Story--"Filled With the Lives of Fire"

This would be my first full-length Jack story, my first foray into DW/Torchwood fanfic, and my venture out of lurkerdom. I hope you enjoy!

Title: Filled With the Lives of Fire
Author: miladygrey
Subject: A well-meant gift, but one not meant for your kind. You are too fragile.
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Jack
Spoilers: General for the end of Torchwood S1 and the start of DW S3.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: They belong to the BBC, Russell, John, and David, not me.
Notes: Title from Pablo Neruda, beta by firiel44. Feedback welcomed!



He knew it was the right one, because no other Time Lord in his/her/its right mind would travel about in a blue police box. Hell, none of the other Time Lords (according to one who would know) would travel at all. So when the door opened, he burst in without a second thought. "This thing still sounds like a dying cam–"

A woman blinked at him, a pretty dark woman in a sleek reddish jacket with her hair in a tumble of beaded braids. And there at the console was–

–not.

Not the Doctor. Someone else, some tall bloke in brown with a mad quiff of hair and the luminous green light of the console turning his face high and hollow...

Jack turned in an increasingly frantic circle. No black jacket or pink hoodie tossed over a railing. The lines of the place were subtly different, the doors out had shifted. Even the bland-clean air no longer smelled of leather jacket and Rose’s flowery perfume.

“You all right?”

The woman barely registered. Jack stalked towards the stranger, the usurper. “Where are they?”

“Some things have changed, Jack.”

“No fucking kidding. What have you done with–if you’ve hurt Rose, I’ll–“ The Doctor could handle anything, but Rose was small and soft and prone to sympathy at the worst times. “Don’t think I won’t find them, the TARDIS knows me.” He glared the stranger straight in the eye. “Where. Are. They?”

“Rose is gone. I’m here.”

“The Daleks–“ The image of Rose screaming as her bones flared and organs burned was a physical blow that made him stagger back a step, wobbling on the ramp.

“No ” The man reached out and caught his arm, steadying him. “The Daleks didn’t touch her, neither did the Cybermen. She’s safe, Jack, safe and well. Just...not here.”

The touch was not the familiar thing, not the freckled long-fingered hand wrapped firmly around his bicep. But the warmth, unexpected heat pulsing from the body. Pulse. He wrenched himself free, stumbled closer, and pressed fingertips to the bared, pale throat.

Counterpoint. Two hearts beating in eighth-note syncopation. And an unwavering gaze that he knew, even though the eyes were doe-brown and not blue. “Doctor?”

“Captain Jack Harkness.” It had always been a ritual with him, the naming of names.

“I don’t understand.” He sounded strange to his own ears, high and helpless, a child.

“I’m still me, Jack. I just changed. Rose was put off, too...” His voice trailed away as he stared, and Jack felt the depth behind those eyes, the weight of years and span of galaxies. “Jack? Oh, Jack.” And abruptly those eyes were pure compassion, and both warm hands were on him, holding his face and keeping his eyes steady on the Doctor’s. “I didn’t know, Jack, I swear I didn’t know. I’d have come if I did, never mind the Sycorax.”

Home and not. Beloved and betrayed. Same two hearts in a new body. Too much. “Gods, this is too much.” He closed his eyes. Tried to pretend that the hands holding him upright belonged to the big-eared Northerner (North of where, he’d never learned) who knew how to dance and resonate concrete.

“Doctor?”

“I’ve got him, Martha. Be back in a bit, don’t worry. Go mess around in the library.”

He was being led somewhere, and he went along meekly. It felt good to not be in charge, after months of being Torchwood’s answer man. Let someone else make the decisions. Let Gwen use her policewoman training, or Owen grow up, or Toshiko gain some confidence, or Ianto...Ianto would make coffee, and watch, and have unexpected depths.

He was sat down. When he opened his eyes in a dim little room, the brown ones were still in front of him, studying him. “I don’t understand,” he repeated. “I died. Then I was alive, and you left, and–and–“ You left me, he wanted to say, wanted to yell. You left me alone and afraid and I died half-a-dozen times before I got back to civilization and WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?

“I died too, Jack. My people, we regenerate after we die. But after I regenerated, I was a bit–“ The Doctor made a gesture, fingers wriggling. “My head wasn’t on properly. New teeth, still not ginger, very confusing. Rose had to get me someplace safe, and then there were the Sycorax, and by the time I thought back, that timeline was gone. We couldn’t get back to you, Jack. Not for lack of trying.” He caught his face again, painfully earnest. “Please believe me.”

The Doctor had never lied to him before. Evaded the truth or only told it in parts, but never a falsehood. He nodded, felt the Doctor’s grip tighten, and saw the long, mobile face break into a wide smile that was so familiar he smiled back on impulse. “That’s the same.”

“Is it? I thought the new teeth made it quite different.” Warm hands slid to his shoulders, made a show of adjusting his collar and smoothing away lint.

The heat of that touch soaking through, warming his skin–he fought the urge to lean in and gather that warmth in close. Still the Doctor, still familiar on a basic level, but not enough to fall back into camaraderie and personal-space invasion. A comfort nonetheless. “How? How did everything turn out? When I–woke up, everything was quiet, and there were no Daleks, just dust. I know you didn’t use the delta wave.”

“It was Rose and the TARDIS. She used the TARDIS’s power somehow, or maybe it used her. Destroyed the Daleks, their ship, everything. And I think–“ The brushing gestures stopped. “I think that power was what revived you. Except it didn’t get out of you and back to the TARDIS in time, so it stayed in you.”

“And that’s why I can’t die.”

The dark head nodded, strands of hair falling disheveled in front of earnest eyes. “The dual voids of space and time–you’ve got to have a lot of life in you to survive, and she has to keep her passengers alive as well. It’s not in her to let one of her own die if she can help it. And to her, what’s a few bullets or some blunt-object trauma?”

