earlgreytea68 | Pleasure Cruise -- Part 4 Commentary

In response to this post, orelle_peredhil requested Part 4 of Pleasure Cruise.

The Doctor came to with the startling quickness of a Time Lord, consciousness rushing back onto him as he sat up in alarm, hand reaching to retrieve a disc that had long ago fallen away from it, and he swore in Gallifreyan, both at the missing signal device, so close and now so far, and at the fact that his head felt like it was about to fall off. He reached his hands up to grab it before it could roll away.

The quick coming-to of a Time Lord I got from that weird little moment in "The Idiot's Lantern," when he's punched and then abruptly sits up all in a rush. I decided that maybe that was part of his alienness. No eyelash-fluttering for him upon regaining consciousness!

“There, there,” said a voice. “You’ve been out for a while. I wouldn’t try to do too much too soon, if I were you.”

The Doctor peeked through his fingers. “Jackie?” he said.

She was sitting with her back against the wall next to him, knees drawn up to her chest, and she nodded at him.

The Doctor closed his eyes and carefully leaned back against the wall. “Blimey,” he sighed. “I’m hallucinating.”

“Hallucinating what?”

“You.”

He felt someone slap at his shoulder. “I’m not a hallucination.”

“Ow,” he said, rubbing at his shoulder, and turned his head carefully to face her. It pounded in protest but didn’t roll away. Jackie was there, real enough to slap him. Anger swiftly built in him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

I don't write the Doctor injured very often. Giving him a headache was kind of fun, in that perverse, evil-author way.

“D’you think I could just let you get kidnapped like that?”she snapped back.

“Yes. I do. I can handle myself.”

Jackie snorted. “I’ve never seen any evidence of that.”

Jackie really has seen the Doctor at his worst, a lot of the time.

The Doctor frowned and closed his eyes again.

“How do you feel?” Jackie ventured, after a moment of silence.

“Headache,” he answered, shortly. “It should wear off soon, and then I can think how to get us out of here.”

“What are they going to do to us?”

“I’ve no idea. I can’t predict the future, Jackie.”

“There’s no need for you to be stroppy,” Jackie informed him.

I think this is the only time I've ever used the word "stroppy" in my fic.

“Rose is going to kill me,” he said. “She’s going to kill me.”

“For what?”

“For endangering you. Obviously.”

“Funny,” remarked Jackie, after a moment. “Because I’ve been sitting here the whole time you were out cold thinking that Rose was going to kill me if you never woke up.”

I love the symmetry of these remarks. This is what I love about the Doctor and Jackie, and why I wanted to make this story about them. They both love Rose desperately, and they both think that Rose loves the other desperately, and they both, in their own way, downplay their *own* importance to Rose. Not that either the Doctor or Jackie doubts that Rose loves them, but they just think she loves--or needs--the other one *more.*

The Doctor thought for a second, over the pounding of his head. “Apparently, we both consider Rose to be fairly violent.”

“You do look terrible,” Jackie told him. “I’ve got some aspirin in my purse, if you think you can take it without water.”

“I can’t have aspirin, it would kill me,” he said, absently, thoughts preoccupied with other things. He opened his eyes. “Have you got your purse?”

I don't mention this allergy very often. I'm probably lucky I remembered it at all! Then again, I think I remembered it just to set up the line that's coming up in a bit.

“Yeah.” She handed it across. “They didn’t take it from me. They’ve been pretty polite, really.”

“You came willingly,” he remarked, pawing through her purse. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Oi,” she said, watching him. “Ever heard of privacy?”

“Well,” he said, handing the purse back. “Nothing terribly useful in there.”

Jackie frowned.

The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out Rose’s mobile and dialed Jack, who picked up with, “Doctor? Where are you?”

I had to do a lot of thinking in this fic, about who had whose mobile and what that meant for communication purposes.

“I’m with Jackie,” he said. “And I would guess we’re on the Zygon ship. Hello?” Because there sounded like there was a scuffle for the phone.

“What happened?” Rose’s voice demanded. “And we can’t find my mum—”

“She’s here with me, and she’s fine,” he assured her. “In much better shape than I am. You weren’t kidding when you said you had a wicked headache.”

“Doctor, where are you?”

“The Zygon ship, I think.”

“If you pull those tubes out of your arms, the alarm goes off, you can try to make a break for it.”

