Gift of God

(I found this on my memrory stick, so thought it deserved its time to shine. I own nothing, and mean no disrespect to anyone. I wrote this while on my Torchwood bender, in which I managed to read around twenty of their books? I hope you enjoy. Sorry if any of my statements aren't exactly exact, other than that, review review review! )

One / Prologue

It was 1949 and Captain Jack Harkness stood on the corner of a terraced street in Grangetown, waiting for something. Someone.He stood certain, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his preened greatcoat, navy eyes staring patiently ahead of him. He'd been stood there for a good half an hour, Gladys Bevan from number 92 had watched all from behind her twitchy curtain since she'd heard and felt the rumbling of a sleek black beast of a vehicle rolling up. Medwyn, her sympathetic husband, numbed with years of his wives intrusive and controlling behaviour, gave a grunt from the sofa. It was dark outside but that hadn't stopped her sticking her pointed beak between the blinds to find some new gossip for the ladies tomorrow. He'd learnt to be quiet and besides a few coughs and murmured 'yes's' he had nothing more to say to her.

Jack glanced down at his wrist readout and then back up, nodding his head slightly as he saw a figure walking towards him, having appeared from the turn off at the top of the road. Alice Smyth scuffed her way down the path back to the home she'd been evading for so many years. Her younger brother and erratic mother had lived there happily in her absence until a freak accident had called an end to everything; now she was back to pick up the pieces.

Stopping in the middle of the road, Alice caught Jack's eye and both considered one another as though they weren't strangers and in fact old friends meeting after a long time apart. Looking away first, Alice glanced at the floor nonchalantly and continued to walk. She'd seen him before, that much was obvious. You didn't get many people around here that looked and dressed like that – an officer, frozen in time.

'What?' she asked, still looking down as she made it onto the path, 'Can I help you?' but as Alice glanced to her left she was greeted by nothing more than empty space and the back of a man walking away. 'Hey!' abandoning the last few steps to her house, Alice shot along the curb and after Jack like he'd fled with her handbag. 'Oi! I- oh.'

Jack swivelled around on the path to look at her, his coat swishing around his heels like some spectacular superhero. They surveyed one another again. 'Sorry.' Alice finally breathed, breathless from the sprint which had brought her around the corner and halfway up the road which moved off towards a children's play park. 'I saw you at mam's funeral – were you following me? Because I've had enough of-'

'So you are the daughter.' Jack mused, a slight smirk pulling at his handsome features, his eyes taking her in again, fully. Yes, this was definitely the daughter; they held the same stance, the heart shaped face and the full, almond eyes. 'Y'know you reallyneed to work on you manners–'

'Who are you.' She didn't sound curious or afraid, more fed up and tired. Sleep deprived. He could see the bags under her eyes, greying, aging the beautiful face. Bag hanging off her left shoulder he watched as she left it there, eyes searching his for an answer, but Jack had turned to look away, staring into the distance as thoughts ran through his mind. 'Are you ok? You're not a mental patient are you? You can never tell.' Her laugh brought him back from his reverie, it was sweet and musical.

Reaching into his back pocket, Jack fumbled for something and it set the young girl on edge as she took a few steps backwards. Alice Smyth was no older than nineteen, give or take, but her strong heart-shaped face and sculpted chin took away any false impressions that she was a child. You could always tell how aged someone was by looking into their eyes and Jack's were too full of loss, knowledge and longing for something so impossible to reach, that if you looked close enough you'd find fault with his seemingly normal being and begin to again, if you looked at anything long enough you could always find fault with it. But what person today stared at anything for longer than a second before moving on without delay. People today had become so frozen and selfish that they took things as they were, minus hesitation; why question reality?

For all they knew, this was all there was to the world and they'd go on thinking and being like that, never to know the realtruth behind life which Torchwood tried so hard to hide.

Pulling a silver chain out of his back pocket he thumbed it in his palm, rolling the locket over and over, examining it. Alice's eyes ignited with interest instantly and without thinking she reached out to touch it, but his fingers closed over the item, denying her. 'You recognise it, huh?' as though she'd given the reaction he'd wanted, he smiled.

'What are you doing with that?' her eyes slipped into a determined stare as she moved closer. 'Tell me who you are.' His blank expression forced a final appeal. 'Please.'

Putting his arm out before him, Jack let the chain slip into her smaller hands where she cradled it slowly.

'Come find me when you're old enough.' He told her, but her eyes stayed transfixed on the necklace as she opened the little clasp of the locket to reveal a photo of a red haired woman on the left side and a cheeky-looking coalminer on the other, dust and dirt flecking his cheeks. Her parents stared back at her with glinting eyes.

'I don't understand.' Alice sighed, looking back up to see Jack had vanished again.

