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Guilt was not an emotion that Captain Jack Harkness allowed himself to feel very often. It was counterproductive, for one thing. For another, he had so very much about which to feel guilty that if he allowed himself to ever truly feel it all, he’d go insane.
So for Jack, guilt was an indulgence that he rarely allowed himself, rather like a really good glass of Scotch or some exceptional caviar.
Holidays were a bad time for guilt, but he found himself indulging in it (just this once) as he watched the newest addition to his team, Toshiko Sato, hunched over her computer screen on Christmas Day.
Toshiko had shown no hesitation or disappointment whatsoever when he’d told her that she’d have to be here today. Her professionalism had surprised him greatly until he realized – Tosh wasn’t a Christian.
She’d been born in Japan, and while she’d immigrated fairly young, her parents had still never converted in more than a cursory sense. They’d participated in various Christmas-oriented celebrations to fit in, but they’d never actually converted.
Christmas didn’t mean anything to her at all.
New Year’s, on the other hand, was the most important holiday of the year.
And so far, she’d shown no sign of doing anything at all that he might have expected, not even mailing postcards to her family.
He knew that she knew he’d been monitoring her communications with everyone outside of Torchwood very closely since he’d gotten her away from UNIT, but even when he’d recruited her he’d told her that she’d be allowed to have some contact with her family.
She’d had yet to ask for any at all. Not a phone call, not a letter, not a postcard.
Nothing.
So Jack was feeling guilty.
Resolving the guilt wasn’t as simple as saying, “Hey, Tosh, why don’t you give your mother a call?” not when this had already gone on for months.
No, making up for this was going to take subtly and finesse.
He found the nengajō online easily enough, but getting them shipped in time was literally impossible.
Impossible without Torchwood, that was.
Tosh found the cards on her desk on the twenty-seventh of December. He watched her looking at them for close to five minutes before he decided to intervene.
“You’ll need to fill them out by noon if you want them to make it through the mail forwarder in time to be there by the first.” This was utter nonsense. Torchwood didn’t have a mail forwarder. Or if they did, his name was Jack.
“I appreciate the thought, sir.” Five months and she still wasn’t calling him Jack. “But I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
“Anyone I could send them to would want to know where I was, would want explanations I can’t give, and I just-“ She bowed her head and he could see that she was trying not to cry.
His guilt notched even higher, but he soldiered on.
“They’re just postcards, a way to let them know-“
“To let them know what? That I’m alive? That I’m a traitor who’s been blackmailed into working for someone who could send me back to being less than human at any time, for any reason? I’d rather not give them hope of seeing me again when I don’t have any of it myself!” She pulled away and into herself and this time there was no hiding that she was crying.
Well, that hurt. Had he really been that bad, these last few months? It was starting to look like, yes, yes he had. He hadn’t trusted her completely at first, because as sweet and relatively innocent as she’d looked both on paper and in person, she’d still managed to get around top-level security and build something that no one in this century was supposed to be able to build.
He moved to kneel next to her chair, reaching out to touch her shoulder gently and hating himself even more when she flinched away from him.
“I’m sorry, Tosh.”
She looked up at him and the fear in her face broke his heart in a way that he hadn’t thought it was possible for it to break anymore. “For what?”
“For not trusting you.”
She gave a bitter shrug. “Why should you?”
“If you’d wanted to sabotage us, you could have done it a thousand times over by now.”
He was oddly pleased to see that she didn’t hesitate to nod and reply, “Very true.”
He smiled. “So I’m sorry. Forgiven?”
She gave a slight smile in return. “I suppose, sir.”
“Fill out your postcards.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And how about you make a New Year’s Resolution to go along with them?”
“What’s that, sir?”
He grinned. “Call me Jack.”