Fic: Gifts from yesterday
Title: Gifts from yesterday
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose, Jack
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: If ever there was anyone in need of hope, it was the Doctor at that moment. For even though the Doctor wasn’t human, Jack knew a thing or two about what kept him going. Now that Rose was gone, what did he have to hold onto? How did he manage through that horrible year from Hell?
Word count: 3,089
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em. “Not nobody, not nohow…”
A/N: The requested sequel to Touché d’Artagnan, and prompted by challenge 29 at then_theres_us (Poetry-prompts under the cut).
Timeline: Starts with TW post-Exit Wounds and then jumps to the time during the audiobook The Story Of Martha & DW pre-Last Of The Time Lords, aboard the Valiant during The Year That Never Was. I’ve avoided exact dates due to the impossibility to find any two timelines for either show that concur. So-research and timing be damned!
Prompts:
13. If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
15. I fear. She kisses close, to shut the open gate of hunger, heavy-footed as history perched on her chest. Empty spaces.
Jack sat at his desk in Torchwood and poured himself another scotch. He shifted the heavy crystal double old fashioned in his hands, listening to the ice clinking against the glass. It either sounded hollow or too cheery. He couldn’t decide.
It’s quiet in here. Too quiet.
With Owen and Tosh dead and Gwen at home and Ianto gone to wherever it was that he went lately, it was only him left: The Lone Sentry, Immortal Defender of the Earth.
It would always be like this, wouldn’t it? Isn’t this what he had to look forward to-being alone, outlasting everybody-forever?
His chest tightened as he held up the glass.
“To absent friends,” Jack toasted thickly to no one in particular and tossed the liquid fire down his throat, burning a path to his heart-which he thought was either AWOL or on vacation. Or, maybe this would wake it up? He doubted it. After all the times he’d died, he was beginning to wonder if that quad-chambered lump of muscle was still there-and if he even needed it anymore. Or maybe life would be better if he couldn’t feel things, or at least feel the good things more keenly than the bad? He was convinced that after everything, he could only feel two emotional states: Lust and guilt, but lately the guilt was overtaking his hunger for anything else. So maybe it’s just shame, now?
Great. An endless lifetime of remorse… What a thing to look forward to. He grinned, ruefully. When did he become so morose?
He thought about them, the missing and the dead, those whom he’d buried in the crypts downstairs (all too recently) and those who had passed through his fingers over the years. He thought of those who left him before their time, those who left him out of time, and those who were now somewhen else.
He thought of the Doctor and Rose and felt that clenching feeling in his chest again.
“Damn,” he muttered. “Out of scotch!”
He quickly looked around his studied mess of an office to find the other decanter. Out of luck, he pulled open his right bottom drawer in his desk, hoping Ianto hadn’t already found his emergency stash.
“Bingo,” he purred as he wrapped his hand around the friendly, comforting coolness of the glass bottle, and yanked it from its hiding place. He was gonna get good and sauced tonight…
Rooting around for the corkscrew in his top drawer, he noticed an ancient photo album. A photo album whose cracked pages contained vignette reproductions of alien art from a debauched party in 1890s Bavaria-and also two photos of a half-naked blonde girl in Victorian garb fencing another half-naked brunette. They’d only just found it days before at a hockshop that contained one very dead alien bloke and several alien artifacts and trinkets. While they had taken the whole lot of it back to Torchwood for processing, Jack had withheld the photo album from inventory for the very simple reason that it held sentimental value for him.
He’d been to that party. It’d been a damn good party. Moreover, Rose’d been half-naked in those pictures. Yes, siree-a good party, indeed…
He missed those days so much.
Wish I’d never met you, Doctor! I was much better off as a coward.
He always was a lousy liar.
