The Destroyer 2/3
Fic: The Destroyer
Author: wmr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones, Jack Harkness
Rated: PG13 for language and lots of angst; not a happy fic.
Spoilers: S3 up to Family of Blood; AU from there.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not in a million years
Summary: I break everyone who gets close to me. Sequel to Guilty Secret.
With very many thanks, as always, to
dark_aegis, who BRed despite telling me that this hurt. ;) And for everyone who asked for more after reading Guilty Secret.
Chapter 1: Human Nature
Chapter 2: Lies and Truth
Back in the TARDIS - how can he not bring Jack back here with him after that? How can he not at least try to help his one-time friend, much as he’d prefer to avoid him? - he learns why Jack would never have just walked away.
Though even before that he’s had yet more lacerations to his guilty conscience. Jack looks around the inside of the TARDIS as a man trapped in a desert might look at a glass of water. Completely oblivious to his presence, Jack trails a hand over the railing, the console, one of the viewscreens and then the time rotor. It’s as if he’s saying hello to a cherished and long-lost friend.
In a way, of course, Jack is.
And that’s why he has to interrupt the silent reminiscing. Because, if he lets it continue, Jack’s going to start thinking that maybe he’d like to stay, and he’s going to start thinking that it’d be good to have someone around again, and even better if it’s someone he already knows - none of those tedious explanations he always has to give with a new companion, not this time.
It’s bigger on the inside.
I’m a Time Lord.
I’m not human. Alien. Two hearts, see?
My planet’s gone. Dead. Destroyed in a war.
Gallifrey. It was called Gallifrey.
I don’t do domestic. And certainly not with a human.
No, Jack wouldn’t need any of those. But he’s also the very last person who should be encouraged to stay here. Both times he’s met the Captain previously, he’s managed to destroy him. He won’t - can’t - take the risk of that happening yet again.
Besides, Jack’s also one of the few people who really does understand him. That, too, is another reason why he can’t allow Jack to stay. He’s had to work hard to erect these barriers, the guard he’s put on his emotions, his need to have someone to care for, after Gallifrey, after Rose. And, yes, after Joan and even Martha. Jack’s one of the few people who’d know how to tear down those walls, and could do it.
Jack loved him once. He didn’t deserve it then, and he certainly doesn’t deserve it now.
“So, Jack. You said you’ve been searching for me.”
Jack blinks, tears his gaze away from the console and faces him. The look of combined nostalgia and grief leaves his face instantly, and he’s all business. Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood Three, has entered the TARDIS.
“I need your help. And, yeah, you might be the biggest bastard who ever travelled the universe, but you’re still the only person who can help me. I can’t afford to walk away.”
Showing no reaction - and the need to keep dabbing his still-bleeding nose helps - he simply waits for the explanation, and it comes as soon as Jack realises he’s not going to make it any easier by asking questions.
“I can’t die. No, I do die, but I don’t stay dead. I just get right back up again as if nothing ever happened. I’m a twenty-first century Lazarus.”
He can’t help but wince inwardly at that. Jack must surely have seen Richard Lazarus’s broadcasts. Someone in his position would know all about that rejuvenation chamber and what happened after it was used.
Showing no outward reaction to the Lazarus comparison, he simply nods. “I knew that.”
“You knew? You knew I can’t die?” Jack sounds incredulous now, and well he might. This is exactly the kind of situation he, as the last Time Lord, would have taken upon himself to fix. Only the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to face Jack stopped him. Better to have Jack as a temporal anomaly, and sort out whatever problems happen as a result, than have to see Jack again and acknowledge everything he’s done to the man.
“I knew,” he repeats.
“I’m almost a hundred and forty years old, Doctor, and I don’t look a day older than thirty-seven,” Jack continues, and now emotion’s bleeding through his voice. Not anger, but pain. Anguish.
He finds this life so unbearable? Oh, occasional frustration, even pain, he imagined, in the quiet times when he found himself thinking about Jack and wondering how his one-time companion was coping. But not this degree of torment.
