Chapter Text
The Doctor was beaming with unmitigated delight as he strolled through the dark tunnel that led to the exit of the Hub. Not that there was a lot to beam at, in what was just a few steps above a sewer, but he was making a display of his approval for his friend. Sure, there had been times, in the little tour he’d just concluded of Torchwood Three, that he’d looked distinctly less pleased; but in the end, he had apparently decided he was impressed.
Jack walked alongside, swelling with satisfaction. He’d done it; he’d built something in the Doctor’s honour, and even if it wasn’t perfect, the Doctor was pleased. The Time Lord had finally gotten to know Jack’s team, babbled gleefully about the ingenuity of humanity, shared his expertise on certain mysteries that had come through the rift, berated Jack over Owen’s condition (although actually slightly less than he’d expected), and flown into a spitting fury at the inhumane conditions of the holding cells. But, quelled by promises that they were actively working on solutions towards the latter issues, he’d come away smiling his beautiful smile. And that ignited more in Jack than just his pride.
But he’d told himself to can it. Flirting with the Doctor was like playing slots; it started out fun, kept you there with perfectly timed hooks, tiny victories, and glimpsed promises—and never actually paid out.
“So what’s next for the great Captain Jack?” the Doctor finally asked, breaking their companionable silence as he swung a warm smile back over to his friend.
“Oh, same old, same old,” he answered, a mockery of a complaint. “You know, defending the Earth. Turns out to be a sorta full-time job.”
“Oh, tell me about it,” the Doctor groaned sympathetically. “You’d almost think the human race is inviting alien invasion. Still,” he sniffed, “It’s very considerate of your lot to take some of the burden off my shoulders.” He winked.
“Great to know what we do here is appreciated,” Jack answered, grinning right back at him. “What about you? Gonna pick Donna back up and go gallivanting off through the stars like usual? Or, well—better than usual, I guess. The Doctor Donna, saving twice the days with twice the Time Lord brains?”
The Doctor’s grin faltered for only a moment before he pasted it right back on, bright and cheery and airy and totally void of any true warmth. “You know me!”
The thing was, he did.
And the only thing the Doctor ever seemed to lie about was his feelings, so it was perhaps not surprising that, to the trained eye, he was absolute rubbish at it. Most of the time, it was only his unnerving ability to find some immediate, pressing distraction that allowed him to escape prying follow-up questions; but this long, empty tunnel offered none.
Jack stopped walking; the Doctor noticed a few steps later, turned around, and, seeing the expression on his friend’s face, grimaced. “Oh, do we have to? I’m really not in the mood—"
Jack cut him off. “Doctor, did you and Donna—have a falling-out, or something?”
When Jack had last seen him, the Doctor had had a clone, Donna, and Rose for company. As someone who had already watched too many loved ones grow old and die in his comparably shorter time above ground, Jack had immediately grasped the implications of a half-human Doctor, and was glad to have had his suspicions confirmed when this Doctor had showed up alone, earlier today, and verified that those two were going to live their happily ever after off in the alternate universe. (The one where Rose’s parents were both alive, together, and, just as a bonus, absolutely stinking rich.) It had sounded picture-perfect, but for the part where that meant this Doctor was left alone.
Alone, except for Donna.
But then, as far as she was concerned… the Doctor had just mentioned dropping her with her family. Said he’d decided to stop in for a visit with Jack while he was in “the neighbourhood”. And then, in his usual way, moved on to his exuberant exploration of the hub, cutting off any Donna-related train of thought.
So Jack had just assumed.
But now…
The Doctor’s face had fallen into an unreadable blankness. He didn’t continue towards the exit, but he didn’t meet Jack’s gaze, either.
So the Captain crouched down slightly, putting hands on the Doctor’s shoulders, planted his face firmly in his friend’s line of sight and stared up at him with stubborn compassion. “What happened?”
The big brown eyes held the blue ones for a moment, and then the Doctor shifted his weight, sniffed loudly as if just to clear his nose, and looked away. “She won’t be traveling with me anymore.”
Jack frowned, puzzled. “What? Why not? You two were perfect for each other.” Met with a stony silence, he felt the need to keep speaking. “I mean, as friends, of course—"
“She can’t,” was the low growl of a response. When Jack just stared at him, the Doctor huffed and turned away to resume their journey to the exit.
“What? Hey,” and Jack grabbed him again, gently but firm. “Why not? Doctor, talk to me.”
That was when he noticed the tears in the Doctor’s eyes, and was hit with anticipatory sorrow.
But the Time Lord rallied himself, and answered—speaking bitterly, addressing his words roughly to the wall over Jack’s head.
