Captain Jack Harkness doesn't sleep much these days, and when he does, he's not sure if his mind's tricks are dreams or memories or something else entirely. Usually, he doesn't let them bother him, whatever they are, but lately… lately, they've been different.

He'd thought he was done with this. He'd thought he'd dealt with it and worked through it and just plain buried it; it had been so damned long, after all. But somehow his subconscious must be churning and chucking it all back up at him, because this was his third night of no sleep at all; frankly, feeling momentarily rested isn't worth the trouble of dealing with the dreams.

The problem is that his reactions are all off when he gets so little rest, and he needs to think quicker on his feet. Torchwood is depending on him, and he's depending on himself, and he doesn't want to miss anything because he wasn't ready for it when or if it ever comes.

So he tries again to sleep.

Something black and devouring and ominous lurks around him in the darkness, encroaching, closing in around him. He sees it there behind his eyelids, and it's still there after he opens his eyes, even though the room is dark.

He tries to back away from it, tries to untangle himself from it, and he wakes up.

His eyes snap open and his body's in a cold sheen of sweat, with the certainty of something being wrong, wrong, wrong churning in his gut.

He reaches awkwardly for the light, blinks stupidly for just a moment before heaving himself out of bed to carefully approach the German bomb currently taking up most of the space in his room. He reaches out one hand, gently rests it on the dark casing… this can't be real. This can't possibly be here, now. He backs away from it, peering around it for anything else out of place, any evidence of an intruder, but finds nothing. He climbs up to open the cover to his office, and as soon as he touches it, he realizes he can hear music from above.

He knows that music. Hasn't heard that music since…

He opens the cover, looks upward, and stops, an icy thread of foreboding coiling down his spine. This cannot be real.

He pulls himself up through the manhole and stands, reaching one hand out to where his desk should be, and instead resting it on the TARDIS' console so very gently.

It feels so solid under his fingertips, and so familiar is his wish for this that it's a physical pang, shaking him down to his soul, if he has one any more.

He looks around, sees no one. The music plays softly, but there's no one here to be dancing.

He doesn't call out, simply looks around, drinking in the place. He trails his fingertips across the console's panel edges, ghosting a light touch over the levers and buttons and dials, just letting himself remember. He crosses around the center console to the door that leads deeper into the TARDIS, but when he tries to open the door, it doesn't budge.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes. Opens them, and tries again. The door won't open.

He can't help it, it just slips out, under his breath. "Damn it!"

He takes another deep breath, the crosses back to the TARDIS' outer door. It opens easily at his touch.

Of course.

This can't be real, this has to be his subconscious getting revenge for all of the horrors he's asked it to bury over the centuries. He might as well just go with it, get it over with.

The familiar walls of his Chula ship are welcoming, though he flinches as he hears the TARDIS door close behind him. He walks to the cockpit, reaching up a hand to pat the ceiling grill overhead, the bulkhead beside him.

"Hello, computer. Long time, no see."

Silence replies.

He sits down. "Not speaking to me? Computer?"

He sighs. "You can't be angry at me. You don't get angry. And you're logical, you'd understand I didn't have any choice… understand that there was no way to get rid of the bomb once it was aboard." He turns, looking over his shoulder and swiveling the chair halfway around, but the ship remains empty.

"Right. No bomb. But no TARDIS, either. Huh." He turns back and slips his hand onto the controls, but the displays are blank. He tries the first few most likely adjustments, but there's no response.

He slumps back into the chair, peering to try to make a half-hearted attempt to recognize patterns in the starfield beyond the cockpit windows. "So what are you trying to tell me? Computer? Hello?"

He swivels the chair around again, and his breath catches. The bomb stares silently at him, accusation, damnation and salvation all in one.

"Great. And no emergency protocol four-one-seven this time to tide me over until the TARDIS gets here. If the TARDIS gets here. Just wonderful."

He stands, glad somehow that his legs are steady, and walks slowly around to the rear of the ship.

He touches the bomb's casing gently. He knows there isn't time to disarm it, suspects that it isn't even in stasis, since nothing else on the ship is working.

He waits.

He thinks that if he can't raise a toast, he ought to at least be dancing. He tries to hum a tune, but the only one that comes to mind also brings with it the memory of Rose and the Doctor, dancing around the TARDIS console, and the thought of them without actually being with them feels like a punch to the gut. He closes his eyes and sways a little anyway, past the burn of hurt and loss.

He murmurs, quietly. "Come on, come and get me…"

He spreads his arms wide. "C'mon, don't leave me here…"

His eyes snap open as he realizes. "Don't leave me…"

The bomb explodes in a flash of brightness and pain, and he can't help but recoil back from it, closing his eyes and raising his hands against the blast.

