Chapter Text
When Jack finally calls the Doctor, it's because he has no other options left. His team have reached their breaking point, none of them have slept more than a couple of hours each; the British Government have followed their global counterparts in declaring martial law, society is in freefall, and after Owen storms out he knows he's reached the absolute limit of what they can do.
Contacting him is an ordeal of its own variety, but when the reply arrives Jack waits another two days yet, getting Tosh to work with the UNIT scientists to search for some technological solution to the impending invasion, taking advantage of his Time Agent training to draw up strategies for a handful of high-ranking commanders based on what they have gleaned from this alien race. The number-crunching is too unreliable, the Rift too unpredictable, the major powers too afraid of their own loss of control to accept much advice from Torchwood, of all places. It's only then that he replays the message and follows the instructions he's been given. The reply is hasty, dismissive, the worst of the Doctor. Even as civilisation threatens to crumble around him and his team, he knows it's always been this he doesn't have the heart to face.
When it's time, and the situation has deteriorated a few orders of magnitude further than his conscience would have usually allowed, he leaves Gwen in charge and instructions for the occasion of his extended absence. He tells Ianto alone where he's going before he lets UNIT escort (manhandle) him to the secure area he signals the Doctor from. In the wind and a gloomy drizzle of rain, damp and shivering, the TARDIS arrives only an hour later. That in itself should have tipped him off how bad things were, but when the doors open it's a surprise anyway.
The Doctor ducks out, glancing left and right before he slips through the doors and locks them securely. He looks so much older, so much tireder, than Jack has ever known him. There's a peculiar wide-eyed, hurt look under the hard lines of his face, like somewhere this is the Time Lord equivalent of a toddler finding their goldfish belly-up in the tank one morning.
His face seems to flinch through five different emotions before it settles on a friendly grin, and he hugs back with no less enthusiasm but to Jack it still feels brittle. He hesitates in a way that is entirely new, holds back in the beginning, but when the action starts and there's no more time for talking he throws himself into the task at hand with all the old vigor.
He's manic, even, more than Jack is comfortable with, and the necessary diplomacy is as always more pot luck and talking too fast to be understood than any great skill on the Doctor's behalf. His sigh of relief is breathed the greatest when Earth's airspace is finally clear and the environmental phenomena recede at last. The moment he and the Doctor share a hug, in triumph, is almost exactly how he remembers it. There's a grin, and a shared understanding that has come to Jack since taking up his own share of responsibility for Earth's safety.
But the Doctor is the Doctor, and the moment is crushed before it even blossoms as he almost runs back to the UNIT vehicles, nattering to the driver half-heartedly, who himself is far more concerned with phoning his family as the towers start to come back online. The drive is long enough that those silences the Doctor so dreads begin to reign inside the truck, the kind belonging to two people who have entire lifetimes to catch up on and yet find they have absolutely nothing to say. The kind that outline, vividly, how little there is left they are willing to give each other.
Jack can't ignore that much longer. It's been centuries, and then it had been a year, and then a little over six months, and it still hurts. He opens his mouth and only the expectation of the silence that follows finally drags the words out.
'How is he?'
The Doctor is remarkably calm as he insists, 'Better.'
'Doctor,' Jack warns. He won't play the game again, not with this.
'Don't you dare,' is the reply, too soft for Jack to know if it's a growl over the rumble of the road. There's a pause where the Doctor licks his lips, as if this is another advanced theorem of temporal physics that he knows nobody will understand, but tries to humour him anyway. 'There are good days and bad. He's--it's better than it was before.'
If "before" is meant to mean "enslavement of the human race and daily torture" then he doesn't want to be humoured. 'You can't believe that. You're not yourself.'
The Doctor glances at the soldier behind the wheel and his expression hardens. 'I can't afford to be.'
And then Jack reads between the thin lines of his lips, the hollow of his cheeks, and sees that he means 'I don’t want to be.' The words are already there, but he feels them lose their conviction as he says, 'You know you can't change him.'
'Yeah,' is all the Doctor says, apologetic, and then his eyes flick to something out the window.
The silence is, surprisingly, a comfort.
***
Jack invents some kind of business at the Hub he has to take care of to make the Doctor wait around for him, which is uncomfortable, as he starts getting edgy, manic, and then quiet and thoroughly avoidant. When he can stall no longer, he insists to accompany the Doctor back to the TARDIS, like walking to the gallows.
