Cracks in the Safety Glass
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Jack/Doctor (10)
Summary: There is a planet where December is in August, there's always snow on Christmas and the dead ancestors are coming for dinner. Unfortunately they outstay their welcome.
Note: For nightrider101 , who's won my service at the Support Stacie Holiday Auction. She requested a story about the Doctor and Jack, with the Doctor being heroic, some hurt/comfort and a happy ending. I love writing for her: She's never asking for things I don't like!
“It’s not Christmas.”
Jack turned to look at the Doctor, not for the first time wondering if the Time Lord was able to read his mind. But then his thoughts hadn’t been especially hard to guess right now - not like during their last trip, when they had landed in a jungle full of blue-leafed plants and the Doctor had told him that no, this place wasn’t on the same planet as the Blue Jungle of Potawari, where Jack, unbeknownst to the Doctor, had once spend a fantastic weekend with a few friends and no clothes.
That had been a little bit creepy.
Now, however, there wasn’t much else for him to think, if his mind was in any way connected to the situation, but the fact that this looked a lot like Christmas Eve, in some part of Earth where there was snow in December.
“It’s not Earth either,” the Doctor informed him. “And it’s not December.”
“All right, stop it already,” Jack growled. The worst thing about this was that he was absolutely certain that the Doctor’s telepathy didn’t work this way.
The Time Lord gave him a puzzled look. “Stop what?”
“Never mind.” Jack concentrated on their surroundings again, the snow covered streets, the blinking lights in the windows and the trees. “Where are we, then?”
“Ullur Eleven,” the Doctor told him, unhelpfully.
“Never heard of it.”
“It didn’t make much noise during your days. It’s the first human colony in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It’s always been quite peaceful here - probably because this solar system is too far away from Earth to have any part in their conflicts and developments.” They were walking through the snow covered streets in the weak light of winter’s early dusk. The Doctor wasn’t chatting, or rambling. He was giving away information, but Jack noted that he lacked his usual enthusiasm. In fact he seemed subdued and a little nervous. Jack could see no reason for it, but it was infectious.
“Is something the matter?” he asked after a minute of silence, during which danger of any kind stubbornly refused to manifest itself. “You seem distracted.”
“What? Oh, it’s nothing.” The Doctor’s sudden grin didn’t convince Jack. “I was just marvelling on how long it’s been since I last saw real snow on Christmas.”
“Didn’t you say it’s not Christmas?”
“Well, technically it isn’t. Wrong month, for starters, and religion has nothing to do with it. But they’re celebrating the same way, so I guess we can call it that.” He looked at the gardens and houses around them. “Christmas trees - check. Christmas decorations - check. Christmas presents - well, we’d have to go and ask to make sure, but I’m assuming they’re there. Or will be. This could just as well be the weekend before Christmas. In fact I hope it is.”
“Why?”
The Doctor didn’t seem to have heard him. “Did you know? It’s August!” He bent down to collect a handful of snow. “Though that’s not what anyone here would tell you.”
“Doesn’t look like August to me.”
“Because you spend too much time in Wales. On this part of the planet it’s cold and snowy for three quarters of the year.”
“Except in December,” Jack guessed. “That’s why they’re having Christmas in August.”
The Doctor frowned at him. “Don’t be silly. It’s December anyway. It just shouldn’t be.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense here, Doc.” Jack thought about his own words. “None at all, in fact.”
“Oh, it’s simple!” The Doctor sounded a bit exasperated, as if it really was obvious. “The journey here took the first settlers almost a hundred years. They spend them tucked away in stasis chambers and just hoped they’d wake up someday. And at some point during that journey there was a glitch in their ship’s computer and it skipped a few months. So when they woke up it gave them the wrong time. Until another ship from Earth came here and pointed out the error in their calendar nearly another century had passed. With all other humans so far away and so little contact to the Empire, they never bothered to correct it, though. Think of all the hassle that would be. Try explaining to your boss that you want the usual pay for your job, even if the year was four months shorter. Not to mention deadlines! They’re bad enough under normal circumstances.”
Now here was the ramble Jack had been waiting for. He allowed himself a smile as much of the tension fell away from him. The tension returned, unbidden and much stronger then before, when they turned around a corner and the Doctor stopped dead. Jack followed his gaze to the random arc spanning the street, looking not completely unlike the toori in front of Shinto shrines. It was large, but Jack could see that it had been put up only recently and could be removed just as easily. There were decent lights at the corners, almost subtle compared to the blinking collections in the windows and on the rooftops. In the middle of the arc were symbols Jack’s couldn’t read.
“Ah, hell,” the Doctor murmured. Then he turned on his heels and walked briskly back the way they had come, not once looking left or right. Jack had to hurry to keep up with him.
“What’s going on?” he asked alarmed. “Something wrong with that gate? What is it?”
“It’s Christmas Eve after all,” the Doctor said darkly. “They put up the gate only on this day, to welcome the spirits of their ancestors.”
“’Spirits of their ancestors’?” Jack echoed as they hurried down the street toward the TARDIS. “Sure this is Christmas we’re talking about?”
“They got a bit mixed up in their holidays. There are many cultures on Earth that spare a few days each year to spend it with the dead. Some of the first settlers kept up the tradition, the others copied it, and eventually someone had the bright idea that there’s no better day to spend with their passed loved ones than Christmas.”
Jack thought about it while he fought for his balance after slipping on a patch of ice on the sidewalk. “And that’s bad why exactly?”
“Because they invite the dead to their houses.” The harshness in the Doctor’s voice startled his human companion. “And the dead accept the invitation.”
Jack stopped for a second, startled. “You’re serious?” He looked around but saw no zombies, just a bunch of exited children being ushered into a house by a woman in an apron. “How so?” He realised that since they’d arrived here almost everything he’d said had ended with a question mark.
The Doctor didn’t answer directly. Instead he pointed down the street where Jack could see the TARDIS, and behind her the vague outline of another of those gates in the distance. Perhaps they should start to have good, 360° looks-around after landing somewhere. Just so the things right behind them in plain view didn’t have so much chance to take them by surprise later.
Through the gates people were coming, stepping out of the grey haze created by dusk. They looked perfectly normal to Jack - until he had a closer look and saw that they didn’t step out of the dusk but were coming into being right before their eyes.
“Hell,” he said, baffled.
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed bitterly, jamming his key into the lock of his ship and turning it harshly. “I hate this place,” he told the blue wood.
The door opened and closed after them a second later, shutting out the world and its ghosts. The Doctor breathed a visible sigh of relief.
“Are they dangerous?” Jack asked - another question - thinking of all the people out there.
“Not at all,” the Doctor told him. “They’re not even real. This planet is… there’s some kind of underlying telepathic current. Didn’t you feel it?”
Jack thought about it. Inside the closed TARDIS they were safe from all influences, but perhaps he had felt something, some tingling at the back of his head, ignored by his consciousness. It could also be his imagination, though.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“Then you didn’t. If you had, you’d know.” The Doctor seemed much more relaxed now. He let himself fall onto the couch, staring at the console without yet mustering the energy to steer them away. “But some of the settlers did. And they used their technology to use this current, and then they based their new technology on it. And once a year they enhance this telepathic field and it gets into the heads of everyone and brings back the dead. Reconstructed from their memory.” He shuddered.
“From your reaction,” Jack said carefully, “I gather that it’s not just the natives that are affected.”
“Oh, no, it’s for everyone.” The Doctor waved around with his hands, smiling and putting up an act of casualty that might have fooled Jack had he not know better. “It might be nice to see old friends again - the locals certainly enjoy it. Not really my cup of tea, but if you like, I’ll wait for you while you go out. I can’t guarantee it’s going to work for you, though. You are telepathically death since - well, and I don’t know if it can reach you. You can still try, though.”
