Fic: Mercy of the Fallen (2/4)
Feb. 5th, 2011 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tardis_stowawayTitle: Mercy of the Fallen (2/4)
Author: TARDIS_stowaway
Rating: Teen
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Nine, Jack/Ten, Jack/original character
Spoilers: Through Children of Earth and The Waters of Mars.
Warnings: Descriptions of violence, cursing
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit here. Do I look like the BBC?
Summary: If wishes were horses, this spaceship would be even more crowded and smelly. Trying to escape his past, Jack instead comes face to face with it in the form of the Doctor, on the run from his own recent tragedies.
Author's notes: Bottomless thanks and cookies go to my fantastic beta reader,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wendymr. She rocks in myriad ways. The Macbeth quote in this chapter is from Act V, v, 19-23.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Outbound from Parnialus Station, Earth year 2012
In the end, the Doctor and Jack ended up on a midsize cargo ship that had emptied its hold in order to house over two hundred space station residents. It was crowded, but at least there were no young kids. Unfortunately, the ship’s captain refused to deviate from course to go searching for the TARDIS, so the Doctor would have to take the overnight journey to the nearest planet and find a lift back.
This put the Doctor in a foul mood, and Jack was no better. He needed to get away from the Doctor. It was too good to be in the company of the Doctor (this Doctor, the one with the cheekbones he’d dreamed about for a century, the one he’d died for when it still mattered). This Doctor didn’t even know Jack had once nearly destroyed the Earth through a careless con, much less his latest sins. It was too painful knowing that this trusting companionship had to end soon and worse knowing that it should end because he, Jack, had fucked up beyond all hope of forgiveness.
When they had laid claim to patches of floor space packed in with the other refugees, the Doctor started to eye Jack like he might ask about Jack’s response to the children. Jack promptly left for a trip to the toilet. That was when he discovered that the ship’s waste management and water recycling systems, meant to handle about two dozen crew, couldn’t cope with the increased traffic. The ship’s crewmembers trying to sort the problem were clearly not skilled plumbers, nor were any of the increasingly restive people in the queue. Riot seemed inevitable, possibly with a bit of disease outbreak on the side.
"Doctor!" he shouted over the crowds. "Time for some more heroics." The Doctor dashed over wearing his trouble grin, which to his credit drooped only slightly when he saw the actual situation. They went to work.
Much later, after some truly innovative plumbing rerouting, organizational support to the ship’s overwhelmed leaders, a few friendly bathroom signs suggesting "if it's yellow, let it mellow," and two plungers that were now significantly more sonic, Jack and the Doctor were able to call it a day. The second mate had given up his private cabin to them in thanks for their septic heroism, assuming that the two of them would share. Jack wondered if he was too obvious.
“Geez, Doc, I’ve always thought you were a good man to have around when the shit hits the fan, but today was unusually literal,” Jack said, wrinkling his nose at the scent coming from the Time Lord.
“An entire platoon of Judoon couldn’t delay my shower right now. Don’t you try,” the Doctor growled, making a beeline for the bathroom. Jack, by some lucky fluke almost completely clean, raised his hands in mock surrender.
“Throw your clothes out. I’ll do some laundry,” Jack suggested.
“Return them or else I strand you in the Slurping Swamps of Sovort,” the Doctor shot back, unlacing his boots.
“Don’t you trust me?” Jack said in a teasing tone, the banter an unconscious old habit. The Doctor, however, cocked his head and studied Jack, suddenly all seriousness. Jack felt like the Doctor could see through his skin as if it were glass, straight into his stained soul. He fought back the impulse to hide and braced himself to be judged and found wanting.
“Yes, actually,” the Doctor announced. He vanished into the bathroom, leaving Jack reeling. Black jeans, black turtleneck jumper, black socks, and black boxers were slid out, and Jack heard the water start. As he headed off to the laundry room, he reflected that the Doctor’s powers of judgment through staring seemed to be overrated. All the more important, then, that he get away from the Doctor without giving away too much about his past. He couldn’t bear to imagine the Doctor’s reaction to learning how badly his trust was misplaced.
* * * * *
“I have good news, and I have bad news,” announced Jack, wheeling a small trolley into the room. The Doctor, towel wrapped around his waist, was standing at the window, staring at the stars. “Good news number one is that I did laundry. Bad news number one is that apparently I’m going to the Slurping Swamps of Sovort, because the washing robots got confused by the scorching and tears on your jumper and ended up shredding it into this.” Jack displayed a fluffy pile of wool with a nice fresh scent and no resemblance to a jumper.
“What’s the rest of the news?” the Doctor grumbled, scowling at the remains of his jumper.
“Good news number two, in an effort to avoid my swampy fate, I brought back some food. Bad news number two is that there is nothing on this ship bearing even the vaguest resemblance to tea. Good news number three is that some entrepreneurial soul brought aboard a stash of Maotish spice mead, and I have procured some for an only mildly extortionate price. Mixed news is that I asked around to find you an extra shirt, but all I could track down was this.” He held aloft a bright purple t-shirt advertising the fourth annual Orion Nebula yodeling contest.
“Captain, I’m disappointed. A pretty thing like you, reeking of fifty-first century pheromones, should have an easy time talking people out of their clothing.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’ve been a bit off my game lately,” Jack grumbled. The Doctor’s face shifted, growing intent, and Jack knew that he was about to start pushing for details of why Jack was off his game. A distraction was in order. “I don’t know about you, Doc, but I could eat a horse with a side of chips.”
“You want either of those things in this century, you’d be better off heading to Earth.” There was a question in the Doctor’s voice, but he wasn’t pushing it. Yet.
“I’d rather get my wristband fixed so I can try a different century. You haven’t lived until you’ve had chips from Big Uncle Xoxor’s Chip Shack on New Liverpool, thirty-eighth century.”
“That tourist trap? The chips are good, I grant you, but there’s no atmosphere. If you want chips on New Liverpool, there's this hole in the wall in Ringoville…” The Doctor hurtled off on a tangent, and the conversation stayed nice and safe until the food was gone. When there was nothing left to eat, a brief lull in the conversation gave the Doctor an opportunity to develop a thoughtful look that didn’t bode well for Jack’s privacy.
“So where were you before this, Doctor?” Jack asked, trying to preempt any unwanted questions.
“Troy,” the Doctor said, too shortly.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Troy! How was it?” asked Jack.
“Big wooden horse. Walls fell, everybody died. Well, just about.” The Doctor stared at the dirty dishes as if he intended to use lingering rage about the fall of Troy to scour them clean.
“Bad day. I’m sorry. How about before that?” Jack hoped to get the Doctor talking again, preferably about something cheerful. At first the Doctor didn’t answer, pouring himself another drink and gulping half of it down. “Doctor? Where were you before Troy?”
The Doctor looked up, and Jack recoiled. Something about the set of his jaw and the shadows under his eyes suggested profound sorrow, and trying to actually meet the Time Lord’s eyes was like skydiving into a hurricane.
