joking: Home Is Whenever I'm With You (Part 1) (9/Jack, 10/Jack) [PG-13] (SUMMER HOLIDAYS PROMPT 15)

[wojelah.livejournal.com]

Title: Home Is Whenever I'm With You (Part 1)

Author: joking

Pairing: Nine/Jack friendship, Ten/Jack pre-slash

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers/warnings: Spoilers for all of The Homeward Bounders and through season 5 of Doctor Who.
Prompt: 70, Platinum, Engineer Primus, The Summer Revolution

Notes: This fic is a fusion with The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones. No knowledge of this book is required to enjoy the fic. Just open your mind to an interesting AU!

Jacerel hadn’t meant to find them. But then, no one ever means to find them.

He’d been looking for shelter for his parents and Gray, a place where the bombs wouldn’t fall. He’d found an abandoned town further inland. The buildings were intact, their insides scoured clean. The townspeople had packed up and left, but there was no sign of an attack from the Others.

He was looking for a bunker, a building that would protect them. The streets were eerily quiet and still, the buildings and gardens already starting to fall into disrepair, weeds sprouting up where they shouldn’t be.

There was one building, though, that was a little too clean.

It was a House of the Dead, where death-speakers spoke and listened. It had all the right markings for one, all faded and smudged a little. But there was one marking out of place, one that looked as fresh and crisp as if it had just been put there. At the gate to the House of the Dead was the symbol of an anchor.

Jacerel pressed his fingers to the relief carving in the stone. Anchors weren’t a threshold-symbol to mark the space between life and death. They were the opposite. They kept you steady in the flow of life, or bound you to the cold peace of death. A House of the Dead had no use for anchors.

But Jacerel’s family might have a use for this place. Builders cut corners sometimes, but they never spared any expense on a House of the Dead. It would be built strong, if it was a House at all. That was why Jacerel took a running leap and jumped over the fence.

He wasn’t so bold as to walk in through the front door. You could only go through there if you were a death-speaker, or if you were invited by one. But when he went around the back, he found a private door. The death-speakers had needs too. They needed herbs and fuel for their fires, and someone to sweep the floors. This was the service door. It was made of black stone, like the front door, but instead of a matte dark void, this stone was cut to be reflective.

As Jacerel opened the door, it was as if he were walking into an even dimmer reflection of the ruined town. In the darkness, there were three figures, humanoid, cloaked so as to completely cover their bodies and faces. There were also holographic screens glowing with images, too many for Jacerel to process, though somewhere he saw an image of spaceships floating over the Boeshane like thunderclouds, and somewhere else, he saw casualty figures. The numbers were high enough to distract him so that it took a moment to realize that he couldn’t move.

One of them turned toward Jacerel. Even though he couldn’t see its face, he could tell the way it was looking at him. It was the same way the Others looked at people: like they weren’t people at all.

“A random factor,” it sighed. Like he was some rubbish the wind had blown in. “And at this stage in the game, too.”

“Surely another corpse wouldn’t make a difference,” another one said.

“Yes it would. Don’t you remember rule five thousand eighty two? It’s a special rule for invasion games.”

“Every point counts in an invasion game. You know that. I say we make it a discard.”

“If you insist. Let’s check the Bounder circuits, then.”

The darkness opened up, then, showing reflections of other rooms with other them in front of different screens. The reflections seemed to curve away into infinity, like when you stand between two mirrors and look into one. But instead of looking dimmer and less real, as the phantoms in mirrors always did, they seemed more real, somehow. It was as if every trailing hem, every sterile room, every cold sneer Jacerel had ever seen were only shadows of the ones he saw now. Jacerel felt a numb dread at how many of them there were.

“A brief interruption,” one of Jacerel’s them said. “We are about to make a discard to the Bounder circuits. Can we confirm that this move is within the bounds of gameplay?”

“Acceptable,” said a voice that sounded like a computer to Jacerel. “Discard has been added to the Bounds.”

The darkness folded in on itself, then, leaving Jacerel with only the three of them. One of them spoke to him, then, speaking in a bored monotone like a sulky child reciting a poem she was forced to memorize.

“You are now a discard. We have no further use for you in play. You are free to walk the Bounds as you please, but it is against the rules for a Homeward Bounder to enter play in any world. To ensure you keep this rule, you will be transferred to another field of play every time a move ends in the field where you are. The rules also state that you are allowed to return Home if you can. If you succeed in returning Home, then you may enter play again in the normal manner.”

Another of them reached for a spinning holographic control. Jacerel panicked. “Wait, what are you doing?” he cried. “Let me go! Mum and Dad and Gray need me!”

