[Doctor Who]: Breaking a Habit
Jack glanced sideways at the man, looked him over with a positive conclusion, and glanced back at the Doctor across the bar, still watching him. All right, good. Just one minute to make sure Mr. Alonso wasn’t going to wander off, and then he and a certain Time Lord needed to have a serious talk.
He saluted anyway, mostly out of habit.
Jack had said a grand total of two pickup lines before he happened to glance across the room again and notice a conspicuously blank space where the Doctor had been standing. He narrowed his eyes, and then turned and flashed his best smile at Alonso. “Don’t wander off,” he said, “I’ll be right back.”
No, oh no. The Doctor wasn’t running out on him this time. Not without a damn good explanation.
He didn’t wait for an answer before starting to shove through the crowd toward the front door.
Jack burst out of the tavern and stopped dead, finding the Time Lord leaning against the wall right outside the door and breathing like he’d forgotten how. “We need to talk,” he said, mercilessly.
The Doctor straightened with what looked suspiciously like an effort, and Jack steeled himself against what threatened to be encroaching worry. “Jack,” he said, and then stopped. He didn’t look defiant, or sad, or angry, or anything that Jack was used to seeing in his face. He just looked…tired.
So maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.
“We need to talk about why you didn’t show up.”
“I need to go,” said the Doctor. “I was just stopping by-“
“How did you find me?”
“Third guess. Just lucky.” Jack frowned at him, but the Doctor seemed immune, as he’d always been immune. “It was fixed, Jack. That’s why. And I really need to-“
“No, you don’t,” said Jack, cutting him off. He looked thin. Of course this regeneration had always been thin, like a rail, but this was different. And then he realized the other thing that was strange and looked over the Doctor’s shoulder. “Where’s Donna? And Rose?” He asked.
“Gone.” The Doctor made a choking sound that Jack guessed was supposed to be a laugh, and lifted one hand to his forehead, dropped it, seeming unaware of the gesture. “Safe. It’s all right.” Jack tensed.
“Rose? Gone? What do you mean, she’s-“
“With the other me. On the parallel world.” The Doctor shrugged, and smiled, and Jack wondered if he knew how obviously fake that smile looked. “He’ll grow old with her. It’s better.”
Jack didn’t have the courage to argue with that, with how again the Doctor always had to decide what was ‘better’ - and besides, that still left his other question conveniently unanswered. And he was still angry, dammit. “And Donna? What, did you just leave her, drop her off, have a nice life? She wouldn’t have left you if she had a-“
“Stop!” Jack stopped, not liking the brittle note he suddenly caught in the Doctor’s voice. “Just - it doesn’t matter. She’s not here, and I need to go.”
“You keep saying that. Go where?” Jack could feel his jaw tighten. “You have all the time in the world, what are you in such a hurry for?”
“No,” said the Doctor, and his voice sounded hoarse, now. Jack blinked.
“No what?”
“I don’t. Have all the time in the world.” He coughed, and then again, and then it became a coughing fit that bent him double and the worry was no longer encroaching so much as determined. Jack took a step toward him to support him and the Doctor pulled away.
“What’s the matter?” Jack asked. “Are you sick or - something?” He’d never known the Doctor to get sick. But it occurred to him that he didn’t know much about the Doctor.
“Yes. Something like that.” The Doctor took a deep breath and pulled himself upright again, his expression clearly pained. “Jack, just - go back inside. I'm leaving.” He turned away, and Jack moved, standing in front of him with his arms out, blocking the narrow street.
“Leaving where?”
“Get out of the way.”
“No. You owe me some explanations.” The Doctor sighed, giving him a look of pure exasperation that at least looked more like the Doctor Jack was used to. “So it was a fixed point, all right. But could you at least have come to tell me that? Couldn’t you have come at all?”
“There wasn’t time,” said the Doctor. “I was - busy, and then I - couldn’t.” Jack wanted to yell at him for that, but the Time Lord looked so miserable that he couldn’t quite bring himself to. “It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, Jack. You wouldn’t have accepted it, and you would have been - furious with me for not trying to change it.”
He was right. As usual. Jack clenched his fists and changed the subject. “And Donna? What happened to her, then? Did she get hurt? Why isn’t she here?”
