Neither with nor without you
Chapter 5
The nightmares no longer plagued him.
Whenever he awoke, Jack felt wondrously...relaxed. Placing a gentle kiss on his sleeping husband's forehead, he realized that this...was where he belonged.
He had a place where he was needed – and a place where he wanted to be.
Forever.
And yet...he had already felt the pain of it ending at last. John may not remember the year that had never been, but everything was still so very alive in Jack's memory.
It only made the immortal appreciate these peaceful moments all the more.
Their second chance in itself was a miracle he was grateful for every single day he awoke next to the man he loved.
And every morning anew, he promised that he would never let him down again.
Time had been kind to John, yet it had to show eventually.
Decades had passed, wrinkles had appeared, and yet Jack could not help but fall in love again every time he saw his doctor.
"I think I'll be working from home today," John told him after breakfast as he massaged a sore spot on his neck, "Can you get the groceries later?"
Jack arched an eyebrow. "Again?" he asked critically, but did not wait for an answer. John was tiring out more easily nowadays, yet he insisted that it had no unnatural cause. Shifting his focus on tutoring rather than practising actively, he had already adapted his pace to his body's limitations. Nonetheless...his general well-being had not stopped deteriorating, slowly, but noticeably.
Making a mental note to insist on a checkup later that day – when he was not in a hurry to get to work only moderately late – Jack leaned down for a brief goodbye kiss, "Take care."
Insisting on stealing just a bit more of his husband's time, John deepened the kiss. "I love you."
"I love you, too," Jack grinned brightly, not regretting the additional delay in the slightest.
In retrospective, it was his late arrival that saved his skin that day...at least for a while.
His team had salvaged a meteorite from Snowdonia that had harboured a danger nobody had anticipated. It was a plant that fed off electricity...and procreated that way. By the time Jack arrived, it had occupied a good part of the building.
Thanks to his team, he managed shutting off Torchwood tower's power supplies.
Thanks to an established cooperation with UNIT, he managed quarantining it altogether.
Unfortunately, though, not even John had been able to come up with a way to actually contain or even kill the thing.
This only left them with one option: waiting it out. Since electricity was its sole source of nourishment, it would eventually starve.
But...would it do so before his team?
Worse yet...there was electricity within the human body. If bad came to worst, their waiting would be useless if they ended up killing the main organism but serving as hosts for its offspring nonetheless.
Running a hand through his hair, Jack looked at the desperate faces of his friends. Most of them had been part of the team for less than ten years.
All of them were far too young to die like that.
"I'll figure this out," he heard John's firm promise through the phone before the battery died at last. Sighing, Jack lowered the device. This had been the last piece of functioning technology within the tower. There was no light but the moon above, no gas, no noise...aside from the soft sobbing from their youngest member.
Jack gulped. Rachel was Gwen and Rhys' daughter. What would he tell them?
Would he ever get to tell them anything in the first place?
"We need to burn it," she whispered quietly, "If we don't, the entire world will go down with us."
Watching her warily, Jack chose his words carefully. She had only voiced what everybody was thinking – the global intergalactic taskforce had grown immensely during the last three decades. If they had not found a solution during the day they had already spent in quarantine, they would probably not do so – at least, not in time for anyone to survive.
Rachel knew, Jack knew...all of them were aware of that. In that sense, burning along with the entire building might be the least cruel choice to make.
He did not want to watch his team starving.
But he could not have them give up just yet.
John had promised to help – and now that he thought about it, Jack had not tried everything, either. "Come on, people," he began as he finally got up again, his voice much stronger than he felt, "regardless of how bad this is looking, we're not out of options yet. We can still communicate with the outside world, and if there's any insight on this plant that can save everyone, it's us who can provide it."
A few gasps and disbelieving stares later, he was grateful to watch his small speech succeed; as everyone was setting to work, the overall mood was lightening again.
They could do this.
They had overcome many hindrances – so why would this one be different?
The sun had risen an hour ago, and they were finally getting somewhere...That did not make their findings particularly reassuring, though.
"So you're saying that it would take three months for it to die," Rachel summarized gravely, "assuming it has not, and never will, infect any of us."
"That's good news, though, isn't it?" Jack mused, thinking, "We do have enough rations for that long." Taking another moment to process that information, he then turned to Steven, who had been the head of their laboratory for five years already, "So what can we tell about the risk of infection?"
Much like everybody else, Steven did not particularly look thrilled. "I hate what I'm going to say," he stated and closed his eyes, "As far as I can tell, nobody has shown any visible signs of an infection, but...I've found spores of it in the blood samples of us all."
