Chapter Fifty-Nine
It's the penultimate chapter, guys! :-) Hope you enjoy...
Disclaimer: I don't own. Though I so wish I did...
"Where's Donna?" the Doctor asked, not breaking his stride as they hurried through the veritable maze of tunnels and chambers in the lower levels of the Hub.
Jack didn't glance around at him as he replied, "At a film," his tone short and clipped.
"And the TARDIS?"
"Locked away." Jack turned down at side-passage, deftly depressing a press-stone cleverly concealed in a door-arch. "Toshiko's fixed a temporal/spatial lock on her, too, to keep her from wandering."
"She wouldn't leave without me."
"Hmm."
"She wouldn't," the Doctor insisted, blinking as bright light flooded the corridor they were walking down. "What—?"
"Sorry," Jack apologised, flashing a quick grin in the Doctor's direction, his teeth gleaming white. "The automatic systems seem to be a bit slow at the moment."
"No problem," the Doctor said, still blinking in an attempt to rid his vision of the dancing blue circles. "How deep does this place go?"
Jack chuckled, and gestured to a doorway that the Doctor hadn't noticed before. "I'm not entirely certain – there are tunnels leading up to Scotland and London, and others that the plans don't show."
"You would have thought that you'd at least make sure you knew what was in your base," the Doctor observed. He peered up the dark stairwell, the gloom a stark contrast to the bright lights of the corridor. "I bet you haven't even finished going through all the Archives, yet."
"That's Ianto's job," Jack said with a wry smile, following the Doctor up the steps.
"He does a lot, doesn't he?" The Doctor carefully slid the stunner out of his coat pocket, sliding his fingers up the slim metal shaft to flip the 'on' switch. Sorry, Jack, he thought as he whirled around and deftly cracked Jack over the head with the electric rod.
Jack crumpled, his eyes rolling back in their sockets and his mouth sagging open into an 'o' of surprise as he tumbled back down the stairs.
The Doctor leapt down the steps, shoving the stunner back in his pocket, to carefully take the immortal's pulse. He was relieved to find it steady and strong. "Don't like to use that thing," he said, rooting around in his other pocket for the short-range teleporter. "Easier than carrying you all the way up there without waking your Mr. Jones," he informed the prone Jack. "Sorry about this all, but it is rather necessary."
"What d'you mean, 'necessary'?" a cold voice demanded from behind him, accompanied by the click of a gun being taken off the safety-latch.
The Doctor froze, slowly swivelling around to face a white-faced Ianto Jones, pointing a SIG P228 semi-automatic straight between his eyes.
"Hands up where I can see them," Ianto instructed, his voice brittle. His eyes were over-bright in his pale face, the lighting bestowing upon him a chill pallor. Dressed in only a pair of slacks and a loose white t-shirt that the Doctor suspected was Jack's, the Welshman presented a rather unthreatening appearance.
"I'm only trying to help—"
"Pull the other one," Ianto snapped, his aim steady. "Tell me exactly what you've done to Jack, and how to wake him up again. And then tell me how you got out of your cell."
The Doctor licked his lips, hyper-aware of how close the gun was to his face. "Put the gun down and we can talk—"
"Tell me."
The Doctor hesitated for a moment. Dare he try bargaining with the young man? The expression on Ianto's face told him that he'd be a fool to try. "I only stunned him, and he'll wake up in a couple of hours," he said, keeping eye-contact with Ianto. He swallowed. "As for how I got out of the cell, Jack let me—"
Ianto's eyes flashed, and the Doctor knew that he'd made a mistake. Ianto took a step closer, the gun almost pressing into the Doctor's forehead. One twitch of Ianto's trigger-finger and—
"One twitch of my finger and your brains will be splattered all across the wall," Ianto growled. He readjusted his grip on the gun slightly. "And believe me – it'd be worth the clean-up just to see if that so-called 'regeneration' process I've read about comes into effect when your brains are contributing to our interior design."
"Understood," the Doctor said, trying not to think about how much that would have to sting. "What—"
"Why did you stun Jack?"
The Doctor sighed. "I need to fix this," he said quietly. "I need to get in contact with the aliens and fix this."
"How d'you intend to do that?" Ianto's eyes were dark with barely-suppressed fury.
"Let me go and you'll see," the Doctor tried.
"No deal," Ianto said. His inflection was like a shower of ice crystals, probing and stabbing and cold. "You tell me exactly what's going on or..." he raised his eyebrows, his intent clear in his eyes, "...bang."
