New Fic!
Title: Another Galaxy
Rating: PG
Summary: Jack lives and dies and lives and dies and the Doctor’s life is woven through it all, inescapably. Based on the song “Another Galaxy” by Paul Simon
Warnings: Angst, attempts at deep-ness, spoilers for practically every Doctor Who episode ever made up through season 3.
A/N: Good Lord. My first lengthy fic in this fandom and it’s un-beta’d (cause I’m lazy) and a songfic (which I usually run away from screaming. But I think this works…)
The empty space station seems to stretch on and on forever, and everywhere he looks all he sees is dust. Piles and piles of dust, interspersed with the occasional corpse. The station is dead and empty. He should be one of the corpses, or perhaps one of the piles of dust (He steps over another one and again his brain cries out ‘what happened here?’) but he is alive. Here, amidst all this death he is alive. And he is alone. His body feels cold and empty, different. He doesn’t feel alive any more, and yet doesn’t feel dead either. Confused and frightened, he falls to his knees in the middle of a graveyard of corpses in the little room where they made their final stand. He hears the echo of the TARDIS’s engines play over and over in his mind, mocking him. The machine chanting He’s gone, gone, gone as it disappears.
[There is a moment]
One hundred and forty years, three Torchwoods, and countless resurrections later he hears the engines again, and this time he isn’t too late. He has just enough time to grab onto the frame and hold on for dear life as the full fury of the time vortex rips through him. It is the first time since waking up on the game station that he is actually thankful for the immortality. He is dead by the time they reach the end of the universe, but when he wakes up and takes that first painful breath of air, the Doctor is there looming over him and for a moment Jack can pretend he never left.
He’s different now, of course. A different face, but there is no denying the fact that it’s still him. Jack fancies if he squints he can still see the big ears and the manic grin. This Doctor has his own version of the manic grin and he flashes it almost immediately when he thinks Jack isn’t looking. Jack falls in love with him all over again in the time it takes the Doctor to say “stop it” in response to his flirtation with the new companion. Jack inhales the smell of death, smoke, and stars that seems to constantly cling to the Doctor and feels like he’s come home.
[a chip in time]
The year of the Master’s reign stretches on and on, as interminable as the dead game station seemed so long ago. Occasionally, Jack wonders if the Master will outlast his immortality. Perhaps millennia in the future, when Jack finally dies, the Toclafane will still perform the Master’s bidding across the stars, ruling with a merciless blade and an iron fist.
He hasn’t seen the Doctor in a very long time. Martha is a distant memory. She has probably long since died on the wasteland that used to be the Earth, stabbed by a Toclafane for daring to oppose the Master. Perhaps she died in one of the explosions. Her mother and sister wear dead, empty expressions and the Master-when he spares time to come and taunt Jack-looks gleeful. Insane.
That four beat rhythm pervades Jack’s consciousness. He can hear it in the silence of the cell, in the joke that passes for sleep, in the Master’s taunting laughter, in Tish’s helpless sobs. When he is finally, finally allowed to see the Doctor, he can practically feel the rhythm beating out underneath the frail skin. The Doctor kneels in front of a tent wearing a dog collar, his face impossibly old and his eyes impossibly hopeless. Jack no longer wonders whether he has a plan, he knows he had one. Right now, it seems the Doctor is waiting. Jack hopes the slump of his shoulders signifies patience and not defeat.
Jack still clings to the irrational, improbable hope that Martha is still alive.
And when a year passes slowly and achingly into history and Martha comes back bringing with her the ultimate triumph of the human race over its latest oppressor, he can’t help the immense feeling of pride. He watches the Doctor fly, his body so gloriously young again, born up by humanity’s hope, and he revels in the feeling of absolute relief.
The gun shot shatters all pretence at a happy ending. The Doctor’s helpless, blood-curdling yell stabs through Jack’s heart as efficiently as a sharpened knife slides through butter. Lucy accomplishes in the space of a moment what the Master could not manage over the course of an entire year. Jack watches the Doctor grieve and his confidence shatters. He despairs. He expects the Doctor to die.
Of course the Doctor doesn’t die, that choice has been stripped from him. He’s the last, the only one left and so he is condemned to live on and on. And Jack realizes suddenly that he is probably the only person in the universe who can even begin to comprehend what that means.
