Ghosts
by Schildkroete
Somehow, the man known to the world as Jack Harkness had always known that the tenth life of the Doctor would also be his last one.
Jack himself had lived for nearly a millennium by now. He'd gone back to travelling through time centuries ago and in all that time he had come across only two different incarnations of his old friend. He'd avoided contact with the one he'd met first before he'd met him, so as not to mess with the time lines. He'd never met him before his ninth life, though, even in times and places he knew he should have been. Because of the Time War, the Doctor had explained once, in two short sentences before moving on to the next topic. When Gallifrey had been destroyed, when the Time Lords had been erased from existence, the entire history of the universe had been rewritten. Only the personal timeline of the Doctor had been spared, so everything he'd done had really happened for those involved. Jack had not been part of that timeline back then and now he could not touch it. He wasn't sure he fully understood these things, despite being an experienced time traveller himself, but the Doctor avoided the topic and it wasn't important enough to bother him with something he wanted to forget.
Not once did Jack run into an incarnation of him after the one he'd come to know so well. The past was closed to him and the future didn't seem to exist.
Of course it was still possible that the Doctor of later lives avoided him for some reason or another. Jack reminded himself of that whenever his mind wandered in this direction, but most of the time he tried not to think of it at all. It felt like a lie anyway.
When he'd first met him, back in England, Second World War, the Doctor had been balancing on the edge of the abyss, and when he'd met him again later it had gotten worse. After the Master, after he'd seen that a Time Lord did not have to regenerate if he didn't want to, Jack had thought 'That could be the Doctor lying there'. Because one look into his eyes had told Jack that this man didn't want to cheat death anymore. He didn't know what for. And Jack had thought, then and every time he'd met him since, that something had to happen for the Doctor to be saved. That he needed something to fight for, a reason to live that was stronger than the pain of existence and the call of peace from the dark places beyond, or they would lose him.
Jack knew it himself, the wish for all to be over, to be free from pain and responsibility and far to many memories, but then, the universe could do without him. It would hardly notice when he was gone and that was a relief: the permission to go whenever he wanted to, provided he found a way to do it.
A sun should do it. A black hole, the blast of an atomic bomb. Where there's a will there's a way, he told himself, he just hadn't felt like trying one so far. Maybe someday he would. He'd seen many worlds in many times, but his own future was still unwritten.
And so was the Doctor's. Jack didn't count the times he'd closed his eyes and refused to see the signs. A cosmos without the Doctor was beyond his imagination.
He'd known this was the Doctor's last life. But he'd never really believed it.
He hadn't been there in the end. He didn't see it happen, had been too slow, too weak, useless. He'd only heard the screams, and when he was alone now and everything was quiet he still heard them. He didn't think they'd ever leave him.
It had been screams of agony, of pain beyond words, but that had been all. There was no desperation in that voice, no fear, just pain and the acceptance of pain and the end that was to come. That had been the worst part – Jack had run through the empty corridors and listened to the hoarse, cracked, exhausted voice of a man who was being tortured to death, and known that whatever he would do, it would be too late.
It had always been too late.
The next day his throat had felt like he'd screamed himself, for hours, but he had no memory of it. For days he didn't think clearly. He remembered, though, blowing up the ship in the Doctor's name, never stopping to wonder if he'd want that.
The universe didn't end there and then. Five weeks later in Jack's personal timeline it was still existing. The pain had become a dull ace in his heart that never went away.
He was sitting in the cafeteria of a space station run by humans, in the 46th century. Not quite the time he was born in, far from the era he had spend most of his life in and he felt like he didn't belong here. Well, he didn't, of course. He'd just never noticed it before, not like this.
The Doctor always seemed to belong everywhere he went, always seemed like he owned the place. Jack watched him over his untouched coffee as he chatted cheerfully with some men in uniform at the other end of the room. The Doctor hadn't seen him yet and Jack just watched, wondering when exactly in the Doctor's timeline this was, how long before the end. The artificial gravity of the station was pressing him into the chair.
In the distance the Time Lord laughed, openly, unconcerned. He looked happy. The other men joined his laughter. Jack couldn't hear what they were talking about until he got closer.
He didn't remember leaving his table.
The Doctor's face betrayed surprise when he saw him, then lit up, his smile soon replaced by a look of alarm as Jack strode towards him without slowing down, put a hand behind his neck and kissed him, hard, possessive.
'I'm going to lose you,' he thought.
After the initial moment of surprise the Doctor pulled free. He looked confused rather than angry, although the anger was still visible. The small scar on his forehead was already there, Jack noticed, so this was at least his third century in this form.
The other three men stared at them with their jaws closer to the ground than to their noses. The Doctor smiled at them apologetically.
"I think Captain Harkness and I have some private matters to discuss in my cabin," he said, grabbed Jack's arm and dragged him from the cafeteria. He didn't speak when they made their way to his room, but Jack could sense his anger rising. He didn't care.
The room was small: A large bed took almost half of it and some more space was taken by the TARDIS parked in a corner.
