rubychan05: Define Me (Ten/Jack, Eleven/Jack) [PG-13]
Title: Define Me
Author: rubychan05
Challenge: Plague
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: All New Who. Mentions of TW, but nothing much.
Warnings: An experiment in writing style, so sorry for any failings!
Summary: The Doctor defines Jack.
This came about when I decided to actually look up the dictionary definition for Plague, and it inspired me to tackle all the other meanings other than sickness!
Define Me
plague (plāg)
n.
1. A widespread affliction or calamity, especially one seen as divine retribution.
2. A sudden destructive influx or injurious outbreak
3. A cause of annoyance; a nuisance
4. a. A highly infectious, usually fatal, epidemic disease; a pestilence.
b. A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is transmitted
primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A widespread affliction or calamity, especially one seen as divine retribution
The Daleks call you the Oncoming Storm.
Others call you the Lonely God.
Do you think I don’t know? I’ve heard so much since you left me, Doctor. The rumours, the gossip, the myths that trickle through the grapevine and out of the Rift. You hid yourself from me as best you could, and the irony is that I know far more about you now that you’re gone than I ever did when I was with you.
Are you still running? Are you still reaching out for whatever hand you can find to hold, scared of the dark like a little boy?
You whisk away women because you want to show them the world, because it means you have to stand up and protect them. They give you a reason to stand tall, to hold back the fear that eats away inside you until you can’t breathe.
That’s why we fellow men have to beg, sneak and cheat to fly with you, because we’re everything you don’t want to think about. With us you can let your guard down, and that scares you more than any of the monsters out there. You don’t want to be protected, but you can’t hold yourself together, either.
The first time I shared your bed you told me I was your first male companion in over a hundred years, and the first human male for nearly double that. I thought that meant something, then. I let myself spread out into space I didn’t have, tried to be your equal.
Is that why you let me be your soldier, Doctor? Did you send me out to do battle with the Daleks as God once sent his warrior angels to do battle with the demons? Lucifer, filled with pride, led a revolution against God and was cast out of Heaven in punishment. I stepped over your invisible boundaries and encouraged Rose to do the same…you sent me out to lay my life down for you and sent her away, your own two fallen angels.
She returned as your equal, brimming with the power of Time, and you forgave. I became the abomination, the epitome of Wrongness, and you left me to suffer amongst the ash of my enemies’ corpses and the bodies of my allies.
They call you the Lonely God. They call me the Devil in disguise.
Is this your divine retribution for daring to stand on the same high step as a Time Lord? You left me on a station plagued with death and hopelessness, and though I repented you did not return.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A sudden destructive influx or injurious outbreak
Blood control.
One third of the population are out there standing on their roofs, and there’s not a thing we can do to stop it. Word is that Torchwood One are gearing up to shoot the alien ship down, and we’re to sit tight, prepare ourselves for a fight if they fail.
Not that we’ll be much good to them. It’s only me and Suzie gearing up, going through the weapons and cataloguing the ammo. Owen’s on the roof and Tosh won’t leave him. He may be a prick but he’s a good hearted prick, and if we lose him to whatever’s doing this then I will personally rip out the leader’s heart, no matter how many deaths it takes to get close enough.
You’re out there somewhere. I just know it. You have a knack for crashing into the middle of these sort of things, and if I know you you’re up there right now, trying to persuade the aliens to back down and leave.
If you take too long they’ll shoot the ship down, and you’ll die in agony and flames. There won’t be enough of you left to regenerate by the time you burn up entering the atmosphere.
I don’t know whether to laugh or weep at the idea. I thought I loved you once, but it’s been nearly 137 years to the day since you condemned me to walk the slow path and I’ve put all that behind me now.
They always did say it’s a thin line between love and hate, but I think you stranding me in the future more than justifies me crossing that line and moving on until I can barely see it anymore. They have a TV show here with a quote like that…”The line is just a dot to you!”. It’s just a stupid sitcom, but I think Friends sums it up quite nicely.
Suzie and I watch the monitors as the ship explodes in a burst of furious light, only mere moments before Tosh comes back inside and forces a pale Owen to sit down and have some coffee laced with brandy. It’s all I need to know that you’re alright - if Torchwood One had shot you down before you worked your magic then I’m willing to bet all those people would have jumped anyway - and I can’t hold back the smile that crosses my lips in relief.
