Fanfic - The Waters and the Wild 2/3 [Torchwood: Jack/Ianto]
one: bluebells and roses
The Waters and the Wild
-azaleas and yarrow-
Ianto is watching him.
This much, Jack is certain of. He thought at first that he might be imagining it, because how could a faerie leave Earth, leave the place that nourishes it? But he keeps seeing light out of the corner of his eye, keeps catching the scent of bluebells.
The TARDIS does not register any other life-forms on board, but Jack nonetheless knows that Ianto is there. Watching.
Jack wonders what will happen if he follows through on any of his numerous flirtations.
It might be best, he decides, if he does not. This resolution is aided by the fact that there is no one around that he particularly wants to follow through with. Even his attraction to the Doctor has faded, dulled by time, a new body, a new personality, and the revelation that Jack had been abandoned. Not simply - not -
Jack’s mind shies away from the thought. Coltish, he thinks, liking the sound of the word. It makes him think of long legs with knobbly knees, a perpetually wide-eyed stare. A baby’s stare, agape at the world that has been inflicted on it.
Amniotic fluid. A much safer world, Jack thinks, than that which we must endure. What is it like in those terrifying moments, being forced out of your sanctuary into the world? This must be why we do not remember our births.
He has always known that the human mind is - resilient, that is the word, the word he always uses. In protecting itself, it forgets.
Sometimes, Jack thinks that forgetting is the only means of getting through life intact. But how much must he forget?
Time is a peculiar sort of construct. The breakdown. Hours, minutes, seconds. Days, weeks, months. So very precise. And yet, it is a system that is quite arbitrary. Is dependent on our position in this particular solar system at this particular point in history. On our speed as we careen around the sun, whirling dizzyingly through space.
And through it, time exists. The words do not matter. What matters is the flow. The rippling fabric. The then-now-thence. This is why a second can feel so long or so short. Time pulls.
It takes one second for Jack to die. One minute and twenty-seven seconds for him to come back to life. Ten seconds to focus enough to see the gun. One second to hear the bluebell screaming. One second to die. Again.
The Master lowers his gun and times how long it will take for Jack to come back this time.
Little things, at first.
Unlucky things. But little things. Barely enough to register.
Then bigger things.
It is Jack who understands before anyone else. Jack, chained up and separate from the rest of the ship, is nonetheless the one who understands. And so he laughs when the Master slowly, carefully, cuts his chest open, breaks his rib-cage and pulls it apart in a live autopsy. He laughs as his organs are prodded and the Master loses interest, leaving him to hang there with his innards falling out. He laughs when the guards are ordered to skewer him while the Master watches, spitting him for the fire.
He knows they think he is going insane. But he knows. He knows.
And the day the wind rips through the ship and flings his tormenters against the bulwarks, screaming bluebells and hurricane fury, so does everyone else.
“’Lo, Ianto,” Jack says tiredly.
“My Jack Harkness,” Ianto cries furiously.
“I don’t think he cares,” Jack says. He reaches out without thinking and runs his hand down Ianto’s cheek. Faerie, he tells himself. Not human. But Ianto feels warm and Jack’s hand trembles at the sensation. Touch. After so long.
“Mine,” Ianto repeats, and drags Jack into a vicious hug. It is arms and nails and teeth and Jack finds himself tumbled to the floor with Ianto climbing over onto into through him. Jack gives exactly what he gets, clinging to Ianto, desperate for contact. Skin on skin is what he needs now and what Ianto gives him.
Afterwards, Jack wonders what sort of pact he has entered into. Faust, he thinks. Goethe. And all the renditions thereafter. Jack knows that he is merely one in a long line. The knowledge does not stop the fear of what will come. His mind works feverishly, offering up any number of possibilities, each one worse than the next.
Ianto reaches over and pulls Jack into a bruising kiss. Bluebells bloom and die between their bodies.
Jack decides to stop thinking.
Jack returns to his body.
Ianto does not have the strength to hold him for long. Not for Jack, the faerie world. He gasps back to life, flailing in his manacles, feeling the bite of steel against his arms.
Steel. Iron. A more thorough prison than the Master knows.
The Master does not understand what has happened. Does not understand the windswept fury lashing the walls. Does not understand the ice creeping through his ship, the ice that refuses to melt despite bags of salt. The ice that watches. Waits.
