Jack fingered one pile. He arched a brow as he noted it felt softer and finer than the beaches of Boeshane. He let it trickle between his fingers and looked up, frowning.

No screaming. No gunfire. Not even the grating, whining robotic Dalek chanting. Nothing.

"He did it," Jack breathed, a grin spreading across his face. "I can't believe it! He did it!" With a little whoop, Jack leapt to his feet. He jumped over the piles of Dalek dust everywhere, not caring if his boots were kicking them up as he went. Jack skidded around the corner to the corridor where he could see the edges of the TARDIS light. Jack could hear its hum, like a beacon. He was about to call out to the Doctor and froze at the end of the hallway. Stunned, Jack watched the TARDIS fade until the last sight he saw was its blue police siren light twirling, twirling until even that was gone.

"Doctor…"





Chapter 1
London, Blitz 1941

With a final thrust, Jack groaned, arched his back, his eyes still clenched tight. It was easier to pretend, easier this way to forget in a blinding, dizzy rush of an anonymous orgasm.

The hands snaking up his shoulders from behind, however, were too callused, too large, too rough, to fool him for long.

Jack rolled away, eyes still shut until his sweaty back hit the duvet that covered the scalloped roof tiles. He lay there panting, listening to the bombs go off in the distance, shivering as the night air acrid with fire graced his cooling skin.

A deep chuckle off his right ear made Jack swallow hard.

"You are a crazy fool, Captain Harper." A broad hand stroked his chest, lingered around his nipples, and gave them a painful pinch. "Only you would think to be out here, on a rooftop, with the Germans bombing around us." There was awe and maybe a bit of fear in his voice because, yes, he was crazy to fuck someone out on the rooftop during the Blitz.

"I would like to think of myself as being avant garde," Jack quipped as he ran a hand through his damp bangs. The smile he got was warm, the kind a friend might give to another friend they pass by on the street. Shit, he must know him then. Frantically, he tried to think of the man's name. He was tall, dark, and perhaps handsome if it weren't for the disfiguring scar down his left jaw. In the right light, the right turn towards him, Jack could fool himself. It was so good of a deception he forgot to remember the man's name.

Ooh, that's a no-no in any century, Captain, Jack thought fatalistically. He glanced quickly at the bars on the man's uniform. He was already getting dressed. Jack could hear Big Ben far away. No, not yet, still too much time. Jack propped himself up on one elbow.

"General," Jack guessed from the uniform, trying to remember his 20th century military history. He lowered his voice in invitation. "Going so soon?"

Under the moonlight and distant fires, the look the General gave him made his throat ache. "I should be with my men in the shelters."

"We're safe here." This building survived until the 24th century, but Jack didn't tell him that. He smiled ruefully to himself and thought if Jack had never met him, Jack could have easily left for that spot right now, timelines be damned.

The general gave him another look over his shoulder as he pulled on his trousers. It was a dark look, a hungry look that roamed Jack's naked body with a greed Jack knew he could take advantage of. Jack kept the small smile on his face as the nameless, almost faceless man stood over him.

"Ah," the general murmured as he stroked himself through his open fly, his erection already renewing. "but are you safe from me?"

Corny in any century. Jack would have rolled his eyes but he didn't want Ge—Gerald, yes, Gerald was his name, to walk away so he just kept smiling even as he stood higher on his knees, closed his eyes when the general curled a hand tightly to the back of his neck, and roughly pulled him towards his crotch.

And just for a few minutes more, Captain Jack Harkness, currently known as Captain James Harper, pretended.



The German bombs were never ending and proved to be a good motivator for formerly repressed men to tumble into bed with another man, easily swayed by the threat of death all around them and Jack's smoky, sly, inviting smile.

It was easier with men than women, Jack had discovered. He didn't have to worry about babies (on their side at least) or needing to promise forever after to them. He'd discovered on Ellis Island that he could keep his promise on forever, but his mate? Death lured them all away from him like a lover. No, it was better to feel cock slipping against his, its heated hardness forcing its way into his body, sweaty bodies crashing against each other in a physical frenzy that invited no memories, no feelings, and no regrets. Just sex. Yes, it was easier with men. They just wanted to drive their fears deep into Jack's body and Jack…he just wanted that brief blinding white hot blankness he got pistoning into a body or being pistoned into. He just wanted to pretend.

Jack wanted to pretend that time wasn't realigning and a blue police box would soon materialize in the heart of World War II London in five days. No, it was the wrong police box and timelines must be kept unspoiled. Even if Jack never met him before, as a former Time agent he knew too much could go wrong if a timeline got corrupted. But oh God, oh God, he would be right there and yet so unfathomably out of reach; him and Rose. They would come and go, taking a version of him, a bit of him, then discard him hundreds of millennia away. But they would be right there. Just five days. Five more days.

