Disclaimer: The Doctor and all his companions are the property of the BBC and Russell T. Davies. There are not mine, nor will they ever be.
One And The Same
Rose hurried towards the control room, drawn by the sound of raised voices. She suspected she knew what was going on, but when she reached her destination, she found that it was much worse than she had anticipated. As she stepped through the doorway, her ears met with a resounding crash, and she was almost knocked over by the Doctor, who was evidently storming off in a huff.
"Doctor!"
But the Doctor either didn't or wouldn't hear her, and Rose decided that it would be much easier to talk to the person who wasn't walking away from her at a speed that could almost be called running. So she turned away from the retreating Time Lord and made her way over to the central console. Underneath it she found Jack, who seemed to be hammering at a panel a little harder than was strictly necessary.
"Jack." No answer. "Jack!"
"What!" The former Time Agent sounded extremely annoyed, and for a moment Rose almost decided to forget it and leave him to his anger. But that wouldn't help matters at all, she reminded herself. They needed to sort this out.
"You just need to get used to him, you know," she said.
"Get used to who?" But Jack wasn't fooling anyone, least of all himself, and a second later he sighed and switched his attention from the now rather dented panel to Rose.
"I've tried to 'get used to him'," he said. "But he's not making it easy for me. He's different. It's like he doesn't even remember what everything was like before."
Rose looked at Jack sympathetically. She knew exactly what Jack meant, and understood that the Time Agent was having a hard time of it. He'd been through a lot lately, what with dying at the hands of the Daleks, then coming back to life only to find that she and the Doctor had left him stranded on Satellite Five. And when they had finally reappeared to find him, the Doctor was a completely different person, one that the Captain couldn't seem to relate to at all.
"He does remember, Jack," she replied. "Trust me. It's not easy for him either. He's still adjusting to being a different person. But the old Doctor is still in there too. It took me while to understand that, and even I'm still getting used to him."
"But he doesn't seem to care about anything!" Jack protested. "He seems perfectly happy to jump into a situation, and damn the consequences. He's always on the hunt for the next piece of fun, without stopping to consider his actions at all."
Rose couldn't help herself. She started to laugh. But at Jack's angry glare she quickly stifled her giggles. "I'm sorry," she apologised. "But do you realise that you've just described someone else we both know? You, you idiot!" she exclaimed when Jack looked blank.
Jack opened his mouth to protest, and then closed it again. "I guess you're right," he conceded.
"The Doctor is just like you," said Rose. "Or, at least, how you used to be," she amended. "Now, you're nowhere near the Jack-the-lad you used to be, if you'll pardon the pun."
"Well, maybe I've changed," said Jack. "But if I have, it's all down to the Doctor. The old Doctor."
"There is no 'old Doctor', Jack. There's just 'the Doctor'. He's still…"
"The same person. Yeah, I know," interrupted Jack. "But Rose, you keep telling me that, and yet I can't seem to believe it." He scrambled to his feet. "As far as I'm concerned, when you reappeared on Satellite Five, you reappeared with a stranger."
Jack leaned against the corridor wall, allowing himself to slide to the floor until he was sitting. After his talk with Rose he had left the control room rather hurriedly, and was now wandering the TARDIS's many corridors, hoping that he wouldn't run into the Doctor.
It was safe to say that the adjustment period was taking rather longer than anyone would have hoped. He and the Doctor couldn't seem to do anything but argue – about anything and everything. Top of the list were the TARDIS repairs. The time-ship was a lot more sophisticated than it looked, but it required constant maintenance to keep it running. The Doctor was still allowing Jack to assist him with the repairs, albeit grudgingly, but he was not taking kindly to Jack's methods. Today was a stellar example. The Doctor was trying to fix the time dilation circuit, which had fried again during their last rather hasty retreat from a dangerous situation. Jack had merely made a suggestion about how it might be done more efficiently, having made the same repair to his own time-ships several times while he was with the Time Agency. But the Doctor had blown his top at the perceived implication that he might not be handling the repair in the best way. Then Jack had gotten angry too and yelled at the Doctor, the upshot of which was that the Doctor had dropped the piece of panel he was holding and stormed off. It was that that had shocked Jack more than anything else. The old Doctor – Jack still couldn't bring himself to think of them as the same person – would never have treated the TARDIS with such disrespect. This new Doctor really didn't seem to care about anything or anyone. Least of all a former Time Agent brought back from the dead.
