crabby_lioness | Fic: The Tale of the Big Bad Wolf: When Martha Met Jack (1/3)

Fic: The Tale of the Big Bad Wolf: When Martha Met Jack (1/3)
Sequel to Post-Mortem, may be read as a stand-alone story

Author: CrabbyLioness

Characters:  Jack, Ten, Martha

Summary: Martha wonders who the strange man who just appeared on the TARDIS is, and why the Doctor is so freaked out.

Rating:  PG for adult themes.

Disclaimer: Don't own them.  Not making a penny.

The Doctor was the most intriguing mystery Martha had ever uncovered. He didn't talk much about himself, and even less about other people. Most of the time when he mentioned someone else, it was "Rose". But every now and again, if you listened carefully, he would let other names slip. Martha listened very carefully.

After meeting and flirting up a storm with William Shakespeare, the Doctor had laughed and murmured, "He flirts as well as Jack."

"Who's Jack?" Martha asked, but the Doctor was already sprinting away.
_______________

The next time they were in the TARDIS. The Doctor was hopping around the console, complaining. "The TARDIS has developed an intermittent power leak."

"Is that a problem?" Martha asked, worried.

The Doctor frowned and shook his head. "Not really, it doesn't happen often and we're not losing much energy. I can't tell what's causing it or where it's going, though. I've checked out the whole system, but I can't find the stress point. We'll have to refuel sooner than I expected."

The Doctor moved to the monitor. "We'll need a Rift to refuel at. Cardiff's got the the biggest Rift on Earth. I was there with Rose, Jack, and Mickey." The faraway look came into his eyes again, the way it it did whenever he mentioned Rose.

"Jack and Mickey?" Martha asked.

The Doctor nodded. "Friends," he said by way of explanation.

"Where are they now?"

"Mickey's with Rose across the dimensional barrier."

"And Jack?"

The Doctor was silent for a moment. Martha thought she would have to press him, but by now the Doctor knew she would keep asking. He couldn't run away in the TARDIS console room.

"Jack's dead, " he said shortly, as if he didn't want to say that much.

"I'm sorry. What happened to him?"

Another pause, then the Doctor said, "Daleks." The tone of his voice made it clear she would get no more out of him on that subject now.

He pressed some buttons. "Let's see. There's smaller Rifts in Paris, Cairo, New York.... I've never been to New York. Let's go to New York."
__________________

In New York, Martha stared at the small machines that looked like rabid R2-D2s. "What's that?"

"Daleks," the Doctor spat out the word.

"Like killed your friend Jack?"

"Yes."
________________

Back on the TARDIS after his wrenching attempt at being human, the Doctor performed a diagnostic check on his craft. "Looks good, looks good," he murmered. "Still got that pesky power leak, but that's too small to cause us any problems." He slapped the console affectionately.

The TARDIS lurched sideways. Martha and the Doctor were thrown off their feet. It lurched again, and again. Martha grabbed on to a railing while the Doctor tried to reach the console. The shaking continued.

"What's happening?" Martha cried.

"I don't know!" the Doctor said. He tried to read the controls, was almost thrown off his feet again, then reached the monitor. "It's the power leak. It's increased a hundred times."

"Oh great, the ship's going to bleed out in the middle of nowhere!" Martha would have rolled her eyes, except that she was already rolling.

Suddenly the Time Rotor began moving.

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know! I'm not controlling the TARDIS. It's an emergency landing protocol -- I hope!"

"You hope? You don't know!"

"It's never done this before. If it isn't an emergency protocol, then someone else is controlling the TARDIS. In which case...."

"We're in trouble."

"No. They're in big trouble," the Doctor said grimly.

The shaking toned down enough for the Doctor to read the control panel. "We're materializing. No, not quite."

"How can you not quite materialize?"

"Very fancy manuever that. Requires pin-point navigating. Not something your average TARDIS thief would know how to do. Also not something that's normally part of an emergency landing. Hang on."

There was another lurch, then the shaking subsided. The Time Rotor slowed down and stopped. The Doctor looked at the monitor. "The leak has stopped. No other problems. We appear to be all right, but where are we?"

Martha climbed to her feet. "Why don't you ask him?"

