Archive of Our Own ^beta

From the moment Martha said that, laughing, showing no fear whatsoever of the Master, despite being on her knees in front of him and marked for death, Jack knew it was over.

Belief. He'd been right to keep it. Belief in the Doctor had turned out to be the key. A chant, heard across the world, all at the same time, carried by the Archangel network and magnified into a power so strong, it restored the Doctor completely.

Because he had spent an entire year, sitting quietly, psychically integrating himself into it under the Master's nose. Not idle at all. Always working towards the plan.

The Doctor had sent Jack to destroy the Paradox Machine built out of the TARDIS and he ran to get it done, like the soldier he was. Though he'd had to shoot down three Toclafane spheres who were guarding it, Baa Baa had zipped in to help and shielded him from their fire, allowing Jack and several UNIT troops to get to it.

Its destruction caused time to tailspin backwards around the ship, an entire year erased, though everyone on the Valiant itself were caught in the eye in the eye of the storm, their memories of that year than never really happened left untouched.

Jack had run back up to the Bridge Deck and caught the Master in his attempt to run, turning him around, forcing him to face the people he'd tormented; Francine, Tish, Clive, Martha, the Doctor too.

There was no surprise whatsoever for Jack when Francine pulled a gun, her hands shaking as she stared the Master down, pointing out all the reasons he deserved to die.

The Doctor urged her to lower the gun. "Francine, you're better than him," he said.

And he was right. She broke down in her daughter's arms in the end.

"What happens to me?" the Master asked then, with a put-upon sigh.

"You're my responsibility from now on," the Doctor said, a strangely tender look on his face. "The only Time Lord left in existence."

"No he's not," Jack said, and turned to the Master sharply. "Tell him. Tell him who you found at the end of the Universe."

"Are you trying to break his heart all over again, Freak?" the Master said with a cruel snort.

"Oh I don't think it'll break anyone's heart but yours. If you have one," Jack said, and he felt the godbots surging into his hand, moving it. The Master was curious enough to allow the contact, and as Jack's fingers pressed against the side of the Master's forehead, a small but visible tumble of lights made contact between them.

A cascade of images flashed past Jack's vision, moving far too fast for him to make sense of them, but when his hand was released and fell away, he knew that a conversation had been had. Not one he was meant to be involved in, but one he could guess at perfectly well.

The Time Lord's gaze fell onto the facsimile of Lucy, standing aside in her red satin dress, and Jack knew that Ianto had just shown the Master the truth of what had happened to the real Lucy on Utopia.

There was a surprisingly genuine flicker of anguish in his eyes, and Jack was wondered if maybe he had cared for her in the end, on some level at least.

Perhaps aware of the slip, the Master quickly shuttered whatever flicker of a real reaction off and turned back to Jack. "It takes more than a little stolen genetic code to make a Time Lord," he sneered. "That thing is just another little freak."

He suddenly started laughing, the sound of utter madness rising through it, his head thrown back. Then the Master suddenly took out his laser screwdriver and fired it off.

"No!" Jack gasped, but he wasn't fast enough to stop him. He gasped as the the laser blast hit Lucy, throwing her backwards like a rag doll.

"Let's see if that one stays dead-"

As Jack ran to the facsimile, lifting her into his arms, the Doctor struggled with the Master to get the screwdriver out of his hand. "Just stop it!" the Doctor yelled, and clawed it out of his grasp, pocketing it. "You're coming with me. I'm going to keep you on the TARDIS."

"Keep me?" the Master said as he spun out of his hold, with a look of horror that Jack might have liked to see in other circumstances. The Time Lord stared at the Doctor, clearly outraged at the very idea.

Nearby he could hear the Doctor arguing with the Master, telling him to regenerate, demanding he regenerate, the dying Time Lord making a point of refusal. A cold embrace that ended in anguish; the Doctor still crying over the Master's body, despite everything he had done.

"Now what?" he muttered, privately, hoping Ianto would clue him in. When there was nothing, he closed his eyes and tried to tune out the sound of the Doctor from his mind and find the beach, reaching for Ianto.

A half-formed vision of him formed in his mind's eye, the two of them standing facing one another by the shore, everything blurry and vague.

For some reason, the sound of the Doctor's anguish was louder there, washing over Jack in a way that almost hurt his ears.

"I... should save him," Ianto muttered, "Shouldn't I?"

"Who? The Master?" Jack asked, surprised. "No, we need to fix Lucy- your body-"

"But-"

"No." Jack snapped, firmly. "He is not the priority here. What do I need to do, right now, for you?"

