Journey Onward 2/6?
Story: Journey Onward
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness; also Mickey Smith, Martha Jones, Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper
Rated: PG13
Spoilers: Anything up to Journey's End, with perhaps a couple of non-spoilery references to The Next Doctor
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to the BBC; if they're unrecognisable, blame me.
Summary: Sometimes the hardest journeys to make are the familiar ones.
With many thanks to the long-suffering and brilliant dark_aegis for her help with this fic.
Chapter 1: Confronting the Dragon
Chapter 2: Never Stopped Running
The second time he visits, Jack’s not there.
He emerges from the TARDIS into a silent Hub, with no sign of activity anywhere. He’s just about to go exploring when a familiar voice calls, “Hey, Boss! Over here!”
“Mickey!” He’s sitting at a desk surrounded by about three computers, wearing a headset and working controls. As the Doctor approaches, Mickey’s talking into his headset. “I’m trying, Jack, but if I block your signal any more than I already have I won’t be able to track you.” He pauses. “Yeah, you’re getting close, but it’s still trying to shake you off.”
He leans over to Mickey. “What are you trying to do?”
Mickey flicks a switch. “We’ve got a rogue Mitrak on the loose. Jack and the others are following it, but it’s detected them and it’s trying to lose them.”
“A Mitrak?” He sucks in his breath. “Dangerous, those. Anyone hurt?”
“One dead, two in hospital.” Mickey taps at some keys. “Yeah, Jack, I’m still here. What d’you need?”
The Doctor gestures at the equipment. “Let me.”
“Yeah, hold on, Jack. Got someone here who can help.” Mickey bends down, grabs another headset and hands it over. “All yours, mate.”
“Jack? Tell me you’re not stalking a Mitrak? Do you want to get yourself killed? Well, I suppose it wouldn’t matter so much for you, but-”
“Did you just drop in to give me a lecture, or are you planning to give us some, you know, actual help here?”
He’s already running the sonic over Mickey’s equipment. “Already done. No-one but Mickey here can hear you. Now, be careful!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Too cocky by far, is Captain Jack. “Don’t disappear before I get back, all right?”
“Depends how long you take. My record trapping a Mitrak? Eleven minutes fourteen point six seconds.”
“You’re on.” There’s a click, followed by radio silence.
From beside him, Mickey tuts. “Like little kids, you are. An’ I thought you were supposed to be oh, so old and wise.”
“Old? Old?” He stares at Mickey, eyes wide. “I’d like to see you looking this good when you’re over nine hundred, mate.”
Mickey grins. “That’ll be the day.”
***
He’s counting the seconds, converting them simultaneously into Old Gallifreyan and Reticulan time-units, since there was last word from Jack. Mickey’s still tracking the Torchwood SUV and transmitting data to its computer, but nothing’s coming through over the intercom.
“D’you mind?” Mickey says after a bit - well, after exactly four minutes and twenty-five - no, twenty-eight now - seconds. He glances in the direction of Mickey’s nod and realises that he’s drumming his fingers on the desk.
“Oh. Sorry.” He stops.
Mickey grins. “You really hate doing nothing, don’t you? ‘S like Rose always said. You just can’t stand still.” He shakes his head. “Can’t imagine how that other you’s coping with it, bein’ stuck on one planet.”
“I’ve coped before,” he points out, a little acerbically; the other him is still him, just with altered biology. And, besides, the other him will be fine. Well, mostly. Stuck with you, that’s not so bad. It probably isn’t.
“Heard you dropped in on Sarah Jane the other week,” Mickey comments, ignoring his comment.
“How did you know that?” Damn. This really is getting inconvenient, all his exes knowing each other. Just as long as Sarah didn’t tell Mickey all about it...
“Went down to visit her, didn’t I?” Mickey grins. “Us Smiths have to stick together, remember? An’ it’s not like I’ve got any family left here. She’s sort of adopted me, I s’pose. Anyway, she said she gave you a flea in your ear about Donna.”
More than that. She hounded him until he practically ran away. Well, made some excuse about needing to see an alien about a planet and being late. Yeah. Not one of his best. She kept going on about never giving people a choice and just dumping them - he thinks Aberdeen came up somewhere in the discussion too - and Rose got mentioned almost as often as Donna.
He suspects the only reason she didn’t mention Jack is that Jack’s never actually told her the whole truth about what happened to him. Though Jack’s told her plenty of other things, he’s pretty sure; that’s the only thing that can explain the similarity between Sarah’s lecture and Jack’s.
“No offence, mate,” Mickey adds. “But I reckon you deserved it.”
He could object; in fact, the words are on his lips. But he doesn’t utter them. It’s not that he doesn’t feel he needs to defend himself to Mickey Smith. It’s more that... Well.
“Mickey?” There’s a Welsh accent on the intercom. Female. Timely interruption, Gwen.
“Yeah, Gwen? What’s happening?”
“Mitrak’s dead. We’re bringing it back now. Man down.”
Man down. “Who?” he demands instantly, before Mickey can. If it’s Ianto, Jack will be devastated...
“Jack. Martha’s looking after him.”
Jack... “He’ll be all right. Just give him a couple of minutes,” he instructs. These people, Jack’s team, don’t they know about him?
“He’s not dead.” There’s an almost anguished note to Gwen’s voice. “Badly hurt. Very. Be better if he was dead.” Because then he’d wake up fine, of course.
“Hurry back,” he tells her curtly.
He throws off the headset and starts to pace. It doesn’t make sense, of course, since Jack can’t die, so he’s going to be all right, no question. But he’s not dead. Not dying. Just badly hurt.
