Request fic: Forming Judas 1/?
Story: Forming Judas
Author: wmr
wendymr
Characters: The Doctor, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness, Jackie Tyler, possibly others
Rated: PG13
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and its associated characters are the property of the BBC. I'm only borrowing them to play with them for a short while.
Summary: "I only came to say goodbye. Won’t be coming again.” Sequel to Finding Judas and Fixing Judas.
Written by request for
debs7, who asked in the 'ask me a question about a fic' meme for: ten years after Fixing Judas. And with very many thanks to
dark_aegis, as always, for terrific BRing and support.
Forming Judas
Chapter 1: Bad Parking
“He’s here!” She flings the shower door open, uncaring of the puddle of water that accumulates on the floor as a result. “I just heard the TARDIS!”
“Sense of timing hasn’t improved, then.” Jack turns off the water, then finger-combs his hair away from his face. “Pass me a towel?”
She obliges. “Yeah. Overshot by two months this time. And there’s no way I can get time off right now.”
Jack shrugs as he steps out onto the bathmat. “Well, I guess we could try for the back five minutes after we leave approach. When he really tries, he’s not bad at that.”
“True.” She leans against the sink, watching him shave. She can time his complaint to the second.
“God, I miss sonic razors.” Yep, there it is.
Now, after fourteen years of marriage, it just makes her smile. There’ve been a few times over those years when, especially if she’s not slept well or something else is irritating her, she’d grumble back, asking why he didn’t just take the Doctor up on his offer of giving him a lift back to the future. Not any more. Like any married couple, they’ve got used to each other’s flaws and quirks, and this is just one of Jack’s that she’s come to find endearing.
“You ready yet?” she demands as he sweeps the razor over his face for one last time.
“Not unless you want me to go out there naked,” he retorts, then grins. “Not that he’d mind.”
“The neighbours might.” She grins back.
“Nothing they haven’t seen before.” He winks. It’s true, though. Jack’s so completely unselfconscious about his body. One night, a couple of years ago, they were woken in the small hours by sounds outside. Jack leapt out of bed, grabbed his weapon and ran out just as he was. Completely naked.
The noises turned out to be a deer that’d got lost. Jack’s appearance caused far more consternation among their neighbours. Once she realised, she came running with a coat for him, but the damage was done.
Though, as one neighbour commented a day or two later, he’s in very good shape for his age. Nothing to be ashamed of at all.
If any of the neighbours knew exactly how old Jack is, they’d be even more impressed. But that’s their secret. These days, Jack, like her, is ageing normally. Officially, he’s fifty-six, and he looks no older than fifty. She’ll be forty-one this year, and she could pass for mid to late thirties.
Jack strides back to the bedroom, minus the towel, and dresses in seconds. “Okay, ready. Strange,” he adds, frowning. “Haven’t heard him come in yet.”
He’s right. There’s been no key in the door. The Doctor’s had a key to their house for years - since his second trip back to pick them up for one of their TARDIS holidays, in fact. Not that he needs a key when the screwdriver will do the same job, though that’s irrelevant. It’s the principle. They have keys to his home, so they extended the same welcome to him.
“Come on.” She touches his hand, then heads for the door. “Let’s go and find him.”
Outside, the TARDIS stands in the street - literally, in the street. Her eyes widen. “What the hell’s he playing at?”
“You’re telling me!”
Cars are already swerving to avoid it, honking horns and giving the odd blue box funny looks. Any minute now, someone’s going to call the police.
They exchange glances, then walk straight across to the door; she’s got the key she grabbed on their way out in her hand. But, as they approach, the door swings open.
“Doctor - ” Jack begins, ready, she knows, to ask what the heck he’s up to.
But the man who emerges from the ship is a complete stranger.
***
Okay, so he’s regenerated again. Well, they knew it was bound to happen some time. He was doing pretty well with the last body - around a hundred and fifty years, at the last count.
First impressions: not bad at all. Looks fortyish again, as he did in his ninth incarnation, but taller this time than both the bodies they knew. He’s around six-three, six-four. Interesting; a grin curves across his face as he anticipates having to stretch upwards to kiss this new Doctor. Dark, almost black hair, straight and neater than his last body, with stray locks flopping over his forehead. And - another change - green eyes this time. Oh, yes. This Doctor will do very nicely indeed.
“Hi, Doctor.” Rose sounds almost calm, but he can hear the underlying sadness in her voice. Even though they’ve both been through the experience of losing an incarnation of the Doctor they loved before, and came with ease to love the new incarnation, there’s still a sense of loss. This time, again, no chance to say goodbye to the youthful, exuberant, yet still lonely and hurting Doctor they knew for so long and who was their lover, if only part-time, for the last ten years. More than that, counting the fact that for every week or so they were away from Torchwood in each year or six months they spent three months or so with the Doctor.
“Rose.” The new Doctor’s voice is deep, resonant. The accent’s light Scottish. “Jack. I made it, then. Wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah, you did.” He banishes the feeling of loss and smiles warmly. “Bit of bad parking, though. Might want to move the TARDIS before someone complains.”
The Doctor shakes his head once, firmly, ignoring the continued honking of horns and impatient drivers pulling out past the time-ship. “Doesn’t matter. Not staying more than a couple of minutes.”
