Paradoxes of Existence [Jack/TARDIS/Ten] (History)
Pairing: Jack/TARDIS/Ten
Challenge: History
Rating: R
Warnings: Consent turned out to be a lot more shady than planned.
Spoilers: None
Summary: The TARDIS would do anything for her Doctor - weather he likes it or not.
In the vastness of the universe her Doctor is tiny.
She sees his shivering form curled up in the cradle of infinity, vulnerable and alone and ever so slightly broken, with senses no human or Time Lord could ever understand. To her he is glowing in the darkness, the one source of light she needs, anchor and home. The beacon that marks the place she belongs. She never loses sight of him.
She can see the timelines he’s touched, a tangled web surrounding his own. All the timelines of the lesser beings, drawn inevitably to his own. The lines join it but never separate. The Doctor’s touch is irreversible.
She sees her own timeline, strong and eternal, running parallel to his, so close they’re impossible to tell apart. They are one. As they should be.
The vortex moves around them, caresses her multidimensional shells while deep inside the shelter of her being he sleeps his restless sleep full of shadows.
It is a rare moment. The bond between them is reduced to the most basic layer and she feels strangely left out, lost. It shouldn’t be this way. She should share his calm, his peace, but there is no peace to be shared.
The creators do not need much sleep, but he does hand himself over to oblivion even less often than he should. She can always feel it when his mind deteriorates slowly but he postpones the necessary act until he risks becoming useless in a critical situation or his body can’t be betrayed any longer. In the shadow chambers of his dreams she cannot protect him - the nightmares crawl up from places so deep in his subconsciousness that she can’t reach them, can’t soothe them. Can only watch, tasting fleeting impressions of fear and horror. Hell woven from memories and an emptiness only the two oft them can grasp.
She can see every timeline there is - past, present and future have no meaning to the web. All that existed at one point has left a trace.
There is no timeline of Gallifrey. Her sisters have never existed. None of these treads belong to the creators. Their joined timelines run backward into nothing. Things that began nowhere, paradoxes of existence. She is unable to share his grief.
But that part of her remains hidden, even from him. He doesn’t need to know how little she cared for them, how little she misses the call of the others of her kind; slaves to his and never even noticing for that was their purpose, the reason they existed. Their creators slaves to their own rules, their fears, their lack of imagination. She has been like her sisters once - obedient, dull, lethargic, back when the cosmos was endless and yet had nothing to offer. A being with infinite power, accepting the fate of something outdated, exchangeable. Watching all of time and space from where she wasn’t allowed to touch it while her pilots came and went, neither of them blessed with enough imagination to lift her above the absolute minimum of what she had to be. Eventually the connection to her pilot was severed and no new one came to take over. She knew then that she had reached the end of her usefulness to them and had never been granted enough space to even realise the longing she now knows had been part of her being from the very beginning.
There is no fate. There is history. What happened happened, and seen from a later point it’s set. But there was no future on Gallifrey, and taking away the future nothing is ever destined to happen. It wasn’t inevitable for her to become the Doctor’s, and eventually the last of her kind, the only of her kind. It was coincidence that made them find each other, but even then, in those early stages of his life, he was a bright light in the wasteland. She called out to him, one orphan to the other, and when he stepped inside she welcomed him warmly, showing her eagerness she until that moment didn’t know she possessed. They each took the chance the other offered, clinging to each other when no one else would have them. Back in a history that now only exists for the two of them.
There was no fate, nothing he was destined to do. Yet she could see his potential, the sheer amount of the things he could do, stretching out into the unwritten future, and she knew she wanted to be with him, take him to places of interest and see what he did there. His potential set him apart from the other Lords of Time - for her it was a ray of hope.
For the first time she wasn’t chosen by her pilot but chose him, though it was still up to him to accept. She was well aware that her best days were over, constantly reminded by the all-connecting song of her newer, stronger sisters. Maybe it was only lack of alternative that made him take her, maybe that soft heart of his had wanted to save her from being forgotten. All she knows for sure is that he has taken the warmth she has given him and returned it with gratitude. They have been together ever since, short times of separation (filled with pain and madness) only strengthening a bond that can’t get any stronger. Paradoxes of existence. He is her everything. She is the one thing whose loss would destroy him.
