Fic: Dulce et Decorum Est 1/1
Story: Dulce et Decorum Est
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness
Rating: PG13 - for descriptions of battlefield scenes
Disclaimer: I asked for them for Christmas, but Santa said I wasn't good enough
Summary: On an infamous battlefield, the Doctor finds someone he left behind.
My thanks to un_sedentary and dark_aegis for BRing.
Dulce et Decorum Est
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
- Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfrid Owen
The Time Rotor slowly comes to a halt, sighing into silence as the pulsing ceases. A long, thin hand pushes buttons, flips switches, turns dials; but nothing happens.
“Come on!” Impatient, he reaches for the mallet, but a faint sound, like the expulsion of air, makes him pause. “What is it? Something wrong? Am I supposed to be here? Where is here, anyway?”
Dropping the mallet, the Doctor looks back at the co-ordinates on the console. “Passchendaele? September 1917? But... why?”
There’s no answer. He shrugs. “S’pose we’d better find out, then.”
Just in time, he stops himself from reaching out to grab a hand that’s not there any more. Rose is gone. So’s Donna of the wedding-dress, not that she was here for very long, and that would have been a disaster anyway, wouldn’t it? And for some reason he’s landed during one of the most infamous battles of the First World War.
He’s still shrugging into his coat as he - very carefully - pulls the door open. After all, he doesn’t know exactly where he’s landed. In the village of Passchendaele itself? Close to the trenches? On which side? Or in No-Man’s-Land itself? And it’s not just the gun-battles, or more likely sniper fire as it’s night-time. This place is known for the quagmire of mud into which the battlefield descended mere days after fire opened, killing both men and horses as a result.
Passchendaele. One of the last major battles of the Great War, of course, eventually won by the Allied forces - though how anyone can declare victory at the cost of one hundred and forty thousand lives is beyond him. Five miles of territory gained in three and a half months - and every inch of that cost two soldiers’ lives. Well, isn’t that a price worth paying. Especially since, in the end, the territory wasn’t actually worth anything to the Allies.
His hand stills on the door. Why would the TARDIS have brought him here? It’s not as if he can do anything. Can’t change the course of history. Can’t save even a single one of those hundred and forty thousand Allied lives, or the even greater number of German lives lost.
And yet she’s brought him here. There has to be a reason.
He opens the door.
What hits him hardest isn’t the noise, although that’s terrible; the cries of dying men, the shrill neighs of horses in distress, the occasional sound of gunfire. It’s not the smell either, though that’s cloying and pervasive. Blood and guts, poor sanitation, rotting bodies and mud. And it’s not the sense of desperation that’s all around him.
It’s the wrongness shivering through his veins and chilling his blood, turning his senses taut as a bowstring, driving the primal instinct for flight into his gut.
Wrong. Fixed point. Constant, even as time itself swirls on around him, unchanging and static. Never ageing, never dying, never altering.
How is he here? And is this why the TARDIS brought him here?
It makes no sense. The TARDIS was equally willing to flee; a fixed point that close to her heart would have been too traumatic. So why bring him here?
But he’s here now. Standing in the doorway, he scans the area; as his eyes become more accustomed to the lack of light, shadows and shapes become visible.
And there he is. He recognises Jack by sensation, identifying the absence of time and pinpointing him to a few yards away. He’s dragging what looks like the dead body of another man through a muddy swamp, slowly and with great difficulty due to the state of the ground.
Oh, Jack. “Don’t tell me you’ve stooped to robbing corpses,” he murmurs, disappointment and sadness filling him. Jack was better than that, despite his past. He proved it so many times. Why this, now? He can’t be that desperate, surely?
But, as he watches, Jack stops, lays the body carefully on the ground, and then turns back, wading through the mud again; a minute or so later, he’s back, dragging another body. This time he’s slower, pausing every so often to cough, a harsh, racking cough that seems to use every muscle in his body and leaves him almost gasping for breath.
Is it curiosity or guilt which sets him trudging through the mud towards his one-time companion? He’s not sure, or maybe doesn’t want to know. By the time he reaches Jack, the man who was born three millennia from this time is dragging a third body, this time barely managing to stay upright.