“We’re not ready,” Rose points out. “You’re two months late, Doctor! We’re due at work in half an hour and we’ve got to make arrangements - ”
“That’s not what I mean.” He’s not come closer at all, and he’s now leaning against the TARDIS doorframe, his gaze focused somewhere in the distance. “I only came to say goodbye. Won’t be coming again.”
What? Now he’s regenerated he doesn’t want them any more? New body, new start? Old friends - old lovers - discarded like yesterday’s newspaper?
“Oh, no.” Rose gets in ahead of him with her protest. “No, you don’t get to do that, Doctor. You don’t just turn up an’ announce that’s it, that you’re writing off nearly twenty years with a two-minute goodbye. If you don’t want us as friends any more, that’s your choice, but you owe us more than that.”
“Being a friend of mine’s dang...” Before the Doctor can finish his reply, he trails off, his expression becoming distant. Another driver beeps impatiently.
“What?” Jack demands. “Being a friend of yours is what, Doctor?”
The Doctor turns to look at him, but his eyes are unfocused and he’s looking confused. “What? Was I... Ah...” The vagueness increases, and then abruptly the Doctor crumples, sliding in a heap to the ground.
***
She’s crouched down next to him in an instant, ignoring the shouts and beeps of angry drivers who want to know why three people and a strange box are blocking the road. “He’s burning up.” Jack’s already next to her, his fingers at the Doctor’s throat. “He must have only just regenerated.”
“Either that or he’s just sick.” Jack moves his hand to the Doctor’s chest. “His pulse is a bit rapid, but it’s always difficult to tell with him. Both hearts are beating, but they feel a bit irregular.”
“We need to move him. The house or the med-lab?” He’d be alone in the med-lab, unless Jack can get the day off work.
Jack meets her gaze. “House. I can bring what we might need from the TARDIS. If he’s still bad tonight, then we’ll take him back and try the Zero Room, but right now I don’t think he should be alone.”
His expression tells her what he’s not saying: that, left alone, the Doctor might just leave, regardless of the fact that he’s sick. Whatever’s got into him that’s made him decide to end their relationship, he seemed serious enough about it. And she just hopes that it’s only because he’s not himself due to regeneration sickness. “Okay.”
Together, they get him to his feet, though he’s a dead weight between them and very awkward given his new height.
“Hey! Jack! Need some help?”
It’s a neighbour - Chris, from two doors down. Tall and burly, Chris is a construction worker, used to lifting heavy weights. “Yeah, that’d be great,” Jack calls back. “This guy’s a friend of ours. He’s sick. Help us get him into the house?”
Between them, Jack and Chris carry the Doctor with arms under his armpits and across his shoulders. After taking care to pull the TARDIS door shut - she tells Chris it’s an experimental design of Portacabin and it must’ve fallen off the delivery van - she hurries ahead to open doors and lead the way upstairs.
Mere minutes later, he’s on the bed in their spare room. “Gonna move the TARDIS,” Jack says, for her ears only, before he ushers Chris downstairs again and she’s left alone with the Doctor.
The new Doctor. For the second time, she’s confronted with a regenerated Doctor, the man she loves in a stranger’s body. This time, though, it’s different. She knows external appearances don’t matter. Yes, the Doctor’s personality will have changed, too, and it is possible that his feelings for her and Jack could have changed - but he’s still the Doctor. That’ll never change.
All the same, she can’t stifle the grief for the man she’s known and loved for so long, the boyish, energetic Doctor with floppy brown hair and a motormouth, and the engaging smile which hid his underlying sorrow, for a dead planet and people and for all the friends he’s lost.
That Doctor’s gone now, just as her first Doctor is. And this time she didn’t see it happen; had even less opportunity to say goodbye.
Yet, if her guess is right and he’s only just regenerated, at least he came to her - to them - for help when he needed it.
Quickly, she starts undressing him: pulls off his shoes, unbuttons the sweat-dampened shirt that’s obviously new to him - it, and the dark jeans he’s wearing, would have been too big for his last body. Jack comes back as she’s struggling with those jeans - he’s heavier in this body than before - and helps her, and between them they get him into a pair of Jack’s running shorts and a T-shirt, and then into bed.
And she’s torn. He needs her - needs someone to take care of him. But she’s got meetings all day, one of them with the boss and the rest of the divisional heads, and she can’t just take the day off. Jack’s busy too today, now she thinks of it; he’s in overall charge of field operative recruitment and training these days, and he’s got a strategy meeting in an hour or so.
“I’m gonna call Mum,” she decides. “She helped me take care of him last time.”
Jack’s already heading to the bathroom for damp cloths. “Sure. Then you better get to work. I’ll stay as long as I can.”
“Regenerated?” her mum squeaks on the phone. “He’s changed again?”
“We always knew it’d happen some day, Mum,” she points out, and her voice is just a little unsteady. “Look, will you come?”
“Course I will! I’ll be there soon as I can.”
“Thanks.” Now there really is a choke in her voice, and a lump in her throat. She ends the call before she breaks down completely.
***
“Trust you to go and bloody change on us again.” She dabs the cool, damp cloth against his forehead. “Couldn’t come back for one last visit to say goodbye, could you? S’pose you didn’t have a choice, though. Sudden, was it?”
He’s not responding, of course. Not doing anything except lie there, perfectly still. He’s breathing, but shallowly and unevenly.
