Hey guys! This is my new fic. Starts off in the summer of 1999-2000 and touches events in 2005 and early 2006 before kicking off again when Gabrielle first joins the ED. Some of the conon/timeline is a little off (Zoe/Bianca/Spence's arrivals etc) but it should stll flow fairly well. Enjoy!

Chapter One

1999-2000

Gabrielle Jaeger scraped her feet along the pavement of a nondescript Canberra street. Two days, and she hated the nation's capital. It was simultaneously too big and too small. Too small, because it was geographically smaller than the farm in southern New South Wales that she came from, and too big, because even for a city whose population was dwarfed by Sydney and Melbourne, the cities it was located in between, it was far more densely populated than her family farm.

She hated it.

She had been sent here to stay with relatives because her dad thought she had been spending too much time with men. Well, one man in particular – Steve Taylor. The adult that she was close to being understood why her father wasn't happy with her spending time with a man ten years older than her with less than a sterling reputation; the seventeen-year-old that she was deeply resented being moved from one location to another because of her father's judgement. How the hell did he know better than her what was best for her? Didn't it occur to him that she was old enough to make her own choices?

Not for the first time in the last year, she wished her mother was still alive. But Laura Jaeger had died a year ago from breast cancer. It was part of why Gabrielle had started seeking out the company of a man much older than her; Steve had understood her pain more than her silly high school friends who were still preoccupied with getting Paul Croft, who, as the good-looking son of the town's mayor – and the Crofts had been one of the town's founding families, who was even more prestigious than simply being the mayor – was by far the most eligible guy in Widgee, southern New South Wales.

She sighed. Country people could be so narrow-minded, and in possession of tunnel vision to boot. Not that Canberra seemed much different. Her aunt and uncle were boring. They knew nothing about teenage girls, having no children of their own. Gabrielle bet that she could pull the wool over their eyes easy. Not that she planned on – she had never been that type of girl – but with an adolescence sneer she thought that she could if she wanted to.

She entered the War Museum. Not that it was of any interest to her, but she didn't see anything else to do. She wandered aimlessly through the museum, scowling as she went. There was no-one here even close to her age. This was boring. She was going home. She would rather be at home alone than at this boring museum.

"You look bored. Your parents make you come?" came a voice, and Gabrielle looked up to see a very good-looking young man – he couldn't be much older than her and had he most dazzling green eyes which seemed to have flecks of grey in them. She blushed, realising she was staring.

"Um... no. I'm staying with relatives and have nothing to do," she admitted.

He laughed. "Canberra can be like that," he said. "But I like it."

"You – you like – all this boring stuff?" she asked incredulously.

He laughed again. "I do," he said good-naturedly. "My dad thinks I'm strange like that. So does my step-mother, for that matter. I just figure that in a few year's time, I'll be making more than them and my half-brothers combined."

Gabrielle noticed the slight stress on the half-brothers, and couldn't help but wonder if theirs was a strained relationship. She got on quite well with her own brother, although at ten, he could be quite annoying at times. She felt sad, thinking about Ben, and it showed on her face.

"Did I say something that bothered you?" he asked.

"Wasn't your fault. Just thinking about my kid brother."

"You seem a bit old to be homesick," he noted. "Not here of your own volition?"

"Hardly," she said.

He cocked his head, analysing the situation. She would about be the same age as him, maybe a year or two younger, an age where she straddled adolescence and adulthood. It was an age he would have remembered, had he ever had the chance to enjoy his adolescence – or his childhood. But that was neither here nor there for the time being. "Let me guess," he said. "Interest from an inappropriate male?"

Gabrielle blushed. "How did you know?" she asked.

"Right age, attractive girl – it was the most obvious choice. How inappropriate was he?"

"Ten years older," she admitted.

He whistled appreciatively. "Sorry, but I'm on your folks side here."A forlorn look crossed her face, and he felt sorry for making fun of her. "Look, I don't suppose you're old enough for me to buy you a drink?" he asked. She shook her head, looking – and feeling – even more forlorn. A cute guy was asking her out for a drink, and she was too young to accept. "A coffee, then," he offered. He didn't know what it was about this girl – she was, by her own admission, under eighteen, and while he himself was only nineteen, he had no interest in people he couldn't go to the pub with – but there was something about her that made him want to reach out to her.

