New fic: Before His Time 1/3
Story: Before His Time
Author: WMR
Rated: PG
Characters: Nine, Rose, Jack, brief appearance by Ten
Spoilers: All the way to TCI
Summary: After being left on Satellite Five, Jack tries to track his former companions down. Finally, he thinks he's found them... but all is not as he assumes.
Before His Time
Chapter 1: Familiar Strangers
He’s found them. At last.
After all his searching, he’s finally found their genetic signatures. Both of them. He’d identified the Doctor on his own a few times, but ignored that; he knows the Doctor is more than nine hundred years old and has been travelling around in time and space for most of that time. He doesn’t want to meet the Doctor years, or perhaps centuries, before Rose joined him. He wants things to be as they were. The three of them together. The unbeatable team they were - before the Daleks came along.
And here they are, finally. As he’d suspected, too, in Rose’s time and place. Twenty-first century London.
All he has to do now is get there to join them.
He fingers his little pen-shaped sonic device, one of the few things from his pre-TARDIS life that he still has. The little gizmo that he’s been able to soup up a bit since being left behind on the Game Station. It’s now got a few additional tricks, one of which is now going to come in very handy indeed.
He configures it to connect to his wristcomm, and downloads the coordinates for the Doctor and Rose’s location. And then he’s all set.
One set of keystrokes on his gizmo later and he’s teleporting out of the satellite almost two hundred thousand years in the future, on his way to London, England, Rose’s time. And his lost companions.
********
“That was spur of the moment. I’m signin’ up now.” She grins cheekily and waggles her finger at him. “You’re stuck with me.”
He wants to grin in return, but stifles it. Mickey’s watching, not happy even though the idiot human has just turned down the offer of a lifetime. Worse, though, Jackie Tyler is here too. Watching her daughter, who she hasn’t seen for a year, prepare to swan off god knows where with a man - an alien - she barely knows. An alien Jackie Tyler has no reason to trust.
Though, given he saved her life last night, she should give him some credit. Not that she will. He knows that. He’s taking her daughter away, and he can’t promise her anything at all about Rose’s safety. And he rejected her olive branch pretty thoroughly by refusing to stay for tea first.
He stands, silent, as Jackie berates him for risking Rose’s life. Demands promises that he can’t give. Reminds him once more that Rose is her daughter, all she’s got. Mickey’s watching, not saying a word but his expression showing that he echoes every one of Jackie’s sentiments. Rose is the only one who seems unmoved by the conversation, who seems to think that her mother’s being foolish.
She’s not really that naïve, is she? After today, she can’t be. She was almost killed, after all. He had to risk her life - and that of Harriet Jones, future prime minister, and his own, though regeneration would take care of that - to save the planet from the Slitheen’s plan to destroy it and sell it off for scrap.
But then, Rose would tell him - has told him - that she could get run over by a bus staying at home, and she’d rather have the excitement.
He sighs. This is self-defeating. There’s nothing he can tell Jackie Tyler that’ll make her feel any better, and Rose is an adult. She’s made her choice. He turns to put her rucksack inside the TARDIS, leaving Rose to say her goodbyes.
And then he stops dead. Because, standing right beside the TARDIS, is a man he’s never seen before. Who wasn't there a couple of seconds ago. And who’s looking at him with a wide grin of recognition and happiness.
“Bet you’re surprised to see me alive, Doctor!” the stranger exclaims, and suddenly he’s being seized in a fierce embrace.
He disentangles himself and opens his mouth to demand what this ape thinks he’s doing, but then halts. Obviously, judging by the way he was greeted, the guy knows him. Will know him. This is someone from his future.
Rose is approaching now, a frown developing on her face as she sees the stranger, notices that they’ve just apparently hugged. He gives the stranger a wary glance, and almost freezes as he sees the same joyous expression on the man’s face as he looks at Rose.
Okay. This has gone far enough for now. He’s not going to give Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith any more evidence of exactly how weird his life is.
“Inside.” He pushes the TARDIS door fully open, standing back to let Rose go in. With a jerk of his thumb, he indicates that the stranger should follow him. Then walks in himself and closes the doors firmly.
“Right, then,” he says, striding to the console and moving the appropriate levers, switches and dials to send the TARDIS away from the Powell Estates and into the Vortex. “Just who are you, and how is it that you seem to know us?”
********
It’s looking like he miscalculated.
He’d started to get that tingling ‘everything’s not quite right’ feeling when, instead of breaking into that manic grin when he’d spoken to him, the Doctor had just given him an arrogant, questioning look. And then he hadn’t returned the hug and Jack had known.
This Doctor - and therefore this Rose - is from before he met them.
So they don’t have a clue who he is.
Well, hell, anyway.
And he thought his quest was over. That he’d found his friends again - found his home.
These two don’t know him. Have no reason to want to keep him around, and every reason to get rid of him. After all, at some point in their timeline they’re going to meet him again. And he can’t be here when they do so. Can’t stay here even until then, of course, because he knows too much about their future, about the events and dangers they will meet along the way before they meet him in 1941.
