Auction Story: Unseen, the Sun Still Rises
Title: Unseen, the Sun Still Rises
Beta: nightrider101
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Ninth Doctor
Spoilers: Torchwood: Children of Earth
Summary: Just a normal day in the life of the Doctor: A world is ending, people are dying, and he meets a man from his own future.
Words: 3858
Note: For taffimai who won this at the help_haiti fandom auction.
It was, in the end, a fairly normal day. It was raining, it was cold, bombs were falling, and he met someone from his own future.
The Doctor’s standards allowed for a very generous definition of ‘normal’.
The war on this world had started only a day before and the Time Lord knew it would be over tomorrow. After the last bomb, the big one, had blown up, there would be nothing left of these people and all their reasons for fighting would be forgotten. There was nothing the Doctor could do. He couldn’t save the planet, he couldn’t save a single of its inhabitants; he didn’t know what he was here for, except to watch another civilisation turn to ash.
Another bomb went up nearby. There was fire, but no screams, no voices at all. Everyone in this area was already dead, it seemed, or had escaped to treacherous safety. They knew nothing of the fact that there was no escape, not for them. The Doctor stared at the dancing flames devouring a building ahead, his lips pressed into a thin line, feeling helpless anger that served no one.
The TARDIS had brought him here. He didn’t know why; his chosen destination had been somewhere else, somewhere friendly, warm and fun - at least that was the word Jack had used. The Doctor had travelled with the former time agent just long enough to know that Jack’s idea of fun was not necessarily the same as his.
Watching the flames, the Doctor didn’t think even Jack would consider this place in any way amusing.
The place Jack had chosen for them the Doctor didn’t yet know. He’d been curious, though not exactly expecting much, and Rose had been positively ecstatic, bouncing in impatience to go and explore a strange new world with their strange new friend. In fact, she had been more excited than she had ever been about a destination chosen by the Doctor. Slightly put off and in the mood to get back at them, he had let the TARDIS take the long road, which basically meant that she was supposed to aimlessly drift through the vortex for a while before going where she was supposed to go.
Which she hadn’t done, that much was obvious.
After they had departed from their last adventure, the Doctor had told his companions to use the time in the vortex and get some rest before the next trouble they would doubtlessly end up in sooner or later. Not in the mood for jokes like that, the Time Lord had pretended not to hear Jack’s playful invitation into his bed and stayed behind in the console room, not in need of rest but needing time to think, time to be alone.
When the TARDIS had landed much sooner than expected, the Doctor knew at once that it was in the wrong place, the wrong time, or both. Letting the two humans sleep on, he had left on his own, and soon recognized the place. He had been here before, in better times both for him and this world, and even then he had known how the world would end.
Now the world was ending. Following an instinct, the Time Lord swiftly walked back to the TARDIS and locked it from the outside. He knew Jack was more than capable of taking care of himself and Rose had proven the same on numerous occasions, but this was not a place he wanted to lose them in should they wake up and wander off.
The same instinct that told him to lock in his companions also kept him from getting into the ship and leaving this world behind. The Doctor saw no purpose in his being here, but he trusted his instincts. Something was in motion here, some thread of history that needed his presence to be spun.
He only had to find it.
Without consciously choosing a direction, the Doctor started down the deserted street. It was getting warmer the closer he came to the big fires, the ones that devoured the entire city. And while he walked on, night was falling. His sense of time told him what his eyes couldn’t; the sky was full of smoke, black and suffocating. It would never again see the sun. The end would come tomorrow, an hour after sunrise, long before the smoke could clear away.
Two miles down the road, he found the first corpses. Burned, humanoid forms, outlined by the flames. The Doctor walked on, a part of him glad they were already gone. Were they still alive, he could not have helped them - not in the long run. He could have saved them from the flames, but only to have them survive for nine more hours. He would have found shelter for them knowing full well it would not protect them; that he could easily save them and was not allowed to do it. And then he’d go on and let them die. He already knew far too well how very capable he was of doing what he had to do. No matter the price.
Three miles down the street, he heard the first screams.
They came from the direction of the industrial district, where some buildings had not yet collapsed under the onslaught of the raging fires. The Doctor stopped, imagined the victims: trapped, probably, inside a burning factory, safe from the flames but not from the heat and the smoke. Perhaps injured, without doubt terrified, and doomed to either suffocate, or be slowly roasted, or die when the ceiling came down. Some were screaming for help, some were just screaming. The Doctor started running even as he cursed his instincts for doing this, for allowing himself to see the faces of those he would leave behind.
