Doctor Who / Eureka: "Huh. Interesting."
Title: “Huh. Interesting.”
Author's Name: cherryfeather
Recipient's Name: clay_marble
Fandom: Eureka/Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Character(s): Jack Carter, Zoe Carter, the Doctor, Nathan Stark, Vincent, Allison Blake, Henry Deacon
Warnings: Mild language, slight slash
Author's notes: AU for Eureka’s upcoming Season 2. Betaed by E.
“I’m going, Zoe; have a good day at school,” Jack Carter called as he made a beeline for the door, coffee cup in hand.
Zoe looked up from her morning comics. “Where are you off to?”
“What are you, my keeper? I keep tabs on you, not vice versa--”
“Oh, right,” Zoe interrupted. “You’re having breakfast with John again. Say hi to your boyfriend for me, Dad.”
Jack stopped, rolled his eyes, and turned back. This could not go unchallenged. “Zoe, how many times do I have to tell you--”
“Hey, Dad, he’s cute and British; I’d wanna date him too.”
“Oh, he’s--he’s not my boyfriend, Zoe, for God’s sake.”
“Oh, right.” Her tone dripped sarcasm. “So you just have breakfast with him, like, every single morning? Didn’t you do that with Allison before she and Stark got back together?”
“Oh, so I finally make a real friend in this town, and you insist it means I’m gay. You know, most daughters would be happy for their fathers.”
Zoe shook her head and disappeared behind her newspaper. “Sure, Dad. Whatever.”
“Zoe--”
“Dad. Whatever.”
There was just absolutely no point in arguing with a teenage girl. Especially if she played the ‘sure, whatever’ card. Acknowledging futility, Jack grabbed his keys off the side table. “S.A.R.A.H., door.”
“Have a good day, Sheriff Carter,” the house chirruped as the door of the bunker hissed open.
“Don’t start making out in front of everybody,” Zoe yelled as the door swung shut behind him
Jack decided not to dignify that with a response.
- - -
“Good morning, Doctor Smith,” Vincent greeted him cheerily as he stepped into the café, shaking water from the early morning rainstorm out of his shaggy brown hair.
The man in the pinstriped suit looked up as he wiped his Converse sneakers off on the welcome mat and beamed. “Oh, it’s a brilliant morning, Vincent. Apparently that test I ran yesterday caused sufficient cumulative atmospheric excitation to cause one hell of a thunderstorm this morning. Though it’s not as strong as I meant it to be. Compared to the waterspouts of Argelia XII it’s positively mild.” He looked around, the motion shaking more water out of his dripping hair, and his face split into a smile. “Oh, there you are, Jack.”
“John,” the sheriff greeted him, shifting his barstool to make room for his lanky friend to sit down. “Do you always say things that don’t make sense before you’ve had breakfast?”
“I try not to make sense, as a rule,” John said dismissively. “Tea, please, Vincent, and I think I feel like chips this morning.” He frowned and caught Vincent’s arm as he turned away. “No, hold on. Not chips. Bloody Americans butchering the language…um…what-d’you-call-‘ems… French fries. But with vinegar.”
“French fries for breakfast?” Jack gave him a look. “You are by far the weirdest person I have ever met. I’ll have a bagel, Vincent.”
“In this town, I think that’s a compliment.”
“Yeah, well.” Jack took a long drink of his coffee. “So are you doing anything today that’s not super-top-secret? Or am I too far out of the confidentiality loop to hear anything?”
John gave him a smug smile. “Well, I think I can safely tell you that Doctor Stark’s going to be doing a bit of arse-kissing today. He didn’t think my weather matrix would work. I mean, I’ve been doing it for ages; I explained it all quite simply…” John started to rattle off some highly complex technobabble that Jack gave up trying to follow about two seconds in, and just sat there nodding when he paused for breath.
John was an oddity, that was sure. He’d turned up in Eureka one morning, looking for a place to work, and Jack and Jo picked him up. Two seconds of hearing the guy talk and they’d brought him to Stark, and after only five minutes of conversation he’d emerged with an office in Section Four and full funding for whatever the hell he wanted to do.
Naturally Jack had been suspicious of such a peculiar introduction to Eureka. But Doctor John Smith, British, cheeky, and pinstriped, was just the sort of person you couldn’t help but trust. And apparently something about Jack had intrigued the good doctor in return, because John had been in Eureka for a week and a half and they’d had breakfast six days out of the ten. John was the first Global Dynamics scientist--except for Carl Carlson, but he’d been a bit…eh--that had ever taken Jack seriously. Jack couldn’t help but like it.
Even if John’s quirky references to places and times Jack had never heard of made the sheriff think he was a little bit crazy sometimes. And he did tend to go on and on.
“…So, basically, it’s all a matter of electrons and… Jack, you’re staring at me.”
Jack shook himself out of his reverie and grinned at his friend. “Yeah. Because you lost me right after, ‘I explained it all quite simply.’”
John sniffed disdainfully and speared a pair of French fries from the plate before him with a fork. “You have absolutely no sense of science, Jack Carter,” he retorted around a mouthful of potato, and stuck the fork into his mouth to lick the salt and vinegar off.