Jack imagined himself doing it; going out there and meeting his parents, Estelle, Owen, Tosh… Only it wouldn’t be them. It would be his memory of them, put into shape. There would be no point in telling them he loved them, or in apologizing, because they’d never get the message. It would only be walking, talking knifes to tear open old wounds.
“Didn’t think so.” The Doctor nodded to himself, and Jack didn’t feel like pointing out that he was doing it again.
“Can we…” Realising that he was about to ask another question, Jack rearranged the words he wanted to say. “We can leave now. Unless there was something in particular you wanted to do here.” He knew that the second part was, technically, a question, but he refused to rise his tone at the end and called it a statement.
“No, there wasn’t.” The Doctor jumped to his feet, suddenly all life and flying limps again. His hands touched the controls. “Where would you…”
But it seemed that the asking was reserved to Jack, as the Doctor was interrupted before he could finish the sentence. There was a scream, reaching them through the closed doors. A female voice, full of horror. It was followed by several other screams and angry shouts.
The Doctor’s hands fell away from the console as his shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes and for a second stood very, very still.
And for once it was Jack who had a very good idea what he was thinking.
-
They came outside just in time to see two men engage in a fight with three of the undead apparitions right in front of the TARDIS. Apparently they were quite solid. They also seemed to be attacking people - as Jack and the Doctor watched, a child with a bloody face crawled out of the heap of fighting men and ran crying to a young woman who picked it up and hurried back into the house before more of the things could have a go at them.
Everywhere in the street people were coming out of their homes to see what was going on. The Doctor yelled at them to go back inside and lock the doors while pointing his sonic screwdriver at the fighting memory-creatures in front of him. When it had no visible effect, he and Jack joined the fight themselves.
One problem with fighting dead things was that they felt no pain and no exhaustion. Still, the two of them managed to keep the things busy long enough for the two other living men to get away. Once they were gone, Jack and the Doctor didn’t seem to interest the undead any longer. Instead they followed their former victims in a casual, relaxed walk that somehow was much creepier than them running would have been.
But at least it was slow.
Everywhere the long dead were wandering around the houses. They didn’t seem to be able to get inside, though. Like the vampires of human legends, thought Jack; only able to enter your home if you invited them.
Since no one else seemed to be in mortal, peril they thought it safe to get back into the TARDIS and figure out what this all was about.
It didn’t take the Doctor long. He ran a few scans, cried “That’s it!” and “They had it coming!” and pulled down a lever. To Jack’s surprise they took off at once.
And materialized a second later. Peering outside Jack discovered that they had landed on the roof of a rather high building. Everything seemed peaceful here - until he heard the frightened screams of people down in the street.
“Some explanation would be in order,” he suggested as the Doctor rushed past him, not even bothering to put his coat back on.
“We’re in the capital now,” the Doctor told him. “It’s not far from the village we first landed in; the colony isn’t very large. Inside this building we’ll find the control centre for the energy that’s feeding off the telepathic current.”
“Switch it off and these things disappear,” Jack guessed.
“You’ve got it.” The Doctor looked grim.
But to get inside the building they had to find the door first. The roof, they discovered, was a maze. Low, doorless huts formed a faceless village of their own, and as they briskly walked through it, Jack thought he saw shadows moving out of the corner of his eye. It was almost dark now, and in the darkness things were forming. But when he looked closer there was nothing there.
The Doctor had been right: It couldn’t get a hold of his thoughts.
“But what’s caused this now, all of a sudden?” Jack asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” the Time Lord asked back. Jack told him it wasn’t, so the Doctor explained, “The planet is alive.”
Maybe it was kind of obvious. “Ah,” said Jack. “They’re draining its strength, and now it’s fighting back.” He shuddered. “Using the forms of their loved ones was weapons.”
“It’s using whatever they’re giving them,” the Doctor pointed out. “Don’t judge it, Jack. It’s a living planet. It’s quite different from anything you could imagine.”
That was true. Jack fell silent and went back to keeping an eye on the shadows, as if staring at them could somehow prevent something nasty from emerging.
Once he thought he saw his father disappearing into the darkness between the huts.
Eventually they reached the entrance to the building, a plain metal door with a lock that was no challenge to the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor pulled it open, looked up, and froze.
He was staring at something behind Jack. With a feeling of dread, his muscles tense with the anticipation of a fight, the human turned. But there was no monster hovering right behind him. Just an old man in wide, faded orange ropes standing at a junction twenty metres away. He didn’t move, just looked at them in silence, his eyes firmly fixed on the Doctor. Jack didn’t know him.
The stranger only started coming closer when the Doctor tore his eyes off him. Within a second, the Time Lord pushed Jack into the building and slammed the door shut behind them.
-
The corridors were empty, almost hauntingly so. Everyone working in this building must have had gone outside when the riot started. The two time travellers ran through the brightly lit complex until they found a plan of the building. One level down to find what they were looking for. The Doctor turned to run for the staircase one second too late to not see Adric coming around a far corner.
He hated this place.
The control room was usually shut off by doors of unbreakable glass. Now these doors were open, and the two women on duty tonight were dead, one with her skull crushed, the other with the marks of fingers around her throat. They could only speculate on what had happened here. The Doctor locked the doors behind them in hope that they would be strong enough to keep out any visitors and, as he saw Sam coming closer, whished they hadn’t been made of glass.
Shutting down the power, in the end, wasn’t difficult. Sam was watching helplessly from outside the sealed room, joined by one of his cousins and more people the Doctor refused to recognize, never looking at them directly. The draining of energy from the telepathic field inherent to the planet, from the very being of the planet itself stopped - but the ghosts remained.
“Oh,” said the Doctor, for a second fully staring at them. It hurt. He looked away.
“What went wrong?” Jack asked, looking at the controls. “I thought they’d disappear without this technology maintaining them.”
“The planet is keeping them going itself,” the Doctor guessed. “It doesn’t want them to disappear.”
“It’s out for revenge,” Jack guessed, and the Doctor guessed he was right.
“We’ve got to stop it!” his human friend declared. The Doctor approved of that. Stopping things, in general, was good.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Now we only need to figure out how.”
Jack looked around, soon accepting that in this case there was nothing for him to shoot at. For once the Doctor wasn’t glad; not looking at the growing crowd of ghosts that formed their audience distracted him too much to appreciate the uselessness of violence in this case.
Go away, he thought, despairingly. You’re not invited.
Finally admitting defeat, Jack asked, “Can’t we just talk to it? Ask it to stop? You’re so good at that kind of thing. If these creatures are formed by its will, maybe we can talk to the planet through them.”
The Doctor felt cold horror at the idea of addressing the beings out there directly. Jack’s idea was the only one they had, and still he was relieved to be able to declare it useless. “It wouldn’t get our words,” he said. “It’s too alien.” He could feel it, in the current tugging at his mind. Human reasoning would never reach it. “All communication would have to happen on a much deeper level…” He trailed off, then slapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, yes!” he cried, startling Jack. “That’s it! Jack, you’re brilliant!”
He whirled around, walked over to the console and, after a second of taking in its working, pulled it apart to get to the bits inside. “If it can get into our minds, maybe we can get into the planet’s,” he explained, exited despite himself (while a part of him reflected that he was falling into his enthusiasm as a way to stop himself from going mad). “With this stuff I should be able to build an amplifier, some sort of backdoor into the planet-being. There I can address it directly. Make it understand.”