A building nearby collapsed; burning debris landed in his way, blocked it. There was no getting through this and it would have been such a good excuse, such an easy way out, but he’d already spotted another way, through that alley and over a wall and he was moving before he could think, burning the hairs off his hands when he got too close to the flames. The wall would be gone soon, and his way back to the TARDIS with it. The Doctor couldn’t not think of it, but he also couldn’t stop.
And then he reached the origin of the screams and saw at once, with a mix of desperation and relief, that there was nothing he could do.
The flames surrounded the entire building. Debris blocked all ways inside. The Doctor inspected the walls quickly and almost against his will. The structure of the building would hold for about one more minute before it would collapse, and the screams had turned higher and louder; screams of pain now, rather than fear.
It was too late. He should just leave. There was no point in staying here until the end.
But the Doctor was unable to turn his back on people in suffering, even if sometimes that only meant staying to watch. Already he found himself running on, circling the building, looking for a gap, some way inside, if only to postpone the inevitable for a few hours or die trying.
His mind knew he was torturing himself, but perhaps he deserved that, and his body was acting on its own. He couldn’t turn away, except the building was starting to collapse now, and he had not heard any voices in half a minute.
And then he saw the gap, a hole in the wall, but it was too late now, and the flames were beginning to fill this opening as well. The Doctor wanted to turn away, but there was someone moving inside, between the flames, someone who felt like a punch to the stomach, or the ground disappearing beneath his feet.
A second later he was inside, his leather jacket pulled over his head to keep his hair from catching fire. The dark figure moving inside the hall turned into a man in a dark coat, carrying the limp body of a woman over his shoulder. The Doctor could see at once that the woman was dead, but apparently the man couldn’t, for he kept carrying her towards the opening the Time Lord came in through.
The walls and ceiling were on fire. There was no furniture to burn, but even so for a human it had to be almost unbearably hot.
The Doctor blocked his airways to keep himself from breathing in the smoke.
The ceiling creaked.
“She’s dead,” he called, trying to avoid looking directly at the man. The man looked directly at him, staring. “Leave her,” the Doctor ordered. “We need to get out of here before the ceiling comes down!”
For a moment it looked like the man would do as he said, but then he tightened his hold on the body and stumbled on, towards the exit. Only he got the direction slightly wrong, being unable to see through the smoke that filled the air. The Doctor reached for him, intending to push him in the right direction. A loud crash aborted his movement, and the next moment the man was replaced by a pile of rubble.
The Doctor’s eyes burned. He was nearly blind, but reached for the debris anyway, because the man was still alive, and he would be for longer than the nine hours everyone else had left. Acting according to his nature while fighting his instincts, the Time Lord struggled to push the large piece of ceiling off and away.
Ironically, it was the corpse of the woman that had spared the man’s head and neck from being crushed under the weight. More rubble rained down around them.
With no time to pay attention to the human’s injuries, the Doctor hauled him up and over his shoulder, running through the smoke and the fire and then on and on once outside to get clear of the falling building. The weight of the man on his shoulders didn’t slow him down.
It started to rain. The rain wouldn’t put out the fires, but it would drench them, and while the Doctor was not against having the soot washed off his face, he knew he should get his burden out of the downpour. Away from anything that burned it was cold. For a human without his tolerance for low temperatures it had to be freezing.
On his way here, the Doctor had passed a few houses that had so far escaped the destruction around them. Hoping they were abandoned by their original inhabitants, he carried the man there and inside the first intact building he found. The door was gone, broken open from the outside. No one was living here anymore.
Inside, it was dark. The Doctor put down the man who had yet to start moving again and looked for a source of light, until he found a couple of candles. The irony of fire being the solution for this particular problem was not lost on him.
Finally able to get a good look at this human he had so unexpectedly, though perhaps not randomly met, he hesitated to do so. Simply being near him was difficult, but he was hurt and the Doctor needed to help him. So he gently turned him around and used the edge of his own wet coat to clean the dirt off his face.
The cloth was dirty and slightly burned, and the rain had made its way through clouds of dust and smoke, so the water did little to clean the face. It didn’t matter. The Doctor knew what it looked like.
There was a deep cut on the side of the man’s forehead, and his right arm was broken in two places. Other than that, he had survived the impact of the debris surprisingly intact.