Days later I find the hand, half buried in a rubbish dump just outside of London. It twitches feebly when I hold it, wriggles when I put in the jar, and it makes me wonder if you can feel my phantom fingers upon your own. I know it’s yours - there’s just something about it that screams Time Lord at me - and against my will it gives me hope that I can find you one day.
I lock away the dirty thoughts begging me to experiment, and smile mysteriously when my team asks me why I’m keeping a severed hand on my desk. Who knows, maybe it will encourage them to hand their paperwork in on time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A cause of annoyance; a nuisance
You used to roll your eyes and chuckle at my jokes, take the time to explain parts of TARDIS circuitry that I just couldn’t understand. I felt like you actually wanted me around you, in your company, in your space. Rose once called me your backup guy, and you didn’t deny it.
Now, your lip curls when you talk to me, like I’m a pest that you can’t quite get rid of, the dog next door that keeps following you around no matter how many times you aim a kick at it. You smile at Martha reassuringly, then make some crack about not knowing whether I’d freeze to death like you and she would. You rub my immortality in my face like it’s a joke, as if I did this to myself, and for the first time I understand how Mickey felt whenever he was with you and Rose.
The third wheel. The unwanted follower. The plague that just won’t go away.
I hugged you back then, when you told me Rose was alive. Wrapped my arms around you and pulled you into an embrace you could not escape. And though you laughed and hugged me back you were thinking of someone else, taking comfort in the only person to carry her mark like a brand. I felt the tension that slowly built in you, the way you held yourself stiff and formal as you let me go afterwards.
What did I ever do to deserve your scorn like this? You call me Wrong and say it’s hard to look at me, but how does that justify the way you’re treating me like dirt now? Even Mickey didn’t receive this derision, and you could hardly stand him at times.
Maybe the only thing that held us together was Rose, after all. Maybe I’m reaching for something beyond my grasp, something I’ll never hold onto again.
You bark orders at me like I’m nothing more than your slave, put me down in front of Martha. And despite it all I still look at you and see the big eared man in a leather jacket who gave me hope for a better life all those years ago, can’t quite shake the feeling that if I just keep holding on you’ll somehow change your mind and decide I’m worthy enough for you again.
If we get through this in one piece will it change anything? Will you reach back for me if we put things right? Or will you leave me behind once again, abandon me to the wreckage of whatever’s left?
I’ll still find you. I’m the bad penny that keeps turning up, the shadow that never goes away.
Get used to it. If it takes me another 150 years I’m going to make you see the man behind the immortal again.
Whatever it takes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A highly infectious, usually fatal, epidemic disease; a pestilence
It’s nearly ten years to the day since I last saw your face.
Martha made a habit of dropping in to visit us at the Hub at least once a year, three or four times if she could wing it. At least, she did before she vanished off the face of the Earth, according to U.N.I.T records. They’ve been searching for her body almost a year now, desperate to either give her an honourable burial or find out what happened to her.
I know, but I’m not telling. The only thing she ever asked of me was not to tell them where she was going, and I intend to keep that promise - even if it still hurts that you didn’t invite me along too.
I know I told you I had responsibilities, but that doesn’t mean you can’t visit me once in a while, maybe ask me along for the odd trip every now and then. Martha was nearly silent when she told me that you’d asked her to go with you again, voice quiet as she described how you almost begged. I laughed and told her to go, that it didn’t matter, and lost myself in Ianto that night instead. I got on with my life.
And then you go and screw it all up again by turning up when I least expected you.
One trip, you say, eyes guarded. Martha’s been on at you, so you’re offering me a return ticket to wherever, whenever. It makes me sure more than ever that your previous offer after the Year That Never Was really was just a courtesy after all, but I still nod my acceptance, step into the TARDIS after you and try not to feel guilty about the piles of paperwork left heaped on my desk for Ianto to file later.
At least I left a note this time - they’ll know where I am when they come back to find the Hub empty and me AWOL.
