Garrideb: Worse Than the Disease (Ten/Jack) [PG-13]
Title: Worse Than the Disease
Author: Garrideb
Challenge: Plague
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/warnings: Some violence and gore, some implied Jack/Ianto
Summary: In order to cure Jack, the Doctor makes some dangerous choices.
The figure was dressed in red-orange armor that shone in the bright sunlight. It was so smooth and formfitting that it looked like he - and Jack was assuming it was a he, if it was human - had been dipped in molten copper from head to toe. His face was hidden by a visor. Jack could see himself and his team in its curved, mirrored surface, and flashed his reflection a grin.
“Hi,” Jack said. “Welcome to Cardiff, Wales, planet Earth. You’ve arrived in the year 2008, just in time to cash in on You Tube stardom.”
The figure moved, raising his right arm with his open palm facing the sky. The armor rippled with the movement, and Jack could see it was actually made of miniscule scales. The figure then made a fist, brought it to rest on his left shoulder, and finally let it drop to his side again
Jack waited a beat for the figure to say or do something else, but he just stood still in the empty field he had appeared in. Jack raised an eyebrow. “I’m Jack, and this is my team. We’re Torchwood. You’re going to have to come with us.” The man showed no sign of understanding or even of hearing. “Can you take the helmet off?” Jack mimed removing a helmet from his own head. Nothing.
“Is it human?” Gwen asked. She had left her position next to Tosh to stand by Jack. Her gun was drawn, pointing towards the ground.
“He might be, but I’ve never seen armor quite like that. He’s either from very far away, or very far from the future. Tosh?”
Toshiko’s voice came from a few feet behind Jack. “The metal isn’t from Earth, that’s certain. I can’t get any readings beyond it.”
Jack nodded. “Okay. Stay put, you two.”
“Jack!”
“Don’t worry, Gwen. I’m just going to offer a handshake.”
Jack held out his hands, showing he was unarmed, and slowly walked towards the visitor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gwen raise her gun a fraction. Jack smiled and looked at the figure’s visor. He wondered if there were eyes behind it. “I wasn’t kidding about You Tube,” he said. “We’ve got a web cam set up at our headquarters, and it’s all yours once you answer a few questions. With that costume you’ll be an instant hit. You just need a catchy screen name, something like LonelySpaceBoy87.”
“There’s an energy buildup coming from his armor,” Tosh warned.
Jack stopped. He was only a few meters away from the figure now. “Is it an explosive device?”
Tosh hesitated. “If it is, it will be a very small explosion. I’d say a shield of some sort is more likely, but I can’t say for sure.”
“Shields, huh? There’s no need to be defensive,” he told the visitor. “I don’t bite.”
Almost too low to be heard, Tosh murmured, “Ianto’s hickeys tell a different story.” Gwen ducked her head to hide a smile, but kept her eyes and gun trained on the stranger.
Silence fell over the four still figures in the field, as Tosh and Gwen waited for either Jack or the visitor to do something. The only sound came from a flock of birds alighting in some far off trees.
Slowly, Jack raised his right arm with the palm up and open. The copper colored head with the mirrored visor tilted to the side slightly. Encouraged, Jack clenched his hand and brought it to his left shoulder. Then he dropped his arm, completing the visitor’s gesture.
The visitor calmly raised his right arm again, this time with his palm down and his fingers splayed. His armor rippled, and five coppery scales shot from his fingers. In the next instant, Jack was dead.
~~~
Gwen fired her gun before Jack’s body had hit the ground, and to her surprise her bullet easily penetrated the visitor’s armor. She fired a second shot without consciously making the decision to do so, this time into the center of the visor. Blood and brain sprayed from the figure’s ruined head, and his corpse joined Jack on the dry brown grass. The flock of birds took to flight, and the flapping of wings and the stench of gunpowder filled the air.
Gwen was halfway to Jack’s crumpled body when Tosh’s machine began an incessant, high pitched beep. “Gwen,” Tosh said, her voice strained. “Stay away from the bodies. I’m getting some readings on the man’s blood now, and there’s something very wrong.”
“Wrong?” The holes in Jack’s head and neck were starting to close up. Gwen wanted to kneel next to him and check his pulse, futile as it would be.
“I’ll call Owen and Ianto. They’ll need to bring hazmat suits.”
Gwen nodded numbly. Bits of blood coated metal were being pushed up and out of his healing wounds. There was blood all over him, and not all of it was Jack’s blood.
~~~
Jack woke up on a bed in Torchwood’s small but efficient infirmary. Gwen and Owen were with him, Gwen holding his hand and Owen taking blood samples while assuring her that Jack would probably be fine. The solacing atmosphere was somewhat ruined by the fact that they were both dressed in hazmat suits.
“Am I contagious?” Were his first words. He didn’t know what else the suits could mean. Gwen leaned over him and offered him a toothy smile through the plastic of her helmet.
“Well, it’s probably not airborne. We reckon it only passes through blood-to-blood contact.”
Owen scowled. “Who’s the doctor in this room?”
“Sorry, sorry. Floor’s all yours.”
Jack looked at Owen, who sighed. “We reckon it only passes through blood-to-blood contact.”
“And what is it, may I ask?”
Owen rubbed the back of his neck through the suit. “A virus. An unidentified alien virus. I need to run a few more tests before we can take these damn things off, but as we’ve said, you probably won’t be spreading this to the rest of the world. You, of course, are as infected as they come. Good job, by the way, practically swallowing a rift-hobo’s blood.”
Deciding that Owen’s increased bitchiness was a sign of concern for his boss, Jack didn’t comment on that last part. “I feel fine,” he said.
“Don’t worry, you won’t for long. I can’t tell you exactly what the virus will do, it being alien and all, but believe me, it will fuck you up.”
“Have I ever told you how glad I am you’re my doctor?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Owen muttered.
Jack propped himself up on his elbows and craned his neck, glancing around the hub. “Where are Tosh and Ianto?”
“Tosh is running some tests. Ianto is doing infection control in Wolf’s Field, where the blood was spilled. He should be back soon.” Gwen said.
“Well. It looks like you’ve all got this under control. Good job.”
Gwen frowned. “Don’t mock us, Jack.”
Jack looked at her sharply. “What do you mean? I was being sincere.”
“You’ve got an alien virus that none of us know a thing about!”
“Yes, but no one else is hurt or sick, and all the measures have been taken to keep it that way. And however bad this virus is, I’m sure I’ve had - and died from - worse. I’ll get better.”
Gwen slumped, and Jack wondered if she had honestly forgotten about his immortality, or if guilt over her part in this was just causing her to overreact. “I’ll be fine,” he repeated, this time with his biggest, brightest smile.
And he was, for about twenty two hours.
The symptoms started with a fever, mild enough that Jack might not have noticed it if Owen weren’t constantly shoving a thermometer in his mouth. The young doctor had run enough tests by then to determine that they were safe in Jack’s presence without protective gear. “Just be careful not to cut yourself, and don’t have any unprotected sex,” he’d snapped as he’d taken off his hood. The last rule had been punctuated with a meaningful glare at Ianto.
Shortly after the fever, Jack had started to lose his vision. He described it to Owen as a dark fog thickening in front of his eyes. It only took a few hours after that for Jack to become completely blind.
Jack sat on a chair in the infirmary, with Gwen holding his hand. He could hear Owen constantly running tests - on Jack, on Jack’s blood, on the alien’s blood and body. Tosh was taking a closer look at the alien armor, and Jack could occasionally hear her at work, too. Ianto was down in the archives, although Jack wasn’t clear what he was hoping to accomplish down there.