“That’s what they tell me.” Jack watched, fascinated, as John made short work of the rest of his fries, and then ran a finger over the plate to catch the grease and vinegar he’d missed and popped the digit into his mouth. “Ew.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Jack took a bite of his bagel. “You just look like you’re addicted to French fries, is all.”
“Chips, Jack. Chips.” John chuckled slightly. “I remember, Rose used to…” His voice trailed off and his smile faded abruptly. “But never mind her.”
Jack looked closely at him. His expression was stony, and he suddenly looked very far away. “Hey. John. You okay?”
John looked at him remotely. “Hmm? Fine. I’ve got to go. Thanks for breakfast, Jack. I’ll see you later.” And he slid off the chair and walked out into the driving rain.
Jack watched him go, a light frown etched between his eyebrows.
“There goes the most eccentric man I’ve ever met,” Vincent said with what sounded like an odd respect in his voice.
“And how,” Jack agreed.
- - -
He threw his coat haphazardly on one of the chairs in his lab and glanced at the clock, whistling rather tunelessly as he did so. Doctor Stark would be coming by sometime during the hour, and it would be a good idea to have the weather machine switched on if it was going to be inspected.
The Doctor, smiling happily, walked around the control panel, checking the various knobs and dials that registered the status of his (really, quite simple and elementary, and in fact he’d picked it up in a marketplace on Ryxtigan Gamma Prime, but Stark didn’t need to know that) weather machine. Of all the various personas he’d assumed over the years, Doctor John Smith, Global Dynamics researcher, was one of the most…satisfying. He had a whole laboratory! For absolutely whatever he wanted to do! Really, how brilliant was that? He was almost tempted to just…stay. Spend a year or two or three just…working. Studying. Being a scientist. Doing things he never really got to do and always sort of wanted to.
But this was a town full of the cleverest people on Earth. He’d managed to fool the first physical with a simple psychic filter and a bit of quick jiggery-pokery. There was no way he’d be able to keep it up. These brilliant humans amazed even him. It was fantastic.
Plus, it certainly wouldn’t take him a year or two or three to figure out what had brought him here in the first place: Stark’s artifact. He just had to work his way into Section Five. Shouldn’t be too long after this, the Doctor reflected, grinning as he switched settings on the sonic screwdriver and held it against a loose phase coil. Stark would be eating out of the palm of his hand after this. (He felt sort of bad about it, actually. In another time and place, when he wasn’t tricking him and infiltrating his research center to see if it was necessary to steal an alien artifact from a bunch of too-clever humans, he and Nathan Stark would have been good friends.)
Nope. Wouldn’t be long at all. In fact, he might even go so far as to say instantaneous, after…
Was that rumbling supposed to be happening?
No.
Oh. Oops.
The Doctor barely managed to jump back before the device exploded.
- - -
Nathan Stark was halfway to the medical area when he heard running footsteps thundering down the hall towards him. He didn’t have to look around to see whom it was, and really didn’t want him there, but he stopped anyway so the man could catch up. “Carter,” he said cordially.
“Stark!” Jack panted as he doubled over, hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “I came…soon as I heard…ran a few…red lights and…ran all the way here.” He straightened up, feeling a gnawing worry in the pit of his stomach as he lengthened his stride to match Stark’s. “An explosion?”
“In Section Four. Doctor Smith’s lab. Allison’s with him and the meds.”
“Oh…God. Is he--he’s okay, though, right?”
“He’s unconscious, but Allison said there was something we should come and see. So this is us, coming to see.” Stark shot Jack a side glance. “You two are friends?”
Preoccupied with all sorts of horrible unbidden imaginings involving the death, destruction, and/or dismemberment of one of the nicest guys he’d ever met, Jack missed the question. “Huh?”
“I asked if you two were friends.”
“Yeah.” Stark’s expression was eloquent, and Jack glared at him. “Oh, because me being friends with a Global scientist is really that unexpected?”
“Well, since you asked, yeah.”
The doors of the medical area made that whooshing sound Jack couldn’t help but associate with Star Trek as they opened, and Jack immediately dashed to the glass screen that separated them from the hospital-like room beyond. John was unconscious on the pristine white medical bed, customary pinstripes replaced with sterile grey hospital gown. A nasty-looking cut marred one freckled cheek, and there were some marks that looked like speed-healed burns on his arms, but other than that he seemed all right.
So why was he in what looked like the maximum-security medical center?
“What’s up with…” he began to ask as he turned, but trailed off as he noticed Henry was there, as well. “Henry, no offense, but--”
“What the hell am I doing here?” One corner of Henry’s mouth twitched upwards for a second, but instantly he looked serious again. “Look at this.” And he called up a bioscan on the computer.
“This is why I called you,” Allison said in a hushed voice as she looked at the man on the other side of the glass.
Stark crossed his arms as he stared at the scan. “That’s impossible.”
“Ran it three times. This is fact, Nathan.” Henry leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “It’s something, isn’t it?”
Jack stared at the screen and blinked. Hard. Twice.
There were two hearts.
“I think we missed something on his first physical,” Jack said after a moment.
- - -
Light. White light. Bright, white light. Stab-your-retinas-with-an-ice-pick-bright white light.
