Lacrimis Morientium 6
Title: Lacrimis Morientium
Part: 6/6 + epilogue
Warnings: Mpreg. Dark and depressing. Character death and very disturbing scenes. May be triggering for anyone with issues relating to infants. No happy ending.
Rating: 18+
Genre: Angst, AU after Parting of The Ways
Spoilers: Parting of the Ways
Characters: Jack, Simm!Master, Doctor, Rose
Pairings: Jack/Simm!Master, Jack/Doctor (implied)
Summary: The Doctor has abandoned Jack on Satellite 5. This has consequences that he did not foresee. Major Jack angst. A dark fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine
AN:
Previous chapter here: http://ohinyan.livejournal.com/30862.html
Chapter 6
Koschei was so pleased to have Jack make some sort of independent suggestion, as to what he wanted to do, that he would even have even agreed to take him to shopping to the largest Mall in the galaxy. But, as it was, confronting the Doctor was something he was quite keen to do. And, if he could not do it directly, he could do it by proxy via Jack. He would have to be careful with the time lines. When he had stolen the TARDIS on Malcassairo, the Doctor had not known that he had not been erased from time, along with Gallifrey at the end of the Time War. If they met a past version of the Doctor, he could not find out. It could jeopardise the events that led to him acquiring the TARDIS.
The TARDIS memory banks contained the information that they needed. They knew where and when Rose had gone when the Doctor tricked her into leaving Satellite 5, and where she and the Doctor had gone after she saved him. They followed. They landed on the Powell Estate only hours after Rose arrived for the first time. They had been careful not to land too close to the Doctor's TARDIS, but were instead hidden away in an alley on the other side of the flats.
Jack was on tenterhooks. “Let's go find her,” he demanded. He looked ready to head out of the TARDIS there and then.
“Hold on now,” Koschei said calmly. “Remember that she mustn't see you. You were on that Satellite when she left it, and when she returned. You can't let her see you here, on Earth, before she rescues the Doctor. It could change her actions. It's not a good idea to get too close to her.”
However much Jack might want to change her actions, he knew that interfering with the time lines could bring the Reapers down on them. But he was still tempted. If Rose did not go back to save the Doctor, he would not be made immortal, and he and his daughter would not have to die endlessly on the Satellite. They would be permanently dead, a far better outcome. But he couldn't do it. It would create a paradox, which was far too risky. “Well what do you suggest then?” he asked, pushing temptation from his mind.
“Why don't we watch her from here?” suggested Koschei.
Jack was totally thrown. “From here? How the hell are we gonna do that?”
Koschei was actually surprised. “With the scanner of course,” he retorted impatiently. “Do you think these instruments are as primitive as human scanners? With the remote scanner, I can zero in on anything within a 5 mile radius. And someone who has travelled through the vortex shines like a beacon to the TARDIS.”
It took a few minutes, but Koschei did find Rose. Jack had never seen this feature of the scanners before, but it was incredibly useful. He wondered why the Doctor had never used it. They were able to watch, and hear, events occurring miles away, on the monitor screen. “I didn't know the scanner could do that,” he commented.
Koschei laughed. “The Doctor was always a third rate excuse for an engineer. He probably didn't know either.”
Rose was with a woman, who could only be her mother, and Mickey, in a cafe. Jack and Koschei settled in to watch. Jack flinched when he heard Rose declame '200,000 years in the future he's dying and there's nothing I can do.' Shortly after, she ran out of the cafe, back to the TARDIS.
Koschei, seeing that Jack was upset, asked “What's the matter?”
“You heard what she said,” Jack answered, tersely. “She said 'he's dying', meaning the Doctor. She didn't say 'they're dying'. She doesn't give a damn about me. I'm irrelevant to her.”
They continued to watch, as Rose sat on a bench and sobbed. Mickey eventually joined her and they talked. Jack gasped as he saw them notice the graffiti. Bad Wolf. He remembered it from the Satellite. How the hell had it got here! It galvanised Rose. She sprang back into action. They watched in disbelief as Rose and Mickey fixed a chain to a Mini and took the other end into the TARDIS. They couldn't use the scanner to follow inside the other TARDIS, but that was a past event for this TARDIS, so all they needed to do was call up that time in her memory banks. They watched that on a different screen.
Using the Mini didn't work, and they watched as Rose became despondent once more. She and her mother were sitting in the TARDIS. Rose was talking about what her father would expect. “Dad would say, if I could save the Doctor's life, try anything.”
Just the Doctor again, thought Koschei, glancing at Jack, who was studiously avoiding his gaze.
It seemed as if Rose had failed. Jackie left, leaving Rose behind, crying in the TARDIS. Rose had clearly given up hope of saving the Doctor. That changed when Jackie returned in a bright yellow tow truck. This time they succeeded. The TARDIS console opened and Rose absorbed the vortex. The doors slammed shut and the TARDIS dematerialised, leaving Jackie and Mickey standing on the, now empty, pavement.
