for quitehomoerotic: Welcome to the 27th century

[rude_not_ginger]

Follows this.

It was one thing, watching your companion be ripped apart.

One very terrible thing, mind you, but one thing. The Doctor stayed prone on the ground, the sound of Jack's death screams ringing in his ears as that thing, whatever it was, tore him into several unpleasant pieces. It reminded him of the Year That Wasn't, of Jack's screams while the Master tortured him and the Doctor's frail body keeping him from helping. That was torture, far more brutal than anything the Master's tools could produce.

Once the loud stomps of the creature faded away, the Doctor struggled to get to his feet and limped to the place where Jack had been.

It was another thing, having to find his body for it to regrow.

It took some time to find his upper torso, limp and lifeless. It didn't take too terribly long to drag said upper torso to a safe, empty cave not far from the forest's edge (after all, what Jack no longer had in height, he also lost in weight. It didn't take long for time to start snapping around him and his body to start to regrow.

That was something else all together. Muscle and bone formed out of nothing, and while Jack wasn't coherent, he was still alive, screaming and thrashing as he reformed. The Doctor pressed his fingertips to Jack's temple and tried to take away the pain, but when that failed, he pressed his mind into a quiet, comatose state.

While Jack repaired, the Doctor covered him with his coat and sat, waiting. For all that they'd fought, for all that the Doctor swore he'd never want Jack back on the TARDIS again, he did care about him. He wanted him happy, even if he wasn't certain he could handle having him so close. Jack was willing to die for the Doctor, and this was just another example of how he could.

But the Doctor wouldn't leave. Not this time.

Comments

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"We can't be," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "It's impossible. Gallifrey's gone, it burned, I watched it happen."

But no, no, a nagging voice in his head told him it was very, very possible. Well, maybe not 'very very', but it was possible. The rift, the past, the timing. If everything just happened to fit in the right sectors of time, it was definitely plausible.

He looked up to the gray sky and longed, just for a moment, for the orange sky he suspected rested just outside of the Zone's interior fields. He never realized how much he missed his home until it was gone.

"There's only one way to find out," he said. "We have to get to the Tower. There'll be plenty of technology in there, we can repair the manipulator and leave. I'll seal whatever gap in the rift we took to get here."

The Tower seemed a very, very long way away. "We'll need to get there first. Keep an eye out. There's a good reason this is called the Death Zone."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack had heard many things about Gallifrey. It was the stuff of legend. It was spoken of in his youth, like fairytales told at bedtime. Whispers told on different words, stories that had passed from one to another and been twisted. Through all the stories though, there was one consistency; it was beautiful. A perfection. This wasn't quite what he expected.

He'd only ever asked the Doctor about his planet once. It was a respect he kept, a pain he knew the Doctor held and a barrier he didn't want to broach for fear of stepping where he shouldn't tread. Ironically, perhaps, that one conversation had been happening in a warehouse in London somewhere while in a flat in Cardiff Jack was stepping over other lines. 'The Shining World of the Seven Systems', Jack had remembered him call it, and remembered too the way he spoke, that distant sadness and fondness in his tone.

"Right," Jack said quietly, still looking around him. "Death Zone? Really?" he felt nervous here, in no small part because of things the Doctor had mentioned before, off hand things that never really mattered knowing the Time Lords were gone. Things like how someone like Jack would never be allowed to exist.

But here they were, home of the Time Lords.

He wanted to ask questions, to ask who had put them in that maze? Had it been Time Lords? Did that mean they were out there? Could the Doctor feel them? Why had they put the Doctor in there if he's one of their kind? Maybe he wasn't alone? Maybe he'd been wrong?

But he didn't ask. He just stepped behind him and nodded, "Lead the way, Doctor."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Well, it was either that or the Terribly Unpleasant Zone, and I think this looks more impressive on a bit of stationary, don't you?" the Doctor said, finding the flippancy did help, just a little bit.

He led the way down the mountainside, keeping an eye out for creatures or slippery slopes. The Time Lords did like it when their prey had it difficult, didn't they.