“Could you turn that off?” he mumbled, lifting a heavy arm to shield his eyes.
“Sorry,” a voice said over a speaker. “When researchers become research, all the big, fancy microscopes need light.” After a second, however, the lights dimmed slightly.
The Doctor tried to sit up and swiftly realized that he hurt like hell. Settling for propping himself up on his elbows, he looked around, taking stock of his surroundings. Sterile white room with a two-way mirror. Hospital bed. Extremely sensitive and sophisticated-looking machinery.
Oh. Bollocks.
He’d become the research.
“How’re you feeling?” the same sympathetic voice asked, and now that he’d mostly shook off what he was assuming was heavy sedation, he placed the voice as Jack Carter’s. Good. At least he had a friend up there with the microscopes.
Assuming Jack was watching from the mirror, the Doctor directed his response that way. “Oh, I’ve definitely been better.”
“So has your lab. It’s completely destroyed. Hope you didn’t have anything you really cared about in there.”
The Doctor arched a wry eyebrow. “Jack. Why are we making small talk?” When no answer was forthcoming, he continued conversationally, laying back down on the bed and stretching, lacing his fingers behind his head and using them as a pillow. “Since I’m in what seems to be a maximum-security hospital ward with--” He checked. “Mostly healed injuries, and I’m being looked at through a small glass window under a few very expensive-looking microscopes… I’m assuming you lot have found me out.”
Jack laughed once. “Well, yeah, if by ‘found you out’ you mean ‘found that second heart.’” His friend paused, and added in a quieter voice, “So who are you?”
The Doctor had been all set to have this interview out with casual, studied nonchalance. But Jack’s question intrigued him, and he sat up fully, pain forgotten. “Who am I?” he asked his reflection, knowing that was where Jack was standing. “Don’t you mean what?”
“Well. Yeah. That too. But you’re not John Smith. So who are you?”
After a moment, he smiled slowly. “I’m the Doctor.”
“So, you’re really a doctor?” Jack sounded skeptical. “Oh, there’s a relief. I thought you’d been totally and completely, y’know, lying to us.” He sighed, and the Doctor felt a pang of regret. This man had been--well, he hoped he still was--his friend, and he was never completely sanguine about lying to friends. Jack sounded tired when he spoke again. “So, it’s just Doctor?”
“Yup.”
A second voice joined Jack’s. “Sheriff, I hope you’re not conducting interrogations without me,” a dry, sarcastic voice interjected.
The Doctor lay back down on the bed, sighing slightly. “Good morning/afternoon/evening, Doctor Stark.”
“Doctor Smith.” He could hear the smirk in Stark’s voice.
“No, just Doctor.” Best to get this over with. “I trust you’d like to know who I am and why I’m here?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“My name’s the Doctor, I’m an alien who travels in space and time, and I picked up the signals from your…town and wanted to investigate.” Considering Stark’s obsession, hinting that he might know something about the Artifact probably wasn’t the best course to take if he wanted to get out of here sometime this decade. Feigning boredom, he stretched, stood, and examined the machinery in the room with him. “Oh, this is clever. What is it, a high-frequency particulate mass imager? And if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like my clothes back. Or at the very least my shoes. Or socks, I’m not picky. Well, that’s a lie, I am. But picky or not, it’s cold in here.”
“We’ll increase the temperature. Once those burns are completely healed, you’ll be moved to a more comfortable location.”
“To be your lab rat.” It wasn’t a question.
“What?” Jack sounded surprised, and he gave a half-laugh. “Stark…what are you going to do to him?”
“Yes, Doctor Stark,” the Doctor chimed in. “What are you going to do to me?”
“We’re just going to study you. Extraterrestrial life. You’re possibly the biggest scientific discovery since the splitting of the atom.” Stark’s voice had that excitement that only appeared in the voices of scientists on the verge of breakthroughs, but with the customary Stark coolness. Which somehow made it faintly ominous. “I can’t wait to write up the paper.”
And the Doctor couldn’t help but feel some slight trepidation as he heard the sound of the doors opening and closing as Stark left.
- - -
It wasn’t as easy to figure out the moral high ground as Jack had initially supposed.
Stark had gotten his hands on an alien. Scientific progress and all that dictated study, right? But…when a guy thought ‘alien,’ ugly green guys with big heads and black egg-shaped eyes and ray guns came to mind. Not thirty-something cute British guys with floppy brown hair and pinstriped suits and silly grins and a tendency to run at the mouth. (He still might have a ray gun, though. Just because Jack hadn’t seen it didn’t mean it didn’t exist.)
It was funny how he was taking this so calmly. His new buddy was an alien. And about the only thought that had crossed his mind was a sort of vague “Huh. Interesting.”
But anyway. Interesting and shocking or not, there was kind of a moral issue here.
Not to mention a personal issue. Guys didn’t usually let megalomaniacs keep their friends in small rooms with glass walls. Alien or not, John--no, the Doctor--was his friend…right?
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had a headache.
Studying aliens was valuable scientifically: yes. Keeping a generally nice and friendly guy locked up in one of those aforementioned small rooms with glass walls: no. Stark promising he wouldn’t be hurt, just looked at: good.
