Chapter Three- Jack Harkness

Jack could barely remember any other profession in his life besides this one. After all, he'd been working in it for at least 300 years now. Torchwood. He'd had a bunch of people helping him along the way, but most of them were gone now. Dead and buried in the Earth, their worldly possessions in storage houses, if Torchwood should ever need them. It was not the life he had wanted, but it was the life that had been given to him. Oh well, it could have been worse.

He was in the middle of scanning an alien artifact on the computer when he heard it. Lie a siren almost, but yet so different. At first he couldn't place it, but then the memories came flooding back. Memories of a time where he hadn't felt so alone, memories of a better life. It was the TARDIS.

Abandoning all work, he raced up the steep stairs to the surface, glad that his body was still strong and young enough to move as fast as he pushed it. Arriving at the stairs, he shoved open the door with one hand and raced to the blue box. 'Doctor,' he thought. 'It's really the Doctor!' Racing towards the blue box, he almost collided with a teenager standing near it. "Oh, sorry," he said, and would have continued his pursuit, except for the fact that the teenager grabbed his arm.

"What?" he was about to exclaim, but the teenager cut him off.

"Captain Jack Harkness, boy am I glad to see you! Almost missed you there, fast as you were. You haven't aged a bit! Oh well, that was to be expected. How long has it been? About 200 years right, for you at least. 200 years, wow!"

"Doctor?" Jack asked. "Doctor! Wow, you're…" He was at a loss for words to describe how the Time Lord looked. "Different," he concluded lamely.

"You're not," the Doctor replied, grin on his face. "So where were you headed to, anyway? Perhaps I should let you get going."

Jack blushed scarlet red for an instant. "No, no problem, I was just going to, you know, take care of some Torchwood business, but it's not urgent, so, you know…" He trailed off, very embarrassed.

The Doctor seemed not to notice his stuttering. "Oh, great! Come in, come in!" He beckoned towards the doors of the TARDIS.

Jack slowly entered. "Oh my, you haven't changed it a bit!"

"Nah, I sort of like it the way it is. Don't you?"

"Yeah, it's great!" Jack grinned at the Doctor's enthusiasm, and sat down on one of the chairs next to the console. The Doctor sat on the other.

"So Jack, tell me, what have you been doing for the past 200 years?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh, you know, Torchwood stuff. Stopped a couple alien invasions, found a couple stalkers, normal things. Oh, and Martha worked with us for a bit! Great help she was, but, time passed and…" He was again at a loss for words, something that only seemed to happen to him around the Doctor.

For a second, a flicker of regret echoed in the Doctor's eyes. "Yeah, I know." But that flicker was soon gone. "So come on, you must have some good stories! I can't believe you went through 200 years of Torchwood without seeing anything worth telling."

Jack grinned. "Well, normally I could get arrested for this, but so long as you don't tell anyone…"

"I won't."

"So, about 100 years back, there was this alien that came to Earth. But you see, it didn't have a physical form. It survived by feeding off the energy in human's brains, which meant it had to inhabit human's brains. However, when inhabiting the brain, the alien began to shut down all of the brain's functions in its quest for more and more energy. So basically it was a parasite. We didn't know what to do; dead bodies were popping up all over town with no explanation for their death, since you couldn't see the loss of energy with any human technology at the time. But we, well, actually I, came up with a way to stop the alien. I created a fake brain with all the same energy as a human brain, but in much larger proportions. I planted it in Torchwood, and when the alien came running, expecting its biggest feeding yet, we trapped it." After a moment's pause, it was clear that the story was done. The Doctor was curious about what they did with the alien once they caught it, but was afraid to ask. He didn't always agree with Torchwood's methods, and he didn't come here to start an argument.

"Doctor, so what about you?" Jack asked. "Come on, you must have a story to share!"

"No, sorry Jack, I really have to go," observed the Doctor. He was beginning to feel weak, and didn't want to collapse like last time.

"Well, then, I was wondering…" Jack didn't quite know how to ask. Finally he blurted it out. "Can I come with you?"

The Doctor sighed. "No," he said.

Jack began to protest. "But we're immortal, both of us! It'd be perfect, we wouldn't have to be alone!"

The Doctor felt a slow sinking pain in his gut. For Jack to say that aloud, he must be lonelier than the Doctor had thought. But he didn't know about what was happening to the Doctor. And it was best that it stay that way.

"No Jack, I'm sorry," the Doctor said. "It wouldn't work."

Jack was about to argue further, but then he saw the look in the Doctor's eyes. It was a look of utter despair, an emotion he rarely showed. So Jack decided to let the subject drop.

"Well then, I'll see you around."

The Doctor couldn't bear to hurt anyone else. He'd done so much damage in his life, but for once he would help by telling someone what they wanted to hear, even if it wasn't true. "Yeah Jack, I'll see you around."

As the Doctor walked back to the TARDIS, opened the doors, and stepped inside, Jack felt like a hole had been torn inside him. Because he knew, knew from the Doctor's dejected step, and the look in his eyes, that he had lied.