Title: I time every journey to bump into you.
Pairing: Ten/Jack.
Disclaimer: I wish.
Summary: They're not together, but Jack keeps appearing - everywhere the Doctor goes. It's not really intentional until it is. And even then it takes something like a Haemovore to get them both to realise why neither can really ever leave.

January, 1969.
He saw him, but only from a distance; bent casually over a Newspaper in the street with a cup of coffee if his hand. It hadn't meant anything and he'd barely glanced across - but he was there, and - for the first time in centuries - so was the Doctor.

Jack, he noticed, had a hat bent low over his face and if it hadn't been for the thick accent rolling off his 'good morning' he may have never guessed. Except he already knew, he'd sensed it. And it still tugged violently at a part of his spine that was, he insisted, curved in the wrong direction to fit snugly into a mattress.

"Martha -" he mumbled distractedly, shoving his hands into his pockets, "Tell me - does that picture from the Venera 6 look suspiciously like interference?" And he knew then he was staring.

He could have walked over, he could have smiled, or acted like he hadn't walked away. He could have asked to see the article and avoid conversation or hope he didn't remember a thing. Instead, there was a young boy selling copies on the corner. From the moment he picked it up, scanning his eyes over the vague detail of ghastly blue bodies fading in the static gases, he found himself watching him over top until Martha nudged his elbow.

"Well? What is it?"

He frowned, taking a step back as their eyes almost locked across the street, shrugging.

"Nothing." and he grinned widely, "Absolutely nothing." a pause, "Say - how do you fancy a trip to Venus?"

April, 1611.
"London?" Martha asked as they stepped out onto cobbled ground again, glancing around at the dark streets and high brows, single file, rushing; piling into a modest little building with a thatched roof and no windows, "What happened to Barcelona? Could have done with a holiday."

But the Doctor shrugged himself into his jacket as he stood beside her and narrowed his eyes.

"Shakespeare -" he laughed, "Marvelous. What a time to get the wrong year - The Tempest, wonderful, by the way. Well, not after our last visit. I wonder how old Will is doing. I hope he remembers us, I think a spot of tea would --"

"Doctor?"

He shook his head and turned to slam the door of the TARDIS shut gently, "1611. Not a flaw in the history books!" and then he grimaced, "Ooh. That usually means we'll have to stop one happening. And I thought we could have a break."

They ended up around the corner of a playhouse, as they always seemed to - somehow - in Elizabethan England. Hollow green eyes, the doctor had paused, and it had been so obvious.

"Graske - " he had smiled, "Why I haven't seen you in - at least three hundred years, what have you been doing with yourselves?" and they'd tried to replace him.

Through the streets, across the shallow bridges, through deep British puddles and still he hadn't seen the look. Jack, a long grey duster, walking calmly out of the pub just as the doors opened.

"Hi," he'd said to Shakespeare 'William' as he'd called him, raising his head, and the Doctor, he - he would have known, "I'm Captain Jack Harkness."

But they'd been trying to get them - to get them all. They'd wanted a peaceful life, a new life, but it had all backfired in the end. Sadly, the Doctor could sympathise too well and just, that night, the time he turned to leave, he caught a set of familiar eyes following his every move in silence.

November, 7921.
They were running after the same thing, or running away from it. Crossing corners on a thinly shielded old aluminium spaceship - leisure-cruiser they'd called it, private stores, won it. But neither of them believed a word. Jack had scratches across his cheeks and a mark of dirt running the length of his left arm, braces heavy, shirt untucked - but he was close.

They never made contact when they met, they just looked, and kept on going.

"So what is this thing?" had been the only question, subtle, not quite subdued, but friendly enough to not warrant any expectations.

"Haemovore -" the doctor replied, taking a sharp left to avoid a host of Judoon guards, "Met them in the Viking Age, years ago. Feed on blood, sort of like - well, vampires really. But they're not. They're not human. You have - you have this chain, you see, this evolution chain but nothing like the ones from Earth. They're the end product, pollution, war, all of it turns you lot into them." he paused, pushing Jack's shoulders against a wall to miss a growl, a hiss, an ohmygod, "The only way to repel them to - to disarm them is by their victim's faith. It's all a bit mumbo jumbo but we need to --"

And Jack jumped in front of one. Arms out, winking back.

" -- find someone loyal who can't die? Relax. I haven't changed."

Under his breath, with a set jaw, the doctor muttered, "That's what I'm afraid of."

July, 1905.
"Martha - she, well, decided it better if she didn't come with me. It's complicated I think." the Doctor shrugged, his sleeves rolled up, staring fixatedly at a screen in the TARDIS with Jack on the ground, buried in mechanics again. And he swore this wasn't going to happen.

"Nobody else then?"

The doctor frowned, "Nobody else. I travel alone."

Jack snorted then and sat up, rubbing a grubby hand across his brow and resting his back against the wall. "Come on, I'm not one of those stragglers you meet along the way. I know you better than that. You don't need to give me some old excuse just because you don't want me to come along --"

"Your Vortex Manipulator, of course!"

And it went quiet.

"I wondered how, in all times, in all places, you were there. I thought it was coincidence at first - 'or guilt' he added silently but no --" he grinned, "No. It's still working, isn't it?"

"I -"

"Jack, you utter genius!"

And the kiss on the cheek had meant nothing at all.

December, 2007.
Everything had a tendancy of going a bit topsy-turvy over the Christmas period, he noted, after the past few years at least. So he'd turned up. There were no big window displays but the lights were enough, the tinsel; empty apart from the brief glimpse of Jack hurrying down a side alley to avoid him.

Against his better judgement, or perhaps, because he may have been the only one to know what was going on - he followed.

"We've got to stop meeting like this, Captain." he smiled, and there were dumpsters, big green dumpsters piled high with restauraunt waste and old wrapping paper, "Went through all of time and space to try and get away from you, and you were there - every single time."

"You know why." Jack shrugged almost nervously, holding out his wrist, "Guess you'll be wanting to fix it then? So I can't?"

"Come with me." the doctor asked suddenly, surprising them both. His eyes widened and his mouth pressed into a firm line, "Come with me" he repeated, calmer and almost laughed.

"Really?"

"Really. Elimate the element of surprise when I run into you in the caves of Adrozani."

Jack almost said no, but his lips quirked up just in time, "Okay."

--

It didn't snow that year either, but the hydrotechnics they'd found behind the dumpsters led, again, to the breakdown of another space vessel in the atmosphere. Somehow, for them, right then, ash seemed so much more fitting to a new start.