Survivor's Sojourn

by Indigo

She lay dead at his feet, and his knees -- they wouldn't unlock.

On December 31st, 1999, the stroke of midnight -- he had been awakened with a sense of Nameless Dread. Something Bad was going to happen, and he had no idea what. The Omen he could not put a name to had frightened him so badly that he'd nearly dropped and broken the hand-blown glass bowl he used for those rare occasions when more mundane means were not sufficient to calm his frazzled nerves.

Physician, heal thyself. The Doctor believed strongly in that simple maxim, and lived by it day by day. It had resulted in the rest of the group that called themselves The Authority laughing, snickering, or outright sneering down their noses at him. But he did what they expected of him, and kept his cool the only way he knew how.

It had taken two bowls of opium before the Doctor's hands stopped shaking. He held the burning smoke in his lungs, forcing himself to breathe slowly and deeply as he let the white smoke billow out from his nostrils and lips. It was another half hour and a joint laced with mescaline before the cold sweats and the steely coldness in his spine subsided enough for him to sleep again.

When he awoke the morning of the 31st, just before the last adventure, the last problem, the last crisis of the year arose -- he knew.

Jenny Sparks' number was up.

Whatever infernal, celestial, or terrestrial mechanism that had given her a full century of life and vitality as a 20 year old woman was going to shut down promptly at the stroke of twelve.

Of course, Jenny's last day on earth could not possibly have been quiet, peaceful and pleasant; it couldn't even be Jenny's idea of quiet, peaceful pleasant -- marked with orgies, wild parties, and every hedonistic indulgence she could think of.

Instead, Jenny was standing on the bridge of the Carrier, keeping on that brave face -- the face that often smiled sweetly in response to being called "bitch," "cow," or any number of less polite insults. The memory of that day spiralled through his memory in a multicolored blur of emotions and images. The Engineer re-terraformed the Earth where the advance for the creature some called God had begun making an environment inhospitable for human life. Apollo, on the moon, blasting away with the fury of a small sun. The Midnighter and Jack Hawksmoor fought back-to-back in a nightmare the Doctor would never have dreamed he would see outside a bad Japanese monster movie. Jenny, on the bridge, beside him, yelling at him to not be a big girl's blouse and to suck it up and pull his weight.

The mental image that most vividly surfaced in the roiling sea of the Doctor's memories? Jenny Sparks' face as she coughed blood and told him she knew what was coming -- and that they had to save the world by midnight.

She'd damn well done it, too. The air had become tingly and sharp, ionized. The Doctor's strawberry blonde-red hair had stood on end, and the current had tickled teasingly through the soles of his feet, up his legs, across his scrotum, and climbing spiral staircase up his spine as Jenny had pulled enough power to light New York, Las Vegas, and LA -- and channeled it into the brainpan of the noxious creature that had come to use Earth as its nesting space.

She had killed it good and dead with only seconds to spare before midnight. Colonel Jennifer Sparks, of MI5 went down like some cosmic hand had dissolved her spine. Blood trickled slowly from her nose and frothed on her lips. She'd had time only to give a wilting glare to each member of the team and threaten retribution from beyond the grave if they fucked up the mission she'd created The Authority for.

Apollo stood across from him. Jack, Swift, The Engineer, and the Midnighter had all dropped to their knees beside her, heads hung. The Doctor hadn't even had a chance to say a proper, respectful goodbye.

~Not that Jenny would've wanted a proper, respectful goodbye,~ the shaman of the Earth thought sadly, tears threatening behind the red lenses he wore. ~Given her druthers, she'd have rather gone out in the approved Jenny Sparks way -- drunk off her arse and fucking some guy's brains out until death stilled her breath, her mouth, and her hips forever.~

The others had gone to mourn and prepare for the funeral. The Doctor, unfortunately, was unable to join them. The dread that had seized him the beginning of the last day of Jenny's life had come down like a sledgehammer thrown by the fist of God Himself when her death rattle broke the silence on the bridge of the Carrier.

She was gone, and she'd taken the source of his confidence with her, or so it seemed. ~What did you expect, really?~ The Doctor asked himself. ~She is the one who jarred you out of your pathetic haze of terror.~

The Doctor hung his head, and gasped as the needle pierced the vein. Pure, uncut Heroin -- enough to kill anyone who wasn't him -- entered his vein. Cold, sweet numbness spread upward and outward from the needle's point and made his pain manageable.