“She’s safe,” the Doctor repeated, and Jack wanted to hit him.
“What about happy,” he said, nearly yelled. “Is she happy? What did you do? Did you find someone else?”
“No. I'm traveling alone.” The Doctor’s voice was so flat, so even, that for a moment Jack was almost nervous; he’d only ever heard that tone of voice when someone was in very deep trouble. “Donna’s - home. She doesn’t remember me.”
Jack blinked. “What? How can she-“
The Doctor scrubbed a hand through his hair in an old, familiar, and with all this strangeness comforting gesture. “The metacrisis - it was killing her. I had to wipe her memories or she would have died. She’s home, with her family, and as far as she knows she never met me.” Another one of those small, false smiles. “She’s happy. Getting married. And she’s alive.”
You selfish bastard, Jack thought angrily. Always making decisions for everyone. Deciding what’s best. What he said, though, was, “And you didn’t just - pick up someone else?”
The Doctor looked at him, and Jack had the feeling he’d heard everything that hadn’t been said, or at least knew it was there. “No,” the Doctor said, simply. “I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.” Jack stared at him. The Doctor never traveled alone. Not for more than a few months. Jack wondered how long it’d been this time.
“I don’t have time for this, Jack,” the Doctor said suddenly, and he sounded distressed again. “I need to-“
“Go, I know. Fine, I’ll come back to the TARDIS with you and wait until she cures you and then you can-“
“She won’t.”
“What do you mean,” Jack snapped. “She won’t? She’s fixed a lot worse than some sickness, hasn’t she?”
“No,” the Doctor said, and his voice sounded heavy, and Jack realized that one of the Doctor’s hands was clenched white knuckled on his pants, and he was trembling, ever so slightly. “She can’t. Not this time.”
It took Jack a moment to understand. “You’re dying. You idiot, isn’t there a cure or-“
“There’s no cure for radiation poisoning, Jack.”
Jack stared at him, and then said carefully, “What happened?” The Doctor made a strange, strangled sound.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over now. Fixed it, gone, done with. All taken care of, don’t need to worry about it. Now I really need to-“
“Doctor. What happened.”
The Doctor swallowed like it hurt and looked at Jack. Radiation poisoning, he thought, he should have guessed. No wonder he was so thin. “The Master happened,” he said, finally, and then shook his head. “No, not - not exactly. It was - it’s a long story, I really don’t have-“
“If you’re still alive,” Jack said, abruptly, “There are things, in - my century, things that can help-“
“It’s too much for that,” the Doctor said. “All I'm doing is - holding it off. Long enough to have a little time. Do a few things. Save a few little lives. Just long enough for that.” Jack looked at him, and after a long few moments dropped his arms.
“The Master was dead.”
“He came back.” The Doctor made that strange, choking laugh again, and Jack would have hit him to make it stop. “And died again. All of them died. Again. ---Jack, I don’t have much longer. I need to go now. There’s still a few more-“
“So that’s it, then,” said Jack, cutting him off again. “That’s all. You’re just going to - crawl off like a wounded animal and - regenerate? Alone?”
The Doctor’s mouth twitched unhappily. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but - yes. There’s just a few more goodbyes I’d like to say.” His brown eyes, seeming suddenly larger than normal, looked right through Jack. “And there’s not much time, so if-“
“No,” said Jack, surprised at the harsh note in his voice. The Doctor blinked at him, his expression so satisfyingly surprised that Jack wished he’d said this before. “No, that’s not how it’s going to be. I'm coming with you. You owe me, and maybe you’ve forgotten, but you’re my friend and I'm not going to just let you die by yourself.”
“I'm not taking you with me,” the Doctor said. “I can’t. I don’t even know if-“
“Don’t even know if what?” Jack said belligerently. “If you’re going to come back this time?”
“Yes,” he said, almost whispered, and the sound of his voice took all the anger out of Jack’s sails. “There’s a choice, there’s always a choice.”
“Yes,” Jack said fiercely, “I know, and maybe if someone else is there you’ll make the right one.” The Doctor closed his eyes and let go of the side of the building, swayed. His face was drawn and he looked at Jack, very still and very quiet. “You’re not getting rid of me,” Jack said.
