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The Doctor is ancient and the weight of so many years of regrets and mistakes pull at her in like an event horizon. Usually people help, ordinary people (which are the best sort). When the Doctor surrounds herself with bright young humans the dark pull lessens and she feels alive and useful and whole. But it always ends. And even after millennia the Doctor hasn’t figured out how to be alone. That’s not the exact problem really, because even with the bright people near she feels that tug, intangible, enduring - loneliness.

Yeah, that’s the word. Loneliness plucks at the doctor’s being, has for centuries, and doesn’t it make sense now that she knows her own truth – an abandoned child, exploited, orphaned. The creeping quiet of loneliness is sneaky and sometimes stifling. When she stops for just a second –adventure, danger, rambling – when she stops it’s like looking right into eternity alone. Paralyzing.

No escape here and now. She feels marginated from reality in this empty cell with nothing to ground her. It is so quiet her pulse murmurs in her ears so she covers them with pale fists but the thrum strengthens in the vacuum.

Some of her-selves were more resilient to being alone, more accepting of that state. Embraced inevitably.

Some tried to erase the sensation, created a family, grandchild, grandparents, companions, anyone.

Some of her-selves burned the world down when there was no one there to stop her.

Her lives are strands of rope weaved together yet separate, and it’s too long now, she’s reached the fag-end.

In Judoon prison there are no friends (she’s dead to them) or family to mourn her or miss her or save her. And after weeks of shouting and prying and plotting and planning the true inescapable fact that she is alone and imprisoned and there is no mystery to solve and no wall to break and really no way out, it hits her. Alone. Forsaken.

She is thousands (billions?) of years old but rather than resilience, her age has only sharpened her brittleness. Feelings get worse when you’re old, emotions all complex and layered, memories tinted with loss. The long years have taught her what to dread.

And she does dread it. Thousands of years of memories and people and deaths and lives to sort through when you are alone. And her own life, a lie in so many ways.

She’s dull, dazed, unable to rise without greatest effort, unable to think clearly. A crushing idleness.

She should rescue herself, break out, she’d punched through an azbantium wall so surely she can escape this prison. The universe is out there and needs her. It always needs her. There’s always a way to survive.

Gradually over months the escape attempts stutter. The rambling and plotting peters out. She winds down like an unloved grandfather clock no one cares to set. Her own death knoll is close. Eventually she sprawls in the cell entirely apathetic.

A thought is forefront in her mind towards the end. Why do I exist? No, nothing so existential as why the Doctor exists, but why her? Why didn’t she end with the Scotsman? There was no point to what she’d endured in this regeneration. The brief buoyancy of adventures with her fam overshadowed by her planet’s burning and the Master and the revelation that she is a lie. And now a life in prison. Pointless.

That’s when she completely stops: Eating, moving, living. A shallowly breathing body in a cold cell. Nutrient patches applied twice a week by hooded Judoon guards and a computerized decontamination burst every 31 hours.

Her physiology is powerful and she hates that now. Sores heal even as they form. Limb contracture is limited and the starvation activates a metabolic hibernation rather than death. How can someone look whole superficially when they are so fractured within?

What would they think? (Pick anyone). What would her enemies think or her past selves, her friends or her fam, lying here, a geriatric lump of flesh and cloth and questions, resigned to her fate. She feels every second her age and the years crush her.

She doesn’t want to die, not really, but she would appreciate at this point not existing. Her entire life a lie.

Time passes with horrible clarity because she is a Time Lord after all (well, perhaps not) and it is as sharp a sense as smell or taste or fear.

She should care that she’s not moved for weeks. That she’s in the same clothes she’s worn for months. That she’s thin and sick now, even despite her biology. They could leave the door open and she wouldn’t be able to escape. She doesn’t care. Because her own mother murdered her time and time again. Her own people exploited her and looked her in the eye knowing what they’d done. Who could care about anything after that?

Regeneration, she has some control over it by now. This will be her final one. Her lips slope sardonically when she thinks that. Her first movement in a while.

Her vision is going. The iris is a muscle like any other, with lack of use they’ve atrophied. She’s almost blind. But there is nothing to see anyway.

Until.

There is a noise at her cell door. Her hearing is stuffy now but it could be boot-steps. A voice maybe? Yes, several actually, one with a grating accent, the others soft and familiar.

She squints towards the noise but doesn’t move, can’t by now. Her form is coiled loosely with arms crossed close under yellow braces that her best friends picked out for her.

Don’t care. Caring hurts. It doesn’t matter what it is. She is close now to a death that will not miraculously end in yellow fire and bursting artron energy. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

A hesitant touch at her shoulder, non-threatening, barely any pressure. More blurry words. Shift her on her back. It feels good, such relief to be repositioned, why hadn’t she done this before? But pain too, immense. Hm, maybe that’s why. Well, nothings hurts as bad as dying, right?