All the same, when Mickey tells him the SUV’s outside he takes to his heels.
***
He knows he’s getting on Martha’s nerves when she orders him out of the medical room for the second time.
“Come on, mate.” The hand on his shoulder’s Mickey’s. Gwen’s standing nearby, and he can see sympathy in her eyes. “Let’s get you a cuppa.”
“Jack’s gonna be fine,” Gwen assures him. “Thought you knew that.”
Fine? With a leg that’s on the verge of requiring amputation? How is he going to be fine?
He slips out from under Mickey’s grasp. “Don’t you have a dead Mitrak to deal with?” Before either of them can stop him, he’s back in the medical room.
“Doctor-” Martha begins to protest, but he holds up a hand firmly.
“Stand back. Back, Martha. Let me talk to him.” She’s about to object again, but he moves straight to Jack’s head. He’s under anaesthetic, of course, with Martha working on his leg - a suturing job that’s never going to take properly and, if Jack does get to keep his leg, means that when he finally does learn to walk again he’ll have a permanent limp. Until the next time he dies, of course.
“Jack.” Useless, that; he’s unconscious, he won’t be able to hear. He bends over the comatose body, laying his fingers at Jack’s temples. It takes a lot of concentration, but finally he knows he’s getting through. “Listen to me. You know what’s happening. What do you want?”
The answer he gets doesn’t surprise him. It still doesn’t prevent the sick feeling inside as he releases Jack and finds the exact pressure-point on his throat to cut off his oxygen supply.
It takes exactly seventy-two point three eight seconds for Jack to die, and for every one of them Martha’s anger rings in his ears.
As soon as the tingling under his skin vanishes, he rips his hands away and rushes from the room.
***
“Ten minutes fifty seconds.”
His head jerks up as Jack drops down on the bench next to him. The Captain’s grinning in triumph. “I beat you,” he adds.
Oh. Right. The Mitrak. “Hardly a fair comparison,” he points out. “You did have help. I was alone.”
“You also have some advantages even I don’t have.” Jack reaches out and ruffles his hair. Jack’s never done that before and, for a second, he contemplates objecting, but then lets it pass. Strange. It actually felt... well, almost nice.
“You all right, then?” He wasn’t going to say anything; after all, it’s perfectly obvious that Jack’s all right. Back to normal; in full rude health, and every bit as rude as usual, apparently. And yet he can’t seem to help himself.
“Yeah. Thanks, by the way.” Jack’s white teeth flash in a wide smile. “I saw Martha’s amputation saw. Sometimes there really are fates worse than death.”
He shrugs. “Just seemed the obvious solution, given your... special features.” And why no-one else, Martha especially, seemed to think of it baffles him.
“Yeah. I just got through giving them all a piece of my mind over it. I can understand Martha,” Jack adds thoughtfully. “Hippocratic Oath and all that. Told Ianto next time he’s to put a bullet through my head. Far quicker, far less messy.”
“Still not easy to do, even when they know you’ll wake up again all healed.”
“Yeah.” Jack’s giving him a keen look. “Ianto told me you couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And you were white as a ghost.”
“I killed you.” His voice is harsh. “Knowing it’s the right thing to do doesn’t make it any less murder.”
“Murder?” Jack bumps his shoulder. “You asked me. I said yes. And I appreciate that, by the way. And even if you hadn’t I’d have been okay with it.”
“You remember?” That shouldn’t happen.
“Just kinda vague impressions, which didn’t mean anything until Martha told me you’d been digging around inside my head.”
He nods, then gets to his feet and strides to the railing, staring out to sea. He should be leaving, really, but the TARDIS is still back down in the Hub and he’ll have to run the gauntlet of Jack’s team to get to it.
“What’s up, Doc?”
He ignores Jack; it’s not even a good Bugs Bunny imitation.
“Come on.” Jack’s dropped the attempt at humour. “You’ve seen me die lots of times. And I’ve seen you perform a mercy killing at least once before. It’s not a big deal - especially not with me.”
He’s silent for a long time, and it’s not only that he’s not sure he wants to explain. He’s not convinced he’ll even be believed.
Jack doesn’t ask again, and in the end it’s his friend’s patience that does it.
“You all think it’s easy for me,” he says at last. Jack still waits. “Taking away Donna’s memories. Leaving Rose behind with the other me. Killing you - running away from you in the first place. Taking Sarah home all those years ago. Easy-peasy. No-brainer. Snap my fingers and it’s done.”
Jack stills. “Not sure I’m the best person to comment on that.”
“What, cause I ran from you and kept running? You’re a clever bloke, Jack. Would’ve expected you to work that out by now.”
Jack should have, because the Captain of all people should know that he sometimes lies as easily as he tells the truth. But if Jack hasn’t worked it out he’s got no intention of telling him.
It’s Jack’s turn to remain silent for a while. Finally, looking out to sea, he says, “You know, a long time ago Rose told me something that I’ve never forgotten. Wasn’t long after I joined you two, and I was asking her about you, what exactly you did - you know, trying to figure you out. She told me that you make the decisions nobody else will. The kind of impossible choices that no-one knows how to make or wants to make, you make them. She was right.”
He remembers saying something along those lines a long time ago. To Jackie, not to Rose, but of course she was there. Silently, he nods.
“I ripped you a new one over Donna and Rose last time,” Jack adds. “And I guess, in your place... god, I don’t know what I’d have done. Yeah, I’ve played the complete bastard a time or two when I’ve had to, but it’s getting harder these days, not that I know why. Rose... well, if I felt about her the way you do I’m not sure I could’ve let her go, but I understand why you did it. And she’s got you anyway so I’m guessing she’s doing okay.”
