It was supposed to have been a day off.It was supposed to have been an honest-to-goodness, designated, 'mark it on the calendar, boys!' day off where nothing was supposed to happen. They had monitored (And Jack meant he and Tosh by they) the earth and its surrounding spaces for weeks, making sure that nothing was coming, or already here so that they could all take a personal day, and they all had their plans. Jack included. (There was a pretty half-human thing that lived not two streets down and Jack had its number on speed-dial.) He had sent them home, the evening before, explicitly taking them all aside and telling them, "Don't come in."
He had said that, those exact words. And then he had to add on, just tacked onto the end, "Unless there's an emergency."
... Nearly as bad as 'nothing can possibly go wrong'; those words.
And so, Jack had stepped out into the streets of Cardiff full of upmost confidence in the fact that nothing would happen, and had prepared himself for what had promised to be a very good time, knowing that the other members of Torchwood were planning to do… well, not quite the same, but something similar. So he really should have expected it, but as has been stated, he thought it was going to be a day off.
He stepped out of the base and was blasted by a fresh breeze coming off the river, which he breathed in deeply, a smile on his chiseled features, hands in his large overcoat's pockets, satisfaction in the sigh he let out. He took a step forward.
As if on cue, the sky exploded.
There was a tremendous rattling boom as the ground around him shook and split, a hole the size of a human appeared in the blue just above his head, and through it a girl was rather unceremoniously dropped, like a giant of a giant had decided she wasn't an interesting enough toy for him. Jack leapt into action, throwing himself forward and under where she fell, spreading his arms and shouting "I've got you! Don't worry!" into the early morning breeze. He lunged forward and she landed in his arms, nearly jarring them off his body, but somehow he managed to hold on, squeezing her almost stick-like thinness close to him, feeling her ribs under his fingers and through her clothes. Whoever she was, she hadn't eaten for a long while. Jack slowed from his mad dash to catch her and stopped, moments before he would have run into the pier barrier, holding the girl and finally looking down at her, meeting her hazel eyes with his own. She was so thin that he had barely recognized her, and suddenly wasn't surprised that he hadn't from her figure alone.
"Hello." She said, in a familiar Londoner accent. She sounded breathless, woozy and a little sick.
"Hello." He replied, sounding and feeling slightly shell shocked.
"Hello." She said again.
There was an awkward moment in which they both looked at each other, identical sheepish grins on their faces, identical slightly nervous laughs escaping them as Jack helped the girl to stand up properly, keeping his arm out to balance her.
And then, Rose Tyler fainted.
"Now I remember why this is so familiar." Captain Jack Harkness said, waving his free hand at the unconscious girl in his arms for emphasis.
Then he sighed, scooped her up properly into his arms and carried her, bridal style, back towards the Torchwood base.
"Rose Tyler." He said, shaking his head and barking out a disbelieving laugh. "So much for a day off." He stepped into the base and tried not to jostle the girl in his arms. He only hoped that Owen would take the interruption to the schedule better than he expected the man to.
"An emergency." Owen snapped, in his cockney drawl. "Don't come in unless it's an emergency, that's what I believe you told us, yeah." He pointed an accusing finger at Jack's chest. "What do you call this then? Where's the emergency?"
Jack remained silent as Gwen jumped vehemently to his defense. "Oh, don't be like that Owen, I'm sure Jack has a perfectly good reason for all of this, don't you Jack?"
"I bet it's because he missed us." Owen replied, with a toothy grin shot in his brunette companion's direction. "Can't go without us for one day, you know our Captain, he doesn't know anyone else."
"I think you're mistaking him for yourself, Owen." Gwen replied sharply, giving him a look that stated she was clearly impressed by the level of stupidity that the man was displaying.
"For your information," the team doctor said, "I happened to have a lovely evening planned."
"What, with your mother?" Gwen snapped daringly.
"So what if it was?"
The room paused for a minute, even the computers seemed to whir slightly in disbelief before Ianto decided to insert his opinion. "You spent your day off with your mother?" He said, one eyebrow raised.
"Yes." Owen snapped, "Or at least I was going to before I got called in to work by mister Big Shot Captain, now wasn't I. It's better than whatever you were going to do. Polishing your silverware collection or something, Ianto?"
