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(one)
"Ooh, a ring toss! I love a ring toss!"
It's the third thing in as many minutes that she's declared her love for.
Jack loves how much she loves things with this face. And he loves how easily she can say it, even though he knows she will never, ever be able to say it about him.
A few thousand years ago that realisation might have hurt. He was so young back then, so certain that he understood what love meant and how it was expressed and what it looked like when it was directed at him. But the millennia have left him older and wiser.
Now he knows that she can only say the words about a silly carnival game because it's a silly carnival game. Words like 'love' are cheap, and carnival games don't matter. Her feelings about people do matter though, and they are far too messy and complex to be described using such simple, limited terminology.
The sign on the ring toss booth is old and worn, and the man selling tickets looks even older and more worn. She's practically bouncing on her toes with enthusiasm. The sounds of the carnival are a cheerful cacophony, the air is thick with the smells of sugar and grease and humanity, and the other carnival-goers flow around and past them like water over pebbles. After a few minutes in the queue, sisal rope rings in hand ready to toss, she grins at him with eyes sparkling.
He grins back.
It's what she really wants from him. More than she wants to play the ring toss, or to compete in the three legged race, or test her strength with an oversized novelty mallet, she wants someone to be excited with. She wants to see the universe in all its infinite variety, and she wants to see her delight reflected in the face of the person next to her.
Jack understands that better than most, because whenever he travels with the Doctor the Universe becomes just a bit brighter. The endless parade of unexceptional planets each suddenly become unique. The crushing inevitability of his own immortality fades away.
And he can go to silly, run down old carnivals, and keep having the best day of his life every day.
The Doctor gets a very meagre score at the ring toss, and she's just as happy as if she'd aced it. She collects her prize, a little box of coloured chalk, and he congratulates her on her victory. Then she spots something over his shoulder.
"Oh! Jack, look, they've got toffee apples! I love toffee apples!"
So of course Jack buys her a toffee apple, because she never thinks to carry money. The toffee stains her tongue red, and when Jack points it out she's delighted by that too.
He knows that she probably won't ever say those old, tired, human words about him, and she'll definitely never say them to him, but that's okay. The Doctor speaks her feelings in a language that transcends words.
Over the years, Jack's had to learn a lot of new languages for a lot of different reasons. This may be his best reason yet.
-----
(two)
Jack wakes up to the smell of blood and antiseptic and human sweat. It's a combination that he's encountered far too often over the years. He's fought in more than his fair share of wars, and then died in more than his fair share of front line army hospitals. They all smell the same.
He doesn't very often revive to someone holding his hand though, so that's a welcome variation.
"Doc?" he says to the holder of said hand. His voice is scratchy and his jaw is stiff.
The Doctor is startled from her musings, and takes the kind of sharp breath that implies she might have forgotten about breathing for longer than was strictly recommended.
"Jack!" she exclaims, then after a few seconds adds a borderline accusing, "You took a long time coming back."
Jack tries to shrug, but the stiffness in his shoulders tells him that the Doctor is probably correct. Rigor mortis normally doesn't kick in for at least a few hours, and revival only partially releases the locking effect on his limbs. He's been out for a while. He grimaces, and is relieved that at least his face is working properly.
"Yeah, feels like it. It always takes a bit longer to come back when there's a lot of repair work to do first." He casts his mind back best as he can, then checks; "Explosion?"
"Explosion," confirms the Doctor.
Jack continues the mental effort of reassembling his scattered memories. The explosion hadn't been anticipated, he recalls, and it had been a big one. Perhaps there had been other casualties without the benefit of his particular gift? That might explain the distance in the Doctor's gaze. She's not normally quite so ruminative until after the righteous battle for justice has been won.
She turns Jack's hand back and forth between her own, distracted by it. Looking at it like it's done something wrong.
"Anything I should be worried about Doc?" Jack checks.
"Your skin is still cold. Shouldn't it be warm again by now?"
People often talk about feeling like death warmed over, but honestly, the warming part always seems to take the longest these days. He's unusually cold this time though. Even her inherently cool hands feel warm against his. Jack flexes his fingers to get the blood flowing properly again, and is rewarded by a very severe case of pins and needles.