He glances at Jack, but it’s not until Jack speaks again that he realises there was a challenge in his eyes. “Yeah, okay, I loved her too. Kinda hard to pretend otherwise after what I told you about going back to see her, isn’t it? But she was always yours, so...” He shrugs. “Donna - you really didn’t have time to give her a choice, did you?”
“No.” The word’s bitten out curtly. After a while, the rest of it comes pouring out.
“She was standing there, Jack, in the TARDIS, talking about Felspoon and telling me how I could fix the chameleon circuit - and, I mean, why would I want to do that? I like the TARDIS the way she is! Don’t you? Anyway, there she was, all brilliant and Time Lordy and so human too, and... and suddenly...” He inhales sharply, a shuddering breath.
“Her mental processes just jammed. It was like listening to a stuck record, Jack, and you want to knock it so the needle will move into the next groove, but you know you can’t cause it’ll only get even more damaged and... that was her. Damaged. Falling apart, about to have a neuron implosion right in front of me. And that was the choice I had. Let her die, or do that to her.”
“Yeah.” He can hear the sympathy in Jack’s voice, but for some reason that sends anger coursing through him. He doesn’t want sympathy.
He swings around. “You think I wanted to lose her as well? After I’d just given - sent Rose back to the parallel world? Or to see her revert to the way she was when I first met her, after I saw everything she could be? All the brilliance she had inside her that never had a chance to get out before, to see all that wiped away as if it never existed?”
“It’s still there.” Jack’s voice is gentle, just like the hand that’s now on his forearm. “Come on, Doctor, you know that. It doesn’t come from nowhere. Donna was brilliant long before she got the contents of a Time Lord brain dumped inside her head. Even if I hadn’t I seen it for myself, Martha’s told me enough about her. She’ll be brilliant again. Probably already is.”
He looks away again. “Who knows?” With a mother like that, putting her down at every turn? Jackie, for all her nagging, loved Rose and believed in her. Francine, for all her faults, always encouraged Martha to be the best she could be.
Jack’s hand moves to his shoulder. “What’s brought you here, Doctor? Today, I mean. You don’t come without a reason.”
“You’re the one who told me to visit sometimes!”
“Yeah, but you don’t. And you told me you’d find someone to travel with, too. You haven’t, have you?”
He stares out to sea again, ignoring the question. “I saw her.”
“Who?” Jack’s eyes widen. “Donna?”
“Yep.” He falls silent again; Jack waits. “Didn’t intend to. It’s not as if I decided to go to Chiswick and look for her. Oh, no. Staying well away from there. Got to. She can’t see me, ever.”
“So? Where did you see her, then?”
“Oxford Street.” He kicks at an invisible pebble. “Needed new Chucks. Last pair got a bit... burned... Well. No need to go into that. Well, anyway, I was in Oxford Street. She must’ve been shopping with friends. Looked right through me, like she didn’t even see me. That wasn’t the worst, though.”
“What was?”
He tugs at his ear. “When I first met her, she refused to believe there was any such thing as aliens, did you know that? Missed the Sycorax invasion - she had a bit of a hangover. Never noticed the Cybermen, either, cause she was scuba-diving in Spain. She kept missing the big picture.”
Jack shakes his head slowly. “Not the Donna Noble I met.”
“Nope. Thing is, she was back to that. When I saw her, I mean. Telling her friend - Nerys, I think she called her - that anyone who thinks there were alien pepperpots running around the place kidnapping and murdering people are off their heads.”
Jack bumps his shoulder again. “Sometimes I think we’d all be a lot happier if we believed that.”
The Doctor laughs, but without humour. Oh, if only he hadn’t been there in that time, that place - bad enough that his last memory of Donna was her ranting about unimportant nonsense in her mum’s house.
He finds himself telling Jack the rest. “After that, I went to see Sarah.” Because he actually believed what she told him when she left the TARDIS that day, that he had the biggest family in the universe.
“I heard.” He assumes from Mickey, until Jack speaks again. “She called me an hour or so after you left. Asked me to tell you she’s sorry, on the off-chance I saw you any time soon.”
“She’s sorry?” He snorts. “She sounded like she meant every word.”
“Oh, she meant it all right.” Jack grimaces. “I did too. Doesn’t mean we don’t know it’s a choice we’d hate to have to make, or that if we had to make it we’d probably have done the same thing. It just means we think like humans.”
The Doctor smiles slightly, recognising Jack’s comment as more apology for his harsh words last time. And it’s true; he can’t blame them for thinking like the humans they are. Though Jack’s not entirely in the same category as Sarah, or most of his human ex-companions. “You’ve made some hard choices in your time. I hear things, you know.”
“Yeah?” Jack pretends to flinch. “Think I’d rather not know.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. Hard choices, they were indeed, and some of them were far from the kind of decision he would have made. But then, as he’s learning to understand, he’s not the person who had to make the decision at the time - even if that never stopped him doling out criticism before now in similar circumstances.
Harriet Jones. That name still humbles him. He was wrong about her, so very wrong. And it really is time that he said so, even if it’s too late to admit it to her. He must ask Jack...
“We’re keeping an eye on her, you know,” Jack says, and it takes him a second or two to realise that his friend’s still talking about Donna, not the dead Harriet Jones.
“Keeping an eye on her?” He spins, leaning against the railing with his back to the sea. “You’re not supposed to go anywhere near her! You can’t! If she sees any of you, recognises you, it’ll reawaken the memories and kill her!”
“We’re being careful!” Jack’s defensive, in a way he hasn’t observed from the other man for a long time. If he gets the slightest hint that being careful isn’t as effective as Jack pretends...
