Another Day, Another Elephant (2/4)

[amberfocus]

Title:  Another Day, Another Elephant (2/4)
Author:  Amberfocus
Characters/Pairings:  Nine/Rose, Jack Harkness
Genre:  Action/Adventure, Romance
Rating:  Teen
Beta: amyo67
Warning:  Discussion of violent punishment for criminal offenses.
Summary:  Jack's missing--and there's an elephant in the console room.  Is it just a silly prank or is there something far more serious going on than meets the eye?
A/N:  Written for the Hearts in Time Summer Adventure Ficathon.

Previous chapter:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/278006.html

Chapter Two

 

 

Jack Harkness was not having a good day. It had started out well enough the previous night. Rose had wanted to sleep as was the wont of most 21^st century humans and the Doctor had repairs to tend to and when Jack had offered to help he’d gotten a most emphatic bugger off. He hadn’t been with the Doctor and Rose long and he knew the Time Lord still didn’t quite trust him, so he’d wandered into the city looking for a pint and a lover and he’d managed to find both at the same establishment.

 

The trouble started when the woman he’d hooked up with, a beautiful redhead by the musical name of Marésa, who happened to be a trader, and he had gotten up that morning. Well, woken up at any rate, because of the loud pounding on the door. It was not quite the leisurely day in bed that the two of them had been hoping for and the panic in the woman’s violet eyes told him there’d likely be no getting back to more of the same from the night before. He sighed. She’d been quite an inventive lover for a Calidesh, and that was saying something for a race known for its creativity. Her particular species was a lot more bendy than humans and it had made for some interesting and extremely pleasurable positions that he’d been quite eager to try again.

 

The people on the other side of the door had been determined not to let that happen, their anger practically radiating through the thin wooden door. She’d shoved something at Jack, something small and rather adorable that fit in the palm of his hand. It looked like the perfect toy, a purple elephant the size of a kitten. It had taken him a moment to realize it was alive. “Please, Jack, don’t let them have her. She’s just a baby and they’ll kill her. I imported her without a license.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I have my reasons.”

 

“Not good enough, Marésa,” Jack said.

 

“These creatures are being hunted to extinction just because of what they are on their home planet and that prejudice holds galaxy wide. But look at her. She’s harmless. What could this creature possibly do that would harm a fly?” I’ll meet you at the back of the saloon once I get away. Put her somewhere they can’t hurt her. They’ll kill her just for being unlicensed. They have very stringent import laws here.”

 

The argument had been sound to his ears. A lot of planets were overly cautious about what they’d let aliens bring onto the surface. As far as he could tell the creature was a simple pet. The animal snuggled against him and let out a soft little trumpeting noise. The pounding on the door became more insistent and Marésa looked at him desperately.

 

“Please, Jack. I’ll distract them and you get her somewhere safe.” 

 

Jack had nodded and slipped the creature into his shirt. “What’s she eat?”

 

“It’s not a good idea for you to feed her, Jack. We shouldn’t be separated long enough for you need to, anyway. I’ll have her back in time to see to her needs,” Marésa said.

 

“Just in case. I don’t want the poor thing starving to death on my watch,” he told her.

 

“Only if you have to, okay? Fruit, vegetables, hay, bamboo,” Marésa reeled off. “The adults have been used to clear forests on some planets. Pretty much any vegetation will do actually, but they prefer the fruit and veg and hay. And plenty of water.”

 

“You sure you don’t need any help with them?” Jack asked nodding to the door.

 

“If I don’t have the creature on me, there is no evidence I broke any laws. They can arrest me but they can’t hold me for more than a couple of hours. That’s more than enough time for you to hide her somewhere safe.” She shoved a long tendril of her gorgeous hair out of her face and looked at him anxiously.

 

 “Okay, sweetheart. I have just the place. It’s impenetrable to those who don’t belong there. See you when you get away.” Jack headed for the window, slipping easily over the sill and dropping onto the porch roof beneath him.

 

“Hold on,” he heard Marésa call out loudly to the person behind the door. “I’m getting dressed.”

 

He dropped to the ground and legged it back to the TARDIS, one hand holding the animal against his heartbeat. Despite what the woman had said, he wasn’t heartless enough to not feed the creature. He’d hunted up a container that passed for a feed trough in one of the many TARDIS closets and an old-fashioned basin he’d filled with water. The size of the trough was ridiculous in comparison to the elephant, but the little thing managed to use its trunk to easily scale the side of it and pull itself in. Satisfied that the animal would be perfectly safe he went to find the Doctor and tell him what was going on.

 

Unfortunately there was no sign of the Time Lord. It was early enough that Rose was probably still sleeping. He headed back to the console room and asked the TARDIS if she could help him locate the missing man. The monitor flicked on and Jack was surprised to see Rose’s room. The girl was fast asleep in her bed, but what surprised him was that the Doctor was sitting in the overstuffed arm chair in her room, a book opened and ignored on his lap as he watched her slumber. He’d often thought the two of them should get a room, had almost said it aloud a time or two, but this wasn’t exactly what he’d meant. He wondered if Rose knew the Doctor watched her. This could be interesting blackmail material the next time the Doctor got on his high horse.

