Quid Pro Quo, by Linker27
Disclaimer: The characters mentioned in this story are in no way my own. All rights go to BBC (however much I might wish otherwise).
A/N: Minor Spoilers for Torchwood (Mostly 2.12), and some major spoilers for Doctor Who S1-S3. It's old enough that my bet is it's fair game, but don't say I didn't warn you.
It was a slow day. Tosh and Suzie were both busy with their own projects, and based on the scowl Owen had been wearing all week, Jack could be sure he wouldn't be coming back from lunch, and when he arrived in the morning, he'd have a hell of a headache. He yawned, abandoning his desk full of admin in search of some coffee. The batch was just about brewed when he heard it. The raucous grinding of metal: the sound of the universe. He ran.
He was halfway across the Plass when he saw the TARDIS, materialised straight on top of the rift. He'd been right; the ship would home in on the energy source. His TARDIS key burned against his palm as he fumbled for the lock – hopefully, the old girl'd still recognise him as a friend and open for him: he'd heard of locks that recognised intruders and shut down, and he had no desire to do that to either himself or the TARDIS.
Turning the lock, he could have screamed with rage. He couldn't get in; the key fit and turned, but the door still wouldn't open. The Doctor had actually locked him out. He sighed, leaning against the gently trembling wood of the police box, and closed his eyes. He'd prayed against hope, of course, but the reality hurt none the less.
He was just about to walk away and let the Doctor cling to his pettiness until the next time their paths crossed – all the while refusing to consider the possibility that the Doctor could ensure that never happened – when the sound of a lock clicking open reverberated through the wood beneath his cheek. He pushed, and the door opened with a murmur of protest. It sounded like homecoming.
He stepped into the ship, ready to box the bastard's big ears. Standing behind the console near the scanner, however, with his arms crossed and his eyes hard and cruel stood a stranger. He stopped and stared. Part of him, a rather large part if he was being honest, still expected to see his Doctor, despite what he'd learned from various reports through the years. He couldn't quite line up the old self with the new form.
"Jack." The statement came crisp and cold as the man looked. "Hardly the proper way to say hello, is it, staring?" There was an unusual emphasis on his name, as if even dignifying him with that much was laughable. It hurt.
Using the tone he reserved for murderers and mutineers, he said the first thing that came to mind. "You abandoned me."
"Did I? Sorry 'bout that."
"Why'd you do it, Doctor? Just tell me that."
The stranger grinned, leaping around the console towards the door. "I'm so sorry, but I've got better things to do than stick around and chat: I'm late for a meeting with all sorts of important people."
Jack felt the cool brush of air as the bastard breezed past towards the doors, noting with a wince that he went out of his way to avoid actual contact. Was this how it was to be, then? Nearly a century and a half he'd waited for the right Doctor, one whom he could ask his questions of, and now that he finally had that chance, the Time Lord had the gall to ignore him!
Just before he opened the door, Jack made his decision. He needed answers. If the Doctor didn't care, then it didn't particularly matter how kindly he went about getting them. It's not like there was any chance of a second trip with the Doctor. He'd get his fix, and then it'd be back to the real world, or whatever sort of world Torchwood qualified as.
He drew his gun as he darted ahead of the Doctor. Closing his eyes and thinking a silent apology, he aimed the barrel at his old friend. "Your appointment, Doctor, can wait. I've been in line longer than they have anyway. If this is my only chance, then so be it. But I won't let you leave until I get my answers."
The Doctor looked bored, watching Jack's face disinterestedly. "Fine. I've been planning a sort of extended stay on Earth, anyways. There are certain contacts that need to be established, certain intelligence that must be gathered." He walked back to the console, and closed the doors before turning back to Jack. "You help me get that, and I'll tell you what you want to know. Do we have a deal, Captain?"
Jack clenched his teeth, seething. He couldn't say no – what if this really was his only chance? – but the thought of agreeing to such open terms galled him. "An answer for each favour and you don't leave my sight. I'm not letting you run away again."
"We'll see, Captain. We'll see."
For a long time, they didn't talk. Whatever matters the Doctor needed resolved seemed to have faded from his mind, and the only pressing issue Jack faced was making sure he didn't give into the urge to run screaming from the TARDIS. Trust the Doctor to know exactly how to make even the most wonderful place in the universe awkward. He just stood there, tapping his fingers on the console in a quiet, unending rhythm, as his eyes bored into Jack's in silence.
He realised that Rose wasn't there, or if she was she was hidden away in the depths of the TARDIS. He hoped she wasn't; he didn't want her to see this side of the Doctor. He wondered when she'd left: if she'd had the choice denied to him. He couldn't quite bring himself to ask, not yet.
Instead, he walked slowly around the control room, basking in the Doctor's, and the TARDIS's presence. The ship seemed uneasy, somehow, but he dismissed it as his imagination. Time played tricks on the mind like that, turning shadows into monsters.
