![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
d8rkmessngrAuthor: d8rkmessngr
Pairing: Jack/OMC, Jack/?, Jack/Ianto eventually, het and slash
Rating: NC-17
Summary: He left Jack on the game station. Abandoned. But then…he came back…different. An AU look on what happens if things happened differently. Doctor Who 'verse with Torchwood later on.
Warnings: Please read each chapter's individual warnings. Some parts down the road may briefly mention non-con, abuse, and/or violence. Dark in the beginning. Please note there are some dark thoughts as my boys are broken…for now. Each chapter will be labeled for your convenience.
Author's Notes: Note that "the Year That Never Was" was suggested that it wasn't fun. I took it as a challenge to somehow still find a way to instill comfort in it. If it didn't work, I'm sorry. I suck. LOL.
Disclaimer: RTD and BBC owns them. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Warning For This Chapter: strong language, dark, angsty, VIOLENCE, torture (mostly implied, all a matter of reader interpretation), sappy maudlin
Notes For This Chapter: Note there are events/dialogue here that was referenced in DW's "Last of the Time Lords"
Prologue + Ch , Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31, Ch 32, Ch 33, Ch 34, Ch 35, Ch 36 Ch 37, Ch 38, Ch 39, Ch 40 1/11, Ch 40 2/11, Ch 40 3/11, Ch 40 4/11, Ch 40 5/11, Ch 40 6/11, Ch 40 7/11, Ch 40 8/11
Master Fic List: here
Chapter 40 "The Last of the Time Lords"
Act IX: "Faith and hope?"
Gwen looped an arm around Tosh's shoulders and pulled her in for a one-sided hug.
"Incredible," Ianto breathed as he stared at it in Jack's grasp.
"Okay," Owen grumbled, "I'm impressed."
"Ooh, you brilliant woman. We should be calling you Doctor!" Gwen enthused.
"Ma'am or Miss Sato will do just fine, thank you," Tosh quipped with a smirk. She tugged her apron straight with a snap before she returned Gwen's embrace before she turned to Jack. Her smile wavered.
"I suspected," Tosh confessed, "but I wasn't sure…"
"You did great," Jack assured her.
Jack looked loads better with a new shirt and trousers. He still carried a worn air about him but at least the blood was gone. Gwen suspected she knew where the new clothes had come from. She'd seen Ianto holding one of Jack's service shirts one night, just holding it like cherished childhood toy, stroking the collars with a reverence that brought tears to her eyes. She wondered if that's what she looked like holding her mobile, which was still in her pocket like a talisman.
"Are we using this to kill Saxon then?" Gwen asked when she found her throat thick with grief again. God, she was going to be useless if she went on like this.
The steam in the pipes whistled, drowning out the answer. But when Jack shook his head as well, Gwen's stomach plummeted.
"There's not enough ionic charge to create a fully concentrated beam," Tosh murmured. Her shoulders slumped. "I tried, but without the right materials, I couldn't chance binning it."
"It'll be enough to do what we need it to do." Jack held up a hand, halting her apology. He seemed to have understood perfectly what Tosh was trying to say.
"So what do we need it to do?" Owen asked but the brash tones seemed to have fizzled out of his voice. Even he stared at it with a bit of awe.
"I'll need it to bridge a link," Jack said as he tucked it into his waistband. "Tosh?"
"I set up a link. Archangel network is open to receive transmissions from the Valiant now as well," Tosh confirmed.
"Transmission?" Owen raised a brow. "What you planning to do? Sing a song?"
"The Doctor was going to use the Archangel system by merging with it to create a sort of telepathic shield," Jack explained, "except the system has been blocked so we have to send him another energy source to revive him."
"If he does that regeneration like you said," Owen said slowly. "Why don't we just kill him and let him start over?"
"Owen!" Ianto and Tosh both hissed. They both started and turned guiltily to the doors.
Gwen blinked at how quickly they responded. Even Jack looked surprised.
Owen rolled his eyes. "Fine," he griped. "We'll do it the hard way. Just seem like a lot of fuss, is all."
"Wait," Toshiko spoke up. "The only way you can send data in any form is either through the bridge or through their computer room." She scowled in memory. "I've been trying for months to get in."
"Any system wired into this ship that's running a current will do," Jack patted the screwdriver by his hip. "This will create a connection to your link and create a loop to make sure whatever we send through will boomerang back."
Gwen winced. Owen was right—it did seem like a lot of fuss. She shifted from foot to foot. Gwen wanted to get out of this room. It still smelled too strongly of blood.
"How you gonna make sure the Doctor gets it?" Owen wanted to know, "We can't stick an antenna in him."
Jack gave him a grim smile. "That's up to Martha."
Gwen gave Tosh a baffled look. Martha?
"So," Tosh said slowly, "Martha was supposed to be here, with Saxon?"
"Not until she had everything in place." Jack patted the screwdriver by his hip again, as if reassuring himself of its presence. "Not until we were all ready."
It made Gwen dizzy how all the pieces had fallen into place. If anything, her insides knotted more than loosened.
Ianto's brow furrowed. "Where are you going to find another room then or another energy source?"
Gwen's stomach churned when Jack wouldn't look at Ianto. "The fourth level has some rooms I can easily access—"
"Jack!" Tosh burst out. "You can't!"
"Sh!" Owen hissed. His eyes darted back to the door then to Jack.
"What's she talking about, Jack?" Gwen asked, her voice lower, but her eyes were glued to Jack's face, still too gray, too much like after Abbadon.
"Jack?" Ianto whispered. He took a step closer but Jack never acknowledged him.
"That's what you're planning to do, isn't it?" Tosh accused, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "That's why the satellites, that screwdriver. This energy source you're not telling us about is you."
Jack grabbed her by the forearms and gave her a gentle shake. Tosh stared up at him, her lower lip trembling.
"Hey," Jack murmured. "Hey, now. There's no other way."
Gwen had been watching Jack and Tosh like it was Wimbledon, her eyes going from Tosh to Jack's face. All the while, her mind was piecing things together but she wasn't sure of the picture she was getting.
"All right." Owen gave up trying to figure it out. "Will someone tell me what's going on?"
"You're going to tap into your vortex," Ianto suddenly said. Understanding dawned on his face and slowly mutated to horror. "That's what you're planning to do." Ianto inhaled sharply. He looked sick.
"You're planning to drain yourself and somehow transfer that to the Doctor."
When Jack would neither confirm nor deny, Gwen felt her skin shrink around her, her lungs turned to stone. No more air would draw in.
"Jesus, Jack," Gwen gasped. "After what Saxon's—"
"There's no other way to get the Doctor back," Jack cut her off. He studied Tosh, his hands flexing carefully on her forearms. "Do you understand me? The satellites are locked out for him. There's no other way."
"That's why the Rift," Ianto said, his voice rough and unsteady. "The Doctor had me rig a timer to release a short burst of rift energy."
Jack nodded. "Vortex energy is naturally attracted to other temporal ions. Once I…siphon off the energy, it'll be a beacon for the satellite and it'll go right to it—"
"Then my command code for the satellite will send it straight back to the Valiant," Tosh finished. She moved her hands up to clasp Jack's wrists. "It might work." She sighed. "It's brilliant actually."
"It will work," Jack corrected her. "The Doctor had the whole year to figure it out."
Gwen spied Ianto swallowing as if he was fighting not to be ill. She turned to Jack. Something jabbed hard in her chest when she worked her mouth.
"W-what do you want us to do?"
"Take out the paradox machine," Jack replied without hesitation. "The TARDIS is stored in the lowest level of this ship." He gestured to the explosives Owen must have been working on before. "Get these into the main chamber. That's where the paradox machine is. Blow it."
Gwen hesitated. "Just like that?"
"She's sturdy. The paradox machine isn't." Jack dropped his hands from Tosh and stepped back. "Set the timers to give yourself enough leeway to get clear."
"Right." Owen shrugged his rucksack back over his shoulder. "I got the firecrackers," he reported. "We gonna to do this or what?"
Gwen glanced over to Ianto and when she caught his attention, tilted her head towards Jack. Ianto nodded. Satisfied, Gwen slipped her necklace off and tossed it to Jack, who caught it neatly.
"I can move around like this with Tosh," Gwen explained. "You boys are too scruffy-looking to slip past anyone."
"Oi, I'm not scruffy looking. I'm rugged," Owen griped.
It somehow made her feel a lot better to see Tosh roll her eyes at Owen.
"Don't get yourselves killed out there," Jack said quietly. "Get it set up and get the hell out of the way."
"You too," Tosh said. She tiptoed up and kissed Jack on the cheek. "See you later, Captain."
Gwen did the same but said nothing. She was worried what she might say.
Jack merely smiled down at her. He nodded.
Gwen looked at Owen, who looked at Tosh, who looked at Ianto. There should be something they should say, something profound, something encouraging but her mind was blank. They just all stared at each other as if no one wanted to be first to suggest leaving.
"Well," Owen finally said in a gruff voice, "Let's do this."
Jack was still trying to figure out what to say to Ianto when the door creaked and he looked up in time to see Gwen's back disappear behind the door. He stared at the door, feeling a bit like the walls were closing in around him before he realized he wasn't alone. He turned to his right.
Ianto stood there, his hands in his pockets, the TARDIS key bright against his throat.
"No," Ianto said before Jack could say anything. His eyes were dark, his mouth grim.
"Ianto, it's the only way to revive the Doc—"
"I'm not denying that," Ianto interrupted. "But you're daft if you think I'm letting you do this alone." His smile was a poor one. "Besides, I've done this before in London, the…experience might be useful."
Jack averted his eyes. "It's just…I didn't want you to see that."
"I wish you would stop deciding things for me." Ianto took Gwen's necklace and carefully looped it over Jack's head.
"Are we doing this or not?" Ianto asked hoarsely. Ianto stood in front of him, so real, so solid, Jack couldn't speak for a moment.
"Yeah," Jack managed, "let's go save the world…again." He took great care in walking over to the door, his legs still feeling like they didn't belong to him. He stared at the door handle before him. How many times had he stared at it alone? It looked so much bigger.
Jack reached out and nearly wept when the handle gave easily in his grasp.
"Honestly," Ianto whispered behind Jack as he followed him out, "after this is over, I wish to renegotiate my salary."
Jack couldn't respond but as they slipped out of the room, Ianto reached forward and snagged the end of his service shirt. It anchored Jack as they navigated through the maze of pipes that seem to lunge towards Jack to prevent his escape. There were times when a doorway looked more like a mouth full of fire, yawning open towards them. Jack's feet stuttered to a halt many times, but Ianto just twisted his fingers tighter when Jack went the wrong way.
