Part 3 of this fanfic (specifically "City of Ruin") was written after the Torchwood Season 2 finale, during Doctor Who Season 4, and pre Children of Earth. It is a diligently-researched work of love that I never intended to make public; I began it for my own enjoyment, and continued it out of love, and as a means of coping with some of the grief left behind by TW Season 2. With that in mind, R&R, and I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: Torchwood and Doctor Who are franchises that don't belong to me. I simply like to visit their 'verse and play.

Primarily, what's not mine belongs to Russell T. Davies et al. of the current incarnation of the Whoniverse.


My name is Sage Smith, Torchwood Officer 000. Defender of the Earth.

Or at least I try to be.

Sol 3 has been my home for just over a century, most of my life. My home planet of Gallifrey burned and died in the Great Time War. My father destroyed it. He had to. And then he ran. He hasn't stopped running since. He didn't try to save me. He doesn't know I'm still alive.

Either by accident or fate, I wound up here. Planet Earth. One of my dad's favourites. He's come and gone many times over the years, but we've never crossed paths. At first this was on purpose. I had to watch out for Jack. He's headstrong and sort of broken. He used to think only my father could 'fix' what's wrong with him. The fact that he's an immutable point in time. The fact that he can't die.

We met when I was just a child, the day I landed here, and it was my responsibility as a daughter of Gallifrey to keep Jack Harkness from meeting my father before he was meant to, to prevent the paradox that could wipe out all existence. When the time came for them to meet again... I wasn't myself.

Back home I'd had a friend I wasn't supposed to have. He calls himself John Hart, but no one knows his real name. Back then he was just my Johnny, an older boy who was forbidden to come to our planet but did so anyway, a Time Agent who was a rogue even as a young recruit. He'd given me a gift one day, on a whim: a Vortex Manipulator. I suppose you could call it a time machine, but it wasn't really equipped to handle a voyage of such magnitude... my trip to Earth. I landed in the year 1900 and the poor, silly thing fried. I've since managed to repair it a bit, but it's not a time machine anymore. It may never be again.

The next time I saw John Hart, he was the last thing I saw for nearly nine years. I didn't recognize him... not then... nor he me. He used a concentrated burst of radiation to blind me. He thought I was human when he shot me. I became human to hide from Torchwood. Then John ran from what he'd done to me. It was years before he confronted Jack again, and longer than that before I discovered the real reason why he ran. But that's a story for another time.

I work for Torchwood Cardiff, also known as Torchwood 3. We guard a Rift in space and time that runs through the city. Jack says the Rift is an ocean and we are the shore: things wash up here all the time. Weapons, creatures, slices of the past, pieces of the future... I didn't come through the Rift, but I believe it pulled me here, to Earth. I wonder sometimes if it has a mind, a consciousness, because I seem to have been brought here for a purpose. Ostensibly, to keep Jack from causing a paradox, as I've already explained. That job is done, though, and I'm still here.

Right now I'm here to help. Cardiff lies in ruins. Torchwood has just lost two key members... two amazing people, friends, that are sorely missed. My mission now is to help Jack find someone, two someones, to heal this gaping wound. Toshiko and Owen, though, can never be replaced. Sometimes I wonder if any of this would have happened if I'd never come here. If Jack had never found me. If I'd stayed in Gallifrey and died with the others. Sometimes I wonder if all of this is my fault.

These were the thoughts running through my head as Jack introduced our new recruit, Laura Harding, to the team members she hadn't yet met. Ianto Jones and I had discovered her potential just the night before. She was being introduced to Martha Jones (our friend from UNIT who was standing in for Owen until we could find a medic or until she was recalled) and to Gwen Cooper (a former police officer, now second in command). It was Toshiko Sato's post that Laura would be taking over if she passed Jack's trial by fire, but that morning I was sitting at what had been Tosh's desk, thinking dark thoughts, when Laura arrived.

"Sage?" she said to me softly. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," I lied. "I'm fine."

"Gwen says this is my post," she murmured, "but if you want to stay here for a while, that's all right. I'm sure there's something else I—"

"No, it's fine," I said, standing. "I'll get out of your way."

"Sage?" she called after me, but I ignored her. I just kept walking.