Jack cursed himself silently. Stupid, stupid! He’d been too wrapped up in himself to think about the Doctor’s personal timeline. He should have realized that this incarnation before meeting Rose couldn’t be far past the Time War. No wonder the Doctor had been behaving a little oddly.
Of the two incarnations of the Doctor that Jack knew, he tended to think of this one as grumpier, harsher in words, but happier despite the gruff exterior. Oh, from time to time Jack had seen flashes of sharp grief about the loss of his people, but he'd seemed to be dealing with them. The pinstriped Doctor was friendlier, quicker to smile, but carrying a greater burden of sorrow underneath. Now, Jack considered that he had only known the big-eared Doctor after months of Rose’s steadying influence and the pinstriped Doctor only after losing her, and mostly during the horrific reign of the Master. At this moment, no one and nothing sheltered the Doctor from the immediate memories of the Time War. Jack had clearly poked at an unhealed wound, and he knew such pain from the inside far too well.
He stretched his hand across the table and laid it across the Doctor’s hand. Voice choked, Jack said, “I am so sorry.”
The Doctor turned his head away, though he left his hand under Jack’s. Jack stared at their hands. Handsome hands on both of them, strong and lightly calloused from work but still able to be delicate. You wouldn’t think from looking at them that these two pairs of hands had been covered in so much blood. The silence stretched between them, thick as fog in a graveyard.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Jack said at last. Neither of them needed sleep the way an ordinary human did, but it was something easier than trying to find conversation.
“Yeah.” The Doctor, last of the Time Lords, stood and began clearing the dishes.
* * * * *
In the end, they shared the bed. Jack tried to take the floor, not from any chivalry or propriety but to protect his own sanity from the strangeness of lying next to the man he’d loved and lost, the man whose ideals had so profoundly shaped him until he failed them so completely. He couldn’t explain that, though, and the Doctor just told him to stop being an idiot. The blankets had gone to the refugees in the hold without beds, so Jack spread his long wool coat over both of them. They settled in to sleep. Jack hadn’t needed to sleep since he became immortal, but he found it both convenient when sharing a bed and good for his mental state to spend a few hours a night asleep.
Some obscure hour of the night, Jack awoke suddenly, heart pounding and nerves on edge. Instinctively groping for the gun he wasn’t wearing, he listened intently to figure out what had woken him. For once, he hadn’t been dreaming, so something must be wrong. Nothing stirred in the room. The Doctor was apparently still sound asleep with his arms flung out to take up most of the bed, hand brushing up against Jack’s side. Still, Jack couldn’t shake a sense of dread. He risked a little light from his wrist strap. Nothing looked wrong, but Jack decided to get up to check more carefully.
He gently moved the Doctor’s hand away. As soon as the contact ceased, the sensation of dread eased markedly. That was strange. Jack touched the Doctor again and immediately tensed up.
The Doctor, Jack knew, was moderately telepathic, especially with the aid of touch. Was he projecting something? The Doctor had never done anything like that before in Jack’s presence. In sleep, though, he might be doing so unintentionally. Moving his light to take a closer look at the Doctor’s face, Jack saw that its features were tense and distressed while the Doctor’s eyelids twitched softly with the movement of the eyeballs underneath. A nightmare, then. Jack knew the feeling.
“Doctor?” Jack spoke softly, putting a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “You’re dreaming.”
No response. “Wake up, Doctor,” he said, louder, shaking the Doctor gently.
Wild blue eyes flew open. The Doctor’s limbs flailed in panic. Fierce terror seized Jack, swirling with a soul-burning sorrow and loneliness that gaped like a bottomless crevasse. Jack grabbed the Doctor and held on, fighting the urge to run. Run far away, somewhere safe, somewhere no one would know, somewhere he could escape the sight of that terrible fire, but it would never work because every time he closed his eyes he saw lightning and the fires burning, burning, burning in a ravenous blackness that was all his fault, no matter that they had wanted something even worse, this was his doing, oh dear Romana, his fault.
The flood of emotion ceased as abruptly as water from a tap. The Doctor stopped thrashing and his eyes gained focus. Jack sighed in relief.
“Sorry if I woke you,” the Doctor mumbled. “You all right?”
“Been better, but yeah. You’re not, though.” Jack was all for giving people privacy to deal with their problems in their own ways, but there was grief and then there was the hurricane in the Doctor’s head, and there was no way Jack was going to ignore someone in the grip of the latter. And here the Doctor was asking if he was all right.
“Don’t worry about me. ‘S normal.” The Doctor rolled away from Jack and lay on his stomach, head turned aside. “As you just found out, sometimes my shields weaken when I'm asleep. Understand if you want to move to the floor.”
Jack switched off the wrist light and scooted close to the Doctor’s side, almost touching. The Doctor tensed, but he didn’t push Jack away. “Don’t be an idiot. I’m not leaving you alone after that. What if you have another one?”
“You shouldn’t have to deal with that,” the Doctor insisted harshly.
“And you should?”
The Doctor didn’t answer. Jack thought the Time Lord might be trembling just a bit, unless that was him.
“Maybe we both should,” Jack said quietly, staring up into the darkness. “There’s a reason why I acted so strangely when I saw Suriana’s kids. I used to have nightmares about it almost every time I slept. Not as loud or quite so large-scale as yours, but still really bad and with way too much basis in reality. The past few months, though, the nightmares haven’t come quite as often. The pain’s still there, and it pops out sometimes like today, but I just…I don’t feel it at full strength every single second. It’s not like I’ve made things right or reached some sort of absolution. No way to do that. Maybe I needed you to remind me.”
The Doctor made a noncommittal hmm noise. After a few heartbeats of silence, he turned his face toward Jack and posed a question. “This thing you’re running from, Jack…was it something that happened to you or something you did?”
“Both. Lots of both.”
“You lost people?”
“God, yes. Sometimes I wasn’t good enough to save them. Sometimes by my hand.” In the intimacy of the bed and the privacy of the darkness, Jack found himself compelled to answer with honesty he would never have dared in the light of day. His closed eyes stung with the image of Steven’s face, a startling burst of crimson dribbling from his nose. His throat felt tight with the pressure of all the things he'd never told Ianto.
“I take it you did it to keep something even worse from happening.” The Doctor’s tone loaded the words with bitterness.
“No choice. The cost of losing was beyond imagining. So I saved the world and lost too many of my reasons for staying there.”
“But you have to go on living through the pyrrhic so-called victory.” The Doctor’s voice was unsteady.
Jack tasted salt as he answered, “No choice there either.”
The Doctor rolled onto his side and resettled himself against Jack. Jack felt as much as heard the Time Lord whisper raggedly in his ear, “Does it hurt like someone cutting your beating heart out of your chest?”
“Yeah.” One syllable, too small to carry the heaviness of so much guilt and grief, but Jack knew he was with perhaps the only person in the universe who could fully hear the oratories of loss compressed into that simple sound,
The Doctor’s hand found his and squeezed hard before releasing. No words, but the gesture was eloquent enough.