While he’d lived an interminably long life-longer even than the Doctor’s-when he looked back, his best days were the days he spent with the Doctor and Rose Tyler. He thought of those sad, old, decrepit movie stars who signed autographs on photos of themselves from days so long ago you could hardly recognize that the person in the photo was the same as the one who stared out of the wrinkly, old body sitting in front of you now! He’d always felt sorry for those poor buggers who’d been forced to eternally relive moments from their past like living fossils in a museum. Those poor bastards who were frozen 30-40+ years in their pasts, stunted and held prisoners in a time the public found comfort with.
He understood them better than he cared to admit.
Perhaps if he’d known that those times traveling with the Doctor would have gone by so quickly he might have enjoyed them or appreciated them more? He doubted it. He didn’t know how that would have been possible, as he’d taken every opportunity to squeeze every morsel of fun out of each and every moment with them. He couldn’t have gotten any more out of it if he’d tried.
But if only he’d known at the time that he was just some bit actor called in for a few guest roles before the show was cancelled… Because the Game Station had changed everything. If he’d led a life with an ordinary life expectancy, he would have been perfectly happy to look back fondly at that time and be at peace with it-like some high school football star or something. It was only now-with eternity stretching out in front of him that made that time so fleeting and painful.
Still, he wouldn’t have given it up for anything.
Rose… You are worth fighting for.
He’d meant every word of that. Rose was unlike anyone he’d ever met in his long life. She was as rare as she was compassionate-or perhaps rare because she was so compassionate? He wasn’t sure. The only thing he knew was that she’d remained the only woman he’d ever loved that he’d never possessed... save Gwen, maybe. After all, he’d known from the moment he’d failed to cut in that night, that the only person who’d ever get to dance with Rose Tyler would be the Doctor. He never stood a chance and he’d known it. He’d never even tried. Not seriously at least, or certainly not sober… or while the Doctor was in the room. He loved her anyway. It was impossible not to.
Yes, she was worth fighting for.
Jack wondered if the Doctor felt as disheartened as he did, now that half his team was gone. Now that Rose was sealed off in her parallel universe, what kept the Doctor going if he didn’t have her to fight for?
He thought of The Year That Never Was and how utterly hopeless that must have seemed for the Doctor, kept in chains and forced into subservience by the Master. Jack wasn’t sure which the Doctor would find more difficult to bear, being imprisoned inside a weak and ancient body or remaining stationary and silent?
If ever there was anyone in need of hope, it was the Doctor at that moment. For even though the Doctor wasn’t human, Jack knew a thing or two about what kept him going. Now that Rose was gone, what did he have to hold onto? How did he manage through that horrible year from Hell? And if the Doctor needed hope, then what did Jack need now as he mourned the loss of more Torchwood team members? Who was going to give it to him?
Jack stood up and grabbed his coat before he even had time to think things through. Flipping open his vortex manipulator he set his coordinates for 58.2 North, 10.2 East, during The Year That Never Was. He’d gotten the blasted thing to work again-he thought-but if it only had one trip in it, he knew exactly where to go.
The last thing he did before pressing the button was pocket the photo album.
For there was someone he knew who needed it more than him, and for once, he knew exactly where to find him…
****
Jack slammed against the steel wall of the Valiant with a jarring clang and a headache to match. He wrenched his neck, swearing to himself that no matter how long he might live, he would never totally get used to cheap teleportation.
He was relieved to discover his passageway miraculously free of pesky UCF Soldiers, whose flimsy tracheas and dead bodies might arouse more suspicion than he needed. There was also the obvious concern that if he should do anything colossally stupid, Martha’s family or the Doctor might pay the price. Finally, he had the whole Disturbing The Timeline Thing to think about, which wasn’t helping his headache any.
But at least he’d gotten his coordinates correct. If there was one thing he’d learned in his year of being chained up in the aft of the ship in his cell, it was the overall layout of the ship, and by his calculations, he’d placed himself exactly right. Now all he had to do was get into the bridge to get to the Doctor, which, as memory served, should be right through these doors here…
Jack heard the screams though the doors and began to wonder if his had really been a good idea.