Martha’s hug nearly makes up for the chill coming off you as you ask where I’d like to go, so it’s with a smile that’s nearly genuine that I request the Boeshane Peninsula, 51st century. You look shocked, hands frozen over the console buttons, and in the end it’s me who has to key in the coordinates as best I can, trying to remember everything you once taught me about the TARDIS.
We arrive with a bit of a bump, but for once it’s the exact date requested; three years after the invasion. I gaze upon the burnt wreckage that was once my home and see the horror in your eyes, see the moment it all clicks for you and you match history up with the present. I don’t want your pity - I came here to pay my respects, not show you the war that took everything from me and make you feel sorry for me.
Dad’s headstone still stands among the hundreds of hurriedly dug graves, though his sand goggles have long since blown away from their resting place on the rock. Beside him, another headstone marks the empty grave of Gray, the only way I was able to help my mother deal with the loss. She kept on searching until I made her accept that he was gone, wouldn’t rest until we ‘laid him to sleep’.
And now she sleeps too, on Gray’s other side, in a grave planted with lavender.
After that invasion, everything went wrong for us. No one wanted to trade with us anymore, so we had to become totally self-sufficient. Food and medicine became scarce, and when disease spread among us all we could do was bury the dead and surround them with flowers to ward off the sickness.
Plague swept through us like an unstoppable wave and took my mother away with it. Took nearly everyone I cared about, nearly everyone who cared about me. The rest of the country called it the Boeshane Blight, as if we were some damn worthless plant, withering away to nothing before we rotted in shallow graves.
It became legendary on this planet, a warning of what could happen if invasion occurred again. There’s no way you haven’t heard of it during your travels, and in some ways that’s a relief. I played a role nearly all my life, slid into the boots of a Time Agent and let that be the face and attitude I let everyone see.
I didn’t become a Time Agent to see the universe, or get the awestruck respect that came with the job; I became a Time Agent so that I could run away from it all, get out of the place that would serve as my prison until I died. And now you can see, now you know why I mentioned my past even less than you.
A slender hand takes mine, squeezing in reassurance, and I can’t help but wish it were yours, despite the pain you put me through, despite where we are. I claim to hate you as much as I look up to you, but if you looked me in the eye and told me you wanted me right now I would just bend over and let you take me like the desperate wretch I am, let you desecrate my family’s graves with what’s left of my shattered heart.
I squeeze Martha’s hand back and rip a button off my greatcoat, burying it among Mum’s lavender. Avery Vosper died a long time ago, and it’s fitting that he should be laid to rest with his family. I don’t bother with a headstone to carve his name onto; it’s been many moons since anyone called him by that name, and it can be allowed to fade from memory, never to be spoken aloud again.
Jack Harkness is all that’s left now. And as I trek back to the TARDIS with Martha’s hand in mine, your gaze burning into my back, I can’t help but wonder whether Avery Vosper would have been enough for you. Whether you’d have rescued him from a backwater planet barely bigger than the mother planet of Earth if you’d met him.
I was young and naïve, my innocence still there, and if only you’d have taken my hand I would have been your Rose in a second.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is transmitted primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms
I’m lying facedown in a pool of stagnant water when the hand touches my back, and I feel the powerful coughs that wrack my body as I sit up, shivering as my lungs forcibly expel the water I swallowed. The stranger crouches down beside me, looks at me reassuringly as he pulls the jewelled dagger from my back, and as he turns piercing blue eyes on mine I just know.
How many regenerations has it been since I saw you last? It’s been nearly 215 years for me, whilst for you it could have been only a day, or a thousand years. The body’s changed - you look completely different to both of the men I knew you as now - but the eyes stay the same, sharp and clear and otherworldly. The eyes that haunt my dreams at night.
You look at me pityingly, your face etched with pain, and I just know what I will see when I look around. If I turn my head just right I can already see the limp body of the partner I took with me for the mission, the raised lumps and bruises just there in my peripheral vision.
I failed, yet again, and I know exactly how much that has cost the planet. They came through the Rift; Fraxians, a race that took their pleasure in exterminating other races for the sheer thrill of it. They didn’t care about conquering new land, or gaining resources…they just wanted to wipe us out, and if that meant going on a suicide mission than all the better for them.
