Seeing the Light 2/3 (A Rose Gen Ficathon Story)
Story: Seeing the Light
Author:
wendymr
Rated: PG13
Summary: It's all about moving on; maybe she’d have preferred a different ending, but she’s always believed in facing up to challenges and changes rather than trying to live in denial.
Written for the Rose Gen Ficathon for
vegasunicorn25 - requests listed with chapter 1. With many thanks to
dark_aegis and
nnwest for BR services.
Chapter 1: First Contact
Chapter 2: Encounter
A low voice penetrates the darkness. “Okay, time to talk, darling. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
The accent is North American, the voice vaguely familiar. But she can’t think about that now. What’s more important is staying alive.
He’s asked her a question. Wants to know who she is. That tells her that killing her isn’t his top priority.
She falls back on her cover story. “I work here. That’s my dance studio over there.”
“Liar.” There’s scorn in his voice, audible even though he’s still speaking in little more than a murmur. “You had some kind of scanner. That’s not anything a dance teacher would have.”
“You sure about that?” she challenges him. Keep him talking. Then maybe she can figure out a way to get the knife away from him. Keep him talking long enough and she’ll catch him off guard.
“Oh, yeah,” he drawls. “I’m very sure.”
That voice... The more she hears of it, the more she’s convinced she’s heard it before. But he’s still not speaking in a normal tone, so she can’t place why it’s familiar. Weird. Maybe he sounds like someone off the telly. Or someone she travelled on the subway with this morning.
The question is, who is this bloke? What’s he doing here, and how does he know she had a scanner? It’s dark; he couldn’t have seen what she was holding, let alone what she was doing with it. The only way he could know is if he was using some sort of electronic equipment himself.
“I was working,” she says, making her tone reluctant. That’s given him enough information to get his interest.
“Who do you work for? Who sent you here?”
And it’s worked. The knife-point is pressing less firmly against her now. She twists, breaking away from him, and in the same movement swings her leg in an arc, catching him on the hip, hard, knocking him off-balance. The knife clatters to the cobblestones, and he stumbles back.
Her hand’s already in her pocket, fumbling for the Maglite she always carries. She shines it in his face, more to disorient him than anything else. But then her breath catches and she gasps in disbelief.
“Jack!”
***
But it can’t be. Well, it can, but it’s not the Jack from her universe.
Even apart from the fact that this is a different universe, that Jack is dead. He died on the Game Station. She mourned him a long time ago.
All the same, the question of what Jack Harkness, Time Agent from the fifty-first century, is doing in the early twenty-first century, is an interesting one. Well, once she gets past the pang of seeing him and knowing he’s not the man who was once her friend. Not the man who’s probably the only other person she knew who really understood what it’s like to travel with the Doctor, to be his best friend, confidant and more.
He’s older than the Jack she knew, her Jack; he’s probably about forty, hair getting a little grey around the temples, but his clear blue eyes are as sharp as her Jack’s ever were.
She takes a deep breath, calming herself, ready to plan her next move. But he’s already getting to his feet, preparing to launch himself at her again. And then he pauses.
“Wait a minute. You know me?”
No. Of course she doesn’t, because he’s not her Jack. Somehow, now, she has to cover up for her slip, too, because she can’t even hint at the truth - he won’t believe her and, if he’s anything like the Jack she knew in her old universe, he won’t let it rest until he gets to the bottom of the mystery.
“Nah. Sorry, you just look a bit like someone I used to know.”
In a single movement, he’s wrenched her Maglite from her and is shining it at her. And he’s studying her. “No. Don’t give me that, Rose Tyler. You do know me. And for the same reason I know you. My only question is how. How are you here, in this universe?”
What?
He’s her Jack? But how is that possible?
“It’s really you?” Her voice is faint. “I don’t believe it!”
“God, me neither.” He sounds incredulous. He bends, picks up his knife and slides it into some kind of holder, then hands her back her torch. Then, in the faint light, she sees him grimace. “Shit. Supposed to be here for a reason.”
“Me too,” she says, glancing upwards. The sky’s dark. No flashing lights to be seen.
She runs for her scanner - it’s still working - and tries to search. It’s finding nothing.
“It’s gone,” Jack tells her. He’s punching information into the wrist computer he’s still wearing - how can she not have noticed that when she was fighting him?
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. Then he studies her. “You’re here for the same reason I was? To find out whatever the hell that thing is?”
“Yeah.” She glares at him, remembering the way he attacked her, almost choked her, fought her, held a knife to her throat. “Some reason why you almost killed me?”
“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound all that apologetic, really. She thumps his arm. “Sorry,” he says again, and this time sounds as if he means it. “I need to find out where that ship’s from. It’s alien, and for all I knew the occupants might be able to disguise themselves as human.”
“Oh yeah? And your computer can’t distinguish between human and alien?” she throws at him.
“Couldn’t look,” he says, tone rueful. “You’d have seen the backlight while I was checking. Couldn’t take the risk.”
“So you almost killed me instead.”
“I was never going to kill you!” he says, now impatient. “I just needed to find out who you were.”
