Title: Dying Stars
Characters: Eighth Doctor, Jack Harkness
Summary: The Doctor found him collapsed and trembling on a desolate world, huddled around a battered vortex manipulator like it was his only friend in the universe.
Notes: Prompt: "Eight/Jack during the Time War, bonus points if it's the reason for Jack's missing 2 years."
The Doctor found him collapsed and trembling on a desolate world, huddled around a battered vortex manipulator like it was his only friend in the universe.
It took some work to pull him to his TARDIS, and more still to treat his wounds, but the boy recognised a fellow soldier when he saw one and put up less struggle than he might have.
He called himself Gray. Not his own name, the Doctor could tell, but an important one all the same. As he recovered, he slipped into rebellious bravado, fearless flirtation, and for the first time in ages the Doctor would smile.
He was so very young, with such dark, weary eyes. He would comment on the Doctor's, so ancient and bright in his gaunt face, and they would share a wry, sad smile.
They confessed their backgrounds, if only in broad terms; Time Agent and Time Lord, renegades both. They shared bitter experiences in galaxies made battlefields, memories of bloody warriors and dying stars.
The friendship was fraught with arguments and accusations brimming with trust and laughter, and though they knew very little about each other, they knew what mattered.
It was only a matter of time before they killed together, before they were intimate together.
The second came on the heels of the first. Hands sliding on skin covered in gore and sweat and tears, tracing bruised lips and pulsing veins, grasping and pulling and clawing. They whispered so many things, against a trembling thigh, an exposed throat, lost in desperate thrusts and frantic moans.
They almost died that day, and they almost lived.
So it went, the two of them sharing the best and worst of a universe at war, saving who they could and destroying what they had to, following orders when it suited them, pulling each other from the brink of hopelessness. The raucous rogue with the easy smile and the melancholy aristocrat with the soft voice became both renowned and infamous, if never understood.
It couldn't last, of course, and when the Council took him, the Doctor asked only that be safe, and that they take his memories as well.
This wasn't a War for mortals, after all, and he could run from one more loss.