Fic (1/1) Doctor's Orders (Warning - character death). WoM spoilers
“…and thus the whirligig of time brings its revenges.”
Shaksespeare, Twelfth Night, Act V
It was funny how you could convince yourself you were over somebody until the moment you saw their face again. Then you realised you’d been avoiding that face for nearly fifty years, just so you could keep that illusion intact.
It was just after breakfast time in London on 21 November 2059 and Jack Harkness was working through his e-mail. The message that came up looked identical to all the others until he opened it. After all, if it hadn’t actually been recorded today, it had been recorded whenever by someone who knew, precisely, what today’s e-mail would look like.
So that was how Jack came to be faced with a holograph of the Doctor, who’d vanished from the universe on New Year’s Eve, 2009, exactly as he’d predicted he would. Nobody knew what had happened to him, or what the precise cause had been of the breakdown of the Laws of Time a few weeks earlier. The Doctor wouldn’t say.
Until now. Or then, depending on your point of view. From the gauntness of his features, the state of his once-gelled hair and the exhaustion in his cold eyes, Jack guessed that this had been recorded very near the end, then primed and left to erupt like a nuclear bomb in his broken heart.
Some things never changed, did they? There was no apology, no explanation, no hint of warmth. Jack found himself wondering what Rose would have thought of him now. Imagined her, in her seventies now (married, kids?) and wondered whether, after all, she’d wound up better than any of them. Then he pushed the thought from his mind and steeled himself to hear the Doctor’s orders.
“Jack, you’re the only person I can trust to be around and do what has to be done…Tonight Adelaide Brooke will arrive in Finchley, with Mia Bennett and Yuri Kerenski. Three people who ought to be dead, who would be if I hadn’t interfered. Adelaide’s death is essential to preserve the timeline. And it needs to be on Mars, or at least look that way. Oh, and they could be infected with a virus that could wipe out life on Earth. You’ll know what to do.”
“I’m not asking you to do this for me. Just for the human race…”
He watched the message through again, not quite believing that, even now when he’d nothing left to lose, the bastard hadn’t said he was sorry. Why did he go on hoping for the impossible?
*****
He had nearly twelve hours to piece it together. What had started off the End of Time. Why nobody had ever found out precisely what had happened on Mars, between the signal breaking up in a solar flare and the satellite pictures of the end of a dream. Did anybody have any idea what it had cost him to keep quiet when that mission to Mars had taken wing with the hopes and cheers of humanity? To maintain that silence whenever someone commented on the progress of Bowie Base, for seventeen long months? No, because he was the freak, the one who lived forever, and the only person who could have really understood that had walked away from him down some dark path of his own a long time ago
Even now, the Doctor was giving nothing away. It was up to him to figure out what must have been going on in the Time Lord’s head, what made Adelaide Brooke and her crew worth breaking the rules for when Alice, Stephen and ten percent of humanity’s children hadn’t been.
Probably he’d just snapped. Seen too many good people die. To be honest, Jack was too gutted right now to make allowances for that.
He travelled to Finchley by Vortex Manipulator. Because the longer he left it, the harder it would be to follow orders. And wasn’t that all he’d ever done when the Doctor was concerned?
He was the one who gave and gave and asked for nothing in return. The one who waited for the Doctor. Who put out his fires. Who cleaned up his shit. Who could imagine how it felt to be whisked back from Mars to gratify a Time Lord’s vanity when you’d just seen your comrades die around you, then left alone on a cold London street with the knowledge that you could potentially kill the first human beings you touched.
The Doctor never had done follow-up very well. Whether he’d died repenting of his follies and his sins was another thing nobody would ever know. Jack wouldn’t put it past him to have sprung up fresh as a daisy in a parallel universe somewhere, with a full new deck of regenerations and a bubbly, nice young companion waiting for him. Even in his most broken state, he had the kind of charm that could get under your principles and whisper, “Go on, one more chance.”
He knew he wouldn’t have long once the TARDIS materialised. All he’d have was two blasters, years of target practice in the field and the ability to blank his conscience out when it suited him.
He had to move the second that the door opened and they came out, disorientated and terrified. One word of the Doctor’s voice and he’d stumble and be lost. And someone had to do it. Always someone. Usually him.
He took Adelaide out first, because he expected someone of her calibre to beat him to the draw, and he couldn’t afford to lose time dying right now. Then Mia and Yuri.
Then he fired his final shot, uncertain right to the end whether he did so out of mercy or revenge.
“That one’s for Ianto,” he said, as the Doctor collapsed bleeding onto the snow. “Too bad he wasn’t blonde.”
He set to work. Four bodies to drag into the TARDIS, and he hadn’t much time. Maybe the Doctor would regenerate. Maybe not. They’d take it moment by moment. What else had they ever done?
Moments were all you had. Sometimes they just ticked by unheeded, but sometimes they changed everything. Looked like he might eventually live long enough to know the difference.
.
Shaksespeare, Twelfth Night, Act V
It was funny how you could convince yourself you were over somebody until the moment you saw their face again. Then you realised you’d been avoiding that face for nearly fifty years, just so you could keep that illusion intact.
It was just after breakfast time in London on 21 November 2059 and Jack Harkness was working through his e-mail. The message that came up looked identical to all the others until he opened it. After all, if it hadn’t actually been recorded today, it had been recorded whenever by someone who knew, precisely, what today’s e-mail would look like.
So that was how Jack came to be faced with a holograph of the Doctor, who’d vanished from the universe on New Year’s Eve, 2009, exactly as he’d predicted he would. Nobody knew what had happened to him, or what the precise cause had been of the breakdown of the Laws of Time a few weeks earlier. The Doctor wouldn’t say.
Until now. Or then, depending on your point of view. From the gauntness of his features, the state of his once-gelled hair and the exhaustion in his cold eyes, Jack guessed that this had been recorded very near the end, then primed and left to erupt like a nuclear bomb in his broken heart.
Some things never changed, did they? There was no apology, no explanation, no hint of warmth. Jack found himself wondering what Rose would have thought of him now. Imagined her, in her seventies now (married, kids?) and wondered whether, after all, she’d wound up better than any of them. Then he pushed the thought from his mind and steeled himself to hear the Doctor’s orders.
“Jack, you’re the only person I can trust to be around and do what has to be done…Tonight Adelaide Brooke will arrive in Finchley, with Mia Bennett and Yuri Kerenski. Three people who ought to be dead, who would be if I hadn’t interfered. Adelaide’s death is essential to preserve the timeline. And it needs to be on Mars, or at least look that way. Oh, and they could be infected with a virus that could wipe out life on Earth. You’ll know what to do.”
“I’m not asking you to do this for me. Just for the human race…”
He watched the message through again, not quite believing that, even now when he’d nothing left to lose, the bastard hadn’t said he was sorry. Why did he go on hoping for the impossible?
*****
He had nearly twelve hours to piece it together. What had started off the End of Time. Why nobody had ever found out precisely what had happened on Mars, between the signal breaking up in a solar flare and the satellite pictures of the end of a dream. Did anybody have any idea what it had cost him to keep quiet when that mission to Mars had taken wing with the hopes and cheers of humanity? To maintain that silence whenever someone commented on the progress of Bowie Base, for seventeen long months? No, because he was the freak, the one who lived forever, and the only person who could have really understood that had walked away from him down some dark path of his own a long time ago
Even now, the Doctor was giving nothing away. It was up to him to figure out what must have been going on in the Time Lord’s head, what made Adelaide Brooke and her crew worth breaking the rules for when Alice, Stephen and ten percent of humanity’s children hadn’t been.
Probably he’d just snapped. Seen too many good people die. To be honest, Jack was too gutted right now to make allowances for that.
He travelled to Finchley by Vortex Manipulator. Because the longer he left it, the harder it would be to follow orders. And wasn’t that all he’d ever done when the Doctor was concerned?
He was the one who gave and gave and asked for nothing in return. The one who waited for the Doctor. Who put out his fires. Who cleaned up his shit. Who could imagine how it felt to be whisked back from Mars to gratify a Time Lord’s vanity when you’d just seen your comrades die around you, then left alone on a cold London street with the knowledge that you could potentially kill the first human beings you touched.
The Doctor never had done follow-up very well. Whether he’d died repenting of his follies and his sins was another thing nobody would ever know. Jack wouldn’t put it past him to have sprung up fresh as a daisy in a parallel universe somewhere, with a full new deck of regenerations and a bubbly, nice young companion waiting for him. Even in his most broken state, he had the kind of charm that could get under your principles and whisper, “Go on, one more chance.”
He knew he wouldn’t have long once the TARDIS materialised. All he’d have was two blasters, years of target practice in the field and the ability to blank his conscience out when it suited him.
He had to move the second that the door opened and they came out, disorientated and terrified. One word of the Doctor’s voice and he’d stumble and be lost. And someone had to do it. Always someone. Usually him.
He took Adelaide out first, because he expected someone of her calibre to beat him to the draw, and he couldn’t afford to lose time dying right now. Then Mia and Yuri.
Then he fired his final shot, uncertain right to the end whether he did so out of mercy or revenge.
“That one’s for Ianto,” he said, as the Doctor collapsed bleeding onto the snow. “Too bad he wasn’t blonde.”
He set to work. Four bodies to drag into the TARDIS, and he hadn’t much time. Maybe the Doctor would regenerate. Maybe not. They’d take it moment by moment. What else had they ever done?
Moments were all you had. Sometimes they just ticked by unheeded, but sometimes they changed everything. Looked like he might eventually live long enough to know the difference.
.