Wojelah: Water, water everywhere (Eleven/Jack) [G] - SUMMER HOLIDAYS PROMPT #8
Wojelah: Water, water everywhere (Eleven/Jack) [G] - SUMMER HOLIDAYS PROMPT #8
Title: Water, water everywhere
Author: wojelah
Prompt: #8 - needlepoint, meteorology, Geographica, Planerian
Rating: G
Pairing: Eleven/Jack
Spoilers/warnings: Through The Angels Take Manhattan
Summary: After that, it’s really all over barring some political intrigue, a near-coup, and a few explosions. Jack’s along for the ride, and it’s old times new again, and he enjoys it, or would if he couldn’t feel the Captain watching.
It’s raining.
It’s always raining on Plan. Not always, but enough that the business of weather, weather-proofing, and occasionally weather-witching are the foundation of the local economy.
It’s why he’s here, actually.
The TARDIS had picked up the tremor, that trembling of something almost at fruition but still, just possibly, avoidable, he supposed. At least, it’s the only real explanation as to why, when he’d been aiming for the quiet forests of Abranta, he’d opened the door on rain so intense he’d actually put on waders. He’d complained, but she’d fizzled and fussed, a low tremolo in the back of his head irritating enough to make at least a preliminary reconnaissance better than the alternative.
She’d been fizzing at him a great deal since the Ponds left, he realizes now.
He doesn’t need to think about that, though, not now, standing in the Great Hall, with the entire Geographica spread out before him. In fact, he shouldn’t be thinking about it, because right here, right now, something is very, very wrong. Paint doesn’t work on Plan. It’s too wet. It took the colonists a few decades to figure it out - and to figure out a solution. Now the habited areas of the planet shimmer with tapestry, gleaming with intense, intricate artwork, made out the finest, non-corroding filaments a Planerian sou can buy. And the most intense, most intricate, most functional example of that artwork is right in front of him, crackling and quite literally electric. The Geographica maps the planet in metallic threads, the finest barely visible to the Gallifreyan eye - and tracks it, recording and forecasting the planet’s weather patterns, sending them to the scientist and farmers and transporters and industrialists. It’s the loveliest economic prognositcator he’s ever seen. And someone’s tampering with it.
“You see them too,” says a voice in his ear, familiar and unexpected. He doesn’t turn around.
“Broken threads,” he answers, and he can feel the Captain standing just behind him. If he hadn’t been so very, very focused on the Geographica (and possibly on ignoring the TARDIS and the Ponds and trying very hard to forget the day he sat alone in Central Park), he’d have felt Jack coming a mile off. He can’t honestly say if he would have avoided the encounter. Not right now. “The question, Captain,” he continues, biting down on the consonants and making them echo, “is who broke them.”
“Actually,” Jack says, very softly, “I’ve been here for about a week, and I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is the fashion-challenged fish in a suit standing six kidibits down on the left. Which means the new question is why, and also - hey, stop!”
Said fish-person is flippering its way out of the hall with surprising - and alarming - speed. Jack’s flying off behind him - it’s odd, even after all this time, not to see that long woolen coat flapping at his heels. Wool’s hardly practical here, but still. He’s about to follow, when a small movement out of the corner of his eye snags his attention.
It’s a tiny old woman, her gills fluttering with effort as she reaches for the tapestry. The glint in her hand can only be a needle. He’s about to shout, and stops himself barely in time to keep from startling her. He can’t actually see the thread she wraps around the broken end; there’s a sheen in the moisture-thick air that suggests the presence of a filament, but nothing more. Slowly, carefully, she wraps it around the other end of the tear and then ties it off in with movements so small, so delicate, they look almost like the hand-dances of Lupicak Eth. When he’s sure she’s done, he walks over to her slowly and bows. “I think,” he says, “you’re the best person I could possibly talk to.”
At that point, Jack bounds back in, lugging along a trussed and protesting Planerian. The woman’s eyes are dark and sad, and a little hopeful.