And what the Master does not understand, he ignores or destroys. He cannot stop the ice and so he pretends it is not there. Pretends he does not care about it. Pretends it is not undermining his rule.
Takes it out on Jack.
Jack does not care. He knows.
And so he smiles.
Once upon a time, on a planet far, far away, there was a torture expert named -
Well. His true name is not important. There was once a torture expert - we shall call him… hm. Shane. It has a good sound. That shall be his name. Now, Shane was famous through the land for his ability to get information out of the most recalcitrant prisoners. Leave him alone in a room with the hardiest man, it was said, and within the half hour that man would have revealed everything Shane wanted to know and more besides.
Yes, Shane was famous. And his fame made him rich, for there was always work for such a skilled torture expert. But with riches come danger, and no one was more aware of the fact than Shane. He hid away his fortune in a secret place and never told a soul where it was. Countless people tried to trick the location out of him, but Shane always saw through their clumsy attempts. Shane hunted down these people and killed them. In that sense, it was a tad difficult to rob him.
But all it takes is one man. One lucky man.
And one unlucky day, for Shane.
After a brief but glorious battle - battles are always glorious, and let no one tell you otherwise - Shane found himself taken prisoner. Swiftly, he was spirited away. His men lay behind him dead and dying. Shane’s thoughts were not of them, but of what would become of him.
His own tricks were used against him. That, to Shane, was the most detestable thing. The techniques he had so lovingly crafted were bastardised for use on him. When his fingertips were cut off, he had to hold himself back from correcting their positioning. When his right calf was flayed, he resisted suggesting the liberal application of salt water. Why, he lamented to himself in those quiet moments he was allowed, these were nothing more than rank amateurs.
And being amateurs, one day a cut was made on Shane’s body that was a little too deep. A little too long. Unknown to his captors, Shane slowly bled to death in a cramped, dark cell.
The next morning, his dead body was the cause of much consternation. Shane’s death was premature. They had not gotten any information out of him. He had not given up his most prized secrets. They had not found the location of his hoard of riches.
There was only one hope for it. They would have to plunder all his known dwellings and search for a clue as to his secret ones.
Dead, Shane listened to these plans and felt his fury grow. He refused to let them desecrate his sanctuaries. But being dead, Shane’s ability to stop them was understandably limited. He therefore turned to those who could.
The next morning, Shane’s captors were themselves dead. The smell of roses chased them into the afterlife.
Jack wakes to silence. The dream lingers and for a moment he thinks he smells roses. Then the scent is replaced by bluebells and he smiles, as if at the young girl who has just entered.
“The usual, Tish?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says.
It is Tuesday, and Tish feeds Jack protein mush flavoured with mercuric oxide. He is allowed to wash it down with mercury.
It is a particularly difficult death.
The faeries, Jack recalls, are creatures of time. Does that mean they can sense his unnatural condition? Is Ianto fixated on him because Jack is a fact? Does he feel peculiar? Or does he feel wrong?
For that matter, what would a Time Lord feel like to a faerie, and vice versa?
Jack thinks of all the things Estelle thought of her faeries. The faeries that lived in her world were good, helpful creatures. Jack has always thought of them as being the opposite. But is that right, is that what they are? Is anything ever pure evil or pure good?
Taking Jasmine was an act of evil, surely. She was a child, could not have known the ramifications of what she was doing. But. But.
They never take those who remain attached to the human world.
Jack remembers the angry faerie voices. His men, in the train. The tunnel. The darkness. The overwhelming smell of roses.
“Harm ours, summon harm,” the chant he thought he heard. They protect their own.
Faeries twist human minds. Rework them into something malleable, something that accepts faeries as saviours and friends. They are not what Jack wants to be. And yet.
Different clans, he thinks. Perhaps Ianto is not like them. Bluebells and roses and the difference between madness and life. Perhaps Ianto is a faerie that Estelle might have liked to meet. Or at least is halfway there.
Estelle. What did she do? What did she do, save love them?
Jack remembers what he has read of the faeries. How they steal the substance of something. A cow, a goat, a baby. What is left behind is a shell that sickens and slowly dies an inexplicable death. Perhaps Estelle has been stolen, stolen away to the faerie world. She has always had the mind and curiosity of a child. Jack hopes that she is being treated well by them. There are stories of human women being stolen away to suckle faerie children. To shelter their babes and provide the care they are incapable of. Perhaps.