"A coffee would be nice," she said shyly. Then realising that they didn't even know each other's names, she said, "I'm Gabrielle. Gabrielle Jaeger."

He smiled and offered his hand. "Jack Quade," he said. They shook hands, and when he withdrew his hands from hers, he brought his arm lightly around her back, guiding her out of the museum and towards a small coffee shop he knew that almost met his exacting standards.

Gabrielle found herself telling Jack everything leading up to her semi-exile in Canberra – her mum dying, her interest in Steve, his reciprocated interest. "It was nice," she admitted. "He understood me better than boys my age – or girls my age, for that matter."

Jack looked thoughtful. "I've never lost a parent, so I can't say that I understand, but I get that it must have been terrible. But this guy – please don't take this the wrong way, but there's no way that someone who's twenty-seven would be interested in a seventeen-year-old for any reason that would withstand any moral inspection. Hell, I'm nineteen and it would take a pretty special seventeen-year-old to interest me."

Gabrielle blushed at that. "I must seem like a kid to you," she said.

"You? No. There's something about you that seems older than you are. More –" Jack mulled over his choice of words. Sophisticated was the wrong one, because Gabrielle lacked the glamour of several of the seventeen-year-olds that populated Sydney's high schools, let alone that of a young woman a few years older. And yet there was an intelligence and sense of groundedness – interest in twenty-seven-year-old men notwithstanding – that Jack didn't see often, let alone in seventeen-year-olds. "Mature," he offered.

Gabrielle blushed again. "I'm not very pretty," was the first thing she thought to say. The funny thing was, she and Paul Croft were good friends, so he paid her the kind of attention that most of the teenage girls in Widgee envied, but as far as the other guys went, they paid more attention to people like her best friend Ashley.

Jack wasn't stupid enough to argue that; she was never going to be a rival for Elle McPherson, and to pretend otherwise would only be condescending an intelligent girl. "Looks aren't everything," he said. "My step-mother used to be a stunner, and she's so miserable that she drank away her looks. I'd rather be with someone who's smart and loyal and makes me laugh."

Smart, loyal, makes me laugh. He could be describing her. She found herself blushing again, felt for an idiot for blushing so much, and blushed even harder. "I'm sorry, am I embarrassing you?" Jack asked.

"No... it's just that I'm not used to being around someone like you. They don't make boys like you back home." Then she blushed again. "Sorry, I didn't mean to call you a boy." Jack might be only nineteen, but there was no mistaking him for a boy.

"It's OK. And for what it's worth, I think it's cute. You don't have any pretentions. I like that. This city is teeming with pretentious people. I like that you're not like that."

She tried not to blush again, without much success. "So – you've always lived here?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Sydney boy, born and bred. I go to uni here."

"Then why are you still here? It's Christmas holidays. I thought all the unis were closed."

"They are. There's skeleton staff and some of the boarding units are set aside for people like me, who don't go home between semesters." There was a sad, bitter note to that explanation that made Gabrielle wonder if he was an orphan. "God, no," Jack said. "My parents are still alive – or at least, I think my mum still is. She, uh, left me with my dad when I was eighteen months old." Even to Gabrielle's naive ears, left meant abandoned. "I don't get along with my dad and step-mum. I have a scholarship, board and stipend, so I may as well stay where I am." He shrugged like it was no big deal that he had no family worth speaking to. "Canberra's not as bad as it first seems – and believe me, I thought it was a hole when I first got here. If AUMEL didn't have the reputation that it does, I would have turned around and taken up my University of Sydney scholarship."

Gabrielle's eyes widened in appreciation. Even a backwards country girl like her had heard of the Australian University of Medicine, Engineering and Law. And he had gotten a scholarship? "You must be really smart," she said.

"I guess," he said, like getting a scholarship to a world-renowned university was no big deal. "Intelligence isn't really appreciated where I come from. I think my step-mother would have forgiven me sooner for being the next Hitler than for being smarter than her son."

