DW/TW Story: Wonderland (1/5)
Title: Wonderland (1/5)
Rating: PG-15
Characters: ensemble
Pairings: Yes. Many.
Spoilers: Nu!Who 'verse up through CoE, possible casting spoilers for '09 Christmas special
Warnings: extreme self-indulgence, angsty emo (mostly Jack), character death (also mostly Jack), child endangerment, mentions of torture circa The Year That Never Was, sentence fragments, and believe it or not given the other warnings, massive amounts of fluff. It is deeply twee, interspersed with moderate horror.
Beta: With greatest thanks to Brinshannara for the translation and my beloved Ab for the read-through.
Author's Note: I hadn't intended to write a sequel to " Six Hundred Seconds" (and in fact suggest that anyone who enjoyed that story avoid this one). But then I looked down into the rabbit hole, and lo, the bunnies living there were so very densely fluffy that they changed the orbits of nearby stars. Title in honour of said rabbit hole and not the Who novel.
***
Prelude
***
The breath flew out of him as the door to the TARDIS opened onto the scene of destruction. Jack looked away, looked back at the Doctor. "Here?"
"Here. You always come back here."
"I didn't intend to. I was thinking that moon in the Rygellian Cluster, the one with that great bar. The waitresses dress entirely in different shades of light. Know the place?"
The Doctor tilted his head, which could have been a yes and could have been a no, or could have been a stray memory of a time he rescued some cute young thing from virtual slavery and out-thought an alien menace over banana daiquiris.
Jack breathed out and looked at the mess in the Plass. No more police tape, much of the actual rubble taken away, more signs of construction-related jumble than he'd thought at first glance. "When are we?"
"A bit after you left. Not long." He always said things like that with certainty, and never mind if they ended up five years and three hundred miles away from where he stated with authority that they ought to be. Jack found it part of the Doctor's exasperating charm.
"I don't want to be here. Can't we refuel and just go?" He tried to keep the whine out of his voice.
"I can. Your ride's over." The door stayed open. Jack watched it warily, as though the Doctor was asking him to walk into a fire. Everything hurt, and would hurt so much more when Jack was out there surrounded by the memories he'd been trying to outrun. Maybe he'd drown in them instead. Out of the deaths he'd experienced, drowning hadn't been as pleasant as he'd been led to believe. His lungs had filled with water he could not choke out, and he'd flailed for air he could not reach. And here he was again.
"We'll see each other again," the Doctor said gently. "I guarantee it."
"Never doubted him. Never will."
No goodbyes. Jack had said his, at last. The Doctor made a habit of not even trying.
Instead, Jack drew in his shoulders and stepped out carefully, wondering if each step would burn him, freeze him, needle him. The ground was solid under his feet, and as he breathed in, the air tasted like home. Behind him, the door closed, and Jack pulled in another ragged breath.
Home. Right.
***
Part One
***
Jack walked across the ruins of the Plass and examined the area. Yes, definitely under construction. A Council-approved plan was posted, describing the improvements they were making to the site in memory of those who'd died in the "terrorist attack." That had been the official story, though no one had died in the blast except Jack. He'd kicked Gwen out, had to drag Ianto to the lift to get him out in time, but they'd survived.
He wondered who the government had made disappear conveniently at the same time. Had they found the bodies in the morgue? In cold storage? Were Suzie and Gray, and for that matter Janet, listed in some deliberately miswritten roster of fallen victims? Or were they still buried deep below where he stood, to be found by confused archaeologists in a thousand years' time?
He thought about going down to the other entrance to see what was being done to the wreckage down there, but stopped short when he realised just considering looking at the destroyed Tourist Information Centre was making his palms sweat and his chest tighten. No.
He turned on his heel and walked away from the site, from the TARDIS, from everything. This wasn't home, not anymore.
He listened to the TARDIS hum, and without turning his head, knew it was gone.
Jack needed a place to sleep, something to eat, and time to figure out how he was going to start on the rest of his very long life. He couldn't bear the thought of contacting Gwen. Her baby was due soon, if she hadn't already delivered. Jack could not be near children. Not yet.
He stopped by a machine to get some cash out. His card still worked, and the balance looked like he had drawn a couple more paycheques than he last remembered. The date on his receipt was a month after he'd left Gwen and Rhys on the hillside and fled Earth. No baby, then. He would call her later.
After lunch. Some comfort food was exactly what he needed, something familiar. He walked to the Thai place down the street, but it and the Indian restaurant next door both held placards in their windows advertising that they were closed Mondays.
Today was the first Monday of the rest of his life, and it would start with --- he checked another two doors down --- pizza. Jubilee Pizza was open, Monday or not. He went inside.
Jubilee didn't do much dine-in business, so it was only a minute until he had a seat at a tiny table in the corner, staring at a menu, and the normalcy of it all took his breath away again. The waiter, a little too spotty to be cute, had just come back to take his order when Jack heard his name. His stomach sank. It was too soon, He shouldn't have come here, not where people knew him, not until he was ready. He turned to see who it was.
"Oi! You Jack Harkness?" asked the balding man at the counter, beefy arms resting in front of him.
"That's me," he said. Maybe it was time to change that. He'd worn a dead man's name long enough. He could be someone else now. Walk out of here, change his passport, become Larry Somebody. He'd make a good Larry.
"Told you," said a blonde girl. "You gonna take these or what?" She pulled out three pizzas from the warmer. "Save me a trip, yeah?"
Jack stood up and went to the counter. The name on the slip wasn't his. Gwen had ordered them for delivery to an address he didn't recognize, but it wasn't far. He glanced up at the blonde girl. "I can take them." He pulled out his wallet.
Her face broke into a smile, and he returned it automatically, slipping into flirt mode while he searched his memory for her name. She was familiar, had surely delivered to them via the Tourist Centre before, which was why she would know a pizza for Gwen was a pizza for him too.
As he counted out money for the food, he tried not to think about the Tourist Info Centre, but it was like not thinking about the rhinoceros, and so just as her boss said her name, Jack knew it already. "Thanks, Annie."
"Thank you! Just between you and me, I don't think that new girl likes me much."
He made a noise in his throat, not a "yes," not a "no," so that he didn't have to ask who the new girl was. Annie's hair was different, but it had been a few years since he'd shot her down in the deep dungeons of the Hub, shot the person who'd been wearing her body like a new camisole. Jack liked the new look, he decided, and offered her another 100 Watt smile to cover the panic he felt welling inside him.
"Gotta go," he said, and grabbed the pizzas without taking his change. Not running, he still managed to be around the corner in five seconds flat.
Okay. So. They'd changed time. The Doctor had, and Jack too. Not because Jack had asked, because the Doctor never would have said yes, not in five billion years, not to Jack. But someone else had asked him, had made him promise, and while the Doctor broke his promises as often as not, he did try to keep them when he could. What the Doctor could not do for Jack, he did for a dying woman who'd loved him once. (He loves us all, Jack's mind told him quietly, far back in the place he occasionally allowed himself forgiveness. As usual, he told it to shut up.) A little change made at the right time, or so the Doctor said, and there had never been a Cyberman in their basement, and she had never murdered Annie.
Jack glanced at the receipt again. He needed to talk to Gwen. He'd stepped onto a new world, and he was suddenly and sharply uncertain of his footing.
Across the way, down the street, and now he recognised where he was: a new building they'd been constructing for the past year. He'd driven by the site countless times, and now it was all shiny windows and cool steel. Modern and flashy, and for the life of him, he couldn't picture Gwen here. No suite number on the pizza, so no idea where she was.
Inside, he read the list of businesses on the wall, and then the warning bells rang in his head. Harper's Jellied Eels was the most obvious, but he'd be damned if there was a real Smith & Jones business in the building. Sunrise Software Solutions? Enfys Tours? And what was H3? He made a note of the suites and then followed the discreet number plates to the jellied eel office. As he'd suspected, while he could see a prim yet tasteful reception area through the glass, the door was locked with a "Sorry, we're closed" sign in the window. Smith & Jones had a different décor, and a differently-lettered sign.
A grin spread over his face.
H3 was next door. The light was on through the curtains over the windows. He went inside.
Lois looked up from the desk and her eyes lit up at the sight of him. "Jack!"
"Lois Habiba," he said, because he'd discovered many years back that saying full names helped him remember them when the faces ran together too much. So Lois was working as their front doorkeeper now. Gone were the homey pile of maps and brochures with which they'd disguised their last headquarters. Instead, he saw a large stylised logo on the reception desk, a few posters claiming that "H3 worked for me!" and two chairs with some elderly magazines on a table between them.
"I brought pizza." He didn't hug her. He was not at that point with her in his timeline, wasn't sure about this one.
"Fantastic. Also, you're late."
"I'm … really not myself today."
"So who are you, then?" she asked with a smile. "Because whoever it is is late, too." She tilted her head. "Go on in, before it gets cold."
Jack opened the door to the right and behind her desk. Inside, the office stretched comfortably out to encompass, at a quick guess, this half of the building. The private lift he spied to his left enabled access to the rest. Easy cover in a building that looked like half of Cardiff: smack in-between this week's brand new businesses and last month's old ideas that were already closed.
Computer terminals filled most of this space, though corridors and offices branched out everywhere. Not like the Hub, not quite, but also not dissimilar. The ceiling was too low for Myfanwy, but perhaps well above them there was a hall or atrium big enough to be used as a bird cage for a dinosaur.
He liked it, grudgingly.
Jack set the pizzas down on the first table he saw, brushing aside some papers as he did.
"Hey!" came a shout from behind him. "Mind the work!" And it wasn't so much that the shout couldn't have happened, because this was not his world and not the life he remembered and oh God the threads were so far unraveled, but he hadn't even let himself think or hope.
"Sorry," he said with his heart in his mouth, and he stacked the papers neatly. "How're you doing, Toshiko?"
And then he wished he'd looked at her a second before asking, as she approached the table in a wheelchair with slanted wheels. Her face was different, harder. She didn't smile when she saw him. "You're late. She's going to kill you, you know."
"I wouldn't be surprised." He bent over and kissed her on the head.
"Stop it," she said, and there was no friendliness to her irritation.
"Sorry," he said again. Different world, different rules, and he could fake his way through. He could.
"Well, go see her. Get it over with quickly." Tosh grabbed the pizzas and took them towards another room.
Jack scanned the offices for nameplates, found only numbers. Not helpful. He walked past empty offices, though these were clearly often used, until he came to one with a light on, and he tapped on the door frame.
"Yeah?" came Gwen's voice.
"It's me."
"Where the hell have you been?!" she shouted. "And you better bloody answer 'dead, ma'am,' or so help me … "
He almost told her, as he walked in. Still Gwen, still beautiful, if massively pregnant and scowling at him from behind stacks of reports.
Jack hears him say, "He was supposed to take that Welsh bitch in with him, too, but at least his little pet died." Jack doesn't hear much after that.
"Did you pick up the TARDIS on the scans a little bit ago?" he asked instead.
"Why d'you think we've been trying to reach you? Don't you ever answer your mobile?"