It wasn’t so bad for him, because he knew it would end. And it was a good feeling, having his team around him and knowing they would stay.
When his muscles began to cramp and stiffen, he began to wonder if he should just put an end to it now and get it over with. He could ask Owen for a shot. No one would deny him it. But knowing the symptoms was important, in case this plague ever showed up on Earth again. There was nothing more dangerous than an unknown, and all he had to do to know was to wait this out.
He lost control of his body slowly and painfully. Soon he was no longer able to sit in the chair, so Owen and Gwen helped move him back to the bed. By then it had been a day and a half since he contracted the virus, so he sent Gwen home. Jack planned to send Owen away a few hours later, but by then paralysis was complete and he had no way to communicate orders.
He could still hear, although even that sense was getting fuzzy. He could feel too; he felt when Owen gave him injections that did nothing for the pain.
Owen finally gave in to exhaustion and left Jack’s side for a nap on the break room couch. Ianto came at that point, although Jack couldn’t understand most of what the young man was saying. It took too much effort to concentrate. He lost all sense of time by then, so he had no idea how long he lay in darkness before a needle slid into his veins and brought death.
~~~
Jack’s eyes felt gummy and he blinked several times before he could focus. “Sleeping beauty awakes,” came a voice to his left, and he turned to see Ianto leaning against the bed. “How are you feeling?” He asked.
“Hmm. Okay.” His throat was dry and he felt cold. “How long...?”
“Were you dead?” Ianto glanced down at a flash of gold in his hand. “Three hours, seventeen minutes.”
Jack shook his head. “Before I died.”
“Oh. Four days.” Ianto looked away. “We didn’t know how long it would take, and Owen thought maybe it wouldn’t kill you directly at all. It got to the point where he would have had to put in a stomach tube. We took a vote and decided to kill you.” There was a long silence as Jack processed the information. He felt worlds better, but still tired. “The others will want to know you’re awake,” Ianto added. Jack watched him go.
He rested for a bit more after enduring some smothering hugs from Gwen and Tosh, and some oddly touching scolding from Owen. Then it was back to business as usual for Torchwood.
That was, until later that evening when Ianto frowned and reached out to feel Jack’s forehead as he was bringing his boss a mug of coffee. “You feel warm,” Ianto said, and there was hard fear behind the words.
~~~
From there it only got worse. They determined that death didn’t kill off the virus; it only gave a brief respite. And with each passing death, the respite got shorter.
“What about your Doctor?” Ianto asked in the space between Jack’s fifth and sixth death. “The one you hoped had answers?”
Jack smiled, his eyes staring unfocused a few feet above Ianto’s head. “He might know what to do. You’d be amazed at the things he knows, Ianto. The way he thinks, the way he acts.” He tipped his head back and sighed. Ianto wished he could know what Jack was seeing on the black canvass of his blindness. “He’s like a logic puzzle, one so intricate that every time you approach it, you get a different answer. He transformed a coward, once. Do you know how hard that is?”
When Ianto didn’t answer, Jack laughed. “Ignore me. Sometimes nostalgia creeps up on me. But it doesn’t matter - I don’t have a way to contact my Doctor.”
“Yes, sir,” Ianto said. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Jack listened to the retreating footsteps, lost in thoughts of the Doctor. He only vaguely noticed when, true to his word, Ianto returned a few minutes later and sat with Jack as his body shut down.
~~~
He was certain he was hallucinating the next time he woke up, because surely the Doctor wasn’t really standing above his bed, frowning down at him with his glasses slightly askew. Jack relaxed back into his pillows, eyes on the Doctor. It was a good hallucination.
“Good evening, Jack,” the Doctor said. “Your team tells me you’ve contracted the fatal Ipselian virus. How are you feeling?”
Jack shot up in bed. “Doctor?”
The Time Lord’s very serious expression lightened just a little. “That would be me, yes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, you need help, don’t you? So here I am.”
Unexpectedly, Jack felt embarrassed. The Doctor showing up out of the blue was a constant fantasy of his. It was something that always garnered a passing thought - wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Doctor walked by this street, just in time to see Jack and his team investigating some strange sighting? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Doctor came through that line of trees, coming upon Jack excavating an alien artifact?
He didn’t let himself dwell on such thoughts, just let them warm him as he worked. But he never imagined the Doctor showing up while Jack lay sick in bed, his team standing helpless around him. Jack felt his cheeks color, and hoped the other time traveler didn’t notice. He opened his mouth to tell him that Torchwood had everything under control, but stopped himself just in time. What possible good could he do by pushing the Doctor away?
“It’s good to see you,” he said, putting all the truth he was capable of behind the words.
The Doctor blinked, then smiled. “It’s good to see you, Jack. Circumstances aside, of course.”
“Mm.” Jack closed his eyes for a moment. “So you know this virus?”
“I know of it, yes. It was after your time, so I’m not surprised that you don’t.”
Jack swung his legs off the edge of the bed and carefully stood up. He was a bit shaky, and the Doctor obviously noticed. “Do you want me to fetch your doctor?” the Time Lord asked.
It took Jack a moment to realize that his friend was referring to Owen. To Jack’s mind, the Doctor had dibs on the term. All other doctors were secondary to the Doctor. He laughed softly, mostly at himself. “I’m surprised they’re not banging down the door. What did you tell them?”
“They’re the ones that fetched me,” the Doctor said. “Quite the clever team you’ve got there, Jack. But enough of that - we don’t have much time to find a cure, so down to business for us, right?”
The happiness of seeing the Doctor dimmed. “You don’t have a cure?”
The Doctor shook his head. “The Ipselian plague was never cured, although I know every lab on the planet was working on one.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It struck the Diopal civilization in the eighty-second century. They were highly advanced, but none of their medications worked against this virus.” The Doctor took off his glasses and wiped at one of the lenses with the edge of his shirt before tucking them in his pocket. “It effects the DNA itself, you see, not that any of the Diopalites lived long enough to suffer the long-term consequences of that.
“When they saw how quickly it was spreading, the government set an ultimatum. Every scientist was put on the job of finding a cure, and any of the inflicted were viable test subjects. They were given two months before the project was abandoned and all resources were directed towards eliminating the virus through other means.”
Jack gave the Doctor a horrified look. “Let me guess - they decided to kill all the infected?”
The Doctor shrugged, but Jack could hear the contempt in his voice. “The virus killed so quickly, there was surprisingly little objection. It had killed nearly a fourth of the population, and no one had much hope. In order to spare the healthy further contact, those in the early stages of infection were armed and paid to round up and kill any infected who tried to flee.
Jack sighed. “And I suppose there was rift activity somewhere on their planet?”
“I never heard of any, but it only takes a tiny rip in space and time to cause a lot of damage.”
Jack had to agree. Already he was beginning to feel warm and a little dizzy. “So that’s it? The plague died off and no cure was found.”
“Don’t worry, Jack. The Diopalites didn’t have what we do.”
“And what’s that?”
The Doctor scratched his head. “Well... you and me, of course.”
Normally, Jack would have agreed that he and the Doctor were an unstoppable team, but the virus had certainly put him off his A game. After an hour of brainstorming cures, Jack was once again blind and on his way to pain and paralysis. The Doctor had squeezed his shoulder and gone off to work with Owen. Jack could only hope - as he slipped into a dark void - that when he woke up from his next death the two doctors would have a cure.