~Jenny, how can I go on without you?~

He fumbled off the lenses, nearly poking himself in the temple with the used needle before flinging it away in a sob. Wracked with grief, his body shook as he leaned against the door to his private room aboard the Carrier. ~They don't understand me. They laugh, they think I'm weak. I'm alone.~

[%Even were that true, little Doctor, you would not be alone. You are never alone. You know that. And Jenny knew it too.%]

The voices of the other Doctors were always with him -- they were a comforting whisper in the back of his mind, most of the time. But sometimes -- like now -- they came to him en masse. The world of the real and mundane faded from his sight, replaced by a shifting panoply of violets and pinks, oranges, and golds -- a sunset panorama tinted with the paintbrush of the emotions and daubed with the colours of a million souls. And he, the one they addressed as little Doctor, stood looking at all those whose legacy now rested on his narrow shoulders.

"I didn't want this. I never wanted this," the Doctor sobbed bitterly.

[%We know. It is that which convinced us you would do right by the abilities and powers conferred upon you as Doctor -- shaman of the planet. Your fears. Your doubts. Have you not banished them yet? Do not you remember what miracles and surgeries you have performed since the microcosm of the Earth took its place where once resided your heart?%]

"Jenny banished them. Jenny's gone."

Amongst the voices that spoke to him, the little Doctor recognized historical figures: Benjamin Franklin. Marie Curie. Albert Einstein. Indira Gandhi. Many were too old to have names that would be recognizable to any modern tongue spoken in the world today. They were patient with him -- so patient. He wondered, every time they spoke to him, why they didn't just choose another -- someone with more courage, someone with drive. Someone who did not turn into a mewling child on the inside whenever the toughness of the job threatened.

Franklin spread open a wrinkle between the folds of the Doctor's brain. [%See this. You did this.%]

The Doctor gave a brittle laugh. He had jokingly called it the "reforestization of Los Angeles." He had smiled dumbly at Jenny, said, "I feel great..." and passed out on the spot from the stress of energies he had wielded to transform living beings into *trees*.

Martin Luther King threw a handful of memory into the pool of their shared consciousness. [%Without you, this would not have been possible.%] Another image. Another tiny grain of time wherein the Doctor's powers had been instrumental.

The other Doctors of Before showed him moment after moment.

"I get it," he snapped at his predecessors. "I *get* it. But I'm still afraid. Don't you *see*? I've done what I said would happen. I've failed. When I was needed to come through, I couldn't. Jenny *died*. She *died* and I couldn't do a fucking thing about it!"

[%She was meant to die, little Doctor. You knew that when you saved her. You knew that when you let your power touch her.%]

* * *

The Doctor nodded, closing his eyes against a memory he tried not to recall. But it unfurled in his mind's eye, as clear as the *now*.

Jenny had approached him for her new Authority team. He had only been a mundane then -- and that because he was throwing an inordinate amount of effort into being just ordinary. His sanity had fractured, broken, and shattered in the four years between his seventeenth and 21st birthdays. Money had not given him happiness. It had only invited more and more pressure until finally he had cracked beneath it. He had been reduced to almost nothing -- a boy in a man's body, with a boy's control over his adult form.

He had had to live with the humiliation of a bedwetting problem for two years. That had eroded what confidence he had had left to him to nothing.

Jenny Sparks had brought his confidence back -- one tiny mote at a time until it was whole again. She had stood around his apartment, smirking prettily at the sight of him in his filthy clothes and unchanged underwear, goading him. She had laughed at the idea that no one knew he was holed up in his tiny little matchbox of an Amsterdam apartment. She had insisted that he would be part of her team. She would not take no for an answer.

And she'd got what she wanted in those first three minutes. He had never once tapped into the power that the previous Doctors had given him until Col. Sparks had pissed him off beyond rationality. "Leave me alone," he'd told her. She had refused, of course. She was Jenny Sparks and she got what she wanted. She wouldn't leave. He'd said, "You don't understand, I want to be alone." And just like that -- he was Alone. Shen and Sparks were gone -- sent to the airport at Heathrow. His apartment was once again occupied by no one but him, and he had only his trash for company.

And he had, for the first time, used his shamanic magic.

"Damn her," the Doctor whispered, closing his eyes on the memory. "Damn me."

He had been willing to try to forget. But the voices in his head, that resonated inside his soul -- the voices of the other Doctors, only got louder. The cadences of their words thrummed in rhythm to the beat of his heart. Tripping on dope only seemed to make it possible for them to speak more clearly to him. His only escape was gone, leaving him at the mercy of this power he didn't want.

He went to a sex shop on the main thoroughfare, and went seeking a more mundane, human, *male* form of release and distraction.

"Chicks who dig chicks? Why, Doctor, who woul've thought...!" The velvet-wrapped-brass voice was Jenny's. And he had not really been surprised that she hadn't given up. The Doctors had warned him that he would have to step up and take his place in the world. Jenny was apparently the stepping stone.

But still, clinging to the illusion of autonomy, humanity, insanity and powerlessness, he refused.

[%You cannot evade what is Meant To Be, little Doctor,%] the voices told him. They were amused. They were detached. But despite his best efforts, they had not been disappointed. They had been resigned at the most when Sparks had finally pulled the gun from her jacket.

