Belonging: Chapter Eight
You can breathe again now, I'm back, and here is the new chapter you've all been waiting for ;)
Title: Belonging - Chapter Eight
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Characters Jack/Ten (of sorts), mentions of Jack/Ianto
Rating: This Chapter - R for adult situations and language (Series is rated NC-17 overall)
Spoilers: TW: Cyberwoman, Dead Man Walking / DW: The Stolen Earth, Journey's End
Disclaimer: The BBC own it all, the little tinkers
Warnings: boykissing | angst | hurt with no comfort
Description:
Set immediately after the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.
The Torchwood team members are struggling to get back to normal after recent shattering events, when the Doctor turns up in the Torchwood Hub in the middle of the night; alone, heartbroken, guilt-ridden, and needing somewhere to belong.
"Haven't you stopped to think, just for one moment, that while you're in here hiding from the universe like some scared kid, people are out there dying?"
Chapter Eight
It was with a spring in my step and a jaunty tune being hummed under my breath that I made my way downstairs to the basement storage bay, to visit the Doctor again. It had been five days since I'd seen the Time Lord, and I'd missed him sorely. There had been no urgent messages left on the vortex manipulator, and I was pretty sure the Doctor would have contacted me if he felt he needed to, so I figured he must have been okay. At least now I had Ianto's blessing to spend time with him again, as long as I didn't let it interfere with our own relationship.
Life was good.
I pushed the TARDIS doors open (and the good old girl automatically let me in with a welcoming hum) to see the Doctor hunched over on the seat near the console, his journal rested in the crook of one arm as he wrote inside with his neat copperplate handwriting. He was sticking the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth with concentration.
"Hey, you." My voice rang out loudly. The Doctor looked up, as if he hadn't noticed me come in.
"Oh, hello! Won't be a sec..." he finished writing the last few words with a flourish and closed the book, the pages meeting with a soft thump. He pushed the quill into the inside pocket of his jacket. It looked too long to fit in there, but somehow I suspected that the Doctor's pockets were bigger on the inside.
"It's been a while," I said. Only five days, actually, but it felt like ages since I'd last been to see him. I thought he looked quite perky, though. "How are you feeling?" I asked warmly.
"Hmm? Yeah... not bad, thanks. Been busy." The Doctor sounded distracted. He was gazing down at his closed journal, deep in thought. I'd just noticed that the tatty leather cover was coloured the same shade of blue as the TARDIS. In fact, it looked almost like a stylised representation of the panels making up the exterior Police Box. Cute.
"What are you writing in there, anyway?" I said curiously.
The Doctor shrugged. "Just an account of... y'know. Places I've been, things I've done."
I smiled. "Thinking of publishing your memoirs?" Now, that would be the science fiction bestseller of the century.
The Doctor looked like he was indeed thinking about it, for a moment. "No, not really. It's for... well, it's not for anyone, really. Not any more. I just thought I might as well write it anyway. Gives me something to do, I suppose." He scratched his ear, the way he always did when he felt pushed into talking about something when he'd rather not.
I didn't have much of an idea as to what he was talking about, but I'd learnt recently that to get the Doctor to explain what he meant either rendered him feeling confused and irritable, or made him launch into a long, complicated speech at a hundred miles an hour, which made even less sense. So I just nodded and smiled.
His face lit up suddenly. "Oh, I forgot! I'm glad you're here."
"Yeah, I missed you too," I said with a smile. I joined him on the seat, trying not to sit on his journal.
But the Doctor shook his head. "No, not… Well... yes, that, but... I had something to tell you."
"Oh?"
"Yes!" He looked quite excited. "Your Weevils. I know what species they really are, and where they come from."
I stared at him. "But... how? I mean, you haven't even seen them, have you...?" I felt a bit worried. He hadn't sneaked down to the cells without me knowing, had he?
He shook his head. "No, no, but I talked to them. The one you call Mildred. And... what's the other one, Janet is it?" He shook his head, half-amused. "They quite like that, by the way. Those silly names you give them."
I ignored the less important issue of whether the Weevils approved of their adopted names or not, and shook my head impatiently. "You spoke to the Weevils?"
"Yes. Well, not spoke. I could hear them, in my head, faintly. So I reached out to them from here. Telepathically, I mean." He spoke like he was explaining something grown-up and complicated to a child.
I stared at him. The Doctor stood up and faced the console, and after swinging the monitor towards him, began tapping rapidly on a small keyboard. "So I asked them a few questions, did a bit of research..." he continued excitedly. A dizzying array of images and information flashed up on the screen, some of it in complicated Gallifreyan symbols I had no hope of ever being able to decipher.
"Doctor," I tried to interrupt.
"They aren't just to be found in Cardiff, y'know; in the 1930's there were sightings of them in New York, all hushed up by Torchwood, of course. But, even more interestingly, they first turned up on Earth in 4th century Byzantium. Wonder how they got there..." he was stroking his chin, oblivious to my attempts to attract his attention. "Your lot simply come through the space-time rift, that's how they end up in Cardiff... but of course you knew that."
His fingers flicked over the keyboard, bringing up more data. Shockingly, I began to recognise some of the images and written reports flashing up on the screen.
"They're actually rather complex creatures, you know. Not the brightest buttons in the box, but they have a recognised family structure, exhibit territorial behaviour, that kind of thing. And they're time-sensitive... which is probably why they could feel me, all the way down here. I think maybe the TARDIS has been making them a bit jittery of late..."
"Doctor," I tried to interrupt him again, but he was in full flow.
"The newest one you keep here, the one you called Mildred, she came up to the surface because she was scared, was feeling a bit aggressive I'm afraid; her child wandered off, must have been picked up by someone or something... and she said something about... difficult to understand, but there's been a bit of disquiet within their community lately, they say the... King has gone missing from their hearts? I wonder if they mean your Owen Harper, it said here something about..."