But he’d said he was a traveler. Locking up a guy with wanderlust: bad.
So it all sort of came down to what was more important.
In his head, Jack Carter shrugged. What the hell. He stood up and picked up his car keys from the side table. “S.A.R.A.H., door.”
- - -
There were six hundred and twelve individual flashing lights on the high-frequency particulate mass imager. There was a tessellated pattern of geometric birds on his hospital gown. And there was one excruciatingly bored Doctor in the room.
At least the lights were dim. Thank Rassilon for small favors, he supposed.
There was an odd clicking sound, and he sat up eagerly. A break in monotonous tedium. How delightful. When a door that he hadn’t been able to see opened in the wall, and a shifty-looking Jack Carter appeared holding a pile of clothes that included a pinstriped suit and trainers, the Doctor revised his previous thought to include the words “brilliant” and “fantastic” in addition to merely “delightful.”
“Good to see you, Sheriff,” he said simply.
“Shh. Get dressed.” Jack tossed him his clothes, which he caught easily. It was all here, and the Doctor grinned as he reached up to untie the hospital gown. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Jack staring, and he almost laughed.
“Most of the same biology,” he said cryptically.
Jack started and stared guiltily, fixedly, at his face. “What?”
“I’m a Time Lord. Most of the external biology is the same as a human’s.” Jack flushed and looked away, and the Doctor grinned wider as he buttoned his shirt. “I’ve been fancied by military blokes named Jack before. No problem. Stare all you want. Don’t get many aliens on the Pacific Coast. Well, except Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Hilton sisters. And David Beckham, nowadays at any rate.”
“Paris Hilton’s an alien. That explains so much.” Jack grinned. “Oh, we should totally dissect her instead of you.”
The Doctor tilted his head up as he tied his trainers to fix Jack with a look of admiration. “Oh, not much breaks your stride, Sheriff Carter.”
Jack gave him a tight grin, sticking his head out of the door he’d come in through to cast a surreptitious look around. “Getting caught would. Forget your shoelaces, we are so outta here.”
They slipped out of the medical area and down the hallways. Global Dynamics was eerie at night, especially with the lights in Stark’s overseeing office turned off. Skeleton crew down in the other sections, and no one on the ground floor made it one of the easiest breakouts Jack had ever attempted. Of course Henry’s borrowed access card simplified things enormously. Jack was going to have to treat him to a month’s worth of ball games and beer to properly say thanks for this.
The Doctor took a deep, deep breath as they slid into Jack’s car. “That’s odd. Normally everything goes wrong around me. That was almost smooth.”
“You’re not gone yet,” Jack said shortly, turning the key in the ignition. “Okay, you’re an alien. Tell me you’ve got a spaceship or something.”
His passenger grinned. “Take a left here.”
- - -
“It’s a wooden box.”
“Don’t sound so unimpressed.”
“Okay, it’s a big wooden box. Why does it say ‘POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX’ across the top?”
“Americans,” the Doctor said despairingly, rolling his eyes as he ran a caressing hand over the wood of the strange edifice, standing incongruously among the trees of the forest. “It’s from Britain, about forty or so years ago. I landed there and the chameleon circuit got stuck.”
To his credit, Jack didn’t even bat an eye at the phrase “chameleon circuit.” “If you say so.”
“I do, actually.” The Doctor gave the box another pat and turned back to Jack. After a moment, he smiled and extended his hand. “Thank you,” he said simply.
Jack shrugged and smiled as he took the Doctor’s hand. “It was nothing,” he said just as simply.
The Doctor gazed at him for a long moment, and then stepped back, pushing open the door of the wooden box. Jack stared past him at the impossibility beyond, and the Time Lord smiled. “Come with me.”
It took a moment for the offer to register. Jack looked back and forth between the ship that broke every law of physics he’d ever known and the man who broke every law of nature he’d ever known, and he’d never been so tempted by anything in his life.
“Sorry,” he said finally, looking into those brown eyes and wondering how he’d missed seeing the universes in them. “But I can’t.”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that,” the Doctor sighed. Then he flashed one of those cheeky, irrepressible grins. “But I wanted to ask anyway.”
Jack glanced at the ever-lightening sky. “They might have found out you’re gone. You should go.”
“I know.” The Doctor leaned against the doorframe of his impossible ship and studied Jack. “What will you do?”
“Tell Stark why I did it. They can’t fire me, and I think I can make him see it my way.” Jack gave the walking enigma before him a curious look. “What about you?”
The Doctor shrugged lightly. “Always moving on, me. I don’t know what I’ll do.” And he flashed another grin in the darkness. “That’s half the fun.”
He straightened and gave Jack a mock salute. “Sheriff Carter. I hope I’ll see you again. Pleasure knowing you, sir.” Jack laughed as he returned it, and the Doctor, smiling, slipped inside his ship.
A second later, though, he stuck his head back out, grinning. “Oh. Tell your daughter I’m a fabulous kisser. Just in passing. To see her face.”
Jack burst out laughing, and the last he saw of the Doctor was that brilliant grin as the doors closed.
Not much broke Jack Carter’s stride. But as he watched the Doctor’s ship dissolve into thin air, he had the oddest sensation. It felt sort of like his jaw hitting the ground.
Some things were just too weird to handle, after all.
Author's Name: cherryfeather
Recipient's Name: clay_marble
Fandom: Eureka/Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Character(s): Jack Carter, Zoe Carter, the Doctor, Nathan Stark, Vincent, Allison Blake, Henry Deacon
Warnings: Mild language, slight slash
Author's notes: AU for Eureka’s upcoming Season 2. Betaed by E.
“I’m going, Zoe; have a good day at school,” Jack Carter called as he made a beeline for the door, coffee cup in hand.
Zoe looked up from her morning comics. “Where are you off to?”
“What are you, my keeper? I keep tabs on you, not vice versa--”
“Oh, right,” Zoe interrupted. “You’re having breakfast with John again. Say hi to your boyfriend for me, Dad.”
Jack stopped, rolled his eyes, and turned back. This could not go unchallenged. “Zoe, how many times do I have to tell you--”
“Hey, Dad, he’s cute and British; I’d wanna date him too.”
“Oh, he’s--he’s not my boyfriend, Zoe, for God’s sake.”
“Oh, right.” Her tone dripped sarcasm. “So you just have breakfast with him, like, every single morning? Didn’t you do that with Allison before she and Stark got back together?”
“Oh, so I finally make a real friend in this town, and you insist it means I’m gay. You know, most daughters would be happy for their fathers.”
Zoe shook her head and disappeared behind her newspaper. “Sure, Dad. Whatever.”
“Zoe--”
“Dad. Whatever.”
There was just absolutely no point in arguing with a teenage girl. Especially if she played the ‘sure, whatever’ card. Acknowledging futility, Jack grabbed his keys off the side table. “S.A.R.A.H., door.”
“Have a good day, Sheriff Carter,” the house chirruped as the door of the bunker hissed open.
“Don’t start making out in front of everybody,” Zoe yelled as the door swung shut behind him
Jack decided not to dignify that with a response.
- - -
“Good morning, Doctor Smith,” Vincent greeted him cheerily as he stepped into the café, shaking water from the early morning rainstorm out of his shaggy brown hair.
The man in the pinstriped suit looked up as he wiped his Converse sneakers off on the welcome mat and beamed. “Oh, it’s a brilliant morning, Vincent. Apparently that test I ran yesterday caused sufficient cumulative atmospheric excitation to cause one hell of a thunderstorm this morning. Though it’s not as strong as I meant it to be. Compared to the waterspouts of Argelia XII it’s positively mild.” He looked around, the motion shaking more water out of his dripping hair, and his face split into a smile. “Oh, there you are, Jack.”
“John,” the sheriff greeted him, shifting his barstool to make room for his lanky friend to sit down. “Do you always say things that don’t make sense before you’ve had breakfast?”
“I try not to make sense, as a rule,” John said dismissively. “Tea, please, Vincent, and I think I feel like chips this morning.” He frowned and caught Vincent’s arm as he turned away. “No, hold on. Not chips. Bloody Americans butchering the language…um…what-d’you-call-‘ems… French fries. But with vinegar.”
“French fries for breakfast?” Jack gave him a look. “You are by far the weirdest person I have ever met. I’ll have a bagel, Vincent.”
“In this town, I think that’s a compliment.”
“Yeah, well.” Jack took a long drink of his coffee. “So are you doing anything today that’s not super-top-secret? Or am I too far out of the confidentiality loop to hear anything?”
John gave him a smug smile. “Well, I think I can safely tell you that Doctor Stark’s going to be doing a bit of arse-kissing today. He didn’t think my weather matrix would work. I mean, I’ve been doing it for ages; I explained it all quite simply…” John started to rattle off some highly complex technobabble that Jack gave up trying to follow about two seconds in, and just sat there nodding when he paused for breath.
John was an oddity, that was sure. He’d turned up in Eureka one morning, looking for a place to work, and Jack and Jo picked him up. Two seconds of hearing the guy talk and they’d brought him to Stark, and after only five minutes of conversation he’d emerged with an office in Section Four and full funding for whatever the hell he wanted to do.
Naturally Jack had been suspicious of such a peculiar introduction to Eureka. But Doctor John Smith, British, cheeky, and pinstriped, was just the sort of person you couldn’t help but trust. And apparently something about Jack had intrigued the good doctor in return, because John had been in Eureka for a week and a half and they’d had breakfast six days out of the ten. John was the first Global Dynamics scientist--except for Carl Carlson, but he’d been a bit…eh--that had ever taken Jack seriously. Jack couldn’t help but like it.
Even if John’s quirky references to places and times Jack had never heard of made the sheriff think he was a little bit crazy sometimes. And he did tend to go on and on.
“…So, basically, it’s all a matter of electrons and… Jack, you’re staring at me.”
Jack shook himself out of his reverie and grinned at his friend. “Yeah. Because you lost me right after, ‘I explained it all quite simply.’”
John sniffed disdainfully and speared a pair of French fries from the plate before him with a fork. “You have absolutely no sense of science, Jack Carter,” he retorted around a mouthful of potato, and stuck the fork into his mouth to lick the salt and vinegar off.
