Undiscovered Country - 10/10 DW/TW crossover - no DW S4 spoilers, Ten/Rose/Jack PG-15
A sequel to Life in Cardiff.
WORDS: 5586
SPOILERS: TW S2 up to End of Days. 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.
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose/Jack, Martha, Owen, Tosh, Gwen/Rhys, Ianto, Romana
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.
There's trouble ahead, but why is Romana offering to help? What does she know about Jack's brother?
The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and walked over to John, taking his hand and flipping it over to examine his wrist in one deft movement completed before he’d had time to react. “Oh yes!” he exclaimed. “Molecularly bonded wristband, just as I thought. You’re not wearing the trousers here, are you, Captain John? Although, to be fair, Jack probably preferred you that way.”
Quotations directly from "End of Days" are italicized. There will be an Epilogue, just to tie everything up.
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words,
and fall a-cursing like a very drab….
(Hamlet, Act II scene ii)
“What?” the Doctor gasped. Recovering slightly, he went on, “How do you know about Gray?”
“A long story,” replied Romana. “One that will put you in something of a quandary, I’m afraid.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked suspiciously.
Romana seemed to be choosing her words with great care. “There are two possible reasons, and I shall leave you to distinguish between them,” she said. “The first is my duty - our duty - as Time Lords.”
He drew in his breath and restrained himself, barely, from interrupting her.
“The second is my attachment to you as a friend.”
“Well, that covers you nicely,” he commented. “You’d better come in.”
He took her to the library. Rose looked up from the legal tome she was dutifully perusing and made as if to leave.
“No, wait,” he told her, gesturing with his hand for her to sit down again. “Romana has news of Jack’s brother.”
“Gray?” Rose exclaimed, eyes wide. “How come?”
“Biroc - my companion - and I were returning from the Domecliades,” Romana began, sitting down. “We had just taken the Cardinal back to his library - it is a project very dear to his hearts and he hopes to live out the rest of his days there, but that is by the by.” She settled in her armchair, arranging the folds of her long skirt. “As we passed through the Vortex, I detected an anomaly in the early 51st century and decided to investigate.”
“You have a TARDIS?” he asked, surprised and - if he was honest, a little put out that she’d managed to keep it to herself for so long.
“Regrettably, no, but I do have a partner with a time-sensitive ship,” said Romana. The Doctor noticed Biroc’s promotion from the role of companion but decided not to remark on it. “When I discovered the name Harkness in the faulty timeline, I was immediately concerned.”
“Here comes trouble, eh?” the Doctor quipped. A severe look from both ladies quickly silenced him.
“Tell me what you know of Gray,” Romana said.
The Doctor sighed. “Jack doesn’t talk about him much; it’s an open wound. He’d just turned twelve when there was a Cell 114 invasion. His brother didn’t make it out; Jack never found out what happened to him.”
“You’re missing out the most important bit,” said Rose. “Just before he was killed, Jack’s dad asked him to look after Gray. But there was a panic and Jack let go of his brother’s hand. Basically, his childhood ended that day. He’s never forgiven himself for it.”
“Then perhaps it would be better for him not to know what his brother has become,” Romana said sadly.
“He’s alive?” Rose and the Doctor exclaimed together. Rose’s tone, to begin with, was unmixed delight, but the Doctor was more familiar with the subtleties of communication between Time Lords. Romana had mentioned an anomaly; immediately the truth slotted into place.
“He’s alive, and he shouldn’t be. Is that what you’ve come to tell us?”
She nodded with a sorrowful frown. “I haven’t been able to find out who has meddled in his personal timeline, but they did him no favour,” she said. “He suffered years of torture at the Cell’s hands and he is broken in both mind and body. All he desires is to have his revenge on his brother.”
“But it wasn’t Jack’s fault! He was just a kid himself!” cried Rose.
The Doctor briefly closed his eyes and groaned. “He’s probably out of his mind. The Cell modelled themselves on the Daleks. They took everything decent from their captives and left murderous hatred in its place. They feed on it, you see. But I wonder who’d do such a thing? It would have to be someone who could manipulate a timeline, and they’d need some kind of motive.”
“That’s easy,” Rose said, at once. “Captain John. He was the bloke who cluster-bombed Cardiff, paralysed Gwen, shot Tosh…”
“Your work is dangerous,” Romana observed.
Rose rolled her eyes. “That’s like saying you lot knew a thing or two about clocks,” she said. “And just before he disappeared, he completely freaked Jack out by saying he’d found Gray.”
“But that still doesn’t give him a motive,” the Doctor observed. “I know he and Jack had a thing going a long time ago and John wouldn’t mind starting it off again, but this is a bit over the top, isn’t it?”
“Jealousy? Revenge? Sometimes you forget how irrational humans can be,” Rose pointed out. “Or maybe he just wants Jack back. They were together quite a while. He knows his weaknesses.”
“But to harm the fabric of Time for such trivial reasons!” Romana gasped, horrified. “Doesn’t this Time Agency teach them anything?”
“They were a bit of a rogue outfit,” the Doctor had to admit. “And don’t you start, Romana! Rassilon was no angel.”
“Stop it, you two,” Rose scolded. Romana was temporarily startled by her forthrightness, but after a tense moment she relaxed into a laugh. For the first time, some kind of co-operation between them seemed possible. “The point is what do we have to do?” Rose continued.
“Well said, Rosemariantilur!” said Romana.
“Oh, just Rose is fine,” she replied. “We don’t need to get into all that name stuff.”
“Have you followed this timeline all the way through?” the Doctor asked.
Romana nodded. “He must be stopped.”
“Or what?” he asked slowly.
Romana’s movements made it clear that she wanted to move to telepathic communication, but he wasn’t having that. “Sorry,” he said. “If you want me, you get Rose as well. I’ve complete faith in her. In fact, she’s emotionally intelligent in a way I couldn’t hope to emulate.”
“But she’s…she’s…” Romana’s voice petered out.
“Human? Yes, I’d noticed,” he said. “If that doesn’t shock you, this certainly will. I’ve told her my name. Her and Jack. I’ve told you already, Romana, the days when we Time Lords had a monopoly on decisions like this are over. We need to teach humans how to do it properly while there’s a few of us still around.”
“But if she makes a mistake…” fretted Romana.
“I’ve made mistakes already,” Rose pointed out. “Made a massive one once. Reapers and everything. My dad had to sort it out. By dying,” she added, after a minute. “He was nothing special to look at, just an ordinary bloke. But when he had to save the world, he got on and did it.”
Romana looked at him. He nodded in assent. He’d rather not have had that brought up in present company, but he knew it hadn’t been easy for Rose to mention it either. “And it’s not as if Time Lords don’t make the occasional blooper,” he pointed out.
“Very well,” Romana conceded, with a sigh. “If the timeline is not corrected, the results will be catastrophic. Half the population of Cardiff will perish in timed explosions. Jack himself will be horribly tortured. His brother will transport him back 2000 years and bury him alive on the site of Cardiff, where he will remain entombed…”
“Dying over and over!” Rose’s hands went up to her mouth as if she was about to vomit. “No, we’d never let that happen! We’ll save him!”
