AN: With thanks to Lewis Carroll. The Vorpal Sword is broken, and the Jabberwocks have won.
Hame's hands were gentle as she adjusted the cable plugged into the base of his misshapen skull. "Is this correct, My Lord?"
Yes, thank you Hame, Jack answered. Feels very strange, this cable..
"Is it… too much?" Hame wrung her gentle hands in worry. "My Lord?"
Not too much… just different from the old one. Jack inhaled deeply, the caruxin-smoke inside his containment shell whirling slowly. Sometimes he saw patterns in the smoke, cities and faces and times long ago. The monitor feeds?
"Stable," she said after a perfunctory check. "The switchover is successful. My Lord, there must be another way to supply power to the motorway…"
We have discussed this many times, my little Hame. Jack leaned his forehead against the cool glass, peering out at her worried eyes, her greying fur. I am dying. I have been dying for two thousand years now. However, I am still the most powerful psionic in the universe, and the mental energy I command is enough — barely — to run the automated systems of New New York for another twenty years. The strain is no contributor to my death. Time has done that. Now, do you remember the poem I taught you?
She frowned, kneeling beside his case. "My Lord, the power…"
Ah no, Hame my dear. That conversation is done. The poem?
She bowed her head, her veil sighing by her ear. "I don't understand it."
Of course. It's nonsense, and meant to be. But I like to hear you say it. Jack's ossified mouth tilted slightly into a near approximation of a smile. You have a beautiful voice, my little Hame.
She smiled back tremulously. "Thank you, my Lord." She sat up a little straighter, her greying snout wrinling slightly. "Um…"
'Twas brillig… Jack prompted gently. She nodded absently, her lovely eyes unfocussed as she continued:
" 'And the slithy toves,
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went...' "
She broke off as a shrieking, coughing, grating sound filled the air. "My Lord?"
Jack's great darkened eyes had closed as Hame's mellifluous voice washed over him in the bubbling, fluid syllables of Carroll's ode to nonsense, but now snapped open in recognition. He can't…
The unmistakable outline of the TARDIS was materialising in the corner of the ruined Council control room. It's not time — it's too soon! He said it was too soon!
"My Lord, what is it?" Hame pressed herself up against the glass of his containment shell. "What is it?" Her beautiful voice was terrified.
Not a danger, Jack replied in bemusement as the light on top of the eponymous blue box flickered and guttered and finally went out. Just… unexpected. Relax, Hame. You met him once.
"Him? Not…"
The door swung open, and the Doctor fell heavily onto the plascrete flooring of the skeleton-strewn chamber. "Jack!" he gasped immediately, hands and mind grasping blindly.
I'm here. Jack sent out a tendril of support — but he had so little left that was not running the city. I'm here, Doctor.
His old friend reeled against his telekinetic help. "She's…" The twenty-fifth Doctor broke off into a storm of coughing. "She's…"
Breathe, Doctor. Hame, help him. Jack could feel the pain, the pure anguish that rose from the Doctor like steam. Hame gave Jack a wide-eyed look of alarm, before picking up her skirts and assisting the struggling man to sit. The Doctor gasped like a fish, his rake-thin chest heaving whilst his once-coppery hair fell over tight-clenched eyes. Jack wished he could hold him.
What is it, he asked in the softest possible mindtone. The Doctor cracked open one greenish eye at his friend.
"Hello, Jack…" he croaked. "Sorry… about dropping in on you like that, but… I knew you'd be…" he broke off into coughing again, and behind him, the TARDIS gave a long subterranean moan, like a whale singing its last.
Doctor, Jack began again, but the Doctor held up one pale, freckled hand.
"The TARDIS is dying," he said weakly.
Jack's mouth fell open.
"And if she's dying," the Doctor continued with a desperate laugh, "then so am I."
No! Jack sent fiercely. I won't... you can't! You MUSTN'T!
"Mustn't I?" The Doctor rolled his head back, closing his eyes. "You can't stop it, my Jack. I knew you'd be here. I want to die here. So does she."
I won't let you, Jack growled into his mind.
"It's taking everything you have to keep the motorway moving, isn't it," the Doctor said in a monotone, his eyes still closed. "You've barely enough left to keep using mindspeech."
I don't care. I won't let you die!