Me too, it said. Also,
I’m sorry. Or perhaps,
To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
As they turned over dark thoughts in silence, a thought struck Jack, the sort of incongruous realization that can’t be ignored. “Actually, I’d say it hurts more like somebody pouring molten lead down your throat.”
“What?”
“Having your heart cut out is a fairly sharp pain that starts at the skin and works inward. Molten lead down your throat burns broadly from the inside and settles low in the gut, and if the lead doesn’t burn its way entirely out you end up with all this heaviness inside of you that just won’t go away. This feeling is more like that.”
“You have a very macabre imagination,” the Doctor said, sounding somewhere between shocked and awed.
“Not imagination. Well, not my imagination. I’m just the one still here to tell the story.” Jack kept his voice nonchalant. He couldn’t let the Doctor know anything about the Master. Even if the Doctor made himself forget this night, memory blocks were rarely perfect. The risk that something could leak through was too great. Time lines were already messed up in the aftermath of the paradox machine, so any change from information Jack gave out now could be disastrous.
“Oh, Jack,” the Doctor breathed, horrified.
“That’s blood under the bridge,” Jack said.
“That’s not how the expression usually goes,” the Doctor pointed out unnecessarily.
“Appropriate, though. Sometimes I wonder how I’m still even vaguely sane.” The things that had happened to him, the things he’d done…Jack no longer had any idea how many times he’d died. It would be easier to go crazy, not to mention appropriate. Jack engaged the darkness in a staring contest. “I just keep on keeping on. Eventually the older memories don’t hurt as much. I wonder if maybe there’s something besides the obvious wrong with me, that somehow I don’t care enough.”
The Doctor took a moment to digest before answering carefully, “I've just met you, Jack, but I'm already sure that you care more than enough. You know what I think? You shouldn’t overlook the obvious. You’re a fixed point. Heal from anything, you can. Maybe that means your mind too. Not as quickly as wounds to your body, especially when you keep reopening the wounds with brooding about them, but quick enough to save your sanity.”
“No! There are things I need to remember,” Jack protested, as if by will alone he could unfix himself in this one aspect. So many things he'd promised to remember: Ianto’s smell, the miniscule twinkle in his eyes when he gave one of his deadpan jokes, the fit of his suits over that excellent rear end, the perfectly balanced bitterness of the coffee he brewed. Would there come a day when he couldn’t remember Ianto clearly at all? When that day came, would he even know what he’d lost? And if he ever forgot what he'd had to do to save the Earth's children, what sort of monster would that make him?
“Didn’t say forget, did I? Just heal, so long as you don’t pick the scabs open too much. Whatever this is that’s killing you like molten lead, I doubt you’ll ever forget it, but sooner or later you won’t run from children.”
Jack didn’t know which aspect of the Doctor’s statement he wanted to argue about more: the implication that he would ever, EVER be anything resembling at peace with what happened when the 456 invaded, or the notion that this possible peace would be acceptable. He wanted to immerse himself in that grief again, make sure he could still feel the full burning heaviness of it, but something about the Doctor’s tone caught Jack’s attention. Maybe he put a slight emphasis on you, just enough to tell Jack that his attention was needed more on the person with him now than those he’d already lost.
“You heal too, Doctor. Maybe not all the way, but it will get better.”
“I regenerate. ‘S not the same.” The Doctor’s voice was dark.
“If you’re trying to insinuate that I shouldn’t have pulled you out of the reactor room, you may be stupider than the stupidest ape,” Jack said in disbelief.
“Course not. You’ve obviously met me looking like this. Can’t have a paradox.” The Doctor practically spat out ‘paradox,’ venomous as only a seasoned time traveler who’s had to face too many tragedies he can’t change.
“Not just that. There’s this girl, this fantastic girl…I shouldn’t tell you too much, even if you’re forgetting. Let’s just say that when I meet you, you mean a lot more of those big, goofy smiles. Sometimes even the Doctor needs someone to heal him.”
The Doctor spoke wearily, dragging his words like a ball and chain. “There’s healing and then there’s hiding, Jack. They’re easily mistaken. I’m all right enough to get by, but you’re about the only thing in the universe that can’t be broken beyond repair.”
“I’m not trying to say your future is all kittens and rainbows, Doc. I wish I could. I’ve seen you better, and I’ve seen you break again, and again, and again. I’m just saying those double Time Lord hearts are bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS, and still growing. One day there will be room in there for something besides the Time War.”
The Doctor drew in his breath sharply. Jack wondered if he’d made a mistake calling the War by name. The Doctor might lash out with angry, defensive words or withdraw from the conversation. He might even break down, as he had after the Master’s death. Jack was prepared for a bad response. He wasn’t prepared for the Doctor’s question.
“Do you know what caused the disaster on Parnialus Station, Jack?” His tone was conversational, as if they’d spent the past ten minutes talking about the weather.
“The reactor core overloaded. It was a fluke of the regulator equipment, a one-in-a-billion accident. Nobody’s fault,” Jack said, but the fact that the Doctor was asking at all meant that this explanation was wrong somehow. He tensed as if expecting a blow.
“The reactor core was hit by a type Q chronowave. Too subtle for Meeviopites or humans to feel, but it was enough to destabilize the reactor. The chronowave was an aftershock of the Time War. The people in the engine room who didn’t make it out died because of the Time War. All these people who lost their home? Displaced by the Time War. And it’s like this everywhere I go. All across the universe: aftershocks, leftover weapons, power vacuums, refugees. That’s not even getting into the routine little paradoxes, dimensional instabilities, and such that need to be cleaned up only there’s no one left but me to do it. Do you see why I’m not gonna move on from the Time War, Jack? There’s nowhere to go.”
“Oh,” said Jack, inadequately, not that there was anything adequate to say. After a second, he added a heartfelt “Shit.” He simply gathered the Doctor close to him; the Time Lord didn’t resist. Words weren't enough, so Jack spoke in the language of the body he'd always spoken best. Tilting his head, he pressed his lips against the Doctor’s forehead, off center in the darkness. He brushed too-long hair heavy with sweat off that forehead, over and over.
Jack remembered his months traveling around Earth before leaving. Hearing the news had been unbearable. The headlines were filled with the fallout against world governments that had been prepared to sacrifice their children. When other aliens came calling (it was still the 21st century, and things were still changing), the country that had sewn a bomb into his belly tracked him down and begged him to come back and help, and what choice did he have? At least he'd managed to do that bit without interacting with anyone he knew. It had been such a relief to leave all that behind, to put others in charge and go somewhere where nobody cared about Earth or its children and he was just another alien drifter. The Doctor didn’t have the luxury of leaving even the external reminders of his past behind.