They paid him no mind. The cloaked hand twisted around the control, and Jacerel was somewhere else.

“Somewhere else” wasn’t enough to describe it. He was on a pile of stones in a desert, the air so dry it felt like all the salt and damp of Boeshane Bay in the summer was sucked off his skin in a matter of moments.

The stars were wrong. If Jacerel didn’t know better, he would have said he was on another planet. But he did know better, because the difference was more profound than that. Somehow, Jacerel knew that he was in another universe entirely.

There was just something about it. The way gravity pulled on him, maybe. The flow of thirsty air across his face. Or maybe the flesh just knew when it was someplace it was never meant to be. Jacerel could feel it. They had sent him to another world. That’s what they’d meant.

Jacerel sat down so hard his bones rattled. Mum. Dad. Gray. They had taken his family away from him. He would never see them again unless he managed to find a way Home. He choked on bitter despair. How was he supposed to do that, when he didn’t even know how they’d sent him away?

“Take me back!” he screamed to the sky that wasn’t his. “I promise I won’t interrupt your stupid game! I just want to go back!”

There was no answer.

“What are the rules?” Jacerel said, not expecting an answer this time. “You didn’t even tell me the rules.”

He couldn’t stay. He knew walking wouldn’t take him to the next world, but while he was in this one, he needed water. He didn’t have the slightest idea how to find it, but he certainly wouldn’t have any if he stayed here. He walked until the horizon began to glow green and gold with an alien sun, and still he never found so much as a living plant. He took shelter under a crag of rock and slept.

It was in the desert that Jacerel discovered Rule One: he couldn’t die.

He went for a week without water and food, long past the point when he should have died of thirst and heat stroke, before a caravan found him. He was delirious and half-dead, but not all the way dead.

Once he was conscious enough to do anything but drink warm water and writhe with the pain of his sunburns, he thought, I’m an abomination. A thing that can’t taste the Silence in Between, or the Peace Beyond.

The people who’d rescued him, swathed in headwraps and flowing robes, spoke to him in soothing tones, in a language Jacerel had never heard. The translator chip he had installed in school took longer to get going than it ever had before. It was a whole day of gibberish before he understood what they were saying.

Miracle child, they called him. A foundling the desert had chosen to spare. Jacerel wanted to laugh. The desert had nothing to do with it. They were all pieces in the same game. Jacerel just had to play by different rules.

They were kind to him, though. He was the only young person in the caravan. They dressed him in a flowing sea-dark robe and a white headwrap to cover his hair and neck. He had to admit, looking at himself in a polished tray, that he looked good.

He felt bad, a little, when he had to leave.

The call came one night as he lay in his tent, turning restlessly in his bedroll with nightmares of the Others coming for Gray. It was a yearning in his chest, a hook just behind his sternum pulling him away, away. There was no use ignoring it, and anyway, Jacerel didn’t want to. If they were calling him, that meant they were going to send him to another world, and he could learn how the journey was made.

Jacerel put on his robe and his shoes and took a skin of water. He snuck out of the encampment and followed the pull until morning. He realized, looking at the unfamiliar shapes of the stars, that he was going back to where he had started. He slept through the heat of the day, his robe pulled up over his face, dreaming of a voice hidden in his heartbeat telling him where to go.

The sun set, and it wasn’t long before Jacerel was back at the pile of rocks where he’d first landed. He stood on the topmost rock, and the pull took him.

________

The next thing Jacerel knew, he was in a dark, close alley, and the air stank.

It didn’t stink like the air did when the Others attacked. It smelled like nothing Jacerel had known before, like too many animals close together and rotting fruit and human waste all at once. For a long time, he coughed and gagged, eyes watering so hard he could barely see.

Slowly, Jacerel’s senses returned to him. He looked up and saw a symbol etched into the soot-streaked wall opposite him. He couldn’t make any sense of it. To his left, the alley retreated into dimness. To his right, there was a busy street, filled with the sounds of shouts and rolling cartwheels. He looked down. His empty waterskin was gone. All he had were his robe and shoes.

“Pssst!” came a voice from the dark end of the alley.

Jacerel edged toward the voice. His eyes adjusted, and he saw a boy and girl about his own age, both much dirtier than he was. They both had nearly black skin, but the girl was nearly bald while the boy had a mass of springy curls on his head. The boy spoke to him. Again, he understood nothing. Jacerel’s head ached at the prospect of going a day in this awful city without knowing the language. He shook his head. The boy kept trying to talk, until finally the girl tugged at his ragged sleeve and seemed to explain to him that he wasn’t going to be able to communicate.

