Author's Note:

Thanks very much to SawManiac211, MayFairy, Aietradaea, Theta'sWorstNightmare and EmmaMarie for reviewing, you guys are wonderful :)

Anyway, here's the next little bit I was talking about. Hope you enjoy!

- Chapter Two -

It was freezing cold outside, as black as pitch and exceedingly bleak. The TARDIS appeared to have landed in some sort of rocky valley, surrounded by towering cliffs. The ground was shiny and slick, as if it had just been raining.

Tejana turned the collar of her jacket up against the cold. Suddenly, something large and dark caught her eye, lying on the ground not far away. Both her hearts nearly stopped as she saw it was a body... a body wearing a long, blue coat.

"Jack!" she cried, running towards his crumpled figure. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring sightlessly up at the dark sky.

But before she could get too close, something seemed to rise up and strike her between the eyes, a tsunami of soul-shattering disgust so great that she staggered backwards. Again and again, she tried to get close to the fallen man, only to be driven back by her own revulsion each time, stumbling and almost falling, gasping for breath. To her horror, she realised that the overwhelming sense of abomination was actually emanating from Jack himself. Time was streaming madly around him without touching him, peeling back from him, as if he was a dark, immovable rock in the middle of a raging river. To a Time Lord, such an unnatural effect was almost physically distressing.

Strong hands gripped her from behind, catching and supporting her so she didn't fall. "Now do you understand?" her father's voice said softly in her ear. "I was trying to protect you."

She was vaguely aware of Martha pushing past them, rushing to Jack's side and falling to her knees beside him. The human woman showed no ill-effects from his nearness, completely unaware of the temporal abhorrence that hung in the air like a miasma.

"Oh my God!" she exclaimed, catching sight of Jack's face. "It's that bloke from Cardiff." She fumbled clumsily at his wrist. "Can't get a pulse. Hold on, you've got that medical kit thing."

Leaping to her feet, she charged back inside the TARDIS, leaving the two Time Lords standing together looking down at their old comrade. Tejana turned her face into her father's shoulder, great shudders wracking her body, tears falling down her face. "Oh stars," she breathed, unable to believe that she had found Jack alive, only to lose him again like this. "What's happened to him?"

The Doctor's arms tightened comfortingly around her, tucking her into the warmth of his body, his chin resting on the top of her head. "The Daleks did kill him on Satellite Five. But Rose used the power of the Bad Wolf to bring him back to life. She couldn't control it and she brought him back permanently. She made him immortal, Tejana. He's a fixed point in Time and he can't ever die. That's why he feels so wrong to you now."

Tejana choked back a sob. A fixed point in Time! No wonder she could hardly bear to look at him. To a time-sensitive being, anything so immutable, so changeless, so contrary to the ebb and flow of history, could only be an anathema.

But before she could even begin to grasp the implications of what had befallen Jack, Martha burst out of the TARDIS again, holding the all-purpose medical kit. "Here we go!" she said, her tone brisk and efficient, in her element now as all her medical training came to the fore. "Out of the way!"

Rushing back over to Jack, she flipped open the medical kit and began rapidly sorting through the contents until she found a stethoscope. "What I don't understand is how he got here!" she exclaimed, putting the rubber earpieces into her ears. "I mean, one minute he's running towards us in Cardiff, the next minute he's here at the end of the Universe!"

"He came with us," the Doctor said quietly.

Martha glanced up at him in amazement. "What...all the way from Earth?"

"He must have been clinging to the outside of the TARDIS," the Doctor surmised, watching as she placed the end of the stethoscope against Jack's chest. "All the way through the Vortex. Well, that's very him!"

Martha moved the stethoscope back and forth, evidently finding nothing. "All that stuff between you two in the TARDIS...You know him, don't you?" she said, her dark eyes keenly surveying the Doctor's impassive expression and taking in the way Tejana was so uncharacteristically huddled against him, her face hidden in his shoulder. "Both of you. Who is he?"

"A friend of ours," the Doctor replied. "Used to travel with us. Back in the old days."

"But he's..." She hesitated, obviously trying to break the news to them gently. "I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat. There's nothing. He's dead."

At that moment, the so-called corpse sucked in a huge gasp of air and bolt upright, clutching at Martha's shoulders as she screamed in shock.

Yet again, Captain Jack Harkness dragged himself back from the dark abyss of death, clawing for the light through a tunnel made of broken, black glass. All he could remember were the never-ending spirals of the Time Vortex, cindering his flesh, burning through his brain.

Death by Time Vortex, he thought muzzily. Never done that before. That's a new one to add to my list!

He could sense someone leaning over him and he could smell an enticing, musky fragrance like warm cinnamon. Sucking in the cold, life-giving air in huge, ragged gulps, he reared up, his hands automatically reaching for the human reassurance of the warm body crouching beside him. A woman's sharp, terrified scream rang out and he forced open his eyes. To his surprise, he found he was holding on tightly to an attractive woman with dark hair and smooth, coffee-coloured skin.

"It's all right!" she exclaimed breathlessly, obviously getting over her initial alarm. "Breath deep! I've got you!"

He had no idea where he was and no idea who she was, but he couldn't see any reason to let that spoil his enjoyment of the situation. After all, if returning from the dead in the arms of a beautiful woman was the worst thing to happen to him today, things were definitely looking up.

"Captain Jack Harkness!" he introduced himself, his tone light and suggestive and full of potential seduction, his hand rising to playfully brush her pretty little chin with his thumb. "And who are you?"

The woman smiled down at him in a flustered way, obviously flattered by the appreciative expression in his eyes. "Martha Jones."

Ah, he thought in self-satisfaction. The old Harkness charm, works every time!