Gabrielle's eyes went wide. While she understood in her head that some families didn't get along, could be cruel to one another and make it vital for them not to live together, her own upbringing had been so loving and sheltered that she struggled to understand it in reality. "You're joking."

"Fraid not. But it's no big deal. It's just made me work harder to get what I want. And one of these days, I'm going to be making far more money than he ever did and he and my stepmother can whistle for their retirement home down payment." He spoke this with just the right amount of pleasure that made Gabrielle smile.

They ended up whiling away the afternoon with easy conversation. Jack was surprised at how intelligent, informed and unself-absorbed Gabrielle was. Even though he was technically one himself, he found teenagers – particularly teenage girls – to be vacuous and dull. If he never had to listen to someone rave about Britney Spears or Gucci handbags again, he would consider himself lucky. And she was tall, too, only ten centimetres or so shorter than him, and given that he was one-ninety, that was saying something. Certainly, if he was to consider dating someone younger than him, it would be someone like Gabrielle.

"I'll take you home," he offered when he realised how late it was. "When are your aunt and uncle expecting you?"

"They don't care, as long as I'm home for dinner – or tell them before that I won't be. I'd appreciate a lift, though. I'm used to being able to go wherever I like on a quad. The road rules are daunting, let alone mastering public transport."

Jack laughed at that. "Let me guess – you can drive, you just don't have a piece of paper from the Department of Transport that says you can?" he asked. Gabrielle nodded sheepishly. Growing up on a farm, she had learnt at an early age how to operate several different pieces of machinery and could handle a four-wheel drive as well as a tractor or quad bike – she just didn't, as Jack had said, have that piece of paper from the Department of Transport. "My dad's a mechanic, and while I'm a total disappointment in his eyes for what he sees as my complete ineptitude with anything mechanical, I grew up with some knowledge of cars – how they run, how to fix them, how to drive them. By the time I actually got my licence, I was somewhat over it. I also inherited my dad's somewhat casual attitude towards the road rules," he admitted.

"Should I be worried?" she asked.

"You want to walk home?"

"I'll take my chances," she decided. She and Jack continued to talk on the way home. "Well... thanks for the lift – and the coffee," she said shyly when he dropped her off at her aunt and uncle's house. She gave it a few seconds, hoping Jack might say or do something, then when he didn't, unbuckled her seatbelt and let herself out of the car.

Jack watched her for a few seconds before he realised she hadn't acted the way he was used to women acting. He was used to them being forward and letting them know that they were interested in him in the form of phone numbers and invitations. But Gabrielle wasn't like most women – that he had already figured out. "Gabrielle," he called out the door. She stopped and turned around so she was facing him, then stepped back towards him when she saw the expression on his face was an interested, welcoming one. Jack quickly scribbled his number on the first piece of paper he could find – which happened to be his semester results, but he had already known he had gotten all HDs, so it was no biggie. "Look, if you want, give me a call – Canberra's not too bad a place after a while, and I know my way around. That is, if you want to."

Gabrielle almost snatched the paper off him in her eagerness. "That sounds good," she said, trying to keep the grin off her face. Steve Taylor was far from her mind as she turned back around and headed into the house. Once she was in the house, she squealed with delight. A good-looking med student was interested in her. It was almost too good to be true!

"I can't let you spend this kind of money on me," Gabrielle said a few days later over dinner – or, rather, what Jack had intended to be dinner, and what Gabrielle was equally intending not to be dinner. She had never been to dinner at a city restaurant before, and at these prices, she never intended on doing it.

"It's fine. I wanted to take you somewhere nice."

"You're a student, you can't exactly be flush," she protested.

"For a student who doesn't get a cent from his parents, I do quite well," he said. "My scholarship, board and meal plan means I have practically no expenses – although whoever budgeted for my meal plan must have been using an anorexic vegetarian as their standard. Then I get Centerlink and cash-in-hand tutoring. It's more than what I need, given it's just me, and it means that between semesters I can have fun."