Wishful thinking, he tells himself.
Gwen’s hair has been lopped short.
It is a strange thing to focus on, Jack knows. But he cannot help himself. Her long, messy locks have been cropped close to her head now. A sheep after shearing. He wonders if it is something she did herself, or if it was done out of necessity, or if her captors did it for some inexplicable reason. It could be any of those reasons, or something else he hasn’t thought of.
He likes to think that the short hair is merely practical. That she cut it off herself so that it would not get in the way as she fought to survive.
“Jack,” she whispers in horror when she sees him.
He stares at her blankly.
“I’ll leave her here, shall I?” the Master says, smiling. “Let you catch up? Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be back soon and then we can play!”
Gwen flinches. No doubt she is imagining being raped, Jack thinks. But that is one indignity he has thus far been spared, and that he suspects Gwen will be spared as well. The Master is curiously asexual. Lucy is a physical toy. A doll to be paraded on his arm because that is what all leaders should have. He doubts that the Master has ever had sex with Lucy.
Sometimes, Jack thinks that it is because the Master is so in love with himself he cannot be aroused by anyone else.
“Jack,” Gwen says again once the Master has left. She reaches out instinctively, her arms pulled up short by the chains holding her to the wall.
He blinks slowly, lazily. Perhaps he should say something.
“Jack,” Gwen says. “God, please, say something.” She waits, and when no reply is forthcoming, her face crumbles. “What has he done to you?”
Jack thinks. The list is long, and he has lost track a while ago. He remembers the more interesting deaths, but a lot of them blur together in his mind. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, shifting slightly.
Gwen lights up when he speaks. “Oh, Jack,” she says. “It’s been horrible on Earth. All the things he’s doing -”
“I don’t know what’s been happening,” Jack says. “It’s a bit hard getting the news here.”
Gwen bites her lip. “The Hub was destroyed,” she says. “Along with most of Cardiff, in the first strike.”
“The team?” Jack asks.
“We split up,” Gwen says. “And we lost contact a while ago. I don’t know what’s happened to them.”
“So,” Jack says. “What brings a lovely lady like you to a place like this?”
Gwen smiles tremulously. “I was trying to help get some food for a refugee camp,” she says. “The soldiers caught me. I thought they were going to kill me at first, but they brought me here.”
“He knows you’re Torchwood,” Jack says. The Master will probably kill her in front of him. No, not just kill. He will likely torture her. Kill her slowly. And make Jack watch every moment of it. He has done it before, tortured children in front of Jack, delighting in Jack’s helplessness in the face of his cruelty. And knowing that he has one of Jack’s team here, he will surely find heretofore unknown depths of creativity.
Jack does not tell Gwen this. The anticipation is just as debilitating as the torture.
“Jack,” Gwen says urgently, her voice dropping. “There are bluebells everywhere. We find them in the camps, near places where there’s food and water, like signals.”
He stares at her. She takes this as a signal to continue. “And helping us,” she says. “Sometimes there’s a wind pushing away the Toclafane. Not always, but often enough to not be a coincidence. And it always smells of bluebells.”
Jack is not entirely sure what to say. There are reasons. There are surely reasons. He can think of plenty. But his mind is frozen on her words. There are bluebells everywhere.
The Master brings in a large water tank for Gwen. She is dropped into it, chained to the sides. Then the tank is filled with water. Jack watches as the level slowly rises, as Gwen frantically grasps the chains, trying to find a way to break free. The water reaches her waist. Her chest. Her neck. Her nose. She stands on the tips of her toes, desperate for air.
And then the water stops. If she stays on her toes, she can breathe. If she drops even slightly, she will breathe water.
So this is what he’s doing, Jack thinks. Waiting to see how long she will last before falling. He knows what it is like for your legs to give way without permission. He knows the limits to which the human body will push itself if there is even the slightest possibility of survival. And Gwen has never been one to stop fighting.
She lasts two days.
When she finally drowns, Jack remembers a story he read once, about the woman of Llyn-Y-Fan. A children’s tale, which like all children’s tales has a kernel of awfulness at its core. He remembers how the story ended.
