Chapter Text
"I still can't believe they have a potato museum!" Rose is looking at a carved landscape in the typical yellow-whitish color.
Jack laughs. "Potatoes are a rare delicacy here, Rose. The closest planet that can grow them is three parsecs away."
Rose grins. "If they are that hard to come by, that's all the more reason to eat the ones you can get."
"Oh, they do. There's an exhibition in the west wing — potato bread, potato chocolate, potato beer—"
"Don't they just eat them? Y'know — boiled, chipped, maybe with fish..."
"Well, yeah, but when something's that rare and costly, people always try to find special things to do with it." He hooks his arm through hers. "It was the same where I grew up, you know?"
Rose turns to him, attentive. Jack rarely talks about his childhood. She'll take anything she can get. "No spuds?"
He grins. "No spuds. The planet was too arid. They were imported sometimes, but my family wasn't... They were too expensive for us. First time I had them, I was already a Time Cadet."
Rose puts her head on his shoulder. "Know what you mean. All kinds of stuff Mum couldn't afford for us when I was growing up. First time I had asparagus, I was already traveling with the Doctor."
"Gross, huh?"
She laughs and nods. "Yeah. But now I know that firsthand." She curls her tongue around her teeth. "Anyway, this museum's much more interesting than the last one. 'And here we have some coins. And here some almost identical coins, except greener. Oh, and look, some even greener coins with little circles on them!'"
A guard frowns at them disapprovingly; they giggle.
"Money's just very important in their culture, Rose." Jack sounds too amused for it to be an admonishment.
"Well, where isn't it?"
"Not just economically. They actually consider money part of their heritage, a sign of sophistication. Both the value and the physical tokens."
"Sometimes you sound just like your boyfriend." Jack preens, and Rose sticks her tongue out at him. "Like the spuds better, that's all."
He grins and glances at his wristcomp. He downloaded a map of the museum at the entrance. "Wanna take a look at the gallery of famous presidents upstairs?"
"How much longer is the Doctor going to be?"
Jack checks his wristcomp again. "At least two hours, if he just listens to the lectures. If he goes to the meet-and-greet afterwards..." He shrugs.
Rose cocks her head. "Do you mind missing it? I know you like temporal physics. I really didn't need a babysitter..."
"Shhhh!" Jack gestures frantically. "Don't say that out loud or someone might make me go!" He drops his voice conspiratorially. "What the Doctor's listening to right now is way above my head, and ages ahead of my time. I'd understand just enough to feel like an imbecile."
Rose giggles. "Let's go and have a look at the other potatoheads then, eh?"
Jack smiles and opens his mouth to reply.
There's an unearthly shrieking sound. A flash of light so bright it comes right through the walls. The room suddenly feels unbearably hot. She sees Jack's hand reaching for her, and then the floor rushes towards her.
The Doctor's sitting in the first row, watching the projection with amusement. The first three presentations, held by guest lectures from different systems, were quite impressive — well, for non-Time Lords in this era at any rate — and he even gave them a few pointers afterwards. But this bloke — a chubby violet local, full of self-importance like most G'ndulaks — doesn't seem to have the first clue what he's talking about.
He wishes Jack was here to see this. He's a smart lad, and has good instincts for temporal matters. He'd laugh this guy right out the door.
But he understands why the humans are happier doing the tourist thing. And he wouldn't have wanted Rose wandering about by herself anyway.
Not that that's not ridiculously overprotective of him. On Itawamba, Rose got him and Jack out of prison all by herself, and yet he'd rather not have her wander around a simple museum district in a civilized city like Duladi unescorted. But it's the very things that happened on Itawamba that mean he can't help himself. His companions are his to protect. If he's honest, he'd rather be with them right now. But he knows he can't keep acting like they're joined at the hip or he'll drive them all crazy.
If the G'ndulak's research was just marginally less shallow, maybe it'd distract him better. And the way the bloke's convinced his theories are naturally superior to those of the alien researchers — who were apparently invited to the conference merely for novelty value — is so damn irritating. The Doctor squirms in his chair. He suddenly has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something's wrong, he just knows it. He should sneak out and check on Jack and Rose.
But no. He's being an idiot. They're adults, they can take care of themselves. They're all right. Of course they—
There's a terrible screech, a flash, and half the windows in the lecture hall shatter. He's on his feet and heading towards the door before the lecturer has even turned on the lights. He's just reaching for the doorknob when he hears words that turn his hearts to ice. One of the G'ndulaks looking out of a window screams "Gauka have mercy, the museum district's gone!"
