Well Hello There

[spacehopper]

When: Any Time
Where: Anywhere
Who: Captain Jack Harkness + You

You've seen him before, maybe even since you were a child. When he appears, it's always been right there, at the edge of your vision, watching you. Sometimes he says hello in passing as he crosses the street. Sometimes he just smiles when you spot him and ducks into a shop or moves around the corner. He comes and goes from your life, never threatening, never tangible.

Until today.

Today he moves towards you purposefully. He has bright blue eyes and dimples when he smiles. He'd not aged a day since you first started to see him. He smells like the best thing in the world to you. He offers his hand. "Hi. I'm Captain Jack Harkness," he says.

Comments

[badgirlshenanigans]

As with just about everyone who meets him for the first time, Jemma's a little taken aback. By taken aback, it means she's staring rather gobsmacked at the very pretty that is Captain Jack Harkness.

Unfortunately, Jemma fails at these sorts of things. "Jemma Simmons. Have we met? That's not a line, I mean it could sound like a line, but you look familiar. That's not a line either. Why do I keep saying that?"

[spacehopper]

He couldn't help but laugh, massive hand warm against hers. "We've never officially met, no. And I don't mind it if they happened to be lines." He'd been watching Jemma's progress since she was small, wowing her teachers until she surpassed anything that they could teach her. It had been lonely, at least to Jack, growing up without equals, until she applied to work for SHIELD.

But here, there had been set backs too. That's what happened when someone tried to rule the world, unfortunately.

Jack wasn't going to take sides. SHIELD and HYDRA could have their little drama. He was much, much more interested in things on a more universal scale.

"I've come to offer you a job. I think you're finally ready for it."

[badgirlshenanigans]

Jemma kept shaking his hand, much longer than she should.

"A job?" Being smart doesn't mean being socially savvy. "Was that a line?" If she kept thinking that way this could go very badly.

"And that sounds like one of those emails offering me millions of dollars, if I send all my banking information."

[spacehopper]

Jack laughed. He was use to skeptics but usually they gave him crazy looks or asked for details in condescending tones. Not Jemma. He appreciated that. It took a special sort, and she had exactly what it would take to be a member of Torchwood. Understandably, over the years, he had become selective in the process. He was not getting attached to what might amount to fodder again.

He let her keep shaking his hand for as long as she liked.

"Lucky for both of us, I'm not an email. We've only had one incident where email has taken a physical form but it wasn't human. Just a lot of worms. You wouldn't believe how literal some species can be. At least it wasn't a virus, right?"

He knew he was confusing her. Making her wonder. Making her question. That was the point.

"You have a particular skill set that's being wasted here. There bigger and better out there, Jemma. If you want that."

[badgirlshenanigans]

She still has a hold of his hand.

"I've been infected with an alien virus. I wouldn't want to experience it again." Jemma is good with understatement.

Another thing she's good at is being enthused about things other people may find disgusting. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could get a sample of those worms, do you? I'd have to make sure there wasn't any computer or web-linked technology around, but I could handle it."

Hook a girl with worms? Easier than fishing.

[spacehopper]

"I would, in fact," the Captain said with a grin. "We've kept a few samples on ice. You never know when you'll need a literal computer worm." It was a good thing he knew all about Jemma Simmons, or at least enough about her to be aware of what to bait his hook with.

He had to admit: it was a little bit easier than he thought, though.

"Do you think you're up for that sort of challenge though?" His grip never turned limp in her hand. He found her clinging to be...well.. Darling, almost. Jack always did have a soft spot for people like her.

[badgirlshenanigans]

"I would be most interested in seeing them, but," the but had her finally releasing his hand. Jemma's been scammed by a pretty, oh so pretty, why is he so pretty? before and terrible things came as a result. It made her distrustful. Ward's influence will always cast a pall on things.

"Buy," She repeated herself to steel up her nerve. "You know that. Of everything in the world you come up and talk about something I would be fascinated in."