“She couldn’t take it. Her half of the metacrisis. A Time Lord consciousness is literally too big for a human brain, it was melting her from the inside. Only way to save her was to seal it off—it and all of her memories of me—so it won’t awaken again. If she remembers, she’ll die.”
His eyes were dry by the time he finished, staring through Jack into some imagined space, and his voice was flat with grief and defeat.
Jack stared.
“Fuck,” he breathed. He hadn’t had the faintest idea.
The Doctor had come here, right after that? Swanned around the place without a care in the world, all day, with that weighing on his conscience?
“Yeah,” was the short response.
But as the Doctor started to turn away, his progress was halted once again. This time, though, the hands didn’t stay on his shoulders, as Jack folded his arms around him and pulled him into a tight embrace.
It wasn’t like they hadn’t already hugged today, when the Doctor first appeared for a surprise visit, or a couple times when the alien had just been overenthused by something he found out about the hub or the team’s more noteworthy accomplishments. The Doctor (in this form, at least) was simply a huggy person, and he’d not gone starved for human contact this day.
But this was different; it wasn’t excited or energetic, a way of expressing a brief outburst of joy. It was soft, loving, apologetic, compassionate. And after staying rigid for a few seconds, he eventually relaxed into the comforting contact.
It was nice: warm, familiar, full of Jack’s pleasant personal scent, sympathetic words spilling softly into his ears, and sturdy hands gently stroking his back.
For the first time in a very, very long while, the Doctor simply let himself be held. And if a tear or two dampened the shoulder of Jack’s greatcoat, neither man said anything.
~ ~ ~
“Sure I can’t convince you to come with me? I think she misses you.” The Doctor nodded to the TARDIS, parked out on the Plass, as they headed up to it.
Jack laughed good-naturedly, but his smile was sombre. “You know I can’t. They need me.”
He was sympathetic to the Time Lord's’s plight, knowing that aching loneliness as well as anyone could. And it wasn’t that there was no allure to the idea of traveling with the Doctor again, even as the sole companion—maybe especially as the sole companion. But he’d felt awful enough after abandoning his team for a few months the first time he’d run off after the TARDIS, and now, with Owen and Tosh barely recovered from their respective near-death experiences, and his somewhat fragile developing relationship with Ianto—
The Doctor nodded. “I know,” he agreed, with regret. He came to a halt a few meters from the blue box. Jack expected him to turn back and say his goodbyes… and was surprised to watch him just stand there, staring at the TARDIS with something like apprehension. Jack had never seen his friend anything less than ecstatic to get back on his ship, so this reticence was… almost unnerving.
He waited a moment, unsure what to say. The seconds stretched out until he felt compelled to speak.
“Sure I can’t convince you to stay?”
Those seemed to be the magic words—for a spell with the exact opposite of his intentions, unfortunately. The Doctor straightened up, the reluctance dissipating, and gave his friend a genuine, if sad, smile.
“I can’t. You know I can’t.”
Jack wasn’t sure he did, really. He loved adventure as much as anyone, but he couldn’t understand the Doctor’s total aversion to settling down for even a short while. As he watched his friend step towards the blue doors, he found himself trying to hold back frustration. This man would give anyone a chance at happiness, at doing the right thing, the smart thing—even a mortal enemy—anyone but himself.
“Fine. But—don’t be a stranger.”
The words were a command, almost a threat.
“ ‘course not,” the Doctor replied with one of his big, vapid grins. But his eyes didn’t quite meet Jack’s, and flicked back quickly to his own hands as he slipped his key into the door.
Jack strode forwards and grabbed the Doctor’s hands, inserting himself between the Time Lord and the TARDIS, forcing eye contact.
“I’m serious,” he said, earnestly. “Doctor, please. Just… stop in. From time to time. Whenever you need to. Whenever you want to.” There was no response—not even an indication that he’d been heard, brown eyes staring vacantly forward. “…no need to look so morose, Doctor. Last I checked, social visits weren’t lethal.” The Doctor’s lip twitched upwards with a hint of amusement. Jack let his hands go, and stepped out of the way, letting him finish opening the door.
“And if they are, it could be… like an inspection! Make sure we’re defending the Earth to an acceptable standard? Keeping up to your moral code and all that? Heck, we could schedule it—whaddaya say, once a month? Or once a year? At least?”
For a moment, the Time Lord just stood at the now-open door of his TARDIS, staring inside, still and silent. Then he glanced back, dark eyes calculating. Jack could see, suddenly, the span of time, the Doctor’s age, his ancient solitude. His fear of staying as lonely as he was now, weighed against his fear of connecting and losing again.
Then the Doctor smiled. A faint expression, but perhaps a more genuine one.
“Is that according to your timeline, or mine?”
There was a soft, wry humour there that sparked a surprisingly strong thrill of hope in Jack’s heart.
