Familiar Stranger (2/3) Spoilers, Post JE Rating G
AUTHOR:
sensiblecat
WORDS: 4348
Thank you to
wendymr for lightning-fast beta work
CHARACTERS: Everyone who was in the TARDIS in Journey's End.
The Companions have just saved the whole of creation. But that was a walk in the park compared to saving the Doctor.
Chapter One
You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.
Contact, (Screenplay), by Carl Sagan
There was a whoosh behind the Doctor and he spun round, unable to believe his ears. Sarah Jane heard it too; she paused and turned in her dash to get home to her son. Both of them, simultaneously, recognised the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising.
“WHAAT?” cried the Doctor. “They can’t - hang on a minute - no - wait - they can’t!”
Sarah Jane saw the horror on his face and started back towards him.
He stood before her with his mouth hanging open. “They pinched my TARDIS!” he gasped, as if she hadn’t noticed.
There was a pause as he stood ineffectually scrubbing at his hair. He looked like a hurt little boy, she thought, this incredible being who’d just saved creation. Yes, she felt sorry for him but, at the same time, she couldn’t quite resist the urge to laugh.
“It’s not funny!” he cried.
She laughed more loudly. “What’s so funny?” he demanded. “I need my TARDIS back! I’ve things to do. People - well, Jackie - not that Jackie isn’t people - she needs to go home. People need to go back. And there’s only the fuel for one trip! I’ve got to cross the blinking Void, dammit!”
“I’m sure it’s in good hands,” she pointed out gently. “After all, the Doctor’s on board. And isn’t all this ranting about stealing a TARDIS a little - hypocritical of you?” She bobbed her head over to one side and raised an eyebrow.
“He’s me!” the Doctor protested, going into meltdown before her eyes. “The last person I can trust with the TARDIS! What if - what, what…Sarah Jane, what am I going to do?”
“You’re asking me what you’re going to do?” she asked. “Well, maybe the handbrake just slipped and they’ll be back in a few minutes. Try calling them.”
“The TARDIS handbrake never slips,” he said. “It’s a very delicate manoeuvre taking off the handbrake - I usually do it with my foot.”
Sarah Jane pointed. “Phone. Pocket. Call them?”
He pulled out his mobile and hammered frantically on the keys. “It’s dead! All that atmospheric interference - got to be. Whole planet’s up the Swanee - gonna take weeks to sort it all out.”
“You’ll be on your way rejoicing long before then,” she soothed him.
“Not without my TARDIS, I won’t!” He really did look as if he was about to weep. Sarah Jane thought about the hours he’d spent being tortured, no doubt, by Davros. The old megalomaniac had always known exactly which of his buttons to press. And then there was Rose; that had to be putting him through the mill emotionally. She wondered when he’d last eaten or slept.
“We could try Mr Smith,” she suggested.
“That computer of yours? Oh, come on! It’s not going to be able to trace them across the Void.”
“You’d be surprised what Mr Smith can do. Anyway, there’s no point in you hanging around here getting all worked up. You might as well come home with me and have a cup of tea and a hot bath.”
“I do not need mothering!” he snorted.
“Won’t do you any harm,” said Sarah Jane. “Just look at the state of you! And besides, you could meet Luke. Come on.”
She linked arms with him and steered him away.
****
Taking Jackie back was a walk in the park, really. A bit emotional, granted, but nobody questioned her decision to return to Pete and Tony, least of all Jackie herself. As the Doctor pointed out, with two Time Lords on board, reunions were by no means out of the question anyway.
Then they all headed back to the Hub.
“Oh my God, this place is amazing!” Rose gasped, her mouth dropping open at the sight of the Elevator and Myfanwy flying around it. “How long’s it been here, Jack?”
“Ever since the Queen Victoria set it up,” Jack replied. “Not that I was involved way back then. That came in the ‘90s, when they picked me up for dying once too often in the local taverns and pumped me for info about the Doctor.”
“And you’ve been working for them ever since?”
“Freelance, mostly,” Jack replied. “Didn’t come on board full-time until the turn of the Millennium.” He didn’t elaborate on the reasons why that had happened. Rose didn’t probe; she’d enough to think about already, putting together this hidden life Jack had been leading, built around his love for the Doctor, his temporal self-discipline and the overwhelming need to work things out between the two of them.
“Know what I can’t get over?” she said, reaching gently for his arm. “When we were here before, that time with Mickey before the Doctor changed his body, all laughing and joking together in that bar. You must have been here, Jack. Knowing what was going on. And he thought Time Lords were the only people who could handle stuff like that.”
“Wasn’t the easiest of days,” Jack agreed. “I just kept my head down.”
“How did he get his hand back?” Rose asked.
“Oh, that was me,” Jack replied. “Soon as it showed up, UNIT called me.”
Rose was silent, thinking of the giddy joy of that day, wondering where Jack had gone for Christmas lunch. So much to talk about on both sides, so much to forgive. One thing she was certain about - she wasn’t going anywhere until there’d been time to do that, no matter how many Doctors were buzzing around trying to arrange things.
It was difficult knowing where to start. Meanwhile, there was other stuff to think about. Donna, for instance. Martha, who’d turned out to be some kind of medic among all her other skills, was already familiar with the layout of this extraordinary place, Rose observed. It was she who pointed out to the Doctor that they really ought to run a few scans on Donna and see what all this was doing to her brain.
