Hey all sorry for the delay!
Its all gone a bit quiet on the reviewing front where are you all??? Please review - I like to hear what you're all liking, loving, hating etc etc. And your conspiracy theories! Plus if someone can spot my 2 other tv homages then they get a virtual cookie!
Chapter 3
"What was he like?" Lizzie questions as the two girls walk along the edge of one of the lawns outside the college where a few pilots are playing a hastily arranged game of cricket. "I know you left with him again."
Rose blushes. "Nothing happened."
"Liar."
At that moment a red leather cricket ball comes bouncing to a stop near them. Rose stoops to pick it up, one hand holding her WAAF cap on so it doesn't fall off. A man comes running over. It is Jack with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat.
"Hello," Rose says staring at him. He loves her what can she say to him now?
"Hello," he calls cheerily.
Rose smiles a bit stupidly. "Hello."
"You said that already," Jack says with the teeniest flicker of remembrance. "Good morning Lizzie." He smiles to Lizzie.
"Hello Jack," she smiles back at him.
"Err can we have our ball back?"
"Oh of course." Rose holds it out to him.
He takes it gently, making sure his fingers brush her hand. "This is a damn stupid English game," he complains. "I don't understand half the rules."
Standing on the wicket, holding his bat, the Doctor glowers at the sight of Rose giggling away with a smiling Jack. Maybe Rose likes this Jack a bit too much. He certainly knows his con tricks well, especially the ones that work on women. And despite last night he's not sure what Rose is thinking about them. They haven't talked about him dying. He wanted to, but he couldn't spoil the moment with such a morbid topic. And now everyone thinks that Rose is Jack's girl. The WAAF girl who fell for the Yank. He can't hold her hand or take her dancing. Jack can. Just like Jack could find her. Her real life knight on his white charger, rescuing her and kissing her hand. Despite his big romantic gesture last night Rose would rather be chatting to Jack than him. The Doctor feels his stomach tying itself into unfamiliar knots. He is going to kill him. He tightens his grip on the bat's handle.
"Brawling in public!" The moustached colonel spits in their faces. "And at a cricket match man!" he aims this last bit at the Doctor. "And you, you bloody yank" he rounds on Jack. "I can have you shipped back to the states so quick that your feet won't touch the bloody ground!"
Both of them keep their eyes front and stand to attention, letting the senior officer's tirade wash over them.
"Captain Harkness and Flight Lieutenant Smith you are on mess duties for a week! Starting today! Get out of my sight!"
"Yessir!" The Doctor and Jack both salute to the colonel and turn smartly to leave the office.
The Doctor looks at Jack as they turn into the corridor. "Wish I'd hit you harder," he growls past his swollen split lip.
Jack smirks, his left eye purple and puffy already. It'll probably be swollen shut by the next morning. "I'm lucky. And you have to punch me a hell of a lot harder than that to hurt me."
The Doctor growls low in his throat knowing that mess duties are an easy punishment knowing that he just turned a squadron casual cricket match into a punch-up. "Don't I know it."
"And hitting me with a cricket bat in the legs, now that was just low," Jack continues smugly. "I think I shall go and find a young English girl to baby me."
The Doctor glares at him and Jack crows in triumph. "I knew it! You're sweet on Miss Tyler too!" he leans close to the Doctor. "Such a shame she would rather dance with me."
The Doctor hears the insinuation in the word dance and feels slightly sick. He's never felt this way before, not in nine hundred years has he felt so jealous. And of Jack, who is his friend. He just puts his head down and walks away. He needs to find Rose.
"What on earth were you thinking?"
He winces, she sounds like her mother when she goes this shrill.
"I thought you said we had to stay undercover! That means not hitting Jack with a cricket bat!"
"I didn't hit him with the bat," he says defensively. "I threw it at the back of his legs."
"Not an excuse Doctor!" she snaps folding her arms.
"Sorry," he mutters, still feeling slightly justified in his fight with Jack. He winces and touches his lip. "Bastard punched me in the teeth! And I have nice teeth."
Rose glares at him.
"Kiss it better?" he asks hopefully. She is really angry this time. Not just running-to-her-room-Cleopatra-sulking-angry but full on might-punch-him angry. This doesn't happen often but when it does he has learnt to duck.
She folds her arms and gives him a look. "You're in no fit state to be brawling, you died!"
The Doctor flops back into the chair that's Rose originally backed him into and lets his head hit the back of it and sighs loudly. "Yes I died. But I'm fine! Look!" he waggles his hands around, then stands and kicks his legs up in front of him.
"Are you?" Rose demands. "You haven't even mentioned it! Be serious for once!" she snaps, making him pause in his impromptu Can-Can. "You're behaving like a child!"
"And you sound like your mother!" He regrets the words as soon as they come out of his mouth.
"What?" she glares at him eyes hard.
"Rose I…"
"I'm going to go and check on Jack. You stay here and try and behave yourself!" she turns and stomps out of the room.
"Yes miss," he mutters sarcastically at her back, then stands and grabs his flying jacket. He needs a walk.
Jack massages his temples with his hands as he sits in the empty barracks room. He has the horrible sensation of being closed in upon. Like the walls are moving in, but it is something far worse, far more dangerous. Something is coming. Something not good. The hair on the back of his neck is prickling like there is electricity in the air like before an oncoming storm.
The tap at his door startles him. "Come in?"
Rose's blonde head appears. "Are you okay Jack?" she asks softly.
