ext_27351 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
dameruth.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wintercompanion2008-02-10 11:45 am
dameruth.livejournal.com) wrote in wintercompanion2008-02-10 11:45 am
Entry tags:
dameruth: Ten Minutes (Jack/Ten) [PG-13]
Title: "Ten Minutes"
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dameruth
Challenge: Plague
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None that I can think of.
Warnings: Some ugly plague stuff, bad words, and a few borderline cliches.
Author:
dameruthChallenge: Plague
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None that I can think of.
Warnings: Some ugly plague stuff, bad words, and a few borderline cliches.
A/N - I think a lot of this story came from my own frustration at getting cycle after cycle of the flu this winter. Cranky authors are hard on their characters sometimes . . . part of my AU "Flowers" series (previous stories archived on Teaspoon), as are many of my stories for this comm. However, references to past stories are very slight, and it should read as a standalone. Thanks to aibhinn for beta-ing the heartfelt but slightly incoherent first draft. :)
When the phone rang, Jack picked up the receiver almost absently. He had loads of files and other assorted materials to dig through today and the Rift had been unusually quiet lately, so he wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary.
He certainly wasn’t expecting to hear the voice on the other end of the line.
“Jack?” The connection was rough and scratchy, but there was no mistaking who it was.
“Doctor.” Jack’s stomach dropped. He knew that tone, and this was decidedly not a social call.
“I need your help.” The Doctor’s voice was clipped and precise. “I wouldn’t ask but . . . I’m out of options. There’s a planet at stake. Thirty-four billion lives.”
Jack’s eyes closed briefly, adrenalin starting to flow. If the Doctor was calling in outside help, it was bad news indeed. “Where are you?” Jack asked, his acceptance of whatever was to come included in the question.
“Just across the Plass.”
“I’ll be there.”
Jack hung up, set his pen neatly down on the stack of papers, and grabbed his greatcoat from the chair he’d carelessly tossed it across the evening before.
Jack’s team looked up with surprise as he strode purposefully from his office.
“Something the matter?” Gwen asked, clearly ready to drop what she was doing and follow his lead, if necessary. The others gave off similar vibes, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
“No, I’ve just gotta step out for a few minutes,” Jack said, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Continue what you’re all doing. Back in ten.”
Reluctantly, they let him pass. Nobody followed, even though Jack could feel them watching as he left.
--
The TARDIS was easy enough to spot visually, though she was parked (not at all coincidentally, Jack was sure) in one of the area’s few CCTV blind spots. The Doctor was leaning almost-casually against her exterior. Jack knew him well enough to see the rigidity in the superficially relaxed pose, and he cursed inwardly. The Doctor never looked like that unless it was life or death.
Even with the low-level perception filter that the TARDIS routinely exuded, people were crossing the street to avoid the blue box and the slender figure in brown. As he drew closer Jack could see why. The Doctor looked godawful. His suit was rumpled, and his tie-less shirt unbuttoned at the throat. His hair stood up in random spikes -- not, Jack realized from a habitual overuse of product, but with the stiffness of oil and dirt. The fine bones of the Doctor’s skull stood out sharply, and the lines around his mouth and eyes were clearly visible.
He was shockingly pale, the smattering of freckles across his nose and cheekbones standing out nearly as starkly as the dark smudges under his eyes. The Doctor straightened as Jack approached, pushing away from the TARDIS, and every movement was taut and overly controlled. It was partly tension and exhaustion, but Jack met the Doctor’s pitch-dark eyes and realized that a great deal of the emotion being suppressed was rage. The Doctor burned with it. Even the innocent passers-by of Cardiff could feel it, and sought to avoid his notice.
Jack nodded a curt greeting and followed the Doctor into the TARDIS, catching a strong whiff of the organic, vinegar-and-honey scent of the Doctor’s sweat as he did so.
They were silent while the Doctor began the dematerialization sequence; when the ship was in the Vortex, the Doctor focused his attention on Jack, and Jack felt the force of it like a slap – though he was quite sure none of the Doctor’s anger was directed at him, it still spilled over.
“There’s a plague preparing to break free, on the planet of Enala Tuzaren,” he paused, and Jack nodded comprehension. He wasn’t familiar with it, but the Universe was a big place.
“It’s a synthetic plague. Completely fatal to carbon-based lifeforms within ten minutes of exposure,” the Doctor continued.
“Ten minutes! Damn, what is it, weaponized?” Jack asked, aghast.
“The Tuzarenese government says not. They claim the facility involved in the breakout was strictly doing medical research. I have my doubts.”
“No kidding. So would I,” Jack said, now certain of the reason for the Doctor’s rage.
“A transmission just before the facility in question was swept with the plague indicates that there may be information about how to stop it in the core computers. The information does not appear to exist anywhere else. All of the facility staff succumbed without managing to download the information and transmit it. The vector – apparently a virus of some sort – is capable of penetrating even the best available protective gear. It seems able to . . . migrate through nearly any substance, given enough time. The entire facility went into lockdown at the first sign of the outbreak, but there is no guarantee that the vector will remain contained.”