"Now, Owen, that was uncalled for." Toshiko said quietly, and Owen looked slightly reprimanded. Jack sent a mental thank-you in Toshiko's direction for being the voice of reason in all of this. "Jack must have had a very good reason for calling us in." Then she paused with slight uncertainty, "You do have a good reason, right?"
Jack rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but Gwen spoke first. "Of course he does. He's just got to tell us what we possibly couldn't have accounted for when planning this day off."
"So what was it, Jack?" Owen started sarcastically, "Bombs hovering in the sky? Mutated rats in the sewers, another sex monster meteorite, a…" He trailed off.
"What, what is it, Owen?" Gwen asked, looking the slightly weedy man up and down.
Owen was looking towards the door. "Oh hello." He sounded incredibly appreciative, Jack thought with pride. Even when showing signs of vast malnourishment, Rose Tyler was still a… what was that word he had heard that girl use in relation to him? Oh yes, a knockout.
All of the heads turned, and Jack, who still hadn't said anything (not for lack of trying) smiled slightly in victory. Rose stood in the doorway, a towel the only thing protecting her modesty from those in the room. It showed off her figure quite nicely, and Jack mentally congratulated himself on the idea of offering her use of the showering facilities. Ianto shot him a dirty look, and Jack mouthed 'what?' at him, wearing the biggest shit-eating grin he could manage. The others were busy looking at Rose, eyeing her warily and wondering at the security breach, no doubt.
"Jack?" Rose said quietly, and Jack looked in her direction, trying to hide his grin. The way she looked at him promised harsh retributions and he knew he had failed miserably. "Where did you put my clothes?"
Jack remembered the filthy rags that he had found her in, with disgust. "There's some clean clothes in a backpack under the pterodactyl perch, Rose." He said finally, monkey-grinning at the way her expression shifted.
"Pterodactyl?"
"You don't believe me?" He asked her, grin still firmly fixed in place, even growing from the baffled looks that his team were shooting at him 'covertly'.
She rolled her eyes, hitched her towel up a little higher, and frowned. "With all we've been through, Captain," She said solemnly, "Nothing would surprise me." She huffed at him and spun on one bare heel, showing off more of her legs than she no doubt intended, and Jack grinned. It was nothing he hadn't seen before – living on the TARDIS for those short months had meant some... unavoidable situations had occurred, but Owen looked greedily until Gwen swatted him over the head.
"Give the girl some privacy, would you?" She snapped at him.
Jack had the grace to not start laughing until Rose was out of hearing distance. He felt this disapproval of the others on him, all except Owen, who was looking in the direction the girl had gone with a bemused expression on his features.
"An explanation, Jack." Gwen demanded eventually, and Owen's head snapped around as Jack stopped laughing. "Who is she and what is she doing in Torchwood."
"More importantly, why didn't she seem surprised that we had a pterodactyl?" Toshiko added on, looking puzzled.
"You wanted an emergency, boys and girls, well there it went." Jack replied, looking all the while like a cat who had just eaten a canary dipped in a very large bowl of cream. Rose was so going to kill him.
Oh, but was it worth it.
"Right!" The Doctor said enthusiastically, banging on one of the many panels of the TARDIS with hopeless abandon. "Donna, Just a quick fuel and supply stop, and then it's back to exploring the universe we go." He smiled at her, energetically hopping around the controls, hitting what seemed like random buttons on the circular console, running a hand through his scalp and scractching at it slightly.
"Where are we stopping off then?" the ginger-haired woman said slightly sulkily, "Some sort of Martian gas station or something?" She pointed a long, slender finger at him. "They better have magazines, Doctor, and not some bizarre alien ones either."
"Nope! Just Earth." The Doctor responded brightly, ignoring the Martian quip, simply because he didn't feel like explaining the fact that he wasn't from Mars for the 'n'th time.
"Where are you going to get Blue Box fuel on Earth? DisneyLand?"
"Cardiff!" The Doctor announced confidently, "Good Ol' Cardiff. Right on top of the Rift. Best fuel there is this side of the Galaxy. Well, I say best. Best that's readily accessible anyway. There are plenty more places but there are all sorts of nasty beasts guarding those, and last time I was there I lost a bet. Don't know about you, but I don't see why chickens would be a valuable source of currency, really. Didn't make much sense at the time." He paused and thought about it. "Makes even less now, I suppose."