Jack watched as he hastily re-assembled wires and created connections. It only took a minute.
“How does it work?” he wanted to know.
“You connect this thing here -“ The Doctor held up a string of wires. “- with your central nervous system and it kicks your mind right into the belly of the beast, so to speak. And when I say ‘you’, I actually mean -“
“I’ll do it,” Jack interrupted him.
The Doctor frowned in irritation. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“I know. I’ll still do it.”
“Jack, that’s going to be unpleasant. And dangerous.” With all the stress placed upon him by his past looking in through the window, the Doctor himself couldn’t tell how much of his confusion was genuine, how much was act. “Why ever would you want to do it?”
“So you don’t have to.” Jack gave him a grin of false confidence. “So, plug me in!” He took a step closer.
The Doctor, automatically, took a step back. “I’m not going to let you do that.”
“No.” Jack’s voice was surprisingly soft. “I’m not going to let you do it. How could I, after seeing what effect even these creatures out there have on you? You’re trembling, Doc.”
For a second the Doctor glanced at his hands. He was, wasn’t he? He hadn’t noticed.
“I can take it. Don’t expect me to let another do this for me.”
“Why not? You’re expecting the same of me.” Jack had a point, the Doctor had to admit. And it didn’t help at all that he really, really didn’t want to do it. “Just step back for once, Doctor. I won’t let you throw yourself right to the bottom of the pit. Again. For once, let me be the hero. You can make it up to me later.” Here he winked playfully, and the Doctor wondered if his brave, stupid friend could see how much he wanted to let him do it. Just step back and let someone else throw himself into the blade. How terrified he was.
Jack took the wire out of his hand and the Doctor let him. He stepped back, behind the human. A second later Jack tumbled to the ground, unconscious.
As he bent down to take back the wire, the Time Lord wondered if he would have stopped Jack as well had he not been certain that Jack would have been unable to properly connect.
Better not dwell on it - he might learn things about himself he didn’t want to know, and there was no time for it either. People were being killed outside. The Doctor looked up, at the door, the fine lines where the strong glass was beginning to break. Worrying about the time he had left to accomplish his goal, he made sure only to look at the cracks, not at the hands that caused them.
A new line sprang through the glass, between the Doctor and the dead eyes in the withered face of Father Kreiner - no, of Fitz. Dearest Fitz, who looked at him accusingly through a web of cracks.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor found himself saying; he couldn’t help it. “So, so sorry. If I could…”
But he wouldn’t, even if he could, and they both knew it. The Doctor pressed a button on the console and the wires came to life.
Knowing its purpose, the machine acted on its own. The wires moved across his body, beneath his clothes. There was a second of naked terror when he realised he couldn’t turn back now, then a sharp pain all along his spine as the thin wires pierced his skin. The Doctor screwed shut his eyes, and when he opened them he was in another room altogether. Smooth, cream-coloured walls surrounded him, and the sort of seemingly useless ornaments so popular with Gallifreyan politicians. He turned around but there was no one else around. No windows either. Just a closed door.
The Doctor swallowed. This was worse than expected.
His hearts racing he walked over to the door, opened it. It should have opened on its own. The entire door was wrong. Wrong time, wrong planet.
And there should have been a hall outside, not a corridor. The Doctor left the room. All the details were right out here. The light was right. He swallowed, his hearts breaking. The corridor was quiet, empty but for him. The entire place had an abandoned feel to it, but as he stood still in the warm light of a side wing of the citadel, the Doctor could hear the noise in the distance. Screams, weapons being fired. The artificial voices of Daleks. He couldn’t make out the words but knew what they were saying. It wasn’t a fight he was hearing, it was an execution. They happened everywhere now - the fighting was already over.
It were the sounds of a lost war.
All this happened long ago. No matter how fast he ran, he wouldn’t be in time to save anyone. The Doctor stood in the warm, peaceful corridor and listened to the death of his species, unable to move. Until Koschei came around the far corner and walked toward him. He was young, and his eyes were already full of ice. He hadn’t been like this, back then.
Had he?
Just before the Doctor he stopped, a sneer on his face.
“Well, Theta,” he said. “Have you come to kill us once again?”
-
Jack groaned when he opened his eyes. It was not so much a groan of pain as it was an expression of his frustration. The bastard had knocked him out, just because he’d tried to be the hero for once. And now he had…
The memory drove the human to his feet, and the dizziness that came with the movement nearly pushed him down again. He didn’t know how the Doctor had rendered him unconscious, but he hadn’t been hit. Otherwise there would be more pain. Instead he just felt an odd tearing at the neck for a few seconds, that still felt unpleasant and almost made him retch. If he’d been killed he would have spend a second shaking off the awful but familiar feeling of being dead, and been okay again. Unfortunately, the Doctor never killed if he could avoid it, not even him. He was pretty much the only person in the universe who thought that Jack’s life was actually worth something.
The two overlapping rooms became one again as the feeling of dizziness and disorientation subsided. Jack was leaning heavily against the back of a chair, and in front of it lay the dead body of a woman - the blonde one. He hardly registered the fact. A dull thumbing sound, like fists hitting glass, told him of the continued presence of material ghosts. Right in front of him, sprawled across the console with his arms spread, was the Doctor.
The Time Lord was lying face down, and the suit and shirt he were wearing had been torn by sharp, thin wires that were now embedded in his back, all along his spine. Jack reached out instinctively but knew better than to touch them, or even pull them out. He’d more likely kill his friend than do any good.
It was hard to do nothing, though, and it became even harder when the Doctor’s body twitched and a fain whimper escaped his throat.
Jack felt helpless, worried, and he hated the Doctor a little for it. He’d been in this situation far too often; being forced to watch and do nothing while his friend sacrificed himself for the entire stupid universe. And for Jack.
The Doctor might not even realise what he did to Jack by acting like this. Jack assumed this in his favour, for if he’d suspected that the Time Lord did know, then he’d just have to kill him.
Suddenly his friend let out a brief, toneless groan, and the wires retreated from his body to fall uselessly to the floor. The Doctor followed a second later, sliding down when there was no longer anything to keep him up. Jack was too slow to catch him.
The Time Lord didn’t react when Jack knelt beside him. His ashen face was covered in sweat and thin trails of blood had run out of his mouth and nostrils. Fighting panic, Jack felt for a pulse and found both of them. Just when he was letting out the breath he had been holding, the glass of the entrance broke.
The human was on his feet so fast he couldn’t even remember moving. The gun was already in his hand when he saw the creatures coming in, and, standing between them and the defenceless Time Lord, he fired at the one closest to him. A girl, dark blonde hair bound on top of her head. Jack’s stomach turned when the bullet entered her head the moment he recognized her: it was the girl from the Game Station, the one who’d refused to return to Earth because she’d wanted to stay with the Doctor.
She disappeared when her body hit the ground. Jack couldn’t remember her name.
He recognized some more, but most of them were strangers. People from the Doctor’s past, not his. Jack stood before his friend, ready to defend him at any cost, and more of them fell. The others didn’t seem to care, and soon Jack had run out of ammunition. Desperation tightened its grip on him when he saw that there was nothing he could do to stop them. They’d just overrun him, without even noticing. Neither of them so much as glanced at him - all eyes were on the Doctor. It was just like before, when they had helped the men in the village.
The Doctor had explained it to Jack, in the TARDIS: Since all these people were created by someone’s memory, they only took notice of those who remembered them. And since the planet’s consciousness couldn’t get a hold on Jack’s thoughts anyway, he would have been invisible even if he’d had known every single person coming in through the shattered door.
