*Cringes* I am so sorry this update took so long. I was in the middle of a move, and then I got stuck on this chapter (re-wrote it a few different times), and I was in the process of writing an outline for the next few chapters….
Anyway, enough excuses. Allon-sy!
o0o0o0o0o
The Doctor couldn't help but wonder if the Master's weapon had done something to his time sense, because if he were asked, he honestly wouldn't be able to say exactly how long he and Rose stood in each other's arms, crying into each other's shoulders—from grief, loss, happiness—he wasn't quite sure what fraction of their tears could be attributed to each, and he couldn't care less. It just felt too damn good—to finally let go in front of the one person he actually felt able to, to have her in his arms.
It hit him, again, as it had repeatedly since he'd walked back into the TARDIS. She was here—she was really, really here.
He squeezed her tighter.
"I missed you, so much," she confessed after a long, shuddering sigh. Her hands, which had been clinching the fabric of his suit, relaxed and began to run soothingly up and down his back. The Doctor sighed, his breath against her neck causing her to shiver slightly. His cheek brushed against hers as he drew his head back, only to rest his forehead against hers, eyes still closed.
"It was so hard, sometimes," she continued, "I didn't have nothing but sometimes it felt like it and thinking about this—right now, finally seeing you again—well….sometimes it was the only thing….that kept me going, especially after—especially during the bad days…." He swallowed convulsively. Though his tears had now dried up, he still felt an aching sadness at the misery lacing her voice. She should never have to feel like that. He would make it so she would never have to feel like that ever again, he decided, trying to ignore the portion of his mind that reminded him it was entirely his fault she'd had reason to feel such pain in the first place.
Because he knew all too well the kind of torment that separation cost someone.
"Oh, Rose, you….you have no idea what it was like, for me, all those years…" Suddenly, she stiffened, pulled back from him. The abrupt absence of her nearly made him fall forward, and he opened his eyes to see her staring at him with a drawn expression, nearly a glare.
"No idea what it was like…?" she said in a dangerously low tone. "I think I know exactly what it was like, Doctor." He winced, remembering her brother, and what his age implied. That had been a bit thoughtless. Rude and not ginger, indeed. Just as he was about to apologize, her gaze turned a little unsure, and she cocked her head to the side, studying him.
"Except…how long has it been for you, Doctor? In your personal timeline?" He blinked, a bit thrown by her question, but having been acutely aware of the answer since the count began, it spilled from his lips readily.
"Thirteen years, two months, five days, one hour, and…well, the minutes are off, since I seem to have stopped counting the minute I saw you here—and that's a first for me, you know, losing track of time—it's a rather unpleasant feeling, but I certainly can't complain since you're here, and I don't have a reason to keep track of it anymore—but still! That's you Rose Tyler, always distracting me, you cheeky girl, somehow making me experience human things first hand—I guess I can see why you lot are always so keen on keeping watches around, if that's what it's like to not feel the minutes as they pass, but then…" He trailed off, noticing for the first time that Rose had not made a sound as he babbled nervously, but was instead staring fixedly at a point just below his chin, her own lips quivering. And her eyes, which had been red before, were wet again, fresh tears about to spill. Bugger. So much for never making her feel sadness again.
"Rose, Rose? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—please don't cry," he pleaded, shifting from one foot to another, wringing his anxious hands together, wanting to reach out for her again but now worried that it might only make things worse. He stilled a bit as she let out a wet laugh, reaching up a hand to cover her mouth, then wipe at her eyes.
"S'not—sorry, it's just….you're so you," she told him, her voice a mix of awe, exasperation, and a heavy dose of something he feared to put a name to at the moment.
"Yes, I'm me," he replied, confused and a little worried. "And….that makes you…sad?" Her laugh was lighter this time, and preceded a real grin which did funny things to his insides—as it always had. That was something he should really look into, since it couldn't be good for his organs, but decided that could wait until later—much later, in fact, as the sensations only seemed to happen when she laughed or smiled or held his hand….he needed to collect more data. A larger sample size would provide more accurate results, after all, and he was nothing if not an empiricist. So, more hugging, then. And touching, hand-holding, making her laugh…. For science.
