Pendulum (5/?)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Summary: There's something the Master always wanted to tell Jack...
Note: I'll be busy with NaNoWriMo in November, so there won't be time to write the next chapter before December. Sorry about that.
The TARDIS was large enough to get lost in her if one really wanted to, and often enough when one didn’t. Even the Doctor had been known to run through her corridors for ages when she’d shifted the rooms without warning or he’d been too deep in thought to pay attention to where he was going. Theoretically a Time Lord could walk until he died of a very hypothetical old age and never reach the very hypothetical end of the pocket universe contained inside the time capsules, but so far this one had always returned her passengers to the better known parts after a while. The Master had never heard of someone who’d entered a TARDIS and never came out. But then this was exactly the kind of thing the Time Lords would keep secret if it ever happened.
All type 40 TARDISes had been known for their erratic navigation and errors in their chameleon circuits. The Master didn’t know if sudden and unpredictable internal behaviour was also on the long list of things that had led to this type being called back and dismantled when he was still a child, or if it was just this particular model that enjoyed getting people lost, among everything else. He’d often speculated that she might be doing it on purpose, but most of the time said purpose remained a mystery to him.
Right now he wasn’t lost. He’d have liked to be, though. After leaving the Doctor he’d been wandering through the corridors for hours, not with the intention of not knowing where he was, but with every intention of being on his own. Given the TARDIS’s internal nature it shouldn’t have been much of difficult goal to accomplish.
Or so he’d thought.
There was a garden inside the ship. It was large, and every time the Master had seen it during his life it had looked different. Once it looked like a park that wouldn’t seem displaced surrounding a European castle, once it looked like a jungle. This time it reminded him of a European park that had been neglected for so long it became a jungle. The Master followed the remains of cobbled paths to the other side, and found the pool. Or a pool anyway. He wasn’t sure he had seen this one ever before.
The Time Lord didn’t linger there. After the pool more corridors, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever walked them before. In any case he was far, far away from the infirmary, Jack or anything remotely living, save for the TARDIS itself. When he came across a staircase he walked down and ended up in a room with a stone floor, a fireplace that looked like it had recently been used and a number of heavy furniture, all covered in white sheets. He pulled the cover away from a large plush chair that looked like something the Doctor might have liked a few lifetimes back and sat down with a sigh.
It occurred to him that he was hungry. This insufficient mortal body he’d stolen required more food than his original body had, and more sleep as well. Since it seemed unlikely that the TARDIS had helpfully placed a kitchen right next door, the Master decided that he could bear the hunger and closed his eyes to lean back and think of nothing.
For a while he did so. All thoughts of the Doctor, his own sense of claustrophobia, and his anger at his fellow Time Lord in particular and the universe in general were banned from his mind while the Master relaxed in this cool, dark, distant, room and slowly began to nod off.
Eventually he was shaken from his light dozing, reluctantly leaving the cosy darkness he had pulled around himself, distracted by the cold steel pressed against the side of his head.
Smart as he was he didn’t open his eyes until after he was done rolling them. For a moment he considered pretending to be shocked, or frightened, but it seemed like so much wasted breath.
“Hello, Jack,” he said without turning his head. “What can I do for you today?”
How the hell had the guy found him anyway? The Master really hoped the TARDIS hadn’t helped him. Otherwise the ship going to wish she never had the next time he stole her.
“Oh, I just want to talk,” Jack answered with false cheer. “Get to know you a little better and all that.”
The Master nodded. “And if I’m deciding to ignore you and get back to sleep you’ll blow my brains out, I suppose?”
“Quite right.”
The Master considered this. “I think I’ll go back to sleep anyway. Right now I have little interest in talking to you.”
“Then I’ll shoot you,” Jack promised calmly, causing the other to shake his head.
“As a matter of fact, you won’t.”
The pressure of the barrel against his temple increased. “You want to gamble your life on it?”
“I don’t need to.” With a sigh of patient suffering the Master finally did the human the favour of turning around to face him. Jack looked annoyed. And angry. “I know you. And I know the Doctor. You will not kill me - not because I’m unarmed and harmless, but because you don’t want to lose his respect.” He snorted. “Wherever that comes from.”
“Probably from me being a better person than you are,” Jack suggested, still not lowering the gun. It was now no longer touching the Master but remained aimed at his face. “If he knows you longer than me he had the chance to compare.”
“Ah.” The Master crocked his head, looking at Jack with interest. “And how, exactly, are you better than me? Because in the time we’ve known each other all I’ve done was saving the Doctor’s life. I don’t see how that counts as a crime.” He thought of getting out of his armchair to get on one level with the other man, decided it was too warm and cosy to leave just for effect. “The simple fact that you dislike someone doesn’t make them evil, Harkness. You’re not that much of a personality detector.”
“You’re forgetting the time we spend together before,” Jack reminded him, as if that was necessary. “The time I’ve forgotten. You must have made an impression on me bad enough to instantly dislike you when we met again.”
