Pendulum (9/9)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Warnings: Character death
Summary: It's the Doctor's ship and he decided where to go with it.
There was only one thing Jack and the Master agreed on: that the Doctor was far too fragile still to be allowed to leave the TARDIS. The Doctor, on the other hand, had decided that he was far too frustrated to stay inside doing nothing any longer. In time he would only become more and more helpless, and if he didn’t go outside now, he would never do it.
The Master and Jack argued that the Doctor got in trouble wherever he went and would only end up getting himself killed. The Doctor argued that the TARDIS knew of his state and would not drop them into the middle of a crisis. Jack and the Master weren’t convinced. The Doctor argued that it was his ship and that he would decide if it landed anywhere or not.
The Master would have mercilessly tied him to the bed, which was why the Doctor cunningly didn’t warn him before he blindly wandered into the console room and made the TARDIS land wherever she felt was a good place to be at the moment.
The smell of the sea greeted him when he pushed open the doors, and under his feet he felt rough plants, like long grass hard and pointy enough to poke into the skin of his legs through the thin fabric of his trousers.
He had never before noticed this clearly how every planet had its own unique scent. One deep breath was enough to tell the blind Time Lord that he was on Earth.
It didn’t smell like Cardiff though, which was probably a good thing - Jack would only have gotten annoyed if he had reason to think the Doctor wanted to deposit him at home.
Cool wind ruffled the Doctor’s hair and caressed his face and neck. He had missed this. He hadn’t realised how much.
There were no sounds caused by humans to be heard. Just the wind and the cry of birds. The area felt deserted. All the traces of pollution the humans of the twenty-first century were so used to they never even noticed them were missing from the air. The Doctor supposed that they had landed on pre-industrial age Earth.
“Looks like Denmark to me,” Jack’s voice sounded behind him. “Jutland, before the tourists came. Looks pretty deserted.”
“That’s nice,” the Doctor replied, a little sourly. “I suppose I have your permission to go for a walk then?” Without waiting for an answer, he started walking towards the sea, hoping he wouldn’t find it at the bottom of a cliff.
Didn’t sound like waves crashing against a cliff, though. Sounded like waves more or less gently rolling up the shore. Judging from their strength and the strong smell of salt, he guessed that this was the North rather than the East Sea.
He could make out footsteps behind him and sped up his own steps. Two metres later he was lying on the steadily rising ground after stumbling over something in the marram grass. Rather inelegantly so, he feared. The Doctor made an effort to get up before Jack could reach him.
“Careful,” Jack called. “It goes down in a few metres.”
The Doctor slowed down his steps, but supposed that there would have been more alarm in Jack’s voice if he was about to fall to his death. So this was Other Side Of Dune Down, not Cliff Down.
He still stumbled a few more times over things he couldn’t see, and while he didn’t fall again, he wondered if it wouldn’t be easier if he just lay down and rolled to the feet of the dune.
Would be more fun, too.
But this was another of the things he’d better not do when he couldn’t see and was in an area he wasn’t familiar with. It did nothing to improve his mood, although he was quite determined not to be miserable today.
The Doctor closed his eyes. A moment of concentration and a rush of nausea inducting disorientation later he opened them again, and saw the broad, clean shore at the foot of the dune, and the sea. Birds were flying above him, in front of bright grey sky. He swallowed his feelings and let go of his vision after less than a minute. His determination not to be miserable might waver if the rising pain made it impossible for him to think.
Jack said nothing, but the Doctor sensed him nearby anyway, ready to save him should be face any terrible danger, like a hole in the sand, or an overly enthusiastic seal. The Doctor grimaced, and before Jack had a chance to stop him threw himself to the ground to roll all the way down to the shore.
-
Jack could see that the Doctor wanted to be on his own for the moment, away from everyone who treated him like a helpless child that needed to be watched over instead of a hero who had saved the universe more often than any of them could count. He even was aware that even in his current state - blind, weak and probably in pain - the Time Lord could one of the most dangerous being the universe had ever produced, if he put his mind to it. More than once in his life he had been very, very relieved that the Doctor had made the decision to fight for the cosmos, and not against it.
Unfortunately the cosmos obviously had decided to fight against him - and no matter how much Jack knew that his concern was probably unnecessary, he winced every time he saw his friend stumble. He couldn’t help it: he loved the Doctor and wanted to protect him. On the other hand he knew that he would be pretty pissed himself if their roles were reversed and everyone would fuss over him as if he might get killed by a gush of wind. So he stayed back a little, trying to find a balance between giving the Doctor some space and being close enough to help him should the need occur, yet suspecting that he failed spectacularly.
He hadn’t been happy to see the Doctor throw himself off the dune. What a silly thing to do, and stupid and careless, and most of all terribly childish!
If Jack hadn’t felt like it was his job to be the responsible one here, he would have done exactly the same.
The Doctor was laughing when he came to a stop in the sand of the beach, and Jack swallowed the lecture he’d been planning to give once he caught up with his friend. The Time Lord had little enough fun these days, after all. In the end he stayed up on the dune, sitting on the sandy ground and watching the Doctor as he strolled toward the water. Eventually the Time Lord took off his shoes and left them in the sand as he let the waves bury his feet in the ground.
From the distance he looked relaxed, content and normal, except that his movements were lacking the barely contained energy Jack had grown accustomed to. It prevented him from forgetting for even one moment that the Doctor was very much not okay.
It hurt more than he would have been able (or willing) to express to know that maybe he would never again be as he had been before. The Master and him, they had saved the Doctor’s life, but they hadn’t really healed him, and their solution for the problem had turned out to only make matters worse. The Doctor alive was the only positive outcome of their actions, and while he had never told Jack so, the human suspected that the Time Lord would have preferred if they had simply let him go.
He had, after all, been ready to die ever since Jack had first met him.
So it was with a vague feeling of dread that Jack watched the Doctor wander along the shoreline, his feet in the no doubt pretty cold water. There wasn’t anything to do here, but there was just as little to do inside the TARDIS, and despite his objections Jack was grateful for the change in scenery. He had begun to feel rather claustrophobic these last few days.
