Undiscovered Country -7/10 DW/TW crossover, Ten/Rose/Jack PG-15
A sequel to Life in Cardiff.
WORDS: 4766
SPOILERS: TW S2 up to Fragments. Basically, this is a story about how those events might have gone with the Doctor and Rose around, and emotionally involved with Jack.
DW-wise, it's post VOTD, but pretty much AU from there. However I have borrowed a few ideas from the forums discussing possible ways S4 could go. There's also a nod to the Fourth Doctor story, "City of Death."
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose/Jack, Martha, Owen, Tosh, Gwen/Rhys, Ianto and a surprise.
RATING - PG so far. Some strong language and general creepiness.
DISCLAIMER - Obviously, the BBC thought up the original characters and storylines, and the credit for that goes to them. This is just for fun, not personal profit.
CREDITS: Illustration by christn7 . Thank you to dark_aegis and wendymr for sterling work as beta readers and brainstormers. This story would have gone way off track without them, I am sure.
Quotation from St Paul's letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13 - The Bible (NIV)
“Now you get this, Time Lady. You can be President of what the hell you like, but on this planet you’re illegal aliens. And you know what Torchwood do with people like you? We take you in for interrogation.”
An unexpected reunion rocks the Doctor's world and makes Jack fear the worst. Sometimes just feeling wrong can come in useful...
“ ‘Seems’, madam! Nay, it is; I know not ‘seems.’”
Hamlet, Act 1, scene ii
“I’m coming with you,” Jack insisted. “How do you know it isn’t a trap?”
“He knew my name,” the Doctor replied, not for the first time in the conversation.
“That makes him even more dangerous,” said Jack. “If he knows your name, then either he’s a Time Lord or he knows them very well. I’ve had dealings with your people, Doctor. I know what they’re capable of doing.”
He could see that the Doctor hadn’t appreciated him bringing that up. He was already on edge, barely able to stand still in his desperation to be on his way. This wasn’t about Torchwood business any more. It was getting far more personal than that.
“If he’s an enemy,” Rose pointed out, “why would he specifically tell the Doctor to bring his friends?”
“Hostages, of course.” Jack looked at her as if she was completely brainless.
“But you can’t expect him not to show up if one of his people might be involved. That’s just not him.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jack insisted. He meant it with every fibre of his being, even if the nightmare was beginning again, if the Master had somehow returned as the Doctor had occasionally hinted that he could. “You think I can’t leave my team,” he said. “You’ve seen nothing yet.”
The Doctor’s face momentarily softened. Jack saw how much that confession of loyalty meant to him, and it was reflected by his next words.
“Don’t just walk out,” he said. “Stay long enough to brief them. You owe them that.”
Rose nodded. “You can’t just vanish and not tell them what’s going on,” she said. “You should have done it a long time ago. And Martha’s with them. She understands; if you don’t come back, she’ll know what might be happening. She’ll help them decide what to do.”
“Okay,” he acknowledged, after a few moments of doubt. Either the three of them were of one mind, or they weren’t. If they were going into another Year That Never Was, they needed to be rock solid. And Rose was right. He had been wrong to keep so much from his team. They would willingly die for him. At least he could make sure that they didn’t die in ignorance.
“Just give me a few minutes,” said Jack. He’d almost added, “to say goodbye”. Where had that come from? Okay, he was leaving on a mission, possibly a very dangerous one, but it was hardly the first time.
The Doctor seemed to be trying to change the subject. Whatever was on his mind, he was struggling to get it out. Jack retreated from the door and came back into the control room, where the Time Lord stood nervously clearing his throat. He supposed that the possibility of another reunion had made him nervous - something he was having difficulty showing. Bit like Gray showing up out of nowhere, Jack thought.
“Come on, Doctor. Spit it out,” he urged him.
“Oh.” The Doctor didn’t quite seem to know what to do with those hands of him; they stopped halfway into his pockets and he started pulling on his sideburns. “It’s just - oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does,” said Rose.
“Well…the thing is, since this is a Time Lord we’re dealing with - I mean another one, and that’s assuming it’s only one - it could be more for all I know and really if you don’t want anything to do with all this that’s perfectly reasonable, after all that happened-”
“You know the answer to that already,” said Jack. He didn’t want to rush things but he knew the team would be waiting for instructions back in the boardroom. “We won’t take the TARDIS,” he continued. “Too risky. She’s safer here. Don’t want to cause offence, but you never know with Time Lords.”
“Exactly!” The Doctor seemed to be relieved that he’d put his finger right on the problem, but then he started stalling again, his discomfort obvious from the speed of the words pouring out. “You never know with Time Lords. Last time there wasn’t time to do anything like this, the way it all came out of the blue but - thing is - if there’s more than one, it’s a society. A culture. Helps to know the language as it were.”
“I thought the TARDIS handled all of that inside our heads?” asked Jack.
“Oh, but there’s more to it than that. To really know Time Lords you have to…have to…”
Rose came to his rescue. “He’s offering to tell us his name,” she said quietly.
“What?” Jack gasped. “You guys never tell your names to anybody, isn’t that right?”
The Doctor’s jaw was clenched in quiet anguish; he was obviously finding this very difficult. “Not quite,” he said at last. “But, yeah, it’s a big thing. Not just anybody. I mean, we don’t tell just anybody. It has to be someone…somebody…Oh, never mind.”
He turned away. “I’ll try that transmission again. They might be waiting. Or he might be waiting, or…” He looked back at Jack with such confusion in his eyes that Jack felt almost protective of him. “Names. Should have done it long ago. I’m sorry.”
“You sure about this?” Jack asked. “All this time, why bother?”
“Because…” His hand raked through his hair and he sighed awkwardly. “I can’t say it, Jack, but you know why.”
Rose was merciless. “Don’t be such a wimp,” she said. “You’re looking at someone who’d die for you if he could. Course you can bloody say it.”
