Summary: Based on Utopia. "I went back to her estate, in the 90's, just once or twice, watched her growing up"
Hallelujah
Baby I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
Jack stood leaning against the concrete wall. It was exactly how he'd remembered it, the same dark grey concrete of every council estate, the same graffiti stained wall that he leant upon, the same grey slabs on the ground with their familiar cracks. The weather was the same; he'd noticed that, whenever he was here the sun beamed high above him, tanning his immortal skin as he raised his head to squint into its blinding beams.
As always, he found his gaze falling from the sun into the light blue sky which went on endlessly above his head, the clouds dappled the sky, he squinted hoping each was concealing what he was looking for. When they moved, and he found nothing, his gaze would fall to the corner, the one where the Tardis had always stood. He found himself standing next to it, his eyes waiting, the faintest hint of hope fluttering in his heart – but he never came, the Doctor never came.
Sighing, Jack would pull his long military coat tighter around him, trying to starve off the chill that seemed to only affect him on these summer days. It wasn't the first time he'd been here, he came every year, always the same date – the date he lost them.
But he wasn't just waiting, he was also watching. He was watching Rose Tyler grow into his Rose, into the girl he would know who could laugh in the face of danger, the Rose who loved the Doctor so, the Rose who could cling to the hand of an alien on a planet a million miles from home and giggle like this was ordinary.
There was something about her that amazed him, that enticed him, that despite each time he came he swore it was the last – something that always brought him back. He watched her as she grew from a girl with pigtails, to the stropy teenager, giggling and running around the estate with a head of loose curls.
Each time she came by he would step back into the shadows, just a memory returning to the darkness. Each time the urge to reach out and hold her close was over whelming, then it would all flash before him, his death, the Daleks – and he would remember his purpose.
It was not this. He was not to stand and watch and hope and wait. This was not who he was…but it was who he was becoming. Each time he stepped further back into the shadows, taking one last stealing glance before turning away, before walking out of her life and back into his. His never ending life.
And as he watched his Rose mature and grow into the beautiful young woman he knew, he almost smiled and he almost cried. He almost remembered his death and his rebirth…but then he always forgot. Instead he remembered her smile, her love for the alien who amazed her, her laughter, and her power.
As he turned into the setting sun leaving the past and the future behind him he remembered the life he had lived and the life he had lost. And he began to wait, slowly as the years passed by, each the same unmarked event, waiting for the man in the blue box, waiting for the girl on his arm – he waited for the day he could go home.
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah