Fic: Get Loved, Make More, Try to Stay Alive (epilogues)
part 8
Epilogue #1: Sideways from the Middle
Martha headed straight for the console, and turned back halfway there when she realized the Doctor wasn't with her.
He was leaning against the door, with a strange, dreamy smile on his face. Martha couldn't help but smile herself as she strolled back to him.
He focused on her when she was right in front of him, but his smile only widened. "Martha Jones. Do you realize who we just met? Right here in my TARDIS?"
She'd never suspected the Doctor would get quite this sentimental about kids, even--well. "Jack's baby?"
The Doctor shook his head, "No--well, yes, but--did you hear what Jack called him?" Before Martha could say a word, the Doctor answered himself. "Indiana. Indiana Jones! We just met Indiana Jones!"
Martha took a half-step backward. "What, like the films?"
The Doctor was staring over her head, and he waved his hands in dismissal. "No, no--yes! But no--every Time Lord who comes to Earth in the late Twentieth or early Twenty-first thinks they've discovered some grand anomaly, because those movies had faded into utter obscurity by the time Jones was born. And all this time it was just Jack Harkness and his refusal to stop making cultural references to things no one around him remembers!"
"So you're saying he's going to be famous," Martha interpreted, waiting for anything more intelligible to fall out of the Doctor's mouth.
"Famous, infamous--ha! I should have known Jack was related to him--only all of his descendants are rather pointed about the Jones, and you never think of someone like him being anyone's little boy. And I shook his tiny five-year-old hand! And showed him his very first TARDIS! Indiana Jones!"
Martha nodded slowly, and gave up on the Doctor spontaneously starting to make sense. "If he's so famous, wouldn't Jack have heard of him? Is that going to be... weird?"
The Doctor hesitated for a moment, frowning, but shook his head. "I shouldn't think so. He was only really famous on Gallifrey, and only among certain circles, at that. His book was never translated out of Gallifreyan--it couldn't be, and still mean anything. I don't suppose Jack will even be able to read it." The Doctor frowned a bit harder, and then shook it off. "I'm sure Indiana will explain it to him, anyway."
"He wrote a book," Martha said, and then shook her head quickly. He was five years old; she doubted he could write his name. "He's going to write a book, in Gallifreyan."
The Doctor finally seemed to realize that she had no idea what he was talking about, and nodded quickly, walking briskly toward the console. "The most-read book written by a human on Gallifrey. It's--well, it's difficult to explain, because it was written in Gallifreyan, about Gallifreyan--about the tenses, mostly, which are ... complicated. The linguistic analysis was almost completely specious, but it was a scathing critique of the Time Lords, and also made you hurt yourself laughing. It was banned instantly, mostly on the grounds that a human couldn't possibly have written it, even though a panel of Time Lords had certified his fluency in the language years before."
"Which is how it got so widely read?"
The Doctor nodded, setting their coordinates. "You can't actually admit, past your first fifty years or so, that you want to study humans because Indiana Jones was so... so cool. But that's why a lot of us did, anyway."
Martha joined him at the console. "So... is becoming your hero's hero like becoming your own grandfather?"
"No, no--ewwwwwraaagh," the Doctor shook all over as he said it, like a dog shaking off water, wrinkling his nose and screwing up his mouth. "God, no--you've never met my grandfather, but no, decidedly not."
The Doctor twirled a dial, and the TARDIS started up.
"Mind you," he added meditatively. "If Jack weren't how he is--which he got to be because of Rose, which is to say because of my TARDIS, so because of me--Indiana wouldn't exist at all. So if you believe the stories about my great-grandmother, I suppose I might possibly in some sense be my own great-great-great-grandfather. But that's safely remote, don't you think?"
Martha rubbed her forehead--her eyebrows had gone as high as they could get, and she was going to give herself a cramp. "If you say so."
"Right," the Doctor said, as the TARDIS quieted. "Here we are, Indiana Jones's sixth birthday. Do you suppose he'd like a tour?"
