Doctor Who: "Waiting for the Sun (a romance in two universes)" (1/1)
Title: Waiting for the Sun (a romance in two universes)
Characters: Jack, Eleven, Martha, Rita (from The God Complex), River
Pairings: Eleven/Jack; side pairings of Jack/Rita, Eleven/River
Rating: Adult
Warning: Children in distress
Summary: In the paradox timeline, everything is broken and little is certain, but Jack knows one thing for sure: he has to find the Doctor. In the restored timeline, the Doctor is supposed to be dead, but there's one man he knows he can trust with the secret of his life.
Notes: A gift written for
sahiya for the
wintercompanion fic exchange. Thanks to
wojelah for the beta. Click here for a fanmix of songs I listened to while writing this fic.
Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends
- “Old Friends” by Simon & Garfunkel
I. The Eternal Now
This is what I know.
I know my name. I have more than one name, but Captain Jack Harkness is the most important. I don’t know how I came by this name, or why it’s more important than the others, but I know it, and I love how it feels on my tongue.
I know that the universe is not as it should be. There is only one eternal moment, 5:02 p.m. on the 22nd of April, but somehow I know that time is supposed to be an entire dimension, not a freeze frame. I even have the equations to prove it. Sometimes I show these equations to people I meet, to show them that the world could be something other than what it is, but almost none of them understand.
I know that there are oceans of love and desire beneath my skin, vast beyond my own awareness. The desire and the love spill over to encompass most people I meet. I share the desire with everyone who says yes yes please, and I share the love with anyone who needs it, even if they’re too shy or broken ask for it.
It’s because of all the love that I couldn’t hold back even if I wanted to that I end up collecting strays: escapees from a Japanese internment camp, survivors of a spaceship crash, a Silurian baby left on a snowy hillside to die. They travel with me until they find a place for themselves, and I protect them, because another thing I know is how to hurt people. How to make them stop. I’m good at it. I try not to think about why that is. I only hurt people who try to hurt my strays, though. It doesn’t matter if they hurt me, because I heal fast, but my strays are so easily broken.
Some part of me knows that I am a stray myself. Sometimes I meet other strays, and in the ocean of love inside me there’s a current that flows toward them, because there’s another man who collects us.
I meet a woman named Martha Jones on the Silk Road. She pulls a cart full of medical supplies and stops when she sees Hinata Sato with her badly splinted leg riding on a mule. “Is your leg hurting you?” she says.
Hinata nods. Martha introduces herself and says she’s a doctor. We all stop and watch as Martha gives Hinata painkillers and makes a better splint for her leg. When they see her gentle manner, everyone lines up for a medical exam. She can’t help the Silurian baby, not knowing enough of its biology, but everyone else benefits from her kindness.
“And how about you, mister?” she asks me, when she notices I’m the only one who didn’t come to her for healing. “Anything I can do for you?”
“That’s Captain,” I say with a grin, extending my hand. “Captain Jack Harkness. And I’m sure there’s plenty you could do for me, but nothing medical.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” says Martha. “Take off your shirt.”
“You didn’t need a medical exam to get me to do that, Dr. Jones,” I say, shedding my dust-streaked shirt.
“Might as well get a nice view while I’m at it,” Martha says appreciatively, adding a little extra caress when she presses the stethoscope to my chest.
I smile, and the rush of affection is more than I usually feel when a pretty lady touches my chest, which is saying something. “You’re a stray,” I say. “Like me.”
Martha takes the stethoscope from her ears and looks at me. “What?”
“There’s a man who collects us. The strays.” I realize something, and with a thoughtful frown, I add, “But he doesn’t call us that.”
“Companions,” says Martha. “That’s what the Doctor calls us.”
The Doctor and his companions. Yes. I still can’t see his face in my mind’s eye, but now I know the difference between the Doctor with his companions and me with my strays. I collect strays to protect them, but the Doctor has companions so they can go on adventures together, and become more than what they are. I keep my strays from harm, us against the world. But the Doctor makes his companions better. That means that Martha and I have a bond. We are both better people because of the Doctor.
“Do you know where the Doctor is? Could he help them?” I ask Martha, gesturing to the strays.
“Of course he could,” says Martha. “I’ll tell you how to find him. But first, I’m finishing your exam, and then I have something to tell Hinata and her husband.”
We flirt our way through the rest of the medical exam, and Martha gives me a clean bill of health. She finds Daisuke and Hinata Sato again and says, “Do you have any children?”
“Yes,” says Daisuke. “A daughter. But we don’t know where she is, or even her name. We dream about her.”
“Does Toshiko ring any bells?” says Martha.
“Oh!” Hinata cries, clutching her hands to her chest. “Yes! That’s our girl! How could we not know?”
“That’s the way it is for most,” says Martha. “I don’t know anyone in my family either. But I do know where your daughter is. She’s the Hacker Princess of New Tokyo, and her underground palace is sure to have a suite for you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Jones,” says Daisuke. “But we don’t know the way to New London, and we have nothing more than the clothes on our backs and this old mule.”
“I can take you there,” says Martha. “People pay me for my healing, when they can, and anyone on the road who tries to hurt you will have to go through me.”
The Satos bow to Martha, tears of gratitude glistening in their eyes.
“But before we go,” says Martha, “let me tell Jack how to get to the Tower of London.”
“The Tower of London? Why there?” says Kaede, one of the internment camp survivors. She has good reason to be skeptical: the Allies of World War II are not kind to her people.
“We’re not going to meet the Queen, or anyone else in the British government,” I say. “We’re going to meet the Doctor, a man who helps people who have nowhere else to turn. No one’s going to lock you up again, Kaede, not if I can help it. But it’s your choice, of course. Anyone who wants to go with Dr. Jones and the Satos to New London can make that choice now.”
“I’ll go with you, Captain,” says Kaede, pressing the swaddled Silurian baby to her chest. “Not for my sake, but for this forsaken child’s.”
Two of the Japanese escapees, and one of the space-wreck survivors, choose to go with Martha and the Satos. Martha tells me the way to the Tower of London. Before she goes, Martha kisses me on the mouth. “I’ve seen you before,” she says against my lips, “and I’ll see you again.”
I don’t understand what she’s saying. Then some part of my brain is reminded that not all verbs are in the present tense, that the past and the future my equations tell me must exist can also be expressed in language. The past is what I should already know, and the future is what I can’t know. So how can Martha be so sure about the future, if it exists at all?
Martha must see how lost I am, because she says, “The Doctor will fix this. All of this. The world will go back to the way it should be.”
“You have a lot of faith,” I tell her. I have no faith in the future. I can’t know the way things will be, or the person I’ll be when the universe is back the way it should. I know how to kill people, and I don’t know why. Is killing in my future? My past? If that’s so, I don’t want time to unfreeze. I have no faith in time. But for some reason, I have faith in the Doctor.
“If I do have faith,” says Martha, “then it’s because there are people like you.” And she sets off down the Silk Road with her cart in tow.
I pick up more strays on the way to London. I rescue a couple, Craig and Sophie, who for some reason are in Siberia without any cold-weather clothes. I take in a group of young people rejected by their village because they’re programmed Flesh instead of biologically evolved humans. I meet Rita Afzal, who isn’t a stray, but who travels with us as our doctor for a while. I let my desire flow into her, and hers into me, because she’s beautiful, and she keeps my strays whole, and she lets me thank her for it with my body.
Like Martha, Rita has faith. She believes in Allah, and does all her healing in his honor. I ask her if the universe exists as her god intends it should be.
“No,” says Rita. “The world is not the way it is written in the holy book. But I must keep on with my work, even in an imperfect world.”
Rita isn’t one of the Doctor’s companions, but I think he would like her a lot.
We pass through Egypt, where the pharaoh is an android and hydroelectric plants sip power from the Nile. River Song finds me and my company in a narrow street in Cairo, scarfing down pitas and baba ghanoush. She prowls down the street in a black catsuit, a patch over one eye, her ginger-blonde curls a wild corona around her face.
I don’t know River, but she greets me by name without an introduction. “Captain Jack Harkness, as I live and breathe,” she says, sizing him up. “Ooh, but you do live up to the stories, don’t you?”
“Depends who’s telling the stories,” I say, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, I hear lots of stories about you. Two of my agents, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones, are such fans.”
The names stir tidal forces inside me, love that roars through me strongly enough to drown out the bustle of the street. “Who are you?” I say.
“River Song,” she says, “a friend of the Doctor.” I know then that she loves him. Not the way I do, because love shifts, flows, runs deep, and is never the same between two people, or even within one person. Again, I feel that connection between us. The Doctor makes us better, and we love him.
“Well, there’s a coincidence,” I say. “We’re on our way to see him.”
River’s confident mask shatters, and she stares at me wide-eyed. “You know where he is?”
“Yeah. He’s in the Tower of London.”
River swears softly to herself. “All right. Well, now we can bring him in.”
“Bring him in?” I say sharply.
“Jack,” River says. “The Doctor is dying. I want to help him.”
My mouth fills with a bitter taste. I want the Doctor to help my strays, but he needs help too. How could I not think of that? Am I so selfish that I put what I want before what the Doctor needs? “How can I help?” I ask.
“You already do,” says River. “You always do. But please, go to him. Tell him that whenever he needs you, you’re there. Tell him it’s worth any cost. That’s all you need to do.”
“Of course,” I tell her. “That’s what I always say to him.”
“Good. Stubborn as he is, he listens to you.” River studies him. “I’m glad that he loves you.”
I choke on a mouthful of baba ghanoush. I love the Doctor, but the Doctor’s love is like the future: something I can’t know.
“He tells the best stories about you,” says River. “And the saddest.”
“You love him too, don’t you?”
River smiles wistfully. “How could I not?”
