Alter Ego: Needs Be (Jack/Ten) [PG-13] 2/2
This continued for several days. Jack ate what the Doctor brought him, he allowed himself to be bathed, and other than that he was unresponsive. He slept most of the time, which was understandable, and the rest of the time he might as well have been sleeping, because he didn’t react, just stared at the ceiling or wall.
The Doctor was getting more concerned hourly. He spent a great deal of time on the couch beside Jack’s bed. The TARDIS moved the library across the hall from Jack’s room, so he did a lot of reading. He was reading an obscure but fascinating text from the Second Human Empire when a small breakthrough happened.
At least, he thought it was a breakthrough. Jack started thrashing in his sleep. “No,” he cried out hoarsely. “Fuck off!”
That was more like the captain. The Doctor took heart and went to rouse Jack. “Jack,” he said gently, “wake up.”
All this got him was more thrashing and several 51st century curses.
“Jack, you’re on the TARDIS.”
That didn’t help, but he could feel the ship reach out and carefully ease Jack into wakefulness. Finally Jack opened his eyes. “Doctor,” he croaked.
“Jack.”
His friend looked so lost, and he didn’t know what to say. This had never been the Doctor’s strong point. All he could think of was to sit down on the edge of the bed and give Jack a hug.
As it turned out, this was exactly the right thing to do. He’d thought after surgeries and pain Jack wouldn’t want to be touched, but the opposite seemed true: Jack desperately needed physical contact. The Doctor chastised himself for not thinking of this sooner. He let Jack pull him down, holding his friend closely.
Jack put a hand to the Doctor’s chest, feeling the double heartbeat. “It’s really you,” he said.
“Yes.”
Jack didn’t smile, but a bit of the tension around his face eased before he fell back asleep. The Doctor waited until he was sure he wouldn’t wake his friend up and thought about going back to his book. But as soon as he moved, Jack stirred restlessly. So he settled for taking off his shoes and suit jacket before lying back down and allowing Jack to cling to him.
Jack slept for six more hours. The Doctor dozed for about two of them, but the rest of the time he spent thinking about how to best help Jack. Actually, he wasn’t sure he was the best person to help Jack. He really wasn’t good at this sort of thing. Maybe he should’ve brought Jack by to Martha. He was pretty certain, however, than whatever his intentions Jack would not appreciate being left in the care of anyone else. Humans tended to see that as abandonment, and Jack had plenty of reason to assume abandonment from the Doctor.
So the Doctor figured he’d muddle along as best he could. Under his care Jack’s health was improving. He was beginning to gain weight, and his skin was returning to a much healthier color. The Doctor was more concerned about his friend’s state of mind.
In the morning Jack seemed amazed that the Doctor was still there next to him in bed. His face was more expressive than the blank mask it had been, and the Doctor took this as a good sign. He decided to try something new.
“Let’s go get breakfast.”
“Go?” asked Jack.
“To the kitchen,” he explained. Jack hadn’t left his room and bathroom, and it was time for that to change. Certainly Jack wasn’t physically able to do much, but he had been trapped for so long it seemed cruel not to expand his environment.
Jack said nothing but followed him two doors down to the kitchen and accepted a chair.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
Jack just looked at him, so the Doctor made some suggestions. “Eggs, scones, toast, sausage, oatmeal…”
“Scones,” announced Jack. “And sausage.”
The Doctor made tea and also put out bananas to go with Jack’s selections. He was fairly pleased with himself for this idea, which was starting to give Jack control of his own life again.
*****
The next few days he drew Jack back into living. Jack still needed to rest frequently, but he was getting better by the day. He was still quiet and withdrawn in a way that was entirely unnatural for him, which was worrisome.
When Jack finally smiled, the Doctor couldn’t have been more relieved. It hadn’t been soaking in the enormous bath the TARDIS provided, though that had been Jack’s first real request. It hadn’t been watching the ridiculous twenty-ninth century comedy film of which Jack had always been overly fond. It hadn’t been reading, though Jack had enjoyed browsing the shelves of the library before settling with a classic Greloius travel narrative. No, what finally made Jack smile was when the Doctor slipped on water he’d spilled and dumped waffle batter all over himself.