"Doctor!" I almost yelled into his ear. I had stood up and was standing right next to him. At last he stopped chattering and looked at me, an expression of surprise on his face.
I jabbed my finger at the screen. "Those are Torchwood files," I said incredulously.
The Doctor blinked. "Yes, of course they are, how else would I..."
"Confidential, password-protected, heavily encoded, authorised access-only Torchwood files." I folded my arms angrily.
"Yes. Well…the TARDIS just... it was easy enough for her to..." he looked a little uncomfortable now.
"What the hell gave you the right to hack into my computer system?"
"I didn't think you'd mind." The Doctor was blinking rapidly.
"Well, I do!"
"But, Jack..." he took a step back, obviously feeling uneasy.
"'But, Jack' what?"
He raised upturned hands. "I thought... well, it didn't seem right that you were keeping them here against their will. But having looked into what's happened to them in the past when they've been exposed to humans, I suppose it is for their own safety..."
"'It didn't seem right'...? Doctor, regardless of how you feel about the way we run things here, it has absolutely nothing to do with you!"
The Doctor looked like a child being chastised. He stuck his hands in his pockets defensively. "I was trying to help... I thought if I could find out what species they are, where they come from, maybe we could find out how to send them back to their own world, only..."
"You thought what?"
"Well, yes, only I found out after talking to them that they like it here on Earth, they come through the rift on purpose to get away from their own planet. I thought you might have asked them this sort of stuff yourself, I mean the TARDIS has given you every opportunity..."
I ran my fingers through my hair with frustration and turned away from the Doctor before I did something I might regret.
I started pacing around the console. "So let me get this straight. You disapprove of the way we operate here at Torchwood, so you took it upon yourself to hack into highly confidential files in an attempt to find a way of doing things better?"
His voice was quiet. "Not better, as such, just... I was trying to help… trying to please you. I thought you'd want to do the best you could for them. You've felt differently about them recently, because you can hear them, understand them. I could tell. I thought you might want to know, that's all. They're from a planet called..."
"I don't want to know!" I hissed. "We've spent all this time calling them Weevils, dealing with them how we think best, and you turn up and start... interfering."
"I wasn't..."
"Yes, Doctor. Interfering. I guess old habits die hard, huh?" I glared at him. I could feel my face burning.
The Doctor looked down at the floor. "That's not fair," he muttered.
"No, and it's not fair that you come here and start taking the moral high ground, prying into things that don't concern you. We keep those Weevils here to protect human life, and for their own safety. Because when humans encounter something that scares them, that they don't understand... well, you know what happens."
There was no response.
"That's what we're here for. We do the best we can, Doctor. We're not here to save the universe. That used to be your job, remember?"
The Doctor still wasn't looking at me. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
"And just because you've decided that's not your job any more, then it doesn't give you the right to start poking your nose into ours!"
"I wasn't... I mean, the Weevil thing was incidental, really. I was just..." the Doctor looked upset. If I wasn't so mad at him, I would have been feeling guilty by now.
"You were just what?"
The Doctor shrugged. He looked up at the ceiling to avoid meeting my eyes. "I was trying to... learn. Find out... well, everything."
"Find out about Torchwood?" I thought back to some of the comments he'd made recently, mentioning things he shouldn't have known about unless I'd told him. I'd assumed I'd revealed things during some of our chats but simply couldn't remember, but now I realised he'd been hacking into our confidential files for a long time. That's how he'd known things about Tosh, about Owen... about Ianto and how we'd had to deal with Lisa.
The Cyberwoman hidden in the basement; the dark, guilty secret.
Irony is a funny thing.
"You've been reading our files for ages, haven't you? For as long as you've been here!" I was trying to keep my voice steady.
"No," said the Doctor in a pleading tone. "Not at first. Just when I realised... well, the TARDIS knew before I did..."
"Knew what? Realised what? Doctor, you speak in riddles, and it frustrates the hell out of me sometimes!"
The Doctor took a deep breath. "You told me that when I worked out what I needed, what I need to get better, that I should tell you. You said you wanted to be the first person to know. Well, as it happens, the TARDIS knew before I did."
I rested my hands on my hips. "Go on," I said, as calmly as I could.
"It took me a while to realise myself, because this is such a big thing for me, this… it's not something I could accept at first. It… scares me."
He swallowed.
"So… like I've always said, knowledge... learning as much as you can, is half your problem solved, so I… that's when I started looking into your files. I wanted to know everything."
"Everything about Torchwood?"
"No, no, not as such. I mean, some of it is terribly interesting, of course. Most of it was… I can't say I approve of a lot of what has gone on here over the last century or so, but that's hardly your fault. By the way, I'm mentioned in your files quite a bit, did you know?"
I glared at him impatiently.
"Right. Well, anyway, that aside, I started looking into… the more recent records. From when you took over as leader, I mean. The Millennium, wasn't it? It seems you more or less started Torchwood Three again from scratch on the first of January 2000."
I nodded shortly. Every Torchwood team member but me was dead by the time it struck midnight. The memory of it still horrified me.
"And… well, you used to tell me that you'd changed Torchwood after the battle of Canary Wharf, rebuilt it in my honour. And I was always a bit sceptical, I know, but you do good things. I know that now. And sometimes, even if you deal with something in a way that… I couldn't, I know you always try to do your best. Not using guns would be preferable, but you can't have everything I suppose…"
"Doctor, is this going anywhere?"
"Yes, yes." He started running fingers through his hair anxiously.
"So, you wanted to learn everything about how I run things here in Torchwood."
"Well… at first, yes. You spend so much of your life here, well, pretty much all of it. Torchwood is your life. So it seemed the logical place to start."
