If you recognise it, it's not mine.
"But what does it mean?" Tooth had asked, breaking the silence at last. Nobody answered her. They all stood around the globe, staring up at the letters carved into it.
Even as they watched, they faded away, replaced by glowing lights once more. "We ask Manny," North had said decisively, his usual way of saying that he didn't have a clue.
And now the Guardians were assembled around the room, waiting for their next companion to be revealed. The moonlight illuminated a silhouette of a man, a small device clutched in one hand. Jack looked blank, but North's eyes widened. A picture of an old phone box appeared over the Sandman's head.
"I don't believe it," Tooth murmured.
"Is that the Doctor?" Bunny said incredulously.
"The Doctor?" Jack asked in confusion. "Doctor Who?"
North looked at the moon. "We must fetch him," he said, clicking his fingers at a couple of yetis. They grunted in response, heading away to find the sack. North tossed a snow globe into the air, calling the mysterious name as he did so. The yetis vanished into the portal.
"Who's the Doctor?" Jack asked, looking at his friends in confusion.
"Nobody knows, mate," Bunny said with a shrug. "He comes and goes. Mostly Britain, though. There's a hell of a lot of weird stuff which goes on there that he's mixed up in."
"Remember a couple of years ago, when the sky was filled with planets? He had something to do with that," Tooth whispered, awestruck. "There are legends amongst the fairies that say he's a warrior, a saviour of mankind."
Before Jack could respond to that, the portal flared and a bedraggled man in a tattered blue shirt tumbled onto the floor, followed by the yetis. He was on his feet within seconds, pointing a strange buzzing device around the room. North stepped forward, embracing the stranger.
"Doctor, old friend! It has been too long!"
"When did we last meet, North?" the Doctor asked, glancing around the room. As his eyes skimmed over Jack, the winter spirit felt a familiar sinking feeling in his chest. Here was yet another person who didn't believe in him.
"You were trying to reach the South Pole during the human's Cold War, with that girl. What's her name again? Was it Clara?" Tooth added cheerfully. The Doctor frowned, shaking his head. Bunny rolled his eyes as a clock, hands spinning wildly, appeared over Sandy's head.
"Bloody time travellers," he muttered. Jack's head was spinning.
"Would somebody explain what's going on, please?" he asked. Sandy flitted over and began to show him various pictures, none of which made any sense to Jack. Jack shook his head, then realised that the Doctor was staring at him- or rather, at Sandy- in confusion.
"He can't see me," Jack whispered to the room, misery creeping into his tone. Tooth and North promptly launched into an explanation of the whole Pitch fiasco, and why Jack was here, and who he was. Jack couldn't help but notice that they left out various details, as if they were trying to impress this strange man with their stories. He could tell that the Doctor still didn't really believe in him.
Suddenly, the Doctor raised a hand, cutting them off. "What am I doing here, though? One minute I was on the moon, then Phil and Roger turned up. Blargoharagh," he added to the yetis, who had begun to mumble apologetically.
"What did you just say?"
"You were on the moon?"
The Doctor sighed. "I speak yeti, and not that moon," he gestured out of the window, "I was on the Lost Moon of Poosh. Or rather, the Recently Found Moon of Poosh. I was checking it was in the right place, and I said five minutes!" This last was directed at the large clock hanging on the wall, the one which showed the time in every country in the world.
"Manny chose you," North said. "He wants you to become Guardian."
The Doctor frowned. "Why would I want to be a Guardian?" he asked, slightly bitterly. "I already save the universe every other day. Why would I want to be trapped on Earth?"
Jack raised an eyebrow. He had originally assumed that this Doctor was human, but after that, it seemed as if he was...what?
"No," the Doctor continued. An elf kicked a small tuba behind a bookshelf. "I don't mind helping every so often, but I have other things to do. And I said five minutes!" Balefully, he glared at the globe. An extremely bright light glowed somewhere in Great Britain.
"Who's that?" Tooth asked, gesturing to the light.
"Amelia Pond," the Doctor replied. Then he kicked a snow globe into the wall and vanished with a shout of "Poosh!"
"Oh," North said.
Bunny nodded. "There's no pinning down a time traveller, mate."
As Jack found out much later, there was, in a way. He had finally worked up the courage to take one of North's snow globes, and very politely, he had asked it to take him to the Doctor. The portal, for some reason, seemed to be filled with lightning and clouds, but it worked. He had ended up somewhere which wasn't so different to a mall Jamie had taken him to once. He had hated it. People kept walking through him, as they did here. As he peered through the people, he spotted the Doctor, wearing different clothes and standing with a young woman with red hair. Slipping closer, he heard a brief bit of their conversation.
"So that's it then, Doctor? We don't intefere in the affairs of other people or planets, unless there's children crying."
The snowflake was timed perfectly, bursting across the Doctor's face a second before he replied. Suddenly, the man's eyes widened as Jack appeared to materialise out of thin air, just metres away.
"Yes," he said slowly. "Unless there's children crying."
A brief conversation followed, something about a purse, and then the girl left. The Doctor stood up and beckoned to Jack, finding a quieter place to stand.
"Hi," Jack said sheepishly, wincing as another person walked through him. "You can see me this time, then?"
The Doctor smiled, although he still looked confused. "Adjusting the perception filter around yourself? Useful trick."
"How can you see me?" Jack asked. "I've done that before, and people usually just have fun. They don't start believing in me."
"Do I look like people?" the Doctor asked seriously.
Jack shrugged. "Where is this, anyway?" He glanced around the mall.
"Starship UK. What's left of the human race, boxed onto a spaceship and travelling through the universe."
"So...we're in space?" Jack's voice rose noticeably as he searched for a window. "How did I get in space?"
The Doctor shrugged. What was most likely was that North's portal had linked into the time vortex and Jack had been brought to the time most relevant to that which he was picturing, somehow. There was no way he was going to try and explain that to the already confused spirit, though. Instead, he shrugged. Jack was already talking about something else.
"If this is a spaceship, why isn't the engine making any noise? Or making the floor shake?" The Doctor looked at him in surprise. Jack blinked. "I grew up when there weren't any kind of engines. I notice when there is one."
The Doctor's eyes widened. "I'm about three hundred, give or take," Jack said awkwardly.
"I know. It's just... No engine vibrations? That could be really important. Thanks, Jack."
"No problem," the spirit said with a small smile. As the Doctor pulled out his weird buzzing thing again, muttering something about manipulating the vortex and reopening the portal, something clicked in his head.
"Hey, Doctor? You know when you got called to the Pole, to become a Guardian? There had been these...I dunno, words, carved into the globe. 'Silence will fall.' Does that mean anything to you?"
The Doctor hesitated a second before shaking his head.
"I just thought, what with this whole silent engine thing. Might be something like that."
The Doctor frowned, but then his face lit up. Behind Jack, the portal flicked open.
"Goodbye, Jack. I don't mean to sound rude, but it's probably best you don't try and find me again. You have duties, right?"
"Yeah," Jack replied, taking a step backwards. "I guess you do too, Doctor. That stuff about children crying? You're a Guardian too, really. Just a different sort." He waved one final time, releasing an almost invisible flurry of snowflakes into the air, and vanished into the portal.
The Doctor smiled for a second, and then turned back to the rest of the starship.
He had work to do.