WHO: Jack and the Doctor (12) WHEN: Way back to when he first arrived WHERE: Outside Quarantine WHAT: Picking up his friend and helping to get him settled in WARNINGS/DISCLAIMERS: None!
The Doctor found out exactly the time when Jack was coming out of quarantine, so he could be there for him, waiting outside, leaning against the TARDIS with his arms folded leisurely across his chest with his sunglasses on, in a pose that was meant to be cool. Once Jack exited the military building, the Doctor tilted his head up in greeting.
“Howdy, partner,” he said in a poorly articulated Western drawl. “Welcome to Tumbleweed, where the cows are poked and the people are from different universes. It’s a far cry from Knowhere, that’s for sure. Are you thirsty?”
Jack grinned as he approached the Doctor, pulling his old friend into a hug. “Thanks for the welcome. As for a drink? Sure… why not? So fill me in, Doctor. What do I need to know about this place?”
Pulling back from the hug, the Doctor shot a quick glance at their surroundings. “What you see is not necessarily what you get. Except maybe at the bar. It’s within walking distance, if you don’t mind, the Mystic Grill. You want to drop your things off inside, and then we can walk there?”
“I don’t really have much. Most of my stuff was in my room in your TARDIS. But I can stow this tablet they gave me.” Jack walked over to the TARDIS and smiled as he rested a hand on the door. “Miss me, girl?”
The TARDIS subtle reply was a warm vibration beneath Jack’s hand, which the Doctor could also perceive, and he smiled. They’d come a long way since the TARDIS (and essentially the Doctor himself) rejected Jack for being a Fixed Point and thus an anomaly. Yes, Jack still felt strange, but both Time Lord and TARDIS grew accustomed to it, and accepted the oddity as part of Jack’s winning personality.
“It’s all there in the same place,” the Doctor said. “Your room, and everything in it, from Knowhere. But if that’s all you have, that tablet, you can just take it with us, if you’d rather?”
In response to the question, Jack slipped the tablet into the pocket of his greatcoat and smiled. “Works for me.” He gave the TARDIS another fond pat on her blue door and turned to face the Doctor. “So how long have you and River been here?”
Smiling, the Doctor inclined his head in the direction they ought to go, and then headed in that direction, walking side by side with Jack in the bright, Texas sunshine. Linear time often eluded the Doctor, but he’d been getting better at it ever since the TARDIS prevented him from time travel in Knowhere. “A few weeks. Not that long. It’s a bit crazy here, I doubt any of us will get bored anytime soon.”
“A few weeks? Strange… you were still on Knowhere when I got snatched here, at least as far as I knew. Time must flow differently between the two places.” Jack reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, slipping them on due to the bright Texas sun. “That’s going to take some getting used to…”
The Doctor nodded his head. “I’m keen on finding more about this portal. The main one’s inside the military base, protected by soldiers, but there are other, smaller ones, that pop up, unexpectedly. Like the one that opened and deposited those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz.” He glanced over at Jack’s sunglasses. “What? The sun?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t like that on Knowhere and you know how Cardiff is. Wait… there’s multiple portals? And what flying monkeys?” he asked, turning his head to look over at the Doctor.
“Flying. Monkees.” The Doctor spoke each word clearly, like he was talking to a young child who didn’t understand the language, while flapping his arms to mimic wings. “Monkees that fly. Oh come on, if I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz, I know you must’ve seen it, too. They came swooping down and grabbed some people. Tried to carry them away, but were thwarted. I wasn’t there to see it, but that’s what I was told. Tell you one thing, we may no longer be on a gigantic head floating in space anymore, but I have a feeling this Tumbleweed place is going to be far more interesting.”
“Well, yeah… I’ve seen the film. Man, this place sounds weirder than Knowhere!” he joked. As they walked Jack shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “So… your little pet psycho. What happened to him? Or did you finally find a way so send him back to Gallifrey?”