The Doctor glanced over at Jackie. “No tubes in our arms. They must not be using us for imprints. Listen, Rose, I had the signal device, when I was knocked out. It’s a small disc, it was sewn into the carpet in the corridor outside our rooms. I must have dropped it when I fell. They probably took it and hid it again somewhere else, but the sonic will pick up on it. Tell Brem it’s setting eo803whoihfeoiw009jg—“

I love that the Doctor thinks Rose is going to remember this. And I love that Brem unhesitatingly does.

“Wait, you’re telling him yourself,” said Rose, and, after a moment, Brem said, “Hello?”

The Doctor relayed the setting to him and told him what he was looking for. “And you’re to bring Jack with you.”

“Yeah,” agreed Brem.

“And make sure neither of you holds it for too long, it kind of…bonds to your skin.”

“Got it.”

“Let me talk to Mum again.”

The mobile was handed across. “Make sure Jack goes with Brem,” he said.

“Of course,” she said. “We’ve got things covered up here, it’s you and Mum I’m worried about.”

“Oh, don’t worry about us,” the Doctor told her, and winked at Jackie for good measure. “It’s practically a garden party down here. See you soon.” He hung up the mobile and put it back in his pocket.

“What’s your plan for getting out of here?” asked Jackie.

“Haven’t got one,” he admitted.

He makes it up as he goes along. And he does it *brilliantly.*

There was a long moment of silence. They sat beside each other with their backs against the wall and did not look at each other.

“I thought you were dead,” said Jackie.

“I’m very difficult to kill.”

“You just said you’d be killed by aspirin.”

“I’m…very complicated.”

This exchange. This is what I was setting up way back there with the aspirin conversation. And he is very complicated. Complicated and Gallifreyan.

“I just wanted to have a nice cruise,” said Jackie. “I just wanted to have a nice cruise, with my daughter, and my grandkids, and my boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, after a second. “This is all my fault, and I’m sorry.” They looked at each other. “You deserved the nice cruise.”

“I’m sorry I made you come,” she said. “Not because of this. You hate being out on the water, don’t you? I could tell the whole time you were on the ship.”

“There’s only one ship I’m comfortable on, and it’s mine.”

I liked this idea, that the word "ship" means two very different ships. (And also other fandom things we need not get into!)

“Because of things like this, isn’t it? I always think you’re being so difficult, and I never really realized…It’s because of things like this. You’re difficult because of things like this.”

“I really am sorry,” he said again.

She leaned her head back against the wall, breaking the gaze. “They’ll be okay? Up on the ship?”

“Yeah, Brem’ll…Yeah.” The Doctor took a deep breath. “I tried to give Rose a normal life, you know, I really did. I tried to—”

Jackie laughed, startling him into silence. “Oh, Doctor,” she said, gasping for breath around her chuckles. “I don’t even know what a normal life would be, anymore. I can’t imagine life without you.” She caught her breath, wiping tears away from her eyes and composing herself. “Did you like Rodney?” she asked.

I like how Jackie's on the verge of hysteria through this, how it starts gradually, with the laughter pushing her over the edge. Laughter is *so* close to crying.

“Don’t talk in the past tense,” he said, firmly. “I’m going to get us out of here, Jackie.”

“Oh, I know,” said Jackie. “I know. I trust you. It’s just…” She paused to wipe more tears out of her eyes, crying now properly.

The Doctor sat up slowly, alarmed. “Jackie…” he said.

“I’m scared to tell you,” she sobbed.

“Scared to tell me what?”

Jackie slowly lifted her other hand, the one not wiping her tears away, and held it out to him, her fingers curled into a fist. The Doctor bent out her fingers, and stared at the signal device, which was now biologically grafted to her, infiltrating itself into her skin, stuck fast.

“Oh, Jackie,” he breathed, staring at it.

“I grabbed it, when you fell and you dropped it, and now it’s—“

“I know,” he said. It was a trait, of the Zygon signal devices. He’d had it happen to him, the other time he’d come in contact with one.

“What do I do?” she begged. “I can’t get it to come off.”

He had no idea, and didn’t want to tell her that. His had fallen off when Harry had pressed a random button on the Zygon ship. He was going to have to find the control room, somehow, keep the Zygons at bay, and find the same random button.

“It’s okay,” he said, striving to keep her calm. “Do you hear me?” He met her eyes. “It’s okay. This is nothing. A tiny, infinitesimal problem. I solve things like this in my sleep.”

“Yeah?” she asked, trembling a bit but looking hopeful.

“Yeah,” he affirmed.

