A Hand to Hold

by sahiya

Summary:

Rule #1 of synthesizing a cure for an alien plague and saving a planet of nine billion humans from total decimation: Take some of the cure with you when you leave. Just in case. (Spoilers for s4; Ten/Jack)

Notes:

Thanks to kivrin for the beta.

Rule #1 of synthesizing a cure for an alien plague and saving a planet of nine billion humans from total decimation: Take some of the cure with you when you leave. Just in case.

 

In hindsight, the Doctor wondered if he could blame having forgotten this on his incipient fever. On the other hand, how was he to know that out of the billions of pathogens to which he'd been exposed, this was the one that would sneak past his top-notch immune system and knock him on his Time Lord arse? If he'd had a companion with him, he'd have been a lot more careful - would've had to be - but it'd been just him ever since Donna . . . left. So off he went, content with having stopped the 43rd century's answer to the Black Plague using only his brain and the TARDIS medlab.

 

Embarrassing, that was what it was, he thought as he collapsed into bed. Or would have been, if there were anyone around to see it. It was just as well there wasn't. The last thing he needed was someone hovering over him, waking him up to ask him if he wanted tea or water or chicken soup, not to mention possibly forcing aspirin down his throat in an ill-advised attempt to make him feel better. The human reaction to illness was just so, well, human, and the Doctor didn't have the energy to deal with it.

 

He slitted his eyes open briefly and reached out to touch the wall of his ship, for his comfort and hers, and to apologize for having been sick on the floor of the control room. It'd been at least a century and a half since he'd last thrown up, and he hadn't even realized what was happening at first. Then the blinding headache had come crashing down, and he'd barely managed to stagger down the hall to his room before his legs gave out.

 

It was all very unpleasant, but he wasn't worried. He'd sleep for a few hours and wake up right as rain. In the mean time, the TARDIS would look after him. She always did.

 

By the time the Doctor realized that a few hours of sleep wasn't going to fix this, Time Lord immune system or no, he was too far gone to even think about recreating the cure he'd come up with on Orion's Twelve. He blinked blearily at the ceiling of his bedroom and realized with a jolt that one of his hearts had stopped. He was in serious danger of regenerating, and there wasn't anything he could do about it except surrender himself to blessed unconsciousness. Dying usually hurt, but this just wouldn't end.

 

Fortunately for the Doctor, the TARDIS was a lot quicker on the uptake than he was.

 

***

 

Jack had fallen asleep at his desk.

 

This wasn't that unusual. Not having to sleep very much had made him sort of lazy about sleeping, if that made any sense. He tended to just not, except after sex when it was socially expected of him, until he eventually pitched face-first into a stack of file folders and woke up a few hours later with a crick in his neck. He knew he'd be better off if he just went to bed every few days, but there were always rift items to be catalogued or weevils to be tagged, and Jack had come to realize that expecting his team to work sixteen hours a day on a regular basis led to mutiny and often minor to moderate explosions.

 

This week had been worse than usual. The rift had been spitting all sorts of crap at them, he hadn't slept at all in at least six days, and the reports he was reading from UNIT had been written by someone with very little sense of how the English language actually functioned. All of which meant that when Jack crashed, he crashed hard.

 

He woke disoriented in the small hours of the morning, blinking and surreptitiously wiping a bit of drool off his chin as he tried to figure out what had woken him up. Because something had woken him, Jack was sure of it. He felt as though someone were waving for his attention or tapping him on the shoulder - except he was alone in the Hub.

 

Jack rubbed the back of his neck and stood to check the monitors, rolling his shoulders to try and loosen the muscles. The monitors showing the vaults and the weevil cells were completely normal, but the one showing the Plas -

 

Ah ha. A blue police box. Jack grinned, glanced around once more just to make sure the Doctor wasn't lurking in the shadows of the Hub itself, and took the lift up.

 

It was very early still, but dawn was on its way. The sky had a gray-blue cast to it and the few stars visible in Cardiff had all winked out. It was cold, too - Jack could see his breath, streaming out before him in a white cloud. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat and quickened his step. He thought he should probably feel a lot more ambivalent about the Doctor, all things considered, but the truth was that even after everything, any day that blue box showed up was better than any day it didn't.

 

Well. In principle that was true. In practice, a lot of the days the TARDIS had shown up ended up being pretty bad.

 

Jack was a little puzzled by the time he reached the TARDIS. It'd taken him a couple minutes to cross the Plas, and he'd been expecting all the while for the Doctor to throw open the doors and come bounding out. Jack wondered if he'd arrived hours ago and emerged while Jack was still asleep in the Hub. He was pretty sure the TARDIS herself had woken him with the psychic equivalent of a poke in the arm, but just because the ship wanted to see him didn't mean the Doctor did. Maybe he'd parked here in the middle of the night to refuel and hoped to avoid Jack completely.

 

That thought hurt a bit - more than a bit, if Jack was honest. And it pissed him off, too, enough that he was scowling as he took his TARDIS key out from under his shirt and let himself in. Idiot Time Lord. He should have learned by now that he couldn't avoid Jack.

 

The hum of the ship was familiar and comforting. He stroked a wall in greeting, then paused. The control room was empty. "Doctor?" he called. "Donna?" He hesitated. "Rose?" No answer. Jack stepped over to the console, checking the chronometer and a few other systems. It had been six months for the Doctor since Jack had last seen him, about twice as long as it had been for Jack, and there wasn't any record of anyone else on board. His last stop had been three days ago, in the 43rd century on a human-inhabited planet called Orion's Twelve. He'd been there an entire week, an unusually long stopover, but there wasn't anything to say what he might have done. Overthrown a dictatorial government? Thwarted a Dalek invasion? Gone trekking in their mountains? Impossible to say with the Doctor.

 

Jack felt a sudden flood of worry — no, not worry. Fear. Which was strange, because he hadn't seen anything so far to be afraid of, but there it was - his heart rate up, the bitter taste of adrenaline in the back of his mouth, every nerve on high alert. He reached out to touch the wall of the TARDIS to steady himself, but the comforting hum he'd expected wasn't there. Jack sucked in a quick breath. He didn't have much psychic ability of his own, so the ship had always communicated with him through feelings more than thoughts. He didn't have any reason yet to be afraid, for himself or for the Doctor, but it seemed she did.

 

Jack frowned and moved away from the console, around the time rotor, then paused again. There was a sour smell in the air, as though someone had been sick - which someone had, on the floor between the grating and the threshold that led deeper into the ship.

 

"Doctor?" he called again, this time with a sinking feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with the TARDIS. There wasn't any answer, but then, Jack hadn't really expected one. He sighed. "Okay, beautiful," he said to the ship at large, "lead me to him."

 

She didn't have to lead him very far. A few steps down the hall and he fetched up in front of a nondescript door with a vague feeling of yes, this is it. It felt silly, but he knocked first, just in case. He thought he heard something inside, a vague rustling, but that was all. The TARDIS's anxiety ratcheted up a notch and with it Jack's pulse rate. He pushed the door open.

 

It took him several seconds to realize he was in the Doctor's bedroom. He'd never been in here before, though he'd certainly thought about it often enough, both during and after his time on the TARDIS. He supposed it shouldn't surprise him that it was almost Spartan in its furnishings - he couldn't imagine the Doctor spent any more time here than was necessary. A bed, a nightstand, a dresser - that was all. There wasn't even a wardrobe, since of course the TARDIS had her own.

 

A strange sound from the bed, like a strangled moan, finally got Jack moving again. The room smelled as sour as the control room had, though less like someone had been sick and more like stale sweat. Jack had spent more than his fair share of time in hospitals and sickrooms, and he knew what fever and sickness and pain smelled like.

 

"Doctor?" he ventured, much more quietly than before, and he stepped cautiously toward the bed.

 

He didn't think the Doctor was even conscious. In fact, once he got a look at him, Jack almost hoped he wasn't. He was still wearing most of his suit, everything but the tie and jacket - the Converse were tumbled beside the bed with their laces still tied - and he was tangled up in the duvet like he'd been thrashing around. His unruly hair was flat, and there were deep lines at the corners of his mouth and on his brow. He looked, in other words, like absolute shit.

 

What the hell had happened on Orion's Twelve?

 

***

 

"Doctor?"

 

The familiar voice sliced through the haze of fever dreams the Doctor was mired in. Dreams of Daleks and Cybermen and the Master, of blonde girls falling to their deaths and Rose falling into a black hole and Martha killed by Toclafane and Jack shot dead on the Game Station and himself burning, burning, burning -

 

Jack.

 

The Doctor pried his eyes open. Pain lanced through his temples, but he swallowed his reflexive whimper and managed to focus on Jack, who was standing by the bed and staring at him in horror. "Jack," he croaked. His throat was dry enough that it hurt. He thought he should feel humiliated at anyone seeing him in such a state, but he couldn't feel anything but relief. The truth was, the Doctor felt in desperate need of someone's hand to hold - or, maybe even more truthfully, of someone to hold his hand. Jack was immune to just about everything, and he did love the Doctor, even though he shouldn't, even though it'd never done him the least bit of good. Most of the time the thought made the Doctor squirm, but at the moment he was just grateful Jack was there.

 

"Hey, Doc," Jack said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. The Doctor tried to move over, but pain shot through his chest as his one remaining heart started to pound, and he stopped, dizzy and gasping for breath. The worry etched across Jack's face deepened as he lay the back of his hand across the Doctor's forehead.