Ianto never let go until they were finally out of the engine room.
"Citizens of Earth, rejoice and observe."
Francine felt Clive's hand on her back, Tish clutching her left hand with both her hands as the doors opened.
The room was filled with people again, guards lined up against the walls. Francine could see the Doctor in his shrunken form, standing hunched inside his wretched cage. He was staring at the door.
The doors opened soundlessly, nothing like the way Saxon usually liked to storm in. Guards, all too stoic to be human, entered. A pair of them as tall as she knew Jack Harkness was.
And in-between them…
"Martha," Tish whimpered when she saw Martha entering the room slowly.
No one talked. Even the guards who were murmuring before fell silent. The constant electrical noises from the bridge upper deck quieted. The footsteps were subdued as if everyone was taking great care not to make a sound.
Francine wanted to scream.
Do something! Do something, Francine wanted to rage at the small figure in the cage by the stairs. He took Martha away from her for so long; made her travel the world alone and hunted. Francine was torn between screaming and staring at the first glimpse she had of her daughter in such a long time. A year. It's been a whole bloody year.
Martha walked tall and easy unlike the way she did when she graduated from the university. She had had a very odd left foot, right foot stride to her then when she walked up the podium as if she was afraid she would fall off the stage. Martha had confessed then she was afraid to look at all those people. Tish had teased her for weeks.
As Martha passed them, she turned her head and it was a woman Francine had never seen before who looked at them with dark yet calm eyes. There was a faint smile, like she was trying to tell them something. Her eyes visibly lightened when they landed on Francine and her mouth twitched.
It was quick. Martha looked away barely a second later, but it stole Francine's breath away.
Martha looked like the Doctor.
The Master stood at the top of the stairs with that damn smug look on his face. He held up a small black case. He bounced it in his hand as he waited for Martha to approach.
"Pity you didn't have your teleport device," Saxon boomed. He held up a small disk shaped device. "Could have had a pair." He turned to his right where Lucy Saxon stood in her red silk gown. She was staring at Martha with a frown.
"She's so…human, Harry," Lucy murmured. Her face screwed up in disgust.
"Yes well, aren't they all, my darling?" Saxon took a step down.
"Kneel, Martha Jones."
Clive growled low under his breath behind Francine but when a guard jabbed Tish with his rifle, Clive fell silent at their daughter's yelp.
Martha looked over her shoulder at Tish's cry. Her eyes glinted and Francine thought Martha's eyes drifted over to her before she faced Saxon again and slowly dropped to her knees without any protest.
Francine gritted her teeth at Saxon's smirk.
"Right on cue," he murmured strangely. "Down below, the fleet is ready to launch." Saxon spread his arms wide open. "Two hundred thousand ships set to burn across the universe." He bounded back up the steps to one of the console and grabbed a microphone.
"Are we ready?"
"The fleet awaits your signal," a voice crisply answered out of the speakers that surrounded them. "Rejoice!"
Saxon clapped his hands. He stretched out his right and Lucy Saxon sashayed over to him. He wrapped an arm around her waist.
"Five minutes to align the black hole converters," Saxon murmured as they swayed. Lucy beamed up at him with her bruised face, white with too much makeup. He hummed as they did a short circuit on the deck. Then he grew bored and shooed Lucy off. "Counting down!" He snapped his fingers.
A clock nailed above him and the consoles beeped and with old-fashioned flaps started at three hundred. After another beep, the digit flipped down and now it was 299.
Saxon leaned forward against the rail on the upper deck and stared at the counter with open fascination. He barked a laugh, thumped the rail with his palms and grinned.
"I never ever could resist a ticking clock. A quirk of mine," Saxon told Lucy.
"My children," Saxon shouted out into the air, "are you ready?"
"We will fly and blaze and slice! We will fly and blaze and slice!"
"God," Clive muttered. Francine shivered. The Toclafane answered in do many voices yet so perfectly as one.
"At zero, to mark this day, the child, Martha Jones, will die." Saxon leaned against the stairway. He paused. His hand twirled lazily in the air by his head.
"Blah, blah, blah, blah—Really, this is a waste of time," Saxon suddenly huffed. "Here I ask if you have any last words, you of course have none, then I go on and on in a seemingly self-absorbed monologue. Couldn't you just save us the trouble and interrupt me right now?"
"What?" Francine muttered as Saxon directed his last question at Martha.
Martha tilted her head and looked at him.
Saxon shook the case at her. "This? The gun?" The Master shook his head and descended the stairs until he was next to the Doctor's cage.
"Such a disappointment, this one," Saxon leaned against the cage. "What did I say before? Ah, yes. Days of old, Doctor, you had companions who could absorb the time vortex. This one's useless!"
The Doctor said nothing. He gripped the bars with his small hands.
Saxon beamed down at the Doctor. "Should I tell her? Or should you?" He checked the counter above him. "Oh, you'll just prattle on, I'll tell her old friend." Saxon turned neatly to her, his teeth gleaming white as he bared them at her like a wolf in the dark.
"A gun, Martha Jones?" Saxon shook the case again before he dropped it in front of her. "Oh look, I dropped our last hope against the evil Master!" Saxon folded his arms. He tsked. "Poor quality, this weapon. Made in some sweatshop factory, I suppose. No more useful than a toy."
Francine saw Martha's shoulders stiffen.
"Yes," Saxon chuckled. "This was where you're supposed to start telling me about how clever you were, pretending to look for a gun." He turned to look at his wife over his shoulder. "In four parts, no less."
Lucy smiled hesitantly but she looked confused.
"Questions?" Saxon beckoned her. "Come. Come here, my child." He looped an arm around Lucy and leaned into her.
"You see," Saxon pretended to whisper into Lucy's ear.
"The gun doesn't work."
Francine's body grew cold when Martha reacted with a jerk she couldn't suppress.
The smile was oily and twisted. "The Doctor would never have wanted you to kill. The gun, nice idea, poorly executed. You humans are such creatures of habit."
"How did you know?" Martha was barely audible.
Saxon merely smiled. There was a look of pity in his eyes as he cocked his head.
"A gun in four parts scattered across the world?" Saxon shook his head. "You asked me once if I really believed that?" Saxon stroked a knuckle down Lucy's cheek. "I did before, but unlike your species, I learned to break out of the cycle of history."
Saxon sighed dramatically. "Here, you're thinking, realizing, that everything you've done has been for nothing. All those plans." Saxon waved a hand towards the cage. "He can't get into Archangel. He wasn't able to get into the matrices."
"Mum?" Tish whimpered to Francine's ear. "What's he talking about?"
Saxon clasped his hands together in mock prayer. "What do you think will happen when all those dirty, fragile humans gather together when this counts to zero, all chanting 'Doctor'?" The Master clapped and tapped his clasped hands to his lower lip.
"Fifteen satellites floating high above while they all chant to a nine hundred year old Time Lord? Hm? Hm?"
The Doctor in his cage pressed closer to the bars.
"I ask you, Martha Jones. You have traveled the Earth on foot for a whole year because your precious Doctor told you to use the countdown. What did you think would happen?"
Martha said nothing for a moment. Francine's eyes burned. God, what will come now? Martha's shoulders were slumped and she could tell from where she stood that Martha was staring across at the Doctor.
"Don't look to him for answers, Martha Jones," Saxon seethed. "He has none."
Martha turned back towards him.
"How does it feel now?" Saxon purred as he slowly climbed up the steps backwards until he was on top again. "How does it feel to know that all your beloved Doctor's plans have failed, have failed you?"
"How does it feel?" Martha repeated in a thick voice. She kneeled there, very still, until she tilted her head up towards him.
"Actually, not too bad."
Martha tilted her head back and laughed.
Owen counted the bundles again one more time.
"It was eight before, it'll still be eight now," Tosh whispered. She crouched down under the steam pipe next to him. "They're not magic dynamite, they won't multiply."
"Just checking," Owen grumbled. He tried to ignore the fact her skirt was hiked halfway up her thigh.
"Christ, did you use too much hot water?"
Tosh blinked, glanced down and smoothly grabbed the hem and tugged it down. It didn't help.
"Saxon likes us wearing short skirts," Tosh grumbled. She jerked at the hem again without any success.
Owen grunted. He checked the watches strapped with the dynamite again.
"Are you sure those things will work?" Tosh tapped at one cracked face. "Did you check the batteries?" Her right knee bounced nervously in front of him and her skirt slipped up again.
"Of course, I did," Owen snorted. He stared at his lap. He did, didn't he? Bollocks.
The two fell silent again.
The hollow echoes of steam rumbling in pipes vibrated against his back. They sounded like laughter from an old fart sneering at them. Owen grimaced.
"What was that?" Owen hushed, more to hear his own voice than the pipes.
Tosh shot him a baffled look.
"Before," Owen prodded. "You know…before. When we were first up here—"
Tosh wrinkled her nose. "When they took us up here to be executed?"
Argh. "No, no, after that."
Tosh frowned. "But that was our first time up here," she reminded him.
If it wouldn't bung the entire mission, Owen would have ranted right now. He clenched his teeth and gritted out, "Never mind. Forget I said anything." He slumped back against the pipe. Where the hell was Cooper anyway?
Tosh, unfortunately, was the kind of clever woman who didn't let go easily. Owen, without looking up, could sense Tosh frowning and making faces to herself. She made a tiny noise and touched her own lips.
"Ooh." Tosh drew out her response long and low. Her eyes widened. "That."
Owen's mouth twisted. He wasn't sure if he was glad she remembered or irked that she had forgotten in the first place.
"It was for luck," Tosh whispered. She huddled closer until her hip was warm against his leg.
"For luck?" Owen repeated. He gave her a wary glance. His eyes narrowed. "That's all?"
"Sure because of the heat of the moment." Tosh shrugged. "I mean, it was pretty tense…"
"Yeah, we were about to—"
"And I didn't know when we would see—"
"Exactly," Owen threw in. He stared at Tosh.
"So…" Owen said slowly. He tested the words in his head. "For luck?"
Tosh brushed her hand across her lap. "Of course." Her knee bounced again in place. "…What did you think it was?"
The quiet footsteps stalled whatever Owen was going to say. Not that he knew what his answer was going to be.
"All right," Gwen reported as she squeezed into the space the two large pipes created. She handed Owen back his key, which Owen took back gratefully. It felt weird and very exposed without that stupid piece of metal hanging off his neck.