His mobile. Which he'd dropped into a cesspit behind one of too many bars four planets ago when he'd looked at it and started shaking and couldn't stand it anymore.
"I lost it."
"You're an idiot."
"I brought pizza."
"Then you're an idiot with pizza. I see your comm is gone, too."
"Look … " he said, and he heard voices from outside. Familiar voices. No …
Jack turned on his heel and went out of Gwen's office, his hand already on his gun. He had it pointed at Johnson's face before she drew breath to say hello.
"Hi," he said, resisting the impulse to shoot her. "Why are you here?"
A hand covered his, very gently. "It's lunchtime, mate," said Mickey. "No one is allowed to die at lunch. Remember? We never did get those stains out of the carpet after Emma stabbed you over the Pad Thai."
Jack pulled his gun away slowly, then pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Johnson shrugged and went to where Tosh had already set out plates, helping herself to two slices.
"Mind some advice?" said Mickey in a low voice. "Work that out with her. Where were you this morning?"
Jack found a chair and sat heavily in it. Gwen walked out of her office, stood in the doorway watching him. To her, he said, "Okay. I've got a problem." He could hear Tosh and Johnson come closer. He was betting Lois had a feed in here as well. "I thought I could deal with it, but apparently not so much."
"What is it, Jack?" Gwen asked.
"I've been given a dose of Retcon. Big."
"How big?" asked Tosh, no longer pretending not to listen.
He did the mental math. "Three years. Maybe four."
"Oh my God," said Gwen. "Do you … do you even know who we are?"
He grinned weakly. "I remember you, Gwen Cooper. And I've known Mickey Mouse here for over a century. I've got substitute memories, and they go back a long way."
Tosh was already beside him scanning. "That's a massive reprogramming. You shouldn't be able to even stand up right now."
"I'm special." It was the best explanation he could think of to cover his changed memories, at least that didn't involve mentioning, "By the way, I may have broken time so keep an eye out for giant flying monsters trying to eat us all, okay?"
"It's already vanished from your bloodstream," Tosh said. Nice tech. New. No blood samples required. Which was good since Owen …
"Where's Owen?" he blurted out. Tosh's expression told him what he needed to know before Gwen said in a gentle voice, "He died, love. A while back. You don't remember at all?"
"I did," he said. "I hoped I was wrong." Tosh had already put her scanner down and was typing into a keyboard, her head purposely turned away.
Mickey cleared his throat. "Lunchtime. Then we can figure out what's wrong with Captain Smiley."
***
Martha arrived a few hours later. Gwen had called her, letting Jack know they still didn't have their own doctor and needing one who was familiar with Jack's unique background. "You're off the street," Gwen said, "until we know who did this to you and why."
"The street" turned out to be the current code for their field agents: trapping Weevils, chasing down artifacts, that sort of thing. Jack was on that team with Johnson and Mickey. Lois was being trained for it, but was still well in the "not allowed to carry a gun yet" stage. Due to her condition --- and Jack was getting a sneaking suspicion that none of the others directly wanted to say "due to her being much better at it than Jack" --- Gwen managed everything at the Hub, from handing out assignments and directing their energies to keeping an eye open for desperately needed new talent.
Jack was in charge, Gwen had assured him as he took this in, but he seemed to be in charge of things like having to deal with the politicians, signing things that required someone's signature, and not getting in the way while Tosh figured out what was going on with the Rift and Gwen ordered them to deal with it.
"How long was I gone?" he asked, as Martha took the first of what would be a dozen blood samples.
"Which time?" Gwen asked. Lois brought in another stack of papers. Jack hadn't had to verbalise his desire to read the basic history of the team over the past four years before she had gathered the information, but she hadn't handed them over until Martha had given them the nod that Jack was really Jack and not some imposter trying to infiltrate.
Good instincts there, he mused. Johnson had offered to shoot him in the head to positively confirm his identity. Also a good instinct, but he made a note to give her a wide berth for a while until he knew precisely her place here, and why someone he associated with blowing him up was now on his team. She and Mickey had gone back out as soon as they'd eaten, maybe thinking the same thing.
"How many times have I left?"
"Three, while I've been here. The Doctor came and you left us right after you came back from the Abaddon incident. You were gone for months." The flicker in her eyes was guilt, and he nodded. They'd opened the Rift in this world, too, and he'd died to fix it. He wondered if he'd spent a year under the Master's loving care. Martha was here, so probably. "When the Earth was taken by the Daleks, you left us to go find the Doctor."
"I'm consistent."
"You also went on a long holiday after the incident with the 456." The false jollity as she said it was as telling as her eyes.
"I'll read that report later," he said. The pain was back, the sour taste in his mouth and the need to run, just run.
"You really don't remember?" Martha asked, as she examined his vitals. "You don't even want to know how much adrenaline just shot through your system."
"Like I said, I remember something. But it's all wrong." He swallowed. "I just need to know what really happened, so I can sort it out." Half-lies were easier than full lies. Always had been.
"Do you have any idea who would have done this to you?"
He shook his head.
Gwen said, "We'll have to make a list. All your local enemies. Anyone from other times with a big enough grudge. Start narrowing it down."
"Focus on people who know about you," Martha said. "You can't die, maybe modifying your memory is the next best thing for someone."
"Good thought," said Gwen. "We had a lost memory incident a little over a year ago. The whole team. Could be related."
Lois said, "Two weeks lost, wasn't it?" Gwen nodded. "Maybe that same problem came back?"
"Just for Jack?" Gwen said. "Possible."
"Keep on the Retcon angle," Martha said, finishing up her notes. "That's a lot of drug, and the last I checked, you had the lion's share of the world's supply locked up downstairs. Though I still can't see any traces in his bloodstream." She patted Jack's arm absently, like a puppy the vet had just remembered was still on the table.
"Tosh is already looking into it," Gwen said, and they shared a look which Jack couldn't read at all.
"Yeah," said Martha, breaking first. "Let me know what she finds. I should be going."
"Stick around," Jack said. "I need to compare notes with people." He cocked an eyebrow. "End of the World Survivors' Club ring any bells?"
"Too many," Martha said. "Tish says hi, by the way." She paused. "Do you remember Tish?"
"I do. Send her my love." It had been a long, painful year, and Martha's sister had been the one bright thing he'd held onto. They'd agreed, after, that it wasn't something either wanted to continue; too many bad memories clouding the good. He was sure she hadn't mentioned their fling to Martha in his timeline. Just another thing to get past from a year no one remembered but them.
"Read the reports," Martha said. "If you want to chat, you have my number." She pecked a kiss on his cheek, and he saw her wedding ring. So things with Martha had stayed the same. Good. He wouldn't have wished the whole walking the Earth thing on her, but she seemed to have recovered from it as well as she had in his memory.
"How was the wedding?"
"Perfect," said Martha, with that old smile. "You had a great time."
It's a very rare day off for the three of them, but it's Martha's wedding and Jack is determined to go. He bickers with Rhys on the entire ride up, because he's bored. When Martha's parents see him, they hug him and laugh with him like a long-lost son. He finally meets Leo, who isn't as confused as Gwen and Ianto, but he's clearly not sharing in the "we survived hell together" party at Table One, either. Jack dances with the bride, dances with the bride's sister, dances with his boyfriend, and kisses almost everyone in the room before they have to leave.
On the ride back to Cardiff, he finally tells them about the lost year. Not all of it, but enough, and then the car is quiet and full of ghosts the rest of the way home.
"I'll let you know when I find something," said Martha. Her samples safely stowed in her UNIT briefcase, she gave a last round of hugs and was gone.
After she'd left, Tosh came back from the basement archives. "All our Retcon is accounted for." She handed a file folder to Gwen, who glanced at it and handed it to Jack.
This was new. While he'd had a system for tracking their amnesia pills, this was a proper file with spaces for names, dates, reasons and his or Gwen's signature for approval for every pill. The record only went back about six months.
"Nothing was missing from the supply," Tosh said. "I counted just to make sure."
"We still don't have the numbers for Torchwood 2's supply," Lois said. "I need to prod them again. And no one knows for certain what was scavenged from the ruins of Torchwood 1. Or for that matter, the original Hub."
"We got it all," said Johnson, coming in unannounced. "I was in charge of that cleanup. Nothing went off-site that didn't get catalogued."
The temperature in the room dropped. Jack itched to punch her, and it seemed Gwen and Tosh would happily join him. Lois stepped in carefully, "We still haven't mined the deeper levels. And there was that trouble with those kids. For all we know, the world's supply of Retcon is in the hands of a seventeen year old dealer who thinks it's Ecstasy."
Jack's neck prickled, just a little. The problem with tracking down who'd given him Retcon was not going to be helped by his not having been given any. He hated to see them waste time.
"Let's not make it a priority for now," he said. "Maybe someone was screwing with my head. Fine. We'll sort it out by comparing notes eventually. Right now, we have work to do."
He spent the rest of the afternoon helping Tosh work on their new Rift Manipulator. He could remember a lot of the details from the old one, but she'd made improvements to the design and he happily let her tell him what to do. After Mickey had finished with his report on whatever he and Johnson had been chasing down after lunch, he joined them, joking around with Jack as they rewired a new panel Tosh wanted to install.
When she went to the Ladies' for some peace and quiet, Jack asked him, "How long have you been with our team? In my memory, I offered you a job but you turned me down."
Mickey shrugged, wiping his hands on a rag. "I almost did. Martha told me you really needed the help, and she asked me to keep an eye on you for her. Right after the Daleks came."
"Is Rose … "
"Back in that other universe?" Mickey looked down, at his knees, at the floor. "With that other Doctor. Yeah. And I'm here." He glanced around the office. "Not sure that was my best idea. I've been shot, almost blown up, and in jail since."
Jack laughed. "What'd you end up in jail for?"
Mickey's eyes widened. "You really don't know?"
"Total blank, me."
"Well, after you blew up," Mickey glanced at him, waited for Jack's nod, "we all got separated, didn't we? Me and Tosh figured out where you'd been taken, busted you out. Gwen and Rhys too, but they weren't dead. Johnson had buried you in concrete. Got picked up while we was on the run after."
"Why is Johnson here?"
"You recruited her, mate. Made a big show of forgiving her for Eugene. I don't think the others have, yet."
"Eugene?"
Mickey sat back. Tosh came back to where they were. "Eugene Jones? Squirrelly guy? Made the coffee? Tidied up around the place?"
He thought back. The name was familiar, and he couldn't stop the twitch at the name Jones and the idea of him making coffee.
"He was a dear," Tosh said, grief on her face. She typed in something and pulled up a picture. Jack's memory kicked in. One of Gwen's admirers and Torchwood's hangers-on, dead in a hit and run years back.
"Eugene?" He remembered a nervous young man, his hands always full of so-called alien artifacts that were usually painted cheese or unusual-looking pieces of common quartz.
"Great guy," Mickey said. "He got me set up when I started, showed me the ropes. Always had time for a chat when things got weird, always with a helping hand."
"Eugene."
Tosh said, "He was so proud when you told the whole team that he was our most valuable member."
"Eugene. Jones." He'd come back from the dead, briefly. Saved Gwen's life. Maybe he did have it in him to be Torchwood material. They'd never known.
