PG, Captain Jack / The Doctor (Nine)
Fuzzy Science
By elfin
In the blink of an eye, in the rush of an ancient power, the
dynamics of a relationship changed.
The vulnerable psyche, chained by horrific memories, a
desperate desire to atone, and protected only by the thinnest glaze of
sarcasm,
the strength of a sense of humour.
Like the shifts in the TARDIS’ configuration, this
regeneration had moved that which had been at the surface deep down
inside. The humour was easier, the
banter less forced. But the raw emotion
had been hidden under layers of defence, a defence complex it might
take years
to find it again.
And perversely Jack mourned the challenge, the ‘I dare you’
inherent in the eyes of his Doctor’s incarnation, lost
now in
the new face, in the uncaring smile of the interloper.
When they’d first met Jack hadn’t believed it – a Time Lord,
the last surviving one. More precious
than life, more dangerous than death.
Like a collector of rare objects, he’d had to have him. But the Doctor wasn’t easy, and that just
made the him all the more addictive.
Now, suddenly Jack was the vulnerable one, his heart on his
sleeve, and the confusion of cynical denial and burning desire he had
sometimes
caught fleetingly in the dark, star-filled eyes was now only in his
own.
He didn’t flirt with this new face.
Rose did – she seemed okay, seemed to accept that it was the
same man who’d loved her more than the universe – more than existence
itself.
Captain Jack – hero - wasn’t okay. He’d
flirted because the Doctor – his Doctor,
Nyne, had allowed it. He’d flirted
because it was an intimacy that might have led to something more. But now it never would, because two hundred
years after the time they met, at the end of the world, the love of his
life
had died to rise again as someone else, someone different.
Time on the TARDIS truly was relative. He
had no idea how much had actually passed
since the Daleks, Satellite 5 and the absolute end of at least his
world and at
most his dreams for the future.
Life had never exactly been kind to him, throwing bad shit
after bad shit his way; a game dealt by a cheat with a perfect poker
face. But now all the cards were on the
table, and
somewhere in the back of his mind was the idea that he could beat the
house.
By the time the TARDIS materialised on Magma 9, Rose and her
new Doctor, Taen, were pissed at him. (A
lovely expression he’d picked up from Rose and just the result he’d
been hoping
for.)
He had a plan, of sorts.
An insane plan born of grief.
Lonely searches of the ship’s labyrinthine corridors had
eventually turned up a room he thought of as ‘the archives’ although
there were
no actual documents stored there. The
more he studied it, the clearer it became – that the room was the
TARDIS’
memory, tall snapshots, like windows hanging in mid-air, of the
ever-changing
configurations of the strange ship.
But not random changes, as he’d first imagined when the
throw-laden room he’d been sleeping in had surprised him by moving from
its
location on the third level to inhabit the same space as the Doctor’s
eclectic
bedroom.
The resulting area had been interesting, especially as the
Earth-autumn-coloured fur throws under which he’d been sleeping at the
time had
ended up on the Doctor’s ultra-wide mattress with him still naked
beneath. And the Doctor, also naked, had
been sleeping
above his own covers.
The first thing Jack had seen were the floor-to-ceiling
windows that showed planets and stars on all four walls when clearly
that was
impossible. Then he’d seen the Doctor,
lying a foot away from him, eyes open revealing the mirror of the
cosmic view.
Jack knew he should have kissed him then, should have pinned
him to the bed and made it clear exactly what was on offer. But it wasn’t like talking some easy humanoid
alien into a quick romp. This was the
Doctor,
a Time Lord, and Jack was falling faster and deeper than he’d realised.
Now it was too late and some mad-eyed, mad-haired stranger was
in his place.
However hard Rose insisted – it wasn’t the man he knew.
It wasn’t the man he loved. But out
there, in time, was his Doctor. And during
the long hours studying the
archives, he’d realised that there was a way to go back.
The TARDIS changed not randomly but with space and
time. As they moved forwards and
backwards, as they passed points – markers – in space, the
configuration
altered. But always around twelve
presets. The Doctor existed out of time,
but the ship did not. Each Doctor made
his own impression, left his own memory, facets of his personality, his
mark on
the TARDIS. And the TARDIS remembered.
When they moved through a place and time his Doctor had
existed in, the TARDIS shifted, recalled his memory, stamped it on the
pattern
of things already being shaped by the interloper. Taen.
The tenth.
Taking into account the one original architecture, whose was
the eleventh pattern?
Jack didn’t think too long on that. He
didn’t really care. Because he’d
discovered another room too, a
room hidden in the plans, that looked bigger than the flight deck. A room marked only as ‘Vault’.
He’d only found it because he’d known about
it – he’d dreamt about it. And in his
deepening
insanity, his growing obsession, he believed the TARDIS had told him
about it,
believed it was where he’d find his Doctor.
