sahiya: Atonement (PG-13) [Jack/Ten preslash]

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

Happy Christmakwanzasolstikah, everyone! Long time reader, first time poster.

Title: Atonement
Author: sahiya
Pairing/Rating: PG-13, Jack/Ten (mostly preslash)
Word Count: 11,100
Disclaimer: Not mine! They belong to Rusty and the BBC.
Summary: The Doctor goes back for Jack a bit sooner. But sooner still might not be soon enough.
Author's Note: This was written for the AU challenge at wintercompanion. Thanks to the mods for amnesty month, which let me write it! Many thanks also to my beta reader, fuzzyboo03, who made me fix the ending even when I didn't want to.

Atonement

Jack was easy to find, once the Doctor decided to try. He didn't at first, not till after Rose, after Donna. You need someone to stop you, Donna had said, and she was right, but the idea of breaking in a new companion was exhausting. Having to do it all over again, and for what? For someone who wasn't Rose, who would always be second best. The only way it might work, he eventually realized, was if it was someone who would understand.

It was enough to make him swallow his instinctive distaste at the temporal anomaly that was Jack Harkness and go back to a place he'd hoped to never see again: the Game Station.

Except . . . he couldn't. The TARDIS wouldn't. Or, well, she would, but not when he wanted her to. It was like trying to go somewhere associated with the Time War - the old girl just dug her heels in and refused to budge. The Doctor prided himself on being able to get her to do most anything he really wanted, but this time, he knew she wouldn't be persuaded. That particular place, that particular time, was time-locked.

In the old days, the Doctor would have assumed it was his people, the interfering hypocrites. Now, when he stopped banging on the console long enough to think about it, he realized it had to be an even higher power.

Bad Wolf.

For some reason, Time itself didn't want that part of the timeline messed with. By the time the Doctor could finally wriggle his way in, it was six months later and the station was deserted. The Doctor stood just beyond the light of the TARDIS, hands in the pockets of his overcoat. There were little piles of Dalek dust everywhere. Except, he realized with a frown, in the middle of the room, where it looked as though someone had spread it out. Spread it out and written in it, he saw, stepping forward.

FUCK YOU DOC.

Ah. Well, then. He deserved that.

He went back into the TARDIS and closed the door on the room where Rose had saved him and killed him in the same breath. He went to the console, brought Earth up on the screen, and asked the TARDIS to search for Jack. His flippant answer to Rose when she'd demanded they go back for him hadn't been a complete lie; he'd known what Jack would do - probably better than Jack did - when faced with being abandoned.

The Doctor wondered if Jack had found out the truth yet about what Rose had really done to him. If so, it could only have happened the hard way.

The TARDIS found him almost immediately, in continental Europe. Or at least it had been Europe; probably it wasn't called that anymore, and probably there wasn't much there to be called anything at the moment, just a lot of desperate people and devastation. They'd need someone like Jack. More, possibly, than the Doctor did.

He hesitated, hands on the controls. Perhaps he shouldn't do this after all. Perhaps Jack wouldn't want to go. Perhaps he'd want to go, but was needed elsewhere.

The Doctor frowned down at the image of the Earth. The time-lock included the planet itself. The Doctor couldn’t go back and find Jack a week or two after he’d left the station. Six months was hardly a blink in the objective sense, but it could be a damn long time subjectively. Jack would probably be furious with him, and he had the feeling arguments about time-locked events wouldn’t hold a lot of water. But in the end, even if he showed up a bit later than either of them wanted, Jack would still want to come home. The Doctor was sure of it.

Well. Almost sure of it. Just about 91.6% sure to be exact, but that 8.4% was making him squirm.

The Doctor set his coordinates.

Berlin was gone. Mostly, at least. Miles outside of it, residents had set up tent cities. Oh, humanity would get its technology up and running again, eventually, but until then things were a bit shaky. The Doctor wasn't really looking forward to going into what amounted to the aftermath of a war zone, but he would, for Jack.

He set the TARDIS down outside town and checked the atmospheric reads. Negative five degrees Centigrade and a lot of unpleasant rubbish floating about: radiation, of course, from the Daleks and unfiltered sunlight, but it seemed some of the more industrialized targets had released scads of toxins into the air as well. The bioscans were downright frightening: contaminated water and soil, disease spreading on an endemic scale from the ruined metropolises, large tracks of earth simply ravaged into uselessness.

The Doctor cringed. This was the part he hated. It was so very . . . ugly. And no, that wasn't a good thought to have, nor a noble one, but there it was. It was no good denying he'd had it. Humanity would stagger on, it always did, but the truth was that he liked to watch them soar, not stumble through the dirt.

He left the TARDIS inside what had once been someone's garden shed. There was no longer much of the shed left, definitely nothing of the garden, and not much of the house, but it would do. He struck out along the road, hands in the pockets of his overcoat for warmth. There was a bite in the air the Doctor thought had little to do with the temperature. The radiation wouldn't affect him long-term, but it was going to give him a migraine if he was forced to linger. Not that he would be. Jack might be stubborn, but surely no one would choose this mess over all the rest of time and space.

He walked for nearly two hours before he saw a soul. The sky was green with the setting sun, and the Doctor's radiation-migraine had settled into an unpleasant throb behind his eyes. He was looking forward to dark, even if it did mean a sharp drop in temperature. In the dark he could almost pretend he was somewhere else.

That was when the Doctor saw him.

He wasn’t alone – there were two other people with him, standing off in the distance, leaning over something the Doctor couldn't quite make out in the strange, green gloaming. He might not have known right away that one of them was Jack Harkness, but his time sense knew. One of them was a rock in the stream. The waters of time broke around him, eddied, swirled, and combined again. The ache in the Doctor’s head intensified.

Jack was leaning over a well, the Doctor realized as he drew nearer. He hoisted up a bucket brimming with water, set it on the ground, then groaned, bracing himself against the side of the well. “Your turn, Jonas,” he said, stepping away. None of them were dressed for the weather, and the Doctor could see through his inadequate clothing just how painfully thin Jack had grown.

The woman in the group noticed him first. “And who are you?” she demanded, eyes narrowing in immediate suspicion.

"Hello, hello!" the Doctor replied brightly. “That’s a fine greeting. Not that I can blame you, really, can’t imagine you get too many tourists round here these days.”

The woman crossed her arms over her chest, clearly unamused. The other man – Jonas – was too busy hauling a bucket up out of the well to pay him much mind. Jack stared at him, jaw working. "I think you should answer her question,” he said at last, very tensely.

The Doctor shrugged. "Out for a stroll. Nice night for it, don't you think? 'Course it's never a good sign when the sky goes green. Didn't there used to be a sailor's rhyme about that?"