"I was here once before," he said as he hopped down a ledge. "Well, five times. Well, four. Earlier incarnations ended up being brought here. Oh, I hope I don't have to see my other selves here, that'll just be embarrassing."

But, just in case, he stopped along the ledge and tugged off his coat and scrubs top, before pulling on his dress shirt and suit.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"What've you got to be embarrassed about? You're just the man they are and more." Jack found himself oddly defensive of the Doctor. "If anyone should be embarrassed it's them." He huffed a little and shoved his hands to the bottom of his pockets.

"You know, Doctor, not that I've got any objection to having a look at your bare skin -because I haven't- but do you think this is really the time and the place for a costume change?"

Despite his words though, Jack was thinking himself that he'd feel much more comfortable in his own clothes, a nice pair of trousers and a set of braces over his shoulders. Some familiarity in it. Maybe that's what the Doctor was doing.

"So how far to this tower then? And how likely am I to get eaten again on the way, you know, on a scale of one to ten?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Well, you've already been eaten once," the Doctor said, discarding the top and only briefly considering the trousers before giving up on the idea and stuffing them in his (larger on the inside!) pockets.

"I think that lowers your likelihood a bit. But, considering where we are, I don't think we should start scaling up any of our chances for survival just yet. This way."

He decided on a route along the mountaintops. It would be a lot longer than straight across, but he decided it would, most likely, contain fewer traps. After all, anyone in the Death Zone would want to get out of the Death Zone as fast as possible.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Have I? Oh I didn't notice," Jack said sarcastically before nodding, "great, so we're still in mortal danger then? Gotcha. Always good to know the numbers."

He followed up behind the Doctor and bit his lip, not trusting himself to not ask a barrage of questions. There was just too much he wanted to know.

He couldn't quite hold back completely.

"Doctor..." he started, wondering if he sounded like one of the annoying kids at school that always had their hand up (but that had been him, hadn't it?), "Doctor I thought Gallifrey had gone from time. How can we be here? And I mean, are we- are there- are there other Time Lords here?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"I don't know," the Doctor replied, honestly. "The whole Time War was blocked from Time, but so was the Dark Times. Everything that happened while the Death Zone was open was considered forbidden, and knowledge of it was Forbidden with an capital F. Which means someone probably had knowledge of it somewhere."

He walked and talked, deftly avoiding the occasional serpent or spiked claw that jutted out of the rock face as they did.

"This is an age right after Rassilon, widely considered the most influential Time Lord in the whole of Gallifrey's history. Time Lords weren't fully in control of their telepathic skills, it's no real wonder I can't feel them out there." He looked up to the murky sky. "And they are. They're watching us like mice in a cage."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack listened, cautious as he took the information in. Jack had an understanding how certain aspects of time worked; fixed points and time locks. But his knowledge was basic and nothing at all in comparison to the Doctor's. Next to him, he knew nothing.

He glanced down, avoiding unpleasant creatures that inched their way towards them, stepping to and fro to stay out of the way.

"So they can't tell you're one of them either?" Jack theorised. "I guess in comparison you're what, highly evolved? And me, they uh, they can't tell what I am?" It made him uncomfortable, but he didn't want to show just how much. This wasn't his place to feel uncomfortable. If anyone should have an emotion attached to this place, it should be the Doctor.

"Nice," Jack nodded, looking around as though he expected to see someone watching. "Dramatic. And if they're watching, I take it they're waiting for something?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Our deaths, probably."

The mountaintops were relatively easy to navigate and, as the Doctor had anticipated, most of the action was going on down in the forests. Creatures killing each other, the occasional trap being sprung, and screams that were cut unbearably short.

"Used to hear stories about this place," the Doctor said, resting against a rock to catch his breath. "Nursery stories. Well, nursery stories were never very kid-friendly for my species. Zagreus, Lord Zodin, Rassilon's Tower. We were never really told the things done here, only that they were very, very bad and only lesser species would think of doing them again."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Well lets hope they don't get what they want."

It was horrible, where they were, the sound of the creatures in the valleys and forests below and rich screams that Jack desperately didn't want to hear. He tried to push it out, focus on the Doctor instead. But what the Doctor was saying was hardly a comfort either.