“Good point,” the Doctor agreed. “Which way’s the med lab?”
“Haven’t you ever been here before?” Rose asked, in surprise.
“Never set foot in the place,” he replied. “First time for everything, though. Lead the way, Martha Jones.”
“Hang on a minute!” Rose interrupted. “What about when Jack caught up with you and Martha? Surely then-”
And there it was again, she noticed. Awkward little looks between the three of them - Jack, Martha, the Doctor. A story that wasn’t being told. It hurt. More than that, it frightened her.
“Oh, we got caught up in things,” the Doctor said, at last.
“What kind of things?” Rose demanded.
“Tell you later,” he said, quickly. “Come on, Donna.”
Rose followed them all to the medical room. Martha’s usual composure seemed to slip a little as they entered it and she helped Donna up on to the table. The Doctor groped in his pocket for spectacles, grumbled a bit when he realised they weren’t there, and began setting up the scanner.
Jack went over to Martha and laid his palm on the back of her hand. “You okay?” he murmured.
Martha gulped down a sigh. “Yeah, sort of,” she replied. “It’s just…you know. I’ve not been in here since I heard about Owen.”
“Owen?” Rose queried.
“He was our last Medical Officer,” Jack explained. “We lost him.”
“When you first met him,” Martha said, with a thin smile, “he seemed like the most obnoxious git that ever walked the earth. But a lot of it was bullshit. Saw him get shot, through the heart.”
“That killed him?” said Rose, and immediately reproached herself silently for such a thoughtless question. Not everyone could grow a new body from a severed hand.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay, Rose,” Jack replied. “Long story, I’m afraid. Some other time. Doc, let me know how things go with Donna, okay?”
“What are you gonna do to me?” Donna asked. “Don’t fob me off with long words and technobabble, please. I want to know the truth. If it’s bad, it’s bad. I’ll call my mum, put her in the picture, say goodbye if I have to.”
“It shouldn’t come to that,” the Doctor said, without looking at her.
There was a pause.
“Can I have a word?” Donna asked him. “Just you on your own?”
The Doctor blinked. “Yeah, sure,” he replied. “That okay, everybody?”
Jack, Martha and Rose nodded and made their way out. Back in the centre of the Hub, laughter floated across the room as Ianto and Mickey shared a tin dog type joke. Rose found it difficult to imagine a more unlikely couple of friends.
“So, Mickey’s staying here,” she said. “He’d make a good agent. Got any openings?”
“Two,” Jack said quickly. “Wasn’t just Owen we lost last year.”
“And what about you, Jack?” Rose asked. “How many times have you died?”
Something about Martha’s demeanour showed Rose that she’d bowed to the inevitable. Martha really didn’t want to waste any more time lying or skirting round the subject. Her eyes met Jack’s.
“We ought to talk about the Year that Never Was,” she said. “Because he never will.”
Jack was leaning against the wall of his office, his features chiselled in the stark underground light. Rose remembered when he dressed like Mr Average and wondered how long he’d been going with the Forties look, not that it didn’t suit him. God, she could shag him herself, this minute, if things were different. Foursome, she thought. That sounded very Jack. But she’d a feeling he was more faithful to Ianto than he cared to admit. The attraction baffled her but that wasn’t the point. Whatever Jack’s 140-year pursuit of the Doctor had been about, it wasn’t just romantic or sexual. More like unfinished business.
“I never said I was sorry, Jack,” Rose said.
“You weren’t to know what you were dealing with,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have it differently now.”
“You really are going to live forever? Like the Face of Boe? The Doctor said he was billions of years old.”
“Who knows?” Jack asked. “Maybe one day my luck will run out; we’ll see. Most things happen for a reason, Rose. That’s what I figure, anyway.”
“Tell me what happened when you met up again,” Rose insisted. “You’re both hiding something.”
Jack looked at Martha. Martha nodded; he shrugged. “Ianto makes the best coffee in the universe,” he remarked. “If you’re gonna hear that story, Rose, we’ll need a pot or two.”
They headed for the boardroom.
****
The Doctor sat at Sarah Jane’s kitchen table, working through a plate of excellent stew and a bottle of red wine in her company. He was not in the best frame of mind to appreciate either, however.
They’d managed, at about the fifteenth attempt, to contact the TARDIS, only to find that the rest of the crew - if you could call them that - had returned from dropping Jackie off in the parallel world. They were now lurking in an undisclosed location. He strongly suspected that was the Hub.
And, right now, since Sarah Jane flatly refused to leave her son behind and drive him to Cardiff, there wasn’t a lot he could do about that. He’d spoken briefly with his other self, who’d reassured him that Donna was in good shape but declined to give details. Mickey had gone out for a pint with Ianto, Gwen was back home with her husband and Rose, Jack and Martha had been in the Torchwood Three boardroom for a couple of hours. He couldn’t bring himself to speculate about that particular conversation.
“It’s all wrong!” he complained, yet again, his speech becoming slightly slurred. Drinking alcohol had done nothing to help, but he was so tense and exhausted he’d indulged himself and the wine was affecting him far more than it usually did. “Rose can’t stay here. She just can’t.”
“Why not?” Sarah Jane asked. God, humans could be obtuse sometimes. Even the best of them.
“Because somebody has to look after him, of course!”
“You mean somebody has to look after you?”
