beesandbrews: Time Bomb (Four/Jack) [All Ages] - SUMMER HOLIDAYS PROMPT 8
Title: Time Bomb
Author: beesandbrews
Prompt: 8 - the green fairy, fades, a leaf, while hiking a trail
Rating: All Ages
Characters: Jack Harkness, the 4th Doctor, cameo by Ianto Jones
Spoilers/warnings: none
Beta: m_findlow Many thanks!
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Epping Forest is in danger. A mysterious summons from himself teams Jack and the 4th Doctor. Only working together can they keep a foe from Jack's past from destroying Earth's future. Set during Torchwood Series 2. Passing references to Small Worlds, but no actual spoilers.
**
"Jack?"
Jack looked up from his computer screen. CCTV footage of an alley off Prince's Street scrolled by at twice times speed. He blinked, clearing after-images from his eyes, and paused the feedback.
"Saved from a case of terminal boredom by the man bearing caffeine!" Jack grinned and waved Ianto in, observing the stack of mail on the tray next to his mug. One of the letters was not like the others. "What have you got there?"
Ianto set the mug and an old-fashioned looking envelope on the desk in front of Jack, and then deposited the rest of the post in the already overflowing In basket. He shrugged as he tucked the silver serving tray underneath his arm. "You tell me." He pointed at the letter where it was marked Personal and Confidential in block letters. "The writing, although an effort has been made to disguise it, is in your hand." Raising an eyebrow, Ianto speculated, "Something too sensitive even for the time locked vault?"
Jack picked up the letter, frowning as he studied it. Ianto was right, that was his writing, even if it looked as if it had been done left-handed. He shook his head, perplexed, and reached for his letter opener. "You better shut the door on your way out."
"I'm leaving for home now, but if you need anything - " Ianto left the rest of the sentence hanging, and Jack filled in the unspoken remainder. If he needed backup, assistance, or even a shoulder to cry on, he would have it.
"Thanks." Jack looked away from the mysterious letter long enough to meet Ianto's eyes to reinforce that the unspoken message was understood and appreciated.
The door shut with a soft click. Jack hesitated over the letter, examining it minutely for anything that might be construed as a clue.
His badly disguised writing meant that it was important. That it hadn't come from the time-locked vault meant it wasn't something he had stored and then retconned away the memory of having done so. "Could future-me have written this?" Jack mused as he sliced open the envelope.
His frown deepened as he extracted the contents. There was a letter. The paper was heavy, and was of the same vintage as the envelope. A smudge of blue ink, caused by haphazard blotting, suggested the use of a fountain pen.
"This is strange," Jack muttered as he removed the other items that had been tucked in with the letter. He cleared away some neglected paperwork and laid them out next to one another on the desk. "A letter, a map of Epping Forest with an X on it, and a leaf?" Granted it was an especially nice leaf, mottled in shades of burnt umber and gold, and a particularly chocolatey sort of brown that one didn't normally see in the local trees, but that still didn't explain why he had posted it to himself.
The message was brief. The day's date, the time he should be at the map coordinates, and three cryptic instructions:
Come alone.
Bring the leaf.
Do I have to even mention, tell no one?
Jack frowned at the last bit. It sounded ominously like he was being lured into a trap. Absently, he reached for his coffee and took a swig of the cooling brew, considering whether he should trust himself or put some sort of contingency plan into place.
Caution won out. He scrawled a brief note to Ianto, folded it neatly into thirds, and left it under his mug. At least this time he wasn't going to leave without an explanation.
* * * * *
The Doctor looped an extra length of scarf around his neck, adjusted his hat over a riot of unruly curls, and then stepped lightly out of the TARDIS. Earlier he had posted the letter to Captain Jack Harkness. Although he wasn't entirely sure who Captain Jack Harkness was.
That was the trouble with time travel. It wasn't the danger of stepping on a butterfly and accidentally causing the collapse of a civilisation. The Universe, magnificent creation that it was, had safeties in place that not even the Time Lords completely understood to prevent that from happening. No, the trouble with time travel was keeping track of where one was in relation to other time travellers. It could turn a quick catch-up into an absolute mare's nest when ones' timelines were out of sync. "Somebody's today is someone else's yesterday," the Doctor muttered to himself as he regarded his pocket watch. He, at least, was right on time.
The Doctor returned the watch to his pocket and regarded the ancient woods surrounding him. There were the rustling noises and the soft calls of night birds, and the sensation that one was being observed by small animals going about their business. In other words, the sort of things one expected to hear and feel at night in the forest. But there was something else. Something that made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck beneath his scarf. The sure and certain knowledge that he was being watched by something other than a deer or squirrel.
"Hello?" The Doctor peered out into the dense thicket of trees. He was glad that he was, for the moment, without a travelling companion. There was something uncanny about this place, and it was setting his teeth on edge.
"Hello, yourself." A torchlight cut a bright swath through the inky blackness. The crunching sound of leaves being crushed underfoot on the trail in front of him became audible, and a large shadowy figure began to resolve into the shape of a man.
"Is that you, Captain Harkness?" The Doctor strode forward with his hand extended, taking measure of the new arrival. He was tall, appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and wore a RAF greatcoat over dark trousers and a pale shirt. He was also a complete stranger, although the Doctor felt a wave of deja vu wash over him as they clasped hands. "Have we met before?"
Harkness's hand tensed against that of the Doctor's. "No. Never."
The Doctor shrugged to himself as they stepped back and regarded one another. It was possible that Jack Harkness had one of those ubiquitous faces, but it was also extremely likely that he wasn't telling the truth. He filed the moment away to contemplate at a more convenient time, and changed the subject by holding out the envelope he had found on the TARDIS console a few hours earlier. "So, what do you know about this?"
* * * * *
The man in the ridiculously long scarf and broad-brimmed hat had yet to introduce himself, but Jack knew without being told he was face to face with the Doctor. After a brief encounter with one of the Doctor's other selves in 1971, Jack had realised that UNIT knew far more about the Doctor than Torchwood did. He had then made it a personal mission to sleep his way into the UNIT archives. By the time he found the files he wanted, he had seduced
so many secretaries and file clerks that he was still involuntarily aroused by the scents of mimeograph ink and correction fluid when he reviewed old case notes.
The photographs of the man before him didn't do him justice. His eyes had a probing intensity that film couldn't capture. There was a restless energy about him that marked him as the Doctor, even though he looked nothing like the versions Jack had known and travelled with.
"Oh!" the Doctor said abruptly, before Jack had a chance to answer. "I do apologise. I'm the Doctor. Now, about this letter?"
Jack shrugged. "I suspect you know as much as I do." He reached into his pocket and pulled out an identical envelope. He held it out close enough for the Doctor to examine. "Other than it appears I wrote this to myself, I'm in the dark."
The Doctor extracted the contents of his envelope. From where Jack was standing the paper looked to have been taken from the same supply as the one he had received. "So, why are we here?"
The Doctor pushed the brim of his hat higher up on his head and did a slow one-eighty degree circle, regarding the trees around them. "My envelope contained a leaf." He regarded Jack with bright eyes. "But the leaf doesn't look like it came from any of these trees." He pointed above their heads as he named species. "Pedunculate oak. European beech. Hornbeam. Holly. None of them have a leaf like mine."
Without being asked, Jack extracted the leaf from his envelope and handed it over for the Doctor to examine. "Thank you," he replied absently. He tucked his letter away in a voluminous pocket and then plucked the leaf from Jack's fingers. He held the leaves, one in each hand. From Jack's point of view they were identical. Even in the pale moonlight, they seemed richly coloured, more so than the leaves either hanging on the trees or on the ground at their feet. They were shaped differently - larger and more lobed or divided, or whatever it was tree scientists used to describe the shape of a leaf.
When the Doctor brought them closer together, both leaves began to glow. "Interesting," he murmured.
Jack wanted to advise caution. He knew they had probably summoned themselves to this place, but he didn't know why, and he didn't like not knowing. He got as far as, "Doctor - " when the Doctor pressed the two leaves against one another and everything went at first a vivid green, and then very, very, black.
* * * * *
When Jack opened his eyes again things were no longer black. They were instead very, very, green. Green grass. Green plants. There was even a faint green glow coming from the sky above them, which didn't seem at all right. If the sky was green then that meant they were no longer on Earth. "Doctor?"
The Doctor groaned in reply. Jack turned his head - he didn't feel capable of doing more - and followed the sound to the source. The Doctor was a few feet away, close enough that, with an effort, Jack was able to stretch out his fingers and lay them against the Doctor's wrist. The Timelord's pulse throbbed with reassuring regularity, and Jack took a small measure of comfort from knowing the Doctor could be laid low by unusual means of transportation. For there could be little doubt they had been transported. "But where?" he managed to mutter.