 

"Water," the Doctor managed, before Jack could say anything. "Please."

 

"Right," Jack said, springing up. "Or I could make tea?"

 

The Doctor shook his head, then had to stop and close his eyes until the room stopped spinning. "Water, please." He tried to remember to breathe while Jack clattered about in the small loo off the bedroom. His respiratory bypass wouldn't work with only the one heart - though the Doctor was beginning to hope regeneration would happen sooner rather than later. His time-sense had gone all wibbly because of the fever, but it felt like days and things were only getting worse.

 

Jack returned at last, a cup of water with a straw in one hand and a folded over flannel in the other. He lay the flannel across the Doctor's brow, then held the straw steady so he could sip from the cup. "Slowly," Jack cautioned. "You don't want to just bring it all back up."

 

"Yeah," the Doctor said roughly. It seemed to take forever, since Jack wouldn't let him take more than a few sips at a time, but eventually he drained the cup. He felt a bit better - still terribly thirsty but no longer quite so desiccated.

 

Jack set it aside on the nightstand. "You can have more in a minute. Doctor, what happened?"

 

The Doctor sighed. Just the idea of telling the entire story was exhausting. "There was this planet - Orion's Twelve."

 

"I saw on the log. You were there for a week."

 

"Yeah. They had a plague - vicious thing, would've killed everyone on the planet. I cured it, and then I left, but . . ." He trailed off with a grimace.

 

"I don't suppose you brought some of the cure with you?"

 

"I don't get ill."

 

Jack blew out an exasperated breath. "Current evidence would suggest otherwise, Doc."

 

The Doctor had nothing to say to that. He was almost glad the brief conversation had robbed him of breath, since it gave him an excuse to close his eyes and turn his face away. He listened to the concerned thrum and hum of his ship and felt Jack's hands clasping his. This wasn't so bad, he told himself. He'd certainly regenerated under worse circumstances.

 

"Doc, where's Donna?" Jack asked at last, quietly. "And Rose?"

 

The Doctor had been hoping he wouldn't ask. "They're both fine. Long story."

 

"I have time."

 

"I don't." The Doctor drew as deep a breath as he could manage. "Where are we? Cardiff?"

 

"Yeah. I think the TARDIS brought you to me."

 

"Probably. You're easy to find." He thought he'd felt them make a jump earlier, but he'd been too out of it to care. "Jack, this plague spread like wildfire. No one else can come in. In fact, we should leave. Go into the Vortex and stay there until it's over."

 

Jack started to nod, then paused. "What do you mean, 'over'? Until you're better, right?"

 

The Doctor looked at him for a few seconds. Then he turned his palm over so that he was grasping Jack's hand and pulled it to his chest, over the heart that was still beating sluggishly. Then he brought it across to the spot where his second heart should have beat and pressed it there. He watched Jack's expression change from puzzlement to shock. "Doctor -"

 

"I know."

 

"This thing is killing you?"

 

"It's all right," the Doctor said, squeezing his hand. "I'll regenerate. I'll be different, but I'll still be me -"

 

"The eleventh you," Jack said, face darkening in anger. "You can only do that thirteen times! And don't you dare say it doesn't matter. It might not matter to you, but it damn well matters to me!" His grip on the Doctor's hand tightened almost to the point of pain. "I'm immortal. You're not. Someday I'm going to lose you, but it isn't going to be one minute before I have to. Got it?"

 

The Doctor didn't answer. He blinked up at Jack, stunned. He'd never quite thought of it that way - but why would he? He'd never been on this end of things before. He was a Time Lord - the closest thing to immortal in this or any universe. At least, until Jack came along. It had grated on the Doctor's nerves to be around him at first, but now - now Jack was a fixed point, but he was the Doctor's fixed point. Even the TARDIS knew it. In her fear for him she'd brought him to Jack, like finding the way home via pole star.

 

"Jack, there isn't -"

 

"Don't tell me there isn't anything I can do," Jack hissed. "You cured it once, you can cure it again."

 

"I can't even hold my head up."

 

"Then I will."

 

The Doctor looked away, discomfited by the emotion flickering across Jack's face. Humans were so open, so readable, and Jack more than most, even after so much time. He'd known Jack loved him, of course, but this - this naked display of feeling was just so . . .

 

Unseemly.

 

The Doctor almost laughed at himself. Of all the times to have his upbringing show. It was probably for the best that he was too wrung out to say anything unfortunate. Instead he turned away to press his face into the pillow. "Whatever you want," he said, with weariness he didn't have to feign. "Only please take us into the Vortex first. I don't fancy playing Typhoid Mary."

 

"Right," Jack said, more to himself than to the Doctor, it seemed. The Doctor felt him brush a hand lightly over his brow, then adjust the compress. "I'll go do that, and let the team know I won't be in -"

 

"Can bring you back," the Doctor protested weakly. "Won't even know you're gone."

 

"I've heard that one before," Jack said with a smile that almost looked genuine. "I'm not taking any chances, Doc. I'll do that, then take us into the Vortex and - well, we'll see."

 

"Yeah." The Doctor closed his eyes. He felt Jack linger for a minute, watching him, then leave. The Doctor listened to the hollow beating of a single heart and allowed sleep to swallow him whole.

 

***

 

Jack didn't unclench his fists until he reached the control room. He leaned against the console, head bowed, and tried to let go of his anger. Typical Doctor, he thought with exasperation that was a lot less fond than usual. He apparently didn't care that he blew through regenerations like other people went through pairs of trainers, but with all the angsting he did about losing people it should have damn well occurred to him that it would matter to Jack. The one person in all the universe Jack had some hope of still knowing a couple millennia from now and he seemed determined to short his life out in seventy or eighty years.

 

But of course it hadn't occurred to him. This was the Doctor, after all.

 

He straightened eventually. Cleaning up the mess on the floor would give him a chance to calm down while he spoke to Gwen, he decided, and went to track down cleaning supplies.

 

His mobile rang while he was still trying to extract a mop from the confusion that was the TARDIS broom closet. He slipped it out of his pocket and looked at the screen: MARTHA. It was seven-thirty, about the time she usually crossed the Plas on her way into the Hub.

 

"Hey," he said, cradling the too-small phone between ear and shoulder. The mop finally came free and he shoved the door to the closet shut before anything else could make a bid for freedom. There was a sonic cleaner back in the corner that would have had the floor sparkling again in about five seconds, but Jack wanted a bit of mindless physical labor while he tried to figure out what the hell to do next.

 

"Jack, did you know the TARDIS is sitting in the Plas?"

 

"Yeah, I did, seeing as I'm currently in it. But, Martha, you can't come in," he added quickly. "We'll be out of here in just a couple minutes, but until then I want you to stay well clear. That's an order if necessary."

 

There was a pause. "It's not," she said at last. "But why?"

 

"The Doctor's sick. Really sick and it's contagious as hell to humans, so the TARDIS is under quarantine until further notice. I'm going to take us into the Vortex just to be safe."

 

"Sick? Is there anything I can -"

 

"No," Jack said firmly. "I'll take care of it - and him. Seriously, we don't want this spreading around Cardiff." Briefly, Jack gave her a run-down of events, even while dumping a bunch of industrial grade cleaner from a planet he'd never heard of into a bucket with some water. He plopped the mop into it and dragged it out into the control room. "And his genius solution to this?" he concluded, shoving the mop along the floor with short, jerky strokes. "Regenerate. What the hell? You and I have both seen him about as low as it's possible to get and his reaction was never to just lie down and die. I don't understand."

 

Martha was quiet for a few moments. "No one else's life is at stake this time," she said at last. "Just his. He wouldn't say where Rose and Donna were?"

 

"No. Typical Doctor evasion. He said they were fine."

 

"Of course," she sighed. "Well, you know how he gets when he's alone for too long. And if he didn't have anyone and couldn't take care of himself —"

 

"Yeah," Jack said shortly, straining the mop out in the bucket. "Well, he has me now."

 

"If you get him comfortable, he might be more willing to listen to reason."

 

Jack sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "I don't know how much time I have to spend making him comfortable. Martha, one of his hearts has stopped."

 

"Oh." There was another pause. "That's . . . not good."

 

"I didn't think so."

 

"What's your plan?"

 

Jack emptied the bucket into a sink the TARDIS had conveniently provided. "Try and get the TARDIS to land us back in the right time and place to pick up some of the cure he came up with. If that doesn't work, I'll try to resynthesize it using the records in the medlab, but I'm not the Doctor. I'm not crazy about trying to do in a day something that took him a week." He rinsed out the mop, stuck it back in the bucket, and nudged it along the hallway back towards the broom closet.

 

"I don't blame you," she said. "Well, I think I saw my old mobile on the console last time I was on board. It's got universal coverage, and that's not just an expression. You need anything, Jack, if there's anything at all I can do, just give me a ring."

 

"Thanks," Jack said, closing the broom closet and heading back towards the console room. Sure enough, there was a little black flip-top mobile sitting on its edge. How it hadn't yet fallen off and smashed to bits in one of the TARDIS's shakier landings, Jack didn't know. "There might be. For now, could you just let Gwen and Ianto know where I've gone? I'm hoping I'll be back in the next couple of hours, but you know how these things go."

 

"I do," she said, with a trace of irony. "Good luck. And give him my love."

 

"Sure." Jack flipped the phone shut, slipped it back in his pocket, and stood for a minute, staring at the console and frowning to himself.

