Torchwood/Doctor Who, Ten & Jack Fic
Nov. 30th, 2009 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiFandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Title: "For the Greater Good"
Characters: Ten, Jack
Rating: PG-13 for themes, angst
Spoilers: Massive spoilers for TW: Children of the Earth, nothing really for DW, except basic New Who premise.
Disclaimer: I claim nothing, not even the stuff I've made up.
Summary: Set after CotT and shortly before The Waters of Mars: the Doctor and Jack save history and catch up on recent events.
A/N: This story has been floating in my mind for while and finally floated out.
"For the Greater Good"
"I knew it!" said Jack. "It's a fixed point in time. Isn't it? Isn't it? Tell me it isn't."
"Oh yeah, it's a fixed point in time, all right," said the Doctor as the walls began to buckle. "The Sub-Countess of the Third Fourth Ixil, later the Queen Tenth Ix, will become the founder of the Pax Xialthia, the shining light of Xialthian culture for ten thousand years. And if she's assassinated today, who knows what might happen? Nice to see you again, Jack."
"Likewise."
"Run!"
They raced down the transport tunnel to the blaring of alarms and slid under the security force door just in time to avoid being crushed by alpha-2 wave. Thirty seconds of conferring, and they opted to split up, Jack to evacuate the Sub-Countess's retinue and the Doctor to find the alpha-2 generator and deactivate it before the palace could implode.
"See you in hell!" Jack shouted (nostalgically) as he pounded off down the corridor.
***
Despite the partially crushed palace, jubilation reigned that night. While the Doctor's rather stylish dematerialization of the generator had gone unnoticed, Jack made it onto the vid-cast as the Sub-Countess's new bodyguard. In the warm, summer evening, amid the happy shouts and para-zither chords, the Doctor put his hands in his pockets and smiled at the giant holo-image of Jack kissing the fins of the royal entourage.
Then, one of the vendor kids tugged on his sleeve and asked him to make up a fourth in a game of sand pipe, so he did.
After that, he strolled back toward the Tardis. He was just about to fit the key in the lock when he heard feet thundering behind him.
"That was phenomenal," laughed Jack, breathless, as he pulled up beside the Doctor. "Just like the old days, and I just wanted to say, it's been terrific to see you again." He clapped an arm on the Doctor's shoulder. "I had a feeling you'd come because fixed point in time and all that, but..." Abruptly, he seemed at a loss for words.
The Doctor, also at a loss, smiled, feeling a bit silly.
"Anyway," said Jack. "I hear the clubbing down the Seventh Ninth District is, well, let's say the recovery time is about two weeks, so I'm going to go check it out. Play out the celebrity thing a little."
"Seize the day, eh?"
They stood there, their smiles so varnished the Doctor kept expecting them to crack.
"Have fun, Jack. Well, I guess that goes without saying."
"Yeah." Jack started off down the street, talking over his shoulder. "Fun is... fun. Can't have too much of it really. I won't expect you hang around. I know how it goes." He waved and strode into the shadows.
***
Of course, the Doctor had had every intention of leaving, so much so that he went into the Tardis and, for ten minutes, contemplated doing so. He didn't like being sent on guilt trips and wasn't the sort to change his plans on account of one. But it wasn't what Jack said; it was why. It was that the Doctor didn't know why. Oh, he understood the old resentments, but this was something more. For example, why had Jack popped up here after seeming so comfortably ensconced in Torchwood?
So the Doctor strolled down the Seventh Ninth, where a bouncer in a bikini informed him that his clothes were gauche. He managed to pass muster by using his coat as a skirt and volunteering to run the twelfth-bass synthesizer, which produced some amazing harmonics that made his ears sting. In a good way.
Jack was out on the dance floor with a bald girl and a banana. The Doctor grinned a touch smugly. And who was it taught him never to be without a banana? Jack, whose choice of clothes was, all things considered, quite similar to the Doctor's, had apparently received the "gauche" remark, too, and chosen to address it by going for the naked look.
After an hour and a half, Jack "said hello" to a company of two young, blond men and a rather impressively ginger lady and flew up with them to the second floor.
