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Rivers saw the soldier waiting by the front door to his rooms from the other end of the street. He was unmistakably a soldier, and not merely because he was under forty and over nineteen and therefore had probably had little choice in the matter – the man wore his civilian clothes like a uniform, which is to say he wore them uneasily, and he stood like a soldier and he breathed like a soldier and his hair and face and shoulders were a soldier's. He might have been the Ur-Soldier.
Rivers did not recall that he had an appointment with anyone, but as he came to his door the soldier greeted him by name.
"Dr Rivers, I presume?"
A pronounced American accent. Rivers nodded; the American did not introduce himself, but leaned on the wall and added:
"We haven't met, but one of your patients spoke very highly of you. I thought you might be able to – " He looked annoyed, Rivers thought, but apart from this brief surge of irritation across what were undeniably handsome features there appeared to be little else wrong with him. There were certainly none of the gross physical signs of shell shock that he had grown so accustomed to searching for – no tremors, no twitches, no trace of a stutter. He even had the unhollowed and healthy eyes of a man who has recently enjoyed a good night's sleep, something which Rivers had all but forgotten.
And yet there was still something wrong about the man, a sense of some inner distress or desperation that the easy vowels and sharp white teeth of his nationality failed to obscure; Rivers noticed that he did not actually utter the word "help" but left its implication hanging in the late November air between them.
"Are you going to invite me in?" the American asked after a longish pause.
"I don't usually see new patients without an appointment," Rivers said slowly, "People are referred to me by the Home Office – "
"As far as they're concerned I'm perfectly okay," the American said, "and I want it to stay that way."
"You know, secrecy is – "
"Perfectly necessary in a time of war."
"The war is over," Rivers pointed out gently. He was getting cold, and his key weighed heavy in his hand.
"That's part of the problem," the American said stiffly, and Rivers relented. He put the key to the lock, opened his front door and gestured inside.
"After you."
The American walked down the hallway into the room that doubled as Rivers's consulting rooms, taking in every detail of the building's layout as though searching for an escape route, and stood aimlessly between the two chairs. Again Rivers became aware of a certain division between the outer façade – broad, friendly face, straight back, neat-combed hair – and the subtle sense of inner turmoil given away by something quite ineffable. Perhaps his eyes, or movements of the fingers too small to hold Rivers's conscious mind.
"Please, sit," Rivers suggested, removing his scarf. The American remained standing.
"You did a lot for my … friend," he said. The pause before "friend" was small but noticeable and planted a seed in Rivers's mind.
"Which friend is this?"
The American put his hands in his trouser pockets and looked faintly embarrassed. He licked his lips and returned the reply Rivers had been expecting: "Lieutenant William Prior." He said loo-ten-ant, not leff-ten-ant, and it sounded strange and even a little obscene. Hearing Prior referred to as "William" was also jarring, and Rivers recalled the feeling, although not the sight, of reading the young man's name among the final casualty lists.
"Ah," Rivers said quietly. He now had a good idea of who this man was, he thought, and he found himself apprehensive of what he might hear. Prior had spared him the details – always with that expression of contempt and the air that this courtesy might be withdrawn at any moment – but the same might not be true of the American.
He waited. Asking what the problem seemed to be had rarely in his experience proved productive – apart from any other consideration, what the problem seemed to be and what it was were not often concurrent.
"I'd prefer not to give you my name," the American said eventually.
"If you don't trust me with your name – " Rivers began.
"Then I can trust you with a few other things," the American interrupted. "Anonymity's kind of one of the best shields there is."
His idiom was quite foreign to Rivers, but his meaning was at least clear. "Perhaps you would be better off talking to a priest."
"Perhaps I'd need to believe in God to do that," the American said. For a moment he almost sounded like Prior – the same sneer. "I hate priests. They're the worst kind of con man, selling people hope and redemption when there is none."
"The war is over," Rivers said.
"There'll be another," the American said with finality. He still had not sat down, but at least he wasn't pacing yet either. Outside the sky began to fill with ominous clouds, deadening the light and making a dusk of 2pm. "That's not what bothers me," he added into Rivers's careful silence. "I'm okay at war. I know how to do war." He looked down at Rivers. "I've been doing war for more years than I want to think about. I know you think that's hyperbole, that I'm – what did Billy call it - dramatising, but I'm not."