I nodded, needing more.
"It was the easiest way to learn everything about you."
I blinked. "Everything about me?"
"Yes. That's why I needed… well, wanted… to spend so much time with you recently, I wanted to get to know you. Properly. Not just..." he waved hands in the air abstractly, "not just as... travelling companions."
I frowned. "Why?"
"Because that's what I need," the Doctor said impatiently, as though my questions were pointless and beginning to irritate him.
"Doctor… I… oh, this is driving me mad…" I started to pace around the TARDIS console room again.
"You're talking and talking, and you're still not telling me what I need to know," I muttered, frustrated beyond measure. "Are you deliberately being vague, or am I just an idiot?"
The Doctor approached me. I stopped pacing and stood still, my arms folded. He drew near, came right up to me, and with a determined look, cupped my face in his hands, the way I had done to him many times. He'd never mirrored the gesture until now.
To my utter surprise, the Doctor leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. It wasn't passionate or particularly skilled, but firm and with meaning.
He pulled back and we stared at each other in silence; both of us wide-eyed; me with shock, and the Doctor with a desperate need for me to understand, without him having to speak any more useless words.
"It's you. You're what I need, Jack…" he whispered at last.
Oh God, oh my fucking God…
My arms unfurled from their folded position, simply because all my strength had left me.
He was so close I could feel both of his rapidly beating hearts against my own chest. He wrapped his arms around my neck and thrust his face against my shoulder again, the way he had when he'd cried such bitter, desperate tears and I'd comforted him, all those weeks ago; comforted him lovingly and willingly and never really dreamt…
My arms, hanging loosely by my sides, seemed to return his embrace of their own accord. I wrapped my arms around the Doctor's slim waist, clutching him to me as though I needed him to anchor me to the ground.
My head was spinning. I wanted to say something, anything, but my mouth wouldn't form any words.
I felt the heat of the Doctor's reddened face leave my shoulder and then his widened eyes were inches from mine again… I watched, seemingly in slow motion, as the Doctor tilted his head and kissed me again.
And for a moment, just one single, weak moment, I responded. I heard myself moan softly as his hot mouth… oh God, it was the Doctor's mouth, and it pressed against mine. At that moment I felt my own lips part, almost involuntarily, and felt the tip of the Time Lord's tongue cautiously began to probe the inside of my mouth, as though it was a sensation he was curious to experience, but scared of what it might do to him.
And then I came to my senses.
All this time, all these years, I'd dreamt... and imagined... and now it was reality, I just couldn't let it happen.
This couldn't be real. This must be another symptom of the Doctor's weakened state, his emotional breakdown.
He was doing this in an effort to thank me, to repay me, because felt he owed me something for taking care of him, not because he wanted it, surely. I couldn't let him do this, it was wrong.
And what about Ianto?
I made a muffled negative sound against the Doctor's mouth, pushed him gently but firmly away.
"Doctor…" I gasped. The voice that came out of my mouth didn't even sound like me.
He stepped back suddenly, the expression on his face a mixture of apprehension and uncertainty. "Didn't I do it right? Didn't you like it?"
"Doctor… do you realise what you're doing?" My heart was hammering in my chest.
He stepped fully away then, one hand resting gently on the console as though to steady himself, or as a way to afford himself a note of comfort and familiarity in a moment of madness.
The Doctor sounded anxious when he spoke again. "I thought… I just wanted to make it nice for you. I'm not very experienced, so I thought it might help if I watched first, tried to learn that way. That's how Ianto kisses you, isn't it? You seemed to like it last night."
What the...?
"What did you just say?" my voice had a dangerous inflection.
The Doctor pointed vaguely at the monitor on the console without actually looking at it. "Last night… you and Ianto. When you were… together. I mean, I've tried to find out about Ianto, because… well, you two are…" he swallowed noisily. "You never really go into detail, although I suppose it's not something I expected you might want to tell me straight away, but I just wanted to…"
"Are you trying to tell me that last night, when me and Ianto were..." I could feel my face reddening with shock and anger.
The Doctor nodded, looking a little anxious. "The camera turned off, but then the TARDIS just… well, she can communicate with your computer systems, override…"
"You watched me and Ianto last night? Having sex?" My voice sounded too high-pitched, a mixture of disbelief and indignation.
"It's not what you think…"
"Oh, it's not? You sneak around spying on your friends all the time, do you?" I was utterly incensed.
"No! It wasn't…" the Doctor took a step backwards.
"Doctor, have you gone completely crazy? Do you realise how this looks? You're tapping into our security systems, and worse than that, tampering with them. That's bad enough, but to…" I was at a loss for words. I rubbed cold sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.
"I just wanted to learn," the Doctor said in a pleading tone. "I wanted to learn what you like, what makes you happy..."
I wasn't listening. "There is absolutely no excuse you can give me that would make this acceptable, Doctor. Have you no respect for our privacy?" I shook my head, started walking away from the anxious-looking Time Lord before I lost it completely.
God help me, but at that moment, if I'd have lost my self-control I would have punched the Doctor in the face.
"I didn't realise I was doing something wrong, I'm sorry!" The Time Lord looked scared now.
I turned around, my face burning and my eyes blazing. "I never took you for a Peeping Tom, Doctor. I mean, Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you? It wouldn't have been so bad if you'd have at least asked first…"
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't getting on any sort of prudish high horse. I have no sexual hang-ups in that regard. It's not like voyeurism wasn't a turn-on for me, it wasn't even as though I'd never been watched while I had sex before, it was the… way it had been done, the deceit that angered me.
