Jack stared at the bright blue box in front of him in astonishment. He never visited him. Maybe it was an accident. Shaking all thoughts from his head and smiling, he walked to the front door and knocked.
The door opened and the man staring out at him wasn't a Doctor that Jack recognised.
'Excuse me.' He requested of the possible Time Lord. 'Are you the Doctor?'
The man's eyes, bright blue and sparkling, stared into his and seemed to read his soul. Did all of his regenerations do that?
'Yes.' He stated after a while. 'You're not a Time Lord are you? I'm kind of running at the moment.'
'No, I'm not a Time Lord.' Jack smiled happily. Hang on, aren't all the Time Lords dead? He thought.
'What regeneration are you?' he asked warily.
'Eighth.' He answered. 'Nearly became my ninth, but I always could defeat the Master.'
'The Master?' Jack asked. 'I met him recently.'
'I just took his ashes from both Skaro and the San Francisco Millennium.' The Doctor stated unhappily. 'He killed Grace and Chang Lee, but the Eye Of Harmony helped me to bring them back.'
'What? They died?' Jack asked with his eyes wide open.
'Yes.' The Doctor glared at him. 'The Master turned Chang Lee against me and tried to use him to open the Eye Of Harmony, and I turned him back and the Master snapped his neck. Grace was killed when he threw her over, I think it was a balcony or it was a massive flight of stairs and she landed next to the Eye Of Harmony.'
'Okaayyyyy.' Jack stated while turning his head away.
The Doctor stared at him, and Jack found it quite unnerving. 'I can show you if you want to see it. The TARDIS at the moment had a replay room.'
Jack found himself nodding, but he had no conscious movement over it.
The Doctor turned in the doorway, and headed back in to the TARDIS interior.
Jack entered and stopped short. When the Doctor, he had first travelled with, had coral structures, it had looked amazing, and alien and so different to what it was like now. Maybe the Doctor had been trying to show to himself that the Time Lords weren't really gone. But this, it looked as though the Doctor was trying to fit in with humans. Late 20th century, if Jack hazarded a guess.
'Wow.' Jack turned on his heel. 'This is just amazing!' he said taking in the wooden, and decidedly less complicated consol, the huge airy, gothic room, that they were standing in.
'I like to think so to.' The Doctor smiled happily. 'I think that I like it better than the white desktop theme I had going on for the last god knows how many regenerations.'
'White?' Jack asked. 'Never figured that as your colour.'
The Doctor laughed and indicated Jack to go down a corridor to their left. 'Third door on the right.' The Doctor murmured. 'Well, at least that's where it was last time.'
'Yeah, when I was on the TARDIS, she used to move all the rooms around, as a game.' Jack chuckled. 'It was quite fun.'
The Doctor stopped in front of a door, and Jack bumped into him. The Doctor turned to look at him and said. 'This is it.'
Jack pushed on the door and it sprung open to reveal a Spartan room into which they both stepped.
'Well, the last time I was in here, Romana was trying to get me to reveal who my wife on Gallifrey was.' The Doctor stated.
'You're married?' Jack coughed.
'No. Her regenerations ran out.' The Doctor stated, before turning to look at Jack. 'It was an arranged marriage. We didn't love each other. All we had to do was mix DNA into a loom to have a mixing of our houses.'
'What? That made no sense!' Jack said confused.
The Doctor rolled his eyes and spoke slowly as if to a child. 'We had to have a child to join our houses together. We were one of the richest houses on Gallifrey. My cousins had to marry others from different houses. It was just the way the Prydon chapter was run.'
'Houses, Chapters and cousins?' Jack banged his head against the wall. 'Are there any Gallifreyians that will make any sense?'
The Doctor glared at him. 'I am probably the only one willing to talk to you. No other Time Lord would lower themselves to talk to humans.' The Doctor spared a smile. 'I am a rebel. Do not assume that the rest of my race is like me. The only one who is similar to me is Romana, and she, well, she's the Lady President.'
'You're friends with the President?' Jack growled.
The Doctor stared at him. 'Did my successor tell you nothing? I was the President over Gallifrey in my fourth incarnation. Or it could have been my third.'
Jack shook his head and whispered. 'Ok, let's just watch this memory.'
The Doctor pressed a covertly hidden button behind him that was hidden by the wall.
The Memory
He said it himself, Lee! He's wasted his lives, all of them!
Jack saw the Master grin at the Doctor, and notch an eyebrow slightly before commanding 'Open The Eye!'
Jack saw the younger human man, he was so confused, trapped between two people that had helped him so much over the course of the last day.
'No! You lied to me.' He said as the Master turned to him, grin no longer on his face.
The Master turned to look at the Doctor, and grinned whispering 'Lee.'
'I will never lie to you. I would only protect you.' He said putting his hands on either side of his neck, and Jack could see what the crazed Time Lord was about to do, even if the human male could not, and Jack closed his eyes, not wanting to watch as he was killed.
Jack heard the sickening snap of bones, and the Doctor yelling. 'NO!'
The scene faded and all Jack could see when he opened his eyes was the Doctor.
'That was vile.' He said emotionlessly.
The Doctor looked at him incredulously. 'Did you think that it would be all sunshine and daisies? You knew what it was going to be about when you came in here.'
