Author's Notes: The Lyrics to A World of Pure Imagination written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. Hallelujah written by Leonard Cohen. A nod to Hamlet by Shakespeare. I’m forever blowing bubbles written by John Kellette, James Kendis, James Brockman and Nat Vincent.
Warning: Character death
30 (b) - I Walk Alone
The Master smiled at him triumphantly, wallowing in his own self importance to provoke events. ‘Little man,’ Ianto thought as the whole of time was mapped out before him. ‘Little men,’ he reflected sadly.
Their eyes met and Ianto saw, in their murky orbs, the darkened flash of resolve as if it were a shadow on the face of the moon.
The Master’s smile became a sneer as he turned and focused his aim on Martha. “Let’s start at the end shall we?” His reasoning was gone, what was left was the chaotic mix of insanity, fuelled by bitterness and enmity.
Ianto watched those few seconds of consequence past protractedly before him. He saw the change in Martha’s expression, the movement of the Doctor, too slow and too late, the fire of the laser blaze across the room, Martha topple to the floor, pushed, as Harry quickly stepped between her and the blast; the blast that hit him directly in the chest.
For Ianto, for that moment, time stilled around him in a three dimensional tableaux, a canvas of death, painting so time could recover, so time could go on.
Good old Harry Sullivan, hero to the last. The statement ebbed like an outgoing tide, the words washing through him with icy certainty.
He felt the TARDIS settle by him.
‘It always ends in death,’ he observed.
‘Without death there can be no beginning,’ she answered.
As she spoke the event fractured around them into different pathways of possibilities. The TARDIS gently kissed Ianto’s cheek and disappeared to add her voice into the swirl of the Vortex.
“He’s dead.” Martha’s words echoed on a thousand instances all leading away from this moment - the death of Harry Sullivan.
Martha looked to the Doctor but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Beside Ianto, Jack felt each weighed beat of every new second pound through him as time pivoted and began to move forward, the fine hairs on the back of his neck sensing the approaching storm.
The Master stood over the body. “Good old Harry Sullivan, hero to the last, looks like he earned you a reprieve, Martha.” The pitch of his anger had been momentarily sated. “But not for long, eh?” He winked at her, she glared up at him, unaware of time fizzing around her; waiting.
The Master pocketed the laser screwdriver and turned to Ianto. “And now for you, young Mr Jones.”
He held up the vortex manipulator fastened on his wrist like a magician about to perform a new trick. He twisted his arm tauntingly in front of Ianto. ‘Look nothing up my sleeve.’ Ianto heard a voice giggle in the back of his mind.
‘Only death,’ he whispered back.
‘Oh, don’t be so morose, we’re getting to the best bit.’ The voice reminded enthusiastically before it popped and vanished like a bubble in the sunlight.
“I’m going back, back to the battle of Canary Wharf,” the Master informed the room as he pulled out Jack’s Webley, checking the chamber. “I wonder who I’ll find amongst the blood and debris, a Rose maybe amid the thorns.” He turned the metal barrel, his eyes never leaving Ianto. “Your victory will be short lived when you cease to exist.”
“No you can’t.” The Doctor spoke for the first time since Harry’s death.
“Can’t what, Doctor? Eh? Kill two birds with one bullet? It’s a perfect solution.”
“No. Think of the consequences. It would break the flow of time. Cracks would appear, people would vanish into the vacuum you create, widening the breaks until time itself implodes and there is nothing left.”
The Master’s smile was triumphant. “That’s the general idea, you catch on quick.”
“But there would be nothing left,” the Doctor repeated again.
“Yes, but I would have won.” The gleam in his eye was full of shadows.
“Won? This isn’t a game.”
“You’re such a fool, Doctor; it’s always been a game between you and me.” The Master pressed a button on the wrist strap and the rift opened in a halo of dazzling light.
Ianto felt the spike of connection between himself and the Vortex reach for the pinnacle of the moment and shuffle its marked cards.
‘Showtime,’ the voice crowed jubilantly in the swirl of Ianto’s mind. ‘Hm, but what to wear?’
Jack stepped forward but Ianto grabbed his arm; there was nothing either of them could do to stop this. Time’s guardians had already chosen a champion.
The young TARDIS shimmered its solid form, bending with the tentacles of light the rift emitted until they became one qualifying entity of beauty and power, but the cost for both was high as the juvenile TARDIS was consumed by time’s force.
Ianto mourned her loss, even though he knew her renewal was imminent, she would be tainted and corrupt by the madness that belonged to someone else.
‘You can’t save us.’ The memory of the young TARDIS’s words filled his thoughts.
‘You could not save me.’ Lucy’s detached voice swam in recollection.
