For my 1000+ readers for the month of May! Also, a non-spoilers fic for all my non-UK whovians out there! Total and complete Jack Harkness angst, but it fell into my mind as I was thinking about the Doctor's death, and got on to the thought about Jack's first death, and how he felt about it…all of it.
This is what came of that.
It was a good death, Jack had to admit. He had died to save his friends, to stop the Daleks…and he'd kissed the Doctor, so that had to be worth something, even if his life was a steep toll.
The bad part, the worst, the very worst part, the impossible part of that good death wasn't even the dying; a short, practically painless death. The only time the Daleks efficiency was helpful. No, Jack hadn't minded feeling his last breath slip past his lips, hadn't minded the sting of the ray that had hit his chest.
The worst part was waking up again. He had died; he knew that much. But waking up, all alone, and then being left behind by Rose and the Doctor, being left alone, that was the part that killed him truly.
Captain Jack Harkness, a fifty first century man, wasn't sure what else to do. So he used the vortex manipulator to go back to earth, even though he got the century wrong…and then he started dying again, over and over. No pleasant, painless death. He couldn't die in his sleep, in the arms of someone he loved.
There was no final escape for him. And for a while he was mad at both of them. For leaving him. For not being there for him.
And then after that, after a few centuries of anger, he realized that he wanted to see the Doctor and Rose. He wanted them to tell him what happened to him, why he was the way he was. He didn't want to be stuck that way he wasn't young forever either; he was aging, slowly. One day, he would be a pitiful old wrinkle who'd seen it all. Him. The gorgeous, dashing, dancing Captain Jack Harkness…old. Unable to run. Old, and forever alone.
So he waited. He waited for centuries, for millennia. He waited for the Doctor he was sure would arrive to save him. Sometime. Sooner or later.
And when he did come, he came without Rose. Jack was fairly certain that the Doctor would be alone, after he saw the list at Canary Wharf. Finding out she was alive-that was amazing. Wonderful. He watched her grow up, a bit. And to find that she was still out there, still alive, still fantastic…was the best feeling in the entire universe, there at the end of the Universe.
It wasn't that he didn't like Martha-she was a very nice, pretty girl (nice derrière, too)-but the Doctor seemed a bit lost without Rose. Not the way Jack had been lost, lost in anger and confusion, but lost, as if there was a piece of him. A bit snarky, a bit odd around him…well, that was the new regeneration, he supposed.
Until the Doctor finally told him the truth. The man who can't die. A fixed point in time. Wrong.
And then he answered the two questions Jack had been wondering about for the majority of his immortal life.
It was Rose's fault.
It was Rose who brought him back. "Couldn't control it." Those were his words. "Brought him back forever."
He knew why she did it. She was nineteen, he was the only person in her life that was anything like an older brother…and if she had died and he had the power to bring to bring her back, he probably would have done the same. Save Rose.
It seemed they were always doing that. Maybe one day she would repay the favor.
Maybe one day she would apologize.
I hope you liked this, and if you did(or didn't) please drop a review. If it made your day…or if it made it awful…I'd love to hear your opinion!