Title: Haunting
By: Fiara Fantasy
Pairing: Jack/10
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They should have known better than to drink or to talk like this so soon, when one wrong word could break what's left of faith for either of them. They should have known better when ghosts refuse to stay out of their memories.

***

Jack had lost track of how long they'd been drinking. He hadn't asked too many questions when the Doctor had shown up in the hub a few days after they'd said goodbye, looking tired, and decidedly without Martha.

They'd been drinking for a while now, long enough and enough of an amount to talk about the year that never was. The Doctor was trying to explain Gallifreyan telepathy and Jack was sitting upside-down on the chair in his office, unconsciously looking around the hub for the ghostly form of the Master, whose eyes he'd sworn he could feel boreing into them both.

"Oh! I've got it! I've really got it this time! Ok, have you ever sang in a choir Jack?"

"What!" Jack's attention is dragged away from the walls and he focuses in on the Doctor.

"A really big choir with hundreds of people, hundreds of different voices layering on top of one another until there's so many it turns into a background, a backdrop of the sound, like stars in the sky. Then for some reason they all stop and you're left with a solo, and its so quiet you can't even hear it yourself. And they just leave you singing so long your throat hurts and its hard to breath and your legs are shaking so bad because you're so scared to have it just be you and then you finally forget that you're singing.

And it's not like anyone notices because none of the audience have souls you can hear or faces or motion but they really do try so you have to feel sorry for them.

And then there's one other voice, out of no where and you remember you're singing and it's enough with two to hear, even if you hurt all over. And you would happily burn the entire hall with all the audience inside if it would keep the duet."

There's silence in which three hearts skip a beat, and suddenly the room loses it's drunken tinge of familiarity and friendliness. And suddenly it's just so cold and lonely everywhere they see.

"I did ramble a bit. That didn't even make sense…"

"Don't you dare," Jack growled and the Doctor words froze in his throat. "Don't you dare try to take that back because I know you meant every word."

The Doctor shut his eyes and slid the last of his drink down his throat. He stood to leave, heading for the door without a sound or goodbye, but he freezes when a hand closes vice-like on his arm.

"Where you going?" Someone's hissing in his ear and he knows it's Jack but he doesn't want believe what's in the voice is there, and his eyes stay tightly shut.

Jack lets go when he doesn't answer. "Don't come back."

The Doctor nods, not turning around. "How long?" And he's holding his breath, hoping Jack doesn't fate them both with the word forever.

Instead he hears a sigh. "A long time."

The Doctor feels words against the back of his teeth and bites; and he's holding back the explanation, that it's not always like this, it hasn't been this bad in a long time, that he never should have come here, and never should have drank, but by now he's metabolized the alcohol and he knows better than to speak. He nods again silently and disappears.
Jack sighs as the door clicks shut, and somewhere hears the Master's ghost laughing.