"You'd have to find a rhyme for 'apocalypse,'" Jack said, grabbing hold of one bucket and swinging it onto a small cart. The Doctor swooped in and grabbed the other, before he could. "Thanks," Jack said grudgingly.

"'Apocalypse,'" the Doctor mused. "Hard one to rhyme, that. You could go for some nice alliteration, perhaps some assonance, but actual rhyme - tricky, very tricky."

Jack didn't answer. The Doctor could feel him watching him sideways. "You never said who you were," he said at last.

"Oh, you know. I'm a lot of things."

"Healthy,” the woman said.

The Doctor turned to squint at him. "What?"

"I said, you're healthy." She turned away to stare unflinchingly into the setting sun. "Not many people can say that these days."

Certainly none of them could. Up close, Jack was more than merely thin, he was gaunt. Starving, probably. Ill, almost definitely. Hoisting the buckets onto the cart was a strain, and his breathing was loud and labored. Probably it was a bacterial infection. Respiratory or gastrointestinal or some nasty combination. If the Doctor got him back to the TARDIS and into the medbay, he could kill it off with a round or two of antibiotics and no harm done. But somehow, when he’d imagined this meeting, he’d skipped over the part where he re-introduced himself. He'd forgotten how awkward it was, meeting someone who didn't recognize you just because you'd changed your face. Rose'd had a hard time getting her head around it, and she'd seen it happen. What could he possibly say to make Jack believe him?

And what was he supposed to do about the other two? Jonas seemed harmless, but the Doctor was vaguely concerned the woman might eat him for breakfast.

"Well," the Doctor said at last, "I do have a headache."

Jack laughed. "Join the club. Mine's been splitting for six months. Ever since you left me for dead on the Game Station."

It took a moment for the Doctor to realize what Jack had said. He blinked, then blinked again. "What?"

Jack set his bucket down and turned to glare at him, arms folded over his chest. "Don't 'what' me, Doctor. Random stranger in perfect health shows up in this festering hellhole, rambling about green sky and what rhymes with apocalypse? Of course it's you, you asshole."

The Doctor rubbed the back of his head. "I deserved that."

"Fuck you. I don't need your goddamn permission." Jack eyed him up and down, but there was none of the flirting, none of the sly, sensual assessment the Doctor had expected. "Jonas, Birte, this is the Doctor.”

The woman – Birte – looked him up and down. “Can we trust him?”

“No,” Jack said.

The Doctor sighed. “All right, I deserved that, too.”

“You deserve anything I dish out and then some.”

“Your turn, Birte,” Jonas said. He appeared unperturbed by the Doctor’s presence, or perhaps he was just too exhausted to take notice.

“Can you guys give me a second?” Jack asked.

Jonas shrugged. Birte, in the midst of lowering the bucket down into the well, glowered but nodded. Jack grabbed the Doctor roughly by the arm and pulled him away. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, as soon as they were out of earshot.

“I came for you,” the Doctor said, carefully removing his arm from Jack’s iron grip. “And really, Jack, I understand why you don’t trust me, but it’s not as if I’d hurt these people.”

“And how the hell would I know that? How am I supposed to know what you’d do?” Jack stepped away and crossed his arms over his chest. He was pale and perspiring, weak and ill, but fury was etched into the lines of his face and the steel of his spine. “I take it you died at some point between then and now?"

The Doctor cleared his throat. "On the Game Station."

Jack jerked his gaze up from contemplating the Doctor's trainers and met his eyes. "Good," he spat. He turned away, face hard in a way it had never been before. "Come on. If you’re here, you can help.” He led the way back to the well, where Jonas and Birte had finished loading the cart.

“Is he coming with us?” Jonas asked.

“Over my dead body,” Birte said flatly.

“He’s fine,” Jack said.

“Jack –”

“He’s. Fine. And he’ll help pull.”

And with that, the Doctor, who had been glancing about for a donkey or mule or some other beast of burden, realized they were it. Or, rather, he was. Looking at Jack’s face, any possible protest died on his lips.

Wordlessly, he began hauling the cart along the rocky, pitted path that wound its way out of sight and into the eerie green dusk. This was going to be harder than he’d thought.

And maybe, a voice that sounded very like Rose whispered to him, it should be.

***

It was a long hike - five miles, at least, slowly and steadily uphill – especially for people as ill as Jack and the others. The Doctor couldn’t imagine how they’d have managed it on their own. He tried to break the silence once by asking, "Why are you going so far for water?"

"Because we like the exercise," came Birte’s breathless but scathing retort out of the dark. "Why do you think?”

“All the water closer to the city was contaminated,” Jack explained. He sounded less breathless, but no more sympathetic. “A lot of people are too sick to move. Those of us who can still make the hike do it once a day."

The Doctor glanced back at the buckets in the cart. Nine of them, roughly five gallons each. "That's not very much water."

There was a brief, loaded silence. Then Jack said, "There's not many of us left.”

“But what about your telep –”

“Broken. Shorted out in the jump down to Earth.”

The Doctor didn't make any more stabs at conversation after that. He'd thought for sure that Jack would make something of himself down here - help rebuild the Earth, as he'd told Rose. Instead it seemed he'd landed in a dying community and stayed there. Had he just been too depressed to move? Or had he thought, in the beginning, that he might make a difference? Knowing Jack, the Doctor was betting on the latter. "Too depressed to move" might have come later, once he'd realized there was nothing anyone could do.

By the time they reached the settlement, a thin crust of ice had formed across the top of the buckets. The Doctor's arms were aching and he was more than eager to hand them over to the people who came straggling out to meet them, even if it meant enduring their stares. But the questions he’d expected never arrived. The people glanced at him, then away, as they relieved him of his burden, and Birte and Jonas vanished without a word towards the light of the fires.

"This way," Jack muttered to him, and led him through the tent city - well, tent town, or possibly tent village, there couldn't have been more than ten little canvas structures in all - to his own. It was one of the smallest and it was located the furthest away from the heat and light of the cook fires. Jack lit a small lamp - kerosene, from the smell of it - as they ducked in.

"It was a lucky coincidence that old fashioned survival training was back in vogue at the time," Jack said, nodding to the lamp. "Stay here. I have to see to some people."

The Doctor couldn't stand up in the tent, so he sat down cross-legged on Jack's bedroll. He thought of Jack's bedroom on the TARDIS - the Den of Iniquity, his ninth self had called it, to Rose's amusement. He'd known Jack had all the skills necessary to survive in a situation like this - the Time Agency had seen to that - but never dreamed that he might choose this sort of deprivation. Because Jack had chosen it, of that the Doctor was certain. Even with a broken teleport, he could have gone somewhere less damaged if he'd wanted to. Parts of Asia had emerged relatively unscathed. Even southern Europe wasn’t so bad, according to the TARDIS’s scans.

