Fic: Smaller on the Outside, Bigger on the Inside
Title: Small on the Outside, Bigger on the Inside
Characters: Jack Harkness, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones, Toshito Sato, Gwen Cooper, Trunks Briefs
Fandoms Crossed: Torchwood/Doctor Who/Dragonball Z
Rating: Teen
Note: Just an idea I've been tossing around in my head.
Summary: The Time War affected many worlds including alternate and parallel ones. A time traveler in a primitive time machine gets trapped in vortex for ages before being squished through the rift into an entirely different parallel Earth.
**
The needle snapped before it pierced the skin and with another curse, Owen dropped the destroyed needle in his waste basket and glared at the person lying on his table.
“Bloody piece of work you are, mate.”
An alien ship crashed into Cardiff Bay after a rift spike and Torchwood barely got there in time before the media got a hold of the story. The water explosion was massive when the ship crashed, it had hit the water with full speed when the rift opened to spit it out. It seemed like a routine human rescue job when Owen fished the still-living pilot from the water. He had originally guessed the rift had brought someone from the future because of his technology. But Owen had changed his assessment of the man being a human once he tried to lift him and did his x-rays. The skeletal bone density was at least two-times denser than the average homo-sapien and leaned closer to being Neanderthal.
The alien looked human enough that you could pass him on the street corner and think he was just some young college jock with shockingly, perfectly, dyed purple hair that could only be a desperate cry for attention. If you didn't try to lift him, he looked deceptively light with lean muscles and small frame, a runner jock body. When Torchwood dragged him from the wreckage of his destroyed ship (a poorly constructed design with it's glass dome and terrible landing gear), the alien had been bleeding profusely from his head, had a huge gash in his left leg with jagged glass sticking out, and had half of his right rib cage collapsed. Not to mention he was half-drowned and extremely malnourished and dehydrated. Their mysterious alien had not woken up yet but Owen estimated it would probably take anywhere from a few hours to days for the traveler to wake up.
The scent of coffee lured Owen out of the depths of the autopsy bay to find Ianto had taken a break to make coffee for everyone before resuming his work. Tosh and Ianto were taking pictures and cataloging all the pieces of the ship that Torchwood had found. Ianto had a mug in his hand as he wrote down whatever interesting note or comment Tosh said about each piece.
“-and must have some kind of contact with the human race before because there is English on the side of his ship.” Tosh brushed her hand over the worn out word on the metal base of the ship. “'Hope!!' for what?”
“Better landings?” Ianto suggested.
Owen picked up his coffee mug from his desk and letting the cup warm up his cold hands and sighed. He would give anything to be able to drink it right now but it would just slosh in his stomach for ages before he would have to puke it up. He glanced up to see Jack in his office. Gwen had already gone home for the night and wouldn't return until morning.
At least someone was getting sleep.
Ianto and Tosh continued to work for a while and Owen refilled his mug every few hours to keep the fresh scent of coffee under his nose. His patient hadn't moved and he was itching for something to happen soon.
Jack stepped out of his office. He came down, grabbed his own coffee, and stood next to him for a few moments.
“How is our visitor?”
Owen snorted and put down his cup. It was getting cold again anyway.“Stable for now. No progress unless breaking half a dozen needles counts.”
“You still can't get through his skin?”
“I tried every size we have at various strengths. It's like he has armored skin.”
A soft groan came from behind them and Owen turned.
The patient getting off the table and using the sheet that had barely covered him as he grasped it at the waist and stumbled over to the staircase to walk up the steps. The gash on his leg began to bleed heavily again and as he walked, blood splattered onto the floor with every step. His ribs still looked black and bruised. He shouldn't even be able to get up much less move around.
Everyone moved at once towards the autopsy bay.
Jack took out his gun, prepared for anything the alien may do.
The alien leaned against the wall, only half way up the steps, breathing irregular with his blue eyes glossed over with fever. “'Kassan,” he slurred. “'Kassan, watashi ha daun no hayasa watashi ha kita kotoga.”