“I know what you mean. I collect strays in honor of him. But what do you do, River Song?”
“I fight enemies of the Doctor,” she says. “I keep them prisoner. I do whatever I can to keep the Doctor alive.”
“But not by yourself.”
“What are you saying, Captain?”
“Some of my strays might want to help you. Why don’t you introduce yourself to them?”
She does, and in the end Rita and two others decide to join her. I kiss Rita goodbye. “You’re in good hands with River,” I say.
“And your lost ones are in good hands with you,” says Rita.
We continue our journey. Craig and Sophie leave us and join a traveling troupe of good-natured nerds called LINDA. In France, Madame de Pompadour and other high members of the French court join us, fleeing the 25th century neo-Marxists who terrorize the palaces and castles. I turn no one away, even though the nobles complain about the effect of travel on their fine clothes.
By the time we reach Lille, we have a hovercraft big enough to hold everyone. I navigate the hovercraft over the English Channel, wondering why I’m such a natural at this. When we get to England, we stop for food and water, then continue to London.
Like every other city in the world, London is a chaotic mix of architecture, from Stone Age to Roman to Nanotech Age. Over it all hang scuds of heavy cloud. I dodge blimps, carbon-fiber skyscrapers, and other hovercraft, until I reach the Tower of London, pointing up like an accusing finger. I feel guilty, somehow, like I belong there with all the other prisoners, even though as far as I know there’s no reason I deserve it. Maybe I’m just afraid of the power of killing in my hands, and what that says about me.
Prisoners. Yes, of course, the Tower of London is a prison. But why would the Doctor be in prison?
I land the hovercraft in Belgravia Square. Our group is ragtag amidst all the finery, Reinette’s and her companion’s royal clothing long since dust-streaked and torn. We shiver as the grey sky spits down clumps of snow. Men in top hats and warm coats turn their noses up at us as we pass by.
Two Roman centurions stand guard at the entrance to the Tower. “State your name and purpose,” they say.
“I’m Captain Jack Harkness, and these are the people under my protection. We’ve come to see the Doctor.”
“Send word to Emperor Churchill,” one centurion says to the other. Then, to me, he says, “Wait here.”
We huddle together, relying on each other’s body heat to keep off the snowy chill. I can hear teeth begin to chatter as the snow begins to seep into our shabby clothing.
The centurion comes back with two Beefeaters in tow, looking a little ridiculous but very grand and warm in their red coats. They’re our escort into the Tower. I flirt with them all the way in, covering my relief as my strays relax in the blessedly climate-controlled building.
The inside of the tower has the same mix of technology and architecture as the world outside. The Beefeaters bring us to an interrogation room (and it gives me a sick lurch when I know what that is.) I look in through the one-way glass before going in.
There’s a young man there in tattered clothes, with dull dark hair and a scruff of beard across his chin. He looks like one of my strays. I want to ask the Beefeaters who he is, but the man looks up at the glass, and I see his eyes. They’re far too old for his face.
I know the Doctor changes his face. When I picture him, I see dark brown eyes and steel blue. What they have in common is their depth, a feeling that you could fall into them for a thousand years before you hit bottom. This man’s hazel-brown eyes have that too. I press my hand to the glass and drink in the sight of him. “Would you mind if I spoke with him alone first?” I say, my voice thick.
“Go ahead,” says a Beefeater.
“I’m not asking you,” I say, looking meaningfully at my group of strays.
“Go to him,” says Madame de Pompadour. “We’ll have our turn.”
No one disagrees. I take it as a blessing. I open the door to the interrogation room.
“Jack,” the Doctor says, rising from his chair. “Where’s your coat?”
I blink, caught off guard. But then, I shouldn’t be surprised. The one thing I can always expect from the Doctor is the unexpected. “I don’t have one,” I manage to say. If I did have one, I’d give it to one of the strays, anyway.
“That’s a shame,” says the Doctor. “I like the coat. I think the coat likes you too. It sort of…” He gestures toward me, suggesting with his hands a shape surrounding me. “Embraces you.”
“I may not have the coat,” I say, recalling the blue sweep of it even as I speak, “but I have you.” I draw him into a hug, and find as I do that I’m nervous. I’m never nervous about embracing people, but when it comes to the Doctor, I am. It’s because of the Doctor’s heart, and how unknowable it is. I know love well, having so much of it in myself, but in the Doctor it becomes mysterious, distant, lost down the deep wells of his eyes.
But there’s no need to worry. The Doctor hugs awkwardly but earnestly, almost elbowing me in the ribs before he settles his hands on my shoulder blades, rubbing a little at the threadbare fabric of my shirt. I can feel his cool breath on the back of my neck.
“You’re a good hugger,” the Doctor says. “Very smooth, good grip. I ought to get hugging lessons from you.”
“Anytime,” I say, and pull out of the hug, even though I don’t really want to.
The Doctor maintains a gentle grip on my shoulders. “I never thought you’d find me,” he says. “No one’s been able to find me. Just Emperor Churchill, so he could lock me up in this tower.”
“It couldn’t happen any other way,” I say. “I need your help. And I need to help you.”
“You need to help me? Why?”
I don’t know how to explain it, so I just say, “Because that’s the way it works with us.”
The Doctor nods, slowly. “All right. What do you need me for?”
“I collect strays, Doctor. Lost people who don’t know their place in the world. Like you do. But I can’t help them like you can. They’re outside. Can you talk to them? Just talk, and do what you can.”
“I’m a prisoner, Jack. There’s not much I can do.”
“I can break you out.”
“I know you can. You’ve done it before.”
“Before?” The word is hard to grasp.
“Listen,” the Doctor says. “The universe is not the way it ought to be. You know that by now.”
I nod, thinking of my equations, about past and future and the nature of time.
“I’m going to fix it. I’m going to put things right. This entire universe will be undone. No one will know that it ever existed.”
“How?” I ask. “Can I help?”
The Doctor pauses. “Find a woman named River Song. Tell her where I am. Tell her I’m waiting.”
“I know River Song. She knows where you are, from me.”
“Good. You were right to trust her. I can only hope she trusted you,” the Doctor says. “But don’t you see? It doesn’t matter if I help these people you’ve brought. Once the universe is put back together, all of their suffering in this universe will be erased. Forgotten. They’ll all be back where they ought to be.”
“What you’re talking about…” I don’t want to admit I don’t understand, so I say, “I can’t grasp it. It’s too uncertain. What I do know is that the people outside this room are lost, now. They need hope, now. And even if time is rewritten, even if everything they’ve been through disappears into nothingness - doesn’t their pain still matter?”
The Doctor seems stricken by my words, much more so than I would expect. “Yes, of course,” he says, staring into my eyes, his voice choked with pain. “Thank you for reminding me. Bring them in.”
I leave the room and let the strays go in alone or in groups, as they choose. I study their faces after they speak to him. Some look pensive. Some steal glances at me. Some cry. But most leave the Tower with a look of purpose.
After everyone’s had a chance, I go back in the room. “What can you do for them?” I say.
“Nothing you haven’t already done,” the Doctor says.
“What do you mean?”
“Kaede has always wanted to be a mother. Did you know that? On some level you must have, because you put the Silurian baby in her care. She thought she’d never get to raise a child because she’s not interested in relationships. But now she has Tatsuya, and he has someone who cares for him.
Yasir has felt helpless ever since he was taken by the Ransomers. You taught him how to fish and find plants good to eat. You taught him how to ride a horse and take a fall without breaking bones. He doesn’t feel so helpless anymore.
And Reinette. Reinette Poisson, with dreams beyond her station. She thought she wanted power, but really what she wanted was to see the world and experience it all for herself. You gave her that in spades. Jack, you traveled with these people to places they’d never been before, and you’ve made them better. They’ve come closer to the people they want to be.” The Doctor leans toward me, and smiles. “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“That can’t be right. I can’t do for them what you do for me.”
“And why not?”
“I am who I am because of you. You create me. You’re like some kind of crucible. I can’t possibly change them the way you change me.”
“That’s not true,” the Doctor says. “I didn’t create you. You made yourself who you are.” He taps me in the chest. “I just gave you a push.”
The ocean of love that fills my body forms mighty waves against the inside of my chest, threatening to break through the barrier of my skin. This is why I love him: he looks into me and sees everything good and worthwhile in me, even though I can’t see it myself. I want to open myself up to him, to bare everything, so I don’t have to worry whether anything inside myself is tainted. If he knows everything about me and still believes in me, then I have nothing left to fear.
“I know how to kill people,” I say. “Do you know why?”
“Do you kill people?”
“No. I hurt them, sometimes, but only if they threaten my strays.”
“Then why does it matter?”
“Because I need to understand. I have to hold it back, when I fight.” I flex my hands and stare down at them, thinking of what they can do.
“In the universe-that-should-be,” the Doctor says gently, “you fought in a war when you were a boy. It’s hard to forget how to kill, when you learn so young.”
I laugh shakily. “I think I’m scared of the universe-that-should-be. What kind of man am I?”
“The same kind of man you are here. Brave, loyal, quick to love.”
“I can be all that and a killer?”
“You believe I’m a good man,” the Doctor says, “and I’m a killer too.”
“I know you are,” I insist.
“What will you do now?” the Doctor asks.
I freeze up. I don’t know what to do. My strays are here. I’m with the Doctor. I don’t know what else there is. I’m a stray again; I don’t know where I belong.
“There are school groups that come in for tours,” the Doctor says, almost conversationally, but I can tell there’s something more. “The children learn all about the kings and traitors locked up in here. Morbid, if you ask me, but I’m hardly a history teacher, more of a history do-er. There was a Welsh boy here. He stopped to talk to me. Very nice fellow, loves airplanes. Learned a thing or two about airplanes from him. But here’s the funny bit. He mentioned how much he misses his Uncle Jack who gives him airplane rides. Wears a coat from the Royal Air Force, just like the real thing from World War II.”