A minute after the Doctor had made a makeshift splint for his arm, the man started to wake up. He moved weakly, and groaned, and sat up, and the Doctor watched from where he was sitting on the floor, forcing himself not to look away. Forcing himself not to run away.
The candles lit the room only insufficiently, but it was enough to see, enough to recognize. The man blinked at the Doctor, rubbed his temple, and shook his head as if to clear it.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he finally said.
“Can’t say the same about you,” the Doctor replied, and Jack flashed a smile that reminded the Doctor of the burning houses.
“That answers that question, then.” He moved to get into a more comfortable position, and winced slightly when he moved his injured arm. “When did we meet?”
“Four days ago.”
“Ah. So you don’t really know me yet.”
“I know you well enough,” the Doctor said, “to recognize that you are not the same man who is right now sleeping in my TARDIS. What happened to you?”
“Well. That-” Jack breathed out sharply, obviously in a lot of pain. “Is a long story.” “He looked at the Doctor, his eyes never leaving the Time Lord’s face. “I can’t tell you, of course.”
“Of course.” The Doctor nodded, but wasn’t satisfied. Whatever had happened, it was big, bigger than anything happening to a human should be. Space and time were rippling around his friend in a sickening manner. He wasn’t supposed to be.
He was wrong.
Jack moved, perhaps to stand, perhaps to get into a more comfortable position. He never achieved either, had to stop the movement with a pained grin. “I’d forgotten how much fun broken bones can be.”
“Seems like you lost your taste for the finer things in life.” Compassion defeating his reluctance, the Doctor came over and sat behind the former time agent, pulling him back so Jack could lean against him. It was better than nothing, though probably still not very comfortable.
“How did you get here? Or can’t you tell me that either?”
“Oh, that had nothing to do with you, don’t worry. I came in my ship.”
“And by your ship, you mean…”
Jack laughed softly. “His name was Ben. We’ve…”
“I’m not interested in the details.” Leaning his back against the Doctor, Jack missed the frown of disapproval. “At least some things about you haven’t changed.”
“What makes you think I changed? I mean, apart from the obvious.”
“The Jack Harkness I met last week in London wouldn’t have risked his life to save a woman who was already dead,” the Doctor said.
For a long minute, Jack was silent. “There’s not much risk to speak of. And I didn’t know she was dead.”
“Who was she?”
“I have no idea.” The human shifted a little, as if uncomfortable with the topic. “I heard her scream. She was injured, so I tried to get her out. But when I arrived she was already dying. I’m not surprised she didn’t make it.”
This man leaning against the Doctor, trembling softly in the cold air, had run into a burning house on the verge of collapse to save a person he didn’t even know. The Doctor had seen from the beginning Jack could be more than he allowed himself to be, but it was obvious that a lot of time and events lay between this Jack and the conman he knows.
“Where’s your ship? I’ll take you there,” he offered. “In your condition you won’t make it on your own.”
“Oh, come on.” Even though he couldn’t see his face, the Doctor knew Jack was pouting. “Can’t I stay with you?”
“You already are.”
“Right. Of course. Should’ve known that. Oh well.”
“Your ship, Jack,” the Doctor repeated patiently.
“A few miles north. Let’s not go yet, okay?” The human wriggled a little bit, as if trying to sink deeper into the Time Lord’s body.
“Are you aware what’s happening to this planet?”
“Yes. But we’ve still got time, and I don’t really feel like moving.”
With his injuries, that was understandable. The Doctor sighed, wondering if he could allow his old friend a few hours of rest before they had to leave.
“Why did you come here?” he asked. “There’s no one to save.”
“Why did you come?” Jack asked back. He was still trembling. It was cold, and the Doctor’s body offered little warmth to a human.
“I saved you,” the Time Lord pointed out. It earned him a little laugh.
“Did you?”
“Did I?” Carefully, the Doctor moved to get out of his jacket. “Enlighten me.”
Jack sighed. “I guess that remains to be seen.” He leaned his head back to rest against the Doctor’s shoulder, only to lift it in surprise when the Time Lord draped his heavy leather jacket over him.
“It’s cold here, for a human,” the Doctor explained his action. “And I don’t have much body heat to offer.”
“Your body’s hot enough for me,” Jack said with a hint of humour the Doctor knew better than to rely on, even as he rolled his eyes at the reply. Despite his words, Jack pulled the jacket closer around himself with his good hand. “Ah. I missed this jacket. Good quality, too. You should have left it to me.”
