He doesn't look back as the sky-blue light flashes from behind a set of closed floral curtains; somehow, the eerie glow still illuminates the street for a split second, the fresh snow underfoot refracting the unnatural hue of the shot she fired. He doesn't see. Nobody does. It was the same hue as his Sonic Screwdriver – Ood Sigma blinks, pondering silently. History warps to the beat of his twin hearts; her death, by her own choosing, meant little to the cosmos as a whole. Sigma watches from afar as the TARDIS closes its doors behind the Timelord-come-God with an abrupt clatter. His strides are powerful and full of purpose as he walks forwards to brace both palms against the console– confidence incarnate, and how the feeling becomes him. He saved two lives tonight. He is The Doctor. He is Victorious. Adelaide never stood a chance.
He awoke slowly to the sound of light music, a dull, rhythmic throbbing drumming somewhere deep behind his eyeballs. He swallowed roughly – his tongue seemed incredibly set on staying firmly jammed against the roof of his mouth, and as he flexed his jaw in a circular motion, he could have sworn he could hear said tongue unstick somewhere above the samba that was his hangover. The Doctor blinked, once, twice, three times – where was he? High above him, three moons danced in the sky lazily… dancing? Wasn't he dancing? But when?
He meant to ask that question out loud, but all that came from him was a wet, deflated rumble, hot and sticky in his throat. He tasted blood, but it wasn't his. Human blood was liquid copper, but this? He burped forth a bubble – this tasted like chalk. The Doctor rolled onto his back, his head banging against his TARDIS as he flopped unceremoniously over.
"Steady on, party-man. You know, what you did is considered a passage into literal godhood itself here", a voice laughed quietly from somewhere out of sight. The Doctor blinked stupidly, squinting as one of the three suns sank lazily over the horizon, casting the TARDIS above him in a beautiful lilac. It wasn't so beautiful when Jack's head poked out of the open door, his hair stuck out instead of being preened as it usually was. "Seriously impressive, eh Doctor! No mortal can drink three Trillixion Ceremonal Crescents and live, let alone a fourth, and then go swimming in the Praxal rays of Phinium Five!"
Oh. Jack. Yes.
"W...What day is it again? And, didn't I take you back to Cardiff at some point?"
His voice! What had happened to his voice!? Jack laughed loudly, the sound rich and full of life compared to the Doctor's grating rasp. After a few long moments of unsteady jostling, the Doctor drew himself to his feet, his chest throbbing as his knees fought valiantly to stop buckling beneath him. He was naked from the waist up, but somehow, still had the tie – where had his shirt and jacket vanished to?
"The interesting thing about Trillaxion Ceremonial Crescents, Doctor..." Jack said, his voice partially muffled by the Doctor's armpit as he planted his feet firmly into the ground to stop the man falling again, "is the fact that they're only drunk by the honoured holymen of Trillix on the fourth eve of their Thirtieth birthday."
His head swam; wasn't Jack just inside the TARDIS?
"They're drunk as a closing serenade, to honour the five years of diligent service offered by those holy men, at which point they lay down their mortal life and become immortalised in the planets archives so that they can be consulted with for eternity; 'Gods of the Wreath'. For the good of all Trillix." Jack released him gently, taking a step back but leaving his hand on The Doctor's shoulder. He had tried to ignore how tired they had both become as the slow years had clawed their way by, but it was painfully obvious how much of a toll it had taken on The Doctor especially. He couldn't help but frown.
"You didn't answer my question, Jack", came a curt reply. "I don't remember much, well, I remember too much some may argue, but I definitely dropped you off on Earth before..." His voice ran off in thought. What had happened next? His tongue swirled widely in his mouth – Crescents weren't made from blood, but he could definitely taste the last remaining vapours somewhere at the back of his throat. It made his teeth tingle.
"And you tried to kill yourself last night." Jack replied, darkly. His stomach wasn't settling right, the Doctor was acting strangely, and last night was... "The only reason I know all about Trillixion Crescents is the fact that you told me before drinking them so fast I literally didn't have time to stop you! They damned near stopped both of your hearts, hell, I had to start one of them again myself at one point!"
"Ah. That would explain the chest pain! Did I drink blood at some point too?"
They stood in silence; before them stretched nothing but miles and miles of bright pink flowers, the sea uninterrupted by anything other than the varying shades. The air was permeated with a lush sweetness, and Jack found his anger slipping away. They were on another planet entirely, now. This, he thought, was Vuun, fourth planet in the same system as Phinium Five. The planet was more akin to a moon in size, and for whatever reason unknown to him, had no wind whatsoever. Everything just stood, exactly as it was, never changing. The TARDIS had thrown a tantrum when a very drunken Doctor had attempted to take them to the next bar, and crash landed as elegantly as she could in the most soothing location she could think of.
