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Jack didn't speak the language here, which was probably just as well because he didn't really want to talk to anyone. It was a moot point anyway, because in the market districts it was currency that did most of the talking, and he didn't have any of that either.
Occasionally he thought it might be nice to be able to negotiate a room to stay for the night, or something to eat... But the more perverse part of his brain enjoyed the hunger that was as much of a universal constant now as he was himself. It was the same part of him which thanked the frost he woke up to every morning for stopping him from dreaming too long. In the end though, the frost and the starvation didn't matter. However long he went without food or sleep, eventually he would pass out and wake with a gasp, still hungry and dirty and cold, but with a body otherwise frustratingly restored to health.
He recognised the noise when he heard it, because he always recognised the noise, but he didn't want to. The rhythmic whooping sound used to make him want to leap to his feet, to run and to hold on and never to let go. Now he wanted it to go back to wherever it came from. He wasn't ready for this. He didn't want this. Not yet.
Because he had thought about it a lot, and there were only two ways it could really go. He might rail at the Doctor for not being there when he should have been, beat him and kick him and scream at him until he fell... The other option was that he might kneel, confess and beg absolution. But if he did that, the Doctor would look down at him the way he had when they first met, when Jack had nearly destroyed the world with carelessness, and that would be too much.
There was another option, one he had only let himself imagine once, in those early days when he still let himself dream at night. But the truth was that he couldn't bear to think about that, because the improbability of it hurt even more.
He drew his knees up to his chest and squeezed his eyes closed. He wasn't particularly well hidden, but the market was busy, bustling even, and he was dark and dirty and still. Passers by looked over and around him, but didn't see him. To them he was someone else's problem, and as long as there was no eye contact it could stay that way. Jack hoped that the Doctor and whomever he had wandering around with him this week would do the same. The sound of the TARDIS had been distant. (And yet still he had heard it, like it was a part of him, or he was a part of it, it didn't matter.) There was the possibility that they would go in a completely different direction.
He imagined he could hear the door open, the door close, footsteps. Then a thump. But the thump wasn't imaginary, it was next to him. Sitting next to him. Occupying his dark place. He willed it to leave.
"What's a nice young captain like yourself doing in a disreputable place like this?"
Jack froze. That wasn't his Doctor. It wasn't even his old Doctor. There was a familiarity to it, a memory, but... He felt a long forgotten spike deep his chest, the pain of a new loss to add to his collection. He wasn't ready for a new Doctor yet. He wasn't even ready for his old Doctor yet. He bit down on his lip.
"Jack? You with me?"
No. No no no no no. Jack focused all his attention on his toes, his sore, frostbitten toes. Anything to shut out the voice.
"It's okay if you don't want to talk, the Doctor said you'd probably be feeling pretty shit about life in general, but it'd be nice if you'd at least let me know if you're awake. Or alive even. Not that I mind waiting, 'course, I just prefer not to carry on conversations with people even more dead than I am."
The words filtered down slowly, flicking around in his tired brain trailing cords of confusion behind them. Then they coalesced into a single, wonderful, terrifying thought.
"Owen?" Jack croaked, eyes sparking open in surprise. Owen was lounging in the damp dust next to him, legs stretched out into the footpath in front of them where they irritated passers by.
"Ah ha! I knew you'd give up if I pestered you enough. Thought you'd last out longer than that though, to be honest." Owen smiled affectionately, offering a hand expectantly for a handshake. Jack stared at it.
"You died. You were dead." Jack stated.
Owen rolled his eyes and withdrew the hand. "Yep. I did. I was. I still am." He leaned back against the wall. "Got the bullet hole to prove it. I'd demonstrate, but it's a bit too chilly right now to lose the shirt. Plus I don't know what the local laws are for indecent exposure."
"But the power plant. You died. Again. Tosh..." Jack words trailed away.
"Yeah," Owen replied, then took a deep breath, "yeah, that's where it gets a bit complicated." He coughed unnecessarily. "I got out. Obviously." A shrug. "Not by myself, mind you, got a bona fide last second rescue. Your Doctor, the one you thought could fix you... He pulled me out. It happened really fast, I don't really remember the details. Really don't care to either."