“Least you came to us, though. Knew where to come to be properly looked after, didn’t you? Just like last time. Bet I know what you want, don’t I? Cuppa tea. That’s what you said last time. My tea saved your life.”
He doesn’t stir, or give any sign that he’s heard her. She sighs, and continues to sponge him down. He’s still burning up, the fever raging just as it did the last time, all those years ago back on the Powell Estates.
“They’re both worried sick about you. Hope you know that. Was all I could do to make them go to work. An’ Rose’s already phoned twice and Jack phoned once. Well, you probably heard me talking to them. If you can hear anything, o’course.”
Maybe he can, maybe he can’t. But she knows, from all her hospital dramas, that hearing’s the last thing to go and the first thing to come back. So she’ll keep talking to him, even if it feels like she’s talking to a brick wall.
“John’ll be so happy you’re back. You promised him he could go with the three of you this time, an’ then you never turned up. He was so disappointed. You know he’s studying physics at university because of you, right? Cause of all that stuff you taught him, every time you visited. Says he wants to do physics research. I’ve no idea what he’s on about most of the time when he’s talking about what he wants to do, but it makes him happy an’ that’s all that matters.”
Still no response, and she’s positive that if he’d heard any of that he’d have said something. Or given some sign. He’s very fond of John, is the Doctor.
“You know,” she says a few hours later, after she’s soaked the cloth in cool water yet again and brought herself a sandwich and a cuppa upstairs for lunch, “if you had any manners the least you could do is pretend you’re listening to me. Even a grunt every so often’d be nice. But then, always were rude, you were. No matter what face you wore.”
The mumbled, “Am listening” is so quiet she barely catches it. But then she realises, and bends closer to him.
“Doctor? Doctor, did you say something? Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
“No... need to... shout.”
Scottish. He’s Scottish! Does that mean he’ll be wearing a kilt -
No. She’s not going to think about that. No way. Oh, yeah, the Doctor’s always been a bit of all right, whichever face he wore, and that’s not changed. But these days he’s like Jack - like a second son-in-law. Which is sort of what he felt like all those years ago when Rose was with him, only now she’s aware that their relationship really is what she used to suspect it was back then.
Didn’t take much to work out that the three of them weren’t spending time together just so they could go on crazy adventures. She’d worked it out long before she walked into the living-room at Rose and Jack’s and found the Doctor and Jack snogging, and Rose wrapped around the pair of them. The lack of shock from being forewarned made it much easier to back out again without being seen - though the Doctor knew she’d seen them, she’s certain.
She lays her hand briefly against his forehead now. Still hot and damp - and since Rose told her his body temperature’s much lower than a human’s that has to mean he’s even more feverish than he appears - but maybe not as hot as it was before.
“You feelin’ any better, Doctor?”
“Would be if stupid bloody humans’d leave me to get some rest,” he grumbles, no hesitation or mumbling this time. Oh, yeah. He’s back to being as rude as the first one of him she met. That last one, the younger-looking one, had his moments, but most of the time he was actually nice.
“That’s right, insult me. I’ve only given up my entire day to come here an’ take care of you.”
He blinks, and then slowly his eyes open and she finds her gaze held by a compelling green stare. “Jackie.” He takes a shuddering breath. “I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t... They should’ve let me leave.”
Leave? Jack said something, before he and Rose left for work, about not letting him go back to the TARDIS, though how she’s supposed to stop a bloody great hulking lump of a Time Lord if he wants to go is beyond her. But still... leave to go where? Why would he go anywhere? He came here, to them, after all. Why else would he come if he didn’t want their help because he was sick?
“You’re in no fit state to go anywhere,” she points out, a little caustically - well, he has been downright rude to her.
“Will be, though...” he murmurs though an expulsion of breath. “In a while. After I’ve rested.” His eyes drift shut and he inhales twice, three times. “Turn out the light before you go, Jackie.”
Before she can think of a clever come-back, he’s unconscious again.
***
Her mum meets them in the hall as they arrive home. The Doctor’s still out cold, she says. But it’s encouraging to hear that he woke up and was coherent, even if only for a few minutes.
After her mum leaves, she and Jack go upstairs to check on him.
Hand in hers, Jack takes a deep breath, then forces a smile. “Gonna wake up and talk to us yet?”
There’s no answer from the Doctor. Jack bends, brushes the Doctor’s hair away from his forehead and presses a kiss to his lips before telling her he’s going to get changed. And she’s left alone with her other lover, a man who’s become a stranger again.
Earlier, before she left for work, she wanted to touch him, to kiss him goodbye, just to let him know that she’s there and she loves him. But it didn’t feel right, somehow. It’s not just that he looks completely different again; she understands regeneration now and it’s not a problem. It’s still him under the new face and body. It’s that he was so different outside, distancing himself, telling them he only came to say goodbye.
But now... She bends, tracing the line of his jaw with her fingertips, then brushes her lips across his. “You’re safe, Doctor. You’re with us. We’re taking good care of you,” she tells him, voice soft, before going for a new cloth and water. He’s still much too hot, even though his hearts seem to be beating normally.
Jack’s back then, changed into T-shirt and jeans, and he sits on the other side of the bed, holding the Doctor’s hand in his. “What was it like last time?” he asks, his voice low. “Was he as bad as this?”
