Mission T08: From Dreams to Reality: Classified Dreams
Many Sues pair themselves up with Jack Harkness. Most of them are in their teens so there is a huge age gap. If that isn't enough of an ick factor, not all of them take the age of consent into consideration, and some stray from it very far.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts taken from From Dreams to Reality: Classified Dreams by horns-halos4ever.
-oOo-
She lay stomach down, sprawled on the ledge on her new building's roof.
Tasmin walked over. The Sue didn't see her as she was looking away at the clouds. Tasmin braced herself and pushed the Sue over the ledge. She grinned as the Sue went down kicking and screaming and landed on the pavement below with a dull thud.
-oOo-
Emma studied the grin on her partner's face. "You're not sleeping on the job are you?"
Tasmin gave her head a startled shake and looked up. "Just a little day-dreaming."
"Sue's over there." Emma pointed towards the two girls that sat two rows ahead of them on the bus. The agents had no problem hearing the conversation that was going on.
The Sue had had a vivid dream again that she had been present when Jack was tortured on the Valiant. Usually in these dreams she was not corporal, but this time she swore at Saxon and then everyone could see her.
"And then she woke up," Emma said. "Just before Saxon could grab her and torture her too. There's no fun in these Suefics."
"It is a well-established fact that Sues have a different idea of fun than PPC-agents. For instance, we don't think it's fun to be jostled from past to present tense and back."
"Oh, was that what it was. I just thought Americans had extremely bad roads and very soft springs in their buses." Emma pulled a notepad and pen from her shoulder bag and made a note of the first charge.
The bus pulled to a stop and the Sue and her friend got off. The agents followed. The Sue and friend talked about their own apartment; they really wanted to get out of their parental homes. The Sue's father quickly rushed out of his house to show why.
His face was completely red, as he continued to yell at them. "Work called and told me that you called in and said that you couldn't come in." He took a breath, "Caden O'Connor. When you are schedule to go to work, you go to work. You don't call in sick."
"If work already knows that she's not coming in, why did they call and tell her dad?"
"He was a bully to them too?" Tasmin shrugged.
The Sue said something about having too much homework and her dad understanding and then turned around and walked away. Her dad was left in the street fuming.
"Wanna know where they are going." Emma jerked her head after the two girls.
"I'm sure we'll bump into them sooner or later. Let's take a portal and look at this story from another angle."
-oOo-
The other angle was Jack's office. Jack had just woken up from another dream about the Sue and was happy to find that he now finally knew her name. He told Ianto he wanted a full investigation of the Sue. Ianto did not question his assignment in the least, not even to ask why Jack wanted an investigation of a person he'd never even heard of before. When Ianto left the office, Jack pulled out a dossier and filed the dream he had just had.
The agents flopped down on the sofa in the office while Jack read through the dossier he had kept for two hundred years.
"If he has dreamt about this girl for two hundred years already, shouldn't he have known the girl's last name already, for, oh, I don't know, two hundred years? After all he knows her almost better then she knows herself."
"You'd think that, wouldn't you? But think of this as two people using aliases when talking on-line: they may have told each other everything, except their real names."
There was a knock on the door and the rest of the Torchwood employees filed into Jack's office. They all stood in a line in front of his desk, like tin soldiers on the battle field. Ianto announced he had some information on the Sue.
"She lives with her parents, even though she's 19. Has her own place in about a mouth," Gwen looked at him confused.
"Nineteen is not particularly old to still be living with one's parents. So is Gwen confused because Ianto seems to think it is; because she doesn't understand how a person could find a place in a mouth, unless they are a dentist; or because there is some Gwen bashing in this story?"
"My guess is number three. But I wouldn't hold it against Gwen if it was the second option."
Jack filled his team in on the reasons the Sue and her friend were soon going to move in together. Gwen found it suspicious Jack knew so much already.
"That's classified, Gwen." He told her with a strict voice that told her to drop it, but she couldn't.
"Yep, definite Gwen bashing going on." Tasmin nodded.
"I'm siding with Gwen on this one: if Jack is sharing personal details about two young women with his team, he also ought to share with them his sources. If he doesn't he's just being an authoritative jerk."
"Interesting theory that this is Jack bashing disguised as Gwen bashing."
"I doubt it's Jack bashing. The narrative seems to be sympathetic of Jack."
Jack finally revealed that his source was too personal for his team to know.
They all looked at him shocked that he was actually telling them all this. But he continued, "But the thing is when I die, I don't see any of that. I don't see the darkness and I don't hear the silence. Instead I get to see this girl's whole life. Since she was five, I saw every moment."
"And again I wonder why he has never ever before picked up on the girl's last name," Emma said. "He thinks he's seen every second of her life over a span of fourteen years. Surely, there were occasions when her last name was used? Such as on the first day of school when a new teacher had to learn her name, or when she applied for her job, or when her parents were angry with her as they were before?"
"I think it's a charge both under continuity and logic. Also, charge them with no one wondering about how or why Jack is seeing every moment of the life of a girl that turns out to really exist."
