Notes: Sequel to He Who Fights with Monsters and Familiar Monsters, but can be read on its own. If crossing over two alternate universes isn't self-indulgent, I don't know what is, but I enjoyed writing this and it gave me a chance to explore Jack's POV on this particular 'verse a bit more. Tell me what you think!
Warnings: bad temporal mechanics, some swearing, mild violence, and implications of nastier stuff in terms of physical/psychological abuse.
"Hey," Jack begins as he wanders into the console room, "Doc, I was wondering –"
He freezes. The man bent over the console isn't the Doctor. His body is too small, his hair too light, his skin too pale.
"Don't call me Doc," the stranger says absently, turning. "Listen, something is very –" His eyes (bright amber instead of dark brown) widen in a reflection of Jack's own shock. "– wrong," he finishes. "Oh, dear."
"Who are you?" demands Jack, stepping forward and regretting the fact that he is unarmed.
The stranger – young, Jack notes automatically, maybe a bit younger than Ianto; tawny hair, elfin features; sharply dressed, black waistcoat over a white dress shirt and pressed slacks, the chain of a pocket watch and the wire frames of his glasses glinting in the ethereal light – sighs, running a hand through his hair.
"I'm the Doctor," he says wearily, "but evidently not your Doctor. What regeneration are you with?"
"Tenth," says Jack slowly, "but how can you be the Doctor? I saw him just fifteen minutes ago, and he was definitely not you."
"I'm the tenth one too," says the stranger, almost to himself. "Damn, we must have jumped timestreams."
Before Jack can think of what to say to that non-answer (that, at least, is like the Doctor), his Doctor's voice comes drifting into the console room.
"Jack, have you been messing with the temporal stabilizers again? I told you not to touch – oh." The Doctor stops in the doorway and blinks at the stranger, who raises an eyebrow coolly. "Ah. So that was the disturbance I felt."
"Indeed," says the stranger, and if his look is cool, his voice is positively frosty.
"Also," says the Doctor, suddenly going very still, slowly withdrawing his hands from his pockets, "that at least partially explains the gun which is pressed against my head."
Jack starts, spinning towards him, but any move he might have made is cut short by the stranger's voice.
"Harkness! Stand down!"
Jack jumps at the sharp command, but it isn't directed at him. He stares, open-mouthed, as a carbon-copy of himself steps out from behind the Doctor, holding a sonic blaster and looking angry and confused.
"Put that thing away," snaps the . . . well, the Other Doctor, Jack supposes, but something's not quite right. There's an edge to his voice, an edge to him which is making the hairs on the back of Jack's necks stand on end. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"What am I doing?" sputters Other Jack indignantly. "What are they doing?"
"Oh, just passing through," says the Proper Doctor cheerfully, rocking back on his heels. "Unfortunately, we may be inadvertently tearing a hole in reality as we speak, so if we could ignore the guns for a moment . . . ?"
"Of course," says the Other Doctor. He shoots Other Jack a look which clearly states, we will talk about this later, and Jack feels a stab of pity for his twin. "Your Jack informs me that you're the tenth regeneration."
"Yep," says the Doctor brightly, popping the P. "Since you don't remember that and I don't remember you, I can assume that you are as well?"
Other Jack shoots a questioning look at Jack from behind his Doctor's back. Do you have any idea what's going on?
Jack shrugs in reply. Not a clue.
"Doctor," he begins, taking it upon himself to ask, seeing as the Other Doctor seems ready to toss Other Jack into the Time Vortex at any further provocation. Both Time Lords look around, but it's the Proper Doctor who answers.
"Yes, Jack?" he asks mildly. Jack takes his lack of impatience as reassurance that reality will probably survive another few minutes, and continues.
"Mind telling us why there's two of me?"
"We've jumped timestreams," says the Doctor, as if it's the most obvious thing in the Universe.
"Yeah, so he tells me. What does that mean?"
"We-ell," says the Doctor with a grimace, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's a bit hard to explain in English . . ."