Only after a few minutes did Jack notice the Master who was standing about fifty metres away, pointedly ignoring him. It was the first time Jack had seen him in days, and the old hatred was back in an instant, not at all lessened by the new body the man was wearing - though a part of Jack still expected to see the face of Harold Saxon whenever he looked at him.
At the moment the Master was looking at the Doctor with a stony face and narrowed eyes, his body tense, as if he was expecting the Doctor to wander off into the sea any second. When Jack looked back at the tall, thin figure at the water’s edge, the Doctor had turned his face in their direction, a frown gracing his features. Jack wondered if he was doing his little trick to get back his ability to see, or if he was just guessing that they were there. He supposed that they were kind of predictable in their behaviour.
The second option was more likely. As Jack understood what the Doctor had refused to explain in depth, forcing his senses to work caused the Doctor a severe headache that didn’t lessen even when he stopped.
After a moment, the Doctor lifted two fingers in their general direction and walked on, further and further down the beach.
-
It was probably pride that had made the Doctor walk this far, because it surely had not been a well thought through decision. He felt the sands beneath his feet and the water playing around his ankles, and it felt wonderful, but he also felt the fatigue in his limps and the pain his head that steadily grew worse even though he did nothing to deserve it, and he’d felt the sharp edge of a large, broken seashell that had cut the sole of his foot. What he didn’t feel was the TARDIS: her constant, reassuring presence at the back of his mind had been gone when he’d first woken up, and he’d felt abandoned and lost without it; now that he had left her more than ever before. Since the Doctor knew the telepathic bond wasn’t entirely gone but only drowned out on his end, he assumed that his ship could still feel him like it had ever before. She still was helpful, gave him the shortest way to wherever he wanted to go, adjusted the temperature to meet his needs, and of course he wouldn’t want her to feel like he did, but it still seemed unfair, somehow.
He grimaced at his own pettiness, just before he walked up the shore a bit, where walking was harder because the sand was dry and lose. Self-consciously aware that Jack and the Master were still watching him - and how he knew that he would not have been able to tell - he flopped down into the sand, trying to make it look like he just felt like sitting down and drawing figures into the sand with his fingers, as opposed to, say, sitting down because he had no breath left and the thought of the way back was utterly depressing.
It was their fault, really. If Jack and the Master had no been watching, the Doctor would not have felt the need to keep walking, unwilling to show any weakness. Yet, it had also been the unwillingness to let go of this little bit of freedom that had forced him to keep moving.
And the fact that he simply enjoyed it, and had kind of forgotten that he’d have to walk all the way back again.
His head was aching rather more than he liked. The Doctor did his best not to notice that this was the kind of ache that would result in the loss of another sense. If he was a human he would be running out of them pretty quickly. But even so…
The Doctor didn’t think about that. The Doctor listened to the crashing of the waves and wondered if the others would be quick enough to stop him if he decided to get up and walk into the water until he lost the ground under his feet.
He was cold, although it didn’t bother him. With a deep breath the Doctor lay on his back and closed eyes he had hardly been aware had been open. Funny how sand that slipped away with every step could be so hard and unrelenting when lain upon.
A gap in the clouds must have opened, because the Doctor could feel the warmth of the sun on his skin. That was nice. He decided to rest a little under the cover of daydreaming and relaxing, and let the sound of the waves and the wind distract him from the growing pain in his head and in his joints.
It didn’t work in the long run. The Doctor’s thoughts quickly became confused and incoherent, and when he realised that he was about to pass out, sprawled on the shore, after the Master and Jack had told him was he wasn’t fit enough to go for a bloody walk, he wasn’t even embarrassed. He only wished to feel better. Even the sun was burning him now, while his entire body was shaking in the cold air.
How long he had been lying here he couldn’t tell. If he lost his time sense next, he thought distractedly, he probably wouldn’t even notice.
Eventually a hand touched his forehead, ran softly through his hair. The touch was gentle, soothing, comforting. The Doctor recognized Jack in the lack of roughness the Master applied to every caress as a mask of indifference betrayed by all his actions. The Doctor didn’t see the point, but had given up hoping for anything else long ago.
Jack’s hand felt at the same time too hot and too cold, yet the Doctor feared the moment the contact would be gone. He was too weak, though, to reach for it, and too far gone to even consider the possibility. Instead he said Jack’s name, or thought he did, but then he couldn’t think of anything else to say and fell silent. He felt sick. It was difficult to breathe so he stopped for a while. There were voices, but he didn’t pay attention. The words that were spoken, the sound of the waves, were too far away.
-
Walking in lose sand, the Master decided, was annoying. Carrying someone else in his arms while walking on lose sand was even more annoying, but at least he didn’t have to carry the Doctor very far.
While Jack’s younger self had been with them, the Doctor had done something to his ship, to keep the Master from abusing it for his own evil plans when he wasn’t there to stop him. But the manipulations only blocked the TARDIS’ functions if the Master was out to do something the Doctor wouldn’t approve of. The ship was very willing to make a short trip to where the Doctor had apparently passed out on the beach. That idiot. The words ‘I told you so’ were on the tip of the Masters tongue, but he swallowed them for a time when the other Time Lord was awake enough to acknowledge them.
He hadn’t bothered to wait for Harkness to enter the ship before he took off, and so the human had to walk all the way across the beach to get to the Doctor. If he was quick enough with collecting his fellow Time Lord, the Master had thought, he might be able to take off before the freak got to them and leave him stranded here. The idea was tempting, but Harkness was a surprisingly fast runner on sand, and his way wasn’t as long as the Masters would have been, since he had followed the Doctor, up on the dunes, when he felt he was getting too far away from them.
“Poor Doctor,” the Master had murmured as he sat down beside the other man and caressed his too warm forehead. “Defeated by a walk.” His words were mocking but his touch wasn’t.
Jack had reached them just in time to hear the Doctor whisper his name.
An hour later the Master was sitting in one of the living rooms, brooding and angry. The Doctor calling him Jack had stuck him painfully in a place he hadn’t known existed. And the Master didn’t deal well with hurt. It turned to fury and the urge to lash out at whoever had caused it.
Technically that had been the Doctor. But the Doctor didn’t present himself as a useful victim at the moment, and in the end this slip of the hardly conscious man had only refuelled the resentment the Master had held for Jack all along.
