| Date: 17 December 2007
Characters: Jack Harkness, Toshiko Sato Location: a cafe Link to IJ: thread #12674 |
 Jack was sitting in the cafe with a cup of coffee and his feet propped up in the opposite chair. He was still stuck, he still didn't know what he was going to do about it, and he still didn't actually like this coffee. For all that, though, his mood wasn't completely horrible and meeting himself had definitely been. Interesting. |
 Tosh spotted him as she walked by the cafe and made a bee-line for the door and his table, grinning.
Ok, so according to Ianto, he wasn't her Jack. But still, he was a Jack. He had to have some handle on what was going on. Hopefully. She put her hands behind her back and crossed her fingers, composing herself before she spoke. "Hello Jack." |
| He looked up and returned the grin. Well, she hadn't shot him yet, at least. "Hey, Tosh." He pulled his feet down. "Have a seat." |
| "Thanks," she said. She folded her hands together on the table. "First things first: What's the last thing you remember before you arrived here?" |
| "How about you tell me the last thing you remember first?" So far he'd been the furthest along the timeline, and while he wasn't shy about sharing that information he'd been helped by having a starting point so far. |
| "You fought Abbadon, and won. Sort of. We thought you'd died. Really died. But you hadn't. You came back. And then you disappeared again." |
| "Okay, you are actually ahead of me." And he was relieved. "The last thing I remember was going out to Abbaddon. I started to die and ended up here." |
| "Maybe it took you days to get back to us," she posited. |
| "I've already been here days, and popular experience from people who have been before is that time doesn't pass while we're here. Wherever your Jack is, it's not here." |
| "That's what Ianto said as well. So. You're not his, not mine. And." She paused and eyed him. "Do you know anyone from the future named Anne Miles?" |
| "I actually could be from the same universe, just a different point in time." He frowned and shook his head. "No. Why?" |
| "She mentioned a time agency, time agents, the 51st century, knew about the rift when I mentioned Cardiff." |
| He shook his head. "A lot of that sounds like it could be familiar, but the name's not. What'd she look like? Did she mention anything that would make you think she knows me?" |
| Tosh described her as best she could.
"And she had something similar to that wrist comp you always wore. Wear. But she said it was just an emergency beacon. And she didn't mention you by name or anything, she just seemed to know things. Like you do." |
| "Great," he groaned to himself, and made a note to do the best he could to use that wrist comp of his to stay the hell away from the Time Agent. |
| "What?" Tosh asked. |
| "Nothing, just someone who's way I should stay out of. It's not a big deal." |
| "Are you a time agent, Jack?" she asked, curious. It would explain many things about him. Not everything, but a lot. |
| He lifted his eyebrows. "No, I'm the head of Torchwood Three." |
| "For how many years now?" |
| "Since Canary Warf, so about four." |
| She sighed and rubbed her temple.
"I'm sorry, I'm still just trying to make sense of this all. I feel like if I had the right information, I might be able to accomplish something." |
| "I don't think there's much to make sense of. It's like the slip through to 1941, on a much bigger slide." |
| "And hopefully without people trying to maim each other to take over Torchwood and open the rift." She glanced down at her hand and shook her head. "I could do without the messages written in blood, too." |
| "If time isn't passing there, no one will ever notice anyone's missing. If we're from the same timeline, you never noticed me being gone before, which adds credence to that. Messages of any sort are pointless, too, so no blood." |
| "But there's no way to know that we're from the same timeline, right? Or to know what's happening back home?" |
| "That's about the size of it," he admitted and took another drink of coffee. "As for what's happening back home. Tosh. nothing is happening back home." |
| "How do you know?" |
| "Because I know more about time than you do." |
| "OK, well, you've got me there." |
| "Grab a book out of the library and read some more about relativity." |
| "Is there a library here?" |
| "There's a library here." |
| "I don't know why that surprises me." |
| "I have no idea. It's a couple of blocks up the street, same side as the hotel." |
| "At least I won't go completely stir crazy while I'm not getting out of here," she said with a small smile. |
| "There's quite a bit of space around. You should be okay, the books will help and just between us, so far, it seems mostly safe." |
| "Have you found anything technological?" she asked. Maybe she just hadn't been looking in the right places. |
| "Nothing above typical twentieth century tech, no." |
| "I miss my computer," she said. "How pitiful does that sound?" |
| He held up his wrist. "Doesn't sound pathetic at all, to me." |
| "Feels weird without it?" Come to think of it, she couldn't ever remember seeing him not wearing the wrist comp. |
| "Can't imagine being without it. It's like another hand." |
| "Really? I thought that's what that hand in the jar back home was for," she teased lightly. |
| He shook his head. "You dont' want to know what that's for," he said, seriously. |
| "I do. But I won't press." |
| "You really don't," he maintained. |
| "So," she said, changing the subject. "Who else have you met here?" |
| "Owen and Ianto - there are a couple of Ianto's here, by the way. One's safe. One's not. Be careful - and the Doctor. A random assortment of other people from various places through history. Oh, an Suzie." |
| "I must have met the safe ... Suzie? From when?" |
| "Right after we found the glove." |
| Tosh looked down at her hands and nodded. |
| "What's wrong?" |
| "It was. What she did. After, I mean. Once we started to study the glove. Sometimes I think I still don't understand it. Sometimes I think I could be just like that." |
| "I think we could all be like that, and I don't think that makes it any more comprehensible." |
| "It'll be hard to see her, knowing what happens. At least, in our timelines." |
| "There are a lot of things that are hard to look at, especially in the past. We all have our ghosts and demons. That doesn't mean you don't have to face them." |
| "I know. And I won't avoid her forever, I promise." |
| "Don't avoid her at all. She hasn't done anything to be punished for. Certainly no more than you and the rest of the team has done." |
| "You're right," she said, rubbing her temple again. |
| "Doesn't that just suck?" |
| "Yes, yes it does," she said but gave him a smile. |
| "The last thing I remember was dying in front of Abbadon. You're going to have to live with my self-righteousness for a bit, I'm afraid." |
| "Believe me," she said, reaching out to touch his arm. "I don't think I've ever been so relieved as when you walked out the morgue. Thank you, by the way." |
| "I'm sure by the time I actually die and stay dead for a while my attitude about it will have improved." |
| "I'd answer that for you but I never got the chance to see," she said with a half-smile. |
| "Wait. I know I disappeared, but didn't you just say you saw me walk out of the morgue?" |
| "You died, Jack, I told you that. You fought him. He died, you died. You died for days. And then you came back. And just when we thought we had you again, you disappeared." |
| "That's not all that surprising. There's any number of places I could have gone - from through the rift to home to just got the fuck out of there after I had to feed myself to a giant cow because you all nearly destroyed the world," he said, dismissively. "What's bothering me is that I came back and you said you saw me and that you didn't see me. What you caught a glimpse of me and then I poofed?" |
| "No, it wasn't like that," she said, shaking her head. "Ianto, Owen and I went to fetch coffees. Gwen stayed behind with you. Just when we came back, she asked if we'd passed you coming in. The hub was a mess -- we'd cleaned up before -- and she said that you'd just been there, but now you were gone. That something had taken you." |
| "I really hope that's true," he murmured. |
| "What are you thinking Jack?" |
| "I'm thinking that i can't know the answer to where I went, but of all the likelyhoods of things attracted to an open rift, there's one strong possibility and it's not a bad one, and just maybe where I went was home." |
| "Home?" |
| He drank his coffee and just looked at her. |
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