He returned from his musings just as her laugh trailed off, watching as she shook her head at him—fondly, he thought. Her small smile was definitely fond as she stepped back to him, straightening his tie and jacket as she spoke.
"Never, I just meant…even after all this time, you're still so familiar—I get mad at you, you get nervous and babble at light speed until you start saying things so far away from the original topic that I can't help but laugh and—" she shrugged, placing her hands flat against his now-tidy suit as she looked up at him, eyes soft. "It's like hearing your favorite song again, and suddenly remembering the words and the rhythm and the beat and knowing what part of the chorus comes next, even though you haven't sung the words in years—and even if little bits and pieces of it catch you off guard, you relearn them—you want to dance to it again, and it…" She looked away for a moment, and when her gaze returned her grin was a bit embarrassed. "Sorry, I'm not making much sense, am I?" He couldn't help the grin spreading across his face.
"When do you ever?" he teased, though he hoped that little twinkle in her eye meant that she'd caught on—that he knew exactly what she meant, even if he'd never be able to describe it as poetically as she had.
Why, music-you can dance to it, sing along with it... Fall in love with it...
Oh, yes. He knew exactly what she meant.
"Though I think I caught the gist of it," he continued lightly, despite the turmoil in his mind that came from consciously acknowledging what he had realized long ago, albeit silently. "You want to dance with me again, hmm?"
There, flirting. It was indeed very easy to fall back into the same rhythm, like a song remembered. Anything to keep things light for now, though he knew it was a weak barrier against the impending flood of deep, serious discussions just waiting to burst forth, for a little while, he wanted to just…be, with her, just exist together in this moment.
That word, though, dance. It was always risky, using it between them, since he was fairly certain that, whenever either of them brought it up after that night in the basement of Albion Hospital, they never, ever, really meant just dancing.
He knew he certainly didn't. It was his own, As You Wish, in a way, though perhaps a bit…lewder.
Apparently, Rose was thinking along the same lines. She rolled her eyes.
"Again? You know very well we've never…danced before, Doctor," she said with a grin. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and his breath gave an odd little stutter. Oh, well, that was—certainly the most direct she'd ever been about it, because they'd certainly danced, but they'd never danced, which left very little room for interpretation about what she was—was she really asking to-?
"Not in this body, at least," she continued, and his panicked excitement turned into relieved disappointment. A good deal of disappointment, actually, since that implied she was still separating his previous form from his current one, in some way, and of all the things he'd worried about between them, that was one he'd thought she'd gotten past.
Rose, however, once again displayed her uncanny knack for anticipating his mood and held up a hand to silence him before he could even begin to protest.
"And I know—you're the same man. I got to see that first hand." She raised her hands from his chest to his face, lightly cupping his cheeks, fingers brushing along his sideburns, and the Doctor had to clamp his mouth shut hard to keep a very unmanly sound from escaping. She grinned at him, tongue just barely poking through in that way she grinned when she was well and truly happy, and he was now thoroughly distracted, though he managed to at least half-listen to what she was saying, "But, we haven't, in fact, danced with you all brown and pinstripes, though not for lack of trying on my part, and…I dunno. This body seems like it was made for dancing, don't you think?"
"Wellllll….." Technically, he supposed he was a rather good dancer in this body….but he wasn't about to bring up Reinette. Or Nurse Redfern, for that matter, but Rose didn't exactly know about that, and he dearly hoped she never would…
Luckily, she either didn't think about the French woman, or decided to not bring it up, for which he was grateful, and continued teasing him. "I mean, new feet—which you'll still find at the end of your legs, just in case you've forgotten…I confess, I'm curious," she remarked in a falsely swotty tone, "to see if you've still got the moves." Ah, and there was the ambiguity again, which meant he had to respond in kind.
"Oh, I've got the moves, Rose Tyler, and I intend to show them to you," he said in a low voice, slipping his hands under her arms to rest just above her waist. She smiled wide, eyes slightly dark.
"Oh, yeah?" She was so….this was getting somewhere really fast, and he…..he wasn't sure if it was the best time….