Limbs limp and eyelids low.

Do what you will.

Something WRONG is near her, a paradox, aberration. It touches her bare skin so she flinches. She tries to protest, to repel it. Don’t touch me.

Different fingers gently brush her neck and this feels acceptable, not great but bearable. The nutrient patch is removed. A guard then, time for another fill up.

The inflamed skin is soothed by weathered, gentle fingertips that smell like clean soap. Words so soft and friendly. This isn’t a guard. Without meaning to she starts to care a bit.

She is Not Alone for the first time in months.

So much effort, but so worth it, when she tightens her gaze to focus on her three best friends and Captain Jack sitting there beside her. Close enough to touch.

She feels light headed and she thinks she would rather die a hundred deaths than have this be an illusion.

“Fam.” She says quietly, surprised she can speak. Her voice is like glass.

Right then she vows to spend the rest of their lives with them.

She immediately thinks of Donna and stifles a sob. Her best mate, that same thought – together forever. Maybe this can end differently.

Not every story is a tragedy.

…

Graham is impressed that events are going so smoothly. Their adventures with the Doctor never did, so it comes as a shock that other trekkers in time and space have a better track record.

Jack’d shown up out of the blue, all smiles and nods and quips. He couldn’t have brought gladder tidings: the Doctor had survived the death particle. However, she’d been imprisoned for something secret and dark and mysterious. He’d gotten her cleared somehow and then come to collect her ‘companions’ to go with him, needed the extra hands and needed the other-Tardis to get to the prison. Wanted to bring faces she would be happy to see.

Now, finally, they are stood outside the cell door of a Judoon prison cell. Yaz clutches an oversized canvas bag labelled ‘Doctor, The. Pocket contents’. She looks sick with worry.

Graham files inside last, desire and dread warring. The cell is small and lit only by silver starlight and empty except for a figure on the floor. Their dear Doc.

No wait. He falters like he’s stubbed a toe. No, Jack didn’t get it right, after all.

Because there is no way that’s the Doc.

Or? No, he doesn’t want it to be.

The being in this cell radiates hopelessness and illness. The suggestion of prominent bones jut sharply under dull clothing. Its syncopated breaths are a struggle. Light hair reflects silver starlight but the eyes are shadows. There is no reaction to its visitors except a mild exacerbation of the strained gasps. It is alive, just.

They pause in confusion and horror, this almost feels illicit – their Doctor would not want them witness to this. Jack creeps forward even though he’s the least qualified to identify her. He’d warned them about this possibility, that she may be tortured or hurt or even changed into an entirely new person, because the Doctor may be extraordinary but she’s still assailable. Jack’s awe in her is tempered and Graham wonders why.

Jack pauses halfway there, squatting with a beseeching hand towards her. She doesn’t move so he turns and asks Graham, of all people, “Is it her?” He manages to sound reluctant and hopeful simultaneously and Graham wonders which answer the man really wants.

Graham gapes, opens and closes his mouth like an unattractive fish. “Well.” He looks to the kids for help but Yaz is speechless and Ryan looks simply nauseated so they don’t do anything but stand there frozen.

He’ll have to get closer and he feels cowardly that he wants nothing to do with this poor prisoner. Because if it isn’t her? They can’t leave this thing here, suffering, alone - they will have to help it (which will be time spent). But if this is her...

“Come on now.” Graham doesn’t want to do this alone. Yeah, he’s the oldest but that doesn’t make him qualified or anything, and his heart is feeling strained and arrhythmic.

The light twinkling weakly from distant stars sparkles off a layer of frost coating the figure and everything is in shades of gray. Soft breaths rise in billowing puffs of mist. The cold is cloying and cruel and he wonders what the point of it is. Punishment? Restraint?

He glances over at his grandson and wants to spare him this; Ryan looks resigned now - he’s too used to losing people he loves. Yaz has on the most steely face he’s ever seen like she’s erected a screen to filter this. Despite that she is pale and trembling and her eyes are so wide he sees the body mirrored on their reflective surfaces.

Time to open Schrodinger’s box. Graham painstakingly kneels beside the body, squinting in the twilight. Its face is downturned so first he studies the clothing, brushes at the layer of frost a bit. And the clothes are exactly right; no one else in the universe would sport a rainbow lapelled coat, blue culottes and yellow braces with juvenile blue stripy socks.

He licks his lips, nods shakily but wants to be sure. He sweeps the hair back, careful not to make skin contact. He contorts a bit downward and looks at her fully for the first time in weeks and feels a soaring sensation he can’t name. Elation and compassion and fear and love. It is her, their Doctor. He nods several times and has to force himself to stop.

Everyone kneels now, hands reaching but restraining from contact.

