A Friend in Need 2/2
Story: A Friend in Need
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness
Rated: PG13
Spoilers: All the way to Journey's End
Disclaimer: Just borrowing them, more's the pity
Summary: "I'm not here to criticise you, Doctor. I came because I thought you needed a friend.
Written for nyteshaede, who bid on me in the Support Stacie Auction. She wanted fluffy Ten/Jack post-JE, which this isn't, but I'll aim for slightly fluffier in chapter 2. With thanks, as always, to dark_aegis for her absolutely invaluable help, especially with Ten-picking. Couldn't have done it without you!
( Chapter 1: Keeping a Promise )
Chapter 2: A Promise for the Future
Good. His unwanted passenger is leaving.
He keys in co-ordinates, but his hand stills as he’s setting the date, and it’s a moment before he finishes and slides the lever to take them back to Cardiff.
Once they’ve materialised, he strides down to join Jack. “Come on, then,” he says, pushing the door open and walking out without looking back. When he hears the door close a few seconds later, he knows Jack has followed.
“Where is this?” Suspicion laces Jack’s voice as he looks around. Grass, moss and rocks, leading to sand and sea. Certainly not the modern cobblestones of Roald Dahl Plas and the façade of the Millennium Centre he’ll have been expecting.
“Cardiff.” He manages to sound casual. “1385. Good year, actually, if you don't mind the lack of modern plumbing. The city’s back there-” He inclines his head towards the city walls behind them, the original castle rising up from the hill in the distance. “We’re not in Wales now. Well, not Wales as it is in the late fourteenth century. That takes time. Hundred or so years, actually. Not until the Act of Union of 1536 that Cardiff actually becomes the capital of Wales-”
“I don’t need a history lesson, Doctor.” Jack strides away, walking the couple of hundred yards over to the water’s edge, staring out to sea.
“No, of course you don’t,” he murmurs, almost to himself, as he walks down to join the Captain.
He looks at Jack, really looks at him for the first time since Satellite Five, and sees what he’s been avoiding all that time. He hasn’t wanted to see it; it’s as simple as that. He really is a selfish bastard, isn’t he? All this time, he’s been feeling sorry for himself, and he’s far from the only one who’s entitled to it.
“You’ve lost people too.”
Jack turns sharply, and surprise is written all over his face. “Yeah.”
“You’re over a hundred and seventy years old. How many?”
The Captain bends to pick up a stone, then skims it across the water, watching it bounce six times before answering. “Too many. I lost count long ago.”
“Jack.” It’s the same tone as he used on Malcassiro when Jack refused to answer his question about whether he wanted to die.
Jack turns back, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I lost two of my team just a couple of months ago. They were killed trying to save the city from a psychopath who wanted to destroy it to get revenge on me. I was too damn late to save them, and they died.” He picks up another stone. “That what you want to know? I lost my previous team before that, too, the whole lot of them - New Year’s Eve 1999. I was the only one left alive. That’s when I rebuilt Torchwood Cardiff. I recruited new people, hand-picked them, watched them grow into the best they could be - and then lost two of them. I held one of them in my arms as she died.”
His team. The people he stayed behind for, after the Year that Never Was. “Oh, Jack.”
Jack skims the stone he was holding. It bounces eight times. “When I said I understood, it wasn’t just a platitude.”
“I know.” And he does now. “I wish you’d sent for me. Why didn’t you? I’d have helped.”
“How?” Jack stares at him, eyes wide and scornful. “You didn’t give me your phone number, did you? I didn’t even realise until afterwards that Martha has it.”
“Sorry.” He means it too, he realises. “I had her phone. She made me keep it after she left. But you have the number now. If you ever need me, use it.”
For a long moment, Jack just looks at him. Then he nods. “Thanks. Wasn’t anything you could’ve done that time, but who knows in future? I appreciate it.”
“You’d do as much for me. You already have.” Far more, he knows, than he deserves. It would have served him right if Jack had walked away after Malcassiro, instead of helping him to defeat the Master.
Jack’s speaking again, still looking out over the bay. “I walked away from someone I loved too, and I told myself it was for her own good.” He shrugs, turning to face the Doctor. “What kind of life could she have had with me? She’d age normally and in thirty years’ time people would’ve assumed I was her son. So I left. Just disappeared. Let her think I was dead.”
Making the decision for her, instead of giving her the information and letting her decide for herself. Oh, yes, that sounds very familiar.
He simply nods; there’s nothing he can say, nothing that won’t make him sound even more of an idiot than he already is. Of course Jack knows what it’s like, and he really was being completely self-absorbed, wasn’t he?
“Course, it wasn’t a completely unselfish decision,” Jack adds, self-derision in his voice. “This is me, after all. And it was London in the summer of 1941.”
Right. Just a couple of months before the Chula ambulance incident. “You wanted to avoid two of you in the same time and place.”
“And to avoid temptation. You and Rose, Doctor,” Jack adds as he gives him a puzzled glance. Stupid. Of course he should have realised. Jack spent well over a hundred years trying to find him, after all.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. It’s an apology that’s long overdue.
“I met her again, years later,” Jack continues, as if he hasn’t spoken. “In Cardiff. She was... old. And I pretended to be my own son.”
Oh, Jack. Someone he loved, withering and dying right before his eyes. What made him imagine he’s the only one? “Did she believe you?”
“I’m pretty sure she just pretended to.” Jack picks up another stone, but this time he just holds it in his palm, weighing it. “She died, too. I was too late. I arrived in time for her to die in my arms.”
How many times has Jack done that now: held someone he loved as they died? It’s more than he himself has done. He just doesn’t wait around for that to happen, does he?
Cautiously, because he knows Jack has every right to reject him, he lays his hand on his friend’s arm. “You’re a far braver man than I am, Captain.”
