Solipsism
Jack: A Labor of Love
After The Doctor leaves I look around for my clothes, then put them on albeit slowly while I take some time to think.
Is it still a lie if the other person knows you're not telling the truth?
Don't get me wrong. Lying is the road to perfidy. Obfuscation, misdirection, dissembling – call it by any name you want – I despise them all. This fact is something you learn unequivocally when you've lived as long as I have: lying is always, always, always bad. I'm not being morally superior here; it's just that lying never, ever works. If you remember anything I tell you, remember that. And yet…
He'd known about the Dyson sphere for awhile, maybe ever since that day outside Sylvia Noble's house when I first brought it up. In reality I do not doubt this for a minute. So what was he waiting for, I wonder. Was he unsure about me or was he unsure about himself or was it something completely unrelated rattling around in his Time Lord brain that caused him to tarry?
And does it really matter?
No, I decide. It doesn't. Or maybe it's that other things matter more.
That wasn't the only untruth told this day. There is another, and this other lie is more egregious. It was far too easy for me to concur that my nightmare had been about Wil. Previously when The Doctor would worriedly and cautiously venture into my room to check on me, the disturbing dreams had always in fact been about Wil's heartbreaking, mysterious, and dare I say sinister disappearance. I'd be sweating buckets and shaking like a leaf, and he'd walk in and talk me down. His words, which sometimes made absolutely no sense whatsoever – that's our Doctor! – weren't as important as his comforting presence, the simple sound of his voice, and the cool, calm touch of his hand.
But this time I lied. Or maybe it was a half-truth. It wasn't Wil of whom I dreamt. That was the lie part. The other part, the part that made it perhaps only a half-lie, is that I am really not sure what the dream was about, but I think… and this is hazy… it almost hurts to remember… I think it was about that freaking psychopath the Master.
It isn't so much that I conjured him – the Master – up in my dream, or that I raised from the dead the bleak days of the year that never was. It's more like the dream was about the interminable horror and despair I felt during those excruciating months when I knew so very, very well what was happening… what was happening to him, to my precious Time Lord, and yet could do absolutely nothing about it. It was a time when hopelessness and self-doubt were my constant companions. The darkness of those days seeps back in whenever life is slow, a stain creeping up the walls of my soul. Keeping myself distracted, either through work or fancying myself in love or even being frightened half out of my freaking wits helps me to ignore that darkness.
Being as close to The Doctor as I am now (ah! be careful what you wish for!) has helped to churn up those awful memories, feeding them like bloody chum into my internal dream machine. It's something I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about yet. It's too strange, too new, too private, too painful. For those of us who were present, trapped in that insane, chaotic mayhem, there is no therapy other than the passage of time. A lot of time. And yet if nothing else I know I will never allow anything like that to happen to my precious Time Lord again. I came so close to losing him! I've nearly lost him too many times! Damn it. He doesn't look after for himself properly, so I know what I must do. It's my job.
But it is a labor of love.
It is effortless, instinctive, natural and habitual.
So I button my shirt cuffs and methodically, with a critical eye, examine my reflection in the mirror. I watch myself nodding my head. I look fine. Just fine. Finer than fine, in fact…
"Jack!" I hear The Doctor hollering from the control room. "Are you coming or are you going to spend the entire day deciding what to wear?"
I watch myself smile. A proper adventure sounds like just the thing.