Fic: Mors Non Ultima Linea Rerum Est (1/1)
Title: Mors Non Ultima Linea Rerum Est (1/1)
Beta: lindenharp - Thank you!
Characters: Ten/Jack
Rating: Teen; discussion of death, strong language
Spoilers/warnings: DW: Waters of Mars, TW: Children of Earth
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction; the characters are the property of the BBC and used here without permission. No money was made.
Summary: Sequel to Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes. The Doctor and Jack talk about the Doctor's impending death.
Written for wendymr, for her generous donation in the help_haiti auction. The title quote is adapted from Horace's Mors ultima linea rerum est ("Death is everything's final limit." Epistulae I, XVI).
Mors Non Ultima Linea Rerum Est
It's late. Jack and the Doctor are in the library, sipping old whiskey and listening to music. Jack is sprawled out on the sofa. Part of him still doesn’t believe he deserves any of this, but the Doctor has been very clear that that's not a line of thought he's allowed to follow anymore. "You do what you have to. And you have to take care of yourself."
When he first heard the TARDIS materializing earlier today, Jack was convinced that anything the Doctor had to say would only make him feel worse. But he was wrong. The Time Lord has been infinitely patient, and for the first time in over a hundred years, Jack felt understood. And he knows he helped the Doctor, too. When he looks back on the day now, there's only one thing he regrets.
"Listen." He sits up and stretches out a hand to the Doctor, but changes his mind and pulls back before they make contact. "I just wanted to say… I'm sorry."
The Doctor raises an eyebrow.
"About what I said before. You being lucky. Wasn't fair."
The Doctor shrugs. "Understandable, from your perspective." He starts browsing the bookshelves, pushing books back and forth until they're exactly aligned.
"Doctor… If you'd like to talk about it…"
"What for? Not like it'll help." The Doctor pulls the sixteenth volume of the Martian Encyclopedia off a shelf and dusts it off. He puts it back and does the same with the seventeenth volume. Then the eighteenth.
As he's reaching for the nineteenth, Jack dares to speak up again. "You spent all day making me talk. Said it would help."
"Well, yes… Didn't it?" Volumes twenty and twenty-one are now dust-free.
"It's starting to."
"You're welcome." Now the Doctor is climbing a stepladder to get to the volumes on the first shelf.
Jack reaches for the bottle and refills his whiskey. He leans back into the cushions. Putting pressure on the Doctor has ever been an exercise in futility.
A loud thump startles Jack. The Doctor has dropped the first volume. As he climbs off the stepladder and bends over to pick it up, he asks, so quietly that Jack would have missed it but for his 51st century hearing, "Do you think it will hurt?"
Jack flinches, and wishes he could lie to the Doctor. "Yes."
"Well, thanks Jack. You were right. Talking really does make me feel better." The Doctor's back on the ladder, dusting off volume two.
"Sorry. But - well, you're hardly going to die in your sleep, are you? And anything that gets you from conscious to dead hurts. Believe me, I know."
"I'm sure there are painless methods. Like…" The Doctor's browsing through the third volume with an intent expression on his face. "…lethal injection!"
"Hurts like hell. The cramps especially. Well, at least on 20th century Earth. Can't speak to other eras and worlds."
"How do you-"
"Long story. Won't cheer you up."
"Well…" The Doctor pushes the volume back, climbs off the ladder, and starts pacing. "They say if you get shot in the head you die so quickly you don't even feel the pain."
"They're wrong."
"Stepping on a Frangulian laser mine…"
"Cuts you apart from the bottom up while you watch."
"Being crushed by a falling piano."
Jack blinks. "I wouldn't know."
"Ha!" How does the Doctor manage to sound smug about that?
"I don't think you're very likely to-"
"It once almost happened! Well, not to me. To this woman and her child. Never even found out her name. It's an interesting story, actually - see I was human at the time and had no idea-"
Jack throws up his hands. Clearly, the Doctor will do anything to avoid talking about his impending death. Even discuss the finer points of piano droppage.