"Nice to meet you, Martha Jones."

"Oh, don't start!" a scathing male voice cut in.

Looking beyond Martha, he felt his heart turn over as he saw the distinctive shape of the tall, blue police-box. And standing in front of it were a man and a woman. The man was tall and thin, with an impressive shock of spiky brown hair and neatly cut side-burns. He was wearing a long, tan-coloured coat over a brown, pin-striped suit, with a pair of white Converse runners on his feet. The woman was nestled in the curve of his arm, held closely against his chest. She was facing away from Jack, but he could see she was small and slender, with a long, familiar plait of midnight-dark hair reaching all the way down her back. Even though the man's face was strange to him, and he couldn't see the woman's, he had no doubt he was looking at the two people he had waited for over a century to find. The realisation that he had finally done it was surreal, almost overwhelming in its intensity.

Neither of them made any move to approach him, leaving Martha to help him on her own. Instead, they carefully maintained their distance, as though he had some kind of virulent disease they were afraid of catching. Tejana kept her back to him, her face averted, as if she didn't even want to look at him. Resentment lanced through him like a razor-sharp javelin. So much searching, so long waiting, just for this! But he was damned if he would let them see how much their lack of concern had hurt him. They were Time Lords, and he had learned long ago that Time Lords didn't always react the way humans did.

"I was just saying hello!" he retorted, resuming his flirtatious routine by giving Martha another devilish smile.

The dark-skinned woman gave a feminine little giggle. "Oh, I don't mind!"

Supporting his arm with surprising strength, she helped to lever him to his feet. To his relief, he could already feel his usual vigour returning, rushing back through his body like a tide of adrenaline. Straightening his back, he eyed the two Time Lords warily.

"Doctor," he said, the greeting cold and even.

The Time Lord raised his chin and gave a small nod. "Captain," he replied, his tone equally brusque and emotionless.

Jack's eyes dropped to the smaller figure of the woman. "Tejana."

For a moment, she didn't respond and he wondered if she intended to ignore him altogether. But then she pulled away from her father and slowly turned around, at last enabling him to see the delicately-featured face, dominated by a pair of large, dark-blue eyes, even more beautiful than he remembered. Immediately, he saw that he had badly misjudged her by assuming she didn't care. There were fresh tear-stains on her pale cheeks, something he had rarely seen in the time they had travelled together. Not only that, now that he thought about it, the very fact that she had even allowed the Doctor to hold her was extremely unusual. Normally, if someone tried to comfort her, especially her father, she would become irritable and shake them off after a couple of seconds. Vulnerability had never been something she did well.

"Jack," she said hoarsely, the single syllable sounding forced, as though she was unable to trust her voice not to tremble.

It was all Jack could do not to step forward and take her into his arms. God, he'd missed her! He'd missed them both, these mad, impossible, infuriating, irresistible Time Lords. But something about the way they were both standing warned him that, right now, such an affectionate greeting wasn't a good idea.

"Good to see you both," he continued, his manner formally polite instead.

"And you," the Doctor replied. "Same as ever. Although...have you had work done?"

Jack's eyebrows shot up sky high. "You can talk!"

The Doctor looked down at himself with a puzzled expression, as if he wasn't quite sure what Jack was talking about. Then he seemed to suddenly remember that he had looked very, very different the last time they had seen each other. "Oh yes! The face! Regeneration. How did you manage to find us?"

"The police box in the middle of the Plass kinda gave it away," Jack said dryly, fresh bitterness welling up inside him. As much as he had missed the two Time Lords, there was something important he wanted from them other than their company. Seeing them again had ripped the scabs off a multitude of old wounds. More than anything, he wanted them to give him the answers he needed. "I've been following you for a long time." His voice hardened into cold stone. "You abandoned me."

Martha gave a little gasp and Tejana visibly flinched, as if he had reached out and slapped her. The Doctor, however, gave no sign of any reaction. "Did we?" he asked coolly. "Busy life. Move on."

Jack swallowed hard. He wasn't sure exactly what he had expected from the Doctor when he found him again. Apologies, maybe, for leaving him behind. Excuses. Reasons. But not this blank wall of sheer indifference. "I gotta ask," he persisted. "The Battle of Canary Wharf. I saw the list of the dead. It said Rose Tyler."

As far as questions went, he couldn't have chosen a better one to break down the barriers between them. At the sound of Rose's name, the Doctor's face lit up in a huge smile. For the first time, Jack caught a glimpse of the warmth and vitality he remembered so well. "Oh no! Sorry! She's alive!"

Jack grinned, an enormous wave of relief swamping him. "You're kidding?"

"Parallel world, safe and sound. And Mickey! And her mother!"

"OH, YES!" Jack shouted. Overwhelmed with delight, he ran forward without thinking and enveloped the Doctor in an enormous bear hug, lifting him right off the ground. At first, he felt the Time Lord's slim body tense in his grasp, as if he was afraid Jack might bite. But then he gradually relaxed and laughed, returning Jack's embrace enthusiastically.

Martha, on the other hand, didn't look pleased at all. The look on her face was somehow bitter, as though she had bitten into a particularly sour lemon. "Yeah," Jack heard her mutter. "Good old Rose."

And Tejana... Jack caught her eyes over the Doctor's shoulder and held them. For a moment, she returned his gaze. There was an odd, lost expression on her face, one he couldn't read or interpret. Then she pulled her eyes abruptly away from his, wrapped her arms around herself as though trying to protect herself from the cold, and turned and walked away.

Another Author's Note: Yeah, there is a bit more already written. Once I give it a bit of an edit, I will post it, if anyone's interested...