The Doctor could hear Martha enter the control room of the Tardis, with an edge of hesitancy to her step.
He'd said one trip, and then he'd stretched that into two. By all rights, it was time to take her home, but the loneliness threatened in the back of his mind.
He forced a wide grin onto his face instead and stood from where he'd been crouched beneath the console to check the Tardis' scanners.
"Martha! Just in time. Tardis has picked up on some odd readings in the vortex that need checking out," he announced and bounced to his feet, pulling levers and flipping switches as he darted around the control column.
"Bit of a detour, it's probably nothing." The lie slipped out, and he caught himself, gritting his teeth as he corrected himself, "Well, could be nothing. Well, I say 'could be'... might possibly, actually, be something... anyway! Hope you're well rested," he babbled, treading the line between not lying and not scaring her, and sighing in relief when the smile on her face told him he'd succeeded.
The Tardis landed with a soft thump, and with just a quick glance at the monitor to make sure there was nothing deadly right outside the doors, he stepped back, holding an arm out towards the door and inviting her to go first.
Martha darted across the console, down the ramp, and pulled open the doors, stepping out with her head already spinning to take in everything as the Doctor shrugged into his coat and followed.
A city skyline, water, sail ships, the scent of desperation mingled with salt wafting on the air, and as he stepped out behind her and closed the door to the Tardis securely, he heard Martha ask where they were and smiled.
"Ah! Smell that Atlantic breeze. Nice and cold. Lovely. Martha, have you met my friend?" he teased, turning to face her and indicating that she should turn around with a playful tilt of his head.
She followed his instruction and gasped, his grin widening at her excitement as she stared up at the Statue of Liberty.
"Is that..? Oh my God! That's the statue of Liberty!" she spluttered.
"Gateway to the new world," he confirmed, stepping up to her side. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." he quoted, and Martha nudged his arm with her shoulder beaming.
"That's so brilliant! I've always wanted to go to New York. I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new one..."
He swallowed down the correction, that they were both real. He could hear in her voice what she'd meant this time. The original, and he sniffed, turning back to the city on the opposite shore and pacing forwards slowly.
"Well, there's the genuine article," he told her, "so good they named it twice. And, with a bit of luck, it'll make up for being kidnapped on an alien world," he said, throwing a grin over his shoulder as Martha moved to follow him, seeming determined to stick closer to his side after the events of New New York.
"Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally," the Doctor continued, babbling to keep the guilt at bay, and filling her in on the history of where they found themselves as a distraction.
"Harder to say twice, no wonder it didn't catch on; New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam."
She laughed softly, but it was cut off quickly and when the Doctor glanced down at her she was squinting towards the city, staring at something.
"I wonder what year it is. Because, look, the Empire State Building's not even finished yet," Martha muttered, and the Doctor sniffed.
"Well, wonder no longer. I am a Time Lord, after all," he told her, letting his eyes scan across the city but testing so much more than that.
He'd already tasted the desperation on the air, and that put them in the middle of the Great Depression. 1929 to 1933. He knew the Empire State Building wasn't yet finished, and construction of that had occurred between 1930 and 1931. For something more specific, something to impress, he started nudging at his time senses and began babbling again as he focussed.
"Work in progress, still got a couple of floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date around—"
"November 1st, nineteen-thirty," Martha said confidently, and the Doctor's head snapped around as his senses confirmed her words.
"You're getting good at this," he told her, surprise filling his voice as he stared at Martha, but she turned around and waved a newspaper at him and he scowled. Disappointment warring with relief that she was human and curious, and clever.
"That's cheating."
"Eighty years ago," she mused, ignoring his comment, and the Doctor watched her curiously as she seemed to consider the landscape before her again.
She was taking to time travel on her own planet easier than space travel to new worlds, he decided. That wasn't a problem, every companion adjusted differently and every companion had a preference, but seeing how they all reacted was one of his favourite parts, and he shushed the northern part of his brain that whispered no one had ever taken to Tardis life as naturally as Rose.
