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Chapter Text

"All I'm saying is, there's something going on, and every empath, psychic or so-called-sensitive in ten blocks is on the call-in line, telling me their third nipple is tingling or whatever." Zofi shuddered deeply. "Frankly I'd rather drown in my soup than pick up another call. I need a legwork shift, someone else can take the tipline tonight, yeah?"

Dafydd's head shot up from behind the screen he was monitoring. "Oh, hey Jack! Hey, hey, Jack!"

"Hmm?" Jack Harkness looked up from the stack of notes from the night's unusually busy tip-line. "What'd I miss?"

"Drowning in soup," Dafydd repeated from Zofi's rant. "That's a new one, right?"

"You know, honestly I'm starting to lose track. We should have been writing these down. Anyway, yes, Earth, sometime back around the 23rd century. It only mostly counts, though: the soup was poisoned, but if I hadn't passed out face-down in it, I might have survived it."

"Maybe more to the point," Zofi interrupted, "What do you think of all this psychic craziness that's going on. Sounds like someone's raising a right racket around Tenth and Rabbit Street. Worth me taking a walk and checking it out? Dafydd can man the phone for one night, right?"

"Hey!? Why'd I get thrown under the bus. Johan's the one who's late for rollcall."

"I need Johan on wrangling detail," Jack shook his head. "Can't bet that this isn't all an elaborate distraction by Krawk and his cronies. Dafydd on the phones -" There was a groan from the other side of the room. "Sarah will be in at six to relieve you. Zofi, you walk the radius, start from the outer bounds and work your way in. Don't go straight for the epicentre, give yourself time to acclimate to whatever it is."

"I'm not sensitive, you know," Zofi shot back.

"I don't think it matters - this thing, whatever it is, its radius isn't small, and we're getting calls from people who've never registered as sensitive. Looks like everyone's being affected."

Zofi shrugged. "I'll keep my head down, promise. What are you going to do?"

"Me?" Jack grinned. "I'm going straight for the epicentre."

-

Jack always thought he was done with the Doctor, that his time was over and he was on his own now. There had been something in their interactions back at the start that made him think that maybe the Doctor had met him some time in Jacks future, perhaps more than once, but their last meeting in Jack's memory seemed so final, such a clear goodbye.

It hadn't taken him long to stop looking for anachronistic blue police boxes, or listening for that grinding time vortex manipulator sound, at least not this time around.

Perhaps he wasn't looking, perhaps he wasn't listening, but that didn't stop the leap of joy his heart took when he turned the corner to see familiar chameleon circuits.

The blue box was tucked inside the entrance to a narrow alleyway, just off Tenth and Rabbit, far enough back that it wasn't in anyone's way, and already with a pile of trash bags stacked against one wall. Suddenly things were starting to make sense.

The last remaining question - was the Doctor here to investigate the strange disturbances himself, or was the TARDIS in all its sentient, telepathic glory the *cause*? He wasn't sure he wanted to know what could upset the TARDIS so much that she would swamp a whole neighbourhood with displaced emotion, but if the Doctor was here investigating then he'd parked the TARDIS right at the epicentre of the symptoms.

Jack stepped up and pushed at the door, but it didn't give even slightly, locked up tight. He took another glance around the alleyway, a couple of wary pairs of eyes watching from the shadows, and a couple more not even glancing up at his intrusion into their space.

Even in the daylight the New Cardiff high rises cast shadows too deep to be sure he'd seen everything, but the Doctor was loud and bright no matter what form he took - he could at least be sure the Doctor wasn't nearby. That meant he was somewhere in the city, chasing down... whatever, and maybe with a new handful of hapless travellers.

He should probably just leave them to it. Let them all sort it out.

Probably.

-

It took Jack less than an hour to get everyone back together, explain what he'd found, and explain what it meant that the Doctor was in town.

Something big was happening in New Cardiff. Something unknown.

They came back from their own investigations with information of their own - Ari Chosttet had admitted to smuggling six crates of brandy out of the factory on Mars (they'd confiscated one, chided her, but they weren't police and they didn't keep informants by turning them over to the authorities), Frank from the Laundrette was still sure that they were just being stubborn by not investigating that singer with the amazing voice, and Hopzzr was still having prescient dreams in languages she didn't speak, but hadn't seen anything interesting lately.

Nothing that would have brought the Doctor here, now. Nothing world ending. Nothing significant. Jack was running short on patience. The Doctor *had* to have known he'd be here, and maybe they weren't travelling together anymore, and he'd always hated the idea of Torchwood, but just with it being *his* home, the Doctor could have at least asked Jack's input.

Even if Jack couldn't work out what the Doctor would have needed Jack's input *for*.

Short of ideas, Jack pulled out some of his more anachronistic tools, set the power converter to charge up his damaged vortex manipulator and dragged out the old, familiar - and only a little ragged given its advanced age - blue greatcoat.

While everything was charging and calibrating, he called in Gruffydd and asked him to start cooking.

If the Doctor wasn't coming to him, he was going to the Doctor.

-

The TARDIS was exactly where he'd last seen it. Jack hadn't been sure it would be until the moment he rounded the corner and caught sight of blue paint - bright somehow even in the gloom of the alley's eternal dusk - he'd been expecting it to be gone for the whole walk over. The Doctor having solved the imminent crisis without ever alerting anyone there was any trouble going on, and disappearing into the void again.

While relief hit him from one side, concern was creeping up the other. The Doctor never left the TARDIS alone for so long. Not for so long that someone had set up a lean-to structure against its sturdy side. The trash piled against the other side was starting to look a little precarious as it filled the gap between the dumpster and the TARDIS wall.

The Doctor never left the TARDIS so completely unsupervised.

The shiver of fear that went through him - what if the Doctor *had* come to him for help, and hadn't found him in time?

Gryff stepped up beside him, peering around the unwieldy box in his arms.

"She's a beauty," he mused. "I'll just set up here then, shall I?" He put the box down on the ground and started pulling out the containers inside, steaming slightly as he offered them up in no ones particular direction. "A meal for everyone here," he announced, "And seconds for anyone who can offer me information on the owner of the big blue box."

As the small crowed stepped forward with varying levels of caution, Jack started pulling instruments out of his deep pockets and setting up a tracking system.

It was important to make sure he wasn't too obvious. There was nothing worse than a police officer that knew that certain technology was illegal but only had the vaguest idea what that technology looked like, and he'd already seen a higher-than-usual number of beat cops on his way back to the TARDIS. They must have picked up on the odd energy in the area too.

The device - a somewhat Frankensteined time vortex energy detector, which he'd desperately wanted to go ding when there's stuff but really gave a kind of dying duck squawk - finally finished calibrating on the TARDIS and made a mournful noise.

As if in reply, Jack felt a surge of frustrated-upset-panic-PANIC which nearly drove him to his knees. He heard gasps and shouts from the others in the enclosed space as they took their food from Gryff and returned to what shelter they had devised.

Jack reached out as the emotional wave petered out, and laid his hand against the paintwork. Immediately the psychic buzz he'd been feeling intensified, tingling at the back of his mind like psychic pins and needles. No question who was causing the psychic disturbance then - the TARDIS was near enough screaming in his mind. He tried to push his own reassurance that he was on the case, patting the blue paint soothingly. It was likely nothing would calm the ship until her owner returned, but he didn't have much else to offer.

The detector squawked again, and then again, and Gruffydd stepped up next to him and nudged his shoulder.

"Someone remember something?" Jack asked, half turning. The detector squawked again, and Jack looked down at it in frustration. Gryff nudged him again, and Jack looked up.

Meeting his eyes, Gryff looked pointedly at the opposite wall of the alley, where a figure bundled in a elderly blanket was hunched in a tight ball. "Apparently she came out of it," Gryff said quietly. "No one else since, in or out. They say she hasn't moved in days, someone put the blanket on her when she started shivering, but she hasn't had food or water. She's got to be in a bad way."