The Conversation split off as they were plunged into another memory.
She was untying the Doctor from the chains that Jack had seen him in, in the last memory, but now she seemed panicked. 'What's a temporal orbit? What's a temporal orbit?'
Her eyes widened and she twisted herself and the Doctor around, and Jack watched as the Master threw her over the balcony, and as she went flying through the air to land next to the Eye Of Harmony.
The Doctor was yelling but Jack couldn't make it out, too focused on the two deaths that had happened so close to each other, to people that the Doctor had been close too, so soon after he had met them, and Jack knew then, that he blames himself for their deaths.
Jack wavered slightly as the memory left, grimacing as he did so. 'Is that it, Doc?'
The Doctor grinned. 'One more now, a happy one this time.'
'Go on then. I'm ready.' Jack said.
The TARDIS materialised on some random street in San Francisco, and the Doctor, Chang Lee and Grace stepped out.
Jack closed his eyes and just listened to what they were saying.
'Your things.' Chang Lee said to the Doctor.
'My Sonic Screwdriver!' the Doctor cried with jubilation.
'And um, theres the matter of these.' Chang Lee pulled something out of his pocket.
'Keep them.' The Doctor said, slightly preoccupied.
'Really?'
'Yes, really.'
'I better go before you change your mind.' Jack laughed at what Lee said.
Lee started running, but looked back as the Doctor called him. 'Lee.' He waited for Lee to face him. 'Next Christmas, take a vacation, just don't be here.' He said indicating San Francisco.
'Right, thanks.' He replied, slightly confused. 'Thanks Doctor. See ya around Grace.'
'There you go, interfering again.' Grace said as they started walking.
'But Grace something you should know-'
'Don't tell me.' She said suddenly.
'Why not?'
'I know who I am.' She said happily. 'And that's enough.'
'I'm glad.' He grinned.
Then Jack heard the question he had been waiting to hear since he started watching these memories. 'Come with me?'
Jack laughed at Grace's reply. 'You come with me.'
The Doctor's confusion made him laugh even harder. 'Me come with you?'
'Yes.' Grace nodded her head
'Me come with you.' He repeated
Grace laughed as the fireworks celebrating the Millennium lit over head, and Jack felt jealously as he heard the Doctor's words. 'It's tempting.'
'I'm gonna miss you.' Grace said sadly.
'What do you mean? I'm easy to find, I'm the guy with two hearts.' The Doctor laughed.
Jack blinked as he heard her say quietly. 'That's not what I mean.'
And Jack felt full blown jealously erupt through his body as he saw them kiss under the fireworks.
They separated and started walking in opposite directions, and they spun around to speak to each other one last time. 'Thank you Doctor.' She called.
'No thank YOU, Doctor.' The Doctor smiled.
Jack tilted his head, what was her profession?
The Doctor walked to the TARDIS, and Jack watched as Grace watched him go sadly, and The Doctor turned around, and Grace did a sad half wave to which the Doctor smiled at her, before walking into the TARDIS.
'Well, got to admit that, that was much happier than the others.' Jack grinned.
'Yes, it was.' The Doctor seemed to look back into his memories again before snapping back to attention. 'So, a trip? Or do you want to go home?'
'I would like to go back to Torchwood, because it's my team, and my family and my lover, and they're them as much as Grace is Grace.' Jack tried to explain.
The Doctor led him back to the front door of the TARDIS, when an ominous ringing rang thought the interior.
The Doctor groaned, walked to the consol, and yanked a phone from it. 'What do you want Romana?'
Jack watched as his eyes dilated, and he stopped breathing.
'Doctor?' he asked hesitantly.
The Doctor dropped the phone and turned to look at Jack. 'I looked into your mind.' He announced. 'I saw about the Time War.' He grinned slightly. 'Daleks have just invaded my home planet. The council is calling back all Time Lords and Gallifreyians to fight. Romana, she wants me to fetch Susan.'
'Who?' Jack asked
'Susan, she is, was my granddaughter, she was only a Gallifreyian, and I abandoned her in the 22nd century on Earth.' The Doctor laughed. 'She fell in love with a freedom fighter. The Daleks have always ruled my life. And that's how I lost my first companion, because I dropped her off so she could stay with her lover who fought Daleks.'
Jack watched in worry, as the Doctor completely broke down.
'I'm gonna survive this War, only to have my best friend find me after three years, and try to kill me, and my TARDIS. Then you die, and I really want to run away from you, as far and fast as I can, but I'll never get far enough away, I fear, and now Wars. I've only been in this body for three days.' He sat against the TARDIS consol. 'Right. No more weeping, no more emotion, lock it away in the little box in the corner of my mind.'
'You have heard that compartmentalisation is bad for you didn't you?' Jack asked.
He turned his dead eyes on him. 'This war is going to last 569 years. Earth years. Do you understand how difficult this will be?'
'Yes.' Jack stated.
'WW1 and 2 added together do not even add up to it! The last major battle that Gallifrey had seen that threatened all of existence was Pythia, and maybe when the Sontarans tried to invade Gallifrey.' The Doctor mused.
'Right! That's it! I'm going!' Jack said storming out.
The Doctor called after him. 'See you again in 900 years.'