The Doctor hung about for another couple of hours. After relinquishing the synthesizer, he found himself pleasantly diverted by the conversation of the Super-Waitress for Internal Affairs. But once she gathered up her husbands and went home for the night, it dawned on him that he was daft to keep waiting for Jack--because that shrieking engine noise that had emanated from the upper floors five minutes before was almost certainly Jack making his exit.
The Doctor went back to the Tardis and, for ten minutes, pondered leaving. Then, he went for a walk in the pink pre-dawn, reflecting with a certain satisfaction that the Pax Xialthia would now unfold as it always had done.
When he got back, Jack was sitting against the door, half a bottle of large-size Xial-blue brandy in hand. A brandy blue stain marked his shirt, as well as other, somewhat more adventurous stains.
"Long night," said the Doctor.
"Just like I like them."
"You look a bit knackered. Would you like to sleep here?" Not a good idea, a little voice whispered. But a louder voice said it was the least he could do.
"I don't sleep anymore," said Jack.
***
Jack rummaged in the cupboard. "Where the heck did the glasses go?"
"Two doors down." The Doctor pulled out two glasses and set them on the table. "The Tardis has a tendency to rearrange."
Jack poured the brandy. "I know. I used to live here, remember?"
The Doctor sipped his brandy; he wasn't really a fan. "Last I heard, you'd found a niche in Torchwood. Seemed like a good place for you."
"Funny to hear you say that after the laser beams you glared at me when I told you I was working for them." Jack drained his glass.
"Well, you caught me by surprise. I know they've changed. You changed them."
Jack gave a rough laugh.
"Like to tell me what happened?"
Jack looked at him for the first time since they'd sat down. "You know what happened, right? Even if you weren't on Earth at the time, you must have heard about it."
"The 456? I know your lot did a nice job repelling them."
Jack refilled his glass and turned it around in his hands. "I had a boyfriend. The 456 killed him."
The Doctor waited.
"I told myself I wasn't going to fall for him. Not him, not this time. I might have sex with him, but I wasn't going to fall. Been there, had enough of that." He took a breath and took a drink. "He was just a kid. He'd barely scratched his twenties when I met him. He was this weird combination of awkwardness and grace. He could be an office clerk one minute and the next this cold, committed Torchwood agent who'd pull his gun on you and pull the trigger if that's what it took to protect the human race. And he looked up to me. He loved me." He drained his glass again. "It was just about a year ago it hit me that I'd fallen in love with him, completely in love, and I was already gearing up to go the whole distance. We'd only just had the conversation, the one about how I was going to watch him grow old and die. I thought, 'As soon as we've dealt with the 456, I'm going to ask him to marry me.' A few hours later, they poisoned him. And as he was losing consciousness in my arms, do you know what he said?"
The Doctor waited.
"He said, 'You'll forget me.' And he was right." With a weary apathy, Jack flung his bottle across the room.
It's supposed to shatter, the Doctor thought. That's the thing for it to do. But being p-membrane, it only bounced and splattered droplets of brandy of the floor.
"Jack, I'm sorry."
Jack made a noise that might have been a laugh or sob. Swiftly, he composed himself. "And then, I killed my grandson." The next sound was definitely a laugh, the kind the Doctor sometimes struggled hard not to laugh himself. "To disrupt the 456, we needed to feed them a signal through the brain of a child, and he was the only child on hand. So I fried his brain." He turned his empty glass around and around, then around in the other direction. "Later, I was sitting in a hallway, just sitting. And my daughter came through the door; she was just walking, I guess. She stood in the doorway and looked at me for a second, and then, she turned around and left."
They sat for a time in the quiet of the Tardis humming.
"You know, Jack," said the Doctor, "you've made me think of something I never dreamed I could: that I'm a bit... glad my daughter died... before I killed her daughter, with the rest of them."
Jack didn't look at him. He rubbed a hand over his face and sniffed and sat like a statue. The Doctor slid his chair close and put an arm around him. He was a little surprised that Jack melted, sinking against his shoulder with an arm around him in return. They sat that way a long time, even after Jack fell asleep.