The Doctor stopped for a breath, and Jack nodded his comprehension again, unable to speak past the chill in his throat and gut. God, it was an utter nightmare scenario.
“The possibility of a nuclear strike against the facility has been discussed and discarded except as a last-ditch option. There is every possibility that a portion of the plague might survive even a ground-zero blast, and instead be given a boost into the upper atmosphere, to be spread by the jet stream across the entire planet.”
“’Medical research, my ass,” Jack said.
“Indeed. My reasoning exactly. Five people have died attempting to reach the computer core. All of them succumbed well before they reached their goal.” The Doctor’s face was haunted, and Jack read the story of desperate courage and horrific failure, repeated against all hope, over and over.
“Which is where I come in,” Jack concluded.
“Yes. In the worst case scenario, you will not be killed permanently by the plague, and should be able to reach the core. In the best case scenario, you will be completely unaffected.” The Doctor hesitated, the first break in his manner since Jack had spotted him from across the Plass. “I have to admit, I’m not certain how your system responds to pathogens . . .” he trailed off, his eyes questioning.
“Haven’t been sick so much as a day since the Game Station,” Jack told him, “except for the 1918 pandemic. That one got me – but only once.” He grimaced with the memory. “I seemed to have the antibodies against it after the first time I died. Did a lot of work in field hospitals after that. Someone had to, and I had less to lose than most. So it won’t be the first time I’ve done something like this.”
The Time Rotor stopped, and the Doctor came around the console. He stopped, face-to-face with Jack, all the anger burnt out of him. His expression was no longer set and fierce; instead he looked tired and anxious.
“Thank you,” he said, simply and deliberately. For a moment, he rested one slender hand affectionately on Jack’s shoulder. That was all there was time for.
“Quickly now! I couldn’t risk crossing my own timeline, so I had to come back the moment I left.” The Doctor spun and strode for the door. Jack followed, a bare half-step behind.
--
Jack made a quick check of the sterile-suit’s helmet out of sheer spinal reflex, before putting it on and fastening it in place. The Doctor, Jack’s greatcoat draped over one arm, walked around him in a circle, checking the suit’s integrity and fit. He stopped in front of Jack and nodded approval. Behind the Doctor, frightened technicians huddled silently, watching this last hope. Ranged around the room, soldiers in obvious military uniforms refused to huddle, but still managed to look every bit as unsettled as the techs. Jack couldn’t blame them.
The Doctor tapped the headset attached to one ear. “Can you hear me?”
“Crystal clear,” Jack responded.
“Good. You have the directions to the core in your suit’s wristcomp, and I’ll be listening in the entire way.” The Doctor blew out a breath and looked anxious again. “Er. Ready?”
“Let’s do this,” Jack said by way of confirmation. “Oh, and take care of that coat, Doc. I’ve had it since the War – the second time around – and I’d hate for something to happen to it.”
The Doctor gave him a bright, toothy grin. “Your coat will be fine, Captain. You have my word on that.”
--
Jack went through a double airlock (Medical research my ass, he thought again), and into bland, polished corridors that wouldn’t have been out of place in any space station, hospital, or research facility Jack had ever seen.
After about three minutes, it became clear that the place was a warren, full of locked, secured doors. Jack entered access codes and passwords as directed by the Doctor via the earbug. Five minutes in, Jack encountered the first bodies in the corridor. They sprawled as if fallen in mid-run, and oozed unpleasant substances across the smooth floors; most of them were mercifully facedown.
Six minutes in, and Jack’s eyeballs began to ache. A few seconds later, a pulse of pain shot through his head and he felt a hot/cold flush sweep through his body. Shit.
“Guess what?” he said into the suit’s microphone. “I’m not immune to this one.”
A moment of silence. Then a familiar voice, tense and helpless. “I’m here, Jack.”
“I know,” Jack told him, even as he picked up the pace.
--
The nausea hit Jack like a freight train, and he barely managed to wrench the (clearly useless) helmet free before he emptied his guts onto the polished floor. After the spasms passed, Jack quickly stripped free of the cumbersome sterile suit, in order to make better time. He retained the earbug, and, rather ridiculously, slipped the helmet back on so he’d have access to the microphone. He abandoned the wristcomp with the suit, but he hadn’t been using it for the last few minutes anyway, relying on the Doctor’s verbal instructions instead. Stumbling and increasingly incoherent, Jack managed to make it further into the facility than any of his doomed predecessors before he fell for the first time.
--
He died two more times on the way to the core.
He died yet again, propped in a chair from which he’d evicted a disgustingly leaking corpse.
After that, he simply followed the directions given to him by the tense, scratchy, velvet-tenor voice that spoke in his ear. Wrapped in his fifth fatal fever, Jack wasn’t capable of much independent thought, but he knew he trusted that voice.