In the darkness, lit faintly by the moon and the occasional muzzle-flash, he can see that Jack’s features haven’t changed at all. In other ways, though, the man’s changed markedly. He’s dressed in the ragged remains of what’s probably a British army uniform, though the caked-on mud and dried blood make that impossible to confirm. His feet are bare, though right now Jack’s up to his calves in mud; the lack of shoes was only confirmed when Jack managed to take a longer step.
His face and hair are smeared with mud, there’s a vicious scar across one cheek, and his eyes show horrors far worse than in the rare moments when Jack would talk about Agency missions gone bad or his lost memories.
How long has it been for him? Where has he been and what has he done?
The questions are on the tip of the Doctor’s tongue, yet he won’t let himself ask. Because that would mean identifying himself, and questions and explanations he wants at all costs to avoid. Has to avoid.
Why? Why does the TARDIS want him here?
Jack stumbles again. Without conscious thought, he moves in, slides one arm across Jack’s back and under his arm to support him, catching hold of the dead - or is he just unconscious? - soldier with his other hand.
“Thanks.” Jack’s voice is a hoarse rasp.
“Welcome.” Silence, then, until they reach the point where Jack’s laid the other two soldiers. Instantly, Jack turns, almost falling over as he seems to lose his balance. “Steady,” he cautions, catching hold of his former companion again.
This time, the only response is a nod, and then Jack pulls away to stagger back towards what has to be a trench. He follows. “What are you doing?”
“Gas.” The answer is terse. “They’ll die if I don’t...”
“They’ll die anyway!” Harsh, but true. And Jack knows it, so why is he even trying...?
Because he has to. Of course he does. He’s part of events here, just one of Field-Marshal Haig’s pawns, sacrificed in the interests of one more push, the belief that capturing just a few acres of land would make a difference in the most horrific war humanity had seen to this date.
He shouldn’t. But he does anyway, following Jack and helping him to drag the next barely-alive soldier away from the edge of the trench and back towards the mud-filled zone that’s at least clear of gas. It doesn’t matter; he’s not changing history, saving anyone who should die, is he? All of these men will probably be dead by morning anyway, whether from existing wounds, the gas they’ve already inhaled, enemy fire or drowning in mud.
And, yes, the gas is choking and poisonous. Whether it’s from an enemy attack, or simply the accidental result of substances both natural and chemical mixing, he doesn’t know, but it’s going to cause at least a hundred deaths here tonight.
Including Jack’s. The other man’s steps are getting more haphazard and his cough’s worsening. Just as well the combination’s not poisonous to Gallifreyans.
“Stop,” he says after they’ve laid this soldier down with the rest. “You can’t go on. You’re sick.”
“I’m alive,” Jack retorts harshly, turning back again. This time he loses his balance completely, falling face-down in the mud. By the time he’s managed to help him up again and wipe the mud away from Jack’s nose and mouth, letting him breathe, the Doctor’s completely covered in foul-smelling dirt.
One more soldier, and it’s obvious that Jack’s not going to last much longer. They’re halfway back and the Doctor’s practically carrying both men. In the end, he lets Jack drop to the ground and drags the soldier to the small group of barely-alive bodies himself, before returning for his ex-companion.
“Idiot,” he murmurs, crouching down next to Jack, his nostrils filling with the foul stench. “What were you hoping to achieve?”
Jack coughs, his body racking in pain. “Save... some. Even... one’s... worth...”
He reaches out a hand, but stops before he can touch Jack’s shoulder. Strange. Even though he’s been practically dragging Jack around for the last ten minutes, now he can’t even bear to touch him. “You’re dying,” he points out, even though the observation’s redundant.
“Can’t...” Jack coughs again. “Can’t... die...”
Oh, yes, you can. He has to swallow and look away. Can’t meet those blue eyes staring up at him, even if Jack probably can’t see anything clearly now, thanks to the darkness and what’s probably a delirious haze.
“Come on,” he urges, wanting to get Jack to his feet again, bring him back to his comrades, the men he’s rescued. But this time Jack does nothing to help him. He can’t. He’s too far gone. The gas is inside his system, and he’s probably got other, not visible, injuries.