Jack turns, and his eyes are still bleak. “I’ve only had a century and a half of it, Doctor. I’ll probably be running away too long before I get to your age, or I lose a quarter as many people you have.”
Moving closer, until the shoulders of their greatcoats are brushing, he comments casually, “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. I don’t know, of course I don’t. Not yet. Haven't met the future you. At least, not yet. But I do know there is something that's never, ever going to change. And that's you. Who you are. What you are. The same Jack Harkness I’ve known all along. You’ll keep walking into danger, not away from it, and you won’t take the easy way out even when everyone else is telling you you should. You’ll save lives, save your planet, maybe even save the universe. And you’ll make the universe a better place because you’re in it.”
Jack finally throws the stone he was holding, and then turns to face the Doctor, a crooked smile on his lips. “Sounds like someone else I know, Doctor.”
For a moment, he has no comeback at all. He wants to argue, to remind Jack of everything he’s been responsible for even during the years Jack’s known him, but there’s a different series of faces before his mind now: everyone at the bomb-site in 1941, the population of this very city in 2006, a new breed of humans on New Earth, vanished children who returned, a family on a hillside in Pompeii, all the billions of people who would have died if the Daleks had succeeded every time they tried. And more, and more, and more.
“Touché,” he says softly, and lays his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
***
His job here’s done. Well, as long as the Doctor doesn’t slip back into self-flagellation again. Now, if he can just get the guy to decide it’s time to find a new companion - and to believe that it’s his own idea, not something he’s being nagged to do - Jack will be able to go back to Torchwood, his promise kept.
He has to go back, however tempting it is to stay - and it is tempting. Even without Rose, or Martha, this is still the Doctor, and it’s still the TARDIS and travelling in time. It never gets old, that thrill inside when he steps inside the ancient, alien time-ship. But he can’t stay, not now. Some day, some time in the future, maybe; but now his team needs him. He can’t abandon them again. It’s too soon after Owen and Tosh, and Mickey and Martha need him, too, to train them and help them settle in.
“C’mon,” he says, nudging the Doctor’s hip with his. “Nice though this trip to fourteenth-century Wales has been, it’s a little... rustic. Sorta lacking the fun part. Y’know, no interactive displays, re-enactments, anything like...that...”
There’s movement, over there, near the walls. People. Men dressed in the rough clothing typical of Welsh insurgents of the time. And carrying longbows and ordinary, handmade bows and arrows. “Doctor. TARDIS, now!”
“Right. Yes.” The Doctor’s seen them too. “Might be a good idea to... run!”
A cry goes up from one of the Welshmen. “Over there! English! Actually outside the city walls, instead of huddling inside like the cowards they are.”
They’re running, him and the Doctor, towards the TARDIS, but the Welsh soldiers, if that’s what they are, are running too, and one of them’s already fitting an arrow to his bow. And - oh shit - he’s aiming at the Doctor-
There’s no thought involved. He shoves the Doctor aside as the arrow whistles towards them, and then there’s a moment of agonising pain in his chest before his world goes black.
When he wakes, his lungs inflating again with the same agonizing jolt as always, he’s lying on the TARDIS floor. The absence of any pain from his chest tells him that the Doctor’s had the presence of mind to get rid of the arrow as well as dragging him inside, and the engine sound he hears tells him that they’re already in the Vortex. His eyes open to see the Doctor’s pale, anxious face looking down into his. Very close to his, too, and if it wasn’t for that worry he’s seeing in the Doctor’s eyes he’d be doing more than looking back.
“Come on, Doc,” he says as soon as his breathing’s back to normal. “We’ve been through this before. You know I always come back.”
“You died for me,” the Doctor says, and there’s a note of disbelief in his voice. “You jumped right in front of that arrow so it wouldn’t hit me.”
“Course I did,” he says, pushing himself into a sitting position. “What did you expect me to do? Let you get killed?”
The Doctor shifts from his kneeling position to flop down beside him, still very close. “Why not? Not like I've done anything to earn your loyalty. Anyway, I'd just regenerate. New me. Might even be a better me. Who knows?”
The air around them’s very thick suddenly, and he knows he’s got to say what he feels now, or lose his chance. “I like the you you are now. And, in case you hadn’t realised, Doctor, it’s not about anything you’ve done or haven’t done. It’s about who you are and who I am. And the fact that I love you. Always have. Probably always will.”
The Doctor’s eyes are impossibly wide, and his lips part, whether in surprise or to speak Jack neither knows nor cares. Jack reaches out a hand, slowly enough for his intention to be clear, and slides his fingers, then his palm, along the Doctor’s cheek and into his hair, before leaning in and covering the Time Lord’s lips with his own.
The Doctor stays perfectly still, allowing the kiss but not participating, and after a few moments Jack pulls back, expecting either a smack-down or, more likely, the Doctor’s typical pretend-it-never-happened manoeuvre. Either way, in seconds the Doctor’s going to be as far away from him as he can be.
Instead, the Doctor looks down, tugging on his ear, but stays where he is. “Jack, I can’t... I mean, why would you... I don’t know what you want from me.”
His breath catches, and he has to choose his words very carefully. “There are things I want, and things I know I’ll never get. And there are things I don’t want. Such as, I don’t want or expect you to tell me you love me too and promise to stay with me for the rest of your lives.”
The message he’s sending is deliberately chosen: he’s not Rose, and he’s not Martha. He gives the Doctor a crooked grin, and when it’s returned by a wry smile he finds himself relaxing.
“What I want...” he continues. “I want to know that I’ll see you every once in a while, and not only because the universe is in imminent danger of destruction.”
The Doctor nods, hand rubbing his chin. “I can do that.”
