Chapter Text
The sand was cool and damp under his bare feet. Sand like this would show footprints, he knew, but as long as he got to the TARDIS before anyone thought to follow then it wouldn't matter. His ship had kept out the assembled hoardes of Genghis Khan; whatever forces had brought him to this place would fare no better.
Still, the relief he felt as he closed the TARDIS doors behind him was palpable, a weight off his shoulders. The weight was immediately replaced by a strange sense of right-wrong.
It was his ship - there was no doubting it. He recognised her light, her smell, her slight pressure differential. Every hum and buzz and click was long since engraved on his soul. Even her delight at his return was familiar, and yet there was... something…
He shook his head, scrubbing a hand over his face. Had he been drugged? Time Lord physiology was resilient, but drugging wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. And it would explain how he had come to be unconscious, lying in a bed that he'd never seen before, in a strange house by the ocean, on an unfamiliar sand planet.
Whatever had happened to him, he'd have to figure it out from the safety of the vortex, far beyond the reach of the perpetrators. Whoever they were.
He gave himself a brief moment to catch his breath, resting his weight against the console. His dash from the house had been far more taxing than it had any right to. Then he sucked in a reinforcing breath and righted himself. No time to dally!
It was the work of mere moments, scrambling around the central pillar, priming instruments and setting coordinates, all muscle memory and relief. Then he pulled the lever with a flourish and stepped back, triumphant in his flawless escape.
Nothing happened.
He waited a few more seconds, then, confused, checked all his inputs. They were correct. He tried the lever a second time.
Nothing continued to happen.
The sense of right-wrongness that he had noted earlier was building in the back of his head, an uncomfortable itch of a thought, but he pushed it to the side. Priorities! He had to get his ship working first, then he'd have plenty of time to examine the sensations more closely. He fiddled with the sliders, jiggled the cords, and pulled the lever again.
There was a slight shift of tone in the background hum, even as the TARDIS once again refused to engage the rotor. He stepped back, mentally reaching out to her in confusion. Her response was melancholy, reluctant, concerned. Apologetic? He rubbed his hand over his face again.
"Whatever's wrong with me, I will figure it out," he reassured her. "I just need to..."
A sudden knocking caught him off guard. He spun on the spot, nearly losing his balance in his haste.
One, two, three, four. Four knocks. That meant something... He was sure it meant something, something important... An unexpected and unwanted rush of conflicting emotions blossomed in his chest, but he pushed it aside through sheer willpower and turned his attention to the screen.
The image was small, but unmistakable. Jack. Of all people. Captain Jack Harkness, knocking on the TARDIS door.
Even on the tinny little display screen, the man's wrongness shone like torchlight. Was it his presence that was making everything feel so off? It would hardly be the first time... But then, if that were the case, surely the TARDIS would have been desperate to leave, not insisting on staying.
The Captain didn't appear to be fleeing anything sinister. There was no frantic pounding on the door, no desperate glances back towards the house. And the Doctor had given him a key, hadn't he? He was almost certain he had, although he couldn't for the life of him remember when or why. But if Jack did have a key, he wasn't using it. He was just standing there, knocking on the door and waiting to be let in.
He did look worried, though.
The Doctor flicked the control that allowed the TARDIS doors to unlock and swing open, but kept himself on the far side of the console. He wanted to maintain his distance, for reasons he couldn't quite identify or name.
Jack took it as an invitation, but not an enthusiastic one, stepping into the console room just far enough to let the doors close. His hands rested loosely in his pockets, his movements clearly telegraphed. It was a deliberate performance of nonchalance, designed to make him appear non-threatening. It implied an awareness of the Doctor's anxiety, but that made even less sense. Jack may have been unusual, may even have made the Doctor uncomfortable, but the Doctor had never seen him as any kind of genuine threat, and Jack knew it.
"Hey Doc," Jack said, still standing just inside the doorway and rocking slightly on his heels. "How are you doing?"
"I'm alright," the Doctor replied on autopilot. "I'm always alright Jack. You know that."