"No..." Rachel whispered, dropping to her knees.
Jack inhaled sharply. So this was it?
They were doomed after all?
"No, this is not the end," he muttered, running a hand through his hair as he walked amongst his despairing friends, "There has to be something we've overlooked."
The truth was...even if he could stand for the deaths of his team mates...he could not guarantee burning everything within the range of the quarantine would solve the problem...because the spores might well survive within his own system.
He had no solution to that.
"Maybe there's something that kills it, but not us," he mumbled, more to himself than to his team – but they answered nonetheless.
"You mean...like an electromagnetic impulse?" Steven suggested, his eyes briefly lighting up with hope.
"Yeah," Jack replied hastily, "Have we tried that yet?"
"I'll get to it," Steven replied with a nod.
Suddenly, though, the ground started shaking beneath their very feet and confirmed their worst fears.
"How can it be growing again?" Rachel exclaimed in terror, "It's got no energy source! There's no electricity left except for..."
"...us," Steven whispered gravely.
Another rumbling below increased their terror, but Jack noticed the subtle difference. "It's not growing," he stated quietly as he kept listening to a noise that was much louder than the steady rumbling it had given off before, "it's moving."
Even Steven panicked this time. "How can it be moving?" he breathed, "By any specifications, it's a plant, for crying out loud!"
"It looks like a vine, but its metabolism actually resembles that of a squid."
Jack's eyes widened. He welcomed hearing that voice, but...how dare John dash into a situation as dangerous as that?
"...well, a squid maintaining a low-level telepathic field while living off a highly adaptive kind of photosynthesis."
He had been about to reprimand his husband, but the man Jack was staring at with wide eyes and a dry throat...was not John at all. "What are you doing here?" he croaked, still in shock.
The Doctor looked like John had thirty years ago. With him wearing yellow trainers and a brown pinstripe suit, nothing about his appearance gave away his subjective age.
Nothing but the golden ring on his finger.
"I'm here to do something I'm good at," the Doctor stated plainly, "talking."
Jack opened his mouth...and closed it again.
"You mean you found a solution?" Rachel piped up hopefully, running up to him to shake his hand excitedly, "That's why you broke the quarantine in the first place, is it?"
"Well, yes," the Doctor replied and tilted his head, "This...plant-squid is a single sentient being known as Morbol." The frown, suddenly ever-present on those familiar features, deepened. "It stranded on Earth thanks to the rift and was simply trying to survive," he explained, "It never meant to harm anyone."
"So what do we do with it?" Steven asked, "We don't exactly have a way of talking to it...do we?"
"Actually we do, and it agreed to leave us alone," the Doctor offered plainly, "It's being migrated as we speak."
Rachel's eyes lit up as she squeezed John's hand which was still caught between hers. "Oh thank god!"
"The spores in your blood are merely its way of recognizing you," the Doctor added, "Nothing harmful will grow from that, so you all might as well go and get some well-deserved fresh air." With a small grin, he nodded towards the door he had entered through.
As the rest of the team left towards freedom in tearful relief, Rachel was practically bouncing. "I've never been so happy to see you, John," she chirped gratefully before dashing off as well.
A whole minute passed before Jack corrected her, far too late for anybody to hear. "He's not John." As he lowered his head in grief, slow footfalls and quiet rustling told him of the Doctor sitting down on the chair to his far right.
Close enough to be heard, but too far away to offer any comfort.
"It was a terminal illness," the time lord offered at last, "I – John – was planning to tell you once he hit the critical stage, but given the fact you would have been trapped in this tower for another couple of months, you would not have met again either way."
Jack felt his eyes beginning to water. "What?"
"Humans fade, Jack," the Doctor spoke, "But they never want you to notice."
Inhaling deeply, Jack gulped. "I never said goodbye."
"John's not dead," the Doctor replied softly, "He's right here."
Forcing himself to look up, Jack saw a man he knew yet didn't watching him with the strangest expression.
Within a split second his heart broke yet again, and he quickly averted his eyes – just like the Doctor did.
Taking a deep breath, the time lord got up again to pace around the room. For better or for worse, Jack at least was not the only one deeply unsettled in that moment.
Frankly, his mind had already refused working properly by the time he had caught sight of the Doctor. By now, Jack was just sitting there, thinking nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, barely even listening.
"The thing is," the Doctor was rambling, "It's gotten better, but I can't believe it's still that difficult."
Tiredly, Jack looked up.