“I'm sorry,” whispered the Doctor, and before Jack realized what he was doing there was a horseshoe flying at the side of his head and he only had time to think a horseshoe? Really? before he was down and unconscious.
**
“I'm alone in my head again,” the Doctor said, still kneeling next to the Master’s body. “Even having him to feel was better than nothing, but now it’s back to the same - emptiness, the same thing that after the Time War nearly killed me.”
Jack looked at him. “He chose to die,” he said, slowly. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Of course it is,” the Doctor said softly. “If life…becomes too much to bear, there’s always a choice. To die, rather than regenerate. I'm so tired sometimes that I think I could do the same.”
“Don’t you dare,” Jack said, and the Doctor looked at him and just barely smiled.
“I won’t. If I were going to, it would have been after the Time War, with all of them gone and Gallifrey burning.”
“But you regenerated anyway,” Jack said, and because he could only imagine what that would feel like, because if he had had the choice to die rather than come back how many times would he have taken it, he asked: “Why?”
“Habit, I guess,” the Doctor said.
He woke with a gasp to someone splashing water in his face. “Hey,” Alonso was saying, “Hey, are you all right? What happened?”
He sat up a little, groaned. And then it all came back. “Oh god,” he said, and grabbed Alonso’s shirt. “Have you seen a box, a blue box?”
“There was one right there, just a minute ago,” Alonso said, looking puzzled. “This guy - met him before, called the Doctor? He was standing there and when I came out he told me to tell you that he said - goodbye. And then it was just gone, but seriously - are you okay?”
At that moment, Jack had never hated the Doctor so much in his entire centuries long life. Not when he’d left him on Satellite 5, not during the Year That Wasn’t, not during the eons of death after death after death. Not like he did now. “I'm fine,” he said, “He isn’t.”
There are still people to save, he wanted to yell. Who are you to just give up?
His wrist beeped and Jack glanced at it, not quite understanding. His Vortex Manipulator had burned out after two trips, and he hadn’t worked out how to fix it. It beeped again, and he looked at it.
Battery Life, he read, unlimited.
“I'm going to kill that son of a bitch,” Jack said, without feeling, and his eyes stung, but he was not going to cry, dammit, he was not going to cry.
He saluted anyway, mostly out of habit.
Jack had said a grand total of two pickup lines before he happened to glance across the room again and notice a conspicuously blank space where the Doctor had been standing. He narrowed his eyes, and then turned and flashed his best smile at Alonso. “Don’t wander off,” he said, “I’ll be right back.”
No, oh no. The Doctor wasn’t running out on him this time. Not without a damn good explanation.
He didn’t wait for an answer before starting to shove through the crowd toward the front door.
Jack burst out of the tavern and stopped dead, finding the Time Lord leaning against the wall right outside the door and breathing like he’d forgotten how. “We need to talk,” he said, mercilessly.
The Doctor straightened with what looked suspiciously like an effort, and Jack steeled himself against what threatened to be encroaching worry. “Jack,” he said, and then stopped. He didn’t look defiant, or sad, or angry, or anything that Jack was used to seeing in his face. He just looked…tired.
So maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.
“We need to talk about why you didn’t show up.”
“I need to go,” said the Doctor. “I was just stopping by-“
“How did you find me?”
“Third guess. Just lucky.” Jack frowned at him, but the Doctor seemed immune, as he’d always been immune. “It was fixed, Jack. That’s why. And I really need to-“
“No, you don’t,” said Jack, cutting him off. He looked thin. Of course this regeneration had always been thin, like a rail, but this was different. And then he realized the other thing that was strange and looked over the Doctor’s shoulder. “Where’s Donna? And Rose?” He asked.
“Gone.” The Doctor made a choking sound that Jack guessed was supposed to be a laugh, and lifted one hand to his forehead, dropped it, seeming unaware of the gesture. “Safe. It’s all right.” Jack tensed.
“Rose? Gone? What do you mean, she’s-“
“With the other me. On the parallel world.” The Doctor shrugged, and smiled, and Jack wondered if he knew how obviously fake that smile looked. “He’ll grow old with her. It’s better.”