Eventually, the silence grew oppressive enough to drive Jack to speak. He wouldn't get answers yet; the Doctor's stony glare was enough to make him give up even considering the benefits of trying that one out. But telling answers was different than demanding them. And being back inside the TARDIS, so comforting and familiar, was more than enough to make him regret the years he'd spent hunting down aliens and collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the rift to protect the Earth.
"Doctor? There's something I haven't told you. I've been working for Torchwood." There was no reply, and Jack hadn't been expecting one, just as long as he was listening. "I don't know if you've heard much about them – there've been no direct encounters with you on record since the Institute's founding in 1879. Did you honestly save the Queen from a werewolf? And the mistletoe? Bet that one's worth a few laughs. Anyhow, Torchwood's original purpose was to protect and arm the British Isles against alien threats, yourself key among them. It was Torchwood's weaponry that destroyed the spaceship on Christmas. I know you can't possibly approve, and I'm sorry, but I'm trying to change it, if that helps anything. Torchwood Cardiff is under my command, and I'm changing them, I really am."
He waited. And waited. The Doctor's expression hadn't slipped once during his confession, and he feared the worst. He was going to get tossed out of the TARDIS without another word, and his only hope for a cure was going to vanish into the stars forever. When the Doctor spoke, though, his words weren't of disgust or rage. "That's the first thing you can do for me. I want full access to your datafiles. Full access, mind you, so no snooping about telling me what I shouldn't interfere with."
He was going to say no. He really was. Loyalty to the Doctor aside, he had a responsibility at Torchwood. His team trusted him, London and Glasgow trusted him. He couldn't betray that, not when he knew all too well what it felt like to be betrayed. But then he looked at the Doctor, cold and impassive. He only had one chance at this. Reluctantly, feeling with every hairsbreadth of motion the weight of thirty pieces of silver, he nodded. "I'll take you to the Hub tonight."Jack and the Doctor stayed in the TARDIS through the afternoon: there was a very real possibility that some of his team would be in late, but the risk of bringing 'Enemy of the Crown Number One' onto base was significantly less during the night. He'd have to remember to properly wipe the security footage, but Tosh only reviewed the films when they had cause to be wary, so everything should be fine. He only hoped that everyone went home early. The sooner he got his answers and got out of this insane game of tit for tat, the better off he'd be. --
---
Tosh's computers were running some program or other, but her laptop was gone – either the job would run until morning, or she'd connect remotely to access the results. Suzie's workstation was organised and neat: a sure sign that she'd left hours ago. Jack didn't even bother to peek into the autopsy bay; Owen didn't come back to work when he was in a mood, not when there were girls to be had and scotch to be drunk. The Hub was empty.
It felt so wrong, bringing the Doctor into the Torchwood base. It seemed much too close to bringing a lamb to the slaughter, whether his team were there or not. The trouble he'd be in if London found out about this. Still. There was work to be done, and Jack set his jaw, and walked over to the nearest computer terminal. Typing in the access code, he passed the chair to the Doctor, who sat down with a flourish and got to work.
The Doctor browsed through recent Torchwood missions, first, scanning for anything big. He paused at the files of the Sycorax invasion, frowning as he read through the cross-referenced UNIT report, lingering on the details of Torchwood's retaliation and his own revenge against Harriet Jones. Jack shuffled his feet, feeling more ashamed than he had in decades. But the Doctor still didn't comment on his involvement, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He supposed the Doctor was waiting on that scolding, and, selfishly, hoped it was a long ways off.
Instead, the Doctor turned away from Torchwood entirely. He followed Harriet Jones' files into the government records, where a second access code was required. The Doctor looked at Jack expectantly, eyebrow raised. He took a step forward, and then stopped. What was he doing? Standing calmly by, handing out passcodes to the one man brilliant and brash enough to dismantle the UN in seconds, if he thought that they were 'going about things the wrong way'? He didn't even know why the Doctor was there. Torchwood hadn't picked up anything unusual, and yet the moment the TARDIS touched down, the Doctor was springing into action. Why the hell was he doing this?
"I can't, Doctor. I just- I trust you, but I need to know what you're doing, what this information is for."
"An answer each favour." The Doctor nodded his head sagely. "I'll tell you, if you want."
Jack knew what he meant without needing to hear it straight. Eventually, the favours Jack could grant would run out, and the Doctor would leave, whether or not Jack was willing to let him. Lord knew he'd follow the Doctor to the end of the universe, but the Time Lord was notoriously good at slipping away. He only had a little while until the Doctor was gone, maybe for good, and he'd waited so long – lived so long – already.
And he trusted the Doctor. There had been a time when he hadn't: when the bitter rage of abandonment still stung, and later, when he realised that he couldn't stay dead and knew that it had something to do with the first time he'd died and woken up, surrounded by dust, and heard the sound of the TARDIS echoing away into the silence.
