Work Text:
Rose is most disturbed when she finds him one night, slumped in a corner, with napkins spread over the kitchen table. They are covered in thick, bleeding strokes of ink–-all anatomically correct sketches of the Gallifreyan heart.
It’s the heart he’s lost, now that he’s human. He’s drawn them from multiple angles. He’s superimposed hearts on the architecture of Gallifrey, the two hearts replacing the twin suns.
He’s huddled in the corner with his hands on his chest and the constant phantom pain. She makes him get up, and bathes him, and puts him to bed. He is strangely quiet and cooperative but does nothing for himself without her gentle nudging.
With the second heart missing, he feels empty and fresh, as if that one belonged to everyone left behind, and now he can start over. Rose guides him through it, under the shower water, like a baptism.
The end is where we begin. This lie has kept Jack going when he’s lost too many people-–but the Captain, the one constant, is now lost with that lost universe. Well, the pair of them were never good with goodbyes.
In the morning, the drawings have disappeared and she finds him at work, acting like nothing has happened. He’s taking notes in meetings, looking alive and chipper as ever. He takes her out for the evening to a ballroom dance. He teaches her tango, and spins and dips her, teaching her to hold her back straight so she does not tip and fall.
As they go to bed, she finds a way to ask him. “I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself.”
"I'd never." He draws her close. “I have to make up for everything he’s lost. Make it up to you.”
“Time for an adventure then, is it, Doctor?”
“Oh, yes. Past time, I think. If you all can live with just one of these, I'll do just fine.” And he does, from then on, at least while she's watching.
Years later in a storage room in their new Tardis, she finds the napkins. He’s been drawing all these years. It’s all he has of the memories. In messy ink, on sketch pads, post-its, and napkins. His lost heart, respiratory bypass, and the woven spirals of Gallifreyan; cityscapes, and portraits of lost people. He’s remembered Jack and Mickey better than she could have. And he’s captured her, too, aging.
Her hair is wispier and greyer now, and his has thinned as well, but they’re going to tango again tonight on another planet.
“Do you still miss it?” she asks him as they sweep back and forth on the dance floor. She presses her hand to his chest where he used to complain of the phantom pain.
“I found it,” he answers, pressing his hand back against her chest, feeling her heart beat against him. And he spins her around and dips her, and the dance continues.