Belonging: Chapter Seventeen
Author's Note: I got some of the loveliest comments ever on the last chapter. Please keep them coming - they gladden my heart :)
Title: Belonging - Chapter Seventeen
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Characters Ianto, Ten, Jack (mentions of Jack/Ianto)
Rating: This Chapter - PG-13 for innuendo (Series is rated NC-17 overall)
Spoilers: The Stolen Earth, Journey's End
Disclaimer: The BBC own it all, the little tinkers
Warnings: angst | suggestion of polyamory
Description:
Set immediately after the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.
The Torchwood team members are struggling to get back to normal after recent shattering events, when the Doctor turns up in the Torchwood Hub in the middle of the night; alone, heartbroken, guilt-ridden, and needing somewhere to belong.
I knew that I could trust him with my life. I knew, instinctively, that no matter what happened, I would risk anything, do anything for him, just because he's the Doctor.
Chapter Seventeen
Yes. Me again. Sorry.
I don't write as quickly as he does, and somebody round here needs to keep the place from falling apart, so I don't have as much spare time, either. And some of us need to sleep.
You may have noticed that I had to stop writing quite suddenly last night. The Rift monitor started having a fit - alarms, lights flashing, the whole works. I won't give away any details; Jack says this journal is no place for work matters; he says all of that stuff goes into the official Torchwood files, and if I want to rant about last night's fiasco I should enter a formal memo onto the system. Where it will just be ignored, no doubt.
Let's just say that last night there were two bodies to dispose of, and because we are rapidly running out of 'spare' corpses again, Ol' Gravedigger Jones here had to spend most of last night trying to negotiate new stock from the 'usual source'.
It's all very distasteful. Let me just tell you that if one of your loved ones should pass on, don't give your business to Sneed & Son Funeral Directors. They might have been established in 1864, but they were dodgy as hell back then, and they're even dodgier now.
And don't go to those undertakers in Splott, either. I have it on good authority that the creepy bloke called Jez who works there is doing more to the corpses than embalming them, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. I've had a look back at what I've written so far. I think I might have got a bit over-emotional in the last bit I wrote, but it has been an emotional time, recently, so I think I can be forgiven.
Where was I? Oh yes.
What Happened Next
I decided that I knew what to do to make things right for everyone. Well, I had a pretty good idea, anyway.
After Jack had told me what the Doctor had said, and about him saying no to him because of me, I know I went all quiet on him. I spent a day or so just… thinking things over. And then I decided to do something proactive.
I went to see the Doctor. And no, I didn't tell Jack I was going, which was bad of me, I suppose, given that Jack has been so honest with me recently, but I wanted to see how the land lay before I told Jack anything.
Jack and the rest of the team were out on a field mission, and I was the only one around (babysitting the Hub, on my own, AGAIN) so I took my chance. I went down to the storage room, and there it was: the TARDIS. I already knew some stuff about it, even back from when I worked at Torchwood One. I'm not the sort of person to be phased by an alien artefact, I've had plenty of experience of those, but somehow the TARDIS was different. I always feel a bit weird just being near it, and I have no idea why.
I placed my hand on the door first; I wanted to know whether it felt like ordinary wood. And it did, sort of, but a bit rough, like the paintwork had had a battering. But there was something else there. It felt sort of… fizzy under my palm. I know that's a simplistic, childish way of explaining it, but that's how it felt. Like there was a terrific power running through it, but nothing that could hurt you. It was… almost magical. And I know magic doesn't exist, but somehow being in the presence of that wonderful blue box, you could almost believe that it does.
And then… well, I didn't have a key or anything. (I wonder if I'll ever get one?) So I did the most natural thing I could think of. I knocked on the door.
And there was hardly a pause before it opened, as though the Doctor had been standing behind the door all the time, like he knew I was there, and was just waiting for me to knock. Maybe he'd been spying at me through a hidden peephole.
He stood in the doorway and stared at me. He was raised up a bit, on a step, and he's tall, so he was looking down at me slightly. I felt a bit awkward then, like a double glazing salesman.
"Um…. hi," I said. I'm pretty sure that's what I said, I haven't got such a good memory for speech and things like Jack has, so what I put might not be entirely accurate, but I'll do my best.