 

What he hadn't told Martha was that flying the TARDIS on his own might not be much less of a disaster than trying to resynthesize the cure. He knew only as much as the Doctor had taught him back when he and Rose had been with him — a hell of a long time ago now, and that'd been mostly maintenance procedures. His role in the actual flying had been limited to, "Hold that lever" or "Push that button" or, more often, "Don't touch that if you don't want the universe to implode!" It'd never seemed to Jack like it was the same twice over, and half the screen displays were in Gallifreyan.

 

At least he knew enough to take them into the Vortex without making a complete hash of it. That wasn't nearly as complicated as an actual jump. Even so, he breathed a sigh of relief when the dematerialization sequence began and the time rotor started to move. Mission accomplished, he patted the ship's wall in thanks. "I'm going to need all the help you can give me, beautiful," he told her. "And so's he."

 

***

 

The Doctor woke when he felt the TARDIS dematerialize. For moment, he thought it must have been part of the dream he'd been having. Jack had been there, he thought sadly. He'd been angry about something, but on the whole it'd been much nicer than waking up to the realization that he was going to die and regenerate with no one but the TARDIS to look after him. Not that she didn't do a very good job, but there were just some things she couldn't be for him. She was a lot of things, but she wasn't a hand to hold.

 

He closed his eyes wearily against the pulse of pain in his head - and opened them again when he felt the bed dip. He looked up at Jack, stretched out beside him and propped on one elbow. Jack looked back with very serious dark eyes. "You weren't a dream," the Doctor murmured, lifting a hand to touch Jack's face.

 

"Nope. In the flesh," Jack said, with a grin that somehow turned a cliché into a come-on. But the grin was dimmer than usual, the flirtatious tone almost an afterthought. His smile faded as he refolded the compress and used it to wipe down the Doctor's face and neck. "Martha sends her love."

 

The Doctor was enjoying the damp cloth on his face too much to answer right away. "You talked to Martha?" he said at last, faintly.

 

"She works for Torchwood now. Saw the TARDIS in the Plas and called my mobile. Don't worry, I told her to steer clear - we're in the Vortex now anyway."

 

The Doctor let out a breath. "Good."

 

Jack cupped the side of his face with one hand, smoothing a thumb over the Doctor's cheekbone. "I'm sorry I got mad before," he said softly. "I'm just not ready to let go of this you yet."

 

The Doctor felt his throat close up. "I am pretty wonderful," he managed.

 

Jack chuckled, then brushed his lips against the Doctor's temple. "Don't let it go to your head."

 

"You're one to talk."

 

Jack outright laughed at that, if only briefly. "There's my Doctor." His good humor vanished as he slid his hand down to rest over the place where the Doctor's second heart should have beat. "I can save you," he whispered, lips hovering just over the Doctor's ear, "but you have to help me. Please?"

 

The Doctor didn't answer right away. The idea was just . . . exhausting. The last six months, traveling on his own, resisting the urge to pick up anyone, had taken a toll on him. He'd found himself wondering, in his less delirious moments before Jack had shown up, what it would be like to go gentle, just the once.

 

But Jack was right. The Doctor had a lot of miles left to run in these trainers.

 

"All right," he said, trying to dredge up something that looked like a smile for Jack.

 

To his surprise, Jack merely nodded solemnly and ducked his head to bury his face briefly in the Doctor's hair. "Thank you," he said, muffled. The Doctor barely had time to lift his hand to touch Jack's shoulder before he straightened. "Right. Far as I can tell, our best option is to take the TARDIS back to Orion's Twelve, just after you left. I'll go, get a sample, bring it back. Five minutes, tops. Right?"

 

"Almost." The Doctor leaned his head against Jack's chest and closed his eyes. "The cure is an antiviral that works by unraveling the virus's DNA. Problem is, it'd also unravel human DNA. 'Cept I keyed it not to."

 

Jack frowned. "But you're not human. Your DNA is completely different, and, I'm guessing, about a hundred times more complicated."

 

Any other time, the Doctor would have said something cutting about the pitfalls of a simple double helix and probably outlined for Jack the number of ways in which it was holding the human species back. Circumstances being what they were, he merely said, "S'not too bad. TARDIS can do it." The Doctor paused. "Probably."

 

"Great," Jack sighed. "Well, that won't matter till I've got hold of a sample of the stuff anyway. And for that, we need the TARDIS. And for that, I need you in the control room. Just to make sure I don't go and end time and space as we know it."

 

The Doctor hadn't thought of that. He honestly didn't know which was less desirable to him at that moment, letting Jack fly his ship or getting out of bed to do it himself. "Was mostly winding you up back then. Very few ways to actually do harm with a TARDIS. Worst that'd happen, you'd just miss the right place or time. Or both."

 

"Well, I don't want that either. Come on." Jack stripped the duvet away and scooped him up in one swift move, with one arm behind the Doctor's knees and the other behind his shoulders. The Doctor yelped and immediately started to shiver. He mentally added that to the list of indignities he'd had thrust upon him in all of this. He didn't get cold. Of course, he also didn't get ill. How did humans stand it, being so physically fragile?

 

"You're heavier than you look, you know that?" Jack grunted, nudging the door to the Doctor's bedroom open with his foot.

 

"Bigger on the inside," the Doctor managed, only half-joking. Jack snorted, but it sounded strained. Fortunately for them both, the TARDIS had shifted about to place the Doctor's bedroom right down the hall from the control room. Within a few seconds, Jack was lowering him carefully onto the ground, propped up against the wall.

 

"There," Jack said. "Sorry about that, but the idea of doing this on my own gives me hives."

 

The Doctor was too busy trying to breathe past the involuntary contractions of his diaphragm to answer. He squeezed his eyes shut and didn't bother to reply when Jack told him he'd be right back. He concentrated on the gentle pulses the TARDIS was sending his way, as though she were stroking his hair. Let us handle this, she told him. Like he had any other choice.

 

He opened his eyes when he heard Jack return. He had a self-heating blanket bundled under one arm, and in his other hand he held two syringes, labeled in the Doctor's own writing: one to combat dehydration, and one a generic pan-species painkiller. It wasn't the strongest thing in the medlab, but it would neither knock him out nor send him into instant cardiac arrest.

 

"Blanket first," the Doctor said through chattering teeth.

 

"Right," Jack said with an apologetic grimace. He crouched down and helped the Doctor wrap himself up in the blanket, though he refused to set it as high as the Doctor would have liked. Then he pulled the Doctor's arm out and started swabbing it. The TARDIS medlab didn't have anything so primitive as hypodermic needles, but it was still necessary to keep everything clean. In his current state, Rassilon only knew what sorts of mundane infections he was susceptible to. It happened to humans all the time, especially in the 21st century - go into hospital with one thing, come out with a raging infection of staphylococcus aureus. Insult to injury, that would be.

 

Jack paused once he was done, slipped his hand beneath the blankets, and rested the tips of his fingers over the place where the Doctor's second heart should have beat and didn't. "Can we get it going again?" he asked quietly. "Buy us some time?"

 

The Doctor shook his head. "Too much strain on everything else. Could stop the other heart entirely."

 

Jack nodded, his mouth a thin, grim line. "How much time do we have, do you think?"

 

"Mmm." The Doctor closed his eyes, the better to pay attention to what was happening inside of him. It was harder when everything was muffled by painkillers, but one thing stood out loud and clear. "Remaining heart and lungs are at thirty percent and dropping. 'S the fever. Too high for too long." Time Lords had been a cold people in so many ways. Humans burned hot and bright in comparison. Hot, bright, and brief. Except, of course, for Jack.

 

"Doctor, how long?" Jack demanded.

 

The Doctor looked up at him. "Twelve hours. Fifteen at the outside."

 

Jack let out a breath. Twelve hours, then. If he went over that, he'd be faced with whether to come back to the TARDIS, so as to be here when the Doctor needed him most, or push on, and hope he made it back with the cure in time. Not a choice he wanted to make. "All right. Could be worse. Everything goes according to plan, that should be plenty of time." He pulled his hand out from beneath the blankets and smoothed them over the Doctor's chest. "Now. Tell me how to get us where and when we need to go."

 

***

 

It would have been so much easier with his Vortex manipulator, Jack thought, trying not to fall and brain himself as he dashed around the console. He could have left the TARDIS in the Plas, jumped to 43rd century Orion's Twelve by himself, and brought the cure back, just like that. There was always the possibility he might miss either going or coming, but that wasn't a problem with a working Vortex manipulator. The TARDIS wasn't meant to be flown by a human — Jack figured that out in the first thirty seconds, when the Doctor told him to turn a certain dial until it "felt right."

 

Fortunately, the TARDIS was on Jack's side. He apprehensively turned the dial and at a certain point he actually did feel a sense of "rightness" — the TARDIS telling him "when," he supposed. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything the ship could do about the fact that Jack didn't have six arms — though neither did the Doctor, and how did he manage when he was on his own, anyway? — or the ability to sense timelines. Or at least three other senses the Doctor did. Jack gritted his teeth, followed the directions he could make sense of, and prayed for the best.

 

It was even bumpier than usual. Jack clung to the console. The Doctor sat propped up against a wall, so white he was almost gray, but he still never seemed in danger of getting tossed around like Jack. By the time they came to a crashing halt, Jack had one hand with second-degree burns and what he was sure was a sprained ankle. The Doctor merely looked queasy — at least, until he slid slowly down the wall with a faint groan to lie flat on his back on the floor.

