Disclaimer: Don't own anything or anyone from Eureka or Doctor Who, trust me if I did, Natha would still be there.
Author's Note: Inspired by all the wonderful Doctor Who references in I Do Again. My first Doctor Who and Eureka fic (that I've posted), so be gentle, it sort of just stuck in my head and I had to get it on paper. Set in Eureka after I Do Again, goes AU from there. Doctor Who set before the whole Season fianle Donna's still there. This is Nathan/Jack so be warned.
Jack paused his hand hovering over the doorknob, was he really going to do this? He closed his eyes and remembered this very day, two years ago exactly and pain and resolution washed over him. He turned the knob and walked inside. The room was dark and smelled slightly damp. No one had been in here since…no one had been in here in two years, no one had touched anything. It looked exactly the same and it had taken him no small amount of favors to Eva to keep it that way. He walked slowly pushing the bad memories away, pushing everything away as he tried not to look in the middle of the room, at the place where it happened. He set his mind to the task and walked over to the bank of computers. "You're really going to do this?"
Jack turned around to see Fargo standing in the threshold, looking at him cautiously. "I have to." Jack said, the crack in his voice didn't go unnoticed as Fargo stepped in the room and walked over to stand beside him.
"Do you really think it'll work?" He asked and there was no more challenge in his eyes like with the previous question, instead Jack was sure he saw hope.
"I have to." Jack said again and pushed the button, turning the whole system on. His hands hovered over the keyboards and it was then that he realized that he had no clue what to do next. He looked up at Fargo, pleading and the young man sighed, gently pushing Jack to the side and typing rapidly, bringing up screen after screen pausing to turn to Jack.
"If this doesn't work..." He looked at the Sherriff. "Will you let it go?" Jack didn't say anything. "You can't keep doing this to yourself."
"I'm doing this for Allie." Jack said for what felt like the hundredth time.
"For Allie?" Fargo snorted. "Really?" He shook his head. "Come on Jack, that excuse isn't going to work anymore, she's moved on, she's engaged again, she and Kevin both are really happy. You're doing this for you."
"And Nathan." Jack added after a pause.
Fargo just nodded. "If we get caught…"
"I'll take the full blame from Eva don't worry." Jack assured him.
"Time?" Fargo asked without looking up.
"Five Forty Five." Jack said staring at the clock on the wall.
"Fifteen minutes." Fargo said moving to another computer and started typing again.
"Yeah." Jack sighed and closed his eyes and for the first time since it happened he allowed himself to really think about that day two years ago.
TWO YEARS AGO
Jack stared in shock at the image before him. Fargo was jumping and whooping with joy. "We're moving forward." He said and Jack cringed. Time was moving forward again but Nathan, Nathan was still frozen. Frozen with that smile on his face, that smile that Jack had been waiting to see from him for years. The smile that only emerged now, right before his death, like calling him Jack. The bastard had to be dying to show any real emotion. Jack shook his head and realized that Fargo had stopped celebrating, he must have noticed, must have seen Nathan. He just needed one more day, one more try.
"What…" Fargo was staring in disbelief at his mentor frozen in time.
Jack felt his throat constrict, he felt the familiar tingle in the corner of his eyes but he wouldn't cry, he couldn't cry. His grief was interrupted by a strange whirring sound." What's wrong?" He screamed to Fargo over the noise.
Fargo frantically started checking and rechecking the equipment and shook his head. "I don't know." He screamed back.
Suddenly the outline of something was forming, materializing in the room and Jack pushed Fargo behind him, laying his hand on his gun but not taking it out yet. As Jack watched a large blue box formed in the room, right in front of him and from the look on Fargo's face the kid hadn't seen anything like this before either.
"I take it this isn't one of Global's things?"
"Not that I've ever seen." Fargo shook his head as the door opened. Jack tensed but a man poked his head out, smiled slightly at them and then stepped into the room. He didn't look dangerous but Jack knew that looks could be deceiving.
The man spotted Nathan, frozen Nathan in the container and his smile faded. "Oh Nathan, I'm so sorry." He stared for a minute and Jack wondered who he was and how he knew Nathan, and how he knew that something had happened. Suddenly the man's face broke into a large grin and he laughed. "Oh but you were clever weren't you?" He said tapping the glass and causing Jack to flinch.
He didn't like this man, with the quick mood swings and his apparent inability to realize that there were other people there, people that were trying to grieve properly. As soon as Jack thought that, a pain, sharp and twisting hit him in the stomach, feelings he hadn't allowed himself to feel earlier pouring over him lake a wave of pain and sorrow. He almost stumbled under the weight of it all. The man turned and looked at him then, his smile again replaced by a frown and took two steps toward them. "Oh Jack, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"How do you know my name?" Jack asked and realized what a stupid question it was the second it left his mouth. If Nathan were here he would have been asking the man more important things, like how his box appereared out of nowhere, more pressing important things.
