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"Oh, just pick one," the Doctor had said, waving them absently away as he fussed with the TARDIS's controls. "Plenty of room."
That was an understatement, Jack realized as Rose ushered him deeper into the TARDIS. He found a bedroom on the second corridor – it was big but simple, with dark furniture and a gloriously huge bed.
"That wasn't there this morning," Rose said intriguingly, then yawned away before Jack could follow up.
He was very tired – nearly destroying the human race could do that to you. And the low throb of the TARDIS's engines was already settling into his bones, sounding a gentle harmonic that whispered strange things like 'safety' and 'comfort' and, most bizarrely, 'home.' Still, Jack couldn't sleep. He lay in the extraordinarily comfortable bed – no space conserving rest sling, this – but unconsciousness remained maddeningly out of reach.
He got up at last, started to go out exploring, then thought better of it and put his pants back on.
Instead of the corridor, the door deposited him right back in the control room where he'd come in. Jack blinked, impressed despite himself.
The Doctor was awake, sitting with his boots propped on the control panel and his hands clasped behind his head. He appeared to be in serious contemplation of the middle distance.
"Can't sleep?" he asked, not looking around. "Or thought you'd have a go at my ship while I wasn't looking?"
"The first one," said Jack equably. "Like I could figure out how to fly her," he added, surveying the baffling array of controls.
The Doctor flicked a piercing glance over him. "Oh, you'd get there eventually," he said. "Not as dumb as you look, you."
Jack grimaced. He was starting to wonder if there was any clever little social engineering move the Doctor didn't se right through. So far, he'd just bashed every pitch straight back at Jack's face, no matter how clever. So, straightforwardness, apparently. "Yeah, I'd figure it out eventually," Jack admitted, coming to lean on the opposite side of the panel. "But it'd be faster if you just showed me." He glanced around the room again and then met the Doctor's eyes, hoping the sincerity showed. "She's amazing."
"Is it the hole in your memory?" asked the Doctor casually. "Is that why you can't sleep?"
Right, then. Possessive about the ship. "Maybe," said Jack. "Dunno. It's not like I haven't lived with it for the past few years, though."
"Stops smarting, does it?" asked the Doctor.
Jack huffed out a breath. "No." It throbbed like a violently pulled tooth, the space where those years -- his years – should be. Jack didn't know much about memory wiping technology, but he had a feeling it wasn't supposed to feel quite like this. What would be the point, after all, of wiping someone's memory if you didn't smooth the edges and let it scar over naturally, make someone forget that they had forgotten. It made Jack wonder; it made Jack think he had fought it very hard.
"What's your plan, then?" asked the Doctor, studying his boots.
"Excuse me?"
"Blokes like you always have a plan."
"I want my memory back," said Jack. "And as soon as I've acquired some more resources, I'm going to go back to the Time Agency—" the Doctor's lip curled "--and get it."
The Doctor's feet slid off the console with a thump. He leaned forward, working some controls, and Jack tried not to be too obvious about how closely he was watching. Then the lights changed, and he blinked, struck with a sudden flash of vertigo. The ceiling and four walls had vanished, replaced with a flickering starscape. Jack watched a gas giant hove into view like a great, ocean-going beast, trailing a string of baby moons. Only a sliver of its primary was visible past its glowing curve. The stunning panorama was interrupted only by the console and the incongruously freestanding doors leading outside and farther into the TARDIS; it looked as if Jack could step through and catch a ride on a comet. The Doctor's profile was precise and elegant against the tableau. Jack suppressed the urge to tell him that his right ear was blocking an entire nebula.
"Has it occurred to you," the Doctor asked quietly, "that you might not want to know? Has it occurred to you that perhaps you have forgotten some terrible things? Perhaps you did terrible things?"
Jack's heart jumped. He was briefly, irrationally afraid that the Doctor knew something he didn't. No. The Doctor knew many things he didn't, Jack was increasingly sure, but not even he could reach into someone's mind and read things that weren't there anymore.
"Yes," said Jack. "It's occurred to me."
"And you still want it back?"
"Yes," he said instantly. "All the more reason. It's mine, whatever it is, and I've got to . . . to own it." He tried a smile, and was glad the Doctor's back was turned. "And if I did do something, well, I should know whose skin I'm living in, shouldn't I?"