Ianto and Owen came down the stairs just in time to catch him as he slipped back into unconsciousness.
“He spoke Japanese.” Tosh stood stunned at the top of the stairs, gripping the railing.
“What did he say?”
Jack came over to her as Ianto and Owen hauled the alien back onto the table.
“'Mother. Mother, I came down as fast as I could.'”
Ianto fixed the sheet over the alien again once Owen cleaned and wrapped a new bandage on his leg. Jack glanced back at the alien and couldn't help but be intrigued. When the young man woke up he had a lot of questions that needed to be answered.
**
“Jack get over here. He's awake!” Gwen shouted. She was on shift for alien-sitting for the last few hours and this was the first time anyone had seen him move more than a few twitches in his sleep.
Owen had eventually moved his patient to one of the cleaner holding cells as his condition improved. But the young man didn't wake up again for days. This time when he was conscious, the alien sat up gingerly holding his bruised ribs and stared at his surroundings for a few minutes. They had found a spare pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt for him to wear and he looked even younger with the clothing draping on him. The blue eyes were cold and assessing as he gazed at his cell.
Gwen shivered when the eyes focused on the camera across from his cell and didn't move.
**
Trunks woke with a soundless gasp and his ribs protested when he suddenly sat up and swung his legs of his little bed. He quickly accessed that he had broken or heavily bruised ribs and a cut in his leg that was bandaged but not stitched. He reached up and touched the bandage he could feel tugging on his hair before dropping the hand to hold his bruised ribs. A quick sniff told him he was underground wearing clothes that weren't his own. He could smell the dampness in the walls and guessed it was near or under some kind of water source.
The hair on the back of his neck rose when he spotted the camera aimed directly at his cell.
There were too many possibilities where he could be and none of them added up to anything good in his mind. What if he had landed earlier than he wanted? What if he was a prisoner of the Red Ribbon Army? The camera wasn't that advanced, he had to be in the past. But what had thrown him so far off course? He never had a problem with his time machine before.
He had originally promised to destroy the time machine his mother had built when he had gone back to his own time-line because of all the trouble it caused by creating alternate universes, or parallel universes, or alternate time-lines. Trunks was a little confused on the temporal theory and he never really bothered asking for specifics once he found out that the changes he had caused to the past did not affect his own time-line. His mother in the past time-line had theorized about it and told him something about a “predestination paradox” or something. It didn't matter much to him.
When he had gone home for the final time after helping save the past Earth from the androids that had decimated his own Earth, his mother refused to allow him to destroy the machine she built. She wanted him to be happy. Mother had made him promise to go back to his family in the other time line when she grew too old and died. She knew that he would outlive her. She said he took after Goku and his father in that aspect. She did not want him to spend the rest of his days alone on a sparely populated planet that had its population all but wiped out when he could be happy with her younger self and his father. So when she died, he left to travel back to the other time-line.
But something went wrong.
The last thing he remembered was his ship's console exploding in his face as a huge force dragged him through space-time out of the path he had already set and error messages popping up all over his computer displays. The ship felt like it was shaking apart and he remembered the dome exploding into pieces at some point. The pain had been excruciating as he felt the weird multi-colored pathway he traveled through rip through him and his machine as he sat buckled and unprotected. He had no idea how long it was like that but it seemed like ages. The space-time tunnel or whatever it had been eventually changed and the whole vehicle moved violently. He then felt like he was being torn in a million directions at once and then squished before blacking out.
Trunks glanced at the large door at the end of the hallway just as it opened and a man with a long coat stepped through. He was dressed very oddly with older clothes and bracers but he was definitely some kind of fighter with the way he walked. The closer he came to Trunks' cell, the more the fine hairs on his neck tingled. Trunks inhaled slowly and the air tingled and felt full with unseen energy. It practically pulsed out from the man in time with his heart. But he didn't even register like human or anything Trunks knew.
“Hello, I'm Captain Jack Harkness. And you are?” The man had an easy smile, but his eyes were old, accessing. The man had a weird accent like nothing Trunks had heard before but he could understand it.