When he opens his eyes again, he's in his room, eyes trying in vain to adjust to the darkness, an icy sheen of sweat on his skin. He fumbles for the light, looks around quickly but intently, but there's nothing out of place, nothing out of the ordinary.

He buries his face in his hands, just for a moment.

Then he wipes the sleep from his eyes, and hauls himself out of bed. There's a treadmill in one of the disused rooms down below, waiting for him to run himself into endorphins and exhaustion, and a heavy bag waiting for his fists.

---

Hours later, his hands are bloody but he might be tired enough to try sleeping again. He doesn't answer the questioning looks of his staff, simply tells them to continue their work cataloguing the latest haul of alien flotsam that they've gotten from an estate sale, of all things, and asks them to get him their reports by the following day. If he weren't so off his game himself he'd have noticed the dark circles under their eyes, but he's lost in his own anger and he doesn't have the energy to spare.

---

He closes his eyes, and it feels like only moments later that he hears weapons fire.

He grabs for the light, then the locked wall panel that conceals his midnight security breach weapon of choice, hauling it and himself up to the manhole. He pauses for one quick, collecting breath before hurling himself into whatever fresh hell has taken up residence in the Hub, but instead of his office, he finds himself elsewhere.

He hoists the weapon anyway, but can't stop the murmur that escapes his lips as he recognizes the gamestation's corridor. "Oh, damn. Not again."

He hears screams behind him, and he turns, but there's no one there. He hears the chillingly familiar blasts and whirs of Dalek weaponry off to his right, but he doesn't see any of them. He sweeps the corridor and the connecting passageways, seeking targets, but there's nothing. Empty corridors, empty space, hollow echoes of deaths and destruction.

He makes his way up toward level 500, with each corner, with each barricade, expecting to meet someone or something. But although the walls are scored and the barricades scorched and pitted, there are no bodies, no survivors, no victors, no remains. There's no one.

He gets to level 500, breathless, just in time to hear the fading sounds of the TARDIS leaving.

He knows, with every fiber of his being, that Rose and the Doctor are both in that TARDIS, just as he knows that they won't be returning for him.

He throws his weapon to the ground with a clatter, after which the only sound in the sudden silence the rasp of his own breath.

"Damn you!"

He turns in a circle, wanting to strike out, wanting to break down, wanting to beg for them to come back, but there's no one to hear and no one to make any damned difference and the anger folds back in on himself as rationality overrides frustration… this can't be any more real than the dreams of the last few nights, after all, and why is his mind doing this to himself, anyway?

The whir behind him does startle him slightly, and he turns to face the Dalek just as it raises its arm and takes aim.

"What, you're going to kill me? Good luck with that." He spreads his arms wide, waits for the familiar pain, staring down the single glowing eye.

He blinks, a slight echo of death sizzling along his nerves, and he's in his room, sweaty and tangled in the bedding. He sits up with an unapologetic curse, clenches his hands into his sheets, and tears himself out of bed, heading for a shower.

---

He makes it through another two days before he tries to nap again. His whole staff looks like hell, and they're sniping at one another and bickering at the slightest provocation. He finally sends them all out in different directions for dinner before dragging himself to the couch. He's tired of waking without waking in his room that isn't his room.

He manages to sleep for a half-hour, but he wakes up soaked in sweat again, with the sound of Rose's delighted laughter ringing in his ears and the twinkle of mischief in her eyes wrenching a smile from him despite himself. His mouth tastes of ash.

He goes out for more coffee, and this time, he brings back a carafe of it.

---

Two hours later he's starting to tear the Hub apart, trying to figure out where the sound of the sonic screwdriver is coming from. He can't find it, and as some of his staff return from dinner, making their quiet apologies to him and each other, the sound has faded and he's not entirely sure if he was really hearing it in the first place.

---

The next day he flops down for another nap on the couch, this time, while his staff work around him. He wakes in an utter blind panic a few minutes later, and he has no memory of what had horrified him. His shout brings everyone from their desks.

He scrubs at his face with a hand, tries to take a few breaths to find any piece of calm deep within himself.

"All right, that's it. There's something going on. Jack, what's happening? You're having nightmares, aren't you? So am I. So are we. What's causing this?"

He looks from one staff member to the next, finally recognizing that they all look like they've been dragged behind a lorry. Haunted eyes, furrowed brows, tired, slumped shoulders. He squares his own against the additional weight. "Right. Where's the catalogue of that latest batch of alien tech? Let's start with what came in within the past two weeks. Maybe something in those boxes is active."

He glances around again, lending them his strength, such as it is. "Come on, we can solve this."

---

It takes them two more days to isolate the culprit, another to deactivate it.

Knowing that the seemingly-innocuous little device was causing the vivid dreams somehow made the prospect of facing the dreams easier to cope with during that last day. At least his own mind isn't entirely doing this to himself, and that consolation's enough for him to try sleeping in his own bed again, since he's now so tired his eyes won't focus properly at all.