“I made a bad impression?” With effort the Master brought a disbelieving expression to his face, in place of the delightful grin that wanted to spread. “You can’t even remember any of it yet you assume I did something wrong on the ground of you not liking me? Do excuse me, but you are hardly in a position to complain.” He’d been waiting for an excuse to say this for days now. “After all, I was not the one who raped the Doctor.”
The barrel of the gun dropped only a centimetre. Jack’s expression darkened for a second but the shock wouldn’t manifest, and his voice wasn’t shaking when he said, “You’re lying.” Spoken with conviction. The Master suppressed the urge to smirk.
“How would you know?” he asked. “You can’t remember.”
“I know,” Jack said, “because I would never, ever do that! I was not the most honourable person in the cosmos, I readily admit that, but I know very well that there is a line I would never have crossed.”
The Master took a step forward, until the gun pressed against his chest. “You sound so certain. And yet I was there. I saw it. He begged you to stop, Harkness - but you didn’t. You hurt him, without…”
“I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish here,” Jack interrupted him, “but it’s not working. I know you are lying, and even if you’d have proof for your accusation I’d still not believe you! I’m rather beginning to believe that you’re trying to cover some crime of your own here, and that the Doctor, and everyone, would be better off if I pulled this trigger.” His eyes were burning. “Because I know what I am capable of, and what not!”
“But what if you’re wrong?” The Master’s voice was calm, low. “Will you add murder to the list of your crimes?”
“Gladly.” The finger on the trigger moved, and despite his certainty the Master began to wonder if he’d pushed the human too far. Nothing of this was reflected in his voice, however, when he said, “Did the people who erased your memories leave you the time you spend with your sociopathic partner in that time loop?” Now the gun dropped notably and confused suspicion joined the fury in Jack’s eyes. “You knew what he did when he felt like it. Rape, torture, murder - and you never cared. Just turned your back and pretended it was none of your business. But then, you’ve been quite the skilled torturer yourself, weren’t you?” He snarled at all this hypocrisy and it wasn’t even an act. “So how can you be so sure?”
“That was different.” Oh, look! He sounded all defensive now. “I’m not proud of the man I once was, but I never agreed with what John was doing.”
“And still you did nothing to stop him. It’s just a small step from watching to doing it yourself.”
“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Jack hissed. “How do you know about all this?”
“You told me,” the Master lied. He’d pulled the information from ‘Bill’s’ mind when they had copulated in the human’s bedroom. At the same time when he’d planted the hypnotic orders in his brain that would soon lead to the time agent taking advantage of the Doctor’s weakness.
Repeatedly. It hadn’t been planned that way and the way he had lost control over his puppet still irked the Master. Now was payback time. “You’re talkative in bed,” he added.
“No,” Jack said darkly. “I’m not.”
The Master refused to acknowledge his words. “I often wondered,” he mused. “Maybe you erased your memories yourself because you couldn’t live with the guilt. It’s worth a thought, isn’t it?”
“I did not hurt him!” Jack said with force, his patience wearing thin.
“You were a time agent! You suspected us of being criminals, while lusting after the Doctor every step of the way. Tell me honestly, Captain, how sure can you be?”
“Absolutely.” There was no doubt in his eyes, just bottomless anger. It would come, though. The Master knew it. As soon as the human had time to calm down the words would keep running though his head. And he’d begin to suspect…
It was delicious, really. A delight to do something other than worry about the Doctor, and taking revenge at the same time. The best part was that it was all true, from a certain point of view. The Master smiled coldly.
“I can prove it,” he revealed.
Jack froze for the span of one second. Then his finger tightened around the trigger again.
“I’m not interested.”
“Yes, I know, you’re not believing me - but it’ll give you something to think about. If you’re so sure, why not have a look? Indulge me.”
“Like hell!” Jack’s hand was shaking ever so slightly. The Master could feel it, through the gun now pressed to his forehead. “I don’t know what game you are playing, but you’re not going to win it.”
The Master was quite convinced of the contrary. Still, winning would lose much of its triumph if Jack did indeed kill him after all. He had to prevent that from happening, somehow.
“Last wish of a condemned man?” he tried. “Just so I know you will one day realise that you have killed me without reason. I’m quite interested what you are going to tell the Doctor anyway.”
“You slipped and fell down the stairs.” Jack’s answer came without hesitation.
The Master grimaced. “Into a bullet?”
“It happens.” Jack seemed to consider a moment, his eyes fixed on the gun in his hand. Then he lowered it - just to bring it up one second later and smash the hilt into the Master’s face. The Time Lord saw the punch coming a quarter of a second too late. He managed to throw himself backwards and take the worst force out of the impact, but not to avoid it completely.
“Jack!”
Even as he stumbled backwards, his head ringing, the Master heard the breathless voice calling out. Through the dark spots dancing in front of him he could make out Jack turning around sharply, shock and guilt written all over his face, and the Doctor, leaning heavily against the doorframe.
The next second the Master was too busy not falling inelegantly on his backside to pay attention. When he regained his orientation Jack was crouching beside the Doctor, who had fallen to is knees but angrily pushed the human away when he tried to help.
