Doctor Who: "Hangman" (4/5)
Title: Hangman
Characters/Pairings: fem!Nine, Jack, Rose, John Hart, OCs
Rating: Teen
Beta: yamx, who nurtured my prose with patience.
Summary: Who can Jack trust when he can't even trust himself?
Notes: For those who are familiar with the fem!Doctor 'verse, this story is set before section X of " Mad Girl's Love Song." For those unfamiliar, all you need to know is that the Ninth Doctor is female and always has been. Chapters will be posted on a weekly basis.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
For a moment, Jack couldn't think of how the Doctor knew his family. But then he remembered her unexpected appearance at what had nearly been his execution. Rose, though, looked confused.
“I met them today,” the Doctor explained, “while you were, ah…”
“Sitting in a freezer,” Rose finished.
“Right.” She looked briefly chagrined, then moved on. “They said things about you, Jack, that weren't kind. I lost my temper. They thought you stole the timeline tracer.”
“That's because I promised them I would.”
Rose and the Doctor stared at him.
Jack sighed. “Can we go to the garden room? It'll be easier, there.”
The Doctor gave him a thoughtful look. “The TARDIS showed you the garden room?”
He nodded. “My first night here. Couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about what I'd done. I wandered the corridors, and I found it by accident. Or at least, I thought it was an accident at the time. It was a place where I could just… be.”
“All right, then.” The Doctor stood, helped Jack to his feet, and led him and Rose by the hand to the garden room. The grass was reddish, the “sky” gold and cloudless. A bed of daisies stirred in a breeze that seemed to be without source. The Doctor knelt in the grass, Rose sat cross-legged, and Jack lay on his side, propping himself up on one arm. None of them said anything for a while.
“I thought I did it,” Jack said, finally. “I could've done anything during those two years. Afterward, I became a criminal. Wasn't too much of a stretch to think I might have been a criminal then, too. And besides…” He swallowed. This was the hard part, where each word would feel like it had been wrenched from him with a crowbar. This was the part he didn't want to admit even to himself. “I'd dreamed of getting a timeline tracer. Just fantasized about it, never acted on it. I made a terrible mistake when I was a kid, and I've spent most of my life wishing I could go back and change it.”
Rose reached out a hand. “Do you want…?”
Did he want Rose to hold his hand while he relived a memory of letting go of the hand of someone he'd sworn to protect? “No,” said Jack. “Not right now. Though I appreciate the offer.”
Rose seemed to accept this, and let her hand fall to the reddish grass. Jack was grateful. If she had been hurt by his refusal, it would have only made this confession harder. Besides, he didn't want her to feel shy about offering touch again later, when he was ready to say yes. “When I was fourteen, an invasion force called the Hive invaded my planet, Inner Beta Aquarii, sister planet to where we just were. I lived in this little place called the Boeshane Peninsula. It was hit the hardest because it was one of the most densely-populated places on I.B.A. Most of the planet is desert, but the Boe is right on the water.” He laughed bitterly. “When the invasion force hit the Boe, my madrina was on O.B.A., trying to get help, but the rest of us were right in the line of fire.”
He was about to continue, but he saw Rose's confusion and stopped to explain. It was a nice break from the story, anyway. “My father and mother married each other first, and Ivory joined the marriage later on, after they had me. That's why she's called my madrina - our relationship isn't genetic.”
He returned to the story, quickly, before he could lose his nerve. “My father told me to look after my little brother while he went to help my mother.” It was hard to find the words to describe this part, and not only because it hurt so much. His memories were all jumbled images, a chaos so total that it nauseated him just to try to sort through it. He had to pause every few words to gather himself. “We were running - I told him I wouldn't let go of him - but he, he got lost, somehow. I don't know. It all happened so fast. I hid, and prayed he'd made it to safety too. But when I finally got home, my father was dead, and Gray was gone. I've searched for him ever since, and never found a trace. I thought if I had a timeline tracer, I could make it go differently, but I wasn't foolish enough to try to actually steal one myself.”
“Thibadeaux said that he came up with the idea for the heist and offered to let you in on it,” the Doctor supplied.
“Yeah. I guess I must've seen the opportunity to get one and promised my parents I would. It was a chance to redeem myself, to undo what I'd done. And even though what I wanted to do was wrong, I still feel bad for breaking my promise to them. They had one last hope of seeing Gray again, and I took it away from them.”
The Doctor said nothing. She looked like she might be somewhere else, behind her eyes. If she really was the only survivor of the Last Great Time War, then she must have made much greater sacrifices than he had to preserve the integrity of Time. It was a comfort to know they shared that pain, but it was also quietly devastating to see her like this. The Doctor never wore her heart on her sleeve, but her emotions still animated her in their own subtle ways. Now, as Jack's memories brought back her own, it was as if the Doctor had disappeared into some black hole inside herself.
“I think you were really brave,” said Rose. “I know you don't remember it, but it's always harder to choose a lot of lives over one when it means losing someone you love. I know how that feels.”
Jack stared at her. He could understand why the Doctor might empathize with what he was going through, but Rose? Rose, who had never known the black desperation of war, who always seemed to know what was right, had gone through this same trial of guilt and self-recrimination?
“Stop looking at me like that, Jack, you look like a kid who just found out the Easter Bunny's not real. You can't think of me like I'm - like some kind of saint. My dad was supposed to die when I was a baby. I went back and changed that, and it was almost the end of the world.”
“But you couldn't have known,” Jack countered. “I should have known better. I'd been trained in the Time Agency Academy.”
“And you did. You realized it was wrong before it was too late.”
“I shouldn't have tried to do it in the first place! I shouldn't have given my parents false hope. They'd have been better off just accepting that Gray was lost forever.”
“He's your brother, Jack,” said Rose. “It's different with family. You can't think the same way.”
“I'd have done the same for you or the Doctor,” said Jack, the words slipping out before he even realized what they meant. “Maybe I'd have realized that it was stupid and wrong, but if I lost one of you, I'd do anything to get you back. You're not family. I've only known you for - what, less than a month linear? What does that say about me, that I'd do that for people I've just met?”
Rose's eyes were huge, and she looked like she might be holding back tears. The Doctor said, “I haven't done anything to deserve that.” She swallowed, and her eyes, too, were a little too bright. “But I think it says you've a good heart, Captain Jack Harkness.”
Jack's throat constricted. The Doctor had never called him Captain before, or at least never without a sneer - she'd always said he'd never earned the title. Now, of course, she knew he had. But it was more than that. The Doctor wouldn't care if the Time Agency thought he was worthy of captaincy. She wouldn't care no matter what titles he'd earned or honors he'd won. She measured by her own standard.
“It just isn't fair,” he managed to say. “I made the right choice, the moral choice, for once in my life. So why do I feel like crap?”
“Only monsters never feel guilt, Jack.” The Doctor snorted, but there was no real humor in it. “I saved the universe from being overrun by the Daleks and I ended up catatonic in Mikaëla's backyard.”
Rose looked wide-eyed and a little frightened, which made Jack wonder just how much she knew about the Doctor's part in the Last Great Time War. Whatever that knowledge was, he wished she didn't have to bear the burden of it. “How did she know what to do with you? You just appeared there, and you were - I mean, I can't imagine - ”
“There's no way she couldn't've known what was happening,” said the Doctor, her voice a monotone. “After the end, once my body and the TARDIS had repaired themselves, I couldn't go anywhere near sentient life forms. Would've hurt too much. I wandered through empty places - just beyond the event horizons of black holes, time pockets a second out of sync with the rest of the universe, anywhere that wasn't within a thousand light-years of sentient life. My brain had just healed itself, and staying away from thinking beings kept my telepathic senses dormant.” She tapped her temple. “Then I crash-landed right in the middle of Camp Thibadeaux, Mikaëla's autumn retreat on Eta Kappa. Or that's what she calls it, any road, but it's more like a miniature fortress. Mikaëla's idea of a vacation is to keep on doing her work, but with nicer scenery. Don't think it was an accident, though, looking back. The TARDIS must've been sick of me by then.”
