Engendered Change

Chapter 5

If Jack expected h’er to strip down in the same manner he had, he was sorely disappointed. S’he pulled down h’er trousers to reveal perfectly modest striped boxer shorts on beneath; s’he might as well have been wearing a bathing suit, and a modest one at that. The Doctor hesitated with h’er top. On the one hand, Jack was the last person s’he wanted to start showing off h’er new body to. On the other hand, it was just Jack. He might flirt and make lewd remarks but at the same time and in a slightly paradoxical manner (and what about Jack wasn’t a paradox in the making?) he was safe. He would flirt madly but he wouldn’t press himself onto anyone. Feeling slightly defiant (the Doctor was not going to let this…gender thing affect her) s’he finally pulled off h’er top, suddenly thankful s’he had decided to go with the bra.

Jack grinned and whistled playfully, but held his hands up in surrender under the Doctor’s glare. “Sorry, Doc, I’ll be good. I promise,” he said, “Just…come on in, the water’s fine!” The Doctor continued to glare suspiciously while s’he made a big show of checking the lake with h’er sonic screwdriver just to make absolute sure it was safe. Considering it was usually the Doctor who plunged head first into the unknown without checking it first, Jack thought that was a bit unfair. That, or it was another symptom of whatever was wrong with the Doctor, not trusting h’er environment. As if the TARDIS would have chosen a dangerous location for this trip.

The Doctor actually looked a bit disappointed when the lake turned out to contain nothing more than H2O. Well…water and a few harmless microorganisms and plant life. Possibly fish as well, unless the lake proved to be as barren as the hillside. Finally the Doctor relinquished h’er sonic screwdriver and slowly glided into the lake.

The water was cool. If she were human she might have even called it cold, but being what she was she found it very pleasant. Jack wasn’t shivering either, so even by human standards it couldn’t have felt particularly arctic, and beneath the hot sun it was a blessing. S’he did frown slightly when s’he moved towards where Jack was standing and felt the ground slope away from her feet. Jack’s grin widened at her predicament though he refrained from saying anything. Suddenly, the Doctor found Jack’s lack of teasing quite annoying. S’he wasn’t made of glass, no matter what Jack suddenly seemed to think. Jack was supposed to give her a hard time about being short, about having breasts, about…well…everything! He was safe and he was…infuriating! He hadn’t even tried to splash h’er yet, or suggested that s’he join him properly in the nude! (S’he ignored the previous whistle; it barely counted and only proved that Jack hadn’t been replaced by a clone). Well…s’he would show him s’he hadn’t turned to glass. Flashing him a wicked grin of her own, she dove beneath the murky water.

Jack’s grin vanished when he saw her dive, though it still hovered about his lips. He waited for tensely for h’er to grab his leg or (more likely considering his lack of clothing and the murkiness of the water) for h’er to suddenly resurface before him. He stared into the rippled blue, trying to see into its depths. Nothing stirred. A whole minute passed.

Respiratory bypass or not, Jack was beginning to feel just a little nervous now, and not the fun kind of nervous. Did she get caught up in the weeds at the bottom? Was something lurking, something with tentacles or sharp teeth? Surely if she was distressed there’d be some sign, some disturbance of the water…

“Yah!” Jack cried when something grabbed his foot and yanked. His cry was cut short as his head slipped beneath the water, his arms flailing. A moment later he managed to right himself as the Doctor burst from the surface of the water, still grinning wickedly. Jack sputtered, the water burning his nose and the Doctor began to laugh outright at the expression on his face. His eyes narrowed and took on a mischievous gleam.
The Doctor, seeing the look in Jack’s eyes, stopped laughing and gave him a wide-eyed look of pleading innocence, as though s’he hadn’t just purposefully dunked him.
“Jack?” s’he said, literally back pedaling in the water, “Jack, come on, haven’t I taught you that retaliation and violence are not the answer?”

“You know me,” Jack answered, affecting an innocent air that wasn’t fooling anyone, “I’m always up for a good lesson.” He managed to make ‘lesson’ sound like something particularly lewd and the Doctor’s nose wrinkled as s’he was distracted, quite possibly trying to figure out what lessons had to do with sex. Or simply reacting to Jack’s continuous flirting, Jack wasn’t sure, but he used the distraction to his advantage. He lunged, the water rippling in mad waves as he used his height to his advantage, planting his feet and grabbing the Doctor into a surprisingly non-sexual hold considering his recent words, not to mention lack of clothing. Which wasn’t to say he wasn’t enjoying the hold, just that he was enjoying the Doctor’s half furious, half laughing reaction to the hold more. Jack managed to twist h’er up so he was holding h’er like a child, a fete he never would have managed so smoothly on dry land but here in the water his only difficulty was flailing limbs and shouted death threats. It also helped that at this depth he was the only one actually standing.

