The TARDIS jumped like a sedan going over a raccoon. Jack felt that ‘bump’ would have been a far less gloomy comparison, but given the circumstances, death was more likely than turbulence.
Maybe that was just a year of torture talking. Or, you know, witnessing the actual death of the universe.
The TARDIS’s brief founder had everyone’s attention. Martha joined the Doctor at the console, who bent over a tiny monitor. Jack thought about doing the same, then thought better. He’d done some important prioritizing during his stay on the Valiant; no sense in making himself part of the rhythm now. He’d be leaving soon, this time probably for good. Jack didn’t WANT it to be forever… but he felt a twinge of permanence when he thought about his practiced speech.
Maybe he’d just go pack. Whatever hadn’t been raided from his room, anyway. Sheesh. Opportunist wolves, these companions since him. He turned to head down the corridor.
“…Jack?”
Jack turned at the Doctor’s summons. “Yes, sir?”
The Doctor pushed up his glasses and looked down his nose at Jack over the top of the console. “You mind getting the door? For a friend. Well. Colleague. We-ell…” He searched for a more appropriate descriptor while Jack followed the request. He pulled the door open to the whirling time vortex. His joints remembered the screaming cold pain of clinging to the TARDIS.
A stranger’s hand swept through the doorway, catching Jack’s wrist in a ferocious grip. The force nearly yanked Jack out with it, but then Martha was there anchoring him, and the two of them towed their strange cargo aboard.
Like a wine cork coming free, the stranger tumbled through the door and rolled both Jack and Martha to the bridge floor. He landed mostly on Jack… who landed completely on Martha.
“Oye!” She yelped.
“Everyone all right?” The Doctor asked, without looking up. Jack shifted himself and the stranger sideways with a grumpy apology. Until he looked down… and found himself looking up into a pair of the most brilliant blue eyes he’d seen on a human face.
Brilliant… and pissed.
“Captain Jack Harkness,” Jack smiled, and who are *you?*“
"Jack,” the Doctor’s voice held a note of warning.
“Castiel,” the stranger replied, rose as indiffently as if he *hadn’t* been sprawled between Jack’s legs, and proceeded to the console. There, while Martha and Jack looked on in bewildered amusement, he proceeded to engage the Doctor in an absolutely splendid argument. Terms like ‘megalomaniacal amateur’ and ‘delusions of heroism’ were bandied about.
Martha raised her eyebrows at Jack and made a shooing motion towards the combatants. He grinned, poked his pinkies in his mouth, and let out a piercing whistle that (momentarily) brought things to a halt.
“Doctor?” Jack asked, “Everything ship-shape?”
“Oh, yes. Just a friendly theological discussion between time travelers. Castiel’s a concerned citizen. He does this periodically.”
Castiel’s already stormy disapproval whipped into a squall. “Does *what* ‘periodically’?”
And Lord if he didn’t have just the sexiest angry voice. Before Jack could insert himself into the discussion, it closed him out again. Martha nudged his shoulder.
“Hey,” she smiled, angling her head towards the corridor, “I smuggled in some chocolate biscuits, last stop. Fancy a coffee?”
Jack’s frustration soothed. He remembered again why he’d made his decisions, where he was going, and why. Saving his most dazzling grin for the beauty at his side, Jack offered her a gratious arm.
tHE DOCTOR BEING PROTECTED BY CAS ALL THOSE TIMES HE BARELY MADE IT OUT ALIVE sorry I’ll stop with the head canons now :P
Castiel looked down at the dusty, bedraggled Doctor with an impassive expression. “My people find you to be an interfering nuisance.”
The Doctor sat forward, bent over his gangling knees. A puff of fine chalky dust rose from his hair as he ruffled it. “Well,” he gasped, “given that you’re here and I’m still not… whatever your people like to do to things like me…” he shaded his eyes and peered up over his glasses at the angel, “you must feel differently.”
“Jack likes you,” Castiel replied, cool.
“Reckon you’re not Jack.”
“No.”
“Well, that’s a bit noncommittal for the fellow who just bent time to keep me from squishing like a grape.”
Castiel squinted at the Doctor in disapproval. “If you’re so insistent—”
The Doctor bobbed his head. “Usually, yeah.” His humor was lost on the angel, who seemed in an even fouler mood for the interruption.
“—I tolerate you. With a significant level of personal control.”
“Ah.” They regarded one another in silence for a moment, before the Doctor’s eyes widened in recognition.
“Ohhhh. You’re *sweet* on our Jack!”
Being found out clearly sat no better with Castiel than interruptions. “And now that you have your answers, I expect you’ll be in a hurry to leave. As usual,” he snapped. The Doctor had time to make an appropriately puzzled face, before a dismissive wave of Castiel’s hand saw him back to the controls of the TARDIS. Leftover force from the trip nearly took him to the floor all over again, but he snatched the edge of the console in time to steady himself.
“Well, that was abrupt.”
The TARDIS fizzed. The Doctor’s rolled his eyes.
“Oh, he was *not* right, don’t you start in!”
Cas bringing Dean and Sam over to Wales because Jack refuses to believe that this demon thing isn’t some kind of alien. Then he’s immediately starts hitting on the both of them. The entire escapade ends with Jack tied up somewhere in a closet while everyone else goes out for drinks.
I’d watch that. Also I officially love Headcanon Sunday even more now.
It’s A Girl (SuperWood Ficlet, Harkstiel, K)
Jack sashayed across the alley on his toes, kicking up a miniature dust storm. He whirled with a rowdy whoop to his nonplussed companion, standing unmoved in the shade of ivy-draped eaves a few steps away.
“It’s a girl!” Jack crowed. He clapped his phone closed.