"Harder," Jack sobbed out and gritted his teeth as he felt the anonymous cock (yet another face turned in the right light, the right way) ram into him. He slammed back against his lover (Carl? Joe? Adam?), trying to get him to exorcise him of faces that had haunted him for over seventy years. "Harder, damn it," Jack grated out. He grunted, his head hung low to his chest, his arms straining to hold him up. Jack panted. He could feel tears—no, sweat, it was only sweat—streaming down his face and dripping down to the yellowing folds of table clothes beneath him. They had swept every folded cloth off the pantry in the basement of the officers' club. They couldn't find a bed. Every one of them was full of frightened boys with their sweethearts one last night before they go off to war. The man had suggested the basement. He was impatient and had just swept the fabric to the grimy floor with a meaty arm before demanding Jack stripped.

The release was sharp, painful, yet woefully inadequate in chasing away the gong of the grandfather clock upstairs. Jack stayed on his hands and knees, panting, winded. The other didn't even say goodbye. Jack waited until he’d left, got dressed and snuck out of the basement. He would have cleaned up the linens (young Lana had enough work picking up after the officers upstairs) but the clock gonged again and again. Jack couldn't bear hearing it any more and fled. Five days, his mind chanted as he ran out the building.

Five days.



"Mummy?"

Odd seeing from this vantage, Jack Harkness truly understood the damage, the near catastrophe he’d wrought. He watched from a tower as Rose climbed up to save a dead boy. He fought back the urge to go after her when she floated away in her Union Jack shirt. He stood there, watching himself dance with Rose by Big Ben.

Then, he saw him.

His fingers twitched the minute he saw him dash out the alley, calling out for Rose, talk to a cat, and then chase after a young woman. His fingers twitched. His body ached. Right there. God, there was the TARDIS. He still had his key. He could just…just…But he couldn’t.

"Damn you!" Jack shouted down to the alley. Despair had roughened into rage after decades of waiting. The bombing concealed both voice and presence. He never looked up.

Jack dropped to his knees, chest heaving. He could find himself, his past self running around with a pair of who he’d thought at the time were from the Agency. Jack should warn himself. Don't go near them. Don't have anything to do with them. Get away as fast as you can.

Don't…don't fall in love with them.

He was right there. Himself, following after Rose like a stupid, stupid boy. He was over there, foolishly letting himself get enchanted by an extinct Time Lord and let himself believe he could possibly be redeemed. Jack should find himself. Maybe…maybe kill him? Would it kill his present self? Horses, starvation and a gun shot to the heart didn't strike him down. Would temporal murder? Or was it temporal suicide?

Jack laughed. He laughed and laughed until he was crying and suddenly he couldn't stop. He doubled over on the roof, forehead to his fists, bombs screaming around him, London burning, and here he was sobbing over a stupid police box below him.

Tears dried and so did his strength. Jack sat there for hours, days, he didn't know. He couldn't stand; he might be too tempted to just drop down ten stories below. Jack had an arm on one drawn knee as he dully watched them return finally, laughing because a virus was no longer a virus, and he knew moments later, they were going to come save him.

They should have left him with the bomb.

The familiar sound of the TARDIS slipping back into the vortex brought tears to his eyes. Jack didn’t want to watch but he couldn't bring himself to tear his eyes away from the fading box. Going. Going. Gone again.

"See you in hell, Doctor," Jack whispered, his eyes gritty, his throat tight. He stayed where he was, watching where the TARDIS had stood before. He could imagine what was being played out right now. He would be having his drink right now, readying to die with an antiquated German bomb.

Behind him, a breeze that was not warm, not cold, that blew. Jack took no notice. Probably a fighter plane's wake as it zipped by to its target. Jack ignored it, the torn flyers and debris slapping against his body, the pebbles scratching any part of exposed skin.

It wasn't until he heard the odd whooping sound and the swish that Jack's head jerked up. He spun around, mouth agape as he saw the TARDIS solidified just a few feet away on the roof.

The wind died down and Jack stood to his feet. He stared, because it couldn't possibly be here. He was going mad.

When the door creaked open, Jack staggered forward a step, still in disbelief. A slim man, just his height, with short, light hair stepped out. He tapped a finger to his chin, scanned his surroundings, stopping short when his eyes fell on Jack.

"There you are!" A huge grin spread on the man's pale face and he looked rather handsome now despite the somber dark suit.

"Doctor?" Jack stammered, not coming closer. "You…you look different."

The man frowned, grimaced, before he lit up and snapped his fingers. "Ah, yes, regeneration! Die, come back, new and improved." Shrewd light eyes narrowed on Jack. "How did you know it was me then?"

Jack nodded towards the TARDIS. "The police box sort of gave it away." Jack took another step then he stopped. Something lumped in his throat. "I've been waiting a long time." Jack tried to steady his voice. "You abandoned me."

He didn't flinch at the accusation. "Yes, you were abandoned." Jack flinched instead.

The man's voice lowered to a lull. He came close enough to frame Jack's face with both his hands. Jack stood transfixed. He couldn't have pulled away even if for some reason he’d wanted to.

"But now I found you," his voice was low and soothing. "I came back for you." Suddenly, he smiled.

"My handsome Jack."


Chapter 2

Additional Notes: Many thanks to snakeling for betaing this chapter long ago. Yes, I finally finished and can start reposting! Huzzah! LOL.