"But if he got you... Why didn't he bring you back? Why did he let us think you were dead? He didn't even mention you when he..."
"It's... complicated." Owen repeated, picking up a wrapper from some item or another which had been floating in the dust with breeze. He twisted it between his fingers. "Yeah, that's where it gets... really complicated. There's physics and vortexes and paradoxes and that sort of thing involved. The Doctor did a really good job of explaining it, but it pretty much boils down to the fact that... I was supposed to disappear. For a while, anyway."
The substance in Owen's his hand was filmy and clear like cellophane. It crinkled as it moved. Jack was staring at it.
"Jack?" Owen prompted.
"So you're real. You're really here. I'm not mad or feverish or hallucinating or..."
One side of Owen's mouth quirked up, and he reached over to place a palm on Jack's forehead. Jack startled at the contact, but Owen withdrew before he had a chance to react.
Owen looked briefly at his own hand with frustration. "Well it's a bit hard to tell with the feverish," he answered, "since I can't really tell what temperature anything is any more. You don't look flushed though, so I make that a negative. As for being mad, well we all figured you went mad long before you met any of us." Owen's words were gentle and affectionate, with an unusually patient warmth in them. "On the plus side, I can say fairly categorically that I'm not a hallucination. But then I guess most hallucinations would say that. I could pinch you, if it'd help?"
"Owen..." Jack reached out a hand to brush Owen's cheek. Owen moved slightly as Jack got closer, but didn't pull away. Owen's skin was cold, but undeniably solid. "God, Owen..." Jack repeated, then pulled his hand back to press it over his mouth in a vain attempt to trap his emotions in. He tried to take a gulp of air through his fingers, but his chest spasmed and suddenly he was coughing and choking and suffocating all at once. Owen tensed, pulling his legs in and shifting into a kneeling position in front of Jack.
"Jack? You okay mate? I know it's a lot to take in, just take your time, yeah? Try and breathe slowly? In... out... in... out..." Owen's hand gripped Jack's shoulder, squeezing gently and rubbing small circles with his thumb.
It was over in a little over a minute. Jack was back in control. Owen leaned back on his heels and looked critically at him.
"Let's get a proper look at you, then," he muttered more to himself than anything. He sounded like a perfectly normal doctor in a perfectly normal surgery, despite the situation and surroundings.
Jack sat perfectly still, drinking in the sight of Owen moving aside some several of Jack's outer layers of clothing, gently and efficiently rearranging the foetid fabric to allow access. Owen made a displeased noise as he ran his fingers over Jack's chest, noting the xylophone ribcage, but was otherwise quiet. When he started running those same cool fingers through Jack's greasy hair, testing his scalp for lumps or bruising, Jack pulled away.
"You shouldn't be here Owen. Go back to the TARDIS. Tell the Doctor to take you home. I'm fine. I just need some space. You... Please?"
Owen frowned, moving back into his original position next to Jack. "Well I would, but I can't really do that... Got a few things need taking care of first," he murmured, and picked up the piece of cellophane he had been mangling earlier.
"Please Owen, please just do this for me. Stand up, walk away, don't look back."
"I'm sorry Jack."
Jack stared at him. He poured all the intensity he could into it, verging on a glare. "Owen. You need to go home."
Owen tried, and failed, to match Jack's intensity. He carefully put down the cellophane piece again, staring at it rather than at Jack.
"It was supposed to happen. The four-five-six thing. It was part of history, and it was supposed to happen. You were supposed to be the one to stop it. That's why he didn't come."
There was silence for a while. Jack felt a disturbing combination of anger, nausea and fatigue. Owen kept flicking glances at Jack, then looking back at the ground.
"I know you don't really want to hear it, but I guess you sort of have to," Owen continued, "thing is, I wasn't supposed to be there either. I tried so hard to convince the Doctor to take me back to help, I really did, but he just wouldn't. Flat out refused. He said that as far as the records showed, it was you and Gwen and Ianto. Jack, look... I'm sorry, yeah? I mean, I'm really, really sorry..."
