GIFT FOR JOKING: Getting There (Jack/Eleven) [PG]

[trobadora]

Title: Getting There
Author: wojelah
Recipient: joking
Rating: PG at most
Pairing(s): Jack/Eleven
Spoilers/warnings: Canonical character death off-screen.
Summary: “Crossing your own timeline is a very foolish thing, you know,” he observes casually to the back of a nearby holochip stall. “Pot,” says Jack, “Meet kettle.”

**

He feels so old, this time around. Older even than his first self, even at his most crotchety. “Worn thin,” he thinks, “like butter that has been scraped over too much bread," and then tells himself to stop pinching Tolkien’s best lines, even if they were his in the first place.

River steps past him in a swirl of metallic silks, her shoulders bare, her eyes bright. He watches her as she leans on the balcony, looking out over Darillium, the silvery drifts of music settling onto her skin. She turns back to him, the singing dust scattering as she moves, spangling her face, her hands, her hair. She burns so brightly, he thinks, and lets her pull him into a dance. He kisses her forehead when it ends, and feels the dampness on his cheeks.

She’ll burn brighter still. He’s watched her do it. He’s carried her death with him since before she was born. He’s always known. He’s always had to remember.

He feels so old.

* * *

He hadn’t known where he’d end up next. He hadn’t meant to end up anywhere. And this -- this would have been last on the list.

He’d kissed River and closed the doors and commended her to his younger self. He hadn’t waited to engage the rotors -- she’d know something was off and come banging down the door.

But then the TARDIS was thrumming and the Vortex had taken them in -- and he’d meant to stay there. To be still. To be alone.

He’d had his hands on the controls almost before he’d realized it. He hadn’t known where the dial had stopped when he flung off the brake keeping him lost in time. He hadn’t cared.

He’d walked out the door...and into Ophelia Seven at the height of the Nine-Year Solipsism, the greatest tribute to pseudophilosophical hedonism in the universe. It’s teeming. The crowd is so thick it washes him away from the TARDIS barely a heartsbeat after he steps out. It’s all he can do to check the doors are closed.

He loses track of geography -- never Time, never, ever Time -- jouncing along with the ebb and flow of the crowd, past stall after stall offering him anything he’s ever wanted. It isn’t carnal -- at least, this district isn’t, or the districts he’s wandered through aren’t, though he knows they exist. It’s just experience, on demand. Try the color blue, or the smell of fresh akhibal, or the touch of the fur of a two-day old deezil. Taste this. Listen to that. Breathe it in, take it up, drink it down. “Live now,” proclaims the tannoy overhead. “Live now and prove your life.”

Around him, the crowd jostles and surges and thickens and slows, and he’s caught in the middle, watching all of it, the laughing faces, the outstretched hands, the beating hearts. Beneath it all, Time moves, and he feels it pass. Sees it leaving its mark, sees it wearing away at the stones of the walls, the weave of the fabrics, the bodies of the celebrants. So much life. So little Time.

He finds he can’t quite breathe properly, which takes some doing with a respiratory bypass, but irony isn’t a comfort at this point. He turns and stumbles and pushes his way to the edges until he spills out of the throng and into a small courtyard, a teahouse, he thinks, just a guess, from the looks of the cups in the hands of the patrons. Who are all staring. At him. Quite openly.

“Hello,” he manages, before the five-armed bouncer moves in.

* * *

Ten minutes later, he has a quiet seat in the sunshine and a cup of something remarkably like fine Oolong. This time, at least, he’d remembered the psychic paper. He’s sat at the back, far from the sound of the street, and he thinks maybe, just maybe, he’ll be able to make it back to the TARDIS without further incident.

Until a too-familiar voice at his shoulder says, “Buy you a drink?” and then Captain Jack Harkness drops into the chair across the way.

Except it isn’t Jack. Not the Jack he knows, at any rate.

The Jack he knows isn’t this predatory, loose-limbed man with an easy smile and too-sharp eyes. This isn’t even the Jack he’d met long ago in London, let alone the Jack he’d seen last.

This Jack, he hadn’t felt coming.

He lifts his cup. “Well in hand.”

“May I?” Jack doesn’t wait for the Doctor’s nod -- when it comes, he’s already reaching for the pot. He pours one for himself, sipping with apparent relish and then, to all outward appearances, slouching back like the rest of the clientele to watch the blue steam curl into patterns. It isn’t actually Oolong, after all. “So,” Jack says softly. “Psychic paper. Rare stuff, these days.”