"What?" The Doctor turned around and looked where Martha was pointing.

In front of the ramp was the figure of a man surrounded by a golden light. Martha noted that the man was extremely handsome in a  "Hollywood Classic" way and wore what she thought was a World War II British officer's uniform. The light subsided and the man looked around. His face broke out in an enormous grin and he threw his arms up in the air in a victory sign. "The TARDIS, yes!"

Martha blinked at his American accent. "Who are you? How did you get here?" She turned to the Doctor, expecting him to come down on the stranger like the Wrath of God for interfering with the Doctor's precious TARDIS. Instead, the Doctor stood perfectly still, his mouth hanging open, looking pale.  "Jack?" he appeared to ask so softly Martha couldn't even be sure he said it out loud.

The man looked around, smiled at them, and looked around more intently as if searching for something that wasn't there.

"Who are you?" Martha asked again.

The Doctor stood rooted in place whispering, "That can't be Jack. That can't be Jack. That can't be Jack."

The stranger held up his hand in a "just a moment" gesture, bounded up to the console, and reached over to caress the Time Rotor. "Hello, Sweetheart," he crooned in a bedroom voice. "Has your Daddy been taking care of you?"

The console chirped mournfully.

"That's Jack."

The man lifted his eyebrows and said, "Really." He petted the console. "We'll talk later." He turned around, walked over and enfolded Martha's hand in a double handshake. "Captain Jack Harkness. Where's the Doctor?"

Martha gestured vaguely in the Doctor's direction, but the man had already turned towards him and shook his hand.

"Jack?" the Doctor asked again, as if he couldn't quite believe it.

Captain Harkness started. "Do I know you? I don't think we've met, and I never forget a face."

"I wasn't wearing it when you kissed me."

Martha and the Captain both stared at the Doctor. The Captain held up his left arm and stared at something strapped to his wrist with a leather band. He looked up at the Doctor. He looked down at the wristband. Up. Down. Finally he took a deep breath. "Two hearts. Okay. Doctor!" He reached over and hugged the bemused alien. "You're looking good." He held the Doctor out at arm's length. Not -- what I expected, but good. Very, very good."

"Jack, you died."

"Yeah, but I got better."

"That's impossible. Humans don't 'get better', not from Daleks. Jack, I heard you die. Your rifle ran out, then your pistol ran out, then you said something to them, and then you died Jack. They shot you. I heard your body hit the wall and fall to the floor. You were dead." The Doctor looked more freaked out than Martha had ever seen him.

The Captain stared at the Doctor for a long moment without speaking, then sighed. "Yeah." He took his hands off the Doctor and put them on his hips. "I was kinda hoping you could explain that."

"Let's find out," the Doctor said, whipping his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket. He grabbed the Captain by the arm and pulled him over to the console.  The Doctor gestured behind him at Martha. "Jack, meet Martha Jones. 21st Century medical intern. Brilliant but pushy."

Jack threw a nod at Martha as the Doctor dragged him forward. She ran to catch up with them.

"Martha, meet Captain Jack. 51st Century former Time Agent, usually in over his head, usually dick-first."

"Hey." Jack grinned cheekily at the Doctor, who lifted an eyebrow at Jack and seemed to be suppressing an answering grin.

"Nice to meet you," Martha told Jack.

"My pleasure," he assured her. The Doctor pulled the monitor around where he could see it and began scanning Jack.

"What did you say your problem was?" Martha asked.

"I can't die. I'm immortal."

"Nonsense," the Doctor snorted. "There are no immortals, only people who haven't died yet. How old are you now?"

Jack consulted his wristband. "One hundred and -- seventy two."

"Aw, you're an infant! If you were a Time Lord, you'd barely be old enough to drive." The Doctor divided his attention between scanning Jack and looking at the screen. "Mind you, that's impressive for a human, and you do appear to be still human. You don't register as any different from your last trip in the TARDIS. Turn around, let me get your back."

"Anytime, handsome."

Martha laughed. "Is he always like this?" she asked the Doctor.

"All the time. If he gets to be a bother, swat him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper."

The Doctor adjusted the setting on his screwdriver. "Now I've known people who've devoted thousands of years to trying to figure out how to be immortal. No system works forever. They all fall to entropy in the end. Take enough damage, they stop working, and the victim dies. Never fails."

