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It wasn’t hard to find Jack after everything was over, leaning over a cryo-stasis tube in the autopsy bay.
“My whole life I was looking for him. Now I have to lose him all over again.”
John walked up to him. “You cryo-freeze him and then what? Wake him up in a hundred years and he's miraculously better? Because that's not gonna happen. Maybe killing him would be the release he needs.”
Jack’s head whipped around to look at him. “There has been enough death.”
Jack looked away, and John considered his profile carefully.
“You didn't struggle, when I buried you. Like…you were allowing it.”
“It was my penance.”
John had to fight back tears as he stepped closer. “It's not your fault.”
The look Jack gave him then was so tired, so over everything that had happened in his long, long life, that it made the tears even harder to stop. But John had never cried easily, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Jack leaned over the cryo-chamber, kissing Gray’s forehead. Then he pulled back, straightened, and pressed a few buttons on his VM to make the cover slide shut. John watched his face, then the curve of his back as he turned and pushed the tube into place, closing the door to hide Gray from the world, potentially forever.
John wanted to give him his privacy as he pressed his hands to the closed door, but he couldn’t. He tried to take in every detail of Jack, knowing he likely wouldn’t ever see him again.
“Why did you do it?” Jack asked, almost too quietly to hear.
“What?”
Jack rose and turned around, face closed-off but eyes wet. “Why did you bring him here? To me? Why did you go looking for him?”
“I didn’t know it was going to be this way.” He wasn’t sure this was what Jack meant, but he thought it best to cover his bases. He was never one for apologies, though. “I thought he would be like you.”
“Like me?” Jack asked sceptically.
“You know, young, idealistic, ready to face the world. You were like that when I first met you, even after everything. You had a clear moral code despite the stuff you had to do. I admired that about you.”
Jack didn’t look convinced.
“And now, well….” John considered. “Immortality is torture, I know, but you haven’t lost any of that, despite going through so much, losing so much. In fact, you became better. Stronger. I thought…maybe, he’d be like that too. Same genes, same parents, all that. I thought that even after being tortured for as long as he had, he’d be strong.”
“He was.” Jack looked down at the door behind which his brother was lying. “Strong enough to overpower you.”
John didn’t know how to reply to that. Thankfully, he didn’t need to.
Jack took a deep breath. “That doesn’t answer my question. Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” John deflected again. “He made me.”
Jack’s eyes hardened, and John knew he said the wrong thing.
“I did it because I care about you, Jack.” It came out harsher than he intended. “I did it because I still love you. I did it because I thought it would make you happy. I thought that if I did this, you’d want me back.” A lump lodged in his throat, worsened by the coldness of Jack’s expression. “I just wanted to have you back. I didn’t know it would end this way.”
Jack softened, just a little, and when he pulled John into a hug John didn’t fight it, leaned into it, soaked in Jack’s warmth, breathed in his familiar scent.
“You can never have me back,” Jack whispered into his ear, softly, viciously, and John shoved him away.
“Fuck you!” John didn’t hold back. “I bloody know that! I was hoping for a miracle. I knew it was far-fetched. I wanted to do the impossible, do something even you haven’t managed to, so I could at least have a chance! I gave you everything you wanted. I worked so hard to bring him here. The least you could do is offer me some common courtesy. The least you could do is be kind. But you could never just be nice to me, could you?” John sniffed, straightening his back, attempting to look put-together despite the tears still streaming down his face.
“I think we’re done here,” he said.
Jack looked taken aback, but then his face flattened out as well. “Need help with those Rift predictions?”
How fitting that he wouldn’t even apologise. John shook his head. “A lot of this planet I haven’t seen. You like it so much, I thought I’d take a look. Might see you around.” He knew he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter.
He took a step back even as Jack stepped forward. Ten minutes earlier, he would have gone for a goodbye kiss. Now he knew Jack would simply turn his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he said, still – constantly – trying to one-up Jack, because Jack would never say it. “For your losses.”
He hoped it hurt him. Still, he didn’t look back as he climbed up the stairs. Jack didn’t call him back. No one else was in the Hub to stop him.