He has a more immediate problem, too. It took him long enough to get through the Doctor’s hard, suspicious exterior the first time, to persuade the Time Lord to accept him as a friend. He’s not sure he can go through that again.
It could be even harder this time, too, even with his assurance that he’s already known them - will know them, from their perspective. Because this Doctor is harder, far more closed-off than the Doctor he knew. He knows, because Rose told him after he’d been with them a few weeks. Explained why the Time Lord sometimes fell into very dark moods, closed himself off from them, refused to answer questions, got very, very bleak. Told him that it’d been worse until a short time before he’d met them.
This Doctor is obviously still in the grip of his survivor’s guilt. Still traumatised. He can see it in the man’s eyes, in the set of his jaw. In the tension of his shoulders and upper body.
He wonders, once again, how Rose copes. Yet he knows the answer to his question.
She loves him. And she knows that he loves her, too. That’s how she copes - how she’s always coped.
Okay. So he has to reintroduce himself to his best friends. He sighs, then pastes a bright smile on his face.
“Jack Harkness,” he says, resisting the urge to step forward, up to the console, and offer his hand. He doesn’t include the ‘Captain’ in this introduction. That’s a part of his life he’s left behind. It’s not relevant any more, and anyway, he knows the Doctor well enough to know he won’t be impressed by it.
“Well, Jack Harkness,” the Doctor says, and his tone is cool though not entirely unwelcoming - Jack knows that he’s lucky not to have been left there on the street - “like I said, how come you know us?”
He’s pretty sure the Doctor already knows the answer to that. But he supplies it anyway. “I travelled with you both for about three months,” he says. “Or will travel, since I’m guessing it’s in your future. Until we got separated about six months ago. I’ve been looking for you guys ever since.”
The Doctor comes to stand against the console rail, his arms folded. The pose is so familiar. It’s painful to accept that this man doesn’t know him at all.
Rose is still a few feet from him, and she’s giving him a curious look. She, at least, is not suspicious. Or doesn’t seem to be. “You travel with us?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding, giving her a smile. Not one of his flirtatious ones. The way he’d smiled at the Rose who’d become his friend. The woman he loved, rather than the woman he just fancied the pants off. The woman who doesn’t know him at all. “I don’t know how far in your future, though. I met you in - ”
“Don’t say another word.” The Doctor sounds forbidding. “If you’ve travelled with us, you should know not to discuss the future. Bad enough that we’re meeting you now, out of the timeline.”
“Yeah. Right.” He blows out a breath. Stupid. Amateur mistake. “Sorry. I should know better,” he says. “Dammit, I was a Time Agent for ten years. I do know better.”
“A Time Agent?” Rose asks.
The Doctor also seems to look intrigued, but he hides it pretty well. Naturally. “That would make you from some time in the... fiftieth century or thereabouts?”
He hadn’t thought the Doctor knew about the Time Agency before their meeting in 1941. “Close. Fifty-first.”
Rose blinks at that. It’s obviously an eye-opener for her that he’s from so far into the future. Odd - she hadn’t seemed so surprised by that when he first met her. On the other hand, by then she’d done more travelling with the Doctor and probably her capacity to be shocked by what she saw had worn off a bit.
“An’ I’m guessing that’s how you managed to find us again,” the Doctor says. He’s still being watched intently, and it’s making him feel as if he’s some weird species of insect that the Time Lord can’t decide whether to kill or examine.
“Something like that. Well, actually, I came here from a couple of hundred thousand years in the future,” he says.
He gets a quirk of a dark eyebrow for that. “That where we left you, by any chance?”
He nods. “You thought I was dead.” He’s about to mention the Daleks, but hesitates. With what he now knows about the Time War, and given he has no idea whether this Doctor has encountered the Dalek in Van Statten’s museum yet, it’s not a good idea to drop that name into the conversation.
“An’ we just left you?” Rose sounds incredulous. “If you were with us for... three months, you said?”
He nods.
“Then I don’t understand why we’d just go. Why we’d leave you - your body - there.”
“Could be good reasons for that, Rose,” the Doctor says. “Might not’ve been a body. Our friend Harkness here didn’t say why we thought he was dead.”
“And there’s a good reason for that.” He meets the Doctor’s gaze, returning challenge with what he hopes is sincerity. “Like you said, it’s best not to discuss what happens in your future. But,” he adds, “there would’ve been a body.”
And, yes, he is pissed with them for abandoning him so completely. But he’d decided to let that one pass. They might have had good reasons for not taking his body with them. Maybe the Doctor himself was hurt, or even dying. He had been left to face an army of Daleks, after all, and he has no idea when the TARDIS came back. The only reason he’s sure that the Doctor left in it is that the Doctor’s body was nowhere to be seen on Floor 500. Nor was there anything that could once have been the Doctor.
“Maybe it was deliberate,” the Doctor says, and his tone is sardonic. “Maybe we wanted to ditch him.” And Jack catches the glance he throws Rose, the darkly humorous smile.
