In the Present Day section, we'll be spending some time in Jack's POV. That should keep things lively for a bit, don't you think?
Chapter 8: What Goes Around
Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828
Will sat with his back against the wall, on the plain straw bed where he and Burke had murdered Daft Jamie the night before. He had come into the room with the intention of stripping the coarse blanket away, of taking it off to burn but had instead just ended up sitting there, staring off into space, unable to move. Blood stains darkened and dappled the coverlet. Jamie had not gone as quietly as the others...
"Will! Help me with this! Damn you! Even with the drink he's frightful strong!" called Burke frantically.
Will came and stood in the doorway, his gaze taking in the horror of the scene before him: that of Burke struggling with Daft Jamie on the meager straw bed. Burke had his hands around the young man's throat; Jamie's eyes were bulging out of their sockets, wild with pain and fear. They alighted on Will with the unspoken plea:
Please help me!
Will moved forward.
But instead of helping Jamie, Will clamped his hands over the young man's eyes and nose and dug a knee into his chest. He closed his eyes; he refused to look at the struggling young man beneath him. And all the while, Burke kept his hands on his throat. The two of them held on until the struggling ceased, until the boy had gone as still as the blood-flecked blanket beneath him. With trembling hands, Will got off the boy, off the bed. He turned away from the ghastly scene, an unfettered sob escaping his throat.
"For God's sake, what's the matter with you?" Burke's words lashed at his back, echoing through the now silent room.
"...for God's sake, what's the matter with you? I've called your name four times already!"
Will looked up sharply to see Burke standing in the doorway, his eyes narrowed and blood-shot as they stared down at Will. Will merely swallowed and looked away, his own eyes equally shadowed and blood-shot from the restless night he'd spent. Sleep had eluded him. His conscience had kept him awake with its scorching litany of accusations.
"I don't think I can do this anymore," Will whispered morosely.
"What? Why not? It's nothing," insisted Burke. "The body's in the tea crate down the stair, all ready to be dispensed to the good doctor. It's nothing for us to carry it-"
"-that's not what I meant," said Will.
"Then what do you mean?" asked Burke, in an ominous tone of voice. Then, his face softening, he approached the bed, sat down next to Will. It took everything Will had to not flinch, to not move away. Burke linked an arm around his shoulders, agreeable as a snake. He said, in what was meant to be a reassuring whisper:
"It's nothing, Will. Nothing. And to think, what would we do without the money? I, for one, do not wish to be hammering away at soles all day. Not when we can have so much for so little-"
"-it's not 'little'," Will said, closing his eyes. He felt Burke tighten his grip around him, and, despite himself, he found himself leaning into the perceived safety net of those arms, falling gratefully back into his embrace. His conscience pricked at him then, for an entirely different reason, as Will remembered falling back in a similar fashion into Dr. Knox's arms a mere two days prior to this...
Not Knox, his mind corrected, Robert.
Will felt the faint brush of lips against the side of his face, tickling him like kitten whiskers. Burke was being far too patient and comforting. Will had the vague sense that he was being manipulated. After a few moments, he tried to disentangle himself from Burke's arms. But Burke kept his hold, refusing to let him up. Finally, Will said:
"Let go."
Burke's grip tightened like a hangman's noose around his shoulders. "Not yet. The crate can wait, I think. Let's stay here for a bit..."
Burke's hands began stroking Will's hands, his intent clear. Will felt lips again, this time by his ear, their ministrations leaving a sloppy trail down his neck.
"No." Once again, Will tried to disengage himself from Burke.
But Burke was having none of it. "Hush, now. Just let ol' Burke take care of you..." Burke's hands tugged at the hem of his shirt; he pushed Will back on the bed, pinning him with his greater weight.
"No!" This time the word was almost a shout as Will struggled beneath him. Then, suddenly, there was the feel of fingers grasping him about the throat.
"You whoring bastard!" Burke spat at him, all pretense at softness now gone. He pressed his hands on Will's windpipe in the same way he had done Jamie's. Will began to struggle wildly, clawing at the other man's wrists. In his mind, he pictured the look on Robert's face as his own body sat unwrapped, stiff and cold with death, on the hard, metal dissecting table...
"You lie!"
"I do not! How dare you accuse me of such?"
"Then why will you not let me look in the crate? I swear I saw hair-"
"-you saw nothing!"
Both Burke and Will suddenly froze at the sound of raised voices echoing from downstairs. And, staring at one another in dawning horror, they instantly scrambled apart. They both got off the bed, with Will all but bolting from the room. He stopped to cram his shirt-tail back into his pants, then he walked shakily toward the stairs. From below, the argument continued:
"I told his mother I saw him here just last night. The woman was frantic, asking about for her son. Why do you insist you never saw him, when I know good and well he was here!"