He shut his eyes against the phosphorescent glow and concentrated on regulating his breathing. After a few slow inhalations and exhalations the disorientated feeling started to fade away and strength returned to his limbs. Jack sat up. He waited a few moments, and when he was sure he was stable, he carefully opened his eyes.
Although everything was still in shades of green, the weird glow had faded. Jack glanced over at the Doctor and found he was clambering to his feet. When he noticed Jack was conscious and alert, he held out his hand to help him off the ground.
"Was that some kind of transmat device?" Jack looked around for the leaves that had transported them, but they were nowhere to be seen.
"That's as good a theory as any." The Doctor pivoted sharply and regarded Jack with an expression of intense curiosity. "How do you know about transmat devices? They haven't been invented yet in your century."
Jack realised he had blundered. He had no history with this Doctor. All of that was yet to come. "It's something the lab boys speculate about. Plus, I read a lot of science fiction. Big fan." Realising he was in danger of laying it on too thick, he hastily changed the subject. "So, where are we?"
Since regaining his feet, the Doctor had been rubbing his forehead as if it bothered him. He looked around the clearing and swayed dangerously. Jack stepped a little closer, ready to catch the Time Lord if he passed out again.
The Doctor shook his head. "I'm all right. But this place." He rubbed his forehead and then looked around again. "It's not right."
Not right went without saying. Wherever they had ended up was downright primordial, and instincts Jack didn't even know he possessed were warning him to be wary of any change in the ambient sounds or light levels because they would be harbingers of danger.
The Doctor operated on a different level. He could sense things that Jack couldn't. It wasn't deadly wildlife or other natural perils worrying him. Something else was setting off his internal alarm bells. "What do you mean, Doctor?"
"This place - " The Doctor made an effort to stand straighter. He shut his eyes briefly, as though concentrating on something only he could perceive. "It's out of phase."
Out of phase with what? Jack wondered. He didn't get a chance to voice the question. The ground beneath them rocked, sending them off their feet, and once again, everything went very black.
* * * * *
When the Doctor next regained consciousness, he was seated on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree. Jack was next to him, still out cold. Someone had unwrapped his scarf from around his neck and rearranged it to pillow their heads, protecting them from the tree's rather rough and scaly bark. They had also dressed a number of minor injuries caused by flying debris in the wake of what could have only have been an explosion.
The Doctor nudged Jack, and then shook his shoulder gently.
"Come on, Ianto, five more minutes," Jack muttered. He tried to bury his face against the Doctor's shoulder.
The Doctor tried again, putting more enthusiasm into his effort. He was still feeling a bit peaky himself. "Wakey, wakey, Captain. There's a mystery to solve."
"Doctor?" Jack raised his head. He blinked a few times and then groaned as he passed his hand over his face, gingerly patting a bruise that covered his right temple. "What happened?" He flexed his left hand, testing the mobility in his wrist and fingers. "One minute we were talking and the next … Boom!"
"That was a time bomb."
The Doctor wasn't surprised to find a third person in their midst. After the explosion, someone had tried to make them comfortable, propping them against the tree and tending to their cuts and scrapes.
"A time bomb?" Jack sounded irritable. He was still somewhat out of it and hadn't yet realised they were no longer alone. "Who would bother to use a delay to blow up a forest?" Belatedly, he realised that they were no longer alone and looked up sharply, wincing in pain as he did so. "Who the hell are you?"
"Manners, Captain," the Doctor chided. "This is our host. Although my companion does have a point. Introductions do seem to be in order. I'm the Doctor. The irritable young fellow on the floor is Captain Jack Harkness. And you are?"
Jack pulled his revolver from its holster and pointed it at the latest arrival to their company. "He's a fairy, Doctor. Step away from him. And you, whoever you are, you can tell us why the hell you've brought us here."
"I am of the Fairy Folk, but I am no harm to you, Jack Harkness. I am Meridial, Steward of Epping Forest," the being replied. He bowed deeply from the waist. When he straightened he added, "I seek your help."
"Captain Harkness, please lower your weapon. You're being very rude." The Doctor smiled warmly as he combed his memory. He had been to many of Earth's forests during his adventures, but had never come across anyone like Meridial before. He was certain he had never met any of his people, and he wondered why they had left his companion with such a negative impression. "I presume you're the the person who arranged our transportation to … " He looked up at the tall, stately being who was standing before them. "I'm sorry, where are we, exactly?"
Meridial settled his iridescent wings more comfortably against his shoulders and then offered a slim, but strong, pale green hand to assist the Doctor to his feet. He then knelt at Jack's side and offered him a drink from a shining silver flask. "Here. This will help clear your head."
Jack glanced sharply up at the Doctor. He, in turn, offered a nod of encouragement. He had no sense that the newcomer bore them any ill will. Grudgingly, Jack drank and then nodded his thanks. Their benefactor then capped his flask and put it away. "We are," he explained, "where you were, but far away and one step removed."
"Come again?" Jack sounded perplexed, which was a fair reaction. The Doctor wasn't entirely sure what to make of the reply either. "I'm not sure I heard that quite right."
A resigned expression passed quickly over Meridial's sharply defined features. "This is, as you would define it, the past. In order to protect the present and the future, I have taken this part of the forest and moved it out of the flow of normal time." He paused for a moment, obviously searching for a less complicated explanation. "I have moved it into ..." He paused again and then brightened. "Yes. That is the word. An eddy. This is an eddy in time."
"Ah, that explains it." The Doctor said, feeling a sense of relief. His disorientation was caused by the shift out of the normal time stream.
"Explains what?" Jack didn't seem any more enlightened. "Doctor, what's going on?"
"Certain places, Jack, like certain people, are critical. Things must happen in the right place, at the right time. If they don't then - "
"Everything changes?" Jack sounded as if he was uncertain he was following the right train of thought.
"Exactly." The Doctor nodded. He was pleased his companion was becoming less hostile and more engaged in their current situation. "Epping Forest has been featured in many prominent historical events. It was the playground of kings and queens and the hunting ground of highway men like Dick Turpin. Writers as diverse as Dorothy Sayers and Charles Dickens were inspired by it. Without Epping Forest, England would be a far different place."
"Which is why it has been my duty, and my honour, to protect it." Meridial touched his templed fingers to his chest then let his arms fall, palms open, to his sides, in what was obviously meant to be a reverent gesture. "This latest attack has been more deadly than those of avaricious humans bent on personal enrichment. Someone is attempting to alter the course of history by destroying this forest before it becomes a focal point."
"With all of your kind's powers- " There was still a heavy current of suspicion in Jack's voice. "- just what is it that we can do that you can't, Meridial?"
The Doctor supposed that was a fair question. He couldn't ever recall someone who had the ability to shift a physical location around in time asking for his help before.
"You can move through both time and space." Meridial replied, as if their role should have been obvious. "While I can influence time, I am tied to this physical space. I cannot leave my forest."
"So, we, what?" Jack raked his glance over the surrounding woodland. "Find the time bomb and defuse it?"
The Doctor stared at the stark white glow where the blast from the time bomb had erased a section of forest. "Better we keep any bombs from being planted in the first place." He tore his gaze away and glanced around, looking for the TARDIS, but he could neither see nor sense her. Whatever Meridial had done to protect the forest was interfering with his connection to the ship. "I say, Meridial, you haven't seen a blue police box around, have you? I think we're going to need it if we've any chance of making this work."
Meridial nodded and with a sweeping gesture, pointed out a path through the trees.
* * * * *
Jack managed to do a slow one-eighty, taking in the changes to the interior of the TARDIS, before she began to tremble. It seemed the Doctor wasn't the only one who underwent the periodic makeover. This TARDIS's control room was small and cosy, relatively speaking. The central console, elevated on a low platform, was more compact than the one he knew so well. In some ways, it resembled an old fashioned writing desk. Though why the Doctor would keep his shaving mirror on a writing desk was something only he could explain.
Everything around him, even the majority of the roundels in the bulkheads, was made of polished wood. Others made of stained glass added splashes of bright colour to the otherwise sedate décor. The brass railing reminded him of the sort of fitting found in a gentlemen's club lounge or smoking room. He wondered what other changes the TARDIS had undergone.
"There, there. Oh, do calm down, old thing." The Doctor was at the controls, flipping switches and frowning at the results.
"Shh," Jack whispered. "It's okay. Or at least it will be." He heard Meridial gently clear his throat to get their attention, and dragged his thoughts away from the ship's.
"Whatever you've done, Meridial, you've upset the old girl and scrambled all my readouts." The Doctor looked away from the display as the TARDIS settled. "Suppose you tell us more about these mad bombers. When did they start sniffing around your forest?"
"It might be easier if I showed you." Meridial raised his arms and waved his hands in an intricate pattern. Jack felt his head go funny, but before he could grab for the nearest surface to steady himself, it abruptly cleared. He swallowed hard against a residual feeling of nausea and saw the Doctor's frown had deepened even further.
