Author's Note:
The soon update (as demanded by kichida ;)
and as always a thank you to all my followers and those who take the time and effort to write reviews. It really means a lot to me.
So, feel free to review and I've put up 'SHAME: The Doctor's Nightmare' so if you're interested check it out.
"Doctor? Doctor where are you?"
The Doctor raised his head slowly only to realize that he was still suffering from a sore throat. He blinked at the bright light above him and squinted. He was in his library. He could tell by the feel of resting his head on ripped pages.
"Doctor? Doctor! Blimey, at first he keeps shouting after me and then... POOF, the Time Lord's gone, never to be seen again... Doctor! Can you hear me? Doctor!"
"Jack" the Doctor mumbled voiceless and rolled onto his stomach. His swollen stomach... He closed his eyes inevitably but forced them open on the instant. He didn't want to come back, no he never wanted to be on an operating table again, no, not ever again! He breathed in deeply and slowly lifted his body by pressing the palm of his hands against the paper covered floor. He managed to establish some kind of kneeling position, resting his backside carefully on his feet and supporting himself with his hands still on the floor. He struggled for air and felt a stinging pain in his throat whenever he dared to swallow. He bit his lower lip and concentrated hard.
"I'm here, Jack" produced the Doctor with a small voice.
"Doctor?" There was shouting without and footsteps approaching before they dwindled slowly. "Where are you?"
It was hard for the Doctor to breathe. His lungs hurt. His upper part of the body hurt unimaginable... and he didn't even dare to think about the fact that his lower part of the body was still attached to him.
It hurt... It hurt so much the Doctor couldn't even scream to express the pain inside of his body. His abdomen felt hot and was burning; He managed to sit on his hurting backside before taking a closer look at his stomach. The scars. The scars had come back; or new scars had currently formed on the same spot whereas the last time the small cuts had disappears within a few hours. The Doctor couldn't decide; but actually he didn't care.
Carefully he started picking at the brackets that kept the wounds shut and hissed in pain whenever he managed to remove one of it.
"Doctor where are you? Doctor!"
The Doctor had stopped replying. It was best if Jack wouldn't find him before he'd removed all of the artificial aids which were put there to keep his body from falling apart. He smirked before biting his lower lip as he started pulling the seams. As if he was some kind of human. An underdeveloped being that needed to be put together after some severe injuries because they wouldn't manage to heal themselves. Well, of course humans managed to repair their bodies themselves. But simply too slow; it was as if their bodies were mocking them. Wounds would close themselves but if you'd failed to disinfect them first you were in serious trouble.
The Doctor hissed between his gritted teeth as he discovered several knots on a seam on which he kept on pulling eagerly. No wonder it wouldn't budge. Someone had actually tried to tie the cut up properly in order to keep him from picking on the stitching. He smirked again.
Well, that wouldn't stop him.
The Doctor ripped the seam out of his body and threw it beside him on the floor. He'd winced and produced a muffled cry; like someone would yield if he's opened a big fluffy pillow's covering before putting it over his head and pressing his hands against it.
The door behind the Doctor creaked and the Doctor spun around, still kneeling, to find Jack standing in the door frame. His face turned a strange colour, which couldn't be quite described as 'pale' due to his normal complexion; and green wouldn't work, either. Yet he looked as if his stomach had turned inside out and was currently working on digesting itself.
"Doctor..." he mumbled perplexed as he stared down at the Doctor's scar-covered skin. The Doctor sighed and put his shirt back on, shielding his injured body from Jack's greedy stares. Thereby he forced something small out of his breast pocket that would hit the floor with a quiet thud. Jack stepped forward uneasily.
The Doctor picked up the small box from the floor and lifted it slowly, staring at it unbelievably. He'd only wanted to return it to Jack, all he tried was running after him to give him the small box that seemed to be of inconceivable importance to him.
He sighed and threw it in his direction; Jack caught it quick-reacting.
"You forgot your box, Jack" mumbled the Doctor quietly and closed his eyes, retrieving the images that had been burnt into his skull, the pain that he'd experienced and would never ever forget and the shame he'd felt after Rose had...
