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Fic: "Bring Out Your Dead" [Doctor Who]
Bring Out Your Dead
Jack Harkness in the aftermath of the Game Station. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Doctor Who. Spoilers through "The Parting of the Ways." Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_bounce_ for beta. 14A.
Fire.
Crackle and pop of flames, heat pulling at the skin. Bonfires at sunset, you think, remember outdoor parties in high school with one of the colony’s suns going down as the other came up. The half-hour of dark between their orbits, cicada chirp and guilla call from the trees. Girls and boys and liquor and the bite of bark against your skin.
Crackle and pop, boys and girls, but the noise is a building roar and the heat is a strike, a physical blow. Trioxynetaline on your hands and in the air (rocket fuel, corrosive, but it will do). It paints your hands red, oxidizes in the atmosphere but it cannot cover the sickly-sweet smoke, the smell of burning hair.
The heat is like a blow, like a caress and you stand there watching the flames. There is ash on your face, your hands, your clothing, ash (like regret) over the sweat and grime and trioxynetaline. Worn into your pores and burning through your skin.
It would be easy to close your eyes and just... let it take you. Let it reach for you and swallow you whole.
The door to the lift slams shut behind you, bulkheads sealing level zero away like some post-futuristic tomb.
Alive, you are alive, throat hoarse from chemical smoke, from screaming and not screaming; hands wound round with burns from trioxynetaline and flames, nails broken, muscles aching, eyes burning, ashes caked in your split knuckles. Alone. Alive.
You were better off a coward.
Alive. You are alive.
*
There is no blood.
Base ten. Twenty-two and one-half rows. Two hundred twenty-six total, including Lynda. Two hundred twenty-five bodies (the observation deck, where you left Lynda has been depressurized) and there is no blood. Daleks kill clean.
There’s liquid trioxynetaline stored by the shuttle docks. It will do.
You wish you knew their rites.
*
The skin beneath your hands is cool. You check – you check them all, each one, before you start to move them. Roderick, when you find him, is staring blankly at the ceiling plates. He seems surprised. There is ash in his hair and you brush it out, furious.
Level 467, you find the body of a little girl. She is curled up in a corner, all pale skin and blonde hair. You close her eyes without looking because you’re afraid you’ll see Rose’s.
Close them and punch the wall, watch numbly as the blood trickles down the metal. The impact reverberates through the silence, the only sound of life in a dead station.
With the echoes still dying away, you pull her body into your arms and, heavy, trudge towards the lift.
Dust (ashes) everywhere, and her spirit bound as long as her shell remains.
*
You are sitting by a window, listening to the tap-tap-tap against the station side as stellar dust hits it; no longer waiting for the rise and fall of a siren, the rush of wind; you are sitting with ashes in your hair and in your mouth when it dawns on you.
The ashes are all that’s left. Every Dalek given rites.
Every Dalek given rites, released from this plane, and you are alone.
You wonder if they’ll miss you.
*
Left. They –
They left you.
You probably should have seen that one coming
*
A claxon rises and falls. The TARDIS. Rose must have found a way to bring it back – Rose, beautiful Rose – Doctor should have known better than to send her away and expect her to stay sent.
Air rushes past you, carrying dust, carrying the scent of metal and gunpowder. Not a last stand, just another line in the sand.
Run, you run, because you need something now that is not ugly.
Only – there is no Rose, there is no Doctor, there is only a soft pop as air rushes in to fill the empty space.
And there is nothing but dust.
*
There is this: nothing. The absence of being.
Jack.
Nothing.
Jack.
And somewhere, tinged with gold. Rose. Silver and gold, silver and gold (so cold).
Jack, I need you to do something for me.
I need you to come back. I need you to come back to us.
Black, then. Solid in its presence.
I can see it, Jack. I can see it all.
It would be easy, to stay.
Please
Cold builds, localizes and twists inward upon itself, until it is physical, until it is a sharp pain and air rushes in, rushes through you, and you breathe.
Alive, you are alive.
Jack Harkness in the aftermath of the Game Station. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Doctor Who. Spoilers through "The Parting of the Ways." Thanks to
_bounce_ for beta. 14A.Fire.
