Title: A Split Second
Author: Joolz
Genre: Angst, Drama, slashy in an understated way
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Ninth Doctor, Jack, implied Tenth Doctor/Jack
Series/Spoilers: Set during The Empty Child, with references to canon events in The Parting of the Ways, Gridlock and The Last of the Time Lords.
Word Count: 1,700
Notes: Thanks as always to my terrific beta, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ladyra.
ladyra.Summary: The Doctor meets someone new, and gets a taste of how important to him the man will be.
Warnings: Sort of like death fic, but not
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Link to the story on my website
Link to the story on my website
A Split Second
A young man walked down the corridor next to Rose, a broad smile on his face. The Doctor frowned at the movie star good looks and the RAF uniform. Where had Rose picked up this one, then?
The man held out his hand as he took the last few steps to reach the Doctor. “Good evening!” he said, “I hope we’re not interrupting.”
In accordance with the local customs, the Doctor automatically shook the man’s hand.
********************
Suddenly the Doctor wasn’t standing in an old hospital corridor. He was looking at the same handsome man, though his hair and clothes were different, from a distance, like through a view screen. The Doctor’s body was burning from the inside; he was sick, dying maybe. And there was something else, a painful sense of wrongness all around that he couldn’t identify.
The mix of sensations was overwhelming and disorienting, but he was inside the TARDIS, and that gave him a point of reference. Despite it all, the Doctor’s attention was drawn back to the man’s face as he watched the TARDIS dematerialize from outside. Confusion, disbelief, desolation. As the time ship disappeared into the void, the Doctor knew that he was the cause. That the Doctor was the betrayer.
*********************
Then the Doctor’s perception shifted. His body was coursing with energy, and it was a different body. A different regeneration. He was standing in a large room with people scattered around, but what he noticed first was the man walking purposefully toward him. It was the same man, looking older, more mature, and filthy, wearing ragged clothing.
He leaned toward the Doctor and said urgently, “But you can’t trust him!”
The Doctor saw worry, and a bit of desperation, in the man’s eyes, and more. Beyond his response to whatever the current situation was, there was a depth of pain and suffering that was startling to see in a human, and the Doctor wondered what put it there.
He was aware of two powerful distortions of time in the room with him, but he didn’t manage to sort them out before the scene shifted again.
*********************
The Doctor was lying on a soft bed, floating in endorphin-based bliss, smiling with pleasure. The man was lying on his side next to him, gloriously naked, propped up on one hand looking down at him. The profundity of the affection, adoration – the love – on his face touched the Doctor inside, in a place he’d never expected anyone to reach again. The Doctor’s hand, his own, but unfamiliar, reached out and slid into the man’s hair and around to cradle the nape of his neck. “Jack,” a strange voice, his own, said.
The man, Jack, looked much the same as the last time, but felt older. Impossibly older, as though he had lived even longer than the Doctor. There was a twinge of discomfort at the man’s presence, too, in the Doctor’s gut, but it was insignificant next to the joy and gratitude he felt. The Doctor couldn’t remember ever being this happy.
*****************************
Of course it didn’t last. The Doctor found himself in the TARDIS again, standing before the open door. Outside was a maelstrom of dark chaos, the violence of the Void.
Jack was next to him, as usual. This time the Doctor was shocked at the age he sensed in the other man. Tens of millennia, but that couldn’t be. He only looked a bit older; there were lines around his eyes that made him even more beautiful, though the Doctor wouldn’t have thought that possible either, and patches of grey at his temples.
He must have asked Jack a question, because the other man took the Doctor’s hands in his own and leaned close, resting his forehead against the Doctor’s, and said, “Yes, I am. You know that I have to. I’m the only one who can hold the fissure together until you can find a way to fix it. The whole universe is at stake.”
Tears welled in the Doctor’s throat. He did not want Jack to do this. He would do anything to stop it, but he was helpless, powerless.
Jack went on, “You will fix it, I know you will. I trust you and I believe in you. And I’ll be waiting right here until you come back.”
The Doctor wanted to say something, to express his feelings, but grief stole his words. Jack reluctantly released the Doctor’s hands and walked to the open door. He paused, but didn’t look back, then stepped out. He was a fixed point of calm amid the chaos, and walked, somehow, straight out away from the ship.