The Master switched the screens off. He looked at Jack.
“I thought it was just the Doctor who didn't care,” Jack said sadly. “But she didn't either. How could I have ever been stupid enough to believe that either of them loved me?”
Offering hugs and comfort was not in Koschei's repertoire, so he merely suggested that they get some sleep. “We know that Rose and the Doctor will return here, in the TARDIS, on Christmas Eve. So we'll move the TARDIS to that date when we wake, and see what they do,” he suggested.
“When he gets here, will he be able to feel the presence of this TARDIS?,” Jack asked. “Will he know that we are here?”
“No, he can feel her, but he won't be able to distinguish this one from his own. He's more likely to be able to feel you, if you get close,” Koschei advised. “So make sure that you want him to see you, before you go anywhere near him.”
* * * * *
They moved forward in time to Christmas Eve, and waited for the Doctor to arrive. When he did, with the worst landing possible, he had his new face and collapsed in a heap in front of Mickey and Jackie. Rose emerged from the TARDIS a moment later.
Clearly the Doctor was in the throes of regeneration sickness. Koschei explained that this could happen, but would sort itself out in a day or so. Jack could see that, at this point, the Doctor had not had a chance to go back for him on the Satellite. He could have forgiven the Doctor if he had left and then, when he was well, had come back. Why hadn't he?
Things were pretty boring for a while, as all the Doctor did was lie in bed, being tended by Jackie and Rose. Every now and then he exhaled vortex energy. The Christmas tree spiced things up. Jack laughed out loud as it tore up Jackie's flat. The Doctor managed to wake up long enough to deal with it, but collapsed back into a coma again afterwards.
Things got even more interesting on Christmas day, when one third of the population went to stand on the edges of tall buildings. The Doctor was still in bed.
Rose, Jackie and Mickey took the unconscious Doctor into the TARDIS for safety, so Jack and Koschei called up the TARDIS memory banks again. Jackie was left behind as the TARDIS was taken by the aliens.
They couldn't follow the action on the spaceship, outside the TARDIS, as it was out of range. But, as usual, the Doctor saved the day. He, the TARDIS, Rose and Mickey, along with Harriet Jones and her aide, were deposited back at the Powell Estate. There was a bit of an altercation when the spaceship was shot down.
The Doctor then returned, with Rose and Mickey, to Jackie's flat. He even found time to change his clothes.
This is it, Jack thought. The crisis is over. He's recovered, and they have free time. This is when the Doctor should go back for me. Whether he believes me alive or dead, he should still go back.
But he didn't. There was no mention of Jack by the Doctor, or Rose. And Mickey, who should certainly have been aware that one of the crew was missing, never asked what had happened to him.
What they saw was a party, with a Christmas dinner of turkey, and all the trimmings. The Doctor and Rose were laughing, wearing party hats, pulling crackers, and having fun with Mickey and Jackie. They didn't appear to have a care in the world.
They watched for an hour, intense fury rising up in Jack as time went on. “Tell me again how long this is, for them, after Rose rescued the Doctor from Satellite 5,” he snarled.
“Less than a day,” the Master informed him.
“I see,” Jack forced out. “So, best case scenario, They think I died less than one day ago. Worst case scenario, they both abandoned me, on purpose, less than one day ago. But there's not a trace of sorrow or guilt in either of them.”
From what Koschei had learned from the time lines he had seen, there was a chance that Rose did not remember what had happened on the Satellite. But the Doctor; he had left Jack, whether knowing that he was alive or dead was unclear, but either way was a betrayal of someone who was meant to be a comrade, and an even worse betrayal of a lover.
After two hours of watching his 'friend' and his 'lover' celebrate, Jack couldn't stand it any more. He ran back to his room and pounded the wall in his agony. How could they not care! If the Doctor or Rose had died, he would have mourned them from the depths of his soul. He had thought they were his family. But he had been wrong.
The hate that he had developed for the Doctor over the years of his abandonment on Satellite 5, took over again. He forced himself to be calm, and collected a few items from his room. He tucked them into his greatcoat. Then he gently lifted the stasis capsule. “It's time to go,” he explained to the baby. “You're going to meet your father.”
Koschei couldn't go with him, and his name must not be mentioned. He also thought that confronting the Doctor was something that Jack had to do alone.
* * * *
The doorbell rang. “I'll get it,” shouted Rose to her mother. She made her way to the door, giggling, tipsy after all the wine she had drunk. Jack stood at the door. Rose practically fainted with the shock. “Jack, how? I thought you were dead.”
Jack strode in, coat swishing around him, and looked around at the party.
“So, are you having a good time?” he sneered. “I've been watching you. What is it, Rose, 24 hours since you thought I died? I'm glad to see that you've got over any grief so quickly.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “How long did you mourn me? A couple of hours? Ten minutes?”
