sahiya: When You Have to Go There (Jack/Eleven) [PG-13]
Scooting in just under the deadline! I really didn't think I'd make it.
Title: When You Have to Go There
Author: sahiya
Characters/Rating: Eleven/Jack, appearances by Nine and Ten, PG-13
Word Count: 7,100
Disclaimer: Not mine! They belong to RTD, Moffat, and the BBC.
Feedback: Yes, please! Even "I liked this" is always nice to hear.
Summary: Traveling just isn't the same without a home to come back to.
Author's Notes: This fic is doing double-duty as my Jack/Doctor Fest entry here at wintercompanion and as a birthday fic for my wonderful and long-suffering beta reader fuzzyboo03. The prompt was my own (*sheepish*), and it was:
Somewhere, somewhen, there is a house whose occupants seem to change all the time. Sometimes it is a very handsome man in a great coat. Sometimes, it's a man in a bowtie (sometimes accompanied by a woman, sometimes not). Sometimes there's a mysterious blue box with strange lettering in the front yard. And sometimes it stands empty for years at a time, until the ivy starts to encroach. The Doctor and Jack do domestic in their own ways.
Many thanks to kivrin for the lightning fast beta! It was much appreciated (especially by fuzzyboo03, who was glad not to have to beta her own gift fic, heh).
When You Have to Go There
The House was very old. Old, and tired, and neglected. Her paint had all peeled off, and she could feel the rot setting in from the harsh winters and the spray off the waves that crashed on the bluff below. For many years, her only visitors had been insolent children, who stripped the wallpaper from her walls and wounded her woodwork. But then a bad winter came, and with it rain that soaked her through to the soil, rendering the cliff's edge unstable. A fence went up, and after that, there were no more children.
She hadn't thought she would miss them.
The ivy, once carefully pruned back to decorative temperance by her people, encroached, choking her facade. She settled in to sleep for many years, listening to her own creaks and groans, the crash of the waves, the howling of the wind.
And then . . . he came. A man who sounded young, but felt old. He climbed the fence and dropped down into the tangled jungle of her garden. She felt him cast his gaze upon her as he waited for the other one, his companion, who both sounded and felt very young indeed. Too young even to have been one of her childish trespassers.
"Doctor, you can't be serious. It looks like it's about to fall down around our ears!"
"Have a little imagination, Amy. Can't you see how beautiful she used to be?"
"I can see the dry rot. Or should I call it wet rot? The plumbing's probably a right mess. I bet everything inside is flooded. And look at the roof! I know you're a do-it-yourself type, but really."
The House decided she did not much care for this Doctor's young friend.
"Never mind all that. It's not as though I'm asking you to live in it while we fix it up."
"We! Doctor, what do you want with a house? You have the TARDIS!"
"Oh, it's not for me. It's for a friend."
"A friend? I wouldn't wish this house on my worst enemy."
"Amy!" the Doctor chided. "Don't be mean. Houses have feelings, too. Besides, Jack will love it. It's broken."
They walked around a little longer, and the Doctor even fought his way inside, past the ivy, to shine a bright light up her stairs. He seemed pleased by what he saw. The House found herself wanting to please him, and tried to look as much like a home as possible, thinking back to when her people had been with her still, when they had lived and loved and, finally, died in her rooms.
"You'll do," the Doctor told her, well out of earshot of his young friend.
Then they left. The House tried not to be disappointed. She was certain the Doctor, at least, would be back.
***
Jack breathed deeply, filling his lungs with cold, damp sea air as he climbed the hill. It was a dreary day, and the townspeople had looked at him askance when he'd asked for directions to the old house on the bluff. It was too dangerous and too depressing, especially in this weather, they all said, but Jack had a slip of paper and a key in his pocket, weighing him down. The woman who'd given it to him - River Song, she'd called herself, an alias if Jack had ever heard one - had said it was from the Doctor. This place, this time, it said, in an unfamiliar chicken-scratch.
The house truly did appear dangerous and depressing. It was an old Victorian, very different from any of the small, boxy, nondescript houses Jack had caught glimpses of in town. It looked like it'd been well-loved once, but now the paint had all flaked off, the garden had run rampant, and the front porch was half caved-in. Jack found a place where the chain-link fence was falling down and ducked through, careful not to snag his coat. He followed an overgrown path around the house to the back, which was not in quite such terrible repair as the front. He picked his way up the stairs, pulled the key from his pocket, and slid it into the lock. It turned easily, as though someone had oiled it recently.
The house smelled of mold and mildew, and the windows were encased in grime. Jack didn't dare venture up the staircase at all - a broken neck wouldn't be such a big deal, but broken legs were annoying. There were probably rats living in the walls. But the rooms were big and airy with high ceilings, and the bay window in the living room faced out onto the ocean. It would be a magnificent house, he thought, for someone with unlimited time and money to pour into it.
What none of it told him was why the Doctor had told him to come here. It was the first Jack had heard from him at all since that night in the bar six months ago. His name is Alonso. As though that would somehow make up for the Doctor's absence on Earth when the 456 came calling. As though anything could.
Not that Jack hadn't tried - he had, so ingrained was his impulse for following the Doctor's orders. And Alonso was beautiful. He had, in fact, looked a more than a bit like Ianto, stretched out beneath Jack.
Jack had kept his eyes mostly closed. And then he'd left, because in the end, Ianto and Steven were still dead, and Alonso was just another mortal. Someone else to lose.
A floorboard creaked, somewhere in the house. Jack felt for his blaster, even though he knew who it was. He turned, but where he'd expected to see spiky hair, pinstripes, and red trainers, he saw floppy hair, a tweed jacket, and a bow tie.
"Hullo there, Jack."
Jack frowned. "Doctor?"
"Yes, of course, who else?" The Doctor rubbed his face. "I know it's a bit, well, new, but you always seem to know me, no matter what face I wear."
"When did -" Jack paused. "When did it happen?"
"Soon after I saw you last. Very soon."
"Is that why you -"
"Yeah." The Doctor's fringe flopped into his face. He looked sheepish. "Sorry about that. In hindsight it looks a bit of an empty gesture, but it was the best I could do with the time I had left and the man I was then."
Jack nodded. "I hated you a bit for it," he said, conversationally.
"Don't blame you there." The Doctor shoved his fringe out of his face and smiled. "But I'm trying to do better. I have nothing but time, now, and . . . well, I'm still figuring out what sort of man I am, but I'd like to be the sort who doesn't run from a friend who needs him. Provided, of course, that the friend still wants him around."
Jack looked away, considered and rejected half a dozen responses before finally choosing honesty. "I could never not want you around." The Doctor said nothing in reply, which told Jack more than the Doctor probably knew about how much he'd changed. After a few seconds, Jack cleared his throat and gestured around the room. "Anyway, none of that explains all this. What is this place?"
The Doctor was silent for a moment. "A soft place to land," he said at last. "For both of us, I was hoping."
Jack's throat felt suddenly, inexplicably tight. "Oh."
"I know it doesn't look like much now, but neither did the TARDIS when I first got her. I thought we could just do a little at a time. It isn't as though we're on a schedule, after all." The Doctor wandered over and laid a hand on wall, a gesture Jack had only ever seen him make with the TARDIS. "I was going to set up a little time bubble around her, to keep people out and keep her from falling apart, even if we don't come back for a couple centuries at a time." He shrugged and smiled a little sadly. "Traveling just isn't the same when you don't have anywhere to come home to."
Jack couldn't speak. He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn't squeeze any of them out past the lump in his throat. "Thank you," he managed at last.
The Doctor crossed to him in two long strides, took his hand, and pressed a kiss to his temple. "It's nothing. Come on, let me show you around."
***
It had been a long time since anyone had made love within the House's walls. A storm hit late in the evening, and the House could feel the wind whistling through her cracks and crannies. But somehow the two men did not seem to care, entwined as they were on a mattress on the floor of the lounge. They both held such sadness within them, as much sadness as she herself did; they had all lived too long and lost too much. But as she listened to their cries, muffled by the raging of the storm, she felt a sense of completion as well. Cold and drafty as she yet was, it put her in mind of calm winter evenings when there had been a fires in her grates and love in her rooms.
At last, the storm and the men quieted. For a long time, there was only silence. Then the Doctor asked, "Are you all right?"
The man who called himself Jack did not answer at first. "I don't know," he said at last. "I've been not all right for so long - I don't even remember -"
"Shh." The Doctor sighed, echoing the wind. "Sometimes . . . you just have to redefine all right."
