Title: Too Much To Learn
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1, letter100
Prompt: 81, Education
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Tenth Doctor or Jack Harkness, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

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Dear Jack,

I've been thinking lately of how much I've learned from you over the course of the time that we've been together. Not only that, but of how much I've learned about you -- and about what it's like to love someone as completely as I love you.

Before I met you, I never thought that I was capable of the undying, deep emotions that so many humans seem to feel. I thought that it was a part of my human side that had passed me by -- and that I would never know what it was like to feel that another person was part of me.

But the day that you walked away from me and didn't look back, I knew exactly what it's like to love so deeply that losing the person you love feels as though you're being ripped to shreds. I knew, for the first time in my life, what it's like to lose the love of your life.

I hope I never have to feel that way again, Jack. Nothing has ever been as painful as seeing you walk away from me and knowing that you wouldn't come back -- and nothing has lifted my hearts to the heavens as much as seeing you come back to me.

I never thought that would happen, you know. I was sure that once we parted that first time, you would be gone forever. I convinced myself that you weren't the kind of man who would ever look back at a relationship from the past and have regrets about ending it.

Knowing you has been quite an education, about so many other things as well as about love. There are things about you that have brought out my human side more, especially since we've been back together. I suppose I can say that you've taught me a great deal about being human.

Being with you has also been an education in how to flirt -- though I can't honestly that's something I really appreciate learning about. But you've managed to curb your flirting since you've been back with me, and I'm glad you have. I couldn't bear to feel that I was sharing you with anyone else.

You've promised me that you'll never make me share you with anyone else again, and I believe you. There may be an old saying about a leopard not being able to change its spots, or some such thing -- but I believe that an immortal can change his habits.

If I'm wrong, then that's my own foolishness, and my own mistake. But I don't believe that I am. You're a man of your word, Jack -- at least, when you try to be. I've known you to break that word before, but you made that promise in all honesty, and I believe that you'll keep it.

You're not the sort of man who backs away from a promise made, especially when it's one you didn't make in some sort of jest and that you mean to keep. I'll hold you to that promise, you know -- but I don't think that either one of us will ever regret me doing that.

I mean to make sure that you never regret making that promise, Jack. I may not have been able to hold you the first time we were together, but we're both older and wiser now -- and more to the point, we've both learned a great deal while we were apart. And we both know what we want.

I've always known that I wanted you -- but there were times when I didn't have the courage to say it, because I was terrified that it would only push you away from me. And there were times when I would have been right about that, before you matured and realized what you wanted from life.

I wold never have thought you'd realize that you wanted me, and that you'd decide that a committed, serious relationship was the right thing for you. But I believe that in our time apart, you've gotten an education, too. And that you've grown up a lot more than I could have imagined.

I've learned a lot from you, Jack, but I've also learned a lot about myself -- and about how our relationship, as it was before, never would have lasted -- since we've been apart. I don't like to say this, but maybe that time apart, that heartache we both endured, was a good thing.

Thanks to that time apart, we both learned what life was like without each other -- and that it wasn't what we wanted. Being apart was just as much, if not more, of an education for us as being together could have been. I think we benefited from that time away from each other.

Not that I would want to go through that time again, mind you. If you were to walk away from me again, I don't think my hearts could deal with it. I'd survive, of course. I would go on, but I wouldn't be able to consider that just another part of my education about love.

I would still exist, but I'd be a shell of the man you're with now. And I know that I could never make myself love again -- nor would I want to. Spending the rest of my life mourning for a lost love sounds melodramatic, but I know in my hearts that it's what I would do.

That's not an education that I want to have. I've learned enough of what it's like to love someone and to lose them, to feel that there would always be a part of my heart that remained empty because they would never come back to me. That's a feeling I want to keep locked away in the past.

And I know you well enough to know that you don't want to experience a heartache like that again, either. You've grown up, Jack, and you've become the man I always knew you could be. I loved the man that you were -- but I love the man you've become even more.

I've always loved you, Jack. And I'll continue to love you, until the end of time itself. You've captured my hearts and soul in a way that no one else ever could, and even though some might consider loving you a weakness, I look on loving you as being my greatest strength.

Knowing you -- and loving you -- has been an education. I don't doubt that through the years to come, you'll have even more to teach me, and that I'll be a willing pupil. When you stop learning, then you die -- and I'm nowhere near ready to succumb to oblivion yet. I still have far too much to learn.

Always your

Doctor

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