I stare at the Doctor. A terrible tenderness grows behind my eyes, so full of longing it hurts. He kisses me on the forehead, his lips a light brush but his grip fierce, like I’m the most fragile thing in the universe.
I caress his face, just to be sure he’s real. Then I leave the Tower, because the Doctor’s right.
There’s a place where I need to be.
II. Home for Next Year
When the universe was right again, the first person the Doctor had to thank was River. She was serving a prison sentence for him, after all. That had been exhilarating (“the universe is even more beautiful than you’d promised me it would be,” she said) and sexy (“I’m going to kiss you all over ‘til you scream,” she said) and heartbreaking (“the Singing Towers of Dorillium!” she said.)
The next person he had to thank was Jack.
It was for what he’d done in the paradox universe. But if he was honest with himself, it was also for standing by him for so many years, even when (especially when) he hadn’t deserved it.
It was the easiest thing in the world to track him down. The TARDIS had made her peace with Jack during the process of healing from the Master’s depredations, but she could hardly forget how he burned like a magnesium flare in the dark vastness of space.
Before he opened the door, the Doctor paused, wondering which Jack he would find, and where he would be. Would he be a Time Agent, a man who hadn’t found his name and didn’t know the Doctor? A disaffected con man in Pompeii? A bitter Torchwood agent waiting for the secret of his immortality? The broken man he’d bidden farewell in a 51st century bar? Or another Jack, unimaginably older than the Doctor himself?
The Doctor hoped, selfishly, that it would be a Jack who knew him. But then, it didn’t really matter. The Jack he’d met in the paradox world River created was a summation of the man at every point in his timeline, compressed into a single frozen moment. Everything he wanted to thank Jack for - his loyalty, his dedication, his care for the unnoticed and unloved of the universe - that existed in any version of Jack he might find on the other side of the door. So, with no more delay, he opened it.
He stepped out onto silver snow, a soft carpet made of moonlight. More silver flakes fell from a dark, lightly clouded sky. The only light came from the stars and the lanterns glowing on the street beyond this narrow alley. The Doctor tasted the air, metallic with a frisson of ionization, and he knew exactly when and where he was.
It was Winterdark on Iothani.
Iothani was a moon orbiting a gas giant in a binary star system. It was rare for the sky to be truly dark, empty of its mother planet and its two suns. But one of those dark skies fell every winter, and the Ka’iotha called it Winterdark.
The Doctor stepped out from the alley to the street. It was empty. He supposed the Ka’iotha, accustomed to constant light, preferred to stay inside where their lanterns burned bright against the dark. Somewhere down the street, he heard the high-pitched voices of children. He walked toward the sound, and discovered that the street was not so empty after all.
There was a groundcrawler, the preferred vehicle on Iothani, parked on the side of the street. The back of the groundcrawler was open, covered with a tarp to keep off the snow. It had warm clothing, sleeping bags, and a huge pot of soup that sent up curls of steam in the cold air. Gathered around the back of the groundcrawler were Ka’iotha children, some clothed and drinking soup through their long, delicate trunks, some still naked and shivering.
Sitting in the back of the groundcrawler was Captain Jack, cleaning a child’s bleeding hoof with disinfectant. As the Doctor watched, Jack bandaged the hoof and laid a blanket over the child so it could rest a while.
Jack stepped out from under the tarp to break up a fight between two children. The Doctor came closer. Three children in hats and fuzzy leg warmers noticed him as he approached.
“Cashen! Cashen!” they cried. “There’s an alien just like you!”
Jack turned to face him. Silver snow dusted his hair, greatcoat, and eyelashes. He stared in wonder and disbelief, as if he were a mirage made of starlight.
I’ve failed him, the Doctor thought. I’ve failed him so many times that he can’t even believe I’ve come for him. But still he looks at me that way, like he’s seen water in the desert and he can’t quite believe it.
So for that reason (and lots of other reasons, but he wasn’t going to waste his time thinking of all of them) he pulled Jack close and kissed him.
Jack’s mouth parted easily, but the Doctor didn’t push, just kissing him sweetly and gently, with soft slow caresses of lips and tongue. The Doctor didn’t think he was a very good kisser in this body to start, but he must have got some good practice in with River, because he could feel Jack go a little weak in his arms.
“Cashen, why are you and the other alien pressing mouthparts together?” said one of the children.
They both broke the kiss, laughing a little against each other’s mouths. The Doctor turned to the child and said, “The Captain and I are friends. That’s how I show him that I like him very much.”
“What’s your name?” another child demanded.
“I’m the Doctor.”
Several children repeated, “Dothor!” The Doctor realized why they called Jack “Cashen” - they couldn’t pronounce the hard T in Captain.
“What was that for?” Jack said.
“Well, it sounded like the children wanted to know why we were doing something so puzzling and unhygienic.”
“No, the kiss.”
“Oh. Does it have to be for something?” the Doctor said. “I owed you that, and a lot more besides.”
“No you didn’t,” said Jack.
The Doctor wanted to contradict him, to say no, I do owe you, and you can’t even let yourself have that, but he admitted, “You’re right. Kissing isn’t the sort of thing you owe. But I wanted to. I’ve wanted to for a long time, actually, but I was very busy being noble and tormented and I never seemed to find the time.”
“What changed?”
The Doctor smiled a little. “I got old.”
“Come here,” said Jack, guiding him toward the tarp. “Let’s get out of the snow.” They sat in the back of the groundcrawler. Jack positioned himself next to the soup pot, ready to break up any fights over who got to eat first. He directed the children to form up in queues, one for the soup and one for clothes. The Doctor found himself in charge of handing out clothes. They settled into a rhythm, Jack calling for the line to move, the Doctor giving out hats and leg warmers.
Soon, all the children were clothed and fed. Some gathered and sang songs. Others played in the snow. A few just stared up at the dark sky.
“Is there any place they can take shelter?” the Doctor asked Jack.
Jack shook his head. “Not everyone has a place to go on Winterdark.” He adjusted a folded stack of sleeping bags. “The best I can do is set them up under storefronts that keep off the snow.”
“And what about you, Jack? Have you got a place to go?”
“If I did, I’d let them all stay there.” Jack gave the Doctor that look again, like perhaps he’d dreamed him. The Doctor looked into his eyes and saw so much that was broken there. “I thought you were dead.”
Guilt flooded the Doctor. He’d failed Jack again. He didn’t want the universe to know he’d survived Lake Silencio, but surely he could have trusted Jack with the secret. “Oh, Jack,” he breathed. “How long?”
“A year,” Jack said. “A Time Agent told me.”
“Let them go on thinking that. Let everyone think I’m gone. It’s better that way. But you, Jack. I should never have let you go through that. I owe you a year.”
“A year of traveling with you?”
“No,” the Doctor said. “Of course not. You can come aboard the TARDIS any time, and stay as long as you like. I owe you a year of my life. Just give the word and I’ll spend it however you’d like.”
“That’s too much,” jack protested. “I can’t tell you how to spend a year of your life.”
“A year isn’t so long for an immortal,” the Doctor said, “as you ought to know.”
“You’re not immortal,” Jack said. “You can die.”
That was when the Doctor realized that Jack must have worried about this ever since he learned that his immortality was irreversible. He feared that one day he would live long enough to see the Doctor die.
“If I die, you’ll know,” the Doctor promised. “There’ll be a messenger. Perhaps you’ll even be there.”
“If I were there, I wouldn’t let you die,” Jack said.
“That’s not always possible,” said the Doctor, thinking of Lake Silencio, and how close he’d come. Jack wouldn’t have been able to take his place, there.
The children’s play was slowing down. The songs had become soft and fragmented. Some of the younger children were already asleep on their feet. “Let’s put them to bed,” Jack said.
The children formed up queues for sleeping bags more tractably than they had for clothes and soup. Only a few still wanted to play; their main problem was keeping the younger ones from falling asleep on their feet. They set them up under the eaves of storefronts, in narrow strips of ground bare of snow. The Doctor told bedtime stories to the fussy ones, while Jack hummed snatches of lullabies. The Doctor recognized one of them as Brahms and another as traditional Boe.
When they were done, they sat in the back of the groundcrawler again. From the shelter of the tarp, they watched the snow fall on a city huddled against the dark.
“They like you,” the Doctor said. “How long have you been here?”
“I arrived on Iothani a few months ago,” Jack said. “When I heard that you died, I felt like I had to… take up your mantle. Do the kind of thing you do. So I went wherever I heard there was trouble and tried to do something about it.”
“If there’s anything important I do, it’s finding people like you and giving you a chance to do something bigger.”
“And you did,” Jack said. “You did. But you also save us, sometimes. Like you did for me. So I had to save people too, because I thought you weren’t around anymore to do it. I explored haunted tombs, radioactive shipwrecks, anywhere where I could get in trouble instead of someone else who couldn’t survive it. I came to Iothani because I heard there was a mysterious parasite infesting the children here. And there was. But I found that even after I figured out what the parasite was and got rid of it, there were still sick children who had no place to go. I couldn’t just leave them.”
“Not like I do,” the Doctor said.
Jack hesitated. For a moment he looked like he wanted to protest, but he reconsidered. “Not like you do,” he agreed.
“So they trust you,” the Doctor said. “You deserve it.”
“Do I?”
“Jack,” the Doctor said, turning to take the other man’s hands in his. “You did what you did to save children. If I had been in your place, I would have done the same.”
“No. You wouldn’t have,” Jack said flatly. “You’d have found another way. You always do.”
“No, I don’t,” the Doctor said. “I have been in your place, and I made the same choice you did. I destroyed Gallifrey and all her children to end the Time War. You don’t need my forgiveness any more or less than I need yours.”