“I want to come with you sometimes. Not full-time. I can’t do that - I’ve got responsibilities. But I get to take time off, and every once in a while I’d like to get back out into the universe, and to see a different century or even millennium. And, okay,” he adds with a laugh, “if it involves running and overthrowing governments that’d be a bonus.”
This time, the Doctor actually meets his gaze and his smile is impish. “Think I can promise that.” His expression sobers. “One thing you haven't asked. Thought it might've been one of the first things you did, actually. Well, no, that's a lie. Wasn't expecting you to pop in, after all. You didn't ask me how I felt about you. The whole fixed point thing. If I could fix it. Make you mortal. Or is that one of the things you know you'll never get?”
Jack shrugs. He can say this now and mean it, where he wouldn’t have been able to do it a year ago, when he said no to the Doctor out on the Plas. “I’m past that. We both are, aren’t we? I know there’s nothing you can do, and you’re not running away from me any more. That’s good enough for me.”
“So...” The Doctor’s tugging at his ear again. Jack wonders if the man has a clue just how much he gives away by his nervous gestures. “You said there’re things you know you’ll never get. Funny, that. How do you know you’ll never get them if you don’t ask? I mean, don’t know you want them unless you tell me. So, go on, then. What things?”
***
He’s laying himself open to all kinds of things here, the sort of things he normally avoids like the plague - the sort of things he sends companions to parallel universes to avoid confronting. But, just this once, he’ll force himself to listen, and even - if he can - try to give Jack one of the things he thinks he’ll never get. He owes it to Jack, after all, doesn’t he?
Jack doesn’t answer immediately. His eyelids lower and he gazes down at the grilled floor of the console room, and it’s clear that he’s debating how to answer. Does he take the risk of answering honestly, or equivocate on the basis that it’s less likely to destroy what he has?
“Jack,” he prompts again, and this time Jack meets his gaze, and it’s clear that he’s decided to take that risk.
“I want you. You know that - you’ve always known it. I want to have sex with you. I’d settle for a kiss from you.” Jack’s smile is rueful. “Sorry you asked?”
Well, he did ask. And Jack’s right: he did know. Always did, right from the moment he told Rose that Jack was equally likely to want to dance with him as with her.
It’s not such a huge thing, really. In his last life, he said once that he’d hug anyone. He’s discovered, hasn’t he, that this regeneration will kiss anyone. Rose, Reinette, Martha, Astrid, Joan, Donna... the list goes on.
He leans forward, just as Jack did two minutes ago, and presses his lips to Jack’s. His own immediate, instinctive recoil doesn’t surprise him - Jack’s a Fact, after all - but he pushes past his Time Lord sense of distaste and concentrates on the man he’s kissing. Jack tastes of coffee, salt, human saliva and the universe, both the same as and very different from every other human he’s kissed.
He pushes forward, lips parted, cupping the back of Jack’s neck as Jack takes advantage of the opportunity to deepen the kiss, tongue sliding forward to tangle with his own. It’s a shock to realise that his hearts have sped up, and that the moan he’s just heard didn’t come from Jack. At least Jack’s own pulse is equally rapid, and the fingers now digging into his shoulders tell their own story.
The kiss is broken abruptly as he overbalances, falling back onto the grating and somehow managing to drag Jack with him.
Jack’s grin is lascivious and wicked. “Always suspected you’d be a bottom.”
There are times when superior Time Lord strength comes in very handy. Flipping them over so that he’s now on top, he grins down at Jack. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions. I think you’ll find I’m very versatile.”
Eyes alight with lust and humour, Jack retorts, “As long as that means I’m gonna get to find out.”
He is? But then, why not? After all, as he also told Rose once - and showed her, too - he does dance.
***
They’re lying in bed - the bed in Jack’s old room, which is still there, still the same as it was in the days when this ship was his home - having moved there after the first frenzied, laughter-filled, uncomfortable yet mind-blowing time on the console-room floor. Several hours of experimentation and exploration later, Jack’s limp, exhausted and thoroughly sated.
It’s different with a Time Lord, and in ways he never imagined. It’s not just the Doctor’s cooler core temperature, and it’s certainly not because of any anatomical differences - in fact, the Doctor’s indistinguishable physically from a human. There are some differences in erogenous zones, and the Doctor’s binary vascular system means no noticeable refractory period.
This is unlikely ever to happen again. He knows it, accepts it and doesn’t resent it. After all, this is the Doctor, and the guy doesn’t do relationships, or even affairs. He runs at the first hint of commitment. That’s okay, though. If this is all he’ll ever get, it’s a damn good memory to store away.
But they can’t stay here indefinitely. Sooner or later, the Doctor’s going to make an excuse to get up and leave, and if he even suspects that Jack’s going to make a big deal of this he’ll be rushing to pretend it never happened. That’s the very best reason for Jack to be the one to return the two of them to normality. Plus he needs to get back to Torchwood, and there’s still the rest of his promise to Rose, and to the duplicate Doctor.
Sitting up, he reaches for his clothes, which they had the presence of mind to bring with them. “Hate to say it, but it’s time I was getting back.”
“Yeah. Yes, of course. No probs. Have you back in a jiffy.” The Doctor pulls on his T-shirt, then his shirt, and reaches for his underwear. “So, back to Cardiff. Back to your team. Who’d have thought? Jack Harkness, defender of the Earth.”
There’s pride in the Doctor’s voice, and Jack can’t help but be proud himself. “It’s a responsibility. It’s something I can do, and I’m needed, I think.”
“You won’t be needed for ever.” Knotting his tie, the Doctor tilts his head to one side and holds Jack’s gaze. “When it’s time, call me. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“If you fixed my Vortex manipulator, you wouldn’t need to,” he points out, even though the offer’s more than he was expecting. The Doctor doesn’t comment, so he switches to the other topic on his mind. “What about you? What will you do?”