"What's 'enough damage'?" Martha asked.

"Enough to disrupt the life support system. Weird, I can't detect one on Jack. Are you sure you're immortal?"

Jack turned around and sat on the rim of the console. "Wouldn't a Dalek bolt qualify as 'enough damage'?"

"It should."

"How about multiple gunshots, stab wounds, electrocutions, strangulations, poisonings, asphyxiations, and drownings?"

"Blimey Jack, what have you been up to?"

"Clean living. I always knew it would be the death of me. Speaking of which, what happened on the Gamestation after I died?"

The Doctor grimaced. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Jack crossed his arms. "You came up with a plan what would take out the Daleks but get us all killed. You sent Rose and the TARDIS to safety. I died. I came back to a station full of corpses and Dalek dust. I wasn't sure what happened. I heard the TARDIS start up and ran for it. By the time I got there you were leaving. You couldn't stick around long enough to get my body?"

The Doctor scratched his neck. "Sorry about that. I was doing a spot of dying there myself."

"What?" Jack asked.

"Rose opened the console and absorbed the Heart of the TARDIS. She came back and destroyed the Daleks. She had the whole Time Vortex running through her body, and it was killing her. I took it from her and put it back in the TARDIS, but it killed me in the process. I barely had time to get back to the TARDIS before I regenerated."

"Regenerated?" Martha asked.

"Time Lords can regenerate into new bodies when something kills their old body."

"But isn't that a form of immortality?"

"Nah! It only works a few times. You still die for good in the end." The Doctor tapped his screwdriver against his lips. "Wait a minute. Rose said something while she was doing all that about 'bringing life'. I wonder if she brought you back to life?"

"Could she do that?" Martha asked.

"With the Vortex running through her? She could do anything she wanted. Literally anything. But that doesn't answer the question of how she did it."

"What do you mean?" asked Jack.

"Rose was a wonderful girl, but her knowledge of medicine was limited to basic first aid. She could tell the Vortex she wanted you back, but she couldn't tell it how to bring you back. She didn't even know about immortality, let alone how to design a sophisticated immortal support system on the spur of the moment. The knowledge of how to do that had to come from somewhere else. But where?"

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair, lost in thought. "I wonder -- no. Yes. No! Yes! Aw that's brilliant!" He began to pace. "She's a genius!"

"What? What did Rose do?" asked Jack.

"Not Rose. Rose wanted you back. The Vortex gave her the power to bring you back. But neither of them knew how to do it. That knowledge came from someone else."

"Who?" Jack gestured for the Doctor to finish up.

"You're sitting on her."

Jack jumped up with a priceless expression of shock on his face. He turned around and stared at the console. "The TARDIS?"

"The Heart of the TARDIS. She's got thousands of years of knowledge to draw from, including information on dozens of support systems."

"Can the TARDIS do that?" Martha asked. "No, you said she could do anything under those circumstances. Has the TARDIS ever done anything like that before?"

"No, but I wouldn't put it past her to try. She'd try anything."

Jack was circling the console. "C'mon, Sweetie, we need to talk. Doctor, how do we communicate with her?"

The Doctor looked flustered. "Well, I -- she's not really talkative."

Martha raised an eyebrow. "900 years together, and you never sit down and talk? Why do I believe that?"

Jack examined the control panels. "You said the console opened up and she could hop in someone. Would that work?"

"No! Jack, that kills the host!"

Jack looked up at the Doctor. "It wouldn't kill me." He stroked his index finger over a lever. "It's this one, isn't it? Come on out, Sweetheart, we need to talk."

"Jack, no!" The Doctor lunged forward. The lever flew up by itself. The console split open and bathed the room in a bright golden glare. "Don't look into it!" the Doctor cried, covering his eyes. Martha covered her eyes as well.

She couldn't see what happened next, but the glare gradually subsided into a softer glow. She peeked out between her fingers. The golden light was now coming out of the strange man's eyes. His face wore a completely different expression. His lips moved, and he spoke a single word in a different tone and accent.

"Yes."

To be continued ...

Part 2: Constellations of Blood