Jack gave a very strange laugh. "Like the last you did, you mean, to mean, really, really not all right?"
"No. That's not what I mean."
"I know."
They lay quietly once more, for long minutes. The House let herself settle a little, sinking into the ground. The Doctor had done something very peculiar to her, so that she was no longer in danger of sliding off the cliff's edge. She did not understand it, but she was grateful all the same.
"I'd given up on ever having this," Jack finally said, in a quiet voice. "What made you change your mind?"
"Mmm. My mind varies on this sort of thing from regeneration to regeneration, so in that way, I guess you could say I didn't change my mind at all. But . . ."
"What?"
"Things have happened for me, Jack, that haven't happened for you yet. In this very room, in fact. Can't tell you more than that, of course."
"Of course. But can you tell me - Doctor, are they good things?" He sounded so broken, this strange man who felt so impossible and was older, perhaps, even than she.
"Yes, Jack." The Doctor's voice was infinitely tender, as when he'd told her that she would do. "Some of them are hard things, but they're good things, too."
Jack slept, then. The Doctor did not. He held Jack and the House held them both as the storm died down to nothing. The clouds parted overhead to reveal a field of stars, until one by one they winked out in the gray of early morning.
***
Jack stayed.
He could have left when the Doctor did, a few days later, but he'd been wandering long enough, he decided. He could stay awhile, in this place that wasn't Earth, but looked like it and smelled like it and even, sometimes, felt like it. Besides, time bubble or no, if something wasn't done about the foundation, the house would surely crumble in on herself.
Jack was not entirely sure why he and the Doctor both instinctively referred to the house as she - he was tempted to say it was simply a habit leftover from calling the TARDIS home, but somehow that didn't feel quite right. In any case, the house was always she and never it, and somehow, Jack thought that pleased her.
The Doctor left him with some tools to make the renovation work easier, including something that looked very like a sonic screwdriver, but which the Doctor insisted most certainly was not, since he never gave away his screwdrivers. He also promised to return soon to give Jack a hand, but he was off to pick up the new girl, Amy, and her friend Rory, and Jack knew better than to put any store by such promises.
He kept a candle burning in the window, like his father had when his mother was at sea.
Five years went by before Jack heard the TARDIS again. When he finally did, he was up to his elbows in potting soil, planting rose bushes in the front garden. He'd had the seeds imported from Earth, an expensive venture that had raised eyebrows in town. But Jack was long accustomed to raising eyebrows, and he had wanted roses in his garden.
It figured the Doctor would show on today of all days. Jack knelt back on his heels and stood, brushing rich, dark soil from his hands. Probably he'd lost track of time and meant to be gone five days, rather than five years.
But the TARDIS, when Jack finally tracked her down round back, smack in the middle of his vegetable garden - there went the strawberries, just like that - was not what he'd expected. She was filthy and battered, and the POLICE CALL BOX sign was flickering in and out, in a rhythm like labored breathing.
"Oh sweetheart," Jack breathed, "no, no." He pulled his TARDIS key - a new one, to replace the one he'd lost on Earth - from beneath his shirt and moved to unlock the door. But it swung open before he could touch it. The Doctor stumbled out and collapsed face down into Jack's carrot patch.
The Doctor, but not the one Jack had expected. Not even close.
The clothes were different - a velvet frock coat? really? - but the close cropped hair, the broad shoulders, and the large, workman's hands were the same. Jack dropped to his knees and carefully turned the Doctor onto his back, checking for injury. But of course, there was none - or rather, there had been, terrible, grievous injuries probably, but they had vanished with his regeneration.
The Doctor moaned and coughed, and a bit of yellow artron energy escaped his mouth. Jack stood and locked the TARDIS door, hoping she would be all right for the time being, and then slung the Doctor into a fireman's carry for the short trip into the house. The Doctor moaned again and struggled briefly. "It's all right, Doctor," Jack said, gently. "I'm a friend." The words seemed to take all the fight out of him and he slumped across Jack's shoulder, unconscious.
The master bedroom was up the stairs. Jack opted instead for one of the two bedrooms on the lower level, both of which were made up comfortably for the visitors he never had. He laid the Doctor on the bed and inspected his clothes - ill-fitting, filthy, and blood-splattered. Jack worked his boots off - no small task, considering the Doctor's feet were now two sizes too large for them - and then worked his way up the rest of him, leaving the Doctor in his briefs. The clothes he shoved in a laundry bag. It wasn't as though the Doctor would be wanting them later.
The Doctor revived while Jack was pulling the covers over him. He went from unconscious to wide awake in less than a second. Jack had no warning before his wrist was suddenly seized in an iron grip and he found himself staring into eyes he hadn't seen in almost a hundred and fifty years.
"Who are you?" the Doctor rasped.
"I'm Jack. I'm a friend," he added, because it had seemed to work before. Not this time - the Doctor's grip didn't slacken in the slightest.
"I don't know you. And you - you're -"
"Wrong?" Jack suggested wryly.
"Yes," the Doctor hissed, grip tightening to the point of pain. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown so they devoured the blue-grey irises. Jack laid his palm over the Doctor's forehead. It was much too warm. "A rock in the stream, a knot in the string -"
"Shh," Jack murmured. He stroked the Doctor's hair. "I'm a friend. That's all you need to know right now. Go to sleep, Doctor."
The Doctor gave a brief, bitter laugh. "Sleep," he said, as though it were a foreign concept. "Can't sleep. If I sleep, I'll dream, and if I dream, I'll -" He stopped. Wake up screaming, Jack filled in, remembering how he and Rose had used to tag-team the Doctor. Jack had been the one to wake him, because the Doctor could forgive himself for clipping Jack on the chin or giving him a black eye. Rose had been the one to hold him afterward, the one to talk him down and stop him shaking.
But Rose wasn't here. "I'll stay with you," Jack promised.
The Doctor turned his face away. His breath hitched once, twice. "Won't help. They're gone. They're gone. All of them. So long, sleeping in my mind. Then they were screaming. And now there's nothing there, it's just empty, and if I sleep it'll be like looking into the void. Gone, gone, gone -"
Damn. Of all the people in all of time and space, Jack thought he was the person least qualified to deal with this Doctor. He searched his memory for everything he knew about regeneration, and the things that helped besides a good, long stretch of bed rest. He'd read detailed reports of every regeneration UNIT had witnessed, there had to be something -
Tea. Right. Of course.
The Doctor had curled up on his side, knees drawn to his chest. "Gone, gone, gone," he mumbled, voice small and broken.
"Doctor, I'm going to go make tea," Jack said, placing his hand over the Doctor's. No reaction, but Jack hadn't really expected one.
Jack made tea as quickly as possible, not wishing to leave the Doctor alone for longer than he had to. He grabbed a banana while he was at it, and a package of biscuits that tasted vaguely like chocolate. He wished he had Jaffa cakes, but they were five hundred years and about a thousand light years away from any store that would have them.
The Doctor had curled up even tighter by the time Jack returned. Jack laid a hand on his shoulder, urging him to roll onto his back. "Hey, sit up and drink this. It'll help."
The Doctor laughed again, a harsh bark that Jack had sometimes heard when he'd traveled with him and Rose. But he didn't fight Jack as he rolled him over and sat him up. When Jack pressed the mug into his hand, the Doctor took it, as though resisting would require more effort than he had in him.
"Drink that," Jack told him.
The Doctor looked down into the mug, and then looked up at Jack. There were taut lines around his eyes and mouth, like the memory of pain. "I wasn't supposed to survive, you know. Had to do it, had to, but I never thought - if I thought I'd survive, I don't think I could've. I'm not supposed to be here," he added plaintively. His fingers loosened on the mug, and Jack barely caught it in time.
"Well, that makes two of us," Jack said, bringing the mug into alignment with the Doctor's lips. "Now drink."
To Jack's mild surprise, the Doctor drank. After the first reluctant sip, he couldn't seem to get enough. He drank the mug dry, and tore into the package of biscuits while Jack went to get him more. Tea procured, Jack pulled a chair up to the Doctor's bedside and watched in bemusement. "Would you like a sandwich or something? I've got some eggs -"
The Doctor shook his head. "No, this is - I haven't had food like this in years. Decades. Can't remember how long it's been since I was on Earth."
"You're still not on Earth," Jack said, taking the empty mug from him again. He set it aside, reached for the banana, and peeled it halfway down before handing it to the Doctor. "You're on Bellacosa, 43rd century. Looks and feels a lot like Earth, thanks to the terraforming, but it's not, quite."