When he hit the final key, there was silence for a moment, then that beloved voice said, “You’ve done it Jack! We have the information. I’ll be there, as soon as I can . . .” Jack was too ill to really track the words, but they sank into his brain nonetheless. “Hold on, please, I . . . thank you.”
Then there was silence, and, weeping tears composed of his own blood, Jack died again.
--
He lost count of the cycles after that. He lived, he died, he hallucinated and he remembered, until it all became a blur. He had to endure, he knew that much – had to, for the sake of the man that trusted him, never mind that he couldn’t really remember what that man looked like. Blue eyes or brown? Tousled hair or a close-cropped skull? It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter that there were Daleks just around the corner, or narrow, tawny eyes staring into his while an evil laugh echoed through the air, or that there was pain or loss or hopelessness. All that mattered was that he continued to exist. And he would, because she had loved him and told him so, and it was the world’s greatest blessing and the deadliest curse that had ever been . . .
“Jack? Jack . . .!”
At the sound of that voice, he tried to open his eyes, managed to achieve a couple slits of brightness, smeared with tears and blood, but it was too much effort, so he simply drifted off, even as cool fingertips brushed his jaw.
--
A moment’s consciousness, and there were cool fingertips again, pressed to the pulse in his neck. Memory shot through him, and he remembered what came next – the blade slicing through veins and arteries both, while the steady beat of his own traitorous heart emptied the blood from his body . . .
Reflexively, Jack lashed out, felt his fist connect with something solid, heard the thump and a strangled oof!, which wasn’t part of the memory, since his hands had been bound . . . but before his addled brain could make sense of the departure, something cold (but not a blade) pressed to his neck and there was a hiss and a chill and the world went away again.
--
When Jack regained consciousness, he held very still for a moment, unsure of where he was. Everything seemed cold and clear and sharp, not like the last times he’d been awake. He blinked the gummy layer from his corneas, and saw a familiarly rondel-patterened wall. Set against the wall, exactly in the center of his line of sight where he was sure to see it, was a chair with Jack’s military greatcoat draped over its back.
At the same time Jack registered that he was lying on a soft mattress, clean and naked between cool, crisp sheets. He pulled in a hitching breath, and the mattress bounced, as a weight lying on it shifted. A quick beat of padding feet, and the Doctor came into view, staring into Jack’s face a trifle warily.
He still looked pale and haggard but he was clean this time, his hair spiked in fluffy, careless disarray. He wore his pinstriped trousers, but not the full suit. Just the white shirt, unbuttoned at the throat to reveal the neckline of an undershirt – no tie, and, for once, stocking feet free of trainers. Since the Doctor tended to be all-or-nothing when it came to clothing, the combination made him look oddly vulnerable and human.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, in a soft sickroom tone that accentuated the natural velvety burr of his voice.
Jack considered. “Thirsty,” he croaked honestly.
“Ah! Well that I can help with . . .!” The Doctor vanished for a moment and Jack heard the chime of ice against glass, and the slur of pouring water. A moment later the Doctor reappeared with a condensation-misted glass sporting a bendy straw. He set it on the bedside table, and then carefully and gently, he helped Jack rearrange himself and the pillows and covers. When Jack was more or less propped upright, he retrieved the glass and slipped the straw between Jack’s lips. Jack sipped and swallowed greedily, but found himself having to stop at half a glass.
He sank back against the pillows while the Doctor set the glass aside. Rather than going back to his spot on the bed (Jack could picture him lying there, mostly clothed, waiting and listening), the Doctor dropped to his knees and folded his arms atop the edge of the mattress. He rested his chin on the back of one hand and looked up at Jack with dark, inhuman eyes, his expression inscrutable and intense.
Jack looked back, mostly glad to have reality behaving in a sane and linear fashion again, waiting for the Doctor to say something, since he sure as hell couldn’t think of anything very coherent. It was a strange silence, but not necessarily uncomfortable.
“You were back there again, weren’t you?” the Doctor asked, finally. Then, as if there were any doubt, he added, “The Valiant.”
Jack saw no point in lying. “Yeah,” he said, “among other places.” Then a fragment of memory surfaced, and he winced. “I remember hitting something. Someone. Did I . . .?”
“Yes.”
It hadn’t been a lightweight tap, Jack knew that much. He grimaced. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know where I was.”
“It’s no less than I deserve,” the Doctor said, his tone meditative.
Shocked, Jack managed to roll over enough to drop his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Don’t ever say that,” he said, as firmly as he could, giving the unresisting Time Lord a little shake.
“Oh, but it’s true,” the Doctor said, gazing up at Jack with black, unhappy eyes. “I’m no good for you.” His voice was rougher than usual, and Jack realized that the Doctor was hovering on the edge breaking his vowels into split tones, as he did in the throes of grief or lovemaking.