In both circumstances, he tried for months to convince himself that the Doctor hadn't meant to abandon him, hadn't meant to leave him alone and clueless. For a while, it even worked. But the echoing memory of their last conversation and the fading whirl of the TARDIS persisted until the old arguments stopped working. "Do you see, Jack? That's the decision I've got to make, for every living thing." He'd told the Doctor that Rose was safe, and that he trusted him. That he'd die for him.
And he did.
But then he woke up. "Die as a human or live as a Dalek." He lived. And what the hell did that make him? Not human, not anymore. He'd trusted the Doctor's decision: better to die than lose that humanity. When that was gone – well, it was no wonder the Doctor left him behind.
The pain dulled eventually, hidden beneath other betrayals and other deaths. But the look in the Doctor's – his Doctor's – eyes when he asked that question remained. "What would you do?" And Jack had answered with the truth, because that's what the Doctor needed, the truth. He'd die. He'd rather die.
And that's why he needed the Doctor now. It didn't even matter if he was left behind again, as long as the Doctor fixed him.
"An answer a favour. What happened to Rose?"
He'd meant to say 'me'. Rose didn't matter; she'd been sent home during the battle, he knew that. He was the one with lingering side-effects from the Dalek Fleet's attack. She had been with the Doctor at Christmas, bright and vibrant as ever, if perhaps a bit frazzled. But at the same time, she wasn't there now. Something had happened between then and Christmas – it had been a few days for him, but for the Doctor and Rose, it could have been years. And it was Rose.
Had it been anyone but her, and he wouldn't have bothered asking. He'd learned enough from the files Torchwood kept on the Doctor that all of his companions left eventually, by choice or by circumstance. But she was special; he'd paused in the middle of saving the universe from the Daleks, just to make sure she got home safely. The Doctor wouldn't have done that for just anyone. Sure, he might have felt something when Lynda's screams blasted over the intercom, or when he died, himself, just a few meters away, but Rose was the one he treated as precious, the one he saved.
And now she wasn't there.
"What happened to Rose, Doctor?"
"She's gone." There was a sort of emptiness in his tone, as though he was speaking from rote. Jack wondered how many times he must have said it to before the misery faded away. "She's in a parallel world, living her life."
"You left her. Left her, in a different reality, alone? How could you?" For the first time since the conversation began, Jack looked at the Doctor. There was no emotion in the Doctor's eyes; he really didn't care. And it hurt. He had known where he stood with the Doctor. He was just a tag-along, a guest. It had made it easier, somehow, to bear: knowing that he had never been important, never considered a true companion to the Doctor. Knowing that even if the Doctor had no qualms sending him to die, he protected the people who mattered. For one horrible second, that illusion shattered, and he almost agreed with the old regime's opinion of the Time Lord. The Doctor was a stranger, and he was so damn cold. "Tell me you're going back for her."
It was a moment before he was able to respond, but his voice was still even when he did speak. "She's trapped there. The walls have closed."
All of Jack's anger faded away. "I'm so sorry."
An awkward silence descended upon the Hub. Keeping his eyes trained on the ground, Jack reached past the Doctor, and typed in the prompted code. His hands shook as he retracted them, and he found he couldn't bear standing idly by. He hurried to his desk for something – anything – to do, and returned to watch over the Doctor with an armful of admin. That way, he could at least pretend he wasn't mooning.
Nearly the entire stack was follow-up for the Christmas Day trouble. Torchwood hadn't instigated measures monitoring all space research in the past, but after the bungling up of the Guinevere One Probe, they really had no choice. Well, Torchwood Three had no choice: London had, and their decision was to foist all the work off on the other branches while they fiddled about with their tiny rift in the sky. The subsequent influx of mandated reports from ESA and the British National Space Centre threatened to bury the whole of South Wales in paperwork. Not only did they have to look into all current projects, but also an entire databank of old records had to be established, complete with up-to-date statuses and readings from all of them.
While the Doctor read up on the political climate in Whitehall, Jack slowly worked his way through deep space probes and mobile satellites, recording data and organising the reports. After cataloguing every minor anomaly discovered on the Mars Express Orbiter in the past two years, he reached for the next file with a yawn. It was going to be a long night.
The file was light – surprisingly so – and when Jack saw the heading he knew why. Zircon. Britain's original spy satellite, abandoned due to the cost and the loss of face that threatened the Thatcher administration when an over-curious reporter started snooping. It never made it off the ground, so there was nothing at all to catalogue. He stood and threw the worthless report on the desk next to the Doctor. "I need coffee. Want any?" He asked, already walking towards the machine. An unenthused "No, thank you," came in answer, and, after dumping out the cold mug he'd abandoned that afternoon – it felt like weeks ago – he set to work brewing another cup's worth of the precious liquid.