Humans crave immortality, or at least that’s been his experience. Of course, only one who is immortal, or near it, knows that it’s a curse, not a blessing. He imagined that a man like Jack would find it exciting. That he’d relish not being able to stay dead; that it would fit just fine with his daredevil life, his love of risky situations. And the eternal youth... well, Jack the serial seducer would love that, too.
But then Jack’s lived for what, to any human, is a very long time. More than long enough to have seen the downside of eternal life and youth, and to...
Does he crave death?
Why wouldn’t he? Jack’s experience isn’t so different from his own now. Just a few centuries shorter, that’s all, but it’s still long enough that Jack knows how unbearable life can be. Just as he does. As he even told Richard Lazarus.
A longer life isn’t always a better one. In the end, you just get tired. Tired of the struggle; tired of losing everyone who matters to you. Tired of watching everything turn to dust.
“What do you want, Jack?” he asks, and his voice is sharp now. What is it that Jack thinks he can do for him?
“Answers.” Jack blows out a breath and stares at him.
“Answers,” he repeats. It’s so far from what he expected Jack would ask for. To be ‘cured’, perhaps. To die, even. And he would’ve been prepared to help - to find a remedy. It’s the right thing to do, anyway. Now that he’s been forced to meet Jack again, he can’t allow him to continue to live like this, can’t risk the damage to space and time that could result.
“It’s like something’s keeping me alive, Doctor. Or someone is. And I’ve never been able to work out why.”
He actually starts. “You think I’m keeping you alive?”
Obviously, Jack did. He actually loses a couple of inches in height as he slumps, and most of the colour ebbs from his face.
“It’s not you? So you don’t know how to fix me?”
“Well...” He’s rubbing the side of his face, careful to avoid his throbbing nose, before he realises. “Not me. It’s... Well, it’s difficult to explain, especially to someone who hasn’t had a Time Lord’s education, but basically it’s a function of residual huon energy intermingled with a fusion of Vortex and Artron energy at a time when you were particularly vulnerable and your circulatory and respiratory systems, not to mention cerebral functions, were particularly receptive -”
“God, they were right about the motormouth!” Jack exclaims; he wonders, but doesn’t ask, just who he’s been talking to. “So, okay, you’re saying the TARDIS did it?”
Right. Should’ve remembered, shouldn’t he, that Jack’s the one human he never could blind with science and technobabble.
He nods. “Yes. Yes, the TARDIS. Not on her own - she had help.”
“The TARDIS,” Jack echoes. “And, of course, the TARDIS isn’t remotely connected to you in any way, right?”
The sarcasm’s not undeserved. Of course Jack knows, even if he doesn’t fully understand, about the symbiotic connection between him and his TARDIS.
“I don’t always have control over what she does.” The words are almost bitten out. This really is an explanation he didn’t want to give. “Rose did it. She opened up the heart of the TARDIS. In those few minutes, she was more powerful than any being in the universe. Even me. She destroyed the Daleks, saved me and brought you back to life. Only she wasn’t specific in what she asked for, I suppose, and the TARDIS recreated you as something immortal. Inalterable.”
There’s a pause while Jack digests this. Then he says, slowly, “And you knew all this when you left me behind?”
Saying yes would be easy. It’d cement the hatred for him that’s burning inside Jack already, the hatred he needs Jack to feel and that he deserves. But he’s lied to this man too many times already. “No. No, I didn’t. Didn’t find out about that until afterwards. A long time afterwards.”
“But you still ignored me. You never came to ask if I wanted help.”
He tilts his chin again. “You said I’m a bastard.”
“You were never that much of a bastard before,” Jack points out. “Fuck, you saved me from my ship when I was about to blow up. And then you abandon me to this? Why the hell did you save me if this was what you were going to do?”
He looks away. “You didn’t deserve to die.”
“Then I don’t deserve this, either!” Jack almost shouts. Then, obviously calming himself with some effort, he says, “Can you fix me?”
He can. And he must. “Yes.”
***
On the way to the med-lab, Jack’s and his own greatcoats left behind in the console room, he realises the handkerchief’s ceased to be of any use; it’s totally sodden with his blood. No matter; once he’s repaired Jack and sent him on his way, he can sort out the nose. It’ll wait.
