DW Remix Fic
The DW Remix archive has opened for posting, so here's my contribution:
Title: Still Just Us (The Two Adrift Remix)
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Summary: The Torchwood helicopter fishes the survivor out of the sea, miles from St. John's. Or: Jack meets the ganger!Doctor.
Rating/Warnings: A very mild PG at most, just for Jack being Jack.
Length: ~2,000 words
Author's note:: This is a remix of "How to Save a Man from Drowning" by Poetry, written for the DW Remix ficathon. It takes place shortly after the end of "The Almost People."
Still Just Us (The Two Adrift Remix)
The Torchwood helicopter fishes the survivor out of the sea, miles from St. John's. He's clinging to an unidentifiable piece of floating debris, semi-conscious, dehydrated, still dressed in water-logged, salt-encrusted tweed. His face and hands have a faint, plasticky sheen that disappears as soon as they begin pumping fluid into him, until his skin looks as if it always has been and always will be skin.
"I'll take care of this one personally," Jack tells the others, the current members of the current incarnation of Torchwood. He's sure they'll want a full report later -- they're very big on paperwork, this lot -- but none of them challenges or questions him about it now. They don't question him much, in general. He sometimes thinks they see him more as a legend than as a man. He sometimes thinks he's been doing this a century too long.
**
Back on dry land, Jack lays the Doctor on his own bed. It's more literal and less fun than he would have preferred, but, hey, you take what you can get in life, right? As compensation, he allows himself a brief but vivid flash of fantasy involving two Doctors and the malleable properties of Flesh. Hmm. He'll have to save that one for later.
As Jack drapes the blanket over him, the Doctor's eyes flutter open, and he focuses on Jack's face for the first time since the rescue. "Jack?" He sounds mildly surprised to see him. Or maybe he's surprised to still be alive.
"Hello, Doctor."
The man in the bed smiles at him. "You know who I am, then?"
Now, there's a complicated question. Jack decides on a simple enough answer. "I haven't seen this face before." Well, of course he hasn't. But he hasn't seen the face it was based on, either.
Unthinking, he reaches out and gently touches the Doctor's cheek. It feels living and real. Maybe a little cooler than human normal. He thinks he remembers that from a very long time ago, too.
Belatedly, it occurs to him that this may not be the kindest thing to do, but the Doctor isn't flinching away. Either that whole "fixed point in time" thing has ceased to bother him much, or he isn't able to sense it as strongly now. Or maybe he's just tired. Jack pulls his hand back. "But don't think Torchwood doesn't have pictures of every face you've had."
"Tsk," says the Doctor "I would have thought you'd have found something better to do with your time by now."
Jack grins at him. "Never."
The Doctor lets out a little snort of a laugh, and his eyes drift shut again. In sleep, Jack thinks, he looks ridiculously young. Well, in a sense, he supposes that's true. Probably not an important sense, though.
Jack tucks the blanket around the Doctor's shoulders and gets up to make himself some coffee.
**
The net, as it has been for days, is full of Miranda Cleaves and friends endlessly discussing the rights of gangers and the wrongs of disposable Flesh. Funnily enough, they never mention the alien in the police box. It's surprising how often people don't. No doubt it's the natural desire of those who've been through a crazy situation not to appear crazy themselves.
There's also no mention anywhere of Torchwood's role in developing the technology. Good for Torchwood's secrecy (and, among the far-too-large category of people in on the secret, its PR). Less good for Jack's conscience, if this idea that the Flesh has had some level of sentience all along is true. But then, Jack's conscience has absorbed worse. He just sort of wishes it could stop for a while.
He randomly samples a few different 'casts, but they're all basically the same. Lots of philosophical arguments from pretentious talking heads and ignorant blather from citizens-on-the-street, because some things never change. (Or, at least, haven't changed for a very long time, and won't for longer yet.) Almost all of it centers around one question: if you duplicate someone, memories, personality, and all, in a new body, is the result just as good as the original?
