It had been 50 years since Jack had seen the Doctor. It had been 50 years since Jack had been Jack. 50 years, and he still felt the same. Some days he hated that, it frustrated him and annoyed him and made him want to scream. And some days, it just made him lonely. This was one of those days.

It was Valentines day. A stupid Earth holiday that really meant nothing, but people put so much stock into. Everywhere you went there were balloons shaped like hearts and people holding hands and declaring their love. It made Jack grumpy, and he could never and would never explain why.

So he shut himself away from it. He was in a small flat in a city that seemed to be nothing but small flats. Somewhere full of people where he could at the same time, be completely alone.

And he sat on his own, watching broadcasts on a television with a bottle of scotch to soothe his pains.

50 years, and it still felt like yesterday.

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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He had been gone three weeks.

Three weeks one day and seventeen hours to be precise.

The whole time, it had been in his mind to return, but this time he wanted to be ready. He wanted a plan before he turned back up ready to show her a little of the future and a little of his past.

The first thing he did was visit a library. He sat in a quiet corner with a book. The aged dust sheet was decorated with a photograph of a painting of 'Madame de Pompadour'. There was a likeness, at least. He wasn't sure if he ought to read. The pages told her history, or at least the story that history was graced with. There was always so much more, he knew, and so much incricacy and detail that history could never wish to capture.

Moments in time that flitted and disappeared.

It wouldn't be right of him to read, would it? No. So for once, he hoped, he made the right decision, and the book remained in the library, unopened and untouched.

A book, however, that did make it out the door, was a French language book. Eighteenth Century French to be precise. He wanted to brush up.

And he did. He brushed and he prepared and three weeks later he was sure he was ready. Or at least, as ready as he could ever be.

So he took himself back, with a bag and a box in tow. He arrived at 5pm. Three week and barely any time at all.

Five fifty eight and he stood outside the doorway to her lounge. He'd found his way up, and though he'd received looks, he found too they didn't attempt to stop him. His destination was expected. A reputation already, it seemed.

Five fifty nine and he walked in.

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Jack had slept. Much to his own surprise.

He hadn't expected to sleep. He'd expected to lie and to stare at the ornate ceiling, watching the flecks in the paint and the gold until they moulded to nothing in his mind. He had done, for a while, but then his eyes had grown heavy, and quite against his own will he was pulled into sleep. Perhaps due to just how long it had been since he'd had the chance to rest like that. To lie and to know he could. To know he had a night there, with nothing to call him away.

He did dream, of course. Unpleasant dreams of his faults and his losses. But they were standard, and even though they were painful, he was used to them.

The morning came and he was awake by the time the light was filtering through the window. He had, also, somehow, acquired his own clothes, though were he asked how, he'd never explain. He preferred to keep certain things a mystery.

He stood now, in that bedroom, staring out of the window at the landscape outside. A new landscape, a new time.

Torchwood didn't keep hours. Torchwood couldn't keep hours. Not with the sort of work they did. Alien invaders didn't really respect when people might like to have a nice night in in front of the telly, or sleep in late in the morning. They didn't care if you wanted to start at nine and finish at five.

But sometimes, Jack just had to accept that even his staff needed lives of their own. Admittedly, of course, that would often be when Gwen picked up her bag and declared she was going home, without giving Jack option either way. But accept it he did. He knew people needed time to themselves, and times away from the underground confines of the Hub. And so some nights he'd end up there alone, an old record player on echoing out a cracked recording of Gracie Fields and a self made (infinitely worse than Ianto's) cup of coffee in hand.

This was one of those nights.

He sat in his office, listening to the sound of the music as he jotted down notes on paperwork he'd left waiting for weeks. To his side a computer ran a regular nightly scan for any activity in the area. Nothing, just the way he liked it. Cardiff safe.

Nothing strange (which was almost strange in and of itself), nothing out of the ordinary or abnormal. Nothing that was until a little alarm started sounding.

He ought to have known things would never run smoothly.

Pushing aside his papers he leant forward and prodded keys on the keyboard. Strange, he thought, the reading wasn't something he recognised. Some sort of transmission. It seemed to be harnessing the rift, but how? He keyed a little more and then the screen flickered, putting him on edge.