“Oh, you know.” The Doctor shrugs and leads the way out of the bedroom. “Have TARDIS, will travel.”
“Alone?” he prompts.
“Well, you could come with me. All right, all right, you’ve got responsibilities on Earth,” the Doctor adds before Jack can comment. “I suppose... well, sooner or later someone will come along. That’s how it always happens. I don’t go looking for people to take with me, Jack. Never do. Didn’t go looking for you, did I? Or Rose, or Martha. Or Donna,” he adds, his voice softer.
“Find someone,” he urges. “Just so you know, I’m gonna worry about you until you do.”
The Doctor says nothing until the two of them are at the console, taking the TARDIS back to Earth 2009. Then he rubs his cheek. “Funny to think of you worrying about me. Should be me worrying about all of you, every one of you who’s travelled with me. With good reason, too, I suppose.”
“Depends what the reason is.” At last: a chance to confront what he knows the Doctor will have taken to heart. “Not if you’re somehow insane enough to believe that Davros was right. We’re not weapons, Doctor. Anything we do to help you, or to save our planet or the universe, we do because we can. Because it’s the right thing to do. And if you actually look around at the people whose lives you’ve touched, really look at us, you’d see what you’ve really done for us.”
He straightens, smiles and continues. “Look at Martha. A doctor, a senior UNIT operative and now a member of my team. You’ve seen what she’s capable of. And Mickey, the guy you used to call the idiot - look what he’s done. Then there’s Sarah-Jane: amazing woman. Harriet Jones. The Brigadier - I met him, you know. I’d be honoured to report to him. Plus all the other companions before my time - I’ve heard stories, you know. You changed them for the better too.”
“You didn’t mention Rose,” the Doctor comments quietly. “Or Donna.”
He shrugs. “Rose will be fine. She’s come a long way from the kid you first took with you. She’s got her own Torchwood now. Knows a few things about aliens, and about defending her planet. She’s got her family too, thanks to you, and she’s got someone who’s you in every way, except for the no regenerations thing. Maybe it’ll take a while, but it’ll work out for them. It wouldn’t even surprise me if they find a way to travel again, knowing you.”
The Doctor nods, and his expression’s lighter than it was. “They will. I gave him a piece of the TARDIS before we landed. He’ll know what to do with it, and he’s still Time Lord enough that it won’t take centuries to grow, like your piece.” He rubs the back of his neck, staring away for a moment; it’s clear that he still misses Rose, but it’s equally clear that this time he’s managing to let her go. “As long as she’s happy. That’s all I ever wanted for her.”
That’s something he can reassure the Doctor about. “She will be. I talked to Mickey before I left Cardiff. Yeah, she spent years trying to get back to you, but that wasn’t all she did. She had a good life over there. Made friends, got her A-levels, built the kind of life she’d need if she never got back to you. She always missed you, Mickey said, but what upset her most was thinking you might be alone. That’s why she made me promise. And that’s why I told her you’d never be alone, not with all the people in the universe who love you - and not as long as I’m alive. Which we both know is gonna be a very long time.”
Slowly, the Doctor nods again. “Right. Yes. Well... can’t hurt to keep an eye out for the right kind of person, I suppose.”
“You do that.” He grins again. “And bring her - or him - to Cardiff. I demand vetting rights.” Before the Doctor can comment, he adds, “As for Donna, between all of us we’ll make sure she’s all right. Don’t forget, you’ve got quite a team of us back on Earth in my time now - besides me, there’s Martha, Sarah and Mickey, and Gwen and Ianto will help, and so will Martha’s Tom and Sarah’s gang of helpers. Donna’s gonna be fine.”
The Doctor plays with some controls on the console before answering. “Sarah was right,” he says finally. “She told me I had the biggest family in the universe.”
“ ‘Bout time you realised that.” He claps the Doctor on the back. “Just don’t forget it again.”
They’re materialising, and he can see on the viewscreen that this time they’re in the Plas, back where he belongs. Time to leave. “Thanks for the trip, Doctor,” he says, deliberately casual and upbeat.
“Welcome,” the Doctor says, fingers trailing over the console. Then his gaze shifts and meets Jack’s, the brown eyes open and honest. “Thank you. I... Well. I’m glad you came.”
“Me too.” He steps back from the console, then hesitates; can he expect a farewell hug, or should he just head straight for the door? “It was fun,” he adds, to cover his hesitation. “Not just the...” He inclines his head towards the ship’s interior. “I miss the travelling, you know.”
“I know. And it was fun.” The Doctor’s smile is wicked, and Jack feels heat curling inside him again; he orders his body to calm down. “We’ll have to do it again some time,” the Doctor continues, and Jack’s body reacts even more forcefully.
Just as he’s deciding that it’s probably safer just to head for the door, the Doctor steps in front of him, cups his face between cool palms and kisses him firmly before moving back again.
“Well, off you go, then. Your team’s waiting.” The Doctor shoos him towards the door. “But I’ll be back, Jack, and that’s a promise. Better save up your holiday allowance.”
His heart lighter than it’s been in a long time, Jack salutes. “Yes, sir! But I thought this was a time machine?” he points out, spoiling the salute with a grin.
The Doctor gives him a careless salute and a wink in return. “Ask Mickey about the time I thought I’d kept Rose away for twelve hours.” The TARDIS door creaks open. “Go on, now. I need to get going. Got a companion to find, apparently.”
“You do. Goodbye, Doctor.”
He steps through the open door into the sunlight of a July afternoon in Cardiff, then pulls it closed behind him. Seconds later, the sound of dematerialisation roars behind him, and he stands for a moment watching the ship fade in and out of view. He’s kept his promise, and much more besides. And now he has a few promises of his own to hold on to.
He turns, takes a deep breath and, with an anticipatory grin on his face, hurries off towards the invisible lift and his team. Back to work.