“Bo,” the girl said, pointing to herself.

“Bo,” Jacerel repeated, giving her a little bow.

“Kip,” she said, pointing to the boy. Kip nodded.

“Jacerel,” he said, pointing to himself.

“Jaza, za, zurel,” said Bo, struggling with the name.

“Jass-uh-rull,” Jacerel said slowly.

“Jack,” Kip said, pointing to him.

“Jack,” Bo agreed.

“Fine, then. Jack.” He pointed to the street. “Shall we go?”

Bo gasped and pulled him away from the street. Kip hissed a word that Jacerel was willing to bet meant “no.”

Bo and Kip couldn’t explain to him why he couldn’t go into the street, of course, but they looked like survivors, and Jacerel had nothing but the clothes on his back and his wits, so he’d do well to learn from the locals. He didn’t try leaving the alley again. Kip brought out a chipped set of wooden marbles, and he watched Bo and Kip play until he figured out how to join in. They played until the sun came down.

At sunset, Bo and Kip led Jacerel out of the alley, through a network of filthy streets, until the mud and brick buildings thinned out. They were at an oxbow lake at the curve of a river, where ships floated out from a brightly lit harbor. There were other children at the lake already. Those who weren’t bathing already were stripping off their clothes. Jacerel didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t an ocean, but he missed the water. He rinsed himself clean and had a splash fight with Kip and Bo.

When they emerged from the lake, shivering a little, there was a fire lit on the bank. There was a man tending the fire, tall and pale with a mess of spiky brown hair, his thin frame lost in a long brown coat. He had a basket of bread and another of cured meat. Jacerel realized he was starving.

Everyone gathered around the fire. The man passed around bread and meat, taking care to distribute it fairly. Each child murmured a phrase ending in the word “Harkness” when they received the food. It took Jacerel a while to realize that the word was the man’s name. When Harkness came to him, he gave Jacerel a long, considering look with brown eyes that seemed too old for his face. He seemed like he was about to say something, but instead he just smiled a little and gave Jacerel his dinner.

Harkness told them stories. Jacerel couldn’t understand them, but he could tell they were stories, from the lilt in his voice and the way the kids leaned in to listen. At the end, when the youngest were nodding off, he said, “The slavers have all hauled anchor from Vikramantown Harbor. You’re safe to walk the streets,” and just like that, Jacerel understood his words.

So that was why Bo and Kip wouldn’t let him out of the alley. “Thank you,” he told them. “For stopping me from doing something stupid.”

“Jack! You remember how to speak!” Bo said

“Sorry,” said Jacerel. “I was… out of it.”

Kip smiled. “It’s OK. Even if you never remembered how to speak, I would have liked you. You’re good at marbles.”

The kids were bedding down on the lakeshore, sleeping in pairs back-to-back to keep warm. Jacerel tapped Bo on the shoulder. “Can I sleep with you?”

“You can’t do that!” Bo gasped.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s a girl,” Kip said.

“So?”

“Boys can’t sleep with girls,” Bo said. “Stuff might happen.”

Jacerel wanted to ask what terrible things would happen if boys and girls slept together, but Bo was already looking at him like he was possibly dangerous, so he kept his mouth shut. “Can I sleep with you then, Kip?”

“Sure,” said Kip. With an apologetic smile to his friend, he led Jacerel away from Bo and curled up on the ground like a leaf folding up in autumn. Jacerel spooned up behind him, his nose filling with the lake-water smell of Kip’s hair. Kip gave a surprised little jerk at the contact.

“Sorry,” said Jacerel. “Would you rather we slept back to back?”

“No, it’s fine,” said Kip. “It’s warmer this way, actually.”

Jacerel found himself adopted by Harkness, and by Bo and Kip too, in a way. At night, Harkness fed the street kids of Vikramantown and warmed them by his fire. By day, Bo and Kip taught Jacerel how to steal. He took to it quickly, and found he didn’t feel bad about it. It was just a way to survive until he made it Home, after all. And when he did get Home, it might turn out his family needed a thief.

Bo was good at pickpocketing, her fingers so light you couldn’t feel them even when you knew they were there. Kip stole from street vendors when they didn’t watch their wares closely enough. Jacerel had a different gift. Bo liked to say, “Jack, you’ve got honey on your tongue.” He could distract people with his words from what he was really doing. When he smiled just right, people gave him what he wanted before he even had to ask.