"Right then. I hope you get hit by a falling piano. Or, while we're discussing cartoon deaths, maybe you could run over the side of a cliff and not notice it until you look down. Or, hey, how about someone gives you a stick of dynamite inside a hot dog bun, and you swallow it down whole because…"
The Doctor's lips are forming a pale, straight line. Jack grimaces. He should have realized that the Doctor wasn't dissembling just to be annoying or to preserve his sense of superiority. "Sorry. Guess I've kind of lost the sense of gravity where dying is concerned. Got numb after a while, I suppose."
The Doctor sighs. "No wonder, considering... Still, for those of us without your special circumstances, it's rather a sore prospect, you know?"
"Not like you don't come back though, right?" Jack shrugs.
"We don't know that." The Doctor runs a hand through his hair, making it stand on end even more. "If it happens too fast, if I don't have time to regenerate..." He sighs. "And even if I do - I won't be me anymore." His voice sounds hollow and strained. "New body, new personality, a whole new man. You should know, you've seen it."
Jack grunts. Yes, he's seen it. Seen the differences, but also the similarities. And, if the Doctor were to ask him, he'd tell him the latter outweigh the former by far. Yes, the two Doctors he's known may look different, have different accents, different styles of clothing and different tastes in music. But that's all surface stuff.
Where it matters, both Doctors are the same. Both with the weight of the universe on their shoulders every second. Both wanting to travel and explore and share, but scared of close attachment.
Both made him want to be a better man and, worse, made him believe that he could be. And both abandoned him when he needed them most. He digs the fingers of his left hand into his thigh and takes a gulp of whiskey with his right to keep from saying any of this.
The Doctor seems oblivious to the effect his words are having. "You see," he continues, rubbing his neck and tugging his earlobe and looking anywhere but at Jack. "The thing is, I like this me. And I've only been this me for about four years, and that's just not enough! The last me, well, he was dark and broody and born out of the War, and honestly, he wasn't too unhappy to leave it all behind. Except Rose. He hated leaving her, but that was all."
Jack digs his fingers in more and drains his glass. He's glad it's made from solid Evangian crystal, because his grip is so tight that any lesser material would shatter. He wonders what's harder - the crystal or the Doctor's head.
"And of course, I had to die to save her," the Doctor rambles on. "So really, that Doctor was okay with it in the end. Me? I have so much to live for, and not much to die for that I can see, and it's just so unfair that I have to lose this me, when it's my favorite. I mean, I could happily go on being this me forev-"
A sharp ripping sound stops the tirade. Jack looks down. Oh. Seems he dug his fingernails right through the fabric of his trousers and into his flesh. He watches as five perfect red pearls well up over his nails and start rolling down his leg. No pain. The things white hot rage is good for...
"Bugger," the Doctor says. He kneels next to Jack and takes the whiskey glass from him, putting it on the side table before using his cool, slender fingers to widen the rip in Jack's trousers and inspect the wounds. "I'm such a prat."
Jack snorts.
The Doctor dabs at the blood, his eyes glued to the bright red spots on his white handkerchief. "I'm sorry, Jack. Here I am, prattling on about how terrible it is that I have to die, all the while forgetting that... well, that…" He shrugs helplessly.
"That it beats the alternative?" Jack suggests.
The Doctor flinches. He takes out his sonic screwdriver and starts healing up the cuts with the first aid setting. "So sorry. I wasn't thinking. Obviously."
Jack grunts. "Yeah. Immortality is overrated." It was meant to lighten the mood, but the quip weighs on both of them like wet sand.
The Doctor rubs small circles on the now unmarked skin of Jack's thigh. "I should count myself lucky, I know. But I can't." He pats Jack's knee. "I'll stop complaining, though. You of all people don't need to hear that."
Jack cups the Doctor's cheek and forces the Time Lord to look up at him. "For the record - I'll miss you like crazy. Insensitive prattle notwithstanding." He grins.
