Pendulum (1/?)
Rating: PG
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Summary: Unannounced strangers in the hub are always a reason to worry - but Jack has no idea just how much.
Note: After postponing it again and a again I finally got around to writing the sequel to Before Sunset. It's the last part in my Losing the Lifeline series. Since I didn't get many comments for the other parts I don't know if many people will care this is finally being written, but it's something I have always wanted to finish.
With a heavy sigh Jack leaned back in his chair and re-filled his glass with water. He drank half of it before going back to what he’d been doing all evening: wasting time.
Right now he was supposed to do paper work. There were three reports to be written and five to be read. So far all he had done was surfing through the internet for stuff that was interesting, if not at all useful.
In between he had started writing the reports: He had opened a file on Word and had every intention of filling it with a professional description of how they had lost their SUV to a sky-blue t-rex from another planet. Eventually. After he had clicked on that link there…
Somehow he was lacking motivation today.
He glanced at the clock. Make it ‘tonight’ then.
When he’d decided to become a hero he no one had warned him of the paperwork. Naturally. If they did, there wouldn’t be heroes. Nowhere. Ever.
The Doctor never had to write reports. If he saw a bill he’d fold it into a paper crane.
He was quite good at that.
The thought reminded Jack that he had been able to fold paper cranes himself, once. He’d learned it in Japan, about forty years ago, and now he took a piece of paper from his printer (a piece that should have been filled with the his first report by now), cut away the extra length that kept it from being square and decided to find out if he still remembered how to do it.
He didn’t.
It wouldn’t leave him alone. Google helped him find a website that refreshed his rusty memory. Once he got this right he would start typing.
He folded his first crane in four decades, then he took another paper and folded a second one, just to make sure he remembered how to. Also, the first one looked really crappy.
Finally satisfied he clicked on the empty Word file and positioned his fingers on the keyboard, reminding himself that he should write a few hundred words before he did anything else. Staring at the screen he tried to think of the crucial first words.
Hadn’t he been able to fold paper boxes, once?
A noise outside his office offered unneeded but welcome distraction. Another glance at the clock made Jack frown though - if he ruled out that the weevils had gotten out of their cells and were now having a tea-party with Myfanwy (and something like that could never be ruled out completely) he had to assume that at least one member of his team was suffering from insomnia.
For that a number of explanations were possible: Either the world was ending and he had so far failed to notice, or Gwen had had a fight with Rhys and needed a shoulder to cry on, or Ianto thought Jack might get lonely here and decided to keep him company. Of all those options Jack favoured the last one - although watching a number of alien monsters having tea with a pterodactyl would well be worth another night without sex.
After half a minute had passed without anyone knocking on his door Jack left his desk to have a look, his weapon loosely in hand. He didn’t want to be surprised by anything nasty, nor did he want to risk shooting one of his friends by accident.
The hub was empty. No weevils, no team, even Myfanwy was nowhere in sight. His face darkening and much more alert Jack looked everywhere, from the autopsy room to the kitchen, and found nothing. Checking the surveillance tapes told him he was all alone.
Maybe he’d imagined it.
Still weary Jack returned to his office. The seat behind his desk was taken, by a man who steepled his fingers in front of is face as if trying to imitate every clichéd villain there ever was and was not in the least impressed by the gun Jack pointed at his face. He had little hope the guy had snuck inside to do this paperwork.
“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you get in here?”
The stranger smiled without humour.
-
“You’re going to come with me, Captain,” the man said; a statement. “You’re assistance, unfortunate as it is, is requited.”
“As I am the one with the gun, you’d better tell me why I should do that,” replied Jack, hoping he wouldn’t hit the computer if he had to fire. Then again, it would be a convenient excuse for being report-less in the morning. “You’ll forgive me my inhospitality, but to my experience people entering the hub without permission are seldom our friends. So you have five seconds to answer my questions.”
The stranger chuckled.
“Dear old Jack,” he mused. “Still acting like the big, hard man from the tv-shows.”
“Three seconds,” Jack answered, wondering how this guy might know him. He’d definitely never seen him before.
The man was black-haired and of similar height and build as Jack. His face was narrower though, and covered in a carefully trimmed beard. In his neat, black suit he looked like a villain from a James Bond movie.
So it was only appropriate that Jack had the licence to kill him.
“It’s in your own interest to assist me,” the man said.
