Nowhere, Part 1
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #072 - Fixed
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Torchwood Series 2 Finale
Characters/Pairing: Fitz/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Summary: Sequel to Elsewhere and Somewhere, although you probably don't need to have read those for this story.
Fitz and the Doctor have picked up Jack, and the three of them have for once landed exactly where they wanted to go. Because if they what to go to where the trouble is, why should the TARDIS protest?
Note: This is the fic that would not end. It kept me from updating Pendulum, but I will finish at least one more chapter for that fic before I take a break for writing my NaNoWriMo story in November.
When the room shook, danced and jumped around until Fitz lost all orientation along with his balance, he crashed towards the ground like he’d done so often before. This time he was lucky though, because his fall was cushioned by something soft before he reached it. Well, soft was a relative expression. In any case the thing he landed on was a lot softer than the floor.
His luck ended when something fell onto him a second later, as this something was a lot harder that the usual things that fell onto him in situations such as this - meaning nothing.
The Doctor usually fell onto the couch beside the console. Fitz had been on board the TARDIS long enough since reuniting with the Time Lord to have noticed that. At first he’d thought it was coincidence that had worked in the Doctor’s favour, then he’d suspected luck. In the end he decided that it had to be the ship, only shaking and tumbling when the Doctor was standing where he would fall softly. No one could be so lucky every single time.
The TARDIS had not been so considerate when Fitz had been here before. Maybe she’d had better things to do then. Like bringing them to trouble. No, scratch that - she did exactly the same now. So maybe she didn’t think - or calculate, or whatever it was a sentient time machine did - that her pilot needed to be protected back then.
Though most likely she had been stopped by the position of the armchair, which had been nowhere near the console.
The only argument against that theory was that this time the Doctor had been standing nowhere near that couch. Sprawled face down over the chest of another human being, Fitz suspected that he had still had a soft landing, on the ground of the elbow pressing into his back.
At least this version wasn’t heavy - not that the first one had been. Fitz’s first one, that was. Meaning the first version of the Doctor Fitz had met. Which had been the Doctor’s eight version of himself.
With the room running in circles around him, no one could blame Fitz for not thinking straight.
A second later Fitz realised that the room had returned to normal and it was just his brain that was still spinning. He shook his head to stop it.
Once everything up there was back in the right order, Fitz became aware of the fact that the weight that must have been the Doctor was gone from his back. He was still lying, though, with a man between him and the floor. Fitz’s nose was practically inside the guy’s shirt. His brain gave the impulse to jump up and away with an expression of disgust, but he body wasn’t ready yet and did nothing. After a brief exchange mind and body remembered that being freaked out by close proximity of another male was in no way acceptable for someone who’d been snogging the Doctor not so long ago, and quite joyously so.
“If you wanted me so badly you should have said something,” the man beneath him grinned, and Fitz was up and away in a millisecond.
He overbalanced and fell onto his butt with a thud. Before he could get up on his own the Doctor was standing before him, offering a hand.
“You never cease to amaze me,” he stated as he pulled the human to his feet.
“I aim to please,” grumbled Fitz.
“Hey,” the man on the floor complained. “And who’s going to get me up?”
“You’re a grown man, you can get yourself up,” the Doctor replied and walked over to his console. There was no wink, no smile, nothing indicating that the Time Lord knew what exactly he had just said. So Fitz ignored that part and focused on what the Doctor’s statement said about him.
“I’m not a toddler either, thanks,” he pouted.
“Right. And even for grown-ups getting up is so much nicer if you have help.” Jack winked as he jumped to his feet, and Fitz did his best to concentrate solely on what the Doctor was doing.
“What happened?” he asked.
“We arrived somewhere,” Jack explained. “The TARDIS likes to tell us about it this way.”
Fitz decided to ignore him, because the only appropriate answer would have been stuffing a sock into Jack’s mouth, and he just couldn’t bother to get out of his shoes right now.
“Where exactly are we?” he clarified his question, and then he added, “Which cosmic catastrophe has caused the TARDIS so much trouble in getting here, and are we where we wanted to go, or somewhere else entirely?” because he didn’t want to give Jack another opportunity to act like this was Fitz’s first trip with the Doctor.
“We’re exactly where we want to be,” the Doctor exclaimed happily. “Right planet, right date, right universe.” He took his coat off the back of the couch and jogged over to the door. “Planet Roa, a decade after my last visit here. I’d like to see how that peace-treaty between the two intelligent races on this world is working. Also, they make the best udon in the entire universe!” Just before opening the door he hesitated. “Of course, that doesn’t explain why the TARDIS had such a hard time getting here.”
“So we’d better prepare for trouble,” Jack said, nodding knowingly.
“Don’t we ever?” muttered Fitz. The Doctor simply pushed open the door and stepped outside.
Fitz hurried after him and was at the door before Jack was. Outside he was greeted by a warm, sunny day. The sky was blue but for a few picturesque white clouds. Cobblestone stretched into a street before them, lined by small houses surrounded by gardens. People in old-fashioned clothes were walking the street without paying attention to the three men and their phone box. They looked not at all alien. Out of the corner of his eye Fitz saw a cat inspecting the TARDIS, before rubbing against his leg with a purr.
“If this is another planet, why does it look so eighteenth century?” Jack’s voice sounded beside him.
The Doctor looked rather confused himself. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s eighteenth century day. Where they dress like eighteenth century people and… build proper houses. And have cows eating straw in the streets.”
Or they simply missed the goal again, Fitz mentally added to the list of possibilities. “Doctor,” he said dryly. “Your navigation sucks.”
Jack, for once, didn’t protest. Even the cat agreed, still rubbing her heard against Fitz’s ankle.
The Doctor turned to him in a quick, unexpected motion. “You think so?” he asked, challenging.
“It would explain a lot,” Fitz justified his words, resisting the delayed urge to jump a step back.
Or a metre.
The cat didn’t even interrupt her purring for half a second.
“In that case, explain this to me!” the Doctor said as he stooped down and picked up the cat to hold it up to Fitz’s face. Just so Fitz could see that it had three eyes, two tails and four ears - and how he’d been able to miss the dark green fur before was beyond him.
The urge finally won and Fitz jumped back with a “Yikes!”
The ‘cat’ mewed.
“Maybe it fell though the rift,” Jack offered. That seemed to be his explanation for everything. Fitz, so far, had deliberately failed to show any interest in what kind of ‘rift’ he was talking about all the time.
“It’s an ekkil,” the Doctor pointed out, allowing the green animal to crawl up his shoulder and inspect his hair. “They live only on Roa.”
“As do humans and cows?” Jack asked. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but your furry friend is outnumbered.”
“We’re here as well, and we’d belong neither to Roa nor to the eighteenth century,” the Doctor reminded him.
“Well, at least two of us don’t,” Jack mumbled with a glance at Fitz. The Doctor scowled at both of them. Louder Jack added, “We didn’t exactly come here by car.”
“Who said they did? The two intelligent species I mentioned are the native Roans and the human colonists. Maybe they just like dressing up like this.”
“Or maybe we’re on Earth and the thing there fell through the rift.” Jack definitely wanted to stick with his theory, and Fitz had to admit that it was at least a little more likely than the Doctor’s explanation. “The TARDIS confused this animal with the entire planet and took us here.”