“What does keeping an eye on her mean?”
Jack moves to face him, standing in front of him. “From a distance, for starters. I organised a job for her. Oh, and don’t think that means I don’t think she could get one on her own. She’s good, Doctor, even without-”
“Without all my knowledge? You think I don’t know that?”
“I was going to say, even without what she became when she was with you. I checked. She was a temp. Lots of previous employers. She wasn’t kidding when she called herself super-temp. She’s worth more than doing some travel agent’s typing and photocopying. Had to keep her away from UNIT,” Jack continues, hands thrust deep in his pockets. “Too dangerous, in the circumstances. Same goes for most government ministries. Except... Martha told me she’s good with numbers.”
“Very good with numbers,” he corrects.
“Yeah. So I got her hired at the Office of National Statistics. Administrative assistant, that’s what they call them these days, but I’m guessing it won’t be long before she’ll gets promoted.” Jack exhales. “It’s not travelling through time and space, but it’s better than temping for idiots who don’t appreciate her.”
That’s true. But, even as part of him is amused at Donna Noble compiling national statistics, the rest of him resents that they couldn’t give her the chance to find her way to brilliance on her own.
Jack really doesn’t get it. There’s been enough interfering in her life, after all.
***
It’s time to leave, even if it does mean he has to run the gauntlet of Jack’s team, two of whom are his own former companions.
Yes, he accords Mickey Smith the title of companion - hardly fair not to, when the man’s helped to save planets at least three times and the entire universe once, not forgetting his role in a certain incident with a big yellow truck. Mickey Smith’s come a long way from the cowering bloke who called him a thing.
Jack’s beside him as he makes his way back down inside the Hub and towards the TARDIS. Martha’s leaning against Mickey’s desk talking with him and Gwen, though Ianto’s nowhere in sight. He knows the exact moment when Martha sees him, but he ignores her attempts to catch his eye. He’s not in the mood for more conversation.
“You’re off, then?” Jack asks, somewhat unnecessarily as his intention has to be obvious.
“Yeah.” No explanation, no apology. He owes neither, after all. He doesn’t answer to Torchwood, or Jack, or to anyone but himself.
Jack nods. “Thanks again for the...” He mimes choking. “...thing. You know.”
The normal response is any time. It’d choke him to say it. He simply nods. About to turn away, he remembers his question from earlier. “Oh! By the way, Jack...”
“Yes?”
“Harriet Jones.” Tugging at one ear, he continues. “Should’ve asked before. There was a funeral, I imagine. A grave?”
Jack’s frowning a little, as if there’s some mystery he’s unable to solve.
“There should’ve been - full state funeral with honours. Sure, there’s only a few of us who know what she did, but she was still a former prime minister. We - Martha, Sarah and me - we were determined to see that she got the recognition she deserved. But it didn’t happen.”
“Why not?”
Jack shrugs. “Kinda need a body for a funeral - or at least some evidence of death. We went to her house to look for her body, but we couldn’t find it anywhere.”
It’s his turn to frown. “Daleks don’t steal bodies. Their weapons don’t disintegrate matter, either.”
“I know.” Jack’s voice is dry; of course, who better to know? Well, apart from himself, of course. “Just telling you what happened, Doctor. We searched. We also interviewed anyone who had access to her house in case they’d buried or cremated her quietly. Nothing. One of the great unsolved mysteries of our time,” he finishes with irony.
“Yep.” He shrugs. “Ah well.” In theory, of course, he could find out, but going back into the battle for the planets could have disastrous consequences. It’s just not possible. Jack’s right; the disappearance of Harriet’s body will have to remain a mystery.
“So...” Jack trails off, raises his eyebrows interrogatively and leans against the side of the TARDIS. “Gonna be dropping in again any time soon?”
He turns away, slides his key into the lock. “No.”
“Doctor?” Jack’s hand’s on his arm again, this time stopping him.
He glances back briefly before pushing the door open and taking a half-step inside. “You know, in the old days - before the War - I never did this. Any of this. When a companion left, that was it. They were gone, end of story. I moved on. Never looked back. Never came back. None of this dropping in to visit, dragging things out.”
“I’m so sorry, Doctor.” The genuine sympathy in Jack’s voice makes him turn again.
“What?”
“I didn’t realise. Well, I knew, but not really. I mean, I guess I thought it was Rose you were missing most of all, but it’s Donna too, yeah?”
“All of them.” He can’t avoid confessing that, but no more. End of subject.
Jack takes a step closer. “You’re still travelling alone, aren’t you?”
He is, and it’s the best way. No more companions. Not for a long time. No-one else to become close to and lose. No-one else whose life he’ll destroy. No-one else he’ll turn into a soldier, a destroyer.
No-one else who’ll break his hearts.
He’s not coming back. Which reminds him that there’s something else.
A few strides take him to the console, and a cursory glance finds Martha’s old phone. Whirling, he marches back to Jack, who’s waiting by the open door.
“Here. Give it back to Martha. I don’t want it any more.”
“Doctor,” Jack protests. “It’s the only way we have of calling you if we need you.”
“You don’t need me. You can do it all by yourselves now, can’t you? Isn’t that what I taught you? How to fight? Turned you all into soldiers, didn’t I?”
“What, you actually care what a megalomaniac thinks? Doctor, he created Daleks. The most murderous creatures in the universe! I hardly think he had any right to lecture you.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He turns away. “Goodbye, Jack.”
“Doc-” Jack tries to protest. He slams the TARDIS door in the Captain’s face.
As he dematerialises, Jack’s face reappears on the console monitor. With a shaking hand, he turns the screen off.