“Doctor!” Yaz exclaims over and over in a whisper as Ryan groans, “Oh my days.”

Silently Jack tugs her a bit to roll her supine and Yaz starts to protest, first aid training kicking in, but it’s too late. Graham follows the movement so he doesn’t leave her eye line.

Her features, her clothing, her presence - dreamed of for months - and here she is, so familiar it makes him catch. But so changed too. The usually radiant eyes are filmy and look without seeing. Her face is sharp bones, hollow cheeks, and white lips. Her shining earrings are missing and at that realization he absurdly tears up. He wants her to be whole and healthy and indefinably her because he loves her like family.

Yaz and Ryan are offering her encouragements and Jack endearments but Graham settles for simplicity – that way she’ll know it’s him. “Hey, Doc, love, I’ve missed you.” He chances a bit of skin contact and brushes the shell of one ear, unsure, unqualified for this.

She doesn’t respond. Her empty eyes stare at him like he’s the most uninteresting bore in the galaxy. They are all as near as four friends can be and she doesn’t even move or smile.

Graham feels sick. She is alive, right? Sort of. They need a doctor, an actual doctor.

“What do you reckon, drugs or summit else?” Ryan looks to him for an answer.

He works his jaw and admits, “I dunno, son. Alien coma? Hypothermia?”

Between them Jack hasn’t stopped speaking and soothing and coddling her like a long lost friend. When he takes her cold hands in his and kisses her knuckles one by one, she makes a soft noise of pain or distress or something and tries to twitch away. He pulls back and his face is desperate. “Doctor, please, I’ve looked everywhere, everywhen, for you. I need you. Come back.”

Graham doesn’t know anything about Jack and probably shouldn’t have followed him blindly into this rescue, but he gets the impression of a deep history between the two. And he’s glad the Doctor has another person out there (friend? Lover? Brother?), because she seems so utterly alone in the universe.

The plea works somewhat. Her joints actually creak when she shifts a bit and her eyes flicker to catch the light as her gaze collimates. She murmurs something alien and musical.

“Hey gorgeous, I’ve missed you.” Jack soothes. The man is crying openly now and smiling and hugging her arm carefully. He leans over her and chastely kisses the corner of her chapped lips then turns away to keep his tears from soaking her. He looks as pained as though he’s the one on the floor dying.

“What’s wrong with her?” Ryan mutters hollowly. No on answers because no one knows.

Yaz seems determined for action. She gingerly rolls the Doctor’s socks down and the trouser legs up, ostensibly to check for injuries but probably just as much to Do Something.

Graham selfishly doesn’t want to be the one to find a grisly injury, again a coward. But he rests one hand on her jawline feather-light and runs the other gently around her neck and head looking for wounds. Catching on, Ryan fumbles down each of her arms while Jack palpates her sides more harshly then Graham likes.

She doesn’t respond to the exam at all, and usually the Doctor dislikes touch, but Graham thinks she would understand.

“What’s this?” He has found a small sticky patch on her neck and peels it off, worried about drugs.

Jack takes it and sniffs. “Nutrient patch, empty, due for a change ages ago.” He chucks it away.

“They forgot about her? Don’t they care for prisoners here?” Yaz asks, dismayed, outraged.

“They do usually, strict laws for it.”

They sit on their heels, not quite willing to just manhandle the Doctor around while she’s so sick and disoriented.

Graham wonders, Why won’t she move, why won’t she speak? Her condition must be severe, maybe even terminal. He feels a surge of panic because even though she’s miraculous he remembers how she just stood over Grace’s dying body, compassionate yet impotent. Unable to reverse the damage.

“How can they treat her like this, the best person in the universe?” Yaz asks, knelt down by the Doctor’s feet. She is rubbing warmth into the cold, striped feet compulsively.

“The Doctor has millennia worth of enemies.” Jack replies.

Graham looks at him and says, “You can’t mean that literally?”

Jack looks carefully at them but just says, “She also has millennia worth of friends, when we parted ways she had so many friends! What’s happened, Doctor?”

Ryan still clutches one of her arms, gripping it through the layers of coat and shirts like a lifeline, head bowed. “Who could even do this to her? She’s the kindest, fairest person in the world.”

Graham continues to press gentle touches to her jaw and hairline while Jack sits back and says thickly. “She’s really not. And thing about the Doctor, my doctor at least, he treated himself worse than anyone else could.”

“What do you mean?” Yaz asks.

“How well do you know him?” Jack seems wary to discuss too much, maybe realizing he slipped with the millennia comment.

Graham and the kids exchange glances and he admits, “She ain’t big on personal stuff.”

Jack catches the hint but says, “Well, she and I travelled together, long time ago, some rough years.”