"His coffee was crap," said Mickey, fondly. "But he made great tea. Emma always loved his tea."
"Emma?"
Tosh glared at him. "Tell me you remember Emma."
"Hum me a few bars."
"Emma Cowell. Gorgeous girl," said Mickey.
"Came through the Rift in a plane," Tosh said, and Jack remembered.
"I know her. I thought she'd gone to London."
"She came back," Tosh said, and again those sad eyes.
"Tell me how we lost them," Jack said. "Please."
"Eugene blew up with you," Mickey said. "Didn't make it out in time. Lockdown. There wasn't enough left to give his Mum."
"And Emma?"
"Well, she went with you into Thames House, didn’t she? And you were the only one who walked out alive. You and that Dekker guy."
Jack closed his eyes. That Dekker guy hadn't been who or what he'd been claiming, but it didn't help to tell them, not now. He flashed back to Thames House all the time, dying and still trying to hold onto the man he hadn't admitted to himself that he loved. The flashes were always interspersed with the next day, the blood streaming from Steven's nose, Alice screaming.
Too much pain.
"Did I love Emma?"
"You love all of us," Tosh said. "Emma was sweet on Eugene. I think you took Eugene home a few nights. Gwen shot you after you slept with Emma, so I don't think that went on." She watched him closely. "You really don't remember at all."
"I really don't." Eugene? Really?
"It took a lot out of you when Emma died. And then the next day."
His mouth went dry. "I don't want to hear about the next day." Not again.
"Yeah," said Mickey. "I don't blame you."
"You're not a monster," Tosh said. "You did what you had to do. You always do what needs to be done."
Jack sat back on his heels. "Stop. Please stop." Screaming in his ears. All that power flowing though such a tiny body. If it could have been Jack instead … "It should have been me," he said through clenched teeth.
Tosh placed her hand on his arm. "If you could have, you would have. We all know that. We all would have done the same." Nothing but kindness and sympathy on her face, and he couldn't bear to look at her.
"I shouldn't have come back," he said. "I don't deserve to be here."
"You don't think Gwen says the same thing?" Tosh said through tears. "You don't think I do?" She shot a glance to Mickey and left again. This time she didn't come back.
"Let it go, mate. You probably shouldn't have brought Johnson in. She's great and all, but they're still sore. Fix your family on your own time." And with that mysterious statement, he went after Tosh.
Jack went to Gwen's office. "Hi."
"Hi," she said, closing the window on her computer. "How're you feeling?"
"Lost."
"It's almost suppertime. I think a good night's sleep could help."
Jack looked out the window. It was still light out. "Since when do we go home this early?"
"Since it's been a slow day and my doctor says I need to rest. Everyone wins."
"Gwen?"
"Yes?"
"Where do I live?"
She sat back. "Oh."
"I used to live in the old Hub. I think."
"You did. Where did you stay afterwards? What do you remember?"
"I stayed at … a friend's place. Just a couple of days." Until the sheets had lost Ianto's scent and Jack had gone mad from the silences. "I didn't stay in one place much after that."
"You have a place in town. We also have sleeping quarters here, nice ones. Well, nice enough. You tend to stay here most nights. D'you want me to send someone to take you home and stay with you? I think Mickey's free tonight."
"I'll stay here."
"Good idea. How about some supper? We can go to the café."
"Sure." He didn't know of a café nearby but getting out would do him some good.
She got her purse. "Come on."
The café was in fact located inside the building. The entire East side of the building was dedicated to Torchwood, under a dozen fake businesses. The West side had actual companies, including a spacious cafeteria with windows reaching up to the second floor. "Open 24 hours," read the sign on the door, and could that be any more perfect?
"Where do we keep Myfanwy?" Jack asked, as he took a tray.
"Who?"
He opened his mouth and closed it again. None of the rest of his team would have considered trapping and training a pterodactyl just to get Jack's attention. It was only after the incident with the Cyberman that he'd even considered wondering how Ianto had known about her chocolate fixation, and well after that before he'd 'fessed up to feeding her in the warehouse for days before using her to get to Jack.
"Never mind." He got his food. "Tell me you're eating more than that."
Gwen poked at her salad. "This is what we call a snack. Rhys will have proper supper ready when I get home, but I need some vegetables."
They sat down at a table to themselves. Other faces that he didn't recognise scattered at the other tables.
"They work here, too. Just not for us."
"Interesting cover."
"We took the tourist office idea and ran with it. We actually have a tourist office on the third floor. When someone's being punished, they have to sit there all day."
"What is H3?"
"A dynamic, multisourcing enterprise built on a proactive vision of a global future."
"What does that mean?"
"I have no idea, but Lois laughed her arse off for ten minutes after she came up with it." Gwen sipped her tea, a non-caffeinated brand. When Lucia had been pregnant, the rules had been different. When Alice had been pregnant, they'd changed again. God knew what Gwen's doctor was telling her now, but he suspected she wasn't mentioning her run-ins with alien tech.
"How are you, Gwen?"
"Same as always."
"I don't know always." He took her hand and squeezed it. "Pretend I've been in a coma for six months. Pretend I've been away."
"Oh, pretending now? I can do that. Well, I'm fine, thank you for asking and no thanks to you. I'm still annoyed with you for putting me on desk work, and I know why you did it. I'm scared half to death every time I send our team out without going with them, and I don't really breathe until they're back through the door and safe. It's worse when you're gone or out of range. When Lois starts going on real missions, I may go into labour from the stress. Is that a good start?"
He laughed. "Yes. Thank you." He took a bite of his sandwich, was surprised to find it was pretty good. "What's going on after you have the baby?"
"I have the biggest office for a reason. You already said I could have him with me."
"You're having a boy?" His Gwen hadn't wanted to know the baby's sex.
She nodded. "Rhys is over the moon about it, though he tries to say he just wants the baby to come out all healthy and not alien. Mickey says he can't wait for there to be a little more testosterone in the office."
They've never had a Boys' Night Out because Owen says going out with just Jack is too much like a date. Once there are three of them, though, Jack and Owen bully the new guy into joining them at the pub. Owen hits on anything with a skirt, Jack hits on anything with a pulse, and Ianto just takes a long drink anytime someone approaches him, though when Jack's hands wander his way, he doesn't protest. Later, Jack will think it was all part of his plan, and much later will think it wasn't after all.
There's karaoke at the third pub. Jack will not remember much about it except to cringe for months afterwards whenever anyone mentions the Sex Pistols.
Hours later, they stagger out to the alley behind the fourth pub. Jack is taking the longest piss of his life against one wall, and trying to piece together the words to a dirty song he learned back in the fifty-first century. Ianto is busy on the other side of the alley losing his kebab and about three too many pints. The woman Owen has convinced to come outside with them punches him when he says something in her ear and then she goes back inside.
The following morning, Suzie and Tosh make an effort to be extra loud, banging things in the Hub on purpose and laughing. Owen leaves early. Ianto, faintly green, sticks it out all day until Jack escapes to his bunker.
The three of them never go out together again.
"I'll show him some testosterone."
"Please don't," Gwen giggled around a bite of tomato. "He's already seriously upset when you make him work the office for the gay cruise line. Which is your cover, by the way, if anyone asks."
"I can remember that. Do we ever have customers?" Ianto had always taken out his passive-aggressive urges on the poor souls who wandered into the Tourist Info Centre, when he wasn't taking them out on Owen. At least he'd never given Owen a map and a smile and told him to have a lovely time at what he knew was the most haunted bed and breakfast in the region.
"Since we don't advertise? Not usually. You did take that one sweet young couple on a ferry ride out of Swansea. Apparently the three of you had a blast."
"At some point, someone is going to have to make me a list of the people I've dated in the past three years just so I don't accidentally say something stupid."
Gwen suddenly found her salad very interesting.
"Gwen … "
"I would love to know what you think you remember," she said quietly, not meeting his eyes.
He tried to take her hand again, but she was less welcoming now. "I am unbelievably sorry that I don't remember that."
"Yes, you are," she said, taking her hand back again and stabbing lettuce leaves furiously. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. It was a long time ago."
"Mind if I ask when?"
"Do you remember a group of cannibal villagers trying to eat Owen and Tosh alive?"
"Sort of."
"Well. After that. Not for long. I felt bad about it." She played with her ring. He wondered if she knew she was doing it. "So we stopped." She'd never told Rhys about her affair with Owen, at least not that Rhys would ever remember. Had she confessed her affair with Jack to him, followed by Retcon? Was there any possible way to ask?
"Thanks. For telling me."
"Yeah. Well. Don't go telling anyone."
"I never kiss and tell."
"You do so. Usually a hundred years or so after they're dead, mind."
Her mobile rang, and of course it was Rhys. He had a sixth sense, which Jack occasionally was tempted to document, about what Gwen was doing at any given time. "I'll be home soon," she promised him, and hung up.
"Why don't you show me to where I can stay tonight and leave me with those files Lois found? I can catch up on what I've missed."
She nodded. "We can fill you in on the rest, I guess. You'll have the computer records. Those survived. The personnel issues will be something else."
"I can imagine."
***
Alone, eventually, Jack flipped through dry reports of his days with Torchwood in this timeline. The same aliens had invaded at more or less the same time. The world had nearly ended in more or less the same fashions, always to be held back by his team, or the Doctor, or even that gaggle of teenagers in Ealing whose den mother regularly sent him reports of the "See what we did there without waving guns in peoples' faces?" variety. Just like always.
A report, filled with Suzie's notes about a humanoid alien species who'd mistakenly thought Cardiff a fine place to start breeding, made a one-line note about Jack shooting a pteranodon in the midst of a hunt for something else entirely.
"Sorry, girl," he said aloud. "I didn't know."
Eugene Jones had joined up shortly after the incident at Brecon Beacons, on Gwen's recommendation. It would keep him out of trouble, she'd noted, and besides, wouldn't it have been a good idea to have someone whose job it was to make sure things were where they ought to be and make sure the team remembered to eat. Emma Louise Cowell had come through the Rift in December of that year, had gone to London under a new identity, and came back while Jack himself was listed as missing a few months later. Gwen had hired her as a friendly face to staff the Tourist Centre and act as a lookout.
There was a two week gap in the reports, followed by a terse explanation of group memory loss, as well as instructions from Jack himself, dated during the missing time, not to look closely at it. Rhys Williams was listed among those with an altered memory. Jack remembered this incident at about this time, but it had only been a few days for them. The part of him that wondered what had happened saw the note from himself again, and decided it wasn't something he wanted to think about, not really.
Dr. Owen Harper was listed as dead in the report on the Pharm. Posthumous commendation for giving his life for UNIT liaison Dr. Martha Jones. No further mentions, and Jack knew what to look for, so no resurrection for Owen. Why? Jack had found the second glove himself. But Ianto had reminded him about gloves coming in pairs. Jack had been scanning his memory for clues ever since, enough to piece them together and bring Owen back. Had to be.
Martha had stayed with them after Owen's death, and that was new.