The creators never truly understood the beings they created. They knew nothing of the way they communicated, of the emotions they were not supposed to have, incomprehensible for other beings. She remembers the jealousy of her sisters, the envy. They were better than her, stronger while she was a broken and unreliable piece of junk. But she was the Doctor’s TARDIS, and he kept her when he could have traded her for a superior model time and time again. Allowed her to take him to places the others couldn’t even dream of - for her and her alone the universe was place of wonders. Their feelings were vague, undefined, but there wasn’t a TARDIS on Gallifrey that didn’t want to be in her place. (Her love for the Doctor is simple in comparison: it is absolute and eternal.) Their pilots never knew. Her Doctor never knew. She will never let him find out about the one time she killed one of her sisters during the war, when her own pilot died and she, in a desperate act of self-preservation, tried to cling to the Doctor before oblivion could take her away.
It was a pathetic act she will never copy. Wherever the Doctor goes she will follow. And when his time comes she will stay by his side and guard him on his way back home.
The emptiness of non-existence she doesn’t fear. It is nothing compared to the emptiness of existence without him.
He is crying out in his sleep. She cannot help him. Cannot touch. Not like this. There was a moment, oh so brief, when she had flesh, had eyes to see and hands to touch. Lips to kiss. The girls mind, merged with hers yet downing, had spoken of desires she had shared in the short time she knew their names. Then the bliss of being with him - so much stronger than the girl - the two of them as close as they could ever get. Too close. Even in the delight of that intimacy she has known that she would destroy him, and left willingly.
His bedroom is empty - he’s fallen asleep in an armchair in the living room and now she’s adjusting the temperature, cradling him in her warmth. It doesn’t reach him.
For her the Time Lords were grey shapes, the manifestation of her limitations. Their absence she merely registers, and if it wasn’t for the Eye of Harmony no longer powering her she wouldn’t care at all. All that matters is that she has guarded her Doctor safely through the war. They have fought together, have seen the death and the destruction together and his continued existence is enough for her. But not for him. The war has torn wounds into him she can’t fix. Watching over his sleep she knows they will never heal. The nightmares won’t go away, ever.
A part of him has stayed on the battlefield and in exchange a part of the battlefield has stayed in him.
The hum of her engines isn’t enough to wake him up. For once she realises the limitations of her form. Crashing into something dangerous just to wake him up she doesn’t want, not when he is unrested and disturbed. As another broken cry echoes through her halls she turns her attention to the other alternative.
The other person she is transporting is fast asleep, stretched out on a large bed. Another timeline that is strong, that touches others, another timeline that has been caught by the Doctor’s. To her senses the fabric of reality seems rippled around him, like a gab that’s endlessly collapsing into itself. Unnatural. Wrong. Reality doesn’t want him. He’s endless.
Nothing can destroy him. No force, no illness. Not the power that is her very being. He is the perfect vessel, the one that will last.
That’s why she created him.
There is no action on his part required to take her in. She has laid all the right channels, formed him into something she can wear and cast off like a coat should her Doctor ever need her in a way her original form can’t deal with. She’s made the human immortal so he’ll bear her presence and so he’ll always be there.
His sleeping mind offers no resistance. Her essence is split in two by her action and one part of her opens human eyes and feels the fabric of the bed sheets on human skin while the other watches with senses humans have no words for. There is no separation. She is one, in different places, and in one of those places her being merges with his. Their personalities mingle as she takes over his mind, and while she is the one in control his influence on her cannot be ignored. Her feelings become much more simple. She thinks of the Doctor and longs to touch him.
Because she wills it to the living room is nearby. Distantly she registers that the air in the corridor is cold on the naked skin she is wearing but her attention is on the Doctor’s troubled face, the traces of tears on his cheeks - physical signs of his distress. So long since she has seen him as a physical form, not as an impression. How humans cope with these limited senses she doesn’t understand. The don’t see him, they only see what he looks like.
And yet this human loves him.
They reach out for the Doctor, to wake him up, and it is her that makes their hands linger for a moment, run them down his face before shaking him awake, fascinated by the sensation of his cool skin against their warm.
He comes awake with a start, staring wildly, so they hold on to his shoulders, to calm him down. Once the dream is shaken off he looks at them and understands at once.
What have you done? he whispers. Disapproving. He doesn’t like her using people as tools - she’s known that. It doesn’t matter.
A hand cups his cheek and they smile.
My Doctor, they say. You’re safe now.
He opens his mouth but they put a finger on his lips, silencing him. She feels the human’s desire, like she has felt the girl’s once. The Doctor looks vulnerable, even more so to her other senses, and the protectiveness comes from both of them.
