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The Doctor woke only a few short hours later and found himself positively disappointed at his lack of dreams. He'd spent years asleep without dreams, and now, when he really wanted them, he still had nothing. No memories, no twisting nightmares, not even a good brain-dump of nonsensical mental garbage. Just nothing. He was asleep next to Jack on the bed, and then he was awake.
He sighed. His memory was still swiss-cheesed with missing parts of the last two hundred years, but there seemed to be more gaps filled in. And that was something, wasn't it? It meant maybe a few more nights of dreamless sleep and he'd be back to himself completely.
He just hoped there weren't more memories like Mars to discover.
He looked over to Jack, asleep next to him. This was what Jack loved the most, he said. Not sleeping alone. Not being alone. In that instant, the Doctor understood it.
The Doctor woke only a few short hours later and found himself positively disappointed at his lack of dreams. He'd spent years asleep without dreams, and now, when he really wanted them, he still had nothing. No memories, no twisting nightmares, not even a good brain-dump of nonsensical mental garbage. Just nothing. He was asleep next to Jack on the bed, and then he was awake.
He sighed. His memory was still swiss-cheesed with missing parts of the last two hundred years, but there seemed to be more gaps filled in. And that was something, wasn't it? It meant maybe a few more nights of dreamless sleep and he'd be back to himself completely.
He just hoped there weren't more memories like Mars to discover.
He looked over to Jack, asleep next to him. This was what Jack loved the most, he said. Not sleeping alone. Not being alone. In that instant, the Doctor understood it.
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"Yes," he said, quietly. "I remember all of it."
But why would he be allowed to forget that? There was the brief not-bliss that was ignorance when he was first resurrected, and now there was just a cold memory and the emptiness of the time he'd been dead. Jack's emptiness.
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He fell back to his back andooked up at the ceiling, closing his eyes. When he opened them he stared up at nothingness, focusing on the coral up above.
"I killed him," he told him, quietly. "I killed him with my bare hands. Well, no. I hurt him and I let him die. I left him to die because he'd left you to die."
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"Revenge---"
He opened his eyes and turned to look at Jack, sad and serious. "Revenge doesn't solve anything, Jack. Nothing at all."
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"It's not the first time I've told you," he said. "I used to sit and," he turned his eyes towards him, "it was almost like a diary, I guess. And I guess I thought if I could talk to you it was like pretending you were still there. I could imagine what you'd say back." He let out an empty laugh. "And it wasn't always good."
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He gave Jack a small smile. "If I tell you I did the same to you, when you were sleeping in that room, would you believe me?"
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He reached his hand out slightly, placing it on the bed in the space between them, his fingers out towards him.
"I'd believe you," he said quietly.
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He closed his eyes. He let his own memories of talking to Jack filter to the surface. The many days of just sitting there and going on and on, as if he could pretend Jack was listening. He kept the sad days, the bad days, he kept those down and buried. Jack didn't need to see the way the Doctor had been when things were very hard.
And he waited for Jack to offer his own memories.
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He took a deep breath as he started to see. To see what the Doctor saw. He recognised it, and recognised how it had helped him too. Oh it was strange how similar they both were, wasn't it? How they'd become over time.
Offering his own was hard because none of them were easy. None of them were good. But he tried. There were times where he sat there just talking. Sat there crying or monologuing at him. Times he held his hand and spoke of the day's repair works, carefully detailing them out to him, precise and important. And then there were the days he sat there with a bottle in his hand and tears in his eyes, wearing himself out until he slept on the floor.
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The Doctor wanted to delve deeper. He wanted to see how bad the alcohol addiction went. He wanted to see just how terribly Jack suffered, so he'd know what he had to atone for. He had, after all, spent too many years running, and too many people were left behind to suffer.
Like Bea.
He pushed that memory back before it surfaced too far, before Jack saw too much of her.
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Without even meaning to, his own mind shut like a book.
He leaned back to the side, looking again at the ceiling, but he didn't pull his hand away. He took a deep breath.
"I'm sorry," he said, quietly. "I keep on failing you."
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And then, Jack's mind was gone.
"It's not you," he said, staying where he was, afraid that moving would break the dam he'd set up holding himself in. And he was doing so well, too.
"At least she wasn't alone," he said. "There's very little that's worse than dying alone."
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The statement cut harshly. Dying alone, the worst thing, and because of Jack the Doctor had to go through that.
"I think I thought it'd be easy," he said. "I was so focussed on getting you back, I thought--- I guess I didn't think enough."
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Vengeance was wrong. The Doctor needed to remind himself of that over and over again, but the image of Bea dead next to Jack was now burned into his mind. Something killed her. Something was chasing them. It was time they figured out what it was.
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"You know..." it was hard to say anything at all, because it was hard to even admit. But then maybe he had to.
"It wasn't just-- the reason I never left the TARDIS. I think... I think I'd have gone too far. I think I still could."
He turned then, looked at him. "I think we both could. We need to make sure we don't."
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Which was something the Doctor could've very easily done. He still could very easily do. He was almost the Valeyard once in this incarnation. It could happen again if he wasn't careful.
"We'll find justice, you and me." He gave Jack a small, tight smile. "Together."
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He pushed that part of him aside. "Nah, we're too good," he said. "You and me? Save the universe more than the average teenager saves concert tickets. No, no, we'll...travel. We'll sort out the storms later. Once we've got our wits about us."
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"I think the universe can wait a bit," he admitted. "Lets start by saving each other."
And that, he supposed, was the crux of what he was saying. What he was asking.
"Please."
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He raised Jack's hand to his lips and pressed a kiss against the palm.
"You sleep," he said. "We'll work on saving each other tomorrow."
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But it was there. It was there in the words and in the lack of them, and Jack wondered if what he'd done had worked at all. He hadn't stopped the Doctor from dying. He might have brought him back, but he hadn't saved him.
He'd failed. He didn't know how he knew it, but he did. He'd failed.
For a long moment, he just looked at him, and then he nodded, sighed, and turned on his side, away from him, staring at the wall. He couldn't rest.
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After a time he moved from the bed and went to pick up the shattered teapot and tray. He looked at the pieces and thought that they couldn't really be any more metaphorical if they tried.
It was going to be a long night.
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And so it was that he realised what was so hard about lying there like that. He needed to speak to him. Every day for almost five years he'd spoken to him; the Doctor, lying dead but there, not quite listening, but his outlet. His way of surviving. It was, he supposed, almost like therapy.
He found himself wanting to be there now. He wanted to be in the zero room, his hand in the Doctor's, and talking.
Though of course if he scratched the surface, he'd know that wasn't what he wanted either. What he wanted was his Doctor, and he wasn't at all sure if he was there any more.