Rivers merely tipped his head. He hoped this would not be a case where his patient talked around for hours and failed to reach even the edge of what had brought him here.
"I want to die," the American said abruptly, "and I can't."
Rivers inhaled slowly. Death threats, or a spoken desire for death, tended to accompany histrionics or detachment; men who were weeping and hugging themselves, men who sounded as though their minds were observing the words from some distant country. The American spoke with the matter-of-factness of disassociation, but he was speaking from within the room, and he held Rivers's gaze without flinching or wandering.
"You mean you can't do the deed? Have you attempted - "
But the American cut him off impatiently. "No, no, no," he sighed. "I mean I can't die. I've been shot, stabbed, gassed, trampled by horses, hanged, run over by a tank and hit by a shell. In the face. And that's just in the course of this war. And there isn't a mark on me." He peered coldly at Rivers. "You think I'm dramatising."
"I think you're speaking figuratively." Or delusional to a degree Rivers had not seen in some time.
"I'm not."
"What you're talking about is impossible," Rivers meant to sound gentle, but there could be no good in encouraging the fellow's delusions.
"I'm an impossible thing," the American said sourly, and put his hand in his coat. To Rivers's horror, he produced a service revolver.
Rivers froze in his seat. It had simply never occurred to him that any patient might now come armed, or that they would be so disturbed as to point their weapon at him. As it it turned out, the American kept the gun pointed at the floor and said calmly, "I thought you might need convincing. I'd hoped you wouldn't, this stings like a sonofabitch, but I'm not surprised at you."
Before Rivers could ask what he meant his question was answered; the American cocked his gun and pressed the muzzle to his temple. Rivers felt paralysed, frozen in his seat, unsure if he should try to snatch the weapon away or talk the man out of it, out of the most horrible situation that his profession had ever landed Rivers in.
The American caught his eye, sighed, and pulled the trigger. There was a muted bang, a sneeze of blood in the air beside the man's head, and he fell backwards onto the armchair behind him, his arms falling limp and the gun dropping from his hand. The low light made him look like a painting rather than a person; at least, Rivers contributed his extreme sense of detachment to this.
Rivers sat perfectly still, his heart making poor time against his ribs, his breath fighting its way in and out of his body through a suddenly constricted trachea. The body of the American slumped still and lifeless opposite him in mockery of his own pose, its eyes glassy open and its forehead marked with gunpowder, the thin dribble of watery blood issuing from his temple just visible as it trekked down the side of his cheek.
What do I do now? Rivers thought. He felt he ought to have known. At Craiglockhart he would have called the nurses to take the body away and spent a while thinking about what he could have done.
As he sat he noticed something quite irregular. The blood on the American's face seemed to be travelling in reverse, rolling back up his face, his eyes growing clear and unclouded again. Rivers blinked, wondering if the low stormy light was playing tricks with his sight.
But soon the American's fingers began to jerk and with a clatter and a rattle the gun fell onto the floor; the American stretched, grimaced, and touched the spot where his fatal gunshot wound had been.
"Are you convinced now?" he asked.
Rivers said nothing. If he was convinced of anything it was that he was losing his mind quite spectacularly. He hardly dreamed and he did not hallucinate, but this surely must be one or the other of those experiences. He concentrated on his breathing until the American said:
"That hurt. In case you were curious." He looked at the purple-black inky clouds outside, at the streaks of rain already soiling the windowpanes. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
Rivers shook his head.
The American extracted a tin from his breast pocket, opened it, and proffered the cheap-looking pre-rolled cigarettes to him.
Rivers shook his head again.
"I wouldn't normally," said the American, the thin paper cylinder wobbling in his lips as he spoke, "but shooting myself – " he struck a match, "- isn't good for the nerves."
"I imagine not," Rivers said. His mouth was dry.
"What're you thinking now?" the American asked, a cloud of smoke rising from his mouth. To Rivers's surprise he could smell the acrid, slightly sulphurous reek of treated tobacco. He had not expected to smell anything.