“And now you know.” She gives him a steady look; the moon’s out now, so he can see her better. “So, the question is, what are we going to do about it?”
***
What they’re going to do, it seems, is go back to her apartment. Jack’s staying in a hotel, he tells her - not a very salubrious hotel, she’s guessing, judging by his clear reluctance to invite her back there. Or maybe he’s sharing it with someone. Knowing Jack, that’s more than likely.
On the way to the subway station, he gets in first and asks again what she’s doing here, in this universe. Long story, she tells him, but she gives him the gist of it as succinctly as she can. He emits a low whistle when she explains about the Void, and the hole between universes, and what the Doctor did to seal the cracks.
“So that explains it,” he says, shaking his head.
“Explains what?”
“Well,” he says, glancing at her, “Obviously, I knew about the Cybermen - and that was one hell of a shock, seeing those on Earth. I’d been trying to find out for weeks what the so-called ghosts were, but my computer couldn’t identify them. Anyway, soon as they showed up as Cybermen, I started working on finding out where they came from.”
“Wait a minute.” This isn’t making sense. “You were in my time? In 2007?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Believe it or not, I was trying to find you and the Doctor. I knew you’d come back to your time - and because I didn’t know where you lived in London I went to Cardiff. Figured sooner or later he’d come back to the Rift to fuel up. Anyway,” he continues, “I discovered where the Cybermen were coming from. A crack between universes. I went through, and ended up in this one. An alternate Cardiff, with guys from an alternative Torchwood running around zapping any Cybermen they saw. Showed them my Torchwood ID and started helping.”
“Your Torchwood ID?” She lowers her voice; they’re walking down into the subway station now and she doesn’t want anyone overhearing.
“Yeah. Got a job with the Cardiff branch, about a month before the so-called ghosts turned into Cybermen.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “I work for Torchwood now. In this universe. I’m in Toronto on secondment, helping to set up the Canadian branch.”
He grins, that familiar white-toothed smile she remembers so well. “Hey, nice work!”
“So,” she continues, “you ended up in this universe. What happened?”
He shrugs. “Tried to go back, once we’d got rid of the Cybermen in the vicinity - but the gap was closed. It all makes sense now. The Doctor sealed it.”
And, in doing so, he’d trapped Jack in this universe, just as he’d trapped her.
“That was five years ago,” she comments as they walk onto the platform. “What’ve you been doing since then?” Not working for Torchwood - not unless it’s under a false name. She’d know.
He pulls a face. She has to wait for an answer then as a train pulls into the station. Once they’re on board and hanging onto straps, she asks him again. “What’ve you been doing?”
“This and that,” he answers. She raises her eyebrows at him. “Surviving,” he says, an edge to his voice.
“What’s that mean?”
He blows out a breath, his expression resigned. “I tried to get a job officially with Torchwood in this universe, but I didn’t have a proper resume and officially I don’t exist here anyway. I didn’t have my psychic paper with me, so couldn’t use that. Without access to any of my tech other than my wristcomp, there wasn’t a lot I could do. So...” He shrugs. “I started freelancing.”
Freelancing. He’s used that term before. “Oh, Jack. You didn’t go back to conning, did you?”
He looks away. “Only when I had to. Oh, come on, Rose,” he adds sharply as she murmurs in disappointment. “What else do you expect me to do? Starve? Steal? I’ve got no papers. No ID. I’m an illegal alien.”
And not just an illegal alien, but stranded in a universe and a time-period not his own. Even if he had been living in her time-period back in their old universe, he wouldn’t have known that time well enough to feel natural there, to understand it fully. He hadn’t been there long enough. She and her mum had it easier there - despite the differences, and there are many, there are enough similarities between the two universes to make assimilation relatively easy, especially since they’ve had help. Her dad and Jake, for starters, and Mickey, who was pretty well assimilated by the time she came through.
“God,” she breathes. “If only I’d known...”
“Yeah.” His tone is rueful. “If I’d known... well, maybe not.” He’s looking away from her, and his expression tells her that he probably wouldn’t have looked her up. Too proud, Jack Harkness, to ask for help.
“You stupid git,” she tells him.
He meets her gaze then, and grins. “Yeah, that’s me.”
On the subway journey, and then as they walk back to her apartment, he tells her how he survived. Some more or less legitimate work - legitimate in the sense that it wasn’t illegal, but he was paid cash in hand - and some not so legitimate. Never anything that meant people getting hurt, though. Security, detective work, bit of protection, that sort of thing. A couple of times, he almost managed to get himself proper ID, but forging is an insecure business and the contacts he made got busted before they could deliver. There were other contacts, of course, but the price they demanded was one he wasn’t prepared to pay. Hurting people’s not his thing. Never was, and never will be.
He’s done forgery himself in the past, but then he was able to get access to equipment, to the right paper, ink and so on. Once, he broke into a forger’s premises, intending to produce a fake driver’s licence for himself. But - and he’s clearly embarrassed to admit it, her one-time Mr Gadget who never met a technological device he couldn’t work - he couldn’t figure out how the machine worked. It was manual, not digital, and in any case he never was that familiar with the twenty-first century before ending up living here. The equipment was just too primitive for his knowledge-base.