Jack doesn't think anybody's going to solve that one today. Hell, people are still going to be debating it in the 51st century, with different cultures coming to different (and, to Jack's mind, sometimes very strange) conclusions. Personally, Jack tries not to think too hard about questions like, if your body is destroyed and your consciousness dies, and the universe somehow recreates you, are you still you? Or, to what extent is a man the sum of his memories? Or, if you take on someone else's identity, do you give up a part of your own? Or, if a force you don't understand changes you on a fundamental level, translating you into some new kind of being, can you even say anymore exactly who you are?
Yeah. Screw those questions. The way Jack sees it, Dicken and Wicks are still Dicken and Wicks, entertainingly suggestive names and all. Jack is still Jack. And the man in the next room is the Doctor. Just... a Doctor without a TARDIS. A Doctor cut off from the Doctor's life.
Jack shuts off the holo and picks up his coffee.
He's sitting on the bed next to the Doctor when he wakes.
**
When it happens, it happens all at once. The Doctor's eyes slam open so wide, so fast, that Jack is a little surprised they don't make an audible clicking noise, and he sits bolt upright in the bed.
"Jack," he says again.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," says Jack. He proffers the mug he's holding: his fifth cup, half-drunk and cooling. "Want some coffee?"
The Doctor ignores this suggestion and looks down at his own body, clad in what Jack considers to be a really very boring pair of pajamas. He looks back up at Jack, his eyebrows raised.
"I was a perfect gentleman," Jack says. "I am capable of it, y'know."
The Doctor rubs his hands together. "That's what I love about this universe!" he says. "After all this time, people still have the capacity to surprise me."
Jack laughs. "I got out some clothes for you." He gestures across the bedroom, at the clothes draped across the chair and heaped in piles on the floor. There's quite a lot of it, really. Some pulled out of Jack's own closet, some left behind by various people, even some dug out of boxes containing years' worth of costumes from the Annual Torchwood Fancy Dress Party. (And Jack has no idea why any of them ever thought that was a good idea.) "I didn't know what you'd want, so I brought out a selection. Pretty much anything I thought would fit. No tweed or bowties, though, if that's what you're into now."
"Ah, well, " says the Doctor. "It may be time for something different, anyway." He throws back the bedcovers, bounces over to inspect the clothes, and gives Jack another one of those raised-eyebrow looks.
"Oh, come on, seriously?"
The Doctor doesn't answer, so Jack sighs and turns his back. "Better?"
The Doctor makes a vague sound of agreement, which is followed by a few minutes' worth of rustling fabric and muttered, "hmmmm"s and "no"s and "yes"es.
"All right," he says, finally. What do you think?"
Jack turns around and lets out a choking noise.
"What?"
Well, the black jeans are nice. They look rather good on him, in fact. But... "Doctor, I really don't think plaid goes with paisley. Actually, I didn't think I had any paisley. What is that?"
With an air of hurt dignity, the Doctor strokes the paisley monstrosity around his neck. "I wear an ascot now. Ascots are cool."
"Since when are you cool?"
"I've always been cool!" He adjusts the ascot a little. It doesn't really help anything. "Do you remember that trip we took to Mantaraxas Seven?" he says. "You and me and Rose? It was right before Kyoto, I think. Or right after."
"I remember. I remember that you wouldn’t adopt the local dress, and you nearly got arrested for walking around with your neck uncovered."
"Well," he says, "Now I can go back." He smiles at Jack, but it seems forced, suddenly. A little sad.
"Doctor..." Jack says, with no idea how he's going to finish the sentence.
The Doctor interrupts him, anyway. He's talking rapidly, plucking and smoothing at his clothing. "Well, I say that. Not strictly true at the moment, I'm afraid. I seem to have lost the TARDIS. Well, not lost. Not exactly. It's more sort of gone. Not gone as in dead, of course. Can't hurt the old girl that easily. But we're, ah, separated at the moment, she and I. Yes, that's probably the word for it. Separated."
He doesn't think I know, Jack realizes suddenly. He doesn't think I know what he is, and he doesn't want to tell me.
He opens his mouth to say, "It's all right, Doctor. I know," but stops himself short. Better, he thinks, to let your friends keep their secrets. Or to decide what to tell you in their own time. He's always appreciated it when people have done that for him.