"Why do you say that he was? I never saw him-"
"What's going on here?" asked Will as his foot came off the last of the stairs leading into the parlor. Standing in the middle of the room was his wife, and his neighbor, Ann Conway. Both women wore angry, red-faced expressions. Will stood, looking back and forth between them. Then Ann said:
"Your wife here claims she never saw Daft Jamie, when I know good and well he accompanied her into these lodgings just the previous evening."
Will opened his mouth to make a denial, but Ann continued, ignoring him, "And now the boy's gone missing, and his mother came 'round looking for any word of him, and I heard your wife here tell Mrs. Wilson that she never saw him! And it's not true!"
"Go back to your own rooms, you daft old cow," hissed Mrs. Hare. Will heard a creak from behind him; he turned to see Burke standing on the stair, his murderous gaze aimed straight at the figure of Ann Conway.
But before anything could happen, Ann whirled around and slammed open the door, her retreating footsteps clapping loudly over the cobblestones. Through the open doorway, Will could see Wallace sitting on his little wooden stool by the stoop, a bottle in a brown paper bag half-covered by his foot. "Fine. I'll go," Ann said as she stormed off. "But I know what I saw." A small pause, and then:
"And I know what it is you have in that crate..."
Edinburgh, Scotland, Present Day
Dying never got any easier.
Even if you'd done it, say, oh...fourteen hundred times before-it still sucked. And it still hurt. It still felt like hell, like you were having all your nerves ripped out simultaneously and put into a blender, set on 'frappe.' It was like...
...sticking your hand into a lake of fire. Before being pushed into it head-first...
Jack woke with a gasp. He blinked several times, trying to right a world that had gone all...funny. Everything looked strange, out of proportion . The archway and sconce was all wrong, flipped around into some fun-house type configuration. And then he suddenly realized why: it was because he was looking at them upside down.
Jack was lying on a stone staircase, with his head on the bottom step and his body sprawled at what could only be described as an odd angle. He experimentally tried to lift his head and instantly felt something in his bones pop. Ah-ha! So that was it: the fall down the stairs had broken his neck. Lovely. He'd been ambushed and murdered by some unseen entity.
Just another day on the job then. Why does this always happen to me? thought Jack peevishly.
With effort, his joints shrieking in pain, Jack managed to pick himself up off the steps. The world righted itself, turning slowly, casually, back to the correct angle. The stairway he'd been maliciously pushed down-the last thing he remembered before everything went catastrophically black-was quite steep, with a wooden door barring its entrance. With aching limbs, Jack climbed back up to the top of the steps. He pushed on the door, but found that it wouldn't give. He pushed harder. Nothing. A rising anger flared his nostrils, made him clench his fists. Goddam it! He wasn't going to be outsmarted and outmaneuvered by some ghost! Not after all the bullshit he'd lived through! Not after spending an entire year being tortured and killed and brought back to life by the Master over and over and over again! There was no way in hell he was going to let something like this defeat him!
Behind him, the bulb in the sconce over the archway began to dim and flicker. Jack felt a sense of cold crawling over his skin-not a good sign. He turned and viciously kicked at the door that refused to open. Whatever it was that had trapped him down here-be it man or beast or ghost or alien entity-obviously meant him harm. So it was probably best not to stick around...
The light over the doorway pulsed in time with his heart: once, twice, three times, before flaring and going out. Jack was once again plunged into complete darkness. Not this again, he thought. And then something strange happened:
Knock! Knock!
A rapping sound came from the other side of the wooden door. Jack waited, frozen in the darkness. A couple of seconds passed, then it happened again:
Knock-knock! Knock-knock-knock! Knock! Knock!
Whatever it was on the other side of the door was obviously being cheeky with him as it rapped out a child's tune on the surface of the door. Jack held his breath. The persistent knocking came again:
Knock-knock! Knock-knock-knock!
Jack hesitated only briefly before lifting his hand, before finishing the tune from his side:
Knock! Knock!
Silence. Then suddenly, dimly, there was an odd sound, then the screech of metal as a bolt was hauled back. In the darkness, Jack could hear the protracted creak of the door as it was pulled opened. He felt his anger returning, felt it rising to the surface like a submerged chunk of ice. Jack didn't turn to run, didn't turn to flee. No. Instead, he barreled straight through the wooden door, straight into the glaring light that appeared from the other side.
And he hit something solid. Something made out of flesh...
He fell to the ground, grappling with this thing, this person, that he couldn't see. Couldn't see because of a bright white light that flared, that was shining directly into his eyes. Blindness of a different sort. He felt a pair of arms beneath him, and said, hesitantly, "Ianto?"
An unknown voice answered him. "Ianto? I'm not Ianto."
Jack had whoever it was pinned to the ground. He reached up, groping, and felt not a face, but...fur. Lots of fur. "What the hell?" muttered Jack.
"Stop groping me, you perv. Here, I'll take off the hat."
