The Doctor called again. He was different – he always seemed to be different. Captain Jack Harkness answered the call of course, swept once more into the Doctor’s inertia and the expanse of the TARDIS. His locker was still there, although his things seemed to number somewhat fewer than they had before (seriously, who the hell took his squareness gun?). All in all, it was a grand thing to be back, to be useful, and to be important to his sometimes-mentor.
The adventure matters little. Oh, it meant a great deal to the universe – although as usual, the universe would never truly understand the extent of its own peril. But to this story, the relevant detail was Jack’s sideways slip into the ‘nothing’ between realities. For enough hours to count as ‘days’ to Earth, Jack did not exist. Not in the way things with good solid grounding in our reality exist. Or in any other, for that matter.
That part wasn’t pleasant at all. It was literal hell. But the homecoming rather made up for it. This time, Jack not only had someone waiting for him ‘back home,’ he had someone literally watching for the registry of his existence. The door of the TARDIS swung inward on Mermaid Quay – in need of a fuel-up after that by-the-skin-of-our-teeth (and maybe a little seat-of-our-pants) escape.
And there was an unremarkable man in a pale overcoat with an expression somewhere between a bonfire and a thunderclap.
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