He wanted him gone, more than ever before. It had been fun to play with him, at times, and that had made his presence somewhat bearable, but if the Doctor had grown so used to having him around that he would call his name over the Master’s it was time for him to disappear.
And the Master wouldn’t mind if it was for good. Not at all.
So far, the Master had refrained from taking any permanent measures against the freak. He’d hurt him in any way he could, but had kept himself from committing murder because he didn’t want to deal with the Doctor in the aftermath. Now, however, he had reached the point where this wouldn’t hold him back any more. Avoiding to make the Doctor angry had never been a deciding factor for him. If he hadn’t been so worried about the Doctor’s fragile state he might have done so long before - and if he hadn’t thought that he might need Jack again, in case the life force they had given the Doctor hadn’t been enough. But by now it was desperately obvious that any life force taken from Jack was hardly the ideal solution and would only make things worse. If that was still possible.
So it was time for the Master to find out if, even after having so much of his unnatural energy taken from him, the human was still immortal.
-
Jack was feeling slightly annoyed, and that feeling was directed at the Doctor. He had been feeling well, and now he was ill again, and all that just because he’d had to go for a stupid walk. Jack would have liked to spend another normal day with him - they were rare enough.
The Doctor had been burning with fever when the Master had carried him inside, something Jack was by now so used to he knew how much of which medication to give his friend to tread it. A useful knowledge in this case, as the Master had just dumped the Doctor on the bed and stalked off like an insulted cat. Jack suspected that it had something to do with the Doctor muttering his name when the Master had been stroking his hair. The memory made him smirk. He couldn’t say that it didn’t please him. At the same time, however, it made him feel uneasy, because the look the Master had thrown him had promised more than another few days of avoidance and hurtful remarks. It would be a mistake to forget just how dangerous this man was.
Currently the Doctor was lying in his bed, caught once again in feverish dreams. He had woken up screaming in pain an hour ago, and by now Jack knew what that meant. The Master had shown up as Jack had prepared to send him back to sleep, but he hadn’t done anything to help, only standing in the doorway to watch the Doctor scream with a stony face. Once Jack had taken care of his friend he had turned and walked away, never speaking a word. All Jack had gotten from him was a cold, hard glare that had made him shiver. At the same time the Master’s behaviour had once again made him long to punch his face to a bloody mass. Or alternatively break his neck.
It would break the Doctor, but Jack had always known that the Master deserved to die, and that dealing with his death would still be better for the Doctor than his presence would be in the long run.
Jack sighed. There was an air of defeat to it; he already he knew wouldn’t be able to murder the Master in cold blood - the Doctor had taught him as much.
Sometimes he wished the Master would just try to murder him (or the Doctor, or anyone, really) and give him an excuse.
Jack kissed the Doctor’s forehead before he left his room. There was a certain feeling of dread when he stepped out into the corridor, caused by the fact that he didn’t want to run into the Master. The TARDIS usually kept them apart, but there was no guarantee for it, and Jack felt like walking though the labyrinth of Crete, expecting to run into the Minotaur any moment. And he didn’t even have a weapon.
It wasn’t the first time Jack felt this way, but it had never been this bad - even though he was aware that the worst that could happen should he meet the Master was probably them passing in silence while throwing glares of hatred at the other.
As it happened, Jack met the Master in the console room, half an hour later. The human had been staring at the symbols flashing over the little screen, as if he could make sense of them if only he watched them long enough. Eventually he came to the conclusion that they were in fact numbers, telling their current position in the vortex.
Alternatively the TARDIS could have described to him a new, improved way of brewing coffee.
The thought made Jack feel something like homesickness. He missed Ianto’s coffee. He also missed Ianto, and Gwen, and the hub. (And Tosh and Owen, but he strictly told his feelings not to go there.)
Most of all he missed hunting aliens in Cardiff. Compared to life in the TARDIS at the moment it would be a blessing - and he’d never thought he’d ever see it like that.
Not being in the company of someone he hated and who hated him while watching someone he loved suffer all the time would be nice for a chance. And the Doctor would take him home the moment he asked for it. Jack still wouldn’t do it. He felt committed to the Doctor, and leaving him when he was this miserable was not an option.
Eventually the symbols, meaningless as they were to him, got boring. Jack sighed. He wasn’t used to being this inactive. Sure, the TARDIS had a gym, a pool, at least three libraries, a cinema if one was needed, a garden so large it was practically a jungle, and probably every gaming console ever invented. Anywhere. But he was used to running around a lot, and helping people and being useful. While he would never forgive himself for leaving the Doctor alone, he knew that he was helping no one here.
When he turned around, the Master was looking at him.
The Master was looking at him with a smile, and careful calculation in his eyes, and the content calmness of a man who had finally, after a long struggle with himself, come to a decision.
Jack’s instincts told him to reach for his weapon, and his hands followed those instincts even though his memory told him he wasn’t carrying a weapon - because the Doctor wouldn’t approve, because the temptation to kill the Master would be too great if he did, and because someone had stolen it days ago. Possibly the TARDIS, to keep him from using it, though the Master rather suspected it had been the Master, for the same reasons.
The Master chuckled. And pulled Jack’s trusty old gun out of his pocket.
“I’m certain you’ll appreciate the irony,” he said.
“I hope you have kept in mind that I might, after all, still be immortal,” Jack replied, rage welling up inside him, though he managed to control it. The prospect of dying didn’t shock him - perhaps he’d simply done it too often before - but the fact that this smug bastard would kill him (again) was hard to accept. And the Doctor… “Because if I am, killing you will be the first thing I’ll do after I come back.”
The Master smiled nastily. “You know what’s even more ironic? The TARDIS used to have a security setting that prevented firearms from working inside. But when you destroyed the paradox machine with a firearm, it missed out this one when resetting itself.”
Funny enough, the first thing Jack thought of was how strange it was to hear the Master talk about the TARDIS as ‘it’, when the Doctor had always referred to the ship as ‘she’.
“Your fulfilling every cliché of a movie villain here, gloating before the kill like this,” he pointed out. From what Jack knew about him, the Master was that kind of man, and Jack desperately looked for a way to use this against him, like any movie hero would. But the Master only laughed (a hard, cold expression of satisfaction, not of humour) and fired.