After a moment, Ianto gave him a curt nod and, with a notable strain in his voice, told Jack exactly what he needed to do next.

*

Jack watched with a morbid fascination as Baa Baa performed the procedure, just as it had before.

This time Jack had wanted to stay awake for it, as gory as it was. He felt absolutely nothing though; the godbots made sure of that. And when his ribs were opened, the second heart that did not belong there plucked carefully out by the floating sphere, he watched everything being repaired again by the stream of lights that lingered within him briefly. When they left, he turned his head to one side, to the other side of the bed, where the visage of Lucy lay, peacefully, not seeing her at all really in the anticipation of what she would become soon.

They'd needed a private space to do this, so he had grabbed Lucy's body and carried it down in the elevator to the Private Quarters, since it was the nearest place to use that he felt would be totally unoccupied. Martha had moved to ask him what he was doing but he'd ignored her, wanting to get out of there before UNIT started to move in to contain the situation, as inevitably they would.

There was a sadness to losing his second heart. He'd become quite accustomed to feeling it there in his chest, assuring him that he was not alone across these bleak months. At the same time, Jack was filled with excitement at the prospect of seeing Ianto again, back in his physical form, able to touch and feel him again.

Once Baa Baa was done with the operation, the sphere sank down onto a nearby dressing table, looking strangely exhausted. The damage caused by the Master's laser screwdriver in particular had left a nasty burned out section on the top of the sphere and Jack didn't think it would last much longer. It had lasted long enough to do its job though and he was grateful enough.

Jack watched over the visage of Lucy for a few minutes, seeing lights appearing beneath her skin in blotches. Ianto had warned him that their depleted numbers meant that it could take some time to change himself back to his base form again. So when nothing happened for a while, Jack decided to take a quick shower.

About a year's worth of grime and dirt was sluiced away and Jack could honestly have stayed in there for a week, it felt so good. He came out fresh as a newborn, and walked straight into a pile of fresh clothes, held out for him to take.

Ianto was there, standing like a butler, all dressed up in a suit; clearly one taken from the Master's wardrobe, being clearly too short for him in the legs and arms. He held out the carefully folded square pile of clothes with a smile, his eyes twinkling.

Jack didn't even take the clothes, but knocked them right out of Ianto's hand as he simply threw his arms around him in a crushing hug, and then kissed his face repeatedly all over, so pleased to see him there in flesh he couldn't help it. Though Ianto seemed a bit embarrassed by his display at first, he soon eased into it, and Jack took full advantage, sealing their mouths together in a deep kiss.

"Hope you felt that?" he asked, as they broke apart, and grinned at the flush that had spread across Ianto's cheeks.

"And then some."

Ianto's hair was back to its floppy straight chestnut colour, his eyes brown, and Jack ruffled a hand through it, fondly.

Curious at why, Ianto leaned over to see himself in the mirror on the dressing table nearby, and let out a slight groan. "Not again," he grumbled, and with a heavy sigh, said, "I'll fix it later."

"Later sounds good to me, we have a lot to catch up," Jack said, lasciviously, pulling him close, hoping to kiss him again.

"Uh, as much as I'd like to properly celebrate getting my body back," Ianto said, evading him. "I'd rather do it somewhere a long way from here. So can you get dressed please?"

If Jack noticed the way he was carefully not looking at the Master's bed at all, he didn't mention it.

Jack picked up the clothes that had been found for him, a vest and some loose trousers that he could just about fit into, and he quickly shuffled himself into them. The fit wasn't great, but there was no way he was putting the dirty bloodstained rags he'd been wearing all that time back on again.

"I really need to go talk to the Doctor," Ianto told him, not meeting his eyes. He went to the wardrobe and, to Jack's surprise, pulled out his military greatcoat. "I spotted it in here. No idea why he kept it."

"Maybe it was-" Jack began, but then thought better of mentioning the not-Lucy. He put it back on, feeling a lot more like himself immediately. "Right, anyway. The Doctor. Sure."

"I can sense where he is still," Ianto said, quietly, one hand absently rubbing his chest, something sad in the way he said it.

Jack stared at Ianto for a long moment, sensing what was coming from that. He was going to offer to bring the Master back; despite everything that the monster had done, the conflict in Ianto's expression was clear. He hoped he was wrong; almost convinced himself that he was, even.

Until they were standing before the Doctor inside the cannibalised TARDIS console room, watching him pick over pieces of the broken Paradox Machine it had been made into, and Ianto was making the offer for real.

