Fic: Journey Into Night 11/11 + Epilogue
Title: Journey Into Night
Author: Kaethel (kae_nine )
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, eventually Ten/Jack/Rose
Rated: M
Warnings: explicit OT3 content, character death in the second chapter (none of the main three characters)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond DW’s Journey’s End. Small mention of Torchwood’s Exit Wounds.
Summary: He’s got the biggest family in the universe - but he keeps pushing them away.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who characters and episodes belong to the BBC; I’m just borrowing them for some shameless bit of fun. ;)
A/N: This story wouldn’t ever have left the realms of my hard drive without wendymr ’s and dark_aegis ’ huge help throughout the writing process. They’ve been the best BRs, cheerleaders, supporters, and brainstormers that I could ever hope for. Many thanks also go to both yamx and botanee , who brainstormed several scenes with me and were always ever so encouraging and helpful. The story is now complete, so I will be posting a new chapter about twice a week.
Chapter 1: Mistakes and Memories | Chapter 2: Loss and Longing | Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness | Chapter 4: Culpability and Consequences | Chapter 5: Debt and Delays | Chapter 6: Talk and Tinkering | Chapter 7: Regret and Ritual | Chapter 8: Comfort and Consolation | Chapter 9: Sensuality and Satisfaction | Chapter 10: Neglect and Negotiation
- Chapter 11 -
Revelations and Reconciliations
Awkward silence followed her question. Letting go of the Doctor’s hands, Rose turned to face Jack, puzzled with the way he immediately lowered his head. The Doctor’s embarrassed gaze confirmed that there was much more to Jack’s observation than just a figure of speech.
They were hiding something from her. Jack had been hit by a Dalek death ray; she’d seen it happen with her own eyes. And she’d wondered, when he’d appeared on the Dalek Crucible’s control screen, how he could still be alive. Now he was talking about mortality being an option, and there was that comment he’d made about doing something fifty years ago.
“What do you mean, most of us die?” she asked, unwilling to let herself jump to conclusions. “Jack, what it is?”
He took a deep breath. “I can’t die. Or rather, I can’t stay dead. Whenever I die, I live again. And before you say it’s fantastic,” he said, raising his hand in warning, “it’s really not. It means I’ll outlive you, the Doctor… even my own descendents.”
“And get sucked into the last black hole.”
“Thanks, Doctor. I needed to be reminded of that.”
“So what you’re saying is that you’re… immortal.”
Even to someone like her, who’d seen aliens, ghosts, cat-nurses and werewolves, who dealt with what other humans labelled paranormal activities on a daily basis, the concept of immortality was one stretch too far on the scale of what was believable.
Jack’s nod, though, was forcing her to revise her judgment.
“Were you already immortal when… I mean, when we met? Oh my God!” She clamped a hand over her mouth to cover her gasp. “Is that something specific to your… to your species? You’re not human?”
He laughed. She couldn’t decide if his reaction reassured or irritated her. “I’m human. And, no, I wasn’t immortal then. It happened… later.”
She turned to the Doctor. “And you knew about this.”
A curt nod, and he looked away again.
He’d known. All along, he’d known that Jack was alive, that the Dalek Supreme hadn’t killed him, and he hadn’t told her.
“What happened, then?”
The question was innocuous enough, but Jack flinched as if that was exactly what he’d wanted to avoid answering. Was the topic off-limits, then? They were hiding something else. Why else would they look so embarrassed? Why else did getting any answer at all from either of them feel like she was pulling teeth?
“Come on,” she insisted, shifting uncomfortably on the bed when both men remained stubbornly silent. “What can possibly be worse news than this? Next thing I know, you’re gonna blame me for making Jack immortal and… oh.”
The sudden looks they each gave her, one guilty, one heavy with regret, as she said the words made her smile fade and her voice falter.
“You brought me back to life,” Jack said slowly, carefully.
He fell silent, as if waiting for her to say something. She didn’t. She couldn’t. She’d brought him back to life? How? When? And how did that have anything to do with him being alive for ever?
“When we were together on Satellite Five, fighting the Daleks,” the Doctor said then, bringing back events she’d long pushed to the back of her mind. “I told you that you’d used the Time Vortex to kill the Daleks.”
He had. Weeks after he’d changed into his current body and after much insistence from her, he’d finally told her what had really happened and why the world hadn’t ended.
It’d come as a shock to realise that the Doctor had died to save her, but he’d dismissed her guilt by claiming he was quite happy with his new hair and sideburns, and that his new choice of clothing meant he could be so much more creative with his ties.
Worth it in the end, don’t you think? he’d said, gesturing to the new body he seemed so infatuated with.
When she’d started probing for more information, though, especially about Jack and why he’d left them so abruptly, he’d eluded her questions and dragged her towards their next adventure.
Now she could see why. In a mixture of fascination and terror, she listened as they told her about the last moments of their fight against the Daleks, not omitting this time what the Doctor hadn’t wanted her to find out then.
“The Vortex made you powerful,” the Doctor continued. “So powerful that the Daleks stood no chance against you. But not just the Daleks. Time itself was in your hands.”
“And you must have sensed I’d been killed, because you brought me back. Permanently.”
“Permanently?”
“You couldn’t control the power that was running through you,” the Doctor explained. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”
She had no recollection of those last moments on Satellite Five, but there was something much more disturbing about the Doctor’s revelation than her missing memories. Blood drained from her face as she realised the implication of his account.
“You left him there.”
He looked embarrassed but didn’t try to deny her statement.
The Doctor, whom she’d always thought was the bravest man in every universe, had abandoned Jack on Satellite Five. Not only that, but he’d also lied to her when she’d enquired about their friend’s sudden disappearance. For years, she’d believed that Jack had willingly left them both, when in fact he hadn’t been given a choice.
“How did you get back to Earth?”