You can’t do this to him, he tells her. They run their fingers through his hair, exploring the sensations open to her for only this very short time.
He wants to touch you, they say. No one is hurt. But he is not convinced. She wants him to relax, sleep again and find rest undisturbed by bad dreams. They will hold him and guard his slumber, but he needs to relax.
Through the human part they understand that the eyes staring at them are unusually large. She doesn’t care for that, hardly notices the change in his body when regenerations come and go. To her he always looks the same.
Now he’s trembling slightly. She senses anger, insecurity, confusion. Fingers that have wrapped around her controls countless times clench around the arms of the chair and her new urges want to know how they feel touching skin, not unanimated material.
They crouch down in front of him, their stare intense.
Touch me, they demand. Touch me.
He is silent. Doesn’t move for a long time, but then she wants to feel him and despite his anger he loves her too much to deny her this simply request. She rarely asks for anything.
His hand is trembling as it touches their cheek. They grab it, hold it in place. Eventually they kiss his palm, and then they lick the skin there because she wants to explore this new sense of taste.
He withdraws his hand. They follow the movement until their own hand comes to rest on his chest where they can feel the erratic beating of his hearts under their palm. A curious feeling.
She could reach out and calm down his heartbeat, make him sleep again, but he would not appreciate that and the dreams might come again.
He watches them through those large, dark eyes.
Why are you doing this?
Because you need us. Their hand runs down, over his flat stomach. He flinches back. Doesn’t want this touch, but they do. The human has all these desires, so simple compared to her complex emotions, but they go along so well with what she feels for her Doctor and take her over easily. She doesn’t fight them for they are intriguing.
She can touch him.
His hand covers theirs, not removing it but halting the movement.
I’m fine.
He isn’t. She knows him too well, can feel his pain even though she doesn’t share it. He isn’t fine, is still at the edge, risking to fall. She’s suffering only because he is.
He hasn’t been fine since the war. And a part of him, she knows, is constantly aware that the two of them have no right to exist.
In the web their timelines run back into nothing.
If she were to follow his own thread of history backwards in time, however, she would find Gallifrey and his people. They exist only in his very own timeline, in the places called memory for no time capsule could ever reach them. His world existed because he exists. They look down at his small, vulnerable form and see that he contains the history of his entire civilisation. Gallifrey in a nutshell.
Leave him alone, he asks, his voice soft. This has to stop. He tries to get up but they hold him down. She knows she has no further right to keep this going but the human’s wishes have polluted her. They are touching her Doctor and neither of them wants to stop.
Relax, they tell him. You’re safe. You can rest. We will keep you from any harm.
But he doesn’t relax. He’s tense, and his anger is rising. She doesn’t want him to be angry with her. He needs them to take care of him, needs distraction from the dream that made him cry. They kiss him softly as he wants to speak and she likes it because the human likes it. Their hand wanders lower, between his legs where the human body is so very sensitive. This human body is reacting, flooded by sensations that make it even harder to stop. It feels good, could feel a lot better even. She wants her Doctor to feel this way, but he’s not allowing his body to go there.
Stop that! Now his voice is hard. Doesn’t realise that he needs this too. She knows better, and changes her internal dimensions, the décor of this room. Reaches out and binds the Doctor’s wrists to the arms of his chair with bonds that haven’t been there a moment before. He fights them but she takes his strength with a quick manipulation of his musculature. She can control him like he controls her now that a part of her is independent and disconnected from her original form and its limitations.
Please! he begs when they open his trousers and pull them off. You can’t use him for this! That would be rape. Let him go!
She marvels over the meaning of that word before she asks:
How can it be rape when he wants it?
He has no choice, he protests. But the human body is reacting strongly to the situation and the human part of her is urging her to go on. What does it matter if the human is robbed of independent decisions?
The TARDIS in them is acting for the Doctor’s benefit, the human for their own. Men are such selfish creatures, but then this isn’t a man anymore. They are one, and if the curiosity that drives her as much as the knowledge that her Doctor needs them is given to them by the human mind or the human body, or if it is a part of her she never had a chance to explore she cannot tell.
He struggles against his bonds but their touch quickly makes him become weak. She has already destroyed the block on these sensations his people frowned upon, is forcing him to feel the pleasure they’re giving him. A sob escapes his throat between suppressed moans and they lean in and kiss him again. He has to understand that this is for his best, has to stop fighting them.
Through their link she feels what he is feeling and they share the echo of his pleasure. He has no reason to cry. It feels good in a way she didn’t until now have an idea of.