Rose blanched. She had been so wrapped up in making sure that the Doctor was safe, that she hadn't given Jack a second thought.
Jack read it on her face. Physical pain prickled through him. “Ah, not even that. After all, the important people were fine,” he mused softly to himself. “And it would be simple to get a replacement for me, if you even wanted to bother.”
He turned to the Doctor then, who was standing at the far end of the room, like a deer caught in the headlights. “But maybe you didn't need to mourn, did you Doctor? Did you know that I was alive on that Satellite, when you abandoned me? In fact , did you know that I'd stay alive no matter what?”
Rose gasped. “How can you say that, Jack? Of course he didn't know. We would never have left you if we'd known.”
Jack had a good view of the Doctor's face when Rose stated that. He could see the guilt etched into his features. Rose was looking at Jack and missed it.
The vain hope that Jack had been holding on to died. So, worst case scenario for the Doctor then. He held out the white box to the Doctor. “This is for you.”
The Doctor took it gingerly and looked inside. He gasped in horror. In it was a baby, long dead, and wrapped in white cloth.
“Meet your daughter, Doctor. Her whole existence was agony and torment, thanks to you.”
Something gripped the Doctor's chest as he gazed into the casket. It was a combination of horror, guilt and grief. It did not for a moment occur to him to doubt Jack's word. As he looked at the pitiful creature he bit back a sob. Another Gallifreyan. His daughter. It would have been a dream come true. He felt sick.
“You were pregnant,” he whispered, more to himself than to Jack. “Why didn't you tell me?”
Rose was totally confused. “I don't understand,” she interjected, addressing the Doctor. “If this is your daughter, who is the mother?”
The Doctor looked at her bleakly. “You don't have to be a woman to have a baby where Jack's from.”
Rose was stunned. “So, this baby, she's yours and Jack's?” she stuttered in disbelief.
The Doctor stroked the capsule gently, his heart breaking. “I'm so sorry,” he murmured. “I never meant for this.” He turned to Jack. “Jack, I'm sorry. I would never have left you if I had known you were pregnant.”
And with those words the doctor condemned himself, even to Rose.
“But you did leave us,” Jack snarled. “And I couldn't find a way off. We waited weeks for you to come. And then the power failed, and the oxygen ran out.”
The bitterness and hate in Jack's voice and demeanour was palpable. Menace, and barely suppressed violence, radiated from him. Rose involuntarily took a step back. The Doctor held his ground.
“You had your vortex manipulator,” he argued. “I thought that you would be able to go anywhere you wanted.”
Jack moved over to the Doctor then, and grabbed his hair, pulling his head back. The Doctor did not resist. “My VM didn't survive the Dalek blast, so it was useless. And you can guess what happened next can't you Doctor? You understand. She died with me every time. Can you imagine it Doctor? An infant, suffocating every 15 minutes in the womb. And, when she was born, I prayed that the immortality would pass over to her. I prayed for that, even though I knew it would torture her until we were rescued, if we ever were. But it didn't. She lived for about two minutes, Doctor, and I got to hold her, and she was beautiful.” Jack was crying by this point.
Rose was listening to their exchange in horrified fascination. She didn't understand all of what Jack was talking about, but what she did get was appalling.
Jackie and Mickey were even more confused, but they knew that Jack was accusing the Doctor of something terrible. And he wasn't denying it.
The Doctor understood perfectly. He now knew exactly what he had condemned Jack and their daughter to, and he realised how much they had suffered. His mind recoiled from it. He had deliberately betrayed Jack, knowing that the other man would be devastated. But he had never thought that this would be the result. Even without the presence of the baby, Jack would have suffered intolerably. There was no justification that he could give, but he tried to explain. “I didn't want to leave you,” he cried. “I loved you, but you were wrong, an abomination, not meant to exist. I couldn't bear to be near you. I can feel you now. It's ...” he trailed off.
Jack's heart, already fractured so badly, turned to stone at the Doctor's words. Forcing back his tears he managed to speak “He can see the time lines you know; when we make love. He can see all that could have been, and what still might be. And, in all those myriad time lines, he's never seen one where you save us. If I become immortal, you always abandon us. If I make Rose immortal, you let us burn, and take her with you. So don't tell me you loved me. I know what I meant to you.”
Jack ignored the look of total confusion on the Doctor's face, as he talked about Koschei. “Well, this is what you mean to me,” he hissed. “You left us to die. In over 300 years you did not come back. You murdered our daughter. My only feelings towards you now are hate, and have been for three centuries.”
The words 300 years, pierced the Doctor's soul. He could hardly blame Jack for hating him.