Pushing his past self back into his mental box, the Doctor returned his attention to Martha to hear her still marvelling over the fact that something that should have been firmly in the past was now, very securely, in their present and future.
As she continued to marvel over their location in space and time, the Doctor gently took the newspaper from her hands and skimmed over the front page, lips pressing tightly together when his eyes landed on a headline and he felt the Tardis hum within his head.
"—all those old newsreels, all in black and white, like it's so far away, but here we are! It's real! It's now!" She all but squealed and just like that the Doctor was hit with another memory of Rose, and felt his hearts shatter as his fingers clenched around the newspaper.
"But, it's like, think about it though... Christmas. Eighteen-Sixty. Happens once, just once, and it's gone. It's just finished, and it'll never happen again. Except for you. You can go back and see days that are dead and gone a hundred thousand sunsets ago... No wonder you never stay still..."
"Not a bad life?"
"Better with two... Come on, then..."
"Come on then, you," Martha's voice crept into his mind, shattering the memory, and he blinked back to the present. Eyes quickly focussed on the paper in his hands and he grasped onto the distraction he'd discovered on the front page of the New York Record like a lifeline as Martha grinned up at him, asking where he wanted to go.
"I think our detour just got longer," he told her, lips pressed together in a grimace at the throbbing in his temples, and he turned the paper to show Martha, glancing around their immediate surroundings again.
"Hooverville Mystery Deepens? What's Hooverville?" she asked, and the Doctor blinked down at her before shaking his head.
"Let's grab a boat over to the mainland, and I'll tell you on the way," he promised, folding the paper and slipping it into the pocket of his coat as she nodded her agreement and the pair went to find a way into Manhattan.
Heavy use of the psychic paper and a boat ride later, and they were strolling through the streets of 1930's America, and it didn't seem to take Martha long to forget their reason for being there.
The Doctor let her weave them a path across the city, only occasionally redirecting her to keep the heading in roughly the direction of Central Park and it was only once they were within sight of the patch of green that Martha stopped her impromptu sightseeing and fell into step beside him.
"Alright then, what's Hooverville?" she asked, letting out a satisfied smile, the warm breath clouding in the cold air.
"Herbert Hoover," the Doctor started to explain. "Thirty-first President of the USA, came to power a year ago. Up 'till then New York was a boom town. The roaring twenties, and then...?" he held out his hand, waiting to see how much Martha knew of US history.
She thought a moment before answering, "Oh, the wall street crash, yeah? When was that, 1929?"
"Yeah," he confirmed, his tone no longer playful as they moved through the park. The thought of the damage that singular event had caused lowered his mood, and the Doctor had a gut feeling that the day wasn't going to get any better.
"The whole economy was wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. All of a sudden the huddled masses doubled in number, with nowhere to go... So they ended up here in Central Park," he finished, face grim and hands once more buried in the depths of his pockets.
"What, they actually live in the park?" Martha asked, and her voice all but told him not to be so ridiculous. He turned his eyes back to her, and raised his eyebrows reprovingly, and partially in surprise that she seemed unable to comprehend what lengths desperate people would go to for survival.
Didn't student doctors do volunteer work anymore? Or was that on Rafern Three?
In the face of his stare, Martha just raised her own eyebrows in disbelief, "In the middle of the city?"
When he didn't crack a smile, or let his own eyes soften, or even break their stare, Martha's features quickly fell into a frown and he could see the reality beginning to settle over her as they moved deeper into the park.
He was suddenly aware that Martha had probably never had to steal food to stave off hunger, or slept in her clothes because there was no heating and that the conditions the people in Hooverville were living under was going to be a particularly big culture shock for the human, and he sighed.
As they stepped through a roughly knocked together archway with 'Hooverville' carved messily into its surface, the Doctor kept his eyes on Martha carefully as she took in the destitution around them. The ramshackle huts and dozens of people crowded around tiny fires in a desperate attempt to keep warm.
"Ordinary people lost their jobs, couldn't pay the rent, and they lost everything," he said quietly as he surreptitiously studied the men and women they passed.