Jack didn’t have the courage to argue with that, with how again the Doctor always had to decide what was ‘better’ - and besides, that still left his other question conveniently unanswered. And he was still angry, dammit. “And Donna? What, did you just leave her, drop her off, have a nice life? She wouldn’t have left you if she had a-“
“Stop!” Jack stopped, not liking the brittle note he suddenly caught in the Doctor’s voice. “Just - it doesn’t matter. She’s not here, and I need to go.”
“You keep saying that. Go where?” Jack could feel his jaw tighten. “You have all the time in the world, what are you in such a hurry for?”
“No,” said the Doctor, and his voice sounded hoarse, now. Jack blinked.
“No what?”
“I don’t. Have all the time in the world.” He coughed, and then again, and then it became a coughing fit that bent him double and the worry was no longer encroaching so much as determined. Jack took a step toward him to support him and the Doctor pulled away.
“What’s the matter?” Jack asked. “Are you sick or - something?” He’d never known the Doctor to get sick. But it occurred to him that he didn’t know much about the Doctor.
“Yes. Something like that.” The Doctor took a deep breath and pulled himself upright again, his expression clearly pained. “Jack, just - go back inside. I'm leaving.” He turned away, and Jack moved, standing in front of him with his arms out, blocking the narrow street.
“Leaving where?”
“Get out of the way.”
“No. You owe me some explanations.” The Doctor sighed, giving him a look of pure exasperation that at least looked more like the Doctor Jack was used to. “So it was a fixed point, all right. But could you at least have come to tell me that? Couldn’t you have come at all?”
“There wasn’t time,” said the Doctor. “I was - busy, and then I - couldn’t.” Jack wanted to yell at him for that, but the Time Lord looked so miserable that he couldn’t quite bring himself to. “It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, Jack. You wouldn’t have accepted it, and you would have been - furious with me for not trying to change it.”
He was right. As usual. Jack clenched his fists and changed the subject. “And Donna? What happened to her, then? Did she get hurt? Why isn’t she here?”
“She’s safe,” the Doctor repeated, and Jack wanted to hit him.
“What about happy,” he said, nearly yelled. “Is she happy? What did you do? Did you find someone else?”
“No. I'm traveling alone.” The Doctor’s voice was so flat, so even, that for a moment Jack was almost nervous; he’d only ever heard that tone of voice when someone was in very deep trouble. “Donna’s - home. She doesn’t remember me.”
Jack blinked. “What? How can she-“
The Doctor scrubbed a hand through his hair in an old, familiar, and with all this strangeness comforting gesture. “The metacrisis - it was killing her. I had to wipe her memories or she would have died. She’s home, with her family, and as far as she knows she never met me.” Another one of those small, false smiles. “She’s happy. Getting married. And she’s alive.”
You selfish bastard, Jack thought angrily. Always making decisions for everyone. Deciding what’s best. What he said, though, was, “And you didn’t just - pick up someone else?”
The Doctor looked at him, and Jack had the feeling he’d heard everything that hadn’t been said, or at least knew it was there. “No,” the Doctor said, simply. “I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.” Jack stared at him. The Doctor never traveled alone. Not for more than a few months. Jack wondered how long it’d been this time.
“I don’t have time for this, Jack,” the Doctor said suddenly, and he sounded distressed again. “I need to-“
“Go, I know. Fine, I’ll come back to the TARDIS with you and wait until she cures you and then you can-“
“She won’t.”
“What do you mean,” Jack snapped. “She won’t? She’s fixed a lot worse than some sickness, hasn’t she?”
“No,” the Doctor said, and his voice sounded heavy, and Jack realized that one of the Doctor’s hands was clenched white knuckled on his pants, and he was trembling, ever so slightly. “She can’t. Not this time.”
It took Jack a moment to understand. “You’re dying. You idiot, isn’t there a cure or-“
“There’s no cure for radiation poisoning, Jack.”
Jack stared at him, and then said carefully, “What happened?” The Doctor made a strange, strangled sound.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over now. Fixed it, gone, done with. All taken care of, don’t need to worry about it. Now I really need to-“
“Doctor. What happened.”