They didn’t. Jack could tell that his team was losing hope and had to admit to himself that so was he. Only the Doctor remained stubbornly optimistic. He insisted on using Jack’s now very short window of health to explain his failed ideas and hopefully think of new ones.
“What about the future?” Jack asked during a rare pause in the Doctor’s rambling. “Isn’t there any cure-all far in the future?”
“There... might be some options, but we can’t risk taking you out to all sorts of times and planets. You aren’t immediately contagious to other humans, but many species don’t have the same barriers. We could contaminate the universe very easily if we’re not careful.”
“Okay. But what about species we do know about? Which ones were advanced in DNA manipulation?” The Doctor looked at him, and Jack knew they were thinking the same thing. “The Chula had nanogenes,” he remembered.
“Only for a very brief time, and they were very protective of their technology. We’d never get access without causing a lot of damage or altering their timeline drastically.”
Jack sighed. “Well, the future’s out, the past doesn’t help, so that leaves the present.”
“That’s brilliant, Jack!”
The shout made him flinch. “What?”
The Doctor gave a manic grin. “The past! There’s one place in history where we can get easy access to the Chula nanogenes, and hopefully without the collapse of time! We don’t even need to leave Earth.”
Jack felt his heart speed up as he connected the dots. “The Chula ship I stole!”
“Close, very close. That one won’t do us any good, as those nanogenes didn’t alter the DNA. They only repaired destroyed tissue. No, the ones we need are the nanogenes that repaired Jamie, once they recognized how humans were really built.” The Doctor’s eyes sparkled. “I think you’re nearly cured, Jack!”
After that, they had little time to waste. Owen estimated that Jack only had half an hour of vision left. The Doctor wanted to rush Jack onto the TARDIS, but Jack insisted on saying a quick goodbye to his team, and giving them at least a bare-bones explanation of where he was headed. He knew running off without a word was a mistake, and it was one he was determined not to repeat.
“I won’t be gone long,” Jack said as he gave Gwen a hug. “The Doctor wants to try a treatment he has at his place.”
“Where is his place?” Gwen asked.
“Secret location,” Jack said.
“What kind of treatment?” Ianto asked.
Jack let go of Gwen and pulled Ianto towards him. “Don’t worry, the Doctor will look after me. Just... try to get some rest, okay? This is wearing us down, and we can’t let it.”
The Doctor appeared in the doorway. “I parked a bit closer. Come on, Jack. We’d better hurry.”
~~~
They stepped out into the cold London night.
The Doctor checked his watch. “We have about an hour until the nanogenes recognize Nancy’s genetics and fix Jamie. We need to find a safe place, where we won’t run into ourselves,” he paused, “or get killed in the blitz.”
Jack grimaced. “An hour? I’ll be catatonic by then.”
The Doctor didn’t reply; he just grabbed Jack by the arm and steered them down an alley.
“Shouldn’t we have come closer to that time?” Jack tried again.
“No,” the Doctor replied. “Quiet, Jack.”
They walked in silence with the Doctor leading. Jack’s vision was fading quickly now, and he couldn’t see anything past the tall, slight form of the Time Lord. Everything beyond him was a dark fog. Out of this fog came the bleating of sirens and the buzzing of planes.
A thought occurred to Jack: the Doctor could be so precise about timing. He wouldn’t have come an hour early on accident, not when a slip-up meant timeline disaster. So why would he have come so early? London, 1941 potentially held a cure for Jack’s illness, but it also held something else, something the Doctor cared about more than Jack’s health.
Rose was here, somewhere.
Was that what the Doctor meant to do, then? Tuck Jack away in a safe corner, tell him to stay put, and then wander off to find Rose? This Rose wouldn’t recognize this Doctor, so he could walk right up to her. Pretend to be confused, lost. Ask for directions. Talk to her, shake her hand, stumble into her when an explosion startles the night...
Jack knew, he knew because he would do it too, maybe, if he weren’t ill, if Rose wouldn’t recognize him, if he could do so without changing the course of history. But he couldn’t, and the Doctor couldn’t either. It was too risky. Surely the Doctor knew that.
“Doctor,” Jack started, but the Doctor quickly hushed him. It felt like confirmation of Jack’s suspicions, and Jack felt anger rising in his gut. He tried to beat it down. Was it really so wrong for the Doctor to use Jack as an excuse to see Rose? If the Doctor could pull off curing Jack and bumping into a gone-forever friend in one trip of the TARDIS, was that so bad?
If the Doctor could pull it off, that was.
Jack pictured crumpled timelines. Devastating paradoxes that could spread across London like blackening ulcers, eating away at the natural order of time.
“Doctor,” Jack said again, and this time his voice was low and dangerous. “You can’t go and see her, you know that?”
“Of course not,” the Doctor said, as if it were the last thing on his mind.
Jack felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There was no way the Doctor wasn’t thinking of Rose, first and foremost. “Don’t lie to me,” he hissed. “I get it, I really do, that you want to break the rules and see her. But you can’t!”
The Doctor stopped abruptly, and the hand on Jack’s arm squeezed hard. “I don’t lie to you.” There was a strain in the voice that said otherwise.
“Lies of omission are still lies, Doctor!”
“Jack, calm down. You need to trust me.”
“It’s a bit hard when you don’t trust me!”
The Doctor was quiet for a long moment. Finally he said, “I’m sorry, Jack.”
The bottom of Jack’s stomach dropped out. “You’re going to talk to her, even if it means destroying the city.”
“No.”
“But you said-”
“I didn’t tell you the whole truth,” The Doctor stepped closer. If Jack squinted, he could just make out the Time Lord’s eyes staring out of his shadowed face. “About using the nanogenes as a cure. It’s not as simple as just getting close to the hospital.”
The Doctor dropped his hand and took a step back into the darkness. Jack stiffened and resisted the urge to grab for his companion and anchor. But the Doctor kept speaking, letting Jack know that he hadn’t gone far.
“The nanogenes upgraded their own programing when they changed Jamie back. All I had to do was send the upgrade to the other nanogenes and tell them who they needed to heal. It wouldn’t do if they spread around the world, healing everybody, of course.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. He felt a tingle go down his spine and looked around, futile as it was. “People might be a little suspicious if hundreds spontaneously grew back missing limbs.” There was a strange shuffling sound, like a strong wind or maybe a large dog moving through the rubble in the street nearby. “Doctor?” He asked nervously.
“So naturally I told the nanogenes only to fix those who they had previously affected.” The Doctor’s voice came from further away this time.
Heart pounding, Jack felt his mouth go dry. “Doctor?” He called, reaching out.
“Are you my mummy?”
Jack froze, arm extended. The young boy’s voice was only a few dozen feet away. He could hear the boy moving closer, though, small footsteps that suddenly seemed so loud. He blinked desperately, trying to see, but found that he was completely blind now. “Doctor!” He gasped.
“Mummy?”
It was closer than Jack expected, and he stumbled backwards. The disease had progressed to his muscles, making him clumsy, and Jack lost his balance. He landed on his ass, hard. Bits of pavement and stone dug into palms from where he’d tried to break his fall.
“I’m sorry Jack, but the nanogenes will only fix you if you’re one of their... empty soldiers, first.”
Jack scrambled back, trying to get his feet under him. “Help me,” he whispered. There was a cold sweat coating his hands, making them slick.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I was afraid you’d refuse.” The Doctor said, helplessly. “This is the only cure I can think of. It’s the only way.”
On one side, Jack could hear small, shuffling steps approaching. On his other side, the Doctor’s steady steps retreated. “Doctor, don’t leave!” Jack pleaded. The Time Lord kept walking.
