Fandom: Doctor Who / Torchwood

Characters: The Doctor (Eleven), Jack

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,552 words

Content notes: contains slash

Author notes: Written for Challenge 244 - Never

Summary: Two lonely souls are destined to find one another eventually.


The Doctor stepped tentatively out of the TARDIS, looking around the now defunct spaceport left just below the surface of the Martian landscape overhead. He looked around, confirming the sender of the signal. After all these years, he thought, it really was who it said. Not that he should be surprised, really. If anyone could survive years in the ravages of space and live to tell the tale, it was Captain Jack Harkness. The better question was why he was here, not how he'd gotten past a bunch of tired but effective security protocols that had stopped people landing here for over five thousand years.

'I don't stop for just any old signal from Mars, you know,' the Doctor called out.

Jack turned at the voice, taking in the Doctor's appearance. The Doctor sensed Jack's approval of this young chap in a bow tie. 'Lucky it wasn't just any old signal, then,' Jack quipped.

'Mars, though? Seriously?' the Doctor asked. 'Have you met the Martians? They're not nice folk. You should have just hailed me from Earth.'

The Doctor caught the brief darkness that seemed to cloud Jack's face, but which disappeared just as quickly, no lengthier than the life of a firebird, yet completely opposite to the alluring brightness the small bird provided in its brief existence.

'I couldn't go back there,' came the reply.

'Couldn't, or wouldn't?' He'd meant it as a joke, seeing as how Jack had this certain way of either drawing you in completely, or being at loggerheads with you. The Doctor could only imagine he'd ruffled a few feathers over the years and made just as many enemies as he had friends.

'The last time we parted you couldn't wait to leave,' the Doctor teased. 'You said you had a team back in Cardiff, only I think we both know it wasn't the team you were hurrying back to.'

Jack looked hurt by the insinuation. 'I loved my team. They were my friends. You don't know how rare that is, to have people look at you, knowing you're different, that you're not like them, and to have them accept you.'

'No,' the Doctor replied, leaning casually back against the TARDIS door. 'I wouldn't know anything about that,' he quipped. 'I'm just a thousand year old Time Lord.'

The thin facade of jocularity Jack was holding in place crumbled beneath the weight of questions and inference. He leaned against the decaying wall, folding his arms and considering the Doctor with a careful eye. 'It's different for you. People stand there in awe of your brilliance. You take them on an adventure and they love you. I'm just...'

The Doctor gave him a questioning glance. 'Just what?'

'I'm not you. People look at me and they're scared. I'm this... thing. Unnatural, undying. I've done so many terrible things, Doctor. Things that give people every right to be scared of me. If you knew, you'd probably hate me too.'

The Doctor shook his head. Jack always had to make a scene out of nothing. 'Why did you call me here, Jack? Were you bored. Or lonely? Or is there some other reason?'

Jack stood a little straighter, the comment clearly causing affront. 'I thought you'd be happy to see me.'

'I came, didn't I?'

'This time,' Jack seethed, his demeanor changing suddenly and without warning. 'Where were you before? Where you you when the world was ending? The 456 nearly wiped the people off the face of the Earth. They came to steal kids and where were you?'

The Doctor pushed away from the TARDIS. 'I can't be on Earth every time there's a crisis. Isn't that what Torchwood is for?'

Jack barked out a vicious laugh. 'I never asked for this. For any of this. Torchwood was not my responsibility. You shouldn't have asked that of me.'

'I trusted you could handle things,' the Doctor replied, feeling uneasy. 'And you did, by all accounts. Earth is still standing. I've seen it for myself.'

Jack scowled. 'Never mind what it cost me. And you wonder why I don't want to go back to Earth?'

The Doctor was growing increasing frustrated with what was the exchange. 'So, what do you want?'

Jack stepped forward, looking reluctant and childlike. 'I hoped after everything we'd been through, you'd still want me.' He paused, taking a step closer. 'I've missed you.'

