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Eventually, Jack decided to travel with the Doctor again for awhile. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to, but that he felt the need to spend some time with this latest incarnation, who was the same man…yet wasn’t. It took a period of adjustment to make the connections, and he needed to make them.
As it happened, they’d intended their first stop to be a harmless vacation planet, but as things often didn’t go as planned around the Doctor, they ended up somewhere else entirely. Jack was the first one to bound out the door; caution was not a word in his vocabulary. Even if he hadn’t been immortal, he wouldn’t have cared. Not now...
The Tardis door promptly slammed shut, before the doctor had a chance to join him. It didn’t seem inclined to open again, even though Jack could hear the Doc banging on the door and demanding it open. Shrugging, he turned and made his way down the corridor he found himself in. The Doctor would either join him later… or not.
Turning a corner, Jack met an alien. And if he had a credit for every time a story began that way...
“Come with me,” the alien said politely but firmly. “He is waiting for you.”
Jack could hear the capitals in 'HE'. Curious, he followed the alien down the long corridor. At the end they entered a room, and Jack was taken aback by what he saw. He'd met a lot of aliens, but none such as this. There was a huge tank of some sort, and inside what looked like... a giant wrinkled head, with something like hair, or tentacles... He shivered involuntarily.
"Jack Harkness. I’ve been waiting for you." The words weren't spoken, they were inside Jack's head. The alien was telepathic.
Jack shook off the foreboding feeling and reached for his flirtiest pose. “And you are?”
"Call me Bojangles," the head said with what sounded like a laugh.
Somehow I don’t see you do much dancing, Jack thought. “Uh, yeah, okay. So what do you want with me, Mr. Bojangles?”
"I have something to tell you. You can get him back."
Jack remained silent, just a tightening of his jaw muscles betraying him.
"The one you love."
“Ianto…” Jack whispered despite himself.
"Ianto," the face repeated slowly, as if trying on an unfamiliar or strange word. "Yes."
Jack's heart hardened. He didn’t know what this alien was playing at, but how dare he… “We can’t go back and change the past,” he said harshly. “Do you think for one moment if I could the Tardis—“
"The Doctor doesn't know everything," Boe interrupted. “To me he was once a mentor. Now… the knowledge of the universe burdens me more than he could ever know.”
Jack's mouth went dry. “How?” he asked, knowing better than to believe but finding hope strangling him anyway. If this alien presented a way... he would take it.
“My assistant will fix your Vortex Manipulator," Boe explained. "If you go back to the day he was killed and bring him here as soon as everyone in the building has died. If you get him here quick enough, the Nurses will be able to revive him.”
“And what about the timeline?” Jack had to ask, even though he didn't want to.
“Nothing will change. The government will not want to admit they’ve ‘lost’ his body. Everyone will still believe him to be dead. There is one catch."
Here it comes, Jack thought.
“You cannot return with him to 21st century Earth.” Boe sighed in regret. “If you go back there, death and destruction will continue to follow you just as it has always,” he revealed. “When you left your birth century, you went back into the past and changed it. Your daughter was not meant to exist, nor was your grandson. Time has righted itself.”
Jack shivered, wondering why he’d never thought about the ramifications before. Maybe because he’d been stuck in the past with no other choice; and over the decades had just settled into it. The alien was right. If he was changing the past just by being there, everything he did created a new timeline… a recipe for disaster. No wonder he’d felt cursed.
“You must return to your time, the 51st century,” Boe continued. “Where you belong. Take Ianto with you. Oh, you’ll explore the universe again and your travels will take you far. But first……
A grin began spreading on Jack’s face as he contemplated the gift being given him. He hesitated. “How do you know he’ll…he’d want to leave his home to go with me?”
“What, you think death is a better prospect than you?”
Jack wanted to make a joke about being irresistable, even as he wondered if part of him did believe it was preferable. In the end, he shook his head. He knew Ianto. "He'll go with me."
“You only get one second chance, Jack Harkness. Use it well.”
Unspoken: don’t fuck up this time. Jack made a silent vow to himself. This time, things would be different.
“Go. Dance with him for me. Dance to Moonlight Serenade.”
Dance.
The end