Jack held the Doctor for a long time, clinging to him like a large, bony, slightly chilly teddy bear, not sure which of them he hoped to comfort more. Finally he said, “The people I left behind on Earth don’t understand why I ran. Oh, they know the reasons, they understand that I’m grieving, but they think of me as someone who’s so, so strong. I should be there for them, and they’re angry that I’m not. I used to think the same thing about you, once upon a time, and worse things besides. I understand now, every day a little more.”
“I wish for your sake you didn’t.” The Doctor’s hand found its way to Jack’s face, softly tracing his jawline. Jack shivered. There was an intensity between them, building in the air like electrical charge, and Jack knew he had to ground himself. Now.
“If wishes were horses, this spaceship would be even more crowded and smelly,” Jack breezed.
The Doctor snorted. “I don’t think even the TARDIS would be big enough for all of them. It would be a problem.”
“You and I would have to go find a nice quiet ranch where all our wish horses could roam. Our regrets would be a huge herd of cattle, and we’d milk them every day.”
“And every night the consequence chickens would come home to roost,” the Doctor added.
“We’d need cowboy hats,” Jack pronounced solemnly, though he couldn’t keep the tone for long. “Does the TARDIS wardrobe room have cowboy hats? Boots too. Oh, and lassoes! There are all sorts of great things you can do with lassoes…”
“Do I look like a cowboy sort of man?” the Doctor huffed.
“I dunno. Maybe not. You’re mostly a blonde shopgirl sort of man.”
The Doctor puzzled over this for a moment, but apparently decided not to probe. “I’m not sure we can reconcile having a home on the range with the whole wanderer without a home business.”
“You would have to change ‘lonely god’ to ‘lonesome cowboy,’ which doesn’t have quite as much force. Or should we call you the Oncoming Tumbleweed?”
The Doctor’s force of personality somehow communicated an eye roll even when it was far too dark to see the gesture. “What’s your nickname, then? Brokeback Jack?”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Why Doctor, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or saddened when the Doctor failed to respond with something like “I don’t…yet.”
“I’m capable of all sorts of things, when need be,” the Time Lord said instead in a tone so neutral that Jack couldn’t tell if that it was invitation or self-recrimination. Either way, it was a shift from the light banter.
“I know,” Jack replied softly, meaning neither innuendo nor genocide. “I never doubted that, not really.”
Jack knew he had more reason than many to distrust, doubt, and even hate the Doctor, and he’d experienced all of those emotions at least in passing. If he’d stayed a coward until the end of his natural life, never traveling with the Doctor or hearing the word Torchwood, he’d never have had to kill his own grandson. He would probably have been able to count the number of long-term lovers who died in his arms on his fingers. He wouldn’t have known what it was to die of molten lead down the throat in either the literal or metaphorical sense.
If he was given the chance to undo his first meeting with the Doctor with a magical “get out of paradox free” card, there was no question what he would do: he would choose the Doctor again. He would not hesitate or waver.
“Then you’re a fool, Captain Harkness.”
“No fool like an old fool, Doctor, and you and I are two of the oldest fools around.”
“Lord, what fools we immortals be,” the Doctor intoned.
“You’re not, though,” said Jack. “Not truly immortal, I mean. Fool is debatable.” Jack knew there were deaths the Doctor couldn't regenerate from, and he knew that Time Lords could even choose not to regenerate from something as simple as a gunshot wound. Jack wondered at the Doctor’s ability to refrain from that choice, after all he’d lost and done. Himself, he couldn’t have done it. In the aftermath of the 456, only the recent evidence that not even complete explosion could kill him had kept Jack from exploring the limits of his curse; he did not live by choice.
“Close enough for most purposes,” the Doctor sighed.
“Not for mine.” The words slipped out of Jack before he could think to stop them.
Oh, this was dangerous ground, but Jack found himself far out on it and unable to back out. He was overcome by sudden horror at the prospect of someday losing the Doctor. As hard as he had tried to avoid the Doctor since leaving Earth, he couldn’t bear the thought of a universe where he would never run into the Doctor again. (He tried not to imagine the possibility that the reason the Doctor hadn’t responded to the distress calls from Earth was that this was already the case.) Jack knew he was a better man because of the knowledge that somewhere out there was someone he trusted as a higher authority. He needed to know that someone knew him to the core with all his faults, seeing him more clearly than the beloved twenty-first century humans who couldn’t let go of just a little bit of awe. He needed to know that this someone trusted him anyway.
Though he had avoided the Doctor after the 456 out of the conscious fear of the Doctor’s condemnation, Jack realized now that somewhere deep inside he had always understood that the Doctor would forgive him. The man who had forgiven the Master for the conquest of Earth would surely forgive Jack for saving it, knowing himself the terrible calculus of necessity.
The Doctor’s hand found Jack’s and twined fingers. “I’m here now,” he said, once again proving his ability to read Jack like a book even without enough light to make out facial expressions.
Jack tingled with awareness of just how here the Doctor was. He could feel the brush of the fine hairs on the Doctor’s arm against his near where their hands joined. The Doctor’s scent filled his nostrils. There was only so long he could lie in bed with the Doctor while intense emotional discussion wore down his defenses before he succumbed to the temptation to try something foolish. But how foolish was it, really? This Doctor was raw as new skin over a wound. With his world yanked out from under him, he seemed in need of someone to lean on. If Jack kissed him, would he let it happen without responding, as he had on the Game Station? Would he flee from such closeness to Jack’s immortal essence? Or would the intimacy of conversation segue into intimacy of a different sort?
Slowly, as if in a dream, Jack drew their joined hands up to his face and pressed his lips against the back of the Doctor’s hand. He heard a tiny sigh escape the Doctor’s lips.
Then he heard pounding on the door.
* * * *
Continued in Chapter 3
Author: TARDIS_stowaway
Rating: Teen
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Nine, Jack/Ten, Jack/original character
Spoilers: Through Children of Earth and The Waters of Mars.
Warnings: Descriptions of violence, cursing
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit here. Do I look like the BBC?
Summary: If wishes were horses, this spaceship would be even more crowded and smelly. Trying to escape his past, Jack instead comes face to face with it in the form of the Doctor, on the run from his own recent tragedies.
Author's notes: Bottomless thanks and cookies go to my fantastic beta reader,
wendymr. She rocks in myriad ways. The Macbeth quote in this chapter is from Act V, v, 19-23.Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Outbound from Parnialus Station, Earth year 2012
In the end, the Doctor and Jack ended up on a midsize cargo ship that had emptied its hold in order to house over two hundred space station residents. It was crowded, but at least there were no young kids. Unfortunately, the ship’s captain refused to deviate from course to go searching for the TARDIS, so the Doctor would have to take the overnight journey to the nearest planet and find a lift back.
This put the Doctor in a foul mood, and Jack was no better. He needed to get away from the Doctor. It was too good to be in the company of the Doctor (this Doctor, the one with the cheekbones he’d dreamed about for a century, the one he’d died for when it still mattered). This Doctor didn’t even know Jack had once nearly destroyed the Earth through a careless con, much less his latest sins. It was too painful knowing that this trusting companionship had to end soon and worse knowing that it should end because he, Jack, had fucked up beyond all hope of forgiveness.