“I'd met Mikaëla a few times before, on Shadow Proclamation business. We were on good terms, I suppose - of which I'm glad, because otherwise, I don't know what she'd've done with me. I fell out of the TARDIS, and my telepathy just went out of control. Mikaëla's a fair telepath herself; she didn't even need to touch me to see what was happening. It was the psychic equivalent of having someone bleed to death at her feet.”
Jack winced. How had it felt for the Doctor, to be psychically bleeding to death in front of someone he'd met only a few times and probably barely trusted?
“She put me in a room shielded against telepathic incursion, but that didn't help. It wasn't what my telepathy was picking up on that made me that way. It was what I wasn't sensing. No Time Lords anywhere. Emptiness.” She tapped her temple again.
Jack inclined his head in acknowledgment. He understood that, at least a little. When he'd first woken up with two years of his memory missing, he'd gone a little crazy. He'd torn up his quarters, ransacking everything he had for some trace of the two years he'd just lived. There had been changes and new belongings, of course, but they'd meant nothing, as if they'd been put there by a stranger. He hadn't known who he was anymore.
The Doctor gave a wry smile. “That's when she tried the frozen katamarite. That gave me time to put my mind back together, but it didn't mean I was thinking clearly. I hadn't changed out of the clothes I'd been wearing when the war ended. I wanted to remind myself. Punish myself, really. That's why I wouldn't cut my hair or eat anything more than the bare minimum to stay alive. I thought it was what I deserved. Mikaëla disagreed. She threw out my old rags and cut my hair while I was sleeping. I didn't want to be her charity case and got angry. Slammed the door in her face and never looked back. I wasn't ready to be traveling on my own, not really, but at least I was letting myself live.”
“And that's when you met Rose,” Jack said.
“That's when I met Rose.”
Rose smiled. She looked almost embarrassed by the note in the Doctor's voice. Jack would have felt the same if the Doctor had spoken of him that way, he was sure. He suddenly felt certain that he wasn't wrong to place the Doctor and Rose in the same esteem as his family. This was how families were supposed to be. They saw the best in each other, the hidden goodness that most people never even saw in themselves. Ivory and Collette only saw the worst in Jack. While the Doctor and Rose had forgiven him for his terrible mistake with the Chula ambulance in less than a month, his parents still hadn't forgiven him all these years later for a mistake he'd made as a child. The knowledge gave him the strength he needed to face them again.
“I want to see them,” Jack said. “They never got the chance to watch me grow up. I was only fifteen when I joined the military, and that's all they really know of me. I want to give them a chance to see who I've become. Maybe they still won't see it, but I have to try.”
“All right then,” the Doctor said. “But we've got to stop by the Time Agency first.” She nodded at Jack's wrist. “We've got to get that chip out of your wrist. Could take it out myself, but I thought you might prefer not to be a fugitive every time you run into the Time Agency in the 51st century.”
“They put a chip in your wrist?” said Rose. “Aren't you ever going to be free of those people?”
“Jack hadn't been acquitted yet when I went to fetch him. Had to post bail. The Time Agency likes to keep its prisoners under surveillance. We'll land when he's due to report back to Internal Affairs.”
Rose said, “How do you know you'll land on time?” That earned her a glare from the Doctor. “Sorry, but you've got a bad track record.”
“We're going to land on time because Jack is going to help me fly the TARDIS,” the Doctor said.
Jack might have fallen over if he hadn't already been stretched out on the ground. “Huh?”
“You've been watching me fly her. You've been helping with repairs. The TARDIS likes you. We'll start simple this time, just a few auxiliary navigation functions, and work up. You'll be perfectly capable if we take it a step at a time.”
“Uh, if she's all right with it, then sure,” said Jack, awed. He no longer doubted the Doctor's trust in him, but it took more than just trust to help pilot the TARDIS. It took technical competence, mastery of space-time navigation, and clever improvisation, all traits Jack knew he had, but the Doctor had always dismissed. “How'd you like to have my hands all over your console, old girl?” He could feel an almost ticklish vibration rise up from the grass itself, and he couldn't quite hold back a giddy laugh. “I'll take that as a yes.”
Piloting the TARDIS with Jack at her side exceeded all of the Doctor's expectations. He did a small job - guiding the TARDIS' calculations of a subset of 4-dimensional vectors - but it was a crucial one, and he did it well. When it came to the TARDIS, it took more than just smarts to be a good pilot, though Jack had those in spades. It took the kind of intuitive touch that could only come from a rapport with ships in general and the TARDIS in particular. All in all, the Doctor should have realized much sooner how much the TARDIS liked Jack. Maybe then she would have given him the trust he deserved.
They landed in a public garden near the Time Agency ten minutes before Jack was supposed to show. “We could've landed her right on top of the teleport deck in Internal Affairs,” the Doctor said as they strolled through the ethereally-scented garden, “but I don't want the Time Agency to lay eyes on her, or they'll start getting ideas.”
A dozen security protocols later, they were back at the floating front desk in the reception area of Internal Affairs. It looked different this time, though. A holographic marquee hovered over the front desk, scrolling across messages like “All adjudicants, please report to your assigned magistrates” and “Time Agency employees are requested not to comment to the media on recent events”.
The Doctor recognized the secretary with four eyes who'd stopped Jack's execution before it was too late. “Reporting in with Shaylin Sel-Ahn,” the Doctor announced. “Has he been cleared of all charges yet?”
“One moment, please, while I call up his file.” The secretary looked down at her console for a moment. “Doctor Jane Doe? You paid his bail, correct?”
“That's me.”
The secretary made a displeased humming sound with the gauzy membranes that flowed down her back like a gossamer cloak. “Dr. Doe, we lost signal from Sel-Ahn's chip barely twenty minutes after you escorted him from this facility. I require that you - ”
The Doctor leaned across the gleaming chrome surface of the desk. “Has he been cleared of all charges?”
“The magistrates have reconsidered their decision, yes, but - ”
“You were less than ten minutes away from killing an innocent man, and now you reprimand him for what he chooses to do with his reprieve from a jail sentence he never deserved in the first place? Give me his release forms, now.”
“How are we to know that he did not violate the terms of his - ”
“How am I to know that you're not going to lock him up again for no reason? The release forms.”
The gauze along the secretary's back flattened to invisibility. “Very well. I will consult my superiors.” She tapped out a few commands into her console, focused on it intently for a few moments, then looked at the Doctor with her top set of eyes. “My superiors have given me the authority to allow Sel-Ahn's release. I cannot, however, return your bail. The credits were automatically sequestered when we lost signal from Sel-Ahn's chip.”
The Doctor folded her arms across the front edge of the desk. “Fine.”
The secretary gave her a sheet of nu-paper and a stylus. The Doctor started filling out the form - she'd love to see the look on their faces when they saw she'd put down Mikaëla as her reference of good character - and heard Jack whisper in her ear, “That's 950,000 credits they're taking from you! You don't have to do this, Doc. I can wait another night in prison if it'll get your money back.”
Never setting down her stylus, the Doctor said, “You won't spend another night in a cell, lad. Your mental health's worth more to me than a bunch of credits.”
“That's not a bunch! That's a small fortune! My parents probably earn 100 credits a fortnight at most.”