ID won’t be a problem for him, not any more, she promises him. She’ll get her dad onto it. And someone with his expertise will be very valuable to Torchwood. He’ll be hired on the spot.
All the same, it does surprise her that he’s spent five years living this underground half-life. That’s not the Jack she knows, the survivor, the eternal optimist, the guy who could find a way out of any situation.
That’s something she intends to get to the bottom of, and the sooner the better.
Back in her apartment, as soon as she closes the door behind them he’s reaching for her, tugging her into the hug she didn’t know she wanted until right now. God, it feels so good to be in his arms again. She’s been so busy missing the Doctor over the past five years that she forgot about missing Jack.
“So good to see you,” she tells him.
“You too.” He hugs her again.
They end up on her sofa, sharing a bottle of Ontario wine - not bad, Jack concedes after the first couple of sips, though he says he’s had better. Not for some time, she suspects. And finally she gets to ask the question that’s been on her mind ever since she recognised him.
“How the hell are you alive? I thought the Daleks killed you.”
The story he tells her would sound unbelievable in any other context. But, given everything she saw and heard while she was travelling with the Doctor, it’s not that incredible. He died and came back to life. Funny; the Doctor did something similar. Though Jack’s just a human.
And then she realises. What he’s been through that makes it all so much worse. They just abandoned him. Left him there on that deserted space-station full of dead bodies.
God, what he’s been through because of the Doctor. Left behind. Then sucked into an alternate universe with no way of getting home, no way of making a legitimate living, no way of getting back to his own century. No wonder it looks as if he’s almost given up hope of a decent life.
That’s not the Jack she knows, though, and she’s already seen that underneath the shadowy person he’s become the real Jack is still there. He wouldn’t be chasing down aliens otherwise.
And he is still there. As they talk and laugh, revisiting old times and catching up on each other’s lives, filling in the missing pieces of their time apart, he becomes more and more the man she once knew. More the man she knows he’ll be again.
They make plans. Tomorrow, she’ll contact her dad, will give him Jack’s information. She’s not doing him any favours, she insists, though she’d gladly do any favour in the world for him. A lifetime ago, he was one of the two best friends she had in the universe, after all. He saved her life more times than she can count in the months they were together. It’s only fair that she gets to save him in return.
It won’t be difficult for her dad to get Jack proper ID. He did it for her, after all, once she was here to stay. With his connections, it was simple. And once she tells him who Jack is - because she trusts him enough to tell him the truth - he’ll be desperate to get Jack on board at Torchwood. His knowledge and expertise will be invaluable.
Finally, as the clock strikes one in the morning, reluctantly she moves out of his embrace - they’ve been sitting close together, his arm around her shoulders, as if he’s afraid to let her go. “Come on. You’re staying here tonight. I’ll show you where you can sleep.” Apart from how late it is, she’s not letting him go back to some sleazy hotel. Not ever.
“Thanks.” He smiles at her. “My hotel’s quite a way from here.”
On the threshold of the spare bedroom, he says, a familiar wicked grin on his face, “You’re really leaving me to sleep here all on my own? That’s not very nice, Rose.”
She’s about to laugh - oh, he hasn’t changed a bit - when she catches sight of a flash of something in his eyes. Something she would sometimes see all those years ago, but only ever in fleeting glances.
Loneliness. Haunting sadness.
Of course, he never did get those memories back. And he’s had betrayal heaped upon betrayal.
She takes his hand, and leads him back along the darkened hallway to her own bedroom.
***
In the morning, she calls her dad and gets arrangements made. Then she makes Jack pose for a few photographs. He follows her into the spare bedroom and watches as she transfers the pictures from her camera to her computer ready to email to her dad.
He reaches for the framed photo of her and the Doctor, picking it up. “This him after he regenerated?” The Doctor’s regeneration is one of the things she told him about last night.
“Yeah.” She concentrates on attaching the photos to an email.
“Hmm. Looks good on him. Like the hair.” Jack grins. “Kinda miss those ears, though.”
She did too, sometimes.
He gives her an appraising look. “Ever get him into the sack in the end?”
“No.” She sends the email.
“Pity. You should have. Y’know, he always wanted it as much as you did. Could never figure out why he didn’t just do it. Guess he was waiting for you to make the first move.”
And that’s another regret on her list, that she never did that. Still, she refuses to have regrets. She hibernates her computer, stands up, takes the photo from Jack and leads the way out of the room. He takes the hint.
Over breakfast, they discuss the lights. He’s convinced it’s alien, too, and determined to find out what it is and whether it’s a threat. It might not be, he comments as he eats. Not all aliens are enemies. Not all come to other planets with the intention of invading. “Does Torchwood have a plan in case this is just a friendly approach?”
She shrugs. “I did ask that. Most of them are locked into the mindset that aliens equal danger. Not easy getting them to understand that’s not always true.”
“Right.” He drums his fingers on the table. “Cause it occurred to me that those lights could be a signal. A message.”