“What happened, why did you stop, leave her all alone?” Ryan challenges, defensive.

No answer at all from Jack as he turns away to try more seriously to rouse her. He sits her up forcibly which elicits atrocious huffs and mewls from her and causes them all to flinch.

“Easy, all right?” Yaz reprimands.

The soft sounds trail away and the Doctor makes little attempt to support herself. This limited response seems to frustrate Jack. He shakes her carefully and blows rudely in her ears like he’s trying to rile a cat. “Up and at em.”

She bats at him with a dodgy fist and whines deep in her throat. She tugs away from the stimulus and looks hard at them for a long minute. Finally.

“Fam?”

They all grin simultaneously and hope leaps in Graham’s heart and Jack is crying, the soppy git, and Yaz bites her fist to keep herself from doing something loud and Ryan’s smile is so large his eyes scrunch shut.

“Yeah, Doctor, it’s us, here to take you home.” Ryan can usually be counted on to be the level headed one, bless him.

“I ’aven’t got an ‘ome.” She says flatly, accent so broad Jack looks actually confused.

“Yeah you do.” Ryan replies. “Sheffield’s your home now, innit? Couch is good as yours, mate.”

Her eyes are haunted and disturbingly deep and she’s rarely looked more alien since they’ve known her, but they do lighten at his words. Her face has a little more life to it than the pale corpse stillness of before. “Me own couch; couch at Graham an’ Ryan’s.”

Jack leans into her eye line and says mawkishly, “I’ve been searching everywhere for you, Doctor.”

She stares at Jack and her expression is almost shy, unsure. “Cap’n Jack ‘Arkness, in the flesh.”

“Hiya old man. Never looked better, you handsome thing, you”

She smiles smally and seems almost relieved.

“So, are you Northern again, then?” He forces a smile back, winking, but his hands are clenched and he’s still teary.

She pauses for so long Graham thinks she won’t answer but she finally gets out. “Dunno though, am I?”

“Yeah, a bit.” Yaz grins affectionately.

Graham corrects objectively. “A lot actually, love.”

Ryan expounds. “Kinda Yorkshire. You’re taking the mick though, can’t you tell?”

“Hm, foreign language, dialects, tricky.” Her face is twisted up and her hands are bunched together. She looks distressed. Graham holds her a bit tighter upright and they all lean in but that seems worse so they lean back out and she settles.

“Let’s get outta here. Happy to say I’m fully at your service, sir.” Jack says bowing.

“No.” She responds tightly, hunching a bit and coughing.

“Oh pardon, fully at you service, ma'am?”

“Oi, no to your services.” She hacks more, it’s a slight variance from a human cough - less force behind it and more whistling. “Give me a mo’ and I’ll be runnin’.”

“Still a liar. And still northern. Adorable.” He lovingly thumbs her chin.

She jerks away indignantly then tries to sit up. She falls back quickly, tries to catch some air, fails and stops breathing. The humans all startle and start to panic but Jack just sighs. Her breathing has gotten steadily worse and it seems she’d decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

They sit by her and talk soothingly until she starts her breath back up, moist and shallow.

“Seriously time to go, enough stalling.” Jack has parked the other-TARDIS in the asteroid’s shuttlebay, the walk is moderate but it’s obvious she won’t be performing it. “My services, like it or lump it.”

He reaches around and drags her towards him and her lips tighten into displeasure as she stiffens like a reluctant child. She pulls back and flails a little but he swats her hands away. “Needs must, Doctor.”

Jack says her name with soft relish and Graham wishes he knew more about their relationship (actually, he wishes he knew more about her at all). She shares so little of herself. It’s obvious that Jack esteems her but he’s also been fairly rough with her, considering her condition. Tough-love maybe.

Jack seems wildly beyond labels, but by limited human standards the Doctor strikes him somewhere near asexual. In their time together she’d been completely oblivious and wholly uninterested in romance herself but seemed to harbor an appreciation for it in general. Like someone who’d rode that train to the end of the line and realized the singular journey was over. She’d mentioned family briefly and never again. She’s chock-full of love and affection but wholly platonic.

Graham feels a surge of protectiveness that is ridiculous considering she’s a nonbinary alien that’s unaccountably ancient. He wants Jack to put her down, to stop making her keen in discomfort when he touches her, and to stop flirting at her. But Jack is strong and competent and he did organize this rescue and all.

So he helps arrange her (wincing at the implication that she needs it), trying to get her to loop an arm around Jack’s neck, but she’s too weak and uncoordinated and contrary about the whole thing. Her arms end up dangling awkwardly, one trapped between their bodies the other curled protectively under her loose braces. Her face is scrunched haplessly near Jack’s armpit and her bare shins are covered in goose bumps.

She complains, “I’m not weak.”

Jack says, “I know. I am though. Let me do this.”