The incident with Gray had gone as badly as expected, though he'd shot Tosh a few millimetres off, damaging her spinal cord. Martha had saved her life. The nuclear power plant, mentioned in a side note, had been stabilised by the people who worked there before it could go critical.
No wonder Tosh couldn't stand to look at Martha now. He wondered if Owen had shown that same puppylike crush on Martha in this timeline right before he died. He wondered if that mattered.
He'd been trying to avoid the thought, but now it was in front of him. Ianto had never been a part of Torchwood in this world, not One, not Three. People were alive today that wouldn't have been had he joined. At least one was dead who should be alive. Eugene had died later than before, Owen earlier (on a technicality). But as far as the world was concerned, as far as Torchwood was concerned, Ianto Jones hadn't been nearly as important to things as Jack had believed, and like every other time when he'd made a similar discovery, that the world would not end without someone Jack loved in it, he died a little in a way that had nothing to do with immortality.
He refused to read the report on the 456. Just thinking about it make the bile rise in his throat.
Instead, he broke down and did what he'd been itching to do since he'd seen the computer terminals glowing. Not thirty seconds later, he found the home address of Lisa and Ianto Jones in Paris. Not that he'd go. Not that he'd call. Not even that he'd try to hack into the CCTV in the small office where they worked together. He'd had his promised ten minutes to say goodbye, and he knew the Doctor would not be forgiving if he tried to steal more. Worse, he knew the penalty for breaking the timeline, even if he hadn't experienced it himself. The further he stayed away from Ianto, the less likely he and his friends were to be eaten by monsters, and that was how it had to be.
But Jack had an address, in a city he hadn't visited in years on a street he didn't know, and that one fact (well, coupled with Jack's hurried reassurance to himself that the world hadn't been overridden by aliens, demons or lawyers because of that one change) meant the rest of the changes had all been worth it.
Had to be.
He eventually fell asleep for an hour or so, in the standard-issue bed in their spare sleeping quarters. For the first time in months, his nightmares were quiet.
***
Jack woke well before daybreak. He managed to find the shower facilities, if not soap, and fresh clothes that looked like his. The café had decent coffee and edible pastries, and after a few tries, he figured out which office was supposed to be his. The lack of personal items wasn't really a surprise; most of his would have been destroyed in the Hub.
The programs were similar to those he remembered. Tosh had made updates, but he could still run her pattern-detecting software without problems, see what mischief the world was up to today.
Tosh showed up ten minutes later and showed him what he was doing wrong.
Lois arrived twenty minutes after that with better coffee and healthier food. (Also, when he demurred, a relayed comment from Martha that if the whole team didn't eat better, she'd start having Lois slip laxatives in their coffee.) Jack took the hint and a piece of toast. While they ate, the others made their ways in and Lois handed out agendas.
"What's this appointment at ten?" Jack asked.
"Dr. Sheffield. Normally, you see him on Fridays, but since your memory is mixed up, I scheduled you early this week."
"For what?" Followed closely by, "We have a doctor?"
"Head shrink," Mickey said around an apple.
Lois said, "The entire team has weekly visits with Dr. Sheffield. He's got clearance to know everything we do."
"He knows about you," Gwen said, swallowing a large bite of bagel with peanut butter. "And we have a standing rule that anyone who skips a session without an authorised reason and permission from you and I both is on automatic suspension without pay."
"Who the hell thought that was a good idea?"
The rest stared at him until it sunk in.
"Okay, but there's no way I would have suggested a shrink."
"That was me," Lois said, nibbling at a strawberry.
"Her second day," Gwen said, "Lois declared we all needed therapy. Then some bloody idiot told her to go arrange it if she felt that strongly about it."
"Me again?"
"You're his favorite patient," Tosh said.
"I don't need therapy."
Gwen said, "You said that before. But you also said it'd be a good idea so we didn't run into another Suzie problem."
"Ten AM," Lois said. "These are the authorised reasons for skipping a session."
Jack read the paper. He was amused to see "Dead" listed at the top, and was less amused by the asterisk which stated "If JH, automatically reschedule appointment for next day. If JH misses three sessions in a row due to death(s), suspension rules apply." No killing himself to get out of it, then. "In hospital" was a valid reason, as was "alien invasion requiring full Torchwood involvement." "Weevil hunting" was listed as unacceptable. So were "calling in sick," "having sex," and "calling in sick to have sex."
"Who wrote this list?"
Lois said, "We needed it to be thorough."
Tosh asked, "Any luck with your memory yet?"
"No," Jack said.
Johnson hadn't said a word, he noticed. She'd just watched him.
***
Jack sat in the only other chair in the office. There was a couch. Of course there was a couch. He wasn't going anywhere near it.
"Hi," said Dr. Sheffield warmly. He had sandy hair going to silver and blue eyes. No chance to check out his other assets, as it were, behind the desk.
"Hi."
"I was briefed that you've had some memory loss. Would you like to start there today?"
"No." Jack's memory was fine. It was time that was wrong.
"What do you remember?"
Jack stayed silent.
"Do you remember me?"
"No."
"So we have to re-establish trust. I've been seeing you for three months now, but we can start over."
"I don't need to start over. I don't need therapy."
"Ah," said the shrink.
"What 'ah?'"
"We'll be starting there, then. Jack Harkness, not your real name, official rank Captain though in what service you've remained vague. The Time Agency doesn't appear to have that rank." Jack raised his eyebrows at mention of the Agency. "I don't suppose you'd like to start with sharing your real name this time?"
"Not a chance."
The doctor sighed. "Would you like me to catch you up on what I know about you so far?"
"You just did."
"No, I identified you. I also know plenty about you. After the death of your father and your brother's abduction, both of which took place on the same day about three thousand years from now, your mother also effectively left you due to her grief. You developed a serious abandonment complex, which you compensated for by running away from home and forming intentionally brief attachments so you wouldn't be hurt again. That lasted as long as it took for your best friend to die, and it didn't stop the Time Agency from hurting you, but you could tell yourself that it didn't matter, not in the deep places inside you, not when they used you over and over, not even when they ripped out your memories. You left them before they could leave you.
"Your complex was suddenly and massively exacerbated by your meeting with the Doctor, who became both the father figure you'd been craving as well as the idealised mate who would never leave you. Except he did, and what's worse, he left you immortal, so that instead of worrying about people leaving you, you were now guaranteed to outlive and lose every single person you ever know or love.
"Since then, you've drifted, trying not to form attachments and failing. You've had countless short relationships, a few longer ones, and a marriage you yourself admit was doomed from day one. After having been abandoned again to be the de facto leader of Torchwood, you've used your power to surround yourself with damaged people, usually with parent issues of their own. You're happy to provide a substitute father figure, ironic since you've run away from your parental responsibilities otherwise. You care about your team against your better judgment, knowing that signing their employment contracts is as good as signing their death warrants. You focus your energies on those you think you can manipulate the easiest, alternately praising and abusing them until you induce a mild form of Stockholm Syndrome wherein they believe you and only you are the key to their happiness and survival. You end up with a Cult of You, surrounded by worshipers and deeply jealous of anyone who still has some sway over any of your followers, even as you claim you want those same followers to live independently of you and pursue normalcy. You know they won't, that you don't leave them with enough tools or free will, and you like that power. Then it gets someone killed and you wallow in guilt because you know you set them up to die for your aggrandisement.
"You were," and here he checked his notes, "captured and experimented on for a year by the former Prime Minister, a year which no one remembers except for you, a UNIT operative you haven't named, and her family. Strangely, despite the PM torturing your team to death in front of you, you did not hold yourself responsible for their fates. Which appear to have been undone anyway."
The grating beneath him is still sticky with Owen's blood when they drag Gwen into Jack's cell, kicking and cursing. The Master is creative; she screams and she screams and she screams.
He makes Lucy watch.
"It's only the deaths that you personally feel you should have prevented that drive you over the edge, but there are plenty of those. Of course, it's only been three months. We've probably just scratched the surface of what makes you tick."
The doctor sat back, not smiling. Jack would have shot him if he'd smiled. But then, the doctor seemed to know that, too.
"I hate you," Jack said instead.
"Good. Now we know where to begin."
***
Jack managed to finish his session without copping to the time switch. Dr. Sheffield was fascinated by Retcon, and encouraged Jack to think back to recent traumatic events to think about what he might be blocking. Jack couldn't deal with the thought of recent traumatic events, and spent the rest of the time talking about missing his dad.
He fled after his fifty minute hour, leaving the doctor writing up something. Apparently Jack had a prescription for sleeping pills that was active. He wondered if the other him had taken them.
"Help me with this," Tosh said when he came out, and handed him the ends of two leads while she soldered two more into place. "Thanks."
"Do you have to see the shrink too?"
"We all do."
"We did fine before without one."
"Lois says half our problem is thinking no one understands our problems, so we end up getting ourselves killed. Gwen agrees with her." The minitorch sparked in her hand. "Lois has made us all set up retirement funds. She says if we act like we're going to survive this job, we'll start believing it."
"You don't."
"I've been here longer, and started because you offered me a gilded cage instead of a concrete one. I knew it would kill me when I stepped inside." She kept working. "Lois is infectious, you know. She's got the others thinking we can fix Torchwood. That we can grow old, have lives and families."
"Your time finished a while ago. The contract we had. You could walk away now." He couldn't stop the word "walk" in time, but she didn't seem to notice.
"Nope," she said, but there was a little smile as she did. "I'm here to see things through. I'd like to find out if she's right."
Johnson and Mickey were supposed to recertify Jack on his weapons training so he could go back out with them (a process he thought was ridiculous but Gwen had insisted), but they were out dealing with an elementary school which might have had an encounter with a force-growing alien device. Jack was more than happy to skip that assignment. He stayed with Tosh, letting her tell him what to do.
"Off to lunch," Gwen said at noon. "Coming?"
"No," said Tosh.
"I'll be by later," said Jack, and watched Gwen and Lois go. "You should eat something. Martha will blame me if you're overworked and underfed."
"She already does. I'll get something later."
"Promise?"
"Yes. Now hand me that microdriver."
Fifteen minutes later, they were finished. Tosh seemed pleased with the results. Jack would wait to see how it worked before celebrating. "Grab you something from the café?"
"Oh, fine. Tuna sandwich." She waved him off.
The café was busier this time of day. Jack spied Gwen and Lois across the room at a table with two other women. He could hear their laughter over the noise of the other diners, let it follow him through the line on the other side of the room. He figured he'd get Tosh her food on his way out so the bread didn't get moist; soggy tuna bread disgusted even Jack.
He brought his tray over towards the table where the girls were, pasting a coy grin on his features as he neared them. "Hello, ladies!" he said, taking them all in, and then he froze.
"Hi, Jack," said Gwen, and scooted to make room for him. "You remember Bren from Sunrise, yeah?" That was nice of her. Jack wasn't looking at Bren but nodded automatically at her. "This is their newest programmer."
Gwen was smiling kindly at her, was not cowering in fear or rage, or pulling her gun like Jack's mind screamed she should. Yet his last sight of her hadn't been in a metal bikini but in white lace, and that changed everything.
"Lisa Jones," she said, extending her hand.
