Come On, Take Me Home ( "Element" entry)

[templeremus]

Title: Come On, Take Me Home
Genre: Adventure/Humour
Word Count: 460
Characters: Jack Harkness, The Doctor
Rating: PG for mentions of injury/aftermath of violence
Summary: After several lifetimes on the run, Jack finds his past catching up with him in unfamiliar ways. Character spoilers up to series eight.

There was another guard on duty when Jack resurfaced. 
Same dirt-brown fatigues and grey dust-mask as the rest, the mask tightly fastened so that only the upper portion of the face was visible. So far Jack had counted three others - Heavy Breather, Baldy and Sunburnt, he'd called them, for lack of any proper introduction - but there could well have been more. He'd been executed five times since dawn and his hold on reality was starting to feel distinctly shaky.

This particular guard, though, was holding a sonic screwdriver.

As one of the very few people ever to learn from fatal encounters, Jack had developed a reasonably good sense of when a risk was worth taking. He swallowed, trying not to gag on the taste of his own blood. "Doctor?"

The pale blue eyes returned his gaze, unblinking. "Captain."

A canteen was pressed to Jack's mouth. The water was gritty and lukewarm, and the best thing to have happened to him all day. He drank, and watched the eyes watching him, searching them for a trace of the familiar. It was like trying to identify someone from a badly posed photograph; the likeness only came through from certain angles, and then only briefly, a thrilled little shiver of recognition.

The voice would take some getting used to, too. Jack hadn't heard a Scottish accent for centuries.

"What brings you here, then?" asked the not-quite stranger.

Jack grinned. Or tried to: in his present condition he suspected that the effect was more grotesque than anything else. "Oh, you know. Passing through, made some friends. Picked a fight with the wrong psychopath. You?"

"Same. Apart from the psychopath, I haven't had the pleasure yet. Now, I need you to hold very, very still."

The restraining buckles around Jack's chest clicked. In the same moment, the air seemed to explode. The wail of the alarm drilled into the base of Jack's skull, exacerbating his usual post mortem headache. Wincing with the effort, he tried to sit up. The cave-cell was sparsely lit, the tunnel that led to the outside world a dark fissure before them. There came footsteps, distant at first but approaching at a run. It was Sunburnt, club held aloft, the pork-belly pink of his forehead suffused with rage. The Doctor sucked in an exasperated breath between his teeth. "Damn. There goes the element of surprise. Time we were off, Captain."

The wiry fingers were unexpectedly strong. Jack gripped them as if worlds depended on it, and - for the first time in what felt like forever - let himself be saved.

Comments

[templeremus]

Thank you. I do enjoy these drabble challenges: they're a great exercise in seeing how much you can cram into a strict word limit. :)