“Hey!” someone called just the moment the Doctor opened his mouth to defend his ship’s navigational abilities. They all turned their heads to see an elderly man running up to them. “You’re breaking the clothing rule. Get changed, or I’ll have you removed from the project!”
“Right, sorry,” the Doctor apologized. “We’ve only just arrived, no one has instructed us yet.”
“You’re new?” The man frowned. “Of course you are. I don’t know you.”
“New to the project and the planet.” The Doctor smiled. “Sorry, we’ve spent a lot of time in a spaceship and got a bit confused. Could you tell us the date?”
They were looked at as if they were idiots, but Fitz was used to that.
“It’s fourth of October,” the old man said. “In the year 4067 of the old Earth calendar,” he added sarcastically.
“Thanks, we knew that much,” Jack answered in the same tone.
“We’ll get changed now,” the Doctor interrupted him before he could say more. “Once we’re done, could you send someone to give us the tour? Just so we know in detail what we are dealing with?”
The stranger in the old fashioned pants and shirt grunted something that could have been agreement and shuffled away. The Doctor turned back to the TARDIS, ignored by everyone but them, and threw his friends a triumphant glance while pushing open the doors.
“You owe her an apology,” he stated once they were all back inside and on their way to the wardrobe.
“I’m sorry I doubted you, Doctor,” Jack said obediently while the Time Lord attempted to get the ekkil out of his hair. “But I’m not apologizing to a ship.”
“At least this one isn’t answering,” mumbled Fitz. The thought was followed by another. “Hey, Doctor,” he called. “Do you have any idea what Compassion is doing?”
Giving an answer took the Time Lord long enough for Fitz to regret having asked at all. When he finally spoke the Doctor’s voice was quieter than he had been in days.
“She was, in the end, a product of Gallifrey,” he said and didn’t look at his friends. “When Gallifrey’s existence got negated so must have been hers.”
But I remember her, Fitz wanted to protest. She was real! But then, so was the Doctor, born on a planet that never was. Fitz didn’t understand and could never hope to. All he knew was that he had quite effectively killed the mood.
He didn’t need to turn his head to know that Jack was glaring at him. If it was physically possibly he’d have been glaring at himself.
-
If there was one thing that hadn’t changed one bit it was the Doctor’s ability to forget things that bothered him from one second to the next, or at least very successfully pretend he had. Half an hour later they were all seated around a table on the terrace of a restaurant that looked just as middle-age-ish as everything else here and were chatting happily with each other, as if nothing had ever happened.
Well, actually the Doctor chatted happily with Fitz and Jack and Fitz and Jack happily chatted with the Doctor. They also chatted with each other, but not happily so.
Jack Harkness had joined them almost a week ago, when the Doctor and Fitz had come to Cardiff, of all places, to save Earth once again. Fitz hadn’t been reunited with his friend for very long and wasn’t at all happy when Jack, who apparently knew the Doctor from the days Fitz had missed, asked to join for a trip or two. Especially since Fitz had the distinct impression that the man only wanted to come along to make sure he wasn’t the wrong company for the Doctor to play with or something similarly idiotic.
It wasn’t even dislike Fitz and Jack felt for each other. Had they met under different circumstances… well, most likely they’d have passed on the street without a second glance, but at least there would have been no hate.
Fitz grimaced every time he realised that what he felt for Jack could best be describes as ‘sibling rivalry’.
He hadn’t yet decided where the catlike animal the Doctor had picked up fit into all that. The three-eyed thing had finally agreed to climb off the Time Lord but had been following them ever since. It didn’t help that the Doctor was feeding it with little lumps of meat he picked out of his udon with his chopsticks.
As Fitz had found out udon was some kind of soup with a kind of long noodles in it. No sane person could ever wish to eat soup with chopsticks, but here they were, doing their best.
The Doctor didn’t seem to find it strange at all. He sat bent down in his chair, his face almost in his bowl, and slurped in the noodles noisily. While Jack definitely knew how to handle the chopsticks he made the mistake of trying to get the every noodle into his mouth with one go, without the slurping, and ended up making a mess of both in himself and the table. And Fitz, sitting opposite to him.
Fitz himself didn’t even know how to hold the chopsticks and ended up using both his hand in an attempt to stab the soup with them.
Once the Doctor had finished with the solid bits he put the bowl to his lips and drank the soup with an expression of delight. Fitz gave up on trying to find anything in his own bowl and drank as well, revealing the noodles and other stuff at least. He was bloody hungry. If he didn’t manage to get that into his mouth soon he’d have to use his hands when no one was looking…
“This is too hard for me,” Jack said with a crooked smile at the Doctor. “Can you feed me?”
“We’re trying to blend in, Jack! At least pretend to know what you’re doing,” the Doctor scolded mildly, causing Jack to nod at Fitz. “What, like him?”
“In my culture this stuff is finger food,” Fitz made up. The Doctor slapped his fingers when he tried to reach into the bowl.
Around them people did what they were doing without paying attention to the new arrivals. As it had turned out they were indeed on the planet called Roa, and the coexistence of the human colonists and the native Roans the Doctor had been worried about was no cause for worry at all.
Apparently this village was some kind of tourist location, only with scientific background. They had recreated an original eighteenth century village and had lots of people working and living here, pretending to be pre-spaceage farmers. Tourists could come and live here as well, get the full experience, but it also meant that they were not allowed to use any of their modern products - ranging from phone to toothbrush. According to the Doctor projects such as this had been popular every so often in the history of mankind.
The promised tour, however, they had never gotten. A man had awaited them down the street when they left the TARDIS dressed in clothes that would have looked old even in Fitz’s youth, but he’d seemed nervous and confused and had run away the moment he spotted them. It confirmed Fitz’s suspicion that the entire project was a little bit silly and everyone working here had to be a little bit crazy.
They fit in rather well, he found.
Having found out about the political circumstances and having had his udon, there was no reason for the Doctor to keep them here any longer, though. Fitz expected them to leave within the next hour.
Behind him a man cursed loudly. They all turned to see him wipe a white, sticky substance off his bald head. Fitz grinned widely when he realised that the guy had just been given a ‘gift’ by a bird.
Something touched his ankle. He looked down and shuddered when he saw the green ekkil, which had curled up on the floor, leaning against his leg. As if sensing his stare, the animal opened it’s middle eyes to lazily gaze up at him for a moment before going back to sleep.
It was almost cute, Fitz decided - if he ignored the eye-thing. And the tails. And the ears. In any case it wasn’t half as creepy or disgusting as numerous other creatures he’d faced during his travels.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Jack, looking at the Doctor. “You’ve gotten your snack, the world is all right - and out next stop is…?”
The Doctor snorted.
“Don’t be stupid, Jack,” he said. “We’re not done here.”
It were not the words Fitz had been hoping for. “We’re not?”
“Of course not. We can’t leave before we found out what’s wrong.”
“Why do you think there’s something wrong here?” Jack wanted to know. He looked around, and so did Fitz, and neither of them found anything more out of the ordinary that the local fauna.
The Doctor looked at them, puzzled. “Can’t you feel it?”
The two humans shared a glance. The raised eyebrow Jack gave Fitz was the least hostile gesture he’d ever received from the Captain - apart from some blunt attempts at flirting that seemed to happen automatically.
