Title: He Who Gets There First
By: elfin
Pairing: Jack/Doctor
Rating: PG

 


As if.  How can he resist?  He has a key; Ianto knows that, probably expected Jack to try the device like he's tried almost everything they've picked up.  Even that six-foot-six alien male a year ago; Jack tried him out, had rarely felt anything like it in all his years, and there were a lot of those.

The others have all gone home.  Like he almost but didn't tell Gwen, he lived at the base.  Where else was he going to live.  No point in trying to make a home, not again, not here.  He wasn't even sure why he'd stayed so long, or how long it would be before itchy feet sent him packing again into space.  He lets himself into the vault, opens up the archive, taps in the code and gingerly lifts out the 'ghost machine' as they'd dubbed it.

Carrying it back to his desk in the palm of his hand, he's careful not to press any of the buttons; don't want it to activate while he was on the stairs, crack his head and kill himself... or not.  Didn't really matter, he supposed, and it was something he wasn't coming to terms with any time soon.

He's in his chair, turning it over in his hands, when the first few lights come on.  It's powering up, feeding off his emotions, powerful and tumultuous, hidden from his team but loud and clear to a piece of alien technology more tuned into him than either Gwen or Owen.  Not once does he think he shouldn't be doing this, although he questions once if he really wants to.  Because it isn't ghosts he's looking for, it's the echo of a possible future, the only future there can be.

Gwen almost undid him last night.  "Doesn't it get lonely at night?"

More lonely than you could ever know. 

Jack holds the ends of the device, rubs his thumbs over the circular buttons in each half of it and focuses his mind on just one thing.

When it happens, it's like a phase shift, like the transporter in his old Chula spacecraft, the one he was flying when he met them.  Him.  He knows he's staring at the Doctor, even though the face is so different.  He looks into the unfathomable eyes as they stare back at him and he feels the hands on his shoulders, the life-breath of two heartbeats on his face.  This isn't a ghost or a vision, something's wrong, something's different.  This is real.

"Jack?"

"Doctor...."  He's pulled into deceptively strong arms, held against a slim, firm body that feels like home.  And what he's feeling... is everything, all the love and joy in the universe, feelings so intense he can't bear it but at the same time can't bear to lose it.

The Doctor takes a small step back, hands still on him, Jack's hands on his arms, clutching so tight he knows it must be hurting him but he doesn't seem to care.  Neither of the other two had reported physical contact yet the Doctor is almost shaking him.  "Where are you?"

"Torchwood."  It's the first thing out of his mouth. 

"Earth?"  The Doctor's desperate, like they're in a hurry and Jack begins to feel it, the solidity of him fading again.

"No!"  He clings harder, nails scraping through the material of the Doctor's jacket.

"Jack!  Where?!"

"Cardiff.  Where the rift is."  The feelings are seeping away from him, the Doctor sliding from his grasp somehow without moving.  "No!  Please!  Stay!"

"Jack...."

The colours in the walls shift, change, and once again the dirty tiles and the old air are what's real and there are tears sliding down over his cheeks.  Dropping the device onto his desk he leans forward, uselessly putting his face in his hands and letting the absence of joy wash through him, despair in its wake.

Why did he do that?  Where was the anger that had sustained him all these thousands of years, back and forth through time to find only hatred or apathy, searching for the intensity with which the Doctor did and felt everything; the intensity he'd felt for just a few moments.

Clawing his fingers into his short hair, scratching his nails across his scalp he sobs loudly into the space that echoes his grief back at him.  Everything he's ever lost comes crashing in around him and he lowers his hand to the desk, neck between his arms, hands linking at the base of his skull.

And slowly, a warmth slides across his fingers, and a voice with a sad smile in it murmurs to him softly, "There, there.  No need for that now.  I've found you.  Knew I would."  Raising his head, tasting the salt of his tears on his lips, he looks into those eyes that look back at him with the gravitas of the universe and the flood of anger washing up behind the tide of grief is stemmed for just a few moments while he's once again held like the most precious thing ever created.  "It's over.  It's all over."


fin