They came closer and closer, were upon him, and he turned around to see what they were doing to the Doctor, and then they were all gone. Jack had turned quickly, for a moment losing clear sight of the room, and that quarter of a second had been enough for the room to clear. There was only the Doctor lying on the ground, all pale and still, and a young woman, hardly more than a girl, kneeling over him. Her hair was short and dark and her eyes large, and she bent down to gently press a kiss upon the Doctor’s forehead. Jack blinked and she was gone as well.
The immortal let himself fall to the floor beside his friend, not understanding what had just happened. “Looks like you did it,” he mumbled, confused. All he knew for sure was that he had to take the Doctor back to the TARDIS and hope that he would recover.
-
It never was that easy. No one could save the world and just wander off, except the Doctor. And with the Doctor down, Jack had to deal with the aftermath on his own, and that meant calming down the frightened people he met on the way out. Who’d just had seen the one incredible wonder of their world turn against them. Who’d been attacked by people they loved and missed and made themselves believe were real, and now had their memory of them forever tainted. And then, suddenly, they were gone, and Jack had to explain to them about the living planet, and how their technology was hurting it, and that they should stop abusing it, and all of it with the Doctor hanging limply in his arms. He also had to turn down several offers of help, too scared that well meant medical treatment might harm the Time Lord’s alien metabolism.
He even refused the offer of help in carrying his friend and brought him back to the TARDIS alone. Inside the ship he placed the Time Lord on his bed, got rid of his ruined clothes, checked him over and, after learning that he was deeply unconscious and in some sort of shock, but otherwise not seriously damaged, he tugged him in, sat back and waited.
At some point he fell asleep. When he woke up the Doctor still hadn’t woken, and Jack watched him thoughtfully, wondering what he had seen inside that planet’s mind. In any case, the experience had most likely been… unpretty.
Not to mention painful.
The Doctor was perfectly still. He could just as well have been dead.
Jack hoped that the experience hadn’t caused any lasting damage on his mind. Damn it, why couldn’t the fool just once let him do the risky part?
Were he awake and well, the Doctor would now have told Jack that yes, he really should have let him do it, because Jack didn’t have much of a mind to lose. The thought, strangely enough, calmed the human down a little and he stuck out his tongue at his annoying friend before taking his hand and measuring his pulse. Then he just held that limp hand and marvelled over the difference between his own large, strong hand and the Doctor’s slender one.
He started drawing figures onto the Doctor’s palm with his fingers.
He wished the Time Lord would wake up so Jack could see he was all right.
He promised himself that he would never ask his friend about the identities of all the people he’d seen there.
He was hungry.
Jack ignored his hunger for another hour - he was worried and in the face of the Doctor’s state something mundane like this seemed too pathetic to make a priority. Eventually his stomach convinced him he was being stupid and ten minutes later found him leaning against the wall beside the door, eating a sandwich and watching the Doctor from a distance.
There was a slight frown of dismay on his face now. But still he didn’t move, nearly drowning in the multitude of pillows. It looked almost unreal. Jack wanted to crawl under the covers with him and hold him close. Instead he went back to the kitchen to fill his stomach with another, larger sandwich, and missed the Doctor waking up.
When he came back, sated and feeling slightly guilty, the Doctor was lying on his back like he had before, but his head was thrown back and his hands pressed against his eyes. Jack saw the grinded teeth as he stepped into the room, the shaking of the Time Lord’s body and with new concern took them as sings of pain. Because the Doctor didn’t make a sound Jack needed a moment to realise that he was crying.
The realisation stopped Jack dead on his way to the bed. Suddenly he felt helpless and defeated - his friend was suffering, whatever he’d seen and done had caused more pain than he could bear and now he was being torn apart by grief. And Jack could do nothing.
It was the Doctor’s pain. He wouldn’t share it. Jack knew he wouldn’t.
For a second he thought about leaving, to let the Time Lord be alone with his demons, the next seconds he felt ashamed for even considering it.
He already is alone, an ugly, persistent voice whispered inside his head. You’re presence doesn’t make a difference.
On the bed the Doctor turned to his side and curled up, his hands still covering his eyes. Away from Jack.
And Jack decided that he wouldn’t have it. Two more steps took him to his friend’s side and the Doctor didn’t even seem to notice when he touched his shoulder. So Jack lay down behind him, wrapped his arms around the other’s shaking body and held him close.
“Shh,” he murmured. “It’s alright. It’s alright, I’m here.” It was all he could offer and had to be enough.
For a while the Doctor was shaken by soundless sobs, hiding his face in a crushed pillow. Jack could only hold him, feeling miserable and hoping that he could help by being there, or at least didn’t make matters worse. Eventually the Doctor calmed down, and for several minutes he lay perfectly still. Jack felt his breathing, the soft rise and fall of his narrow chest. He felt so vulnerable and brittle in his arms, something to be protected, not to protect others. Lying here it was hard to believe that this man had saved the universe more often than Jack could count, more often than not getting only suffering in return. It wasn’t fair.
There was no way of knowing what the Time Lord was thinking, or feeling, this very moment - he had never shared that much with Jack. But the immortal knew him well enough to know that in the end his friend would get up, stretch and look at Jack with a grin, and act like this had never happened. And Jack would accept it out of respect for his Doctor’s feelings, and because he didn’t know what else to do.
When the moment came, when the Doctor moved and tried to get away, Jack tightened his hold on him and didn’t let him leave.
There was another moment of silence.
“Jack?”
The voice sounded a little cracked, almost okay. That was what the Doctor was these days. Almost okay. Just a little cracked.
“Jack, I’m fine, really.” Softer now. The Doctor wanted to get away, be done with it. Jack didn’t let go.
“I’m not,” he said, trying to push the Doctor into staying, into opening to him, but it was also true. He needed the Doctor to be with him through this just as much as the Doctor, Jack was convinced, needed to be with someone.
Should be with someone, at least. Jack knew, and hated, that the Doctor didn’t need anyone. He had learned to deal with everything and anything on his own, lifetimes before Jack had entered his crazy world.
“I’m not okay,” he repeated. “Stay with me, please.” Because the Doctor could never say no to a plea for help.
In his arms, trapped between him and the wall, the Doctor sighed. “What happened after I passed out?” He was asking about the situation on the planet, but it was better than nothing. Jack continued to hold him while he told his friend that the creatures all had disappeared and that he had told the people to care for their planet better, and stroked his hair, and for now it was fine. It was enough, this time.
Silence fell, when he had finished.
Eventually the Doctor said, “Jack, I’m not…” He broke off, started again. “You know I’m fine, right? I really am.”
Jack’s lips pressed into a thin line of bitterness, but only for a second. “Yeah,” he said, calmly. “You’re just as fine as me.”
To his surprise the man he held against him chucked. “That’s right,” he said, lively again, but not cheerful like he would have been. His words seemed more real like this, if not any more honest. He freed himself of Jack’s hands at least, crawled over him, all long limbs and movements that were graceful in their awkwardness, Jack turning to watch him. Finally he stood beside the bed, and offered a hand to the human, palm up, long fingers stretched and slightly parted. “Come on,” he said, and smiled. “We can be okay together.” And somehow it was the best thing Jack had heard today.
“Merry Christmas,” he whispered, no, breathed. Just lips moving without sound, when the Doctor’s back was turned, because this felt like a present. Not the one he wanted, but the best he could hope for. It was okay.
The hand holding his as they walked through the corridor towards the console room and their next destination squeezed ever so slightly. Or perhaps that was just Jack’s imagination, making it up because it felt appropriate, right now.