"No guards."
Owen sighed. "Good."
"But there's three Toclafane guarding it," Gwen finished.
Owen glared at Gwen. "I think mentioning that first would have been better."
Gwen just shrugged. She tugged a strand of her hair behind her ear. Getting to be a bad habit of hers. Owen had been tempted many times before to snip it off when she slept on her shift.
"What we need is lightning," Owen muttered.
"What?" Tosh gave him a look.
"Before we left, the Toclafane found out where we were," Gwen explained, "but Ianto used a program he found in your folder."
"Martha found out lightning took down one of those things," Owen added. He jerked his head towards the direction of the room where the TARDIS was. "Sparked the whole lot. Some sort of EMP pulse thing."
"The electromagnetic echo field?" Tosh beamed. "I hadn't had a chance to test it. It worked?"
Owen's mouth dropped open. "You…you hadn't tested it yet?" he stammered.
Tosh waved a hand in a pish-posh fashion. "I was going to last Christmas but then we got so busy." Tosh frowned at Owen. "What's that look for? You just said it worked."
Owen exchanged a look with Gwen. Cooper looked like Tosh just declared her devotion to her. She looked like she was going to pitch forward in a faint.
"W-well…um…" Gwen fumbled. "Love, did…d-did Ianto know this?"
Tosh smiled to herself in memory. "Oh yes, I was ratty about it for days. I was about to have a row with Jack when he had to cut its testing budget. I must have complained every morning to poor Ianto."
"I'll kill him," Owen muttered to himself. "Gwen, you'll distract Jack and I'll take narco boy somewhere and beat him silly with my shoe."
"Narco boy?"
"Don't get him started," Gwen warned Tosh.
Tosh narrowed her eyes at Owen. She shook her head. "Never mind then. Do you remember the voltage? Wattage?"
Owen was sure his face appeared as blank as Gwen's.
"Joules?" Tosh pressed.
"Joules?" Gwen brightened. "Yes, megajoules. It was…four hundred?" Gwen glanced over to Owen.
"Five hundred," Owen corrected. "About five hundred and ten." At Tosh's speculative look at the ceiling, Owen added in a drawl, "Why?"
Tosh didn't answer at first. She stared at the ceiling above her. Gwen tipped her head back and squinted at the bulb above her.
"Gwen?" Tosh asked absently. She dropped her gaze back down to them and her smile was blazing.
"Were there any lights in there?"
Jack could understand Ianto's reluctance to come any closer to the dais. Jack was finding he needed to force his feet to take another step to approach it the minute they entered the room.
Because of Martha's arrival, most of the guards were concentrated three levels above them, on the bridge. The hallway had been empty but the door they needed seemed to stretch further and further away as they crept up to it.
Jack avoided looking at the other half of the room when they entered. Instead, he focused on the left side where the coral grew into a partition of golden rock. The dais sat in the center of this half, machinery lined up on the wall parallel to it. Jack grimaced at the canisters that lined up the back, stacked neatly like cans on a Tesco wall. God, he just wanted to take one of Owen's explosives and blow the whole thing out of the sky. His insides churned with both revulsion and rage. It made standing upright a bit of a feat.
"Jack."
Ianto sounded like he couldn't breathe so Jack spun around. Then, Jack couldn't breathe when he realized Ianto was staring at the bed that Jack had been kept in at the beginning.
"Over here." Jack forced the words out. He felt sucker punched and it was hard to get the words out. He took a step into Ianto's view.
Ianto blinked and after gaping blankly at Jack's chest blocking his view, Ianto finally looked up at him with shattered eyes.
Jack wordlessly took a fist of Ianto's right sleeve and steered him towards the other side of the room. Ianto made no comment when Jack tugged harder than necessary to get him to move.
Cotton slipped out of his fingers and Jack staggered deeper into the left half of the room without Ianto. He set his fists on the dais, hung his head and breathed heavily through his mouth. He felt dizzy. He felt like he just woke up after Abbadon.
"His taste in décor hasn't changed."
Jack glanced over his shoulder. Ianto stood at the foot of the platform, staring at it with an unreadable expression.
"Yeah, but," Jack ignored the stack of glowing blue canisters at the wall by the opposite end of the dais as he pulled out the utility drawers by the mainframes, "it's good for the back. He could have made a fortune." It was a mixed victory when Jack found the long IV lines in the bottom drawer.
"That wasn't the least bit funny."
Jack looked up, the tubing in a fist, a quick retort on his lips. But at Ianto's pale face, whatever joke Jack was going to offer died quickly.
"No," Jack agreed. "It wasn't." He took a deep breath. "You said you set a timer for the Rift. When?"
Ianto patted around his jeans. His sleeves rolled up as he twisted around.
"You've kept it on."
Ianto paused. He lifted up his right arm to show Jack. His eyes crinkled when he revealed the wrist strap.
"Never took it off."
"Not even when you shower?" Jack teased as he sat on the edge of the elongated surface. He kept his eyes on Ianto and tried not to think about how cold it felt under him. "Because you in…in just leather—"
"Stop it."
Ianto's voice was quiet, but it shut Jack up effectively.
Jack tracked Ianto coming around and sittting up on the dais with him, an inch away. The heat from Ianto's body made him squirm.
"You don't have to pretend," Ianto told him softly.
The knowing in Ianto's eyes, the dark tint of understanding made Jack look away.
"Jack. I told you before, none of this matters."
"It's easy," Jack murmured, his eyes drifted to the mainframe that the tubing connects to.
"Easy?"
Jack tore his burning eyes away from the mainframe and back to Ianto. "To think things can be…fine when you're in a different place." Jack saw Ianto's questioning look, Jack gestured towards his head.
"It's a nice idea though." Jack swallowed. And it was. That none of this could matter.
A warm hand slipped over his on the dais. Jack looked down at the hand. His heart clenched at the tiny scrapes and scratches he could see on Ianto's knuckles, the calluses he could feel from rough labor, pain and misery.
"No matter what," Ianto repeated. He wrapped his hand tighter around Jack's hand.
Jack smiled sadly at their hands. His hand curled under Ianto's. Jack swiped his tongue across his lower lip.
"How long?" Jack rasped.
"Jack."
"How long?" Please, please, Jack pleaded. He lowered his eyes to their hands. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about it.
Ianto never pulled his hand away. He fumbled the stopwatch out with his other hand.
Jack smiled to himself. Even in jeans and a worn black denim jacket, the watch still suited Ianto like an extension of himself.
"Five minutes."
Five minutes. Okay, that was just three hundred seconds away. Jack rubbed the IV ends together.
"Want me to do that?"
Jack shook his head. "I…I should…"
Ianto didn't ask again. He took the tubing out of his grasp.
Jack watched dully as Ianto began to mimic Jack, pulling out drawers.
"What are you looking for?"
The drawers jerked as Ianto kept pulling them out, closing them and going back to open them again.
"I'm trying to find…I don't see any…" The drawers began to bang louder as Ianto's search grew frantic.
"PV-35?" Jack guessed. He opened and closed his right hand into a fist. "There…there isn't any."
Ianto stilled. He turned around slowly, his eyes pale.
"God, Jack—"
"It's fine," Jack said quickly. "Once the Rift hits the satellite, that's our signal, I only need to be on this thing for maybe," Jack gulped but the lump in his throat wouldn't go away, "a m-minute. It's fin—"
"It's not fine!"
Ianto opened another drawer, made a choking sound then opened another. "There must be…there must be something…"
Jack felt his throat swell tighter and tighter as Ianto searched. The more frenzied Ianto became, the more Jack couldn't breathe. Stop. Just—
"Stop," Jack croaked out loud. "Just stop looking, okay? Just stop."
Ianto halted, one hand on a drawer pull, his head bowed, his back towards him.
"You can't do this," Ianto whispered. "Jack…I was there in London. Christ, your heart had stopped."
There was a vise clamped around his head, getting smaller and smaller.
"It's just a minute," Jack said quietly.
"It's one minute, Jack!" Ianto spun around. "Sixty seconds! You can't even wait that long for coffee! It's one whole, fucking min—" Ianto stopped short, his eyes on Jack. His shoulders slumped. Ianto stared hard at his shoes. He closed his eyes.
Jack didn't know what made Ianto stop. He didn't know why he couldn't move. Ianto's eyes were red-rimmed, his cheeks stained. And Jack should go over to him and say something. Anything.
"It's just one minute," Jack found himself repeating instead. He cringed at how strained his voice sounded.
Ianto nodded, his eyes still downcast. He slowly walked up to Jack and stopped by Jack's knees.
"All right?" Ianto set his hands on either side of Jack's hips.
Jack nodded mutely and parted his thighs to let Ianto stand between them. He fought a shudder when hands came up his back and the sensation of a warm body pressed up against him.
Ianto kept his embrace loose around Jack, his head resting on his shoulder, the distance between them felt too close yet too far away.
"You're right," Ianto murmured against a spot somewhere between his shoulder and heart. "You're right. It's just one minute. You can do one minute. It's fine. I'm…I'm s-sorry. I don't know what I was…it's just one minute."
Jack closed his eyes and exhaled slowly so whatever was trying to climb out of his throat wouldn't escape. He leaned forward closer and his arms felt like lead when he brought them up. He felt like he was swimming in molasses, trapped in liquid amber as he bend his arms and curved them around Ianto's middle. He clasped his hands together and rested them on Ianto's lower back.
"One minute," Jack whispered.
Ianto nodded. Carefully, his embrace shrank around Jack. A palm gently coast up and down his spine.
"There's no other way. The Doctor can't tap into the—"
"Shh. All right. All right." Ianto's hands moved around to curl around his shoulders. He gave them a brief squeeze.
Ianto tilted his head up. "It's just one minute."
Jack stared at Ianto. Under the scratchy unshaven jaw, the shadowy smudges under his eyes, Ianto looked both painfully young and heartbreakingly old at the same time.
"Yeah," Jack choked out. His arms dropped and Ianto stepped back and suddenly it was cold. Jack shivered. He pulled out the rough sonic device and gripped it with both fists. Jack took a deep breath and swung his legs up to the dais.
"You could wait out there if you—" Jack tried.
Ianto settled a hand on Jack's knee. "Straighten out," Ianto requested in a small voice.