This was one among many reasons why the Doctor disliked cooking. But Jack had taken a liking to meal preparation for some unfathomable reason. (All he would give by way of explanation was ‘it feels real,’ whatever that meant.) Of course, at the time the Doctor covered himself in waffle batter, Jack was safely on the other side of the kitchen slicing a melon and didn’t get so much of a drop of waffle batter on him.
All the same, while the Doctor made his way to shower, dripping batter as fast as his ship could clean it up, he concluded this annoyance was worth it to see Jack smile again.
*****
The Doctor was still spending the night with Jack, ending up in his bed more often than not to wake him up from nightmares and then pretend not to know about the nightmares because Jack wasn’t ready to talk yet. On the other hand, the captain was slowly reclaiming his independence. He’d developed a fondness for long soaks in the bath (the Doctor suspected because after four and a half years of being cold Jack couldn’t get enough of being warm). He insisted that he was well enough for caffeine and damned well going to have coffee. He found paper and pen in a corner of the library and sketched scenes of places he’d been.
Two days after the waffle batter incident, the Doctor asked, “What do you say to a picnic?”
“A picnic?” asked Jack, who still seemed to not quite believe this was reality.
“Anywhere you want,” promised the Doctor.
Jack considered this for so long, the Doctor started to wonder if his friend didn’t want to leave the TARDIS. But at last he said, “New Fiji, before colonization.”
“Excellent choice.” It was, though the Doctor would’ve lied through his teeth if necessary. New Fiji was a place of great natural beauty, though it hadn’t taken long for that to turn into atrocious and overly commercialized tourism trade.
They set out that afternoon. The lunch basket was heavy because the Doctor was still intently feeding Jack at every opportunity, and he didn’t want to tire Jack so he quite insisted on carrying it himself. Jack had always hated feeling useless, though, so the Doctor loaded his friend with a blanket, sunblock (for Jack; Time Lords didn’t get sunburns), and the bananas which hadn’t fit in the basket.
New Fiji was not creatively named when humans discovered it, but the landscape did resemble Earth’s Fiji. The colors weren’t the same - the sky was teal and the water a purplely blue - but the dramatic combination of mountains and beaches was just the place for a nice, relaxing picnic.
Jack slid on sunglasses and stopped walking to look around. “Nice,” he pronounced.
“It is that,” agreed the Doctor wholeheartedly.
They didn’t go far from the TARDIS before Jack stopped and spread out the blanket. One of the planet’s three moons was hanging overhead, waning and showing just a crescent. Further down near the water a small flock of ducks was poking about the sand looking for food.
Food was on the Doctor’s mind a lot lately, as he tried to get as much into Jack as possible. Jack was very agreeable to this, at least most of the time. The TARDIS had obligingly provided everything Jack could possibly want to eat. Jack had rediscovered ice cream and the TARDIS now supplied him with a new flavor every few hours.
They admired the vista with silence for a few minutes before Jack said, “The Rift took me from Cardiff.” It was the first time he’d mentioned anything his ordeal, at least when he was awake. “In 2034.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Yes.” He paused for a minute. “Not to stay. To tell them…” Here the captain trailed off. What could he tell his team? That he was alive? That would hardly be news. That he was alright? Nobody would believe that. “For closure.”
The Doctor supposed this made sense. Jack obviously couldn’t just resume his life at Torchwood like nothing had happened, but humans did love their closure. That was something about humans that no Time Lord had ever understood. Not knowing what to say but sure something was expected of him, he offered, “We could take a tour. Best beaches in the universe.”
Jack sighed. “I’m too tired for games, Doctor. How long?”
“We’ll run out of beaches eventually, unless you want to lower your standards.” A quick glance at his friend assured him this was not an acceptable answer. “Long as you want, Jack.”