So he wasn’t wearing the jacket anymore in Jack’s present. The Doctor accepted the knowledge without emotion. “It wouldn’t suit you.”
“I didn’t want it for wearing.”
Deciding he hadn’t actually heard that, the Time Lord asked, “What are you doing here? You know there’s nothing to do in this place but watch it die.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s what I came here for. I don’t know.” All previous humour was suddenly gone from Jack’s voice. “I haven’t had a good time lately. A lot of people died because of me. Some because I killed them.”
The Doctor pressed his lips together and said nothing. He knew Jack had killed before, and that he had probably never wasted a second thought on it. He sensed that this was different. And also that it was better not to ask.
“Somehow, this felt like a good place to be,” Jack added. “I didn’t come here with a plan, but since I was in the area already, I thought I’d drop in for a visit.”
“I’ll take you to your ship,” the Doctor declared. “There’s not much time left.”
Jack laughed softly. “Worried about me, Doc?”
“Yes.”
Jack turned in his arms, and suddenly his hand was on the Doctor’s face, cupping his cheek. The Doctor looked in Jack’s eyes, blue even in the dim light and so much older than they were and saw hurt and pain and resignation mixed with warmth and affection. They looked at each other, two survivors who could get through anything even if sometimes they didn’t want to.
“I’ll be fine,” Jack promised.
He would be. Eventually. For now, he leaned in and gave the Doctor a hug, and the moment was broken. “I could stay here,” the human proclaimed. “For a hard, bony guy you’re surprisingly comfortable.” The Doctor felt him relax in his new position, that couldn’t possibly be truly comfortable as it forced him to lie on his injured arm. The Time Lord understood: this was Jack’s attempt to get the Doctor to do something he didn’t want to ask for: hold him.
So he did. His arms circled around the human’s (still human, even after all the time, all the changes) back and it was a little awkward, a little helpless, but for half an hour, it was enough.
-
True to his promise, the Doctor brought Jack to his ship, with one hour to spare before the end of the world. Jack would have liked to stay in the little cold house a little longer, between the Doctor and the Doctor’s jacket, but taking into consideration that his old friend needed time to return to his own means of transport before it was too late he eventually agreed to leave.
Jack had sprained his ankle on top of everything, so the Doctor carried him. It would not have been a problem for him to hop on one foot if the Doctor supported him, but obviously it also was no problem for the Time Lord to carry him around, so Jack let him.
He didn’t want to kill himself to heal - somehow, in the Time Lord’s presence, it would have been wrong.
The goodbye was brief. “Take care of yourself,” the Doctor said before he left, the words uncharacteristic and meaningful, saying so much that Jack had no choice but to promise and lie. He watched his friend’s retreating back as he walked away without turning around once.
It had been strange seeing him again, in this body, both exhilarating and depressing. Perhaps there was a message in it, but if so, it was lost on Jack.
He only knew that this Doctor had no idea what fate had in store for him, and neither had the Jack that was right now running through the TARDIS like a caged tiger, wondering where the Doctor was and why the hell he couldn’t get the door to open. Jack smiled at the memory, but it turned bitter with regret and envy of this man who had only just begun to learn to take responsibility for his actions.
His younger self knew nothing of Torchwood, of Owen, and Tosh, and Ianto. He had never been married and meant it, was deep inside convinced that his brother was dead and had no daughter who would never look at him again because he was too aware of bigger picture to be a good father. Or grandfather.
His younger self did, however, just now begin to get an understanding of how much the Doctor could mean to him if he let it happen. He did not know that not letting it happen was not an option.
But this was the wrong Doctor. Seeing him had reminded Jack how much he had loved him even then, but now, for the sake of the timelines and the Doctor’s peace of mind, he couldn’t share anything with him. The gap between them was too far.
This Doctor knew nothing. Just like Jack, in the present, saviour of worlds and murderer of children knew nothing about the future and what it would hold. Perhaps that was what this chance meeting should remind him of: that anything could happen, good and bad. Anything would happen, eventually. His life wasn’t over yet.
Behind the smoke the sun was rising. The sky was hidden still, even here beyond the edge of the city, but Jack knew it was time for the very last sunrise, seen by no one.
Were he in his ship and flying over the planet, he would be seeing the dark sea of smoke from above, and over the smoke a few dissipating clouds, shining red and orange and violet in the light of the rising sun. Jack closed his eyes and the image became clear in his mind. It was quite beautiful.