She doesn’t say or do anything else as she’s bustled away from that place, and that worries Graham more than he can say.

..

The TARDIS is not their’s but it still whirrs in greeting when they breach the entrance. Jack turns sideways and looks for all the world like he’s carrying the most valuable heirloom in the galaxy. He has her clutched to him so tightly she’s stopped breathing again, her body tipped obliquely in towards his torso. Despite her fabulous big coat and layered shirts he can feel every vertebrae.

Unable to locate a medbay, Jack deposits her on a padded chaise they’d found in a side room. In the better lighting she looks worse but he drinks in her features regardless. Her hair reminds him painfully of Rose and her eyes are singular. She’s small and fine-boned and he wonders if that bothers her. The clothes are so unfashionable and cheerful he feels a spark of fond laughter that doesn’t fully form because she’s so bedraggled and unkempt. Her young façade is threadbare and her oldness shows through.

Despite this, Jack takes her in like she’s the most beautiful creature in the world.

Yaz kneels beside her and holds her arm through its sleeve mindfully. They all want to be near but try not to crowd.

“Okay, let’s get the ship back to your place Silver Fox. Then get her fed, changed; can’t wait to try out this famous couch.” Jack smile is large and smarmy.

“She ain’t a baby, Jack.” Graham growls protectively. “You ain’t gonna do anything to her she don’t want.”

Jack looks hurt at the implication. “Hmm, obviously.” He runs off to pilot the ship and leaves the fam alone with their Doctor.

“She looks terrible, we should go somewhere with facilities to help, like Resus.” Yaz says.

“Don’t reckon Jack knows how to pilot this thing, really. We’ll be lucky to make it home the right century.” Graham mutters.

“Anyway, if it’s just TLC she needs we’ve got that covered better than any hospital.” Ryan states.

“This is a terrible time to be on Earth though, the pandemic.” Yaz admits worriedly.

“Nah it’s perfect, everyone at home all day, no one’ll be suspicious if we hole up with our alien mate for days on end.” Ryan counters. “You’ll be staying too, in the guest room.”

“What about the Doctor?”

“Couch, of course, it’s where she’d want.”

“Yeah,” Graham exclaims, warming to the subject, “We’ll make up the room for her, duvets and pillows, snacks. She’ll not want to be alone anyway.”

“I’ll do a shopping run and stock up.” Yaz nods, “Tell my family I’m isolating with you.”

A plan does wonders for morale and they feel united in the goal of getting their friend healthy again.

The landing is pretty rough but to give Jack credit they are exactly where they need to be, in Graham’s tiny back garden, Sheffield spring 2020. Gold.

The Doctor braces during the landing and looks resigned. Jack carries her easily, rather subdued when Graham gives him a strict look. No quips about damsels or brides or anything. Jack marvels that someone larger-than-life could can fit inside this body.

He wonders if Timelords attenuate as they age (like humans), gravity eroding them over centuries. There’s no doubt she’s far older than the last time they met, her eyes are so different than the manic, bright gazes of the Doctors he remembers.

“Stop thinking so loud Jack. Couch. Then tea. Then biscuits.” The Doctor’s diction is slurred as she tiredly directs him.

“Bossy!” He is tender as he places her on the furniture, and he knows she would begrudge that if she wasn’t partly dead. He heads into the kitchen, needs time to clarify his thoughts and wants to ask the younglings some questions.

Graham sits stiffly on the couch near her feet. “Are you gonna be all right Doc, really?”

She says slowly, “Probably. Rest, food, friends, right as rain.”

He is tentative and just a bit embarrassed for her when he says sotto voce, “Do you need anything, uh, personal: a wash, any hidden injuries tended? A hairbrush, love?” She is decidedly grubby and he’s feeling grandfatherish. Her hair is lank but not overlong and he wonders if she controls its growth.

“No. Just… stay.”

“With lockdown shouldn’t be a problem to have company with you all the time. What about this Jack bloke, shall I get rid of him? Or give him a shovel talk?”

“A what? He’s harmless, typically.”

“Oh, if you’re sure then.”

He tries not to dwell but she looks a shadow of herself. Her clothes are faded and she’s wan. She must have been in prison far longer relative to their time.

She furrows her brow then licks a finger to hold up in the air. “2020? Totally rubbish year.”

“Does that really work? You can…taste time?” Graham knows he sounds skeptical but is trying for impressed.

One brow raises and she tilts her head to say, “Nah, but you said ‘lockdown’ so must be.”

“Oh, so it don’t last long then?” He knows it’s a Rule not to ask about their own futures but he could really use some positive news.

She gives him a complicated and mournful look that doesn’t bode well and turns away to call into the kitchen, “Oi you lot, quit faffing about.” Her voice barely carries. Graham can tell how hard she’s trying for normalcy and he pretends it’s working but he sees frailty in the angles of her posture.