The Doctor caught the look in Jack's eye and knew that he wanted so much more than just to hang around for a few days. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'You've got this all wrong, Jack.'

'Have I?' He looked around, a little dramatically, the Doctor admitted. 'I don't seen anyone else with you. Have you become a hermit?'

'I'm...' How did he put it so that Jack could understand? 'Taking some time for myself.'

'So much so that the first thing you do is respond to my hail. You could've ignored it, but you didn't,' Jack countered.

The Doctor broke into a small smile. 'We've know each other a long time. You leave a signal with no message on a planet that no longer supports life, you're going to pique my curiosity.'

'So that much at least hasn't changed,' Jack replied.

The Doctor fiddled with his bow tie, feeling it tighten uncomfortably around his neck. 'If you wanted to travel for a while, I wouldn't have said no. But I get the feeling you're after something more than that.'

Jack gave a playful smirk. 'Is it that obvious? You're the last of you kind, and I'm the only one of mine. No one else is going to live as long as we will.' He stepped closer, letting his hands rest on the Doctor's hips. There was an audible sigh of relief when the Doctor didn't immediately pull away, but instead let Jack's breath ghost across his face.

'It's not right,' the Doctor said, turning his head away for a moment, before turning back.

Jack's fierce blue eyes met his. 'How can it not be?'

'Maybe it's okay for you to love whoever you fancy.'

Jack pulled back slightly. 'Don't tell me you're still in love with Rose?'

The Doctor could feel the sadness etched on his face for Jack to clearly see. 'There will never be another Rose, Jack. She's the reason you are the way you are. I never meant for it to happen, but Rose loved you too much to let you die. She loved us both too much.'

His own sadness at that thought was reflected in Jack's face. 'I loved her, too. But she's gone, Doctor. She's with you, in an alternate universe. You can't pine for her forever.'

The Doctor gave a mirth filled chuckle. 'Unlike you. You've moved on quickly. What was his name again?'

This time Jack pulled away completely. 'I don't want to talk about him.' He suspected the Doctor meant Alonso, but he'd just been thrown in Jack's path to distract him from his real pain. 'I've made the mistake of falling in love with too many people who will never last. This heart is done with being broken. We have a chance of having something that will last.'

'I don't want to be your rebound,' the Doctor replied. He hated to admit that he was lonely, still reeling from the emptiness that was left in the space where Amy and Rory had been, but getting into something with Jack? Well, that felt like too much, too soon.

'Doctor, please,' Jack begged. 'Don't tell me feel nothing at all.'

He shuffled awkwardly. That wasn't true. Watching Amy and Rory and the love they had for one another, he'd felt like there was something missing After Rose he'd been content to gallivant around with companions that would never be more than friends, but Jack understood who Rose had been and what she'd meant to him. He couldn't deny that Jack had loved him too, in his own unique way, and that he'd never ventured into that unfamiliar territory. In truth, he'd rarely let himself fall in love at all. When he looked at Jack now though, he could sense something in that gaze that hadn't been there before. Something that lured him into those blue eyes, wanting to know more about the kinds of pain Jack had experienced, and what he could do to take that pain away. Perhaps in doing so, he might be able to end some of his own deep-seated loneliness.

'Jack...'

Jack looked at him with an air of hopefulness.

'I've lost people I love, too,' the Doctor confessed.

'Then you know what it is to need that emptiness filled again,' Jack replied, drawing closer once again. This time his arms wrapped around the Doctor more insistently, pulling him close. The Doctor rested his forehead against Jack's. He was just there, beginning to already fill that emptiness with some kind of fluid warmth that the infused the Doctor from head to toe, tingling inside like the time vortex itself. He edged ever closer until Jack's warm lips were pressed against his own. The kiss was so brief that it was hard to believe it had even happened. Yet something about it had felt right.

'Come with me,' the Doctor asked, though he said it as a statement.

'Anywhere,' Jack replied.