"You've moved us." He turned dials and then looked sharply up at Meridial. "I can't get a fix. When are we?"
"Time as I reckon it, does not quite align with your calendar." Meridial waved his long and elegant fingers again, and this time a wood panel rolled away to reveal a exterior viewscreen. Outside, instead of the forest, there was a blasted wasteland. "This is what would have been, had I not stopped the time bomb." Once more, Meridial drew patterns in the air and everything went funny again. "This is how it should be."
Jack blinked hard against an intense feeling of being dislocated from his internal gyroscope and looked outside. The terrible vision of ruin and decay had been replaced by one of a group of children standing under an ancient tree. A woman in a deep green uniform was lecturing while the children listened with open-mouthed fascination.
"Among those children is the future Prime Minister, who stands fast during an alien invasion, and subsequently saves the planet."
"So, you're saying that the time bomb is an elaborate attempt to change that future?" The Doctor didn't sound as if he doubted Meridial, but he didn't sound wholly convinced either.
Jack tried to work through the scheme's logic. Sure, as a Time Agent he had gone up against people who had tried to change history by assassinating future leaders while they were still in their nappies, but never in his recollection had they ever tried to alter history by changing a place.
"I don't get it." Jack pointed at the group of children who were now being introduced to a fawn. "Are you saying that something happens to one of those kids, that makes such an impression, that decades later it changes how this future Prime Minister faces a crisis? No offence, but that seems kind of far fetched, if you ask me."
The Doctor left the centre console. He went to stand next to the viewscreen, peering myopically at the lecture in progress. "Consider a child, who during a school outing, has impressed upon it the duty of care we should all hold towards one another. That takes to heart how an individual can stand up and make a difference, even in the face of adversity." He pivoted sharply away from the screen to face Meridial and Jack. "Such a child could grow up to be a great leader."
"A leader who will not exist if our adversary's plan is successful." Meridial waved his hands again, causing another wave of nausea to roll over Jack and the Doctor. The forest displayed on the viewscreen suggested they had returned to their original position in the time eddy.
"Okay, just for the minute, say that I believe this screwy plan." Jack turned to face Meridial, noticing absently that for all his powers, he wasn't omnipotent. The demonstration of what could be had caused his face to grey and his posture to sag. "How do we stop them? And who are they anyway? You still haven't told us who we're supposed to be up against."
"He has a point." The Doctor crossed to Meridial's side and escorted him to a high-backed chair.
"I don't know what they call themselves." Meridial paused long enough to take a restorative nip from his silver flask. "I only know they intend to enslave the planet and strip it of its people and resources."
He beckoned the Doctor closer. The Doctor knelt at Meridial's side. Meridial waved his fingers in front of the Doctor's face.
The Doctor's eyes went wide with surprise and dismay. "No!" he gasped, visibly shaken.
"Doctor?" Jack rushed forward to catch the Time Lord before he could collapse, and to defend him, if necessary.
They stood that way for a long moment, Jack holding the Doctor erect and supporting his weight, before the Doctor shook him off.
"I'm fine. I'm fine," he insisted. "It was just a bit of a shock. We're up against some very nasty customers. Have you ever heard of the Feshdrel?"
Before Jack could reply, The Doctor shook his head and answered for him.
"No, of course you haven't. They won't start becoming a nuisance for ages. They were the worst sort of people. They ruined their own planet through greed and poor resource management, and then promptly started a campaign of conquest that left a trail of other blighted planets in its wake."
His expression turned inward and then he frowned. "I don't recall them having the ability to time travel. Or them getting this far out of their own corner of space."
Jack felt sick. He knew the Feshdrel. Every Time Agent knew the Feshdrel.
They were the ones who changed everything.
Jack swayed on his feet. This time it had nothing to do with Meridial's time manipulation. Adrenaline-fuelled anger, and an equal measure of guilt, rolled through his system in a hot wave. He drew a shaking breath and passed a hand over his face as he attempted to get a hold of himself.
"Jack?"
Jack looked over at the Doctor. "I think we need to talk."
* * * * *
Meridial was resting, recovering from his efforts to bring them up to speed. The Doctor escorted Jack out of the console room and into an adjoining corridor. He paused for a moment, and then led Jack to another room a few doors away. "We can be comfortable in here," he said, as the lights came up to reveal a well-appointed sitting room.
The Doctor took a burgundy velvet Queen Anne-style chair for himself and indicated that Jack should sit on a matching sofa. "So now, before we get any deeper into this thing, you should tell me who you really are, Captain Jack Harkness. I can understand why Meridial sought me out to help him with the Feshdrel, but why has he brought you into all of this?"
Jack blew out a breath. Up until the revelation about the Feshdrel he had been asking himself the same question. Now he had a pretty fair idea. Not that it was going to be easy to come clean about it. But second chances, when they did present themselves, rarely involved the easy road. "I don't know, exactly, although I can guess. But what I can't figure is how Meridial would know."
"You've met others of his kind before," the Doctor said. "And I take it from your reaction to Meridial that it wasn't the most pleasant of encounters."
It was another in a long line of things Jack wished he could forget. He nodded. "fairies are ancient beings. They are of the Earth. Elemental entities, for lack of a better way of putting it. They're powerful and they're dangerous." He felt perplexed by their current situation. "But the ones I encountered could wipe the floor with the Feshdrel with one hand tied behind their pint-sized backs. They wouldn't need our help."
The Doctor rubbed his chin in a thoughtful manner. "So, it's possible that while Meridial may be a fairy, he is different from the sort you know?"
That was something Jack hadn't considered. Maybe there was more than one kind of fairy out there. Maybe that's why human folklore was filled with happy stories about good fairies, as well as cautionary tales about the wicked kind. It was food for thought to chew over if they survived the current crisis.
"So," the Doctor shifted in his chair, settling himself more comfortably, "suppose we set the matter of Meridial's relations aside for the moment and return to the topic of you."
Damn. Jack had hoped they could skip this bit. Regrettably, even a good fairy couldn't save him from at least a partial confession. He considered his next words carefully. He and the Doctor were at different places in their personal timelines. He had to be judicious with the facts. "That is a complicated subject and given we've got this Epping Forest crisis on our hands, one we really don't have time to get into."
"And the fact your quantum signature bears a striking resemblance to that of my TARDIS, is that also a complicated subject?" The Doctor leant forward in his chair as though he couldn't wait to hear the explanation.
Would it have been too much for that question to go unasked? Jack wondered. But given the TARDIS had a violent reaction when they had first come aboard, it was inevitable that the Doctor had scanned everything to try and work out why.
"The TARDIS and I have history," Jack admitted. "And some day, so will you and I. Which makes this current situation awkward."
The Doctor's expression became puzzled. "Oh? How so?"
"When we meet, properly, I mean," Jack explained, "we're strangers. I don't know you, and I'm certain you didn't know me."
"Oh. I see." The Doctor sat back in his chair. He looked up and regarded the inlaid ceiling. "I take your point." He shrugged. "Well, for the moment at least, we'll have to worry about that later. Let's get back to the Feshdrel. What can you tell me about them and this time bomb?"
Jack shifted, trying to make himself comfortable against the horsehair cushions. Talking about events that hadn't happened yet, even to a Time Lord, didn't come easily. He blew out a breath and hoped the Doctor would draw the right conclusions from the sketchy accounting of one of the most dangerous moments in human history. "It's like this. There was a research station. They worked on cutting edge - No, bleeding edge, quantum physics as it related to time travel. Stuff so revolutionary that not even the researchers who were working on it had a good grasp of what they were playing around with."
"Go on."
The Doctor sounded as if he didn't like where the story was going, which was fair enough. Jack wasn't keen either, and he had lived through it.
"As you said earlier, the Feshdrel were the worst kind of marauding conquerors, and they had already started dabbling with using time as a weapon. Time Agents were on the front line during that campaign, keeping the timelines pure when the Feshdrel tried to make changes."
"You?" the Doctor said quietly.
Jack nodded. "I was there. Then the Feshdrel got wind of what was going on in that lab. The powers that be, the directors of the Time Agency and the like, knew what would happen if that research got into the wrong hands. The war would be over before it had even started." Jack looked up and almost, but not quite, met the Doctor's eyes. "We did what we had to do, but there was a persistent rumour that a Feshdrel ship escaped. No one could ever confirm it, but I guess now we know it was true."
"This research they were working on," the Doctor asked. "Do you have any idea what it was about?"
Jack racked his brain, but all he could come up with were rumours. Most of them involved worst case scenarios that had never come to pass. "There was one thing that's a possibility." The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. "One of the biggest goals was finding a way to transport not just people, but resources, unimpeded, back and forth through time. Scientists speculated that some day they could create stable portals - gateways between the past and the present you could move through as easily as going from one room to another. Scuttlebutt around the office suggested some spectacular failures were hushed up. But it was a gold ring project, so the scientists kept trying."