The Doctor returns a shaky smile. "Who knows. Maybe you'll like the next me just as much." He lets his face rest in Jack's palm, not exactly leaning into the touch, but not pulling away, either.
Jack shrugs. "Probably will. He'll be you, after all. Doesn't make a difference, though. I'll miss this you. Still miss the last one."
The Doctor blinks. "Really? Old big ears?" He quirks an eyebrow. "What is it - the grumpiness? The U-boat captain look? The great haircut?"
Jack smiles. "All of the above. And the nose. And the way he - you - would cup my neck and shake me when I'd screwed up. And the things I always hoped we'd-" He stops and looks down, pulling his hand away from the Doctor and resting it on the sofa cushion.
The Doctor sits down next to Jack, taking his hand. "He knew. I know. And it's not that he wasn't interested. He just couldn't let anyone that close. But maybe he would have... one day... He thought about it."
Jack jumps up and starts pacing the room. "Fat lot of good, you telling me that now." To think maybe, if the last Doctor had just been able to swallow his inhibitions, if maybe the Game Station had happened just a few months later...
He stops and drops into an armchair. "Doesn't matter now."
The Doctor's voice is quiet and hesitant. "Maybe it does."
Jack looks up. "How?"
"Because maybe... maybe I don't want to make the same mistake again. I'll always regret that I'll never find out what it would have been like to be with you in that body. No reason to add the same regret over this one, though."
Jack's mouth is dry. He cocks his head, not daring to speak for fear of breaking the spell.
The Doctor hesitates. "You still want to, right? I mean, I thought you want to. But maybe not. Maybe that was just the last me? Or maybe I just pissed you off good and proper with all my whining about my mortality, when it's the one thing you want and can't have, and now you're too fed up - I mean, I'd understand, and I'm really sorry if I bollocksed this up, Jack, I-"
Jack raises a hand. "Bedroom. Now."
The Doctor gets up immediately and, unbelievably, silently, and offers Jack a hand and a nervous smile. "Allons-y!"
Jack takes the hand. He feels his lips curl into his first genuine smile in months.
After everything that's happened, and with everything that's still bound to happen in their lives, it's good to know that they'll both have one less regret to add to the pile.
Because Jack's pretty damn sure he won't regret this, and he'll do his darndest to make sure the Doctor won't, either.
*****
Thousands of years later - TARDIS timeline - two very different men are sitting at the bar of a charming little Neo-French restaurant on New New Earth. One of them - young, carelessly dressed in jeans and a hoody, short, and ginger - is trying to build a structure from the round beer mats stacked on the bar. He's succeeding.
The other one's a middle-aged man, well-dressed and carefully groomed, whose laugh lines and gray streak only emphasize his brilliant smile and sparkling blue eyes. He's looking out of the large front window, staring off into the distance. His gaze is not focused on the birds hopping through the apple grass, nor the pretty young woman feeding them. He's looking at something only he can see, and chuckling quietly.
His younger companion looks up from his task and elbows him in the ribs. "Credit for your thoughts," he says in a soft lilt, his green eyes twinkling.
The older man turns to look at him, and his smile is fond and teasing at the same time. "I was just thinking of the first time you and I..." He winks, and makes a rude gesture under the counter.
The ginger bloke rolls his eyes. "Oh, when are you going to let me live that down? I was out of practice, I hadn't... in many years and several bodies. I tried my best! Yet here you are, millennia later, still needling me over one little mistake!"
The more agitated he gets, the louder his companion's chuckle becomes.
"And anyway, it all worked out for the best, didn't it? Eh? Didn't it?" He puts his hands on his hips in a way that looks absolutely ridiculous on a short man sitting on a tall bar stool.
His companion grins and reaches over to squeeze his thigh. "Wouldn't change a thing. Mishaps and all."
The other leans against him. "All right then. Long as you have no regrets."
The taller man slings an arm around him and pulls him closer, narrowly avoiding unbalancing them both. "None whatsoever." They kiss with more heat than is decent in a place like this. "Never did, never will."