The Doctor swallowed an enormous bite of banana. "And you're . . . human?"
"More or less," Jack said, smiling a little tightly. "I can't tell you," he added hastily. "In fact, it might be better if you forget this ever happened. I don't think you knew me when we met."
"Might've just hid it well," the Doctor said, head falling back. Jack rescued the banana peel and dropped it on the tray. "But yeah. Might be better to forget." He lay still and quiet, eyes going sad and unfocused as Jack tucked him in again. Mentally probing, Jack suspected, at the fresh, raw psychic wound where his people once were.
"Doctor, stop."
The Doctor's eyes focused on him. Jack had to control his reaction; he had seen the Doctor in extremis more than once, but he had never seen him so despondent. So completely hopeless. He always had faith in something, if only in his own ability to talk his way out of any situation. "I can't live like this."
Jack slid his hand across the quilt till it encountered the Doctor's. "You can. You do."
"I shouldn't."
"Neither should I, the things I've done. But," Jack shrugged, "I don't have a lot of choice in the matter."
The Doctor looked at him. "Why do I trust you? I shouldn't. I don't know you. You could be lying when you say you know me. And you burn."
Jack stood. "If you want me to leave -"
"No!" the Doctor said. He looked startled at his own outburst. "No," he repeated, picking at the covers and avoiding Jack's eyes. "You're right, I need to sleep. And you said . . ." He stopped, unwilling, as usual, to ask for what he wanted.
Jack sat back down and reached for the Doctor's hand. "Yeah. I'll stay."
***
The House watched over Jack, who watched over this man who both was and was not the Doctor. And she watched over the strange being in her back garden, who was not anything she had ever seen before. She was only as wide as the vegetable patch, but she felt as vast as the ocean that crashed on the bluff or the stars overhead, and she filled the night with an unearthly keening.
In the morning, the Doctor tried to leave while Jack slept, slumped in the bedside chair. The front door became mysteriously sticky, and no amount of jiggling the deadbolt or rattling the handle worked. The House admired his ingenuity, but it was only when the racket finally woke Jack that the door popped open for him. The Doctor caught himself on the door frame and cursed.
"Where you off to, Doc? And in my coat, no less."
"Away. Can't stay here, like you said, and if I'm only going to have to forget -"
"If you have to forget, then it doesn't matter how long you stay. Let's have breakfast at least."
The Doctor said nothing for a time. "Fine. Just let me check on the TARDIS. She was almost as badly injured as me."
"Want me to come with you?"
"No."
"Too bad."
The Doctor snorted. "How well do you know me, in my future?"
"Well enough not to let you walk out that door without supervision. Come on, let's see what we can do for Herself."
Herself. That was what Jack called her sometimes. The House did not sulk, but only, she admitted to herself, because sulking was not within a house's nature. She could not resent any comfort Jack offered to this being, this TARDIS, and when he vanished in the vegetable patch, along with the Doctor, she was not alarmed.
He would come back. Her Jack would always come back.
***
The last thing Jack expected to find in his living room when he got back from a week in the vortex with the leather jacket Doctor was the bowtie Doctor sitting on his sofa. He had his feet up on the coffee table, and his jacket - it really was tweed; Jack had hoped he might've been mistaken - was slung over the armchair. He had a beer in one hand and appeared in no hurry to be anywhere.
"Are you old enough to be drinking that?" Jack asked, nodding towards the beer.
The Doctor pulled a face. "Do you know how often I get asked for my ID now? Almost caused a small apolocalypse on this one planet. Amy and I were chasing a trihorned Grihnintilian who was about to lay his eggs and he went into this pub - they wouldn't let me in without seeing ID, and I'd left the psychic paper back in the TARDIS! Bloke didn't believe me when I told him the world would end if he didn't let me in."
"What'd you do?"
The Doctor heaved a deep sigh. "Amy is an attractive young woman. And very persuasive."
Jack laughed. "Will I ever get to meet the lovely Amy Pond?"
The Doctor narrowed his eyes slightly. "I think not."
Jack grinned. "Don't trust me?"
The Doctor reached out, snagged Jack's hand, and reeled him in to sprawl, half on top of him and half on the sofa. "Don't particularly want to share you." He kissed him, surprisingly aggressive and more than a bit possessive as well. Jack let him take control. He wanted to see where this was going. "Not even with my former self," the Doctor added, when he finally let Jack up for air.
"You realize there's something vaguely psychotic about that."
"Only a bit."
"Oh well, then." Jack grinned. "I guess that's all right. So." He propped himself up on one elbow. "When did you remember?"
The Doctor leaned his head on Jack's shoulder. "I always thought I'd just lost a week. Wouldn't've been that strange if I had done. It wasn't until I came back last time that I remembered." He tilted his head back to meet Jack's eyes. "Thank you. I know I wasn't the easiest person to help."
Jack smiled. "If I liked easy, I wouldn't be here. And . . . it was good to see that you again, even if none of it had happened yet for him." He leaned in to press his lips to the corner of the Doctor's mouth. "Stay awhile?" he murmured.
"Can't yet. Soon, though. I promise."
"I was planting rose bushes before you showed up before. Will you at least stay long enough to help me?"
The Doctor nodded, and the two of them shared a brief, sad smile. "Yeah. I will."
The rose bushes were blooming for the first time when next Jack heard the TARDIS. His pulse immediately quickened, but he forced himself to finish soaping a mug and set it upside down in the dish drain to dry before going to investigate.
The Doctor had managed to miss the strawberries this time, at least. The TARDIS was under a huge tree, the name of which Jack had never bothered to learn. It bloomed in the late fall, massive orange blossoms that weighed the branches down almost to the ground, and in the spring it bore tiny red fruit.
Jack had eaten some once, experimentally. They hadn't killed him, but they had sort of made him wish he was dead.
The door swung open. The Doctor swung himself out, one hand on the doorjamb.
Pinstripes it was. Jack was unsurprised. He hadn't expected Bowtie back so soon, and he wasn't expecting Leather Jacket back at all. The Doctor, on the other hand, looked surprised enough for both of them.
"Jack! What are you -" He broke off and wandered out, nearly tripping over his own feet as he craned his neck back to look up at the sky. "Is this Cardiff?"
"Nope. Not even close."
"Didn't think so. Too dry for Cardiff." The Doctor sniffed the air. "Smells like Bellacosa. What are you doing on Bellacosa? Wait. How old are you?"
"Not that much older than the last time you saw me."
The Doctor frowned. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be on Earth with your team. Thought that was what you wanted."
Jack felt an old anger rising under his skin. "The 456 mean anything to you?"
Understanding dawned. "Ah. Yes. Nasty business, that. Fixed point, I couldn't - well, I could, but I can't - I -" The Doctor broke off, rubbing the back of his neck and ruffling his hair. "One of those things. You were a Time Agent - you know."
"Yeah. Figured it was something like that." Jack consciously unclenched his jaw. "How about you? Where are you in your timeline?"
"Oh, you know." The Doctor shoved his hands in his coat pockets and rocked back on his heels. "Towards the end, I think."
Jack blinked. He hadn't expected the Doctor to be quite so forthright. "Are you sure?" He felt silly asking, as though he hadn't already met the next Doctor twice, but he wasn't sure he should let on that he had.
"Yes. No. Yes. There's a prophecy. Could be rubbish, prophecies usually are, but I don't think this one is. Daft, I know, I've died eight times already, you'd think I'd be used to it, but I've never - I've never seen it coming before. Not from so far off."
Jack was quiet for a moment. He was not really sure, upon consideration, that he wanted to invite this Doctor in for tea. He wasn't sure there was enough room in the house for his issues and the Doctor's, too. But he could also see, plain as day, that the Doctor was deeply frightened, and Jack had never been able to turn his back on him. Not even when he probably should have. "Come in for a bit?" he said. He half-turned, gesturing towards the house. "I've got tea and biccies, if you want them."
The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "You've got a house? Do you have a mortgage, too?"
"No mortgage, just the house." He turned and led the way up the front porch, past the rose bushes, aware that the Doctor stopped and looked at them for just a beat too long.
In the kitchen, Jack put the kettle on and pulled the biscuits out of the cupboard. The Doctor leaned against the doorjamb and picked up where he'd left off, as though they'd never been interrupted. "I don't think I ever had time to be afraid before. It always just happened, because it had to. But this time - I don't want it to. I like the man I am, and when it's over, I'll be dead, even if another me goes on."
