Breathless And Torn.

AN: I don't know what brought this fic about, I was just walking home anda couple of lines came into my head, so I sat down to write and this whole piece just spilled out. It's slightly strange, but I had to write it. I'd love some feedback, especially as this is quite different from my usual style so I'm a little nervous about posting it.

I'm not the only person alive to feel special just because I laugh or smile for no reason when I walk down the street. I don't feel better than them. But I am, and I can't help it, because I've seen better.

I wasn't special, I wasn't anything much really. I was described as no-one once even after I'd met him, right at the beginning, but then, so was he. And it didn't matter, because if we were nothing then we were also everything and everyone, every time and every star in the whole universe, and that's what he did to me.

Walking down the road now, somewhere in South London, I feel that same burst of fleeting joy that had filled me every time he took my hand back then. The sun is shining and I look at the woman who gives in with a smile and buys her son an ice-cream, the teenaged girl standing with her mates on the street corner, tugging at the hem of her too-short top and wondering what there is to look forward to. I used to be her, and I wish I could tell just how much there really is to look for. I see the small children playing in the playground across the road, blissfully unaware of the sheer size of it all, their world contained for now in that leafy and sun filled park, and the old man who does his shopping at the same time, dead on, every day, shuffling out of Tesco's and touching his cap as I pass him, a trace of the grace and gentility that used to be. Reminds me a bit of London in the 40's. Now that was when I really met grace and… not so much gentility, but something a million times better. He was my brother back then; it's strange how people change and grow. Life hangs from promises, I learned. I was just a child back then.

It feels a little as though I am walking in slow motion. Or maybe it's everyone else who's being caught in the moments of time that flock around us, dancing and fading and bursting into life. Flashes of colour catch my eye; the bright green of leaves that are washed in sunlight, the vivid red of the sports car that drives past, so detached that I think it isn't really here. It is just one element from someone else's dream, somehow phased into the scene before me as I stand, push my hair back from my face, and feel out of this world. Maybe I am. This wasn't home to me for so long, and people change. Oh, people change.

I'm 25 years old. That's a quarter of a century, and that means nothing to me. I've lived a million lives and loved like no one on Earth. How could time be to me what it is to everyone else on this planet?

The stairway to my flat is cool and quiet, and I hardly see the stairs before me as I climb. I see the railings, stretching up and up; I see writing on the walls that I pass, years old, records of people's lives that pass in a second. I enter my flat and it feels empty and waiting. Waiting for what?

It's a nice flat, good area. He left me with a lot of money the last time we said goodbye but I think he knew I'd work anyway, because that's what we do.

Because sometimes you can handle it and sometimes you can't. Sometimes the grey of the sky weighs in on you and you can't breathe, and sometimes people talk to you and you don't hear a word they say. And sometimes people talk to you without uttering a single word, and then they disappear and they never leave you alone.

I remember him, the first one. The memories make me smile and they always will; how blindly I gave myself to him, how relentlessly I loved and trusted him. He became me and he still is; he's the child that stays in all of us, hidden away because life forces you to grow up, even when you run away and go back to before you were born, or the end of the world, even when your only responsibility is to stay alive and love the people you've sworn yourself to.

Then he changed, and my world fell apart but of course, he was there to put it back together again. They both were, the ancient love and the purest pretender, falling through time and space at my side forever, and sometimes late at night I can hear echoes of their laughter in the air around me.

And he was alright, number ten. I loved him in ways I'd never had the chance to show my first love. We'd been soulmates since the beginning of forever, and when we became lovers I think the stars smiled down on us, glad for their only son. He was with me for two years and I suppose I changed more than he had in that time. I learnt death and birth, destruction and chaos and true beauty, light and dark and laughter. I grew up with him, and he left me. He had no choice; our hero would have died to save us, but how could we let him? He'd died once already and I'd brought him back; this time we didn't let it get that far.

I've often wondered what I would call the worst night of my life. In a life like mine it's pretty hard to say, though perhaps it hasn't come yet. But the things we saw that night; the things we had to do haunt me still, almost as much as he does. Ten is a part of me still because he made me who I am now. He is laced into every thought and breath that goes through me.

After that it was different. My next love made me laugh more than anything else, and that is his ghost. Every joke, every little thing that brings a smile to my heart reaches to him just slightly, wanting to share and finding no one to share it with. He was a stranger to me for so long, this calm and awkward joker, and I grew angry with him for the change. I should have known it wouldn't last for long. One trip where he miscalculated, and suddenly my heart felt like it'd been torn from my body and I would have died to save him, and nearly did. Soulmates don't always have to be lovers, I learnt, as long as there's that ever-faithful promise that always creeps under the surface and never opens its heart to the souls who cling to it. And my brother ceased to be my brother, because barriers break down when people do, and the things he found when we went searching for his past left him changed in a way that would have killed me had I not been used to adjusting. I remember the first time, when I took him into my arms and held him all night, never sleeping, just letting him rest peacefully for once, and seeing him wake with the knowledge of what we were becoming in his eyes. And I gave in to what I had never admitted to needing, just desperate to make him alive again, never realising that he was doing the same for me.

