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It was funny, Jack thought, how people tended to assume that a place called the Boeshane Peninsula would be warm, even tropical. Not that he talked about his past very often, but when he had, once upon a time, people had said things like, “That sounds like a lovely place to go on holiday” and “I bet you learned to swim before you could walk.”
What no one realized was that the water surrounding the Boeshane Peninsula was frozen seven months out of the year. And even though the tourist season - such as it was - fell during the three months of thaw, the best time to visit the Boe, in Jack’s opinion, was on the darkest day of the year. He had traveled far and wide and experienced a lot of different midwinter festivals, but there was just nothing to rival Solstice on the Boe.
That was what he told Rose when she said she wanted to see where he grew up. He had the Doctor set the coordinates for fifty years before his birth, twenty years before his grandparents had arrived, just to be safe. The TARDIS landed atop a bluff, and when they stepped out, the wide open beach and frozen ocean lay spread out below them, preserved beneath a sea of ice that glowed almost blue in the light of the planet’s two moons. Tonight, because it was Solstice, there were hundreds of bonfires, sending woodsmoke into the air. Jack breathed in deeply; there was nothing in the universe he’d found that smelled as good as a Solstice bonfire. There were minerals in the wood here not found anywhere else, and the colonists threw special herbs onto the flames to symbolize the burning of the old year. The snow crunched under their feet, and the air, despite the smoke, was clear as glass. The tip of Jack’s nose stung with cold and his eyes stung with something else altogether.
“Wow,” Rose said, her breath streaming out in a plume. “This is beautiful, Jack.” She reached out and took his gloved hand in hers, squeezing it.
“That it is, lad,” the Doctor said, reaching for Jack’s other hand. They were close beside him, almost bracing him, and he was warm where they touched, even through layers of insulating clothing. Jack hadn’t told them a thing about his past, except that this was where he was from, and there was no way Rose, in particular, could know what would happen here, on this very beach, in sixty-five years. But it didn’t seem to matter.
They made their very careful way down the steps carved into the cliff face to the beach below. The closer they got, the more Jack’s heart ached. He’d been away so long, he’d forgotten the beat of the drums and the songs written for dancing all night with a mug of warm beer or a glass of mulled wine in hand. Or maybe it was that he’d chosen to forget, chosen to shut away all the good memories, because they hurt even more than the bad ones.
“Seems like there’s something like this everywhere,” the Doctor remarked, when at last they were safely on level ground again, “or at least everywhere that’s cold enough and dark enough to warrant it. Humans always celebrate the shortest day of the year.”
“So what's it like, then?” Rose asked. Her eyes were on the dancers, whirling past, and Jack knew it wouldn’t take much to get her to join in. She might not know the steps, but that never stopped her. The Doctor, on the other hand, would need a glass or two of mulled wine before he would dance. “Dancing and drinking and eating all night?”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. But dawn is the important part. In about eight hours or so, the sun is going to peek over the horizon, just for a few minutes, and then . . .” He broke off, wondering suddenly if this had been a mistake. The three of them had shared a bed for months now; he loved them, and he thought - he was almost certain they loved him. Rose told him so at least once a day, and though the Doctor never did, that had never really mattered. But it was possible this was too much. It was almost too much for Jack, just standing here.
“What?” Rose asked. “What happens then?”
The Doctor said nothing. Jack realized, from the way he was looking at him, that he already knew what happened at dawn. He knew, and he’d let Jack bring them anyway. Jack swallowed. “Weddings,” he said. “The traditional time to get married on the Boe is at dawn after the longest night of the year.”
“Oh,” Rose breathed. “I like that. That’s . . . that’s beautiful.”
Jack nodded. He pulled her close and rested his cheek on top of her head. “I always thought so. But eight hours is a long time,” he added, pulling away. “We don’t have to stay that long. We can dance awhile, drink a glass of wine, and head back to the TARDIS.”
Jack saw Rose’s eyes flicker over to the Doctor. Jack held his breath. “No,” she said softly. “No, I want to stay. Do you, Doctor?”
The Doctor stepped forward, wrapping Jack and Rose both up in his arms. Jack leaned against him and watched the Solstice fires burning bright, sparks flying up into the air to meet the stars that shone overhead. “Might as well,” he said. “Be a shame not to, really. Eh, Jack?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, through an unexpected tightness in his throat. “It would.”
***
And so at dawn, when the horizon grew light and pink, the three of them stood atop the bluff and watched as all up and down the beach, couples and small groups joined hands and repeated the words that bound them to each other. In the three thousand years that had passed since Rose’s time, the words hadn’t changed all that much: they still promised love, and devotion, and steadfastness in the face of adversity and illness. Jack knew the words well, and he murmured along with those below, translating unnecessarily for the Doctor and Rose. The two of them were silent, but they pressed close beside him, and it didn’t matter that they didn’t know the words.
“And we promise,” he finished at last, in an unsteady voice, for this was the part that had always moved him, from the time he was a very young boy, “to serve as each other’s guides in the darkness and to lead each other into the light. This we vow with the coming of the dawn.”
Rose turned, stood on tiptoe, and pressed her lips to Jack’s. “Me too,” she whispered.
“And me,” the Doctor said, kissing Jack soundly before reaching for Rose. They stood, trading kisses back and forth in the frosty air, until at last they went inside.
When the light of dawn faded, only minutes later, the TARDIS was gone.
Fin.