The silence was fatter this time. It pushed the air out of Jack's lungs, and he saw stars at the corners of his vision before he forced himself to breathe in again. He wasn't going to do this. It was over. He was over it.
"At some point in the future," Owen began again, quietly, "your future, I mean, and the Doctor's future, you find him you tell him what happened. All of it." Jack suddenly couldn't bear to look at Owen any more, so he focused back on his feet again. He could still sense Owen's glances. "Including, apparently, this bit," Owen continued, "the bit where I'm here talking to you. That's where things start getting a bit weird. Well, weirder."
Owen took a slow breath, starting to gather momentum. "You told him, the future him, that he needed to go back in time, to the power station right at the last minute, and pull me out. Which he does. Did. And you told him to tell me everything that you told him. Even the bits that you, this you, the you that you are right now, doesn't want anybody to know."
Owen started blinking a little to rapidly, "So he did. He told me everything. Then he brought me here to find you. So here I am. Finding you." Owen shrugged very slightly, "Like I said, it's a bit all-over-the-place. The Doctor explains it better. He had a ball of string, which he kept wrapping around stuff to demonstrate. It made more sense at the time..."
It was too much information. The story wrapped itself around Jack's mind, drawing out old time agent training about predestination, and preservation of historic events, and the implications to personal time lines. These were all thoughts he didn't want to have, but Owen's description had awoken parts of his brain which had been deliberately and carefully neglected for many months, and those parts were determined to make themselves known now.
"Why?" he asked.
"Um," Owen hesitated, "'why' to which bit?"
"Why would I tell him to bring you here? I should have told him to take you home."
"Oh." There was a hint of resignation and quite a bit of nervousness in Owen's response. He picked up the piece of cellophane again and started twisting it again. "I'm supposed to take you home with me. We're supposed to go back together."
"No." Jack responded a little too quickly, and quite a bit too loudly. A couple passing by with a small three-legged dog-type creature startled and looked over momentarily before hurrying away, covering their exit with rapid, mumbled conversation. "No," Jack repeated, a little more calmly, "I'm not ready for that yet. I need distance. I just need some more time and some more distance."
"You've already covered quite a lot of distance, and from where I'm sitting you seem to have achieved bugger all..."
Owen started shredding the piece of cellophane into thin strips, the way small children to to Minties wrappers, competing to see who can make the longest single piece. "I have a plan, you know." He sounded like someone who was trying to sound nonchalant. "A five step plan, in fact. It's not bad, by Torchwood standards." He looked to Jack, "Want to hear it?"
Jack didn't. Not really. He wanted Owen to go, to stop tempting him with his familiar face and his familiar accent and his familiar everything. Instead, he raised an eyebrow. Owen perked up a little, no doubt having expected an immediate rejection.
"Okay. Step one: find Jack. That part worked pretty well really, turns out the TARDIS can find you pretty much anywhere and any-when. On top of which, the future you told the Doctor pretty much when he was supposed to find you, so that narrowed it down quite a lot."
Jack "hmm"d disapprovingly at this, but made no other comment.
"Step two;" Owen persisted, "get you to acknowledge my existence. I was honestly expecting that to be a bit harder to achieve, all things considered. Still, that's two down in under an hour, so I figure I'm going pretty well here."
"So it would seem." Jack murmured. He hated himself for allowing this conversation to continue. The longer it lasted, the harder it would be to send Owen away. But there was part of him which was quietly revelling in seeing Owen, here, sharing some minor points of cunning with him. It was like receiving an unexpected encore of a favourite concert, half an hour after the roadies cleared the stage.
"Step three. I think you'll probably like this one," Owen went on, "get Jack cleaned, fed and rested. According to the Doctor, there should be a sort of motel type place about a hundred yards that way," he gestured vaguely towards the livelier end of town, "which has several rooms available. And you are looking filthy, undernourished and exhausted, so I can't imagine you objecting on any of those points."