“Yeah.” The Doctor spoke without looking at him, but Jack could hear the smile in his voice. “You too.“
December 24, 2008
Characters/Pairing: Jack/Doctor (10)
Summary: There is a planet where December is in August, there's always snow on Christmas and the dead ancestors are coming for dinner. Unfortunately they outstay their welcome.
Note: For nightrider101 , who's won my service at the Support Stacie Holiday Auction. She requested a story about the Doctor and Jack, with the Doctor being heroic, some hurt/comfort and a happy ending. I love writing for her: She's never asking for things I don't like!
“It’s not Christmas.”
Jack turned to look at the Doctor, not for the first time wondering if the Time Lord was able to read his mind. But then his thoughts hadn’t been especially hard to guess right now - not like during their last trip, when they had landed in a jungle full of blue-leafed plants and the Doctor had told him that no, this place wasn’t on the same planet as the Blue Jungle of Potawari, where Jack, unbeknownst to the Doctor, had once spend a fantastic weekend with a few friends and no clothes.
That had been a little bit creepy.
Now, however, there wasn’t much else for him to think, if his mind was in any way connected to the situation, but the fact that this looked a lot like Christmas Eve, in some part of Earth where there was snow in December.
“It’s not Earth either,” the Doctor informed him. “And it’s not December.”
“All right, stop it already,” Jack growled. The worst thing about this was that he was absolutely certain that the Doctor’s telepathy didn’t work this way.
The Time Lord gave him a puzzled look. “Stop what?”
“Never mind.” Jack concentrated on their surroundings again, the snow covered streets, the blinking lights in the windows and the trees. “Where are we, then?”
“Ullur Eleven,” the Doctor told him, unhelpfully.
“Never heard of it.”
“It didn’t make much noise during your days. It’s the first human colony in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It’s always been quite peaceful here - probably because this solar system is too far away from Earth to have any part in their conflicts and developments.” They were walking through the snow covered streets in the weak light of winter’s early dusk. The Doctor wasn’t chatting, or rambling. He was giving away information, but Jack noted that he lacked his usual enthusiasm. In fact he seemed subdued and a little nervous. Jack could see no reason for it, but it was infectious.
“Is something the matter?” he asked after a minute of silence, during which danger of any kind stubbornly refused to manifest itself. “You seem distracted.”
“What? Oh, it’s nothing.” The Doctor’s sudden grin didn’t convince Jack. “I was just marvelling on how long it’s been since I last saw real snow on Christmas.”
“Didn’t you say it’s not Christmas?”
“Well, technically it isn’t. Wrong month, for starters, and religion has nothing to do with it. But they’re celebrating the same way, so I guess we can call it that.” He looked at the gardens and houses around them. “Christmas trees - check. Christmas decorations - check. Christmas presents - well, we’d have to go and ask to make sure, but I’m assuming they’re there. Or will be. This could just as well be the weekend before Christmas. In fact I hope it is.”
“Why?”
The Doctor didn’t seem to have heard him. “Did you know? It’s August!” He bent down to collect a handful of snow. “Though that’s not what anyone here would tell you.”
“Doesn’t look like August to me.”
“Because you spend too much time in Wales. On this part of the planet it’s cold and snowy for three quarters of the year.”
“Except in December,” Jack guessed. “That’s why they’re having Christmas in August.”
The Doctor frowned at him. “Don’t be silly. It’s December anyway. It just shouldn’t be.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense here, Doc.” Jack thought about his own words. “None at all, in fact.”
“Oh, it’s simple!” The Doctor sounded a bit exasperated, as if it really was obvious. “The journey here took the first settlers almost a hundred years. They spend them tucked away in stasis chambers and just hoped they’d wake up someday. And at some point during that journey there was a glitch in their ship’s computer and it skipped a few months. So when they woke up it gave them the wrong time. Until another ship from Earth came here and pointed out the error in their calendar nearly another century had passed. With all other humans so far away and so little contact to the Empire, they never bothered to correct it, though. Think of all the hassle that would be. Try explaining to your boss that you want the usual pay for your job, even if the year was four months shorter. Not to mention deadlines! They’re bad enough under normal circumstances.”
Now here was the ramble Jack had been waiting for. He allowed himself a smile as much of the tension fell away from him. The tension returned, unbidden and much stronger then before, when they turned around a corner and the Doctor stopped dead. Jack followed his gaze to the random arc spanning the street, looking not completely unlike the toori in front of Shinto shrines. It was large, but Jack could see that it had been put up only recently and could be removed just as easily. There were decent lights at the corners, almost subtle compared to the blinking collections in the windows and on the rooftops. In the middle of the arc were symbols Jack’s couldn’t read.
“Ah, hell,” the Doctor murmured. Then he turned on his heels and walked briskly back the way they had come, not once looking left or right. Jack had to hurry to keep up with him.
“What’s going on?” he asked alarmed. “Something wrong with that gate? What is it?”
“It’s Christmas Eve after all,” the Doctor said darkly. “They put up the gate only on this day, to welcome the spirits of their ancestors.”
“’Spirits of their ancestors’?” Jack echoed as they hurried down the street toward the TARDIS. “Sure this is Christmas we’re talking about?”
“They got a bit mixed up in their holidays. There are many cultures on Earth that spare a few days each year to spend it with the dead. Some of the first settlers kept up the tradition, the others copied it, and eventually someone had the bright idea that there’s no better day to spend with their passed loved ones than Christmas.”
Jack thought about it while he fought for his balance after slipping on a patch of ice on the sidewalk. “And that’s bad why exactly?”
“Because they invite the dead to their houses.” The harshness in the Doctor’s voice startled his human companion. “And the dead accept the invitation.”
Jack stopped for a second, startled. “You’re serious?” He looked around but saw no zombies, just a bunch of exited children being ushered into a house by a woman in an apron. “How so?” He realised that since they’d arrived here almost everything he’d said had ended with a question mark.
The Doctor didn’t answer directly. Instead he pointed down the street where Jack could see the TARDIS, and behind her the vague outline of another of those gates in the distance. Perhaps they should start to have good, 360° looks-around after landing somewhere. Just so the things right behind them in plain view didn’t have so much chance to take them by surprise later.
Through the gates people were coming, stepping out of the grey haze created by dusk. They looked perfectly normal to Jack - until he had a closer look and saw that they didn’t step out of the dusk but were coming into being right before their eyes.
“Hell,” he said, baffled.
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed bitterly, jamming his key into the lock of his ship and turning it harshly. “I hate this place,” he told the blue wood.
The door opened and closed after them a second later, shutting out the world and its ghosts. The Doctor breathed a visible sigh of relief.
“Are they dangerous?” Jack asked - another question - thinking of all the people out there.
“Not at all,” the Doctor told him. “They’re not even real. This planet is… there’s some kind of underlying telepathic current. Didn’t you feel it?”
Jack thought about it. Inside the closed TARDIS they were safe from all influences, but perhaps he had felt something, some tingling at the back of his head, ignored by his consciousness. It could also be his imagination, though.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“Then you didn’t. If you had, you’d know.” The Doctor seemed much more relaxed now. He let himself fall onto the couch, staring at the console without yet mustering the energy to steer them away. “But some of the settlers did. And they used their technology to use this current, and then they based their new technology on it. And once a year they enhance this telepathic field and it gets into the heads of everyone and brings back the dead. Reconstructed from their memory.” He shuddered.
“From your reaction,” Jack said carefully, “I gather that it’s not just the natives that are affected.”
“Oh, no, it’s for everyone.” The Doctor waved around with his hands, smiling and putting up an act of casualty that might have fooled Jack had he not know better. “It might be nice to see old friends again - the locals certainly enjoy it. Not really my cup of tea, but if you like, I’ll wait for you while you go out. I can’t guarantee it’s going to work for you, though. You are telepathically death since - well, and I don’t know if it can reach you. You can still try, though.”