“What the hell is going on here?” he asked hoarsely. He was glaring at the Master as he spoke, and the Master decided that both he and Jack were equally uninterested in the Doctor finding out about the topic of their conversation.
“He was being an ass,” Jack explained. “It was either punch or shoot him.”
“How did you find us?” the Master interrupted the Doctor’s angry reply before he could get out even the first word.
“I followed your voices.”
The Master raised his eyebrows. “Did you hear what we were talking about?”
“No. But I don’t need to, do I?” The look the Doctor gave him told the Master that had did indeed have a very good idea. He shouldn’t have been surprised - the Doctor knew him, after all.
He struggled for air, fell forward onto his hands and retched dryly. It distracted Jack from thinking about his words.
“Why did you come here?” the human asked, concern and annoyance in his voice. “You should have stayed in bed!”
The Doctor looked blankly at him through bangs of damp hair. “You were fighting,” he said, as if that was a reason.
“How could you even hear us? We’re miles away from the infirmary.”
The Master groaned at Jack’s words. How he could have travelled with the Doctor before and not noticed that her internal dimensions weren’t quite the same all the time was beyond him.
“Don’t answer that,” the human added quickly, apparently having noticed he’d said something stupid.
“I suppose the TARDIS wanted you to hear it,” the Master mused. “She likes me, after all. Wanted you to come and save me from being unjustly robbed of my precious life by this brute!”
“That’s enough!” The Doctor glared at him. “I have little doubt who started this.” He doubled over again.
“Quite right. Even if I had indeed been planning to kill him, saving his sorry ass was hardly worth getting out of bed for.” Rolling his eyes, the Master only waited for Jack to stick out his tongue at him. To his credit he didn’t. It was better this way, as one second later the Doctor told him to shut up.
“If you’re quite done here, I’d like to get back up,” he said shakily. “It’s chilly down here. Jack, if you could help me up the stairs...” The Master recognized his asking for help for that it was: An attempt to get Jack away from him, and probably the human did as well. He didn’t protest, though, but wordlessly helped the Doctor to his feet. He really wouldn’t be able to get up the stairs without help. The Master had thought the other Time Lord to be still too weak to get out of bed - seeing him here was a surprise. But he was leaning heavily against Jack, shaking with exhaustion and pain. Through the open shirt of his pyjama the Master saw the bandages still wrapped firmly around his chest.
The last thing he saw of them before Jack gently led his friend out of the room was the Doctor’s silent glare, telling him to stay the hell down here until they were well out of sight.
-
The stairs leading back to the main corridor were long - though not as long as Jack remembered them - and they had to pause twice for the Doctor to catch his breath. Yet he refused to let Jack carry him. The human suspected that he was still somewhat pissed.
A part of him wanted nothing more than to tell him of Harry’s accusations, so the Doctor could confirm that nothing of it was true.
But what if Harry had spoken the truth? Jack wasn’t sure he could bear that.
And it wasn’t like the Doctor was likely going to tell him if he’d really hurt him.
“I told you to stay away from him,” the Time Lord said darkly once they had reached the end of the stairs. Well, whispered. Croaked. “He’s trying to provoke you, and you’re not making him work very hard for it!”
“Care to tell me why?” Some of the anger at Harry got redirected at the man in his arms. “What happened between us when we met before?”
The Doctor shrugged. “You didn’t get along very well. There was nothing else to it, really.”
He wasn’t very good at lying.
“Could we try it with a little honesty, please? It’s no surprise I’m losing this game if no one tells me the rules. I’d expected better from you, Doctor.”
The Doctor said nothing, apparently too preoccupied with breathing to react to his words.
“I’m a grown man, whatever it is, I can take it,” Jack wasn’t entirely sure he was speaking the truth himself, now. After a second of hesitation he added, “Harry said it was my fault you’re this ill.”
“That’s not true.” Somewhere the Doctor found the strength to snort. “I was injured when the building I was in collapsed and never really recovered from it. You had nothing to do with it. We met you much later.”
“He mentioned that, yes. Actually he said there was a chance to help you and I ruined it.”
Jack’s stomach sank when the Doctor didn’t answer right away.
“I asked you to ruin it,” he finally said. “It might have worked, but it would have cost thousands of lives. Harry…” The Doctor stopped, shook his head. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you before we left,” he then said. “Thanks, Jack.”
The words ‘You’re welcome’ wouldn’t quite come over the human’s tongue.
“Am I going to get the whole story, or do I have to wait until Harry tells me?” he asked after a moment.
“Harry won’t tell you. At… least not all of it. He’ll pick out bits and pieces, out of… context to make you look bad. Keep that in mind… when you… next speak to him…” Jack looked at the Doctor in alarm. His voice had become halting, even more breathless than before. He’d reached his limit.
They were still standing beside the stairs, but Jack could see the door to the infirmary not five metres away. He’d already suspected that for the Doctor the way had been a bit shorter.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” he said, reluctantly letting go of his chance to actually get some useful information. Already he felt guilty that they had lured the Time Lord out of bed at all.
“Not there,” his friend said weakly, but with determination when Jack wrapped his arm around him again to gently move him toward the door. “I’d much prefer my own bed.”
