Warnings: Angst, Dark!fic, Character Study, Introspection, Romance, First Time, Canon Character 'Death' referenced
A/N: Written for the AO3 Remix Redux 11: The Eleventh Hour Gift Exchange-Challenge 2014. This fiction was based off/Remixed from the wonderful Poetry's fascinating (and damned perfect) fiction 'Waiting for the Sun (a romance in two universes)'. This was a gorgeous fiction, a true triumph in characterization, plot, pacing and romance, that I can only hope I succeeded at Remixing in a way befitting the tale told. I must admit, I am quite nervous over the end result, but only because I could only hope to capture one tenth of the beauty this fiction was comprised of. That being said, I do hope you enjoy the fiction as it has been Remixed - and I highly encourage everyone to read the original it was based off of. That fiction is glorious and more than worth of a read or three. This particular (remixed) edition is made of my usual overly-thinky dark musings with a good dash of standard wandery-blithery prose. This fiction is mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. I also apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/blithery and unbeta'd.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor, the delicious Jack or any of his other lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC, BBC Worldwide the wonderful R.T. Davies and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!
He could feel it.
The sleepy awareness of this universe hummed under his skin, even as the Wrongness of it all echoed through his hearts to fall through the void expanding in his soul. Time had essentially (for everyone else), stopped. It was always 5:02pm on the 22nd of April, though the years all crashed together, one instance spanning across space, distorting Time itself. Something impossible and terrible that should never have happened. It never had before.
'They always trust me, but they never truly trust me enough.'
He had been here (not literally here, but close enough), he'd done this so, so many times his alternative selves are wearing thin; stretched across the vast universes of have-beens, weres, might-have-beens, nevers and maybes. This was a first, being in this particular universe – where time stood still for all but the one it marched upon. It was wearying and frustrating. The distractions were many, but they were too many. So many souls wandering within the realms of his mind, his minutes ticking away to hours, to months (and finally), to years. He could feel them searching for him. All of them. All of his loves. His constants. And when he thought of those constants, he thought of his Ponds. He thought of his TARDIS (lost within the expansion of this universe). He thought of Jack, the man of every time and all time. Time marched within him (over him) as well – but the former Captain used that to fight, to move, to aid and to protect.
All the Time Lord could protect was his own mind, his hearts. He knew what he had to do.
Why did they never trust him, even as they always did? There was trust and there was Trust. River was so, so young. She trusted in him. But she didn't Trust him.
And Jack who had no reason to Trust him, in all the ways that mattered and quite a few that didn't, did so without motive or question. Even when all logic dictated that as foolish, as an error in judgment. But there are no such errors when it comes to the heart. A lesson he stumbled over again and again, lifetime after lifetime – and one it seemed he still had yet to learn. His loves, his Companions had no such hang-ups. Their hearts were always full, always led them true. It was that very quality that drew him in, it was the endless depths of those hearts that made him hold on tight.
The man once known as the Doctor wished sometimes they all had less of one, even as it meant he would not be able to love them as dearly as he did with his two. But as the days and months stretched to years, he cursed his weakness, his need for company and solace over the vast centuries, even as he was so, so proud of those he called his own.
He saw the connections they made, the way they banded together (almost instinctively) in his dreams. He dreamed more now than he did when he was fully integrated into Time and Space, his waking hours less being awake and more being sunk into his own mind, protecting him from the absence of Time that etched itself onto his face, beat within his hearts. It was torment, though he was fully aware that this was not what was intended. This was intended to be a holding point, a grace period.
River had not predicted this one well. But she was young. She was impetuous. He could not fault her for not knowing, nor could he fault her (really) for trying. And she, like Jack, found the lost ones, the ones who could not fend for themselves and protected them. Yet River had a place to go, a place she designed and designated as her own, where she gathered her weapons and her enemies and her people. Jack had no such luxuries, nor did he seem to really want them.
He was too busy looking for souls to save, hearts to love and the lost ones to protect. He shielded them with himself, not even knowing why or how he did so – and the Doctor watched him from the Tower, dreaming dreams that should not have been possible and watching all those caught in the Web of Non-Time, like flies trapped in honey. They struggled, they survived. All those he had known (and loved) and quite a few he did not. But they were all special, they were all important.
He just had a few he loved more dearly than others (as guilty as it made him feel to admit it) – he would whisper of them to himself, no one around him the wiser. But there were very few people to hear him in this lofty Palace of Prisons, his watchers unknown to themselves, even as they were very well known to the man once called the Doctor.