Jack imagined himself doing it; going out there and meeting his parents, Estelle, Owen, Tosh… Only it wouldn’t be them. It would be his memory of them, put into shape. There would be no point in telling them he loved them, or in apologizing, because they’d never get the message. It would only be walking, talking knifes to tear open old wounds.
“Didn’t think so.” The Doctor nodded to himself, and Jack didn’t feel like pointing out that he was doing it again.
“Can we…” Realising that he was about to ask another question, Jack rearranged the words he wanted to say. “We can leave now. Unless there was something in particular you wanted to do here.” He knew that the second part was, technically, a question, but he refused to rise his tone at the end and called it a statement.
“No, there wasn’t.” The Doctor jumped to his feet, suddenly all life and flying limps again. His hands touched the controls. “Where would you…”
But it seemed that the asking was reserved to Jack, as the Doctor was interrupted before he could finish the sentence. There was a scream, reaching them through the closed doors. A female voice, full of horror. It was followed by several other screams and angry shouts.
The Doctor’s hands fell away from the console as his shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes and for a second stood very, very still.
And for once it was Jack who had a very good idea what he was thinking.
-
They came outside just in time to see two men engage in a fight with three of the undead apparitions right in front of the TARDIS. Apparently they were quite solid. They also seemed to be attacking people - as Jack and the Doctor watched, a child with a bloody face crawled out of the heap of fighting men and ran crying to a young woman who picked it up and hurried back into the house before more of the things could have a go at them.
Everywhere in the street people were coming out of their homes to see what was going on. The Doctor yelled at them to go back inside and lock the doors while pointing his sonic screwdriver at the fighting memory-creatures in front of him. When it had no visible effect, he and Jack joined the fight themselves.
One problem with fighting dead things was that they felt no pain and no exhaustion. Still, the two of them managed to keep the things busy long enough for the two other living men to get away. Once they were gone, Jack and the Doctor didn’t seem to interest the undead any longer. Instead they followed their former victims in a casual, relaxed walk that somehow was much creepier than them running would have been.
But at least it was slow.
Everywhere the long dead were wandering around the houses. They didn’t seem to be able to get inside, though. Like the vampires of human legends, thought Jack; only able to enter your home if you invited them.
Since no one else seemed to be in mortal, peril they thought it safe to get back into the TARDIS and figure out what this all was about.
It didn’t take the Doctor long. He ran a few scans, cried “That’s it!” and “They had it coming!” and pulled down a lever. To Jack’s surprise they took off at once.
And materialized a second later. Peering outside Jack discovered that they had landed on the roof of a rather high building. Everything seemed peaceful here - until he heard the frightened screams of people down in the street.
“Some explanation would be in order,” he suggested as the Doctor rushed past him, not even bothering to put his coat back on.
“We’re in the capital now,” the Doctor told him. “It’s not far from the village we first landed in; the colony isn’t very large. Inside this building we’ll find the control centre for the energy that’s feeding off the telepathic current.”
“Switch it off and these things disappear,” Jack guessed.
“You’ve got it.” The Doctor looked grim.
But to get inside the building they had to find the door first. The roof, they discovered, was a maze. Low, doorless huts formed a faceless village of their own, and as they briskly walked through it, Jack thought he saw shadows moving out of the corner of his eye. It was almost dark now, and in the darkness things were forming. But when he looked closer there was nothing there.
The Doctor had been right: It couldn’t get a hold of his thoughts.
“But what’s caused this now, all of a sudden?” Jack asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” the Time Lord asked back. Jack told him it wasn’t, so the Doctor explained, “The planet is alive.”
Maybe it was kind of obvious. “Ah,” said Jack. “They’re draining its strength, and now it’s fighting back.” He shuddered. “Using the forms of their loved ones was weapons.”
“It’s using whatever they’re giving them,” the Doctor pointed out. “Don’t judge it, Jack. It’s a living planet. It’s quite different from anything you could imagine.”
That was true. Jack fell silent and went back to keeping an eye on the shadows, as if staring at them could somehow prevent something nasty from emerging.
Once he thought he saw his father disappearing into the darkness between the huts.
Eventually they reached the entrance to the building, a plain metal door with a lock that was no challenge to the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor pulled it open, looked up, and froze.
He was staring at something behind Jack. With a feeling of dread, his muscles tense with the anticipation of a fight, the human turned. But there was no monster hovering right behind him. Just an old man in wide, faded orange ropes standing at a junction twenty metres away. He didn’t move, just looked at them in silence, his eyes firmly fixed on the Doctor. Jack didn’t know him.
The stranger only started coming closer when the Doctor tore his eyes off him. Within a second, the Time Lord pushed Jack into the building and slammed the door shut behind them.
-
The corridors were empty, almost hauntingly so. Everyone working in this building must have had gone outside when the riot started. The two time travellers ran through the brightly lit complex until they found a plan of the building. One level down to find what they were looking for. The Doctor turned to run for the staircase one second too late to not see Adric coming around a far corner.
He hated this place.
The control room was usually shut off by doors of unbreakable glass. Now these doors were open, and the two women on duty tonight were dead, one with her skull crushed, the other with the marks of fingers around her throat. They could only speculate on what had happened here. The Doctor locked the doors behind them in hope that they would be strong enough to keep out any visitors and, as he saw Sam coming closer, whished they hadn’t been made of glass.
Shutting down the power, in the end, wasn’t difficult. Sam was watching helplessly from outside the sealed room, joined by one of his cousins and more people the Doctor refused to recognize, never looking at them directly. The draining of energy from the telepathic field inherent to the planet, from the very being of the planet itself stopped - but the ghosts remained.
“Oh,” said the Doctor, for a second fully staring at them. It hurt. He looked away.
“What went wrong?” Jack asked, looking at the controls. “I thought they’d disappear without this technology maintaining them.”
“The planet is keeping them going itself,” the Doctor guessed. “It doesn’t want them to disappear.”
“It’s out for revenge,” Jack guessed, and the Doctor guessed he was right.
“We’ve got to stop it!” his human friend declared. The Doctor approved of that. Stopping things, in general, was good.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Now we only need to figure out how.”
Jack looked around, soon accepting that in this case there was nothing for him to shoot at. For once the Doctor wasn’t glad; not looking at the growing crowd of ghosts that formed their audience distracted him too much to appreciate the uselessness of violence in this case.
Go away, he thought, despairingly. You’re not invited.
Finally admitting defeat, Jack asked, “Can’t we just talk to it? Ask it to stop? You’re so good at that kind of thing. If these creatures are formed by its will, maybe we can talk to the planet through them.”
The Doctor felt cold horror at the idea of addressing the beings out there directly. Jack’s idea was the only one they had, and still he was relieved to be able to declare it useless. “It wouldn’t get our words,” he said. “It’s too alien.” He could feel it, in the current tugging at his mind. Human reasoning would never reach it. “All communication would have to happen on a much deeper level…” He trailed off, then slapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, yes!” he cried, startling Jack. “That’s it! Jack, you’re brilliant!”
He whirled around, walked over to the console and, after a second of taking in its working, pulled it apart to get to the bits inside. “If it can get into our minds, maybe we can get into the planet’s,” he explained, exited despite himself (while a part of him reflected that he was falling into his enthusiasm as a way to stop himself from going mad). “With this stuff I should be able to build an amplifier, some sort of backdoor into the planet-being. There I can address it directly. Make it understand.”