"Jack," The Doctor opened his eyes now and the thick hanks of white hair spilled over his forehead once more, "I've almost had two regeneration cycles. I'm older than any Gallifreyan has ever been, ever wanted to be. I've seen the universe born, I saw it die… I've been to every single planet in the Space-Time continuum, and a few that aren't. I've loved. I've been loved. I've done everything I ever wanted to do, and now it's time to go. My time." He crawled painfully over to Jack's containment shell, and rested his own lined forehead over where Jack's pressed against the glass, just as he had once on a blast screen at the end of the universe. "Everything has its time…"
No! Jack wailed into the air, willing those old, old words to stop completing themselves in his mind. Not you! That does not apply here, Doctor! That's not you! You go on! You have all times, all places …!
"And none of them mine," the Doctor's mouth quirked slightly. "This is my time, Jack."
I'll stop you, Jack gabbled frantically. I'll keep you alive. You can use my blood, synthesise something… I can keep the TARDIS alive, I know I can, you can run her from me, part of me is her, anyway…
"She wants to go, poor old girl," the Doctor said softly, love and sorrow saturating his voice, and Jack almost screamed in frustration and pain. "That last flight was all she had. And she's tired. Alone for so long, just me and her…"
I could keep you safe! I could keep you alive! Doctor, can't you see…
Hame stood, her large eyes full of tears. "My Lord," she said quietly. "You cannot. You are dying. They are dying. Even if you could prolong their lives, they would die when you did. There are millions of other people out there who will die the minute you do. Do you not think of them?"
Hame, don't… Jack pleaded.
"The motorway, Jack," the Doctor pressed a palm against the glass, just over Jack's brow. "You can't save us. But you can save them."
Then what use am I at all, Jack wept, if I can't save you? What good are all the lives in the universe if you don't live?
"You don't mean that," the Doctor said tenderly.
I do! Jack said wildly. I mean it! You've got to live, Doctor! Everybody lives, remember, everybody's got to this time, and everybody includes you! I don't care about anything else, so long as you're safe…
"Ja-ack," the Doctor reached his arms as far around the glass as possible, his cheek pressing into the glass. "I'm the safest I've ever been - right now."
The hopelessness hit Jack like a blow, and he reeled back against the support frame at the back of his shell. No… he sobbed, great shuddering breaths of the caruxin-tainted smoke hitching in and out of his lungs. Don't leave me, Doctor…
The Doctor's legs buckled slightly, and he leaned heavily against Jack's casing. "Oh, you see me again, Jack. Very, very soon. You saw me not long ago, after all." And the Doctor gave the grin that had lived behind Jack's eyes his whole long life. "Textbook enigmatic, by the way."
The TARDIS weakened slowly, over the weeks. The Doctor hobbled in and out with Hame's assistance, doing what he could. Jack was absorbing her pain, but sometimes her mind touched his in warmth and not in agony. Then one day she touched his mind in inquiry, and he felt her start of recognition.
You remember me, old girl, Jack murmured to her, and felt the bright gold glow in his mind pulse slightly. Captain Jack Harkness. Sorry I shot you up in the 21st Century.
There was a dancing feeling to the golden light — and Jack got the distinct impression that the TARDIS was laughing. There was a thud from inside, and then the Doctor hollered, "Jack! Stop flirting with my ship!"
Why not? Never stopped you! Jack hollered back. Or are you seriously telling me that those weren't 'love taps' you always gave her?
The dancing glow that was the TARDIS' mind was bubbling now, and Jack could hear the answering laughter from the Doctor. He smiled his slow smile, and nudged her mind gently. He's not bad. You picked well, old girl.
He could feel the warmth of her love for the silly, wonderful old man who puttered about her, carefully re-routing her systems, closer to her than any Time-Lord was ever permitted to be. Abruptly, she joined their minds together and wrapped her Doctor in all that love — ancient, patient, passionate and all-consuming. Her touch upon the Doctor's mind was as intimate and as gentle as a kiss.
Then, surprisingly, she enveloped Jack in her love for him — her unexpected passenger who fixed things and patted her and talked to her and kept a piece of her safe against the changing universe. He could feel the effort that reaching out to her beloved pilot and her old friend, one last time, had cost her.