"I've been close to you for thirty years," the time lord uttered and bit his lip as he met the immortal's heartbroken gaze, "and I can still barely even look at you."
Only when a sob escaped his lips at those words did Jack realize he really had started crying at some point. "Then change back," he whispered.
He had known this was where it had always been headed, so why was it still hurting so much? John was gone, replaced by a man who was convinced of the wrongness of Jack's very nature.
And yet, as the immortal dared looking up at that man again, he realized his words had hurt him just as much.
"...what?" the Doctor echoed in a horse voice.
He was being unfair, was he? But, staring back blankly, Jack was too tired to even care anymore, "Can you even change back?"
The Doctor looked at him with eyes he had never seen so sad. "Yes."
"Will you?" Jack whispered.
Taking a step back, the Doctor finally sat down again. "You still don't understand, do you?" he spoke with a rueful smile. "You're impossible. You're a fixed point in time. You should not exist." He took a deep breath. "My very instincts are screaming so loudly I cannot even bear to keep looking at you. But the thing is...I want to. I want to keep looking at you."
As Jack stared at the man he both loved and despised, it took him several minutes to process the meaning behind those words.
Smiling softly, the Doctor got up and approached Jack at last. As he placed a shaky hand on the immortal's shoulder, his battle against his time lord instincts telling him to stay at a distance became painfully obvious.
Why did he even bother?
But then he leaned forward to whisper in Jack's ear, "In this whole universe, you're the only one who is just as lonely as I am. So even if I need to become human to solve that problem, I will. Again and again and again."
...what?
Jack could not stop crying...but all of a sudden, it was a different emotion that caused those tears. "I was afraid you would reject me," he rasped at last, "...and now...you're saying you became human to be with me in the first place?"
Hovering above Jack, the Doctor refrained from answering directly. "Do you want me to be human again?" he whispered into his ear.
Jack was taken aback for a moment. When he had asked the time lord to change back mere minutes ago, he had done so because of a horrible loss.
But he understood now.
John and the Doctor – one had loved so openly, the other was struggling, yet trying hard to do so. While different, they were the same person after all. John was still there, somehow. It was as simple as that. And so, Jack got up at last, grabbed the Doctor by the shoulder and faced him squarely.
"I'll love you either way," he announced in the firmest voice he had mustered all day and pressed his lips onto the Doctor's. The time lord was surprised, yet welcomed the gesture, albeit with the hesitation his very nature forced upon him. Finally, they pulled apart, yet Jack could not help keeping the man close who had been his lover, his husband...and - dare he hope so? - might become that again. And so he finally finished his statement, "All I want is for you to stay with me."
Still breathing heavily, the Doctor was smiling against his neck. "I can do that," he replied in a soft voice only John had used and leant back to meet Jack's eyes warmly. "So what do you say?" he proposed, "Let's witness the miracles of the universe." His grin widened. "Together."
As tears were starting to cloud his vision yet again, Jack could not help pulling the Doctor into a tight embrace.
This was real, wasn't it?
He was holding onto John just as he was holding onto the Doctor.
What had always been an unrealistic dream was suddenly within his grasp.
Within his embrace.
John was alive, and breathing, and he would live on for centuries.
Alongside Jack.
As the time lord he had always idolized, yet never gotten close to.
When had that happened, though? When had the Doctor started caring?
Inhaling shakily, hesitantly stroking brown hair he loved so much, he realized he did not even need to know.
The Doctor had been inspiring throughout most of his life, but suddenly, he was right there - right where he needed him.
This truly was real, wasn't it?
A final tear rolled out of Jack's eye as he finally replied with a wide smile.
"I thought you'd never ask."
Fin
Notes: Because Jack and the Doctor deserve to be happy, and they would do so well supporting each other throughout their incredibly long lives.
I really hope I could do them justice in writing this, and I hope the main ideas shone through enough even though some of them were only subtly hinted at (e.g. John being rather balanced in nature because the -tired- Doctor wanted to experience not being restless all the time etcetc).
So, well, I'm rambling...and I'll do so a bit more: It's not exactly that important for the story per say, but if you've been wondering about the actual reason for Jack's nightly visions: whenever he had those, an incomplete part of the Doctor (either hand or fob watch) was close to him, so there might have been an unvoluntary reaction. (Though, again, that explanation only works if you don't mind 2006 actually spanning several years, but I think Jack and John's comparatively carefree days need to last more than a few short months.)
In any case, I hope you enjoyed this story and I'd be really happy to know what you liked and disliked - or any feedback at all. (Anyone make the magical review button appear? :3 )
So, thank you all for reading and till next time!