Title: Forbidden Fruit
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: past Jack/Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 30_forbidden
Prompt: 25, Forbidden
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Tenth Doctor, unfortunately. Please do not sue.

***

The Doctor leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling of the control room in the Tardis and reflecting back on the last few months of his life. It seemed that for once, everything was going his way -- but how long would that state of affairs last?

Somehow, the last few years of his life had felt as though they were fraught with losses that he hadn't been able to reconcile himself with; companions, friends, and places. It almost felt as though contentment and security were things that he was forbidden to have.

Everyone else had those states of being, or so it seemed to him. Even if they weren't completely happy and content with their lives, they still had people around them who cared about them, and the security of knowing that they had a place to call home.

He could always call the Tardis home, of course -- but it wasn't the same thing. His planet was gone; so were his people. That had been a sense of security that he could cling to, knowing that he could go back to Gallifrey to be with others who were like him.

But that wasn't possible any more, he told himself with a wry smile. Gallifrey was gone; there were no others of his kind left, other than the Master -- and that wasn't someone he ever wanted to be close to. No, he was alone in the world, in so many ways.

And he hadn't fit in all that well when Gallifrey was around, had he? He'd always been the pariah, the outcast, the one who hadn't followed the rules. He'd dared to think and live outside the box, and he'd spent his life being shunned because of that.

Even when he'd been on his home planet, the life that most people were allowed to live and to take some sort of comfort in had been forbidden to him. He'd known that there were things in life that Time Lords couldn't have, but he'd never thought that he wouldn't be allowed to have a home.

Security? Why would he need security when he had a Tardis and could travel the universe, go to any place and time that he wanted to see? He shouldn't feel that not having a home planet any more made him any less secure than any other person in the world who couldn't go home again.

But if he was honest with himself, the fact that he no longer had the security of Gallifrey, a place to point to as where he belonged, because of his race if nothing else, did rankle a bit. It made him feel rudderless, as though he was truly alone in the universe.

Hadn't he always been alone? a little voice in the back of his mind piped up. Even when he was living on Gallifreyn, amongst the people that he called his own race, he'd been an outcast. Because of his half-human heritage. Because he'd always been different.

He had never resented his mother for being human. No, he had loved her to distraction; she had been the person who had encouraged him to take the tests to become a Time Lord. She had been the one who had given him the desire to be more than he was.

When everyone else had told him that he didn't have what it took to be what he wanted to be, his mother had always encouraged him. She had been the person who had given him his drive, his interest in seeing new places, his thirst for adventure and knowledge.

And she had been the one who had taught him to think outside the box. Maybe it was because she was one of the very few humans on Gallifrey; maybe it was simply because she didn't think in the way that everyone around her did. But she had encouraged him to be different.

He thanked her for that. He always had. If he had been like everyone else on his planet, then he might have accepted their ruling from a very young age that he could never become a Time Lord, and he would never have had the drive to even attempt it.

But he hadn't listened to them. He'd taken her advice, and gone his own way. He'd become what he'd wanted to be -- but she hadn't lived to see it. She'd died when he was young, never knowing that her son had achieved the dreams that she'd nurtured in him.

His security in his home planet had gone with her. He'd never really gotten along with his father all that well, and when his mother had died, most of the sense of home he'd felt when he was on Gallifrey had vanished. It hadn't felt like the place he belonged any more.

That was when he'd begun to feel resentful of everyone on Gallifrey, and had started to want to free himself from his ties to his home planet. He'd managed to do so fairly successfully, even though he always ended up coming back. It was, after all, home.

Though he'd been forbidden the safety and security of that home when he'd felt that he'd needed it most, the Doctor thought wryly. Was it so for all Time Lords? He didn't think so; most of the others stuck to the rules, and were welcomed back home when they decided to go there.

He wouldn't change the way that he'd lived his life, though, not for any reason, he told himself firmly. If he did, then he wouldn't be the person he was; he'd lose some of what made him uniquely himself, and he'd have a hard time liking himself after that.

As it was, he might feel that he'd been locked out of so many things that other people took for granted, that having the kind of life most people wanted to lead was forbidden to him -- but he was happy with who and what he was. Well, for the most part.

What did he have to complain about? He was living the life he'd always wanted -- he was a traveler in the galaxy, able to go to any time and place he might want to see; he'd had all sorts of adventures in his life, and there would be many more to come.

But he didn't share those adventures with anyone -- at least, not for what seemed like a very long time, the Doctor thought, his mood turning melancholy in the blink of an eye. There had been no one special in his life for a long time, not even as a friend, much less as a lover.

Jack had been the last person who had filled that space in his life. He quickly turned his thoughts away from his former lover; he didn't want to think of Jack, didn't want to remember the happiness they'd shared. That, too, seemed forbidden to him now.

When Jack had left him, he'd felt more bereft than when any of his other companions had chosen to leave. Was that because he'd loved Jack more than any of the others? He couldn't say for sure, but a part of his mind -- and his hearts -- told him that was true.

Jack had been the one person who could have shared forever with him, the man who he was sure had been meant for him. And when that man had turned and walked away, something in him had died. It had proved to him that too many comforts were forbidden to him.

He was forbidden to love too deeply. That was why he'd held his emotions back, keeping every person who'd ever been a companion at arm's length -- though honestly, he'd never really wanted to be physically involved with any of them, at least not in this body.

Jack had been different. He'd fallen in love with Jack when he was in another body -- and he hadn't dared to think that he would be forgiven for what he'd done to Jack then, leaving him behind in a world that the other man hadn't really understood.

But Jack had forgiven him -- and the immortal had wanted the Doctor as much as he'd wanted Jack. They'd started a romance that the Doctor had been sure would last until the end of time, the only relationship that he'd ever completely immersed himself in.

And in the end, that relationship had been forbidden fruit for him, too. It seemed that everything he most wanted were the things that he was most denied -- love, security, a home. He was doomed to be a traveler for all of his life -- and that was starting to pale.

It was all he was, and all that he had, the Doctor thought with a sigh. And he had better accept that -- because it was the hand he'd been dealt. He might want more, but wishing for a life beyond what he'd had didn't meant that it would be granted that wish.

If only he could have those wishes come true, the Doctor thought, feeling the longing rise up in him until it almost threatened to overwhelm his senses. To have the security of being in a relationship with someone he loved -- to have a home that he could go back to.

Those wishes were forbidden fruit to someone like him, he thought with a sigh. Getting to his feet, he moved to the console, looking down at it and pressing a few buttons. He needed to go somewhere to get his mind away from these depressing thoughts -- and he knew just the place.

***