“I don’t think…”
“Then don’t!” the Doctor snapped unexpectedly. “I’m sick of that room! I need some normalcy around me, walls that don’t constantly remind me of what a wreck I’ve become. So if you don’t ‘think’, I’ll get there on my own.” He pushed away from Jack, swayed and would have fallen if not for the strong arms reaching for him.
“As you wish.” It didn’t feel right to Jack, but he thought he could understand what the Doctor was going through. With little effort he lifted the man off the ground. “I’ll take you there,” he said quickly, to silence all oncoming protests, “if you let me carry you.”
The Doctor sighed tiredly and gave up. “Go ahead, then,” he allowed him generously.
Secretly Jack hoped that the TARDIS would continue to show some initiative and make the Doctor’s room impossible to find, but it waited for them right behind the next corner.
The carpet on the floor always came as a shock to Jack after the grates they were walking on almost everywhere else. Sure, there were different kinds of floors - in the garden, the living room, the kitchen, Jack’s own room - but somehow he always expected the Doctor’s personal realm to be pretty much like the rest of the ship.
The bed was broad and low. It offered room for two, or even three, yet Jack wasn’t in the mood to point this out.
Silently he promised himself to get the oxygen machine over here should his friend’s breathing get any more laboured.
The covers were already pulled back, as if the bed had been waiting for the Time Lord all along. Jack laid him down, for the first time really registering the fact that the Doctor had been running through the ship on bare feet.
“Do you need anything?” he asked, not expecting a positive answer.
“Yes,” the Doctor answered to his surprise. “Please stay away from Harry. Don’t let him get to you. Whatever he says, ignore him.” He took a short break to catch his breath. “Are we still on Earth?” he asked. “If so you should leave. The two of you… I don’t have the strength to keep you from killing each other right now. I just don’t.”
The last words were underlined with subdued desperation, and Jack found himself promising, “Don’t worry about us. We’ll behave.” He’d just stay away from Harry to resist the urge to kill.
Already he knew it wouldn’t work.
The Doctor sighed quietly, closing his eyes.
“I don’t understand why he’s here,” Jack couldn’t stop himself from saying. “He’s hardly like the kind of people you usually travel with. He’s a bastard, and I don’t trust him. It would be best to bring him back where you fond him. Kick him out and lock the door. Tell me, Doctor,” He took his friend’s hand. “How much of this is actually his fault?”
“Nothing,” the Doctor mumbled at once. “He didn’t hurt me.”
“He seems like the kind of guy who’d enjoy it,” Jack voiced his doubts. “That building you were in didn’t happen to have collapsed because he blew it up, did it?” He wasn’t joking in the least. It caused the Doctor open his eyes. The look Jack received was tired and strangely measuring.
“No. It was my fault. I happened to destroy the entire planet.”
It felt like a punch in the face. “Doctor…”
“Harry told you the building fell on me,” the Doctor continued. “Did he also tell you that I only survived because he almost sacrificed his life to protect me?”
Jack didn’t know what to say to that. It came as a complete surprise.
“No.” The Doctor closed his eyes again, indicating that this conversation was over. “I didn’t think he would.”
His words lingered in Jack’s mind when he was walking down the corridor minutes later. What also lingered were Harry’s accusations. Jack knew it couldn’t be, but what he had said had, in a perverted, twisted way, made sense. Jack hadn’t known the Doctor back then but as a suspect of crimes against the laws of time travel. And while he had never participated in it he had to admit to his shame that he also never tried very hard to stop ‘John Hart’ from acting out his perverted desires. He didn’t like the man he had once been.
Still, he knew that he’d never have forced himself on anyone, not even then. Least of all someone like the Doctor.
And yet…
‘Don’t believe him,’ the Time Lord whispered in his memory. ‘He’s lying.’
He’d woken up, and the first thing he’d told Jack was not to believe what Harry would tell him. As if he’d known what it would be.
Ironically the Doctor’s words had the opposite effect now. For how could he have known it if there wasn’t a hint of truth to it?
Shaking his head, Jack tried to convince himself that he was finding connections where there were none. The Doctor could have spoken about anything. He knew Harry would try to hurt Jack - maybe his words hadn’t been related to anything special.
Try as he might, the human couldn’t shake off the lingering doubt, not entirely. The worst part was that he was sure Harry had been counting on this. He’d planted a seed and now all he had to do was lean back and watch it grow.
It stirred up Jack’s determination to forget about it. Forcing his thoughts to go elsewhere and start worrying for his team for a change, Jack made his way to his own room, deciding to stay true to his promise and avoid Harry as much as possible.
Maybe locking his room would have been a good idea, then.
Harry wasn’t there when Jack entered, but he had been. There was an envelope waiting for him on the bed, his name written on it in neat letters. No one but Harry could have left it here. Jack stared at it in contempt for several minutes, knowing it would be best if he didn’t even touch it.
When he finally picked it up he found that there was no letter inside. Instead of a sheet of paper something small and hard moved under his finger. He shouldn’t open it to see what it was.
In the end he did.
He shouldn’t have.
