Fic: Through A Glass Darkly 3/5?
Story: Through A Glass Darkly
Author: wmr / wendymr
Characters: Rose Tyler, AU Ninth Doctor, AU Jack Harkness, Jackie Tyler
Rated: PG13
Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately, though I'm willing to pay in instalments...
Summary: It’s only when she’s finally given up looking for a way back that she finds him.
Written for the incredibly generous wiggiemomsi, who won my services in the September Support Stacie Auction. I promised a minimum-5000-words fic; so far, this one's over 19,000 words. I hope you like it, Wiggie! With very many thanks to my fantastic team of BRs, dark_aegis, yamx and kae_nine.
Chapter 1: Shadow of the Past l Chapter 2: Tug of War
Chapter 3: Friction
He stands in the doorway of the TARDIS, silent witness to Rose Tyler’s tearful farewell to her family. It feels masochistic in the extreme, as well as intrusive, yet he’s unable to tear himself away.
The Doctor’s there as well, though outside; he’s leaning against the TARDIS, arms folded, one boot pressing flat against the wall. Impossible to tell what he’s thinking; he’s got his inscrutable face on. He could be feeling sorry for the girl; equally as plausible, he could be tutting impatiently at all this human domesticity.
The older woman, obviously Rose’s mother even if the resemblance hadn’t given the relationship away, is clinging to her daughter and crying. The balding man - father? stepfather? - looks as if he doesn’t know who to comfort: mother or daughter.
Eventually, the woman breaks away from Rose. And then she does the last thing he expects: she marches straight for the Doctor. “You don’t know me, but I know you, mate,” she announces, poking him firmly in the chest. “Knew the other you, in the other universe. Slapped you, too, I did. You were terrified of me.”
The Doctor simply raises one eyebrow. “And your point...?”
“You better look after her. Treat her right. If you get her back to the other Doctor, all well an’ good. If you can’t... fix her.” Suddenly, the older woman’s expression changes; the belligerence disappears, replaced by anguish. “Please, Doctor. Fix her an’ bring her home. An’ if you get her back to the other Doctor... come an’ tell me. Please. So I don’t spend the rest of my life wondering.”
“Mum!” Rose sounds as if she doesn’t know whether to cry or try to sink through the ground.
“Course I’ll bring her home.” The Doctor sounds faintly impatient. “What d’you think I am, some sort of kidnapper? Don’t need threats to do that. Don’t need to fix her just to bring her back, either. She’s safe enough if it’s just for a visit.”
The expression of shock on Jackie's face make him wonder just what the other-universe Doctor was like.
“You’re different,” the older Tyler woman says, sounding disbelieving. “The other you... well, the second one was all right, I s’pose-”
“Mum!” Rose hurries over, catches her mother by the arm and starts to drag her back. “You can’t tell him stuff like that.”
The Doctor shrugs. “Already worked out the version of me Rose knew regenerated while she was with him.” He grins briefly, that manic, crazy smile that makes Jack’s knees weak. “Jus’ don’t tell me what I turn out like. Better not be some sort of pansy pretty boy.”
Rose looks down at the ground. Dead giveaway, that. Hmm. Much as he likes the Doctor exactly as he is, it doesn’t look as if he’ll be disappointed in the Doctor’s next body if he’s still around for a regeneration.
Maybe he won’t be. By the sound of it, his Doctor’s very different from the one Rose was with, the one who died and regenerated. He’s not remotely sorry about that. For one thing, if it means he gets to keep his Doctor longer that’s very much okay with him. For another, if his Doctor isn’t like Rose’s then there’s less likelihood that she’ll be happy travelling with the two of them, and that might mean he’ll get his Doctor to himself again sooner.
It briefly crosses his mind to wonder how different the Jack Rose knew is from himself. Probably very, since she’s seemed surprised at the way he’s behaved to her. What, isn’t she used to being around people who don’t treat her like she’s something special? Her father might be the founder of the Vitex empire - and the director of Torchwood - meaning that she’s been fawned over and kow-towed to for the last few years, but there’s no room for spoilt princesses on the TARDIS.
He glances over at her again, his expression sour, at precisely the same moment she looks up, and their gazes meet. She looks shocked, then hurt, and then she abruptly turns away, reaching to hug her mother again.
Lips tightening, he spins on his heel and retreats into the TARDIS. The sooner the Doctor finds a way to dump Ms Tyler in her original universe, the better.
***
This TARDIS looks identical to the one she travelled in for close to two years. Yet it feels completely different.
Jack’s nowhere in sight when she carries her rucksack and holdall into the console room. The Doctor nods towards the door leading to the ship’s interior. “Through there, second left, past the stairs, first right. Your room’ll be somewhere along there.”
“Thanks.” So she’s being dismissed for the time being. She nods and starts walking. The corridors look the same as she’s used to, but again the ship feels different. This TARDIS doesn't know her, of course.
She pauses, sets down her holdall and lays her palm flat against the wall. “Hello,” she says softly. There’s a faint hum in response, and she smiles. At least one being doesn’t seem to resent her being on board.
The room the TARDIS opens for her is nothing like the pink-and-white bedroom she had in her Doctor’s TARDIS. It’s larger, and decorated in subtle hues of blue and violet. Along the walls, there are paintings showing planets and nebulae and starbursts. With a start, she realises that she actually recognises them all. There’s Women Wept, and that one over there is the Horsehead Nebula, and that painting on the side wall has to be the Dagmar Cluster.
“Got around a bit, didn’t you?”
She spins at the amused voice from behind her. This Doctor’s every bit as talented as her version of him was at creeping up on her.
“TARDIS likes you,” he comments, leaning against the door-jamb in a stance so familiar it sends a stab of painful memory through her. “Doin’ her best to make you feel at home.”
And the ship wouldn’t be doing that unless the Doctor wanted her to. “Thank you.” She manages a smile; this feels awkward as hell. “Never said - I appreciate what you’re doing for me.”
He shrugs. “Not much else I could do, really. You couldn’t stay there. An’ you want to go back where you came from, yeah? Looked like it, anyway.” He shifts his position, moving just inside the room and leaning against the wall, arms loosely folded. “Anyway, your Doctor should’ve made sure you were all right. Think we should make him take responsibility for seein’ that you are, don’t you?”