Garrett had access to all the SHIELD files. Her privacy had been invaded before. "So if we've never officially met, why do you look familiar? How do you know anything about me? I've been scrubbed from existence."

Sky made sure of that. Jemma Simmons only existed in SHIELD's records.

[spacehopper]

"Emails creating worms are actually not the most interesting thing I could have mentioned being in possession of," Jack mused, scratching his chin. "They might be the most game actually. They never did much but wriggle around looking for soil." Jack had to laugh at the memory. His team faced worse and they had all be so highly unnerved by a bunch of earthworms! "Everything I do and am would fascinate you, Jemma. That's why I'm here."

And that totally sounded like a line, but it was perhaps the most truth Jemma would ever get out of him.

He didn't move. He didn't cross the distance she put between them. He didn't have to. She was wary, which was good. Wary would keep her alive. "You know where you've seen me before. Think back. You know that everything I know about you is first hand experience. You just have to be open to the thought."

[badgirlshenanigans]

"Then what is the most interesting thing, and if you say you, I know it's a line. It doesn't matter how pretty and shiny your teeth are." Jemma hoped that last part was only in her head.

When it sounded like a line, and acted like a line, it's a line. He was a walking line.

"You're not from SHIELD." It had dominated her life since the age of 17, so her first thought was there. "You've never been in SHIELD, or watched by SHIELD, that I know of."

His familiarity gnawed at her, and there was a strange memory of a picture of him, but it wasn't since the picture was taken at the end of WWII.

"Was your father in the SSR?"

[templeistelepathybutton]

Charles could vaguely remember seeing someone like this when he first arrived in England for his university studies, but other than being a handsome chap, he hadn't really had the time to pay attention. Usually time found him deep in his studies, trying to track down people to speak to, lecturing, or more likely than not, over in one of the local pubs skillfully winning bar bets or picking up women.

So when the other comes up to him when he's tucked up in a bar, just having ordered a pint, he grins easily back and takes the hand, immediately scanning over the other's mind without a second thought. "Nice to meet you," with that soft accent that makes him sound right at home, "Charles Xavier."

[spacehopper]

It very likely was not nice to meet Jack Harkness. Death tended to render one’s thoughts impossible to reach and though Jack had been given new life through a series of horrible but well intentioned events, his thoughts remained cold, hard and dead. That wasn’t to say that he couldn’t think -- Jack was a smart cookie in every sense of the phrase -- but Charles was going to be sorely mistaken if he hoped to get anything from the dimpled, blue eyed man with the massive bear paw hands currently engulfing his own.

“Oh, I know who you are. I don’t think anyone here can say that they don’t.” Charles was friendly, charismatic… Handsome. All things that worked to his advantage without the telepathy coming into place.

This wasn’t quite Jack’s favorite time period, not because he had anything against the seventies, but because he knew he was buried twice under the soil not so far away. Oh, time travel had it’s fun little quirks. And Jack had bad luck with soil.

“Do you have time to talk?”

[templeistelepathybutton]

Charles had yet to ever feel a mind that was closed off to his, so he blinks when, as he tries to scan Jack's thoughts for anything, he feels nothing at all except a blank wall, cold and strong as steel, he can't hide the surprise that crosses his face. Still, he forces that feeling down as quickly as he could, shaking his head before bringing the smile back to his face. Jack's comment about everyone knowing him makes him laugh despite his faint unease, leaning forward on the bar.

"Well, this is one of my favorite pubs. Close to campus and all of that," he returns, studying the other man and trying to figure out what that strange mental wall could be.

Oh? Is this bloke trying to pick him up? That's a touch unusual. Men usually don't do it for him, though occasionally there has been one or two that caught his interest. The easy manner remains, brows going up. "Oh? What about, then?"

[spacehopper]

Jack couldn’t get away with being a student. This wasn’t the right era for people his apparent age to return to school. He hadn’t bothered to affect an accent either, so he firmly sounded American. Oxford tended to be a little more discriminatory as to whom it accepted as students or allowed to teach.

