The phone rang, its ringing sound startling Jack from his dazed stupor. He came to with a start, immediately cursing the obstructive bureaucrat who had insisted in landlines for the Torchwood office. Here they were, an organization dedicated with dealings with aliens, most of them futuristic, stuck using landlines.
He reached over and grabbed the handset in one swift movement, cutting it off in the middle of the third rang. "Captain Jack Harkness," he purred into the receiver.
There was a long silence. Then, "Jack? Is that you?" The voice was female and couldn't have belonged to someone older than their early twenties. It was also decidedly unfamiliar.
She knew him? Jack had a good memory - living through thousands of years did that to a person. "I didn't know there were any other Captain Jack Harkness's working in Torchwood," he drawled.
A sigh of relief. "Thank god. Jack, I really need your help."
Jack grinned. "Depends on what kind of help you're looking for, beautiful."
A brief silence. "God, please don't. That's just fucking wrong – that and the Doctor would probably flay you alive if he found out you tried to flirt with me," the voice continued, now sounding slightly disgusted.
"Doctor?" Now, that was surprising. He raised an eyebrow. "Do I know you?" Nope, the voice definitely wasn't familiar.
"Er. Hell. That's the thing, I don't know. He never told me in which year I met you, and I know we're in 2009 right now, so I might actually be ahead of you in the timeline –"
This was all too familiar to Jack, who had been involved with time travel almost his entire life. "Hey, slow down. How did you meet me? Let me see if you can jumpstart my memories."
A deep breathe. "Okay. I think it was… a New Year's party, or something. The TARDIS landed us here for some reason, and the Doctor was freaking out over crossing his own timeline or something. But it turned out that he didn't have anything to worry about. You were pretty surprised, though. He didn't look like he was supposed to, apparently? I don't fucking know, I don't remember it that clearly. But Martha was there –"
"Got it." Jack snapped his fingers triumphantly. "It was last year, I think. Doc's been getting younger and younger. Thirteenth incarnation, right? Looked like a teenager?"
"Uh, I don't know. I've only ever met the one." A pause. "He had brown hair, right? And glasses – not the brainy specs, or whatever he used to call them – actual glasses he needed."
"That's the one." He squinted in thought. "But that would mean you were – Wow. You grew up. You must have been what, eight?"
"Twelve! I was just small for my age, alright?" The voice said, annoyed. "Yeah, I grew up. The Doctor aged a bit, too. That's usually what happens when time passes, you know."
Okay, that explained a lot. The Doctor had followed the kid around like some overprotective parent, glaring at anyone he deemed a threat. No, not parent – the physical age gap was too small for that. An older brother, maybe.
Though, judging from the short explanation the Doctor had given him after the party, maybe that overprotectiveness was warranted. He told him that he wasn't in the habit of taking companions as young as her, but the circumstances were… special.
The girl had been from the twenty-ninth century, shortly before the solar flares that had devastated the planet, with an addict of a mother and a father rotting in the local prison. She had helped him on another of his 'saving-the-world' adventures and refused to leave, and, semi-reluctantly, the Doctor had let her stay.
She didn't have anyone else, he had defended. I couldn't leave her there.
I'm not judging, Jack had reassured. I would have done the same.
"What happened?" He asked, reaching for a pen and a notepad. "How can I help?"
She hesitated, slightly. "I need you to come to Manhattan."
"…Manhattan?" Jack raised an eyebrow. "What's going on in Manhattan?"
"Nothing, it's just, you know the Doctor. He got himself in some trouble again, and – Do you remember when Martha told me about her time traveling with the Doctor? When she complained about having to pretend to be his maid?" A pause. "He… He did it again."
Jack cursed. "He used the Chameleon Arch?" The Arch could change a Time Lord into a human, both mentally and physically. The essence, however, was saved in a – "I thought he lost the fob watch?"
"He found it, somewhere in the twentieth century. He didn't want to talk about it. The Doctor told me that he didn't want a whole repeat of last time, so he made me hold onto the fob watch for him."
"I really hope, for both of your sakes," Jack joked, "that he didn't get the great idea to make you his maid this time."
"No, thank god. I would have kicked his ass so hard –" She cut off into a strange, hysterical laugh. "No, I'm supposed to be his younger sister. He must have thought we were close enough for it to work. And I guess it did work, for the most part, only…"
"Only?" He pressed.
"We weren't supposed to be in Manhattan – apparently, something big was supposed to happen there, historically. But he – the human Doctor – went and got some high paying job at some organization there. He's a geneticist now – a brilliant one. But I think the Doctor made a mistake when he set up the Arch." A pause. "He feels wrong. Off. He's still the Doctor, but he's also… not. Sometimes, it feels like he's less human than the Doctor was."
A shiver went down his spine. "In what way?" Jack asked.
"I can't really explain it. He's normal, most of the time, but it feels like he's faking it, almost. Probably just me being paranoid, but.., he's just so cold. I tried calling him, e-mailing him, whatever communications there are in this century. He didn't answer for the past few years. I didn't even get a chance to give him the fob watch."
"You want me to come over and find out what's going on with him?"