When they had laid claim to patches of floor space packed in with the other refugees, the Doctor started to eye Jack like he might ask about Jack’s response to the children. Jack promptly left for a trip to the toilet. That was when he discovered that the ship’s waste management and water recycling systems, meant to handle about two dozen crew, couldn’t cope with the increased traffic. The ship’s crewmembers trying to sort the problem were clearly not skilled plumbers, nor were any of the increasingly restive people in the queue. Riot seemed inevitable, possibly with a bit of disease outbreak on the side.
"Doctor!" he shouted over the crowds. "Time for some more heroics." The Doctor dashed over wearing his trouble grin, which to his credit drooped only slightly when he saw the actual situation. They went to work.
Much later, after some truly innovative plumbing rerouting, organizational support to the ship’s overwhelmed leaders, a few friendly bathroom signs suggesting "if it's yellow, let it mellow," and two plungers that were now significantly more sonic, Jack and the Doctor were able to call it a day. The second mate had given up his private cabin to them in thanks for their septic heroism, assuming that the two of them would share. Jack wondered if he was too obvious.
“Geez, Doc, I’ve always thought you were a good man to have around when the shit hits the fan, but today was unusually literal,” Jack said, wrinkling his nose at the scent coming from the Time Lord.
“An entire platoon of Judoon couldn’t delay my shower right now. Don’t you try,” the Doctor growled, making a beeline for the bathroom. Jack, by some lucky fluke almost completely clean, raised his hands in mock surrender.
“Throw your clothes out. I’ll do some laundry,” Jack suggested.
“Return them or else I strand you in the Slurping Swamps of Sovort,” the Doctor shot back, unlacing his boots.
“Don’t you trust me?” Jack said in a teasing tone, the banter an unconscious old habit. The Doctor, however, cocked his head and studied Jack, suddenly all seriousness. Jack felt like the Doctor could see through his skin as if it were glass, straight into his stained soul. He fought back the impulse to hide and braced himself to be judged and found wanting.
“Yes, actually,” the Doctor announced. He vanished into the bathroom, leaving Jack reeling. Black jeans, black turtleneck jumper, black socks, and black boxers were slid out, and Jack heard the water start. As he headed off to the laundry room, he reflected that the Doctor’s powers of judgment through staring seemed to be overrated. All the more important, then, that he get away from the Doctor without giving away too much about his past. He couldn’t bear to imagine the Doctor’s reaction to learning how badly his trust was misplaced.
* * * * *
“I have good news, and I have bad news,” announced Jack, wheeling a small trolley into the room. The Doctor, towel wrapped around his waist, was standing at the window, staring at the stars. “Good news number one is that I did laundry. Bad news number one is that apparently I’m going to the Slurping Swamps of Sovort, because the washing robots got confused by the scorching and tears on your jumper and ended up shredding it into this.” Jack displayed a fluffy pile of wool with a nice fresh scent and no resemblance to a jumper.
“What’s the rest of the news?” the Doctor grumbled, scowling at the remains of his jumper.
“Good news number two, in an effort to avoid my swampy fate, I brought back some food. Bad news number two is that there is nothing on this ship bearing even the vaguest resemblance to tea. Good news number three is that some entrepreneurial soul brought aboard a stash of Maotish spice mead, and I have procured some for an only mildly extortionate price. Mixed news is that I asked around to find you an extra shirt, but all I could track down was this.” He held aloft a bright purple t-shirt advertising the fourth annual Orion Nebula yodeling contest.
“Captain, I’m disappointed. A pretty thing like you, reeking of fifty-first century pheromones, should have an easy time talking people out of their clothing.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’ve been a bit off my game lately,” Jack grumbled. The Doctor’s face shifted, growing intent, and Jack knew that he was about to start pushing for details of why Jack was off his game. A distraction was in order. “I don’t know about you, Doc, but I could eat a horse with a side of chips.”
“You want either of those things in this century, you’d be better off heading to Earth.” There was a question in the Doctor’s voice, but he wasn’t pushing it. Yet.
“I’d rather get my wristband fixed so I can try a different century. You haven’t lived until you’ve had chips from Big Uncle Xoxor’s Chip Shack on New Liverpool, thirty-eighth century.”
“That tourist trap? The chips are good, I grant you, but there’s no atmosphere. If you want chips on New Liverpool, there's this hole in the wall in Ringoville…” The Doctor hurtled off on a tangent, and the conversation stayed nice and safe until the food was gone. When there was nothing left to eat, a brief lull in the conversation gave the Doctor an opportunity to develop a thoughtful look that didn’t bode well for Jack’s privacy.
“So where were you before this, Doctor?” Jack asked, trying to preempt any unwanted questions.
“Troy,” the Doctor said, too shortly.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Troy! How was it?” asked Jack.
“Big wooden horse. Walls fell, everybody died. Well, just about.” The Doctor stared at the dirty dishes as if he intended to use lingering rage about the fall of Troy to scour them clean.
“Bad day. I’m sorry. How about before that?” Jack hoped to get the Doctor talking again, preferably about something cheerful. At first the Doctor didn’t answer, pouring himself another drink and gulping half of it down. “Doctor? Where were you before Troy?”
The Doctor looked up, and Jack recoiled. Something about the set of his jaw and the shadows under his eyes suggested profound sorrow, and trying to actually meet the Time Lord’s eyes was like skydiving into a hurricane.
Jack cursed himself silently. Stupid, stupid! He’d been too wrapped up in himself to think about the Doctor’s personal timeline. He should have realized that this incarnation before meeting Rose couldn’t be far past the Time War. No wonder the Doctor had been behaving a little oddly.
Of the two incarnations of the Doctor that Jack knew, he tended to think of this one as grumpier, harsher in words, but happier despite the gruff exterior. Oh, from time to time Jack had seen flashes of sharp grief about the loss of his people, but he'd seemed to be dealing with them. The pinstriped Doctor was friendlier, quicker to smile, but carrying a greater burden of sorrow underneath. Now, Jack considered that he had only known the big-eared Doctor after months of Rose’s steadying influence and the pinstriped Doctor only after losing her, and mostly during the horrific reign of the Master. At this moment, no one and nothing sheltered the Doctor from the immediate memories of the Time War. Jack had clearly poked at an unhealed wound, and he knew such pain from the inside far too well.
He stretched his hand across the table and laid it across the Doctor’s hand. Voice choked, Jack said, “I am so sorry.”
The Doctor turned his head away, though he left his hand under Jack’s. Jack stared at their hands. Handsome hands on both of them, strong and lightly calloused from work but still able to be delicate. You wouldn’t think from looking at them that these two pairs of hands had been covered in so much blood. The silence stretched between them, thick as fog in a graveyard.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Jack said at last. Neither of them needed sleep the way an ordinary human did, but it was something easier than trying to find conversation.