“Look!” He banged his hand on the table, making the wine splash. “He’s dangerous, don’t you see? He wiped out the whole of the Dalek race a few hours ago. He’s been born in war and violence and darkness and…he shouldn’t be alone.”
“What’s that got to do with Rose?” she asked.
“Rose can make him better. That’s what she did for me. And he’s human - physically, at least. He’ll age along with her. He’ll never have to watch her get old and die and…” His voice trailed away and he covered his eyes. He was putting all this so badly.
“What if she dies young?” Sarah Jane asked. “Or suppose he goes and gets himself killed or something? You’ve gone through enough regenerations. He doesn’t even have that safety net.”
“Rose is human. She’ll expect him to die.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier, believe me,” Sarah Jane pointed out. “Anyway, this whole business about him killing the Daleks. Look at the circumstances, for Heaven’s sake. It wasn’t just some idea he took into his head. It was to save the universe. It’s exactly what you would have done.”
“No! I gave Davros a chance!”
“Then more fool you!” Sarah Jane snapped. “If you hadn’t given Davros and his vicious schemes a chance all those years ago, none of today’s events would ever have happened. Don’t you see, Doctor? You’ll find a way to blame yourself for everything. Not just blame yourself, but punish yourself.”
“I have to live with what I’ve done,” he said grimly. “He doesn’t. He can start again.”
“Poppycock!” Sarah Jane stood up and collected the plates together, before depositing them with a crash in the kitchen sink. “He’s you. You made him! He has your memories, your feelings, your history. And if you thought he could just start again with a clean slate, then why are you expecting Rose to fix him?”
“Now, I never said that!” he protested.
“Yes you did. ‘Rose can make him better.’ Those were your exact words. Nobody asks Rose her opinion, I notice. She crossed universes to be with the man she loves and you’ve barely spent five minutes alone together. What right do you have to decide these things for her?”
He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Sarah Jane, don’t you see? She can’t be with me. It doesn’t matter what she might want, she just can’t. What kind of life can I give her?”
“The one she wants?”
“She thinks she does. But she needs a human life. She’s a human being. I can’t give her…well, you know what I can’t give her. I’m a marked man; every enemy I have from Davros down knows that the way to break me is to threaten her.” His voice broke. “And I can’t bear it. She needs to get away from this universe forever.”
“Oh, Doctor,” Sarah Jane sighed. She took his hand over the table and gently waited for him to calm down. “Davros has already broken you, don’t you see that? He’s made you feel that you destroy the lives of everyone you touch. But think about that. Remember those few minutes we spent in the TARDIS coming home? That’s not destroying people, that’s empowering them. Who else could have given us such a wonderful thing to be part of? I don’t think there was one person in that control room - not even Jackie Tyler - who’d have given that up.”
“But at such a cost…”
“What did Davros actually say to you?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” he snapped.
“Of course it does! I suppose it was the old line about how you hate guns and kill millions, was it? He knows how to play you like an old fiddle, doesn’t he? The hypocrite! The most bloodthirsty megalomaniac in history, and he has the nerve to make you feel guilty. The only thing Davros despises about you is your weakness. The fact that you let his precious Daleks live!”
There was a long silence between them. Rock music came throbbing through the ceiling from Luke’s room. Sarah Jane - a mother, he thought. How had that come about? She’d told him the details, how she’d rescued the boy from the Bane, but he still found it astonishing that she’d taken on such a frightening challenge, let alone that she was appearing to thrive on it. Maybe, in her case at least, he’d managed not to destroy one of his companion’s lives.
But she was just part of a long story. A story that included Rose and, worse still, Donna. Whatever shape she was in now, her brain would fracture under the strain of the metacrisis. He shuddered to think of returning her body home to her family, or having to confess that she was insane. They wouldn’t blame the Daleks, because that would be beyond their comprehension. They’d blame him.
“If anything happens to Donna, I’ll not be able to live with myself,” he admitted.
“You can’t now,” said Sarah Jane. “That’s why you’re blaming him for everything - your other self. You think you can load all the dark, complicated, difficult things onto him, cast him out in the wilderness and leave Rose to deal with it. Worse still, you’ve convinced yourself she’d be happy. But she loves you. Both of you. And she’ll know that any happiness she has is at your expense.”
“He’s not a consolation prize. He’s me - only better, because now they’re the same species. And he’ll tell her I’ll find someone else, and keep going, because I always do. She’ll get over it, given time.”
“Will she? I’m not sure she will. Look what she did to return to you. No doubt you’ve spent the last few years telling yourself and anyone else who’d listen what a perfect life she’s having, but you can’t switch love on and off like a tap. It’s not about our personal gratification. While the loved one suffers, the lover does, too.”
He twisted his fingers around the stem of the glass. “But at least she’ll be safe.”
“And you’d rather have her safe than happy?”
That was a tricky one, he had to admit. “You’re a mother now,” he said. “What if it was Luke? Wouldn’t you?”
Sarah Jane stood up and stood with her back to him, spreading her hands out on the rail of the Aga with a long sigh.
“Touche,” she confessed. Then she turned around, straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin in that old, Sarah Jane way. “I would want him safe for myself, but I would want him happy for him.”
“He’s a nice boy,” the Doctor said, after an awkward silence. “You’re lucky to have him.”