She starts. Did he even know? Did he have any idea that she still had all that stuff inside her? Or how dangerous it is?
But it took this Doctor no time at all to find out, didn’t it?
“Maybe,” she manages to say, hiding her confusion by taking a stack of clothes from her holdall and carrying them to a chest of drawers.
“Can I ask you something?” the Doctor says.
“Course.” She doesn’t look around. It’s probably going to be something else pointing out how careless her Doctor was in leaving her here. Thanks for nothing.
“Your Doctor...” There’s a long pause, which makes her glance up. It looks as if he’s searching for words. Finally, he adds, “Did he ever talk about his people? Other Time Lords?”
She tenses, searching his expression, but relaxes as she finds little more than curiosity there. “Not much.” She lays down the clothes she’s holding and concentrates on the Doctor. “See, in our universe...” Again, she hesitates. Should she even be telling him this?”
He gestures for her to continue. When she doesn’t immediately, he says, “Tell me. Might be the same, might not. ‘S not as if you’re telling me my future.”
She lets go the breath she was holding. “All right. Thing is, his people were all dead. There was a war-”
“The Time War,” he interjects. “So it happened there too.” He slides his hands deep into his jacket pockets. “How long ago for him?”
So this Doctor did go through a Time War, and he lost his people. Yet he’s nothing like as... as damaged as the Doctor she first knew. Or her second Doctor; he showed it far less often, but the paralysing grief was still there, never far from the surface.
“He never said,” she explains. “But from things he did say, sounded like it wasn’t long before I met him. I think he might’ve regenerated into... well, the him that looked like you... right after the War. An’ if I had to guess, I’d say he met me not too long after that.”
“Ah.” The Doctor glances down at the floor. “Poor sod.” He looks up again, and she can see it then: the flash of remembered pain in his eyes as he inhales deeply. “Was a lot longer ago for me.” He shrugs. “You learn to live with it.”
How much longer? And was the War the same for this Doctor? “Can I...” she begins, then trails off as she realises how inappropriate her questions are.
“Can you...?” he echoes, then signals for her to continue.
“Sorry. Was just... I just wondered.”
He tuts impatiently, a gesture she remembers well. “Ask me, then.”
“My Doctor... He never actually said, but I sort of worked out... well, I think he was the one who had to push the button, or whatever it was. He destroyed his planet so that the Daleks would be destroyed too.”
She hears a sharp intake of breath, and the Doctor’s brows draw together. “Rassilon!” Quickly, he’s shaking his head. “Wasn’t like that for me. Could’ve been, I s’pose, if Romana’s plan hadn’t worked. I was the decoy,” he explains. “Pretended to be leading a whole fleet of TARDISes, so the Daleks would follow. But the other ships were all empty. They were supposed to attack me, an’ while they were busy doing that Romana and the Council would have time to put the plan into place. I knew what they were doin’, an’ if there’d been any other way...”
He shuffles, glancing down to the floor again. “Didn’t expect to survive, me. Thought the Daleks’d get me before they pushed the button. Did get caught in the aftershock, though. The ripples almost tore the TARDIS apart. Crash-landed on a little backwater planet an’ regenerated. That was a bad one - I went a little insane in the early days. An’ the TARDIS was badly damaged. Don’t think I’d’ve been able to fix her alone.”
He’s talking to himself now, she senses; he’s probably even forgotten that she’s there. But she has to ask; it’s such a new experience to have the Doctor - even if he’s not her Doctor - so expansive about his past. “You had help?”
“Yeah.” He blinks once and his gaze focuses on her. “Jack. First time I met him, that was. He had no idea who I was, other than some bloke who’d crashed an’ needed a bit of help recovering an’ rebuilding. He was only about sixteen then, an’ looking for adventure. Gave him a trip in the TARDIS when we’d finished the repairs.”
If Jack was sixteen then, and he looks around thirty-three or thereabouts... “He’s been with you ever since?” That’s how long it’s been for this Doctor since the War?
“Nah.” He sounds surprised. “Told you, that was the first time I met him. Start of my sixth life, that was. On my ninth now.” More than three lifetimes ago. Makes sense that he wouldn’t be grieving, not in the same way. That’s good. Well, not good that this Doctor’s lost everything too, but this - the calm acceptance that this Doctor seems to have about the fate of his people and his homeland - is at least allowing him to have a happier life than her Doctor. She wouldn’t wish her Doctor’s grief on anyone.
“Met him again... oh, about six months ago, by Earth dating,” the Doctor continues.
Since the Doctor’s so talkative, and Jack’s behaviour’s bothered her right from the moment she saw him... “Doctor, about Jack... I told you he - well, the version of him in my universe - travelled with us as well. But your Jack, he’s nothing like the Jack I knew. ‘S like he’s angry with me for some reason, but I don’t know how I could’ve done anything to upset him.” She gives the Doctor a helpless look. Even as she’s asking the question, something’s tightened painfully inside her. How are they going to do this, her travelling in the TARDIS, if Jack can’t even bear to look at her?
He looks away, and she knows she’s crossed a line. But this - Jack - is a more sensitive topic for him than the Time War? Well, they’re obviously a lot closer than her Doctor and Jack were, and that makes sense if they’ve been travelling together for that much time. She and her Doctor were inseparable by that time - he even said so once.
The Doctor starts to edge back towards the doorway, glancing at her again as he does. “He has his reasons. Not my place to tell you ‘bout them.”
“But, Doctor...” That tells her nothing - not whether it’s her doing, or whether it’s just the way Jack is.
He pauses on his way out of her room and looks back at her again briefly. “ ‘S nothing you’ve done. Can tell you that, at least.”
The knot in her gut lessens. “Thanks, Doctor.”
Still, though, that doesn’t make it all right. He might not be her Jack, the Captain she loved and lost, but he’s still Jack, and there’s something eating away at him. If it’s not her, then it can’t be jealousy that he’s no longer alone with the Doctor - and anyway, that just didn’t seem like Jack.
No. Her other guess, that something bad happened to him, is much more likely. Losing those two years? But that made her Jack vengeful, not closed-off and unreachable. He became a conman and an intergalactic playboy, not a brooding loner. No, whatever’s happened to this Jack is worse, far worse.
She can’t ignore that. She won’t ignore it.
