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The Doctor looked up from the TARDIS console he was tinkering with when he heard a string of curses. The melange of 51st century slang interspersed with 21st century English, several alien languages and one word of Gallifreyan that Jack must have picked up from him made him smile.
His smile dropped when the curses where followed by the sounds of vomiting and then silence.
"Jack?" he called out and received only a muffled groan in response.
Minutes later, Jack appeared in the control room, skin almost the same colour as his white t-shirt. The braces slapped against his legs and he ran one hand over his face and through his hair.
"I think I caught some kind of virus," he said.
The Doctor had picked up Jack in 22nd century Cardiff. Jack carried himself with an air of maturity and his eyes spoke of a strength he hadn't possessed before.
He was over two hundred years old – still so much younger than the Doctor, but when he grinned, the Doctor remembered. Jack had never been carefree, but always capable of taking life as it came and making the best of it.
Jack's grin made the Doctor want to embrace life. Jack centred him and the need to see Jack smile in that way helped the Doctor find his enthusiasm again after all the things he'd lost.
It wasn't surprising, the Doctor mused, that after travelling together for a little over a month, they had ended up in Jack's bed (and against the door of the TARDIS, on the floor, one time in a prison cell).
"It's just sex," Jack had said and Doctor had ignored the lie and kissed Jack.
Jack shrugged the Doctor's concern off. “Must have been a one off thing. Don't worry about it,” he said an hour later and grinned at the Doctor's look. “I feel fine, really.”
He brushed his fingertips over the Doctor's jaw, down to his shoulder and chest. "I can prove it to you, if you want." He raised his eyebrows and winked at the Doctor.
“That's quite all right, I believe you,” the Doctor rolled his eyes. He'd learnt to differentiate between the types of Jack's flirting and this was genuine affection, not bravado or facade.
Jack caught his lower lip between his teeth, licked it.
“Just don't throw up on me,” the Doctor quipped as Jack's hand crept under his shirt.
Sometimes, the Doctor looked at Jack and went still and Jack could guess his thoughts. “What you are still feels wrong to me,” the Doctor had said, leaning back against the door of the TARDIS, “But who you are is more important. Come with me, Jack.”
He left the Doctor alone those times, wandered through the TARDIS. Sometimes, he'd brush his hands along the walls and talk to the TARDIS, wondering if she'd be better off without him inside of her, if he's as wrong as the Doctor seems to think he is.
Hours later, the Doctor would always come to Jack, his hands cool on Jack's skin and his eyes burning bright. Jack accepted the apologies brushed over his naked body every time, but he never forgot the hours before and the look in the Doctor's eyes.
“... And he said he hadn't thought of that! Can you imagine it?” The Doctor glanced over to Jack, expecting him to laugh and launch into a story of his own.
Jack's face was obscured by shadows, his gaze unfocused. He looked pensive, lost in his own thoughts. One arm was draped over his stomach, his fingers playing with the hem of his shirt.
“And then the space monkeys came and ate all the bananas,” the Doctor exclaimed.
Jack snapped out of it and turned to face the Doctor, shook his head. “What is it with you and bananas?” he asked with a bemused grin.
“Just testing to see if you're listening.”
They had fallen into a routine easily. Jack drank coffee while the Doctor preferred tea. They visited other planets and other times.
It was easy to forget, in the rush of the moment, with the adrenaline that came with discovering and learning, while running and with righting history, that they were different people from who they'd been.
The Doctor could forget what it had been like losing Gallifrey all over again when the Master had died and if he didn't concentrate on Jack, he could almost ignore the tickling at the back of his mind that spoke of Jack's wrongness and that reminded him of the way the presence of his planet had felt.
“You've been quiet lately,” the Doctor said and studied Jack. Jack's jaw was clenched and he pushed his hands into his pockets.
The Doctor hadn't seen Jack this tense since they'd met a time agent Jack had known. Jack shifted his weight but otherwise stood completely rigid and unmoving.
“Did I ever tell you that I can get pregnant?” Jack's voice was flat and tight.
The Doctor forgot to breathe for a moment as the meaning of those words registered and the pieces fell into place. “No,” he objected violently, “No, no, no.”
Jack just looked at him, eyes hard and jaded. The Doctor kept shaking his head.
“You're joking.” The Doctor's tone demanded that Jack shrug and laugh it off.
Jack shook his head. “Feels wrong to you, doesn't it?”
He turned around and left.
The Doctor was the only Time Lord left in existence and there was no presence at the back of his mind, only all of time running through his head.