When the coffee was brewed, he stood, inhaling the scent, before slowly turning to get back to work. The Doctor had paused in his research, and was instead flipping through the Zircon file, frowning contemplatively. "You humans. Utterly useless, aren't you? Britain couldn't build proper satellites if they tried."
"Twenty-first century, Doctor. They're getting there – it won't be long now."
"If you see any open projects in that stack, ones that'll never fly, let me see them."
Jack looked at the Doctor, curious. "Do I even want to know what you're planning?"
The Doctor grinned.
---
Jack had gone and retrieved two more armfuls of reports, and was nearly ready for another trip to his office by the time the Doctor brought up the TARDIS. "I need a place to store her, just for a little while. It wouldn't do to make the world think the Doctor's in." He said his own name with a self-deprecating tone, and Jack frowned at him.
"There's at least one storage room big enough in the basement that isn't monitored by the internal CCTV. You'd have to materialise down there, though."
"Perfect." The Doctor stood at once, logging out of the Torchwood system, and headed for the lift.
"Oh, no!" Jack followed on his heels, knocking over the careful stacks of paper in his haste. "I've seen you control that ship, remember? You're just as likely to end up in the 51st century as the Hub. And that's if you…" Shaking his head ruefully, he quickly logged into the CCTV, and deleted the last few hours from the system.
"I'm hardly going to get lost." The Doctor frowned, insulted, but then seemed to come to a realisation and shake it off. "Though, I couldn't end up that far out if I tried. Are you coming up, Captain?"
Jack was away from the computer and on the lift in seconds, and with a gentle shift in pressure, they began to rise towards the street level. "Storing your TARDIS counts a favour, Doctor." At his nod, Jack continued. "On the Game Station, what happened to me?" He was careful not to say that he remembered dying. The more vague his questions were, the greater chance there was that the Doctor would say more than necessary – the greater chance he might tell Jack the real answers that he wanted to hear. There hadn't been any comments so far, and he was hopeful as the two walked across the Plass in the pre-dawn light.
"Rose." His voice took on the same monotony with which he'd answered the first question. "She came back, opened the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the Vortex."
Jack blinked confusedly. "I don't understand."
A desperate, almost reverent awe overtook the Doctor. "If a Time Lord had that sort of power, he could become God – the lord and master of all." His voice, which had fallen to a whisper, grew hard again. "Rose was human."
"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Doctor." They had nearly reached the TARDIS, but the words gave Jack pause. The Time Lord continued on a few steps before stopping. He didn't turn back.
"All you humans have this extraordinary capacity to destroy. Even in reviving you, she did harm. Botched the job, brought you back forever."
Damn. There was his answer, in the word 'revive'. A nice euphemism for the harsh, violent tug of energy that wrenched him back to life after each passing. The Doctor knew he was immortal. "How long have you known?" He had to ask, had to see if the Doctor would tell him. If there was a chance of getting his answers sooner rather than later, he'd take it in a heartbeat. But no such luck.
The Doctor merely continued on his way, unlocking the TARDIS and stepping inside. Jack followed, noting how the frame seemed to shudder as he passed the threshold. He wondered why – he'd met thousands who shivered in delight as his mere presence, of course, but the Time Lord's ship seemed as though she was distraught, not pleased. The Doctor had hurried to the console, and was already setting coordinates, jumping from one dial to the next in a sort of mad dance. Uncertain of whether help would be appreciated, Jack stood away from the controls. He was moving to lean against one of the branching pillars when the Doctor spoke.
"I want you off my ship, Jack." The coordinates were apparently set and ready, for the Doctor's whole attention had turned to the immortal. "You don't belong here."
Jack flinched back at the calm words. Clenching his fists, he choked out a reply. "You think I'm going to let you leave, just like that?"
"I think you have no choice, Captain." He crossed his arms, and Jack recalled his first glimpse of this strange new Doctor, standing cold and impartial behind the safety of the TARDIS controls. "The decision is, quite frankly, out of your hands. The TARDIS won't fly with you on board."
The blunt statement hit him like a bullet. He thought it was just a threat – hoped it was just a threat. But the wording, 'The TARDIS won't fly.' It was wrong. Something was horribly wrong. And it was his fault, somehow. "What do you mean, won't fly?"
"You're not meant to exist. A constant in time: that's supposed to be impossible. It should be impossible. Can't you feel it? There! That tremor. She can't bear you, Jack."
The Doctor wasn't lying. He didn't have to. He could feel the TARDIS's discomfort, her unease. Even if it had been a lie, though, it didn't matter. If there was even a chance that her agitation was because of him, because of what he was, well, he could never hurt the TARDIS willingly. He started backing away, towards the door, careful not to touch the machinery or the walls, though there was little he could do to avoid the grate flooring. He couldn't help but linger for a moment, though, just inside the ship. "Is it my fault, Doctor?"