The second day on that world, Jacerel tried to tell Bo about being a Homeward Bounder. She looked at him solemnly and said, “That is a great sin you carry. You must have done something terrible.” When Jack protested that he’d done nothing to deserve this, she said, “Our actions all come back to us eventually,” and didn’t seem to understand what he was really saying. Jacerel didn’t bring it up with anyone else after that. He couldn’t stand listening to someone else saying he’d done something wrong without really hearing his story.

A couple weeks later, Kip and Jacerel were bedded down at the outer edge of the lakeshore, in the hollow between the roots of a gnarled, soot-black tree. Jacerel had his arms wrapped around Kip to keep him warm. He thought about how Kip’s hipbones felt beneath his hands and the scent of his neck. Kip woke up, pressed back against Jacerel, and felt the evidence of what he’d been thinking about. He said, “Jack, uh…”

“I can turn around if you like, or sleep somewhere else,” Jacerel said amiably. “Or, if you like, you could do something about it…”

Kip spun around. Even in the darkness, Jacerel could see the tension in his face. “Do something about it? What does that mean?”

Jacerel pulled back. “I’m sorry, Kip. I’ll go sleep somewhere else.”

“First you want to sleep with Bo, and now this? Do you think we’re perverts or something? Is that it?” Kip spat.

Jacerel’s translator chip was having trouble with the word “pervert.” The closest equivalent it could provide in his native tongue was aish’ye, referring to twisted people who desired the touch of things that couldn’t say yes, like animals or children. Jacerel wasn’t like that. “I’m not a pervert. I didn’t mean to force you into anything you didn’t want. I just liked sleeping together and I thought you might want – “

Kip got to his knees and punched Jacerel in the nose. “I don’t want anything like that, do you understand me? Don’t you dare go around saying I’m a pervert like you.”

That was when Jacerel discovered Rule Two.

Kip gave an agonized cry and fell on his side. His nose still bleeding freely, Jacerel struggled up to his knees. For a moment he didn’t understand what was happening. Then he saw the snake pumping venom into Kip’s leg.

Snakes didn’t bother you unless you bothered them first. That’s the way it worked on the Boe. Jacerel didn’t think it was any different with snakes here. Kip had been hurting Jacerel, and the snake had stopped him.

Harkness appeared, drawn by the sound of shouts. “Snakebite,” Jacerel gasped out through numb lips. Without another word, Harkness bent down and started sucking the venom out, spitting bloody mouthfuls over his shoulder while Kip trembled and whimpered. Jacerel rummaged in his pack and lifted a canteen of water to Kip’s mouth. He turned his head aside. Jacerel pressed his lips together in frustration and offered the canteen to Harkness instead. He poured water on his mouth so he could rinse away the blood, then offered it to Kip. He drank.

“This is my fault,” Jacerel whispered. If he hadn’t been a Homeward Bounder, this wouldn’t have happened. Of that he was sure.

“No, it isn’t,” Harkness said. “You did nothing wrong.”

“Then why didn’t he take water from me?”

“I see the way you look at him,” Harkness said. “I can also see you’re not from around here. People don’t love so freely, in this place.”

Yes, Jacerel could see that now. He wondered if the symbol in the alley had been a warning. Maybe another Homeward Bounder had been here before, and heard people talk about perverts, and left a sign for the next traveler to pass through.

Assuming there were other Homeward Bounders at all.

“Thank you,” Jacerel blurted to Harkness, “for being so kind.” Then he ran back to the alley full tilt, hurtling along the dark street. “If I’d known the rules, Kip wouldn’t have gotten hurt,” he whispered. “Get me out of here. Get me out. I can’t stay.”

Jacerel felt a rushing sensation as he drew near the alley. It was the first time he’d felt anything near a transition place. This was what it felt like to slip between worlds.

With his next breath, he was gone.

_______

In the next world, when a concerned woman in a crisp white coat asked him for his name, he said, “Jack Harkness.

_______

It was on the seventieth world that Jack Harkness met the Doctor.

It was summer, and there was revolution in the Floating City. Jack knew because the air smelled like gunpowder and blood.

Jack followed the twin smells to a plaza where a battle had raged between the government and the rebels. The rebels had won. Lucky for him, because the people who died for the government always had more to steal. He snuck into the plaza, wary of government forces coming to reclaim the ground they’d lost. He spotted a bright gleam among the corpses and followed it to the cold hand of a uniformed officer. A ring, platinum. Perfect. He’d be able to exchange it on any world, for one of the many things Jack had learned about the people of the multiverse was that most of them loved shiny metals.