Definitely a fighter of some kind.
“Trunks.”
“You've been unconscious for a few days and our doctor treated you and bandaged you up. Can you tell me what year is it?”
Trunks frowned. “785.” That was year when he had intended to land.
“785?”
“Yes, 785 Age.”
Jack Harkness sighed.
“It's 2008 A.D. You came through a rift in space and time and crashed in Cardiff Bay on planet Earth. Your ship has been badly damaged. You're in Torchwood, a government run facility that handles people stranded by the rift. I'm sorry but my people fished up what we could from the bay of your ship so you can salvage what you want from it.”
Body language told Trunks that the man was not lying. But at least he was on Earth even if the date was unfamiliar. Perhaps all was not lost and he could repair his ship if the damage wasn't too excessive and he still had enough charge left in his ship for another jump.
He was far from his family. Where ever he was, the date was unsettling. He had no idea when or where he was and even if he did, he wasn't sure how to fix everything on his ship if it was as badly damaged as he estimated. But he had to keep up hope. He only knew how to change the destination, charge it, and fly it. His mother hadn't taught him anything else as they had assumed it would really only have one destination after she died. But he was a genius as was everyone in his family. He could probably figure it out if he took the time and had the right tools. Maybe.
“Before I let you out, I know you aren't human.”
Trunks locked eyes with Jack, startled. The man was smiling now, it wasn't an unfriendly unfriendly smile but it did nothing to reassure him.
“As long as you don't intend on hurting my people or the people of this planet, I'm willing to let you out of the cell and bring you to more comfortable surroundings while we discuss what we can do to help you settle in here. Can you promise me that?” Jack shifted, his gun was clearly accessible if he needed it. The unseen energy in the air thickened.
Trunks stood up slowly. His leg was almost fully healed now under the bandage and he did not stumble or falter.
“I promise I have no intention on hurting anyone.”
Jack pressed the button and smiled, opening the cell doors. Trunks stepped out, already standing straighter. He hated being confined and trapped.
“Welcome to Torchwood.”
Characters: Jack Harkness, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones, Toshito Sato, Gwen Cooper, Trunks Briefs
Fandoms Crossed: Torchwood/Doctor Who/Dragonball Z
Rating: Teen
Note: Just an idea I've been tossing around in my head.
Summary: The Time War affected many worlds including alternate and parallel ones. A time traveler in a primitive time machine gets trapped in vortex for ages before being squished through the rift into an entirely different parallel Earth.
**
The needle snapped before it pierced the skin and with another curse, Owen dropped the destroyed needle in his waste basket and glared at the person lying on his table.
“Bloody piece of work you are, mate.”
An alien ship crashed into Cardiff Bay after a rift spike and Torchwood barely got there in time before the media got a hold of the story. The water explosion was massive when the ship crashed, it had hit the water with full speed when the rift opened to spit it out. It seemed like a routine human rescue job when Owen fished the still-living pilot from the water. He had originally guessed the rift had brought someone from the future because of his technology. But Owen had changed his assessment of the man being a human once he tried to lift him and did his x-rays. The skeletal bone density was at least two-times denser than the average homo-sapien and leaned closer to being Neanderthal.
The alien looked human enough that you could pass him on the street corner and think he was just some young college jock with shockingly, perfectly, dyed purple hair that could only be a desperate cry for attention. If you didn't try to lift him, he looked deceptively light with lean muscles and small frame, a runner jock body. When Torchwood dragged him from the wreckage of his destroyed ship (a poorly constructed design with it's glass dome and terrible landing gear), the alien had been bleeding profusely from his head, had a huge gash in his left leg with jagged glass sticking out, and had half of his right rib cage collapsed. Not to mention he was half-drowned and extremely malnourished and dehydrated. Their mysterious alien had not woken up yet but Owen estimated it would probably take anywhere from a few hours to days for the traveler to wake up.