Sighing, Jack scrambled to his feet. He wondered if Rose had left the control room yet – he really needed to get back and finish the repairs. Judging by the Doctor's earlier tantrum, Jack was willing to bet that the Time Lord wasn't about to return to work any time soon, which left the Captain in charge of getting the TARDIS back into shape. Still, he didn't fancy another ear-bashing at the hands of an annoyingly reasonable Rose.
Torn between his desire to avoid a confrontation and his desire to hear the soothing humming of a fully functional TARDIS, Jack dithered in the corridor for a few seconds longer before deciding that he really needed to get back to work, irate Roses and childish Doctors notwithstanding.
Poking his head into the control room, Jack scanned the area quickly, ready to duck out of sight at the slightest sign of another person. But the coast appeared to be clear, and so the Captain slid into the room, still on the lookout for any potential sources of conflict.
No, the room was definitely empty. Sighing with relief, Jack crossed to the console, and bent down to carry on with the repairs. Top of his list was replacing the panel that the Doctor had dropped before storming off. Jack could see where it belonged but, ten minutes later, when the panel still wouldn't fit back into its aperture, the Captain was seriously considering emulating the Doctor and throwing the piece of metal on the floor. It was then that he noticed a bundle of wiring that was slightly out of alignment. Evidently it was preventing the panel from sliding back into place.
Cursing softly at his stupidity, Jack reached out and pushed the wiring back into position. But as he did so, there was an audible click, and then the sound of some piece of machinery whirring to life. Confused, Jack pulled his hand back, and leant away from the circuit. Previous experience with the TARDIS had taught him that things were liable to blow up in your face at any moment, particularly when you thought you'd finally fixed them. But what happened next was completely unexpected.
"This is Emergency Programme One…"
Jack leapt to his feet at the sound of that all too familiar voice. It was the Doctor. The old Doctor. His Doctor. Looking wildly around, the Time Agent suddenly spied a figure standing on the opposite side of the console, facing away from him. But there was something wrong. The figure had a blueish tinge, and was flickering slightly, and Jack realised that what he was seeing was a hologram. His heart dropped as he realised that the Doctor hadn't returned after all – he had simply triggered an old recording logged in the TARDIS's memory banks. And the next words the hologram spoke didn't make him feel any better, either.
"Rose, now listen. This is important. If this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing – we must be in danger, and I mean fatal. I'm dead, or about to die any second, with no chance of escape. But that's okay, hope it's a good death. But I promised to look after you, and that's what I'm doing. The TARDIS is taking you home."
Rose. The message was for Rose. But while one part of Jack felt bitter about that, the other part accepted it with a mental shrug. Of course the Doctor would leave a farewell message for her. Of course he would want to protect her. What those two had was special, and Jack couldn't argue with it.
Still, the irrational part of his brain couldn't help but feel slighted that the Doctor hadn't wanted to say farewell to him too, hadn't felt it necessary to leave him a goodbye message.
'But you said your goodbyes,' said a voice in his head. 'You kissed him and you left. And you both understood what was going to happen.'
"Yes, I understood it," murmured Jack to himself. "But that didn't mean I wanted it to happen. I didn't want any of us to die, or change, or anything."
The hologram was still talking, but Jack was no longer listening. Almost without realising it, he had moved around the console until he was standing in front of the translucent, flickering figure. He watched as the not-quite-there Doctor talked, trying to will the hologram to become solid, to become flesh-and-blood again. But it didn't. It just stood there, reeling off its pre-recorded message, not caring that the person it was addressing was not the intended recipient.