I couldn’t stop them opening the flasks. I couldn’t stop them releasing what they told us were improved Yersinia pestis, couldn’t stop them inflicting a Black Death a hundred times more lethal than its predecessor on us. There will be survivors - my own future proves it - but the toll will be high. Too high.
I take the hand you offer me, let you guide me into the TARDIS and seat me on the console room sofa. You’ve redecorated again, I notice detachedly, but it still feels more like home than anything else ever has done, and the soft hum of her engines comforts me.
“I’m sorry, Jack.” You tell me, blonde hair flopping into your eyes as you rub my back consolingly. “I’m so sorry - if I’d known, I would have come…I would have helped.”
I don’t answer, my mind still caught up somewhere back there, with the corpses of a world nearly destroyed. You frown, lips trembling, and the hand on my back moves to rest against my neck, thumb stroking gently over my pulse point.
“Forgive me.” you beg, and I don’t know what you’re apologising for anymore, there are so many wounds between us. “Tell me what I can do to make you forgive me.”
Your lips are soft and slack with shock when I kiss you, your body tight with tension. Your hands rise to push me away as I reach for your belt, and I bury my face in your neck, relish the gasp you give when I nip pale flesh.
“Please,” I whisper, letting my desperation bleed through into every syllable, every sound. “I can’t…I need…”
You’re shaking as you let me push you back to lie on the sofa, your eyes shut tight against the sight of me as I shift down, bend over your lap.
I wonder who you think about as I wrap my lips around you, but don’t care as long as it’s my name that escapes your mouth in the end.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Afterwards, I slump to the floor, kneel with my head bowed as if in prayer, waiting for the moment you recover enough to hate me for what I’ve done and abandon me again. I don’t apologise; whatever the consequences, I won’t take back what I did. I’ve waited too long.
I freeze as you shift restlessly, hear your ragged breathing as your gaze makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Then a hand curls round the back of my head, fingers tangling themselves in strands of hair, and I find myself tilted back to lock lips in an upside down kiss that would have put the snog in that old Spiderman film to shame.
It’s taken so long to get here, and yet I can count your influences on my life like footprints in the sand, one by one.
You define me, Doctor, and you always will.
Author: rubychan05
Challenge: Plague
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: All New Who. Mentions of TW, but nothing much.
Warnings: An experiment in writing style, so sorry for any failings!
Summary: The Doctor defines Jack.
This came about when I decided to actually look up the dictionary definition for Plague, and it inspired me to tackle all the other meanings other than sickness!
Define Me
plague (plāg)
n.
1. A widespread affliction or calamity, especially one seen as divine retribution.
2. A sudden destructive influx or injurious outbreak
3. A cause of annoyance; a nuisance
4. a. A highly infectious, usually fatal, epidemic disease; a pestilence.
b. A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is transmitted
primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A widespread affliction or calamity, especially one seen as divine retribution
The Daleks call you the Oncoming Storm.
Others call you the Lonely God.
Do you think I don’t know? I’ve heard so much since you left me, Doctor. The rumours, the gossip, the myths that trickle through the grapevine and out of the Rift. You hid yourself from me as best you could, and the irony is that I know far more about you now that you’re gone than I ever did when I was with you.
Are you still running? Are you still reaching out for whatever hand you can find to hold, scared of the dark like a little boy?
You whisk away women because you want to show them the world, because it means you have to stand up and protect them. They give you a reason to stand tall, to hold back the fear that eats away inside you until you can’t breathe.
That’s why we fellow men have to beg, sneak and cheat to fly with you, because we’re everything you don’t want to think about. With us you can let your guard down, and that scares you more than any of the monsters out there. You don’t want to be protected, but you can’t hold yourself together, either.
The first time I shared your bed you told me I was your first male companion in over a hundred years, and the first human male for nearly double that. I thought that meant something, then. I let myself spread out into space I didn’t have, tried to be your equal.
Is that why you let me be your soldier, Doctor? Did you send me out to do battle with the Daleks as God once sent his warrior angels to do battle with the demons? Lucifer, filled with pride, led a revolution against God and was cast out of Heaven in punishment. I stepped over your invisible boundaries and encouraged Rose to do the same…you sent me out to lay my life down for you and sent her away, your own two fallen angels.