The Doctor's expression became grave. "Past meets future in an unstable flux matrix. It's a wonder they didn't experiment themselves into a quantum singularity." He sounded impressed, but not in a good way. "You're right about one thing, in the wrong hands that could make for a very dangerous weapon."
Temporal mechanics weren't really Jack's strong suit. He didn't mind using time travel, as long as he didn't have to calculate the equations to make it happen. He had sat through the courses during training. Occasionally the examples of just how wrong things could go if a decimal shifted out of place while vector coordinates were being input into the NavDrive still gave him nightmares. "So, what can we do about it?"
The Doctor rose from his chair and looked at Jack as if the solution was obvious. "What else? We return to the original scene of the crime."
* * * * *
There were aspects of time travel that gave the Doctor a headache if he thought too closely about them. That Jack Harkness had already participated in the battle against the Feshdrel at the research centre, was causing a distinct throbbing behind his eyes.
They couldn't prevent the battle from happening, because it already had. Nor could they prevent the Feshdrel from getting off the station, because that had already happened as well. But they had to find a way to prevent the Feshdrel from using whatever technology they had managed to abscond with before they overwhelmed Meridial's defences.
"Of course!" The Doctor shouted. "Meridial! He's linked to the forest!"
"Doctor?"
Meridial had addressed him in a querying tone and with an expression of gentle concern, so the Doctor tried to slow his thoughts enough to explain them in layman's terms. An idea. A glimmering fragment of an idea had begun to blossom. "Meridial. I know you can't leave your forest, but can the forest leave Earth?"
There was no reason why his plan couldn't work. Meridial had already removed ancient Epping Forest out of the time stream. It was in a quantum state, just as the TARDIS was. It was just a matter of matching the flux modulation.
"Doctor, what are you thinking?" Jack's expression was dubious, but that was only because he still hadn't caught up.
It was all coming together in his mind. There was a way to beat the Feshdrel at their own game. "Just watch and see." He typed in a set of calculations and then took a reading. He made several more adjustments, then did a new set of calculations and compared the results. Just to be safe, he ran the numbers again before feeding the resulting coordinates into the navigation drive. "You might want to take a seat for the next bit. The ride is going to be a bit bumpy."
The TARDIS juddered, forcing the Doctor and his guests to hang on for dear life as she tore across time and space.
* * * * *
It was odd seeing the operation unfold from a different perspective. Jack watched the Feshdrel raiders enter orbit around the research base. Time Agents were already at the station, waiting and ready to spring their surprise attack. Jack remembered how tense they had been. The intelligence that had tipped them off to the raid had come at a high cost. They had one chance. Their superiors had impressed upon them that this wasn't the day to screw up.
He swallowed hard against a rising gorge as the assault on the station began. Friends had died that day. Good friends cut down without mercy. He heard the sound of their death screams. He smelled acrid smoke. Though the TARDIS was stable beneath his feet, he trembled as if holding himself steady against the vibration of concussion blasts. It was difficult, but Jack shut his mind against the past and made himself watch the unfolding battle.
Somewhere out there was a ship.
The one that had slipped the Time Agents' net.
Their quarry.
On either side of him the Doctor and Meridial were watching just as intently. Meridial looked distressed, greyish and pale. Jack figured it had as much to do with being removed from Earth, as being witness to the battle. He was as suited to space travel as a fish was to breathing air.
"Here we go." The Doctor pointed as a ship broke free from the station's gravity well and accelerated away sharply. "Now!" He mashed a button down and the TARDIS wailed her protest. "Steady, girl." The Doctor made another adjustment. "Just hold on."
The whine of the TARDIS's engine's filled the control room. Meridial pressed his hands over his ears as he fell to the deck. Jack did the same, but he managed to stay on his feet. The Doctor winced, but continued to work feverishly at the central console.
The Feshdrel ship disappeared from view.
The controls on the console may have looked different, but everything still worked as he remembered, more or less. Jack scanned the space around them, but there was no sign of the Feshdrel marauders. "Where'd it go?"
"Hold your questions," The Doctor shouted. "This next bit is rather tricky."
Jack couldn't understand what the Doctor was doing. Whatever it was, the TARDIS wasn't very keen either. Levers held fast as if they were refusing to be pulled, and when the Doctor pressed buttons, sparks flew from the control board.
"I promise, it will be all right." The Doctor pressed down hard on a button and then jumped back from the console. The TARDIS engines screamed to life again.
Jack had one brief glimpse of what appeared to be Epping Forest materialising in front of them before they were thrown off their feet and the TARDIS dematerialised.
* * * * *
Jack offered a hand to help Meridial onto his feet. "What the hell just happened?" He pushed a few buttons of his own and looked out the viewscreen. It was night, although just barely. There were trees. A wood. It looked like 21st century Epping Forest. The chronometer on his wrist strap agreed with his estimation.
The Doctor was beaming. He patted the console affectionately, as if he was praising the TARDIS for a job well done. "Well, Meridial, is the time bomb all sorted?"
"It is no more." Meridial seemed just as baffled as Jack felt. "It never was. I don't understand."
The Doctor waved a hand dismissively in the air. "Oh, it's simple enough, if you think about it. Displaced Epping Forest was a singularity. The time bomb was also a singularity. When two singularities collide - "
"They cancel each other out." Jack stared at the Doctor, as he processed what had just occurred. "Usually violently. So, you just did what the Feshdrel was trying to do? Then how is it that Epping Forest still exists?"
"Because there is a right way to go about that sort of thing, and a wrong way." The Doctor shrugged. "I did it the right way."
"By using the time eddy as a containment field?" Jack guessed.
"Precisely. I just expanded upon what Meridial had already done," the Doctor explained. "And then I added a few refinements of my own."
"You dragged a piece of the past into the future." Jack already felt bruised and battered from the TARDIS' protests over her ill-use. He wasn't sure he really wanted to add a headache from trying to comprehend a complicated explanation of how the Doctor had managed to break most of the laws of time travel.
"We're in a quantum state, Jack," the Doctor explained. "Just as there is no small or large, there is no past, present, or future aboard the TARDIS. Meridial had already contained the time bomb within a single moment in Epping Forest's past. I merely moved that moment into the future."
"To a point in space already occupied by a Feshdrel ship carrying a stolen prototype time gate?"
The Doctor nodded. "Which is why things got a bit bumpy. They had already started their jump into hyperspace."
Jack blew out his breath in a long, slow exhalation. No wonder the TARDIS had fought the Doctor every step of the way. He slumped against the bulkhead and thought about what a long, strange night it had been. He wanted to go home, and to sleep, but there were still a few more loose ends that needed tying up. "Hey, Doctor, where do you keep your stationery?"
* * * * *
Jack wrote the note to himself and tucked the leaf Meridial handed him between the folds of heavy paper. He addressed the envelope and slipped the letter inside, sealing it carefully.
"I'll take care of the rest." The Doctor put Jack's letter, and the one he had composed to himself, in a diary, and then put the diary on a shelf filled with many similar volumes. "Well, I suppose it's just a matter of getting everyone home. Shall we?"
They retraced their steps from the Doctor's private study to the control room. The Doctor opened the exterior door from the central console. "Meridial, it's been quite an adventure. I hope we meet again someday. Under less complicated circumstances, of course."
Meridial sketched the air in front of him as he bowed. "My forest will always be your sanctuary." He bowed a second time towards Jack. "And yours as well. You will always have solace here."
"Thank you," Jack replied just as solemnly. He felt deeply touched, and rather ashamed of his initial suspicion about the steward of Epping Forest. He raised his hand in farewell as Meridial was surrounded by a shimmering green mist. He faded gradually from sight as dawn broke, heralding a new day.
"Right, that just leaves you." The Doctor pressed a fingertip against Jack's forehead, silencing him before he could speak. All control of his faculties escaped him. The Doctor's voice became Jack's sole focus. Everything else seemed immaterial.
When he came to himself, Jack was sitting at his desk. The CCTV footage he had been reviewing had ended, but he didn't recall finding anything of note. It was a short clip, so he started it up again and watched until the segment ended. If someone had disappeared mysteriously from the alleyway, it hadn't been caught on video. PC Andy was going to have to come up with something more concrete before they invested any more time into his “Spooky Doo”.
Yawning, Jack saw the note stuck under his coffee mug and frowned at it. He started to unfold the paper, but then he had a second thought. Instead, he pulled a silver lighter, a memento from a long ago love affair, out of his desk drawer, set the paper aflame, and then tossed it into the empty bin.