"Holy crap." A woman's voice startled them all and they turned to see someone else walk out of the box. "He wasn't kidding was he?" She moved closer to the glass and tapped it, just like the man had. "That's so weird." She raised her hand to tap again and Jack grabbed her wrist, his hand moving of it's own accord.
"Don't do that." She smiled sheepishly at Jack and lowered her arm.
"Sorry, I didn't…sorry."
"Donna." The man said, shaking his head slightly.
"Right, so can you fix it?" The woman, Donna Jack assumed, asked him.
"Oh yes." He said, the smile back and the conversation seemed to catch up in Jack's head.
"Wait, you can fix it?" He asked astonished.
"Piece of cake, well pie really, I always found pie easier than cake, not just to make but to eat as well."
"Have you ever made a pie?" Donna scoffed at him.
"Forget the pie." Jack shouted. "Can you bring him back?"
"Course I can do you know who you're talking to?" He puffed out his chest.
"No actually." Jack reminded him.
"Oh sorry, didn't do introductions did I? How rude of me." But instead of introducing himself then, he simply turned to the computer and started typing.
Donna rolled her eyes. "I'm Donna, Donna Noble, and that's the Doctor." She said.
"Doctor Who?" Jack asked ready to look the man up and see if he was in Global's database.
"No, no, just the Doctor." He said from the computer.
This seemed to snap Fargo back to the present and he ran over to the desk. "What are you doing? What is he doing, Sherriff?" Fargo squealed.
"Relax, I'm not damaging anything, I'm just, I've got to find his signal." The Doctor said as if that explained everything.
"What?" Jack asked.
"His signal, his wavelength."
"Just hold on a second, please." Jack's head was swimming with everything that had happened in the last week, or really just the last day. "What exactly is it that you're doing? What's going on? Why do you think you can help? I want to know everything."
"That's a long story, spanning centuries, well ages, well eons really." The Doctor smiled. "And I swear I'll tell you the whole thing but first I've got to fix this."
"How about the short version?" Jack asked.
"The short version?" The Doctor smiled. "Brilliant that will be much faster. Nathan is stuck in time." The Doctor explained.
"How do you know that?" Jack asked. "How do you know that he's not just…gone." Jack couldn't bring himself to say dead.
"Because he told me." The Doctor smiled. "Explained the whole thing. Not that I couldn't have figured it out on my own mind you." He added as if Jack had suggested that he couldn't.
"He told you?" Jack's brow furrowed. "You've seen him?"
"Oh yeah, kept bumping into him, or rather he kept bumping into us. Haven't quite figured that one out yet. Couldn't talk to him the first few times he was moving so fast but once we got that sorted, like I said, piece of cake, or pie." He turned back to his work and Jack sighed, having gotten no real information from the man so far.
"See what happened was..." The Doctor kept explaining as he worked, Fargo hovering over him cautiously. "When he sped up the particle, he sped up himself too, so basically I've just got to slow him back down and Bob's your Uncle." He stopped and turned around, seemingly deep in thought. "Why is Bob your uncle, assuming you have an uncle Bob, I mean someone must, somewhere surely or the phrase never would have taken but why. Donna." He looked over to the girl. "Write that on the list. Bob's your Uncle."
Jack turned to the woman who smiled sympathetically. "We've got a list of things he wants to figure out like what happened to the settlers at Roanoke…"
"Whole colony disappeared!" The Doctor said excitedly as he pushed buttons and twisted knobs. "Where did they go, I suspect aliens, or possibly a time hole."
Donna smiled. "Or you know, who built Stonehenge and why, did an alien ship crash in Roswell in 1947." Donna explained.
"Oh, don't forget." He looked up. "What exactly is Kosher food." Donna turned to him startled. "I just never understood it is all." He shrugged.
"I actually know that." Jack said on reflex, wanting to impart any knowledge he had that someone else in Eureka didn't was a habit he'd picked up over the years. "It's basically a set of rules and guidelines set down in the bible on how to prepare food properly, what can and can't mix together, how to cut and store meat, even which type of animals you can and can't kill."
"So there are rules for all of it?" The Doctor seemed extremely interested. "That's fascinating."
"Yeah you can't ever mix dairy and meat in the same meal, you can't even eat certain cheeses at all because to make them you mix them with animal products…" Jack noticed they were all staring at him, even Fargo. "I had a girlfriend in college who was Jewish, she kept Kosher." He smiled slightly. "It was killer trying to find places to take her out to eat."
"Yeah, but back to the problem at hand." Donna reminded the Doctor.
"Yes right sorry." The Doctor ran into the blue box and screamed from inside. "Jack, come give me a hand."
Donna nodded an ok at the uncertain look in Jack's eyes. He slowly walked over to the blue box and stepped inside. "Holy crap." He stopped looking around.
"Yes, yes, it's bigger on the inside, we'll have time for explanations and amazement later but right now…" The Doctor hefted a very heavy tangle of cords into Jack's arms. "I need you to plug this into the machine. Can you do that?" Jack was still looking around in wonder. "Jack!" The Doctor snapped and Jack turned to him. "Can you do that?"