Jack returned an hour or so later, a bowl of watery soup in hand. "Here," he said, handing it to the Doctor. "Birte sends her thanks."

The Doctor snorted. “No, she doesn’t.”

“You’re right,” Jack said, folding himself up to sit as far from the Doctor as the confined space would allow, “she doesn’t.”

"What about you?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Jack, look at you, you're starving. And you're feverish." Sitting so close to Jack in the small confines of the tent, the Doctor could feel the heat coming off him in waves and sense the fine tremors in his muscles that belied tightly controlled shivering. "Here, take my coat," he said, starting to strip it off.

"No!" Jack snapped, jerking back from him. "Christ, you show up after six months and suddenly want to take care of me? That's just - obscene."

"Jack -"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "If that was what you wanted, you should have been there when I woke up surrounded by corpses on that satellite, with a hole in my chest and no idea why I wasn't dead. And while we're on the subject, where the hell is Rose?"

The Doctor, shamed into silence, couldn't answer. The picture Jack painted was all too clear. He'd been injured and frightened and utterly alone, and it'd been the Doctor's decision. Yes, he'd been dying at the time, not to mention terribly worried about Rose, but in the end he'd fled because Jack had changed in ways he wasn't prepared to confront. If there was one thing all ten of his selves had in common, it was the ability to run away from any responsibility he didn't want to face. Anything uncomfortable, anything emotional – he was gone as fast as the TARDIS could take him. The only thing he hadn't run from was Rose.

And now he was sitting in a tiny tent with a man he'd abandoned. If he'd ever been in a messy, unseemly, overwrought, human situation, this was it. It even smelled human: the people in this settlement obviously had more immediate uses for their limited water supply than bathing.

"I'm sorry," he said at last. "I should have been there. I was dying and I thought Rose might be, and I couldn't - I couldn't face you. So I ran."

Jack's breath caught. "So it was on purpose."

"Yes."

"You - God. You fucking bastard."

The Doctor swallowed. "Quite."

Jack gave a brief, hollow laugh. "At least we're in agreement on one thing."

"Yep," the Doctor said, slumping. "I am sorry, Jack. I know it doesn't mean anything, I don't know if there's anything that would, but for the record -"

"Don't," Jack said harshly. "Just don't."

Neither of them spoke for a time. The Doctor wasn't sure he was glad or not that he'd managed to briefly distract Jack from the subject of Rose. That was why he'd come, after all - he had no one left with whom to mourn her. But that seemed a paltry reason now, and he thought Jack would find it worse than that.

"Why?" Jack asked at long last. "Just tell me why, Doctor. You couldn't bear to face me - what had I done?"

The Doctor frowned, then suddenly understood - everything. Why Jack had stayed here, in this dying community when he could have gone anywhere. Why he hadn't punched the Doctor straight across the jaw like he deserved. Why they were both still here, in this tiny tent with its stench of fever and unwashed human male and a hundred sleepless, painful nights. "Never doubted him, never will," Jack had said back on the Game Station. That simple declaration of faith had haunted the Doctor. Jack could believe the Doctor had left him behind on purpose, but he couldn't believe there hadn't been a reason.

He wouldn't like the one the Doctor had to give. "You died," he said simply. "I heard you die. And then I felt you come back to life and that - that isn't supposed to happen, Jack."

Jack stared. “I thought – it must have been a glancing blow.”

“In the middle of your chest?”

“But –"

“You were dead,” the Doctor said, meeting Jack’s eyes for the first time in minutes. “You were dead, and then Rose came back. She took the Vortex into herself. She had the power of a god, Jack, a desperate, dying god, who knew only that she wanted her friend alive again. And so you were.”

“And that’s why you left? Because she brought me back?” Jack shook his head. “I don’t believe it – unless – unless you thought you might have to put it right? Put me . . . back?” His eyes widened. “Is that why you’re here?”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, no, there haven’t been any paradoxes that I know of, though by all rights there should be. And,” he swallowed, “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Jack . . . have you had any close calls since the Game Station? Times you thought you were – that it was over, but it wasn’t?”

Jack looked away. “Once. About three months ago, I think. I caught . . . something. Everyone was sick, things humanity hadn’t had to deal with in thousands of years. Diphtheria, cholera, TB. The antibiotics started to run out. I wouldn’t take anything, I thought that if anyone could fight it off it’d be me. The Time Agency immunized us against all sorts of shit, past, present, and future, and the children . . .” Jack trailed off, eyes distant. He raked a hand through his hair. “By the time I admitted I needed something, I was almost gone and we were all out of anything that might help.”

The Doctor hesitated. His offer of comfort had been shrugged off unequivocally before, but the guilt he’d managed to stave off for months, even right up till the moment he saw Jack by the well, forced him to reach out and cover Jack’s hand with his own. “What happened?”

Jack stared at the kerosene lamp, eyes narrowed in memory. “I collapsed. I remember lying in the med-tent on a cot, hallucinating. Out of my head with fever. I thought I saw Rose, bathed by this golden light. She cradled the back of my head in the palm of her hand and said, ‘I bring life.’ Then she kissed me.” He swallowed and glanced up, a bit warily. “Next thing I knew, I was awake. Hurt like hell, but the fever was gone. I was even well for a few weeks before I caught whatever’s been eating away at me ever since.”

“Was anyone with you during those few minutes?” the Doctor asked quietly. “After you collapsed but before you woke up?”

Jack shook his head. “No. I didn’t – I was alone.”

The Doctor tightened his hold on Jack’s hand. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Jack let out a breath. “Me, too. Though not as sorry as I think I’m going to be once you tell me what’s really going on.”

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Right. Like I said, Rose brought you back. But she didn’t know what she was doing – no one could have, I think. No human, anyway, and you don’t want to know what a Time Lord with that sort of power would be. She brought you back, but not just for fifty or sixty years. She brought you back –”

“Forever,” Jack finished. “I can’t die.”

“You can,” the Doctor said. “It just doesn’t stick.”

“That day in the med-tent – I died.”

“Yes.”

“And on the Game Station.”

“Then, too. I can’t fix it. Or, well, I might be able to, but it’ll take time and ingenuity.”

Jack was quiet. “You never told me what happened to Rose,” he said at last.

The Doctor sucked in a single, painful breath. “She’s . . . gone. Alive, but in another universe. I - we can’t reach her.” He looked down at his hand covering Jack’s. “She’s with her family.”

Jack looked down as well. The Doctor felt his loose fist tighten under his fingers. “She’s better off.”