Jack rose from his desk. Ianto was at home, and that seemed like a good place to be. The Rift was meant to be quiet for the rest of the week. Maybe, instead of chasing shadows and catching up on paperwork, they could take a few days off and get away from the city. It was odd. Normally he prefered high-end hotels to the great outdoors, but the scent of green grass and caress of the wind against his face suddenly seemed very appealing.
end
xpost: https://wintercompanion.dreamwidth.org/258634.html
Author: beesandbrews
Prompt: 8 - the green fairy, fades, a leaf, while hiking a trail
Rating: All Ages
Characters: Jack Harkness, the 4th Doctor, cameo by Ianto Jones
Spoilers/warnings: none
Beta: m_findlow Many thanks!
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Epping Forest is in danger. A mysterious summons from himself teams Jack and the 4th Doctor. Only working together can they keep a foe from Jack's past from destroying Earth's future. Set during Torchwood Series 2. Passing references to Small Worlds, but no actual spoilers.
**
"Jack?"
Jack looked up from his computer screen. CCTV footage of an alley off Prince's Street scrolled by at twice times speed. He blinked, clearing after-images from his eyes, and paused the feedback.
"Saved from a case of terminal boredom by the man bearing caffeine!" Jack grinned and waved Ianto in, observing the stack of mail on the tray next to his mug. One of the letters was not like the others. "What have you got there?"
Ianto set the mug and an old-fashioned looking envelope on the desk in front of Jack, and then deposited the rest of the post in the already overflowing In basket. He shrugged as he tucked the silver serving tray underneath his arm. "You tell me." He pointed at the letter where it was marked Personal and Confidential in block letters. "The writing, although an effort has been made to disguise it, is in your hand." Raising an eyebrow, Ianto speculated, "Something too sensitive even for the time locked vault?"
Jack picked up the letter, frowning as he studied it. Ianto was right, that was his writing, even if it looked as if it had been done left-handed. He shook his head, perplexed, and reached for his letter opener. "You better shut the door on your way out."
"I'm leaving for home now, but if you need anything - " Ianto left the rest of the sentence hanging, and Jack filled in the unspoken remainder. If he needed backup, assistance, or even a shoulder to cry on, he would have it.
"Thanks." Jack looked away from the mysterious letter long enough to meet Ianto's eyes to reinforce that the unspoken message was understood and appreciated.
The door shut with a soft click. Jack hesitated over the letter, examining it minutely for anything that might be construed as a clue.
His badly disguised writing meant that it was important. That it hadn't come from the time-locked vault meant it wasn't something he had stored and then retconned away the memory of having done so. "Could future-me have written this?" Jack mused as he sliced open the envelope.
His frown deepened as he extracted the contents. There was a letter. The paper was heavy, and was of the same vintage as the envelope. A smudge of blue ink, caused by haphazard blotting, suggested the use of a fountain pen.
"This is strange," Jack muttered as he removed the other items that had been tucked in with the letter. He cleared away some neglected paperwork and laid them out next to one another on the desk. "A letter, a map of Epping Forest with an X on it, and a leaf?" Granted it was an especially nice leaf, mottled in shades of burnt umber and gold, and a particularly chocolatey sort of brown that one didn't normally see in the local trees, but that still didn't explain why he had posted it to himself.
The message was brief. The day's date, the time he should be at the map coordinates, and three cryptic instructions:
Come alone.
Bring the leaf.
Do I have to even mention, tell no one?
Jack frowned at the last bit. It sounded ominously like he was being lured into a trap. Absently, he reached for his coffee and took a swig of the cooling brew, considering whether he should trust himself or put some sort of contingency plan into place.
Caution won out. He scrawled a brief note to Ianto, folded it neatly into thirds, and left it under his mug. At least this time he wasn't going to leave without an explanation.
* * * * *
The Doctor looped an extra length of scarf around his neck, adjusted his hat over a riot of unruly curls, and then stepped lightly out of the TARDIS. Earlier he had posted the letter to Captain Jack Harkness. Although he wasn't entirely sure who Captain Jack Harkness was.
That was the trouble with time travel. It wasn't the danger of stepping on a butterfly and accidentally causing the collapse of a civilisation. The Universe, magnificent creation that it was, had safeties in place that not even the Time Lords completely understood to prevent that from happening. No, the trouble with time travel was keeping track of where one was in relation to other time travellers. It could turn a quick catch-up into an absolute mare's nest when ones' timelines were out of sync. "Somebody's today is someone else's yesterday," the Doctor muttered to himself as he regarded his pocket watch. He, at least, was right on time.
The Doctor returned the watch to his pocket and regarded the ancient woods surrounding him. There were the rustling noises and the soft calls of night birds, and the sensation that one was being observed by small animals going about their business. In other words, the sort of things one expected to hear and feel at night in the forest. But there was something else. Something that made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck beneath his scarf. The sure and certain knowledge that he was being watched by something other than a deer or squirrel.
"Hello?" The Doctor peered out into the dense thicket of trees. He was glad that he was, for the moment, without a travelling companion. There was something uncanny about this place, and it was setting his teeth on edge.
"Hello, yourself." A torchlight cut a bright swath through the inky blackness. The crunching sound of leaves being crushed underfoot on the trail in front of him became audible, and a large shadowy figure began to resolve into the shape of a man.
"Is that you, Captain Harkness?" The Doctor strode forward with his hand extended, taking measure of the new arrival. He was tall, appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and wore a RAF greatcoat over dark trousers and a pale shirt. He was also a complete stranger, although the Doctor felt a wave of deja vu wash over him as they clasped hands. "Have we met before?"
Harkness's hand tensed against that of the Doctor's. "No. Never."
The Doctor shrugged to himself as they stepped back and regarded one another. It was possible that Jack Harkness had one of those ubiquitous faces, but it was also extremely likely that he wasn't telling the truth. He filed the moment away to contemplate at a more convenient time, and changed the subject by holding out the envelope he had found on the TARDIS console a few hours earlier. "So, what do you know about this?"
* * * * *
The man in the ridiculously long scarf and broad-brimmed hat had yet to introduce himself, but Jack knew without being told he was face to face with the Doctor. After a brief encounter with one of the Doctor's other selves in 1971, Jack had realised that UNIT knew far more about the Doctor than Torchwood did. He had then made it a personal mission to sleep his way into the UNIT archives. By the time he found the files he wanted, he had seduced
so many secretaries and file clerks that he was still involuntarily aroused by the scents of mimeograph ink and correction fluid when he reviewed old case notes.
The photographs of the man before him didn't do him justice. His eyes had a probing intensity that film couldn't capture. There was a restless energy about him that marked him as the Doctor, even though he looked nothing like the versions Jack had known and travelled with.
"Oh!" the Doctor said abruptly, before Jack had a chance to answer. "I do apologise. I'm the Doctor. Now, about this letter?"
Jack shrugged. "I suspect you know as much as I do." He reached into his pocket and pulled out an identical envelope. He held it out close enough for the Doctor to examine. "Other than it appears I wrote this to myself, I'm in the dark."
The Doctor extracted the contents of his envelope. From where Jack was standing the paper looked to have been taken from the same supply as the one he had received. "So, why are we here?"
The Doctor pushed the brim of his hat higher up on his head and did a slow one-eighty degree circle, regarding the trees around them. "My envelope contained a leaf." He regarded Jack with bright eyes. "But the leaf doesn't look like it came from any of these trees." He pointed above their heads as he named species. "Pedunculate oak. European beech. Hornbeam. Holly. None of them have a leaf like mine."
Without being asked, Jack extracted the leaf from his envelope and handed it over for the Doctor to examine. "Thank you," he replied absently. He tucked his letter away in a voluminous pocket and then plucked the leaf from Jack's fingers. He held the leaves, one in each hand. From Jack's point of view they were identical. Even in the pale moonlight, they seemed richly coloured, more so than the leaves either hanging on the trees or on the ground at their feet. They were shaped differently - larger and more lobed or divided, or whatever it was tree scientists used to describe the shape of a leaf.
When the Doctor brought them closer together, both leaves began to glow. "Interesting," he murmured.
Jack wanted to advise caution. He knew they had probably summoned themselves to this place, but he didn't know why, and he didn't like not knowing. He got as far as, "Doctor - " when the Doctor pressed the two leaves against one another and everything went at first a vivid green, and then very, very, black.
* * * * *
When Jack opened his eyes again things were no longer black. They were instead very, very, green. Green grass. Green plants. There was even a faint green glow coming from the sky above them, which didn't seem at all right. If the sky was green then that meant they were no longer on Earth. "Doctor?"
The Doctor groaned in reply. Jack turned his head - he didn't feel capable of doing more - and followed the sound to the source. The Doctor was a few feet away, close enough that, with an effort, Jack was able to stretch out his fingers and lay them against the Doctor's wrist. The Timelord's pulse throbbed with reassuring regularity, and Jack took a small measure of comfort from knowing the Doctor could be laid low by unusual means of transportation. For there could be little doubt they had been transported. "But where?" he managed to mutter.