Moving towards the Doctor, a feral look in his eye, Jack pulled out a wicked looking knife. “I owe you 10,000 deaths, Doctor. This is just the first.” As he spoke, he plunged the knife into the Doctor's stomach, and yanked it upwards. “This isn't going to be enough Doctor. Watch your back. You never know when I will be there, ready to take the next one, and it won't be quick next time.” He caressed the back of the Doctor's neck with his free hand, in a parody of a lover's touch. Moving his mouth close to the Doctor's ear, he whispered. “I have all of time to choose from. And the only thing I regret is that you have so few lives that I can take.”
The others present had been taken by surprise by Jack's action, and had not moved in time to prevent it. Rose and Jackie screamed in horror, and Rose rushed to the Doctor's side, as Jack dropped him to the ground. She pressed on the wound, shouting for Mickey to help her get the Doctor to the TARDIS. But it was clearly hopeless.
Jack focussed on her once more. “Why did you do it Rose?” The agony in his voice was all too evident. “Why resurrect me? I clearly wasn't important to you. And you have left me with this curse to the end of the universe.”
From her position on the floor next to the Doctor, Rose looked up at him with total incomprehension, and Jack realised that she had no idea what she had done.
As he swept out of the room, Jack had just one parting message. “Say goodbye to your daughter, Doctor. You won't see her again.” Those left behind were too busy trying to help the Doctor, to stop him leaving.
* * * * *
After Jack had left the Doctor, Koschei kept the scanner on the scene in Jackie's flat. Jack had done a good job with the knife. They had discussed the finer points of Time Lord physiology, as relevant to fatal knife wounds. It had done a lot of damage, and death would be slow in coming, but was inevitable, even for a Time Lord.
After several minutes, Jack returned. The Doctor was reaching the end.
“Happy regeneration day, Doctor,” Koschei murmured, as they watched him explode into light.
* * * * *
They went to Woman Wept. This planet held happy memories for Jack; of the time when he and the Doctor and Rose had been a family. He had wanted to bury his daughter somewhere with some connection to her father. And it was beautiful. He and Koschei chose a mountain peak, covered in ice and snow. The glaciers below it gleamed in the sun. Nothing here would ever be disturbed.
Koschei used his laser screwdriver to gouge out a grave in the ice, below a massive boulder. They laid the baby to rest, still in the stasis capsule. He then etched out, on the boulder, the words that Jack had chosen.
Sha'hiri
Child of Earth and Gallifrey
Beloved Daughter
Never Forgotten
They had chosen the name together. Sha'hiri in Gallifreyan meant beautiful and loved.
Jack knelt by the grave, and touched the words on the boulder. The encounter with the Doctor had been cathartic. He would always remember, but he was ready now to let go. “I can never be with you, but I'll come back and see you,” he promised.
He stood as Koschei laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Are you ready to go?”
Jack nodded. He followed Koschei down to the TARDIS.
“Where would you like to go?” Koschei asked.
“I know a great bar on Beta Cassiopeia 3,” Jack suggested. “And they have a museum there with a really fine Arkanian death mask. It would look great in the TARDIS.”
Koschei laughed. “So, petty larceny eh? Isn't that a bit beneath you?”
“It's hardly petty,” Jack exclaimed. “It's worth the combined wealth of ten planets. Anyway, we've done enough pleasure planets, for now at least. Do you have any better ideas?”
“The Doctor would not approve.”
“Well, I've learned how much my becoming a 'good citizen' gained his approval,” Jack sneered. “I think I can live without it.”
Koschei grinned. “After that we could visit this planet I know of. Very superstitious natives. They thought I was a god. Or there's this planet that's just asking to be dominated,” he added with a nefarious expression.
Jack looked intrigued. “Could be interesting,” he commented.
“But we don't need to decide yet,” Koschei added. “It's been a long, and emotional day. Come to bed, sleep. There's no hurry to do anything.”
* * * *
Hours later, Koschei lay in bed, watching Jack sleep. It was ironic, he mused, that Jack had effectively ensured that the Doctor would not go back for him. Now that the Doctor had seen Jack after he was abandoned, he would be crossing his own time line if he went back for him on the Satellite. It could be a self fulfilling causal loop. The Doctor did not come, therefore Jack went back for his revenge, therefore the Doctor did not come. Of course that supposed that the Doctor would ever have got around to it, if Jack had not done this. He couldn't help but suspect that the Doctor would not have done so.
When Jack woke, they made love. Koschei looked at the possibilities again. He had been right. If he had not rescued Jack, and hence Jack had not gone after the Doctor, Jack would have remained on the Satellite until its orbit decayed and it burnt up in Earth's atmosphere. He would then have resurrected and been trapped on an Earth still incapable of space flight. The Doctor would never have gone back for him.
The outcome had been tragic, but now they both had an opportunity for a better life. They were both damaged - he by the drums, Jack by the Doctor's abandonment. But it seemed that, together, they could help each other. He had avoided looking into their future; some things were better not known, but he hoped that they would have many years together.
AN: Just an epilogue to go now.