The Doctor felt the words like a knife wound to his gut. They slid in like fire and twisted, leaving him breathless with the pain. He took his hand back. “Yes,” he managed.

Jack looked at him. “That why you’re here? She’s gone and now you want me to come with you?”

The Doctor closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“No.”

“All right.” He drew a breath. “Then let me take you someplace else. Someplace you want to be. Let me take you back to the TARDIS, get you healthy again, then drop you off in the 51st century or wherever you like. This isn’t – it wasn’t a punishment, Jack. It was never that.”

Jack laughed. “Could’ve fooled me. God, you son of a bitch. I spent weeks trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve this.”

“Nothing you’d ever done could have deserved this.”

Jack’s mouth went thin and unhappy. “You don’t know what I’ve done, Doctor. Neither do I.”

The Doctor sighed. He didn’t know what to say anymore. He had words for every conceivable situation, but he was utter crap at apologies. And Jack wasn’t Rose. He was older, wiser, more cynical. He knew love wasn’t everything. “I am very sorry, Jack,” he said at last. “Tell me what you want from me.”

Jack stared at him, then away. “Blank check, Doc. That’s dangerous.”

“I trust you.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “You sure it’s wise to trust a man you’ve stabbed in the back?”

“Probably not. I do anyway. Tell me.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Doctor, I just don’t . . . I don’t know. Part of me wants nothing more than to come with you. I miss that life. If nothing else, I miss real beds and real food. Coffee. Oh God, coffee.”

“There’s all of that back at the TARDIS,” the Doctor pointed out gently, “plus a full course of antibiotics. Which you need, no matter what you decide.”

Jack shook his head. “I can’t leave them. I can’t just up and leave.” He paused deliberately. “I don’t abandon people. And I don’t make messes and leave them for other people to clean up. But . . .” He hesitated. “One night. I’m not promising anything else.” He bent over suddenly to bury his face in his hands. “Sweet Christ, I want a bath. With hot water.”

“You can have bubbles even. I still have some of that purple stuff you and Rose used to fight over.”

Jack rubbed a hand over his face. “Might be too much for me, Doc. It'd hurt my pride to start crying over bubble bath.”

The Doctor dared a very small smile. “In the grand scheme of things that’ve been cried over, I’d say there’ve been worse. And blimey, that was a terrible sentence, but you get the idea.” Jack’s smile was faint, but present. The Doctor straightened – time to get out of here before Jack changed his mind. “Where’s your Vortex manipulator?” Jack dug it out from a little pile of personal things shoved into a corner. The Doctor whipped his specs out of his pocket and squinted down at it. “Ah, I see, your temporal displacement buffer is fried. You’re lucky you didn’t end up randomized atoms.”

“I wonder what would happen if I did,” Jack said, in a dreamy, almost wistful voice. “Is there anything I can’t come back from?”

“Dunno,” the Doctor said, hiding the worry this prompted behind abstraction, “but I don’t really care to test that out.” He zapped it twice with his screwdriver and grinned in satisfaction as it lit up suddenly. “There. One functioning teleport.”

“Never understood why you didn’t get a teleport add-on for the screwdriver. Seems it’d be pretty useful with your lifestyle.”

“Aww, teleport would take all the fun out of it. Well, mostly it’d take a lot of the running out of it, and I like the running. Keeps me young. Good for the hearts, good for the lungs. You used to like it, too, if I remember correctly. Though there were other forms of cardiovascular exercise you liked more,” he added with a shrewd glance over the tops of his specs.

Jack shook his head. “Not these days. Are you ready, Doc? I can’t wait to get out of these clothes,” he added, with a sad lack of innuendo. “Think I’ll have the TARDIS incinerate them.”

In the end, it wasn’t the bath that undid Jack. It wasn’t even seeing the TARDIS again for the first time, as the Doctor had expected, though there was a touching moment when Jack stood with his forehead pressed against one of the struts. The Doctor felt some discordant note he’d hardly been aware of right itself in the TARDIS’s song. Jack's throat moved as he swallowed hard, and the Doctor thought he whispered something, just beyond the Doctor's hearing, to the ship. But when he finally straightened again, his eyes were clear.

No, it was the sight of his greatcoat folded over the back of a chair in the medlab that finally did it. Jack, pink and clean and wrapped in a white robe after his bath, sat down hard on the edge of the bed and broke into sudden, wracking sobs. He reached for the coat with trembling hands and buried his face in the fabric, shoulders heaving. “Oh God,” he managed.

The Doctor had a hypospray full of antibiotics in hand, the first in an array of injections he intended to give Jack. The blood sample he’d drawn before packing Jack off to the bath had shown dangerous vitamin and mineral deficiencies across the board. Anyone else would have died by now, but Jack lingered, the Vortex bolstering his natural defenses just enough to keep him alive and miserable. But the Doctor knew what he was seeing now wasn’t misery – it was the cessation of it. Just as overwhelming, especially if one felt it undeserved. He’d been there himself, but he hadn’t the faintest idea how to deal with it in someone else. He could have done if it were Rose, maybe, but Jack wasn’t Rose. Jack was a lot more like him than Rose, and – oh.

He set the hypospray carefully aside and sat beside Jack on the bed. “It’s all right,” he said quietly.

“It’s not all right, you prick. Six months. Six months.”

“It was time-locked. The whole thing. I couldn’t get near the station or the planet. The whole of the Time War is like that, you see, and this was the last of it.” He had to hope it was. His sanity wouldn’t survive if it weren’t.

Jack raised his tear-streaked face to glare at him. “You wouldn’t’ve had to if you’d come back for me at the beginning. You left me. You left me. Goddammit, Doctor.” He broke into fresh sobs, hunching himself over his coat. The Doctor hesitated, then lay his hand over the back of Jack’s neck. When he wasn’t immediately shaken off or batted away, he stroked once firmly down Jack’s neck with his thumb. Jack made a small, wordless noise into the coat and drew a deep, shuddering breath.

“All right,” the Doctor said, standing, “time for bed.” Jack didn’t answer, but neither did he put up a fight as the Doctor helped him out of the robe. Back when he’d traveled with the Doctor and Rose, Jack had made a point of wandering the TARDIS naked. Rose had laughed, nervously scandalized, while the Doctor had glowered, but they’d have to be blind not to notice Jack’s body. Now Jack ducked his head out of shame over his wasted, emaciated form. The Doctor hid an instinctive wince behind a constant stream of reassuring patter and was careful to keep his touch clinical, even as he tucked Jack in.

Jack’s head hit the pillow and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. “Stop, stop,” he said, flinching away from the Doctor’s touch. “God, I can’t take it.”

The Doctor paused again, hypospray in hand. “Take what?”