***
.
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness; also Mickey Smith, Martha Jones, Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper
Rated: PG13
Spoilers: Anything up to Journey's End, with perhaps a couple of non-spoilery references to The Next Doctor
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to the BBC; if they're unrecognisable, blame me.
Summary: Sometimes the hardest journeys to make are the familiar ones.
With many thanks to the long-suffering and brilliant dark_aegis for her help with this fic.
Chapter 1: Confronting the Dragon
Chapter 2: Never Stopped Running
The second time he visits, Jack’s not there.
He emerges from the TARDIS into a silent Hub, with no sign of activity anywhere. He’s just about to go exploring when a familiar voice calls, “Hey, Boss! Over here!”
“Mickey!” He’s sitting at a desk surrounded by about three computers, wearing a headset and working controls. As the Doctor approaches, Mickey’s talking into his headset. “I’m trying, Jack, but if I block your signal any more than I already have I won’t be able to track you.” He pauses. “Yeah, you’re getting close, but it’s still trying to shake you off.”
He leans over to Mickey. “What are you trying to do?”
Mickey flicks a switch. “We’ve got a rogue Mitrak on the loose. Jack and the others are following it, but it’s detected them and it’s trying to lose them.”
“A Mitrak?” He sucks in his breath. “Dangerous, those. Anyone hurt?”
“One dead, two in hospital.” Mickey taps at some keys. “Yeah, Jack, I’m still here. What d’you need?”
The Doctor gestures at the equipment. “Let me.”
“Yeah, hold on, Jack. Got someone here who can help.” Mickey bends down, grabs another headset and hands it over. “All yours, mate.”
“Jack? Tell me you’re not stalking a Mitrak? Do you want to get yourself killed? Well, I suppose it wouldn’t matter so much for you, but-”
“Did you just drop in to give me a lecture, or are you planning to give us some, you know, actual help here?”
He’s already running the sonic over Mickey’s equipment. “Already done. No-one but Mickey here can hear you. Now, be careful!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Too cocky by far, is Captain Jack. “Don’t disappear before I get back, all right?”
“Depends how long you take. My record trapping a Mitrak? Eleven minutes fourteen point six seconds.”
“You’re on.” There’s a click, followed by radio silence.
From beside him, Mickey tuts. “Like little kids, you are. An’ I thought you were supposed to be oh, so old and wise.”
“Old? Old?” He stares at Mickey, eyes wide. “I’d like to see you looking this good when you’re over nine hundred, mate.”
Mickey grins. “That’ll be the day.”
***
He’s counting the seconds, converting them simultaneously into Old Gallifreyan and Reticulan time-units, since there was last word from Jack. Mickey’s still tracking the Torchwood SUV and transmitting data to its computer, but nothing’s coming through over the intercom.
“D’you mind?” Mickey says after a bit - well, after exactly four minutes and twenty-five - no, twenty-eight now - seconds. He glances in the direction of Mickey’s nod and realises that he’s drumming his fingers on the desk.
“Oh. Sorry.” He stops.
Mickey grins. “You really hate doing nothing, don’t you? ‘S like Rose always said. You just can’t stand still.” He shakes his head. “Can’t imagine how that other you’s coping with it, bein’ stuck on one planet.”
“I’ve coped before,” he points out, a little acerbically; the other him is still him, just with altered biology. And, besides, the other him will be fine. Well, mostly. Stuck with you, that’s not so bad. It probably isn’t.
“Heard you dropped in on Sarah Jane the other week,” Mickey comments, ignoring his comment.
“How did you know that?” Damn. This really is getting inconvenient, all his exes knowing each other. Just as long as Sarah didn’t tell Mickey all about it...
“Went down to visit her, didn’t I?” Mickey grins. “Us Smiths have to stick together, remember? An’ it’s not like I’ve got any family left here. She’s sort of adopted me, I s’pose. Anyway, she said she gave you a flea in your ear about Donna.”
More than that. She hounded him until he practically ran away. Well, made some excuse about needing to see an alien about a planet and being late. Yeah. Not one of his best. She kept going on about never giving people a choice and just dumping them - he thinks Aberdeen came up somewhere in the discussion too - and Rose got mentioned almost as often as Donna.
He suspects the only reason she didn’t mention Jack is that Jack’s never actually told her the whole truth about what happened to him. Though Jack’s told her plenty of other things, he’s pretty sure; that’s the only thing that can explain the similarity between Sarah’s lecture and Jack’s.
“No offence, mate,” Mickey adds. “But I reckon you deserved it.”
He could object; in fact, the words are on his lips. But he doesn’t utter them. It’s not that he doesn’t feel he needs to defend himself to Mickey Smith. It’s more that... Well.
“Mickey?” There’s a Welsh accent on the intercom. Female. Timely interruption, Gwen.
“Yeah, Gwen? What’s happening?”
“Mitrak’s dead. We’re bringing it back now. Man down.”
Man down. “Who?” he demands instantly, before Mickey can. If it’s Ianto, Jack will be devastated...
“Jack. Martha’s looking after him.”
Jack... “He’ll be all right. Just give him a couple of minutes,” he instructs. These people, Jack’s team, don’t they know about him?
“He’s not dead.” There’s an almost anguished note to Gwen’s voice. “Badly hurt. Very. Be better if he was dead.” Because then he’d wake up fine, of course.
“Hurry back,” he tells her curtly.
He throws off the headset and starts to pace. It doesn’t make sense, of course, since Jack can’t die, so he’s going to be all right, no question. But he’s not dead. Not dying. Just badly hurt.
All the same, when Mickey tells him the SUV’s outside he takes to his heels.
