Waiting Through Time

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Title: Waiting Through Time

Fandom: Doctor Who
Prompt: “Tyranny/Rebellion” 
Medium: Fic
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 2,826

Warning: Violence
Summary: The Doctor didn't want Jack to wait for him, but he knew he would anyway.


Some things were just waiting for, no matter how long it took, no matter what obstacles stood in the way. Jack Harkness knew this. Sometimes it was hard, the waiting, especially when pretty things crossed his path and tempted him. The Doctor knew what he was, how he was and when he had to leave, he had told Jack to play all he wanted, because he didn’t know when or if he could come back for Jack and he didn’t want him to be lonely.

Jack promised to wait however long it took, even though The Doctor told him not to.

In the meantime, there was Ianto, and Jack almost broke his promise. He had loved Ianto, even though he knew loving a mortal man would hurt, for one day Ianto would die. And then he did, and Jack wished and hoped that The Doctor would come back and help to heal his broken heart. Of all the parts Jack Harkness possessed, his heart was the one thing that did not heal quickly, or fully. The loss of Ianto would stay with him. He and The Doctor had that one thing in common; thought they were opposites in most other things. they loved the companions that flitted briefly through their lives.

So he waited. It was only time, after all. He would never give up The Doctor. He needed him like he needed air.

~*~

The Doctor had managed to get back to Earth with the Tardis limping and whining and so very, very broken this time. It was the last time around, he could sense it, the last regeneration. When this life ended, it would end, there would be no coming back. It was a bit depressing, but he had lived fifteen hundred years, one could not be too greedy with their life allotment and beg and whine for more when so much had already been granted by the powers that ruled the greater universe.

He had promised Jack he would try. And try he would.

Earth had changed, as it usually did, since the last time he had visited. As he checked the Tardis’s time sensors, he groaned. It was THAT bloody period of history. He hated this century. A tyrannical few with power backed by aliens with business interests in the sector. Most of humanity was downtrodden, under the thumb of this so called leadership.

Unfortunately, the Earthlings had to work their own way out of it, they had to fight their own battles and retake their world. The Doctor had seen the alternatives, what could possibly happen if he or someone else interfered. Within a few generations, Earth would be right back to his place once more, should he try to topple the government. He and Romana had tried that once, in another timeline, it had been ugly and so painful to witness.

He generally avoided this point in time to cut down on his frustration at his inability to act on Earth’s behalf. “Why did you bring us here, Old Girl? I wanted to go find Jack.” As usual, the Tardis did not answer him. The landing was rough, but she brought them to a stand of woods in a park in the middle of a city. It might have been London, or perhaps New York. The Tardis shut herself down to do her own form of regenerating as soon as they stopped and he couldn’t check. He was left to his own devices.

He zipped his leather jacket and pulled the collar up as he stepped out of the Tardis. It was damp, and a layer of mist seemed to hang in the air. London then, most likely. He stood and inhaled the air, getting a feel for the atmosphere. Then he picked a direction and set off, being extra vigilant about his surroundings. It was dangerous here.

Dodging a gang of young thugs by scooting off the main road and onto a side street, he waited for them to pass. Not long after they had gone, a siren wailed and something small and loud and metallic whooshed past him with lights atop the hull flashing. He heard the thump of footfalls as the gang scattered in all directions. He peeked out and saw the robot-cop firing bolts of light at the young men and women, it looked like a disintegration ray. The establishment didn’t waste a great deal of time with trials and prisons during this era of human history. The Doctor had encountered these robot police before, he had no desire to do so again.

He went back out onto the main street, where a cleanup machine was sweeping the street of the dusty debris that had once been some rebellious youth. Keeping his head low, The Doctor kept walking, sensing he had some purpose for being here now, but as yet uncertain what it might be. The Tardis might not bring him where he wanted to go, but it always landed him where he needed to be.

A noise drew his head up, but it was merely a man riding by on a bicycle. A colorful poster on the wall across the way caught his attention. It was blue, a very familiar shade of blue, criss-crossed with lines to create rectangular shadows. From a distance, he recognized the stylized outline of the Tardis.

The bright yellow and red words splashed across the posted proclaimed, “He’s coming. Stay strong. Stand together!” He crossed the road and looked at the sign more closely. Across the bottom, in a fine print that he had to bend over to read clearly he saw, “I’m waiting,” with the symbol for Torchwood beside the words.