So instead he sets his coffee down, stands, and walks over to the Doctor. "Well," he says. "I may be able to pull off a helicopter rescue. Which you're welcome for, by the way--"
"Oh, did I neglect to say thank you?" says the Doctor. "That was remiss of me. Thank you." He sounds entirely sincere, and something about the earnest simplicity of it tugs oddly at Jack's heart.
"I may be able to pluck you heroically from the sea," Jack continues, "but providing a TARDIS is a little bit beyond me. 'Fraid this is about the best I can do." As he talks, his fingers are busy with the strap on his arm, and as he finishes, he fastens the vortex manipulator around the Doctor's wrist.
The Doctor looks down, startled.
"I think you need it more than I do," Jack says.
The Doctor reaches out and touches Jack's hair, the vortex manipulator brushing gently against Jack's cheek. For a long moment, the Doctor just looks at him, and Jack wonders, not entirely comfortably, just what it is he's seeing.
"I'm not certain that's true," the Doctor says at last. He unfastens the manipulator and hands it back to Jack. "But I might let you use it to take me on a trip. If that's something you think you'd like."
"Really? You don't mind hanging out with the temporal freak?" He means that to come out light and humorous, because it's all right, it really is, and he's long since accepted the Doctor's apology. But there's still a faint tinge of bitterness lurking underneath the words.
"I may have changed. Just a little."
"Not too much," says Jack, hoping the Doctor will remember it later. "Still my Doctor." He replaces the manipulator on his arm.
"Yes," says the Doctor quietly.
Jack thinks about the invitation. Hell, maybe the time is right. Maybe the company is. The circumstances are certainly much better than the last time he left, anyway. "Where do you want to go? Not Mantaraxas Seven again?"
"Wherever you like." The Doctor smiles, just a little. "Show me the universe, Jack Harkness?"
Jack shakes his head, laughs, and holds out his hand. "Never could say no to you, Doctor."
The Doctor's hand is real, and warm, and solid. Just like his.
Jack pushes a button, and takes them somewhere new.
Title: Still Just Us (The Two Adrift Remix)
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Summary: The Torchwood helicopter fishes the survivor out of the sea, miles from St. John's. Or: Jack meets the ganger!Doctor.
Rating/Warnings: A very mild PG at most, just for Jack being Jack.
Length: ~2,000 words
Author's note:: This is a remix of "How to Save a Man from Drowning" by Poetry, written for the DW Remix ficathon. It takes place shortly after the end of "The Almost People."
Still Just Us (The Two Adrift Remix)
The Torchwood helicopter fishes the survivor out of the sea, miles from St. John's. He's clinging to an unidentifiable piece of floating debris, semi-conscious, dehydrated, still dressed in water-logged, salt-encrusted tweed. His face and hands have a faint, plasticky sheen that disappears as soon as they begin pumping fluid into him, until his skin looks as if it always has been and always will be skin.
"I'll take care of this one personally," Jack tells the others, the current members of the current incarnation of Torchwood. He's sure they'll want a full report later -- they're very big on paperwork, this lot -- but none of them challenges or questions him about it now. They don't question him much, in general. He sometimes thinks they see him more as a legend than as a man. He sometimes thinks he's been doing this a century too long.
**
Back on dry land, Jack lays the Doctor on his own bed. It's more literal and less fun than he would have preferred, but, hey, you take what you can get in life, right? As compensation, he allows himself a brief but vivid flash of fantasy involving two Doctors and the malleable properties of Flesh. Hmm. He'll have to save that one for later.
As Jack drapes the blanket over him, the Doctor's eyes flutter open, and he focuses on Jack's face for the first time since the rescue. "Jack?" He sounds mildly surprised to see him. Or maybe he's surprised to still be alive.
"Hello, Doctor."
The man in the bed smiles at him. "You know who I am, then?"
Now, there's a complicated question. Jack decides on a simple enough answer. "I haven't seen this face before." Well, of course he hasn't. But he hasn't seen the face it was based on, either.