The scent of coffee lured Owen out of the depths of the autopsy bay to find Ianto had taken a break to make coffee for everyone before resuming his work. Tosh and Ianto were taking pictures and cataloging all the pieces of the ship that Torchwood had found. Ianto had a mug in his hand as he wrote down whatever interesting note or comment Tosh said about each piece.
“-and must have some kind of contact with the human race before because there is English on the side of his ship.” Tosh brushed her hand over the worn out word on the metal base of the ship. “'Hope!!' for what?”
“Better landings?” Ianto suggested.
Owen picked up his coffee mug from his desk and letting the cup warm up his cold hands and sighed. He would give anything to be able to drink it right now but it would just slosh in his stomach for ages before he would have to puke it up. He glanced up to see Jack in his office. Gwen had already gone home for the night and wouldn't return until morning.
At least someone was getting sleep.
Ianto and Tosh continued to work for a while and Owen refilled his mug every few hours to keep the fresh scent of coffee under his nose. His patient hadn't moved and he was itching for something to happen soon.
Jack stepped out of his office. He came down, grabbed his own coffee, and stood next to him for a few moments.
“How is our visitor?”
Owen snorted and put down his cup. It was getting cold again anyway.“Stable for now. No progress unless breaking half a dozen needles counts.”
“You still can't get through his skin?”
“I tried every size we have at various strengths. It's like he has armored skin.”
A soft groan came from behind them and Owen turned.
The patient getting off the table and using the sheet that had barely covered him as he grasped it at the waist and stumbled over to the staircase to walk up the steps. The gash on his leg began to bleed heavily again and as he walked, blood splattered onto the floor with every step. His ribs still looked black and bruised. He shouldn't even be able to get up much less move around.
Everyone moved at once towards the autopsy bay.
Jack took out his gun, prepared for anything the alien may do.
The alien leaned against the wall, only half way up the steps, breathing irregular with his blue eyes glossed over with fever. “'Kassan,” he slurred. “'Kassan, watashi ha daun no hayasa watashi ha kita kotoga.”
Ianto and Owen came down the stairs just in time to catch him as he slipped back into unconsciousness.
“He spoke Japanese.” Tosh stood stunned at the top of the stairs, gripping the railing.
“What did he say?”
Jack came over to her as Ianto and Owen hauled the alien back onto the table.
“'Mother. Mother, I came down as fast as I could.'”
Ianto fixed the sheet over the alien again once Owen cleaned and wrapped a new bandage on his leg. Jack glanced back at the alien and couldn't help but be intrigued. When the young man woke up he had a lot of questions that needed to be answered.
**
“Jack get over here. He's awake!” Gwen shouted. She was on shift for alien-sitting for the last few hours and this was the first time anyone had seen him move more than a few twitches in his sleep.
Owen had eventually moved his patient to one of the cleaner holding cells as his condition improved. But the young man didn't wake up again for days. This time when he was conscious, the alien sat up gingerly holding his bruised ribs and stared at his surroundings for a few minutes. They had found a spare pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt for him to wear and he looked even younger with the clothing draping on him. The blue eyes were cold and assessing as he gazed at his cell.
Gwen shivered when the eyes focused on the camera across from his cell and didn't move.
**
Trunks woke with a soundless gasp and his ribs protested when he suddenly sat up and swung his legs of his little bed. He quickly accessed that he had broken or heavily bruised ribs and a cut in his leg that was bandaged but not stitched. He reached up and touched the bandage he could feel tugging on his hair before dropping the hand to hold his bruised ribs. A quick sniff told him he was underground wearing clothes that weren't his own. He could smell the dampness in the walls and guessed it was near or under some kind of water source.
The hair on the back of his neck rose when he spotted the camera aimed directly at his cell.
There were too many possibilities where he could be and none of them added up to anything good in his mind. What if he had landed earlier than he wanted? What if he was a prisoner of the Red Ribbon Army? The camera wasn't that advanced, he had to be in the past. But what had thrown him so far off course? He never had a problem with his time machine before.
