A/N: The Doctors thank all reviewers for their lovely treats. =)

This is about the half-way point of the story, I think.

"He said, 'Whot's that on your – "

Jack whipped his blaster out and shot over Rose's head. Behind her, the Muerton who had once killed the Doctor crumpled with a yell.

The Doctor – the old Doctor, with his spiky hair and runaway gob – jerked towards him, yelling something, but Jack merely dodged him and shot another one of the attackers behind the Doctor. Screams rang through the restaurant as Jack blasted down another Muerton. Three down, three to –

Rose shrieked, "Behind – " just as a blast grazed the back of Jack's shoulder. The blaster fell from his hand, and he yelled in pain as he whirled to face the source. One of the Muertons had produced its own blaster, aiming wildly at him. The Muerton shot at Jack a second time, and the blast just missed him.

Instead, it zipped past him and straight into Rose's chest.

Rose's mouth opened in surprise. Her hand lifted to touch the hole at her heart, as if to confirm that it was actually there. Then she collapsed to the floor.

"ROSE!" the Doctor screamed.

The remaining three attackers were on them now, seizing them both and pressing the chloroform cloths to their faces. Jack thrashed for a moment before feeling his limbs start to droop. He sluggishly watched as the other two attackers swarmed over the Doctor. The Time Lord lashed out at both the one holding him and the one trying to smother him, arms and legs both striking flesh.

With a kick to a Muerton's head that left it staggering, the Doctor tore free and rushed to Rose's body. His fingers traced the hole over her heart disbelievingly as he cried, "No, no, no please…"

One of the Muertons came up behind him and wrapped an arm around his neck, while the other quickly recovered from the kick and pressed the cloth over his face. The Doctor looked drained, unwilling to do much more than rasp under the cloth. His eyes never budged from Rose's motionless body.

Jack fought the fuzziness engulfing him, but it was no use.

Jack groaned as he opened his eyes. The now horribly familiar cell greeted him. He slowly lifted his pounding head up, only to find the Doctor was not sitting injured in his usual corner.

"Hello, Jack," the Doctor greeted him dully, leaning against the opposite wall. He watched as Jack slowly sat up, rubbing his head. "You're alive." His tone was less pleased and more resigned.

"You're awake!" Jack exclaimed, sitting up faster. The blood rushed to his head and made him see spots, but he no longer cared. "You gotta help me – how do we get out of here? Where is here? Who are the Muertons working for?"

"I was going to ask you the same question," the Doctor said bitterly. "So that I know who killed Rose Tyler."

"But you have to know!" Jack said desperately.

"I don't," he snapped back, "And if you don't know who they are, how did you know they were coming?"

"I'm stuck in a time loop."

"You're stuck in a time loop?" the Doctor snorted. "Impossible. I'd remember. I'm a Time Lord. If time was resetting, I'd be the first one aware of it."

Jack leaned back and sighed. "Well, how else do you explain me repeating this capture, what, four times now?"

"You've repeated this four times?" the Doctor perked up slightly. "That's why you started shooting," he realized.

Jack shrugged. "I was trying to stop them before they got us. Didn't work. And Rose…" He lowered his gaze. "This is the first time she's died. I'm sorry."

The Doctor swallowed. "Time loop, you said. The starting point, right when you started shooting, is before she dies. Which means…"

"She'll be okay," Jack finished.

"She'll be okay," the Doctor repeated, but he didn't smile. The lost look in his eyes morphed to one of focus.

Jack explained the basic course of events. With slight hesitation, he even mentioned the regeneration. But the Doctor was so consumed with solving the problem and saving Rose, he didn't even bother to ask.

The Doctor paced, running one hand through his hair. "Let me see if we have this straight, shall we? Step one: we are captured. That has to happen, because if you try to attack them, Rose or I die."

Jack nodded. "Right."

"Step two: the attackers come take me away. Presumably they want information of some sort which I am unwilling to give them. How long am I gone?"

"About an hour and a half."

"Long enough to use a mind probe or try torture. Neither of which would work. Step three, they come get Rose, probably for leverage against me. Step four, forty-five minutes later the loop repeats. Have I got that right?"

"Yep."

The Doctor frowned as he thought. "If they threatened to hurt Rose, I would tell them whatever they wanted."

"She wouldn't want you to," Jack objected.

"I'm just telling you what most likely would happen. I'd tell them whatever they wanted, or at the very least pretend to."

"Then why am I repeating this over and over?"