Jack’s breaths grow shallower, more rasping, more spaced out, and finally he manages to reach for his friend’s hand, ignoring the prickling through every sense as he does so. “Just let go,” he murmurs. “Easier that way. Don’t fight it.”
“Had...” Jack tries to cough again, but barely succeeds. “...lot of... practice...”
How many times? How many deaths?
He can’t ask. Won’t ask. Not only because Jack can’t answer, not now, but because he doesn’t want to know the answer.
The hand in his slackens, and Jack’s head turns to the side. One final rusty breath, and the trembling of the body on the ground stops. He’s dead. Again.
The Doctor bows his head. “I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
Too easy to say, those words. He’s said them far too many times, told himself he’s meant them every time, yet again and again he does things that mean he has to say them again.
If he really meant it, wouldn’t he make sure he’d never have to say it again?
He lets Jack’s hand slide from his and gets to his feet, gazing down at the corpse of the man he once called companion - the man who’s shown far more courage than he himself has ever possessed.
You could take him. Bring him into the TARDIS now. Make up for what you did.
He could. He could let Jack wake up in the med-lab, safe and warm and protected. He could offer him his place in the TARDIS again, or a trip to anywhere in time and space Jack wants. He could offer him an explanation.
He could atone for what he did back on Satellite Five.
Jaw fixed, a lump in his throat, he stands over the dead man. For now, at least, time flows smoothly around the body on the ground; no hitches, no stumbling, no fixed point. No twitching of his nerves or clenching in his gut. Nothing.
Even as he watches, the scar on Jack’s face slowly fades from view, leaving the same handsome face he was once so familiar with. Even in death, Jack’s still the prettiest of Rose’s pretty boys.
“Goodbye, Jack,” he murmurs, body stiff with tension, then turns on his heel, trudging back through the thick mud to the TARDIS. Yes, he’s still a coward. Always was, always will be.
He’s turning the key in the lock when the tingling under his skin returns. He can’t close the door behind him fast enough, can’t throw off his muddy coat and shoes quickly enough. He’ll probably burn every stitch of clothing he’s wearing.
He refuses to believe that the bumpy takeoff, as he dematerialises and returns to the Vortex, is a reproach.
- end
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness
Rating: PG13 - for descriptions of battlefield scenes
Disclaimer: I asked for them for Christmas, but Santa said I wasn't good enough
Summary: On an infamous battlefield, the Doctor finds someone he left behind.
My thanks to un_sedentary and dark_aegis for BRing.
Dulce et Decorum Est
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
- Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfrid Owen
The Time Rotor slowly comes to a halt, sighing into silence as the pulsing ceases. A long, thin hand pushes buttons, flips switches, turns dials; but nothing happens.
“Come on!” Impatient, he reaches for the mallet, but a faint sound, like the expulsion of air, makes him pause. “What is it? Something wrong? Am I supposed to be here? Where is here, anyway?”
Dropping the mallet, the Doctor looks back at the co-ordinates on the console. “Passchendaele? September 1917? But... why?”
There’s no answer. He shrugs. “S’pose we’d better find out, then.”
Just in time, he stops himself from reaching out to grab a hand that’s not there any more. Rose is gone. So’s Donna of the wedding-dress, not that she was here for very long, and that would have been a disaster anyway, wouldn’t it? And for some reason he’s landed during one of the most infamous battles of the First World War.
He’s still shrugging into his coat as he - very carefully - pulls the door open. After all, he doesn’t know exactly where he’s landed. In the village of Passchendaele itself? Close to the trenches? On which side? Or in No-Man’s-Land itself? And it’s not just the gun-battles, or more likely sniper fire as it’s night-time. This place is known for the quagmire of mud into which the battlefield descended mere days after fire opened, killing both men and horses as a result.
Passchendaele. One of the last major battles of the Great War, of course, eventually won by the Allied forces - though how anyone can declare victory at the cost of one hundred and forty thousand lives is beyond him. Five miles of territory gained in three and a half months - and every inch of that cost two soldiers’ lives. Well, isn’t that a price worth paying. Especially since, in the end, the territory wasn’t actually worth anything to the Allies.
His hand stills on the door. Why would the TARDIS have brought him here? It’s not as if he can do anything. Can’t change the course of history. Can’t save even a single one of those hundred and forty thousand Allied lives, or the even greater number of German lives lost.
