Flashback: The Eyes Outlast A Little While (T.S. Eliot)

Aranea had a bathroom attached to her bedroom, for her morning ablutions. Although she had no sweat or oil glands, dust and grime still accumulated on the surface of her skin. As she concentrated on turning on the taps and lathering up her hands with soap, Aranea did not look into the mirror until she was ready to wash her face.

"Doctor!"

The Doctor was just entering the kitchen when he heard Aranea call out to him, sounding very upset. Immediately he made his way to her room and saw her emerge, wiping her hands hurriedly on a handtowel.

"What's wrong, Nya?" he asked.

She looked up at him. And he realised what had startled her.

Her eyes were bright blue.

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The Doctor turned off his sonic screwdriver and leaned back, frowning in thought. Aranea blinked a few times; her eyes seemed less able to handle changes in light than before. In fact, they were stinging. They never used to sting before.

"You've got human eyes," he concluded.

"That's impossible," Aranea said, "I don't have any external human components. Not skin, nails, hair, eyes, or lips."

"Well, you do now," the Doctor said bluntly, "Those are human eyes you're looking out of."

Rose was standing on the other side of the chair, staring intently at Aranea's new eyes.

"They look kinda familiar," she murmured.

"Of course they look familiar," the Doctor said, pocketing his sonic screwdriver, "They're Jack's."

"What?" both women shouted at him.

He took a step back, wincing at the stereo shrillness.

"No need for dramatics," he said, looking slightly wounded, "Aranea's human DNA is identical to Jack's. Stands to reason that her human parts would be identical to his."

Aranea look back and forth between Rose and the Doctor, hoping this was some colossal joke they were playing on her.

"How can my DNA be identical to Jack's? Unless…" she stopped as the implication sank in.

The Doctor nodded, knowing what she was thinking.

"But that can't be," Aranea said in a small voice, "My father's name was Roger MacKinley. He was a diplomatic TIME Agent. How can it be Jack?"

"The Agency could have sent him in under an assumed name," the Doctor said, "If his mission was to infiltrate and possibly even steal the Citadel, they would hardly reveal that Jack was a field agent, would they?"

"So they created a fake identity for Jack, and he became ambassador under the name of Roger MacKinley," Rose cut in, "And then he fell in love with Aranea's mom? I can't imagine Captain Jack Harkness settling down, to be honest."

The Doctor chuckled.

"Maybe he sleeps around because he knew somehow that he had something great, and lost it," he mused, "Maybe he only enjoys trouble when there's nothing else left."

The Doctor sounded as if he was quoting someone else with that comment, his eyes far away. Aranea brought her fingers up to her own eyes, pressing on her eyelids experimentally. Ouch. That hurt. They were definitely organic, then.

"But why now?" Aranea asked, "Why did they appear?"

"Hmm…" the Doctor paused, "Did anything happen recently, anything concerning your eyes? Anything traumatic, or unusual?"

Rose and Aranea exchanged guilty glances, which made the Time Lord raise his eyebrow.

"Something did happen," he said.

"Yes," Aranea whispered, "When I first heard about Jack's death, I went to my room…"

"When I checked in on her the next day," Rose continued, "I asked her if she wanted anything. She said she wanted to go to the Gamestation and pick up Jack's body."

"And my eyes started bleeding," Aranea finished, "I remember wanting to cry, so much. Just to weep. Shed tears. But I didn't have any tear ducts. My dearest friend dead, and I could not even cry for him."

"That must have triggered it then," the Doctor said, "Obviously your desire initiated changes to your physiognomy and voilà, human eyes!"

"But that doesn't explain why Aranea's DNA is identical to Jack's," Rose insisted, "unless he's really her father."

Aranea remained silent. The whole idea was too absurd, too insane, to contemplate seriously.

"Let's find Jack and then we can try to solve this mystery," the Doctor said, leaving the medlab, "until then, no reason to fret about it."

"No," Aranea agreed, "There's no reason."

No reason at all.

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She adopted a transparent visor that discreetly covered her eyes; otherwise when she activated her forcefield for any time, the dryness and weightlessness would distress them, making her weep. She had her wish now, to cry, and it seemed that sometimes she would cry even if she did not want to.

The visor helped screen her eyes from the radiation, and they were the last things to die when every human cell in her body began to decay. With the last fragment of her consciousness, she looked into deep space, the stars shining constantly before her. Even as her brain died, and Aranea's thoughts, memories and emotions vanished, her eyes remained open, shielded from the vacuum by her visor. She floated, reverted to her Arachnid shape, her blue eyes looking ever outwards.

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AN: The title of this chapter is a quote from T.S. Eliot's poem, "Eyes That Last I Saw in Tears."

Eyes I shall not see unless
At the door of death's other kingdom
Where, as in this,
The eyes outlast a little while
A little while outlast the tears
And hold us in derision.