“Worse.” She carries on trying to cool his fever. “One of his hearts actually stopped beating for a while.”
“Oh, god.” A muscle twitches in Jack’s jaw. “But he pulled through, though. So he should be fine this time, too, yeah?”
She nods. “Should be. But then I don’t know what’s normal for him either. And...” She doesn’t want to admit it, but it needs to be said. “We don’t know that this is regeneration sickness. He’d already changed his clothes. It could be something completely different, that we haven’t a clue what to do about.”
“He’d have to get changed. He’s three or four inches taller than he was in his last body. Broader, too. The suit - if he was still wearing it - would’ve got ripped to shreds as his chest expanded.”
Jack’s being pragmatic, and it helps. A bit. “Did you get any of his diagnostic stuff from the TARDIS?”
“God, yeah.” He slaps himself on the forehead. “Completely forgot.” He jumps off the bed and hurries to get it.
But they’re none the wiser half an hour later, as Jack tries one final time with the sonic scanning device. The trouble is that, even after all this time, they don’t know enough about the Doctor’s biology and physiology to know what they’re looking for. Oh, by now they know what his normal body temperature is, what his pulse and respiration should be, but that’s about it. Well, apart from the kind of human drugs that don’t work on him.
“Let him rest,” she says when Jack gives up. “It’s all we can do for him.”
***
Let him rest. It’s the right thing to do, of course, but letting him rest implies waiting. Waiting, and doing nothing at all except keeping him as comfortable as they can manage.
After a while, Rose sends him downstairs to make dinner. Her excuse, of course, is that he’s still, even after all these years of trying to teach her, a far better cook than her. But he knows what she’s doing. He’s always found it hard when someone he cares about is sick. His natural instinct is to fix problems, and when he runs across one he can’t fix it drives him crazy.
When not being able to fix it means someone he loves is in pain, or in danger, it eats him up inside. Like when Rose got hurt in the line of duty two years earlier. Four hours, he sat next to her bed as she was unconscious, and his nails were chewed to the quick by the time Jackie and Pete arrived an hour or so after Rose was brought in.
This, now... Oh, he’s seen the Doctor hurt before, of course; all three of them have ended up injured from time to time on their adventures, but it was different then. Into the med-lab, quick first-aid, application of the dermal regenerator or some other piece of the Doctor’s amazing tech, and they’re pretty much good as new. This, though, is different. The Doctor’s not injured: he’s sick; and Jack hasn’t a clue what to do to help him.
Rose isn’t as sanguine as she’s pretending, he realises when he brings food up to her; she picks at her meal, even though it’s one of her favourites, and eventually lays it aside with only a few bites eaten. Without a word, he moves to sit next to her and wraps one arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his body; with his free hand, he reaches for the Doctor’s.
It’s larger than before, a bigger, thicker palm and fingers that are still long and slender, but not as bony as they used to be. So many differences to get used to with a new body. Even though this isn’t the first time he’s had to become accustomed to a regenerated Doctor, this feels different. He had years, on and off, with the last Doctor, compared to a few months with his first Doctor, and he got to know the last Doctor far better than he ever knew his predecessor. And he can’t help wondering, now, how different things will be once the Doctor’s better.
“He’s shivering, Jack,” Rose says some time later and, recalled to his surroundings, he realises that the hand in his has become near ice-cold.
“Damnit.” Laying a hand on the Doctor’s forehead, he finds the skin clammy and cold.
“Blankets.” Rose is already up and heading towards the wardrobe.
“No. Got a better idea.” Bending, he throws back the covers and slides his hands under the Doctor’s body. Staggering a bit as he straightens, then walks, he carries the Doctor, with some difficulty, into their bedroom. “Body heat,” he explains as Rose follows. “Better than blankets any day.”
And more than just that; it’ll at least let him feel that he’s doing something more effective than just sitting uselessly at his lover’s bedside.
Minutes later, they’re undressed and lying either side of the Doctor, warming him with their bodies. It takes time, a very long time, during which he manages to transmit his chill to them and, one after the other, they climb out of bed in search of warm pyjamas - he does keep a pair, for the few occasions when they stay overnight somewhere they have less privacy - before returning to curl up next to their friend and lover again.
Finally, the extreme cold seems to dissipate and the Doctor’s body temperature seems to be back to its normal state, and he relaxes, mumbles something indistinct and then moves, settling comfortably between them. The position he takes up is so familiar from the very many nights the three of them have spent in the one bed: curled up behind Rose, face buried in her hair and nuzzling occasionally at her neck, and one hand reaching back to cover Jack’s hip in a possessive caress.
Everything’s going to be all right. The Doctor’s better and, new body or not, it’s just the same as it always was between the three of them.
Until, abruptly, the Doctor sits up, breathing heavily and, even in the near-darkness, the room illuminated only by street-lamps penetrating the curtains, he can see the flash of anger in the Time Lord’s now-green eyes.
“I told you I was leaving! What is it with you humans that you can’t accept that goodbye means goodbye?”
A heavy weight’s on him momentarily as the Doctor climbs over him and out of the bed. “My clothes, please.” The new voice, new accent, is harsh, and as angry as his first Doctor could be at his worst. “No, forget it. There’s plenty more where they came from.”
He turns, seemingly uncaring that he’s barefoot and only wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and strides from the room.