“I make my own luck. Or at the very least, I don’t throw away a beautiful gift when the Universe gives it to me.”
“And you think I do?” he asked, in a low voice.
“Yes. You believe you’re unworthy of it.” She came back to the table and sat down opposite him, passion in her eyes. “But do you know what? We’re all unworthy. Every one of us - Time Lord, Human, Dalek…we’re all a complicated mixture of beautiful dreams and terrible nightmares.”
Aha. A quote. “Carl Sagan,” he said. “The Vegans in ‘Contact’. ‘You’re an interesting species. Capable of such beautiful dreams and such terrible nightmares’.”
“And he’s right,” Sarah Jane went on, her eyes shining. “You wipe out Davros, and another evil genius will come along. Maybe a human one next time. No universe is safe. You could have left Rose in her own back yard and she’d still come from the same planet as Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. You can’t protect her! You can’t protect anyone completely. But you can protect yourself by allowing yourself to love.”
“I could protect her from association with myself,” he pointed out, framing his words with difficulty. The effect of the alcohol and the emotional charge of the discussion were both conspiring to make it more and more difficult for him to maintain a coherent argument.
“Where does that leave you?” she asked. “Alone. Like Davros. How much more sacrifice can you bear before your hearts become a stone, and all that seems real to you is your power? I fear for you, Doctor. Truly, I do.”
“I’m all right,” he protested. “People come and go. That’s my life. Nothing lasts for ever. If you ever reached my age, you’d learn that.”
“You are not all right,” Sarah Jane insisted. “You’re running on empty, and you have been ever since the Time War. Not only that. You lost your restraints; you were freed to invent a moral code as you go along, accountable to nobody. One of the wonderful things about being a parent is that you live with someone who constantly challenges you, points up the errors in your reasoning. Young people are ruthless in that respect.”
“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” he asked, a coldness entering his voice.
Her sigh and her long silence was his answer. She looked down at the table and said nothing.
*****
“So, what is it, Donna? What did you want to say to me?”
Donna looked at the Doctor. She had absolutely no trouble believing it was him. She’d seen him born, seen him naked and vulnerable, and now she shared his mind. She understood his fears and why he was fighting so hard against the obvious solution to the problem.
“This metacrisis,” she began. “Can you reverse it?”
He did the old rubber-face routine, sitting there opposite her looking the picture of casual indifference with his knees spread wide, the fabric of his new suit already creasing behind them into his distinctive shape.
“Why do you ask?” he stalled.
“Why do think I ask? Because it’s my head you’re in, sunshine, and I’m not sure I like you being there.”
That got him, she could tell. He was still an arrogant sod and the idea that anyone wouldn’t jump at the chance to be him was difficult for him to process. “You’d go back to being human, if you could?” he asked. “Back to hangovers and reading “Hello” when there’s stars in the sky?”
“Being human doesn’t have to be like that,” she pointed out. “When I travelled with you, until a few hours ago, I wasn’t blind any more. You opened my eyes. ‘Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us - there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries’.”
“That’s Carl Sagan,” he said. “I sometimes think you and I share a brain, Donna. Oh, hang on. We do.”
“If going back meant I lost that tingling in the spine, I wouldn’t contemplate it for a microsecond,” said Donna. “But I needn’t be a Time Lord to do that. I can just be me, and I’m still the greatest woman in creation. I’m the woman who told you when to stop. The one who saved the universe by saving you. I’m probably in a sculpture on somebody’s wall somewhere in Ancient Rome. I’m part of the Song of the Ood. I’m the person who could listen to you talk about Jenny and all you’d lost and see that you were wrong.” She stopped. “And that’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“You’ve come a long way, Donna Noble,” he said. “Even the TARDIS couldn’t take you further than you’ve travelled in your own mind. In your heart. Have you any idea how amazing you are?”
“I rather think I have, Doctor,” she replied. “I don’t have to be anything I’m not.” She smiled at him and tapped his knee. “You want to hang on to me, don’t you? There’s such a silence in your head where the Time Lords used to be. You think if there was just one of us - half of one, even - out there somewhere, it wouldn’t be as lonely. You’re wrong, Skinny Boy. They’ve gone, and it doesn’t get better than this. But that doesn’t mean this is bad.”
He sat staring at his knees for a while. She looked at the fine hair on top of his head and wanted to blow on it and smoosh it, just to make him laugh, to be silly and human and do him good.
“So, how about it, Martian Boy?” she asked.
“I’ll miss you,” he admitted, with difficulty.
“Don’t see why. I’m not going anywhere. And you know what? That suit doesn’t work with a T-shirt. You’re a Time Lord and you ought to be wearing a tie. This get with the people look isn’t you. Besides, going around matching Rose is just creepy.”
“You got the stuff out of the dressing room for me in the first place!” he protested.
“Well, maybe I was a bit distracted by your gorgeous pecs,” she said. “Or that the world was ending at the time, and all that stuff.”
“I’m just a long streak of alien nothing,” he reassured her, “and you so don’t fancy me.” Suddenly, for some reason best known to himself, he seemed as if he was about to cry, but he managed to hold it in and there was nothing forced about his smile.
“Oh, come here, you,” he said, and folded her up in his arms. “Now, this is just reversing a metabiological event in the most efficient way possible - salivary neurogenetic transfer, okay? It doesn’t mean a thing.”