“It wasn’t your child,” Jack said, voice tight. His eyes were rimmed all around with red.
The Doctor tightened his grip on Jack’s hands and said, quietly, “Yes, it was.”
All the anger drained from Jack. He sagged. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Sometimes the pain gets so big I forget that other people can feel this much all at once.”
The Doctor released his grip on Jack and placed a gentle hand between his shoulder blades. “It’s all right. You couldn’t have known. I was never exactly forthcoming when it came to the Time War, and I didn’t do right by you after the 456. I’m the one who ought to be sorry.”
“You did help,” Jack said. “Alonso’s a good man. He helped me pull myself together - stopped me drinking so much, for a start.”
“He is,” the Doctor said, “but I should have been the one to help you. I could have explained about the fixed point. I could have told you how I got back on my feet after the Time War.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” Jack said, and he had that look of utter thirst again, like he was parched and the Doctor had offered him a sip of cool water. “You never used to be so kind.”
The Doctor smiled. “Like I said. I got old.”
“I’m old,” said Jack. “Not sure if I’m kind yet. I think I’m more of a bitter old man.”
“Oh, I’m bitter,” the Doctor said. “But that’s why I’ve got to be kind.”
They were old, weren’t they? Sitting side by side, the shoulders of their coats just touching, the only people awake to watch the play of silver snow and white stars against an endless blackness.
“Stay with me,” Jack said. “You said you owe me a year. Stay with me for a year and help the children. Can you do that?”
The Doctor considered this. “I’d like to, very much. And I will, but I had better let River know first.”
“River?” Jack said. “The person who was supposed to have killed you is named River Song. She’s imprisoned in the Stormcage.”
“Yes, she is. I am quite sorry about that, but I break her out of prison every night, so it’s not as bad as it looks. I wouldn’t be much of a husband if I let her spend the rest of her life in a gloomy boring jail cell, would I?”
“Husband?” Jack spluttered. “I thought you didn’t do domestic!”
“I don’t! Does our marriage sound domestic to you?”
“Well, no, but - ” He laughed and shook his head. “I just never thought I’d see the day.”
“I didn’t either until I did it. But she’s the sort of person who wouldn’t believe I loved her until I made it official, so it was well worth it.”
“I’m guessing she has a 51st century attitude toward marriage.”
“Very much so. We’ve agreed that we should embrace love wherever and whenever we can find it, though I think I ought to tell her that I’m going to spend a year living in sin with this century’s most notorious rapscallion.”
“This century?” Jack said. “Why Doctor, I’m offended. I thought you of all people would know that I’m the most notorious rapscallion in the entire space-time continuum.”
“Aha, that’s the spirit!” The Doctor clapped him on the back. “I’ll nip back to the TARDIS to contact River, shall I? Do you want me to land her in the back of your groundcrawler?”
Jack placed a hand on the Doctor’s arm. “Can’t you do it in the morning?”
“Of course I can. But why wait?”
“It’s Winterdark.” Jack hesitated, visibly struggling with himself. “I don’t want to be alone.”
The Doctor looked around at the children. Most of them slept in pairs or trios, side by side. Jack may be old, but in many ways, he was still a lost child. He hoped he might hear that story, someday.
“All right, then,” said the Doctor. He wrapped an arm around Jack and squeezed, feeling the nervous tension fall away from him. “You’re cold. Shall we get inside the groundcrawler?”
“Yeah. I have a cot set up.” Jack looked up at him through snow-silvered eyelashes. “It might be a bit snug for the two of us.”
“Good,” the Doctor said. “I like snug.”
They packed up the empty soup pot and the leftover clothes and took down the tarp, shaking off the snow that had gathered on it. They closed the back of the groundcrawler and opened the front.
The interior of the groundcrawler was flat, padded, and roomy, perfect for a vehicle designed for an eight-legged, three-tailed driver. At the moment, most of it was taken up by a camp bed. When they closed the door, it was warm and well-lit. They immediately shed their wet coats, and Jack didn’t stop shedding clothes until he was down to vest and long johns. The Doctor followed his example and stripped down to his underwear, hoping it might put Jack more at his ease.
Jack raised his eyebrows a little, trying to stare and not stare at the same time. He busied himself by taking a kit out from under the camp bed, opening it, and cleaning his teeth. The Doctor studied him. His lips and face were chapped from standing out in the wind and cold so long. He rummaged in the kit for some lotion and waited for Jack to finish cleaning his teeth.
“Your skin’s chapped,” the Doctor said. “Let me help.”
Jack nodded, but the Doctor sensed a manner in him that he never would have expected: that of a kicked dog that wants to be pet, but fears getting kicked again if he asks for affection. But then, the way the Doctor had treated him in the past, he shouldn’t wonder. He would have to earn Jack’s easy comfort.
The Doctor coated his hands in lotion and smoothed it over Jack’s face, putting enough pressure into the strokes of his fingers to make it a massage. When he swiped lotion across Jack’s lips with his thumb, he felt the other man’s breath hitch.
“What would you like me to do?” the Doctor said softly.
“Anything you’ll give me, I’ll take,” Jack said, his eyes still closed in surrender to the relaxation of the massage.
“This isn’t a negotiation,” the Doctor said. “You don’t need to bargain with me. Just tell me what will make you feel good.”
Jack opened his eyes. “Kiss me again.” His gaze roved over the Doctor’s body, thirsty not like a supplicant in the desert but like a connoisseur longing to savor a fine wine. “And let me touch you.”
The Doctor shucked off his vest and captured Jack’s lips in a kiss. This time he delved in with his tongue, mapping out Jack’s sensitive mouth. Jack made contented humming noises that reverberated through the Doctor’s face. He pressed fingertips, feather-light, to the corner of the Doctor’s jaw, then trailed down, tracing spirals and waves across his neck, collarbones, chest. Teasing pressure against his nipple made the Doctor thrust his chest forward, seeking more stimulation.
Jack nipped playfully at the Doctor’s lip and tweaked his nipple with his thumb. The Doctor drew back to take in more air, and his breath spilled over into a breathy sigh. “Ooh, I love it when you do that,” Jack purred. ”Let’s try that again.”
He locked his lips with the Doctor’s in a bruising kiss and flicked at both nipples at once, mercilessly, and his next sigh had a whining edge to it, desperate.
The Doctor felt affronted. He was supposed to be thanking Jack, not the other way around! He let his kisses wander away from Jack’s mouth, to the sensitive place where jawbone met ear, and swirled his tongue there. Jack made low, pleased sounds in his throat, his hands tightening on the Doctor’s waist. He pressed his advantage, sucking at Jack’s earlobe and applying the tip of his tongue to the folds and dips of Jack’s ear.
Suddenly, Jack grabbed the Doctor’s arse. His grip was strong and appreciative, and pulled the Doctor on top of Jack so that the hard lines of their erections were aligned. The pressure was glorious, all firm heat to rub against. They rocked against each other, clutching at each other, Jack trying to get any rise out of the Doctor he could, the Doctor just trying to express all his tenderness with lips and tongue.
In the end, the Doctor cupped one hand around the back of Jack’s head, caressed his neck with the other, and moved his hips in a slow rhythm with Jack’s, murmuring phrases that perhaps he shouldn’t have said, like, “All through that Year that should never have been I kept wishing I’d done this,” and “No matter what timeline you walk, you’re beautiful” and “I don’t deserve you.”
A liquid golden warmth kindled between his hipbones, spread through his body, and overflowed the boundary of his skin. The Doctor might have begged, before that moment came, and when it did, he whispered thanks, almost like prayer.
When his senses returned to him, the Doctor realized that Jack was still hard against his thigh. It was the work of a moment to coat his hand in lotion, pull down Jack’s long johns, and bring him to a shivering release. Jack kept his eyes open through all of it, and the Doctor didn’t let himself look away for a moment.
Jack’s mouth melted against his in a final, languorous kiss. Then the Doctor shimmied out of his damp pants and opened the kit, getting out supplies to wipe Jack clean. Jack didn’t look like he was of any mind to move, so the Doctor eased him out of his long johns and gently cleaned him.
“Here, let me,” Jack mumbled sleepily.
“Shh. It’s all right.” The Doctor cleaned himself, tucked the kit under the bed, found the control for the lights, and switched them off. Then he curled up in the camp bed next to Jack and pulled the covers over them both. The bed was small, and they were tangled together so tightly the Doctor didn’t think there was any part of his body that wasn’t touching Jack.
“I know it’s not much,” Jack began.
“But it’s home,” the Doctor said. “My home, too, for the next year.”
“You… don’t sound disappointed.”
“It’s an adventure with you. I’ve always liked those.” And he meant it, truly, though of course he kept thinking of adventures he’d like them to have on other worlds, in other times. “Will you come away with me, when this year’s over?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Jack murmured into the Doctor’s neck. “Is that a problem?”
“No. If I can’t let you make choices, then there’s no point staying with you at all.”
“You didn’t let Rose choose, back on Satellite Five.”
“I know. I wouldn’t choose that now. I want you to be who you are, all of you.”
“Who am I, then?”
The Doctor smiled against Jack’s shoulder, remembering the broken universe created by the paradox, and all the broken people Jack had taken under his wing. “A protector of the small.”
They tried to sleep, but the Doctor knew from Jack’s breathing that neither of them would reach that distant shore. The Doctor kept thinking of the children, lying outside on empty doorsteps. Jack didn’t have a permanent place to stay either. Like them, he wandered in a vast cold full of closed doors. Yet the Doctor felt Jack did have a home, and that he had invited the Doctor to live there.
The Doctor suspected Jack was thinking of the children, too.
So the old men lay, curled together like a sprout’s new leaves, waiting for the light to return to the world.