***
TBC
***
Part Two
Rating: PG-15
Characters: ensemble
Pairings: Yes. Many.
Spoilers: Nu!Who 'verse up through CoE, possible casting spoilers for '09 Christmas special
Warnings: extreme self-indulgence, angsty emo (mostly Jack), character death (also mostly Jack), child endangerment, mentions of torture circa The Year That Never Was, sentence fragments, and believe it or not given the other warnings, massive amounts of fluff. It is deeply twee, interspersed with moderate horror.
Beta: With greatest thanks to Brinshannara for the translation and my beloved Ab for the read-through.
Author's Note: I hadn't intended to write a sequel to " Six Hundred Seconds" (and in fact suggest that anyone who enjoyed that story avoid this one). But then I looked down into the rabbit hole, and lo, the bunnies living there were so very densely fluffy that they changed the orbits of nearby stars. Title in honour of said rabbit hole and not the Who novel.
***
Prelude
***
The breath flew out of him as the door to the TARDIS opened onto the scene of destruction. Jack looked away, looked back at the Doctor. "Here?"
"Here. You always come back here."
"I didn't intend to. I was thinking that moon in the Rygellian Cluster, the one with that great bar. The waitresses dress entirely in different shades of light. Know the place?"
The Doctor tilted his head, which could have been a yes and could have been a no, or could have been a stray memory of a time he rescued some cute young thing from virtual slavery and out-thought an alien menace over banana daiquiris.
Jack breathed out and looked at the mess in the Plass. No more police tape, much of the actual rubble taken away, more signs of construction-related jumble than he'd thought at first glance. "When are we?"
"A bit after you left. Not long." He always said things like that with certainty, and never mind if they ended up five years and three hundred miles away from where he stated with authority that they ought to be. Jack found it part of the Doctor's exasperating charm.
"I don't want to be here. Can't we refuel and just go?" He tried to keep the whine out of his voice.
"I can. Your ride's over." The door stayed open. Jack watched it warily, as though the Doctor was asking him to walk into a fire. Everything hurt, and would hurt so much more when Jack was out there surrounded by the memories he'd been trying to outrun. Maybe he'd drown in them instead. Out of the deaths he'd experienced, drowning hadn't been as pleasant as he'd been led to believe. His lungs had filled with water he could not choke out, and he'd flailed for air he could not reach. And here he was again.
"We'll see each other again," the Doctor said gently. "I guarantee it."
"Never doubted him. Never will."
No goodbyes. Jack had said his, at last. The Doctor made a habit of not even trying.
Instead, Jack drew in his shoulders and stepped out carefully, wondering if each step would burn him, freeze him, needle him. The ground was solid under his feet, and as he breathed in, the air tasted like home. Behind him, the door closed, and Jack pulled in another ragged breath.
Home. Right.
***
Part One
***
Jack walked across the ruins of the Plass and examined the area. Yes, definitely under construction. A Council-approved plan was posted, describing the improvements they were making to the site in memory of those who'd died in the "terrorist attack." That had been the official story, though no one had died in the blast except Jack. He'd kicked Gwen out, had to drag Ianto to the lift to get him out in time, but they'd survived.
He wondered who the government had made disappear conveniently at the same time. Had they found the bodies in the morgue? In cold storage? Were Suzie and Gray, and for that matter Janet, listed in some deliberately miswritten roster of fallen victims? Or were they still buried deep below where he stood, to be found by confused archaeologists in a thousand years' time?
He thought about going down to the other entrance to see what was being done to the wreckage down there, but stopped short when he realised just considering looking at the destroyed Tourist Information Centre was making his palms sweat and his chest tighten. No.
He turned on his heel and walked away from the site, from the TARDIS, from everything. This wasn't home, not anymore.
He listened to the TARDIS hum, and without turning his head, knew it was gone.
Jack needed a place to sleep, something to eat, and time to figure out how he was going to start on the rest of his very long life. He couldn't bear the thought of contacting Gwen. Her baby was due soon, if she hadn't already delivered. Jack could not be near children. Not yet.
He stopped by a machine to get some cash out. His card still worked, and the balance looked like he had drawn a couple more paycheques than he last remembered. The date on his receipt was a month after he'd left Gwen and Rhys on the hillside and fled Earth. No baby, then. He would call her later.
After lunch. Some comfort food was exactly what he needed, something familiar. He walked to the Thai place down the street, but it and the Indian restaurant next door both held placards in their windows advertising that they were closed Mondays.
Today was the first Monday of the rest of his life, and it would start with --- he checked another two doors down --- pizza. Jubilee Pizza was open, Monday or not. He went inside.
Jubilee didn't do much dine-in business, so it was only a minute until he had a seat at a tiny table in the corner, staring at a menu, and the normalcy of it all took his breath away again. The waiter, a little too spotty to be cute, had just come back to take his order when Jack heard his name. His stomach sank. It was too soon, He shouldn't have come here, not where people knew him, not until he was ready. He turned to see who it was.
"Oi! You Jack Harkness?" asked the balding man at the counter, beefy arms resting in front of him.
"That's me," he said. Maybe it was time to change that. He'd worn a dead man's name long enough. He could be someone else now. Walk out of here, change his passport, become Larry Somebody. He'd make a good Larry.
"Told you," said a blonde girl. "You gonna take these or what?" She pulled out three pizzas from the warmer. "Save me a trip, yeah?"
Jack stood up and went to the counter. The name on the slip wasn't his. Gwen had ordered them for delivery to an address he didn't recognize, but it wasn't far. He glanced up at the blonde girl. "I can take them." He pulled out his wallet.
Her face broke into a smile, and he returned it automatically, slipping into flirt mode while he searched his memory for her name. She was familiar, had surely delivered to them via the Tourist Centre before, which was why she would know a pizza for Gwen was a pizza for him too.
As he counted out money for the food, he tried not to think about the Tourist Info Centre, but it was like not thinking about the rhinoceros, and so just as her boss said her name, Jack knew it already. "Thanks, Annie."
"Thank you! Just between you and me, I don't think that new girl likes me much."
He made a noise in his throat, not a "yes," not a "no," so that he didn't have to ask who the new girl was. Annie's hair was different, but it had been a few years since he'd shot her down in the deep dungeons of the Hub, shot the person who'd been wearing her body like a new camisole. Jack liked the new look, he decided, and offered her another 100 Watt smile to cover the panic he felt welling inside him.
"Gotta go," he said, and grabbed the pizzas without taking his change. Not running, he still managed to be around the corner in five seconds flat.
Okay. So. They'd changed time. The Doctor had, and Jack too. Not because Jack had asked, because the Doctor never would have said yes, not in five billion years, not to Jack. But someone else had asked him, had made him promise, and while the Doctor broke his promises as often as not, he did try to keep them when he could. What the Doctor could not do for Jack, he did for a dying woman who'd loved him once. (He loves us all, Jack's mind told him quietly, far back in the place he occasionally allowed himself forgiveness. As usual, he told it to shut up.) A little change made at the right time, or so the Doctor said, and there had never been a Cyberman in their basement, and she had never murdered Annie.
Jack glanced at the receipt again. He needed to talk to Gwen. He'd stepped onto a new world, and he was suddenly and sharply uncertain of his footing.
Across the way, down the street, and now he recognised where he was: a new building they'd been constructing for the past year. He'd driven by the site countless times, and now it was all shiny windows and cool steel. Modern and flashy, and for the life of him, he couldn't picture Gwen here. No suite number on the pizza, so no idea where she was.
Inside, he read the list of businesses on the wall, and then the warning bells rang in his head. Harper's Jellied Eels was the most obvious, but he'd be damned if there was a real Smith & Jones business in the building. Sunrise Software Solutions? Enfys Tours? And what was H3? He made a note of the suites and then followed the discreet number plates to the jellied eel office. As he'd suspected, while he could see a prim yet tasteful reception area through the glass, the door was locked with a "Sorry, we're closed" sign in the window. Smith & Jones had a different décor, and a differently-lettered sign.
A grin spread over his face.
H3 was next door. The light was on through the curtains over the windows. He went inside.
Lois looked up from the desk and her eyes lit up at the sight of him. "Jack!"
"Lois Habiba," he said, because he'd discovered many years back that saying full names helped him remember them when the faces ran together too much. So Lois was working as their front doorkeeper now. Gone were the homey pile of maps and brochures with which they'd disguised their last headquarters. Instead, he saw a large stylised logo on the reception desk, a few posters claiming that "H3 worked for me!" and two chairs with some elderly magazines on a table between them.
"I brought pizza." He didn't hug her. He was not at that point with her in his timeline, wasn't sure about this one.
"Fantastic. Also, you're late."
"I'm … really not myself today."
"So who are you, then?" she asked with a smile. "Because whoever it is is late, too." She tilted her head. "Go on in, before it gets cold."
Jack opened the door to the right and behind her desk. Inside, the office stretched comfortably out to encompass, at a quick guess, this half of the building. The private lift he spied to his left enabled access to the rest. Easy cover in a building that looked like half of Cardiff: smack in-between this week's brand new businesses and last month's old ideas that were already closed.
Computer terminals filled most of this space, though corridors and offices branched out everywhere. Not like the Hub, not quite, but also not dissimilar. The ceiling was too low for Myfanwy, but perhaps well above them there was a hall or atrium big enough to be used as a bird cage for a dinosaur.
He liked it, grudgingly.
Jack set the pizzas down on the first table he saw, brushing aside some papers as he did.
"Hey!" came a shout from behind him. "Mind the work!" And it wasn't so much that the shout couldn't have happened, because this was not his world and not the life he remembered and oh God the threads were so far unraveled, but he hadn't even let himself think or hope.
"Sorry," he said with his heart in his mouth, and he stacked the papers neatly. "How're you doing, Toshiko?"
And then he wished he'd looked at her a second before asking, as she approached the table in a wheelchair with slanted wheels. Her face was different, harder. She didn't smile when she saw him. "You're late. She's going to kill you, you know."
"I wouldn't be surprised." He bent over and kissed her on the head.
"Stop it," she said, and there was no friendliness to her irritation.
"Sorry," he said again. Different world, different rules, and he could fake his way through. He could.
"Well, go see her. Get it over with quickly." Tosh grabbed the pizzas and took them towards another room.
Jack scanned the offices for nameplates, found only numbers. Not helpful. He walked past empty offices, though these were clearly often used, until he came to one with a light on, and he tapped on the door frame.
"Yeah?" came Gwen's voice.
"It's me."
"Where the hell have you been?!" she shouted. "And you better bloody answer 'dead, ma'am,' or so help me … "
He almost told her, as he walked in. Still Gwen, still beautiful, if massively pregnant and scowling at him from behind stacks of reports.
Jack hears him say, "He was supposed to take that Welsh bitch in with him, too, but at least his little pet died." Jack doesn't hear much after that.
"Did you pick up the TARDIS on the scans a little bit ago?" he asked instead.
"Why d'you think we've been trying to reach you? Don't you ever answer your mobile?"
His mobile. Which he'd dropped into a cesspit behind one of too many bars four planets ago when he'd looked at it and started shaking and couldn't stand it anymore.