The Time Lord sighed. “Apparently not,” he answered his own question. “Really, how do cope with being so… blind?”
“We manage,” Jack said dryly. “Enlighten us, mighty Time Lord: What is wrong here?”
The Doctor grinned, brightly and unexpectedly. “I have no idea!”
“Oh, that helps!” muttered Fitz despite really not having expected anything else.
“It’s like… a disruption,” the Doctor tried to put his impression into words. “It’s impossible to explain - like describing the colour blue to someone who’s been blind all his life. All I can say is that something feels off about this place. Very off.”
“So what do we do about it?”
“We find out what it is.”
“And then we’ll fix it,” Jack guessed.
The Doctor nodded. “I see, you’ve got the idea.”
Fitz merely sighed. He’d kind of seen that coming.
-
Officially they spend the night in one of the houses, sharing one small room with beds made of straw. The ‘bathroom’ consisted of a tiny chamber with a bucket and there was a basin filled with cold water for washing. The Doctor was delighted at the sight while at the same time he had fun pointing out all the mistakes he found. Jack and Fitz were less delighted and complained until the Doctor agreed to let them sleep in the TARDIS. He stayed in that room himself, keeping up the impression it was occupied by three people. Fitz could very well picture him talking to himself all night.
He’d always been talking to himself a lot. It was a way to keep himself from thinking, he’d once said.
Sometimes Fitz wondered what it was his friend hadn’t been willing to think about then, and how it differed from what he avoided thinking about now.
Some part of Fitz had feared that Jack would use the opportunity to have a ‘talk’ with him, or even to just beat him up, for living or some related reason. He didn’t want to talk to Jack, who clearly didn’t like him, and wanted to be beaten up even less, and so he more or less fled to his room as soon as the door closed behind them. Which seemed perfectly fine with the other man. Both of them spent the night blissfully sleeping in their own bed, and managed to get up at the same time. They met in the console room the moment the Doctor came in, looking troubled and slightly tired.
“Well? Did you find out anything interesting while wandering the streets all night?” asked Jack, and proved that he knew the Doctor at least a little bit better than Fitz was comfortable with.
“Yepp.” The Time Lord gave them a quick smile that vanished as soon as it had appeared on his face. He got over to the console and started typing something while staring at the little screen with a frown. Looking over his shoulder Fitz frowned as well, because he hadn’t yet gotten used to the fact that he couldn’t make sense of the symbols on the screen anymore. Back in the old days it had all been written in plain, wonderful English. Or at least it had looked like English to him.
“Just as I thought,” the Doctor said after a minute, turned away from the screen and walked back to the door. Fitz and Jack waited in vain for an explanation.
“What did you think?” Fitz asked when it became clear that the Time Lord would not tell them.
“I thought something was wrong here.” Well, that helped.
“I figured as much. Because you said so before.” The Doctor did not seem to get the hint, so Fitz added, “What, exactly, is wrong here?”
“Oh, pretty much everything! You didn’t notice?”
“Well, I did think it was a little odd they would dress like that…”
“Don’t be silly,” the Time Lord said, granting Fitz only the briefest of glances. It still said ‘You are an idiot’ quite plainly. “The way they dress is perfectly normal.”
“Says the guy who dressed like someone out of the previous century for a lifetime,” Fitz muttered.
“I, personally, thought it was a bit odd the TARDIS had such trouble getting here, and still landed in the right place and time,” Jack voiced his own thoughts on the matter, as if anyone would care. Fitz certainly didn’t.
“Oh, that was simply because she didn’t arrive in the right place and time,” admitted the Doctor, a little sheepishly. “Well, actually she did. Well, kind of. In any case, it wasn’t her fault. Nor mine,” he added a second later. The words “I hope” that followed another second later were almost too quiet for Fitz to hear.
“Doctor, where, and when, exactly are we?” Jack asked with forced patience. The Doctor stood in the open door, looking at the village bathed in the light of the morning sun.
“’We’re nowhere,” he said.
Fitz looked as well. It didn’t appear too unreal to him.
“Care to define that?”
“Try to image a bubble disconnected from the rest of the universe,” the Doctor tried to explain. “This place doesn’t really exist, and at the same time it exists too much.” He sighed. “It’s a leftover.”
“Of what?”
“The Time War.”
“Oh.”
The two humans shared a look, each telling the other without words to ask the inevitable question. The Doctor spared them a decision by giving an explanation before they had to ask for it.
“You see, during the war timelines got changed. It’s left reality in a pretty bad shape in some places. The whole structure of time and space got cracked and torn.” He spoke like a teacher in front of a class full of bored pupils. “This is one of the places that got affected. We are in a crack in time, with reality collapsing into itself around us.”
“And that’s bad, right?” Fitz guessed.
“For various reasons,” nodded the Doctor.
“But what exactly are the consequences of that ‘crack’?” Jack wanted to know. “Everything looks normal to me.”
“I’ll show you,” the Doctor promised. “But not yet.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too early. Meet me in the restaurant where we ate yesterday in five hours.”
“And what are you going to do until then?” Fitz frowned at the Time Lord, who was already back at the controls.
“Running some scans. Looking for the exact location on the disturbance that caused this - since we’re here already we should try to fix this before the entire timeline collapses. And by ‘we’ I mean ‘I’.” He looked up and seemed surprised to find his friends still present. “Go on. Enjoy the day while it lasts! Meet the locals and all that.” He hesitated, appearing to think over what he’d just said. His shoulders slumped a little, and Fitz wasn’t sure whether it was a Jack-memory or a Fitz-memory that caused that sour expression on his face.
In the end he was looking at both of them when he said, “Just try not to break anything, okay?”
-
Having been all but kicked out by the Doctor, who claimed that he could work much better without them, Fitz and Jack spent the next few hours wandering the streets, talking to the locals and trying to figure out which of the people running around were tourists and which were working here. At least that was what Fitz was doing. He and Jack had parted ways the moment they’d stepped out of the TARDIS, and how Jack was spending his time Fitz could only guess. After knowing him for all of one week he supposed that the other man was killing time in the bed of some random chick. Or guy. Or both.
Or possibly in some random closet.
Fitz himself had seen some good looking girls, but they were either too young, or too old, or not interested. And if they were he wasn’t. The morning passed without him getting even close to someone’s bed. For Fitz it was an unmistakable sign that he was finally getting old.
Alternately it could also be the Doctor’s fault. Fitz couldn’t stop thinking back to the day they’d met again and regretting that their snogging had ended where it had.
Or did he? Trying to imagine what sex with the Doctor would be like he failed badly. It had nothing to do with his somewhat limited experience when it came to same-sex sex. Sleeping with the Doctor seemed just wrong. Even thinking about it seemed wrong.
He still couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Maybe Jack was thinking about the same thing. In that case it was good Fitz couldn’t read his mind, because Jack was much stronger than him and trying to beat him up would be a somewhat bad idea.
In the end there was still the possibility that his interest in the local beauties was numbed by the thread of doom and destruction the Doctor had hinted at. Fitz had fallen for too many doomed girls to knowingly take the risk one more time.
Perhaps that was a sign of getting old as well. Older and wiser, as they said.