"What? And have an actual plot in this story? If it had that we wouldn't be here."
Tasmin rolled her eyes. "Just write it down."
Jack took a few moments to recompose himself after relating how important the Sue was to him. Then Ianto informed him that the Sue had gone missing after arguing with her parents and withdrawn all her money from the bank. Jack was devastated and could barely keep from crying when he ordered his team to find her and her friend.
"Right," Tasmin said. "Everybody's out of character. Jack for crying and everybody else for not saying: but Jack, if you can see her life between dying and reviving, wouldn't shooting you in the head help us find her?"
Emma sniggered and scribbled down the question.
Ianto, who had been ordered to talk to the Sue's parents, objected that it was ten at night where they lived, in Seattle, USA.
"If it's ten at night in Seattle, it is six in the morning in Cardiff." Tasmin rolled her eyes again. "Nice try at remembering there is a time difference, but how about explaining what the Torchwood team is doing at the Hub in the dead of night?"
Ianto rang up the parents and told them he was with the BBC and would like to know why their daughter did not show up for school that day.
"That crack you just heard that was my brain breaking," Emma said.
"So soon already?" Tasmin asked in a soothing voice. "We've only just begun in this fic."
"Don't ignore the wear and tear of all the other missions we've been on." Emma dropped her head in her hands.
The Sue's father responded cold and detached to Ianto's questions. Ianto disliked him for it. Tasmin grumbled that if the father had cared for his daughter realistically he would not tell someone claiming to be with the BBC over the phone any particulars of what went missing with his daughter, rather he would want to know why the BBC would be interested.
Jack then had a brainwave: he figured the Sue would be coming to Cardiff, because if he had nowhere else to go, he would go to the Sue.
Emma veered up from rocking her head in her hands and grinned. "And that was just the right kind of mushy to glue my brain back together." She grabbed her pad and wrote down a few charges.
Tosh confirmed Jack's thought: the two girls had arrived at Cardiff airport two hours earlier. Jack jumped up. He thought the girls should have arrived already.
"Well, yeah, if Cardiff International Airport has excellent bus service at 4.30 in the morning," Emma said.
"It's lousy and it doesn't start until nearly six," Tasmin replied. "It's about fifteen miles from the airport to the Hub. They probably couldn't have made it yet if they walked, but by taxi would have been no problem."
Jack took the lift up to the plass and looked around for the Sue and her friend. And as sure as day, or rather night as was the case, the two girls came running across the deserted plass chased by Weevils. The Sue tripped and fell. A Weevil was about to jump on her, but Jack shot it. For a moment the Sue and Jack were mesmerised with each other and the realisation they had found each other, then it occurred to Jack there were still more Weevils around.
Taking his eyes off her for a second, he pulled her into him and then shot his gun. He watched as the rest of the Weevils ran away.
"I think that sentence just exceeded the fic's rating."
"And Jack is carrying two guns so he can fire one to shoot the other."
"Which serves no particular purpose. Though, as a means to scare of Weevils it might just work."
Jack took the Sue and her friend back to the Hub, where he gave his bed to the Sue and put her friend up some place else. The Sue was so tired she slept for two whole days. When she finally woke up Jack was in the room with her and she asked him how much he knew about her. He replied that he knew everything.
He didn't want to lie to her; he wanted to tell her everything. From his childhood to now. Even all the classified stuff.
"Uh, he knows everything about her and now he wants to tell her everything about him?" Emma gave Tasmin a puzzled look.
"I guess so. Don't know why. If she has dreamt as much about him as he has dreamt about her, she probably knows a lot about him already."
"She probably only dreamt about him for fourteen years. She knows a lot less about him than vice versa." Something occurred to Emma. "He's been dreaming about her from long before she was born."
"He's actually been dreaming about her since before he was born. It's been about 140 years since Rose made him immortal, and I doubt he was past the age of 40 when he first met Rose."
"Another continuity error." Emma wrote down the charge.
Then he lightly brought his lips down to hers, the lightest of kisses, but at the touch of her lips, realized he wanted more. He wanted her.
"Excuse me for finding that a little bit icky." Emma made a disgusted face. "Jack pretty much knew her since she was five. She must be like a daughter to him. I know sexual morality is more loose in the 51st century, and I'm pretty liberal myself, but that's a line that shall not be crossed."
"Not if you want to have readers' continued sympathy. There are cases where a father and his daughter, both adults, consented to having a sexual relationship with one another."
Emma's facial expression did not improve on that news.
"But the cases I've heard of, these were absent fathers."
"Objection, your honour, relevance? The Sue just said she can't."
The Sue turned away from Jack and didn't see his heart break.
After her friend woke up the Sue went to chat with her. Jack went to his office to rethink what he had done.
He knew that he had fallen head over heels for her. He knew that a month after the dreams started.
The agents, who were still seated on the sofa in Jack's office, looked at him in shock.
"Please, Jack, tell me these dreams about her were not in chronological order," Emma pleaded.