"Yeah." He nodded, lugging the cords out of the box as the Doctor twisted dials and banged switches on his console. He moved past Donna and started plugging the cords into the machine.
"Sherriff, what are you doing?" Fargo walked over to him.
"Helping." Jack had to ignore the younger man because if he thought about Fargo he thought about Nathan and if he thought about Nathan, he was going to break down.
"We don't know who this guy is or or what he's doing." Fargo pointed out.
"He's getting Nathan back." Jack stole a quick look at Fargo and then went back to work.
"There is no back Sherriff." Fargo was angry now. "He's not lost, he's not gone, he's just dead."
"No he isn't." The Doctor poked his head out of the door. "I told you he's stuck in time."
"Jack." The use of his first name, yet again cause Jack to stop and turn to Fargo. "You can't honestly believe he can help do you?"
"I have to." Jack said.
The retort he'd prepared died on Fargo's lips as he saw the look in Jack's eyes. The pure desperation, the deep cut of grief written all over his face and suddenly a few things became clearer. "Yeah." Fargo whispered nodding and moving out of the way. "Ok."
Jack nodded, he and Fargo had come to an understanding of sorts, Jack had to do this, he just had to. "I still don't really understand…" Jack looked up but the Doctor had disappeared.
"I didn't either." Donna comforted him. "Nathan explained it to me." She paused gathering her thoughts. "He said it was like, say you have two cars, one going fifty miles an hour and one going a hundred miles an hour." Jack nodded. "What happens when you double both of their speed at the same time?"
"One is going a hundred and the other two hundred." Jack said finally catching on.
"Right so when they sped up the particle to normal speed, they sped up Nathan to twice normal speed." Donna said.
"So we're what? Gonna slow him down?" Jack asked.
"Precisely." The Doctor emerged and helped Jack finish plugging things in.
"Won't that cause another loop?" Jack asked concerned. "Make time bend again?"
"Nah." The Doctor shook his head. "The loop was created when the particle was slower than normal time, we're slowing Nathan down to normal time so there shouldn't be any unforeseen side effects." He turned to Donna. "I need you to go watch the monitor, when the red light starts blinking yell." Donna nodded and walked back in the box.
"Ok, here we go." The Doctor walked back over to the computers and started typing something. "Now I just have to lock on to his wavelength so that we can set the parameters and…" He hit the enter key with a flourish and Donna screamed from inside the box.
"It's blinking." She called out.
"Fantastic." The Doctor jumped and then hurriedly unplugged everything, hauling it back into the box. "Now all I have to do is input his wavelength, reverse the program and Nathan will slow down and…"
"Bob's your Uncle." Jack said smiling.
"Too right." The Doctor smiled. "Great meeting you Jack, I look forward to talking more about that whole Kosher thing the next time I see you." He headed for the box and moved to close the door.
"Wait, you're leaving but…" He pointed to the still frozen Nathan in the tube. "You said you'd bring him back."
"I will bring him back I promise, I've got a few other things to sort out on my end, shouldn't take more than five minutes." The Doctor promised.
"Five minutes." Jack breathed a sigh of relief he hadn't realized he'd been holding in.
The Doctor frowned. "Five minutes for me Jack. I'm sorry, I really am, but you're going to have to go the long way."
"The long way?" Jack asked confused, apprehension rising in his gut.
"Two years." The Doctor said. "I need you to come back here in two years exactly and reverse the program."
"Two years?" Jack swallowed.
"Can you do that?" The Doctor paused.
"Do I have a choice?" Jack laughed humorlessly.
"Yes." The Doctor told him.
"Yes I can do it." Jack said quietly.
Fargo and Jack watched as the blue box with the mysterious Doctor and Donna Noble vanished just as it had appeared and the Fargo grabbed his arm. "Sherriff, he's…" Jack turned to the tube and his gut twisted again, Nathan was vanishing, right in front of him and Jack had to close his eyes and tell himself that it was ok, that Nathan would be back. He couldn't worry about any of that right now, he had to go to Allison, he had to explain to a woman on her wedding day why she wouldn't be getting married, why her fiancé wasn't going to show up to the ceremony. He had never wanted this wedding, everyone knew that, though they most likely didn't know the real reason, but he didn't want it to end up like this.
"Come on Fargo." Jack said, his voice tired, the strain of trying to keep everything together weighing heavily on him. It would be hours yet he knew until he could go home and grieve properly.
PRESENT DAY
Jack watched as Fargo set the program up and jumped when he spoke. "Two minutes." He said removing his hands from the keyboard and staring at the old clock.
"Yeah." Jack didn't trust himself to say more than that. As it was, his voice was no more than a whisper. And they waited.
They stared, neither dared move or blink or breathe for what felt like an eternity. Fargo was the one to finally say it. "He's not here."
