Chapter Text
Rule 1: Don’t Allow Life or Death Situations to Detract from the Banter
“Good thing it’s a nice day,” Jack says breezily, trying not to acknowledge that dangling at the end of the Doctor’s arm like this, long legs swinging over what the locals called The Depthless Crevasse, was making him vaguely motion sick. He tries again to get his other arm up to cling onto the Doctor’s wrist with two hands, a marginally more secure proposition than just one, but it’s still trapped awkwardly inside his coat. Only like this does he realise how heavy the damn thing is.
The Doctor grunts and slides another inch towards the edge of the cliff at Jack’s movement, but all he says is, “I dunno. If it was raining, at least the mud would be sticky. Might help.”
“Or it’d be slippery,” Jack objects.
The Doctor hums a sound, like he’s accepting an interesting point in a debate.
“What about the sonic?”
“It’s a screwdriver, Jack. It can’t reverse gravity.”
“What is the point of it?”
The Doctor huffs. “Oh yeah, and a blaster would be so useful right about now.”
Jack looks at the cliff face he’s swinging in front of. It’s sheer and smooth as glass. A weird, alien orange that looks like no mineral Jack’s ever heard of. There’s nothing growing on the surface of it. No useful vines he can pull himself up with, no chips and cracks he could use as hand holds. “What is this stuff anyway?”
On the top of the cliff, feet and knees and elbows dug as well as possible into the fine tangerine shale to anchor them both in place, the Doctor beams. “It’s fantastic. Karbieritum. One of the hardest substances in the universe. You could crash a planet into this cliff and it wouldn’t so much as wobble. You can tell because of the colour. It’s not really orange, it’s clear, but it refracts light in a particular way in the centre due to the density of the atoms.”
“Any way we can make that work for us?” Jack asks, before the Doctor launches into an entire geology lecture.
“Well,” the Doctor considers. “The battle at the bottom of the mountain isn’t going to bother us. It’s not like we’re going to find ourselves on a piece of rock that’s broken off. That’s something.”
Given their luck so far, Jack's not so sure. “Any chance our side’ll win and come looking for us?”
“I’m not sure we have a side any more. They were a bit upset when I sabotaged their tanks.”
Right. They had been. That was why they’d been on the top of the stupid cliff to begin with. “Rose?”
This grunt of the Doctor’s is a bit more pronounced. “Not that I would insult Rose for worlds, but you weigh a bit much for her to haul you up. You need to lay off the hamburgers, Jack.”
“Great,” he grumbles, “So I just hang here forever?” He sees the Doctor's face and immediately adds, “Don’t make a pun about hanging out.”
The Doctor looks briefly disappointed at his brilliant comedic plans being so summarily derailed. “Not forever,” he says brightly and just as Jack is preparing to hear his excellent idea for rescue, he carries on. “I’m good, but I’m not magic. I can’t hold on indefinitely.”
“Great,” Jack moans again. He'd rather have heard stupid jokes about hanging around than blasé pronouncements of his own inevitable doom.
“I did think about summoning the TARDIS to catch you, you know. Remotely.”
“Then do that,” Jack says through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, problem is…I…um. I haven’t installed the newest version of the app and I’ve changed the recall circuit. The TARDIS isn’t recognising the sonic’s command.”
When he makes it back to the top of this cliff, Jack is to punch the Doctor. Hard.
A gust of wind blusters around him. It’s probably not particularly strong, little more than a breeze which would ruffle the hem of his coat, but it creeps down his neck and into his shirt and makes him shiver involuntarily. The Doctor slides still closer to the edge.
Jack keeps looking up. Looking down is making him feel even sicker. Over the Doctor’s shoulder, he can sort of see a cloud, the ridges of which put him in mind of a stern, never satisfied professor. The Doctor whistles a couple of notes in an effort to seem casual. “I’ve got one idea.”
“GREAT!” Jack bellows. “I love a man with an idea.”
“Don’t get shirty with me, Sunshine. Not until you’ve heard the idea anyway.”
It suddenly occurs to Jack that he really doesn’t like the look on the Doctor’s face. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
The Doctor looks more cheerful than he has since before he sabotaged the heavy artillery of all seven of this planet’s armies. “Not in the least.”
~
The Doctor stands up with a groan. The heavy leather of his jacket had protected his arms from the worst of the abrading effects of the dust, but, despite his jumper, his chest and torso are marred with a number of tiny nicks, like he’s been shaving with a potato peeler. He wrings out his hands, uncramping tense fingers.
