[ he draws back after a moment, but keeps his hands affixed to her upper arms, almost as if he's afraid she'll vanish if he lets go. ]

Kind of par for the course with our lot, isn't it?

[ our lot. it's been even longer since he's associated himself with the doctor, and there's a question on the tip of his tongue in regards to the man in the big blue box that he can't quite bring himself to ask. jack hasn't necessarily lost faith in the doctor so much as he's disappointed. (or is it that he feels like the disappointment?) sure, he has plenty of reasons to be cross with the time lord and his lack of a presence on earth, but he isn't.

god, how he hates that he isn't. being angry with the doctor would make things so much simpler, as would not seeing reason behind why he couldn't dirty his hands with jack's messes. the miracle, at the very least, had been a human problem. so very human in ways that were almost alien, but were human to their core. even if jack could argue that he was the "alien" element in that by way of being wrong (as the doctor so kindly put it), he could still see the reason. and he hated it all the more. ]

So, ship to nowhere. Known world? Dimension, maybe? Or are the answers to that part of the mystery?