“You didn’t cause the Year That Never Was,” Jack told him firmly, “or bring the Daleks to Satellite Five – or set that goddamn plague in motion.” He ran his hand up along the line of the Doctor’s shoulder to his neck, and began gently massaging, rubbing his fingers along the sensitive nape beneath the shirt collar. “That was an engineered weapon,” he added clinically. “Screw the ‘pure research’ bullshit.”
The Doctor leaned gratefully into his touch, but still looked unhappy. “Yes, it was. The truth did finally out. I got you into the TARDIS – you were gone quite a while that last time, for what it’s worth – and then had a few words with the remaining people in charge. Let’s just say that avenue of research has been closed permanently.”
Jack huffed a humorless laugh, and shifted his hand a little further up the Doctor’s neck, towards the base of his skull, to work on the taut, knotted muscles there. “It’s all a banana grove now?” he asked with a half-smile.
“Something like that,” the Doctor replied, and his lips smiled but his eyes went terrifyingly black for a moment.
There were some things it was better, in Jack’s long experience, to leave unexplored – and remembering the Doctor’s earlier suppressed rage, he was betting this was one of those things.
“Saved the planet, though,” he said, making it mostly a statement rather than a question.
“Yes,” the Doctor told him. “You did.”
“You did. I was just the dumb muscle.” Jack grinned to take the sting from his words.
“Never,” the Doctor breathed, and it came out interwoven with the vocal harmonies of a split respiratory system, sounding very odd indeed in English. His eyes were ferociously – suspiciously – bright. Then he smiled faintly, and when he spoke again his voice had re-formed in human mode. “I don’t know why you still keep doing what I say. All I ever do is cause you pain.”
Jack shook his head in affectionate exasperation. Never mind what you go through – you didn’t spend The Year on comfy cushions eating peeled grapes, and I know that plague had you sweating blood, too, figuratively speaking . . . Aloud, he said, “It’s not like you have a monopoly on noble self-sacrifice, y’ know.”
The Doctor blinked, wearing an expression of shock made all the more comical because Jack could tell it was entirely genuine.
“Besides,” Jack continued. “The way I am . . . it was a gift, kind of, and what good is a gift you don’t use in a way that’d make the giver proud?” His hand trailed up to ineffectually brush at a few random strands of unruly brown hair that were sticking up in defiance of the main mass. “You taught me that.”
The Doctor caught Jack’s hand, and pressed an unexpected but heartfelt kiss to the palm. He followed the kiss with a feline rub of his cheek, and said something that sounded like a phrase of choral music.
For once the TARDIS translated. ”The student surpasses the teacher.”
“The student’s only as good as the instructor,” Jack shot back, “and are you going to kneel down there all night? If it is night?” He tugged gently at the Doctor’s hand. “I’m too shot for a Holy Grail session, but some company would be nice . . .”
At the second tug on his hand, the Doctor complied.
--
Jack strode into the Hub, and stopped dead. Everything was exactly as he’d left it. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.
The members of his team looked up, startled by his abrupt entrance and equally abrupt halt.
“I’m back,” he told them, somewhat pointlessly, but they seemed to be expecting a pronouncement. “Told you I was just stepping out.” He grinned, and headed for his office. Once there, he skinned out of his greatcoat and dropped it back on the spare chair. Then he sat down at his desk, picked up his pen, and tried to remember what the hell he’d been doing before the Doctor called. After a long recuperation session in the timeless reality of the TARDIS, it was a little hard to get his mind back in gear for everyday reality.
Just when he thought he’d gotten a handle on things, there was a scuff, and a discreet cough. He looked up to see Ianto standing by his desk with a single steaming mug balanced on the silver tray Jack had given him as a borderline gag-gift back at Christmas.
“Thought you might like some coffee,” Ianto said, the lack of a “sir” indicating that he was acting in a personal, rather than professional, capacity.
“You thought right. Thanks,” Jack told him, gratefully accepting the mug. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, savoring the fragrant steam. He still didn’t know what Ianto did to make coffee into something approaching a religious experience, and he was content to leave it a mystery. Everyone deserved a few secrets, after all.
A moment of silence. Then Ianto said, “Ten minutes and fifty-one seconds.”
Jack opened his eyes, the coffee spell broken, and blinked. “What?”
Ianto reached into his pocket and pulled out his stopwatch, displaying its frozen face. “I timed it. Ten minutes and fifty-one seconds.” A beat. “It seemed longer.”
Jack raised an eyebrow, and considered Ianto’s very young, very serious face. “Yeah, it did. Ten minutes can be practically forever, sometimes.”
A moment’s silence again, while they considered each other.
“Thanks again for the coffee,” Jack said, putting enough warmth into his words to make it clear that coffee wasn’t the only topic at hand. “It’ll help keep me awake while I plow through this lot.” He waved a hand at the random piles on his desk.