- end
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Jack Harkness
Rated: PG13
Spoilers: All the way to Journey's End
Disclaimer: Just borrowing them, more's the pity
Summary: "I'm not here to criticise you, Doctor. I came because I thought you needed a friend.
Written for nyteshaede, who bid on me in the Support Stacie Auction. She wanted fluffy Ten/Jack post-JE, which this isn't, but I'll aim for slightly fluffier in chapter 2. With thanks, as always, to dark_aegis for her absolutely invaluable help, especially with Ten-picking. Couldn't have done it without you!
( Chapter 1: Keeping a Promise )
Chapter 2: A Promise for the Future
Good. His unwanted passenger is leaving.
He keys in co-ordinates, but his hand stills as he’s setting the date, and it’s a moment before he finishes and slides the lever to take them back to Cardiff.
Once they’ve materialised, he strides down to join Jack. “Come on, then,” he says, pushing the door open and walking out without looking back. When he hears the door close a few seconds later, he knows Jack has followed.
“Where is this?” Suspicion laces Jack’s voice as he looks around. Grass, moss and rocks, leading to sand and sea. Certainly not the modern cobblestones of Roald Dahl Plas and the façade of the Millennium Centre he’ll have been expecting.
“Cardiff.” He manages to sound casual. “1385. Good year, actually, if you don't mind the lack of modern plumbing. The city’s back there-” He inclines his head towards the city walls behind them, the original castle rising up from the hill in the distance. “We’re not in Wales now. Well, not Wales as it is in the late fourteenth century. That takes time. Hundred or so years, actually. Not until the Act of Union of 1536 that Cardiff actually becomes the capital of Wales-”
“I don’t need a history lesson, Doctor.” Jack strides away, walking the couple of hundred yards over to the water’s edge, staring out to sea.
“No, of course you don’t,” he murmurs, almost to himself, as he walks down to join the Captain.
He looks at Jack, really looks at him for the first time since Satellite Five, and sees what he’s been avoiding all that time. He hasn’t wanted to see it; it’s as simple as that. He really is a selfish bastard, isn’t he? All this time, he’s been feeling sorry for himself, and he’s far from the only one who’s entitled to it.
“You’ve lost people too.”
Jack turns sharply, and surprise is written all over his face. “Yeah.”
“You’re over a hundred and seventy years old. How many?”
The Captain bends to pick up a stone, then skims it across the water, watching it bounce six times before answering. “Too many. I lost count long ago.”
“Jack.” It’s the same tone as he used on Malcassiro when Jack refused to answer his question about whether he wanted to die.
Jack turns back, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I lost two of my team just a couple of months ago. They were killed trying to save the city from a psychopath who wanted to destroy it to get revenge on me. I was too damn late to save them, and they died.” He picks up another stone. “That what you want to know? I lost my previous team before that, too, the whole lot of them - New Year’s Eve 1999. I was the only one left alive. That’s when I rebuilt Torchwood Cardiff. I recruited new people, hand-picked them, watched them grow into the best they could be - and then lost two of them. I held one of them in my arms as she died.”
His team. The people he stayed behind for, after the Year that Never Was. “Oh, Jack.”
Jack skims the stone he was holding. It bounces eight times. “When I said I understood, it wasn’t just a platitude.”
“I know.” And he does now. “I wish you’d sent for me. Why didn’t you? I’d have helped.”
“How?” Jack stares at him, eyes wide and scornful. “You didn’t give me your phone number, did you? I didn’t even realise until afterwards that Martha has it.”
“Sorry.” He means it too, he realises. “I had her phone. She made me keep it after she left. But you have the number now. If you ever need me, use it.”
For a long moment, Jack just looks at him. Then he nods. “Thanks. Wasn’t anything you could’ve done that time, but who knows in future? I appreciate it.”
“You’d do as much for me. You already have.” Far more, he knows, than he deserves. It would have served him right if Jack had walked away after Malcassiro, instead of helping him to defeat the Master.
Jack’s speaking again, still looking out over the bay. “I walked away from someone I loved too, and I told myself it was for her own good.” He shrugs, turning to face the Doctor. “What kind of life could she have had with me? She’d age normally and in thirty years’ time people would’ve assumed I was her son. So I left. Just disappeared. Let her think I was dead.”
Making the decision for her, instead of giving her the information and letting her decide for herself. Oh, yes, that sounds very familiar.
He simply nods; there’s nothing he can say, nothing that won’t make him sound even more of an idiot than he already is. Of course Jack knows what it’s like, and he really was being completely self-absorbed, wasn’t he?
“Course, it wasn’t a completely unselfish decision,” Jack adds, self-derision in his voice. “This is me, after all. And it was London in the summer of 1941.”
Right. Just a couple of months before the Chula ambulance incident. “You wanted to avoid two of you in the same time and place.”
“And to avoid temptation. You and Rose, Doctor,” Jack adds as he gives him a puzzled glance. Stupid. Of course he should have realised. Jack spent well over a hundred years trying to find him, after all.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. It’s an apology that’s long overdue.
“I met her again, years later,” Jack continues, as if he hasn’t spoken. “In Cardiff. She was... old. And I pretended to be my own son.”
Oh, Jack. Someone he loved, withering and dying right before his eyes. What made him imagine he’s the only one? “Did she believe you?”
“I’m pretty sure she just pretended to.” Jack picks up another stone, but this time he just holds it in his palm, weighing it. “She died, too. I was too late. I arrived in time for her to die in my arms.”
How many times has Jack done that now: held someone he loved as they died? It’s more than he himself has done. He just doesn’t wait around for that to happen, does he?
Cautiously, because he knows Jack has every right to reject him, he lays his hand on his friend’s arm. “You’re a far braver man than I am, Captain.”