As moontime and owl-light took over the land they reached the lake, and a wondrous sight it must have been to see them splashing into the water, their backs flaked with quicksilver, and the lake healing over them, and the ripples forgetting the place, till of all that host of creatures not a trace remained save the furrow scraped by the plough the four oxen drew, and the hoofmarks in the dust of the road.
Y Tylwyth Teg. In all his reading, this is the name that Jack keeps coming back to. Perhaps because he has lived so long in Wales. Estelle once mentioned wanting to travel to Llyn y Fan Fach. Before she had the chance, the cancer took away her strength and savings. Instead, she devoted the rest of her life to finding the faeries. Believing in the lovely maiden of Esgair Llaethdy, thrice-struck and forever lost.
He once told Estelle that the maiden had had a fine pre-nuptial agreement. She’d laughed and called him a terrible sceptic.
Now, he thinks once again that he was right. For the faeries are crafty and the spirit world cannot be trusted.
Tish brings him his dinner. It is a flavourless, opaque soup of some sort. As she feeds him, he wonders if it is poisoned.
At the bottom of the bowl, Tish is surprised to find a whole bluebell. Jack is not.
He gets Tish to feed him the bluebell.
Of all things, it is the standing that is the worst. That, and the fact that he is only allowed ten minutes a day to use the washroom. He is not allowed to shower. His hands remain manacled at all times. And save for those ten minutes, he is standing, standing, standing.
Jack’s legs ache in despair. His wrists are chafed where he sags against his restraints helplessly. His thighs collapse and his body falls. Upright. He can taste dirt and sweat and blood in his mouth.
On Wednesday, he is fed actual meat. Afterwards, he finds out that it was a portion of his own liver, removed the previous day. He remembers the Master blindly rooting in his abdomen, pulling his guts out at random for inspection. Troops all lined up, boots polished, hats settled.
He does not have the energy to throw up. It is part of him anyway, he thinks morbidly.
Today is a special day. Today, Jack is being brought outside.
His arms and legs are bound in chain, with just enough room left for him to walk. The weight keeps pulling him down and the guards keep pulling him forward and so he walks in a curiously listing manner, always falling, always angled, a hypotenuse.
He is not surprised when he sees Toshiko and Owen. They kneel, guns to the backs of their heads, looking defiant.
“A rescue attempt, would you believe it?” the Master laughs. “Oh, such darlings you have working for you, freak!”
Jack meets their eyes but does not speak. Toshiko cannot quite hide her horror when she sees him. Owen looks like he did when he found out the truth about Katie’s death.
“Can’t have them taking away my favourite toy, can I?” the Master asks. Toshiko’s eyes turn hard. Jack has never seen them quite so cold before. He thinks of the mountains. Snowdon. Or Mount Fuji. It seems more appropriate. What has happened to put that glacial look in her eyes?
The Master tortures Jack in front of Toshiko and Owen. Kills him a few times. This is nothing new. New is when he tells Toshiko to slit Jack’s throat. She takes the knife in trembling hands, and then, quickly, stabs it into her own throat. Her lifeblood fountains over Jack’s face.
She smiles when she dies. Jack looks to Owen, who meets his gaze implacably.
The Master does not make the same mistake twice. Strangle Jack and you will live another day, Owen is told.
He refuses.
It takes Owen fifteen hours to succumb to the wounds. Jack watches as his once-medic is reduced to a filthy, pleading, grovelling mess. The Master, he has to admit, is rather skilled at torture. He might even be better than Jack himself.
It ends with a bullet to Jack’s head. When he wakes up, he is back in his manacles again.
The bodies, he is told, have been tossed off the ship.
He wonders how far the body parts will scatter, once they hit the ground.
Every time he wakes into life, he smells bluebells. He knows he is imagining the delicate scent, because no one else can smell it. Nevertheless, the smell hangs thick in his nose. He is glad for it. It masks the smell of death and pain that cling perpetually to him now.
He thinks of Ianto. Of those deceptive human eyes and body. Of their last time together, all frantic and demanding, Ianto deep in him, yesyesyesharderdammit, like they were melding one into the other and Ianto was taking over completely, possessing him, dominating him. Jack had not known how much he had needed that. Needed to be possessed by someone other than the Master.
With Ianto, he can feign importance.
Such a dangerous road to tread, and yet he cannot help himself. What would it be like?