- tbc
October 27, 2008
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Summary: There's something the Master always wanted to tell Jack...
Note: I'll be busy with NaNoWriMo in November, so there won't be time to write the next chapter before December. Sorry about that.
The TARDIS was large enough to get lost in her if one really wanted to, and often enough when one didn’t. Even the Doctor had been known to run through her corridors for ages when she’d shifted the rooms without warning or he’d been too deep in thought to pay attention to where he was going. Theoretically a Time Lord could walk until he died of a very hypothetical old age and never reach the very hypothetical end of the pocket universe contained inside the time capsules, but so far this one had always returned her passengers to the better known parts after a while. The Master had never heard of someone who’d entered a TARDIS and never came out. But then this was exactly the kind of thing the Time Lords would keep secret if it ever happened.
All type 40 TARDISes had been known for their erratic navigation and errors in their chameleon circuits. The Master didn’t know if sudden and unpredictable internal behaviour was also on the long list of things that had led to this type being called back and dismantled when he was still a child, or if it was just this particular model that enjoyed getting people lost, among everything else. He’d often speculated that she might be doing it on purpose, but most of the time said purpose remained a mystery to him.
Right now he wasn’t lost. He’d have liked to be, though. After leaving the Doctor he’d been wandering through the corridors for hours, not with the intention of not knowing where he was, but with every intention of being on his own. Given the TARDIS’s internal nature it shouldn’t have been much of difficult goal to accomplish.
Or so he’d thought.
There was a garden inside the ship. It was large, and every time the Master had seen it during his life it had looked different. Once it looked like a park that wouldn’t seem displaced surrounding a European castle, once it looked like a jungle. This time it reminded him of a European park that had been neglected for so long it became a jungle. The Master followed the remains of cobbled paths to the other side, and found the pool. Or a pool anyway. He wasn’t sure he had seen this one ever before.
The Time Lord didn’t linger there. After the pool more corridors, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever walked them before. In any case he was far, far away from the infirmary, Jack or anything remotely living, save for the TARDIS itself. When he came across a staircase he walked down and ended up in a room with a stone floor, a fireplace that looked like it had recently been used and a number of heavy furniture, all covered in white sheets. He pulled the cover away from a large plush chair that looked like something the Doctor might have liked a few lifetimes back and sat down with a sigh.
It occurred to him that he was hungry. This insufficient mortal body he’d stolen required more food than his original body had, and more sleep as well. Since it seemed unlikely that the TARDIS had helpfully placed a kitchen right next door, the Master decided that he could bear the hunger and closed his eyes to lean back and think of nothing.
For a while he did so. All thoughts of the Doctor, his own sense of claustrophobia, and his anger at his fellow Time Lord in particular and the universe in general were banned from his mind while the Master relaxed in this cool, dark, distant, room and slowly began to nod off.
Eventually he was shaken from his light dozing, reluctantly leaving the cosy darkness he had pulled around himself, distracted by the cold steel pressed against the side of his head.
Smart as he was he didn’t open his eyes until after he was done rolling them. For a moment he considered pretending to be shocked, or frightened, but it seemed like so much wasted breath.
“Hello, Jack,” he said without turning his head. “What can I do for you today?”
How the hell had the guy found him anyway? The Master really hoped the TARDIS hadn’t helped him. Otherwise the ship going to wish she never had the next time he stole her.
“Oh, I just want to talk,” Jack answered with false cheer. “Get to know you a little better and all that.”
The Master nodded. “And if I’m deciding to ignore you and get back to sleep you’ll blow my brains out, I suppose?”
“Quite right.”
The Master considered this. “I think I’ll go back to sleep anyway. Right now I have little interest in talking to you.”
“Then I’ll shoot you,” Jack promised calmly, causing the other to shake his head.
“As a matter of fact, you won’t.”
The pressure of the barrel against his temple increased. “You want to gamble your life on it?”
“I don’t need to.” With a sigh of patient suffering the Master finally did the human the favour of turning around to face him. Jack looked annoyed. And angry. “I know you. And I know the Doctor. You will not kill me - not because I’m unarmed and harmless, but because you don’t want to lose his respect.” He snorted. “Wherever that comes from.”
“Probably from me being a better person than you are,” Jack suggested, still not lowering the gun. It was now no longer touching the Master but remained aimed at his face. “If he knows you longer than me he had the chance to compare.”
“Ah.” The Master crocked his head, looking at Jack with interest. “And how, exactly, are you better than me? Because in the time we’ve known each other all I’ve done was saving the Doctor’s life. I don’t see how that counts as a crime.” He thought of getting out of his armchair to get on one level with the other man, decided it was too warm and cosy to leave just for effect. “The simple fact that you dislike someone doesn’t make them evil, Harkness. You’re not that much of a personality detector.”
“You’re forgetting the time we spend together before,” Jack reminded him, as if that was necessary. “The time I’ve forgotten. You must have made an impression on me bad enough to instantly dislike you when we met again.”