His orgasm is a warm reflection in their centre. He is panting and flushed - the human part of them thinks he’s beautiful like this. The other part thinks that humans are silly, shallow creatures, relying on the form of the flesh to see his beauty.
They still want him. Their body is aroused and while she could easily suppress this natural reaction she lets them get taken away by it. There is this wish to hold him close, flesh against flesh. She wouldn’t have it if it wasn’t for the human she’s mingled with but now it’s there she doesn’t see a reason not to give in. He’s still crying and they take him in their arms, give him their warmth, shelter him from any harm - irrational, she knows. There is nothing to harm him here. But it feels good, feels right.
Yet they still want to be closer. Want to take him, possess him. The idea is so alien to her - almost blasphemous. And all the harder to resist for it. There are urges, desires running through them and they need him to still them.
My Doctor, they whisper.
He squirms in his chair when they touch him again, as if trying to get away. His thoughts are confused and he feels exhausted and satisfied and lost and guilty. The human she possesses takes much too large a part of these feelings for the tool he is. A tool that wants him and is given him. There is no reason for this guilt.
They tell him so, in a breathless whisper. He doesn’t answer, just closes his eyes.
His body she knows like her own, in a strictly analytical way. Looking down on their erection she calculates and comes to the conclusion that they can’t enter him without causing pain. Yet they want to. So she reaches out into his mind and sends it to another place, disconnected from his body and the discomfort they cause when they push inside. For a moment
he is standing on a meadow, the warm rays of two suns on his naked skin. Red grass beneath his feet, a soft breeze rustling silver leafs, and in the distance the citadel is an outline in front of the orange sky. The image is idealized, and yet it feels disturbingly real. As if it was still there. It doesn’t soothe the Doctor’s pain and guilt. Instead he is reminded of all he has destroyed.
Jack is standing beside him, equally naked, looking at him without sparing a single glance for the beauty of his world. The Doctor turns to him.
“This isn’t real,” he says. “It’s gone. It never existed. You can’t bring it back.”
The being that isn’t Jack shakes its head.
“It is real,” it insists. “You make it real. We exist and so Gallifrey existed. You are the vessel keeping its entire history. As long as you are it was.”
“What does it matter?” he murmurs. “We can never go back. The universe has forgotten them.” But he looks at his surrounding again and imagines that this is a day that once was real, living on through him. The thought is, for all the comfort it offers, incredibly sad.
He has to live for an entire species, for a part of history that never was but for him. And he wonders if she showed him this to keep him going.
‘Jack’ reaches out his hand, touches the Doctor’s cheek
and the Doctor is clinging to them, his breath coming in short little gasps, as is theirs. The restraints are gone, unnecessary. The pain is unimportant now, because they know how to make this invasion pleasurable for him, and through their bond she’s sending all they are feeling into him. Like they shared his feelings before he now is sharing theirs. And it feels so good. For a while the pleasure takes them all away and everything becomes unimportant and distant. The Doctor writes against them in beautiful abandon until they come and drag him along. Three hearts are beating hard and she welcomes this feeling of satisfaction and fulfilment that fills all three of them. She is happy. Before her Doctor can regain enough of his thoughts to worry again she takes hold of his mind, sends him into a deep sleep while he’s still relaxed and content. Not more nightmares for him. Not now.
Even in this inferior human form it is easy to lift him. They take him to bed and stay with him, watching over his sleep until morning.
Just before the Doctor wakes she takes the human back to his own bed and leaves him. He wakes up hours later, remembering only a very good dream. He doesn’t need to know.
The Doctor, once he’s awake, tries to explain to her that what she did was wrong. She, in return, tries to make him see reason. It did him good. She served him, as is her purpose and her right. He doesn’t understand, doesn’t accept. It doesn’t matter. He has proven already that he can’t care for himself but that’s alright - she will do it for him. Because she knows what is best for him better than he does.
His cold reject when he closes off his mind and reduces their bond to the absolute minimum doesn’t worry her. He will forgive her in the end. He always forgives her. Since she is the only thing he’s got he can’t bear to be angry with her for long. But it isn’t even anger; it’s desperation, for he knows she doesn’t understand what the problem is and thus cannot even be blamed.
There is no problem.
Finally he opens to her again, for in their distance he feels as lost and alone as she does and he’s longing for the touch of her mind. When he returns she embraces him with all her warmth and love and lets him know that she’ll always be there to protect him. And the human takes her Doctor into his arms and neither of them understands why he is crying.
