Finding Judas 2/6?
Story: Finding Judas
Author: WMR
Rated: PG13 thus far, mostly for language
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack, Martha Jones, others
Spoilers: New series DW all the way to Doomsday, Torchwood more or less to Small World; Greeks Bearing Gifts if you squint. Note: I have made some assumptions about things hinted at in Torchwood, fully expecting to be Russelled at some point fairly soon ;)
Summary: He’s a different Jack Harkness now, though. Not at all the same man who considered that ship his home once upon a time.
With many thanks and much love to dark_aegis and nnwest for BRing. Dedicated to christn7 for nagging and the icons ;)
Chapter 1: Seeing the Impossible
Chapter 2: Questions
That... that, what he’s just seen... that’s impossible.
A dead man can’t just get up on his feet again. Bullet-wounds don’t just seal themselves shut. Not in humans, anyway.
It’s not a trick, some sort of sleight of hand Jack is practising on him; he’s very sure of that. That’s a real gun in Jack’s hand. That was real blood on his head. Real bits of skin and bone and brain that got splattered on the paving-slabs. Still are, he realises as he looks down.
And Jack is alive. Truly alive, looking at him with blue eyes like chips of ice. So cold. So hard. So old.
He aches to hug Jack, as he would any old friend, any loved former companion he’s truly glad to see again, especially one he thought was dead. But the way Jack’s looking at him makes clear that a hug would be unwelcome. More than likely rebuffed.
What’s happened to him to make him like this? For him to look at him - and Jack did once consider him a friend, maybe even more than a friend - as if he hates him?
“You...” he began, then realises he doesn’t know what to say. Him, the Doctor, rendered utterly speechless.
Jack just died right in front of him. Shot himself in the head, too quickly for him to do a single thing to stop it. Murdered himself. All he was able to do was watch, a lump in his throat at the sight of the man - the friend - he missed so much since losing him on Satellite Five, alive again and yet killing himself right in front of him.
Jack, alive but dead again.
And then, disbelief, and overwhelming relief, as the dead man climbed to his feet. As the bullet-wound closed itself up. And as Jack, who was dead - was dead twice to his certain knowledge - is alive again.
Was he always like this? Able to cheat death, like a Time Lord except not changing his body? Is this how he survived being exterminated?
But that can’t be. Jack would have said, surely. He always exercised caution, even amidst the daring he showed on a daily basis. He always behaved like a man who could be killed. He expected to die on that stolen Chula ship of his. And he definitely expected to die at the hands of the Daleks. He wouldn’t have said goodbye otherwise.
This... this is new.
“What happened to you?” he finally manages to ask.
“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.” Jack’s tone is harsh, his eyes even colder, if that’s possible.
“I don’t even know how it is you’re alive after Satellite Five!” He stares at Jack, feeling completely helpless. “You died there. I heard you! It was seconds before...” Before the Daleks rolled out to where he was and he discovered that he couldn’t set off the Delta wave.
“What was that you always said about not assuming, Doctor?” The sarcasm in Jack’s voice beats his own previous incarnation at his worst. “Usually a pretty good idea to check a body for signs of life before you pronounce death.”
True, but he was pretty bloody busy at the time, wasn’t he? Just a tad. “Believe me, if I’d been able to - ”
Jack smashes his arm through the air. “Save it, Doctor. Believe it or not, being abandoned by you as if I was just some piece of trash really isn’t the issue here. Not any more. I want to know what’s happened to me that’s turned me into some sort of immortal.”
Which is understandable. And it’s something he desperately wants to know himself. Because that’s just impossible. Yet he’s just seen it with his own eyes. Jack, shot dead, yet getting up again and now obviously unhurt.
“I... Jack, I’m going to need a lot more information...”
Jack shrugs. “No problem. You’ve got all the time in the universe, after all. And so, it appears, have I. So, now that you’re finally here, let’s get to work, Doctor.”
All the time in the universe isn’t going to give him answers. Not without a lot more information than he has right now. And not without a clear head.