Perhaps he would stay a little longer.
February 12, 2010
Beta: nightrider101
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Ninth Doctor
Spoilers: Torchwood: Children of Earth
Summary: Just a normal day in the life of the Doctor: A world is ending, people are dying, and he meets a man from his own future.
Words: 3858
Note: For taffimai who won this at the help_haiti fandom auction.
It was, in the end, a fairly normal day. It was raining, it was cold, bombs were falling, and he met someone from his own future.
The Doctor’s standards allowed for a very generous definition of ‘normal’.
The war on this world had started only a day before and the Time Lord knew it would be over tomorrow. After the last bomb, the big one, had blown up, there would be nothing left of these people and all their reasons for fighting would be forgotten. There was nothing the Doctor could do. He couldn’t save the planet, he couldn’t save a single of its inhabitants; he didn’t know what he was here for, except to watch another civilisation turn to ash.
Another bomb went up nearby. There was fire, but no screams, no voices at all. Everyone in this area was already dead, it seemed, or had escaped to treacherous safety. They knew nothing of the fact that there was no escape, not for them. The Doctor stared at the dancing flames devouring a building ahead, his lips pressed into a thin line, feeling helpless anger that served no one.
The TARDIS had brought him here. He didn’t know why; his chosen destination had been somewhere else, somewhere friendly, warm and fun - at least that was the word Jack had used. The Doctor had travelled with the former time agent just long enough to know that Jack’s idea of fun was not necessarily the same as his.
Watching the flames, the Doctor didn’t think even Jack would consider this place in any way amusing.
The place Jack had chosen for them the Doctor didn’t yet know. He’d been curious, though not exactly expecting much, and Rose had been positively ecstatic, bouncing in impatience to go and explore a strange new world with their strange new friend. In fact, she had been more excited than she had ever been about a destination chosen by the Doctor. Slightly put off and in the mood to get back at them, he had let the TARDIS take the long road, which basically meant that she was supposed to aimlessly drift through the vortex for a while before going where she was supposed to go.
Which she hadn’t done, that much was obvious.
After they had departed from their last adventure, the Doctor had told his companions to use the time in the vortex and get some rest before the next trouble they would doubtlessly end up in sooner or later. Not in the mood for jokes like that, the Time Lord had pretended not to hear Jack’s playful invitation into his bed and stayed behind in the console room, not in need of rest but needing time to think, time to be alone.
When the TARDIS had landed much sooner than expected, the Doctor knew at once that it was in the wrong place, the wrong time, or both. Letting the two humans sleep on, he had left on his own, and soon recognized the place. He had been here before, in better times both for him and this world, and even then he had known how the world would end.
Now the world was ending. Following an instinct, the Time Lord swiftly walked back to the TARDIS and locked it from the outside. He knew Jack was more than capable of taking care of himself and Rose had proven the same on numerous occasions, but this was not a place he wanted to lose them in should they wake up and wander off.
The same instinct that told him to lock in his companions also kept him from getting into the ship and leaving this world behind. The Doctor saw no purpose in his being here, but he trusted his instincts. Something was in motion here, some thread of history that needed his presence to be spun.
He only had to find it.
Without consciously choosing a direction, the Doctor started down the deserted street. It was getting warmer the closer he came to the big fires, the ones that devoured the entire city. And while he walked on, night was falling. His sense of time told him what his eyes couldn’t; the sky was full of smoke, black and suffocating. It would never again see the sun. The end would come tomorrow, an hour after sunrise, long before the smoke could clear away.
Two miles down the road, he found the first corpses. Burned, humanoid forms, outlined by the flames. The Doctor walked on, a part of him glad they were already gone. Were they still alive, he could not have helped them - not in the long run. He could have saved them from the flames, but only to have them survive for nine more hours. He would have found shelter for them knowing full well it would not protect them; that he could easily save them and was not allowed to do it. And then he’d go on and let them die. He already knew far too well how very capable he was of doing what he had to do. No matter the price.
Three miles down the street, he heard the first screams.
They came from the direction of the industrial district, where some buildings had not yet collapsed under the onslaught of the raging fires. The Doctor stopped, imagined the victims: trapped, probably, inside a burning factory, safe from the flames but not from the heat and the smoke. Perhaps injured, without doubt terrified, and doomed to either suffocate, or be slowly roasted, or die when the ceiling came down. Some were screaming for help, some were just screaming. The Doctor started running even as he cursed his instincts for doing this, for allowing himself to see the faces of those he would leave behind.