“I am The Geographic Broder,” she says, glancing at Jack, “and I suspect you’re right.”
After that, it’s really all over barring some political intrigue, a near-coup, and a few explosions. Jack’s along for the ride, and it’s old times new again, and he enjoys it, or would if he couldn’t feel the Captain watching. He know’s Jack’s biding his time, but he doesn’t really want to know for what, and he doesn’t want to think about the possible reasons why, and really, there are so many things he doesn’t want to dwell on right now that it’s simpler just to offer Jack the friendliest of farewells and head for the TARDIS and her quiet alleyway that he’s actually surprised when Jack’s hand comes down heavily on his shoulder.
“Doctor,” Jack says.
“I don’t want to play ‘when are we now,’ Captain,” he says, and he knows he sounds peevish.
“Jack,” says the man of that name.
“What?”
“It’s my name.”
“What? I know it’s your name. Has been for… ooh, centuries now, I’d expect.”
Jack’s fingers clench a little tighter. “Funny. You haven’t called me anything but Captain since I found you at the Geographica.”
“Which reminds me.” He steps out of Jack’s grasp, a little closer to the doors, turning around as he goes. “How did you find me? I barely noticed you - odd, that, your Factness - and besides, changed faces, haven’t I - first encounters aren’t usually so…”
Jack cuts him off. “A little Pond told me.” His face is too old for the Jack he’d known last. Too old, too sad, and too kind. He looks almost like the Broder, after she’d stitched the Geographica back together (“It’s an imperfect fix,” she’d said, when he’d ask, “but it holds, and it will flow, and eventually it will be the way everyone remembers it.”)
He can’t move. His knuckles hurt, and he realizes his hands are in his pockets, and one of them’s clenched around a ball of paper he hadn’t realized was still there. “A Pond.” He sounds almost normal. He knows Jack’s not fooled.
“From Sol Earth, local year 1958.”
“Ah. A Pond.”
Jack takes a step closer. Another.
“She was worried. About you. I told her I’d pass it along.”
“Well. She shouldn’t be. These things pass. And ot would’ve been years by then, wouldn’t it, for her.”
“Not for you,” Jack says. “Not if I know you.”
“Do you know me so well then, Captain,” he says, and he means it to bite.
“You now? Or you when? Either way, you know I can’t tell. Spoilers,” Jack grins. It’s gentle and it’s understanding and it’s a reminder of yet another lost Pond-let, the one he nearly couldn’t let go of, and it’s too much.
“Enough.” He doesn’t touch Jack and he doesn’t have to for the Captain to straighten and step ever so slightly away, not when he’s this angry, so angry, at all that’s gone and all that’s past and the man in front of him who has the gall to remind him that there’s a future in front of him, just teeming with more things for him to lose. “Enough, Jack. I know you, I don’t know when I knew you last, and I don’t need to. I don’t need coddling and I don’t need meddling and I don’t need worries from a woman I’ll never see again.”
And then Jack does something that proves he’s not linear-Jack, current-Jack, Jack-as-he’d-known-him. He leans in, and suddenly there are lips on his and hands cupping his face, and the warmth of another person, so very very close and vivid in the damp, chilly air. He can’t think, for a wonder, caught between anger and grief and touch and the honesty of Jack’s kiss.
The Captain steps back, and there’s no smile on his face, just wisdom and grief and the pain of someone else’s sorrow - his own, the Doctor realizes. “She loves you, Doctor. So do I. And I’m not in 1958. So I told her I’d remind her.”
“Remind me?” he says, stupid and confused.
“That you have friends. Family. Me, if you want. Others if you don’t. That we’re here. I’m here. And that you’ll see me again.”
All he can do is blink. And then Jack touches his wrist and is gone. It’s him and the TARDIS and the twilight blue of this water world, alone. Again.