“Is it?” A thought stuck Jack, causing his expression to darken further. “You’re threatening my team!”
The other grimaced. “Why waste time like that if I have something much better than your team to convince you?”
“Which would be?” Jack’s suspicion grew. His team was his weakness, the thing that made him vulnerable. If this man didn’t use his desire to protect them against him there were only very few alternatives. His brother was one of them, another something from Jack’s past - or even his past itself, the years he’d forgotten.
“The Doctor,” said the stranger. Jack breathed in sharply.
“What have you done to him, bastard?”
The reply he got was unexpectedly harsh. “I did nothing! I need you to save him, fool! He’s dying.”
Jack swallowed. He didn’t lower his weapon - this could be a trick.
He hoped it was a trick.
“I don’t believe you.”
The other looked at him, his stare cold and arrogant. “How certain are you, that I’m lying?” he asked. “Can you really risk killing me? Just because I came in without knocking?”
Jack’s finger was still on the trigger, but he already knew he couldn’t do it. And judging from the other’s calm stare he knew it as well.
Jack lowered the weapon at least. His arm was beginning to get heavy anyway.
“Can you prove it? Where is the Doctor now?”
Instead of answering, the stranger turned the screen of Jack’s computer around for him to see. It showed the pictures received from the surveillance camera beside the fountain above them, and there, standing in its usual spot, was the TARDIS.
Jack fought down the urge to just run there. He pointed the gun at the other man once more.
“Lead the way,” he ordered. “I don’t want you in my back.”
Even as he moved the stranger snorted. “Why so mistrusting, Jack? I am a friend of the Doctor. I came here to help him. We’re on the same side.”
He was right - apart from him getting into the hub without warning Jack had no reason to think him an enemy. But no one should be able to get into the hub without ringing the alarm or being on the surveillance tapes. No one should be able to get into the hub at all. And there was something about him that made Jack dislike him despite his attractive features. It was more than just his arrogance. Jack felt like he knew him, and that made him nervous. Especially since he felt like knowing this man hadn’t been particularly pleasant. He couldn’t base this feeling on anything, though. There was just this dislike when he looked at him, and a vague urge to shoot him.
Although the cause could also be his hurt ego, due to having their security fooled so easily, mingled with worry for the Doctor. Dying, the man had said.
“There’s no need to hurry,” the same man said now, when Jack poked the gun in his back in an attempt to make him move faster. “He’s not in immediate danger.”
“Who are you?” Jack asked again, determined to get an answer this time. ”How do you know me?”
“You don’t remember?” the stranger asked in fake surprise. “I’m hurt! Hurt and shocked, Jack. We were so close once!” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Or should I call you Bill?”
“’Bill’?” Jack frowned. “I never called myself Bill.”
“You did. You called yourself many things. One of them being ‘Fred’, but the Doctor wouldn’t have that.”
Now Jack nearly froze. He’d used the name Fred a few times during his time in the agency - a private joke between him and a long dead lover.
“How do you know that?” They had reached the lift going up - not for the first time Jack cursed it for being so slow.
The stranger snorted. “Like I said, we’ve met. I suppose you really don’t remember, but you and me, we were lovers once.”
“Oh, please!”
“It’s too bad you’ve forgotten,” the bearded man mused. “The sex was fantastic. I’m sure it’s a memory you would have liked to keep.”
There were quite a few memories Jack would have liked to keep. Two years of memories.
Suddenly the barrel of his gun was underneath the other’s chin.
“Do you have anything to do with the agency taking my memories?” Jack hissed. The stranger simply took a step aside.
“No. Our ways parted before any memory-stealing happened.”
“Right. Now explain to me how we met. Was the Doctor there as well? If so, why has he never mentioned anything?”
“Because it has only just happened to us. The last time I saw you weren’t that long ago - you were a time agent, we were time travellers, one thing led to another.”
“To us having sex?” The sceptical tone wasn’t justified. Sex was a natural outcome to many things Jack did.
The man merely shrugged. The lift had almost reached the top and Jack decided that ‘the man’ needed a name.
“Harry,” he introduced himself when asked, with a smirk as if this was a joke Jack didn’t get. He didn’t like the name anyway, was reminded of a certain Harry Saxon, but accepted it for the moment. What he did not accept as easily was the story ‘Harry’ was trying to sell him. He believed him when he said they’d met before, but there was definitely more to it than that.