The Doctor gave him a grim smile. "Well that's just the thing, isn't it?"

Jack's brow scrunched in confusion. "What is?"

"It's not just that there's a time loop," the Doctor explained, "It's that you're the one who knows about it. Not me."

"But why is that weird?"

"Because," the Doctor stopped his pacing and stared at him, "The only way I wouldn't be able to tell if I was in a time loop is if I erased my memory of it."

Jack blinked. "Why would you do that?"

"I think…and mind you, I'm usually right…I think I'm the one causing the time loop."

"Causing the time loop," Jack repeated, trying to wrap his mind around it. "But don't time loops just…happen? Can Time Lords create time loops?"

"No…" The Doctor ruffled his hair. "I mean, we could, back when there were more of us…"

"You mean there's another Time Lord here?"

"No, definitely not. I would know, and there isn't."

"But how do you know?"

"I know."

"Well, then how do you know you're causing it?"

The Doctor paused. "Well, it could be caused naturally. But it'd be a rather remarkable coincidence that one would end right there when we're all in danger. You're not making it, and I doubt Rose is making it, so that leaves me. And the fact remains that I should remember it, and I don't. Which means I've wiped my own memory. And the only reason I can think of for doing that is if I created the time loop and have a good reason for forgetting it."

"Fine," Jack snapped, "Great, fan-freaking-tastic. And why? Why would you repeat this hell over and over again?"

The Doctor ignored him, still thinking hard.

Jack's anger diffused slightly. "Doctor?"

"I'm saving Rose," the Doctor realized.

"What?"

"Something horribly, horribly bad must happen in that room," the Doctor continued, "And somehow, I am giving her a reset button."

"But Rose isn't here this time, so what happens now?"

The Doctor thought. "They come take Rose away an hour and a half after they take me?"

"Yeah."

"They'll take you this time instead."

"So…"

"We wait," the Doctor said dully, slumping back against the wall. "They come get me, I refuse to help them, they come get you, I somehow reset the time loop as I've apparently done before."

"And then I'll know what's going on," Jack nodded, "And hopefully the next you can figure it out." His shoulders slumped, muscles he hadn't realized he'd tensed relaxing. The Doctor knew what he was doing. Jack didn't need to worry anymore.

"Everything I've said, creating a time loop, and all that, is impossible, by the way," the Doctor said mildly, as if stating the obvious, "This is all a purely hypothetical construct I'm using to convince myself that I can get Rose back. Odd little fantasy you've cooked up for me Jack, but thank you, it's helping."

Jack barely restrained himself from hitting his head against the wall. "Whatever keeps you this side of sane, Doc."

"The real question," mused the Doctor, "In this purely hypothetical scenario, is why you are the only one who remembers."

Jack jerked to attention with a start. Footsteps rang from just beyond the cell door.

"I mean, I can make myself forget. But Rose? Why would I erase Rose's memory?"

"Doctor," Jack interrupted, and the Doctor looked up at him. "They're coming back." He held out a hand for the Doctor to take, and pulled him to his feet.

As usual, the door crashed open to allow a horde of armed Muertons entrance.

"Take the Time Lord."

Two Muertons stepped forward, and slammed both the Doctor and Jack into the wall.

"Alright, alright," the Doctor winced. "No need to hurt him, I'll come without a fuss."

Instantly the Muerton pressing Jack to the wall released him, and Jack felt a hot stickiness drip down the back of his head as he watched both Muertons seize the Doctor.

They dragged him to the door. The Doctor met Jack's eyes and Jack gave him a small nod back. Then the cell door slammed shut, and Jack found himself alone again.

He leaned back against the wall and waited. An hour and a half. He counted the seconds to try and keep track. One Boeshane Peninsula, two Boeshane Peninsula, three Boeshane Peninsula….

At about two thousand seven hundred and forty-two Boeshane Peninsulas, Jack blinked.

"He said, 'Whot's that on your head, mate?' And Rose – "

"No!" Jack hissed in frustration as he realised he was back in the restaurant. Only forty-five minutes had passed since the Doctor had been taken from their cell. Why had the loop started early?

Then he noticed Rose, beautiful, alive Rose, wasn't laughing at the Doctor either. "But…" she murmured, hand covering her heart in bewilderment.

Jack's own heart pounded. Rose remembered.

"We're caught in a time loop," Jack explained, the words coming out clipped and practiced.

The Doctor's grin faded as he noticed neither of his friends were laughing. "What?"