Jack would never understand where the Doctor came from, all of a sudden.
And then he thought, strangely detached, that he’d better be mortal now, else this would have been completely in vain.
His mind was still numb with terror when the Master cried out and caught the Doctor as he fell to the ground. The Doctor was looking at the man cradling him in his arms, really looking at him, and whispered something, but Jack couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t his language. It wasn’t meant for him.
He couldn’t stop staring at the blood soaking the Doctor’s shirt.
The Doctor was smiling, but his head fell back when the Master lifted him up, his arms and legs hanging limply, and Jack stood still and watched as the Master ran from the room towards the infirmary, Jack and his murderous intentions toward him forgotten. He stood still until the two Time Lords were out of sight, then his paralysis disappeared and he realised what had just happened.
The infirmary should be right next door, he thought as he ran after them. But it wasn’t - there was just a long corridor, without doors, and the Master was running down it as fast as he could with the dead weight in his arms. The sense of déjà-vu that overcame Jack was destroyed when the Master slowed down, and stopped.
When he saw the Master sink to the floor before him, Jack stopped as well, knowing what it meant.
-
They found the Doctor’s room in the end, and lay him on the bed. Jack kept staring at the bloodstains on the covers, because it was easier than looking at his friend’s face. It wasn’t peaceful, as it should have been. It wasn’t anything, just pale.
The Master had become a vague existence at the edge of his peripheral vision. If the Time Lord (the last of his kind, oh God) decided to kill him after all, right now Jack wouldn’t have cared at all.
But the Master seemed to have forgotten his existence altogether. Eventually Jack moved (his joints creaked as if he had sat still for hours, and perhaps he had) and saw the Master sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on the Doctor’s white face, and there was nothing to be read in his eyes.
He’d screamed when he’d pressed the Doctor’s corpse against him, in the corridor.
The light flickered, and when it stopped was dimmer than before.
“We should go,” Jack said, his voice alien to his own ears. He was mildly surprised when the Master nodded ever so slightly, got up and walked over to the door. He was gone from the room by the time Jack took hold of the Doctor’s cold hand and breathed a kiss to his knuckles. When he left he didn’t look back.
Jack was aware that he hadn’t yet realized what had happened and what it meant, for him and the rest of the cosmos. It was waiting for him, the grief, pain and anger, like a flood waiting for the dam to break, but for now he was sheltered by a wall of numbness.
There were no doors in corridor he walked down, just blank walls leading to the exit. The light faded behind him with every step he walked, and when at one point Jack looked over his shoulder, the corridor he had just walked down ended in a wall a few metres behind him.
The console room went dark when Jack was halfway to the door. There was no last holographic message of the Doctor displayed for him, but in the end none was necessary.
The TARDIS shut down in silence, and Jack took the last few steps through the open door, until he found himself standing in front of the Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
A few steps ahead the Master was standing, lost and with nowhere to go.
-
There was a spaceship hidden in one of the larger storage rooms below the Torchwood hub. It had been found four decades ago, abandoned and out of power, and then forgotten about.
With the equipment stored and equally forgotten in the hub now, and the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, it was a matter of hours to get it to work. It took another few hours to get it to the surface while fighting off Gwen and Ianto, who wanted to know where Jack had been and why he had returned only to take off again in a ship they hadn’t known even existed. Jack didn’t have many words for them, and eventually they accepted that they wouldn’t get anything out of him at the moment and left him alone. All he could give them before getting into the little ship along with the Master was that he would not disappear again. This, at least, he could promise.
There was just enough room to get the TARDIS in, and the Master was familiar enough with this kind of spacecraft to fly it. They needed half a day to reach the sun.
The star was but a wall of fire in front of the tinted windows when they pulled the ship into as close an orbit as they dared. It had been a long time since Jack last came this close to Earth’s sun. Now, as always, the size and power of it took his breath away.
He’d tried to think of something to say for the final moment, but there was nothing he wanted to share with the Master. In the end they shoved the TARDIS out of the airlock in the same silence that had dominated their journey here, each of them keeping their goodbye to themselves.
The silence between them continued all the way back home to Earth. The Master didn’t say a word when Jack turned around just in time to see the large wrench coming towards his head.
It was the last thing he ever saw of the Master. When he woke up, Jack was in the hub, and it was much like after his fight against Abaddon. They hadn’t put him in the freezer this time, and Gwen didn’t kiss him awake, but she was there, as was Ianto, and they told him that he had been dead for two days.
Apparently the Master had thrown him out of the ship and he had hit the roof of the shopping centre near the hub after falling two hundred metres. He was immortal still, then. Jack still felt too numb to care, but he acknowledged the irony.
The Master had stolen their space ship. Understandably, his team was worried about what he would do with it. Yet, Jack didn’t share their concerns. He had seen the look on the Time Lord’s face as the TARDIS was swallowed by the bright light of the sun and knew they wouldn’t see him again.
Jack, for his part, left his concerned friends behind and spent the rest of the day staring up to the sky, trying to gather strength for a life that would go on.
Somehow.
-
He feels like he’s been sitting here for ages. His legs are heavy and useless, like dead things that haven’t been moved in a very long time - he considers drawing them close just to see if he still can, but in the end he doesn’t bother. There is nowhere to go.
The sun is warmer than he can remember it ever having been. It paralyzes him. Closing his eyes, he leans back, so his face is in the shadow of the tree he is sitting under. He feels sleepy, and finds himself unable to care that the day is wasting away without him. But there is somewhere else he has to be. Something he has to do, somewhere he has to go.
There are footsteps. Squinting in the bright light he sees the silhouette of his best friend. He can sense him, like an echo in an empty room.
You need to come with me, his best friend tells him. You’re already far too late.
And you are too early. He looks up into the sun, and the heat rises when the second sun climbs over the distant mountains, far too quickly to be real. It seems to be burning the air he tries to breathe before he can get it into his lungs and nail his limbs to the earth.
But his best friend offers him a hand and with his help he gets to his feet, and the heat doesn’t hurt them.
The sky above them is blazing, and the ground is blazing too. They look into the blinding light, and their hands are still joined as the wall of fire racing across the dry plains reaches them and takes them away.