“Come here,” said the Doctor. He grabbed Jack’s shoulders and pulled him into a kiss. Jack had never heard his hearts beat this fast. His breath was coming in short, ragged gasps and he could smell sweat on his neck.
“That’s why,” he said, following up with his tongue.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jack said, when they’d finished. “And what about Rose?”
“Her as well,” the Doctor said, roughly. Rose moved into the hug. The Doctor seemed to recover his composure. “There’s things you need to know,” he said. “You won’t remember my whole name, you won’t even be able to pronounce it, but it’ll be in your minds and there are people out there - enemies of mine - who’d love to get at it. It puts you in danger. And if there are any of my people left, I don’t suppose it would endear you to them. We’re breaking the last taboo here. After this, in some ways we become the same species.”
“Time Humans,” Rose said. She looked at the Doctor thoughtfully. “Will we feel any different once we know?”
“I can’t say. I’ve never done this before. I’ve been married, I’ve been a father and a grandfather, but I never revealed my true name. It tells the story of my life. The TARDIS might translate it, or maybe she’ll think I need the privacy. My name is myself as others see me, my trace in the web of time. All that was, all that is and all that could yet be.”
“We’d know the future?” she asked, nervously.
“Not just one future. The alternatives as well. Now, can you see why I’ve tried to protect you? Even by the 51st Century, this is way beyond human evolution.” He closed his eyes and placed his hand on her forehead, and the other hand on Jack’s. “You may become time-sensitive to some extent. It’s a burden. You’ll start seeing behind and ahead of the choices people make. You’ll see the ripples. All the timelines laid on top of one another like pages in a book. How easy it is to slip from one to another, and the implications of it when you do.”
“Then we can help you,” Rose said, simply.
“I can handle some of that,” Jack added. “I was trained for it. I’ve done resets, I’ve done jumps and fixes.” He cringed to think of some of the stunts he’d pulled and the motives behind them. But that was in the past and he’d no intention of staying stuck there. “And between us, we’ll take care of Rose. We’ve always protected her. This is no different.”
That seemed to be exactly the right thing to say. “I trust you,” said the Doctor. “But if it’s ever too much for you, I’ll take it away, and nothing will change between us. Are you ready?
“Yes,” they said together.
“Then let’s begin.”
******
Jack walked into the boardroom where the five members of his team, Owen included, were gathered. This was not the time for him to be ruled by any prejudice against dead people. He’d allowed the unannounced arrival of Owen and Rose to pass without comment. Half-expected it, in fact. For once, he understood the Doctor’s tendency to ignore the elephant in the room when there were more important things to think about.
Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood Three, stood at the head of the table and looked around at his team, their faces fearful, yet resolute and trusting. The responsibility sobered him, as it always had, yet with it came the sense of things coming to an end. In that moment, he realised what he’d been running from ever since he’d returned from the Valiant. It was the growing awareness, resisted fiercely at times, that they no longer needed him. Knowledge he couldn’t deal with until he was absolutely sure what he had to put in their place. He looked at each of them in turn, memorizing their faces and silently saying their names, as if he feared he might forget what they had come to mean to him. Tosh. Owen. Gwen. Martha. Last, and longest, Ianto.
He knew them through and through. He’d gone through the fire with them, stood between each of them and death, not just once, but again and again. He’d plucked them from the fire as unformed clay and moulded them into his own image. They’d inherited the best of his character. Courage, intense loyalty, the resolve to do what must be done, yet an idealism that was never completely extinguished. Also, his burdens, particularly the loneliness that came from bearing too many secrets that came between you and your fellow human beings. Yet each of them had remained themselves. They’d had to, because for all they’d survived together, the real Jack Harkness was an enigma to them, out of reach even when physically at his closest. They were like fellow passengers on a deep space cruise liner. Intensely intimate for a short time, but relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of an endless lifetime.
But the Doctor and Rose were another matter. In a lifetime of intense experiences, the sharing of the Doctor’s name had gone deeper than anything he’d ever known. It felt like the final undoing of the Gamestation betrayal and the pain that had followed, as if there was already a timeline being written over. He could almost sense the people gathered in front of him fading into the shadows as if they’d never been. Only the memory of loving them would remain, and they might not remember him at all.
He was saying goodbye. Why didn’t that bother him more, and what had happened to change things? What was he going to say? Jack rubbed his thumb over the eternity ring he’d just replaced on his finger and felt, once again the warm pressure of two pairs of lips, one on each cheek. Suddenly, words came. Not his own, but the ones Rose had read out at their commitment ceremony a few months ago.
“ ‘Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.’”
He wasn’t in the habit of preaching at them and of course they all looked at him as if he’d gone a little crazy - with the exception, funnily enough, of Owen. Death improved your tolerance of a little scripture, Jack assumed.
“ ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’ I want that kind of love for each of you. Every one of you is more than worthy of it. Settle for no substitutes. It eats you inside and you’ll forget what the real thing feels like. I just remembered. Love is what makes you bigger on the inside. I don’t know whether I’m gonna come back - if I don’t you’ll figure out a way to carry on without me. I left you last time without saying goodbye and I shouldn’t have done that. You deserve better.” His voice thickened and tears filled his eyes as he spoke. “I’d like to see each one of you in private and tell you what you mean to me and what you have to do. Okay?”
Ianto spoke first.
“Jack, we always knew deep down we had you on borrowed time. Nobody more than me. I forced my way into your life for reasons of my own, and when that came out you’d’ve been within your rights to throw me straight back out. But you didn’t. Your love was what put me back together and made me feel life was worth living again.”
Jack nodded. “Thanks.”
“I dread to think where I’d be now without you,” Tosh said. “You gave me hope. Whatever happens, the best years of my career have been with you. I don’t want to lose you but I’ll be strong. I’m a strong person. I didn’t know that until you showed me, I thought I was the little quiet one that nobody noticed. But I’m so much more, and now I know that, thanks to you.”