He had originally promised to destroy the time machine his mother had built when he had gone back to his own time-line because of all the trouble it caused by creating alternate universes, or parallel universes, or alternate time-lines. Trunks was a little confused on the temporal theory and he never really bothered asking for specifics once he found out that the changes he had caused to the past did not affect his own time-line. His mother in the past time-line had theorized about it and told him something about a “predestination paradox” or something. It didn't matter much to him.
When he had gone home for the final time after helping save the past Earth from the androids that had decimated his own Earth, his mother refused to allow him to destroy the machine she built. She wanted him to be happy. Mother had made him promise to go back to his family in the other time line when she grew too old and died. She knew that he would outlive her. She said he took after Goku and his father in that aspect. She did not want him to spend the rest of his days alone on a sparely populated planet that had its population all but wiped out when he could be happy with her younger self and his father. So when she died, he left to travel back to the other time-line.
But something went wrong.
The last thing he remembered was his ship's console exploding in his face as a huge force dragged him through space-time out of the path he had already set and error messages popping up all over his computer displays. The ship felt like it was shaking apart and he remembered the dome exploding into pieces at some point. The pain had been excruciating as he felt the weird multi-colored pathway he traveled through rip through him and his machine as he sat buckled and unprotected. He had no idea how long it was like that but it seemed like ages. The space-time tunnel or whatever it had been eventually changed and the whole vehicle moved violently. He then felt like he was being torn in a million directions at once and then squished before blacking out.
Trunks glanced at the large door at the end of the hallway just as it opened and a man with a long coat stepped through. He was dressed very oddly with older clothes and bracers but he was definitely some kind of fighter with the way he walked. The closer he came to Trunks' cell, the more the fine hairs on his neck tingled. Trunks inhaled slowly and the air tingled and felt full with unseen energy. It practically pulsed out from the man in time with his heart. But he didn't even register like human or anything Trunks knew.
“Hello, I'm Captain Jack Harkness. And you are?” The man had an easy smile, but his eyes were old, accessing. The man had a weird accent like nothing Trunks had heard before but he could understand it.
Definitely a fighter of some kind.
“Trunks.”
“You've been unconscious for a few days and our doctor treated you and bandaged you up. Can you tell me what year is it?”
Trunks frowned. “785.” That was year when he had intended to land.
“785?”
“Yes, 785 Age.”
Jack Harkness sighed.
“It's 2008 A.D. You came through a rift in space and time and crashed in Cardiff Bay on planet Earth. Your ship has been badly damaged. You're in Torchwood, a government run facility that handles people stranded by the rift. I'm sorry but my people fished up what we could from the bay of your ship so you can salvage what you want from it.”
Body language told Trunks that the man was not lying. But at least he was on Earth even if the date was unfamiliar. Perhaps all was not lost and he could repair his ship if the damage wasn't too excessive and he still had enough charge left in his ship for another jump.
He was far from his family. Where ever he was, the date was unsettling. He had no idea when or where he was and even if he did, he wasn't sure how to fix everything on his ship if it was as badly damaged as he estimated. But he had to keep up hope. He only knew how to change the destination, charge it, and fly it. His mother hadn't taught him anything else as they had assumed it would really only have one destination after she died. But he was a genius as was everyone in his family. He could probably figure it out if he took the time and had the right tools. Maybe.
“Before I let you out, I know you aren't human.”
Trunks locked eyes with Jack, startled. The man was smiling now, it wasn't an unfriendly unfriendly smile but it did nothing to reassure him.
“As long as you don't intend on hurting my people or the people of this planet, I'm willing to let you out of the cell and bring you to more comfortable surroundings while we discuss what we can do to help you settle in here. Can you promise me that?” Jack shifted, his gun was clearly accessible if he needed it. The unseen energy in the air thickened.
Trunks stood up slowly. His leg was almost fully healed now under the bandage and he did not stumble or falter.
“I promise I have no intention on hurting anyone.”
Jack pressed the button and smiled, opening the cell doors. Trunks stepped out, already standing straighter. He hated being confined and trapped.
“Welcome to Torchwood.”