Next chapter here: http://ohinyan.livejournal.com/31696.html
Part: 6/6 + epilogue
Warnings: Mpreg. Dark and depressing. Character death and very disturbing scenes. May be triggering for anyone with issues relating to infants. No happy ending.
Rating: 18+
Genre: Angst, AU after Parting of The Ways
Spoilers: Parting of the Ways
Characters: Jack, Simm!Master, Doctor, Rose
Pairings: Jack/Simm!Master, Jack/Doctor (implied)
Summary: The Doctor has abandoned Jack on Satellite 5. This has consequences that he did not foresee. Major Jack angst. A dark fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine
AN:
Previous chapter here: http://ohinyan.livejournal.com/30862.html
Chapter 6
Koschei was so pleased to have Jack make some sort of independent suggestion, as to what he wanted to do, that he would even have even agreed to take him to shopping to the largest Mall in the galaxy. But, as it was, confronting the Doctor was something he was quite keen to do. And, if he could not do it directly, he could do it by proxy via Jack. He would have to be careful with the time lines. When he had stolen the TARDIS on Malcassairo, the Doctor had not known that he had not been erased from time, along with Gallifrey at the end of the Time War. If they met a past version of the Doctor, he could not find out. It could jeopardise the events that led to him acquiring the TARDIS.
The TARDIS memory banks contained the information that they needed. They knew where and when Rose had gone when the Doctor tricked her into leaving Satellite 5, and where she and the Doctor had gone after she saved him. They followed. They landed on the Powell Estate only hours after Rose arrived for the first time. They had been careful not to land too close to the Doctor's TARDIS, but were instead hidden away in an alley on the other side of the flats.
Jack was on tenterhooks. “Let's go find her,” he demanded. He looked ready to head out of the TARDIS there and then.
“Hold on now,” Koschei said calmly. “Remember that she mustn't see you. You were on that Satellite when she left it, and when she returned. You can't let her see you here, on Earth, before she rescues the Doctor. It could change her actions. It's not a good idea to get too close to her.”
However much Jack might want to change her actions, he knew that interfering with the time lines could bring the Reapers down on them. But he was still tempted. If Rose did not go back to save the Doctor, he would not be made immortal, and he and his daughter would not have to die endlessly on the Satellite. They would be permanently dead, a far better outcome. But he couldn't do it. It would create a paradox, which was far too risky. “Well what do you suggest then?” he asked, pushing temptation from his mind.
“Why don't we watch her from here?” suggested Koschei.
Jack was totally thrown. “From here? How the hell are we gonna do that?”
Koschei was actually surprised. “With the scanner of course,” he retorted impatiently. “Do you think these instruments are as primitive as human scanners? With the remote scanner, I can zero in on anything within a 5 mile radius. And someone who has travelled through the vortex shines like a beacon to the TARDIS.”
It took a few minutes, but Koschei did find Rose. Jack had never seen this feature of the scanners before, but it was incredibly useful. He wondered why the Doctor had never used it. They were able to watch, and hear, events occurring miles away, on the monitor screen. “I didn't know the scanner could do that,” he commented.
Koschei laughed. “The Doctor was always a third rate excuse for an engineer. He probably didn't know either.”
Rose was with a woman, who could only be her mother, and Mickey, in a cafe. Jack and Koschei settled in to watch. Jack flinched when he heard Rose declame '200,000 years in the future he's dying and there's nothing I can do.' Shortly after, she ran out of the cafe, back to the TARDIS.
Koschei, seeing that Jack was upset, asked “What's the matter?”
“You heard what she said,” Jack answered, tersely. “She said 'he's dying', meaning the Doctor. She didn't say 'they're dying'. She doesn't give a damn about me. I'm irrelevant to her.”
They continued to watch, as Rose sat on a bench and sobbed. Mickey eventually joined her and they talked. Jack gasped as he saw them notice the graffiti. Bad Wolf. He remembered it from the Satellite. How the hell had it got here! It galvanised Rose. She sprang back into action. They watched in disbelief as Rose and Mickey fixed a chain to a Mini and took the other end into the TARDIS. They couldn't use the scanner to follow inside the other TARDIS, but that was a past event for this TARDIS, so all they needed to do was call up that time in her memory banks. They watched that on a different screen.
Using the Mini didn't work, and they watched as Rose became despondent once more. She and her mother were sitting in the TARDIS. Rose was talking about what her father would expect. “Dad would say, if I could save the Doctor's life, try anything.”
Just the Doctor again, thought Koschei, glancing at Jack, who was studiously avoiding his gaze.
It seemed as if Rose had failed. Jackie left, leaving Rose behind, crying in the TARDIS. Rose had clearly given up hope of saving the Doctor. That changed when Jackie returned in a bright yellow tow truck. This time they succeeded. The TARDIS console opened and Rose absorbed the vortex. The doors slammed shut and the TARDIS dematerialised, leaving Jackie and Mickey standing on the, now empty, pavement.