Coward…
"Oh, yeah," he responded anyway, but added a ridiculous eyebrow waggle that caused her to snort, then laugh. She grinned at him again, but it had lost it's heat, and he felt himself relax slightly.
"Well," she giggled, pointing above his eyes, "these seem to have the moves, at least."
"Yep!" He agreed, popping the 'p' happily. "As they should. There are a remarkable number of muscles in your face dedicated solely to eyebrow movement, and you—oh," he frowned. He'd been about to tap on the various places above her eyebrow and name the muscles, when he noticed—or rather, re-noticed—the gash above her right eye. He'd been so focused on….other things, that he'd more or less ignored her injury.
Well, that wouldn't do. He was a Doctor, after all.
"You," he continued, tapping just underneath the wound, while her eyebrows scrunched up in confusion at his sudden mood swing, "need to let me treat this," he declared. She tried to look at where his finger was pointing, and, failing that, raised a hand to prod at the wound. She winced slightly, then pursed her lips.
"Huh. You know, I barely even noticed it until now," she shrugged. "Doesn't really hurt—can't it wait?"
He frowned at her. "No," he said simply. She rolled her eyes, though she didn't protest further.
"All right then, Doctor," she drew out his name in her Londoner's drawl, more or less abandoning the 'r', as she hopped up on the table and looked towards him expectantly, swinging her legs. "Let's see you earn your title." He threw her a quick grin, then whipped around to get a clean wet cloth—which he then spritzed with a topical anesthetic.
"This might sting a bit," he told her as he carefully dabbed away the dried blood from her face. She held still for him, closing her right eye when the cloth got too close, but otherwise watched him work silently. After it was clean, he could see that the wound wasn't deep, and the Regenerator should more or less heal it completely. After disinfecting it with his Sonic, he began to slowly run the other device over the gash, watching her skin slowly mend as he spoke to her.
"You know," he mentioned casually, "I don't know that I'd ever told you that my name is a title." He hadn't told her a lot of things, actually…. She merely raised an eyebrow—the left one—at him.
"You didn't need to, I just sort of assumed…I mean, you never just say "I'm Doctor", you say "I'm THE Doctor." You don't hear me saying "I'm The Rose"—the "The" kind of makes it obvious that it's a title, not a given name…."
He pursed his lips. That was a fair point—though most people just kind of went with it after the initial "I'm The Doctor—Doctor Who?—Just, the Doctor" introduction occurred. He had thought she had, as well, and was curious as to when she'd reached her—correct—conclusion. He shut off the Regenerator and set it aside, then shoved his hands in his pockets, cocking his head to the side to look at her.
"You know, for all you know, all Time Lords had names like that," he observed. She blinked up at him, looking a little shocked, since he knew she knew any mention of his planet or his people tended to put him in a mood, and he rarely brought them up. At least, he hadn't so much with her—but recently he'd found himself able to talk about them without feeling like he was drowning, especially since the universe had proven to him that there were yet more things he had to lose….had lost….and the grief of the War had become ever so slightly distant in the face of new heartsbreak.
"…Did they?" She asked hesitantly. He smiled widely at her.
"Nope!" He said perhaps a little too loudly, "You were right—The Doctor is the name I chose for myself after I finished the Academy. A lot of Time Lords and Ladies chose titles at that point, but not all of them…" He trailed off, trying not to lose himself in the swarm of memories his Academy days brought with them. Rose, of course, jumped to the next logical question.
"So, you have a 'real' name, then? Other than the Doctor?" She was looking at him with wide, curious eyes, apparently happy to be learning more about him, but wary of upsetting him; the battle between curiosity and propriety was one he fought often, and though the topic made him a bit flustered, he couldn't hold it against her.
"Welll…..yes," he confirmed. He looked off to the side. "But I can't tell you." He looked back in time to see a slightly hurt look emerge on her features and hurried to explain.