Jack responded with a small, wistful smile that was positively drenched in some unspoken sadness. Some of the worry he was carrying seemed to fade, but that still left plenty to spare.
"Good," he answered, "that's good." Then, with a very slight change of expression, he added, "Do you know what you're doing here?"
The Doctor narrowed his eyes in suspicion. That question seemed to be just a little bit too on point, given his current state of confusion. "I'm trying to get us into the vortex, but the TARDIS is refusing to cooperate."
Jack nodded, then traced his fingers lightly over one of the coral struts affectionately. The TARDIS's tone grew minutely louder, and her feelings shifted towards relief and gratitude, even over the lingering melancholy. That was new. Or... was it? New? This confusion, this ambivalence, was infuriating.
Jack smiled. "Is she now? Why would she do that, do you think?"
The Doctor's first, rather uncharitable thought, was that the two of them were somehow in this together, conspiring against him. But then he shook himself. Jack may be an uncommonly talented flirt, but there was no way he'd be able to turn the TARDIS against him, not after they'd been together for so long. There had to be something else at play.
"I don't know," he answered warily. "The controls are correct. Nothing's damaged. It's like she doesn't want me to leave yet."
Jack smiled at the explanation. "Maybe she's looking out for you? Same as always?" He looked around for a few moments, then looked back at the Doctor. "Do you know what planet you're on? How you got here?"
The questions made him feel twitchy, and not just because the answers to both of them was 'no'. Even trying to think about them for more than a second made his spine tingle and his brain itch. Whatever drugs he had been given, they were having a very unsettling effect.
"Do you?" he challenged back, choosing not to admit his own ignorance. Jack shrugged then nodded, leaning back against the blue panels on the wall. Blue? Came an intrusive thought; when did the walls turn blue?
All at once, the Doctor's patience wore through. He straightened, lowering his shoulders and stilling his face. Enough games. Time for answers.
"You're asking an awful lot of questions, Jack," he said, letting the first syllable of Jack's name pop as he spoke.
Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly, head bowed but looking up at him even so. "Yeah. I am. One more question then, if you'll humour me. Last one, I promise. And I really am genuinely sorry to have to ask you this, but... Doctor, what colour is your hair?"
The Doctor blinked, utterly lost by the non-sequitur.
"My hair?" he echoed, disbelieving. Jack simply nodded.
With a sudden, sickening sense of foreboding, the Doctor reached up to touch the tousled spikes of hair that he knew should be there, but at the same time knew he wouldn't find. The churning in his gut grew as he found not spikes, but flat, straight hair hanging down in what felt like a bob cut. He caught a lock of that hair between his fingers and brought it in front of his face.
Blonde.
A thousand moments assailed him all at once. A pretty, flirtatious girl wearing a Union Jack, which he instantly knew was wrong. A regeneration then, but still not right, and then another regeneration, and another, and falling, and blonde hair, and then the wall of memories hit her very much like a real wall would.
"Jack?" she asked, with sudden, bone deep terror, "What's happening?"
And then her legs gave out.
---
There were hands on her arms, holding her up, or maybe just slowing down her fall. Her knees landed on something hard, something like tile or glass or polished stone, and there was a sensation there but she couldn't name it because her head was screaming. Everything was sharp, and there were bright lights that weren't coming through her eyes because her eyes were closed, but somehow the light was everywhere anyway and she wanted to run, oh Rassilon did she want to run from them but she couldn't figure out where her legs were any more, she couldn't run and she couldn't see past the lights.
She could hear though, even if the sounds were garbled, like whale song or a recording of speech being played backwards. She reached for those sounds blindly, and something reached back. Then that something was surrounding her.
It was a fixed point, wrapped around her to create a fortress that not even the intertwining strands of temporal probability could penetrate. She breathed in, a gasp, and then the fixed point was rubbing between her shoulder blades.
"It's okay, you're safe," it said. "I've got you. Breathe through it. God, I'm sorry. Just keep breathing, it'll pass, I've got you."
It was Jack's voice. Jack's reassuring words, and Jack's hand on her back. She did as she was told, breathing with all the conscious control that she still had in reserve, which really wasn't a lot. The formerly merciless lights in her brain gradually faded to flickers, the sharp edges growing dull. In their place was a crippling exhaustion.