"You don't have to…" Jack trailed off when Ianto looked up. Jack closed his eyes again. "Yeah…O-okay…You need to use the harnesses so…so I don't fall off when…"
Ianto was feeling the straps. He said nothing as he brushed his thumbs across the leather. His Adam's apple bobbed as he went to Jack's ankles and tugged at the attachments.
"They need to be tight," Jack whispered. He couldn't help but look as Ianto did just that on his ankles, then moved up to do the torso. He felt nothing when the broad cuffs wrapped around him.
"Now the IVs," Jack choked out. His heart began hammering hard, powerful enough to force the air out of his lungs. He took a deep breath and tried again. "I need you to connect all of them."
"It…it helps if you're not watching me," Ianto said in a half whimper.
"Sorry." Jack stared at the ceiling, trying to think of anything other than the burn that pierced his skin and slid—God—into his veins. Jack bit his lower lip then the inside of his cheek when one line of fire jolted down his spine.
"Done," Ianto stammered out. Jack could hear him gulping for air by his head.
"That green meter there, with the toggle," Jack said woodenly. "Set the timer to one minute. When the Rift hits the satellite, the alarms will go off, flip the toggle all the way—"
"All the way?" Ianto strangled out. He took a deep breath. "Sorry. G-go on."
It was hard to get the words out. "Turn that dial on it, yeah, that one there, until the top lights up. Jam the screwdriver into that meter. It should bridge that machine right into the ship. Tosh opened up the Valiant to broad transmit so it'll go right up to the satellite the Rift hit and it'll go right back down—"
"To the Doctor," Ianto finished shakily. He stood by Jack's right arm. He held the screwdriver, looking very much like he wanted to throw it.
"H-how long?" Jack hated how his voice cracked.
Ianto brushed away Jack's hair from his brow.
"Two minutes."
Jack stared at the ceiling again. His heart hammered and distracted him from the pain. Beat for beat, it reminded him of the thrum-thrum-tap-tap. The one Saxon drilled into his head for so long. The Master's eyes shone with a white fire when he would ask Jack if he could hear the drumming.
"You want drums?" Jack rasped out loud. "I'll give you drums, you son of a bitch."
"What's so funny?" Saxon snarled.
"Martha, what are you thinking?" Francine muttered. She bit her lower lip when Martha's laugh faded.
Martha tilted her head up to Saxon.
"Faith and hope?" Martha sounded incredulous. "That's it?"
Francine could see Saxon's smirk falter. Lucy Saxon on the deck fidgeted.
"A telepathic field binding the whole human race together, thinking the same thing at the same time," Saxon said, his voice pitched higher as if mimicking Martha. "You thought you would travel the world, spreading the word."
Martha chuckled. "That sounded like a grand old plan…the first time."
"What?" Tish muttered.
"What's going on?" Clive whispered.
Francine narrowed her eyes. "I don't know."
"You've guessed and nearly caught me so many times," Martha was saying, "so many times. As if you knew where I would go next. Even when you were chasing the wrong people, you still sent killers my way to try and catch me, blew up every hole I ever thought about hiding in."
"God," Francine breathed. Her skin itched all over. "Martha…" Her eyes watered.
"Then I remembered what the Doctor told me."
"The countdown," Saxon spat out.
"Yes." Martha didn't sound surprised. "The countdown."
Beep.
Above them, the counter flipped down to fifty seconds. Francine swallowed. She searched desperately for a sign from Martha but Martha never looked up.
"There are people gathering by the square," one of the pilots reported from behind Saxon, unsure. "They're…they're everywhere, Master."
The Master tsked. "Your people, Doctor." He waved towards the bridge behind him. "All gathering to pray in your name."
"But there are no satellites for your Doctor," Saxon told Martha with a smirk. He kept glancing back at the Doctor. "What do you think you can do with your Doctor this way?"
Beep.
Thirty-five seconds.
"Who says he was going to stay that way?" Martha returned. "Oh, I forgot to mention he also told me something else." Martha turned towards the cage.
Beep.
Twenty-eight seconds.
"What?" Saxon demanded. "What else did he tell you?"
Martha faced Saxon and in a clear, steady voice almost tinged with unknown amusement, Martha answered.
"This is your past."
"You've done this before," the Doctor spoke up as he clung to the cage. "All we've done, all we'd planned…all been done before."
"So yes," Martha said. Francine held her breath. Martha's left hand was slowly coming towards the case that was tossed to her. "I thought if I told people if everyone thinks of one word, at one specific time, right across the world. One word, just one thought, at one moment…but with fifteen satellites." Martha scoffed. "It was a good idea."
"But we had already done it the first time we thought of it. Haven't we? In your past," the Doctor added. "Therefore you would have been expecting it."
One by one behind Saxon, on the bridge, alarms were ringing up on the console.
"What's going on?" Saxon demanded. He never removed his eyes on Martha. But at the increasing number of alarms and stammering, the Master twisted around.
"What?"
"There's reports of…explosions, rioting…" The pilot sounded like he could scarcely believe it. "They're destroying the rockets."
Beep.
Five seconds.
"What was it that you said?" Martha mused out loud. "All of them, every single person on Earth, thinking the same thing at the same time. In perfect unison. In perfect frequency…"
"To cancel out your signal," the Doctor finished.
"Blocking out Archangel," Martha concluded.
Saxon turned beet red as he went up the stairs three at a time to stand over the pilots.
"Launch the rockets!" Saxon ordered. "Every last one of them. Launch them no—"
Beep.
Zero.
There was a rumble outside that Francine could feel under her feet. The entire ship shook. Francine fell back. Clive caught her and they stumbled back into the wall, the guard sprawled by her feet and in the midst of upheaval, Francine saw her Martha lunge for the case.
It wasn't clear what was going on. A beam of golden light from somewhere below on the planet shot up and barreled past the windows.
"…coming from Cardiff!" Francine heard someone calling. The pilots were shouting. Saxon was shouting.
"Shoot down that base!"
The ship tilted and chairs skidded across Francine's view down to the doors.
"…forty percent of the rockets' signal…can't activate…"
"…aiming for satellite five!"
"Jesus, are we crashing?" Clive shouted as the beam of light continued to zip past them like a pulse, thundering by the Valiant like a stampede of horses. The lights on the bridge flickered. Alarms wailed. The consoles on the bridge sparked. But seconds later, the bridge went completely dark. When Francine picked herself up, the lights came back on and there was Martha, standing in front of the stairs, feet apart, gripping an odd silver-looking gun.
"Saxon!" Martha shouted in a voice Francine never heard from her before. The Master froze where he stood just as Martha fired.
"Stop!"
Francine thought Lucy Saxon screamed but the Doctor was louder. He had barreled into the side of his cage and swung it towards the stairs. The chain the prison hung on snapped and sent the cage directly into the beam of light that shot out of Martha's gun. Francine cried out with Martha when the cage was drenched in a sparkle of multicolored light but before anyone could react, someone on deck reported that the Valiant was receiving a transmission from satellite five.
As soon as the pilot shouted out, a blue light, brilliant as a thunderbolt burst through the roof of the bridge. Light filled the bridge and everything faded into a haze of white shapes. Tish shrieked and Francine panicked when Tish's hands were gone from her arm. Clive swore as he dropped. Francine felt her feet lift as she was thrown back; saw Martha knocked off her feet as everyone crashed hard to the floor. The loudest clap boomed in Francine's ears as the blue light slammed into the cage. Through tearing eyes, from the floor, Francine Jones saw the cage that held the Doctor explode.
Act X
Additional Notes: Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soullessminion for betaing this chapter. And trtmx for her magic trick that saved my sanity! LOL.
Pairing: Jack/OMC, Jack/?, Jack/Ianto eventually, het and slash
Rating: NC-17
Summary: He left Jack on the game station. Abandoned. But then…he came back…different. An AU look on what happens if things happened differently. Doctor Who 'verse with Torchwood later on.
Warnings: Please read each chapter's individual warnings. Some parts down the road may briefly mention non-con, abuse, and/or violence. Dark in the beginning. Please note there are some dark thoughts as my boys are broken…for now. Each chapter will be labeled for your convenience.
Author's Notes: Note that "the Year That Never Was" was suggested that it wasn't fun. I took it as a challenge to somehow still find a way to instill comfort in it. If it didn't work, I'm sorry. I suck. LOL.
Disclaimer: RTD and BBC owns them. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Warning For This Chapter: strong language, dark, angsty, VIOLENCE, torture (mostly implied, all a matter of reader interpretation), sappy maudlin
Notes For This Chapter: Note there are events/dialogue here that was referenced in DW's "Last of the Time Lords"
Prologue + Ch , Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31, Ch 32, Ch 33, Ch 34, Ch 35, Ch 36 Ch 37, Ch 38, Ch 39, Ch 40 1/11, Ch 40 2/11, Ch 40 3/11, Ch 40 4/11, Ch 40 5/11, Ch 40 6/11, Ch 40 7/11, Ch 40 8/11
Master Fic List: here
Chapter 40 "The Last of the Time Lords"
Act IX: "Faith and hope?"
Gwen looped an arm around Tosh's shoulders and pulled her in for a one-sided hug.
"Incredible," Ianto breathed as he stared at it in Jack's grasp.
"Okay," Owen grumbled, "I'm impressed."
"Ooh, you brilliant woman. We should be calling you Doctor!" Gwen enthused.
"Ma'am or Miss Sato will do just fine, thank you," Tosh quipped with a smirk. She tugged her apron straight with a snap before she returned Gwen's embrace before she turned to Jack. Her smile wavered.
"I suspected," Tosh confessed, "but I wasn't sure…"
"You did great," Jack assured her.
Jack looked loads better with a new shirt and trousers. He still carried a worn air about him but at least the blood was gone. Gwen suspected she knew where the new clothes had come from. She'd seen Ianto holding one of Jack's service shirts one night, just holding it like cherished childhood toy, stroking the collars with a reverence that brought tears to her eyes. She wondered if that's what she looked like holding her mobile, which was still in her pocket like a talisman.
"Are we using this to kill Saxon then?" Gwen asked when she found her throat thick with grief again. God, she was going to be useless if she went on like this.
The steam in the pipes whistled, drowning out the answer. But when Jack shook his head as well, Gwen's stomach plummeted.
"There's not enough ionic charge to create a fully concentrated beam," Tosh murmured. Her shoulders slumped. "I tried, but without the right materials, I couldn't chance binning it."
"It'll be enough to do what we need it to do." Jack held up a hand, halting her apology. He seemed to have understood perfectly what Tosh was trying to say.