The Doctor turned to look at him for a long, silent moment. There was something very like approval in his eyes, and it grabbed Jack by the scruff of the neck and made him want to stand up straight, fix his hair, roll over and fetch all at once.
"Right then," said the Doctor. "We'll do that."
"Do . . . what?"
"Get your memory back," said the Doctor, rubbing his hands together as if he had just accomplished it by saying it. "Your plan is terrible, by the way," he added. "But don't worry – I'm brilliant."
"You're going to help me?" Jack asked.
"Sure," said the Doctor. "It's on my to do list – just put it there. Right after refitting the horologous flux control nexus and preventing that twenty-second century American idiot from spreading marshmallow peeps across the galaxy in the first human Diaspora."
Jack blinked. "Marshmallow what's?"
"See?" said the Doctor, and grinned hugely. "Done before I've started."
"Um," said Jack. "Thanks."
The Doctor waved him off, looking put out. "You can sleep now," he said with absolute certainty, and turned back to the stars. Jack stared at him for a long moment, then decided he could take that hint.
When he opened the door there was only the corridor, not a slice of the whirling universe. Or maybe, Jack thought as he trailed his fingers along the wall, it was.
The Doctor was right – he was asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.
The Doctor – the alien – was in her kitchen, making himself a cup of tea.
"Well, you look very domestic," Jackie said.
He started, looking like she'd interrupted him thinking very hard about . . . whatever it was he thought about. Alien things.
"You're out of milk," he said. "Just used the last bit."
"Where're you going, then?" she asked, planting herself in the doorway. "Where're you taking my daughter this time?"
"Dunno," he said, like the thought had never occurred to him. He puffed out his cheeks contemplatively. It was a nice face, nice new face. If it'd been on a normal man – a man at all – she'd have liked it a lot more.
"Well wherever it is, I want to hear about it," she said firmly.
"Beg pardon?"
"Rose is lying to me," she said, looking hard at him. "When she calls me, and it's not like that's all too often. I ask her where she is and what she's been doing, and she tells me these fantastic stories about giant alien carnivals and giant alien museums and giant alien chip shops. And it's funny, but she never seems to get around to the bits where you almost get her killed." She'd got him there; she saw it hit and snag like a fishhook. "I want to know," she carried on, leaning forward on her toes. "Every time you drag her into some alien war or you're off adventuring and she gets lost. Every time, I want to know – what the hell are you smiling at?"
"Nothing, honestly," he said, wiping his face clean. "Only, you sounded just like her right there." He paused, blinked. "Though I guess it must be the other way around, mustn't it?"
Jackie scowled. His last face had been easier to hate, somehow. Except at the very end, when he'd sent Rose home alone and out of harm's way. Rose had said he was stranding himself, but Jackie wouldn't be surprised if he could just whistle and the stupid phone box would come to him. But Rose wasn't having any of being left behind, and Jackie could keep blaming that on him, too.
"You'll fix it so my Rose starts telling me where she is. She says you're good at fixing things. Don't know that -- you seem better at breaking them to me."
He hadn't moved from where he was leaning against the counter. He was always careful to keep more than her arm's reach away, in fact. The thought made her smile, and the smile seemed to unnerve him.
"I'll give it a go," he said. "But no promises. She worries about you." He snorted. "Bloody pair, you are."
"Good," she said, surprised by the capitulation. "I'd rather know that you'll die to keep her safe, but this'll do to start."
He turned and dropped his mug in the sink with a clatter, and made no effort to wash up. "I don't need to tell you I'll die for her," he said, striding past her without a flicker of fear. "I just did. Rose! Ready? We're off!"
Rose found him in the control room doing what he called 'tinkering,' but what she had slowly come to understand to be spending quality time with the TARDIS.
"Tea," she said, and deposited a cup in his hand. He nodded thanks, and she settled down in the second chair which had silently appeared there one day. "The TARDIS is shrinking," she said abruptly.
He glanced over at her, unconcerned. "She does that sometimes. She'll put the rooms back when she wants. Just let me know if she eats anything you need."
"Is she all right?" Rose asked, casting a concerned eye over the column and console.