It never bothered Jack to stretch the truth. He was a fantastic con man…despite not remembering a good two years of that con man life. He had stopped bothering to look for it. There were too many times, too many dimensions, and his current job took up too much of his honestly infinite time.

“Your research. Your interests. I have an opportunity for you.” Jack went straight to recruitment. “I promise, I’m not being cheeky. Yet.”

[templeistelepathybutton]

Ah! Charles' smile went from a bit smarmy to actually interested, those eyes bright as he leaned forward with it. He was always happy to discuss his research with other people, in particular someone who might have an opportunity. He was still in classes, trying to finish out his double masters here, but things outside of that would never be outside of his scope.

"Oh, what kind of opportunity?" His grin increased as he added, "not that you couldn't be cheeky with me." Followed by a laugh, a natural charmer, making it all sound so easy.

[spacehopper]

“Not here.” Jack wondered if it was driving Charles crazy not to know his intentions immediately. That he would make him wait until tomorrow night would probably drive the curiousty right up through the roof. That was the point. Bait and hook, reel them in. Jemma had taken a lot of convincing. Gabriel was much easier. Jim and Kaylee hadn’t had a choice. Jack liked the easy catches…not that he wasn’t up for a challenge, of course, but he had been visiting Charles for a long time…and not linearly either.

Being around him as a child and as a bitter cripple? He preferred Charles here and now. And that’s why he finally decided to make his move.

Normally, Jack would slide a slick, glossy blue card with white writing to his potential recruit. Today he used a napkin to write down an address not too far away, but not too close either.

“Tomorrow night. Come with an open mind. And fully dressed. It’s not that kind of meeting.”

[templeistelepathybutton]

Charles' expression fell, just slightly, but perhaps not for the reason Jack was expecting. This felt off, and not just because the man standing beside him gave off nothing that he could read. This wasn't a pick up, but it was very much on the far side of becoming awkward. So maybe it wouldn't have been such a surprise that mentally, he reached out and sent a mental message to his sister, showing her an image of the man standing with him.

Not such a surprise either that Raven sighed and told him that he would be an idiot to even think about going. What if this guy was a murderer, or a psychopath, or crazy? What if it was a set up to get robbed or worse? He couldn't exactly disagree with her...

But just as Jack predicted, his curiosity was running higher than his good sense, so he took the napkin and folded it with a flick of fingers, tucking the napkin away after glancing over the address. Then his eyes lifted and he gave a flash of that normally bright smile that always won people over. "I'll see you tomorrow night, but I can't promise anything about having my knickers on." If Jack was going to play it up, so would he.

[spacehopper]

The following evening, Jack was waiting where he'd said he'd be. He had on the same clothes as the day before, brown trousers and greatcoat from the RAF from just a few decades before. His hands were not in his pockets. His stance was not alarming. In fact, Jack was not at all the alarming party here.

No, if anything, the gold and violet flickering vortex would have been the culprit that clued Charles in on this whole thing not being quite right.

"It's all right that you told your sister," Jack said quietly as Charles approached. Or even if he had stopped dead upon moving around the corner. "But I can't take her with us. Her future doesn't belong with Torchwood, Charles. I want you to know that right up front."

[roomed]

Henry had only gone into the hall to throw out some trash. If he didn't make regular appearances, Frank would start to worry. He was heading back into his dingy apartment on the third floor when he came across an entirely too-pleasant man introducing himself as a Captain.

He peered at the man with sleepy eyes and simply stared at Jack's hand for a moment. He ultimately didn't take it, although he looked like he wanted to. "I'm sorry...who are you? You might want Mike. He's at the end of the hall..."

[spacehopper]

"I just told you," Jack laughed. "And while I might want Mike--" Jack couldn't help himself. "I'm not here for him right now, Henry."

There was an intensity about Jack, the way his cheeks dimpled, the dead way his eyes shone, as if he was both more alive than possible and not alive at all.

"I came to see you."

[roomed]

While Henry would've appreciated the attention (or any attention at all) a year ago, today the intensity did nothing but set him on edge. And those eyes-- while they weren't green, they were familiar. He had only seen eyes like that on dead men.