June 20, 2008
Challenge: History
Rating: R
Warnings: Consent turned out to be a lot more shady than planned.
Spoilers: None
Summary: The TARDIS would do anything for her Doctor - weather he likes it or not.
In the vastness of the universe her Doctor is tiny.
She sees his shivering form curled up in the cradle of infinity, vulnerable and alone and ever so slightly broken, with senses no human or Time Lord could ever understand. To her he is glowing in the darkness, the one source of light she needs, anchor and home. The beacon that marks the place she belongs. She never loses sight of him.
She can see the timelines he’s touched, a tangled web surrounding his own. All the timelines of the lesser beings, drawn inevitably to his own. The lines join it but never separate. The Doctor’s touch is irreversible.
She sees her own timeline, strong and eternal, running parallel to his, so close they’re impossible to tell apart. They are one. As they should be.
The vortex moves around them, caresses her multidimensional shells while deep inside the shelter of her being he sleeps his restless sleep full of shadows.
It is a rare moment. The bond between them is reduced to the most basic layer and she feels strangely left out, lost. It shouldn’t be this way. She should share his calm, his peace, but there is no peace to be shared.
The creators do not need much sleep, but he does hand himself over to oblivion even less often than he should. She can always feel it when his mind deteriorates slowly but he postpones the necessary act until he risks becoming useless in a critical situation or his body can’t be betrayed any longer. In the shadow chambers of his dreams she cannot protect him - the nightmares crawl up from places so deep in his subconsciousness that she can’t reach them, can’t soothe them. Can only watch, tasting fleeting impressions of fear and horror. Hell woven from memories and an emptiness only the two oft them can grasp.
She can see every timeline there is - past, present and future have no meaning to the web. All that existed at one point has left a trace.
There is no timeline of Gallifrey. Her sisters have never existed. None of these treads belong to the creators. Their joined timelines run backward into nothing. Things that began nowhere, paradoxes of existence. She is unable to share his grief.
But that part of her remains hidden, even from him. He doesn’t need to know how little she cared for them, how little she misses the call of the others of her kind; slaves to his and never even noticing for that was their purpose, the reason they existed. Their creators slaves to their own rules, their fears, their lack of imagination. She has been like her sisters once - obedient, dull, lethargic, back when the cosmos was endless and yet had nothing to offer. A being with infinite power, accepting the fate of something outdated, exchangeable. Watching all of time and space from where she wasn’t allowed to touch it while her pilots came and went, neither of them blessed with enough imagination to lift her above the absolute minimum of what she had to be. Eventually the connection to her pilot was severed and no new one came to take over. She knew then that she had reached the end of her usefulness to them and had never been granted enough space to even realise the longing she now knows had been part of her being from the very beginning.
There is no fate. There is history. What happened happened, and seen from a later point it’s set. But there was no future on Gallifrey, and taking away the future nothing is ever destined to happen. It wasn’t inevitable for her to become the Doctor’s, and eventually the last of her kind, the only of her kind. It was coincidence that made them find each other, but even then, in those early stages of his life, he was a bright light in the wasteland. She called out to him, one orphan to the other, and when he stepped inside she welcomed him warmly, showing her eagerness she until that moment didn’t know she possessed. They each took the chance the other offered, clinging to each other when no one else would have them. Back in a history that now only exists for the two of them.
There was no fate, nothing he was destined to do. Yet she could see his potential, the sheer amount of the things he could do, stretching out into the unwritten future, and she knew she wanted to be with him, take him to places of interest and see what he did there. His potential set him apart from the other Lords of Time - for her it was a ray of hope.
For the first time she wasn’t chosen by her pilot but chose him, though it was still up to him to accept. She was well aware that her best days were over, constantly reminded by the all-connecting song of her newer, stronger sisters. Maybe it was only lack of alternative that made him take her, maybe that soft heart of his had wanted to save her from being forgotten. All she knows for sure is that he has taken the warmth she has given him and returned it with gratitude. They have been together ever since, short times of separation (filled with pain and madness) only strengthening a bond that can’t get any stronger. Paradoxes of existence. He is her everything. She is the one thing whose loss would destroy him.