"Yes. No. I mean, yeah, but there's something else going on too. He actually contacted me, a few months ago, and I guess I should have contacted you then –" A sigh. "Sorry. I'm just so fucking stupid, sometimes. But he asked me for help, to help him find out some things about the company he's working for. It's all weird as hell. And I did, because I'm an idiot."
"…Don't say that," Jack said. "Can you try to get him to open the fob watch? I have a feeling that whatever's after him can wait a few days."
"That's just it. I was trying to get it so I could come over, give him the watch and convince him to open it. But he just stopped replying a week or so ago. Like, completely. For some reason, he's sent me his laptop - I just got it this morning. I'm waiting until he shows up to open it. I feel like he's caught up in something too big for his own good." A strange chuckle. "Just like the Doctor, to get involved in shit like that even as a normal human."
"He does have that tendency," he agreed.
A pause. "I remember reading about Manhattan, when I was a kid. The first one, not New Manhattan, not the planet they named after it in the twenty-fourth century. ThisManhattan. They didn't go into much detail, but some kind of disaster happened - something about the city never recovering, not completely." And then, with some hesitation, "Jack, do you think what's going on now has to do with... that?"
As a Time Agent (or ex-Time Agent, nowadays) Jack had to study up on most of the major events in the past. Most of that knowledge had been erased, along with two years of memories, but he vaguely remembered Manhattan coming up more than a few times. A major disaster, resulting in countless deaths and billions of dollars in reconstruction, had happened in 2009 Manhattan. It was a strictly prohibited location for time travel. For some reason, none of his resources ever said exactly what happened to the city - a cover-up of some sort.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "The best thing we can do is to get the Doc and get out of there before whatever happens. Wait a sec." Jack covered the receiver. "Tosh!" He shouted, "Can you get me a flight to Manhattan?"
A clatter of keyboard keys. Most of Torchwood already knew not to question Jack's requests. "Yeah, sure," she replied. "For when?"
"Let's say... seven's good."
Tosh stopped. "...Jack, it's five. What happened in Manhattan that's so important that you need to get there by tomorrow?"
"It has to do with the Doctor."
She rolled her eyes. "When it comes to you, Jack, it always has to do with the Doctor." A sigh. "Got it. 1st Class, direct flight. You know there's no way in hell you could get a flight in such short notice by yourself, right?"
Jack grinned. "That's why I love you, Tosh."
She sighed exasperatedly. "At least tell your boyfriend where you're going. You don't want Ianto to make that disappointed face again, do you?"
He winced. "Yeah, I'll call him later." Once was enough. Jack spoke into the receiver again. "Alright, I should be getting there early tomorrow morning. Stay calm, alright? Don't do anything stupid. The Doc's not an idiot. He wouldn't get himself hurt that easily." Blatant lies, really. Anyone who knew the Doctor knew his terrible sense of self-preservation.
But she didn't bring it up. Maybe she wanted to believe that, too. "Thank god," was all she said, relief palpable in her tone. "Um, I should probably give you a way to find me." She reeled off an address and a cell number.
Jack jotted them down on his notepad. "Got it. What are you two now, John and Dana Smith?"
"Hah. No, actually." Dana said. "The Doctor actually fucking listened to me for once. I told him to choose an actual name for once - I'm pretty sure every one who knows him also knows that John Smith equals the Doctor. Almost two thousand years of traveling through time and space, using the same fake name. For a genius, two thousand year old alien, the Doctor can be really dense sometimes. "
"I haven't gone senile yet." Jack whistled. "Never thought I'd see the day. So, who should I be looking for?"
"You know how he goes on and on about my last name," she explained. "I told him that, seeing how he likes it so much, he might as well use it. Makes it a bit easier for me. No fake names for me - not that I needed it. I won't be born for another few centuries, anyways." A pause. "And he actually agreed."
"Wow, that's actually - he's changed a bit since I've known him. So, he's calling himself John Mercer now?"
"He made John his middle name this time - something about him never having a middle name before," Dana explained. "It's Alexander. I call him Alex."
"Alexander, from Aléxandros, meaning 'protector of men'." Jack smiled. "Yeah, that does sound like his kind of name. Alex J. Mercer. Just rolls of your tongue, doesn't it?"
A/N: I actually have no idea where I'm going with this, other than, "this isn't going to end well."
Replies to anon reviews on profile.
EDIT: I have no idea if anyone will read this, but I guess I'll post it here anyways. I get that the two fandoms is a really unlikely fuse/clash of themes, but I ended up thinking a little more about events after this.
From a reply to a review:
Completely up for interpretation, really.
There's no saying how Blacklight reacts to Time Lord energy, so it's possible that the Doctor gets out of the situation alive, and eventually ends up confronting an incredibly pissed off, homicidal sentient viral bio-weapon doppelganger. Or his human form just gets broken down into biomass and consumed, and the plot of Prototype continues as canon. Or maybe, this leads to some unholy mixture of genetically modified virus and semi-immortal alien.
Doctor Who handwave-y science might explain how P1 Alex is essentially a sentient virus. Or maybe it doesn't. I really don't know.
If I ever continue this, I would probably go for the first. But oh well.