And it wasn't just anger, either. What I felt was a mixture of indignation, hurt at the Doctor's casual betrayal of my trust, and… hell, sheer disbelief, I think. The Doctor had always seemed like this bright, shining angel of purity, and here he was, alone in his ship late at night, watching his friends having sex on a stolen link to our security cameras, like some sort of creep.
The Doctor was looking imploringly at me now, his eyes reddened, not knowing what else to say in case he made things worse.
I blew out a long breath. "I just never imagined… I haven't a clue what's going on here, Doctor, but I can't believe you could have done this. Do you get off on that sort of thing or something?"
A flash of confusion passed over the Doctor's face. "Get off… I wasn't on anything, I don't…"
Another wave of annoyance washed over me. "Oh, for God's sake Doctor, drop the 'confused little boy' act, will you? I've tried my best with you, tried to make you feel better, because I cared about you. I was worried about you. And all that time we spent together, I thought we were… I don't even know who you are any more."
"Jack, please… let me explain…"
I wasn't interested. "If anything you said made the slightest bit of sense, then I'd listen, Doctor, but nothing you say … shit, I can't deal with this."
I started walking back along the ramp towards the doors. I had to get out of there.
The Doctor started after me. "Jack, please, I'm sorry. I didn’t realise… let me tell you, please, I was so close…"
I turned around then, just before I reached the doors.
"I don't know what to say to you any more, Doctor." My voice sounded strange. To be honest, I was pretty close to tears, but I'm good at holding them back. Most of the time.
"I was willing to let you stay here. For as long as you wanted, but I didn't think it would be forever. So you've had some sort of… breakdown. It's hardly surprising, after everything you've been through."
The Doctor blinked, and a tear ran down his cheek. I wouldn't comfort him this time. I couldn't.
I swallowed. "I was so touched that I was the one you turned to when you needed somebody. It meant so much to me because… well, you meant so much to me. And I tried. I tried so hard to do and say the right things, and I thought you were getting better. I thought I was making you better. I though I was getting to know you… the real you..."
"You were! That was… that's the point of all this, can't you see?" He took another step forwards, held his hands out to me imploringly.
I shook my head. "You've betrayed my trust, Doctor. You've… crossed a line, and I don't know how to handle it."
"No, no, no, I would never betray…" the Doctor shook his head, swiped at the tears on his face roughly with the heel of his hand as though angry at himself for appearing weak.
"How do expect me to feel, Doctor?" I could feel the anger rising up into my throat again, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
"I took you in, took care of you. Kept you safe down here, like some dark secret. Martha and Mickey, your friends, are just a few metres away from you sometimes, and you don't even want them to know you're here, don’t you think they'd want to see you, don't you think they'd be worried about you if they knew?"
"I told you why…"
"Yeah, yeah. You told me why you have to hide down here like a frightened rabbit down a hole. Don't you think you've played this stupid game long enough?"
I took a step forward. The Doctor took a step back.
"Haven't you stopped to think, just for one moment, that while you're in here hiding from the universe like some scared kid, people are out there dying?"
The Doctor looked down at the ground. He reached out, blindly clutched at his precious TARDIS console as though his legs might give way at any moment.
I started to walk towards him again, my boots ringing on the grilled floor.
"Yes, Doctor. People are out there, scared and hurt and dying. People who need you!" I pointed at him accusingly.
"How many have died these last few weeks, because you weren't there to save them?" I spat. The Doctor whimpered in response, still not looking at me.
I was unrelenting. "How many planets destroyed? How many innocent people imprisoned? Huh? While you're sitting down here in my basement, like a coward!"
"Jack… please… don't…"
The console started beeping, lights flashing. The Doctor looked down at it, a cloud of panicked horror further darkening his already stricken expression.
"What's that, something else interesting on the CCTV, your precious TARDIS giving you the tip off?"
"No… no! Oh no… Jack…" He started flicking switches, pressing buttons. He looked utterly terrified.
I shook my head. I was done.
He looked up, his face pale. "Jack… you've got to help me. I'm so scared… please!" He took a few steps forward, held his arms out as though he wanted me to hold him and make it all better.
Not any more.
"I'm sorry, Doctor. I think its time you thought very carefully about what you really want. I don't think I can help you any more."
I turned around and walked away, before he could see that I couldn't hold back the tears any longer.
I opened the doors forcefully and stepped out of the TARDIS. The Doctor ran out after me, calling me, his voice cracking.
"Jack, please! Don't go! I need you… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"
I ignored him, started up the stairs.
"Jack! You're the only one who can help me. Don't leave me, oh God, not now! Jack! JACK!"
I closed the heavy door at the top of the stairwell, expecting any moment to hear the muffled thumps of the Doctor banging on it with the palms of his hands, begging me to come back. But he didn't. I leant back against the cold metal, my breath a series of ragged sobs.
What the hell had just happened? My head was still spinning. I covered my face with my hands.
After a minute, when I felt a little more composed, I straightened up and set off to find the only person I could turn to.
I went to find Ianto.
To be continued
Author's Notes: This chapter was a bit upsetting to write. Sorry… :(
Also, this is the longest chapter so far (over 4,500 words).
Please keep leaving me those delicious comments! :)
<< Chapter One
<< Chapter Two
<< Chapter Three
<< Chapter Four
<< Chapter Five
<< Chapter Six
<< Chapter Seven
>> Chapter Nine
>> Chapter Ten
>> Chapter Eleven
>> Chapter Twelve
>> Chapter Thirteen
>> Chapter Fourteen
>> Chapter Fifteen
>> Chapter Sixteen
>> Chapter Seventeen
>> Chapter Eighteen
>> Chapter Nineteen
>> Chapter Twenty
>> Chapter Twenty One
>> Chapter Twenty Two
>> Chapter Twenty Three
>> Chapter Twenty Four
>> Chapter Twenty Five
>> Chapter Twenty Six
>> Chapter Twenty Seven
>> Chapter Twenty Eight
Title: Belonging - Chapter Eight
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Characters Jack/Ten (of sorts), mentions of Jack/Ianto
Rating: This Chapter - R for adult situations and language (Series is rated NC-17 overall)
Spoilers: TW: Cyberwoman, Dead Man Walking / DW: The Stolen Earth, Journey's End
Disclaimer: The BBC own it all, the little tinkers
Warnings: boykissing | angst | hurt with no comfort
Description:
Set immediately after the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.