“Yeah.” The Doctor, last of the Time Lords, stood and began clearing the dishes.
* * * * *
In the end, they shared the bed. Jack tried to take the floor, not from any chivalry or propriety but to protect his own sanity from the strangeness of lying next to the man he’d loved and lost, the man whose ideals had so profoundly shaped him until he failed them so completely. He couldn’t explain that, though, and the Doctor just told him to stop being an idiot. The blankets had gone to the refugees in the hold without beds, so Jack spread his long wool coat over both of them. They settled in to sleep. Jack hadn’t needed to sleep since he became immortal, but he found it both convenient when sharing a bed and good for his mental state to spend a few hours a night asleep.
Some obscure hour of the night, Jack awoke suddenly, heart pounding and nerves on edge. Instinctively groping for the gun he wasn’t wearing, he listened intently to figure out what had woken him. For once, he hadn’t been dreaming, so something must be wrong. Nothing stirred in the room. The Doctor was apparently still sound asleep with his arms flung out to take up most of the bed, hand brushing up against Jack’s side. Still, Jack couldn’t shake a sense of dread. He risked a little light from his wrist strap. Nothing looked wrong, but Jack decided to get up to check more carefully.
He gently moved the Doctor’s hand away. As soon as the contact ceased, the sensation of dread eased markedly. That was strange. Jack touched the Doctor again and immediately tensed up.
The Doctor, Jack knew, was moderately telepathic, especially with the aid of touch. Was he projecting something? The Doctor had never done anything like that before in Jack’s presence. In sleep, though, he might be doing so unintentionally. Moving his light to take a closer look at the Doctor’s face, Jack saw that its features were tense and distressed while the Doctor’s eyelids twitched softly with the movement of the eyeballs underneath. A nightmare, then. Jack knew the feeling.
“Doctor?” Jack spoke softly, putting a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “You’re dreaming.”
No response. “Wake up, Doctor,” he said, louder, shaking the Doctor gently.
Wild blue eyes flew open. The Doctor’s limbs flailed in panic. Fierce terror seized Jack, swirling with a soul-burning sorrow and loneliness that gaped like a bottomless crevasse. Jack grabbed the Doctor and held on, fighting the urge to run. Run far away, somewhere safe, somewhere no one would know, somewhere he could escape the sight of that terrible fire, but it would never work because every time he closed his eyes he saw lightning and the fires burning, burning, burning in a ravenous blackness that was all his fault, no matter that they had wanted something even worse, this was his doing, oh dear Romana, his fault.
The flood of emotion ceased as abruptly as water from a tap. The Doctor stopped thrashing and his eyes gained focus. Jack sighed in relief.
“Sorry if I woke you,” the Doctor mumbled. “You all right?”
“Been better, but yeah. You’re not, though.” Jack was all for giving people privacy to deal with their problems in their own ways, but there was grief and then there was the hurricane in the Doctor’s head, and there was no way Jack was going to ignore someone in the grip of the latter. And here the Doctor was asking if he was all right.
“Don’t worry about me. ‘S normal.” The Doctor rolled away from Jack and lay on his stomach, head turned aside. “As you just found out, sometimes my shields weaken when I'm asleep. Understand if you want to move to the floor.”
Jack switched off the wrist light and scooted close to the Doctor’s side, almost touching. The Doctor tensed, but he didn’t push Jack away. “Don’t be an idiot. I’m not leaving you alone after that. What if you have another one?”
“You shouldn’t have to deal with that,” the Doctor insisted harshly.
“And you should?”
The Doctor didn’t answer. Jack thought the Time Lord might be trembling just a bit, unless that was him.
“Maybe we both should,” Jack said quietly, staring up into the darkness. “There’s a reason why I acted so strangely when I saw Suriana’s kids. I used to have nightmares about it almost every time I slept. Not as loud or quite so large-scale as yours, but still really bad and with way too much basis in reality. The past few months, though, the nightmares haven’t come quite as often. The pain’s still there, and it pops out sometimes like today, but I just…I don’t feel it at full strength every single second. It’s not like I’ve made things right or reached some sort of absolution. No way to do that. Maybe I needed you to remind me.”
The Doctor made a noncommittal hmm noise. After a few heartbeats of silence, he turned his face toward Jack and posed a question. “This thing you’re running from, Jack…was it something that happened to you or something you did?”
“Both. Lots of both.”
“You lost people?”
“God, yes. Sometimes I wasn’t good enough to save them. Sometimes by my hand.” In the intimacy of the bed and the privacy of the darkness, Jack found himself compelled to answer with honesty he would never have dared in the light of day. His closed eyes stung with the image of Steven’s face, a startling burst of crimson dribbling from his nose. His throat felt tight with the pressure of all the things he'd never told Ianto.
“I take it you did it to keep something even worse from happening.” The Doctor’s tone loaded the words with bitterness.
“No choice. The cost of losing was beyond imagining. So I saved the world and lost too many of my reasons for staying there.”
“But you have to go on living through the pyrrhic so-called victory.” The Doctor’s voice was unsteady.
Jack tasted salt as he answered, “No choice there either.”
The Doctor rolled onto his side and resettled himself against Jack. Jack felt as much as heard the Time Lord whisper raggedly in his ear, “Does it hurt like someone cutting your beating heart out of your chest?”
“Yeah.” One syllable, too small to carry the heaviness of so much guilt and grief, but Jack knew he was with perhaps the only person in the universe who could fully hear the oratories of loss compressed into that simple sound,
The Doctor’s hand found his and squeezed hard before releasing. No words, but the gesture was eloquent enough.
Me too, it said. Also,
I’m sorry. Or perhaps,
To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
As they turned over dark thoughts in silence, a thought struck Jack, the sort of incongruous realization that can’t be ignored. “Actually, I’d say it hurts more like somebody pouring molten lead down your throat.”
“What?”
“Having your heart cut out is a fairly sharp pain that starts at the skin and works inward. Molten lead down your throat burns broadly from the inside and settles low in the gut, and if the lead doesn’t burn its way entirely out you end up with all this heaviness inside of you that just won’t go away. This feeling is more like that.”
“You have a very macabre imagination,” the Doctor said, sounding somewhere between shocked and awed.
“Not imagination. Well, not my imagination. I’m just the one still here to tell the story.” Jack kept his voice nonchalant. He couldn’t let the Doctor know anything about the Master. Even if the Doctor made himself forget this night, memory blocks were rarely perfect. The risk that something could leak through was too great. Time lines were already messed up in the aftermath of the paradox machine, so any change from information Jack gave out now could be disastrous.
“Oh, Jack,” the Doctor breathed, horrified.
“That’s blood under the bridge,” Jack said.
“That’s not how the expression usually goes,” the Doctor pointed out unnecessarily.