Jack watched as he hastily re-assembled wires and created connections. It only took a minute.
“How does it work?” he wanted to know.
“You connect this thing here -“ The Doctor held up a string of wires. “- with your central nervous system and it kicks your mind right into the belly of the beast, so to speak. And when I say ‘you’, I actually mean -“
“I’ll do it,” Jack interrupted him.
The Doctor frowned in irritation. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“I know. I’ll still do it.”
“Jack, that’s going to be unpleasant. And dangerous.” With all the stress placed upon him by his past looking in through the window, the Doctor himself couldn’t tell how much of his confusion was genuine, how much was act. “Why ever would you want to do it?”
“So you don’t have to.” Jack gave him a grin of false confidence. “So, plug me in!” He took a step closer.
The Doctor, automatically, took a step back. “I’m not going to let you do that.”
“No.” Jack’s voice was surprisingly soft. “I’m not going to let you do it. How could I, after seeing what effect even these creatures out there have on you? You’re trembling, Doc.”
For a second the Doctor glanced at his hands. He was, wasn’t he? He hadn’t noticed.
“I can take it. Don’t expect me to let another do this for me.”
“Why not? You’re expecting the same of me.” Jack had a point, the Doctor had to admit. And it didn’t help at all that he really, really didn’t want to do it. “Just step back for once, Doctor. I won’t let you throw yourself right to the bottom of the pit. Again. For once, let me be the hero. You can make it up to me later.” Here he winked playfully, and the Doctor wondered if his brave, stupid friend could see how much he wanted to let him do it. Just step back and let someone else throw himself into the blade. How terrified he was.
Jack took the wire out of his hand and the Doctor let him. He stepped back, behind the human. A second later Jack tumbled to the ground, unconscious.
As he bent down to take back the wire, the Time Lord wondered if he would have stopped Jack as well had he not been certain that Jack would have been unable to properly connect.
Better not dwell on it - he might learn things about himself he didn’t want to know, and there was no time for it either. People were being killed outside. The Doctor looked up, at the door, the fine lines where the strong glass was beginning to break. Worrying about the time he had left to accomplish his goal, he made sure only to look at the cracks, not at the hands that caused them.
A new line sprang through the glass, between the Doctor and the dead eyes in the withered face of Father Kreiner - no, of Fitz. Dearest Fitz, who looked at him accusingly through a web of cracks.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor found himself saying; he couldn’t help it. “So, so sorry. If I could…”
But he wouldn’t, even if he could, and they both knew it. The Doctor pressed a button on the console and the wires came to life.
Knowing its purpose, the machine acted on its own. The wires moved across his body, beneath his clothes. There was a second of naked terror when he realised he couldn’t turn back now, then a sharp pain all along his spine as the thin wires pierced his skin. The Doctor screwed shut his eyes, and when he opened them he was in another room altogether. Smooth, cream-coloured walls surrounded him, and the sort of seemingly useless ornaments so popular with Gallifreyan politicians. He turned around but there was no one else around. No windows either. Just a closed door.
The Doctor swallowed. This was worse than expected.
His hearts racing he walked over to the door, opened it. It should have opened on its own. The entire door was wrong. Wrong time, wrong planet.
And there should have been a hall outside, not a corridor. The Doctor left the room. All the details were right out here. The light was right. He swallowed, his hearts breaking. The corridor was quiet, empty but for him. The entire place had an abandoned feel to it, but as he stood still in the warm light of a side wing of the citadel, the Doctor could hear the noise in the distance. Screams, weapons being fired. The artificial voices of Daleks. He couldn’t make out the words but knew what they were saying. It wasn’t a fight he was hearing, it was an execution. They happened everywhere now - the fighting was already over.
It were the sounds of a lost war.
All this happened long ago. No matter how fast he ran, he wouldn’t be in time to save anyone. The Doctor stood in the warm, peaceful corridor and listened to the death of his species, unable to move. Until Koschei came around the far corner and walked toward him. He was young, and his eyes were already full of ice. He hadn’t been like this, back then.
Had he?
Just before the Doctor he stopped, a sneer on his face.
“Well, Theta,” he said. “Have you come to kill us once again?”
-
Jack groaned when he opened his eyes. It was not so much a groan of pain as it was an expression of his frustration. The bastard had knocked him out, just because he’d tried to be the hero for once. And now he had…
The memory drove the human to his feet, and the dizziness that came with the movement nearly pushed him down again. He didn’t know how the Doctor had rendered him unconscious, but he hadn’t been hit. Otherwise there would be more pain. Instead he just felt an odd tearing at the neck for a few seconds, that still felt unpleasant and almost made him retch. If he’d been killed he would have spend a second shaking off the awful but familiar feeling of being dead, and been okay again. Unfortunately, the Doctor never killed if he could avoid it, not even him. He was pretty much the only person in the universe who thought that Jack’s life was actually worth something.
The two overlapping rooms became one again as the feeling of dizziness and disorientation subsided. Jack was leaning heavily against the back of a chair, and in front of it lay the dead body of a woman - the blonde one. He hardly registered the fact. A dull thumbing sound, like fists hitting glass, told him of the continued presence of material ghosts. Right in front of him, sprawled across the console with his arms spread, was the Doctor.
The Time Lord was lying face down, and the suit and shirt he were wearing had been torn by sharp, thin wires that were now embedded in his back, all along his spine. Jack reached out instinctively but knew better than to touch them, or even pull them out. He’d more likely kill his friend than do any good.
It was hard to do nothing, though, and it became even harder when the Doctor’s body twitched and a fain whimper escaped his throat.
Jack felt helpless, worried, and he hated the Doctor a little for it. He’d been in this situation far too often; being forced to watch and do nothing while his friend sacrificed himself for the entire stupid universe. And for Jack.
The Doctor might not even realise what he did to Jack by acting like this. Jack assumed this in his favour, for if he’d suspected that the Time Lord did know, then he’d just have to kill him.
Suddenly his friend let out a brief, toneless groan, and the wires retreated from his body to fall uselessly to the floor. The Doctor followed a second later, sliding down when there was no longer anything to keep him up. Jack was too slow to catch him.
The Time Lord didn’t react when Jack knelt beside him. His ashen face was covered in sweat and thin trails of blood had run out of his mouth and nostrils. Fighting panic, Jack felt for a pulse and found both of them. Just when he was letting out the breath he had been holding, the glass of the entrance broke.
The human was on his feet so fast he couldn’t even remember moving. The gun was already in his hand when he saw the creatures coming in, and, standing between them and the defenceless Time Lord, he fired at the one closest to him. A girl, dark blonde hair bound on top of her head. Jack’s stomach turned when the bullet entered her head the moment he recognized her: it was the girl from the Game Station, the one who’d refused to return to Earth because she’d wanted to stay with the Doctor.
She disappeared when her body hit the ground. Jack couldn’t remember her name.
He recognized some more, but most of them were strangers. People from the Doctor’s past, not his. Jack stood before his friend, ready to defend him at any cost, and more of them fell. The others didn’t seem to care, and soon Jack had run out of ammunition. Desperation tightened its grip on him when he saw that there was nothing he could do to stop them. They’d just overrun him, without even noticing. Neither of them so much as glanced at him - all eyes were on the Doctor. It was just like before, when they had helped the men in the village.
The Doctor had explained it to Jack, in the TARDIS: Since all these people were created by someone’s memory, they only took notice of those who remembered them. And since the planet’s consciousness couldn’t get a hold on Jack’s thoughts anyway, he would have been invisible even if he’d had known every single person coming in through the shattered door.