The Torchwood team members are struggling to get back to normal after recent shattering events, when the Doctor turns up in the Torchwood Hub in the middle of the night; alone, heartbroken, guilt-ridden, and needing somewhere to belong.
"Haven't you stopped to think, just for one moment, that while you're in here hiding from the universe like some scared kid, people are out there dying?"
Chapter Eight
It was with a spring in my step and a jaunty tune being hummed under my breath that I made my way downstairs to the basement storage bay, to visit the Doctor again. It had been five days since I'd seen the Time Lord, and I'd missed him sorely. There had been no urgent messages left on the vortex manipulator, and I was pretty sure the Doctor would have contacted me if he felt he needed to, so I figured he must have been okay. At least now I had Ianto's blessing to spend time with him again, as long as I didn't let it interfere with our own relationship.
Life was good.
I pushed the TARDIS doors open (and the good old girl automatically let me in with a welcoming hum) to see the Doctor hunched over on the seat near the console, his journal rested in the crook of one arm as he wrote inside with his neat copperplate handwriting. He was sticking the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth with concentration.
"Hey, you." My voice rang out loudly. The Doctor looked up, as if he hadn't noticed me come in.
"Oh, hello! Won't be a sec..." he finished writing the last few words with a flourish and closed the book, the pages meeting with a soft thump. He pushed the quill into the inside pocket of his jacket. It looked too long to fit in there, but somehow I suspected that the Doctor's pockets were bigger on the inside.
"It's been a while," I said. Only five days, actually, but it felt like ages since I'd last been to see him. I thought he looked quite perky, though. "How are you feeling?" I asked warmly.
"Hmm? Yeah... not bad, thanks. Been busy." The Doctor sounded distracted. He was gazing down at his closed journal, deep in thought. I'd just noticed that the tatty leather cover was coloured the same shade of blue as the TARDIS. In fact, it looked almost like a stylised representation of the panels making up the exterior Police Box. Cute.
"What are you writing in there, anyway?" I said curiously.
The Doctor shrugged. "Just an account of... y'know. Places I've been, things I've done."
I smiled. "Thinking of publishing your memoirs?" Now, that would be the science fiction bestseller of the century.
The Doctor looked like he was indeed thinking about it, for a moment. "No, not really. It's for... well, it's not for anyone, really. Not any more. I just thought I might as well write it anyway. Gives me something to do, I suppose." He scratched his ear, the way he always did when he felt pushed into talking about something when he'd rather not.
I didn't have much of an idea as to what he was talking about, but I'd learnt recently that to get the Doctor to explain what he meant either rendered him feeling confused and irritable, or made him launch into a long, complicated speech at a hundred miles an hour, which made even less sense. So I just nodded and smiled.
His face lit up suddenly. "Oh, I forgot! I'm glad you're here."
"Yeah, I missed you too," I said with a smile. I joined him on the seat, trying not to sit on his journal.
But the Doctor shook his head. "No, not… Well... yes, that, but... I had something to tell you."
"Oh?"
"Yes!" He looked quite excited. "Your Weevils. I know what species they really are, and where they come from."
I stared at him. "But... how? I mean, you haven't even seen them, have you...?" I felt a bit worried. He hadn't sneaked down to the cells without me knowing, had he?
He shook his head. "No, no, but I talked to them. The one you call Mildred. And... what's the other one, Janet is it?" He shook his head, half-amused. "They quite like that, by the way. Those silly names you give them."
I ignored the less important issue of whether the Weevils approved of their adopted names or not, and shook my head impatiently. "You spoke to the Weevils?"
"Yes. Well, not spoke. I could hear them, in my head, faintly. So I reached out to them from here. Telepathically, I mean." He spoke like he was explaining something grown-up and complicated to a child.
I stared at him. The Doctor stood up and faced the console, and after swinging the monitor towards him, began tapping rapidly on a small keyboard. "So I asked them a few questions, did a bit of research..." he continued excitedly. A dizzying array of images and information flashed up on the screen, some of it in complicated Gallifreyan symbols I had no hope of ever being able to decipher.
"Doctor," I tried to interrupt.
"They aren't just to be found in Cardiff, y'know; in the 1930's there were sightings of them in New York, all hushed up by Torchwood, of course. But, even more interestingly, they first turned up on Earth in 4th century Byzantium. Wonder how they got there..." he was stroking his chin, oblivious to my attempts to attract his attention. "Your lot simply come through the space-time rift, that's how they end up in Cardiff... but of course you knew that."
His fingers flicked over the keyboard, bringing up more data. Shockingly, I began to recognise some of the images and written reports flashing up on the screen.
"They're actually rather complex creatures, you know. Not the brightest buttons in the box, but they have a recognised family structure, exhibit territorial behaviour, that kind of thing. And they're time-sensitive... which is probably why they could feel me, all the way down here. I think maybe the TARDIS has been making them a bit jittery of late..."
"Doctor," I tried to interrupt him again, but he was in full flow.
"The newest one you keep here, the one you called Mildred, she came up to the surface because she was scared, was feeling a bit aggressive I'm afraid; her child wandered off, must have been picked up by someone or something... and she said something about... difficult to understand, but there's been a bit of disquiet within their community lately, they say the... King has gone missing from their hearts? I wonder if they mean your Owen Harper, it said here something about..."