Then he kissed it out of her. He tasted a lot better without the side order of anchovies, she had to admit.
sensiblecat
WORDS: 4348
Thank you to
wendymr for lightning-fast beta work
CHARACTERS: Everyone who was in the TARDIS in Journey's End.
The Companions have just saved the whole of creation. But that was a walk in the park compared to saving the Doctor.
Chapter One
You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.
Contact, (Screenplay), by Carl Sagan
There was a whoosh behind the Doctor and he spun round, unable to believe his ears. Sarah Jane heard it too; she paused and turned in her dash to get home to her son. Both of them, simultaneously, recognised the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising.
“WHAAT?” cried the Doctor. “They can’t - hang on a minute - no - wait - they can’t!”
Sarah Jane saw the horror on his face and started back towards him.
He stood before her with his mouth hanging open. “They pinched my TARDIS!” he gasped, as if she hadn’t noticed.
There was a pause as he stood ineffectually scrubbing at his hair. He looked like a hurt little boy, she thought, this incredible being who’d just saved creation. Yes, she felt sorry for him but, at the same time, she couldn’t quite resist the urge to laugh.
“It’s not funny!” he cried.
She laughed more loudly. “What’s so funny?” he demanded. “I need my TARDIS back! I’ve things to do. People - well, Jackie - not that Jackie isn’t people - she needs to go home. People need to go back. And there’s only the fuel for one trip! I’ve got to cross the blinking Void, dammit!”
“I’m sure it’s in good hands,” she pointed out gently. “After all, the Doctor’s on board. And isn’t all this ranting about stealing a TARDIS a little - hypocritical of you?” She bobbed her head over to one side and raised an eyebrow.
“He’s me!” the Doctor protested, going into meltdown before her eyes. “The last person I can trust with the TARDIS! What if - what, what…Sarah Jane, what am I going to do?”
“You’re asking me what you’re going to do?” she asked. “Well, maybe the handbrake just slipped and they’ll be back in a few minutes. Try calling them.”
“The TARDIS handbrake never slips,” he said. “It’s a very delicate manoeuvre taking off the handbrake - I usually do it with my foot.”
Sarah Jane pointed. “Phone. Pocket. Call them?”
He pulled out his mobile and hammered frantically on the keys. “It’s dead! All that atmospheric interference - got to be. Whole planet’s up the Swanee - gonna take weeks to sort it all out.”
“You’ll be on your way rejoicing long before then,” she soothed him.
“Not without my TARDIS, I won’t!” He really did look as if he was about to weep. Sarah Jane thought about the hours he’d spent being tortured, no doubt, by Davros. The old megalomaniac had always known exactly which of his buttons to press. And then there was Rose; that had to be putting him through the mill emotionally. She wondered when he’d last eaten or slept.
“We could try Mr Smith,” she suggested.
“That computer of yours? Oh, come on! It’s not going to be able to trace them across the Void.”
“You’d be surprised what Mr Smith can do. Anyway, there’s no point in you hanging around here getting all worked up. You might as well come home with me and have a cup of tea and a hot bath.”
“I do not need mothering!” he snorted.
“Won’t do you any harm,” said Sarah Jane. “Just look at the state of you! And besides, you could meet Luke. Come on.”
She linked arms with him and steered him away.
****
Taking Jackie back was a walk in the park, really. A bit emotional, granted, but nobody questioned her decision to return to Pete and Tony, least of all Jackie herself. As the Doctor pointed out, with two Time Lords on board, reunions were by no means out of the question anyway.
Then they all headed back to the Hub.
“Oh my God, this place is amazing!” Rose gasped, her mouth dropping open at the sight of the Elevator and Myfanwy flying around it. “How long’s it been here, Jack?”
“Ever since the Queen Victoria set it up,” Jack replied. “Not that I was involved way back then. That came in the ‘90s, when they picked me up for dying once too often in the local taverns and pumped me for info about the Doctor.”
“And you’ve been working for them ever since?”
“Freelance, mostly,” Jack replied. “Didn’t come on board full-time until the turn of the Millennium.” He didn’t elaborate on the reasons why that had happened. Rose didn’t probe; she’d enough to think about already, putting together this hidden life Jack had been leading, built around his love for the Doctor, his temporal self-discipline and the overwhelming need to work things out between the two of them.
“Know what I can’t get over?” she said, reaching gently for his arm. “When we were here before, that time with Mickey before the Doctor changed his body, all laughing and joking together in that bar. You must have been here, Jack. Knowing what was going on. And he thought Time Lords were the only people who could handle stuff like that.”
“Wasn’t the easiest of days,” Jack agreed. “I just kept my head down.”
“How did he get his hand back?” Rose asked.
“Oh, that was me,” Jack replied. “Soon as it showed up, UNIT called me.”
Rose was silent, thinking of the giddy joy of that day, wondering where Jack had gone for Christmas lunch. So much to talk about on both sides, so much to forgive. One thing she was certain about - she wasn’t going anywhere until there’d been time to do that, no matter how many Doctors were buzzing around trying to arrange things.
It was difficult knowing where to start. Meanwhile, there was other stuff to think about. Donna, for instance. Martha, who’d turned out to be some kind of medic among all her other skills, was already familiar with the layout of this extraordinary place, Rose observed. It was she who pointed out to the Doctor that they really ought to run a few scans on Donna and see what all this was doing to her brain.