The captain looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, accepting the sincerity of the Doctor’s offer. And it was a sincere offer, not made just because he felt he had to. As much as the Doctor didn’t feel like he was altogether the best person to help Jack, he wanted to. He wanted to make sure Jack truly recovered, because with all the years stretching out before him, Jack needed to be well and truly recovered. But - and this the Doctor understood because he was the same - Jack wasn’t a man who found it easy to let people help him.
Jack had spent decades taking care of other people. The Doctor was determined to make sure Jack received proper looking after when he needed it most. Besides, he also hoped Jack wouldn’t dash away as soon as he felt able. The captain was a grand companion once you got used to his factness.
“Those two missing years,” said Jack. “All that time I spent trying to remember, and it never occurred to me that some things are better off forgotten.”
The Doctor knew that all too well. But he couldn’t forget, either. It was his responsibility to remember. Jack’s ordeal, on the other hand… “Do you want to forget this?”
“Yes,” answered Jack without hesitation, “but I can’t. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.” He paused, then added, “And there are parts I need to remember. People I need to remember.”
This, of course, the Doctor had a wealth of personal experience with, so he gave a quick nod.
“I’ve been… off,” said Jack.
“Understandably.”
“It was like a dream I had, sometimes. I… I wasn’t sure it wasn’t another dream.” The words came hesitantly, a confession.
“This is as real as it gets,” the Doctor said cheerily. He thought it best not to overwhelm Jack with a discussion of several unusual theories which held otherwise. Instead he opened the picnic basket and took out the first container. “Deviled egg?” he offered.
The TARDIS had made those. The Doctor hadn’t had one in, oh, five hundred years. He didn’t mind them, but neither did he enjoy them as much as Jack seemed to. Of course, Jack enjoyed food a great deal more than he ever had before. The Doctor found Gorithan f’jrtu pickles, of which he was rather fond, and began to munch on one.
“Do you know who he was?” Jack asked suddenly. He could only be referring to his captor.
“No. Not too hard to find out, though.” When his friend said nothing, the Doctor added, “Can go back whenever you want. Get justice.”
Jack shook his head. “There is no justice. Not for the people who stayed dead.”
He had no good response for that. There were a great many punishments the Doctor could mete out, though he rarely chose to exercise such power as it reminded him of everything he’d disliked about Time Lord society. But with power came responsibility, and the knowledge of all he must not do. He couldn’t save everyone. For all that the Doctor could make the Unglit’katchan suffer as his victims had suffered, he could not bring the dead back to life.
Jack knew this, and simply said, “But we can end it.”
“Yes.” That they could do, and they would when Jack was better. Now he was still too weak. “After we visit the best beaches the universe has to offer.”
“Taking me on a holiday?”
“Yep.” He intended for it to be a relaxing spell for Jack. He had an understanding with the TARDIS that they’d avoid peril and world-saving for a time.
“Thanks,” said Jack quietly.
“‘Course.”
They sat on the beach, looking out at the lilac-aqua waves crashing to shore. The Doctor hoped he wasn’t supposed to be giving an inspirational speech or something. He’d always been better in a crisis than dealing with the aftermath. Aftermaths were messy and complicated and humans had a tendency to go over events again and again, tormenting themselves, because they lacked the mental ability to stop reliving trauma.
But then Jack exhaled loudly and lay on his back, arms behind his head. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but he looked content, so the Doctor figured he must be doing something right. Maybe, after all these centuries, he was finally learning how to handle situations that didn’t have a quick solution.
Jack apparently had similar thoughts, because he said, “You didn’t run this time.”
“It’s you lot.”
“Oh?” asked Jack, crossing his ankles.
“You humans and your ideas about personal growth,” he explained.
Jack actually chuckled at that, which pleased the Doctor immensely. “We’re rubbing off on you, huh?”
“Evidently.”