“Your kindness. After everything – I just can’t –” Jack shoved himself up. “Give me that,” he said, jerking the hypospray out of the Doctor’s hand. He injected it himself, far more roughly than he needed to. “Next.” The Doctor handed him the next one. Jack injected it and silently held his hand out for the third and last. He hadn’t asked what any of them were. “There. Done.”

“And a saline pack,” the Doctor said. “You can’t do that one yourself.”

He thought Jack might argue. But instead he turned away and lay down on his side with his back to the Doctor. The Doctor strapped the pack to Jack’s arm and began searching for a suitable vein. He was so dehydrated, there really weren’t any, but the saline wasn’t like the hyposprays – it couldn’t just go in willy-nilly. “Are you warm enough?” the Doctor asked as he worked.

“Yeah,” Jack said, his voice already sleep-roughened. The last injection had included a sedative. “Warmer than ’ve been in months. Not shivering. Hate shivering.”

“No more shivering,” the Doctor agreed. He finally found a vein and got the needle in. Jack didn’t flinch, though he did blink once slowly. Unable to resist, the Doctor smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “Safe as houses.”

“Not fair,” Jack mumbled. “Not fair that I get this and t’others don’t. They should get saline packs and antibiotics and painkillers, too.” Jack’s eyes drifted shut, but he forced them open again. His hand emerged from beneath the blankets to point blearily at the Doctor. “Fact, s’what I want. Want you to clean up for once. Not everyone, but some.”

The Doctor frowned, then nodded. “All right. But tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Jack mumbled, and finally let his eyes slide shut.

***

The Doctor was at the stove, pushing scrambled eggs around in a pan, when Jack shuffled in the next morning. He was wrapped in the white robe again.

For some reason that was the hardest bit for the Doctor to get his head around. Jack Harkness suddenly becoming immortal – that he could handle, given enough time. Jack Harkness suddenly becoming serious, sober, and modest – that was a bit harder to accept.

“You took us into the Vortex?" Jack asked.

“Good morning,” the Doctor said, glancing over his shoulder. “And yes, I did. Didn't want your friends to miss you - this way we can be back before they do. I was going to bring this in to you," he added with a gesture at the stove. "Thought about doing a full fry-up, but wasn’t sure how your stomach would take it. Figured eggs and toast couldn’t go too far wrong. What kind of jam do you like? I seem to have a bit of everything in here.” Jackie had always sent them off with a jar of something, even though Rose and the Doctor would have been both happy with strawberry every day of the week. The Doctor had always thought that if humanity had just ground to a halt after inventing strawberry jam, it still would have done pretty well for itself.

“Jam,” Jack repeated blankly.

“Yeah, you know, sweet and full of seeds. Sticky if you go sticking your fingers in – not that I would do, of course. Far beneath my Time Lordly dignity. Goes well with toast and scones and, well, just about anything. Ringing any bells?”

“Um.” Jack stalled out and stared helplessly at the pan of scrambled eggs with cheese and herbs.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “All right. How about tea? Coffee might be a bit harsh on your system just yet.”

“Tea’s fine.” Jack sat down at the table.

“How are you feeling?” the Doctor asked, sticking four slices of bread into the toaster.

“Better. Much better. Just a little – I think my head’s done in.” Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. “Doctor, I have to say something. Last night, I was – I was overwhelmed and I let you . . . things got carried away.” He swallowed. “It’s not all right with us.”

The Doctor laid his spatula aside and turned for face him. “I know.”

“You can’t just swoop in and – and decide that you’re oh so magnanimously going to take care of me and everything will be fine,” Jack went on, as though he hadn’t heard the Doctor. His hand clenched into a fist. “That’s now how it works.”

“I know. Last night wasn’t charity, Jack.”

Jack frowned. “It sure as hell felt like it.”

“It wasn’t.”

“What was it, then?”

The Doctor forced himself to be still, just for a few seconds. He had to make Jack believe him or nothing else mattered. “Atonement.”

Jack was silent. The Doctor turned back to the eggs and toast. He made up two plates and set out the jam. Blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, apricot, ginger, cherry, fruits of the forest, orange marmalade, lemon curd – the Doctor shook his head and stuck everything but the strawberry and a jar of Nutella back in the TARDIS fridge.

“Eat,” the Doctor told Jack, and handed him a fork.

Jack ate. The Doctor watched his face. The first forkful was distracted. The second was anything but. By the fourth, the Doctor had to reach out and grasp Jack's wrist to slow him down.

Jack chewed and swallowed, then reached for his tea. “I forgot,” he said, sounding choked-up. “I’d forgotten food could taste like this.”

“Just go slowly,” the Doctor said, “or it’ll come back up.”

Jack nodded. He ate another few bites, then paused when the Doctor handed him the jam. “Doctor,” he began, then stopped.

The Doctor hastily swallowed his own mouthful of jam and toast. “Yes?”

He pushed the eggs on his plate around. “I didn’t mean what I said about Rose. She’s not better off.”

“Nah, you’re right,” the Doctor said, pushing back from the table. “I was never any good for her. Besides, it’s not like she’s dead. She’s with her mom, Mickey, even her dad. Got a baby brother on the way. Perfect life. The one adventure I’ll never have. She’s fine.”

“She’s somewhere else and you can’t reach her. A lot of people would say that’s the definition of death.”

The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “Don’t tell me you’ve found religion.”

Jack shrugged. “Six months in a post-apocalyptic world’ll do strange things to your head. But no. I’m just saying that her being alive doesn’t necessarily make your grief any less.”

The Doctor shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. She’s alive. She’ll have a fantastic life. She promised me. Now eat your eggs.”

Jack ate his eggs, or at least as much as he could manage. The Doctor puttered about, doing the washing-up by hand just so he could keep an eye on him. He’d need another shot of antibiotics and he should stay on vitamin supplements for some time yet, but the Doctor thought they were pretty well out of the woods. There was color in Jack's cheeks now, and his skin had lost the gray pallor that had so worried the Doctor the night before.

Jack pushed his plate away, wiping his mouth with a serviette. There were still a few bites of eggs and a whole piece of toast left. “I can’t,” he replied to the Doctor’s stern glance. “I’ll get sick.”

“Well, we do want to avoid that,” the Doctor conceded. He scraped the plate off and stuck it into the sonic dishwasher. “More tea?”

“Yes, thanks.”

The Doctor refilled both cups. Then he fetched the plans he’d drawn up from their hiding place over the cupboard and sat down across from Jack. “So I gave it some thought while you were asleep,” he said, rolling the plans out on the table, “and it seems from what you’ve said that the biggest problem is a lack of clean water, am I right? So what we need is a basic water purification system. Easiest thing in the world, until it suddenly isn’t. I can whip one up and a spare, too, just in – what?”