His eyes widened slightly, but that was the only indication he gave before he turned and ran the other direction. He headed back toward the central staircase, not caring if he looked insane. He had to stay alive. He was all that was left. If he went, the ritual might be completed, and he couldn't allow that.

He didn't know what was going on, but that wasn't exactly unusual. For now, he had to find something he could use as a weapon.

[spacehopper]

Oooookay. So. He'd never had a runner before. Jack watched Henry go and then flipped up his manipulator. Right time. Right place. Right dimension? Well, the read out was iffy. He'd lost track of Henry some time ago, visiting him as a kid and a teenager like everyone else. After that...well things got a little fuzzy.

It was that fuzziness that Jack was most interested in. He wasn't sure why. Not yet. But he would be. A purple and gold flare in the hall eventually swallowed him up and he left Henry alone for a few days.

Eventually, everyone had to leave their apartments. Jack would be waiting by the door to the building when Henry did.

[roomed]

Jack was in for a long wait. Henry didn't leave his apartment unless he absolutely had to, and left the building even less often. His landlord was being nice and not charging him rent for a few months. But even though he knew he had to start getting back to some form of work, he just couldn't manage it.

As his finances were dwindling, his grocery trips were few and far between, and mostly consisted of ramen. But he'd done that before, and he really didn't need to eat all that often. It was fine.

So it was nearly a week later that he finally left the building. He instantly wished he used the fire escape when he saw that man again. He had convinced himself he was being paranoid, but here he was again.

He tried to hold his ground this time. He had a small fold-out knife in his pocket- it wasn't much but he never left the apartment without it. "What do you want?" he asked, suspicion in his eyes. He couldn't very well ask 'why do your eyes look dead?', now could he?

[spacehopper]

"Firstly I kind of want you to not run away again right away?" That would be nice. Jack didn't mind giving chase but he was pretty sure that Henry would not do well with that. He'd spent the time not at Henry's door research various temporal databases on that fuzzy spot in his history and had come up with a few unfavorable possibilities on what had happened. Not all tales painted Henry in a truly favorable light, mentally, but Jack a few things in the Archive that served him pretty well in figuring out the rest.

He just hoped that this wouldn't become another Alessa situation. That was still painful to think about sometimes. Jack couldn't save them all. No matter how he tried.

"I'm not going to hurt you or take anything from you. I just want to talk. And we can do that wherever you're comfortable."

[roomed]

He considered it, eventually saying, "...okay. Over here." There was a bench in the courtyard of South Ashfield Heights- it sat near the wall that edged along the street and faced the inside of the courtyard. That was public enough, especially if they were going to talk about what he thought they were going to talk about. Henry didn't want to, but if this guy was willing to wait for him to come outside, then he'd follow him wherever he went.

So he walked towards the bench, keeping Jack within his line of sight. "I...don't know how to say this, but...your eyes. They're wrong." In fact, he thought that was the worst way to say it. "I mean, I've seen someone with eyes like yours before....he was dead."

He realized, far too late, that this man might be from the press. 'Oh, hell, please don't be a reporter...' he thought, closing his eyes briefly. It would still be better than anyone from that cult, at least.

[spacehopper]

“I’ve never been a reporter,” Jack said immediately, sitting down like some well worn old man in his wartime finery. Jack looked like something out of an old sepia photo from World War II. Everything from the cut of his shirt to the suspenders beneath the greatcoat with its epilates screamed that he was a man out of place and time. “And you can see that I’m very much alive.”

Too alive. And not alive at all. Jack didn’t know what he was. The one person he thought could help him didn’t know who he was…just that he caused the Time Lord to itch and his teeth to ache.

All Jack knew was that he was wrong.

He offered Henry his wrist to feel for his pulse.

There was something soothing about the way Jack smelled, something familiar, something Henry would enjoy that could call up a scent memory of better days. He hadn’t always been the way he was, after all, and Uncle Jack was not a new face to him if he cared to think back.

“I’m here because I think you can help me.”