“Don’t call him that,” came the Doctor’s quick and irritable reply, his mood shifting quickly. “You don’t like it when he calls you freak.” Or, for that matter, when the Master compared Jack and the other Companions to the Doctor’s pets, which was closer to the truth than what the Doctor cared to admit. His frown deepened as he continued. “I don’t know what happened to him. As far as I know, he’s still in Knowhere. There’s no real way of telling.”
Jack held up both hands as he said, “Okay, okay… sorry.” He rolled his eyes, thankful the Doctor couldn’t see them with the sunglasses on. But as he thought about the Master being left unsupervised on Knowhere, Jack was suddenly grateful to no longer be there. “Anyone here that we know?”
By the tone of Jack’s voice, the Doctor could tell he wasn’t sorry, but instead of arguing further, he simply scowled. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat and stomped along in his boots. Now would not be a good time to admit he actually missed the Master - as infuriating and difficult as he was, the two Time Lords were closer than the Doctor was with any of his traveling companions, Jack included.
“You’ve already read that River and Rose are here,” he replied. “And Martha, and Ianto. And Hair Gel,” he added, using the name he called the younger regeneration of himself. “There’s a bunch of others, too, who you might recognize from Knowhere, but if they were there, they don’t remember. Oh, Nebula’s here.” Jack would know the blue-skinned woman with whom he’d become close. The only person the Doctor didn’t mention was Clara, only because the neural block prevented him from remembering her as Clara, and she hadn’t been in Knowhere long enough for Jack to get to know her, himself.
“Sort of a dysfunctional little family reunion of sorts then.” At the mention of Ianto, Jack fell silent and glanced down at his boots as they walked. “That’s not going to be awkward at all when we finally see each other,” he mumbled to himself.
The Doctor’s eyebrows rose and he nodded his head, agreeing wholeheartedly with Jack’s dysfunctional assessment. “We had to say hello all over again. I’m glad at least you and River remember Knowhere, if only because it makes it a little bit easier since we have that shared experience between us.” He glanced over at Jack, curiously. “The Ianto here isn’t from some alternative universe, so as far as I know, he has the same history as you. Is there going to be a problem?”
“No… maybe… I don’t know,” he admitted with a sigh. “We talked a bit on the network and he knows about the House of the Dead. Which means that he knows he died...I got him killed. Well, me and Torchwood. It’s complicated, Doctor. With Ianto… I cared about him. Loved him even. But that was a long time ago for me and I forced myself to move on.” Jack shrugged his shoulders, still not meeting the Doctor’s eyes as they walked. “I’m a fixed point… I don’t have much of a choice except to move on.”
They were getting closer to their destination - the Mystic Grill was in sight. The tone of Jack’s voice sounded painfully familiar, because he’d heard himself speak the same way, before. “Was Ianto upset when you wrote to him? Does he blame you for his death?” It was bad enough when you blamed yourself, but to have the guilt reinforced by the people you cared about made it even worse. The Doctor didn’t like to discuss Jack’s condition for that reason - though it was Bad Wolf which brought Jack to life and made him a fixed point, the Doctor indirectly felt responsible, so the pain and emotional loss Jack experienced was also indirectly his fault. And while the Doctor wasn’t immortal, his long life span sometimes made it seem that way, so he could sympathize. “It’s never easy, is it? But we can’t help ourselves.”
“Don’t know. He’s hard to read sometimes. And to be honest, I didn’t want to push too hard to find out.” Jack shrugged again and flashed a smile, acting like it didn’t bother him in the slightest. “Guess I’ll find out later if he turns up and tries to shoot me or something. But no, it never really gets easier,” he admitted.
From the corner of his eye, he looked over Jack, sympathetically. There wasn’t much he could do to help Jack right now, except to do what he did best, which was provide support and distraction. It was either that, or wallow in self pity, spiraling toward depression. “At least we have a new place to explore!” he declared, forcing excitement rather convincingly, since he’d had years of experience. “It may be an Earth, but this portal business will make it interesting.”