 

Well, he was not interrupting that tableau. Whatever was going on with the man, he’d embarrass him in private, not in front of Rose. He knew better than to ever make the Doctor look bad in front of Rose. Though with the bad case of hero worship the girl had it might just be impossible that anything could do that. It’d be a tough call. Humans of Rose’s time valued their privacy, but then again, those two thought absolutely nothing about being more tightly inside each other’s personal space than a pair of lovers. Which they were not. He’d asked Rose. He’d not had the courage at the time to ask the Doctor.

 

He’d made up his mind to go and meet up with Marésa, figuring the Doctor would just have to deal with the little creature on his ship until Jack could return her to the trader. He’d petted the little elephant before leaving. She’d curled her trunk around his hand affectionately. He noticed with no small degree of shock that half the food in the trough was already gone. That little girl could eat! He chuckled to himself as it brought to mind the way Rose tucked into her food after an adventure. He’d best keep that thought to himself. He’d likely get a smack if he voiced it. Even though he liked a girl with a healthy appetite and the curves to match it, no woman would take a comparison with an elephant of any size lightly.

 

As he’d left he’d heard an odd popping sound behind him and when he turned around he saw that the elephant had fallen out of the trough and into the water basin. As she hit the water he heard the popping noise again and saw her literally double in size. His eyes widened and he began to wonder if this was what Marésa had meant by it not being a good idea to feed her. He’d run all the way back to the saloon just in time to see the woman arrested, and as he’d been seen fleeing the premises earlier, he’d been taken into custody, too.

 

The rest of his morning had been spent in a jail cell with the trader. She wasn’t particularly a shy woman and they’d managed to make love on the thin mattress, her long robes neatly hiding their actual activity from the camera in the corner. Not that he’d have cared, but he knew that too flagrant a disregard of their jailors might be a bad idea. It didn’t occur to him, as attracted as he was to the woman, that he might be committing another crime in doing so. A couple hours later he and Marésa had been taken before the magistrate, discovered some stringent upgrades to the laws had been made in the past three years that were not promising towards the outcome of their trial, and he found out exactly what the charges for importing an unlicensed and first level dangerous life form carried. He was lucky he was simply being considered an accomplice. It was a severe punishment, but not as much as the one for public copulation.

 

Jack had tried to argue that sex in a locked but unguarded jail cell hardly constituted public but the magistrate was not amused. So now he found himself in the middle of the town square with a small sonic weapon he’d had hidden in a temporal pocket held steadily on a man with a whip who’d been about to flog Marésa, who’d been stripped to the waist and tied over a wooden pommel horse. Her punishment had been handed down as one hundred lashes. Eighty for the illegal import of the dangerous, unlicensed animal, and twenty for public copulation. He knew she wouldn’t survive even the first eighty of her sentence, knew she wasn’t meant to, with the vicious cat-o-nine tails the punisher held in his hands. It was public execution as deterrent in a horrible and gruesome way.

 

He would likely survive the thirty he’d been handed down with his enhanced 51st century healing genes, but he didn’t want to chance it with the well muscled enforcer wielding that weapon of destructive force. No one deserved to go like that. “You know, for a civilized planet, if you want to kill someone there are humane methods.”

 

“Your lover should have thought of that before bringing that animal here,” sneered the magistrate.

 

“So you don’t even pretend she’ll live?” he asked.

 

The man shrugged. “It is my job to pass sentence, his to carry it out without prejudice. I cannot help the outcome if she dies. She knew the laws and broke them anyway.”

 

“But it’s just a harmless pet!” Jack protested.

 

“There is nothing harmless about the Calidesh elephant,” he replied back. “Your ignorance makes me question your guilt in this matter.”

 

“You sure weren’t questioning it back in the courtroom.”

 

“You had your turn to speak.”

 

“No, I didn’t!” he said. “You know damn well that I didn’t.”

 

“Ignorance of our laws is no excuse for breaking them,” he said with a sharp bark of laughter. “Punishment will be carried out.”

 

“Excuse me,” came a harsh Northern accent from the edge of the crowd, ringing loudly and silencing the murmur of the spectators. “I’m not so ignorant of your laws. And I do not believe this man had the representative of his choice for which he is entitled.”

 

“A mere formality.”

 

“Like filling out import papers?” the Doctor asked.

 

“Point taken.”

 

“I want this man retried. I’ll act as his counsel.”

 

“You do know that the representative of each criminal shares in his punishment if he fails to win his case?” the magistrate asked.

 

“Doctor!” Rose gasped. Jack cursed silently. He’d hoped Rose would be well out of this mess. He should have known she wouldn’t be waiting patiently back in the TARDIS with the elephant.

 

“I said I know your laws.”

 

“Very well. I’ll humor you and hold a new trial. But I do not think it will change the outcome.”

 

“It sounds to me like the court is prejudiced,” Rose said. The man’s eyes snapped around and focused on the girl and Jack groaned. “Your honor,” she added.

 

Before the magistrate could say anything to Rose, Jack asked, “And what of the woman?”

 

“Her, too,” said the Doctor. He walked to the woman and shrugged off his leather jacket, covering her nakedness. “This ends now.”

 

“I will grant a twenty-four hour delay of the inevitable while you peruse the evidence, but I think you’ll find, as I did, that despite minor inconsistencies with their defense, they are both guilty as sin.”

 

Ch. 3:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/281048.html