It took him a long time
to work out how to locate it. All the time
Taen was aboard he was imposing
his presence, his character, on Nyne’s and the others’ configurations. And without a map in an ever-shifting,
currently-evolving environment, it was an impossible thing to find a
specific
place.
So Jack started to suggest a
return to the Magma
constellation, to Magma 9 – the pleasure planet - where the happy three
had
once stopped an evil green goo from spoiling a particularly good party. Nyne had told them no Doctor had ever been
there before. His presence there then
was untainted, the preset pattern uncorrupted, unblended.
It was how Jack needed it, how he wanted it. Once
the idea was in Rose’s head and she and
Taen were set on going, turning on the whiny yank act had been a synch. Thus the short, sharp row when they’d arrived
and Jack being alone in the TARDIS with the other two safely off
searching for
a good time.
Jack followed the archive’s map of Nyne’s formation, the
layout the TARDIS had shifted to when they’d moved into the locality. He found the vault with ease, as if the ship
had opened up the shortest distance for him, and stepped inside with
the every
certainty of finding what he was looking for.
It was a graveyard. A
mausoleum. Stretching away into the
distance until trying to see the end made his eyes hurt and his head
ache. It was cold, like being outside
during a cold
night on Earth. The grass under his feet
was too green, the stars in the night sky too bright, like tiny halogen
light bulbs,
winking at him as if inviting him to share a joke he didn’t get.
He started to walk further in, glancing at the smooth, blank
stones rising out of the fake ground.
His common sense told him there couldn’t possibly be anyone
buried here
– it was just a room aboard the TARDIS after all.
But it was still a creepy place.
Looking into the darkness ahead he thought he could make out
a figure in the shadows. Maybe an echo
of himself. Maybe not.
He glanced back at the out-of-place door in the illusion of
distance behind him. So long, so much
planning just to get to this place, did he really just want to leave? What about the Doctor? Why
would Nyne be here?
But the figure in front of him was coming closer. And
in the next moment he recognised the
slope of the wide shoulders, the oval of the head, the long, inviting
neck –
Jack was paralysed.
The moon, impossibly, came out. His Doctor
stood before him, eyes wide,
reaching to put a hand on Jack’s shoulder and in a flash, before Jack
could
speak a word or move a muscle, they were no longer in the vault.
They were back in the space resulting from the merging of
Jack’s room and Nyne’s. They were lying
on the bed, face to face, just as they had been that time, and the
universe was
still being reflected in the Doctor’s eyes.
“What the hell…?”
And Nyne answered him, very softly, very gently. “What
are you doing here?”
“Where’s here?”
“In the vault.”
Jack shook his head.
“But this isn’t….”
“Yes, it is.”
Quietly. “The vault’s
everywhere.”
“So how come it took me so long to find it?”
“Because once you’re in you can’t get out. It’s
where we go once we regenerate, where
our memories and experiences are stored.”
The Doctor pushed himself up onto one elbow and Jack followed
suit,
scant inches between them. “Too much
history to hold inside one brain – even one as big as a Time Lord’s.”
That old ego, the serious words disguised by the flippant
tone. Jack felt his eyes stinging with
grief. All this was his Doctor, and all
this was gone.
“…he’ll draw on it,” the Doctor was saying, “like a back up
memory that can be accessed with just a thought.” The
smile on Nyne’s face brightened and lit
up the recent darkness of Jack’s existence.
“Right now you’re probably giving me – him – a real
headache.”
“You said I couldn’t leave, there’s no way out?”
“That’s right,” and the serious expression was back – an
accessory to the tone. “You’re a part of
the fabric of the TARDIS now.”
“But the TARDIS told me about this place. It
brought me here.”
“And it’s trapped you here.
Tell me, Captain, does ‘Bad Wolf’ sound friendly to you?”
Jack wasn’t sure if the complete lack of panic was a
surprise or not. “Why would it do
that?”
Nyne reached out to touch Jack’s rough face, his silken
hair, to run a lazy thumb over his bottom lip.
Jack’s eyes closed, but not before he’d seen the apology in the
Doctor’s
face.
“It must have been listening. I missed you.
I pushed the knowledge of you to the forefront of my mind and my
regenerated self went to find you. I
knew you were still alive, the TARDIS told me, teased me for a while. When I – he – found you it turned melancholy. It’s my fault you’re here.”
Jack opened his eyes, reached up and caught the Doctor’s
hand by the wrist. “What about you? Are you going to vanish? Leave
me again?” A small shake of the head, a
silent promise
made. “Then it’s okay, isn’t it?”
He let go of
the Doctor’s wrist and started his own, careful
investigation of the other man’s face and neck, braving a hand under
the fallen
lapel of the leather jacket, up over one shoulder where T-shirt met
warm skin.
“The TARDIS isn’t such a bad
girl,” he murmured as he leaned
in to steal a second kiss, hoping this one would last longer than the
first one
did.
end
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