He takes the sonic out of his pocket and shakes it irritably. “You’ve known the TARDIS for ages,” he scolds. “Device unrecognised, indeed.”
He starts heading back down the mountain and meets Rose, cheeks flushed from exertion, hair plastered sweatily to her forehead, running up.
“Doctor!” she cries, approaching him.
He pauses, looking at her in alarm. “Are you alright? You were supposed to stay with the counsel.”
She waves a hand. “They agreed to a ceasefire, no point trying to have a war with no cannons.” She looks over his shoulder. “Where’s Jack?”
The Doctor looks guilty as he runs a hand over the back of his head, ruffling his bristly hair. “He fell off a cliff.”
“What?” Rose gasps and takes a few more stumbling steps forward. “Is he ok? We have to help him!”
“We will,” the Doctor takes her arm firmly and turns her around, pulling her back the way she had come. “Remember what place is called?”
“The Depthless Crevasse, but…Doctor. It can’t really be endless …can it?”
He shrugs. “I’ve seen stranger things. But no, unlikely. The TARDIS scanned this planet. Standard size, mass, rotation… Where would a Depthless Crevasse go ? It’s probably pretty deep though.”
Rose jogs to keep up with his longer stride. “But…” she sounds really confused. “Doesn’t that just mean Jack’ll be…” she daren’t say killed, “badly hurt when he hits the bottom?”
“He isn’t going to hit the bottom.”
With the patience Rose has spent nineteen years cultivating from living with Jackie, she takes a deep breath, forces a smile and says, “What is going to happen to him then?” in the tense tone of someone about to start throttling her conversational partner.
The Doctor beams. His smile is not in the least bit forced. “We’re going to catch him.”
~
Jack falls.
The cliffs on either side of him remain the same glittering, unbroken expanse of orange. If not for the rushing wind pulling unforgivingly at his coat and hair, stinging his eyes, he could almost believe he was motionless. He can hear the roaring in his ears as he hurtles towards a ground he still can’t see, breaking the panic of his thoughts with a groaning, grinding-
Wait.
Jack squints through the tears the cold has drawn to his eyes and sees a blue box materialising in front of him. He breaks out into exuberant laughter, and utilises old sky diving training to turn his body towards the doors. He zooms towards them and abruptly finds himself held, hovering on the threshold.
He gapes where he floats, unable to understand for a second who is piloting the TARDIS. Then he realises that he’s upside down and is looking at the Doctor’s shoes, not some unusual headed alien.
“Not going to invite me in?”
“Give me a minute. Just draining off the excess acceleration. I don’t want you splattered up my wall, it’d take ages to clean.”
Jack opens his mouth and the Doctor takes his hands off the controls to wave a threatening finger in his direction. “Don’t say what you’re thinking or I’ll let you fall a bit longer until you can behave yourself.”
Jack mimes zipping his lips shut and flashes a smirk at a giggling Rose. Which is when, of course, the Doctor releases him, allowing him to fly into the TARDIS fully. Hands occupied, one still twisted in his coat, he isn’t quite quick enough to catch himself and lands on his stomach, skidding a few feet forward and colliding with the Doctor’s knees.
He rolls over and beams up at him from a contented recumbent position. “Always knew you liked it when men fell at your feet, Doctor.”
The Doctor raises an eyebrow. “Fall, yes. Sprawl in an undignified way…no. It just looks silly.”
Jack laughs giddily and picks himself up, dusting himself down and trying to look like he hasn’t spent the last forty five minutes completely terrified.
The Doctor’s eyes rake over him. “Are you hurt?”
“Going to ask me about my fall from Heaven?”
“Going to ask you if you need to go to the med bay.”
Rose comes up beside him and looks him over too in an assessing way. “You look better than I did when I fell out of the sky.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve had more practice.”
“At falling out of the sky?”
“Never let your parachute instructor catch you in bed with their sister the night before a big jump.”
The Doctor snorts and turns away. “I shouldn’t have bothered. Your ego would have cushioned your landing just fine.”
Jack and Rose swap a look. He’s tense now, in a way that he wasn’t when they were in the middle of dealing with the situation, agonising about all the things that could have gone wrong.
“Oh, I’m glad you did, Doctor,” Rose says lightly, smiling at him and curling her fingers around Jack’s at the same time.
The Doctor looks at her, at the spark in her eyes and knows before she says it, what terrible joke she is about to make.
Rose doesn’t disappoint. “When else would I get to say, in all honesty, that it’s Raining Men ?”