Patience is something she’s learned to be very good at over the past six years. Jack can’t avoid her for ever, and eventually she’ll get her chance to try to get through to him. After all, she did it with the Doctor once, and he was far more damaged than Jack could possibly be.
She just hopes she has time before the Doctor gets her home, that’s all.
***
“You’re not gonna be able to do it.” Jack whirls away from the console, bitter frustration in every inch of his body. “Come on, you know it too. Every equation we try, every time we try it, same result. Two universes collapsed.”
He does know it. He’s known it almost as long as he’s had Rose on board. Almost a week they’ve been trying now, him and Jack, using readings from the Vortex energy inside Rose to locate her original universe, and each time they’ve run up against the same conclusion. It’s impossible.
He stops trying to find even a hint of hope in the latest set of equations and instead walks over to Jack, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder. Jack tenses, but after a moment sighs and lets his body relax, taking a step backwards so that they’re almost embracing.
“You’re right. I can’t do it.” He brings his free hand up to Jack’s other shoulder and starts massaging lightly, digging deeper as he feels resistance. “You’re full of knots.” Jack shrugs, letting his head fall forward. They both know why he’s tense, and there’s no point rehashing it. No matter what he says, Jack won’t spend a second more in Rose’s company than he can avoid. And, since they’ve been drifting in the Vortex since she joined the two of them, that means Jack’s been spending a lot of time on his own. Also, since he’s been spending every ship-night here in the console room, his sleep-cycle’s a mess.
No good him telling Jack that Rose isn’t anything like the people he remembers. Or that he’s been spending a lot of time with the young woman and finding that he enjoys her company. She makes him laugh - and long for the kind of adventures, exploring just for the fun of it, that he hasn’t had in a while. Not since he rescued Jack. With Jack, when they’ve gone somewhere it’s all been serious business, performing rescues and undoing things that shouldn’t happen.
Not for the first time, he wonders if he’s actually helping Jack by letting his friend stay with him.
“The sooner you start looking for a way to take that stuff out of her, the better,” Jack says abruptly, moving away from him. His hands fall to his sides.
“Told you I’d try.” He has every intention of it, and not only because it’s Jack’s preferred option, either. The look on Jackie Tyler’s face when she pleaded with him, and his conviction as he watched her that this is a woman who doesn’t plead with anyone, is most of all what’s driving him in that particular quest. She doesn’t want to lose her daughter to another universe. Perhaps she doesn’t even want to lose Rose to a version of the Doctor who doesn’t seem to have tried to get her back.
“See that you do.” Jack’s turned back to him. His hands are buried deep in his jeans pockets now, and his brows are drawn together in an expression that looks mutinous. “This is a waste of time. I’m going to bed.”
Don’t bother coming with me. The subtext is as clear as if Jack had spoken out loud.
He sighs and stares down at the floor as Jack’s footsteps fade away.
No, he’s not helping Jack. And it’s about time he not only admitted that, but did something about it.
***
He doesn’t sleep at all that night. The empty bed’s part of the reason, but it’s not all of it, not by any means.
There’s just one thought playing over and over in his mind all night long. He went too far.
It’s the Doctor’s TARDIS, for one thing. He has a perfect right to decide who gets to come on board - and to stay on board. More fundamental, the integrity of the universe is far more important than his preferences. Of course Rose has to stay here. It’s not safe - for her or for wherever she ends up - for her to be anywhere else.
The Doctor doesn’t have a choice, and he’s hardly helping the man he calls his friend by creating so much tension about the fact that she’s here - both by making it obvious that he can’t stand to be around her, and by bitching at the Doctor all the time because he hasn’t found a way to get rid of her yet.
Right now, if he was the Doctor, it wouldn’t be Rose he’d be wanting to get rid of.
Part of him’s tempted to go straight back out to the console room and apologise nicely, kiss the Doctor and drag him back to bed. Very tempted. But there’s one thing that stops him.
The look on the Doctor’s face as he walked out of the room.
That wasn’t an oh, shit, he’s pissed off look. It wasn’t a long-suffering grow up and get your head out of your arse look. It wasn’t anything that suggests a simple apology and some physical affection will do to sort this out.
No, he knows the Doctor well enough by now to realise that, for him, it’s not just about Jack’s fit of childish mutiny. It’s about the whole of it, everything he’s been trying to get Jack to accept and understand since he brought him on board.
“You can’t go on like this,” the Doctor’s said several times. “You can’t hide for ever. One of these days, you have to start living your own life again.”
He’s always promised that it’ll be on Jack’s time, though. When Jack’s ready. And Jack’s... well, he’s not ready. Nowhere near.
But what if the Doctor’s decided that he is?
There’s no arguing with the Doctor when he’s decided on a course of action for someone’s good. He’s seen it before, and always been thankful that he’s not been the beneficiary. Now, though, it’s looking like he’s about to be. Well, hell.
There’s only one thing he can do to pre-empt it, and it’s not a course of action he’d willingly choose. But it’s the only thing that’s going to convince the Doctor that a dose of for your own good isn’t required.
He’s going to have to make friends with Rose Tyler.
***
“Rose, I’m sorry. Your Doctor was right. It is impossible.”
He’s standing just inside her bedroom door again. Incredibly, in the week she’s been here, this Doctor’s been in her bedroom more often than her first Doctor ever was.
Her breath catches as his meaning sinks in. “You can’t take me back?”
“We’ve tried, Jack an’ me. Every night while you’ve been asleep. Same result every time. Universes implode if we try.”
She’s barely aware of the regret in his voice, the sympathy for her. Over and over, the words repeat in her mind: Impossible. Universes implode. He was right.
It’s only what she told the Doctor from the start, but he seemed so sure that he’d find a way. So sure that she’d allowed herself to hope again. Now, it’s almost as bad as standing on Bad Wolf Bay hearing the Doctor tell her that she’d never see him again. The worst day of her life, that was.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and abruptly his arms are around her, awkward but comforting, and it’s then she realises that her eyes are moist.
He feels so familiar, so right. Everything about him - his scent, the solidity of his body against hers, the smooth-roughness of his battered leather jacket, even his awkward shuffling that gives away the fact that he really doesn’t have a clue what to do with a weeping woman - it all makes the years fall away until, in her head, she’s back with her first Doctor again. The Doctor she first fell in love with, and never had a chance to say goodbye to.