This entry was crossposted at http://joking.dreamwidth.org/103272.html. Comment here or there.
Characters: Jack, Eleven, Martha, Rita (from The God Complex), River
Pairings: Eleven/Jack; side pairings of Jack/Rita, Eleven/River
Rating: Adult
Warning: Children in distress
Summary: In the paradox timeline, everything is broken and little is certain, but Jack knows one thing for sure: he has to find the Doctor. In the restored timeline, the Doctor is supposed to be dead, but there's one man he knows he can trust with the secret of his life.
Notes: A gift written for
sahiya for the
wintercompanion fic exchange. Thanks to
wojelah for the beta. Click here for a fanmix of songs I listened to while writing this fic.
Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends
- “Old Friends” by Simon & Garfunkel
I. The Eternal Now
This is what I know.
I know my name. I have more than one name, but Captain Jack Harkness is the most important. I don’t know how I came by this name, or why it’s more important than the others, but I know it, and I love how it feels on my tongue.
I know that the universe is not as it should be. There is only one eternal moment, 5:02 p.m. on the 22nd of April, but somehow I know that time is supposed to be an entire dimension, not a freeze frame. I even have the equations to prove it. Sometimes I show these equations to people I meet, to show them that the world could be something other than what it is, but almost none of them understand.
I know that there are oceans of love and desire beneath my skin, vast beyond my own awareness. The desire and the love spill over to encompass most people I meet. I share the desire with everyone who says yes yes please, and I share the love with anyone who needs it, even if they’re too shy or broken ask for it.
It’s because of all the love that I couldn’t hold back even if I wanted to that I end up collecting strays: escapees from a Japanese internment camp, survivors of a spaceship crash, a Silurian baby left on a snowy hillside to die. They travel with me until they find a place for themselves, and I protect them, because another thing I know is how to hurt people. How to make them stop. I’m good at it. I try not to think about why that is. I only hurt people who try to hurt my strays, though. It doesn’t matter if they hurt me, because I heal fast, but my strays are so easily broken.
Some part of me knows that I am a stray myself. Sometimes I meet other strays, and in the ocean of love inside me there’s a current that flows toward them, because there’s another man who collects us.
I meet a woman named Martha Jones on the Silk Road. She pulls a cart full of medical supplies and stops when she sees Hinata Sato with her badly splinted leg riding on a mule. “Is your leg hurting you?” she says.
Hinata nods. Martha introduces herself and says she’s a doctor. We all stop and watch as Martha gives Hinata painkillers and makes a better splint for her leg. When they see her gentle manner, everyone lines up for a medical exam. She can’t help the Silurian baby, not knowing enough of its biology, but everyone else benefits from her kindness.
“And how about you, mister?” she asks me, when she notices I’m the only one who didn’t come to her for healing. “Anything I can do for you?”
“That’s Captain,” I say with a grin, extending my hand. “Captain Jack Harkness. And I’m sure there’s plenty you could do for me, but nothing medical.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” says Martha. “Take off your shirt.”
“You didn’t need a medical exam to get me to do that, Dr. Jones,” I say, shedding my dust-streaked shirt.
“Might as well get a nice view while I’m at it,” Martha says appreciatively, adding a little extra caress when she presses the stethoscope to my chest.
I smile, and the rush of affection is more than I usually feel when a pretty lady touches my chest, which is saying something. “You’re a stray,” I say. “Like me.”
Martha takes the stethoscope from her ears and looks at me. “What?”
“There’s a man who collects us. The strays.” I realize something, and with a thoughtful frown, I add, “But he doesn’t call us that.”
“Companions,” says Martha. “That’s what the Doctor calls us.”
The Doctor and his companions. Yes. I still can’t see his face in my mind’s eye, but now I know the difference between the Doctor with his companions and me with my strays. I collect strays to protect them, but the Doctor has companions so they can go on adventures together, and become more than what they are. I keep my strays from harm, us against the world. But the Doctor makes his companions better. That means that Martha and I have a bond. We are both better people because of the Doctor.
“Do you know where the Doctor is? Could he help them?” I ask Martha, gesturing to the strays.
“Of course he could,” says Martha. “I’ll tell you how to find him. But first, I’m finishing your exam, and then I have something to tell Hinata and her husband.”
We flirt our way through the rest of the medical exam, and Martha gives me a clean bill of health. She finds Daisuke and Hinata Sato again and says, “Do you have any children?”
“Yes,” says Daisuke. “A daughter. But we don’t know where she is, or even her name. We dream about her.”
“Does Toshiko ring any bells?” says Martha.
“Oh!” Hinata cries, clutching her hands to her chest. “Yes! That’s our girl! How could we not know?”
“That’s the way it is for most,” says Martha. “I don’t know anyone in my family either. But I do know where your daughter is. She’s the Hacker Princess of New Tokyo, and her underground palace is sure to have a suite for you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Jones,” says Daisuke. “But we don’t know the way to New London, and we have nothing more than the clothes on our backs and this old mule.”
“I can take you there,” says Martha. “People pay me for my healing, when they can, and anyone on the road who tries to hurt you will have to go through me.”
The Satos bow to Martha, tears of gratitude glistening in their eyes.
“But before we go,” says Martha, “let me tell Jack how to get to the Tower of London.”
“The Tower of London? Why there?” says Kaede, one of the internment camp survivors. She has good reason to be skeptical: the Allies of World War II are not kind to her people.
“We’re not going to meet the Queen, or anyone else in the British government,” I say. “We’re going to meet the Doctor, a man who helps people who have nowhere else to turn. No one’s going to lock you up again, Kaede, not if I can help it. But it’s your choice, of course. Anyone who wants to go with Dr. Jones and the Satos to New London can make that choice now.”
“I’ll go with you, Captain,” says Kaede, pressing the swaddled Silurian baby to her chest. “Not for my sake, but for this forsaken child’s.”
Two of the Japanese escapees, and one of the space-wreck survivors, choose to go with Martha and the Satos. Martha tells me the way to the Tower of London. Before she goes, Martha kisses me on the mouth. “I’ve seen you before,” she says against my lips, “and I’ll see you again.”
I don’t understand what she’s saying. Then some part of my brain is reminded that not all verbs are in the present tense, that the past and the future my equations tell me must exist can also be expressed in language. The past is what I should already know, and the future is what I can’t know. So how can Martha be so sure about the future, if it exists at all?
Martha must see how lost I am, because she says, “The Doctor will fix this. All of this. The world will go back to the way it should be.”
“You have a lot of faith,” I tell her. I have no faith in the future. I can’t know the way things will be, or the person I’ll be when the universe is back the way it should. I know how to kill people, and I don’t know why. Is killing in my future? My past? If that’s so, I don’t want time to unfreeze. I have no faith in time. But for some reason, I have faith in the Doctor.
“If I do have faith,” says Martha, “then it’s because there are people like you.” And she sets off down the Silk Road with her cart in tow.
I pick up more strays on the way to London. I rescue a couple, Craig and Sophie, who for some reason are in Siberia without any cold-weather clothes. I take in a group of young people rejected by their village because they’re programmed Flesh instead of biologically evolved humans. I meet Rita Afzal, who isn’t a stray, but who travels with us as our doctor for a while. I let my desire flow into her, and hers into me, because she’s beautiful, and she keeps my strays whole, and she lets me thank her for it with my body.
Like Martha, Rita has faith. She believes in Allah, and does all her healing in his honor. I ask her if the universe exists as her god intends it should be.
“No,” says Rita. “The world is not the way it is written in the holy book. But I must keep on with my work, even in an imperfect world.”
Rita isn’t one of the Doctor’s companions, but I think he would like her a lot.
We pass through Egypt, where the pharaoh is an android and hydroelectric plants sip power from the Nile. River Song finds me and my company in a narrow street in Cairo, scarfing down pitas and baba ghanoush. She prowls down the street in a black catsuit, a patch over one eye, her ginger-blonde curls a wild corona around her face.
I don’t know River, but she greets me by name without an introduction. “Captain Jack Harkness, as I live and breathe,” she says, sizing him up. “Ooh, but you do live up to the stories, don’t you?”
“Depends who’s telling the stories,” I say, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, I hear lots of stories about you. Two of my agents, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones, are such fans.”
The names stir tidal forces inside me, love that roars through me strongly enough to drown out the bustle of the street. “Who are you?” I say.
“River Song,” she says, “a friend of the Doctor.” I know then that she loves him. Not the way I do, because love shifts, flows, runs deep, and is never the same between two people, or even within one person. Again, I feel that connection between us. The Doctor makes us better, and we love him.
“Well, there’s a coincidence,” I say. “We’re on our way to see him.”
River’s confident mask shatters, and she stares at me wide-eyed. “You know where he is?”
“Yeah. He’s in the Tower of London.”
River swears softly to herself. “All right. Well, now we can bring him in.”
“Bring him in?” I say sharply.
“Jack,” River says. “The Doctor is dying. I want to help him.”
My mouth fills with a bitter taste. I want the Doctor to help my strays, but he needs help too. How could I not think of that? Am I so selfish that I put what I want before what the Doctor needs? “How can I help?” I ask.
“You already do,” says River. “You always do. But please, go to him. Tell him that whenever he needs you, you’re there. Tell him it’s worth any cost. That’s all you need to do.”
“Of course,” I tell her. “That’s what I always say to him.”
“Good. Stubborn as he is, he listens to you.” River studies him. “I’m glad that he loves you.”
I choke on a mouthful of baba ghanoush. I love the Doctor, but the Doctor’s love is like the future: something I can’t know.
“He tells the best stories about you,” says River. “And the saddest.”
“You love him too, don’t you?”
River smiles wistfully. “How could I not?”