Ah. So that was it. Jack's parents were refugees from the Hive's invasion of the Boe. Life was never easy for refugees on a strange planet. He was thinking of what his parents would be able to do with 950,000 credits. “Not making any promises, but I may be able to do something for your people. Just let me do this for you first.”
Jack looked conflicted, but Rose laid a hand on his arm and murmured something in his ear the Doctor couldn't make out. Finally, he nodded, and the Doctor passed the form over to him to finish. He raised his eyebrows at a few of her answers on the form, but finished without further objections. The secretary put the form face down on a scan plate and sent it for processing.
“While we wait,” the Doctor said, feigning a conversational tone, “whatever happened to Makarios Thibadeaux?” She could see Jack and Rose perk up at that.
“The Shadow Proclamation claimed jurisdiction over his case as part of their ongoing investigation into 'the Gallows',” the secretary informed them primly. Judging by the invisible scare quotes around “the Gallows”, the Time Agency's official position was still one of denial of wrongdoing. “He is no longer in our custody.”
The Doctor hid a smile behind her hand. She'd suspected that her promise to Makarios would turn out to be little more than a formality. What Mikaëla wanted to know, she found out, one way or another.
There was a quiet chime from the secretary's console. She looked at Jack. “Hold out your forearm, please.” Jack laid his chipped arm on the desk. The secretary took out what looked like a wide rubber band and put it over Jack's wrist. The band tightened around his wrist and writhed like a living thing. Jack grimaced a little at the sensation. After about a minute, the band fell off his wrist, the chip embedded in its inner surface.
The Doctor clasped Jack's shoulder. “Ready?”
He looked a little nervous, but he nodded. “Yeah. Let's go see them.”
It didn't take them long to find Jack's parents. Villa della Costa was arranged like a wheel, with the Central Market Plaza at the hub and boulevards radiating outward like spokes. The 'Shane refugees lived in a neighborhood at the end of one of these spokes. Their neighborhood consisted of several ramshackle longhouses thrown together with whatever siding and roofing material they could scrounge. They got plenty of odd, or sometimes even hostile, looks from the 'Shanes, for their clothing and skin made them stand out very clearly from the refugees. All of the women had elaborate tattoos on their shoulders, and some people whose gender Rose couldn't guess at had tattoos on their bare scalps. Rose got even more strange looks than the Doctor or Jack, because not a single one of the adults, male, female, or other, was under five foot eight, and most of them were better than six feet.
The poverty of the neighborhood showed not only in their architecture, but in the refugees themselves. None of them seemed to have clothes that fit properly; they mostly seemed to be cast-offs of the type of clothing Rose had seen in other neighborhoods, except for the tasseled vests the men wore. Rose hadn't seen children on the streets in any other part of the city, presumably because it was during school hours, but in this neighborhood there were children underfoot wherever they went. The most chilling sign of what the 'Shanes had gone through were a few refugees who simply sat at street corners, mumbling to themselves and staring at nothing, not even reacting when other people offered them charity.
As soon as they entered the neighborhood, Jack dropped into a 'Shane-flavored accent of the language spoken in this system, which came across to Rose's ears via the TARDIS' translation as British, as opposed to his usual American-sounding drawl. When he asked after Ivory and Collette in this idiom, he got prompt responses. Quite a few people seemed to recognize him from broadcasts on the holonet. “I knew you weren't dirty,” Rose heard some of them say. “Trying to pin every mess on the 'Shanes, that's always the way on O.B.A. Don't let 'em bring you down, son.” Others gave him suspicious glances and crossed to the other side of the street when they saw him. Along the way, one of Jack's admirers gifted him a hat, a dark cap with a sort of translucent cowl that covered his ears and the back of his neck. It clashed terribly with his RAF coat, but a smile lit up his face when he put it on that never quite faded.
One of the people Jack stopped to ask for directions pointed to a nearby longhouse and called it Nicander. The name must have meant something to Jack, because his eyes lit and he dashed off toward the house. Rose and the Doctor followed. There was a gap between two wooden planks in the side of Nicander House that they took for a door, or near enough, and stepped through. The inside of the house was ordered by some internal logic that Jack seemed to immediately understand but that remained utterly inscrutable to Rose. Curtains and drapes in muted yet interesting patterns cordoned the interior of the house into semi-private pigeonholes. Jack weaved among them as easily as Rose might navigate a Tube station. She and the Doctor could barely keep up.
Finally, Jack stopped in front of a curtain patterned in swirls of sand and bone and rustled it. “Come in,” came a voice from inside. He pulled back the curtain to reveal a sort of nest made of bean bags, quilts, and old couch cushions. Against the wall of the longhouse, which in this section was made of corrugated metal, was a set of rickety shelves made of bamboo, plastic rods, and other odds and ends. There were neatly folded clothes, eating utensils, bottles, packs of bandages, a few sheets of nu-paper, and other items Rose couldn't identify. The contents of these shelves were probably all Jack's parents owned, by the look of things. The space was lit by a lump of white material in a bowl which cast a cool glow without heat.
In the corner, a woman taller than Rose but shorter than the Doctor with salt-and-pepper curls framing her face was setting a bucket full of clothing to the floor. A thinner woman with hair cropped at her earlobes lay on her stomach in the soft nest on the floor, writing on a sheaf of nu-paper with a stylus. She set both down when she saw their visitors.
“Nazaire!” The woman in the corner let out a surprised little laugh. “I didn't expect you to be out and about so soon.”
For a moment Rose didn't realize what the woman was talking about, until she realized that Nazaire was yet another name of Jack's. If she found out about any more, she'd start to lose track.
“It's all PR,” said Jack. “It'd be embarrassing to the Time Agency to let me sit in jail when I haven't done anything wrong. They're in enough hot water as it is.”
The other woman sat up in her nest of cushions. “You!” she said, looking at the Doctor.
“Naz,” said the shorter woman, in a tone that was clearly meant to calm her wife, “did you know that we encountered this lady earlier? She was very rude to us.”
The Doctor looked like she might have a biting reply, but Rose laid a placating hand on her forearm, and she kept her peace.
“You'll have to forgive her, mum,” said Jack. “She was upset about what the Time Agency tried to do to me and took out her anger on you. Doctor, Rose, this is my mother, Collette, and this is my madrina, Ivory.”
Neither of the women offered her hand to shake, so in the absence of other courtesies Rose bowed her head. “Nice to meet you.”
“Pleasure,” said the Doctor, her face a neutral mask.
“Who are these two, Naz?” Ivory demanded. “Friends? Colleagues? Lovers, like that fellow of yours who got arrested in your place?”
“They're my friends, and they're nothing like Makarios. He's a traitor, and he'll deserve whatever he gets.”
Collette shook her head. “I still find it incredible that they managed to pin a charge on a Thibadeaux. There was either a lot of good evidence or some powerful people working against him. You're very lucky.”
Rose tried not to let her irritation show. She didn't like the implication Collette was making: that Jack wasn't lucky at all and had concocted a plan to frame Thibadeaux in his place.
“Actually,” said Jack, “he's in his great-aunt's custody right now, over at the Shadow Proclamation. I'm pretty sure she had a hand in the transfer. If she really thinks he's tarnished the family name…” He drew a line across his throat.
It wasn't quite the truth, but it wasn't quite a lie either. Mikaëla had been involved, and she was probably going do a better job of punishing him than the Time Agency would. It seemed to be an answer his parents could accept. “That's the Thibadeaux clan for you,” said Ivory. “They can't even leave criminal justice to the plebes.”
“So are you going to join back up with the Agency?” Collette asked.
Jack stared at her as if she'd asked whether he was planning to join a celibate monastery.
