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| Tenth Doctor | |
Laws of Motion by SCAngel [Reviews - 61]  Chapter or Story | |
Torchwood was mucking about again. He didn’t doubt it for a moment. The power surge was from 2015 in Cardiff, right on top of the bloody Rift. Sometimes he wondered how fast they’d destroy themselves if he just pretended he didn’t give a rip. Which wasn’t true, of course, but he was more than a bit brassed off. Maybe if it hadn’t come right on the heels of seeing Martha off…
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair and decided he quite hated being alone. And what a time for Martha to leave–even for something as amazing as a position as Earth representative on the United Planets Referendum Project of 10040. Slumping down on the jump seat, the signal from Earth beeping at him insistently, he felt guilty. He shouldn’t deny Martha her moment to shine, but the timing was just… bad.
He was a day away from the anniversary of losing Rose.
Rose, who he tried desperately to file away deep in his memories as he had his other companions through the many, many years. Rose, who he couldn’t relegate to that position because he couldn’t get her out of his heart. Singular, because he was quite sure she’d taken one with her into the parallel universe. He snorted. How very… Byronic. Martha would have rolled her eyes at him and asked him if he was going to contemplate his navel while some obscure populace died at the hand of an insane dictator.
But Martha was gone. Martha who had popped up almost out of nowhere, didn’t particular like him or think he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Martha, who by her very presence kept him from falling into a black depression after losing Rose. She hadn’t asked many questions, but figured out enough to pull him up by his proverbial bootstraps and tell him to get on with it. There was no way he could be the great and mighty Doctor he said he was if he fell apart every time he lost someone, she had told him with a look that said he’d prove her suspicions that he was rather pathetic and stupid if he didn’t pull it together.
So he had. And he was glad for it. Still, she wasn’t Rose. But after the first few shocks of taking her hand as they ran for their lives, he quit comparing. Martha was Martha. Cool, regal and unwilling to let him step wrong without pointing it out. She didn’t want to save him and heal him like Rose had. She just wanted him to be who he said he was. No more, no less. Her heart didn’t thump when she held his hand and she didn’t watch him wistfully when she thought he wasn’t looking. And the same was true of him toward her.
But she was friend when he needed one and now she was gone too. He wondered if she’d realized the date. While she hadn’t asked questions about Rose in particular, she had asked about previous companions in general. He’d gotten short with her and mentioned ‘losing’ her the last during the war. Her brows had risen the way they often did when he dared to snap at her, but her questions stopped, to his relief.
He got up and circled the console, a wry smile tugging at his lips. Knowing Martha, she had known exactly what she was doing, leaving him the day before. It was probably her silent way of telling him to deal with it and move on instead of bottling it up. But when you’ve spent nearly a millennium doing just that, the habit tends to be rather hard to break. Besides, moving on would mean getting rid of the union jack t-shirt that hung in his wardrobe among his shirts; the one–if he were ever tortured to the point of admitting it–he could still smell her perfume on. And he wasn’t ready to do that. A year wasn’t really all that long.
So, Cardiff.
Back to the grind, back to the rat race, movin’ on up… No, old American television show. Not exactly what he was looking for, but it would do. With a look of determination and more than a little irritation, he set coordinates for where the signal on Earth was coming from, prepared to deliver a blistering set down to whomever was in charge. If they hadn’t learned anything in three years’ time, he was going to personally pound it into their thick little skulls.
XX
“No. No, no, no, no, no!” Jack practically shouted before stopping and closing his eyes as he counted backward from ten. Sometimes the pure science types made him want to bash heads together, especially when they discounted his knowledge because he was military, not science. As if the two were mutually exclusive.
“Listen to me. You can’t just plug into the rift like it’s a fucking power outlet,” he said, gesturing at the Tandoran cruiser sitting in the hanger and glowing blue around the edges. It wasn’t supposed to glow blue. He knew, he’d been on one before. But after going through some of the available technologies on the ship with the science team, they’d been so rabid to power it up and have a look that good sense had obviously gone down the toilet. When no other power source would work, the squirrelly bastards had waited until he took a few days off for a little R&R and gone for the Rift.
Cursing under his breath, he swiftly walked the perimeter, jerking power conduits from source after source until the blue glow slowly faded from the cruiser. If he hadn’t been so incredibly pissed off, watching the scientists’ shoulders slump as one would have been amusing. The idea of the paperwork and bullshit he was going to have to wade through killed any potential amusement. He was going to have to stage another near-walkout and finally get the science team under his aegis as well. If he didn’t, he’d never get another vacation for fear of what the mice would do while mama cat was away.