"Doctor!" I almost yelled into his ear. I had stood up and was standing right next to him. At last he stopped chattering and looked at me, an expression of surprise on his face.
I jabbed my finger at the screen. "Those are Torchwood files," I said incredulously.
The Doctor blinked. "Yes, of course they are, how else would I..."
"Confidential, password-protected, heavily encoded, authorised access-only Torchwood files." I folded my arms angrily.
"Yes. Well…the TARDIS just... it was easy enough for her to..." he looked a little uncomfortable now.
"What the hell gave you the right to hack into my computer system?"
"I didn't think you'd mind." The Doctor was blinking rapidly.
"Well, I do!"
"But, Jack..." he took a step back, obviously feeling uneasy.
"'But, Jack' what?"
He raised upturned hands. "I thought... well, it didn't seem right that you were keeping them here against their will. But having looked into what's happened to them in the past when they've been exposed to humans, I suppose it is for their own safety..."
"'It didn't seem right'...? Doctor, regardless of how you feel about the way we run things here, it has absolutely nothing to do with you!"
The Doctor looked like a child being chastised. He stuck his hands in his pockets defensively. "I was trying to help... I thought if I could find out what species they are, where they come from, maybe we could find out how to send them back to their own world, only..."
"You thought what?"
"Well, yes, only I found out after talking to them that they like it here on Earth, they come through the rift on purpose to get away from their own planet. I thought you might have asked them this sort of stuff yourself, I mean the TARDIS has given you every opportunity..."
I ran my fingers through my hair with frustration and turned away from the Doctor before I did something I might regret.
I started pacing around the console. "So let me get this straight. You disapprove of the way we operate here at Torchwood, so you took it upon yourself to hack into highly confidential files in an attempt to find a way of doing things better?"
His voice was quiet. "Not better, as such, just... I was trying to help… trying to please you. I thought you'd want to do the best you could for them. You've felt differently about them recently, because you can hear them, understand them. I could tell. I thought you might want to know, that's all. They're from a planet called..."
"I don't want to know!" I hissed. "We've spent all this time calling them Weevils, dealing with them how we think best, and you turn up and start... interfering."
"I wasn't..."
"Yes, Doctor. Interfering. I guess old habits die hard, huh?" I glared at him. I could feel my face burning.
The Doctor looked down at the floor. "That's not fair," he muttered.
"No, and it's not fair that you come here and start taking the moral high ground, prying into things that don't concern you. We keep those Weevils here to protect human life, and for their own safety. Because when humans encounter something that scares them, that they don't understand... well, you know what happens."
There was no response.
"That's what we're here for. We do the best we can, Doctor. We're not here to save the universe. That used to be your job, remember?"
The Doctor still wasn't looking at me. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
"And just because you've decided that's not your job any more, then it doesn't give you the right to start poking your nose into ours!"
"I wasn't... I mean, the Weevil thing was incidental, really. I was just..." the Doctor looked upset. If I wasn't so mad at him, I would have been feeling guilty by now.
"You were just what?"
The Doctor shrugged. He looked up at the ceiling to avoid meeting my eyes. "I was trying to... learn. Find out... well, everything."
"Find out about Torchwood?" I thought back to some of the comments he'd made recently, mentioning things he shouldn't have known about unless I'd told him. I'd assumed I'd revealed things during some of our chats but simply couldn't remember, but now I realised he'd been hacking into our confidential files for a long time. That's how he'd known things about Tosh, about Owen... about Ianto and how we'd had to deal with Lisa.
The Cyberwoman hidden in the basement; the dark, guilty secret.
Irony is a funny thing.
"You've been reading our files for ages, haven't you? For as long as you've been here!" I was trying to keep my voice steady.
"No," said the Doctor in a pleading tone. "Not at first. Just when I realised... well, the TARDIS knew before I did..."
"Knew what? Realised what? Doctor, you speak in riddles, and it frustrates the hell out of me sometimes!"
The Doctor took a deep breath. "You told me that when I worked out what I needed, what I need to get better, that I should tell you. You said you wanted to be the first person to know. Well, as it happens, the TARDIS knew before I did."
I rested my hands on my hips. "Go on," I said, as calmly as I could.
"It took me a while to realise myself, because this is such a big thing for me, this… it's not something I could accept at first. It… scares me."
He swallowed.
"So… like I've always said, knowledge... learning as much as you can, is half your problem solved, so I… that's when I started looking into your files. I wanted to know everything."
"Everything about Torchwood?"
"No, no, not as such. I mean, some of it is terribly interesting, of course. Most of it was… I can't say I approve of a lot of what has gone on here over the last century or so, but that's hardly your fault. By the way, I'm mentioned in your files quite a bit, did you know?"
I glared at him impatiently.
"Right. Well, anyway, that aside, I started looking into… the more recent records. From when you took over as leader, I mean. The Millennium, wasn't it? It seems you more or less started Torchwood Three again from scratch on the first of January 2000."
I nodded shortly. Every Torchwood team member but me was dead by the time it struck midnight. The memory of it still horrified me.
"And… well, you used to tell me that you'd changed Torchwood after the battle of Canary Wharf, rebuilt it in my honour. And I was always a bit sceptical, I know, but you do good things. I know that now. And sometimes, even if you deal with something in a way that… I couldn't, I know you always try to do your best. Not using guns would be preferable, but you can't have everything I suppose…"
"Doctor, is this going anywhere?"
"Yes, yes." He started running fingers through his hair anxiously.
"So, you wanted to learn everything about how I run things here in Torchwood."
"Well… at first, yes. You spend so much of your life here, well, pretty much all of it. Torchwood is your life. So it seemed the logical place to start."