But he’s not her Doctor, not this one. Even if this is now her universe. She’s never going back.
She pulls away from him, stepping back. His arms drop to his sides and he looks relieved.
“Thanks for telling me, Doctor,” she says, summoning all her strength. “An’ thanks for trying. I appreciate it.”
He shrugs awkwardly. “Was nothing. Wish I could’ve done it for you, though. But at least we know one thing,” he adds. “It’s not that he doesn’t want you back, yeah? It’s ‘cause he really can’t get to you.”
Well, that’s true. And it’s a comfort, sort of. She had been starting to think that maybe he didn’t care, not as much as she did.
The Doctor shoves his hands into his pockets. “You gonna be all right?”
“Yeah.” She summons a smile. He doesn’t want to know how she really feels - and she certainly doesn’t want him to know. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
Obviously relieved, he leaves, and once the door closes behind him she slumps onto the bed. She’s not going back to her first universe. She’ll never see her Doctor again.
All those years of hoping, ended with just three words: it is impossible. He’s really never coming for her. Oh, sure, she told herself she’d given up expecting him to come, stopped believing that he ever would, or that she’d find a way to get to him - but now, now that she knows for a fact that it’s impossible, she has to admit that the hope never died. Until now.
Stuck here in this universe, without even her family and friends around her. According to the Doctor, she can’t ever be with her family again either, apart from brief visits. She’s stuck on the TARDIS for the rest of her life, or until he finds a way to take the energy from her - and didn’t he say, that evening at her apartment, that he didn’t think he could do that? Stuck on the TARDIS with one person who doesn’t want her around at all, and another who, although he seems relaxed about having her around, is always going to have his first loyalties elsewhere.
And every time she sees either of them, she’s reminded of how things used to be, the fantastic times she had with her Doctor and her Jack - and that they’re both dead now, the ones in her universe. Oh, she loved the regenerated Doctor too, but she never forgot this one. And Jack... the Doctor told her he was rebuilding the Earth, but she never believed him. He just didn’t want to tell her Jack was dead. After all, if he was alive they’d have gone back for him some time, wouldn’t they?
A tear falls onto the back of her hand, and she stares at the damp circle and makes a decision.
Think positive. Look on the bright side. That’s what her Doctor taught her - or reminded her, really, because she always tried to do that growing up, and especially after she moved home again after Jimmy Stone.
She’s alive and well, and she has her family, including her dad and a little brother. She’ll get to go home for visits. The Doctor’s going to try to help her so she won’t be a prisoner in the TARDIS, and he is a genius, right? Even if he can’t get her back to her universe. And, after all, she is in the TARDIS, travelling with the Doctor. And Jack, even if she never sees Jack. And even if they’ve not actually gone anywhere so far.
But there’s something. The Doctor told her that the two of them, he and Jack, worked together to try to find a way through to the other universe. Jack helped. Now, maybe that’s just because he wants her off the ship, but it’s still nice to know.
A tap on her door makes her frown. It couldn’t be the Doctor back so soon, could it? But it won’t be Jack, so it has to be.
She hurries to the dressing-table and examines her face in the mirror. Eyes reddened, slightly swollen... oh, hell, it’s not as if he doesn’t already know she was crying. She goes to the door and pulls it open. “Doct-”
But it’s not the Doctor. Jack’s standing there, looking awkward but determined. “Hi.”
“Jack! Um... hi.”
“I wondered...” He looks as if he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “Uh... you want a coffee?”
Even if she didn’t, there’s no way she’d turn down this offer, the first overture Jack’s made to her since she came on board. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
He nods and immediately turns around, clearly expecting her to follow. He looks like someone who’s walking to his own execution. She bites her lip, determined to stop herself telling him she doesn’t bite. Though, of course, her Jack would have told her that was a pity...
He’s not her Jack. He’s nothing like her Jack.
“I’m glad you came to find me.” She hurries to catch up with him. “Wanted to thank you. The Doctor told me you were helping him try to find a way through the Void.”
He shrugs. “Didn’t work, though.”
And he’s every bit as disappointed as she is, at a guess. “You tried. Can’t ask for more than that.”
Her only answer’s a grunt, and he’s silent the rest of the way to the kitchen. Inside, he’s monosyllabic as he asks how she likes her coffee, and then hands it to her without looking at her.
“All right,” she says, remaining standing; she’s not going to sit and give him even more of a height advantage. “I don’t know what your problem is, Captain Harkness, or what it’s got to do with me. But I do know that if we’re going to be sharing this TARDIS indefinitely we can’t go on like this, unless we jus’ keep avoiding each other - an’ I’m not sure the Doctor’d like that. So let’s have it out once an’ for all, yeah?”
He starts, then takes a couple of steps closer, into her personal space. Oh, he’s not trying to intimidate her at all, is he? “Like that, would you? Having us both fawning over you?”
“What?” She refuses to move even as much as one inch. “Fawning over me? Where d’you get that from?”
His mouth’s a narrow line. “I know about you, Rose Tyler, the Vitex heiress.”
“Oh, yeah?” She shakes her head. “You know nothing, Jack Harkness. I grew up in a single-parent family on a council estate. My dad was killed when I was a baby, and my mum barely had enough to pay the rent. There were days when I didn’t know if we’d make it to the end of the week cause there was no money left for food. I left school at sixteen an’ worked in a shop to help pay the bills. Yeah, now I’ve got a dad an’ he has money, but what matters to me is that he’s alive. He could lose everything tomorrow and I wouldn’t give a shit, as long as I still have him an’ my mum and little brother.”
His eyes are like chips of ice. “Yeah? You love them so much you couldn’t wait to leave them behind and run to another universe.”
She flinches, despite her resolve. How dare he? Did he deliberately choose the most hurtful thing he could say right now? “You have no idea about me, my family or my relationship with the Doctor, so keep your assumptions to yourself.” She turns, tears pricking at her eyes again, and slams the mug he gave her down on the nearest surface, ignoring the coffee that splashes everywhere, and brushes past him, heading for the door.
On the threshold, she turns back. “I knew a Jack Harkness in the other universe. He was an amazing man and one of my best friends. He died a hero. And he’d be ashamed of you.”