He had often thought of blotting his name from the stars. He had never thought to take such extreme measures as this, though. Effective, but unnecessary. The people around him not knowing him, but they knew little (or nothing) about themselves as well. It was terrible, it was sad…it was wrong.
He sighed, following the advance of one Martha Jones, doctor, healer from the inside of his eyelids, waiting to be called for the 577th time to the chambers of Emperor Churchill. He was always called to explain, to show what he knew. His Excellency had a glimmer of what he was and enough intelligence to question the world around him. Not always, but often enough that the 'Soothsayer' was called upon to give counsel. He couldn't tell him everything. Not yet. But he gave enough information that some things should have been worked out on their own.
Time here was funny, though. It existed for far too long, stretching like taffy and coating everything in a sticky fog of half-memory. What he said one 'day' would be forgotten hours later, only to be remembered again two years to the exact 'day'. Some of these people no longer existed. Some of them didn't exist yet. All of them felt the thrum of wrongness, the absence of what had always been, and this semi-awareness created its own problems; the nervous agitation of his guards (all six of them) a prime example. He was trusted in his advice, his words and explanations. He was not trusted to be without someone to keep watch over him, the (super) natural suspicion almost funny even as it was sad.
The Time Lord (could he even be called that anymore?) tried to not think on it, though. He was mad enough as it was. More madness would be detrimental. He wouldn't be ready when the time came around to set this all right. And he needed to be ready. Vigilance was wearisome, boredom was ever a constant – but it was necessary. The hour approached, the end was nigh, he just had to do what he was never very good at and practice patience. So he whiled away the hours and days and months and years with his dreams, watching the people of this endless time as they did what they did naturally; as they proved to him again and again why he did travel with them, why he always, always chose them (even over his own people). Why they were truly the best the universe could ever achieve (should it even comprehend such a thing), and so much more besides.
So the Soothsayer dozed fully awake while he waited, dreaming of the peoples scattered throughout the shrinking cosmos; the sun burning bright and ever constant through the windows of his prison…
The 577th meeting went a lot like he had expected: the Emperor had even forgotten that he had called him, much less why. He had demanded explanations that were impossible to give, all the while restraining himself from giving over to temper and allowing his guards to do the same. The endless years that weren't had finally caught up and the nerves of those nearest him were fraying. He was ground zero and they were caught up on the blast of what should have been, their own beings thinned and out of phase with the flow of the time they were snatched from. It was bound to affect them eventually. He was just surprised it had taken so long to happen.
He peered wearily out of the window, too tired after the 'meeting' to follow the dreams that unfurled behind his eyelids, the distractions too much and yet not enough. The guards had forgotten to remove the manacles so he was forced to a stop mere inches from the aperture, the sun blinding him even as it warmed his limbs, the Tower always, always too cold, though the guards didn't seem to notice. Then again, their temperatures were slightly higher than his own, being the species they were. There was one Silurian among them once that had sympathized and had been known to bring him blankets and robes on occasion. He hadn't seen him in a long time, which didn't mean anything, really. He could close his eyes and find him, should he wish to. He just didn't see the point in doing so.
People and animals of all types bustled through the courtyard, going about a busy day that never ended. Their gradual weariness translated through the shuffling movements of their legs and arms, the way their heads dipped upon their shoulders. Other than these small signs, they seemed unaffected, their chatter and laughter and movements lively and filled with nervous energy that seemed to course off of them in waves.
In amongst the crowd, he saw Ian and Barbara herding a line of school-children through the packed courtyard, eyes automatically scanning for (and not finding) Susan. He smiled with bitter fondness at his two oldest friends, half wishing for a glimpse of his granddaughter and her husband, even as he hoped he wouldn't see them at all. He could find them easily enough if he closed his eyes and dreamed of them, which was half the reason he never did. She was another Time Lord, she was one who could see how the march of days went ever on, her physical self recording the strange phenomena, her mind just as affected as his own. He wondered idly if she knew what River had done, if she even knew who River was – and if she would blame him for it. He didn't know what would be worse: her knowing and blaming him, or her not knowing, her grandfather barely a thought, much less a passing fancy.
Selfish, bitter old man.
He huffed to himself in annoyance, the bustle and energy of the crowds below (all attracted to the time-bleed that was himself), enough to soothe the ache that seemed a constant in his bones. He shuffled back to his collection of blankets and wrapped himself in them, closing his eyes (even as he didn't want to), seeking out the comfort of Jack – another anomaly within this flux of non-time.