Anyway, there was a long pause, and then the Doctor just said 'hi' back to me. He didn't smile, but he didn't look at me like he hated me or anything. And then there was another pause. I think he was sizing me up, somehow.
"Could I come in, please," I said, at last. The Doctor took another long, intense look at me, which made me feel a bit funny. A bit… shivery. And then he took a step out of the way, so that I could go inside.
And… Jesus. I mean… wow. I knew it was bigger on the inside and all that, (which the Doctor tells me is because the inside exists in a different dimension to the outside, which sort of makes sense although I still can't pretend to understand it completely), but it wasn't just that.
As soon as I stepped inside, this incredible feeling came over me. I can't really explain it, but it's like… I wanted to grab the Doctor by his lapels and say "wherever you go, take me with you!'"
I can't really explain it; but it was as though once I was in there, I never wanted to leave. I wanted to be part of it.
I've touched hundreds of artefacts that have come from beyond the stars, and have often wondered where they came from, what the planet they originated from looks like, things like that, but I'd never really longed to be out there amongst them, not like Jack did. Like Jack still does, probably.
Not until I stepped inside that remarkable machine. It… got into my head, and I wanted it in my head, forever.
I was looking around with my mouth hanging open, like an imbecile, and the Doctor just watched me, with the corners of his mouth beginning to gently curve upwards in a small smile.
"It's…" I started to say, my mouth suddenly dry. The Doctor nodded kindly.
"Bigger on the inside," he said.
"No, I know that, I mean… I knew that already. I know… things," I babbled incoherently. "I mean, it's just… bloody hell!"
The Doctor smiled at me, then, like he'd finally decided he quite liked me after all.
"I know," he said. "Isn't it?"
I decided to get a hold of myself, then. I cleared my throat, and looked at the Doctor. I wanted to speak to him, but I found myself just staring at him for a moment, a moment that probably lasted longer than would be considered polite.
I'd not had a good look at him before. I mean… I had, of course, but only in circumstances of emotional drama. Thinking about it, I'd only ever seen the Doctor when he was distraught. Now I was seeing him while he was calm and in his own environment. And he just looked… sad. Like he was still hurting inside, but had resigned himself to it.
He was… beautiful.
Handsome, or hot, or any of those sorts of words don't really describe him. He had an inner, unearthly radiance that goes beyond explanation.
But his eyes were so, so old. I could see, just at that moment, that in those eyes of his was more history, experience and intelligence than I could ever imagine. They were… they are the eyes of a man who has known horror, pain and death on an unthinkable scale, and also more beauty, joy and wonderment than the likes of me would ever be able to comprehend.
I keep saying that the Doctor is amazing, I keep using that word, but that might well be the understatement of the century.
Jack once told me that the Doctor has the whole universe inside his head, and I could see it, just then, in his eyes. I could only ever begin to imagine what sort of burden the Doctor carries around with him. And yet, despite all of that, I could see that he has inside him the excitement and enthusiasm of a child seeing the wonders of the universe for the very first time.
The Doctor was so alien and yet he was one of the most human of beings I've ever met.
Eventually, I stopped staring at him, and I think I forced myself to look away. I probably blushed. Then I looked at him again, and he was looking at me kindly, as though he knew that I was feeling a bit out of my depth. I took a breath, and told him that I needed to talk to him, about Jack.
And he invited me to sit down on a strange little seat next to the mushroom-shaped thing in the middle of the room (console, yes, I know, shut up Jack), and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. He said Jack had brought him some more milk the day before (I wondered why we kept running out of it more quickly than we used to) and that it was the least he could do, in the circumstances.
The thought of the Doctor doing something as mundane as making a cup of tea seemed almost absurd. I politely refused, anyway.
I sat down, and the Doctor sat down next to me, sitting all prim with his hands on his lap. And then we had a nice long chat. I can't tell you word for word what we said to each other like Jack can. I don't know how Jack does it. (Well, I do. He's mentioned something about a memory procedure, which is just cheating in my opinion) but basically, I told the Doctor that I knew what had happened, and that Jack had told me everything.
