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Healing in Love	By : MariaKristoff Category: 1 through F > Doctor Who Views: 2371 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Dr. Who, Torchwood or any of it's characters. Therefore, I get no money for my angsty plot lines. >.<

Chapter List
- 1-Healing in Love
- 1
Jack stared at his wrist band, the brown contrasting against the powder blue sheets. He lay in his little bunker, sleep refusing to rest on him just as it had so many other nights. So many memories. So many people he’d hurt and lives ruined. Their faces and voices swirled through his mind. They haunted him. Every night, his dreams were flooded with guilt and pain. He tried not to sleep much anymore. He didn’t eat much either. He didn’t really do much of anything actually. He thought to himself on the sleepless nights, that anyone who thinks that they’d rather feel pain than be numb had never felt pain on this scale before. He wished it would just stop. Just for one moment that the crippling pangs in his heart and the guilt would subside. He wished the blood on his hands would finally wash clean away. He wanted peace.

He couldn’t even look at a cup of coffee without tears surging forward. Little boys with blond hair made him cringe. “Why?” He found he was asking that a lot lately. He didn’t know who he was asking and he didn’t expect an answer, but still, the word, the quiet little whimpering word, passed his lips. It was then that he heard it. That unmistakable sound caught his ear. His blue eyes went wide and he threw off the covers, flying up the ladder into the main hub of the space station. He had bunked here for the night and his ship was docked in the west chamber. The sound came from his left and he took off after it like a shot.
xXxXx
He looked at the pad of paper one more time to be sure. Yes, this was indeed the right place. He set it down on the dash of the TARDIS. On it was one tiny word. “Why?” He took a deep breath as he came to the door, hand gripping the handle. He was reluctant to exit and he wasn’t sure why he felt that way. I suppose you could call it instinct. Sucking it up, he opened the door and stepped out, locking the door behind him. Footsteps. Running, angry footsteps came from behind him.
“Doctor!” That voice. His ears pricked up and he turned. “Doctor!” The very familiar blonde ran at him. He smiled to himself. Maybe they were just destined to keep running into each other. “Jack Harkness. Been too long,” His sentence was cut off as a fist connected with his jaw. He recoiled, looking into the eyes of the time agent.
“How could you?!” He looked at Jack, bewildered. “Jack, what are you on about?”
“Don’t give me that crap! Where were you?!” He landed another punch. “The world needed you! The children needed you!” He punched the time lord again and again, in the chest now, each blow losing its ferocity, lessening in strength. “Clem! Sam! Ianto!” He choked on the last name, his eyes welling with tears. “They all needed you and you weren’t there!” A lump formed in his throat. “I needed you!” They spilled over now, flowing freely down his face. “And you weren’t there!” The blows had stopped all together now as the pain surged to the surface. He clung to him now, desperate. “I needed you,” he sobbed, “and you weren’t there.” He cried freely for the first time since he was a child. His words were choked whispers as the Doctor put his arms around him, trying to soothe the usually very emotionally reserved blonde man. “You weren’t there. I was all alone.”
“Hush now, Jack,” he said softly, “Calm down and let’s go inside, yeah? You can tell me what’s got you all worked up.”
xXxXx
The Doctor handed Jack a mug of hot tea in the TARDIS’s kitchen. The man had finally calmed down. His eyes were red and puffy from crying, his nose the same cherry red. Surprisingly, he felt a bit better for his outburst. The Doctor sunk into the chair opposite his old companion, setting down his own mug on the island and looking the man in the eye. “Now, Jack, slowly this time, tell me what’s happened.” He took a deep breath. It was going to be hard to tell the doctor what had happened. It was still hard to think about, much less recount it to someone else. So many lives lost. He figured the best place to start was the very beginning.
“It all started with the children. One day they all just froze. And not just in Wales, or England, or even Europe. Every child in every continent just stopped at the same exact time.” The Doctor’s brows came together in the way they always had when he was puzzled or thinking hard about something. Jack could see the questions in his eyes but new he dare not ask them until he had heard the whole story. So he continued. He explained about the 456 and that they wanted the children to use in intergalactic drug rings. He told him, with some difficulty about the virus and Ianto. Finally, it came to the part he could never forgive himself for. “We had found the frequency of the wave the 456 had used to kill Clem. We needed a way to turn it into a constructive wave and fast. The only thing we could think of was…to use the same method they had. The bigger problem was, we needed a child to start the frequency going. The only child with us was,” he choked back tears again, “Sam. We had to use him as the primary transmitter.” The tears rolled silently down his cheeks. The Doctor gaped. “Oh no. Jack I…I’m so sorry. Really I am.” Jack couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t stomach what this man of peace and solver of problems would think of him. He already hated himself enough. But then, the Doctor had no right to judge. Where had he been, this self proclaimed defender of Earth? Jack looked at him with a glare.
