The Wife of Captain Jack Harkness

Hope and War

 The months passed by and I grew accustomed to my solitude although Jack wasn’t satisfied with caring for me from a far, he was determined that I would live the life that he could never have and sent me hope and consolation in the form of a new husband. David Jenkins was standing on my doorstep, sent by Jack on the pretext of financial arrangements. I wonder if David knew that Jack had chosen him and sent him to me. Jack Harkness chose well, David was a good man who took care of me, it was love grown out of friendship but it could never be the same kind of love that I had with Jack, how could it be? Although the intensity and passion of that love, entangled in the deadly and unconventional life of Jack Harkness was too much for one lifetime…well that’s what I repeatedly told myself. I was convinced you could not survive for too long in Jack’s world, that kind of love was all consuming, it burned you up. The new life and husband that I chose to accept turned out well. After my experiences I was afraid of falling pregnant and giving birth though barely weeks after I had married David Jenkins I discovered I was pregnant whereas before it had taken months. I began to dream of the future, to allow myself to hope, for this time it felt different. In my late twenties I gave birth to Peter Jenkins and finally became a mother to a much longed for child.

 And so we were married, the year before war came to Europe. That monstrous war, its devouring shadow accelerating until it had fallen across the entire the world. It seemed a lifetime ago but the prophecies of Jack and Merak had come to pass. I had brought a child into the world with all the promise of that new century gone and the world changed forever. The war to end all wars but war has returned again to our island… I personally escaped the tragedies of that war but other women, so many wives and mothers lost their loved ones. I thought of Jack out there fighting, dying over and over again but unlike the others he came back. Those were dark times and ceaseless, the ending never seemed in sight. To this day it makes me sick to the core when I think of the loss of those young lives, such a waste in that futile and barbaric war, though some would say it had to be fought. At home it was the endless waiting, the silence and shock of a nation though when the survivors finally returned home we all hoped for peace and a time of rest. How wrong could we be? For that signalled the outbreak of the Spanish influenza.