"Circulation's already starting to kick back in, just takes a few minutes. Of course, if you want to help keep me warm in the mean time I'm sure I could come up with a few ideas." He waggles his eyebrows, because that's the done thing when he's being cheesy and flirtatious with her.
He's more than a bit surprised then, when the Doctor looks thoughtfully at him and nods. "Okay."
The surprise grows to genuine bewilderment when she abandons her fold away chair to shuffle her way in alongside him under the blanket. She settles between his torso and his left arm, carefully tucking her own arms in between their bodies and resting her head on his shoulder. He swallows audibly, hoping that he can blame his inability to form coherent thoughts on his recently fatal blood loss.
"Is this alright?" she asks, as though she's offering to order him something unusual from a restaurant menu rather than curling up next to him while he's shirtless on an army cot.
"I... feel like I should be the one asking you that?" He can feel the soft tickle of her breath across his clavicle, and the slight pressure of a button from her coat where it touches his ribs.
"I don't like it when you die, Jack." she says, which doesn't really answer his question. Or maybe it does. "I really don't like it when you take a long time to come back."
"Better me than you?" he jokes back, trying to ease whatever this is into more familiar territory.
"Hmm..." is all he gets from the Doctor, who doesn't seem inclined to agree.
After a few minutes of lying there in silence, the Doctor cautiously snakes one arm out across his ribcage, easing them into a half-embrace. Jack reciprocates as best he can, resting one chilled hand on her elbow and the other in the small of her back.
He feels warmer already.
-----
(three)
The sky is clear and bright with late winter sun. Decorations made out of paper and linen adorn the trees, and there are hundreds of unlit candles arranged in a wide radius around a central bonfire, which is already burning steadily.
A scientist or astronomer might have described it as a celebration of a solar eclipse, but the locals call it the Sun Dance - the one hour every year when the love-struck moon can finally dance with his beautiful, lonely sun.
The Doctor is particularly delighted by the wide assortment of foods on sticks they offer, most of which one could cook for oneself on the bonfire. Most of hers end up charred beyond all recognition, but she doesn't seem to mind. Jack suspects she really just likes the part where her food catches fire and she can wave the flames around like a flag.
Jack wanders through the stalls around the edge of the candle ring until he finds one selling flower crowns. Most of them are dainty, in shades of pastels and white, but there's one made out of big, showy flowers that look a bit like gazanias might do if every petal were a different colour of the rainbow. He praises the workmanship liberally, and earns himself a hefty discount as a result.
The Doctor has stepped back from the crowds now that the sharing of food is drawing to a close and the selecting of dance partners has begun. It's unlike her to step away from any celebration when she has the option to get right into the thick of it, but the very tactile demonstrations of affection popping up all around them seem to have spooked her. Jack is all too aware of the group of young locals barely past puberty who keep casting promising glances in his direction and giggling. He rewards them with a wink and a grin, setting off another round of giggling, then he holds up his newly acquired crown in unspoken apology.
This particular moon is already spoken for, even if his sun doesn't know it yet.
The Doctor sees him coming, and even with the crown casually hidden behind his back she can clearly sense what he's planning. Her eyes are rolling even before he reaches her.
"Don't you ever stop?" She looks at him with exasperated disbelief as he gets down on one knee and presents her with the flower crown. The 'down on one knee' thing is completely unnecessary, of course - it's not even part of the old traditions on this world - but Jack is nothing if not a showman.
Jack doesn't bother answering the question, just goes straight to "Doctor, would you do me the honour of being my partner for the Sun Dance?" He bats his eyes at her for good measure.
"You know the moon and the sun don't actually dance. It's just an eclipse."
"Thousands of years of mythology say differently."
She gestures vaguely towards one of the larger clusters of people. "There are literally dozens of people here who have been eyeing you off since we got here. Why don't you go and offer your crown to one them?" Jack just shrugs.
"There is no other person at this dance who shines quite so brightly as you do. Face it Doc, you're my brilliant lonely star, and I'm your love struck moon." He flutters his eyelashes unnecessarily, and she scrunches up her face at the display. "Anyway, it's bad luck not to have a partner for the Sun Dance. You don't want to have bad luck, do you?"