The Doctor would probably laugh at him for that thought. Fitz decided to keep it to himself.
He was at the restaurant in time. In fact, he was the first one to arrive. After waiting at a free table for a few minutes while drinking water and eating bread he saw the Doctor and Jack arrive. Together.
Fitz rolled his eyes.
“Well,” he asked when they sat down. “Been lucky?”
“Oh yes,” grinned Jack. While Fitz glared at him, the Doctor seemed confused.
“With what?”
“With whatever you’ve been doing,” Fitz said with forced patience.
“Oh. No.”
“No? What have you been doing anyway?”
“In cases such as this there usually is just a tiny little crack in the fabric of reality that influences all around it. Fix that crack and everything is all right again. I’ve been trying to locate it, but there is too much white noise here to tell any more that that it’s nearby.”
Fitz frowned, confused. “White noise?”
“It’s an euphemism.”
“Ah.”
Jack sat down opposite to him.
“So, what do we do now?” he asked.
“Look to your left.”
Both Jack and Fitz looked at the Doctor.
“The other left,” he said patiently.
“Why?” Fitz wanted to know. The Doctor rolled his eyes.
“Fitz, how old are you?”
The question did nothing to kill Fitz’s confusion. “Forty,” he lied. He knew he was older than that, but thanks to his travels with the Doctor couldn’t tell exactly how much. There was no way he’d admit that before Jack, though.
The Doctor accepted the answer without comment.
“However did you manage that?” he asked. “If someone yells ‘down’, do you need an explanation first? I need to know, if I’m ever to let you out of the TARDIS again.”
Point taken, Fitz looked to his left. As did Jack.
They saw nothing special. People were walking down the street. Some were selling stuff at the side of the road. Someone played a beggar in clothes more ragged than those of any real beggar Fitz had ever seen, and a smell to go with it. The sun was shining. Birds - or bird like creatures - were making sounds that didn’t quite qualify as singing. A green spot came down the street towards them and Fitz tried not to look too closely and pretend it was a cat that had fallen into a bucket of green paint. Apart from the fluffy thing everything looked exactly as it had looked the day before. And once the ekkil had reached the Doctor and jumped onto his lap there really was no difference anymore.
None at all.
A loud shout made Fitz look even more left. What he saw was a man wiping bird excrement off his bald head while cursing loudly. Fitz gaped at him.
Jack, meanwhile, leaned back in his chair. “Ah,” he said. “That.”
“Yes, that,” the Doctor confirmed.
“Everything’s exactly the same as yesterday,” Fitz exclaimed.
“It’s called a time loop,” Jack explained in his best teacher voice. Fitz grimaced.
“No shit! I’ve learned as much from watching tv.”
Jack snorted.
“I’ve been stuck in a time loop for years once. The same two weeks over and over. Admittedly, once we’ve seen everything happen twice we found other ways to entertain ourselves.”
“You and who else?” Fitz asked, hoping the answer was not ‘The Doctor’.
“My partner. At the time agency.” The words made Fitz grimace even more, remembering the last ex-time agent he’d met. At least Jack wasn’t out to kill him.
He turned away and had a look at the scenery once again. The ekkil meowed and moved his thoughts to something he didn’t understand.
“If the day repeats endlessly,” he began, looking at the Doctor, who was stroking the animals soft fur, “then no one would remember what had happened when we arrived, right?”
“Right. Because it hasn’t happened to them.”
“Right. So how comes this thing there likes you already?”
The Doctor’s face went blank for a moment. The he jumped up.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed, making several people stare at him. “Fitz, you’re brilliant! It remembers us! That means it isn’t caught in the loop!”
“Why not?” Jack asked.
“It must have been close to the crack when it opened and thus been spared the effects!” He held up the animal with a manic grin, that disappeared a second later. With a sigh he flopped back down onto his chair. “Unfortunately I don’t think it’ll be able to tell us where it has been when it happened. Will you?” he scratched the ekkil between its four ears. It purred and curled up on his lap.
“Apparently not,” Fitz commented, wondering if that meant he wasn’t quite as brilliant now.
The guy with the shit on his head was arguing with some other guy to give him some of his water for a quick polish. Fitz imagined this scene happen over and over and over again.
He’d go crazy after a week, he supposed. These people would too, if they knew.
Good thing the Doctor was here now. He’d fix this.
“I’m looking for Punxsutawney Phil,” Jack suddenly said, following his gaze. “Haven’t seen him yet.” Fitz didn’t do him the favour of asking, having seen the movie on tv during his Doctor-less time on Earth.
“The question is,” said the Doctor, “where is the guy who’s played by Bill Murray?”
“You think there is one?” Jack asked. “Apart from the cat, I mean.”
“There is one. We’ve met him. And it’s an ekkil.”
“Wait, what?” That was Fitz again, if he recognized his own voice correctly. “We’ve met him?”
“Yes, after we arrived. The man who was supposed to show us around. Remember his reaction?”
Fitz did. The man had seemed nervous and confused, and when he’d seen them he’d panicked and run away. Maybe they should have followed him to find out why and not just assumed he was bonkers.
“Of course,” said Jack. “It makes sense now. Depending on how long he’s been stuck in the loop he must know everything here, every event, every movement of the birds. New arrivals must have shocked him to no end.”
“But shouldn’t he be more interested in us, then?” Fitz thought out loud. “I in his place would hunger for change. And a way out.”
“So would I,” Jack agreed.
“Hm,” said the Doctor.
“What, ‘hm’? What does ‘hm’ mean?” Fitz frowned at his friend. “You wouldn’t?”
“Oh, I would! Would be pretty boring being stuck in the same day.” The Doctor grinned briefly. “No worries! I think I know how to find him. And then he can show me the crack and I’ll fix it and we’ll be able to leave.”
Fitz and Jack shared another look. They’d been doing that a lot lately.
“’Be able to’?” Jack repeated. “Does that mean we’re stuck here right now?”
“Hm,” said the Doctor.
“Oh, please!”
“Well, it was hard getting here. Getting out will be even harder.”
“Just our luck that you picked the Groundhog Day to land here,” Fitz complained. “We couldn’t possibly have come here just one day later.”
“Oh yes, it was luck, and not just ours.” The Doctor didn’t seem too concerned. Maybe he was just confident in his crack-fixing abilities. “Because the next day doesn’t exist. Time stops here, because it doesn’t move on. Well, actually the next day does exist, theoretically. But only if the loop has been broken. And so we have to break it, naturally.”
Fitz tried to get though the tense-changes and gave up.
“So without us here the world would end,” he guessed.
“That’s how it works,” confirmed Jack.
“So, how do we find this guy?”
“Later.” The Doctor stood. “I need to get back to the TARDIS first.”
“What for?” Jack’s question granted him an annoyed glance from the Time Lord.
“To get something to fix the gap with,” he said. “Or do you think I’ll pull it closed with my bare hands?”
Fitz, who had imagined something like that, stayed silent. He followed the Doctor when he left, constantly eying the thing his friend was bringing along.
“Why do you bring the ca- ekkil?” he asked.
“It’s important. Crucial, in fact.” The Doctor grinned at him. “Like I said, you’re brilliant!”
Fitz was glad to hear it. He wondered if one day he would learn why.