It was funny, so Jack laughed. Except it came out as something cracked, strangled near hysteria. The tears running down his cheeks just made him laugh harder.

“Jack–ah, Jack–“ His face was abruptly pressed against brown lapels. “It must have been hell. I’m sorry.”

He was shaking, violently, and gripped the coat’s rough material to try and hold himself together. Arms went around him, and one broad hand (these new hands were huge) started stroking his hair in a measured, soothing rhythm. He wrapped his arms around the Doctor and clung, trying to breathe. “It hurt. The dying hurt. And the coming back. And there was only dark. Pain and dark and more pain, then back to do it again...”

“Humans can’t bear it. It even hurts me, and I’m used to it.” A burr softened the Doctor’s voice. “You’re not made for immortality, lad. As much as I’d love to keep you beside me, you and all the others, it’s no’ for you. Likely you’d have gone mad if I hadn’t found you. Forgive me. I’ll make it right, Jack.”

He took a breath. The coat smelled damp and smoky. He missed the leather. “How’d you find me?”

“When the Rift opened–and why’d you do that, by the way? Open Rifts are always more trouble than they’re worth–the TARDIS went straight for it. Maybe she was drawn to the power source. Or maybe she felt that bit of her in you, hard to say. Probably both, you shine on all the arrays like that dwarf supernova off Tserande.”

“I shine?”

“I can feel you, Jack. When we were light-years and centuries away, I could feel you. Drawing me.” Long fingers on his nape, stroking the fine hairs. “Gods, Jack, if you could feel yourself. You burn.”

Both hearts were beating faster. Jack turned his head, almost cautiously, and breathed in the hollow of his shoulder, the vulnerable throat. There. There. The same scent, unclassifiable. Bittersalt, familiar. He touched the tip of his tongue to where a pulse was throbbing, tasted age and stars and something he recognized. Desire.

“So do you.” He whispered against the pulse, felt it leap even faster. Felt the hitch of answering breath ruffle his hair. “You always did.”

“Jack–“ Soft voice a little ragged, a little breathy. Signs he’d been able to read for years. But he was tensing to let go and pull away.

Jack held on. Not leaving me again, never again. “Please.” He kissed the soft hollow of the Doctor’s throat, then the line of his chin, then the corner of his mouth. Little tastes. “Doctor, please.”

There was an instant when the kiss was returned, lips soft and awkward. “You taste like–“ He didn’t finish, but Jack saw the name silently shaped, saw memory and pain cross the Doctor’s face. Rose.

“You kissed her?” Before he could answer, Jack kissed him again, a brush across his mouth that left the Doctor’s lips parted. “That makes it my turn.”

The pain stayed in his eyes for an instant longer, replaced by a darkness so deep Jack almost shied away from it. Except it wasn’t the void of space or the impenetrable black between death and resurrection, but a bright, hot darkness. Novas and nebulas, starfires. “I should tell you what I told her, then.” Hands slid down his back, suddenly pulled him in close. “You need a Doctor.”

The heat engulfed him. Hungry mouth, clever hands, and tangible wanting in the touch. Jack could taste it on his skin. Didn’t stop long enough to let anything intrude on it, no scrap of thought or caution. Just stoking the burn. Slid his hands down, satisfied a long-standing curiosity about just how human the Doctor was. Was working on the pants when he was unceremoniously shoved down onto his back.

“I’m the Doctor here, Jack.” The burr again, turning his voice into a purr that had something predatory in it. Body no longer lanky but lean and strong, eyes no longer doe-soft but avid. “So let me.”

Answering would be superfluous, so Jack just pulled him down into a kiss. A real kiss, all teeth and tongues and sucking, that lasted until Jack needed to breathe. The Doctor, who apparently did not, simply continued. Gods, almost too much, too much that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Ianto had hated him, hated himself and his own desires even more, grimaced as he came, lain stiff and awkward afterwards. Gwen was taken, Toshiko too wary, Owen loudly protective of his straight virtue. This was something inevitable, like time and stars falling. Like being lost in a dance. Then the Doctor started using his new teeth and his senses and thoughts fragmented.

When he bit down, Jack groaned. When an agile tongue began lapping, he whimpered. When the Doctor’s mouth closed around him and suckled, Jack cried out. When he came, it was the first death he’d welcomed in a long time.

For the first time, instead of falling into darkness, he fell into golden light.


Your life is yours again, with its limitations, no longer chained unwilling to your body. I am sorry. It was not my intent, nor that of My Doctor, to cause you distress and pain.

I know. It’s all right. Who are you?

The Bad Wolf.

Bad Wolf?

The watcher in the woods. That which moves all things forward. That which facilitates change. Life and death, light and darkness. The opposite of inertia. The Bad Wolf makes the world turn. Without me, there would be no story.

But I’m not. I can’t be.

It was not meant to be. She was small, yet contained multitudes. Her cup ran over. She gave you life in abundance, enough that the darkness could not comprehend. A well-meant gift, but one not meant for your kind. You are too fragile.

If I’m not a wolf, what am I?

The Beast in the palace, waiting to be freed. You were ensorcelled, now the spell is broken, and your life continues as it should.

Broken by true love’s kiss?

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. Love is different than you think, Beast. Nor does it alter. The wolf still loves you. So does My Doctor. So do I.


Jack opened his eyes to a glow. One hand lay open in front of him, and a swirl of metallic luminosity coiled on his palm. He moved his fingers slightly, and it rose, then undulated up into a vent and was gone.

“Welcome back to mortality, Captain.”

Smiling, he stretched, felt the warmth curled around him. Closed his eyes, and slept without fear of the dark.


Also posted to my journal.