"Well," Jack said, eyes fixed on his hands as he put a pile of biscuits on a plate, "there are worse things."
"And I keep thinking - I could stop it happening," the Doctor went on, blithely. "I could. I can do anything - could go back and stop the 456 if I wanted. Stop them ever existing, even. I have the power, and there's no one to stop me now."
Jack turned and crossed his arms over his chest. "I thought we established a long time ago that you'd make a really shitty god."
"Well -"
"You really don't think about the things that come out of your mouth, do you?"
The Doctor's eyes widened and his mouth snapped shut with an audible click.
"I'm sorry that you're going to die. Dying sucks, and I'm pretty much an expert on it now. But do you know how many times I've wished I could become someone else? Anyone else? Someone who didn't do the things I've done? But no, every time I wake up, I'm just me. And nothing I do will let me stop being me." He dropped the plate onto the kitchen table and shoved it toward the Doctor. "And by the way, I understand that it was a fixed point, but you could've dropped in afterward to see how I was doing. Which was about as well as you might expect."
"Jack -"
Jack felt a sudden flush of pure, unadulterated anger. "Do not tell me you're so sorry."
"I won't," the Doctor said in a subdued voice. He laughed, briefly. "I just can't seem to ever get it right with you, can I?"
"It might help if you actually tried."
"Yes. Yes, you're . . . quite right." The Doctor pushed off the doorjamb with his hip. "I should go, I think."
"Probably." He'd forgotten this, somehow, after his encounters with the bowtie Doctor, how this Doctor had always made him feel like a child who was never quite good enough to earn the affection he craved. Only now, he wasn't sure he craved it as much as he once had. Not from this Doctor.
The Doctor turned to walk away, and suddenly spun around, in a full three-sixty. "Jack, if this is good-bye -"
"It's not. You'll see me one more time." Jack paused. "Good luck, Doctor."
The Doctor nodded. "You, too."
And then he was gone, leaving Jack alone in the kitchen with a whistling kettle and a plate of untouched biscuits.
***
Jack was sad.
The House knew this because he slept. After the Doctor left, he went to bed and slept for hours. Sometimes he woke and did not sleep again immediately, but lay awake, contemplating her ceiling. Then he slept again, as though it hurt to do anything else, though she knew that his dreams were often evil and sleep did not bring the same comfort to him that it had brought to her other people.
She did not like this last Doctor, she decided. He had hurt Jack, and if he came again, she would lock him out.
Days later, the Doctor returned - the first Doctor, the one who was the House's favorite because it was he who had saved her. His presence comforted her; she had begun to feel the hushed, oppressive quiet keenly, and it had reminded her of times when she had held sickness and death within her walls. He hopped over the fence, rather than use her well-oiled gate, and let himself inside. "Hello there, beautiful," he said to her. "How's our Jack, eh?"
He did not pause before climbing the stairs to Jack's bedroom, nor did he knock before entering. "Time to wake up, Jack." Jack made a muffled, protesting noise. "Yup. Can't stay in bed for the rest of forever."
"You remember?"
"Never forgot that one. No point. I'm sorry, Jack. I was scared. And a prat."
"Did . . ."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Ask me, Jack."
"Did you ever care? That you. The last you. Did you ever really care?"
"Yes." The Doctor's voice was quiet, but firm. "I did. I was truly terrible at showing it, and I was thoughtless and careless with your feelings, and I was never there when you really needed me, but . . . I did care, for as much as that counts. And I'm trying to do better."
"Oh," Jack said, in a very small voice.
"Now get up. Take a shower, shave, get dressed, and for the love of Time, brush your teeth. I shan't kiss you again until you do. And then come downstairs. I have something for you."
He did not wait for Jack's reply, but went downstairs, where he busied himself in her kitchen. Jack lay in bed awhile longer, but at last he rose and stumbled into the bathroom, where he started the shower running. The House made small adjustments to the water pressure and temperature.. She could not help him as the Doctor could - she had no hand for him to hold - but there were so many little things that only she could do. This pleased her, perhaps more than it ought.
***
The Doctor was stirring scrambled eggs in a pan when Jack staggered downstairs. There were two places set on the table, with a teapot covered in a cozy and a stack of toast on a plate set between them. A quick glance at the stove confirmed what Jack's nose had told him: there was bacon to be had, frying in a pan with some mushrooms.
"No tomatoes," the Doctor said with a sniff. "I can't abide the texture of fried tomatoes."
Ianto had always said the same thing, Jack remembered with a sudden pang. He rubbed his chest idly, wishing Pinstripes's visit hadn't stirred up so much old grief. He'd thought he'd learned to live with it, but it turned out he'd just managed not to think about it most days.
He really was not in the mood for this. "You said you had something for me."
The Doctor turned and pointed at him with the spatula. "Breakfast first. Presents after."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Presents?"
"Well, of a sort. But not on an empty stomach. How long as it been since you ate?"
Jack frowned, realizing he couldn't properly remember. In fact, he wasn't sure how long he'd slept, though he didn't think it'd been more than a couple of days.
It wasn't like him, he reflected, to just lie down and wait for - what exactly had he been waiting for? Not death. Death never did him any good. The Doctor, maybe. But his encounter with the pinstriped Doctor had left him exhausted. He was so tired of existing, and there he was, whinging on about how he was going to die.
A plate of food was suddenly plunked down in front of him. "Eat all of it." Jack heaved a sigh and lifted his fork.
The Doctor's plate was long clear before Jack managed to finish his. He couldn't seem to manage the last slice of toast, but the Doctor finally took pity on him. "Good enough," he said, and cleared the rest of it away. Then he offered Jack his hand. "C'mon, then. I left your presents in the lounge."
Jack followed the Doctor into the living room, wondering what he possibly could have brought for him. Was this a new bid to get Jack to come with him? he wondered. Look at the marvelous things I brought you from eight planets in six solar systems and seven centuries! If so, it wasn't going to -
Jack froze. For a moment, he literally thought his heart would stop. "How did you -" His throat closed up.
"I went and saw Gwen," the Doctor said. "Asked her precisely when it had happened." He clasped Jack by the shoulder and steered him towards the sofa. He sat beside him and took his hand. "She said to tell you she loves you. She sent a few other things, mostly photographs. They're in the box with your others."
"Oh," Jack said. It seemed to be all he could get out.
The Doctor squeezed his hand. "I can't go back and save them, Jack. I would if I could, but like you said, I'd -"
"Make a really shitty god. I remember."
"But I thought - I can save something. I can save this much."
"Thank you," Jack said, voice shaking. He reached out and picked up the little chunk of TARDIS coral. He was not quite ready for the box of photographs yet, not when he knew what might be inside. There was a particular photo Rhys had taken, not so long before the 456 had come, of Jack and Ianto and Gwen. And another one, which Jack knew Ianto had kept a copy of in his flat, of just the two of them, a candid one Tosh had snapped. He could see it now in his mind's eye: himself sprawled on the sofa, pulling Ianto down by the knot of his tie for a kiss, while Ianto desperately tried not to overbalance and spill coffee all over Jack, the sofa, and the floor.
Too much. It was too much right now. The coral was easier. It was warm in his hands, alive and well and perhaps even happy to see him. Jack realized he'd been holding his breath. He let it out. "Thank you. I never expected - I never even thought to ask."
"My fault," the Doctor said, pulling Jack a little closer. He kissed Jack's forehead, his temple, the corner of his mouth, and finally his lips. Jack half-turned so he could kiss him properly, hooking his fingers into the Doctor's jacket.
When Jack finally pulled away, he went only so far as to rest his forehead against the Doctor's. "Can you stay this time?"
"Yes," the Doctor said. "For a little while. Or . . . you could come with me. Come travel with me. We don't have to go to Earth, there are so many other places we could visit."
Jack swallowed. "I don't think I can make that decision right now."
The Doctor nuzzled closer, the tip of his nose brushing the hair above Jack's ear. "It's all right. You don't have to. Like I said . . . I can stay awhile."
***
Houses are very patient.
The House had waited before, and she did not mind waiting now. The Doctor and Jack would return, and in the meantime, she was not alone. They had left behind a strange little being, rather like the one that had appeared in her garden before with the Doctor, but obviously very small and young still. She waited, too - waited for Jack to return, waited to be old enough and strong enough to travel. She was less patient than the House, but she would learn.