The Master switched the screens off. He looked at Jack.
“I thought it was just the Doctor who didn't care,” Jack said sadly. “But she didn't either. How could I have ever been stupid enough to believe that either of them loved me?”
Offering hugs and comfort was not in Koschei's repertoire, so he merely suggested that they get some sleep. “We know that Rose and the Doctor will return here, in the TARDIS, on Christmas Eve. So we'll move the TARDIS to that date when we wake, and see what they do,” he suggested.
“When he gets here, will he be able to feel the presence of this TARDIS?,” Jack asked. “Will he know that we are here?”
“No, he can feel her, but he won't be able to distinguish this one from his own. He's more likely to be able to feel you, if you get close,” Koschei advised. “So make sure that you want him to see you, before you go anywhere near him.”
* * * * *
They moved forward in time to Christmas Eve, and waited for the Doctor to arrive. When he did, with the worst landing possible, he had his new face and collapsed in a heap in front of Mickey and Jackie. Rose emerged from the TARDIS a moment later.
Clearly the Doctor was in the throes of regeneration sickness. Koschei explained that this could happen, but would sort itself out in a day or so. Jack could see that, at this point, the Doctor had not had a chance to go back for him on the Satellite. He could have forgiven the Doctor if he had left and then, when he was well, had come back. Why hadn't he?
Things were pretty boring for a while, as all the Doctor did was lie in bed, being tended by Jackie and Rose. Every now and then he exhaled vortex energy. The Christmas tree spiced things up. Jack laughed out loud as it tore up Jackie's flat. The Doctor managed to wake up long enough to deal with it, but collapsed back into a coma again afterwards.
Things got even more interesting on Christmas day, when one third of the population went to stand on the edges of tall buildings. The Doctor was still in bed.
Rose, Jackie and Mickey took the unconscious Doctor into the TARDIS for safety, so Jack and Koschei called up the TARDIS memory banks again. Jackie was left behind as the TARDIS was taken by the aliens.
They couldn't follow the action on the spaceship, outside the TARDIS, as it was out of range. But, as usual, the Doctor saved the day. He, the TARDIS, Rose and Mickey, along with Harriet Jones and her aide, were deposited back at the Powell Estate. There was a bit of an altercation when the spaceship was shot down.
The Doctor then returned, with Rose and Mickey, to Jackie's flat. He even found time to change his clothes.
This is it, Jack thought. The crisis is over. He's recovered, and they have free time. This is when the Doctor should go back for me. Whether he believes me alive or dead, he should still go back.
But he didn't. There was no mention of Jack by the Doctor, or Rose. And Mickey, who should certainly have been aware that one of the crew was missing, never asked what had happened to him.
What they saw was a party, with a Christmas dinner of turkey, and all the trimmings. The Doctor and Rose were laughing, wearing party hats, pulling crackers, and having fun with Mickey and Jackie. They didn't appear to have a care in the world.
They watched for an hour, intense fury rising up in Jack as time went on. “Tell me again how long this is, for them, after Rose rescued the Doctor from Satellite 5,” he snarled.
“Less than a day,” the Master informed him.
“I see,” Jack forced out. “So, best case scenario, They think I died less than one day ago. Worst case scenario, they both abandoned me, on purpose, less than one day ago. But there's not a trace of sorrow or guilt in either of them.”
From what Koschei had learned from the time lines he had seen, there was a chance that Rose did not remember what had happened on the Satellite. But the Doctor; he had left Jack, whether knowing that he was alive or dead was unclear, but either way was a betrayal of someone who was meant to be a comrade, and an even worse betrayal of a lover.
After two hours of watching his 'friend' and his 'lover' celebrate, Jack couldn't stand it any more. He ran back to his room and pounded the wall in his agony. How could they not care! If the Doctor or Rose had died, he would have mourned them from the depths of his soul. He had thought they were his family. But he had been wrong.
The hate that he had developed for the Doctor over the years of his abandonment on Satellite 5, took over again. He forced himself to be calm, and collected a few items from his room. He tucked them into his greatcoat. Then he gently lifted the stasis capsule. “It's time to go,” he explained to the baby. “You're going to meet your father.”
Koschei couldn't go with him, and his name must not be mentioned. He also thought that confronting the Doctor was something that Jack had to do alone.
* * * *
The doorbell rang. “I'll get it,” shouted Rose to her mother. She made her way to the door, giggling, tipsy after all the wine she had drunk. Jack stood at the door. Rose practically fainted with the shock. “Jack, how? I thought you were dead.”
Jack strode in, coat swishing around him, and looked around at the party.
“So, are you having a good time?” he sneered. “I've been watching you. What is it, Rose, 24 hours since you thought I died? I'm glad to see that you've got over any grief so quickly.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “How long did you mourn me? A couple of hours? Ten minutes?”
