Title: Through the Looking Glass

Author: scgirl_317

Summary: Rose stumbles upon a secret base while dimension hopping.

A/N: I was never satisfied with Rose and Jack's reunion in Stolen Earth/Journey's End. To be perfectly honest, there was no reunion. The entire focus was on Rose and the Doctor. I have nothing against that, I'm an avid shipper in that regard, but Jack and Rose's relationship deserved a little more acknowledgement than it got. Then I got to thinking, what if the reason they were skipped over was because Jack already knew what she was up to?

A/N 2: Timeline-wise, I'd put it somewhere after Exit Wounds, and towards the end of Turn Left. Of course, I'm operating under the assumption that Donna's bubble universe was retroactive, and events in that universe happened concurrently with events in ours.

Rose suppressed a sigh of frustration as the dimension cannon's portal closed behind her. She had lost count of how many worlds she had crossed, and none of them had proven fruitful. She'd come close a couple of times, returning to her original world just in time to miss him, and crossing into an alternate timeline only to hear UNIT pronounce him dead. She was travel-weary, and ready for her search to end.

She assessed her surroundings, and it appeared that she was in a bunker of some sort; the architecture reminded her of some of the older tube stations in London, and it had the feel of repurposed space. With no immediate clues as to where she was, she chose a direction and began walking. Several slightly random turns later, the corridor emptied out into a large, cavernous room, and suddenly Rose knew where she was.

She was only slightly surprised to find that this world's Torchwood had a base in Cardiff. The rift that had been closed in 1869 still existed, and likely would still spit out random aliens and debris. Of course, if this was Torchwood, than that meant...

Click!

Rose stood very still as she heard a gun being cocked very near the back of her head, raising her hands slowly.

"Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?" asked a female voice with a distinctly Welsh accent.

"I just landed here. I sort of… jumped," she replied vaguely; she still distinctly remembered what this Torchwood had done, how the Battle of Canary Wharf had ripped her away, and she was hesitant to tell them anything about the dimension cannon.

Suddenly, an alarm sounded throughout the Hub, and she could hear a door opening.

"Gwen!" shouted another Welsh voice, and there was the sound of two pairs of feet darting across the grating.

"I don't know how she got in here, but it wasn't by any usual means," the woman who was apparently named Gwen answered the new arrivals.

"And I thought I knew every nook and cranny in this place."

Rose froze at that voice. That warm, teasing, familiar voice. Slowly, so as to not startle anyone holding a gun on her, she turned around. There, dressed in clothes that looked more appropriate for a WWII period drama than an organization that studied aliens, was Jack Harkness.

"Rose," he breathed, his jaw dropping as recognition set in.

Within seconds, the two had come together, Rose throwing her arms around his neck as he lifted her from the ground. Gwen and the other Welshman looked on as the two laughed like giddy schoolchildren.

"How…?" Jack asked, setting Rose back on her feet finally.

"Long story. How are you here? When we left you, it was the year 200,100. And what are hyou doing working for Torchwood?" Rose countered, a bit of the Doctor's indignance seeping through.

"Also a long story. Suffice it to say, what you see is essentially all that is left of Torchwood," Jack replied. "Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, meet Rose Tyler."

Ianto's eyebrows shot sky high at the name, a tidbit to file away and ask Jack about later, if she got the chance. Right now, she had other concerns.

"Jack, I need to find the Doctor. Do you have any way to contact him?"

Jack cringed, remembering he'd left his "Doctor detector"—the Doctor's handy spare hand—on the TARDIS after reversing the paradox and The Year That Never Was.

"Not right off hand, no. But he'll be back. You know he comes here to refuel to TARDIS."

"I need to find him. Jack, something is coming, and we need the Doctor to help figure out how to stop it."

"What is coming?" asked Gwen, having abandoned her weapon apparently upon discovering Rose's identity.

"The darkness," Rose simply replied. "The stars are going out across all worlds, all realities. Even the Void is dead."

"That's how you got across from the parallel world," Jack realized. "Whatever is coming is causing the walls between realities to weaken."

Rose nodded grimly, the earlier joy of their reunion having been replaced by the gravity of the situation.

Her mobile beeped, and she pulled it out to read the text. Donna's ready. Time to go.

"Trouble?" Ianto asked.

"No. In fact, I may have a way to get a message through to the Doctor. I have to go."

Jack nodded, a melancholy tint to his smile, "Denfending the earth. Can't argue with that." He pulled her into his arms and whispered in her ear, "You are definitely worth fighting for."

Her pulled back and placed a sound kiss on her lips before releasing her. She didn't blush as she had on Platform One, she was too experienced for that. She returned his smile.

"Gwen, Ianto, it was nice to meet you. Jack, I'll see ya later."

And with that, she turned and walked away, fading from one world into the next.

Colonel Magambo was waiting for her with the latest readings on Donna's timeline. If these were correct, tonight would be the night that Donna came to her. Donna could carry her message across the worlds to the Doctor. And Rose's months of jumping, years of searching, would finally be at an end.

Fin

I promise that I haven't given up on Blessings and Curses, but I need to figure out how to get out of the corner that I've painted myself into. I will finish it, be assured of that much. But I have no timeline.