Title: A Blessing and A Curse
Author:
donutsweeperChallenge:
Crossing the LinesWord Count: 290
Rating/Spoilers/warnings: Rated G, vague spoilers for "Utopia"
Summary: Two old friends meet over and over again throughout time.
At first Jack didn’t recognize that there was a pattern. Every so often the Doctor randomly appeared on his doorstep and, after refueling the TARDIS on the rift, he would suggest they go off on an adventure. Jack, of course, would say yes and the two of them would take off in the TARDIS to parts unknown.
They’d have a blast, but as soon as the adventure ended the Doctor would say how it’d been fun, but he couldn’t stay, but they should do this again sometime soon. Soon was, of course, a relative term. Jack knew that no matter how many decades passed for him the Doctor would only age a few months, or maybe a year at most.
And Jack accepted it; what choice did he have? He knew that his immortality was a blessing and a curse for his friend. A blessing because no matter what, no matter when, there would always be a familiar face willing to welcome the Time Lord so that he would never have to be truly alone. But a curse because that same immortality, that wrong-ness for lack of a better word, had drawn a line in the sand that could never truly be crossed as the Doctor would never be completely comfortable in Jack’s presence.
Jack just hoped that the times when it was a blessing would outweigh the times it was a curse. He didn’t regret it, and he didn’t want his friend to either. If he was to be a fact, he wanted it to count for something, even if it was only the ability to momentarily keep the darkness at bay; a moment’s respite for the Doctor’s loneliness. That was all he asked for, and it was enough.