The other three come in guiltily and he can tell they’ve been talking amongst themselves. They’ve put together a decent tray of tea, coffee, and at least five types of biscuits.

“I’ll make real food, d’you fancy anything?” Ryan asks her despairingly because she looks so disheveled and uncared for and he was raised by a nurse after all. Her trousers have ridden up and her threadbare shirts are pulled awry and he can’t unsee her knobby knees and sharp bones.

She pulls her coat around her like a shield. “Nah, tannins and custard creams, that’ll do.” But she makes no move towards the tray, doesn’t seem to even see it. The humans stare imploringly at her without making it obvious, somehow.

Jack gets it, has seen it before, this wide-eyed deference everyone has for the Doctor. Rolling his eyes, he gets up to firmly set a lukewarm mug of tea into her lax grasp. Per Yaz’s instructions it’s titrated with sugar into an undrinkable, semi-solid state. For balance, he puts a large biscuit in the other hand. He has to close the grubby, paretic digits around these items since she is still struggling with basic motor skills. But she is aware and breathing and here, so that’s a start.

He can tell she needs…something. He’s not sure yet. He doesn’t know this Doctor well enough to guess. Her expression looks hard up but she’s doesn’t make any requests. She sips the tea and nibbles the biscuit for their benefit potentially, because the actions carry observable indifference. She seems to just want to sit near them, curled tightly in the ratty coat, and take them in. She looks like someone who has been alone a long, long time.

Her stare would be considered rude were she human. She looks at them each in turn, unblinking and hungry and it’s immensely uncomfortable and Yaz for one can’t eat in that limelight. But they all let her do it, she seems to need it, and because they’ve missed her so much the pain is still like a gaping hole in their chests.

Jack has to be the brave (tough) one again when he says firmly after the tea is consumed, “Doctor, tell us about what they did to you, how long has it been? Anything important to help you.”

Already shaking her head she says, “Nothing. They did nothing. Locked me off alone. Proper alone.”

Her accent broadens with tension and Jack can’t suppress an adoring, sad smile.

“Thank you for getting me out.” She looks at Jack when she says it.

“They didn’t drug you or hurt you, duck?” Graham asks apprehensively. “You ain’t gonna pop your clogs?”

The Doctor glowers but not at him. “I should be fine now I’m out.”

Yaz drapes a throw over her and then asks, “Are you cold, or?”

“Not usually.” The Doctor responds petulantly. She has a hard look on her face and it screams that this conversation is over. “I should get my Tardis.” Said shiftily like she wants to hide away from their questions and concerns.

Yaz and Ryan share startled looks. “What, now?” Yaz protests and Ryan argues, “You can’t walk, even.”

She turns away from them and looks out the window silently. “I need to get her, me oldest friend.”

“Is your ship safe, secure?” Jack asks pragmatically.

“Think so.” She sighs and squints her eyes against a beam of sunlight that slants through the window. Her lids don’t reopen and she slumps so heavily they think maybe she’s wandered into sleep.

Yaz shifts quietly beside the Doctor, not touching but close. She shoots a guilty look at her friend, who may or may not actually be aware, when she says, “We need to have a family meeting, or whatever, decide what we’re gonna do to help her. She cannot go off on her own.”

“I’ll tell you this, she’s not going to do anything she doesn’t want to and will resent us trying.” Jack warns.

Graham reveals, “She told me she wanted food and sleep, company, you know basic stuff. I figure she knows what she needs best after all.”

The grin on his face is laced with something dark when Jack counters, “You really must be new if you think that. How long have you been with her again?”

Ryan says, “Long enough that we’re her fam, her best mates. Who are you anyway? Where were you when the Master took her, when the lone cyberman came?”

The grin drops off his face and he looks suddenly fierce. “I’ve done the whole Master thing already, done the travelling and the danger. I’ve been in love with the Doctor longer than you’ve all been alive. Combined. ”

Graham senses the rawness in this admission as he asks dubiously, “And the Doc, does she feel the same about you?” He feels that flash of dissonance again, because he thinks he’s never met anyone in his life less suited to that than her. She is brilliant and genius and competent but she’s also so much like a child that the thought's almost obscene. And she hates to be touched even.

He’s justified for now when Jack says, “No. We travelled some, companions by chance. But she abandoned me, and I search for her sometimes.”

Yaz looks openly crushed and they know it’s because she fears the Doctor will leave them too. In many ways she needs this more than Graham and Ryan do, she needs the Doctor and the adventures and the universe. She needs it to keep back that lurking numbness and sadness.

Ryan wants desperately for things to get better so he tries to take charge. “So simple things, yeah? I’ll find some games and cards and movies, Yaz can go to the shops for supplies, Granddad gets the couch all made up.”