The End
Beta: lindenharp - Thank you!
Characters: Ten/Jack
Rating: Teen; discussion of death, strong language
Spoilers/warnings: DW: Waters of Mars, TW: Children of Earth
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction; the characters are the property of the BBC and used here without permission. No money was made.
Summary: Sequel to Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes. The Doctor and Jack talk about the Doctor's impending death.
Written for wendymr, for her generous donation in the help_haiti auction. The title quote is adapted from Horace's Mors ultima linea rerum est ("Death is everything's final limit." Epistulae I, XVI).
Mors Non Ultima Linea Rerum Est
It's late. Jack and the Doctor are in the library, sipping old whiskey and listening to music. Jack is sprawled out on the sofa. Part of him still doesn’t believe he deserves any of this, but the Doctor has been very clear that that's not a line of thought he's allowed to follow anymore. "You do what you have to. And you have to take care of yourself."
When he first heard the TARDIS materializing earlier today, Jack was convinced that anything the Doctor had to say would only make him feel worse. But he was wrong. The Time Lord has been infinitely patient, and for the first time in over a hundred years, Jack felt understood. And he knows he helped the Doctor, too. When he looks back on the day now, there's only one thing he regrets.
"Listen." He sits up and stretches out a hand to the Doctor, but changes his mind and pulls back before they make contact. "I just wanted to say… I'm sorry."
The Doctor raises an eyebrow.
"About what I said before. You being lucky. Wasn't fair."
The Doctor shrugs. "Understandable, from your perspective." He starts browsing the bookshelves, pushing books back and forth until they're exactly aligned.
"Doctor… If you'd like to talk about it…"
"What for? Not like it'll help." The Doctor pulls the sixteenth volume of the Martian Encyclopedia off a shelf and dusts it off. He puts it back and does the same with the seventeenth volume. Then the eighteenth.
As he's reaching for the nineteenth, Jack dares to speak up again. "You spent all day making me talk. Said it would help."
"Well, yes… Didn't it?" Volumes twenty and twenty-one are now dust-free.
"It's starting to."
"You're welcome." Now the Doctor is climbing a stepladder to get to the volumes on the first shelf.
Jack reaches for the bottle and refills his whiskey. He leans back into the cushions. Putting pressure on the Doctor has ever been an exercise in futility.
A loud thump startles Jack. The Doctor has dropped the first volume. As he climbs off the stepladder and bends over to pick it up, he asks, so quietly that Jack would have missed it but for his 51st century hearing, "Do you think it will hurt?"
Jack flinches, and wishes he could lie to the Doctor. "Yes."
"Well, thanks Jack. You were right. Talking really does make me feel better." The Doctor's back on the ladder, dusting off volume two.
"Sorry. But - well, you're hardly going to die in your sleep, are you? And anything that gets you from conscious to dead hurts. Believe me, I know."
"I'm sure there are painless methods. Like…" The Doctor's browsing through the third volume with an intent expression on his face. "…lethal injection!"
"Hurts like hell. The cramps especially. Well, at least on 20th century Earth. Can't speak to other eras and worlds."
"How do you-"
"Long story. Won't cheer you up."
"Well…" The Doctor pushes the volume back, climbs off the ladder, and starts pacing. "They say if you get shot in the head you die so quickly you don't even feel the pain."
"They're wrong."
"Stepping on a Frangulian laser mine…"
"Cuts you apart from the bottom up while you watch."
"Being crushed by a falling piano."
Jack blinks. "I wouldn't know."
"Ha!" How does the Doctor manage to sound smug about that?
"I don't think you're very likely to-"
"It once almost happened! Well, not to me. To this woman and her child. Never even found out her name. It's an interesting story, actually - see I was human at the time and had no idea-"
Jack throws up his hands. Clearly, the Doctor will do anything to avoid talking about his impending death. Even discuss the finer points of piano droppage.