***
tbc
Author: wmr
wendymr
Characters: The Doctor, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness, Jackie Tyler, possibly others
Rated: PG13
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and its associated characters are the property of the BBC. I'm only borrowing them to play with them for a short while.
Summary: "I only came to say goodbye. Won’t be coming again.” Sequel to Finding Judas and Fixing Judas.
Written by request for
debs7, who asked in the 'ask me a question about a fic' meme for: ten years after Fixing Judas. And with very many thanks to
dark_aegis, as always, for terrific BRing and support.
Forming Judas
Chapter 1: Bad Parking
“He’s here!” She flings the shower door open, uncaring of the puddle of water that accumulates on the floor as a result. “I just heard the TARDIS!”
“Sense of timing hasn’t improved, then.” Jack turns off the water, then finger-combs his hair away from his face. “Pass me a towel?”
She obliges. “Yeah. Overshot by two months this time. And there’s no way I can get time off right now.”
Jack shrugs as he steps out onto the bathmat. “Well, I guess we could try for the back five minutes after we leave approach. When he really tries, he’s not bad at that.”
“True.” She leans against the sink, watching him shave. She can time his complaint to the second.
“God, I miss sonic razors.” Yep, there it is.
Now, after fourteen years of marriage, it just makes her smile. There’ve been a few times over those years when, especially if she’s not slept well or something else is irritating her, she’d grumble back, asking why he didn’t just take the Doctor up on his offer of giving him a lift back to the future. Not any more. Like any married couple, they’ve got used to each other’s flaws and quirks, and this is just one of Jack’s that she’s come to find endearing.
“You ready yet?” she demands as he sweeps the razor over his face for one last time.
“Not unless you want me to go out there naked,” he retorts, then grins. “Not that he’d mind.”
“The neighbours might.” She grins back.
“Nothing they haven’t seen before.” He winks. It’s true, though. Jack’s so completely unselfconscious about his body. One night, a couple of years ago, they were woken in the small hours by sounds outside. Jack leapt out of bed, grabbed his weapon and ran out just as he was. Completely naked.
The noises turned out to be a deer that’d got lost. Jack’s appearance caused far more consternation among their neighbours. Once she realised, she came running with a coat for him, but the damage was done.
Though, as one neighbour commented a day or two later, he’s in very good shape for his age. Nothing to be ashamed of at all.
If any of the neighbours knew exactly how old Jack is, they’d be even more impressed. But that’s their secret. These days, Jack, like her, is ageing normally. Officially, he’s fifty-six, and he looks no older than fifty. She’ll be forty-one this year, and she could pass for mid to late thirties.
Jack strides back to the bedroom, minus the towel, and dresses in seconds. “Okay, ready. Strange,” he adds, frowning. “Haven’t heard him come in yet.”
He’s right. There’s been no key in the door. The Doctor’s had a key to their house for years - since his second trip back to pick them up for one of their TARDIS holidays, in fact. Not that he needs a key when the screwdriver will do the same job, though that’s irrelevant. It’s the principle. They have keys to his home, so they extended the same welcome to him.
“Come on.” She touches his hand, then heads for the door. “Let’s go and find him.”
Outside, the TARDIS stands in the street - literally, in the street. Her eyes widen. “What the hell’s he playing at?”
“You’re telling me!”
Cars are already swerving to avoid it, honking horns and giving the odd blue box funny looks. Any minute now, someone’s going to call the police.
They exchange glances, then walk straight across to the door; she’s got the key she grabbed on their way out in her hand. But, as they approach, the door swings open.
“Doctor - ” Jack begins, ready, she knows, to ask what the heck he’s up to.
But the man who emerges from the ship is a complete stranger.
***
Okay, so he’s regenerated again. Well, they knew it was bound to happen some time. He was doing pretty well with the last body - around a hundred and fifty years, at the last count.
First impressions: not bad at all. Looks fortyish again, as he did in his ninth incarnation, but taller this time than both the bodies they knew. He’s around six-three, six-four. Interesting; a grin curves across his face as he anticipates having to stretch upwards to kiss this new Doctor. Dark, almost black hair, straight and neater than his last body, with stray locks flopping over his forehead. And - another change - green eyes this time. Oh, yes. This Doctor will do very nicely indeed.
“Hi, Doctor.” Rose sounds almost calm, but he can hear the underlying sadness in her voice. Even though they’ve both been through the experience of losing an incarnation of the Doctor they loved before, and came with ease to love the new incarnation, there’s still a sense of loss. This time, again, no chance to say goodbye to the youthful, exuberant, yet still lonely and hurting Doctor they knew for so long and who was their lover, if only part-time, for the last ten years. More than that, counting the fact that for every week or so they were away from Torchwood in each year or six months they spent three months or so with the Doctor.
“Rose.” The new Doctor’s voice is deep, resonant. The accent’s light Scottish. “Jack. I made it, then. Wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah, you did.” He banishes the feeling of loss and smiles warmly. “Bit of bad parking, though. Might want to move the TARDIS before someone complains.”
The Doctor shakes his head once, firmly, ignoring the continued honking of horns and impatient drivers pulling out past the time-ship. “Doesn’t matter. Not staying more than a couple of minutes.”