He shut his eyes against the phosphorescent glow and concentrated on regulating his breathing. After a few slow inhalations and exhalations the disorientated feeling started to fade away and strength returned to his limbs. Jack sat up. He waited a few moments, and when he was sure he was stable, he carefully opened his eyes.
Although everything was still in shades of green, the weird glow had faded. Jack glanced over at the Doctor and found he was clambering to his feet. When he noticed Jack was conscious and alert, he held out his hand to help him off the ground.
"Was that some kind of transmat device?" Jack looked around for the leaves that had transported them, but they were nowhere to be seen.
"That's as good a theory as any." The Doctor pivoted sharply and regarded Jack with an expression of intense curiosity. "How do you know about transmat devices? They haven't been invented yet in your century."
Jack realised he had blundered. He had no history with this Doctor. All of that was yet to come. "It's something the lab boys speculate about. Plus, I read a lot of science fiction. Big fan." Realising he was in danger of laying it on too thick, he hastily changed the subject. "So, where are we?"
Since regaining his feet, the Doctor had been rubbing his forehead as if it bothered him. He looked around the clearing and swayed dangerously. Jack stepped a little closer, ready to catch the Time Lord if he passed out again.
The Doctor shook his head. "I'm all right. But this place." He rubbed his forehead and then looked around again. "It's not right."
Not right went without saying. Wherever they had ended up was downright primordial, and instincts Jack didn't even know he possessed were warning him to be wary of any change in the ambient sounds or light levels because they would be harbingers of danger.
The Doctor operated on a different level. He could sense things that Jack couldn't. It wasn't deadly wildlife or other natural perils worrying him. Something else was setting off his internal alarm bells. "What do you mean, Doctor?"
"This place - " The Doctor made an effort to stand straighter. He shut his eyes briefly, as though concentrating on something only he could perceive. "It's out of phase."
Out of phase with what? Jack wondered. He didn't get a chance to voice the question. The ground beneath them rocked, sending them off their feet, and once again, everything went very black.
* * * * *
When the Doctor next regained consciousness, he was seated on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree. Jack was next to him, still out cold. Someone had unwrapped his scarf from around his neck and rearranged it to pillow their heads, protecting them from the tree's rather rough and scaly bark. They had also dressed a number of minor injuries caused by flying debris in the wake of what could have only have been an explosion.
The Doctor nudged Jack, and then shook his shoulder gently.
"Come on, Ianto, five more minutes," Jack muttered. He tried to bury his face against the Doctor's shoulder.
The Doctor tried again, putting more enthusiasm into his effort. He was still feeling a bit peaky himself. "Wakey, wakey, Captain. There's a mystery to solve."
"Doctor?" Jack raised his head. He blinked a few times and then groaned as he passed his hand over his face, gingerly patting a bruise that covered his right temple. "What happened?" He flexed his left hand, testing the mobility in his wrist and fingers. "One minute we were talking and the next … Boom!"
"That was a time bomb."
The Doctor wasn't surprised to find a third person in their midst. After the explosion, someone had tried to make them comfortable, propping them against the tree and tending to their cuts and scrapes.
"A time bomb?" Jack sounded irritable. He was still somewhat out of it and hadn't yet realised they were no longer alone. "Who would bother to use a delay to blow up a forest?" Belatedly, he realised that they were no longer alone and looked up sharply, wincing in pain as he did so. "Who the hell are you?"
"Manners, Captain," the Doctor chided. "This is our host. Although my companion does have a point. Introductions do seem to be in order. I'm the Doctor. The irritable young fellow on the floor is Captain Jack Harkness. And you are?"
Jack pulled his revolver from its holster and pointed it at the latest arrival to their company. "He's a fairy, Doctor. Step away from him. And you, whoever you are, you can tell us why the hell you've brought us here."
"I am of the Fairy Folk, but I am no harm to you, Jack Harkness. I am Meridial, Steward of Epping Forest," the being replied. He bowed deeply from the waist. When he straightened he added, "I seek your help."
"Captain Harkness, please lower your weapon. You're being very rude." The Doctor smiled warmly as he combed his memory. He had been to many of Earth's forests during his adventures, but had never come across anyone like Meridial before. He was certain he had never met any of his people, and he wondered why they had left his companion with such a negative impression. "I presume you're the the person who arranged our transportation to … " He looked up at the tall, stately being who was standing before them. "I'm sorry, where are we, exactly?"
Meridial settled his iridescent wings more comfortably against his shoulders and then offered a slim, but strong, pale green hand to assist the Doctor to his feet. He then knelt at Jack's side and offered him a drink from a shining silver flask. "Here. This will help clear your head."
Jack glanced sharply up at the Doctor. He, in turn, offered a nod of encouragement. He had no sense that the newcomer bore them any ill will. Grudgingly, Jack drank and then nodded his thanks. Their benefactor then capped his flask and put it away. "We are," he explained, "where you were, but far away and one step removed."
"Come again?" Jack sounded perplexed, which was a fair reaction. The Doctor wasn't entirely sure what to make of the reply either. "I'm not sure I heard that quite right."
A resigned expression passed quickly over Meridial's sharply defined features. "This is, as you would define it, the past. In order to protect the present and the future, I have taken this part of the forest and moved it out of the flow of normal time." He paused for a moment, obviously searching for a less complicated explanation. "I have moved it into ..." He paused again and then brightened. "Yes. That is the word. An eddy. This is an eddy in time."
"Ah, that explains it." The Doctor said, feeling a sense of relief. His disorientation was caused by the shift out of the normal time stream.
"Explains what?" Jack didn't seem any more enlightened. "Doctor, what's going on?"
"Certain places, Jack, like certain people, are critical. Things must happen in the right place, at the right time. If they don't then - "
"Everything changes?" Jack sounded as if he was uncertain he was following the right train of thought.
"Exactly." The Doctor nodded. He was pleased his companion was becoming less hostile and more engaged in their current situation. "Epping Forest has been featured in many prominent historical events. It was the playground of kings and queens and the hunting ground of highway men like Dick Turpin. Writers as diverse as Dorothy Sayers and Charles Dickens were inspired by it. Without Epping Forest, England would be a far different place."
"Which is why it has been my duty, and my honour, to protect it." Meridial touched his templed fingers to his chest then let his arms fall, palms open, to his sides, in what was obviously meant to be a reverent gesture. "This latest attack has been more deadly than those of avaricious humans bent on personal enrichment. Someone is attempting to alter the course of history by destroying this forest before it becomes a focal point."
"With all of your kind's powers- " There was still a heavy current of suspicion in Jack's voice. "- just what is it that we can do that you can't, Meridial?"
The Doctor supposed that was a fair question. He couldn't ever recall someone who had the ability to shift a physical location around in time asking for his help before.
"You can move through both time and space." Meridial replied, as if their role should have been obvious. "While I can influence time, I am tied to this physical space. I cannot leave my forest."
"So, we, what?" Jack raked his glance over the surrounding woodland. "Find the time bomb and defuse it?"
The Doctor stared at the stark white glow where the blast from the time bomb had erased a section of forest. "Better we keep any bombs from being planted in the first place." He tore his gaze away and glanced around, looking for the TARDIS, but he could neither see nor sense her. Whatever Meridial had done to protect the forest was interfering with his connection to the ship. "I say, Meridial, you haven't seen a blue police box around, have you? I think we're going to need it if we've any chance of making this work."
Meridial nodded and with a sweeping gesture, pointed out a path through the trees.
* * * * *
Jack managed to do a slow one-eighty, taking in the changes to the interior of the TARDIS, before she began to tremble. It seemed the Doctor wasn't the only one who underwent the periodic makeover. This TARDIS's control room was small and cosy, relatively speaking. The central console, elevated on a low platform, was more compact than the one he knew so well. In some ways, it resembled an old fashioned writing desk. Though why the Doctor would keep his shaving mirror on a writing desk was something only he could explain.
Everything around him, even the majority of the roundels in the bulkheads, was made of polished wood. Others made of stained glass added splashes of bright colour to the otherwise sedate décor. The brass railing reminded him of the sort of fitting found in a gentlemen's club lounge or smoking room. He wondered what other changes the TARDIS had undergone.
"There, there. Oh, do calm down, old thing." The Doctor was at the controls, flipping switches and frowning at the results.
"Shh," Jack whispered. "It's okay. Or at least it will be." He heard Meridial gently clear his throat to get their attention, and dragged his thoughts away from the ship's.
"Whatever you've done, Meridial, you've upset the old girl and scrambled all my readouts." The Doctor looked away from the display as the TARDIS settled. "Suppose you tell us more about these mad bombers. When did they start sniffing around your forest?"
"It might be easier if I showed you." Meridial raised his arms and waved his hands in an intricate pattern. Jack felt his head go funny, but before he could grab for the nearest surface to steady himself, it abruptly cleared. He swallowed hard against a residual feeling of nausea and saw the Doctor's frown had deepened even further.