“What, like alien Morse code?”
He grins. “Yeah, like alien Morse code.” He leans back in his chair. “Tonight, I want to record the pattern. See if my wristcomp can figure it out.”
She watches him and wonders why it hasn’t occurred to her before that his motives for tracking down the spaceship aren’t the same as hers. That he might see this spaceship as his way off the planet, a way back to a life as a space traveller, if not a time-traveller. Perhaps a way to get to somewhere he could make contact with time-travellers.
He had a knife. He fought her. He was trying to stop her doing what she was doing with her scanner - trying to prevent her scaring off the spaceship? Or finding out what it is? Ensuring that nothing got in the way of his escape-route?
She’s been trusting him automatically, because he’s Jack and he never betrayed her trust after that first time. Yet he was a conman for longer than she knew him. He’s been screwed over twice by the Doctor - even if accidentally - and, from the way he looked during their discussion last night, is obviously still bitter about it. And he’s had to struggle to survive for the last five years. It would hardly be surprising if the interests he’s looking out for here are pure Jack Harkness, not the Earth.
He kisses her as she leaves for work and, even as she gives him a key to her apartment, she wonders if he’ll be here when she gets home.
***
When she gets back, he’s cooked dinner. He’s also modified her scanner so it’ll do a better job of reading any signal the ship’s transmitting and will be able to record it.
She wants to trust him, but there’s still that question in the back of her mind. What will he do tonight, when they go back? And does she need to be carrying a weapon?
She hates herself for doing it, but when she gets changed she hides a small gun inside her jacket.
He holds her hand as they walk to the subway, and again as they walk from King Street to the Distillery. Doesn’t look like a very safe area, he tells her. It’s a familiar, though long-forgotten, feeling to have him guarding her like an over-protective big brother. Though their relationship is hardly brother and sister any more, not after last night.
There’s one thing, though. Whatever his motives here, even if she is right to be suspicious, she doesn’t think he’ll hurt her if he can help it. Not with the way he’s behaving now.
They take up position in the Distillery, Rose using her psychic paper again to get past the police guard on the gate. Jack, she says, is her partner, escorting her because he doesn’t like her being out alone at night. The cops ask him for ID too. She manages to slip him the psychic paper under cover of taking his hand, so he gets away with it. “Close call,” he murmurs as they walk on. “You’re still damn good at this covert stuff.”
“Better than I used to be,” she points out. Because she is. A lot better. Formal training’s made all the difference. So many things she’d never do now, like go out in a Union Jack T-shirt, allow herself to get chatted up by a bloke wanting to con her, lose sight of her main objective in a situation. Oh, and she’ll never let herself be outrun if she can help it. Now, there’s no way Adam would beat her to that bulkhead.
He keeps his hand on her shoulder as they wait for the lights to appear, and she can’t help wondering if it’s protective, proprietorial... or making sure she can’t get away from him.
Their scanners are both primed and ready, but it’s almost an hour before they pick up anything. And then they look at each other simultaneously, and she sees the same arrested, excited look in his eyes as in her own.
“It’s definitely a message,” he says after a couple of minutes, tapping something into his wristcomp. “Trying to translate it now.”
She’s brought along her own translation device tonight, after their conversation over breakfast. Sticking the scanner under her arm, she sets the device to communicate with the scanner and waits to see what happens; if it can understand the message.
“Any idea who they are? Where they’re from?” she murmurs to Jack.
He shrugs. “Not sure.”
“Not sure as in no idea, or as in you can narrow it down but you’re not sure you’re right?” God, she hates being suspicious of him.
He blows out a breath. “I think they might be Zorkans.”
Not a species she’s come across. “And they are...?” Friendly? Hostile? Likely to offer Jack a ride away from this planet?
Her translation device isn’t coming up with anything. Damnit.
“From the next galaxy over. They’re vaguely humanoid,” he says, tone matter-of-fact. “Similar basic shape, facial features very different, lots of bodily hair, hands are more like claws. But they’re bipedal and intelligent, and capable of speech when they feel like it.”
“When they feel like it?”
“Mostly, they communicate through body language and stuff like that.” He gestures towards the ship. “Like you said, alien Morse code.”
“Right.” And he still hasn’t answered the most important question. “Friendly or hostile?”
“Mostly friendly,” he says. “My guess is they really are just trying to make contact. Establish diplomatic relations. Or, y’know, maybe their ship’s in trouble and they’re asking for help.”
That could be, too. She glances at him; he’s still tapping away at his wristcomp. “You getting anywhere with translating the message?”
He doesn’t look at her. “Not really. Been a while since I encountered any Zorkans.”
Now she’s cold inside, as if someone’s thrown a bucket of ice over her. He’s lying to her. Jack’s lying to her.
Which means her suspicions were right. He’s up to something he doesn’t want her to know about.
He glances up, catches her eye. And something of her thoughts must be showing in her expression, because he’s suddenly very still, very alert and completely on guard. Completely the former soldier, the bloke no-one wants as an enemy.
“Give me the gun, Rose,” he says, and his voice is dangerous.