“No need to look so surprised,” said Collette. “I've seen the stories on the holonet. You've been cleared of all charges. They'd probably take you back.”
“Mum, they almost killed me!”
“Do you have another steady, well-paying job lined up, then? The money you sent us every month made a difference for us and for all of Nicander House.”
Jack looked guilty. Their life on the TARDIS was sometimes fun, sometimes breathtaking, and almost always worthwhile, but a steady, well-paying job it wasn't. Rose knew how he felt. When she'd worked at Henrik's, she'd been able to use the money to help her mum pay the bills. She knew Jackie would prefer Rose to be bringing in a reliable paycheck than haring off into time and space with a half-mad alien.
“Hmph,” said Ivory. “I suppose you're planning to go off on some intergalactic jaunt with these two new friends of yours.”
“We've been traveling with your son already,” the Doctor put in, “and he's done a great deal of good in the places we've been. We're not just taking him on some joyride through the stars. He earned a medal in Exta!la, the capital of Zaizúr, just last week.”
“I've never heard of Zaizúr,” said Collette, with not a little skepticism. “Look, Naz. I'm sure you've been having fun with your friends, wherever it is you've been, but don't you think it's time to really do something with your life, something that will make a difference in our community? You did everything you could for Gray. I accept that. But even if you couldn't save him, you can still do something for the 'Shanes. The only other 'Shane on O.B.A. as educated and well-connected as you is Ekozma, the advocate, and he works 12 hours a day and has three children to look after. You're a celebrity, the only 'Shane ever to join the Time Agency. You're known even outside our community.
“We have to run our own schools because the local schools won't take our children. There are diseases here that don't even get treated because everyone on O.B.A. is immune, while we're vulnerable. The local children won't play with ours because they say we're dirty and our tattoos are foul. You can hop off-planet whenever you like, but this is our life, and we can't escape it. You could do something to make it better. Stay, Nazaire. Stay here, where you can do some real good.”
Jack looked miserable. It was obvious to Rose that he cared about his people and hated to see them suffer, but it was equally obvious that he didn't want to stay. Rose didn't want him to stay either, not just because she liked having him around. He would be unhappy living here, even if it did help his family and his people. Jack turned around and gave the Doctor a silent plea with his eyes, but her face was locked into neutral. It was his decision to make, and she wasn't going to give him an out by insisting that he continue traveling with her.
After a silence that felt like it was tearing at its own skin, Jack said, “I can't.” At the looks on his parents' faces, he shook his head. “No. That's not true. I could stay, if I wanted to. I accept responsibility for my choice. This isn't my home. I joined the military when I was fifteen. I was a kid. I saw things and did things no kid should ever have to do. It changed me, mostly in ways I wish it hadn't. Then I got recruited for the Time Agency. I got to travel further than I ever thought was possible, and that changed me too, for better and for worse. I hit rock bottom about a year ago. I won't tell you too much about that, but it didn't so much change me as show me how many terrible changes I'd been through. And then I met the Doctor and Rose, and that…well, I'm not sure you'd understand. But I can't stay here. My place is with them.”
Ivory and Collette looked back at him in stony silence. Rose guessed it was because they didn't want to show their guests how hurt they really were. She wouldn't like to break down crying in front of visitors to her home, either.
“So that's it,” said Ivory, after a time. “You're going to cruise off with your two new friends and your very own timeline tracer. A clean getaway.”
Jack staggered back a step as if his madrina had dealt him a physical blow. “No. Ive, I didn't - this isn't - I promised you,” he said, helplessly. “I thought I could help you, and I couldn't. That's all there is to it.”
“So you're saying you tried to steal it, got caught, and the Time Agency decided it was all your partner's fault and let you walk? Why don't I believe that?” Ivory said acerbically. “I can tell a trash midden by its stink, Nazaire. You haven't told us the whole truth.”
Rose could see the conflict raging within Jack. He could either walk away and let them think he was a criminal, or he could tell them the truth: that he'd decided preserving Time was more important than saving his brother. Which would hurt them more? Did they have a right to know the truth?
She thought about how lucky she was to have Jackie for a mother. The Doctor thought she was a terror. It was true that she disliked the Doctor and wished Rose had chosen a different life. But she believed with all of a mother's conviction that Rose was the most wonderful person in all the world, even if she didn't like some of the choices she'd made. That was unconditional love, as every parent ought to give a child.
Jack seemed to reach a decision. “You're right. I didn't tell you the whole truth. A lot of that was because I didn't know what happened myself. My memories of it are gone. But now I know.” He gritted his teeth for a moment, then all emotion seemed to drain away. He spoke to his parents in a monotone. “My partner and I had a scheme. It was his idea, and I saw it as an opportunity to get Gray back. My part of the plan was recon. I spent over a year running tests on the timeline tracer to find out the best way to teleport it out of the vault unnoticed. I learned about what the timeline tracer could do. It's a weapon. If you don't know what you're doing, it will hurt someone or something, no matter how you mean to use it, for good or bad.” Tears were trickling from the corners of Jack's eyes now, but his voice shook only a little. “I realized that if we used it to save Gray, it could change the course of history in ways none of us could foresee. The whole Boe could have been lost in a paradox. The whole planet could have disappeared, just gone, and no one would have even remembered it existed. I couldn't let that happen. So I backed out. I didn't steal it. My partner did, and he tried to pin it on me. I made my promise to you in good faith, but I broke it, because I didn't see any choice.”
“There's always a choice,” Collette grated. “You can't know it wouldn't have worked. You could have tried.”
“It wasn't worth the risk, mum. Not even for Gray.” Jack choked. The looks on his parents' faces had to be killing him by degrees, but he managed to say, “I'm sorry.”
“Get out,” Ivory said tonelessly. “I don't ever want to see you in Nicander House again.”
Jack looked to his mother in silent appeal. Collette was crying freely, but she folded her arms across her chest and looked away. He was frozen in place, unable to do as his madrina asked.
“Get out,” Ivory repeated.
The Doctor threaded her arm through Jack's. “Come along now, there's a good lad,” she murmured, her voice low and even. “We'll take you home.” She steered him gently toward the curtain and away. Rose left with them.
Once they left Nicander House, Jack pulled away from the Doctor a little, but kept a loose grip on her hand. He barely spoke, only raising his voice to occasionally point out a faster route back to where the TARDIS was parked. Rose wished he would talk, even if it was senseless prattle. She couldn't remember the last time he'd been this quiet. When they got to the TARDIS, he stepped out in front and took out a key, sliding into the lock and turning with slow reverence. Rose's eyes widened, and she looked across at the Doctor. She'd finally given Jack a TARDIS key, just as he deserved.
The Doctor shut the door to the TARDIS behind them, and some sort of tension seemed to drain out of Jack. “Thanks. For taking me,” he said. “It didn't go as I'd - it wasn't - I'm still thankful. Despite everything. Even just seeing all the 'Shanes again meant the world to me.” He let out a shuddering breath. “Can we go to the garden room?”
Rose was glad he invited them along to the garden room. She'd feel like a monster if she left him alone, even if it was what he wanted. They all went to the garden room. Rose and the Doctor sat. “Stay there,” said Jack. “I just need a moment.” He went for a walk through the garden, brushing his fingers against leaves and flower petals as he passed them.
Rose curled her fingers in the grass, and found that it was humming softly, the sensation of music rather than the sound, but music all the same. When Jack returned from his walk, he seemed more focused. He wiped a tear track from his face with the back of his hand, then said, “I can't help the 'Shanes, Doc. Not the way my parents wanted me to, at least. That's not me, and I've accepted that. But there's got to be something. What can we do to help them?”