He finally managed to get to his feet, and lurched after his friend. He made it a few steps before his coat caught on something, and he was back on the ground, this time on his hands and knees.
The child stopped right in front of Jack. He could hear it even over his own gasping, chocked noises. “Are you my mummy?” It asked, and touched Jack’s face. It’s hand was cold, the touch hesitant.
“No,” Jack said. “No. No. Please...”
As if the child understood him, it turned around and began to move away. Mindlessly in search of Nancy, Jack thought numbly. Or called to action by the Chula ship. Empty. Just like I’ll be. Dead and alive at the same time.
“Jack.” The Doctor’s voice cut into the nightmare. It was far away and oddly elevated. Jack pictured him calling out of an open window, safe from Jack and the child on higher ground. He didn’t bother to turn towards the voice. His limbs were getting too stiff to move, anyway. He wondered if that was from the disease or just fear freezing him. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this afraid. “It will be fine, Jack. I’ll watch over you, I promise. And it won’t be long at all until the nanogenes fix you. Then we’ll go home.”
The back of Jack’s hand began to burn, and he imagined a cut opening the skin like a gruesome magic trick.
“Did you hear me, Jack? You’re going to be fine.”
Where are you? he wanted to ask, but the words were scrambled up in his mind until it was a completely different question. Are you my...? With an effort he kept his mouth shut. It was difficult, especially when a strange pressure began pushing at the back of his throat. It made him want to cough and gag.
He thought of Algy, and of watching Algy succumb to the nanogenes. He had been all right, after it was all over. Of course, he hadn’t remembered becoming a flesh and bone gas mask. Had the nanogenes wiped his memory, or had the ordeal been so terrible that Algy had suppressed the memory himself?
The pressure in his throat became too much and Jack doubled over, gagging, tasting wet rubber as he did. There was pressure behind his eyes, too. It felt like a balloon inflating inside his head. It was pushing brain matter aside as it grew, and pushing at his eyes, making them bulge.
It hurt, and he wanted to call out. But the muscles of his jaw were stiffening, forcing his mouth wide open. His tongue was swelling until it grew past his jaw. It was dark and hard and no longer his tongue. His eyes and their sockets were swelling until they were no longer inside his head but outside. The part that disturbed him most was that he could see again, somehow, with the things that weren’t his eyes. It was a strange, distorted vision.
Finally his face stopped stretching and bending. With a noise that sounded like a gunshot to Jack, the left side of his skull cracked inward, and the transformation was complete.
~~~
The Doctor watched from a safe distance as the nanogenes twisted Jack into one of their empty soldiers. It was horrible to watch Jack’s familiar, friendly face disappear, but the Doctor felt obligated. If anything went wrong, he had to be there. Jack was counting on him.
The distant bombing had stopped, and the night went quiet. The Doctor tore his eyes off of his companion and glanced around the room he had found. He’d needed to be far enough away from Jamie so as to not distract the child. If Jamie were even just a few minutes late to his reunion with Nancy, the whole course of history would be altered. Plus, he wasn’t sure how the nanogenes would affect Jack, and a few walls and doors between him and his friend couldn’t hurt.
The Doctor swallowed, feeling bad about that last thought. But it was true, wasn’t it? That thing out there wasn't really Jack anymore. It had no individual identity, and no free will. It was a puppet of war.
As if on cue, Jack turned and started walking. He was heading towards the station, where the Chula ambulance had crashed. The Doctor nodded to himself - their past incarnations had just opened the ship, activating a signal to all the empty soldiers. He would follow Jack at a distance.
He quietly made his way through the dark room and down the staircase. Once out in the street, he stopped short. Jack was no longer walking, and was once more facing the Doctor. Gas mask eyes were staring at him, and he felt his breath catch in his throat.
What if he was wrong? Jack couldn’t die; maybe his body couldn’t be an empty vessel. Maybe his mind had remained even as his brain and body had been contorted.
And yet the Time Lord stayed rooted to the spot. Maybe Jack wasn’t looking at him. Who knew what commands the Chula ship was giving? It was a fluke that Jack had turned around to face the Doctor.
Jack took a stiff, faltering step, and then another towards him. His coat flapped about in the breeze, like a tattered flag.
“Jack?” The Doctor asked softly.
A muffled chiming sounded from all around the Doctor, and he knew that every phone on the block had just rung simultaneously. He felt nauseous as the noise continued. Jack continued his strange march towards him, and now he was raising his arm out as if to touch, to grab, to hold him.
The Doctor ran. He ran and didn’t stop until he had reached the barbed wire fence outside the station, where he put his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. Even then, the ringing still echoed in his ears.
He couldn’t shake the malaise even when, as he carefully picked his way towards the crowd of empty soldiers, he saw a flash of blonde hair above a Union Jack shirt. He didn’t allow himself a closer look. Instead he melted into the shadows and waited for Nancy’s bravery to work its magic.
~~~
The golden glow of the nanogenes faded, and Jack drew in a breath like the first one after drowning. All around him, people were looking about as if they had just woken from a dream; none of them looked the way Jack felt - like a man in the last vestiges of a night terror.
Far away someone gave a joyful shout. The voice was achingly familiar, and tears prickled at the back of Jack’s eyes. He took a step towards the voice.
“No, Jack. We need to go.” A hand grabbed Jack’s and held on painfully tight. The Doctor set off at a quick pace away from the group of people. Jack almost had to jog to keep up. They ducked through dark back streets, one after another, until they reached the blue public call box. Jack leaned against the wooden side as the Doctor unlocked the door.
Once inside, Jack hunched over and vomited.
The Doctor put his hand gently on Jack’s shoulder, but the immortal man shrugged it off violently. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted, his eyes gleaming.
The Doctor took a startled step back.
“No warning! No ‘by the way Jack, you’re going to be a zombie’! Never in a million years would I have...” Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was shaking. He wanted to hit something, someone. “I’m sorry. I need to be alone.” He didn’t look at the Doctor as he left the console room.
He ducked into the first enclosed space he found, which happened to be a supply closet crammed with a stack of chairs and several hat racks. He sat on the floor next to the chairs and closed his eyes. Despite himself, he calmed down, the hum of the TARDIS at the back of his mind.
The Doctor had been right. Jack wouldn’t have gone along if he’d known the plan. Death no longer frightened him - it hadn’t for the past hundred years or so - but there were other things that still did.
Being transformed into something unrecognizable. Being controlled, possessed. Hurting people he loved without a flicker of recognition or remorse in his mind. Hurting the Doctor.
But the Doctor was safe, and yet again so was he. Just this once, everyone lives. The manic man with the cropped hair hadn’t known how right he would be. Jack smiled and tipped his head back against the wall. He felt drained, and imagined he could sleep for a week.
The door opened and the Doctor looked in. “We’re in the vortex,” he said. “I can land us in Cardiff now, if you want.”
“Actually...” Jack trailed off. The Doctor stepped into the crowded room and quietly shut the door. Pushing aside a hat rack, he knelt down by Jack and gave his friend an encouraging smile. Jack knew he had been forgiven for his outburst, and continued. “I thought maybe I could stay here a bit longer.”
“Perfect. I was thinking we should get some ice cream. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from humans, it’s that nothing calms the nerves like ice cream.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Later, as Jack watched the nine-hundred year old alien licking at a blue moon ice cream cone, he forgave the Doctor between spoonfuls of his own rainbow sherbet. He couldn’t blame the Doctor even if he wanted to - they were similar creatures, after all, and one fear was very much like another.