“Good point,” the Doctor agreed. “Which way’s the med lab?”
“Haven’t you ever been here before?” Rose asked, in surprise.
“Never set foot in the place,” he replied. “First time for everything, though. Lead the way, Martha Jones.”
“Hang on a minute!” Rose interrupted. “What about when Jack caught up with you and Martha? Surely then-”
And there it was again, she noticed. Awkward little looks between the three of them - Jack, Martha, the Doctor. A story that wasn’t being told. It hurt. More than that, it frightened her.
“Oh, we got caught up in things,” the Doctor said, at last.
“What kind of things?” Rose demanded.
“Tell you later,” he said, quickly. “Come on, Donna.”
Rose followed them all to the medical room. Martha’s usual composure seemed to slip a little as they entered it and she helped Donna up on to the table. The Doctor groped in his pocket for spectacles, grumbled a bit when he realised they weren’t there, and began setting up the scanner.
Jack went over to Martha and laid his palm on the back of her hand. “You okay?” he murmured.
Martha gulped down a sigh. “Yeah, sort of,” she replied. “It’s just…you know. I’ve not been in here since I heard about Owen.”
“Owen?” Rose queried.
“He was our last Medical Officer,” Jack explained. “We lost him.”
“When you first met him,” Martha said, with a thin smile, “he seemed like the most obnoxious git that ever walked the earth. But a lot of it was bullshit. Saw him get shot, through the heart.”
“That killed him?” said Rose, and immediately reproached herself silently for such a thoughtless question. Not everyone could grow a new body from a severed hand.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay, Rose,” Jack replied. “Long story, I’m afraid. Some other time. Doc, let me know how things go with Donna, okay?”
“What are you gonna do to me?” Donna asked. “Don’t fob me off with long words and technobabble, please. I want to know the truth. If it’s bad, it’s bad. I’ll call my mum, put her in the picture, say goodbye if I have to.”
“It shouldn’t come to that,” the Doctor said, without looking at her.
There was a pause.
“Can I have a word?” Donna asked him. “Just you on your own?”
The Doctor blinked. “Yeah, sure,” he replied. “That okay, everybody?”
Jack, Martha and Rose nodded and made their way out. Back in the centre of the Hub, laughter floated across the room as Ianto and Mickey shared a tin dog type joke. Rose found it difficult to imagine a more unlikely couple of friends.
“So, Mickey’s staying here,” she said. “He’d make a good agent. Got any openings?”
“Two,” Jack said quickly. “Wasn’t just Owen we lost last year.”
“And what about you, Jack?” Rose asked. “How many times have you died?”
Something about Martha’s demeanour showed Rose that she’d bowed to the inevitable. Martha really didn’t want to waste any more time lying or skirting round the subject. Her eyes met Jack’s.
“We ought to talk about the Year that Never Was,” she said. “Because he never will.”
Jack was leaning against the wall of his office, his features chiselled in the stark underground light. Rose remembered when he dressed like Mr Average and wondered how long he’d been going with the Forties look, not that it didn’t suit him. God, she could shag him herself, this minute, if things were different. Foursome, she thought. That sounded very Jack. But she’d a feeling he was more faithful to Ianto than he cared to admit. The attraction baffled her but that wasn’t the point. Whatever Jack’s 140-year pursuit of the Doctor had been about, it wasn’t just romantic or sexual. More like unfinished business.
“I never said I was sorry, Jack,” Rose said.
“You weren’t to know what you were dealing with,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have it differently now.”
“You really are going to live forever? Like the Face of Boe? The Doctor said he was billions of years old.”
“Who knows?” Jack asked. “Maybe one day my luck will run out; we’ll see. Most things happen for a reason, Rose. That’s what I figure, anyway.”
“Tell me what happened when you met up again,” Rose insisted. “You’re both hiding something.”
Jack looked at Martha. Martha nodded; he shrugged. “Ianto makes the best coffee in the universe,” he remarked. “If you’re gonna hear that story, Rose, we’ll need a pot or two.”
They headed for the boardroom.
****
The Doctor sat at Sarah Jane’s kitchen table, working through a plate of excellent stew and a bottle of red wine in her company. He was not in the best frame of mind to appreciate either, however.
They’d managed, at about the fifteenth attempt, to contact the TARDIS, only to find that the rest of the crew - if you could call them that - had returned from dropping Jackie off in the parallel world. They were now lurking in an undisclosed location. He strongly suspected that was the Hub.
And, right now, since Sarah Jane flatly refused to leave her son behind and drive him to Cardiff, there wasn’t a lot he could do about that. He’d spoken briefly with his other self, who’d reassured him that Donna was in good shape but declined to give details. Mickey had gone out for a pint with Ianto, Gwen was back home with her husband and Rose, Jack and Martha had been in the Torchwood Three boardroom for a couple of hours. He couldn’t bring himself to speculate about that particular conversation.
“It’s all wrong!” he complained, yet again, his speech becoming slightly slurred. Drinking alcohol had done nothing to help, but he was so tense and exhausted he’d indulged himself and the wine was affecting him far more than it usually did. “Rose can’t stay here. She just can’t.”
“Why not?” Sarah Jane asked. God, humans could be obtuse sometimes. Even the best of them.
“Because somebody has to look after him, of course!”
“You mean somebody has to look after you?”