The captain was wise enough not to press the issue any further, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. The Doctor felt the planet move and Jack’s factness, watched the ducks foraging and another of the planet’s moons rising, and then grabbed another f’jrtu pickle.
He didn’t need to run. For once, he was exactly where he needed to be.
The Doctor was getting more concerned hourly. He spent a great deal of time on the couch beside Jack’s bed. The TARDIS moved the library across the hall from Jack’s room, so he did a lot of reading. He was reading an obscure but fascinating text from the Second Human Empire when a small breakthrough happened.
At least, he thought it was a breakthrough. Jack started thrashing in his sleep. “No,” he cried out hoarsely. “Fuck off!”
That was more like the captain. The Doctor took heart and went to rouse Jack. “Jack,” he said gently, “wake up.”
All this got him was more thrashing and several 51st century curses.
“Jack, you’re on the TARDIS.”
That didn’t help, but he could feel the ship reach out and carefully ease Jack into wakefulness. Finally Jack opened his eyes. “Doctor,” he croaked.
“Jack.”
His friend looked so lost, and he didn’t know what to say. This had never been the Doctor’s strong point. All he could think of was to sit down on the edge of the bed and give Jack a hug.
As it turned out, this was exactly the right thing to do. He’d thought after surgeries and pain Jack wouldn’t want to be touched, but the opposite seemed true: Jack desperately needed physical contact. The Doctor chastised himself for not thinking of this sooner. He let Jack pull him down, holding his friend closely.
Jack put a hand to the Doctor’s chest, feeling the double heartbeat. “It’s really you,” he said.
“Yes.”
Jack didn’t smile, but a bit of the tension around his face eased before he fell back asleep. The Doctor waited until he was sure he wouldn’t wake his friend up and thought about going back to his book. But as soon as he moved, Jack stirred restlessly. So he settled for taking off his shoes and suit jacket before lying back down and allowing Jack to cling to him.
Jack slept for six more hours. The Doctor dozed for about two of them, but the rest of the time he spent thinking about how to best help Jack. Actually, he wasn’t sure he was the best person to help Jack. He really wasn’t good at this sort of thing. Maybe he should’ve brought Jack by to Martha. He was pretty certain, however, than whatever his intentions Jack would not appreciate being left in the care of anyone else. Humans tended to see that as abandonment, and Jack had plenty of reason to assume abandonment from the Doctor.
So the Doctor figured he’d muddle along as best he could. Under his care Jack’s health was improving. He was beginning to gain weight, and his skin was returning to a much healthier color. The Doctor was more concerned about his friend’s state of mind.
In the morning Jack seemed amazed that the Doctor was still there next to him in bed. His face was more expressive than the blank mask it had been, and the Doctor took this as a good sign. He decided to try something new.
“Let’s go get breakfast.”
“Go?” asked Jack.
“To the kitchen,” he explained. Jack hadn’t left his room and bathroom, and it was time for that to change. Certainly Jack wasn’t physically able to do much, but he had been trapped for so long it seemed cruel not to expand his environment.
Jack said nothing but followed him two doors down to the kitchen and accepted a chair.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
Jack just looked at him, so the Doctor made some suggestions. “Eggs, scones, toast, sausage, oatmeal…”
“Scones,” announced Jack. “And sausage.”
The Doctor made tea and also put out bananas to go with Jack’s selections. He was fairly pleased with himself for this idea, which was starting to give Jack control of his own life again.
*****
The next few days he drew Jack back into living. Jack still needed to rest frequently, but he was getting better by the day. He was still quiet and withdrawn in a way that was entirely unnatural for him, which was worrisome.
When Jack finally smiled, the Doctor couldn’t have been more relieved. It hadn’t been soaking in the enormous bath the TARDIS provided, though that had been Jack’s first real request. It hadn’t been watching the ridiculous twenty-ninth century comedy film of which Jack had always been overly fond. It hadn’t been reading, though Jack had enjoyed browsing the shelves of the library before settling with a classic Greloius travel narrative. No, what finally made Jack smile was when the Doctor slipped on water he’d spilled and dumped waffle batter all over himself.
