Current mood:	lazy
Entry tags:	fic, fic: dw/tw

Fic: And Miles to Go
Title: And Miles to Go
Summary: This is Jack's only chance to reconsider
Characters: Jack
Spoilers: None really, but let's say Last of the Time Lords, to be sure.
Rating: None
Word count: 724
Note 1: Thanks to my lovely beta xwingace, who seems to beta at the speed of sound and always asks all the right questions
Note 2: Inspired by the the word 'tortuous' on tw_wotd_fic and set somewhen during Before I Sleep. Makes sense on its own as well, though.
Fic Masterlist: Here, commented version of this fic here.



But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep

- Robert Frost



He watches the boy weave his way through the market place, still so innocent, yet clever enough to get out of the Feubonian trader's way and to avert his eyes as a Manthodean hisses at him.

He grew up here, Jack can tell, among the crime and the aliens and the danger. The boy knows how things work around here, knows who to please and who to avoid.

The unkempt black hair is shoved out of his face with a small hand when something that looks like an impulse makes the boy turn, instantly spotting Jack watching him. Jack knows, and sees, that instincts fight behind those blue eyes: the instinct to flee, and the instinct that feels, that knows.

Jack's experiencing the same, and he suppresses an involuntary shiver. He pulls his hands out of his coat pockets, trying to be as unthreatening as he can manage nowadays.

"Do I know you?" a tiny voice, higher than he remembers it, asks him. The blue eyes try to pierce him in an attempt to work out why this man feels so familiar, yet isn't.

"Not yet," Jack smiles and curses himself inwardly, as the boy is suddenly rigid, his every muscle ready to run. Time travel is not yet common in these parts of the galaxy, but already being part of the Time Agency is every boy's dream. Only a few, like the one in front of him, learn to distrust any kind of authority with that much power. It's a painful lesson, he remembers.

Jack closes his eyes for a moment, memories assaulting him as he looks at the much younger version of himself, knowing what is still to come.

Jevan, his first partner, bloodied and broken when he pulled him from their wrecked ship -

His best mate, tortured and killed by Daleks while he walked away unscathed.

It's an accident that he has met his younger self, but an opportunity nonetheless, Jack realizes suddenly. An opportunity to end this. How often has he wished for a chance like this? He's so tired of all this living sometimes.

"You're a Time Agent," his younger version says, and his eyes narrow in suspicion, only the thin thread of his curiosity rooting him to the spot in front of this stranger who seems so familiar.

"Maybe," Jack smiles, because he can't help being proud that he'd obviously been a smart kid, spotting a time traveller that easily.

Murielle, his informant and lover dead in his arms because he was reckless -

Estelle, killed because he'd been too close to the truth... he couldn't save them...

This is his only chance.

He knows this boy will run away from this place he still calls home soon. It will be the last time he'll stay in one place for more than mere weeks.

The last time Captain Jack Harkness will be able to find himself, young, mortal. He's too old to care about the timeline anymore, he thinks. He could cause a Blinovitch Limitation Effect. Simply the act of the same being touching in the same point in space-time would be enough to blow them both into oblivion. Maybe. It would be even easier and more certain to kill him without ever laying his hands on him.

His hand twitches, not yet moving towards one of his concealed blasters.

All it'll take is one shot. One shot or even a simple touch and this boy will die, never running away, never joining the Agency, never meeting the Doctor and never becoming immortal. Jack Harkness can't die, but this boy's death will wipe his existence from the universe.

The Doctor, killed by Daleks before finishing the Delta Wave;

Rose, hanging from a barrage balloon, falling to her--

The Doctor, falling, falling down the rocket silo at the end of the universe, never saving the world...

His hand doesn't move.

The boy backs away slowly, then runs away, maybe sensing the danger, unsure what to make of this stranger. But that little brain will slowly work it out, Jack is sure. He wonders if he joined the Agency for a particular reason, but he can't remember.

Jack sighs, walking away through the busy market place, avoiding the Feubonian trader who's arguing with a hissing Manthodean, back to his old, old life.

There's still work to do.