Jack turns, and his eyes are still bleak. “I’ve only had a century and a half of it, Doctor. I’ll probably be running away too long before I get to your age, or I lose a quarter as many people you have.”
Moving closer, until the shoulders of their greatcoats are brushing, he comments casually, “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. I don’t know, of course I don’t. Not yet. Haven't met the future you. At least, not yet. But I do know there is something that's never, ever going to change. And that's you. Who you are. What you are. The same Jack Harkness I’ve known all along. You’ll keep walking into danger, not away from it, and you won’t take the easy way out even when everyone else is telling you you should. You’ll save lives, save your planet, maybe even save the universe. And you’ll make the universe a better place because you’re in it.”
Jack finally throws the stone he was holding, and then turns to face the Doctor, a crooked smile on his lips. “Sounds like someone else I know, Doctor.”
For a moment, he has no comeback at all. He wants to argue, to remind Jack of everything he’s been responsible for even during the years Jack’s known him, but there’s a different series of faces before his mind now: everyone at the bomb-site in 1941, the population of this very city in 2006, a new breed of humans on New Earth, vanished children who returned, a family on a hillside in Pompeii, all the billions of people who would have died if the Daleks had succeeded every time they tried. And more, and more, and more.
“Touché,” he says softly, and lays his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
***
His job here’s done. Well, as long as the Doctor doesn’t slip back into self-flagellation again. Now, if he can just get the guy to decide it’s time to find a new companion - and to believe that it’s his own idea, not something he’s being nagged to do - Jack will be able to go back to Torchwood, his promise kept.
He has to go back, however tempting it is to stay - and it is tempting. Even without Rose, or Martha, this is still the Doctor, and it’s still the TARDIS and travelling in time. It never gets old, that thrill inside when he steps inside the ancient, alien time-ship. But he can’t stay, not now. Some day, some time in the future, maybe; but now his team needs him. He can’t abandon them again. It’s too soon after Owen and Tosh, and Mickey and Martha need him, too, to train them and help them settle in.
“C’mon,” he says, nudging the Doctor’s hip with his. “Nice though this trip to fourteenth-century Wales has been, it’s a little... rustic. Sorta lacking the fun part. Y’know, no interactive displays, re-enactments, anything like...that...”
There’s movement, over there, near the walls. People. Men dressed in the rough clothing typical of Welsh insurgents of the time. And carrying longbows and ordinary, handmade bows and arrows. “Doctor. TARDIS, now!”
“Right. Yes.” The Doctor’s seen them too. “Might be a good idea to... run!”
A cry goes up from one of the Welshmen. “Over there! English! Actually outside the city walls, instead of huddling inside like the cowards they are.”
They’re running, him and the Doctor, towards the TARDIS, but the Welsh soldiers, if that’s what they are, are running too, and one of them’s already fitting an arrow to his bow. And - oh shit - he’s aiming at the Doctor-
There’s no thought involved. He shoves the Doctor aside as the arrow whistles towards them, and then there’s a moment of agonising pain in his chest before his world goes black.
When he wakes, his lungs inflating again with the same agonizing jolt as always, he’s lying on the TARDIS floor. The absence of any pain from his chest tells him that the Doctor’s had the presence of mind to get rid of the arrow as well as dragging him inside, and the engine sound he hears tells him that they’re already in the Vortex. His eyes open to see the Doctor’s pale, anxious face looking down into his. Very close to his, too, and if it wasn’t for that worry he’s seeing in the Doctor’s eyes he’d be doing more than looking back.
“Come on, Doc,” he says as soon as his breathing’s back to normal. “We’ve been through this before. You know I always come back.”
“You died for me,” the Doctor says, and there’s a note of disbelief in his voice. “You jumped right in front of that arrow so it wouldn’t hit me.”
“Course I did,” he says, pushing himself into a sitting position. “What did you expect me to do? Let you get killed?”
The Doctor shifts from his kneeling position to flop down beside him, still very close. “Why not? Not like I've done anything to earn your loyalty. Anyway, I'd just regenerate. New me. Might even be a better me. Who knows?”
The air around them’s very thick suddenly, and he knows he’s got to say what he feels now, or lose his chance. “I like the you you are now. And, in case you hadn’t realised, Doctor, it’s not about anything you’ve done or haven’t done. It’s about who you are and who I am. And the fact that I love you. Always have. Probably always will.”
The Doctor’s eyes are impossibly wide, and his lips part, whether in surprise or to speak Jack neither knows nor cares. Jack reaches out a hand, slowly enough for his intention to be clear, and slides his fingers, then his palm, along the Doctor’s cheek and into his hair, before leaning in and covering the Time Lord’s lips with his own.
The Doctor stays perfectly still, allowing the kiss but not participating, and after a few moments Jack pulls back, expecting either a smack-down or, more likely, the Doctor’s typical pretend-it-never-happened manoeuvre. Either way, in seconds the Doctor’s going to be as far away from him as he can be.
Instead, the Doctor looks down, tugging on his ear, but stays where he is. “Jack, I can’t... I mean, why would you... I don’t know what you want from me.”
His breath catches, and he has to choose his words very carefully. “There are things I want, and things I know I’ll never get. And there are things I don’t want. Such as, I don’t want or expect you to tell me you love me too and promise to stay with me for the rest of your lives.”
The message he’s sending is deliberately chosen: he’s not Rose, and he’s not Martha. He gives the Doctor a crooked grin, and when it’s returned by a wry smile he finds himself relaxing.
“What I want...” he continues. “I want to know that I’ll see you every once in a while, and not only because the universe is in imminent danger of destruction.”
The Doctor nods, hand rubbing his chin. “I can do that.”
