Current mood:	creative
Entry tags:	fanfic, hurt/comfort, jack, martha, starting over, ten, ten/jack

Fic: Starting Over 2/4? (Martha, Jack, Ten) [PG]
Title: Starting Over (2/4?)
Author: hence_the_name
Characters This chapter: Martha, Jack, Ten; later chapters: Donna, possible cameos from Mickey, Gwen, and Ianto.
Pairing: Jack/Ten, discussion of Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Beta: nightrider101, once again saving me from writer's block.
Spoilers: All of New Who and Torchwood. Takes place after Journey’s End.
Summary: The TARDIS lands in Cardiff with a mysteriously ill Doctor on board.

Chapter 1



The TARDIS laboratory was just as Martha remembered it: huge, bright, and full of half-finished projects cluttering every available surface. She paused inside the doorway and took a deep breath. The laboratory was her favorite room on the TARDIS, though she suspected the Doctor himself favored the library or possibly the garden. She had always been inclined to science, and laboratories in general made her feel calm. In control. Very often it seemed like the only place in her life where she had any control at all, with her parents and siblings always pushing and pulling her every which way.

Not that she felt particularly in control now, she thought ruefully. She cleared a space on one of the lab benches, set the vial in a stand, and stood for a moment, chewing her lip. The scanner should have picked up anything that she might detect in any blood tests. The vial in front of her was as much the result of falling back on basic medical science as anything else.

She was still thinking when she became conscious of a clicking noise coming from somewhere in the room. She looked around. A moment of scanning the equipment littering the benches located its source: a plain, flat box with several gauges on the top. She pulled it toward her, frowning. It was an energy gauge, the Doctor had told her, and then waved her off by saying that it was complicated. It measured things like rift energy, not the charge on a battery.

It clicked again, and all the needles jumped.

Rift energy and...regenerative energy? Experimentally, she reached out and pulled the stand holding the vial of his blood closer to the instrument. The needles jumped farther this time. She stared at it. Then she got a clean pipette and dropped a bead of his blood onto the sensor at the front. The needles went wild for a moment, waving back and forth, and then settled, some along the middle of the scale, others closer to the top.

She hopped off her stool and darted back up the corridor to the medical bay. Jack had the Doctor propped up against him and was holding a cup for him to sip from. “That was quick,” he said as she entered.

“I think you were right,” Martha responded, coming to stand on the Doctor’s other side. “I was getting energy readings from his blood sample. I can’t make heads or tails of them, but...” She spread her hands. “How is he?”

“I think you can ask him yourself in a minute,” Jack responded. He set the cup aside and lowered the Doctor gently back down. She could already see an improvement: the feverish flush was leaving his cheeks and his breathing sounded easier.

“Doctor?” Martha asked. He stirred and opened his eyes, blinking slowly up at the two of them, looking confused. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

He raised a hand to his head and shut his eyes again. After another moment he pushed himself upright, swinging his feet around to the side of the table. Martha took a step back to give him room. He ran a hand through his hair. “Hello,” he said, with that daft smile of his. “Sorry, I don’t seem to—”

The smile vanished. His eyes grew very large. “I don’t—” he repeated, and broke off again, one hand coming up to his throat. “That’s—different.” He looked down at himself, turning his other hand over so he could look at it. He exhaled slowly, as if trying to remain calm. “That’s—also, different.” Finally he looked at her again, studying her face, but Martha saw no sign of recognition in them. He seemed to gather himself for a moment, and then he gripped the edges of the table in both hands and launched himself, hitting the floor lightly and disappearing into the corridor, leaving Martha and Jack to stare, dazed, after him.

***

They found him in the wardrobe room, standing in front of the mirror and touching his face gingerly with one hand. His gaze flickered to them in the mirror when they appeared behind him and then back to the unfamiliar features of his own face, wide-eyed with shock.

“I regenerated.” The voice that came out was a slightly higher tenor than he was used to, the accent more refined. It went with his new face, the sharp features softened by liquid brown eyes and freckles and a mess of unruly hair that he already knew would never behave no matter how much gel he applied.

The two people standing behind him exchanged a troubled look. The woman took a tentative step forward. “Doctor,” she began.

He didn’t give her time to finish. Turning, he went deeper into the wardrobe, sorting through the clothes until he found what he was looking for and emerged with it into another dressing area. The worn leather jacket hung loose on this new frame, but the weight of it felt good on his shoulders. Familiar. He sank onto a threadbare velvet sofa wedged between a floor-to-ceiling rack of shoes and an open trunk overflowing with scarves and tried to pretend he wasn’t trembling.

He should be used to this by now, but he wasn’t. Not like this. Not waking up in a new body with no recollection of how he had come to be there. Even his companions were strangers to him.

They followed him, of course. He could always count on his companions to do that. “Sorry,” he said when they appeared at the far end of the little alcove. He pinched the bridge of his nose so he didn’t have to look at them. “My memory’s a bit fuzzy. I’m afraid I don’t—” He broke off. I’m afraid I don’t know who you are, he was going to say. He let his hand fall and smiled brightly at them. “I’m afraid I don’t remember your names.” He could see himself in the mirror from where he sat, and he saw his smile falter when they looked at each other and didn’t answer right away.