Jack mindlessly repeated his warning, his attention fully focused on the Muerton behind Rose, who also seemed to be hesitating in confusion. He opened his mouth to tell the Doctor and Rose to run; if the Muertons were hesitating, maybe they could leg it –

Darkness engulfed him as the wretchedly familiar chloroform-soaked bag was yanked over his head. Jack tumbled backward out of his chair, both startled that he was being attacked on schedule and gagging on the smell.

"Rose, get down!" Jack heard the Doctor yell. Over the sounds of his own smothered breaths and struggles underneath the bag, Jack heard the sonic screwdriver buzz and Rose shrieking and crashing mingled with the Doctor's cries of pain….

Don't fight, Jack tried to scream, but the words were garbled beneath the bag, and opening his mouth only made him breathe in more of the chloroform, and soon he could hear no more.

Jack awoke with no one to greet him. Ignoring the dull headache that accompanied the aftermath of chloroform, he jerked up into a sitting position. Rose lay crumpled next to him, hair wrapped over half her face. On her other side lay the Doctor, or rather, what was left of him.

Jack checked the Doctor's hearts – one beating, one not, as he knew they would be – and leaned the Time Lord against the wall. He'd memorized every bruise and criss-crossed scratch on the Doctor's face several loops before, and bitterly marveled at how the wounds were in the same spot every single time. Then he crawled over to Rose. He'd fallen prey to the chloroform first this time. Now he'd enjoy the benefits of waking up first as well.

Soon Rose's eyes fluttered open. "J – Jack?" she murmured weakly.

"In the flesh." He managed to muster the smallest of smiles.

"Restaurant…" Suddenly she sat bolt upright. "The Doctor – they were hurting him, he – " Her gaze fell upon the mangled heap that was the Doctor against the wall, and her eyes filled with panic.

"He's okay!" Jack reassured her as she pulled herself over to him and gently lay her head on his chest. "Mostly. He's still got one heart left, I checked."

Hearing the thump for herself, Rose relaxed only the slightest bit. Frowning, her hand returned to the spot where, in another version of events, a hole had resided. "Jack, I died. Except I'm okay. Do you think I'm like you? But it was more like…I saw the future or sommat…"

"The Doctor would know if you were like me," he assured her. "I told you, we're caught in a time loop. Only this time you noticed."

"Noticed?" Rose gaped at him in alarm. "You mean it's happened before and I don't remember?"

Jack sighed. "If it's any comfort, you only died last time."

"Last – last time?"

Jack sighed. "Come on, the Doctor'll be up in a few minutes."

They sat on either side of the wounded Doctor. Rose took to running her fingers through his hair. Jack just stared, trying to figure out what in the world to tell him.

Finally, at last: "R – Rose?"

In one swift moment Jack sprung into action, pressing on the Doctor's shoulder. "Don't move," he ordered, speaking fast. "You'll only hurt yourself worse. Rose is fine, or at least she is this time."

"This time?" the Doctor croaked, trying to shove himself off the wall. Jack pushed back on him harder.

Rose laid a hand on his arm. "Jack says we're caught in a time loop."

The Doctor blinked at both of them incredulously. "That's – "

"Impossible," Jack finished, "You'd remember, and as a Time Lord you'd be the first to know if time was resetting."

The Doctor's eyebrows lifted. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"You told me last time. Now for once in all of time, just assume I'm right and you're wrong, and we are actually stuck in a time loop."

"That I can't remember," the Doctor added sceptically.

"And that Rose couldn't remember until now," Jack continued. "Because she died."

Rose nodded in agreement, and the Doctor looked her up and down. "How?" he asked.

She frowned at the memory. "We were laughing, and Jack started shooting people, and they shot back and – they hit me. And then I woke up and it was like time had started over because you were talking about Kelvin Kalrezek again like nothing happened."

"I was trying to just kill the Muertons before they captured us," Jack explained hastily. The Doctor wasn't likely to take kindly to Rose dying, even if it hadn't turned out to be permanent.

The Doctor did glare at Jack accusingly, but he didn't comment. He seemed to be thinking, battered features screwed up in concentration. "That does sound like a time loop," he admitted. His voice rasped with effort. "Start from the beginning."

Wary of the rapidly dwindling time available before the Doctor was taken away, Jack explained the Muertons' attacks, the Doctor's removal from the cell, and Rose following shortly afterward. He repeated as best he could what the Doctor had said in previous loops, and gave the current Doctor every scrap of information he knew. When he got to the part about the Doctor's regeneration, however, the Time Lord perked up, although he still struggled for breath.

