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Amazing Grace:
Pretty amazing grace is what you showed me
Before I met The Doctor I wasn’t the kind of man that even I would want to know! I was a rogue Time Agent lying, cheating and conning my way from one planet to another only ever concerned about number one. I thought I was leading the perfect life, a girl, or boy or….well you get my drift… whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. Money no object, usually, and I always seemed to have enough of the gift of the gab to get me out of trouble when I needed to. But if this was the perfect life then why did I feel I was running from something, hiding from the truth. The truth deep down inside me behind the brash have a go hero exterior and the winning smile was that I was empty and alone and …yes I’ll admit it…a little bit scared that this was all I had. And then He showed up... well actually she showed up… Rose Tyler all blonde and brash and hanging from a barrage balloon in the middle of an air raid! I was ready to fall in love with her right then and there until I met the man she called The Doctor. He was…he still is... the MOST amazing man I have ever met and when I look back at that first meeting I realize that I fell in love with him within a second of meeting him although it took me a while to accept it. He showed me that with love and belief and hope anything and everything is possible. Everybody should have somebody like The Doctor in their lives. Through just being with him I found myself changing, becoming a better man, not perfect just better. And that continues every day that I am with him. I find myself trying as hard as I can to live up to him and to what I think he wants me to be. He tells me that I don’t have to but I owe it to him to keep on trying because if he hadn’t shown me that he cared then I’d probably be dead by now. When we met I’m not sure that he liked me that much, he knew what I was but he also knew what I could be and that is why I’ll never leave him, never let him down and never stop loving him until the day that I die…if I ever do! He gave me a chance to do something to be proud of, something that wasn’t just for Jack Harkness and I took that chance and never looked back. When he didn’t let me die that night I knew that no matter what happened in my life if The Doctor ever called I would be there for him, I lived for him and I died for him and I don’t regret one second of it and I never will.
It was on the Game Station in the middle of a war, with all the odds against him that I saw who He was. He was the Oncoming Storm, the stuff of legends, the man who wasn’t afraid to die for the sake of others, for the sake of the one he loved. I knew of The Daleks, they were the stuff of legends too. But I’d always believed that they were gone, destroyed in the war that should have ended all the wars…the last great Time War and yet like some great cosmic curse they were still alive and still hell bent on destruction. The Doctor wasn’t going to let that happen, not when he had already lost so much to stop them before. They wouldn’t have Earth and they wouldn’t have Rose, not whilst he still lived. Until I met The Doctor I hadn’t known what love was, not true love. Sure I’d been in love, but just the fleeting love of money and power and self gratification. I’d never loved anybody the way that he loved Rose, enough to be willing to take on the one thing, the only thing that I think he is truly scared of…The Daleks. When we kissed I knew that I loved him. It was as simple as that. The feel of his lips on mine, the feel of his hands on my body was all it took for my heart to shatter. As we walked to face our destinies I thought I’d never see him again, never have the chance to tell him how I felt. I don’t know how many times I wanted to stop, turn back run to him and tell him how I felt but I didn’t. Maybe he knew already, after all and he’ll tell you this himself, he is a genius! What he did know was how to show me who I was…who I could be. I could be more than a con man with a roving eye (although he has never quite rid me of that!!). He placed his trust in me, a man with hardly the best track record in the trust stakes and I was strangely determined not to let him down. Once I would have run, as fast and as far away as I could and lived to con another day, but this time there was no where to run. It was fight and die or run and die...either way everybody on that Game Station was doomed to die. (Boy was I wrong on that one!) I did what he asked of me and with the help and bravery of people who didn’t know him and didn’t know me we fought and we died and we gave him the time he needed to stop them. My dying thought was of him, the last of his race and I hoped that he had survived. My first thought was of him and I knew that he had survived. I was sure I had been dead and now I wasn’t… that had to be The Doctor.
Stumbled inside the doorway of your chapel
I raced back to find him through floor after floor of death and destruction but I was too late. I heard The TARDIS leave and my heart fell. It wasn’t until many, many years later that I found out that he’d left me there for a reason and not because he thought that I was dead. I went back to Earth and fairly soon found out that whatever had happened on the Game Station had left me unable to die. The despair I had felt on my return, when I thought that one life time wouldn’t be enough for us to meet again was lifted. I had all the lifetimes I could want and I knew he traveled in time as well as space…eventually we would have to meet again all I had to do was wait…and hope and keep on loving him until we did. As time went on I began to recognize his hand in events…the destruction of the space ship over London, the mysterious metal men, ghosts on the streets…they all told me that he was still out there, still looking out for the Earth and although I was always just to late to find him I knew if I kept trying then one day, one day we would be together again. I also knew that if, when, that day came I wouldn’t hesitate to tell him how I felt about him. I’d tell him I loved him and take the consequences. After the battle at Canary Wharf…damn those Daleks are persistent… I rebuilt Torchwood to be more the kind of organization of which I hoped The Doctor would be proud. I knew he couldn’t be here on Earth every day of the year and he needed help, our help, to hold things in balance until he got back. I took what I learnt on the Game Station about duty and honor and love and built Torchwood on those principals, and we’re good, we’re damn good and it’s all because of what he taught me centuries in the future. Truth and hope and love will ALWAYS win out.
