Note: Short chapter is short.

Chapter Thirty-six

"So...what are we looking for?"

"Nothing." Jackles admitted miserably.

"I'm sorry, what? Nothing?" Rory repeated. "I thought we were looking for some sort of stored Time Lord energy or some other science type thing."

"If my experiment had worked the Age Lock would already be reversed."

"I don't understand." Rory looked around the broken lab that he was now alone in with Jackles. "Wasn't the experiment only half finished?"

"No, it simply failed. It was never part of my procedure to 'store' anything. After pushing the Doctor's body to the critical point the energy burst should have run through the whole ship and released the Age Lock." Jackles explained freely. He looked over at the destroyed table. "I didn't strap him to the table to hold him still, that table is wired into special conduits that run through every inch of this ship."

Rory looked at Jackles with a confused expression. The tired looking older man just looked away. Jackles walked over to a nearby heap of twisted metal and rubble and started to rummage through it. Rory shook his head and approached Jackles again.

"Wait, no...I'm sorry, you're not making any sense." Rory protested. "You said, you told Aleena and the Doctor, like ten minutes ago, that you wouldn't have handed him over to her unless you'd had gotten what you needed from him. What was that all about?"

"More lies." Jackles shrugged as he lifted a broken ceiling tile up off the pile and tossed it aside. "I may not remember exactly what happened, but I know myself well enough to know that I lie when cornered."

"Right. Lying. Great." Rory grumbled. "As long as we're having this little 'heart to heart' any other lies you'd like to share?"

Jackles paused in his work for moment. He stared down sightlessly at the mess before bringing his tear brightened eyes up to look at Rory.

"I did get another tape to work before you arrived." Jackles said quietly. "I was trying to comfort the Doctor after the process failed, giving him Reglin nectar to ease the pain and hunger he was in, telling him the experiment had worked. I tried to convince him that he was hero for our people, that we were going to nurse him back to health, that his suffering wasn't in vain...of course, it was all lies. I was probably just trying to make myself feel better by deluding myself into thinking that I was helping him die in peace."

"You're insane...you know that right?"

"Would it have been better to have told him that he had experienced unimaginable agony for nothing and that he was going to die anyway? At least this way he could have had died thinking he helped someone. At the end of the tape I went to get Aleena...at least I guess I must have since she pierced him with the Vale Blades. I knew it was always her intention to murder him when I was done with him. We couldn't let him live after what I did to him, he'd be insane from the process anyway.

But I was a coward, I must have told her I didn't need him so that she'd deal with him rather than try something else with him to reverse the Age Lock. This way I could wash my hands of him. In any case there is no 'stored Time Lord energy' for us to be searching for, anything that he released during the process has already been dispersed across the ship."

"Why didn't you tell the Doctor all this when he was still standing here?!" Rory demanded angrily. "This is kinda important information! Why keep lying when we are trying to help?!"

"Because after fifteen thousand years of work, endangering everyone on this ship with a dangerous experiment, and needlessly torturing the last of the Time Lords who I have since learned would have helped us of his own free will...I...I couldn't admit to my Queen that I had failed."

"Great. Just great."

"Now I have also learned that I used your wife against him. Not to mention that he's going to destroy this ship and maybe even the Universe because of me...did you see what he did?" Jackles looked over his shoulder at the console that the Doctor had melted. "We are all going to die and I can't even find the courage to spend what time we have left with my wife and daughter. I'm terrified that they'll see me for the monster that I've become. Did you hear in the tape how calm I was as I threatened to kill your wife to wake the Doctor? Even after he woke and began screaming under the device that *I* created, all I said was 'I thought that would work'. I said that as cold as it if it was just the out come of another computerized experiment...as if I wasn't playing with real lives. I was causing another living creature such agony and it didn't even phase me..."

Rory started to feel increasingly awkward as Jackles ended his rambling by breaking down into tears. He had a hard enough time knowing what to do whenever Amy started crying, let alone when a strange man started whimpering. Luckily Jackles pulled himself together went back to shifting the pile of debris around. Rory watched as Jackles knelt down and picked up a palm sized metal and glass object that was vaguely weapon shaped.

"Jackles, what is that?"

Jackles didn't answer he just stared down at his prize as he got to his feet.

"Jackles? Are you okay?"

"No." Jackles whispered hoarsely. "I'm not the man I thought I was...I'm merciless, heartless, inhumane, cruel, cowardly...no, worse than all that: I'm evil."

"Um...okay..." Rory said uncomfortably as he took a step back. "Let's...um...let's just go find the Doctor and figure out what we should do next."

"I am not going to face the Time Lord again."

"He's very forgiving."

"That's part of the problem."

"What?"

"He deserves justice, and he'll never seek it out himself."

"Wha... Jackles, wait, no!"

Despite only being a few feet away Rory wasn't fast enough to stop Jackles. Bringing what turned out to be some kind of syringe to his throat Jackles pulled the trigger. There was no noise from the device but Jackles cried out in pain and stiffened. Rory caught him and eased him to the floor. He pressed his hand against Jackles' throat and found his pulse racing dangerously fast.

"Jackles! What was that? What did you do?!"

Jackles clawed at the metal floor as he began to go into spasms. Rory pressed his forearm against Jackles' chest to try and hold him down to keep him from hurting himself, but thrashing quickly became the least of Jackles' problems. Something was coursing through his blood and breaking down his systems. His eyes rolled back to white as he passed out. His once racing heart dropped down to a deathly slow rhythm. Rory reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small med pack that he carried, but without knowing what was killing Jackles he had just as much chance of making things worse.

"Please don't die." Rory said pointlessly as he jabbed Jackles with an alien syringe.

The tiny needle with an atropine like substance worked great on humans and several other humanoid species when they were going into shock from traditional organophosphate poisons and several alien nonoragnicphosphate poisons. Jackles had gone unresponsive but with the introduction of the atropine he jolted awake with a ear piercing scream.

Rory fought to keep Jackles down as the frantic man suddenly turned on him. Jackles slammed his forehead into the bridge of Rory's nose in his bid for freedom. Reeling back in a haze of pain Rory brought his hand up to his now heavily bleeding nose. Jackles scrambled out from underneath him, but he didn't get very far. Down on his hands and knees Jackles coughed up a thick pink foam that he quickly began choking on when he couldn't clear it from his lungs fast enough.

Seeing the blood stained foam Rory regretted using the atropine and realized that all he had done was prolonged Jackles' suffering. Crashing to the floor Jackles landed on his side and convulsed one last time before going still. Rory sighed heavily before stepping over to press his finger tips against Jackles' throat again. Rory didn't bother searching for a pulse when his touch caused a wash of bubbly blood to spill from Jackles' parted lips. His sightless eyes were bloodshot and blood was beginning to drip from his nose. Whatever poison he had injected himself with had broken down his circulatory system and bled him from the inside out.

Taking a few step back Rory took a moment to get his own bloody nose under control. He decided that although it hurt it probably wasn't broken. The pool of blood around Jackles quickly darkened and congealed. Rory shook his head sadly as he stared down at Jackles' corpse.

"If you thought you were doing the Doctor a favour by taking your own life, you misjudged him...again."