"I'm a terrible dancer. I'm pretty sure I am, anyway?" It's a hollow protest, and he can see her resistance waning. He knows that in her hearts she wants to be part of the celebrations, not just an observer from the side lines.
"Just sway in time with me. Nothing to it."
She sighs dramatically. "Okay, fine," she says, reaching for the crown, but Jack deftly moves it out of her range.
"Ah ah," he admonishes, then waits for her to put her hands back in her lap and roll her eyes yet again before he gently places the crown on her head.
She looks positively angelic. He says as much to her. She calls him incorrigible.
When the ring of candles is lit and the first shadow from the eclipse falls, Jack takes her hand and leads her to the area meant for dancing.
She wasn't lying - she genuinely is a terrible dancer, but Jack loves her all the more for it. He lets her lead, because following has genuinely never been her style.
The story of the Sun Dancer tells of a moon that loved the sun, but Jack can't help but wonder if they might be more like binary stars; caught forever in each other's gravitational pull, sometimes nearer, sometimes further apart, but always, always orbiting around each other.
His philosophising is cut short when she steps on his foot.
Jack can't help but laugh at her, even as she's rapid fire alternating between apologies and told-you-so's.
And when the shadow finally lifts and the sun lights up her face again, he likes to think her smile is shining a little bit brighter.
-----
(four)
She hasn't spoken for nearly ten minutes.
She hasn't moved from her spot by the console for fifteen, and hasn't been able to look directly at Jack in the whole hour since they got back to the TARDIS.
Her hands occasionally ghost over the controls, sometimes stopping to adjust something that doesn't need adjusting. It's a performance of normality, acted by someone who's forgotten what normality looks like and is attempting to reproduce it from a description they read once in a textbook. And as acting goes, she's terrible. Her gaze is distant, and her mouth twitches periodically with emotion that's too all-encompassing to be suppressed by mere force of will.
It's been a bad day.
Her hand settles for a few seconds on a dial, and she turns in a few degrees clockwise. Jack may not be the resident expert on the TARDIS navigational systems, but he's not as clueless as she clearly thinks he is. That dial isn't used by any of the systems that are currently active, and even if it were, a change as small as that would make no meaningful difference.
She's fooling no one, and his heart clenches in his chest for her at the knowledge.
Jack labels it 'grief' in his head, but only because he doesn't know any better word for the particular combination of pain and guilt and regret that is rolling off her in waves. He does recognise it though, with a howling empathy that words could never express.
The part of him that remembers just being a regular human surrounded by other regular humans wants to draw her away from the console and into his arms, to hold her so tightly that her distress turns liquid and is squeezed out of her. It's a strong impulse even now, but he holds himself back. The part of him that's pushing two thousand and which has known and loved the Doctor for almost all of that time knows better than to inflict that kind of comfort on her. She's not wired that way.
So instead Jack saunters over and taps a finger on the console a few inches from her hand.
"I'm going to the library, catch up on some reading. When you're done here, you're very welcome to join me." Even though the words could have borne it, he doesn't add any innuendo to his tone. Doesn't even raise a suggestive eyebrow.
She nods, still avoiding eye contact, although Jack notices her eyes dart for just a second to the place where his hand had made contact with the console. It takes all his will power not to touch her shoulder or brush his hand over hers as he walks away. It somehow takes even more effort not to loiter in the hall in case she needs him.
She needs a moment to process her reactions without an audience. He won't be the one to deny it to her.
He sets himself up on the long leather reading couch, and reads the same page nearly a dozen times before she arrives soft-footed in the library. She curls herself into the far corner of that same couch, knees up near her chest and bare toes curled over the edge of the seat cushion. She picks up a heavy tome filled with the familiar yet incomprehensible circles of her native language, and props it up on her thighs.
He hopes she hasn't picked anything too heavy or depressing. But then, the Time Lords were never really known for their light comedic fiction.
She's still carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, he can see it in the way her head hangs just a bit lower than usual. But she seems calmer about it now. Maybe that's all he can hope for?
After a few minutes she tucks her toes in under Jack's thigh. Jack doesn't mention it.
-----
(five)
The sun is kissing very nearly every inch of Jack's skin, there's salt in the air, and the sound of waves and sea birds almost entirely masks the noise coming from the rest of the resort.