As soon as he's out of the building, he can see it's true. The museum district, built on the mountain pass that's the only entrance to Duladi, is turned into a field of rubble, dust, and smoke. Was it a terrorist attack trying to isolate the city? He doesn't know, and he finds he doesn't care.
His heartbeats are deafening in his ears as he runs towards the pass. If Jack and Rose were in the middle of this... He tries to remember the relative positions of the museums. Which ones did they say they'd go to? Is there any chance they'd left already, maybe visited a restaurant or shopping mall? But there are bistros all over the museum district, and little shops at every exit.
Security forces are closing off the area. He's about to barrel right through them when several burly policemen step in his way. "I'm sorry, sir, but you can't—"
He doesn’t listen, he just tries to dodge, but they grab his shoulders and block him with their bodies. "Let me go! My—" my lover and our best friend "— my family's in there!"
"I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing you can do."
"Yes, there bloody well is! I can get them out!" He can. He has to. He can do anything. "Let me through."
He feels a small hand on his arm and whirls around. "What do you want?"
A tiny girl flinches at the anger in his voice. Her purple cheeks pale to lavender.
He takes a deep breath and crouches down. With an effort, he controls his voice to sound low and calm. "Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you. What do you need?"
She chews on her shiny black pigtail. "Your fam'ly — are they aliens like you? A boy an' a girl?"
Well, they certainly look enough like him that he wouldn't expect this child to know the difference. He nods, a lump in his throat. "Have you seen them?"
She nods.
At least they're not buried under the rubble. He swallows. "Are they all right?"
"The boy was carrying the girl. She looked hurt."
Hell and damnation. The Doctor bites his tongue to keep from swearing out loud. "Do you know where they went?"
She points behind her. "In an ammulance."
He forces himself to smile at her — it's shaky, but she smiles back anyway. "Thank you." He turns back to the police. "Where would the ambulance have taken them?"
"Duladi Central." The officer points westward. "See the tall building with the green m—"
The Doctor starts running before the policeman finishes.
Jack paces up and down the corridor in front of Rose's bed, throwing anxious glances at her still form every few seconds. Where the fuck is the Doctor? He's supposed to be here by now, all rage and gruffness and worry.
He tries to focus on the info-screen at the corner of the hallway, which is scrolling news about the explosion, the rescue efforts and casualties; but the hot pink text is too bright and the numbers too depressing.
"Oi! Let me through, dammit! Family member!"
With a sigh of relief, Jack hurries to the reception area. "It's okay," he nods at the orderly. "He's her father." What the hell. That lie's worked before.
As soon as the Doctor's past the burly orderlies, he looks Jack up and down, fumbling for the screwdriver and turning it on him. "You all right?"
Jack shrugs. "Cuts and bruises. Nothing serious. But Rose—"
The screwdriver beeps and the Doctor glances at the display and nods curtly. "Take me to her."
He leads the Doctor down the corridor, past long rows of beds, and stops by Rose's. The Time Lord scans her. "She's got radiation poisoning! Alltwin's Rays, it looks like. How the hell—"
"They don't know what caused the explosion yet. I'm guessing one of the 'droll alien artifacts' in the space travel museum was either a bomb or some type of generator."
"Well, why isn't there an IV? She needs to be on medication, this is only going to get worse!" The Doctor looks angry now.
Jack knows this. Knew it even before the medics here told him. He'll be all right, because the Time Agency implanted him with artificial glands that can clean up most of the radiation, and his 51st century cell structure can deal with the rest, but if Rose doesn't get some pharmanucleids into her system soon, more and more cells will start to liquify until her organs are no longer viable.
He looks at the Doctor, his mouth dry. "Tell me you carried money today."
"What?" The Doctor frowns. "Why the—"
"They won't treat her unless we pay up front. I spent all you gave us just to get her into this bed. Please tell me you have more."
"They won't treat her unless—" The outrage in the Doctor's voice makes several other patients glance over.
"Believe me, I argued. Pleaded. Begged. Screamed and stomped my feet. We're aliens, hence neither insured nor covered by social. No cash, no treatment. 'We don't value the lives of off-worlders above those of our own people. Our resources are limited,'" he quotes the medical director, almost choking on the words. He wants to cry. Because he can see in the Doctor's eyes that his lover doesn't have money either. "Maybe if you try... but, honest? They seemed the kind of immovable that won't budge even to the Oncoming Storm."
"Gimme your wrist," the Doctor says. "Screw them, we're taking her home."