"I know." Jack's eyes were closed now, maybe in some childish attempt to produce Nathan by sheer will of thought. When I open my eyes he'll be back. Jack thought. He'll be smirking and annoying and he'll berate me for taking so long to save him. Only when Jack opened his eyes Nathan wasn't there and Fargo had moved to shut down all the equipment.
"Can we go now?" He asked Jack without looking at him.
"Yeah, yeah." Jack said distracted as his phone rang. "Carter." He answered trying to make his voice impassive, not let the emotions swirling around his brain seep through the phone line. "I'll be right there." He closed his phone and coughed, hoping to clear his voice more. "That was Jo, situation at Café Diam." Fargo just nodded and continued his shut down procedures.
Jack drove through the town wondering if something had gone wrong. Did they mess something up? Did the Doctor? Was it ever really going to work in the first place? He sighed as he parked in front of Café Diam and saw Jo standing on the sidewalk. "What's up?" He asked, trying to make his voice light and failing. Jo gave him a funny look for a second then it passed and she sighed.
"I'm not sure." She shook her head. "I mean it can't be real can it? Crap we've got to figure this out before Allison see's, she'll have a meltdown."
"Figure what out?" Jack asked confused now.
"He just…appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the restaurant. I can't explain it, Zane can't explain it, hell Henry can't even explain it."
"Who just appeared out of nowhere?" Jack asked, something akin to fear, anxiety, and hope rising in him. "Who?" He asked when Jo didn't answer. She looked at him strangely again and then opened the door, motioning for him to see for himself.
Jack walked into Café Diam and froze in the doorway. Nathan was standing in front of him, wearing the same suit he'd had on two years ago, and the same sarcastic smile. "Carter." He said standing up. "What the hell took you so long?"
Two years worth of emotions seemed to hit him at once, grief, joy, guilt, pain, all like a sucker punch to the gut, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to stumble slightly. "Nathan?" Jack asked.
"Right on the time." A voice said from behind him. "Wrong on the location. Should have warned you this might happen." Jack turned around to see the Doctor and Donna standing in the doorway to Café diam. "Sorry Jack." He smiled brightly and grabbed Donna's arm walking to the counter and sitting down. "Did you order my shake?" He asked Nathan.
"I tried." Nathan shrugged. "But seeing as how I was back from the dead and they weren't even sure I was me, I don't think the order really registered." Nathan turned to Vincent who, like all the other residents of Café Diam was staring unabashedly at Nathan Stark.
"What?" Vincent jumped. "Oh right, one banana milkshake."
"That's disgusting." Donna said shivering slightly.
"I love bananas." The Doctor beamed. "Nothing better than a good banana, except maybe a banana milkshake, or a banana smoothie, or banana daiquiri. Oh there's this little planet in the Klintock system that makes the best banana bread, actually it's all they make, whole planet's full of bananas, only thing that will grow there, not that there's anything wrong with that."
"Doctor." Jack said in exasperation and the man shut his mouth comically.
"Right, not the time." He looked over at Vincent who was busing making his milkshake but still had not taken his eyes off of the action.
"Is it really him?" Jo asked hopefully.
"It can't be." Henry said from Nathan's side.
"Carter." Nathan rolled his eyes in exasperation, wanting nothing more than for the Sherriff to explain everything this time.
"It's him." Jack nodded.
"Holy cow." Zane said stepping closer and poking Nathan in the side, something that would have been unthinkable two years ago. He jumped away quickly as Nathan turned his "head of GD" glare on him.
"Well I was proven wrong once again, apparently you are good for something after all Sherriff." Nathan turned to the counter. "Vincent, you know I think I'll have a banana milkshake too."
"Good man." The Doctor smiled sipping his own in happiness.
Jack's confusing swirl of emotions all changed at the same time into a seething boiling anger that couldn't be contained any longer. Jack took two quick steps forward and punched Nathan as hard as he could, channeling everything he'd gone through in the past two years, everything he'd felt into it and Nathan staggered back, gripping the counter to stay upright.
"Jack!" Henry screamed and moved forward, but Jo, ever on his side, ready to do whatever he asked without explanation held up a hand keeping Henry where he was. This was between Nathan and Jack, no one else.
"You bastard." Jack spat at him and Nathan looked at Jack, that smile still on his face, rubbing his chin softly. If he was surprised by the punch it didn't show and that made Jack even angrier. He took two more steps forward, Henry mirroring him, ready to step in, Jo making sure he didn't. Jack didn't raise his hand to hit this time though. He raised both hands, grabbed Nathan by the face and pulled him close for a deep, mind numbing, kiss.