“That’s what they tell me.” Jack watched, fascinated, as John made short work of the rest of his fries, and then ran a finger over the plate to catch the grease and vinegar he’d missed and popped the digit into his mouth. “Ew.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Jack took a bite of his bagel. “You just look like you’re addicted to French fries, is all.”
“Chips, Jack. Chips.” John chuckled slightly. “I remember, Rose used to…” His voice trailed off and his smile faded abruptly. “But never mind her.”
Jack looked closely at him. His expression was stony, and he suddenly looked very far away. “Hey. John. You okay?”
John looked at him remotely. “Hmm? Fine. I’ve got to go. Thanks for breakfast, Jack. I’ll see you later.” And he slid off the chair and walked out into the driving rain.
Jack watched him go, a light frown etched between his eyebrows.
“There goes the most eccentric man I’ve ever met,” Vincent said with what sounded like an odd respect in his voice.
“And how,” Jack agreed.
- - -
He threw his coat haphazardly on one of the chairs in his lab and glanced at the clock, whistling rather tunelessly as he did so. Doctor Stark would be coming by sometime during the hour, and it would be a good idea to have the weather machine switched on if it was going to be inspected.
The Doctor, smiling happily, walked around the control panel, checking the various knobs and dials that registered the status of his (really, quite simple and elementary, and in fact he’d picked it up in a marketplace on Ryxtigan Gamma Prime, but Stark didn’t need to know that) weather machine. Of all the various personas he’d assumed over the years, Doctor John Smith, Global Dynamics researcher, was one of the most…satisfying. He had a whole laboratory! For absolutely whatever he wanted to do! Really, how brilliant was that? He was almost tempted to just…stay. Spend a year or two or three just…working. Studying. Being a scientist. Doing things he never really got to do and always sort of wanted to.
But this was a town full of the cleverest people on Earth. He’d managed to fool the first physical with a simple psychic filter and a bit of quick jiggery-pokery. There was no way he’d be able to keep it up. These brilliant humans amazed even him. It was fantastic.
Plus, it certainly wouldn’t take him a year or two or three to figure out what had brought him here in the first place: Stark’s artifact. He just had to work his way into Section Five. Shouldn’t be too long after this, the Doctor reflected, grinning as he switched settings on the sonic screwdriver and held it against a loose phase coil. Stark would be eating out of the palm of his hand after this. (He felt sort of bad about it, actually. In another time and place, when he wasn’t tricking him and infiltrating his research center to see if it was necessary to steal an alien artifact from a bunch of too-clever humans, he and Nathan Stark would have been good friends.)
Nope. Wouldn’t be long at all. In fact, he might even go so far as to say instantaneous, after…
Was that rumbling supposed to be happening?
No.
Oh. Oops.
The Doctor barely managed to jump back before the device exploded.
- - -
Nathan Stark was halfway to the medical area when he heard running footsteps thundering down the hall towards him. He didn’t have to look around to see whom it was, and really didn’t want him there, but he stopped anyway so the man could catch up. “Carter,” he said cordially.
“Stark!” Jack panted as he doubled over, hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “I came…soon as I heard…ran a few…red lights and…ran all the way here.” He straightened up, feeling a gnawing worry in the pit of his stomach as he lengthened his stride to match Stark’s. “An explosion?”
“In Section Four. Doctor Smith’s lab. Allison’s with him and the meds.”
“Oh…God. Is he--he’s okay, though, right?”
“He’s unconscious, but Allison said there was something we should come and see. So this is us, coming to see.” Stark shot Jack a side glance. “You two are friends?”
Preoccupied with all sorts of horrible unbidden imaginings involving the death, destruction, and/or dismemberment of one of the nicest guys he’d ever met, Jack missed the question. “Huh?”
“I asked if you two were friends.”
“Yeah.” Stark’s expression was eloquent, and Jack glared at him. “Oh, because me being friends with a Global scientist is really that unexpected?”
“Well, since you asked, yeah.”
The doors of the medical area made that whooshing sound Jack couldn’t help but associate with Star Trek as they opened, and Jack immediately dashed to the glass screen that separated them from the hospital-like room beyond. John was unconscious on the pristine white medical bed, customary pinstripes replaced with sterile grey hospital gown. A nasty-looking cut marred one freckled cheek, and there were some marks that looked like speed-healed burns on his arms, but other than that he seemed all right.
So why was he in what looked like the maximum-security medical center?
“What’s up with…” he began to ask as he turned, but trailed off as he noticed Henry was there, as well. “Henry, no offense, but--”
“What the hell am I doing here?” One corner of Henry’s mouth twitched upwards for a second, but instantly he looked serious again. “Look at this.” And he called up a bioscan on the computer.
“This is why I called you,” Allison said in a hushed voice as she looked at the man on the other side of the glass.
Stark crossed his arms as he stared at the scan. “That’s impossible.”
“Ran it three times. This is fact, Nathan.” Henry leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “It’s something, isn’t it?”
Jack stared at the screen and blinked. Hard. Twice.
There were two hearts.
“I think we missed something on his first physical,” Jack said after a moment.
- - -
Light. White light. Bright, white light. Stab-your-retinas-with-an-ice-pick-bright white light.
“Could you turn that off?” he mumbled, lifting a heavy arm to shield his eyes.