Jack turned, and the detector squawked again as it came around to face the figure, more urgently this time. He turned it off, and put it away as Gryff handed him a paper cup of water and a package of food.

Not sure what he was stepping into, Jack headed towards the hunched figure.

Chapter Text

The figure in the blanket was blond, but not Rose, so presumably some other companion of the Doctor's. But if she'd come out of the TARDIS and he hadn't...

She was soot and grease stained, he could tell even in the low light, and maybe... was that blood? But alive, breathing.

He knelt in front of her, first offering the cup of water, and then putting it down in reachable distance when she didn't take it. She didn't even look up at him, didn't register his appearance at all.

"Hey, I'm a friend of the Doctor's. I'm just trying to find out if he's okay, if he needs help. Can you tell me what you know?" There was a long pause, and Jack considered reaching out, pulling the companion into a hug maybe, but wasn't sure enough of his reception.

"What I know?" she said, finally. Her voice was rough and scratchy, like she'd been breathing in the soot that covered her face and hair.

"Anything you can tell me," Jack urged. "Anything at all."

She looked up at last, met his eyes for a long moment. "You need to know that I tried," she said, stronger this time, but still without any hint of emotion. "He told me; 'Never fail to be kind' and I decided that was who I was going to be. Kind. Warm. 'Nice'." She sneered the word. "And I tried, I tried so hard." Her voice broke, and she trailed off into silence.

"I'm sure you did your best, sweetheart, no matter how it turned out. The Doctor expects a lot from all of us. But I need to know what happened in the TARDIS. Can you tell me that?"

"You don't understand. I thought I could do it. Live more kindly. Forgive people. Care for people and … and risk getting hurt. Turn up for family dinners. Show an interest. But I knew all along, kind... Kind is naïve. He knew it too, you know, never could manage it. That's why he put it all on me, like he thought I was going to be some kind of do-over. I'm not made for 'kind'. All those lives, everyone who died; I don't get 'kind'."

"It sounds like it's been hard for you," Jack said, taking a seat on the ground and accepting he might be here for a while. "People take advantage of kind sometimes. But that doesn't mean you can't..."

The woman interrupted him with a snort. "Oh do shut up, Jack."

He looked up sharply. "Do I... do I know..." There was a moment, a pause, and everything caught up with him all at once. "Doctor?"

There was a short, pained pretence of a laugh, "It's a joke, right? First, do no harm. What a joke."

Jack looked about for a response to that, but couldn't find one. His breakfast was souring in his stomach, and his throat was thick. "I think we should go inside," he said at last. "Get you warmed up and you can tell me what happened. Get you back on your feet."

The Doctor glanced up, over Jack's shoulder at the TARDIS, still standing sentinel over her. "I can't.... I can't go inside right now. I can't leave, but I..." She closed her eyes, shook her head. "I hate her, so much right now, Jack. I can't go inside."

"I can't imagine you hating anyone, outside of the Daleks. I've seen you forgive people I would have shot without hesitation. Hate doesn't suit you."

"I was a better actor than I realised if you believe that. I've never hated anyone so much as I hated myself back then, with the big ears and Rose looking at me like I'd hung the moon. I ruined her, Jack, and I ruined you too. Break everything I lay my hands on, that's me. I thought maybe if I was kind... if I could learn to be kind first, and then me second, maybe if I didn't chase down every enemy with all that *rage*...
"But she took me away, and maybe I could have saved them... I could have *saved* them..." She was raging, shaking with it beneath the ragged blanket, staring straight past Jack at the TARDIS' unanswering blue doors. "She took me away and she left them there. After I convinced them I was *kind*." She spat the word, as if it offended her, and Jack was lost but maybe he had enough information to piece together what had happened.

The ground was cold, even through the wool of the greatcoat, and as the blanket shifted with her movement he could see that the Doctor only had on a t-shirt and a thin coat. If she'd been sat facing off with her TARDIS for as long as Gryff's source suggested, she must be freezing.

He looked over to find Gryff chatting with the small cluster of people, a cup of water in his hand and periodically topping up everyone else's cups as they emptied. He'd made an excellent bartender, it shouldn't surprise Jack that he was just as at ease here.

Gryff glanced over and met his eyes, eyes flicking to the blanketed form with sympathy. It must have been clear from Jack's face that the news wasn't good, and a little belatedly he realised that he had got what he wanted, although not in the way he wanted it. The doctor was right here in front of him, after all this time. But what a reunion.

He weighed up his options as the Doctor slumped back against the wall, her strings cut, her energy abandoning her. With more on show, he could see the rough scrape across her shoulder that had torn her coat and bloodied her skin beneath. There was a dark bruise high on one cheek, and he knew how fast she healed so to still be a bruise after days, it had likely been far worse before. He'd put money on her being knocked out when the TARDIS dragged her away from her doomed companions, and she was still hurt, still hurting, even if she couldn't acknowledge it over her heartbreak.

"Two choices, Doctor. Either we move this to the TARDIS, or you come back to mine and get patched up. I've probably got some tea stored away somewhere - nothing that can't be solved with tea, right?" He got to his feet and offered his hand back down.

"Go away, Jack," she said, quiet. Her head bounced once off the dirty brick, making him flinch.

"I'm not leaving you here like this," Jack objected, but the Doctor didn't say another word, and short of carrying her over his shoulder, there wasn't much he could do. It would be an easier proposition now - carrying her away from here - but far from subtle, and rather more suspicious now she was... well, a she.

He sighed, and rocked back on his heels indecisively.

"We off, boss?" Gryff asked, handing out the last of the food containers.

"You get home, Gryff," Jack suggested. "I'm going to stay a little while. Let the others know we've found the source and I'm working on it."

"Get her to drink something, at least," Gryff said, picking up the empty box. "I'll send out Dafydd if you don't get home by nine. Don't disappear off on some stupid space adventure, else he'll have my neck."

Jack chuckled. "Doesn't look like anything too crazy on the cards this evening," he reassured. "I just want to get her back on her feet."

As Gruffydd headed back towards headquarters, Jack sank back down, his back against the TARDIS door. He could feel the low buzz of telepathic transfer as she emoted fear and frustration and sadness into the back of his mind. "She doesn't mean it," he muttered, "She'd never hate you, she's just..." There was a surge of grief and loss, deep enough to make his stomach turn and his eyes water. If he could feel the TARDIS like that, she must be broadcasting strongly, but the Doctor hadn't so much as twitched. "She must be really hurting, right now. But she'll forgive you, alright? She'll work it out, and I'll do what I can to help."

-

The shadows in the main street, beyond the end of the alleyway, stretched out until it was dusk. People came and people went, with very few looking up from their feet as Jack sat with the Doctor and the TARDIS, waiting for some sign, any sign that something might change.

The TARDIS didn't settle down much, and the Doctor didn't make any move to reassure her or chastise her further. They seemed deadlocked, the Doctor stalled in a moment.

Thinking back - and it was a long time back now, so many lives and loves in between - Jack tried to remember if he had ever seen the Doctor so *still* before. He'd seemed so energised, so frenetic in those early days, and while it had sometimes had an edge of hysteria, he'd always seemed in control. Jack had never doubted darkness lay behind that wild grin, he knew what had happened to Gallifrey, he had seen the Doctor face off with Daleks and Cybermen. But he'd never suspected he'd ever see the Doctor this *still*. Or if he ever had suspected he was capable of stillness, maybe he'd expected it would be serenity he'd see. Not impotent despair.

He was studying her new face - so very different from the others, though no less attractive - when the Doctor flinched sharply, as if presented with a sight she didn't want to see. Jack grimaced in sympathy and stood. If he couldn't do anything else right now, at least he could be a distraction.