Rose had said more than once that it was moments like these that were the hardest part of travelling with him. Knowing when you could help someone, and knowing when you had to leave things alone and watch ordinary people suffer.
"There are places like this all over America," he continued quickly, brushing thoughts of Rose from his mind so he could concentrate. "No one's helping them. You only come to Hooverville, when there's nowhere else to go."
"I can't believe this," he heard Martha whisper and glanced down at her face. Her expression was of badly concealed shock, but he could see the pain there, in her eyes, and let his shoulders relax. Her words weren't of denial, but horror, and while that wasn't a good thing for her to feel, it was better than the alternatives.
They stood for a moment, watching as a fight erupted over food and a third man quickly stepped in as arbitrator. It gave Martha a moment to calm down and compose herself, and it was only as the crowd began to disperse that he nudged her arm gently with his elbow and invited her to follow him with a gentle, "Come on."
He felt her stay beside him as he took several long strides across the camp to catch up with the man who had broken up and resolved the argument, "I suppose that makes you the boss around here," the Doctor offered, heat tilting in greeting, and having to smother a wince at the almost unhealthy level of suspicion being aimed at him.
"And, uh... who might you be?" the man asked as he continued moving across the clearing to stand by one of the many small fires scattered around the park.
Martha was quick to introduce them both and confirmed that they'd heard his name correctly. Solomon. The apparent protector of Hooverville seemed to instantly find humour in the Doctor's name, and the Time Lord couldn't stop a soft, slightly sad smile, as the man went on to explain that, while they had stockbrokers, bankers, and lawyers, he was their first Doctor.
"How many people live here?" Martha asked, and the Doctor let her satisfy her curiosity as he studied Solomon.
He seemed strong, physically, with an equally strong sense of honour, and the Doctor decided that he could be helpful, especially as he seemed to take responsibility for the people residing within Hooverville.
"... I will say this about Hooverville, we are a truly equal society. Black, white, all the same. All starving," Solomon was saying when the Doctor tuned back into his words.
"So you're welcome, both of you," he added and the Doctor smiled. He was generous too, the Doctor decided, adding it to the list of qualities that Solomon had displayed so far, and genuinely kind.
"But tell me, Doctor," the man said, and the Doctor nodded, for him to continue, "You're a man of learning, right? Explain this to me."
Solomon turned and moved away from the small campfire that he'd been warming his hands against. He led them through a few narrow paths between rotting shacks before pointing up at the sky towards the unfinished Empire State Building.
"That there's going to be the tallest building in the world," Solomon stated, before turning back to the Doctor and Martha, raising an eyebrow at them. "How come they can do that, and we got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?"
The Doctor stared up at the construction site and felt his jaw clench. Solomon had asked for an answer, but the Doctor didn't have any that were satisfactory.
It didn't seem like the man truly expected the Doctor to say anything, because a moment later he was walking away and the Doctor had to force himself to swallow hard against the sudden tightness in his throat.
Rose had been right. Knowing when you couldn't help anyone, and making yourself walk away, had always been the hardest part.
It had been a quiet couple of weeks at Torchwood since the Cyberman incident, and Ianto had returned to work with only a nod of forgiveness shared between him and Jack.
Rose had rolled her eyes at the pair and made a pot of tea, and that had been all that had been said on the matter, at least within her earshot.
She knew Ianto wasn't sleeping well though, and when the dark circles under his eyes started to stand out, that's when Rose started digging around the archives for small side projects she could ask Ianto to help her with as a distraction.
He'd leapt at the opportunity, and while he left the hub at fix every evening, Rose could almost guarantee that he'd be letting himself back in sometime between two and three am.
She distracted Ianto the same way she had distracted herself after losing the Doctor. With projects, potential cases, and sweet tea, and while it wasn't a long term solution, the Welshman usually got another couple of hours sleep on one of the sofa's around sunrise, the constant presence of another person seeming to keep his nightmares at bay.
