ten_fwd | The Captain, in the bar

Nobody's seen much of Jack lately. He's been quieter, more subdued, more prone to keeping to himself, shoving his hands in the pockets of his coat and ....

Rose would have called it brooding. Gwen probably would, too.

Rose is gone. Gone back to her time, perhaps. But who knows? She'd just disappeared. He should know better than this, now, to be so attached to people, but Gwen would say that's what keeps people human, and human is something he doesn't always feel. And Rose Tyler was one of the best people he'd known in so many lifetimes' worth of living. She'd taken a con-man and helped show him how to care again, how to live, how to love. She'd had adventures with him across time and space, been his best friend and his best girl though nothing more than friendship had ever officially passed between them, at least not in the confines of 21st century Britain's understanding of relationships.

Rose is gone, and he doesn't know if he's sent her to her death by not warning her.

To anyone who truly knew Jack, the sight of him in his Second World War era coat perched on a barstool with a glass of brandy might seem ... out of place.

He's not breaking his self-imposed not-drinking-unless-he-really-needs-to rule, though. It's synthehol.

He'd probably be better off talking to someone.

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That explained it. This face didn't have the same kind of attachment to Rose as the previous two had, but Eleven knew that without her, he wouldn't have been this Doctor.

"I didn't even really speak to her much when she was here. Though I doubt the other me is taking it well."

And it didn't look like Jack was either, "She gets the chance to be happy back home."

Rose had been the start of it all. A pretty girl hanging from a barrage balloon looking like she needed someone to swoop in and save her. And he'd done it, and in sweeping her off her feet, she'd swept him off hers, with her goodness, her heart, her life, her ... energy, everything about her that was Rose.

"You know what he's like," Jack said, though ... he didn't go into detail.

It would, he thought, have been simply stating the obvious.

What did make him pay attention, though, was what the Doctor said next.

"The lists said she died at Canary Wharf."

His voice, traitorous thing that it was, caught, a little, on the name of Torchwood One's base. He wanted it to be wrong. He'd wanted it ever since he'd heard it, and having the Doctor and Rose here and not knowing if that really was the future, if it could be changed, maybe by being here, while he did know that it shouldn't be changed, had been driving him mad.

Eleven would agree with all of Jack's feelings on Rose. Without her, he certainly wouldn't be the man he was today, nor would he have been the one that he was before, or even before that. She showed him it was possible to move on from the Time War, from what happened, from burning his planet.

"Yes, I do." He hadn't met his tenth self yet, but he knew what he was like, and he knew how far he'd go to do pretty much anything.

But Eleven shook his head at the mention of Canary Wharf. It was a terrible fight, that much was for sure, but at least things turned out somewhat okay for Rose.

"She disappeared then. Didn't die. It was easier to explain that way though."

He also knew telling Jack any of this had the potential to mess up the timelines, but Jack looked like he needed to know something worked out okay at that battle.

Rose had, in many ways, held them together. Rose was the heart of them, back in those days when they'd traveled time and space seeking adventure, before it had gone wrong and he'd found himself abandoned, immortal and not knowing it, on the Game Station. And even that, he'd understood, when he'd been told it was because Rose was in danger. To save her, he'd have given up so much, and said it was worth it.

Including what he did give up: traveling with her and the Doctor.

He was about to take another sip of the brandy that wasn't brandy when the Doctor spoke again, and Jack stared. Stared at the face that was so familiar and yet not familiar, because it wasn't his Doctor, but was still a Doctor.

Then he grinned.

"She's alive? She's still alive?"

"She is."

Rose, as far as he knew, was living happily in Pete's world with Jackie, Pete, and the Meta-crisis Doctor. She finally had everything that could make her happy. Eleven couldn't think of anyone else who deserved that more than Rose.

"The other me can't find out about that . It might not have happened for him yet."

For a moment, Jack was too happy to care about temporal implications. Years. It had been years he'd spent blaming Torchwood, Yvonne, himself, and even, sometimes, the Doctor, for Rose's death. Wondering, if he'd been there, if he could have saved her from that mess. Grieving, for so much brightness, so much light and joy gone from the world.

He stared, as though studying the Doctor's face would tell him something, confirm or deny what he was being told.

"I know," he said, eventually. "I haven't told him anything."

He'd wanted to. He'd wanted to ask. He'd wanted to rail against him for letting anything happen to Rose. But he didn't need to, now, and all he could do was stare, still grinning.

But that wasn't enough. It was awkward, to hug a man sitting next to him at a bar, but Jack did his best, because Rose was alive. Disappeared, whatever that meant, but alive.

"I was so sure she was dead."

Eleven hugged Jack back as best he could, then shook his head one more time, "She's happy."

He knew, just what the meta crisis Doctor said to her at Bad Wolf Bay, and he was glad for it. She needed to hear it, and the part of that man that was him needed to say it. Really, properly, say it. To this day, he still had difficulty with that word.

"She deserves it."

She did. More than anyone he knew, Rose Tyler deserved to be happy. And they'd been happy, once, the three of them. It had been belonging, family, things Jack had thought were never going to be his again.

It had hurt, to have that back, to lose it again. But there he was, with a Doctor who could hug him, could set aside that prejudice against what he'd become.

"Thank you, Doctor."

For telling him. But, more, for whatever part he'd played in making her safety the truth, rather than her death.

"Yes, she does."

Especially after everything she unknowingly did for him. Without Rose, the Doctor was sure he'd have spiraled down some long dark path.

As far as Jack went, maybe this Doctor was a little less sensitive to the 'fixed point' part of him. He was, after all his friend. And Eleven did stop by one or two of those stag parties over the years.

"You're welcome. Just don't tell the other mes."

There was maybe more similarity in that reasoning than either of them knew. It had been Rose, Rose's spark and light that drew Jack in, until he was where the Doctor could take him and teach him and the two of them could show him how much wonder he'd been missing.

"It'll be our secret."

After all, the fact that she'd been on that list of the dead was a secret, too, one he'd hated not sharing with the other Doctor, the one who'd been here with Rose, but ... that was the trouble with time travel. Some things, you couldn't share.

"I can live with thinking I'll never see her again if I just know that."

Eleven wasn't going to tell Jack that he would see Rose again, assuming he managed to get off of this ship. They all save the world together again and it was fun.

He was choosing to forget what happened afterward. For those few moments it was fun and everyone was happy.

"It's what happened. Rose and her family are all happy."

"And her family, too?"

Not that he'd ever had the pleasure of really meeting Jackie Tyler. But he'd heard enough about her to have an idea how much of London she'd have torn apart if she'd thought Rose had died.

(As much as Jack wanted to.)

"A happy ending for the Tylers, then."

He smiles into his glass, because it reminds him of a night long ago, when the Doctor had shouted that just this once, everybody lived. He hadn't been there to hear it, but in the giddy euphoria afterwards, he'd heard about it.

He can handle a happy ending for Rose.

Eleven wouldn't call meeting Jackie a pleasure per se, but she was Rose's mum so he could deal with it (most of the time, if he had something to eat beforehand.)

"When was the last time you saw me?"

It was best to get a handle on timelines now.

The Captain, in the bar

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