“I’m having a hard time believing you we’ve been friends,” he admitted.
“I never said anything about friendship. But we were sexually engaged, and there were no weapons involved in that.” Harry fished for something in the pockets of his suit. “Since I anticipated your unwillingness to believe me I had this printed out.”
He gave Jack a folded piece of paper. Jack took it and unfolded it with one hand, never lowering his gun.
The paper showed a picture, judging from the angle a still from a surveillance camera. It showed two naked people on a couch. Jack recognized Harry immediately. Recognizing the other man as himself, a few years younger, took a moment even though he’d known what to expect.
It proved nothing - pictures could be faked. Still, for now it looked real enough, and Jack having had sex with Harry didn’t mean he had trusted him then.
What surprised him most was the room they were in. Jack recognized it.
“The Doctor let us shag in his TARDIS?” he asked with a frown. “Are you kidding me?”
“We didn’t ask and he didn’t mind when he found out.” Now Harry sounded a little sour as if he wasn’t really happy about - what? The Doctor not minding?
Whatever it was, it convinced Jack more that he was speaking the truth than the picture had.
Jack hadn’t even known there were cameras in the TARDIS.
“And the Doctor?” he asked as he followed Harry through the rainy twilight to the blue box. “How exactly are you connected to him?” Somehow this man didn’t seem like the sort the Time Lord usually took along on his journeys.
Harry opened the door and they entered a TARDIS that seemed darker than unusually somehow. Almost lifeless. Jack shuddered not only because of the low temperature. For the first time he was truly able to accept that Harry might have spoken the truth when he said that the Doctor was dying.
“What’s wrong with him?” he whispered. “What happened?”
Harry kept walking, straight over to the door leading to the main corridor.
“Come,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
-
The corridor appeared longer than usual, with fewer doors to the sides, and Jack was missing the staircases. It seemed as though the ship was reduced to a minimum, but then this damn way wouldn’t have been so endless. Jack felt like he’d been following Harry for hours.
He was worried.
The TARDIS changing on the inside wasn’t unusual, but somehow this felt wrong.
“Where are all the corridors crossing this one?” he asked, the cold emptiness making him nervous. “The stairs? Where’s the damn kitchen?”
Harry didn’t turn around.
“They were still here when I left. Maybe the ship doesn’t like you.”
It reminded the immortal of the way the TARDIS had reacted when he’d clung to her from the outside. Perhaps Harry was right. The thought was followed by doubt that he was the right person to help the Doctor. He was ‘wrong’, after all. What if he made it worse?
He voiced his doubts to Harry. Harry shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Just like the console room the corridor was darker than Jack remembered, barren. It ran straight ahead, seeming to go nowhere. Changed as it was Jack had no orientation, no way of telling where they were. Had he been asked to find his old room now he wouldn’t have been able to do so.
Still he expected the walk to end in the infirmary, or the Doctor’s bedroom at best. He expected to find his friend weak and injured on a bed, either sleeping or awake and in pain (and maybe shying from his presence). So he was surprised and confused when Harry pushed open a door - and how he knew it was this one and not the next, that looked exactly the same he would never know - and Jack found himself entering a small room he had never seen before.
Unlike most rooms in the TARDIS there was a carpet on the floor and the walls were made of wood. None of those walls was even close to the outside, yet opposite the door a window allowed bright, warm sunlight to fall into the centre of the room. It got reflected by something that looked like a coffin made of glass, standing on a table made of wires and buttons.
Jack didn’t see Harry grimace as they stepped inside.
“All this, but you didn’t even manage to light the corridor properly, you stupid machine,” he grumbled, but Jack didn’t hear him. His eyes were on the glass casket, and his feet brought him closer without a single thought forming in his head.
The table was about two and a half metres in length and one metre wide. The casket on top of it was almost as long, and half as wide. Wires and tubes connecting it to the table had little success in making it seem less like a coffin.
The floor of the casket was padded by a narrow mattress. On the soft material lay the Doctor, pale and still. A thin white sheet covered him from the waist down, apart from that he appeared to be naked but for the bandage wrapped firmly around his chest.
The reflections of the sunlight on the lid made it hard to make out more until Jack sank to his knees beside the construction, looking into the casket from the side. The Doctor’s face was entirely without colour, his cheeks sunken in, his lips slightly parted and split. Dark bruises marred his pale skin, on his shoulders, his neck, his wrists. As Jack, speechless, stared at his friend’s drawn face he noticed traces of tears on his cheeks.