The kiss unlike the punch, did surprise Nathan and it took him a minute to respond in kind but the kiss, very much like the punch was packed with emotion, only this time it was double edged. Jack pouring his heart and soul into Nathan with the urgent movement of his lips. Nathan responding in kind, his own fear and worry and regret being shoved right back onto Jack. To say that the inhabitants of Café Diam were shocked was an understatement. Jaws hit the floor from every corner of the room, banana milkshake sprayed out of the blender as Vincent stared on, oblivious to the mess he was making. A slow smile replaced Henry's initial shock and Jo simply ducked her head, coughing slightly when the two men didn't pull apart after a minute. The cough seemed to have no impact on either of them and Jo sighed raising her head. "Carter, I will ticket you both for indecent behavior." She said.
Slowly, reluctantly the two pulled apart, first lips, then arms, then bodies until they were standing a few feet away from each other as if an invisible wall was between them. "Why Sherriff I didn't know you cared." Nathan smirked.
"Yeah it's him." Henry said smiling widely now.
"You are a pig headed, selfish, egomaniacal asshole do you know that?" Jack panted.
"Are you going to hit me again?" Stark asked without about as much interest as someone would inquiring about the drying time of paint.
"Maybe." Jack huffed out.
"Are you going to kiss me again?" Stark raised an eyebrow the answer to this question seemed to interest him exponentially more than the previous one.
"Probably." Jack said annoyed at his own answer.
"Are you going to do either of those things in the next five minutes?"
"No." Jack sighed and slumped down, his anger gone, everything gone for the moment. His brain felt like mush, his bones felt like jelly and his lips were on fire.
"Good." Nathan sat down and took the Milkshake Vincent offered him.
"Sherriff." Vincent said and Jack lifted his head to see another Milkshake being offered. "Your sister said you they calmed you down."
"Thanks Vince." Jack took the shake and avoided Nathan's gaze as he took a few sips. Nathan was about to open his mouth when someone else walked into Café Diam.
"Holy Crap." Nathan and Jack both turned to see Zoe standing frozen in the doorway, staring at Nathan. "Dr. Stark?" She asked quietly. Nathan just smiled at her and before he knew it, all hundred pounds of Zoe Carter slammed into him, pulling him into a vice like hug. He froze for a minute. For him, he'd only been gone a few days but for everyone else it had been two years. Still he didn't remember having this type of relationship with Zoe Carter before.
"Uh Zo, you want to let the man breathe?" Jack chuckled.
Nathan felt Zoe pull away and looked up to see her blushing. "Sorry Dr. Stark, it's just…you were gone and Dad was…and now you're back."
"I'll explain it all later Zoe I promise." Jack told her.
"Dad was what?" Nathan asked, intrigued by the almost relieved look on Zoe's face.
"Well he was miserable." Zoe admitted. "I mean he took it really hard." She seemed to be scolding the man now, angry at him for causing her father so much pain. "And he kept, he kept telling everyone about how you were coming back, about how you weren't dead and if they just waited, if they just believed him…"
"But no one did?" Nathan asked.
"No." Henry spoke up. "I'm sorry Jack." He turned to the Sherriff, a look of guilt on his face. "You tried to tell us."
"It's fine." Jack waved him off.
"We thought you were crazy." Jo piped in, her own guilt in her voice. "We treated you like…Thorn almost had him redacted, for mental health reasons." Jo explained to Stark.
"Yeah well, it sounded crazy, even I knew it sounded crazy." Jack shrugged. After he'd explained what happened to Nathan and then what happened after, everyone in town thought he was crazy. They assumed it was post traumatic stress or something. He kept insisting that it happened and that Nathan was coming back but when even Fargo ceased backing him up Jack had started to wonder himself if maybe they weren't right, maybe he was going crazy, maybe the whole thing had been in his head. "For a minute there I thought I was going crazy."
"What made you change your mind?" Donna asked quietly.
"I met your granddad." Jack smiled. "Oh he said to ask you to call your mother please."
Donna rolled her eyes and looked at Jack expectantly so he sighed and recalled the story.
He tried to forget about it, tried to tell himself he'd imagined the whole thing but it felt so real. Then, as a graduation gift to Zoe, Jack took her on a trip to Europe. While touring around England, the accents reminded Jack so much of The Doctor and Donna that the whole thing went straight to the front of his mind again. Then he realized, Donna Noble, she'd told him her whole name. So one day when Zoe set off to explore for herself Jack took a chance and called information. To his surprise, and relief there was a Donna Noble listed, living in Chiswick which wasn't even ten miles from the hotel they were staying in.
Jack remembered feeling more nervous than he had in his life walking down the street looking for number 7, he was after all about to find out whether or not he was crazy. He found the door and knocked before he could stop himself and stood there, the balance of his sanity hanging perilously in what lay beyond the door. It swung open not too long after he knocked and an older man stood on the other side looking confused.
"Can I help you?" He asked, looking Jack up and down.
"I hope so." Jack breathed out. "I'm looking for Donna Noble."
The old man shook his head. "She's not here."
Jack seemed confused. She existed but she wasn't home, so there was no way to know if this Donna was his Donna. "Oh, sorry, sorry to bother you." He turned to leave when the man spoke again.
"What do you need Donna for?" He asked.
