Fic: The Plumber's Tale (Valiant Tales)

[lindenharp]

Title: The Plumber's Tale
Series: Valiant Tales.  Read them in order here.
Rating: PG
Characters: The Master (Simm), Jack Harkness, other characters
Genre: drabble
Words: 100
Spoilers: Minor spoilers for The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords.
Summary: A series of drabbles about the people who lived, worked, and suffered on the Valiant during the Year That Never Was.
Disclaimer: I am not the BBC.  I am not making money from this.  (I am, however, having a great deal of fun.)
A/N: Thanks to wendymr  for being so agreeable about doing a late-night Brit-pick.


I'm a steam boiler engineer.  The arsehole guards call me 'the plumber'.  They can't 'discipline' the techs, but they've got ways to make life miserable for a bloke who works all over the ship.  Complaining would just make it worse.

The idiots joke about dripping taps.  Steam makes them think of kettles, but at 50 PSI steam becomes a different beast.  Today, Jack Harkness broke a pipe and aimed it at a guard.   The bastard's alive -- pity, that -- covered with second-degree burns.

I could have warned him: anything under pressure is always more dangerous when it gets loose.

Comments

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

another great one

(have to say though that at first I thought it was Jack with the burns - but I blame that on me!)

[lindenharp.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Jack probably caught some of the steam, but not the worst, and the burns would have been cured the next time he died.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

Jack always strikes me as far more dangerous than he lets on. Like if I had to choose between pissing off the Doctor and pissing off Jack, I'd take the Doctor.

[lindenharp.livejournal.com]

I agree. And if the Doctor decides to kill you, it's likely to be something relatively quick like blowing up your planet.

[canaana.livejournal.com]

The Doctor's more likely to kill you by accident. Jack'd do it on purpose.

[lindenharp.livejournal.com]

Wellllll... yes. But we were talking about the conseuences of pissing them off. If the Doctor decides to kill you, it will generally be as uick as the circumstances allow. Usually, he blows something up. Jack might tke his time if he were sufficiently angry. He said in "Countrycide" that he'd been trained in torture, and I don't think that was a bluff.

[canaana.livejournal.com]

I guess I see the Doctor as less likely to kill you because you pissed him off. Poke fun of you, yeah. Come up with some more inventive punishment, sure. But kill you? Not his style.

On the other hand, for just that reason, I'd take my chances pissing Jack off before the Doctor. Between "Countrycide" and "Family of Blood," I'd risk Jack any day. There are fates worse than death.

Not that second degree burns sound like any fun. *wrygrin*

[kensieg.livejournal.com]

Great! Jack is at core a soldier. He has a lot of unexpressed rage. I think that he's experienced a lot more emotionally painful things than the Doctor has. I think he has as much guilt as the Doctor has.

[lindenharp.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure you should underestimate the guilt that the Doctor feels over the Time War. For the other points, I agree, especially since the escape attempt occurs just a few days before the end of the Year. At this point, Jack has been killed hundreds of times.

Thanks for commenting.

[kensieg.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that Jack has more guilt than the Doctor. Only that he has as much. Personal guilt can be quite as debilitating as that resulting from a public source.

Jack's guilt over his brother and over surviving his comrade in arms is quite strong. Jack has survivor's guilt as well as the Doctor. He lost his home, his family and his first comrade in arms. Jack's guilt is a difference in degree not kind from the Doctor's.

Jack is as unmoored (Unstuck in Time) as the Doctor.