"Whatever he did, I don't think you don't deserve to be the last of your kind," Ianto said to the Doctor, by way of explanation as to why he was giving him the option, hard as it had to be for him.

There was a long silence. With the Time Lord crouching down at the machinery pieces with his back turned to them, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Finally he stood up and, with lightning fash movement, turned around to them, some clear decision having been made to confront things head on.

"So, what are you anyway?" the Doctor asked, peering at Ianto. "A clone of some kind, like he said?"

Ianto looked to Jack, who just gave him a shrug. He knew it had to be up to Ianto as to what he shared, or didn't share.

There was a moment, during which Jack could tell he was thinking things through. Then Ianto took a step forward, cleared his throat, and began, "In 1941, you landed in London where you encountered one Captain Jack Harkness, a thief, a conman, and a liar-"

"Steady, Ianto."

He threw a cheeky smile at Jack. "He had dropped a tube containing billions of Chula nanogenes, which were unleashed on the local population. You remember the gas masks, the people turned into walking zombies?"

The Doctor nodded, slowly, wearing an expression of concentration so sharp it made Jack feel a bit uneasy. "Hard to forget," he said.

"Well, I was there too, sort of. I was the nanogenes."

"You were the.... what?"

"I'm sure you didn't mean for them to fall into use again, but Torchwood retrieved them after your departure. They also kidnapped Nancy Jones for experimentation and reactivated us using her genetic code. Scientists from C19 who were working with Torchwood back then performed some, well, fairly extravagant experiments on us both, using their cache of alien tech. We saw a billion dimensions, tumbled around the time vortex, and probably more besides; I can't even remember all of it now. Regardless, we returned a fully conscious collective. The scientists called us 'godbots', fully believing our evolution into sentience was some kind of providence. Arrogant people. Naturally."

"Naturally," the Doctor agreed, and Jack saw that his previously wary gaze had grown into one of curiosity.

"We decided to put our newfound self awareness into an escape plan. To get out without them knowing, we bound ourselves to the reproductive cells inside Nancy Jones, in the form of a conception. As for why we are in large part Gallifreyan, well we created the best, most viable shell possible. You were the most advanced being we had encountered in genetic terms Doctor."

"Oh," the Doctor replied, frowning, though he gave no further reaction than that, except a second, slightly more annoyed, "Oh."

Ianto pressed on. "Your genetic code was used as the template for most of this physical form, but it's also partly human. We meant no harm. We... I just wanted to be real. A singular physical being. It's not different to an organism made up of billions of cells, really. I was grown and born completely naturally and I was raised by my mother Nancy over near Newport. Torchwood caught up with me again when I was a child, took me off to London, held me there. The invasion of Cybermen at Canary Wharf was what finally freed me. Why I ended up at Torchwood Three is complicated, but suffice to say, that's where I met Captain Harkness, and, well-" He entwined his hand with Jack's, the two of them staring at each other, smiling, like there was no one else in the room, or even the world, "I have good reason to want to stay there."

"Oh don't tell me-" the Doctor choked out, giving Jack an incredulous look. "Billions of nanoscopic robots and you still manage to ask them out for a date?"

"A bit more than a date, Doctor," Jack said, with a slightly overdone pout. "I'm in relationship."

"With... nanogenes?" he clarified, looking sceptically at the couple.

"With Ianto Jones." He could sense that the Doctor was not quite getting it, so he added, not breaking his eye contact with Ianto, "With someone who has endured a pain I can't even imagine and who still just offered to save the life of the one responsible for it." Jack couldn't help it, he slid his arm around Ianto and kissed his cheek, gently, overwhelmed with tender feelings. "And Doctor, he may not have been born on Gallifrey but he's the closest thing you have to family now."

"The Master was insane," Ianto said, apparently eager to move the subject on from the question of what he was or wasn't. "He hurt everyone he encountered. If restored to life, he would need to be kept imprisoned forever and I would require your word on that first. But he would still be insane. In fact he'd be worse than ever; there's always a cost. It would mean torment for him."

The Doctor turned away from them again, thinking things through, hiding the pain that he must have felt at that.

"There is one other option of course," Ianto added, very carefully. "I could... preserve him, if that would be easier? If I did that, you wouldn't need to decide right away. I could bring him back to life whenever you chose."

"Preserve him how?" the Doctor asked, quietly.

Jack wanted to know that too. He felt Ianto's absence from his arms as he moved away and circled around the face the Doctor.

