Rating: Gen
Spoilers: through the end of 'Last of the Time Lords' for DW; negligible for TW s2.
Disclaimer: as usual, I own nothing but this story. No infringement intended.
Notes: thanks to Oxoniensis and Complicat for helping this Canuck sound a little more British. *g*
Written for the sixth annual A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words Challenge. My picture is here.
FAITHFUL COMPANIONS by Jayne Leitch
Lucy's room is bright, tidy, comfortable, and locked from the outside. Half of one wall is a one-way mirror; she spends most of her days sitting on the edge of her bed, playing the Master's ring between her fingers, staring straight at her reflection.
Or maybe she's looking through her reflection, at Jack. No matter how long he watches from the dark side of the mirror, he's never sure.
Maybe she's looking at nothing.
*
"Who is she?" Owen asks. If he's at all unnerved by the sight of a beautiful, broken woman behind glass, he doesn't let it show.
Jack certainly hadn't expected Owen to be unnerved. "Her name is Lucy."
"Lucy, Lucy..." Owen stops pulling on his gloves and leans forward, peering more closely through the glass. "Hang on. Lucy *Saxon*?" He's surprised now--curious, certainly--but clinically. Still wholly lacking in discomfort. "Why have we got custody of Harold Saxon's widow? I thought she was sectioned after he committed suicide."
"She was." They'd had a busy time of it, coming up with plausible explanations after the paradox was closed. UNIT had been helpful, albeit from a distance; Jack had wanted to bring in Tosh to work her magic with matters of public record, but the Doctor had denied Torchwood any involvement beyond what Jack could do himself. "And then I brought her here."
"Can't believe we elected him, now," Owen muses, offhand. "Complete nutter, Saxon." Then, nodding at the glass and sliding Jack a look: "Birds of a feather?"
Jack tilts his head toward the door. "Just examine her."
She sits absently as they enter, as Owen introduces himself ("Whenever she can hear you, just use your name," Jack had cautioned him during the drive over. "Not your title."), as the exam begins. Jack stands between her and the mirror, and they look at each other silently while Owen goes about his business.
Finally, Owen straightens up. "All finished," he says to Lucy, with his heartiest and most impersonal voice. He raises his eyebrows at Jack as they walk to the door.
"No sweets?" They turn back: she's watching them in the mirror. "There ought to be sweets at the end of a checkup," she says, her voice trembling with something that might be mistaken for conviction. "To make the suffering worthwhile. Lollipops. Jelly babies." Her eyes lose focus and well with tears; her mouth opens as if to say more, but nothing comes out.
"Jesus," Owen whispers. Unnerved.
Jack ignores him. "No sweets," he tells Lucy firmly. Gently. "They rot your teeth."
*
She visited him once. Jack woke up (the soldier he'd tried to seduce had been awfully rude, turning him down with nine rounds to the chest) to find her standing before him, head canted on her neck, big eyes just staring. She wore a blue silk dress that clashed with the purple bruises at her throat.
Jack groaned a little, stretched uncomfortably against his chains. "You know what hurts the most?" he said, rueful but studiously light. "Before he fired, he said he was interested. Came right out and told me; then, bang." He shook his head slowly, watching her. "People really shouldn't take their own self-loathing out on others."
She drifted closer, her bare feet silent on the catwalk. "You can't escape. It's pointless to keep trying."
"That's a matter of opinion."
"None of us can escape." She stopped bare inches from him, filled his vision with the desolation of her gaze. "You'll see it one day," she whispered fiercely, "the end of everything. You can't die; you will see it. And then you'll understand. You'll *see*."
"The Master took you to the end of the universe," he realised, and watched her tremble. Practically felt it, she was so close. "Lucy," he said quietly, not without sympathy, "I have seen it, and I promise you, it's not as bad as it must've seemed. Humanity moves on, and while it's natural to mourn what's gone, you can't let it blind you to a new beginning." He smiled. "After I see the end of the universe, I'll see the beginning of whatever comes next, and I'll rejoice."
"This is what comes next!" she said, insistence betraying her abused throat, rasping her voice. "This world. Harry's world. Ours, just as we've made it."
"No." He wanted to take her by the shoulders, make a connection, cut through the Master's shared madness. "You're not thinking clearly, Lucy. That's billions of years in the future; now, today, all you're doing is helping the Master kill innocent people--"
She kissed him. It was tender, the first gentle touch he'd felt in months; when it ended, he was breathless, straining against his shackles, his entire body raw with it. Aching.
Lucy's eyes brimmed with tears. "Rejoice," she said, pleading.
*
Jack sits with her sometimes, on her side of the mirror. Inside the box of her world. (Immaculate from her silver-blonde hair to her black patent heels, Lady Cole had refused his offer of visitation. "He changed her," she said, neatly reserved. "I don't know who she is anymore.")
"He took me to the end of the universe," she says one day, while Jack's stretched out beside her on the bed.
She sounds vaguely lucid; he sits up immediately. "Yes," he replies, watching her--but she just watches the mirror, her pretty, pale face as blank as ever. Sighing, he reaches up to stroke her hair. "But he didn't bring you back."
Ever so slightly, she leans her head into his touch. "He left me."
And then, abruptly, she stands, takes the two steps that bring her up to the mirror. She leans forward until her forehead presses the glass; raising her hands, she flattens her palms to their reflections. The Master's ring glints on her finger. Jack hears her whisper, "Take me back."
He leaves quietly--locks the door--returns to stand in the shadows on the other side of the mirror.
So she doesn't have to look at nothing.
End.
Go back to Doctor Who/Torchwood Fic.
2008
