FIC: Torchwood - The Tarot Cards

[fajrdrako_fic]

Title: The Tarot Cards
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness, the Tarot girl
Length: 1050 words
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: Though it may not be immediately obvious, this is my tribute to the Eleventh Doctor, who first appeared tonight. Spoilers for Torchwood series three, Children of Earth. Cross-posted to my Dreamwidth account, my lj, torch_wood, and to my fanfiction journal. Thanks to maaseru for beta-reading.


The Tarot Cards

The Tarot girl frowned at Jack. "Your life is a shambles, your lover dead, your Torchwood destroyed - and all you want to ask me about is him?"

"Tell me," insisted Jack. Unlike the last time she had seen him, he was dressed with neat military precision, his manner outwardly calm and controlled. She had to look closely to see that his hair was uncombed, or that there were shadows under his eyes. In a quiet corner of this café, in which Jack had first found her in 1888, there was no one else to know that his psychic state was shimmering with pain.

Not that it was any of her business. Her business was not to read minds, but to read cards. Simple, straightforward cards. People were seldom simple, never straightforward, and immortal intergalactic con men were a class unto themselves for complexity.

His gorgeous smile had a brittle quality, which made it no less dazzling. He wore his charisma like a force-field. Perhaps if someone weren't accustomed to the leftover debris of other people's minds, he would seem composed. The smile disappeared a second too quickly. He knew she was reading him. He didn't like it.

Well: too bad.

"I need to know what's happening," he said. They both knew he was reduced to pleading. They both knew he would go further, but that had not been her intent. She didn't want to bait him or humiliate him. She rather liked him, however little she trusted his ways.

She had to look away, blinded for a moment by his need. She nodded, not letting him see she was moved. She said briskly, "Very well, then. Shuffle."

Captain Jack Harkness shuffled the cards with the skill of a stage magician, or perhaps a chronic gambler. Except that he characteristically gambled with lives and hearts - particularly his own. He cut the cards, his eyes fixed on her face. People died for those eyes, and lived for them, too. She wondered what Jack lived for, now that he had lost everything... No, not quite everything, but close to it, and not for the first time. This time, he had his memories, and his sanity, and his treasured coat.

She turned over the top card. "The Fool," she said. "That's you."

"Of course."

She glared, to let him know she didn't approve of the smooth self-deprecation, anger directed at himself. He knew that as well as she did. "...Because you're at a new beginning. Reborn, reinvented, as it were."

The smile returned, briefly. "Regenerated?"

"Don't be ridiculous. That's not you, that's someone else. You're not a Time Lord. You're a totally different thing."

"I know. Go on."

The next card showed the knight's effigy, the coloured glass of a church window, the stone hands in prayer. "The four of Swords. That's Torchwood. The peace after the battle is lost; silence; recuperation for the next war."

"The once and future Hub?" He looked amused.

She turned over the next card. "Death. That's - "

"Ianto," said Jack, amusement disappearing. His voice was a rough whisper. He had clenched his hands.

"No," she said sternly. "It's Steven Carter. Don't interrupt. Now, the Empress. That's your Gwen Cooper."

"Fitting," he said. "Good old Gwen. Though I expected something more fecund, now that she's breeding. I happen to know she was on the pill."

"She is equal to her fate, and whatever it brings. The next card is the Knight of Cups, for her partner Rhys, the knight in shining armour who makes her victories possible, and who protects her from herself. Without Rhys, she could not be what she is."

"I know all about that. It doesn't matter," said Jack impatiently. "Tell me about - "

"Don't interrupt," she repeated. "The cards say what they say. A wise man listens."

Though she was only a fraction of his age, he bowed his head as if she were his teacher. She might be, if he would let her, but not in this age. Not now, not here, in a forgotten café in Cardiff with the memories of Ianto, Toshiko, Owen and Steven heavy upon him.

He made his answer light. "Too bad you don't have a TARDIS card."

"The TARDIS encompasses all of time and space. They are all TARDIS cards, every one."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? Bigger on the inside? But - "

"But appearances are always deceptive. Of all people, you know that. Here's the Hanged Man: that's your Captain John Hart, the Time Agent who lost his way."

"He's not my Captain John Hart."

"No? As long as you hold his heart, he's yours, whether you want him or not. Examine your own denials. Ah, here is the one you were waiting for." She pushed the card towards him. "Sudden transformation. Disaster. A change of state. The Tower, where the old edifice falls and the new one must take its place."

"Are you sure? Are you sure that's him, not me?"

She shrugged. "If you don't believe me, find another reader." She reached for the card again, but his hand closed gently around her wrist, stopping her.

"Does it mean his death?"

"Yes." Her eyes met his, with no expression in them. "A sort of death. He is a Time Lord, not a human. He will regenerate still. You will see him once more as he is now. When you see him next after that, he will wear a new face."

The air shimmered with Jack's unasked questions. He released her arm and she put it primly in her lap.

When he spoke, it was with the question he most wanted answered, she knew. "So I will meet him again?"

She smiled brightly. "Oh, yes." She turned over another card. The Wheel of Fortune. "Over and over and over. Your lives are entwined. He will be changed, but you too will be different. That's growth. That's evolution. Time transforms everyone."

"Even me?"

"Even you."

Unsmiling, Jack looked at the card as if it were the face of Doctor himself. "Everything changes. Except for one thing."

She never asked personal questions of a querant: never, never, never. But this time she burst out with it, because of who Jack was, and because of the nature of the man they talked about. "Is he worth all this devotion from you? Is he really?"

"Always," said Jack, with conviction. "I never doubted him. I never will."


~ ~ ~