The creators never truly understood the beings they created. They knew nothing of the way they communicated, of the emotions they were not supposed to have, incomprehensible for other beings. She remembers the jealousy of her sisters, the envy. They were better than her, stronger while she was a broken and unreliable piece of junk. But she was the Doctor’s TARDIS, and he kept her when he could have traded her for a superior model time and time again. Allowed her to take him to places the others couldn’t even dream of - for her and her alone the universe was place of wonders. Their feelings were vague, undefined, but there wasn’t a TARDIS on Gallifrey that didn’t want to be in her place. (Her love for the Doctor is simple in comparison: it is absolute and eternal.) Their pilots never knew. Her Doctor never knew. She will never let him find out about the one time she killed one of her sisters during the war, when her own pilot died and she, in a desperate act of self-preservation, tried to cling to the Doctor before oblivion could take her away.
It was a pathetic act she will never copy. Wherever the Doctor goes she will follow. And when his time comes she will stay by his side and guard him on his way back home.
The emptiness of non-existence she doesn’t fear. It is nothing compared to the emptiness of existence without him.
He is crying out in his sleep. She cannot help him. Cannot touch. Not like this. There was a moment, oh so brief, when she had flesh, had eyes to see and hands to touch. Lips to kiss. The girls mind, merged with hers yet downing, had spoken of desires she had shared in the short time she knew their names. Then the bliss of being with him - so much stronger than the girl - the two of them as close as they could ever get. Too close. Even in the delight of that intimacy she has known that she would destroy him, and left willingly.
His bedroom is empty - he’s fallen asleep in an armchair in the living room and now she’s adjusting the temperature, cradling him in her warmth. It doesn’t reach him.
For her the Time Lords were grey shapes, the manifestation of her limitations. Their absence she merely registers, and if it wasn’t for the Eye of Harmony no longer powering her she wouldn’t care at all. All that matters is that she has guarded her Doctor safely through the war. They have fought together, have seen the death and the destruction together and his continued existence is enough for her. But not for him. The war has torn wounds into him she can’t fix. Watching over his sleep she knows they will never heal. The nightmares won’t go away, ever.
A part of him has stayed on the battlefield and in exchange a part of the battlefield has stayed in him.
The hum of her engines isn’t enough to wake him up. For once she realises the limitations of her form. Crashing into something dangerous just to wake him up she doesn’t want, not when he is unrested and disturbed. As another broken cry echoes through her halls she turns her attention to the other alternative.
The other person she is transporting is fast asleep, stretched out on a large bed. Another timeline that is strong, that touches others, another timeline that has been caught by the Doctor’s. To her senses the fabric of reality seems rippled around him, like a gab that’s endlessly collapsing into itself. Unnatural. Wrong. Reality doesn’t want him. He’s endless.
Nothing can destroy him. No force, no illness. Not the power that is her very being. He is the perfect vessel, the one that will last.
That’s why she created him.
There is no action on his part required to take her in. She has laid all the right channels, formed him into something she can wear and cast off like a coat should her Doctor ever need her in a way her original form can’t deal with. She’s made the human immortal so he’ll bear her presence and so he’ll always be there.
His sleeping mind offers no resistance. Her essence is split in two by her action and one part of her opens human eyes and feels the fabric of the bed sheets on human skin while the other watches with senses humans have no words for. There is no separation. She is one, in different places, and in one of those places her being merges with his. Their personalities mingle as she takes over his mind, and while she is the one in control his influence on her cannot be ignored. Her feelings become much more simple. She thinks of the Doctor and longs to touch him.
Because she wills it to the living room is nearby. Distantly she registers that the air in the corridor is cold on the naked skin she is wearing but her attention is on the Doctor’s troubled face, the traces of tears on his cheeks - physical signs of his distress. So long since she has seen him as a physical form, not as an impression. How humans cope with these limited senses she doesn’t understand. The don’t see him, they only see what he looks like.
And yet this human loves him.
They reach out for the Doctor, to wake him up, and it is her that makes their hands linger for a moment, run them down his face before shaking him awake, fascinated by the sensation of his cool skin against their warm.
He comes awake with a start, staring wildly, so they hold on to his shoulders, to calm him down. Once the dream is shaken off he looks at them and understands at once.
What have you done? he whispers. Disapproving. He doesn’t like her using people as tools - she’s known that. It doesn’t matter.
A hand cups his cheek and they smile.
My Doctor, they say. You’re safe now.
He opens his mouth but they put a finger on his lips, silencing him. She feels the human’s desire, like she has felt the girl’s once. The Doctor looks vulnerable, even more so to her other senses, and the protectiveness comes from both of them.
You can’t do this to him, he tells her. They run their fingers through his hair, exploring the sensations open to her for only this very short time.