It was during one of their early morning research sessions, when Rose was on her way back to the workstations with freshly made cups of tea, that she heard Jack finally stumble over Ianto.
She'd known it would only be a matter of time before they were discovered, but it had only been a few weeks and the atmosphere around the two men was still bordering on tense.
"You shouldn't be here," she heard Jack say quietly, and Rose slowed to a stop, just out of sight, waiting to see if they could behave themselves when they thought there were no witnesses.
There was a long moment of silence, during which Rose wished she didn't have a mug of tea in each hand just so she could nervously bite her nails, but eventually Ianto responded with a cheeky; "Neither should you."
Rose grinned, and peered around the corner, watching Ianto move towards the computer they'd been working on with mild confidence. He knew that Rose had okayed his being there, Jack didn't, and that let the Welshman turn his back on his boss and continue working.
She saw Jack step out of his office, his attention fixed on Ianto and the Captain stepped up behind the other man's chair, his suspenders hanging loose, and she briefly wondered what had awoken him, but set it aside to ask him later.
Jack's shoulders lifted as though he was taking a bracing breath, and then he let one hand settle on Ianto's shoulder. When Ianto paused but didn't brush him off, Rose bit her lip to smother a grin in response to the small bridge of healing that touch signified.
"Funny sort of weather patterns," Ianto offered, his own version of an olive branch, and he glanced over his shoulder at Jack, but paused when he caught sight of Rose.
She grinned at him and straightened from where she'd been leaning against the wall, coming fully around the corner and holding up the cups silently.
"Is that my tea?" he asked, but Jack didn't tear his eyes away from the screens as Rose approached.
"Yup. Careful, it's hot," she warned, passing Ianto his mug before shooting a small frown at Jack. "What is it?" she asked, quickly recognising the look of concern on his features in the barely-there furrowing between his brows.
"Could be nothing," he answered after a moment, and Rose raised an eyebrow. She could see Ianto hide a grin behind a mouthful of tea, but didn't stop staring at Jack with a pointed look of impatience until he glanced at her and noticed with a sigh.
"Alright, fine... it might be something," he conceded with a sigh, "but I need to check on some things before I'm sure," he defended himself gently, folding his arms across his chest.
"I'll need you and Gwen to come with me to an exhibition this afternoon. There's someone I need to speak to."
Rose nodded, surprised but willing to trust that Jack would tell her what she needed to know.
"Sure, I'll send her a test in a couple of hours. Why don't you go have a shower, get dressed. There's a pot of tea in the kitchen," Rose offered easily, eyes worried.
He caught sight of her face and offered her what she assumed was intended to be a reassuring smile, pressing a gentle kiss to the middle of her forehead before he left to do as she'd suggested.
She watched him go, taking another sip from her tea as he vanished. She could feel Ianto watching her, and slowly turned to meet his gaze, waiting for the question she could feel building there.
"Are you two...?" he hesitated and Rose raised an eyebrow, wondering if Ianto was trying to ask what she thought he was.
"None of us really know much about Jack," he started again, "but you seem like you've known him a long time. Like you're... close."
Rose nodded, and lowered her mug with a sigh, "Jack travelled with me and a mutual friend a while back. We saw each other daily for nearly a year. Saved people, ran for our lives, had fun... we know each other pretty well, yeah."
"So... are you and he—"
"Best friends, yeah," she cut in quickly. "He's like an insanely over protective big brother," Rose whined, purposefully breaking the tension that Ianto's hesitancy had built up around them, and answering his unspoken questions at the same time.
"He hogs the shower, vets my boyfriends, tells me way more about sexual exploits that I ever wanted to know about him," she complained, grinning when Ianto flushed bright red and started spluttering while turning back to the computer, eyes wide.
"Oh, well. That's... uh... I mean..."
As Ianto stumbled over a response, her grin grew into soft laughter, and Rose didn't bother to smother it as Ianto's cheeks flushed pink.
"I hope you choke on your tea, Rose Tyler," he grumbled, with an embarrassed glare that simply made her laugh harder.
