Fic: Regrets 1/1

[wendymr]

Story: Regrets
Author: WMR
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack
Rated: PG 
Spoilers: POTW, Torchwood if you squint
Summary: Some time in your future, Jack, you’re going to think I’ve betrayed you.

With thanks to Gillian Taylor for beta :)

Regrets

Most people, he knows, have regrets as they come to the end of their life. He, unusually, has to confront all of

Comments

[mneiai]

Even when the Doctor tries to make it better, it still sucks majorly. This whole situation is such a horrible time for DW fans, I think, and especially for Jack fans...and I'm always left wondering if anything would make it better, how it would have been if Torchwood hadn't been started and he had instead been in series 2 or something. And your fic grasped that unknown, the bittersweetness of having the Doctor and Jack truly care for each other, and believe in each other, but not be able to do anything about what happens, what will happen.

[wendymr]

Oh, thank you! :) Yes, even when he tries... That's one thing I love about the Doctor: he's so far from perfect that it hurts sometimes. We watch him trying to protect the people he loves - even people he's met only fleetingly - and we see him fail miserably and hurt so much over it. Even when he only shows it in one tiny look, we can see how it hurts. Though Nine showed it more than Ten: his reaction to Gwyneth's sacrifice in The Unquiet Dead was so much better than Ten's to Sir Robert in Tooth and Claw - god, I hate so much about that episode

[neadods]

Oh, this is beautiful. I wish they'd taken a similar route in the show - what Jack is going through right now is killing me!

[wendymr]

Thank you! Yes, it's painful to watch the change in Jack :( And now knowing I'll never get my OT3 back on screen hurts too.

Glad you enjoyed this. :)

[neadods]

And now knowing I'll never get my OT3 back on screen hurts too.

...for everything else, there's fanfic.

Although I do wonder if at the end of the next season we're going to be writing Angry!Jack/Martha/Doctor threesomes. I'm not ruling out the possibility, if just to see if I can do it.

[wendymr]

Well, it's possible. I said in another response that I'm a multi-shipper. At the moment, my main ships are Rose/Doctor and Rose/Doctor/Jack - it becomes OT3 at any point when Jack's with them, really.

I also occasionally ship Jack/Rose, but again only when the Doctor's not around - though I'm toying with the possibility of a Rose/Jack pairing which excludes the Doctor. Jack/Doctor... also a possibility, in a scenario with no Rose.

So, depending what I think of Martha and whether I find her shippable, it's possible that I might write that threesome too...

[adafrog]

Great story. I love the Doctor trying to make amends.

[wendymr]

Thank you! I think it's a lesson he does need to learn, much as he learned the 'saying goodbye' lesson from Sarah-Jane and the 'consequences' lesson from POTW. I sincerely hope that, when he meets Jack again, he'll learn from that too.

[pairatime]

Love it, I hope you write more about Jack.

[wendymr]

Thank you! And I am: I'm working on a Ten-meets-Jack fic set in Jack's Torchwood era. It's called Finding Judas, and I should be in a position to start posting in a couple of weeks, I hope.

[pairatime]

Can't wait for it.

[dave7]

This was fantastic. Absolutely brilliant.

When you told me you'd put up a Jack/Ten fic, this wasn't at all what I'd imagined. Even after I'd seen the snippets! For one, I expected that it'd have been set after Doomsday, 'cause it didn't seem like the Doctor gave much thought to lost companions at all during s2. But... I love that it was set right after TCI. Brilliant.

And... I really need to study, so I can't spend as much time as I want commenting on this, but I have to say something about the last line.

He turns away from where the TARDIS stood and heads for the comms panel. He doesn’t look back.

I *love* that.

[wendymr]

Yes, the Doctor is very good at moving on and not looking back. But I can't believe that he never thinks about people he loses. I think he does, but he doesn't let other people see. And about the only way I can cope with the lack of mention of Jack in S2 is by telling myself that Rose and the Doctor did talk about it, just in off-screen time. After all, we do know that Rose somehow remembered the events of Satellite Five during that season, even if we didn't see it happen - grrrr. :P

And... yes. Jack not looking back just seemed to work for me. He wouldn't, I think; that'd happen once he discovers the legacy he's been left with. And that, I think, in this scenario where he's had an advance apology from the Doctor, is when his faith and trust would start to turn to a sense of betrayal, and a complicated mix of hate/love.

Thank you! I'm so glad that you liked this and that it inspired you. :)

[neadods]

I can't believe that he never thinks about people he loses

He must, because he occasionally mentions them when he's distracted, and he melted into utter wibble when he saw Sarah Jane again.

But at the same time, I think it's all a bit emo for him, and until recently he Didn't Do Emo with a vengance; if something hurt his feelings he just didn't think about it and distracted himself as much as possible so he didn't have to deal with the whole issue. And getting a new pet as fast as possible is such an excellent distraction...

[wendymr]

Oh yeah, I'm sure he does think about them. It's just that, with the exception of Sarah-Jane, we never see him talk about them. :P I'd like to think that, after School Reunion, he talked to Rose about at least some of his past companions, though with Mickey on board by then it might not be likely.

And, yes, the new pet always does help to get over the crushing sense of loss of the old one, doesn't it? Which, I think, is the main role of the Bride, isn't it? The temporary immediate post-Rose companion, to allow him to adjust and allow the audience to get over their 'but she's not Rose!!!!' hating on the new companion before Martha's introduced.