This was one among many reasons why the Doctor disliked cooking. But Jack had taken a liking to meal preparation for some unfathomable reason. (All he would give by way of explanation was ‘it feels real,’ whatever that meant.) Of course, at the time the Doctor covered himself in waffle batter, Jack was safely on the other side of the kitchen slicing a melon and didn’t get so much of a drop of waffle batter on him.
All the same, while the Doctor made his way to shower, dripping batter as fast as his ship could clean it up, he concluded this annoyance was worth it to see Jack smile again.
*****
The Doctor was still spending the night with Jack, ending up in his bed more often than not to wake him up from nightmares and then pretend not to know about the nightmares because Jack wasn’t ready to talk yet. On the other hand, the captain was slowly reclaiming his independence. He’d developed a fondness for long soaks in the bath (the Doctor suspected because after four and a half years of being cold Jack couldn’t get enough of being warm). He insisted that he was well enough for caffeine and damned well going to have coffee. He found paper and pen in a corner of the library and sketched scenes of places he’d been.
Two days after the waffle batter incident, the Doctor asked, “What do you say to a picnic?”
“A picnic?” asked Jack, who still seemed to not quite believe this was reality.
“Anywhere you want,” promised the Doctor.
Jack considered this for so long, the Doctor started to wonder if his friend didn’t want to leave the TARDIS. But at last he said, “New Fiji, before colonization.”
“Excellent choice.” It was, though the Doctor would’ve lied through his teeth if necessary. New Fiji was a place of great natural beauty, though it hadn’t taken long for that to turn into atrocious and overly commercialized tourism trade.
They set out that afternoon. The lunch basket was heavy because the Doctor was still intently feeding Jack at every opportunity, and he didn’t want to tire Jack so he quite insisted on carrying it himself. Jack had always hated feeling useless, though, so the Doctor loaded his friend with a blanket, sunblock (for Jack; Time Lords didn’t get sunburns), and the bananas which hadn’t fit in the basket.
New Fiji was not creatively named when humans discovered it, but the landscape did resemble Earth’s Fiji. The colors weren’t the same - the sky was teal and the water a purplely blue - but the dramatic combination of mountains and beaches was just the place for a nice, relaxing picnic.
Jack slid on sunglasses and stopped walking to look around. “Nice,” he pronounced.
“It is that,” agreed the Doctor wholeheartedly.
They didn’t go far from the TARDIS before Jack stopped and spread out the blanket. One of the planet’s three moons was hanging overhead, waning and showing just a crescent. Further down near the water a small flock of ducks was poking about the sand looking for food.
Food was on the Doctor’s mind a lot lately, as he tried to get as much into Jack as possible. Jack was very agreeable to this, at least most of the time. The TARDIS had obligingly provided everything Jack could possibly want to eat. Jack had rediscovered ice cream and the TARDIS now supplied him with a new flavor every few hours.
They admired the vista with silence for a few minutes before Jack said, “The Rift took me from Cardiff.” It was the first time he’d mentioned anything his ordeal, at least when he was awake. “In 2034.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Yes.” He paused for a minute. “Not to stay. To tell them…” Here the captain trailed off. What could he tell his team? That he was alive? That would hardly be news. That he was alright? Nobody would believe that. “For closure.”
The Doctor supposed this made sense. Jack obviously couldn’t just resume his life at Torchwood like nothing had happened, but humans did love their closure. That was something about humans that no Time Lord had ever understood. Not knowing what to say but sure something was expected of him, he offered, “We could take a tour. Best beaches in the universe.”
Jack sighed. “I’m too tired for games, Doctor. How long?”
“We’ll run out of beaches eventually, unless you want to lower your standards.” A quick glance at his friend assured him this was not an acceptable answer. “Long as you want, Jack.”