Back in the car, Jacks palms hammered against the steering wheel in frustration. Things hadn't meant to go like this and now everything was spiralling down the wrong path. But for not the first time, pride and emotion had spiked his decisions and it was too late to turn things back. Too late for them – Jack would always have an eternity to repeat those mistakes and try to change them, just not with those that mattered to him right now. In all of his life, Jack had helplessly remembered everyone; all the bad memories, the wrong answers, the broken hearts, they were the ones he fought to keep away. When you had forever to breathe and do, you couldn't get hung up. Sometimes, though, he broke down, that small human act, and this was one of those times. He wouldn't go back to the tower for a while, he needed some time to himself, atop of one of the fine buildings creating Cardiff would do the job perfectly.

Alice didn't see Jack around a lot after that, and it began to seem like her imagination and working late nights had taken toll on her sanity. It was only a few weeks later, after hours of thinking of her Peter-Pan-in-a-greatcoat that she decided to take action. Jack had been leant against one of the giant oak trees in the cemetery as they buried her mother that summer, though why he hadn't come to stand with the rest of them had always worried her. Niamh Smyth had split with her husband Harry, an English traveller, forced into coalmining, when Alice and her brother Eamonn had been eleven and seven. After that, she'd quit her job at her sister-in-laws hairdressers and cut all ties with her husband's side of the family, leaving her work options very scarce. Until one day, a handsome American Soldier had come up to her with a conditional offer that involved a secret organisation christened Torchwood. That's where Jack had surfaced from and now Alice finally understood what she needed to do. If he was thinking of recruiting her too, he had another thing coming, because her life, like her mother's, was not going to be taken by that place.

One night, when Niamh had first gone to work, Alice and Eamonn had thought she was sneaking out to whore – Alice, more than the unsuspecting Eamonn - somewhere around the Bay, and so had snuck out to bring her back. A little role reversal; if she was going to sneak out to work without telling her children where she would be, when she would back, and who would take care of them, then she would be treated like a child.

She followed the path she had taken that very night – though then it had taken her to a dead end outside the Oval Basin in a part of Cardiff that she knew nothing about, Alice had been stranded and none the wiser as to where her mother had disappeared to. Then, stood facing the building, Alice had waited, as if expecting Niamh to see her, run out and greet her and tell her everything she wanted to know. Instead, it had started to rain and Alice had galloped home with a crying Eamonn faltering and tumbling in every puddle.

Outside the building now, she stared straight ahead of her, taking deep, steadying breaths. Inside, Jack watched her on the monitor, how oblivious and naïve she was to it all. Was he really going to do this? Eyes still on the screen, he could see her lips move, though her body remained stock still as she determined herself to stay just there. Eyes flickering around uncertainly, she moved forward a little, stepping on each slab as though it were a trap door. The tower shone before her and for the first time in weeks she finally took the chance to look at herself. Raising a hand to her face, she traced along her sharp jaw before looking down at herself. Somehow, in such a short space of time, she'd grown up. Suddenly Alice was ready for whatever awaited her. If only she could find the bloody way in…

Pushing himself away from his desk, Jack vanished from the hub, reappearing on the rising slab above the ground to see Alice fingering the locket now around her neck. He stayed there for a few seconds, simply debating whether to greet her or see if she would resign and send herself back home, like she had done so many years before - both times, unknowing to the eyes inside watching her.

Stepping forward to investigate more possible entrances, Alice gave a cry of shock and involuntarily grabbed at her heart as Jack stepped from the slab into view, as if he had just materialized out of thin air. He eyed her for a couple of seconds, expression unresponsive.

'I told you to come back when you were old enough.' Jack repeated his earlier statement. Was that disappointment in his eyes, or was he toying with her? Alice couldn't tell.

'I'm ready.' She assured him calmly.

'And you're gonna have to get better nerves than that if you wanna work for me.' A small smirk crept across his face but Alice simply continued to stare at him. 'Do you even reckon you can cut it – have you even anyidea what you're up against?' slowly, he thumbed the blister pack of retcon in his pocket.

They stared one another down until Alice finally extended her hand to him with a stiff smile. 'Found my way here, didn't I? And you still haven't told me your name.' she prompted him as he led her over to the curb and onto the platform. As she moved, he saw her shirt shift against her, to reveal a small handgun tucked at the side of her belt. Something she had taken from her mother, he mused, unsure if he should be worried or impressed that she'd come prepared. So she wasn't as gullible as he had first made her out to be; maybe he shouldn't have questioned her capability to take care of herself after all. Without even thinking, Jack let his hand slip from the blister pack and down by his side.

Gripping onto his arm as the concrete moved, Alice glanced up at him, trying to keep the shock from creeping onto her face. As they sunk deeper and deeper, she let her hand fall from his forearm and glanced around her, mouth open in awe.

'Impressive, huh?' His grin had grown and he eventually returned the hand shake. 'Captain Jack Harkness.' If needs be he'd slip a retcon into her drink and leave her to make her own way home, but for the moment, Jack Harkness had decided to give her the benefit of the doubt – something that never happened. After all, there was a spot to be filled, and he'd struck a deal with Niamh. Not that Alice needed to know about that. There'd come a time.