“I still had my Vortex manipulator. Brought me back to Earth, though not exactly in the century I was aiming for. And since it fried in the process, I got stuck in the nineteenth century. Stuck on the slow path like any mortal… except I wasn’t. I’m actually one hundred and seventy-four years old now. And looking good.”
The light tone with which he was telling her of his life since the Doctor had left him behind took Rose aback. Wasn’t he angry at all? Wasn’t he tempted to tear into the man who’d abandoned him as if he were no more than an inconvenience, the same man who was about to abandon the two of them again?
“Why, Doctor?” she asked, turning to the Time Lord, who was fidgeting and looking like he was ready to run out the door if he got a chance. While she wasn’t fool enough to believe that she could stop him, her hold on his hand tightened.
“I was scared.” His confession was muttered through gritted teeth. “Terrified. Immortality isn’t something that Time Lords deal very well with. It’s wrong. It’s very, very wrong.”
“But it was Jack! Not just anyone! Not some random bloke you picked off a stupid planet!”
“I know.”
Jack squeezed the Doctor’s shoulder, the affectionate gesture making Rose’s eyes widen in confusion.
“Don’t be too hard on him, Rose,” Jack warned gently. “Some instincts are hard to fight, and Time Lords have a knack for running off when there’s something they don’t understand. A whole load of cowards, you lot,” he added, nodding to the Doctor and grinning at the outraged look he got in return. “My point is,” he said, laying a hand over Rose’s arm, “the Doctor and I talked about this long ago. It’s all water under the bridge now. I understand why he did it.”
And I forgave him, she felt was the underlying conclusion to his comment, though he didn’t say the words out loud.
“It wasn’t your fault, though! If you had to abandon anyone, Doctor, it should’ve been me, not him. I made it happen.”
Oh God. She sank back against the pillows and covered her face with her hands. She had made it happen. She had made Jack immortal. As if being responsible for the Doctor’s regeneration wasn’t bad enough, it now looked like she’d also ruined Jack’s life and condemned him to the worst possible death.
Crushed into the last black hole, the Doctor had said. Having to see everyone he cared about age and die, she’d thought, remembering words that the Doctor had once spoken to her. And it was her actions that had made the Doctor’s instincts kick in so hard that he’d run away as fast as he could. How could she blame him when she was equally, if not more responsible for Jack’s situation? She hadn’t known what she was doing, and her ignorance had had a whole load of consequences on both men.
“No wonder you don’t want me around,” she muttered under her breath.
“Oh, but I do!” the Doctor exclaimed, and she felt him reach for her wrist and gently tug it away from her face.
She shook her head. “You’re sending me away. And it’s fine,” she hurried on, hoping that she could soon believe in her own lie. “But how can Jack want me with him any more than you do? How do you expect him to stay around the person who ruined his life?”
“Hey, it’s all right,” Jack said, seizing her free hand into his. “Being immortal’s been handy now and again. It’s not all bad.”
She stared at him, puzzled. He’d warned her that his immortality was more of a burden than an advantage, and now he was claiming - for her sake, she was sure - that he was all right with it?
“There’ve been times when it’s saved my life, literally speaking,” he explained, probably sensing her confusion. “And, more importantly, saved my team. The end of it won’t be much fun, but I have a few billion years to get used to the idea.”
***
Jack’s words, while outrageously upbeat, failed to hide his fear of the ultimate death he’d have to face, as far ahead in the future as it still was for him. Would he die alone, long after every single species had gone extinct? Would he stand among the last living beings, trying to find an escape that didn’t exist?
The Doctor reached for Jack’s free hand and squeezed it tightly. “I won’t let it happen,” he vowed. How, he didn’t know, but he would find a way to undo what Rose had done before Jack had to face the end of the universe.
“You don’t have to feel responsible for me, Doctor. I know how hard it is for you to even look at me sometimes.”
Guilt and Time Lord sense of flux ganged up on him, warring with his resolve to support his friend. For someone who prided himself on acting solely on logic, he’d blamed primal instincts entirely too often when it came to companions.
Jack’s loyalty was humbling. He’d dropped his team, his life in Cardiff to help him - three times - without a second thought despite what the Doctor had done to him. Rose, too, had abandoned her entire family, her newfound father, her beloved mother and her little brother, just to be with him again.
They’d both been here for him, offering to carry part of his burden after Donna’s departure and the half-human Doctor’s death. And while he’d done his best to spare Rose, having seen how much his duplicate’s death had affected her, Jack hadn’t needed to push too hard before he was letting him in on his sorrow and accepting his offer to help.
He’d never forget how they’d supported him a few hours earlier, when strength had deserted him and lighting the pyre they’d built together had felt like too much to bear. Without Rose and Jack, his duplicate’s body would still be lying in one of the TARDIS’ stasis chambers.
Ruthless logic commanded him to look away, leave the room and send the TARDIS back to Cardiff, but there were times when human-like emotion was worth listening to. While his head was telling him that he didn’t need anyone, his hearts were telling him otherwise. He’d lost Rose once, and his reactions then had been far from sensible. He needed someone. He needed them. Desperately.
Logic had had its time. He held Jack’s gaze.
A hollow chuckle answered his effort. “I’m wrong. So wrong that running away from me is an obsession for you. I just didn’t think that applied to Rose, too.”
“I’m not running away.”
Two pairs of eyes stared at him.
“You’re dumping us in Cardiff and swanning off to God knows where.” It was Rose’s turn to argue. “If that’s not running away, then I don’t know what is.”
“I’m not running away,” he repeated, feeling as if he was testing the words himself.
“Doctor?”
“What you’re saying is…”
“That I won’t be swanning off. I’ve had enough of running away.” This time, the words came out more easily, more naturally. He felt the beginning of a smile stretch his lips.
Beaming, Rose sat up and slid her arms around his neck, pulling him close. He rested his chin on her shoulder, and when he felt Jack’s arms encircle them both he released a breath, giving in at last to what part of him had wanted all along.
What if you hurt her? The tiny, insidious voice of self-doubt came back to haunt him.