She was hot, shaky, and sick to her stomach.
She pressed herself further into Jack's timeless space. She felt what could only be Jack kissing the top of her head, then tucking her in under his chin. He was rocking her, she realised, very slowly and gently. Time slowed to molasses around them, and she breathed.
After some immeasurable period of silence, Jack's hand moved from her back to her shoulder and squeezed. "You back with me now?" The Doctor tried to do a quick self-assessment. She came up completely blank.
"I don't know," she answered, honestly.
"Well the fact that you can answer the question at all is probably a good start."
Jack carefully drew back from her and her stomach lurched. The time lines that Jack had been shielding her from rushed back all at once, and she instinctively squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her knuckles into her temples with a gasp.
"Oh, hey, hey. Sorry. Just..." The pain was already receding, but she gave him an irritated look nonetheless. Then immediately closed her eyes again, because the ship was so bright.
"I'm sorry Doctor," he tried again a few moments later, "but I really do need you to open your eyes for me. Can you do that? The TARDIS will turn down the lights."
Every instinct was telling her that was a very bad plan, but she obediently cracked first one eye open, then the other. The light was bright, but it wasn't the painful, burning light from before. It was just the normal light of the TARDIS console room, slightly dimmed.
Jack very gently took her chin and angled her head from side to side, watching her eyes track him. Apparently pleased with her performance, he moved his attention to her scalp, running quick fingers through her hair down to the base of her skull.
"Any sore spots?" he asked.
"Right now, pretty much all of me." Her confession seemed to evoke something between amusement and sadness from Jack, but no answers. He abandoned the head check, instead taking first one of her wrists and then the other. Checking her pulses, she realised. She was pretty sure they were still racing.
"Okay," Jack finally concluded, "looks like the worst part is over now. How are you feeling?"
"Confused."
"That's normal. It'll pass."
The Doctor nodded, but it was only from the force of habit. "What was that?" she asked again, hoping that a sufficiently broad question might this time earn her some kind of answer.
"You gave yourself a bit of a shock, that's all."
"A shock?" she echoed, first confused, then irritated. "A shock? I feel like someone just cracked my brain in two with a kaleidoscope. I woke up with my head stuck fifteen hundred years in my personal past. 'A bit of a shock' might be an understatement, Jack!"
Jack raised his hands in acquiescence. "Okay, right. Totally fair call. This was a rough one. But I promise you, you'll be okay."
She eyed him suspiciously. "How can you promise that? Do you know what's wrong with me? Do you know what's causing this?"
Jack nodded slowly. The Doctor waited, but when nothing more seemed to be forthcoming she narrowed her eyes even further. "I'm going to need you to explain, Jack. Right now."
Jack took a deep breath, leaning back to sit on his heels. He seemed suddenly very weary.
"A little while back, you discovered that someone had messed with your memory. They'd taken away parts of your past. Do you remember that? Don't think about it too hard, just... If it's there, it's there."
That idea did seem to have a certain ring of truth to it, even if the exact memories of it weren't forthcoming. She tilted her head to one side, then gave a very hesitant nod.
"Best as we can tell, you tried to get those memories back. Utterly harebrained plan, and that's coming from me. And of course it didn't entirely work out as you had planned."
The Doctor had a strange sense of presque vu. Everything he said felt painfully familiar, like something she already knew, a conversation they'd already had, and yet until the moment he said it it was unimaginably foreign to her.
"We're pretty sure you did actually get those memories back. Some of them, at least. But in doing so, you sort of... broke the memories you already had." Jack reached out to swipe a rogue hair away from her face, brushing his thumb over her temple in the process. "It's like your head's a million piece jigsaw puzzle, and half the pieces are made of glass. Sometimes you cut yourself while you're trying to put them back together."
The Doctor swallowed. She closed her eyes, turning her senses inward in an attempt to confirm Jack's explanation. She still felt raw, but the closer she looked, the sharper the pain felt. She nudged a particularly sensitive thought, and her eyes flew open as her whole body stiffened in shock.