“I made a bad impression?” With effort the Master brought a disbelieving expression to his face, in place of the delightful grin that wanted to spread. “You can’t even remember any of it yet you assume I did something wrong on the ground of you not liking me? Do excuse me, but you are hardly in a position to complain.” He’d been waiting for an excuse to say this for days now. “After all, I was not the one who raped the Doctor.”
The barrel of the gun dropped only a centimetre. Jack’s expression darkened for a second but the shock wouldn’t manifest, and his voice wasn’t shaking when he said, “You’re lying.” Spoken with conviction. The Master suppressed the urge to smirk.
“How would you know?” he asked. “You can’t remember.”
“I know,” Jack said, “because I would never, ever do that! I was not the most honourable person in the cosmos, I readily admit that, but I know very well that there is a line I would never have crossed.”
The Master took a step forward, until the gun pressed against his chest. “You sound so certain. And yet I was there. I saw it. He begged you to stop, Harkness - but you didn’t. You hurt him, without…”
“I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish here,” Jack interrupted him, “but it’s not working. I know you are lying, and even if you’d have proof for your accusation I’d still not believe you! I’m rather beginning to believe that you’re trying to cover some crime of your own here, and that the Doctor, and everyone, would be better off if I pulled this trigger.” His eyes were burning. “Because I know what I am capable of, and what not!”
“But what if you’re wrong?” The Master’s voice was calm, low. “Will you add murder to the list of your crimes?”
“Gladly.” The finger on the trigger moved, and despite his certainty the Master began to wonder if he’d pushed the human too far. Nothing of this was reflected in his voice, however, when he said, “Did the people who erased your memories leave you the time you spend with your sociopathic partner in that time loop?” Now the gun dropped notably and confused suspicion joined the fury in Jack’s eyes. “You knew what he did when he felt like it. Rape, torture, murder - and you never cared. Just turned your back and pretended it was none of your business. But then, you’ve been quite the skilled torturer yourself, weren’t you?” He snarled at all this hypocrisy and it wasn’t even an act. “So how can you be so sure?”
“That was different.” Oh, look! He sounded all defensive now. “I’m not proud of the man I once was, but I never agreed with what John was doing.”
“And still you did nothing to stop him. It’s just a small step from watching to doing it yourself.”
“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Jack hissed. “How do you know about all this?”
“You told me,” the Master lied. He’d pulled the information from ‘Bill’s’ mind when they had copulated in the human’s bedroom. At the same time when he’d planted the hypnotic orders in his brain that would soon lead to the time agent taking advantage of the Doctor’s weakness.
Repeatedly. It hadn’t been planned that way and the way he had lost control over his puppet still irked the Master. Now was payback time. “You’re talkative in bed,” he added.
“No,” Jack said darkly. “I’m not.”
The Master refused to acknowledge his words. “I often wondered,” he mused. “Maybe you erased your memories yourself because you couldn’t live with the guilt. It’s worth a thought, isn’t it?”
“I did not hurt him!” Jack said with force, his patience wearing thin.
“You were a time agent! You suspected us of being criminals, while lusting after the Doctor every step of the way. Tell me honestly, Captain, how sure can you be?”
“Absolutely.” There was no doubt in his eyes, just bottomless anger. It would come, though. The Master knew it. As soon as the human had time to calm down the words would keep running though his head. And he’d begin to suspect…
It was delicious, really. A delight to do something other than worry about the Doctor, and taking revenge at the same time. The best part was that it was all true, from a certain point of view. The Master smiled coldly.
“I can prove it,” he revealed.
Jack froze for the span of one second. Then his finger tightened around the trigger again.
“I’m not interested.”
“Yes, I know, you’re not believing me - but it’ll give you something to think about. If you’re so sure, why not have a look? Indulge me.”
“Like hell!” Jack’s hand was shaking ever so slightly. The Master could feel it, through the gun now pressed to his forehead. “I don’t know what game you are playing, but you’re not going to win it.”
The Master was quite convinced of the contrary. Still, winning would lose much of its triumph if Jack did indeed kill him after all. He had to prevent that from happening, somehow.
“Last wish of a condemned man?” he tried. “Just so I know you will one day realise that you have killed me without reason. I’m quite interested what you are going to tell the Doctor anyway.”
“You slipped and fell down the stairs.” Jack’s answer came without hesitation.
The Master grimaced. “Into a bullet?”
“It happens.” Jack seemed to consider a moment, his eyes fixed on the gun in his hand. Then he lowered it - just to bring it up one second later and smash the hilt into the Master’s face. The Time Lord saw the punch coming a quarter of a second too late. He managed to throw himself backwards and take the worst force out of the impact, but not to avoid it completely.
“Jack!”
Even as he stumbled backwards, his head ringing, the Master heard the breathless voice calling out. Through the dark spots dancing in front of him he could make out Jack turning around sharply, shock and guilt written all over his face, and the Doctor, leaning heavily against the doorframe.
The next second the Master was too busy not falling inelegantly on his backside to pay attention. When he regained his orientation Jack was crouching beside the Doctor, who had fallen to is knees but angrily pushed the human away when he tried to help.
“What the hell is going on here?” he asked hoarsely. He was glaring at the Master as he spoke, and the Master decided that both he and Jack were equally uninterested in the Doctor finding out about the topic of their conversation.