“I want to come with you sometimes. Not full-time. I can’t do that - I’ve got responsibilities. But I get to take time off, and every once in a while I’d like to get back out into the universe, and to see a different century or even millennium. And, okay,” he adds with a laugh, “if it involves running and overthrowing governments that’d be a bonus.”
This time, the Doctor actually meets his gaze and his smile is impish. “Think I can promise that.” His expression sobers. “One thing you haven't asked. Thought it might've been one of the first things you did, actually. Well, no, that's a lie. Wasn't expecting you to pop in, after all. You didn't ask me how I felt about you. The whole fixed point thing. If I could fix it. Make you mortal. Or is that one of the things you know you'll never get?”
Jack shrugs. He can say this now and mean it, where he wouldn’t have been able to do it a year ago, when he said no to the Doctor out on the Plas. “I’m past that. We both are, aren’t we? I know there’s nothing you can do, and you’re not running away from me any more. That’s good enough for me.”
“So...” The Doctor’s tugging at his ear again. Jack wonders if the man has a clue just how much he gives away by his nervous gestures. “You said there’re things you know you’ll never get. Funny, that. How do you know you’ll never get them if you don’t ask? I mean, don’t know you want them unless you tell me. So, go on, then. What things?”
***
He’s laying himself open to all kinds of things here, the sort of things he normally avoids like the plague - the sort of things he sends companions to parallel universes to avoid confronting. But, just this once, he’ll force himself to listen, and even - if he can - try to give Jack one of the things he thinks he’ll never get. He owes it to Jack, after all, doesn’t he?
Jack doesn’t answer immediately. His eyelids lower and he gazes down at the grilled floor of the console room, and it’s clear that he’s debating how to answer. Does he take the risk of answering honestly, or equivocate on the basis that it’s less likely to destroy what he has?
“Jack,” he prompts again, and this time Jack meets his gaze, and it’s clear that he’s decided to take that risk.
“I want you. You know that - you’ve always known it. I want to have sex with you. I’d settle for a kiss from you.” Jack’s smile is rueful. “Sorry you asked?”
Well, he did ask. And Jack’s right: he did know. Always did, right from the moment he told Rose that Jack was equally likely to want to dance with him as with her.
It’s not such a huge thing, really. In his last life, he said once that he’d hug anyone. He’s discovered, hasn’t he, that this regeneration will kiss anyone. Rose, Reinette, Martha, Astrid, Joan, Donna... the list goes on.
He leans forward, just as Jack did two minutes ago, and presses his lips to Jack’s. His own immediate, instinctive recoil doesn’t surprise him - Jack’s a Fact, after all - but he pushes past his Time Lord sense of distaste and concentrates on the man he’s kissing. Jack tastes of coffee, salt, human saliva and the universe, both the same as and very different from every other human he’s kissed.
He pushes forward, lips parted, cupping the back of Jack’s neck as Jack takes advantage of the opportunity to deepen the kiss, tongue sliding forward to tangle with his own. It’s a shock to realise that his hearts have sped up, and that the moan he’s just heard didn’t come from Jack. At least Jack’s own pulse is equally rapid, and the fingers now digging into his shoulders tell their own story.
The kiss is broken abruptly as he overbalances, falling back onto the grating and somehow managing to drag Jack with him.
Jack’s grin is lascivious and wicked. “Always suspected you’d be a bottom.”
There are times when superior Time Lord strength comes in very handy. Flipping them over so that he’s now on top, he grins down at Jack. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions. I think you’ll find I’m very versatile.”
Eyes alight with lust and humour, Jack retorts, “As long as that means I’m gonna get to find out.”
He is? But then, why not? After all, as he also told Rose once - and showed her, too - he does dance.
***
They’re lying in bed - the bed in Jack’s old room, which is still there, still the same as it was in the days when this ship was his home - having moved there after the first frenzied, laughter-filled, uncomfortable yet mind-blowing time on the console-room floor. Several hours of experimentation and exploration later, Jack’s limp, exhausted and thoroughly sated.
It’s different with a Time Lord, and in ways he never imagined. It’s not just the Doctor’s cooler core temperature, and it’s certainly not because of any anatomical differences - in fact, the Doctor’s indistinguishable physically from a human. There are some differences in erogenous zones, and the Doctor’s binary vascular system means no noticeable refractory period.
This is unlikely ever to happen again. He knows it, accepts it and doesn’t resent it. After all, this is the Doctor, and the guy doesn’t do relationships, or even affairs. He runs at the first hint of commitment. That’s okay, though. If this is all he’ll ever get, it’s a damn good memory to store away.
But they can’t stay here indefinitely. Sooner or later, the Doctor’s going to make an excuse to get up and leave, and if he even suspects that Jack’s going to make a big deal of this he’ll be rushing to pretend it never happened. That’s the very best reason for Jack to be the one to return the two of them to normality. Plus he needs to get back to Torchwood, and there’s still the rest of his promise to Rose, and to the duplicate Doctor.
Sitting up, he reaches for his clothes, which they had the presence of mind to bring with them. “Hate to say it, but it’s time I was getting back.”
“Yeah. Yes, of course. No probs. Have you back in a jiffy.” The Doctor pulls on his T-shirt, then his shirt, and reaches for his underwear. “So, back to Cardiff. Back to your team. Who’d have thought? Jack Harkness, defender of the Earth.”
There’s pride in the Doctor’s voice, and Jack can’t help but be proud himself. “It’s a responsibility. It’s something I can do, and I’m needed, I think.”
“You won’t be needed for ever.” Knotting his tie, the Doctor tilts his head to one side and holds Jack’s gaze. “When it’s time, call me. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“If you fixed my Vortex manipulator, you wouldn’t need to,” he points out, even though the offer’s more than he was expecting. The Doctor doesn’t comment, so he switches to the other topic on his mind. “What about you? What will you do?”