The light shifted. It moved away, out of Jack's face. Spots danced before his eyes. "Is that better?" There was a sound, a familiar, mechanical sound, and suddenly everything was enveloped in a soothing green light. Jack stared down at the man he'd all but tackled. A very young man with floppy hair and a bow tie and suspenders. A young man holding a thin metal object that hummed and emitted a greenish glow from an alien crystal...
Sonic screwdriver! Jack couldn't believe his eyes or ears. His grip only increased at the revelation. "D-Doctor?"
"I told you to stop groping me, you intergalactic pervert. You haven't changed one bit, have you?"
Jack's eyes were bulging out of their sockets. "You...you've changed. Again." His eyes raked over the Doctor's new and unfamiliar form.
"Yes. Death'll do that for you..."
"You've...gotten younger."
"Yes."
"You look younger than me now," Jack said in an accusatory tone.
"Yes."
"That's not fair. You can't be younger than me."
"Why not?"
In response, Jack leaned forward and placed a big, sloppy kiss on the Doctor's newly regenerated lips. The Doctor pushed him away. "Down boy! Do you always have to be like this?"
There was a dreamy, smirking expression on Jack's face. "Sorry. I regret not doing that the last time we met. Thought I'd make up for it now." His eyes fell on what looked to be a large fur column with a lantern attached to it sitting on the ground beside him. "What the hell is that?" Jack reached down and picked up the object.
"You like it? It's one of the hats from the military tattoo. I strapped a torch to the top, and voila! Instant miner's helmet!"
"It's certainly a stupid looking miner's helmet. It's almost as bad as that bow tie you're wearing. I take it your fashion sense didn't regenerate with the rest of you?"
"What? What are you talking about? Bow ties are cool..." The Doctor popped up, grabbed the furry hat from Jack and strapped it back to his head. Jack immediately started laughing at the sight.
"Laugh it up, Harkness. I don't see you with a light. Maybe I should let you wear the hat."
Jack held up his hands in appeasement. "That's okay. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing that thing-" Jack's snarky comment was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps echoing through the corridor. The Doctor turned his head at the sound, and said, in a whisper, "I think we should probably get a move on. We're intruding on a little passion play that keeps repeating itself down here." With that, the Doctor grabbed Jack's arm and they hurried back down the stairs and through the darkened archway.
"What are you talking about?"
"There is the most interesting phenomenon happening inside these vaults," the Doctor whispered excitedly as they moved through different, but almost identical-looking, chambers. "There's a strange time-loop taking place. I haven't quite worked out all the details yet, but it has something to do with this landlord, and a little girl-"
"Mr. Boots," whispered Jack, remembering the name from earlier. The name had been pronounced, like a warning, through the sound of a little girl's voice; the memory of it was like an auditory hallucination in his head. He turned to look at the Doctor in the bright, shifting light. There was, as always, that look of child-like wonder, of excitement, on the Doctor's face. That look the Doctor always had whenever he was working out a particularly fascinating puzzle. And even now, even with a different face, that look had the power to draw him in, the power to tug at his heart.
His always beating heart...
"Mr. Boots? Is that what they call him? Such a fuzzy-wuzzy name for such a malevolent entity," the Doctor commented dryly. "Anyway, at some point the evil landlord apparently pushes the little girl's mum down a flight of stairs..."
Jack snickered. "Already did that part. Broke my neck and died on the way down."
"Really? Ouch. Well, if we don't find a way out of here, I'm afraid both our necks may be in jeopardy, as I haven't the slightest clue how to break the time loop."
"You don't?"
"No."
"Do you know the way out then?"
"No."
A slight pause. "What are you even doing down here?" asked Jack.
"Rescuing you, of course..."
"Of course. But you don't know how to stop the ghost. And you don't know the way out. Some rescuer you are..."
"Tch! Have a little faith, Jack. I'm working on a...thing."
"Uh-huh. A thing."
"Now, now," said the Doctor with a raised finger. "Respect the thing."
"How did you even know to find me down here?"
"Ah! See...this is the reason! Left myself a little note way back when. Or maybe that's way later. Whichever." The Doctor reached inside his blazer and pulled out a newspaper. He unfolded it, and in the advertising section-which had a notice about the city's proposal to fill the South Bridge vaults with rubble-was a hand scribbled note about Jack and the catacombs and the present time period.
"See!" said the Doctor cheerily, holding the page underneath the lantern light. "Left it for myself in the collection plate at St. Giles on the High Street, 1828." Jack stared down at the paper. He took it from the Doctor's hands and flipped it over to the front page. In large, dark letters the headline read:
WILLIAM BURKE FOUND GUILTY OF WEST PORT MURDERS! DOCTOR RECEIVING CADAVERS CLAIMS NO KNOWLEDGE OF FOUL PLAY! EXECUTION TO TAKE PLACE THREE WEEKS HENCE ON THE SQUARE AT LIBBERTON'S WYND!
"That again," muttered Jack suspiciously.
End Chapter 8.
Well, that was tons of fun to write! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. (Bats eyes) Leave a review if you like! Just press the fun button down at the bottom...