A building nearby collapsed; burning debris landed in his way, blocked it. There was no getting through this and it would have been such a good excuse, such an easy way out, but he’d already spotted another way, through that alley and over a wall and he was moving before he could think, burning the hairs off his hands when he got too close to the flames. The wall would be gone soon, and his way back to the TARDIS with it. The Doctor couldn’t not think of it, but he also couldn’t stop.
And then he reached the origin of the screams and saw at once, with a mix of desperation and relief, that there was nothing he could do.
The flames surrounded the entire building. Debris blocked all ways inside. The Doctor inspected the walls quickly and almost against his will. The structure of the building would hold for about one more minute before it would collapse, and the screams had turned higher and louder; screams of pain now, rather than fear.
It was too late. He should just leave. There was no point in staying here until the end.
But the Doctor was unable to turn his back on people in suffering, even if sometimes that only meant staying to watch. Already he found himself running on, circling the building, looking for a gap, some way inside, if only to postpone the inevitable for a few hours or die trying.
His mind knew he was torturing himself, but perhaps he deserved that, and his body was acting on its own. He couldn’t turn away, except the building was starting to collapse now, and he had not heard any voices in half a minute.
And then he saw the gap, a hole in the wall, but it was too late now, and the flames were beginning to fill this opening as well. The Doctor wanted to turn away, but there was someone moving inside, between the flames, someone who felt like a punch to the stomach, or the ground disappearing beneath his feet.
A second later he was inside, his leather jacket pulled over his head to keep his hair from catching fire. The dark figure moving inside the hall turned into a man in a dark coat, carrying the limp body of a woman over his shoulder. The Doctor could see at once that the woman was dead, but apparently the man couldn’t, for he kept carrying her towards the opening the Time Lord came in through.
The walls and ceiling were on fire. There was no furniture to burn, but even so for a human it had to be almost unbearably hot.
The Doctor blocked his airways to keep himself from breathing in the smoke.
The ceiling creaked.
“She’s dead,” he called, trying to avoid looking directly at the man. The man looked directly at him, staring. “Leave her,” the Doctor ordered. “We need to get out of here before the ceiling comes down!”
For a moment it looked like the man would do as he said, but then he tightened his hold on the body and stumbled on, towards the exit. Only he got the direction slightly wrong, being unable to see through the smoke that filled the air. The Doctor reached for him, intending to push him in the right direction. A loud crash aborted his movement, and the next moment the man was replaced by a pile of rubble.
The Doctor’s eyes burned. He was nearly blind, but reached for the debris anyway, because the man was still alive, and he would be for longer than the nine hours everyone else had left. Acting according to his nature while fighting his instincts, the Time Lord struggled to push the large piece of ceiling off and away.
Ironically, it was the corpse of the woman that had spared the man’s head and neck from being crushed under the weight. More rubble rained down around them.
With no time to pay attention to the human’s injuries, the Doctor hauled him up and over his shoulder, running through the smoke and the fire and then on and on once outside to get clear of the falling building. The weight of the man on his shoulders didn’t slow him down.
It started to rain. The rain wouldn’t put out the fires, but it would drench them, and while the Doctor was not against having the soot washed off his face, he knew he should get his burden out of the downpour. Away from anything that burned it was cold. For a human without his tolerance for low temperatures it had to be freezing.
On his way here, the Doctor had passed a few houses that had so far escaped the destruction around them. Hoping they were abandoned by their original inhabitants, he carried the man there and inside the first intact building he found. The door was gone, broken open from the outside. No one was living here anymore.
Inside, it was dark. The Doctor put down the man who had yet to start moving again and looked for a source of light, until he found a couple of candles. The irony of fire being the solution for this particular problem was not lost on him.
Finally able to get a good look at this human he had so unexpectedly, though perhaps not randomly met, he hesitated to do so. Simply being near him was difficult, but he was hurt and the Doctor needed to help him. So he gently turned him around and used the edge of his own wet coat to clean the dirt off his face.
The cloth was dirty and slightly burned, and the rain had made its way through clouds of dust and smoke, so the water did little to clean the face. It didn’t matter. The Doctor knew what it looked like.
There was a deep cut on the side of the man’s forehead, and his right arm was broken in two places. Other than that, he had survived the impact of the debris surprisingly intact.
