open | i am the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass.

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[ those ghost-robots have fished what appears to be a fresh corpse out of the water. where did this guy in a wwii military jacket come from? who knows. a door probably opened a little too close to the side of the ship at the least opportune moment knowing this ship's track record and the dead man in question's luck.

—or, perhaps, not so dead after all.

lifeless one moment, he's surging back to life the next. air rushes into his lungs with a powerful gasp and he sits up, turning and hunching over slightly so he can properly cough up the water that flooded his lungs out onto the deck. ]

Drowned. [ the laugh that mingles with the tail end of his coughing fit doesn't at all sound amused, but he doesn't seem all that bothered by any of this, either. ] Haven't done that one in a while. Gotta love the classics.

[ by the time he pushes himself to his feet, it's as if he did nothing more than take an impromptu swim. soaked to the bone, but breathing fine and showing no signs of having been lying dead on the deck mere minutes before. ]

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[narrated]

[Martha grows quiet as she stands in front of him with her arms folded, staring up at his face and listening to every single thing he says even as it hurts, even as she knows she can't quite wrap her head around the horrors of it all though she tries. She always tries with Jack, with the Doctor because she wants to understand and to give them comfort in the same moment she deeply realizes that there is no understanding living through what they have, what Jack has.

There's no being able to process that without having lived it.

It doesn't mean she doesn't care. She cares so intensely it's burning in her eyes as she looks at him, and she has already said his name so many times it likely loses its meaning to say it again.

Her hand slides over his arm as she meets his gaze.]

Jesus.

I'm sorry.

[After a moment, she steps forward, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug.

She doesn't tell him he's not wrong even though he'll never be wrong to her. It's the way he feels, it's the way what has happened to him and how he is impossibly immortal has made him feel, and her words won't change that. Can't change that so she wraps her arms so tightly around him, hugging him.]

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[ had that hug come from someone else, he might've rejected it, but martha jones had a unique perspective most people in his life no longer possessed. she remembered that year they spent under the master's rule, was able to recall what he did to those poor, unsuspecting humans from the brink of time's end. and she knew what he went through during that year, too. granted, being killed for sport over and over again wasn't nearly as bad as being buried for as long as he'd been, but at least that had blurred together into a twisted cycle he almost got used to. (he doesn't like to give it much thought.)

but the miracle had been the opposite of that. it was one thing to live the immortal life; it was another to watch people endure what you did, and to do it without his ability to regenerate fully from whatever injuries he sustained. the families who thrust the miracle upon everyone failed to understand what he really was. they could force the blessing to infuse humanity with a mimicry of his inability to die, but they couldn't replicate the fact that he was a fixed point in time. only the TARDIS had that kind of power, and that was something they -- thankfully -- hadn't had access to.

as far as he knew, the families were unaware of the doctor. or, at the very least, jack's connections to him. ]

Don't. [ he soothes, arms coming up to wrap around her form in turn. ] Don't be sorry. It's over, and I'm glad you never had to live in a world that forced you to experience that.

[ that made her wrong like she was. maybe jack didn't think of himself as wrong initially, but the description had stuck with him since the doctor had uttered it. thanks, ten. ]