"Into the TARDIS or back to mine, those are the choices, Doctor. I'm not letting you sit here and torture yourself. We need to do something, even if that something is just finding you a safe place to spend the night."

"Why do I get 'safe'?" she asked, weakly. "I drag you all out into space and time and leave you out there, exposed, while I get a nice cuppa and a custard cream. Why do I get 'safe'?"

"Because if they saw you like this, they'd kick your ass." Jack didn't know the new companions, but he thought he had a fairly good grasp on the Doctor's usual type. "Don't you think?"

"Wouldn't say boo to a goose, that lot. Should never have..."

"No," Jack snapped. "No. You do not get to make out us humans are all weak and feeble like it was you that came up with every plan, who decided every move and controlled every little thing. That's just disrespectful, Doctor, and even if you're going to sit around moping, you don't get to take away their free will. People choose to travel with you, Doctor. I chose. No matter what else happens, you let people choose."

"I get people killed," the Doctor sighed. "Maybe they choose, but no one chooses death. I get people killed and I don't even have the decency to stay at their side. I should have..."

The TARDIS reached out with a flush of panic that felt like a heartattack, and the Doctor did flinch back this time, even as Jack grunted and grasped at his chest, wheezing as the pressure eased.

"This isn't helping you, Doctor," he gasped out. "And it isn't doing anything for them either."

"You should hate me, Jack. You're one of the people I left to die alone, far from home. Every one I left alive was changed, broken and shoved back into their lives like they still fit with all their broken angles, or left somewhere so far from home they couldn't even see it. All the others...
"I try to travel alone, I do try, I try. But it's just so..."

Her words were degenerating into nonsense, or at least no sense that Jack could make out. "Doctor, come inside, please. Tell me about them, but don't sit here like this. I did my hating a long time ago, forgave you for everything."

"How can I drink tea when Yaz' mum is waiting for her to come home?"

Jack swallowed down the thickness in his throat. "Come and tell me about them. Work out what you're going to tell Yaz's mom. I'll help, but please come inside."

The Doctor glanced over at the TARDIS again. "I can't leave her here alone. I told her I hate her, and I do right now, but I can't leave her alone."

"She's locked, and safe. She'll forgive you, Doctor. She'll always forgive you. But she wants you to be safe, just the same as I do."

"She's all I have. Doctor and the TARDIS, all of space and time."

"Well, you're all she has too, so you have to take care of yourself, so that you can take care of her."

"I don't... Sometimes I think I'm too good at taking care of myself. Sometimes I look back and think... Could I have found Bill faster? Could I have got between Rory and that Angel? Could I have taken River's place? If I hadn't been trying so hard to be *kind* would Grace still be alive, would Yaz and Ryan and Graham... Could I have saved you from this, Jack? From this life that you can't help but keep living?"

She said it all with such a blank mask of calm, that Jack had nothing else to say, shaking as he stood and walked away. He didn't even realise until he got home, slammed the door behind him, how FURIOUS he was.

Chapter Text

"OK," Jack said, taking a minute to resettle himself against the TARDIS door. He was too old for all this sitting around on the floor, but he hadn't managed to get the Doctor to budge in the slightest. "So to hell with 'nice', to hell with 'kind'. Let's go back there right now with everything in my secret not-at-all legal armoury. Clear a path through, collect their bodies, and take them back to Sheffield, back to their families."

The Doctor was more talkative today, but only about her three companions, the ones she hadn't been able to save on Paelteri 206.3. He'd heard all about Yaz's brilliance, Ryan's perseverance, Graham's bravery facing an adventure that he seemed to have become involved in purely because his wife would have loved it and Graham needed to experience it in her memory.

Jack felt like they'd been talking around in circles as the Doctor desperately and quite transparently avoided the topic of their deaths, but they'd been circling closer and closer, and now the Doctor looked up and met his eyes.

"Because right now..." the Doctor said, hesitating for a long beat before continuing. "Right now, they're not dead."

Jack had a moment of brain static, of utter confusion. "What?"

"And if I go back there, then I'll see them and it'll be true."

"Doctor - your friends are alive? You didn't see them die, you don't know they're dead?"

"In the moment I was thrown back into the TARDIS, I saw all of them, alive. I've been thinking of all the ways it might have happened after that. All the ways they might have died. Not all of them are fast. But right now, in this moment, for me they're alive." The Doctor's hands snaked up from inside the blanket and buried themselves in her hair, fists clenched against her temples. "I've thought of every possible outcome," she said, hoarsely. "Every possible escape, taken into account every variable, every tool, every option. There's no way, nothing to be done, no way to escape. They were dead the moment we stepped into that situation. But Jack... I can't *watch*, I can't see them..."

"What kind of arrogant... selfish... Doctor, they're alive *right now*? What happened to 'where there's life there's hope'? What happened to the crazy fool in the leather jacket who saved everyone on that day in the London Blitz, even the ones who *had been dead*."

She slumped back against the wall, limp as her hands dropped back beneath the blanket. "Jack... I've started to forget their names." The confession came without her looking up to meet his eyes, staring out into the disinterested populace bustling just outside the boundary the shadows of the alleyway cast.

"But you told me - Yaz, Graham, Ryan, right?"

"No, not them, not yet. But... After the Time War, after I made that decision, I told myself, I *swore* that I'd keep a list. Everyone I lost, everyone killed under my watch. Everyone I couldn't save." Her attention snapped to him, her eyes suddenly intense. "Only... It's just so *big*, Jack. There's so many. How can I add them to a list that means so little? I can't even keep it all in my head, what kind of memorial is that? They can't be dead, because I don't have any more space left in my head for the dead. I can't..."

"OK, ok," Jack broke in, feeling like he was soothing someone hysterical, even though she was calm. "Stop right there, just stop." He took a breath, feeling his heart pounding, not sure if it was upset or fury. "Doctor, they're alive right now. You looked right at them, and then the TARDIS dragged you off. So we have a timestamp, and we have... well, maybe not long, but TIME. And one of the best, most beautiful time machines in all of time and space, just waiting for your command..."

Jack bit his tongue before he demanded why she hadn't saved them yet, he knew once she'd decided it was impossible, she'd be hard to shake. "Talk me how we're going to save them. All of them."

The Doctor shook her head. "You think I haven't thought through every possible scenario? You think I haven't been sitting here thinking and thinking and *thinking*." Finally her voice was raised, and Jack wasn't sure if the emotional response was a good thing or not.

"The TARDIS brought you here, to me, for a reason. Maybe you're worked every scenario, maybe you couldn't do it, not alone, but Doctor - I'm here now, and I've got others I can call up if you need them - good people, brave people, willing to help. Surely that changes your calculations, gives you enough options to at least try?"

She gave him another sharp look. "You Torchwood again, Jack? Didn't you learn from the first time? Loss and pain - I remember you from back then, the fall of Torchwood."

"Torchwood fell more than once, Doctor. You're a fool if you think there hadn't been decades of heartbreak for me. Love and loss over and over again, but I've never walked away while they were still alive and in need of my help. Not without diving back in as soon as I was back on my feet. This new you..."

"Is what? Weak? Powerless? I've been patronised, I've been dismissed, human preconceptions so deeply ingrained that even the psychic paper can't break through them. And just when I think I'm starting to find myself again...
"I'm not weak. I'm not powerless, but even I can't break through physics, Jack. Time's too weak, too damaged there, fractures all over, even if I hadn't been looking *right at them* when she pulled me away. There's no space. No TIME. No way to fit in a rescue. And even if I could, if I could just save one of them... Jack, Jack how would I choose? How could I possibly make that kind of..."

"If time is delicate there," Jack considered, "There's no way we want to put two TARDISes in proximity, and we can't wait for your TARDIS to leave before getting them out of there, every second they could be getting hurt..." The Doctor breathed out a sob as Jack confirmed what she already knew. "But … Doctor, I have a time vortex manipulator here, and another in storage which isn't working right now, but with your know-how..."