~OhmyGodshe'sgonnashootmeifIrefuseheragain~

Jenny rolled her eyes skyward and muttered something about "the hard way," then raised the pistol to her own temple.

*BLAM!*

~OhdearGodsheshotHERSELFintheHEADandshe'llDIEif...~

[%If, little Doctor.%]

~Ifififif...if ... I ... don't... help.~

[%How can you not help?%]

Jenny's braincase lay broken on the floor -- grey matter, blood, and nerve fluids leaking out from the side of her beautiful blonde head.

The crowd murmured in horror and began to panic.

And the Doctor had then and there embraced his destiny. In Russia, the wind of his magic began, taking its strength from the hardy survival instincts of the poor. It traveled the world around, picking up strength, restorative ability, curative power, and atoms with which to rebuild the broken woman. By the time it reached Amsterdam, the manifestation of the shaman's power had become an unbreakable, invisible net that enveloped Jenny's spirit, captured it, returned it to its rightful place, then wove back her broken body and restored her to life.

It had cost the ecosystem of the earth a year off its life to do it, but the Earth knew what he had been trying not to admit -- she was instrumental in looking after the world, and had a job to do. It had willingly given its substance to save her, and it had urged the Doctor to use it as he would.

The power had sung in his loins, his heart, and in places he could not name -- and the little Doctor had gone from being a frightened druggie to an Enlightened man -- even though the fading remnants of his mundanity still wanted to punch Jenny's smirking face for having precipitated it the way she did.

* * *

Without Jenny, he wondered if he still had any purpose. Before the thought was finished, the other Doctors assured him there was still much to be done even though Jenny Sparks had departed the earthly existence.

"Bugger this up and I swear I'll come back and haunt you all."

The Doctor had no doubt she meant it. That thought brought a smile to his lips, through the tears.

~Jenny would be furious if I let her death diminish me, turn me back into the little hermit who hid from the world, wouldn't she?~

[%Why, little Doctor, do you persist in asking questions you already know the answers to?%] The voices of his brethren were warm and amused -- affection, but not ridicule, coloured the voices in his brain.

~I wish I'd still had the chance to say goodbye. I was so busy trying to be brave, and to not let on that I knew. She didn't want the others to know she would be dead by midnight.~

[%For the Doctor, it is never too late,%] the million souls chorused in an encouraging whisper. [%Tell her all you need to tell her.%]

The Doctor nodded, and dried his tears. He had means beyond simple human ones to tell her how he felt. He settled into the Lotus position, and opened his thoughts, letting them resonate out through the Carrier, into the Bleed, and wafting down over the earth to rest, light as the touch of a butterfly on Jenny's body in her quarters.

[^You have my gratitude, Jenny Sparks. You have made me the man I am now, and I am proud to stand beside the others you deemed worthy to protect the world once you were gone. I know now that the fear is not for succumbing to -- it is simply a reality. A thread I must incorporate into the tapestry of my knowledge and abilities. The fear will always be there, but what is one man's fear against the greater importance of the world and all those in it, you made me swear to protect?^]

If Jenny's spirit lingered in or near the Carrier, it made no reply. There was no flicker of electricity on the nerve endings of their living ship. Just silence...

....and then, somewhere in the distance...

....on Earth...

....a tiny atomic twinkle of power, familiar, warm, determined, and pleased....

....then growing larger, and diminishing somehow to a warm glow of nascent human *need.*

[^Jenny?^]

[%Perhaps you need to see what it is, little Doctor.%]

The Doctor rose, brushed himself off, and murmured a brief mantra to purge his fatigue and sharpen his concentration. He stepped outside and called, "Door!" In his meditative grief-state, days had passed. Jenny's funeral had come and gone and her body lain to rest with all the pomp and circumstance the British could possibly manage. "Carrier, send me to Jack."

When he stepped through the shimmering multi-coloured portal the Carrier provided, the Doctor was in London -- in the monument that had been erected to honor Jenny Sparks.

'ALL I WANTED WAS A BETTER WORLD.'

The words were engraved on her tombstone, which came into sharp relief as the Doctor approached the monument.

Jenny Sparks wasn't dead. She was just an equation Einstein would be proud of.

Energy could not be destroyed. It merely changed states. Jenny Sparks might be dead, but that sparkle of her soul was still out there in the world somewhere, forming itself into the woman who would grow to be the spirit of the 21st century --fighting with the fierceness of the lioness and the indomitable spirit of the woman who had been Jenny Sparks.

The Doctor sobbed again, but it was a joyous cry that escaped him now. His friend, his savior, was not really gone. The one who had restored him from a pathetic existence had not truly ceased to exist herself. He would have to have a celebratory trip later. But first...

He had to tell Jack.

--end.

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