“See, here’s the thing boys and girls. I’ll put it in simple terms. You want to go snorkeling. Explore the deep blue. Great. Wonderful. But you know you have to be careful in the deep water. You never know when you might meet a big shark with big teeth. So you move cautiously. You don’t throw yourself into the water with a piece of bloody meat and advertise. Unless you’re trying to commit suicide and I promise you, that’s not in the manifesto. Get it?”
There were wide eyes all around. He bit back a groan and shoved a hand through his short-cropped hair. “If somebody out there caught a burst of rift energy, you’re all gonna wish you hadn’t thought you were so damn smart to begin with. Got it?” Vigorous nods abounded.
“Great,” he said sarcastically. “Now, I’m going to go finish my vacation by doing the paperwork on this little ‘incident’.” With a dirty look over his shoulder, he headed out of the hangar and back to his office, first order of business a very dry martini. It was Saturday night, he was supposed to be on vacation and everyone could go fuck themselves if they had a problem with him having a drink. Not that they would. Very few people dared naysay him, which normally amused him to no end. Nothing like being a treasure trove of knowledge on alien tech to keep a man in his job.
He took his time mixing his drink and by the time he sat down and took a first sip, some of the tension had melted from his shoulders. The fact of the matter was that he liked his job, but humans in this era were just so… small-minded sometimes. Not in a moral way–although that wasn’t far off–but in their understanding of the universe. They were only just beginning to realize how very vast it was and how many hostile races would love to gobble them up. Sometimes it was a battle to keep them from doing themselves in. Like today.
Leaning his head back against the padded leather chair, he closed his eyes. Even though he’d forbidden himself to dwell on old days, sometimes it still happened and he wished he was back in the TARDIS with the Doctor and Rose. People who understood. People who wanted him for no other reason than they wanted him. Not because of what he could give him.
His jaw clenched like it always did when he thought of them and just as predictably, he relived that moment when he watched TARDIS disappear, leaving him stranded on a space station full of the dead. For two years while he worked to help rebuild the Earth the Daleks had nearly destroyed he’d told himself he couldn’t be angry. It was very possible the TARDIS had been running on a pre-set program, especially if the Doctor had been killed in those last moments with the Daleks. As pathetic as it seemed, that thought consoled him, because it meant he wasn’t really left behind. Not on purpose, anyway.
So he mourned the Doctor and worried about Rose, stranded back in her own time. And then the first chance he got, he’d acquired a nearly derelict time ship with every intent of finding Rose. He’d never made it though. The ship had been in worse shape than he realized in his impatience and landed him in 2013, dying in a puff of smoke not more than a second after he’d stepped out. Then to rub salt in the wound, Torchwood had showed up and lead him off to a nice, padded cell.
Of course, Torchwood, for all it’s collective jumpiness had been nothing compared to a few regimes he’d pissed off in between leaving the Time Agency and joining up with the Doctor. So he’d poured on the charm, tossed out some choice tidbits of information and eighteen months later he was a trusted, high-placed employee. All in a day’s work.
He smiled wryly to himself before the expression faded into something much darker. The backlash of working for Torchwood had been finding information he really hadn’t wanted. There had been a war between Daleks and Cybermen on the Earth–the idea still blew his mind–but the details had been… muddy. He suspected Torchwood had somehow fucked up big time in the midst of it, because their records were usually meticulous. Still, what he ultimately understood despite the lack of detail was that the Doctor had fixed the problem. After that incident, he had not been viewed as the ‘potentially dangerous’ alien he had been in the charter, but with attitudes of awe, like he was some all-powerful god, stepping in to save the Earth from certain death.
Jack snorted. It was very nearly true, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that the Doctor was alive. Which meant he had indeed been left behind like a piece of garbage on the Game Station.
He downed the rest of his martini and stared at the empty glass. There had been no mention of Rose, which had left him with a cold feeling that prodded him to investigate. It had taken time and quite a lot of digging–someone had gone to quite a lot of work to bury the information--but he’d eventually found her on the list of the dead along with her mother and Mickey Smith.
He’d gotten drunk and stayed that way for nearly a week, remembering how beautiful and vibrant Rose had been and wondering if the Doctor had somehow sacrificed her for the greater good. Yeah, he knew deep down the Doctor would never choose such a thing, but his hurt was enough to make him deny that knowledge. So Rose was his martyred angel and the Doctor a shadow who haunted his dreams.
Sighing, he put the glass down on his desk and wondered if he’d ever be able to let it go. It had been four years for him, Rose had been dead for nearly eight years and the Doctor was obviously finished with him. It was past time to put it away and move on, quit waiting for… something.
Given his thoughts, it was ironic that ‘something’ was about to happen. He stood just as the feeling in the room changed, like… pressure increasing in the air before a storm. Then before he could react, a heart-wrenchingly familiar sound filled the space as well….
tbc
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