To think of Jack as a comfort was strange and yet inevitable all at once. He remembered well the distaste his past selves had viewed the man with and while he understood it, he was also ashamed of it. Jack was unique – and that uniqueness was not limited to the fact he was a fixed point. There was a reason he had picked him as a Companion. There was a good reason the ex-Time Agent turned con-man was intriguing to him and it hadn't changed, even if his status as a mortal had. He was too attractive to a creature like himself. He was like the TARDIS, even as he was not. The power he exuded something the Time Lord had long feared, but only because of what it could represent, not where it was housed.
He should have apologized long ago. For what the TARDIS had done, for what She had not done. For what he himself had done and yet failed to do every time they met: explain, make amends…talk. Something it seemed (as he tracked the man through his waking dreams, his approach getting closer and closer as he found the people he needed to, as he gathered the information he sought almost without effort), that the time was approaching when that would happen. This was the catalyst. It was near the beginning of the end of this bubble universe that was collapsing upon itself, even as it ever expanded. And it would all begin and end with Captain Jack Harkness.
Not surprising, really. Even a universe-that-shouldn't-be had to mark its beginning and end. The Captain was the only option that was an absolute. He was the safe distance to the Time Lord's ground zero. He was the happy medium within the black and white of law versus chaos. A fixed point within Time that moved freely through space to the Doctor's fixed space moving freely through time. So who else could it be – and how could it be anyone else?
He would wait (an oddity of itself as he was never The One Who Waited, but was always The One Waited For). It would be a few days before the Captain reached the Tower, an eye-blink in this universe, but one that would leave him itching with that long-forgotten impatience. He had missed it, even as he had wished it would never come again. He had become complacent – the mad king-jester within his lofty tower-prison. It was time to shake things up a bit.
It was almost time to find a way Home.
When the time arrived, he found he had nothing truly meaningful to say – not what Jack needed anyhow – and he started off with the almost unintentional mention of his coat. He looked…smaller without it. And Jack should never look small. He should never be lost.
And he should never look to the Doctor for answers.
The embrace was gratifying. He had never thought there would be a day when he could hold Jack close and not shudder with all that he was, but that day had arrived. Within the stumbling mess that was this pocket of Time, Jack was a rock, a constant. He smelled and felt of Home and the Time Lord breathed it in, holding him close in a way he never had before, missing all that they were and had been with a shock that made his old and sluggish hearts beat extra fast.
It was then that he knew he loved him still, that he had never truly stopped loving him. Fast on the heels of that realization was gratitude and relief – Jack was, Jack always would be – and that was good. It was better than good. It was the only thing that mattered. It was what he depended on. He felt ashamed that he would have to use and discard him again, if only to nudge all the pieces into place, get things set in motion, set right again. Jack would hate him if he ever realized he had hastened the Doctor's death, but he would understand if it saved many other lives – the lives of his strays, his traveling companions and compatriots. It was the only way. It was the best way. And being a good man, he would do it, if only to save those that he called his own.
So the Time Lord told him the truth. He told him that you could be a good man and still be a killer. But that Jack was a better man because he killed only when he had to, he was a better man because he of who he was, not in spite of it. He gave more to those he gathered than they could find within themselves. He cultivated their specialness and gifted them with that knowledge. He didn't need the Doctor for that, he never had. He had made himself who he was meant to be, the Doctor just gave him what he needed a little faster to find that person. That was all.
Jack's reaction was expected, heartening, but disarming all the same. Even as he could barely remember who he himself was, he remembered the Time Lord that had so affected his life. He gave that same Time Lord far more credit than he deserved, but that was Jack all over. Jack saw the good things within him, he saw his potential and what he believed made him special. He just didn't see that the Doctor was no more important in the grand scheme of things than Jack was. The only thing that made him stand out was the collapse of Time hinged upon one event. That event would come to fruition regardless of the actions that were taken to prevent it.
But to ease the suffering of the ones Jack had loved, had yet to love (and those he never would), that event had to come to a close sooner rather than later. The Time Lord's dreams were multicolored layers of beauty sandwiched between horrors that he tried to avoid, even as he helplessly oversaw all the things that bled through the fissure of this aborted non-time. He was desperate (now that he had seen Jack), to set things right. Jack breathed reality in all the ways the others could not. He was a solid point, a fact amongst the blurry figures of uncertainty that passed beneath the Tower window; that wandered the streets and slept in the homes and ate the food of this place that shouldn't be. His certainty was a balm and a wake-up call all at once.