Characters/Pairings: fem!Nine, Jack, Rose, John Hart, OCs
Rating: Teen
Beta: yamx, who nurtured my prose with patience.
Summary: Who can Jack trust when he can't even trust himself?
Notes: For those who are familiar with the fem!Doctor 'verse, this story is set before section X of " Mad Girl's Love Song." For those unfamiliar, all you need to know is that the Ninth Doctor is female and always has been. Chapters will be posted on a weekly basis.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
For a moment, Jack couldn't think of how the Doctor knew his family. But then he remembered her unexpected appearance at what had nearly been his execution. Rose, though, looked confused.
“I met them today,” the Doctor explained, “while you were, ah…”
“Sitting in a freezer,” Rose finished.
“Right.” She looked briefly chagrined, then moved on. “They said things about you, Jack, that weren't kind. I lost my temper. They thought you stole the timeline tracer.”
“That's because I promised them I would.”
Rose and the Doctor stared at him.
Jack sighed. “Can we go to the garden room? It'll be easier, there.”
The Doctor gave him a thoughtful look. “The TARDIS showed you the garden room?”
He nodded. “My first night here. Couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about what I'd done. I wandered the corridors, and I found it by accident. Or at least, I thought it was an accident at the time. It was a place where I could just… be.”
“All right, then.” The Doctor stood, helped Jack to his feet, and led him and Rose by the hand to the garden room. The grass was reddish, the “sky” gold and cloudless. A bed of daisies stirred in a breeze that seemed to be without source. The Doctor knelt in the grass, Rose sat cross-legged, and Jack lay on his side, propping himself up on one arm. None of them said anything for a while.
“I thought I did it,” Jack said, finally. “I could've done anything during those two years. Afterward, I became a criminal. Wasn't too much of a stretch to think I might have been a criminal then, too. And besides…” He swallowed. This was the hard part, where each word would feel like it had been wrenched from him with a crowbar. This was the part he didn't want to admit even to himself. “I'd dreamed of getting a timeline tracer. Just fantasized about it, never acted on it. I made a terrible mistake when I was a kid, and I've spent most of my life wishing I could go back and change it.”
Rose reached out a hand. “Do you want…?”
Did he want Rose to hold his hand while he relived a memory of letting go of the hand of someone he'd sworn to protect? “No,” said Jack. “Not right now. Though I appreciate the offer.”
Rose seemed to accept this, and let her hand fall to the reddish grass. Jack was grateful. If she had been hurt by his refusal, it would have only made this confession harder. Besides, he didn't want her to feel shy about offering touch again later, when he was ready to say yes. “When I was fourteen, an invasion force called the Hive invaded my planet, Inner Beta Aquarii, sister planet to where we just were. I lived in this little place called the Boeshane Peninsula. It was hit the hardest because it was one of the most densely-populated places on I.B.A. Most of the planet is desert, but the Boe is right on the water.” He laughed bitterly. “When the invasion force hit the Boe, my madrina was on O.B.A., trying to get help, but the rest of us were right in the line of fire.”
He was about to continue, but he saw Rose's confusion and stopped to explain. It was a nice break from the story, anyway. “My father and mother married each other first, and Ivory joined the marriage later on, after they had me. That's why she's called my madrina - our relationship isn't genetic.”
He returned to the story, quickly, before he could lose his nerve. “My father told me to look after my little brother while he went to help my mother.” It was hard to find the words to describe this part, and not only because it hurt so much. His memories were all jumbled images, a chaos so total that it nauseated him just to try to sort through it. He had to pause every few words to gather himself. “We were running - I told him I wouldn't let go of him - but he, he got lost, somehow. I don't know. It all happened so fast. I hid, and prayed he'd made it to safety too. But when I finally got home, my father was dead, and Gray was gone. I've searched for him ever since, and never found a trace. I thought if I had a timeline tracer, I could make it go differently, but I wasn't foolish enough to try to actually steal one myself.”
“Thibadeaux said that he came up with the idea for the heist and offered to let you in on it,” the Doctor supplied.
“Yeah. I guess I must've seen the opportunity to get one and promised my parents I would. It was a chance to redeem myself, to undo what I'd done. And even though what I wanted to do was wrong, I still feel bad for breaking my promise to them. They had one last hope of seeing Gray again, and I took it away from them.”
The Doctor said nothing. She looked like she might be somewhere else, behind her eyes. If she really was the only survivor of the Last Great Time War, then she must have made much greater sacrifices than he had to preserve the integrity of Time. It was a comfort to know they shared that pain, but it was also quietly devastating to see her like this. The Doctor never wore her heart on her sleeve, but her emotions still animated her in their own subtle ways. Now, as Jack's memories brought back her own, it was as if the Doctor had disappeared into some black hole inside herself.
“I think you were really brave,” said Rose. “I know you don't remember it, but it's always harder to choose a lot of lives over one when it means losing someone you love. I know how that feels.”
Jack stared at her. He could understand why the Doctor might empathize with what he was going through, but Rose? Rose, who had never known the black desperation of war, who always seemed to know what was right, had gone through this same trial of guilt and self-recrimination?
“Stop looking at me like that, Jack, you look like a kid who just found out the Easter Bunny's not real. You can't think of me like I'm - like some kind of saint. My dad was supposed to die when I was a baby. I went back and changed that, and it was almost the end of the world.”
“But you couldn't have known,” Jack countered. “I should have known better. I'd been trained in the Time Agency Academy.”
“And you did. You realized it was wrong before it was too late.”
“I shouldn't have tried to do it in the first place! I shouldn't have given my parents false hope. They'd have been better off just accepting that Gray was lost forever.”
“He's your brother, Jack,” said Rose. “It's different with family. You can't think the same way.”
“I'd have done the same for you or the Doctor,” said Jack, the words slipping out before he even realized what they meant. “Maybe I'd have realized that it was stupid and wrong, but if I lost one of you, I'd do anything to get you back. You're not family. I've only known you for - what, less than a month linear? What does that say about me, that I'd do that for people I've just met?”
Rose's eyes were huge, and she looked like she might be holding back tears. The Doctor said, “I haven't done anything to deserve that.” She swallowed, and her eyes, too, were a little too bright. “But I think it says you've a good heart, Captain Jack Harkness.”
Jack's throat constricted. The Doctor had never called him Captain before, or at least never without a sneer - she'd always said he'd never earned the title. Now, of course, she knew he had. But it was more than that. The Doctor wouldn't care if the Time Agency thought he was worthy of captaincy. She wouldn't care no matter what titles he'd earned or honors he'd won. She measured by her own standard.
“It just isn't fair,” he managed to say. “I made the right choice, the moral choice, for once in my life. So why do I feel like crap?”
“Only monsters never feel guilt, Jack.” The Doctor snorted, but there was no real humor in it. “I saved the universe from being overrun by the Daleks and I ended up catatonic in Mikaëla's backyard.”
Rose looked wide-eyed and a little frightened, which made Jack wonder just how much she knew about the Doctor's part in the Last Great Time War. Whatever that knowledge was, he wished she didn't have to bear the burden of it. “How did she know what to do with you? You just appeared there, and you were - I mean, I can't imagine - ”
“There's no way she couldn't've known what was happening,” said the Doctor, her voice a monotone. “After the end, once my body and the TARDIS had repaired themselves, I couldn't go anywhere near sentient life forms. Would've hurt too much. I wandered through empty places - just beyond the event horizons of black holes, time pockets a second out of sync with the rest of the universe, anywhere that wasn't within a thousand light-years of sentient life. My brain had just healed itself, and staying away from thinking beings kept my telepathic senses dormant.” She tapped her temple. “Then I crash-landed right in the middle of Camp Thibadeaux, Mikaëla's autumn retreat on Eta Kappa. Or that's what she calls it, any road, but it's more like a miniature fortress. Mikaëla's idea of a vacation is to keep on doing her work, but with nicer scenery. Don't think it was an accident, though, looking back. The TARDIS must've been sick of me by then.”