The Doctor's gaze flicked to the red light above Ianto's head, at the very rise of the arch. It was flickering slightly, the bulb clearly beginning to fail. Shows how long it's been, he thought.
"Now," Ianto said, "tell me what's happening."
"I... The aliens had the technology stolen from them," the Doctor said in a rush, almost falling over his words. "The technology's being used to steal DNA."
Ianto narrowed his eyes, clearly unconvinced. "I think you'd better show me exactly what you mean to do," he said, not lowering his gun an inch. "Try anything funny ... and I'll shoot."
"Got it," the Doctor said. "Now, if you wouldn't mind putting away that gun—"
"No." Ianto didn't bat an eyelid. "This gun stays aimed on your head. Now get moving."
The Doctor considered refusing to move, but decided that it really wasn't worth it. "Right away, then," he said briskly, taking a step towards the stairs. The gun didn't move. "Seriously, that gun is really off-putting," the Doctor tried again.
"Shut up and start walking," Ianto said, his jaw clenched and his eyes glittering. "I don't want to have to warn you again."
The Doctor nodded – keeping his movements slow as to not startle the Torchwood agent – and started up the stairs, hands still held up by his ears.
-T-
Jack woke up to see the Doctor and Ianto vanish up the staircase, Ianto holding the time-lord at gun-point. He frowned. What the—?
Oh. He remembered now. He sat up and put a hand to his head; luckily, he had escaped with only a rather startled shock of hair. "Great," he muttered. "My day is doing just wonderful."
He staggered to his feet, his vision blurring and spinning rather alarmingly. He felt sick to his stomach; what had the Doctor used on him? Some sort of stunning device, he concluded, and a powerful one at that. He didn't remember dying, however, which was some relief. At least the Doctor hadn't completely lost it.
Following them up the spiral staircase, Jack couldn't help but try to listen in on their conversation. Or rather, the lack of it.
"So..." the Doctor was saying; Jack could hear the underlying nervousness in his tone. "What exactly are you planning on making me do?"
"You said you knew how to fix it."
"Yes, but ... what if it goes wrong?"
A pause. "Then we'll just have to try something else," Ianto said in resignation.
The Doctor chuckled. "I think I like you, Ianto Jones."
"The feeling isn't mutual."
"I had guessed that, actu—"
"Through here," Ianto interrupted. There came the sound of a door opening, and Jack assumed they were entering the main basin of the Hub. He stopped, listening for the close of the door.
Which never came.
Instead, he heard a buzzing sound and a yell of pain; he raced up the last few steps three at a time, to see the Doctor carefully lowering a stunned Ianto to the floor. The semi-automatic clattered to the floor, firing as it fell. A glass panel shattered, somewhere in the shadows; the Doctor jumped and leapt away from Ianto as if stung.
Jack removed his webley from its holster and aimed it at the Doctor's chest. "Hands up!" he ordered, his heart pounding. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, the voice in his head chanted. You don't point guns at the Doctor – never point guns at the Doctor.
Tough luck, Jack thought, fury clouding his vision.
"Jack?" the Doctor looked startled, holding his hands up by his head and eyeing the gun warily. "I know this looks bad, but just let me explain—"
"I trusted you," Jack said, almost shaking with anger, though he kept his gun-arm steady. "I gave you one last chance."
"And I mucked that up, I know, and I'm sorry, but—"
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't shoot." Jack felt hollow. He barely recognised the gangly man standing in front of him; this wasn't the Doctor. It couldn't be. The Doctor wouldn't do this. He wouldn't—
"I know how to fix this."
"So do I," Jack spat. "This bullet, your head. Simple."
"Nonononononono – let me explain!" The Doctor had his hands up still, although they were more placating than wary now.
"You lied to me. Why should I trust you?"
"You'll try to stop me if I do this," the Doctor said softly. "But I have to do this. There's no other choice."
"Tell me. And if you lie..." Jack let it trail off, his meaning clear.
The Doctor swallowed, his eyes darting from the gun to Jack's face. "This was never meant to happen," he said. "This wasn't in the timelines. I have to remove it."
"What do you mean?"
"I need to remove your memories. Then go back to 1652 and change what happened."
"That's meddling with the timelines," Jack said. He shook his head. "I can't let you do that."
"You have to."
Um... Yeah. Okay. This isn't quite what I had planned... It looks like I'll be rewriting the ending I had already written out! :-S
Reviews are adored, people! :-D I know that you guys in the States are probably distracted by CoE, but please still let me know what you think!
The end is near... *dramatic music*