She returned as your equal, brimming with the power of Time, and you forgave. I became the abomination, the epitome of Wrongness, and you left me to suffer amongst the ash of my enemies’ corpses and the bodies of my allies.
They call you the Lonely God. They call me the Devil in disguise.
Is this your divine retribution for daring to stand on the same high step as a Time Lord? You left me on a station plagued with death and hopelessness, and though I repented you did not return.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A sudden destructive influx or injurious outbreak
Blood control.
One third of the population are out there standing on their roofs, and there’s not a thing we can do to stop it. Word is that Torchwood One are gearing up to shoot the alien ship down, and we’re to sit tight, prepare ourselves for a fight if they fail.
Not that we’ll be much good to them. It’s only me and Suzie gearing up, going through the weapons and cataloguing the ammo. Owen’s on the roof and Tosh won’t leave him. He may be a prick but he’s a good hearted prick, and if we lose him to whatever’s doing this then I will personally rip out the leader’s heart, no matter how many deaths it takes to get close enough.
You’re out there somewhere. I just know it. You have a knack for crashing into the middle of these sort of things, and if I know you you’re up there right now, trying to persuade the aliens to back down and leave.
If you take too long they’ll shoot the ship down, and you’ll die in agony and flames. There won’t be enough of you left to regenerate by the time you burn up entering the atmosphere.
I don’t know whether to laugh or weep at the idea. I thought I loved you once, but it’s been nearly 137 years to the day since you condemned me to walk the slow path and I’ve put all that behind me now.
They always did say it’s a thin line between love and hate, but I think you stranding me in the future more than justifies me crossing that line and moving on until I can barely see it anymore. They have a TV show here with a quote like that…”The line is just a dot to you!”. It’s just a stupid sitcom, but I think Friends sums it up quite nicely.
Suzie and I watch the monitors as the ship explodes in a burst of furious light, only mere moments before Tosh comes back inside and forces a pale Owen to sit down and have some coffee laced with brandy. It’s all I need to know that you’re alright - if Torchwood One had shot you down before you worked your magic then I’m willing to bet all those people would have jumped anyway - and I can’t hold back the smile that crosses my lips in relief.
Days later I find the hand, half buried in a rubbish dump just outside of London. It twitches feebly when I hold it, wriggles when I put in the jar, and it makes me wonder if you can feel my phantom fingers upon your own. I know it’s yours - there’s just something about it that screams Time Lord at me - and against my will it gives me hope that I can find you one day.
I lock away the dirty thoughts begging me to experiment, and smile mysteriously when my team asks me why I’m keeping a severed hand on my desk. Who knows, maybe it will encourage them to hand their paperwork in on time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A cause of annoyance; a nuisance
You used to roll your eyes and chuckle at my jokes, take the time to explain parts of TARDIS circuitry that I just couldn’t understand. I felt like you actually wanted me around you, in your company, in your space. Rose once called me your backup guy, and you didn’t deny it.
Now, your lip curls when you talk to me, like I’m a pest that you can’t quite get rid of, the dog next door that keeps following you around no matter how many times you aim a kick at it. You smile at Martha reassuringly, then make some crack about not knowing whether I’d freeze to death like you and she would. You rub my immortality in my face like it’s a joke, as if I did this to myself, and for the first time I understand how Mickey felt whenever he was with you and Rose.
The third wheel. The unwanted follower. The plague that just won’t go away.
I hugged you back then, when you told me Rose was alive. Wrapped my arms around you and pulled you into an embrace you could not escape. And though you laughed and hugged me back you were thinking of someone else, taking comfort in the only person to carry her mark like a brand. I felt the tension that slowly built in you, the way you held yourself stiff and formal as you let me go afterwards.
What did I ever do to deserve your scorn like this? You call me Wrong and say it’s hard to look at me, but how does that justify the way you’re treating me like dirt now? Even Mickey didn’t receive this derision, and you could hardly stand him at times.
Maybe the only thing that held us together was Rose, after all. Maybe I’m reaching for something beyond my grasp, something I’ll never hold onto again.