"I lost it."
"You're an idiot."
"I brought pizza."
"Then you're an idiot with pizza. I see your comm is gone, too."
"Look … " he said, and he heard voices from outside. Familiar voices. No …
Jack turned on his heel and went out of Gwen's office, his hand already on his gun. He had it pointed at Johnson's face before she drew breath to say hello.
"Hi," he said, resisting the impulse to shoot her. "Why are you here?"
A hand covered his, very gently. "It's lunchtime, mate," said Mickey. "No one is allowed to die at lunch. Remember? We never did get those stains out of the carpet after Emma stabbed you over the Pad Thai."
Jack pulled his gun away slowly, then pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Johnson shrugged and went to where Tosh had already set out plates, helping herself to two slices.
"Mind some advice?" said Mickey in a low voice. "Work that out with her. Where were you this morning?"
Jack found a chair and sat heavily in it. Gwen walked out of her office, stood in the doorway watching him. To her, he said, "Okay. I've got a problem." He could hear Tosh and Johnson come closer. He was betting Lois had a feed in here as well. "I thought I could deal with it, but apparently not so much."
"What is it, Jack?" Gwen asked.
"I've been given a dose of Retcon. Big."
"How big?" asked Tosh, no longer pretending not to listen.
He did the mental math. "Three years. Maybe four."
"Oh my God," said Gwen. "Do you … do you even know who we are?"
He grinned weakly. "I remember you, Gwen Cooper. And I've known Mickey Mouse here for over a century. I've got substitute memories, and they go back a long way."
Tosh was already beside him scanning. "That's a massive reprogramming. You shouldn't be able to even stand up right now."
"I'm special." It was the best explanation he could think of to cover his changed memories, at least that didn't involve mentioning, "By the way, I may have broken time so keep an eye out for giant flying monsters trying to eat us all, okay?"
"It's already vanished from your bloodstream," Tosh said. Nice tech. New. No blood samples required. Which was good since Owen …
"Where's Owen?" he blurted out. Tosh's expression told him what he needed to know before Gwen said in a gentle voice, "He died, love. A while back. You don't remember at all?"
"I did," he said. "I hoped I was wrong." Tosh had already put her scanner down and was typing into a keyboard, her head purposely turned away.
Mickey cleared his throat. "Lunchtime. Then we can figure out what's wrong with Captain Smiley."
***
Martha arrived a few hours later. Gwen had called her, letting Jack know they still didn't have their own doctor and needing one who was familiar with Jack's unique background. "You're off the street," Gwen said, "until we know who did this to you and why."
"The street" turned out to be the current code for their field agents: trapping Weevils, chasing down artifacts, that sort of thing. Jack was on that team with Johnson and Mickey. Lois was being trained for it, but was still well in the "not allowed to carry a gun yet" stage. Due to her condition --- and Jack was getting a sneaking suspicion that none of the others directly wanted to say "due to her being much better at it than Jack" --- Gwen managed everything at the Hub, from handing out assignments and directing their energies to keeping an eye open for desperately needed new talent.
Jack was in charge, Gwen had assured him as he took this in, but he seemed to be in charge of things like having to deal with the politicians, signing things that required someone's signature, and not getting in the way while Tosh figured out what was going on with the Rift and Gwen ordered them to deal with it.
"How long was I gone?" he asked, as Martha took the first of what would be a dozen blood samples.
"Which time?" Gwen asked. Lois brought in another stack of papers. Jack hadn't had to verbalise his desire to read the basic history of the team over the past four years before she had gathered the information, but she hadn't handed them over until Martha had given them the nod that Jack was really Jack and not some imposter trying to infiltrate.
Good instincts there, he mused. Johnson had offered to shoot him in the head to positively confirm his identity. Also a good instinct, but he made a note to give her a wide berth for a while until he knew precisely her place here, and why someone he associated with blowing him up was now on his team. She and Mickey had gone back out as soon as they'd eaten, maybe thinking the same thing.
"How many times have I left?"
"Three, while I've been here. The Doctor came and you left us right after you came back from the Abaddon incident. You were gone for months." The flicker in her eyes was guilt, and he nodded. They'd opened the Rift in this world, too, and he'd died to fix it. He wondered if he'd spent a year under the Master's loving care. Martha was here, so probably. "When the Earth was taken by the Daleks, you left us to go find the Doctor."
"I'm consistent."
"You also went on a long holiday after the incident with the 456." The false jollity as she said it was as telling as her eyes.
"I'll read that report later," he said. The pain was back, the sour taste in his mouth and the need to run, just run.
"You really don't remember?" Martha asked, as she examined his vitals. "You don't even want to know how much adrenaline just shot through your system."
"Like I said, I remember something. But it's all wrong." He swallowed. "I just need to know what really happened, so I can sort it out." Half-lies were easier than full lies. Always had been.
"Do you have any idea who would have done this to you?"
He shook his head.
Gwen said, "We'll have to make a list. All your local enemies. Anyone from other times with a big enough grudge. Start narrowing it down."
"Focus on people who know about you," Martha said. "You can't die, maybe modifying your memory is the next best thing for someone."
"Good thought," said Gwen. "We had a lost memory incident a little over a year ago. The whole team. Could be related."
Lois said, "Two weeks lost, wasn't it?" Gwen nodded. "Maybe that same problem came back?"
"Just for Jack?" Gwen said. "Possible."
"Keep on the Retcon angle," Martha said, finishing up her notes. "That's a lot of drug, and the last I checked, you had the lion's share of the world's supply locked up downstairs. Though I still can't see any traces in his bloodstream." She patted Jack's arm absently, like a puppy the vet had just remembered was still on the table.
"Tosh is already looking into it," Gwen said, and they shared a look which Jack couldn't read at all.
"Yeah," said Martha, breaking first. "Let me know what she finds. I should be going."
"Stick around," Jack said. "I need to compare notes with people." He cocked an eyebrow. "End of the World Survivors' Club ring any bells?"
"Too many," Martha said. "Tish says hi, by the way." She paused. "Do you remember Tish?"
"I do. Send her my love." It had been a long, painful year, and Martha's sister had been the one bright thing he'd held onto. They'd agreed, after, that it wasn't something either wanted to continue; too many bad memories clouding the good. He was sure she hadn't mentioned their fling to Martha in his timeline. Just another thing to get past from a year no one remembered but them.
"Read the reports," Martha said. "If you want to chat, you have my number." She pecked a kiss on his cheek, and he saw her wedding ring. So things with Martha had stayed the same. Good. He wouldn't have wished the whole walking the Earth thing on her, but she seemed to have recovered from it as well as she had in his memory.
"How was the wedding?"
"Perfect," said Martha, with that old smile. "You had a great time."
It's a very rare day off for the three of them, but it's Martha's wedding and Jack is determined to go. He bickers with Rhys on the entire ride up, because he's bored. When Martha's parents see him, they hug him and laugh with him like a long-lost son. He finally meets Leo, who isn't as confused as Gwen and Ianto, but he's clearly not sharing in the "we survived hell together" party at Table One, either. Jack dances with the bride, dances with the bride's sister, dances with his boyfriend, and kisses almost everyone in the room before they have to leave.
On the ride back to Cardiff, he finally tells them about the lost year. Not all of it, but enough, and then the car is quiet and full of ghosts the rest of the way home.
"I'll let you know when I find something," said Martha. Her samples safely stowed in her UNIT briefcase, she gave a last round of hugs and was gone.
After she'd left, Tosh came back from the basement archives. "All our Retcon is accounted for." She handed a file folder to Gwen, who glanced at it and handed it to Jack.
This was new. While he'd had a system for tracking their amnesia pills, this was a proper file with spaces for names, dates, reasons and his or Gwen's signature for approval for every pill. The record only went back about six months.
"Nothing was missing from the supply," Tosh said. "I counted just to make sure."
"We still don't have the numbers for Torchwood 2's supply," Lois said. "I need to prod them again. And no one knows for certain what was scavenged from the ruins of Torchwood 1. Or for that matter, the original Hub."
"We got it all," said Johnson, coming in unannounced. "I was in charge of that cleanup. Nothing went off-site that didn't get catalogued."
The temperature in the room dropped. Jack itched to punch her, and it seemed Gwen and Tosh would happily join him. Lois stepped in carefully, "We still haven't mined the deeper levels. And there was that trouble with those kids. For all we know, the world's supply of Retcon is in the hands of a seventeen year old dealer who thinks it's Ecstasy."
Jack's neck prickled, just a little. The problem with tracking down who'd given him Retcon was not going to be helped by his not having been given any. He hated to see them waste time.
"Let's not make it a priority for now," he said. "Maybe someone was screwing with my head. Fine. We'll sort it out by comparing notes eventually. Right now, we have work to do."
He spent the rest of the afternoon helping Tosh work on their new Rift Manipulator. He could remember a lot of the details from the old one, but she'd made improvements to the design and he happily let her tell him what to do. After Mickey had finished with his report on whatever he and Johnson had been chasing down after lunch, he joined them, joking around with Jack as they rewired a new panel Tosh wanted to install.
When she went to the Ladies' for some peace and quiet, Jack asked him, "How long have you been with our team? In my memory, I offered you a job but you turned me down."
Mickey shrugged, wiping his hands on a rag. "I almost did. Martha told me you really needed the help, and she asked me to keep an eye on you for her. Right after the Daleks came."
"Is Rose … "
"Back in that other universe?" Mickey looked down, at his knees, at the floor. "With that other Doctor. Yeah. And I'm here." He glanced around the office. "Not sure that was my best idea. I've been shot, almost blown up, and in jail since."
Jack laughed. "What'd you end up in jail for?"
Mickey's eyes widened. "You really don't know?"
"Total blank, me."
"Well, after you blew up," Mickey glanced at him, waited for Jack's nod, "we all got separated, didn't we? Me and Tosh figured out where you'd been taken, busted you out. Gwen and Rhys too, but they weren't dead. Johnson had buried you in concrete. Got picked up while we was on the run after."
"Why is Johnson here?"
"You recruited her, mate. Made a big show of forgiving her for Eugene. I don't think the others have, yet."
"Eugene?"
Mickey sat back. Tosh came back to where they were. "Eugene Jones? Squirrelly guy? Made the coffee? Tidied up around the place?"
He thought back. The name was familiar, and he couldn't stop the twitch at the name Jones and the idea of him making coffee.
"He was a dear," Tosh said, grief on her face. She typed in something and pulled up a picture. Jack's memory kicked in. One of Gwen's admirers and Torchwood's hangers-on, dead in a hit and run years back.
"Eugene?" He remembered a nervous young man, his hands always full of so-called alien artifacts that were usually painted cheese or unusual-looking pieces of common quartz.
"Great guy," Mickey said. "He got me set up when I started, showed me the ropes. Always had time for a chat when things got weird, always with a helping hand."
"Eugene."
Tosh said, "He was so proud when you told the whole team that he was our most valuable member."
"Eugene. Jones." He'd come back from the dead, briefly. Saved Gwen's life. Maybe he did have it in him to be Torchwood material. They'd never known.