If only. Jack holds out the Vortex manipulator. "You'll have to fix it first. Used it to get us out of the danger zone. Two-person jump, no time to fine-tune, in the middle of a radiation explosion..." It's fried. Completely fried. He doesn't think even the sonic screwdriver can fix it. But he's probably wrong. He has to be.
The Doctor's moving the screwdriver back and forth. There's a deep furrow between his eyebrows. Then he curses and slaps Jack's wrist away — only to take his hand and squeeze it a second later. "Teleportation chip's completely burned out. No way to fix it without a new one. The temporal spools are gone, too."
Jack swallows, feeling almost as if he's just been told he will never use his arm again. Time Agency chips are impossible to come by. This is it for his manipulator. What he has now is a scanner, a handy tool for various small tasks, but not the beacon of freedom and independence that he'd come to rely on.
Still, no time to grieve the loss of a toy when Rose's life is at stake. "What now?"
The Doctor looks grim. "Need to get a vehicle to get us back to the TARDIS."
Jack gestures to the info screen. "The pass is closed, and she's on the other side of it."
"Air shuttle, then."
"All currently in use to help find survivors."
The Doctor shrugs. "Steal one."
Jack's eyebrows shoot up. Steal a rescue vehicle during a city-wide crisis?
"We're trying to save a survivor, too." The cold in his eyes gives Jack pause. But it's a moot point, anyway. He shakes his head.
"State of emergency. Everywhere's crawling with police and army. We can't fight our way in with Rose unconscious."
"Fine." The Doctor throws his head, looking around impatiently. "We'll pay them their blood money. Just need to find a cashpoint."
"I tried that. Knew you'd show up eventually, had the same thought. Asked an orderly where the nearest cashpoint is.
"And?"
"Blank stare. Apparently, no one on G'ndula would ever consider banking with a machine. The very thought is 'disgraceful.' It's 'much too important a task not to be handled by a professional.'" Jack snorts in disgust. "Oh, and also? Aliens are not allowed to bank here at all. Only one bank on the whole planet that serves 'different people,' apparently, and it's in the trade port. 300 miles away. So even if you somehow manage to manipulate a bank computer around here into thinking you have an account, they'll know it's fake."
He can practically see the Doctor's thoughts racing back and forth behind his eyes. "What are you carrying that can be sold?"
"Clothes on my back, small blaster, broken Vortex manipulator."
The Doctor shakes his head. "With the attitude towards alien tech here..." He eyes the screwdriver thoughtfully.
"You're the only one who can use it properly. No more than a toy with a few nifty settings to almost anyone else."
"You have a better idea?" the Doctor barks.
Jack takes a step back, startled. "I'm just—"
"Nah, you're right." He puts a hand on Rose's forehead. "She's burning up."
"I'll charm some nurse into giving us some towels and ice free of charge."
"You do that. I'll go and talk to whoever's in charge." The darkness in his eyes makes Jack feel almost sorry for the medical director. Almost.
Except he's standing between Rose and the help she needs, and Jack would gladly strangle the man if he thought it'd do any good.
"But I can pay!" The Doctor's hands slap the desk the medical director is sitting behind, looking distant and distracted. For a medic, he certainly seems quite untouched by suffering. Or maybe just the suffering of aliens, "As soon as I can get to my ship, I can buy this whole damn hospital if need be."
The medical director sneers, and his puce cheeks turn mauve. "So you've said. And so your companion has said. The problem is, I don't know that, do I? It's not as if we can repossess the healing if the pass is reopened and you have nothing to give us. I have to protect our shareholders!"
"But she'll die!"
"There's nothing I can do about it. This hospital is not in the business of giving away resources. Especially not during a crisis." He browses through a file and signs some orders.
"Bollocks. You make your own pharmanucleids here. You won't run out!"
"We invest energy, expertise and raw materials. While those are admittedly plentiful, we still cannot give the resulting medications away if we expect to continue to succeed as an enterprise." He gets up and brushes his hands down his lab coat. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have paying patients to attend to."
The Doctor rubs his temples. "All right. Say I were to go to your bank, maybe have a... look at their computer. And say you were going to find a surprising amount in your account all of a sudden. Would you—"
The director coughs sharply. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, on account of your understandable distress." He looks the Doctor up and down with barely-concealed contempt. "But I would advise you not to repeat that question. To anyone." He pulls himself up to his full height, which makes him almost a head taller than the Doctor. "Here on G'ndula, we do not take kindly to bribery. And we take even less kindly to aliens manipulating our banks. While I'm not fool enough to claim that no G'ndulak anywhere would be willing to stoop so low, I'm certain most would call the police at the mere thought."