“What happened?” he whispered - his breath left a white spot on the glass before him that quickly disappeared.
The bandage around the Doctor’s chest indicated an injury, but Jack at once saw that it was more than that. The Time Lord was thinner than he had been ever before, and on the bare skin of his arm Jack discovered marks left by needles, some of them faded and old. He looked ill.
Beneath the bandage his thin chest didn’t rise.
Jack’s hand was caught the moment it touched the lid.
“Don’t open it,” Harry warned.
“He’s not breathing!”
“Yes. Leave him alone.”
Jack took a deep breath, as if for both of them. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked, sinking down to his knees again. “And what is this thing he’s lying in?”
“This thing keeps him alive,” Harry explained. “Inside he’s suspended in time. That’s why he’s not breathing. Outside the machine he would die within days. Maybe hours.”
Jack pressed his fingertips against the glass. “Why?”
“Because he’s too weak to live. Because he’s ill and stubborn and a stupid little idiot!” The bitterness in Harry’s voice made Jack look up - he expected the other man’s gaze to be on the Doctor, but he was staring at Jack instead, his eyes full of darkness. “A while ago he used all of his strength to keep the universe from collapsing - you know how he is. There wasn’t even enough left to regenerate, and he’s never recovered, has been getting weaker ever since. Now he has not even enough reserves left to keep this body alive. Before I put him into that thing I had to remove one of his hearts.”
“Hasn’t there been a way to heal him?” Jack swallowed the information he had just received with a feeling of nausea. He didn’t try to keep the desperation out of his voice - whoever Harry was, he already knew how much the Doctor meant to him.
“Of course there was a way,” the other snarled in a way that made Jack wonder how much exactly the Doctor meant to Harry. “But as you can see it’s failed. The Doctor is dying! He’s almost gone.” A hand landed heavily on Jack’s shoulder as he stared through the glass at the still face of his friend, who already looked like a corpse. Harry’s voice, however, was much calmer when he next spoke.
“And it’s your fault,” he said.
- tbc
September 9, 2008
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Summary: Unannounced strangers in the hub are always a reason to worry - but Jack has no idea just how much.
Note: After postponing it again and a again I finally got around to writing the sequel to Before Sunset. It's the last part in my Losing the Lifeline series. Since I didn't get many comments for the other parts I don't know if many people will care this is finally being written, but it's something I have always wanted to finish.
With a heavy sigh Jack leaned back in his chair and re-filled his glass with water. He drank half of it before going back to what he’d been doing all evening: wasting time.
Right now he was supposed to do paper work. There were three reports to be written and five to be read. So far all he had done was surfing through the internet for stuff that was interesting, if not at all useful.
In between he had started writing the reports: He had opened a file on Word and had every intention of filling it with a professional description of how they had lost their SUV to a sky-blue t-rex from another planet. Eventually. After he had clicked on that link there…
Somehow he was lacking motivation today.
He glanced at the clock. Make it ‘tonight’ then.
When he’d decided to become a hero he no one had warned him of the paperwork. Naturally. If they did, there wouldn’t be heroes. Nowhere. Ever.
The Doctor never had to write reports. If he saw a bill he’d fold it into a paper crane.
He was quite good at that.
The thought reminded Jack that he had been able to fold paper cranes himself, once. He’d learned it in Japan, about forty years ago, and now he took a piece of paper from his printer (a piece that should have been filled with the his first report by now), cut away the extra length that kept it from being square and decided to find out if he still remembered how to do it.
He didn’t.
It wouldn’t leave him alone. Google helped him find a website that refreshed his rusty memory. Once he got this right he would start typing.
He folded his first crane in four decades, then he took another paper and folded a second one, just to make sure he remembered how to. Also, the first one looked really crappy.
Finally satisfied he clicked on the empty Word file and positioned his fingers on the keyboard, reminding himself that he should write a few hundred words before he did anything else. Staring at the screen he tried to think of the crucial first words.
Hadn’t he been able to fold paper boxes, once?
A noise outside his office offered unneeded but welcome distraction. Another glance at the clock made Jack frown though - if he ruled out that the weevils had gotten out of their cells and were now having a tea-party with Myfanwy (and something like that could never be ruled out completely) he had to assume that at least one member of his team was suffering from insomnia.
