Repairs
Owning nothing. All reviews appersheated.
Ianto's eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little. The entire room fell completely still and silent as he looked down at his chest, at the crimson stain blooming across the front of his pressed white shirt. The Doctor threw out his arms to catch Ianto as his knees buckled, and he lowered him to the floor. The Doctor raised his head. River Song stood before a rectangle of distorted space, through which was visible a sliver of the TARDIS' control room. She held a smoking, old-fashioned gun in her hand, with a distinct, long narrow barrel.
Her eyes met his with no trace of apology or regret, only cold determination. And it scared him.
The Doctor looked down at Ianto's pale face, and back up at River. "What have you done?"
River holstered the gun. She matched the Doctor's stare, the one which cowed the mightiest of rulers, and the closest of his friends, and she did not flinch. "I saved your life."
The Doctor, it seemed, could not reply to this. He cupped Ianto's chin in his hand. "Hey. Hey, you're just fine. You just need to regenerate." Nothing happened. "Regenerate!" he ordered.
Ianto smiled weakly. "Look what you've created, Doctor." A trickle of blood slid from the corner of his mouth.. "Aren't you proud?" His head rolled to the side.
"No! NO!" wailed the Doctor. "Regenerate! You can't die!" Only now did the tears come. Only now did Jack step forward. "Get him back into the TARDIS!" he said, with something more resembling his general authoritative manner, though still shaky. "You can heal him!"
Like a man desperately clinging to the very last frayed strands of his rope, the Doctor helped Jack heave Ianto through the TARDIS door, leaving the others in the conference room, and together they laid his inert form on the metal grating next to the control panel.
"Come on… Come on, FIX HIM!" The Doctor screamed at the TARDIS. He kicked her coral pillar. "Fix him, you stupid bloody machine!"
"Doctor…"
Jack was staring at Ianto's body. A soft golden light had begun to collect above his face. It gathered and concentrated, growing brighter, until it floated in a single iridescent cloud above their heads and into the central column of the TARDIS.
A harsh, rhythmic groaning started up, but the longer it continued, the smoother it sounded, and became more like the purring engine of a luxury car.
"She's repairing the paradox," said River, running a gentle hand over a panel. "She's fixing everything."
Jack looked up from where he knelt over Ianto. "But what about-"
River cut him off with a head shake and a knowing smile. "This year never happened, which means he never went back and killed them in the first place. They'll remember nothing."
"Jack?"
Jack dropped his head, and shifted Ianto's body so he was resting against Jack's thighs. "Jack, what's happening?"
"It's you," Jack whispered. He pressed a hand to Ianto's face.
Ianto's deep blue eyes traced the space around Jack's head. "Where are we?"
"In the TARDIS. It's gonna be okay. The Doctor's here."
Ianto took a deep breath, and winced as his lungs expanded. "Ah! Was I shot?"
"Yeah," Jack admitted. "But it's okay. You're gonna be fine, Ianto. I promise."
A shudder wracked Ianto's body and Jack held him tighter. His eyes open wide with sheer, utter horror. "Oh my God," he croaked. Tears pooled in his eyes. "What have I done? What have I done!"
"Shh, it's alright," said Jack, wiping the tear away with a shaking hand. "It wasn't you. You did nothing."
"I…your daughter. Your grandson. Oh God, Jack, I'm so sorry."
"It wasn't your fault," said Jack in a brave attempt at comforting firmness. "Ianto, listen to me. It wasn't you. Do you hear me?"
He could see more memories flashing behind Ianto's blue - beautiful - eyes, and at the same time, see them growing dimmer.
"Ianto," he said. "Hey, stay with me. Please!" his voice became a harsh cry, roughened by desperation. "Ianto!"
The Doctor looked away from the two of them, feeling very much an intruder. Gently, he touched River's wrist, pulled her away to the other side of the console. She avoided his piercing, accusing gaze this time, as she spun dials and pressed buttons with deft, practiced movements.
"We best get the captain back where he belongs."
A harsh gasp drew their eyes the same way a car crash does. Magnetic, to the point where you stare, no matter how much you want to look away.
Jack was bent over Ianto's limp body. His shoulders quaked nearly imperceptibly. The Doctor knew he would never let them see him break, so he stayed where he was, allowing Jack his privacy.
He pressed a square blue button and the familiar rhythmic wheeze started up. Gently vibrations rippled through the floor, sending some small insubstantial amount of comfort through the Doctor's two hearts. The sound had become as much a home as anything to him. He took refuge in the sound, closed his eyes and let it transport him far away, to drown out the Master's voice: while our home burned beneath you, while our people died.
They ground to a stop.
"Where…?" Jack's whisper was impossibly old and weary. His voice shook with the tremor of an elderly veteran, a sad, aged man who had witnessed the end of the world. The Doctor knew because he, too, sounded like that.
"Cardiff," River answered. "The Torchwood Institute. September seventeenth, two-thousand seven." She walked around the console to stand near Jack. "Your friends are safe. For them, this year never happened."
Jack didn't look up.
As though reading his mind, River said, "Ianto never existed. He was never supposed to. The universe has righted itself." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry."
Jack lowered Ianto's head gently off his lap onto the grating, and stood up. "It's for the best," he said without conviction. "They shouldn't remember."
"But you will." Jack met the Doctor's hard, sharp eyes.
"I guess we're in the same boat now, then." Jack attempted a smile. "I'll be seeing you, Doctor."
"You could come with me," said the Doctor softly, but Jack shook his head.