Love you too, old girl, he said sadly. She spasmed in pain, and Jack cradled her gently, but the waves of distress did not subside and she started to keen into his mind for the Doctor, where was her Doctor, her Time-Lord…
"She's going!" the Doctor yelled in horror. "Nononono… you can't, oh my beautiful ship… no!" All wide eyes and wild hair, the Doctor appeared at the blue doors. "Jack…!"
I felt it, Jack groaned with the strain. I'm taking more. Hame?
The Doctor reeled back. "No, Jack, you'll go too!" But the TARDIS cried out for him, and the Doctor wheeled and pressed his forehead against the painted wood, murmuring desperate words of encouragement. "I'm here, darling, I'm right here, old girl, you'll pull through this…"
I can't hold this! Jack gasped in shock. She was pulling him down into death with her, clinging to the spark of the vortex inside Jack as to a brother. Doctor!
"Jack, don't… don't…" but the Doctor didn't seem to know whether he wanted Jack to hold on tighter to her, or let go.
"My Lord, stop this! Doctor," Hame pulled the aged Time-Lord from the TARDIS and he fell hard against the floor once more, "You cannot do more than you have, and to prolong agony is the ultimate cruelty." Her chest heaved as she spoke, but her magnificent voice was full of compassion. "Doctor. Tell her you love her… and let her go."
The silence was broken by the TARDIS' deep wail of pain, and the Doctor's broken breath. Eventually, he bowed his white head in defeat.
"Let her go, Jack," he whispered — but it was as though the words were being dragged out of a throat made of broken glass. "I'll carry her out."
The Doctor's mental presence, so long devoted to maintaining the TARDIS' core energies, now supplanted Jack carefully, supporting her life and absorbing her pain. Jack felt strangely empty, now that the bright gold firefly no longer flitted against his mind.
The Doctor's eyes were greenish-black hollows that quickly flooded as he struggled with himself, watching his home and friend die. He stroked the frame slowly, and the TARDIS' mental weeping became a low sigh of sorrow, which silenced as the Doctor leaned forward and pressed a kiss against the peeling doorjamb. The Time-Lord and his TARDIS remained that way as though carven of stone, in a moment that hung in the air like the striking of a bell, before the Doctor tore himself away from her. Finally, he raised one shaking hand and, as though forcing himself, clicked his fingers.
The doors creaked shut with dreadful finality, and the golden glow in Jack's mind sputtered, and faded.
The Doctor threw himself at the doors that would now never open at a click to a gold-glowing heart, beating at them until he ran out of strength, crying her name in a language that Jack could not now understand.
Hame carried more water to the Doctor's bedside. He was fading quickly now that the symbiotic relationship with his ship was severed. The Doctor's mind clung to Jack's in frantic need, but the silence was so tomblike and unnatural, it was as though he wasn't there at all.
"Here," she murmured, and raised the brittle old body up to sip the fresh water — a real luxury in the Bliss-contaminated city. The Doctor drank a little and broke off into more coughing.
You need to drink it, Jack said softly.
Why? the Doctor sent back. Useless for him to speak, now that a translation circuit closer to him than breath could not choose his language. Dying here, Jack.
Snap, Jack retorted. Just drink it to make me happy.
The Doctor sighed, and Hame, having recognised signs of an exchange, raised the glass again. The Doctor drank obediently, and Hame smoothed his covers with a practiced hand.
"He called you Jack," she ventured into the echoing silence.
That was my name, once, Jack said, careful to broadcast to both Hame and the Doctor. I was called Captain Jack Harkness.
Still are, the Doctor remarked bluntly, but Jack was pleased to note he'd also broadcast to Hame and himself. I can't believe you chose your name from your pin-up days.
Jack's lips twisted into his slow, glacial grin. No-one ever made the connection except you.
And Jenny.
And Jenny. Jack sighed. She died well.
She died how I always expected to die, the Doctor struggled to a sitting position. Fighting some power-mad lunatic. She lived well.
That she did. Jack breathed in slowly, the caruxin whirling hypnotically. So many people we loved and lost.
I miss Susan. Both Susans, the Doctor sent wistfully as Hame tiptoed away. My granddaughter…
You told me so many stories. Did you ever go back and find her?
Yes. She'd lived a long time — even though she never had the Rassilon Imprimature. And she was very happy with David. The Doctor rubbed slowly at one eye. And our daughter. I named our beautiful daughter after her.
I still can't believe I let you convince me, Jack said with dry humour. Told you I'd get stretch-marks.
