m_findlow

Title: A coat for all seasons
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,130 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for juliet316’s prompt "Torchwood, Jack Harkness, Finding the Great Coat again" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack has to take the long road to find his coat again

When he landed on Earth, it became apparent very quickly that he'd done something wrong in setting his coordinates. The coach that idled past with its driver and workhorse, and the smell of the filth in the streets was enough to tell him he'd gotten it very wrong indeed. The clothing of the people that wandered by, and the stares they gave him were also major tip offs.

Suddenly aware that he must have looked very out of place, standing there in his ripped black jeans, t-shirt and leather vest, he quickly strode off the main street and down into a deserted alley so that he could figure out what had gone wrong, without attracting any more unwanted attention.

He flipped open his vortex manipulator and it sparked and fizzled angrily at him. Oh, that was not good. He punched at the buttons, but still nothing. As far as travel through time and space was concerned, it was literally history.

He slumped down against the wall until he was sat on the ground. How had things gone so wrong? One second he'd been shocked to find himself alive, after he was certain that the daleks had come to take him down to the fiery gates of hell. Amazed by the sudden turn of fortune, he'd bolted up the levels on satellite five to rejoin The Doctor and Rose. His feet pounded the ground as he heard that familiar whining and churning sound of the TARDIS.

No, no, no, no, no!

But it was too late. The TARDIS was gone. Off into an unknown part of space and time.

He knew he had to find The Doctor. Despite everything, he didn't want to go back to what he'd been doing before he met The Doctor and Rose. He wanted to travel with them. But how to find them now? Then the idea struck him like a lightning bolt. He didn't have to find them, he just had to be somewhere they could find him. And where else would The Doctor need to go except the universal TARDIS gas station that was Cardiff. The Doctor would have to come back there to refuel, and Jack would be right there waiting, at the only TARDIS taxi rank in the whole universe.

And now his dreams had come to ruin. The one thing his vortex manipulator could confirm for him was that this was definitely Cardiff. Only it was 1869.

Twenty years Jack idled and flitted about planet Earth, drinking, getting into brawls, gambling, and lots of bedfellows in between, and still he was bored. He was stuck here with no way out. Strangely though, for over twenty years he didn't seem to age a day. It was altogether bizarre, but perhaps travelling on a TARDIS did that to you. Either way, he wasn't complaining.

Then it happened. Ellis Island, 1892. He hadn't even been involved in the brawl, busy chatting up the pretty young man behind the bar, but when the fight broke out, the pistol shot meant for its intended target went horribly wide, striking Jack straight through the heart.

Of all the crummy places to die, he though, as the world went dark.

He gasps and finds himself lying in a pool of stagnant, filthy water and rubbish. That's where they dragged his body, dumping it down a manhole into the sewers below, hoping no one would notice it until the rats had feasted on it completely. He'd been dead. He was sure of it. Then again, he'd thought he'd been dead when the daleks had shot him too. Maybe there was more to it than just not ageing. Several months later it was confirmed by a drowning in the river. Washed up on the bank, he'd come to the shocking realisation. He couldn't die. Not in any permanent sense, in any case.

A few more wasted years, lived even more recklessly now that he knew he had nothing to lose, until that fateful day he was discovered skewered by a broken bottle in a back alley by Emily Holroyd and Alice Guppy, setting off the chain of events that would lead him to discover that despite unlimited life, his wait for The Doctor would take another hundred years. He reluctantly accepted the assignments that Torchwood dealt him, but he never felt a part of the team, and had started to feel less and less like the person he'd once been, and more like the petty criminal he'd been before that.

One day, on a routine mission for Torchwood that took him into the British armed forces in 1910, he found himself issued with standard military clothing. After forty years of local period garb, the military uniform was the first piece of clothing that had felt right. He supposed it was because it reminded him of his training days with the Time Agency, and the regimented feeling of belonging. He embraced it and almost wished he didn't have to return to Torchwood after it was over.

Not long after, the Great War broke out, and once again, Jack was relegated to a military position, this time more by choice. He'd gotten under the skin of Emily so badly that she was glad to be rid of him for a while. An officer's uniform was presented to him, along with a thick woolen coat, not unlike the one he'd had during the Second World War a lifetime ago, when he'd first met Rose Tyler and danced with her on top of his Chula spaceship, tethered to Big Ben. Those were good times, and when he donned the coat, he felt more like his old self than he had for years.

When the war was over, he kept the coat and continued to wear it. It felt comfortable and familiar, like an old friend. He carried on with it until the Second World War rolled around once again for him, and at the first opportunity, he embraced the fine grey wool and the brass buttons of his updated greatcoat. Far from the clutches of Emily and Alice, both long since deceased, Torchwood was less of the brutal, self-serving place it had been. He could even see himself continuing to work for them, on and off, while he waited for The Doctor. But through all the years now, the coat would come with him. It had become an integral part of his personality, and the part that he tried to maintain for the sake of The Doctor, the part that stood above the petty selfishness and cowardice. The coat would be a reminder of why he should keep going and never give up, because at the turn of the century, The Doctor would be coming back for him.

And Jack Harkness would be ready.