He opened his eyes again. Rose. He'd seen Rose, he was sure of that. Rose had been with the Silurian surgeon, she'd been on his side and watched his actions as he...
"Doctor, what in God's name has happened to you?" asked Jack while he helped the weak Doctor to his feet again. "Not God, Jack" replied the Doctor sighing "in a Silurian's name. It was a Silurian, Jack."
"Silurian?"
"Silurian, Jack. Blimey, what do you guys in Torchwood actually know? It's an alien, Jack, therefore you should know about it. No? Doesn't ring a bell? A Silurian? No Silurians Jack? Nothing? A reptile-like humanoid race, spread across the universe in several military bases which I'll exterminate in a... what, a thousand years because they are a threat to... Oh Great, Jack. Good going, really, now I'm talking like a Dalek!"
"Doctor" mumbled Jack quietly "Doctor..."
The Doctor sighed and tried to straighten up a bit. He pressed his hands against his back and groaned while experiencing unbearable pain in his pelvic area; he tried to cover it up by stretching and yawning.
"What took you so long?" asked the Doctor quietly "Why did you keep running round in my Tardis?"
"The bathroom wasn't here anymore" replied Jack earnestly "and I stumbled across several rooms before finding the right..." "Did any of those rooms by any chance include any kind of bed?" the Doctor asked quietly, hope resonating in his voice. Jack stared at him in bewilderment.
"Doctor?"
"In case you didn't get the hint, Jack: I'd like to lie down and have a bit of rest."
The Doctor collapsed into Jack's arms as he caught him quick-reacting. He'd passed out right after talking and was breathing heavily while Jack caressed his neck.
The Doctor opened his eyes to find Jack still by his side; he groaned and turned over in the bed.
"You've slept a whole day" explained Jack honestly and put a tray down on the bedside table. The Doctor lifted his head a bit; he smelled tea.
"Didn't feel like one" he mumbled and sat up as Jack handed him a small cup with a reeky liquid in it. "It's not chamomile, is it?"
"I took whatever I found in my office" explained Jack and the Doctor looked around dumbfounded as he realized that he wasn't in his Tardis. He was even more surprised to find that he wasn't in Jack's office; he laid a bed in a room that looked as if it would belong to a hospital; but it didn't. Beside the usual smell of germicide and disinfectant, the smell of plastic and cleaning agent was something else; the scent of other species.
The Doctor took a sip, his eyes fixed on Jack. He tasted contemplative, moved the liquid around in his mouth before deciding on swallowing; he figured it would have been awfully impolite to let the liquid dribble back into the cup from his mouth; and maybe the aftertaste wasn't as bad as the current one.
He swallowed. Well, the aftertaste wasn't as bad.
It was worse.
The Doctor shook his head and eyed up the cup suspiciously.
"And, what it is?" asked Jack
The Doctor shrugged.
"What does it taste like?" probed Jack.
"I doubt that there are words in the human language to describe that taste" explained the Doctor and took another sip. He coughed and hit his chest to keep himself from choking. "Are you even sure this is tea, Jack?" asked the Doctor and gave him a doubtful glance.
Jack didn't know what to respond.
"I mean you didn't find it in one of your desk drawers in a small plastic bag where it said: "Pending check for alien traces", did you? And you wouldn't put that in a teapot and pour in some boiling water, would you? Would you, Jack?"
Jack shifted a bit uneasy.
"Well, to be honest, we're reusing the bags were it says "Pending check for alien traces", but I can assure you that it's definitely tea you're currently drinking because I remember buying it " Jack reassured him as the Doctor raised the cup and slurped quietly, adding in a lower voice "But I can't swear in which millennium I bought that."
"Millenniums don't matter to me" replied the Doctor "I just don't want this to be the withered bits of some sort of 'Sea Devil' aliens that were meant to be stored in a safe place. Well, I guess a 'Sea Devil' would taste a lot different..." he smacked his lips and considered it again. "No, it's definitely a bit more green... it tastes somewhat green..."