Part 2
Prompt: #072 - Fixed
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Torchwood Series 2 Finale
Characters/Pairing: Fitz/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Summary: Sequel to Elsewhere and Somewhere, although you probably don't need to have read those for this story.
Fitz and the Doctor have picked up Jack, and the three of them have for once landed exactly where they wanted to go. Because if they what to go to where the trouble is, why should the TARDIS protest?
Note: This is the fic that would not end. It kept me from updating Pendulum, but I will finish at least one more chapter for that fic before I take a break for writing my NaNoWriMo story in November.
When the room shook, danced and jumped around until Fitz lost all orientation along with his balance, he crashed towards the ground like he’d done so often before. This time he was lucky though, because his fall was cushioned by something soft before he reached it. Well, soft was a relative expression. In any case the thing he landed on was a lot softer than the floor.
His luck ended when something fell onto him a second later, as this something was a lot harder that the usual things that fell onto him in situations such as this - meaning nothing.
The Doctor usually fell onto the couch beside the console. Fitz had been on board the TARDIS long enough since reuniting with the Time Lord to have noticed that. At first he’d thought it was coincidence that had worked in the Doctor’s favour, then he’d suspected luck. In the end he decided that it had to be the ship, only shaking and tumbling when the Doctor was standing where he would fall softly. No one could be so lucky every single time.
The TARDIS had not been so considerate when Fitz had been here before. Maybe she’d had better things to do then. Like bringing them to trouble. No, scratch that - she did exactly the same now. So maybe she didn’t think - or calculate, or whatever it was a sentient time machine did - that her pilot needed to be protected back then.
Though most likely she had been stopped by the position of the armchair, which had been nowhere near the console.
The only argument against that theory was that this time the Doctor had been standing nowhere near that couch. Sprawled face down over the chest of another human being, Fitz suspected that he had still had a soft landing, on the ground of the elbow pressing into his back.
At least this version wasn’t heavy - not that the first one had been. Fitz’s first one, that was. Meaning the first version of the Doctor Fitz had met. Which had been the Doctor’s eight version of himself.
With the room running in circles around him, no one could blame Fitz for not thinking straight.
A second later Fitz realised that the room had returned to normal and it was just his brain that was still spinning. He shook his head to stop it.
Once everything up there was back in the right order, Fitz became aware of the fact that the weight that must have been the Doctor was gone from his back. He was still lying, though, with a man between him and the floor. Fitz’s nose was practically inside the guy’s shirt. His brain gave the impulse to jump up and away with an expression of disgust, but he body wasn’t ready yet and did nothing. After a brief exchange mind and body remembered that being freaked out by close proximity of another male was in no way acceptable for someone who’d been snogging the Doctor not so long ago, and quite joyously so.
“If you wanted me so badly you should have said something,” the man beneath him grinned, and Fitz was up and away in a millisecond.
He overbalanced and fell onto his butt with a thud. Before he could get up on his own the Doctor was standing before him, offering a hand.
“You never cease to amaze me,” he stated as he pulled the human to his feet.
“I aim to please,” grumbled Fitz.
“Hey,” the man on the floor complained. “And who’s going to get me up?”
“You’re a grown man, you can get yourself up,” the Doctor replied and walked over to his console. There was no wink, no smile, nothing indicating that the Time Lord knew what exactly he had just said. So Fitz ignored that part and focused on what the Doctor’s statement said about him.
“I’m not a toddler either, thanks,” he pouted.
“Right. And even for grown-ups getting up is so much nicer if you have help.” Jack winked as he jumped to his feet, and Fitz did his best to concentrate solely on what the Doctor was doing.
“What happened?” he asked.
“We arrived somewhere,” Jack explained. “The TARDIS likes to tell us about it this way.”
Fitz decided to ignore him, because the only appropriate answer would have been stuffing a sock into Jack’s mouth, and he just couldn’t bother to get out of his shoes right now.
“Where exactly are we?” he clarified his question, and then he added, “Which cosmic catastrophe has caused the TARDIS so much trouble in getting here, and are we where we wanted to go, or somewhere else entirely?” because he didn’t want to give Jack another opportunity to act like this was Fitz’s first trip with the Doctor.
“We’re exactly where we want to be,” the Doctor exclaimed happily. “Right planet, right date, right universe.” He took his coat off the back of the couch and jogged over to the door. “Planet Roa, a decade after my last visit here. I’d like to see how that peace-treaty between the two intelligent races on this world is working. Also, they make the best udon in the entire universe!” Just before opening the door he hesitated. “Of course, that doesn’t explain why the TARDIS had such a hard time getting here.”
“So we’d better prepare for trouble,” Jack said, nodding knowingly.
“Don’t we ever?” muttered Fitz. The Doctor simply pushed open the door and stepped outside.
Fitz hurried after him and was at the door before Jack was. Outside he was greeted by a warm, sunny day. The sky was blue but for a few picturesque white clouds. Cobblestone stretched into a street before them, lined by small houses surrounded by gardens. People in old-fashioned clothes were walking the street without paying attention to the three men and their phone box. They looked not at all alien. Out of the corner of his eye Fitz saw a cat inspecting the TARDIS, before rubbing against his leg with a purr.
“If this is another planet, why does it look so eighteenth century?” Jack’s voice sounded beside him.
The Doctor looked rather confused himself. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s eighteenth century day. Where they dress like eighteenth century people and… build proper houses. And have cows eating straw in the streets.”
Or they simply missed the goal again, Fitz mentally added to the list of possibilities. “Doctor,” he said dryly. “Your navigation sucks.”
Jack, for once, didn’t protest. Even the cat agreed, still rubbing her heard against Fitz’s ankle.
The Doctor turned to him in a quick, unexpected motion. “You think so?” he asked, challenging.
“It would explain a lot,” Fitz justified his words, resisting the delayed urge to jump a step back.
Or a metre.
The cat didn’t even interrupt her purring for half a second.
“In that case, explain this to me!” the Doctor said as he stooped down and picked up the cat to hold it up to Fitz’s face. Just so Fitz could see that it had three eyes, two tails and four ears - and how he’d been able to miss the dark green fur before was beyond him.
The urge finally won and Fitz jumped back with a “Yikes!”
The ‘cat’ mewed.
“Maybe it fell though the rift,” Jack offered. That seemed to be his explanation for everything. Fitz, so far, had deliberately failed to show any interest in what kind of ‘rift’ he was talking about all the time.
“It’s an ekkil,” the Doctor pointed out, allowing the green animal to crawl up his shoulder and inspect his hair. “They live only on Roa.”
“As do humans and cows?” Jack asked. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but your furry friend is outnumbered.”
“We’re here as well, and we’d belong neither to Roa nor to the eighteenth century,” the Doctor reminded him.
“Well, at least two of us don’t,” Jack mumbled with a glance at Fitz. The Doctor scowled at both of them. Louder Jack added, “We didn’t exactly come here by car.”
“Who said they did? The two intelligent species I mentioned are the native Roans and the human colonists. Maybe they just like dressing up like this.”
“Or maybe we’re on Earth and the thing there fell through the rift.” Jack definitely wanted to stick with his theory, and Fitz had to admit that it was at least a little more likely than the Doctor’s explanation. “The TARDIS confused this animal with the entire planet and took us here.”
