Title: Goodbye Is Forever
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: past Jack/Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: R
Table: 30_forbidden
Prompt: 7, Forever
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.

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Goodbye was forever.

He'd learned that long ago, hadn't he? When he was a child on Gallifrey. He'd had to say goodbye to his mother -- the human side of himself. He'd had to see her put into a box and taken back to Earth to be buried in the ground.

There was no regeneration for her. No different face, different body, but still the same person inside who loved him unconditionally. That goodbye was permanent; there was no coming back for her. And he didn't even know where she was buried on Earth. He could never find her again.

His goodbyes with his first lover had been permanent, as well. Could he even call the Master a lover? He didn't really think so. Maybe they had been, in a way, when they had first started -- though the first time they'd had sex, he hadn't wanted it.

Still, he couldn't call that rape, could he? The Doctor had always wondered about that; the Master had insisted that it wasn't, that he had really wanted it even though he'd said no at the time. And thinking back, maybe a part of him had been eager.

Was that the truth? He didn't want to admit that he'd been used, that the Master's feelings for him hadn't been real. But it was so long ago now -- what did it matter? They were both different people, and their entire world had changed.

The Doctor pushed that memory away from him, slamming the door on it firmly to hide it away. He didn't want to think about those years. That time of his life had been over long ago; it was nothing that he needed to dredge up now.

But his mind wouldn't let him do that. Thoughts of his first lover, their friendship when they were children, the love/hate relationship they'd had through all those years at the Academy, and their final parting forced themselves to the forefront of his mind.

Goodbye was forever.

When they'd said goodbye for the first time, he had known that the Master was nursing the bitter hatred that would grow and burgeon in him. He'd known that the seeds of that insanity had been planted, and he hadn't been able to stop them from taking root.

If only he had, the Doctor thought with a sigh. Would his life be different now? Would Gallifrey have been destroyed? Would he and the Master be part of the ruling class there, or would he still be the rebel, the outcast who was always on the outside looking in?

Those were questions that he would never know the answer to; better if he didn't ask them of himself. He could literally drive himself mad with those questions circling in his mind; they didn't belong there. He had to push them aside, bury them in a place where they couldn't be found.

That wasn't so easy to do, not when he was thinking of all the goodbyes in his life. The goodbye that he'd said to his home planet had been one that he hadn't expected. And that final goodbye, just before he'd destroyed Gallifrey in the Time Wars, had been the worst one of his life.

Or had it? There had been one goodbye that had torn him apart in every possible way, more so than losing his mother, the Master, or Gallifrey. More so than any other lover, companion, or friend he'd ever had. One person who had meant more to him than anyone else ever could.

Jack Harkness. Saying goodbye to Jack when his former lover had told him that he had to leave, then turned his back and walked away without a second glance, had been the hardest thing that he'd ever had to do -- and he sincerely hoped he would never have to feel that sort of pain again.

Nothing should hurt that badly. Nothing should make him feel as though he was a completely empty shell, with nothing left in his life but the emptiness of years, even centuries, stretching far into the future with no one next to him who he could truly love.

Goodbye was forever.

Losing the Master had been nothing compared to losing Jack. That split had been coming for years; he had known the last time they stood together in the fields outside of the Academy that he would lose the man he'd called a friend and lover for so long.

It had hurt, but not nearly as badly as losing Jack had hurt. Losing the Master had made him cry, had made him feel as though his hearts were being squeezed inside his chest until they were both nothing but a bloody pulp that no longer even resembled beating hearts.

But losing Jack .... losing the love of his life had made him feel as though not only his hearts, but every bit of him was being crushed into nothingness. Oh, he would still live -- but there would be nothing in his life from that point on that meant anything to him.

He'd been wrong about that, of course. He'd been able to patch his life back together, and there were even times when he could say with all honesty that he was happy. He could laugh and smile, and even forget about Jack for a while.

But when he was alone in bed at night, when he was lying there alone staring up at the ceiling, he knew that he was wrong about being happy. He would never be happy again -- not without the man he loved by his side. He was only happy on the surface. Not within himself.

He needed Jack. He needed to find his love, fall at his feet, tell him that their goodbye had been wrong and that he was only sleepwalking through life. He wanted that more than he'd ever wanted anything, wanted Jack by his side for the rest of his life.

It was something he would never do. His pride kept him away from Jack; he would go through the rest of his life pretending that they were nothing more than friends, reliving that last goodbye in his dreams, never able to erase it from his memory.

Jack had made his choice. He'd needed Torchwood, needed the power that he had as the leader of the team. He needed it more than he needed someone to love him -- and his goodbye had been the final nail in the coffin of what they had shared.

And, after all, goodbye was forever.

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