“LET IT BURN!!!!” screamed the insanely gleeful voice of the Master.
He could hear the muffled sobbing and whimpering of a small group of people inside.
“You evil bastard! All those people!”
Jack heard the crisp smack of the Master hitting Francine Jones across the mouth. “Ooooh! Look what you did! You ruined my man-i-cure!”
“You get your hands off my wife, you crackpot!”
The Master laughed. “Now, Clive, don’t make jokes. She’s not your wife-she’s your EX-wife. And you know flattery won’t get you anywhere with me! However, your tasty daughter, Tish here, could get plenty far if she’d only be a little friendlier…. Ooch!”
SMACK.
More sobbing.
With adrenaline and rage rising in him, Jack wondered how any of them had survived that awful year.
“You miserable people have ruined my evening’s entertainment, which I so generously invited you to share with me… Get these ingrates out of my sight! And no dinner for the women! You might have a little less fight in you with a little less food in you… I hate feisty women… Take them to their cells!”
Jack ducked behind the doors as they swung open. The guards dragged the Jones Family down the hall and out of sight as the Master continued his prattle on the other side of the doors.
“It’s you-you’re the one who likes the feisty ones! You and your precious Earth women-Oh, don’t keep looking at me like that, you know I hate it… Fine. Be that way-GO TO YOUR ROOM! I need more popcorn. I can’t enjoy a good show without popcorn. I’ll get us some popcorn, shall I? Then perhaps you’ll be in a better mood.”
Once again the doors swung open and the Master sauntered off down the hall towards the kitchens that were located mid-ship. It took every ounce of self-control not to sidle up behind him and strangle the life out of the bloodthirsty puny alien Caligula-but he knew he would soon meet his end and every evil he’d wrought would be reversed.
Jack only had a few minutes, but it was more than enough time for what he needed to do. So instead of snuffing the ex-Prime Minister, he pushed the doors open and walked into the bridge.
He stared at the images on the screens. Even though he knew the events of this day would be erased from time and history, it was still tough to see: The burning of Japan. Huge plumes of fire devoured the islands. The entire country was a massive inferno. Martha’s travels had led her to Honshu and she had started a revolt at the Master’s guidance factories at the Koban Plant and uncovered the Drast attempting to harvest the Earth’s resources right under the Master’s nose.
The Master hadn’t just been angry, he’d been genocidal.
Jack forced himself to look away, but what he saw when he looked away from the screens made his heart ache just as much, if not more: A shoddy makeshift, hay-strewn tent in the far corner of the room that the Master forced the Doctor to live in.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jack registered the irony. He’d just left Torchwood doubting his heart was still there. But it was only now that he felt it officially leave him, seeing the hunched, wizened old shape of his precious Doctor-his pinstriped suit baggy around his painfully undernourished frame, sitting mute and helpless in his wheelchair. He was blankly staring out of the window before him, the weight of humanity on his alarmingly emaciated shoulders.
The gasp that left Jack’s throat before he could stop it caused the Doctor to slowly turn around. His beautiful brown eyes were clouded with age and despair, and also (Jack could tell) disapproval.
“You’re lucky the Master was too distracted to notice the tang in the atmosphere from your vortex jump,” he said with effort, staring evenly at him.
“Good to see you too, Doctor…”
“Jack… you shouldn’t be here.”
“Well, technically, I’m not here, I’m still chained up in the aft of the ship eating cold mashed swede-“
“You know what I mean,” he interrupted.
“Yeah, I do… But I was thinking about you-what you have to endure this year and I thought you should know… That it works. You and Martha-all of us-we pull it off.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened slightly.
“So, I don’t want you to worry-if you are worrying.” He put a hand up, “And, I’m not going to tell you anything else except that all of this,” he wiped a hand at the TV screens showing the devastation of Japan, “goes away. It goes back to normal.”
The Doctor uttered a heavy sigh.