“He was being an ass,” Jack explained. “It was either punch or shoot him.”
“How did you find us?” the Master interrupted the Doctor’s angry reply before he could get out even the first word.
“I followed your voices.”
The Master raised his eyebrows. “Did you hear what we were talking about?”
“No. But I don’t need to, do I?” The look the Doctor gave him told the Master that had did indeed have a very good idea. He shouldn’t have been surprised - the Doctor knew him, after all.
He struggled for air, fell forward onto his hands and retched dryly. It distracted Jack from thinking about his words.
“Why did you come here?” the human asked, concern and annoyance in his voice. “You should have stayed in bed!”
The Doctor looked blankly at him through bangs of damp hair. “You were fighting,” he said, as if that was a reason.
“How could you even hear us? We’re miles away from the infirmary.”
The Master groaned at Jack’s words. How he could have travelled with the Doctor before and not noticed that her internal dimensions weren’t quite the same all the time was beyond him.
“Don’t answer that,” the human added quickly, apparently having noticed he’d said something stupid.
“I suppose the TARDIS wanted you to hear it,” the Master mused. “She likes me, after all. Wanted you to come and save me from being unjustly robbed of my precious life by this brute!”
“That’s enough!” The Doctor glared at him. “I have little doubt who started this.” He doubled over again.
“Quite right. Even if I had indeed been planning to kill him, saving his sorry ass was hardly worth getting out of bed for.” Rolling his eyes, the Master only waited for Jack to stick out his tongue at him. To his credit he didn’t. It was better this way, as one second later the Doctor told him to shut up.
“If you’re quite done here, I’d like to get back up,” he said shakily. “It’s chilly down here. Jack, if you could help me up the stairs...” The Master recognized his asking for help for that it was: An attempt to get Jack away from him, and probably the human did as well. He didn’t protest, though, but wordlessly helped the Doctor to his feet. He really wouldn’t be able to get up the stairs without help. The Master had thought the other Time Lord to be still too weak to get out of bed - seeing him here was a surprise. But he was leaning heavily against Jack, shaking with exhaustion and pain. Through the open shirt of his pyjama the Master saw the bandages still wrapped firmly around his chest.
The last thing he saw of them before Jack gently led his friend out of the room was the Doctor’s silent glare, telling him to stay the hell down here until they were well out of sight.
-
The stairs leading back to the main corridor were long - though not as long as Jack remembered them - and they had to pause twice for the Doctor to catch his breath. Yet he refused to let Jack carry him. The human suspected that he was still somewhat pissed.
A part of him wanted nothing more than to tell him of Harry’s accusations, so the Doctor could confirm that nothing of it was true.
But what if Harry had spoken the truth? Jack wasn’t sure he could bear that.
And it wasn’t like the Doctor was likely going to tell him if he’d really hurt him.
“I told you to stay away from him,” the Time Lord said darkly once they had reached the end of the stairs. Well, whispered. Croaked. “He’s trying to provoke you, and you’re not making him work very hard for it!”
“Care to tell me why?” Some of the anger at Harry got redirected at the man in his arms. “What happened between us when we met before?”
The Doctor shrugged. “You didn’t get along very well. There was nothing else to it, really.”
He wasn’t very good at lying.
“Could we try it with a little honesty, please? It’s no surprise I’m losing this game if no one tells me the rules. I’d expected better from you, Doctor.”
The Doctor said nothing, apparently too preoccupied with breathing to react to his words.
“I’m a grown man, whatever it is, I can take it,” Jack wasn’t entirely sure he was speaking the truth himself, now. After a second of hesitation he added, “Harry said it was my fault you’re this ill.”
“That’s not true.” Somewhere the Doctor found the strength to snort. “I was injured when the building I was in collapsed and never really recovered from it. You had nothing to do with it. We met you much later.”
“He mentioned that, yes. Actually he said there was a chance to help you and I ruined it.”
Jack’s stomach sank when the Doctor didn’t answer right away.
“I asked you to ruin it,” he finally said. “It might have worked, but it would have cost thousands of lives. Harry…” The Doctor stopped, shook his head. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you before we left,” he then said. “Thanks, Jack.”
The words ‘You’re welcome’ wouldn’t quite come over the human’s tongue.
“Am I going to get the whole story, or do I have to wait until Harry tells me?” he asked after a moment.
“Harry won’t tell you. At… least not all of it. He’ll pick out bits and pieces, out of… context to make you look bad. Keep that in mind… when you… next speak to him…” Jack looked at the Doctor in alarm. His voice had become halting, even more breathless than before. He’d reached his limit.
They were still standing beside the stairs, but Jack could see the door to the infirmary not five metres away. He’d already suspected that for the Doctor the way had been a bit shorter.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” he said, reluctantly letting go of his chance to actually get some useful information. Already he felt guilty that they had lured the Time Lord out of bed at all.
“Not there,” his friend said weakly, but with determination when Jack wrapped his arm around him again to gently move him toward the door. “I’d much prefer my own bed.”
