So, pretty sure I promised a 50th anniversary themed one of these, and I'm finally sitting down to work on it. Finals and essays are coming up fast, so I'm sorry if I've been updating slower than usual. But hopefully this makes up for it. Enjoy!
Dobby's Polka-Dotted Sock
Believing Them
Jack gave a yawn as he pushed open the door of the bar. It had been a long week at work and he was just stopping by for a single drink before heading home to collapse on his bed. He felt he deserved that much.
But he paused halfway to the counter, tired eyes having registered a familiar dark purple color. Turning his head in mild surprise he saw that the Doctor had made it here before him and was pacing the floor in front of the corner booth agitatedly; not angry, rather as if he could simply could not sit down. Clara, on the other hand, was also present, sitting with her legs crossed and arms folded on the table, watching her friend in both amusement and fondness.
Her eyes flickered his way and spotted Jack, a welcoming smile brightening her face. But at that moment the Doctor began muttering to himself, though he suspected the Time Lord was only vocalizing a conversation he'd been chasing around in his brain for the past who knew how long, "Thought he'd be here by now, not that it's too important, just thought maybe we ought to share the news—"
"Doctor—" Clara tried to get his attention.
"Might make it seem more real, that's all, you know? I mean, you know and I know, but we were both there when it happened, we've got the evidence of our eyes, Clara. But even that proof's hard to swallow, isn't it?"
"Doctor—" She added a pointed nod in his direction, but their friend hardly noticed.
"And I'm sure Jack would really appreciate the magnitude of it all—"
"Right now, I'm just appreciating the view," Jack commented, causing the alien to give a start and swivel in his direction.
"Jack! You're here. Oh, sorry Clara, is that what you were trying to say?" When she nodded, he scratched at his cheek sheepishly for a moment then shrugged, seeming to regain that barely suppressed manic energy. He then strode over to Jack, threw his arms around him and gave him a hug.
"Doc?" Before Jack could really properly respond, which he'd have been more than happy to, his friend clapped him on the back and pulled away, though he moved his hands to his shoulders.
"There, hugs are good for shocking news, right? I think someone told me that once, or was that bad news? Cause this isn't bad, it's great news, fantastic even! Brilliant! Amazing! Every word I've ever used and more!" He was grinning widely now, though there was a funny look to his eye which Jack didn't have time to ask about, for the Time Lord drew in a breath and stated, "And you're not going to believe a word of it!"
Jack blinked. "What?"
The Doctor patted his shoulders and then began dragging him to the table. "It's ok, Jack, even I hardly believe it. You should probably sit down, sitting will be good for this. I'm not sitting though, can't give this kind of news while sitting, this is a standing moment—but not for you, Jack, you sit." And he found himself pushed down into the booth across from Clara.
He shot her a bewildered look that he felt adequately broadcasted his complete out-of-the-loop feeling and rising nervousness at this situation. Sure, the Doctor had said it was good news, but just what could have him so frenzied? Clara only gave him a brief sympathetic smile, but he could see that same excited gleam to her eyes too, and while she'd seemed relaxed enough before, now she was sitting on the edge of the booth, clearly waiting to see his reaction.
The Doctor was indeed standing, and he braced both hands flat on the table, leaning in close to them both. Jack found himself moving forward as well, if only because all of this now had him on edge. "What's this about?" He couldn't keep from asking.
"Ok, Jack, remember everything I've ever said about time locks and being the last of my kind and everything about them being gone forever except me and just generally all that stuff?"
"Um, yeah?" He found it hard to imagine ever not remembering all of that 'stuff' as his friend had just put it. This didn't sound like the beginning of some amazing news at all.
But then the Doctor said, "Well, you can forget that, then. Never mind, not to be heard again."
"Sorry?" True, his friend had been talking less about it than in previous regenerations, but to request him to simply ignore the tragedy of the Time War? What was he saying?
"I saved it."
"Saved what?"
"Gallifrey." The Doctor watched him intently for his response. Jack didn't disappoint.