"His coffee was crap," said Mickey, fondly. "But he made great tea. Emma always loved his tea."
"Emma?"
Tosh glared at him. "Tell me you remember Emma."
"Hum me a few bars."
"Emma Cowell. Gorgeous girl," said Mickey.
"Came through the Rift in a plane," Tosh said, and Jack remembered.
"I know her. I thought she'd gone to London."
"She came back," Tosh said, and again those sad eyes.
"Tell me how we lost them," Jack said. "Please."
"Eugene blew up with you," Mickey said. "Didn't make it out in time. Lockdown. There wasn't enough left to give his Mum."
"And Emma?"
"Well, she went with you into Thames House, didn’t she? And you were the only one who walked out alive. You and that Dekker guy."
Jack closed his eyes. That Dekker guy hadn't been who or what he'd been claiming, but it didn't help to tell them, not now. He flashed back to Thames House all the time, dying and still trying to hold onto the man he hadn't admitted to himself that he loved. The flashes were always interspersed with the next day, the blood streaming from Steven's nose, Alice screaming.
Too much pain.
"Did I love Emma?"
"You love all of us," Tosh said. "Emma was sweet on Eugene. I think you took Eugene home a few nights. Gwen shot you after you slept with Emma, so I don't think that went on." She watched him closely. "You really don't remember at all."
"I really don't." Eugene? Really?
"It took a lot out of you when Emma died. And then the next day."
His mouth went dry. "I don't want to hear about the next day." Not again.
"Yeah," said Mickey. "I don't blame you."
"You're not a monster," Tosh said. "You did what you had to do. You always do what needs to be done."
Jack sat back on his heels. "Stop. Please stop." Screaming in his ears. All that power flowing though such a tiny body. If it could have been Jack instead … "It should have been me," he said through clenched teeth.
Tosh placed her hand on his arm. "If you could have, you would have. We all know that. We all would have done the same." Nothing but kindness and sympathy on her face, and he couldn't bear to look at her.
"I shouldn't have come back," he said. "I don't deserve to be here."
"You don't think Gwen says the same thing?" Tosh said through tears. "You don't think I do?" She shot a glance to Mickey and left again. This time she didn't come back.
"Let it go, mate. You probably shouldn't have brought Johnson in. She's great and all, but they're still sore. Fix your family on your own time." And with that mysterious statement, he went after Tosh.
Jack went to Gwen's office. "Hi."
"Hi," she said, closing the window on her computer. "How're you feeling?"
"Lost."
"It's almost suppertime. I think a good night's sleep could help."
Jack looked out the window. It was still light out. "Since when do we go home this early?"
"Since it's been a slow day and my doctor says I need to rest. Everyone wins."
"Gwen?"
"Yes?"
"Where do I live?"
She sat back. "Oh."
"I used to live in the old Hub. I think."
"You did. Where did you stay afterwards? What do you remember?"
"I stayed at … a friend's place. Just a couple of days." Until the sheets had lost Ianto's scent and Jack had gone mad from the silences. "I didn't stay in one place much after that."
"You have a place in town. We also have sleeping quarters here, nice ones. Well, nice enough. You tend to stay here most nights. D'you want me to send someone to take you home and stay with you? I think Mickey's free tonight."
"I'll stay here."
"Good idea. How about some supper? We can go to the café."
"Sure." He didn't know of a café nearby but getting out would do him some good.
She got her purse. "Come on."
The café was in fact located inside the building. The entire East side of the building was dedicated to Torchwood, under a dozen fake businesses. The West side had actual companies, including a spacious cafeteria with windows reaching up to the second floor. "Open 24 hours," read the sign on the door, and could that be any more perfect?
"Where do we keep Myfanwy?" Jack asked, as he took a tray.
"Who?"
He opened his mouth and closed it again. None of the rest of his team would have considered trapping and training a pterodactyl just to get Jack's attention. It was only after the incident with the Cyberman that he'd even considered wondering how Ianto had known about her chocolate fixation, and well after that before he'd 'fessed up to feeding her in the warehouse for days before using her to get to Jack.
"Never mind." He got his food. "Tell me you're eating more than that."
Gwen poked at her salad. "This is what we call a snack. Rhys will have proper supper ready when I get home, but I need some vegetables."
They sat down at a table to themselves. Other faces that he didn't recognise scattered at the other tables.
"They work here, too. Just not for us."
"Interesting cover."
"We took the tourist office idea and ran with it. We actually have a tourist office on the third floor. When someone's being punished, they have to sit there all day."
"What is H3?"
"A dynamic, multisourcing enterprise built on a proactive vision of a global future."
"What does that mean?"
"I have no idea, but Lois laughed her arse off for ten minutes after she came up with it." Gwen sipped her tea, a non-caffeinated brand. When Lucia had been pregnant, the rules had been different. When Alice had been pregnant, they'd changed again. God knew what Gwen's doctor was telling her now, but he suspected she wasn't mentioning her run-ins with alien tech.
"How are you, Gwen?"
"Same as always."
"I don't know always." He took her hand and squeezed it. "Pretend I've been in a coma for six months. Pretend I've been away."
"Oh, pretending now? I can do that. Well, I'm fine, thank you for asking and no thanks to you. I'm still annoyed with you for putting me on desk work, and I know why you did it. I'm scared half to death every time I send our team out without going with them, and I don't really breathe until they're back through the door and safe. It's worse when you're gone or out of range. When Lois starts going on real missions, I may go into labour from the stress. Is that a good start?"
He laughed. "Yes. Thank you." He took a bite of his sandwich, was surprised to find it was pretty good. "What's going on after you have the baby?"
"I have the biggest office for a reason. You already said I could have him with me."
"You're having a boy?" His Gwen hadn't wanted to know the baby's sex.
She nodded. "Rhys is over the moon about it, though he tries to say he just wants the baby to come out all healthy and not alien. Mickey says he can't wait for there to be a little more testosterone in the office."
They've never had a Boys' Night Out because Owen says going out with just Jack is too much like a date. Once there are three of them, though, Jack and Owen bully the new guy into joining them at the pub. Owen hits on anything with a skirt, Jack hits on anything with a pulse, and Ianto just takes a long drink anytime someone approaches him, though when Jack's hands wander his way, he doesn't protest. Later, Jack will think it was all part of his plan, and much later will think it wasn't after all.
There's karaoke at the third pub. Jack will not remember much about it except to cringe for months afterwards whenever anyone mentions the Sex Pistols.
Hours later, they stagger out to the alley behind the fourth pub. Jack is taking the longest piss of his life against one wall, and trying to piece together the words to a dirty song he learned back in the fifty-first century. Ianto is busy on the other side of the alley losing his kebab and about three too many pints. The woman Owen has convinced to come outside with them punches him when he says something in her ear and then she goes back inside.
The following morning, Suzie and Tosh make an effort to be extra loud, banging things in the Hub on purpose and laughing. Owen leaves early. Ianto, faintly green, sticks it out all day until Jack escapes to his bunker.
The three of them never go out together again.
"I'll show him some testosterone."
"Please don't," Gwen giggled around a bite of tomato. "He's already seriously upset when you make him work the office for the gay cruise line. Which is your cover, by the way, if anyone asks."
"I can remember that. Do we ever have customers?" Ianto had always taken out his passive-aggressive urges on the poor souls who wandered into the Tourist Info Centre, when he wasn't taking them out on Owen. At least he'd never given Owen a map and a smile and told him to have a lovely time at what he knew was the most haunted bed and breakfast in the region.
"Since we don't advertise? Not usually. You did take that one sweet young couple on a ferry ride out of Swansea. Apparently the three of you had a blast."
"At some point, someone is going to have to make me a list of the people I've dated in the past three years just so I don't accidentally say something stupid."
Gwen suddenly found her salad very interesting.
"Gwen … "
"I would love to know what you think you remember," she said quietly, not meeting his eyes.
He tried to take her hand again, but she was less welcoming now. "I am unbelievably sorry that I don't remember that."
"Yes, you are," she said, taking her hand back again and stabbing lettuce leaves furiously. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. It was a long time ago."
"Mind if I ask when?"
"Do you remember a group of cannibal villagers trying to eat Owen and Tosh alive?"
"Sort of."
"Well. After that. Not for long. I felt bad about it." She played with her ring. He wondered if she knew she was doing it. "So we stopped." She'd never told Rhys about her affair with Owen, at least not that Rhys would ever remember. Had she confessed her affair with Jack to him, followed by Retcon? Was there any possible way to ask?
"Thanks. For telling me."
"Yeah. Well. Don't go telling anyone."
"I never kiss and tell."
"You do so. Usually a hundred years or so after they're dead, mind."
Her mobile rang, and of course it was Rhys. He had a sixth sense, which Jack occasionally was tempted to document, about what Gwen was doing at any given time. "I'll be home soon," she promised him, and hung up.
"Why don't you show me to where I can stay tonight and leave me with those files Lois found? I can catch up on what I've missed."
She nodded. "We can fill you in on the rest, I guess. You'll have the computer records. Those survived. The personnel issues will be something else."
"I can imagine."
***
Alone, eventually, Jack flipped through dry reports of his days with Torchwood in this timeline. The same aliens had invaded at more or less the same time. The world had nearly ended in more or less the same fashions, always to be held back by his team, or the Doctor, or even that gaggle of teenagers in Ealing whose den mother regularly sent him reports of the "See what we did there without waving guns in peoples' faces?" variety. Just like always.
A report, filled with Suzie's notes about a humanoid alien species who'd mistakenly thought Cardiff a fine place to start breeding, made a one-line note about Jack shooting a pteranodon in the midst of a hunt for something else entirely.
"Sorry, girl," he said aloud. "I didn't know."
Eugene Jones had joined up shortly after the incident at Brecon Beacons, on Gwen's recommendation. It would keep him out of trouble, she'd noted, and besides, wouldn't it have been a good idea to have someone whose job it was to make sure things were where they ought to be and make sure the team remembered to eat. Emma Louise Cowell had come through the Rift in December of that year, had gone to London under a new identity, and came back while Jack himself was listed as missing a few months later. Gwen had hired her as a friendly face to staff the Tourist Centre and act as a lookout.
There was a two week gap in the reports, followed by a terse explanation of group memory loss, as well as instructions from Jack himself, dated during the missing time, not to look closely at it. Rhys Williams was listed among those with an altered memory. Jack remembered this incident at about this time, but it had only been a few days for them. The part of him that wondered what had happened saw the note from himself again, and decided it wasn't something he wanted to think about, not really.
Dr. Owen Harper was listed as dead in the report on the Pharm. Posthumous commendation for giving his life for UNIT liaison Dr. Martha Jones. No further mentions, and Jack knew what to look for, so no resurrection for Owen. Why? Jack had found the second glove himself. But Ianto had reminded him about gloves coming in pairs. Jack had been scanning his memory for clues ever since, enough to piece them together and bring Owen back. Had to be.
Martha had stayed with them after Owen's death, and that was new.