Jack ignored her, too busy with his own thoughts. He thought he had screwed up every chance of being with the Sue.
"He's not just a paedophile, he's a melodramatic paedophile," Emma said resignedly.
"And you thought this fic wouldn't have Jack bashing."
"Well, is my face red or what?"
Music and lyrics floated into the office. Jack had heard the song many times before, but it now made sense to him.
The agents didn't think Jack's turmoil of being immortal could be captured in a pop song.
The scenery turned black for a short moment and the fic fast forwarded two days. Nothing had happened during that time, other than that Jack wanted to tell the Sue about his feelings for her, but didn't want to risk losing her.
"Rather than think about risking to lose her, why not think about setting her up with a life?"
"She's left for the UK on a whim; she probably doesn't have a visa. She has to leave again in six months."
"As if Torchwood can't forge her a work permit and such."
"Well, yeah, but they aren't, are they? Jack is sulking because the Sue dissed him. Meanwhile the Sue and her friend are just hanging around the Hub."
"And cramping our style," Emma commented. The two agents had confined themselves to Jack's office, because, strangely enough, that was the one place the Sue avoided going into.
The Sue was sitting on the dingy sofa in the Hub's lounge corner reading a magazine. Her friend was out with Ianto for some reason. Jack asked if the Sue wanted to have lunch with him. She accepted his invitation and went to put on some gym shoes. When she returned Jack took her up on the lift to the plass.
She was so close to him and she wanted so much to feel his lips again. A kiss that made her feel alive, just like the last one. But she couldn't, she didn't want to risk breaking her heart again.
Tasmin yawned and started to inspect her fingernails.
"Fic boring you?"
"Jack and the Sue going for lunch? Yeah, that sounds very action packed."
"Well, we could always have a bet whether or not they will kiss before or after they have eaten the complementary breadbasket."
"I don't think they will eat the actual basket." Tasmin suppressed a snigger. "So, I'll take before."
"You know what I mean. Still taking before?"
"Sure." They shook on it.
Jack took the Sue for hotdogs and ice cream and Emma tried to collect on her bet.
"There wasn't even a complementary breadbasket. It doesn't count."
Eating their ice creams Jack started talking about how well he knew the Sue.
He looked at her to find that she was looking at him with tears in her eyes. Forgetting about the ice cream in his hand, he dropped it and cupping her cheek and he wiped away the tears that made her beautiful eyes puffy and pink. And then he said one last thing, "You think that no one wants you, but you're wrong. You think that no one loves you, but you're wrong."
The Sue was moved he knew her so well, but thought he was wrong about the last bit: no one loved her.
"In the olden days a melodrama would be a play interspersed with song. If this Sue is going to be melodramatic could she at least do it to tune?"
Tasmin nearly went for her partner's throat. "Never ever taunt the Ironical Overpowers like that. Melodrama is bad enough without the Sue singing."
Jack told the Sue he once materialised in front of her when she was doing some shopping. She thought she was stupid for not having recognised him.
"You are not stupid. You are very smart, one of the smartest people I know."
"Reducing Jack's social circle to three people." Emma scribbled down.
The Sue and Jack found comfort in each other's arms, until Jack received a message from Tosh: there had been a Weevil attack. Jack decided to send the Sue back to the Hub so she would be safe, but she refused.
"Sorry, Jack. But I'm not part of Torchwood. And if Torchwood doesn't exist to the public then I don't have to listen to you." He was shocked, but he didn't show it. He couldn't believe that she had played that card. But he knew that she was right, she was usually always are when it came to this type of decision. "I am coming with you, Jack, and THAT'S final."
"Right, and this is after Jack takes some time convincing the Sue that she is smart. Boy, did she prove him wrong."
"Hmm, and she is wrong too. Just because Torchwood doesn't exist doesn't mean she should not take sound safety advice from Jack. A point which Jack could have argued too."
"I'll just add 'slow brain' to whatever else she has done to his character. Though, if he managed to figure out what that sentence with the 'usually always' meant, I'm going for 'brain working in mysterious ways'."
Jack and the Sue soon encounter a troupe of Weevils that manage to knock both of them out and take them prisoner.
The agents looked at each other.
"Weevils taking prisoners. Curious," Emma said. She moved her pen close to her notepad, ready to write down charges as soon as they occurred.
The Sue woke up in a cell she thought might be a dungeon. Jack was by her side, but he was angry with her. The Sue got up and they argued.
"So would you have rather it be like the past? Where we thought that we were dreaming and none of this was real? Would you rather have it that way?" She whispered the last part. Jack looked at her with pain and truth in his eyes. Then she continued, "The reason why I couldn't let you go alone was because who would watch your back. Who would be there when you needed help? When you need someone to lean on? Someone to help carry your pain, your grief."
"Err, you are aware that he was trying to keep you away from being torn apart by Weevils who have sharp, pointy teeth?" Emma asked. "And that standing by someone doesn't actually require physically standing by them?"
The Sue then collapsed. Jack found she had a big wound on her leg and ordered her to take off her pants so he could take care of it.