“I also thought you could do with seeing this.” Jack pulled out the tattered photo album, flipped to Rose’s photograph and handed it to him. “Quite a day that was, wasn’t it, old man?”
He watched as the Doctor’s breath hitched for a moment. “Rose,” he whispered. Impulsively, the Doctor reached a finger out and touched the image in the photo. It was so intimate, so uncharacteristically honest that Jack looked away. In all the years he’d known him, the Doctor had never done more to confess his feelings for Rose Tyler to someone else than in that one moment.
Jack decided he’d been right to come. And it looked like he’d come just in time.
“I thought you might need a little reminder, Doctor, y’know? A reason to keep going? We all do sometimes-even us impossible ones.”
The Doctor closed his eyes for a few seconds and slowly took a breath, and then raised his unfathomable eyes to Jack. They warmed gradually and Jack noticed a ghost of a smile begin to play at the corner of his lips. He absently wondered how long it had been since the poor man had truly felt happy.
“Thanks,” said the Doctor with effort, closing the book and handing it back to him. Jack nodded and tucked it back into his coat pocket.
“Yeah, well, I was having a pretty crap day, so I decided to come and find somebody who was just a little bit worse off’n me.” Jack tried to play it off, but when he finished he noticed that the Doctor had never looked away from him.
“You’re a good man, Jack,” he said quietly.
Jack shook his head. “Naw, I’m really not, y’know.”
“…And you’re still a lousy liar.”
Jack laughed uncomfortably and made a move to leave. “Well, best be going. I don’t fancy being caught by His Barkingness and getting chained up with myself… Again. Remind me someday to tell you about that one… So! I’m off like a prom dress, then!” He spun on one heel and then after a beat, spun back, leaned over and placed his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “And, I’m sorry old friend, but it’s gonna get much worse before it gets better.”
The Doctor nodded, his jaw set tight.
“Don’t be a stranger,” said Jack as he bent down, kissing the Doctor on his wrinkled forehead. Then stepping back, Jack saluted the feeble old man hunched in his wheelchair, who weakly returned the salute, a wan, thin smile at his lips.
****
That night, the Doctor dreamt of her.
It had been ages since he’d last slept.
He was alone and terrified. Flames leapt around him, annihilating landscape and melting the clothing off his skin. He could hear the unbearable, bloodcurdling shrieks of his people thundering in his ears as the planet tore into pieces. Not even his tears could obliterate the horrific visions as he was forced to watch lidless and without relief. He screamed wretchedly, clawing at the floor, trying to twist himself away from the unspeakable massacre-anything-than have to continue to watch the nightmare unfold.
For he’d already seen it. He’d ordered it, after all.
But being forced to watch it all over again made his blood boil and his soul howl in the frigid wasteland of his torment. For there could be no atonement for his atrocity, no act of contrition that would humanize his despicable brutality and no punishment that could ever purify his soul. Nothing he could do would ever make things right, and there were no secret words or spells that could ever bring them back.
I was there at the fall of Arcadia. Someday I might even come to terms with that…
And yet, as soon as he thought he couldn’t take any more, Rose came to him, encased in a white light, her hair blazing and golden. She came striding through the inferno, banishing the flames, kissing away his fears and soothing his burns, healing him-loving him, forgiving him. Her kisses drew the poison of his sin out of him, empting him, and closing the door on his wailing hunger for absolution.
She made mercy look so simple, really.
His golden angel of clemency held him close, drying his tears. She whispered to him:
The Time war ends…
When he awoke, he wore her devotion like a protective flak jacket. He knew that now no matter what the Master did now, he could endure it.
My Doctor. Protected from the false God…
****
It wouldn’t be until a few years later that the Doctor would return the gesture-giving Jack hope at the moment he needed it most, personified in the form of one thoroughly scrumptious sailor named Alonzo. For, looking up from the bottom of his drink, running from his own fear and shame while hiding out in an extraterrestrial bar, the Doctor saluted him and said goodbye…
After everything, it’d meant so much.