"Doctor, I swear to you, it didn't belong to some sort of alien" Jack tried to convince him.
The Doctor stared at the brown liquid; Jack sighed.
"The colour's a bit rusty, could have been some corroded spare parts of a Dalek..." his eyes met Jack's and he smiled "Well, I sure hope it won't try to exterminate me from the inside." He chuckled. Jack shook his head and refilled the cup.
"I wouldn't be too sure that it wasn't poisonous" he sighed "at least by judging by the way you're acting."
"Well, if it isn't alien and it's not poisonous than it must be drugs, isn't it Jack?"
Jack rolled his eyes. "They're stored elsewhere."
The Doctor shook his head and swallowed.
"Well, at least I sure hope those weren't the last remains of a dried alien race I just now extinct by swallowing up."
"Maybe they'll start forming a new basis of existence inside of your stomach" Jack chuckled.
The cup smashed noisily on the floor.
Jack stared abashed at the Doctor who retorted a shocked stare himself.
"I'm sorry" he muttered and stared down at the scattered porcelain splinters "I... I didn't mean to..."
"Don't worry, I came prepared" explained Jack and left the room for a moment, continuing from the outside "I've got plenty more cups for you to smash."
When he entered the room again the Doctor was kneeling on the floor, moving the smithereens with his hands and pushing them together carefully. Jack sighed and grabbed the Doctor by the shoulders gently. "You don't have to do that" he explained "I can take care of it later. And it wasn't your fault. You're sick, you're weak..."
"I'm sorry, Jack" the Doctor kept on muttering "I'm so sorry Jack."
"Doctor you're talking as if you hadn't accidently broken a piece of my grandmother's tea set but killed my grandmother instead." Jack patted him on the back and sighed. "Come on, you need to get back into bed."
He hauled him back onto the sheets and covered his body carefully with a light blanket.
Jack sighed and took a closer look at the cup in his hands. He examined the 'lilien porcelain' and shook his head. "Never had much taste, the old lady. Well, I shouldn't talk about her being old right now. She's not even born yet. There are still a lot of decades to come, aren't they, Doctor?"
The Doctor wouldn't reply; Jack felt that this was an occasion to be serious. He felt that the Doctor wanted to talk about something; He knew that he wanted to talk with him earnestly. The only hindrance seemed to be a verbal matter; the Doctor must be still searching for the right words, Jack told himself.
"Something terrible has happened, hasn't it?" asked the Doctor and stared into space, figuratively of course, because someone had dared to drag him out of his Tardis.
"You tell me" sighed Jack and folded his arms before placing the empty cup on the bedside table. The Doctor's eyes stopped fixedly on the delicate porcelain.
"Won't you ever break your silence?" asked Jack firmly.
"Why aren't I in your office?" the Doctor counter questioned. Jack owed him the explanation and sighed.
"There must be something severely wrong with me if you prefer putting me in a proper bed instead of shoving me down onto your writing desk" the Doctor went on and Jack met his gaze; the Doctor's expression was cold, his face seemed frozen and due to the fact that the Doctor didn't even blink Jack had to struggle against an inner urge to feel his pulse to make sure that the Doctor was still alive. He didn't look very vital, either. The Doctor looked weary.
Jack sighed again and sat down on the bed beside the Doctor.
"After I've caught a glimpse of your injuries I decided it was best for to come with ..." he began but got cut off by the Doctor instantly "Oh great, here we go again, Jack. What do you do when you find an injured alien? Call the police? Call an ambulance? No, call Torchwood! They'll shield it from the rest of the world, isolate it and defang it as soon as possible. And may I ask: When is the autopsy, Jack? Or are you going to perform several painful and yet unnecessary operations on me before you're performing an autopsy?"
"Looks like if someone had already done that on behalf of us" snapped Jack.
The Doctor stared at him shocked and in horrified silence.
Jack was the first one to find his voice again. He tried to remain steady though it felt quite unpleasant knowing that he had hurt the Doctor definitely more than necessary.
"You should have told me Doctor" he tried to make eye-contact with the Doctor "You really should have told me."