Many were the nights I’d stand in the dark staring at the stars and wondering where he was, wondering if he even remembered me. Many were the days when I thought I heard the sound of The Tardis and went running to find her only to be disappointed again. I faced all sorts of monsters, and not just from other worlds, and more than once I wished that The Oncoming Storm was stood by my side. Many were the times I wondered what he would have done, how he would have acted and hoped that what I did, what we did, would make him proud. The days were long and the fight seemed endless, un-winable but whenever I felt despair I’d think of him on the Game Station…calm in the heat of war, certain he was going to die and yet more powerful than anything ….and my spirit would be lifted and I would fight on, for him. Day after day….night after night….lover after lover I waited for him to return and fill the hole he had left in my heart and my soul. And then one day he did! Torchwood has a lot of things it probably shouldn’t have, alien technology, wide ranging powers and The Doctor’s hand in a jar being just a few of them. The day that jar started to bubble like crazy I had a feeling, one that made the hairs on my neck prickle with anticipation, that soon, very, very soon The Doctor would be back and this time I WOULDN’T let him get away. I rode The TARDIS to the end of the Universe to be with him and when I got there he was a changed man, physically and emotionally. I knew about the Time Lords and how they can regenerate to stave off death and although the man who stood before me looked nothing like the one I had left on the Game Station I knew it was The Doctor. My heart told me so and I trusted that feeling and wanted to take him in my arms and hold him and comfort him but first, yet again, we had to save the world! When he told me why he had run and left me I should have hated him but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I had lived through centuries because of that one act and I wouldn’t have traded away a minute of it…except maybe the death by javelin! If he found that what I had become didn’t fit in his ordered world then that was his problem...I’d got him back and I wasn’t letting him go. In the year that followed our reunion so many things happened that at times it seemed like a surreal dream…a nightmare from which I doubt any of us will ever fully recover. I died so many times that I lost count and more than once I’m ashamed to say I cursed Rose and The Doctor for ever coming into my life and changing me. Death hurts even when it isn’t permanent but living without love, without The Doctor would hurt even more and so I kept dying and I kept living and I kept hoping then when he needed me I wouldn’t let him down. He was my rock in my darkest hours. He was my hope in my deepest despair. I trusted him to save me and he did.
I stand in the doorway to the console room, quietly watching him as he wrestles with the pain of loosing another companion. Martha has gone, she couldn’t stay with a man who didn’t love her but I hope we will see her again. I liked Martha …after all she kissed me before we had even been introduced! Taking a breath I walk up to him and without words do what I have wanted to do for so many years and wrap him in my arms. He is stiff and uncomfortable at first and doesn’t return my embrace but as we stand there the companiable silence only broken by my occasional whispers of comfort and understanding he relaxes and slowly returns the embrace. “They all leave me Jack.” he says dropping his head and fighting back an emotion that I think caught him by surprise. “I’m still here.” I told him stroking his hair “And I’ll be here for as long as you want me to be.” I lift his head and drink in his features then swoop in and kiss him before the moment is lost. Much to my surprise and my pleasure and my amazement he kisses me back. It has been so long since anything moved me like that kiss did…it was soft and gentle and yet laced with the understanding that this was just the beginning. My legs felt weak and my heart raced as we kissed and kissed and kissed as if it was all we had ever wanted and I never wanted it to end. “Doctor……” I mumbled when our lips finally parted. “Captain?” his voice was soft and husky, the pain of loss all but gone. “I….” suddenly I stumble over the words I have waited centuries to tell him “I…you know I…” “Not like you to be lost for words Jack” he teases me pulling away from our embrace and taking hold of my hand. I am aching for him, aching to feel his body next to mine. He leads me deep into the heart of his TARDIS to a place I have never seen before. The wooden door is carved with a shepherd carrying a lamb; it is a metaphor for us, our lives. It also tells me that he knows, that he has always known, how meeting him would change me. The room is so much like him, calm and yet powerful, beautiful and yet with hidden depths that I would be willing to spend the rest of my life discovering. I hesitate in the doorway, unsure, insecure, scared like I haven’t ever been before. I want this and yet have I done enough to deserve it, am I good enough for this man? “Stop it Jack.” It is as if he can read my thoughts. “You know you are.” “I am what?” “More than I could have expected. I always knew there was more to Captain Jack Harkness than you liked to show and look at you now. If I could have one person by my side now Jack it would be you.” He tugs my hand and I fall into his arms. “Doctor ….” “I know Jack, I’ve always known” then he kisses me “I’ve known because I feel the same now what are we going to do about that?” I flicked out a leg, kicked the door shut and showed The Doctor EXACTLY what two guys in love should do.
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