“I don’t think…”
“Then don’t!” the Doctor snapped unexpectedly. “I’m sick of that room! I need some normalcy around me, walls that don’t constantly remind me of what a wreck I’ve become. So if you don’t ‘think’, I’ll get there on my own.” He pushed away from Jack, swayed and would have fallen if not for the strong arms reaching for him.
“As you wish.” It didn’t feel right to Jack, but he thought he could understand what the Doctor was going through. With little effort he lifted the man off the ground. “I’ll take you there,” he said quickly, to silence all oncoming protests, “if you let me carry you.”
The Doctor sighed tiredly and gave up. “Go ahead, then,” he allowed him generously.
Secretly Jack hoped that the TARDIS would continue to show some initiative and make the Doctor’s room impossible to find, but it waited for them right behind the next corner.
The carpet on the floor always came as a shock to Jack after the grates they were walking on almost everywhere else. Sure, there were different kinds of floors - in the garden, the living room, the kitchen, Jack’s own room - but somehow he always expected the Doctor’s personal realm to be pretty much like the rest of the ship.
The bed was broad and low. It offered room for two, or even three, yet Jack wasn’t in the mood to point this out.
Silently he promised himself to get the oxygen machine over here should his friend’s breathing get any more laboured.
The covers were already pulled back, as if the bed had been waiting for the Time Lord all along. Jack laid him down, for the first time really registering the fact that the Doctor had been running through the ship on bare feet.
“Do you need anything?” he asked, not expecting a positive answer.
“Yes,” the Doctor answered to his surprise. “Please stay away from Harry. Don’t let him get to you. Whatever he says, ignore him.” He took a short break to catch his breath. “Are we still on Earth?” he asked. “If so you should leave. The two of you… I don’t have the strength to keep you from killing each other right now. I just don’t.”
The last words were underlined with subdued desperation, and Jack found himself promising, “Don’t worry about us. We’ll behave.” He’d just stay away from Harry to resist the urge to kill.
Already he knew it wouldn’t work.
The Doctor sighed quietly, closing his eyes.
“I don’t understand why he’s here,” Jack couldn’t stop himself from saying. “He’s hardly like the kind of people you usually travel with. He’s a bastard, and I don’t trust him. It would be best to bring him back where you fond him. Kick him out and lock the door. Tell me, Doctor,” He took his friend’s hand. “How much of this is actually his fault?”
“Nothing,” the Doctor mumbled at once. “He didn’t hurt me.”
“He seems like the kind of guy who’d enjoy it,” Jack voiced his doubts. “That building you were in didn’t happen to have collapsed because he blew it up, did it?” He wasn’t joking in the least. It caused the Doctor open his eyes. The look Jack received was tired and strangely measuring.
“No. It was my fault. I happened to destroy the entire planet.”
It felt like a punch in the face. “Doctor…”
“Harry told you the building fell on me,” the Doctor continued. “Did he also tell you that I only survived because he almost sacrificed his life to protect me?”
Jack didn’t know what to say to that. It came as a complete surprise.
“No.” The Doctor closed his eyes again, indicating that this conversation was over. “I didn’t think he would.”
His words lingered in Jack’s mind when he was walking down the corridor minutes later. What also lingered were Harry’s accusations. Jack knew it couldn’t be, but what he had said had, in a perverted, twisted way, made sense. Jack hadn’t known the Doctor back then but as a suspect of crimes against the laws of time travel. And while he had never participated in it he had to admit to his shame that he also never tried very hard to stop ‘John Hart’ from acting out his perverted desires. He didn’t like the man he had once been.
Still, he knew that he’d never have forced himself on anyone, not even then. Least of all someone like the Doctor.
And yet…
‘Don’t believe him,’ the Time Lord whispered in his memory. ‘He’s lying.’
He’d woken up, and the first thing he’d told Jack was not to believe what Harry would tell him. As if he’d known what it would be.
Ironically the Doctor’s words had the opposite effect now. For how could he have known it if there wasn’t a hint of truth to it?
Shaking his head, Jack tried to convince himself that he was finding connections where there were none. The Doctor could have spoken about anything. He knew Harry would try to hurt Jack - maybe his words hadn’t been related to anything special.
Try as he might, the human couldn’t shake off the lingering doubt, not entirely. The worst part was that he was sure Harry had been counting on this. He’d planted a seed and now all he had to do was lean back and watch it grow.
It stirred up Jack’s determination to forget about it. Forcing his thoughts to go elsewhere and start worrying for his team for a change, Jack made his way to his own room, deciding to stay true to his promise and avoid Harry as much as possible.
Maybe locking his room would have been a good idea, then.
Harry wasn’t there when Jack entered, but he had been. There was an envelope waiting for him on the bed, his name written on it in neat letters. No one but Harry could have left it here. Jack stared at it in contempt for several minutes, knowing it would be best if he didn’t even touch it.
When he finally picked it up he found that there was no letter inside. Instead of a sheet of paper something small and hard moved under his finger. He shouldn’t open it to see what it was.
In the end he did.
He shouldn’t have.
- tbc
October 27, 2008