"What." It wasn't really a question, more a demand for the alien to start making real sense. He must have heard wrong or he'd fallen asleep at his desk and was dreaming or he was delusional or—
"I saved Gallifrey," the Time Lord articulated clearly, as if wanting to be certain Jack heard and understood. "It didn't burn, the Moment wasn't used, it—Jack, what are you doing?"
For he had stood slightly and leaned around his friend to search for a waitress. "No, can't do this sober. I need a drink. Miss?" He called the last part out to a rather attractive young woman he'd seen a couple times both here and…other places. She came over with a saucy smile.
"What can I get you, Captain?"
"My usual, babe. Actually," a thought occurred to him as she started to walk away and she looked back. He gestured to the Doctor, who was watching the exchange between them with mild impatience. "Has he had a few?"
She looked at them oddly for the question, but answered, "No, but she had a water. Would you like another?"
"Sure," Clara replied.
Jack turned a suspicious eye on her as their waitress resumed walking away. "Now I know you like cocktails."
"Yeah, but unlike you, thought it'd be best if we did do this sober," she shot back.
They sat, or stood, like that for a while, as he looked for any sign that they were somehow intoxicated. Maybe it wasn't even them; could be crazy clones, Autons, anything. When the waitress returned with the two beverages, she again gave their impromptu faceoff a strange look, but retreated silently.
"I don't believe her," he decided, "you are both completely smashed, have to be."
"Jack, I don't even drink," the Doctor reminded with an exasperated shake of his head.
"Then you must've changed your mind," he stubbornly argued.
"Yes, but not about the drinking! About destroying Gallifrey!"
"You can't change your mind about that!" He accused after taking a large gulp of his drink.
"That's what I thought, but it turns out I did, twelve times over in fact! Thirteen, technically, though I suppose I'll already know at that point so it's not really changing my mind per se—"
"Ok, ok, ok, hold up!" He actually held up both hands to stop the flow of insanity falling from his friend's lips. The Doctor had finally done it; sure he'd always been a little zany, odd, eccentric, but in a funny, even cute way that only occasionally made Jack worry. But this time, the Time Lord had really, actually gone off the deep end into loony-town. And he was going to prove it. "You are asking me to believe that you crossed your own time-stream twelve times, into the Time Lock, and stopped the entire planet of Gallifrey burning despite the fact that to this day there is absolutely nothing left of the constellation of Kasterborous except dust?"
He took the time that the Doctor was using to obviously think about all that logic to finish off his drink. He motioned to the waitress to just keep them coming. Even if the alien did agree with him at this point, he was still going to need a lot of alcohol to get over this.
His friend displayed his own obstinate behavior, however, as he insisted, "Alright, I'll admit I've convinced you pretty good about what I thought happened, but I promise you, Jack, I was wrong. I just didn't remember it at the time!"
"Right," he drew it out, accepting his first refill. "Cause the timelines couldn't preserve your previous memories of it due to potential paradoxes."
"Exactly!" The Doctor was clearly thrilled so much he didn't register the skeptical tone Jack had used, but Clara did as she was now frowning at him. But he'd caught the other male out on a lie.
"So how come you said only one of your successors is going to remember it after you? If you changed your mind twelve times, you shouldn't remember it. You're number eleven." When the Doctor's eyes darted to the side for a moment, however, Jack leaned forward. "Aren't you?"
"Ah, well, that's the funny thing, Jack. See, Big Ears didn't fight the war. He was after. But I had another face before his, one that I didn't use to count."
"He sort of disowned himself," Clara helpfully explained.
"Why am I finding that easier to believe?" He asked aloud almost more to himself, taking another swig of his drink.
The Doctor and Clara both laughed a bit at that, but the Time Lord then sighed. His hands were placed back on the table and he hung his head slightly, causing his fringe to fall over and shade his eyes. "He didn't deserve it. He was possibly the best of us all. I was…ashamed of what I thought he'd done—what I'd done—to end the war. I felt he'd broken the promise of what it meant to be the Doctor," he gave a scoff, and Jack's irritation and outright bafflement at his friend waned slightly. "Like I've done better, like I'll do better. So many battles..."
