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[neon-footprint.livejournal.com]

Title: Fight/Flight
Author: 42footprints 
Challenge: Enemies
Pairing: Nine/Jack, though as it's reflective on the period it could be Ten/Jack if you prefer.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None
Warnings: None
Summary: The Doctor's thoughts on Jack, love, and modernism.


The modernist, love, come to make it new,
acknowledges under the surface what came before.
I would never have asked you to come without a past;
the words would have tasted like dust in a cold coffee cup.
Even as sweet as you drink it, I'd rather have tea.

You tripped on an enemy scalp on the cutting room floor;
a cut from the reels of my life that I can't quite forget,
his chemical salts decaying to colourless stills.
Overexposed in the glare of your eyes, he burned up
on the ground where you stood for me, willing to fight where I ran.

It made me new, my running shoes still in hand,
I drew up a map of your past, like a foreign shore,
or the bruises after a fight; I stood my ground
wherever it hurt, where you flinched from my fingers and ran.
I will defend you from ghosts, for as long as I can.