I nodded, needing more.
"It was the easiest way to learn everything about you."
I blinked. "Everything about me?"
"Yes. That's why I needed… well, wanted… to spend so much time with you recently, I wanted to get to know you. Properly. Not just..." he waved hands in the air abstractly, "not just as... travelling companions."
I frowned. "Why?"
"Because that's what I need," the Doctor said impatiently, as though my questions were pointless and beginning to irritate him.
"Doctor… I… oh, this is driving me mad…" I started to pace around the TARDIS console room again.
"You're talking and talking, and you're still not telling me what I need to know," I muttered, frustrated beyond measure. "Are you deliberately being vague, or am I just an idiot?"
The Doctor approached me. I stopped pacing and stood still, my arms folded. He drew near, came right up to me, and with a determined look, cupped my face in his hands, the way I had done to him many times. He'd never mirrored the gesture until now.
To my utter surprise, the Doctor leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. It wasn't passionate or particularly skilled, but firm and with meaning.
He pulled back and we stared at each other in silence; both of us wide-eyed; me with shock, and the Doctor with a desperate need for me to understand, without him having to speak any more useless words.
"It's you. You're what I need, Jack…" he whispered at last.
Oh God, oh my fucking God…
My arms unfurled from their folded position, simply because all my strength had left me.
He was so close I could feel both of his rapidly beating hearts against my own chest. He wrapped his arms around my neck and thrust his face against my shoulder again, the way he had when he'd cried such bitter, desperate tears and I'd comforted him, all those weeks ago; comforted him lovingly and willingly and never really dreamt…
My arms, hanging loosely by my sides, seemed to return his embrace of their own accord. I wrapped my arms around the Doctor's slim waist, clutching him to me as though I needed him to anchor me to the ground.
My head was spinning. I wanted to say something, anything, but my mouth wouldn't form any words.
I felt the heat of the Doctor's reddened face leave my shoulder and then his widened eyes were inches from mine again… I watched, seemingly in slow motion, as the Doctor tilted his head and kissed me again.
And for a moment, just one single, weak moment, I responded. I heard myself moan softly as his hot mouth… oh God, it was the Doctor's mouth, and it pressed against mine. At that moment I felt my own lips part, almost involuntarily, and felt the tip of the Time Lord's tongue cautiously began to probe the inside of my mouth, as though it was a sensation he was curious to experience, but scared of what it might do to him.
And then I came to my senses.
All this time, all these years, I'd dreamt... and imagined... and now it was reality, I just couldn't let it happen.
This couldn't be real. This must be another symptom of the Doctor's weakened state, his emotional breakdown.
He was doing this in an effort to thank me, to repay me, because felt he owed me something for taking care of him, not because he wanted it, surely. I couldn't let him do this, it was wrong.
And what about Ianto?
I made a muffled negative sound against the Doctor's mouth, pushed him gently but firmly away.
"Doctor…" I gasped. The voice that came out of my mouth didn't even sound like me.
He stepped back suddenly, the expression on his face a mixture of apprehension and uncertainty. "Didn't I do it right? Didn't you like it?"
"Doctor… do you realise what you're doing?" My heart was hammering in my chest.
He stepped fully away then, one hand resting gently on the console as though to steady himself, or as a way to afford himself a note of comfort and familiarity in a moment of madness.
The Doctor sounded anxious when he spoke again. "I thought… I just wanted to make it nice for you. I'm not very experienced, so I thought it might help if I watched first, tried to learn that way. That's how Ianto kisses you, isn't it? You seemed to like it last night."
What the...?
"What did you just say?" my voice had a dangerous inflection.
The Doctor pointed vaguely at the monitor on the console without actually looking at it. "Last night… you and Ianto. When you were… together. I mean, I've tried to find out about Ianto, because… well, you two are…" he swallowed noisily. "You never really go into detail, although I suppose it's not something I expected you might want to tell me straight away, but I just wanted to…"
"Are you trying to tell me that last night, when me and Ianto were..." I could feel my face reddening with shock and anger.
The Doctor nodded, looking a little anxious. "The camera turned off, but then the TARDIS just… well, she can communicate with your computer systems, override…"
"You watched me and Ianto last night? Having sex?" My voice sounded too high-pitched, a mixture of disbelief and indignation.
"It's not what you think…"
"Oh, it's not? You sneak around spying on your friends all the time, do you?" I was utterly incensed.
"No! It wasn't…" the Doctor took a step backwards.
"Doctor, have you gone completely crazy? Do you realise how this looks? You're tapping into our security systems, and worse than that, tampering with them. That's bad enough, but to…" I was at a loss for words. I rubbed cold sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.
"I just wanted to learn," the Doctor said in a pleading tone. "I wanted to learn what you like, what makes you happy..."
I wasn't listening. "There is absolutely no excuse you can give me that would make this acceptable, Doctor. Have you no respect for our privacy?" I shook my head, started walking away from the anxious-looking Time Lord before I lost it completely.
God help me, but at that moment, if I'd have lost my self-control I would have punched the Doctor in the face.
"I didn't realise I was doing something wrong, I'm sorry!" The Time Lord looked scared now.
I turned around, my face burning and my eyes blazing. "I never took you for a Peeping Tom, Doctor. I mean, Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you? It wouldn't have been so bad if you'd have at least asked first…"
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't getting on any sort of prudish high horse. I have no sexual hang-ups in that regard. It's not like voyeurism wasn't a turn-on for me, it wasn't even as though I'd never been watched while I had sex before, it was the… way it had been done, the deceit that angered me.
And it wasn't just anger, either. What I felt was a mixture of indignation, hurt at the Doctor's casual betrayal of my trust, and… hell, sheer disbelief, I think. The Doctor had always seemed like this bright, shining angel of purity, and here he was, alone in his ship late at night, watching his friends having sex on a stolen link to our security cameras, like some sort of creep.