“You made the right decision,” Jack said, suppressing the Doctor’s sudden urge to take back the words and push them away once more. “Rose Tyler and the Doctor, travelling in the TARDIS. As they should be.”
Rose’s smile faded and a frown marred her forehead, betraying her disapproval. “What do you mean, Rose Tyler and the Doctor? What about you, then? Don’t you want to stay? Doctor, you want him to stay, too, don’t you?”
“Jack decided a long time ago to lead a life away from the TARDIS. Turned down my offer to come back.”
His rejection had hurt, too. He’d been so confident that the Captain had been waiting, hoping for a way to travel with him again, that his negative answer had been completely unexpected. He didn’t want to hear Jack’s arguments once more. He knew where he stood, and that Torchwood was now Jack’s life.
Jack shrugged. “You could barely look at me then.”
“I know,” the Doctor confessed, not hiding his discomfort with the reminder of how he’d failed to be Jack’s friend. I really don’t mind, though. His words had hardly been an open invitation. “I should never have abandoned you. Either of you. And that’s a mistake I hope I won’t ever repeat. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Jack. I know my initial reaction was hardly encouraging, but… only fools never change their mind.”
“Is that an invitation?”
He nodded. “It’d be an honour, Captain.”
Jack frowned, his eyes filled with suspicion. “What about the next time you’re tempted to drop me on a desert planet with no way to get home?”
“You know I won’t. Not again.”
“How do I know that for a fact, Doctor?” He grew serious again, and the Doctor could tell that his insistence that Rose should forgive him quickly had merely been trying to conceal how insecure the Captain really was about the Doctor’s loyalty to him. “How do I know that, on a whim, you won’t decide that you do mind after all, and just get rid of me?”
“It won’t happen,” he insisted. How could he prove to Jack that he was sincere? Could he honestly claim that he didn’t make the same mistake over and over, when he’d repeatedly pushed away his companions, and especially Rose, without giving them a choice?
“Maybe it won’t. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But in a month’s time? A year’s time?”
“It won’t happen because I now know how much I need you.” The blush that crept up Rose’s cheeks warmed his hearts a little. “Both of you,” he added, and was rewarded with one of Jack’s brightest smiles.
“Well… there’s one or two things you could do to be fully forgiven,” the Captain said, a hand wandering up the Doctor’s back under his shirt. “Now that I don’t have to hold back around you.”
The three of them shared a knowing look.
“Are you staying, then?”
***
The offer was tempting and so different from the time when the Doctor reluctantly admitted that he wouldn’t mind Jack tagging along again. Jack had had other things in mind then; all he’d been able to think about was that he wanted to get back to his team and serve a world that had suffered so much at the hands of the Master.
This time, though, it wasn’t just the Doctor who was offering. His gaze settled onto Rose, her face open and full of hope as she waited for his answer.
Jack, Rose and the Doctor travelling on board the TARDIS. A wave of nostalgia engulfed him. It’d been such a long time, but he hadn’t forgotten anything of the happy days spent between endless runs, disaster-prone plans to save the universe and a budding relationship that let him hope for so much more.
They’d taken that final step now. The skinny Doctor, devastated by too many losses, and his Rose, a few years older, definitely more mature, and even more beautiful than he remembered, had stepped over the line between friends and lovers. How could he say no? He’d wanted to be with them again for over a century. How could he deny himself that?
Gwen. Ianto. They both counted on him, and Tosh and Owen’s tragic deaths had made things worse. The three of them needed to support each other. Yet here he was, sitting naked on Rose’s bed on the TARDIS and seriously considering the possibility of abandoning them. In fact, the primary thought on his mind right now was that Torchwood, Weevils and Her Majesty’s service could take a hike as long as he was with the Doctor and Rose.
They were still staring at him, Rose hopeful, the Doctor apprehensive. Did he fear Jack’s refusal as much as he probably hoped for it?
“I’ve got to go back to the Hub,” he started, and Rose’s face fell.
The Doctor squeezed her hand tighter. For a man who’d spent the past few hours claiming he could live without her, he was making quite a show of the caring, supportive lover he really was to her.
“I have a few things to sort out,” he continued. “I also need to convince Gwen to take over.”
And then there was Ianto. The new - physical - turn that their relationship had recently taken had been little more than a pleasant diversion to Jack, but he was aware that his young colleague thought of it as something that went beyond a few hot encounters in the dark. After Estelle, though, he’d been determined not to fall in love again, and Ianto respected his choice. Looking at Rose and the Doctor, though, their hands tightly clasped together, he had to admit that being in love was sometimes worth it.
“You staying, then?” Rose asked, her voice trembling as if she feared she hadn’t properly understood the implication of his request.
“Can’t say no to you, sweetheart. Well, if the Doctor is sure there’s enough room for me.”
“Plenty of room in the TARDIS. Welcome aboard, Captain.”
The temptation to seal this new agreement with a kiss was too strong. When the Doctor returned the pressure of his lips, Jack put all his heart into kissing the man he loved. Not that he’d ever been the kind to hold back from sexual pleasure, but until this moment, he’d respected the barriers that the Doctor had erected around himself. That time was over.
“How much time did we waste?” he asked when lack of air forced him to pull away.
“Good things come to those who wait, Jack.”
He glared at Rose. “You can talk! You had him ages ago. I’ve been waiting for this for over a century! I’ve got lots of catching up to do.”
“And you will,” the Doctor promised, his gaze falling onto Rose and the hand he was still holding tightly. “We all will.”
***
This was a turn of events that she’d stopped hoping for ever since the Doctor had abandoned her on his bed, confused and disoriented. She didn’t have to settle back into a world that had changed drastically since she’d left it and where she was nothing more than a name on a memorial stone. She was free. Free to stay on the TARDIS, to travel the universe with the two men she loved.