“I know what you mean. I collect strays in honor of him. But what do you do, River Song?”
“I fight enemies of the Doctor,” she says. “I keep them prisoner. I do whatever I can to keep the Doctor alive.”
“But not by yourself.”
“What are you saying, Captain?”
“Some of my strays might want to help you. Why don’t you introduce yourself to them?”
She does, and in the end Rita and two others decide to join her. I kiss Rita goodbye. “You’re in good hands with River,” I say.
“And your lost ones are in good hands with you,” says Rita.
We continue our journey. Craig and Sophie leave us and join a traveling troupe of good-natured nerds called LINDA. In France, Madame de Pompadour and other high members of the French court join us, fleeing the 25th century neo-Marxists who terrorize the palaces and castles. I turn no one away, even though the nobles complain about the effect of travel on their fine clothes.
By the time we reach Lille, we have a hovercraft big enough to hold everyone. I navigate the hovercraft over the English Channel, wondering why I’m such a natural at this. When we get to England, we stop for food and water, then continue to London.
Like every other city in the world, London is a chaotic mix of architecture, from Stone Age to Roman to Nanotech Age. Over it all hang scuds of heavy cloud. I dodge blimps, carbon-fiber skyscrapers, and other hovercraft, until I reach the Tower of London, pointing up like an accusing finger. I feel guilty, somehow, like I belong there with all the other prisoners, even though as far as I know there’s no reason I deserve it. Maybe I’m just afraid of the power of killing in my hands, and what that says about me.
Prisoners. Yes, of course, the Tower of London is a prison. But why would the Doctor be in prison?
I land the hovercraft in Belgravia Square. Our group is ragtag amidst all the finery, Reinette’s and her companion’s royal clothing long since dust-streaked and torn. We shiver as the grey sky spits down clumps of snow. Men in top hats and warm coats turn their noses up at us as we pass by.
Two Roman centurions stand guard at the entrance to the Tower. “State your name and purpose,” they say.
“I’m Captain Jack Harkness, and these are the people under my protection. We’ve come to see the Doctor.”
“Send word to Emperor Churchill,” one centurion says to the other. Then, to me, he says, “Wait here.”
We huddle together, relying on each other’s body heat to keep off the snowy chill. I can hear teeth begin to chatter as the snow begins to seep into our shabby clothing.
The centurion comes back with two Beefeaters in tow, looking a little ridiculous but very grand and warm in their red coats. They’re our escort into the Tower. I flirt with them all the way in, covering my relief as my strays relax in the blessedly climate-controlled building.
The inside of the tower has the same mix of technology and architecture as the world outside. The Beefeaters bring us to an interrogation room (and it gives me a sick lurch when I know what that is.) I look in through the one-way glass before going in.
There’s a young man there in tattered clothes, with dull dark hair and a scruff of beard across his chin. He looks like one of my strays. I want to ask the Beefeaters who he is, but the man looks up at the glass, and I see his eyes. They’re far too old for his face.
I know the Doctor changes his face. When I picture him, I see dark brown eyes and steel blue. What they have in common is their depth, a feeling that you could fall into them for a thousand years before you hit bottom. This man’s hazel-brown eyes have that too. I press my hand to the glass and drink in the sight of him. “Would you mind if I spoke with him alone first?” I say, my voice thick.
“Go ahead,” says a Beefeater.
“I’m not asking you,” I say, looking meaningfully at my group of strays.
“Go to him,” says Madame de Pompadour. “We’ll have our turn.”
No one disagrees. I take it as a blessing. I open the door to the interrogation room.
“Jack,” the Doctor says, rising from his chair. “Where’s your coat?”
I blink, caught off guard. But then, I shouldn’t be surprised. The one thing I can always expect from the Doctor is the unexpected. “I don’t have one,” I manage to say. If I did have one, I’d give it to one of the strays, anyway.
“That’s a shame,” says the Doctor. “I like the coat. I think the coat likes you too. It sort of…” He gestures toward me, suggesting with his hands a shape surrounding me. “Embraces you.”
“I may not have the coat,” I say, recalling the blue sweep of it even as I speak, “but I have you.” I draw him into a hug, and find as I do that I’m nervous. I’m never nervous about embracing people, but when it comes to the Doctor, I am. It’s because of the Doctor’s heart, and how unknowable it is. I know love well, having so much of it in myself, but in the Doctor it becomes mysterious, distant, lost down the deep wells of his eyes.
But there’s no need to worry. The Doctor hugs awkwardly but earnestly, almost elbowing me in the ribs before he settles his hands on my shoulder blades, rubbing a little at the threadbare fabric of my shirt. I can feel his cool breath on the back of my neck.
“You’re a good hugger,” the Doctor says. “Very smooth, good grip. I ought to get hugging lessons from you.”
“Anytime,” I say, and pull out of the hug, even though I don’t really want to.
The Doctor maintains a gentle grip on my shoulders. “I never thought you’d find me,” he says. “No one’s been able to find me. Just Emperor Churchill, so he could lock me up in this tower.”
“It couldn’t happen any other way,” I say. “I need your help. And I need to help you.”
“You need to help me? Why?”
I don’t know how to explain it, so I just say, “Because that’s the way it works with us.”
The Doctor nods, slowly. “All right. What do you need me for?”
“I collect strays, Doctor. Lost people who don’t know their place in the world. Like you do. But I can’t help them like you can. They’re outside. Can you talk to them? Just talk, and do what you can.”
“I’m a prisoner, Jack. There’s not much I can do.”
“I can break you out.”
“I know you can. You’ve done it before.”
“Before?” The word is hard to grasp.
“Listen,” the Doctor says. “The universe is not the way it ought to be. You know that by now.”
I nod, thinking of my equations, about past and future and the nature of time.
“I’m going to fix it. I’m going to put things right. This entire universe will be undone. No one will know that it ever existed.”
“How?” I ask. “Can I help?”
The Doctor pauses. “Find a woman named River Song. Tell her where I am. Tell her I’m waiting.”
“I know River Song. She knows where you are, from me.”
“Good. You were right to trust her. I can only hope she trusted you,” the Doctor says. “But don’t you see? It doesn’t matter if I help these people you’ve brought. Once the universe is put back together, all of their suffering in this universe will be erased. Forgotten. They’ll all be back where they ought to be.”
“What you’re talking about…” I don’t want to admit I don’t understand, so I say, “I can’t grasp it. It’s too uncertain. What I do know is that the people outside this room are lost, now. They need hope, now. And even if time is rewritten, even if everything they’ve been through disappears into nothingness - doesn’t their pain still matter?”
The Doctor seems stricken by my words, much more so than I would expect. “Yes, of course,” he says, staring into my eyes, his voice choked with pain. “Thank you for reminding me. Bring them in.”
I leave the room and let the strays go in alone or in groups, as they choose. I study their faces after they speak to him. Some look pensive. Some steal glances at me. Some cry. But most leave the Tower with a look of purpose.
After everyone’s had a chance, I go back in the room. “What can you do for them?” I say.
“Nothing you haven’t already done,” the Doctor says.
“What do you mean?”
“Kaede has always wanted to be a mother. Did you know that? On some level you must have, because you put the Silurian baby in her care. She thought she’d never get to raise a child because she’s not interested in relationships. But now she has Tatsuya, and he has someone who cares for him.
Yasir has felt helpless ever since he was taken by the Ransomers. You taught him how to fish and find plants good to eat. You taught him how to ride a horse and take a fall without breaking bones. He doesn’t feel so helpless anymore.
And Reinette. Reinette Poisson, with dreams beyond her station. She thought she wanted power, but really what she wanted was to see the world and experience it all for herself. You gave her that in spades. Jack, you traveled with these people to places they’d never been before, and you’ve made them better. They’ve come closer to the people they want to be.” The Doctor leans toward me, and smiles. “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“That can’t be right. I can’t do for them what you do for me.”
“And why not?”
“I am who I am because of you. You create me. You’re like some kind of crucible. I can’t possibly change them the way you change me.”
“That’s not true,” the Doctor says. “I didn’t create you. You made yourself who you are.” He taps me in the chest. “I just gave you a push.”
The ocean of love that fills my body forms mighty waves against the inside of my chest, threatening to break through the barrier of my skin. This is why I love him: he looks into me and sees everything good and worthwhile in me, even though I can’t see it myself. I want to open myself up to him, to bare everything, so I don’t have to worry whether anything inside myself is tainted. If he knows everything about me and still believes in me, then I have nothing left to fear.
“I know how to kill people,” I say. “Do you know why?”
“Do you kill people?”
“No. I hurt them, sometimes, but only if they threaten my strays.”
“Then why does it matter?”
“Because I need to understand. I have to hold it back, when I fight.” I flex my hands and stare down at them, thinking of what they can do.
“In the universe-that-should-be,” the Doctor says gently, “you fought in a war when you were a boy. It’s hard to forget how to kill, when you learn so young.”
I laugh shakily. “I think I’m scared of the universe-that-should-be. What kind of man am I?”
“The same kind of man you are here. Brave, loyal, quick to love.”
“I can be all that and a killer?”
“You believe I’m a good man,” the Doctor says, “and I’m a killer too.”
“I know you are,” I insist.
“What will you do now?” the Doctor asks.
I freeze up. I don’t know what to do. My strays are here. I’m with the Doctor. I don’t know what else there is. I’m a stray again; I don’t know where I belong.
“There are school groups that come in for tours,” the Doctor says, almost conversationally, but I can tell there’s something more. “The children learn all about the kings and traitors locked up in here. Morbid, if you ask me, but I’m hardly a history teacher, more of a history do-er. There was a Welsh boy here. He stopped to talk to me. Very nice fellow, loves airplanes. Learned a thing or two about airplanes from him. But here’s the funny bit. He mentioned how much he misses his Uncle Jack who gives him airplane rides. Wears a coat from the Royal Air Force, just like the real thing from World War II.”