- end
March 11, 2009
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Warnings: Character death
Summary: It's the Doctor's ship and he decided where to go with it.
There was only one thing Jack and the Master agreed on: that the Doctor was far too fragile still to be allowed to leave the TARDIS. The Doctor, on the other hand, had decided that he was far too frustrated to stay inside doing nothing any longer. In time he would only become more and more helpless, and if he didn’t go outside now, he would never do it.
The Master and Jack argued that the Doctor got in trouble wherever he went and would only end up getting himself killed. The Doctor argued that the TARDIS knew of his state and would not drop them into the middle of a crisis. Jack and the Master weren’t convinced. The Doctor argued that it was his ship and that he would decide if it landed anywhere or not.
The Master would have mercilessly tied him to the bed, which was why the Doctor cunningly didn’t warn him before he blindly wandered into the console room and made the TARDIS land wherever she felt was a good place to be at the moment.
The smell of the sea greeted him when he pushed open the doors, and under his feet he felt rough plants, like long grass hard and pointy enough to poke into the skin of his legs through the thin fabric of his trousers.
He had never before noticed this clearly how every planet had its own unique scent. One deep breath was enough to tell the blind Time Lord that he was on Earth.
It didn’t smell like Cardiff though, which was probably a good thing - Jack would only have gotten annoyed if he had reason to think the Doctor wanted to deposit him at home.
Cool wind ruffled the Doctor’s hair and caressed his face and neck. He had missed this. He hadn’t realised how much.
There were no sounds caused by humans to be heard. Just the wind and the cry of birds. The area felt deserted. All the traces of pollution the humans of the twenty-first century were so used to they never even noticed them were missing from the air. The Doctor supposed that they had landed on pre-industrial age Earth.
“Looks like Denmark to me,” Jack’s voice sounded behind him. “Jutland, before the tourists came. Looks pretty deserted.”
“That’s nice,” the Doctor replied, a little sourly. “I suppose I have your permission to go for a walk then?” Without waiting for an answer, he started walking towards the sea, hoping he wouldn’t find it at the bottom of a cliff.
Didn’t sound like waves crashing against a cliff, though. Sounded like waves more or less gently rolling up the shore. Judging from their strength and the strong smell of salt, he guessed that this was the North rather than the East Sea.
He could make out footsteps behind him and sped up his own steps. Two metres later he was lying on the steadily rising ground after stumbling over something in the marram grass. Rather inelegantly so, he feared. The Doctor made an effort to get up before Jack could reach him.
“Careful,” Jack called. “It goes down in a few metres.”
The Doctor slowed down his steps, but supposed that there would have been more alarm in Jack’s voice if he was about to fall to his death. So this was Other Side Of Dune Down, not Cliff Down.
He still stumbled a few more times over things he couldn’t see, and while he didn’t fall again, he wondered if it wouldn’t be easier if he just lay down and rolled to the feet of the dune.
Would be more fun, too.
But this was another of the things he’d better not do when he couldn’t see and was in an area he wasn’t familiar with. It did nothing to improve his mood, although he was quite determined not to be miserable today.
The Doctor closed his eyes. A moment of concentration and a rush of nausea inducting disorientation later he opened them again, and saw the broad, clean shore at the foot of the dune, and the sea. Birds were flying above him, in front of bright grey sky. He swallowed his feelings and let go of his vision after less than a minute. His determination not to be miserable might waver if the rising pain made it impossible for him to think.
Jack said nothing, but the Doctor sensed him nearby anyway, ready to save him should be face any terrible danger, like a hole in the sand, or an overly enthusiastic seal. The Doctor grimaced, and before Jack had a chance to stop him threw himself to the ground to roll all the way down to the shore.
-
Jack could see that the Doctor wanted to be on his own for the moment, away from everyone who treated him like a helpless child that needed to be watched over instead of a hero who had saved the universe more often than any of them could count. He even was aware that even in his current state - blind, weak and probably in pain - the Time Lord could one of the most dangerous being the universe had ever produced, if he put his mind to it. More than once in his life he had been very, very relieved that the Doctor had made the decision to fight for the cosmos, and not against it.
Unfortunately the cosmos obviously had decided to fight against him - and no matter how much Jack knew that his concern was probably unnecessary, he winced every time he saw his friend stumble. He couldn’t help it: he loved the Doctor and wanted to protect him. On the other hand he knew that he would be pretty pissed himself if their roles were reversed and everyone would fuss over him as if he might get killed by a gush of wind. So he stayed back a little, trying to find a balance between giving the Doctor some space and being close enough to help him should the need occur, yet suspecting that he failed spectacularly.
He hadn’t been happy to see the Doctor throw himself off the dune. What a silly thing to do, and stupid and careless, and most of all terribly childish!
If Jack hadn’t felt like it was his job to be the responsible one here, he would have done exactly the same.
The Doctor was laughing when he came to a stop in the sand of the beach, and Jack swallowed the lecture he’d been planning to give once he caught up with his friend. The Time Lord had little enough fun these days, after all. In the end he stayed up on the dune, sitting on the sandy ground and watching the Doctor as he strolled toward the water. Eventually the Time Lord took off his shoes and left them in the sand as he let the waves bury his feet in the ground.
From the distance he looked relaxed, content and normal, except that his movements were lacking the barely contained energy Jack had grown accustomed to. It prevented him from forgetting for even one moment that the Doctor was very much not okay.
It hurt more than he would have been able (or willing) to express to know that maybe he would never again be as he had been before. The Master and him, they had saved the Doctor’s life, but they hadn’t really healed him, and their solution for the problem had turned out to only make matters worse. The Doctor alive was the only positive outcome of their actions, and while he had never told Jack so, the human suspected that the Time Lord would have preferred if they had simply let him go.
He had, after all, been ready to die ever since Jack had first met him.
So it was with a vague feeling of dread that Jack watched the Doctor wander along the shoreline, his feet in the no doubt pretty cold water. There wasn’t anything to do here, but there was just as little to do inside the TARDIS, and despite his objections Jack was grateful for the change in scenery. He had begun to feel rather claustrophobic these last few days.