Bouncing to her feet, she grabbed the bag that she’d earlier crammed full with clothes and accessories she hadn’t worn in years. Deliberately meticulous, she folded each item back into the wardrobe and dressing table, aware that the Doctor was keeping a close watch on her every move as she did so.
“Before you change your mind again,” she explained. “At least if you ask me to pack it all again you’ll feel bad.”
“Rose, come here.”
The Doctor’s voice, tender and shy, made her abandon trousers, jumpers and tops to walk over to the bed. Her lover grabbed her hand, a familiar gesture that would certainly never fail to amaze her. Then he groped behind his back and squeezed Jack’s fingers in his free hand.
“I won’t change my mind,” he said solemnly to both of them. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m not scared, but I’ll do my best not to make the same mistakes again.”
“You will not overprotect us,” Rose warned. “Jack was used to dangerous fieldwork long before he met us, and I’m much more experienced than I was when we were all travelling together.”
“I’m not even going to try to convince you.” His smile didn’t quite reach his lips, and Rose realised she’d probably have to put on a fight the first few times their lives collided with imminent danger. “Thank you. What you did today was amazing.”
“I know I’m good, very good.”
“Jack!”
“Deny it,” he challenged with a raised eyebrow.
All the Doctor did was shake his head in amused disbelief. “I’m serious, though. Losing Donna was bad enough, but the other Doctor died because of that, because of me and because he knew I was terrified of losing her.”
“You can’t blame yourself…”
“He did it because he knew. He was me. He had the same memories, the same thoughts… the same emotions. It’s true,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “What he told you, Rose.”
She nodded, humbled that the Doctor, usually so disdainful towards the human verbal expression of feelings, had almost openly confessed the feelings he had for her. He didn’t need to say more. She slid her arms around him and pulled him to her, pressing her ear against the rapid and regular beatings of his two hearts.
“Thank you.” She heard the rumbling of his voice through the shirt that didn’t quite cover his chest. Her hold on him tightened. “Both of you. You’ve been the best friends I could ever hope for. There are no words to describe what you did today.”
She kept her arms around him as she straightened, and pressed a hard kiss against his lips. “All we did was talk sense into you.” Reluctantly, she released him.
“Setting fire to that pyre was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. And after losing Donna…” His voice broke and he lowered his head, probably embarrassed by an emotion he couldn’t control.
“Any time.”
“Please, no. I don’t ever want to have to do that again.”
To either of you.
She figured that neither Jack nor the Doctor wanted to hear the logical end to his sentence any more than she did. If the life she’d been leading ever since she’d first met the Doctor had taught her one thing, it was that getting ready for the worst didn’t always ensure that she or the people she loved stayed out of harm’s way.
She’d known, when she’d decided to come back to this universe and leave her family behind, that life on the TARDIS wouldn’t be always be safe, or even necessarily always trouble-free. She’d embraced that possibility because, as long as she had him with her, it was worth the risk.
The past few hours had been more of an emotional rollercoaster than she’d been prepared for, but looking at the two men sitting next to her now, Jack’s hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, his thumb brushing rhythmic patterns against the back of the Time Lord’s head, her own fingers still trapped tightly in the Doctor’s hand, she knew that they’d be all right.
Jack. What an unexpected bonus that was. Happy as she’d been with the Doctor once she’d grown accustomed to his regeneration, at the back of her mind she’d never got over that sense of loss, of the missing part of their team, and the fact that Jack had left without so much as saying goodbye. Now she knew the truth. Relief that he would stay, and forgiveness for the Doctor’s initial lie, had won over anger.
It was right that Jack was here now. Not just because she loved him - and it was clear that the Doctor did too - but because they needed him. It’d taken Jack, not her, to make the Doctor see sense about dumping her when they went to Cardiff, and to ask for their help with the funeral. It’d taken Jack, too, to stop both her and the Doctor from being self-sacrificing and in the end almost losing each other again. He’d put his own needs and feelings aside and practically begged the Doctor to keep her with him, even if it’d mean that Jack would end up alone again.
“I love you.” She blurted out the words, a blush colouring her cheeks. She’d only ever spoken them a few times in her life, to her mum, to Mickey, and the last time had been to a fading image of the Doctor. She cleared her throat. “Both of you.”
It was a beaming Jack that replied first. “Love you, too, sweetheart.” His hand affectionately cupped her cheek, then he nodded towards the Doctor. “And he does, too, even though he’s rubbish at showing it.”
“Oi! Well, I suppose I am,” he huffed, his shoulders slumped. “Never was any good at domestic stuff.”
She looked back at the Doctor, seeing the tension in his jaw and the fear in his eyes, and let instinct take over, gathering his slim body into her arms once more.
“I’ll be good enough for three,” she whispered in his ear. “Got to keep up with stupid ape standards.”
At last she felt him return her hug, tentatively at first, then his light hold on her turned to desperate clutching. Blindly, she reached for Jack and pulled him closer, grateful when the Doctor took her cue and opened the embrace to the Captain.
“Jack…” After a few minutes, Rose’s voice, though muffled against the Doctor’s chest, came out as a chuckle.
“Hmm?”
“You’re still naked.”
Jack pulled away with a frown. “That a problem?”
“It’s illegal on about seven hundred thousand planets,” the Doctor commented.
The Captain rolled his eyes. “I’m not even gonna ask how you know that. Why don’t you take us somewhere where it’s legal?”
“Because,” he said, pressing his lips to the side of Jack’s neck, “I’m perfectly happy to stay where I am right now. And I’m not the one who complained about your state of undress.”
Wide-eyed, Rose sat up to glare at the Doctor. “I wasn’t complaining,” she protested. And, to prove her point, she grabbed the hem of her top and slid it over her head before dropping it to the floor in a deliberately overdramatic move.
“Here you go. Naked planet, I’m ready!” She cocked her head to the side. “Doctor, your mouth is open.”
“Hm?” His eyes widened. “Oh.” He clamped it shut.
“I prefer it open, actually,” Jack said, and proceeded to demonstrate why.