 

Jack pried his fingers from their death grip on the edge of the console. He landed on his knees next to the Doctor and felt frantically for the Doctor's remaining pulse. Fast, too fast, and almost fluttering like a bird's. But still there. "Doc?"

 

"How'd she do?" the Doctor asked without opening his eyes.

 

"Not sure yet," Jack said, lurching awkwardly to his feet. The sprained ankle would heal up in about ten minutes, but for the moment he was stuck limping over to the main screen, which for once showed readings in Arabic numerals and 51st century English, instead of the floating, mercurial geometric shapes that passed for numbers in Gallifreyan. Thank you, Jack thought. She answered him with a surge of possessive protectiveness that Jack couldn't quite parse. He thought she might have been telling him that the Doctor was hers to take care of — though strangely, not in any way that made Jack feel he was infringing. The Doctor and the TARDIS belonged to each other, but when she'd been unable to help him and he couldn't help himself, she'd brought him to Jack. And that realization started a warm feeling like banked coals in Jack's chest.

 

"Jack?"

 

Jack refocused with an effort. "Right planet," he reported, "right century, but we're late by about ten years. That shouldn't make a difference, right?"

 

"Shouldn't. Might have a hard time finding someone who remembers me."

 

"I'll take my chances." The Doctor was pretty unforgettable, after all, and he had saved the planet's entire population from probable destruction. Whether anyone would believe Jack when he said he was there on the Doctor's behalf was something else entirely. But Jack was not without personal charm, and he thought he could probably use a combination of truth, lies, and wiles to get a bit of the cure without too much trouble.

 

He didn't know how long that would take, though. He'd said five minutes tops, but he knew exactly how optimistic that was. He doubted the stuff was available on every street corner. And he couldn't just leave the Doctor lying on the floor of the TARDIS for however long it took.

 

"I'll stay here," the Doctor mumbled groggily when Jack asked him if he wanted to go back to his bed. "'M all right."

 

"You're not. You're lying on grating for Christ's sake."

 

The Doctor buried his face in the self-heating blanket by way of reply. Jack raked a hand through his hair and decided he would have to settle for getting him a bit more comfortable where he was. He took the chance offered by slipping the pillow beneath the Doctor's head to palm the back of his head and stroke his hair briefly, then wiped his face and neck down with a fresh compress before laying it across his forehead. The Doctor murmured something that might, with imagination, have been thank you before sighing and letting his eyes fall shut.

 

Jack crouched there next to the Doctor, looking at him. He was whipcord thin in this incarnation, but he'd never looked frail to Jack before. He knew he was wasting valuable time, but he suddenly couldn't stand the thought of leaving him alone like this. He should be back quickly, but if he wasn't, he didn't want the Doctor to be alone. He shouldn't be alone, if worst came to worst and he regenerated.

 

Jack knew from experience that dying was usually painful and nearly always very lonely. He might not be able to do much about the former, but, he realized, the little black phone on the console catching his eye — and he had to wonder if the Doctor had super-glued the thing into place, for it to have survived that landing — he could do something about the latter.

 

"Martha, it's me," he said, when Martha answered her mobile.

 

"Jack! Is the Doctor —"

 

"He's . . ." Jack hesitated. "Still himself," he finished. "We're on 43rd century Orion's Twelve, where this whole mess started. I'm about to leave to try and get hold of the cure, but I just — I don't want to leave him alone."

 

Martha was quiet for a moment. "That bad, is it?"

 

"Yeah, it is. Could you stay with him on the phone while I'm gone? Keep him company? I shouldn't be long, but just in case -"

 

"Of course, Jack, you didn't even need to ask."

 

"Thanks," he said with relief. He crouched down next to the Doctor again and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Doc. Wake up."

 

"Jack, please," the Doctor mumbled without opening his eyes. "Just leave off —"

 

"Martha's on the phone," Jack said, ignoring him. "She's going to stay with you on the mobile while I'm gone, all right?"

 

The Doctor blinked up at him. "Martha?" he repeated.

 

"Yeah." Jack picked his hand up and put the phone into it. Then he went to his knees and kissed the Doctor on the mouth, just as he had on the Game Station all those years ago. The Doctor sucked in a breath. Then, as Jack started to pull away, his hand came up, anchoring him in place, and this time the Doctor kissed him. It was just about the most chaste kiss Jack had ever given or received in his long and illustrious history of kissing, snogging, sucking face, and swapping spit with several dozen species, but it was the Doctor, and that meant it shot a bolt of heat straight to the pit of Jack's stomach.

 

Jack backed off just enough to cup the Doctor's face in his hands. He caught and held the Doctor's red-rimmed eyes seriously. "Be here when I get back. Got it?"

 

The Doctor nodded. Jack pushed himself to his feet. He paused once at the door to look back. The Doctor had the mobile to his ear and his eyes closed. Jack opened the door and stepped outside.

 

Where he was promptly shot in the head.

 

***

 

"Doctor?"

 

Martha sounded so worried, the Doctor thought in feverish bewilderment. He couldn't understand it. It was one thing for Jack to be anxious, he saw the sense in that and it made him feel a bit of a berk not to have thought of it sooner - not that the Doctor would ever admit to feeling berk-like - but Martha wasn't immortal. Not to mention she had every reason to hate him, but then, people did seem inordinately fond of this him. Maybe it was the suit. Or the trainers. Or the hair. The last him had had ears like this one had hair, but then, the last him had also been all sharp, jagged edges and oozing psychic wounds that wouldn't heal. They'd mostly scarred over now, and they'd probably hurt less with each regeneration. Something to look forward to, he supposed, if things came to that.

 

"Doctor?" Martha repeated, and the Doctor realized he'd been lying there without saying a word ever since the TARDIS doors had swung shut behind Jack.

 

"I'm here," he said. He hoped she wouldn't want to have a heart-to-heart. Humans got the urge to talk in the strangest situations. Look at Shakespeare's plays. Stuck through with a great bloody sword and giving a soliloquy! The Doctor liked to talk as much as anyone - well, more than most - but dying didn't usually leave him the breath for it. Only having one heart left him even less.

 

"God, you sound awful."

 

"I'm dying," he pointed out peevishly.

 

"Don't say that," she said, voice rising in pitch, if not volume. "Jack'll be back with the cure before you know it. He always comes through. He's like you that way."

 

Hadn't Rose said something like that to him once? The day they met Jack, wasn't it? She'd been trying to get him to leave off resonating concrete and dance with her. He had done, too, and then Jack had teleported them up to his ship.

 

The Doctor realized his throat had closed up. He missed Rose terribly, and the missing was only made worse by the knowledge that this time, it had been his own hand that had cut them off from each other. He could have had her with him again, for a little while at least. But he'd chosen to leave her behind with the other him and go on alone.

 

"Doctor?" Martha said again, more quietly. The background noise he'd been able to hear before, people moving around and talking, the occasional ring of laughter, had faded as well. He was almost sorry for it. "You still there?"

 

"Yeah." He missed Martha, too. He missed all of them, all his Children of Time, but Martha especially. He wished he'd been able to talk her and Jack into coming with him, just for a little while. The three of them would always be bound by that year on the Valiant. It was such a shame hardly anyone knew how brilliant she'd been. Had he even told her? He couldn't remember.

 

He told her now. "Doctor, don't," she replied, sounding close to tears. "Please, don't, don't -"

 

"I'm not," he said, even though he was, because he just couldn't stand making her cry. He didn't want to think about all the times she must've cried over him already. There wasn't a thing he could do about any of them, except try to never do it again. And from the muffled noises on the other end of the line, he was failing miserably even at that. "Sorry, sorry." He forced himself to listen to her sniffle until he couldn't stand it anymore, then asked, "Where're you? Torchwood?"

 

"Yeah, the Hub," she said, still sounding a bit stuffed. "Jack's office. It's a bit mad today - more weevils than usual."

 

"They must need you then. 'Specially since Jack's not there."

 

"You're not getting rid of me that easy, mister," she replied, firmly. "Jack asked me to stay with you. Mickey and Gwen and Ianto have it in hand."

 

That was more like his Martha. "Just thought -"

 

"Well, don't."

 

They both fell quiet then. The five minutes Jack had predicted it would take were long past. Jack would come through in the end, the Doctor had as much faith in him as Martha did, but whether it would be soon enough was a lot less certain. The Doctor had said fifteen hours at the outside, but the truth was that if he made it to twelve, it would be a minor miracle. "Martha?" he said.

 

"I'm here," she said, in a mirror image of their earlier exchange. "What do you need?"

 

"Talk to me? Tell me a story." He hesitated. "No death."

 

"Sure," she said, sounding a little surprised. "Uh. Hmm. Do you know 'Cinderella'?"

 

The Doctor rolled his eyes at the TARDIS ceiling. "'Course I know 'Cinderella.' Had a granddaughter, didn't I?"

 

"You did? You never told me that."

 

Bloody fever, making him spill all sorts of things he'd never intended. That was almost as embarrassing as vomiting on the control room floor. And yet he still felt compelled to say, "Yeah. Susan. She was brilliant, too. You'd've liked her." He prayed that would be the end of it.

 

Martha, thank Rassilon, left well enough alone for once. "Well, I'm pretty sure you don't know this Cinderella. It's the one my mother used to tell my niece right after my dad left. Or she did until my brother told her she couldn't anymore, because he was worried about the sort of effect it would have on her impressionable young mind. If you knew my brother, you'd know how mad that is coming from him."