In the lab, though, Jack strides straight across the room, destination clearly in mind, and when he turns around he’s holding the bone repairer.
After a whole century, Jack still knows where to find things in the TARDIS. That on its own is far more revealing than he wanted.
“Can’t have you bleeding all over me if you’re gonna fix me,” Jack says coolly. “Hold still.”
The human’s fingers are gentler than he deserves, and in minutes his nose is almost as good as new. Almost; there’ll be a bruise for a few days, and maybe a little residual bump on the site of the break. But the bleeding’s stopped and the pain’s gone.
He doesn’t thank Jack, knowing the other man doesn’t want it. Instead, he directs the Captain to one of the examination beds and, in silence, hooks him up to the monitoring equipment. It’ll take a few minutes to analyse just how much of the various types of energy are flowing through Jack’s body, and what’s the best way to remove the forms keeping him alive.
He’s busy working, and barely conscious of Jack other than as the supine body he’s attaching wires to, so is completely taken off guard by Jack’s sudden question.
“What happened to you, Doctor? What turned you into this? You were never this cold, this much of an unfeeling bastard. I know it’s not just the regeneration - I’ve met people who interacted with you since.” There’s a pause and, while he’s still digesting the accusation, Jack slides the stiletto between his ribs. “It was losing Rose did it, right?”
Rose.
One of the great unmentioned topics that lies between them - other than his own brief mention of Rose as the one who brought Jack back to life and condemned him to this never-ending existence. He worried then that mentioning her would open this can of worms, but Jack let it go. Should have known he hadn’t got away with it.
Deflection’s a tactic he’s always been good at. “Why does it have to be about Rose? She’s not here any more. End of story, move on, that’s that.”
Jack’s eyes flash. “You bastard. You got her killed, and you don’t even care? Not one single regret?”
The Captain’s back to hating him. That’s good, except... No. Jack cared about Rose too - loved her too - and he can see the pain her reported death brought him.
He covers Jack’s hand with his own, trying to convey that, at least this time, he’s telling the truth. “She’s alive. She’s safe. She’s with her family. There’s nothing to regret.”
Jack’s head shoots up and, despite the wires and probes all over his head and hands, he tries to launch himself off the bed. “That’s not true! Her mom’s dead, too. I saw the reports. Don’t lie to me, Doctor.”
“I’m not lying.” Hand hard on Jack’s shoulder, he pushes him back down, then, calmly and succinctly - he can do that now - he explains. “So she’s with her family,” he finishes. “Her mum and dad. And a baby brother or sister. She’s working for Torchwood, too.” A smile, and it’s actually genuine; much as he misses her, he’s proud of her. “Rose Tyler, defender of the Earth.”
He called her that, too, that day he projected his image onto the beach. And she smiled, even through her tears.
He has to look away from Jack as the image of a sobbing Rose fills his mind freshly once more. Is she still broken, too? Or can he let himself hope that the passage of time will have healed her?
Damnit, what gives him the right to take these people away from their homes, their lives, their times and leave them fractured, shattered? No-one survives unscathed from getting to know the Doctor, do they?
If the Doctor had never visited us, if he’d never chosen this place on a whim... would anyone here have died?
At least Rose has her family, as does Martha. Joan has to live with losing a man she loved a second time, and returning to a devastated village and school. So many deaths. So many lives ruined. And all his fault.
The Doctor: the great destroyer.
“Doctor?”
Reluctantly, he lets Jack reclaim his attention. “Yes?”
“I asked, remember? What’s happened to you? Because you were never like this. Why now?”
“Oh, Jack, how little you knew me.” He steps back, hands buried deep in the pockets of his trousers. “I was always like this.”
Turning away, he flips the switches to start the analysis. Just another couple of minutes, then he’ll know what to do to sort Jack out, make him a normal human again, and he can send the Captain on his way and try to forget that this encounter ever happened.
“No, you weren’t.” Damnit, how could he forget how argumentative Jack could be? Stupid bloke never could just shut up and listen. “The Doctor I knew wasn’t. He cared. Oh, he hid it well - no way I’ll ever forget our first meeting - but he cared, Doctor. About me. About Rose. About the whole fucking universe!”