"Right enough," said the Doctor. "Just something she does when one of her people leaves for good." He smiled. "Doesn't like an empty nest, my girl."
"Yeah," said Rose, and looked down. Mickey's absence ate at her, and she was honest enough to admit to herself how unexpected that was. He'd not been with them long enough to become part of them, not the way Jack had so seamlessly. But he'd been there every morning across the breakfast table, he'd made silly faces behind the Doctor's back when he was being purposely obscure and alien, he'd looked at her like he still loved her, no matter how many times she'd left him. Rose was also honest enough to acknowledge that it had been easy to leave him behind; it was only when he did it to her that she felt the sting.
She looked up to find the Doctor watching her intently. "What?" she asked.
He stood abruptly and started flipping controls. The familiar pitch of the engines changed, then began to fade.
"What're you doing?" asked Rose, standing up.
"Parking." He grinned at her. "Plenty of spaces out here – we're five million light-years from the galactic core. Here we are."
"What's out here, then?" she asked, intrigued.
"Not much," he said, and made the walls and ceiling disappear. It'd scared the hell out of her the first time he did that, but over the past few months she'd learned not to be alarmed by stepping into the control room and finding herself surrounded by the cosmos. It was something the old Doctor had done sparingly but the new Doctor seemed to love; Rose wondered what it was about the new face, the new mind, that made it easier for him to look the universe in the eye.
"Come see," he said, and beckoned her over to stand dizzyingly at the edge of their little scrap of floor. Rose knew there was a wall there, that she could lean against it if she wanted, but that didn't help the vertigo. "Here," said the Doctor, and took her hand. "Right there, the cluster of red ones, you see?"
"Is that where we're going?" she asked, squinting along his pointing finger.
"Nah. Civilization of mineral life forms – rocks with brains. Nice bunch, but deadly dull after the first five minutes."
"What, then?" she asked, staring out at the cluster of stars, the red center of a patch shading to orange, then yellow, then blue.
"The stars aren't just different colors because they're burning different gasses," he explained. "It also depends on where you're looking from. We're holding still here, see, so red means those stars are moving away, right?"
"Why?" she asked, wanting to know but potentially dreading some incomprehensible explanation.
"Light waves," he said, gesturing demonstratively with his free hand. "Just what they sound like. What color you see depends on how long they are. Red's long, violet and blue are short. So, since we're holding still, and those stars are moving away from us every second . . ." he looked at her expectantly.
"Oh, oh. It means the waves are a bit longer," said Rose. "And that makes it look more red?" He beamed at her, and she glowed to know he thought her clever. He'd get over it soon enough. "Hold on," she said suddenly, looking from the stars to him. "Is this one of those things about how I can be glad I can still see the stars, even if they're far away? Is this a -- a metaphor or something?"
He grinned with sudden, goofy brilliance. "Of course not," he said brightly.
"No," Rose echoed. "Of course not."
He squeezed her hand, and they stood in silence for a long moment on the edge of the tiny room, swamped in the vastness of space.
"Can we—" she started.
"Deadly dull, I told you." He glanced down at her and heaved a huge sigh. "Oh fine, fine. You want rock people, you'll get rock people. Don't say I didn't warn you."
"Thanks," she said, and leaned briefly into his shoulder.
He stroked her hand and pulled away to return to the console, muttering. "Seen one sentient lump of granite, seen 'em all. And it's not like they ever go anywhere . . ."
Just the two of them, now.
The Doctor made tea for himself, then stayed in the kitchen to drink it. It was a funny room – little and cozy and battered 'round the edges. All the mugs had chips or broken handles, but the kettle never needed to be descaled. The TARDIS was a funny old girl that way – that's how he'd made her. Or she'd made him. It was impossible to say, after these centuries, who was stake and who clinging vine, and he supposed it really didn't matter.
She pulsed gently in the back of his mind, perhaps a little more there than she'd been yesterday. But even she couldn't drown out the silence inside her.
Humans. Always bloody humans. Here he was, the last of the Time Lords, twisting the bright thread of his life up and around and back through history, weaving his tapestry that was supposed to be just one of millions. It was the highest form of art his people had ever known, the Byzantine paths of their own existences spiraling in and out and back around all for the pleasure of seeing the bigger shape emerge. In comparison, human lives were just one straight dash up the street to the corner store, and they spent most of that time waiting for the light at the crossing.