“That’s the point,” the Doctor explained. “It might not be that simple. We have to look at the consequences first.”
“But if the timeline’s wrong to start with-” Rose began.
“Once people start dying, it’s far more difficult to correct,” he went on. “Every one of those people leaves their own causal trail. It’s much better to deal with the problem before it happens.”
“Yes,” Romana agreed. “Also, if Gray isn’t dealt with now, Jack will be forced to kill him to protect his team. Even then, two of them will not survive.”
Rose shuddered. “No!”
“We have to make sure Gray dies, don’t we?” said the Doctor, his hearts sinking.
“We can’t ask Jack to kill his own brother!” cried Rose. “He’d never get over that!”
“Would you prefer me to carry out the sentence?” Romana asked. “I have the necessary objectivity.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the Doctor answered. “Not without Jack’s consent. I wouldn’t do that to him. It goes against everything we value in this relationship.”
Now Romana was really horrified. “You’d show him his own timeline? Doctor, are you completely without scruples?”
“Oh, don’t start with all those regulations - you’re not on Gallifrey now!” Rose glared at Romana, indignation in her eyes.
“Romana has a point,” he argued. “Some of those rules were made for very sound reasons. Would you want to know exactly how you’re going to die? Imagine the cruelty of expecting Jack to make a decision like this.”
“Imagine the cruelty of making it without asking him!” Rose protested. “We need a procedure for this!”
“Rose Tyler, we’ll make a Time Lady of you yet!” he exclaimed, with mixed feelings.
“I don’t mean we have to put stupid hats on,” said Rose. “But the more we learn about time, the more often we will have to make these choices. And they’re hard, aren’t they? I’ve seen what you go through, trying to do it all on your own. You feel guilty whatever you do.”
Romana spent a few moments staring at Rose. He could tell that she was impressed. “It’s the price of becoming involved,” said Romana at last.
“I’ll admit, I’m beginning to understand you people a bit better now,” Rose said. “I can see why you tried to stand above it all; it wasn’t just some control-freakery thing, was it? But Gallifrey’s gone. We have to work out how to do these things without the guilt and the responsibility crushing people. Because one day humans will be doing it.”
“You speak wisely, Rose,” said Romana. “Forgive me if I dismissed you earlier; arrogance is the curse of our species. What would you have me do?”
The Doctor resisted the urge to interrupt. This was a proud moment for him and he trusted Rose to rise to the challenge.
“You have to talk to Jack,” Rose insisted. “He’ll understand if you tell him there are things he shouldn’t know. But we don’t do things like you lot used to on Gallifrey. We don’t just assume we know what’s best; nobody learns anything that way.”
Romana began to frown, but it didn’t last. Her face remained troubled, even as she conceded the point. “It goes against my deepest instincts, but I think perhaps you do need to discuss this with the Captain.”
“Oh God,” Rose groaned. “Poor Jack, to see his brother after all this time only to have to kill him.”
“It doesn’t have to be Jack who does the killing,” the Doctor pointed out.
“I won’t let you do it!” Rose declared. “You’ve had enough deaths to agonize over. I’d rather do it myself than that! Is there any way we could just go back and just stop Gray coming back to life in the first place?”
Romana shook her head. “I’m afraid not. The timeline is already too established. Gray is on his way to Cardiff, and his intention seems to be to destroy everything Jack loves.”
A leaden weight seemed to settle in the Doctor’s chest, between his hearts. It was happening again. The nightmare, the guilt, the impossibility of finding peace. Yes, it was true that he no longer faced it alone, but nor did he wish to visit it on his loved ones.
“Then I must be prepared to do it,” he said, in a low voice. “But we have to give Gray a chance to change his mind. Jack needs to ask Gray’s forgiveness, even if he was too young to know better, and even if the situation’s hopeless. Because there’s no such thing as a hopeless situation, Romana. I refuse to believe that.”
“How long have we got?” Rose asked.
“A few hours at most,” replied Romana. “Jack and the team will be called to investigate a deserted building, where they will be injured - none of them fatally - in an explosion. Those events are fixed. Subsequent ones I can influence, to some extent.” She turned to him. “Doctor, might I ask you a favour? The use of the TARDIS?”
“I’d be honoured,” he replied, and his cheeks crinkled into his trademark grin.
*****
By early morning, they had the bare bones of a plan.
The most difficult part was breaking the news to Jack. He still mistrusted Romana, with good reason, so Rose proposed involving him from the very start. Romana didn’t like the idea, but to her credit she was prepared to back down.
“The plan is to lure you and your team to a deserted building, and injure them in a series of controlled explosions,” she explained. “You are expected to survive. Then Captain John appears to you with Gray, who announces his intention to destroy everything you care about.”
“Jesus,” murmured Jack. “Why the hell would he want to hurt me that much? Is John controlling him somehow?”
“I fear that the reverse is more likely to be the case,” said Romana. “John presumably had reasons of his own for interfering with the timeline, but once faced with the force of your brother’s irrational anger he found himself under his influence.”
“How could he do that?” Rose asked. “Brainwashing him or something?”
“Could have been a flesh implant - they had the technology by that time,” said Jack.
Rose looked at him. He was dealing with this in much the same way the Doctor would. Calm, professional, detached. But this wasn’t just anybody they were discussing. It was the little brother Jack had lost and blamed himself for abandoning ever since. What bothered her most was there was an awful fatalism about the way Jack was reacting to this; he seemed convinced that he deserved the worst Gray could do to him.
“Don’t let your own guilt stop you realising how wrong this is,” she warned him. “He’s talking about killing your team, just because you care about them.” She didn’t add what she knew the Doctor would be thinking; that if Gray knew how much she and the Doctor mattered to Jack, he’d try to kill them, too.
“Not just the team,” the Doctor reminded them. “That’s bad enough, but at least they’re professionals who signed up for the dangers they face. If this plan goes ahead, thousands of ordinary people will die, too.”
“We have to stop him,” Jack groaned. “Even if I have to do it myself.”
“No!” Rose rushed to Jack’s side. “Nobody should have to do that. Romana’s offered, if it comes to that. Or I’d do it myself, rather than put you through it.”
“Or perhaps your team, if you feel it’s prudent to involve them?” Romana suggested. “Then at least the responsibility could be shared.”
“We can’t just condemn him without a hearing, for something he’s about to do,” the Doctor insisted. “He’s been conditioned to hate and kill; he’s probably no more responsible for his own actions than Jack was when he lost track of him on that beach.”
Rose reached for Jack’s hand and held it tight. “The Doctor’s right,” she agreed. “At least we could try to reason with him. We might need a few people pointing guns at him to get a word in edgeways, but we owe it to everyone to try.”
Romana’s talent for strategising was becoming increasingly obvious. “The TARDIS is able to withstand the blast of the explosion,” she said. “We’ll keep your team safely inside when it detonates; that will draw Captain John and Gray towards us.”