"You're losing blood fast. You have a gash that almost severs your leg in half, it missed the artery, but it still hit the bone."
"I think we should go there before the Sue bleeds to death. How many charges have you got?"
"The usually: bad grammar, bad plot, bad characterization, bad melodramatics."
"Good enough for me." Tasmin pulled the Remote Activator from her duffel bag and opened a portal.
-oOo-
The agents stepped into the cell where Jack was busy applying a tourniquet to the Sue's wound.
"Jack, I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the Sue," Emma said.
Jack looked up at the agents, but did not seem to recognize them. It probably was the Colt M1911 that made him decide to follow orders.
"And may I complement you on your choice of wardrobe for today?"
Tasmin cleared her throat. "Charge the Sue so we can get out of her before the Weevils come in."
Emma sighed and pulled her eyes away from shirtless Jack to face the bleeding Sue. "Caden O'Connor, we are Protectors of the Plot Continuum and we are here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and Torchwood fandom in particular.
"We charge you with bad grammar, bad spelling and bad punctuation. We charge you with changing tenses so often they caused car sickness. We charge you with nothing happening at Torchwood, while all of the Team should be very busy trying to find out how it is possible that a girl Jack's been dreaming about turns out to be a real person. We charge you with Jack filling the Team in on everything he knows about the girl, but refusing, at first, to reveal his sources. Jack, if he had been remotely in character, would not have told so much if he was not willing to tell more."
Jack looked at the two agents. He faint air of recognition started to appear on his face.
"We charge you with Jack being out of character. Mainly because you made him cry and melodramatic. Jack's not going to think he screwed up every chance he had with a person just because they break off a kiss. We also charge you with Jack thinking you are right to claim: Torchwood doesn't exist to the public so I don't have to listen to you. Jack was looking out for your safety, you dodo. Torchwood had nothing to do with it."
The Sue just stared at Emma. She was shivering. Tasmin urged Emma to hurry up charging. The Sue had seemed to have lost a lot of blood and they needed to be done before she died.
Emma nodded vigorously. "We charge you with having everyone else out of character as well, because after Jack said he saw every second of your life between dying and reviving, and Ianto said you had gone missing, no one suggested to shoot Jack in the head to see where you had gone."
"I'm glad they didn't," Jack replied. "You can't believe the headache that leaves me with. Hi, girls." Jack threw one of his winning smiles at the two agents.
"Hi, Jack." Emma returned his smile and turned back to the Sue. "Further, we charge you with some plot holes. Jack has seen every second of your life in the past 200 years -- by the way, it's not been that long for him since the events of Satellite 5 -- yet only once he heard your last name. Second, are these dreams he's having of you in chronological order?"
The Sue nodded weakly. "He's seen every moment of my life since I was five."
"The reason I'm asking, is that Jack at one point contemplates that he has fallen head over heels for you, through his dreams."
"That's right."
"And that he knew that a month after the dreams had started. The context implied lustful craving. Now, if the dreams had been in chronological order, his first dreams of you were when you were five, and one month later-"
"I think I would have preferred the other headache," Jack interrupted her.
"I have an excellent headache cure." Tasmin nodded pointedly at her gun.
"Right. Well, besides Gwen bashing, that's all the charges I have. To sum it up: you are a Mary Sue. The punishment for this is dead, and Tasmin will shoot you now."
And Tasmin shot the Sue through the head. "Did that cure your headache?"
"Just some residual feeling of ick lingering," Jack replied.
"Do you know where this Sue's friend is? We have to take care of her too."
"No, but I could call Ianto and find out."
"If you could that would be great."
"Why do you need to kill her? She doesn't seem to have done much wrong."
"Aiding and abetting a Mary Sue," Tasmin replied. "Plus, we believe that she was only put in the story to serve as a love-interest for Ianto. We've seen it before. It's a vain attempt to excuse for not having Janto in the fic. If Ianto is paired off with someone the road is free for the Sue to jump your bones."
"Janto?"
"It's a portmanteau of Jack and Ianto."
"We don't like it either," Emma added. "But it's still better than Gwack."
Jack made a face. "Hey, what do they call it when they pair me with the Doctor: Joc? I kind of like that."
"I think they just say Jack/Ten. Anyway, if you could call Ianto? This place is not canon and it's going to fold in on itself in few moments. We'd like to be out of here by then."
"What will happen to me if it folds in on itself?"
"You'll be returned to the Hub," Tasmin said. "With hopefully no memories of the events of the past few days."
Jack made the call, the agents made the kill and everyone lived happily ever after. That is, until the next time the console let out a piercing beep.
-oOo-
A/N: Jack seeing a girl in his dreams for a long time and then learning she really exists could make for an interesting Torchwood plot. The Team trying to find out why Jack is dreaming about her, whether she has any alien connections, that sort of thing. When writing that plot, or any plot for that matter, watch out for continuity issues. For instance, I'm not going to believe that Jack saw every second of a person's life for fourteen years, but never learned their last name. Also, if the dreams are in chronological order, you may want to leave out any lustful thoughts on Jack's part unless the girl is at least sixteen.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts taken from From Dreams to Reality: Classified Dreams by horns-halos4ever.