"It's not anything personal, Rose, but—names have power," he informed her quietly. "It's not just you, I can't tell anyone my given name…well, I say anyone, but—" And again, definitely not the time to be bringing that up, "—anyway, names have power, especially a Time Lord's name. Our true names encompass and describe the very core of our being, and for anyone else to speak it, or even know it, is, well…." He swallowed. Intimate, was the word he wanted to use, but… "Dangerous," he said instead.
She nodded, then frowned. "But….if no one but you is allowed to know your name, how did you get it in the first place? And, if you don't choose your own name until you graduate Time Lord School," her lips twitched, apparently amused at the thought of him as a student, "what did people call you in the mean time?" He nodded. Two very good questions—sharp, his Rose was—and he told her so.
"Well, it's a bit complicated, but—Time Lords typically had three names." She raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing, so he continued, "The True name, the one we're Loomed with, is never used—it's something we just…kind of know, up here, from Day One," he tapped his temple. Her newly-healed eyebrow rose to join the other, but she still remained silent. "So then our second name-from birth until graduation, we had, well, nicknames, I guess you could call them." He shrugged. It was a little more complicated than that, but… "At the point of graduation, you had a choice: You could choose to either go by a—very—abbreviated form of your true name, or, you could pick a title." He stuck his hands in his pockets. It was obvious which option he'd chosen, and now he was just waiting to see what her reaction would be. As usual, it surprised him.
"So…when you chose your name…you got to pick between a name that told people who you were…and who you wanted to be," she said slowly, with her eyes staring straight into his, and suddenly, even with all of his layers, he felt utterly exposed. That was—she'd cut straight to the heart of the issue in three seconds flat. She'd always seen things about him that he hadn't intended, but this was….
He thought he might have stopped breathing as a soft, adoring look bloomed across her features. "And you chose 'Doctor'," she stated simply as she reached out to take his limp hand in both of hers, running her thumbs across his knuckles. "A man who makes people better."
Sanctimonious, isn't it? The Master's taunting voice seemed to whisper. He shook the thought away like the pest it was.
Meanwhile, Rose threaded her fingers through his, and he found that their joined hands were all he could stand to look at, now, terrified of what her eyes might do to him. Her voice was even quieter as she continued. "Because you do—you fix people. Because that's the kind of man you wanted to be…and that's the kind of man you are." She said it so plainly, as if it were an absolute truth.
After a long moment, he found a portion of his voice.
"Oh….you…..Rose," he croaked, slowly moving his other hand up to join the clasped one. He still couldn't look her in the eye. How could she think of him so….what did she see in him? When he was…
"I'm not," he denied with complete conviction. "I'm really, really not." How could he be, after the things he'd done? The Doctor was only one of his names, after all, and was far outnumbered by the other titles he'd unwillfully earned—Oncoming Storm, Destroyer of Worlds, Killer of His Own Kind…
And then his true name….There was more than one reason he'd picked a title over a shortened version of his real name—because the meaning behind even a shortened version would have sent any of his people running for the hills… So, barely adolescent, still a naïve teen with the whole universe to run in, to explore and escape Gallifrey and what he now knew had always been his fate, he'd chosen his name, just another rebellion, a fantasy, distancing himself from what he would become by picking that title…
"Stop it," she said—no, commanded, in such a hard tone that his head jerked up to face her without thinking. Her eyes locked onto his and held him there, and her hands tightened almost painfully on both of his.
"Stop it," she repeated, more quietly but still just as firm. "You can't keep crucifying yourself like that. I can see it in your eyes, what you're thinking—all those scary titles you have, yeah? Well, they're a part of you, but they're not all of who you are—just names given to you by evil things that had every right to fear you, because you were the only one to stand in their way, the only one to stop them." She squeezed his hand, then asked sharply, "who was it that named you the Oncoming Storm?"
"The Daleks…." He said slowly. She nodded once.