And the Doctor asked me how I felt about it all. Which took me aback, because that is something Jack hadn't really done. It had all been about how he'd been feeling, and how the Doctor had been feeling.
And now it was the Doctor who'd been the only one to ask me how I felt, and it never really struck me until then.
So... yeah. Thanks, Jack.
Anyway, that made me warm to him even more, somehow.
So I told him how I felt. It seemed easier to tell him than it would have been to tell Jack. Don't you think that's strange? Considering that the whole thing was… no, not the Doctor's fault, but the Doctor coming to the Hub like he did had been a sort of catalyst for me and Jack to bring this thing to the fore.
'This thing' being Jack's… longing for the Doctor. It's always been there, before I knew him, and after he came back after his time away. Jack chose me, three times; he chose to come back to Cardiff after both his adventures with the Doctor, and he chose me again when faced with the Doctor's proposal, if you can call it that.
But every time he made that choice, every time he picked me and not the Doctor, there had always been a voice in his head asking him if he was sure he'd done the right thing. Jack had never admitted that to me, probably not even to himself, but it was there. In a way, maybe that was slightly hurtful, but on the other hand, it wasn't surprising, either.
I'd always known it was there, somehow, and now I could see that it wasn't a healthy thing. I think, subconsciously, it had always bothered me. Maybe that's why I had always been more jealous of the Doctor than of any of Jack's other little flirtations and 'encounters'. Because none of the others had meant anything to him.
Now that the Doctor had turned up, now that all of this had happened, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it had brought the whole issue to a head, and now we could begin to deal with it.
I had to think of it as a positive thing, didn't I? Or else there would never be a solution.
And my solution, or at least part of it, was for Jack to have both of us.
I suppose that might sound a bit shocking, but from what Jack tells me, in the future where he comes from, multiple relationships are nothing unusual.
Apparently, by the 51st century, the whole attitude to sex and relationships is a whole lot different. Humans were travelling through the stars by then, settling on different planets. Just like there are different creeds and races living together in different countries on Earth, in the future there were beings from different planets cohabiting, integrating, mating with each other.
There was such a mix of different sorts of life forms co-existing that the common concepts of 'straight' marriage, monogamy and having a sexual preference were rendered mostly futile and outdated.
Once I could get my head round the fact that, for instance, there are species out there, in the future, who have three genders, and that a 'normal' relationship for them would involve one of each gender in a tri-way marriage, and also that there are some beings that could not be categorised as either male or female, then I suppose I could see what Jack meant.
Which I guess also makes it easier to comprehend how Jack could have sex with a giant blob with five arms and five legs and five… of whatever else it had. Although I suspect he was lying about that. Although knowing Jack… perhaps not.
So I told the Doctor how I felt, about everything, and he listened to me, he really listened. And he nodded, and smiled, and looked sad in all the right places. And I could feel my heart thawing towards him. He stopped being a mystical alien and something I couldn't understand, and started becoming a person.
I think that apart from everything else I might have felt about the Doctor up until that point, I was probably a bit in awe of him. But once we started talking, it was as though I'd known him all my life. It was like… one minute he was a stranger, and the next... I knew that I could trust him with my life. I knew, instinctively, that no matter what happened, I would risk anything, do anything for him, just because he's the Doctor.
And that's mad, isn't it?
But if you knew the Doctor, you'd know that I'm right. Because you'd feel it too.
I'd had doubts about my 'solution', up until then. Or at least, the other part of it. I'd thought that what I was proposing to do was mostly for Jack's benefit. And for the Doctor's benefit too, I suppose. But until that moment, I didn't really think it was something I would actually want for myself.
But I did.
I told the Doctor how I felt, right up to the moment when Jack had sat me down on the sofa in the Hub and told me what the Doctor had asked him to do.
And the Doctor nodded, and looked all sort of… shamefaced. And he said that he honestly hadn't thought about the fact that Jack and I might be monogamous. He said that if I was prepared to 'put up with Jack's little ways', as he put it, then he assumed that I would be okay with Jack taking on another relationship, and that it had been naïve and ignorant of him to assume anything of the sort, and he couldn't tell me how sorry he was.