Gwen was crying openly. “Thanks - oh, so many things Jack. I’ve always loved you. Many people have. I sometimes got muddled up about what kind of love it was but in the end - well, some love goes on a lifetime and yours wasn’t that kind, but you let me bring Rhys into this crazy life and I’ll always be grateful for that, because without him to go home to I couldn’t survive.” She blinked back her tears and held her head high. “I promise you, Jack, if you don’t come back, we’ll keep on doing what we do. And I’m proud to be a part of it. I’ll do my best to live up to your faith in me, and Rhys would say the same.”
“I don’t know what to say,” said Martha. “I just…you just keep in touch, okay? You can borrow his phone.” She stood up and came towards him.
“Be careful,” she said, as he caught her up in a hug. That figured. Out of all of them, she was the one who knew the Doctor best.
Everybody looked at Owen. He kept his feelings to himself as always.
“I’ll be designated driver,” he offered, for all the world as if they were heading off down to the pub.
*******
“He is on his way,” said Parker with a smile to his companion.
She didn’t look up from her keyboard and her calculations. “And about time too,” she said. “I can’t hold this timeline together for much longer. It never really recovered from the Master’s interference.” She looked outwardly composed but he’d noticed a slight sweat breaking out on her forehead. As he had grown weaker, more and more of the burden of holding things together had fallen on her shoulders. It was lonely work.
“Alone?” she asked, as if echoing his thoughts.
“No, he has his companions with him.”
“Good. And the TARDIS?”
He sighed and shook his head. “He is suspicious. For obvious reasons.”
“I wish I could have stayed with him,” she said, glancing up from her work for a moment. “He needed me so much.”
“You could have stayed,” he pointed out.
She shook her head regretfully. “No, Braxiatel, the timeline was still marginally viable at that point. I needed to keep an eye on it, and he wasn’t in any fit state to deal with the news we are about to give him. What mattered more than anything was that he got Rose Tyler back.”
She disliked to be accused of emotional involvement, but he knew that was a veneer. Despite all the pressure on their scant resources at the time - it had been difficult for them to maintain any physical presence in this universe, let alone use chameleon technology - she’d been deeply affected by the Doctor’s state of mind when she’d visited him.
“Her name was Rose,” she’d kept saying. “Brax, if I’d been able to stay a moment longer, he’d have wept.”
His own motivation had been rather different. Truth, rather than compassion, was his guiding principle. The way that the Doctor had been treated was an offence against Time itself. No matter what the provocation - and a forced treaty with the Daleks had been provocation indeed - he could never excuse the Council for letting their vindictiveness get the better of them.
There had been no need to torture the Doctor in the way they had, to leave him completely isolated and believing he’d wiped out his entire race. And it had all been pointless in the end. Gallifrey had still burned.
Once he would have thought himself above such thing as grief. He would have despised the Doctor’s tears. Not any more. Wars changed things. He had had fifty years in a decaying body to reflect on that.
“You must be looking forward to seeing him again,” he remarked. “What did you think of the latest incarnation?”
“Oh, I’ve seen worse,” she replied, trying not to smile. “Absolutely dreadful hair again, this time around. And skinny - that jacket of his wouldn’t fit a rat.”
He smiled. His affections lay elsewhere, with someone he might not live to see again, but he cared deeply for her and he hoped that the Doctor’s arrival would erase some of the weary lines from her face.
“He’s going to be absolutely livid when he sees that I’m ginger,” she declared.
***
There was something strangely familiar about the woman who met them in the moonlit garden of the Parker mansion. She moved forward into a circle of lamplight and the Doctor noticed the colour of her long, straight hair with a jump of recognition, half horrified and half delighted.
“Donna Noble, as I live and breathe! What brings you here?”
He was expecting her to explain, in her own inimitable way, that her resolution to walk in the dust and see the world had wound up with her becoming companion to a cranky old man (Not that different from the option he’d offered her, in fact - she might just as well have signed up). He braced himself for loud London vowels, hands on hips and some remark about pockets and space-boys. But her smile was teasing and refined, provocative and so familiar. Yet overlying it were long years of weariness and pain. He knew all about those things.
“Doctor!” she said, “Don’t you remember?”
A jolt of recognition burned through him like lightning, making him doubt the evidence of his own senses. After all that had happened, he wasn’t in the habit of opening his mind quickly or easily. He barely remembered how to do it, and when he did he shied away from it, because what could it achieve apart from reminding him of all he’d lost?
Yet there was something about her that was not only familiar, but welcome, in a way that few contacts with his people would have been. Perhaps it was a tone of voice, the way she stood, or (most probably) a certain flash of wry amusement in her eyes.
“Romana!” he gasped. “You didn’t die! I didn’t…didn’t…”
…kill you? How could he say such a thing to her? For the last fifty years he’d refused to even think it. It would have finished him off.
“You killed no-one, Doctor. I will explain later. But first, will you introduce me to your companions?”
He didn’t register her request at first. The buzzing in his mind was too deafening. Didn’t kill anyone? Whatever did she mean? How could he have mistaken what he’d seen with his own eyes? Was she telling him it had all been a mistake and Gallifrey still existed somewhere, beautiful and whole? Impossible. He would have sensed it. Unless - and the thought was quite beyond him - his people were deliberately hiding from him.
He knew Time Lords could be cruel, but not that cruel, surely. Their harshness was generally rooted in detachment rather than deliberate malice.
“Hey, you okay?” asked Jack.
He hoped that neither Jack nor Rose would touch him right now. He wouldn’t be able to handle it and some half-forgotten code of conduct that hadn’t quite kicked in yet was making him shrink from revealing his inner turmoil to Romana. Instead, he ignored the question and took refuge in formalities.
“Right. Yes, of course!” His stupid voice came bellowing out and he inwardly cursed his clumsiness. He felt Rose and Jack back off. They were closely attuned to his defence mechanisms and knew that any sign of support wouldn’t be appreciated right now.
