Man and Superman 3/10?
Story: Man and Superman
Author: wmr
Rated: PG13 (for now)
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness, others
Spoilers: AU from Parting of the Ways, general Torchwood spoiler (but not Torchwood compliant)
Summary: A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Man and Superman Act I
With grateful thanks to
ponygirl72 and
dark_aegis for BRing and general support and encouragement - you rock, ladies!
Chapter 1: Staying Alive l Chapter 2: Sick Bed
Chapter 3: Christmas Spirit
A familiar scent tantalises his nostrils. Tannin. That’s it. Good old English tea. All those free radicals and the like. Ooh. Good cup of tea, that’s what he needs.
He’s in the TARDIS. Was he in the TARDIS before? For some reason, he has an odd memory of Jackie’s flat and a revolving Christmas tree. And Rose pleading with him to help her. Pilot fish. That’s what it was. Something was coming. Has it come? Or...
Someone’s outside. More than one person. There’s trouble. Putting down the flask of tea after just one gulp, he walks to the door and pulls it open, just in time to hear Rose saying, “That’s English. Do you hear English? He’s speaking English!”
A harsh, guttural voice responds, “I would never dirty my tongue with your primitive bile!”
Rose, again, then. “If I can hear English... then it's being translated. Which means it's working. Which means...”
She turns to him just as he steps into the doorway, and she’s smiling, even though tear-tracks are running down her face. “Did you miss me?” he asks lightly, stepping forward again, keeping a smile on his face - always helps to disarm anyone whose intentions might be less friendly. At the same time he’s looking around, taking in the situation.
It’s bad. Very bad. A shedload of vicious-looking aliens. Two piles of charred bones that were once humans; two murders so far. No, he realises as he almost trips over a body on the ground by his feet. Three. Jack’s been killed. Not charred, but still dead, all the same.
Oh, Jack. Brave, warm-hearted Jack, who was no doubt being a hero once more.
No Vortex-infused Rose to bring him back to life this time. And, he realises with a shock, no-one but him and Rose to mourn the loss of their courageous friend. If Jack has family anywhere in the universe, he’s never mentioned them. Didn’t ask, back on Satellite Five, for any message to be given to anyone who might miss him. Might love him. He was alone, but for the two people he’d accidentally fallen in with. The only people left to love him.
But there’s no time to mourn Jack now, just as there was no time before. There are aliens to defeat and an invasion to prevent - and lives to defend here, not least Rose and Mickey’s. And, he realises as he recognises the woman standing a few feet away, Harriet Jones’s.
So, a strategy... or time to come up with one. He grabs the staff the alien - they’re Sycorax, he gathers - is holding, snaps it over his knee and then, taking advantage of the element of surprise, takes control of the situation. Makes the Sycorax leader wait while he asks Rose what he looks like. Rose is disconcerted, but sees what he’s up to after a while - especially once he prods her by accusing her of giving up on him - and plays along. Then greets Harriet Jones, attempting in his reintroduction of himself to reassure her that he’ll do his best to get her out of this alive, her planet safe. Finally, he uses the Sycorax leader’s demand to know who he is as an excuse to prattle on for ages about what sort of man he might be.
The blood control removed, he’s running through options in his mind: intergalactic treaties, alliances this race might have, planets and species they might decide are easier prey than Earth - not that he wants them to invade somewhere else he’ll only have to save, but it might take them out of this situation and give him breathing-room. After all, he’s only just woken up from regeneration sickness.
And then it comes to him, as he’s mid-speech, the kind of speech the previous him would have given about leaving the Earth’s population to find its own fumbling way in the universe - except he borrows from The Lion King - and he grabs a sword. One-to-one combat. The sanctified rules still apply, after all, and even the Sycorax accept that.
Fight to the death, then, or at least until he comes up with another brilliant stratagem.
And then, as he’s shrugging out of his dressing-gown, handing it to Rose, out of the corner of his eye, unbelievably, he sees Jack stir and struggle to his feet.
***
There’s no time, no time at all to react to Jack being alive after all, or even to ask how. She has to leave Mickey to help him as he sways a little on his feet; she has to give her full attention to the Doctor as he fights.
Sword-fighting; not something she could remotely have imagined the old Doctor doing, and it’s yet another reinforcement that her first Doctor’s gone for ever. Yet she’s watching him, eagle-eyed, heart in her throat, every bit as much as if he was her first Doctor. Ready to rush in to help when he’s injured, and he has to warn her to get back or else she’ll invalidate the challenge and hand the Earth over to the invaders.