“We’re not ready,” Rose points out. “You’re two months late, Doctor! We’re due at work in half an hour and we’ve got to make arrangements - ”
“That’s not what I mean.” He’s not come closer at all, and he’s now leaning against the TARDIS doorframe, his gaze focused somewhere in the distance. “I only came to say goodbye. Won’t be coming again.”
What? Now he’s regenerated he doesn’t want them any more? New body, new start? Old friends - old lovers - discarded like yesterday’s newspaper?
“Oh, no.” Rose gets in ahead of him with her protest. “No, you don’t get to do that, Doctor. You don’t just turn up an’ announce that’s it, that you’re writing off nearly twenty years with a two-minute goodbye. If you don’t want us as friends any more, that’s your choice, but you owe us more than that.”
“Being a friend of mine’s dang...” Before the Doctor can finish his reply, he trails off, his expression becoming distant. Another driver beeps impatiently.
“What?” Jack demands. “Being a friend of yours is what, Doctor?”
The Doctor turns to look at him, but his eyes are unfocused and he’s looking confused. “What? Was I... Ah...” The vagueness increases, and then abruptly the Doctor crumples, sliding in a heap to the ground.
***
She’s crouched down next to him in an instant, ignoring the shouts and beeps of angry drivers who want to know why three people and a strange box are blocking the road. “He’s burning up.” Jack’s already next to her, his fingers at the Doctor’s throat. “He must have only just regenerated.”
“Either that or he’s just sick.” Jack moves his hand to the Doctor’s chest. “His pulse is a bit rapid, but it’s always difficult to tell with him. Both hearts are beating, but they feel a bit irregular.”
“We need to move him. The house or the med-lab?” He’d be alone in the med-lab, unless Jack can get the day off work.
Jack meets her gaze. “House. I can bring what we might need from the TARDIS. If he’s still bad tonight, then we’ll take him back and try the Zero Room, but right now I don’t think he should be alone.”
His expression tells her what he’s not saying: that, left alone, the Doctor might just leave, regardless of the fact that he’s sick. Whatever’s got into him that’s made him decide to end their relationship, he seemed serious enough about it. And she just hopes that it’s only because he’s not himself due to regeneration sickness. “Okay.”
Together, they get him to his feet, though he’s a dead weight between them and very awkward given his new height.
“Hey! Jack! Need some help?”
It’s a neighbour - Chris, from two doors down. Tall and burly, Chris is a construction worker, used to lifting heavy weights. “Yeah, that’d be great,” Jack calls back. “This guy’s a friend of ours. He’s sick. Help us get him into the house?”
Between them, Jack and Chris carry the Doctor with arms under his armpits and across his shoulders. After taking care to pull the TARDIS door shut - she tells Chris it’s an experimental design of Portacabin and it must’ve fallen off the delivery van - she hurries ahead to open doors and lead the way upstairs.
Mere minutes later, he’s on the bed in their spare room. “Gonna move the TARDIS,” Jack says, for her ears only, before he ushers Chris downstairs again and she’s left alone with the Doctor.
The new Doctor. For the second time, she’s confronted with a regenerated Doctor, the man she loves in a stranger’s body. This time, though, it’s different. She knows external appearances don’t matter. Yes, the Doctor’s personality will have changed, too, and it is possible that his feelings for her and Jack could have changed - but he’s still the Doctor. That’ll never change.
All the same, she can’t stifle the grief for the man she’s known and loved for so long, the boyish, energetic Doctor with floppy brown hair and a motormouth, and the engaging smile which hid his underlying sorrow, for a dead planet and people and for all the friends he’s lost.
That Doctor’s gone now, just as her first Doctor is. And this time she didn’t see it happen; had even less opportunity to say goodbye.
Yet, if her guess is right and he’s only just regenerated, at least he came to her - to them - for help when he needed it.
Quickly, she starts undressing him: pulls off his shoes, unbuttons the sweat-dampened shirt that’s obviously new to him - it, and the dark jeans he’s wearing, would have been too big for his last body. Jack comes back as she’s struggling with those jeans - he’s heavier in this body than before - and helps her, and between them they get him into a pair of Jack’s running shorts and a T-shirt, and then into bed.
And she’s torn. He needs her - needs someone to take care of him. But she’s got meetings all day, one of them with the boss and the rest of the divisional heads, and she can’t just take the day off. Jack’s busy too today, now she thinks of it; he’s in overall charge of field operative recruitment and training these days, and he’s got a strategy meeting in an hour or so.
“I’m gonna call Mum,” she decides. “She helped me take care of him last time.”
Jack’s already heading to the bathroom for damp cloths. “Sure. Then you better get to work. I’ll stay as long as I can.”
“Regenerated?” her mum squeaks on the phone. “He’s changed again?”
“We always knew it’d happen some day, Mum,” she points out, and her voice is just a little unsteady. “Look, will you come?”
“Course I will! I’ll be there soon as I can.”
“Thanks.” Now there really is a choke in her voice, and a lump in her throat. She ends the call before she breaks down completely.
***
“Trust you to go and bloody change on us again.” She dabs the cool, damp cloth against his forehead. “Couldn’t come back for one last visit to say goodbye, could you? S’pose you didn’t have a choice, though. Sudden, was it?”
He’s not responding, of course. Not doing anything except lie there, perfectly still. He’s breathing, but shallowly and unevenly.