The Doctor was looking imploringly at me now, his eyes reddened, not knowing what else to say in case he made things worse.
I blew out a long breath. "I just never imagined… I haven't a clue what's going on here, Doctor, but I can't believe you could have done this. Do you get off on that sort of thing or something?"
A flash of confusion passed over the Doctor's face. "Get off… I wasn't on anything, I don't…"
Another wave of annoyance washed over me. "Oh, for God's sake Doctor, drop the 'confused little boy' act, will you? I've tried my best with you, tried to make you feel better, because I cared about you. I was worried about you. And all that time we spent together, I thought we were… I don't even know who you are any more."
"Jack, please… let me explain…"
I wasn't interested. "If anything you said made the slightest bit of sense, then I'd listen, Doctor, but nothing you say … shit, I can't deal with this."
I started walking back along the ramp towards the doors. I had to get out of there.
The Doctor started after me. "Jack, please, I'm sorry. I didn’t realise… let me tell you, please, I was so close…"
I turned around then, just before I reached the doors.
"I don't know what to say to you any more, Doctor." My voice sounded strange. To be honest, I was pretty close to tears, but I'm good at holding them back. Most of the time.
"I was willing to let you stay here. For as long as you wanted, but I didn't think it would be forever. So you've had some sort of… breakdown. It's hardly surprising, after everything you've been through."
The Doctor blinked, and a tear ran down his cheek. I wouldn't comfort him this time. I couldn't.
I swallowed. "I was so touched that I was the one you turned to when you needed somebody. It meant so much to me because… well, you meant so much to me. And I tried. I tried so hard to do and say the right things, and I thought you were getting better. I thought I was making you better. I though I was getting to know you… the real you..."
"You were! That was… that's the point of all this, can't you see?" He took another step forwards, held his hands out to me imploringly.
I shook my head. "You've betrayed my trust, Doctor. You've… crossed a line, and I don't know how to handle it."
"No, no, no, I would never betray…" the Doctor shook his head, swiped at the tears on his face roughly with the heel of his hand as though angry at himself for appearing weak.
"How do expect me to feel, Doctor?" I could feel the anger rising up into my throat again, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
"I took you in, took care of you. Kept you safe down here, like some dark secret. Martha and Mickey, your friends, are just a few metres away from you sometimes, and you don't even want them to know you're here, don’t you think they'd want to see you, don't you think they'd be worried about you if they knew?"
"I told you why…"
"Yeah, yeah. You told me why you have to hide down here like a frightened rabbit down a hole. Don't you think you've played this stupid game long enough?"
I took a step forward. The Doctor took a step back.
"Haven't you stopped to think, just for one moment, that while you're in here hiding from the universe like some scared kid, people are out there dying?"
The Doctor looked down at the ground. He reached out, blindly clutched at his precious TARDIS console as though his legs might give way at any moment.
I started to walk towards him again, my boots ringing on the grilled floor.
"Yes, Doctor. People are out there, scared and hurt and dying. People who need you!" I pointed at him accusingly.
"How many have died these last few weeks, because you weren't there to save them?" I spat. The Doctor whimpered in response, still not looking at me.
I was unrelenting. "How many planets destroyed? How many innocent people imprisoned? Huh? While you're sitting down here in my basement, like a coward!"
"Jack… please… don't…"
The console started beeping, lights flashing. The Doctor looked down at it, a cloud of panicked horror further darkening his already stricken expression.
"What's that, something else interesting on the CCTV, your precious TARDIS giving you the tip off?"
"No… no! Oh no… Jack…" He started flicking switches, pressing buttons. He looked utterly terrified.
I shook my head. I was done.
He looked up, his face pale. "Jack… you've got to help me. I'm so scared… please!" He took a few steps forward, held his arms out as though he wanted me to hold him and make it all better.
Not any more.
"I'm sorry, Doctor. I think its time you thought very carefully about what you really want. I don't think I can help you any more."
I turned around and walked away, before he could see that I couldn't hold back the tears any longer.
I opened the doors forcefully and stepped out of the TARDIS. The Doctor ran out after me, calling me, his voice cracking.
"Jack, please! Don't go! I need you… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"
I ignored him, started up the stairs.
"Jack! You're the only one who can help me. Don't leave me, oh God, not now! Jack! JACK!"
I closed the heavy door at the top of the stairwell, expecting any moment to hear the muffled thumps of the Doctor banging on it with the palms of his hands, begging me to come back. But he didn't. I leant back against the cold metal, my breath a series of ragged sobs.
What the hell had just happened? My head was still spinning. I covered my face with my hands.
After a minute, when I felt a little more composed, I straightened up and set off to find the only person I could turn to.
I went to find Ianto.
To be continued
Author's Notes: This chapter was a bit upsetting to write. Sorry… :(
Also, this is the longest chapter so far (over 4,500 words).
Please keep leaving me those delicious comments! :)
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<< Chapter Two
<< Chapter Three
<< Chapter Four
<< Chapter Five
<< Chapter Six
<< Chapter Seven
>> Chapter Nine
>> Chapter Ten
>> Chapter Eleven
>> Chapter Twelve
>> Chapter Thirteen
>> Chapter Fourteen
>> Chapter Fifteen
>> Chapter Sixteen
>> Chapter Seventeen
>> Chapter Eighteen
>> Chapter Nineteen
>> Chapter Twenty
>> Chapter Twenty One
>> Chapter Twenty Two
>> Chapter Twenty Three
>> Chapter Twenty Four
>> Chapter Twenty Five
>> Chapter Twenty Six
>> Chapter Twenty Seven
>> Chapter Twenty Eight