"You've moved us." He turned dials and then looked sharply up at Meridial. "I can't get a fix. When are we?"
"Time as I reckon it, does not quite align with your calendar." Meridial waved his long and elegant fingers again, and this time a wood panel rolled away to reveal a exterior viewscreen. Outside, instead of the forest, there was a blasted wasteland. "This is what would have been, had I not stopped the time bomb." Once more, Meridial drew patterns in the air and everything went funny again. "This is how it should be."
Jack blinked hard against an intense feeling of being dislocated from his internal gyroscope and looked outside. The terrible vision of ruin and decay had been replaced by one of a group of children standing under an ancient tree. A woman in a deep green uniform was lecturing while the children listened with open-mouthed fascination.
"Among those children is the future Prime Minister, who stands fast during an alien invasion, and subsequently saves the planet."
"So, you're saying that the time bomb is an elaborate attempt to change that future?" The Doctor didn't sound as if he doubted Meridial, but he didn't sound wholly convinced either.
Jack tried to work through the scheme's logic. Sure, as a Time Agent he had gone up against people who had tried to change history by assassinating future leaders while they were still in their nappies, but never in his recollection had they ever tried to alter history by changing a place.
"I don't get it." Jack pointed at the group of children who were now being introduced to a fawn. "Are you saying that something happens to one of those kids, that makes such an impression, that decades later it changes how this future Prime Minister faces a crisis? No offence, but that seems kind of far fetched, if you ask me."
The Doctor left the centre console. He went to stand next to the viewscreen, peering myopically at the lecture in progress. "Consider a child, who during a school outing, has impressed upon it the duty of care we should all hold towards one another. That takes to heart how an individual can stand up and make a difference, even in the face of adversity." He pivoted sharply away from the screen to face Meridial and Jack. "Such a child could grow up to be a great leader."
"A leader who will not exist if our adversary's plan is successful." Meridial waved his hands again, causing another wave of nausea to roll over Jack and the Doctor. The forest displayed on the viewscreen suggested they had returned to their original position in the time eddy.
"Okay, just for the minute, say that I believe this screwy plan." Jack turned to face Meridial, noticing absently that for all his powers, he wasn't omnipotent. The demonstration of what could be had caused his face to grey and his posture to sag. "How do we stop them? And who are they anyway? You still haven't told us who we're supposed to be up against."
"He has a point." The Doctor crossed to Meridial's side and escorted him to a high-backed chair.
"I don't know what they call themselves." Meridial paused long enough to take a restorative nip from his silver flask. "I only know they intend to enslave the planet and strip it of its people and resources."
He beckoned the Doctor closer. The Doctor knelt at Meridial's side. Meridial waved his fingers in front of the Doctor's face.
The Doctor's eyes went wide with surprise and dismay. "No!" he gasped, visibly shaken.
"Doctor?" Jack rushed forward to catch the Time Lord before he could collapse, and to defend him, if necessary.
They stood that way for a long moment, Jack holding the Doctor erect and supporting his weight, before the Doctor shook him off.
"I'm fine. I'm fine," he insisted. "It was just a bit of a shock. We're up against some very nasty customers. Have you ever heard of the Feshdrel?"
Before Jack could reply, The Doctor shook his head and answered for him.
"No, of course you haven't. They won't start becoming a nuisance for ages. They were the worst sort of people. They ruined their own planet through greed and poor resource management, and then promptly started a campaign of conquest that left a trail of other blighted planets in its wake."
His expression turned inward and then he frowned. "I don't recall them having the ability to time travel. Or them getting this far out of their own corner of space."
Jack felt sick. He knew the Feshdrel. Every Time Agent knew the Feshdrel.
They were the ones who changed everything.
Jack swayed on his feet. This time it had nothing to do with Meridial's time manipulation. Adrenaline-fuelled anger, and an equal measure of guilt, rolled through his system in a hot wave. He drew a shaking breath and passed a hand over his face as he attempted to get a hold of himself.
"Jack?"
Jack looked over at the Doctor. "I think we need to talk."
* * * * *
Meridial was resting, recovering from his efforts to bring them up to speed. The Doctor escorted Jack out of the console room and into an adjoining corridor. He paused for a moment, and then led Jack to another room a few doors away. "We can be comfortable in here," he said, as the lights came up to reveal a well-appointed sitting room.
The Doctor took a burgundy velvet Queen Anne-style chair for himself and indicated that Jack should sit on a matching sofa. "So now, before we get any deeper into this thing, you should tell me who you really are, Captain Jack Harkness. I can understand why Meridial sought me out to help him with the Feshdrel, but why has he brought you into all of this?"
Jack blew out a breath. Up until the revelation about the Feshdrel he had been asking himself the same question. Now he had a pretty fair idea. Not that it was going to be easy to come clean about it. But second chances, when they did present themselves, rarely involved the easy road. "I don't know, exactly, although I can guess. But what I can't figure is how Meridial would know."
"You've met others of his kind before," the Doctor said. "And I take it from your reaction to Meridial that it wasn't the most pleasant of encounters."
It was another in a long line of things Jack wished he could forget. He nodded. "fairies are ancient beings. They are of the Earth. Elemental entities, for lack of a better way of putting it. They're powerful and they're dangerous." He felt perplexed by their current situation. "But the ones I encountered could wipe the floor with the Feshdrel with one hand tied behind their pint-sized backs. They wouldn't need our help."
The Doctor rubbed his chin in a thoughtful manner. "So, it's possible that while Meridial may be a fairy, he is different from the sort you know?"
That was something Jack hadn't considered. Maybe there was more than one kind of fairy out there. Maybe that's why human folklore was filled with happy stories about good fairies, as well as cautionary tales about the wicked kind. It was food for thought to chew over if they survived the current crisis.
"So," the Doctor shifted in his chair, settling himself more comfortably, "suppose we set the matter of Meridial's relations aside for the moment and return to the topic of you."
Damn. Jack had hoped they could skip this bit. Regrettably, even a good fairy couldn't save him from at least a partial confession. He considered his next words carefully. He and the Doctor were at different places in their personal timelines. He had to be judicious with the facts. "That is a complicated subject and given we've got this Epping Forest crisis on our hands, one we really don't have time to get into."
"And the fact your quantum signature bears a striking resemblance to that of my TARDIS, is that also a complicated subject?" The Doctor leant forward in his chair as though he couldn't wait to hear the explanation.
Would it have been too much for that question to go unasked? Jack wondered. But given the TARDIS had a violent reaction when they had first come aboard, it was inevitable that the Doctor had scanned everything to try and work out why.
"The TARDIS and I have history," Jack admitted. "And some day, so will you and I. Which makes this current situation awkward."
The Doctor's expression became puzzled. "Oh? How so?"
"When we meet, properly, I mean," Jack explained, "we're strangers. I don't know you, and I'm certain you didn't know me."
"Oh. I see." The Doctor sat back in his chair. He looked up and regarded the inlaid ceiling. "I take your point." He shrugged. "Well, for the moment at least, we'll have to worry about that later. Let's get back to the Feshdrel. What can you tell me about them and this time bomb?"
Jack shifted, trying to make himself comfortable against the horsehair cushions. Talking about events that hadn't happened yet, even to a Time Lord, didn't come easily. He blew out a breath and hoped the Doctor would draw the right conclusions from the sketchy accounting of one of the most dangerous moments in human history. "It's like this. There was a research station. They worked on cutting edge - No, bleeding edge, quantum physics as it related to time travel. Stuff so revolutionary that not even the researchers who were working on it had a good grasp of what they were playing around with."
"Go on."
The Doctor sounded as if he didn't like where the story was going, which was fair enough. Jack wasn't keen either, and he had lived through it.
"As you said earlier, the Feshdrel were the worst kind of marauding conquerors, and they had already started dabbling with using time as a weapon. Time Agents were on the front line during that campaign, keeping the timelines pure when the Feshdrel tried to make changes."
"You?" the Doctor said quietly.
Jack nodded. "I was there. Then the Feshdrel got wind of what was going on in that lab. The powers that be, the directors of the Time Agency and the like, knew what would happen if that research got into the wrong hands. The war would be over before it had even started." Jack looked up and almost, but not quite, met the Doctor's eyes. "We did what we had to do, but there was a persistent rumour that a Feshdrel ship escaped. No one could ever confirm it, but I guess now we know it was true."
"This research they were working on," the Doctor asked. "Do you have any idea what it was about?"
Jack racked his brain, but all he could come up with were rumours. Most of them involved worst case scenarios that had never come to pass. "There was one thing that's a possibility." The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. "One of the biggest goals was finding a way to transport not just people, but resources, unimpeded, back and forth through time. Scientists speculated that some day they could create stable portals - gateways between the past and the present you could move through as easily as going from one room to another. Scuttlebutt around the office suggested some spectacular failures were hushed up. But it was a gold ring project, so the scientists kept trying."