Gabrielle smiled. It all sounded so reasonable when he explained it like that. She shivered with delight. When she had called Jack, she had thought that maybe he would show her around Canberra or something – not a date. He had asked her out on a date. She, Gabrielle Jaeger, who was hardly the prettiest girl around even by Widgee standards, was on a date with a very good-looking medical student from the biggest, most cosmopolitan city in the country – and he wanted to go on a date with her.

"What?" Jack asked when he saw her smiling dreamily.

"Nothing," she said. "I just – always thought my first date would be in the town pub. There's not exactly a variety of things to do, places to go."

"I always thought my first date would be one of the working-class pubs around my area – I mean, the area I grew up in," Jack admitted. "There wasn't much more beyond that and McDonalds."

"Well, you have us beat on the McDonalds," she said, then she realised what Jack had meant. "Wait – this is your first date?" she asked. Jack nodded slightly, and Gabrielle was flabbergasted. "But – but – you're so – I would have thought you've had plenty of girlfriends," she said.

"I don't date," he said casually, and Gabrielle was left under no illusions that although he didn't date, he was hardly a virgin. "At least not before tonight." And there was a note in his voice that made Gabrielle squirm with delight. Was there something about her that interested Jack enough to take her out, even though there were far more beautiful women out there who he wasn't interested in dating?

The night went well – fantastically well. It was way beyond Gabrielle's greatest fantasies about what her first date would be like... and Jack was way beyond her fantasies about what her first boyfriend would be like. She blushed slightly at that. One date hardly made a relationship, she knew. It was just that she got on so well with Jack that it was difficult not to think of a future with him. He was intelligent and sophisticated without making her feel immature. E made her think and made her laugh – all in the space of a few hours.

Afterwards, they went for a walk along the foreshore before he took her home. "I had a really good time," he said when he walked her to the door, and was surprised by how much he meant it. 'Really good time' didn't really cover it; he couldn't remember having this much fun – good, clean fun – in his whole life, and he would never have thought he could enjoy himself like this with someone who wasn't even old enough to drink. She was intelligent and insightful way beyond her age, and had an honesty and complete lack of pretentions that he found enchanting. He had thought he was happy with women who sought knowledge and information as obsessively as he did, and yet – Gabrielle was nothing like the women he usually socialised with – dated was far too kind a word for it – yet tonight had been the perfect night. He could see himself dating her; he could see her as his girlfriend.

"Me, too," she said. She shivered in anticipation. Was Jack going to kiss her? What did he expect of her? He had admitted that he didn't date, although he was hardly a virgin, which meant he had to engaged in casual sex and friends-with-benefits arrangements, which meant that he slept with women without dating them – so what would he expect of her, since he had actually taken her out on a date and paid and everything?

Jack leaned in to kiss her. Instinctively, he knew that it was her first kiss – Christ, the girl had barely known what to do when he had gone to take her hand – and was as gentle and non-threatening as he knew how – far more so than he thought himself capable of. He kissed her on the lips very softly, closed-mouth, with all the heat he might have demonstrated towards a sister, had he had one. He felt in her body language – the way she trembled slightly in a way he knew was a good thing, the way her breathing got very shallow – that she wanted it. He ran his tongue over her lips, savouring the taste of her, before gently probing her mouth with it. She met his tongue eagerly – if a touch awkwardly – and kissed him back as well as she could manage given she hadn't done it before.

It wasn't difficult to get the hang of it, especially with someone as patient and understanding as Jack was, and before too long, they were kissing against the front door. After a few minutes, she got a little more confident and brought her hands up to the back of his head, running her fingers through his hair. He felt – and smelt, and tasted – clean, like soap and shampoo and toothpaste that were actually breath mints. Whatever it was, it was heavenly, and no fantasy in the world could have prepared her for this.

He ran his hands the length of her bare arms and brought them around her back, drawing her tightly against him so she was wedged between his body and the wall – and it was hard to tell which was harder, although Jack felt far more comfortable than the heavy oak door. She couldn't think of anything she would rather be doing than kissing Jack. It felt so wonderfully warm and sexy without being sleazy... she felt Jack dig his fingers slightly into the waistband of her skirt, and tensed slightly, remembering what she had thought just minutes before – what was Jack expecting of her? "Jack," she said softly, torn between pulling away and cooling things down a little and continuing with the wonderful kissing and maybe giving him the wrong idea. "I, um..."