"I appreciate a party more than your average two-legged life-form, but last night, you went too far."
The Doctor shrugged him off and took a step forwards on his own, the still air invigorating. The planet under his feet rotated slightly slower than Earth; apparently, his TARDIS thought that it might have soothed his head more to have ended up on the planetary equivalent of a bed of roses. Walking out into the waist-high field of flowers, he didn't see how Jack cringed in pain behind him; the wounds had already began to heal, but his body could only erase the damage - it couldn't erase the evidence. The numerous tooth-shaped lesions scattered across his shoulders had crusted over, but the blood had long since bled through and dried against the fabric of his shirt. Even if The Doctor didn't remember, Jack did. The TARDIS certainly would.
"I have the expanse of Time, Space and Matter at my fingertips. My people were the shepherds of the stars, and now, I am all that remains." The Doctor shouted back from a distance away. "It is my right to inherit their legacy, Jack, and the whole of creation itself was theirs and theirs alone." His voice echoed against the silence, the suns high above throwing two giant shadows behind him that stretched all the way to the doors of his TARDIS. His tone changed; Jack shivered."I am Victorious. A Time Lord Victorious." He paused for a moment, looking up to the sky. "Reality will bend to my will. And so will the bars!"
"You sound like him."
The Doctor froze, as though the air had been sucked from his lungs. Jack didn't have to elaborate on who he was referring to. "He wasn't wrong, though, was he?"
Jack, the only fixed Human in history, froze too. The TARDIS murmured behind him, listening in. She seemed to be just as anxious. "Does that make you God? Is that what you're saying?"
The Doctor stretched his arms out, as if to embrace the crimson clouds above. "Yes, I suppose it does. Four Crescents." He took in a deep lungful of cold air, the hairs on his arms and neck standing on end as everything gradually cooled. He glanced over his shoulder to see Jack shake his head and retreat into the control room. A slight smile played at the corners of his lips.
By the time The Doctor finally returned to the TARDIS, Jack was willing to bet it was the longest he had ever stayed on one planet doing so little before. His skin was reddened from the intense sunlight, but if he bore any discomfort, he didn't outwardly show it. He flitted about the console almost nervously, his long fingers twisting and turning knobs and dials as he skipped a full circle around the room. He had seemingly forgotten about his missing shirt; Jack allowed himself a small smile, and wondered whether it would be ethically sound to put off reminding him.
The Doctor hadn't noticed that he had changed his shirt, either. Or perhaps, he had, but chose not to mention it? Jack shook his head as the TARDIS lurched into life, its rattling whoosh ringing in his ears as it had on so many occasions before. The Doctor had been right when he said he had dropped Jack off the night prior, but apparently, he wasn't remembering anything afterwards. It didn't seem right to linger on the perfect tautness of his lightly muscled back; even from the corner of his eye, his beauty and grace was as undeniable as it always had been before. Even as free in his sexuality as he was, there was something memorising about the architecture of The Doctor as a whole that made his head spin and his stomach turn. As The Doctor danced around his TARDIS, conducting their path to their next destination with maddening rhythm and grace, the TARDIS humming lightly under his palms as he flipped switches and pulled levers effortlessly, Jack definitely wasn't looking. Not one bit. The skin on his back tingled painfully, the tooth-prints slowly reforming into flawless flesh. He had expected passion of which only the man in front of him were capable of; what he got was a storm in a bottle; rage and a wide-eyed pitch-black cadence of cracked assonance. A repeated phrase, spat out between clenched teeth, through bloodied tongue and shredded voice.
Victorious. Victorious. Victorious. That word. That phrase. He had fucked him raw, his throat crushed flush against the grating of the very floor The Doctor paced up and down upon, his head jarred at an unnatural angle as the hand that pushed it down dug nails deep into what was willingly given. And he didn't remember, because somehow, he had done all this through a thread of consciousness as his second heart stilled in his chest from those damned Crescents.
The Doctor sighed loudly, stretching as the TARDIS came to what was, by usual standards, a gentle landing. He stood there, a gigantic, stupid grin plastered across his face. "Time to get dressed! Didn't I have a flower wreath somewhere around here?"
Jack felt sick to his stomach as he was left behind watching a flickering console; they were on the new Homeworld of the Ood, and the Doctor needed to find something dramatic, yet presentable to wear.