“Late night then?” Ianto asked, with a casualness that was a trifle overstated.
“I’m thinking so,” Jack said.
“Right,” Ianto replied, and turned and left without another word.
Jack wrapped his hands around the welcome, scalding heat of the mug and thought about teachers, students, and the subjective nature of time while he inhaled the scent of home. Then, since he’d been idle long enough, he set the mug on the coaster that lived on his desk and pulled the nearest sheet of paper over so he could began reading it.
aibhinn for beta-ing the heartfelt but slightly incoherent first draft. :)When the phone rang, Jack picked up the receiver almost absently. He had loads of files and other assorted materials to dig through today and the Rift had been unusually quiet lately, so he wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary.
He certainly wasn’t expecting to hear the voice on the other end of the line.
“Jack?” The connection was rough and scratchy, but there was no mistaking who it was.
“Doctor.” Jack’s stomach dropped. He knew that tone, and this was decidedly not a social call.
“I need your help.” The Doctor’s voice was clipped and precise. “I wouldn’t ask but . . . I’m out of options. There’s a planet at stake. Thirty-four billion lives.”
Jack’s eyes closed briefly, adrenalin starting to flow. If the Doctor was calling in outside help, it was bad news indeed. “Where are you?” Jack asked, his acceptance of whatever was to come included in the question.
“Just across the Plass.”
“I’ll be there.”
Jack hung up, set his pen neatly down on the stack of papers, and grabbed his greatcoat from the chair he’d carelessly tossed it across the evening before.
Jack’s team looked up with surprise as he strode purposefully from his office.
“Something the matter?” Gwen asked, clearly ready to drop what she was doing and follow his lead, if necessary. The others gave off similar vibes, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
“No, I’ve just gotta step out for a few minutes,” Jack said, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “Continue what you’re all doing. Back in ten.”
Reluctantly, they let him pass. Nobody followed, even though Jack could feel them watching as he left.
--
The TARDIS was easy enough to spot visually, though she was parked (not at all coincidentally, Jack was sure) in one of the area’s few CCTV blind spots. The Doctor was leaning almost-casually against her exterior. Jack knew him well enough to see the rigidity in the superficially relaxed pose, and he cursed inwardly. The Doctor never looked like that unless it was life or death.
Even with the low-level perception filter that the TARDIS routinely exuded, people were crossing the street to avoid the blue box and the slender figure in brown. As he drew closer Jack could see why. The Doctor looked godawful. His suit was rumpled, and his tie-less shirt unbuttoned at the throat. His hair stood up in random spikes -- not, Jack realized from a habitual overuse of product, but with the stiffness of oil and dirt. The fine bones of the Doctor’s skull stood out sharply, and the lines around his mouth and eyes were clearly visible.
He was shockingly pale, the smattering of freckles across his nose and cheekbones standing out nearly as starkly as the dark smudges under his eyes. The Doctor straightened as Jack approached, pushing away from the TARDIS, and every movement was taut and overly controlled. It was partly tension and exhaustion, but Jack met the Doctor’s pitch-dark eyes and realized that a great deal of the emotion being suppressed was rage. The Doctor burned with it. Even the innocent passers-by of Cardiff could feel it, and sought to avoid his notice.
Jack nodded a curt greeting and followed the Doctor into the TARDIS, catching a strong whiff of the organic, vinegar-and-honey scent of the Doctor’s sweat as he did so.
They were silent while the Doctor began the dematerialization sequence; when the ship was in the Vortex, the Doctor focused his attention on Jack, and Jack felt the force of it like a slap – though he was quite sure none of the Doctor’s anger was directed at him, it still spilled over.
“There’s a plague preparing to break free, on the planet of Enala Tuzaren,” he paused, and Jack nodded comprehension. He wasn’t familiar with it, but the Universe was a big place.
“It’s a synthetic plague. Completely fatal to carbon-based lifeforms within ten minutes of exposure,” the Doctor continued.
“Ten minutes! Damn, what is it, weaponized?” Jack asked, aghast.
“The Tuzarenese government says not. They claim the facility involved in the breakout was strictly doing medical research. I have my doubts.”
“No kidding. So would I,” Jack said, now certain of the reason for the Doctor’s rage.
“A transmission just before the facility in question was swept with the plague indicates that there may be information about how to stop it in the core computers. The information does not appear to exist anywhere else. All of the facility staff succumbed without managing to download the information and transmit it. The vector – apparently a virus of some sort – is capable of penetrating even the best available protective gear. It seems able to . . . migrate through nearly any substance, given enough time. The entire facility went into lockdown at the first sign of the outbreak, but there is no guarantee that the vector will remain contained.”
The Doctor stopped for a breath, and Jack nodded his comprehension again, unable to speak past the chill in his throat and gut. God, it was an utter nightmare scenario.