"I've just seen my family and my planet nearly destroyed by the man I love. I need to know they're okay."
There was no long goodbye, no more apologies, no mentions of sins past. Jack walked down the ramp of the TARDIS with sagging shoulders and a shuffling gait, as though each step caused him extreme pain. At the door, he turned back, and a bit of his old roguish glint could just barely be seen. "Doctor, this not dying thing…you can't fix it?"
The Doctor shook his head.
"So, I'll live forever, but I'll still age? Grey hair and everything?"
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
Jack chuckled. "Sorry, vanity. I did model as a kid, you know. The Face of Boe, they used to call me." Immersed in memories, he exited out the door and was gone.
The Doctor's jaw hung loose. "No," he muttered. "No way. He's not…" he gave a shocked laugh. "He can't be!"
"Well, Doctor," said River, interrupting his disbelieving revelation, "this has been fun. Let's do it again some time." She made for the door.
"Hold on just a minute, Dr. Song." The Doctor caught up to her as she reached the damp grey pavement, grabbed her arm, uncomfortably firm . "You've got some questions to answer."
Rive smiled patronizingly. She knew what he was going to say, had known he would since she'd first planned to kill Ianto, but still she tried to deflect the words she knew was coming. "You can't ask me about the future, sweetie. It's against the rules."
"Whose rules?"
"…Yours."
"Then answer me this." The dark eyes flashed dangerously, and River caught a glimpse of the warrior, the man he would become. For just one second, he was exactly her Doctor. But her flame of joy was snuffed out by the Doctor's next words.
"You murdered him. You murdered the only other of my kind left in the universe. Why?"
It wasn't the anger which broke River's heart. It was the anguish she saw underneath, the knowledge that she had hurt the Doctor, possibly beyond repair. And the knowledge that he would not forgive her for 100 years, not until he became the man who had answered her call and come to her in Stormcage.
River gestured around them. A number of people milled around the courtyard and the surrounding streets. Cars whisked by. Birds chirped. "Everyone here is alive. Isn't that enough?"
"You murdered him. The very last of my people."
River sighed. She knew what she was going to say would come very close to breaking the Doctor's rules. He would probably be furious. She said it anyways.
"He was going to kill you, Doctor. And if you die now…none of our life together would have happened. And I can't lose that."
"What do you mean?" The Doctor tightened his grip, but not so much that it hurt. "What life together? Who are you?"
River gestured helplessly. "You know me! We just saved the world together."
"But why?" asked the Doctor. "Why did you come? What are you to me, in the future?"
Sadness filled River's eyes. The Doctor could see the truth bursting at the seams, but knew it would never make it to her mouth. She tugged her arm gently out of his grasp and clasped his hands gently in hers. "You'll find out in due time, my love." She smiled. "And what an adventure it will be." She stepped away.
"No, River. You told me my name. Why would I have told you? Answer me!" River touched hand on her elbow, savoring the feel of his skin on hers, and gently pulled it away. "Spoilers."
The Doctor opened his mouth, but was cut off by the rhythmic grinding of the TARDIS engines. A blue phone box had appeared several meters away, a distinctly brighter blue and now with a circular seal on the panel adjacent to the "Pull to Open" sign.
The door swung inwards and the Doctor saw a sliver of the interior. The appliances all seemed more bulbous and colorful.
"Is that…?" he began.
"That's my ride." River stood on her toes and kissed the Doctor on the cheek. "Goodbye, Doctor. Until next time." She walked through the TARDIS door, and for just a moment, the Doctor thought he caught a glimpse of a man wearing grey boots and a tweed jacket and-was that a bowtie? He prayed he wouldn't ever wear a bowtie.
"River!" he shouted desperately one last time. "Who are you!"
"Spoilers!" was the last thing he heard before the TARDIS vanished from sight.
"Doctor!" Martha Jones was jogging across the pavement, having just closed the door of the darker, more battered TARDIS. As she reached him, she asked, "Who was that?"
"No one."
Martha raised her eyebrows skeptically, but shrugged and dropped the subject. "So, are we going to go scold Torchwood?"
The Doctor shook his head. "We don't need to worry about them."
"But you said-"
The silence was suddenly rent by an ear-splitting screech and they both looked up to see a pterodactyl swopping overhead, shrieking.
"Except for that, of course."
"Myfanwy!" A young man in jeans and a black leather jacket was sprinting across the pavement, a gun clenched in one hand. "Damn it, blasted thing!" A few feet from them he stopped, raised the gun and fired a single shot at the pterodactyl. It gave a squawk and fluttered limply to the ground.
"Owen?"
Beside the silver building they saw a petite Asian woman with straight black hair, shading her eyes from the pale sun.
"It's fine," the man called. He scooped up the pterodactyl and carried it back toward the building.
"Come on," said the Doctor with a brave attempt at his usual manic grin. "I know a library that takes up an entire planet!" He took Martha's hand and dragged her back to the TARDIS.
He found himself, however, on a collision course with a little, dark haired boy, who barreled straight into the Doctor's legs and promptly toppled over onto his backside with an "Oof!"
Already the horrible recognition was blooming when an exasperated voice said, "Daniel! I told you to walk! I'm so sorry, sir," said Juliette Rêve. She looked incredibly different in jeans and a sweatshirt, with her caramel hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, than in the black combat fatigues, but still just as lovely.
The Doctor hitched a smile onto his face before Martha caught him staring. "No harm done." He backed up a step. "You have a nice day."