Only after a few minutes did Jack notice the Master who was standing about fifty metres away, pointedly ignoring him. It was the first time Jack had seen him in days, and the old hatred was back in an instant, not at all lessened by the new body the man was wearing - though a part of Jack still expected to see the face of Harold Saxon whenever he looked at him.
At the moment the Master was looking at the Doctor with a stony face and narrowed eyes, his body tense, as if he was expecting the Doctor to wander off into the sea any second. When Jack looked back at the tall, thin figure at the water’s edge, the Doctor had turned his face in their direction, a frown gracing his features. Jack wondered if he was doing his little trick to get back his ability to see, or if he was just guessing that they were there. He supposed that they were kind of predictable in their behaviour.
The second option was more likely. As Jack understood what the Doctor had refused to explain in depth, forcing his senses to work caused the Doctor a severe headache that didn’t lessen even when he stopped.
After a moment, the Doctor lifted two fingers in their general direction and walked on, further and further down the beach.
-
It was probably pride that had made the Doctor walk this far, because it surely had not been a well thought through decision. He felt the sands beneath his feet and the water playing around his ankles, and it felt wonderful, but he also felt the fatigue in his limps and the pain his head that steadily grew worse even though he did nothing to deserve it, and he’d felt the sharp edge of a large, broken seashell that had cut the sole of his foot. What he didn’t feel was the TARDIS: her constant, reassuring presence at the back of his mind had been gone when he’d first woken up, and he’d felt abandoned and lost without it; now that he had left her more than ever before. Since the Doctor knew the telepathic bond wasn’t entirely gone but only drowned out on his end, he assumed that his ship could still feel him like it had ever before. She still was helpful, gave him the shortest way to wherever he wanted to go, adjusted the temperature to meet his needs, and of course he wouldn’t want her to feel like he did, but it still seemed unfair, somehow.
He grimaced at his own pettiness, just before he walked up the shore a bit, where walking was harder because the sand was dry and lose. Self-consciously aware that Jack and the Master were still watching him - and how he knew that he would not have been able to tell - he flopped down into the sand, trying to make it look like he just felt like sitting down and drawing figures into the sand with his fingers, as opposed to, say, sitting down because he had no breath left and the thought of the way back was utterly depressing.
It was their fault, really. If Jack and the Master had no been watching, the Doctor would not have felt the need to keep walking, unwilling to show any weakness. Yet, it had also been the unwillingness to let go of this little bit of freedom that had forced him to keep moving.
And the fact that he simply enjoyed it, and had kind of forgotten that he’d have to walk all the way back again.
His head was aching rather more than he liked. The Doctor did his best not to notice that this was the kind of ache that would result in the loss of another sense. If he was a human he would be running out of them pretty quickly. But even so…
The Doctor didn’t think about that. The Doctor listened to the crashing of the waves and wondered if the others would be quick enough to stop him if he decided to get up and walk into the water until he lost the ground under his feet.
He was cold, although it didn’t bother him. With a deep breath the Doctor lay on his back and closed eyes he had hardly been aware had been open. Funny how sand that slipped away with every step could be so hard and unrelenting when lain upon.
A gap in the clouds must have opened, because the Doctor could feel the warmth of the sun on his skin. That was nice. He decided to rest a little under the cover of daydreaming and relaxing, and let the sound of the waves and the wind distract him from the growing pain in his head and in his joints.
It didn’t work in the long run. The Doctor’s thoughts quickly became confused and incoherent, and when he realised that he was about to pass out, sprawled on the shore, after the Master and Jack had told him was he wasn’t fit enough to go for a bloody walk, he wasn’t even embarrassed. He only wished to feel better. Even the sun was burning him now, while his entire body was shaking in the cold air.
How long he had been lying here he couldn’t tell. If he lost his time sense next, he thought distractedly, he probably wouldn’t even notice.
Eventually a hand touched his forehead, ran softly through his hair. The touch was gentle, soothing, comforting. The Doctor recognized Jack in the lack of roughness the Master applied to every caress as a mask of indifference betrayed by all his actions. The Doctor didn’t see the point, but had given up hoping for anything else long ago.
Jack’s hand felt at the same time too hot and too cold, yet the Doctor feared the moment the contact would be gone. He was too weak, though, to reach for it, and too far gone to even consider the possibility. Instead he said Jack’s name, or thought he did, but then he couldn’t think of anything else to say and fell silent. He felt sick. It was difficult to breathe so he stopped for a while. There were voices, but he didn’t pay attention. The words that were spoken, the sound of the waves, were too far away.
-
Walking in lose sand, the Master decided, was annoying. Carrying someone else in his arms while walking on lose sand was even more annoying, but at least he didn’t have to carry the Doctor very far.
While Jack’s younger self had been with them, the Doctor had done something to his ship, to keep the Master from abusing it for his own evil plans when he wasn’t there to stop him. But the manipulations only blocked the TARDIS’ functions if the Master was out to do something the Doctor wouldn’t approve of. The ship was very willing to make a short trip to where the Doctor had apparently passed out on the beach. That idiot. The words ‘I told you so’ were on the tip of the Masters tongue, but he swallowed them for a time when the other Time Lord was awake enough to acknowledge them.
He hadn’t bothered to wait for Harkness to enter the ship before he took off, and so the human had to walk all the way across the beach to get to the Doctor. If he was quick enough with collecting his fellow Time Lord, the Master had thought, he might be able to take off before the freak got to them and leave him stranded here. The idea was tempting, but Harkness was a surprisingly fast runner on sand, and his way wasn’t as long as the Masters would have been, since he had followed the Doctor, up on the dunes, when he felt he was getting too far away from them.
“Poor Doctor,” the Master had murmured as he sat down beside the other man and caressed his too warm forehead. “Defeated by a walk.” His words were mocking but his touch wasn’t.
Jack had reached them just in time to hear the Doctor whisper his name.
An hour later the Master was sitting in one of the living rooms, brooding and angry. The Doctor calling him Jack had stuck him painfully in a place he hadn’t known existed. And the Master didn’t deal well with hurt. It turned to fury and the urge to lash out at whoever had caused it.
Technically that had been the Doctor. But the Doctor didn’t present himself as a useful victim at the moment, and in the end this slip of the hardly conscious man had only refuelled the resentment the Master had held for Jack all along.