The man stepped forward this time, extending his hand and opening his mouth to speak. The Doctor couldn’t help it; he recoiled, flinging up a hand as if to shield his eyes. “Don’t—come any closer. Please.” Hurt flashed across the man’s face, but he stayed where he was, his arm falling to his side. “Sorry,” the Doctor repeated. He had moved as far as he could against the arm of the sofa, and he leaned against it, covering his eyes with one hand. “You’re very...bright.” He grimaced, knowing how idiotic it sounded. Bright hardly did justice to the way the man shone, making the universe ripple with his every breath. He felt too warm in his jacket but he huddled in it, pulling it around himself. He took a shaky breath, eyes still closed against his hand.

There was a rustle of movement, and then the couch cushions shifted beside him. He sat very still. “Doctor?” The woman’s voice. “I’m Martha. That’s Jack. We’re your friends, yeah?”

He nodded. He didn’t doubt that; the TARDIS would never have let them find him if she didn’t know and trust them, even this man who blazed so bright and constant in the fabric of time that he contravened everything the Doctor thought he knew about the universe, made him want to shudder and hide.

She shifted again and he felt her hand on his forehead, warm and dry. After a moment it shifted to the back of his neck. “Still have a fever,” she said, sitting back. He looked up to see her fitting the stethoscope that had been around her neck into her ears. She warmed it in her hand before she held it up, a questioning look on her face. He nodded, and then a small smile touched his lips.

“I’m traveling with a doctor,” he said, and he couldn’t help feeling delighted by the fact, despite everything.

Martha froze for an instant, staring at him. Then she gave him a tight smile and tugged at the open collar of his shirt, slipping the stethoscope under it.

“Heart rate’s still up,” she said when she had finished, removing the earpieces and letting the stethoscope hang. She glanced at Jack. The Doctor looked at his hands. They were silent for a moment.

“How did it happen?” he asked. His voice sounded rough.

They both looked at him blankly. “The regeneration,” he prompted. “What happened?”

They exchanged another look, as if deciding who should speak. At last Martha touched his arm and said, very gently, “You didn’t regenerate, Doctor.”

“What?” His voice squeaked alarmingly and he clamped his mouth shut. He jumped to his feet and paced backwards a few steps, looking from one to the other. “What do you mean, I didn’t regenerate? I’m still regenerating, I can feel it.” He gestured to his face. “And I did not look like this the last time I checked. Although—” He peered toward the mirror, considering, and reached up to run a hand through his hair. “—I think I rather like it.”

“Doctor.” Martha’s voice was full of sympathy. He turned back to her. “You did. I traveled with you for more than a year, and you looked like that the whole time.”

He stared at her. “Traveled,” he repeated. Past tense. “Not anymore?”

She shook her had sadly.

With effort, the Doctor looked at Jack. He looked down, spreading his hands. “Sorry, Doc.”

The energy that had surged through him a moment ago drained away. He made his way slowly back to the sofa and sat, resting his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his palms. “Where’s Rose?” he asked after a moment.

There was silence. He looked up. “What?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as he took in their expressions. “What is it, what’s happened?”

Martha closed her mouth. “I—It’s—Nothing. You know who Rose is?”

“Of course I know who Rose is!” He looked frantically back and forth between them. “What’s happened to her?”

“She’s gone, Doctor,” Jack said, his voice soft. He moved as though he wanted to cross the room to him, but he caught himself, crossing his arms over his chest instead.

“Gone?” he repeated, his voice papery thin.

“She’s in a parallel universe.”

“She’s all right?”

“She’s fine. She’s with her family.”

The Doctor struggled to bring himself back under control. She was fine. Of course she was fine, his Rose. He was the one who had never been fine. She would have a good life, he thought; a fantastic life. The life she deserved. He fell back against the cushions and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “When?” he asked. “How?”

Instead of answering, Jack sat down on the lid of an overflowing trunk and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at him quizzically. “Doctor. What’s the last thing you remember?”

The Doctor opened his mouth to answer and then closed it, suddenly uncertain. “I...don’t know,” he said, the realization coming with the words.

“Where was the last place you went?”

He opened his mouth and closed it without speaking. He shook his head. The room was beginning to close in on him.

“How did you and Rose meet?” Jack persisted.

“I don’t—” His voice broke. He remembered Rose, but he couldn’t remember a thing about her, anyplace they’d gone together, anything they’d done. The last thing he could remember clearly, he wished he could forget. He looked down at himself, for the first time taking in the pinstripe pants, the light blue shirt and tie. Not the clothes he remembered wearing. More than just Rose was missing from his memories.

He was having difficulty breathing. “Do I always go barefoot?” he mumbled. Black spots obscured his vision.

“Jack.” Martha’s voice sounded distant, her tone reproving. He felt her arm go around his shoulders. “It’s all right,” she said, giving him a squeeze.

He gulped a breath down. “I can’t remember.”

“Shh.” Martha rubbed his back. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”

For a moment the room splits and her voice echoes. ”Just stay calm. You saved me, now I return the favor.” They’re falling toward the sun and the fire of it rages within him, burning out his hearts.

He picked his head up and stared at her, jolted out of his panic. Martha stopped and stared back. “What?”

He blinked. “I—nothing. I thought—” He shook his head.

Jack shifted on his seat on the trunk. “I think we’d better start from the beginning,” he said.

The Doctor took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes,” he agreed, looking right at him. “I think you’d better.”

Chapter 3