Title: "For the Greater Good"
Characters: Ten, Jack
Rating: PG-13 for themes, angst
Spoilers: Massive spoilers for TW: Children of the Earth, nothing really for DW, except basic New Who premise.
Disclaimer: I claim nothing, not even the stuff I've made up.
Summary: Set after CotT and shortly before The Waters of Mars: the Doctor and Jack save history and catch up on recent events.
A/N: This story has been floating in my mind for while and finally floated out.
"For the Greater Good"
"I knew it!" said Jack. "It's a fixed point in time. Isn't it? Isn't it? Tell me it isn't."
"Oh yeah, it's a fixed point in time, all right," said the Doctor as the walls began to buckle. "The Sub-Countess of the Third Fourth Ixil, later the Queen Tenth Ix, will become the founder of the Pax Xialthia, the shining light of Xialthian culture for ten thousand years. And if she's assassinated today, who knows what might happen? Nice to see you again, Jack."
"Likewise."
"Run!"
They raced down the transport tunnel to the blaring of alarms and slid under the security force door just in time to avoid being crushed by alpha-2 wave. Thirty seconds of conferring, and they opted to split up, Jack to evacuate the Sub-Countess's retinue and the Doctor to find the alpha-2 generator and deactivate it before the palace could implode.
"See you in hell!" Jack shouted (nostalgically) as he pounded off down the corridor.
***
Despite the partially crushed palace, jubilation reigned that night. While the Doctor's rather stylish dematerialization of the generator had gone unnoticed, Jack made it onto the vid-cast as the Sub-Countess's new bodyguard. In the warm, summer evening, amid the happy shouts and para-zither chords, the Doctor put his hands in his pockets and smiled at the giant holo-image of Jack kissing the fins of the royal entourage.
Then, one of the vendor kids tugged on his sleeve and asked him to make up a fourth in a game of sand pipe, so he did.
After that, he strolled back toward the Tardis. He was just about to fit the key in the lock when he heard feet thundering behind him.
"That was phenomenal," laughed Jack, breathless, as he pulled up beside the Doctor. "Just like the old days, and I just wanted to say, it's been terrific to see you again." He clapped an arm on the Doctor's shoulder. "I had a feeling you'd come because fixed point in time and all that, but..." Abruptly, he seemed at a loss for words.
The Doctor, also at a loss, smiled, feeling a bit silly.
"Anyway," said Jack. "I hear the clubbing down the Seventh Ninth District is, well, let's say the recovery time is about two weeks, so I'm going to go check it out. Play out the celebrity thing a little."
"Seize the day, eh?"
They stood there, their smiles so varnished the Doctor kept expecting them to crack.
"Have fun, Jack. Well, I guess that goes without saying."
"Yeah." Jack started off down the street, talking over his shoulder. "Fun is... fun. Can't have too much of it really. I won't expect you hang around. I know how it goes." He waved and strode into the shadows.
***
Of course, the Doctor had had every intention of leaving, so much so that he went into the Tardis and, for ten minutes, contemplated doing so. He didn't like being sent on guilt trips and wasn't the sort to change his plans on account of one. But it wasn't what Jack said; it was why. It was that the Doctor didn't know why. Oh, he understood the old resentments, but this was something more. For example, why had Jack popped up here after seeming so comfortably ensconced in Torchwood?
So the Doctor strolled down the Seventh Ninth, where a bouncer in a bikini informed him that his clothes were gauche. He managed to pass muster by using his coat as a skirt and volunteering to run the twelfth-bass synthesizer, which produced some amazing harmonics that made his ears sting. In a good way.
Jack was out on the dance floor with a bald girl and a banana. The Doctor grinned a touch smugly. And who was it taught him never to be without a banana? Jack, whose choice of clothes was, all things considered, quite similar to the Doctor's, had apparently received the "gauche" remark, too, and chosen to address it by going for the naked look.
After an hour and a half, Jack "said hello" to a company of two young, blond men and a rather impressively ginger lady and flew up with them to the second floor.