And if he goes to jail, that's it for Rose. The Doctor nods darkly. "Is there nothing you can do for us?"
The director checks his clipboard. "Well, I see the bed is paid for today. I can extend that till eight a.m. tomorrow."
"And then what? You'll chuck a dying girl out into the street?" The Doctor curls his hands into tight fists and digs in his nails to keep from strangling the bloke.
The director's eyes harden. "If you don't lower your voice, we can 'chuck her out' at midnight. Neither the girl's status nor your lack of funds is the hospital's fault, so kindly stop casting us as the villains in you personal drama."
The Doctor takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "I appreciate the generosity." It's not exactly a growl.
The director opens the door to the hallway and looks at the Doctor expectantly. "I really need to get on with my paid work now."
The Doctor sighs and leaves. There's no way to win this argument. And they can't move Rose until she's stable, so stealing the medication and running isn't an option.
Jack is in the process of wrapping Rose's lower legs in cold, wet towels. He looks up expectantly — and his face falls before the Doctor can even shake his head. "No luck?"
"Goddamned stuck-up plonker. Gave us an extension on the bed till eight tomorrow morning."
"That's it?"
He nods, and strokes Rose's cheek, careful not to dislodge the ice pack. There are some loose hairs on her pillow already. He can barely force his voice past his larynx to say, "We're not going to need it that long."
Jack takes a deep breath. "How long does she have?"
The Doctor scans her with the screwdriver again. "If she doesn't get the medication within five hours, at most, there'll be irreversible damage. About eight hours till it'll be too late to even..." He closes his eyes. He can't say it. She's twenty. All she wanted to do was go to a bleeding potato museum. She shouldn't have to die for it. Especially not from something completely treatable. Why didn't he pocket some money this morning? Why does he never think to? What will he tell her mother?
He realizes that Jack has finished with the towels and is pulling on his jacket. "Where are you going?"
Jack fumbles with the zip, not looking at him. "To earn money."
"Don't be ridiculous. No job they'd let an alien do in this city that'd raise that much money that fast."
Jack looks up, and his eyes are haunted. He looks straight at the Doctor, swallows, and says, "There is one."
The Doctor blinks. Once. Twice. Surely he doesn't mean...
But he does. The Doctor feels like linearity has been pulled out from under him and he's adrift in a maelstrom of disconnected moments.
"I'm sorry, Doctor. I know we have a deal. And yes, I'm about to go out and break it. I'm telling you ahead of time." He runs a hand through his hair and looks at the floor, then makes eye contact again. "If this means... If this is it, I understand. It'll break my heart, but I understand if you can't..." Jack strokes a hand along Rose's arm. "But I can't stand here and watch her die. I have to help her. Even if that means I won't have a partner and a home to come back to."
No. This isn't right. There must be another way, goddammit. One that doesn't involve... The Doctor shakes his head. Think, dammit. Some genius you are. But every way he looks at it, the facts add up to this one option.
Jack looks at him searchingly. The Doctor tries to say something, anything, but his thoughts are racing too fast. Jack nods sadly and turns around, walking towards the exit. He's almost at the door when the Doctor finally regains control of his tongue.
"Jack! Wait!" He runs to catch up with him.
Jack stops, but doesn't turn around. "I'm going to do this, Doctor. There's nothing you can say."
He steps around to face Jack and gently tips up his chin. "Look at me."
Jack does, and the Doctor holds him by the shoulders. He takes a deep breath. "Jack." Damn, this hurts. "Go..." His voice cracks and he has to swallow and lick his lips. "Go and prostitute yourself." The words feel like razor blades in his throat.
Jack frowns. "What?"
"I order you to go sell your body and get us the money we need to help Rose. I order you." He won't let Jack go out there thinking he has nothing to return to. He's the one who's failed to come up with a better plan. If Jack has to do this, it'll be on the Doctor's orders. The Doctor's responsibility.
The confusion in Jack's eyes gives way to understanding. "Thank you." He leans in and kisses the Doctor on the mouth, hard, desperate. When he breaks the kiss, he leans their foreheads together. "It'll mean nothing. Nothing. I promise you. I know you—"
"We can deal with my issues when Rose is safe." It was meant to sound like another order, but comes out a plea. He can't talk about this now. Can't think about what Jack is going to do, and how often, and with how many people. If he thinks about it, he won't be able to let him go. "You have your orders."
"Yes, sir." Jack turns and begins to walk away.
"And be careful. Please." It's no more than a whisper, but Jack's heard him.
He nods and leaves without another word.