It dawned on me then. He thought that I had gone to see him in the TARDIS so that I could give him a hard time about trying to steal Jack away from me. I think he'd been sitting there patiently, waiting for me to start ranting at him. And the way he was at the time, I think he'd have just sat there and taken it. I think he thought he deserved it.
But that wasn't why I was there at all. When the Doctor stopped talking, it all went quiet. We just sat and stared at each other.
"Do you like me?" I asked him suddenly. It was a bizarre question to ask out of the blue, I suppose, and the Doctor blinked in surprise. He's cute when he blinks.
"I don't know you," he said, simply.
I nodded, feeling a little uncomfortable. It sounded like the sort of response you give someone when you don't want to hurt their feelings. But then the Doctor spoke again.
"But I'd like to get to know you," he said. And then he gave me a radiant smile.
Blimey.
So, I didn't tell him about my idea just then, but I told him that I would come to see him again, and that in the meantime I'd prefer it if he didn't tell Jack. The Doctor looked uncomfortable (about keeping it as a secret I mean, not about me coming to visit him, he seemed quite happy about that), but he agreed to what I'd said.
And... it didn't really feel like cheating. Well, it couldn't be cheating, when me and the Doctor weren't bonded, could it? Come to think of it, those Time Lords must be so pious they probably invented this whole thing so that none of them could have affairs, even if they wanted to.
So... seeing the Doctor behind Jack's back wasn't cheating. It was just a means to an end.
That's all it was... right?
To be continued...
<< Chapter One
<< Chapter Two
<< Chapter Three
<< Chapter Four
<< Chapter Five
<< Chapter Six
<< Chapter Seven
<< Chapter Eight
<< Chapter Nine
<< Chapter Ten
<< Chapter Eleven
<< Chapter Twelve
<< Chapter Thirteen
<< Chapter Fourteen
<< Chapter Fifteen
<< Chapter Sixteen
>> Chapter Eighteen
>> Chapter Nineteen
>> Chapter Twenty
>> Chapter Twenty One
>> Chapter Twenty Two
>> Chapter Twenty Three
>> Chapter Twenty Four
>> Chapter Twenty Five
>> Chapter Twenty Six
>> Chapter Twenty Seven
>> Chapter Twenty Eight
Title: Belonging - Chapter Seventeen
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Characters Ianto, Ten, Jack (mentions of Jack/Ianto)
Rating: This Chapter - PG-13 for innuendo (Series is rated NC-17 overall)
Spoilers: The Stolen Earth, Journey's End
Disclaimer: The BBC own it all, the little tinkers
Warnings: angst | suggestion of polyamory
Description:
Set immediately after the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.
The Torchwood team members are struggling to get back to normal after recent shattering events, when the Doctor turns up in the Torchwood Hub in the middle of the night; alone, heartbroken, guilt-ridden, and needing somewhere to belong.
I knew that I could trust him with my life. I knew, instinctively, that no matter what happened, I would risk anything, do anything for him, just because he's the Doctor.
Chapter Seventeen
Yes. Me again. Sorry.
I don't write as quickly as he does, and somebody round here needs to keep the place from falling apart, so I don't have as much spare time, either. And some of us need to sleep.
You may have noticed that I had to stop writing quite suddenly last night. The Rift monitor started having a fit - alarms, lights flashing, the whole works. I won't give away any details; Jack says this journal is no place for work matters; he says all of that stuff goes into the official Torchwood files, and if I want to rant about last night's fiasco I should enter a formal memo onto the system. Where it will just be ignored, no doubt.
Let's just say that last night there were two bodies to dispose of, and because we are rapidly running out of 'spare' corpses again, Ol' Gravedigger Jones here had to spend most of last night trying to negotiate new stock from the 'usual source'.
It's all very distasteful. Let me just tell you that if one of your loved ones should pass on, don't give your business to Sneed & Son Funeral Directors. They might have been established in 1864, but they were dodgy as hell back then, and they're even dodgier now.
And don't go to those undertakers in Splott, either. I have it on good authority that the creepy bloke called Jez who works there is doing more to the corpses than embalming them, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. I've had a look back at what I've written so far. I think I might have got a bit over-emotional in the last bit I wrote, but it has been an emotional time, recently, so I think I can be forgiven.