"And the Daleks had a name for me too, remember? The Abomination, they called me…" a corner of her lip twisted up in a wry grin. "Personally, I think yours has more of a ring to it, but I suppose they're not really much for creativity…" He stared at her owlishly. There were so many things his mind was trying to digest at the moment—her stubborn refusal to see the truth about him, to which part of his mind was screaming at him to change the subject, because he didn't want her to see the truth, because she'd run—the fact that she'd known that he was thinking about all the ways he wasn't a healer by any means, acknowledged, in fact, that there was a part of him that destroyed…yet at the same time, she seemed to accept it, embrace it, even going so far as to suggest that there was a part of her that had become a destroyer, too…
(And the thought that that part of himself had somehow transferred over to her by mere association, that he had tainted her with his darkness, and that she was now trying to comfort him by showing him they were similarly corrupted, horrified him more than he could ever express.)
Yet, despite all of the chaos in his mind, curiosity overrode everything else, and a question formed on his lips.
"…When did the Daleks call you…that?" He asked hesitantly. Her faint smile dimmed, and her gaze dropped slightly.
"Ah, at some point, don't remember, " she said in a voice just slightly too strained to be offhand, and she released his hand to wave him off. "It's not important, anyway." She rather abruptly hopped off the table, causing him to take a step back as she moved away and towards the doorway. She shot a brief look back at him, face neutral, then continued walking.
"C'mon, then-let's go find the others, I'm sure they're waiting on us..."
The Doctor blinked at the empty doorway, trying to process her sudden eagerness to get back to the mess outside, before his feet caught up with his head and he began walking swiftly to catch up to her. He knew she had a point-they couldn't stay in here forever, much as he wanted to. He dreaded confronting the Master again, to be honest, but despite his desire to avoid the man, he knew it was his responsibility to handle him, and no one else's. He couldn't run from this...
Wait. Running away...
He caught a flash of blonde hair disappearing out the front door of the TARDIS as the belated realization slammed into him. Rose was trying to distract him, dodging—no, fleeing, the question.
The Rose he knew faced things head-on, no matter how dangerous or uncomfortable, yet now...
What else had she learned from him?
"Rose, stop, hold on," he called after her. She paused just before the door to the main corridor, though she didn't turn to face him. With no small amount of trepidation, he closed the gap between them with slow steps, which seemed impossibly loud in the dark metal room. His hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she tensed, ever so slightly at the contact. Her hand slowly came up to rest over his, and for a moment, he thought she might push the appendage away. Instead, she just laced her fingers though his again, and drew their joined hands down to hand between them. He squeezed it, and through a careful combination of nudges, steps and tugs, managed to turn them so they were facing each other again. Her carefully blank expression sent a chill down his spine, and he had to swallow before he could speak again.
"Rose..." He let out a long, deep sigh. If she was avoiding the question, there was probably a good reason for it, but it also meant that whatever it was had to be important, and his ever-present curiosity would not let it drop, despite the small foreboding prickle in the back of his mind that suggested he probably should.
"Rose," he began again, his voice as even as he could make it, "when did the Daleks give you a name?" She stared back silently for a long moment, minute expressions flickering just underneath her vague exterior too rapidly for him to catch, before a kind of tired resignation settled in her eyes.
"You should know. You were there, too," she said quietly, gaze pointed somewhere just past his shoulder. The Doctor just stared. She couldn't possibly mean what he thought she meant. There were only three times-that he knew of, at least, he realized with a delayed panic-that a Dalek would have had the opportunity to bestow such a title upon her.
He really, really hoped it wasn't the second time.
After the silence hung in the air for a long moment, and it became clear that the Doctor wasn't going to reply, Rose just gave a small, tired sigh and looked away completely. When she spoke again, her voice gave away nothing. But the words themselves were enough.
"Satellite Five."
Of course it would be, some distant part of his still rational mind informed him dryly, while the rest of him reeled. The Doctor could vaguely recall the Dalek Emperor screeching something at the terrifying golden goddess that had stepped out of his TARDIS, occupying the space where Rose should be, right before she had wiped the warped Dalek and his entire fleet from exsistence with a wave of her hand. Many extraneous details of that day had been lost from the nasty combination of the Vortex and Regeneration Energy burning through his mind, but what images remained had been seared behind brand-new eyelids forever.
The fact was: he was a Time Lord, with a mind already equipped to handle the burn of time, though not on such a scale. And yet, even parts of his memory from that time were spotty at best. For her human mind to have remembered any of it was...