“Least you came to us, though. Knew where to come to be properly looked after, didn’t you? Just like last time. Bet I know what you want, don’t I? Cuppa tea. That’s what you said last time. My tea saved your life.”
He doesn’t stir, or give any sign that he’s heard her. She sighs, and continues to sponge him down. He’s still burning up, the fever raging just as it did the last time, all those years ago back on the Powell Estates.
“They’re both worried sick about you. Hope you know that. Was all I could do to make them go to work. An’ Rose’s already phoned twice and Jack phoned once. Well, you probably heard me talking to them. If you can hear anything, o’course.”
Maybe he can, maybe he can’t. But she knows, from all her hospital dramas, that hearing’s the last thing to go and the first thing to come back. So she’ll keep talking to him, even if it feels like she’s talking to a brick wall.
“John’ll be so happy you’re back. You promised him he could go with the three of you this time, an’ then you never turned up. He was so disappointed. You know he’s studying physics at university because of you, right? Cause of all that stuff you taught him, every time you visited. Says he wants to do physics research. I’ve no idea what he’s on about most of the time when he’s talking about what he wants to do, but it makes him happy an’ that’s all that matters.”
Still no response, and she’s positive that if he’d heard any of that he’d have said something. Or given some sign. He’s very fond of John, is the Doctor.
“You know,” she says a few hours later, after she’s soaked the cloth in cool water yet again and brought herself a sandwich and a cuppa upstairs for lunch, “if you had any manners the least you could do is pretend you’re listening to me. Even a grunt every so often’d be nice. But then, always were rude, you were. No matter what face you wore.”
The mumbled, “Am listening” is so quiet she barely catches it. But then she realises, and bends closer to him.
“Doctor? Doctor, did you say something? Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
“No... need to... shout.”
Scottish. He’s Scottish! Does that mean he’ll be wearing a kilt -
No. She’s not going to think about that. No way. Oh, yeah, the Doctor’s always been a bit of all right, whichever face he wore, and that’s not changed. But these days he’s like Jack - like a second son-in-law. Which is sort of what he felt like all those years ago when Rose was with him, only now she’s aware that their relationship really is what she used to suspect it was back then.
Didn’t take much to work out that the three of them weren’t spending time together just so they could go on crazy adventures. She’d worked it out long before she walked into the living-room at Rose and Jack’s and found the Doctor and Jack snogging, and Rose wrapped around the pair of them. The lack of shock from being forewarned made it much easier to back out again without being seen - though the Doctor knew she’d seen them, she’s certain.
She lays her hand briefly against his forehead now. Still hot and damp - and since Rose told her his body temperature’s much lower than a human’s that has to mean he’s even more feverish than he appears - but maybe not as hot as it was before.
“You feelin’ any better, Doctor?”
“Would be if stupid bloody humans’d leave me to get some rest,” he grumbles, no hesitation or mumbling this time. Oh, yeah. He’s back to being as rude as the first one of him she met. That last one, the younger-looking one, had his moments, but most of the time he was actually nice.
“That’s right, insult me. I’ve only given up my entire day to come here an’ take care of you.”
He blinks, and then slowly his eyes open and she finds her gaze held by a compelling green stare. “Jackie.” He takes a shuddering breath. “I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t... They should’ve let me leave.”
Leave? Jack said something, before he and Rose left for work, about not letting him go back to the TARDIS, though how she’s supposed to stop a bloody great hulking lump of a Time Lord if he wants to go is beyond her. But still... leave to go where? Why would he go anywhere? He came here, to them, after all. Why else would he come if he didn’t want their help because he was sick?
“You’re in no fit state to go anywhere,” she points out, a little caustically - well, he has been downright rude to her.
“Will be, though...” he murmurs though an expulsion of breath. “In a while. After I’ve rested.” His eyes drift shut and he inhales twice, three times. “Turn out the light before you go, Jackie.”
Before she can think of a clever come-back, he’s unconscious again.
***
Her mum meets them in the hall as they arrive home. The Doctor’s still out cold, she says. But it’s encouraging to hear that he woke up and was coherent, even if only for a few minutes.
After her mum leaves, she and Jack go upstairs to check on him.
Hand in hers, Jack takes a deep breath, then forces a smile. “Gonna wake up and talk to us yet?”
There’s no answer from the Doctor. Jack bends, brushes the Doctor’s hair away from his forehead and presses a kiss to his lips before telling her he’s going to get changed. And she’s left alone with her other lover, a man who’s become a stranger again.
Earlier, before she left for work, she wanted to touch him, to kiss him goodbye, just to let him know that she’s there and she loves him. But it didn’t feel right, somehow. It’s not just that he looks completely different again; she understands regeneration now and it’s not a problem. It’s still him under the new face and body. It’s that he was so different outside, distancing himself, telling them he only came to say goodbye.
But now... She bends, tracing the line of his jaw with her fingertips, then brushes her lips across his. “You’re safe, Doctor. You’re with us. We’re taking good care of you,” she tells him, voice soft, before going for a new cloth and water. He’s still much too hot, even though his hearts seem to be beating normally.
Jack’s back then, changed into T-shirt and jeans, and he sits on the other side of the bed, holding the Doctor’s hand in his. “What was it like last time?” he asks, his voice low. “Was he as bad as this?”