Jack’s the one who has to be held back when the Doctor’s sword is cut from his hand and they realise that his hand’s been severed too. She grips Jack’s hand with one of hers, and Mickey holds him back with the other. And they all stare as a new hand grows in place of the old. “Time Lord,” the Doctor says, claiming the title more proudly than she’s ever heard him before.
Mickey finds a new sword from somewhere, and she gets to throw it to the Doctor. And in that moment there’s a new accord between them. He grins at her, and she realises that, somehow, she’s managing to let go of her Northern Doctor and accept this one in his place.
It’s all over soon enough and they’re back down on Earth. And, finally, they can react to Jack - alive, safe, unhurt.
“You were dead! I saw them kill you! How...” She grabs him, won’t let go of his hand, reaching up to his face.
He shrugs. “Think the whip must’ve missed me. Guess I fell and hit my head,” he says, looking puzzled himself. “Must’ve knocked myself out. Lucky escape.”
“Yeah.” Very lucky. And if he was just unconscious that explains why he wasn’t burned to a crisp, like the people in Harriet Jones’ entourage.
She hugs him, and then the Doctor’s hugging the two of them, and a moment later pulling Mickey into the group embrace.
Shortly after, the Doctor goes to talk to Harriet Jones, hugging her as well. He really seems much more tactile now, she considers. Before, he would sometimes reach out and touch, and he did once say that he’d hug anyone - not that she saw much evidence of that - but he still kept a very obvious don’t touch wall around himself most of the time.
He breaks away as her mum arrives, relief written all over her face, demanding to know if they’re all right and safe.
“Are you all right?” she asks the Doctor, staring up at him as he comes to her. “Are you better?”
He grins down at her. “Cup o’ tea! That’s all I needed.” And he hugs her, too, and Rose’s jaw almost hits the ground.
They’re all talking at once, the Doctor, her mum, Jack and Mickey, when suddenly several beams of light appear, followed by a massive explosion.
The retreating Sycorax ship, disintegrated, and its crew with it.
And the Doctor’s expression is furious. Suddenly, the new, easy-going, open and friendly exterior’s vanished. Rage is in every part of his posture, his voice, his movements. He strides over to Harriet Jones and her assistant.
“That was murder.”
An argument breaks out, while all she can do is stand there, stunned. The Doctor fought for the planet. He won. He got a promise that the Sycorax wouldn’t come back. And now... this.
And yet she can’t help but remember Downing Street. The Doctor, unsure whether he could take the risk of launching nuclear missiles on the building, knowing that it could kill the three of them. Harriet Jones taking the decision out of his hands.
The argument’s broken up by Jack. “She’s right, Doctor. There was no guarantee those bastards would keep their word. You didn’t see what happened before you woke up. She tried to negotiate - kept trying even when they’d taken a third of the planet hostage. They’re the ones who took the hostile action. And, you know, other people would’ve opened fire as soon as their ship entered airspace.”
She holds her breath as the Doctor turns his enraged gaze on Jack. But, after a moment, his expression relaxes. “Maybe. Maybe you’re right. I’m not saying you are, mind, but it is just possible they’d have come back with reinforcements.”
“That’s the problem, Doctor. We didn’t know,” Harriet says. “And, while I am very grateful for your help, you’re not here all the time. You were almost not here this time. We have to have a way of defending ourselves.”
That’s true, and Rose finds herself taking the Prime Minister’s side, along with Jack. She’s seen enough alien invasions of her own planet to know that - including, just yesterday, the Daleks. And it occurs to her that she still doesn’t know what happened there. The Doctor and Jack are safe, yes, and the Doctor told her the Daleks are gone - but what of Earth? And everyone else who was on Satellite Five?
And, yeah, like Jack said, it’s not as if Harriet fired first and asked questions later. She tried. Almost got killed herself for it, too.
The Doctor holds Harriet’s gaze for several moments. Finally, he says, “This isn’t the time. But we need to talk. I’ll be in touch.”
“I’d like that, Doctor,” she says, and smiles with clear relief. “I think you know where to find me.”
There’s actually reluctant humour in his eyes when he replies, “Downing Street, wasn’t it? But will you let me back into the Cabinet Room?”
And Harriet’s jaw is twitching as she says, “Let’s both of us leave our weapons code-words behind this time, shall we?”
***
He has to try to push away his anger. It’s Christmas, after all, and even if murder has been committed right above his head the humans around him want to celebrate. Jackie, surprising him with her new friendliness towards him, invites him and Jack to Christmas dinner.