Rose blanched. She had been so wrapped up in making sure that the Doctor was safe, that she hadn't given Jack a second thought.
Jack read it on her face. Physical pain prickled through him. “Ah, not even that. After all, the important people were fine,” he mused softly to himself. “And it would be simple to get a replacement for me, if you even wanted to bother.”
He turned to the Doctor then, who was standing at the far end of the room, like a deer caught in the headlights. “But maybe you didn't need to mourn, did you Doctor? Did you know that I was alive on that Satellite, when you abandoned me? In fact , did you know that I'd stay alive no matter what?”
Rose gasped. “How can you say that, Jack? Of course he didn't know. We would never have left you if we'd known.”
Jack had a good view of the Doctor's face when Rose stated that. He could see the guilt etched into his features. Rose was looking at Jack and missed it.
The vain hope that Jack had been holding on to died. So, worst case scenario for the Doctor then. He held out the white box to the Doctor. “This is for you.”
The Doctor took it gingerly and looked inside. He gasped in horror. In it was a baby, long dead, and wrapped in white cloth.
“Meet your daughter, Doctor. Her whole existence was agony and torment, thanks to you.”
Something gripped the Doctor's chest as he gazed into the casket. It was a combination of horror, guilt and grief. It did not for a moment occur to him to doubt Jack's word. As he looked at the pitiful creature he bit back a sob. Another Gallifreyan. His daughter. It would have been a dream come true. He felt sick.
“You were pregnant,” he whispered, more to himself than to Jack. “Why didn't you tell me?”
Rose was totally confused. “I don't understand,” she interjected, addressing the Doctor. “If this is your daughter, who is the mother?”
The Doctor looked at her bleakly. “You don't have to be a woman to have a baby where Jack's from.”
Rose was stunned. “So, this baby, she's yours and Jack's?” she stuttered in disbelief.
The Doctor stroked the capsule gently, his heart breaking. “I'm so sorry,” he murmured. “I never meant for this.” He turned to Jack. “Jack, I'm sorry. I would never have left you if I had known you were pregnant.”
And with those words the doctor condemned himself, even to Rose.
“But you did leave us,” Jack snarled. “And I couldn't find a way off. We waited weeks for you to come. And then the power failed, and the oxygen ran out.”
The bitterness and hate in Jack's voice and demeanour was palpable. Menace, and barely suppressed violence, radiated from him. Rose involuntarily took a step back. The Doctor held his ground.
“You had your vortex manipulator,” he argued. “I thought that you would be able to go anywhere you wanted.”
Jack moved over to the Doctor then, and grabbed his hair, pulling his head back. The Doctor did not resist. “My VM didn't survive the Dalek blast, so it was useless. And you can guess what happened next can't you Doctor? You understand. She died with me every time. Can you imagine it Doctor? An infant, suffocating every 15 minutes in the womb. And, when she was born, I prayed that the immortality would pass over to her. I prayed for that, even though I knew it would torture her until we were rescued, if we ever were. But it didn't. She lived for about two minutes, Doctor, and I got to hold her, and she was beautiful.” Jack was crying by this point.
Rose was listening to their exchange in horrified fascination. She didn't understand all of what Jack was talking about, but what she did get was appalling.
Jackie and Mickey were even more confused, but they knew that Jack was accusing the Doctor of something terrible. And he wasn't denying it.
The Doctor understood perfectly. He now knew exactly what he had condemned Jack and their daughter to, and he realised how much they had suffered. His mind recoiled from it. He had deliberately betrayed Jack, knowing that the other man would be devastated. But he had never thought that this would be the result. Even without the presence of the baby, Jack would have suffered intolerably. There was no justification that he could give, but he tried to explain. “I didn't want to leave you,” he cried. “I loved you, but you were wrong, an abomination, not meant to exist. I couldn't bear to be near you. I can feel you now. It's ...” he trailed off.
Jack's heart, already fractured so badly, turned to stone at the Doctor's words. Forcing back his tears he managed to speak “He can see the time lines you know; when we make love. He can see all that could have been, and what still might be. And, in all those myriad time lines, he's never seen one where you save us. If I become immortal, you always abandon us. If I make Rose immortal, you let us burn, and take her with you. So don't tell me you loved me. I know what I meant to you.”
Jack ignored the look of total confusion on the Doctor's face, as he talked about Koschei. “Well, this is what you mean to me,” he hissed. “You left us to die. In over 300 years you did not come back. You murdered our daughter. My only feelings towards you now are hate, and have been for three centuries.”
The words 300 years, pierced the Doctor's soul. He could hardly blame Jack for hating him.
