Both Sides Now
After the events of Children of Earth, Jack finds himself in a strange place with some achingly familiar faces. Can he look at his life from another side?
Canon pairings, re-imagined (which in Jack's case doesn't narrow it down much); rated M for language and in anticipation of future developments.
(title credit: Joni Mitchell)
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Chapter one
There was nothing left.
Worse than that: there was a shitload of debris and junk and dust that had once been a whole helluvah lot of something, and now was less than rubble. Twisted metal and pieces of structural supports lay tangled together with the remnants of pilfered artifacts, the ruined remains of centuries worth of work. Paper files vaporized, computers reduced to sand and pools of plastic, and who knows how many scattered human remains, most assuredly some of them his own.
Pleasant.
Jack kicked his way through the crater that had once been the Hub, his office, his home, his life. Several stories lay pancaked together, collapsed on top of any deeper vaults where his late colleagues and his more sensitive archives might still be buried and salvageable if he could get to them. Someone had picked through the majority of the wreckage, and he hoped it had been Gwen and whatever team she might have cobbled together, rather than the assholes from UNIT. Anything interesting or useful had been combed out months ago. Now it was just a mass grave, a pit that had swallowed his life's work, the ground zero of a battle that had claimed his lover and his grandson alike.
And with them, his connection to everything that had mattered.
Jack fought his way downward through the mess, further caking dust and debris into his pants and coat. And fuck all, no one was going to offer to have them dry cleaned for him. Somewhere down here, somewhere buried in all this mess, was a box he'd kept in his personal safe. Small and innocuous, and filled with several human lifetimes worth of memories and tokens—nothing Gwen or UNIT or anyone else would have cared about. But it was all he had left. The 456 had seen to that.
For the millionth time, he cursed the Doctor, selfish goddamn alien with his ability to fix timelines and his complete inability to be anywhere near when and where Jack needed him. Rumor now was that he'd gone and regenerated. Pity, too. Jack had a few rather body-specific fantasies about taking his anger out on the Time Lord in ways that generally involved violence and then sex, and then make-up sessions with the two put together.
Although deeper down, he had to admit he'd be glad just to see the Doctor again. Funny how one's life seemed more normal and bearable if it contained another time-traveling immortal with a knack for losing everything he loved.
Dislodging a slab of concrete, his fingers felt the tingle of the rift energy, crackling near what had been the heart of the Hub. Uncontrolled by any manipulator, the energy thrummed against his flesh, raising the hairs on his arms and at the back of his neck. This much rift energy, this uncontrolled, would have weevils running through the city in no time.
Jack scuffled in the rubble around him, trying to find something he could use as a shield between the raw rift and the open air. A piece of twisted metal that had been part of the manipulator itself gleamed at him an arm's length away, and Jack grabbed on to it. Leaning back to use his weight against it he pulled hard, falling back as the metal came free, dislodging a little more of the material.
And opening the rift a crack wider.
Energy sizzled around Jack, sent him spinning and hurtling, without moving him from where he'd landed, sprawled in the bowl of the crater. He felt molecules rending, tearing, splitting, felt himself stretched and mangled and thrown, heard the howl of voices, of shouting, of roaring silence, of colliding planets, of rushing traffic.
And abruptly, nothing. Nothing but cool, fresh air against his face. Nothing above him, nothing beside him except a panoramic view of a city skyline, and most importantly, nothing below him.
Nothing for a good five or six hundred feet, anyway.
Oh hell. This was really going to hurt.
Jack closed his eyes, his head throbbing against the whistling rush in his ears, the momentum of the fall, and the pavement rushing up to meet him.
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Jack's first awareness was the prickling sensation of his limbs and ligaments re-knitting, a feeling not unlike that of body parts waking up after a loss of circulation—if you took that sensation and multiplied it by several million and added the sharp stabs of pain in each and every nerve ending below his mid-back. Ah, spinal injuries. Lovely.
The pain mounted and receded, and his lungs patched enough to hold air, and he was gasping, jerking up, eyes wide, and then collapsing back.
He'd expected to see the skyline above him, to feel the concrete sidewalk against his back, but he was indoors, in a room so bright it burned the backs of his eyes, lying on a slightly padded table. A hospital? A morgue? Not again. He hated having to explain himself to the night watchmen in morgues. Always freaked them out. Except the necrophiliacs; they got a kick out of him.
"I think he's alright," a voice said to his left. A familiar voice, soft, feminine, laced with a London accent thick enough to make him want to try to stand a spoon in it. "Can you hear me, Jack?" she asked, and her breath stirred near his cheek. She was close.
He groaned.