 

The Doctor's lips quirked up. This was why Jack had made him take the phone. Alone, he'd have found something to angst himself to death about. Now he drifted, neither asleep nor awake, with the TARDIS pulsing gently at him and Martha's voice in his ear, telling him about a Cinderella who smashed the glass slipper into itty bitty pieces and tossed the prince out on his lying, cheating, patriarchal arse. He wanted to laugh, imagining Francine telling the story in her own imitable way, but laughing would have hurt too much.

 

"Don't leave," he mumbled, once Martha had run out of story.

 

"I won't."

 

***

 

Getting shot in the head was a bitch.

 

Jack jerked back to life with a gasp that burned like hellfire, in the back of whatever sort of motorized land vehicle the trigger-happy residents of Orion's Twelve used to get around. The engine was loud enough to cover up the noise of him coming back to life. He lay there for several long minutes, getting his bearings and waiting for his raging headache to die down. Certain kinds of deaths stayed with him, like a particularly bad hangover, and getting shot in the head was one of them.

 

Believing him to be dead, they'd left him his gun - not a mistake Jack ever made. Torchwood had a policy of stripping even corpses of all weaponry, just in case. Now, careful not to draw attention to himself, Jack worked it out of its holster and held it, cocked and ready, as the vehicle slid to a stop. Moments later the boot swung open.

 

Jack barely had time to register the blue, watery color of the sunlight. He swung his legs up, locked his ankles around the neck of the man drawing breath to yell, and within seconds had him pinned down with the gun to his head. "So tell me," Jack said, gritting his teeth, "is shooting someone in the head a traditional greeting on Orion's Twelve or am I just special? Lying, by the way, will get you the same treatment, only I doubt you'll be bouncing back as fast as I did. Or at all."

 

"You're a trick," the man - kid, really, he couldn't have been more than twenty - spat, defiant despite the fear in his eyes. "A filthy trick. You came in a blue box like the Doctor's to make us think you were him."

 

Jack blinked. "What?"

 

"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, you lying, filthy, scumbag, dog-dirty -"

 

"Okay, okay, I get it," Jack said, holding up the hand without the gun. He looked down at the kid, who glared back sullenly, and finally sighed. "Look. I'm in a hurry. If I let go, will you promise not to shoot me again? It hurts like hell and I'm on a tight schedule. I'm not the Doctor, but I am a friend of his, and I'm here to try and help him - like he helped you before."

 

To Jack's surprise, the kid laughed, though it rang strangely hollow. Then he shrugged. "I won't shoot you again. It doesn't seem like it'd do me a hell of a lot of good anyway."

 

"Glad you see reason," Jack said, and knelt back. He locked the safety into place and slid the gun back in its holster. "Anyway, what I need is really easy. Probably all you need to do is point me in the direction of the nearest drug store and I'll be out of your hair."

 

That won him another suspicious glare. "Yeah? What?"

 

"The cure the Doctor made for you. I need a dose of it - maybe a couple, just to be sure. The Doctor's sick, and if I don't bring it back to him . . ." Jack trailed off as the man started to laugh again, this time with a hysterical edge that made Jack's stomach sink. "What?" he demanded.

 

"I only wish we could give it to you," the kid said, sobering. "Especially if you truly are a friend of the Doctor's. But we can't. We don't have it."

 

Jack stared. It was only with the greatest effort that he managed not to dissolve into hysterical laughter himself. "How the hell don't you have it?" he demanded instead. "Did you lose it? It's a cure for a devastating illness, not the fucking remote control!"

 

The poor kid obviously had no idea what Jack was talking about. "A few things have happened here since the Doctor left."

 

"Like what?"

 

"Like seven years of civil war." He sighed and shoved himself to his feet, then yanked open the door of the vehicle. "Look, I don't know if you are who you say you are, but get in. I can't promise anything, but I can at least take you to people who can."

 

An hour later Jack found himself in a bolthole in the mountain range that hemmed in Orion, the creatively named capital city, on one side. He was nursing his second cup of some chemical sludge that passed for coffee in an effort to wash out the bitter aftertaste the interrogation drug had left in his mouth, and damning civil war, biological warfare, and all their collective offspring. The man who'd shot him - Lieutenant Cose, or "Bobby" as Jack had mentally dubbed him for his likeness to a certain Kennedy - hadn't been lying. The Doctor's antiviral was a tightly controlled substance on Orion's Twelve these days, because the recently triumphant dictatorship targeted the virus at select demographics. Not to mention rebel forces.

 

Jack didn't even have to try that hard to get them to let him take a shot at snitching some from a drop at one of the government's pet hospitals later that night. The rebel general he met with obviously thought he was nuts, but they were desperate enough to trust him, once the chemical interrogation had proven he wasn't an enemy agent. And at least this time, Jack could practically hear the guy thinking, it wouldn't be his own people's asses on the line. He put Bobby in charge of outfitting Jack so he'd have "some slim chance of coming back not dead," made sure Jack knew they'd be getting at least part of whatever he managed to grab, and left shaking his head at the foolishness of youth.

 

If only he knew.

 

Silence reigned for almost a minute after the general had ducked out. Jack waited for Bobby to bring up either Jack's own particular chances of coming back from this mission "not dead" or the fact that the TARDIS was parked out in the foothills. He hadn't mentioned either during the meeting, for which Jack was grateful. He had no idea what these people's reactions would be if they knew their one-time savior was in town. Especially since the Doctor wasn't up to saving anyone just at the moment. But all Bobby said when he finally turned to Jack was, "So, you got any particular weapons specialty?"

 

It almost killed Jack to give a straight answer to that; the guy was so fresh-faced and, well, the only word Jack had was boyish, at least when he wasn't shooting Jack in the head. This was one area where the Doctor was wrong: the time was now and the place was here, almost always. That philosophy was the only way Jack got through most days. But even Jack couldn't swan off and have a covert (or overt) affair with a twenty-year old kid while the love of his extremely long life lay dying in his time-ship.

 

Jack sighed and resisted the urge to clap Bobby on the shoulder, smirk, and tell him, I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Instead he asked, "Got any sonic blasters around here?"

 

***

 

Jack had been gone six hours now. Something had clearly gone wrong, but the Doctor hardly cared. He'd fallen asleep and woken to find that the painkillers had worn off.

 

It wasn't particularly intense, as pain went. The Doctor had certainly had worse. But the headache was literally blinding and he'd been sick again, narrowly missing the blanket. Now he was lying there on the floor and he just felt so weak. He'd have sold his dignity and possibly even his screwdriver for someone to bring him another syringe full of painkillers and a mug of hot tea, but there only him and the TARDIS. And Martha, on the mobile.

 

"Martha?" he mumbled in the general vicinity of the little black phone. He'd fumbled the speaker phone on awhile back when holding it to his ear had got too hard. His mouth was horribly dry. Where was Jack? he wondered bleakly. He truly couldn't be arsed to care anymore whether he regenerated or not, but he didn't want to be alone if he did. Humiliating. He coughed weakly and tried to muffle it in the blanket. Pointless, since he certainly hadn't muffled anything when he'd thrown up.

 

"I'm here, Doctor."

 

"Where're you?"

 

"My flat."

 

"Not t' Hub?"

 

"No, Gwen sent me home. She said I was too distracted to be there."

 

"Oh." He buried his face in the blanket, then turned his head to the side. "Hurts."

 

"I know. You just have to hang in there. Jack'll be back with the cure, and then he'll bring you back here."

 

"He will?"

 

"Yes," she said, a note of steel in her voice. "If he knows what's good for him. And you'll stay here for a few days. On the slow path."

 

"I will?"

 

"You will. You're not going to get over this quickly, Doctor. You can stay with Jack or with - well, Jack would probably be best. I'd offer, but I have Tom up almost every weekend and it might be a bit awkward. But Jack doesn't live in the Hub anymore, he's got a very nice flat with a guestroom and everything. You can stay there while you rest, and let us fuss over you."

 

"Sounds nice," the Doctor said, and meant it. If he regenerated, he was going to need time to recover, and if he didn't - well, he had no idea how long it would take his body to heal itself. Either way, Jack had proven himself more than capable of looking after him. The Doctor had never done a damn thing to prove himself the same way - he'd abandoned Jack once and would have done again if Jack hadn't hung on to him so tenaciously; he'd put Jack through a year of torture at the hands of one of his own people and never so much as asked him how he was feeling in the aftermath; hell, he never dropped in to see him at all unless there was some emergency afoot that meant he couldn't avoid it. And for some reason Jack didn't seem to care. He should, but he didn't.

 

I'm sorry was almost as hard for the Doctor as I love you. But he was starting to think he might eventually have to say them both to Jack. Probably more than once. He'd have the chance to do so, at least, one way or the other, but he knew Jack would prefer - and so would he, truthfully - that he was wearing this face when he did it. He wasn't worried, as he had been with companions in the past, that Jack would stop loving him if he regenerated, but the man he was now had hurt Jack terribly and the man he was now should be the one make restitution. If he could.

 

He really didn't know what he'd done to deserve such loyalty from Jack, from Rose, from Martha, from Donna. From Sarah Jane and everyone else who'd been willing to risk their brief, fragile human lives for him. Some days it felt like a burden, others more of a gift. He wasn't sure what it felt like just now, except he really hoped he could blame the ache in his throat and the hot burn in his eyes on the fever. It occurred to him that after this was over, he could probably blame anything he said right now on fever and pain and fear, but he didn't want it to be like that. If he was going to say it, then he should say it and have done. It frightened him deeply, but that made it no less true.