“Doc, I would think it’s in your power to make it both,” he answered, smirking.
That got a chuckle.
“I suppose it is.” The Doctor looked up once more, holding Jack’s gaze as if he was looking for something in it—and of course, as a telepath, maybe he was. Then he dropped his eyes, but nodded, firmly. “Torchwood Inspector. Hmm. Maybe not actually such a bad idea.” Jack masked his impatience and watched quietly as the Doctor scratched at his own face, ruminating, before coming to some decision. “How about… oh, roughly… once a season?”
Jack was not remotely surprised to hear that once a month would be too much of a commitment; in fact, he’d anticipated that the Doctor would either refuse or accept the year offer with a disgruntled whine… or even push it to decade or, hell, century. Quarterly? That was well beyond his best expectations.
His voice carried his grin. “Sounds great to me!”
“Can’t promise I’ll keep to a schedule, mind,” the Time Lord was half talking to himself, or perhaps the empty TARDIS, raising his eyebrows dubiously, “ ‘course, an inspection probably shouldn’t be scheduled anyways.” His voice reduced to a self-directed mutter, “And I could… probably use the company…”
It was quiet, but Jack just managed to catch it, and couldn’t help but grin. “Well hey, if you’re that desperate to get back to me, you could always just skip right ahead. Wouldn’t blame you, I’m pretty hard to resist.” He gave a comically exaggerated wink, which got a snort and a bemused shake of the head from the Doctor.
“Oh, you wish.”
“Pfft, well yeah!” Jack answered, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “If I was half as irresistible to you as you are to me…” His words trailed off and he let his eyes do the talking; they raked their way appreciatively up and down the figure in brown, making his interest abundantly clear.
He had been very well-behaved, this whole visit, out of respect (and perhaps, at least a little, to keep up some semblance of dignity in front of his team). But he was glad, now, to take this last-minute opportunity to make sure the Doctor wasn’t left with the wrong impression.
Jack would absolutely shag him.
“Right,” was the slightly higher-pitched answer, which in no way masked the Doctor’s awkwardness; but then he was grinning wide and disarmingly, in an expression that briefly reminded Jack of a certain old face with big ears.
“Right,” the Doctor repeated, brightly, “Best be off before you get too excited and… strain something.”
His eyes darted down, once, quickly but pointedly. He looked back up to see he’d managed to catch Jack off-guard—almost flustered him.
The Doctor beamed impishly, and stepped backwards through the TARDIS doors. Spinning on his heels, he shouted a goodbye, letting the doors swing shut behind him.
Jack wasn’t phased for long. Knowing full well that he’d be visible on the monitor, and suspecting (accurately) that the Doctor would check it, he made a show of fanning himself and pulling at his collar as if overheated. As the dematerialisation sequence commenced, he gave his sauciest salute, and turned to walk away with a swagger.
He couldn’t be sure the Doctor would actually come back, but he felt like there might just be reason to hope.
~ ~ ~
Very briefly, the Doctor actually considered Jack’s teasing invitation to skip right ahead. He loved his TARDIS, loved to hear her sing for him, but she wasn’t enough to abate his crushing loneliness. He could jump ahead, a few months, pretend it had been the same span time for him, hang out with Jack and his team. Probably coincidentally arrive at the same time as some minor emergency and help them sort it.
He considered, equally, and more seriously, going back completely on his word to visit (visit regularly, even!) and simply forget about the whole thing. “Inspections” were pretty obviously a pretense that Jack wasn’t really expecting him to keep up, so they would just be social visits, really, and… it wasn’t as if he hadn’t stood people up before, when they declined to come with him. Joining his loved ones in their spaces, with their families, families that weren’t and couldn’t be his and even if they could they’d still all just wither and die—
He jerked a lever on the console unnecessarily brusquely.
He couldn’t do it. Sitting in some domestic setting with people that he couldn’t really belong with, stuck forever on the outside looking in, remembering all the faces that had ever sat round his table before disappearing into the Time War or simply crumbling away under the weight of age.
How did Jack stand it?
Maybe he was too young, still. Older than any other human had ever been, sure, but he wasn’t even quite two hundred yet. It might not have set in, the weight of it.
Jack would outlive even him.
…Jack was the one person who would never die on him.
He dragged his hands roughly through his hair, and then down his face, and swore at the empty room.
“You’re an idiot, Doctor.”
How much would it really hurt? To visit the one man he didn’t have to worry about? The one man he couldn’t lose to time or sickness or injury, but only to his own mistakes?
Muttering to himself, he made his way over to the console monitor, opened the digital calendar (something he hadn’t bothered with in literal lifetimes), and marked a date.
He would try it. Just this once.