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Title:Race and Pause.
Author:Keenir.
Summary:Jack Harkness races to rescue Tosh from a spacial bomb…and Tosh tries not to get killed.
Written after 'Countrycide' and before any following episodes.
Pairing:Jack/Toshiko.
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"Tosh!" Captain Jack Harkness shouted as his feet left the street and struck down on the puddle-dappled alley. Why do alleys only figure into things when its night? Answer later.
His eyes were better than humans had in this century – the Event he'd mentioned to ancestress Gwen, had far-lasting affects, fully-felt even in the 55th century -- and with these eyes, he could see the edge of the bomb. A spacial bomb, set to explode after a set amount of time, taking with it anyone who'd wandered in…and anyone who'd been left in it.
Trae Bierness had left – no, had put Tosh in the spacial bomb, as bait for "the legendary Harkness himself, 57th of the Lateral Line," as Bierness had said upon his capture; Gwen and the others had looked puzzled unsurprisingly: I'd said I was unable to die…that'd been it. Bierness was on his way to captivity.
"Tosh!" shouted one last time before hurling himself through the edge of the bomb. Unlike the ones considered conventional for this century, spacial bombs recreated a scene or an event in history. Since their invention, they'd been used both for reward and punishment, suicide and martyrdom. They were easy to escape…if you knew you were in one. Its so easy to mistake its inside for somewhere the Rift might take you.
The light was different inside the bomb. Streetlamps provided much of the visible light, where those lamps hadn't been busted up by all the fighting. Overhead blazed the dim purple haze of the blue giant. Great, a time limit and radiation. "Tosh!"
Hearing noise, a Merrier leaped out from a grave-of-dozens, tilting its serrated skull at him, eager to use an armament that would make a Triceratops envious – and then carve the dino like so much haggis. Its tail rattled, daring him to get past him.
"I do not have time for this!" Jack growled at it.
Its body flared white and yellow. Make time was its meaning. Merriers loved to fight, they lived to fight anything that wasn't a Merrier. And that was one of their good sides – that only the Time Lords hated the Daleks more than the Merriers did.
It charged him it did. "Hyll u eaen," Jack laughed as he danced to the side and slammed the end of his nearer forearm down on its vulnerable neck, then crunched that neck with his heel once it was on the pavingstones. Merrier armor was an alloy of calcium and various metals, but their skeleton was silica.
No other Merriers showed up. This one must've been the last of its piece. Looking around, "Tosh!" at the top of his lungs, which was only a little louder than anyone at Torchwood'd heard from him. 'One city block horizontal diameter,' Bierness had said of the bomb, 'one city block vertical diameter. No subterranean element – wouldn't want to stress a Lateral Line.' We were the elite, and when we fell by the wayside, way harder did he fall. "Tosh!" as he got moving again. The only line-of-sight here was the pavingstone street, and Tosh wasn't on it.
She'd look for shelter, Jack thought to himself. She knows what that sun means. She loves the sky, even after seeing all the nightmares that come from space. And part of him wondered if that'd been what initially drew him to her.
Please don't start raining.
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"Tosh!"
She heard her name being called, but she didn't dare move, didn't dare make a sound. She'd run in here for shelter from the hard radiation of the sun overhead – had that Bierness thrown her through the Rift to some far world? so far, everything pointed to that – only to find she wasn't the only one who'd had that idea. It was a struggle to keep her breathing slow and silent, a fight to keep her pulse from telegraphing her fear. For the first time in her life, Toshiko Sato tried not to think – they could sense thoughts, she'd heard.
It wasn't moving. Was it dead? She couldn't see any damage to it. Was it asleep? Did they sleep? Was it just lurking in wait, patiently sure she would give herself away? Tosh's throat felt way too dry for comfort, but she dared do nothing. It was alone. Was that normal? Where were the others?
Dalek.
Tosh's eyes widened when she realized she'd thought the thought and subvocalized the name in her thought.
Yet it did nothing. Did it tolerate its own name, granting leeway there? "Dalek?" Tosh asked, her voice a scratchy whisper. No response still.