Life with the Doctor and Jack required a great deal of patience.
Fin.
Title: When You Have to Go There
Author: sahiya
Characters/Rating: Eleven/Jack, appearances by Nine and Ten, PG-13
Word Count: 7,100
Disclaimer: Not mine! They belong to RTD, Moffat, and the BBC.
Feedback: Yes, please! Even "I liked this" is always nice to hear.
Summary: Traveling just isn't the same without a home to come back to.
Author's Notes: This fic is doing double-duty as my Jack/Doctor Fest entry here at wintercompanion and as a birthday fic for my wonderful and long-suffering beta reader fuzzyboo03. The prompt was my own (*sheepish*), and it was:
Somewhere, somewhen, there is a house whose occupants seem to change all the time. Sometimes it is a very handsome man in a great coat. Sometimes, it's a man in a bowtie (sometimes accompanied by a woman, sometimes not). Sometimes there's a mysterious blue box with strange lettering in the front yard. And sometimes it stands empty for years at a time, until the ivy starts to encroach. The Doctor and Jack do domestic in their own ways.
Many thanks to kivrin for the lightning fast beta! It was much appreciated (especially by fuzzyboo03, who was glad not to have to beta her own gift fic, heh).
When You Have to Go There
The House was very old. Old, and tired, and neglected. Her paint had all peeled off, and she could feel the rot setting in from the harsh winters and the spray off the waves that crashed on the bluff below. For many years, her only visitors had been insolent children, who stripped the wallpaper from her walls and wounded her woodwork. But then a bad winter came, and with it rain that soaked her through to the soil, rendering the cliff's edge unstable. A fence went up, and after that, there were no more children.
She hadn't thought she would miss them.
The ivy, once carefully pruned back to decorative temperance by her people, encroached, choking her facade. She settled in to sleep for many years, listening to her own creaks and groans, the crash of the waves, the howling of the wind.
And then . . . he came. A man who sounded young, but felt old. He climbed the fence and dropped down into the tangled jungle of her garden. She felt him cast his gaze upon her as he waited for the other one, his companion, who both sounded and felt very young indeed. Too young even to have been one of her childish trespassers.
"Doctor, you can't be serious. It looks like it's about to fall down around our ears!"
"Have a little imagination, Amy. Can't you see how beautiful she used to be?"
"I can see the dry rot. Or should I call it wet rot? The plumbing's probably a right mess. I bet everything inside is flooded. And look at the roof! I know you're a do-it-yourself type, but really."
The House decided she did not much care for this Doctor's young friend.
"Never mind all that. It's not as though I'm asking you to live in it while we fix it up."
"We! Doctor, what do you want with a house? You have the TARDIS!"
"Oh, it's not for me. It's for a friend."
"A friend? I wouldn't wish this house on my worst enemy."
"Amy!" the Doctor chided. "Don't be mean. Houses have feelings, too. Besides, Jack will love it. It's broken."
They walked around a little longer, and the Doctor even fought his way inside, past the ivy, to shine a bright light up her stairs. He seemed pleased by what he saw. The House found herself wanting to please him, and tried to look as much like a home as possible, thinking back to when her people had been with her still, when they had lived and loved and, finally, died in her rooms.
"You'll do," the Doctor told her, well out of earshot of his young friend.
Then they left. The House tried not to be disappointed. She was certain the Doctor, at least, would be back.
***
Jack breathed deeply, filling his lungs with cold, damp sea air as he climbed the hill. It was a dreary day, and the townspeople had looked at him askance when he'd asked for directions to the old house on the bluff. It was too dangerous and too depressing, especially in this weather, they all said, but Jack had a slip of paper and a key in his pocket, weighing him down. The woman who'd given it to him - River Song, she'd called herself, an alias if Jack had ever heard one - had said it was from the Doctor. This place, this time, it said, in an unfamiliar chicken-scratch.
The house truly did appear dangerous and depressing. It was an old Victorian, very different from any of the small, boxy, nondescript houses Jack had caught glimpses of in town. It looked like it'd been well-loved once, but now the paint had all flaked off, the garden had run rampant, and the front porch was half caved-in. Jack found a place where the chain-link fence was falling down and ducked through, careful not to snag his coat. He followed an overgrown path around the house to the back, which was not in quite such terrible repair as the front. He picked his way up the stairs, pulled the key from his pocket, and slid it into the lock. It turned easily, as though someone had oiled it recently.
The house smelled of mold and mildew, and the windows were encased in grime. Jack didn't dare venture up the staircase at all - a broken neck wouldn't be such a big deal, but broken legs were annoying. There were probably rats living in the walls. But the rooms were big and airy with high ceilings, and the bay window in the living room faced out onto the ocean. It would be a magnificent house, he thought, for someone with unlimited time and money to pour into it.
What none of it told him was why the Doctor had told him to come here. It was the first Jack had heard from him at all since that night in the bar six months ago. His name is Alonso. As though that would somehow make up for the Doctor's absence on Earth when the 456 came calling. As though anything could.
Not that Jack hadn't tried - he had, so ingrained was his impulse for following the Doctor's orders. And Alonso was beautiful. He had, in fact, looked a more than a bit like Ianto, stretched out beneath Jack.
Jack had kept his eyes mostly closed. And then he'd left, because in the end, Ianto and Steven were still dead, and Alonso was just another mortal. Someone else to lose.
A floorboard creaked, somewhere in the house. Jack felt for his blaster, even though he knew who it was. He turned, but where he'd expected to see spiky hair, pinstripes, and red trainers, he saw floppy hair, a tweed jacket, and a bow tie.
"Hullo there, Jack."
Jack frowned. "Doctor?"
"Yes, of course, who else?" The Doctor rubbed his face. "I know it's a bit, well, new, but you always seem to know me, no matter what face I wear."
"When did -" Jack paused. "When did it happen?"
"Soon after I saw you last. Very soon."
"Is that why you -"
"Yeah." The Doctor's fringe flopped into his face. He looked sheepish. "Sorry about that. In hindsight it looks a bit of an empty gesture, but it was the best I could do with the time I had left and the man I was then."
Jack nodded. "I hated you a bit for it," he said, conversationally.
"Don't blame you there." The Doctor shoved his fringe out of his face and smiled. "But I'm trying to do better. I have nothing but time, now, and . . . well, I'm still figuring out what sort of man I am, but I'd like to be the sort who doesn't run from a friend who needs him. Provided, of course, that the friend still wants him around."
Jack looked away, considered and rejected half a dozen responses before finally choosing honesty. "I could never not want you around." The Doctor said nothing in reply, which told Jack more than the Doctor probably knew about how much he'd changed. After a few seconds, Jack cleared his throat and gestured around the room. "Anyway, none of that explains all this. What is this place?"
The Doctor was silent for a moment. "A soft place to land," he said at last. "For both of us, I was hoping."
Jack's throat felt suddenly, inexplicably tight. "Oh."
"I know it doesn't look like much now, but neither did the TARDIS when I first got her. I thought we could just do a little at a time. It isn't as though we're on a schedule, after all." The Doctor wandered over and laid a hand on wall, a gesture Jack had only ever seen him make with the TARDIS. "I was going to set up a little time bubble around her, to keep people out and keep her from falling apart, even if we don't come back for a couple centuries at a time." He shrugged and smiled a little sadly. "Traveling just isn't the same when you don't have anywhere to come home to."
Jack couldn't speak. He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn't squeeze any of them out past the lump in his throat. "Thank you," he managed at last.
The Doctor crossed to him in two long strides, took his hand, and pressed a kiss to his temple. "It's nothing. Come on, let me show you around."
***
It had been a long time since anyone had made love within the House's walls. A storm hit late in the evening, and the House could feel the wind whistling through her cracks and crannies. But somehow the two men did not seem to care, entwined as they were on a mattress on the floor of the lounge. They both held such sadness within them, as much sadness as she herself did; they had all lived too long and lost too much. But as she listened to their cries, muffled by the raging of the storm, she felt a sense of completion as well. Cold and drafty as she yet was, it put her in mind of calm winter evenings when there had been a fires in her grates and love in her rooms.
At last, the storm and the men quieted. For a long time, there was only silence. Then the Doctor asked, "Are you all right?"
The man who called himself Jack did not answer at first. "I don't know," he said at last. "I've been not all right for so long - I don't even remember -"
"Shh." The Doctor sighed, echoing the wind. "Sometimes . . . you just have to redefine all right."
