Doctor Who fic: Double Pain, Bound Hearts (3/4)

[eloriekam]

Title: Double Pain, Bound Hearts (3/4)
Author: eloriekam/eloriekam
Pairing: Ten/Jack
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: A few references to "Utopia"; Doctor whump
Disclaimer: Not mine, and I'm just taking them for a spin, and will return them, perhaps slightly battered.
Word Count: ~2000
Summary: Everyone was on the wrong side of the law this time because they couldn't let something stand. Vigilantes meet vigilantes for vengeance.
Author's Notes: Written from the 'Law' challenge during Amnesty 2012 for wintercompanion (2nd fic I wrote for challenge). Set after Last of the Time Lords and before Partners in Crime.


Jack entered the medical bay two days later, watching the readouts and the Doctor's bed cautiously. Still just one heart beating, but it had been steady for the last day, and a bit faster. The TARDIS had reduced the oxygen levels again, bringing them closer to normal. The Doctor was sitting up partway with a light blanket pulled up to his chest, arms folded oddly to help some of the muscles in his shoulders come back together properly; his eyes were closed, but Jack could see the change in his breathing, a little bit of tension in his still-pale face.

As he had each time he'd removed the Doctor's swathing of bandages and cared for the remaining wounds and rearranged him to help other injuries heal before wrapping him up again, Jack reached for a vial of sedative, identical to the one he'd found the first time he'd come back in. The Doctor couldn't stand the touch, awake; wouldn't let them go find someone else to help. When he came over to the bed, the Doctor's eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling. Jack reached for him automatically, to caress his hair, and stopped, sucked in a breath, then dropped his hand back to his side. He reached over carefully with the other hand, ready to deploy the sedative, send the Doctor into blissful sleep he still needed so badly, knowing little of the time he spent in here with his eyes closed involved real rest.

"Don't." The Time Lord's voice broke the silence, tapped it, sent their not-quite-truce spilling to the ground. Jack stared at him, incredulous. "I'm... I can take it, Jack, I don't want to be asleep for this. I don't."

"You can take it?" the Captain repeated. "You can take it? You took being beaten, whipped, chained, oh, almost strangled, whipped, electrocuted, dragged and kicked and bound like an animal, burned, blindfolded and deafened and gagged, held in positions that tore your shoulders worse than anything I've ever seen, struggled so hard you cut yourself to the bone and maybe some of that is my fault, but you think you can take it when my hands are on you, applying salves and bandages, trying to help you heal?!" He sucked in a breath and shut his mouth firmly. He didn't know where all that had come from, and he shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have brought any of it up, not yet, but the words were out there and being in a time machine wouldn't take them back.

The Doctor stared steadily at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. Jack didn't dare move. "Not here," the Doctor finally said in a whisper.

"Pardon?" Jack inquired when the Doctor didn't elaborate.

"I don't want to wake up in here again, Jack." He drew a long breath and twisted his head restlessly from side to side. "I... don't."

"You don't want to be unconscious and then you don't want to come awake in here... which is it, Doctor?" He kept his voice gentle, tried to push the caresses he still wanted to give the Doctor through in his voice.

The Doctor's face twisted and he looked away for a moment, blinking hard again. "Let me touch you?" he whispered, turning his face to Jack, finally making eye contact. "Oh, Jack, just one touch before sleep, please." He had the look that was almost impossible to resist: begging, lonely, hurt, loving. Jack hesitated, then stepped closer. The Doctor winced a little as he moved his arm toward Jack, and clasped his forearm in one hand. He paused, swallowed, took a breath, then slid his hand down.

"Don't hurt yourself," the Captain whispered, his voice shaking. "My Doctor... don't make that pain worse."

"Readjusting," the Time Lord said, clasping Jack's hand in his as they both trembled. "I love the impossible, Jack, you know that."

"That makes two of us," Jack returned, smiling faintly for the first time in much too long.

"Okay," the Doctor said a moment later. "Oooh." He let go of Jack's hand and moved his arm back. The Captain made another abortive gesture toward stroking his hair.