The Doctor grinned, eyes bright and wide and almost crazed. "I don't know. Is it?" He bit off the words, mouth twisting around each sound. Jack flinched, and he laughed. The sound echoed in the empty space, and Jack ran.
---
He didn't go back to the Hub. There was no point; there wasn't anything there but silence. He couldn't go to the pub, they'd all be closed, and the notion sounded unfulfilling anyway. He didn't want to get drunk or get laid. So he lingered in the Plass. There wasn't really anything left. That was his life. Torchwood, pubs, and waiting. And look what it had all brought him.
He remembered when he'd first run into Torchwood, back when he was still looking around every corner, waiting for the Doctor to show up. They quoted him, reiterated things he'd said while he searched. "You wait 'til I see the Doctor. First I'm gonna kiss him, then I'm gonna kill him." Even a hundred years later, he was still just as pathetic, just as hopeless.
He'd run for the TARDIS, without even a lick of proof that it was his Doctor, and not an older incarnation, nearly started weeping on the locked doors, and drew a gun on his old friend the moment things stopped looking good. Of course, even that didn't help for long, and now the Doctor was gone, and he still had so many things left to say. Worst bit was, he had no one to blame but himself.
He'd spent a century trying to foist all the blame off on the Doctor, but that only led him running circles: he couldn't hate the Doctor, no matter what he may have done. Not only because he was the only one who could possibly fix him, but also because he was the Doctor. He'd never even considered that Rose was involved in the whole debacle, but he couldn't hate her for the same reasons. And that left only him; there was no one else left to pass the responsibility to. He was the only one alive, in the end of it all, standing ankle-deep in Dalek dust, alone in the wrong time.
The only reason that he needed the Doctor to sweep in and rescue him was because he'd somehow managed to cheat Death. Whether or not Rose did it, or he did, or it was some freak accident, he wasn't supposed to be there. And ultimately, the blame lay with him. If he hadn't been in 1941, if he hadn't let those nanogenes loose, if he hadn't charmed Rose and won his Doctor's grudging respect, he wouldn't have been at the Game Station to get fucked up.
He wished he knew how to put it right, though. Maybe, if he could do that, the Doctor would forgive him. Every attempt he'd made, though – every death – had failed.
Dying, waiting, working, enduring. Those first few decades on earth, he'd figured the whole thing was only temporary. It was just a bit of an adventure, while the time passed. "When the Doctor turns up, it'll all be put right." He'd been so trusting, so faithful in the miracle man who didn't hesitate to send him off to face death by Dalek. There hadn't been much choice, but even so. Caring about his fate would have been nice.
As if the Doctor cared at all. He let himself believe the Doctor would save him, clinging to a childish hope –"He will be able to fix me." – and it led him nowhere. Time passed, and people came and went and he was still there, goddamn it, waiting, and the Doctor never came to rescue him.
Torchwood had made it a little easier. They chased him to the augur whose cards gave him a date, as far off as it seemed at the time. They gave him purpose, and even a little bit of that glory he'd first felt travelling with the Doctor and knowing that he was making a difference for humanity. And then, just five years past the rough date he'd received so long ago, the Doctor came. But there was no welcome reception planned, no apology or warmth waiting for him inside the TARDIS. He refused to acknowledge the voice in his mind, the one who asked 'Why would there be?' in a voice remarkably similar to the cruelty of the new Doctor's.
---
After morning came, and the gentle tide of people hurrying about flooded into the Plass, he left. He felt a twinge of guilt as he passed the lift, knowing that he ought to go to the Hub, and be there when his team showed up. No one was watching the rift monitor, for one. And while his team trusted him to not leave the city undefended for long, if he wasn't there when Tosh arrived – always the first in the doors, Toshiko, most likely because there was nothing else but the job – then they'd worry, and ask questions, and grumble about having had to appoint someone to watch the Rift during the night. He didn't quite care enough to bother, though, and continued on his way.
He wandered the city, staying away from crowded centres and looking for something to distract him. He didn't find it, but the walking was something. He had considered finding a roof with a good view, but the roof-top hours had always been for watching, and there was nothing to watch for, anymore.
So instead, he kept to the streets. He walked for a long time, pausing now and again to recall how things used to be. Eventually, his path led him back to the Plass. He stopped outside the pier restaurant where the Doctor, Rose, Mickey, and he had gone to eat, back when Cardiff was just a pit stop for him, too. In linear terms, it was only a few months back. He considered ordering something, a drink maybe, just for the nostalgia. He didn't. Instead, he went to the small Chinese takeaway that frequently received Torchwood's patronage, and when he had finished off an order of fried rice, he continued walking.