Jack gave a very strange laugh. "Like the last you did, you mean, to mean, really, really not all right?"
"No. That's not what I mean."
"I know."
They lay quietly once more, for long minutes. The House let herself settle a little, sinking into the ground. The Doctor had done something very peculiar to her, so that she was no longer in danger of sliding off the cliff's edge. She did not understand it, but she was grateful all the same.
"I'd given up on ever having this," Jack finally said, in a quiet voice. "What made you change your mind?"
"Mmm. My mind varies on this sort of thing from regeneration to regeneration, so in that way, I guess you could say I didn't change my mind at all. But . . ."
"What?"
"Things have happened for me, Jack, that haven't happened for you yet. In this very room, in fact. Can't tell you more than that, of course."
"Of course. But can you tell me - Doctor, are they good things?" He sounded so broken, this strange man who felt so impossible and was older, perhaps, even than she.
"Yes, Jack." The Doctor's voice was infinitely tender, as when he'd told her that she would do. "Some of them are hard things, but they're good things, too."
Jack slept, then. The Doctor did not. He held Jack and the House held them both as the storm died down to nothing. The clouds parted overhead to reveal a field of stars, until one by one they winked out in the gray of early morning.
***
Jack stayed.
He could have left when the Doctor did, a few days later, but he'd been wandering long enough, he decided. He could stay awhile, in this place that wasn't Earth, but looked like it and smelled like it and even, sometimes, felt like it. Besides, time bubble or no, if something wasn't done about the foundation, the house would surely crumble in on herself.
Jack was not entirely sure why he and the Doctor both instinctively referred to the house as she - he was tempted to say it was simply a habit leftover from calling the TARDIS home, but somehow that didn't feel quite right. In any case, the house was always she and never it, and somehow, Jack thought that pleased her.
The Doctor left him with some tools to make the renovation work easier, including something that looked very like a sonic screwdriver, but which the Doctor insisted most certainly was not, since he never gave away his screwdrivers. He also promised to return soon to give Jack a hand, but he was off to pick up the new girl, Amy, and her friend Rory, and Jack knew better than to put any store by such promises.
He kept a candle burning in the window, like his father had when his mother was at sea.
Five years went by before Jack heard the TARDIS again. When he finally did, he was up to his elbows in potting soil, planting rose bushes in the front garden. He'd had the seeds imported from Earth, an expensive venture that had raised eyebrows in town. But Jack was long accustomed to raising eyebrows, and he had wanted roses in his garden.
It figured the Doctor would show on today of all days. Jack knelt back on his heels and stood, brushing rich, dark soil from his hands. Probably he'd lost track of time and meant to be gone five days, rather than five years.
But the TARDIS, when Jack finally tracked her down round back, smack in the middle of his vegetable garden - there went the strawberries, just like that - was not what he'd expected. She was filthy and battered, and the POLICE CALL BOX sign was flickering in and out, in a rhythm like labored breathing.
"Oh sweetheart," Jack breathed, "no, no." He pulled his TARDIS key - a new one, to replace the one he'd lost on Earth - from beneath his shirt and moved to unlock the door. But it swung open before he could touch it. The Doctor stumbled out and collapsed face down into Jack's carrot patch.
The Doctor, but not the one Jack had expected. Not even close.
The clothes were different - a velvet frock coat? really? - but the close cropped hair, the broad shoulders, and the large, workman's hands were the same. Jack dropped to his knees and carefully turned the Doctor onto his back, checking for injury. But of course, there was none - or rather, there had been, terrible, grievous injuries probably, but they had vanished with his regeneration.
The Doctor moaned and coughed, and a bit of yellow artron energy escaped his mouth. Jack stood and locked the TARDIS door, hoping she would be all right for the time being, and then slung the Doctor into a fireman's carry for the short trip into the house. The Doctor moaned again and struggled briefly. "It's all right, Doctor," Jack said, gently. "I'm a friend." The words seemed to take all the fight out of him and he slumped across Jack's shoulder, unconscious.
The master bedroom was up the stairs. Jack opted instead for one of the two bedrooms on the lower level, both of which were made up comfortably for the visitors he never had. He laid the Doctor on the bed and inspected his clothes - ill-fitting, filthy, and blood-splattered. Jack worked his boots off - no small task, considering the Doctor's feet were now two sizes too large for them - and then worked his way up the rest of him, leaving the Doctor in his briefs. The clothes he shoved in a laundry bag. It wasn't as though the Doctor would be wanting them later.
The Doctor revived while Jack was pulling the covers over him. He went from unconscious to wide awake in less than a second. Jack had no warning before his wrist was suddenly seized in an iron grip and he found himself staring into eyes he hadn't seen in almost a hundred and fifty years.
"Who are you?" the Doctor rasped.
"I'm Jack. I'm a friend," he added, because it had seemed to work before. Not this time - the Doctor's grip didn't slacken in the slightest.
"I don't know you. And you - you're -"
"Wrong?" Jack suggested wryly.
"Yes," the Doctor hissed, grip tightening to the point of pain. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown so they devoured the blue-grey irises. Jack laid his palm over the Doctor's forehead. It was much too warm. "A rock in the stream, a knot in the string -"
"Shh," Jack murmured. He stroked the Doctor's hair. "I'm a friend. That's all you need to know right now. Go to sleep, Doctor."
The Doctor gave a brief, bitter laugh. "Sleep," he said, as though it were a foreign concept. "Can't sleep. If I sleep, I'll dream, and if I dream, I'll -" He stopped. Wake up screaming, Jack filled in, remembering how he and Rose had used to tag-team the Doctor. Jack had been the one to wake him, because the Doctor could forgive himself for clipping Jack on the chin or giving him a black eye. Rose had been the one to hold him afterward, the one to talk him down and stop him shaking.
But Rose wasn't here. "I'll stay with you," Jack promised.
The Doctor turned his face away. His breath hitched once, twice. "Won't help. They're gone. They're gone. All of them. So long, sleeping in my mind. Then they were screaming. And now there's nothing there, it's just empty, and if I sleep it'll be like looking into the void. Gone, gone, gone -"
Damn. Of all the people in all of time and space, Jack thought he was the person least qualified to deal with this Doctor. He searched his memory for everything he knew about regeneration, and the things that helped besides a good, long stretch of bed rest. He'd read detailed reports of every regeneration UNIT had witnessed, there had to be something -
Tea. Right. Of course.
The Doctor had curled up on his side, knees drawn to his chest. "Gone, gone, gone," he mumbled, voice small and broken.
"Doctor, I'm going to go make tea," Jack said, placing his hand over the Doctor's. No reaction, but Jack hadn't really expected one.
Jack made tea as quickly as possible, not wishing to leave the Doctor alone for longer than he had to. He grabbed a banana while he was at it, and a package of biscuits that tasted vaguely like chocolate. He wished he had Jaffa cakes, but they were five hundred years and about a thousand light years away from any store that would have them.
The Doctor had curled up even tighter by the time Jack returned. Jack laid a hand on his shoulder, urging him to roll onto his back. "Hey, sit up and drink this. It'll help."
The Doctor laughed again, a harsh bark that Jack had sometimes heard when he'd traveled with him and Rose. But he didn't fight Jack as he rolled him over and sat him up. When Jack pressed the mug into his hand, the Doctor took it, as though resisting would require more effort than he had in him.
"Drink that," Jack told him.
The Doctor looked down into the mug, and then looked up at Jack. There were taut lines around his eyes and mouth, like the memory of pain. "I wasn't supposed to survive, you know. Had to do it, had to, but I never thought - if I thought I'd survive, I don't think I could've. I'm not supposed to be here," he added plaintively. His fingers loosened on the mug, and Jack barely caught it in time.
"Well, that makes two of us," Jack said, bringing the mug into alignment with the Doctor's lips. "Now drink."
To Jack's mild surprise, the Doctor drank. After the first reluctant sip, he couldn't seem to get enough. He drank the mug dry, and tore into the package of biscuits while Jack went to get him more. Tea procured, Jack pulled a chair up to the Doctor's bedside and watched in bemusement. "Would you like a sandwich or something? I've got some eggs -"
The Doctor shook his head. "No, this is - I haven't had food like this in years. Decades. Can't remember how long it's been since I was on Earth."
"You're still not on Earth," Jack said, taking the empty mug from him again. He set it aside, reached for the banana, and peeled it halfway down before handing it to the Doctor. "You're on Bellacosa, 43rd century. Looks and feels a lot like Earth, thanks to the terraforming, but it's not, quite."