“Family heirloom,” is all he says in reply. This isn’t his Jack, after all.

Jack quirks a grin. “I know people who’d love to get their hands on it.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Reminds me of my dear old mum.”

At that, Jack actually laughs, but it’s short and sharp. “Too precious to let go of, then.” Jack’s still grinning, but it’s a stare and a challenge.

“Not easily, at any rate.” He meets Jack’s eyes calmly and rolls his empty cup between his palms. “I try to hold on to the important things.” It’s not how he’d meant that to come out. And Jack’s not a fool at any age.

This version’s no exception. “You may try,” Jack says, eyes narrowing. “But that doesn’t mean you always win.”

It’s too close to home, too soon. He doesn’t flinch, not exactly, but he does look away. His fingers clench on the cup and he forces himself to reach out, to set it down with a tiny click. And then he lets himself look back up at Jack, and he doesn’t bother to hide what’s in his face any longer. “No,” he answers. “But it means I try harder than most.”

It’s Jack’s turn to look away. And then -- because Jack has always been a surprise -- he looks back, and the sharp, hard edges are gone. “That just means the losses count more,” he says quietly.

“Yes,” he answers. “More and more.”

“What do you do when you keep losing?”

He tries to find the kind answer. This Jack is young enough to need it more than honesty. And yet - this Jack is old enough to say “when” and not “if.” He does his best. “I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“Well. If I run into you again, I’ll be sure to ask.” Jack flicks a glance over the Doctor’s shoulder and just like that, he lifts his chin and the persona falls back into place. He sets his own cup down and stands, looking down. His gaze is sharp again, but not quite so cutting. “If I were you, I’d keep my Mama’s things tucked away where they’re not so interesting to other people.”

“Busybodies,” the Doctor sighs. “Bane of my existence.”

This time, when Jack laughs, it’s bright. Open. It calls to memory so strongly that the Doctor has to blink. Five minutes later, he watches Jack leave arm in exoskeletal arm with an Appian, murmuring in zhir ear even as his hand slips quickly in and out of zhir cloak pocket. He tosses something small to an apparently uninterested man reading a newsfilm, who makes it vanish.

The Doctor goes back to his tea. Time Agency-era, then. Jack won’t likely remember. He thinks what he’s feeling is relief, but he really isn’t sure.

* * *

He drinks another pot before the trek back to the TARDIS begins to feel plausible. It’s the dinner hour by now, and the streets are at least passable -- though that won’t last long. He’s halfway back, he thinks, when a niggling sensation at the back of his mind resolves itself.

“Crossing your own timeline is a very foolish thing, you know,” he observes casually to the back of a nearby holochip stall. “And twentieth century English wool isn’t normally found backing vendor tents three galaxies and several epochs away.”

Nothing answers. Or rather, no one answers. Which means he has to look more closely, which means he discovers that twentieth century English wool is a close match for the fabric woven on Jupilegen Epsilon, and that the Jupils don’t take kindly to people who say they’re only browsing. But when he turns around, Jack Harkness is standing in front of him.

“Pot,” says Jack, “ meet kettle.”

It’s his Jack. The one he knows. That knows him, even if they’ve never met before in this regeneration. That’s looking at him with a compassion he’s not sure he can stand. “Well, well,” he manages. “Captain Jack Harkness. Hello, then.”

“Doctor,” Jack nods, and takes a long look. “Nice tweed. Love the tie.”

He knows his next line, but he doesn’t feel like saying it. He sets off down the street instead. “Heading back to the TARDIS, just now, before the streets run mad again,” he says over his shoulder. He can feel Jack following. “You’re welcome, if you like. She’s had the decorators in, mind, so be polite.” He’s angry, somehow -- angry that Jack knows, possibly, or that Jack remembers, or that Jack would do something so blunderingly stupid, mucking with the timeline with only a vortex manipulator to hand.

It’s easier to simply walk in and head for the console, to start gearing up for flight, than to argue. He hears Jack shut the door. He hears the TARDIS grumble, hears Jack say “hello, sweetheart,” and hears her settle back down into something much more fond.

He’s running out of switches to switch. The toggles are toggled. The gnrphh can gnrpph no further, given that he hasn’t yet replaced the spring.

He doesn’t dare stop moving.

“So,” Jack says. The Doctor spares him a glance -- he’s leaning against the door, hands in his pockets. “How long’s it been?”

“Ninety standard Earth minutes, give or take,” he answers, and reaches for the knirder. It clangs, and the TARDIS bongs at him, annoyed. “As you ought to know.”