Jack knew from her tone exactly what she was trying to say. He made the decision for her and pulled away. "I understand," he said softly. "I don't want you to feel like you have to do anything."

"But – you must be used to – you must have expectations," she said, suddenly feeling miserable for all that she had felt wonderful less than a minute before.

He cocked his head and looked at her inquisitively. He felt a sudden pang of conscience. She certainly wasn't like anyone else he had dated – there was that word again, dated. He didn't date. He just slept around – slept around with women far more experienced than Gabrielle. Hell, he wasn't sure that he could even call Gabrielle a woman. She was certainly younger, and less experienced, then anyone he had come into contact with in the past three years – and that included himself. She was an innocent girl with no real idea of how ugly human beings could behave towards one another, and he should sent her back to the country life she was familiar with to find someone who was just as ignorance of the ugliness of human beings as she was.

And yet, he couldn't bring himself to do that.

"What I've expected in the past has nothing to do with what I expect now," he said, finding that he meant it. "I like you and I don't want to hurt you by making you do something you don't want to. Whatever you want to do – you set the pace."

The look of relief on her face was worth any uncertainty he felt about being able to restrain himself to go at Gabrielle's pace. "I'd like it if you kissed me some more," she said hopefully.

"Done," he said, and leaned in to kiss him again.

"Who's the kid?" Bianca Miller asked, watching Jack and Gabrielle over her cigarette and gin and tonic at a university quiz night. It was supposed to be a dry event, but the organisers of AUMEL events had long since given up on trying to make their study-hard-play-hard students adhere to that. They had means of smuggling sneaking in alcohol that hardened alcoholics hadn't heard of.

"Some girl he's been seeing," her 'friend' – doppelganger was closer to it, because even at AUMEL they had social hierarchies, and Bianca's looks and intelligence guaranteed her a place as one of the most popular students, despite her complete lack of other qualities, and naturally a popular girl needed doppelgangers – Jane Grey said disparagingly. She didn't get what Jack saw in Gabrielle, either. She was plain. And so tall. OK, so that kind of worked when you were as tall as Jack, but still, women weren't supposed to be that tall. It was unfeminine.

"Haven't seen her around much," Bianca said, thinking that even so, it was more than he was usually seen with one particular woman.

"That's 'cos she's only seventeen," Jane said with a giggle.

Bianca's eyes bugged out. "What?" she asked. Jack was notorious for only seeing women older than him. Which wasn't that surprising when you thought about it, given he had started uni when he was sixteen so pretty much every female he came into contact with was older than him.

"Seventeen," Jane said. "That's why you haven't seen much of her. She can't come to any of the over-eighteen things." And given that AUMEL students tended to study hard and play just as hard, most of their socialising was done in the pubs and clubs of Canberra.

Bianca took a long drag of her cigarette. It was a foul habit, she knew, and as a medical student, she really ought to know better. She kept meaning to give it up, but at times like this – "She got anything to recommend for her?" she asked.

"Country girl from some place near the border, I think," Jane said. She knew, actually, but didn't want to appear too informed, and therefore, too desperate. AUMEL gossip was surprisingly well-informed on Gabrielle Jaeger, given that she wasn't a student there and Jack was his usual tight-lipped self about the person he was involved with. "Quite well off for farmers, but hardly wealthy," Jane said, as if no-one had ever gotten substantially wealthy from farming.

"I wonder what he sees in her, then," Bianca said, carefully concealing the jealousy she felt. She hadn't managed to get Jack to look at her twice, let alone take her out, let alone take her as his plus-one to university events. And they would make such a good couple, too. Both highly intelligent and extremely good looking. True, he was a couple of years younger than her, but given that he was so smart and so driven that they were in the same year now, Bianca thought she could overlook that. So it infuriated her that he had barely looked at her in all the months she had been trying to get his attention, and now he had showed up to a university social event with some schoolgirl on his arm with absolutely nothing to recommend for her.

Jane shrugged. "She's probably good in bed," she suggested. That was Jane's answer to why any man would be interested in any woman other than her.