“Jack,” he breathed out, The Tardis had brought him home. And Jack had not given up hope, he had waited, all this time.

~*~

“What are you waiting for Shadow Man?” the guard asked, “No one is coming to rescue you!” The guard punched Jack in the stomach and then kneed his groin for good measure. “You’re gonna rot here.”

His head hanging low as he breathed through the pain, Jack ground out, “Make you feel better, beating on a guy in chains? Your type prefer it that way, don’t you?”

Bracing himself, he got hit upside the head with an empty food tray. Bullies were so predictable. “Shut your mouth, you rabble rouser!”

“We should have gotten a robo to dust this one. He’s trouble, I can feel it in my bones,” another guard said as Jack spit blood onto the cement floor.

“He’s wanted, the robos won’t go against their programming. Unless you’ve got a tech in your back pocket?” his companion snapped.

The first guard pulled a billy club and smashed it across Jack’s knees. “Where’s the rest of Torchwood holed up? Where’s the stinking ELO hiding? I don’t see anyone liberating anything, stupid rebels.”

Grunting and writhing against the pain, Jack nevertheless managed to approximate a laugh, spraying his abusers with blood. “Just me. The rest are gone. All gone. Always gone, so fragile and breakable. A handful of posters are all that’s left. Just me waiting now.”

“Waiting for what?”

Jack raised his head and met the bully’s eyes. “He’s going to come, and you are going to be sorry.” Jack spat blood in his face. The billy club smashed down on his head and he slumped in the chains.

~*~

The Doctor, having grown wiser in his last few regenerations, did not march into the closest pub and ask about the posters, as one of his earlier incarnations might have. He did go to the pub however. He sat at the bar and ordered a pint, which he paid for by flashing the psychic paper in his billfold. He had purposely picked this establishment because the wait staff appeared to be living beings. He wasn’t ready to draw too much attention to himself by dropping foreign currency. His billfold wouldn’t work on robo-servers, they had no minds to cloud.

He sipped at his pint and listened. For hours, he eavesdropped on the chatter around him, picking up little bits of information as he nursed a pint, then another and then a third.

The gossip was quiet, slow in coming, but humans by nature talked when they gathered together. Eventually he heard that Torchwood had been raided and the London cell of the ELO had been slain. His hearts thumped painfully until he remembered that Jack was nearly impossible to kill. He’d been powderized by the Daleks and come back, surely he could survive these robo-cops?

Then he happened to hear that they took a prisoner from the scene, notable because ordinarily the police enforcers don’t take prisoners. If The Doctor were a gambling man, he would lay money on the bet that the prisoner in custody was Jack Harkness. Now to find the place they were keeping him.

Needing directions to the local enforcer’s station, he asked the bartender, because bartenders throughout the universe know things most people don’t and lots of things they shouldn’t. He got a queer look from the woman, but she told him which street to take and the number of the building. He thanked her and put a real gold coin on the bar to cover his bill and as a tip for the information, leaving it to her to figure out how to change it.

It was just after dusk. He stood across from the station, keeping away from the street lights, pondering the best plan of attack. In the old days, he would have blustered his way right through the front door. But that was dangerous, here and now - he’d be a pile of dust before he could say ‘how do you do?’

There was an alley beside the building. The robo-units came and went through a slot at the front of the building and did not seem to pay attention to the alley. Patting his jacket pocket to be sure he had his sonic screwdriver, he decided to chance it, there must be a side or back door he could force open.

He casually strolled across the street and darted into the alley, wishing he wore his old trainers rather than the boots that made so much more noise as he walked down the alley. He found the door around the back and made quick work of it. Slipping inside, he listened before turning left and cautiously picking his way along the hallway, wondering where Jack might be.

The Doctor stopped and stared at the sign on the wall with the very helpful arrow point the way to ‘Holding Cells.’ He went down one level and heard noise. He paused, slicked his hair back, flattened his collar and unzipped his jacket. He hoped his black jeans and white shirt were nondescript enough in this time to pass a quick inspection by any bystanders he might happen across.

He spotted a uniformed man standing outside the line on the floor that marked the edge of the electronic cell. The man was grinning in a way The Doctor did not like. He heard muffled grunts. When he got closer, he saw another man within the cell area jabbing a weapon of some kind into Jack’s gut. Jack was a mess, his clothes and skin were stained with blood. His legs looked unable to support him. But he was alive and in one piece, and with Jack, that was the most important thing. He just needed time to get himself back to fighting form.