“You can just zap it off with your screwdriver, maybe?”

“Sadly, no. But it’s okay. I know how to get it off, I just can’t do it with the sonic. Don’t panic, Jackie. Just stay calm, and I’ll fix this.”

Jackie, swallowing, nodded.

And then the device began to beep.

********

Rose hung up the phone and turned to her son, hand out. “Give me the sonic.”

“What?” he said, confused.

“Give it to me, tell me how to use it.”

“But, Mum, I—“

“You’re going in the teleport,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “All of you are. You’re going to go back to Cardiff. Jack and I will find the signal device.”

“Rose—“ said Jack.

“Don’t argue with me,” she snapped. “This is what we’re doing.”

“Rose, I don’t understand,” interjected Rodney. “Where’s your mother—”

“I don’t have time to explain it to you right now!” she shouted, and then took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell, I just…” Rose took another deep breath, walked a few steps away, waited until she no longer felt about to cry.

“You need to go with them,” Jack murmured , having followed her. “I can do this by myself, you need to go with your kids.”

She knew this. She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to leave him. Not like this, not like…He’s trapped, with my mum, and they—”

“They’d want you to leave, wouldn’t they? If something happens to them, what would your kids do without you?”

Poor Rose. This is her instinct, right? The Rose we know, who wouldn't leave the Doctor on the impossible planet. But she can't do these things anymore, she has her kids, and she knows that, but it still tears her apart to leave him in danger.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know.” She reminded herself of being on the impossible planet, of what terrible thing would have happened if she’d tried stubbornly to stay behind for the Doctor, of how the Doctor had shouted at her for being so foolish. She knew she had to go. She turned abruptly to Jack and hugged him tightly. “Be careful. I can’t lose everyone today.”

And I think she really does think that she might never see her mother again. Her Doctor, sure, he's the Doctor, he may figure something out, even if he's no longer Ten, but I think she really doesn't think her mother will make it out alive.

“You’re not going to lose any of us, Rose. Come on. He’s your Doctor. Remember?”

She nodded against him, then took a step back. “What are we going to do about everybody else on this ship?” she asked, feeling a bit calmer and more composed. “We can’t teleport them all through to Cardiff.”

“I know. We’re working on a helicopter rescue.”

Rose nodded, then walked back over to her children and Rodney. “Show Jack how to use your sonic,” she said to Brem, evenly. “We’re getting out of here.”

“You’re coming with us?” asked Fortuna, who had clearly been terrified this would not be the case.

“Absolutely,” Rose assured her. She reached out and smoothed her hair, aware that Fortuna was the child most terrified of separation, and that Rose should have remembered that before letting her emotions run away with her earlier. “I’m sorry I frightened you, Fort,” she said, tenderly. “I would never leave you.”

Fortuna nodded, lower lip still quivering a bit.

Poor, wee Fortuna.

“What about Dad?” queried Athena.

Rose looked over at her. “He will join us as soon as he can.”

“With Grandma?” said Fortuna.

“Yes,” said Rose, firmly.

“What about everyone else?” said Athena.

“Jack’s working on that. He’ll get them safe, he will.” She looked back at Jack, who had received his lecture from Brem and was holding the sonic screwdriver.

Jack flipped open his mobile and pressed a button. “Tosh?” he said. “I’m sending Rose and the kids through to Cardiff. Oh, and Rodney.”

********

“Why’s it doing that?” asked Jackie, sounding terrified. “What’s it mean?”

It was calling the kraken. Which was every bad thing plus a whole suitcase full of bad more. “Time to go,” he said, standing up and pulling them over to the door. He sonicked the lock open, stepped out, Jackie in tow.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN.

A Zygon stopped short at the end of the hall. It stared at them. It looked at the beeping signal device attached to Jackie’s palm. And then it turned and ran.

“This way,” said the Doctor, confidently, running with Jackie down the hallway. An alarm started blaring, red lights flashing, a voice booming out over the intercom system. Abandon ship. They ran through Zygons scurrying around the ship in a panic, all of them trying their best to avoid the beeping signal device.

The Doctor kept running, moving on instinct, hoping against hope, until he stumbled abruptly into the control room, deserted now. He turned and dead-lock sealed the door behind them, just in case, before leaving Jackie and walking over the control panel and beginning to hit buttons at random.

Notice I don't really describe what the ship looks like as they run through it. Because I hate description.

“Why were they all running away?” asked Jackie.