"But you… you don't even remember…" he denied, because it simply was not possible. She turned back and stared at him, the non-verbal "Really?" written all over her face, and he was reminded yet again that she and impossible were practically best friends; her very presence in this Universe was proof enough of that. . .
"Satellite Five?" She repeated. He nodded slowly, though he dreaded the answer. "I remember…" she trailed off, and he waited on tenterhooks for words like "golden light" and "fire" and "singing" and "pain".
What he got was so much worse.
"... everything," she finished, and the haunted look her eyes had developed made his stomach drop. (Though there was just the tiniest bit of relief, as well. If she really had remembered what exactly she'd done and felt nothing, he wouldn't have known what to think…)
A fine tremor ran through her entire form. "At one point, I just remembered….everything…and more," she whispered, breaking his gaze. His eyes fell closed without the power of her stare to sustain them, and he felt every single one of his years bearing down on him.
Though their hands were still connected, The Doctor was a million miles away from the here and now, his mind trying to swallow everything he'd had revealed to him and picked up on from the second he'd seen Rose lying on the floor of his ship, let himself contemplate all of the horrible fears and worries about what had happened that day that he'd purposefully ignored before, and the conclusions he arrived at nearly made him physically ill.
"Oh, Rose…." He whispered, heartbroken. She looked back up and his mind finally allowed him to see everything his eyes had picked up on right away. She still looked so, so beautiful—not a wrinkle in sight…exactly, impossibly, the same….as if she hadn't aged a single day…
Her face still looked so, so young…
But her eyes looked so, so old.
"How?" Was all he said. He had so many questions, but most of them began with this one word. He'd let her answer whichever one she wanted.
"It's like you said," she began after a long, grave silence, staring at that invisible point over his shoulder again. "Names have power, yeah? The names we're born with, the names we're given—and even the names we give ourselves," she said pointedly, eyes focusing back to his and holding. He nodded once and waited for her to continue, silent.
"Now, there's only one name I've ever given myself, and the power it has had over me, even I don't know the full extent of. But you knew, didn't you?" she said shrewdly, not quite accusing, but he felt his palm in hers was suddenly much too clammy and his hearts kicked up in tempo. He had a good idea of what she was leading up to, and he didn't like it one bit. She continued, either oblivious to his growing unease, or entirely aware and deliberately feeding it.
"Because in the back of your mind, that corner where you put the things you don't want to look too closely at, to acknowledge—that fact had to have been there, burning. The fact that I had held all of Time and Space in the palm of my hand, bent it to my will, saw infinity. That what you saw me do on the Gamestation couldn't possibly have been the only thing I did in that state, when I was Everywhere and Everywhen, but, the thing was, you had no way of determining the scope of it." Her voice was growing in speed and volume, and the Doctor had the oddest sensation of falling, as if the ground was being pulled out from underneath him, as if he was strapped in to a rollercoaster and only realized now, at the crest of the hill, that he'd very much like to get off now, thank you, but could do nothing more than brace himself and endure the ride. It was knowing exactly what was about to happen and being powerless to stop it. It was a total loss of control.
And that….that…
"And that terrified you," Rose unwittingly finished for him, naming the exact emotion welling in him then and now. "It terrified me, too," she admitted quietly. There was a look in her eyes, half-resigned, half-amused, that he didn't quite understand until she continued, "Even all the way back in Scotland, the wolf there, he saw it in me. Told me that I burned like the Sun," she quoted, and the Doctor stiffened.
Even then? How could he have missed—but he'd taken—he'd thought he'd fixed…
"Later that night was the first time I remembered anything from that moment," she continued, while guilt began to nestle in his chest alongside the fear, fear of what he had put her through from sheer negligence…of what it had done to her, of what she had become…
"I got little pieces, here and there, after… But it was years before I really saw, that I really began to understand…" she looked away again, distant. "To remember. That it was a part of me—that it was still there, and it's always been there, that name, that power, those words…"
No, no, no, oh please, Rose, no…
When she looked back to him, he noticed for the first time that her once hazel eyes were flecked with gold...