"Articulate as always," another voice chimed in, this one doubly-familiar, the stuff of dreams, of legends. Cool fingers brushed the pulse-point in his wrist, betraying a gentleness not evident in the cheeky tone.
Jack's eyes snapped open, watering against the white lights above him. Squinting and blinking, he looked right, confirming as best he could the outline of the man who had spoken. The silhouette was hard to make out, but it was lanky and had hair jutting out everywhichway. It was, in fact, a sight for sore eyes.
"Doctor!" Jack gasped, hoping he sounded at least a little bit jaunty, and trying to flash his best smile, the one that made his dimples stand out.
"Captain." The Doctor gave him a half-grin and dropped a wink.
Jack concentrated on the muscles in his neck, and swung his head to the other side. Rose was seated in a chair by his head, nibbling the fingers of one hand as she watched him. "Rose," he said in awe. "Good to see ya, Rose Tyler."
"Oi, don't even think about it," the Doctor warned.
But Rose beamed back at him. "Feeling better?" she asked.
He propped himself up on his elbows and took in his surroundings, a medical sort of examination room.
"Good thing we found you first," Rose offered, her face clouding with seriousness again. "Brought you in here to wake up, rather than out on the street. You were drawing quite a crowd."
"Always do," he said, flashing another of his most dazzling smiles and sitting up, swinging his legs over the edge of the table, Doctor-side. "So." He looked at the Time Lord, trying to gage his relative point in Jack's timeline. He looked… younger in some ways, less strained and anguished than the last time they'd met, but in other ways older, actually physically a little bit older. "When am I?"
The Doctor furrowed his brows in genuine concern. "It's been about three years for us since Rose and I last saw you, Jack." Jack's own frown deepened. This wasn't making sense. The Doctor and Rose were only together for about a year after they'd all parted at the Bad Wolf Corporation. "The problem is really not so much the when. It's the where."
"You're in our world, Jack," Rose said softly behind him.
Jack turned to her, not understanding. "Of course I'm in your world. Where else would I be?"
"No, Jack. Our world. Mine. His. He," Rose nodded across the table at the Doctor, "is not the Doctor. Not the proper one." There was a huff behind him, and Rose glanced over Jack's shoulder apologetically. "Well, you're not; not the Doctor he thinks you are. Jack, this is not your world."
Oh shit. Jack was beginning to understand. "Parallel universe?" he asked, and Rose nodded. He whirled back to the Doctor. "Half-human?" he asked, and the Doctor-twin nodded. "Fuck."
"Indeed," the Doctor—whoever—said. "Unless that was a suggestion," he amended after a pause. "In which case, maybe later."
"I'm gonna hold you to that," Jack promised half-heartedly.
"Bet you would, too," the other man said.
"So how did I—how do I…" Jack faltered. Oh. He was beginning to see the reason for all the frowning. Clearly they hadn't been that concerned about whether or not he'd survived the fall; they'd seen him come through worse. "You don't know do you?"
The Doctor stand-in shook his head. "If we knew that…"
"We'd have crossed the dimensions a long time ago," Rose finished.
Trapped, then. At least for now. "So where exactly am I, then?" Jack asked, trying to recall the flash of skyline as he fell. "I mean, in this world. Is this London? Cardiff?"
"London," Rose answered. "Specifically, you're in Torchwood Tower, in the offices of a highly secret organization, where we work fighting aliens and protecting the crown."
Jack gaped at her. "I'm in Torchwood London? The Torchwood attached to the other Torchwood, to Canary Wharf?" Rose was nodding. "You," he stared at the Doctor-double in disbelief, "you work for Torchwood?"
"Well," the man shifted uncomfortably, running his hand through his hair. "Advise them really. Offer expert input. I'm a civilian."
"He means he sits at a desk," Rose clarified.
"No weapons. Not a field agent," the Doctor said. "But on the bright side, if there's a place with the resources we need to try to get you home, this is it. And, it doesn't hurt that you have the cleverest bloke in this Universe working on the problem."
"And my team's top-notch," Rose said proudly. "You'd be proud of them, Captain."
"Which reminds me!" The Doctor snapped his fingers, his face lighting up like a fluorescent bulb. "We've got a person here we thought you might like to meet so long as you're stuck here. One of the agents in the office. Brilliant; makes a fantastic cup of coffee."
He was grinning wickedly, nodding over Jack's head to Rose, who had crossed to the door to open it and lean out into the hall.
"Oi, you," she said to an unseen passer-by. "Go fetch Jones."
Martha too? Jack wondered. He glanced back at the Doctor who was grinning like he had swallowed a—
Oh.
Jones.
Torchwood London.
The bottom fell out of Jack's stomach.