"You all right from that?" he asked instead. The other nodded, a little hesitantly.

"Move me home when you're done?" he requested, turning that look on his lover again.

"Only if the TARDIS agrees," Jack said after a brief hesitation. "I'm not arguing with your ship again."

"Me neither," the Doctor muttered as the sedative was injected. The Captain paused, cocked an eyebrow at the readouts the TARDIS had used before and then at the ceiling, and made a note to himself to ask the Doctor about that sometime when they weren't both traumatized and shuddering and uncertain of even each other, before finally brushing a hand through the Doctor's hair and starting to remove the bandages.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He was limp in warm arms. Limp and unseeing, feeling bound but without the dreadful weight and pulling, arms carefully laid on his stomach and chest rather than being yanked or hanging, face fully open to air, mouth comfortably slack. The immediate motion stopped, and adjusted him, his head now tipping against a strong shoulder. The TARDIS hummed at him about thieves and paradoxes and fixed points and paying a little more attention, and he silently leaned against her, feeling the Vortex again. He could feel timelines, Time, drawn around the arms carrying him, the shoulder and torso he rested against, a painful familiar swirling. Yes, the universe, maybe even the multiverse, was quite interested in this entity, and had increased its interest several times fairly recently. He stuck his tongue out, just a little bit, and then drew in a breath.

Memory reared up in front of him and he was being stroked gently everywhere in succession and the wrong pressed at uninjured skin as he lay on the floor helpless waiting for more pain and he watched and felt someone run toward him and they gripped hands for one of the most desperate jumps of all...

Jack. Jack Harkness. Impossible Jack.

He opened his eyes, slowly, and looked up, his dear one's sometimes cheerfully dimpled face very close and now grim. Oh Jack. Jack, I am so sorry...

"Jack," he whispered. The other jumped, but kept moving.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, Doctor, I didn't think you would wake up yet, we're almost there, then I can set you down," the Captain babbled, panicky, voice strained.

The Doctor tried to relax more against Jack, and another memory rose. "You carried me, before."

"I've carried you lots of times, Doc, never like this, trust me. Don't panic, we're almost there."

"That was you," the Doctor tried again. "Death, then more death, anger smelled more than I did, then I was being carried by something or someone in which the Universe had recently taken a very personal interest. My leg hurt, other things hurt, oh, they hurt, but that someone wanted to protect me, get me out of there, you had to let me fall a few times and there was more death, then TARDIS said hello...." He trailed off, exhausted, and tucked his face against Jack's shoulder, closing his eyes again.

"That was me," Jack agreed. "Almost there." Tears tracked down his face and dripped into the Doctor's hair, his folded-up arms. He burrowed his face harder into Jack in response. A door opened, and Jack's gait slowed, changed, then went back to normal again. He was lowered gently, oh so gently, onto a large bed with comfortable pillows, and blankets were drawn over him. He opened his eyes and looked up, watching the worried blue eyes as they watched the Captain's own hands fuss at the blankets for a moment before withdrawing. Jack looked at him, and his face morphed into an odd frown and smile. "Sleep, Doctor."

"I just woke up."

"You've hardly been sleeping," he pleaded. "I don't know when your other heart is going to start, and you need to rest. Please."

"They wouldn't let me," the Doctor said abruptly. He tried to pull back one of the blankets. "Hot. Please. Jack, wouldn't..." he stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, then looked at the ceiling. Jack slowly peeled back one blanket.

"They wouldn't let you?" he repeated softly, remembering the Doctor plead that he needed sleep, the first time they brought him back, all bruised but before they muffled his head.

"Meditated to help hold myself up," the Doctor muttered. "But I was tired, Jack, and you'd fallen asleep twice, and it didn't seem like so much, later, but then my shoulders hurt..."

"I... I know, I'm sorry," Jack whispered, reaching out hesitantly to stroke the Doctor's hair. The Doctor neither moved away nor tensed nor turned into it as he usually did, and Jack withdrew his hands, clasping them awkwardly.