Despite Jack’s ability to heal himself, anger rose in The Doctor, Jack was his, they had no right to touch him like this. They were beating on him, torturing him in a way that told The Doctor these were not the official interrogators, but rather petty officers with a little bit of power and a grudge against humanity to work through.

Needing a way to get the men away from Jack, he went back the way he had come to a room that had been filled with pieces and parts of dismantled robo-units. He walked around, picking up pieces and carrying them to a workbench. He quickly cobbled together a conversion device that would slide onto the end of his sonic screwdriver.

He tested it, and it worked. Going back to Jack’s cell, his stomach turned as he saw both men taking turns hitting Jack.

Standing in the shadows, he said, “It isn’t very sporting, leaving his hands tied like that.”

The one holding a billy club turned around. “Who's there? Who said that?”

Jack’s head came up and he squinted through his one good eye in The Doctor’s direction. All these years, and Jack still looked the same. “I did. I don’t think my friend likes the treatment here. One might call it police brutality.”

He stepped into the light, the sonic screwdriver aimed at the man closest to Jack. “Step away, I really don’t want to use this, but in this case, I will.”

“I told... you... he was... coming,” Jack panted. Jack was one of the ones that could recognize him, whatever the face he wore, Romana and Sarah Jane had been among the only others that could do that. He had missed Jack.

Of course, the bully wasn’t ready to give up his fun. He hit Jack again. “I warned you nicely,” The Doctor said and activated the sonic screwdriver. The converter focused the beam and made it solid enough to slam into the guard and throw him back. He turned it on the other when the man started towards him, growling like an animal.

He turned off the screwdriver and pulled the converter tip off, pocketing it. “I hate bullies,” he declared, stepping over them to get to Jack. He checked him over and then undid the cuffs with the screwdriver. Jack slid down against him, and pressed his face into The Doctor’s neck. He allowed a moment of cuddle and then propped Jack up on his feet. Jack leaned in and kissed his lips. He wanted to stay and strip Jack naked and check him over, then beat the men that had done this for every mark he found. But he couldn’t do that. He needed to get Jack out of here.

He broke off the kiss and asked, “Can you walk, Jack?”

“Yeah, they broke my knees yesterday, but they healed up. Are they dead?” he looked down at the fallen guards.

“I don’t care,” the Doctor replied shortly.

Jack seemed a little surprised by the answer, but quickly covered the look. “We have to get off Earth. I’m marked, I’m useless to the cause now.”

“We can hole up in The Tardis, I should be able to camouflage her. I need to make repairs.”

Jack limped a little, but he was walking on his own as The Doctor led him out. Using the cover of darkness, they managed to get to the Tardis. Jack slumped into the seat by the control console and stared at The Doctor. “I knew you’d come.”

“I knew you’d wait.” He leaned against the console and returned Jack’s stare.

“New face. I like it, but then I always liked blondes. The freckles are damned cute, and I like the denim and leather.”

The Doctor pointed a threatening finger. “There will never be a mention of the freckles again. You may, however, admire the jeans. Jeans are cool.”

Jack tipped his head back and laughed. “I missed you.”

He rubbed a hand along the console. “I needed to come back. I think is the last regeneration. I wanted to spend it with you. As soon as the Old Girl is back on her feet, we’ll be away to somewhere... nicer.”

Jack pointed towards the doors. “So you don’t want to stay and fight the good fight and get rid of the evil overlords?”

“Sometimes, Jack, even I have to put my hands in the air and say I give up. I... we can’t win here. Not now. After you’re rested, we’ll come back to a point where we can do some good. But here, now, I give up.”

“I never thought I would hear you say that,” Jack whispered, looking shocked and a little sad. The Doctor pushed away from the console and wrapped his arms around Jack, pulling him close and holding him, because he couldn’t stand there and look at the emotions on his face. Immortal yes, but Jack was still so inherently human and could not always understand why The Doctor did things the way he did.

Jack clung to him, sucking up the comfort he needed. They had spent enough time apart. If this was his last lifetime, he wanted it to pass through it with the man in his arms, the one who had waited. This one was worth coming back to.


The End