Once again, he's glad that none of his staff know how little he sleeps on his good days, because no normal human could still be on their feet after what he's going through.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, tells himself that whatever dirty trick is about to be played on him, he absolutely needs the rest before he'll be of any use in figuring out how to deactivate the device. They don't want to simply destroy it, since it might be useful for something in future, but if they can't figure it out soon, he'll authorize its destruction, because although he's the most affected, his staff can't take much more of this, either.

He's not sure exactly how they'll be able to destroy it, but he's sure there's something in the arsenal that will crush it or explode it, and that ought to do. The thought is slightly comforting, and he tries to relax.

He opens his eyes slowly, warily, but there's no lurking darkness, no impending doom. There's only… warmth. Beside him, there's warmth.

He rolls slowly.

There's someone beside him in his bed.

He reaches out slowly, tentatively.

His fingers brush soft hair, the curve of a shoulder. There's a small huff of breath, the quiet hum of a questioning tone, and he can't quite bring himself to recognize the woman beside him.

He closes his eyes, squeezes her shoulder gently.

"Jack?"

He manages to keep the sob that tries to escape buried deep in his chest. Oh, he'd know that voice anywhere, any time.

She turns toward him, rolling to her side to face him. He can feel her breath on his face, and he curves into it instinctively.

"Jack? All right?"

He feels her hand fumble slightly in the darkness, then clasp his shoulder, pulling him toward her.

He almost doesn't breathe, clinging in the moment. His word is barely a breath, so soft he almost can't hear it himself. "Rose…"

He buries his face in her hair, and she simply embraces him, her hand sliding from his shoulder to caress his back, sure and tender.

There's a soft grumph from the far side of his room. "You two aren't going to get any sleep at all at this rate. I'm turning the light on."

There's a bright flare, and though Jack has to pull back from Rose slightly and squint painfully against the light, he can't help seeking out that voice. Oh, that voice. That Doctor. He leans against the wall of Jack's room, all nonchalance and mystery wrapped in a black leather jacket.

If Jack could die, he thinks could die happy right this moment. He reaches out. "You're here."

The Doctor gives him a small shake of the head, a sideways smile. "You're a clever Captain, you should know better."

Jack blinks. Of course. The realization is a solid lump in his stomach. It's the alien gizmo again, and this has to be another dream. He shakes his head, takes one slow, deep breath, and then lets the regret and the anger and the hurt flow out. "Fine. You're not really here. But you're here in my mind, right this moment, and I'll take what I can get."

That brings a brighter smile to the Doctor's face, and he reaches out to take Jack's outstretched hand. "You always seem to."

Jack can't help returning the grin, and he knows he must be flirting in just the right way… because the Doctor cocks his head to one side and responds with a bit of his own, "It's refreshing sometimes how little some things change."

Rose props herself up on one elbow, her hair mussed with sleep. "Oh, you two. Stop puffing your feathers at one another and just c'mere." She draws them together, and somehow his bed is just nearly big enough for the three of them to tangle themselves up in each other. There's the brief hum of the sonic screwdriver, and the light goes out.

Jack tries to keep his eyes open, tries to savor and remain in the moment, tries not to cling too tightly or too desperately, tries not to try to make sense out of the impossibilities and the lack of explanations, tries to memorize each touch, each breath. He's just so tired.

They seem to be, too, because they curl around him and each other and he hears Rose's breathing leveling out, rhythmic and calming. The Doctor's heartbeats are a solid comfort against his back.

He lets his eyes slip shut.

When he opens them, the light is on and there's a stranger leaning up against his wall.

Jack sits up, wary, but there's something about this man…

Jack's breath catches.

"I didn't forget you, you know. It's just that I wasn't quite myself then. And I'm not quite myself now, you see, but I'm my new self now. And I haven't forgotten you, either."

Jack's feet are tangled in his sheet, but he can't help but move toward the stranger, anyway.

"Doctor?"

He wakes up again as he hits the floor, one foot still tangled in the sheets and his face wet.

His room is dark.

He scrubs his hands over his face, trying to untangle and wipe away the frustration and confusion from the better parts of the dream he clings to. He threads his fingers through his hair once, then hoists himself up through the manhole cover into his office without bothering to turn on his light, heading straight for the cluster of coffee carafes on the conference room table.

He's halfway through his cup before his staff finds him to tell him that they'd managed to deactivate the device an hour and a half before he awoke.

He closes his eyes gently, lets himself remember warmth beside him, a hand clasped at his shoulder, and the welcoming sounds of the TARDIS that mean home. He lets himself just breathe, slow and steady, deep and sure.

"Thank you."

---