Before the Doctor had a chance to do more than shriek and make a few rather creative and highly unlikely threats Jack grinned and tossed h’er out deeper into the water. S’he sputtered back to the surface, a look of indignant fury on h’er face (the good kind of fury, not the scared kind he had seen earlier in the TARDIS, not the Time Lord fury of the Oncoming Storm when danger loomed). Then the war was on.

It lasted a good ten minutes and ended in a truce in which they both agreed not to tell the other who had very obviously won. The floated in the lake a while longer in companionable silence, the sun warm on their faces while the cool currents of water gently rocked their still forms. Neither looked at the other, content to stare upwards into the blue of the sky, watching the windswept clouds. Finally, the Doctor broke the silence.

“I was an alien.” Jack said nothing, but he listened intently, his relaxed thoughts sharpening on h’er words. The Doctor continued to float as well, eyes firmly fixed upon the clouds. Just when the silence had gone on for long enough that Jack wondered if he shouldn’t speak after all, s’he continued.

“I was an alien, and they were curious,” the Doctor continued, h’er voice deceptively relaxed for h’er words, “Friendly. Well, I say friendly, I mean they did sort of welcome me and were all excited and very…friendly. And curious. But…I was alien.” Jack listened, tempted to cut in when the Doctor’s voice sped up, the words becoming distracted. But he didn’t because he knew if he did, the Doctor might very well stop talking completely. The way s’he was repeating h’erself was disturbing, especially the way s’he kept saying ‘alien’. Somehow Jack didn’t think s’he just meant in the sense of ‘not from their planet’. There was alien and then there was alien. Different. Not One Of Us.

“And they decided they need more…aliens,” the Doctor continued, barely pausing for breath, “So they decided to grow them once they had the…the bits they needed to do that. Nothing like as advanced as a progenation machine, well I say not as advanced, I mean it was really quite clever but a bit more test tube baby; of course a progenation machine wouldn’t have given them what they wanted anyway, apparently they wanted to see the whole process, to really understand…”

“Doctor,” Jack cried, unable to hold himself back anymore, “What did they do?” The Doctor went silent and Jack twisted his body in the water, looking at where s’he still floated, still staring into the clouds. Finally, s’he turned to look at him.

“They took what they needed,” s’he said, “And they turned me into a woman so they could…take the other parts.” At Jack’s blank look the Doctor took a deep breath and stated quite clearly, “Sperm. And eggs. But they didn’t…I escaped before they could complete it. And here I am.” Jack tried to stare into h’er eyes, to figure out what he should do. What he wanted to do, of course, was grab a blaster, find that planet, and burn it to the ground. He wanted the cold feeling that curled into the pit of his stomach when he stared in the Doctor’s eyes to go away; for the day to go back to splashing and flirting and laughter and that bad, painfully deep yet disturbingly empty look to be gone. Then the Doctor turned away and swam swiftly for the shore, not looking back to see if he followed. He did.

The Doctor, for h’er part, didn’t know why s’he had told Jack that. Why s’he had suddenly decided to tell him everything, while at the same time telling him nothing. The details weren’t important anyway, not really; this…darkness s’he felt would pass and the gender sickness too. If s’he could get over the loss of h’er people, of h’er companions, of every dark or tainted bit that lay in h’er past then s’he would get over this. It was nothing, not compared to the dark places that were stored in the recesses of h’er memory.

But of course now Jack wasn’t going to let it go and he would probably go back to treating h’er weird, like s’he was broken. Like he wanted something from h’er or for h’er that he himself didn’t understand. Even more confusing, the Doctor found h’erself wanting that something…whatever it was, and that scared h’er almost more than telling Jack about the scientists had. So s’he did what s’he did best, what s’he always did when getting close to Jack started to scare h’er. S’he ran.

S’he knew it was pointless to try, even as she swiftly pulled on her shoes; s’he wouldn’t put it past Jack to run after h’er stark naked, maybe even shoeless if he thought s’he needed him. But s’he was going to try anyway. Or s’he was until s’he heard the startled yelp from the lake followed by a splash. The Doctor turned just in time to see Jack vanishing beneath the surface of the water. S’he waited, unconsciously holding h’er breath as she waited for Jack to surface, half expecting it to be another game, maybe a ploy to make stop h’er desperate flight. But he didn’t surface. And the world was silent and still once more.