Unfortunately, it does nothing to mask the sound of the Doctor fidgeting beside him.
"Doc?" he asks, cracking an eye open to observe her from his lounge chair.
Unlike Jack himself, the Doctor is still very nearly fully dressed, having only reluctantly agreed to forego the coat and boots.
"I think there's something wrong with my chair," she complains, on her knees in the sand examining the folding mechanism with an expression that's mostly curious but also a tiny bit manic. Jack has a horrible feeling that if he can't distract her in the next thirty seconds, he's going to have to explain to their hosts why all their beach chairs have been mysteriously disassembled. The Doctor may have promised Jack a relaxing day out, but quietly sitting still had never really been her strong suit.
"Hey, why don't you go inside? Find Yaz, see what she's up to?"
The Doctor looks briefly conflicted, then slinks back to sit in the beach chair looking sheepish.
"No. It's fine. This is nice. Nice beach. Nice sand. Lots of... Ocean. Very... Nice."
Jack closes his eyes again, settling back into his chair and holding his hand out for her to take. He's so touched that she's trying, even if she's really, really bad at it. Even if he honestly gives it about two more minutes before she gives up completely.
She takes the offered hand, and Jack enjoys the sensation of sun and surf for almost a full minute before he startles back to alertness. He looks at the Doctor again.
She's drawing on the back of his hand with a marker. Where she managed to get a marker while sitting on a beach chair by the ocean should baffle him, but it really doesn't. He does raise an eyebrow at her though, requesting an explanation.
She looks at him, all wide eyed and innocent, like she thought he wouldn't notice. Then she gives a lopsided shrug and a cheeky smile.
She gestures at his hand with the marker in the vague shape of a request, despite having clearly already chosen forgiveness over permission. Still, Jack figures that it'll keep her from damaging resort property for at least a few more minutes, and he can't imagine she's even capable of drawing something that would embarrass him more than it would her. He closes his eyes once more and allows the sensation of marker on skin to become just another part of his relaxation tableau.
The next time he looks at her, she's admiring her handiwork. She's wearing a small, private smile, and there's an almost wistful shine to her eyes. The pattern on his hand is instantly recognisable to Jack as a Gallifreyan glyph; one large circle filled with a number of smaller variations on circles. There's a single line connecting the two largest of the nested circles, which seems important for some reason that Jack can't fully articulate.
It really is quite beautiful, even if he has no idea what it means. Her language is aesthetically spectacular, and even if some of the lines wobble a little bit over his knuckles, he can certainly forgive poor penmanship - he can't even think when he last used an actual pen.
"What does it mean?" he asks the Doctor, and she startles like she's almost forgotten that he's still attached the the hand she's playing with. She stashes the marker away in a pocket somewhere and shrugs.
"It doesn't really translate," she replies, which Jack takes to mean that she doesn't want to translate it for him. But that's fine. Given her earlier expression, he's pretty sure it's not anything obscene or offensive. And heck, even if it is, it's not like anyone else on this planet is going to be able to read it any better than he could.
It's not until a few hours later, when they're back in the TARDIS and the Doctor has gone to wash off all the sand, that it occurs to Jack to transcribe it before it fades. There's probably no one in the Universe other than the Doctor herself who could actually translate it for him, but for some reason he can't help but want to hold onto it. The Doctor so rarely shares any part of her early life with anyone, and this was so... tangible.
He copies it onto a piece of paper best as he can, which probably isn't very well. He can only assume that all the baby Time Lords get special training on how to draw circles that actually look circular, because most of his attempts have come out as weird egg-looking shapes. But the details are more or less intact, which is the best he can really hope for.
He's surprised then, when he feels a querying nudge from the TARDIS at the edge of his consciousness. He's not sure exactly what it is that she's asking for, especially given that she almost never asks permission for anything, but he thinks the most welcoming thoughts he can at her anyway.
He feels the momentary pressure of a applied perception shift, and then the circles on his skin seem to swirl into the shape of a word. A word he recognises.
He stares at it for a moment. Then he smiles, because of course that's what it means.
Turns out that some things aren't actually all that hard to translate after all.