"So what do we need it to do?" Owen asked but the brash tones seemed to have fizzled out of his voice. Even he stared at it with a bit of awe.
"I'll need it to bridge a link," Jack said as he tucked it into his waistband. "Tosh?"
"I set up a link. Archangel network is open to receive transmissions from the Valiant now as well," Tosh confirmed.
"Transmission?" Owen raised a brow. "What you planning to do? Sing a song?"
"The Doctor was going to use the Archangel system by merging with it to create a sort of telepathic shield," Jack explained, "except the system has been blocked so we have to send him another energy source to revive him."
"If he does that regeneration like you said," Owen said slowly. "Why don't we just kill him and let him start over?"
"Owen!" Ianto and Tosh both hissed. They both started and turned guiltily to the doors.
Gwen blinked at how quickly they responded. Even Jack looked surprised.
Owen rolled his eyes. "Fine," he griped. "We'll do it the hard way. Just seem like a lot of fuss, is all."
"Wait," Toshiko spoke up. "The only way you can send data in any form is either through the bridge or through their computer room." She scowled in memory. "I've been trying for months to get in."
"Any system wired into this ship that's running a current will do," Jack patted the screwdriver by his hip. "This will create a connection to your link and create a loop to make sure whatever we send through will boomerang back."
Gwen winced. Owen was right—it did seem like a lot of fuss. She shifted from foot to foot. Gwen wanted to get out of this room. It still smelled too strongly of blood.
"How you gonna make sure the Doctor gets it?" Owen wanted to know, "We can't stick an antenna in him."
Jack gave him a grim smile. "That's up to Martha."
Gwen gave Tosh a baffled look. Martha?
"So," Tosh said slowly, "Martha was supposed to be here, with Saxon?"
"Not until she had everything in place." Jack patted the screwdriver by his hip again, as if reassuring himself of its presence. "Not until we were all ready."
It made Gwen dizzy how all the pieces had fallen into place. If anything, her insides knotted more than loosened.
Ianto's brow furrowed. "Where are you going to find another room then or another energy source?"
Gwen's stomach churned when Jack wouldn't look at Ianto. "The fourth level has some rooms I can easily access—"
"Jack!" Tosh burst out. "You can't!"
"Sh!" Owen hissed. His eyes darted back to the door then to Jack.
"What's she talking about, Jack?" Gwen asked, her voice lower, but her eyes were glued to Jack's face, still too gray, too much like after Abbadon.
"Jack?" Ianto whispered. He took a step closer but Jack never acknowledged him.
"That's what you're planning to do, isn't it?" Tosh accused, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "That's why the satellites, that screwdriver. This energy source you're not telling us about is you."
Jack grabbed her by the forearms and gave her a gentle shake. Tosh stared up at him, her lower lip trembling.
"Hey," Jack murmured. "Hey, now. There's no other way."
Gwen had been watching Jack and Tosh like it was Wimbledon, her eyes going from Tosh to Jack's face. All the while, her mind was piecing things together but she wasn't sure of the picture she was getting.
"All right." Owen gave up trying to figure it out. "Will someone tell me what's going on?"
"You're going to tap into your vortex," Ianto suddenly said. Understanding dawned on his face and slowly mutated to horror. "That's what you're planning to do." Ianto inhaled sharply. He looked sick.
"You're planning to drain yourself and somehow transfer that to the Doctor."
When Jack would neither confirm nor deny, Gwen felt her skin shrink around her, her lungs turned to stone. No more air would draw in.
"Jesus, Jack," Gwen gasped. "After what Saxon's—"
"There's no other way to get the Doctor back," Jack cut her off. He studied Tosh, his hands flexing carefully on her forearms. "Do you understand me? The satellites are locked out for him. There's no other way."
"That's why the Rift," Ianto said, his voice rough and unsteady. "The Doctor had me rig a timer to release a short burst of rift energy."
Jack nodded. "Vortex energy is naturally attracted to other temporal ions. Once I…siphon off the energy, it'll be a beacon for the satellite and it'll go right to it—"
"Then my command code for the satellite will send it straight back to the Valiant," Tosh finished. She moved her hands up to clasp Jack's wrists. "It might work." She sighed. "It's brilliant actually."
"It will work," Jack corrected her. "The Doctor had the whole year to figure it out."
Gwen spied Ianto swallowing as if he was fighting not to be ill. She turned to Jack. Something jabbed hard in her chest when she worked her mouth.
"W-what do you want us to do?"
"Take out the paradox machine," Jack replied without hesitation. "The TARDIS is stored in the lowest level of this ship." He gestured to the explosives Owen must have been working on before. "Get these into the main chamber. That's where the paradox machine is. Blow it."
Gwen hesitated. "Just like that?"
"She's sturdy. The paradox machine isn't." Jack dropped his hands from Tosh and stepped back. "Set the timers to give yourself enough leeway to get clear."
"Right." Owen shrugged his rucksack back over his shoulder. "I got the firecrackers," he reported. "We gonna to do this or what?"
Gwen glanced over to Ianto and when she caught his attention, tilted her head towards Jack. Ianto nodded. Satisfied, Gwen slipped her necklace off and tossed it to Jack, who caught it neatly.
"I can move around like this with Tosh," Gwen explained. "You boys are too scruffy-looking to slip past anyone."
"Oi, I'm not scruffy looking. I'm rugged," Owen griped.
It somehow made her feel a lot better to see Tosh roll her eyes at Owen.
"Don't get yourselves killed out there," Jack said quietly. "Get it set up and get the hell out of the way."
"You too," Tosh said. She tiptoed up and kissed Jack on the cheek. "See you later, Captain."
Gwen did the same but said nothing. She was worried what she might say.
Jack merely smiled down at her. He nodded.
Gwen looked at Owen, who looked at Tosh, who looked at Ianto. There should be something they should say, something profound, something encouraging but her mind was blank. They just all stared at each other as if no one wanted to be first to suggest leaving.
"Well," Owen finally said in a gruff voice, "Let's do this."
Jack was still trying to figure out what to say to Ianto when the door creaked and he looked up in time to see Gwen's back disappear behind the door. He stared at the door, feeling a bit like the walls were closing in around him before he realized he wasn't alone. He turned to his right.
Ianto stood there, his hands in his pockets, the TARDIS key bright against his throat.
"No," Ianto said before Jack could say anything. His eyes were dark, his mouth grim.
"Ianto, it's the only way to revive the Doc—"
"I'm not denying that," Ianto interrupted. "But you're daft if you think I'm letting you do this alone." His smile was a poor one. "Besides, I've done this before in London, the…experience might be useful."
Jack averted his eyes. "It's just…I didn't want you to see that."
"I wish you would stop deciding things for me." Ianto took Gwen's necklace and carefully looped it over Jack's head.
"Are we doing this or not?" Ianto asked hoarsely. Ianto stood in front of him, so real, so solid, Jack couldn't speak for a moment.
"Yeah," Jack managed, "let's go save the world…again." He took great care in walking over to the door, his legs still feeling like they didn't belong to him. He stared at the door handle before him. How many times had he stared at it alone? It looked so much bigger.
Jack reached out and nearly wept when the handle gave easily in his grasp.
"Honestly," Ianto whispered behind Jack as he followed him out, "after this is over, I wish to renegotiate my salary."
Jack couldn't respond but as they slipped out of the room, Ianto reached forward and snagged the end of his service shirt. It anchored Jack as they navigated through the maze of pipes that seem to lunge towards Jack to prevent his escape. There were times when a doorway looked more like a mouth full of fire, yawning open towards them. Jack's feet stuttered to a halt many times, but Ianto just twisted his fingers tighter when Jack went the wrong way.
Ianto never let go until they were finally out of the engine room.
"Citizens of Earth, rejoice and observe."
Francine felt Clive's hand on her back, Tish clutching her left hand with both her hands as the doors opened.
The room was filled with people again, guards lined up against the walls. Francine could see the Doctor in his shrunken form, standing hunched inside his wretched cage. He was staring at the door.
The doors opened soundlessly, nothing like the way Saxon usually liked to storm in. Guards, all too stoic to be human, entered. A pair of them as tall as she knew Jack Harkness was.
And in-between them…
"Martha," Tish whimpered when she saw Martha entering the room slowly.
No one talked. Even the guards who were murmuring before fell silent. The constant electrical noises from the bridge upper deck quieted. The footsteps were subdued as if everyone was taking great care not to make a sound.
Francine wanted to scream.
Do something! Do something, Francine wanted to rage at the small figure in the cage by the stairs. He took Martha away from her for so long; made her travel the world alone and hunted. Francine was torn between screaming and staring at the first glimpse she had of her daughter in such a long time. A year. It's been a whole bloody year.
Martha walked tall and easy unlike the way she did when she graduated from the university. She had had a very odd left foot, right foot stride to her then when she walked up the podium as if she was afraid she would fall off the stage. Martha had confessed then she was afraid to look at all those people. Tish had teased her for weeks.
As Martha passed them, she turned her head and it was a woman Francine had never seen before who looked at them with dark yet calm eyes. There was a faint smile, like she was trying to tell them something. Her eyes visibly lightened when they landed on Francine and her mouth twitched.
It was quick. Martha looked away barely a second later, but it stole Francine's breath away.
Martha looked like the Doctor.
The Master stood at the top of the stairs with that damn smug look on his face. He held up a small black case. He bounced it in his hand as he waited for Martha to approach.
"Pity you didn't have your teleport device," Saxon boomed. He held up a small disk shaped device. "Could have had a pair." He turned to his right where Lucy Saxon stood in her red silk gown. She was staring at Martha with a frown.
"She's so…human, Harry," Lucy murmured. Her face screwed up in disgust.
"Yes well, aren't they all, my darling?" Saxon took a step down.
"Kneel, Martha Jones."
Clive growled low under his breath behind Francine but when a guard jabbed Tish with his rifle, Clive fell silent at their daughter's yelp.
Martha looked over her shoulder at Tish's cry. Her eyes glinted and Francine thought Martha's eyes drifted over to her before she faced Saxon again and slowly dropped to her knees without any protest.
Francine gritted her teeth at Saxon's smirk.
"Right on cue," he murmured strangely. "Down below, the fleet is ready to launch." Saxon spread his arms wide open. "Two hundred thousand ships set to burn across the universe." He bounded back up the steps to one of the console and grabbed a microphone.
"Are we ready?"
"The fleet awaits your signal," a voice crisply answered out of the speakers that surrounded them. "Rejoice!"