Castiel’s bland blue eyes squeezed in confusion. “What is?”
“The baby! Martha Jones has a daughter!” Jack’s voice swelled. He was suddenly in Castiel’s space, clapping a hand to his cheek with a little shake for emphasis.
“You were expecting a boy?” Castiel asked. Humans were always so jubilant about their infants. Castiel thought human young fascinating and precious, but sometimes the level of enthusiasm seemed disproportionate. Then again, it was Jack. His enthusiasm for everything was usually disproportionate.
Jack pulled a face. “Well, she is half Mickey’s. He’s just obstinate enough to insist on a boy.”
Castiel tipped his head. There was that, as well – infant genetics were a gamble of odds without outside interference on the divine level. And yet humans inevitably blamed any number of unrelated events for everything from eye color to height to a propensity for 3 a.m. screaming fits.
“She’ll be just like her mother,” Jack declared, “she’ll be fabulous!”
“It’s a bit early for expectations,” Castiel protested. He, for example, would have appreciated some options before being assigned Thursdays and – frankly – the Winchesters.
“What else are expectations for?” Jack bantered, scooped his arm behind Castiel’s back and swung him in a circle. It wasn’t a new thing, and Castiel spun like a dancer to follow. Neither was the boisterous attendant kiss a new thing, which he was happy to indulge.
“Congratulations, Jack,” Castiel said afterward. In the face of such magnetic joy, even his usual sobriety couldn’t stand, and he found himself smiling. Jack accepted the congratulations as if he’d made the baby personally for Martha and Mickey.
“They’ve named her Tosha,” he said, and took a slow breath. His smile flickered. Castiel scuffed his cheekbone with a thumb and left him the silent space. Then with a bounce like a startled horse, Jack was off down the alley after their quarry.
After a moment – and maybe a smile, he was yet unaccustomed to the expression – Castiel hurried to take up the spot at Jack’s side.
Jack Harkness and Castiel like to switch coats and stand around quietly in the background during team planning, waiting to be called the wrong name.
Only the Doctor seems immune to these shenanigans.
#castiel doesn’t like to give jack’s coat back #it makes him feel swoopier
And now I’m thinking about Martha meeting Cas and how good she’d be with him. She would treat him like a friend and even slyly flirt with him just to get a rise out of Jack, and in turn Cas makes more jokes that make her laugh hard no matter how terrible or corny they can be. They trade stories frequently – Cas tells Martha about the Tower of Babylon falling and in turn Martha talks about her time in UNIT.
Bah I want Martha and Cas friendship stories now
YES! Ohgod, a harkstiel new!Torchwood story with Martha as a big part of it. That would be beautiful. Martha asking Castiel questions about the past with genuine interest and gentle humor. If she buys that he is what he says he is, she’d be fascinated with him, Castiel would sense it, and just open right up to her like a steamed clam.
I don’t know where I’m going with this but….:
Martha pulled up to the gas station. The day was oppressively humid and she was glad she’d had time to get used to the climate. In the seat next to her Mickey fidgeted with a gadget. “Yeah, this is it. There’s something going on here.”
“I’ll fill up.” Martha got out of the SUV and walked around to the pump. The only other car was something long, black and classic being filled by a tall guy with long hair. Classic rock could be heard from the open windows. That thing probably didn’t even have air conditioning.
The guy in the driver’s seat had noticed her looking and glanced her way. Brothers, if she had to hazard a guess. She gave him a small smile and looked back at the pump.
My headcanon is that Deanna Campbell, before her last name was Campbell, had a relationship with a mysterious drifter-type. They were clearly in love, but he was called away back to Wales, and she never told him she was pregnant. She met Samuel Campbell a couple months later and they were married before she gave birth to Mary.
That drifter was Captain Jack Harkness, which totally explains Dean’s womanizing con-man ways and the brothers’ inability to simply stay dead.
Okay, so addendum to previous reblog:
Re-watch the Supernatural series, assuming Jack periodically crosses the pond on the trail of the Yellow-Eyed demon that killed his daughter and his past lover. He can’t get away often, although he could more frequently prior to 1999.
Early SPN was happening…
Torchwood is like if Doctor Who and Supernatural had a baby that was actually okay with being super queer.
This is also why we have the Superwood fandom (which is Torchwood + Supernatural)
But Castiel as a Torchwood deputy leader though, years down the road. Surviving crucibles of pain and loss both similar and dissimilar to those of his past. Watching Jack, learning how to be a true leader, rather than an impressionable Garrison’s Mockingjay. Discovering that many of his team mates not only enjoy but respond to touch, and thus giving out hugs and shoulder squeezes and interlacing hands in a way that would have made Sam proud. Castiel learning his team, learning their strengths, their pasts; earning their loyalty. Putting his faith in a cause to protect the world he loves. Giving Jack a moral compass and a compassionate second voice. Going off the fucking chain and having to be hauled back in by the people he so fiercely believes in. Discovering he can control that first introduction, he can be the person he wants to be with the team. Emphasis on *person,* not weapon, not monster. Losing everything but Torchwood and Jack. Losing Jack for a while, sometimes a long while, and getting him back. Rebuilding. Again and again, finding hope and a cause and a reason to go on. Cleaning the singe off of love, off of faith, and marching back into the fray. Finding a new cause, always fighting for the good. Making misguided decisions, making angry calls, being too tired and too hurt to go on; paying the price. Being bigger than himself, bigger and bigger, until his name inspires hope and fear and sometimes hate and worship. Not just on this earth, but out among the stars, for as long as there’s a Jack Harkness, and as long as the need goes on.
And never forgetting the Winchesters; his two boys, his old drunk, for as long as the stars endure.
I have too many feels today.