"It means that something happened to you that didn't happen to us, or visa versa, probably relatively recently," says the Other Doctor. "Causality split into two timestreams, and one of our TARDISes has jumped between them. Since the two TARDISes are essentially the same object, they merged, and now we have to separate them and get both of us back to our proper timestreams before Reality implodes."
"Well, sure, if you want to grossly simplify it," huffs the Proper Doctor, looking affronted. The Other Doctor rolls his eyes.
"Regeneration isn't set in stone. He," says the Other Doctor, nodding at his taller counterpart, "died differently than I did, so now he lives differently."
"Right!" says the Proper Doctor, clapping his hands together. "And that's the perfect place to start! We need to figure out where the timestreams diverged. Was your ninth regeneration the same as mine? Tetchy bloke, big ears, leather jacket?"
The Other Doctor nods sharply.
"How'd you regenerate?"
The Other Doctor swallows, his hands curling into fists.
"The Gamestation. Daleks." He spits the word like a curse, and the Proper Doctor's eyes darken in agreement with his hatred.
"Yes, me too. But obviously not quite the same way, because your Jack isn't immortal. So what happened to you?"
"What?" asks Other Jack, shooting a wide-eyed looked at his counterpart. Now that Jack thinks about, it makes sense – the other him is younger, more impulsive, less comfortable with the Doctor (though whether that's because his youth, the situation, or his Doctor's personality is unclear).
He gives the younger him – whose question is ignored by both Doctors – a rueful shrug. He might have started explaining, but then the Other Doctor says something which makes his blood freeze.
"I set off the Delta Wave."
The Proper Doctor stills, ceasing his barely perceptible fidgeting. He stares at his other self, his face carefully blank and his eyes black as night.
"Did you have time to refine it?"
The Other Doctor's jaw tightens, his pointed chin tilted upward in a gesture of defiance, his eyes cold.
"No."
Jack sucks in a startled, horrified breath, and the Proper Doctor's jaw clenches. Other Jack's eyes dart from one Doctor to the other, obviously wanting to step to his Doctor's defense but not knowing if the interference would be welcomed.
"Where was Rose?" asks the Proper Doctor, his voice carefully controlled. The Other Doctor falters, confusion and pain flashing across his face.
"Dead," he says, and Jack is actually relieved to hear the grief-filled tightness in his voice. He was beginning to fear that the Other Doctor was less like his Doctor and closer to the only other Time Lord he has met. Now, however, there is guilt and vulnerability showing through the Other Doctor's cold mask, and Other Jack moves forward to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder as he continues. "Long dead. Why?"
"How?" the Proper Doctor questions sharply. "When?"
"A Dalek, Utah, 2012," says the Other Doctor shortly, quickly burying his hurt again and retreating behind a shield of aloof irritation. "Again, why?"
"Because that's where we diverged," says the Proper Doctor. He tilts his head towards Jack and addresses him, but he is clearly still watching his counterpart from the corner of his eye. "Rose and I landed in a bunker in Utah in the year 2012. Turns out it was some billionaire's idea of a collection; all salvaged alien artifacts. Junk, mostly, but his most prized possession was alive, for a certain value of the word. A Dalek. The last one, I thought."
The Doctor gives a bitter, hollow chuckle. Jack flinches, and Other Jack's eyes widen in something like recognition.
"It got free, of course," the Proper Doctor continues. "Killed hundreds of people – but it had absorbed some of her humanity. Enough that it couldn't kill her; killed itself instead. That's what happened in our timeline, anyway. I expect it went rather differently in theirs."
"Quite," says the Other Doctor tightly. Then, in a typically Doctor-ish shift, he's business-like again, spinning away from Other Jack and towards the console. "Now that we know where the timestreams split, we need to get them untangled," he says over his shoulder.
"Right!" says the Proper Doctor, fresh energy flooding him, as well. "It would probably help if we knew how they got tangled in the first place. Which brings me back to my original question – Jack."
Jack jumps.
"Yeah, Doc?"
"Having you been messing with the temporal stabilizers again?"