Jack turned around and had the sudden urge to spill everything right here to this man, he held himself back. "I think…I think she's helping me with something. Or maybe she helped me with something, or maybe she's going to help me with something."
The man smiled then, motioned Jack to come inside and complied. "Tea?" He asked and Jack nodded, he hated tea, he'd never had so much tea in his life but he just knew this man had answers for him. After the tea was brewed and they were seated relatively comfortably they sat there. Neither one apparently wanted to broach the subject that had brought Jack there, so they started in with small talk.
"You're American then?" Wilfred asked.
"Yeah just on vacation with my daughter. Graduation present. She's headed off to college in the fall so…MIT, full scholarship."
"Impressive." He smiled at Jack.
"She'd kill me if she knew I told you that." Jack laughed. "She says I've got to stop bragging."
"Never stop bragging." Wilfred smiled. "Can't brag much about my Donna. Don't get me wrong there's plenty to be had but no one would believe me."
"Your Donna." Jack said, getting to the point. "Does she, uh, does she have long, sort of reddish hair?"
"Just a second." Wilfred got up and walked to the mantle, coming back and handing Jack a picture. It was the same woman he'd seen a year ago in Global. "That's my Donna. So have you met her then?"
"I think so." Jack nodded wanting to ask if he could have this, bring the picture back and prove to everyone that he wasn't crazy.
"Then you must have met HIM?" He asked.
Jack paused, the tea cup halfway to his mouth, there was no mistaking, even after Jack's all to brief meeting, who the man was talking about. "I think so."
"You're never really sure, even while he's there." Wilfred shook his head and suddenly Jack realized there was someone else, someone who knew what Jack knew, what Jack was going through, possibly knew more than Jack did.
"Exactly." Jack said. "No one believes me and I was starting to think…"
"Maybe you made it up? Maybe it was all in your head?" He asked. Jack nodded. "I know that feeling."
"But then we were here and I thought if Donna is real, if she exists, then so does he."
"Of course he does." Wilfred smiled. "The Doctor."
Then Jack felt it, hope. Someone else had called him by name, or close enough if the Doctor could be called a name. Someone else knew he was real, knew he existed. "Yes." Jack said softly.
"He's a remarkable man." Wilfred smiled. "And my Donna's with him. Out there, traveling through time and space. Oh the adventures they're having." He sighed wistfully.
"Through time and space?" Jack asked confused.
"I see they never got around to explanations?"
"They were in sort of a hurry." Jack shook his head.
"He's what they call a Time Lord, an alien if you can believe it, which I can. He's got this ship, the TARDIS."
"The blue box!" Jack said excited.
"That's the one, it can go five hundred years into the past or five thousand years into the future, it can go to different plants, different solar systems." Wilfred explained.
"And he's what? I mean why does he do it?" Jack asked.
"Just traveling apparently. Having fun, visiting places no one else can or would. Mind you, from what Donna's told me, it's rarely a lovely holiday, always running into some trouble or other." Wilfred shook his head in amusement. Jack thought about what Donna had said. They had a list of things they wanted to find out, Roanoke, Roswell, Stonehenge. "Would it be rude to ask you, what exactly is Donna helping you with?"
Jack felt his throat constrict but pushed forward. "A friend of mine, a very good friend, he had an accident. He got…stuck in time. The Doctor said he could fix it, could bring him back."
"Then he will." Wilfred reached out a pat Jack's hand reassuringly. "Anything that man sets out to do, he does it. You'll see. You'll get your friend back."
"Thank you." Jack could feel the tears threatening to fall. He wasn't sure if was just from thinking of Nathan, of what happened, or if it was more, the certainty that this stranger had that Jack would see him again, the faith he had in his granddaughter and the Doctor. "Well I won't take any more of your time, I just wanted…I needed to make sure…" Jack stood up and handed him the picture back. "Thank you."
"You're more than welcome son." He led Jack to the door and smiled. "Can you do me a favor?"
"Sure." Jack said automatically.
"When you see Donna, and trust me, you'll see her again, tell her to give her mother a call." He smiled.
"Can do." Jack promised and then he turned around and walked away, felling better than he had in months.
Nathan seemed to realize a little of what the Sherriff had actually gone through for him. Nathan leaned over suddenly, not even caring that his daughter was standing right there and kissed Jack. This one wasn't hard or fast, it was slow and tender, a thank you, for not giving up, for believing in him.
Nathan pulled back before he got too carried away and realized that everyone was staring again. "Huh." Zoe said, breaking the silence. "I totally knew that's why you took it so hard." She smiled at her dad and Jack laughed to cover up his embarrassment.
"Right, so what are you doing home?" He asked. "It's not a vacation is it?" He asked. "She's in college now. MIT." Jack told Nathan proudly. "Full scholarship."
"Wow Zoe that's impressive." Nathan smiled at her and she shrugged, blushing.
"Yeah so why are you here?" Jack asked again.