“Sorry,” a voice said over a speaker. “When researchers become research, all the big, fancy microscopes need light.” After a second, however, the lights dimmed slightly.
The Doctor tried to sit up and swiftly realized that he hurt like hell. Settling for propping himself up on his elbows, he looked around, taking stock of his surroundings. Sterile white room with a two-way mirror. Hospital bed. Extremely sensitive and sophisticated-looking machinery.
Oh. Bollocks.
He’d become the research.
“How’re you feeling?” the same sympathetic voice asked, and now that he’d mostly shook off what he was assuming was heavy sedation, he placed the voice as Jack Carter’s. Good. At least he had a friend up there with the microscopes.
Assuming Jack was watching from the mirror, the Doctor directed his response that way. “Oh, I’ve definitely been better.”
“So has your lab. It’s completely destroyed. Hope you didn’t have anything you really cared about in there.”
The Doctor arched a wry eyebrow. “Jack. Why are we making small talk?” When no answer was forthcoming, he continued conversationally, laying back down on the bed and stretching, lacing his fingers behind his head and using them as a pillow. “Since I’m in what seems to be a maximum-security hospital ward with--” He checked. “Mostly healed injuries, and I’m being looked at through a small glass window under a few very expensive-looking microscopes… I’m assuming you lot have found me out.”
Jack laughed once. “Well, yeah, if by ‘found you out’ you mean ‘found that second heart.’” His friend paused, and added in a quieter voice, “So who are you?”
The Doctor had been all set to have this interview out with casual, studied nonchalance. But Jack’s question intrigued him, and he sat up fully, pain forgotten. “Who am I?” he asked his reflection, knowing that was where Jack was standing. “Don’t you mean what?”
“Well. Yeah. That too. But you’re not John Smith. So who are you?”
After a moment, he smiled slowly. “I’m the Doctor.”
“So, you’re really a doctor?” Jack sounded skeptical. “Oh, there’s a relief. I thought you’d been totally and completely, y’know, lying to us.” He sighed, and the Doctor felt a pang of regret. This man had been--well, he hoped he still was--his friend, and he was never completely sanguine about lying to friends. Jack sounded tired when he spoke again. “So, it’s just Doctor?”
“Yup.”
A second voice joined Jack’s. “Sheriff, I hope you’re not conducting interrogations without me,” a dry, sarcastic voice interjected.
The Doctor lay back down on the bed, sighing slightly. “Good morning/afternoon/evening, Doctor Stark.”
“Doctor Smith.” He could hear the smirk in Stark’s voice.
“No, just Doctor.” Best to get this over with. “I trust you’d like to know who I am and why I’m here?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“My name’s the Doctor, I’m an alien who travels in space and time, and I picked up the signals from your…town and wanted to investigate.” Considering Stark’s obsession, hinting that he might know something about the Artifact probably wasn’t the best course to take if he wanted to get out of here sometime this decade. Feigning boredom, he stretched, stood, and examined the machinery in the room with him. “Oh, this is clever. What is it, a high-frequency particulate mass imager? And if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like my clothes back. Or at the very least my shoes. Or socks, I’m not picky. Well, that’s a lie, I am. But picky or not, it’s cold in here.”
“We’ll increase the temperature. Once those burns are completely healed, you’ll be moved to a more comfortable location.”
“To be your lab rat.” It wasn’t a question.
“What?” Jack sounded surprised, and he gave a half-laugh. “Stark…what are you going to do to him?”
“Yes, Doctor Stark,” the Doctor chimed in. “What are you going to do to me?”
“We’re just going to study you. Extraterrestrial life. You’re possibly the biggest scientific discovery since the splitting of the atom.” Stark’s voice had that excitement that only appeared in the voices of scientists on the verge of breakthroughs, but with the customary Stark coolness. Which somehow made it faintly ominous. “I can’t wait to write up the paper.”
And the Doctor couldn’t help but feel some slight trepidation as he heard the sound of the doors opening and closing as Stark left.
- - -
It wasn’t as easy to figure out the moral high ground as Jack had initially supposed.
Stark had gotten his hands on an alien. Scientific progress and all that dictated study, right? But…when a guy thought ‘alien,’ ugly green guys with big heads and black egg-shaped eyes and ray guns came to mind. Not thirty-something cute British guys with floppy brown hair and pinstriped suits and silly grins and a tendency to run at the mouth. (He still might have a ray gun, though. Just because Jack hadn’t seen it didn’t mean it didn’t exist.)
It was funny how he was taking this so calmly. His new buddy was an alien. And about the only thought that had crossed his mind was a sort of vague “Huh. Interesting.”
But anyway. Interesting and shocking or not, there was kind of a moral issue here.
Not to mention a personal issue. Guys didn’t usually let megalomaniacs keep their friends in small rooms with glass walls. Alien or not, John--no, the Doctor--was his friend…right?
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had a headache.
Studying aliens was valuable scientifically: yes. Keeping a generally nice and friendly guy locked up in one of those aforementioned small rooms with glass walls: no. Stark promising he wouldn’t be hurt, just looked at: good.
But he’d said he was a traveler. Locking up a guy with wanderlust: bad.