Epilogue #2: Beyond the End
Ianto just sighed and set his fork down when the sound started up. It stood to reason, really. Kit had made an argument--with supporting graphs and charts--for the position that if Indiana, at twenty-one years old, could go off all over the universe in a TARDIS with a Time Lady, then she, at thirteen, could go to London with her mates. They'd said yes mostly to encourage the practical application of her maths homework.
Both trips had begun today, which meant that tonight, for possibly the first time in fifteen years, Jack and Ianto were meant to have a night alone.
Which, of course, meant that their time travelers would turn up in the middle of their nice, quiet dinner.
"Should've just set four places," Jack sighed, setting down his glass, and then--even as the extra door in the kitchen's wall appeared--he gave Ianto that eternally boyish grin. "Give them something to walk in on?"
Ianto rolled his eyes, but he also shoved his plate out of the way and climbed half onto the table. Jack reached out for him, one hand in Ianto's hair to draw him into a kiss, while the other hand tugged up his shirt.
"Oh, yes, make it interesting," Ianto murmured against Jack's mouth, and Jack jerked him forward, into a proper kiss, just as the extra door slammed open.
"Hi, Dad," Indy said. "Got your elbow in the peas, Dad."
Ianto shifted backward gingerly--it was, as ever, more difficult to get out of any situation that seemed like a good idea when Jack suggested it. Jack stood, spotting him to his feet, as Jenny followed Indy through the door.
"Ooh, you made peas!" She beamed at them both--her idea of what constituted a treat had never quite recovered from her early upbringing--and politely darted round the table to kiss each of them on the cheek in greeting as she swiped the serving bowl off the table. "Hi Uncle, hi Captain."
"Jennifer," Jack said dryly. "Indiana."
Indy grinned and dropped into his usual seat at the table, waving Jenny toward Kit's. "Miss me yet?"
"It's been three hours," Ianto said, settling back into his own chair. "We've managed to cope."
Indy raised his eyebrows toward Jenny, who smiled, swallowed, and said, "Whoops?"
Indy looked around. "Kit's still off in Town, then? I brought her some presents."
"You brought her rocks," Jenny corrected.
"Interesting rocks," Indy insisted. "Kit likes rocks."
"You can leave them in her room," Jack said. "Or hang on to them and come back in three days, and we'll just act surprised to see you."
Indy rolled his eyes and stole Jack's glass of water. After he'd taken a sip, he said, "I'm actually here on a very important errand. I have an oath to discharge."
Jack's eyebrows went up. Indy didn't look over at Ianto at all, and Ianto propped his chin on his hand, covering his mouth with his fingers, and kept his eyes on Jack.
"I have come to tell you that Dad sends you his love," Indy said solemnly.
Jack just frowned, and finally did look at Ianto, who said, "Well, I did. And do."
Indy looked, too, and added apologetically, "It's been three days, but I didn't think there was any great rush."
"Three days?" Ianto wracked his memory--he'd known it would be sometime this year, but he hadn't thought it would be so soon. "Didn't I tell you to leave Cardiff?"
Indy looked sheepish. "You said we'd better cut our visit short."
"We were going to stay a fortnight," Jenny added helpfully.
Ianto watched Jack watching them all, but he didn't seem prepared to say anything yet.
"I've been meaning to thank you for about fourteen years, now," Ianto said, "for the advance warning about your seventh birthday."
Indy grinned. "I liked the idea that you were only that calm about it because you knew in advance. Took some of the sting out of it."
Ianto smiled and nudged the bread basket closer to Indiana.
"You were in Cardiff," Jack said finally, his voice pointedly even. "Before Ianto came back to us?"
Indy nodded. "And in the spirit of learning from other people's mistakes, I swear I will never, ever hit on anyone I haven't been introduced to yet."
Jack raised his eyebrows at Ianto, and Ianto finally gave in and started laughing, shaking his head. "That was you. That was all you."
"I would n--"
Ianto raised his eyebrow right back and Jack sighed. "All right, I would--I suppose you retconned me, after?"