"What was I like? Was I ginger?"

"No."

"Taller?"

"Nope."

"Older?"

Jack snorted. "Definitely not. You looked about twelve."

"Twelve?" Rose said in alarm.

"Alright, twenty-five," Jack conceded, "And don't worry, Rose, you seemed to like him snogging you enough."

The Doctor sighed. "Still not ginger."

"Anyway…" Jack continued his story quickly.

When he'd finished, the Doctor's arm raised slightly before dropping with a wince. If he'd been healthy, Jack knew he would be running his fingers through his hair. "Well, can't say this isn't a dilemma."

"Which part?" Jack asked drily. "The part where I'm caught in a time loop?"

"Oh, no we're all caught in a time loop," the Doctor assured him, gesturing from him to Rose. "You, you, me, the Muertons, and whoever's behind all this. But the memories of it have been wiped from everyone's mind, except you, Jack. And now Rose. Distance, that's the key."

Rose rubbed his shoulder soothingly. "Distance from what?"

"From the eye of the storm." Seeing the blank looks on both their faces, the Doctor continued, his voice a pained wheeze, "The epicenter of the time loop. Me. Or rather, whatever I'm doing in there that causes the time loop. Everyone within a certain radius of the epicenter forgets. You, Jack, have kept your memories because you're too far away."

"That's why I remember this time," Rose realized. "If I died last time, they'd've left my body there, yeah? And I'd be too far away."

The Doctor nodded. "Exactly."

"Some of the Muertons looked a bit confused, this time," Jack realized. "The ones I killed."

"They remembered too!" Rose gasped. "So whoever's employing them knows what you're trying to do now!"

The Doctor jerked his head to the side in a half-hearted attempt to shake his head. "Muertons? Nah, they won't say a thing. Mercenary race, the Muertons. Bred to take orders and not much else. Very to the letter. Won't do a thing more than they've been hired to do. Not to mention that they hate looking thick, and mentioning they've got déjà vu wouldn't be likely to go over well. So if their assignment was to bag-and-tag us, they won't do more than that."

Jack rubbed his forehead. "That's why the loop started early as well. You figured out that if I got too close to the epicenter, I'd forget about the time loop and we'd be stuck in square one."

The Doctor beamed weakly. "I am rather brilliant. So this time, I'll just tell them whatever they want to know, or at least pretend to. Then hopefully they won't feel a need to take Rose, and in the meantime I avoid a thrilling bout of torture. Works out nicely for everyone."

All three tensed as they heard stomping outside their cell.

"Doctor," Rose said suddenly, "What about you?"

"They're coming for me," muttered the Doctor through clenched teeth as he strained to get to his feet. "Not much we can do about that."

"I mean, how can Jack convince you not to fight next time so you don't end up…like this? Maybe he could say something only you would know?"

She and Jack carefully helped the Doctor to his feet. He leaned on both of them, gasping with effort.

"Say 'Theta Sigma, time loop,' first thing in the restaurant," the Doctor decided.

"That a code?" Rose wondered.

The door burst open, and the Muertons filed in the door. "Old Academy nickname," the Doctor finished, speaking fast, "Should shock me into listening to you. And mention….mention Susan Foreman."

"Susan – ?" Jack repeated in confusion.

"Take the Time Lord," a Muerton ordered.

The Doctor, Rose, and Jack all tensed and didn't move. Oddly, neither did the Muertons.

"Well, go on then!" snarled the Doctor after a moment, fists clenching. "What're you waiting for, eh? Trying to decide which of my friends to shoot?" He glared. "Don't you dare touch either of them."

A Muerton grabbed each of the Doctor's arms and yanked him towards the door. For all his angry bravado, the Doctor stumbled and hissed as his legs gave way underneath him.

Rose stepped forward and reached out for him without thinking, but Jack snatched her arm and pulled her back. No need for Rose to get herself shot.

As soon as the door slammed shut, Rose shoved Jack's arm away and paced the length of their cell. "Can we get out of here?"

Jack shook his head. "We've tried. With and without the screwdriver."

Rose hugged herself, running her hands up and down her arms. "So what do we do now?"

"Wait for the loop to repeat and tell the next Doctor. Eventually, he'll figure it out."

Rose frowned. "I don't like it. I feel like we're missing something…"

Jack laid down on the floor, hands behind his head. It was going to be a long wait.