“Hey!” someone called just the moment the Doctor opened his mouth to defend his ship’s navigational abilities. They all turned their heads to see an elderly man running up to them. “You’re breaking the clothing rule. Get changed, or I’ll have you removed from the project!”
“Right, sorry,” the Doctor apologized. “We’ve only just arrived, no one has instructed us yet.”
“You’re new?” The man frowned. “Of course you are. I don’t know you.”
“New to the project and the planet.” The Doctor smiled. “Sorry, we’ve spent a lot of time in a spaceship and got a bit confused. Could you tell us the date?”
They were looked at as if they were idiots, but Fitz was used to that.
“It’s fourth of October,” the old man said. “In the year 4067 of the old Earth calendar,” he added sarcastically.
“Thanks, we knew that much,” Jack answered in the same tone.
“We’ll get changed now,” the Doctor interrupted him before he could say more. “Once we’re done, could you send someone to give us the tour? Just so we know in detail what we are dealing with?”
The stranger in the old fashioned pants and shirt grunted something that could have been agreement and shuffled away. The Doctor turned back to the TARDIS, ignored by everyone but them, and threw his friends a triumphant glance while pushing open the doors.
“You owe her an apology,” he stated once they were all back inside and on their way to the wardrobe.
“I’m sorry I doubted you, Doctor,” Jack said obediently while the Time Lord attempted to get the ekkil out of his hair. “But I’m not apologizing to a ship.”
“At least this one isn’t answering,” mumbled Fitz. The thought was followed by another. “Hey, Doctor,” he called. “Do you have any idea what Compassion is doing?”
Giving an answer took the Time Lord long enough for Fitz to regret having asked at all. When he finally spoke the Doctor’s voice was quieter than he had been in days.
“She was, in the end, a product of Gallifrey,” he said and didn’t look at his friends. “When Gallifrey’s existence got negated so must have been hers.”
But I remember her, Fitz wanted to protest. She was real! But then, so was the Doctor, born on a planet that never was. Fitz didn’t understand and could never hope to. All he knew was that he had quite effectively killed the mood.
He didn’t need to turn his head to know that Jack was glaring at him. If it was physically possibly he’d have been glaring at himself.
-
If there was one thing that hadn’t changed one bit it was the Doctor’s ability to forget things that bothered him from one second to the next, or at least very successfully pretend he had. Half an hour later they were all seated around a table on the terrace of a restaurant that looked just as middle-age-ish as everything else here and were chatting happily with each other, as if nothing had ever happened.
Well, actually the Doctor chatted happily with Fitz and Jack and Fitz and Jack happily chatted with the Doctor. They also chatted with each other, but not happily so.
Jack Harkness had joined them almost a week ago, when the Doctor and Fitz had come to Cardiff, of all places, to save Earth once again. Fitz hadn’t been reunited with his friend for very long and wasn’t at all happy when Jack, who apparently knew the Doctor from the days Fitz had missed, asked to join for a trip or two. Especially since Fitz had the distinct impression that the man only wanted to come along to make sure he wasn’t the wrong company for the Doctor to play with or something similarly idiotic.
It wasn’t even dislike Fitz and Jack felt for each other. Had they met under different circumstances… well, most likely they’d have passed on the street without a second glance, but at least there would have been no hate.
Fitz grimaced every time he realised that what he felt for Jack could best be describes as ‘sibling rivalry’.
He hadn’t yet decided where the catlike animal the Doctor had picked up fit into all that. The three-eyed thing had finally agreed to climb off the Time Lord but had been following them ever since. It didn’t help that the Doctor was feeding it with little lumps of meat he picked out of his udon with his chopsticks.
As Fitz had found out udon was some kind of soup with a kind of long noodles in it. No sane person could ever wish to eat soup with chopsticks, but here they were, doing their best.
The Doctor didn’t seem to find it strange at all. He sat bent down in his chair, his face almost in his bowl, and slurped in the noodles noisily. While Jack definitely knew how to handle the chopsticks he made the mistake of trying to get the every noodle into his mouth with one go, without the slurping, and ended up making a mess of both in himself and the table. And Fitz, sitting opposite to him.
Fitz himself didn’t even know how to hold the chopsticks and ended up using both his hand in an attempt to stab the soup with them.
Once the Doctor had finished with the solid bits he put the bowl to his lips and drank the soup with an expression of delight. Fitz gave up on trying to find anything in his own bowl and drank as well, revealing the noodles and other stuff at least. He was bloody hungry. If he didn’t manage to get that into his mouth soon he’d have to use his hands when no one was looking…
“This is too hard for me,” Jack said with a crooked smile at the Doctor. “Can you feed me?”
“We’re trying to blend in, Jack! At least pretend to know what you’re doing,” the Doctor scolded mildly, causing Jack to nod at Fitz. “What, like him?”
“In my culture this stuff is finger food,” Fitz made up. The Doctor slapped his fingers when he tried to reach into the bowl.
Around them people did what they were doing without paying attention to the new arrivals. As it had turned out they were indeed on the planet called Roa, and the coexistence of the human colonists and the native Roans the Doctor had been worried about was no cause for worry at all.
Apparently this village was some kind of tourist location, only with scientific background. They had recreated an original eighteenth century village and had lots of people working and living here, pretending to be pre-spaceage farmers. Tourists could come and live here as well, get the full experience, but it also meant that they were not allowed to use any of their modern products - ranging from phone to toothbrush. According to the Doctor projects such as this had been popular every so often in the history of mankind.
The promised tour, however, they had never gotten. A man had awaited them down the street when they left the TARDIS dressed in clothes that would have looked old even in Fitz’s youth, but he’d seemed nervous and confused and had run away the moment he spotted them. It confirmed Fitz’s suspicion that the entire project was a little bit silly and everyone working here had to be a little bit crazy.
They fit in rather well, he found.
Having found out about the political circumstances and having had his udon, there was no reason for the Doctor to keep them here any longer, though. Fitz expected them to leave within the next hour.
Behind him a man cursed loudly. They all turned to see him wipe a white, sticky substance off his bald head. Fitz grinned widely when he realised that the guy had just been given a ‘gift’ by a bird.
Something touched his ankle. He looked down and shuddered when he saw the green ekkil, which had curled up on the floor, leaning against his leg. As if sensing his stare, the animal opened it’s middle eyes to lazily gaze up at him for a moment before going back to sleep.
It was almost cute, Fitz decided - if he ignored the eye-thing. And the tails. And the ears. In any case it wasn’t half as creepy or disgusting as numerous other creatures he’d faced during his travels.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Jack, looking at the Doctor. “You’ve gotten your snack, the world is all right - and out next stop is…?”
The Doctor snorted.
“Don’t be stupid, Jack,” he said. “We’re not done here.”
It were not the words Fitz had been hoping for. “We’re not?”
“Of course not. We can’t leave before we found out what’s wrong.”
“Why do you think there’s something wrong here?” Jack wanted to know. He looked around, and so did Fitz, and neither of them found anything more out of the ordinary that the local fauna.
The Doctor looked at them, puzzled. “Can’t you feel it?”
The two humans shared a glance. The raised eyebrow Jack gave Fitz was the least hostile gesture he’d ever received from the Captain - apart from some blunt attempts at flirting that seemed to happen automatically.