A clear head - that’s a joke. He’s standing in Cardiff staring at a ghost. A man who should be dead two times over - three if he counts that death-trap ship he actually went back in time to rescue Jack from. Oh, yes, not that he ever told Rose that, and he never so much as gave a hint to Jack either. Jack was already dead, reduced to atoms floating in hyperspace, by the time he and Rose made it back to the TARDIS. But, because even a conman didn’t deserve to die for atoning for his mistake, for saving the human race, he turned back time. Wiped out that explosion and its consequences, and allowed the alive-after-all Captain Harkness into his TARDIS.
Only to allow him to be killed on Satellite Five.
And that... Jack did die there. He heard the mechanical Dalek cry of Exterminate! He heard the zap. He heard Jack’s scream, and then the thud of a body hitting the floor.
Another death on his conscience. Another person who’d be alive if only he’d never met the Doctor.
When Jack stepped into his line of vision just a few minutes ago, he thought he was hallucinating. Nothing new there. It’s why he avoids London in the twenty years before summer 2007. Too many chances of seeing Rose, either before he met her in the first place or on their occasional visits there while she was still with him. He has enough problems with imagining he sees her, a face in a crowd somewhere, without actually seeing her, the real, living, breathing Rose.
He never actually hallucinated Jack, though the Captain has haunted his dreams once or twice. His trademark sense of humour and flirtatiousness. His stalwart friendship, to both of them, him and Rose. His courage as they faced the Daleks together. That bittersweet farewell kiss, and his inability even to say goodbye. Never doubted him, never will.
He saved Rose, but sent Jack to die.
So at first he thought this had to be an earlier Jack - after all, the man had travelled time and space, first as a Time Agent and later as a conman, long before they met. Although he let his guard slip and addressed Jack by name, he’d been prepared to back away, come up with a cover-story that Jack would accept. Until Jack made clear by that reference to the TARDIS interior that he’s been inside. Then, he knew that this is a Jack who knows him... and the word impossible formed itself in his brain again.
Jack’s alive. Yet it’s obvious that this is a very different Jack from the man he knew. So different as almost to be unrecognisable.
What has happened to him? How long, for him, has it been since Satellite Five? How has he ended up here, on Earth, in Cardiff, in 2007?
Too many questions and, although he wants answers to every one of them, they’re not the most important thing right now. There’s something seriously wrong with Jack, and he has to get to the bottom of it.
“Into the TARDIS,” he begins, but then halts. The TARDIS. There’s a reason why he’s here, why the TARDIS told him that he needed to be here. “Wait. I need a few minutes first, Jack. Bit of a problem to sort. I came here because the TARDIS alerted me to a temporal disturbance - ”
“Yeah.” Jack produces a tiny gadget from his pocket and flips a switch. And then the strange buzzing, whirling sensation that’s been in his head ever since he stepped outside the TARDIS stops abruptly. “This temporal disturbance? All sorted.”
Eyes narrowed, he stares at Jack. “What did you just do?”
“Cancelled the signal I sent you.” He gets a smile that contains no humour, no warmth whatsoever. “It’s served its purpose.”
And he curses himself just a little for being caught out on that one. Jack, one of the cleverest people with technology, human or alien, that he’s ever known. Of course he’d know how to do something like this.
He won’t give Jack even a hint that he might just be impressed at what he was able to do. “Right. TARDIS, then. Now.”
Jack merely nods, then - keeping his distance quite noticeably - strides to the TARDIS door. And then he hesitates. It’s brief, and most people probably wouldn’t have noticed, but for a split second Jack pauses before crossing the threshold. One hand strokes the TARDIS’s outer shell, before falling to his side once more. And then he’s inside, clearly pretending not to look around him, not to be happy to be in the familiar surroundings again.
“She hasn’t changed much since you were here,” the Doctor says conversationally as he follows Jack inside. “Couple of cosmetic alterations, maybe. Believe it or not, I finally got around to repairing the shock absorbers you always complained about.”
But his attempt to find common ground in their shared past falls flat. Jack completely ignores his comment.