“Rose, this is Romana,” he said, without further explanation - he didn’t know where to begin and explaining this was beyond him, anyway. “Romana, Rose Tyler, my…my. Friend. Travelling companion.” He knew that wasn’t good enough. “Partner,” he corrected himself, looking at her with a romantic idiot’s smile plastered onto his face.
Romana stepped forward, her hand outstretched, all gallantry. “You must be Captain Jack Harkness,” she said. “So nice to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s all mine,” Jack said smoothly. “Looks like my reputation precedes me, as always.”
The Doctor detected a steel rod of suspicion running through the charm and observed that Jack had avoided returning the handshake. Romana seemed relieved to have avoided direct contact with him.
Aha, the Doctor thought.
“The last Time Lord Jack met made a bit of a nuisance of himself,” he explained.
Romana knew exactly to whom he was referring. Their eyes met and he saw it quite clearly. But, like the born lady she was, she neatly steered the conversation in a less painful direction.
“And Rose,” she continued, turning to her. “What a pleasure. Channeller of the Vortex and Defender of the Earth. A worthy partner for a Time Lord.”
No secrets there, then. What the hell had been going on? Why had he been abandoned for all this time, yet still watched?
I want answers, he fired mentally at Romana.
“Oh, you’d be surprised what I know,” she replied.
There was nothing new about a Time Lord being smug. He’d done it himself, both knowingly and involuntarily, on numerous occasions. He wondered whether any of the people he’d ever practiced it on, Donna and Jackie Tyler excepted, had felt quite as tempted to slap him across the face as he was feeling now.
She sensed his indignation and added quickly, “We were able to observe events long before we could influence them. A fitting penalty for Time Lords in exile.” Her features hardened at that and he saw that whatever had happened to her since the War, she hadn’t escaped unscathed. But there were so many questions!
“You said ‘we’,” he observed. “Who else is there?”
“Only the two of us,” she sighed. “The rest are dead. All dead, though not by your hand. The truth is more complicated than that. Come, the Cardinal awaits you.”
“It’s like the Spanish Inquisition,” Rose whispered to Jack.
Yes, the Doctor replied mentally. With even dafter hats. One advantage of sharing his name was that it made this kind of communication much easier, with the caveat that Rose, at least, wasn’t yet experienced enough to shield her mind from someone as sharp as Romana.
“Oh, now I’m definitely losing my marbles,” he told Romana. “You can’t mean old Braxiatel, surely?”
“The very same. Who else would be able to call you by name?”
“And who the heck is Brax-” Jack faltered. “This guy?”
“Oh, he’s my little brother,” the Doctor replied.
“You had a brother and you never told us?” exclaimed Jack.
“You can talk,” said Rose.
“Well, half-brother,” said the Doctor. “He was born by more conventional means. Very bad form to discuss these things, though.”
“I should warn you,” Romana pointed out, “he is very frail. We were both stripped of some regenerations, but he had fewer to lose. His body is failing, but his mind is as sharp as ever.” She lowered her voice. “I won’t mention your little faux pas about the Louvre.”
“The what?”
“Paris, don’t you remember? That argument we had about the greatest art gallery in the universe. As if anything on Earth could compete with the Braxiatel Collection.”
“Did someone say Paris?” Jack enquired, and the Doctor wondered if he was going to have to speak severely to him.
“A conspiracy to clone the Mona Lisa,” the Doctor said, briskly.
“Not that we originally went for that reason,” Romana said.
Rose laughed. This came as something of a relief to the Doctor. “You’re a bit of a one, aren’t you, Romana?” she said. “I think you fancied him, didn’t you? How many bodies ago was all this?”
Rose Tyler, you are brilliant, he thought. Nobody puts one over you, do they? He shielded his mind; his feelings for his companions were none of Romana’s business.
She’d gone too far. Romana drew herself up to her full height and for a moment Donna vanished completely. “Rosemariantilur, kindly remember that you are addressing the last President of the High Council of Gallifrey, keeper of the Seals and Sash of Rassilon…”
“Still President, then?” the Doctor asked, in something very like a sneer.
Romana winced. “The last elected President,” she replied, coldly. “And I took the Crown with me.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Never mind that now.”
“I’m supposed to show a polite lack of interest in the final days of my own planet’s history, am I?” he snapped. “I was only returning the compliment. You two seem to have taken a great interest in me.”
“We will speak more of this later,” said Romana. “Why don’t we retire to the TARDIS and discuss things there?”
“Because the TARDIS isn’t here!” he retorted. “Did you think I’d be gullible enough to show up and let you strip her down for parts to build a paradox machine, or whatever you need to get out of the mess you’ve got into?” He realised, with dismay, that his voice was betraying him. He stopped and reinforced it with a further layer of ice. “You lot abandoned me! You left me to rot for years, you watched me and my friends go through hell and now you’re in a fix you just call up and think I’ll come running? Have you any idea what that feels like?”
“I have,” said Jack, and an awkward silence fell. Then he stepped forward, making it rather more obvious than the Doctor would have liked that he was armed. “Now you get this, Time Lady. You can be President of what the hell you like, but on this planet you’re illegal aliens. And you know what Torchwood do with people like you? We take you in for interrogation. You got something you want to say to the Doctor? Then you come quietly, under escort, to our headquarters and we follow the procedures. I get the feeling you people were into procedure back home, am I right?”
His hand came down on Romana’s shoulder. The Doctor saw a shudder of pain run through her and realised, or rather remembered, its cause. Trust Jack to turn a problem into an opportunity. “Well, whaddya know?” he laughed. “I’m a fixed point in time and you don’t like that one bit, do you?” His hand tightened a little more. “I can make life a little uncomfortable for you if you don’t co-operate. Not bad for someone who just feels wrong, huh?”