Jack looked up and saw a man leaning out of a first story window. He was tall and spare in a battered leather jacket, and he stared at Jack with piercing blue eyes. Jack knew then, with the same certainty with which he knew this world was not his own, that the man was another Homeward Bounder.

“Come here,” the man said.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Jack felt ashamed. He went to the door next to the window and opened it. The flat smelled like smoke; when its habitants left, they must have left the cook-fire burning. The other Homeward Bounder stood framed in the square of light coming in from the window. “Follow me,” he said, and started up a narrow flight of stairs.

Jack was helpless to resist. The man was magnetic, and it wasn’t just because Jack was so curious to meet another Homeward Bounder. It was as if the man were a world in himself, a world that Jack actually wanted to explore. He climbed the stairs.

After a few flights, Jack emerged on the roof of the building. He could see the whole neighborhood from up here. There was a tide of people moving north along a main boulevard. The strange man wasn’t watching them. Instead, he inspected a ramshackle building with a tall chimney on a newly abandoned street. “That’s an alchemist’s lab,” he said. “There’ll be dangerous equipment in there. Could have explosions or chemical spills with no one there to mind the shop.”

“What does it matter? The fighting will probably turn this whole sector to rubble anyway.”

“And then someone goes back to pick through the ruins of her home, and steps on a bomb.”

“That’s what happens,” Jack said flatly.

“That’s what happens, eh? Is that what you always say when people die for no reason?”

“You have no right to talk to me like that,” Jack said. “I’ve seen too many people die. I should have died at least a dozen times myself. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just trying to get Home. Who do you think you are?”

The man became suddenly gentle, his expression softer than any Jack would have thought that angular face could make. “’M sorry, lad. I’ll get you away from all of this. I’m the Doctor.”

Jack just stared at the Doctor’s extended hand. “I’m not a lad.” He looked like the same fourteen year old he’d been when he was first sent away from Home, but he’d been wandering the Bounder circuits for twenty years. “My name is Jack Harkness.”

“I’m sorry, then, Jack.”

Jack hesitated, then shook the Doctor’s hand.

“I’m going to do something about that lab. You can come with me if you like, or stay in this building and I’ll come back for you.”

“Can you do that?” Jack said, surprised.

“Do what?”

“Go in and stop that lab from exploding. Didn’t they remove us from play? That would be interfering.”

The Doctor beamed at him. “Yes. Yes, it would.”

“They won’t punish you for it?”

“The worst they can do is send me on to another world.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve been doing this for a thousand years and more.”

Jack looked into his eyes, and believed it. “I’ve never saved anyone before. I’m not sure I can care enough.” He swept his arms around him. “This is just another prison they’re keeping me in. I want to go Home.”

“So do I,” the Doctor said. “I miss it every day. But if even they – “ The Doctor pointed at the corpses layered in the street, eyes flashing – “are just pieces in their game, I’d still like to be the random factor that ruins the fun.”

Jack felt a little thrill up his spine. Some part of him that had given up on getting Home took to this idea like the warmth of a fire. Even if he couldn’t win the game, he could spit in the face of them who played it. “OK. Take me with you,” he said.

The Doctor smiled at him. “Good.” He dashed down the stairs, and Jack hastened to follow. They skirted the bloody streets, ducking through archways and empty plazas until they reached the alchemist’s lab. Even from outside, Jack could smell hot petrol and an acrid, chemical tang.

The alchemist hadn’t bothered to lock the door when he fled. The Doctor and Jack walked in. The chemical smell grew stronger. In the closeness of the lab, Jack’s skin began to prickle with sweat beneath his tunic. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice the heat, even in his leather jacket.

“Anything you can easily snuff out or turn off, do it,” the Doctor said. “If you think there’s even a chance you might hurt yourself doing it, don’t.”

“I know a thing or two about machines,” Jack said belligerently. Then he felt bad for speaking that way when the Doctor was just trying to protect him. Not many people had tried to protect him since he was torn away from Home. “But I’ll be careful.”

He found a cauldron of what smelled like industrial chemicals bubbling over a flame. Jack cut off the gas line that fed the flame. Further on was an elaborate gear mechanism with its cogs still turning. Jack went to the controls. He couldn’t read the labels – written language always took his translator chip longer to decipher – but he observed the ways the controls linked up to the gears and pulled the biggest lever. The mechanism ground to a halt.

Somewhere above him, Jack heard a buzzing sound, like a mechanical insect, then felt a shudder through the whole building. “Run!” the Doctor cried, hurtling across a gantry above Jack’s head.