“I'd met Mikaëla a few times before, on Shadow Proclamation business. We were on good terms, I suppose - of which I'm glad, because otherwise, I don't know what she'd've done with me. I fell out of the TARDIS, and my telepathy just went out of control. Mikaëla's a fair telepath herself; she didn't even need to touch me to see what was happening. It was the psychic equivalent of having someone bleed to death at her feet.”
Jack winced. How had it felt for the Doctor, to be psychically bleeding to death in front of someone he'd met only a few times and probably barely trusted?
“She put me in a room shielded against telepathic incursion, but that didn't help. It wasn't what my telepathy was picking up on that made me that way. It was what I wasn't sensing. No Time Lords anywhere. Emptiness.” She tapped her temple again.
Jack inclined his head in acknowledgment. He understood that, at least a little. When he'd first woken up with two years of his memory missing, he'd gone a little crazy. He'd torn up his quarters, ransacking everything he had for some trace of the two years he'd just lived. There had been changes and new belongings, of course, but they'd meant nothing, as if they'd been put there by a stranger. He hadn't known who he was anymore.
The Doctor gave a wry smile. “That's when she tried the frozen katamarite. That gave me time to put my mind back together, but it didn't mean I was thinking clearly. I hadn't changed out of the clothes I'd been wearing when the war ended. I wanted to remind myself. Punish myself, really. That's why I wouldn't cut my hair or eat anything more than the bare minimum to stay alive. I thought it was what I deserved. Mikaëla disagreed. She threw out my old rags and cut my hair while I was sleeping. I didn't want to be her charity case and got angry. Slammed the door in her face and never looked back. I wasn't ready to be traveling on my own, not really, but at least I was letting myself live.”
“And that's when you met Rose,” Jack said.
“That's when I met Rose.”
Rose smiled. She looked almost embarrassed by the note in the Doctor's voice. Jack would have felt the same if the Doctor had spoken of him that way, he was sure. He suddenly felt certain that he wasn't wrong to place the Doctor and Rose in the same esteem as his family. This was how families were supposed to be. They saw the best in each other, the hidden goodness that most people never even saw in themselves. Ivory and Collette only saw the worst in Jack. While the Doctor and Rose had forgiven him for his terrible mistake with the Chula ambulance in less than a month, his parents still hadn't forgiven him all these years later for a mistake he'd made as a child. The knowledge gave him the strength he needed to face them again.
“I want to see them,” Jack said. “They never got the chance to watch me grow up. I was only fifteen when I joined the military, and that's all they really know of me. I want to give them a chance to see who I've become. Maybe they still won't see it, but I have to try.”
“All right then,” the Doctor said. “But we've got to stop by the Time Agency first.” She nodded at Jack's wrist. “We've got to get that chip out of your wrist. Could take it out myself, but I thought you might prefer not to be a fugitive every time you run into the Time Agency in the 51st century.”
“They put a chip in your wrist?” said Rose. “Aren't you ever going to be free of those people?”
“Jack hadn't been acquitted yet when I went to fetch him. Had to post bail. The Time Agency likes to keep its prisoners under surveillance. We'll land when he's due to report back to Internal Affairs.”
Rose said, “How do you know you'll land on time?” That earned her a glare from the Doctor. “Sorry, but you've got a bad track record.”
“We're going to land on time because Jack is going to help me fly the TARDIS,” the Doctor said.
Jack might have fallen over if he hadn't already been stretched out on the ground. “Huh?”
“You've been watching me fly her. You've been helping with repairs. The TARDIS likes you. We'll start simple this time, just a few auxiliary navigation functions, and work up. You'll be perfectly capable if we take it a step at a time.”
“Uh, if she's all right with it, then sure,” said Jack, awed. He no longer doubted the Doctor's trust in him, but it took more than just trust to help pilot the TARDIS. It took technical competence, mastery of space-time navigation, and clever improvisation, all traits Jack knew he had, but the Doctor had always dismissed. “How'd you like to have my hands all over your console, old girl?” He could feel an almost ticklish vibration rise up from the grass itself, and he couldn't quite hold back a giddy laugh. “I'll take that as a yes.”
Piloting the TARDIS with Jack at her side exceeded all of the Doctor's expectations. He did a small job - guiding the TARDIS' calculations of a subset of 4-dimensional vectors - but it was a crucial one, and he did it well. When it came to the TARDIS, it took more than just smarts to be a good pilot, though Jack had those in spades. It took the kind of intuitive touch that could only come from a rapport with ships in general and the TARDIS in particular. All in all, the Doctor should have realized much sooner how much the TARDIS liked Jack. Maybe then she would have given him the trust he deserved.
They landed in a public garden near the Time Agency ten minutes before Jack was supposed to show. “We could've landed her right on top of the teleport deck in Internal Affairs,” the Doctor said as they strolled through the ethereally-scented garden, “but I don't want the Time Agency to lay eyes on her, or they'll start getting ideas.”
A dozen security protocols later, they were back at the floating front desk in the reception area of Internal Affairs. It looked different this time, though. A holographic marquee hovered over the front desk, scrolling across messages like “All adjudicants, please report to your assigned magistrates” and “Time Agency employees are requested not to comment to the media on recent events”.
The Doctor recognized the secretary with four eyes who'd stopped Jack's execution before it was too late. “Reporting in with Shaylin Sel-Ahn,” the Doctor announced. “Has he been cleared of all charges yet?”
“One moment, please, while I call up his file.” The secretary looked down at her console for a moment. “Doctor Jane Doe? You paid his bail, correct?”
“That's me.”
The secretary made a displeased humming sound with the gauzy membranes that flowed down her back like a gossamer cloak. “Dr. Doe, we lost signal from Sel-Ahn's chip barely twenty minutes after you escorted him from this facility. I require that you - ”
The Doctor leaned across the gleaming chrome surface of the desk. “Has he been cleared of all charges?”
“The magistrates have reconsidered their decision, yes, but - ”
“You were less than ten minutes away from killing an innocent man, and now you reprimand him for what he chooses to do with his reprieve from a jail sentence he never deserved in the first place? Give me his release forms, now.”
“How are we to know that he did not violate the terms of his - ”
“How am I to know that you're not going to lock him up again for no reason? The release forms.”
The gauze along the secretary's back flattened to invisibility. “Very well. I will consult my superiors.” She tapped out a few commands into her console, focused on it intently for a few moments, then looked at the Doctor with her top set of eyes. “My superiors have given me the authority to allow Sel-Ahn's release. I cannot, however, return your bail. The credits were automatically sequestered when we lost signal from Sel-Ahn's chip.”
The Doctor folded her arms across the front edge of the desk. “Fine.”
The secretary gave her a sheet of nu-paper and a stylus. The Doctor started filling out the form - she'd love to see the look on their faces when they saw she'd put down Mikaëla as her reference of good character - and heard Jack whisper in her ear, “That's 950,000 credits they're taking from you! You don't have to do this, Doc. I can wait another night in prison if it'll get your money back.”
Never setting down her stylus, the Doctor said, “You won't spend another night in a cell, lad. Your mental health's worth more to me than a bunch of credits.”
“That's not a bunch! That's a small fortune! My parents probably earn 100 credits a fortnight at most.”