"Hey, what did I just say about the glass?" Jack reprimanded, somehow managing to sound both exasperated and sympathetic. "Just try and hold yourself in the moment for now, if you can. It'll pass, but you've got to let it settle."
She pressed her lips tight, and her eyebrows scrunched of their own accord. Waiting was the exact opposite of her style. She didn't want to stay in the moment. She didn't want to hold herself anywhere while things settled. She wanted answers, and she wanted to know the right questions to get them. She also very much wanted her head to stop hurting and her hearts to stop racing.
She gave a little exhalation of frustration, and felt an answering squeeze to her hand.
"Where are we?" she asked eventually. It seemed like it ought to be a safe enough question, as questions went - very much 'in the moment', as Jack had recommended.
Jack glanced around briefly, then looked at her with that same expression he'd had a few minutes earlier when he was checking her pupils. "We're in the TARDIS, Doc. Your TARDIS."
She huffed in frustration. "I can see that. Where is she parked?" Then, as an afterthought, she added, "There was sand?"
Jack nodded, apparently appeased, and released her hand. "We're in a safe place. An empty world, nothing historic scheduled here for another hundred years or so. Just you, me, Yaz, and the local crustacean population."
She latched onto that last data point as something she could at least start reasoning about. "Crustaceans?" she repeated, hoping for details.
"Don't worry," Jack smiled reassuringly, "strictly the non-sentient, edible kind. Gotta say, they make an amazing soup. It was one of my favourite things in the universe, growing up."
The Doctor let that thought bounce around in her head for a moment. It didn't seem to be hitting anything too sharp. But it did hit something relevant.
"When you were growing up? We're on the Boeshane Peninsula?" Jack smiled, and it felt somehow easier than his earlier smiles.
"There, see? Things are settling back into place already. Yep, Boeshane, 53rd century. About 150 years after I left, and around 70 since the last of the population decided their futures lay elsewhere. Like I said, completely empty, completely safe."
She nodded, a small amount of the background panic easing with the thought. Then something else he'd said flickered through her consciousness. "Yaz?" she prompted.
"Do you remember Yaz?"
She nodded, affronted. Of course she remembered Yaz. Then she reconsidered, because in all honesty she hadn't, just a few minutes earlier. The recollection sent a sharp spike of something through her head, and she locked her jaw against the pain.
Jack reached out, resting his hand feather-light over the tensed muscles. "Hey, don't try to reach for it. If it comes easily then let it come, but don't... Don't try to force anything. It'll be there when it's ready, I promise."
She twisted her face away, but caught his hand as he withdrew, twining their fingers and squeezing through the pain behind her eyes. He squeezed back, and true to his word she felt the pain begin to fade.
"Yaz is safe?" she asked through still gritted teeth.
"She's fine. Probably fretting about you and acting stoic about it. She's still in the house."
The house she remembered. Or at least, she remembered running from it.
"How long?" she asked, realising the criticality of that question. Jack's smile chilled, forced.
"Not long," he covered, as though he thought she couldn't tell.
"Jack," she said. Her thoughts on evading the question were implied entirely by tone. Jack sighed again.
"Earth measurement, probably about eight months. Days are a bit longer here. Still, compared to our lifetimes, barely a moment."
The number shocked her, and then it didn't. Jack was right of course, eight months was nothing for people with lives like theirs. But they weren't alone on this planet.
"For me and you, maybe, Jack. Not Yaz. You need to take her home. We can find her again when I'm fixed, I'm sure she'll understand."
Jack raised his eyebrows at her. "Trust me, that's not the first time you've had that thought. Yaz understands just fine, and no matter how many times you try to explain it to her, she's still not going to agree. What do you say we save ourselves the fight just this one time?"
The Doctor didn't remember the fights, but probability and personality definitely suggested that Jack’s assertions were correct. She nodded reluctantly.
"You said she was in the house?"
"Yeah. Are you ready to go back, let her know you're not running away from us today?"
"Not for lack of trying," she grumbled, side-eyeing the console.