"All the better for seeing you Rosie." He gestures at her to come in as he stands and shuts the door behind her. "If I get caught with you in here I'll get shipped back to America."
"I'll be quiet," she says softly and walks across his room to perch on the end of his bunk.
He grins unseen at her back and goes to sit beside her.
Rose looks at his swollen purple eye sympathetically. She can't believe her Doctor could do that to him. "Does it hurt?" she asks touching his puffed up eye gently.
"Not much now." He says smiling, which looks rather grotesque with his swollen face. "So are you only here to check on my health?" he inquires innocently.
She gives him a look. "Yes Jack. Behave."
He puts his hand on her thigh. "Are you sure you want me to?"
Rose brushes it off and stands abruptly. She crosses to the window and stares outside.
Jack steps quickly behind her and pulls her to the side of the window. "You'll be seen."
She turns to look at him and then says strangely. "I have so many things to ask you, and you can't answer any of them."
He frowns at her as she drops her eyes to the floor. Very gently he lifts her chin with his hand. "Try me."
"I can't Jack."
"You're a very odd girl you know?" he drawls with a smile.
She smirks. "Really?" her tone is almost teasing.
"Yeah," he leans slowly towards her when the alarm goes.
"Hello John."
He turns as the brown haired girl jogs up beside him and loops her arm into his. "Hello Lizzie. What can I do for you?"
She smiles widely at him. "Can't a girl just get a handsome pilot to escort her on a walk?"
He laughs, and then winces at his stinging lip.
She looks sympathetically at him. "Why did you attack Captain Harkness?" she inquires.
The Doctor purses his lips. "It's complicated."
"Isn't it always?" she says smiling sweetly up at him.
"Yeah," he sighs again, then changes the subject. "Pretty watch," he says glancing down at the silver strapped square faced watch on her wrist. He isn't sure why it caught his attention.
"Thank you. It's kept me out of trouble many times," she says smiling and touching the face of it protectively. "How's your lip?"
"Fine."
"Good," she gives his arm a squeeze and smiles up at him sweetly. "Then I won't have to nurse you on our walk!"
"Are you flirting with me Miss Cash?"
"That's Flight Sergeant Cash you know?"
He grins at her. He can see why Rose is friends with this girl.
"Can I ask you to accompany me to the dance tonight Mr. Smith?"
"That's Flight Lieutenant Smith you know?" he mimics laughing.
She laughs too. "Well can I? Rose is always at it with that American."
The Doctor feels the stabbing pain somewhere in his stomach when he thinks about Rose and Jack. It isn't a feeling he really recognises but logically guesses is jealousy. He hasn't been jealous in a good many regenerations. Not like this anyway. It's completely illogical and so very human. Maybe its because its her, she brings out his human side. He feels slightly sick. He shouldn't be jealous of a human, and Jack is so very human, so maybe that's why he aches like someone has punched him in the solar plexus. Maybe sometimes Rose just wants to be human and be with someone like her.
Meanwhile Lizzie has continued talking. "I mean he really is the case in point that proves the saying 'Over paid, over sexed and over here.' My mum warned me about American G.I.s, said they were trouble she did. And are you taking me dancing or what?"
The Doctor blinks at her forwardness. "Err…alright."
"Good," she squeezes his arm again when a shout comes.
"Flight Lieutenant Smith!"
He turns, Lizzie dropping his arm. "Yes sir?" he asks of the man running towards him.
"Plane down! Not one of ours! A Jerry. Shift it!"
The Doctor looks down at the rifle in his hands as the army vehicle bounces along the lane towards the woods where a trail of black smoke drifts almost lazily into the sky. He doesn't like guns. Opposite him Jack sits, his rifle in his lap, an odd half smile on his face. Two other British soldiers sit beside them – Pilot Officer Hagman and Sergeant Harper, while Pilot Officer Perkins drives. The truck comes to a stop on the edge of the woodland.
"Split up," Jack says confidently. "Circle round there Harper. Take Hagman and Perkins. Smith and me will go this way." He gestures with the rifle barrel up a track in a way that makes the Doctor particularly nervous. "Shoot if there's even the sign of trouble."
They set off into the shadows of the trees, dark even on this sunny day, the mud squelching beneath their boots. The Doctor follows Jack in silence watching the man's back. Jack makes no attempt to hide but walks confidently up the track, rifle held ready in front of him. They smell the burning soon after.
Jack starts running and bursts into the clearing made by the fallen German bomber. A man is jabbering at Jack in German holding a pistol.
"Put the gun down!" Jack shouts loudly.
"His gunner is dead," the Doctor says listening to the frightened pilot's babbling. "He's scared."
"You speak German?" Jack demands suspiciously.
The Doctor can hardly explain how the TARDIS translates everything so he settles for "A little."
"Then tell the Jerry bastard to put the goddamn gun down!"
"Put the gun down," the Doctor says slowly in German. "We won't hurt you."
At that moment the other three soldiers burst into the clearing, all shouting at the man. Jack has a sudden moment where the man meets his eyes then all he sees is the muzzle flash of the pistol and two successive bangs, and then blackness.
Coming Soon
She urgently pushes the collar of his shirt aside to look for the wound. Her fingers find nothing but skin. Jack closes his eyes at her touch. I'm alive, he tells himself silently.
"Jack talk to me." There is more worry in her voice than he would have expected. "Are you hurt somewhere else? Is this your blood?"