"For your own good," Ianto agreed.
Jack took his water glass back from Indy, drained it, and then said to Jenny, "You know, we expected someone to be the adult on this trip..."
"Sorry," Jenny replied, without taking her eyes off the plate of chicken. "I was going to keep an eye on the scanner and tell him if you were getting close, but then there was footie on, and I'm still trying to figure out the rules."
"It's really not hard," Ianto said, Indiana's voice echoing him with slightly more exasperation.
Jenny shrugged, and Ianto added alone, "Your TARDIS does have a kitchen, doesn't it?"
Jenny did look up at him then, smiling sheepishly. "Yeah, Dad keeps saying he's going to show me how to set it up properly, but right now it insists on a six-course meal every time I try to go in there. It's a bit--"
Jenny looked past him, then, toward the door to the outside. The smile she reserved for her dad was already on her face a couple of seconds before the rest of them could hear it.
"Speak of the devil," Jack muttered, standing again, as the sound of the TARDIS out in the garden intensified. "How many do you think he's got with him now? Should we set more places, or just call for take--"
Jack was walking toward the cupboards, and glanced out the window as he came even with it. Ianto saw him go white and freeze, and then he pivoted toward the door as it opened and yelled, "Myfanwy Jones!"
Ianto could hear the panic under the outrage. Jack would have brought out the Dread Middle Name if he were sanguine enough to be genuinely angry--Kit's full given name was a tirade all by itself, when Jack got going. Ianto was on his feet as the Doctor came through, pushing Kit ahead of him with a firm grip on her shoulder. The Doctor looked grim, but mostly in the way where he was trying not to laugh; whatever the crisis had been, it was well over by now. Whenever now was, for the Doctor and Kit.
Ianto reached for Kit gently, tipping her chin up to look her in the face. Jack had obviously appointed him good cop, and she'd find babying more shaming than being shouted at, with this audience. "Circuit, sweetheart, what did you get yourself into?"
She wouldn't meet his eyes for more than a second, but she did, and she only looked tired, not really hurt or traumatized. "There were these crystals, and I thought they were just--why would they have them in a museum if they weren't safe?"
Her voice was wobbling toward the end. Ianto gave in and gathered her into a hug, and she buried her face against his chest and clung to him as the Doctor semi-explained, "Crystals that glowed and talked to her and did not, in the end, have her best interests at heart."
Ianto looked past him to Jack, who was standing with his hands braced on the counter and his head down.
"Thank you," Ianto said quietly, as Jack was obviously a bit beyond words at the moment. "Billy and Cora?"
"Left them there, with Billy's mum. Kit got the worst of it--the others were all right once they'd settled down, and the property damage was quite minimal. Alaine did say they'd be a bit more careful about respecting the museum exhibits, mind."
Ianto nodded, kissed the top of Kit's head, and then detached her and turned her toward Jack, who'd pulled himself together and was coming over for his own hug.
The Doctor looked past Ianto just as Jenny said, "Hi, Dad!"
He got that smile on his face, the same one he always had when Ianto saw him with Jenny, like he was surprised and thrilled all over again that she even existed.
"Jenny," he said, "Indy."
Indy seemed to take that as some sort of permission, because he fired off a question in rapid Gallifreyan, evidently beyond the power of two TARDISes to translate. The door opened again, and Ianny and Bruce and some bright-eyed kid Ianto hadn't met yet all tumbled in.
Ianny beamed at Ianto with her mother's gap-toothed smile and nearly knocked him down with a hug, and Jack was assuring Kit that this happened to everyone, really, at least once. The Doctor muttered something about having no one but himself to blame, but then pulled out a notebook and pen and started drawing a diagram for Indy, and Bruce was hanging over the back of Jenny's chair and introducing her to the new addition, who seemed more interested to make the acquaintance of the peas.
Ianto felt the Doctor's own smile on his face, looking around the crowded kitchen at them all. He pushed the door shut and towed Ianny over to look at the takeaway menus.