And yet together…
“I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. They fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then like my dreams they fade and die. Fortune's always hiding, I've looked everywhere, I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air.” Two voices twinned as one sang out from the glow as a lone, faceless, figure stepped from the rift’s energy taking its radiance with it like a cloak.
The Hub stilled, locked in the expanding bubble from the rift, its players unable to move like shop front mannequins selling its wares.
The figure moved behind the Master and wrapped its arms around him in an embrace. “Hello, Harry dear, long time, no see.” One voice became prominent, the other a whispered echo.
The cocoon of light fell from its form like golden grains of sand revealing the woman underneath; the Master’s body stiffened in recognition. “Lucy, but you’re dead.”
“No, sweetheart, only reborn. Hallelujah,” she whispered close to his ear but she directed her smile at Ianto. It was honest and well meant but couldn’t hide the madness straining at its edges.
“You know the song, Harry dear: ‘Well baby, I’ve been here before, I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor, you know, I used to live alone before I knew ya. And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch and love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.’”
She giggled and kissed his neck, tenderly. “Oh, how I’ve missed this.” Her fingers traced the line of buttons on his shirt. “Feeling that is, touching, you can’t imagine what it’s like being so detached from everything you love; and I love you, Harry, body and soul. Do you still love me?”
Her hand wrapped around the Webley he still held as an empty threat, the metal becoming hot and glowing in his grasp, burning his skin until he released it with a hiss. It spun across the floor, like a wayward firework stopping at Jack’s feet. Lucy brought his hand to her lips and kissed away the hurt. The Master swallowed as her embrace became tighter, possessive. “I’m not so sure you do love me Harry,” Lucy pouted, “you’ve been very mean to me.”
She smiled and the whole room trembled. “Now what’s that old adage, ‘heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.’”
“Lucy, I never…”
“Shush, sweetheart, it’s too late, you’ve been a very naught boy.” She waggled her finger at him. “Playing with things that don’t belong to you, that shouldn’t be touched and now you have to be punished.” Her eyes changed into the twist of the Vortex.
“Lucy, please…”
“I’m sorry, Harry, it’s time’s dictate and you’ve made it angry, very angry, you’re not going to like it when it’s angry.”
She reached inside his breast pocket and located the laser screwdriver. “No naughty toys for naughty boys.” She tossed the device across the room. “And this.” She placed a finger on the Vortex manipulator; it fell from his wrist.
Lucy’s mouth fell open, her jaw dislocating and from its unnaturally wide cavity the energy that lay within her flooded the Hub. She drew the Master closer, her eyes burning dangerously. “Do not fear, sweetheart, for I have made a place for us, a world of my own imagination to share with you.”
She giggled, its twisted sound held no wispy melody.
“’Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination.’”
Their bodies lifted from the floor, the ghostly brilliance of the Vortex and rift combined making Lucy appear translucent.
“’We'll begin with a spin
Trav'ling in the world of my creation,
What we'll see will defy
Explanation.”’
“Lucy, don’t do this,” the Master began to plead.
She stroked his face with her fingertips as she dragged him further into her embrace until his skin began to blister with little shafts of light.
“’If you want to view paradise,
Simply look around and view it.
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there's nothing to it.”’
The Master cried out as his body began to slowly melt into Lucy. She smiled.
”’There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you'll be free
If you truly wish to be.”’
“’Till death us do part, Harry and beyond.” Lucy’s voice was no more than a snatched whisper of sunlight on a cloudy day.
She sort out Ianto, the man who had saved her from death but not the madness that troubled her mind. “’Good-night, sweet prince; his hour is come when he to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up himself. Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to him, but use none. O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew”’.
The Master’s piercing scream visited every surface of the Hub as both their bodies burst into a turbulent cloud of glimmering specks, embellishing the air with both sunlight and shadow. Lightening ripped from its maelstrom, dancing in mental flashes of the Master’s crimes against universe. ‘We are hurting. Time is hurting,’ a chorus of voices recited in ghostly whispers. ‘We must stop the hurt.’
The cloud collapsed back into itself, in a swirling pattern of light and dark, to be contained within the coral-like exoskeleton of the young TARDIS.
‘We will not hurt that which is ours.’ One small sigh, one lone voice and then silence.
Nobody moved as they waited for time to exhale. It stirred, unfurling the pathway, stretching so that everything that happened fell into place, slotting together, second after second.
“What... what just happened?” Martha stood back from Harry’s body, looking to the Doctor.
“Time and punishment,” he replied, but there was no humour in the statement.
Martha looked around her; those under the Master’s control had been rendered unconscious. “Then he’s gone?” she asked cautiously, moving to check on Miss Royds who had face planted on her keyboard.