***
tbc
x-posted to
available_very
Author:
wendymr
Rated: PG13
Summary: It's all about moving on; maybe she’d have preferred a different ending, but she’s always believed in facing up to challenges and changes rather than trying to live in denial.
Written for the Rose Gen Ficathon for
vegasunicorn25 - requests listed with chapter 1. With many thanks to
dark_aegis and
nnwest for BR services.
Chapter 1: First Contact
Chapter 2: Encounter
A low voice penetrates the darkness. “Okay, time to talk, darling. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
The accent is North American, the voice vaguely familiar. But she can’t think about that now. What’s more important is staying alive.
He’s asked her a question. Wants to know who she is. That tells her that killing her isn’t his top priority.
She falls back on her cover story. “I work here. That’s my dance studio over there.”
“Liar.” There’s scorn in his voice, audible even though he’s still speaking in little more than a murmur. “You had some kind of scanner. That’s not anything a dance teacher would have.”
“You sure about that?” she challenges him. Keep him talking. Then maybe she can figure out a way to get the knife away from him. Keep him talking long enough and she’ll catch him off guard.
“Oh, yeah,” he drawls. “I’m very sure.”
That voice... The more she hears of it, the more she’s convinced she’s heard it before. But he’s still not speaking in a normal tone, so she can’t place why it’s familiar. Weird. Maybe he sounds like someone off the telly. Or someone she travelled on the subway with this morning.
The question is, who is this bloke? What’s he doing here, and how does he know she had a scanner? It’s dark; he couldn’t have seen what she was holding, let alone what she was doing with it. The only way he could know is if he was using some sort of electronic equipment himself.
“I was working,” she says, making her tone reluctant. That’s given him enough information to get his interest.
“Who do you work for? Who sent you here?”
And it’s worked. The knife-point is pressing less firmly against her now. She twists, breaking away from him, and in the same movement swings her leg in an arc, catching him on the hip, hard, knocking him off-balance. The knife clatters to the cobblestones, and he stumbles back.
Her hand’s already in her pocket, fumbling for the Maglite she always carries. She shines it in his face, more to disorient him than anything else. But then her breath catches and she gasps in disbelief.
“Jack!”
***
But it can’t be. Well, it can, but it’s not the Jack from her universe.
Even apart from the fact that this is a different universe, that Jack is dead. He died on the Game Station. She mourned him a long time ago.
All the same, the question of what Jack Harkness, Time Agent from the fifty-first century, is doing in the early twenty-first century, is an interesting one. Well, once she gets past the pang of seeing him and knowing he’s not the man who was once her friend. Not the man who’s probably the only other person she knew who really understood what it’s like to travel with the Doctor, to be his best friend, confidant and more.
He’s older than the Jack she knew, her Jack; he’s probably about forty, hair getting a little grey around the temples, but his clear blue eyes are as sharp as her Jack’s ever were.
She takes a deep breath, calming herself, ready to plan her next move. But he’s already getting to his feet, preparing to launch himself at her again. And then he pauses.
“Wait a minute. You know me?”
No. Of course she doesn’t, because he’s not her Jack. Somehow, now, she has to cover up for her slip, too, because she can’t even hint at the truth - he won’t believe her and, if he’s anything like the Jack she knew in her old universe, he won’t let it rest until he gets to the bottom of the mystery.
“Nah. Sorry, you just look a bit like someone I used to know.”
In a single movement, he’s wrenched her Maglite from her and is shining it at her. And he’s studying her. “No. Don’t give me that, Rose Tyler. You do know me. And for the same reason I know you. My only question is how. How are you here, in this universe?”
What?
He’s her Jack? But how is that possible?
“It’s really you?” Her voice is faint. “I don’t believe it!”
“God, me neither.” He sounds incredulous. He bends, picks up his knife and slides it into some kind of holder, then hands her back her torch. Then, in the faint light, she sees him grimace. “Shit. Supposed to be here for a reason.”
“Me too,” she says, glancing upwards. The sky’s dark. No flashing lights to be seen.
She runs for her scanner - it’s still working - and tries to search. It’s finding nothing.
“It’s gone,” Jack tells her. He’s punching information into the wrist computer he’s still wearing - how can she not have noticed that when she was fighting him?
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. Then he studies her. “You’re here for the same reason I was? To find out whatever the hell that thing is?”
“Yeah.” She glares at him, remembering the way he attacked her, almost choked her, fought her, held a knife to her throat. “Some reason why you almost killed me?”
“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound all that apologetic, really. She thumps his arm. “Sorry,” he says again, and this time sounds as if he means it. “I need to find out where that ship’s from. It’s alien, and for all I knew the occupants might be able to disguise themselves as human.”
“Oh yeah? And your computer can’t distinguish between human and alien?” she throws at him.
“Couldn’t look,” he says, tone rueful. “You’d have seen the backlight while I was checking. Couldn’t take the risk.”
“So you almost killed me instead.”
“I was never going to kill you!” he says, now impatient. “I just needed to find out who you were.”
