Right Angles of Time

Jack Harkness always thought that Time Lords were myths. He used to take comfort in it.

Used to.

Jack hadn’t heard his first stories of the Time Lords until he’d gone to the Agency academy.

It had been commonplace practice there for older students to frighten the newcomers with stories about how dangerous time travel could be. The teachers did nothing to dissuade the tradition, either- if a member of the Agency didn’t have a healthy fear and respect for the sanctity of time, then it would only cause trouble down the line. Better to start them early.

So when they sat together in the hosting hall with their legs crossed, keeping their voices low, they told stories far more frightening than simple ghost stories. They whispered about time horrors.

People trapped in eternal time loops. People erased out of existence from before they had been born. Agents sent to a planet that no longer exists. Driven mad and frozen forever, reliving their last moments over and over and over-

And then, they spoke of Time Lords.

They spoke of the ancient beings from before the dawn of time. Vast, powerful, dispassionate overseers of the universe, for whom mortal life was insignificant. Whose idea of morality consisted of order and chaos, as opposed to good and bad. Who had written the rules of the universe and presided over them with an iron fist, who imposed those rules and would tolerate no deviation, and if you even breathed too hard in the wrong way on the wrong day, they would remove you from existence like swatting a bug. There was no way for a feeble mortal mind to determine what they might consider a crime worthy of punishment by eternal suffering. And time travel done wrong was the number one best way to catch their attention.

Jack had thought they were just telling tales. Until he’d lost two years of his memory, and turned rogue, and wound up nearly causing a paradox. Until he nearly destroyed the Earth before he was born.

He’d thought that the Time Lords were as much of a myth as any other. Until he’d done time travel wrong, and drawn attention to himself.

And met a Time Lord.

-

It had taken him a good long while to get used to the idea that the Doctor wasn’t going to turn on them. The Time Lord, to his credit, seemed to just be able to tell when Jack was having a particularly panic-prone day, and would generally give him his space. And Rose- impossible Rose with the heart of gold- would sit with him and tell him stories about how the Doctor might get mad sometimes but he would never hurt them, not even on his worst day- or how the TARDIS really was very sweet, except for when she hid the wardrobe room but that was alright because she never ever hid the bathrooms when you really needed them, and Jack would just sit and listen and try to force down the nausea in his stomach.

When he’d asked Rose what she did to attract the attention of a force of nature like a Time Lord, she had responded succinctly- with pursed lips and an expression halfway between fond and exasperated- that the Doctor had blown up her job, and then she’d saved his life, and in-between there had been a Nestene Auton copy of her boyfriend. And when Jack had just stared at her, she’d shrugged it off and beamed at him and offered to grab him a cup of tea or cocoa or a beer or something.

Rose terrified him, Jack finally decided. She’d come from some century in the early twenties- and the Doctor had already had her for long enough that she seemed to have become accustomed to brushing off anything she didn’t understand with the sort of trust in the Time Lord that meant putting her life in his hands and letting him do as he liked with it.

That thought- the thought that such an terrible and powerful being could, and would, do that- to just pick up a human and decide ‘yes, I think I’ll keep this one’- it made Jack glance down at himself, at the clothes he had ‘borrowed’ from the aforementioned wardrobe room on one of the rare days it had decided to play along and be easily found, and he thought about the bedroom he had been given that was everything he could have asked for in a room, and the warm food that was just waiting for him in the kitchen in the mornings, and this chill crept into Jack’s blood because he was entirely dependant on the mercy of this impossible ship and its ineffable pilot.

Rose seemed perfectly fine with that. It was like she wasn’t bothered by it at all- it probably hadn’t even registered to her to be bothered by it. She treated the Doctor like he was her pet, sometimes, instead of it being the other way around- it probably hadn’t even dawned on her what that Time Lord could do to her, if she set one foot out of place.

Then again, maybe she didn’t have anything to fear. Rose just didn’t seem like she was the sort that would rebel against the Doctor- more likely if she disagreed with him, she would just tell him to his face. And for some inexplicable reason, the Doctor listened to her, and there might be a few complaints or some grousing, but she generally got her way.

The more Jack watched it happening, the more baffled he got. Because it wasn’t like the Doctor was proving all those schoolboy stories of the Time Lords wrong- he was still great and terrible and powerful and terrifying and glorious- it was more like there was just sort of this addendum, a little footnote at the bottom of the page- and by the way, disappointing perky little blondes from the New Media Age who like to bite their tongues when they smile is the one true weakness of the Time Lords, and they will go to obscene lengths to prevent it from happening.