***
He knows he’s getting on Martha’s nerves when she orders him out of the medical room for the second time.
“Come on, mate.” The hand on his shoulder’s Mickey’s. Gwen’s standing nearby, and he can see sympathy in her eyes. “Let’s get you a cuppa.”
“Jack’s gonna be fine,” Gwen assures him. “Thought you knew that.”
Fine? With a leg that’s on the verge of requiring amputation? How is he going to be fine?
He slips out from under Mickey’s grasp. “Don’t you have a dead Mitrak to deal with?” Before either of them can stop him, he’s back in the medical room.
“Doctor-” Martha begins to protest, but he holds up a hand firmly.
“Stand back. Back, Martha. Let me talk to him.” She’s about to object again, but he moves straight to Jack’s head. He’s under anaesthetic, of course, with Martha working on his leg - a suturing job that’s never going to take properly and, if Jack does get to keep his leg, means that when he finally does learn to walk again he’ll have a permanent limp. Until the next time he dies, of course.
“Jack.” Useless, that; he’s unconscious, he won’t be able to hear. He bends over the comatose body, laying his fingers at Jack’s temples. It takes a lot of concentration, but finally he knows he’s getting through. “Listen to me. You know what’s happening. What do you want?”
The answer he gets doesn’t surprise him. It still doesn’t prevent the sick feeling inside as he releases Jack and finds the exact pressure-point on his throat to cut off his oxygen supply.
It takes exactly seventy-two point three eight seconds for Jack to die, and for every one of them Martha’s anger rings in his ears.
As soon as the tingling under his skin vanishes, he rips his hands away and rushes from the room.
***
“Ten minutes fifty seconds.”
His head jerks up as Jack drops down on the bench next to him. The Captain’s grinning in triumph. “I beat you,” he adds.
Oh. Right. The Mitrak. “Hardly a fair comparison,” he points out. “You did have help. I was alone.”
“You also have some advantages even I don’t have.” Jack reaches out and ruffles his hair. Jack’s never done that before and, for a second, he contemplates objecting, but then lets it pass. Strange. It actually felt... well, almost nice.
“You all right, then?” He wasn’t going to say anything; after all, it’s perfectly obvious that Jack’s all right. Back to normal; in full rude health, and every bit as rude as usual, apparently. And yet he can’t seem to help himself.
“Yeah. Thanks, by the way.” Jack’s white teeth flash in a wide smile. “I saw Martha’s amputation saw. Sometimes there really are fates worse than death.”
He shrugs. “Just seemed the obvious solution, given your... special features.” And why no-one else, Martha especially, seemed to think of it baffles him.
“Yeah. I just got through giving them all a piece of my mind over it. I can understand Martha,” Jack adds thoughtfully. “Hippocratic Oath and all that. Told Ianto next time he’s to put a bullet through my head. Far quicker, far less messy.”
“Still not easy to do, even when they know you’ll wake up again all healed.”
“Yeah.” Jack’s giving him a keen look. “Ianto told me you couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And you were white as a ghost.”
“I killed you.” His voice is harsh. “Knowing it’s the right thing to do doesn’t make it any less murder.”
“Murder?” Jack bumps his shoulder. “You asked me. I said yes. And I appreciate that, by the way. And even if you hadn’t I’d have been okay with it.”
“You remember?” That shouldn’t happen.
“Just kinda vague impressions, which didn’t mean anything until Martha told me you’d been digging around inside my head.”
He nods, then gets to his feet and strides to the railing, staring out to sea. He should be leaving, really, but the TARDIS is still back down in the Hub and he’ll have to run the gauntlet of Jack’s team to get to it.
“What’s up, Doc?”
He ignores Jack; it’s not even a good Bugs Bunny imitation.
“Come on.” Jack’s dropped the attempt at humour. “You’ve seen me die lots of times. And I’ve seen you perform a mercy killing at least once before. It’s not a big deal - especially not with me.”
He’s silent for a long time, and it’s not only that he’s not sure he wants to explain. He’s not convinced he’ll even be believed.
Jack doesn’t ask again, and in the end it’s his friend’s patience that does it.
“You all think it’s easy for me,” he says at last. Jack still waits. “Taking away Donna’s memories. Leaving Rose behind with the other me. Killing you - running away from you in the first place. Taking Sarah home all those years ago. Easy-peasy. No-brainer. Snap my fingers and it’s done.”
Jack stills. “Not sure I’m the best person to comment on that.”
“What, cause I ran from you and kept running? You’re a clever bloke, Jack. Would’ve expected you to work that out by now.”
Jack should have, because the Captain of all people should know that he sometimes lies as easily as he tells the truth. But if Jack hasn’t worked it out he’s got no intention of telling him.
It’s Jack’s turn to remain silent for a while. Finally, looking out to sea, he says, “You know, a long time ago Rose told me something that I’ve never forgotten. Wasn’t long after I joined you two, and I was asking her about you, what exactly you did - you know, trying to figure you out. She told me that you make the decisions nobody else will. The kind of impossible choices that no-one knows how to make or wants to make, you make them. She was right.”
He remembers saying something along those lines a long time ago. To Jackie, not to Rose, but of course she was there. Silently, he nods.
“I ripped you a new one over Donna and Rose last time,” Jack adds. “And I guess, in your place... god, I don’t know what I’d have done. Yeah, I’ve played the complete bastard a time or two when I’ve had to, but it’s getting harder these days, not that I know why. Rose... well, if I felt about her the way you do I’m not sure I could’ve let her go, but I understand why you did it. And she’s got you anyway so I’m guessing she’s doing okay.”