“Appropriate, though. Sometimes I wonder how I’m still even vaguely sane.” The things that had happened to him, the things he’d done…Jack no longer had any idea how many times he’d died. It would be easier to go crazy, not to mention appropriate. Jack engaged the darkness in a staring contest. “I just keep on keeping on. Eventually the older memories don’t hurt as much. I wonder if maybe there’s something besides the obvious wrong with me, that somehow I don’t care enough.”
The Doctor took a moment to digest before answering carefully, “I've just met you, Jack, but I'm already sure that you care more than enough. You know what I think? You shouldn’t overlook the obvious. You’re a fixed point. Heal from anything, you can. Maybe that means your mind too. Not as quickly as wounds to your body, especially when you keep reopening the wounds with brooding about them, but quick enough to save your sanity.”
“No! There are things I need to remember,” Jack protested, as if by will alone he could unfix himself in this one aspect. So many things he'd promised to remember: Ianto’s smell, the miniscule twinkle in his eyes when he gave one of his deadpan jokes, the fit of his suits over that excellent rear end, the perfectly balanced bitterness of the coffee he brewed. Would there come a day when he couldn’t remember Ianto clearly at all? When that day came, would he even know what he’d lost? And if he ever forgot what he'd had to do to save the Earth's children, what sort of monster would that make him?
“Didn’t say forget, did I? Just heal, so long as you don’t pick the scabs open too much. Whatever this is that’s killing you like molten lead, I doubt you’ll ever forget it, but sooner or later you won’t run from children.”
Jack didn’t know which aspect of the Doctor’s statement he wanted to argue about more: the implication that he would ever, EVER be anything resembling at peace with what happened when the 456 invaded, or the notion that this possible peace would be acceptable. He wanted to immerse himself in that grief again, make sure he could still feel the full burning heaviness of it, but something about the Doctor’s tone caught Jack’s attention. Maybe he put a slight emphasis on you, just enough to tell Jack that his attention was needed more on the person with him now than those he’d already lost.
“You heal too, Doctor. Maybe not all the way, but it will get better.”
“I regenerate. ‘S not the same.” The Doctor’s voice was dark.
“If you’re trying to insinuate that I shouldn’t have pulled you out of the reactor room, you may be stupider than the stupidest ape,” Jack said in disbelief.
“Course not. You’ve obviously met me looking like this. Can’t have a paradox.” The Doctor practically spat out ‘paradox,’ venomous as only a seasoned time traveler who’s had to face too many tragedies he can’t change.
“Not just that. There’s this girl, this fantastic girl…I shouldn’t tell you too much, even if you’re forgetting. Let’s just say that when I meet you, you mean a lot more of those big, goofy smiles. Sometimes even the Doctor needs someone to heal him.”
The Doctor spoke wearily, dragging his words like a ball and chain. “There’s healing and then there’s hiding, Jack. They’re easily mistaken. I’m all right enough to get by, but you’re about the only thing in the universe that can’t be broken beyond repair.”
“I’m not trying to say your future is all kittens and rainbows, Doc. I wish I could. I’ve seen you better, and I’ve seen you break again, and again, and again. I’m just saying those double Time Lord hearts are bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS, and still growing. One day there will be room in there for something besides the Time War.”
The Doctor drew in his breath sharply. Jack wondered if he’d made a mistake calling the War by name. The Doctor might lash out with angry, defensive words or withdraw from the conversation. He might even break down, as he had after the Master’s death. Jack was prepared for a bad response. He wasn’t prepared for the Doctor’s question.
“Do you know what caused the disaster on Parnialus Station, Jack?” His tone was conversational, as if they’d spent the past ten minutes talking about the weather.
“The reactor core overloaded. It was a fluke of the regulator equipment, a one-in-a-billion accident. Nobody’s fault,” Jack said, but the fact that the Doctor was asking at all meant that this explanation was wrong somehow. He tensed as if expecting a blow.
“The reactor core was hit by a type Q chronowave. Too subtle for Meeviopites or humans to feel, but it was enough to destabilize the reactor. The chronowave was an aftershock of the Time War. The people in the engine room who didn’t make it out died because of the Time War. All these people who lost their home? Displaced by the Time War. And it’s like this everywhere I go. All across the universe: aftershocks, leftover weapons, power vacuums, refugees. That’s not even getting into the routine little paradoxes, dimensional instabilities, and such that need to be cleaned up only there’s no one left but me to do it. Do you see why I’m not gonna move on from the Time War, Jack? There’s nowhere to go.”
“Oh,” said Jack, inadequately, not that there was anything adequate to say. After a second, he added a heartfelt “Shit.” He simply gathered the Doctor close to him; the Time Lord didn’t resist. Words weren't enough, so Jack spoke in the language of the body he'd always spoken best. Tilting his head, he pressed his lips against the Doctor’s forehead, off center in the darkness. He brushed too-long hair heavy with sweat off that forehead, over and over.
Jack remembered his months traveling around Earth before leaving. Hearing the news had been unbearable. The headlines were filled with the fallout against world governments that had been prepared to sacrifice their children. When other aliens came calling (it was still the 21st century, and things were still changing), the country that had sewn a bomb into his belly tracked him down and begged him to come back and help, and what choice did he have? At least he'd managed to do that bit without interacting with anyone he knew. It had been such a relief to leave all that behind, to put others in charge and go somewhere where nobody cared about Earth or its children and he was just another alien drifter. The Doctor didn’t have the luxury of leaving even the external reminders of his past behind.
Jack held the Doctor for a long time, clinging to him like a large, bony, slightly chilly teddy bear, not sure which of them he hoped to comfort more. Finally he said, “The people I left behind on Earth don’t understand why I ran. Oh, they know the reasons, they understand that I’m grieving, but they think of me as someone who’s so, so strong. I should be there for them, and they’re angry that I’m not. I used to think the same thing about you, once upon a time, and worse things besides. I understand now, every day a little more.”
“I wish for your sake you didn’t.” The Doctor’s hand found its way to Jack’s face, softly tracing his jawline. Jack shivered. There was an intensity between them, building in the air like electrical charge, and Jack knew he had to ground himself. Now.
“If wishes were horses, this spaceship would be even more crowded and smelly,” Jack breezed.
The Doctor snorted. “I don’t think even the TARDIS would be big enough for all of them. It would be a problem.”
“You and I would have to go find a nice quiet ranch where all our wish horses could roam. Our regrets would be a huge herd of cattle, and we’d milk them every day.”
“And every night the consequence chickens would come home to roost,” the Doctor added.
“We’d need cowboy hats,” Jack pronounced solemnly, though he couldn’t keep the tone for long. “Does the TARDIS wardrobe room have cowboy hats? Boots too. Oh, and lassoes! There are all sorts of great things you can do with lassoes…”
“Do I look like a cowboy sort of man?” the Doctor huffed.
“I dunno. Maybe not. You’re mostly a blonde shopgirl sort of man.”
The Doctor puzzled over this for a moment, but apparently decided not to probe. “I’m not sure we can reconcile having a home on the range with the whole wanderer without a home business.”