Then, before anyone had gathered their wits enough to argue, he held his weapon to Romana’s head and radioed for Owen.
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One
WORDS: 4766
SPOILERS: TW S2 up to Fragments. Basically, this is a story about how those events might have gone with the Doctor and Rose around, and emotionally involved with Jack.
DW-wise, it's post VOTD, but pretty much AU from there. However I have borrowed a few ideas from the forums discussing possible ways S4 could go. There's also a nod to the Fourth Doctor story, "City of Death."
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose/Jack, Martha, Owen, Tosh, Gwen/Rhys, Ianto and a surprise.
RATING - PG so far. Some strong language and general creepiness.
DISCLAIMER - Obviously, the BBC thought up the original characters and storylines, and the credit for that goes to them. This is just for fun, not personal profit.
CREDITS: Illustration by christn7 . Thank you to dark_aegis and wendymr for sterling work as beta readers and brainstormers. This story would have gone way off track without them, I am sure.
Quotation from St Paul's letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13 - The Bible (NIV)
“Now you get this, Time Lady. You can be President of what the hell you like, but on this planet you’re illegal aliens. And you know what Torchwood do with people like you? We take you in for interrogation.”
An unexpected reunion rocks the Doctor's world and makes Jack fear the worst. Sometimes just feeling wrong can come in useful...
“ ‘Seems’, madam! Nay, it is; I know not ‘seems.’”
Hamlet, Act 1, scene ii
“I’m coming with you,” Jack insisted. “How do you know it isn’t a trap?”
“He knew my name,” the Doctor replied, not for the first time in the conversation.
“That makes him even more dangerous,” said Jack. “If he knows your name, then either he’s a Time Lord or he knows them very well. I’ve had dealings with your people, Doctor. I know what they’re capable of doing.”
He could see that the Doctor hadn’t appreciated him bringing that up. He was already on edge, barely able to stand still in his desperation to be on his way. This wasn’t about Torchwood business any more. It was getting far more personal than that.
“If he’s an enemy,” Rose pointed out, “why would he specifically tell the Doctor to bring his friends?”
“Hostages, of course.” Jack looked at her as if she was completely brainless.
“But you can’t expect him not to show up if one of his people might be involved. That’s just not him.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jack insisted. He meant it with every fibre of his being, even if the nightmare was beginning again, if the Master had somehow returned as the Doctor had occasionally hinted that he could. “You think I can’t leave my team,” he said. “You’ve seen nothing yet.”
The Doctor’s face momentarily softened. Jack saw how much that confession of loyalty meant to him, and it was reflected by his next words.
“Don’t just walk out,” he said. “Stay long enough to brief them. You owe them that.”
Rose nodded. “You can’t just vanish and not tell them what’s going on,” she said. “You should have done it a long time ago. And Martha’s with them. She understands; if you don’t come back, she’ll know what might be happening. She’ll help them decide what to do.”
“Okay,” he acknowledged, after a few moments of doubt. Either the three of them were of one mind, or they weren’t. If they were going into another Year That Never Was, they needed to be rock solid. And Rose was right. He had been wrong to keep so much from his team. They would willingly die for him. At least he could make sure that they didn’t die in ignorance.
“Just give me a few minutes,” said Jack. He’d almost added, “to say goodbye”. Where had that come from? Okay, he was leaving on a mission, possibly a very dangerous one, but it was hardly the first time.
The Doctor seemed to be trying to change the subject. Whatever was on his mind, he was struggling to get it out. Jack retreated from the door and came back into the control room, where the Time Lord stood nervously clearing his throat. He supposed that the possibility of another reunion had made him nervous - something he was having difficulty showing. Bit like Gray showing up out of nowhere, Jack thought.
“Come on, Doctor. Spit it out,” he urged him.
“Oh.” The Doctor didn’t quite seem to know what to do with those hands of him; they stopped halfway into his pockets and he started pulling on his sideburns. “It’s just - oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does,” said Rose.
“Well…the thing is, since this is a Time Lord we’re dealing with - I mean another one, and that’s assuming it’s only one - it could be more for all I know and really if you don’t want anything to do with all this that’s perfectly reasonable, after all that happened-”
“You know the answer to that already,” said Jack. He didn’t want to rush things but he knew the team would be waiting for instructions back in the boardroom. “We won’t take the TARDIS,” he continued. “Too risky. She’s safer here. Don’t want to cause offence, but you never know with Time Lords.”
“Exactly!” The Doctor seemed to be relieved that he’d put his finger right on the problem, but then he started stalling again, his discomfort obvious from the speed of the words pouring out. “You never know with Time Lords. Last time there wasn’t time to do anything like this, the way it all came out of the blue but - thing is - if there’s more than one, it’s a society. A culture. Helps to know the language as it were.”
“I thought the TARDIS handled all of that inside our heads?” asked Jack.
“Oh, but there’s more to it than that. To really know Time Lords you have to…have to…”
Rose came to his rescue. “He’s offering to tell us his name,” she said quietly.
“What?” Jack gasped. “You guys never tell your names to anybody, isn’t that right?”
The Doctor’s jaw was clenched in quiet anguish; he was obviously finding this very difficult. “Not quite,” he said at last. “But, yeah, it’s a big thing. Not just anybody. I mean, we don’t tell just anybody. It has to be someone…somebody…Oh, never mind.”
He turned away. “I’ll try that transmission again. They might be waiting. Or he might be waiting, or…” He looked back at Jack with such confusion in his eyes that Jack felt almost protective of him. “Names. Should have done it long ago. I’m sorry.”
“You sure about this?” Jack asked. “All this time, why bother?”
“Because…” His hand raked through his hair and he sighed awkwardly. “I can’t say it, Jack, but you know why.”
Rose was merciless. “Don’t be such a wimp,” she said. “You’re looking at someone who’d die for you if he could. Course you can bloody say it.”