“The possibility of a nuclear strike against the facility has been discussed and discarded except as a last-ditch option. There is every possibility that a portion of the plague might survive even a ground-zero blast, and instead be given a boost into the upper atmosphere, to be spread by the jet stream across the entire planet.”
“’Medical research, my ass,” Jack said.
“Indeed. My reasoning exactly. Five people have died attempting to reach the computer core. All of them succumbed well before they reached their goal.” The Doctor’s face was haunted, and Jack read the story of desperate courage and horrific failure, repeated against all hope, over and over.
“Which is where I come in,” Jack concluded.
“Yes. In the worst case scenario, you will not be killed permanently by the plague, and should be able to reach the core. In the best case scenario, you will be completely unaffected.” The Doctor hesitated, the first break in his manner since Jack had spotted him from across the Plass. “I have to admit, I’m not certain how your system responds to pathogens . . .” he trailed off, his eyes questioning.
“Haven’t been sick so much as a day since the Game Station,” Jack told him, “except for the 1918 pandemic. That one got me – but only once.” He grimaced with the memory. “I seemed to have the antibodies against it after the first time I died. Did a lot of work in field hospitals after that. Someone had to, and I had less to lose than most. So it won’t be the first time I’ve done something like this.”
The Time Rotor stopped, and the Doctor came around the console. He stopped, face-to-face with Jack, all the anger burnt out of him. His expression was no longer set and fierce; instead he looked tired and anxious.
“Thank you,” he said, simply and deliberately. For a moment, he rested one slender hand affectionately on Jack’s shoulder. That was all there was time for.
“Quickly now! I couldn’t risk crossing my own timeline, so I had to come back the moment I left.” The Doctor spun and strode for the door. Jack followed, a bare half-step behind.
--
Jack made a quick check of the sterile-suit’s helmet out of sheer spinal reflex, before putting it on and fastening it in place. The Doctor, Jack’s greatcoat draped over one arm, walked around him in a circle, checking the suit’s integrity and fit. He stopped in front of Jack and nodded approval. Behind the Doctor, frightened technicians huddled silently, watching this last hope. Ranged around the room, soldiers in obvious military uniforms refused to huddle, but still managed to look every bit as unsettled as the techs. Jack couldn’t blame them.
The Doctor tapped the headset attached to one ear. “Can you hear me?”
“Crystal clear,” Jack responded.
“Good. You have the directions to the core in your suit’s wristcomp, and I’ll be listening in the entire way.” The Doctor blew out a breath and looked anxious again. “Er. Ready?”
“Let’s do this,” Jack said by way of confirmation. “Oh, and take care of that coat, Doc. I’ve had it since the War – the second time around – and I’d hate for something to happen to it.”
The Doctor gave him a bright, toothy grin. “Your coat will be fine, Captain. You have my word on that.”
--
Jack went through a double airlock (Medical research my ass, he thought again), and into bland, polished corridors that wouldn’t have been out of place in any space station, hospital, or research facility Jack had ever seen.
After about three minutes, it became clear that the place was a warren, full of locked, secured doors. Jack entered access codes and passwords as directed by the Doctor via the earbug. Five minutes in, Jack encountered the first bodies in the corridor. They sprawled as if fallen in mid-run, and oozed unpleasant substances across the smooth floors; most of them were mercifully facedown.
Six minutes in, and Jack’s eyeballs began to ache. A few seconds later, a pulse of pain shot through his head and he felt a hot/cold flush sweep through his body. Shit.
“Guess what?” he said into the suit’s microphone. “I’m not immune to this one.”
A moment of silence. Then a familiar voice, tense and helpless. “I’m here, Jack.”
“I know,” Jack told him, even as he picked up the pace.
--
The nausea hit Jack like a freight train, and he barely managed to wrench the (clearly useless) helmet free before he emptied his guts onto the polished floor. After the spasms passed, Jack quickly stripped free of the cumbersome sterile suit, in order to make better time. He retained the earbug, and, rather ridiculously, slipped the helmet back on so he’d have access to the microphone. He abandoned the wristcomp with the suit, but he hadn’t been using it for the last few minutes anyway, relying on the Doctor’s verbal instructions instead. Stumbling and increasingly incoherent, Jack managed to make it further into the facility than any of his doomed predecessors before he fell for the first time.
--
He died two more times on the way to the core.
He died yet again, propped in a chair from which he’d evicted a disgustingly leaking corpse.
After that, he simply followed the directions given to him by the tense, scratchy, velvet-tenor voice that spoke in his ear. Wrapped in his fifth fatal fever, Jack wasn’t capable of much independent thought, but he knew he trusted that voice.
When he hit the final key, there was silence for a moment, then that beloved voice said, “You’ve done it Jack! We have the information. I’ll be there, as soon as I can . . .” Jack was too ill to really track the words, but they sank into his brain nonetheless. “Hold on, please, I . . . thank you.”
Then there was silence, and, weeping tears composed of his own blood, Jack died again.