“An’ I’m not taking no for an answer, so don’t think you’re disappearin’ off in that TARDIS of yours, with or without Rose. You’re coming, like it or not.”
And, strangely, he finds he wouldn’t dream of saying no. “We’d be honoured,” he says, and it’s about the most sincere he’s ever been when talking to Jackie.
New him, new start, it seems. For her as much as for him - he has a vague recollection of a succession of people taking care of him, mopping his forehead and worrying over him, and Jackie features in those hazy images just as much as Jack and Rose.
And, speaking of Jack... “We’ll come up to the flat in a bit, Jackie, okay? I really should put some proper clothes on. Might’ve been okay to fight a duel in jim-jams, but I’m not sure it’s quite appropriate for dinner.” And he winks. “Jack?”
Jack takes the hint, glancing down at himself. “Yeah, guess I should too.” It’s a good enough excuse. After all, he is still wearing the same white T-shirt and leather vest that he had on Satellite Five.
Inside the TARDIS, the door safely closed, he turns to Jack. “I need to know what you’ve told Rose.”
“About...?”
“My regeneration, you being alive despite the Daleks - keep up, Jack!” Where once he might have raised an eyebrow and given the human one of his best sardonic sighs, now he finds himself shaking his head in mock-weary resignation.
Jack shrugs, and when he answers there’s a familiar tartness in his tone. “Nothing. Claimed I just had a lucky escape. I worked out from that pathetic excuse for an explanation you gave her that you don’t want her to know, and whether I agree with that or not I didn’t think it was my place to tell her.”
“You think I’m wrong not to tell her the truth?”
This time, Jack looks disbelieving. “Need to think about that one for a bit, Doctor. Ooh, what do you know? Yup. Dead wrong.”
“I have my reasons, Jack.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack leans against the console rail, crossing his arms. “Feel like sharing?”
He suspects that Jack believes he won’t. But there’s no reason not to. Perhaps he was a little too reticent in his last life. Perhaps this new body is more into sharing information. Something else he’ll get to find out over the coming days and weeks. “I can’t. She couldn’t cope with the truth if I did tell her.”
“You protect her too much, Doctor.” Tone dry, Jack holds his gaze. “Sure, I know we both do, and with good reason. She doesn’t have my experience, let alone yours. She’s not trained in combat, and she never signed up to fight a war. But she’s not a kid, and you can’t shelter her from everything.”
“You think that’s what I’m trying to do? Spare her the harsh realities of life, as if she was a little kid? It’s not that at all, Jack. Nothing like it.”
“Then what?”
“Think about it. I sent her away to keep her alive. She came back - and if I didn’t already know it, I saw it when I took the Vortex from her. She came back because the thing she wanted most in the universe was to save me. You, too. She didn’t care if she died, as long as I lived. Yet the me she knew died anyway. She’s still trying to get used to the fact that I’ve changed - so are you, but I always knew you’d find it easier. How much worse do you think it’d be for her if she knew the reason I regenerated was to save her life?”
He can tell the instant Jack realises that he’s right. His stance changes, and he blows out a breath. “When you put it like that...”
“Knew you’d see it my way.” He raises an eyebrow, and gets a reluctant nod from Jack in return.
“Besides,” he adds, just a little reluctantly, but it needs to be said since he treated Jack to his rant about it in the first place, “I still don’t know whether to shake her or hug her for what she did. The damage she could have done. Might still have done, for all I know. That’s something I won’t know for ages yet.” He shakes his head despairingly.
“She meant well,” Jack points out, needlessly, of course.
“I know. But good intentions...” He trails off; pointless saying anything more. Changing the subject, he asks, “How’s your head, by the way?” That’s the second-most important thing on his mind right now, in any case, Jack’s well-being.
“Fine. Don’t feel a thing.”
“Sure? I can give you a quick check-over if you like? Did say I’d do that after the Daleks.” He keeps his tone light; no need to let Jack know just how - well, how cut to the hearts he was when he saw him lying on the floor of the spaceship, apparently dead. It’s over, after all. Jack’s alive and well.
“Nah, no need. I’m fine.” Jack grins, holds his arms out and looks over his own body. “See? Still in perfect shape.”
He nods, but he still watches Jack. “Gave me quite a fright, you know. Second time in as many days. You’ve got to stop doing that to me.” All right, he can’t quite seem to avoid letting Jack know.
