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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[ 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. ]