"No," Jack answers honestly. "But . . . I did tighten the dimensional buffers earlier." He thought that he knew what he was doing with those. Apparently not, as the Proper Doctor gives an exasperated sigh and the Other Doctor rolls his eyes in an eerily familiar expression of scorn.
"Don't do that," the Proper Doctor tells him unnecessarily, before turning to the Other Doctor. "That explains us, anyway, but the shields had to be compromised on both sides."
"Captain?" the Other Doctor addresses Other Jack, who shakes his head.
"I didn't touch anything."
"Jack . . ."
"No, really!"
"Alright," says the Other Doctor. A subtle tension is flowing into his frame, an entirely new level of ice creeping into his eyes. Other Jack looks something between nervous and resigned. The Other Doctor spins abruptly, face hardening as he barks what sounded like a name – or a curse. "Koschei!"
Beside Jack, the Proper Doctor's breath catches, and he turns to see dark eyes wide in a white face. He opens his mouth to ask what's wrong, but is distracted by the sound of movement and turns to see a man he thought he would only ever see in nightmares.
His stomach turns with dread and terror as his blood roars in his ears. He can't think, he can't breathe –
"Easy, Jack." The Doctor's voice is steady and soothing in his ear, but there is a tension in the thin hand which grips his shoulder that belies his even tone.
"Oh, dear Rassilon," drawls the Master, leaning against the doorway. It isn't quite the Master he knows – his hair is darker, and there are other subtle differences in his face – but he's close, like a drawing by a less than perfect artist. He surveys the room with the casual disdain which Jack remembers all too well, and the scorn in his voice is exactly the same. "There's two of them. I'm amazed they're not humping like rabbits yet."
"Really?" asks Other Jack. "All the people in this room and I'm the one you're accusing of egotism?" There's venom in his voice and a touch of fear in his eyes, but not nearly enough of either. Different timestream, Jack reminds himself. The Doctor is cold, Jack is young, and the Master – the Master is afraid. It's a fleeting expression, quickly covered by a sneer, but the look which flashes across his face when the Other Doctor approaches him is pure terror.
"We've jumped timestreams, Kosch," says the Other Doctor, his voice sickly sweet, his smile all teeth and no warmth. There's no doubting it now – the Master physically recoils as the Other Doctor grips his shoulder, only to lean into the touch a moment later.
Jack has seen that reaction before, between different versions of the same two people, but reversed. He takes a step back, feeling sick.
"You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?" asks the Other Doctor, rounding the Master to murmur in his ear from behind, low and almost loving. Other Jack averts his eyes, but Jack watches in horrified fascination, unable to tear his eyes away as the Master shivers, obviously unwillingly.
"No idea," says the Master lightly. "Why don't you ask your pet monkey?"
"Play nice," says the Other Doctor, his mild tone jarringly incongruous with the abrupt tightening of his grip, sudden and hard enough to make the Master wince. "You know better than to lie to me. Tell me the truth."
"What's the magic word?" the Master retorts.
Wrong move. All traces of amiability, false or otherwise, drop from the Other Doctor's face. He shifts his hand and presses his thumb into the Master's shoulder in a place that makes him hiss with pain. It isn't any pressure point Jack recognizes – an old injury, then, and that has all sorts of sickening implications.
"Now," the Other Doctor snarls.
"Alright, alright!" snaps the Master, a coward in any timeline. "I mucked with the gravitic anomalizers a bit! I was bored!"
The Other Doctor loosens his grip, smiling again, and this time it's almost genuine.
"Good boy," he murmurs, stretching upward to press a kiss to the Master's cheek. The Master jerks away, glaring, and the Other Doctor's face hardens. "Well if you're going to be like that . . ." He strikes him across the face, hard.
Jack jerks backwards in alarm. He has never, ever seen the Doctor hit anyone, let alone with such nonchalance. Worse, the Master doesn't even attempt to retaliate, merely skittering backwards with teeth bared like a frightened animal.