***
tbc in Chapter 4: In The Way
Author: wmr / wendymr
Characters: Rose Tyler, AU Ninth Doctor, AU Jack Harkness, Jackie Tyler
Rated: PG13
Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately, though I'm willing to pay in instalments...
Summary: It’s only when she’s finally given up looking for a way back that she finds him.
Written for the incredibly generous wiggiemomsi, who won my services in the September Support Stacie Auction. I promised a minimum-5000-words fic; so far, this one's over 19,000 words. I hope you like it, Wiggie! With very many thanks to my fantastic team of BRs, dark_aegis, yamx and kae_nine.
Chapter 1: Shadow of the Past l Chapter 2: Tug of War
Chapter 3: Friction
He stands in the doorway of the TARDIS, silent witness to Rose Tyler’s tearful farewell to her family. It feels masochistic in the extreme, as well as intrusive, yet he’s unable to tear himself away.
The Doctor’s there as well, though outside; he’s leaning against the TARDIS, arms folded, one boot pressing flat against the wall. Impossible to tell what he’s thinking; he’s got his inscrutable face on. He could be feeling sorry for the girl; equally as plausible, he could be tutting impatiently at all this human domesticity.
The older woman, obviously Rose’s mother even if the resemblance hadn’t given the relationship away, is clinging to her daughter and crying. The balding man - father? stepfather? - looks as if he doesn’t know who to comfort: mother or daughter.
Eventually, the woman breaks away from Rose. And then she does the last thing he expects: she marches straight for the Doctor. “You don’t know me, but I know you, mate,” she announces, poking him firmly in the chest. “Knew the other you, in the other universe. Slapped you, too, I did. You were terrified of me.”
The Doctor simply raises one eyebrow. “And your point...?”
“You better look after her. Treat her right. If you get her back to the other Doctor, all well an’ good. If you can’t... fix her.” Suddenly, the older woman’s expression changes; the belligerence disappears, replaced by anguish. “Please, Doctor. Fix her an’ bring her home. An’ if you get her back to the other Doctor... come an’ tell me. Please. So I don’t spend the rest of my life wondering.”
“Mum!” Rose sounds as if she doesn’t know whether to cry or try to sink through the ground.
“Course I’ll bring her home.” The Doctor sounds faintly impatient. “What d’you think I am, some sort of kidnapper? Don’t need threats to do that. Don’t need to fix her just to bring her back, either. She’s safe enough if it’s just for a visit.”
The expression of shock on Jackie's face make him wonder just what the other-universe Doctor was like.
“You’re different,” the older Tyler woman says, sounding disbelieving. “The other you... well, the second one was all right, I s’pose-”
“Mum!” Rose hurries over, catches her mother by the arm and starts to drag her back. “You can’t tell him stuff like that.”
The Doctor shrugs. “Already worked out the version of me Rose knew regenerated while she was with him.” He grins briefly, that manic, crazy smile that makes Jack’s knees weak. “Jus’ don’t tell me what I turn out like. Better not be some sort of pansy pretty boy.”
Rose looks down at the ground. Dead giveaway, that. Hmm. Much as he likes the Doctor exactly as he is, it doesn’t look as if he’ll be disappointed in the Doctor’s next body if he’s still around for a regeneration.
Maybe he won’t be. By the sound of it, his Doctor’s very different from the one Rose was with, the one who died and regenerated. He’s not remotely sorry about that. For one thing, if it means he gets to keep his Doctor longer that’s very much okay with him. For another, if his Doctor isn’t like Rose’s then there’s less likelihood that she’ll be happy travelling with the two of them, and that might mean he’ll get his Doctor to himself again sooner.
It briefly crosses his mind to wonder how different the Jack Rose knew is from himself. Probably very, since she’s seemed surprised at the way he’s behaved to her. What, isn’t she used to being around people who don’t treat her like she’s something special? Her father might be the founder of the Vitex empire - and the director of Torchwood - meaning that she’s been fawned over and kow-towed to for the last few years, but there’s no room for spoilt princesses on the TARDIS.
He glances over at her again, his expression sour, at precisely the same moment she looks up, and their gazes meet. She looks shocked, then hurt, and then she abruptly turns away, reaching to hug her mother again.
Lips tightening, he spins on his heel and retreats into the TARDIS. The sooner the Doctor finds a way to dump Ms Tyler in her original universe, the better.
***
This TARDIS looks identical to the one she travelled in for close to two years. Yet it feels completely different.
Jack’s nowhere in sight when she carries her rucksack and holdall into the console room. The Doctor nods towards the door leading to the ship’s interior. “Through there, second left, past the stairs, first right. Your room’ll be somewhere along there.”
“Thanks.” So she’s being dismissed for the time being. She nods and starts walking. The corridors look the same as she’s used to, but again the ship feels different. This TARDIS doesn't know her, of course.
She pauses, sets down her holdall and lays her palm flat against the wall. “Hello,” she says softly. There’s a faint hum in response, and she smiles. At least one being doesn’t seem to resent her being on board.
The room the TARDIS opens for her is nothing like the pink-and-white bedroom she had in her Doctor’s TARDIS. It’s larger, and decorated in subtle hues of blue and violet. Along the walls, there are paintings showing planets and nebulae and starbursts. With a start, she realises that she actually recognises them all. There’s Women Wept, and that one over there is the Horsehead Nebula, and that painting on the side wall has to be the Dagmar Cluster.
“Got around a bit, didn’t you?”
She spins at the amused voice from behind her. This Doctor’s every bit as talented as her version of him was at creeping up on her.
“TARDIS likes you,” he comments, leaning against the door-jamb in a stance so familiar it sends a stab of painful memory through her. “Doin’ her best to make you feel at home.”
And the ship wouldn’t be doing that unless the Doctor wanted her to. “Thank you.” She manages a smile; this feels awkward as hell. “Never said - I appreciate what you’re doing for me.”
He shrugs. “Not much else I could do, really. You couldn’t stay there. An’ you want to go back where you came from, yeah? Looked like it, anyway.” He shifts his position, moving just inside the room and leaning against the wall, arms loosely folded. “Anyway, your Doctor should’ve made sure you were all right. Think we should make him take responsibility for seein’ that you are, don’t you?”