"You are probably a projection of my mind," Rivers said slowly, "relating in some way to guilt about sending young men back to the Front, like Prior, to die." He swallowed and linked his fingers to disguise the tremors in his hands. "It is fitting for me to be visited by an unkillable soldier who wants to die, in the face of the men I have been treating through the war."
The American shook his head. He took the cigarette from his mouth and fixed his eyes on Rivers as though he could see through his skull. "I could burn you with this," he gestured with the glowing cherry and the tip of the lit cigarette, "if it'd convince you. I'd rather not."
"I'd rather you didn't either."
"Good. The last thing I want to do is cause any more pain," the American said darkly. "Can we at least for the moment assume that I'm real and I have a real problem and I'm really consulting you because – because – "
"Because you really need help?" Rivers suggested quietly. He found it easier to accept the truth as it was presented to him for now, however improbable it was.
"I need to … work something out with myself," the American said with some difficulty.
"It might help if you gave me a name to address you with," Rivers offered. He did not say whom it might help.
"Captain Jack Harkness," he said, and sighed, "Jack Harkness. Feels kinda naked without the 'captain'." The American smiled. "Call me Jack." He extinguished the cigarette on his palm without a grimace or a flicker, "It's not my name, but … well."
"Well?"
"It's what everyone else has been calling me for years now," said Jack.
Rivers waited. Jack waited. For a moment Rivers considered saying something, but he thought it best not to lead.
"I wasn't exaggerating," Jack said, leaning on his knees. "War is all I know how to do – uh, all that's not, you know – " another quick smile, slightly lascivious. Rivers thought he saw a reflection of Prior in it, without the antagonism, but perhaps he was only looking for what he thought he found. " – I mean. When there's a war, I know … I know how to be a 'good person'. I know where the lines go. Keep my men alive, treat prisoners well, obey the sane orders and ignore the crazy ones." He winced. "Who would you be, Dr Rivers, if you weren't a doctor anymore?"
Rivers thought about this. "I have no idea."
"There'll be other wars," Jack said meditatively, "but … would he really – what would he think of me, waiting on wars like a vulture?"
"He?" Rivers hazarded the usual guess. "Your father?"
Jack snorted. "Fuck no." The profanity came early to his lips and conferred an unwarranted sense of intimacy upon the meeting, one which Rivers was not sure he felt comfortable with. "I never met the guy. Don't even know who he was. Not sure my mom did either. No shortage of candidates." He seemed unbothered by this, and spoke of it as though it was quite normal and not at all shaming. "No, I mean … someone else."
"Someone you believe would be opposed to your pinning your … moral sense … on conflict?" Rivers asked. Cigarette smoke hung in the air between them, irritating his eyes. Jack sat with his knees apart and his head lowered, exuding turmoil and a raw and vital sexuality that even Prior had not been able to match.
"I can't die," Jack snapped, "I want to know why I'm still alive. What for. He's not around to give me the fucking answers." Again the profanity sat easily in his mouth.
"Are you sure he has them?" Rivers was on firmer ground with Why am I still alive? It was a frequent question from his other patients, the guilt of their survival weighing on them and often manifesting itself as the voices of their fallen comrades. He at least knew one thing he could suggest when it came to the question of why am I still alive when all my fellows are not? One bandage for the wound in the mind. Before he could make any comment to the effects of this potential cure, Jack had answered him.
"I don't know. He left. I was perfectly fine until I met him!" he said rather savagely. Rivers doubted that he had been – Jack seemed rather like he had never, in fact, been "fine". But Jack also didn't look like he wanted to be interrupted. "I wasn't exactly a brilliant person but there was none of this. And then he did a … I don't know what. He did something to my head. Made me think I could - should - do something. Fix things. Not destroy people." Jack raised his head and gave Rivers a look that encompassed both anguish and petulance. "And all I know how to do is give orders and shoot things."
Rivers decided not to respond. Jack appeared to have quite a lot of frustration left in him.