Author: Garrideb
Challenge: Plague
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/warnings: Some violence and gore, some implied Jack/Ianto
Summary: In order to cure Jack, the Doctor makes some dangerous choices.
The figure was dressed in red-orange armor that shone in the bright sunlight. It was so smooth and formfitting that it looked like he - and Jack was assuming it was a he, if it was human - had been dipped in molten copper from head to toe. His face was hidden by a visor. Jack could see himself and his team in its curved, mirrored surface, and flashed his reflection a grin.
“Hi,” Jack said. “Welcome to Cardiff, Wales, planet Earth. You’ve arrived in the year 2008, just in time to cash in on You Tube stardom.”
The figure moved, raising his right arm with his open palm facing the sky. The armor rippled with the movement, and Jack could see it was actually made of miniscule scales. The figure then made a fist, brought it to rest on his left shoulder, and finally let it drop to his side again
Jack waited a beat for the figure to say or do something else, but he just stood still in the empty field he had appeared in. Jack raised an eyebrow. “I’m Jack, and this is my team. We’re Torchwood. You’re going to have to come with us.” The man showed no sign of understanding or even of hearing. “Can you take the helmet off?” Jack mimed removing a helmet from his own head. Nothing.
“Is it human?” Gwen asked. She had left her position next to Tosh to stand by Jack. Her gun was drawn, pointing towards the ground.
“He might be, but I’ve never seen armor quite like that. He’s either from very far away, or very far from the future. Tosh?”
Toshiko’s voice came from a few feet behind Jack. “The metal isn’t from Earth, that’s certain. I can’t get any readings beyond it.”
Jack nodded. “Okay. Stay put, you two.”
“Jack!”
“Don’t worry, Gwen. I’m just going to offer a handshake.”
Jack held out his hands, showing he was unarmed, and slowly walked towards the visitor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gwen raise her gun a fraction. Jack smiled and looked at the figure’s visor. He wondered if there were eyes behind it. “I wasn’t kidding about You Tube,” he said. “We’ve got a web cam set up at our headquarters, and it’s all yours once you answer a few questions. With that costume you’ll be an instant hit. You just need a catchy screen name, something like LonelySpaceBoy87.”
“There’s an energy buildup coming from his armor,” Tosh warned.
Jack stopped. He was only a few meters away from the figure now. “Is it an explosive device?”
Tosh hesitated. “If it is, it will be a very small explosion. I’d say a shield of some sort is more likely, but I can’t say for sure.”
“Shields, huh? There’s no need to be defensive,” he told the visitor. “I don’t bite.”
Almost too low to be heard, Tosh murmured, “Ianto’s hickeys tell a different story.” Gwen ducked her head to hide a smile, but kept her eyes and gun trained on the stranger.
Silence fell over the four still figures in the field, as Tosh and Gwen waited for either Jack or the visitor to do something. The only sound came from a flock of birds alighting in some far off trees.
Slowly, Jack raised his right arm with the palm up and open. The copper colored head with the mirrored visor tilted to the side slightly. Encouraged, Jack clenched his hand and brought it to his left shoulder. Then he dropped his arm, completing the visitor’s gesture.
The visitor calmly raised his right arm again, this time with his palm down and his fingers splayed. His armor rippled, and five coppery scales shot from his fingers. In the next instant, Jack was dead.
~~~
Gwen fired her gun before Jack’s body had hit the ground, and to her surprise her bullet easily penetrated the visitor’s armor. She fired a second shot without consciously making the decision to do so, this time into the center of the visor. Blood and brain sprayed from the figure’s ruined head, and his corpse joined Jack on the dry brown grass. The flock of birds took to flight, and the flapping of wings and the stench of gunpowder filled the air.
Gwen was halfway to Jack’s crumpled body when Tosh’s machine began an incessant, high pitched beep. “Gwen,” Tosh said, her voice strained. “Stay away from the bodies. I’m getting some readings on the man’s blood now, and there’s something very wrong.”
“Wrong?” The holes in Jack’s head and neck were starting to close up. Gwen wanted to kneel next to him and check his pulse, futile as it would be.
“I’ll call Owen and Ianto. They’ll need to bring hazmat suits.”
Gwen nodded numbly. Bits of blood coated metal were being pushed up and out of his healing wounds. There was blood all over him, and not all of it was Jack’s blood.
~~~
Jack woke up on a bed in Torchwood’s small but efficient infirmary. Gwen and Owen were with him, Gwen holding his hand and Owen taking blood samples while assuring her that Jack would probably be fine. The solacing atmosphere was somewhat ruined by the fact that they were both dressed in hazmat suits.
“Am I contagious?” Were his first words. He didn’t know what else the suits could mean. Gwen leaned over him and offered him a toothy smile through the plastic of her helmet.
“Well, it’s probably not airborne. We reckon it only passes through blood-to-blood contact.”
Owen scowled. “Who’s the doctor in this room?”
“Sorry, sorry. Floor’s all yours.”
Jack looked at Owen, who sighed. “We reckon it only passes through blood-to-blood contact.”
“And what is it, may I ask?”
Owen rubbed the back of his neck through the suit. “A virus. An unidentified alien virus. I need to run a few more tests before we can take these damn things off, but as we’ve said, you probably won’t be spreading this to the rest of the world. You, of course, are as infected as they come. Good job, by the way, practically swallowing a rift-hobo’s blood.”
Deciding that Owen’s increased bitchiness was a sign of concern for his boss, Jack didn’t comment on that last part. “I feel fine,” he said.
“Don’t worry, you won’t for long. I can’t tell you exactly what the virus will do, it being alien and all, but believe me, it will fuck you up.”
“Have I ever told you how glad I am you’re my doctor?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Owen muttered.
Jack propped himself up on his elbows and craned his neck, glancing around the hub. “Where are Tosh and Ianto?”
“Tosh is running some tests. Ianto is doing infection control in Wolf’s Field, where the blood was spilled. He should be back soon.” Gwen said.
“Well. It looks like you’ve all got this under control. Good job.”
Gwen frowned. “Don’t mock us, Jack.”
Jack looked at her sharply. “What do you mean? I was being sincere.”
“You’ve got an alien virus that none of us know a thing about!”
“Yes, but no one else is hurt or sick, and all the measures have been taken to keep it that way. And however bad this virus is, I’m sure I’ve had - and died from - worse. I’ll get better.”
Gwen slumped, and Jack wondered if she had honestly forgotten about his immortality, or if guilt over her part in this was just causing her to overreact. “I’ll be fine,” he repeated, this time with his biggest, brightest smile.
And he was, for about twenty two hours.
The symptoms started with a fever, mild enough that Jack might not have noticed it if Owen weren’t constantly shoving a thermometer in his mouth. The young doctor had run enough tests by then to determine that they were safe in Jack’s presence without protective gear. “Just be careful not to cut yourself, and don’t have any unprotected sex,” he’d snapped as he’d taken off his hood. The last rule had been punctuated with a meaningful glare at Ianto.
Shortly after the fever, Jack had started to lose his vision. He described it to Owen as a dark fog thickening in front of his eyes. It only took a few hours after that for Jack to become completely blind.
Jack sat on a chair in the infirmary, with Gwen holding his hand. He could hear Owen constantly running tests - on Jack, on Jack’s blood, on the alien’s blood and body. Tosh was taking a closer look at the alien armor, and Jack could occasionally hear her at work, too. Ianto was down in the archives, although Jack wasn’t clear what he was hoping to accomplish down there.