Norrmalmstorg, Sweden. 23rd August 1973. Six days and a few songs later, a new phenomenon is born. Jack has read extensively about it. It was once part of his trade. When he lived through the time period, he travelled to Sweden to watch the drama unfold. He knew what would happen, but was still surprised at the vehemence with which the hostages defended their captors.
They claim to have been more afraid of the police. This, Jack thinks, is not entirely surprising depending on the part of the universe you are in. All the same, for him, it has never been a case of choosing the lesser of two evils. Caught between two impossibilities, Jack has always found a way to create a third path. An escape route. He has never yet been caught without one.
He has, however, grown skilled at creating that situation for others.
The two key ingredients are these. First, isolation from the outside world. Keep them dependent on you for information and they will come to rely on you for everything else. And second, kindness. This can be as simple as a lack of abuse. Or a break from the abuse.
Jack ponders this. He is certainly isolated. He is also certainly not shown any kindness by the Master. No, no danger for him here, even if he were not aware of the possible traps laid down for him.
Bluebells, he thinks to himself, don’t bluebells mean kindness?
Ianto steals him away once more, and only once.
This time Jack spends a few hours slowly kissing and tasting every inch of Ianto’s body. Ianto allows it. Encourages him, guides his hands and mouth around. Jack can feel himself sinking further into bluebells and song, can feel Ianto’s grasp tightening around him. The past ten months have robbed him of his ability to care.
And he wants to make it right. He has wanted to make it right for a long time now, even before the Master. But now the want is a need and so he lavishes attention on Ianto’s body. On his human skin and human flesh. On the peculiar bumps below his shoulder blades.
“Show me what you really look like,” he says.
“Like this,” Ianto says. Jack smiles and licks the whorl of Ianto’s ear.
“Don’t you believe me?” Ianto asks.
“You’re talking a lot more like people in my time now,” Jack observes.
“I’ve been listening,” Ianto says, smiling proudly.
Jack kisses the tip of his nose. “And doing very well.” He sinks back on his heels, buries his nose in the crook of Ianto’s thigh and hip.
“I know,” Ianto says complacently. He watches as Jack kisses a line down his inner thigh.
“How does this body work?” Jack asks.
Ianto smirks. “Well,” he says. “The blood flow to the penis increases and -”
He is cut off with a firm kiss. It lasts all of two seconds before they are both laughing into each other’s mouths, all teeth and lips and tongues, sliding against each other till they come, flushed and sated.
“I look different,” Ianto says quietly.
“Thought you might,” Jack says.
“This body is easier,” Ianto says. “But so funny!” He wriggles his toes. “How do you humans stand it?”
Jack smiles crookedly. “Used to it, I guess. Do you miss your other body, when you’re in this?”
Ianto shrugs. “I miss flying,” he says. “I miss breathing.”
What, Jack wonders, does that mean? Instead of asking, he pressed his lips to Ianto’s neck and breathes deeply. Bluebells, of course. What else would Ianto smell of?
“Not long now,” Ianto says, and Jack nods against Ianto’s skin. Already he can feel the ghostly weight of iron around his wrists. The same iron that impedes Ianto’s magick. He sighs a kiss against Ianto’s collarbone and closes his eyes.
He flails alive again, back on board the Valiant.
Poisoned (dimethylmercury, arsenic, bromide, succinylcholine, tetradotoxin, batrachotoxin, sarin, polonium).
Dismembered, flayed, roasted, defenestrated (and wasn’t that fun?).
Shot, strangled, stabbed, starved, suffocated.
Electrocuted, frozen, burned, beatenbrokenbruised.
Ground glass in his food and baths of acid.
And Jack is so very tired.
It ends.
Jack imagines that Ianto can feel time stretching, distorting, folding back on itself. The loom, reset. Threads frayed and snapped. Do-over, he thinks. He has finally gotten his do-over. Does it count when he still remembers?
Cleaning up. Mopping up the mess the kids have made, after the party has ended. It has been a year-long birthday party and the birthday boy is no more. Jack is glad for it.
They Retcon the memories of those left aboard the Valiant. For the most part, they were unwilling accomplices. But there is one guard who enjoyed helping the Master. Enjoyed stoking the fire beneath Jack’s feet to slowly boil him to death. Enjoyed carving patterns into his skin while the Master watched to see how long it would take for the blood loss to kill him.