And part of him wonders if that was actually true.
No. He won’t believe it. Can’t believe it. It wasn’t like that. They cared for him. They did. He knows it. He was part of their team. The two had become three - inseparable, dependent on each other.
He catches and holds the Doctor’s gaze. “No,” he says firmly. “They wouldn’t have done that. I know that for a fact.”
The Doctor returns his stare for a few seconds without comment. Then he nods. “Fair enough.” Then he turns back to the console, makes a couple of adjustments, and turns back to him. “So now, Jack Harkness, we have to decide what to do with you.”
********
Who is this man? This Jack, who says he’s travelled with her? Who looked at her, when she first saw him, as if he’d found his dearest friend?
He acts as if she - as if both of them - are special to him. Will be special to him.
She studies him, knowing he can see her watching him but not really caring. After all, he has just appeared out of nowhere with his story about knowing them, being with them for three months, and expects them to believe it.
She might not have been travelling with the Doctor that long, but she was no fool even before he invited her into his TARDIS. She never fell for charming chat-up lines, no matter how good-looking the guy uttering them.
And this one is good-looking. One of the most handsome men she’s ever met, in fact. All clean features, darkly coiffed hair, warm blue eyes, and a visibly muscular torso in that tight T-shirt-like thing he’s wearing.
He looks exactly like the type who’d expect one smile and a compliment to sweep her off her feet. Except, when he did smile at her, it wasn’t that sort of smile. It was more like... More like the smile of someone who cares about her. Even, maybe, loves her.
Could that be true? Could this Jack Harkness from their future have meant so much to her? Or her to him?
Though it’s not just her. Because he’s looking at the Doctor now, watching as he dashes around the console in his normal seemingly-haphazard style, pushing levers, working that bicycle-pump-like thing which he did tell her the name of but she can’t remember, turning dials and flipping switches. The time rotor’s roaring again. They’re obviously off somewhere.
Has he decided what to do with their passenger?
But that’s not important. What does matter is the look on Jack Harkness’s face as he watches the Doctor. It’s almost heartbreaking.
He looks like someone who’s lost everything he ever cared about.
Maybe that’s true. He did say that he’s been looking for them for six months. That’s twice as long as he was with them in the first place. He must really want to find them very badly.
And, of course, he thought he had found them, only to realise that he’s stumbled on them before they ever met him in the first place.
So, what now?
Can he stay? Will the Doctor let him stay?
But... She tries to work it through. They’re going to meet him at some point anyway. When, she has no idea - he doesn’t seem to, either. So he can hardly be with them already when they do - she doesn’t know all that much about time travel, but she’s pretty sure that it’s not a good idea to have two of yourself around. At least, that’s what Doc Brown said in Back to the Future.
And, anyway, he knows too much about their future. He’s already having to watch what he says, and the Doctor’s warned him about it once. So won’t it be too dangerous if he stays?
Maybe the Doctor’s taking him back to where he came from. The fifty-first century. Or to the year two hundred thousand - didn’t he say he was there before coming to London in her time to find them?
“So, Doctor.” She turns to Jack again. He’s schooled his features; now, he simply looks blandly curious. “What have you decided?”
“Decided?” The Doctor, arms folded, stares down at Jack.
“To do about me.”
“Nothing, yet.” Shadows from the struts and the console play across the Doctor’s face. He always looks so alien when that happens. “I want to know a bit more about you first,” he says, just a tiny note of danger in his voice. “If I’m going to help you, I need to know that you deserve my help.”
“Help me?” Jack sounds as if he can’t quite believe it.
“You did say that you’ve been trying to find us for six months. That would suggest it’s something you want pretty badly. In that case, if I believe your story, then I should help you. Don’t you think?”
“I’d appreciate it more than I can say, Doctor,” Jack says, and she gives him a sharp look since there’s something in his voice which almost suggests that his emotions are getting the better of him. “Problem is, I can’t let you do it.”
“No?” And there’s a note of warning in the Doctor’s voice.
“The future’s not a nice place, Doctor. Believe me, you don’t want to go anywhere near there before you have to.”
“I was already getting that impression.” The Doctor leaves the console suddenly, coming down the steps and across to where the two of them are standing. “But I know what I’m doing.”
“I know you do. But, trust me, Doctor, this is something you don’t want to do. You shouldn’t do.”
This sounds bad. Very bad.
No, she doesn’t like the sound of this at all. And part of her wants to make Jack tell them everything, every painful detail - because it’s obvious from the way he’s talking that it is painful to him - so that they can make damn sure they avoid it when the time comes.
But she knows very well that the Doctor will have some techno-babble explanation for why they can’t do that. And he won’t let Jack explain anyway.
“I’ll decide that,” the Doctor announces. “For now, Jack Harkness, I have a few questions for you. So, since you’ve been in the TARDIS before, why don’t you lead the way to the kitchen? Rose here missed her tea when I whisked her away from London an’ I think it’s time to put the kettle on.”
*******
tbc
x-posted to better_with_3