The captain looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, accepting the sincerity of the Doctor’s offer. And it was a sincere offer, not made just because he felt he had to. As much as the Doctor didn’t feel like he was altogether the best person to help Jack, he wanted to. He wanted to make sure Jack truly recovered, because with all the years stretching out before him, Jack needed to be well and truly recovered. But - and this the Doctor understood because he was the same - Jack wasn’t a man who found it easy to let people help him.
Jack had spent decades taking care of other people. The Doctor was determined to make sure Jack received proper looking after when he needed it most. Besides, he also hoped Jack wouldn’t dash away as soon as he felt able. The captain was a grand companion once you got used to his factness.
“Those two missing years,” said Jack. “All that time I spent trying to remember, and it never occurred to me that some things are better off forgotten.”
The Doctor knew that all too well. But he couldn’t forget, either. It was his responsibility to remember. Jack’s ordeal, on the other hand… “Do you want to forget this?”
“Yes,” answered Jack without hesitation, “but I can’t. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.” He paused, then added, “And there are parts I need to remember. People I need to remember.”
This, of course, the Doctor had a wealth of personal experience with, so he gave a quick nod.
“I’ve been… off,” said Jack.
“Understandably.”
“It was like a dream I had, sometimes. I… I wasn’t sure it wasn’t another dream.” The words came hesitantly, a confession.
“This is as real as it gets,” the Doctor said cheerily. He thought it best not to overwhelm Jack with a discussion of several unusual theories which held otherwise. Instead he opened the picnic basket and took out the first container. “Deviled egg?” he offered.
The TARDIS had made those. The Doctor hadn’t had one in, oh, five hundred years. He didn’t mind them, but neither did he enjoy them as much as Jack seemed to. Of course, Jack enjoyed food a great deal more than he ever had before. The Doctor found Gorithan f’jrtu pickles, of which he was rather fond, and began to munch on one.
“Do you know who he was?” Jack asked suddenly. He could only be referring to his captor.
“No. Not too hard to find out, though.” When his friend said nothing, the Doctor added, “Can go back whenever you want. Get justice.”
Jack shook his head. “There is no justice. Not for the people who stayed dead.”
He had no good response for that. There were a great many punishments the Doctor could mete out, though he rarely chose to exercise such power as it reminded him of everything he’d disliked about Time Lord society. But with power came responsibility, and the knowledge of all he must not do. He couldn’t save everyone. For all that the Doctor could make the Unglit’katchan suffer as his victims had suffered, he could not bring the dead back to life.
Jack knew this, and simply said, “But we can end it.”
“Yes.” That they could do, and they would when Jack was better. Now he was still too weak. “After we visit the best beaches the universe has to offer.”
“Taking me on a holiday?”
“Yep.” He intended for it to be a relaxing spell for Jack. He had an understanding with the TARDIS that they’d avoid peril and world-saving for a time.
“Thanks,” said Jack quietly.
“‘Course.”
They sat on the beach, looking out at the lilac-aqua waves crashing to shore. The Doctor hoped he wasn’t supposed to be giving an inspirational speech or something. He’d always been better in a crisis than dealing with the aftermath. Aftermaths were messy and complicated and humans had a tendency to go over events again and again, tormenting themselves, because they lacked the mental ability to stop reliving trauma.
But then Jack exhaled loudly and lay on his back, arms behind his head. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but he looked content, so the Doctor figured he must be doing something right. Maybe, after all these centuries, he was finally learning how to handle situations that didn’t have a quick solution.
Jack apparently had similar thoughts, because he said, “You didn’t run this time.”
“It’s you lot.”
“Oh?” asked Jack, crossing his ankles.
“You humans and your ideas about personal growth,” he explained.
Jack actually chuckled at that, which pleased the Doctor immensely. “We’re rubbing off on you, huh?”
“Evidently.”
The captain was wise enough not to press the issue any further, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. The Doctor felt the planet move and Jack’s factness, watched the ducks foraging and another of the planet’s moons rising, and then grabbed another f’jrtu pickle.
He didn’t need to run. For once, he was exactly where he needed to be.