For that a number of explanations were possible: Either the world was ending and he had so far failed to notice, or Gwen had had a fight with Rhys and needed a shoulder to cry on, or Ianto thought Jack might get lonely here and decided to keep him company. Of all those options Jack favoured the last one - although watching a number of alien monsters having tea with a pterodactyl would well be worth another night without sex.
After half a minute had passed without anyone knocking on his door Jack left his desk to have a look, his weapon loosely in hand. He didn’t want to be surprised by anything nasty, nor did he want to risk shooting one of his friends by accident.
The hub was empty. No weevils, no team, even Myfanwy was nowhere in sight. His face darkening and much more alert Jack looked everywhere, from the autopsy room to the kitchen, and found nothing. Checking the surveillance tapes told him he was all alone.
Maybe he’d imagined it.
Still weary Jack returned to his office. The seat behind his desk was taken, by a man who steepled his fingers in front of is face as if trying to imitate every clichéd villain there ever was and was not in the least impressed by the gun Jack pointed at his face. He had little hope the guy had snuck inside to do this paperwork.
“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you get in here?”
The stranger smiled without humour.
-
“You’re going to come with me, Captain,” the man said; a statement. “You’re assistance, unfortunate as it is, is requited.”
“As I am the one with the gun, you’d better tell me why I should do that,” replied Jack, hoping he wouldn’t hit the computer if he had to fire. Then again, it would be a convenient excuse for being report-less in the morning. “You’ll forgive me my inhospitality, but to my experience people entering the hub without permission are seldom our friends. So you have five seconds to answer my questions.”
The stranger chuckled.
“Dear old Jack,” he mused. “Still acting like the big, hard man from the tv-shows.”
“Three seconds,” Jack answered, wondering how this guy might know him. He’d definitely never seen him before.
The man was black-haired and of similar height and build as Jack. His face was narrower though, and covered in a carefully trimmed beard. In his neat, black suit he looked like a villain from a James Bond movie.
So it was only appropriate that Jack had the licence to kill him.
“It’s in your own interest to assist me,” the man said.
“Is it?” A thought stuck Jack, causing his expression to darken further. “You’re threatening my team!”
The other grimaced. “Why waste time like that if I have something much better than your team to convince you?”
“Which would be?” Jack’s suspicion grew. His team was his weakness, the thing that made him vulnerable. If this man didn’t use his desire to protect them against him there were only very few alternatives. His brother was one of them, another something from Jack’s past - or even his past itself, the years he’d forgotten.
“The Doctor,” said the stranger. Jack breathed in sharply.
“What have you done to him, bastard?”
The reply he got was unexpectedly harsh. “I did nothing! I need you to save him, fool! He’s dying.”
Jack swallowed. He didn’t lower his weapon - this could be a trick.
He hoped it was a trick.
“I don’t believe you.”
The other looked at him, his stare cold and arrogant. “How certain are you, that I’m lying?” he asked. “Can you really risk killing me? Just because I came in without knocking?”
Jack’s finger was still on the trigger, but he already knew he couldn’t do it. And judging from the other’s calm stare he knew it as well.
Jack lowered the weapon at least. His arm was beginning to get heavy anyway.
“Can you prove it? Where is the Doctor now?”
Instead of answering, the stranger turned the screen of Jack’s computer around for him to see. It showed the pictures received from the surveillance camera beside the fountain above them, and there, standing in its usual spot, was the TARDIS.
Jack fought down the urge to just run there. He pointed the gun at the other man once more.
“Lead the way,” he ordered. “I don’t want you in my back.”
Even as he moved the stranger snorted. “Why so mistrusting, Jack? I am a friend of the Doctor. I came here to help him. We’re on the same side.”
He was right - apart from him getting into the hub without warning Jack had no reason to think him an enemy. But no one should be able to get into the hub without ringing the alarm or being on the surveillance tapes. No one should be able to get into the hub at all. And there was something about him that made Jack dislike him despite his attractive features. It was more than just his arrogance. Jack felt like he knew him, and that made him nervous. Especially since he felt like knowing this man hadn’t been particularly pleasant. He couldn’t base this feeling on anything, though. There was just this dislike when he looked at him, and a vague urge to shoot him.
