Nine Times the Doctor Met Jack
By: The Bubbles
Summary: A visit to Cardiff results in tragedy for young!Doctor.
A/N- And just like that, this story gets serious. I think it's because I'm working on Tocxi's b-day story right now too, and that's so silly that I have to kind of counterbalance the silliness with something serious. Not all of the chapters will be this serious, by the way.
(o.o.o)
He was in the tourist's center talking to Ianto when the boy ran in. Jack judged him to be about seven, maybe eight, with a shock of sandy blonde hair that fell into steely blue eyes currently wide with fear.
"You have to help me!" he cried. "It's my mum, she's been attacked by a Weevil!"
He knows what a Weevil is. Jack filed that information away for later and called for Owen, the only other team member available. Once Owen had grabbed his med kit, Jack indicated for the boy to lead the way.
It wasn't far. He took them to a nearby alleyway. A young woman lay on the ground, bleeding from several wounds, while a man, presumably the boy's father, was wrestling the Weevil to the ground- and not doing a bad job of it, Jack noted.
"Owen, take care of the victim," Jack ordered. He needn't have. Owen was already crouched over the woman's body, an ear pressed against her chest to check for breathing. Jack pulled out his gun. "Sir, you need to back off. I don't want to risk shooting you as well."
The man didn't even shift a little. "You're primitive weapons won't do you any good. You might as well poke it with a stick."
"And I supposed going at it completely unarmed is a better idea?"
"I'm not unarmed."
The Weevil bucked, in an attempt to dislodge it's attacker, and for the first time Jack realized that the man was not, in fact, wrestling with the Weevil but attempting to strangle it with a high-tech lasso. After several more attempts to dislodge the man, it succeeded, and he went sailing through the air. Jack caught him, and the two fought for balance for a moment before steadying themselves. Jack once more brought up his gun and fired once, twice, three times at the Weevil, catching it off-guard and severely weakening it.
At this point, before we go any further, we must back up and observe something that happened several minutes ago. When Jack, Owen, and the young boy had approached the scene, the boy had run into what appeared to be a port-o-john resting at the back of the alley. Jack saw this out of the corner of his eye, and though he was focused on the matter at hand, somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that where the toilet should have been was a console room. A very large console room, disproportionate to the port-o-john it was contained in.
Now, as the Weevil was reeling from the damage Jack's gun and the boy's father had inflicted, the boy ran out, carrying a cricket bat, which he used to hit the Weevil's head as hard as he could. The strain too much for it, and it fell to the ground, unconscious. The boy aimed a kick at its head.
"That," he spat out angrily, "was for attacking my mum."
"Theta," his father said warningly, and shook his head warningly. The boy, Theta, looked angry but complied with his father's wishes and tossed the bat aside as if it disgusted him.
Jack turned to his medic. "Owen?"
Owen cast his med-kit aside and shook his head dejectedly. "Dead," he said. Grief layered over the anger in his voice. "I didn't get here in time to save her. I'm sorry."
"Mum!" Theta made as if to run to his mother's body, but his father grabbed him and redirected him to the port-o-john. "But Dad…"
"Go inside, Theta. I'll be in in a moment." Theta made no move to follow his father's directions. "I said go."
"I won't let you leave her."
"I won't leave her."
"Swear it."
He held up his hand. "Scout's honor."
Theta stared at his father for a long time before casting one last wistful glance at his mother's body and storming inside. Just before he slammed the door, Jack caught the words, "You're lying."
Once his son was no longer there, the man knelt over his wife's body and took the wedding band from around her finger.
"I promised I'd take care of her," he said, more to himself than to them. "I told her family I'd keep her safe. We've been all over time and space, we have, from Raxicoricofallipatorious to the Karzaxx Nebula, and nothing happened to her. Then I bring her to visit her family and she gets killed by a Weevil a few blocks away from home." He suddenly stood up and turned to Jack, as if he could no longer bear to look at the broken body that had only moments ago been a beautiful woman in the prime of her life. "Take her to her family, will you?" He gave him the directions. "She deserves that much, at least. Tell them I'm sorry. I tried."
He turned and walked into the port-o-john. Moments later it disappeared, never to be seen in Cardiff again.
(o.o.o)
He wasn't surprised when he knocked on the door at the address the older Time Lord had given him to learn that the girl was human; somehow he'd always suspected that the Doctor was more human than he let on.
He couldn't explain how he knew that the boy was the Doctor as a child. Maybe it was those eyes, because those eyes held all the wonder of the Universe. Or maybe it was the way he'd defiantly told his father that they couldn't leave without his mother. Or maybe it was because of the way the hand had shook and bubbled a little when the boy had come near it.
Or maybe it was the Sonic Hammer that was sticking out of his back pocket.
Yes; that had to be it.
They held the funeral a few days later. Jack attended, partly because he had been the bearer of bad news and partly out of respect to his friend.
When they arrived at the grave, a young man with sandy blonde hair was standing some ways away, leaning on a tree that Jack was fairly certain hadn't been there when he'd come by the day before. The man didn't seem to want to get involved in the proceedings, and when Jack returned afterwards he was gone- tree and all. He gave a forced laugh. Trust the man to wait that long to go to his mother's funeral and then not even stick around to see his family.
/All this time, Jack thought. All this time I've been living around the corner from his family and never knew it. No wonder he avoids Cardiff like the plague. I doubt I'd be able to go back either./
(o.o.o)
A/N- I know the ending is a bit off but I couldn't figure out what to do with it. Anyway, a bit of a look into why the Doctor would rather not go to Cardiff, especially since there seem to be so many shenanigans and goings on now. So there you are. And I'm already working on the next meeting, too.