She starts. Did he even know? Did he have any idea that she still had all that stuff inside her? Or how dangerous it is?
But it took this Doctor no time at all to find out, didn’t it?
“Maybe,” she manages to say, hiding her confusion by taking a stack of clothes from her holdall and carrying them to a chest of drawers.
“Can I ask you something?” the Doctor says.
“Course.” She doesn’t look around. It’s probably going to be something else pointing out how careless her Doctor was in leaving her here. Thanks for nothing.
“Your Doctor...” There’s a long pause, which makes her glance up. It looks as if he’s searching for words. Finally, he adds, “Did he ever talk about his people? Other Time Lords?”
She tenses, searching his expression, but relaxes as she finds little more than curiosity there. “Not much.” She lays down the clothes she’s holding and concentrates on the Doctor. “See, in our universe...” Again, she hesitates. Should she even be telling him this?”
He gestures for her to continue. When she doesn’t immediately, he says, “Tell me. Might be the same, might not. ‘S not as if you’re telling me my future.”
She lets go the breath she was holding. “All right. Thing is, his people were all dead. There was a war-”
“The Time War,” he interjects. “So it happened there too.” He slides his hands deep into his jacket pockets. “How long ago for him?”
So this Doctor did go through a Time War, and he lost his people. Yet he’s nothing like as... as damaged as the Doctor she first knew. Or her second Doctor; he showed it far less often, but the paralysing grief was still there, never far from the surface.
“He never said,” she explains. “But from things he did say, sounded like it wasn’t long before I met him. I think he might’ve regenerated into... well, the him that looked like you... right after the War. An’ if I had to guess, I’d say he met me not too long after that.”
“Ah.” The Doctor glances down at the floor. “Poor sod.” He looks up again, and she can see it then: the flash of remembered pain in his eyes as he inhales deeply. “Was a lot longer ago for me.” He shrugs. “You learn to live with it.”
How much longer? And was the War the same for this Doctor? “Can I...” she begins, then trails off as she realises how inappropriate her questions are.
“Can you...?” he echoes, then signals for her to continue.
“Sorry. Was just... I just wondered.”
He tuts impatiently, a gesture she remembers well. “Ask me, then.”
“My Doctor... He never actually said, but I sort of worked out... well, I think he was the one who had to push the button, or whatever it was. He destroyed his planet so that the Daleks would be destroyed too.”
She hears a sharp intake of breath, and the Doctor’s brows draw together. “Rassilon!” Quickly, he’s shaking his head. “Wasn’t like that for me. Could’ve been, I s’pose, if Romana’s plan hadn’t worked. I was the decoy,” he explains. “Pretended to be leading a whole fleet of TARDISes, so the Daleks would follow. But the other ships were all empty. They were supposed to attack me, an’ while they were busy doing that Romana and the Council would have time to put the plan into place. I knew what they were doin’, an’ if there’d been any other way...”
He shuffles, glancing down to the floor again. “Didn’t expect to survive, me. Thought the Daleks’d get me before they pushed the button. Did get caught in the aftershock, though. The ripples almost tore the TARDIS apart. Crash-landed on a little backwater planet an’ regenerated. That was a bad one - I went a little insane in the early days. An’ the TARDIS was badly damaged. Don’t think I’d’ve been able to fix her alone.”
He’s talking to himself now, she senses; he’s probably even forgotten that she’s there. But she has to ask; it’s such a new experience to have the Doctor - even if he’s not her Doctor - so expansive about his past. “You had help?”
“Yeah.” He blinks once and his gaze focuses on her. “Jack. First time I met him, that was. He had no idea who I was, other than some bloke who’d crashed an’ needed a bit of help recovering an’ rebuilding. He was only about sixteen then, an’ looking for adventure. Gave him a trip in the TARDIS when we’d finished the repairs.”
If Jack was sixteen then, and he looks around thirty-three or thereabouts... “He’s been with you ever since?” That’s how long it’s been for this Doctor since the War?
“Nah.” He sounds surprised. “Told you, that was the first time I met him. Start of my sixth life, that was. On my ninth now.” More than three lifetimes ago. Makes sense that he wouldn’t be grieving, not in the same way. That’s good. Well, not good that this Doctor’s lost everything too, but this - the calm acceptance that this Doctor seems to have about the fate of his people and his homeland - is at least allowing him to have a happier life than her Doctor. She wouldn’t wish her Doctor’s grief on anyone.
“Met him again... oh, about six months ago, by Earth dating,” the Doctor continues.
Since the Doctor’s so talkative, and Jack’s behaviour’s bothered her right from the moment she saw him... “Doctor, about Jack... I told you he - well, the version of him in my universe - travelled with us as well. But your Jack, he’s nothing like the Jack I knew. ‘S like he’s angry with me for some reason, but I don’t know how I could’ve done anything to upset him.” She gives the Doctor a helpless look. Even as she’s asking the question, something’s tightened painfully inside her. How are they going to do this, her travelling in the TARDIS, if Jack can’t even bear to look at her?
He looks away, and she knows she’s crossed a line. But this - Jack - is a more sensitive topic for him than the Time War? Well, they’re obviously a lot closer than her Doctor and Jack were, and that makes sense if they’ve been travelling together for that much time. She and her Doctor were inseparable by that time - he even said so once.
The Doctor starts to edge back towards the doorway, glancing at her again as he does. “He has his reasons. Not my place to tell you ‘bout them.”
“But, Doctor...” That tells her nothing - not whether it’s her doing, or whether it’s just the way Jack is.
He pauses on his way out of her room and looks back at her again briefly. “ ‘S nothing you’ve done. Can tell you that, at least.”
The knot in her gut lessens. “Thanks, Doctor.”
Still, though, that doesn’t make it all right. He might not be her Jack, the Captain she loved and lost, but he’s still Jack, and there’s something eating away at him. If it’s not her, then it can’t be jealousy that he’s no longer alone with the Doctor - and anyway, that just didn’t seem like Jack.
No. Her other guess, that something bad happened to him, is much more likely. Losing those two years? But that made her Jack vengeful, not closed-off and unreachable. He became a conman and an intergalactic playboy, not a brooding loner. No, whatever’s happened to this Jack is worse, far worse.
She can’t ignore that. She won’t ignore it.