“Sorry doesn’t change the fact that you were nowhere to be found. Sorry isn’t going to make my daughter speak to me again. It isn’t going to bring Sam and Ianto back!” The Doctor said nothing to defend himself. He just stared intently, which only served to make Jack angrier. “You said you would protect us! You’ve saved the earth so many times! Why?!” The mug shattered in jack’s hand. He stared numbly at the shards of porcelain on the counter top and his bloodied hand which The Doctor took in his own, pulling pieces of tea soaked china out of the shaking palm. All the while, he was calm. When he finally spoke his voice was level and careful. “Jack, we’re not just talking about the planet and the 456 anymore, are we.” It wasn’t a question. He knew there was something deeper than that. When the scarred and tormented man finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “You weren’t there for me.” He stared at the counter top where the tea had started to dry up and become a sticky brown mess. “I was all alone. I’m not smart like you. I didn’t know what to do and it was so hard. I kept thinking “what would The Doctor do” but I’m not you. I had to do something but I’m not brilliant. I don’t know how to solve things in a positive way for everyone involved like you can. The world didn’t need a hero, it needed a doctor. It needed THE Doctor. Why would you leave us on our own when we needed you most?”
The Doctor sighed, standing and gathering up the shattered bits of mug in his hand. “Nothing to say,” Jack jibed, “that’s a first.”
“Damn it, Jack! Don’t you think I wanted to be?!” The Doctor threw the shards a little too forcefully into the waste bin. “I knew what was going on. I knew damn well how many people would suffer but I couldn’t do a bloody thing! It was a fixed point in time, Jack! The government had to learn their lesson. If I stepped in, things only would’ve been worse off in the long run.” He sighed, running a hand through his short brown spikes. “And it killed me, more than anything, to know how much you in particular were suffering.” He looked at his former companion with sad eyes. “Look at me, Jack.” Reluctantly, the captain looked him in the eye. “You think I don’t notice how you look at me? You think I don’t understand what you feel? I’ll tell you what, Jack. When I yell at you for flirting with people, it isn’t because it’s indecent or I find it revolting. It’s because,” the Time Lord paused, contemplating, weighing his options and the outcomes. “Oh, never mind.”
“No,” Jack insisted, standing from his own seat and taking a step closer to the other man. “Say it. Tell me exactly what’s in your mind right now.”
“I’m warning you, Jack.” Jack ignored him, moving closer. He trapped the brunette against the counter with an arm on either side. “Please,” he whispered, their foreheads touching. “I need to know.” The Doctor sighed again, giving in because seeing the man this broken, this vulnerable, tugged at his hearts’ strings in a way he hadn’t thought possible. He looked into his eyes, chocolate brown and crystal blue meeting, searching in each other for an answer or some form of encouragement. “I like you, Jack. I always have. But I need someone who can be with me and only me.” He cupped the other man’s cheek. “I need monogamy and devotion and that’s just not in your nature. I couldn’t ask that of you.” Jack couldn’t help but giggle. “You would think that, but you know what?” He brought a hand up to cover The Doctor’s. “Being with Ianto, it changed me. It made me realize that being with one person isn’t a chore. It’s not a lack of freedom or something that ties you down. It’s the feeling of going to someone who knows you and understands what your day was like but asks about it anyway so you can vent. It’s about having someone you can trust. It’s about having someone to come home to, someone who would miss you if something went wrong. It’s mattering to someone and having them matter to you in return.” He turned his head to kiss the palm of the other’s hand. “And right now, you’re the only person I can think of that I’m willing to care that much about.” Brown eyes stared, bewildered into his own. The Doctor had certainly not expected that. The time lord closed his eyes and smiled, his other hand finding Jack’s and grasping it. “Sounds like you have done quite a bit of growing up since last I saw you.” Jack smiled. “And I’ve learned more than that.” He pressed a gentle kiss to The Doctor’s soft lips. “I’ve learned that as good as I’ve become at fixing things, there are better ways. I have a lot to learn before I’m ready to be anyone’s guardian let alone the guardian of a whole planet. And I know I have so much more to learn from you.” He put his arms around The Doctor’s waist, nuzzling into his neck and delighting in the fact the other hadn’t pushed him away. “Please, don’t leave me behind again. Let me stay with you. There’s nothing I want more and I think the two of us have earned a little happiness in our lifetimes. Why should we punish ourselves with loneliness?”
He was hesitant but The Doctor eventually brought his arms up to embrace the other man. He wrapped his arms around broad shoulders, one hand resting comfortingly in blond tresses. “Forgive me if I’m not willing to make this a relationship right away, but I won’t be leaving you behind. Never again, Jack. I promise.” The blonde man smiled and kissed the Time Lord. “I’ve got an eternity to wait, and for now, just being with you is enough.” The Doctor smiled back. “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful companionship.”
- 1
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Healing in Love