The moment the door closed behind them the Doctor whirled around to face Jack but just as he opened his mouth to say something Jack covered it with his own. It wasn't gentle, the way he'd always wanted it to be. There was so much rage in him, and rage was another name for desperation. He needed to cover his mouth with something or he would spill out everything that would happen, change what was already history. Cause irreparable damage to the universe. He pushed the Doctor down onto the bed, straddling him. Thin wrists trapped helplessly in his large hands.
… his fingers wrapped around a wrist sticky with blood, broken bones beneath cold skin, no pulse, nothing, nothing…)
But the Doctor was a Time Lord and stronger than he looked. He managed to push Jack back and there was still this mixture of anger and confusion in his eyes.
"Don't!" he hissed in a voice that said he meant it.
Jack recaptured his wrists in one hand, let the other roam down the Doctor's body, looking for a way beneath all those clothes.
"Stop me," he said.
The Doctor was writhing beneath him when he began stoking his groin. His breath caught in his throat. But he wasn't human, not a slave of his own body. He wriggled free again, crawled up the bed until he was almost sitting on the pillow and kept Jack at arm's length when he followed.
When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle.
"Why?" he wanted to know.
Jack couldn't speak. In his mind he was looking into the Doctor's broken eyes, saw his own dirty hand reaching out to close them. The smell of blood was overpowering.
Finally he spoke:
"You can't stop me."
'I can't stop me.'
The Time Lord looked into his eyes, his intense stare making Jack flinch inside, but he didn't back away. After a moment the Time Lord let his hands fall away and he didn't resist when Jack continued where he had stopped, and he didn't fight the reactions of his body anymore. The flush on his face, his irregular breathing
(…no breath at all…)
made Jack feel guilt and happiness at the same time. The grief came back before he'd exorcised it completely.
His heart had already broken.
The Doctor helped him remove his clothes, then entirely gave himself over to the instinctive reactions of his body. Jack had had dreams about this, and it wasn't how he'd imagined it. It wasn't romantic, he wasn't tender and the Doctor wasn't really willing, just not unwilling enough to stop him. Which he could have done – so what if he'd had to kill Jack in the process? It wasn't perfect.
But at least it was something.
Jack soon learned what made the Doctor shudder, what made him gasp and moan. Suddenly he had a purpose again, something he was good at. He wasn't useless.
(The Doctor had always needed someone to protect him from the universe he wanted to protect. Jack couldn't even bury him.)
The Time Lord stopped breathing for a moment when Jack entered him. He kept his eyes closed all the time, ever since he'd given up fighting, and Jack thought 'You are a ghost.'
He was tight, tighter than any human Jack had ever fucked, virgin or not. His body wasn't meant to be used this way
(at all)
but Jack didn't let that stop him. He let his rage guide him and with every thrust his mind screamed 'Why didn't you regenerate, you bastard?' but his voice died somewhere in this throat.
Much later, when the Doctor was sleeping in his arms, Jack gently brushed the damp hair out of his face but he waited in vain for the wave of guilt and regret that should wash over him. The anger had been replaced by a momentary numbness, the pain was, for now, hidden beneath a layer of exhausted satisfaction and he'd just slept with the Doctor. How could he regret that?
A part of him was grateful that the Doctor had given in and not made him a rapist.
Fatigue was making his mind sluggish, but he fought it, knowing when he woke up the Doctor would be gone. He would see him again, time and time again, somewhere and somewhen, after this meeting and before and how he would bear it he didn't know.
'Tie him to the bed,' a little voice in his head whispered. 'Tie him to the bed and never let him leave. Keep him here, with you, save. Don't let him go, ever.' A dry sob escaped Jack's throat then. But he had been a time agent once and knew what couldn't be.
He drifted to sleep.
When he woke up the Doctor was sitting beside him on the bed, fully clothed. He smiled cheerfully down at him and said:
"I made you coffee."
Jack's mind needed a moment to catch up with the reality he found himself in, but the gratefully took the mug the Doctor gave him. He watched the other man as he got up, stretched his long limbs. Then the Doctor strode over to the TARDIS and he was a ghost, the shadow of a man who had died five weeks ago. He fished for his key.
"Are you going to pretend it never happened?" Jack heard his own voice say. The Doctor hesitated, turned back to him.
"Is there anything you'd like to talk about, Jack?" A challenge.
There was a bright red scratch running down the side of his neck. Jack didn't remember doing that and for a moment he couldn't breath. Before that scratch would fade completely they would see each other for the last time.
And he found himself saying:
"I know the future." A stupid statement form a time traveller, but the Doctor understood. He looked down at Jack and although he didn't smile his eyes where full of warmth, and sadness.
"No," he said softly. "You only know the past. Like all of us. Whatever we know we know because it already has happened, even if for some people it is still to come." His words where at the same time damnation and absolution. He unlocked the TARDIS's door and stepped inside.
(The Doctor was standing in the open door, looking back for one last time before going on a mission that might (would) kill him. Smiling and shaking his head.
"You've already had your goodbye, Jack.")
"Goodbye, Jack," he said quietly and closed the door. Jack looked at the blue box and fought his tears until it faded away. Then he raised his still steaming mug of coffee to the empty room and formed the words with his lips.
"Here's to the next time."
But his voice failed him.
-end
August 05, 2007