-oOo-
She lay stomach down, sprawled on the ledge on her new building's roof.
Tasmin walked over. The Sue didn't see her as she was looking away at the clouds. Tasmin braced herself and pushed the Sue over the ledge. She grinned as the Sue went down kicking and screaming and landed on the pavement below with a dull thud.
-oOo-
Emma studied the grin on her partner's face. "You're not sleeping on the job are you?"
Tasmin gave her head a startled shake and looked up. "Just a little day-dreaming."
"Sue's over there." Emma pointed towards the two girls that sat two rows ahead of them on the bus. The agents had no problem hearing the conversation that was going on.
The Sue had had a vivid dream again that she had been present when Jack was tortured on the Valiant. Usually in these dreams she was not corporal, but this time she swore at Saxon and then everyone could see her.
"And then she woke up," Emma said. "Just before Saxon could grab her and torture her too. There's no fun in these Suefics."
"It is a well-established fact that Sues have a different idea of fun than PPC-agents. For instance, we don't think it's fun to be jostled from past to present tense and back."
"Oh, was that what it was. I just thought Americans had extremely bad roads and very soft springs in their buses." Emma pulled a notepad and pen from her shoulder bag and made a note of the first charge.
The bus pulled to a stop and the Sue and her friend got off. The agents followed. The Sue and friend talked about their own apartment; they really wanted to get out of their parental homes. The Sue's father quickly rushed out of his house to show why.
His face was completely red, as he continued to yell at them. "Work called and told me that you called in and said that you couldn't come in." He took a breath, "Caden O'Connor. When you are schedule to go to work, you go to work. You don't call in sick."
"If work already knows that she's not coming in, why did they call and tell her dad?"
"He was a bully to them too?" Tasmin shrugged.
The Sue said something about having too much homework and her dad understanding and then turned around and walked away. Her dad was left in the street fuming.
"Wanna know where they are going." Emma jerked her head after the two girls.
"I'm sure we'll bump into them sooner or later. Let's take a portal and look at this story from another angle."
-oOo-
The other angle was Jack's office. Jack had just woken up from another dream about the Sue and was happy to find that he now finally knew her name. He told Ianto he wanted a full investigation of the Sue. Ianto did not question his assignment in the least, not even to ask why Jack wanted an investigation of a person he'd never even heard of before. When Ianto left the office, Jack pulled out a dossier and filed the dream he had just had.
The agents flopped down on the sofa in the office while Jack read through the dossier he had kept for two hundred years.
"If he has dreamt about this girl for two hundred years already, shouldn't he have known the girl's last name already, for, oh, I don't know, two hundred years? After all he knows her almost better then she knows herself."
"You'd think that, wouldn't you? But think of this as two people using aliases when talking on-line: they may have told each other everything, except their real names."
There was a knock on the door and the rest of the Torchwood employees filed into Jack's office. They all stood in a line in front of his desk, like tin soldiers on the battle field. Ianto announced he had some information on the Sue.
"She lives with her parents, even though she's 19. Has her own place in about a mouth," Gwen looked at him confused.
"Nineteen is not particularly old to still be living with one's parents. So is Gwen confused because Ianto seems to think it is; because she doesn't understand how a person could find a place in a mouth, unless they are a dentist; or because there is some Gwen bashing in this story?"
"My guess is number three. But I wouldn't hold it against Gwen if it was the second option."
Jack filled his team in on the reasons the Sue and her friend were soon going to move in together. Gwen found it suspicious Jack knew so much already.
"That's classified, Gwen." He told her with a strict voice that told her to drop it, but she couldn't.
"Yep, definite Gwen bashing going on." Tasmin nodded.
"I'm siding with Gwen on this one: if Jack is sharing personal details about two young women with his team, he also ought to share with them his sources. If he doesn't he's just being an authoritative jerk."
"Interesting theory that this is Jack bashing disguised as Gwen bashing."
"I doubt it's Jack bashing. The narrative seems to be sympathetic of Jack."
Jack finally revealed that his source was too personal for his team to know.
They all looked at him shocked that he was actually telling them all this. But he continued, "But the thing is when I die, I don't see any of that. I don't see the darkness and I don't hear the silence. Instead I get to see this girl's whole life. Since she was five, I saw every moment."
"And again I wonder why he has never ever before picked up on the girl's last name," Emma said. "He thinks he's seen every second of her life over a span of fourteen years. Surely, there were occasions when her last name was used? Such as on the first day of school when a new teacher had to learn her name, or when she applied for her job, or when her parents were angry with her as they were before?"
"I think it's a charge both under continuity and logic. Also, charge them with no one wondering about how or why Jack is seeing every moment of the life of a girl that turns out to really exist."
"What? And have an actual plot in this story? If it had that we wouldn't be here."
Tasmin rolled her eyes. "Just write it down."
