Title: Whispered on the Wind
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: past Jack/Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: Amnesty in January, 5_prompts
Prompt: 1, from Table 30 - He's not coming back
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.

***

"He's not coming back, you know."

How many times had the voice in his head spoken those words? Too many for him to count, the Doctor thought as he stood at the door of the Tardis, looking out from the high hills above the city of Cardiff at the lights of the city sparkling far below.

Was Jack thinking of him? Was the man he still desperately loved with all of his hearts and soul standing at the window of his bedroom in the Hub, looking out at those same sparkling lights and regretting that the two of them had parted?

There was no use asking himself that question, the Doctor thought with a dejected sigh. He would only end up driving himself crazy if he tried to put himself in Jack's shoes, to decipher what the immortal might be feeling at this very moment.

He'd tried to do that before, and he'd been completely unable to fathom what made Jack tick. He had no idea why his former lover made the decisions he did; he didn't know what would make Jack walk away from everything he'd thought they had together.

One thing was for certain -- he knew that it wasn't simply because Jack had some burning desire to lead Torchwood. That had been the reason he was given, but Jack hadn't been able to look into his eyes when he'd said those words. There had been hesitation, doubt.

He should have demanded that Jack tell him the real reason he was leaving. But at the time, he'd been afraid to push for any further explanation, too crushed by the fact that the man he loved was leaving him to do anything but watch numbly as Jack walked away.

If he'd been stronger, if he hadn't let his emotions overwhelm him and drag him down into helpless inaction, he might have been able to save himself a great deal of heartache. He might have been able to get an actual answer from Jack -- the truth this time.

And he might have been able to convince his lover to stay.

Would that have happened? Or would Jack still have walked away? That was really why he hadn't asked for Jack's real reasons for leaving -- or demanded to hear them. He'd been afraid to find out whether or not Jack would still have left him.

What did it matter now? Jack was gone. And as that voice in his head said, he wasn't coming back. It had been months, and even though they had seen each other and talked, they'd never addressed the subject of the elephant that was always in the room with them.

They had skirted around the subject of why Jack had left him, even though it had been foremost in the Time Lord's mind -- so much so that he had almost blurted out his question more times than he cared to remember, letting the words ring out.

"Why did you leave me, Jack? Why?"

He needed the answer. The real answer. He needed to know why Jack had apparently found it so difficult to be with him, why his lover had felt that the two of them were better apart. Even if the truth hurt, he had to know.

A part of him was sure that Jack had told him the truth -- that his life with the Doctor wasn't what he wanted, that Torchwood needed him, and that he felt he had a duty to be there with them, to lead them into the future. But that explanation seemed far too simple.

The other part of him, the more emotional part that he usually kept tightly locked up, insisted that Jack had left him because he was afraid of his own feelings. Afraid of accepting the Doctor's love -- and afraid of the love that he felt for the Time Lord.

Could that be true? Could Jack merely have run away because he was afraid of his own emotions, of the strength they'd gained, the sway they had over him? He knew well enough that Jack was afraid to get close to anyone, for the same reason that he himself was.

Both of them had watched too many of the people they'd loved age and die. He knew that Jack feared going through that kind of pain again, and he couldn't say that he blamed the other man for feeling as he did. He was no stranger to that pain himself.

But neither of them could let that kind of pain color the decisions they made about the rest of their lives. And if Jack had left him because of that fear, then there was no way that he could fight it. He'd tried to break through that wall of reserve before, and failed miserably.

He could still remember the conversation they'd had about it, one that had broken his hearts. Jack had been so hard, so unmovable on the subject. He wasn't going to let himself fall for anyone who could die and leave him. He wasn't going to put himself through that again.

The Doctor knew how he felt. Oh, he knew all too well.

Still, death was a part of life. And if Jack was afraid of losing him through death -- or through regeneration, considering that he would become a different man, albeit with the same memories -- then he had a right to that fear, even if it was unreasonable in the Doctor's eyes.

Yes, he might regenerate. But if he was lucky, it wouldn't happen for a long, long time -- and he would still retain his love for Jack. That was something that he was sure he would never lose, no matter how many more bodies he happened to have.

Of course, there was always the possibility that Jack wouldn't be able to love him in the next body he had. What if he regenerated into a body that was hideous? Something that made Jack shudder just to look at it? That would crush him; he wouldn't be able to bear it.

He loved this body as much as Jack did. He didn't want to lose it. But something told him that even if he regenerated, he and Jack would still be just as much in love as they were. What they shared wasn't something that relied on looks, on mere surface impressions.

But he would never know now if that was true. Jack wasn't coming back.

No matter how many times he told himself that, his hearts stubbornly refused to believe the words. He didn't want to believe that the man he loved could simply walk away from him, that what they had shared was completely and irrevocably gone forever.

Jack must have had other reasons besides some strange need to lead the Torchwood team. That couldn't have been his reason for leaving; he wasn't the kind of man who would walk away from someone who he knew needed him without having a better explanation than that.

It was a flimsy excuse at best. Unless .... the Doctor closed his eyes as another thought ripped through his mind. Unless Jack had thought that he wasn't really needed, that the Doctor would eventually tire of him and not want him around any longer.

No, Jack had to know that would never be true. He knew how deeply invested the Doctor was in their relationship; goodness knows he'd been told often enough. But Jack always did have a hard time believing in words that were spoken in moments of great emotion.

He might as well face the truth, the Doctor told himself, folding his arms over his chest and staring out morosely at the twinkling lights of Cardiff spread out far below him. Jack was never coming back to him. He'd lost his chance at having someone to love him forever.

What they had shared might have been brief, but it had been the most emotionally intense relationship the Doctor had ever known. Maybe something like that was meant to be fleeting, he told himself. That kind of intensity couldn't have lasted for much longer.

Could it? With Jack, one could never be sure. The immortal had a way of getting under a person's skin, of becoming such a part of whoever he was involved with that they would feel bound to him forever, unable to get him out of their minds or their hearts.

The Doctor was sure that others had felt much the same as he did now -- standing at their window, or at the doorway to their home as he was, thinking of Jack and wondering if he was ever coming back .... yet knowing in their hearts and souls that he never would.

It was time for him to stop living in a dream. That dream was long over. It had crumbled to dust.

Turning his back on the glittering lights of the city, the Doctor closed the door of the Tardis, cutting off the sight that he'd been contemplating with such alacrity. Within moments, the blue box shimmered into nothingness, leaving nothing in its wake but a sigh of regret whispered on the wind.

***