"Stop it," the Proper Doctor orders sharply. All eyes fix on him, the Other Doctor's irritated and the Master's glinting with a familiar, cruel light which squashes the tiny tendril of sympathy which has been working its way into Jack's heart.
"Look at you," the Master says, seemingly forgetting his earlier fear. "All guilt and no anger. Oh, I must have had so much fun with you . . ."
The Master is just as mad as always, Jack realizes, and he probably would be horrified by the revelation if he had not already reached his capacity for horror. As it is, he can only manage a dull sort of acknowledgement. The Master is just as mad as always, and the Doctor is even madder. He's amazed that their timestream even exists. He'd have thought that they would have torn the Universe apart by now.
"And you," says the Master, turning his attention to Jack, who fights the urge to run as far as he possibly can. Instead he holds his ground and the Master's gaze as the Time Lord examines him like a piece of meat. "I'd love to know how you happened. He didn't make you, did he? Even he's not that desperate. You just burn –"
"Leave him alone," growl both Doctors at once. Both voices contain enough power to shatter worlds, but Jack is certain that it's the Other Doctor's, with its promise of immediate retribution, which shuts the Master up. That and the small hand which seizes the back of his collar, yanks him backwards, and shoves him towards the door.
"Get out," the Other Doctor snarls. "Out!"
The Master flees. The Other Doctor falls back against the console, pulling his glasses off to run a hand over his face, obviously trying to regain some semblance of control.
"Doctor?" says Other Jack cautiously, standing very still and looking ready to leap away at any moment.
"It's fine, Jack," the Other Doctor sighs, suddenly gentle. Jack doesn't find the abrupt change reassuring in the least, but his double relaxes. "I'm fine. You two should probably leave, as well," he says, slipping his glasses back on and turning towards the console. "You'll only get in the way."
"He's right," says the Proper Doctor, and Jack can't tell whether he's telling the truth or if he just wants to get Jack away from his obviously unhinged counterpart. "Off you go."
Jack hesitates, reluctant to leave the Doctor alone with the Other Doctor and wary of wandering in the corridors into which the Master has just disappeared. Given his apparent status ('prisoner' is the nicest term Jack can think; 'the Doctor's bitch' is probably closer to the truth), he's likely to be even more bitter and vicious than usual.
"Don't worry about precious Koschei," says the Other Doctor, evidently reading at least one of his concerns. "The TARDIS will keep you away from each other."
"Right," says Jack slowly, taking another step away from the composed, elegant man who just moments ago was slapping a dangerous psychopath for looking at him funny. "If you're sure," he says, turning towards his Doctor (but not entirely; no way he's turning his back on the nutcase in spectacles).
"I'm sure," says the Proper Doctor, not looking at him but at his elfin counterpart, face dark.
"Okay," says Jack, and begins to follow Other Jack, who was already halfway through the door, but he can't resist turning back at the last moment. "Just so I know, does the Blinovitch Limitation apply here?"
"No, no," says the Doctor with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Do whatever you want. But I don't want to hear about it!" he calls, as Jack jogs towards his double and out of earshot.
"They think we're going to shag," he informs Other Jack, who has paused to wait for him.
"Are we?" the younger him asks, a familiar, flirty smile creeping onto his face.
"Maybe later," Jack says with an answering grin, but then sobers. "Right now, I want answers."
Other Jack's face falls.
"I don't know what's going on with those two," he says, and he doesn't need to specify.
"Didn't expect you to," Jack replies evenly. The dynamic between the Doctor and the Master is impossible to fathom even when one of them is somewhat sane; with both of them off their rockers it would only be more complicated. "But what about you?"
He isn't sure if it counts as a protective instinct or self-preservation, but he finds that he's extremely concerned about his other self's position on a TARDIS occupied by two madmen.
"What about me?" asks Other Jack, frowning. His face clears a moment later. "Oh, you mean the Master. It's fine. He doesn't really care about me. I mean, yeah, he's a mad dog; he'll take a chunk out of anyone who gets too close . . ."