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose, Jack
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: If ever there was anyone in need of hope, it was the Doctor at that moment. For even though the Doctor wasn’t human, Jack knew a thing or two about what kept him going. Now that Rose was gone, what did he have to hold onto? How did he manage through that horrible year from Hell?
Word count: 3,089
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em. “Not nobody, not nohow…”
A/N: The requested sequel to Touché d’Artagnan, and prompted by challenge 29 at then_theres_us (Poetry-prompts under the cut).
Timeline: Starts with TW post-Exit Wounds and then jumps to the time during the audiobook The Story Of Martha & DW pre-Last Of The Time Lords, aboard the Valiant during The Year That Never Was. I’ve avoided exact dates due to the impossibility to find any two timelines for either show that concur. So-research and timing be damned!
Prompts:
13. If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
15. I fear. She kisses close, to shut the open gate of hunger, heavy-footed as history perched on her chest. Empty spaces.
Jack sat at his desk in Torchwood and poured himself another scotch. He shifted the heavy crystal double old fashioned in his hands, listening to the ice clinking against the glass. It either sounded hollow or too cheery. He couldn’t decide.
It’s quiet in here. Too quiet.
With Owen and Tosh dead and Gwen at home and Ianto gone to wherever it was that he went lately, it was only him left: The Lone Sentry, Immortal Defender of the Earth.
It would always be like this, wouldn’t it? Isn’t this what he had to look forward to-being alone, outlasting everybody-forever?
His chest tightened as he held up the glass.
“To absent friends,” Jack toasted thickly to no one in particular and tossed the liquid fire down his throat, burning a path to his heart-which he thought was either AWOL or on vacation. Or, maybe this would wake it up? He doubted it. After all the times he’d died, he was beginning to wonder if that quad-chambered lump of muscle was still there-and if he even needed it anymore. Or maybe life would be better if he couldn’t feel things, or at least feel the good things more keenly than the bad? He was convinced that after everything, he could only feel two emotional states: Lust and guilt, but lately the guilt was overtaking his hunger for anything else. So maybe it’s just shame, now?
Great. An endless lifetime of remorse… What a thing to look forward to. He grinned, ruefully. When did he become so morose?
He thought about them, the missing and the dead, those whom he’d buried in the crypts downstairs (all too recently) and those who had passed through his fingers over the years. He thought of those who left him before their time, those who left him out of time, and those who were now somewhen else.
He thought of the Doctor and Rose and felt that clenching feeling in his chest again.
“Damn,” he muttered. “Out of scotch!”
He quickly looked around his studied mess of an office to find the other decanter. Out of luck, he pulled open his right bottom drawer in his desk, hoping Ianto hadn’t already found his emergency stash.
“Bingo,” he purred as he wrapped his hand around the friendly, comforting coolness of the glass bottle, and yanked it from its hiding place. He was gonna get good and sauced tonight…
Rooting around for the corkscrew in his top drawer, he noticed an ancient photo album. A photo album whose cracked pages contained vignette reproductions of alien art from a debauched party in 1890s Bavaria-and also two photos of a half-naked blonde girl in Victorian garb fencing another half-naked brunette. They’d only just found it days before at a hockshop that contained one very dead alien bloke and several alien artifacts and trinkets. While they had taken the whole lot of it back to Torchwood for processing, Jack had withheld the photo album from inventory for the very simple reason that it held sentimental value for him.
He’d been to that party. It’d been a damn good party. Moreover, Rose’d been half-naked in those pictures. Yes, siree-a good party, indeed…
He missed those days so much.
Wish I’d never met you, Doctor! I was much better off as a coward.
He always was a lousy liar.