"What am I supposed to do? I can't get my mind back the way it was – I can't just settle back into robbing people and fucking things up – and I don't know what he'd want me to do now either." Jack scowled at some point in the smoky air between them. The room was getting stuffy; a change in air pressure, perhaps. Rivers looked to the barometer out of habit – it was too far away for him to see and had been broken for a while now – and out of the window just in time to catch a blinding flash of sheet lightning.
"Do you have any plans?" he asked, purple spots dancing before his eyes. It was easy to imagine that he was inventing the whole conversation in his head. The details fitted too perfectly with what he judged to be his own psychological needs, and the appalling weather seemed too dramatic to be a coincidence.
Jack shrugged. "I'm going to stay with an acquaintance in the West Country," he said, and in his accent the name of the region sounded alien, "get to know them a little better."
Rivers didn't need to ask what he meant by that.
"Perhaps …" he cleared his throat. "Perhaps you might benefit from having a sense of purpose?"
"Is that what you tell your other patients?" Jack again looked almost as hostile as Prior. Almost, but not quite. He didn't have, or didn't seem to have, Prior's punishing self-awareness or self-loathing. "'Make a birdhouse, everything will be fine'?"
"Only the ones who need to hear it," Rivers said, unable to prevent a small, sad smile. It was not the kind of thing he would ever have said to Prior, certainly. "Would you rather I told you what I tell them? You are a rather different case."
Jack looked so forlorn at this that Rivers almost wished he could unsay it. Perhaps the possibility of being truly unique was an uncomfortable one. "No," Jack said at last. "I want you to tell me what you think I should do to stop me from wishing I could die."
"You didn't want to die while you were in the trenches?"
Jack snorted. "No. I knew what I was doing then."
"Perhaps if there was some way for you to carry on … 'giving orders and shooting'," Rivers sighed. "I'm not suggesting I know of one. But it might help." He examined Jack's face. There was no way of telling how he'd taken it, but he seemed to be thinking about it, for after a little while, as thunder rolled and re-rolled across the skies over London, the former captain got to his feet and finally began pacing around the room.
Rivers was distracted by another burst of light from the heavens, and when he returned his attention to the room Jack was saying, "Torchwood?" in a rather bewildered tone.
"Mm?"
"Torchwood were sniffing around one of my shell shocks, but eventually left him in his bed. I wish they could be persuaded to stay out of more important matters." Jack read.
Rivers said softly, "Put that down. That is private correspondence."
Jack did as he was told. "You leave letters from a year ago lying around?"
"I was re-reading it," Rivers said, although he had no idea why he had been. It was an uninteresting letter, and apart from the tantalizing mention of an agency that apparently thought their ghost-chasing was more important than the very real and alarming war that raged across the channel, almost entirely unworthy of note.
Jack sighed and held out his hand for Rivers to shake, and after a false start Rivers got to his feet and took it.
Instead of shaking, Jack pulled on his arm hard enough to unbalance him, enough to pull him into an embrace that was exceptionally fierce and quite inescapable. "Thank you," Jack muttered into his ear, "from all of us."
The rough texture of Jack's lips on his cheek was not unexpected. Nor was the way he released Rivers so abruptly that he almost overbalanced, and left without another word. Erratic behaviour was the province of so many of his patients that he would have been startled had Jack not left in a whirlwind.
For a moment Rivers stood in the storm-darkened silence of his rooms and tried to collect himself. The smell of fresh tobacco smoke of a brand no one he knew smoked still failed to mask the odour of gunpowder; an extinguished cigarette lay like a body on the clean surface of his arm-chair's arm, and the antimacassar was, he noticed, spotted with a good deal of blood, and smeared at head height. The coolness of thin saliva drying on his cheek and the scent of this Jack still clung to Rivers' clothes. By the side of the armchair lay a service issue revolver, recently discharged.
Rivers looked out at the storm again. It was moving away, the gaps between lightning and thunder increasing with each round. He thought about the gun, and thought the words I want to die but I can't.
He decided he had imagined the entire thing.
He maintained that he had imagined it even when he found the crisp new five pound notes on his hallway table, weighted with a coin and a note reading, "For your time", and he gave the money away.