"…Bad Wolf."
o0o0o0o0o
Some part of Jack was aware that he had been struck speechless. It was an odd feeling, that same detached part mused, and certainly not very familiar to him—so few things surprised him anymore—even dying barely phased him.
Yet here he was, gaping silently at an ever-increasingly panicking Tony Tyler, as the boy tried frantically to apologize and explain, and, probably, get him to respond. Jack's mind finally recovered enough to match the sounds washing over him to the words coming out of the redhead's mouth.
"—I swear, it's not as bad as it sounds, and it's something you agreed to, besides! You know, even if you never were the most obedient Time Agent, even you knew the importance of keeping timelines straight—and now that we're all matched up timeline-wise, we can unlock them. Your 'lost' memories, I mean. Well, Rose can, but—"
"Stop," Jack said without really thinking about it, holding up a hand to stem the tide of words flowing from the boy's mouth and give him a chance to process this revelation so he could actually respond. Thankfully, his mouth snapped shut, though there was now a hint of annoyance warring with the concern on his freckled face.
Jack blinked once. Twice. Three times. He took a deep, slow breath.
Okay, then.
"Let me make sure I understand this correctly," he began in an even tone, quite different from his usual (sometimes faked) buoyant charm. Tony winced, but allowed him to continue without interruption. "I am missing two years of my life because I was spending them with you and Rose, before I'd met either of you, and I asked you—or Rose, rather-to hide them—and I'm very curious to know how she did that, by the way, since she wasn't telepathic last I checked—in order to keep the timelines intact, so I could go on to meet Rose and the Doctor, who I definitely didn't know at the time?" A beat, then:
"Pretty much, yeah." Tony shrugged. Jack stuck his hands in his coat pockets.
"Huh," was all he had to say. Tony raised his eyebrows, surprised, then tilted his head to the side, curious.
"You're not…angry?" Jack considered it. Was he?
"No, not really," was his somewhat-surprised, automatic answer. And the more he thought about it, the more true it was. While those missing two years had certainly haunted him for quite some time, his anger and fear at their loss had been relegated to the back of his mind, a distant reminder that once, two years had seemed a significant amount of time.
"I'd honestly gotten over it years ago," he admitted, something odd beginning to bubble in his chest as he spoke. He thought it might be joy. "But I sure as hell want them back now that I know they're good memories, and now I can, 'cause they're locked, not retconned-away like I thought," he grinned. Tony grinned right back, though it was more subdued than his own. Jack was nearly bouncing on his feet. "So, two years' worth of memories with you and Rose? Travelling all over, saving the world, going on interplanetary pub-crawls?"
Tony barked a laugh. "Got it in one, though that last bit was mostly you," he added dryly.
"What, you mean I never smuggled back any hypervodka for you? Seems awfully responsible of me," he mused. Tony rolled his eyes.
"One of us had to be sober enough to fly the getaway-ship when you inevitably flirted with the wrong person and set a small army of bodyguards on our tail," he informed him, crossing his leather-clad arms across his chest in a way so reminiscent of Jack's first Doctor that he nearly burst out laughing. "And yes, that happened more than once," he added with a shake of his head. Jack just smirked.
"And where was Rose when this happened?" Jack asked. God, it sounded like they'd had fun together…and two years! The months that he'd spent with the Doctor and Rose were honestly some of the happiest times he'd ever had, and while he'd only be remembering something he already lived through, he also knew that now that Rose was back, she wouldn't let the Doctor just leave him again, or at least, not without coming back to visit…
"Rose was always the one that had to drag your arse back to the ship, of course. Well, except for that one time that you'd both had too much and got thrown into jail on Mandolaxis Prime, and I had to come bail you out, and let me tell you, trying to negotiate with a burly Mandolaxian when you look like a twelve-year-old kid is no easy feat…" Jack snorted in amusement.
"Look like? You are a kid, kid," Jack reminded him, and, just because he was sure to hate it, reached down to ruffle his fluffy ginger hair. He was rewarded with a scowl.
"I'm not a kid," he enunciated carefully, glaring. Jack just ruffled his hair harder. Tony scowled deeper and ducked under the hand, finger-combing it back down into some semblance of order. Jack rolled his eyes.