The Doctor's head shot up. "Two..." she whispered.

"Yeah, we'll have to time it carefully, make a repeat trip for one of them..."

"No, no... not like that," the Doctor moaned, pressing her head back into her palms. "It's too much. Even if we switched the person, the resonance of the device itself... No."

"It's a risk, I understand, but..." Jack was frowning at her immediate denial of his plan, but stumbled backwards as she surged to her feet, stumbling slightly, the blanket held in one hand to keep it from falling to the floor. "Doctor?"

"Not 'no', no," she said, shaking her head, her gaze somewhere far away. "Just... not quite that." Her free hand curved around as if trying to grasp hold of some shape in the air. "Maybe if we... I think I've got enough time and... We'll need to..." She sagged, suddenly, and Jack saw all his work unravelling for a moment before she pulled herself back together and stumbled across the short distance to her TARDIS. She reached out tentatively, brushing her fingertips across the raised lettering of the sign. "Oh my sweet TARDIS. You're not going to like this..." She sighed, and not for the first time Jack felt he was intruding on a moment between the Doctor and their TARDIS.

She pressed her forehead to the text and then pulled away. Gathering the blanket up in her hands, she headed deeper into the alley to press it into the hands of an older lady. Now uncovered, Jack could see the tears in her jacket and the scrapes across her shins and knuckles. The bruise on her cheek bone was turning purple and green as it healed, only looking more painful now that her face was in motion.

"Okay, Jack," she said, squaring up. "Take me to Torchwood." She bounced on her toes a couple of times, and then shoved her hands in her pockets as if she was trying to keep them still.

"Aren't you going to need anything from inside the TARDIS?" he asked.

"Nah," she shrugged, pushing her hands into her coat pockets and wiggling them around. She gave the shadow of a grin. "Big pockets, me. And a really great Sonic."

He frowned. "Sonic *what*?"

She rolled her eyes at him, and he felt a flush of familiarity. "Well, it's not a blaster, that's for sure."

"That goes without saying." He shook his head at her and turned to walk away from the TARDIS and back towards the library basement that had become the headquarters of the group that they definitely weren't calling Torchwood. They'd walked the length of the block, shoulder to shoulder, before it started to sink in for Jack what was about to happen. Another adventure with the Doctor, after all this time. Life and death stakes, high chance of danger, thrills and potential death. He grinned to himself.

"I know I haven't said it yet, and maybe it's not the time... But it's really good to see you, Doctor."

Chapter Text

There was an odd kind of anti-rush that came with emergency plans which included time travel. While everything from the sparking adrenaline to the nervous tension said 'act now, act fast', there was really infinite time in which to prepare; the only risk was exposing the time traveller to something that might cause a paradox, or fix the events in time.

Like Schroedinger's apocryphal cat, the target was fixed in the exact state they had last been observed, right up until they were observed again.

Zofi was hiding behind her work station, looking between Jack and the Doctor like *Jack* was the one acting out of the ordinary. Dafydd was opting for an expression somewhere between thinking of asking for her autograph and giving her a good talking to. Jack hadn't been lying when he'd said she was long forgiven, but that didn't mean his team hadn't heard the stories - and Dafydd more than most.

The Doctor - having been subdued the whole walk back to New Cardiff Central Library - had been buzzing around the big basement space since they'd arrived, alternating between nursing two aged vortex manipulators back to full strength and laying out some odd stage on the ground - pieces of scrap metal, benches, chairs and console stations all dragged into place and then tweaked and nudged on each passing as she got everything where she needed it.

She'd been talking and joking around with the others as she worked, her voice going high and bright any time the machinery sparked, every time she worked out some curiosity or she got something lined up just right. Jack was finding it hard to tell if the high spirits were real or for show, but he was sure no normal person would have been able to bounce back from where she had been so quickly.

But then, how often had he been fooled by his first Doctor's easy grin? It seemed some things really didn't change.

Johan had just come in from his shift undercover with Krawk, and Sarah was a couple of steps behind him, showing up for the day shift when she finally paused, looked around her self and called Jack over.

"I think I've got this laid out right, now," she said, gesturing to the strange floorplan of random obstacles. "And I can't do anything else with the vortex manipulators until they finish charging. I need bodies, and then I can talk you through the plan."

"Bodies?" Zofi asked, her tone a little startled.

"Thanks for volunteering!" she said gleefully. "You come over here, you can be me."

"Why can't you be you?" Sarah asked, walking over a little hesitantly.

"I am going to be me. But Zofi's going to be the one of me who was here before, and I'm going to be the me coming in to rescue everyone."

"Okay," Jack interrupted. "Dafydd, get in here, Sarah and Johan, you too."

"That makes four, perfect!"

After a little jostling, and some pretty unclear direction from the Doctor, they had Zofi stood between two posts which Jack guessed was the door to the TARDIS, Johan stood in the densest cluster of rubbish on the floor, Dafydd was right at the back by the stairs and Sarah was kneeling behind two workstations they had been reliably informed was a rock formation.

"So when the Roshraths transmatted in to the middle of our almost successful escape, Yaz -" The Doctor indicated Johan and his surrounding obstacles. "She was surrounded. Ryan had fallen behind -" This was Dafydd, at the back by the stairs, "And... and Graham had stopped to look back for him. He was hit, and knocked back, behind the rocks." Sarah acted out an impact and collapsed to the ground theatrically. "I could see him from the doors to the TARDIS, so I know he wasn't visible to the Roshraths." She gestured finally at Zofi, who was a little wide-eyed at the fictional scenario she was suddenly in the centre of.

"Of the two vortex manipulators, only one is going to be stable enough for passengers, and we've got limited time and space to move people around, so we can't just jump in grab everyone and jump straight back out. I know exactly when we left the TARDIS earlier that day, so I'll arrive just after, get inside and find the material transporter. It won't be perfectly safe for human transport even at such short range - we'll have to transport directly to the med bay recompression chamber, which means fixing its spacial location using a field disruptor - which she is going to hate. No wonder she's so..." The Doctor seemed to get distracted for a minute, her gaze on the fictional TARDIS and Zofi standing at the pretend door. "Anyway, material transport would to be too much for Graham - too dangerous when injured that seriously. Ryan was far enough out to not have attracted any attention yet. Roshrath's have incredibly bad long distance vision. But Yaz... Yaz was right in the middle of the fighting..."

"You're going to use a material transport on a human - into the TARDIS?" Jack could think of a whole host of reasons that wouldn't go well. Not least of all - "I didn't think field transport could get through her shielding?"

"Postal signal," the Doctor replied dismissively. "They have masterkeys. A very dangerous system, as it turns out - you can never be sure who has control of a system like that, but... But I know the signal can get through."

"So you set up this transport from inside the TARDIS," Jack gestured to the space behind Zofi. "And you vortex out at the exact moment the other you falls into the TARDIS to avoid a paradox. And then, in the microseconds between you entering the TARDIS and it dematerialising, you need to get the transponder on Yaz and complete the transport, all without getting either of you killed in the middle of a battle."

"Not microseconds," the Doctor objected, walking the distance from inside their pretend TARDIS to stand alongside Johan in the only clear bit of space. "It's not easy triggering emergency dematerialisation without a pilot, takes at least thirty seconds, maybe a whole minute. Plenty of time. Once she's inside Yaz'll be safe, and I'll put a timer on the emergency system to bring Yaz and the TARDIS here, to the Library, to arrive at the same time as Jack gets back with Ryan and Graham."

"This sounds insane. Sounds like suicide, Doctor." Jack's voice had gone hard, and accusing, and the Doctor wasn't meeting his eyes. He hadn't missed that she hadn't described a return home for herself. He was remembering that cold hard fury from before.