Sometimes he felt like he's just drifting along, no permanent hold and nothing to hang on to. It was disorienting, lonely. There was always a whisper of Jack in the fabric of the universe, constant and there, but the Doctor tried to ignore it.
Jack's personality grounded him in the present, drew his attention away from the possibilities of future and past.
The Time Lords were gone from space and time. The Doctor wondered if that would ever stop hurting, if laughing with Jack wasn't just another form of denial and repression.
They hadn't spoken, hadn't even seen each other. Jack had kept away from the control room and the Doctor had made no effort to find him.
When Jack leaned against the wall the next morning, one arm draped protectively over his stomach, the Doctor stopped and gaped.
Jack averted his eyes. He was pale, but seemed more relaxed and calmer, with an air of quiet conviction about him.
“Just tell me,” he said, facing the Doctor and there was only a hint of pain in his gaze that belied the calm of his voice, “That Time Lord and human biology are compatible. Tell me my child's not going to die.”
The Doctor's chest felt too tight all of the sudden. “Yeah, it'll probably work out. Might be closer to Time Lord than human genetics, though. That should be the dominant gene pool, anyway.”
He fell silent. The relief shone brightly in Jack's eyes, though his stance didn't change. The Doctor wondered when Jack had gone from some kind of virus to protecting his child.
It wasn't until after Jack was gone that it hit the Doctor. It was his child, too.
The Doctor remembered his children and his grandchildren. He remembered the smiles and the laughter, the tears and curses and everything in between.
Like the rest of Gallifrey, they were gone.
When he concentrated, he could feel the child drawing from the energy of the Vortex running through Jack, could almost imagine the double heartbeat.
He was the only Time Lord who'd survived the Time War, but he wasn't the only one in existence anymore.
Quietly and to himself, the Doctor admitted he was scared.
Jack looked up when the Doctor hesitated in the doorway to his room, crossed the distance to the bed.
He could read the lines of tension in the Doctor's body. The Doctor crouched down, reached out with one hand. Jack didn't draw back, his eyes following the Doctor's movement.
The warmth of the Doctor's hand on his stomach seeped through his t-shirt. Jack shivered and his breath caught in his throat. The tingling sensation on his skin stopped when the Doctor's gaze found Jack's.
His voice quiet and filled with awe. “She's a Time Lord.”
The days passed and they kept travelling through time and space. The Doctor didn't mention the presence at the back of his head that kept growing stronger as Jack's stomach lost its tautness, as the pregnancy began to show.
They didn't talk about it, pretended the word pregnancy didn't exist in their vocabulary. There was laughter and curses. They never stayed anywhere long enough for someone to ask questions, to get to know them.
Jack still laughed and the Doctor ignored the strain in his eyes, just as he ignored the way Jack tired more easily now.
They were dealing just fine, he told himself.
“I can't do this anymore,” Jack said. The Doctor studied Jack over his cup of tea. The ease with which Jack used to move was gone, replaced by careful motions, as though his back constantly hurt.
It probably did, the Doctor realised.
“Can't do what anymore?”
“Any of this.” Jack was frowning. “I nearly died today, Doctor!”
The Doctor tilted his head and furrowed his brows. “And?”
Jack closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head slowly. “It's amazing how you can ignore this so easily when it's the first thing on my mind all the time. If I die, what happens to her?” He rubbed one hand over his stomach in slow circles. “She's not immortal.”
The Doctor flinched as though Jack had slapped him.
They didn't travel much anymore. Jack stayed in the library, stretched out on the sofa. He read one book after the other, books the Doctor had acquired and books other companions had left behind.
Sometimes, the Doctor stopped in the door and watched Jack. Jack was touching his stomach while he read out loud and made comments directed at the child.
The softness in Jack's tone and his gaze filled the Doctor with warmth, but when the domesticity became too much, he always turned around and left.
He never noticed Jack's eyes following him.
The Doctor found Jack in his room, hands against the wall and his head hanging between his shoulders, eyes on the ground.
“I can't,” Jack choked out.
The Doctor's hearts beat wildly in his chest and he settled one hand on Jack's shoulder, pressed close. “What?” he asked.
“Pregnancy.” The lines of fear and pain were etched into Jack's expression, stark against his pale skin. “Said I'd never do it again, I can't go through it again, I can't. I just, I can't.”
Jack's breath grew shallow and the Doctor felt a surge of possessiveness rush through him (his child, his partner). He drew Jack against him and Jack came willingly, pressed his face into the crook of the Doctor's neck.
“It's going to be okay,” the Doctor said, his hands running over Jack's back. “We're going to be okay.”
Jack curled inwards, closer to the Doctor and they held on to each other.
“I promise we'll be okay.”