With one final embrace he told Jack what he needed to do, confident the man would come through. The Time of Dreaming was over. The woman he waited for was closer than ever.
It was (finally) time to go Home.
O-o-O-o-O
It was in a tomb he was exploring with Professor Song (a woman he knew, even as he didn't know how), that he first saw it. A message from ages ago in a place that was ageless. The factual death of the man who had made him how he was today, even as he had given him the possibility to become who he was.
He didn't know why he scratched it out, hid it from the Professor (though deep down he knew why, oh yes , indeed), shame at what he was doing overrode by the horror of what had been done.
The Doctor was dead. His friend and lover (at this time), was the one who had made it happen. Whether or not she knew that yet was beside the point. He half-hoped that his desecration of an ancient structure would erase the fact, even as he knew such erasures could sometimes set those facts in motion. He didn't know what else to do. He hoped that it was some terrible, tasteless joke at his expense, but he knew it couldn't possibly be.
Not too long after, he left the dig site – too overwhelmed with guilt and sadness to stay, even as he was too filled with love and hope to go. He let his heart make the decision and before he knew it, he was embroiled in adventures that brought the old adrenaline singing in his blood, even as wistful nostalgia nipped at his heels. He had half-forgotten the joys of freedom, of traveling space and time (sometimes both at once), though he was constantly plagued with the question of that tomb and what it had revealed.
There were dangers to remembrance. There was folly in falling back on the past to forge one's future. But like most humans, Jack was ever a creature of habit – and it was easier to run and run and run once he found his footing again. He longed for the days of the bluest box of blue, even as he exhilarated in the freedom from it (and the man She had taken as Her own). He tried to not think on them too much as he rediscovered joy and purpose at what the Time Lord and his wondrous Machine had taught him. Their lessons so ingrained as to be a part of him, the worlds they opened up healing something within him (so long ago now), that he hadn't know was broken. It gave him the ability to reach out, to help those who could not help themselves and no matter his ever-fluctuating feelings for the Doctor (love, hate, resignation, rage, passion, sorrow), he would forever be grateful to him for awakening that part he hadn't known was missing.
But with each successive adventure, he was forced to face (and mourn again and again) what had been lost. He couldn't escape the reality of it. Every planet he landed on, every ship he boarded, every moon, star and satellite declared an ending to the man who seemed endless within Jack's mind. He knew that every creature was born and those same creatures died. He was the only exception within the vastness of Time and the slow sprawl of space. But the one constant he had depended on besides himself was no longer there – and his world seemed smaller and joyless without it.
There was nowhere he could go that this new reality didn't exist. There was no time he could run to that didn't gently nudge him to the facts as they now were. It seemed that he was doomed to face it ever since he had seen the literal writing on the wall and he couldn't dismiss it, turn away or unsee it. He couldn't outrun it, he could only run to it; his dreams haunted with a Man in a Tower that told him to save them all with one final (fatal) message. In the end, that message led to the explosion of the (barely remembered) alternate time-that-never-was and the result of that explosion –
He had helped to ensure the Doctor's fate.
He didn't know quite what to do with that.
Eventually his lust for adventure burned away beneath the censure of what he had brought about. After months of wandering he found he could be tired after all. That he could be (once more) felled by his own eternity and left weary down to his marrow of the constant that he represented; the being who had spawned it all never seeking him out to reassure him, to tell him he was mistaken. That it was all a magic trick for the masses. The temptation to fold back on his own timeline, just to see him again (just once more) was a danger he was desperate to avoid, even as he was becoming more and more convinced that he needed to do so – for his own sanity if for nothing else.
That was when he knew he had to stop. The fact he wished to do so anyway was irrelevant.
Before he broke the rules completely, he had to remove himself from the temptation. The only way to do so was to find where he was needed and stay there for a while. Remember why he didn't break the cardinal rule of Time by surrounding himself with those who would be affected by his foolishness.
To top it all off (the horror of the Doctor's death just not enough, it seemed), the man he had loved for centuries, the same man he now mourned with every step he took, was being slowly wiped from the stars.
It didn't take long to see that for every place that burned the fact of his demise across the fabric of its skies, there were places that were silent and dim from the lack of any knowledge at all of the Doctor. He was a non-entity in these zones, a void that may have been there once, but was no longer.