Some part of Jack wanted to wait for the Doctor, to be sure he’d be all right. He told himself he was being silly. It wasn’t like a Homeward Bounder could die anyway. He ran out and waited in the street for the Doctor to follow. The building shuddered again, and Jack felt his heart rise into his throat despite himself. I shouldn’t care, he thought desperately. Getting Home is the only thing that matters. Everything else is a distraction.

But he needed the distraction so badly.

Something crumbled inside the building. The Doctor ran out, his left side covered in brick dust, grinning like a madman. He took Jack’s hand and ran down the street. Jack was forced to match his strides to keep up as best he could. When they reached the end of the street, the ground rumbled, and the building collapsed in on itself.

“There,” the Doctor said. “Can’t fall in on anyone if it’s already fallen in.”

“What now?” Jack said. He realized he was still holding the Doctor’s hand, and self-consciously pulled away.

“What do you want to do?” the Doctor asked.

Jack had a sense that with the Doctor at his side, he could do anything. The thought was too dizzying to hold. “I don’t know.”

“What do you usually do when you come to a new world?”

“Survive,” Jack said in a small voice.

The Doctor looked at him, eyes sad. “Well, I’m going to make sure you survive just fine, so there’s no need to concern yourself with that.”

“What do you do when you come to a new world?” Jack said.

The Doctor grinned. “Explore.”

Jack managed a smile back. “OK. I’ll try that.”

The Doctor led them away from that place of death. Most people were headed toward the heart of the city, but the Doctor went to the outskirts, until they came to a park with nothing beyond it but sky.

Jack stopped and stared at the clouds drifting beyond the hedges and lawns. “Is that the edge?”

The Doctor smiled in answer. He walked past a curlicue hedge and a stand of trees that looked like tentacles frozen mid-grasp. They came to a wall about the height of the Doctor’s collarbone. He hoisted himself up, then helped Jack do the same.

Beyond the wall was a world. Not a tiny slice of one, which was all Jack ever saw of them, but a whole world spread out beneath them. There were railroads and farmland and a gaping pit mine.

“There’s so much of it,” said Jack. “But it’s so small.”

“All worlds are like that,” the Doctor said. “Even your Home.”

“Not Home,” Jack said with feeling. “That’s so much bigger than this. It’s everything.”

The Doctor didn’t disagree.

“It’s beautiful, though,” Jack said. “How does the Floating City stay up like this?”

“Magic,” the Doctor said with distaste.

Jack knew how the Doctor felt. He didn’t like magic either. He couldn’t understand it, and it reminded him how alien the worlds really were. “Do all worlds have something like this? Something beautiful?”

“Not all, lad. But most.” A pause. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be calling you that.”

Jack hesitated, then said, “No, it’s OK. You can call me ‘lad.’”

The Doctor ruffled Jack’s hair. “All right, then, lad. Let’s find us something to eat.”

________

On the next world, Jack and the Doctor were sitting at a fire in a vast pine forest, eating something like a rabbit that the Doctor had caught and Jack had skinned and gutted. The night was cold, but they would take turns sleeping so the other could tend the fire.

Jack licked the last of the grease from his fingers and stared into the flickering dance of the flames. “You’ve been doing this for a long time…” he began.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows for Jack to continue. His face looked like an ancient mask in the orange glow of the fire.

“So maybe you know. Is it my fault I’m a Homeward Bounder?”

“What makes you think that, lad?” the Doctor said softly.

Jack stared at the fire instead of the Doctor’s face. “Whenever I try to tell someone about it, they tell me I’ve sinned.”

“Do you think you’ve sinned?”

“Where I come from, we don’t have sin. We’re all supposed to honor the dead and dying and help them pass through, but no one gets angry if you don’t do your duty. They step up and help. It took me the longest time to figure out what sin even was. But when I did, I couldn’t help but wonder.”

“It’s not your fault. Don’t ever think that.”

“If it’s not my fault, then why do they do this to us?”

“Because they need us.”

Jack just stared. There was nothing the Doctor could have said that would have surprised him more. They had treated him like an inconvenient stain when he’d stumbled upon their game. How could they need him?

“You’re asking the wrong question,” the Doctor said. “The right question for you, but the wrong question for them. The question that matters to them is this: where do they get their power from?”

“I’ve never really thought about that,” Jack admitted. “I thought maybe they were the dead. Vengeful dead that weren’t cared for by the living, and got their revenge by controlling us. But after all I’ve seen, all the – I don’t think there’s anything after death, after all. We were all just lying to ourselves to make it easier to bear.”