Jack took a few moments to recompose himself after relating how important the Sue was to him. Then Ianto informed him that the Sue had gone missing after arguing with her parents and withdrawn all her money from the bank. Jack was devastated and could barely keep from crying when he ordered his team to find her and her friend.
"Right," Tasmin said. "Everybody's out of character. Jack for crying and everybody else for not saying: but Jack, if you can see her life between dying and reviving, wouldn't shooting you in the head help us find her?"
Emma sniggered and scribbled down the question.
Ianto, who had been ordered to talk to the Sue's parents, objected that it was ten at night where they lived, in Seattle, USA.
"If it's ten at night in Seattle, it is six in the morning in Cardiff." Tasmin rolled her eyes again. "Nice try at remembering there is a time difference, but how about explaining what the Torchwood team is doing at the Hub in the dead of night?"
Ianto rang up the parents and told them he was with the BBC and would like to know why their daughter did not show up for school that day.
"That crack you just heard that was my brain breaking," Emma said.
"So soon already?" Tasmin asked in a soothing voice. "We've only just begun in this fic."
"Don't ignore the wear and tear of all the other missions we've been on." Emma dropped her head in her hands.
The Sue's father responded cold and detached to Ianto's questions. Ianto disliked him for it. Tasmin grumbled that if the father had cared for his daughter realistically he would not tell someone claiming to be with the BBC over the phone any particulars of what went missing with his daughter, rather he would want to know why the BBC would be interested.
Jack then had a brainwave: he figured the Sue would be coming to Cardiff, because if he had nowhere else to go, he would go to the Sue.
Emma veered up from rocking her head in her hands and grinned. "And that was just the right kind of mushy to glue my brain back together." She grabbed her pad and wrote down a few charges.
Tosh confirmed Jack's thought: the two girls had arrived at Cardiff airport two hours earlier. Jack jumped up. He thought the girls should have arrived already.
"Well, yeah, if Cardiff International Airport has excellent bus service at 4.30 in the morning," Emma said.
"It's lousy and it doesn't start until nearly six," Tasmin replied. "It's about fifteen miles from the airport to the Hub. They probably couldn't have made it yet if they walked, but by taxi would have been no problem."
Jack took the lift up to the plass and looked around for the Sue and her friend. And as sure as day, or rather night as was the case, the two girls came running across the deserted plass chased by Weevils. The Sue tripped and fell. A Weevil was about to jump on her, but Jack shot it. For a moment the Sue and Jack were mesmerised with each other and the realisation they had found each other, then it occurred to Jack there were still more Weevils around.
Taking his eyes off her for a second, he pulled her into him and then shot his gun. He watched as the rest of the Weevils ran away.
"I think that sentence just exceeded the fic's rating."
"And Jack is carrying two guns so he can fire one to shoot the other."
"Which serves no particular purpose. Though, as a means to scare of Weevils it might just work."
Jack took the Sue and her friend back to the Hub, where he gave his bed to the Sue and put her friend up some place else. The Sue was so tired she slept for two whole days. When she finally woke up Jack was in the room with her and she asked him how much he knew about her. He replied that he knew everything.
He didn't want to lie to her; he wanted to tell her everything. From his childhood to now. Even all the classified stuff.
"Uh, he knows everything about her and now he wants to tell her everything about him?" Emma gave Tasmin a puzzled look.
"I guess so. Don't know why. If she has dreamt as much about him as he has dreamt about her, she probably knows a lot about him already."
"She probably only dreamt about him for fourteen years. She knows a lot less about him than vice versa." Something occurred to Emma. "He's been dreaming about her from long before she was born."
"He's actually been dreaming about her since before he was born. It's been about 140 years since Rose made him immortal, and I doubt he was past the age of 40 when he first met Rose."
"Another continuity error." Emma wrote down the charge.
Then he lightly brought his lips down to hers, the lightest of kisses, but at the touch of her lips, realized he wanted more. He wanted her.
"Excuse me for finding that a little bit icky." Emma made a disgusted face. "Jack pretty much knew her since she was five. She must be like a daughter to him. I know sexual morality is more loose in the 51st century, and I'm pretty liberal myself, but that's a line that shall not be crossed."
"Not if you want to have readers' continued sympathy. There are cases where a father and his daughter, both adults, consented to having a sexual relationship with one another."
Emma's facial expression did not improve on that news.
"But the cases I've heard of, these were absent fathers."
"Objection, your honour, relevance? The Sue just said she can't."
The Sue turned away from Jack and didn't see his heart break.
After her friend woke up the Sue went to chat with her. Jack went to his office to rethink what he had done.
He knew that he had fallen head over heels for her. He knew that a month after the dreams started.
The agents, who were still seated on the sofa in Jack's office, looked at him in shock.
"Please, Jack, tell me these dreams about her were not in chronological order," Emma pleaded.
Jack ignored her, too busy with his own thoughts. He thought he had screwed up every chance of being with the Sue.
"He's not just a paedophile, he's a melodramatic paedophile," Emma said resignedly.