He wanted him gone, more than ever before. It had been fun to play with him, at times, and that had made his presence somewhat bearable, but if the Doctor had grown so used to having him around that he would call his name over the Master’s it was time for him to disappear.
And the Master wouldn’t mind if it was for good. Not at all.
So far, the Master had refrained from taking any permanent measures against the freak. He’d hurt him in any way he could, but had kept himself from committing murder because he didn’t want to deal with the Doctor in the aftermath. Now, however, he had reached the point where this wouldn’t hold him back any more. Avoiding to make the Doctor angry had never been a deciding factor for him. If he hadn’t been so worried about the Doctor’s fragile state he might have done so long before - and if he hadn’t thought that he might need Jack again, in case the life force they had given the Doctor hadn’t been enough. But by now it was desperately obvious that any life force taken from Jack was hardly the ideal solution and would only make things worse. If that was still possible.
So it was time for the Master to find out if, even after having so much of his unnatural energy taken from him, the human was still immortal.
-
Jack was feeling slightly annoyed, and that feeling was directed at the Doctor. He had been feeling well, and now he was ill again, and all that just because he’d had to go for a stupid walk. Jack would have liked to spend another normal day with him - they were rare enough.
The Doctor had been burning with fever when the Master had carried him inside, something Jack was by now so used to he knew how much of which medication to give his friend to tread it. A useful knowledge in this case, as the Master had just dumped the Doctor on the bed and stalked off like an insulted cat. Jack suspected that it had something to do with the Doctor muttering his name when the Master had been stroking his hair. The memory made him smirk. He couldn’t say that it didn’t please him. At the same time, however, it made him feel uneasy, because the look the Master had thrown him had promised more than another few days of avoidance and hurtful remarks. It would be a mistake to forget just how dangerous this man was.
Currently the Doctor was lying in his bed, caught once again in feverish dreams. He had woken up screaming in pain an hour ago, and by now Jack knew what that meant. The Master had shown up as Jack had prepared to send him back to sleep, but he hadn’t done anything to help, only standing in the doorway to watch the Doctor scream with a stony face. Once Jack had taken care of his friend he had turned and walked away, never speaking a word. All Jack had gotten from him was a cold, hard glare that had made him shiver. At the same time the Master’s behaviour had once again made him long to punch his face to a bloody mass. Or alternatively break his neck.
It would break the Doctor, but Jack had always known that the Master deserved to die, and that dealing with his death would still be better for the Doctor than his presence would be in the long run.
Jack sighed. There was an air of defeat to it; he already he knew wouldn’t be able to murder the Master in cold blood - the Doctor had taught him as much.
Sometimes he wished the Master would just try to murder him (or the Doctor, or anyone, really) and give him an excuse.
Jack kissed the Doctor’s forehead before he left his room. There was a certain feeling of dread when he stepped out into the corridor, caused by the fact that he didn’t want to run into the Master. The TARDIS usually kept them apart, but there was no guarantee for it, and Jack felt like walking though the labyrinth of Crete, expecting to run into the Minotaur any moment. And he didn’t even have a weapon.
It wasn’t the first time Jack felt this way, but it had never been this bad - even though he was aware that the worst that could happen should he meet the Master was probably them passing in silence while throwing glares of hatred at the other.
As it happened, Jack met the Master in the console room, half an hour later. The human had been staring at the symbols flashing over the little screen, as if he could make sense of them if only he watched them long enough. Eventually he came to the conclusion that they were in fact numbers, telling their current position in the vortex.
Alternatively the TARDIS could have described to him a new, improved way of brewing coffee.
The thought made Jack feel something like homesickness. He missed Ianto’s coffee. He also missed Ianto, and Gwen, and the hub. (And Tosh and Owen, but he strictly told his feelings not to go there.)
Most of all he missed hunting aliens in Cardiff. Compared to life in the TARDIS at the moment it would be a blessing - and he’d never thought he’d ever see it like that.
Not being in the company of someone he hated and who hated him while watching someone he loved suffer all the time would be nice for a chance. And the Doctor would take him home the moment he asked for it. Jack still wouldn’t do it. He felt committed to the Doctor, and leaving him when he was this miserable was not an option.
Eventually the symbols, meaningless as they were to him, got boring. Jack sighed. He wasn’t used to being this inactive. Sure, the TARDIS had a gym, a pool, at least three libraries, a cinema if one was needed, a garden so large it was practically a jungle, and probably every gaming console ever invented. Anywhere. But he was used to running around a lot, and helping people and being useful. While he would never forgive himself for leaving the Doctor alone, he knew that he was helping no one here.
When he turned around, the Master was looking at him.
The Master was looking at him with a smile, and careful calculation in his eyes, and the content calmness of a man who had finally, after a long struggle with himself, come to a decision.
Jack’s instincts told him to reach for his weapon, and his hands followed those instincts even though his memory told him he wasn’t carrying a weapon - because the Doctor wouldn’t approve, because the temptation to kill the Master would be too great if he did, and because someone had stolen it days ago. Possibly the TARDIS, to keep him from using it, though the Master rather suspected it had been the Master, for the same reasons.
The Master chuckled. And pulled Jack’s trusty old gun out of his pocket.
“I’m certain you’ll appreciate the irony,” he said.
“I hope you have kept in mind that I might, after all, still be immortal,” Jack replied, rage welling up inside him, though he managed to control it. The prospect of dying didn’t shock him - perhaps he’d simply done it too often before - but the fact that this smug bastard would kill him (again) was hard to accept. And the Doctor… “Because if I am, killing you will be the first thing I’ll do after I come back.”
The Master smiled nastily. “You know what’s even more ironic? The TARDIS used to have a security setting that prevented firearms from working inside. But when you destroyed the paradox machine with a firearm, it missed out this one when resetting itself.”
Funny enough, the first thing Jack thought of was how strange it was to hear the Master talk about the TARDIS as ‘it’, when the Doctor had always referred to the ship as ‘she’.
“Your fulfilling every cliché of a movie villain here, gloating before the kill like this,” he pointed out. From what Jack knew about him, the Master was that kind of man, and Jack desperately looked for a way to use this against him, like any movie hero would. But the Master only laughed (a hard, cold expression of satisfaction, not of humour) and fired.