This man he’s with is not Jack Harkness. Yes, the face and body in front of him are identical to the man he once knew, but he of all people knows how outward appearances can be deceiving. That it’s the inner person that matters. This person has nothing in common with the Captain Jack who was once his travelling companion. Once his friend.
He and that Jack shared a bond quite unlike what he had with Rose. Both seasoned time-travellers, both soldiers, both with incidents littering their past they desperately wanted to forget, both with painful betrayals in their relatively recent past, he and Jack had understood each other on a level he and Rose - or Jack and Rose - never had. Oh, it didn’t - hadn’t - diminished what he felt for Rose in any way, but Jack filled a need in him he didn’t even know existed.
That bond meant he missed Jack, though in a different way, just as much as he now misses Rose. He ached for the Captain’s death, lay awake night after night regretting it, wishing there’d been a way to avoid it, even occasionally dreaming up ways of altering it, though he knew he would never do it. Jack joined the long list of companions he’s lost, and the shorter list of those who died.
But Jack is alive - except that this is not the Jack he knew. The Jack he shared that bond with. And now he has to wonder if that Jack is gone beyond reach.
Right. No point at all in reaching for the threads of a past friendship that’s so very obviously dead and buried, gone beyond recall. Best to get down to business.
“So, Jack. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get me here, and it’s pretty obvious that it’s not for the pleasure of my company.”
“Yeah, right, I missed you like crazy and couldn’t wait to see you again.” The sarcasm is unmistakable. “I want a lot of things, Doctor. I’m not gonna get most of them. But there’re a few things I want that only you can give me, and the way I see it is you owe me. That’s why I wanted you here.”
“Maybe I do.” He did leave the bloke behind, after all, without even bothering to check for a body. “So, what is it you want?”
“I want to know what happened to me to make me like this. I know it’s got something to do with the Game Station and that means you had to’ve been involved. I want to be able to die. And I want away from here - from this goddamned planet and this time.”
Only the last of that sounds in any way feasible. The rest...
He’s about to speak, to say that he has no idea what happened to Jack on the Game Station, that he has no idea how Jack can possibly be alive at all. But then a sound from the other side of the console room attracts both their attentions.
Martha’s awake and she’s heard them. Well, damnit. He could have done without her getting involved in this. Especially given Jack’s tendency to flirt with anything even passably attractive - and Martha’s a lot more than that.
Too late, though. She’s here now.
***
The newcomer’s a young black woman. Definitely fanciable - well, it can’t be said the Doctor doesn’t go for consistency in his companions. Slim, yet with curves in all the right places. Right now, it’s obvious that she’s just got out of bed; she’s wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt, but her feet are bare and her hair’s rumpled.
Just got out of whose bed, he wonders.
“I heard voices - is there something wrong?”
She’s got a nice voice, too. Sounds like a London accent, as well. That reminds him of Rose, and he flinches just a little at the thought.
Rose replaced already. The Doctor really does have a revolving door on his TARDIS. Though it’s true that he has no idea how long it’s been since Canary Wharf for the Doctor.
It doesn’t look like the Doctor’s best pleased that the woman is there. He’s frowning, looking irritated, and his hand’s at the back of his head in a gesture he already suspects is a trait of this regeneration.
“No, everything’s under control, Martha. Go back to bed.”
Oh, yeah, the Doctor’d so prefer this to be just the two of them. No witnesses. He smiles coldly. Far be it from him to make it easy for the Time Lord. “Oh, aren’t you going to introduce us, Doctor? Not very nice of you.”
“Jack Harkness, Martha Jones. All right? Now, Martha, please.”
This Doctor may, in outward appearances, be softer, kinder than his previous incarnation; he’s lacking the hard edges and the sarcastic tongue of the leather-clad Northerner. But he can still make his wishes clear by tone of voice, still show impatience easily through his body language. Still the Doctor. Still about the most arrogant piece of work he’s ever met, of any species.
The woman’s definitely looking curious. She’s staring at him, interest in her eyes, and giving the Doctor another questioning look. Again, he forestalls the Doctor’s attempt to get rid of her.