“For now,” a thought whispers at him, and for once, he doesn’t know if it belongs to him, or the TARDIS, or some lingering vestige of Jack Harkness, but he can’t deny, all the same, that he heard it.
Title: Water, water everywhere
Author: wojelah
Prompt: #8 - needlepoint, meteorology, Geographica, Planerian
Rating: G
Pairing: Eleven/Jack
Spoilers/warnings: Through The Angels Take Manhattan
Summary: After that, it’s really all over barring some political intrigue, a near-coup, and a few explosions. Jack’s along for the ride, and it’s old times new again, and he enjoys it, or would if he couldn’t feel the Captain watching.
It’s raining.
It’s always raining on Plan. Not always, but enough that the business of weather, weather-proofing, and occasionally weather-witching are the foundation of the local economy.
It’s why he’s here, actually.
The TARDIS had picked up the tremor, that trembling of something almost at fruition but still, just possibly, avoidable, he supposed. At least, it’s the only real explanation as to why, when he’d been aiming for the quiet forests of Abranta, he’d opened the door on rain so intense he’d actually put on waders. He’d complained, but she’d fizzled and fussed, a low tremolo in the back of his head irritating enough to make at least a preliminary reconnaissance better than the alternative.
She’d been fizzing at him a great deal since the Ponds left, he realizes now.
He doesn’t need to think about that, though, not now, standing in the Great Hall, with the entire Geographica spread out before him. In fact, he shouldn’t be thinking about it, because right here, right now, something is very, very wrong. Paint doesn’t work on Plan. It’s too wet. It took the colonists a few decades to figure it out - and to figure out a solution. Now the habited areas of the planet shimmer with tapestry, gleaming with intense, intricate artwork, made out the finest, non-corroding filaments a Planerian sou can buy. And the most intense, most intricate, most functional example of that artwork is right in front of him, crackling and quite literally electric. The Geographica maps the planet in metallic threads, the finest barely visible to the Gallifreyan eye - and tracks it, recording and forecasting the planet’s weather patterns, sending them to the scientist and farmers and transporters and industrialists. It’s the loveliest economic prognositcator he’s ever seen. And someone’s tampering with it.
“You see them too,” says a voice in his ear, familiar and unexpected. He doesn’t turn around.
“Broken threads,” he answers, and he can feel the Captain standing just behind him. If he hadn’t been so very, very focused on the Geographica (and possibly on ignoring the TARDIS and the Ponds and trying very hard to forget the day he sat alone in Central Park), he’d have felt Jack coming a mile off. He can’t honestly say if he would have avoided the encounter. Not right now. “The question, Captain,” he continues, biting down on the consonants and making them echo, “is who broke them.”
“Actually,” Jack says, very softly, “I’ve been here for about a week, and I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is the fashion-challenged fish in a suit standing six kidibits down on the left. Which means the new question is why, and also - hey, stop!”
Said fish-person is flippering its way out of the hall with surprising - and alarming - speed. Jack’s flying off behind him - it’s odd, even after all this time, not to see that long woolen coat flapping at his heels. Wool’s hardly practical here, but still. He’s about to follow, when a small movement out of the corner of his eye snags his attention.
It’s a tiny old woman, her gills fluttering with effort as she reaches for the tapestry. The glint in her hand can only be a needle. He’s about to shout, and stops himself barely in time to keep from startling her. He can’t actually see the thread she wraps around the broken end; there’s a sheen in the moisture-thick air that suggests the presence of a filament, but nothing more. Slowly, carefully, she wraps it around the other end of the tear and then ties it off in with movements so small, so delicate, they look almost like the hand-dances of Lupicak Eth. When he’s sure she’s done, he walks over to her slowly and bows. “I think,” he says, “you’re the best person I could possibly talk to.”
At that point, Jack bounds back in, lugging along a trussed and protesting Planerian. The woman’s eyes are dark and sad, and a little hopeful.
“I am The Geographic Broder,” she says, glancing at Jack, “and I suspect you’re right.”