“Worse.” She carries on trying to cool his fever. “One of his hearts actually stopped beating for a while.”
“Oh, god.” A muscle twitches in Jack’s jaw. “But he pulled through, though. So he should be fine this time, too, yeah?”
She nods. “Should be. But then I don’t know what’s normal for him either. And...” She doesn’t want to admit it, but it needs to be said. “We don’t know that this is regeneration sickness. He’d already changed his clothes. It could be something completely different, that we haven’t a clue what to do about.”
“He’d have to get changed. He’s three or four inches taller than he was in his last body. Broader, too. The suit - if he was still wearing it - would’ve got ripped to shreds as his chest expanded.”
Jack’s being pragmatic, and it helps. A bit. “Did you get any of his diagnostic stuff from the TARDIS?”
“God, yeah.” He slaps himself on the forehead. “Completely forgot.” He jumps off the bed and hurries to get it.
But they’re none the wiser half an hour later, as Jack tries one final time with the sonic scanning device. The trouble is that, even after all this time, they don’t know enough about the Doctor’s biology and physiology to know what they’re looking for. Oh, by now they know what his normal body temperature is, what his pulse and respiration should be, but that’s about it. Well, apart from the kind of human drugs that don’t work on him.
“Let him rest,” she says when Jack gives up. “It’s all we can do for him.”
***
Let him rest. It’s the right thing to do, of course, but letting him rest implies waiting. Waiting, and doing nothing at all except keeping him as comfortable as they can manage.
After a while, Rose sends him downstairs to make dinner. Her excuse, of course, is that he’s still, even after all these years of trying to teach her, a far better cook than her. But he knows what she’s doing. He’s always found it hard when someone he cares about is sick. His natural instinct is to fix problems, and when he runs across one he can’t fix it drives him crazy.
When not being able to fix it means someone he loves is in pain, or in danger, it eats him up inside. Like when Rose got hurt in the line of duty two years earlier. Four hours, he sat next to her bed as she was unconscious, and his nails were chewed to the quick by the time Jackie and Pete arrived an hour or so after Rose was brought in.
This, now... Oh, he’s seen the Doctor hurt before, of course; all three of them have ended up injured from time to time on their adventures, but it was different then. Into the med-lab, quick first-aid, application of the dermal regenerator or some other piece of the Doctor’s amazing tech, and they’re pretty much good as new. This, though, is different. The Doctor’s not injured: he’s sick; and Jack hasn’t a clue what to do to help him.
Rose isn’t as sanguine as she’s pretending, he realises when he brings food up to her; she picks at her meal, even though it’s one of her favourites, and eventually lays it aside with only a few bites eaten. Without a word, he moves to sit next to her and wraps one arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his body; with his free hand, he reaches for the Doctor’s.
It’s larger than before, a bigger, thicker palm and fingers that are still long and slender, but not as bony as they used to be. So many differences to get used to with a new body. Even though this isn’t the first time he’s had to become accustomed to a regenerated Doctor, this feels different. He had years, on and off, with the last Doctor, compared to a few months with his first Doctor, and he got to know the last Doctor far better than he ever knew his predecessor. And he can’t help wondering, now, how different things will be once the Doctor’s better.
“He’s shivering, Jack,” Rose says some time later and, recalled to his surroundings, he realises that the hand in his has become near ice-cold.
“Damnit.” Laying a hand on the Doctor’s forehead, he finds the skin clammy and cold.
“Blankets.” Rose is already up and heading towards the wardrobe.
“No. Got a better idea.” Bending, he throws back the covers and slides his hands under the Doctor’s body. Staggering a bit as he straightens, then walks, he carries the Doctor, with some difficulty, into their bedroom. “Body heat,” he explains as Rose follows. “Better than blankets any day.”
And more than just that; it’ll at least let him feel that he’s doing something more effective than just sitting uselessly at his lover’s bedside.
Minutes later, they’re undressed and lying either side of the Doctor, warming him with their bodies. It takes time, a very long time, during which he manages to transmit his chill to them and, one after the other, they climb out of bed in search of warm pyjamas - he does keep a pair, for the few occasions when they stay overnight somewhere they have less privacy - before returning to curl up next to their friend and lover again.
Finally, the extreme cold seems to dissipate and the Doctor’s body temperature seems to be back to its normal state, and he relaxes, mumbles something indistinct and then moves, settling comfortably between them. The position he takes up is so familiar from the very many nights the three of them have spent in the one bed: curled up behind Rose, face buried in her hair and nuzzling occasionally at her neck, and one hand reaching back to cover Jack’s hip in a possessive caress.
Everything’s going to be all right. The Doctor’s better and, new body or not, it’s just the same as it always was between the three of them.
Until, abruptly, the Doctor sits up, breathing heavily and, even in the near-darkness, the room illuminated only by street-lamps penetrating the curtains, he can see the flash of anger in the Time Lord’s now-green eyes.
“I told you I was leaving! What is it with you humans that you can’t accept that goodbye means goodbye?”
A heavy weight’s on him momentarily as the Doctor climbs over him and out of the bed. “My clothes, please.” The new voice, new accent, is harsh, and as angry as his first Doctor could be at his worst. “No, forget it. There’s plenty more where they came from.”
He turns, seemingly uncaring that he’s barefoot and only wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and strides from the room.
***
tbc