Although the cause could also be his hurt ego, due to having their security fooled so easily, mingled with worry for the Doctor. Dying, the man had said.
“There’s no need to hurry,” the same man said now, when Jack poked the gun in his back in an attempt to make him move faster. “He’s not in immediate danger.”
“Who are you?” Jack asked again, determined to get an answer this time. ”How do you know me?”
“You don’t remember?” the stranger asked in fake surprise. “I’m hurt! Hurt and shocked, Jack. We were so close once!” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Or should I call you Bill?”
“’Bill’?” Jack frowned. “I never called myself Bill.”
“You did. You called yourself many things. One of them being ‘Fred’, but the Doctor wouldn’t have that.”
Now Jack nearly froze. He’d used the name Fred a few times during his time in the agency - a private joke between him and a long dead lover.
“How do you know that?” They had reached the lift going up - not for the first time Jack cursed it for being so slow.
The stranger snorted. “Like I said, we’ve met. I suppose you really don’t remember, but you and me, we were lovers once.”
“Oh, please!”
“It’s too bad you’ve forgotten,” the bearded man mused. “The sex was fantastic. I’m sure it’s a memory you would have liked to keep.”
There were quite a few memories Jack would have liked to keep. Two years of memories.
Suddenly the barrel of his gun was underneath the other’s chin.
“Do you have anything to do with the agency taking my memories?” Jack hissed. The stranger simply took a step aside.
“No. Our ways parted before any memory-stealing happened.”
“Right. Now explain to me how we met. Was the Doctor there as well? If so, why has he never mentioned anything?”
“Because it has only just happened to us. The last time I saw you weren’t that long ago - you were a time agent, we were time travellers, one thing led to another.”
“To us having sex?” The sceptical tone wasn’t justified. Sex was a natural outcome to many things Jack did.
The man merely shrugged. The lift had almost reached the top and Jack decided that ‘the man’ needed a name.
“Harry,” he introduced himself when asked, with a smirk as if this was a joke Jack didn’t get. He didn’t like the name anyway, was reminded of a certain Harry Saxon, but accepted it for the moment. What he did not accept as easily was the story ‘Harry’ was trying to sell him. He believed him when he said they’d met before, but there was definitely more to it than that.
“I’m having a hard time believing you we’ve been friends,” he admitted.
“I never said anything about friendship. But we were sexually engaged, and there were no weapons involved in that.” Harry fished for something in the pockets of his suit. “Since I anticipated your unwillingness to believe me I had this printed out.”
He gave Jack a folded piece of paper. Jack took it and unfolded it with one hand, never lowering his gun.
The paper showed a picture, judging from the angle a still from a surveillance camera. It showed two naked people on a couch. Jack recognized Harry immediately. Recognizing the other man as himself, a few years younger, took a moment even though he’d known what to expect.
It proved nothing - pictures could be faked. Still, for now it looked real enough, and Jack having had sex with Harry didn’t mean he had trusted him then.
What surprised him most was the room they were in. Jack recognized it.
“The Doctor let us shag in his TARDIS?” he asked with a frown. “Are you kidding me?”
“We didn’t ask and he didn’t mind when he found out.” Now Harry sounded a little sour as if he wasn’t really happy about - what? The Doctor not minding?
Whatever it was, it convinced Jack more that he was speaking the truth than the picture had.
Jack hadn’t even known there were cameras in the TARDIS.
“And the Doctor?” he asked as he followed Harry through the rainy twilight to the blue box. “How exactly are you connected to him?” Somehow this man didn’t seem like the sort the Time Lord usually took along on his journeys.
Harry opened the door and they entered a TARDIS that seemed darker than unusually somehow. Almost lifeless. Jack shuddered not only because of the low temperature. For the first time he was truly able to accept that Harry might have spoken the truth when he said that the Doctor was dying.
“What’s wrong with him?” he whispered. “What happened?”
Harry kept walking, straight over to the door leading to the main corridor.
“Come,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
-
The corridor appeared longer than usual, with fewer doors to the sides, and Jack was missing the staircases. It seemed as though the ship was reduced to a minimum, but then this damn way wouldn’t have been so endless. Jack felt like he’d been following Harry for hours.
He was worried.
The TARDIS changing on the inside wasn’t unusual, but somehow this felt wrong.
“Where are all the corridors crossing this one?” he asked, the cold emptiness making him nervous. “The stairs? Where’s the damn kitchen?”
