Chapter Eight
The last thing Jack Harkness expected was the first thing he found. And the one thing he knew he'd never want to discover, in any of his lifetimes.
He realized something was off, in this very off place, long before the naked pink soles of his bare feet crunched in the white bright gravel of the path, one path among many in this strange menagerie… it reminded him of one of those episodes of Star Trek the Doctor had forced him to watch one night on the TARDIS. Thereafter he would have sworn to his corset –yes, he'd owned a corset once, a very handsome Victorian chocolate velvet-ribboned man-corset; he'd seen a replica of it once at Lane's on Pierre Street, a specialty-vintage boutique of the extreme on a little backwater station called Pelier Et La Marche, one day he'd take the Doctor there- that the Old Girl had shook with a certain tingling laughter whenever the Doctor saw fit to mention the incident again.
Thoughts of the Doctor were always filling his mind, especially since they had essentially eloped to this place, but this time… when he saw the man again, it was not in golden triumph, or broken, bleeding departure, or a tired old returning from some inner war, no; it was the soft sound of weeping that carried Jack Harkness -like the guiding song of long demised Star Whales- to the Time Lord, who knelt like a supplicant in the cloudy gravel below a statue with a familiar face.
The Lord of Time was on his knees, holding his stomach, which, strangely, seemed to be more full with life than he remembered, with the other hand curled around the foot of the white lady of stone who had given him such nightmares.
Was it truly this, the statue from the same dark dream what left him bawling and sick? Was it the same statue at which they'd entered this maze of lights and marble seraphim staring out at nothing in blindness. They rather resembled the too-many queens of a beehive, standing silent vigil over the dreams they imparted, Jack thought, as he took a step toward his lover and said, "Theta? What's happened? I heard you scuffling and sniffling across two dimensions and this small thing that looked like a temporal micro-pocket…
"Well, that's… that's really quite something, you two," sobbed the Time Lord finally, as two shadows came from behind the statue. Jack turned, startled, but Mayu and Miyu were standing beside the Time Lord, both with koto in their long inhuman hands.
They were playing Greensleaves…
"They…" the Doctor started, but it was obvious he would need some help to finish his sentence, so Jack knelt beside him on the gravel and held him, to stop his trembling.
"The Other, my memories of being, being… being in pieces in the Looms, it's all, all true! Listen to Her, Jack…"
Jack held him close; the Doctor's soft green eyes were staring out of him like green dwarf stars, the rarest jewels in the cosmos, staring as if something in him had broken. As if that something had needed to break long ago the seals that had held it, and been denied release by something beyond himself.
"Jack… just listen… she was mad then, but time has been kind to her, as it was never kind to Rassilon; just… hear her out, for me."
The Doctor twisted weakly in his grasp, and then leaned against him, sagging as if out of breath as he struggled to speak again through the torrent of tears that were shining his cheeks, "I came! I promised her I would. She waited so long, for the Other to release her from her prison!" He choked, his deep eyes widening like jewels swaying in place underwater. "I promised her, Jack… I couldn't save her then, oh no, had to lock her away in the Abyss… but… here…I… am. Oh yes! Our child, Jack! Don't you see? She's… given her… blessing…" He shivered once, looked down, then, curling inward, and was still against Jack's chest, sliding down. Just sleeping.
Jack felt the Doctor slip quietly into emotion-fed sleep at last, and felt his own breast heave a sigh of relief as he looked up to stare at the face of the gigantic winged statue above him.
Stone creaked; streaks of color in the cream white marble became nothing less than shiny cracks, wet with anticipation as suddenly the sturdy white mounds of bosom and thigh and splendid waist, bright long hands and seraphic countenance began to gleam beneath the fastly breeching breaks until like mud the pieces showered over them both in a rain of soft dust.
Then those giant eyes lay like a blanket upon them, and those womanly lips began to part, to part and sing the words they had so long been denied; their name:
Pythia Pythia
Pythia Pythia
Pythia Pythia
Pythia Pythia
And each word rang like a hammer blow through the extradimensional grounds of a artificial quantum jewel, the last lock on Her garden prison, until all that remained were the stars one could see through the fractures...