***
Epilogue
Author: Kaethel (kae_nine )
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, eventually Ten/Jack/Rose
Rated: M
Warnings: explicit OT3 content, character death in the second chapter (none of the main three characters)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond DW’s Journey’s End. Small mention of Torchwood’s Exit Wounds.
Summary: He’s got the biggest family in the universe - but he keeps pushing them away.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who characters and episodes belong to the BBC; I’m just borrowing them for some shameless bit of fun. ;)
A/N: This story wouldn’t ever have left the realms of my hard drive without wendymr ’s and dark_aegis ’ huge help throughout the writing process. They’ve been the best BRs, cheerleaders, supporters, and brainstormers that I could ever hope for. Many thanks also go to both yamx and botanee , who brainstormed several scenes with me and were always ever so encouraging and helpful. The story is now complete, so I will be posting a new chapter about twice a week.
Chapter 1: Mistakes and Memories | Chapter 2: Loss and Longing | Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness | Chapter 4: Culpability and Consequences | Chapter 5: Debt and Delays | Chapter 6: Talk and Tinkering | Chapter 7: Regret and Ritual | Chapter 8: Comfort and Consolation | Chapter 9: Sensuality and Satisfaction | Chapter 10: Neglect and Negotiation
- Chapter 11 -
Revelations and Reconciliations
Awkward silence followed her question. Letting go of the Doctor’s hands, Rose turned to face Jack, puzzled with the way he immediately lowered his head. The Doctor’s embarrassed gaze confirmed that there was much more to Jack’s observation than just a figure of speech.
They were hiding something from her. Jack had been hit by a Dalek death ray; she’d seen it happen with her own eyes. And she’d wondered, when he’d appeared on the Dalek Crucible’s control screen, how he could still be alive. Now he was talking about mortality being an option, and there was that comment he’d made about doing something fifty years ago.
“What do you mean, most of us die?” she asked, unwilling to let herself jump to conclusions. “Jack, what it is?”
He took a deep breath. “I can’t die. Or rather, I can’t stay dead. Whenever I die, I live again. And before you say it’s fantastic,” he said, raising his hand in warning, “it’s really not. It means I’ll outlive you, the Doctor… even my own descendents.”
“And get sucked into the last black hole.”
“Thanks, Doctor. I needed to be reminded of that.”
“So what you’re saying is that you’re… immortal.”
Even to someone like her, who’d seen aliens, ghosts, cat-nurses and werewolves, who dealt with what other humans labelled paranormal activities on a daily basis, the concept of immortality was one stretch too far on the scale of what was believable.
Jack’s nod, though, was forcing her to revise her judgment.
“Were you already immortal when… I mean, when we met? Oh my God!” She clamped a hand over her mouth to cover her gasp. “Is that something specific to your… to your species? You’re not human?”
He laughed. She couldn’t decide if his reaction reassured or irritated her. “I’m human. And, no, I wasn’t immortal then. It happened… later.”
She turned to the Doctor. “And you knew about this.”
A curt nod, and he looked away again.
He’d known. All along, he’d known that Jack was alive, that the Dalek Supreme hadn’t killed him, and he hadn’t told her.
“What happened, then?”
The question was innocuous enough, but Jack flinched as if that was exactly what he’d wanted to avoid answering. Was the topic off-limits, then? They were hiding something else. Why else would they look so embarrassed? Why else did getting any answer at all from either of them feel like she was pulling teeth?
“Come on,” she insisted, shifting uncomfortably on the bed when both men remained stubbornly silent. “What can possibly be worse news than this? Next thing I know, you’re gonna blame me for making Jack immortal and… oh.”
The sudden looks they each gave her, one guilty, one heavy with regret, as she said the words made her smile fade and her voice falter.
“You brought me back to life,” Jack said slowly, carefully.
He fell silent, as if waiting for her to say something. She didn’t. She couldn’t. She’d brought him back to life? How? When? And how did that have anything to do with him being alive for ever?
“When we were together on Satellite Five, fighting the Daleks,” the Doctor said then, bringing back events she’d long pushed to the back of her mind. “I told you that you’d used the Time Vortex to kill the Daleks.”
He had. Weeks after he’d changed into his current body and after much insistence from her, he’d finally told her what had really happened and why the world hadn’t ended.
It’d come as a shock to realise that the Doctor had died to save her, but he’d dismissed her guilt by claiming he was quite happy with his new hair and sideburns, and that his new choice of clothing meant he could be so much more creative with his ties.
Worth it in the end, don’t you think? he’d said, gesturing to the new body he seemed so infatuated with.
When she’d started probing for more information, though, especially about Jack and why he’d left them so abruptly, he’d eluded her questions and dragged her towards their next adventure.
Now she could see why. In a mixture of fascination and terror, she listened as they told her about the last moments of their fight against the Daleks, not omitting this time what the Doctor hadn’t wanted her to find out then.
“The Vortex made you powerful,” the Doctor continued. “So powerful that the Daleks stood no chance against you. But not just the Daleks. Time itself was in your hands.”
“And you must have sensed I’d been killed, because you brought me back. Permanently.”
“Permanently?”
“You couldn’t control the power that was running through you,” the Doctor explained. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”
She had no recollection of those last moments on Satellite Five, but there was something much more disturbing about the Doctor’s revelation than her missing memories. Blood drained from her face as she realised the implication of his account.
“You left him there.”
He looked embarrassed but didn’t try to deny her statement.
The Doctor, whom she’d always thought was the bravest man in every universe, had abandoned Jack on Satellite Five. Not only that, but he’d also lied to her when she’d enquired about their friend’s sudden disappearance. For years, she’d believed that Jack had willingly left them both, when in fact he hadn’t been given a choice.
“How did you get back to Earth?”
“I still had my Vortex manipulator. Brought me back to Earth, though not exactly in the century I was aiming for. And since it fried in the process, I got stuck in the nineteenth century. Stuck on the slow path like any mortal… except I wasn’t. I’m actually one hundred and seventy-four years old now. And looking good.”