“Doctor, what are you talking about?” Jack asked, shaking his head in bewilderment.

“A water purification system. For the settlement. Unless there was something else you wanted?”

“Wanted?”

“Last night, you said – oh. It’s possible you weren’t entirely coherent at that point.” The Doctor ruffled the back of his hair and squirmed, avoiding Jack’s eyes. “You said it wasn’t fair that you got antibiotics and painkillers and all the rest while the others didn’t. And you said that was what you wanted from me – to clean up my mess for once, at least for these few people. I can do the antibiotics and painkillers, of course, that bit’s easy, but they’d only run out again if we don’t take care of the water, so I thought . . .” He shrugged.

Jack was silent. The Doctor sneaked a glance up and saw him staring, his mouth hanging open slightly. “Really?” he said at last.

“Yeah.”

Jack frowned down at his cup. “Oh.”

“I mean, if there’s something else – you just seemed certain, and –”

“Thank you,” Jack said quietly.

The Doctor waved this away hastily. “Don’t.”

“But –”

“Really, Jack, don’t.” The Doctor took a long sip of tea, then cleared his throat. “Anyway, those are the plans. Take a look and let me know if you think it’ll work.”

“Right,” Jack said, smoothing them out. “Could you give me a minute?”

“'Course,” the Doctor said. “I’ll just – come find me.” He left without waiting for a reply.

***

He was under the console when Jack finally emerged. "Doc?" Jack said, nudging at him with the toe of his boot.

The Doctor finished zapping an ominously blinking light with the screwdriver and pushed himself out. He peered up at Jack. He was dressed in clothes he must have found in his old room; his great coat hung from shoulders that were no longer broad enough to pull it off. Still, he looked a lot more like his old self than he had heretofore. There was even a glimmer of his old cocky smirk lurking about his lips.

Jack set the rolled-up plans on the console, then cleared his throat. "Didn't mean to go all to pieces over a stupid old coat," he said, shoving his hands sheepishly in the pockets. "But you wouldn't believe the number of times I've wished I'd been wearing it on the Game Station."

The Doctor sat up. "Well, now you have it."

"Yeah." Jack ran a hand along the console. "How's she running? Sounds a bit rough. No offense," he added, patting a strut apologetically.

The Doctor sighed. "Truthfully? She could use some time in dry dock, but I haven't a place to park her. Should pick some place and time out of the way and just give her an overhaul."

"Bit of a job for one person, isn't it?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Not like I've got much choice. The list of people I'd let touch her is damn short."

Jack looked up. "You let me."

The Doctor nodded. "I did."

Jack was silent as he drifted around the console, checking the read-outs and touching the ship briefly, lightly. The Doctor watched him. Of all the companions he'd ever had, Jack had been one of the few he thought might actually understand the TARDIS, given enough time. The ship was inordinately fond of him, even more so than Rose - and at times more than himself, the Doctor thought with some chagrin. The Doctor had trusted Jack with small chores around the console room almost immediately, long before he'd trusted him to keep his hands to himself around Rose. It made him regret all the more his decision to leave Jack behind. Especially now, when Jack looked up and the Doctor knew at once by his stricken expression what he would say.

"Doctor . . . I can't."

The Doctor climbed to his feet. He didn't even bother to pretend he didn't know what Jack meant. "Ah," he said simply.

"I'm sorry," Jack said, clutching the console in a white-knuckled grip. "I want to. God, Doc, you have no idea how I want to. But I can't - I don't think I'll ever stop wondering if today is the day you'll leave me behind again. It would just drive me crazy."

"I don't suppose it would make a difference if I promised I wouldn't," the Doctor said, without much hope.

Jack sighed. "I wish it would. I just -"

"- can't," the Doctor finished.

Jack nodded. The two of them stood silently regarding the console in lieu of each other. The Doctor would do what Jack had asked of him, of course, give him a lift wherever he wanted to go, and then, well . . . he wouldn’t beg Jack to stay. He couldn't even pretend he deserved anything else. He didn’t know now what he’d been thinking, to assume that he could show up here and Jack would be thrilled to come with him. Naïve. Worse than naïve.

"It doesn't need to be the end, you know," Jack said at last. "The universe is big, but it seems like we run into the same people over and over anyway."

"Right!" the Doctor said, nodding. "Perfectly possible I'll turn around someday and there you'll be. Might even look you up."

"Right," Jack agreed. But it came out very flat and perfunctory. It made the Doctor miserable to think of dropping Jack off on some planet with a wave and a vague promise of "someday" when they both knew it was hardly likely. But what else was there to say? Jack was right. If he was never going to get over what the Doctor had done, it was better for them to go their separate ways.

"Well, then," the Doctor said, shoving himself off the railing. "Did you get a look at the plans?"

"Yeah," Jack said, picking up the rolled-up tube and giving it a brief wave. "They look fine. Better than fine. Fantastic, even."

The Doctor flashed a smile. "This me's buzzword seems to be 'brilliant'."

"They're that, too."

"Think Birte will think so?"

Jack grimaced. "My guess is Birte wouldn't apply that word much. I'm a little unclear on her history - I'm not even sure she's of this time - but she had some military training at some point. You might get a grunt of approval out of her, if you're lucky."

"Ah ha. Thought I smelled something vaguely 'ex-drill sergeant' about her. Well, then!" He bounded up to the console and tossed his jacket over the railing. "I'm ready when you are, captain. Allons-y!"

He set their coordinates but let Jack throw the lever to take them out of the Vortex and back down to Earth. Jack lingered for just a moment with his hand on the console, a look of naked, desperate longing on his face. He hadn't lied, the Doctor thought, he really did wish he could bring himself to come along. Which somehow made it all the worse to know he couldn't.

They landed at the edge of the settlement beside Jack's old tent in the early gray hours of the morning. Frost crunched beneath their feet as they stepped outside, Jack still clutching the plans, but it was almost too cold for snow.

"Didn't think you'd be back," a voice said, startling them both. Birte rose from where she'd sat in the entrance to Jack's tent, arms crossed over her chest. "Came over to make sure he hadn't killed you," she nodded towards the Doctor, "and you were gone. Didn't look like you'd put up much of a fight, so I figured you'd probably gone willingly enough."


"I wouldn't have left without saying good-bye," Jack said, sounding mildly offended.

Birte snorted. "If someone offered me a ride out of this hellhole, I'd take it and not think twice."

"No, you wouldn't," Jack said.

"No, I wouldn't," Birte agreed. She paused, then added with palpable reluctance, "And I'm glad you didn't." She eyed him up and down, then turned to the Doctor. "You must be decent at your trade, then. He looks a lot less like something just got coughed up."