So it all sort of came down to what was more important.
In his head, Jack Carter shrugged. What the hell. He stood up and picked up his car keys from the side table. “S.A.R.A.H., door.”
- - -
There were six hundred and twelve individual flashing lights on the high-frequency particulate mass imager. There was a tessellated pattern of geometric birds on his hospital gown. And there was one excruciatingly bored Doctor in the room.
At least the lights were dim. Thank Rassilon for small favors, he supposed.
There was an odd clicking sound, and he sat up eagerly. A break in monotonous tedium. How delightful. When a door that he hadn’t been able to see opened in the wall, and a shifty-looking Jack Carter appeared holding a pile of clothes that included a pinstriped suit and trainers, the Doctor revised his previous thought to include the words “brilliant” and “fantastic” in addition to merely “delightful.”
“Good to see you, Sheriff,” he said simply.
“Shh. Get dressed.” Jack tossed him his clothes, which he caught easily. It was all here, and the Doctor grinned as he reached up to untie the hospital gown. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Jack staring, and he almost laughed.
“Most of the same biology,” he said cryptically.
Jack started and stared guiltily, fixedly, at his face. “What?”
“I’m a Time Lord. Most of the external biology is the same as a human’s.” Jack flushed and looked away, and the Doctor grinned wider as he buttoned his shirt. “I’ve been fancied by military blokes named Jack before. No problem. Stare all you want. Don’t get many aliens on the Pacific Coast. Well, except Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Hilton sisters. And David Beckham, nowadays at any rate.”
“Paris Hilton’s an alien. That explains so much.” Jack grinned. “Oh, we should totally dissect her instead of you.”
The Doctor tilted his head up as he tied his trainers to fix Jack with a look of admiration. “Oh, not much breaks your stride, Sheriff Carter.”
Jack gave him a tight grin, sticking his head out of the door he’d come in through to cast a surreptitious look around. “Getting caught would. Forget your shoelaces, we are so outta here.”
They slipped out of the medical area and down the hallways. Global Dynamics was eerie at night, especially with the lights in Stark’s overseeing office turned off. Skeleton crew down in the other sections, and no one on the ground floor made it one of the easiest breakouts Jack had ever attempted. Of course Henry’s borrowed access card simplified things enormously. Jack was going to have to treat him to a month’s worth of ball games and beer to properly say thanks for this.
The Doctor took a deep, deep breath as they slid into Jack’s car. “That’s odd. Normally everything goes wrong around me. That was almost smooth.”
“You’re not gone yet,” Jack said shortly, turning the key in the ignition. “Okay, you’re an alien. Tell me you’ve got a spaceship or something.”
His passenger grinned. “Take a left here.”
- - -
“It’s a wooden box.”
“Don’t sound so unimpressed.”
“Okay, it’s a big wooden box. Why does it say ‘POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX’ across the top?”
“Americans,” the Doctor said despairingly, rolling his eyes as he ran a caressing hand over the wood of the strange edifice, standing incongruously among the trees of the forest. “It’s from Britain, about forty or so years ago. I landed there and the chameleon circuit got stuck.”
To his credit, Jack didn’t even bat an eye at the phrase “chameleon circuit.” “If you say so.”
“I do, actually.” The Doctor gave the box another pat and turned back to Jack. After a moment, he smiled and extended his hand. “Thank you,” he said simply.
Jack shrugged and smiled as he took the Doctor’s hand. “It was nothing,” he said just as simply.
The Doctor gazed at him for a long moment, and then stepped back, pushing open the door of the wooden box. Jack stared past him at the impossibility beyond, and the Time Lord smiled. “Come with me.”
It took a moment for the offer to register. Jack looked back and forth between the ship that broke every law of physics he’d ever known and the man who broke every law of nature he’d ever known, and he’d never been so tempted by anything in his life.
“Sorry,” he said finally, looking into those brown eyes and wondering how he’d missed seeing the universes in them. “But I can’t.”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that,” the Doctor sighed. Then he flashed one of those cheeky, irrepressible grins. “But I wanted to ask anyway.”
Jack glanced at the ever-lightening sky. “They might have found out you’re gone. You should go.”
“I know.” The Doctor leaned against the doorframe of his impossible ship and studied Jack. “What will you do?”
“Tell Stark why I did it. They can’t fire me, and I think I can make him see it my way.” Jack gave the walking enigma before him a curious look. “What about you?”
The Doctor shrugged lightly. “Always moving on, me. I don’t know what I’ll do.” And he flashed another grin in the darkness. “That’s half the fun.”
He straightened and gave Jack a mock salute. “Sheriff Carter. I hope I’ll see you again. Pleasure knowing you, sir.” Jack laughed as he returned it, and the Doctor, smiling, slipped inside his ship.
A second later, though, he stuck his head back out, grinning. “Oh. Tell your daughter I’m a fabulous kisser. Just in passing. To see her face.”
Jack burst out laughing, and the last he saw of the Doctor was that brilliant grin as the doors closed.
Not much broke Jack Carter’s stride. But as he watched the Doctor’s ship dissolve into thin air, he had the oddest sensation. It felt sort of like his jaw hitting the ground.
Some things were just too weird to handle, after all.