“Oh, you know.” The Doctor shrugs and leads the way out of the bedroom. “Have TARDIS, will travel.”
“Alone?” he prompts.
“Well, you could come with me. All right, all right, you’ve got responsibilities on Earth,” the Doctor adds before Jack can comment. “I suppose... well, sooner or later someone will come along. That’s how it always happens. I don’t go looking for people to take with me, Jack. Never do. Didn’t go looking for you, did I? Or Rose, or Martha. Or Donna,” he adds, his voice softer.
“Find someone,” he urges. “Just so you know, I’m gonna worry about you until you do.”
The Doctor says nothing until the two of them are at the console, taking the TARDIS back to Earth 2009. Then he rubs his cheek. “Funny to think of you worrying about me. Should be me worrying about all of you, every one of you who’s travelled with me. With good reason, too, I suppose.”
“Depends what the reason is.” At last: a chance to confront what he knows the Doctor will have taken to heart. “Not if you’re somehow insane enough to believe that Davros was right. We’re not weapons, Doctor. Anything we do to help you, or to save our planet or the universe, we do because we can. Because it’s the right thing to do. And if you actually look around at the people whose lives you’ve touched, really look at us, you’d see what you’ve really done for us.”
He straightens, smiles and continues. “Look at Martha. A doctor, a senior UNIT operative and now a member of my team. You’ve seen what she’s capable of. And Mickey, the guy you used to call the idiot - look what he’s done. Then there’s Sarah-Jane: amazing woman. Harriet Jones. The Brigadier - I met him, you know. I’d be honoured to report to him. Plus all the other companions before my time - I’ve heard stories, you know. You changed them for the better too.”
“You didn’t mention Rose,” the Doctor comments quietly. “Or Donna.”
He shrugs. “Rose will be fine. She’s come a long way from the kid you first took with you. She’s got her own Torchwood now. Knows a few things about aliens, and about defending her planet. She’s got her family too, thanks to you, and she’s got someone who’s you in every way, except for the no regenerations thing. Maybe it’ll take a while, but it’ll work out for them. It wouldn’t even surprise me if they find a way to travel again, knowing you.”
The Doctor nods, and his expression’s lighter than it was. “They will. I gave him a piece of the TARDIS before we landed. He’ll know what to do with it, and he’s still Time Lord enough that it won’t take centuries to grow, like your piece.” He rubs the back of his neck, staring away for a moment; it’s clear that he still misses Rose, but it’s equally clear that this time he’s managing to let her go. “As long as she’s happy. That’s all I ever wanted for her.”
That’s something he can reassure the Doctor about. “She will be. I talked to Mickey before I left Cardiff. Yeah, she spent years trying to get back to you, but that wasn’t all she did. She had a good life over there. Made friends, got her A-levels, built the kind of life she’d need if she never got back to you. She always missed you, Mickey said, but what upset her most was thinking you might be alone. That’s why she made me promise. And that’s why I told her you’d never be alone, not with all the people in the universe who love you - and not as long as I’m alive. Which we both know is gonna be a very long time.”
Slowly, the Doctor nods again. “Right. Yes. Well... can’t hurt to keep an eye out for the right kind of person, I suppose.”
“You do that.” He grins again. “And bring her - or him - to Cardiff. I demand vetting rights.” Before the Doctor can comment, he adds, “As for Donna, between all of us we’ll make sure she’s all right. Don’t forget, you’ve got quite a team of us back on Earth in my time now - besides me, there’s Martha, Sarah and Mickey, and Gwen and Ianto will help, and so will Martha’s Tom and Sarah’s gang of helpers. Donna’s gonna be fine.”
The Doctor plays with some controls on the console before answering. “Sarah was right,” he says finally. “She told me I had the biggest family in the universe.”
“ ‘Bout time you realised that.” He claps the Doctor on the back. “Just don’t forget it again.”
They’re materialising, and he can see on the viewscreen that this time they’re in the Plas, back where he belongs. Time to leave. “Thanks for the trip, Doctor,” he says, deliberately casual and upbeat.
“Welcome,” the Doctor says, fingers trailing over the console. Then his gaze shifts and meets Jack’s, the brown eyes open and honest. “Thank you. I... Well. I’m glad you came.”
“Me too.” He steps back from the console, then hesitates; can he expect a farewell hug, or should he just head straight for the door? “It was fun,” he adds, to cover his hesitation. “Not just the...” He inclines his head towards the ship’s interior. “I miss the travelling, you know.”
“I know. And it was fun.” The Doctor’s smile is wicked, and Jack feels heat curling inside him again; he orders his body to calm down. “We’ll have to do it again some time,” the Doctor continues, and Jack’s body reacts even more forcefully.
Just as he’s deciding that it’s probably safer just to head for the door, the Doctor steps in front of him, cups his face between cool palms and kisses him firmly before moving back again.
“Well, off you go, then. Your team’s waiting.” The Doctor shoos him towards the door. “But I’ll be back, Jack, and that’s a promise. Better save up your holiday allowance.”
His heart lighter than it’s been in a long time, Jack salutes. “Yes, sir! But I thought this was a time machine?” he points out, spoiling the salute with a grin.
The Doctor gives him a careless salute and a wink in return. “Ask Mickey about the time I thought I’d kept Rose away for twelve hours.” The TARDIS door creaks open. “Go on, now. I need to get going. Got a companion to find, apparently.”
“You do. Goodbye, Doctor.”
He steps through the open door into the sunlight of a July afternoon in Cardiff, then pulls it closed behind him. Seconds later, the sound of dematerialisation roars behind him, and he stands for a moment watching the ship fade in and out of view. He’s kept his promise, and much more besides. And now he has a few promises of his own to hold on to.
He turns, takes a deep breath and, with an anticipatory grin on his face, hurries off towards the invisible lift and his team. Back to work.
- end