Epilogue #1: Sideways from the Middle
Martha headed straight for the console, and turned back halfway there when she realized the Doctor wasn't with her.
He was leaning against the door, with a strange, dreamy smile on his face. Martha couldn't help but smile herself as she strolled back to him.
He focused on her when she was right in front of him, but his smile only widened. "Martha Jones. Do you realize who we just met? Right here in my TARDIS?"
She'd never suspected the Doctor would get quite this sentimental about kids, even--well. "Jack's baby?"
The Doctor shook his head, "No--well, yes, but--did you hear what Jack called him?" Before Martha could say a word, the Doctor answered himself. "Indiana. Indiana Jones! We just met Indiana Jones!"
Martha took a half-step backward. "What, like the films?"
The Doctor was staring over her head, and he waved his hands in dismissal. "No, no--yes! But no--every Time Lord who comes to Earth in the late Twentieth or early Twenty-first thinks they've discovered some grand anomaly, because those movies had faded into utter obscurity by the time Jones was born. And all this time it was just Jack Harkness and his refusal to stop making cultural references to things no one around him remembers!"
"So you're saying he's going to be famous," Martha interpreted, waiting for anything more intelligible to fall out of the Doctor's mouth.
"Famous, infamous--ha! I should have known Jack was related to him--only all of his descendants are rather pointed about the Jones, and you never think of someone like him being anyone's little boy. And I shook his tiny five-year-old hand! And showed him his very first TARDIS! Indiana Jones!"
Martha nodded slowly, and gave up on the Doctor spontaneously starting to make sense. "If he's so famous, wouldn't Jack have heard of him? Is that going to be... weird?"
The Doctor hesitated for a moment, frowning, but shook his head. "I shouldn't think so. He was only really famous on Gallifrey, and only among certain circles, at that. His book was never translated out of Gallifreyan--it couldn't be, and still mean anything. I don't suppose Jack will even be able to read it." The Doctor frowned a bit harder, and then shook it off. "I'm sure Indiana will explain it to him, anyway."
"He wrote a book," Martha said, and then shook her head quickly. He was five years old; she doubted he could write his name. "He's going to write a book, in Gallifreyan."
The Doctor finally seemed to realize that she had no idea what he was talking about, and nodded quickly, walking briskly toward the console. "The most-read book written by a human on Gallifrey. It's--well, it's difficult to explain, because it was written in Gallifreyan, about Gallifreyan--about the tenses, mostly, which are ... complicated. The linguistic analysis was almost completely specious, but it was a scathing critique of the Time Lords, and also made you hurt yourself laughing. It was banned instantly, mostly on the grounds that a human couldn't possibly have written it, even though a panel of Time Lords had certified his fluency in the language years before."
"Which is how it got so widely read?"
The Doctor nodded, setting their coordinates. "You can't actually admit, past your first fifty years or so, that you want to study humans because Indiana Jones was so... so cool. But that's why a lot of us did, anyway."
Martha joined him at the console. "So... is becoming your hero's hero like becoming your own grandfather?"
"No, no--ewwwwwraaagh," the Doctor shook all over as he said it, like a dog shaking off water, wrinkling his nose and screwing up his mouth. "God, no--you've never met my grandfather, but no, decidedly not."
The Doctor twirled a dial, and the TARDIS started up.
"Mind you," he added meditatively. "If Jack weren't how he is--which he got to be because of Rose, which is to say because of my TARDIS, so because of me--Indiana wouldn't exist at all. So if you believe the stories about my great-grandmother, I suppose I might possibly in some sense be my own great-great-great-grandfather. But that's safely remote, don't you think?"
Martha rubbed her forehead--her eyebrows had gone as high as they could get, and she was going to give herself a cramp. "If you say so."
"Right," the Doctor said, as the TARDIS quieted. "Here we are, Indiana Jones's sixth birthday. Do you suppose he'd like a tour?"