It wasn’t so bad for him, because he knew it would end. And it was a good feeling, having his team around him and knowing they would stay.
When his muscles began to cramp and stiffen, he began to wonder if he should just put an end to it now and get it over with. He could ask Owen for a shot. No one would deny him it. But knowing the symptoms was important, in case this plague ever showed up on Earth again. There was nothing more dangerous than an unknown, and all he had to do to know was to wait this out.
He lost control of his body slowly and painfully. Soon he was no longer able to sit in the chair, so Owen and Gwen helped move him back to the bed. By then it had been a day and a half since he contracted the virus, so he sent Gwen home. Jack planned to send Owen away a few hours later, but by then paralysis was complete and he had no way to communicate orders.
He could still hear, although even that sense was getting fuzzy. He could feel too; he felt when Owen gave him injections that did nothing for the pain.
Owen finally gave in to exhaustion and left Jack’s side for a nap on the break room couch. Ianto came at that point, although Jack couldn’t understand most of what the young man was saying. It took too much effort to concentrate. He lost all sense of time by then, so he had no idea how long he lay in darkness before a needle slid into his veins and brought death.
~~~
Jack’s eyes felt gummy and he blinked several times before he could focus. “Sleeping beauty awakes,” came a voice to his left, and he turned to see Ianto leaning against the bed. “How are you feeling?” He asked.
“Hmm. Okay.” His throat was dry and he felt cold. “How long...?”
“Were you dead?” Ianto glanced down at a flash of gold in his hand. “Three hours, seventeen minutes.”
Jack shook his head. “Before I died.”
“Oh. Four days.” Ianto looked away. “We didn’t know how long it would take, and Owen thought maybe it wouldn’t kill you directly at all. It got to the point where he would have had to put in a stomach tube. We took a vote and decided to kill you.” There was a long silence as Jack processed the information. He felt worlds better, but still tired. “The others will want to know you’re awake,” Ianto added. Jack watched him go.
He rested for a bit more after enduring some smothering hugs from Gwen and Tosh, and some oddly touching scolding from Owen. Then it was back to business as usual for Torchwood.
That was, until later that evening when Ianto frowned and reached out to feel Jack’s forehead as he was bringing his boss a mug of coffee. “You feel warm,” Ianto said, and there was hard fear behind the words.
~~~
From there it only got worse. They determined that death didn’t kill off the virus; it only gave a brief respite. And with each passing death, the respite got shorter.
“What about your Doctor?” Ianto asked in the space between Jack’s fifth and sixth death. “The one you hoped had answers?”
Jack smiled, his eyes staring unfocused a few feet above Ianto’s head. “He might know what to do. You’d be amazed at the things he knows, Ianto. The way he thinks, the way he acts.” He tipped his head back and sighed. Ianto wished he could know what Jack was seeing on the black canvass of his blindness. “He’s like a logic puzzle, one so intricate that every time you approach it, you get a different answer. He transformed a coward, once. Do you know how hard that is?”
When Ianto didn’t answer, Jack laughed. “Ignore me. Sometimes nostalgia creeps up on me. But it doesn’t matter - I don’t have a way to contact my Doctor.”
“Yes, sir,” Ianto said. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Jack listened to the retreating footsteps, lost in thoughts of the Doctor. He only vaguely noticed when, true to his word, Ianto returned a few minutes later and sat with Jack as his body shut down.
~~~
He was certain he was hallucinating the next time he woke up, because surely the Doctor wasn’t really standing above his bed, frowning down at him with his glasses slightly askew. Jack relaxed back into his pillows, eyes on the Doctor. It was a good hallucination.
“Good evening, Jack,” the Doctor said. “Your team tells me you’ve contracted the fatal Ipselian virus. How are you feeling?”
Jack shot up in bed. “Doctor?”
The Time Lord’s very serious expression lightened just a little. “That would be me, yes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, you need help, don’t you? So here I am.”
Unexpectedly, Jack felt embarrassed. The Doctor showing up out of the blue was a constant fantasy of his. It was something that always garnered a passing thought - wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Doctor walked by this street, just in time to see Jack and his team investigating some strange sighting? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Doctor came through that line of trees, coming upon Jack excavating an alien artifact?
He didn’t let himself dwell on such thoughts, just let them warm him as he worked. But he never imagined the Doctor showing up while Jack lay sick in bed, his team standing helpless around him. Jack felt his cheeks color, and hoped the other time traveler didn’t notice. He opened his mouth to tell him that Torchwood had everything under control, but stopped himself just in time. What possible good could he do by pushing the Doctor away?
“It’s good to see you,” he said, putting all the truth he was capable of behind the words.
The Doctor blinked, then smiled. “It’s good to see you, Jack. Circumstances aside, of course.”
“Mm.” Jack closed his eyes for a moment. “So you know this virus?”
“I know of it, yes. It was after your time, so I’m not surprised that you don’t.”
Jack swung his legs off the edge of the bed and carefully stood up. He was a bit shaky, and the Doctor obviously noticed. “Do you want me to fetch your doctor?” the Time Lord asked.
It took Jack a moment to realize that his friend was referring to Owen. To Jack’s mind, the Doctor had dibs on the term. All other doctors were secondary to the Doctor. He laughed softly, mostly at himself. “I’m surprised they’re not banging down the door. What did you tell them?”
“They’re the ones that fetched me,” the Doctor said. “Quite the clever team you’ve got there, Jack. But enough of that - we don’t have much time to find a cure, so down to business for us, right?”
The happiness of seeing the Doctor dimmed. “You don’t have a cure?”
The Doctor shook his head. “The Ipselian plague was never cured, although I know every lab on the planet was working on one.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It struck the Diopal civilization in the eighty-second century. They were highly advanced, but none of their medications worked against this virus.” The Doctor took off his glasses and wiped at one of the lenses with the edge of his shirt before tucking them in his pocket. “It effects the DNA itself, you see, not that any of the Diopalites lived long enough to suffer the long-term consequences of that.
“When they saw how quickly it was spreading, the government set an ultimatum. Every scientist was put on the job of finding a cure, and any of the inflicted were viable test subjects. They were given two months before the project was abandoned and all resources were directed towards eliminating the virus through other means.”
Jack gave the Doctor a horrified look. “Let me guess - they decided to kill all the infected?”
The Doctor shrugged, but Jack could hear the contempt in his voice. “The virus killed so quickly, there was surprisingly little objection. It had killed nearly a fourth of the population, and no one had much hope. In order to spare the healthy further contact, those in the early stages of infection were armed and paid to round up and kill any infected who tried to flee.
Jack sighed. “And I suppose there was rift activity somewhere on their planet?”
“I never heard of any, but it only takes a tiny rip in space and time to cause a lot of damage.”
Jack had to agree. Already he was beginning to feel warm and a little dizzy. “So that’s it? The plague died off and no cure was found.”
“Don’t worry, Jack. The Diopalites didn’t have what we do.”
“And what’s that?”
The Doctor scratched his head. “Well... you and me, of course.”
Normally, Jack would have agreed that he and the Doctor were an unstoppable team, but the virus had certainly put him off his A game. After an hour of brainstorming cures, Jack was once again blind and on his way to pain and paralysis. The Doctor had squeezed his shoulder and gone off to work with Owen. Jack could only hope - as he slipped into a dark void - that when he woke up from his next death the two doctors would have a cure.
They didn’t. Jack could tell that his team was losing hope and had to admit to himself that so was he. Only the Doctor remained stubbornly optimistic. He insisted on using Jack’s now very short window of health to explain his failed ideas and hopefully think of new ones.