“He’s a Time Agent,” the Doctor protested. “They’d detect the TARDIS, wouldn’t they?”
“Cloaking device,” snapped Romana. “Oh, for Rassilon’s sake, don’t give me that excuse about a faulty chameleon circuit. If you weren’t so stubborn you could have fixed it centuries ago! I’ll rig up a perception filter while you look into the timelines, Doctor. If you’re so keen to spare Gray’s life, you’d better be prepared to clean up after him.”
“He might have to travel with us for a while,” said the Doctor.
“Excellent. In fact, I want to have a word with this Captain John,” declared Romana. “I will not have people running around disturbing timelines for personal reasons.”
Rose gestured to Jack; they left the two Time Lords to their semi-productive bickering and headed for the kitchen, where she sat Jack down and poured him a stiff drink.
“God, this is horrible,” she said, with a sigh. “It never stops, does it?”
“Nope.” Jack’s jaw was set; Rose just wished he’d let go and let some of it out before he was out in the field and having to play the hero again.
“First Owen, then the Doctor’s people. Now this.” He sounded shattered.
She sat opposite him and held his hand across the table. “Don’t give up hope,” she said. “Look at what he’s managed to do for those poor people taken by the Rift. Everyone else had given up on them. But he’s the Doctor. He never gives up on anybody.”
“Even the Master,” Jack said, thoughtfully. “He offered to look after him, you know. Said he’d been on his own too long and he needed someone to care for.” He emptied his lungs in a long sigh. “God, I want this thing with Romana to work for him. I really do. He needs one of his own people. It’s just so hard for me even to look at her, after the way she betrayed him…”
“Maybe it will help him get through to Gray?” Rose wondered. “What she did to him was much worse - she pretty much handed him over to the Daleks. Okay, she had her motives, but you were just a twelve-year-old kid who let go of his hand. If the Doctor can forgive Romana that, then surely Gray can forgive you for something you never intended to do anyway?”
“That depends how much of him is left, I guess,” said Jack.
That silenced them both for a while. Then Rose spoke.
“Jack, I just want you to know how much I love you. We’ll get you through this somehow.” Her voice trembled. “I’ve killed once or twice. Never told the Doctor - he’s got a lot of double standards about that stuff and I think he knows that. He’s just not ready to hear it about me. It was horrible, I never want to go through it again, but I will if I have to. If it’s the only way.” She looked at him, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes but stark determination in her face. “And, if it really was the only way, I think that the Doctor would, too.”
*****
It was ten o’clock on a Cardiff morning, a few hours later. Minutes ago, just as Romana had predicted, a devastating explosion had gutted the building where the Torchwood team were supposed to be investigating a tip-off. Secure in the TARDIS, they’d heard and felt nothing, but the tension in the crowded control room made up for that. In fact, Jack reflected, he generally preferred to be in the thick of things, dangers and all. Waiting was tough; it gave you time to think of all the things that could go wrong.
He wasn’t sure if anyone could really process this situation, however. He was about to see Gray for the first time in well over a century. He didn’t know how that made him feel. To tell the truth, the two of them hadn’t been particularly close. He’d been very much his father’s son, the apple of his eye, whilst Gray had been closer to his mother; that was why she’d never recovered from his loss and died herself less than a year afterwards. To lose all three of his family members at the same time, not to mention his community, had affected him so deeply that he’d distanced himself and closed off his memories simply to survive it. Everyone who came after that, even the people he’d been close to - John, for example - had been transient, there to be manipulated rather than loved. He’d revelled in the forced objectivity of the habitual time-traveller - outside everything, belonging nowhere, unable to commit.
Then he’d met Rose and the Doctor. He’d found someone to believe in again, people who could make him face the consequences of his selfish actions. Trouble was, that reminded him that he could feel guilt and responsibility and grief. Everything good that had happened to him since, he’d wondered how long he’d got before it ended. Everything bad, he’d believed he deserved. No wonder he and the Doctor had clicked. Maybe the Doctor was more of a thinker and he was more of a doer, but beneath those differences they were truly two of a kind. Both of them needed Rose around to smack some sense into them when they fell to brooding too much.
“He’s sent a transmission,” Romana announced, “I’ll put a fix on it; then he won’t be able to log out whenever he feels like it. We’ll hold him in stasis until he materialises physically with Gray.”
“Can you predict the location?” Jack asked.
“Oh yes. They’ll be locked into the same co-ordinates.” Romana glanced up, adjusted the narrow spectacles she’d taken to wearing, and looked around at the team. “You may wish to take up your positions.”
They’d already discussed who’d go out to meet Gray and John, and in what order. Owen, Ianto, Gwen and Tosh all provided discreet armed back-up, ready to act as firing squad at a pre-arranged signal if it came to that point. Romana would observe and keep track of the temporal issues; Martha would stay in the TARDIS as designated medical officer.
The Doctor, of course, had refused to do anything other than walk out and meet Gray in the open, unarmed. Jack would be beside him. With the team providing cover, he’d be spared the necessity of carrying a weapon against his brother. After a lengthy argument with the Doctor, Rose, lightly armed, had won her right to be there on the other side of Jack.
Team TARDIS in front, team Torchwood behind. It felt right. As right as a situation like this ever could feel.
The hologram of Captain John appeared facing them, apparently unaware that the people he’d just schemed to murder were behind him. So far, so good.
“Hey team! ‘Course, there might me a few less of you by now. Don’t know if you liked my little gift….”
“Bastard,” Owen muttered.
Jack watched the green, shimmering figure of his ex-lover in front of him with a sense of dread and disbelief. What was going on here? Yeah, John had been ruthless. Amoral, and if Jack pretended he hadn’t enjoyed the occasional killing spree, he’d be lying to himself and everyone else. But this went way beyond even the most frenzied jealousy. Why now, and why like this? Had something made him lose his mind?
John turned his attention to him. “Of course, you can’t die.” He sighed. “And with all that life, all that time, you can’t spare any for me...Say ‘Hi’ to the family…”
“Gray?” Jack questioned, as he saw Gray as a grown man for the first time. His first impression was that he’d put on weight. He looked younger than he’d been expecting. Maybe John had thought to spare him by pulling him out of time comparatively early in his ordeal? Gray had always been a stocky, well-built lad, and whatever they’d done to him, it looked as if starvation hadn’t been part of the regime.
He’d also been inclined to sulk mightily if he didn’t get his own way. Jack was rather horrified to find himself noting that Gray could still do petulance like an expert. He shouldn’t be thinking like this. He ought to be pleased to see the little tyke, not remembering everything that used to irritate him about his sibling.
For whatever reason, John continued to do the talking. “Been a while since you’ve seen your brother, Jack. Okay, here’s what’s gonna happen. Everything you love, everything you treasure, will die. I’m gonna tear your world apart, Captain Jack Harkness - piece by piece, starting now. Maybe now you’ll wanna spend some time with me.”