They all look obliging and Jack says smarmily, “What’s my job, Mouthy - ”

“You behave and stay out of trouble and make sure she’s not alone.” Graham finishes.

Jack salutes sloppily.

...

The two time-travelers sit together on a ratty couch in the average room of an ordinary house in an admittedly shoddy year of planet Earth. The dichotomy gets Jack smiling but he stops when his companion starts to hack harshly.

“What’s wrong with your lungs?”

“‘Aven’t got lungs.”

“Well, then with whatever system you use to oxygenate yourself.”

She curls her lip a bit. “It’s fine, just not used to answering annoyin’ questions.”

Jack considers. “Tetchy.” He sounds altogether pleased. “Can you see better?” He doesn’t think the humans have noticed but her vision is compromised, unless it was always poor in this body.

The hazel eyes sweep the room and avoid meeting his own. “Fine.” The word has a finality to it.

“Ok, so you’re all fine, that’s good.” He considers her carefully before he asks, “Where’s Donna? She’s my favorite.”

She looks devastated and mortified, then furious at him for bringing this up. “Gone. Living her life, an average life, but happy.”

Desperately wanting to know more (because Donna was many things but average was certainly not one of them) he forces his questions aside. “How long has it been for you since stolen Earth?”

“Time is all so relative,” is what she says cagily.

She doesn’t ask about him or his timeline or life which is so typical of his Doctor he feels a bittersweet pang. The Doctor never had shown much interest in Jack, really. He liked to think it had to do with Time Lord ethics and axioms pertaining to immortals because that hurts less than the alternative. His love for the Doctor had always been unrequited but he’d come to peace with that over lifetimes.

“I like your ‘fam’. They’re good people.” He settles for.

“Yeah, they’re ace.” She looks distantly happy, the first slightly positive emotion he’s seen on this face. It lights her up considerably and she is so very lovely that he aches.

“Are you planning to run away in that ship of yours so you don’t have to face them?” Jack asks banally.

She scrunches her face and responds, “What, no. I’d never do that, well almost never, well almost sometimes...” She trails off and looks desperately lonely and he understands that she’d do anything right now to avoid the sensation. He may not know this Doctor well but he knows her past and knows how harsh the raw edges of her can cut. He hopes her fam are tough as nails.

“I didn’t tell them why you were there, I still don’t fully know.” Jack says.

She responds, “Search me. Something I did lifetimes ago, conceivably; I don’t remember.”

“These long years leave detritus in their contrails.” Jack says with heavy regret, opening a door, inviting her into his life a little.

Her scowl creases her face and she turns away from his invitation. “Try and be cheerful, yeah? Had enough dark.”

Jack feels disregarded and lovelorn and remembers why so many years ago he’d left the Doctor. But his life at Torchwood was long gone and his team are all dead and he’s always the last one standing with his years distending towards infinity. He looks at his beloved friend and knows one day she’ll be gone too and he blinks to hide his tears.

“Understood.”

She must hear his sorrow because she stares at him myopically and tilts her head birdlike, considering. “Oh.” The lines of her face shift into something kind when she asks, finally, “How are you then, Jack, these days?”

He is silent for a while then starts to talk.

…

When the fam reconvene later she is asleep and Jack is too so the three humans slink off to the kitchen and putter for a while.

“Yaz, I’m making it your mission to get her to change and wash, she may need help. She’s a mess, those clothes a disgrace.” Graham tells her.

Yaz startles and replies, “What, me, why?” She actually is a poor choice because she’d so enamored by her friend that she’s the least likely to coerce her into anything.

“Think it’s obvious, sort of. Both girls, yeah?” Ryan offers purposely neutral.

“She’s not though, she’s an alien!”

“Phenotypically you’re likely the most similar.” Jack is standing by the doorway but doesn’t come in, reluctant to leave her sight in case she wakes. “But trust me, she won’t do anything until she can do it herself. Independent to a fault.”

Graham sighs in resignation and wishes again for Grace. A nurse would know what to do and how to do it. “Fine, she’ll lay around in dingy togs then.” He’s tired and far too old for this and he’s never had children so he’s not sure how to handle a thousands-year-old one. “I’m going to bed, wake me if needed.”

That leaves the youngsters with Jack and they head back into the room. Ryan puts something muted on the telly and Yaz scrolls through her phone but it’s a gimmick to hide how often they stare at their friend in disbelieving happiness and worry.

As if sensing their eyes she shuffles awake and shakes herself like a wet dog. “Ah, recharged, ready to go.”

They should have expected it, even Jack who barely knew her now, when she heads straight from sleep to standing in one go. Almost clownishly she buckles with an oof of surprise.