I stare at the Doctor. A terrible tenderness grows behind my eyes, so full of longing it hurts. He kisses me on the forehead, his lips a light brush but his grip fierce, like I’m the most fragile thing in the universe.
I caress his face, just to be sure he’s real. Then I leave the Tower, because the Doctor’s right.
There’s a place where I need to be.
II. Home for Next Year
When the universe was right again, the first person the Doctor had to thank was River. She was serving a prison sentence for him, after all. That had been exhilarating (“the universe is even more beautiful than you’d promised me it would be,” she said) and sexy (“I’m going to kiss you all over ‘til you scream,” she said) and heartbreaking (“the Singing Towers of Dorillium!” she said.)
The next person he had to thank was Jack.
It was for what he’d done in the paradox universe. But if he was honest with himself, it was also for standing by him for so many years, even when (especially when) he hadn’t deserved it.
It was the easiest thing in the world to track him down. The TARDIS had made her peace with Jack during the process of healing from the Master’s depredations, but she could hardly forget how he burned like a magnesium flare in the dark vastness of space.
Before he opened the door, the Doctor paused, wondering which Jack he would find, and where he would be. Would he be a Time Agent, a man who hadn’t found his name and didn’t know the Doctor? A disaffected con man in Pompeii? A bitter Torchwood agent waiting for the secret of his immortality? The broken man he’d bidden farewell in a 51st century bar? Or another Jack, unimaginably older than the Doctor himself?
The Doctor hoped, selfishly, that it would be a Jack who knew him. But then, it didn’t really matter. The Jack he’d met in the paradox world River created was a summation of the man at every point in his timeline, compressed into a single frozen moment. Everything he wanted to thank Jack for - his loyalty, his dedication, his care for the unnoticed and unloved of the universe - that existed in any version of Jack he might find on the other side of the door. So, with no more delay, he opened it.
He stepped out onto silver snow, a soft carpet made of moonlight. More silver flakes fell from a dark, lightly clouded sky. The only light came from the stars and the lanterns glowing on the street beyond this narrow alley. The Doctor tasted the air, metallic with a frisson of ionization, and he knew exactly when and where he was.
It was Winterdark on Iothani.
Iothani was a moon orbiting a gas giant in a binary star system. It was rare for the sky to be truly dark, empty of its mother planet and its two suns. But one of those dark skies fell every winter, and the Ka’iotha called it Winterdark.
The Doctor stepped out from the alley to the street. It was empty. He supposed the Ka’iotha, accustomed to constant light, preferred to stay inside where their lanterns burned bright against the dark. Somewhere down the street, he heard the high-pitched voices of children. He walked toward the sound, and discovered that the street was not so empty after all.
There was a groundcrawler, the preferred vehicle on Iothani, parked on the side of the street. The back of the groundcrawler was open, covered with a tarp to keep off the snow. It had warm clothing, sleeping bags, and a huge pot of soup that sent up curls of steam in the cold air. Gathered around the back of the groundcrawler were Ka’iotha children, some clothed and drinking soup through their long, delicate trunks, some still naked and shivering.
Sitting in the back of the groundcrawler was Captain Jack, cleaning a child’s bleeding hoof with disinfectant. As the Doctor watched, Jack bandaged the hoof and laid a blanket over the child so it could rest a while.
Jack stepped out from under the tarp to break up a fight between two children. The Doctor came closer. Three children in hats and fuzzy leg warmers noticed him as he approached.
“Cashen! Cashen!” they cried. “There’s an alien just like you!”
Jack turned to face him. Silver snow dusted his hair, greatcoat, and eyelashes. He stared in wonder and disbelief, as if he were a mirage made of starlight.
I’ve failed him, the Doctor thought. I’ve failed him so many times that he can’t even believe I’ve come for him. But still he looks at me that way, like he’s seen water in the desert and he can’t quite believe it.
So for that reason (and lots of other reasons, but he wasn’t going to waste his time thinking of all of them) he pulled Jack close and kissed him.
Jack’s mouth parted easily, but the Doctor didn’t push, just kissing him sweetly and gently, with soft slow caresses of lips and tongue. The Doctor didn’t think he was a very good kisser in this body to start, but he must have got some good practice in with River, because he could feel Jack go a little weak in his arms.
“Cashen, why are you and the other alien pressing mouthparts together?” said one of the children.
They both broke the kiss, laughing a little against each other’s mouths. The Doctor turned to the child and said, “The Captain and I are friends. That’s how I show him that I like him very much.”
“What’s your name?” another child demanded.
“I’m the Doctor.”
Several children repeated, “Dothor!” The Doctor realized why they called Jack “Cashen” - they couldn’t pronounce the hard T in Captain.
“What was that for?” Jack said.
“Well, it sounded like the children wanted to know why we were doing something so puzzling and unhygienic.”
“No, the kiss.”
“Oh. Does it have to be for something?” the Doctor said. “I owed you that, and a lot more besides.”
“No you didn’t,” said Jack.
The Doctor wanted to contradict him, to say no, I do owe you, and you can’t even let yourself have that, but he admitted, “You’re right. Kissing isn’t the sort of thing you owe. But I wanted to. I’ve wanted to for a long time, actually, but I was very busy being noble and tormented and I never seemed to find the time.”
“What changed?”
The Doctor smiled a little. “I got old.”
“Come here,” said Jack, guiding him toward the tarp. “Let’s get out of the snow.” They sat in the back of the groundcrawler. Jack positioned himself next to the soup pot, ready to break up any fights over who got to eat first. He directed the children to form up in queues, one for the soup and one for clothes. The Doctor found himself in charge of handing out clothes. They settled into a rhythm, Jack calling for the line to move, the Doctor giving out hats and leg warmers.
Soon, all the children were clothed and fed. Some gathered and sang songs. Others played in the snow. A few just stared up at the dark sky.
“Is there any place they can take shelter?” the Doctor asked Jack.
Jack shook his head. “Not everyone has a place to go on Winterdark.” He adjusted a folded stack of sleeping bags. “The best I can do is set them up under storefronts that keep off the snow.”
“And what about you, Jack? Have you got a place to go?”
“If I did, I’d let them all stay there.” Jack gave the Doctor that look again, like perhaps he’d dreamed him. The Doctor looked into his eyes and saw so much that was broken there. “I thought you were dead.”
Guilt flooded the Doctor. He’d failed Jack again. He didn’t want the universe to know he’d survived Lake Silencio, but surely he could have trusted Jack with the secret. “Oh, Jack,” he breathed. “How long?”
“A year,” Jack said. “A Time Agent told me.”
“Let them go on thinking that. Let everyone think I’m gone. It’s better that way. But you, Jack. I should never have let you go through that. I owe you a year.”
“A year of traveling with you?”
“No,” the Doctor said. “Of course not. You can come aboard the TARDIS any time, and stay as long as you like. I owe you a year of my life. Just give the word and I’ll spend it however you’d like.”
“That’s too much,” jack protested. “I can’t tell you how to spend a year of your life.”
“A year isn’t so long for an immortal,” the Doctor said, “as you ought to know.”
“You’re not immortal,” Jack said. “You can die.”
That was when the Doctor realized that Jack must have worried about this ever since he learned that his immortality was irreversible. He feared that one day he would live long enough to see the Doctor die.
“If I die, you’ll know,” the Doctor promised. “There’ll be a messenger. Perhaps you’ll even be there.”
“If I were there, I wouldn’t let you die,” Jack said.
“That’s not always possible,” said the Doctor, thinking of Lake Silencio, and how close he’d come. Jack wouldn’t have been able to take his place, there.
The children’s play was slowing down. The songs had become soft and fragmented. Some of the younger children were already asleep on their feet. “Let’s put them to bed,” Jack said.
The children formed up queues for sleeping bags more tractably than they had for clothes and soup. Only a few still wanted to play; their main problem was keeping the younger ones from falling asleep on their feet. They set them up under the eaves of storefronts, in narrow strips of ground bare of snow. The Doctor told bedtime stories to the fussy ones, while Jack hummed snatches of lullabies. The Doctor recognized one of them as Brahms and another as traditional Boe.
When they were done, they sat in the back of the groundcrawler again. From the shelter of the tarp, they watched the snow fall on a city huddled against the dark.
“They like you,” the Doctor said. “How long have you been here?”
“I arrived on Iothani a few months ago,” Jack said. “When I heard that you died, I felt like I had to… take up your mantle. Do the kind of thing you do. So I went wherever I heard there was trouble and tried to do something about it.”
“If there’s anything important I do, it’s finding people like you and giving you a chance to do something bigger.”
“And you did,” Jack said. “You did. But you also save us, sometimes. Like you did for me. So I had to save people too, because I thought you weren’t around anymore to do it. I explored haunted tombs, radioactive shipwrecks, anywhere where I could get in trouble instead of someone else who couldn’t survive it. I came to Iothani because I heard there was a mysterious parasite infesting the children here. And there was. But I found that even after I figured out what the parasite was and got rid of it, there were still sick children who had no place to go. I couldn’t just leave them.”
“Not like I do,” the Doctor said.
Jack hesitated. For a moment he looked like he wanted to protest, but he reconsidered. “Not like you do,” he agreed.
“So they trust you,” the Doctor said. “You deserve it.”
“Do I?”
“Jack,” the Doctor said, turning to take the other man’s hands in his. “You did what you did to save children. If I had been in your place, I would have done the same.”
“No. You wouldn’t have,” Jack said flatly. “You’d have found another way. You always do.”
“No, I don’t,” the Doctor said. “I have been in your place, and I made the same choice you did. I destroyed Gallifrey and all her children to end the Time War. You don’t need my forgiveness any more or less than I need yours.”