“Oh now, just hang on a minute!” the Doctor interrupted. “Romana, would you do the honours?” Within a few seconds, a startled couple of figures replaced the holograms.
“Sorry if the teleport was a little rough, but it’s so much easier to discuss these things face to face, don’t you think?” The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and walked over to John, taking his hand and flipping it over to examine his wrist in one deft movement completed before he’d had time to react. “Oh yes!” he exclaimed. “Molecularly bonded wristband, just as I thought. You’re not wearing the trousers here, are you, Captain John? Although, to be fair, Jack probably preferred you that way.”
A flash of light from the screwdriver removed the device painlessly from the Captain’s skin. “I’m sure you’re not really that childish, are you?” the Doctor said to him with a smile. “Fifteen explosions - including a nuclear power station - enough to cripple the entire city of Cardiff, just because the two of you broke up? It’s worse than that bunny-boiling movie - what was its name?”
“ ‘Fatal Attraction’ ”, Rose replied, helpfully.
“That’s it. Not that it wasn’t compelling, in its own way. That’s the trouble with revenge. People like the idea of it, makes fantastic drama - I mean, look at old Hamlet, ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’” He stopped. “No, hang on. That’s ‘Macbeth’. That wasn’t revenge, that was ambition. The tragedy of ambition, that’s it. ‘Othello’ is jealousy and Lear, well that’s either existential angst or a batty old man depending on your point of view…”
“Um, Doctor…” prompted Jack. “I think, maybe, a little urgency here…”
“Oh, sorry. Good point. Universe about to go boom and all that. Well, Cardiff about to go boom anyway; that’s bad enough.” The Doctor turned to the astonished Gray and ran his fingers over his left cheek. “My, that’s a nasty scar you’ve got there. Bit rough with you, were they? I can imagine.” He wasn’t smiling now. “I was captured by the Daleks. So was my friend over there. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce myself, did I? How rude of me.”
“Who are you?” Gray gasped.
“I’m the Doctor, and I’m working with Romana.” He looked at John and shook a warning finger at him. “We’re Time Lords. We get a bit cross when people start messing around with time to impress their old friends. Tends to end up with events spiralling out of control. Romana will be speaking to you later, and since she used to be the President of the High Council of Gallifrey, I suggest you think long and hard before you try anything on with her. Now, where was I?” He looked around. “Ah yes, Daleks. Nasty, very nasty. Makes that Cell lot look like amateurs. Probably trained them up, in fact. So, before we go into details, you might as well know, Gray, young man, you’re not the first person to be tortured. Or betrayed. Or lose everything you love. And I’ll tell you this, right now.”
He faced Gray, and Jack would not have wanted to be that close to the Doctor in his present mood. “Revenge is the most pointless, negative, useless response to anything that you could ever have. Revenge says to your enemy, ‘You win. You have made me into one of you.’ It never, ever helps.”
He moved away, adopting an orator’s pose with a swish of his coat. His rich voice, packed with controlled rage, carried in the still air of the foggy morning. “So, you’d murder half a city - not to mention these good people who’ve been unlucky enough to be important to Jack - just because long ago, when he was a twelve-year old boy, he let go of your hand? What about the time he ate the last of the custard creams? What are you going to do about that? Burn up a sun? Start another war? You think that’s going to help? You think that’s going to solve your pathetic little sibling rivalry issues? Punish Jack for something he never intended to do in the first place? Will it make you feel better? Well?”
Gray crumpled under the onslaught. He shook. “He abandoned me!” he cried, furiously. “He left me to die! Does he know what they did to me? Why shouldn’t he suffer? I lost everything!”
“And you think he didn’t?” asked the Doctor. “You think you’re the first person that’s ever happened to? Oh, come on! How old are you, Gray? You ought to be going through this phase in your bedroom listening to My Chemical Romance and experimenting with eyeliner! Now, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll tell me where those explosive charges are and how we abort them. Or maybe you’d care to do the honours, Captain John?”
“I carried the detonation circuits,” John confessed. “He took control of me; I had no choice.”
“Of course you did, you silly man!” Romana swept out of the TARDIS, clearly furious. The Doctor saw a lot of Donna in her at that moment.
“You could have chosen not to meddle in time!” she exclaimed. “What, precisely, were you trying to prove? Don’t you realise what could have happened if I hadn’t spotted what was going on?”
John gaped as this ginger-haired tornado whirled towards him. “Time Lords! I thought you guys were just a myth.”
“We are not, nor were we ever, ‘guys’,” Romana announced crisply. “Now hand that nasty little device to the Doctor at once, please. And as for you, Mr Gray Harkness or whatever you’re called…”
Gray sank down to his knees, his body wracked with sobs. “I hate you!” he yelled at Jack. “You left me! They all left me - him, Dad…M..m.m…”
“Always were a mommy’s boy, weren’t you, Gray?” Jack remarked. “It figures. You were the one she had made to measure. I was your off-the-peg guy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Rose, bewildered.
“He’s an ectogene!” Jack explained. “Mom got caught in a radiation storm just after I turned six, wound up sterile. Dad wanted nothing to do with it - said it was no time or place to be bringing another kid into so she went behind his back and had him monoprogenated!”
“How old were you when he was born?” Romana asked.
“Seven? Eight, maybe? And then she brings home this five year old kid with the emotional needs of a baby and expects me to get my head around it. Dad logged off from the whole thing, did the whole frozen rage deal. I wound up trying to do his job myself, learning as I went along.”
Now the memories were pouring back. How baffled, frightened, resentful of Gray he’d been. How he’d blamed him for the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and how both of them had used Gray as a bargaining chip, trying to get him - Jack - to come down on one side of the divide or the other. The horrible, constant nagging feeling of being wrong, whatever he did. Being blamed for being what he was - a boy too young to be grown up.
That was where the guilt had come from! It wasn’t just letting go of that hand on the beach, it was everything that had led up to it. The years of feeling inadequate, passed over by his warring parents. The only happy times he could remember were games of ball on the sand dunes with his father. Everything about him seemed to irritate his mother, and once Gray was lost she could hardly bring herself to look at him.
He’d been abandoned. The one who just felt wrong.
“I should have realised sooner,” Romana said. “I can normally spot an ectogene right away. The Doctor wouldn’t - he was biologically conceived - that’s why he never really felt comfortable on Gallifrey.”
Then something quite amazing happened. Romana, the original ice-maiden, headed straight for Gray and scooped him up into her arms. “Oh, Gray, you poor, silly little boy!” she exclaimed tenderly. “You’re just like those little Time Children we had back home. Woken up at the age of seven, ready to be crammed with every type of knowledge except the one you really need - how to deal with not getting exactly what you want. You’re not a teenage rebel. Trust the Doctor to self-project; he’s such a narcissist. You’re just a little boy who wants his mummy.”
Jack, Rose and the Doctor all gazed at each other, slack-jawed with amazement and embarrassment.
“I think this is where we came in,” the Doctor muttered, as Gray collapsed, weeping against Romana’s bosom.
