Nothing You Can Do But You Can Learn How To Be You In Time

[capj_harkness]

Who: Captain Jack Harkness and Dawn Summers
Where: Swimming Pool
When: Afternoon
What: Jack is having a relaxing swim and meets The Key.

Comments

[littlesummers]

"Nope," Dawn called dropping her blow up floaty mattress into the shallow end of the pool. "Looks like I had the same idea as you mister."

[capj_harkness]

Jack did open his eyes and put his feet down, then. The voice sounded young... then again, some women just had voices like... nope. This girl (and she was a girl) couldn't have been more than sixteen. It made him a little angry that the place had grabbed another mere child. Melchior had vanished, but no worries, people! They're still in the business of kidnapping minors.

He grinned at her to put her at ease and pointed to the floaty mattress. "I think that may be cheating," he teased.

[littlesummers]

"Don't be jealous just because I thought of it first," she retorted with a sassy grin. Putting her book in the matress' cup holder she climbed onto the float carefully as to not tip it and to not get her book wet.

[capj_harkness]

"I have to say," he told her, "you're getting along with all this pretty calmly for someone I haven't met yet. You can't have been here long," he pointed out. "I get around."

He waded a little closer and offered her his hand to shake. "Captain Jack Harkness."

[littlesummers]

Dawn just smiled and shrugged in reply.

"So what's it like being a time traveler?" she asked curiously, changing the subject. "Is it all Back To The Futurey where if you change one thing in the past and you go back to the present and suddenly you have a monster truck and your parents are cool? Do you dress in what ever period you're headed before you go so you blend in right away or is that something you have to do when you get there? Instead of going away to a certain place for vacation do you go to a certain time? If you run into yourself from another time period and touch each other do you both explode?" she asked with excitement, her own personal ideas of time travel mixing with the ideas formed from watching various movies on the topic.

[capj_harkness]

Jack laughed as she rapid-fired questions at him. He recognized some of the scenarios from movies, though he didn't watch many.

"It's exciting," he told her. "But you can't alter your own timeline, so no. You can't make your parents cool or change your own life." He thought back to what her other questions were. "Dressing for the period is more optional than you'd think," he said. "And how necessary it is, depends on the era. I've gone to other eras on holiday, sure," he continued, "and you can never, ever, under any circumstances, allow yourself to run into another version of you. You won't explode," he explained with a laugh, but you will rip a hole in the fabric of the universe." He paused. "Which is worse. Believe me."

[littlesummers]

"Okay, mental note, if I ever get ahold of a time-turner, avoid myself," Dawn said taking heed of Jack's warning, especially since tearing a hole in the fabric of dimensions is kinda what she was made for. Or made out of as the case may be.

"Wait so you can't alter your own timeline or you're not supposed to?" she asked for clarification, since there was certainly a difference in the two. "Because Marty McFly didn't mean to change history those times. It just sort of worked out that way."

[capj_harkness]

"And if he really had done that, it would have ripped a hole in the universe and the Reapers would have come to clean the wound," he told her ominously. "It would not have been a happy ending. The mechanics of the universe really don't care if you live or die, they just care whether or not the fabric of reality is maintained. If taking you out of it stops it from tearing... well, they're going to go with that easy option."