Sweet as Sugar

Sweet as Sugar Chapter Thirty-One?


Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather is wondermous! J Thanks all of y'all for reading and reviewing as you can and just a sidenote…even after the finale for this season (or series as y'all put it in the UK, lol) I'm continuing this fic and some other Rose/Tens… Going down with the ship, lol. Oh, and due to a misnumbering, there's two 28's so this is the correct number.



"How many are there?"

"Eight," Jack replied tightly, fingers flexing at his hips. He wanted to grab his gun from the pancake holster at his side, years of training and life urging him to subdue first, question second, but he held himself still, for the most part. "Nine," he amended, a blossom of shock filling his chest and belly, weakening his knees. "Nine…"

"Jack," the painfully, warmly familiar man said quietly. "Jack Harkness, Captain, dancer…" a smile creased his features and he fell silent, a flicker of confusion dancing in his eyes.

"Who's this then?" a very tall, very lanky man demanded, gesturing at Bara. "Got his hands all over the TARDIS!" He squinted and seemed to be assessing Jack from head to toe before he elbowed the man next to him. "You allow this?"

"Here! Stop nudging me!" The blonde, curly topped man stepped away from the even taller man next to him.

"What," Jack said stiffly, "is going on here?" His eyes sought the familiar, the warmth rekindling in his belly. "Doctor?"

"Yes?" Nine voices chorused, faces ranging from serious to bemused.

A growl rose in Jack's throat before he could stop it, his eyes squeezing shut in sudden annoyance. "MY Doctor…" he paused, opening his eyes to see all nine men giving him the same, significant look. "HIM!" He shouted, jabbing a finger at the one he knew best, the face that still tugged at him in the dark. He knew, logically, that they were all the same individual, just different... different, he trailed off mentally.

Bara looked between Jack and the cadre of males with no small amount of confusion and apprehension. "Jack? Where did they come from? Who," he began as he moved around the center console, "are they?"

"They're all the Doctor," Jack replied with the firm realization of a man who had seen just about everything. "He," he added, pointing to the face he knew best out of all of them, the one that he thought of sometimes in the most quiet hours of the night, the one that seemed impossible to think of as being the same as his current incarnation, "was the one I met when I saved Rose…" he glanced at Bara and shrugged slightly. "Remind me to tell you that story sometime."

"You," a shorter man in a light colored suit, his hat pushed back so he could see more clearly in the dim light of the TARDIS control room, "picked him up?" His glance flickered to the leather coat-clad incarnation next to him. "I didn't know I had it in me," he mused, smiling faintly. "I suppose it's not such a surprise really. I mean…"

"Enough," Jack barked. "This isn't right… what's going on here? You told me… you told me you regenerated to cheat death. You told me that it's like shedding a shell…"

"So close and yet so far," his familiar one grinned, Northern accent achingly comforting to Jack's ears. "Ghosts in the machine, we are. Or I am. Grammar be buggered!" He broke free from the collective and strode to Jack, gripping the former time agent's shoulders tightly, giving him a little shake. "Something's gone wrong, Jack. Something with…with the very make up of space and time."

The lankiest one, the one with the impossibly long scarf and curly hair, crossed to crowd Jack and 'his' Doctor. "Cut the shilly shallying! Did we ever tell you how the TARDIS works? No? Don't give me that look! I haven't time for it! The RANI has recreated Gallifrey. RECREATED GALLIFREY!"

"Be fair," the shorter one in the pale suit called helpfully. "You can only recreate it if it's gone. She just… jumpstarted it."

"Just like you to want to be fair to that bint!"

Jack blinked rapidly, as if to clear his vision, as the lanky Doctor and the hat wearing Doctor broke away to continue their argument on the far side of the console. The two blond Doctors were fussing over some features of the control room, frowning and muttering with their heads together, as two older gentlemen—Time Lords… Doctors, Jack corrected himself—stood silently, glaring from a safe distance. He took a deep breath and focused his attention on his Doctor before him. "Tell it to me slowly, using small words," he breathed. "You…your current incarnation is in some deep shit, Doctor.

"Rose?" he demanded, fingers tightening on Jack's arms painfully. "Is she alright?"

"I don't know," Jack admitted, aware of Bara looming large behind him. "She's with him. You.. So yes, she IS safe," he smiled, admitting that he knew what the Doctor had never said aloud. "She's safe."

Swallowing visibly, he nodded. "I'm just a ghost in the machine, Jack, a part of the TARDIS consciousness that is getting thrown up because something's gone wrong."

"What did he mean about Gallifrey being recreated?" He gripped the Doctor's arms in return, sharing the fear. "I thought you told me you saw it destroyed, you watched it burn…"

"I did," he said flatly. "I watched is it burned and my people with it… But it seems I was wrong, somehow… the will of the planet was stronger than the bodies that died…"

"The Rassilion Imprimatur," the friendly little version of the Doctor put in from near Jack's elbow. He had been bent to examine the underside of the control panel. Popping up with a grin, he nodded at Jack's Doctor. "Nice work you did."

"Thank you," he nodded in return. "The Imprimatur is what connects us to our TARDIS," he began, but hissed in aggravation as the TARDIS rocked hard to one side. "What the Hell is that?"

"We have more company," Bara put in, pointing to the view screen for the outside monitors. "The Accolytes are back… with pallet movers."