Where was I? Oh yes.
What Happened Next
I decided that I knew what to do to make things right for everyone. Well, I had a pretty good idea, anyway.
After Jack had told me what the Doctor had said, and about him saying no to him because of me, I know I went all quiet on him. I spent a day or so just… thinking things over. And then I decided to do something proactive.
I went to see the Doctor. And no, I didn't tell Jack I was going, which was bad of me, I suppose, given that Jack has been so honest with me recently, but I wanted to see how the land lay before I told Jack anything.
Jack and the rest of the team were out on a field mission, and I was the only one around (babysitting the Hub, on my own, AGAIN) so I took my chance. I went down to the storage room, and there it was: the TARDIS. I already knew some stuff about it, even back from when I worked at Torchwood One. I'm not the sort of person to be phased by an alien artefact, I've had plenty of experience of those, but somehow the TARDIS was different. I always feel a bit weird just being near it, and I have no idea why.
I placed my hand on the door first; I wanted to know whether it felt like ordinary wood. And it did, sort of, but a bit rough, like the paintwork had had a battering. But there was something else there. It felt sort of… fizzy under my palm. I know that's a simplistic, childish way of explaining it, but that's how it felt. Like there was a terrific power running through it, but nothing that could hurt you. It was… almost magical. And I know magic doesn't exist, but somehow being in the presence of that wonderful blue box, you could almost believe that it does.
And then… well, I didn't have a key or anything. (I wonder if I'll ever get one?) So I did the most natural thing I could think of. I knocked on the door.
And there was hardly a pause before it opened, as though the Doctor had been standing behind the door all the time, like he knew I was there, and was just waiting for me to knock. Maybe he'd been spying at me through a hidden peephole.
He stood in the doorway and stared at me. He was raised up a bit, on a step, and he's tall, so he was looking down at me slightly. I felt a bit awkward then, like a double glazing salesman.
"Um…. hi," I said. I'm pretty sure that's what I said, I haven't got such a good memory for speech and things like Jack has, so what I put might not be entirely accurate, but I'll do my best.
Anyway, there was a long pause, and then the Doctor just said 'hi' back to me. He didn't smile, but he didn't look at me like he hated me or anything. And then there was another pause. I think he was sizing me up, somehow.
"Could I come in, please," I said, at last. The Doctor took another long, intense look at me, which made me feel a bit funny. A bit… shivery. And then he took a step out of the way, so that I could go inside.
And… Jesus. I mean… wow. I knew it was bigger on the inside and all that, (which the Doctor tells me is because the inside exists in a different dimension to the outside, which sort of makes sense although I still can't pretend to understand it completely), but it wasn't just that.
As soon as I stepped inside, this incredible feeling came over me. I can't really explain it, but it's like… I wanted to grab the Doctor by his lapels and say "wherever you go, take me with you!'"
I can't really explain it; but it was as though once I was in there, I never wanted to leave. I wanted to be part of it.
I've touched hundreds of artefacts that have come from beyond the stars, and have often wondered where they came from, what the planet they originated from looks like, things like that, but I'd never really longed to be out there amongst them, not like Jack did. Like Jack still does, probably.
Not until I stepped inside that remarkable machine. It… got into my head, and I wanted it in my head, forever.
I was looking around with my mouth hanging open, like an imbecile, and the Doctor just watched me, with the corners of his mouth beginning to gently curve upwards in a small smile.
"It's…" I started to say, my mouth suddenly dry. The Doctor nodded kindly.
"Bigger on the inside," he said.
"No, I know that, I mean… I knew that already. I know… things," I babbled incoherently. "I mean, it's just… bloody hell!"
The Doctor smiled at me, then, like he'd finally decided he quite liked me after all.
"I know," he said. "Isn't it?"
I decided to get a hold of myself, then. I cleared my throat, and looked at the Doctor. I wanted to speak to him, but I found myself just staring at him for a moment, a moment that probably lasted longer than would be considered polite.
I'd not had a good look at him before. I mean… I had, of course, but only in circumstances of emotional drama. Thinking about it, I'd only ever seen the Doctor when he was distraught. Now I was seeing him while he was calm and in his own environment. And he just looked… sad. Like he was still hurting inside, but had resigned himself to it.