Crackle and pop of flames, heat pulling at the skin. Bonfires at sunset, you think, remember outdoor parties in high school with one of the colony’s suns going down as the other came up. The half-hour of dark between their orbits, cicada chirp and guilla call from the trees. Girls and boys and liquor and the bite of bark against your skin.
Crackle and pop, boys and girls, but the noise is a building roar and the heat is a strike, a physical blow. Trioxynetaline on your hands and in the air (rocket fuel, corrosive, but it will do). It paints your hands red, oxidizes in the atmosphere but it cannot cover the sickly-sweet smoke, the smell of burning hair.
The heat is like a blow, like a caress and you stand there watching the flames. There is ash on your face, your hands, your clothing, ash (like regret) over the sweat and grime and trioxynetaline. Worn into your pores and burning through your skin.
It would be easy to close your eyes and just... let it take you. Let it reach for you and swallow you whole.
The door to the lift slams shut behind you, bulkheads sealing level zero away like some post-futuristic tomb.
Alive, you are alive, throat hoarse from chemical smoke, from screaming and not screaming; hands wound round with burns from trioxynetaline and flames, nails broken, muscles aching, eyes burning, ashes caked in your split knuckles. Alone. Alive.
You were better off a coward.
Alive. You are alive.
*
There is no blood.
Base ten. Twenty-two and one-half rows. Two hundred twenty-six total, including Lynda. Two hundred twenty-five bodies (the observation deck, where you left Lynda has been depressurized) and there is no blood. Daleks kill clean.
There’s liquid trioxynetaline stored by the shuttle docks. It will do.
You wish you knew their rites.
*
The skin beneath your hands is cool. You check – you check them all, each one, before you start to move them. Roderick, when you find him, is staring blankly at the ceiling plates. He seems surprised. There is ash in his hair and you brush it out, furious.
Level 467, you find the body of a little girl. She is curled up in a corner, all pale skin and blonde hair. You close her eyes without looking because you’re afraid you’ll see Rose’s.
Close them and punch the wall, watch numbly as the blood trickles down the metal. The impact reverberates through the silence, the only sound of life in a dead station.
With the echoes still dying away, you pull her body into your arms and, heavy, trudge towards the lift.
Dust (ashes) everywhere, and her spirit bound as long as her shell remains.
*
You are sitting by a window, listening to the tap-tap-tap against the station side as stellar dust hits it; no longer waiting for the rise and fall of a siren, the rush of wind; you are sitting with ashes in your hair and in your mouth when it dawns on you.
The ashes are all that’s left. Every Dalek given rites.
Every Dalek given rites, released from this plane, and you are alone.
You wonder if they’ll miss you.
*
Left. They –
They left you.
You probably should have seen that one coming
*
A claxon rises and falls. The TARDIS. Rose must have found a way to bring it back – Rose, beautiful Rose – Doctor should have known better than to send her away and expect her to stay sent.
Air rushes past you, carrying dust, carrying the scent of metal and gunpowder. Not a last stand, just another line in the sand.
Run, you run, because you need something now that is not ugly.
Only – there is no Rose, there is no Doctor, there is only a soft pop as air rushes in to fill the empty space.
And there is nothing but dust.
*
There is this: nothing. The absence of being.
Jack.
Nothing.
Jack.
And somewhere, tinged with gold. Rose. Silver and gold, silver and gold (so cold).
Jack, I need you to do something for me.
I need you to come back. I need you to come back to us.
Black, then. Solid in its presence.
I can see it, Jack. I can see it all.
It would be easy, to stay.
Please
Cold builds, localizes and twists inward upon itself, until it is physical, until it is a sharp pain and air rushes in, rushes through you, and you breathe.
Alive, you are alive.
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A haunting line,absolutely fantastic,so lyrical,thanks for sharing this.
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It's been a while since I felt the level of pure character love that I feel for Jack. Needless to say, I'm rather anticipating Torchwood, but it does bother me that neither Rose nore the Doctor seems upset that they think he sacrificed himself for them.
*huggles Jack lots*
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(Jack just makes me so sad, at the end.)
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Poor Jack.
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*huggles Jack*
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