Jack moved directly to a bright, gaping wound in the Void and stretched out his arms to encompass it. At this point the Doctor didn’t know if what he was seeing was physically happening, or a metaphor. Jack was more than human, surely, as he controlled the tempest, bending it to his will. He floated, rotating, until the Doctor could see his face again. That beloved countenance grew increasingly contorted with effort and pain, until he flung his head back and screamed.
**************************
The Doctor jumped forward in time, and back, both, not an unfamiliar sensation for a time traveller. He was still reeling from the emotional trauma of what he had just experienced, and it took him a moment to register what was in front of him. It was a large glass tank filled with smoke, inside of which floated an enormous head. Tendril-like appendages undulated softly at its sides. This was, the Doctor thought, shocked again, perhaps the oldest being he had ever encountered. It was billions of years old.
He looked for Jack, whom he expected to be here somewhere. There was a cat in a nun’s habit, but no Jack.
He was drawn back to the gigantic face and he knelt, spreading his hands against the glass. The huge lips were moving, but the Doctor heard the forming words directly in his head. “I knew you would come.”
He could feel the strain emanating from the ancient creature. He said, “Old friend, what happened to you?”
“I’m failing,” it said sadly.
This incredibly powerful ancient being was pouring out its life force, giving of itself to save others, draining itself faster than it could be replenished. It was an extraordinary display of self sacrifice, but the Doctor was distracted by other concerns.
Where was Jack?
**************************
The Doctor turned around. He was standing in a forest of tall trees, the trunks bare except where the canopy formed high overhead. Jack was standing in front of him, looking young and innocent, like he had so long ago.
“It’s good to see you,” Jack said.
“Is that you?” the Doctor asked. “How?” He tried to touch Jack, but his hand passed through as though it were a holographic projection. The handsome young man shimmered with light, glowing softly. It reminded the Doctor of Rose, though he wasn’t sure why.
“I chose this form because I thought you might like it,” Jack said, smiling, “but I haven’t got it all worked out yet. You look good, though. A hotty, as usual.”
The Doctor looked down at himself to see muscular limbs all encased in faded blue denim. Another regeneration, then.
“Can you stay?” he asked the apparition. “Will you come with me?”
Jack shook his head sadly. “Not now, I can’t. There are things I have to…. I just wanted to see you, and let you know that I’m still here. Show you what I am. I wanted to share this with you.”
The Doctor cocked his head. “So share, then.”
Jack grinned and reached for the Doctor’s hand. At first he felt nothing, but then the pressure increased as Jack’s hand became solid. Their palms fit together perfectly, as they always had done.
There was a jolt of energy, and the Doctor gasped. Suddenly he could see all of time and space unfolding. He’d always believed that that’s what he’d seen before, but now he knew that his perception was limited, as dwarfed by this as humans had been dwarfed by the Time Lords.
The Doctor laughed out loud, and met and held Jack’s vivid blue eyes. “Thank you.”
************************
He was dying. The Doctor could feel his body failing, but there was no energy gathering for a regeneration. This was it, then.
He was lying on the ground, held in someone’s arms. When his vision cleared, he saw that it was Jack, of course. He could feel the strength and warmth in the very real body.
“Jack,” he said, his voice tremulous. “Sorry. Sorry to leave you.”
Jack hugged him closer. “No, don’t be sorry, Doctor. You may be dying, but you aren’t leaving me.”
The Doctor didn’t understand, but it also didn’t seem to matter.
The other man went on, “Don’t worry about me. I can see the future now, you know, and I can tell you that you’re going to love it. You’re taking a step, just one little trip,” he teased affectionately, then continued, “and I’ll be there when you arrive.”
The Doctor’s body was growing distant, but that was all right. He felt fantastic.
**************************
Finding himself again in the hospital corridor was a bit disconcerting, and not even a second had passed. He was shaking the hand of the young man in the RAF uniform, with whom he’d just lived a whole life and then some.
The details were already starting to fade. This man would be important to him, but exactly how was becoming muddled.
The same thing had happened to the Doctor once before, when he was a child and had met the boy who would be his best friend for many years, and his enemy for even more. He’d been terrified for a moment, he remembered, but then had forgotten all the particulars. Only the sense of connection had remained.
Slipping back into the moment, he looked into oddly familiar blue eyes. The young man introduced himself. “Jack Harkness.”
End
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