Jack couldn’t really figure out where he fit in. What it was that would make the Doctor least likely to want to just shed him somewhere for being too annoying- into a supernova or a black hole, for instance.

Did the Doctor want Jack to be like Rose, all complete trust and comforting cheer, but constantly keeping him on his toes? When Jack had tentatively tried that for the first time, the Doctor had just shot him a look, and he’d immediately decided to never make another attempt.

Jack had sat down in his room and thought about it, about what made people take pets. When you had one, he supposed, you worried they might be lonely. But Rose wasn’t lonely- far from it. Besides, he would have thought that if the Doctor wanted to foster that trust into devotion, he would have made an effort to isolate her from everyone else in her life- not to introduce new people into it.

Jack highly doubted it was for any of the reasons that people usually spared him or brought him along. When he was nervous, he flirted, which meant that he flirted with Rose and the Doctor a lot. But the general response to it had been faintly sarcastic amusement from the Time Lord and general good-natured playfulness from Rose- who wasn’t responding to his pheromones like an early twentieth girl anymore, he had noticed, and suspected either the Doctor or the TARDIS but he wasn’t sure which-

That wasn’t the point, although it was stuck somewhere between reassuring and alarming. Reassuring that he knew his interactions with Rose were about as honest as he ever got, not tinged with the souring of guilt that he felt whenever it crossed his mind how much he might use those pheromones to further his own ends-

No. No, every time they’d landed, every time they’d left those doors, every time Jack caught himself working that charm without realizing it, the Doctor had spoken up and interrupted him- drawn his attention to the fact that he was doing it. Little reminders- either speaking his name warningly, or a quiet ‘stop it’-

But that still wasn’t the point, though maybe it felt like it had something to do with understanding why the Doctor brought him along. The Time Lord didn’t want him for his body, or for his ability to con and persuade people to see things his way, or for his ability to fight, or even for his pheromones. Which left- what?

What was there left of him, when those four things were taken away?

-

The first time that Jack saw it, it was by accident.

He’d been having one of his little bad days- he’d said something sharp and insulting to the Doctor and then nearly thrown up when his brain caught up with his mouth, and the Doctor had made busy and left him alone with Rose, and they had talked for long enough that he didn’t feel as if he was going to just collapse to his knees in the middle of the corridor and start hyperventilating anymore.

He’d managed to coax himself into going to find the Doctor and apologizing for his behavior. Rose had headed to the library to find- something, some book that was important to her, he hadn’t been paying too much attention (the lump in his throat had nothing to do with shame about ignoring her, of course it didn’t)- and he headed back to the control room, where the Doctor was tinkering with the console.

Jack had nearly started speaking when his train of thought caught up to his eyes and registered something.

The Doctor had that sonic screwdriver of his in his right hand, and a bundle of what looked like wires spun out of cotton candy in his left.

But he was also holding a bottle of something that looked like ink.

Jack pinched his eyes closed. Rubbed at them. Shook his head slightly.

When he opened them again, his brain registered it again. Except it was that the Doctor had the screwdriver in his left hand, and the ink in his right, but he still had a handful of the wires sitting in his palm.

When Jack tried to focus on the bizarre occurrence, his eyes would inform him that there was nothing strange at all, the extraneous thing was being held in a hand that was attached to an arm that was attached to a shoulder, and the Doctor only had two of each of those. But there was still always one thing left over hovering in mid-air, supported by what looked like, to him, a hand attached to an arm attached to a shoulder, but as soon as he started to focus on it, that arm would register as one of the only two the Doctor had, and leave out some other item.

Jack had to force himself to shut his eyes again, his heart racing, to try and actually think.

Three hands, three objects, three arms.

Three arms. But only two connections to his shoulders.

And whatever it was, it was messing with his head.

That wasn’t just a perception filter. Jack was generally good with perception filters. Once you got used to it, it wasn’t that hard to train yourself to look past it.

That was something else. Something much more powerful, which would continue screwing with him even long after he had registered there was something wrong and forced himself to look at it. Something that caused his mind to actively reject what he was seeing.

Which meant the Doctor was wearing- something. Something that made him look human.

Of course he did, Jack’s mind supplied, dully. Why wouldn’t he? He likes playing with humans. He likes playing on Earth. He wouldn’t be able to travel to early Earth if he didn’t look human.