“What about the future?” Jack asked during a rare pause in the Doctor’s rambling. “Isn’t there any cure-all far in the future?”
“There... might be some options, but we can’t risk taking you out to all sorts of times and planets. You aren’t immediately contagious to other humans, but many species don’t have the same barriers. We could contaminate the universe very easily if we’re not careful.”
“Okay. But what about species we do know about? Which ones were advanced in DNA manipulation?” The Doctor looked at him, and Jack knew they were thinking the same thing. “The Chula had nanogenes,” he remembered.
“Only for a very brief time, and they were very protective of their technology. We’d never get access without causing a lot of damage or altering their timeline drastically.”
Jack sighed. “Well, the future’s out, the past doesn’t help, so that leaves the present.”
“That’s brilliant, Jack!”
The shout made him flinch. “What?”
The Doctor gave a manic grin. “The past! There’s one place in history where we can get easy access to the Chula nanogenes, and hopefully without the collapse of time! We don’t even need to leave Earth.”
Jack felt his heart speed up as he connected the dots. “The Chula ship I stole!”
“Close, very close. That one won’t do us any good, as those nanogenes didn’t alter the DNA. They only repaired destroyed tissue. No, the ones we need are the nanogenes that repaired Jamie, once they recognized how humans were really built.” The Doctor’s eyes sparkled. “I think you’re nearly cured, Jack!”
After that, they had little time to waste. Owen estimated that Jack only had half an hour of vision left. The Doctor wanted to rush Jack onto the TARDIS, but Jack insisted on saying a quick goodbye to his team, and giving them at least a bare-bones explanation of where he was headed. He knew running off without a word was a mistake, and it was one he was determined not to repeat.
“I won’t be gone long,” Jack said as he gave Gwen a hug. “The Doctor wants to try a treatment he has at his place.”
“Where is his place?” Gwen asked.
“Secret location,” Jack said.
“What kind of treatment?” Ianto asked.
Jack let go of Gwen and pulled Ianto towards him. “Don’t worry, the Doctor will look after me. Just... try to get some rest, okay? This is wearing us down, and we can’t let it.”
The Doctor appeared in the doorway. “I parked a bit closer. Come on, Jack. We’d better hurry.”
~~~
They stepped out into the cold London night.
The Doctor checked his watch. “We have about an hour until the nanogenes recognize Nancy’s genetics and fix Jamie. We need to find a safe place, where we won’t run into ourselves,” he paused, “or get killed in the blitz.”
Jack grimaced. “An hour? I’ll be catatonic by then.”
The Doctor didn’t reply; he just grabbed Jack by the arm and steered them down an alley.
“Shouldn’t we have come closer to that time?” Jack tried again.
“No,” the Doctor replied. “Quiet, Jack.”
They walked in silence with the Doctor leading. Jack’s vision was fading quickly now, and he couldn’t see anything past the tall, slight form of the Time Lord. Everything beyond him was a dark fog. Out of this fog came the bleating of sirens and the buzzing of planes.
A thought occurred to Jack: the Doctor could be so precise about timing. He wouldn’t have come an hour early on accident, not when a slip-up meant timeline disaster. So why would he have come so early? London, 1941 potentially held a cure for Jack’s illness, but it also held something else, something the Doctor cared about more than Jack’s health.
Rose was here, somewhere.
Was that what the Doctor meant to do, then? Tuck Jack away in a safe corner, tell him to stay put, and then wander off to find Rose? This Rose wouldn’t recognize this Doctor, so he could walk right up to her. Pretend to be confused, lost. Ask for directions. Talk to her, shake her hand, stumble into her when an explosion startles the night...
Jack knew, he knew because he would do it too, maybe, if he weren’t ill, if Rose wouldn’t recognize him, if he could do so without changing the course of history. But he couldn’t, and the Doctor couldn’t either. It was too risky. Surely the Doctor knew that.
“Doctor,” Jack started, but the Doctor quickly hushed him. It felt like confirmation of Jack’s suspicions, and Jack felt anger rising in his gut. He tried to beat it down. Was it really so wrong for the Doctor to use Jack as an excuse to see Rose? If the Doctor could pull off curing Jack and bumping into a gone-forever friend in one trip of the TARDIS, was that so bad?
If the Doctor could pull it off, that was.
Jack pictured crumpled timelines. Devastating paradoxes that could spread across London like blackening ulcers, eating away at the natural order of time.
“Doctor,” Jack said again, and this time his voice was low and dangerous. “You can’t go and see her, you know that?”
“Of course not,” the Doctor said, as if it were the last thing on his mind.
Jack felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There was no way the Doctor wasn’t thinking of Rose, first and foremost. “Don’t lie to me,” he hissed. “I get it, I really do, that you want to break the rules and see her. But you can’t!”
The Doctor stopped abruptly, and the hand on Jack’s arm squeezed hard. “I don’t lie to you.” There was a strain in the voice that said otherwise.
“Lies of omission are still lies, Doctor!”
“Jack, calm down. You need to trust me.”
“It’s a bit hard when you don’t trust me!”
The Doctor was quiet for a long moment. Finally he said, “I’m sorry, Jack.”
The bottom of Jack’s stomach dropped out. “You’re going to talk to her, even if it means destroying the city.”
“No.”
“But you said-”
“I didn’t tell you the whole truth,” The Doctor stepped closer. If Jack squinted, he could just make out the Time Lord’s eyes staring out of his shadowed face. “About using the nanogenes as a cure. It’s not as simple as just getting close to the hospital.”
The Doctor dropped his hand and took a step back into the darkness. Jack stiffened and resisted the urge to grab for his companion and anchor. But the Doctor kept speaking, letting Jack know that he hadn’t gone far.
“The nanogenes upgraded their own programing when they changed Jamie back. All I had to do was send the upgrade to the other nanogenes and tell them who they needed to heal. It wouldn’t do if they spread around the world, healing everybody, of course.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. He felt a tingle go down his spine and looked around, futile as it was. “People might be a little suspicious if hundreds spontaneously grew back missing limbs.” There was a strange shuffling sound, like a strong wind or maybe a large dog moving through the rubble in the street nearby. “Doctor?” He asked nervously.
“So naturally I told the nanogenes only to fix those who they had previously affected.” The Doctor’s voice came from further away this time.
Heart pounding, Jack felt his mouth go dry. “Doctor?” He called, reaching out.
“Are you my mummy?”
Jack froze, arm extended. The young boy’s voice was only a few dozen feet away. He could hear the boy moving closer, though, small footsteps that suddenly seemed so loud. He blinked desperately, trying to see, but found that he was completely blind now. “Doctor!” He gasped.
“Mummy?”
It was closer than Jack expected, and he stumbled backwards. The disease had progressed to his muscles, making him clumsy, and Jack lost his balance. He landed on his ass, hard. Bits of pavement and stone dug into palms from where he’d tried to break his fall.
“I’m sorry Jack, but the nanogenes will only fix you if you’re one of their... empty soldiers, first.”
Jack scrambled back, trying to get his feet under him. “Help me,” he whispered. There was a cold sweat coating his hands, making them slick.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I was afraid you’d refuse.” The Doctor said, helplessly. “This is the only cure I can think of. It’s the only way.”
On one side, Jack could hear small, shuffling steps approaching. On his other side, the Doctor’s steady steps retreated. “Doctor, don’t leave!” Jack pleaded. The Time Lord kept walking.