Moving towards the Doctor, a feral look in his eye, Jack pulled out a wicked looking knife. “I owe you 10,000 deaths, Doctor. This is just the first.” As he spoke, he plunged the knife into the Doctor's stomach, and yanked it upwards. “This isn't going to be enough Doctor. Watch your back. You never know when I will be there, ready to take the next one, and it won't be quick next time.” He caressed the back of the Doctor's neck with his free hand, in a parody of a lover's touch. Moving his mouth close to the Doctor's ear, he whispered. “I have all of time to choose from. And the only thing I regret is that you have so few lives that I can take.”
The others present had been taken by surprise by Jack's action, and had not moved in time to prevent it. Rose and Jackie screamed in horror, and Rose rushed to the Doctor's side, as Jack dropped him to the ground. She pressed on the wound, shouting for Mickey to help her get the Doctor to the TARDIS. But it was clearly hopeless.
Jack focussed on her once more. “Why did you do it Rose?” The agony in his voice was all too evident. “Why resurrect me? I clearly wasn't important to you. And you have left me with this curse to the end of the universe.”
From her position on the floor next to the Doctor, Rose looked up at him with total incomprehension, and Jack realised that she had no idea what she had done.
As he swept out of the room, Jack had just one parting message. “Say goodbye to your daughter, Doctor. You won't see her again.” Those left behind were too busy trying to help the Doctor, to stop him leaving.
* * * * *
After Jack had left the Doctor, Koschei kept the scanner on the scene in Jackie's flat. Jack had done a good job with the knife. They had discussed the finer points of Time Lord physiology, as relevant to fatal knife wounds. It had done a lot of damage, and death would be slow in coming, but was inevitable, even for a Time Lord.
After several minutes, Jack returned. The Doctor was reaching the end.
“Happy regeneration day, Doctor,” Koschei murmured, as they watched him explode into light.
* * * * *
They went to Woman Wept. This planet held happy memories for Jack; of the time when he and the Doctor and Rose had been a family. He had wanted to bury his daughter somewhere with some connection to her father. And it was beautiful. He and Koschei chose a mountain peak, covered in ice and snow. The glaciers below it gleamed in the sun. Nothing here would ever be disturbed.
Koschei used his laser screwdriver to gouge out a grave in the ice, below a massive boulder. They laid the baby to rest, still in the stasis capsule. He then etched out, on the boulder, the words that Jack had chosen.
Sha'hiri
Child of Earth and Gallifrey
Beloved Daughter
Never Forgotten
They had chosen the name together. Sha'hiri in Gallifreyan meant beautiful and loved.
Jack knelt by the grave, and touched the words on the boulder. The encounter with the Doctor had been cathartic. He would always remember, but he was ready now to let go. “I can never be with you, but I'll come back and see you,” he promised.
He stood as Koschei laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Are you ready to go?”
Jack nodded. He followed Koschei down to the TARDIS.
“Where would you like to go?” Koschei asked.
“I know a great bar on Beta Cassiopeia 3,” Jack suggested. “And they have a museum there with a really fine Arkanian death mask. It would look great in the TARDIS.”
Koschei laughed. “So, petty larceny eh? Isn't that a bit beneath you?”
“It's hardly petty,” Jack exclaimed. “It's worth the combined wealth of ten planets. Anyway, we've done enough pleasure planets, for now at least. Do you have any better ideas?”
“The Doctor would not approve.”
“Well, I've learned how much my becoming a 'good citizen' gained his approval,” Jack sneered. “I think I can live without it.”
Koschei grinned. “After that we could visit this planet I know of. Very superstitious natives. They thought I was a god. Or there's this planet that's just asking to be dominated,” he added with a nefarious expression.
Jack looked intrigued. “Could be interesting,” he commented.
“But we don't need to decide yet,” Koschei added. “It's been a long, and emotional day. Come to bed, sleep. There's no hurry to do anything.”
* * * *
Hours later, Koschei lay in bed, watching Jack sleep. It was ironic, he mused, that Jack had effectively ensured that the Doctor would not go back for him. Now that the Doctor had seen Jack after he was abandoned, he would be crossing his own time line if he went back for him on the Satellite. It could be a self fulfilling causal loop. The Doctor did not come, therefore Jack went back for his revenge, therefore the Doctor did not come. Of course that supposed that the Doctor would ever have got around to it, if Jack had not done this. He couldn't help but suspect that the Doctor would not have done so.
When Jack woke, they made love. Koschei looked at the possibilities again. He had been right. If he had not rescued Jack, and hence Jack had not gone after the Doctor, Jack would have remained on the Satellite until its orbit decayed and it burnt up in Earth's atmosphere. He would then have resurrected and been trapped on an Earth still incapable of space flight. The Doctor would never have gone back for him.
The outcome had been tragic, but now they both had an opportunity for a better life. They were both damaged - he by the drums, Jack by the Doctor's abandonment. But it seemed that, together, they could help each other. He had avoided looking into their future; some things were better not known, but he hoped that they would have many years together.
AN: Just an epilogue to go now.
Next chapter here: http://ohinyan.livejournal.com/31696.html