The Doctor swallowed like it hurt and looked at Jack. Radiation poisoning, he thought, he should have guessed. No wonder he was so thin. “The Master happened,” he said, finally, and then shook his head. “No, not - not exactly. It was - it’s a long story, I really don’t have-“
“If you’re still alive,” Jack said, abruptly, “There are things, in - my century, things that can help-“
“It’s too much for that,” the Doctor said. “All I'm doing is - holding it off. Long enough to have a little time. Do a few things. Save a few little lives. Just long enough for that.” Jack looked at him, and after a long few moments dropped his arms.
“The Master was dead.”
“He came back.” The Doctor made that strange, choking laugh again, and Jack would have hit him to make it stop. “And died again. All of them died. Again. ---Jack, I don’t have much longer. I need to go now. There’s still a few more-“
“So that’s it, then,” said Jack, cutting him off again. “That’s all. You’re just going to - crawl off like a wounded animal and - regenerate? Alone?”
The Doctor’s mouth twitched unhappily. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but - yes. There’s just a few more goodbyes I’d like to say.” His brown eyes, seeming suddenly larger than normal, looked right through Jack. “And there’s not much time, so if-“
“No,” said Jack, surprised at the harsh note in his voice. The Doctor blinked at him, his expression so satisfyingly surprised that Jack wished he’d said this before. “No, that’s not how it’s going to be. I'm coming with you. You owe me, and maybe you’ve forgotten, but you’re my friend and I'm not going to just let you die by yourself.”
“I'm not taking you with me,” the Doctor said. “I can’t. I don’t even know if-“
“Don’t even know if what?” Jack said belligerently. “If you’re going to come back this time?”
“Yes,” he said, almost whispered, and the sound of his voice took all the anger out of Jack’s sails. “There’s a choice, there’s always a choice.”
“Yes,” Jack said fiercely, “I know, and maybe if someone else is there you’ll make the right one.” The Doctor closed his eyes and let go of the side of the building, swayed. His face was drawn and he looked at Jack, very still and very quiet. “You’re not getting rid of me,” Jack said.
“I'm sorry,” whispered the Doctor, and before Jack realized what he was doing there was a horseshoe flying at the side of his head and he only had time to think a horseshoe? Really? before he was down and unconscious.
**
“I'm alone in my head again,” the Doctor said, still kneeling next to the Master’s body. “Even having him to feel was better than nothing, but now it’s back to the same - emptiness, the same thing that after the Time War nearly killed me.”
Jack looked at him. “He chose to die,” he said, slowly. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Of course it is,” the Doctor said softly. “If life…becomes too much to bear, there’s always a choice. To die, rather than regenerate. I'm so tired sometimes that I think I could do the same.”
“Don’t you dare,” Jack said, and the Doctor looked at him and just barely smiled.
“I won’t. If I were going to, it would have been after the Time War, with all of them gone and Gallifrey burning.”
“But you regenerated anyway,” Jack said, and because he could only imagine what that would feel like, because if he had had the choice to die rather than come back how many times would he have taken it, he asked: “Why?”
“Habit, I guess,” the Doctor said.
He woke with a gasp to someone splashing water in his face. “Hey,” Alonso was saying, “Hey, are you all right? What happened?”
He sat up a little, groaned. And then it all came back. “Oh god,” he said, and grabbed Alonso’s shirt. “Have you seen a box, a blue box?”
“There was one right there, just a minute ago,” Alonso said, looking puzzled. “This guy - met him before, called the Doctor? He was standing there and when I came out he told me to tell you that he said - goodbye. And then it was just gone, but seriously - are you okay?”
At that moment, Jack had never hated the Doctor so much in his entire centuries long life. Not when he’d left him on Satellite 5, not during the Year That Wasn’t, not during the eons of death after death after death. Not like he did now. “I'm fine,” he said, “He isn’t.”
There are still people to save, he wanted to yell. Who are you to just give up?
His wrist beeped and Jack glanced at it, not quite understanding. His Vortex Manipulator had burned out after two trips, and he hadn’t worked out how to fix it. It beeped again, and he looked at it.
Battery Life, he read, unlimited.
“I'm going to kill that son of a bitch,” Jack said, without feeling, and his eyes stung, but he was not going to cry, dammit, he was not going to cry.