"Jack," she continued, ignoring him. "You'll need to grab Ryan and micro-jump to Graham, then head back here. Make sure you get Ryan first - Graham's not likely to be mobile, and you'll need Ryan's help to convince Graham to accept medical care. Make sure there's not a single picosecond of overlap in that microjump, understand? That whole moment in time could so easily collapse, and then we're all in far worse trouble."

"We have a doctor we can bring in," Sarah said, already reaching for the phone. "Are we going to need more space? Should we move this somewhere bigger?"

"The space here won't matter." The Doctor looked around her mock-up battle scene, and then at the space around the chaos she had caused. The people already standing ready to help some strangers they'd never met. "This is a good place."

-

"So, we're redecorating, are we?" Gruffydd's voice was teasing as he stopped by the inner door, now almost completely blocked by the workstations which had been cleared from their position as a rock formation to make space for the TARDIS and all other imminent post-rescue chaos.

"Oh! The chef!" the Doctor declared brightly.

"The vagabond," Gryff replied, with a smile. "Feeling better?"

"Never better!" she replied, without a hint of truth behind her nervous smile.

"Jack," Gryff called through. "The Library Caf's just warming up. Get you all breakfast down here before the morning rush starts?"

"Gryff, you're a Godsend!" Jack shouted back from the storage room, where he was searching for a spool of wire to suit the Doctor's specifications.

"Yes, yes, as you say," Gryff eyed the red duct tape crosses on the floor and rolled his eyes. "Breakfast in 20." And he headed back upstairs.

"Right, you lot!" the Doctor declared, seemingly out of no where. "Gather round for kit check."

Team Torchwood gathered around the desk that was holding the two vortex manipulators - one of them now safety pinned and maglocked to a leather belt she'd acquired from who-knows-where. "Okay so we have one extended vortex manipulator-" she poked the belt which made the manipulator rattle on its hodge-podged charging dock. On one charge you should get three... maybe four jumps for a maximum four passengers. Just make sure all passengers've got a limb inside the..." she gestured vaguely at the loop of leather. "Thing. The third jump should be fine, but you're stretching it for a fourth and who knows where you'll end up if you run out of power half way through a trip, so don't take any risks."

"What about the other one?" Jack asked. The second vortex manipulator had been a charity shop find, listed as a steampunk watch, some time in the early twenty second century. It hadn't showed any sign of working, no matter how much time Jack had spent on it, but now the display was lit up - dull next to Jack's own device, but it was active at least.

"Urgh," the Doctor made a face. "Missing a fuse in the target stabilisation unit, I've had to bypass it to get the basic functions online. One traveller only, this one, which means I've got to get this right first time."

"Can we find you a fuse," Sarah asked, "Something that would work to replace it?"

"Not in time. The powersource on these things have a set half-life, and after the core has deteriorated past a certain point they can't hold a reliable charge." The Doctor ran gentle fingers over the cover of the elderly device. "This one's on its last legs, looks like it was lost some time in the early 800s and it's been decaying ever since. But it'll be fine, I've used one of these without a stabiliser before, just a bit of a rough ride."

Johan stepped forwards, shaking his head urgently, "You can't do that. The target stabilisers work out the planet's spin and direction of travel and match up your vectors for arrival - if you get it wrong you could hit your target at 100 km/s, or just bounce straight off, or miss the planet as it's travelling through space and just turn up directly in the vacuum..."

"Well you're a barrel of laughs, aren't you!" she gasped. "Look, there's no use debating that now. We're going, and we'll just have to trust I'm good enough at maths to not splatter myself across the face of Paelteri 206.3."

"How many jumps will you get out of it, if the powersource is dying?" Jack asked.

"Hard to say, with one as old as this. No way to judge the efficiency of charging or how bad the leakage will be. It isn't going to fail while I'm using it, but there's some risk that it won't hold the charge."

"You'll need to make sure you trigger your jump back before I do," Jack said firmly. "So if it fails you can hitch a lift back with us."

"So long as you survive the jump there, the jump directly into live fire, and the jump home... should be fine?" Dafydd asked, his tone scathing.

"See, now you're seeing it my way," the Doctor offered a grin. "Nothing to it."

"Doctor - " Jack started, but was interrupted by Gryff arriving with a stack of plates. As the rest of the team headed over to claim a plate of food, Jack pulled the Doctor aside. "You should let me take your place. If I go early enough, you'll have time to talk me through setting up the lock on the TARDIS medbay - I know you can make a communications device that would work across the distance. If the target stabilisation fails... at least I'd have time to resurrect while you're getting Ryan and Graham out of there, and I'm more likely to survive jumping into live fire to get the transponder on Yaz."

"Jack..." she was already shaking her head.

"Doctor, let me do this for you."

"Jack, I can't. I took them there, I left them there. I've got to set this right."

"Look, you may not be the best at being nice, at being kind, it might not come naturally to you. But you put yourself out there, you run headlong into danger again and again - for other people, not for yourself. That's the definition of kindness. You might not always save everyone, there might be people out there who can't be saved from the path they're on, but you go out there with the intent to save.
"Maybe give yourself a break, give the eyebrows and his last requests the finger, and work out who YOU are first, before you die try to be who he wanted you to be. And for once in your life, forgive yourself for failing. People fall, people die, people get changed by their experiences and the things that happen to them. Mourn them, learn from them, but you can't carry them with you forever. Killing yourself trying doesn't make things right."

"Best not die then," she smiled even though her eyes were wet. "Good job we've got a wicked plan and all the tools and friends we need to carry it off."

Chapter Text

With the plan finalised, the Doctor had stepped her hyper business up to almost hysterical positivity, walking through the plan again and again, tweaking and testing the vortex manipulators, the communication devices, and finally - when she ran out of things to do - upgrading the in-house sensor grid to pick up... something or other that meant nothing to Jack, but had Sarah gasping and muttering with glee.

Finally, as dusk settled over the city, Enfys turned up.

Their doctor on call for the last two years, Enfys Jones had seen a fair amount of strange, weird and wonderful, and she didn't even hesitate at the changed layout of the room, instead focusing immediately on the Doctor.

"I thought you said the casualty was arriving later," she asked Jack sharply, not bothering with a greeting as she hauled her case - broadly stocked these days - half into the room.

Jack glanced over at the Doctor, realising with a start that she was still in her torn and bloodied clothes, her temple still bruised and scraped, the injury more ugly under the fluroescent lights. Her energy and enthusiasm had distracted them from the fact that she was still hurt, probably still hurting. They hadn't even offered her a change of clothes.

"Doctor..." he started, but was interrupted as she raced past him to grab the newcomer's hand.

"Ah, you're the doctor, right? I'm the Doctor!" she pulled out a bright grin. "So, here's what you need to know. We'll have one high energy penetrating wound, upper chest. A burn across the shoulder - I wasn't close enough to be able to tell you how bad, but he was still standing. And... well, significant acute decompression syndrome. The decompression case will be moved directly into a recompression chamber, and have four days... say five days of mid-stasis low rate hyperbaric oxygen therapy before she reaches you."

"What's the timeline?" Enfys asked sharply.

"We were just waiting on you." The Doctor was already fixing the older vortex manipulator to her wrist.

"I'm not sure I understand..."

"Dav," Jack said sharply. "Catch Enfys up, please!"

He grabbed the extended vortex manipulator, wrapping the belt around his arm a couple of times to tighten the long loop and fastening it in place. The Doctor had already dematerialised as he programmed in his destination, made eye contact with Dafydd and activated the device.

-

The Doctor woke slowly, to a persistent beep and a slow blooming pain that almost took her breath away. She moved to push herself to her feet but collapsed back down to the ground with a groan as the distant knowledge of pain turned into something sharp and present in her hands and wrists.

She took a moment to breathe, to collect herself, listening to the persistent beep. With a careful inhale, she rolled onto her side and got herself up to her knees with her hands held close to her chest. Her head felt a bit wishy washy, but she managed to get her eyes open.