Unthinking, he reaches out and gently touches the Doctor's cheek. It feels living and real. Maybe a little cooler than human normal. He thinks he remembers that from a very long time ago, too.
Belatedly, it occurs to him that this may not be the kindest thing to do, but the Doctor isn't flinching away. Either that whole "fixed point in time" thing has ceased to bother him much, or he isn't able to sense it as strongly now. Or maybe he's just tired. Jack pulls his hand back. "But don't think Torchwood doesn't have pictures of every face you've had."
"Tsk," says the Doctor "I would have thought you'd have found something better to do with your time by now."
Jack grins at him. "Never."
The Doctor lets out a little snort of a laugh, and his eyes drift shut again. In sleep, Jack thinks, he looks ridiculously young. Well, in a sense, he supposes that's true. Probably not an important sense, though.
Jack tucks the blanket around the Doctor's shoulders and gets up to make himself some coffee.
**
The net, as it has been for days, is full of Miranda Cleaves and friends endlessly discussing the rights of gangers and the wrongs of disposable Flesh. Funnily enough, they never mention the alien in the police box. It's surprising how often people don't. No doubt it's the natural desire of those who've been through a crazy situation not to appear crazy themselves.
There's also no mention anywhere of Torchwood's role in developing the technology. Good for Torchwood's secrecy (and, among the far-too-large category of people in on the secret, its PR). Less good for Jack's conscience, if this idea that the Flesh has had some level of sentience all along is true. But then, Jack's conscience has absorbed worse. He just sort of wishes it could stop for a while.
He randomly samples a few different 'casts, but they're all basically the same. Lots of philosophical arguments from pretentious talking heads and ignorant blather from citizens-on-the-street, because some things never change. (Or, at least, haven't changed for a very long time, and won't for longer yet.) Almost all of it centers around one question: if you duplicate someone, memories, personality, and all, in a new body, is the result just as good as the original?
Jack doesn't think anybody's going to solve that one today. Hell, people are still going to be debating it in the 51st century, with different cultures coming to different (and, to Jack's mind, sometimes very strange) conclusions. Personally, Jack tries not to think too hard about questions like, if your body is destroyed and your consciousness dies, and the universe somehow recreates you, are you still you? Or, to what extent is a man the sum of his memories? Or, if you take on someone else's identity, do you give up a part of your own? Or, if a force you don't understand changes you on a fundamental level, translating you into some new kind of being, can you even say anymore exactly who you are?
Yeah. Screw those questions. The way Jack sees it, Dicken and Wicks are still Dicken and Wicks, entertainingly suggestive names and all. Jack is still Jack. And the man in the next room is the Doctor. Just... a Doctor without a TARDIS. A Doctor cut off from the Doctor's life.
Jack shuts off the holo and picks up his coffee.
He's sitting on the bed next to the Doctor when he wakes.
**
When it happens, it happens all at once. The Doctor's eyes slam open so wide, so fast, that Jack is a little surprised they don't make an audible clicking noise, and he sits bolt upright in the bed.
"Jack," he says again.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," says Jack. He proffers the mug he's holding: his fifth cup, half-drunk and cooling. "Want some coffee?"
The Doctor ignores this suggestion and looks down at his own body, clad in what Jack considers to be a really very boring pair of pajamas. He looks back up at Jack, his eyebrows raised.
"I was a perfect gentleman," Jack says. "I am capable of it, y'know."
The Doctor rubs his hands together. "That's what I love about this universe!" he says. "After all this time, people still have the capacity to surprise me."
Jack laughs. "I got out some clothes for you." He gestures across the bedroom, at the clothes draped across the chair and heaped in piles on the floor. There's quite a lot of it, really. Some pulled out of Jack's own closet, some left behind by various people, even some dug out of boxes containing years' worth of costumes from the Annual Torchwood Fancy Dress Party. (And Jack has no idea why any of them ever thought that was a good idea.) "I didn't know what you'd want, so I brought out a selection. Pretty much anything I thought would fit. No tweed or bowties, though, if that's what you're into now."