He glances at Jack, but it’s not until Jack speaks again that he realises there was a challenge in his eyes. “Yeah, okay, I loved her too. Kinda hard to pretend otherwise after what I told you about going back to see her, isn’t it? But she was always yours, so...” He shrugs. “Donna - you really didn’t have time to give her a choice, did you?”
“No.” The word’s bitten out curtly. After a while, the rest of it comes pouring out.
“She was standing there, Jack, in the TARDIS, talking about Felspoon and telling me how I could fix the chameleon circuit - and, I mean, why would I want to do that? I like the TARDIS the way she is! Don’t you? Anyway, there she was, all brilliant and Time Lordy and so human too, and... and suddenly...” He inhales sharply, a shuddering breath.
“Her mental processes just jammed. It was like listening to a stuck record, Jack, and you want to knock it so the needle will move into the next groove, but you know you can’t cause it’ll only get even more damaged and... that was her. Damaged. Falling apart, about to have a neuron implosion right in front of me. And that was the choice I had. Let her die, or do that to her.”
“Yeah.” He can hear the sympathy in Jack’s voice, but for some reason that sends anger coursing through him. He doesn’t want sympathy.
He swings around. “You think I wanted to lose her as well? After I’d just given - sent Rose back to the parallel world? Or to see her revert to the way she was when I first met her, after I saw everything she could be? All the brilliance she had inside her that never had a chance to get out before, to see all that wiped away as if it never existed?”
“It’s still there.” Jack’s voice is gentle, just like the hand that’s now on his forearm. “Come on, Doctor, you know that. It doesn’t come from nowhere. Donna was brilliant long before she got the contents of a Time Lord brain dumped inside her head. Even if I hadn’t I seen it for myself, Martha’s told me enough about her. She’ll be brilliant again. Probably already is.”
He looks away again. “Who knows?” With a mother like that, putting her down at every turn? Jackie, for all her nagging, loved Rose and believed in her. Francine, for all her faults, always encouraged Martha to be the best she could be.
Jack’s hand moves to his shoulder. “What’s brought you here, Doctor? Today, I mean. You don’t come without a reason.”
“You’re the one who told me to visit sometimes!”
“Yeah, but you don’t. And you told me you’d find someone to travel with, too. You haven’t, have you?”
He stares out to sea again, ignoring the question. “I saw her.”
“Who?” Jack’s eyes widen. “Donna?”
“Yep.” He falls silent again; Jack waits. “Didn’t intend to. It’s not as if I decided to go to Chiswick and look for her. Oh, no. Staying well away from there. Got to. She can’t see me, ever.”
“So? Where did you see her, then?”
“Oxford Street.” He kicks at an invisible pebble. “Needed new Chucks. Last pair got a bit... burned... Well. No need to go into that. Well, anyway, I was in Oxford Street. She must’ve been shopping with friends. Looked right through me, like she didn’t even see me. That wasn’t the worst, though.”
“What was?”
He tugs at his ear. “When I first met her, she refused to believe there was any such thing as aliens, did you know that? Missed the Sycorax invasion - she had a bit of a hangover. Never noticed the Cybermen, either, cause she was scuba-diving in Spain. She kept missing the big picture.”
Jack shakes his head slowly. “Not the Donna Noble I met.”
“Nope. Thing is, she was back to that. When I saw her, I mean. Telling her friend - Nerys, I think she called her - that anyone who thinks there were alien pepperpots running around the place kidnapping and murdering people are off their heads.”
Jack bumps his shoulder again. “Sometimes I think we’d all be a lot happier if we believed that.”
The Doctor laughs, but without humour. Oh, if only he hadn’t been there in that time, that place - bad enough that his last memory of Donna was her ranting about unimportant nonsense in her mum’s house.
He finds himself telling Jack the rest. “After that, I went to see Sarah.” Because he actually believed what she told him when she left the TARDIS that day, that he had the biggest family in the universe.
“I heard.” He assumes from Mickey, until Jack speaks again. “She called me an hour or so after you left. Asked me to tell you she’s sorry, on the off-chance I saw you any time soon.”
“She’s sorry?” He snorts. “She sounded like she meant every word.”
“Oh, she meant it all right.” Jack grimaces. “I did too. Doesn’t mean we don’t know it’s a choice we’d hate to have to make, or that if we had to make it we’d probably have done the same thing. It just means we think like humans.”
The Doctor smiles slightly, recognising Jack’s comment as more apology for his harsh words last time. And it’s true; he can’t blame them for thinking like the humans they are. Though Jack’s not entirely in the same category as Sarah, or most of his human ex-companions. “You’ve made some hard choices in your time. I hear things, you know.”
“Yeah?” Jack pretends to flinch. “Think I’d rather not know.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. Hard choices, they were indeed, and some of them were far from the kind of decision he would have made. But then, as he’s learning to understand, he’s not the person who had to make the decision at the time - even if that never stopped him doling out criticism before now in similar circumstances.
Harriet Jones. That name still humbles him. He was wrong about her, so very wrong. And it really is time that he said so, even if it’s too late to admit it to her. He must ask Jack...
“We’re keeping an eye on her, you know,” Jack says, and it takes him a second or two to realise that his friend’s still talking about Donna, not the dead Harriet Jones.
“Keeping an eye on her?” He spins, leaning against the railing with his back to the sea. “You’re not supposed to go anywhere near her! You can’t! If she sees any of you, recognises you, it’ll reawaken the memories and kill her!”
“We’re being careful!” Jack’s defensive, in a way he hasn’t observed from the other man for a long time. If he gets the slightest hint that being careful isn’t as effective as Jack pretends...