“And now you know.” She gives him a steady look; the moon’s out now, so he can see her better. “So, the question is, what are we going to do about it?”
***
What they’re going to do, it seems, is go back to her apartment. Jack’s staying in a hotel, he tells her - not a very salubrious hotel, she’s guessing, judging by his clear reluctance to invite her back there. Or maybe he’s sharing it with someone. Knowing Jack, that’s more than likely.
On the way to the subway station, he gets in first and asks again what she’s doing here, in this universe. Long story, she tells him, but she gives him the gist of it as succinctly as she can. He emits a low whistle when she explains about the Void, and the hole between universes, and what the Doctor did to seal the cracks.
“So that explains it,” he says, shaking his head.
“Explains what?”
“Well,” he says, glancing at her, “Obviously, I knew about the Cybermen - and that was one hell of a shock, seeing those on Earth. I’d been trying to find out for weeks what the so-called ghosts were, but my computer couldn’t identify them. Anyway, soon as they showed up as Cybermen, I started working on finding out where they came from.”
“Wait a minute.” This isn’t making sense. “You were in my time? In 2007?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Believe it or not, I was trying to find you and the Doctor. I knew you’d come back to your time - and because I didn’t know where you lived in London I went to Cardiff. Figured sooner or later he’d come back to the Rift to fuel up. Anyway,” he continues, “I discovered where the Cybermen were coming from. A crack between universes. I went through, and ended up in this one. An alternate Cardiff, with guys from an alternative Torchwood running around zapping any Cybermen they saw. Showed them my Torchwood ID and started helping.”
“Your Torchwood ID?” She lowers her voice; they’re walking down into the subway station now and she doesn’t want anyone overhearing.
“Yeah. Got a job with the Cardiff branch, about a month before the so-called ghosts turned into Cybermen.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “I work for Torchwood now. In this universe. I’m in Toronto on secondment, helping to set up the Canadian branch.”
He grins, that familiar white-toothed smile she remembers so well. “Hey, nice work!”
“So,” she continues, “you ended up in this universe. What happened?”
He shrugs. “Tried to go back, once we’d got rid of the Cybermen in the vicinity - but the gap was closed. It all makes sense now. The Doctor sealed it.”
And, in doing so, he’d trapped Jack in this universe, just as he’d trapped her.
“That was five years ago,” she comments as they walk onto the platform. “What’ve you been doing since then?” Not working for Torchwood - not unless it’s under a false name. She’d know.
He pulls a face. She has to wait for an answer then as a train pulls into the station. Once they’re on board and hanging onto straps, she asks him again. “What’ve you been doing?”
“This and that,” he answers. She raises her eyebrows at him. “Surviving,” he says, an edge to his voice.
“What’s that mean?”
He blows out a breath, his expression resigned. “I tried to get a job officially with Torchwood in this universe, but I didn’t have a proper resume and officially I don’t exist here anyway. I didn’t have my psychic paper with me, so couldn’t use that. Without access to any of my tech other than my wristcomp, there wasn’t a lot I could do. So...” He shrugs. “I started freelancing.”
Freelancing. He’s used that term before. “Oh, Jack. You didn’t go back to conning, did you?”
He looks away. “Only when I had to. Oh, come on, Rose,” he adds sharply as she murmurs in disappointment. “What else do you expect me to do? Starve? Steal? I’ve got no papers. No ID. I’m an illegal alien.”
And not just an illegal alien, but stranded in a universe and a time-period not his own. Even if he had been living in her time-period back in their old universe, he wouldn’t have known that time well enough to feel natural there, to understand it fully. He hadn’t been there long enough. She and her mum had it easier there - despite the differences, and there are many, there are enough similarities between the two universes to make assimilation relatively easy, especially since they’ve had help. Her dad and Jake, for starters, and Mickey, who was pretty well assimilated by the time she came through.
“God,” she breathes. “If only I’d known...”
“Yeah.” His tone is rueful. “If I’d known... well, maybe not.” He’s looking away from her, and his expression tells her that he probably wouldn’t have looked her up. Too proud, Jack Harkness, to ask for help.
“You stupid git,” she tells him.
He meets her gaze then, and grins. “Yeah, that’s me.”
On the subway journey, and then as they walk back to her apartment, he tells her how he survived. Some more or less legitimate work - legitimate in the sense that it wasn’t illegal, but he was paid cash in hand - and some not so legitimate. Never anything that meant people getting hurt, though. Security, detective work, bit of protection, that sort of thing. A couple of times, he almost managed to get himself proper ID, but forging is an insecure business and the contacts he made got busted before they could deliver. There were other contacts, of course, but the price they demanded was one he wasn’t prepared to pay. Hurting people’s not his thing. Never was, and never will be.
He’s done forgery himself in the past, but then he was able to get access to equipment, to the right paper, ink and so on. Once, he broke into a forger’s premises, intending to produce a fake driver’s licence for himself. But - and he’s clearly embarrassed to admit it, her one-time Mr Gadget who never met a technological device he couldn’t work - he couldn’t figure out how the machine worked. It was manual, not digital, and in any case he never was that familiar with the twenty-first century before ending up living here. The equipment was just too primitive for his knowledge-base.