Clara placed her hand over one of his, and said softly, "You did, though. You changed your mind." The Doctor offered her a small, but genuine smile in thanks which she returned. She then turned a sharper eye on Jack. "The Doctor's not lying. He was going to do it. We met his last regeneration, and the one who fought the Time War." An image still fresh in his mind of a man with spiky brown hair and pinstripes and a penchant for shouting words in other languages came to him, and he cracked a smile. Trying to envision that meeting was certainly interesting. "They were going to help do it, use the Moment, burn that whole planet. But he stopped, because of me."
He could see Clara standing there, perhaps with tears in her eyes, at the critical Moment. The Doctor would have given anything not to make her, make any of his friends, cry. Would Jack have cried? He didn't think so; he would have reigned it in, put on a brave face for his friend as he did what had been predetermined as necessary.
And that was why, while these few meetings were nice, they had come to terms leading lives apart. Jack could quite possibly be the most useful, practical choice for a companion the Doctor could ask for. But he wouldn't be a good one. Because the Time Lord shouldn't travel with someone too much like him, who would see the reason behind the tough choices and help him to make them. He needed these young, fragile, compassionate, hopeful humans, who made him strive to make the impossible choices—only impossible in that they were the best choices that nobody could ever think would be possible to achieve—and challenge him to do even better. He had seen it before, and he knew he was seeing it again.
Jack took a deep breath. "Ok," he said, and pushed aside his drink. "How did you do it?"
When his friend absolutely beamed at him, he felt suspending his disbelief had been the right decision. "I suppose you wouldn't know anything about Time Lord art?"
"No," he answered truthfully, never having really thought about it before.
"Well, it's a bit different from what you humans do. See, instead of painting a two-dimensional image on a canvas, instead we depict it as it should be, three-dimensional. A tiny moment in time captured and frozen, preserved in one instant as a work of art."
He tried to imagine it, a 3D painting. It certainly sounded Time Lord—of course their artwork just had to be bigger on the inside. But what did a painting have to do with Gallifrey?
"We found a painting, or UNIT did, anyway," Clara answered his unspoken question. "They had a whole gallery of them from the time of Queen Elizabeth I."
"The under-gallery," he breathed in realization. He'd heard rumors of the place, never got around to sneaking in for a peek, though.
"That's right. Oh, before I forget, thanks for the vortex manipulator," she tapped her bare wrist. "Very handy."
Jack smirked. "I usually found it was—you know, when a certain somebody didn't break it." He'd finally given the old thing to Kate Stewart's crew for safe keeping after he came back from the dead to find somebody trying to unstrap it from his wrist. They wouldn't have been able to use it, but the future technology could be dangerous if leaked to the wrong person.
The Doctor cleared his throat and took over the story once again. "The thing was, one of the paintings wasn't done in Elizabeth's time. It had fallen into her possession, nobody knows how or even who made it—the Zygons made all the other ones, but we sorted it. Oh! and I thought you might want to know, I did actually marry Liz. Never quite remembered it before, but I saw it with my own eyes. Clara threw flower petals. Nice touch, by the way." The brunette gave him a cheeky grin.
"Wait. Liz as in 'Elizabeth I' Liz? Doc, you actually married the Virgin Queen?" He felt both stunned and incredibly proud—and jealous—of the Time Lord. To think in his time-traveling days the worst he'd done was pull a few cons.
"In all fairness," the alien was hurriedly backtracking before he could get started on any more comments, "it was the last me, and I was trying to prove she was a Zygon. I think. It's all still a little bit hazy. Nothing really came of it, though, left straight after."
Jack pouted. "No wonder she didn't get married after that. You probably put her off the idea forever."
"You're making thirty years of peace and prosperity sound like a bad thing, you do realize?" The Doctor countered crossly, ever the big-picture-thinker.