Something wasn't right.

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Three weeks. That's how long it should have been. Three weeks for Jack to fix what was broken. For Jack to play the role of the hero and save the world again.

He did it in two.

Three weeks and he went back to that spot. Went back and waited for the sound of the engines and the appearance of a little blue box. He waited there all day, waited in the pleasant summer's day and waited as the day turned to balmy evening, and the evening to cool night.

He waited there the day after, in case he'd got it wrong, in case he'd made a mistake (but he knew he hadn't).

He waited, but nothing came. No engines, no little blue box, no familiar face in a pinstripe suit and messed up hair. Nothing.

He waited and when nothing came, he found he had nowhere to go.

Martha had tried to be sympathetic, and Jack had lied and said he was fine. The Doctor was a busy man, he probably just got side tracked. But then Martha couldn't really understand, could she? She couldn't know how things changed. She couldn't know how Jack needed the Doctor now (and how Jack had hoped he was needed too).

She'd suggested he go home, back to Cardiff. Gwen'd love to see him and there's still the rift that needed looking after and you know technically Torchwood still existed and it was still in his control.

But no. He couldn't do that. He wasn't ready and even the mention of it infuriated him. It made him snap and made him cold. He felt bad for it, but he didn't apologise.

Nowhere to go, and as the weeks passed Jack would return each one, the same day each week to that place, just in case the TARDIS arrived. But it never did, and as each week came and went, the little voice of hope that thought maybe, just maybe he would, got quieter and faded into nothing.

He had to wait though. He couldn't go because what if the Doctor did need him? What if the Doctor came back and he wasn't there? No, he wouldn't do that. He'd wait. He wouldn't use the vortex manipulator and run, as appealing as the idea could be.

The weeks turned to months, and Jack had had to find a place to wait. A home, well that was easy enough, and Martha was only too happy to give him something to do. But he stayed under the radar. He didn't want to be too noticed. Not by UNIT or the Government or a woman in Cardiff who'd not long given birth.

He became reclusive as the time went on. He didn't want to make conversation, and he wouldn't. He stopped wanting to help and fell back to how he had been when he ran from Earth. But this time, in limbo. Waiting, still waiting. He'd spent his whole life waiting.

This time though, he waited with a bottle in one hand and a gun in the other. Turned out London had quite the Weevil infestation. Well at least that was something he could deal with.

Five months had passed since he left the Doctor. Five months in a life as long as Jack's could seem like nothing at all. But it didn't, it seemed like forever. He'd stopped going to check for the TARDIS, because he was sure it wouldn't come. He'd considered ringing him and asking what the hell he thought he was doing, but no, they didn't need an over the phone domestic. If the Doctor wanted to come, he'd come. Jack wouldn't chase, not any more. He was worried about him too, of course, and perhaps in truth that was a larger part of the reason he wouldn't call. Just in case there was no answer. Just in case something had happened to him. He'd rather not have that confirmed.

So there he was, living in a top floor apartment that overlooked the Thames. An apartment not unlike the one in Cardiff. Modern and a little bland, with barely a touch to describe it as belonging to him. There he sat with an open bottle of whisky and a bank of open laptops around him, tracking and working and busying himself with anything.

Busying himself with nothing. While he waited.

It had been months since then. Months since the Valiant and the terrible events that occurred upon it. It had been months of rebuilding a life. Torchwood, his team, his people.

But every night. Every night without fail. He dreamt.

No, not dreams. Dreaming sounded like too nice a word. He had nightmares. Terrible nightmares.

He did his best to ignore them, or at least get used to them, and sometimes he even managed it. He did his best to push aside the memories of that year that never was, and of the pain and terror. To forget the face of the man who caused it all. But it never was that easy.

Some nights would be easier. The nights forcing himself to stay awake or better the nights he spent with Ianto. It stilled his mind and sometimes he could even relax. But they'd still be there, tickling away at the back of his mind, reminding him that they were there. Reminding him of just what happened.

He'd even, on an occasion or two, gone to the point of taking pills to steady his mind. They worked, at least for a while.

But nothing could work for long, and when he slept, he knew to expect it, and to expect he'd wake in a sweat.