Epilogue #2: Beyond the End
Ianto just sighed and set his fork down when the sound started up. It stood to reason, really. Kit had made an argument--with supporting graphs and charts--for the position that if Indiana, at twenty-one years old, could go off all over the universe in a TARDIS with a Time Lady, then she, at thirteen, could go to London with her mates. They'd said yes mostly to encourage the practical application of her maths homework.
Both trips had begun today, which meant that tonight, for possibly the first time in fifteen years, Jack and Ianto were meant to have a night alone.
Which, of course, meant that their time travelers would turn up in the middle of their nice, quiet dinner.
"Should've just set four places," Jack sighed, setting down his glass, and then--even as the extra door in the kitchen's wall appeared--he gave Ianto that eternally boyish grin. "Give them something to walk in on?"
Ianto rolled his eyes, but he also shoved his plate out of the way and climbed half onto the table. Jack reached out for him, one hand in Ianto's hair to draw him into a kiss, while the other hand tugged up his shirt.
"Oh, yes, make it interesting," Ianto murmured against Jack's mouth, and Jack jerked him forward, into a proper kiss, just as the extra door slammed open.
"Hi, Dad," Indy said. "Got your elbow in the peas, Dad."
Ianto shifted backward gingerly--it was, as ever, more difficult to get out of any situation that seemed like a good idea when Jack suggested it. Jack stood, spotting him to his feet, as Jenny followed Indy through the door.
"Ooh, you made peas!" She beamed at them both--her idea of what constituted a treat had never quite recovered from her early upbringing--and politely darted round the table to kiss each of them on the cheek in greeting as she swiped the serving bowl off the table. "Hi Uncle, hi Captain."
"Jennifer," Jack said dryly. "Indiana."
Indy grinned and dropped into his usual seat at the table, waving Jenny toward Kit's. "Miss me yet?"
"It's been three hours," Ianto said, settling back into his own chair. "We've managed to cope."
Indy raised his eyebrows toward Jenny, who smiled, swallowed, and said, "Whoops?"
Indy looked around. "Kit's still off in Town, then? I brought her some presents."
"You brought her rocks," Jenny corrected.
"Interesting rocks," Indy insisted. "Kit likes rocks."
"You can leave them in her room," Jack said. "Or hang on to them and come back in three days, and we'll just act surprised to see you."
Indy rolled his eyes and stole Jack's glass of water. After he'd taken a sip, he said, "I'm actually here on a very important errand. I have an oath to discharge."
Jack's eyebrows went up. Indy didn't look over at Ianto at all, and Ianto propped his chin on his hand, covering his mouth with his fingers, and kept his eyes on Jack.
"I have come to tell you that Dad sends you his love," Indy said solemnly.
Jack just frowned, and finally did look at Ianto, who said, "Well, I did. And do."
Indy looked, too, and added apologetically, "It's been three days, but I didn't think there was any great rush."
"Three days?" Ianto wracked his memory--he'd known it would be sometime this year, but he hadn't thought it would be so soon. "Didn't I tell you to leave Cardiff?"
Indy looked sheepish. "You said we'd better cut our visit short."
"We were going to stay a fortnight," Jenny added helpfully.
Ianto watched Jack watching them all, but he didn't seem prepared to say anything yet.
"I've been meaning to thank you for about fourteen years, now," Ianto said, "for the advance warning about your seventh birthday."
Indy grinned. "I liked the idea that you were only that calm about it because you knew in advance. Took some of the sting out of it."
Ianto smiled and nudged the bread basket closer to Indiana.
"You were in Cardiff," Jack said finally, his voice pointedly even. "Before Ianto came back to us?"
Indy nodded. "And in the spirit of learning from other people's mistakes, I swear I will never, ever hit on anyone I haven't been introduced to yet."
Jack raised his eyebrows at Ianto, and Ianto finally gave in and started laughing, shaking his head. "That was you. That was all you."
"I would n--"
Ianto raised his eyebrow right back and Jack sighed. "All right, I would--I suppose you retconned me, after?"