And yet she’s brought him here. There has to be a reason.
He opens the door.
What hits him hardest isn’t the noise, although that’s terrible; the cries of dying men, the shrill neighs of horses in distress, the occasional sound of gunfire. It’s not the smell either, though that’s cloying and pervasive. Blood and guts, poor sanitation, rotting bodies and mud. And it’s not the sense of desperation that’s all around him.
It’s the wrongness shivering through his veins and chilling his blood, turning his senses taut as a bowstring, driving the primal instinct for flight into his gut.
Wrong. Fixed point. Constant, even as time itself swirls on around him, unchanging and static. Never ageing, never dying, never altering.
How is he here? And is this why the TARDIS brought him here?
It makes no sense. The TARDIS was equally willing to flee; a fixed point that close to her heart would have been too traumatic. So why bring him here?
But he’s here now. Standing in the doorway, he scans the area; as his eyes become more accustomed to the lack of light, shadows and shapes become visible.
And there he is. He recognises Jack by sensation, identifying the absence of time and pinpointing him to a few yards away. He’s dragging what looks like the dead body of another man through a muddy swamp, slowly and with great difficulty due to the state of the ground.
Oh, Jack. “Don’t tell me you’ve stooped to robbing corpses,” he murmurs, disappointment and sadness filling him. Jack was better than that, despite his past. He proved it so many times. Why this, now? He can’t be that desperate, surely?
But, as he watches, Jack stops, lays the body carefully on the ground, and then turns back, wading through the mud again; a minute or so later, he’s back, dragging another body. This time he’s slower, pausing every so often to cough, a harsh, racking cough that seems to use every muscle in his body and leaves him almost gasping for breath.
Is it curiosity or guilt which sets him trudging through the mud towards his one-time companion? He’s not sure, or maybe doesn’t want to know. By the time he reaches Jack, the man who was born three millennia from this time is dragging a third body, this time barely managing to stay upright.
In the darkness, lit faintly by the moon and the occasional muzzle-flash, he can see that Jack’s features haven’t changed at all. In other ways, though, the man’s changed markedly. He’s dressed in the ragged remains of what’s probably a British army uniform, though the caked-on mud and dried blood make that impossible to confirm. His feet are bare, though right now Jack’s up to his calves in mud; the lack of shoes was only confirmed when Jack managed to take a longer step.
His face and hair are smeared with mud, there’s a vicious scar across one cheek, and his eyes show horrors far worse than in the rare moments when Jack would talk about Agency missions gone bad or his lost memories.
How long has it been for him? Where has he been and what has he done?
The questions are on the tip of the Doctor’s tongue, yet he won’t let himself ask. Because that would mean identifying himself, and questions and explanations he wants at all costs to avoid. Has to avoid.
Why? Why does the TARDIS want him here?
Jack stumbles again. Without conscious thought, he moves in, slides one arm across Jack’s back and under his arm to support him, catching hold of the dead - or is he just unconscious? - soldier with his other hand.
“Thanks.” Jack’s voice is a hoarse rasp.
“Welcome.” Silence, then, until they reach the point where Jack’s laid the other two soldiers. Instantly, Jack turns, almost falling over as he seems to lose his balance. “Steady,” he cautions, catching hold of his former companion again.
This time, the only response is a nod, and then Jack pulls away to stagger back towards what has to be a trench. He follows. “What are you doing?”
“Gas.” The answer is terse. “They’ll die if I don’t...”
“They’ll die anyway!” Harsh, but true. And Jack knows it, so why is he even trying...?
Because he has to. Of course he does. He’s part of events here, just one of Field-Marshal Haig’s pawns, sacrificed in the interests of one more push, the belief that capturing just a few acres of land would make a difference in the most horrific war humanity had seen to this date.
He shouldn’t. But he does anyway, following Jack and helping him to drag the next barely-alive soldier away from the edge of the trench and back towards the mud-filled zone that’s at least clear of gas. It doesn’t matter; he’s not changing history, saving anyone who should die, is he? All of these men will probably be dead by morning anyway, whether from existing wounds, the gas they’ve already inhaled, enemy fire or drowning in mud.