The Doctor’s brow lowered, but he didn’t contradict Jack. “They are regular sentient beings, just like you. There’s only one thing different: they learned about the multiverse first. They discovered the Bounds and how they work. And they discovered what keeps all the worlds in existence. Have you noticed anything the worlds have got in common?”

“I can breathe the air and eat the food on all of them,” Jack offered.

“That’s because they left you on a circuit of Bounds that lead to places with compatible biospheres,” said the Doctor. “If they sent you on a truly random circuit, you’d be choking or freezing or starving to death nearly all the time, and that doesn’t suit their purpose. What they’ve got in common is that all of them have sentient life. That’s no accident. The multiverse exists because of belief. Sentient beings believe a world is real, and so it is. Worlds that don’t ever evolve sentient life shrivel up into nothingness.”

“So they came up with a plan. They found a world, killed off all the sentient life there, and turned it into a paradise for themselves. They believed in this place. They decided it was more perfect than any other world, because they made it in their image. And because they believed in their world, and they disbelieved in all the others, their world became more real than all the rest. That’s what gave them power over the worlds, and let them turn the multiverse into a game for their amusement.”

“What does that have to do with…” Jack trailed off as he thought about the last world, when he’d been stripping the corpses of the fallen in the streets of the Floating City. He hadn’t felt anything at all, though what he’d done would be considered the worst kind of disrespect to the dead, back on the Boe. It hadn’t been real to him. No world was. All the people he met were like characters in a holo-dream: he knew them, briefly, and then they were gone. The only thing that was real to him was Home. “Oh.”

“They need the Homeward Bounders,” the Doctor repeated. “We know about all the worlds, but because of the way they used us, the only one that feels real is Home. So we maintain their disbelief, and their power.”

Jack stared glumly into the fire. “What if we believed in other worlds? Wouldn’t that it mess it all up for them?”

“If you work out how to do that, lad, let me know. I’ve been trying for centuries.”

Jack looked at the Doctor sidelong. “How do you know so much about them?”

“I used to be one of them.”

Jack gaped at him, then recoiled. “You – you did this to me!”

“No,” the Doctor said heavily. “I didn’t. I refused to play their game. I tried to stop them. That’s why I’m Homeward Bound like you.”

“I don’t understand,” said Jack, edging away from the Doctor a little farther.

“In my world, I was a traveler,” said the Doctor. “I explored the universe. Met people. Had adventures. Along the way, I discovered the Bounds. So I traveled along one. Turns out there’s one world where most of the Bounds go. When I got there, I found a village on the Boundary. A whole community of explorers, scientists, and geniuses from all over the multiverse who’d discovered how to travel among the worlds. I was delighted. I thought I’d found my sort of people.”

“So I joined them, hoping to learn all there was to know about the Bounds and the multiverse. I mapped some of them out. But most of the others weren’t like me. They wanted to know how they could use the Bounds for their own ends. That sort united in one front to make their little paradise. They told the rest of us we could either join them or go back to our own worlds. Most of us went Home. A few of us fought. We lost. Far as I know, I’m the only survivor.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“I’m not. I did what was right, and I paid the price for it. You didn’t even get that choice.”

“I’m not sure I could have done what you did,” Jack admitted. “You saw – I’m not a very good person.”

The Doctor studied him. “You’re the one who gets to decide that.”

The weight of responsibility was crushing. Jack was supposed to be focused on getting Home, and now he was worrying about whether he was a good person or not. Then again, did he want to come home only for his family to find that he’d turned into a monster?

Jack felt himself settle into the decision. When he looked up, he saw the corners of the Doctor’s mouth turned up ever so slightly. The expression was tender. Caring. No one had looked at him that way since he’d been wrenched away from Home.

The Doctor took off his leather jacket. He looked strangely naked without it. “Sleep on this for tonight.”

“Won’t you be cold?”

“This isn’t cold. Not for me.”

Jack wanted to protest, but when he curled up in the homey, earthy scent of leather, he found that he couldn’t.

The Doctor taught Jack the secrets of the Bounds. He showed Jack which Bounds took him along a chain of similar worlds, which Bounds led in a circle, and which Bounds were random. He taught Jack the language of symbols that Homeward Bounders left at Boundaries as signals to each other, like FRIENDLY or GOOD CLIMATE or CANNIBALS. Jack suggested a few more symbols that could be useful, like YOU’RE ONLY ALLOWED TO HAVE SEX IF IT’S THE BABY-MAKING KIND.

