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The Doctor was standing on a mass of utter darkness that covered an entire medium sized asteroid. Perhaps it was the asteroid itself. She hadn’t been able to check yet.
Deep gashes and boils, leaking grey pus and deep red blood covered every square meter of the surface. She didn’t want to call them wounds. That was all they could be.
Part of the asteroid looked very familiar… just like the exterior of the TARDIS had looked right after the Time War. Right when she met Rose, and then Jack Harkness. Exactly like it, except for the coloring. It was pitch black, through and through. But there was a sort of quality to it that made the inside seem brighter.
Wishing she could be doing anything else, she walked toward the door.
When her hand touched the handle, the mockery of the TARDIS churned away, melting back into the ground.
In its place was a figure. It was Jack.
Not as she knew him when he helped her escape from prison, or when he helped save the earth from Daleks with the rest of her friends. Not even him as he was during the year that never was.
This was the silhouette of Jack the day he gained his immortality, shirt and all.
His skin was ashen gray, his hair blacker than it had ever been before.
Looking into his eyes was like looking into the abyss himself. It rivalled the first time she stared into the Vortex.
“Hi, Doctor,” he said. He wasn’t smiling. “It’s been a while.”
Every inch of her was trembling. She couldn’t believe that her friend could have ever turned into this. It must have stolen his voice, right? … and his memories of her?
“Stop looking at me like that, Doctor,” said the thing in front of her, and it pained her how much it sounded like Jack.
“You’re not supposed to be this!,” she protested. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. “You’re supposed to, well, turn into a giant severed head and save a planet.”
He chuckled darkly. “Well, I’m not dead yet. Could still happen. I’ve been so many different things in my lifetimes.”
She couldn’t stop staring.
“I’m nothing but the result of travelling with you.”
“No, please,” The Doctor finally turned her gaze. “You cannot be Jack Harkness.”
“And yet you know I am. Don’t deny it,” the ground beneath her was pulsing a familiar rhythm. She’d heard it before, on cold nights travelling, when her old self had felt comfortable enough to curl up next to him. Every human heartbeat was slightly different to her ears, and Jack’s was no different.
“I’m just,” she looked around frantically. “I can’t do this. You’re not real.”
And she did what The Doctor always did best. She ran.