He was… beautiful.
Handsome, or hot, or any of those sorts of words don't really describe him. He had an inner, unearthly radiance that goes beyond explanation.
But his eyes were so, so old. I could see, just at that moment, that in those eyes of his was more history, experience and intelligence than I could ever imagine. They were… they are the eyes of a man who has known horror, pain and death on an unthinkable scale, and also more beauty, joy and wonderment than the likes of me would ever be able to comprehend.
I keep saying that the Doctor is amazing, I keep using that word, but that might well be the understatement of the century.
Jack once told me that the Doctor has the whole universe inside his head, and I could see it, just then, in his eyes. I could only ever begin to imagine what sort of burden the Doctor carries around with him. And yet, despite all of that, I could see that he has inside him the excitement and enthusiasm of a child seeing the wonders of the universe for the very first time.
The Doctor was so alien and yet he was one of the most human of beings I've ever met.
Eventually, I stopped staring at him, and I think I forced myself to look away. I probably blushed. Then I looked at him again, and he was looking at me kindly, as though he knew that I was feeling a bit out of my depth. I took a breath, and told him that I needed to talk to him, about Jack.
And he invited me to sit down on a strange little seat next to the mushroom-shaped thing in the middle of the room (console, yes, I know, shut up Jack), and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. He said Jack had brought him some more milk the day before (I wondered why we kept running out of it more quickly than we used to) and that it was the least he could do, in the circumstances.
The thought of the Doctor doing something as mundane as making a cup of tea seemed almost absurd. I politely refused, anyway.
I sat down, and the Doctor sat down next to me, sitting all prim with his hands on his lap. And then we had a nice long chat. I can't tell you word for word what we said to each other like Jack can. I don't know how Jack does it. (Well, I do. He's mentioned something about a memory procedure, which is just cheating in my opinion) but basically, I told the Doctor that I knew what had happened, and that Jack had told me everything.
And the Doctor asked me how I felt about it all. Which took me aback, because that is something Jack hadn't really done. It had all been about how he'd been feeling, and how the Doctor had been feeling.
And now it was the Doctor who'd been the only one to ask me how I felt, and it never really struck me until then.
So... yeah. Thanks, Jack.
Anyway, that made me warm to him even more, somehow.
So I told him how I felt. It seemed easier to tell him than it would have been to tell Jack. Don't you think that's strange? Considering that the whole thing was… no, not the Doctor's fault, but the Doctor coming to the Hub like he did had been a sort of catalyst for me and Jack to bring this thing to the fore.
'This thing' being Jack's… longing for the Doctor. It's always been there, before I knew him, and after he came back after his time away. Jack chose me, three times; he chose to come back to Cardiff after both his adventures with the Doctor, and he chose me again when faced with the Doctor's proposal, if you can call it that.
But every time he made that choice, every time he picked me and not the Doctor, there had always been a voice in his head asking him if he was sure he'd done the right thing. Jack had never admitted that to me, probably not even to himself, but it was there. In a way, maybe that was slightly hurtful, but on the other hand, it wasn't surprising, either.
I'd always known it was there, somehow, and now I could see that it wasn't a healthy thing. I think, subconsciously, it had always bothered me. Maybe that's why I had always been more jealous of the Doctor than of any of Jack's other little flirtations and 'encounters'. Because none of the others had meant anything to him.
Now that the Doctor had turned up, now that all of this had happened, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it had brought the whole issue to a head, and now we could begin to deal with it.
I had to think of it as a positive thing, didn't I? Or else there would never be a solution.
And my solution, or at least part of it, was for Jack to have both of us.
I suppose that might sound a bit shocking, but from what Jack tells me, in the future where he comes from, multiple relationships are nothing unusual.
Apparently, by the 51st century, the whole attitude to sex and relationships is a whole lot different. Humans were travelling through the stars by then, settling on different planets. Just like there are different creeds and races living together in different countries on Earth, in the future there were beings from different planets cohabiting, integrating, mating with each other.
There was such a mix of different sorts of life forms co-existing that the common concepts of 'straight' marriage, monogamy and having a sexual preference were rendered mostly futile and outdated.