They came closer and closer, were upon him, and he turned around to see what they were doing to the Doctor, and then they were all gone. Jack had turned quickly, for a moment losing clear sight of the room, and that quarter of a second had been enough for the room to clear. There was only the Doctor lying on the ground, all pale and still, and a young woman, hardly more than a girl, kneeling over him. Her hair was short and dark and her eyes large, and she bent down to gently press a kiss upon the Doctor’s forehead. Jack blinked and she was gone as well.
The immortal let himself fall to the floor beside his friend, not understanding what had just happened. “Looks like you did it,” he mumbled, confused. All he knew for sure was that he had to take the Doctor back to the TARDIS and hope that he would recover.
-
It never was that easy. No one could save the world and just wander off, except the Doctor. And with the Doctor down, Jack had to deal with the aftermath on his own, and that meant calming down the frightened people he met on the way out. Who’d just had seen the one incredible wonder of their world turn against them. Who’d been attacked by people they loved and missed and made themselves believe were real, and now had their memory of them forever tainted. And then, suddenly, they were gone, and Jack had to explain to them about the living planet, and how their technology was hurting it, and that they should stop abusing it, and all of it with the Doctor hanging limply in his arms. He also had to turn down several offers of help, too scared that well meant medical treatment might harm the Time Lord’s alien metabolism.
He even refused the offer of help in carrying his friend and brought him back to the TARDIS alone. Inside the ship he placed the Time Lord on his bed, got rid of his ruined clothes, checked him over and, after learning that he was deeply unconscious and in some sort of shock, but otherwise not seriously damaged, he tugged him in, sat back and waited.
At some point he fell asleep. When he woke up the Doctor still hadn’t woken, and Jack watched him thoughtfully, wondering what he had seen inside that planet’s mind. In any case, the experience had most likely been… unpretty.
Not to mention painful.
The Doctor was perfectly still. He could just as well have been dead.
Jack hoped that the experience hadn’t caused any lasting damage on his mind. Damn it, why couldn’t the fool just once let him do the risky part?
Were he awake and well, the Doctor would now have told Jack that yes, he really should have let him do it, because Jack didn’t have much of a mind to lose. The thought, strangely enough, calmed the human down a little and he stuck out his tongue at his annoying friend before taking his hand and measuring his pulse. Then he just held that limp hand and marvelled over the difference between his own large, strong hand and the Doctor’s slender one.
He started drawing figures onto the Doctor’s palm with his fingers.
He wished the Time Lord would wake up so Jack could see he was all right.
He promised himself that he would never ask his friend about the identities of all the people he’d seen there.
He was hungry.
Jack ignored his hunger for another hour - he was worried and in the face of the Doctor’s state something mundane like this seemed too pathetic to make a priority. Eventually his stomach convinced him he was being stupid and ten minutes later found him leaning against the wall beside the door, eating a sandwich and watching the Doctor from a distance.
There was a slight frown of dismay on his face now. But still he didn’t move, nearly drowning in the multitude of pillows. It looked almost unreal. Jack wanted to crawl under the covers with him and hold him close. Instead he went back to the kitchen to fill his stomach with another, larger sandwich, and missed the Doctor waking up.
When he came back, sated and feeling slightly guilty, the Doctor was lying on his back like he had before, but his head was thrown back and his hands pressed against his eyes. Jack saw the grinded teeth as he stepped into the room, the shaking of the Time Lord’s body and with new concern took them as sings of pain. Because the Doctor didn’t make a sound Jack needed a moment to realise that he was crying.
The realisation stopped Jack dead on his way to the bed. Suddenly he felt helpless and defeated - his friend was suffering, whatever he’d seen and done had caused more pain than he could bear and now he was being torn apart by grief. And Jack could do nothing.
It was the Doctor’s pain. He wouldn’t share it. Jack knew he wouldn’t.
For a second he thought about leaving, to let the Time Lord be alone with his demons, the next seconds he felt ashamed for even considering it.
He already is alone, an ugly, persistent voice whispered inside his head. You’re presence doesn’t make a difference.
On the bed the Doctor turned to his side and curled up, his hands still covering his eyes. Away from Jack.
And Jack decided that he wouldn’t have it. Two more steps took him to his friend’s side and the Doctor didn’t even seem to notice when he touched his shoulder. So Jack lay down behind him, wrapped his arms around the other’s shaking body and held him close.
“Shh,” he murmured. “It’s alright. It’s alright, I’m here.” It was all he could offer and had to be enough.
For a while the Doctor was shaken by soundless sobs, hiding his face in a crushed pillow. Jack could only hold him, feeling miserable and hoping that he could help by being there, or at least didn’t make matters worse. Eventually the Doctor calmed down, and for several minutes he lay perfectly still. Jack felt his breathing, the soft rise and fall of his narrow chest. He felt so vulnerable and brittle in his arms, something to be protected, not to protect others. Lying here it was hard to believe that this man had saved the universe more often than Jack could count, more often than not getting only suffering in return. It wasn’t fair.
There was no way of knowing what the Time Lord was thinking, or feeling, this very moment - he had never shared that much with Jack. But the immortal knew him well enough to know that in the end his friend would get up, stretch and look at Jack with a grin, and act like this had never happened. And Jack would accept it out of respect for his Doctor’s feelings, and because he didn’t know what else to do.
When the moment came, when the Doctor moved and tried to get away, Jack tightened his hold on him and didn’t let him leave.
There was another moment of silence.
“Jack?”
The voice sounded a little cracked, almost okay. That was what the Doctor was these days. Almost okay. Just a little cracked.
“Jack, I’m fine, really.” Softer now. The Doctor wanted to get away, be done with it. Jack didn’t let go.
“I’m not,” he said, trying to push the Doctor into staying, into opening to him, but it was also true. He needed the Doctor to be with him through this just as much as the Doctor, Jack was convinced, needed to be with someone.
Should be with someone, at least. Jack knew, and hated, that the Doctor didn’t need anyone. He had learned to deal with everything and anything on his own, lifetimes before Jack had entered his crazy world.
“I’m not okay,” he repeated. “Stay with me, please.” Because the Doctor could never say no to a plea for help.
In his arms, trapped between him and the wall, the Doctor sighed. “What happened after I passed out?” He was asking about the situation on the planet, but it was better than nothing. Jack continued to hold him while he told his friend that the creatures all had disappeared and that he had told the people to care for their planet better, and stroked his hair, and for now it was fine. It was enough, this time.
Silence fell, when he had finished.
Eventually the Doctor said, “Jack, I’m not…” He broke off, started again. “You know I’m fine, right? I really am.”
Jack’s lips pressed into a thin line of bitterness, but only for a second. “Yeah,” he said, calmly. “You’re just as fine as me.”
To his surprise the man he held against him chucked. “That’s right,” he said, lively again, but not cheerful like he would have been. His words seemed more real like this, if not any more honest. He freed himself of Jack’s hands at least, crawled over him, all long limbs and movements that were graceful in their awkwardness, Jack turning to watch him. Finally he stood beside the bed, and offered a hand to the human, palm up, long fingers stretched and slightly parted. “Come on,” he said, and smiled. “We can be okay together.” And somehow it was the best thing Jack had heard today.
“Merry Christmas,” he whispered, no, breathed. Just lips moving without sound, when the Doctor’s back was turned, because this felt like a present. Not the one he wanted, but the best he could hope for. It was okay.
The hand holding his as they walked through the corridor towards the console room and their next destination squeezed ever so slightly. Or perhaps that was just Jack’s imagination, making it up because it felt appropriate, right now.
“Yeah.” The Doctor spoke without looking at him, but Jack could hear the smile in his voice. “You too.“
December 24, 2008