"CARDIFF?" Donna stood up in indignation. "All of time and space and you're taking me to Cardiff?"
"What's wrong with Cardiff?" The Doctor asked, nonplussed. "They have this great chip shop, right on the corner, and there's the Millennium Center and... no. Right. Suppose that's about it, really, but moving on. Fuel."
"I'm going to kill you." Donna said, sullenly.
The Doctor merely laughed, flicking another switch. The TARDIS gave a sickening lurch which sent Donna to the ground.
"...That's not supposed to happen." The Doctor said.
"I don't know what you're on about, Mister. The way you drive it always happens."
"Nonono." The Doctor said, and shushed her for good measure. He let his head hover over the TARDIS console. "What's wrong with you, my girl?"
"Who are YOU calling your girl!" Donna demanded, swelling up in indignant rage.
"Donna, be quiet for a minute, would you? There's something wrong with the TARDIS."
Rose heard them talking as she headed back towards the room where they all had gathered, and discreetly listened in to the words they passed amongst themselves.
"But I did a scan as soon as you called us all back!" One of the females insisted. "There was no sign of alien activity, other than the usual monitored stuff that there always is."
"That's because she's not alien." Jack replied in a voice that showed his patience was being tried.
"What about the biological scans, did they show anything?" The bad tempered, sarcastic one who'd been eyeing her off had asked.
"No, nothing." First voice again.
"Are you even listening to me? She's not alien." Jack again. Rose stood and stared at the doorway in front of her with something that resembled nervousness threatening to boil up within her. The entireity of the situation had just dawned on her, her knees were starting to shake. After so many years, and so many false starts, she had finally managed it – this was Earth, her Earth, and in that room was Captain Jack, whom she still selfishly thought of as hers, even though there had been so much distance separating them for so long.
It was all thanks to the Rift, which she had guessed would be in the same spot in her world, and had spent years trying to get across. Of course, she had felt all too silly when they had shown up and pointed out that she'd been going about it the wrong way from the start, but they'd helped her, which was frankly a lot more than she had expected from the initial greeting.
"What, nothing alien at all?" Different female voice. Welsh accent this time. "There's nothing alien about her at all? Why did you call us all in, Jack, if there's nothing alien about her at all?"
And she was back. Finally. With no clue where to begin to look, but Jack was here, seemed to be based here even, although she wasn't so certain about his working for Torchwood. She had... displeasing memories of Torchwood, or at least the one she wasn't in charge of.
Rose could hear the frown in Jack's voice as he spoke, his American accent bringing back fond memories for her, which seemed like they had occurred a lifetime ago. "None of you have actually been listening to me, have you? She's not from an alien world, she's from a parallel world. You're not supposed to be able to travel between parallel worlds, it rips apart the fabric of space and time. Emergency."
Rose sighed and leant against the wall outside of the room where they were all gathered, listening and wearing clothes which were slightly too big for her, but comfortable and practical. Easy to move in, she thought with a smile, easy to run and jump in. Whoever owned these clothes had obviously learnt the need for practicality over fashion. She smiled at the sleeve of her jumper, resisting the urge to pull at a loose thread.
"How do you know that, if, if anyone tried there'd be a hole ripped in space and time?" Sarcasm-boy snapped at Jack, and Rose decided it was time to make herself known.
"It's because you can avoid that if you're careful." Jack said as she stepped into the room. "But it takes finesse. More finesse than any human has ever had, forty times more." She walked around the table, and noted that all their attentions had shifted in her direction as she came and stood at Jack's shoulder. She tugged at the sleeve of her jumper and wished she had a belt or something to cinch around the middle and make it look less like a sack on her. "And more energy." Jack said. "Humans aren't physically capable of creating the machines necessary to traverse parallel worlds. For a start, the Void destroys any matter that tries to cross it."
"So how did she do it then?" The sarcastic one said, pointing a finger in Rose's direction. "If she's a human, from a Parallel world, how did she get here if we're not capable of the science."
"She has a name." Rose snapped at him. "And it's not she. In fact, she's going to slap you if you keep calling her she."
"Well then what is her name?" The man snapped. "Or is she too up herself to tell me it?"
Rose glared at him from over Jack's shoulder. "Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine." She snapped angrily.