Patience is something she’s learned to be very good at over the past six years. Jack can’t avoid her for ever, and eventually she’ll get her chance to try to get through to him. After all, she did it with the Doctor once, and he was far more damaged than Jack could possibly be.
She just hopes she has time before the Doctor gets her home, that’s all.
***
“You’re not gonna be able to do it.” Jack whirls away from the console, bitter frustration in every inch of his body. “Come on, you know it too. Every equation we try, every time we try it, same result. Two universes collapsed.”
He does know it. He’s known it almost as long as he’s had Rose on board. Almost a week they’ve been trying now, him and Jack, using readings from the Vortex energy inside Rose to locate her original universe, and each time they’ve run up against the same conclusion. It’s impossible.
He stops trying to find even a hint of hope in the latest set of equations and instead walks over to Jack, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder. Jack tenses, but after a moment sighs and lets his body relax, taking a step backwards so that they’re almost embracing.
“You’re right. I can’t do it.” He brings his free hand up to Jack’s other shoulder and starts massaging lightly, digging deeper as he feels resistance. “You’re full of knots.” Jack shrugs, letting his head fall forward. They both know why he’s tense, and there’s no point rehashing it. No matter what he says, Jack won’t spend a second more in Rose’s company than he can avoid. And, since they’ve been drifting in the Vortex since she joined the two of them, that means Jack’s been spending a lot of time on his own. Also, since he’s been spending every ship-night here in the console room, his sleep-cycle’s a mess.
No good him telling Jack that Rose isn’t anything like the people he remembers. Or that he’s been spending a lot of time with the young woman and finding that he enjoys her company. She makes him laugh - and long for the kind of adventures, exploring just for the fun of it, that he hasn’t had in a while. Not since he rescued Jack. With Jack, when they’ve gone somewhere it’s all been serious business, performing rescues and undoing things that shouldn’t happen.
Not for the first time, he wonders if he’s actually helping Jack by letting his friend stay with him.
“The sooner you start looking for a way to take that stuff out of her, the better,” Jack says abruptly, moving away from him. His hands fall to his sides.
“Told you I’d try.” He has every intention of it, and not only because it’s Jack’s preferred option, either. The look on Jackie Tyler’s face when she pleaded with him, and his conviction as he watched her that this is a woman who doesn’t plead with anyone, is most of all what’s driving him in that particular quest. She doesn’t want to lose her daughter to another universe. Perhaps she doesn’t even want to lose Rose to a version of the Doctor who doesn’t seem to have tried to get her back.
“See that you do.” Jack’s turned back to him. His hands are buried deep in his jeans pockets now, and his brows are drawn together in an expression that looks mutinous. “This is a waste of time. I’m going to bed.”
Don’t bother coming with me. The subtext is as clear as if Jack had spoken out loud.
He sighs and stares down at the floor as Jack’s footsteps fade away.
No, he’s not helping Jack. And it’s about time he not only admitted that, but did something about it.
***
He doesn’t sleep at all that night. The empty bed’s part of the reason, but it’s not all of it, not by any means.
There’s just one thought playing over and over in his mind all night long. He went too far.
It’s the Doctor’s TARDIS, for one thing. He has a perfect right to decide who gets to come on board - and to stay on board. More fundamental, the integrity of the universe is far more important than his preferences. Of course Rose has to stay here. It’s not safe - for her or for wherever she ends up - for her to be anywhere else.
The Doctor doesn’t have a choice, and he’s hardly helping the man he calls his friend by creating so much tension about the fact that she’s here - both by making it obvious that he can’t stand to be around her, and by bitching at the Doctor all the time because he hasn’t found a way to get rid of her yet.
Right now, if he was the Doctor, it wouldn’t be Rose he’d be wanting to get rid of.
Part of him’s tempted to go straight back out to the console room and apologise nicely, kiss the Doctor and drag him back to bed. Very tempted. But there’s one thing that stops him.
The look on the Doctor’s face as he walked out of the room.
That wasn’t an oh, shit, he’s pissed off look. It wasn’t a long-suffering grow up and get your head out of your arse look. It wasn’t anything that suggests a simple apology and some physical affection will do to sort this out.
No, he knows the Doctor well enough by now to realise that, for him, it’s not just about Jack’s fit of childish mutiny. It’s about the whole of it, everything he’s been trying to get Jack to accept and understand since he brought him on board.
“You can’t go on like this,” the Doctor’s said several times. “You can’t hide for ever. One of these days, you have to start living your own life again.”
He’s always promised that it’ll be on Jack’s time, though. When Jack’s ready. And Jack’s... well, he’s not ready. Nowhere near.
But what if the Doctor’s decided that he is?
There’s no arguing with the Doctor when he’s decided on a course of action for someone’s good. He’s seen it before, and always been thankful that he’s not been the beneficiary. Now, though, it’s looking like he’s about to be. Well, hell.
There’s only one thing he can do to pre-empt it, and it’s not a course of action he’d willingly choose. But it’s the only thing that’s going to convince the Doctor that a dose of for your own good isn’t required.
He’s going to have to make friends with Rose Tyler.
***
“Rose, I’m sorry. Your Doctor was right. It is impossible.”
He’s standing just inside her bedroom door again. Incredibly, in the week she’s been here, this Doctor’s been in her bedroom more often than her first Doctor ever was.
Her breath catches as his meaning sinks in. “You can’t take me back?”
“We’ve tried, Jack an’ me. Every night while you’ve been asleep. Same result every time. Universes implode if we try.”
She’s barely aware of the regret in his voice, the sympathy for her. Over and over, the words repeat in her mind: Impossible. Universes implode. He was right.
It’s only what she told the Doctor from the start, but he seemed so sure that he’d find a way. So sure that she’d allowed herself to hope again. Now, it’s almost as bad as standing on Bad Wolf Bay hearing the Doctor tell her that she’d never see him again. The worst day of her life, that was.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and abruptly his arms are around her, awkward but comforting, and it’s then she realises that her eyes are moist.
He feels so familiar, so right. Everything about him - his scent, the solidity of his body against hers, the smooth-roughness of his battered leather jacket, even his awkward shuffling that gives away the fact that he really doesn’t have a clue what to do with a weeping woman - it all makes the years fall away until, in her head, she’s back with her first Doctor again. The Doctor she first fell in love with, and never had a chance to say goodbye to.