He whirls back, a lump in his throat and his hearts aching, bleeding. “You think I cared about you, Jack? You really believe that?”
Jack can’t be allowed to believe any different. Not only because it’s not true, but because... Because if he doesn’t stop this now, stop Jack from letting go of his hurt and anger and beginning to understand, to empathise, then all those walls he’s so carefully built will start to crumble. And then he’ll be the one left destroyed, but as well as that he’ll hurt Jack again. And again and again. Just as he does everyone.
Jack doesn’t avoid his gaze. “Yeah. I do. Sure, you left me behind, and you still haven’t told me why, but I remember everything about when I travelled with you and Rose. We were friends. You’d have died for me, just as I’d have died for you. I used to be a soldier, Doctor. You can’t hide that from someone like me.”
“Oh, can’t I?” Slowly, he walks in a circuit around Jack’s bed, never taking his gaze off the younger man. Only blunt truth will serve now. Jack’s seeing through too many of the lies. “Can’t I, Jack? You really think you know me? Think you know what I’m like? Think we were friends? I was never your friend, Jack. I destroyed you. That’s how much I cared about you.”
He curls his lips into a sneer, and waits for the inevitable reaction. For Jack’s hatred to return.
Blue eyes meet his, Jack’s gaze steady, disbelieving. “Liar.”
“Oh, you think?” He carries on walking; it’s a very disorienting tactic, he knows, when the other person’s immobile. “I did destroy you. And you don’t even remember it. Two minutes ago, you said you’ll never forget our first meeting. But you did, Jack,” he taunts lightly. “Every detail. Along with the two years leading up to it.”
He pauses, waiting for the penny to drop. It doesn’t take more than a couple of seconds.
“You stole my memories?”
He applauds, slow, deliberate claps. “Oh, well done! Give that man a medal! Yeah, it was me,” he adds, and there’s that callous note again. Very effective, that. He’ll have to remember it for future reference. “I wiped your memories. Easily done. Easy-peasy. You were such a malleable subject. So suggestive. I could’ve wiped your entire life out in less than five minutes, and you could never’ve stopped me.”
“You.” Jack’s face is red with rage, and he’s straining against the ties that hold him to the bed while the procedure completes. “You bastard. All this time... You let me tell you about the Time Agency stealing my memories, and all the time you knew it was you. I became a fucking conman because of you!”
Yes. That’s his fault too, and he’s never forgotten it. All because he was a coward.
“I died for you,” Jack adds, more quietly, and he’s clearly fighting emotion now. Tears - rage or devastation? - bubble in his eyes. “I fucking died for you, Doctor!”
“You did. And look where it’s got you.”
A dismissive nod, then he turns on his heel and leaves the room.
***
It’s done.
If there was any possibility of Jack softening towards him, it’s not going to happen now. Once he’s done what’s needed to take away Jack’s immortality, the younger man will leave.
Though, now, Jack’ll probably have a go at killing him first. No doubt he still carries at least one weapon with him wherever he goes. And maybe it’s only fair. Maybe it’s right: a life for a life. Because, while Jack may be alive, it’s only too obvious that this isn’t living. Jack’s not seen it as living for a very long time.
Three times he’s met Jack Harkness, and three times he’s destroyed him. This time, though, he had no choice. And, anyway, it’s a confession that’s long overdue. He should have told Jack before. It wasn’t fair to keep him in ignorance. Maybe, too, if Jack lets him, he can restore those memories before the bloke leaves.
If Jack lets him.
Damnit! He’s gone and done it again, hasn’t he?
That’s it. No more companions. No more waifs and strays. If anyone does happen to wander into the TARDIS, they’ll get dropped off at the first safe landing. Goodbye, have a nice life. At least it’ll be a whole life.
So what if Donna thought he needs someone to stop him? How can he take someone along just to act as his conscience? It’s not as if having someone with him stops him from being lonely. Rose thought she could be everything he needed. Martha told Joan and John Smith she stayed with him because he’s lonely and he needs her.