"What, exactly, are we doing here?" Gwen asked several hours later and she and Rose followed Jack down a small street, having left the SUV parked in a nearby car-park.
"Dunno, but if we're not quick the tires on the car won't be there when we come back," Rose muttered, looking around the rough area. She saw Gwen throw her a grin, but Jack was too busy answering her question.
"I got an invitation from an old friend two days ago... here we go," he said, holding an arm out towards a run-down auditorium. Rose stared up at it and narrowed her eyes. It looked like any number of old, abandoned buildings she'd waded her way through, but the timetable of the board outside insisted the old building played host to any number of local community events.
"Faeries?" Gwen exclaimed, and Rose blinked, "Are you kidding me?"
As Gwen rounded on Jack, Rose glanced at the timetable and spotted what had so alarmed Gwen. A quick glance at her phone to check the time and she realised Gwen was right, they'd come to see a talk on faeries.
As strange as it sounded, she glanced at Jack and could see the grin creeping across his face.
"Just because they're called faeries, doesn't mean that's what they are, Gwen," Rose warned, thinking of the Gelf, and how they'd portrayed themselves as benevolent beings and Jack pointed at her nodding.
"Right."
He led them both inside without another word of explanation, and Rose followed through a large entrance hall, covered in a worn, threadbare carpet, and into a large darkened room that had rows and rows of empty chairs.
At the front of the room stood an older woman, with a shaky looking projector as the only accompaniment to her speech. The room could have held several hundred people, but there were only a handful of listeners scattered about.
The woman paused her presentation when they entered and smiled at Jack when he waved. As she continued speaking, Jack quietly ushered Rose and Gwen into seats near the back of the room.
"I don't believe this," Gwen muttered as they sat, but before Rose had a chance to chastise her, Jack had already shushed the woman.
Rose could see how seriously Jack was taking the tales, and so she turned her attention to the images on the projector, frowning in thought.
The creatures were beautiful, there was no doubt, and if Jack was taking this woman seriously then Rose didn't doubt the validity of her claims, but what these 'faeries' had to do with the weather patterns that had put the worried frown on Jack's face that morning still eluded her, so she rallied her patience and waited.
Throughout the presentation, Rose alternated between watching the woman and glancing at Jack, but the look on his face made her throat close up and her stomach tighten.
It was the same look he shot at her when he thought she was being particularly amazing. The tight, genuine smile. Soft eyes, relaxed features, and Rose knew with absolute certainty that Jack knew this woman and cared for her, deeply.
After she realised that, Rose didn't hear another word of the presentation, too focussed on Jack's rare, unguarded expression, but he suddenly frowned and shook his head.
"Wrong," he complained softly, "she always gets it wrong."
As the presentation finished, and the lights slowly came up to scattered applause, Jack sighed and finally turned his gaze onto a sulking Gwen and Rose.
He paused when she met his eyes, and pressed his lips together before sighing, "Come on, I'll introduce you both."
Rose didn't call him on the avoidance, now clearly wasn't the time. She set in aside in favour of following Jack up to the front of the room, watching him swoop up to the small woman and wrap her in a hug that was easily reciprocated.
"Oh Jack, I'm so glad you could make it," she said as Jack released her.
"Wouldn't miss it, Estelle. These are some friends of mine, Gwen and Rose," he introduced and Rose held out her hand, taking Estelle's in a firm but gentle grasp.
"Lovely to meet you, your photographs are amazing!" she said, and the woman laughed, seemingly torn between flattered and embarrassed.
"They're rather shaky," Estelle dismissed, "I took quite a few, but only showed the best ones here. Even these weren't as clear as I'd have liked," she answered, cheeks turning pink as Rose beamed at her.
"Do you have the others with you?" Jack asked, and Estelle rolled her eyes.
"Of course," she replied, grabbing Jack's elbow and steering him over to the table.
"What are we doing here?" Gwen muttered to Rose softly, drawing her attention from watching Jack and Estelle. "Faeries? This has got to be a joke, right?"
