Summary: When Rose starts jumping through dimensions, she's hoping to find the Doctor. Instead, she finds someone who is just as desperate as she is to find the Time Lord: Captain Jack Harkness. Set Post-Doomsday, pre- Utopia with spoilers for season one of Torchwood.

Author's Note: Hello! I've had this plot bouncing around in my head for quite a while, and I figured I would finally try writing it down. This is my first attempt at a Doctor Who fanfic and the techno babble might take a little getting used to, so try and be patient with me! The first few chapters of this story will be taking place in Torchwood episodes… Not quite enough that I consider this a crossover, especially because Torchwood and Doctor Who do take place in the same universe. Quite soon we'll jump back into the Doctor and plots you'll recognize from Doctor Who, since I'm not sure how many of you guys watch Torchwood! Now, I'll shut up… I just wanted to get that out of the way! Please read and review!

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. It all belongs to the BBC. I'm just playing around. Don't sue me, and I promise I'll update. Sound like a plan, Stan?

Chapter 1

Captain Jack Harkness was, quite frankly, frustrated. To say it had been a hell of a few weeks would be an understatement. Meeting those three travelers from the 1950s had worn down the entire team. They had each connected to the people out of their time, with no one to turn to. Even Owen—the heartless bastard who generally looked only for sex in relationships—had fallen for the pilot. Oh, sure, he had tried to hide behind the pretense of sex, but Jack had seen the look in his eyes. Watching that girl fly back into the rift broke what little piece of heart Dr. Owen Harper might possess.

It had practically turned Owen suicidal, especially after he had found an underground fighting ring. Fighting the Weevils hadn't gotten rid of Owen's stress; it had only increased the agitation that he felt towards the world, Jack in particular. Tension had been building between Jack and Owen, waiting for something to burst into a full blown fight. It hadn't helped that Jack had gotten himself and Tosh stuck in the 1940s where Jack was reminded of his own past. Honestly, the universe was testing him. The first place he had been able to time travel for one hundred and fifty years was the one place he didn't want to go to. Reminders of the conman Jack had been, reminders of the Blitz and the Doctor and Rose…

It was just too much.

The team was all home now, though. Gwen had left early enough to actually have dinner with Rhys, something Jack knew she missed. Owen had most likely gone to drink his troubles away, try to find a cheap hook-up. Tosh would be sitting quietly, alone, in her flat. Ianto went back to his flat to … do whatever it was that Ianto did when he wasn't working. But Captain Jack was doing what he was always doing: staying at the Hub, trying to distract himself from this half-life he was living. When he was running around with his team, it was easy enough to distract himself. Just focusing on Tosh's determination to solve problem, Owen's snarky behavior, the need to solve one more case, or Gwen's caring nature that reminded him so much of Rose would make him forget how many years he'd lived.

Then they would go back to their lives, and he would be left in the Hub. Sleeping, occasionally, monitoring the rift activity, cleaning up after recent cases. It felt like tonight would be another one of those nights: the ones that went on forever, where he couldn't escape the bad memories of the past sneaking up on him. Jack knew that if he closed his eyes for just one second, he would see the car he was in the previous week, helping another man to take his own life. He would find himself greeting the real Captain Jack Harkness, knowing his fate and not being able to change it.

This, Jack had realized decades earlier, must be what the Doctor felt like, especially after the Time War. An endless night, with only tiny stars of light to catch his interest: that's what life was. Of course, Rose Tyler would have been more like a shooting star, filling the sky completely, blinding the helpless Time Lord who had been so used to the dark.

Imagine how much darker it was now that that light had faded. Now that Rose Tyler had died at Canary Wharf.

With a sigh, Jack pulled himself out of his office and down the stairs. He flicked one of the computers to life, thinking he would check for any rift activity, hoping for the chance to chase down a Weevil to burn off some stress. The levels were perfectly normal, though, so he picked up a few basic files—paperwork, the worst part of the job. But if he wanted to keep any connection to this job, he had to satisfy the government with basic reports, so he did it with minimal complaint. Boring enough to spend hours on, but not mindless enough to let his mind wander. Maybe paperwork was exactly what Jack Harkness needed.

It was about 2 A.M. and halfway through the stack of files when one of the computers beeped out a warning. An energy strike was running through the rift—a different kind than Jack had ever seen. He ran over there, trying to analyze what exactly what happening. Tosh had felt the need to put her own touches on the programs, though, so Jack's knowledge of computers from beyond the 21st century was practically useless. From what he could tell, this was different than when people would fall from a different time, like the singular plane had fallen from 1953. That probably meant an alien from a faraway planet would be running loose through Cardiff now.

Turning on the CCTV, Jack tried to find the creature, hoping to at least know a general physical description before taking the van out searching. Luckily for Jack, the area surrounding the Hub was practically empty, so even if the alien was particularly hostile, almost no damage would be done.

There wasn't any form of alien wandering outside the Hub. Instead, Jack saw a single human figure take a few steps forward, stumbling as if drunk or injured. Through the dark and grainy quality, Jack could tell the figure was female and blonde, but she was facing away from the camera, so it was impossible to get a better description. Jack reached for his coat, intending to help the girl, find out where she was from, see how he could help. But then she spun in a circle, facing directly towards the camera, and Jack saw her face. In an instant, he was running out of the Hub, too impatient to use the slow moving platform up to the surface or even grab his coat. He didn't see her start coughing and fall to her knees in pain.

No, he just knew that face.

The face that should have been dead.

Because that face belonged to Rose Marion Tyler.

End note: If you aren't familiar with Torchwood, then the beginning descriptions may have made little made sense to you… If you are a follower of Russell T. Davies' Torchwood, then this fic is picking up right after "Captain Jack Harkness". From now on, almost everything with Torchwood and Doctor Who will be different. But assume that everything up until this point is perfectly cannon.

For now, tell me what you think!

~WriteForeverForLife~