While he’d lived an interminably long life-longer even than the Doctor’s-when he looked back, his best days were the days he spent with the Doctor and Rose Tyler. He thought of those sad, old, decrepit movie stars who signed autographs on photos of themselves from days so long ago you could hardly recognize that the person in the photo was the same as the one who stared out of the wrinkly, old body sitting in front of you now! He’d always felt sorry for those poor buggers who’d been forced to eternally relive moments from their past like living fossils in a museum. Those poor bastards who were frozen 30-40+ years in their pasts, stunted and held prisoners in a time the public found comfort with.
He understood them better than he cared to admit.
Perhaps if he’d known that those times traveling with the Doctor would have gone by so quickly he might have enjoyed them or appreciated them more? He doubted it. He didn’t know how that would have been possible, as he’d taken every opportunity to squeeze every morsel of fun out of each and every moment with them. He couldn’t have gotten any more out of it if he’d tried.
But if only he’d known at the time that he was just some bit actor called in for a few guest roles before the show was cancelled… Because the Game Station had changed everything. If he’d led a life with an ordinary life expectancy, he would have been perfectly happy to look back fondly at that time and be at peace with it-like some high school football star or something. It was only now-with eternity stretching out in front of him that made that time so fleeting and painful.
Still, he wouldn’t have given it up for anything.
Rose… You are worth fighting for.
He’d meant every word of that. Rose was unlike anyone he’d ever met in his long life. She was as rare as she was compassionate-or perhaps rare because she was so compassionate? He wasn’t sure. The only thing he knew was that she’d remained the only woman he’d ever loved that he’d never possessed... save Gwen, maybe. After all, he’d known from the moment he’d failed to cut in that night, that the only person who’d ever get to dance with Rose Tyler would be the Doctor. He never stood a chance and he’d known it. He’d never even tried. Not seriously at least, or certainly not sober… or while the Doctor was in the room. He loved her anyway. It was impossible not to.
Yes, she was worth fighting for.
Jack wondered if the Doctor felt as disheartened as he did, now that half his team was gone. Now that Rose was sealed off in her parallel universe, what kept the Doctor going if he didn’t have her to fight for?
He thought of The Year That Never Was and how utterly hopeless that must have seemed for the Doctor, kept in chains and forced into subservience by the Master. Jack wasn’t sure which the Doctor would find more difficult to bear, being imprisoned inside a weak and ancient body or remaining stationary and silent?
If ever there was anyone in need of hope, it was the Doctor at that moment. For even though the Doctor wasn’t human, Jack knew a thing or two about what kept him going. Now that Rose was gone, what did he have to hold onto? How did he manage through that horrible year from Hell? And if the Doctor needed hope, then what did Jack need now as he mourned the loss of more Torchwood team members? Who was going to give it to him?
Jack stood up and grabbed his coat before he even had time to think things through. Flipping open his vortex manipulator he set his coordinates for 58.2 North, 10.2 East, during The Year That Never Was. He’d gotten the blasted thing to work again-he thought-but if it only had one trip in it, he knew exactly where to go.
The last thing he did before pressing the button was pocket the photo album.
For there was someone he knew who needed it more than him, and for once, he knew exactly where to find him…
****
Jack slammed against the steel wall of the Valiant with a jarring clang and a headache to match. He wrenched his neck, swearing to himself that no matter how long he might live, he would never totally get used to cheap teleportation.
He was relieved to discover his passageway miraculously free of pesky UCF Soldiers, whose flimsy tracheas and dead bodies might arouse more suspicion than he needed. There was also the obvious concern that if he should do anything colossally stupid, Martha’s family or the Doctor might pay the price. Finally, he had the whole Disturbing The Timeline Thing to think about, which wasn’t helping his headache any.
But at least he’d gotten his coordinates correct. If there was one thing he’d learned in his year of being chained up in the aft of the ship in his cell, it was the overall layout of the ship, and by his calculations, he’d placed himself exactly right. Now all he had to do was get into the bridge to get to the Doctor, which, as memory served, should be right through these doors here…
Jack heard the screams though the doors and began to wonder if his had really been a good idea.