"Bit different to the nursery stories I used to hear about Gallifrey," Jack said, finding the irony of the situation. He wondered how far it was beyond this, how far they'd have to travel to see the beauty he'd imagined, or if it was there at all.

"So this tower, we'll be able to find what we need easily, you think?" He really, really hoped they would.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Really? What do the non-natives say? Great world of peace and benevolence? Never a cloud in the universe-loving sky?" He shook his head. "It's rubbish. Peaceful to the point of indolent, or they liked to appear. Most of the time they were forcing non-natives, or me, to rewrite huge chunks of history to fuel what they believed the universe should be like."

He led the way up another cliff face. He could see the entrance to the top of the Tower. That was how they'd enter. If he remembered correctly, it was a lot safer than the other passages. Getting there was the hard part.

"If we don't," he said. "We'll ride the rift again. Something I'd rather not do, but if we must..."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack shook his head and recalled some of those childhood stories, "They said it was beautiful, they said it was like nothing you'd ever see. The stories made it sound perfect, it was like a fairy tale. I guess it was for me. Nobody ever thought it was a real place."

He followed up behind the Doctor and looked at the Tower over the ridge. It looked foreboding. Jack didn't like it one bit.

"Never know," Jack said flippantly, "it could take us back to Cardiff."

But that'd just be too lucky, and they weren't that good with luck.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"It was beautiful," the Doctor said. "Not like this. This place is burned and broken. Chunks of green grass they probably pulled straight out of Earth next to the red grass from home. They don't know if creatures will survive here and they don't care. This place is a jigsaw of everything they think will hurt someone."

He stepped gingerly over a decapitated creature lying in the path, leaning down briefly to pick up the spear from its clawed grasp. Whatever did the decapitating appeared to be long gone, but he wasn't going to take any risks.

"Ten billion years of absolute power, Jack. It went to their heads. They thought they were gods."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack had thought the rot of the Death's Spiral had been horrific, but that seemed nothing in comparison to this. This was living, but scarred and damaged and angry, covered in death in a somehow more real way than that planet. Dead animals, bodies. What was this place? It made Jack wonder if it wasn't that the Master was an exception to the rule amongst the Time Lords, maybe the Doctor was. Were they all like the Master? So hell bent on destruction, just because they could? Just to watch it crumbling beneath their fingers.

If Jack had had a respect for the Doctor before, it had increased a hundred times over seeing this place. How had he managed to be different?

"No such thing," Jack said, looking over at the Doctor. "You wouldn't think it," he said quietly, watching him. "That you're from this. Doctor, you're so much better."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"No," the Doctor said, quietly. "I'm just different."

He'd always been different. Radical, unfocused, strange. He'd never fit in, and it had become something he'd expected. He would always be different, always be outcasted, and he would never turn away someone who was, too.

And then, he ran away from Jack because he was afraid. If he'd still been under the influence of those drugs, he'd have been a ball of shame, then.

He kept the spear up, using it to occasionally knock a large insect out of the path and prod areas where something might hide.

"It'll be night again, soon," he said. "Explains why the days are so short. They want it to be night as often as it can be for the more frightening creatures, but not so long that they can't see what's going on."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Well I'm glad you are," Jack whispered back before glancing down at his feet, kicking off the insects that were crawling over his thin slippers.

"And anyway," he said, diceptively chirpy, "it's not all bad to be different. You're not the only one, Doctor."

He stepped into line behind the Doctor, but part of him felt it was wrong, the Doctor was the one with a weapon, not him. Okay it might not be a gun, but it could still do a great deal of damage. That wasn't something he wanted to see the Doctor have to do.

"They've got it all very well thought out, haven't they? Like a big toy set. Do they all have that tendency, Doctor?" he thought back to the Master, and how he so enjoyed treating Jack like a toy. It made him think of this.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

The Doctor knew what Jack meant. "Not quite to the extent of some," he said. "The Master was also very different from the rest of the Time Lords. More inventive, rebellious. Ambitious. Time Lords were content to just be in control of everything. The Master wanted to own it."