TARDIS blue, on her left. She sagged against the back wall of her TARDIS, took strength from her old friend. The vortex manipulator on her swollen wrist was beeping low battery - not a good sound, considering, but if she could get inside then she could charge it back up using the TARDIS.

She clenched her hands, acknowledging the pain and grimacing through it. She must have tried to catch herself with her hands as she materialised, a stupid reflex when she was travelling goodness knows how fast, but it didn't feel like anything was broken. That determined, her biggest concern became not knowing how long she'd been unconscious, and how much time she had left to get ready.

There was nothing she could do about it, she was just going to have to put all her faith into in her favourite fallacy: there was no way a well thought out and practiced plan with all good intention behind it could go wrong.

Stumbling to her feet, she peeked around the side of the TARDIS. At least Team TARDIS weren't in sight yet, so she had a little time. She bolted in through the TARDIS door, slammed the vortex manipulator into a charging station and ran for the medical bay.

The recompression chamber was big and bulky, dusty from lack of use and tucked in the corner of the rarely used room. She shoved and manoeuvred it out of the corner with elbows and hips, powering it up with a breathless hope. If this didn't work, the whole plan collapsed...

Fortunately the built-in computer fired up first time, and accepted the commands from her awkward fingers. First problem down. Provided she could get Yaz inside, the chamber would take care of the immediate effects of the transport and keep her stable until she could get the TARDIS relocated to Torchwood headquarters.

Next problem - any kind of transport needed a fixed space-time target location, and only the central console of the TARDIS could ever be accurately defined on any given day. The four field disruptors were in the same storage room as Twirly the Second, and she loaded them onto a little handcart without too much trouble.

The moment she got her burden out into the corridor, she knew the TARDIS wasn't going to help her complete this part of her mission. The door facing her was a different colour than it had been when she'd gone into the storage room. "No, no..." Any moment now, Team TARDIS would be rushing towards the TARDIS herself. They could be out there already.

The image that was imprinted on her mind, that moment before the world had exploded at her feet and everything had gone dark, flashed again in front of her. Yaz surrounded, Ryan further away than she'd realised, Graham taking a hit and crashing to the ground. "Please..." she begged as she pulled open the door that should have been the medbay. A darkened storage room lay beyond, and she her heart sank. "Don't do this to me right now."

She opened another door, gritting her teeth against her aching wrists, and groaned as it opened onto the pool. "Come on, sweetheart," she begged. "I know you don't want this. I know it's going to hurt, and I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry." She kept moving, kept opening doors. "But very, very soon, if not already, Yaz is going to be out there in the middle of a whole platoon of guns, and the only way I can get her out of there is by transport." Another door, this time a broom cupboard.

Ryan and Graham would be alright. She had to believe that Jack would do his part and get them both out of there, get them to the Torchwood doctor, back in New Cardiff. But Yaz was in a far more precarious position, right in the middle of the fighting. Even a moment late and... The Doctor groaned as another door opened into a disused bedroom.

"If I thought I could send her straight to the console room then I would. But you know as well as I do... her body isn't made for materials transport, and I don't have anything else on board." The next door, this one the library.

The Doctor hissed as her abused hands went into spasm around the handle to the cart, and she released her burden sharply, pressing her fists against her mouth to hold in the noise. "This is for Yaz, do you hear me?" she said, carefully taking hold of the handle once more, forcing herself back into motion. "You *like* Yaz. You even made her favourite cereal every morning for a whole week. And you haven't tried to drop her in the pool even once, even though you do it to Graham every other Tuesday."

Finally, finally the next door opened into the medical bay. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." She shoved Twirly the Second into the foot of the recompression chamber, thankful the chamber was a model made for much bigger entities than a standard human and there was more than enough room for the bulky distribution interface as well as Yaz.

She uploaded the transport commands she had preprogrammed into the sonic, pocketed the transponder that would allow her to trigger the transport remotely, and took a moment to check that the device had confirmed all commands before taking a step back and bracing herself. With one last calming breath, the Doctor asked for the TARDIS' forgiveness one last time and triggered all four field disruptors.

There was a jolt and a shudder, and the Doctor bit her tongue at the noise the TARDIS made. She bolted down the corridor, resisting the urge to sob at the sound of the TARDIS wailing in her mind. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry, it won't be for long, I promise. As soon as Yaz is on board, they'll deactivate. As soon as she's safe."

She stumbled into the console room, no more time to spare. On the scanner she could see herself and the others running towards the TARDIS. No more time, just long enough to program in a short hop relocation. She ducked as the TARDIS doors sprang open, herself just on the other side, hesitating... looking back towards the outside at the sound of a dozen transmat devices activating at once, bringing the Roshraths right into their midst. Too panicked herself to notice the TARDIS' distress.

The Doctor hidden behind the console reached up to pick up the vortex manipulator from the charging station. Fumbled her sonic in swollen, stiff fingers and brought it down to bear on the device.

A grenade exploded just outside the door, far too close for comfort, debris and shrapnel raining down on the Doctor in the doorway, throwing her inside in a shower of noise and dust, even as the Doctor already inside managed to get the vortex manipulator onto her wrist and activated it.

-

Jack shook off the familiar discomfort of vortex manipulator travel, judged his position and reached out one hand to grab hold of Ryan's jacket as he ran past.

The young man shouted and struggled, managing to throw Jack off for a moment until he got a better grip.

"I'm a friend of the Doctor's," Jack hissed, as loudly as he dared when none of the Roshraths were turned their way yet. Transmat travel was far worse than vortex manipulator, and while the Roshraths were shooting indiscriminately, and had already let off a volley of grenades towards the TARDIS doors, they likely hadn't really taken in their surroundings yet. "Come with me if you want to live!" He let himself have a little smirk, but Ryan wasn't listening - half dragging Jack forwards.

"My Grandad..." he said, gesturing towards the man who had fallen behind the cover of some rocks, just as the Doctor had said. He was worryingly still, one hand clenched against the wound in his chest, but Jack didn't have time to worry about that right now.

"I know," he replied. "We're going, just give me your hand and keep your head down!"

Jack risked a glance towards the TARDIS - the blue doors swinging shut as the unconscious Doctor lay inside. The other Doctor should have already vortexed out by now, but Jack hadn't seen her reappear as the Roshraths turned on the human in their midst.

He'd been thinking, as the plan evolved back at headquarters, and he'd done a couple of practise runs of this in the Doctor's mockup - if he and Ryan could get to Graham the slow way, on foot, then he could save his third jump to come back for the Doctor and Yaz if things went wrong. And it already looked like things were going wrong.

Decision made, he deactivated the short jump he'd had preprogrammed, and he and Ryan sprinted through the debris towards the fallen human, who was watching them both with wide eyes as they dodged particle blasts and high energy pulses. They slid under the cover of the rock formation just in time, pulse energy fire raining down on them and cutting away chunks of rock in little showers of sand.

Jack watched Ryan grab hold of his grandfather, and then scrambled to his knees to peer around the far side of the rocks. Yaz was still on her feet, cheek bloody and jacket torn, fighting wildly and making good use of the fact that they were in too close quarters for the enemies to use their weapons without shooting one another.

But still no Doctor.

-

She tensed on rematerialisation, waiting for pain, and instead had a feeling of utter weightlessness. On her wrist, the vortex manipulator beeped once and then went dead. Around her, there was the feeling of gravity reinstating itself, and a moment later, the noise of rushing air.

The Doctor had time to look around herself, time to take in her situation. While she had arrived at the right time, and in more or less the right position - the TARDIS doors shut, but not yet dematerialising, and the battle ongoing below her - she was also about thirty feet up in the air. Yaz was right below her, still fighting for her life.

And right now, she was powerless to help in the slightest. Right now, she couldn't even help herself.