Instead of giving Jack hope, it made him afraid.
Somehow the death of the Time Lord triggered a chain reaction: his removal from the universe they both loved so much a physical thing that now echoed across the timelines he had touched, leaving vast holes (that could never be filled), the lack of what had been, not there to stopper what was now. Those places bled a darkness, an absence of light that sucked all the energy from Jack's bones. The missing piece of the Time Lord throughout all of Time and Space an infection that couldn't seem to stop spreading.
Weariness and temptation drove him to think of stopping, fear of forgetting was what brought it all about. He saw the places where the Doctor was no longer (places that had once marked him as such a part of what they had become) and he was terrified of losing his own memories, his anchor to what he had become and the drive to be better than what he was. All of that (despite the Doctor's protests), were because of the Time Lord. To lose even one memory of him was rip a hole in Jack's heart, his soul, that could never be repaired. There was no cure for such a loss, there was no balm invented to soothe such a hurt.
So it was with relief (and no small amount of surprise), that he found himself at Iothani during Winterdark, following a rumor that there were those who needed help and that maybe he could provide that help. A place for rest, for respite and the soothing lull of watching over and protecting those who do not have the wherewithal to do the same for themselves. The Ka'iotha accepted him with open arms and confirmed the whispers that had swirled through the neighboring systems: there was a parasite of unknown origins that was affecting their children, their aged and sick. And they were all but helpless in the face of the threat.
During Winterdark times were desperate as it was and there was little they could do for those afflicted beside make them as comfortable as possible and hope for a cure that may never come. Their scientists were hard at work, but there was only so much they could do – and while those who had a place to go were tended to with all the care and devotion that this plague called for – there were those sad few that would never know of that care, of that search for hope. The homeless, the indigent and the young were left out in the (literal) cold, the society's resources stretched paper-thin during this moment of twilight that danced over their world. Even those who were relatively well off were crippled by the winter, what little they had going to their families and their own homes.
In other words, this was the perfect time, the perfect place to stop. To find solace in aiding others and maybe while doing so forget why he had come in the first place.
So he made himself well known with the people. He met their scientists (and though science was never really a talent of his), he discussed theories and plans, making himself known as a resource they could fall back on. He found a place to call his own, gathering the lost and the hopeless to him, using his ability to gather supplies and make shelters to bring them comfort and a touch of warmth during a time when they would normally hold no hope for these things, parasite or no. He bathed and fed and warmed and counseled, his days becoming a blur that led to weeks and months, contentment in the works he was doing filling the void that was the Doctor within his heart. He made himself a home, made the lost his children and loved them with all the capacity his one lone heart could give – praying that somewhere out there, the Time Lord that had been was proud of him. It made things a bit more bearable, waking each day to remember him, even as he still mourned (all these months later), the loss of him.
So it was a shock, an almost terrible surprise to hear the recognizable hum of the TARDIS as She landed, the possibility so far beyond hope he was quite sure he had imagined it. Then he saw him –
The man from the Tower of London. The man who reassured him, praised him, gave him his terrible mission and let him go all at once. The man who had told him it was okay to let go of him, though he had never hinted as to why.
That was left for Jack to find out on his own.
But he couldn't be bitter, he couldn't be angry when all he had missed and mourned and longed for and lost was standing right there. The 'how' didn't quite matter. It was the 'why' that was important: and as the Time Lord looked at him with a new light in his eyes (understanding, apology and a warmth he hadn't seen in several lifetimes), the Captain knew he would accept almost anything – just as long as the Doctor would stay there, be real and look at him for just a while longer.
The children (his adopted lost ones), clamored in confusion when the Doctor enveloped him in an embrace he could have never hoped to know again, before kissing him breathless like he had always (secretly) longed for. The magic within that kiss, the love and relief behind it left Jack giddy and slightly unhinged, the permission to return the affection a shy request more than a demand – but one he was more than happy to fulfill. He kissed the Doctor as if his life depended on it, which in all reflection, it likely did. He had become so used to numbness, to floating within his own existence he had forgotten what living was really like – and Jack found he had missed that almost as much as he had missed the man in his arms.