"And you thought this fic wouldn't have Jack bashing."
"Well, is my face red or what?"
Music and lyrics floated into the office. Jack had heard the song many times before, but it now made sense to him.
The agents didn't think Jack's turmoil of being immortal could be captured in a pop song.
The scenery turned black for a short moment and the fic fast forwarded two days. Nothing had happened during that time, other than that Jack wanted to tell the Sue about his feelings for her, but didn't want to risk losing her.
"Rather than think about risking to lose her, why not think about setting her up with a life?"
"She's left for the UK on a whim; she probably doesn't have a visa. She has to leave again in six months."
"As if Torchwood can't forge her a work permit and such."
"Well, yeah, but they aren't, are they? Jack is sulking because the Sue dissed him. Meanwhile the Sue and her friend are just hanging around the Hub."
"And cramping our style," Emma commented. The two agents had confined themselves to Jack's office, because, strangely enough, that was the one place the Sue avoided going into.
The Sue was sitting on the dingy sofa in the Hub's lounge corner reading a magazine. Her friend was out with Ianto for some reason. Jack asked if the Sue wanted to have lunch with him. She accepted his invitation and went to put on some gym shoes. When she returned Jack took her up on the lift to the plass.
She was so close to him and she wanted so much to feel his lips again. A kiss that made her feel alive, just like the last one. But she couldn't, she didn't want to risk breaking her heart again.
Tasmin yawned and started to inspect her fingernails.
"Fic boring you?"
"Jack and the Sue going for lunch? Yeah, that sounds very action packed."
"Well, we could always have a bet whether or not they will kiss before or after they have eaten the complementary breadbasket."
"I don't think they will eat the actual basket." Tasmin suppressed a snigger. "So, I'll take before."
"You know what I mean. Still taking before?"
"Sure." They shook on it.
Jack took the Sue for hotdogs and ice cream and Emma tried to collect on her bet.
"There wasn't even a complementary breadbasket. It doesn't count."
Eating their ice creams Jack started talking about how well he knew the Sue.
He looked at her to find that she was looking at him with tears in her eyes. Forgetting about the ice cream in his hand, he dropped it and cupping her cheek and he wiped away the tears that made her beautiful eyes puffy and pink. And then he said one last thing, "You think that no one wants you, but you're wrong. You think that no one loves you, but you're wrong."
The Sue was moved he knew her so well, but thought he was wrong about the last bit: no one loved her.
"In the olden days a melodrama would be a play interspersed with song. If this Sue is going to be melodramatic could she at least do it to tune?"
Tasmin nearly went for her partner's throat. "Never ever taunt the Ironical Overpowers like that. Melodrama is bad enough without the Sue singing."
Jack told the Sue he once materialised in front of her when she was doing some shopping. She thought she was stupid for not having recognised him.
"You are not stupid. You are very smart, one of the smartest people I know."
"Reducing Jack's social circle to three people." Emma scribbled down.
The Sue and Jack found comfort in each other's arms, until Jack received a message from Tosh: there had been a Weevil attack. Jack decided to send the Sue back to the Hub so she would be safe, but she refused.
"Sorry, Jack. But I'm not part of Torchwood. And if Torchwood doesn't exist to the public then I don't have to listen to you." He was shocked, but he didn't show it. He couldn't believe that she had played that card. But he knew that she was right, she was usually always are when it came to this type of decision. "I am coming with you, Jack, and THAT'S final."
"Right, and this is after Jack takes some time convincing the Sue that she is smart. Boy, did she prove him wrong."
"Hmm, and she is wrong too. Just because Torchwood doesn't exist doesn't mean she should not take sound safety advice from Jack. A point which Jack could have argued too."
"I'll just add 'slow brain' to whatever else she has done to his character. Though, if he managed to figure out what that sentence with the 'usually always' meant, I'm going for 'brain working in mysterious ways'."
Jack and the Sue soon encounter a troupe of Weevils that manage to knock both of them out and take them prisoner.
The agents looked at each other.
"Weevils taking prisoners. Curious," Emma said. She moved her pen close to her notepad, ready to write down charges as soon as they occurred.
The Sue woke up in a cell she thought might be a dungeon. Jack was by her side, but he was angry with her. The Sue got up and they argued.
"So would you have rather it be like the past? Where we thought that we were dreaming and none of this was real? Would you rather have it that way?" She whispered the last part. Jack looked at her with pain and truth in his eyes. Then she continued, "The reason why I couldn't let you go alone was because who would watch your back. Who would be there when you needed help? When you need someone to lean on? Someone to help carry your pain, your grief."
"Err, you are aware that he was trying to keep you away from being torn apart by Weevils who have sharp, pointy teeth?" Emma asked. "And that standing by someone doesn't actually require physically standing by them?"
The Sue then collapsed. Jack found she had a big wound on her leg and ordered her to take off her pants so he could take care of it.
"You're losing blood fast. You have a gash that almost severs your leg in half, it missed the artery, but it still hit the bone."