He returned to the Hub in the early evening, when he felt calm enough to deal with his team's questions. They knew him well enough to know that he vanished, now and again, but he was always bombarded with queries when he returned. Hopefully, they would understand that he really didn't want to talk, this time, and leave him be. He was too tired to joke around the subject properly.
As he walked down the steps from the Tourist Centre, he winced at the remembrance of his paperwork. Suzie was going to kill him for leaving a mess on the floor. Stepping into the Hub, though, he was surprised by silence. He walked slowly into the main room, waiting for his team to pop out from behind their desks and shout 'Surprise!' There was nothing. Suzie's desk was uncluttered, and Tosh's laptop was missing. Miffed, he started moving towards the autopsy bay. If they had left the Hub unmanned – purposefully neglecting the fact that he had done the same thing, just the past night – then he was going to kill them, once he figured out where they hell they were.
"So the runaway finally decides to return?"
Jack spun around, reaching for his holster as he turned to find the source of the voice. Owen was sprawled out on the sofa behind Tosh's desk, half-buried under newspaper sections. "Where are the girls?" Jack asked.
Owen threw him a look – the 'don't-fuck-with-me' look that appeared much too often on his scowling face. "They're off doing girly things, chatting, squealing. Fuck am I supposed to know?! If they aren't completely screwed up from working this job, they'll be out celebrating. Lord knows they could do with some socialising."
"Celebrating?" There wasn't much cause, as far as Jack could tell, to be celebrating. No one had died in a good while, but no one had really lived, either. There weren't any births or weddings or anniversaries as far as he could recall, and well, none of them worked the sort of job where you were happy about it."What's there to celebrate?"
"I got saddled with Hub-duty, without wine or women, until you deign to finally show. And you don't even know what day of the month it is? It's the 31st, Jack. Happy fucking New Year. Now, if you don't mind, I'm off."
Jack frowned at Owen's back as he swept out of the Hub, letting rumpled news segments float to the ground.
He walked to the piles of reports scattered across the floor, and collected them up with a sigh. No point in sitting around on the hard cement, not without any reason to. Each step on the short walk to his office seemed to drag on forever. How pathetic was he, clinging to the past? He dumped the final pile on his desk with a flourish, watching the neatly separated stacks fall together, papers sliding across the already cluttered surface.
He watched celebrations lighting up the sky outside the Millennium Centre from the Hub's cameras. He had no desire to join the festivities: a bottle of rum was company enough. A little after the fireworks had died down, he decided. It was time he stopped waiting. The Doctor had come, and left, and there wasn't any point in hoping he'd come back – he wouldn't, not if he stayed as cold and distant as he had the day and a half they'd spent sitting in relative silence. The 21st century had come, but for him, nothing changed. He went back to work organising and uploading the ESA's reports. If there was nothing else to look forward to, he might as well do his job.
He wasn't sure when he realised that he was making an extra pile from the completed reports. There weren't too many of them, just a handful. They were the ones the Doctor had asked for: the ones that would never fly. He wondered why the Doctor had wanted them – why he'd wanted anything at all – the Torchwood files, the government reports... The Doctor was hardly the sort to keep up with the times. But who knows? Maybe that, too, had changed with his face.
The last thing he was expecting to find when he went down for another mug of coffee was the Doctor, back at the computer console, navigating through files on the Ministry of Defence's newest pet project – some prototype aircraft carrier or other. He was drumming his fingers on the edge of the keyboard and grinning like a loon.
"I thought you'd left." Jack winced as the words left him. There went his plan of maintaining even the illusion of dignity in the whole scenario.
"Extended stay, Jack. I thought I made that clear. Though, I won't stay here much longer. I spent all day confined in that storage closet. You've dreadful décor, has anyone told you that? And I've been too long already – I'm on a schedule, you know."
He didn't reply. What was there to say?
"Last thing I need from you, Jack, is an identity. Something respectable, Cambridge maybe. It doesn't need to be foolproof, just something that will look good."
He decided not to think about that 'last' yet. He could mope after it all was said and done. No point in mourning. "Alright. That's easy – we do it for victims of the rift and people we've retconned all the time."
"Retcon. There's a reference that surprised me. Your lot synthesised an amnesia pill?"
"I can't explain the chemistry of it: I'm rubbish with the details. Retcon, Protein B67, is the pride and joy of Torchwood's science department. Different doses will erase memories over increasing periods of time. It's not exact: there's no fine tuning, but it does the job."
A little less than an hour, and they were done. It wasn't the best life he'd made, but he was never as good at hacking security systems as Tosh. Most of the time, he hadn't needed to be. But the Doctor got his life. He had parents, a respectable enough sounding job title, a bank account tied into Torchwood funding, a degree from Cambridge, and a rugby legacy, for kicks. He wondered if the Doctor had ever even played rugby.