It was so much better, traveling with the Doctor. It wasn’t just because the Doctor knew so much about the Bounds, or because Jack didn’t have to rob graves or steal to get by. The Doctor had an instinct for excitement and beauty and pulse-pounding danger, the three all too often indistinguishable from one another. One moment he’d be taking Jack up a crystal mountain, the next there’d be an avalanche, and the next, they’d be rescuing people buried by the silver snow.

Jack found things in himself he didn’t know he had. While the Doctor was digging people out of the snow, he led them away in case another avalanche came. When the Doctor was repairing the life support systems in an underwater castle with his sonic screwdriver, Jack questioned and pushed all the guards in the castle until he found all the tools the Doctor needed to finish the repairs.

Jack wasn’t a scared little boy anymore. He didn’t have to be a coward. The Doctor had freed him from that. And if the Doctor sometimes looked at Jack, and the aching loneliness on his too-old face lightened just a little – well, that was just a bonus.

One night, as they sat in an inn by the fireside, sipping hot mulled drinks from flagons and listening to low thrumming music from downstairs, Jack said, “I promise I’ll stay with you.”

The Doctor looked at him, startled.

“Until I get Home,” Jack explained. “I – I think it’s better if you’re not alone. So until this is all over for me, I’ll make sure you aren’t.”

The Doctor didn’t quite smile, but he went soft around the eyes in a way Jack had grown to love. “Thank you, lad.”
_______

When it began, the Doctor took note of it only as a vague feeling. A world would feel indefinably familiar, even though the Doctor knew he had never been there before. Jack would point out something about the night sky or the smell of the air, and something inside him itched.

Then he really started to notice, on a conscious level. For the first time in over a millennium, the flow of time began to pulse in a more familiar rhythm. The rotations of the planets and galaxies settled into the paths he’d always known. The first few times, he didn’t dare let himself hope. But when they took another SIMILAR Bound and the Doctor spotted the familiar shape of Kasterborous in the sky, he knew it had to be true.

He was getting close to Home.

He never thought the time would come so soon, but now that it had, all the old fantasies came roaring back.  The feeling of red grass bending beneath his toes. Romana, embracing him, smiling. Koschei, ready to forgive and be forgiven. The TARDIS, welcoming him with open doors.

They came to a world with many of Gallifrey’s worse aspects and none of its best. A fussy woman in elaborate robes saw the Doctor and Jack sitting together in a railcar and demanded proof that he was the lad’s legal guardian. They exchanged a look and ran to the back of the railcar, jumping out to the nearest platform, but this world was too high-tech for a maneuver like that to throw off the authorities. They took Jack away to be registered and enrolled in a school.

Jack gave the Doctor a helpless look as the police frog-marched him off. This had happened to them before, on highly regimented worlds like this one. Jack couldn’t resist too much, or what he called “Rule Two” would kick in, and anyone who tried to stop him would die. They would have to find him a way out that wouldn’t get anyone killed.

The Doctor went into a police station and discreetly used his sonic screwdriver to get into the database. A Jack Harkness had just been taken into Twelfth Precinct, with assignment to Sparkling Merits Correctional Boarding School, located in low orbit around the planet. The Doctor scowled.

He was waiting none too patiently at the station for the next hopper into low orbit to arrive when he felt the Bounds calling, plucking insistently at his chest. He never knew in advance when they would call, even in all his centuries Homeward Bound, but he wasn’t sure the call had ever come at a worse time.

He looked at the orange sky, felt the thrum of time along his skin, and knew he was probably a single trip on the SIMILAR Bound away from Gallifrey. If he took the next hopper, the call would orient on the nearest Bound to the orbital station. That Bound could lead anywhere. He would miss his chance.

Some part of him insisted that he could run up, get Jack, and come back down before the call from the Bounds became too strong to resist. But what then? He couldn’t take Jack to Gallifrey. The Doctor missed Home, but he had no illusions about his fellow Time Lords. There was no telling what they’d do to a human who breached their inner sanctum.

He’d want this, the Doctor told himself. He said he’d stay with me until I made it Home. Well, the time’s come.

He left the launch station and followed the call that snared him behind the ribs. It should have been easy to walk to the Boundary. Everything in his body was screaming at him to do it. But it felt as if he moved through molasses.

The Boundary was a little park wedged between two skyscrapers. The Doctor paused by a tree, and took out his sonic screwdriver to etch a symbol into the bark. He had never seen it before, but another Homeward Bounder, the Flying Dutchman, had taught it to him. It was the symbol a Homeward Bounder left to show that he had made it Home.

His message delivered, The Doctor walked along the Bound and surrendered to the journey.

_______

Home is Whenever I'm With You, Part 2