Jack would never understand where the Doctor came from, all of a sudden.
And then he thought, strangely detached, that he’d better be mortal now, else this would have been completely in vain.
His mind was still numb with terror when the Master cried out and caught the Doctor as he fell to the ground. The Doctor was looking at the man cradling him in his arms, really looking at him, and whispered something, but Jack couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t his language. It wasn’t meant for him.
He couldn’t stop staring at the blood soaking the Doctor’s shirt.
The Doctor was smiling, but his head fell back when the Master lifted him up, his arms and legs hanging limply, and Jack stood still and watched as the Master ran from the room towards the infirmary, Jack and his murderous intentions toward him forgotten. He stood still until the two Time Lords were out of sight, then his paralysis disappeared and he realised what had just happened.
The infirmary should be right next door, he thought as he ran after them. But it wasn’t - there was just a long corridor, without doors, and the Master was running down it as fast as he could with the dead weight in his arms. The sense of déjà-vu that overcame Jack was destroyed when the Master slowed down, and stopped.
When he saw the Master sink to the floor before him, Jack stopped as well, knowing what it meant.
-
They found the Doctor’s room in the end, and lay him on the bed. Jack kept staring at the bloodstains on the covers, because it was easier than looking at his friend’s face. It wasn’t peaceful, as it should have been. It wasn’t anything, just pale.
The Master had become a vague existence at the edge of his peripheral vision. If the Time Lord (the last of his kind, oh God) decided to kill him after all, right now Jack wouldn’t have cared at all.
But the Master seemed to have forgotten his existence altogether. Eventually Jack moved (his joints creaked as if he had sat still for hours, and perhaps he had) and saw the Master sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on the Doctor’s white face, and there was nothing to be read in his eyes.
He’d screamed when he’d pressed the Doctor’s corpse against him, in the corridor.
The light flickered, and when it stopped was dimmer than before.
“We should go,” Jack said, his voice alien to his own ears. He was mildly surprised when the Master nodded ever so slightly, got up and walked over to the door. He was gone from the room by the time Jack took hold of the Doctor’s cold hand and breathed a kiss to his knuckles. When he left he didn’t look back.
Jack was aware that he hadn’t yet realized what had happened and what it meant, for him and the rest of the cosmos. It was waiting for him, the grief, pain and anger, like a flood waiting for the dam to break, but for now he was sheltered by a wall of numbness.
There were no doors in corridor he walked down, just blank walls leading to the exit. The light faded behind him with every step he walked, and when at one point Jack looked over his shoulder, the corridor he had just walked down ended in a wall a few metres behind him.
The console room went dark when Jack was halfway to the door. There was no last holographic message of the Doctor displayed for him, but in the end none was necessary.
The TARDIS shut down in silence, and Jack took the last few steps through the open door, until he found himself standing in front of the Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
A few steps ahead the Master was standing, lost and with nowhere to go.
-
There was a spaceship hidden in one of the larger storage rooms below the Torchwood hub. It had been found four decades ago, abandoned and out of power, and then forgotten about.
With the equipment stored and equally forgotten in the hub now, and the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, it was a matter of hours to get it to work. It took another few hours to get it to the surface while fighting off Gwen and Ianto, who wanted to know where Jack had been and why he had returned only to take off again in a ship they hadn’t known even existed. Jack didn’t have many words for them, and eventually they accepted that they wouldn’t get anything out of him at the moment and left him alone. All he could give them before getting into the little ship along with the Master was that he would not disappear again. This, at least, he could promise.
There was just enough room to get the TARDIS in, and the Master was familiar enough with this kind of spacecraft to fly it. They needed half a day to reach the sun.
The star was but a wall of fire in front of the tinted windows when they pulled the ship into as close an orbit as they dared. It had been a long time since Jack last came this close to Earth’s sun. Now, as always, the size and power of it took his breath away.
He’d tried to think of something to say for the final moment, but there was nothing he wanted to share with the Master. In the end they shoved the TARDIS out of the airlock in the same silence that had dominated their journey here, each of them keeping their goodbye to themselves.
The silence between them continued all the way back home to Earth. The Master didn’t say a word when Jack turned around just in time to see the large wrench coming towards his head.
It was the last thing he ever saw of the Master. When he woke up, Jack was in the hub, and it was much like after his fight against Abaddon. They hadn’t put him in the freezer this time, and Gwen didn’t kiss him awake, but she was there, as was Ianto, and they told him that he had been dead for two days.
Apparently the Master had thrown him out of the ship and he had hit the roof of the shopping centre near the hub after falling two hundred metres. He was immortal still, then. Jack still felt too numb to care, but he acknowledged the irony.
The Master had stolen their space ship. Understandably, his team was worried about what he would do with it. Yet, Jack didn’t share their concerns. He had seen the look on the Time Lord’s face as the TARDIS was swallowed by the bright light of the sun and knew they wouldn’t see him again.
Jack, for his part, left his concerned friends behind and spent the rest of the day staring up to the sky, trying to gather strength for a life that would go on.
Somehow.
-
He feels like he’s been sitting here for ages. His legs are heavy and useless, like dead things that haven’t been moved in a very long time - he considers drawing them close just to see if he still can, but in the end he doesn’t bother. There is nowhere to go.
The sun is warmer than he can remember it ever having been. It paralyzes him. Closing his eyes, he leans back, so his face is in the shadow of the tree he is sitting under. He feels sleepy, and finds himself unable to care that the day is wasting away without him. But there is somewhere else he has to be. Something he has to do, somewhere he has to go.
There are footsteps. Squinting in the bright light he sees the silhouette of his best friend. He can sense him, like an echo in an empty room.
You need to come with me, his best friend tells him. You’re already far too late.
And you are too early. He looks up into the sun, and the heat rises when the second sun climbs over the distant mountains, far too quickly to be real. It seems to be burning the air he tries to breathe before he can get it into his lungs and nail his limbs to the earth.
But his best friend offers him a hand and with his help he gets to his feet, and the heat doesn’t hurt them.
The sky above them is blazing, and the ground is blazing too. They look into the blinding light, and their hands are still joined as the wall of fire racing across the dry plains reaches them and takes them away.
- end
March 11, 2009