Saxon clapped his hands. He stretched out his right and Lucy Saxon sashayed over to him. He wrapped an arm around her waist.
"Five minutes to align the black hole converters," Saxon murmured as they swayed. Lucy beamed up at him with her bruised face, white with too much makeup. He hummed as they did a short circuit on the deck. Then he grew bored and shooed Lucy off. "Counting down!" He snapped his fingers.
A clock nailed above him and the consoles beeped and with old-fashioned flaps started at three hundred. After another beep, the digit flipped down and now it was 299.
Saxon leaned forward against the rail on the upper deck and stared at the counter with open fascination. He barked a laugh, thumped the rail with his palms and grinned.
"I never ever could resist a ticking clock. A quirk of mine," Saxon told Lucy.
"My children," Saxon shouted out into the air, "are you ready?"
"We will fly and blaze and slice! We will fly and blaze and slice!"
"God," Clive muttered. Francine shivered. The Toclafane answered in do many voices yet so perfectly as one.
"At zero, to mark this day, the child, Martha Jones, will die." Saxon leaned against the stairway. He paused. His hand twirled lazily in the air by his head.
"Blah, blah, blah, blah—Really, this is a waste of time," Saxon suddenly huffed. "Here I ask if you have any last words, you of course have none, then I go on and on in a seemingly self-absorbed monologue. Couldn't you just save us the trouble and interrupt me right now?"
"What?" Francine muttered as Saxon directed his last question at Martha.
Martha tilted her head and looked at him.
Saxon shook the case at her. "This? The gun?" The Master shook his head and descended the stairs until he was next to the Doctor's cage.
"Such a disappointment, this one," Saxon leaned against the cage. "What did I say before? Ah, yes. Days of old, Doctor, you had companions who could absorb the time vortex. This one's useless!"
The Doctor said nothing. He gripped the bars with his small hands.
Saxon beamed down at the Doctor. "Should I tell her? Or should you?" He checked the counter above him. "Oh, you'll just prattle on, I'll tell her old friend." Saxon turned neatly to her, his teeth gleaming white as he bared them at her like a wolf in the dark.
"A gun, Martha Jones?" Saxon shook the case again before he dropped it in front of her. "Oh look, I dropped our last hope against the evil Master!" Saxon folded his arms. He tsked. "Poor quality, this weapon. Made in some sweatshop factory, I suppose. No more useful than a toy."
Francine saw Martha's shoulders stiffen.
"Yes," Saxon chuckled. "This was where you're supposed to start telling me about how clever you were, pretending to look for a gun." He turned to look at his wife over his shoulder. "In four parts, no less."
Lucy smiled hesitantly but she looked confused.
"Questions?" Saxon beckoned her. "Come. Come here, my child." He looped an arm around Lucy and leaned into her.
"You see," Saxon pretended to whisper into Lucy's ear.
"The gun doesn't work."
Francine's body grew cold when Martha reacted with a jerk she couldn't suppress.
The smile was oily and twisted. "The Doctor would never have wanted you to kill. The gun, nice idea, poorly executed. You humans are such creatures of habit."
"How did you know?" Martha was barely audible.
Saxon merely smiled. There was a look of pity in his eyes as he cocked his head.
"A gun in four parts scattered across the world?" Saxon shook his head. "You asked me once if I really believed that?" Saxon stroked a knuckle down Lucy's cheek. "I did before, but unlike your species, I learned to break out of the cycle of history."
Saxon sighed dramatically. "Here, you're thinking, realizing, that everything you've done has been for nothing. All those plans." Saxon waved a hand towards the cage. "He can't get into Archangel. He wasn't able to get into the matrices."
"Mum?" Tish whimpered to Francine's ear. "What's he talking about?"
Saxon clasped his hands together in mock prayer. "What do you think will happen when all those dirty, fragile humans gather together when this counts to zero, all chanting 'Doctor'?" The Master clapped and tapped his clasped hands to his lower lip.
"Fifteen satellites floating high above while they all chant to a nine hundred year old Time Lord? Hm? Hm?"
The Doctor in his cage pressed closer to the bars.
"I ask you, Martha Jones. You have traveled the Earth on foot for a whole year because your precious Doctor told you to use the countdown. What did you think would happen?"
Martha said nothing for a moment. Francine's eyes burned. God, what will come now? Martha's shoulders were slumped and she could tell from where she stood that Martha was staring across at the Doctor.
"Don't look to him for answers, Martha Jones," Saxon seethed. "He has none."
Martha turned back towards him.
"How does it feel now?" Saxon purred as he slowly climbed up the steps backwards until he was on top again. "How does it feel to know that all your beloved Doctor's plans have failed, have failed you?"
"How does it feel?" Martha repeated in a thick voice. She kneeled there, very still, until she tilted her head up towards him.
"Actually, not too bad."
Martha tilted her head back and laughed.
Owen counted the bundles again one more time.
"It was eight before, it'll still be eight now," Tosh whispered. She crouched down under the steam pipe next to him. "They're not magic dynamite, they won't multiply."
"Just checking," Owen grumbled. He tried to ignore the fact her skirt was hiked halfway up her thigh.
"Christ, did you use too much hot water?"
Tosh blinked, glanced down and smoothly grabbed the hem and tugged it down. It didn't help.
"Saxon likes us wearing short skirts," Tosh grumbled. She jerked at the hem again without any success.
Owen grunted. He checked the watches strapped with the dynamite again.
"Are you sure those things will work?" Tosh tapped at one cracked face. "Did you check the batteries?" Her right knee bounced nervously in front of him and her skirt slipped up again.
"Of course, I did," Owen snorted. He stared at his lap. He did, didn't he? Bollocks.
The two fell silent again.
The hollow echoes of steam rumbling in pipes vibrated against his back. They sounded like laughter from an old fart sneering at them. Owen grimaced.
"What was that?" Owen hushed, more to hear his own voice than the pipes.
Tosh shot him a baffled look.
"Before," Owen prodded. "You know…before. When we were first up here—"
Tosh wrinkled her nose. "When they took us up here to be executed?"
Argh. "No, no, after that."
Tosh frowned. "But that was our first time up here," she reminded him.
If it wouldn't bung the entire mission, Owen would have ranted right now. He clenched his teeth and gritted out, "Never mind. Forget I said anything." He slumped back against the pipe. Where the hell was Cooper anyway?
Tosh, unfortunately, was the kind of clever woman who didn't let go easily. Owen, without looking up, could sense Tosh frowning and making faces to herself. She made a tiny noise and touched her own lips.
"Ooh." Tosh drew out her response long and low. Her eyes widened. "That."
Owen's mouth twisted. He wasn't sure if he was glad she remembered or irked that she had forgotten in the first place.
"It was for luck," Tosh whispered. She huddled closer until her hip was warm against his leg.
"For luck?" Owen repeated. He gave her a wary glance. His eyes narrowed. "That's all?"
"Sure because of the heat of the moment." Tosh shrugged. "I mean, it was pretty tense…"
"Yeah, we were about to—"
"And I didn't know when we would see—"
"Exactly," Owen threw in. He stared at Tosh.
"So…" Owen said slowly. He tested the words in his head. "For luck?"
Tosh brushed her hand across her lap. "Of course." Her knee bounced again in place. "…What did you think it was?"
The quiet footsteps stalled whatever Owen was going to say. Not that he knew what his answer was going to be.
"All right," Gwen reported as she squeezed into the space the two large pipes created. She handed Owen back his key, which Owen took back gratefully. It felt weird and very exposed without that stupid piece of metal hanging off his neck.
"No guards."
Owen sighed. "Good."
"But there's three Toclafane guarding it," Gwen finished.
Owen glared at Gwen. "I think mentioning that first would have been better."
Gwen just shrugged. She tugged a strand of her hair behind her ear. Getting to be a bad habit of hers. Owen had been tempted many times before to snip it off when she slept on her shift.
"What we need is lightning," Owen muttered.
"What?" Tosh gave him a look.
"Before we left, the Toclafane found out where we were," Gwen explained, "but Ianto used a program he found in your folder."
"Martha found out lightning took down one of those things," Owen added. He jerked his head towards the direction of the room where the TARDIS was. "Sparked the whole lot. Some sort of EMP pulse thing."
"The electromagnetic echo field?" Tosh beamed. "I hadn't had a chance to test it. It worked?"
Owen's mouth dropped open. "You…you hadn't tested it yet?" he stammered.
Tosh waved a hand in a pish-posh fashion. "I was going to last Christmas but then we got so busy." Tosh frowned at Owen. "What's that look for? You just said it worked."
Owen exchanged a look with Gwen. Cooper looked like Tosh just declared her devotion to her. She looked like she was going to pitch forward in a faint.
"W-well…um…" Gwen fumbled. "Love, did…d-did Ianto know this?"
Tosh smiled to herself in memory. "Oh yes, I was ratty about it for days. I was about to have a row with Jack when he had to cut its testing budget. I must have complained every morning to poor Ianto."
"I'll kill him," Owen muttered to himself. "Gwen, you'll distract Jack and I'll take narco boy somewhere and beat him silly with my shoe."
"Narco boy?"
"Don't get him started," Gwen warned Tosh.
Tosh narrowed her eyes at Owen. She shook her head. "Never mind then. Do you remember the voltage? Wattage?"
Owen was sure his face appeared as blank as Gwen's.
"Joules?" Tosh pressed.
"Joules?" Gwen brightened. "Yes, megajoules. It was…four hundred?" Gwen glanced over to Owen.
"Five hundred," Owen corrected. "About five hundred and ten." At Tosh's speculative look at the ceiling, Owen added in a drawl, "Why?"
Tosh didn't answer at first. She stared at the ceiling above her. Gwen tipped her head back and squinted at the bulb above her.
"Gwen?" Tosh asked absently. She dropped her gaze back down to them and her smile was blazing.
"Were there any lights in there?"
Jack could understand Ianto's reluctance to come any closer to the dais. Jack was finding he needed to force his feet to take another step to approach it the minute they entered the room.
Because of Martha's arrival, most of the guards were concentrated three levels above them, on the bridge. The hallway had been empty but the door they needed seemed to stretch further and further away as they crept up to it.
Jack avoided looking at the other half of the room when they entered. Instead, he focused on the left side where the coral grew into a partition of golden rock. The dais sat in the center of this half, machinery lined up on the wall parallel to it. Jack grimaced at the canisters that lined up the back, stacked neatly like cans on a Tesco wall. God, he just wanted to take one of Owen's explosives and blow the whole thing out of the sky. His insides churned with both revulsion and rage. It made standing upright a bit of a feat.