[where leaving home is the lesser crime]
“Seriously, Jack, come with me,” the Doctor beckons with a little incline of his head. His eyes sparkle with a false happiness hiding the pain, and emptiness that lurks behind the carefree smile. He still smells of smoke and burning flesh.
It would be so easy to say yes.
[where your eyes are blind with tears]
Listening to the TARDIS dematerialize isn’t any easier. It still sounds like mocking laughter. It still rips out a part of Jack’s heart, and sucks a part of his soul out of his body to disappear into thin air along side the blue wood and the flashing light. Jack watches the box fade and spares a moment of silent thought, contemplating the horror of the Year the Never Was. He indulges in a moment of mourning for the Doctor. His Doctor died that year. The man who disappeared in the TARDIS is a broken shell of the hero Jack knew and loved. Jack mourns him as though he were dead, and moves on.
[but your heart can see]
His team is so ridiculously happy to see him. They have managed not to destroy Cardiff in his absence (Jack refuses to think about how close the Master came to destroying the entire Earth). Best of all, they don’t ask questions. They merely accept him back with open arms, adding one more mystery to their leader’s enigmatic past.
Time passes. Torchwood three saves the world over and over again. The team work, fight, and die. The normal course of human life goes on and on and Jack watches. He mourns his friends, his coworkers as they fall one by one. He sits quietly in the background, a silent, constant observer of the passing of time. The defender of the Earth. As he grows older and older, wearier and wearier, he begins to pay more attention to the little inconsistencies that signify the Doctor’s passing. Here, a young girl talks of nightmares, of children disappearing into her drawings and Satan hiding in her closet. She tells her friends that she wants to be a doctor when she grows up so she can save people. There a woman disappears from the altar at her own wedding. She comes back babbling about blue boxes and Martians. Her family pats her on the head and forgets. Jack finds them all, the lives the Doctor touched however briefly. The people who can never forget him. He finds them and befriends them and together, they wait for the Doctor’s return. They wait to be taken away to the stars. They live in hope, praying to a lonely god.
[Another lifetime. Another galaxy]
End
There is a moment
A chip in time
Where leaving home is the lesser crime
Where your eyes are blind with tears
But your heart can see
Another lifetime
Another galaxy
-Paul Simon
Rating: PG
Summary: Jack lives and dies and lives and dies and the Doctor’s life is woven through it all, inescapably. Based on the song “Another Galaxy” by Paul Simon
Warnings: Angst, attempts at deep-ness, spoilers for practically every Doctor Who episode ever made up through season 3.
A/N: Good Lord. My first lengthy fic in this fandom and it’s un-beta’d (cause I’m lazy) and a songfic (which I usually run away from screaming. But I think this works…)
The empty space station seems to stretch on and on forever, and everywhere he looks all he sees is dust. Piles and piles of dust, interspersed with the occasional corpse. The station is dead and empty. He should be one of the corpses, or perhaps one of the piles of dust (He steps over another one and again his brain cries out ‘what happened here?’) but he is alive. Here, amidst all this death he is alive. And he is alone. His body feels cold and empty, different. He doesn’t feel alive any more, and yet doesn’t feel dead either. Confused and frightened, he falls to his knees in the middle of a graveyard of corpses in the little room where they made their final stand. He hears the echo of the TARDIS’s engines play over and over in his mind, mocking him. The machine chanting He’s gone, gone, gone as it disappears.
[There is a moment]
One hundred and forty years, three Torchwoods, and countless resurrections later he hears the engines again, and this time he isn’t too late. He has just enough time to grab onto the frame and hold on for dear life as the full fury of the time vortex rips through him. It is the first time since waking up on the game station that he is actually thankful for the immortality. He is dead by the time they reach the end of the universe, but when he wakes up and takes that first painful breath of air, the Doctor is there looming over him and for a moment Jack can pretend he never left.
He’s different now, of course. A different face, but there is no denying the fact that it’s still him. Jack fancies if he squints he can still see the big ears and the manic grin. This Doctor has his own version of the manic grin and he flashes it almost immediately when he thinks Jack isn’t looking. Jack falls in love with him all over again in the time it takes the Doctor to say “stop it” in response to his flirtation with the new companion. Jack inhales the smell of death, smoke, and stars that seems to constantly cling to the Doctor and feels like he’s come home.