Jack just shakes his head and doesn’t even offer to help but Yaz leaps forward and Ryan stumbles in his haste.

“Doctor, are you mad?” Yaz can’t stand to see her on the ground, it’s too much like the cold dark figure in the cell. She grasps at her friend and tries to help haul her up.

The Doctor looks chagrined and replies, “Silly old me. Might have rushed things, actually.”

She has a better color and her breathing is fine now but she’s still weak.

“It’s only been a few hours, give yourself some time mate.” Ryan tells her.

“My Tardis – “ she starts but Jack interrupts “ – not until you can walk.”

She glares at them and the two youngsters shrink back from it but Jack just looks back unconcerned.

Ryan gets up from his stumble and says determinedly, “Food, I’m making you some.”

An interested noise is the only response he gets. He comes back a few minutes later with a lopsided chip butty, apple juice, and a hand-wipe. She ignores the wipe and drink and goes for the sandwich but Yaz intercepts. “Honestly, Doctor please.” She slaps the wipe into the grubby hands and makes a hand-washing motion of her own, exasperated.

After a perfunctory clean the Doctor takes the sandwich and holds it in both hands like a greedy kid. Swallowing appears an effort and she chews rudely, vacuously with her mouth open. She’s mechanical and doesn’t seem to enjoy the process much and Yaz wonders if eating after so long feels unpleasant.

Glad to be done she says, “Ta, Ryan. Ten points.” She downs the juice in one go and wipes her mouth with her dirty sleeve.

Yaz clears her throat and tries tentatively. “I bought you sleep clothes if you want them?” She had spent money she didn’t have on the softest pair of deep blue, flannel, warm sleepwear she could find. She’d gotten the smallest size but was worried they’d be still too big.

“I’ve got on clothes, haven’t I.” The Doctor glances down to double-check then looks back up vindicated.

“But don’t you want to get clean, get that place off you?” Ryan asks doubtfully.

She shrugs and replies, “Not really. Decontamination bursts kept me cleaner than you.” It’s not strictly true - although she’s not overtly filthy she is ragged and unkempt.

“Just leave it.” Jack warns them off and they back down defeated. He goes to ask her something but she’s collapsed back into the corner of the couch asleep, crumbs scattered down the front of her faded shirt.

…

They end up sprawled around the room sleeping that night, reluctant to leave her. She wakes them with her nightmares but they comfort her and she quiets every time.

Graham is pottering in the kitchen making breakfast when they wake up, rumpled and warm from sleep.

“What, food again?” the Doctor exclaims when he brings a judicious helping to her.

“Well, we tend to do this about three times a day.” He says dryly.

“Is it chips? I love chips.” She scans the plate hopefully.

Graham settles next to her with his own meal. “Doc, I know I’m not your mum but you ain’t having chips for breakfast.”

She scrunches her nose at the eggs and toast but tucks in anyway.

“Ok, duck?” Graham asks. He’d given her a tiny portion to start with.

She’s too busy eating to respond but makes a happy noise.

After the meal they watch the news but it’s all bad so Ryan turns it off. The Doctor has been entranced at how fascinating it is to watch history unfold on a telly instead of being in the thick of it.

“Before you save the world again you need to be able to stay awake longer than ten minutes.” Jack tells her.

She looks at him with a double-take and says loudly, “Are you still here then?”

Yaz grimaces and reminds her, “Rude.”

The Doctor tries again. “No, I mean, are you actually staying, Jack?”

He seems to get her unvoiced meaning because he goes still and says, “If you’re offering.”

“You’d want to?” She seems unsure but interested.

“Maybe.”

The three humans looks around confused and Ryan gets it first. “Wait, is he travelling with us now?”

She shrugs and asks them, “It’s up to you, this is a democracy after all.”

Jacks laughs outright and says, “Whoa, since when?”

She puffs up, offended and says, “Since them.”

It’s really not and they all know it but the thought is nice.

“Could use another experienced time traveler, maybe you could teach her to fly better.” Graham pipes up, the first to say it’s okay. Even though it’ll change the dynamic, make their fam more complex, he reminds himself happiness is not diminished when shared. And the Doc should travel with whomever she wants, even if they are annoying and tawdry.

Yaz looks worried but says, “Any friend of hers is a friend of ours.” Then she remembers the Master and chokes a bit on her words. “Well, uh.”

“All right then, welcome aboard mate.” Ryan shrugs.

Jacks smile is so large on someone less tacky it’d be ridiculous. “Yeah, for a trip or two, ok then, I’m in!”

The Doctor looks happily around and she’s still wan and worn but looks whole. “Friends - the pinnacle of life. And here you lot are, just landed in me lap. Amazing. Could search the whole universe and not find that.”

She stands coltishly and smiles and they know now she really will be okay as long as they stick together.

END