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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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."