"Anyway, I think we were talking a little bit about Gallifrey?" Clara reminded them both pointedly, and when they both nodded in acknowledgment she smiled, sipped at her water, and then motioned at them with one arm. "Carry on, then."
"So this mysterious painting?" He made it a question, inviting the other male to continue explaining.
He did, and that excitement from when he'd been pacing the bar waiting for him was back in his eyes. "Right. It was a painting of Gallifrey, on the last day of the Time War. Arcadia being turned to ruin…but not destroyed, not completely. Frozen before the final moment of devastation." There was the hint of a grin on his face. "When Clara made me stop, made me see I had to stop, I got the idea—why not freeze it? The entire planet?"
Jack was having trouble not just letting his mouth gape open. He edged out of the booth and paced back and forth once himself, needing to take a step back and think about what that meant. When he was standing next to the Doctor, he ventured, "What, and just stop it right before, move it out of harm's way?" When they both nodded excitedly, he felt his own amazement rise up inside. "Really?"
"Yes!" They answered together.
"Where?"
"We don't know!" The Doctor declared, and Jack blinked.
"How?"
"Well it was sealed off, safely tucked away, out of sight of the Daleks, the universe, me even! Lost…but still out there."
"What makes you so sure?" He didn't want to continue being the voice of doubt, but he knew what could happen when the Doctor got his hopes up only to have them dashed.
But his friend just got a mysterious smile on his face. "Heard it from a very credible source."
He decided to just accept it. Something was still bugging him however. "Then what about the Time Lock? How'd you get through it?"
"The Moment. See, it was a terrible weapon, designed by the Time Lords that became sentient. But instead of just letting me use it…she showed what would happen if I did, let me change my mind." His features had softened into a warm smile, though his eyes seemed distant.
"She?"
"The interface. It's still hazy to me, understand, because it was one of my past selves who talked to her and maybe I'll never know for sure—but I think it chose her form, Jack. Bad Wolf."
The two words still managed to send a shiver down his spine. He shook his head in surprise. "But you wouldn't have even known about that at that point, right? How does that make sense?"
"Did it ever?" He had to return the slight nostalgic grin. Clara was looking between them both but chose not to ask.
"Wait, then what really happened to all those Daleks? You didn't freeze them too, did you?" He could tell the two were getting a bit tired of all the questions, but he just wanted to be absolutely certain of what this meant.
"No, no," the alien waved a dismissive hand, "but they had surrounded the planet on all sides, and when it disappeared, they were destroyed in their own crossfire."
He nodded, impressed. "That's very poetic."
"Isn't it?" His friend said gleefully. And the strange thing was, Jack suddenly realized that his friend truly was gleeful. That was real happiness in his eyes and he seemed lighter, more vibrant than he had in a long time, perhaps since Jack had even known him. Maybe the Doctor wasn't perfect and maybe he'd done some terrible things in his life, but he hadn't done this, this one thing that had haunted him for centuries.
Jack almost cursed aloud when he felt his eyes stinging. Damnit, he was not going to cry. "So, so what now?"
"Now?" The Time Lord repeated, and gave a little shrug, as if what he was about to say was simple. "I go home." A giddy little giggle escaped, and Jack couldn't help himself.
He grabbed the Doctor's shoulders, pulled the slightly shorter male forward, and kissed him, hard, right on the lips. "Good for you, Doc. I'm- I'm happy for you." Once released, his friend sort of flailed backwards and he used that moment of distraction to wipe at his watery eyes. Clara had her lips pressed together in an attempt not to let her laughter out, though both eyebrows were raised.
The Doctor did not seem cross, more surprised, but after a couple minutes of stammering managed to regain the use of human speech. "Ah, well, thank you, Jack—for your words, mind, not the kiss—not that you're not bad at the kissing! Suppose you hear that a lot, actually—just, ehm." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Right. Well it's- it's not all wonderful. The war still happened, for one, and there'll be a lot to do once I find Gallifrey, if I can even do that. Not to mention the High Council probably wants my head and—oh dear," he stated flatly, and then slapped a hand to his forehead.