--
He lost count of the cycles after that. He lived, he died, he hallucinated and he remembered, until it all became a blur. He had to endure, he knew that much – had to, for the sake of the man that trusted him, never mind that he couldn’t really remember what that man looked like. Blue eyes or brown? Tousled hair or a close-cropped skull? It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter that there were Daleks just around the corner, or narrow, tawny eyes staring into his while an evil laugh echoed through the air, or that there was pain or loss or hopelessness. All that mattered was that he continued to exist. And he would, because she had loved him and told him so, and it was the world’s greatest blessing and the deadliest curse that had ever been . . .
“Jack? Jack . . .!”
At the sound of that voice, he tried to open his eyes, managed to achieve a couple slits of brightness, smeared with tears and blood, but it was too much effort, so he simply drifted off, even as cool fingertips brushed his jaw.
--
A moment’s consciousness, and there were cool fingertips again, pressed to the pulse in his neck. Memory shot through him, and he remembered what came next – the blade slicing through veins and arteries both, while the steady beat of his own traitorous heart emptied the blood from his body . . .
Reflexively, Jack lashed out, felt his fist connect with something solid, heard the thump and a strangled oof!, which wasn’t part of the memory, since his hands had been bound . . . but before his addled brain could make sense of the departure, something cold (but not a blade) pressed to his neck and there was a hiss and a chill and the world went away again.
--
When Jack regained consciousness, he held very still for a moment, unsure of where he was. Everything seemed cold and clear and sharp, not like the last times he’d been awake. He blinked the gummy layer from his corneas, and saw a familiarly rondel-patterened wall. Set against the wall, exactly in the center of his line of sight where he was sure to see it, was a chair with Jack’s military greatcoat draped over its back.
At the same time Jack registered that he was lying on a soft mattress, clean and naked between cool, crisp sheets. He pulled in a hitching breath, and the mattress bounced, as a weight lying on it shifted. A quick beat of padding feet, and the Doctor came into view, staring into Jack’s face a trifle warily.
He still looked pale and haggard but he was clean this time, his hair spiked in fluffy, careless disarray. He wore his pinstriped trousers, but not the full suit. Just the white shirt, unbuttoned at the throat to reveal the neckline of an undershirt – no tie, and, for once, stocking feet free of trainers. Since the Doctor tended to be all-or-nothing when it came to clothing, the combination made him look oddly vulnerable and human.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, in a soft sickroom tone that accentuated the natural velvety burr of his voice.
Jack considered. “Thirsty,” he croaked honestly.
“Ah! Well that I can help with . . .!” The Doctor vanished for a moment and Jack heard the chime of ice against glass, and the slur of pouring water. A moment later the Doctor reappeared with a condensation-misted glass sporting a bendy straw. He set it on the bedside table, and then carefully and gently, he helped Jack rearrange himself and the pillows and covers. When Jack was more or less propped upright, he retrieved the glass and slipped the straw between Jack’s lips. Jack sipped and swallowed greedily, but found himself having to stop at half a glass.
He sank back against the pillows while the Doctor set the glass aside. Rather than going back to his spot on the bed (Jack could picture him lying there, mostly clothed, waiting and listening), the Doctor dropped to his knees and folded his arms atop the edge of the mattress. He rested his chin on the back of one hand and looked up at Jack with dark, inhuman eyes, his expression inscrutable and intense.
Jack looked back, mostly glad to have reality behaving in a sane and linear fashion again, waiting for the Doctor to say something, since he sure as hell couldn’t think of anything very coherent. It was a strange silence, but not necessarily uncomfortable.
“You were back there again, weren’t you?” the Doctor asked, finally. Then, as if there were any doubt, he added, “The Valiant.”
Jack saw no point in lying. “Yeah,” he said, “among other places.” Then a fragment of memory surfaced, and he winced. “I remember hitting something. Someone. Did I . . .?”
“Yes.”
It hadn’t been a lightweight tap, Jack knew that much. He grimaced. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know where I was.”
“It’s no less than I deserve,” the Doctor said, his tone meditative.
Shocked, Jack managed to roll over enough to drop his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Don’t ever say that,” he said, as firmly as he could, giving the unresisting Time Lord a little shake.
“Oh, but it’s true,” the Doctor said, gazing up at Jack with black, unhappy eyes. “I’m no good for you.” His voice was rougher than usual, and Jack realized that the Doctor was hovering on the edge breaking his vowels into split tones, as he did in the throes of grief or lovemaking.
“You didn’t cause the Year That Never Was,” Jack told him firmly, “or bring the Daleks to Satellite Five – or set that goddamn plague in motion.” He ran his hand up along the line of the Doctor’s shoulder to his neck, and began gently massaging, rubbing his fingers along the sensitive nape beneath the shirt collar. “That was an engineered weapon,” he added clinically. “Screw the ‘pure research’ bullshit.”