"I think we should go there before the Sue bleeds to death. How many charges have you got?"
"The usually: bad grammar, bad plot, bad characterization, bad melodramatics."
"Good enough for me." Tasmin pulled the Remote Activator from her duffel bag and opened a portal.
-oOo-
The agents stepped into the cell where Jack was busy applying a tourniquet to the Sue's wound.
"Jack, I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the Sue," Emma said.
Jack looked up at the agents, but did not seem to recognize them. It probably was the Colt M1911 that made him decide to follow orders.
"And may I complement you on your choice of wardrobe for today?"
Tasmin cleared her throat. "Charge the Sue so we can get out of her before the Weevils come in."
Emma sighed and pulled her eyes away from shirtless Jack to face the bleeding Sue. "Caden O'Connor, we are Protectors of the Plot Continuum and we are here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and Torchwood fandom in particular.
"We charge you with bad grammar, bad spelling and bad punctuation. We charge you with changing tenses so often they caused car sickness. We charge you with nothing happening at Torchwood, while all of the Team should be very busy trying to find out how it is possible that a girl Jack's been dreaming about turns out to be a real person. We charge you with Jack filling the Team in on everything he knows about the girl, but refusing, at first, to reveal his sources. Jack, if he had been remotely in character, would not have told so much if he was not willing to tell more."
Jack looked at the two agents. He faint air of recognition started to appear on his face.
"We charge you with Jack being out of character. Mainly because you made him cry and melodramatic. Jack's not going to think he screwed up every chance he had with a person just because they break off a kiss. We also charge you with Jack thinking you are right to claim: Torchwood doesn't exist to the public so I don't have to listen to you. Jack was looking out for your safety, you dodo. Torchwood had nothing to do with it."
The Sue just stared at Emma. She was shivering. Tasmin urged Emma to hurry up charging. The Sue had seemed to have lost a lot of blood and they needed to be done before she died.
Emma nodded vigorously. "We charge you with having everyone else out of character as well, because after Jack said he saw every second of your life between dying and reviving, and Ianto said you had gone missing, no one suggested to shoot Jack in the head to see where you had gone."
"I'm glad they didn't," Jack replied. "You can't believe the headache that leaves me with. Hi, girls." Jack threw one of his winning smiles at the two agents.
"Hi, Jack." Emma returned his smile and turned back to the Sue. "Further, we charge you with some plot holes. Jack has seen every second of your life in the past 200 years -- by the way, it's not been that long for him since the events of Satellite 5 -- yet only once he heard your last name. Second, are these dreams he's having of you in chronological order?"
The Sue nodded weakly. "He's seen every moment of my life since I was five."
"The reason I'm asking, is that Jack at one point contemplates that he has fallen head over heels for you, through his dreams."
"That's right."
"And that he knew that a month after the dreams had started. The context implied lustful craving. Now, if the dreams had been in chronological order, his first dreams of you were when you were five, and one month later-"
"I think I would have preferred the other headache," Jack interrupted her.
"I have an excellent headache cure." Tasmin nodded pointedly at her gun.
"Right. Well, besides Gwen bashing, that's all the charges I have. To sum it up: you are a Mary Sue. The punishment for this is dead, and Tasmin will shoot you now."
And Tasmin shot the Sue through the head. "Did that cure your headache?"
"Just some residual feeling of ick lingering," Jack replied.
"Do you know where this Sue's friend is? We have to take care of her too."
"No, but I could call Ianto and find out."
"If you could that would be great."
"Why do you need to kill her? She doesn't seem to have done much wrong."
"Aiding and abetting a Mary Sue," Tasmin replied. "Plus, we believe that she was only put in the story to serve as a love-interest for Ianto. We've seen it before. It's a vain attempt to excuse for not having Janto in the fic. If Ianto is paired off with someone the road is free for the Sue to jump your bones."
"Janto?"
"It's a portmanteau of Jack and Ianto."
"We don't like it either," Emma added. "But it's still better than Gwack."
Jack made a face. "Hey, what do they call it when they pair me with the Doctor: Joc? I kind of like that."
"I think they just say Jack/Ten. Anyway, if you could call Ianto? This place is not canon and it's going to fold in on itself in few moments. We'd like to be out of here by then."
"What will happen to me if it folds in on itself?"
"You'll be returned to the Hub," Tasmin said. "With hopefully no memories of the events of the past few days."
Jack made the call, the agents made the kill and everyone lived happily ever after. That is, until the next time the console let out a piercing beep.
-oOo-
A/N: Jack seeing a girl in his dreams for a long time and then learning she really exists could make for an interesting Torchwood plot. The Team trying to find out why Jack is dreaming about her, whether she has any alien connections, that sort of thing. When writing that plot, or any plot for that matter, watch out for continuity issues. For instance, I'm not going to believe that Jack saw every second of a person's life for fourteen years, but never learned their last name. Also, if the dreams are in chronological order, you may want to leave out any lustful thoughts on Jack's part unless the girl is at least sixteen.