The Doctor started talking before Jack could figure out what to say. Last words had never been his good suit. "How long, you asked. I've known since the moment I left, Jack. How could I not? You're a freak. Even just being near you, I can sense it. The wrongness."
He thought it felt a bit like dying: he'd been stabbed through the heart before, but this was worse. This was more like being trampled, with every inch of him exploding into agony as the words laced their way through his chest, squeezing around his heart and lungs until the pain overtook everything.
When he could think again, he asked, slowly, as to hide the hitch in his breath. "If this was the last favour you needed fulfilled, I presume you won't be staying long?"
The Doctor's smile was answer enough. He knew how much it hurt, the bastard, and he stood there grinning, enjoying watching him squirm. "I've got all that I need. I'll be free of this filth by morning." The fact that the Doctor didn't need him was purposefully implied, and Jack could only hope that 'filth' referred to the disordered Hub. The longer he thought about it, the more he was sure it didn't.
"Okay." There seemed nothing else worth saying. There was no point in trying to cling to something that never existed – could never exist, if he was really so horrible. He'd grown used to being immortal, but he supposed 'getting used to it' wasn't an option for the Time Lord. If he would even be willing to try in the first place: if 'wrongness' wasn't just another excuse to get away. He tried not to figure out which it was.
Jack walked slowly to his office, glancing back every few steps. It seemed like the Doctor would do that: say 'by morning' and mean 'in a minute'. Always the sort to run. He had come back, like he said, but that didn't mean he'd stay for even a moment longer than he had to.
The first thing he saw when he stepped into the relative safety of his office was the Christmas Day backlog, and the pile of set-aside documents for the Doctor. He poured a glass of rum, and knocked it back before pouring another. Then, he picked up the files, and left his office.
He set them down beside the Doctor without a word. The Time Lord paused, and turned to look at him. He couldn't keep the man's gaze, and instead turned to survey the Hub. It really was filthy.
"No questions?" The Doctor didn't seem surprised; merely curious. As though he didn't know the thoughts lingering in Jack's mind. He'd planned it all out, ages before, but things had changed. He couldn't bring himself to ask the words on the tip of his tongue. He knew what the answer would be. He'd known for a long, long time, to be honest. A hundred and thirty seven years of waiting – he'd counted, every single day – and for most of it he'd known the truth, or prayed that he did.
If it was as simple as flipping a switch, the Doctor wouldn't have left him. If what had happened were reversible, he wouldn't have been left alone, amidst the dust. The Doctor would have fixed him and let him stay or set him down somewhere hospitable at the least. The alternative was too horrible to consider. In some sick, bitter way, it was better to be broken and despised for it than simply unworthy of the cure.
"No. No more questions."
But the Doctor answered him anyways. "I won't fix you Jack. That was your question, right? That's the reason you've been working at Torchwood, to watch for any hint that the TARDIS might show up with your knight in shining armour. And she will, one day. But not yet. Not a while yet."
He'd been right. It had been better to think that the Doctor couldn't fix him. Anything would have been better than that manic grin and the echoing words, 'I won't.' It was possible to fix him. The Doctor hadn't even skirted the topic, like Jack had expected him to. With his Doctor, bad news was harder to pull from the man than teeth. Not anymore, apparently. But even if he could be cured, the Doctor wouldn't do it.
And that hurt far worse than dying ever could. He felt like hurting the Doctor. Killing him. Let him die and live again, just to remind him how much it bloody hurt. He hoped it hurt, at least. It would be just his luck if the Doctor's regenerations were pleasant and pain-free.
Not that he could ever really do it, though. Because no matter how cruel the Doctor was, how cold, he was still the Doctor. And that meant he was more important than anything else in the whole of time and space. The universe needed the Doctor, same as he did. And the universe, at least, the Time Lord wouldn't leave behind.
"Just go, Doctor. Go back to your ship and your stars and your avoidance." Jack's voice was thick with sorrow. He must sound like a right idiot, mourning like a lovesick puppy. He couldn't quite bring himself to mind. Already his thoughts were upstairs in his office with a blissful bottle of forget.
"I'm not going anywhere, Jack. Not until I know that you can't jeopardise this." He waved his hand towards the computer screen, and the manila folders resting beside the keyboard.
Jack laughed. "Jeopardise? Are you mad? I don't know what you're up to, but I'd never..." But he couldn't say it. 'Never betray you.' The Time Lord didn't deserve that kind of loyalty, regardless of whether or not it was true. And if he thought about it, really thought, it almost seemed like there might be something big behind his favours and queries: something that Jack might just end up having a problem with.
He turned about the facts in his mind. He'd appeared out of the blue, cold as ice, talking about appointments and an extended stay, and satellites and pseudonyms. "What are you planning, Doctor? What's the common link?"