Ah. So that was it. Jack's parents were refugees from the Hive's invasion of the Boe. Life was never easy for refugees on a strange planet. He was thinking of what his parents would be able to do with 950,000 credits. “Not making any promises, but I may be able to do something for your people. Just let me do this for you first.”
Jack looked conflicted, but Rose laid a hand on his arm and murmured something in his ear the Doctor couldn't make out. Finally, he nodded, and the Doctor passed the form over to him to finish. He raised his eyebrows at a few of her answers on the form, but finished without further objections. The secretary put the form face down on a scan plate and sent it for processing.
“While we wait,” the Doctor said, feigning a conversational tone, “whatever happened to Makarios Thibadeaux?” She could see Jack and Rose perk up at that.
“The Shadow Proclamation claimed jurisdiction over his case as part of their ongoing investigation into 'the Gallows',” the secretary informed them primly. Judging by the invisible scare quotes around “the Gallows”, the Time Agency's official position was still one of denial of wrongdoing. “He is no longer in our custody.”
The Doctor hid a smile behind her hand. She'd suspected that her promise to Makarios would turn out to be little more than a formality. What Mikaëla wanted to know, she found out, one way or another.
There was a quiet chime from the secretary's console. She looked at Jack. “Hold out your forearm, please.” Jack laid his chipped arm on the desk. The secretary took out what looked like a wide rubber band and put it over Jack's wrist. The band tightened around his wrist and writhed like a living thing. Jack grimaced a little at the sensation. After about a minute, the band fell off his wrist, the chip embedded in its inner surface.
The Doctor clasped Jack's shoulder. “Ready?”
He looked a little nervous, but he nodded. “Yeah. Let's go see them.”
It didn't take them long to find Jack's parents. Villa della Costa was arranged like a wheel, with the Central Market Plaza at the hub and boulevards radiating outward like spokes. The 'Shane refugees lived in a neighborhood at the end of one of these spokes. Their neighborhood consisted of several ramshackle longhouses thrown together with whatever siding and roofing material they could scrounge. They got plenty of odd, or sometimes even hostile, looks from the 'Shanes, for their clothing and skin made them stand out very clearly from the refugees. All of the women had elaborate tattoos on their shoulders, and some people whose gender Rose couldn't guess at had tattoos on their bare scalps. Rose got even more strange looks than the Doctor or Jack, because not a single one of the adults, male, female, or other, was under five foot eight, and most of them were better than six feet.
The poverty of the neighborhood showed not only in their architecture, but in the refugees themselves. None of them seemed to have clothes that fit properly; they mostly seemed to be cast-offs of the type of clothing Rose had seen in other neighborhoods, except for the tasseled vests the men wore. Rose hadn't seen children on the streets in any other part of the city, presumably because it was during school hours, but in this neighborhood there were children underfoot wherever they went. The most chilling sign of what the 'Shanes had gone through were a few refugees who simply sat at street corners, mumbling to themselves and staring at nothing, not even reacting when other people offered them charity.
As soon as they entered the neighborhood, Jack dropped into a 'Shane-flavored accent of the language spoken in this system, which came across to Rose's ears via the TARDIS' translation as British, as opposed to his usual American-sounding drawl. When he asked after Ivory and Collette in this idiom, he got prompt responses. Quite a few people seemed to recognize him from broadcasts on the holonet. “I knew you weren't dirty,” Rose heard some of them say. “Trying to pin every mess on the 'Shanes, that's always the way on O.B.A. Don't let 'em bring you down, son.” Others gave him suspicious glances and crossed to the other side of the street when they saw him. Along the way, one of Jack's admirers gifted him a hat, a dark cap with a sort of translucent cowl that covered his ears and the back of his neck. It clashed terribly with his RAF coat, but a smile lit up his face when he put it on that never quite faded.
One of the people Jack stopped to ask for directions pointed to a nearby longhouse and called it Nicander. The name must have meant something to Jack, because his eyes lit and he dashed off toward the house. Rose and the Doctor followed. There was a gap between two wooden planks in the side of Nicander House that they took for a door, or near enough, and stepped through. The inside of the house was ordered by some internal logic that Jack seemed to immediately understand but that remained utterly inscrutable to Rose. Curtains and drapes in muted yet interesting patterns cordoned the interior of the house into semi-private pigeonholes. Jack weaved among them as easily as Rose might navigate a Tube station. She and the Doctor could barely keep up.
Finally, Jack stopped in front of a curtain patterned in swirls of sand and bone and rustled it. “Come in,” came a voice from inside. He pulled back the curtain to reveal a sort of nest made of bean bags, quilts, and old couch cushions. Against the wall of the longhouse, which in this section was made of corrugated metal, was a set of rickety shelves made of bamboo, plastic rods, and other odds and ends. There were neatly folded clothes, eating utensils, bottles, packs of bandages, a few sheets of nu-paper, and other items Rose couldn't identify. The contents of these shelves were probably all Jack's parents owned, by the look of things. The space was lit by a lump of white material in a bowl which cast a cool glow without heat.
In the corner, a woman taller than Rose but shorter than the Doctor with salt-and-pepper curls framing her face was setting a bucket full of clothing to the floor. A thinner woman with hair cropped at her earlobes lay on her stomach in the soft nest on the floor, writing on a sheaf of nu-paper with a stylus. She set both down when she saw their visitors.
“Nazaire!” The woman in the corner let out a surprised little laugh. “I didn't expect you to be out and about so soon.”
For a moment Rose didn't realize what the woman was talking about, until she realized that Nazaire was yet another name of Jack's. If she found out about any more, she'd start to lose track.
“It's all PR,” said Jack. “It'd be embarrassing to the Time Agency to let me sit in jail when I haven't done anything wrong. They're in enough hot water as it is.”
The other woman sat up in her nest of cushions. “You!” she said, looking at the Doctor.
“Naz,” said the shorter woman, in a tone that was clearly meant to calm her wife, “did you know that we encountered this lady earlier? She was very rude to us.”
The Doctor looked like she might have a biting reply, but Rose laid a placating hand on her forearm, and she kept her peace.
“You'll have to forgive her, mum,” said Jack. “She was upset about what the Time Agency tried to do to me and took out her anger on you. Doctor, Rose, this is my mother, Collette, and this is my madrina, Ivory.”
Neither of the women offered her hand to shake, so in the absence of other courtesies Rose bowed her head. “Nice to meet you.”
“Pleasure,” said the Doctor, her face a neutral mask.
“Who are these two, Naz?” Ivory demanded. “Friends? Colleagues? Lovers, like that fellow of yours who got arrested in your place?”
“They're my friends, and they're nothing like Makarios. He's a traitor, and he'll deserve whatever he gets.”
Collette shook her head. “I still find it incredible that they managed to pin a charge on a Thibadeaux. There was either a lot of good evidence or some powerful people working against him. You're very lucky.”
Rose tried not to let her irritation show. She didn't like the implication Collette was making: that Jack wasn't lucky at all and had concocted a plan to frame Thibadeaux in his place.
“Actually,” said Jack, “he's in his great-aunt's custody right now, over at the Shadow Proclamation. I'm pretty sure she had a hand in the transfer. If she really thinks he's tarnished the family name…” He drew a line across his throat.
It wasn't quite the truth, but it wasn't quite a lie either. Mikaëla had been involved, and she was probably going do a better job of punishing him than the Time Agency would. It seemed to be an answer his parents could accept. “That's the Thibadeaux clan for you,” said Ivory. “They can't even leave criminal justice to the plebes.”
“So are you going to join back up with the Agency?” Collette asked.
Jack stared at her as if she'd asked whether he was planning to join a celibate monastery.