I went to the lower levels, to the firing range, and was shooting the shit out of wooden Weevil targets when I heard Jack say Martha was looking for me. I holstered my gun rather than put it away as I would have any other day, but when I took off my protective eyewear and headphones and turned, Jack wasn't in the room with me. He wasn't wearing headphones, either. He was on the other side of the glass. He hadn't spoken at all, simply projected the words right into my head, knowing I would hear them. Most Gallifreyans are... were... at least a little bit psychic, but I was even more psychic than most. Anyone who focused on a thought hard enough was fairly guaranteed that I would hear them. Jack's voice in particular was one I always heard. Maybe because I love him so much.

He was standing there with his arms crossed, smirking. I thought it was because he'd managed to get in my head again, but when I came out of the firing range he said, "Nice shooting. I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing you with a gun, though."

"Yeah, what would Daddy think?" I said sarcastically, irritated. My father was one of the universe's greatest pacifists. The Destroyer of Worlds. The Oncoming Storm. And I was his daughter, the one he'd left behind, raised by the man he'd run away from. I'd learned to fire a pistol when I was ten, but I'd never killed anyone with one.

"Sage, Martha needs to speak with you," Jack said again, this time out loud.

"I know. I heard you the first time," I muttered, pulling my blazer on over my holstered weapon.

"You already knew," Jack pointed out. "You've been avoiding her."

"I know what she's going to say," I told him, starting to walk away. He stopped me with a hand on my arm and he wasn't gentle about it.

"Maybe you don't," he told me. "She's waiting for you in the boardroom."

"Why the boardroom?" I asked him, suddenly intrigued.

"Because what she has to tell you is need-to-know and even I don't have the clearances for it," he admitted.

"But I do?" I raised an eyebrow.

"You don't exist," he reminded me. "Go on. CCTV is off and everything. You can call me all the names in the world if you feel like it, but go hear her out, okay?"

"Okay," I conceded. He walked off ahead of me. "Jack?"

"Yes, Sage?" He paused and turned toward me. I ran across the five yards between us and jumped into his arms, kissing him fiercely. He kissed me back, but gently, coaxing the savagery out of my lips and taming it. Each kiss was more gentle than the last until I finally broke away from him with the smallest peck. "What was that all about?" he asked me.

"Just remember that I love you, Jack," I told him. "No matter what, always know that I love you."

"Uh-oh. The last time someone said that to me, he riddled me with bullets and chained me to the wall," he remarked, eyeing me suspiciously. "Want to put that gun back into storage, Sage?" he said, only half-jokingly.

"No," I said firmly.

"Want to tell me why not?" he inquired sternly, all the fun gone from his voice.

"I can't," I told him gently. "I have to go somewhere, and you can't come, all right? Don't tell Ianto until I've gone, and don't follow me."

"You're scaring me," he admitted.

"I'm coming back," I assured him. "I swear to you, I'm coming back. Don't follow me."

I ran from him then, ran past Ianto's confused frown and straight to Martha. I already knew part of what she was going to say.

"I'm leaving soon, then," she concluded. "That's all I've told Jack."

"I can't help you," I told her.

"I thought you'd want to see him," she voiced, confused.

"I'm not so sure he'd want to see me," I admitted. "I've been hiding from him for a very long time; at first because I had to, but now... I don't think he'd be very pleased to see what I've become."

"What? Torchwood? Jack explained to him about this branch of Torchwood," she told me.

"I know..."

"Then what are you keeping from me, Sage? Why are you still hiding?"

"He abandoned me!" I admitted angrily.

"Oh. My. God," Martha blurted. "He's your father, isn't he!? I don't know how I missed... He said the planet burned, that everyone died... Are you sure he never looked for you?"

"What?"

"You left as it was happening. Are you sure he never tried to find you?"

"I have to go," I said, standing.

"Just think about it, Sage, all right? I could use your help. And I think you should talk to him. Find out what really happened," Martha pressed.

"I'll think about it," I said, opening my wrist strap. "I'm glad to have met you Martha Jones. I hope you're still here when I get back, but if you're not... You've been fantastic."

Before she could say another word, I was gone.