The Time Lord sighed. “Apparently not,” he answered his own question. “Really, how do cope with being so… blind?”
“We manage,” Jack said dryly. “Enlighten us, mighty Time Lord: What is wrong here?”
The Doctor grinned, brightly and unexpectedly. “I have no idea!”
“Oh, that helps!” muttered Fitz despite really not having expected anything else.
“It’s like… a disruption,” the Doctor tried to put his impression into words. “It’s impossible to explain - like describing the colour blue to someone who’s been blind all his life. All I can say is that something feels off about this place. Very off.”
“So what do we do about it?”
“We find out what it is.”
“And then we’ll fix it,” Jack guessed.
The Doctor nodded. “I see, you’ve got the idea.”
Fitz merely sighed. He’d kind of seen that coming.
-
Officially they spend the night in one of the houses, sharing one small room with beds made of straw. The ‘bathroom’ consisted of a tiny chamber with a bucket and there was a basin filled with cold water for washing. The Doctor was delighted at the sight while at the same time he had fun pointing out all the mistakes he found. Jack and Fitz were less delighted and complained until the Doctor agreed to let them sleep in the TARDIS. He stayed in that room himself, keeping up the impression it was occupied by three people. Fitz could very well picture him talking to himself all night.
He’d always been talking to himself a lot. It was a way to keep himself from thinking, he’d once said.
Sometimes Fitz wondered what it was his friend hadn’t been willing to think about then, and how it differed from what he avoided thinking about now.
Some part of Fitz had feared that Jack would use the opportunity to have a ‘talk’ with him, or even to just beat him up, for living or some related reason. He didn’t want to talk to Jack, who clearly didn’t like him, and wanted to be beaten up even less, and so he more or less fled to his room as soon as the door closed behind them. Which seemed perfectly fine with the other man. Both of them spent the night blissfully sleeping in their own bed, and managed to get up at the same time. They met in the console room the moment the Doctor came in, looking troubled and slightly tired.
“Well? Did you find out anything interesting while wandering the streets all night?” asked Jack, and proved that he knew the Doctor at least a little bit better than Fitz was comfortable with.
“Yepp.” The Time Lord gave them a quick smile that vanished as soon as it had appeared on his face. He got over to the console and started typing something while staring at the little screen with a frown. Looking over his shoulder Fitz frowned as well, because he hadn’t yet gotten used to the fact that he couldn’t make sense of the symbols on the screen anymore. Back in the old days it had all been written in plain, wonderful English. Or at least it had looked like English to him.
“Just as I thought,” the Doctor said after a minute, turned away from the screen and walked back to the door. Fitz and Jack waited in vain for an explanation.
“What did you think?” Fitz asked when it became clear that the Time Lord would not tell them.
“I thought something was wrong here.” Well, that helped.
“I figured as much. Because you said so before.” The Doctor did not seem to get the hint, so Fitz added, “What, exactly, is wrong here?”
“Oh, pretty much everything! You didn’t notice?”
“Well, I did think it was a little odd they would dress like that…”
“Don’t be silly,” the Time Lord said, granting Fitz only the briefest of glances. It still said ‘You are an idiot’ quite plainly. “The way they dress is perfectly normal.”
“Says the guy who dressed like someone out of the previous century for a lifetime,” Fitz muttered.
“I, personally, thought it was a bit odd the TARDIS had such trouble getting here, and still landed in the right place and time,” Jack voiced his own thoughts on the matter, as if anyone would care. Fitz certainly didn’t.
“Oh, that was simply because she didn’t arrive in the right place and time,” admitted the Doctor, a little sheepishly. “Well, actually she did. Well, kind of. In any case, it wasn’t her fault. Nor mine,” he added a second later. The words “I hope” that followed another second later were almost too quiet for Fitz to hear.
“Doctor, where, and when, exactly are we?” Jack asked with forced patience. The Doctor stood in the open door, looking at the village bathed in the light of the morning sun.
“’We’re nowhere,” he said.
Fitz looked as well. It didn’t appear too unreal to him.
“Care to define that?”
“Try to image a bubble disconnected from the rest of the universe,” the Doctor tried to explain. “This place doesn’t really exist, and at the same time it exists too much.” He sighed. “It’s a leftover.”
“Of what?”
“The Time War.”
“Oh.”
The two humans shared a look, each telling the other without words to ask the inevitable question. The Doctor spared them a decision by giving an explanation before they had to ask for it.
“You see, during the war timelines got changed. It’s left reality in a pretty bad shape in some places. The whole structure of time and space got cracked and torn.” He spoke like a teacher in front of a class full of bored pupils. “This is one of the places that got affected. We are in a crack in time, with reality collapsing into itself around us.”
“And that’s bad, right?” Fitz guessed.
“For various reasons,” nodded the Doctor.
“But what exactly are the consequences of that ‘crack’?” Jack wanted to know. “Everything looks normal to me.”
“I’ll show you,” the Doctor promised. “But not yet.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too early. Meet me in the restaurant where we ate yesterday in five hours.”
“And what are you going to do until then?” Fitz frowned at the Time Lord, who was already back at the controls.
“Running some scans. Looking for the exact location on the disturbance that caused this - since we’re here already we should try to fix this before the entire timeline collapses. And by ‘we’ I mean ‘I’.” He looked up and seemed surprised to find his friends still present. “Go on. Enjoy the day while it lasts! Meet the locals and all that.” He hesitated, appearing to think over what he’d just said. His shoulders slumped a little, and Fitz wasn’t sure whether it was a Jack-memory or a Fitz-memory that caused that sour expression on his face.
In the end he was looking at both of them when he said, “Just try not to break anything, okay?”
-
Having been all but kicked out by the Doctor, who claimed that he could work much better without them, Fitz and Jack spent the next few hours wandering the streets, talking to the locals and trying to figure out which of the people running around were tourists and which were working here. At least that was what Fitz was doing. He and Jack had parted ways the moment they’d stepped out of the TARDIS, and how Jack was spending his time Fitz could only guess. After knowing him for all of one week he supposed that the other man was killing time in the bed of some random chick. Or guy. Or both.
Or possibly in some random closet.
Fitz himself had seen some good looking girls, but they were either too young, or too old, or not interested. And if they were he wasn’t. The morning passed without him getting even close to someone’s bed. For Fitz it was an unmistakable sign that he was finally getting old.
Alternately it could also be the Doctor’s fault. Fitz couldn’t stop thinking back to the day they’d met again and regretting that their snogging had ended where it had.
Or did he? Trying to imagine what sex with the Doctor would be like he failed badly. It had nothing to do with his somewhat limited experience when it came to same-sex sex. Sleeping with the Doctor seemed just wrong. Even thinking about it seemed wrong.
He still couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Maybe Jack was thinking about the same thing. In that case it was good Fitz couldn’t read his mind, because Jack was much stronger than him and trying to beat him up would be a somewhat bad idea.
In the end there was still the possibility that his interest in the local beauties was numbed by the thread of doom and destruction the Doctor had hinted at. Fitz had fallen for too many doomed girls to knowingly take the risk one more time.
Perhaps that was a sign of getting old as well. Older and wiser, as they said.