A minute after the Doctor had made a makeshift splint for his arm, the man started to wake up. He moved weakly, and groaned, and sat up, and the Doctor watched from where he was sitting on the floor, forcing himself not to look away. Forcing himself not to run away.
The candles lit the room only insufficiently, but it was enough to see, enough to recognize. The man blinked at the Doctor, rubbed his temple, and shook his head as if to clear it.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he finally said.
“Can’t say the same about you,” the Doctor replied, and Jack flashed a smile that reminded the Doctor of the burning houses.
“That answers that question, then.” He moved to get into a more comfortable position, and winced slightly when he moved his injured arm. “When did we meet?”
“Four days ago.”
“Ah. So you don’t really know me yet.”
“I know you well enough,” the Doctor said, “to recognize that you are not the same man who is right now sleeping in my TARDIS. What happened to you?”
“Well. That-” Jack breathed out sharply, obviously in a lot of pain. “Is a long story.” “He looked at the Doctor, his eyes never leaving the Time Lord’s face. “I can’t tell you, of course.”
“Of course.” The Doctor nodded, but wasn’t satisfied. Whatever had happened, it was big, bigger than anything happening to a human should be. Space and time were rippling around his friend in a sickening manner. He wasn’t supposed to be.
He was wrong.
Jack moved, perhaps to stand, perhaps to get into a more comfortable position. He never achieved either, had to stop the movement with a pained grin. “I’d forgotten how much fun broken bones can be.”
“Seems like you lost your taste for the finer things in life.” Compassion defeating his reluctance, the Doctor came over and sat behind the former time agent, pulling him back so Jack could lean against him. It was better than nothing, though probably still not very comfortable.
“How did you get here? Or can’t you tell me that either?”
“Oh, that had nothing to do with you, don’t worry. I came in my ship.”
“And by your ship, you mean…”
Jack laughed softly. “His name was Ben. We’ve…”
“I’m not interested in the details.” Leaning his back against the Doctor, Jack missed the frown of disapproval. “At least some things about you haven’t changed.”
“What makes you think I changed? I mean, apart from the obvious.”
“The Jack Harkness I met last week in London wouldn’t have risked his life to save a woman who was already dead,” the Doctor said.
For a long minute, Jack was silent. “There’s not much risk to speak of. And I didn’t know she was dead.”
“Who was she?”
“I have no idea.” The human shifted a little, as if uncomfortable with the topic. “I heard her scream. She was injured, so I tried to get her out. But when I arrived she was already dying. I’m not surprised she didn’t make it.”
This man leaning against the Doctor, trembling softly in the cold air, had run into a burning house on the verge of collapse to save a person he didn’t even know. The Doctor had seen from the beginning Jack could be more than he allowed himself to be, but it was obvious that a lot of time and events lay between this Jack and the conman he knows.
“Where’s your ship? I’ll take you there,” he offered. “In your condition you won’t make it on your own.”
“Oh, come on.” Even though he couldn’t see his face, the Doctor knew Jack was pouting. “Can’t I stay with you?”
“You already are.”
“Right. Of course. Should’ve known that. Oh well.”
“Your ship, Jack,” the Doctor repeated patiently.
“A few miles north. Let’s not go yet, okay?” The human wriggled a little bit, as if trying to sink deeper into the Time Lord’s body.
“Are you aware what’s happening to this planet?”
“Yes. But we’ve still got time, and I don’t really feel like moving.”
With his injuries, that was understandable. The Doctor sighed, wondering if he could allow his old friend a few hours of rest before they had to leave.
“Why did you come here?” he asked. “There’s no one to save.”
“Why did you come?” Jack asked back. He was still trembling. It was cold, and the Doctor’s body offered little warmth to a human.
“I saved you,” the Time Lord pointed out. It earned him a little laugh.
“Did you?”
“Did I?” Carefully, the Doctor moved to get out of his jacket. “Enlighten me.”
Jack sighed. “I guess that remains to be seen.” He leaned his head back to rest against the Doctor’s shoulder, only to lift it in surprise when the Time Lord draped his heavy leather jacket over him.
“It’s cold here, for a human,” the Doctor explained his action. “And I don’t have much body heat to offer.”
“Your body’s hot enough for me,” Jack said with a hint of humour the Doctor knew better than to rely on, even as he rolled his eyes at the reply. Despite his words, Jack pulled the jacket closer around himself with his good hand. “Ah. I missed this jacket. Good quality, too. You should have left it to me.”