"Well it's the anniversary." She shot a look at Nathan. "I didn't want you to be alone." She smiled slightly. "I see now that's not going to be a problem."
"No." Jack shook his head.
"Good, well, I'm gonna go visit a few people, carry on or whatever and maybe I'll stay over at Jo's tonight, let you have the house to yourself. You know to catch up or whatever." Zoe shrugged walking towards the door. She stopped and turned around looking at Nathan intently for a minute. "I'm glad you're back."
"Thanks Zoe." Nathan smiled at her and nodded as she left the building.
"About that." Henry sat down. "I really don't understand what's going on here and I usually understand everything that's going on."
"It's killing you isn't it?" Carter smirked, liking the feeling of being the one with all the knowledge for once.
"Oh yeah." Henry nodded.
So Jack explained, to the best of his ability, how Nathan got sped up along with the particle and then subsequently stuck in time, and then how the Doctor appeared and basically slowed him down. "There's one thing I'm still a little unclear on." Jack turned to the Doctor.
"Just one?" Nathan asked.
Jack ignored him and carried on. "What did you mean Nathan told you what happened? You said he kept bumping into you?"
"Oh right." The Doctor nodded. "Well we were just traveling around you know, find new places see knew things, but everywhere we went we saw this sort of blur, out of the corner of our eyes, you know just in passing. It really started to bug me because I had no clue what it was and there is very little that I don't know about."
"Modest this one huh?" Donna scoffed at him.
"So I studied it, there was almost a pattern to it, when it appeared, where it appeared so I set a trap, anticipating it's next appearance." He sipped his milkshake. "Imagine my surprise when I find I've trapped a person."
"I was just grateful that someone could finally see me, could finally hear me." Nathan said. "I'd been wandering around for days or even months, I didn't know, but everything was always moving too slowly. I explained what happened, figuring a man who knew enough to trap me would know what I was talking about."
"And just his luck I did." The Doctor smiled. "So I worked out a plan, headed off to Global and…"
"Bob's your Uncle." Jack said nodding.
"Exactly."
"Did you ever figure out where that came from?" Jack asked.
"No, it's still on the list." He shook his head sadly. "But we did figure out that whole Roanoke thing." The Doctor smiled at Jack. "Not nearly as interesting as I was hoping it would be." He frowned into his quickly disappearing milkshake."
"Yeah?" Jack asked, felling something like happiness, contentment settle over him.
"Not a single alien or time hole or anything." The Doctor sighed. "They just ran out of food, moved to another place, just five miles down the road mind you, you'd think someone would have been able to figure all that out by now. I mean honestly did no one even bother to go to the next town over and ask. Was a simple, "Terribly sorry we seem to be missing a whole colony you haven't seen them perchance" been too hard? Took me less than two minutes to sort it all out then we were stuck with a bunch of Puritans who thought I was a witch."
"Almost burned us at the stake." Donna sighed as if this were an everyday thing. "Ruined my favorite boots at any rate, burned the soles clean off."
"Burned you at the stake?" Jack asked smiling.
The Doctor seemed to hear the interest in Jack's voice. "Yeah, that one was new to me, so I suppose the trip wasn't a total bust."
"And I got that quilt for my mom from one of the church ladies. It was handcrafted by a genuine pilgrim; no one else on her block will be able to say they've got one of those?" Donna shrugged.
Jack laughed at the absurdity of it all and when he looked at Nathan he could he was trying not to give in. It didn't last long and just as Nathan finally gave into the absurdity of the situation and started laughing along with Jack Fargo walked in Café Diam. "Sherriff, I finished up in the lab, I'll let Ms. Thorn know in the morning that she can…" He trailed off when he saw Nathan's smiling face, the ghost of his laughter still on his lips and Jack looked between the two of them and cringed. He knew he'd forgotten something, Fargo, he forgot to tell Fargo.
Fargo just stood and stared, partly because the man he was now truly convinced was gone for good, was sitting at the bar with the Sherriff and the Doctor and the Donna woman, having a milkshake, possibly banana, and partly because Fargo had never seen Dr. Stark laugh like that. Fargo had seen him chuckle at his own jokes, mostly aimed at Carter, he'd seen him laugh sarcastically, but never like this. It was entirely possible that the laughter was harder for Fargo to process than the fact that Nathan Stark was back from the Dead and it took a whole five minutes of staring to finally snap him out of his stupor. He ran to the older man and threw his arms around him.
Nathan's immediate instinct would have been to shove Fargo away but he let him have his moment. It was the second time in two hours he'd been hugged like this and he wasn't really used to it but Fargo was the only one, besides Jack who believed enough to help, to make sure that Nathan would come back so he let him have this moment. "When did, how did…"
"I forgot to factor in the rotation of the earth." The Doctor said shaking his empty cup at Vincent who set to work on a fresh milkshake. "He was moving not only in time but also in space, I was only off by a few miles." He said indignantly to Fargo as if it was his fault in the first place.