“Tetchy,” is all Jack says, but he shoves off the door and walks closer to the console. “I was still a Lieutenant then, you know.”

His sense of Time is prickling at him, like a heat rash. It’s Jack, he knows, and it should be innocuous, only he’s too worn, too stretched already. It makes him sharper than he means to be. “And what did they teach you, on your way up the ranks?” He’s really very bad at this.

Jack’s stopped short. “You know,” he says, and there’s enough frost in his voice that the Doctor thinks maybe he’s done it, maybe he’ll leave. “I can’t really remember.”

Lucky man, he almost says. But he doesn’t. He manages to bite it back, has to go still with the effort of it, because it would be cruel. He can be cruel, but he’s not so far gone to know that he oughtn’t. If he’s honest, he manages mostly because it’s Jack. “Captain,” he says carefully, looking at his knuckles, white on pink where he’s gripping the brake, “this really isn’t the time.”

“Eight hundred years ago, I might have let that stop me.” Jack’s voice is calm.

The Doctor has to laugh, even if he can’t look up. “Eight hundred years ago, I doubt ‘stop’ was part of your vocabulary. I’m still not sure it is.”

“Eight hundred years ago,” Jack says quietly, “I didn’t know that there’s always a stop.”

It tips him all the way into anger. That’s what brings his chin up, the thought that this young pup has it in him to offer this lecture, offer it now, here, when he hasn’t any idea. But when he looks up, Jack’s just across the console, and the eyes that meet his are clear and blue and know a thing or two about what it’s like to keep going.

Jack, he thinks, is one of the few people that have recognized him in any body. He lets the ire slip away. He isn’t angry. He’s just tired.

He lets go of the brake. “Not for all of us.”

“No,” Jack agrees. “Just for most.”

His hand hurts from clenching. He flexes it and winces. “Eight hundred years, then? Been awhile since we’ve seen each other.”

Jack steps closer. “Come on, Doctor. Who’s to say we meet in order, after all?”

“The last time I saw you, Jack -” he stops.

“You were dying.”

“Told you, did I?”

“Eventually.” Jack lets go and leans back against the console. “One of you does, anyway. But it wasn’t hard to figure out.”

He shrugs. “It was important. Before I went.” The need to move is back. He pulls the monitor over to fiddle.

Next to him, Jack is quiet for a time. Eventually, he says, “It was a gift. And you’re still here.”

Two hundred years ago, in a leather jacket and big ears, he could’ve shrugged this conversation off with a smile and quip. Now he hunches his shoulders and says nothing at all.

Jack’s hand settles on the nape of his neck. It’s warm and solid and real, and the ease of it makes him wonder what the proper order of events is from Jack’s perspective. “So am I,” Jack says.

He breathes out. “So you are.” He looks up as Jack’s hand falls away. “So we are.”

“I met a man once,” Jack says, not breaking eye contact. “I was just a kid. Barely a Lieutenant. Must be nine hundred years ago, now. On assignment -- busting a fence for psychic gadgets. Thought I’d found my mark. And then I realized he wasn’t selling.”

“No?”

“Nah. Just didn’t have the horse sense not to flaunt his belongings in public. Shared a good cup of jyglash with him, though.” Jack looks away then, glancing down at his hands and then off into nine hundred years of space-time. Or ninety minutes, depending on whose chronology’s the baseline. “Never forgot him. The Agency didn’t take every year, you know. I got to keep that one. I wasn’t important enough then.”

The Doctor waits.

“I got to keep that memory. And I got to keep the look in his eyes, when he talked about what he’d lost. What he’d fought to keep and hadn’t. And then I saw him again.”

“Ninety minutes, yes,” the Doctor starts to say.

Jack waves him off. “I saw him again, across a crowded bar. Looking at me from face I already knew. And what he was fighting to keep was me.” Jack looks back at the Doctor. “Or at least, to keep me from following after what I’d lost. And he won. I thought maybe I could repay the favor.”

He can’t move when Jack reaches out and cups his face. He doesn’t move when Jack leans in and kisses him, except to close his eyes. It’s the memory of another kiss that keeps him still, keeps his eyes shut when Jack pulls back.

“What do you do when you keep losing?” he asks Jack Harkness, ninety-odd minutes and eight hundredish years after Jack first asked him.

“I haven’t worked it out yet,” Jack answers. He’s smiling gently when the Doctor looks at him. “But I think we’re getting there.”