 

"Martha," he said, some long, silent hours later, when the blanket beneath his cheek was wet with tears and sweat. His remaining heart was starting to fail; he felt each slow throb as a bone-deep weariness he'd never known before. "I'm going to sleep now. Not sure I'll wake up as - as me. Tell Jack I'm sorry."

 

"Tell him yourself," she said sharply.

 

"Might do. Might not. Don't know what sort of man I'll be. Might be even less apologetic than I am now."

 

"That's hard to imagine," she said, with a brave dryness the Doctor admired greatly. But then she added, voice wavering, "Doctor, please -"

 

"Thank you, Martha Jones. You really are brilliant."

 

As last words went, the Doctor thought as he lost consciousness, he'd certainly had worse.

 

***

 

As deaths went, Jack had definitely had worse.

 

Actually, come to think of it, he'd had worse less than eight hours earlier.

 

Not that getting run over by one of the large and cumbersome motorized land vehicles favored by the good people of Orion's Twelve was his idea of a good time, but at least there wasn't a hangover. He woke up still under the car, checked to see where the box of tiny vials full of precious antiviral had fallen, and was extremely relieved to see it hadn't been crushed. He could hear the soldiers who'd been driving the vehicle bitching at each other about whose fault it was they'd killed him - it seemed they saw this as a lost interrogation opportunity - and no one had moved to pick it up yet. Jack dug the heels of his boots into the dirt and began pushing himself backwards, trying to scoot out from under the car on his back.

 

He made it as far as the box of cure, where he couldn't resist stopping to check and make sure at least one dose hadn't broken. Except, of course, this was the 43rd century and they wouldn't be silly enough to put something so valuable in containers that might break, so he needn't have worried and could in fact have saved himself getting caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

 

The soldier's yell of alarm turned to a yell of pain when Jack shot him in the shoulder. He'd have felt bad about it, but he was having a rough day and frankly did not have the time to die again. He bolted while the soldiers were still trying to organize themselves, but the vehicle's engine roared to life behind him all too soon. Jack swore and turned off the road, pounding across an unpaved field toward the mountains and praying the wheat-like stalks around him would slow his pursuers down. Finding Bobby and the getaway vehicle would be more of a hassle now, but hopefully the GPS in his wrist device worked for Orion's Twelve as well as Cardiff.

 

Jack breathed a little easier once he hit the line of trees that marked the foothills. His pursuers were still behind him, wallowing through the wheat in their tank. He found a tree with a hollowed out bit in its trunk, stashed the box there and covered it over with leaves. Then he holstered his gun and went straight up the trunk, managing to get himself up and out of the way just as the vehicle's headlights swept over the spot he'd been seconds earlier. The thing was a lot more maneuverable than Jack would've expected, and they were moving a lot faster now that they'd cleared the fields, even with all the trees to avoid - forty or fifty miles an hour, at Jack's best guess. He waited for it to go by, holding his breath and hoping that the last thing these people were expecting was a primitive weapon that shot hot lead.

 

He cocked the gun, sighted down the barrel, and blew out both back tires - or whatever passed for tires on Twelve. They looked a lot like tires, anyway. Exploded like them, too. The twin explosions were followed by the much bigger one caused when a vehicle slams into a tree at fifty miles an hour.

 

Jack grinned and dropped down to the ground and into the sudden, unholy silence. He didn't wait for whoever was left conscious in the vehicle to come investigate. He retrieved the box and ran flat-out, the precious seconds he'd already wasted ticking away in his head. The Doctor, the Doctor, the Doctor, he thought, in time with the pounding of his blood in his ears.

 

He'd started to think he might die a third time after all, this time of heart failure, when Bobby's vehicle came into view. He pushed himself just a little bit harder - the door was open - he threw the box in the back and was in -

 

Ow. Holy fuck pain hot ow ow ow can't move can't breathe stop stop stop

 

"Goddammit!" Bobby yelled. Jack was vaguely aware of being tossed against the back of the seat as they went tearing off, bumping over an unpaved road, up into the mountains. Jack clenched his teeth against the white-hot pain and gripped the seat till his knuckles turned white. So there'd been someone behind him after all. Probably they'd been shooting to wound, and they'd been pretty fucking successful. Jack could feel his body already starting to knit itself back together, but he'd have a raw, open wound in the small of his back for several hours yet.

 

Nothing Bobby was saying actually penetrated until after the vehicle had stopped bucking and weaving and slowed to something less than break-neck speed. Then Jack clearly heard him say something about heading back to camp. "No, no," he ground out. "Not camp. TARDIS! Doctor!"

 

"Don't be stupid, you can't -"

 

"Bobby," Jack said, hauling himself up and forcing himself into coherence.

 

"My name isn't -"

 

"Shut up. Take me to the Doctor, I'll take two doses of the cure and you can have the rest."

 

"But you're dying!"

 

"Trust me when I say I'd know if I was." Jack tilted his head back against the seat and tried not to actually die. His body's healing hadn't managed to staunch the bleeding yet, and he was dizzy from blood loss and pain. He was relieved when Bobby didn't argue. He drifted, semi-conscious, for the rest of the drive, aware only of the weight of the box in his lap, the lack of any pursuit, and that every second that passed took him both closer to the Doctor and to running out of time.

 

A shimmering blue dawn was breaking over the horizon by the time the TARDIS came into view, looking small and very blue between the orange foothills of Orion's Twelve. Jack sat up, the wound in his back twinging painfully, and tightened his hold on the box. Nearly eleven hours had passed since he'd left the TARDIS, and he still had to get the ship to reconfigure the antiviral to Time Lord DNA.

 

He had two doses of the cure in his hand and the door to the vehicle half-open before Bobby even came to a full stop. "Thanks for everything, Bobby, good luck with the -"

 

"Wait!" Bobby said, and reached across to yank Jack back in.

 

"Wait for what?" Jack demanded, tugging his arm away. "The Doctor is -"

 

"Exactly! The Doctor! Captain Harkness, he could - he could fix all of this! The dictatorship -"

 

"Is your problem," Jack said firmly, even though it made him feel like an jerk. "He saved your asses once, you can save them this time. End of story." For the moment, anyway. Jack had a good idea what the Doctor's reaction might be to finding out how his antiviral was being used. Orion's Twelve might be seeing him in its very near future after all, but Jack was determined it would be somewhat further along in the Doctor's own timeline, post a little R&R in scenic Cardiff.

 

"But -"

 

"Look, I got you your cure. That's the best I can do for now."

 

"But he could help us -"

 

 

"I have to help him!" Jack snapped, finally wedging himself out of the vehicle "I'm sorry, I can't do any more than that. Deal with it."

 

"Captain -"

 

Jack shoved his key in the TARDIS lock and didn't answer. He understood the poor kid's desperation, really, he did - he'd been in more wars than he could count, and in every single one of them he could remember the exact moment he'd have done anything for it to just be over. But all he could think about was the Doctor. Probably he was fine, but maybe he wasn't, and Jack couldn't know until he got inside and saw for himself. Everything else could just take a -

 

Hot pain lanced through the top of Jack's thigh. He let out a yelp and looked down to see the fabric of his trousers, already the worse for wear, seared away. The flesh below was badly burned and bleeding. Mouth gaping open, Jack looked up and saw Bobby staring back at him, weapon in hand, looking almost as shocked as Jack felt.

 

"You shot me again?" Jack yelled, and then they were both moving, Bobby sprinting towards him and Jack lunging into the TARDIS and shoving the door shut in the kid's face just as his leg gave out beneath him. "Shit!" he swore, collapsing onto the floor. He could just make out the Doctor's bare toes, sticking out from behind the console, and he breathed a sigh of relief despite the pain.

 

"Jack!" Martha's small, tinny voice called. "Jack, is that you?"

 

"Yeah," Jack grunted, hauling himself up on the console. "Come on, beautiful," he said to the TARDIS. "Let's get him out of here." He threw a couple switches and fell back as the time rotor started to move, taking them into the Vortex. The pain slammed into him for real then, making him groan even as he hauled himself up onto his elbows.

 

"Jack, what's wrong?"

 

"The bastard shot me! Dammit - need the medlab." He smeared blood across the floor as he dragged himself around the console to get his first good look at the Doctor. He wasn't moving. Jack skirted the edge of a patch of half-dried vomit to get a better look at his face. White as paste and still as a statue. "Dammit."

 

"Who shot you? Jack, did you get it?"

 

"I got it," Jack said, the edges of his vision blacking out. "Need the medlab - TARDIS - rekey to his DNA -"

 

Martha was demanding explanations, but Jack left the phone where it lay. He didn't have energy or coherence to spare, not when it was taking everything he had to get down the corridor to the medlab on his hands and knee, his burned leg dragging behind him. He went straight to a mysterious little device, the exact use of which the Doctor had never seen fit to clarify to Jack. But he'd used it to produce everything from painkillers to antibiotics, and whatever it was, it was blatantly connected to the TARDIS. Jack uncapped the vial of antiviral with shaking, clammy hands and dumped it all in.

 

The device lit up and Jack slumped to the floor. "C'mon, you can do it," he told the TARDIS as the lights flashed through some dance he couldn't even guess at. He'd broken out in a cold sweat; his leg was healing, but the tissue synthesizer would move things along if he could find it. Last he'd seen it, it'd been on a shelf over the sink . . .