Bianca laughed meanly. "I doubt it. Look at her. She's probably still a virgin." She eyed Gabrielle's wholesomeness with contempt. She looked like what she was – a teenage farmgirl with no interest in looking older or more sophisticated than what she was. And Jack seemed captivated with her. What was up with that?

"Who's that girl?" Gabrielle asked Jack a little nervously. She wasn't feeling very comfortable. She knew Jack meant well, trying to include her in his uni stuff when he could, but she found herself far removed from these highly intelligent, hard-studying AUMEL students.

"What girl?" Jack asked. He was bored. A few weeks ago, he had enjoyed being at something like this, and would have been right up there, sneaking alcohol in and laughing at the organisers who tried to stop it. But now he would have been quite content to cuddle up on the couch with Gabrielle watching videos. Gabrielle pointed, none too subtly. Jack didn't call her on it. He liked that she didn't care if she appeared to be graceless in pointing; she simply saw it as the simplest way to express her thoughts. "Oh, her. Blonde's Jane Grey. Not sure on the brunette – Bree, or something like that."

"You, uh, have a history with her? Jane, I mean?" Gabrielle asked. Normally forthright, she was always a little hesitant about asking about Jack's history with women. She knew he had a lot of sexual experience – you didn't need to ask to know that. She didn't like asking about the past, because she was afraid to draw attention to the fact that she was nothing like the intelligent, beautiful, sexually experienced women that he had previously been involved with. Certainly, it didn't seem to be an issue – he had never pushed her to do anything, and often needed to be verbally encouraged to take things a degree or two further – but she could never shake the feeling that going so slow wasn't particularly comfortable for him. Like it was so high school.

Jack made a face. "God, no. They're part of this clique of girls I try to steer clear of. I only remember her name 'cos Jane Grey was the first Queen of England, and that Jane –" he jerked his head in the blonde's direction, "certainly acts like she's a queen." Gabrielle laughed at that. She and Jack had been seeing each other for less than a month, but she had already realised that Jack loved to learn, and not just about medicine, and he had an understanding of a broad range of subjects, including history. It didn't surprise her that he would remember someone's name because they shared it with a pivotal, if little know, historical figure.

Jack stretched and yawned. He was really bored, and having Gabrielle leaning into him like that was only making him want to be alone with her even more. "What do you say we ditch this place," he said.

"But – these are your friends," she protested, although there was nothing she would rather do that ditch these highly driven intellectuals, many of whom looked down on her for her family being involved in something as lowly as farming, and spend the rest of the night with Jack.

Jack shrugged. 'Friends' was putting it a bit too strongly. He didn't make friends too easily; his childhood had scarred him from getting to intimately involved with people too quickly – with the exception of Gabrielle. No-one would miss him too much, and the ones that did would understand. Besides, he was well aware of the esteem he was held in as the current 'boy wonder' – his IQ was among the highest in a university known for attracting the best and brightest not only in Australia but around the world, and he was only nineteen to boot. So long as he continued to bring in the HD's, he was allowed to blow off informal social events like this. "Let's split," he said. It didn't take him long to say his goodbyes and usher Gabrielle out of the place, his arm wrapped firmly around her waist, announcing to the world that she was his – and he was hers.

Bianca watched him go. So did several other people. Word was getting out that Jack Quade, who, by his own admission, didn't date, had been seeing the same girl for nearly a month now – and most likely not even sleeping with her. What he saw in her, no-one was sure, but it had galled more than a few women who hadn't gotten past a few nights of casual sex with him – if they had gotten him to pay them attention at all.

Bianca was in the latter category. And she couldn't stand the fact that this teenaged country hick who was at least five years younger than her, not to mention vastly less sexually experienced, could capture and hold Jack's interest like that, while Jack kept calling her 'Bree' and 'Bridget'. It didn't make her want Jack any less, though; in fact, it only made her eyes gleam competitively. Whatever charms Gabrielle held, they would pale eventually; she lacked the polish, intelligence and sexual experience that Bianca knew she possessed. Whatever trip Jack was on right now, he would tire of Gabrielle before too long. And if it was too long for Bianca's liking, well, she could always help him tire of her.