Title: Impossible Possibilities
Summary: A brief glimpse and the most impossible of possibilities. Really, he should have known.
Rating: K+ for language. Just one bad word, honestly.
After so many years tracing down mysterious signals, the Doctor had come to expect certain things. Sinister plots, old enemies, and a fair bit of running were all old hat in these instances. What wasn't normal, for example, was being parked beside a very young TARDIS. What wasn't normal was for his millennia-old ship to physically lock him out and block their telepathic connection. It certainly wasn't normal for his own personal timeline to suddenly snap into one place, all options but one blinking out of existence in an instant and becoming viciously tangled with two others, ones he knew better than his own.
There was a metallic bite to the air in the fourth dimension which meant only one thing: The Doctor was about to run head-long into the past.
The pub he was somehow led to had a rustic wooden sign hanging over the door. Zly Wilk, it said, obviously a nod to Earth's Germanic ale houses, and the Doctor wasn't anywhere near oblivious enough to ignore that kind of cosmic demand. It was like painting a big bull's-eye on the door and writing "Investigate Universal and Timespace Anomalies Here". Some things were constant, he'd finally learned. By now you'd think he would have stopped bitching about the capitally-lettered Impossible, because it seemed like someone was trying to prove him wrong out of spite every time he said it.
As he pushed open the heavy door, the Doctor contemplated turning around and heading back to the TARDIS, had his sentient time-ship no locked him out already. That was most likely why he had been evicted in the first place. His clever girl knew his cowardice all too well, after all.
He had to admit to some curiosity in the last few years, especially where Jack Harkness was concerned. The man led an unbelievably complicated life, but the Doctor hadn't ever thought to look towards the seedy space-port of Argos's 4th moon to find the near-immortal. Actually, it was a testament to how much had changed that he hadn't started searching there. The small satellite was a notorious Time Agency hang-out, so yes, he was a little surprised to see Jack here.
The chanting, however, was completely normal.
KISS HER! KISS HER! KISS HER!
The Doctor couldn't see the woman over the crowd, but he could clearly see Jack, and was almost shocked when the man actually blushed, blushed, and bent down to ask the lucky lady's permission. The old Jack would have hammed it up for the crowd, oozing charm and debauchery. It wasn't often that he remembered Jack ever backing down from the chance to make a spectacle of himself.
There was a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watched small, pale hands grasp the lapels of Jack's pea coat and pull him forcefully down. However much Jack might have changed, he was still so Jack, bending the woman backwards and dipping her as the kiss went on and on… and on.
When the woman turned her head and winked at him, grinning maniacally with her tongue between her teeth, the Doctor finally understood the clenched-stomach reaction and urge to run far, far away.
Because this was Impossible.
Rose Tyler could not be in this pub, on this planet, because she was in Pete's universe with his human counterpart. She couldn't have called him here and convinced his ship to mutiny because she was Psi-null. That could not have been her immature TARDIS calling out friendly greetings because she wasn't a Time Lady.
There was something brilliant about the Impossible, something fantastic.