Work Text:
the smiles that win, the tints that glow,
but tell of days in goodness spent,
Jack spends his first day in 1869 desperately trying to get his Vortex manipulator to work again, and when he realises it’s a lost cause he pilfers a few period-appropriate clothes and tries to blend in.
*
On his second day he talks the local butcher into giving him a job, because travelling with the Doctor and Rose made him forget how to pull a proper con and hacking raw meat sounds incredibly therapeutic just now.
*
For most of the third day he’s busy pretending he knows what he’s doing and delivering slabs of meat to various households, and he brushes the strange looks and speculative whispers his accent get him off with a wink and a grin.
*
On the fourth day he meets Gwyneth.
It’s a Tuesday in early autumn, and he’s only meant to make the weekly delivery to Mr. Sneed but he ends up dawdling after he’s helped her tuck it away in the pantry. “I’m Jack,” he says, and has to swallow down the Captain and the Harkness. She blushes, and drops her gaze to watch her hands twisting knots into her apron. “What’s your name?”
“Gwyneth,” she says, and offers him a shy, gap-toothed smile.
“It’s nice to meet you Gwyneth,” Jack says, and she bites her lip and can’t quite meet his eyes. “I’ll see you again next week,” he promises, and pretends not to notice her watching him walk down the road from the kitchen window.
*
On the seventh day he ditches the wrist strap, and tucks it away with what little he has left.
*
On the eleventh day Gwyneth asks him where he’s from.
“A long way away,” he says and distracts her with a smile, and he almost feels bad for it.
*
On the eighteenth day she says, “I’ve never seen anywhere else than Cardiff.” She pretends to be busy washing the dishes, and Jack leans against the cupboard to watch the sudsy water turn her hands pink and pruney. “What’s it like, out there?”
Jack thinks for a moment, and then says, “It’s fantastic.” She looks at him over her shoulder, and her eyes are wide and impossibly curious, and a bit of hair has escaped from under her cap and it’s tickling her nose. “There’s so much out there,” he says, and steps closer, and tucks her hair back into place. “It’s beyond anything you’ve ever imagined.”
She gasps when his fingers brush the freckled shell of her ear, and the soapy plate slips from her hands and shatters on the floor.
Jack bends down to help her pick up the shards, and says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” and then stops as he realises he doesn’t know what he did wrong.
Gwyneth doesn’t look at him, and says, “I think perhaps you should go.”
*
On the twenty-fifth day she doesn’t speak to him, and dismisses him immediately after he’s handed over the meat.
*
On the thirty-second day Jack brings her a flower plucked from the wayside, and although she only accepts it grudgingly he catches her smiling when she turns away and decides to bring her one every week.
*
On the fifty-third day Gwyneth adds a fresh white rose to a vase of dried flowers, and speaks to him for the first time in weeks.
“Tell me about travelling, Jack,” she says, and then quickly adds, “Please.”
“What would you like to know?” he asks, and she shrugs with the dreamiest expression on her face.
“Anything,” she says, and there’s something nudging at the back of Jack’s head that tells him it’s not what she means to say. “Cardiff must look small and boring to someone like you.”
She smiles when she says it, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, and Jack says, “I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Gwyneth blushes, and he grins and says, “I’ll see you next Tuesday.”
*
On the sixtieth day it’s cold and the first snow is falling, and Jack shows up with a split lip and a black eye.
Gwyneth gasps and puts her hand over her mouth when she sees him, and Jack says, “You should see the other guy,” before he can stop himself.
She looks confused for a moment, and then she says, “You and your thick skull.”
Jack grins, and tastes blood, and Gwyneth dabs at his newly bleeding lip with her handkerchief until she realises how close they’re standing and quickly turns away.
*
On the eighty-first day she makes him a cup of tea, and asks him if he takes sugar or milk.
“I know almost nothing about you, Jack,” she says, and watches his hands curl around the steaming mug as they sit at the small kitchen table, and there’s no accusation in her words, only wonder.
“What would you like to know?” he asks, and doesn’t want to lie to her.
She says, “Only what you want to tell me.”
In the tiny kitchen of Mr. Sneed’s house Jack tells a servant girl he barely knows about his entire life. He doesn’t tell her everything, because he can’t, but he tells her more than he’s ever told anyone. He tells her about losing his brother and father, and how his mother hated him for it. He tells her about the people he worked for and trusted stealing from him, and how he ended up far from home and doing all the wrong things because it was easy. He tells her about meeting a mad, brilliant physician who made him better and a girl who taught him to be kind, and how he sometimes hates them for it.
He tells her how he they left him behind, and how he has no one, and Gwyneth says, “You’ve got me.”
*
On the eighty-eighth day he helps her carry firewood into the house, and there’s snow in her hair and her cheeks are bright pink. It’s the last day of November, and Jack loves her.
*
On the ninety-fifth day he brings her chocolate, and she hugs him and squeals like a child in her excitement.
*
On the one-hundred-fifth day he buys a ring, and wants to ask for her hand on Christmas because that’s what a boy does when he loves a girl in these times. He doesn’t quite understand it himself, but there’s a nagging itch in his bones, a strange desire to stay and settle down and live a quiet life, right here in Cardiff, and to spend it with her.
*
On the one-hundred-ninth day Jack delivers the goose for Christmas dinner, and Gwyneth smells like pine and ginger and crackling fire, and he vaguely thinks that she’s the only living thing in this house.
“Happy Christmas, Jack,” she says when he’s about to leave, and looks embarrassed when she gives him a carefully wrapped parcel. “Promise not to open it until Christmas morning, though.”
“I promise,” Jack says, and takes her hand to brush a kiss across the back. Her lips part, and she sighs, and he speaks against her soft skin, “I’ll come by to give you yours.”
Gwyneth nods, and bites her lip when Jack grins at her, and in the corner there’s a vase filled with dried and crumbling flowers.
*
On the one-hundred-tenth day Gwyneth dies, and Jack doesn’t understand how or why for a long, long time. He never opens her present, and somewhere along the way it is lost or left behind with the ring he never put on her finger, and she joins the people he loved and lost, and never really had to begin with.
*
On the fifty-thousand-four-hundred-sixth day Jack Harkness meets Gwen Cooper, and sometimes, when she’s smiling her gap-toothed smile at him, he thinks that they’ve been here, exactly here, before.
a mind at peace with all below,
a heart whose love is innocent