“Come here,” said the Doctor. He grabbed Jack’s shoulders and pulled him into a kiss. Jack had never heard his hearts beat this fast. His breath was coming in short, ragged gasps and he could smell sweat on his neck.
“That’s why,” he said, following up with his tongue.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jack said, when they’d finished. “And what about Rose?”
“Her as well,” the Doctor said, roughly. Rose moved into the hug. The Doctor seemed to recover his composure. “There’s things you need to know,” he said. “You won’t remember my whole name, you won’t even be able to pronounce it, but it’ll be in your minds and there are people out there - enemies of mine - who’d love to get at it. It puts you in danger. And if there are any of my people left, I don’t suppose it would endear you to them. We’re breaking the last taboo here. After this, in some ways we become the same species.”
“Time Humans,” Rose said. She looked at the Doctor thoughtfully. “Will we feel any different once we know?”
“I can’t say. I’ve never done this before. I’ve been married, I’ve been a father and a grandfather, but I never revealed my true name. It tells the story of my life. The TARDIS might translate it, or maybe she’ll think I need the privacy. My name is myself as others see me, my trace in the web of time. All that was, all that is and all that could yet be.”
“We’d know the future?” she asked, nervously.
“Not just one future. The alternatives as well. Now, can you see why I’ve tried to protect you? Even by the 51st Century, this is way beyond human evolution.” He closed his eyes and placed his hand on her forehead, and the other hand on Jack’s. “You may become time-sensitive to some extent. It’s a burden. You’ll start seeing behind and ahead of the choices people make. You’ll see the ripples. All the timelines laid on top of one another like pages in a book. How easy it is to slip from one to another, and the implications of it when you do.”
“Then we can help you,” Rose said, simply.
“I can handle some of that,” Jack added. “I was trained for it. I’ve done resets, I’ve done jumps and fixes.” He cringed to think of some of the stunts he’d pulled and the motives behind them. But that was in the past and he’d no intention of staying stuck there. “And between us, we’ll take care of Rose. We’ve always protected her. This is no different.”
That seemed to be exactly the right thing to say. “I trust you,” said the Doctor. “But if it’s ever too much for you, I’ll take it away, and nothing will change between us. Are you ready?
“Yes,” they said together.
“Then let’s begin.”
******
Jack walked into the boardroom where the five members of his team, Owen included, were gathered. This was not the time for him to be ruled by any prejudice against dead people. He’d allowed the unannounced arrival of Owen and Rose to pass without comment. Half-expected it, in fact. For once, he understood the Doctor’s tendency to ignore the elephant in the room when there were more important things to think about.
Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood Three, stood at the head of the table and looked around at his team, their faces fearful, yet resolute and trusting. The responsibility sobered him, as it always had, yet with it came the sense of things coming to an end. In that moment, he realised what he’d been running from ever since he’d returned from the Valiant. It was the growing awareness, resisted fiercely at times, that they no longer needed him. Knowledge he couldn’t deal with until he was absolutely sure what he had to put in their place. He looked at each of them in turn, memorizing their faces and silently saying their names, as if he feared he might forget what they had come to mean to him. Tosh. Owen. Gwen. Martha. Last, and longest, Ianto.
He knew them through and through. He’d gone through the fire with them, stood between each of them and death, not just once, but again and again. He’d plucked them from the fire as unformed clay and moulded them into his own image. They’d inherited the best of his character. Courage, intense loyalty, the resolve to do what must be done, yet an idealism that was never completely extinguished. Also, his burdens, particularly the loneliness that came from bearing too many secrets that came between you and your fellow human beings. Yet each of them had remained themselves. They’d had to, because for all they’d survived together, the real Jack Harkness was an enigma to them, out of reach even when physically at his closest. They were like fellow passengers on a deep space cruise liner. Intensely intimate for a short time, but relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of an endless lifetime.
But the Doctor and Rose were another matter. In a lifetime of intense experiences, the sharing of the Doctor’s name had gone deeper than anything he’d ever known. It felt like the final undoing of the Gamestation betrayal and the pain that had followed, as if there was already a timeline being written over. He could almost sense the people gathered in front of him fading into the shadows as if they’d never been. Only the memory of loving them would remain, and they might not remember him at all.
He was saying goodbye. Why didn’t that bother him more, and what had happened to change things? What was he going to say? Jack rubbed his thumb over the eternity ring he’d just replaced on his finger and felt, once again the warm pressure of two pairs of lips, one on each cheek. Suddenly, words came. Not his own, but the ones Rose had read out at their commitment ceremony a few months ago.
“ ‘Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.’”
He wasn’t in the habit of preaching at them and of course they all looked at him as if he’d gone a little crazy - with the exception, funnily enough, of Owen. Death improved your tolerance of a little scripture, Jack assumed.
“ ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’ I want that kind of love for each of you. Every one of you is more than worthy of it. Settle for no substitutes. It eats you inside and you’ll forget what the real thing feels like. I just remembered. Love is what makes you bigger on the inside. I don’t know whether I’m gonna come back - if I don’t you’ll figure out a way to carry on without me. I left you last time without saying goodbye and I shouldn’t have done that. You deserve better.” His voice thickened and tears filled his eyes as he spoke. “I’d like to see each one of you in private and tell you what you mean to me and what you have to do. Okay?”
Ianto spoke first.
“Jack, we always knew deep down we had you on borrowed time. Nobody more than me. I forced my way into your life for reasons of my own, and when that came out you’d’ve been within your rights to throw me straight back out. But you didn’t. Your love was what put me back together and made me feel life was worth living again.”
Jack nodded. “Thanks.”
“I dread to think where I’d be now without you,” Tosh said. “You gave me hope. Whatever happens, the best years of my career have been with you. I don’t want to lose you but I’ll be strong. I’m a strong person. I didn’t know that until you showed me, I thought I was the little quiet one that nobody noticed. But I’m so much more, and now I know that, thanks to you.”
