Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own Torchwood or Captain Jack Harkness. If I did...well, I won't get into that. :)

Author's Note: I've written stories about Jack for Doctor Who, but this is my first Torchwood fic. I just couldn't help but try a bit of introspection. This is set during Episode 1 of Torchwood: Miracle Day. I apologize in advance for the inordinate use of ellipses and tenses changes. I don't have an excuse for the ellipses, but for the tense changes, I blame Charles Yu and "How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe".

Jack stares at his bruises in the broken half-mirror which leans precariously against one of the crumbling walls in his makeshift home base. He can't help but run his fingers along them, noting the peculiar pain that trails along with his touch. Slowly, he lowers his shirt and turns away, his mind racing trying to make sense of it all.

He moves to the window, pulling aside the tattered remnants of a curtain to stare outside. There's a streetlight not far from the window, but it must have a fault in its wires because it sputters for a moment and then dies again, leaving the street in complete shadow. He continues to stare at the emptiness, and suddenly finds himself wondering how old he is. It's been a while since he last considered this—age is just a quaint way of measuring one's own mortality, and until recently, Jack hadn't seen the point in keeping track.

The last time Jack celebrated his birthday was back when he was traveling with Rose and the Doctor. His personal chronometer had beeped, letting him know another year had passed, and Rose had insisted they celebrate with drinks and a cake. She had even given him a present—a scrapbook of her, Jack, and the Doctor, and all the places they had been. It was garishly done in bright orange and neon green, and it had Rose's curvaceous script covering the margins with commentary like "Boys & Their Toys", and "They don't teach that in the Time Agency!" It was messy and rushed, since his birthday had caught them all off guard, but it was full of love and warmth and joy...

That had been his 35th birthday, and not long after had come the Game Station, and Bad Wolf. His personal chronometer had fried along with his vortex manipulator. Still, his life over the next century had been simple enough, temporally speaking anyway, and he knows that by 2008 he had been 174. Then he had found the Doctor, and things started to get complicated.

Sitting on the stoop, Jack wonders if he should count the Year That Never Was. Technically, it had never happened, but his memory still, masochistically, refuses to forget it. And what about Gray? How much of the nearly 2 millennia underground should he count? He had been dead for most of the time, reviving every few hours to suffer through another 3 agonizing minutes of burning suffocation...

Jack lets out a slow breath as he shakes his head clear. He knows it's impossible to say how old he is, and in truth, he knows it doesn't really matter. The real question that he is making his way around to is, how much of that time had he spent wishing he could die? How many times did he kill himself just to see if it would stick? How long had he spent waiting for the Doctor, so that the Doctor could take away his immortality? In the end, the Doctor hadn't been able to fix things. No, for that to happen, Jack had needed a miracle.

The streetlight chooses that moment to let out another sporadic burst of power, and the light reaches into the dark room, glinting off the Webley in Jack's hand. When did I take that out of the holster? he wonders, though he doesn't bother putting it back. His thumb brushes down the barrel, almost caressing it as he turns a single thought over in his mind.

Miracle Day.

It makes a kind of twisted sense to Jack that he would only lose his immortality by the world's gaining it. Things can never be simple, can they?

Can they?

He thinks about this, still staring at his gun. He wonders what death feels like, when it's real. When it's forever. He considers how easy it would be for him to find out, finally. This is his chance, maybe his last chance...

His laptop beeps; one of his searches has landed a hit. Maybe he finally has a trace on Gwen. Or maybe there's news about the bombing. He pauses, then holsters his Webley.

First he'll save the world. Then he'll deal with his own problems.