 

By the time the TARDIS pronounced the antiviral done with a beep that reminded him strongly of his microwave, Jack had a shiny new scar on his leg to go with the one still healing on his back, but at least he was able to stand. He retrieved the cure, now conveniently contained in a syringe, and limped as fast as he could down the corridor to the control room, where he fell to his knees beside the Doctor. His hands shook as he swabbed the Doctor's arm and pressed the syringe to it. There was a brief hiss as it emptied, then Jack tossed it aside and bent over the Doctor, pressing his ear to his chest. One of his hearts was still beating, slowly, faintly, but the miracle Jack had been waiting for didn't happen. "It's not working," he said, nearly weeping in frustration.

 

"It wouldn't yet," Martha's voice pointed out reasonably. She paused. "Are you holding him? It might help. You never know with these things. How much the person is aware of, I mean. And it's the Doctor."

 

"Right," Jack said, pulling himself together. "Right." He sat with his back against the wall of the TARDIS, the anxious, worried thrum of the ship palpable through his shoulder blades. He pulled the Doctor onto his lap, cradling him against his chest and feeling his weight on Jack's still-aching leg. Still so warm - way too warm for the Doctor. "C'mon, Doc," he said, stroking the Doctor's sweat-stiffened hair back from his forehead.

 

"What about you, Jack?" Martha asked. "Are you all right?"

 

"I'm fine," Jack said shortly.

 

"You were shot at least once. How many times did you die?"

 

Jack considered lying, then decided he was too tired to keep track of it all. "Twice. It was nothing."

 

"Jack -"

 

"Martha, it doesn't matter!" he snapped.

 

"Doesn't it?"

 

"No! Because I'm here, I'll always be here, and none of it matters if he isn't!" Too late, Jack snapped his mouth shut. He tightened his hold on the Doctor and bent to press his face into his neck. He could feel the Doctor's pulse point, the slow, single beat of his heart, no faster than before. For nothing, it had all been for nothing. Jack could have screamed.

 

This wasn't the end, Jack told himself. Not yet, at least. The Doctor would regenerate - he could do that thirteen times. But someday the Doctor would be gone and Jack would still be here, and he would remember this moment and how he could have had just a little more time with him, if only he'd been faster. By that time, even a few centuries might not seem like much, but he knew from experience that time was relative when it came to the people you loved. Especially once it'd run out.

 

Martha sighed. "We should start a support group, you and I. For people who love the Doctor too much. Though I like to think I'm recovering."

 

"You still come running whenever he needs you," Jack pointed out waspishly.

 

Martha wasn't cowed, of course. "Jack, you need to give it time -"

 

"He doesn't have time!" Jack forced himself to stop and take a deep breath. "You don't know," he said at last. "You can't see him, Martha, you can't see how still he is. He's hardly breathing, and soon he won't be breathing at all and then I'll be left holding someone else. And I wouldn't care, because he'd still be the Doctor, except - except -"

 

"Jack." Jack shut up, startled by the commanding note in Martha's voice. "I want you to put the Doctor down, go back into the medlab, and take the tranquilizer I'm sure the TARDIS will be nice enough to leave lying out for you. You've died twice in the last twelve hours, and I don't care what you say, that is neither normal nor healthy."

 

Jack had to admit she had a point. He swallowed, feeling the rapid throb of his injured leg in time with his heartbeat. "Yeah. Okay."

 

"Seriously?"

 

"Yeah." Jack shifted the Doctor carefully off his lap, climbed to his feet, and half-staggered, half-stumbled down the hall to the medlab, where he found a bottle of pills lying out on the counter. Jack had been slightly worried the TARDIS would stick to Martha's temporal context when she fulfilled her suggestion, but the pills were 51st century and entirely reasonable, nothing like the horrors that passed for psychotropic medication in the 21st century. Jack took two and pocketed the bottle, because there'd been times when he'd wished something like that would fall through the rift.

 

By the time Jack got back to the control room, he could already feel his heartrate dropping. Martha'd been right - dying was horrible, and watching the person you loved die right in front of you despite your best efforts was worse. Except, Jack realized as he lowered himself down beside the Doctor with his leg stuck out, he wasn't sure he was watching that. The Doctor had been deathly pale before, despite his fever; now he looked flushed. His other heart still wasn't beating, but he thought the one that was felt stronger.

 

"Jack?" Martha asked tentatively. "You there?"

 

"Yeah. Sorry."

 

"Are you all right?"

 

"Better, thanks." Jack stretched out beside the Doctor, twined his arms and legs around him, and rested his head on his shoulder. "So's he, I think."

 

Martha let out a breath. "Told you."

 

Jack laughed briefly. "You did." He rolled his forehead against the Doctor's shoulder, breathing in the distinctly alien smell of his skin and sweat. "I should move him back to his bed. He'll be more comfortable when he wakes up."

 

"What you should do is close your eyes for a few minutes," Martha told him. "Don't think I haven't noticed you haven't been sleeping lately."

 

"I slept last night," he protested.

 

"At your desk, right? And then you ran off and died twice!"

 

Jack wanted to argue, but it was a moot point. He'd been under too much stress for too long, and now the tranqs had cut in and he was about to pay for it with interest. Better to lie down before he fell down, so to speak. He tugged the self-heating blanket out from under the Doctor and pulled it over himself, then wrapped his arm around the Doctor's chest. The TARDIS hummed at him, and Jack wondered if his own fear and the ship's might not have been indistinguishable for at least a few minutes there. "S'all right, beautiful," he told the ship. "He's going to be okay."

 

"What?" Martha said.

 

"Nothing. I was talking to the TARDIS." Jack sighed. "Will you check in with Gwen for me? Make sure she knows what's going on? We'll be back as soon as I'm sure the Doc isn't contagious anymore, but I might be out for a few days if he needs someone to keep an eye on him."

 

"Doesn't he always?" Martha replied dryly. "We can take it in turns. But yeah, I'll call Gwen for you. See you soon, yeah?"

 

"You bet." Jack rang off and lay for a moment, the phone cupped in his hand, looking up at the ceiling. Then he set it aside and rolled over to bury his face in the Doctor's neck. Reflexively, he listened for the pulse-beat, and then he smiled. Faintly, very faintly beneath the strong, single beat, a fainter one pulsed in quiet counterpoint.

 

***

 

Upon waking, the Doctor made four immediate observations.

 

The first was that he hadn't regenerated. He determined this by picking up his hand and checking for the very faint scar he'd got from burning his hand on the console the one and only time he'd let Donna drive. The second, which was predictable based on the first, was that Jack was back, lying sound asleep beside him on the floor of the TARDIS. Well, not so much beside him, really, as on top of him. The third was that his second heart was beating again, a bit sluggishly perhaps, but at least steadily.

 

The fourth was that he was covered in sweat.

 

Sweat, the Doctor decided, was disgusting.

 

It wasn't helped by either the self-heating blanket or Jack, who was himself an effective furnace. The Doctor grimaced and attempted to wriggle his way out, but he was wrapped up so thoroughly that it was impossible. He gave up after less than thirty seconds of futile struggle and was annoyed to discover that he had a throbbing headache as reward for his efforts.

 

In fact, whilst the fuzziness in the Doctor's head had cleared when his fever broke, and the exhaustion and malaise were much more bearable for having his second heart beating again, he still felt like death warmed over. Martha, unsurprisingly, had known what she was talking about. Though he thought he'd feel a lot better when he wasn't about to expire from overheating.

 

There was simply nothing for it. "Jack," the Doctor said, poking Jack in the arm to wake him. "Jack, wake up, you need to get off."

 

Jack opened one eye. "I dunno about need to get off. Are you offering, Doc?"

 

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Get off me. I'm boiling alive here."

 

"Oh. Right." Jack shifted obediently, and the Doctor was able to throw off the blanket with a sigh of relief. Jack held the back of his hand to the Doctor's forehead. "Feeling better?"

 

"I feel like something that's just been sicked up," the Doctor snapped, right before he recalled everything Jack had just gone through for him. He rubbed a hand over his face wearily; it came away damp. Yech. "Yes, better. A bit. Sorry. It's just . . . sweat. It's repulsive. How do you lot stand it? The least bit cold and all your muscles contract so hard you can barely move; the least bit warm and you're suddenly dripping in salt water. Your bodies are always sneezing and sweating and coughing and shivering and -"

 

"All right, all right, I get it, you're uncomfortable." Jack sounded exasperated, but his dimples were showing and his underlying relief was palpable. The Doctor managed to leave off wishing he could crawl out of his own skin long enough to wonder exactly how close he'd come to regenerating after all. "You want me to run you a bath?"

 

Just the idea made the Doctor nearly whimper in relief. He nodded, aware he looked pathetic. Jack's dimples deepened, and he ducked his head to kiss the Doctor's forehead. "Can do," he murmured against the Doctor's skin. Then, a bit more clearly, "Glad to have you back, Doc."

 

"How'd you do it?" the Doctor asked, as Jack sat up and started to climb to his feet. "I don't remember much from those last couple of hours, but I know it took longer than we thought it would. And - Martha! I remember Martha. Is she still on the mobile?"

 

Jack shook his head. "But I promised her I'd bring you right home soon as we knew you weren't going end up patient zero. As for how I did it . . ." He paused, looking down at the Doctor, and rubbed a hand on his thigh. "It's a long story. I'll tell you while you soak."