“LET IT BURN!!!!” screamed the insanely gleeful voice of the Master.
He could hear the muffled sobbing and whimpering of a small group of people inside.
“You evil bastard! All those people!”
Jack heard the crisp smack of the Master hitting Francine Jones across the mouth. “Ooooh! Look what you did! You ruined my man-i-cure!”
“You get your hands off my wife, you crackpot!”
The Master laughed. “Now, Clive, don’t make jokes. She’s not your wife-she’s your EX-wife. And you know flattery won’t get you anywhere with me! However, your tasty daughter, Tish here, could get plenty far if she’d only be a little friendlier…. Ooch!”
SMACK.
More sobbing.
With adrenaline and rage rising in him, Jack wondered how any of them had survived that awful year.
“You miserable people have ruined my evening’s entertainment, which I so generously invited you to share with me… Get these ingrates out of my sight! And no dinner for the women! You might have a little less fight in you with a little less food in you… I hate feisty women… Take them to their cells!”
Jack ducked behind the doors as they swung open. The guards dragged the Jones Family down the hall and out of sight as the Master continued his prattle on the other side of the doors.
“It’s you-you’re the one who likes the feisty ones! You and your precious Earth women-Oh, don’t keep looking at me like that, you know I hate it… Fine. Be that way-GO TO YOUR ROOM! I need more popcorn. I can’t enjoy a good show without popcorn. I’ll get us some popcorn, shall I? Then perhaps you’ll be in a better mood.”
Once again the doors swung open and the Master sauntered off down the hall towards the kitchens that were located mid-ship. It took every ounce of self-control not to sidle up behind him and strangle the life out of the bloodthirsty puny alien Caligula-but he knew he would soon meet his end and every evil he’d wrought would be reversed.
Jack only had a few minutes, but it was more than enough time for what he needed to do. So instead of snuffing the ex-Prime Minister, he pushed the doors open and walked into the bridge.
He stared at the images on the screens. Even though he knew the events of this day would be erased from time and history, it was still tough to see: The burning of Japan. Huge plumes of fire devoured the islands. The entire country was a massive inferno. Martha’s travels had led her to Honshu and she had started a revolt at the Master’s guidance factories at the Koban Plant and uncovered the Drast attempting to harvest the Earth’s resources right under the Master’s nose.
The Master hadn’t just been angry, he’d been genocidal.
Jack forced himself to look away, but what he saw when he looked away from the screens made his heart ache just as much, if not more: A shoddy makeshift, hay-strewn tent in the far corner of the room that the Master forced the Doctor to live in.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jack registered the irony. He’d just left Torchwood doubting his heart was still there. But it was only now that he felt it officially leave him, seeing the hunched, wizened old shape of his precious Doctor-his pinstriped suit baggy around his painfully undernourished frame, sitting mute and helpless in his wheelchair. He was blankly staring out of the window before him, the weight of humanity on his alarmingly emaciated shoulders.
The gasp that left Jack’s throat before he could stop it caused the Doctor to slowly turn around. His beautiful brown eyes were clouded with age and despair, and also (Jack could tell) disapproval.
“You’re lucky the Master was too distracted to notice the tang in the atmosphere from your vortex jump,” he said with effort, staring evenly at him.
“Good to see you too, Doctor…”
“Jack… you shouldn’t be here.”
“Well, technically, I’m not here, I’m still chained up in the aft of the ship eating cold mashed swede-“
“You know what I mean,” he interrupted.
“Yeah, I do… But I was thinking about you-what you have to endure this year and I thought you should know… That it works. You and Martha-all of us-we pull it off.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened slightly.
“So, I don’t want you to worry-if you are worrying.” He put a hand up, “And, I’m not going to tell you anything else except that all of this,” he wiped a hand at the TV screens showing the devastation of Japan, “goes away. It goes back to normal.”
The Doctor uttered a heavy sigh.