"The old girl's looking out for you, just like the rest of us. What do you think would have happened if you'd been all alone in the Vortex when you realised who you weren't, hmm?"
There was no point in arguing with him about that, which was especially annoying.
"House. Yaz." the Doctor said, decisively, using Jack's sturdy frame to push herself back up to her feet. If it was going to have to happen anyway, it may as well be on her terms.
----
The sun was high above the horizon now, and the sand that had previously been cool and damp was now hot enough to burn the soles of her feet. Jack had offered to carry her, then very quickly offered instead to find some spare shoes in the TARDIS after she had made her feelings on that plan clear. By the time she'd made it half way back to the house though, she was seriously considering whether she had made the wrong choice. For all that she'd been awake for mere hours at this point, every part of her ached with exhaustion.
She held her tongue when Jack slowed his pace to match hers, and wrapped one arm supportively around her waist. If nothing else, it meant that she didn't have to worry quite so much about falling if she were to trip over her own feet.
Jack didn't immediately open the door when they finally made it to the house though, looking to her instead. "Whenever you're ready, Doctor," he invited, nodding towards the handle.
She stared at it for a moment, steeling herself. She'd not been gone long. An hour, maybe two? Not like the last time. Not like that time with the ten months. Surely Yaz would understand? She hadn't been herself, or, well, not her right self....
Yaz was on her feet the moment the door opened, then hastily tried to cover her jumpiness by turning to mess with the kettle on the kitchen bench. "Doctor?" she asked, with all the apparent nonchalance of someone who was working extremely hard to appear nonchalant.
"Yaz," the Doctor replied, and Yaz put down the kettle and looked back at her with a relieved smile.
"Alright then?" she checked, and the Doctor nodded. Nodding was easier than speaking. Yaz fumbled again with the kettle. "Good. Tea? Kettle's hot."
The Doctor's addled brain stalled at the question. Did she want tea? She thought maybe she did, but even thinking about the effort required to hold the cup felt insurmountable. She looked to Jack, who seemed to correctly interpret her dilemma.
"Let's see how we feel when it's made up?" he answered for her. Yaz deflated a little - resigned, but not surprised. This was clearly a scenario they'd played through before.
"So who were you this time?" Yaz asked, as Jack settled the Doctor down into a chair.
"Suit and sneakers," Jack answered for her again.
"Good. That's good," she replied, apparently able to interpret that rather pithy description of her former self. The sentiment sparked something in the Doctor though.
"Was it?" she asked, churlishly. None of the things she'd just experienced had any right to be called 'good'.
Yaz turned, wide eyed. "I didn't mean... It's just... Reckon it's easier, isn't it? When it's a you who recognises Jack. When you know you can trust him?"
Everyone went quiet then, until Jack pointedly cleared his throat. "Tea, Yaz?" he reminded her, and she looked so relieved to have something to distract her that the Doctor felt a bit guilty about snapping. Jack then turned his attention to the Doctor, catching her gaze and holding it like what he was about to say was really important. Or maybe just like she was really important.
"You can drink the tea or not, Doctor. That's your call. But then we need to get you back to bed. I know it doesn't feel like it, but the confusion really will resolve a lot better and faster if you sleep the worst of it off."
"I only just woke up," she protested, but they both knew it was a token effort. She felt utterly wretched, and she was pretty certain it showed. Damn this face and its complete inability to disguise her emotional state.
Jack cupped her cheek for just a second, pairing the gesture with a sympathetic smile, and then she was being handed tea. Her senses buzzed at the scent, so much so that when Jack offered to help her raise the cup to her lips she didn't even protest. After a few sips though, she shook her head at him and they put the cup down.
"Sleep?" she prompted, and Jack was more than ready to oblige.
She didn't recognise the room. Not exactly. She knew it from waking up there, but there was a strange undertone of ill-defined familiarity. It was a disconcerting feeling. She hovered in the doorway.
"I don't..." Her words failed her, her tired brain not quite keeping up. She looked to Jack imploringly.
"You don't want to sleep?" he suggested, and she shook her head.