So he wasn’t wearing the jacket anymore in Jack’s present. The Doctor accepted the knowledge without emotion. “It wouldn’t suit you.”
“I didn’t want it for wearing.”
Deciding he hadn’t actually heard that, the Time Lord asked, “What are you doing here? You know there’s nothing to do in this place but watch it die.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s what I came here for. I don’t know.” All previous humour was suddenly gone from Jack’s voice. “I haven’t had a good time lately. A lot of people died because of me. Some because I killed them.”
The Doctor pressed his lips together and said nothing. He knew Jack had killed before, and that he had probably never wasted a second thought on it. He sensed that this was different. And also that it was better not to ask.
“Somehow, this felt like a good place to be,” Jack added. “I didn’t come here with a plan, but since I was in the area already, I thought I’d drop in for a visit.”
“I’ll take you to your ship,” the Doctor declared. “There’s not much time left.”
Jack laughed softly. “Worried about me, Doc?”
“Yes.”
Jack turned in his arms, and suddenly his hand was on the Doctor’s face, cupping his cheek. The Doctor looked in Jack’s eyes, blue even in the dim light and so much older than they were and saw hurt and pain and resignation mixed with warmth and affection. They looked at each other, two survivors who could get through anything even if sometimes they didn’t want to.
“I’ll be fine,” Jack promised.
He would be. Eventually. For now, he leaned in and gave the Doctor a hug, and the moment was broken. “I could stay here,” the human proclaimed. “For a hard, bony guy you’re surprisingly comfortable.” The Doctor felt him relax in his new position, that couldn’t possibly be truly comfortable as it forced him to lie on his injured arm. The Time Lord understood: this was Jack’s attempt to get the Doctor to do something he didn’t want to ask for: hold him.
So he did. His arms circled around the human’s (still human, even after all the time, all the changes) back and it was a little awkward, a little helpless, but for half an hour, it was enough.
-
True to his promise, the Doctor brought Jack to his ship, with one hour to spare before the end of the world. Jack would have liked to stay in the little cold house a little longer, between the Doctor and the Doctor’s jacket, but taking into consideration that his old friend needed time to return to his own means of transport before it was too late he eventually agreed to leave.
Jack had sprained his ankle on top of everything, so the Doctor carried him. It would not have been a problem for him to hop on one foot if the Doctor supported him, but obviously it also was no problem for the Time Lord to carry him around, so Jack let him.
He didn’t want to kill himself to heal - somehow, in the Time Lord’s presence, it would have been wrong.
The goodbye was brief. “Take care of yourself,” the Doctor said before he left, the words uncharacteristic and meaningful, saying so much that Jack had no choice but to promise and lie. He watched his friend’s retreating back as he walked away without turning around once.
It had been strange seeing him again, in this body, both exhilarating and depressing. Perhaps there was a message in it, but if so, it was lost on Jack.
He only knew that this Doctor had no idea what fate had in store for him, and neither had the Jack that was right now running through the TARDIS like a caged tiger, wondering where the Doctor was and why the hell he couldn’t get the door to open. Jack smiled at the memory, but it turned bitter with regret and envy of this man who had only just begun to learn to take responsibility for his actions.
His younger self knew nothing of Torchwood, of Owen, and Tosh, and Ianto. He had never been married and meant it, was deep inside convinced that his brother was dead and had no daughter who would never look at him again because he was too aware of bigger picture to be a good father. Or grandfather.
His younger self did, however, just now begin to get an understanding of how much the Doctor could mean to him if he let it happen. He did not know that not letting it happen was not an option.
But this was the wrong Doctor. Seeing him had reminded Jack how much he had loved him even then, but now, for the sake of the timelines and the Doctor’s peace of mind, he couldn’t share anything with him. The gap between them was too far.
This Doctor knew nothing. Just like Jack, in the present, saviour of worlds and murderer of children knew nothing about the future and what it would hold. Perhaps that was what this chance meeting should remind him of: that anything could happen, good and bad. Anything would happen, eventually. His life wasn’t over yet.
Behind the smoke the sun was rising. The sky was hidden still, even here beyond the edge of the city, but Jack knew it was time for the very last sunrise, seen by no one.
Were he in his ship and flying over the planet, he would be seeing the dark sea of smoke from above, and over the smoke a few dissipating clouds, shining red and orange and violet in the light of the rising sun. Jack closed his eyes and the image became clear in his mind. It was quite beautiful.
Perhaps he would stay a little longer.
February 12, 2010