The Doctor would probably laugh at him for that thought. Fitz decided to keep it to himself.
He was at the restaurant in time. In fact, he was the first one to arrive. After waiting at a free table for a few minutes while drinking water and eating bread he saw the Doctor and Jack arrive. Together.
Fitz rolled his eyes.
“Well,” he asked when they sat down. “Been lucky?”
“Oh yes,” grinned Jack. While Fitz glared at him, the Doctor seemed confused.
“With what?”
“With whatever you’ve been doing,” Fitz said with forced patience.
“Oh. No.”
“No? What have you been doing anyway?”
“In cases such as this there usually is just a tiny little crack in the fabric of reality that influences all around it. Fix that crack and everything is all right again. I’ve been trying to locate it, but there is too much white noise here to tell any more that that it’s nearby.”
Fitz frowned, confused. “White noise?”
“It’s an euphemism.”
“Ah.”
Jack sat down opposite to him.
“So, what do we do now?” he asked.
“Look to your left.”
Both Jack and Fitz looked at the Doctor.
“The other left,” he said patiently.
“Why?” Fitz wanted to know. The Doctor rolled his eyes.
“Fitz, how old are you?”
The question did nothing to kill Fitz’s confusion. “Forty,” he lied. He knew he was older than that, but thanks to his travels with the Doctor couldn’t tell exactly how much. There was no way he’d admit that before Jack, though.
The Doctor accepted the answer without comment.
“However did you manage that?” he asked. “If someone yells ‘down’, do you need an explanation first? I need to know, if I’m ever to let you out of the TARDIS again.”
Point taken, Fitz looked to his left. As did Jack.
They saw nothing special. People were walking down the street. Some were selling stuff at the side of the road. Someone played a beggar in clothes more ragged than those of any real beggar Fitz had ever seen, and a smell to go with it. The sun was shining. Birds - or bird like creatures - were making sounds that didn’t quite qualify as singing. A green spot came down the street towards them and Fitz tried not to look too closely and pretend it was a cat that had fallen into a bucket of green paint. Apart from the fluffy thing everything looked exactly as it had looked the day before. And once the ekkil had reached the Doctor and jumped onto his lap there really was no difference anymore.
None at all.
A loud shout made Fitz look even more left. What he saw was a man wiping bird excrement off his bald head while cursing loudly. Fitz gaped at him.
Jack, meanwhile, leaned back in his chair. “Ah,” he said. “That.”
“Yes, that,” the Doctor confirmed.
“Everything’s exactly the same as yesterday,” Fitz exclaimed.
“It’s called a time loop,” Jack explained in his best teacher voice. Fitz grimaced.
“No shit! I’ve learned as much from watching tv.”
Jack snorted.
“I’ve been stuck in a time loop for years once. The same two weeks over and over. Admittedly, once we’ve seen everything happen twice we found other ways to entertain ourselves.”
“You and who else?” Fitz asked, hoping the answer was not ‘The Doctor’.
“My partner. At the time agency.” The words made Fitz grimace even more, remembering the last ex-time agent he’d met. At least Jack wasn’t out to kill him.
He turned away and had a look at the scenery once again. The ekkil meowed and moved his thoughts to something he didn’t understand.
“If the day repeats endlessly,” he began, looking at the Doctor, who was stroking the animals soft fur, “then no one would remember what had happened when we arrived, right?”
“Right. Because it hasn’t happened to them.”
“Right. So how comes this thing there likes you already?”
The Doctor’s face went blank for a moment. The he jumped up.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed, making several people stare at him. “Fitz, you’re brilliant! It remembers us! That means it isn’t caught in the loop!”
“Why not?” Jack asked.
“It must have been close to the crack when it opened and thus been spared the effects!” He held up the animal with a manic grin, that disappeared a second later. With a sigh he flopped back down onto his chair. “Unfortunately I don’t think it’ll be able to tell us where it has been when it happened. Will you?” he scratched the ekkil between its four ears. It purred and curled up on his lap.
“Apparently not,” Fitz commented, wondering if that meant he wasn’t quite as brilliant now.
The guy with the shit on his head was arguing with some other guy to give him some of his water for a quick polish. Fitz imagined this scene happen over and over and over again.
He’d go crazy after a week, he supposed. These people would too, if they knew.
Good thing the Doctor was here now. He’d fix this.
“I’m looking for Punxsutawney Phil,” Jack suddenly said, following his gaze. “Haven’t seen him yet.” Fitz didn’t do him the favour of asking, having seen the movie on tv during his Doctor-less time on Earth.
“The question is,” said the Doctor, “where is the guy who’s played by Bill Murray?”
“You think there is one?” Jack asked. “Apart from the cat, I mean.”
“There is one. We’ve met him. And it’s an ekkil.”
“Wait, what?” That was Fitz again, if he recognized his own voice correctly. “We’ve met him?”
“Yes, after we arrived. The man who was supposed to show us around. Remember his reaction?”
Fitz did. The man had seemed nervous and confused, and when he’d seen them he’d panicked and run away. Maybe they should have followed him to find out why and not just assumed he was bonkers.
“Of course,” said Jack. “It makes sense now. Depending on how long he’s been stuck in the loop he must know everything here, every event, every movement of the birds. New arrivals must have shocked him to no end.”
“But shouldn’t he be more interested in us, then?” Fitz thought out loud. “I in his place would hunger for change. And a way out.”
“So would I,” Jack agreed.
“Hm,” said the Doctor.
“What, ‘hm’? What does ‘hm’ mean?” Fitz frowned at his friend. “You wouldn’t?”
“Oh, I would! Would be pretty boring being stuck in the same day.” The Doctor grinned briefly. “No worries! I think I know how to find him. And then he can show me the crack and I’ll fix it and we’ll be able to leave.”
Fitz and Jack shared another look. They’d been doing that a lot lately.
“’Be able to’?” Jack repeated. “Does that mean we’re stuck here right now?”
“Hm,” said the Doctor.
“Oh, please!”
“Well, it was hard getting here. Getting out will be even harder.”
“Just our luck that you picked the Groundhog Day to land here,” Fitz complained. “We couldn’t possibly have come here just one day later.”
“Oh yes, it was luck, and not just ours.” The Doctor didn’t seem too concerned. Maybe he was just confident in his crack-fixing abilities. “Because the next day doesn’t exist. Time stops here, because it doesn’t move on. Well, actually the next day does exist, theoretically. But only if the loop has been broken. And so we have to break it, naturally.”
Fitz tried to get though the tense-changes and gave up.
“So without us here the world would end,” he guessed.
“That’s how it works,” confirmed Jack.
“So, how do we find this guy?”
“Later.” The Doctor stood. “I need to get back to the TARDIS first.”
“What for?” Jack’s question granted him an annoyed glance from the Time Lord.
“To get something to fix the gap with,” he said. “Or do you think I’ll pull it closed with my bare hands?”
Fitz, who had imagined something like that, stayed silent. He followed the Doctor when he left, constantly eying the thing his friend was bringing along.
“Why do you bring the ca- ekkil?” he asked.
“It’s important. Crucial, in fact.” The Doctor grinned at him. “Like I said, you’re brilliant!”
Fitz was glad to hear it. He wondered if one day he would learn why.
Part 2