The Doctor hung about for another couple of hours. After relinquishing the synthesizer, he found himself pleasantly diverted by the conversation of the Super-Waitress for Internal Affairs. But once she gathered up her husbands and went home for the night, it dawned on him that he was daft to keep waiting for Jack--because that shrieking engine noise that had emanated from the upper floors five minutes before was almost certainly Jack making his exit.
The Doctor went back to the Tardis and, for ten minutes, pondered leaving. Then, he went for a walk in the pink pre-dawn, reflecting with a certain satisfaction that the Pax Xialthia would now unfold as it always had done.
When he got back, Jack was sitting against the door, half a bottle of large-size Xial-blue brandy in hand. A brandy blue stain marked his shirt, as well as other, somewhat more adventurous stains.
"Long night," said the Doctor.
"Just like I like them."
"You look a bit knackered. Would you like to sleep here?" Not a good idea, a little voice whispered. But a louder voice said it was the least he could do.
"I don't sleep anymore," said Jack.
***
Jack rummaged in the cupboard. "Where the heck did the glasses go?"
"Two doors down." The Doctor pulled out two glasses and set them on the table. "The Tardis has a tendency to rearrange."
Jack poured the brandy. "I know. I used to live here, remember?"
The Doctor sipped his brandy; he wasn't really a fan. "Last I heard, you'd found a niche in Torchwood. Seemed like a good place for you."
"Funny to hear you say that after the laser beams you glared at me when I told you I was working for them." Jack drained his glass.
"Well, you caught me by surprise. I know they've changed. You changed them."
Jack gave a rough laugh.
"Like to tell me what happened?"
Jack looked at him for the first time since they'd sat down. "You know what happened, right? Even if you weren't on Earth at the time, you must have heard about it."
"The 456? I know your lot did a nice job repelling them."
Jack refilled his glass and turned it around in his hands. "I had a boyfriend. The 456 killed him."
The Doctor waited.
"I told myself I wasn't going to fall for him. Not him, not this time. I might have sex with him, but I wasn't going to fall. Been there, had enough of that." He took a breath and took a drink. "He was just a kid. He'd barely scratched his twenties when I met him. He was this weird combination of awkwardness and grace. He could be an office clerk one minute and the next this cold, committed Torchwood agent who'd pull his gun on you and pull the trigger if that's what it took to protect the human race. And he looked up to me. He loved me." He drained his glass again. "It was just about a year ago it hit me that I'd fallen in love with him, completely in love, and I was already gearing up to go the whole distance. We'd only just had the conversation, the one about how I was going to watch him grow old and die. I thought, 'As soon as we've dealt with the 456, I'm going to ask him to marry me.' A few hours later, they poisoned him. And as he was losing consciousness in my arms, do you know what he said?"
The Doctor waited.
"He said, 'You'll forget me.' And he was right." With a weary apathy, Jack flung his bottle across the room.
It's supposed to shatter, the Doctor thought. That's the thing for it to do. But being p-membrane, it only bounced and splattered droplets of brandy of the floor.
"Jack, I'm sorry."
Jack made a noise that might have been a laugh or sob. Swiftly, he composed himself. "And then, I killed my grandson." The next sound was definitely a laugh, the kind the Doctor sometimes struggled hard not to laugh himself. "To disrupt the 456, we needed to feed them a signal through the brain of a child, and he was the only child on hand. So I fried his brain." He turned his empty glass around and around, then around in the other direction. "Later, I was sitting in a hallway, just sitting. And my daughter came through the door; she was just walking, I guess. She stood in the doorway and looked at me for a second, and then, she turned around and left."
They sat for a time in the quiet of the Tardis humming.
"You know, Jack," said the Doctor, "you've made me think of something I never dreamed I could: that I'm a bit... glad my daughter died... before I killed her daughter, with the rest of them."
Jack didn't look at him. He rubbed a hand over his face and sniffed and sat like a statue. The Doctor slid his chair close and put an arm around him. He was a little surprised that Jack melted, sinking against his shoulder with an arm around him in return. They sat that way a long time, even after Jack fell asleep.