The shifts and changes in people are as minute and magnificent, as intricate and as beautifully simple as the shifts and changes in time that we experienced every day. People, like time, are fluid and unstable, ever changing contours in the face of time, twisting and burning at the slightest touch, remaining true and sound when the strongest force tries to break them.

I could sink into these memories now, close my eyes and slip away to join them, my soulmates, and ease the heart of me that is longing for home. The memories pull at me, trying to take my hands and root me down, singing to me and fighting to draw tears from my eyes that I will not let them take. I remain still, alone in my flat, breathing in air that feels empty.

He still watches over me. I don't think he realises that I know it, but I do. I can sense him when he's near, but I can't recognise him. He was there last week, just there, in the middle of London, and I could feel him. He could have been the older man who brushed past me, scowling, as I crossed the road, or the man who looked about my age who winked at me, grinning. He could have been the dark haired man with the tired eyes who was sitting on a bench like he was waiting for something that he knew would never come. Whoever he was, I could feel him watching, checking up. He promised once to keep me safe, and for him promises go to the grave.

I'll never know what he looks like now, because I left number twelve. He was too different and I couldn't breathe anymore. He tried, for weeks he tried, and he said he was sorry, but we both knew our time had come. Soulmates don't always have to be together, I learnt. We were strangers, standing together with the knowledge of each other burning between us. I felt like something vital was draining out of me as I walked through the doors to our home and kept going, not looking back. Because leaving him meant leaving it all, even my own love, the man who had taken possession of me as strongly as if he had carved his name into my foundations.

I wonder what he's doing now; he's not with the Doctor, somehow I know that. The Doctor. No one ever asked him what he was a Doctor of, and he never understood why. Because people trust him. It's what we do; it's who he is. Even now I struggle to find the words for what he truly is, something greater than a simple ape could ever comprehend, perhaps. Something greater than time and space, something greater than the stars, and the world, greater than love and hate, life and death.

The sun's going down. I get up and head into the bathroom, turning on the taps to run a bath. I wander into the bedroom to decide what to wear when I go out later. I've been happy here, but suddenly everything feels dim and faded, and I can't shake the feeling that something's changing. There's a hum in the air that is at odds with my surroundings, and I remember the feeling that descended upon me, six years ago today, when I first entered the TARDIS. The biggest adventure imaginable was just about to start, and I was aching for it.

So what now?

I can feel a strange sort of music running through me and suddenly I can see the Doctor before me, smiling sadly, full of relief. I can't even say which of my Doctors it is, only that it is all of them and none of them, and I realise; I've never seen him look this peaceful before, this free. I remember the first time he died.

You were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

"And you were." The words escape my lips, barely a whisper, before I can stop them, and his smile widens as he fades from my sight. Or my mind. "Goodbye, my Doctor."

There is a knock on the door and I'm glad that I've been left no time to mourn things that even the power of a Time Lord could not change. But it's unlike any of my friends to be early, and I can't help feeling my heart quickening slightly as I walk through my flat to the front door. That music keeps playing and it dulls my senses to everything but the tight feeling in my chest and the front door, which suddenly looks exquisitely daunting. The click of its opening casts a silence over me and I let it swing open.

There's a man standing there, half turned away as though he thought I wasn't coming for him; he is startled by the door opening, and he doesn't say anything at first. Now no memories haunt me. Nothing exists for me but this moment, and all that is in this moment is me, aching for what I never admitted to needing, and him. Dark hair worn slightly longer than the last time I saw him, a smile that is sheepish and flirtatious and warm and awkward and relieved all at once, blue eyes that hold so many emotions that I think I might fall under the sheer force of them. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his jeans and he is dressed clumsily, messily. He looks tired.

We are standing still but he could be falling through time and space at my side and it'd still feel the same. It's like two strangers staring at each other, and not knowing why they can't look away.

I think that moment only lasted for a second, but it gave us forever back, and now I have to speak but the words don't come. I stand back to let him in, and he picks up his bag and takes a few hesitant steps into my home, and drops his bag again.

"Jack." I only manage to choke out one word, but it breaks us and pulls us into each other; in a second I'm in his arms, and I know that he'll never let me go again. And I know that I'll never give him that option anyway, and I feel the Doctor somewhere in my mind, smiling his blessing at us, before finally letting go and disappearing. I know that Jack feels it too, and I take him by the hand and lead him towards my room.

"Come with me," I tell him, and he grins and follows, and I know that the biggest adventure imaginable is about to begin.

Thank you for reading.