You have no idea, thinks Jack, remembering Martha's stolen innocence, Lucy Saxon's mangled sanity, the Doctor's hollowed soul.
". . . but the Doctor keeps him on a short chain," his double continues. "He won't touch me on pain of dismemberment." He gives a rueful grimace at Jack's sharp look. "I think the exact words were, 'lay a finger on him, you lose one.'"
"And that doesn't seem extreme to you?" Jack asks incredulously. Or, you know, completely, batshit insane.
"It works," says Other Jack coldly. "Just because your Doctor couldn't protect you –"
"Don't you dare," Jack snarls, advancing on his other self, all protective instinct shifting in an instant. "You don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about."
"Neither do you!" Other Jack snaps back.
They glare at each other for a moment, both of them burning with fury in defense of their Doctors. Finally, Jack falls back, shaking his head. The younger him is right, in a way. He doesn't have any clue what he's talking about; what it took for the Doctor to shatter so completely; what the descent into madness looked like; what atrocities his counterpart and the Doctor witnessed and suffered and committed along the way. His horror and shock are ebbing, leaving a sick mixture of revulsion and sorrow and pity in their wake.
The Proper Doctor and the Other Doctor were the same, once. Then one died and was reborn out of love, doomed to fall fast and land hard, bonding so quickly with everyone he met that when they were torn away they took pieces of him with them. The other killed and was reborn out of hate, doomed to strike first and cut deep, freezing himself in some misguided attempt at fortification until he became brittle and cracked.
Other Jack seems to be reaching a similar midpoint, and the anger drains out of him.
"I know that it's twisted," he says. He huffs out a half-hearted chuckle and gives a weak version of their customary grin. "I mean, we're a pretty open-minded guy, but even by our standards, whatever . . . that is, it's fucked up. But . . ."
He swallows hard, any pretense of cheer fading away, and Jack is suddenly struck by how young he really is. He can't be more than forty.
"If the Doctor isn't hurting the Master then he's hurting himself," says Other Jack. "I can't let him do that. These days, he's so – he's just been – he's not like he seems. He's –"
"He's broken," Jack states flatly, "and you're not about to let anything break him more."
Other Jack nods in agreement.
"Yeah," Jack sighs. "I know how that goes."
There's a beat of silence, and then –
"You're fading!" exclaims Other Jack. Jack glances down at himself, alarmed. He looks perfectly solid, but when he looks up . . .
"So are you. They must have fixed it."
They meet each other's eyes, and Jack has the rather surreal experience of speaking in unison with himself as they both offer the same farewell.
"Good luck."
-DW-
The Doctor is standing still and silent in the console room – his Doctor, tall and wild-haired and pinstriped. His face is a dark mask, and he does not look around when Jack enters.
The silence stretches.
"He has no idea," says the Doctor at last, his voice rumbling from deep in his throat and thick with . . . something. "The other you. He's like a frog being boiled to death."
"I think he knows more than he lets on," Jack replies. The Doctor barely seems to hear him.
"It's already too late. I won't let him go. I can't. Lost too much already; I'll hold onto anything I have left even if it kills everyone involved –"
"Doctor!" Jack cuts him off, stepping in front of him and seizing his shoulders, forcing those dark, haunted eyes to meet his. "That. Was not. You."
"Wasn't it?" the Doctor questions, but then he shakes his head, dropping his gaze to the console. "No. No, I suppose you're right."
"'Course I am," says Jack, forcing some semblance of cheer into his voice. "So. Al-lawn-zee?" He doesn't even attempt to fix his terrible accent, and it serves its purpose. The Doctor smiles despite himself.
"Allons-y," he agrees.
Jack grins at him across the console as the TARDIS jerks into motion. The Doctor thinks that Other Jack won't leave because the Other Doctor would destroy him if he did. In those terms, Jack won't leave because the Proper Doctor would destroy himself if he did. In the end, though, it's irrelevant, because neither Jack would even consider leaving, not while his Doctor still needed him.
Jack loves the Doctor. In any timestream.
For better or for worse.