“Look!” He banged his hand on the table, making the wine splash. “He’s dangerous, don’t you see? He wiped out the whole of the Dalek race a few hours ago. He’s been born in war and violence and darkness and…he shouldn’t be alone.”
“What’s that got to do with Rose?” she asked.
“Rose can make him better. That’s what she did for me. And he’s human - physically, at least. He’ll age along with her. He’ll never have to watch her get old and die and…” His voice trailed away and he covered his eyes. He was putting all this so badly.
“What if she dies young?” Sarah Jane asked. “Or suppose he goes and gets himself killed or something? You’ve gone through enough regenerations. He doesn’t even have that safety net.”
“Rose is human. She’ll expect him to die.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier, believe me,” Sarah Jane pointed out. “Anyway, this whole business about him killing the Daleks. Look at the circumstances, for Heaven’s sake. It wasn’t just some idea he took into his head. It was to save the universe. It’s exactly what you would have done.”
“No! I gave Davros a chance!”
“Then more fool you!” Sarah Jane snapped. “If you hadn’t given Davros and his vicious schemes a chance all those years ago, none of today’s events would ever have happened. Don’t you see, Doctor? You’ll find a way to blame yourself for everything. Not just blame yourself, but punish yourself.”
“I have to live with what I’ve done,” he said grimly. “He doesn’t. He can start again.”
“Poppycock!” Sarah Jane stood up and collected the plates together, before depositing them with a crash in the kitchen sink. “He’s you. You made him! He has your memories, your feelings, your history. And if you thought he could just start again with a clean slate, then why are you expecting Rose to fix him?”
“Now, I never said that!” he protested.
“Yes you did. ‘Rose can make him better.’ Those were your exact words. Nobody asks Rose her opinion, I notice. She crossed universes to be with the man she loves and you’ve barely spent five minutes alone together. What right do you have to decide these things for her?”
He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Sarah Jane, don’t you see? She can’t be with me. It doesn’t matter what she might want, she just can’t. What kind of life can I give her?”
“The one she wants?”
“She thinks she does. But she needs a human life. She’s a human being. I can’t give her…well, you know what I can’t give her. I’m a marked man; every enemy I have from Davros down knows that the way to break me is to threaten her.” His voice broke. “And I can’t bear it. She needs to get away from this universe forever.”
“Oh, Doctor,” Sarah Jane sighed. She took his hand over the table and gently waited for him to calm down. “Davros has already broken you, don’t you see that? He’s made you feel that you destroy the lives of everyone you touch. But think about that. Remember those few minutes we spent in the TARDIS coming home? That’s not destroying people, that’s empowering them. Who else could have given us such a wonderful thing to be part of? I don’t think there was one person in that control room - not even Jackie Tyler - who’d have given that up.”
“But at such a cost…”
“What did Davros actually say to you?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” he snapped.
“Of course it does! I suppose it was the old line about how you hate guns and kill millions, was it? He knows how to play you like an old fiddle, doesn’t he? The hypocrite! The most bloodthirsty megalomaniac in history, and he has the nerve to make you feel guilty. The only thing Davros despises about you is your weakness. The fact that you let his precious Daleks live!”
There was a long silence between them. Rock music came throbbing through the ceiling from Luke’s room. Sarah Jane - a mother, he thought. How had that come about? She’d told him the details, how she’d rescued the boy from the Bane, but he still found it astonishing that she’d taken on such a frightening challenge, let alone that she was appearing to thrive on it. Maybe, in her case at least, he’d managed not to destroy one of his companion’s lives.
But she was just part of a long story. A story that included Rose and, worse still, Donna. Whatever shape she was in now, her brain would fracture under the strain of the metacrisis. He shuddered to think of returning her body home to her family, or having to confess that she was insane. They wouldn’t blame the Daleks, because that would be beyond their comprehension. They’d blame him.
“If anything happens to Donna, I’ll not be able to live with myself,” he admitted.
“You can’t now,” said Sarah Jane. “That’s why you’re blaming him for everything - your other self. You think you can load all the dark, complicated, difficult things onto him, cast him out in the wilderness and leave Rose to deal with it. Worse still, you’ve convinced yourself she’d be happy. But she loves you. Both of you. And she’ll know that any happiness she has is at your expense.”
“He’s not a consolation prize. He’s me - only better, because now they’re the same species. And he’ll tell her I’ll find someone else, and keep going, because I always do. She’ll get over it, given time.”
“Will she? I’m not sure she will. Look what she did to return to you. No doubt you’ve spent the last few years telling yourself and anyone else who’d listen what a perfect life she’s having, but you can’t switch love on and off like a tap. It’s not about our personal gratification. While the loved one suffers, the lover does, too.”
He twisted his fingers around the stem of the glass. “But at least she’ll be safe.”
“And you’d rather have her safe than happy?”
That was a tricky one, he had to admit. “You’re a mother now,” he said. “What if it was Luke? Wouldn’t you?”
Sarah Jane stood up and stood with her back to him, spreading her hands out on the rail of the Aga with a long sigh.
“Touche,” she confessed. Then she turned around, straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin in that old, Sarah Jane way. “I would want him safe for myself, but I would want him happy for him.”
“He’s a nice boy,” the Doctor said, after an awkward silence. “You’re lucky to have him.”
“I make my own luck. Or at the very least, I don’t throw away a beautiful gift when the Universe gives it to me.”