Rose just shook her head with a sigh and tried to figure out how to explain it to the woman beside her. "Imagine for a moment that you've seen... I dunno, a weevil for the first time. Before you knew that aliens were real. What would you think you were seeing?"
"I don't have to imagine. That's part of how I found Torchwood," Gwen explained. "I thought it was a mask, or some kind of acid damage to someone's face."
"Right," Rose agreed, "so 'alien' isn't the first thought you jumped to, yeah? So if you see small white creatures in a forest. They can glow and have a humanoid shape, and what look like wings... what are you going to call them?"
She watched Gwen's features fall into shock, and her face drained of colour as the reality finally clicked into place for her.
"Oh god, so you're saying that what she thinks are faeries are actually—"
"They could be anything," Rose cut in quietly, "but Jack seems to know more than he's saying right now, and he looks worried when he doesn't think anyone's looking. So, right now, I'm trusting him," she explained with a shrug, turning her gaze back to the ex-time agent as he poured over Estelle's photographs.
"Come on, we'd better take a seat. It looks like he's going to be a while," Rose said with a sigh, and she and Gwen settled into the front row, close enough to listen in on the conversation between Estelle and Jack.
Jack was faster flicking through the collected images than Rose had predicted, and although he put one or two into the projector to get a closer look, most of the time he just peered at them briefly before putting the slides back into their box.
"Estelle, when did you take these?" he asked eventually, once he'd dug through her collection, and when Rose glanced at them, Estelle was smiling.
"A couple of nights ago. I left you that voice mail the next morning. I knew you'd want to see them," she told him, leaning patiently against the table that had her belongings scattered across it.
She'd been standing there the whole time Jack had been engrossed in her pictures, as though this was a familiar routine for them and Rose felt her eyes narrow in consideration.
"Where?" Jack asked.
"In Roundstone wood."
"That's not far from here," Gwen threw in, and Jack glanced over his shoulder at them while Estelle's smile just widened.
"No, it's about a half hour drive, I suppose," she agreed, turning glittering eyes back on JAck. "It is so good to see you again, Jack. It's been far too long— Oh, look! There's the wood," she exclaimed, interrupting herself when Jack placed a new slide onto the projector, but Rose had been watching Jack's features and caught the shadow that passed behind his eyes, pulling Rose back onto her feet until she stood by his elbow.
"What is it, Jack, what's wrong?" she asked softly, but at her question, his shoulders just tensed further. What surprised her the most, however, was when Estelle was the one to answer her question.
"Oh, Jack and I have always disagreed about faeries. I only ever see the good ones, he only ever sees the bad!" she explained, and Rose raised an eyebrow.
"Maybe you're both wrong?" she offered, and Estelle laughed.
"They're all bad," Jack shot back firmly, and Estelle shook her head and tapped the pen in her hand against his arm in gentle reproof.
"No. I refuse to believe that."
"Well, I suppose one person's good could be another person's evil," Gwen offered softly, a second attempt at finding the two a middle ground to agree upon, but Rose could see the determination behind Jack's cold gaze.
To have such solid certainty she knew he had to have some kind of proof or personal experience. She'd never known the 51st-century man to be closed-minded about anything, always willing to bed unless he had a damn good reason not to.
"Oh, Jack, if only you'd seen them out there in the woods!" Estelle's elation drew Roses' gaze, and no matter her friends' concerns, the woman's sheer joy drew a smile to her face.
"They were happy, they were dancing, and the faerie lights were shining," she whispered softly, her hands coming up to clasp together against her chest in delight, and Rose could see some of Jack's defensiveness leak out of his frame as he smiled down at Estelle.
"Do you have any more photos?" he asked softly, and Estelle glanced up and met his eyes before sighing, apparently resigned to the fact that she wasn't going to change his mind and nodded in response.
"Yes. At home," she told him, dropping her hands in surrender.
"We need to see them all," Jack said, and once Estelle nodded Rose moved to help her pack up the projector, prepared to follow Jack wherever his investigation led.