The Doctor was tucked up in bed asleep.
Jack wished he could stay nestled next to his lover's not quite warm body and enjoy his company but insomnia and ghosts from the past made it impossible and he soon found himself wandering the corridors of the TARDIS.
He had just been on the edge of sleep when he remembered waking up on Platform One, alone. He had spent days searching the empty satellite for signs of life but with only piles of ashes and the stench of death to keep him company he finally used his vortex manipulator to leave the floating coffin.
The only problem was; somehow the device had been damaged. He meant to set it for modern day Earth, catch up with The Doctor, and reunite with Rose. But instead he wound up in India in the 1700s.
He spent the first year drinking himself to death, only to find that death didn't want him. One minute they were measuring him out for his funeral pyre, the next mumbling under their breaths as the corpse rose from the dead and asked for a neat gin.
After that he decided to move on.
As he left town, nervously glancing over his shoulder for people with clubs and knives to be following him, he wandered around Asia. He was on the trail of a legend that a god in a blue chariot-like conveyance had been visiting the area.
The artists captured the chariot in great detail, down to the hatch for the phone and he knew he was onto something.
Just outside of Edo he thought he had caught up with The Doctor. He saw the familiar blue Police box and with a wide grin approached it. Only instead of the close cropped hair, pale blue eyes and ever-present leather jacket, this man was wearing a dark, formal suit and his grey hair was neatly combed back, slicked to curl behind his ears.
And he was traveling with a young woman who Jack overheard him to refer to as his granddaughter.
Jack held back, this man was too old to be his Time Lord, he reasoned. This was obviously not the one he was looking for. He hesitated to approach the older man and the woman, trying to decide how to introduce himself, but by the time he had come up with a plan the ship had gone.
Rounding another hallway in his night time journey Jack noticed a portrait hanging on the wall. His heart stuttered in his chest as the familiar face came into view. It was the old man he had seen in Edo!
Why was his portrait adorning the TARDIS walls? he wondered.
There were more paintings, he realised, each frame held the image of another face.
Maybe, Jack reasoned, these were relatives of The Doctors? Given the next two portraits a quick glance he moved on down the hallway.
Then he saw another familiar face. This time of a man with wildly curly hair, a long scarf and an almost maniacal grin. He had seen this man before! In a pub in London in the 1970s.
He was three gin and tonics into what he figured would be a long day of drinking. He had jumped through time so often that he no longer knew or really cared where he was, as long as he had access to a pub or even some potent home brew he was happy.
Well, not exactly happy, he remembered, but the ability to get passed out drunk certainly helped.
The curly haired man had burst into the pub, smiling like a mad man, inquiring if any of the seasoned drunkards had seen a tin dog anywhere around? When everyone who was still aware of their surroundings shrugged unhelpfully he fished out a small white bag, tipped some sweets into his mouth and ran back out of the pub with the same speed he had entered it.
Jack had forgotten about this until he saw that distinctive grin again. Who was that man to The Doctor and why was his picture on the wall?
He proceeded on and saw more faces, a blonde with wispy hair wearing a cricket uniform, a shorter squat figure in a rainbow coat, a dandy in full Edwardian dress and then he stopped frozen to the spot, and his mouth fell open.
The last portrait on the wall was his Doctor, the first one, the one with the leather jacket smiled at him as if to say "hello Jack, glad you found me again, isn't this fantastic?"
Once he was able to breathe again Jack slowly walked back down the hallway, at each painting he searched his memory only to discover he had seen everyone of these men, at least once, in his ongoing search for The Doctor.
As each encounter flooded his mind his breath quickened in time with his frantic heart. Unable to bear it any longer he ran down the hall to The Doctor's room and threw open the door.
The Doctor was curled up on his side, blankets pulled up tight as if the warmth of Jack's body was missed, even in his sleep.
He stared down and the tousled dark hair, the long fingers holding the covers in tight and the spray of freckles on the Time Lord's youthful face.
"Doc?" Jack ventured, "are you awake?"
The large brown eyes opened slightly as the thin man rolled over on his back, "am now," he grumbled, as he held back a yawn.
"I was in the hall by the library," Jack sat on the edge of the bed, his legs now seeming to be unable to hold his weight, "all those portraits, those men? Who are they?" He asked, even though he knew, deep down inside what the answer would be.
The Doctor finally seemed to catch on that something was bothering the ex-Time Agent, and sat up to take his trembling hands in his, "they are, or were, me," he explained.
Then his brow suddenly curled into a concerned frown of confusion as the man sitting next to him burst into tears.