“Anyone got a gas mask?” murmured Rose.
Chapter Nine
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One
WORDS: 5586
SPOILERS: TW S2 up to End of Days. 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.
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose/Jack, Martha, Owen, Tosh, Gwen/Rhys, Ianto, Romana
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.
There's trouble ahead, but why is Romana offering to help? What does she know about Jack's brother?
The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and walked over to John, taking his hand and flipping it over to examine his wrist in one deft movement completed before he’d had time to react. “Oh yes!” he exclaimed. “Molecularly bonded wristband, just as I thought. You’re not wearing the trousers here, are you, Captain John? Although, to be fair, Jack probably preferred you that way.”
Quotations directly from "End of Days" are italicized. There will be an Epilogue, just to tie everything up.
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words,
and fall a-cursing like a very drab….
(Hamlet, Act II scene ii)
“What?” the Doctor gasped. Recovering slightly, he went on, “How do you know about Gray?”
“A long story,” replied Romana. “One that will put you in something of a quandary, I’m afraid.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked suspiciously.
Romana seemed to be choosing her words with great care. “There are two possible reasons, and I shall leave you to distinguish between them,” she said. “The first is my duty - our duty - as Time Lords.”
He drew in his breath and restrained himself, barely, from interrupting her.
“The second is my attachment to you as a friend.”
“Well, that covers you nicely,” he commented. “You’d better come in.”
He took her to the library. Rose looked up from the legal tome she was dutifully perusing and made as if to leave.
“No, wait,” he told her, gesturing with his hand for her to sit down again. “Romana has news of Jack’s brother.”
“Gray?” Rose exclaimed, eyes wide. “How come?”
“Biroc - my companion - and I were returning from the Domecliades,” Romana began, sitting down. “We had just taken the Cardinal back to his library - it is a project very dear to his hearts and he hopes to live out the rest of his days there, but that is by the by.” She settled in her armchair, arranging the folds of her long skirt. “As we passed through the Vortex, I detected an anomaly in the early 51st century and decided to investigate.”
“You have a TARDIS?” he asked, surprised and - if he was honest, a little put out that she’d managed to keep it to herself for so long.
“Regrettably, no, but I do have a partner with a time-sensitive ship,” said Romana. The Doctor noticed Biroc’s promotion from the role of companion but decided not to remark on it. “When I discovered the name Harkness in the faulty timeline, I was immediately concerned.”
“Here comes trouble, eh?” the Doctor quipped. A severe look from both ladies quickly silenced him.
“Tell me what you know of Gray,” Romana said.
The Doctor sighed. “Jack doesn’t talk about him much; it’s an open wound. He’d just turned twelve when there was a Cell 114 invasion. His brother didn’t make it out; Jack never found out what happened to him.”
“You’re missing out the most important bit,” said Rose. “Just before he was killed, Jack’s dad asked him to look after Gray. But there was a panic and Jack let go of his brother’s hand. Basically, his childhood ended that day. He’s never forgiven himself for it.”
“Then perhaps it would be better for him not to know what his brother has become,” Romana said sadly.
“He’s alive?” Rose and the Doctor exclaimed together. Rose’s tone, to begin with, was unmixed delight, but the Doctor was more familiar with the subtleties of communication between Time Lords. Romana had mentioned an anomaly; immediately the truth slotted into place.
“He’s alive, and he shouldn’t be. Is that what you’ve come to tell us?”
She nodded with a sorrowful frown. “I haven’t been able to find out who has meddled in his personal timeline, but they did him no favour,” she said. “He suffered years of torture at the Cell’s hands and he is broken in both mind and body. All he desires is to have his revenge on his brother.”
“But it wasn’t Jack’s fault! He was just a kid himself!” cried Rose.
The Doctor briefly closed his eyes and groaned. “He’s probably out of his mind. The Cell modelled themselves on the Daleks. They took everything decent from their captives and left murderous hatred in its place. They feed on it, you see. But I wonder who’d do such a thing? It would have to be someone who could manipulate a timeline, and they’d need some kind of motive.”
“That’s easy,” Rose said, at once. “Captain John. He was the bloke who cluster-bombed Cardiff, paralysed Gwen, shot Tosh…”
“Your work is dangerous,” Romana observed.
Rose rolled her eyes. “That’s like saying you lot knew a thing or two about clocks,” she said. “And just before he disappeared, he completely freaked Jack out by saying he’d found Gray.”
“But that still doesn’t give him a motive,” the Doctor observed. “I know he and Jack had a thing going a long time ago and John wouldn’t mind starting it off again, but this is a bit over the top, isn’t it?”
“Jealousy? Revenge? Sometimes you forget how irrational humans can be,” Rose pointed out. “Or maybe he just wants Jack back. They were together quite a while. He knows his weaknesses.”
“But to harm the fabric of Time for such trivial reasons!” Romana gasped, horrified. “Doesn’t this Time Agency teach them anything?”
“They were a bit of a rogue outfit,” the Doctor had to admit. “And don’t you start, Romana! Rassilon was no angel.”
“Stop it, you two,” Rose scolded. Romana was temporarily startled by her forthrightness, but after a tense moment she relaxed into a laugh. For the first time, some kind of co-operation between them seemed possible. “The point is what do we have to do?” Rose continued.
“Well said, Rosemariantilur!” said Romana.
“Oh, just Rose is fine,” she replied. “We don’t need to get into all that name stuff.”
“Have you followed this timeline all the way through?” the Doctor asked.
Romana nodded. “He must be stopped.”
“Or what?” he asked slowly.
Romana’s movements made it clear that she wanted to move to telepathic communication, but he wasn’t having that. “Sorry,” he said. “If you want me, you get Rose as well. I’ve complete faith in her. In fact, she’s emotionally intelligent in a way I couldn’t hope to emulate.”
“But she’s…she’s…” Romana’s voice petered out.
“Human? Yes, I’d noticed,” he said. “If that doesn’t shock you, this certainly will. I’ve told her my name. Her and Jack. I’ve told you already, Romana, the days when we Time Lords had a monopoly on decisions like this are over. We need to teach humans how to do it properly while there’s a few of us still around.”
“But if she makes a mistake…” fretted Romana.
“I’ve made mistakes already,” Rose pointed out. “Made a massive one once. Reapers and everything. My dad had to sort it out. By dying,” she added, after a minute. “He was nothing special to look at, just an ordinary bloke. But when he had to save the world, he got on and did it.”
Romana looked at him. He nodded in assent. He’d rather not have had that brought up in present company, but he knew it hadn’t been easy for Rose to mention it either. “And it’s not as if Time Lords don’t make the occasional blooper,” he pointed out.
“Very well,” Romana conceded, with a sigh. “If the timeline is not corrected, the results will be catastrophic. Half the population of Cardiff will perish in timed explosions. Jack himself will be horribly tortured. His brother will transport him back 2000 years and bury him alive on the site of Cardiff, where he will remain entombed…”
“Dying over and over!” Rose’s hands went up to her mouth as if she was about to vomit. “No, we’d never let that happen! We’ll save him!”
