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This is not an EP, I just don't have the energy. However, threads need to happen between Harkness and The Doctor (with a bit of Chase to solve that puzzle), Cuddy, Daniel and Ianto (together or seperate), Ace, and always House. So...top level and we'll thread and that way they'll all be in a tidy bundle for me to NOT DROP!

Jack was there, at the door. Waiting. He wasn't quite what to sure, or how long it had been, but ever since Halloween he had either been smoking pot ot House had been shooting him up with something to keep the dreams under control. He didn't know where to turn, so he played an insane game of ring-around-the-rosies and it had lead him to this door.

Now all he needed was an idea of what to say.

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A little of all three, actually. He stared at the Doctor imporingly for a moment, then bent down and petter Atalanta...almost like he was fond of her.

"Hi," he said to the Doctor...to the ground, since he was bent over. As he straightened up, the neck of his shirt gapped open enough to reveal bandages. "Am I bothering you? I could come back."

"You don't usually pet her," the Doctor said, looking really worried once he saw the bandages. "And no, you're not bothering me, I can just let her out to do her business...Jack, what's wrong?"

Might as well just cut to the chase. Jack took a breath to steady himself and looked into the Doctor's eyes. Once upon a time they'd been blue and had seemed to hold all the answers. Now...maybe some of that was still there, even after all this time.

"...Who am I?"

This clearly wasn't a time for bollocksing around. The Doctor gently nudged Atalanta out the door. "Honestly?" he said. "I have no bloody idea. All I've got is fragments. Out there..." he gestured to the universe at large, "you're an enigma, a cypher, and if what I saw with Martha's time is right, you're a paradox. Universe isn't made for constants."

"I don't care who I become," he said quietly. "Something happened. Something happened and the Time Agency took two years, you remember?"

"I remember," the Doctor said softly. "But I don't know what those two years are. Or why. Only that that was why you went rogue."

Jack dragged his fingers through his hair and looked away. "I think they did more than that," he said quietly. His fingers came out of his hair and clawed down his neck, leaving welts. "Halloween...this woman got inside my head and undid things."

"Jack." The Doctor moved quickly and caught Jack's wrist. "Don't do that. Please. Who was this woman, and what do you remember?"

He was, however, a little on guard.

"Adria. She was...I don't know. She was someone Daniel had been seeing. Hallucinating. But then she was really here and I...and I tried...I could feel her in there, scrabbling around. Undoing things. I...have two whole lives and I can't tell what's real. I can remember the procedure. When the Agency did their thing. And I don't, I mean I can't..."

If it wasn't obvious he was falling apart, the words existential crisis may as well not even exist.

"Jack." The Doctor looked at him, looked him in the eye. "You need to try to sort it out. Try to parse what parts went where. It's a puzzle, but you need to try." Or he'd go mad, and that would be bad for everyone.

"I've been trying," he answered quickly. "There's two seperate but consistant tracks. I just don't know which is...me."

"Maybe it's both." The Doctor motioned for Jack to sit down. He let Atalanta back in the door. "Do you want to tell me? Saying it aloud might help sort it."

He took a breath and nodded, then sat. He started with what the Doctor was familiar with, the Academy, the breeding, the life Jack had always known. And then he started over as a child on a desert world. The stories were more clear, but hit and miss with specific details.

"But I've been seeing her face," he said, telling the Doctor about the mom he'd been dreaming of for a while now. "I can see he face, I can feel her when she touches me."

After a moment, the Doctor considered this, not quite having the energy to get Atalanta to stop sitting by Jack's feet and looking mournfully up at him. He cleared his throat.

"It wouldn't surprise me if one of them wasn't," he said. "The Earth of the Agency...doesn't quite fit into that, like a round peg into a hole that doesn't quite fit. Every child by then is a wanted child. The other story...well, George Lucas told it better." Pushing back a stray thought about Jay and Padme, he carried on. "But I know this. The future you tells future me, and Martha from a few days after she got here, that you're from some place called the Boeshane Peninsula. That you were the first kid that ever went to the Time Agency from there."

His lips quirked wryly. "Poster boy. They called you the Face of Boe."

He reached out with both hands and caught Atalanta's head, ruffing her ears as he listened. "The Boeshane Peninsula," he repeated. It didn't ring any bels, but then again, he was awake. "I tell you that...someday?"

Atalanta whined gently. The Doctor considered that, and Jack. "Yeah. Not too far ahead of time for me or Martha. Long, long time for you. I don't know what happened. If you figured it out. But it fits, with everything that happens there."

Though how there was a desert and peninsula in the same place, he didn't know.

"Huh," he said quietly, focusing on the dog for another minute, talking sweetly to her...mostly to distract himself.

"Jack Harkness isn't my name."

"Yeah," the Doctor said softly. "I figured that out, a while back. It suits you, though."

That got a weak smile and soft shake of his head. His hands were busily finding the places that made Atalanta lean in hard for more.

"Fucker likes that, too," he said to her, not sure where to go from there. He'd hoped the Doctor would have an answer. A solution.

And at the same time, he knew there wasn't one.

"I heard there were Daleks."

The Doctor was good. Just not good enough to solve problems without solutions.

The expression on his face changed from worry about Jack to something harder. "Oh, there were Daleks."

Chase was distractedly wandering into the room, fidgeting with his tie as he descended the stairs, a couple at once. "Babe, have you seen my..." he mumbled idly before glancing up and actually seeing Jack. "Oh, hey, didn't know we had company," he said, still distracted. He was focusing on getting his tie done up and his gaze was lowered.

Low enough to see Jack's hands.

As much as he might have put himself down, he was a good diagnostician, and this wasn't even that much of a puzzle.

He didn't like the tone in the Doctor's voice and decided then and there that maybe having his mind fucked with in the archery field was probably the lesser of two evils.

And then he heard Rob and looked up. He let go of Atalanta and his eyes darted for the door. "I didn't mean to bother you two. I was just...wondering. I should...go."

"It's not a bother," the Doctor said. He looked up at Chase, eyes signaling that they needed to help Jack, that that was very.important. "Don't go. What were you wondering?"

'What the hell?' he mouthed back at the Doctor, descending the last few steps slower, heading to the door to casually lean against the frame with his hip; effectively blocking out. "Jack...?" he said, slow and concerned. "What are you wondering about?"

A small shrug and even smaller shake of his head, and he didn't even meet Rob's eyes. "I was wondering if you knew more than you've bothered to tell me. I know you've done that before. With other...people."

Companions. Other companions.

"I just don't know what to try to hold on to."

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