Jack’s smile is rueful. “Hey, I was lucky. That’s all that matters. Anyway, you can talk. For a while there, we thought you really were dying. You might’ve warned me about the heart stopping thing.” The smile disappears, and there’s nothing but concern and remembered fear in Jack’s eyes.
“One of ‘em stopped beating?” Perturbing, that, really. It shouldn’t have happened. But clearly everything turned out all right. Jack doesn’t need to know the truth. “Oh, I always have difficult regenerations. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
It’s clear that his light tone doesn’t fool Jack. His obvious concern is gratifying, all the same. “Well, maybe you’d tell us what to look out for next time. And what we can do to help.”
“I’m hoping there won’t be a next time - not for ages, anyway.” He tries a winning smile - he thinks those might be pretty effective in this body. Jack gives a grudging smile back.
“We’re all alive and well, and that’s all that matters. And it’s Christmas!” he exclaims, trying to push Jack out of his gloomy mood. Stepping closer, he wraps an arm around Jack’s shoulder, hugging him briefly. They’re both alive, after all, after their second narrow escape in - what’s it been? Two days?
“Christmas dinner at Jackie’s - now, that’ll be an experience to remember! Should’ve asked what’s on the menu. Cheap plonk, shouldn’t wonder. Nut loaf? Oh, and pickles - no, that’s just Jackie.” He grins. “Just let me find something to wear... oh, might take a while, incidentally. Always does with a new body. Need to work out what feels right, you know?”
Now he gets a grin, and a rakish lift of an eyebrow. “Want some help?”
“Nah.” What, Jack in the wardrobe room, with innuendo-filled suggestions as to what he might wear? “Quite a ritual, this. I like to do it alone.”
“Far be it from me to get in the way of your... rituals.” Jack winks, waving him away.
“Oh, and Jack?” He sticks his head back around the door, his voice deliberately - deceptively - light. “You can stop trying to atone now, you know. There never was a debt to pay in the first place.”
As he intends, he’s gone before Jack can reply.
***
Maybe he should be a cat, Jack muses later as he sips supermarket wine and watches Rose and the Doctor smiling almost shyly at each other across the table. That’s three times recently he should have died, but he survived. First, the Doctor saved his life, then Rose did, and now he was just incredibly lucky.
He saw, after, what that whip did to the other poor bastards unlucky enough to get in its way. And all he got was a bit of a headache, which went away quickly enough. Funny, though; he could swear that he did actually feel the coil of the whip hit his head, but of course it can’t have.
So, what? He has six lives left? More than the Doctor’s got left, from what the Time Lord said on the way over to the flat in answer to his question about regenerations. He couldn’t really complain if that were true.
Christmas at Rose’s mum’s; not a situation he ever imagined he’d find himself in. Not that he does Christmas much anyway, though they did it well in 1940. All that good old British wartime spirit. Those were the days. This, though... Jackie Tyler’s a good party girl and fun with it, even if Rose is looking a tad disapproving. He’s getting the impression, too, that even despite the existence of the Howard whose pyjamas and dressing-gown the Doctor borrowed Jackie’s sending him distinct signals of interest.
Best not, though. Rose’s mum. Not the most diplomatic of moves.
Oh, she’s attractive enough, and if he were still Jack the conman he’d be tempted. Now, though... no.
The Doctor’s new outfit still takes him by surprise every time he looks in the Time Lord’s direction. Did he set out to look as different as possible from the previous him? The black armour’s gone, and in its place... well, really, the brown pinstripes, shirt and tie should make him look formal and unapproachable, but it doesn’t. He was far less approachable in the black leather.
Maybe it’s the combination of the suit together with white sneakers - Converses, aren’t they? If he remembers brand names correctly from his and Rose’s quick tour of the shops in Cardiff, and he thinks he does, that’s what they are. Height of fashion, and expensive besides. And he had those hidden away in the TARDIS wardrobe? He’ll have to look more carefully himself next time he needs to borrow something to wear. But, yeah, those Converses and the Doctor’s almost boyish grin make him look more like an overgrown schoolboy than an almost-thousand-year-old Lord of Time.
Nice, though. Cute, actually. And he’s pretty sure that Rose is already warming to the Doctor’s new look. And his new personality, too, given the way the two of them are laughing and teasing each other - flirting with each other, actually, as he gives her the pink paper hat he won in a cracker and she persuades him to wear it instead. They’re exchanging smiles that he’ll bet his best blaster he’ll never see them give to anyone else.