Yet here he was, back again. He'd clung to his aloneness after the end of the Time War, almost savored it, and thought distantly that perhaps that's how it would always be from then on. And then he'd met her, and touching her mind for the first time involuntarily in the basement of her shop had been like a long drink of water after a drought. She had been . . . well, she had been his Rose.
The Doctor drank his tea slowly, head bent. Always had to say things, did humans, had to keep on babbling at each other and just hope some of it would get through. He found it astounding how they got around in those blind little brains, blithely unaware of the currents of history and emotion they swam in every day, that they made themselves. Ridiculous to have to say things instead of just knowing.
She'd known, though he'd never come out and said it in her terms. She must have known. She must have.
The Doctor set his cup down and patted the countertop. "Come on, old girl," he said out loud, mouth twisting in unwilling humor. "In a few billion years, ten thousand stars in the Gray Nebula are going to go nova all at once. Like popcorn. Let's say we go watch, just you and me."
He'd been prepared for a new Doctor. Torchwood didn't have any reliable pictures yet, but Jack had steeled himself to see the same man behind a stranger's face. He wasn't prepared for the rush of instant familiarity that struck him breathless and dizzy the moment he dashed up the stairs and found the TARDIS neatly parked across from Tosh's desk, the Doctor just emerging.
"Hello!" the Doctor said, blinking around at Tosh's astonished expression, smiling hopefully over Owen and Gwen's guns. "Damn, appear to have blown a bit off course. She had a mind of her own for a second there at the end, the old girl." He patted the TARDIS fondly – oh yeah, that was definitely him. "Would you mind telling me where we are? And the date if it's not too much—" then he turned, saw Jack, and broke into an astonished grin. "Will you look at that," he said, pointing. His entire damn staff did look, and Jack made a mental note to review the finer points of keeping your eye on the alien. "Captain Jack Harkness, as I live and breathe. You know, it's moments like this I'm reminded that it really is a small universe after all." He strode away from the TARDIS; Jack waved Gwen back. "How've you been, you old reprobate? And how'd you get wherever it is we –" and then the Doctor stopped walking, and the grin winked out.
"Doctor," said Jack, making up the distance. He'd had a lot of time to think about this, to review his options. Some years he was sure he'd slug the Doctor into unconsciousness; sometimes he thought he'd kiss him; sometimes he thought he'd fling himself at the Doctor's feet and cling to his ankles like an hysterical child. His brain was spinning, and he didn't know yet what would emerge on top.
The Doctor was looking at him – looking into him, Jack could feel it like a gentle hand cupped around his head, fingers sunk painlessly into his skull. "Oh Jack," the Doctor said, face softening into compassion. "Look what it did to you. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
Jack turned convulsively away. "Stand down," he said roughly, and glared until Gwen and Owen obeyed.
"Jack?" said Gwen hesitantly.
"It's fine," Jack said. The Doctor had moved up next to him, Jack could feel him breathing there, though he couldn't manage more than a quick look. This wasn't supposed to go like this.
"Why don't you come in," the Doctor said quietly. "Have a cup of tea. Tell me what you've been up to."
Jack nodded, ignored the protests from his staff, and followed the Doctor back into the TARDIS. She was just the same, down to the big white mug with the enormous chip out of the rim. The Doctor was silent as he prepared the tea. Jack watched him closely, cataloging the new face, new hair, new energy quivering beneath his skin.
"So," the Doctor said at last, passing Jack the mug.
Jack gulped at it, uncharacteristically stalling for time. You left me alone with nothing but corpses, I've been looking for you for so long, you did this to me. "I can't die," he said. "Something kills me and I just come back. Again and again and again."
The Doctor looked like he wanted to reach out and take Jack's hand, the way he'd used to do so easily with Rose. "Neither can I," he said. "Exhausting, isn't it?"
Jack nodded. There were many other words for what it did to you, for the isolation, the fear, the numbness.
The Doctor nodded back. "Stay for another cup," he said, and there was something aching and hungry in his eyes. Jack felt it too, the recognition -- we're the same, you and I.
"Okay," he said. "I'll stay."