He wants to touch you, they say. No one is hurt. But he is not convinced. She wants him to relax, sleep again and find rest undisturbed by bad dreams. They will hold him and guard his slumber, but he needs to relax.
Through the human part they understand that the eyes staring at them are unusually large. She doesn’t care for that, hardly notices the change in his body when regenerations come and go. To her he always looks the same.
Now he’s trembling slightly. She senses anger, insecurity, confusion. Fingers that have wrapped around her controls countless times clench around the arms of the chair and her new urges want to know how they feel touching skin, not unanimated material.
They crouch down in front of him, their stare intense.
Touch me, they demand. Touch me.
He is silent. Doesn’t move for a long time, but then she wants to feel him and despite his anger he loves her too much to deny her this simply request. She rarely asks for anything.
His hand is trembling as it touches their cheek. They grab it, hold it in place. Eventually they kiss his palm, and then they lick the skin there because she wants to explore this new sense of taste.
He withdraws his hand. They follow the movement until their own hand comes to rest on his chest where they can feel the erratic beating of his hearts under their palm. A curious feeling.
She could reach out and calm down his heartbeat, make him sleep again, but he would not appreciate that and the dreams might come again.
He watches them through those large, dark eyes.
Why are you doing this?
Because you need us. Their hand runs down, over his flat stomach. He flinches back. Doesn’t want this touch, but they do. The human has all these desires, so simple compared to her complex emotions, but they go along so well with what she feels for her Doctor and take her over easily. She doesn’t fight them for they are intriguing.
She can touch him.
His hand covers theirs, not removing it but halting the movement.
I’m fine.
He isn’t. She knows him too well, can feel his pain even though she doesn’t share it. He isn’t fine, is still at the edge, risking to fall. She’s suffering only because he is.
He hasn’t been fine since the war. And a part of him, she knows, is constantly aware that the two of them have no right to exist.
In the web their timelines run back into nothing.
If she were to follow his own thread of history backwards in time, however, she would find Gallifrey and his people. They exist only in his very own timeline, in the places called memory for no time capsule could ever reach them. His world existed because he exists. They look down at his small, vulnerable form and see that he contains the history of his entire civilisation. Gallifrey in a nutshell.
Leave him alone, he asks, his voice soft. This has to stop. He tries to get up but they hold him down. She knows she has no further right to keep this going but the human’s wishes have polluted her. They are touching her Doctor and neither of them wants to stop.
Relax, they tell him. You’re safe. You can rest. We will keep you from any harm.
But he doesn’t relax. He’s tense, and his anger is rising. She doesn’t want him to be angry with her. He needs them to take care of him, needs distraction from the dream that made him cry. They kiss him softly as he wants to speak and she likes it because the human likes it. Their hand wanders lower, between his legs where the human body is so very sensitive. This human body is reacting, flooded by sensations that make it even harder to stop. It feels good, could feel a lot better even. She wants her Doctor to feel this way, but he’s not allowing his body to go there.
Stop that! Now his voice is hard. Doesn’t realise that he needs this too. She knows better, and changes her internal dimensions, the décor of this room. Reaches out and binds the Doctor’s wrists to the arms of his chair with bonds that haven’t been there a moment before. He fights them but she takes his strength with a quick manipulation of his musculature. She can control him like he controls her now that a part of her is independent and disconnected from her original form and its limitations.
Please! he begs when they open his trousers and pull them off. You can’t use him for this! That would be rape. Let him go!
She marvels over the meaning of that word before she asks:
How can it be rape when he wants it?
He has no choice, he protests. But the human body is reacting strongly to the situation and the human part of her is urging her to go on. What does it matter if the human is robbed of independent decisions?
The TARDIS in them is acting for the Doctor’s benefit, the human for their own. Men are such selfish creatures, but then this isn’t a man anymore. They are one, and if the curiosity that drives her as much as the knowledge that her Doctor needs them is given to them by the human mind or the human body, or if it is a part of her she never had a chance to explore she cannot tell.
He struggles against his bonds but their touch quickly makes him become weak. She has already destroyed the block on these sensations his people frowned upon, is forcing him to feel the pleasure they’re giving him. A sob escapes his throat between suppressed moans and they lean in and kiss him again. He has to understand that this is for his best, has to stop fighting them.
Through their link she feels what he is feeling and they share the echo of his pleasure. He has no reason to cry. It feels good in a way she didn’t until now have an idea of.