Yes, he needed them. Needed everyone who’s travelled with him, really, but that doesn’t mean he has a right to have them with him. Not when it wrecks their lives.
Stupid fucking lump in his throat that won’t go away. Stupid hearts that feel like they’re being squeezed to death.
“Okay, Doctor. Time to cut the crap and tell me what’s really going on here.”
He whirls. Jack’s standing just inside the console room, tapes hanging loosely from his wrists and ankles, a couple of probes still attached to his temples.
He has to swallow before he can answer. “How is it you’re out here? You were tied -”
“To the table, yeah.” A ghost of a smile flits across Jack’s face. “Come on, Doctor. You know me - you know me better than I know myself, it seems. You really think something like that’d keep me prisoner?”
“Obviously not.” His mask’s safely back in place now. “Thought you wanted me to put you back together the way you should be?” Bad choice of words. Very bad. Though maybe not so bad; the reminder that he stole those two years of Jack’s life is probably timely.
“Oh, you’ll do that, Doctor.” Jack’s still smiling, though it’s far from friendly. “I’ll make sure of it, even if you don’t. But I asked you a question. What’s really going on here?”
“And I don’t understand the question,” he retorts, an entirely fake smile on his own face. “What’s going on? You and I ran into each other - of all the streets in all the cities in all the planets in the universe, and that’s not even considering time, you have to walk down the one I’m walking on. And they say coincidences don’t happen.” He stretches his lips into a grin. “That’s all that’s going on. Oh, and I’m supposed to be de-immortalising you. If you ever actually let me do it, that is.”
“Shut it, Doctor - to quote a man I used to know.” Jack strolls towards the centre of the room, halting when he reaches the console rail, then rests against it, arms folded. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since we met last. And a few minutes to think after that bombshell you dropped just there. And I don’t buy it.”
“Don’t buy what?” Completely relaxed, showing nothing but mild surprise at Jack’s statement. That’s what’s going to get him through this.
“Yeah, maybe you did take my memories. You never told me it was you, which I have to say stinks, Doctor. And you left me on the Game Station. All pretty shitty things to do. But you’re wrong about the rest of it. Because I do know you. You’re the Doctor, and you’re not cruel without a good reason.”
If he walks around the console slowly, keeping his gaze on Jack the whole time, maybe that’ll keep the illusion of control. “You think? You really believe that?”
“I know it.” Jack starts to circle too, suddenly, and the two of them are performing a strange, almost stately dance around each other with the console in between them. “Not just because I’ve seen it. You know what I’ve been doing over the past hundred years, Doctor?”
He shrugs lightly. “Oh, I don’t know... living a life, day after day?” Unfair. Very unfair. “Hiding, making sure nobody knows you don’t die, can’t age... yeah, I’d guess that’d have kept you busy, all right.”
The flash of anger that crosses Jack’s face should have pleased him, but it doesn’t.
“It did,” Jack says, and he’s got himself under control again. “But I had time for more than that. I researched you, Doctor. For a time-traveller who can go anywhere in the universe, you seem to have spent a lot of time in the twentieth century. I met a few people who know you.”
He can’t hide that wince. But he tries to cover it up. “Used to know me,” he points out. “A me who’s very different from the man you knew, Jack. You of all people should know how war changes people.”
“You’d been through wars before the Time War, Doctor.” As he moves to his right, Jack’s still advancing on his left. “I talked to people who fought in them with you. Yeah, you do cruel things sometimes. You’ve left people behind before. You’ve done things that’ve destroyed people’s lives. But never without a reason, or without trying to put it right if you can.”
“Then why didn’t I with you?” he taunts.
“Yeah, and that’s a good question, isn’t it? One I’ve had a lot of time to try to figure out an answer to. Cause you could’ve put things right for me. You could’ve come back for me. Or you could’ve looked for me a long time ago - seems you’ve known all along where I was, right?”
A brief nod is all he can manage.
“You didn’t, though. And, too, you could’ve told me after 1941 that you took my memories. You could’ve told me why, even if you weren’t able to give them back. You didn’t. And I think I’m finally beginning to figure out why.”
***
tbc