[a chip in time]
The year of the Master’s reign stretches on and on, as interminable as the dead game station seemed so long ago. Occasionally, Jack wonders if the Master will outlast his immortality. Perhaps millennia in the future, when Jack finally dies, the Toclafane will still perform the Master’s bidding across the stars, ruling with a merciless blade and an iron fist.
He hasn’t seen the Doctor in a very long time. Martha is a distant memory. She has probably long since died on the wasteland that used to be the Earth, stabbed by a Toclafane for daring to oppose the Master. Perhaps she died in one of the explosions. Her mother and sister wear dead, empty expressions and the Master-when he spares time to come and taunt Jack-looks gleeful. Insane.
That four beat rhythm pervades Jack’s consciousness. He can hear it in the silence of the cell, in the joke that passes for sleep, in the Master’s taunting laughter, in Tish’s helpless sobs. When he is finally, finally allowed to see the Doctor, he can practically feel the rhythm beating out underneath the frail skin. The Doctor kneels in front of a tent wearing a dog collar, his face impossibly old and his eyes impossibly hopeless. Jack no longer wonders whether he has a plan, he knows he had one. Right now, it seems the Doctor is waiting. Jack hopes the slump of his shoulders signifies patience and not defeat.
Jack still clings to the irrational, improbable hope that Martha is still alive.
And when a year passes slowly and achingly into history and Martha comes back bringing with her the ultimate triumph of the human race over its latest oppressor, he can’t help the immense feeling of pride. He watches the Doctor fly, his body so gloriously young again, born up by humanity’s hope, and he revels in the feeling of absolute relief.
The gun shot shatters all pretence at a happy ending. The Doctor’s helpless, blood-curdling yell stabs through Jack’s heart as efficiently as a sharpened knife slides through butter. Lucy accomplishes in the space of a moment what the Master could not manage over the course of an entire year. Jack watches the Doctor grieve and his confidence shatters. He despairs. He expects the Doctor to die.
Of course the Doctor doesn’t die, that choice has been stripped from him. He’s the last, the only one left and so he is condemned to live on and on. And Jack realizes suddenly that he is probably the only person in the universe who can even begin to comprehend what that means.
[where leaving home is the lesser crime]
“Seriously, Jack, come with me,” the Doctor beckons with a little incline of his head. His eyes sparkle with a false happiness hiding the pain, and emptiness that lurks behind the carefree smile. He still smells of smoke and burning flesh.
It would be so easy to say yes.
[where your eyes are blind with tears]
Listening to the TARDIS dematerialize isn’t any easier. It still sounds like mocking laughter. It still rips out a part of Jack’s heart, and sucks a part of his soul out of his body to disappear into thin air along side the blue wood and the flashing light. Jack watches the box fade and spares a moment of silent thought, contemplating the horror of the Year the Never Was. He indulges in a moment of mourning for the Doctor. His Doctor died that year. The man who disappeared in the TARDIS is a broken shell of the hero Jack knew and loved. Jack mourns him as though he were dead, and moves on.
[but your heart can see]
His team is so ridiculously happy to see him. They have managed not to destroy Cardiff in his absence (Jack refuses to think about how close the Master came to destroying the entire Earth). Best of all, they don’t ask questions. They merely accept him back with open arms, adding one more mystery to their leader’s enigmatic past.
Time passes. Torchwood three saves the world over and over again. The team work, fight, and die. The normal course of human life goes on and on and Jack watches. He mourns his friends, his coworkers as they fall one by one. He sits quietly in the background, a silent, constant observer of the passing of time. The defender of the Earth. As he grows older and older, wearier and wearier, he begins to pay more attention to the little inconsistencies that signify the Doctor’s passing. Here, a young girl talks of nightmares, of children disappearing into her drawings and Satan hiding in her closet. She tells her friends that she wants to be a doctor when she grows up so she can save people. There a woman disappears from the altar at her own wedding. She comes back babbling about blue boxes and Martians. Her family pats her on the head and forgets. Jack finds them all, the lives the Doctor touched however briefly. The people who can never forget him. He finds them and befriends them and together, they wait for the Doctor’s return. They wait to be taken away to the stars. They live in hope, praying to a lonely god.
[Another lifetime. Another galaxy]
End
There is a moment
A chip in time
Where leaving home is the lesser crime
Where your eyes are blind with tears
But your heart can see
Another lifetime
Another galaxy
-Paul Simon