The Doctor swallowed an enormous bite of banana. "And you're . . . human?"
"More or less," Jack said, smiling a little tightly. "I can't tell you," he added hastily. "In fact, it might be better if you forget this ever happened. I don't think you knew me when we met."
"Might've just hid it well," the Doctor said, head falling back. Jack rescued the banana peel and dropped it on the tray. "But yeah. Might be better to forget." He lay still and quiet, eyes going sad and unfocused as Jack tucked him in again. Mentally probing, Jack suspected, at the fresh, raw psychic wound where his people once were.
"Doctor, stop."
The Doctor's eyes focused on him. Jack had to control his reaction; he had seen the Doctor in extremis more than once, but he had never seen him so despondent. So completely hopeless. He always had faith in something, if only in his own ability to talk his way out of any situation. "I can't live like this."
Jack slid his hand across the quilt till it encountered the Doctor's. "You can. You do."
"I shouldn't."
"Neither should I, the things I've done. But," Jack shrugged, "I don't have a lot of choice in the matter."
The Doctor looked at him. "Why do I trust you? I shouldn't. I don't know you. You could be lying when you say you know me. And you burn."
Jack stood. "If you want me to leave -"
"No!" the Doctor said. He looked startled at his own outburst. "No," he repeated, picking at the covers and avoiding Jack's eyes. "You're right, I need to sleep. And you said . . ." He stopped, unwilling, as usual, to ask for what he wanted.
Jack sat back down and reached for the Doctor's hand. "Yeah. I'll stay."
***
The House watched over Jack, who watched over this man who both was and was not the Doctor. And she watched over the strange being in her back garden, who was not anything she had ever seen before. She was only as wide as the vegetable patch, but she felt as vast as the ocean that crashed on the bluff or the stars overhead, and she filled the night with an unearthly keening.
In the morning, the Doctor tried to leave while Jack slept, slumped in the bedside chair. The front door became mysteriously sticky, and no amount of jiggling the deadbolt or rattling the handle worked. The House admired his ingenuity, but it was only when the racket finally woke Jack that the door popped open for him. The Doctor caught himself on the door frame and cursed.
"Where you off to, Doc? And in my coat, no less."
"Away. Can't stay here, like you said, and if I'm only going to have to forget -"
"If you have to forget, then it doesn't matter how long you stay. Let's have breakfast at least."
The Doctor said nothing for a time. "Fine. Just let me check on the TARDIS. She was almost as badly injured as me."
"Want me to come with you?"
"No."
"Too bad."
The Doctor snorted. "How well do you know me, in my future?"
"Well enough not to let you walk out that door without supervision. Come on, let's see what we can do for Herself."
Herself. That was what Jack called her sometimes. The House did not sulk, but only, she admitted to herself, because sulking was not within a house's nature. She could not resent any comfort Jack offered to this being, this TARDIS, and when he vanished in the vegetable patch, along with the Doctor, she was not alarmed.
He would come back. Her Jack would always come back.
***
The last thing Jack expected to find in his living room when he got back from a week in the vortex with the leather jacket Doctor was the bowtie Doctor sitting on his sofa. He had his feet up on the coffee table, and his jacket - it really was tweed; Jack had hoped he might've been mistaken - was slung over the armchair. He had a beer in one hand and appeared in no hurry to be anywhere.
"Are you old enough to be drinking that?" Jack asked, nodding towards the beer.
The Doctor pulled a face. "Do you know how often I get asked for my ID now? Almost caused a small apolocalypse on this one planet. Amy and I were chasing a trihorned Grihnintilian who was about to lay his eggs and he went into this pub - they wouldn't let me in without seeing ID, and I'd left the psychic paper back in the TARDIS! Bloke didn't believe me when I told him the world would end if he didn't let me in."
"What'd you do?"
The Doctor heaved a deep sigh. "Amy is an attractive young woman. And very persuasive."
Jack laughed. "Will I ever get to meet the lovely Amy Pond?"
The Doctor narrowed his eyes slightly. "I think not."
Jack grinned. "Don't trust me?"
The Doctor reached out, snagged Jack's hand, and reeled him in to sprawl, half on top of him and half on the sofa. "Don't particularly want to share you." He kissed him, surprisingly aggressive and more than a bit possessive as well. Jack let him take control. He wanted to see where this was going. "Not even with my former self," the Doctor added, when he finally let Jack up for air.
"You realize there's something vaguely psychotic about that."
"Only a bit."
"Oh well, then." Jack grinned. "I guess that's all right. So." He propped himself up on one elbow. "When did you remember?"
The Doctor leaned his head on Jack's shoulder. "I always thought I'd just lost a week. Wouldn't've been that strange if I had done. It wasn't until I came back last time that I remembered." He tilted his head back to meet Jack's eyes. "Thank you. I know I wasn't the easiest person to help."
Jack smiled. "If I liked easy, I wouldn't be here. And . . . it was good to see that you again, even if none of it had happened yet for him." He leaned in to press his lips to the corner of the Doctor's mouth. "Stay awhile?" he murmured.
"Can't yet. Soon, though. I promise."
"I was planting rose bushes before you showed up before. Will you at least stay long enough to help me?"
The Doctor nodded, and the two of them shared a brief, sad smile. "Yeah. I will."
The rose bushes were blooming for the first time when next Jack heard the TARDIS. His pulse immediately quickened, but he forced himself to finish soaping a mug and set it upside down in the dish drain to dry before going to investigate.
The Doctor had managed to miss the strawberries this time, at least. The TARDIS was under a huge tree, the name of which Jack had never bothered to learn. It bloomed in the late fall, massive orange blossoms that weighed the branches down almost to the ground, and in the spring it bore tiny red fruit.
Jack had eaten some once, experimentally. They hadn't killed him, but they had sort of made him wish he was dead.
The door swung open. The Doctor swung himself out, one hand on the doorjamb.
Pinstripes it was. Jack was unsurprised. He hadn't expected Bowtie back so soon, and he wasn't expecting Leather Jacket back at all. The Doctor, on the other hand, looked surprised enough for both of them.
"Jack! What are you -" He broke off and wandered out, nearly tripping over his own feet as he craned his neck back to look up at the sky. "Is this Cardiff?"
"Nope. Not even close."
"Didn't think so. Too dry for Cardiff." The Doctor sniffed the air. "Smells like Bellacosa. What are you doing on Bellacosa? Wait. How old are you?"
"Not that much older than the last time you saw me."
The Doctor frowned. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be on Earth with your team. Thought that was what you wanted."
Jack felt an old anger rising under his skin. "The 456 mean anything to you?"
Understanding dawned. "Ah. Yes. Nasty business, that. Fixed point, I couldn't - well, I could, but I can't - I -" The Doctor broke off, rubbing the back of his neck and ruffling his hair. "One of those things. You were a Time Agent - you know."
"Yeah. Figured it was something like that." Jack consciously unclenched his jaw. "How about you? Where are you in your timeline?"
"Oh, you know." The Doctor shoved his hands in his coat pockets and rocked back on his heels. "Towards the end, I think."
Jack blinked. He hadn't expected the Doctor to be quite so forthright. "Are you sure?" He felt silly asking, as though he hadn't already met the next Doctor twice, but he wasn't sure he should let on that he had.
"Yes. No. Yes. There's a prophecy. Could be rubbish, prophecies usually are, but I don't think this one is. Daft, I know, I've died eight times already, you'd think I'd be used to it, but I've never - I've never seen it coming before. Not from so far off."
Jack was quiet for a moment. He was not really sure, upon consideration, that he wanted to invite this Doctor in for tea. He wasn't sure there was enough room in the house for his issues and the Doctor's, too. But he could also see, plain as day, that the Doctor was deeply frightened, and Jack had never been able to turn his back on him. Not even when he probably should have. "Come in for a bit?" he said. He half-turned, gesturing towards the house. "I've got tea and biccies, if you want them."
The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "You've got a house? Do you have a mortgage, too?"
"No mortgage, just the house." He turned and led the way up the front porch, past the rose bushes, aware that the Doctor stopped and looked at them for just a beat too long.
In the kitchen, Jack put the kettle on and pulled the biscuits out of the cupboard. The Doctor leaned against the doorjamb and picked up where he'd left off, as though they'd never been interrupted. "I don't think I ever had time to be afraid before. It always just happened, because it had to. But this time - I don't want it to. I like the man I am, and when it's over, I'll be dead, even if another me goes on."