You bark orders at me like I’m nothing more than your slave, put me down in front of Martha. And despite it all I still look at you and see the big eared man in a leather jacket who gave me hope for a better life all those years ago, can’t quite shake the feeling that if I just keep holding on you’ll somehow change your mind and decide I’m worthy enough for you again.
If we get through this in one piece will it change anything? Will you reach back for me if we put things right? Or will you leave me behind once again, abandon me to the wreckage of whatever’s left?
I’ll still find you. I’m the bad penny that keeps turning up, the shadow that never goes away.
Get used to it. If it takes me another 150 years I’m going to make you see the man behind the immortal again.
Whatever it takes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A highly infectious, usually fatal, epidemic disease; a pestilence
It’s nearly ten years to the day since I last saw your face.
Martha made a habit of dropping in to visit us at the Hub at least once a year, three or four times if she could wing it. At least, she did before she vanished off the face of the Earth, according to U.N.I.T records. They’ve been searching for her body almost a year now, desperate to either give her an honourable burial or find out what happened to her.
I know, but I’m not telling. The only thing she ever asked of me was not to tell them where she was going, and I intend to keep that promise - even if it still hurts that you didn’t invite me along too.
I know I told you I had responsibilities, but that doesn’t mean you can’t visit me once in a while, maybe ask me along for the odd trip every now and then. Martha was nearly silent when she told me that you’d asked her to go with you again, voice quiet as she described how you almost begged. I laughed and told her to go, that it didn’t matter, and lost myself in Ianto that night instead. I got on with my life.
And then you go and screw it all up again by turning up when I least expected you.
One trip, you say, eyes guarded. Martha’s been on at you, so you’re offering me a return ticket to wherever, whenever. It makes me sure more than ever that your previous offer after the Year That Never Was really was just a courtesy after all, but I still nod my acceptance, step into the TARDIS after you and try not to feel guilty about the piles of paperwork left heaped on my desk for Ianto to file later.
At least I left a note this time - they’ll know where I am when they come back to find the Hub empty and me AWOL.
Martha’s hug nearly makes up for the chill coming off you as you ask where I’d like to go, so it’s with a smile that’s nearly genuine that I request the Boeshane Peninsula, 51st century. You look shocked, hands frozen over the console buttons, and in the end it’s me who has to key in the coordinates as best I can, trying to remember everything you once taught me about the TARDIS.
We arrive with a bit of a bump, but for once it’s the exact date requested; three years after the invasion. I gaze upon the burnt wreckage that was once my home and see the horror in your eyes, see the moment it all clicks for you and you match history up with the present. I don’t want your pity - I came here to pay my respects, not show you the war that took everything from me and make you feel sorry for me.
Dad’s headstone still stands among the hundreds of hurriedly dug graves, though his sand goggles have long since blown away from their resting place on the rock. Beside him, another headstone marks the empty grave of Gray, the only way I was able to help my mother deal with the loss. She kept on searching until I made her accept that he was gone, wouldn’t rest until we ‘laid him to sleep’.
And now she sleeps too, on Gray’s other side, in a grave planted with lavender.
After that invasion, everything went wrong for us. No one wanted to trade with us anymore, so we had to become totally self-sufficient. Food and medicine became scarce, and when disease spread among us all we could do was bury the dead and surround them with flowers to ward off the sickness.
Plague swept through us like an unstoppable wave and took my mother away with it. Took nearly everyone I cared about, nearly everyone who cared about me. The rest of the country called it the Boeshane Blight, as if we were some damn worthless plant, withering away to nothing before we rotted in shallow graves.
It became legendary on this planet, a warning of what could happen if invasion occurred again. There’s no way you haven’t heard of it during your travels, and in some ways that’s a relief. I played a role nearly all my life, slid into the boots of a Time Agent and let that be the face and attitude I let everyone see.
I didn’t become a Time Agent to see the universe, or get the awestruck respect that came with the job; I became a Time Agent so that I could run away from it all, get out of the place that would serve as my prison until I died. And now you can see, now you know why I mentioned my past even less than you.
A slender hand takes mine, squeezing in reassurance, and I can’t help but wish it were yours, despite the pain you put me through, despite where we are. I claim to hate you as much as I look up to you, but if you looked me in the eye and told me you wanted me right now I would just bend over and let you take me like the desperate wretch I am, let you desecrate my family’s graves with what’s left of my shattered heart.