"Jack."
Ianto sounded like he couldn't breathe so Jack spun around. Then, Jack couldn't breathe when he realized Ianto was staring at the bed that Jack had been kept in at the beginning.
"Over here." Jack forced the words out. He felt sucker punched and it was hard to get the words out. He took a step into Ianto's view.
Ianto blinked and after gaping blankly at Jack's chest blocking his view, Ianto finally looked up at him with shattered eyes.
Jack wordlessly took a fist of Ianto's right sleeve and steered him towards the other side of the room. Ianto made no comment when Jack tugged harder than necessary to get him to move.
Cotton slipped out of his fingers and Jack staggered deeper into the left half of the room without Ianto. He set his fists on the dais, hung his head and breathed heavily through his mouth. He felt dizzy. He felt like he just woke up after Abbadon.
"His taste in décor hasn't changed."
Jack glanced over his shoulder. Ianto stood at the foot of the platform, staring at it with an unreadable expression.
"Yeah, but," Jack ignored the stack of glowing blue canisters at the wall by the opposite end of the dais as he pulled out the utility drawers by the mainframes, "it's good for the back. He could have made a fortune." It was a mixed victory when Jack found the long IV lines in the bottom drawer.
"That wasn't the least bit funny."
Jack looked up, the tubing in a fist, a quick retort on his lips. But at Ianto's pale face, whatever joke Jack was going to offer died quickly.
"No," Jack agreed. "It wasn't." He took a deep breath. "You said you set a timer for the Rift. When?"
Ianto patted around his jeans. His sleeves rolled up as he twisted around.
"You've kept it on."
Ianto paused. He lifted up his right arm to show Jack. His eyes crinkled when he revealed the wrist strap.
"Never took it off."
"Not even when you shower?" Jack teased as he sat on the edge of the elongated surface. He kept his eyes on Ianto and tried not to think about how cold it felt under him. "Because you in…in just leather—"
"Stop it."
Ianto's voice was quiet, but it shut Jack up effectively.
Jack tracked Ianto coming around and sittting up on the dais with him, an inch away. The heat from Ianto's body made him squirm.
"You don't have to pretend," Ianto told him softly.
The knowing in Ianto's eyes, the dark tint of understanding made Jack look away.
"Jack. I told you before, none of this matters."
"It's easy," Jack murmured, his eyes drifted to the mainframe that the tubing connects to.
"Easy?"
Jack tore his burning eyes away from the mainframe and back to Ianto. "To think things can be…fine when you're in a different place." Jack saw Ianto's questioning look, Jack gestured towards his head.
"It's a nice idea though." Jack swallowed. And it was. That none of this could matter.
A warm hand slipped over his on the dais. Jack looked down at the hand. His heart clenched at the tiny scrapes and scratches he could see on Ianto's knuckles, the calluses he could feel from rough labor, pain and misery.
"No matter what," Ianto repeated. He wrapped his hand tighter around Jack's hand.
Jack smiled sadly at their hands. His hand curled under Ianto's. Jack swiped his tongue across his lower lip.
"How long?" Jack rasped.
"Jack."
"How long?" Please, please, Jack pleaded. He lowered his eyes to their hands. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about it.
Ianto never pulled his hand away. He fumbled the stopwatch out with his other hand.
Jack smiled to himself. Even in jeans and a worn black denim jacket, the watch still suited Ianto like an extension of himself.
"Five minutes."
Five minutes. Okay, that was just three hundred seconds away. Jack rubbed the IV ends together.
"Want me to do that?"
Jack shook his head. "I…I should…"
Ianto didn't ask again. He took the tubing out of his grasp.
Jack watched dully as Ianto began to mimic Jack, pulling out drawers.
"What are you looking for?"
The drawers jerked as Ianto kept pulling them out, closing them and going back to open them again.
"I'm trying to find…I don't see any…" The drawers began to bang louder as Ianto's search grew frantic.
"PV-35?" Jack guessed. He opened and closed his right hand into a fist. "There…there isn't any."
Ianto stilled. He turned around slowly, his eyes pale.
"God, Jack—"
"It's fine," Jack said quickly. "Once the Rift hits the satellite, that's our signal, I only need to be on this thing for maybe," Jack gulped but the lump in his throat wouldn't go away, "a m-minute. It's fin—"
"It's not fine!"
Ianto opened another drawer, made a choking sound then opened another. "There must be…there must be something…"
Jack felt his throat swell tighter and tighter as Ianto searched. The more frenzied Ianto became, the more Jack couldn't breathe. Stop. Just—
"Stop," Jack croaked out loud. "Just stop looking, okay? Just stop."
Ianto halted, one hand on a drawer pull, his head bowed, his back towards him.
"You can't do this," Ianto whispered. "Jack…I was there in London. Christ, your heart had stopped."
There was a vise clamped around his head, getting smaller and smaller.
"It's just a minute," Jack said quietly.
"It's one minute, Jack!" Ianto spun around. "Sixty seconds! You can't even wait that long for coffee! It's one whole, fucking min—" Ianto stopped short, his eyes on Jack. His shoulders slumped. Ianto stared hard at his shoes. He closed his eyes.
Jack didn't know what made Ianto stop. He didn't know why he couldn't move. Ianto's eyes were red-rimmed, his cheeks stained. And Jack should go over to him and say something. Anything.
"It's just one minute," Jack found himself repeating instead. He cringed at how strained his voice sounded.
Ianto nodded, his eyes still downcast. He slowly walked up to Jack and stopped by Jack's knees.
"All right?" Ianto set his hands on either side of Jack's hips.
Jack nodded mutely and parted his thighs to let Ianto stand between them. He fought a shudder when hands came up his back and the sensation of a warm body pressed up against him.
Ianto kept his embrace loose around Jack, his head resting on his shoulder, the distance between them felt too close yet too far away.
"You're right," Ianto murmured against a spot somewhere between his shoulder and heart. "You're right. It's just one minute. You can do one minute. It's fine. I'm…I'm s-sorry. I don't know what I was…it's just one minute."
Jack closed his eyes and exhaled slowly so whatever was trying to climb out of his throat wouldn't escape. He leaned forward closer and his arms felt like lead when he brought them up. He felt like he was swimming in molasses, trapped in liquid amber as he bend his arms and curved them around Ianto's middle. He clasped his hands together and rested them on Ianto's lower back.
"One minute," Jack whispered.
Ianto nodded. Carefully, his embrace shrank around Jack. A palm gently coast up and down his spine.
"There's no other way. The Doctor can't tap into the—"
"Shh. All right. All right." Ianto's hands moved around to curl around his shoulders. He gave them a brief squeeze.
Ianto tilted his head up. "It's just one minute."
Jack stared at Ianto. Under the scratchy unshaven jaw, the shadowy smudges under his eyes, Ianto looked both painfully young and heartbreakingly old at the same time.
"Yeah," Jack choked out. His arms dropped and Ianto stepped back and suddenly it was cold. Jack shivered. He pulled out the rough sonic device and gripped it with both fists. Jack took a deep breath and swung his legs up to the dais.
"You could wait out there if you—" Jack tried.
Ianto settled a hand on Jack's knee. "Straighten out," Ianto requested in a small voice.
"You don't have to…" Jack trailed off when Ianto looked up. Jack closed his eyes again. "Yeah…O-okay…You need to use the harnesses so…so I don't fall off when…"
Ianto was feeling the straps. He said nothing as he brushed his thumbs across the leather. His Adam's apple bobbed as he went to Jack's ankles and tugged at the attachments.
"They need to be tight," Jack whispered. He couldn't help but look as Ianto did just that on his ankles, then moved up to do the torso. He felt nothing when the broad cuffs wrapped around him.
"Now the IVs," Jack choked out. His heart began hammering hard, powerful enough to force the air out of his lungs. He took a deep breath and tried again. "I need you to connect all of them."
"It…it helps if you're not watching me," Ianto said in a half whimper.
"Sorry." Jack stared at the ceiling, trying to think of anything other than the burn that pierced his skin and slid—God—into his veins. Jack bit his lower lip then the inside of his cheek when one line of fire jolted down his spine.
"Done," Ianto stammered out. Jack could hear him gulping for air by his head.
"That green meter there, with the toggle," Jack said woodenly. "Set the timer to one minute. When the Rift hits the satellite, the alarms will go off, flip the toggle all the way—"
"All the way?" Ianto strangled out. He took a deep breath. "Sorry. G-go on."
It was hard to get the words out. "Turn that dial on it, yeah, that one there, until the top lights up. Jam the screwdriver into that meter. It should bridge that machine right into the ship. Tosh opened up the Valiant to broad transmit so it'll go right up to the satellite the Rift hit and it'll go right back down—"
"To the Doctor," Ianto finished shakily. He stood by Jack's right arm. He held the screwdriver, looking very much like he wanted to throw it.
"H-how long?" Jack hated how his voice cracked.
Ianto brushed away Jack's hair from his brow.
"Two minutes."
Jack stared at the ceiling again. His heart hammered and distracted him from the pain. Beat for beat, it reminded him of the thrum-thrum-tap-tap. The one Saxon drilled into his head for so long. The Master's eyes shone with a white fire when he would ask Jack if he could hear the drumming.
"You want drums?" Jack rasped out loud. "I'll give you drums, you son of a bitch."
"What's so funny?" Saxon snarled.
"Martha, what are you thinking?" Francine muttered. She bit her lower lip when Martha's laugh faded.
Martha tilted her head up to Saxon.
"Faith and hope?" Martha sounded incredulous. "That's it?"
Francine could see Saxon's smirk falter. Lucy Saxon on the deck fidgeted.
"A telepathic field binding the whole human race together, thinking the same thing at the same time," Saxon said, his voice pitched higher as if mimicking Martha. "You thought you would travel the world, spreading the word."
Martha chuckled. "That sounded like a grand old plan…the first time."
"What?" Tish muttered.
"What's going on?" Clive whispered.
Francine narrowed her eyes. "I don't know."
"You've guessed and nearly caught me so many times," Martha was saying, "so many times. As if you knew where I would go next. Even when you were chasing the wrong people, you still sent killers my way to try and catch me, blew up every hole I ever thought about hiding in."
"God," Francine breathed. Her skin itched all over. "Martha…" Her eyes watered.
"Then I remembered what the Doctor told me."
"The countdown," Saxon spat out.
"Yes." Martha didn't sound surprised. "The countdown."