He almost left before the Doctor spoke again. "It was hot, and bright, and much too small. I couldn't get away from the light. They wouldn't let me sleep. Too small to turn, even. And sometimes it'd be just a few seconds, other times ten, fifteen minutes, I couldn't concentrate enough..." His voice never changed, but his slender limbs twitched under the blanket. He could still feel the all-encompassing heat pressing against him, the ruthless light... it reminded him of that sun, back with Martha, the living sun, beautiful and angry. But when he relaxed, he kept waiting for the shock again, the jolt, and sometimes the low chuckle he could hear outside the cage.

"Oh, Doctor, Doctor, I am..." Jack paused, apparently running out of words. He covered his face with his hands.

"Still, I'm here, we're here," the Time Lord declared, abruptly shifting his facade. "I'll try to sleep, Jack."

"Promise me?"

"I'll try."

"I'll, um, I'll wait," Jack said, and fled. The lights lowered, and cool air brushed across the Doctor. He closed his eyes and went limp, mind drifting. Eventually, he found himself reviewing the movement of Venusian aikado, then the odd gestures of the Gofs' self-defense, and the hybrid motion of the Cheetah People.

Though he was a little more refreshed, mentally, when Jack came in several hours later with some food, he still had not slept.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Thirty-four days," the Doctor said a couple of days later, flexing his hand as Jack removed the last of the bandages on his leg and torso. "Ow. That bit stuck, Jack."

"Sorry," Jack said, putting more goo on the spot. "I'll leave it open to the air again, this time." He propped up the Doctor's leg again, fussing around the Doctor's arms. The Doctor could tell, by the way Jack's eyes went to his face, that he was still too pale. Pale and uncomfortable, to be honest; his still heart had tried beating a few times, but the pain was worse than it was when it didn't beat. He could tell when his words registered: the Captain stopped moving, making a sudden move to withdraw his hands, then forced himself to sit still.

"Thirty-four days?" he repeated.

"Earth standard in the 21st century, yes." He shifted a little against the pillows propping him up.

"That we were there," Jack clarified.

"Yeah."

Jack's lips moved for a moment before he handed the Doctor a cup of water, supporting it in case the Time Lord's grip failed.

"A month," he said when he had set the glass down again.

"Basically, well, yeah."

His lover closed his strong hands briefly over his slender limp ones before stepping back. "I need a walk. And then a shower."

The Doctor sat up a little, watching the retreating back, covered with cloth that hid unmarred skin. "Jack!"

Later, he slept for twenty minutes before jerking awake and panting with a confused stare into the cool dimness.

Comments

[jer832]

I read and commented on Teaspoon because I couldn't bear to wait. I don't know where to start. I think the little sparks of hope and love and respect within the desperation and pain kept me reading, kept me from wanting to throw this marvelous and painful to read little gem back at you

First, the pain. The Doctor's and Jack's. This tore me up: "You can take it?" the Captain repeated. "You can take it? You took being beaten, whipped, chained, ....but you think you can take it when my hands are on you, applying salves and bandages, trying to help you heal?!" He sucked in a breath and shut his mouth firmly. He didn't know where all that had come from, and he shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have brought any of it up, not yet, but the words were out there and being in a time machine wouldn't take them back.

And then the love: "I love the impossible, Jack, you know that." And then he goes on, throughout to call Jack impossible. I love the way you have the Doctor see the time lines and Jack.

[eloriekam]

I couldn't bear to wait.

Thank you, jer--that's very flattering, that I created that much suspense(?) for you. :)

kept me from wanting to throw this marvelous and painful to read little gem back at you

Eeep, throwing? I think I know what you mean, though.

That long bit you quoted, I remember doing spontaneously and then thinking to myself "What just happened?", so the end of that is my thought process, except for the bit about being in a time machine.

I've never been sure what to make of the 'impossible thing' line, so I turned it around, because the Doctor loves impossible.

Thank you for reading, jer, as always. :)

[jer832]

That entire paragraph - I didn't quote it all because I feared it would make the comment box too big - is absolutely amazing. It fits the emotional place they are in perfectly. Poor, wonderful Jack.