He prodded the insects out of a small cave and pulled the key from his pocket to set as a shield around the area. "Seems they didn't recognize a Type 40 key, either," he said. "For the best."

He clung to the spear as he went about clearing out the cave and making room amongst the rocks for them to hide. On any other world, he wouldn't have thought about holding a weapon. Here, on Gallifrey, it was his responsibility.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Inventive," Jack nodded, "yeah, I'll agree there." None of it sat right though. That this place would be something of Time Lord design. It didn't fit the image Jack had painted in his mind of the Doctor's people. He had wanted them all to be like him. He should have known they wouldn't have been. The Doctor was one of a kind.

In the cave Jack pulled at some of the dead foliage that crept around the walls, checked it to make sure there was nothing unpleasant waiting for them.

"So what happens from here, Doctor?" he asked, feeling utterly useless. "Usually I can help, or, well, you know me, blunder on in, but here? I mean, this is Gallifrey. What do I do? How can I help?"

He slid himself down to the floor and pulled his knees up a little, sighing. "I'm always getting you into trouble."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

I'd always hoped he'd use it for good. He was such a likeable child, but he grew up angry." He shook his head and dropped down to the ground next to Jack. He didn't want to talk about the Master. That was the last thing he needed.

Back on his home world, but nowhere near his home. "It's not your fault. The Rift can be blamed, if anything."

"Doesn't matter. We get to the Tower," the Doctor instructed. "At any cost, you need to get there. The worst they can do to me is kill me. You need to get out, off this world."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"People with power sit on a knife's edge, people like him. People like you. Everything you know, everything you could do. Sometimes it'd be so easy to go another way. I've thought the same myself. I think it's easier to be harsh than to be strong. But we try. We really do try."

Jack let his head fall to the side and he looked at the Doctor. Cautiously, he reached out a hand and let it touch against his leg. Just a gesture of companionship.

"Yeah," he laughed, "the Rift. And who's job is it to look after that?" He shook his head and rubbed a hand over his face, it was sore and uncomfortable, and he could feel the bruising under his fingers.

"One day you'll learn that I'm not going to let that happen," he said with a laugh in the back of his throat. "I'm not letting anyone kill you, Doctor, and I don't care where that gets me. You don't like that fact, I know that, but you know what? Suck it up and live with it. We get out of this together, or we don't get out of it at all."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

The Doctor didn't pull away from Jack's touch. It felt companionable. It felt good, knowing he was here and not alone. It was bad now. It would be worse alone.

He leaned over and touched the side of Jack's chin, bringing his face into view. The bruises were healing, but the split and the sores were still dark and visible.

Bruises he'd inflicted.

It was really about time for one of those apologies.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Jack, I'm so sorry."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack looked at the Doctor, directly at him, and didn't drop his gaze. Part of him wanted to, it was hard to look at the Doctor. It didn't used to be, maybe this was a recent thing. He never used to feel so raw.

He smiled at the apology. He didn't need it, though he'd be lying if he said he didn't want it.

"You don't have to be," he whispered to him. "But thank you. For saying it."

Giving him a long look, he smiled, "I'm not all bad, am I?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"What makes you think you're bad at all?" the Doctor asked. He paused and considered that. "Well. Might be from a few choice things I've said, yeah? Said in anger, though, shouldn't...really be taken too seriously. Unless they're right, which I wasn't."

He pulled his hand away from Jack's face in order to scratch the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Suppose I've got a list of things to apologize for. Not sure this night is going to be long enough for all of them."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be quite accurate to say Jack took pleasure in watching the Doctor seem to squirm a little, but nor would it be quite accurate to say he didn't.

"Like I say," he smiled sideways, "I don't need any apologies. But... if you've got something you want to say..."

He wasn't expecting any specific something, but there were a few choice things he'd like to hear, even if he was certain most of them would never be said.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, well, maybe when we've got a night long enough for all of my apologies," he said with a smile. "And after a long dinner. Which would be particularly nice right about now."

He pulled the wad of poisoned food from his pocket and showed it to Jack. He wasn't sure he was hungry enough to deal with another round of drug-induced hysteria.

"Perfectly edible, if we think we can handle ourselves."