Immortality

Beta'ed by Zabrak Prophet, who wins my firstborn.

Eyes wide, the Doctor slowly lowered his head to stare at his chest. He raised two hesitant fingers to touch the blood that soaked the front of his shirt, stunned. Blood, with unblemished skin beneath.

'Well then,' he said after a long moment. He looked back up at his attacker- a terrified teenage boy, mostly human in appearance. The weapon in his hand was shaking badly, and he dragged his wide-eyed gaze from the Doctor down to the barrel, before dropping it like it burned.

'You… you…' he stuttered, looking ready to run.

'Indeed,' said the Doctor brightly, acclimatizing. It was not the worst of the shocks he'd ever suffered, but it was up there in the top ten. 'You might want to learn about the safety switch before you going playing with those things.'

'You're an alien. By the Five, you were going to invade the planet! I had to. I'm sorry.'

The Doctor sighed, raising an eyebrow. 'If only you knew the whole story.' He shook his head, making tsk tsk sounds. 'Kids these days- just don't pay any attention to their history lessons. I've saved this place more times than you've had hot dinners. Now as much as I'd love to stay and chat, I must be on my way.'

A momentary flicker of confusion broke through the terror on the youth's face. 'But… you're meant to be dying. The bloke who sold this to me said it'd kill anything!'

'Charming,' said the Doctor dryly, narrowing his eyes. He dug out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it briefly at the weapon that had just been used to shoot him. The thin barrel made a crackling sound and let out a cloud of smoke. 'There! Much better,' he declared brightly. Turning on his heel, he began to stride rapidly back towards the Tardis, trying not let the desperate hurry he was in show through. It would give the wrong impression. He heard the quavering demand to wait issue from behind him, and rolled his eyes. He didn't know why he bothered sometimes.

Relief washed through him when he finally located the Tardis again. He was deeply unsettled, and her familiar shape served to reassure him. Carefully fitting the key in the lock, he stepped through the blue wooden doors, shutting them firmly behind him before turning towards the console.

'Well?' he asked the air. 'I should be looking at a new face right about now. What on Rassilon's going on?'

There was silence, the dim green light and coral structures offering him no answer. Undeterred, he sprang forwards to the console, twiddling a knob here, pushing a button there. 'Bit of a scan. Just the thing,' he muttered to himself, distracted with what he was doing, but long in the habit of talking to himself.

It was mere moments before some results appeared on the screen in the circular Gallifreyan text. The Doctor cocked his head on one side as he read, becoming still. 'Well,' he said after a long silence. 'I should have realised.'

He looked around at the interior of his time ship, frowning. 'Forever? This regeneration is going to last… forever.' The second time it wasn't a question. 'Immortality. Funny word for a Time Lord to be bouncing about, eh?'

There was a slight brightening of the lights, almost imperceptible. 'Regenerations hardly count. They're finite,' he told his ship. She hummed to him, low and long.

'Well no one can ever truly come to terms with their own mortality.' He still seemed slightly stunned by the revelation, skin pale and vague smile on his face.

'I really should have thought. Oh gods. It all ran through Rose too…' he trailed off, gut twisting. There was an abrupt shower of sparks from the console, burning his hand. He jumped backwards, sucking on the wound.

'Ow! What did you do that for? It's not like I can get to her. She'll figure it out. She'll be okay. More than okay, actually. Forever…'

There was another jump of sparks, bigger this time.

'Well there's no need to be like that,' he growled in return, stalking around the other side of the console and going to lift up a floor panel. 'If you're going to be upset about it we'll just sit here until you've calmed down. There's nothing I can do. I'm immortal. Rose is probably immortal. We both had the time vortex run through us-'

This time he was cut off by a significant judder from the Tardis, smoke and sparks flying through the air. His eyebrows shot up. She was very distressed about something. 'What are you trying to…' he started off angrily, before realization hit him like a ton of bricks. 'Oh,' he said, eyebrows dropping. 'Oh,' he repeated, slumping down to sit on the floor.

'It's a long shot. It's a very long shot. But it might just be true,' he murmured, gaze turned inwards and a slow smile spreading across his face. 'Brilliant!' he declared suddenly, springing up and beginning to rapidly work controls. All signs of the Tardis's earlier distress were gone. If he'd have ventured to say anything, he'd have said that she was doing her utmost best to be accommodating, reaching back through the vortex, to a date so long ago it was mere myth by this time.

Hovering in the vortex, he began to search first, one of the very few times he preferred not to go in blind. This was too important to go wrong. He had to go in at just the right time or the whole of history might skew off its path. Because if he knew Captain Jack Harkness, the man would have been right in the thick of so many history changing decisions his personal timeline would somewhat resemble a pretzel. An 11 dimensional pretzel. With salt.

His eyes began to well with tears as he traced Jack back through history… From where they'd left him, straightening up the mess the Daleks had left on Satellite Five, and the planet below it. He'd done a wonderful job. Humanity back on course in a mere two years, reconnecting with other races, striding back out into the stars.

From there, an abrupt disappearance, a trail that might have gone dead if not for the Tardis's ability to track the time ripples caused by it. Back to 1909, apparently accidentally- it looked like he'd been aiming a little further forward. The Doctor smiled fondly. For all her unpredictability, there were few devices that were as accurate as his Tardis over such long distances.

And then; a positive cornucopia of world-savings. 'Need a better word for that,' muttered the Doctor to himself, eyes fixed on the screen. 'Maybe Savers? No.

Something though.'

Jack had lived straight through from that point it seemed, careful to be posted out of the country in 1941, when he might have met himself accidentally. He'd found love though, oh yes. The Doctor felt intense pride burning through him. It seemed Jack had shown immense strength, many a time carefully avoiding temptations of paradox. Earth's timeline in the 1900's had never flowed so neatly.

And through it all, time after time, Jack had been in the thick of it when the other-worldly things began to threaten. The Doctor frowned slightly, skipping forwards to the 70's, and then again. If it carried on like this, there'd be no place safe to pick him up without leaving the Earth undefended against the invading hordes.

Eventually, the Doctor gave up and closed his eyes, deciding to do it the easier way than the hard slog of research. The time flow almost instantly resolved itself to him. Thinking about it, that had become easier to do since the time vortex had ripped through him. He really should have realised earlier. Discarding those thoughts from his mind for a second, he sought Jack. It wasn't hard; he knew his one-time companion like his own right hand, and what's more, he glowed, alone in that time as something different. Something new, and different, and so very alive.

Opening his eyes, the Doctor grinned. He'd found the right place.

TBC (in the next chapter there will be Cardiff, Jack, gobsmackedness, and gratuitous hugging. Promise)