“No need to look so surprised,” said Collette. “I've seen the stories on the holonet. You've been cleared of all charges. They'd probably take you back.”
“Mum, they almost killed me!”
“Do you have another steady, well-paying job lined up, then? The money you sent us every month made a difference for us and for all of Nicander House.”
Jack looked guilty. Their life on the TARDIS was sometimes fun, sometimes breathtaking, and almost always worthwhile, but a steady, well-paying job it wasn't. Rose knew how he felt. When she'd worked at Henrik's, she'd been able to use the money to help her mum pay the bills. She knew Jackie would prefer Rose to be bringing in a reliable paycheck than haring off into time and space with a half-mad alien.
“Hmph,” said Ivory. “I suppose you're planning to go off on some intergalactic jaunt with these two new friends of yours.”
“We've been traveling with your son already,” the Doctor put in, “and he's done a great deal of good in the places we've been. We're not just taking him on some joyride through the stars. He earned a medal in Exta!la, the capital of Zaizúr, just last week.”
“I've never heard of Zaizúr,” said Collette, with not a little skepticism. “Look, Naz. I'm sure you've been having fun with your friends, wherever it is you've been, but don't you think it's time to really do something with your life, something that will make a difference in our community? You did everything you could for Gray. I accept that. But even if you couldn't save him, you can still do something for the 'Shanes. The only other 'Shane on O.B.A. as educated and well-connected as you is Ekozma, the advocate, and he works 12 hours a day and has three children to look after. You're a celebrity, the only 'Shane ever to join the Time Agency. You're known even outside our community.
“We have to run our own schools because the local schools won't take our children. There are diseases here that don't even get treated because everyone on O.B.A. is immune, while we're vulnerable. The local children won't play with ours because they say we're dirty and our tattoos are foul. You can hop off-planet whenever you like, but this is our life, and we can't escape it. You could do something to make it better. Stay, Nazaire. Stay here, where you can do some real good.”
Jack looked miserable. It was obvious to Rose that he cared about his people and hated to see them suffer, but it was equally obvious that he didn't want to stay. Rose didn't want him to stay either, not just because she liked having him around. He would be unhappy living here, even if it did help his family and his people. Jack turned around and gave the Doctor a silent plea with his eyes, but her face was locked into neutral. It was his decision to make, and she wasn't going to give him an out by insisting that he continue traveling with her.
After a silence that felt like it was tearing at its own skin, Jack said, “I can't.” At the looks on his parents' faces, he shook his head. “No. That's not true. I could stay, if I wanted to. I accept responsibility for my choice. This isn't my home. I joined the military when I was fifteen. I was a kid. I saw things and did things no kid should ever have to do. It changed me, mostly in ways I wish it hadn't. Then I got recruited for the Time Agency. I got to travel further than I ever thought was possible, and that changed me too, for better and for worse. I hit rock bottom about a year ago. I won't tell you too much about that, but it didn't so much change me as show me how many terrible changes I'd been through. And then I met the Doctor and Rose, and that…well, I'm not sure you'd understand. But I can't stay here. My place is with them.”
Ivory and Collette looked back at him in stony silence. Rose guessed it was because they didn't want to show their guests how hurt they really were. She wouldn't like to break down crying in front of visitors to her home, either.
“So that's it,” said Ivory, after a time. “You're going to cruise off with your two new friends and your very own timeline tracer. A clean getaway.”
Jack staggered back a step as if his madrina had dealt him a physical blow. “No. Ive, I didn't - this isn't - I promised you,” he said, helplessly. “I thought I could help you, and I couldn't. That's all there is to it.”
“So you're saying you tried to steal it, got caught, and the Time Agency decided it was all your partner's fault and let you walk? Why don't I believe that?” Ivory said acerbically. “I can tell a trash midden by its stink, Nazaire. You haven't told us the whole truth.”
Rose could see the conflict raging within Jack. He could either walk away and let them think he was a criminal, or he could tell them the truth: that he'd decided preserving Time was more important than saving his brother. Which would hurt them more? Did they have a right to know the truth?
She thought about how lucky she was to have Jackie for a mother. The Doctor thought she was a terror. It was true that she disliked the Doctor and wished Rose had chosen a different life. But she believed with all of a mother's conviction that Rose was the most wonderful person in all the world, even if she didn't like some of the choices she'd made. That was unconditional love, as every parent ought to give a child.
Jack seemed to reach a decision. “You're right. I didn't tell you the whole truth. A lot of that was because I didn't know what happened myself. My memories of it are gone. But now I know.” He gritted his teeth for a moment, then all emotion seemed to drain away. He spoke to his parents in a monotone. “My partner and I had a scheme. It was his idea, and I saw it as an opportunity to get Gray back. My part of the plan was recon. I spent over a year running tests on the timeline tracer to find out the best way to teleport it out of the vault unnoticed. I learned about what the timeline tracer could do. It's a weapon. If you don't know what you're doing, it will hurt someone or something, no matter how you mean to use it, for good or bad.” Tears were trickling from the corners of Jack's eyes now, but his voice shook only a little. “I realized that if we used it to save Gray, it could change the course of history in ways none of us could foresee. The whole Boe could have been lost in a paradox. The whole planet could have disappeared, just gone, and no one would have even remembered it existed. I couldn't let that happen. So I backed out. I didn't steal it. My partner did, and he tried to pin it on me. I made my promise to you in good faith, but I broke it, because I didn't see any choice.”
“There's always a choice,” Collette grated. “You can't know it wouldn't have worked. You could have tried.”
“It wasn't worth the risk, mum. Not even for Gray.” Jack choked. The looks on his parents' faces had to be killing him by degrees, but he managed to say, “I'm sorry.”
“Get out,” Ivory said tonelessly. “I don't ever want to see you in Nicander House again.”
Jack looked to his mother in silent appeal. Collette was crying freely, but she folded her arms across her chest and looked away. He was frozen in place, unable to do as his madrina asked.
“Get out,” Ivory repeated.
The Doctor threaded her arm through Jack's. “Come along now, there's a good lad,” she murmured, her voice low and even. “We'll take you home.” She steered him gently toward the curtain and away. Rose left with them.
Once they left Nicander House, Jack pulled away from the Doctor a little, but kept a loose grip on her hand. He barely spoke, only raising his voice to occasionally point out a faster route back to where the TARDIS was parked. Rose wished he would talk, even if it was senseless prattle. She couldn't remember the last time he'd been this quiet. When they got to the TARDIS, he stepped out in front and took out a key, sliding into the lock and turning with slow reverence. Rose's eyes widened, and she looked across at the Doctor. She'd finally given Jack a TARDIS key, just as he deserved.
The Doctor shut the door to the TARDIS behind them, and some sort of tension seemed to drain out of Jack. “Thanks. For taking me,” he said. “It didn't go as I'd - it wasn't - I'm still thankful. Despite everything. Even just seeing all the 'Shanes again meant the world to me.” He let out a shuddering breath. “Can we go to the garden room?”
Rose was glad he invited them along to the garden room. She'd feel like a monster if she left him alone, even if it was what he wanted. They all went to the garden room. Rose and the Doctor sat. “Stay there,” said Jack. “I just need a moment.” He went for a walk through the garden, brushing his fingers against leaves and flower petals as he passed them.
Rose curled her fingers in the grass, and found that it was humming softly, the sensation of music rather than the sound, but music all the same. When Jack returned from his walk, he seemed more focused. He wiped a tear track from his face with the back of his hand, then said, “I can't help the 'Shanes, Doc. Not the way my parents wanted me to, at least. That's not me, and I've accepted that. But there's got to be something. What can we do to help them?”