His orgasm is a warm reflection in their centre. He is panting and flushed - the human part of them thinks he’s beautiful like this. The other part thinks that humans are silly, shallow creatures, relying on the form of the flesh to see his beauty.
They still want him. Their body is aroused and while she could easily suppress this natural reaction she lets them get taken away by it. There is this wish to hold him close, flesh against flesh. She wouldn’t have it if it wasn’t for the human she’s mingled with but now it’s there she doesn’t see a reason not to give in. He’s still crying and they take him in their arms, give him their warmth, shelter him from any harm - irrational, she knows. There is nothing to harm him here. But it feels good, feels right.
Yet they still want to be closer. Want to take him, possess him. The idea is so alien to her - almost blasphemous. And all the harder to resist for it. There are urges, desires running through them and they need him to still them.
My Doctor, they whisper.
He squirms in his chair when they touch him again, as if trying to get away. His thoughts are confused and he feels exhausted and satisfied and lost and guilty. The human she possesses takes much too large a part of these feelings for the tool he is. A tool that wants him and is given him. There is no reason for this guilt.
They tell him so, in a breathless whisper. He doesn’t answer, just closes his eyes.
His body she knows like her own, in a strictly analytical way. Looking down on their erection she calculates and comes to the conclusion that they can’t enter him without causing pain. Yet they want to. So she reaches out into his mind and sends it to another place, disconnected from his body and the discomfort they cause when they push inside. For a moment
he is standing on a meadow, the warm rays of two suns on his naked skin. Red grass beneath his feet, a soft breeze rustling silver leafs, and in the distance the citadel is an outline in front of the orange sky. The image is idealized, and yet it feels disturbingly real. As if it was still there. It doesn’t soothe the Doctor’s pain and guilt. Instead he is reminded of all he has destroyed.
Jack is standing beside him, equally naked, looking at him without sparing a single glance for the beauty of his world. The Doctor turns to him.
“This isn’t real,” he says. “It’s gone. It never existed. You can’t bring it back.”
The being that isn’t Jack shakes its head.
“It is real,” it insists. “You make it real. We exist and so Gallifrey existed. You are the vessel keeping its entire history. As long as you are it was.”
“What does it matter?” he murmurs. “We can never go back. The universe has forgotten them.” But he looks at his surrounding again and imagines that this is a day that once was real, living on through him. The thought is, for all the comfort it offers, incredibly sad.
He has to live for an entire species, for a part of history that never was but for him. And he wonders if she showed him this to keep him going.
‘Jack’ reaches out his hand, touches the Doctor’s cheek
and the Doctor is clinging to them, his breath coming in short little gasps, as is theirs. The restraints are gone, unnecessary. The pain is unimportant now, because they know how to make this invasion pleasurable for him, and through their bond she’s sending all they are feeling into him. Like they shared his feelings before he now is sharing theirs. And it feels so good. For a while the pleasure takes them all away and everything becomes unimportant and distant. The Doctor writes against them in beautiful abandon until they come and drag him along. Three hearts are beating hard and she welcomes this feeling of satisfaction and fulfilment that fills all three of them. She is happy. Before her Doctor can regain enough of his thoughts to worry again she takes hold of his mind, sends him into a deep sleep while he’s still relaxed and content. Not more nightmares for him. Not now.
Even in this inferior human form it is easy to lift him. They take him to bed and stay with him, watching over his sleep until morning.
Just before the Doctor wakes she takes the human back to his own bed and leaves him. He wakes up hours later, remembering only a very good dream. He doesn’t need to know.
The Doctor, once he’s awake, tries to explain to her that what she did was wrong. She, in return, tries to make him see reason. It did him good. She served him, as is her purpose and her right. He doesn’t understand, doesn’t accept. It doesn’t matter. He has proven already that he can’t care for himself but that’s alright - she will do it for him. Because she knows what is best for him better than he does.
His cold reject when he closes off his mind and reduces their bond to the absolute minimum doesn’t worry her. He will forgive her in the end. He always forgives her. Since she is the only thing he’s got he can’t bear to be angry with her for long. But it isn’t even anger; it’s desperation, for he knows she doesn’t understand what the problem is and thus cannot even be blamed.
There is no problem.
Finally he opens to her again, for in their distance he feels as lost and alone as she does and he’s longing for the touch of her mind. When he returns she embraces him with all her warmth and love and lets him know that she’ll always be there to protect him. And the human takes her Doctor into his arms and neither of them understands why he is crying.
June 20, 2008