“What does keeping an eye on her mean?”
Jack moves to face him, standing in front of him. “From a distance, for starters. I organised a job for her. Oh, and don’t think that means I don’t think she could get one on her own. She’s good, Doctor, even without-”
“Without all my knowledge? You think I don’t know that?”
“I was going to say, even without what she became when she was with you. I checked. She was a temp. Lots of previous employers. She wasn’t kidding when she called herself super-temp. She’s worth more than doing some travel agent’s typing and photocopying. Had to keep her away from UNIT,” Jack continues, hands thrust deep in his pockets. “Too dangerous, in the circumstances. Same goes for most government ministries. Except... Martha told me she’s good with numbers.”
“Very good with numbers,” he corrects.
“Yeah. So I got her hired at the Office of National Statistics. Administrative assistant, that’s what they call them these days, but I’m guessing it won’t be long before she’ll gets promoted.” Jack exhales. “It’s not travelling through time and space, but it’s better than temping for idiots who don’t appreciate her.”
That’s true. But, even as part of him is amused at Donna Noble compiling national statistics, the rest of him resents that they couldn’t give her the chance to find her way to brilliance on her own.
Jack really doesn’t get it. There’s been enough interfering in her life, after all.
***
It’s time to leave, even if it does mean he has to run the gauntlet of Jack’s team, two of whom are his own former companions.
Yes, he accords Mickey Smith the title of companion - hardly fair not to, when the man’s helped to save planets at least three times and the entire universe once, not forgetting his role in a certain incident with a big yellow truck. Mickey Smith’s come a long way from the cowering bloke who called him a thing.
Jack’s beside him as he makes his way back down inside the Hub and towards the TARDIS. Martha’s leaning against Mickey’s desk talking with him and Gwen, though Ianto’s nowhere in sight. He knows the exact moment when Martha sees him, but he ignores her attempts to catch his eye. He’s not in the mood for more conversation.
“You’re off, then?” Jack asks, somewhat unnecessarily as his intention has to be obvious.
“Yeah.” No explanation, no apology. He owes neither, after all. He doesn’t answer to Torchwood, or Jack, or to anyone but himself.
Jack nods. “Thanks again for the...” He mimes choking. “...thing. You know.”
The normal response is any time. It’d choke him to say it. He simply nods. About to turn away, he remembers his question from earlier. “Oh! By the way, Jack...”
“Yes?”
“Harriet Jones.” Tugging at one ear, he continues. “Should’ve asked before. There was a funeral, I imagine. A grave?”
Jack’s frowning a little, as if there’s some mystery he’s unable to solve.
“There should’ve been - full state funeral with honours. Sure, there’s only a few of us who know what she did, but she was still a former prime minister. We - Martha, Sarah and me - we were determined to see that she got the recognition she deserved. But it didn’t happen.”
“Why not?”
Jack shrugs. “Kinda need a body for a funeral - or at least some evidence of death. We went to her house to look for her body, but we couldn’t find it anywhere.”
It’s his turn to frown. “Daleks don’t steal bodies. Their weapons don’t disintegrate matter, either.”
“I know.” Jack’s voice is dry; of course, who better to know? Well, apart from himself, of course. “Just telling you what happened, Doctor. We searched. We also interviewed anyone who had access to her house in case they’d buried or cremated her quietly. Nothing. One of the great unsolved mysteries of our time,” he finishes with irony.
“Yep.” He shrugs. “Ah well.” In theory, of course, he could find out, but going back into the battle for the planets could have disastrous consequences. It’s just not possible. Jack’s right; the disappearance of Harriet’s body will have to remain a mystery.
“So...” Jack trails off, raises his eyebrows interrogatively and leans against the side of the TARDIS. “Gonna be dropping in again any time soon?”
He turns away, slides his key into the lock. “No.”
“Doctor?” Jack’s hand’s on his arm again, this time stopping him.
He glances back briefly before pushing the door open and taking a half-step inside. “You know, in the old days - before the War - I never did this. Any of this. When a companion left, that was it. They were gone, end of story. I moved on. Never looked back. Never came back. None of this dropping in to visit, dragging things out.”
“I’m so sorry, Doctor.” The genuine sympathy in Jack’s voice makes him turn again.
“What?”
“I didn’t realise. Well, I knew, but not really. I mean, I guess I thought it was Rose you were missing most of all, but it’s Donna too, yeah?”
“All of them.” He can’t avoid confessing that, but no more. End of subject.
Jack takes a step closer. “You’re still travelling alone, aren’t you?”
He is, and it’s the best way. No more companions. Not for a long time. No-one else to become close to and lose. No-one else whose life he’ll destroy. No-one else he’ll turn into a soldier, a destroyer.
No-one else who’ll break his hearts.
He’s not coming back. Which reminds him that there’s something else.
A few strides take him to the console, and a cursory glance finds Martha’s old phone. Whirling, he marches back to Jack, who’s waiting by the open door.
“Here. Give it back to Martha. I don’t want it any more.”
“Doctor,” Jack protests. “It’s the only way we have of calling you if we need you.”
“You don’t need me. You can do it all by yourselves now, can’t you? Isn’t that what I taught you? How to fight? Turned you all into soldiers, didn’t I?”
“What, you actually care what a megalomaniac thinks? Doctor, he created Daleks. The most murderous creatures in the universe! I hardly think he had any right to lecture you.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He turns away. “Goodbye, Jack.”
“Doc-” Jack tries to protest. He slams the TARDIS door in the Captain’s face.
As he dematerialises, Jack’s face reappears on the console monitor. With a shaking hand, he turns the screen off.
***
.