ID won’t be a problem for him, not any more, she promises him. She’ll get her dad onto it. And someone with his expertise will be very valuable to Torchwood. He’ll be hired on the spot.
All the same, it does surprise her that he’s spent five years living this underground half-life. That’s not the Jack she knows, the survivor, the eternal optimist, the guy who could find a way out of any situation.
That’s something she intends to get to the bottom of, and the sooner the better.
Back in her apartment, as soon as she closes the door behind them he’s reaching for her, tugging her into the hug she didn’t know she wanted until right now. God, it feels so good to be in his arms again. She’s been so busy missing the Doctor over the past five years that she forgot about missing Jack.
“So good to see you,” she tells him.
“You too.” He hugs her again.
They end up on her sofa, sharing a bottle of Ontario wine - not bad, Jack concedes after the first couple of sips, though he says he’s had better. Not for some time, she suspects. And finally she gets to ask the question that’s been on her mind ever since she recognised him.
“How the hell are you alive? I thought the Daleks killed you.”
The story he tells her would sound unbelievable in any other context. But, given everything she saw and heard while she was travelling with the Doctor, it’s not that incredible. He died and came back to life. Funny; the Doctor did something similar. Though Jack’s just a human.
And then she realises. What he’s been through that makes it all so much worse. They just abandoned him. Left him there on that deserted space-station full of dead bodies.
God, what he’s been through because of the Doctor. Left behind. Then sucked into an alternate universe with no way of getting home, no way of making a legitimate living, no way of getting back to his own century. No wonder it looks as if he’s almost given up hope of a decent life.
That’s not the Jack she knows, though, and she’s already seen that underneath the shadowy person he’s become the real Jack is still there. He wouldn’t be chasing down aliens otherwise.
And he is still there. As they talk and laugh, revisiting old times and catching up on each other’s lives, filling in the missing pieces of their time apart, he becomes more and more the man she once knew. More the man she knows he’ll be again.
They make plans. Tomorrow, she’ll contact her dad, will give him Jack’s information. She’s not doing him any favours, she insists, though she’d gladly do any favour in the world for him. A lifetime ago, he was one of the two best friends she had in the universe, after all. He saved her life more times than she can count in the months they were together. It’s only fair that she gets to save him in return.
It won’t be difficult for her dad to get Jack proper ID. He did it for her, after all, once she was here to stay. With his connections, it was simple. And once she tells him who Jack is - because she trusts him enough to tell him the truth - he’ll be desperate to get Jack on board at Torchwood. His knowledge and expertise will be invaluable.
Finally, as the clock strikes one in the morning, reluctantly she moves out of his embrace - they’ve been sitting close together, his arm around her shoulders, as if he’s afraid to let her go. “Come on. You’re staying here tonight. I’ll show you where you can sleep.” Apart from how late it is, she’s not letting him go back to some sleazy hotel. Not ever.
“Thanks.” He smiles at her. “My hotel’s quite a way from here.”
On the threshold of the spare bedroom, he says, a familiar wicked grin on his face, “You’re really leaving me to sleep here all on my own? That’s not very nice, Rose.”
She’s about to laugh - oh, he hasn’t changed a bit - when she catches sight of a flash of something in his eyes. Something she would sometimes see all those years ago, but only ever in fleeting glances.
Loneliness. Haunting sadness.
Of course, he never did get those memories back. And he’s had betrayal heaped upon betrayal.
She takes his hand, and leads him back along the darkened hallway to her own bedroom.
***
In the morning, she calls her dad and gets arrangements made. Then she makes Jack pose for a few photographs. He follows her into the spare bedroom and watches as she transfers the pictures from her camera to her computer ready to email to her dad.
He reaches for the framed photo of her and the Doctor, picking it up. “This him after he regenerated?” The Doctor’s regeneration is one of the things she told him about last night.
“Yeah.” She concentrates on attaching the photos to an email.
“Hmm. Looks good on him. Like the hair.” Jack grins. “Kinda miss those ears, though.”
She did too, sometimes.
He gives her an appraising look. “Ever get him into the sack in the end?”
“No.” She sends the email.
“Pity. You should have. Y’know, he always wanted it as much as you did. Could never figure out why he didn’t just do it. Guess he was waiting for you to make the first move.”
And that’s another regret on her list, that she never did that. Still, she refuses to have regrets. She hibernates her computer, stands up, takes the photo from Jack and leads the way out of the room. He takes the hint.
Over breakfast, they discuss the lights. He’s convinced it’s alien, too, and determined to find out what it is and whether it’s a threat. It might not be, he comments as he eats. Not all aliens are enemies. Not all come to other planets with the intention of invading. “Does Torchwood have a plan in case this is just a friendly approach?”
She shrugs. “I did ask that. Most of them are locked into the mindset that aliens equal danger. Not easy getting them to understand that’s not always true.”
“Right.” He drums his fingers on the table. “Cause it occurred to me that those lights could be a signal. A message.”
“What, like alien Morse code?”