"Ah, well, " says the Doctor. "It may be time for something different, anyway." He throws back the bedcovers, bounces over to inspect the clothes, and gives Jack another one of those raised-eyebrow looks.
"Oh, come on, seriously?"
The Doctor doesn't answer, so Jack sighs and turns his back. "Better?"
The Doctor makes a vague sound of agreement, which is followed by a few minutes' worth of rustling fabric and muttered, "hmmmm"s and "no"s and "yes"es.
"All right," he says, finally. What do you think?"
Jack turns around and lets out a choking noise.
"What?"
Well, the black jeans are nice. They look rather good on him, in fact. But... "Doctor, I really don't think plaid goes with paisley. Actually, I didn't think I had any paisley. What is that?"
With an air of hurt dignity, the Doctor strokes the paisley monstrosity around his neck. "I wear an ascot now. Ascots are cool."
"Since when are you cool?"
"I've always been cool!" He adjusts the ascot a little. It doesn't really help anything. "Do you remember that trip we took to Mantaraxas Seven?" he says. "You and me and Rose? It was right before Kyoto, I think. Or right after."
"I remember. I remember that you wouldn’t adopt the local dress, and you nearly got arrested for walking around with your neck uncovered."
"Well," he says, "Now I can go back." He smiles at Jack, but it seems forced, suddenly. A little sad.
"Doctor..." Jack says, with no idea how he's going to finish the sentence.
The Doctor interrupts him, anyway. He's talking rapidly, plucking and smoothing at his clothing. "Well, I say that. Not strictly true at the moment, I'm afraid. I seem to have lost the TARDIS. Well, not lost. Not exactly. It's more sort of gone. Not gone as in dead, of course. Can't hurt the old girl that easily. But we're, ah, separated at the moment, she and I. Yes, that's probably the word for it. Separated."
He doesn't think I know, Jack realizes suddenly. He doesn't think I know what he is, and he doesn't want to tell me.
He opens his mouth to say, "It's all right, Doctor. I know," but stops himself short. Better, he thinks, to let your friends keep their secrets. Or to decide what to tell you in their own time. He's always appreciated it when people have done that for him.
So instead he sets his coffee down, stands, and walks over to the Doctor. "Well," he says. "I may be able to pull off a helicopter rescue. Which you're welcome for, by the way--"
"Oh, did I neglect to say thank you?" says the Doctor. "That was remiss of me. Thank you." He sounds entirely sincere, and something about the earnest simplicity of it tugs oddly at Jack's heart.
"I may be able to pluck you heroically from the sea," Jack continues, "but providing a TARDIS is a little bit beyond me. 'Fraid this is about the best I can do." As he talks, his fingers are busy with the strap on his arm, and as he finishes, he fastens the vortex manipulator around the Doctor's wrist.
The Doctor looks down, startled.
"I think you need it more than I do," Jack says.
The Doctor reaches out and touches Jack's hair, the vortex manipulator brushing gently against Jack's cheek. For a long moment, the Doctor just looks at him, and Jack wonders, not entirely comfortably, just what it is he's seeing.
"I'm not certain that's true," the Doctor says at last. He unfastens the manipulator and hands it back to Jack. "But I might let you use it to take me on a trip. If that's something you think you'd like."
"Really? You don't mind hanging out with the temporal freak?" He means that to come out light and humorous, because it's all right, it really is, and he's long since accepted the Doctor's apology. But there's still a faint tinge of bitterness lurking underneath the words.
"I may have changed. Just a little."
"Not too much," says Jack, hoping the Doctor will remember it later. "Still my Doctor." He replaces the manipulator on his arm.
"Yes," says the Doctor quietly.
Jack thinks about the invitation. Hell, maybe the time is right. Maybe the company is. The circumstances are certainly much better than the last time he left, anyway. "Where do you want to go? Not Mantaraxas Seven again?"
"Wherever you like." The Doctor smiles, just a little. "Show me the universe, Jack Harkness?"
Jack shakes his head, laughs, and holds out his hand. "Never could say no to you, Doctor."
The Doctor's hand is real, and warm, and solid. Just like his.
Jack pushes a button, and takes them somewhere new.