Once I could get my head round the fact that, for instance, there are species out there, in the future, who have three genders, and that a 'normal' relationship for them would involve one of each gender in a tri-way marriage, and also that there are some beings that could not be categorised as either male or female, then I suppose I could see what Jack meant.
Which I guess also makes it easier to comprehend how Jack could have sex with a giant blob with five arms and five legs and five… of whatever else it had. Although I suspect he was lying about that. Although knowing Jack… perhaps not.
So I told the Doctor how I felt, about everything, and he listened to me, he really listened. And he nodded, and smiled, and looked sad in all the right places. And I could feel my heart thawing towards him. He stopped being a mystical alien and something I couldn't understand, and started becoming a person.
I think that apart from everything else I might have felt about the Doctor up until that point, I was probably a bit in awe of him. But once we started talking, it was as though I'd known him all my life. It was like… one minute he was a stranger, and the next... I knew that I could trust him with my life. I knew, instinctively, that no matter what happened, I would risk anything, do anything for him, just because he's the Doctor.
And that's mad, isn't it?
But if you knew the Doctor, you'd know that I'm right. Because you'd feel it too.
I'd had doubts about my 'solution', up until then. Or at least, the other part of it. I'd thought that what I was proposing to do was mostly for Jack's benefit. And for the Doctor's benefit too, I suppose. But until that moment, I didn't really think it was something I would actually want for myself.
But I did.
I told the Doctor how I felt, right up to the moment when Jack had sat me down on the sofa in the Hub and told me what the Doctor had asked him to do.
And the Doctor nodded, and looked all sort of… shamefaced. And he said that he honestly hadn't thought about the fact that Jack and I might be monogamous. He said that if I was prepared to 'put up with Jack's little ways', as he put it, then he assumed that I would be okay with Jack taking on another relationship, and that it had been naïve and ignorant of him to assume anything of the sort, and he couldn't tell me how sorry he was.
It dawned on me then. He thought that I had gone to see him in the TARDIS so that I could give him a hard time about trying to steal Jack away from me. I think he'd been sitting there patiently, waiting for me to start ranting at him. And the way he was at the time, I think he'd have just sat there and taken it. I think he thought he deserved it.
But that wasn't why I was there at all. When the Doctor stopped talking, it all went quiet. We just sat and stared at each other.
"Do you like me?" I asked him suddenly. It was a bizarre question to ask out of the blue, I suppose, and the Doctor blinked in surprise. He's cute when he blinks.
"I don't know you," he said, simply.
I nodded, feeling a little uncomfortable. It sounded like the sort of response you give someone when you don't want to hurt their feelings. But then the Doctor spoke again.
"But I'd like to get to know you," he said. And then he gave me a radiant smile.
Blimey.
So, I didn't tell him about my idea just then, but I told him that I would come to see him again, and that in the meantime I'd prefer it if he didn't tell Jack. The Doctor looked uncomfortable (about keeping it as a secret I mean, not about me coming to visit him, he seemed quite happy about that), but he agreed to what I'd said.
And... it didn't really feel like cheating. Well, it couldn't be cheating, when me and the Doctor weren't bonded, could it? Come to think of it, those Time Lords must be so pious they probably invented this whole thing so that none of them could have affairs, even if they wanted to.
So... seeing the Doctor behind Jack's back wasn't cheating. It was just a means to an end.
That's all it was... right?
To be continued...
<< Chapter One
<< Chapter Two
<< Chapter Three
<< Chapter Four
<< Chapter Five
<< Chapter Six
<< Chapter Seven
<< Chapter Eight
<< Chapter Nine
<< Chapter Ten
<< Chapter Eleven
<< Chapter Twelve
<< Chapter Thirteen
<< Chapter Fourteen
<< Chapter Fifteen
<< Chapter Sixteen
>> Chapter Eighteen
>> Chapter Nineteen
>> Chapter Twenty
>> Chapter Twenty One
>> Chapter Twenty Two
>> Chapter Twenty Three
>> Chapter Twenty Four
>> Chapter Twenty Five
>> Chapter Twenty Six
>> Chapter Twenty Seven
>> Chapter Twenty Eight