“I also thought you could do with seeing this.” Jack pulled out the tattered photo album, flipped to Rose’s photograph and handed it to him. “Quite a day that was, wasn’t it, old man?”
He watched as the Doctor’s breath hitched for a moment. “Rose,” he whispered. Impulsively, the Doctor reached a finger out and touched the image in the photo. It was so intimate, so uncharacteristically honest that Jack looked away. In all the years he’d known him, the Doctor had never done more to confess his feelings for Rose Tyler to someone else than in that one moment.
Jack decided he’d been right to come. And it looked like he’d come just in time.
“I thought you might need a little reminder, Doctor, y’know? A reason to keep going? We all do sometimes-even us impossible ones.”
The Doctor closed his eyes for a few seconds and slowly took a breath, and then raised his unfathomable eyes to Jack. They warmed gradually and Jack noticed a ghost of a smile begin to play at the corner of his lips. He absently wondered how long it had been since the poor man had truly felt happy.
“Thanks,” said the Doctor with effort, closing the book and handing it back to him. Jack nodded and tucked it back into his coat pocket.
“Yeah, well, I was having a pretty crap day, so I decided to come and find somebody who was just a little bit worse off’n me.” Jack tried to play it off, but when he finished he noticed that the Doctor had never looked away from him.
“You’re a good man, Jack,” he said quietly.
Jack shook his head. “Naw, I’m really not, y’know.”
“…And you’re still a lousy liar.”
Jack laughed uncomfortably and made a move to leave. “Well, best be going. I don’t fancy being caught by His Barkingness and getting chained up with myself… Again. Remind me someday to tell you about that one… So! I’m off like a prom dress, then!” He spun on one heel and then after a beat, spun back, leaned over and placed his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “And, I’m sorry old friend, but it’s gonna get much worse before it gets better.”
The Doctor nodded, his jaw set tight.
“Don’t be a stranger,” said Jack as he bent down, kissing the Doctor on his wrinkled forehead. Then stepping back, Jack saluted the feeble old man hunched in his wheelchair, who weakly returned the salute, a wan, thin smile at his lips.
****
That night, the Doctor dreamt of her.
It had been ages since he’d last slept.
He was alone and terrified. Flames leapt around him, annihilating landscape and melting the clothing off his skin. He could hear the unbearable, bloodcurdling shrieks of his people thundering in his ears as the planet tore into pieces. Not even his tears could obliterate the horrific visions as he was forced to watch lidless and without relief. He screamed wretchedly, clawing at the floor, trying to twist himself away from the unspeakable massacre-anything-than have to continue to watch the nightmare unfold.
For he’d already seen it. He’d ordered it, after all.
But being forced to watch it all over again made his blood boil and his soul howl in the frigid wasteland of his torment. For there could be no atonement for his atrocity, no act of contrition that would humanize his despicable brutality and no punishment that could ever purify his soul. Nothing he could do would ever make things right, and there were no secret words or spells that could ever bring them back.
I was there at the fall of Arcadia. Someday I might even come to terms with that…
And yet, as soon as he thought he couldn’t take any more, Rose came to him, encased in a white light, her hair blazing and golden. She came striding through the inferno, banishing the flames, kissing away his fears and soothing his burns, healing him-loving him, forgiving him. Her kisses drew the poison of his sin out of him, empting him, and closing the door on his wailing hunger for absolution.
She made mercy look so simple, really.
His golden angel of clemency held him close, drying his tears. She whispered to him:
The Time war ends…
When he awoke, he wore her devotion like a protective flak jacket. He knew that now no matter what the Master did now, he could endure it.
My Doctor. Protected from the false God…
****
It wouldn’t be until a few years later that the Doctor would return the gesture-giving Jack hope at the moment he needed it most, personified in the form of one thoroughly scrumptious sailor named Alonzo. For, looking up from the bottom of his drink, running from his own fear and shame while hiding out in an extraterrestrial bar, the Doctor saluted him and said goodbye…
After everything, it’d meant so much.