“Armies cower at the sight of me, Jackie,” he responded, absently. “Tell me if any of these buttons do anything.” He kept punching at them, hoping for something.

I love this absent little aside here, about the armies. It just cracks me up. And I could hear the delivery of it so perfectly.

“This is calling the huge squid thing, isn’t it? That’s why they’re running. The squid is heading straight toward us. We’re going to be squeezed to bits.”

She always was smarter than he gave her credit for, he thought. He did not pause in hitting the buttons. He didn’t have time. “Jackie, I’m going to get us out of this.”

“You’ve no clue how!” she shrieked. “You’re hitting buttons at random!”

“I’m not,” he protested. “There’s a highly scientific process to all this. You see, I started at the upper left hand corner and am moving first vertically, then horizontally, down to the bottom right—”

Trying to get the directions right in that sentence was *really* *hard,* okay?

Jackie grabbed his hands, where they’d just pressed the last two buttons. He stared down at them.

“You have to go,” she said, and her voice shook only a little bit.

He looked up at her. “Jackie—”

She shook her head. “No. You have to go. She can’t lose you.”

“Jackie—”

“I know, that I’ve always given you such a hard time, but you make her so happy. You have given her a better life than I could ever have imagined for her. You’re not the man I would have chosen for a son-in-law, I know you know that. But you’re the man I should have chosen. I’m sorry for every time I slapped you, I really only meant half of them.”

Okay, so, this entire story was written to get to this little exchange to the Doctor and Jackie. Because I'd realized, by this point in the Chaosverse, that they really loved each other, these two, they depended on each other, they respected each other's roles in the family they had built. And it wasn't the sort of thing that either of them would ever say outside of thinking they were about to die. But I love this moment when Jackie admits she was wrong and should have chosen the Doctor all along. I've always really, really hated that scene in "Army of Ghosts" when Jackie tells Rose that there will be nothing left of her. I mean, I'm sure Jackie thought that in that moment, but I like to think that Jackie really did come to realize that this life her daughter has is remarkable and extraordinary precisely because *that* is who her daughter is: this remarkable and extraordinary being who captured and healed a Time Lord heart.

“Jackie—”

“Okay, three-quarters.”

“Stop saying things that are going to embarrass both of us when we get out of here,” he said, desperately.

“And the kids,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You’ve given me these beautiful grandkids, and thank you so much for that. Being their grandmother has been…such a joy, and an honor. You’re such a good father. I think you don’t realize, how good you are at all this. They love you so much, and they need you so much, and you have to go. You have to go because you have to take care of all of them for me. Rose and the kids, I need to know they still have you, because I know you’ll keep them safe, and I don’t want to have die worrying about them, please go.”

And this, this major moment here, where Jackie tries to get him to realize how good he is at being a father. I don't think the Doctor, no matter how many centuries he plays the role, ever truly thinks that he is a good father, I think he always thinks he's just stumbling his way along, and I love that Jackie sees that about him, that he just doesn't *get* that he is instinctively good at the whole thing. And I love that Jackie really *does* think he's instinctively good at it. I love this moment here, because, to Jackie, there is nothing in her universe even half as important as Rose and Rose's children, and this is the moment when she admits that the only thing she'd trust them with is the Doctor.

“Jackie, listen to me,” he said, urgently. “You are not going to die here. I won’t let you.”

“It’s okay,” she insisted, around the tears streaming down her face. “Really it is. Because I’ve saved all of them, right? I lured the kraken here instead and they’ll be safe, right? And they’ll destroy this alien ship and I’ll have saved the entire planet.” She attempted a smile. “Don’t think you’ve got the market cornered on that, Doctor.”

The Doctor swallowed. “I will not leave you here alone,” he told her, firmly.

She choked out a sob and abruptly threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. “I’m so scared,” she said, shuddering violently in his arms.

“I know,” he said. “I’m here. I’ll stay with you.”

She would be scared, of course. And this also reminds me of "The Impossible Planet," that moment when Ida says she doesn't want to die alone. Nobody does. And the Doctor is determined that Jackie not do it, that Jackie not be left in an alien ship waiting for a kraken to arrive and squeeze her to bits.

“You can’t,” she protested.

“I can. Time Lord, remember?”

She drew back a bit. “Will you really not die?”

“I’ve got a respiratory bypass system. I can hold my breath for a very, very long time.”

I made this up. Probably this isn't true. But let's suspend disbelief and believe the Doctor would be okay. I don't think he would lie to her about this, not in this situation.