The incident with Gray had gone as badly as expected, though he'd shot Tosh a few millimetres off, damaging her spinal cord. Martha had saved her life. The nuclear power plant, mentioned in a side note, had been stabilised by the people who worked there before it could go critical.
No wonder Tosh couldn't stand to look at Martha now. He wondered if Owen had shown that same puppylike crush on Martha in this timeline right before he died. He wondered if that mattered.
He'd been trying to avoid the thought, but now it was in front of him. Ianto had never been a part of Torchwood in this world, not One, not Three. People were alive today that wouldn't have been had he joined. At least one was dead who should be alive. Eugene had died later than before, Owen earlier (on a technicality). But as far as the world was concerned, as far as Torchwood was concerned, Ianto Jones hadn't been nearly as important to things as Jack had believed, and like every other time when he'd made a similar discovery, that the world would not end without someone Jack loved in it, he died a little in a way that had nothing to do with immortality.
He refused to read the report on the 456. Just thinking about it make the bile rise in his throat.
Instead, he broke down and did what he'd been itching to do since he'd seen the computer terminals glowing. Not thirty seconds later, he found the home address of Lisa and Ianto Jones in Paris. Not that he'd go. Not that he'd call. Not even that he'd try to hack into the CCTV in the small office where they worked together. He'd had his promised ten minutes to say goodbye, and he knew the Doctor would not be forgiving if he tried to steal more. Worse, he knew the penalty for breaking the timeline, even if he hadn't experienced it himself. The further he stayed away from Ianto, the less likely he and his friends were to be eaten by monsters, and that was how it had to be.
But Jack had an address, in a city he hadn't visited in years on a street he didn't know, and that one fact (well, coupled with Jack's hurried reassurance to himself that the world hadn't been overridden by aliens, demons or lawyers because of that one change) meant the rest of the changes had all been worth it.
Had to be.
He eventually fell asleep for an hour or so, in the standard-issue bed in their spare sleeping quarters. For the first time in months, his nightmares were quiet.
***
Jack woke well before daybreak. He managed to find the shower facilities, if not soap, and fresh clothes that looked like his. The café had decent coffee and edible pastries, and after a few tries, he figured out which office was supposed to be his. The lack of personal items wasn't really a surprise; most of his would have been destroyed in the Hub.
The programs were similar to those he remembered. Tosh had made updates, but he could still run her pattern-detecting software without problems, see what mischief the world was up to today.
Tosh showed up ten minutes later and showed him what he was doing wrong.
Lois arrived twenty minutes after that with better coffee and healthier food. (Also, when he demurred, a relayed comment from Martha that if the whole team didn't eat better, she'd start having Lois slip laxatives in their coffee.) Jack took the hint and a piece of toast. While they ate, the others made their ways in and Lois handed out agendas.
"What's this appointment at ten?" Jack asked.
"Dr. Sheffield. Normally, you see him on Fridays, but since your memory is mixed up, I scheduled you early this week."
"For what?" Followed closely by, "We have a doctor?"
"Head shrink," Mickey said around an apple.
Lois said, "The entire team has weekly visits with Dr. Sheffield. He's got clearance to know everything we do."
"He knows about you," Gwen said, swallowing a large bite of bagel with peanut butter. "And we have a standing rule that anyone who skips a session without an authorised reason and permission from you and I both is on automatic suspension without pay."
"Who the hell thought that was a good idea?"
The rest stared at him until it sunk in.
"Okay, but there's no way I would have suggested a shrink."
"That was me," Lois said, nibbling at a strawberry.
"Her second day," Gwen said, "Lois declared we all needed therapy. Then some bloody idiot told her to go arrange it if she felt that strongly about it."
"Me again?"
"You're his favorite patient," Tosh said.
"I don't need therapy."
Gwen said, "You said that before. But you also said it'd be a good idea so we didn't run into another Suzie problem."
"Ten AM," Lois said. "These are the authorised reasons for skipping a session."
Jack read the paper. He was amused to see "Dead" listed at the top, and was less amused by the asterisk which stated "If JH, automatically reschedule appointment for next day. If JH misses three sessions in a row due to death(s), suspension rules apply." No killing himself to get out of it, then. "In hospital" was a valid reason, as was "alien invasion requiring full Torchwood involvement." "Weevil hunting" was listed as unacceptable. So were "calling in sick," "having sex," and "calling in sick to have sex."
"Who wrote this list?"
Lois said, "We needed it to be thorough."
Tosh asked, "Any luck with your memory yet?"
"No," Jack said.
Johnson hadn't said a word, he noticed. She'd just watched him.
***
Jack sat in the only other chair in the office. There was a couch. Of course there was a couch. He wasn't going anywhere near it.
"Hi," said Dr. Sheffield warmly. He had sandy hair going to silver and blue eyes. No chance to check out his other assets, as it were, behind the desk.
"Hi."
"I was briefed that you've had some memory loss. Would you like to start there today?"
"No." Jack's memory was fine. It was time that was wrong.
"What do you remember?"
Jack stayed silent.
"Do you remember me?"
"No."
"So we have to re-establish trust. I've been seeing you for three months now, but we can start over."
"I don't need to start over. I don't need therapy."
"Ah," said the shrink.
"What 'ah?'"
"We'll be starting there, then. Jack Harkness, not your real name, official rank Captain though in what service you've remained vague. The Time Agency doesn't appear to have that rank." Jack raised his eyebrows at mention of the Agency. "I don't suppose you'd like to start with sharing your real name this time?"
"Not a chance."
The doctor sighed. "Would you like me to catch you up on what I know about you so far?"
"You just did."
"No, I identified you. I also know plenty about you. After the death of your father and your brother's abduction, both of which took place on the same day about three thousand years from now, your mother also effectively left you due to her grief. You developed a serious abandonment complex, which you compensated for by running away from home and forming intentionally brief attachments so you wouldn't be hurt again. That lasted as long as it took for your best friend to die, and it didn't stop the Time Agency from hurting you, but you could tell yourself that it didn't matter, not in the deep places inside you, not when they used you over and over, not even when they ripped out your memories. You left them before they could leave you.
"Your complex was suddenly and massively exacerbated by your meeting with the Doctor, who became both the father figure you'd been craving as well as the idealised mate who would never leave you. Except he did, and what's worse, he left you immortal, so that instead of worrying about people leaving you, you were now guaranteed to outlive and lose every single person you ever know or love.
"Since then, you've drifted, trying not to form attachments and failing. You've had countless short relationships, a few longer ones, and a marriage you yourself admit was doomed from day one. After having been abandoned again to be the de facto leader of Torchwood, you've used your power to surround yourself with damaged people, usually with parent issues of their own. You're happy to provide a substitute father figure, ironic since you've run away from your parental responsibilities otherwise. You care about your team against your better judgment, knowing that signing their employment contracts is as good as signing their death warrants. You focus your energies on those you think you can manipulate the easiest, alternately praising and abusing them until you induce a mild form of Stockholm Syndrome wherein they believe you and only you are the key to their happiness and survival. You end up with a Cult of You, surrounded by worshipers and deeply jealous of anyone who still has some sway over any of your followers, even as you claim you want those same followers to live independently of you and pursue normalcy. You know they won't, that you don't leave them with enough tools or free will, and you like that power. Then it gets someone killed and you wallow in guilt because you know you set them up to die for your aggrandisement.
"You were," and here he checked his notes, "captured and experimented on for a year by the former Prime Minister, a year which no one remembers except for you, a UNIT operative you haven't named, and her family. Strangely, despite the PM torturing your team to death in front of you, you did not hold yourself responsible for their fates. Which appear to have been undone anyway."
The grating beneath him is still sticky with Owen's blood when they drag Gwen into Jack's cell, kicking and cursing. The Master is creative; she screams and she screams and she screams.
He makes Lucy watch.
"It's only the deaths that you personally feel you should have prevented that drive you over the edge, but there are plenty of those. Of course, it's only been three months. We've probably just scratched the surface of what makes you tick."
The doctor sat back, not smiling. Jack would have shot him if he'd smiled. But then, the doctor seemed to know that, too.
"I hate you," Jack said instead.
"Good. Now we know where to begin."
***
Jack managed to finish his session without copping to the time switch. Dr. Sheffield was fascinated by Retcon, and encouraged Jack to think back to recent traumatic events to think about what he might be blocking. Jack couldn't deal with the thought of recent traumatic events, and spent the rest of the time talking about missing his dad.
He fled after his fifty minute hour, leaving the doctor writing up something. Apparently Jack had a prescription for sleeping pills that was active. He wondered if the other him had taken them.
"Help me with this," Tosh said when he came out, and handed him the ends of two leads while she soldered two more into place. "Thanks."
"Do you have to see the shrink too?"
"We all do."
"We did fine before without one."
"Lois says half our problem is thinking no one understands our problems, so we end up getting ourselves killed. Gwen agrees with her." The minitorch sparked in her hand. "Lois has made us all set up retirement funds. She says if we act like we're going to survive this job, we'll start believing it."
"You don't."
"I've been here longer, and started because you offered me a gilded cage instead of a concrete one. I knew it would kill me when I stepped inside." She kept working. "Lois is infectious, you know. She's got the others thinking we can fix Torchwood. That we can grow old, have lives and families."
"Your time finished a while ago. The contract we had. You could walk away now." He couldn't stop the word "walk" in time, but she didn't seem to notice.
"Nope," she said, but there was a little smile as she did. "I'm here to see things through. I'd like to find out if she's right."
Johnson and Mickey were supposed to recertify Jack on his weapons training so he could go back out with them (a process he thought was ridiculous but Gwen had insisted), but they were out dealing with an elementary school which might have had an encounter with a force-growing alien device. Jack was more than happy to skip that assignment. He stayed with Tosh, letting her tell him what to do.
"Off to lunch," Gwen said at noon. "Coming?"
"No," said Tosh.
"I'll be by later," said Jack, and watched Gwen and Lois go. "You should eat something. Martha will blame me if you're overworked and underfed."
"She already does. I'll get something later."
"Promise?"
"Yes. Now hand me that microdriver."
Fifteen minutes later, they were finished. Tosh seemed pleased with the results. Jack would wait to see how it worked before celebrating. "Grab you something from the café?"
"Oh, fine. Tuna sandwich." She waved him off.
The café was busier this time of day. Jack spied Gwen and Lois across the room at a table with two other women. He could hear their laughter over the noise of the other diners, let it follow him through the line on the other side of the room. He figured he'd get Tosh her food on his way out so the bread didn't get moist; soggy tuna bread disgusted even Jack.
He brought his tray over towards the table where the girls were, pasting a coy grin on his features as he neared them. "Hello, ladies!" he said, taking them all in, and then he froze.
"Hi, Jack," said Gwen, and scooted to make room for him. "You remember Bren from Sunrise, yeah?" That was nice of her. Jack wasn't looking at Bren but nodded automatically at her. "This is their newest programmer."
Gwen was smiling kindly at her, was not cowering in fear or rage, or pulling her gun like Jack's mind screamed she should. Yet his last sight of her hadn't been in a metal bikini but in white lace, and that changed everything.
"Lisa Jones," she said, extending her hand.
***
TBC
***
Part Two