"Right then. I hope you get hit by a falling piano. Or, while we're discussing cartoon deaths, maybe you could run over the side of a cliff and not notice it until you look down. Or, hey, how about someone gives you a stick of dynamite inside a hot dog bun, and you swallow it down whole because…"
The Doctor's lips are forming a pale, straight line. Jack grimaces. He should have realized that the Doctor wasn't dissembling just to be annoying or to preserve his sense of superiority. "Sorry. Guess I've kind of lost the sense of gravity where dying is concerned. Got numb after a while, I suppose."
The Doctor sighs. "No wonder, considering... Still, for those of us without your special circumstances, it's rather a sore prospect, you know?"
"Not like you don't come back though, right?" Jack shrugs.
"We don't know that." The Doctor runs a hand through his hair, making it stand on end even more. "If it happens too fast, if I don't have time to regenerate..." He sighs. "And even if I do - I won't be me anymore." His voice sounds hollow and strained. "New body, new personality, a whole new man. You should know, you've seen it."
Jack grunts. Yes, he's seen it. Seen the differences, but also the similarities. And, if the Doctor were to ask him, he'd tell him the latter outweigh the former by far. Yes, the two Doctors he's known may look different, have different accents, different styles of clothing and different tastes in music. But that's all surface stuff.
Where it matters, both Doctors are the same. Both with the weight of the universe on their shoulders every second. Both wanting to travel and explore and share, but scared of close attachment.
Both made him want to be a better man and, worse, made him believe that he could be. And both abandoned him when he needed them most. He digs the fingers of his left hand into his thigh and takes a gulp of whiskey with his right to keep from saying any of this.
The Doctor seems oblivious to the effect his words are having. "You see," he continues, rubbing his neck and tugging his earlobe and looking anywhere but at Jack. "The thing is, I like this me. And I've only been this me for about four years, and that's just not enough! The last me, well, he was dark and broody and born out of the War, and honestly, he wasn't too unhappy to leave it all behind. Except Rose. He hated leaving her, but that was all."
Jack digs his fingers in more and drains his glass. He's glad it's made from solid Evangian crystal, because his grip is so tight that any lesser material would shatter. He wonders what's harder - the crystal or the Doctor's head.
"And of course, I had to die to save her," the Doctor rambles on. "So really, that Doctor was okay with it in the end. Me? I have so much to live for, and not much to die for that I can see, and it's just so unfair that I have to lose this me, when it's my favorite. I mean, I could happily go on being this me forev-"
A sharp ripping sound stops the tirade. Jack looks down. Oh. Seems he dug his fingernails right through the fabric of his trousers and into his flesh. He watches as five perfect red pearls well up over his nails and start rolling down his leg. No pain. The things white hot rage is good for...
"Bugger," the Doctor says. He kneels next to Jack and takes the whiskey glass from him, putting it on the side table before using his cool, slender fingers to widen the rip in Jack's trousers and inspect the wounds. "I'm such a prat."
Jack snorts.
The Doctor dabs at the blood, his eyes glued to the bright red spots on his white handkerchief. "I'm sorry, Jack. Here I am, prattling on about how terrible it is that I have to die, all the while forgetting that... well, that…" He shrugs helplessly.
"That it beats the alternative?" Jack suggests.
The Doctor flinches. He takes out his sonic screwdriver and starts healing up the cuts with the first aid setting. "So sorry. I wasn't thinking. Obviously."
Jack grunts. "Yeah. Immortality is overrated." It was meant to lighten the mood, but the quip weighs on both of them like wet sand.
The Doctor rubs small circles on the now unmarked skin of Jack's thigh. "I should count myself lucky, I know. But I can't." He pats Jack's knee. "I'll stop complaining, though. You of all people don't need to hear that."
Jack cups the Doctor's cheek and forces the Time Lord to look up at him. "For the record - I'll miss you like crazy. Insensitive prattle notwithstanding." He grins.