"For your own good," Ianto agreed.
Jack took his water glass back from Indy, drained it, and then said to Jenny, "You know, we expected someone to be the adult on this trip..."
"Sorry," Jenny replied, without taking her eyes off the plate of chicken. "I was going to keep an eye on the scanner and tell him if you were getting close, but then there was footie on, and I'm still trying to figure out the rules."
"It's really not hard," Ianto said, Indiana's voice echoing him with slightly more exasperation.
Jenny shrugged, and Ianto added alone, "Your TARDIS does have a kitchen, doesn't it?"
Jenny did look up at him then, smiling sheepishly. "Yeah, Dad keeps saying he's going to show me how to set it up properly, but right now it insists on a six-course meal every time I try to go in there. It's a bit--"
Jenny looked past him, then, toward the door to the outside. The smile she reserved for her dad was already on her face a couple of seconds before the rest of them could hear it.
"Speak of the devil," Jack muttered, standing again, as the sound of the TARDIS out in the garden intensified. "How many do you think he's got with him now? Should we set more places, or just call for take--"
Jack was walking toward the cupboards, and glanced out the window as he came even with it. Ianto saw him go white and freeze, and then he pivoted toward the door as it opened and yelled, "Myfanwy Jones!"
Ianto could hear the panic under the outrage. Jack would have brought out the Dread Middle Name if he were sanguine enough to be genuinely angry--Kit's full given name was a tirade all by itself, when Jack got going. Ianto was on his feet as the Doctor came through, pushing Kit ahead of him with a firm grip on her shoulder. The Doctor looked grim, but mostly in the way where he was trying not to laugh; whatever the crisis had been, it was well over by now. Whenever now was, for the Doctor and Kit.
Ianto reached for Kit gently, tipping her chin up to look her in the face. Jack had obviously appointed him good cop, and she'd find babying more shaming than being shouted at, with this audience. "Circuit, sweetheart, what did you get yourself into?"
She wouldn't meet his eyes for more than a second, but she did, and she only looked tired, not really hurt or traumatized. "There were these crystals, and I thought they were just--why would they have them in a museum if they weren't safe?"
Her voice was wobbling toward the end. Ianto gave in and gathered her into a hug, and she buried her face against his chest and clung to him as the Doctor semi-explained, "Crystals that glowed and talked to her and did not, in the end, have her best interests at heart."
Ianto looked past him to Jack, who was standing with his hands braced on the counter and his head down.
"Thank you," Ianto said quietly, as Jack was obviously a bit beyond words at the moment. "Billy and Cora?"
"Left them there, with Billy's mum. Kit got the worst of it--the others were all right once they'd settled down, and the property damage was quite minimal. Alaine did say they'd be a bit more careful about respecting the museum exhibits, mind."
Ianto nodded, kissed the top of Kit's head, and then detached her and turned her toward Jack, who'd pulled himself together and was coming over for his own hug.
The Doctor looked past Ianto just as Jenny said, "Hi, Dad!"
He got that smile on his face, the same one he always had when Ianto saw him with Jenny, like he was surprised and thrilled all over again that she even existed.
"Jenny," he said, "Indy."
Indy seemed to take that as some sort of permission, because he fired off a question in rapid Gallifreyan, evidently beyond the power of two TARDISes to translate. The door opened again, and Ianny and Bruce and some bright-eyed kid Ianto hadn't met yet all tumbled in.
Ianny beamed at Ianto with her mother's gap-toothed smile and nearly knocked him down with a hug, and Jack was assuring Kit that this happened to everyone, really, at least once. The Doctor muttered something about having no one but himself to blame, but then pulled out a notebook and pen and started drawing a diagram for Indy, and Bruce was hanging over the back of Jenny's chair and introducing her to the new addition, who seemed more interested to make the acquaintance of the peas.
Ianto felt the Doctor's own smile on his face, looking around the crowded kitchen at them all. He pushed the door shut and towed Ianny over to look at the takeaway menus.