"And if you want to remember me, then you can do one thing. That's all. One thing. Have a good life. Do that for me, Jack. Have a fantastic life."
Jack took an involuntary step backwards, his eyes widening and his jaw all-but dropping. Surely he had imagined what he had just seen and heard? The hologram had looked right at him and said his name. Not Rose's name. His name. But that couldn't be true. The message had been intended for Rose, to be heard in a different time and situation. How could it now be addressing him?
"It's semi-sentient, you know."
Jack jumped, turning to see the Doctor – the new Doctor – standing in the doorway of the control room. "What?" he asked, confused.
"Well, maybe 'sentient' isn't the right word. Let's say 'adaptable', shall we?" Seeing that the Captain still looked a little puzzled, the Doctor elaborated. "It has something to do with my connection to the TARDIS, I think. As I recorded that message, the TARDIS was able to pick up on all the other unsaid thoughts and feelings I was having at the time and incorporate them into the fabric of the recording. Therefore the message would be able to adapt itself to certain different circumstances…such as the addressee."
"But he said Rose's name at the beginning of the message…" said Jack, still not exactly sure what the Doctor was trying to say.
"That's probably because you weren't standing in the line of sight," replied the Doctor. "Did you move during the recording?"
"I…yes," admitted Jack. "I was standing behind him to start with."
"Well, there you go!" said the Doctor, with the air of someone who knows they are right. Then his tone of voice changed. "I didn't forget about you, Jack," he said gently, and Jack couldn't help but notice the faint emphasis on the pronoun. "I addressed the original message to Rose, but that doesn't mean I wasn't thinking of you too. It's just that I knew you could take of yourself, while Rose…well, she needs looking after. I had to make sure that she would be okay, that she understood what was happening. Do you understand that?"
"I do," replied Jack, and surprisingly enough, he did. The feeling of being slighted and excluded was diminishing. Still…
"It must have been something of a shock to see me like that again," said the Doctor suddenly, almost as if he was reading Jack's mind. "I know you're having trouble adjusting. So did Rose. So am I." Again there was the faint emphasis on the last word. "But can't you see that I am the same person, Jack? Okay, so I look a bit different, and I act a bit different. But underneath all that, I'm still the same. I have the same thoughts, the same morals, the same opinions…and the same feelings. And that's what counts, isn't it? That I still feel the same way about you and Rose? That I wouldn't want to go travelling through time and space without either of you?"
The Doctor's voice was almost pleading, and suddenly Jack felt sorry for him. To be different but the same…he couldn't imagine what that felt like. Jack realised that he needed to say something.
"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "I've acted like a complete asshole about all of this. I do understand…I think I always have, really. I just didn't know how to react. He…you…and Rose are the first people I've been able to trust since the Time Agency stole my memories. And to come back and find that one of the people I relied on had changed into someone else, as it seemed to me, kinda threw me for a loop. And I didn't handle it well."
"Neither of us did," replied the Doctor quietly. "But we seem to be doing better now."
"Yeah," Jack agreed. Then, suddenly, he grinned. "I've just realised…this must be longest we've gone without yelling at each other since you picked me up from the Games Station!"
The Doctor smiled back, albeit a little sheepishly. "Well, I think we have Rose to thank for that. She came and found me after my little tantrum earlier, and gave me right earful about how I'd been treating you. She said that I had to sort out the situation and she wasn't going to give up until we were friends again."
Jack laughed. "She can be a bit scary when she's on the warpath," he said. Then he stuck his hand out. "So, friends again?"
"Friends," agreed the Doctor. But instead of shaking Jack's hand, he pulled the other man into a hug. "I'm glad you're back," he said into Jack's shoulder. After a few seconds, he pulled away. "Now, shall we get back to these repairs? The TARDIS won't fix herself, you know."
Jack nodded. "On one condition," he said. "That you let me have a look at the dampening relays."
"Absolutely," replied the Doctor. "And if you're really lucky, I might even let you touch them!"