In From the Cold
Summary: Jack finally catches up with the Doctor, and releases some pent-up anger. The result is not what he expected – but perhaps it should have been. Post-Runaway Bride, pre-Torchwood.
-DW-
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." – Robert Frost
-DW-
It took Jack nine months to catch up with the Doctor. That was nothing, next to the century (and then some) that he had spent waiting for their personal time-lines to coincide, but the near-miss at Canary Warf and then the second one on Christmas had ignited a new fervor in his search for the Time Lord. Finally, finally, he received a report of a mysterious blue police box on a London street corner – and he was in town.
He screeched to a stop at the address he had been given, his heart racing as he scrambled out of the SUV, barely pausing to slam the door shut behind him. Oh god, if he had gotten away this time . . . .
The TARDIS was still there.
Jack strode up to the time-ship and pounded on the door, not giving himself time to hesitate. "Doctor!" he yelled, not caring how he looked. "Doctor, open up!"
No response.
"You can't hide in there forever!" Actually, he probably could, but that was beside the point. And there was still no answer.
Right. So either the Doctor really was in the TARDIS, hiding until Jack gave up and went away, or he had popped out to save the world or commit genocide or eat chips or whatever the hell he got up to these days. The sensible thing would be to stay here and wait for him to either emerge or return. Jack, however, was not feeling very sensible. He was feeling angry and betrayed and impatient, and he thought that he had an idea where the Doctor was.
The Canary Warf Memorial was nearby.
When he rounded the corner, the first thing he saw was the enormous slab of marble that stood as a gravestone to thousands of dead who could never be buried. The second thing he saw was a sharp brown figure standing in front of it, head bowed and shoulders hunched. His breath caught in his throat, and his heart seemed to stutter in its frantic rhythm. The long coat, the spiky brown hair, the tall, skinny frame . . . oh, god, it was really him.
"Doctor," he said. It was less of challenge than he meant it to be, but his voice was strong and steady.
The Doctor's back snapped straight, but he did not make any other move. Jack stopped a few meters away from him.
"You left me," he stated, and did not wait for a response before continuing, pouring out a hundred and thirty years' worth of resentment. "Do you know how long I waited for you? Three months! Three months on that godforsaken Game Station, and when I finally figure out that you're not coming back and use my vortex manipulator to come back here and find you, where do I end up? Cardiff, 1869! I lived through the whole twentieth century waiting for you – all of it, because apparently, I can't die.
"But I think you know that already; don't you, Doctor?" he sneered at the motionless back, scorn dripping from every syllable. "The almighty Doctor doesn't miss a trick, does he? That's why you're here. You always know exactly how many deaths you've caused."
The shoulders twitched at that, just once. The lack of reaction was beginning to grate at Jack's nerves. He was not sure what he had been expecting – anger, maybe, that he dared question the infallible Doctor, or perhaps indifference from the ever-superior Time Lord – but this silence was not it. He was just behind the Doctor in three strides.
"Turn around," he demanded harshly.
The Doctor complied silently. His face, completely new to Jack and yet somehow familiar, was utterly blank, eyes fixed somewhere above Jack's left ear.
"Look at me," snarled Jack, seizing him by his bony shoulders and shaking him roughly.
The Doctor did.
Jack felt every last drop of anger drain out of him as he stared into pair of bottomless brown eyes. Guilt pain sorrow self-loathing guilt loss loneliness guilt –
Jack had forgotten. He had spent so long alternately glorifying and demonizing the Doctor, dwelling on the laughter and the honor and the compassion, or on the anger and the arrogance and the callousness, that he had forgotten the man. He had forgotten that the Doctor was, fundamentally, broken.
He remembered, now. The face inches from his own was pale and drawn. The body beneath the pinstriped suit was impossibly, unhealthily thin. The shoulders gripped in his strong hands were trembling.
"I'm sorry," said the Doctor, voice thick and eyes anguished. "I'm so sorry, Jack. I couldn't – I wasn't–"
Jack sighed and let go of his shoulders, pulling the Doctor into a one-armed hug.
"Yeah, Doc," he murmured into his old friend's hair (new hair, to go with the new face that was pressed into his neck, the new body that shook as he held it). "I figured it was something like that. C'mon."
The Doctor allowed himself to be led over to a bench, where he explained haltingly, brokenly why Jack was the way he was – and why Rose Tyler was on the list of the dead. He did not cry, though his voice shook in places. Finally, when his tale was finished, he looked up from his clasped hands and met Jack's eyes again.
"You should hate me," he said flatly, resignedly, as if he was agreeing, as if he was granting consent for Jack to pile more guilt onto his too-thin shoulders. He shifted as if to stand, to leave Jack to his life and to get on with his, running and running and running until he bent and buckled and broke under his load.
Jack caught his arm.
"Maybe," Jack stated when the Time Lord shot him a puzzled, wary glance. "Maybe I should. But I think you've got that covered for both of us, don't you?"
The Doctor glanced away, once more avoiding his eyes, and Jack knew. He knew that however much hatred and betrayal and resentment he had harbored for this man over the decades, he would never be able to turn away when he was actually there in front of him, looking exhausted and regretful and defeated. As much as Jack, in his darker moments, liked to think himself bruised and battered and damaged by his century and a half of love and life and loss, he could not hold a candle to the shattered mess of flames and darkness and jagged edges that was the Doctor.
What he could do was offer a little bit of the forgiveness that the Doctor would never grant himself, and try his very best to prevent complete self-destruction. And he could start right now.
"C'mon, Doc," he said, in a fairly good approximation of his usual good-natured tone. "I still haven't bought you that drink."