The Doctor's expression became grave. "Past meets future in an unstable flux matrix. It's a wonder they didn't experiment themselves into a quantum singularity." He sounded impressed, but not in a good way. "You're right about one thing, in the wrong hands that could make for a very dangerous weapon."
Temporal mechanics weren't really Jack's strong suit. He didn't mind using time travel, as long as he didn't have to calculate the equations to make it happen. He had sat through the courses during training. Occasionally the examples of just how wrong things could go if a decimal shifted out of place while vector coordinates were being input into the NavDrive still gave him nightmares. "So, what can we do about it?"
The Doctor rose from his chair and looked at Jack as if the solution was obvious. "What else? We return to the original scene of the crime."
* * * * *
There were aspects of time travel that gave the Doctor a headache if he thought too closely about them. That Jack Harkness had already participated in the battle against the Feshdrel at the research centre, was causing a distinct throbbing behind his eyes.
They couldn't prevent the battle from happening, because it already had. Nor could they prevent the Feshdrel from getting off the station, because that had already happened as well. But they had to find a way to prevent the Feshdrel from using whatever technology they had managed to abscond with before they overwhelmed Meridial's defences.
"Of course!" The Doctor shouted. "Meridial! He's linked to the forest!"
"Doctor?"
Meridial had addressed him in a querying tone and with an expression of gentle concern, so the Doctor tried to slow his thoughts enough to explain them in layman's terms. An idea. A glimmering fragment of an idea had begun to blossom. "Meridial. I know you can't leave your forest, but can the forest leave Earth?"
There was no reason why his plan couldn't work. Meridial had already removed ancient Epping Forest out of the time stream. It was in a quantum state, just as the TARDIS was. It was just a matter of matching the flux modulation.
"Doctor, what are you thinking?" Jack's expression was dubious, but that was only because he still hadn't caught up.
It was all coming together in his mind. There was a way to beat the Feshdrel at their own game. "Just watch and see." He typed in a set of calculations and then took a reading. He made several more adjustments, then did a new set of calculations and compared the results. Just to be safe, he ran the numbers again before feeding the resulting coordinates into the navigation drive. "You might want to take a seat for the next bit. The ride is going to be a bit bumpy."
The TARDIS juddered, forcing the Doctor and his guests to hang on for dear life as she tore across time and space.
* * * * *
It was odd seeing the operation unfold from a different perspective. Jack watched the Feshdrel raiders enter orbit around the research base. Time Agents were already at the station, waiting and ready to spring their surprise attack. Jack remembered how tense they had been. The intelligence that had tipped them off to the raid had come at a high cost. They had one chance. Their superiors had impressed upon them that this wasn't the day to screw up.
He swallowed hard against a rising gorge as the assault on the station began. Friends had died that day. Good friends cut down without mercy. He heard the sound of their death screams. He smelled acrid smoke. Though the TARDIS was stable beneath his feet, he trembled as if holding himself steady against the vibration of concussion blasts. It was difficult, but Jack shut his mind against the past and made himself watch the unfolding battle.
Somewhere out there was a ship.
The one that had slipped the Time Agents' net.
Their quarry.
On either side of him the Doctor and Meridial were watching just as intently. Meridial looked distressed, greyish and pale. Jack figured it had as much to do with being removed from Earth, as being witness to the battle. He was as suited to space travel as a fish was to breathing air.
"Here we go." The Doctor pointed as a ship broke free from the station's gravity well and accelerated away sharply. "Now!" He mashed a button down and the TARDIS wailed her protest. "Steady, girl." The Doctor made another adjustment. "Just hold on."
The whine of the TARDIS's engine's filled the control room. Meridial pressed his hands over his ears as he fell to the deck. Jack did the same, but he managed to stay on his feet. The Doctor winced, but continued to work feverishly at the central console.
The Feshdrel ship disappeared from view.
The controls on the console may have looked different, but everything still worked as he remembered, more or less. Jack scanned the space around them, but there was no sign of the Feshdrel marauders. "Where'd it go?"
"Hold your questions," The Doctor shouted. "This next bit is rather tricky."
Jack couldn't understand what the Doctor was doing. Whatever it was, the TARDIS wasn't very keen either. Levers held fast as if they were refusing to be pulled, and when the Doctor pressed buttons, sparks flew from the control board.
"I promise, it will be all right." The Doctor pressed down hard on a button and then jumped back from the console. The TARDIS engines screamed to life again.
Jack had one brief glimpse of what appeared to be Epping Forest materialising in front of them before they were thrown off their feet and the TARDIS dematerialised.
* * * * *
Jack offered a hand to help Meridial onto his feet. "What the hell just happened?" He pushed a few buttons of his own and looked out the viewscreen. It was night, although just barely. There were trees. A wood. It looked like 21st century Epping Forest. The chronometer on his wrist strap agreed with his estimation.
The Doctor was beaming. He patted the console affectionately, as if he was praising the TARDIS for a job well done. "Well, Meridial, is the time bomb all sorted?"
"It is no more." Meridial seemed just as baffled as Jack felt. "It never was. I don't understand."
The Doctor waved a hand dismissively in the air. "Oh, it's simple enough, if you think about it. Displaced Epping Forest was a singularity. The time bomb was also a singularity. When two singularities collide - "
"They cancel each other out." Jack stared at the Doctor, as he processed what had just occurred. "Usually violently. So, you just did what the Feshdrel was trying to do? Then how is it that Epping Forest still exists?"
"Because there is a right way to go about that sort of thing, and a wrong way." The Doctor shrugged. "I did it the right way."
"By using the time eddy as a containment field?" Jack guessed.
"Precisely. I just expanded upon what Meridial had already done," the Doctor explained. "And then I added a few refinements of my own."
"You dragged a piece of the past into the future." Jack already felt bruised and battered from the TARDIS' protests over her ill-use. He wasn't sure he really wanted to add a headache from trying to comprehend a complicated explanation of how the Doctor had managed to break most of the laws of time travel.
"We're in a quantum state, Jack," the Doctor explained. "Just as there is no small or large, there is no past, present, or future aboard the TARDIS. Meridial had already contained the time bomb within a single moment in Epping Forest's past. I merely moved that moment into the future."
"To a point in space already occupied by a Feshdrel ship carrying a stolen prototype time gate?"
The Doctor nodded. "Which is why things got a bit bumpy. They had already started their jump into hyperspace."
Jack blew out his breath in a long, slow exhalation. No wonder the TARDIS had fought the Doctor every step of the way. He slumped against the bulkhead and thought about what a long, strange night it had been. He wanted to go home, and to sleep, but there were still a few more loose ends that needed tying up. "Hey, Doctor, where do you keep your stationery?"
* * * * *
Jack wrote the note to himself and tucked the leaf Meridial handed him between the folds of heavy paper. He addressed the envelope and slipped the letter inside, sealing it carefully.
"I'll take care of the rest." The Doctor put Jack's letter, and the one he had composed to himself, in a diary, and then put the diary on a shelf filled with many similar volumes. "Well, I suppose it's just a matter of getting everyone home. Shall we?"
They retraced their steps from the Doctor's private study to the control room. The Doctor opened the exterior door from the central console. "Meridial, it's been quite an adventure. I hope we meet again someday. Under less complicated circumstances, of course."
Meridial sketched the air in front of him as he bowed. "My forest will always be your sanctuary." He bowed a second time towards Jack. "And yours as well. You will always have solace here."
"Thank you," Jack replied just as solemnly. He felt deeply touched, and rather ashamed of his initial suspicion about the steward of Epping Forest. He raised his hand in farewell as Meridial was surrounded by a shimmering green mist. He faded gradually from sight as dawn broke, heralding a new day.
"Right, that just leaves you." The Doctor pressed a fingertip against Jack's forehead, silencing him before he could speak. All control of his faculties escaped him. The Doctor's voice became Jack's sole focus. Everything else seemed immaterial.
When he came to himself, Jack was sitting at his desk. The CCTV footage he had been reviewing had ended, but he didn't recall finding anything of note. It was a short clip, so he started it up again and watched until the segment ended. If someone had disappeared mysteriously from the alleyway, it hadn't been caught on video. PC Andy was going to have to come up with something more concrete before they invested any more time into his “Spooky Doo”.
Yawning, Jack saw the note stuck under his coffee mug and frowned at it. He started to unfold the paper, but then he had a second thought. Instead, he pulled a silver lighter, a memento from a long ago love affair, out of his desk drawer, set the paper aflame, and then tossed it into the empty bin.
Jack rose from his desk. Ianto was at home, and that seemed like a good place to be. The Rift was meant to be quiet for the rest of the week. Maybe, instead of chasing shadows and catching up on paperwork, they could take a few days off and get away from the city. It was odd. Normally he prefered high-end hotels to the great outdoors, but the scent of green grass and caress of the wind against his face suddenly seemed very appealing.
end
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