amberfocus | Post Pomp Post Script (Reply)

A/N: I was feeling a little bit sorry for Jack at the end of Post Pomp, so wrote this little follow-up one shot for him.

Post Pomp Post Script

Jonathon Ashford Kensington the Fourth, later to be known as Captain Jack Harkness, paced the deck of the good ship Time Salvager. He knew that he had made the correct decision to save the life of the woman he loved, but he couldn’t bear the thought that in less than 12 hours Rose Tyler and everything that had happened in the last two hundred sixty days would be wiped from his mind as if it had never existed.

Rose had changed him. Changed him on a deeply fundamental level. And he knew that if he could only remember her after the Doctor repaired the time line, that change could only make him a better man. Even if he had to spend the rest of his life grieving for her, for a love that could never be, it would be worthwhile.

An idea struck him and he raced back to his quarters. Furiously he typed everything he could remember about finding Rose and their relationship into his computer. He entered in all of the information from Rose’s diary that she had left behind. He dug through security footage and lifted out images of Rose, found the digitally saved pictures that had been taken of her in the weeks he'd known her. Then he downloaded it into a tiny subcutaneous micron data chip and went off to the infirmary.

With a charming smile and his usual flirtatious manner, he distracted a nurse and managed to nick a syringe and a bottle of injectant fluid. He made his way on board the Madame de Pompadour and set his wrist comp to take him back in time two hundred sixty days. Trying to be that precise could be difficult, but fate was on his side today.

He watched from a hiding place as the Doctor reunited with Rose and Mickey. His heart was begging for him to join them, to ask to come along, but he knew he couldn’t. It had to be enough that he’d run into Rose again one day. As soon as the TARDIS doors closed behind them he loaded the syringe with injectant, dumped in the micron data chip and jabbed it against the skin of his thigh. As soon as he was done, he sighed and tossed the syringe into a nearby disposal chute.

It was done. If it worked, and he prayed to every diety he could think of that it would, that he'd gone back far enough in time to make it work, one day he’d find the data chip and he’d have a history of what happened here. It wasn’t the same as a memory, but it was better than nothing. He hit the retrieval button to return him to his proper place in time, just before the time line shifted, recovered and repaired itself.

Somewhere in the 51st century the future Jack Harkness forgot Rose Tyler.