"Hey!"

"Not like the rest of us are any better off," she said with a shrug.

The Doctor decided that despite Birte's biting, sardonic tone, glib would be the wrong way to go with her. Even Jack seemed to have only limited success in charming her; the Doctor didn't wish to take his chances, especially considering her probable estimation of him. "There's more where it came from," he said, seriously. "A whole medlab full."

Whatever Birte had expected, that wasn't it. She stared. "You're not serious."

"He is," Jack said. "And about this, too." He handed her the plans for the water system, then gestured her further into the light of the TARDIS so she could look them over. The Doctor was glad Jack had the sense not to invite her in - he was not the least bit in the mood for ten rounds of "but it's bigger on the inside!"

"Are these what I think they are?" Birte demanded of Jack.

"That depends," the Doctor said, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. "Do you think they're a water purification system?"

Birte ignored him. "Is this why you came back?" she asked Jack. Jack nodded. "And after this -"

"I never belonged here, Birte," Jack said, looking - deliberately, the Doctor thought - at her and not at him. "I'm out of my time. I was always waiting for a way home."

Birte glanced at the Doctor. "And you've found it."

There was a split second hesitation before Jack replied, "More or less."

"I see," she said. She rolled the plans up and grasped them in both hands. "Well. I am grateful."

"Don't be," Jack said, shaking his head, "it's the least I can do after everything. I'd never have made it if it weren't for you and the others."

Birte raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. "Jack Harkness, that is hyperbole if I've ever heard it. You have one of the most stubborn wills to live I've ever seen. Now come on," she added, before either Jack or the Doctor could manage a response, "we have work to do."

Truer words were never spoken. Jack and Birte seemed to determined to take over the water project themselves, so the Doctor left them to it. He slipped back into the TARDIS, where he went about systematically emptying the medlab cupboards of all antibiotics, vitamin supplements, painkillers, sedatives, basic surgical supplies, bandages, a portable blood analyzer, and anything else the medlab coughed up. By the time he was done, he had a small mountain of first aide accoutrements stacked on top of the bed Jack had occupied the night before. He shoveled everything into the pockets of his trench coat, swooped out through the console room, and flung open the TARDIS doors to find thirty-five skinny, dirty, hollow-eyed humans staring at him.

"Blimey, word does get around fast, doesn't it?" he said, blinking at them. "Well, never mind, saves having to round you all up. I'm the Doctor."

"We know," one of them said.

It was hard to tell beneath all the grime, but the Doctor suspected adolescence. He glared down at the boy. "Bit cheeky, aren't you? Just for that, you get to be the first."

"First what?" the boy demanded.

The Doctor smiled, revealing teeth. It made him look slightly demented and he knew it. "First patient." He strode over and yanked back the flap on Jack's tent. "After you, sir."

It was not, perhaps, the most auspicious beginning, but to the boy's credit he marched straight in and sat himself down on Jack's bedroll. He loudly questioned everything the Doctor did, but that suited the Doctor just fine, since it let him give the answers within earshot of everyone outside. The Doctor tested his blood and gave him the same three shots he intended to give everyone - one for vitamin deficiencies, one for infection, and one for the host of parasitic nasties undoubtedly responsible for that "nineteenth century consumptive" look most of them were sporting.

"Right, then," the Doctor said. "You're done. Who's next?"

It took him six hours to work his way through the crowd. After awhile he lost himself in a sort of tunnel vision, aware only of whoever happened to be in front of him at that particular moment. He knew, in some peripheral way, that it was exhausting, but at least it allowed him to forget everything else. He could even push away the knowledge, hovering constantly in the background, that this was entirely his fault - not only that it had happened in the first place, but that he'd done nothing to help until Jack had forced him.

At least, until he looked up and found Birte sitting in front of him, her forearm bared for his needle. "Ah," he said, attempting to collect himself. "Am I done already?"

"Seems so."

"What about the water system? Up and running?"

She raised her eyebrows. "For about an hour now. Or didn't you hear the cheering?"

Now that she mentioned it, he did seem to recall a lot of shouting at one point, but he'd blocked it out. "Ah, is that what that was?" he said vaguely as he poured a vial of her blood into the analyzer. "Been a bit busy. Where's Jack?"

"Saying good-bye. He said he'd be along when he was done." She fell silent. The Doctor felt her eyes on him as he scanned the results of the analyzer, and fought the urge to squirm. "Doctor," she said at last.

"Birte," he replied, preparing her hyposprays. She was in slightly better shape than most of the others, probably because she'd been in better physical condition before everything had happened.

She didn't answer. The Doctor gave her three injections in quick succession, then tossed away the empty hyposprays. They sat, looking at each other in silence. The Doctor sensed cracks in her previously impenetrable facade, as though the hope provided by the new water system had chipped away at her cynicism. He was glad for her, but it was setting off his mental cloister bell - she had that look humans sometimes got, right before they said something devastating.

She spoke at last. "I think I could hate you for taking him from us."

The Doctor sighed. "Of all the things you could hate me for, Birte, taking Jack away is the least of it. He doesn't belong to you."

"You abandoned him," she said, leaning towards him. "And what's more, I know what happened up there - this is your fault. All of it. And you can't possibly think that this" - she waved her hand vaguely to take in Jack's tent and the floor littered with medical supplies - "can ever make up for it."

"I don't."

"Well, good." She shoved herself to her feet with startling ferocity. She stood looking down at him, then turned on her heel as though to stride out.

"Birte," he said, stopping her. She looked back over her shoulder. "You don't get to keep him," the Doctor said, "but neither do I. Does that help?"

She looked away. "I don't know. Good-bye, Doctor."

The Doctor cleaned up the tent, leaving the rest of the supplies in neatly organized piles. Back in the TARDIS, he tidied the medlab, then puttered about the console, wondering where and when Jack would wish to go. The 51st century was the obvious choice, but the Time Agency wielded a great deal of power then. Well, he'd let Jack decide.

Jack finally turned up nearly two hours later, rucksack slung over his shoulder. He looked weary and a bit sad, but he was also smiling faintly. "Everyone all right?" the Doctor asked.

Jack nodded. "They will be, I think. Thanks to you."

The Doctor snorted. "Come now, Jack, we both know that's not true. If it were up to me, they'd all still be dying."

Jack let his rucksack fall to the floor. "And you know, Doc, that's what I don't get. You go around the universe putting out fires, but you never stay for the clean-up. You never deal with the aftermath. Why? Is it just less interesting? Less fun than all the running?"

The Doctor flinched. He couldn't help it. "No."

"Then what?" Jack demanded. "Tell me! Why did I have to twist your arm when you knew all along how much good you could do for them?"