"Baa Baa," Ianto called, and the Toclafane sphere appeared in a flash just above his shoulder. At the slight flinch back from the Time Lord, Ianto held his hands out and assured him, "It's empty. I'm controlling it. I could fix it up for the purpose. It would be a prison almost. You could keep it stored here and, well, if you ever wanted him back, I could do that."

There was a long exchange of stares, and Jack got the distinct impression that there was a silent conversation of some kind taking place, in looks, or maybe on a deeper more telepathic level.

In the end, Ianto and Doctor gave each other a surreptitious nod.

"We'll be back," Ianto said, flashing Jack a very warm smile, just before he and the Doctor disappeared further into the TARDIS, Baa Baa following creakily behind them. He watched them go, a faint note of hope blooming that this meant that the Doctor might just accept Ianto for what he was, despite Ianto's previous expectations. Perhaps things really were going to work out on that front, even if this incarnation of the Doctor was harder to read that the one he'd known before.

After a moment, Jack became aware of eyes on him, and he turned around to find Martha Jones hovering in the doorway.

"There she is," he said, grinning, reaching out towards her. She took his hand and absorbed the huge hug gave to her. "Saviour of the earth!"

"Not really," she said, her blush audible in her voice. "All that's erased now."

"Not for everybody," he assured her. "Trust me, there are those of us who will never forget what you did."

Martha looked bashful as could be when he let her go, which just made her even more endearing to Jack.

"Oh!" she gasped, suddenly, and handed him the wristband he had given to her before. "This is yours."

"Thanks," he said, and strapped it back onto his wrist, gratefully. It fit right back home like it had never been gone from his side.

"I guess things really did work out after all," she said, with a sigh. "Well, more or less. I can tell Tish and my parents have a lot of therapy ahead."

"I might know someone who can help with that," Jack said, with a twinkle in his eye. Normally he wouldn't offer Ianto's services out like that, but he already knew he would want to help. "Maybe not a completely happy ending, then. But the best we could have hoped for."

"Yeah," Martha agreed, with a slightly bittersweet smile of understanding. "I'll take it."

*

With Ianto lending a telekinetic hand with some of the repairs, Jack also helping out here and there, the Doctor was able to get the TARDIS into a workable enough condition for them to leave the Valiant fast enough to avoid having to face questions from UNIT over what had really happened.

Instead they spent some time parked at the edge of the Universe, the Doctor working flat out on the repairs, Martha and Ianto getting to know each other a bit while the work was carried out.

Jack mostly hung back, watching them all, a warm glow in his chest. Even the TARDIS seemed to have calmed down about his presence and felt welcoming now, and the Doctor was no longer avoiding looking at him. If nothing else, it proved that their first impressions of what he was, a freak, could be fully overcome. Just as he'd believed.

He was also beyond happy that he was finally going to get the chance to do something he'd always wanted to do, and yet had never managed before.

A small, personal ambition, and now the perfect opportunity...

As soon as Ianto caught on as to what he was thinking, he slid his fingers into Jack's with a conspiratorial smile, his bright blue eyes twinkling, and they ran together into the TARDIS hallways, to Jack's old room, which he'd been very gratified to discover was still there waiting for him, even after all this time.

It was so good, so incredibly good, to be able to touch Ianto again for real, knowing he was actually able to feel everything. They might have kissed for hours, but there was a ragged sort of impatience with Ianto that Jack understood and, to some degree, felt too.

He had no idea if Ianto retained any memories from his time masquerading as Lucy; hoped he didn't, since it had never really been him at all. But Jack did wonder, the desperation in Ianto so raw and assertive on what he wanted.

They got undressed as fast as they both could and fell together onto the bed, Ianto making it very clear that he needed to be the one in charge right now. His mouth was everywhere on Jack, practically wrestling with him to get him where he wanted him, legs stretched out as far as they could go as Ianto nibbled along his thighs, taking full possessive control.

Jack flailed a bit as he reached across, feeling under the side of the mattress, looking for what he used to keep there, and was relieved to find that grand old tube of the good stuff just where he left it. He held the lube up for Ianto's benefit, grinning. "Always prepared," he said, stroking Ianto's bare arm with his foot.

Ianto laughed and fondly shook his head. He took it from Jack's hand and got to work. He slathered up a finger and set to work on the task of opening Jack up, slowing down and watching closely as Jack hummed and sighed at the sensations, lying back with a very contented grin as he was attended to.