And, yes, the gas is choking and poisonous. Whether it’s from an enemy attack, or simply the accidental result of substances both natural and chemical mixing, he doesn’t know, but it’s going to cause at least a hundred deaths here tonight.
Including Jack’s. The other man’s steps are getting more haphazard and his cough’s worsening. Just as well the combination’s not poisonous to Gallifreyans.
“Stop,” he says after they’ve laid this soldier down with the rest. “You can’t go on. You’re sick.”
“I’m alive,” Jack retorts harshly, turning back again. This time he loses his balance completely, falling face-down in the mud. By the time he’s managed to help him up again and wipe the mud away from Jack’s nose and mouth, letting him breathe, the Doctor’s completely covered in foul-smelling dirt.
One more soldier, and it’s obvious that Jack’s not going to last much longer. They’re halfway back and the Doctor’s practically carrying both men. In the end, he lets Jack drop to the ground and drags the soldier to the small group of barely-alive bodies himself, before returning for his ex-companion.
“Idiot,” he murmurs, crouching down next to Jack, his nostrils filling with the foul stench. “What were you hoping to achieve?”
Jack coughs, his body racking in pain. “Save... some. Even... one’s... worth...”
He reaches out a hand, but stops before he can touch Jack’s shoulder. Strange. Even though he’s been practically dragging Jack around for the last ten minutes, now he can’t even bear to touch him. “You’re dying,” he points out, even though the observation’s redundant.
“Can’t...” Jack coughs again. “Can’t... die...”
Oh, yes, you can. He has to swallow and look away. Can’t meet those blue eyes staring up at him, even if Jack probably can’t see anything clearly now, thanks to the darkness and what’s probably a delirious haze.
“Come on,” he urges, wanting to get Jack to his feet again, bring him back to his comrades, the men he’s rescued. But this time Jack does nothing to help him. He can’t. He’s too far gone. The gas is inside his system, and he’s probably got other, not visible, injuries.
Jack’s breaths grow shallower, more rasping, more spaced out, and finally he manages to reach for his friend’s hand, ignoring the prickling through every sense as he does so. “Just let go,” he murmurs. “Easier that way. Don’t fight it.”
“Had...” Jack tries to cough again, but barely succeeds. “...lot of... practice...”
How many times? How many deaths?
He can’t ask. Won’t ask. Not only because Jack can’t answer, not now, but because he doesn’t want to know the answer.
The hand in his slackens, and Jack’s head turns to the side. One final rusty breath, and the trembling of the body on the ground stops. He’s dead. Again.
The Doctor bows his head. “I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
Too easy to say, those words. He’s said them far too many times, told himself he’s meant them every time, yet again and again he does things that mean he has to say them again.
If he really meant it, wouldn’t he make sure he’d never have to say it again?
He lets Jack’s hand slide from his and gets to his feet, gazing down at the corpse of the man he once called companion - the man who’s shown far more courage than he himself has ever possessed.
You could take him. Bring him into the TARDIS now. Make up for what you did.
He could. He could let Jack wake up in the med-lab, safe and warm and protected. He could offer him his place in the TARDIS again, or a trip to anywhere in time and space Jack wants. He could offer him an explanation.
He could atone for what he did back on Satellite Five.
Jaw fixed, a lump in his throat, he stands over the dead man. For now, at least, time flows smoothly around the body on the ground; no hitches, no stumbling, no fixed point. No twitching of his nerves or clenching in his gut. Nothing.
Even as he watches, the scar on Jack’s face slowly fades from view, leaving the same handsome face he was once so familiar with. Even in death, Jack’s still the prettiest of Rose’s pretty boys.
“Goodbye, Jack,” he murmurs, body stiff with tension, then turns on his heel, trudging back through the thick mud to the TARDIS. Yes, he’s still a coward. Always was, always will be.
He’s turning the key in the lock when the tingling under his skin returns. He can’t close the door behind him fast enough, can’t throw off his muddy coat and shoes quickly enough. He’ll probably burn every stitch of clothing he’s wearing.
He refuses to believe that the bumpy takeoff, as he dematerialises and returns to the Vortex, is a reproach.
- end