Gwen was crying openly. “Thanks - oh, so many things Jack. I’ve always loved you. Many people have. I sometimes got muddled up about what kind of love it was but in the end - well, some love goes on a lifetime and yours wasn’t that kind, but you let me bring Rhys into this crazy life and I’ll always be grateful for that, because without him to go home to I couldn’t survive.” She blinked back her tears and held her head high. “I promise you, Jack, if you don’t come back, we’ll keep on doing what we do. And I’m proud to be a part of it. I’ll do my best to live up to your faith in me, and Rhys would say the same.”
“I don’t know what to say,” said Martha. “I just…you just keep in touch, okay? You can borrow his phone.” She stood up and came towards him.
“Be careful,” she said, as he caught her up in a hug. That figured. Out of all of them, she was the one who knew the Doctor best.
Everybody looked at Owen. He kept his feelings to himself as always.
“I’ll be designated driver,” he offered, for all the world as if they were heading off down to the pub.
*******
“He is on his way,” said Parker with a smile to his companion.
She didn’t look up from her keyboard and her calculations. “And about time too,” she said. “I can’t hold this timeline together for much longer. It never really recovered from the Master’s interference.” She looked outwardly composed but he’d noticed a slight sweat breaking out on her forehead. As he had grown weaker, more and more of the burden of holding things together had fallen on her shoulders. It was lonely work.
“Alone?” she asked, as if echoing his thoughts.
“No, he has his companions with him.”
“Good. And the TARDIS?”
He sighed and shook his head. “He is suspicious. For obvious reasons.”
“I wish I could have stayed with him,” she said, glancing up from her work for a moment. “He needed me so much.”
“You could have stayed,” he pointed out.
She shook her head regretfully. “No, Braxiatel, the timeline was still marginally viable at that point. I needed to keep an eye on it, and he wasn’t in any fit state to deal with the news we are about to give him. What mattered more than anything was that he got Rose Tyler back.”
She disliked to be accused of emotional involvement, but he knew that was a veneer. Despite all the pressure on their scant resources at the time - it had been difficult for them to maintain any physical presence in this universe, let alone use chameleon technology - she’d been deeply affected by the Doctor’s state of mind when she’d visited him.
“Her name was Rose,” she’d kept saying. “Brax, if I’d been able to stay a moment longer, he’d have wept.”
His own motivation had been rather different. Truth, rather than compassion, was his guiding principle. The way that the Doctor had been treated was an offence against Time itself. No matter what the provocation - and a forced treaty with the Daleks had been provocation indeed - he could never excuse the Council for letting their vindictiveness get the better of them.
There had been no need to torture the Doctor in the way they had, to leave him completely isolated and believing he’d wiped out his entire race. And it had all been pointless in the end. Gallifrey had still burned.
Once he would have thought himself above such thing as grief. He would have despised the Doctor’s tears. Not any more. Wars changed things. He had had fifty years in a decaying body to reflect on that.
“You must be looking forward to seeing him again,” he remarked. “What did you think of the latest incarnation?”
“Oh, I’ve seen worse,” she replied, trying not to smile. “Absolutely dreadful hair again, this time around. And skinny - that jacket of his wouldn’t fit a rat.”
He smiled. His affections lay elsewhere, with someone he might not live to see again, but he cared deeply for her and he hoped that the Doctor’s arrival would erase some of the weary lines from her face.
“He’s going to be absolutely livid when he sees that I’m ginger,” she declared.
***
There was something strangely familiar about the woman who met them in the moonlit garden of the Parker mansion. She moved forward into a circle of lamplight and the Doctor noticed the colour of her long, straight hair with a jump of recognition, half horrified and half delighted.
“Donna Noble, as I live and breathe! What brings you here?”
He was expecting her to explain, in her own inimitable way, that her resolution to walk in the dust and see the world had wound up with her becoming companion to a cranky old man (Not that different from the option he’d offered her, in fact - she might just as well have signed up). He braced himself for loud London vowels, hands on hips and some remark about pockets and space-boys. But her smile was teasing and refined, provocative and so familiar. Yet overlying it were long years of weariness and pain. He knew all about those things.
“Doctor!” she said, “Don’t you remember?”
A jolt of recognition burned through him like lightning, making him doubt the evidence of his own senses. After all that had happened, he wasn’t in the habit of opening his mind quickly or easily. He barely remembered how to do it, and when he did he shied away from it, because what could it achieve apart from reminding him of all he’d lost?
Yet there was something about her that was not only familiar, but welcome, in a way that few contacts with his people would have been. Perhaps it was a tone of voice, the way she stood, or (most probably) a certain flash of wry amusement in her eyes.
“Romana!” he gasped. “You didn’t die! I didn’t…didn’t…”
…kill you? How could he say such a thing to her? For the last fifty years he’d refused to even think it. It would have finished him off.
“You killed no-one, Doctor. I will explain later. But first, will you introduce me to your companions?”
He didn’t register her request at first. The buzzing in his mind was too deafening. Didn’t kill anyone? Whatever did she mean? How could he have mistaken what he’d seen with his own eyes? Was she telling him it had all been a mistake and Gallifrey still existed somewhere, beautiful and whole? Impossible. He would have sensed it. Unless - and the thought was quite beyond him - his people were deliberately hiding from him.
He knew Time Lords could be cruel, but not that cruel, surely. Their harshness was generally rooted in detachment rather than deliberate malice.
“Hey, you okay?” asked Jack.
He hoped that neither Jack nor Rose would touch him right now. He wouldn’t be able to handle it and some half-forgotten code of conduct that hadn’t quite kicked in yet was making him shrink from revealing his inner turmoil to Romana. Instead, he ignored the question and took refuge in formalities.
“Right. Yes, of course!” His stupid voice came bellowing out and he inwardly cursed his clumsiness. He felt Rose and Jack back off. They were closely attuned to his defence mechanisms and knew that any sign of support wouldn’t be appreciated right now.