The light tone with which he was telling her of his life since the Doctor had left him behind took Rose aback. Wasn’t he angry at all? Wasn’t he tempted to tear into the man who’d abandoned him as if he were no more than an inconvenience, the same man who was about to abandon the two of them again?
“Why, Doctor?” she asked, turning to the Time Lord, who was fidgeting and looking like he was ready to run out the door if he got a chance. While she wasn’t fool enough to believe that she could stop him, her hold on his hand tightened.
“I was scared.” His confession was muttered through gritted teeth. “Terrified. Immortality isn’t something that Time Lords deal very well with. It’s wrong. It’s very, very wrong.”
“But it was Jack! Not just anyone! Not some random bloke you picked off a stupid planet!”
“I know.”
Jack squeezed the Doctor’s shoulder, the affectionate gesture making Rose’s eyes widen in confusion.
“Don’t be too hard on him, Rose,” Jack warned gently. “Some instincts are hard to fight, and Time Lords have a knack for running off when there’s something they don’t understand. A whole load of cowards, you lot,” he added, nodding to the Doctor and grinning at the outraged look he got in return. “My point is,” he said, laying a hand over Rose’s arm, “the Doctor and I talked about this long ago. It’s all water under the bridge now. I understand why he did it.”
And I forgave him, she felt was the underlying conclusion to his comment, though he didn’t say the words out loud.
“It wasn’t your fault, though! If you had to abandon anyone, Doctor, it should’ve been me, not him. I made it happen.”
Oh God. She sank back against the pillows and covered her face with her hands. She had made it happen. She had made Jack immortal. As if being responsible for the Doctor’s regeneration wasn’t bad enough, it now looked like she’d also ruined Jack’s life and condemned him to the worst possible death.
Crushed into the last black hole, the Doctor had said. Having to see everyone he cared about age and die, she’d thought, remembering words that the Doctor had once spoken to her. And it was her actions that had made the Doctor’s instincts kick in so hard that he’d run away as fast as he could. How could she blame him when she was equally, if not more responsible for Jack’s situation? She hadn’t known what she was doing, and her ignorance had had a whole load of consequences on both men.
“No wonder you don’t want me around,” she muttered under her breath.
“Oh, but I do!” the Doctor exclaimed, and she felt him reach for her wrist and gently tug it away from her face.
She shook her head. “You’re sending me away. And it’s fine,” she hurried on, hoping that she could soon believe in her own lie. “But how can Jack want me with him any more than you do? How do you expect him to stay around the person who ruined his life?”
“Hey, it’s all right,” Jack said, seizing her free hand into his. “Being immortal’s been handy now and again. It’s not all bad.”
She stared at him, puzzled. He’d warned her that his immortality was more of a burden than an advantage, and now he was claiming - for her sake, she was sure - that he was all right with it?
“There’ve been times when it’s saved my life, literally speaking,” he explained, probably sensing her confusion. “And, more importantly, saved my team. The end of it won’t be much fun, but I have a few billion years to get used to the idea.”
***
Jack’s words, while outrageously upbeat, failed to hide his fear of the ultimate death he’d have to face, as far ahead in the future as it still was for him. Would he die alone, long after every single species had gone extinct? Would he stand among the last living beings, trying to find an escape that didn’t exist?
The Doctor reached for Jack’s free hand and squeezed it tightly. “I won’t let it happen,” he vowed. How, he didn’t know, but he would find a way to undo what Rose had done before Jack had to face the end of the universe.
“You don’t have to feel responsible for me, Doctor. I know how hard it is for you to even look at me sometimes.”
Guilt and Time Lord sense of flux ganged up on him, warring with his resolve to support his friend. For someone who prided himself on acting solely on logic, he’d blamed primal instincts entirely too often when it came to companions.
Jack’s loyalty was humbling. He’d dropped his team, his life in Cardiff to help him - three times - without a second thought despite what the Doctor had done to him. Rose, too, had abandoned her entire family, her newfound father, her beloved mother and her little brother, just to be with him again.
They’d both been here for him, offering to carry part of his burden after Donna’s departure and the half-human Doctor’s death. And while he’d done his best to spare Rose, having seen how much his duplicate’s death had affected her, Jack hadn’t needed to push too hard before he was letting him in on his sorrow and accepting his offer to help.
He’d never forget how they’d supported him a few hours earlier, when strength had deserted him and lighting the pyre they’d built together had felt like too much to bear. Without Rose and Jack, his duplicate’s body would still be lying in one of the TARDIS’ stasis chambers.
Ruthless logic commanded him to look away, leave the room and send the TARDIS back to Cardiff, but there were times when human-like emotion was worth listening to. While his head was telling him that he didn’t need anyone, his hearts were telling him otherwise. He’d lost Rose once, and his reactions then had been far from sensible. He needed someone. He needed them. Desperately.
Logic had had its time. He held Jack’s gaze.
A hollow chuckle answered his effort. “I’m wrong. So wrong that running away from me is an obsession for you. I just didn’t think that applied to Rose, too.”
“I’m not running away.”
Two pairs of eyes stared at him.
“You’re dumping us in Cardiff and swanning off to God knows where.” It was Rose’s turn to argue. “If that’s not running away, then I don’t know what is.”
“I’m not running away,” he repeated, feeling as if he was testing the words himself.
“Doctor?”
“What you’re saying is…”
“That I won’t be swanning off. I’ve had enough of running away.” This time, the words came out more easily, more naturally. He felt the beginning of a smile stretch his lips.
Beaming, Rose sat up and slid her arms around his neck, pulling him close. He rested his chin on her shoulder, and when he felt Jack’s arms encircle them both he released a breath, giving in at last to what part of him had wanted all along.
What if you hurt her? The tiny, insidious voice of self-doubt came back to haunt him.