“That’s the point,” the Doctor explained. “It might not be that simple. We have to look at the consequences first.”
“But if the timeline’s wrong to start with-” Rose began.
“Once people start dying, it’s far more difficult to correct,” he went on. “Every one of those people leaves their own causal trail. It’s much better to deal with the problem before it happens.”
“Yes,” Romana agreed. “Also, if Gray isn’t dealt with now, Jack will be forced to kill him to protect his team. Even then, two of them will not survive.”
Rose shuddered. “No!”
“We have to make sure Gray dies, don’t we?” said the Doctor, his hearts sinking.
“We can’t ask Jack to kill his own brother!” cried Rose. “He’d never get over that!”
“Would you prefer me to carry out the sentence?” Romana asked. “I have the necessary objectivity.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the Doctor answered. “Not without Jack’s consent. I wouldn’t do that to him. It goes against everything we value in this relationship.”
Now Romana was really horrified. “You’d show him his own timeline? Doctor, are you completely without scruples?”
“Oh, don’t start with all those regulations - you’re not on Gallifrey now!” Rose glared at Romana, indignation in her eyes.
“Romana has a point,” he argued. “Some of those rules were made for very sound reasons. Would you want to know exactly how you’re going to die? Imagine the cruelty of expecting Jack to make a decision like this.”
“Imagine the cruelty of making it without asking him!” Rose protested. “We need a procedure for this!”
“Rose Tyler, we’ll make a Time Lady of you yet!” he exclaimed, with mixed feelings.
“I don’t mean we have to put stupid hats on,” said Rose. “But the more we learn about time, the more often we will have to make these choices. And they’re hard, aren’t they? I’ve seen what you go through, trying to do it all on your own. You feel guilty whatever you do.”
Romana spent a few moments staring at Rose. He could tell that she was impressed. “It’s the price of becoming involved,” said Romana at last.
“I’ll admit, I’m beginning to understand you people a bit better now,” Rose said. “I can see why you tried to stand above it all; it wasn’t just some control-freakery thing, was it? But Gallifrey’s gone. We have to work out how to do these things without the guilt and the responsibility crushing people. Because one day humans will be doing it.”
“You speak wisely, Rose,” said Romana. “Forgive me if I dismissed you earlier; arrogance is the curse of our species. What would you have me do?”
The Doctor resisted the urge to interrupt. This was a proud moment for him and he trusted Rose to rise to the challenge.
“You have to talk to Jack,” Rose insisted. “He’ll understand if you tell him there are things he shouldn’t know. But we don’t do things like you lot used to on Gallifrey. We don’t just assume we know what’s best; nobody learns anything that way.”
Romana began to frown, but it didn’t last. Her face remained troubled, even as she conceded the point. “It goes against my deepest instincts, but I think perhaps you do need to discuss this with the Captain.”
“Oh God,” Rose groaned. “Poor Jack, to see his brother after all this time only to have to kill him.”
“It doesn’t have to be Jack who does the killing,” the Doctor pointed out.
“I won’t let you do it!” Rose declared. “You’ve had enough deaths to agonize over. I’d rather do it myself than that! Is there any way we could just go back and just stop Gray coming back to life in the first place?”
Romana shook her head. “I’m afraid not. The timeline is already too established. Gray is on his way to Cardiff, and his intention seems to be to destroy everything Jack loves.”
A leaden weight seemed to settle in the Doctor’s chest, between his hearts. It was happening again. The nightmare, the guilt, the impossibility of finding peace. Yes, it was true that he no longer faced it alone, but nor did he wish to visit it on his loved ones.
“Then I must be prepared to do it,” he said, in a low voice. “But we have to give Gray a chance to change his mind. Jack needs to ask Gray’s forgiveness, even if he was too young to know better, and even if the situation’s hopeless. Because there’s no such thing as a hopeless situation, Romana. I refuse to believe that.”
“How long have we got?” Rose asked.
“A few hours at most,” replied Romana. “Jack and the team will be called to investigate a deserted building, where they will be injured - none of them fatally - in an explosion. Those events are fixed. Subsequent ones I can influence, to some extent.” She turned to him. “Doctor, might I ask you a favour? The use of the TARDIS?”
“I’d be honoured,” he replied, and his cheeks crinkled into his trademark grin.
*****
By early morning, they had the bare bones of a plan.
The most difficult part was breaking the news to Jack. He still mistrusted Romana, with good reason, so Rose proposed involving him from the very start. Romana didn’t like the idea, but to her credit she was prepared to back down.
“The plan is to lure you and your team to a deserted building, and injure them in a series of controlled explosions,” she explained. “You are expected to survive. Then Captain John appears to you with Gray, who announces his intention to destroy everything you care about.”
“Jesus,” murmured Jack. “Why the hell would he want to hurt me that much? Is John controlling him somehow?”
“I fear that the reverse is more likely to be the case,” said Romana. “John presumably had reasons of his own for interfering with the timeline, but once faced with the force of your brother’s irrational anger he found himself under his influence.”
“How could he do that?” Rose asked. “Brainwashing him or something?”
“Could have been a flesh implant - they had the technology by that time,” said Jack.
Rose looked at him. He was dealing with this in much the same way the Doctor would. Calm, professional, detached. But this wasn’t just anybody they were discussing. It was the little brother Jack had lost and blamed himself for abandoning ever since. What bothered her most was there was an awful fatalism about the way Jack was reacting to this; he seemed convinced that he deserved the worst Gray could do to him.
“Don’t let your own guilt stop you realising how wrong this is,” she warned him. “He’s talking about killing your team, just because you care about them.” She didn’t add what she knew the Doctor would be thinking; that if Gray knew how much she and the Doctor mattered to Jack, he’d try to kill them, too.
“Not just the team,” the Doctor reminded them. “That’s bad enough, but at least they’re professionals who signed up for the dangers they face. If this plan goes ahead, thousands of ordinary people will die, too.”
“We have to stop him,” Jack groaned. “Even if I have to do it myself.”
“No!” Rose rushed to Jack’s side. “Nobody should have to do that. Romana’s offered, if it comes to that. Or I’d do it myself, rather than put you through it.”
“Or perhaps your team, if you feel it’s prudent to involve them?” Romana suggested. “Then at least the responsibility could be shared.”
“We can’t just condemn him without a hearing, for something he’s about to do,” the Doctor insisted. “He’s been conditioned to hate and kill; he’s probably no more responsible for his own actions than Jack was when he lost track of him on that beach.”
Rose reached for Jack’s hand and held it tight. “The Doctor’s right,” she agreed. “At least we could try to reason with him. We might need a few people pointing guns at him to get a word in edgeways, but we owe it to everyone to try.”
Romana’s talent for strategising was becoming increasingly obvious. “The TARDIS is able to withstand the blast of the explosion,” she said. “We’ll keep your team safely inside when it detonates; that will draw Captain John and Gray towards us.”