The Doctor tightened her grip on the transponder, closed her eyes tight, and hoped.

-

"Come on, Doctor. Come on. Where are you...?" He still had two jumps after he'd taken Ryan and Graham back, Jack reminded himself - well, one and a half, but the Doctor wouldn't have even mentioned a fourth jump if there wasn't at least half chance of it working. She was worth half a chance, the Doctor. He could take Graham and Ryan home, come back for them...

Movement caught his eye from an unexpected quarter, but by the time he looked up...

Jack heard the impact even over the sound of weaponsfire. He saw the woman - Yaz - turn towards where the Doctor was laying motionless on the ground at her feet. Saw her shout and lurch forwards. Saw the moment when Yaz grasped her limp, motionless hand.

One Roshrath standing over them raised one arm as all other others pulled back a couple of steps. Jack's breath caught on a 'no'... And then there was another explosion as the grenade landed.

The dust cleared to show the remaining Roshraths storming towards their rocky cover, too many to see what remained of the Doctor and her companion. There was no blue glow of transport, no burst of yellow light, no indication of anything but death.

As guns were raised, Jack pulled the two remaining companions in close, threw the strap around their arms and activated the vortex manipulator.

"Take a deep breath!" he shouted as the device activated.

Chapter Text

Jack, Ryan and Graham arrived in New Cardiff in the centre of the marked square they'd cleared on the floor, and in the same state they'd left. Graham was prone on the floor, Ryan kneeling over him, and Jack frozen with the image of the Doctor's fall seared across his retinas. They all groaned as the effects of the transport made themselves known.

"Enfys!" Jack shouted with his next breath, only to wince as he realised she was already *right there*, and reaching for Graham.

A glance at the prominent clock told Jack that they'd only been gone for ten minute. Either Enfys was harder to phase than Jack had realised, or Dafydd had been fast with that explanation. Before his vertigo had eased off, Graham was on a drip and the ugly wound was packed and covered.

Ryan was stock still, both hands planted against the floor in the position he'd caught himself as the vortex had spit them out.

"Ryan, you alright?" Jack asked, as Sarah and Johan helped Graham onto a grav stretcher under Enfys' close supervision.

"Is everything still moving, or is it just me?" Ryan asked, tipping slightly before settling his weight back.

Jack got up and grabbed the nearest waste basket. "Vortex travel hits everyone differently. It's definitely easier in a capsule, but..." Jack got the basket in front of Ryan just in time. "Sorry, there really wasn't any other way to get out out of there."

"I'm just gonna stay down here for a bit, mate," Ryan gasped, pulling the basket closer.

Dafydd stepped up with a bottle of water. "Still no action in the other box," he said quietly. They both looked across at the second marked out space - the one the Doctor should have jumped back into once she'd delivered the transponder to Yaz and activated the transport. "What happened out there, Jack?"

"I'm going back for them," Jack replied, pulling Dafydd aside and lowering his voice, already programming the vortex manipulator for the return trip.

"You can't -" he objected sharply. "Three jumps, you'll be out of charge."

"I've only done two..."

"And you get back here... how?" Dafydd demanded.

Jack looked up from the device. "She said maybe four jumps. The Doctor never suggests something like that unless she's mostly sure something will work."

"And if it doesn't work, at least you'd be with her?" Dafydd shot back sharply.

"Dav..." Jack objected.

"Look, there's still time - lets put it back on for a charge, just enough so that you can be sure you'll be able to make that trip home. Long enough to make sure she hasn't tried to jump back and she's just missed the box or something. Johan said her missing target stabiliser was to make sure she landed in the right place? Maybe she's just nearby, or..." He paused, reading something in Jack's face. "What happened out there, Jack?"

"What did you see?" Ryan asked, still stooped over his bucket. He was swaying like a man recently returned from sea, but his eyes were sharp on Jack. "You were looking over at the TARDIS. At Yas and the Doctor - what did you see?"

"The plan was that the Doctor put a transponder on Yaz, transported her inside the TARDIS and then the Doctor jumped back here." Jack indicated the still-empty box. "But the Doctor's vortex manipulator was old, damaged. She was supposed to appear right next to Yaz, so she could just give her the transponder, but she was... out of position. There's still time - I can get back there, I can grab both of them and bring them straight back here." Jack bit back the reassurance that once they were here, they could be treated, that Enfys was a good doctor - a great doctor. If he could just get them back here, alive, they would be safe.

"You don't think the Doctor vortexed herself back here?" Dafydd said, realisation in his voice.

"She'd never leave Yaz," Ryan said, almost to herself. "If she couldn't get to her... she'd keep fighting until she found a way."

"Jack, give me the vortex manipulator. Give it some time to charge, and you can go back with a sure way home."

Enfys reappeared, all her attention now on Ryan and the scorched burn through the layers of material that showed blistered skin across his upper arm. If she thought it was okay to leave Graham healing, it meant he was stable at least.

Two companions safe, Jack reminded himself. If nothing else. If the Doctor and Yaz really were... irretrievable. If nothing else, there were two of the Doctor's precious people safe right now that never had to be added to her list.

It wasn't as soothing as it should have been.

-

They'd cleared the space for the TARDIS along with the spaces they'd made for the two vortex travellers, clearly marked out on the ground in tape so that it would stay clear. They couldn't redirect the TARDIS completely - she still needed to appear at Tenth and Rabbit and spit out the Doctor to avoid a paradox - but the Doctor had set it to automatically relocate here after everything was done.

It hadn't occurred to Jack, when he'd agreed to host the universe's most notorious time ship, that if their plan failed then the TARDIS would turn up alone, and would likely never move under her own power again.

It didn't occur to him until he heard the grinding noise of vortex engines in flight, watched her materialise with his heart in his mouth, heard the others react as they saw her for the first time; it didn't occur to him until then, how heartbreaking it would be to have such an immediate reminder of the Doctor right there in front of him.

The vortex manipulator was still on charge, he'd agreed to leave it four hours before he made an attempt at recovering the Doctor and Yaz, but he'd be jumping back to before the TARDIS left, and if he wanted to avoid any worse disruption then he shouldn't even try the door until that trip was done.

He still stood in front of her for ten long minutes, still feeling those waves of urgent panic and upset, reaching out as if to test the door - to see if she would let him in - and holding himself back by only the smallest margins.

"I'm going to get her back," Jack said firmly. "I'll bring her back to you." He tried not to feel like the TARDIS' surge of urgent denial was her telling him his attempt wasn't going to work, or worse. He couldn't read anything into her reactions. He had to believe he was bringing them home.

-

Jack could feel the tension ratcheting up, and it wasn't just the TARDIS' surging mood that was getting to him. Two hours since the TARDIS had appeared, three and a half hours of charge on the vortex manipulator. It was going to have to be enough, soon, he couldn't stand this waiting.

Graham was conscious again, if a little groggy from whatever was in the drip Enfys was giving him, and Ryan had mostly stopped throwing up, although his forehead was creased like he had a headache, and standing without falling back over was still pot luck. Enfys had taken the furthest cot to grab a powernap, with the suggestion of more patients in her near future.

Jack forced himself to sit down in the chair at the side of the makeshift medical bay. Forced himself still, if only for a moment. No point in racing out there exhausted.

"So you knew the Doctor before, right?" Graham asked, when it became apparent Jack wasn't up for starting a conversation. "When she was... grey and Scottish?"

"Ah, no," Jack shook his head. "I knew the Doctor a very long time ago, he sounded English both times."

"Both times?" Ryan asked, startled. "How many faces has she had?"

"I've never asked, it sounded kind of rude, but Torchwood and UNIT between them had records of at least half a dozen faces, and a half dozen more who had identified themselves as The Doctor and had appropriate traits to have been him."

"No way," Ryan said, eyebrows raised.