"What?" Both Jack and Clara demanded.
"Well, I don't know for sure, could be they just killed each other," he started somewhat hopefully, "but maybe, possibly, once I unfreeze Gallifrey, he'll be back. The Master."
It was probably a combination of disbelief and anger that made his knees give out. As it was, Jack collapsed back into the booth. "No."
"I'm afraid so."
"But he wasn't even there. He came and had fun with us, remember?" The words were incredibly bitter. Clara herself seemed wary, and he wondered if the Doctor had ever mentioned his old nemesis to her.
"Yes, but he was resurrected in 2009 and there was this whole bit with the High Council and some half-cooked scheme of theirs to destroy the Earth—usual Christmas fare, really." Was it sad that he nodded in agreement? He then downed the rest of the drink he'd previously abandoned. "And I stopped them, but he saved my life and was trapped in the Time Lock with the rest of them. I don't know what ultimately happened to him, or will happen as the case may be."
"Well, we'll handle it," Clara decided. "Been doing it for the past however many centuries, right?" The Doctor gave her a smile and nodded in acknowledgement.
"Yes, I suppose I am rather getting ahead of myself, aren't I? I've got to find a misplaced planet first before dealing with him at all."
"Oi, enough of the 'I', Chin Boy, it's 'we'."
"You're going with him?" Jack guessed, glad there would be someone there to keep the Time Lord from becoming too absorbed in his search.
"Well I did convince him to save the thing, be a shame not to see it," she remarked. "Might be nice to find out if there are any sane Time Lords."
"Oi!" The Doctor exclaimed, though not without a grin. Jack thought back on the only other Time Lords he'd met; the Master and, technically, River. The thought of an entire planet of crazy aliens was almost a little too scary. But, though he'd never think of it as making up for her loss, at least there might be others now, Time Lords, who could understand his friend.
"I'm sure they're great, Doc," he spoke up, breaking into the light bickering that had been going on between the other two. "And at least you know this: you're not alone."
It didn't have quite the intended affect he'd thought it would. For a split second, the alien's smile grew—but then his jaw went slack and his eyes widened. "What did you say?" The Doctor breathed, voice suddenly hoarse it was so quiet.
"Just, you know," he felt like he had to explain himself under that intense gaze for some reason. "I mean, yeah, Gallifrey's kind of lost—nice job misplacing a whole planet, by the way—but you'll get there. I know you will. So, really, you're not alone." He paused, and narrowed his eyes when the Doctor regained the smile, only this time it threatened to split his face. "What?"
"Nothing," he stated, reached over, and took a firm hold of his hand. "You remember those words, Jack Harkness. You remember them. And thank you, old friend."
"Calling me old already?" He couldn't help joking, even when the warmth and sincerity in the Doctor's voice brought a smile to his own face. He squeezed his friend's hand briefly and then let it go. "Best of luck to you."
"And you." The Time Lord then offered an arm to Clara, who stood and took it. She laid one hand over Jack's for a moment, though.
"Thanks for believing us."
"What can I say? You start believing anything if you hang around him long enough," he replied, and she grinned. The pair turned and left and he called after them, "Later, Doc!"
His friend shot a smile over his shoulder and then gave a jaunty wave, headed for the next great adventure. Perhaps when they met up next he'd be telling him all about Gallifrey, young-looking face alight with joy, arms flying every which way, fringe falling over his eyes every so often.
Gallifrey back. Jack sat for a long time and wondered just what that might mean for the universe. It was incredible, unbelievable—and he loved it.
So this was mostly happy, yes? Yay! I know, it's a lot of stuff, but realistically Jack was not just going to believe it right off the bat. And yes, I finally let him kiss the Doctor again. How else would our favorite ladies/mens/everthings' man celebrate such wonderful news? Anyway, I hope that this one lived up to expectations, thanks for reading and please review!