And he expected that now. Alone in the Hub at the end of a long day, lying in bed and waiting. He closed his eyes, and he knew they'd come.

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Jack held fast to the controls of the ship as they plunged into hyperspace. The g-forces on his body pressed him into the chair, and he focused all of his attention on keeping the craft smooth and flying. He'd worry about just where it was they were going later.

It was a strong craft, a good ship. But it was built for leisure, built for transporting rich people to unimportant places. There was no hardened shell and it wasn't well shielded, and so it wasn't ever constructed to contend with such difficult conditions. It was something like trying to drive a sports car through the desert in a sandstorm.

The ship started shaking as they moved through space; fixtures and fittings coming unstuck from their various homes in the craft. Somewhere inside there was a smash as a vase fell from a shelf and not even the gravity cushion was enough to restrain it.

"Make sure your trays are in the upright condition and your seatbelts are fastened until the pilot has turned off the seatbelt light," Jack said with a grin as he moved the craft along. There was an undeniable rush with it. The thrill of the adventure and the danger. You really had to be a certain sort of person to enjoy it as he did.

Jack had seen the vortex before. Travelled through it, even, clung to the outside of the TARDIS. The Doctor had seen it too, many times, Jack suspected. But the Doctor didn't need to know that right now. So Jack leaned forward and pressed a button on the panel that blackened out the window in front of them so they wouldn't have to see the vortex now as the vortex manipulator directed the ship through it.

"Hold on tight!" Jack called as they travelled. Just a little longer, just a little bit more. The ship continued to rattle and he worried it might not keep together, but then without warning or sign the shaking stopped.

"We're out," Jack breathed with a wide grin as the adrenaline rushed through his system. He reached forward and pressed the button to clear the glass. What he saw outside wiped the smile right off his face.

Below them, a few hundred feet or so was the surface of a planet. A planet covered in a dark cloud, devoid of light and life. It looked sick, like the planet itself was rotting. It sent a chill down Jack's spine.

"So don't tell me," Jack said, "The Death's Spiral, right?"

It was cold when Jack woke up. There was no blood on his chest, no wound other than a deep pain in his chest. That Lazer screwdriver had been the weapon, and it was a sharp pain, second only to that of the Dalek's extermination. The death had faded but the sting remained.

It had taken him a while to reorientate himself, to recognise the room around him as a section of the underside of the Valiant. He felt the metal around his wrists before he saw it, so cold it seemed damp against his skin. The corners of the shackles were sharp and bit harshly into his skin. But then, he didn't suppose they were built to be comfortable.

He tugged on the chains a little, to test their strength, but they were secured fast to the wall. He'd been put here to stay.

It was amusing at this stage. He didn't intend to be kept. Not when the Doctor might need his help. If he ever had motivation then that was it. He wouldn't let him down, not now.

He had expected that someone would come, that they might try and get information out of him (information that he of course wouldn't give), but nobody did. Nobody came that day and nobody came the day after. The only way he knew night or day was an LCD clock in the corner of the room. No light reached him, everything seemed to fade into one.

It became his focus though, that clock. Because someone would come, that much he knew, and when they did, he'd have something to say.

Jack sat in his office, empty and alone. The Hub seemed bigger today. It seemed colder. If he listened he could hear the cold echo of water in the distance, dripping and flowing through pipes and against cold stone. It was late and the city above was sleeping, recharging ready for a new day.

Had the day gone how he'd have expected he'd have likely been with Ianto right now. Perhaps at his flat or here. He wouldn't have been sitting trapped and lost within his own thoughts, staring at a phone on his desk as thought it were about to perform a song and dance routine for him.

He leaned back in his chair, his fingers lightly touching his lips, and he breathed out heavy and long. He'd met a young girl that day, fallen through the rift. It was an easy one. She wasn't hurt or damaged and all he had to do was send her home. But then things never were so simple.

She'd awakened memories in him. Memories of a past and of a woman he tries not to think about. And words echo in his head, "Call her."

So it's with a fistful of courage that he finally picked up the phone and dialed the London number for Mina Harker. And he waited as it rang. Waited to hear her voice.