“The latest companion, huh? Hey, Martha, hope he warned you about what it’s like being with him. People who travel with him have a tendency to end up a lot worse off than they started out. And so far I haven’t seen much evidence of any life insurance plan.”
“If you want my help, Jack, that’s not really the best way to go about it,” the Doctor says, irritation clear in his tone. He glances towards Martha again; Jack’s noticed the woman is making no effort to leave. “If you’re not going back to bed, Martha, you may as well come to the med lab with us. I need to examine Jack. You can help me.”
“I don’t think so,” he begins.
But the Doctor cuts across him in a tone of amused superiority. “Oh, she's actually Doctor Jones. Well, almost. She's a medical student. Within a year of qualifying, actually. Makes her well suited to help me figure out the mysteries of Jack Harkness. Well, the one that matters most, at least right now. So let's find out what's wrong with you, shall we?”
“What is the problem?” Martha asks.
He’s about to give her a pithy explanation, but the Doctor cuts him off. “See for yourself - or, at least, let’s see if you can detect anything unusual. Be an interesting test subject for you.”
“I didn’t get you here to be someone’s lab rat,” he snaps.
“If you want me to find out what’s happened to you, Jack, you have to trust me.” The Doctor’s tone is sharp, impatient.
In answer, he simply walks ahead of the two of them, out of the console room and towards where he remembers the med-lab being. There’s really no point making an issue of this one. There’ll be more important battles to fight, no doubt.
“First door on the left,” the Doctor points out. Right. Why should he expect that the interior layout is the same as he remembers? Why should anything be the same as he remembers?
Inside the medical room, he strips off his coat and shirt, as instructed, and lies on a bed while the Doctor attaches a variety of monitors and wires to him.
“Right, Martha. Take a look.” The Doctor steps back, waving his new companion forward. “Tell me if you see anything unusual.”
He suffers her examination in silence. At least she has warm hands, and she’s new enough to the medical field - and probably nervous, too, in this unusual situation - to be careful in her work. Pulse, respiration, heartbeat, reflexes, level of consciousness, the usual straightforward tests. He could tell her she’ll find nothing, but it’s not up to him.
“Well?” the Doctor asks, as the medical student steps back.
“Everything normal, so far as I can see. He’s in excellent health - very fit and in good condition for his age.” She gives him a quick and slightly hesitant smile. “Sorry. Shouldn’t be talking about you as if you’re not here, Jack. I didn’t ask, and I should have,” she continues. “How old are you?”
Ah. He gives her a ghost of a smile. In other circumstances, he might even enjoy this. “How old do you think?”
She shrugs faintly. “I’m guessing thirty-eight, forty?”
“Yeah, you’d think that, all right,” he says, moving into a sitting position. He has to think before he can give her an answer. “Last time I worked it out, I think I was a hundred and thirty-eight.”
“You’re joking,” Martha says.
But the Doctor silences her with a gesture, frowning himself. “That’d mean it’s been about a hundred years since Satellite Five for you. But how...?”
“How come I still look like this?” He shrugs. “Far as I can tell, I haven’t aged a day since then. Spent a year on Earth in 200,100, and then a century bouncing around the planet since arriving in 1907, and I’ve looked like this the whole time.”
The Doctor seems stunned into silence. Martha, who’s giving no sign that she believes or disbelieves him about his age, says, “I could try some more invasive tests - you have the equipment, don’t you, Doctor?” She frowns. “I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for. This not-aging thing Jack’s described - it’s a symptom of something else, right?”
He gives the Doctor another humourless smile. “How about I just give her a demonstration of the problem?”
Finally, the Doctor reacts. Eyes wide, he stares at Jack. “No! Once was enough, Jack. Once was more than enough.”
His mouth twists, and he can hear the ugliness in his voice. “Not got the stomach to see me get up off the ground again, Doctor?”
Suddenly, the Doctor’s leaning over him, arms braced on the side of the bed. “It hurts you. You think I didn’t notice that? You felt it. You felt that bullet hit you. You felt the bleeding. You felt the pain until it killed you. You might not be able to stay dead, Jack, but you can die. For two seconds, you were dead, and you felt all of it. So, no, we can do without the demonstration, thanks.”