The Doctor makes a single protest, a stern, 'You know I can't let you do this, Jack,' but that aside there is little said between them. Jack's mind is made before they even sight the TARDIS on its rooftop. It is testament to why he's doing this, even as the TARDIS protests and the wood sticks in its jamb, that the Doctor all but stands aside to let Jack pass through the doors.
Jack takes a deep breath and lays his hand on the blue paint comfortingly, his eyes shut as he enters for the first time since the last time. He isn't sure what he expects to see, but it isn't the console and its battered seat just lying there, exactly the way he remembers down to the cultural debris that litters the grated floor.
There's an intake of breath behind him just as he starts to wonder, and a cold, mocking voice straight from his nightmares that chuckles in the shadows. 'Well, well. If it isn't Handsome Jack.'
Jack refuses to let himself betray any reaction and turns calmly to face the other Time Lord who he won't acknowledge as Master of anything, where he leans casually against the TARDIS doors. The Doctor slinks away to fiddle with something on the console, but this time Jack is determined to prove he can take care of himself.
'Did you miss me?' he grins, taking off his coat and throwing it over the strut where the Doctor's usually sits. He's awarded a curt nod and a slight raise of the eyebrows, which he supposes is a measure of being impressed, and hopefully also a truce.
The Master straightens his tie (he hasn't changed a bit from Jack's fragmented memories) and stalks behind the Doctor, digging fingers into his shoulders to better lean over him on tiptoes.
Jack watches, warily, but the other Time Lord is content to simply look amused and say, 'Cut that out, Doctor, we both know that dial doesn't even measure anything in this dimension.'
'That's the problem,' the Doctor mutters, and shrugs off the contact like he's done it a hundred times already.
'It's very rude of you,' the Master sniffs, 'Now we've got the gang back together. Why are you here, Freak?'
'To check up on him,' Jack says, as offhandedly as he can manage. It's no secret.
The Master grins broadly at this, only a little of the usual mockery present. 'Ooh, really? It'll be just like old times! The Master, the Doctor, and his pet, the Freak.'
Jack can't help clench his fist at that, the Doctor looking up from his tinkering to shoot a glare. 'Don't listen to him, Jack.'
He doesn't have to for much longer. With an exaggerated wave, the Master makes his exit, leaving the two of them and the awkward, stifling silences that now follow them around.
With a sudden spike of fear, Jack wonders just what he's gotten himself into, just as suddenly as he realises he has to stay.
The Doctor cycles through his usual repertoire; he excuses the Master's behaviour, makes small talk, devolves into chatter and technobabble, fidgets and paces and rakes his hands through his hair until Jack offers him leave with the excuse of wanting to find his room again. Only then does the Doctor escape to the bowels of his ship, Jack wandering after aimlessly, double-checking every corner and corridor.
Jack's room is, in fact, elusive. The TARDIS is reluctant to show him to any rooms but the most basic; the console room, the wardrobe, a bathroom that ought to belong in the corner of a prison cell, a kitchen that presented itself as a pantry full of tinned lychees (which so happened to be the only fruit Jack genuinely hated). He ends up sleeping in the tiny room that functions as a toilet that night, because it's the only room the TARDIS allows him with a lock, even though he knows it has as much chance of keeping the Master out as a water balloon.
Contacting the TARDIS psychically is a lot more successful. Her interface is staggeringly huge, a consciousness so unfathomable he's scared he'll lose his mind in the enormity of it the first time he tries to talk to her. Whatever he manages to communicate to her, she relents, and when he sends a thought of his room he finds the door only a few hallways later. It's exactly like he remembers it, untouched from the day he left and woke up on Satellite Five. Hesitantly, he walks to his bed and slides his palm over the sheets, amazed to find them still warm. He recognises Rose's lipstick, still there, sitting uncapped on the dresser.
He catches himself pretending for the shortest of moments nothing had ever changed and his Doctor will demand to know what's taking so long and barge in, leather jacket and stupid ears, and realises he can't bear to stay here.
Approaching the TARDIS again, he sends a clear picture of how he'd like the room remodelled and can't fathom when, exactly, it changed, only that suddenly Jack becomes aware the room now looks exactly how he'd specified. Fondly, he smooths down the covers of Ianto's bed before climbing on top of them, pleasantly surprised with the TARDIS that the sheets somehow smell of him. Sending his thanks towards the buzz in the back of his head, Jack closes his eyes and rests a while in what is beginning to feel like his home again.
***