Written by Z

Conceived by Z & twtl

DISCLAIMER: Jack Harkness, The Doctor, The TARDIS. None of it belongs to us. AT ALL. We also don't lay claim to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

TORCHWOOD: RESURRECTION

PREQUEL 1 - TIME HEALS

Part 1.

Sleep was fitful for the two thousand year old Captain. Nightmares mixed in with blissful dreams. Dreams of what could have been had he made different choices. Nightmares of what became the prison of his reality. "Every day I've been with you, you show me the strangest... saddest things," he said softly, stroking the only part of the TARDIS controls the Doctor had ever shown him how to use.

"It's her way of comforting you," came a voice from behind.

Jack stiffened, frozen in place as he tried to regain his voice. "How long have you been there?" he asked him.

"Long enough."

"Why?" Jack asked, turning to him slowly. "Why does she feed these dreams into my head? Making me relive that moment over again."

"Because you're running away Jack. Always running. She does the same to me when she knows I've made a hard decision." The Doctor's brown eyes seemed to stare unfocused in his direction, but not at him. As if he were remembering something so horrible, so terrible that he dared not speak of it aloud. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts before speaking again. "You're so focused on the what if that you can't see beyond what is. He's gone, Jack. He isn't coming back."

"You could have come. You could have stopped it." The Captain's fists were clenched in anger. An anger he restrained for the sake of their friendship only. For even an immortal, unkillable man knew to strike a Time Lord would bring forth a wrath more terrible than death.

"No, I couldn't," the Doctor said, shaking his head. Jack saw the immense restraint it took him to say those words and not speak what he was truly thinking.

"Why not?!" Jack shouted in frustration. "You could have saved them! All of them! You could have saved him!"

The Doctor squared his shoulders in stubbornness. He had wanted to tell Jack everything once he realized where in the other man's time-line this moment fell. But he couldn't. He cursed the innate inclinations of his people then, to watch and not intervene. He had intervened many a time before, but this... what Jack begged of him, he could not do. Not again.

"No," he said firmly, deciding to throw the laws of time and the etiquette of how to speak of such things to the wind as he had so many times before. He knew the dangers of even speaking such things when for others, they had not happened yet. But he also knew his way around circular insinuation. Suggestion, rather than bold faced fact. "Because I couldn't risk crossing my own time-line. Especially during something like that."

Jack's anger simmered then, and the Doctor saw it in his blue eyes. A confusion, a curiosity that struggled with his emotional pain for dominance. This, he took as a good sign. "I couldn't. When two fixed points come together and they're not supposed to, the temporal fall out sends tidal waves into the continuum. If I'd chosen that situation and that moment, already far too volatile to interfere in from the start, to

cross my own timeline, the end result would be cataclysmic."

He stood there in the corridor, watching Jack as his anger and angst turned inward, tempered now by the subtle clues of his reasons. Knowing Jack as he did, and oh the Doctor knew the man almost better than he knew himself in these years, he knew Jack's attention span would circle back around. It was inevitable for the man who even now in this younger version than the last he had seen him was still older by a millenia, he would come to him again before this trip was over. And he would ask him what he meant.

And the Doctor had already decided to tell him the truth. Well, most of it. But not until he was ready to hear it.

---

They had just saved a colony of Algoloths from the deadly oppression of the Aleelian military when Jack came to him again. The Algoloth chieftain had thrown a celebratory banquet in their honour. The TARDIS was still a week's hike through the forests. But now that the war for Algoloth independence was over, surely they could find themselves a quicker way to reach it. Cut their trek down by at least a day or two.

He was thinking this over one one side of his brain while using the other to introduce the wonders of bananas to the cooks when he felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder.

"We need to talk."

"Oh, Jack! I was just telling these fine connoisseurs of gelatinous foodstuffs that bananas make an excellent source of potassium, and explaining how easy they are to grow. Haven't you noticed the weather here is absolute phenomenal for it? They could have the trees springing up in two months!"

"Doc-"

"Later Jack. Later. Can't you just relax and cut loose for a while? I mean, under normal circumstances I would chide you for flirting with any and everything around you, but it's a party! And I haven't scolded you nearly enough yet."

Jack smiled, trying not to laugh. "You're drunk, aren't you?"

"I'm not drunk. I am sufficiently socially lubricated."

"Same difference Doc."

"You're no fun anymore. Not since-"

"Fine. I'll go. But we do need to talk. Soon."

"Right," he said. "Right. Soon."

The Doctor spent the remainder of the feast avoiding Jack whenever possible. When he crept into their hut later that night, the Captain was sound asleep, much to his relief.

---

Jack was hesitant to leave the Algoloths. In the old days, he would have exploited them to make himself more powerful, more wealthy. Things, he, had changed. He used to say the Doctor was to thank for that. In truth he was partly responsible. But he could not be given full credit. Jack's experiences, his friends, family, and everyone he came into contact with had shaped him into the man he was now. A man he hated and loathed and felt that only death and devastation followed in his wake.

For a time, Jack thought, believed he had reached his breaking point. He had failed them. Failed everyone. His daughter, his grandson, his lover. His planet. It was strange, calling Earth that when he knew it wasn't. When he had been born in such a distant time on a tiny peninsula thousands of light-years away from that blue-green ball circling endlessly in the Sol star system.

And yet, Earth is the planet he loved the more. All of the wonders he had seen, all of the epic battles fought and the cons he had done... Earth had always held a special place in his heart, as it did for the man he traveled with once again. The man he thought could heal any wound. Close any gap, and help you to forget all your troubles when not even a hypervodka could place a dent.

He trailed behind the Doctor now through the thick forests of Ensidra 9. Jack felt naked without his wristband. He'd lost it gambling on his last visit to the Restaurant and the End of the Universe. Not that his first trip to the era was all that pleasant. But at least the Restaurant served decent food. Without it, he couldn't even show off, despite there currently no one around to show off to.

"Ah!" the Doctor exclaimed ahead of him, parting a thicket at the edge of a clearing. Jack heard running water up ahead. The TARDIS couldn't be far, if he remembered where they'd parked it correctly.

He came up behind the Doctor, looking over his shoulder. "Well?"

"Home sweet home," the Time Lord said with a smile as he turned his head to find Jack looking back at him.

The fact the Time Lord didn't shy away from his invasion of personal space lately did not escape him. In fact, it only added to the questions he was trying to work out on his own. After what felt like a long moment, the Doctor's smile broadened into one of utter madness. "Race you to the finish line?" he said.

"You're on," Jack replied, barely having time to get the words out before the pinstriped suit was but a blur.

They'd raced along the stream, bending branches back to fling into eachother's face as they tried to be first to the TARDIS. At some point, Jack had caught up with him, and crossed the water to the other bank.

"Cheater!" the Doctor cried as he followed, despite having slowed his pace to allow Jack the lead. They were as two children, then, running through the woods home. The Doctor smiled, and Jack laughed. His worries, for this moment, forgotten.