“You’ll be okay, in the end, to go back to Rose and the kids?”

“Yes.”

Jackie nodded, sniffling. “Then, if you could stay, I’d like to…not be alone.”

“I’m right here,” he promised. She moved back into a hug, trembling still against him, and he hugged her tightly and squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think what he was going to tell Rose. “I wish you hadn’t picked up the device,” he said.

She laughed, a little hysterically. “You and me both.”

“You saved my life, you know. With your tea. The little ham sandwich was superfluous but the tea was vital. Remember? And you took care of me, the entire time I was ill, even though I know you didn’t like me and I’d almost just gotten your daughter killed. You still did it, and I’ve never thanked you.”

Love this moment, too. Because it's true, Jackie *did* take care of him, long before she liked him even a little bit, and she did it sweetly and tenderly and without hesitation, and he never did truly thank her for that (that we've seen, or in my fic).

“Now who’s saying things that are going to embarrass us in the morning?” asked Jackie.

“I know,” he admitted.

“I wish that alarm would shut off,” she said. “Your head must be killing you.”

“I’m okay,” he said, and then opened his eyes abruptly. He pushed Jackie away, staring at her. “What did you say?”

“What?” she asked, surprised.

“The alarm off!” he exclaimed. “Oh! Why didn’t I think of this? The power! I’ll just shut the power off!” He turned, tearing off the paneling of the control panel, ripping out wires and aiming his sonic screwdriver at them.

I have no idea where this thought came from, but I think it's convincing enough as a magical resolution.

The ship went black. And abruptly, ear-splittingly silent. Except for the beeping of the device, disappointingly.

But Jackie cried, “It fell off! Doctor! It fell off my hand!”

He reached out in the darkness, found her hand, intertwined his fingers into it. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Fast.” He switched the sonic screwdriver to torch setting, and they stumbled with haste. He was running so fast he was pulling Jackie along, but it didn’t matter. They’d be at the loading dock, so soon, so very, very soon—

The ship shuddered, pitching back and forth. Jackie, behind him, screamed.

“Keep moving!” he shouted, reaching a hand out to the wall for balance. He rounded them into the loading dock. The ship was groaning, as the kraken tightened around it. It began, slowly to splinter, water beginning to leak in, then spray in, steadily, soaking them with salt. The pressure was going to collapse the whole ship in a moment. “In, in, in!” he told Jackie, practically pushing her into one of the little submarines. He tumbled in himself, closing the hatch and deadlock sealing it. “Hold on,” he told her, aiming the sonic at the controls. The ship leaped into life, jumping out of its dock in eagerness and jetting through the water.

Without a window, it was impossible to know how close they passed to the kraken on their way out of the ship. The Doctor suspected it was a bit too close for comfort.

Were this on film instead of on a computer screen, you would know that yes: a bit too close for comfort. I tried to get across the point that they *just* made it here.

He looked over at Jackie, red and splotchy with tears, and she grinned at him. “We made it, didn’t we?”

Then again, he thought, it had also been just far enough. And he grinned back.

********

Jack was having no luck with Brem’s sonic screwdriver. He didn’t know if it was because it wasn’t working, or because he didn’t know how to use it, or because the signal device was no longer there. All he knew was he had a ship full of people he had to evacuate, no viable way yet of doing that, and no signal device.

The mobile rang, and he pulled it out and stared at the caller ID. Rose. And here even he had been giving up on the Doctor.

Because the Doctor has Rose's mobile. See, keeping all of this straight was very hard!

“Where are you?” he said, into the phone.

“Bobbing in a Zygon submarine,” he answered. “I’ll give you the coordinates in a minute. Listen, the Zygons are heading to the cruise ship, their submarines are programmed to go straight there in an emergency, I had to override.”

“What, all of them?”

“Yes. Jackie very cleverly lured the kraken to destroy the Zygon ship instead, meaning the Zygons are currently ship-less. All you need to do is keep them contained in the loading dock, I’ll send UNIT out to you.”

“And how am I going to do that?” asked Jack.

“Welllllllll,” drawled the Doctor. “You’ve got Brem’s sonic screwdriver, am I right?”

So, in a roundabout way, Brem, through the presence of his sonic screwdriver, saves the day.

Also, you'll notice I never really go into what Jack does with the Zygons. You know why? Because it bored me. He does something and they all get contained, the end. I wanted to focus on the smut in the next part, and I think we will all mostly agree that was the right choice.