After that, it’s really all over barring some political intrigue, a near-coup, and a few explosions. Jack’s along for the ride, and it’s old times new again, and he enjoys it, or would if he couldn’t feel the Captain watching. He know’s Jack’s biding his time, but he doesn’t really want to know for what, and he doesn’t want to think about the possible reasons why, and really, there are so many things he doesn’t want to dwell on right now that it’s simpler just to offer Jack the friendliest of farewells and head for the TARDIS and her quiet alleyway that he’s actually surprised when Jack’s hand comes down heavily on his shoulder.
“Doctor,” Jack says.
“I don’t want to play ‘when are we now,’ Captain,” he says, and he knows he sounds peevish.
“Jack,” says the man of that name.
“What?”
“It’s my name.”
“What? I know it’s your name. Has been for… ooh, centuries now, I’d expect.”
Jack’s fingers clench a little tighter. “Funny. You haven’t called me anything but Captain since I found you at the Geographica.”
“Which reminds me.” He steps out of Jack’s grasp, a little closer to the doors, turning around as he goes. “How did you find me? I barely noticed you - odd, that, your Factness - and besides, changed faces, haven’t I - first encounters aren’t usually so…”
Jack cuts him off. “A little Pond told me.” His face is too old for the Jack he’d known last. Too old, too sad, and too kind. He looks almost like the Broder, after she’d stitched the Geographica back together (“It’s an imperfect fix,” she’d said, when he’d ask, “but it holds, and it will flow, and eventually it will be the way everyone remembers it.”)
He can’t move. His knuckles hurt, and he realizes his hands are in his pockets, and one of them’s clenched around a ball of paper he hadn’t realized was still there. “A Pond.” He sounds almost normal. He knows Jack’s not fooled.
“From Sol Earth, local year 1958.”
“Ah. A Pond.”
Jack takes a step closer. Another.
“She was worried. About you. I told her I’d pass it along.”
“Well. She shouldn’t be. These things pass. And ot would’ve been years by then, wouldn’t it, for her.”
“Not for you,” Jack says. “Not if I know you.”
“Do you know me so well then, Captain,” he says, and he means it to bite.
“You now? Or you when? Either way, you know I can’t tell. Spoilers,” Jack grins. It’s gentle and it’s understanding and it’s a reminder of yet another lost Pond-let, the one he nearly couldn’t let go of, and it’s too much.
“Enough.” He doesn’t touch Jack and he doesn’t have to for the Captain to straighten and step ever so slightly away, not when he’s this angry, so angry, at all that’s gone and all that’s past and the man in front of him who has the gall to remind him that there’s a future in front of him, just teeming with more things for him to lose. “Enough, Jack. I know you, I don’t know when I knew you last, and I don’t need to. I don’t need coddling and I don’t need meddling and I don’t need worries from a woman I’ll never see again.”
And then Jack does something that proves he’s not linear-Jack, current-Jack, Jack-as-he’d-known-him. He leans in, and suddenly there are lips on his and hands cupping his face, and the warmth of another person, so very very close and vivid in the damp, chilly air. He can’t think, for a wonder, caught between anger and grief and touch and the honesty of Jack’s kiss.
The Captain steps back, and there’s no smile on his face, just wisdom and grief and the pain of someone else’s sorrow - his own, the Doctor realizes. “She loves you, Doctor. So do I. And I’m not in 1958. So I told her I’d remind her.”
“Remind me?” he says, stupid and confused.
“That you have friends. Family. Me, if you want. Others if you don’t. That we’re here. I’m here. And that you’ll see me again.”
All he can do is blink. And then Jack touches his wrist and is gone. It’s him and the TARDIS and the twilight blue of this water world, alone. Again.
“For now,” a thought whispers at him, and for once, he doesn’t know if it belongs to him, or the TARDIS, or some lingering vestige of Jack Harkness, but he can’t deny, all the same, that he heard it.