#ninejackrose

("how old are you?" he asks her.

"i'm nineteen," she says. she's not a child.

he's seen children half her age kill and be killed. when she publishes her article - not in the dinky little paper she'd been writing for, but a real outlet, one nines had told her to pitch to - he reads it. it's good work.)

he doesn't need an assistant. he doesn't need a writer. but it was fun, working with someone again. he'd forgotten how fun it was, working with someone ... he hadn't had that since doboj ...

nines takes rose to freetown, because the civil war is over and the elections are going to happen within a few years, so there's plenty of news but the likelihood that they're going to get killed is a little lower. rose takes to it like a fish to water. they're gone for about a year.

("i called, mum," rose tries to explain. "when i first left. you hung up!"

jackie makes an incoherent noise. the speechlessness doesn't last.

"here you are, going off with some pervy old man to africa -" her mum snaps, and rose interrupts.

"it was sierra leone, mum, not africa," she says. "not like, the whole continent. i was with a real journalist! i was perfectly safe."

nines chooses not to comment.)

they're in afghanistan when they meet jack. they rescue him from where he's holed up in a burnt-out jeep, close to death from dehydration. he's clever and charming and oddly sweet and quite handsome when he's not near dying. he's also fiercely loyal to them, since they've saved him.

when rose looks up captain jack harkness, she finds a picture of a dead american soldier with a face that isn't their jack, k.i.a. two months ago.

("it's stolen valor, yeah?" she asks nines.

nines is quiet for a long time. "might be," he says. "hard to say.")

Jack scrambles to his feet, automatically checks both the weapons that are lying on the floor next to him – full chambers, and he remembers them being empty – and tears down the empty hallways in search of that fucking alien.

He makes it around the corner just in time to see the TARDIS – again, wrong, the Doctor sent it away, he sent it away with Rose, he got her out – whirring, glowing, readying to take off –

Jack staggers to a stop, still double-fisting a pistol and a machine gun.

This is it, then. They're leaving. They're leaving without him.

He knew it was gonna happen, one day. He'd be too slow to get back to home base – or there'd be other things that would take precedence – or they'd just get tired of having him around. Whatever. Jack wasn't the kind of person people stuck around for.

The door of the TARDIS flings open, a pale golden glow shining through. From inside that light, the Doctor's voice says, "Well, are you coming or not?"

: :

Inside, Jack puts down the guns. He doesn't really know whether he should sit down or not, but he's got too much nervous energy to stay still right now. He kind of paces the inner console room of the TARDIS, bouncing around like a buzzed kid.

He can't stop smiling.

They won. Okay, so it's not just that they won: also, Jack's not dead; also, no one important is dead; and they waited for him. He doesn't entirely understand how any part of that happened, but there's an old saying about looking gifts in the big mouth or something.

Rose is sitting down, wrapped in the Doctor's coat – the first time Jack has ever seen him without it, actually. She's grinning up at Jack, all teeth and bright lips and huge soft eyes.

"What happened?" Jack asks, at the same time the Doctor says, "Are you sure you're alright?"

He's not talking to Jack.

"I feel fine," Rose tells them both. "I don't feel even a bit off, I swear."

"You should," the Doctor says. "Your little human mind isn't capable of comprehending the powers you accessed."

Rose shrugs, still smiling widely. "Maybe I'm just tougher'n you," she says.

Jack looks from one to the other. "… what happened?" he asks, again.

The Doctor stalks over to stand next to Jack, glowering down at Rose, sitting below them. Jack thinks it would be intimidating, except that concern radiates from every line of his body.

"Rose looked into the heart of the TARDIS," he says. "Into her soul."

"Like you told us not to?" Jack asks.

"Like I told you not to!" the Doctor snaps.

Rose blinks up at them. "I feel fine," she insists. "I don't even really remember it. I mean, just flashes, I suppose – like a dream. And then the Doctor was pulling me back into the TARDIS, and I was me again."

"You again?" Jack asks. He has some experience with that. "Instead of who?"

"Bad wolf," Rose says, and a shiver runs down Jack's spine.

"What did you do? Or – bad wolf," Jack says. "What did bad wolf do?"

Rose closes her big pretty eyes.

"She gave the Daleks a stern talking-to," the Doctor says. Jack snorts. Then the Doctor adds, "And she saved your life."

"What?" Jack says, struck dumb.

"Yes," Rose says, without opening her eyes. She looks tired. "Saved you. That's what I did."

Jack stares at her. Then he looks at the Doctor, who is looking back at him with a funny expression, one that Jack isn't used to seeing on the alien's face.

"Well," he says eventually. "Thanks for that. I appreciate it."

Rose's eyelashes flutter open again and her mouth quirks up. Jack wants to touch it, and he thinks he's allowed to, so he does. He moves slow, telegraphing it, watching to see if she flinches away. She doesn't.

"Where are we going?" Rose ask the Doctor. Her lips brush Jack's fingers when she speaks.

"Barcelona," the Doctor says. He hasn't moved away, either; he's close enough that Jack can feel the warmth of his body through the thin sweater he always wears and the shirt Jack's wearing. "Not the city, the planet. I've been wanting to take you."

Do Time Lords run hotter than humans? Jack wonders. Is this normal? Is he going insane? He used to be so good at this.

"Sounds terrific," Rose says. "Jack, have you ever been to Barcelona-the-planet?"

She turns her big-eyed gaze on him, and he swears he can see gold in her eyes. Looking at her, standing there next to the Doctor, inside the TARDIS, it's like he's on the edge of something terrifying and exhilarating and dangerous and beautiful. Like catching his ship in a slipstream and having no choice but to ride it out.

"No," Jack says, helpless.

Rose grins at him, delighted.