"Oh, sorry, teenager, then," he amended. Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut.
"No, really," he sighed, "I'm not a kid. I'm not as young as—"
"Hey, where did the Doctor disappear to?"
Tony and Jack both jumped at the sudden appearance of Martha—Jack, because he'd been facing the other way, and Tony, because he'd had his eyes shut. Martha rolled her eyes at their skittishness, but refrained from commenting. She looked like she was about to ask Jack something when she did a double take at Tony and stepped towards him in concern.
"Hey, woah now, should you really be up? I definitely saw you get shot at least once, maybe more…"
Tony eyed her warily, taking half a step back. "Ah, well, yes, but," he stammered, "I…got better." Martha stared.
"You….got better. From a gunshot wound." Martha's eyes flickered to Jack, then to Tony, and back again.
"Is he like…" Martha asked in a stage whisper, gesturing vaguely towards Jack, whose brow rose sharply. His first instinct was to say Of course not, but then Tony's half-finished sentence finally registered in his head.
Wait, wait! 'I'm not as young as'—what? As I used to be? As I feel? As I look?
Now unsure himself, Jack turned with Martha to look at Tony in askance. The—boy?—in question looked mildly chagrined, but didn't look away.
"Tony…?" Jack started hesitantly, unsure of just what to ask him. Tony's eyes darted between the two of them and, after settling on Martha, he cleared his throat.
"I was shot just as time began reversing, so that took care of most of the damage," he told her succinctly, answering one question and avoiding the other. He pulled up the bottom of his coat to reveal his healed skin. "And a Dermal Regenerator took care of the rest." He let the coat drop back in place.
Martha still looked slightly skeptical, but let it drop. "Right…" she drawled, then seemed to shake herself. "Right," she said again, with more purpose, "Some group called UNIT just arrived and seemed to be getting everything sorted," she told them, then turned slightly towards the podium, lips thinned. "The only thing left is to figure out what to do with him," she said darkly, jerking her thumb towards the now-revived Time Lord, who was restrained on either side by guards, but was making no moves to escape. That alone would have worried Jack, but the fact that the Master was still smirking and seemed to be chatting conversationally with the blank-faced guards beside him, and, every now and again, Lucy (who still looked out of it, though a sheen of fear was now dripping down her face) made him shiver.
If it were up to him, he honestly would have considered just killing him and getting it over with. He knew, instinctively, that this was the type of person you just couldn't keep locked up, not for long, anyway. He was too cunning by half, sociopathic, and utterly insane—an intelligent madness, and definitely vengeful. If (when) he broke out, there would be hell to pay…
Luckily (for the bastard of a Time Lord, or everyone else, he wasn't sure) it wasn't up to him, or anyone here, what would happen to the Master. And though he wasn't sure he trusted the Doctor to be harsh enough on his once-friend, he did know that the only one even remotely capable of ensuring the deranged alien would never be unleashed again was his fellow Time Lord.
Jack nodded towards Martha, then began walking towards the podium. "We won't be doing anything to him. Let's let UNIT know the Doctor—"
A lone shot rang out, and Lucy screamed.
"Down!" Jack ducked instinctively, pulling Martha and Tony with him.
Chaos reigned again.
o0o0o0o0o
Muahaha….Yes, I know I have a bad habit of leaving cliff-hangers. So, in case you haven't noticed by now, I tend to alternate between more action-y scenes and introspective/conversational ones. This chapter was heavier on the second one, but I think it's warranted, given all the back-story I'll need to fit in here and there (but I'll try not to bog down the pacing too much—let me know how I'm doing, please!)
So, some questions answered, more raised. Please note that my explanation for Time-Lord naming is not "canon", if such a thing exists in DW, but was more of me making sense of the rather inconsistent naming-habits of Time Lords. But please do let me know if I ever get something totally wrong. I'm a newish fan, and half of my knowledge of canon is from fanon, so there might be some things off there…
Anyway. Consider reviewing! Almost as good for my brain as a superheated infusion of tannins and free-radicals…