Seems that, despite what the Doctor said back in the TARDIS, he’s already made up his mind not to hold against Rose the tiny fact that she might have blown a great big hole in the fabric of the universe.
Not that he has a problem with that, personally. Rose saved his life. Not that he’s not done that for her a time or two, including today, but this is different. He was actually dead, and she brought him back. Waved her hand, fought the laws of time and life and death and gave him life. If there are consequences - and he can’t help feeling sure they’d know about them by now if there were - they can deal with them. The three of them have just proved they’re invincible, after all. Twice over.
If only Rose could just wave her hand and stop her mother flirting with him...
“I’ll get down to B&Q tomorrow an’ get some proper plasterboard,” Mickey says, interrupting his thoughts and, even better, distracting Jackie’s attention from Jack. “Couple of hours, coat of paint, that wall’ll be good as new.”
Before dinner, he, Mickey and the Doctor performed a temporary repair on the hole the robotised Christmas tree made in the living-room wall, much to Jackie’s appreciation, using a piece of plywood Mickey acquired from somewhere, no questions asked.
“I’ll give you a hand,” Jack promises, fairly sure they’ll still be here then - the Doctor did say the TARDIS needed repair work before they could go anywhere. “You will too, Doctor, right?”
“What?” The Doctor blinks, seeming indignant at having his services offered without consultation. For a second, he looks so like his former self, all superior not-human Time Lord who couldn’t possibly be bothered with anything so mundane.
“Come on, Doctor, it’s about time you proved that screwdriver of yours really could put up shelves, isn’t it?” he teases. Rose giggles and the Doctor grins.
And there’s something in the Doctor’s expression as the grin fades away and he sips his wine again that Jack never imagined he’d see in the Time Lord’s face. It’s not happiness, though that’s there. It’s not the relaxed look of satisfied enjoyment. It’s belonging.
The Doctor he knew, the Doctor he met in a plague-ridden hospital in 1941, made it so clear that he was different from everyone else. That not only wasn’t he human, but he considered it an insult to be thought human. Funny little human brains. How do you get around in them? The idea that he might belong anywhere human was laughable; the idea that he might feel at home in a human, domestic environment was doubly so. Yet here he is, and he obviously feels like he belongs - and he likes it.
Well, good, Jack thinks.
Later, as Mickey’s complaining about the BBC’s cancellation of the planned alien-invasion blockbuster movie in consideration of recent events, and its replacement with something that seems to star a huge fluffy dog named after an eighteenth-century composer, the Doctor stands and stretches.
“I need some fresh air,” he announces. “Coming for a walk? Rose? Jack?”
Rose is on her feet immediately. “Good idea.” Jack gets up too, trying not to disturb Jackie, who’s half-asleep next to him; his guess is that the Doctor wants the two of them alone for some reason.
And Jackie is suddenly wide awake and her face is white. “You’re not about to disappear in that ship of yours, are you? Rose...?”
“Jackie.” The Doctor moves to stand in front of her, his hands on her shoulders as she’s leapt to her feet too. “We’re not going anywhere. Well, I say that - maybe down to the community centre and back. Just for a walk. I promise.”
And it’s all clear, in that moment, just what Rose’s mother’s been through in the last... however long it’s been for her since Rose met the Doctor. Never knowing when she’ll see her daughter again, and never knowing, too, when Rose will just vanish, perhaps without even a goodbye. And, knowing the previous Doctor, the lack of goodbye was probably a certainty.
It’s a long time since anyone worried about him like that. If anyone ever did.
In that moment, too, Jack swears that, whatever the Doctor might decide, he’ll see to it that Rose always gets safely home.
“Thought I should probably rescue you from Jackie,” the Doctor murmurs as they wait by the door for Rose to get her coat. “Unless,” he adds in an even softer voice, a wicked whisper in his ear, “you didn’t want to be rescued...”
“I’d rather not risk death three times in two days,” he says dryly, with a raise of an eyebrow. At the Doctor’s quizzical look, he explains, “Rose would kill me.”
“That she would.” The Doctor grins - he seems much more prone to smiling now, though Jack can’t help but miss that old manic grin he used to wear. It was just something about the combination of blue-grey eyes, angular cheekbones, that nose and such a mobile mouth - a mouth he wishes he’d kissed more than once.
Though this one could stand to be kissed too. Whether he’ll get the chance is another matter. But he can be patient. It’s not as if he’s going anywhere, after all.
***
tbc... and please note, no cliffhanger this time ;)