"Not here," she clarified, then for good measure, "it... smells?"
Jack sniffed audibly, then looked at her with uncertainty. She gave herself a moment to think, hunting for the words she needed and assembling them into a sensible order.
"It smells like waking up afraid."
Jack scanned the room, the unmade bed and the open window and the boots that she'd failed to put on when she made her earlier escape. "I guess you can sleep in my room while we wash your sheets. Fair warning though, it almost certainly smells like me. Not sure if that's better or worse."
"It's better," she said automatically, then mentally face-palmed as she realised who she was talking to. Jack laughed, then gave her a flirtatious wink.
"All these years, Doc. I always suspected."
"Stop it," she pouted, playing her part in a script that was so familiar she didn't even need to think about it.
"Come on then. My bedchamber awaits."
She was right, of course. Jack's bed was better. And not just because it didn't smell like fear. Jack's fifty-first century pheromones may not have had their intended aphrodisiac effect on her, but they were deeply familiar. Reassuring all the way back to the primitive parts of her hind brains. Her mind calmed. Her thoughts were coming a little easier now.
She breathed deeply into the pillow, then looked at Jack. He was looking fond. Fond and a bit smug. It was an extremely irritating combination. A thought occurred, apropos of nothing.
"You said I got my stolen memories back?"
Jack raised an eyebrow at the sudden change in topic, but nodded. She scrunched her face up in thought.
"How can you tell?"
A third expression joined the fond and the smug. One she couldn't quite find a name for. Jack sat himself down on the edge of the bed, and she budged herself over a way to make him some space.
"Sometimes," he began, slowly, like he was still finding his words, "you're a version of you who knows me. And sometimes you're not."
"Right. But that doesn't exactly prove anything. Even when I wasn't all... disorganised... There were loads of me's before I met you."
Jack nodded. "Right. And I'm getting to know a lot of them pretty well these days. But that's not really the point. The point is that sometimes... Sometimes you're a version of you who knows me, but by a different name. A name I stopped using well before we met."
The Doctor swallowed. That was a thought that had implications.
"You told me once that you were missing memories."
"Yes."
"You blamed the Time Agency."
"I did."
"And you're sure that you don't remember..."
"Nope."
"Oh."
Jack rested a hand on her pyjama'd knee. "Look, we don't need to sort this out right now Doc. You're exhausted, we're safe. There's no rush."
A part of her wanted to argue. According to Jack, they'd been at this for months already. They needed answers, not more delays. But between her exhaustion and Jack's expression, she just couldn't find it in herself to push.
She rested her hand an inch or two above her knee, just close enough that her pinkie finger was touching Jack's. She chewed idly at her lip.
"What if I sleep now, and I wake up wrong." She took a shaky breath. "What if I get lost again?"
Jack's pinkie curled itself up and around hers.
"Then I'll find you," he assured her. "I'm getting pretty good at it these days."
"No," she argued, some of that earlier fear curling back in her gut, "what if..."
"Hey," he interrupted her, "I'll always find you, Doctor. No matter how lost you get. No matter how well you hide. I will turn the entire universe upside down if I have to. If you need me, I'll be there."
She rubbed her free hand over her face, pressing thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridge of her nose. "What if, when you find me, I'm not the person you thought I was?"
Jack didn't even hesitate, didn't even blink.
"Then I look forward to getting to know you again. Doesn't change anything."
There wasn't an inch of doubt in him that the Doctor could sense. It was almost overwhelming, how sincere the sentiment was.
"Promise?" she asked, embarrassingly aware of how needy it made her sound. She'd feign selective amnesia in the morning - it seemed pretty plausible, under the circumstances.
"On my life, Doctor. On all my lives."
"That is a lot of lives," she acknowledged, offering him a small, tired smile. It was apparently the right thing to do, because he almost glowed in response.
She couldn't be certain if it was the exhaustion, or the pheromones on the pillowcase, or that shockingly earnest expression on his face, but she believed him. Really, completely believed.
She curled into the blankets and closed her eyes.
"Good night Jack. And thank you."
"Any time Doc, any time."