“For now,” came the simple answer.
“Not dead then?” Jack this time, his eyes trained on the young TARDIS, the Webley raised.
“Trapped, imprisoned if you prefer.” The Doctor spared him a glance.
“But not forever, not permanently.” It was rhetorical. Jack pulled back on the hammer.
The Doctor sighed, rubbing his forehead. “You can’t destroy it, Jack, it won’t let you.”
“And you could just be saying that.” Jack tore his stare away from the young TARDIS to challenge the Doctor, the trust between them showing its cracks.
“I could.” The Doctor looked toward Ianto for support but Ianto’s eyes still held the weave of the Vortex.
“Ianto?” The Doctor gained both Martha and Jack’s attention, but the young man ignored him, his gaze fixed on the body of Harry Sullivan.
“So much death, so many tears.” He took a step forward.
“Ianto, don’t.”
Ianto turned to the sound of the Doctor’s voice before looking down at his hands. “So much power, so much life.”
“No, don’t do it.” The Doctor’s plea sounded small in the pivot of the moment.
“Doc, I got this.” Jack reached out and grabbed Ianto’s arm, turning the young man to face him.
He held his gaze, seeking the man lost to the Vortex. “You won’t be saving him, Ianto, believe me, you’ll be condemning him.”
“You were saved.” Ianto’s fingers brushed Jack’s face without really seeing him.
“Was I?” Jack dropped the Webley to the floor and took Ianto’s hands in his own, squeezing them lightly.
They were close now, Jack could feel Ianto’s breath on his face, he swallowed. “Look inside me and tell me Sullivan would want this, this endless life.” Jack leant forward so their foreheads touched.
Ianto inhaled sharply as their soul’s met and he saw, he felt, everything that the Vortex had given Jack: every death, life, lie, love, tear, every goodbye and every year of loneliness. It was cold, detached and, oh, so broken. He was surviving, more than any in a world that constantly recycled itself under a different name.
“Jack.” What could he say? This was who Jack saw in the mirror.
“This, this is what I am, who I am.” Jack carefully pushed a strand of hair off Ianto’s forehead.
“No, you’re so much more.”
Memories of smiles and laughter, however fleeting, however painful, touched both men. Jack’s laugh held sorrow in its inflection. “Happiness, laughter, but there are too many silences in between.”
Ianto looked back at Harry’s body, the Vortex draining from his eyes. “Ianto, don’t do it, please.” Jack turned the young man to face him again.
“He’s always been there for me, Jack, like a…” Ianto closed his eyes.
“I love him.” It was heartbreakingly sincere.
“I know, I know,” Jack said softly
“I can’t let him go, I need him.”
“You have to, Ianto, you must. It was his time.” Jack inhaled deeply.
“Let him rest in peace, let him die once, with dignity, not cursed with eternal life. It will eat him up and he will slowly die on the inside.” He kissed the top of Ianto’s head feeling the power of the Vortex draining away from them both.
Tick, tock.
Jack swallowed. Time was running out on him, he needed something from it, needed something from Ianto, needed to ask the question. “Ianto…?”
His eyes sort the mix of the other man’s, appealing to the ancient knowledge within him, imploring, begging. The question died on his lips as Ianto shook his head, drawing a shaky breath. “I can’t, Jack, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Well, I had to ask.” Jack hid his heartbreak behind the humour, the small smile pushing his lips too dull to be real. He dropped his gaze, screening his pain.
Ianto reached out, gently gripping the sides of Jack’s head, clutching at this one chance to save the man behind the façade of Captain Jack Harkness, the man he loves. He kept his voice low and precise. “But I’ve seen your death, Jack, it’s a long way off, but you won’t die alone or unloved.”
Death.
Jack’s eyes were slow to leave lanto’s face in case the words were taken back in jest. He closed them, listening to the heightened beat of his own heart, savouring the moment.
Death.
Ianto had seen his death; his forever death, that unattainable, unfamiliar concept. He exhaled a long drawn out note of relief. It was enough; there was an end.
He wanted to open his eyes, to kiss those lips with grateful thanks, to taste the words so fresh upon them, but he couldn’t, he was ashamed. Ianto had given him everything and Jack, Jack had never given him anything solid in return, just whispered promises of a ghost of a man, a fabrication, an illusion.
He opened his eyes. “Thank you.” The words were spoken just plain and true to the man, without any invention.
Ianto smiled back at him and something tore deep within Jack’s heart; he found himself smiling back.
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A/N: This was one of the hardest chapters to write. Harry is one of my favourite characters and I thought long and hard before killing him off. I wanted give him a good exit, a hero’s exit where at least he gets to save the girl.
Thank you. :o(
Chapter 31