 

To the Doctor's embarrassment, Jack had to help him up and then more or less carry him down the hall to the bathroom. He helped the Doctor peel off his shirt and trousers, which the Doctor frankly hoped the TARDIS would just incinerate. The Doctor climbed into the bath, holding onto Jack's shoulder for balance. Jack had got the water nearly cool enough - from his fussing it was clear he thought it was too cold, but the Doctor finally managed to convince him it was fine. He settled in, head resting on a folded-up towel, and closed his eyes. He heard a faint splash, then Jack ran a flannel across the top of his chest, his throat and face. The Doctor slitted his eyes open just enough to catch Jack's gaze. Something flickered there, something quiet and soft and dark, and the Doctor felt his breath hitch. "You were going to tell me how you did it."

 

"Yeah." Jack sank down so he was sitting by the bath. The flannel paused in its wanderings, and Jack stroked it over the Doctor's forehead three times, contemplatively. "How about a trade? I'll tell you how I got your antiviral if you tell me what happened to Donna and Rose."

 

The Doctor felt his throat start to ache. Ridiculous to get so emotional about it after six months. But it had been a hard six months, and it hadn't felt like it was getting any easier. When he was caught up in something he was usually fine, but the let-downs afterward were only getting worse. Even now he felt as though he was teetering on the edge - like he was all right because Jack was here, sitting next to him, touching him, but once he left . . .

 

"Doc?"

 

The Doctor looked up at Jack and swallowed. Then, slowly, his voice shaking and threatening to crack, everything came tumbling out: leaving Rose at Bad Wolf Bay with her family and the other him; wiping Donna's memory and taking her home. Then, even more haltingly, he confessed to the doubts that had plagued him ever since. "I thought I was doing the right thing for both of them. Rose shouldn't be cut off from her family, it isn't right. And Donna - I had no choice. I really had no choice, she would have died - but then, didn't she anyway? The Donna I said good-bye to wasn't my Child of Time." He drew a deep breath, avoiding Jack's gaze, afraid of the condemnation he might find there. "Ever since, I haven't been able to - I haven't picked up anyone else. Haven't really wanted to."

 

"Now that I don't believe." Jack stroked the cloth over the Doctor's hair, squeezing it so the water ran down the back of his neck and his temples. "For someone as smart as you are, you really are an idiot, you know that? I don't know if what you did was for the best, but I can tell you that Rose, at least, would've liked to make her own decision, even if it meant never seeing her family again, even if it meant -"

 

"Dying?" the Doctor said quietly. Jack blinked. The Doctor nodded. "I saw the timeline, Jack. She'd have had a few years with me, and then I'd have lost her again. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it again. And," he reached up and caught Jack's hand, "the truth is that it was never the same with Rose and me after I regenerated. It was never quite right. I loved her, but I didn't need her, and it wasn't . . . it wasn't the same. And I was afraid she would choose me and it would be terrible, because I didn't need what she could give me."

 

Jack sighed, then shook his head. "You're still an idiot, Doctor."

 

The Doctor gave a brief laugh. "I know."

 

"But you're my idiot Doctor."

 

The Doctor tried not to smile at that, but he didn't fool Jack, who dropped the flannel into the bathwater, tilted the Doctor's chin up, and kissed him. The Doctor hesitated, then kissed back, wondering if he might not have to say anything at all. It was Jack, after all - Jack, who knew him better than anyone, Jack who had died for him over and over, saved his life -

 

The Doctor pulled away, and Jack let him. Jack helped him settle his head back on his towel, then retrieved the flannel, managing to brush it over a certain part of the Doctor's anatomy on its way back up to his head and neck. The Doctor shivered, then glared. Jack didn't even pretend innocence, just leered at him, utterly unrepentant.

 

"Jack," the Doctor said, after a few minutes of being silently coddled and caressed into forgiving any and all liberties Jack might take - not that he would, really, under the present circumstances. "Tell me how you did it."

 

Jack cleared his throat again, seeming strangely nervous. "Yeah, okay. So, I'm guessing the upstanding citizens of Orion's Twelve were a lot less trigger-happy when you were there . . ."

 

***

 

Jack had known the Doctor would be indignant that his antiviral was being held hostage by an evil dictatorship. What he hadn't realized was how pissed he'd be that Jack had been shot twice in the course of things, not to mention run over. "Of all the ungrateful - as though they hadn't learned - I'm going right back there and I'm bloody well going to Oncoming Storm them into the next millenium!" the Doctor declared at last, hauling himself up out of the bath like an angry, wet muskrat, with one hand gripping the tiled bathroom wall.

 

"Sure you are," Jack said, leaning against the wall in a position convenient to catching the Doctor when his legs folded five seconds later. Jack eased his armful of righteously indignant Time Lord back into the bathtub and recommenced coddling him. But when the ranting still hadn't let up a good ten minutes later, Jack finally decided that a higher power than himself was called for - namely, tea and biccies.

 

It took the application of an entire pot of herbal tea and half a package of the Doctor's favorite ginger-nut biscuits, but Jack eventually got the Doctor calm enough to sleep. Tucked up between clean, dry sheets and a brand new duvet, the Doctor's irritated ramblings grew drowsier and more intermittent, until he finally slumped against Jack's side, his head resting just over Jack's heart. One hand rested on the small of Jack's back, where he'd been shot the first time. There wasn't much sensation there at the moment, but the touch felt oddly intimate anyway.

 

Neither of them spoke for some time - perhaps the longest Jack had ever gone in the Doctor's presence without him speaking. Then the Doctor murmured, "I'm sorry."

 

"For what?" Jack asked, lifting his head.

 

The Doctor rubbed a slow circle on the small of Jack's back, then reached with the other hand for Jack's thigh. The wound beneath his fingers gave a brief twinge, then subsided into a low-grade ache. "For that. And for everything else."

 

Jack shook his head and smoothed the Doctor's still-damp hair with his palm. "Go to sleep."

 

"Can't. Had to say it. And have to ask you." The Doctor's hand on Jack's thigh clenched briefly. "Stay with me?"

 

"Of course, Doc. Well, actually, someone has to get us back to Cardiff or Martha'll have me by the balls, but you know I'm here for as long as -"

 

"No, I mean - I mean, don't leave. I mean stay. Come with me."

 

Jack went very still. The Doctor didn't usually ask twice - well, unless you were blonde - but then, the Doctor didn't usually spend more than a couple of weeks alone at a time. And the truth was that Jack wanted to say yes - someday. Just not right now. He wanted a few more years on the slow path, defending Earth. Helping his team learn how to defend the Earth. It was good work.

 

"Doc . . ." he said at last, slowly. He felt the Doctor stiffen instantly, pulling away from him. Jack, panicking, tightened his hold on him in reflex. "Don't, please don't, Doc. Don't do this."

 

"What? Don't do what, Jack? I'm not doing anything."

 

"You are! Dammit, this isn't rejection! I love you and you know it, so quit being an idiot and consider that I have other obligations and that maybe, when I say no, I don't mean never, I just mean, not now!" Too late, centuries too late, Jack snapped his mouth shut.

 

The Doctor said nothing for nearly a minute. Jack clenched his teeth together and ran over in his head the dozen different ways he'd just ensured he'd never see the Doctor again. Then the Doctor said, very quietly, "Oh."

 

"Yeah," Jack said, relaxing fractionally. He nuzzled the Doctor behind his ear, breathing in the scent of the shampoo he'd worked into the Doctor's hair. Jack had found the experience almost unbearably erotic, not because it was particularly sexual - though the Doctor had made a few noises while Jack was massaging his scalp that could only be classified as "obscene" - but because it was yet another small intimacy the Doctor had allowed him. All these little touches, all these small comforts - they added up to something much bigger than the sum of their parts. "Look, we can talk about this later. Sleep a bit, all right?"

 

"If you insist," the Doctor said, settling back against Jack's side. Jack twined their fingers together more thoroughly and stroked through the Doctor's hair with the other hand. "I can wait, I s'pose."

 

"I'm told there are benefits to waiting."

 

"I can't believe you of all people are extolling the virtues of patience," the Doctor replied, his voice already a bit rough and groggy - sexy as hell, if only he realized it.

 

"Give me a few centuries, I'm sure I'll think of at least one."

 

The Doctor gave a charmingly drowsy chuckle and tucked his face against Jack's side. Jack pressed a kiss to the crown of the Doctor's head. He was still warmer than he should have been, but already a lot closer to his usual room temp. Jack sighed in relief, his breath ruffling the Doctor's half-dried hair.

 

Moments later the Doctor was sound asleep. Jack extricated himself and padded out of the room, tea tray balanced against one hip as he nudged the door to the Doc's bedroom closed. He deposited it in the kitchen and headed for the console room. He had no intention of trying to fly the TARDIS without the Doctor, lest they end up in Cardiff circa two million BC, but the sooner he cleaned up the godawful mess on the floor in there, the happier the ship would be.

 

He mopped the TARDIS floor until it was sparkling, with a mental apology to the ship for bleeding all over her to begin with. Then he slumped into the console chair and reached out to stroke the wall of the ship. "We did good, beautiful," he told her, and felt her hum back at him in agreement. He rubbed a hand over the console briefly and looked around. This place had been home once and would be again, someday. That was more than enough for Jack. He grinned, patted the console one last time, and went to curl up with his idiot Doctor.

 

Fin.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Icarus