The Doctor returns a shaky smile. "Who knows. Maybe you'll like the next me just as much." He lets his face rest in Jack's palm, not exactly leaning into the touch, but not pulling away, either.
Jack shrugs. "Probably will. He'll be you, after all. Doesn't make a difference, though. I'll miss this you. Still miss the last one."
The Doctor blinks. "Really? Old big ears?" He quirks an eyebrow. "What is it - the grumpiness? The U-boat captain look? The great haircut?"
Jack smiles. "All of the above. And the nose. And the way he - you - would cup my neck and shake me when I'd screwed up. And the things I always hoped we'd-" He stops and looks down, pulling his hand away from the Doctor and resting it on the sofa cushion.
The Doctor sits down next to Jack, taking his hand. "He knew. I know. And it's not that he wasn't interested. He just couldn't let anyone that close. But maybe he would have... one day... He thought about it."
Jack jumps up and starts pacing the room. "Fat lot of good, you telling me that now." To think maybe, if the last Doctor had just been able to swallow his inhibitions, if maybe the Game Station had happened just a few months later...
He stops and drops into an armchair. "Doesn't matter now."
The Doctor's voice is quiet and hesitant. "Maybe it does."
Jack looks up. "How?"
"Because maybe... maybe I don't want to make the same mistake again. I'll always regret that I'll never find out what it would have been like to be with you in that body. No reason to add the same regret over this one, though."
Jack's mouth is dry. He cocks his head, not daring to speak for fear of breaking the spell.
The Doctor hesitates. "You still want to, right? I mean, I thought you want to. But maybe not. Maybe that was just the last me? Or maybe I just pissed you off good and proper with all my whining about my mortality, when it's the one thing you want and can't have, and now you're too fed up - I mean, I'd understand, and I'm really sorry if I bollocksed this up, Jack, I-"
Jack raises a hand. "Bedroom. Now."
The Doctor gets up immediately and, unbelievably, silently, and offers Jack a hand and a nervous smile. "Allons-y!"
Jack takes the hand. He feels his lips curl into his first genuine smile in months.
After everything that's happened, and with everything that's still bound to happen in their lives, it's good to know that they'll both have one less regret to add to the pile.
Because Jack's pretty damn sure he won't regret this, and he'll do his darndest to make sure the Doctor won't, either.
*****
Thousands of years later - TARDIS timeline - two very different men are sitting at the bar of a charming little Neo-French restaurant on New New Earth. One of them - young, carelessly dressed in jeans and a hoody, short, and ginger - is trying to build a structure from the round beer mats stacked on the bar. He's succeeding.
The other one's a middle-aged man, well-dressed and carefully groomed, whose laugh lines and gray streak only emphasize his brilliant smile and sparkling blue eyes. He's looking out of the large front window, staring off into the distance. His gaze is not focused on the birds hopping through the apple grass, nor the pretty young woman feeding them. He's looking at something only he can see, and chuckling quietly.
His younger companion looks up from his task and elbows him in the ribs. "Credit for your thoughts," he says in a soft lilt, his green eyes twinkling.
The older man turns to look at him, and his smile is fond and teasing at the same time. "I was just thinking of the first time you and I..." He winks, and makes a rude gesture under the counter.
The ginger bloke rolls his eyes. "Oh, when are you going to let me live that down? I was out of practice, I hadn't... in many years and several bodies. I tried my best! Yet here you are, millennia later, still needling me over one little mistake!"
The more agitated he gets, the louder his companion's chuckle becomes.
"And anyway, it all worked out for the best, didn't it? Eh? Didn't it?" He puts his hands on his hips in a way that looks absolutely ridiculous on a short man sitting on a tall bar stool.
His companion grins and reaches over to squeeze his thigh. "Wouldn't change a thing. Mishaps and all."
The other leans against him. "All right then. Long as you have no regrets."
The taller man slings an arm around him and pulls him closer, narrowly avoiding unbalancing them both. "None whatsoever." They kiss with more heat than is decent in a place like this. "Never did, never will."
The End