The Doctor leaned gratefully into his touch, but still looked unhappy. “Yes, it was. The truth did finally out. I got you into the TARDIS – you were gone quite a while that last time, for what it’s worth – and then had a few words with the remaining people in charge. Let’s just say that avenue of research has been closed permanently.”
Jack huffed a humorless laugh, and shifted his hand a little further up the Doctor’s neck, towards the base of his skull, to work on the taut, knotted muscles there. “It’s all a banana grove now?” he asked with a half-smile.
“Something like that,” the Doctor replied, and his lips smiled but his eyes went terrifyingly black for a moment.
There were some things it was better, in Jack’s long experience, to leave unexplored – and remembering the Doctor’s earlier suppressed rage, he was betting this was one of those things.
“Saved the planet, though,” he said, making it mostly a statement rather than a question.
“Yes,” the Doctor told him. “You did.”
“You did. I was just the dumb muscle.” Jack grinned to take the sting from his words.
“Never,” the Doctor breathed, and it came out interwoven with the vocal harmonies of a split respiratory system, sounding very odd indeed in English. His eyes were ferociously – suspiciously – bright. Then he smiled faintly, and when he spoke again his voice had re-formed in human mode. “I don’t know why you still keep doing what I say. All I ever do is cause you pain.”
Jack shook his head in affectionate exasperation. Never mind what you go through – you didn’t spend The Year on comfy cushions eating peeled grapes, and I know that plague had you sweating blood, too, figuratively speaking . . . Aloud, he said, “It’s not like you have a monopoly on noble self-sacrifice, y’ know.”
The Doctor blinked, wearing an expression of shock made all the more comical because Jack could tell it was entirely genuine.
“Besides,” Jack continued. “The way I am . . . it was a gift, kind of, and what good is a gift you don’t use in a way that’d make the giver proud?” His hand trailed up to ineffectually brush at a few random strands of unruly brown hair that were sticking up in defiance of the main mass. “You taught me that.”
The Doctor caught Jack’s hand, and pressed an unexpected but heartfelt kiss to the palm. He followed the kiss with a feline rub of his cheek, and said something that sounded like a phrase of choral music.
For once the TARDIS translated. ”The student surpasses the teacher.”
“The student’s only as good as the instructor,” Jack shot back, “and are you going to kneel down there all night? If it is night?” He tugged gently at the Doctor’s hand. “I’m too shot for a Holy Grail session, but some company would be nice . . .”
At the second tug on his hand, the Doctor complied.
--
Jack strode into the Hub, and stopped dead. Everything was exactly as he’d left it. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.
The members of his team looked up, startled by his abrupt entrance and equally abrupt halt.
“I’m back,” he told them, somewhat pointlessly, but they seemed to be expecting a pronouncement. “Told you I was just stepping out.” He grinned, and headed for his office. Once there, he skinned out of his greatcoat and dropped it back on the spare chair. Then he sat down at his desk, picked up his pen, and tried to remember what the hell he’d been doing before the Doctor called. After a long recuperation session in the timeless reality of the TARDIS, it was a little hard to get his mind back in gear for everyday reality.
Just when he thought he’d gotten a handle on things, there was a scuff, and a discreet cough. He looked up to see Ianto standing by his desk with a single steaming mug balanced on the silver tray Jack had given him as a borderline gag-gift back at Christmas.
“Thought you might like some coffee,” Ianto said, the lack of a “sir” indicating that he was acting in a personal, rather than professional, capacity.
“You thought right. Thanks,” Jack told him, gratefully accepting the mug. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, savoring the fragrant steam. He still didn’t know what Ianto did to make coffee into something approaching a religious experience, and he was content to leave it a mystery. Everyone deserved a few secrets, after all.
A moment of silence. Then Ianto said, “Ten minutes and fifty-one seconds.”
Jack opened his eyes, the coffee spell broken, and blinked. “What?”
Ianto reached into his pocket and pulled out his stopwatch, displaying its frozen face. “I timed it. Ten minutes and fifty-one seconds.” A beat. “It seemed longer.”
Jack raised an eyebrow, and considered Ianto’s very young, very serious face. “Yeah, it did. Ten minutes can be practically forever, sometimes.”
A moment’s silence again, while they considered each other.
“Thanks again for the coffee,” Jack said, putting enough warmth into his words to make it clear that coffee wasn’t the only topic at hand. “It’ll help keep me awake while I plow through this lot.” He waved a hand at the random piles on his desk.
“Late night then?” Ianto asked, with a casualness that was a trifle overstated.
“I’m thinking so,” Jack said.
“Right,” Ianto replied, and turned and left without another word.
Jack wrapped his hands around the welcome, scalding heat of the mug and thought about teachers, students, and the subjective nature of time while he inhaled the scent of home. Then, since he’d been idle long enough, he set the mug on the coaster that lived on his desk and pulled the nearest sheet of paper over so he could began reading it.