"It worked?" Fargo looked at Jack who nodded at him. "Who's going to tell Allison?" Fargo asked.
Everyone went silent, no one wanting to volunteer for that particular job, no one looking at Nathan either. "What?" He asked Jack concerned. "She's ok right? Kevin's ok?"
"She's great, Kevin's great." Jack reassured him quickly. "It's just, I'm sorry Stark, she's engaged."
"Engaged?" Nathan asked.
"To a doctor from section 12. Doctor Farber." Jack said. "They've been seeing each other for a while now, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Jack hated this part of his job, the bad news part.
"No, that's fine." Nathan shook his head. "Really that's fine, I'm happy that's she's happy, I'm happy that Kevin's happy."
"They are." Jack assured him.
"Funny, I always thought it would have been you." Nathan chuckled.
"Well if that kiss wasn't enough indication, it was never Allie for me Nathan." Jack smiled. "Are you ok really?"
"Well if the way I kissed you back wasn't enough indication, it was never really Allie for me either." Jack still didn't look convinced. "Jack, she moved on, unlike some people." Nathan rolled his eyes.
"Hey!" Jack snapped. "If I had moved on you wouldn't be here right now."
"True." Nathan agreed, sighing as if it was a very hard thing for him to do. "And don't think I'm not grateful, really."
"Thanks." Jack said quietly.
"What kiss?" Fargo piped up suddenly. "There was a kiss. You two…with the kissing…" Fargo mumbled staring at some point over Nathan's shoulder.
"Fargo." Jack waved a hand in front of his unseeing eyes.
"But…kissing…" Fargo sputtered out a word every few seconds but showed no recognition of anyone else.
"I think…" Jack looked from Fargo to Nathan. "I think we broke him."
"He'll reset." Nathan waved it off as if it happened a lot.
"He's not a computer Nathan." Jack snapped at him.
"He's done this before." Nathan shrugged. "He mumbles to himself for a few minutes and once he's processed whatever it is he's seen or heard, he comes back to normal as if the whole thing never happened."
"He's done this before?" Jack asked wearily. "You've seen it." Nathan nodded. "Huh." Carter watched Fargo for a few minutes and then turned back to the counter. "He does have a point though, who's going to tell Allison? Who's going to tell Thorn?"
"Do we have to tell anyone?" Nathan groaned.
"You appeared out of thin air in the middle of Café Diam, two years after you supposedly died, she's gonna find out." Jack pointed out.
"Not if we all pink swear not to say anything." Nathan joked.
Jack was frozen for a moment by the sheer ludicrousness of Nathan using the phrase "pinky swear" but pressed on. "We've got to explain to her what happened, what really happened because if she hears about you're miraculous resurrection from someone else who doesn't have all the facts, you know the first thing she'll want to do is strap you to a table in section 5 and do experiments on you."
"First of all." Nathan smiled. "A person cannot resurrect if they never died. Secondly, Section 19 is where we do all the human experimentation." Jack glared at Nathan. "Fine." He rolled his eyes and stood up grabbing Jack's arm. "We'll go to Global and tell Allison and Eva what happened, together, so I can go home at some point today." As Jack started to protest Nathan held up a hand. "You played you're part in this whole thing and you've had two more years experience with her than I have."
"But…" Jack tried to pull his arm away.
"Look, the sooner we get this over with the sooner I can go home, and maybe take a shower and maybe we can continue what you started after you punched me." Nathan said and Jack seemed to catch up with his reasoning.
"Ok, but…"
"No." Nathan said. "Be a man Carter, it's not like they're gonna hurt you for bringing me back, you're not scared of two woman are you?"
Jack scoffed then stopped at the look Jo was giving him. "It's not about that if you would let me finish a sentence." Jack said tugging his arm away and Nathan nodded for him to go on. "I was just trying to tell you that, you kind of sort of don't have a home anymore. They assigned it to someone else."
"Oh." Nathan said. "Well I guess, I can just…"
"You'll come back to the bunker." Jack said as if that was obvious. Nathan looked up at him. I've got most of your stuff there anyway. Your clothes and your work. I packed it up for you when they reassigned the house. I knew you'd want it when you got back." He smiled. "Everyone said I was crazy."
"They really need to learn to trust you more." Nathan smiled at the man who had boxed up his life and kept it safe for him for two years, simply because he had such unnerving faith in Nathan to come back.
Jack scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Says the man who wouldn't believe me about the time loop until I sang the equation for bending the space time continuum to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Jack told him.
Nathan just smiled and took Jack's arm again headed to the door. "Do I still have my car?"
"Oh." Jack said. "About that…"
As they were walking out of Café Diam and Jack was trying to explain to Stark how his car was the unfortunate victim one of the many GD experiments gone horribly wrong over the past two years, Fargo seemed to snap out of his stupor. "Hey, are those banana milkshakes?" He asked happily.
"Are there any other kind?" The Doctor replied.