"There's no point in telling you anything, Captain. You can't be allowed to know. Not that I think you'd turn me in, or anything half so crass – not with your blind loyalty– but that doesn't change the truth of the matter, that your ignorance is necessary. Without that, well, we'd have another impossible thing among us, wouldn't we?"
"What do you mean?" Jack had a bad feeling. There was no way this could end well, not with a threat like that looming on the horizon.
"In short, I'm not supposed to be here. The less you know, the better, Captain Jack. It wouldn't do for you to put two and two together. I'd much prefer I didn't have to deal with the threat of a freak crying wolf in Cardiff."
The Doctor looked distracted; lips pursed in a frown and forehead wrinkled in concentration. He was drumming on the desk again, that same quiet pattern over and over. Jack slowly stood up, careful not to disturb his thinking too badly, and walked to his office.
It hurt, listening to the casual insults and knowing that they wouldn't stop, but there were more important things to consider. If the Doctor was in danger because he remembered their conversation, then he'd just have to forget. He grabbed the bottle of rum – nearly empty now, he had another secreted away somewhere, but he'd still have to restock soon – and, hesitantly, reached for the triangular box sitting innocently on his desk. He'd planned, from the moment the Doctor cursed him with the truth, to spend the evening with alcohol, the perfect remedy for the pain of memory. But in light of the Doctor's most recent revelation, it seemed he had no choice but to spend the night under the influence of a different sort of cure.
One last time that night, he returned to the central room of the Hub, a panacea in each hand. Placing the rum on the desk, he opened the other container, and shook out a single pill, staring at it as he flipped the small capsule over. That ought to cover it: a single forty-eight hour dose of Retcon. He told the Doctor as much. With his eyes still downcast, he missed the proud smirk which flittered across the Time Lord's face.
He unscrewed the rum singlehandedly, flipping the loosened cap away with his thumb. He didn't bother pouring a glass, instead clinging to the bottle by the neck.
Jack looked between the pill and the Doctor, and took a drink, for strength. When this was done, he'd be just as clueless as before; to protect the Doctor, he'd have to forfeit the things he'd learned, the answers he'd needed so badly to hear. A part of him rejoiced at the fact; the truth had brought him nothing but more agony. He'd spent so long waiting and it had all been for nothing, not because the Doctor couldn't fix him, but because he wouldn't. But if the memories were erased, he'd keep on hoping until he found the Doctor again, and the situation repeated. And he was so sick to death of waiting.
There was nothing for it, though. He'd give his life for the Doctor – he had – and a couple of days was nothing in comparison. Guiltily, he held close to the realisation that if he forgot the Doctor's coming, he'd only have his Doctor to remember – the Doctor who, despite having abandoned him, had once joked and laughed and flirted with him, and been his friend, so long ago. If he had to forget one of them, he was glad it was this new Doctor, and not his old one that he lost.
Before he could lose his nerve, he tossed the pill to the back of his throat, and chased it down with the last few swallows of rum. Quickly, before the drug could begin to take effect, he logged into the computer systems and deleted the internal CCTV for the night. He went back, and made sure the previous evening's footage had been deleted properly, as well. He'd been in a bit too much of a hurry to do a good job. With a sigh, he booted down the computer, spinning around to face the Doctor.
Nearly over, now. Just a few minutes, and then he'd wake up and everything would be different. He hoped the Doctor stayed safe; he'd hate for his sacrifice to be for naught.
He had so little time left. He started, realising his eyes had fallen closed. He was so tired. Raising his eyes to haphazardly meet the Doctor's, he spoke. "Forgetting is a favour. I want to know, before I fall asleep. Why? All the government files, the space research, the fake identity..." His eyes were slipping closed again. He couldn't quite muster the strength to force them back open. Still, he caught site the grin that adorned the Doctor's face as his vision faded away. He looked entirely too proud of himself.
He was so damn tired. But he couldn't sleep yet: he wasn't finished. He had to get his answers; that was what he needed from the Doctor all along. But as the world grew more and more faint and distant, he wasn't sure that he'd stay conscious long enough to hear the Doctor's response. He cut to the chase, just as the world convulsed and fell to pieces. "What can your rugby hero do that the Doctor can't?"
The crisp voice that echoed through his mind didn't fit right with the rest of the shadowy world: it was too loud, too cruel. He assumed it was the dream changing to a nightmare. In the morning it would be gone, he knew, along with the rest of reality. Still, for a time the response stuck with him as he fell into a deeper sleep, growing more and more urgent with each repetition. He was too tired to attempt to learn why.
"The Doctor has shaped this sad little planet for decades, but he's too late this time, Handsome Jack. He can't save his precious Earth any more than I can. But I can make it scream."
By the time Jack's breathing evened out and his clenched fists relaxed against the desktop, the TARDIS was in flight. A Time Lord stood at the console, smirking. He tapped out a rhythm against a single manila folder lying against the control panel: the rhythm of drums.