There was almost something comforting about that, actually. After years of academy stories about the Time Lords, perhaps one of the creepiest things about meeting a real one had been how completely normal he looked. But if that was just some kind of super-shimmer, then it would explain it, and take a little bit of a weight off his chest as well. If the Doctor was making an effort to seem human, then maybe seeming human was important to him- enough to not drop the disguise and sear Jack until he wished he had never existed over a mere slight, at least.

Jack hesitated. Should he let the Doctor know that he’d been seen or not? Jack doubted that Rose knew about it- she would have mentioned it, wouldn’t she? It would be one of those things that a New Media Age girl would think of as significant to mention. Unless she had been trying to keep it from him to protect him, or something- but that just didn’t seem like Rose’s style. She was far too earnest for that.

Would the Doctor be angry that he’d been seen? Should Jack leave, and come back later, and pretend it was the first time he’d come in?

The Doctor would know, though. Jack wasn’t sure how, but he was certain that the Doctor would know that he knew. And that might annoy him worse than anything else, that Jack was trying to hide it.

“Sorry, but can you put down one of the things you’re holding?” he finally managed to speak up, his eyes still closed. “You’re kind of hard to look at.”

There was a silence, broken only by the faint sounds of the TARDIS all around him. Then, a clink of metal against metal, and Jack peeked an eye open.

The Doctor was still crouching in front of the panel. Ink bottle in one hand and cotton candy wires in the other. His sonic screwdriver was sitting beside him.

He had turned to look at Jack. Just watching him, expression unreadable.

“Thanks.” Jack forced out, folding his arms behind his back to try and get them out from in front of him. He didn’t want to twitch and start folding them reflexively over his chest to defend his middle mass. “Listen, I just wanted to come and apologize.”

“Apologize?” the Doctor sounded faintly confused. Jack had a moment of wondering- Rose had explained that the TARDIS translated for them, and it obviously made inhuman noises sound like perfectly reasonable sentences, as he’d discovered on that one planet with the society of hyena people. What was the Doctor really saying, Jack wondered? What did his voice really sound like?

“For earlier.” Jack admitted. “What I said. I was just stressed out, needed to blow off some steam. Shouldn’t have directed it at you. Sorry.”

The Doctor sat there for a long moment. Just watching him.

Then, a faint smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

“Don’t worry about it.” he turned back to the console. “I get it.”

Jack hesitated. Then-

“So, we’re good?”

“We’re good.” The Doctor agreed. And then- “If you want to make it up to me, come hold this.” he held up the bottle of- well, it only looked like ink, didn’t it?

Jack didn’t bother pointing out that the Doctor could hold it perfectly well himself with however many arms he had sticking out of however many dimensions he inhabited and came over to hold the thing for him.

The Doctor picked up his sonic screwdriver and dipped the very tip of it, just the very tip, into the bottle. When it came out again with a blob of something black and runny on it, the Time Lord began almost painting the cotton candy wires with it, switching seemingly at random between warbling frequencies.

The two of them sat in relatively comfortable silence for a moment before the Doctor finally spoke up again.

“Suppression.”

“What?” Jack’s eyes pulled away from the inside of the console and flickered to the Time Lord. The Doctor wasn’t even watching him.

“Your pheromones.” came the simple reply. “There’s a method to suppress them. Stop your body from producing them when you don’t want it to. I can teach you how.”

Oh.

Jack had almost thought for a moment that the Doctor was saying whatever thing he’d done to make himself look human was called suppression. But that…

Jack’s mind reeled at the thought. Walking down the street and not turning every head. Actually being able to chat up someone and knowing that they liked him for him, not because their biochemistry was reacting to his.

“Why?” he finally asked. Why would the Doctor want to teach him how to do something like that? What would he get out of it? Why would he possibly want to keep Jack around if he didn’t want to use him for something?

The Doctor turned to him, and all the questions on his lips died into silence.

“Why?” the Doctor repeated, softly. “Because unless I’m very much mistaken, you, like me, want to be able to make connections with people without certain disquieting physiological quirks getting in the way.”

Jack’s heart froze in his throat.

The Doctor was still watching him, but he’d also turned back to what he was doing and began painting the wires with the screwdriver again. That was what Jack’s mind was telling him. That the Doctor was both looking at him and looking at the controls at the same time.

Jack closed his eyes. Tried to steady his breathing again.

Making connections to people.

Maybe Jack had been wrong, after all. The Doctor didn’t have to be a Time Lord or the person he presented himself to Rose as. Maybe they really were just the same person- just that, a person. Not some long lost ancient monster from beyond the rim.

Just the Doctor.

“When can I start?”