This one didn't match the pictures she'd seen of Daleks. Wrong colour, for one – a particularly grievous fact, given how photographed Daleks had been unvaryingly identical in how they'd looked. Was this one a step in the evolution of the Daleks?
Thankful it wasn't commanding 'Exterminate,' Tosh weakly told it, "Hello," and tensed herself.
Nothing. Not a thing from the dark Dalek. Could the radiation be interfering with its movements? Might Daleks – or at least this type – be more vulnerable to hard radiation than humans? In which case, what was it doing here? A fellow victim of the Rift? Despite herself – all she knew about Daleks – she felt sorry for it.
That didn't stop her from shouting "Jack!" to the best of her ability.
With a clatter, the Dalek's plunger moved.
Tosh skittered the half-step back, her posterior against the wall, mute, jaw still open. It was waiting after all.
It stood there, still.
She didn't move, watching it.
Not even the iris at the end of the turret moved.
Another clatter, a stone falling to the ground from somewhere in the ceiling. It hadn't been the Dalek after all, seeing another such stone by the foreward edge of the Dalek's support pad.
Looking ceilingwards now, Tosh wished she could see what it was that was moving about up there. Its just a rat. Its just a rat. Oh please let it be just a rat.
There was a noise now – and now – and now. It was the sound of seals hauling themselves across a beach. Its just a rat. In case it wasn't a rat, she didn't move and didn't scream. There was the chance it was trying to frighten her into movement, into crying and screaming and calling for help. Just a rat.
A rat pounced down from the ceiling, landing on the floor. Easily the size of a wolfhound, this rat had thick, heavy, stout jaws, perfectly suited to breaking bones. The innermost two digits of each paw were angled to be thumbs – and on each paw the innermost thumb and the innermost finger were tipped with a wicked sinister claw. A rat, Tosh thought with a gulp, looking at it, wondering if she could outrun –
A dead rat. Something had torn considerable chunks out of the rat, along with whatever sort of a tail it'd once had.
Once more, she looked up. Where are you? What are you? Wouldn't you rather have a conversation with me than a meal of me? If whatever was up there could read minds, it gave no indication.
No movement from any of them.
Eying the doorway, Tosh took a step forward – and down swooped the blind squid head on a slender boneless neck. The tentacle-tips bore hooks and claspers, while the mouth itself sprouted dozens of recurved serrated teeth. You're not a vegetarian. You're not even an omnivore.
It is humanly possible to slip on nothing – and just as possible to slip from fear. Such a fall – more likely than not – saved Tosh's life, as the tentacles thrust forwards into the space where her head'd been seconds earlier.
No longer bothering with breathing quietly, she took in all the oxygen she could get, scrambling away from that alien.
…right up to where the Dalek had parked. No way around the ceiling monster. Climbing up the Dalek and hoping against hope that it didn't pick now to be like Jack. One reviving man was quite enough for her. Jack, where are you?
Lookin around for a gun, a cannon, a knife – any sort of a weapon would do, really – one hand came to rest on one of the Dalek's arms, and not the plunger.
Fired the laser – it is a laser, isn't it? – at it, blasting a gap between the alien head and its neck. The tentacles and their head made a damp squish when it landed on the floor. I killed it. Tosh looked at her hand, pulling it off the Dalek weapon, which didn't fire again. Postmortem nerve firing? very much hoping so.
Another splattering sound, off to one side. Looking at it, she saw a starfish bound up in blue-veined clear placenta lying in the middle of the room. Before her eyes, the arms of the starfish detached from one another and began wriggling free of the tearing placenta. What the…?
More bursts of fire at the pieces – not from the Dalek or Tosh, but from Jack's wrist-device, him standing in the doorway. Once all of the aliens were dead, Jack and Tosh looked to one another and moved likewise.
They embraced as soon as possible, that being one thing that even thirty-five thousand more years couldn't eliminate.
And "I don't know where we stand on the clock," Jack said, "but we need to get out of here before the neighborhood's eradicated."
Toshiko nodded, holding his hand and never letting go. Their kiss, she reasoned, could wait til they were clear of here.
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The End