“And you think I do?” he asked, in a low voice.
“Yes. You believe you’re unworthy of it.” She came back to the table and sat down opposite him, passion in her eyes. “But do you know what? We’re all unworthy. Every one of us - Time Lord, Human, Dalek…we’re all a complicated mixture of beautiful dreams and terrible nightmares.”
Aha. A quote. “Carl Sagan,” he said. “The Vegans in ‘Contact’. ‘You’re an interesting species. Capable of such beautiful dreams and such terrible nightmares’.”
“And he’s right,” Sarah Jane went on, her eyes shining. “You wipe out Davros, and another evil genius will come along. Maybe a human one next time. No universe is safe. You could have left Rose in her own back yard and she’d still come from the same planet as Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. You can’t protect her! You can’t protect anyone completely. But you can protect yourself by allowing yourself to love.”
“I could protect her from association with myself,” he pointed out, framing his words with difficulty. The effect of the alcohol and the emotional charge of the discussion were both conspiring to make it more and more difficult for him to maintain a coherent argument.
“Where does that leave you?” she asked. “Alone. Like Davros. How much more sacrifice can you bear before your hearts become a stone, and all that seems real to you is your power? I fear for you, Doctor. Truly, I do.”
“I’m all right,” he protested. “People come and go. That’s my life. Nothing lasts for ever. If you ever reached my age, you’d learn that.”
“You are not all right,” Sarah Jane insisted. “You’re running on empty, and you have been ever since the Time War. Not only that. You lost your restraints; you were freed to invent a moral code as you go along, accountable to nobody. One of the wonderful things about being a parent is that you live with someone who constantly challenges you, points up the errors in your reasoning. Young people are ruthless in that respect.”
“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” he asked, a coldness entering his voice.
Her sigh and her long silence was his answer. She looked down at the table and said nothing.
*****
“So, what is it, Donna? What did you want to say to me?”
Donna looked at the Doctor. She had absolutely no trouble believing it was him. She’d seen him born, seen him naked and vulnerable, and now she shared his mind. She understood his fears and why he was fighting so hard against the obvious solution to the problem.
“This metacrisis,” she began. “Can you reverse it?”
He did the old rubber-face routine, sitting there opposite her looking the picture of casual indifference with his knees spread wide, the fabric of his new suit already creasing behind them into his distinctive shape.
“Why do you ask?” he stalled.
“Why do think I ask? Because it’s my head you’re in, sunshine, and I’m not sure I like you being there.”
That got him, she could tell. He was still an arrogant sod and the idea that anyone wouldn’t jump at the chance to be him was difficult for him to process. “You’d go back to being human, if you could?” he asked. “Back to hangovers and reading “Hello” when there’s stars in the sky?”
“Being human doesn’t have to be like that,” she pointed out. “When I travelled with you, until a few hours ago, I wasn’t blind any more. You opened my eyes. ‘Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us - there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries’.”
“That’s Carl Sagan,” he said. “I sometimes think you and I share a brain, Donna. Oh, hang on. We do.”
“If going back meant I lost that tingling in the spine, I wouldn’t contemplate it for a microsecond,” said Donna. “But I needn’t be a Time Lord to do that. I can just be me, and I’m still the greatest woman in creation. I’m the woman who told you when to stop. The one who saved the universe by saving you. I’m probably in a sculpture on somebody’s wall somewhere in Ancient Rome. I’m part of the Song of the Ood. I’m the person who could listen to you talk about Jenny and all you’d lost and see that you were wrong.” She stopped. “And that’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“You’ve come a long way, Donna Noble,” he said. “Even the TARDIS couldn’t take you further than you’ve travelled in your own mind. In your heart. Have you any idea how amazing you are?”
“I rather think I have, Doctor,” she replied. “I don’t have to be anything I’m not.” She smiled at him and tapped his knee. “You want to hang on to me, don’t you? There’s such a silence in your head where the Time Lords used to be. You think if there was just one of us - half of one, even - out there somewhere, it wouldn’t be as lonely. You’re wrong, Skinny Boy. They’ve gone, and it doesn’t get better than this. But that doesn’t mean this is bad.”
He sat staring at his knees for a while. She looked at the fine hair on top of his head and wanted to blow on it and smoosh it, just to make him laugh, to be silly and human and do him good.
“So, how about it, Martian Boy?” she asked.
“I’ll miss you,” he admitted, with difficulty.
“Don’t see why. I’m not going anywhere. And you know what? That suit doesn’t work with a T-shirt. You’re a Time Lord and you ought to be wearing a tie. This get with the people look isn’t you. Besides, going around matching Rose is just creepy.”
“You got the stuff out of the dressing room for me in the first place!” he protested.
“Well, maybe I was a bit distracted by your gorgeous pecs,” she said. “Or that the world was ending at the time, and all that stuff.”
“I’m just a long streak of alien nothing,” he reassured her, “and you so don’t fancy me.” Suddenly, for some reason best known to himself, he seemed as if he was about to cry, but he managed to hold it in and there was nothing forced about his smile.
“Oh, come here, you,” he said, and folded her up in his arms. “Now, this is just reversing a metabiological event in the most efficient way possible - salivary neurogenetic transfer, okay? It doesn’t mean a thing.”
Then he kissed it out of her. He tasted a lot better without the side order of anchovies, she had to admit.