“It wasn’t your child,” Jack said, voice tight. His eyes were rimmed all around with red.
The Doctor tightened his grip on Jack’s hands and said, quietly, “Yes, it was.”
All the anger drained from Jack. He sagged. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Sometimes the pain gets so big I forget that other people can feel this much all at once.”
The Doctor released his grip on Jack and placed a gentle hand between his shoulder blades. “It’s all right. You couldn’t have known. I was never exactly forthcoming when it came to the Time War, and I didn’t do right by you after the 456. I’m the one who ought to be sorry.”
“You did help,” Jack said. “Alonso’s a good man. He helped me pull myself together - stopped me drinking so much, for a start.”
“He is,” the Doctor said, “but I should have been the one to help you. I could have explained about the fixed point. I could have told you how I got back on my feet after the Time War.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” Jack said, and he had that look of utter thirst again, like he was parched and the Doctor had offered him a sip of cool water. “You never used to be so kind.”
The Doctor smiled. “Like I said. I got old.”
“I’m old,” said Jack. “Not sure if I’m kind yet. I think I’m more of a bitter old man.”
“Oh, I’m bitter,” the Doctor said. “But that’s why I’ve got to be kind.”
They were old, weren’t they? Sitting side by side, the shoulders of their coats just touching, the only people awake to watch the play of silver snow and white stars against an endless blackness.
“Stay with me,” Jack said. “You said you owe me a year. Stay with me for a year and help the children. Can you do that?”
The Doctor considered this. “I’d like to, very much. And I will, but I had better let River know first.”
“River?” Jack said. “The person who was supposed to have killed you is named River Song. She’s imprisoned in the Stormcage.”
“Yes, she is. I am quite sorry about that, but I break her out of prison every night, so it’s not as bad as it looks. I wouldn’t be much of a husband if I let her spend the rest of her life in a gloomy boring jail cell, would I?”
“Husband?” Jack spluttered. “I thought you didn’t do domestic!”
“I don’t! Does our marriage sound domestic to you?”
“Well, no, but - ” He laughed and shook his head. “I just never thought I’d see the day.”
“I didn’t either until I did it. But she’s the sort of person who wouldn’t believe I loved her until I made it official, so it was well worth it.”
“I’m guessing she has a 51st century attitude toward marriage.”
“Very much so. We’ve agreed that we should embrace love wherever and whenever we can find it, though I think I ought to tell her that I’m going to spend a year living in sin with this century’s most notorious rapscallion.”
“This century?” Jack said. “Why Doctor, I’m offended. I thought you of all people would know that I’m the most notorious rapscallion in the entire space-time continuum.”
“Aha, that’s the spirit!” The Doctor clapped him on the back. “I’ll nip back to the TARDIS to contact River, shall I? Do you want me to land her in the back of your groundcrawler?”
Jack placed a hand on the Doctor’s arm. “Can’t you do it in the morning?”
“Of course I can. But why wait?”
“It’s Winterdark.” Jack hesitated, visibly struggling with himself. “I don’t want to be alone.”
The Doctor looked around at the children. Most of them slept in pairs or trios, side by side. Jack may be old, but in many ways, he was still a lost child. He hoped he might hear that story, someday.
“All right, then,” said the Doctor. He wrapped an arm around Jack and squeezed, feeling the nervous tension fall away from him. “You’re cold. Shall we get inside the groundcrawler?”
“Yeah. I have a cot set up.” Jack looked up at him through snow-silvered eyelashes. “It might be a bit snug for the two of us.”
“Good,” the Doctor said. “I like snug.”
They packed up the empty soup pot and the leftover clothes and took down the tarp, shaking off the snow that had gathered on it. They closed the back of the groundcrawler and opened the front.
The interior of the groundcrawler was flat, padded, and roomy, perfect for a vehicle designed for an eight-legged, three-tailed driver. At the moment, most of it was taken up by a camp bed. When they closed the door, it was warm and well-lit. They immediately shed their wet coats, and Jack didn’t stop shedding clothes until he was down to vest and long johns. The Doctor followed his example and stripped down to his underwear, hoping it might put Jack more at his ease.
Jack raised his eyebrows a little, trying to stare and not stare at the same time. He busied himself by taking a kit out from under the camp bed, opening it, and cleaning his teeth. The Doctor studied him. His lips and face were chapped from standing out in the wind and cold so long. He rummaged in the kit for some lotion and waited for Jack to finish cleaning his teeth.
“Your skin’s chapped,” the Doctor said. “Let me help.”
Jack nodded, but the Doctor sensed a manner in him that he never would have expected: that of a kicked dog that wants to be pet, but fears getting kicked again if he asks for affection. But then, the way the Doctor had treated him in the past, he shouldn’t wonder. He would have to earn Jack’s easy comfort.
The Doctor coated his hands in lotion and smoothed it over Jack’s face, putting enough pressure into the strokes of his fingers to make it a massage. When he swiped lotion across Jack’s lips with his thumb, he felt the other man’s breath hitch.
“What would you like me to do?” the Doctor said softly.
“Anything you’ll give me, I’ll take,” Jack said, his eyes still closed in surrender to the relaxation of the massage.
“This isn’t a negotiation,” the Doctor said. “You don’t need to bargain with me. Just tell me what will make you feel good.”
Jack opened his eyes. “Kiss me again.” His gaze roved over the Doctor’s body, thirsty not like a supplicant in the desert but like a connoisseur longing to savor a fine wine. “And let me touch you.”
The Doctor shucked off his vest and captured Jack’s lips in a kiss. This time he delved in with his tongue, mapping out Jack’s sensitive mouth. Jack made contented humming noises that reverberated through the Doctor’s face. He pressed fingertips, feather-light, to the corner of the Doctor’s jaw, then trailed down, tracing spirals and waves across his neck, collarbones, chest. Teasing pressure against his nipple made the Doctor thrust his chest forward, seeking more stimulation.
Jack nipped playfully at the Doctor’s lip and tweaked his nipple with his thumb. The Doctor drew back to take in more air, and his breath spilled over into a breathy sigh. “Ooh, I love it when you do that,” Jack purred. ”Let’s try that again.”
He locked his lips with the Doctor’s in a bruising kiss and flicked at both nipples at once, mercilessly, and his next sigh had a whining edge to it, desperate.
The Doctor felt affronted. He was supposed to be thanking Jack, not the other way around! He let his kisses wander away from Jack’s mouth, to the sensitive place where jawbone met ear, and swirled his tongue there. Jack made low, pleased sounds in his throat, his hands tightening on the Doctor’s waist. He pressed his advantage, sucking at Jack’s earlobe and applying the tip of his tongue to the folds and dips of Jack’s ear.
Suddenly, Jack grabbed the Doctor’s arse. His grip was strong and appreciative, and pulled the Doctor on top of Jack so that the hard lines of their erections were aligned. The pressure was glorious, all firm heat to rub against. They rocked against each other, clutching at each other, Jack trying to get any rise out of the Doctor he could, the Doctor just trying to express all his tenderness with lips and tongue.
In the end, the Doctor cupped one hand around the back of Jack’s head, caressed his neck with the other, and moved his hips in a slow rhythm with Jack’s, murmuring phrases that perhaps he shouldn’t have said, like, “All through that Year that should never have been I kept wishing I’d done this,” and “No matter what timeline you walk, you’re beautiful” and “I don’t deserve you.”
A liquid golden warmth kindled between his hipbones, spread through his body, and overflowed the boundary of his skin. The Doctor might have begged, before that moment came, and when it did, he whispered thanks, almost like prayer.
When his senses returned to him, the Doctor realized that Jack was still hard against his thigh. It was the work of a moment to coat his hand in lotion, pull down Jack’s long johns, and bring him to a shivering release. Jack kept his eyes open through all of it, and the Doctor didn’t let himself look away for a moment.
Jack’s mouth melted against his in a final, languorous kiss. Then the Doctor shimmied out of his damp pants and opened the kit, getting out supplies to wipe Jack clean. Jack didn’t look like he was of any mind to move, so the Doctor eased him out of his long johns and gently cleaned him.
“Here, let me,” Jack mumbled sleepily.
“Shh. It’s all right.” The Doctor cleaned himself, tucked the kit under the bed, found the control for the lights, and switched them off. Then he curled up in the camp bed next to Jack and pulled the covers over them both. The bed was small, and they were tangled together so tightly the Doctor didn’t think there was any part of his body that wasn’t touching Jack.
“I know it’s not much,” Jack began.
“But it’s home,” the Doctor said. “My home, too, for the next year.”
“You… don’t sound disappointed.”
“It’s an adventure with you. I’ve always liked those.” And he meant it, truly, though of course he kept thinking of adventures he’d like them to have on other worlds, in other times. “Will you come away with me, when this year’s over?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Jack murmured into the Doctor’s neck. “Is that a problem?”
“No. If I can’t let you make choices, then there’s no point staying with you at all.”
“You didn’t let Rose choose, back on Satellite Five.”
“I know. I wouldn’t choose that now. I want you to be who you are, all of you.”
“Who am I, then?”
The Doctor smiled against Jack’s shoulder, remembering the broken universe created by the paradox, and all the broken people Jack had taken under his wing. “A protector of the small.”
They tried to sleep, but the Doctor knew from Jack’s breathing that neither of them would reach that distant shore. The Doctor kept thinking of the children, lying outside on empty doorsteps. Jack didn’t have a permanent place to stay either. Like them, he wandered in a vast cold full of closed doors. Yet the Doctor felt Jack did have a home, and that he had invited the Doctor to live there.
The Doctor suspected Jack was thinking of the children, too.
So the old men lay, curled together like a sprout’s new leaves, waiting for the light to return to the world.
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