Jack's heart's pounding in his chest as the door of the Hub rolls open, lights flashing on either side of the doorway, alarms going off faintly down the hall to alert the team. All that's standard, precautions put in place a few decades back, and nothing Jack even notices anymore. The way his heart's jumping, though... That, he hadn't expected. Nor the fact that he can't stop grinning.
He can't say he minds, though.
"Suddenly, in an underground mortuary, on a wet night in Cardiff, I hear the song of a nightingale."
It's strange, how only two people in this universe do this to him. Make things better and brighter just by being around, make him feel really alive. Two people who make his heart do this. And one of those two spends his time gallivanting around the space-time continuum, so that leaves...
"Miss Martha Jones."
Oh, and he'd missed that smile. It hadn't even been that long since he last saw it, and he still missed it. His instinct is to bound forward and kiss her, right here in the Hub in front of his team. He restrains himself to a smile and a wink, his heart still pounding fit to burst.
Their relationship is just one of those kinds of relationships. The kind where you can charge around a corner into an alleyway, running from a creature that doesn't have a name (because no one's ever lived long enough to give it one), crash into each other, and not even blink because somewhere, in the back of your head, you're always expecting it.
"Martha Jones! Good to see you."
"You too," she says breathlessly. "I don't suppose you've got a gun I could borrow?"
He tosses it to her with a quick grin, and turns to face the opening of the alley, fighting to slow his breathing. Proper greetings, as always, can wait until they're not both about to be torn to pieces by a massive, slobbering, nameless alien.
Jack never could resist a blue box sitting on a street corner. The trouble is that he never knows who's inside it – which Doctor, who he's travelling with... He's been standing across the street, just watching it for the longest time.
It's not that he wants to come along again – not unless the Doctor needs him, that is. It's been years since he turned down the Doctor's offer, and he's still got his team. It's really just... nostalgia that keeps him standing here, he supposes. Or maybe just curiosity.
He's about two seconds from walking up and knocking on the door when it opens of its own accord. He gets a glimpse of green and gold that still means 'home' somewhere deep in the back of his brain, even after all these years, and then out steps the Doctor – the Doctor Jack knows now, tall and skinny and pinstriped – followed by Martha, and Jack smiles to himself.
He doesn't walk up to them – timelines and all – and they don't see him, and his heart's a tangled mess of love and joy and loneliness and longing. But he hears her laugh at something the Doctor says, a laugh bright and carefree and innocent, like he hasn't seen her since they first met at the end of the universe.
Somehow, that almost hurts more, but he can't stop smiling even so until they've both walked out of sight.
It doesn't seem possible this could be the last time he sees her. It's a warm day in Cardiff, the sun's a little blinding sparkling off the bay, and Jack catches Martha in front of the Hub, walking up behind her and grabbing her around the waist. "Hello, Miss Jones," he murmurs, grinning, in her ear.
Martha jumps a little, and then spins around to grin up at him. "Jack! Where did you come from?"
He keeps his hands settled on her hips, and somehow it always surprises him how tiny she is. she always seems so much larger than life in his head, and then he remembers she barely reaches his chin. "I was standing on the invisible lift. It's cheating, I know."
"It is, but I'll forgive you. I'm working right now, you know. I can't-"
"I know. What's the use of having a computer genius around if you're not going to have them hack into secure UNIT files so you'll know when your very favorite doctor's in town?"
"Very favorite?" she asks, eyebrows raised.
"Alright, second favorite."
Martha laughs and moves to hit him. Jack catches her by the wrist before she can, and pulls her just a little closer to him, leaning in to kiss her thoroughly.
"You'll drop by the Hub before you leave?"
"Absolutely, Captain Harkness."
Two hours later, Ianto comes to him with a phone call from UNIT – Martha's dropped off the radar, he's closer than any of their people, and could Torchwood please locate her ASAP?
Two hours and two minutes later, he's in the SUV and searching, running on coordinates from UNIT, CCTV his team is digging up, anything he can get.
Three hours later he finds her in a warehouse, bloody and still, warm but not warm enough, and gets himself covered in blood trying uselessly to just get her to open her eyes.
Twelve hours later, he's cleaned up, at Ianto and Gwen's insistence, and staring at her on the autopsy table. He knows her body, but not like this, cold, pale. He knows her warm and pliable beside him in bed, growling softly when he moves too far away because he's warm and the rest of the world is much too cold. He knows her too thin after that year, holding her close and being able to count every rib without trying, the too sharp outline of her collarbones, and how she's beautiful anyway. He knows the way her muscles shift under her skin, her thighs pressing against the outside of his, her laughing while she tries to pin him down, and the way her laughter turns to soft gasps and whimpers and then laughter all over again.
He reaches out to touch her cheek, breath catching in his throat.
"Martha Jones," he murmurs softly, and he's surprised the syllables of her name even make it out of his mouth without getting all tripped up on his tongue. "I'm so sorry."
"It's alright! Breathe deep, I've got you!"
Hearing tends to come back before vision, when Jack recovers from a death. So it's her voice, and gripping her shoulder as he gasps for air, and then his vision clears and it's just her against the darkness.
Not a bad thing to wake up to.
"Captain Jack Harkness. And who are you?"
She's got the prettiest smile, just a little shy and uncertain.
"Martha Jones."
There's a song about this, Jack knows, but just now he can't remember any of the lyrics except for the very first line. Have you met Miss Jones...?
He grins up at her, not sure whether his heart racing is from just coming back to life or something else.
"Nice to meet you, Martha Jones."