“You made the right decision,” Jack said, suppressing the Doctor’s sudden urge to take back the words and push them away once more. “Rose Tyler and the Doctor, travelling in the TARDIS. As they should be.”
Rose’s smile faded and a frown marred her forehead, betraying her disapproval. “What do you mean, Rose Tyler and the Doctor? What about you, then? Don’t you want to stay? Doctor, you want him to stay, too, don’t you?”
“Jack decided a long time ago to lead a life away from the TARDIS. Turned down my offer to come back.”
His rejection had hurt, too. He’d been so confident that the Captain had been waiting, hoping for a way to travel with him again, that his negative answer had been completely unexpected. He didn’t want to hear Jack’s arguments once more. He knew where he stood, and that Torchwood was now Jack’s life.
Jack shrugged. “You could barely look at me then.”
“I know,” the Doctor confessed, not hiding his discomfort with the reminder of how he’d failed to be Jack’s friend. I really don’t mind, though. His words had hardly been an open invitation. “I should never have abandoned you. Either of you. And that’s a mistake I hope I won’t ever repeat. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Jack. I know my initial reaction was hardly encouraging, but… only fools never change their mind.”
“Is that an invitation?”
He nodded. “It’d be an honour, Captain.”
Jack frowned, his eyes filled with suspicion. “What about the next time you’re tempted to drop me on a desert planet with no way to get home?”
“You know I won’t. Not again.”
“How do I know that for a fact, Doctor?” He grew serious again, and the Doctor could tell that his insistence that Rose should forgive him quickly had merely been trying to conceal how insecure the Captain really was about the Doctor’s loyalty to him. “How do I know that, on a whim, you won’t decide that you do mind after all, and just get rid of me?”
“It won’t happen,” he insisted. How could he prove to Jack that he was sincere? Could he honestly claim that he didn’t make the same mistake over and over, when he’d repeatedly pushed away his companions, and especially Rose, without giving them a choice?
“Maybe it won’t. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But in a month’s time? A year’s time?”
“It won’t happen because I now know how much I need you.” The blush that crept up Rose’s cheeks warmed his hearts a little. “Both of you,” he added, and was rewarded with one of Jack’s brightest smiles.
“Well… there’s one or two things you could do to be fully forgiven,” the Captain said, a hand wandering up the Doctor’s back under his shirt. “Now that I don’t have to hold back around you.”
The three of them shared a knowing look.
“Are you staying, then?”
***
The offer was tempting and so different from the time when the Doctor reluctantly admitted that he wouldn’t mind Jack tagging along again. Jack had had other things in mind then; all he’d been able to think about was that he wanted to get back to his team and serve a world that had suffered so much at the hands of the Master.
This time, though, it wasn’t just the Doctor who was offering. His gaze settled onto Rose, her face open and full of hope as she waited for his answer.
Jack, Rose and the Doctor travelling on board the TARDIS. A wave of nostalgia engulfed him. It’d been such a long time, but he hadn’t forgotten anything of the happy days spent between endless runs, disaster-prone plans to save the universe and a budding relationship that let him hope for so much more.
They’d taken that final step now. The skinny Doctor, devastated by too many losses, and his Rose, a few years older, definitely more mature, and even more beautiful than he remembered, had stepped over the line between friends and lovers. How could he say no? He’d wanted to be with them again for over a century. How could he deny himself that?
Gwen. Ianto. They both counted on him, and Tosh and Owen’s tragic deaths had made things worse. The three of them needed to support each other. Yet here he was, sitting naked on Rose’s bed on the TARDIS and seriously considering the possibility of abandoning them. In fact, the primary thought on his mind right now was that Torchwood, Weevils and Her Majesty’s service could take a hike as long as he was with the Doctor and Rose.
They were still staring at him, Rose hopeful, the Doctor apprehensive. Did he fear Jack’s refusal as much as he probably hoped for it?
“I’ve got to go back to the Hub,” he started, and Rose’s face fell.
The Doctor squeezed her hand tighter. For a man who’d spent the past few hours claiming he could live without her, he was making quite a show of the caring, supportive lover he really was to her.
“I have a few things to sort out,” he continued. “I also need to convince Gwen to take over.”
And then there was Ianto. The new - physical - turn that their relationship had recently taken had been little more than a pleasant diversion to Jack, but he was aware that his young colleague thought of it as something that went beyond a few hot encounters in the dark. After Estelle, though, he’d been determined not to fall in love again, and Ianto respected his choice. Looking at Rose and the Doctor, though, their hands tightly clasped together, he had to admit that being in love was sometimes worth it.
“You staying, then?” Rose asked, her voice trembling as if she feared she hadn’t properly understood the implication of his request.
“Can’t say no to you, sweetheart. Well, if the Doctor is sure there’s enough room for me.”
“Plenty of room in the TARDIS. Welcome aboard, Captain.”
The temptation to seal this new agreement with a kiss was too strong. When the Doctor returned the pressure of his lips, Jack put all his heart into kissing the man he loved. Not that he’d ever been the kind to hold back from sexual pleasure, but until this moment, he’d respected the barriers that the Doctor had erected around himself. That time was over.
“How much time did we waste?” he asked when lack of air forced him to pull away.
“Good things come to those who wait, Jack.”
He glared at Rose. “You can talk! You had him ages ago. I’ve been waiting for this for over a century! I’ve got lots of catching up to do.”
“And you will,” the Doctor promised, his gaze falling onto Rose and the hand he was still holding tightly. “We all will.”
***
This was a turn of events that she’d stopped hoping for ever since the Doctor had abandoned her on his bed, confused and disoriented. She didn’t have to settle back into a world that had changed drastically since she’d left it and where she was nothing more than a name on a memorial stone. She was free. Free to stay on the TARDIS, to travel the universe with the two men she loved.
Bouncing to her feet, she grabbed the bag that she’d earlier crammed full with clothes and accessories she hadn’t worn in years. Deliberately meticulous, she folded each item back into the wardrobe and dressing table, aware that the Doctor was keeping a close watch on her every move as she did so.