The talked for a long time, the Doctor's chatter bringing new insights and revelations that weren't wholly unwelcome, even as they drove home the idea that Jack was one of the last people he had expected to run into. He had hoped (from what he had said) to talk to him, but time had spun away before he had gotten the chance. And as time passed, (hours becoming days and then weeks), he had come to the thought that maybe Jack would not want to see him. Yet even with that, Time Lord was shocked at how long it had been since their meeting in the Tower – how long Jack had mourned him, thinking him long dead – his erasure from the stars a double-blow that Jack confessed he had been ill-equipped to handle.
New insights spilled from this confession, as did newly found common ground: the fact that they had both loved and lost so, so much (their children, their grandchildren, their families, their friends), was a bittersweet thing to share. Jack had forgotten that he wasn't the only one who mourned, who felt such sorrow and emptiness – he wasn't the only one whose centuries dictated those inevitable losses, with only more ahead. His own burdens felt a little lighter as he comforted the Doctor for the losses he had suffered (most long before Jack had ever met him), the passing of his people and his hand in that passing something that still haunted him, still left him alone and guilty, even when surrounded by those he had found to love.
The Doctor's sharing of his own personal horror and tragedy an explanation, an apology and a path to understanding that the Captain had never dreamed of attaining. There was healing to be found there, something they both desperately needed if the Doctor's soft voice and sad smiles were anything to go by. His semi-silent request for forgiveness warmed Jack's heart, even as it made it heavier for the man beside him. He could only assure him that the forgiveness he was seeking had been given long ago. All he asked for was the same – and maybe a new beginning for them both.
Maybe that beginning was already happening as they spoke, moving past their sorrows to the new joys they had found. The adventures they had, the ones they looked forward to and all that had fallen between. They talked for a long, long time, of the future and of the past, of friends they had both known, lives they had touched and those they hoped to meet in the coming years.
After a while their conversation lulled, but not in an uncomfortable way – the both of them redouble their focus on the little ones and their comfort, getting them fed, washed and warmed before finding places for them to sleep – the night during Winterdark long, cold and unforgiving. Winterdark was unforgiving as it was, but the sudden prospect of losing the Doctor back to the stars was one that Jack couldn't afford to entertain. He had only just been found by the man again; losing him so soon after mourning him for so long…it was unbearable.
So he did what he would never have dared before – and asked him to stay.
To his surprise, the Doctor readily agreed (his manner that of someone who had waited to be asked) and the next few hours were surreal and wonderful; a long, strange night that Jack wished he could relive again and again, even as he dashed through every second with breathless, dizzy joy. Everything he had ever wanted (and quite a few things he didn't dare to dream) was there with him. His love for the Time Lord reciprocated tenfold with every kiss, every caress they shared. The Doctor asking forgiveness with his hands and mouth, as Jack assured him that there was nothing to forgive with the dance of his fingers, the reassuring firmness of his lips.
They sang the age-old song that the stars were born to within the warm silence of their shelter, old hurts easing, fissures of regret and misunderstanding sealed with their rediscovered love of one another. The depth of that love all Jack could have ever hoped for, everything he had ever dreamed. A promise was made that he would never hold the Time Lord to, even as he pressed him to make it. A wish to keep him close as long as he could, a wish to have him as his own, even as he knew that such a thing was not even remotely possible.
So it stunned him when the Doctor agreed (those ancient, kind eyes making promises of their own), the smile they were accompanied by sealing the trust Jack had in him. He kissed his happiness into that smile and slept the sleep of the just, knowing the next year would be for themselves. A lifetime to the man in his arms, but a lifetime freely offered – one that Jack was helpless to refuse.
His perceptions of the person lying beside him (content, sleepy-warm) were altered, but then, his perceptions of himself were equally as changed. Most of those changes were good, the few that were not…well, he had an eternity to work on those. To be the best man he could be. To be a man that the Doctor could love and be proud of (though the Time Lord had declared he was all that and more, already). To find the strength to love himself and be the man the Doctor had seen all those years ago, the person he insisted Jack had always been.
It would be harder to be that person without the Doctor, without his presence and influence. One day he would have to face that, to face himself and know he was the only one he would have to answer to. But until that time, he could have this. For the next year (maybe longer), he would have the Doctor – and all that he was and ever could be – within his arms.
One day he would be alone. One day he would have to stand by himself and find his path through a universe that was ever-changing (as it always was) and sometimes loveless and cold (like Winterdark), the Spring always just ahead and out of reach. But those days were not today. That time was far into the future. For now, he had the Doctor, he had time – and even in the depths of the 'Dark, there was no place he would rather be.