He finally managed to get to his feet, and lurched after his friend. He made it a few steps before his coat caught on something, and he was back on the ground, this time on his hands and knees.
The child stopped right in front of Jack. He could hear it even over his own gasping, chocked noises. “Are you my mummy?” It asked, and touched Jack’s face. It’s hand was cold, the touch hesitant.
“No,” Jack said. “No. No. Please...”
As if the child understood him, it turned around and began to move away. Mindlessly in search of Nancy, Jack thought numbly. Or called to action by the Chula ship. Empty. Just like I’ll be. Dead and alive at the same time.
“Jack.” The Doctor’s voice cut into the nightmare. It was far away and oddly elevated. Jack pictured him calling out of an open window, safe from Jack and the child on higher ground. He didn’t bother to turn towards the voice. His limbs were getting too stiff to move, anyway. He wondered if that was from the disease or just fear freezing him. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this afraid. “It will be fine, Jack. I’ll watch over you, I promise. And it won’t be long at all until the nanogenes fix you. Then we’ll go home.”
The back of Jack’s hand began to burn, and he imagined a cut opening the skin like a gruesome magic trick.
“Did you hear me, Jack? You’re going to be fine.”
Where are you? he wanted to ask, but the words were scrambled up in his mind until it was a completely different question. Are you my...? With an effort he kept his mouth shut. It was difficult, especially when a strange pressure began pushing at the back of his throat. It made him want to cough and gag.
He thought of Algy, and of watching Algy succumb to the nanogenes. He had been all right, after it was all over. Of course, he hadn’t remembered becoming a flesh and bone gas mask. Had the nanogenes wiped his memory, or had the ordeal been so terrible that Algy had suppressed the memory himself?
The pressure in his throat became too much and Jack doubled over, gagging, tasting wet rubber as he did. There was pressure behind his eyes, too. It felt like a balloon inflating inside his head. It was pushing brain matter aside as it grew, and pushing at his eyes, making them bulge.
It hurt, and he wanted to call out. But the muscles of his jaw were stiffening, forcing his mouth wide open. His tongue was swelling until it grew past his jaw. It was dark and hard and no longer his tongue. His eyes and their sockets were swelling until they were no longer inside his head but outside. The part that disturbed him most was that he could see again, somehow, with the things that weren’t his eyes. It was a strange, distorted vision.
Finally his face stopped stretching and bending. With a noise that sounded like a gunshot to Jack, the left side of his skull cracked inward, and the transformation was complete.
~~~
The Doctor watched from a safe distance as the nanogenes twisted Jack into one of their empty soldiers. It was horrible to watch Jack’s familiar, friendly face disappear, but the Doctor felt obligated. If anything went wrong, he had to be there. Jack was counting on him.
The distant bombing had stopped, and the night went quiet. The Doctor tore his eyes off of his companion and glanced around the room he had found. He’d needed to be far enough away from Jamie so as to not distract the child. If Jamie were even just a few minutes late to his reunion with Nancy, the whole course of history would be altered. Plus, he wasn’t sure how the nanogenes would affect Jack, and a few walls and doors between him and his friend couldn’t hurt.
The Doctor swallowed, feeling bad about that last thought. But it was true, wasn’t it? That thing out there wasn't really Jack anymore. It had no individual identity, and no free will. It was a puppet of war.
As if on cue, Jack turned and started walking. He was heading towards the station, where the Chula ambulance had crashed. The Doctor nodded to himself - their past incarnations had just opened the ship, activating a signal to all the empty soldiers. He would follow Jack at a distance.
He quietly made his way through the dark room and down the staircase. Once out in the street, he stopped short. Jack was no longer walking, and was once more facing the Doctor. Gas mask eyes were staring at him, and he felt his breath catch in his throat.
What if he was wrong? Jack couldn’t die; maybe his body couldn’t be an empty vessel. Maybe his mind had remained even as his brain and body had been contorted.
And yet the Time Lord stayed rooted to the spot. Maybe Jack wasn’t looking at him. Who knew what commands the Chula ship was giving? It was a fluke that Jack had turned around to face the Doctor.
Jack took a stiff, faltering step, and then another towards him. His coat flapped about in the breeze, like a tattered flag.
“Jack?” The Doctor asked softly.
A muffled chiming sounded from all around the Doctor, and he knew that every phone on the block had just rung simultaneously. He felt nauseous as the noise continued. Jack continued his strange march towards him, and now he was raising his arm out as if to touch, to grab, to hold him.
The Doctor ran. He ran and didn’t stop until he had reached the barbed wire fence outside the station, where he put his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. Even then, the ringing still echoed in his ears.
He couldn’t shake the malaise even when, as he carefully picked his way towards the crowd of empty soldiers, he saw a flash of blonde hair above a Union Jack shirt. He didn’t allow himself a closer look. Instead he melted into the shadows and waited for Nancy’s bravery to work its magic.
~~~
The golden glow of the nanogenes faded, and Jack drew in a breath like the first one after drowning. All around him, people were looking about as if they had just woken from a dream; none of them looked the way Jack felt - like a man in the last vestiges of a night terror.
Far away someone gave a joyful shout. The voice was achingly familiar, and tears prickled at the back of Jack’s eyes. He took a step towards the voice.
“No, Jack. We need to go.” A hand grabbed Jack’s and held on painfully tight. The Doctor set off at a quick pace away from the group of people. Jack almost had to jog to keep up. They ducked through dark back streets, one after another, until they reached the blue public call box. Jack leaned against the wooden side as the Doctor unlocked the door.
Once inside, Jack hunched over and vomited.
The Doctor put his hand gently on Jack’s shoulder, but the immortal man shrugged it off violently. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted, his eyes gleaming.
The Doctor took a startled step back.
“No warning! No ‘by the way Jack, you’re going to be a zombie’! Never in a million years would I have...” Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was shaking. He wanted to hit something, someone. “I’m sorry. I need to be alone.” He didn’t look at the Doctor as he left the console room.
He ducked into the first enclosed space he found, which happened to be a supply closet crammed with a stack of chairs and several hat racks. He sat on the floor next to the chairs and closed his eyes. Despite himself, he calmed down, the hum of the TARDIS at the back of his mind.
The Doctor had been right. Jack wouldn’t have gone along if he’d known the plan. Death no longer frightened him - it hadn’t for the past hundred years or so - but there were other things that still did.
Being transformed into something unrecognizable. Being controlled, possessed. Hurting people he loved without a flicker of recognition or remorse in his mind. Hurting the Doctor.
But the Doctor was safe, and yet again so was he. Just this once, everyone lives. The manic man with the cropped hair hadn’t known how right he would be. Jack smiled and tipped his head back against the wall. He felt drained, and imagined he could sleep for a week.
The door opened and the Doctor looked in. “We’re in the vortex,” he said. “I can land us in Cardiff now, if you want.”
“Actually...” Jack trailed off. The Doctor stepped into the crowded room and quietly shut the door. Pushing aside a hat rack, he knelt down by Jack and gave his friend an encouraging smile. Jack knew he had been forgiven for his outburst, and continued. “I thought maybe I could stay here a bit longer.”
“Perfect. I was thinking we should get some ice cream. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from humans, it’s that nothing calms the nerves like ice cream.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Later, as Jack watched the nine-hundred year old alien licking at a blue moon ice cream cone, he forgave the Doctor between spoonfuls of his own rainbow sherbet. He couldn’t blame the Doctor even if he wanted to - they were similar creatures, after all, and one fear was very much like another.