for shewalks_away Journey's End missing scene.

[quitehomoerotic]

How long does it take to tow the Earth home? Quite a while actually.

The TARDIS was full. Really full, full of people who had all touched the Doctor in some way. There were smiles and laughter and people talking. Two Doctor's rushing around the console. Two! People that had never met and people that knew each other well. It was remarkable.

Jack could feel eyes on him when he stood, and when he turned he'd notice those eyes belonged to one Donna Noble who waved at him with a little coy wave (or at least he suspected she thought it was coy). It was an occurrence that repeated itself no less than three times. It was somewhat unnerving.

As time went on people seemed to spread out, filling the halls and corridors of the familiar TARDIS in ways Jack had never seen. It felt right in a way Jack couldn't truly describe.

He watched. Watched Martha and Donna and Rose.

Rose.

Rose who he'd expected never to see again. Rose who over all those long years he'd thought of just as much as he'd thought of the Doctor. Rose who he'd watched as a little girl, falling off her bike and scraping his knee.

Rose who in all the flurry, he'd been unable to catch even a moment with.

Ad so when he saw her take her leave from the console room and turn down a corridor, he followed, and when there was fair distance he stopped and he cleared his throat from behind her.

"So do I get a hello?"

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[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack allowed himself to be pulled. Allowed himself to indulge in the playfulness of it. He wasn't being Jack the leader. Jack the man with Torchwood to worry about. Jack with the fate of so many people relying on him. He was just Jack. Jack that used to travel. Jack that used to smile.

Jack.

And that felt good, just for now.

"Sean Connery?" he echoed with surprise. "Really? You think so?"

He arched his head back a little, as if trying out the thought. That's all it ever would be, of course, a thought. Jack wouldn't age, he'd always be this. And as for grey he expected little else than the odd one he'd find (and swiftly dispatch) every now and then.

"Wait," he said, "you don't think I look distinguished now?"

Finding the kitchen he made immediately for a cupboard to busy himself with sifting through while he continued to talk.

"Well I'd better, because it's not going to change." He looked up at a shelf and then back over to her.

"I'm not gonna age, Rose. I'm not gonna get... Sean Connery."

[shewalks-away.livejournal.com]

She smiled at him, watching him working around the kitchen. She sat down at the table. This felt normal again, like it did all those years ago. Before she found out the Doctor could change, before Jack left, when it was just the three of them, on the TARDIS, hopping about the universe.

"Wouldn't say you're Sean Connery material just yet," she said, biting her tongue a bit, her tone teasing.

Rose stopped short though as he looked back at her, his words hitting her hard. Her smile turned to a confused frown.

"How do you mean you're not gonna age. Everyone's got to, even the Doctor would have to if..."

She stopped short. If the Doctor wasn't the Doctor and didn't do something daft and get himself killed before he got the chance. The Doctor looked older even now, and she would never know if it was only a few years like it was for her, or if he had been living decades or centuries since she last saw him.

But he wasn't important now. Jack said he wasn't going to age. What did that even mean?

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack ventured his way over to the table with a plate and bread and some sort of unidentifiable jam. He gestured out for her to help herself, and as he sat down opposite, he began to do the same.

He ate rather quickly, and spoke around mouthfuls. Really his habits there hadn't changed.

With a half eaten bread roll in hand he gestured out in her direction. And without much preamble, he announced something that had sat silent.

"It's been 141 years since I last saw you, Rose. For me, I mean."

Another mouthful of bread, and he focussed on that as though it were the most important thing and not just taking his mind off everything else.

"Still. Look good for my age, right?"

[shewalks-away.livejournal.com]

Rose stared at him, dumbfounded. She pulled a piece of bread onto her plate, but merely toyed with it, too distracted to actually eat.

She tried to process what he was saying. That was...it couldn't be, could it.

"One hundred and forty-one years?" she repeated, dazed and confused by this newest revelations.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack gave one emphatic nod in response. "Yep." He pointed a finger at her, "And don't you dare say I look it."

He laughed. That's what he did now, make light of things. How he coped with it. Well, it always was really.

"These stripes," he said, pointing to his shoulder, "they're real now. World war two? Fought in that. And world war one for that matter."

He shrugged his shoulders, just once. "See after Satellite Five I got sort of stranded in 1869. Lived straight through since then. Kept my eyes peeled for him, and for you. But... well, took a while."

[shewalks-away.livejournal.com]

Rose scooted her chair around closer to Jack, hesitant for a moment, and then reaching out a hand to feel the stripes on his shoulder. He had gone through so much, but why and how and...

"Was that the business you had to go and take care of?"

She never got a straight answer about what happened to him. All she knew was she woke up and Jack wasn't there anymore.

"What happened to you? You had just gone and you didn't even say goodbye or anything. If you'd said something, we could've known where to look for you, we could've come back and found you."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack let out another laugh and shook his head. He sighed. Ahh of course she didn't know. Of course the Doctor didn't explain any of that. As if he would have. Once it might have annoyed him, but not now. He was way past that point now.

He tucked his head down and smiled to himself a moment before shaking his head and lifting it again, turning to look at her more fully.

"I died," he said. "And I mean really died. Exterminated by Daleks. Sayonara Jack Harkness."

He paused, a breath. "But... I came back. First time. And--" he sighed.

"Rose, he knew. He knew I was alive and he left me there. He was running away from me." He shrugged his shoulders, acting as though it were nothing. "And come on, he was too busy having a facelift to think of me."

[shewalks-away.livejournal.com]

"He was running away from you? But that can't be right, cause he said, he said you had business you had to take care of and..."

Rose bit her lip, folding her hands on her lap and wringing them idly, trying to make sense of what Jack just told her.

"The Doctor, he wouldn't do that," she said, more to convince herself than anything else. "He's better than that, he wouldn't just leave someone like that."

It's why she went back for the Doctor in the first place all those years ago, wasn't it? You don't run away, you stand up and fight and save the things that are really important.

She looked up at Jack earnestly, searching his eyes and hoping they would tell her something she wasn't understanding. There had to be a reason, he wouldn't just leave Jack. Not like that.

"He really did that, he really just...left you?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

While he listened to Rose process what he'd said, Jack almost smiled. It was funny because he could understand it. Understand the questioning. The Doctor wouldn't do that. The Doctor would look for him. He'd said and thought the same things so many times.

But truth won out, and he couldn't ignore that.

"I thought he could answer my questions," Jack admitted. "I thought that he'd understand what had happened to me. But the truth is? He didn't, not really. You know when I first saw him again even the TARDIS tried to get away from me. Went right the way to the end of the universe and I clung on to the outside," he laughed. Though really, a trip through the vortex like that was hardly pleasant.

"He told me that I'm wrong. That that's how it feels to him. His instinct was to run and so..." he threw his hands in the air.

"So he did."

And then he smiled. "But hey, come on. I'm doing pretty okay."