I squeeze Martha’s hand back and rip a button off my greatcoat, burying it among Mum’s lavender. Avery Vosper died a long time ago, and it’s fitting that he should be laid to rest with his family. I don’t bother with a headstone to carve his name onto; it’s been many moons since anyone called him by that name, and it can be allowed to fade from memory, never to be spoken aloud again.
Jack Harkness is all that’s left now. And as I trek back to the TARDIS with Martha’s hand in mine, your gaze burning into my back, I can’t help but wonder whether Avery Vosper would have been enough for you. Whether you’d have rescued him from a backwater planet barely bigger than the mother planet of Earth if you’d met him.
I was young and naïve, my innocence still there, and if only you’d have taken my hand I would have been your Rose in a second.
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A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is transmitted primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms
I’m lying facedown in a pool of stagnant water when the hand touches my back, and I feel the powerful coughs that wrack my body as I sit up, shivering as my lungs forcibly expel the water I swallowed. The stranger crouches down beside me, looks at me reassuringly as he pulls the jewelled dagger from my back, and as he turns piercing blue eyes on mine I just know.
How many regenerations has it been since I saw you last? It’s been nearly 215 years for me, whilst for you it could have been only a day, or a thousand years. The body’s changed - you look completely different to both of the men I knew you as now - but the eyes stay the same, sharp and clear and otherworldly. The eyes that haunt my dreams at night.
You look at me pityingly, your face etched with pain, and I just know what I will see when I look around. If I turn my head just right I can already see the limp body of the partner I took with me for the mission, the raised lumps and bruises just there in my peripheral vision.
I failed, yet again, and I know exactly how much that has cost the planet. They came through the Rift; Fraxians, a race that took their pleasure in exterminating other races for the sheer thrill of it. They didn’t care about conquering new land, or gaining resources…they just wanted to wipe us out, and if that meant going on a suicide mission than all the better for them.
I couldn’t stop them opening the flasks. I couldn’t stop them releasing what they told us were improved Yersinia pestis, couldn’t stop them inflicting a Black Death a hundred times more lethal than its predecessor on us. There will be survivors - my own future proves it - but the toll will be high. Too high.
I take the hand you offer me, let you guide me into the TARDIS and seat me on the console room sofa. You’ve redecorated again, I notice detachedly, but it still feels more like home than anything else ever has done, and the soft hum of her engines comforts me.
“I’m sorry, Jack.” You tell me, blonde hair flopping into your eyes as you rub my back consolingly. “I’m so sorry - if I’d known, I would have come…I would have helped.”
I don’t answer, my mind still caught up somewhere back there, with the corpses of a world nearly destroyed. You frown, lips trembling, and the hand on my back moves to rest against my neck, thumb stroking gently over my pulse point.
“Forgive me.” you beg, and I don’t know what you’re apologising for anymore, there are so many wounds between us. “Tell me what I can do to make you forgive me.”
Your lips are soft and slack with shock when I kiss you, your body tight with tension. Your hands rise to push me away as I reach for your belt, and I bury my face in your neck, relish the gasp you give when I nip pale flesh.
“Please,” I whisper, letting my desperation bleed through into every syllable, every sound. “I can’t…I need…”
You’re shaking as you let me push you back to lie on the sofa, your eyes shut tight against the sight of me as I shift down, bend over your lap.
I wonder who you think about as I wrap my lips around you, but don’t care as long as it’s my name that escapes your mouth in the end.
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Afterwards, I slump to the floor, kneel with my head bowed as if in prayer, waiting for the moment you recover enough to hate me for what I’ve done and abandon me again. I don’t apologise; whatever the consequences, I won’t take back what I did. I’ve waited too long.
I freeze as you shift restlessly, hear your ragged breathing as your gaze makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Then a hand curls round the back of my head, fingers tangling themselves in strands of hair, and I find myself tilted back to lock lips in an upside down kiss that would have put the snog in that old Spiderman film to shame.
It’s taken so long to get here, and yet I can count your influences on my life like footprints in the sand, one by one.
You define me, Doctor, and you always will.