Beep.
Above them, the counter flipped down to fifty seconds. Francine swallowed. She searched desperately for a sign from Martha but Martha never looked up.
"There are people gathering by the square," one of the pilots reported from behind Saxon, unsure. "They're…they're everywhere, Master."
The Master tsked. "Your people, Doctor." He waved towards the bridge behind him. "All gathering to pray in your name."
"But there are no satellites for your Doctor," Saxon told Martha with a smirk. He kept glancing back at the Doctor. "What do you think you can do with your Doctor this way?"
Beep.
Thirty-five seconds.
"Who says he was going to stay that way?" Martha returned. "Oh, I forgot to mention he also told me something else." Martha turned towards the cage.
Beep.
Twenty-eight seconds.
"What?" Saxon demanded. "What else did he tell you?"
Martha faced Saxon and in a clear, steady voice almost tinged with unknown amusement, Martha answered.
"This is your past."
"You've done this before," the Doctor spoke up as he clung to the cage. "All we've done, all we'd planned…all been done before."
"So yes," Martha said. Francine held her breath. Martha's left hand was slowly coming towards the case that was tossed to her. "I thought if I told people if everyone thinks of one word, at one specific time, right across the world. One word, just one thought, at one moment…but with fifteen satellites." Martha scoffed. "It was a good idea."
"But we had already done it the first time we thought of it. Haven't we? In your past," the Doctor added. "Therefore you would have been expecting it."
One by one behind Saxon, on the bridge, alarms were ringing up on the console.
"What's going on?" Saxon demanded. He never removed his eyes on Martha. But at the increasing number of alarms and stammering, the Master twisted around.
"What?"
"There's reports of…explosions, rioting…" The pilot sounded like he could scarcely believe it. "They're destroying the rockets."
Beep.
Five seconds.
"What was it that you said?" Martha mused out loud. "All of them, every single person on Earth, thinking the same thing at the same time. In perfect unison. In perfect frequency…"
"To cancel out your signal," the Doctor finished.
"Blocking out Archangel," Martha concluded.
Saxon turned beet red as he went up the stairs three at a time to stand over the pilots.
"Launch the rockets!" Saxon ordered. "Every last one of them. Launch them no—"
Beep.
Zero.
There was a rumble outside that Francine could feel under her feet. The entire ship shook. Francine fell back. Clive caught her and they stumbled back into the wall, the guard sprawled by her feet and in the midst of upheaval, Francine saw her Martha lunge for the case.
It wasn't clear what was going on. A beam of golden light from somewhere below on the planet shot up and barreled past the windows.
"…coming from Cardiff!" Francine heard someone calling. The pilots were shouting. Saxon was shouting.
"Shoot down that base!"
The ship tilted and chairs skidded across Francine's view down to the doors.
"…forty percent of the rockets' signal…can't activate…"
"…aiming for satellite five!"
"Jesus, are we crashing?" Clive shouted as the beam of light continued to zip past them like a pulse, thundering by the Valiant like a stampede of horses. The lights on the bridge flickered. Alarms wailed. The consoles on the bridge sparked. But seconds later, the bridge went completely dark. When Francine picked herself up, the lights came back on and there was Martha, standing in front of the stairs, feet apart, gripping an odd silver-looking gun.
"Saxon!" Martha shouted in a voice Francine never heard from her before. The Master froze where he stood just as Martha fired.
"Stop!"
Francine thought Lucy Saxon screamed but the Doctor was louder. He had barreled into the side of his cage and swung it towards the stairs. The chain the prison hung on snapped and sent the cage directly into the beam of light that shot out of Martha's gun. Francine cried out with Martha when the cage was drenched in a sparkle of multicolored light but before anyone could react, someone on deck reported that the Valiant was receiving a transmission from satellite five.
As soon as the pilot shouted out, a blue light, brilliant as a thunderbolt burst through the roof of the bridge. Light filled the bridge and everything faded into a haze of white shapes. Tish shrieked and Francine panicked when Tish's hands were gone from her arm. Clive swore as he dropped. Francine felt her feet lift as she was thrown back; saw Martha knocked off her feet as everyone crashed hard to the floor. The loudest clap boomed in Francine's ears as the blue light slammed into the cage. Through tearing eyes, from the floor, Francine Jones saw the cage that held the Doctor explode.
Act X
Additional Notes: Many thanks to
soullessminion for betaing this chapter. And trtmx for her magic trick that saved my sanity! LOL.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:09 am (UTC)Uh, I mean, there-there? -pats-
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 04:39 pm (UTC)My problem is when the battle was written down, it felt fine. But as I typed it out and compared it to the actual episode, I realized like TLOTTL, I was ignoring Torchwood and while you can go that in a DW episode, not in a crossover fic. I had so many scenes I needed to add.
TOS has been a huge learning experience for me...
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 06:29 am (UTC)Hee! You know, I wait until the WHOLE part is done before reading? And 40 just keeps going up in its numbers pushing my reading back more and more. Not that I'm complaining!! A longer part means just that much more to drool over when it's whole. I've never commented on how wonderful it is to see something WELL WRITTEN and long. Most times you get one or the other but this...this is made of true awesomeness. *hugs* Sorry that the ending keeps evading your estimate but I wanted you to know I absolutely freaking LOVE this fic and I'm so excited to see this part done so I can start reading what happens after part 39! *^^*
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 04:42 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for sticking by this and aharing your coomments with me about this. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 07:04 am (UTC)*worries about Jack and Ianto*
"The electromagnetic echo field?" Tosh beamed. "I hadn't had a chance to test it. It worked?"
Owen's mouth dropped open. "You…you hadn't tested it yet?" he stammered.
Tosh waved a hand in a pish-posh fashion. "I was going to last Christmas but then we got so busy." Tosh frowned at Owen. "What's that look for? You just said it worked."
Owen exchanged a look with Gwen. Cooper looked like Tosh just declared her devotion to her. She looked like she was going to pitch forward in a faint.
"W-well…um…" Gwen fumbled. "Love, did…d-did Ianto know this?"
Tosh smiled to herself in memory. "Oh yes, I was ratty about it for days. I was about to have a row with Jack when he had to cut its testing budget. I must have complained every morning to poor Ianto."
"I'll kill him," Owen muttered to himself. "Gwen, you'll distract Jack and I'll take narco boy somewhere and beat him silly with my shoe."
I couldn't help but laugh at this part. I'd love to see Owen try and beat Ianto silly with his shoe *giggles* That and the acid part when they first got on the Valiant. I just love it :)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 07:26 am (UTC)It has been said may times before but bears repeating - Tosh is Briliiant.
And so are you. Never mind the confrontation Torchwood VS Saxon, I don't see how you could possibly heal Jack and Ianto in 2 acts :) But is getting taken hostage by Jack and Ianto really that bad? Ianto would atleast make sure you were fed on time...
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:41 pm (UTC)Weeeell, when you put it that way...:)
jlbdlcndjelbas
Date: 2009-01-13 08:26 am (UTC)Ok, so, Tosh, we all know that kiss wasn't "just for luck". You are not foolin anyone, you mini-skirt-wearing genius.
Jack and Ianto are brilliant, btw. As always. As usual. I bow to your angst-writing skillz.
And Martha is kick ass too.
He he.
THANKS FOR THE UPDATE! CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT!
Re: jlbdlcndjelbas
Date: 2009-01-13 05:43 pm (UTC)Thanks! I really needed Martha to be more active this time around.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 08:28 am (UTC)Owen's suggestion that they kill the Doctor was just so fitting for me, that he would cut through to that option.
Martha with a GUN??? OMG I must know what's going on.
I love that you kept Martha's reaction's spirit, I was worried she wouldn't know enough to be able to do that bit.
Poor Janto. *patpatpat*
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:44 pm (UTC)Soon. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 09:14 am (UTC)oh, and love the nod to Satellite Five.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:45 pm (UTC)A cookie for you for noticing the very obscure nod. LOL
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 11:07 am (UTC)Didnt anticipate being up reading until 1 am most nights! Dammit! This. is. amazing. I LOVE this story. Its destroyed me and put me back together. I just finished Ch 38, and am planning to read parts of 39 at work today, so I can't comment on this bit specifically, but I have yet to comment, so I thought I should.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 04:29 pm (UTC)Wonderful!
The bit with 'just one minute' and how it changed sentiment throughout the conversation completely broke me! It was so sad =[ NOOOOOO! JACK! Why does he always have to play the big goddamned hero?!
*snuffles*
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:47 pm (UTC)Think of it like...recharging a Time Lord. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:38 pm (UTC)Great chapter really. the suspense building up, the Owen/Tosh debacle, Ianto being so horrified that Jack must do what the Master has done to him before.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 05:49 pm (UTC)I thought it might serve to defeat the Master using his own devices: Archangel, Lucy (before), Jack...:)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 06:54 pm (UTC)I didn't catch this till today (Tuesday!) and and a cliffie! NUTZ!
That was intense!
I have been trying to read this between classes, knowing full well I am going to have to re-read it!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 07:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 08:11 pm (UTC)amazing chapter, so excited there will be more!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 10:15 pm (UTC)Weeell, like in the episode, she is and she isn't but the Doctor has a good reason for once.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 09:42 pm (UTC)Weeell, I for one am home with the flu. Got nothing to do. Am sad, have headache, need something to do while I lie incapacitated. Wouldn't mind extra reading at all. :D *nudge nudge*
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 11:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 12:04 am (UTC)In the end, that's what did it for me. I wrote in the spirit of the canon episode but upon transcribing it and fleshing it out, my chapter felt rush. Granted, this chaoter went from 49 pages to 150 (and that just could be partially that I cant shut up, lol), but yea, even if I didn't include TW, there was so much with that episode I wish they addressed.
For him to have to put himself through what the Master spent months doing to him against his will,
For me personally, after all Saxon had done, I really needed his defeat be about his own tables being turned against him, that his real enemy was himself. Jack who he saw was his greatest threat did become just that--Stcokholm Syndrome twisted to its final emotional stage...
I'm at least glad he has Ianto there with him, because given the shape he's in, I don't think he could do it on his own.
Thanks. You're so right, Jack is not fine and in fact, this carries into season two and that creates a new arc of problems for the dynamics. I considered resolving it completely in this fic but it felt too much like discounting what Jack's gone through but at the very least, I wanted to put Jack a step towards the right direction...
no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 05:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 02:27 pm (UTC)(That said, I really can't wait for the next part...)