The glib answer was on the tip of the Doctor's tongue. One scathing reply and - well, it wasn't like it mattered. Jack was leaving anyway. But he looked up and the retort died on his lips. "Because sometimes I don't get there in time and I lose people," he said, glancing away and speaking mostly to the console. "Or I put the fire out, but not before it's burnt down half the house. If I had to see that - if I stopped every time -" He broke off, swallowing. "Besides," he added, "my people were always rubbish at that sort of thing. Humans are brilliant at it. Humanity is never better than when it's in crisis. I figure that most of the time, you're better off left to it."

A minute went by punctuated only by the soft sounds of the TARDIS at rest. "Let's go," Jack said at last. "Let's get out of here before I change my mind."

***

The forty-ninth century: a high point for humanity. Few wars, economically prosperous, free thinking about gender and sex, some truly brilliant artists and scientists. Jack had chosen his time well. The Time Agency was a worry, but it was Jack's worry, and the Doctor had lost any right to advise him on how to live his life.

"Here we are!" the Doctor said, as the TARDIS shuddered to a halt. "Glaxon 5. Busiest spaceport in a half dozen galaxies. Isn't anywhere - or when - you can't get to from here."

Jack nodded. He swung his rucksack up and over his shoulder. "Thanks, Doctor."

The Doctor shook his head. "Least I can do."

Jack smiled, small and tight. "Well, yeah, but still." He glanced toward the door. "Anyway. I should . . ."

"Yes," the Doctor said.

They looked at each other. The Doctor felt something hot and hard in his throat - words maybe, trapped there by his unwillingness to beg. Words like Don't go and please stay, short, fraught phrases. He hadn't had any trouble with I'm sorry, but it hadn't done the trick. Really, he should never have expected it to. I'm sorry could only go so far, and atonement didn't mean anything if you expected something from it.

"See you around, Doc," Jack said at last, and pushed through the door before the Doctor could reply.

For nearly a minute, the Doctor couldn't move. He stood braced with his hands on the console, waiting for Jack to come back, to say he'd made a huge mistake and of course he couldn't leave the TARDIS, couldn't leave the Doctor. To say he'd forgiven him for everything. That of course he wanted to stay.

He didn't.

The Doctor finally forced himself to move. He threw a few levers, pushed a few buttons - everything necessary to take the TARDIS into the Vortex and set her in a holding pattern. He'd do what he'd told Jack, he thought, find someplace out of the way to park her for awhile. He could lose himself in repairs and he'd hardly even miss having someone around. It wasn't good to have a companion about for that sort of thing anyway; they got bored, wandered off, and fell into trouble, almost invariably.

The exceptions, of course, being those few like Jack, who actually understood the TARDIS and were able to help.

That sort of thinking wasn't doing him the least bit of good, the Doctor told himself firmly. He pressed the final button and stood, still as stone, as the TARDIS began dematerializing.

Except . . . no.

No.

The Doctor leapt for the controls, ending the dematerialization sequence and sending the TARDIS back the way she'd come. Hardly daring to hope, he sprinted over and flung the doors open.

Jack was still there - of course he was, it'd been less than three seconds for him. He was very white, the color of milk almost, his eyes two wide, dark holes. "Doctor?" he gasped, taking a half-step forward.

"Don't," the Doctor said, taking a half-step of his own. He held his hands up, palms out. "Jack, I can't just walk away and let us both make the biggest bloody mistake in both our lives - all right, second biggest in mine - well, third - oh hell, you get the idea. Jack, please." He paused, gathering up his pride and his courage in two big mental handfuls. "Come with me."

Jack stared at him, silent. The Doctor dug his fingernails into the doorjamb of the TARDIS until the ship nudged at his mind reproachfully. "Jack?" he prompted.

"Watching you leave," Jack began, then blinked rapidly, mouth twisting. "I'm really glad you didn't, Doc."

The Doctor swallowed. "Me, too."

Jack made a small, wordless noise, and rushed forward. The Doctor caught him up and for a minute the two of them simply clung to each other, silently, in the embrace they'd avoided since their reunion. Jack had been too angry, too suspicious; the Doctor had been too afraid. Now Jack buried his face in the Doctor's neck, the Doctor palmed the back of Jack's head, and both of them dared to hope there might be some other ending.

"Promise me," Jack said, hot human breath puffing against the Doctor's neck. "Swear to me, Doctor, that you won't ever -"

"I swear," the Doctor said, arms tightening around Jack. "Never. Not unless you ask me to." Someday he would, of course - they all did. That he didn't have to worry Jack would die made no difference there. But as long as that moment wasn't now, the Doctor didn't care.

They held each other, standing there in the threshold to the TARDIS, for long minutes. The Doctor's hearts, which had been thumping wildly in those first adrenalin-filled moments, gradually calmed. Jack's steady human pulse, which the Doctor could feel beneath the pads of his fingers, did the same. At last Jack drew a deep, shaky breath and asked, "What were you saying about wanting a few days in dry dock?"

The Doctor rubbed the back of Jack's neck, much the way he had that first night. Jack made a remarkably similar noise and buried his face in the Doctor's shoulder. "Think it might be a good idea. Where do you think we should go?"

"Somewhere with a beach," Jack said, pulling away just enough to look at the Doctor, "and moonlight. No people. Nothing that'll try and eat us, either."

The Doctor hmm'd. "Bellacosa has four moons. And there are islands off the coast of its northern continent that don't have any natural predators."

"Good beaches?"

"The best. Well," the Doctor added, "maybe not the best, but very good ones, at least. A bit on the crowded side later on, but if we get there early enough we should have them to ourselves." He paused, stroking a hand down Jack's back. "It won't really be a holiday, you know. You were right - she's running rough. It's not going to be easy."

"That's okay," Jack said, leaning his forehead against the Doctor's. "I'm not looking for 'easy.'" He swallowed. "Doctor, I'm not - I don't - I still don't know if I can do this. We're not -"

"- all right," the Doctor finished. "I know."

"But the second you left," Jack's voice shook, "the second I heard that noise, I knew I'd been wrong. And I knew I'd spend the next however many hundreds of years trying to find you, to make up for it."

"Forgive me," the Doctor said, lips pressed against Jack's temple. "Forgive me, Jack, please."

Jack was silent. "I can't yet," he said at last. The Doctor stood very still. "But at least this way, I get to find out if maybe someday I will. I think for now that'll have to be good enough."

The Doctor nodded, relief making him sag a little against Jack. A second chance - or was it a third? - was much more than he deserved. The rest he would earn, because he had to. Because he wanted to.

"Come inside," he said, taking Jack's hand. "It's cold out here."

Fin.

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