Anger makes him strike back. Leaning forward so that he’s right in the Doctor’s face, he snaps, “Bit late now to pretend you care.”
Yet, even as he says it, he knows he’s wrong. That’s not pretence.
And it only leaves him even more in the dark about what the hell happened all those years ago.
***
“What demonstration?”
He spins around, to see Martha looking from him to Jack, curious and obviously very lost as to what’s going on between the two of them. Interested. Wanting to know.
No. This isn’t her business.
“Leave us, please, Martha. This is between Jack and me.” He’ll let her into a lot of things - one thing he’s learned from Rose is that sometimes it is better to explain than to leave companions wondering and believing the worst. Or even more dangerous, believing the best. But this is private.
For a moment, she looks as if she’s about to argue. But then she nods. “Okay. See you later, then. Nice meeting you, Jack.”
Jack’s farewell is cursory, at best. Another change from the man he knew before. Jack didn’t once flirt with Martha. Not a single suggestive comment, despite the fact that she had her hands all over his semi-naked body.
Once the door closes behind Martha, he says, “Still the same Doctor, I see. Always shutting people out once they get a little too close to stuff you’d rather they didn’t know about.
Coolly, he says, “You wanted Martha to know you can’t die?”
“I didn’t want her here at all, if you remember.” Jack’s swinging his legs down from the bed, pulling off the wires and reaching for his shirt. “Not that it matters now. If you can’t help me, then I’m wasting my time. I’ll get out of your way and let you get back to your time-travelling jollies.”
“I didn’t say I can’t help you.” Hands in his trouser pockets, he stands, head tilted, watching Jack.
“No? Doesn’t look like it so far.”
“I haven’t even started.”
“Then what was all that about? With your new little pet?”
He ignores the taunt. “That? Oh, that was just a bit of distraction. Could've revealed something, but it didn't. Never hurts to try, though. But the distraction was brilliant, if I do say so myself. Which I do. Didn't notice that something else was happening while Martha was doing her thing? No? Oh, you missed the best part. The TARDIS was doing a diagnostic scan."
He can tell by Jack’s expression that he’s not impressed by the claims of brilliance. “Thought you probably were. But if it’d shown anything you’d have said so by now.”
Jack’s right. He would have. He felt nothing but frustration as he looked at the results, while Martha was still conducting her examination. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that every reading indicates the healthy body and cell structure of a man in his late thirties, while Jack is a century older than that.
One hundred and thirty-eight years old, older even than the average lifespan of humans in Jack’s own time, alive when he should have been dead from the Dalek blast, and somehow now unable to die by any means. Or at least any means he’s discovered.
What’s he been doing for the last hundred years? Bouncing around is no explanation. A hundred years spent in one time. Torture for someone used to being able to travel wherever and whenever in the universe he wants to. He knows how he felt during his exile on Earth; climbing the walls at times, wanting to tear his hair out and rage in fury at what the Time Lords had sentenced him to. For all that he loves this planet and its people, he was never made to stay in one place, one time. And nor was Jack.
And there’s something else - though it’s not a question he intends to ask Jack. How many resurrections has the man had? How many times should he have died, only to wake up alive again? And how many were deliberate, like that bullet to his head outside? Has Jack actually tried to commit suicide?
“No, it showed nothing. Which means we need to approach this from another direction.” And that direction’s obvious. It all starts back on Satellite Five. He moves to the door and leans against it. “So, let’s start from the beginning. The Game Station. Tell me everything that happened from the time you told me I had twenty seconds.”
He listens as Jack gives a crisp, emotionless recitation of events, although he’s confident that he’s already put one piece of the puzzle together. Jack’s resurrection after being exterminated has to be Rose’s doing. He even remembers that odd thing she said - I bring life. At the time, he told her she couldn’t, that no-one should be able to do that. But she did. The Time Vortex, all the power of the TARDIS coursing through her body, allowed her to give Jack his life back.
And more besides?
Well, there’s really only one way he can think of to find that out. Somehow, though, he can’t imagine Jack being receptive to that idea.
***
tbc