"Well," Jack said, eyes fixed on his hands as he put a pile of biscuits on a plate, "there are worse things."
"And I keep thinking - I could stop it happening," the Doctor went on, blithely. "I could. I can do anything - could go back and stop the 456 if I wanted. Stop them ever existing, even. I have the power, and there's no one to stop me now."
Jack turned and crossed his arms over his chest. "I thought we established a long time ago that you'd make a really shitty god."
"Well -"
"You really don't think about the things that come out of your mouth, do you?"
The Doctor's eyes widened and his mouth snapped shut with an audible click.
"I'm sorry that you're going to die. Dying sucks, and I'm pretty much an expert on it now. But do you know how many times I've wished I could become someone else? Anyone else? Someone who didn't do the things I've done? But no, every time I wake up, I'm just me. And nothing I do will let me stop being me." He dropped the plate onto the kitchen table and shoved it toward the Doctor. "And by the way, I understand that it was a fixed point, but you could've dropped in afterward to see how I was doing. Which was about as well as you might expect."
"Jack -"
Jack felt a sudden flush of pure, unadulterated anger. "Do not tell me you're so sorry."
"I won't," the Doctor said in a subdued voice. He laughed, briefly. "I just can't seem to ever get it right with you, can I?"
"It might help if you actually tried."
"Yes. Yes, you're . . . quite right." The Doctor pushed off the doorjamb with his hip. "I should go, I think."
"Probably." He'd forgotten this, somehow, after his encounters with the bowtie Doctor, how this Doctor had always made him feel like a child who was never quite good enough to earn the affection he craved. Only now, he wasn't sure he craved it as much as he once had. Not from this Doctor.
The Doctor turned to walk away, and suddenly spun around, in a full three-sixty. "Jack, if this is good-bye -"
"It's not. You'll see me one more time." Jack paused. "Good luck, Doctor."
The Doctor nodded. "You, too."
And then he was gone, leaving Jack alone in the kitchen with a whistling kettle and a plate of untouched biscuits.
***
Jack was sad.
The House knew this because he slept. After the Doctor left, he went to bed and slept for hours. Sometimes he woke and did not sleep again immediately, but lay awake, contemplating her ceiling. Then he slept again, as though it hurt to do anything else, though she knew that his dreams were often evil and sleep did not bring the same comfort to him that it had brought to her other people.
She did not like this last Doctor, she decided. He had hurt Jack, and if he came again, she would lock him out.
Days later, the Doctor returned - the first Doctor, the one who was the House's favorite because it was he who had saved her. His presence comforted her; she had begun to feel the hushed, oppressive quiet keenly, and it had reminded her of times when she had held sickness and death within her walls. He hopped over the fence, rather than use her well-oiled gate, and let himself inside. "Hello there, beautiful," he said to her. "How's our Jack, eh?"
He did not pause before climbing the stairs to Jack's bedroom, nor did he knock before entering. "Time to wake up, Jack." Jack made a muffled, protesting noise. "Yup. Can't stay in bed for the rest of forever."
"You remember?"
"Never forgot that one. No point. I'm sorry, Jack. I was scared. And a prat."
"Did . . ."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Ask me, Jack."
"Did you ever care? That you. The last you. Did you ever really care?"
"Yes." The Doctor's voice was quiet, but firm. "I did. I was truly terrible at showing it, and I was thoughtless and careless with your feelings, and I was never there when you really needed me, but . . . I did care, for as much as that counts. And I'm trying to do better."
"Oh," Jack said, in a very small voice.
"Now get up. Take a shower, shave, get dressed, and for the love of Time, brush your teeth. I shan't kiss you again until you do. And then come downstairs. I have something for you."
He did not wait for Jack's reply, but went downstairs, where he busied himself in her kitchen. Jack lay in bed awhile longer, but at last he rose and stumbled into the bathroom, where he started the shower running. The House made small adjustments to the water pressure and temperature.. She could not help him as the Doctor could - she had no hand for him to hold - but there were so many little things that only she could do. This pleased her, perhaps more than it ought.
***
The Doctor was stirring scrambled eggs in a pan when Jack staggered downstairs. There were two places set on the table, with a teapot covered in a cozy and a stack of toast on a plate set between them. A quick glance at the stove confirmed what Jack's nose had told him: there was bacon to be had, frying in a pan with some mushrooms.
"No tomatoes," the Doctor said with a sniff. "I can't abide the texture of fried tomatoes."
Ianto had always said the same thing, Jack remembered with a sudden pang. He rubbed his chest idly, wishing Pinstripes's visit hadn't stirred up so much old grief. He'd thought he'd learned to live with it, but it turned out he'd just managed not to think about it most days.
He really was not in the mood for this. "You said you had something for me."
The Doctor turned and pointed at him with the spatula. "Breakfast first. Presents after."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Presents?"
"Well, of a sort. But not on an empty stomach. How long as it been since you ate?"
Jack frowned, realizing he couldn't properly remember. In fact, he wasn't sure how long he'd slept, though he didn't think it'd been more than a couple of days.
It wasn't like him, he reflected, to just lie down and wait for - what exactly had he been waiting for? Not death. Death never did him any good. The Doctor, maybe. But his encounter with the pinstriped Doctor had left him exhausted. He was so tired of existing, and there he was, whinging on about how he was going to die.
A plate of food was suddenly plunked down in front of him. "Eat all of it." Jack heaved a sigh and lifted his fork.
The Doctor's plate was long clear before Jack managed to finish his. He couldn't seem to manage the last slice of toast, but the Doctor finally took pity on him. "Good enough," he said, and cleared the rest of it away. Then he offered Jack his hand. "C'mon, then. I left your presents in the lounge."
Jack followed the Doctor into the living room, wondering what he possibly could have brought for him. Was this a new bid to get Jack to come with him? he wondered. Look at the marvelous things I brought you from eight planets in six solar systems and seven centuries! If so, it wasn't going to -
Jack froze. For a moment, he literally thought his heart would stop. "How did you -" His throat closed up.
"I went and saw Gwen," the Doctor said. "Asked her precisely when it had happened." He clasped Jack by the shoulder and steered him towards the sofa. He sat beside him and took his hand. "She said to tell you she loves you. She sent a few other things, mostly photographs. They're in the box with your others."
"Oh," Jack said. It seemed to be all he could get out.
The Doctor squeezed his hand. "I can't go back and save them, Jack. I would if I could, but like you said, I'd -"
"Make a really shitty god. I remember."
"But I thought - I can save something. I can save this much."
"Thank you," Jack said, voice shaking. He reached out and picked up the little chunk of TARDIS coral. He was not quite ready for the box of photographs yet, not when he knew what might be inside. There was a particular photo Rhys had taken, not so long before the 456 had come, of Jack and Ianto and Gwen. And another one, which Jack knew Ianto had kept a copy of in his flat, of just the two of them, a candid one Tosh had snapped. He could see it now in his mind's eye: himself sprawled on the sofa, pulling Ianto down by the knot of his tie for a kiss, while Ianto desperately tried not to overbalance and spill coffee all over Jack, the sofa, and the floor.
Too much. It was too much right now. The coral was easier. It was warm in his hands, alive and well and perhaps even happy to see him. Jack realized he'd been holding his breath. He let it out. "Thank you. I never expected - I never even thought to ask."
"My fault," the Doctor said, pulling Jack a little closer. He kissed Jack's forehead, his temple, the corner of his mouth, and finally his lips. Jack half-turned so he could kiss him properly, hooking his fingers into the Doctor's jacket.
When Jack finally pulled away, he went only so far as to rest his forehead against the Doctor's. "Can you stay this time?"
"Yes," the Doctor said. "For a little while. Or . . . you could come with me. Come travel with me. We don't have to go to Earth, there are so many other places we could visit."
Jack swallowed. "I don't think I can make that decision right now."
The Doctor nuzzled closer, the tip of his nose brushing the hair above Jack's ear. "It's all right. You don't have to. Like I said . . . I can stay awhile."
***
Houses are very patient.
The House had waited before, and she did not mind waiting now. The Doctor and Jack would return, and in the meantime, she was not alone. They had left behind a strange little being, rather like the one that had appeared in her garden before with the Doctor, but obviously very small and young still. She waited, too - waited for Jack to return, waited to be old enough and strong enough to travel. She was less patient than the House, but she would learn.
Life with the Doctor and Jack required a great deal of patience.
Fin.