“Before you change your mind again,” she explained. “At least if you ask me to pack it all again you’ll feel bad.”
“Rose, come here.”
The Doctor’s voice, tender and shy, made her abandon trousers, jumpers and tops to walk over to the bed. Her lover grabbed her hand, a familiar gesture that would certainly never fail to amaze her. Then he groped behind his back and squeezed Jack’s fingers in his free hand.
“I won’t change my mind,” he said solemnly to both of them. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m not scared, but I’ll do my best not to make the same mistakes again.”
“You will not overprotect us,” Rose warned. “Jack was used to dangerous fieldwork long before he met us, and I’m much more experienced than I was when we were all travelling together.”
“I’m not even going to try to convince you.” His smile didn’t quite reach his lips, and Rose realised she’d probably have to put on a fight the first few times their lives collided with imminent danger. “Thank you. What you did today was amazing.”
“I know I’m good, very good.”
“Jack!”
“Deny it,” he challenged with a raised eyebrow.
All the Doctor did was shake his head in amused disbelief. “I’m serious, though. Losing Donna was bad enough, but the other Doctor died because of that, because of me and because he knew I was terrified of losing her.”
“You can’t blame yourself…”
“He did it because he knew. He was me. He had the same memories, the same thoughts… the same emotions. It’s true,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “What he told you, Rose.”
She nodded, humbled that the Doctor, usually so disdainful towards the human verbal expression of feelings, had almost openly confessed the feelings he had for her. He didn’t need to say more. She slid her arms around him and pulled him to her, pressing her ear against the rapid and regular beatings of his two hearts.
“Thank you.” She heard the rumbling of his voice through the shirt that didn’t quite cover his chest. Her hold on him tightened. “Both of you. You’ve been the best friends I could ever hope for. There are no words to describe what you did today.”
She kept her arms around him as she straightened, and pressed a hard kiss against his lips. “All we did was talk sense into you.” Reluctantly, she released him.
“Setting fire to that pyre was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. And after losing Donna…” His voice broke and he lowered his head, probably embarrassed by an emotion he couldn’t control.
“Any time.”
“Please, no. I don’t ever want to have to do that again.”
To either of you.
She figured that neither Jack nor the Doctor wanted to hear the logical end to his sentence any more than she did. If the life she’d been leading ever since she’d first met the Doctor had taught her one thing, it was that getting ready for the worst didn’t always ensure that she or the people she loved stayed out of harm’s way.
She’d known, when she’d decided to come back to this universe and leave her family behind, that life on the TARDIS wouldn’t be always be safe, or even necessarily always trouble-free. She’d embraced that possibility because, as long as she had him with her, it was worth the risk.
The past few hours had been more of an emotional rollercoaster than she’d been prepared for, but looking at the two men sitting next to her now, Jack’s hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, his thumb brushing rhythmic patterns against the back of the Time Lord’s head, her own fingers still trapped tightly in the Doctor’s hand, she knew that they’d be all right.
Jack. What an unexpected bonus that was. Happy as she’d been with the Doctor once she’d grown accustomed to his regeneration, at the back of her mind she’d never got over that sense of loss, of the missing part of their team, and the fact that Jack had left without so much as saying goodbye. Now she knew the truth. Relief that he would stay, and forgiveness for the Doctor’s initial lie, had won over anger.
It was right that Jack was here now. Not just because she loved him - and it was clear that the Doctor did too - but because they needed him. It’d taken Jack, not her, to make the Doctor see sense about dumping her when they went to Cardiff, and to ask for their help with the funeral. It’d taken Jack, too, to stop both her and the Doctor from being self-sacrificing and in the end almost losing each other again. He’d put his own needs and feelings aside and practically begged the Doctor to keep her with him, even if it’d mean that Jack would end up alone again.
“I love you.” She blurted out the words, a blush colouring her cheeks. She’d only ever spoken them a few times in her life, to her mum, to Mickey, and the last time had been to a fading image of the Doctor. She cleared her throat. “Both of you.”
It was a beaming Jack that replied first. “Love you, too, sweetheart.” His hand affectionately cupped her cheek, then he nodded towards the Doctor. “And he does, too, even though he’s rubbish at showing it.”
“Oi! Well, I suppose I am,” he huffed, his shoulders slumped. “Never was any good at domestic stuff.”
She looked back at the Doctor, seeing the tension in his jaw and the fear in his eyes, and let instinct take over, gathering his slim body into her arms once more.
“I’ll be good enough for three,” she whispered in his ear. “Got to keep up with stupid ape standards.”
At last she felt him return her hug, tentatively at first, then his light hold on her turned to desperate clutching. Blindly, she reached for Jack and pulled him closer, grateful when the Doctor took her cue and opened the embrace to the Captain.
“Jack…” After a few minutes, Rose’s voice, though muffled against the Doctor’s chest, came out as a chuckle.
“Hmm?”
“You’re still naked.”
Jack pulled away with a frown. “That a problem?”
“It’s illegal on about seven hundred thousand planets,” the Doctor commented.
The Captain rolled his eyes. “I’m not even gonna ask how you know that. Why don’t you take us somewhere where it’s legal?”
“Because,” he said, pressing his lips to the side of Jack’s neck, “I’m perfectly happy to stay where I am right now. And I’m not the one who complained about your state of undress.”
Wide-eyed, Rose sat up to glare at the Doctor. “I wasn’t complaining,” she protested. And, to prove her point, she grabbed the hem of her top and slid it over her head before dropping it to the floor in a deliberately overdramatic move.
“Here you go. Naked planet, I’m ready!” She cocked her head to the side. “Doctor, your mouth is open.”
“Hm?” His eyes widened. “Oh.” He clamped it shut.
“I prefer it open, actually,” Jack said, and proceeded to demonstrate why.
***
Epilogue