“Rose, this is Romana,” he said, without further explanation - he didn’t know where to begin and explaining this was beyond him, anyway. “Romana, Rose Tyler, my…my. Friend. Travelling companion.” He knew that wasn’t good enough. “Partner,” he corrected himself, looking at her with a romantic idiot’s smile plastered onto his face.
Romana stepped forward, her hand outstretched, all gallantry. “You must be Captain Jack Harkness,” she said. “So nice to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s all mine,” Jack said smoothly. “Looks like my reputation precedes me, as always.”
The Doctor detected a steel rod of suspicion running through the charm and observed that Jack had avoided returning the handshake. Romana seemed relieved to have avoided direct contact with him.
Aha, the Doctor thought.
“The last Time Lord Jack met made a bit of a nuisance of himself,” he explained.
Romana knew exactly to whom he was referring. Their eyes met and he saw it quite clearly. But, like the born lady she was, she neatly steered the conversation in a less painful direction.
“And Rose,” she continued, turning to her. “What a pleasure. Channeller of the Vortex and Defender of the Earth. A worthy partner for a Time Lord.”
No secrets there, then. What the hell had been going on? Why had he been abandoned for all this time, yet still watched?
I want answers, he fired mentally at Romana.
“Oh, you’d be surprised what I know,” she replied.
There was nothing new about a Time Lord being smug. He’d done it himself, both knowingly and involuntarily, on numerous occasions. He wondered whether any of the people he’d ever practiced it on, Donna and Jackie Tyler excepted, had felt quite as tempted to slap him across the face as he was feeling now.
She sensed his indignation and added quickly, “We were able to observe events long before we could influence them. A fitting penalty for Time Lords in exile.” Her features hardened at that and he saw that whatever had happened to her since the War, she hadn’t escaped unscathed. But there were so many questions!
“You said ‘we’,” he observed. “Who else is there?”
“Only the two of us,” she sighed. “The rest are dead. All dead, though not by your hand. The truth is more complicated than that. Come, the Cardinal awaits you.”
“It’s like the Spanish Inquisition,” Rose whispered to Jack.
Yes, the Doctor replied mentally. With even dafter hats. One advantage of sharing his name was that it made this kind of communication much easier, with the caveat that Rose, at least, wasn’t yet experienced enough to shield her mind from someone as sharp as Romana.
“Oh, now I’m definitely losing my marbles,” he told Romana. “You can’t mean old Braxiatel, surely?”
“The very same. Who else would be able to call you by name?”
“And who the heck is Brax-” Jack faltered. “This guy?”
“Oh, he’s my little brother,” the Doctor replied.
“You had a brother and you never told us?” exclaimed Jack.
“You can talk,” said Rose.
“Well, half-brother,” said the Doctor. “He was born by more conventional means. Very bad form to discuss these things, though.”
“I should warn you,” Romana pointed out, “he is very frail. We were both stripped of some regenerations, but he had fewer to lose. His body is failing, but his mind is as sharp as ever.” She lowered her voice. “I won’t mention your little faux pas about the Louvre.”
“The what?”
“Paris, don’t you remember? That argument we had about the greatest art gallery in the universe. As if anything on Earth could compete with the Braxiatel Collection.”
“Did someone say Paris?” Jack enquired, and the Doctor wondered if he was going to have to speak severely to him.
“A conspiracy to clone the Mona Lisa,” the Doctor said, briskly.
“Not that we originally went for that reason,” Romana said.
Rose laughed. This came as something of a relief to the Doctor. “You’re a bit of a one, aren’t you, Romana?” she said. “I think you fancied him, didn’t you? How many bodies ago was all this?”
Rose Tyler, you are brilliant, he thought. Nobody puts one over you, do they? He shielded his mind; his feelings for his companions were none of Romana’s business.
She’d gone too far. Romana drew herself up to her full height and for a moment Donna vanished completely. “Rosemariantilur, kindly remember that you are addressing the last President of the High Council of Gallifrey, keeper of the Seals and Sash of Rassilon…”
“Still President, then?” the Doctor asked, in something very like a sneer.
Romana winced. “The last elected President,” she replied, coldly. “And I took the Crown with me.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Never mind that now.”
“I’m supposed to show a polite lack of interest in the final days of my own planet’s history, am I?” he snapped. “I was only returning the compliment. You two seem to have taken a great interest in me.”
“We will speak more of this later,” said Romana. “Why don’t we retire to the TARDIS and discuss things there?”
“Because the TARDIS isn’t here!” he retorted. “Did you think I’d be gullible enough to show up and let you strip her down for parts to build a paradox machine, or whatever you need to get out of the mess you’ve got into?” He realised, with dismay, that his voice was betraying him. He stopped and reinforced it with a further layer of ice. “You lot abandoned me! You left me to rot for years, you watched me and my friends go through hell and now you’re in a fix you just call up and think I’ll come running? Have you any idea what that feels like?”
“I have,” said Jack, and an awkward silence fell. Then he stepped forward, making it rather more obvious than the Doctor would have liked that he was armed. “Now you get this, Time Lady. You can be President of what the hell you like, but on this planet you’re illegal aliens. And you know what Torchwood do with people like you? We take you in for interrogation. You got something you want to say to the Doctor? Then you come quietly, under escort, to our headquarters and we follow the procedures. I get the feeling you people were into procedure back home, am I right?”
His hand came down on Romana’s shoulder. The Doctor saw a shudder of pain run through her and realised, or rather remembered, its cause. Trust Jack to turn a problem into an opportunity. “Well, whaddya know?” he laughed. “I’m a fixed point in time and you don’t like that one bit, do you?” His hand tightened a little more. “I can make life a little uncomfortable for you if you don’t co-operate. Not bad for someone who just feels wrong, huh?”
Then, before anyone had gathered their wits enough to argue, he held his weapon to Romana’s head and radioed for Owen.
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One