"And you've travelled with her... with... them?" Graham asked.

"A couple of times, but never for long, we have a somewhat troubled history. And there was always Rose... and no one could ever compete with Rose in the Doctor's eyes."

"Who was Rose?" Graham asked.

Jack stalled, shocked. "It must have been longer for her than I thought, if she's stopped talking about Rose. Rose was..." Jack sighed. "Rose was spectacular, and the Doctor was besotted with her - rightly so. They got separated in the end, and he couldn't get back to her... and then everything got very complicated."

"When is anything with the Doctor not complicated?" Ryan mused.

"You got that right," Jack smiled, pushing down the image of her awkward fall, Yaz surging toward her. He swallowed hard, and stood to avoid having to continue the conversation.

He found himself facing the TARDIS, the blue doors, 'advice and assistance', but the TARDIS had nothing to offer him. There was no more time to waste, he had to go now.

Jack was halfway across the room to the power converter they had set up when the TARDIS door opened.

He froze, all of his attention on the wooden door that was anything but wooden. It swung open in fits and starts, revealing a scorched and sooty Yaz, more than half supported against the opposite door. She was wheezing for breath, barely upright, and Jack forced himself forwards with a surge of adrenaline.

"Enfys!" he yelled for the second time as he ran to support the collapsing companion.

"Help her," Yaz wheezed as he got a shoulder under arm, moving her towards the medical beds. "You've got... to help her."

"I know," Jack said. "I'm going back there now. We didn't know she'd managed to get you into the TARDIS, else we'd have come in for you sooner."

"Back?" Yaz asked, staggering slightly. Jack gave in to the urge and lifted her off her feet. It wasn't polite, maybe, but she looked like she needed medical attention more than she needed etiquette.

"Back to Paelteri 206.3. She transported you into the TARDIS, which brought you back here in recompression stasis - the statis lock must have been set to release on arrival - and then she was supposed to use the vortex manipulator to get back here. But she never arrived. I'm going back..."

"No," Yaz said, pushing Enfys away when she tried to get an oxygen mask on her. "She's here."

Enfys finally won with the mask, and whether through exhaustion, pain or the relief of the oxygen, Yaz passed out.

Jack looked up and found himself meeting Ryan's eyes. Together they looked over at the TARDIS, the door standing open now.

Jack slammed through the TARDIS door first, if only because Ryan had a false start getting to his feet. He was right behind Jack as they skirted the central console and dived into the first visible corridor. By instinct or instruction, Jack turned the first left and found another door standing open, beyond it a big glass and metal box was waiting with its lid cracked up an inch.

The glass was fogged with cool gases that were pouring from the opening, and for a moment Jack couldn't let himself believe... and then the gas cleared and he could see the Doctor inside.

Bruised, scorched and bloody, black eyed and gripping the transponder in clawed fingers. Her thumb still resting on the transport button.

-

The Doctor woke with the feeling that she had no idea how much time had passed. A sure sign of significant injury, and her every nerve ending was agreeing with that assessment.

"Don't sit up yet," a voice said from her left, and she considered the voice's suggestion. "Take your time. I don't know if you remember it, but you've already thrown yourself out of bed once, and the doctor was really pissed."

"I'm the Doctor," she objected, and saying it made her lungs hurt in a way that was really very unpleasant indeed. Also, she sounded every one of her many, many years.

"Yeah, talking's not recommended either," said the voice.

She opened her eyes slowly, letting them adjust to the ambient light. It was turned down very low, which she appreciated, but she suspected it wasn't for her. "Ryan got a migraine?" she asked.

Graham raised an eyebrow at her from the next medical bed over. "Yeah, vortex travel did a bit of a number on him. That's what you ask first?"

"Fuzzy," she explained, annoyed that talking wasn't getting any more comfortable. She loved talking, and right now she had far, far more questions than answers and wasn't processing well enough to ask them in a sensible order.

"Yeah, well. Oxygen deprivation will do that to you. Apparently you triggered a... respiratory bypass? Just before you transported. But then the chamber's stasis field activated, which meant you didn't get much of oxygen for a while. It definitely saved Yaz's life, because even with the hyperbaric oxygen, there wouldn't have been enough in there for both of you when you'd only set up for one person. She's gonna want to have words with you about that, by the way."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"I've been listening to a lot of folks talking about how nuts you are."

She considered that - considered the way her lungs ached and the bandage covered limbs itched and tickled with healing skin. She considered that Yaz was alive, that Graham was right there beside her, that if the lights were low for Ryan then he wasn't great, but he was here.

She blinked, and Jack was stood at her side... Maybe longer then a blink then. He smiled, warmly.

"Thank you," she said, and shut her eyes again. She could rest now. There was time to rest.

-

The next time she woke, someone was reading from a book. A real, old fashioned paper book - she could smell the cellulose breakdown products.

She opened her eyes and found Jack still at her bedside, or perhaps at her bedside again. The other beds were all empty, and the space was quiet. Still not tracking time properly, she needed to shake this off. She considered herself as Jack turned another page, and tentatively pushed herself upright.

"If you make a break for it, Enfys will kill me," Jack said mildly, not taking his eyes off his book.

"How's Yaz?" she managed - the question she'd wanted to ask first, the last time around.

"Already back on her feet and asking questions. Angry with you for the risk you took, but glad you took it. Waiting until you're better to tear you a new one."

The Doctor went to reply, and hesitated. Thought back, thought about words and pronunciation. Thought through translation circuits.

"You speaking Welsh to me, Jack?" she asked, amused.

Jack looked up from his book, a startled grin.

"It's the first language, around here, habit these days. Picked it up from Gwen and Rhys, back in the day. Gwen said if I had all the time in the world, I might as well set about doing something useful with it. Figures she thought the most useful thing I could be doing was taking lessons from her and Rhys in their mother tongue." Jack smiled to himself. "She'd tell me off for my pronunciation these days, never did learn to roll my Rs, and Dafydd lets me get away with it. It's changed a bit since then too, the way languages do. Livened up a bit, picked up some new words from the youth."

"Gwen Cooper," the Doctor mused.

"It came easier to her when she started to fade - Welsh, that is. Not sure why. She was always asking if I'd seen Ianto, whether I'd told him she'd moved into the nursing home because he never came by to visit anymore." Jack paused, and swallowed thickly. "That version of Torchwood seems a long time ago now, but living in New Cardiff... it's nice to be speaking Welsh again."

"A group with staying power, the Welsh." She cleared her throat, tried to shake off the creak in her voice. She had words, things to say, no little bit of pain was going to stop her. "One of the last families to leave Earth spoke Welsh, and their quote for the news feeds really lost something in translation." There, a whole sentence, and only a little bit wobbly at the end. She tried to hide how out of breath it had left her, but spoiled it when she had to wrap a cast-encased hand around her ribs.

"Talking about staying power..." Jack said, with the edge of a grin. "You saved them all... and yourself too."

"I had some help," she conceded. "Remarkable how that changes things."

"Something to think about... The people you gather around you, the people you travel with, they're there to help too. And they can't help if they can't see what you're struggling with. If you're trying so hard to hide things from them, they won't even know you need help. If you need them to rein you in, if you need them to reassure you that what you're doing is the right thing? There's nothing wrong with that. These folks... they're nice, kind people you've surrounded yourself with. Maybe rely on them for that sometime?"

"What happens when they realise I'm not? What happens when I fail in front of them. Even with their help, even with their advice? What happens when I fail them?" Her hand clenched reflexively around her ribs as her voice faded to nothing and she was left gasping for breath.

"They're not going anywhere, Doctor. They'll follow to the ends of the earth and beyond. All you've got to do is keep trying. That's all they need to see."

The Doctor slumped back into the bed, weariness overwhelming the itching urge for movement for the moment. "Read me some of your book, Jack?"

She was asleep again before he'd finished the first page.