“He’s a Time Agent,” the Doctor protested. “They’d detect the TARDIS, wouldn’t they?”
“Cloaking device,” snapped Romana. “Oh, for Rassilon’s sake, don’t give me that excuse about a faulty chameleon circuit. If you weren’t so stubborn you could have fixed it centuries ago! I’ll rig up a perception filter while you look into the timelines, Doctor. If you’re so keen to spare Gray’s life, you’d better be prepared to clean up after him.”
“He might have to travel with us for a while,” said the Doctor.
“Excellent. In fact, I want to have a word with this Captain John,” declared Romana. “I will not have people running around disturbing timelines for personal reasons.”
Rose gestured to Jack; they left the two Time Lords to their semi-productive bickering and headed for the kitchen, where she sat Jack down and poured him a stiff drink.
“God, this is horrible,” she said, with a sigh. “It never stops, does it?”
“Nope.” Jack’s jaw was set; Rose just wished he’d let go and let some of it out before he was out in the field and having to play the hero again.
“First Owen, then the Doctor’s people. Now this.” He sounded shattered.
She sat opposite him and held his hand across the table. “Don’t give up hope,” she said. “Look at what he’s managed to do for those poor people taken by the Rift. Everyone else had given up on them. But he’s the Doctor. He never gives up on anybody.”
“Even the Master,” Jack said, thoughtfully. “He offered to look after him, you know. Said he’d been on his own too long and he needed someone to care for.” He emptied his lungs in a long sigh. “God, I want this thing with Romana to work for him. I really do. He needs one of his own people. It’s just so hard for me even to look at her, after the way she betrayed him…”
“Maybe it will help him get through to Gray?” Rose wondered. “What she did to him was much worse - she pretty much handed him over to the Daleks. Okay, she had her motives, but you were just a twelve-year-old kid who let go of his hand. If the Doctor can forgive Romana that, then surely Gray can forgive you for something you never intended to do anyway?”
“That depends how much of him is left, I guess,” said Jack.
That silenced them both for a while. Then Rose spoke.
“Jack, I just want you to know how much I love you. We’ll get you through this somehow.” Her voice trembled. “I’ve killed once or twice. Never told the Doctor - he’s got a lot of double standards about that stuff and I think he knows that. He’s just not ready to hear it about me. It was horrible, I never want to go through it again, but I will if I have to. If it’s the only way.” She looked at him, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes but stark determination in her face. “And, if it really was the only way, I think that the Doctor would, too.”
*****
It was ten o’clock on a Cardiff morning, a few hours later. Minutes ago, just as Romana had predicted, a devastating explosion had gutted the building where the Torchwood team were supposed to be investigating a tip-off. Secure in the TARDIS, they’d heard and felt nothing, but the tension in the crowded control room made up for that. In fact, Jack reflected, he generally preferred to be in the thick of things, dangers and all. Waiting was tough; it gave you time to think of all the things that could go wrong.
He wasn’t sure if anyone could really process this situation, however. He was about to see Gray for the first time in well over a century. He didn’t know how that made him feel. To tell the truth, the two of them hadn’t been particularly close. He’d been very much his father’s son, the apple of his eye, whilst Gray had been closer to his mother; that was why she’d never recovered from his loss and died herself less than a year afterwards. To lose all three of his family members at the same time, not to mention his community, had affected him so deeply that he’d distanced himself and closed off his memories simply to survive it. Everyone who came after that, even the people he’d been close to - John, for example - had been transient, there to be manipulated rather than loved. He’d revelled in the forced objectivity of the habitual time-traveller - outside everything, belonging nowhere, unable to commit.
Then he’d met Rose and the Doctor. He’d found someone to believe in again, people who could make him face the consequences of his selfish actions. Trouble was, that reminded him that he could feel guilt and responsibility and grief. Everything good that had happened to him since, he’d wondered how long he’d got before it ended. Everything bad, he’d believed he deserved. No wonder he and the Doctor had clicked. Maybe the Doctor was more of a thinker and he was more of a doer, but beneath those differences they were truly two of a kind. Both of them needed Rose around to smack some sense into them when they fell to brooding too much.
“He’s sent a transmission,” Romana announced, “I’ll put a fix on it; then he won’t be able to log out whenever he feels like it. We’ll hold him in stasis until he materialises physically with Gray.”
“Can you predict the location?” Jack asked.
“Oh yes. They’ll be locked into the same co-ordinates.” Romana glanced up, adjusted the narrow spectacles she’d taken to wearing, and looked around at the team. “You may wish to take up your positions.”
They’d already discussed who’d go out to meet Gray and John, and in what order. Owen, Ianto, Gwen and Tosh all provided discreet armed back-up, ready to act as firing squad at a pre-arranged signal if it came to that point. Romana would observe and keep track of the temporal issues; Martha would stay in the TARDIS as designated medical officer.
The Doctor, of course, had refused to do anything other than walk out and meet Gray in the open, unarmed. Jack would be beside him. With the team providing cover, he’d be spared the necessity of carrying a weapon against his brother. After a lengthy argument with the Doctor, Rose, lightly armed, had won her right to be there on the other side of Jack.
Team TARDIS in front, team Torchwood behind. It felt right. As right as a situation like this ever could feel.
The hologram of Captain John appeared facing them, apparently unaware that the people he’d just schemed to murder were behind him. So far, so good.
“Hey team! ‘Course, there might me a few less of you by now. Don’t know if you liked my little gift….”
“Bastard,” Owen muttered.
Jack watched the green, shimmering figure of his ex-lover in front of him with a sense of dread and disbelief. What was going on here? Yeah, John had been ruthless. Amoral, and if Jack pretended he hadn’t enjoyed the occasional killing spree, he’d be lying to himself and everyone else. But this went way beyond even the most frenzied jealousy. Why now, and why like this? Had something made him lose his mind?
John turned his attention to him. “Of course, you can’t die.” He sighed. “And with all that life, all that time, you can’t spare any for me...Say ‘Hi’ to the family…”
“Gray?” Jack questioned, as he saw Gray as a grown man for the first time. His first impression was that he’d put on weight. He looked younger than he’d been expecting. Maybe John had thought to spare him by pulling him out of time comparatively early in his ordeal? Gray had always been a stocky, well-built lad, and whatever they’d done to him, it looked as if starvation hadn’t been part of the regime.
He’d also been inclined to sulk mightily if he didn’t get his own way. Jack was rather horrified to find himself noting that Gray could still do petulance like an expert. He shouldn’t be thinking like this. He ought to be pleased to see the little tyke, not remembering everything that used to irritate him about his sibling.
For whatever reason, John continued to do the talking. “Been a while since you’ve seen your brother, Jack. Okay, here’s what’s gonna happen. Everything you love, everything you treasure, will die. I’m gonna tear your world apart, Captain Jack Harkness - piece by piece, starting now. Maybe now you’ll wanna spend some time with me.”
“Oh now, just hang on a minute!” the Doctor interrupted. “Romana, would you do the honours?” Within a few seconds, a startled couple of figures replaced the holograms.