Jack frowned. That didn't sound right. He was supposed to be suffering for his crimes. Penance, penitence and suffering. Not warm beds and warm food.
Owen must have seen this in Jack's expression, because he gave a very slight sigh. "Thing is, Jack, I get that you want to punish yourself, I really do. Thought the same of myself once or twice. But as your doctor I have to point out that masochism is really bloody bad for you. And just because you can come back from the dead, doesn't mean you should. It's like what mothers are always saying to their kids, 'if so-and-so jumped off a cliff...'"
"Ianto dropped me off a cliff," Jack interjected, and was surprised that it saying that name didn't hurt anywhere near as much as he thought it would. "I was stuck in a block of concrete, and he dropped it off a cliff to get me out." The thought had come out of nowhere. He hadn't let himself even come close to those memories for months, and here it was suddenly in full focus.
"Inventive," Owen commented, "but then, he was always pretty good at the left field solutions."
Jack didn't answer. They sat in silence again, but this time it didn't feel so stifling.
Owen broke the silence in the end, "So, motel then?" He bumped his shoulder against Jack's companionably.
"I... I'm not... I don't..." Jack stumbled over his words. He was so tired, and his life seemed to be spiralling very rapidly out of control. Yet there was something comforting and familiar in that sensation.
"Yes you. And you are. And you do. Come on then, up you get." Owen heaved himself out of the muck and held out a hand.
Jack surveyed it carefully. Maybe letting someone else take charge for a while would be okay. He could just follow orders, do what he was told. Let someone else be in control. That someone could be Owen. Jack's Owen, who had been lost.
And Jack was so very, very tired.
He took Owen's hand.
Owen gave an exaggerated groan as he dragged Jack up to his feet, then did a double take as Jack, weak and tired, overbalanced. Owen caught him slightly awkwardly, then guided him back upright.
"Christ you've lost a lot of weight Jack," Owen murmured, a combination of surprise and concern. "Might have to rearrange the plan. Food first, then shower and sleep. Then a long lecture about taking care of yourself, maybe."
Jack allowed himself to wrap an arm around Owen's shoulder to keep himself upright, and even though Owen was at almost exactly the ambient temperature, Jack felt a little bit warmer. He pressed himself closer, and felt Owen wrap an arm around the small of his back supportively.
"All good now?" Owen asked.
"What happened to four and five?" Jack replied. Owen raised an eyebrow at the non-sequitur.
"Um... what?"
"You said it was a five step plan," Jack expounded, "you only got as far as three." He took a couple of steps, then wobbled. Owen's grip tightened.
"Oh yeah. Well the last two are a bit high level really, but I figured I work out the details when I got there. You okay, do you want me to walk a bit slower?"
Jack shook his head, so Owen continued, "Okay. Well step four went something like 'make Jack see reason'. Then step five was 'take Jack home again'."
Jack stopped, so suddenly that Owen nearly stumbled. Jack looked at him, bemused.
"Quite high level, then?"
"I prefer not to plan too far in advance. I'm much better at spontaneity, me..." Owen offered a grin, one which Jack thought he was never going to see again. "Okay, quit staring and start walking." Owen gave a slight push to the small of Jack's back and they started moving again.
"I thought you said it was a good plan." Jack muttered. Owen smirked again.
"Well technically I said it was a good plan by Torchwood standards," he clarified, "and since I'm well on my way to finishing step three, I'd say I was probably doing quite well on those grounds."
Jack smiled. It only lasted a moment, but it surprised him. He hadn't done that for... a long while. He hadn't really expected to be doing it again for a long while either. "So... what now?"
"Like I said. Step three. Get Jack fed, clean, and rested. I think that's the place." Owen tilted his head at a building which looked like it had been rendered in black mud.
"I mean after that," Jack answered, as he was guided through the swivel-door, "what happens after that"
"Room under the name of Harper?" Owen addressed the short orange creature behind the desk before turning back to Jack. "After that? Two more steps to go," he took a swipe card from the orange creature, and walked Jack to the staircase. "...and we take those one step at a time."