The Doctor let out a bark of laughter. Still vain, poster-boy?
Hey, look at this face. You think it comes naturally? joked Jack. Susan made me so cross sometimes. All those daredevil schemes.
That was your side in her, not me, the Doctor protested.
Was not. Anyway, you encouraged it.
Of course I did! the Doctor was indignant now. You gave me a precious gift, Jack, and that gift gave me Susan — and another chance. Not like I hadn't had enough, but anyway — I didn't mess it up. I messed it up royally with my son, I left my granddaughter alone for seventy years, and I missed half of Jenny's life because I thought she was dead. But I was there for our daughter. I was there. That feels good.
You've always been there for me, too, Jack said quietly.
Well, I love you. The Doctor paused as Jack's mind rang with the words he never thought he'd hear. There. That wasn't so hard. I love you, I love you, I love you. The Doctor scratched at his chin with a hand trembling with palsy.Nothing to be afraid of.
I wish I could hold you, Jack's mindtone was fervent. I have loved you from the first day I met you.
Thought you wanted Rose, the Doctor smiled weakly. I did, too.
No, really? Never used these eye things before, Jack nudged him mentally, and felt the Doctor's answering chuckle.I wasn't picky, you were both gorgeous. You have a knack for picking the stunners, don't you?
Oi! They pick me, thank you very much. The Doctor swung his shaking legs off the pallet and carefully stood. Oooh, headspin. Lovely.
Careful, Jack braced the Doctor's body again. He was so thin and brittle, it was as though he were about to fly away.What are you doing?
Don't want to die in bed. The Doctor tottered cautiously to Jack, and fell against the glass. Want to hold you too.
Doctor, Jack choked. Doctor, I…
Shhh. It's okay, Jack, the Doctor soothed him. Now, where's the door on this contraption, hmm?
Around the left, Jack said in resignation, and watched the thin old hands fiddle with the lock, before the caruxin-laden smoke eddied with the movements of another body. Doctor?
Can barely see you in all this. No wonder your eyes changed colour, said the Doctor peevishly. Ah, there's my Jack.A small hand patted its way over his brow and the Doctor slid down to sit on the floor of the containment unit. You know, this is really quite pleasant. Bet you can't hear all that well, though.
Doctor, what need have I got to hear with my ears? Jack laughed. Sometimes you seem to forget.
Doesn't seem right, admitted the Doctor easily. You're Jack Harkness. My brave Jack. The Face of Boe is a guy who speaks in a much deeper and posher voice, and represents New New York in the Enigmatic Games.
Couldn't have you recognise me, Jack's lips once more curved slowly into his smile. And it was fun.
Jack?
Yeah?
You haven't changed at all. The Doctor nudged Jack's cheek with a bony elbow. Their laughter filled the tiny space like the smoke.
Remember the whiskey? whispered Jack after their laughter was spent.
I remember our little Martha Jones drunk on… champagne, the Doctor smirked. She was hilarious. Called me a Timey-Wimey moron and… passed out.
No more bananas, Jack breathed into the air. The Doctor's hand buried itself into the profusion of tendrils that crowned Jack's head now. Oh, that feels so good.
I remember that, the Doctor said archly. Jack?
Hmm?
I'm going now. I can't stay any more. And this is the best way I've ever seen to die. Carpe diem, and… all that. Don't leave me… You'll… see me soon, Jack. I won't… know it's you, of course. When? Very soon… actually. And Martha, too. You… enigmatic thing, you. What, when I… Yup. So you see, Jack, it's not… so bad. We die each holding the… other. Just not at the same time. Jack… Yeah? Do me… a favour… Anything. Bury me… in the TARDIS. She'll be… an empty box now. But when you go… get Hame… to bury you there too. … Here… comes… my time. Jack? Yes, Doctor? I love you. I love you too. My... brave Jack... ~**~ Hame crept back into the chamber. A white figure was slumped against the glass of the containment shell, long arms wrapped loosely around the darker, blocky shape of her Lord. His face was bowed over the body of his companion, and water glittered over the cracked, leathered cheeks. "My Lord?" she quavered. Jack's face slowly rose and his eyes, desolate and heartbroken, pierced her utterly. The poem, he said hollowly, and he had never been so lost or so utterly, utterly in love. It was about him.
Not… not just yet.
~Fin~