“You would have to change ‘lonely god’ to ‘lonesome cowboy,’ which doesn’t have quite as much force. Or should we call you the Oncoming Tumbleweed?”
The Doctor’s force of personality somehow communicated an eye roll even when it was far too dark to see the gesture. “What’s your nickname, then? Brokeback Jack?”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Why Doctor, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or saddened when the Doctor failed to respond with something like “I don’t…yet.”
“I’m capable of all sorts of things, when need be,” the Time Lord said instead in a tone so neutral that Jack couldn’t tell if that it was invitation or self-recrimination. Either way, it was a shift from the light banter.
“I know,” Jack replied softly, meaning neither innuendo nor genocide. “I never doubted that, not really.”
Jack knew he had more reason than many to distrust, doubt, and even hate the Doctor, and he’d experienced all of those emotions at least in passing. If he’d stayed a coward until the end of his natural life, never traveling with the Doctor or hearing the word Torchwood, he’d never have had to kill his own grandson. He would probably have been able to count the number of long-term lovers who died in his arms on his fingers. He wouldn’t have known what it was to die of molten lead down the throat in either the literal or metaphorical sense.
If he was given the chance to undo his first meeting with the Doctor with a magical “get out of paradox free” card, there was no question what he would do: he would choose the Doctor again. He would not hesitate or waver.
“Then you’re a fool, Captain Harkness.”
“No fool like an old fool, Doctor, and you and I are two of the oldest fools around.”
“Lord, what fools we immortals be,” the Doctor intoned.
“You’re not, though,” said Jack. “Not truly immortal, I mean. Fool is debatable.” Jack knew there were deaths the Doctor couldn't regenerate from, and he knew that Time Lords could even choose not to regenerate from something as simple as a gunshot wound. Jack wondered at the Doctor’s ability to refrain from that choice, after all he’d lost and done. Himself, he couldn’t have done it. In the aftermath of the 456, only the recent evidence that not even complete explosion could kill him had kept Jack from exploring the limits of his curse; he did not live by choice.
“Close enough for most purposes,” the Doctor sighed.
“Not for mine.” The words slipped out of Jack before he could think to stop them.
Oh, this was dangerous ground, but Jack found himself far out on it and unable to back out. He was overcome by sudden horror at the prospect of someday losing the Doctor. As hard as he had tried to avoid the Doctor since leaving Earth, he couldn’t bear the thought of a universe where he would never run into the Doctor again. (He tried not to imagine the possibility that the reason the Doctor hadn’t responded to the distress calls from Earth was that this was already the case.) Jack knew he was a better man because of the knowledge that somewhere out there was someone he trusted as a higher authority. He needed to know that someone knew him to the core with all his faults, seeing him more clearly than the beloved twenty-first century humans who couldn’t let go of just a little bit of awe. He needed to know that this someone trusted him anyway.
Though he had avoided the Doctor after the 456 out of the conscious fear of the Doctor’s condemnation, Jack realized now that somewhere deep inside he had always understood that the Doctor would forgive him. The man who had forgiven the Master for the conquest of Earth would surely forgive Jack for saving it, knowing himself the terrible calculus of necessity.
The Doctor’s hand found Jack’s and twined fingers. “I’m here now,” he said, once again proving his ability to read Jack like a book even without enough light to make out facial expressions.
Jack tingled with awareness of just how here the Doctor was. He could feel the brush of the fine hairs on the Doctor’s arm against his near where their hands joined. The Doctor’s scent filled his nostrils. There was only so long he could lie in bed with the Doctor while intense emotional discussion wore down his defenses before he succumbed to the temptation to try something foolish. But how foolish was it, really? This Doctor was raw as new skin over a wound. With his world yanked out from under him, he seemed in need of someone to lean on. If Jack kissed him, would he let it happen without responding, as he had on the Game Station? Would he flee from such closeness to Jack’s immortal essence? Or would the intimacy of conversation segue into intimacy of a different sort?
Slowly, as if in a dream, Jack drew their joined hands up to his face and pressed his lips against the back of the Doctor’s hand. He heard a tiny sigh escape the Doctor’s lips.
Then he heard pounding on the door.
* * * *
Continued in Chapter 3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-05 11:13 pm (UTC)I'm really enjoying the interaction between the Doctor and Jack. If there were ever two people who ought to understand each other at these points in their respective timelines, this is that pairing. And I'm glad it finally dawned on Jack that the problem was never that the Doctor wouldn't forgive him--the problem was that the Doctor *would*.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:42 am (UTC)With the plumbing disaster, I wanted the Doctor and Jack to have to face some of the mundane problems that follow in the wake of major catastrophes. The Doctor usually takes off before this sort of thing, and Jack has generally delegated it, but in this instance there's no escaping.
And I'm glad it finally dawned on Jack that the problem was never that the Doctor wouldn't forgive him--the problem was that the Doctor *would*.
I love the way you phrased this! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-05 11:15 pm (UTC)But damn that pounding on the door just when I was hoping for some angsty needy sex!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-05 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:46 am (UTC)I am also pleased that your Brett!Holmes icon seems to be enjoying the story. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 12:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:52 am (UTC)Major catastrophes are often followed by many more mundane disasters and unglamorous challenges. It's not the stuff that makes history books, but serious to the people involved. Usually the Doctor and Jack flee beforehand or delegate this sort of thing, but I wanted to force them to deal with the less showy side of heroism. Also, the Oncoming Storm and the Immortal Captain unclogging the plumbing is just funny. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 01:32 am (UTC)“If wishes were horses, this spaceship would be even more crowded and smelly,” Jack breezed.
The Doctor snorted. “I don’t think even the TARDIS would be big enough for all of them. It would be a problem.”
“You and I would have to go find a nice quiet ranch where all our wish horses could roam. Our regrets would be a huge herd of cattle, and we’d milk them every day.”
“And every night the consequence chickens would come home to roost,” the Doctor added.
It's cute and funny and painful all at once. You remain an insanely talented writer.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-06 04:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-07 02:19 am (UTC)The Doctor and Jack, Plumbers Extraordinaire!
And this particularly inspired bit of banter:
“You and I would have to go find a nice quiet ranch where all our wish horses could roam. Our regrets would be a huge herd of cattle, and we’d milk them every day.”
“And every night the consequence chickens would come home to roost,” the Doctor added.
“We’d need cowboy hats,” Jack pronounced solemnly, though he couldn’t keep the tone for long. “Does the TARDIS wardrobe room have cowboy hats? Boots too. Oh, and lassoes! There are all sorts of great things you can do with lassoes…”
I laughed hard enough that I startled my cats *g*. Brilliant work and I really look forward to the next chapter!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-10 03:05 am (UTC)Also, my apologies to your poor startled cats. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-16 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-16 08:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-03 01:03 am (UTC)The molten lead discussion was painful to read, it rang so true.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-03 02:37 am (UTC)