He grins. “Yeah, like alien Morse code.” He leans back in his chair. “Tonight, I want to record the pattern. See if my wristcomp can figure it out.”
She watches him and wonders why it hasn’t occurred to her before that his motives for tracking down the spaceship aren’t the same as hers. That he might see this spaceship as his way off the planet, a way back to a life as a space traveller, if not a time-traveller. Perhaps a way to get to somewhere he could make contact with time-travellers.
He had a knife. He fought her. He was trying to stop her doing what she was doing with her scanner - trying to prevent her scaring off the spaceship? Or finding out what it is? Ensuring that nothing got in the way of his escape-route?
She’s been trusting him automatically, because he’s Jack and he never betrayed her trust after that first time. Yet he was a conman for longer than she knew him. He’s been screwed over twice by the Doctor - even if accidentally - and, from the way he looked during their discussion last night, is obviously still bitter about it. And he’s had to struggle to survive for the last five years. It would hardly be surprising if the interests he’s looking out for here are pure Jack Harkness, not the Earth.
He kisses her as she leaves for work and, even as she gives him a key to her apartment, she wonders if he’ll be here when she gets home.
***
When she gets back, he’s cooked dinner. He’s also modified her scanner so it’ll do a better job of reading any signal the ship’s transmitting and will be able to record it.
She wants to trust him, but there’s still that question in the back of her mind. What will he do tonight, when they go back? And does she need to be carrying a weapon?
She hates herself for doing it, but when she gets changed she hides a small gun inside her jacket.
He holds her hand as they walk to the subway, and again as they walk from King Street to the Distillery. Doesn’t look like a very safe area, he tells her. It’s a familiar, though long-forgotten, feeling to have him guarding her like an over-protective big brother. Though their relationship is hardly brother and sister any more, not after last night.
There’s one thing, though. Whatever his motives here, even if she is right to be suspicious, she doesn’t think he’ll hurt her if he can help it. Not with the way he’s behaving now.
They take up position in the Distillery, Rose using her psychic paper again to get past the police guard on the gate. Jack, she says, is her partner, escorting her because he doesn’t like her being out alone at night. The cops ask him for ID too. She manages to slip him the psychic paper under cover of taking his hand, so he gets away with it. “Close call,” he murmurs as they walk on. “You’re still damn good at this covert stuff.”
“Better than I used to be,” she points out. Because she is. A lot better. Formal training’s made all the difference. So many things she’d never do now, like go out in a Union Jack T-shirt, allow herself to get chatted up by a bloke wanting to con her, lose sight of her main objective in a situation. Oh, and she’ll never let herself be outrun if she can help it. Now, there’s no way Adam would beat her to that bulkhead.
He keeps his hand on her shoulder as they wait for the lights to appear, and she can’t help wondering if it’s protective, proprietorial... or making sure she can’t get away from him.
Their scanners are both primed and ready, but it’s almost an hour before they pick up anything. And then they look at each other simultaneously, and she sees the same arrested, excited look in his eyes as in her own.
“It’s definitely a message,” he says after a couple of minutes, tapping something into his wristcomp. “Trying to translate it now.”
She’s brought along her own translation device tonight, after their conversation over breakfast. Sticking the scanner under her arm, she sets the device to communicate with the scanner and waits to see what happens; if it can understand the message.
“Any idea who they are? Where they’re from?” she murmurs to Jack.
He shrugs. “Not sure.”
“Not sure as in no idea, or as in you can narrow it down but you’re not sure you’re right?” God, she hates being suspicious of him.
He blows out a breath. “I think they might be Zorkans.”
Not a species she’s come across. “And they are...?” Friendly? Hostile? Likely to offer Jack a ride away from this planet?
Her translation device isn’t coming up with anything. Damnit.
“From the next galaxy over. They’re vaguely humanoid,” he says, tone matter-of-fact. “Similar basic shape, facial features very different, lots of bodily hair, hands are more like claws. But they’re bipedal and intelligent, and capable of speech when they feel like it.”
“When they feel like it?”
“Mostly, they communicate through body language and stuff like that.” He gestures towards the ship. “Like you said, alien Morse code.”
“Right.” And he still hasn’t answered the most important question. “Friendly or hostile?”
“Mostly friendly,” he says. “My guess is they really are just trying to make contact. Establish diplomatic relations. Or, y’know, maybe their ship’s in trouble and they’re asking for help.”
That could be, too. She glances at him; he’s still tapping away at his wristcomp. “You getting anywhere with translating the message?”
He doesn’t look at her. “Not really. Been a while since I encountered any Zorkans.”
Now she’s cold inside, as if someone’s thrown a bucket of ice over her. He’s lying to her. Jack’s lying to her.
Which means her suspicions were right. He’s up to something he doesn’t want her to know about.
He glances up, catches her eye. And something of her thoughts must be showing in her expression, because he’s suddenly very still, very alert and completely on guard. Completely the former soldier, the bloke no-one wants as an enemy.
“Give me the gun, Rose,” he says, and his voice is dangerous.
***
tbc
x-posted to
available_very