Jack stabs him. Gouges out his eyes. The knife, in, in, in, and Jack does not know if he is crying or screaming or both.
The Doctor is aghast. Jack does not care.
Inside the TARDIS, a bluebell breeze follows Jack wherever he goes. A subtle shifting of the air. He suspects that the Doctor and Martha do not realise that they are not alone. He takes comfort in the warm brush of shiftless, ageless presence in his hair, on his cheek, the back of his hand.
The bluebells become his refuge. He avoids his other two companions. They cannot understand what it was like for him. Cannot understand the constant immensity taking away his air. He retreats to his room, inhales bluebells and reacquaints himself with a bed. With a lavatory. With a bath. With soft, cotton sheets. With lying down. He is so sick of standing.
Slowly, the simmering panic begins to recede.
It takes a while, but Jack eventually feels like he can breathe again.
“Doctor?” Jack asks.
The Doctor runs around, checking various readings. Jack thinks that he might be able to make sense of at least some of it if he focused, but he does not want to. Near him, Martha is watching the Doctor work. She is sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest. Like Jack, she appreciates the luxury of sitting or lying down.
“Yes?” the Doctor says distractedly.
“Ever met a faerie?” Jack asks.
The Doctor pauses in his frenetic work. “Well, really!” he says, blinking owlishly. “You’re the last person I’d accuse of using such derogatory language, Jack!”
Jack pauses, rewinds. “I meant real faeries,” he says dryly. “As in, supposed mythology. What do you know about them?”
“Oh, them,” the Doctor says, and goes right back to his work. “Not much.”
“Are they real?” Martha asks. “I mean, actual faeries. Are they aliens, or some such?”
“No,” Jack says. “They’re not aliens.”
“Some sort of creatures here on Earth,” the Doctor says. “Supposedly, anyway.”
“You don’t know anything about them?” Jack asks. “Culture, society, what they like to do, any of that?”
The Doctor shakes his head, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. “No, no,” he says. “I’ve never seen them. Who knows if they even exist?”
Jack looks away. “They do,” he says.
“Yeah?” Martha asks. “Have you met them?”
Jack smiles. “Some,” he says.
“So are they like in the stories?” Martha, again. The Doctor knows better than to ask.
“They’re not all good,” Jack says. “I used to have arguments about them with - someone. She thought they were good. I thought they were bad. We were never able to agree, not until just before she died. Before they killed her.”
Martha’s eyes are wide and her mouth is making a silent ‘oh,’ late-night pantomime at the old theatre. “So they’re bad, then,” she says.
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Jack says. “But they’re definitely not human. And definitely not understandable.”
A bluebell laugh, on the wind. Jack looks up at nothing and smiles.
“Jack,” the Doctor says. “Why were you asking about faeries earlier?”
Jack looks out over the Plass. He has nearly forgotten what it looked like. The sunlight is warm, the Cardiff weather obliging him with a moment of perfection. No doubt it will rain tonight, but for now, Jack will enjoy this brief respite.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” Ianto asks, leaning against the railing beside them. Jack turns and smiles broadly at him.
“Stop it,” the Doctor mutters under his breath.
“Should be off now,” Jack says. He salutes casually and winks at them, before interlacing his fingers with Ianto’s.
“Jack,” the Doctor says, glancing strangely at their joined hands. “My question?”
Jack shrugs. “It’s nothing important,” he says.
“Aren’t I?” Ianto asks archly.
“Unless you also want him for a toy,” Jack says, turning his eyes on Ianto.
“No,” Ianto decides. “I’ll just play with you.” His smile is predatory. Jack thinks that he might die tonight, might choke on bluebell petals and gasp back to life tasting sweet nectar at the back of his neck. The thought does not bother him. It is an easier death than the multitudes the Master has inflicted on him.
“Wait,” the Doctor says, outright gaping for the first time in Jack’s memory. “Are you saying -”
Ianto leans in, bites Jack’s neck, and vanishes into the wind.
Jack shrugs. Touches the small swell of blood on his neck. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Bye, Martha. Doctor.” He turns and sets off towards the Tourist Information Centre, feeling the Doctor’s eyes burning into his back.
He raises one hand in farewell, then turns his mind to the future.
three: irises and dandelions