Harry didn’t turn around.
“They were still here when I left. Maybe the ship doesn’t like you.”
It reminded the immortal of the way the TARDIS had reacted when he’d clung to her from the outside. Perhaps Harry was right. The thought was followed by doubt that he was the right person to help the Doctor. He was ‘wrong’, after all. What if he made it worse?
He voiced his doubts to Harry. Harry shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Just like the console room the corridor was darker than Jack remembered, barren. It ran straight ahead, seeming to go nowhere. Changed as it was Jack had no orientation, no way of telling where they were. Had he been asked to find his old room now he wouldn’t have been able to do so.
Still he expected the walk to end in the infirmary, or the Doctor’s bedroom at best. He expected to find his friend weak and injured on a bed, either sleeping or awake and in pain (and maybe shying from his presence). So he was surprised and confused when Harry pushed open a door - and how he knew it was this one and not the next, that looked exactly the same he would never know - and Jack found himself entering a small room he had never seen before.
Unlike most rooms in the TARDIS there was a carpet on the floor and the walls were made of wood. None of those walls was even close to the outside, yet opposite the door a window allowed bright, warm sunlight to fall into the centre of the room. It got reflected by something that looked like a coffin made of glass, standing on a table made of wires and buttons.
Jack didn’t see Harry grimace as they stepped inside.
“All this, but you didn’t even manage to light the corridor properly, you stupid machine,” he grumbled, but Jack didn’t hear him. His eyes were on the glass casket, and his feet brought him closer without a single thought forming in his head.
The table was about two and a half metres in length and one metre wide. The casket on top of it was almost as long, and half as wide. Wires and tubes connecting it to the table had little success in making it seem less like a coffin.
The floor of the casket was padded by a narrow mattress. On the soft material lay the Doctor, pale and still. A thin white sheet covered him from the waist down, apart from that he appeared to be naked but for the bandage wrapped firmly around his chest.
The reflections of the sunlight on the lid made it hard to make out more until Jack sank to his knees beside the construction, looking into the casket from the side. The Doctor’s face was entirely without colour, his cheeks sunken in, his lips slightly parted and split. Dark bruises marred his pale skin, on his shoulders, his neck, his wrists. As Jack, speechless, stared at his friend’s drawn face he noticed traces of tears on his cheeks.
“What happened?” he whispered - his breath left a white spot on the glass before him that quickly disappeared.
The bandage around the Doctor’s chest indicated an injury, but Jack at once saw that it was more than that. The Time Lord was thinner than he had been ever before, and on the bare skin of his arm Jack discovered marks left by needles, some of them faded and old. He looked ill.
Beneath the bandage his thin chest didn’t rise.
Jack’s hand was caught the moment it touched the lid.
“Don’t open it,” Harry warned.
“He’s not breathing!”
“Yes. Leave him alone.”
Jack took a deep breath, as if for both of them. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked, sinking down to his knees again. “And what is this thing he’s lying in?”
“This thing keeps him alive,” Harry explained. “Inside he’s suspended in time. That’s why he’s not breathing. Outside the machine he would die within days. Maybe hours.”
Jack pressed his fingertips against the glass. “Why?”
“Because he’s too weak to live. Because he’s ill and stubborn and a stupid little idiot!” The bitterness in Harry’s voice made Jack look up - he expected the other man’s gaze to be on the Doctor, but he was staring at Jack instead, his eyes full of darkness. “A while ago he used all of his strength to keep the universe from collapsing - you know how he is. There wasn’t even enough left to regenerate, and he’s never recovered, has been getting weaker ever since. Now he has not even enough reserves left to keep this body alive. Before I put him into that thing I had to remove one of his hearts.”
“Hasn’t there been a way to heal him?” Jack swallowed the information he had just received with a feeling of nausea. He didn’t try to keep the desperation out of his voice - whoever Harry was, he already knew how much the Doctor meant to him.
“Of course there was a way,” the other snarled in a way that made Jack wonder how much exactly the Doctor meant to Harry. “But as you can see it’s failed. The Doctor is dying! He’s almost gone.” A hand landed heavily on Jack’s shoulder as he stared through the glass at the still face of his friend, who already looked like a corpse. Harry’s voice, however, was much calmer when he next spoke.
“And it’s your fault,” he said.
- tbc
September 9, 2008