CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A MYSTERY TO SOLVE

The clean up was going to take a long time, and the Doctor just wished to be going. He normally didn't hand around long enough to have to help clean any mess up, but Jack was refusing to go until Sandra agreed to go with him, and Sandra was refusing to go with him unless her house was cleaned up, at least partially. It did make a kind of sense to the Doctor, but that didn't mean he had to take part. Even if it meant they had to hang around for an extra couple of hours, he would still not get involved. He didn't do domestic, and cleaning up a destroyed house was close enough to domestic for him.

No, he was content just to watch. It wasn't boring. It was rather exciting in its own way, and he smirked to himself as Brittany squirted bleach all over Jack. That would definitely have put stains on that overcoat of his, but the captain had prudently taken it off, expecting a situation exactly like this.

Jack retreated from the attack, throwing a sponge at the Doctor's newest companion in self-defence. Brittany lost interest in pursuing Jack, and began chatting with Sandra, giving the captain enough time to come sit next to the Doctor on top of the kitchen table.

"Hello Jack," the Doctor said contentedly, happier now than he had been since the Noble affair, as he referred to it in his mind. He had been alone for far too long after Donna Noble, and it was doing him good to have another human messing up the place every now and then.

"Well, you seem happy all of a sudden," Jack observed, picking up the subtle mood change.

The Doctor smiled a genuine warm smile. "Yeah. I suppose I am Jack, I suppose I am." The pair sat in silence for a long time, watching Brittany flick splinters at the back of Green's head, much to Sandra's amusement. It was such a simple thing, just to sit and watch without interfering, and the Doctor couldn't remember the last time he had just observed, instead of involving himself.

Jack ruffled the Time Lord's hair, knowing how much the alien hated that. "So, any theories?" he asked as the Doctor tried to restyle his hair back to how it had originally been.

"On what?" the alien asked, trying to get his unruly hair to sweep forward, but it was simply refusing to do what he wanted.

"You know what," Jack replied, running his fingers once through the Doctor's hair, causing it to stick straight up as if it had been electrified.

The Doctor gave up on trying to fix his hair, instead ruffling it and letting it fall back into place by itself. "I do know how the shadow got here, other than that, only theories." He sighed, racking his brains for any possible answer to their current dilemma. "The shadow came with us, in the TARDIS."

Jack frowned. "How? What do you mean by that?"

"It's a shadow Jack, how do you think?" the Doctor replied. "It must have hidden itself in one of our shadows, and smuggled itself on board. It would have been weak after it was pushed into the glowworm light, but if it acted fast, I suppose it is possible that it found our shadows and hid, just the tiniest sliver, biding its time, growing stronger over the weeks. But that wasn't what pulled us here. I don't know what caused that. Absolutely no clue."

"Not even an idea? Not a smidgen of anything even resembling a theory?"

"Not yet," the Doctor said succinctly. "But whatever it is, it doesn't feel like it did it out of kindness."

Jack shrugged it off. "Still, alls well that ends well." He ducked and a sponge flew through the air right where his head had been. "Might have said that too soon," he chuckled, keeping an eye out for any more attacks from Brittany. "I don't know why you picked that one up."

The Doctor laughed. "That makes two of us. As far as companions go, she's one of the most annoying I've ever had. She does that on purpose, though why, I don't know. I should just dump her on a moon and be done with it."

Jack punched the skinny alien in the shoulder. "How dare you even say such a thing! You would never do that."

"No." The Doctor smiled at the idea of Brittany being stuck on a moon, with only rocks to annoy, but then another thought occurred to him, one that had been nagging him ever since he had met her. "Jack, I don't know how to say it, but Brittany is different from everyone else I've ever met," he said, not quite sure why he was saying it. "There's just something about her that I just can't put my finger on, something that should be familiar, but isn't."

He suddenly felt cold, an involuntary shiver running up his spine. "Something is coming Jack. Coming from across the stars, and this danger is just a taste of what's to come. When it gets here, then we'll have something to worry about."

Jack didn't know what that meant, but knew the Doctor's words had deep meaning, deeper than even the Time Lord could know at this time. But whatever event the Doctor was referring to was a long way off, but once it got here, it would be all or nothing.

Chilled by this revelation, Jack stood up. "Well, I better get back to clearing up. You enjoy yourself."

The Doctor watched him go. "Yeah," he said, although he didn't mean it. Just for a few minutes, he had been able to forget all the danger, all the horror and all the sadness that was his life, but that was it. Only a few minutes relief, and then he had to go back and face reality.

Whatever was coming wasn't going to be friendly, and the Doctor could only help but think that the events of the past few days were linked. What the Thoraln had said about the 'Golden One' activated something hidden deep within hundreds of years of memories, and while he didn't consciously realise what it was, he knew that it really wasn't good.

Nowhere near.