But he’s not her Doctor, not this one. Even if this is now her universe. She’s never going back.
She pulls away from him, stepping back. His arms drop to his sides and he looks relieved.
“Thanks for telling me, Doctor,” she says, summoning all her strength. “An’ thanks for trying. I appreciate it.”
He shrugs awkwardly. “Was nothing. Wish I could’ve done it for you, though. But at least we know one thing,” he adds. “It’s not that he doesn’t want you back, yeah? It’s ‘cause he really can’t get to you.”
Well, that’s true. And it’s a comfort, sort of. She had been starting to think that maybe he didn’t care, not as much as she did.
The Doctor shoves his hands into his pockets. “You gonna be all right?”
“Yeah.” She summons a smile. He doesn’t want to know how she really feels - and she certainly doesn’t want him to know. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
Obviously relieved, he leaves, and once the door closes behind him she slumps onto the bed. She’s not going back to her first universe. She’ll never see her Doctor again.
All those years of hoping, ended with just three words: it is impossible. He’s really never coming for her. Oh, sure, she told herself she’d given up expecting him to come, stopped believing that he ever would, or that she’d find a way to get to him - but now, now that she knows for a fact that it’s impossible, she has to admit that the hope never died. Until now.
Stuck here in this universe, without even her family and friends around her. According to the Doctor, she can’t ever be with her family again either, apart from brief visits. She’s stuck on the TARDIS for the rest of her life, or until he finds a way to take the energy from her - and didn’t he say, that evening at her apartment, that he didn’t think he could do that? Stuck on the TARDIS with one person who doesn’t want her around at all, and another who, although he seems relaxed about having her around, is always going to have his first loyalties elsewhere.
And every time she sees either of them, she’s reminded of how things used to be, the fantastic times she had with her Doctor and her Jack - and that they’re both dead now, the ones in her universe. Oh, she loved the regenerated Doctor too, but she never forgot this one. And Jack... the Doctor told her he was rebuilding the Earth, but she never believed him. He just didn’t want to tell her Jack was dead. After all, if he was alive they’d have gone back for him some time, wouldn’t they?
A tear falls onto the back of her hand, and she stares at the damp circle and makes a decision.
Think positive. Look on the bright side. That’s what her Doctor taught her - or reminded her, really, because she always tried to do that growing up, and especially after she moved home again after Jimmy Stone.
She’s alive and well, and she has her family, including her dad and a little brother. She’ll get to go home for visits. The Doctor’s going to try to help her so she won’t be a prisoner in the TARDIS, and he is a genius, right? Even if he can’t get her back to her universe. And, after all, she is in the TARDIS, travelling with the Doctor. And Jack, even if she never sees Jack. And even if they’ve not actually gone anywhere so far.
But there’s something. The Doctor told her that the two of them, he and Jack, worked together to try to find a way through to the other universe. Jack helped. Now, maybe that’s just because he wants her off the ship, but it’s still nice to know.
A tap on her door makes her frown. It couldn’t be the Doctor back so soon, could it? But it won’t be Jack, so it has to be.
She hurries to the dressing-table and examines her face in the mirror. Eyes reddened, slightly swollen... oh, hell, it’s not as if he doesn’t already know she was crying. She goes to the door and pulls it open. “Doct-”
But it’s not the Doctor. Jack’s standing there, looking awkward but determined. “Hi.”
“Jack! Um... hi.”
“I wondered...” He looks as if he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “Uh... you want a coffee?”
Even if she didn’t, there’s no way she’d turn down this offer, the first overture Jack’s made to her since she came on board. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
He nods and immediately turns around, clearly expecting her to follow. He looks like someone who’s walking to his own execution. She bites her lip, determined to stop herself telling him she doesn’t bite. Though, of course, her Jack would have told her that was a pity...
He’s not her Jack. He’s nothing like her Jack.
“I’m glad you came to find me.” She hurries to catch up with him. “Wanted to thank you. The Doctor told me you were helping him try to find a way through the Void.”
He shrugs. “Didn’t work, though.”
And he’s every bit as disappointed as she is, at a guess. “You tried. Can’t ask for more than that.”
Her only answer’s a grunt, and he’s silent the rest of the way to the kitchen. Inside, he’s monosyllabic as he asks how she likes her coffee, and then hands it to her without looking at her.
“All right,” she says, remaining standing; she’s not going to sit and give him even more of a height advantage. “I don’t know what your problem is, Captain Harkness, or what it’s got to do with me. But I do know that if we’re going to be sharing this TARDIS indefinitely we can’t go on like this, unless we jus’ keep avoiding each other - an’ I’m not sure the Doctor’d like that. So let’s have it out once an’ for all, yeah?”
He starts, then takes a couple of steps closer, into her personal space. Oh, he’s not trying to intimidate her at all, is he? “Like that, would you? Having us both fawning over you?”
“What?” She refuses to move even as much as one inch. “Fawning over me? Where d’you get that from?”
His mouth’s a narrow line. “I know about you, Rose Tyler, the Vitex heiress.”
“Oh, yeah?” She shakes her head. “You know nothing, Jack Harkness. I grew up in a single-parent family on a council estate. My dad was killed when I was a baby, and my mum barely had enough to pay the rent. There were days when I didn’t know if we’d make it to the end of the week cause there was no money left for food. I left school at sixteen an’ worked in a shop to help pay the bills. Yeah, now I’ve got a dad an’ he has money, but what matters to me is that he’s alive. He could lose everything tomorrow and I wouldn’t give a shit, as long as I still have him an’ my mum and little brother.”
His eyes are like chips of ice. “Yeah? You love them so much you couldn’t wait to leave them behind and run to another universe.”
She flinches, despite her resolve. How dare he? Did he deliberately choose the most hurtful thing he could say right now? “You have no idea about me, my family or my relationship with the Doctor, so keep your assumptions to yourself.” She turns, tears pricking at her eyes again, and slams the mug he gave her down on the nearest surface, ignoring the coffee that splashes everywhere, and brushes past him, heading for the door.
On the threshold, she turns back. “I knew a Jack Harkness in the other universe. He was an amazing man and one of my best friends. He died a hero. And he’d be ashamed of you.”
***
tbc in Chapter 4: In The Way