“Sorry if the teleport was a little rough, but it’s so much easier to discuss these things face to face, don’t you think?” The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and walked over to John, taking his hand and flipping it over to examine his wrist in one deft movement completed before he’d had time to react. “Oh yes!” he exclaimed. “Molecularly bonded wristband, just as I thought. You’re not wearing the trousers here, are you, Captain John? Although, to be fair, Jack probably preferred you that way.”
A flash of light from the screwdriver removed the device painlessly from the Captain’s skin. “I’m sure you’re not really that childish, are you?” the Doctor said to him with a smile. “Fifteen explosions - including a nuclear power station - enough to cripple the entire city of Cardiff, just because the two of you broke up? It’s worse than that bunny-boiling movie - what was its name?”
“ ‘Fatal Attraction’ ”, Rose replied, helpfully.
“That’s it. Not that it wasn’t compelling, in its own way. That’s the trouble with revenge. People like the idea of it, makes fantastic drama - I mean, look at old Hamlet, ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’” He stopped. “No, hang on. That’s ‘Macbeth’. That wasn’t revenge, that was ambition. The tragedy of ambition, that’s it. ‘Othello’ is jealousy and Lear, well that’s either existential angst or a batty old man depending on your point of view…”
“Um, Doctor…” prompted Jack. “I think, maybe, a little urgency here…”
“Oh, sorry. Good point. Universe about to go boom and all that. Well, Cardiff about to go boom anyway; that’s bad enough.” The Doctor turned to the astonished Gray and ran his fingers over his left cheek. “My, that’s a nasty scar you’ve got there. Bit rough with you, were they? I can imagine.” He wasn’t smiling now. “I was captured by the Daleks. So was my friend over there. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce myself, did I? How rude of me.”
“Who are you?” Gray gasped.
“I’m the Doctor, and I’m working with Romana.” He looked at John and shook a warning finger at him. “We’re Time Lords. We get a bit cross when people start messing around with time to impress their old friends. Tends to end up with events spiralling out of control. Romana will be speaking to you later, and since she used to be the President of the High Council of Gallifrey, I suggest you think long and hard before you try anything on with her. Now, where was I?” He looked around. “Ah yes, Daleks. Nasty, very nasty. Makes that Cell lot look like amateurs. Probably trained them up, in fact. So, before we go into details, you might as well know, Gray, young man, you’re not the first person to be tortured. Or betrayed. Or lose everything you love. And I’ll tell you this, right now.”
He faced Gray, and Jack would not have wanted to be that close to the Doctor in his present mood. “Revenge is the most pointless, negative, useless response to anything that you could ever have. Revenge says to your enemy, ‘You win. You have made me into one of you.’ It never, ever helps.”
He moved away, adopting an orator’s pose with a swish of his coat. His rich voice, packed with controlled rage, carried in the still air of the foggy morning. “So, you’d murder half a city - not to mention these good people who’ve been unlucky enough to be important to Jack - just because long ago, when he was a twelve-year old boy, he let go of your hand? What about the time he ate the last of the custard creams? What are you going to do about that? Burn up a sun? Start another war? You think that’s going to help? You think that’s going to solve your pathetic little sibling rivalry issues? Punish Jack for something he never intended to do in the first place? Will it make you feel better? Well?”
Gray crumpled under the onslaught. He shook. “He abandoned me!” he cried, furiously. “He left me to die! Does he know what they did to me? Why shouldn’t he suffer? I lost everything!”
“And you think he didn’t?” asked the Doctor. “You think you’re the first person that’s ever happened to? Oh, come on! How old are you, Gray? You ought to be going through this phase in your bedroom listening to My Chemical Romance and experimenting with eyeliner! Now, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll tell me where those explosive charges are and how we abort them. Or maybe you’d care to do the honours, Captain John?”
“I carried the detonation circuits,” John confessed. “He took control of me; I had no choice.”
“Of course you did, you silly man!” Romana swept out of the TARDIS, clearly furious. The Doctor saw a lot of Donna in her at that moment.
“You could have chosen not to meddle in time!” she exclaimed. “What, precisely, were you trying to prove? Don’t you realise what could have happened if I hadn’t spotted what was going on?”
John gaped as this ginger-haired tornado whirled towards him. “Time Lords! I thought you guys were just a myth.”
“We are not, nor were we ever, ‘guys’,” Romana announced crisply. “Now hand that nasty little device to the Doctor at once, please. And as for you, Mr Gray Harkness or whatever you’re called…”
Gray sank down to his knees, his body wracked with sobs. “I hate you!” he yelled at Jack. “You left me! They all left me - him, Dad…M..m.m…”
“Always were a mommy’s boy, weren’t you, Gray?” Jack remarked. “It figures. You were the one she had made to measure. I was your off-the-peg guy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Rose, bewildered.
“He’s an ectogene!” Jack explained. “Mom got caught in a radiation storm just after I turned six, wound up sterile. Dad wanted nothing to do with it - said it was no time or place to be bringing another kid into so she went behind his back and had him monoprogenated!”
“How old were you when he was born?” Romana asked.
“Seven? Eight, maybe? And then she brings home this five year old kid with the emotional needs of a baby and expects me to get my head around it. Dad logged off from the whole thing, did the whole frozen rage deal. I wound up trying to do his job myself, learning as I went along.”
Now the memories were pouring back. How baffled, frightened, resentful of Gray he’d been. How he’d blamed him for the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and how both of them had used Gray as a bargaining chip, trying to get him - Jack - to come down on one side of the divide or the other. The horrible, constant nagging feeling of being wrong, whatever he did. Being blamed for being what he was - a boy too young to be grown up.
That was where the guilt had come from! It wasn’t just letting go of that hand on the beach, it was everything that had led up to it. The years of feeling inadequate, passed over by his warring parents. The only happy times he could remember were games of ball on the sand dunes with his father. Everything about him seemed to irritate his mother, and once Gray was lost she could hardly bring herself to look at him.
He’d been abandoned. The one who just felt wrong.
“I should have realised sooner,” Romana said. “I can normally spot an ectogene right away. The Doctor wouldn’t - he was biologically conceived - that’s why he never really felt comfortable on Gallifrey.”
Then something quite amazing happened. Romana, the original ice-maiden, headed straight for Gray and scooped him up into her arms. “Oh, Gray, you poor, silly little boy!” she exclaimed tenderly. “You’re just like those little Time Children we had back home. Woken up at the age of seven, ready to be crammed with every type of knowledge except the one you really need - how to deal with not getting exactly what you want. You’re not a teenage rebel. Trust the Doctor to self-project; he’s such a narcissist. You’re just a little boy who wants his mummy.”
Jack, Rose and the Doctor all gazed at each other, slack-jawed with amazement and embarrassment.
“I think this is where we came in,” the Doctor muttered, as Gray collapsed, weeping against Romana’s bosom.
“Anyone got a gas mask?” murmured Rose.
Chapter Nine
Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Chapter Five
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One