He glared back, and gave her a two-fingered salute. "Start of a beautiful friendship, sweetheart."
There was a sigh from the other side of the table, and the welsh-sounding brunette waved at him dismissively. "That idiot's name is Owen." She gestured at the other members of the table in turn. "That's Ianto, that's Toshiko, Tosh for short, you already know Jack and I'm Gwen."
Rose nodded. "Rose." She said, looking around the table. "And that's all you're getting from me so don't bother trying for more."
Jack frowned at her. "She," And he grinned when Rose discreetly hit him in the shoulder "Is Rose Tyler – officially dead and unofficially stuck on a parallel world with no hope of getting back without destroying two realities. Or so I was told." He gave her a pointed look, but she refused to rise to the bait. It wasn't that she didn't want to tell him, it was that she wasn't allowed to. They had sent her off with a strict warning about the damage that world-travel could do, and she had taken them seriously. It had taken a long time for them to even find a way to make the gap big enough for her to squeeze through without destroying the weak world tie that those particular worlds had. "How did you do it, Rose?" Jack asked, when the less direct approach failed to work.
"It's amazing what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it." Rose said, grinning at him cheekily. Gwen sent her a dark look, which she raised both her eyebrows at. She patted Jack on the back. "You've just got to think long and hard."
There was a long, almost tangible pause that swept through the room.
"So are you going to tell us how you did it?" Jack asked at length.
Rose paused, as if considering it. "…No." she said. And beamed.
The Doctor frowned and scratched at his head again as he flicked another switch.
"Would you stop that?" Donna demanded, "You'll go bald, and it's bad enough that I'm travelling around with an alien, let alone a bald one."
"You know, you have the best people skills of anyone I've ever met." The Doctor said, sparing her a glance before going back to doing what he was doing.
"Thank you!" Donna said, genuinely smiling.
"I was being sarcastic. You should be used to that by now." He scratched at his head again. "Oh, what's wrong with her?! She was fine yesterday, and all her readouts are fine. It's like she doesn't want to go back to Cardiff for some reason."
"I don't blame it, really." Donna commented, sitting down on the TARDIS' chair, legs tucked under her, and hands folded into her lap. "And what do you mean it doesn't want to go to Cardiff? It's a machine, it can't want anything, can it?"
"She's alive." The Doctor sighed, scratching at his hairline again. "She can want a lot of things."
"Oh would you stop that!" Donna snapped. "It's. Annoying."
"Like certain other things." The doctor quipped, ducking around the other side of the console before Donna thought to hit him for the comment. He frowned. "It's not my fault. It's itchy."
"Then don't scratch it." Donna replied, looking at the flashing lights of the TARDIS. "I don't see how you can make sense of all this, it's completely alien to me."
The Doctor looked around the console at her and raised an eyebrow.
"...Point taken." Donna said.
He returned his attention to the TARDIS "Now why don't you want to go get fuel?"The Doctor cooed at the console, rolling what looked like a rubber ball around in a groove for a moment. "You like Cardiff, you like the twenty-first century... Something else is there. Something else you don't like." He frowned. "What don't you like? It can't be Jack, we worked all that out last time. What is it?"
"You're mad."
"Thank you for your opinion, Donna, it wasn't helpful." He looked at the TARDIS. "You know, the more you say you don't want to go there, the more I want to take you there."
He reached up a hand to his hairline again.
"Oh stop it before I check you for lice." Donna snapped.
.
A/n: ...My first Who-fic! I regretfully have moved on from the FMA fandom, I still love the show, but I've recently re-awakened my love for British TV –and it's sort of exploded into fan fiction.
Yes, this fiction takes place in the new Who verse, but some references to the classic who will be made if I can find space for them. I'm not as good with my classic as I am with my new for obvious reasons. (That is, when classic had its last series, I was seven. And shamefully not interested. –hangs head-)
I'm using Donna as the companion because Donna's series hasn't started yet, and it's going to be easiest to make a plausible story that could happen in Cannon with her. Of course, all fan fiction is AU by definition, but I like to delude myself sometimes.
Don't worry, Martha fans, Martha's in this too!
...Rose is really hard for me to write, for some reason. Sorry if she's OOC, I'm trying to get into the groove of writing her.