"See You In Hell"
PROLOGUE
A/N – My second ever Dr Who fic, and my first one that is more than one chapter long! It's set after Doomsday, and is mainly about Rose's reunion with Jack, though the Doctor will turn up eventually :) Dedicated to my Beta (and bestest) Elmo, and to all the rest of the fans out there who are missing Captain Jack.
"See you in hell."
Those were the last words he had ever said to her.
Rose missed a lot of things now that she was stuck here, in this other dimension, one of those things being Jack. Captain Jack Harkness. His teasing, his energy, hell – even his non-stop flirting with pretty much anything with a pulse and, depending on the planet, some things without. A true 51st century guy, as the Doctor had said.
She hadn't thought of Jack in a long time. The Doctor had told her what had happened on the Game Station – that he'd been killed, and remembering him was just too painful. But after almost a year of moping around over the Doctor she couldn't help thinking of what else she'd lost.
Something about Jack though…some tiny niggling little itching in the back of her mind whenever she allowed herself to think of him. If she had been honest with herself from the start Rose would have known that this was the real reason she'd avoided thinking about him ever since the day he'd…the day of the Daleks.
Sitting here in her modest office in the middle of the Torchwood building, sifting through reports and case files, random pictures and ornaments cluttering her desk, she finally acknowledged that itching.
It was one of those things, like an idea of an idea or a remnant of a dream that would, she knew, disintegrate and disappear if you poked at it, so instead she let it just simmer there, turning back to what she had been doing when the itching had first distracted her.
Strictly speaking, it was the reason she'd thought of him in the first place. The report that lay in front of her was her brief. She was being sent to Cardiff. An unidentified object had been found in the possession of a politician. From the description she had it sounded a lot like the extrapolator. If she was right and that was what it was, Rose was sure that she would have a good laugh at the irony of it being in the hands of another Welsh politician. She already knew that none of them would have any clue what it was though.
With her unique skills gathered with the Doctor part of her job was to vett any and all people in any position of political power within Britain to ensure that they were all human. And they all were, with the quiet exception of the Scottish First Minister. A nice man from the neighbourhood, i.e. Pluto, whose only reason for being in power was because he actually had the best interests of Scotland at heart. In his own words, he 'knew what it was like to be pushed around by the bigger planets', the implication being that those 'bigger planets' were in this case, England.
So she kept it quiet for him and on the odd occasion when she had no clue what kind of alien or alien artefact she was dealing with, he would help her out.
She didn't really need to be re-reading the brief, she'd already read it several times and knew all the important details but before she left for Cardiff the next morning she wanted to make sure she knew absolutely everything there was to know about the case. The more times she read it, the more insistent the niggling in her brain became.
There was nothing new to know. Welsh politician found a strange looking item in an antique store; placed it in his office as an ornamental type thing and since then his office and the offices on either side of him had everything running on full power whether they liked it or not, computers, lights, coffee makers, printers, phones, all going 24-7. The poor maintenance staff had no idea what was going on.
Rose sighed and abruptly closed the file. This was getting her nowhere. The Torchwood researchers had done their job, finding out about it, now all she had to do was retrieve it, bring it back to London and catalogue it. An unlimited source of power in the hands of the Torchwood Institute.
If it had been the old Torchwood in the other place she'd have been far more concerned. As it was, since the Preachers had backed down and allowed the British Government to re-open the project, it had taken a whole new turn. Information and understanding was the focus, rather than profit and warfare. And with her father on the board of directors and herself and various other members of Mickey's group employed there, they ensured that it stayed that way.
Deciding that there was nothing to be gained from staying in the office reading and re-reading some stupid case file in the vain hope that suddenly everything would make sense, she pulled the band out of her thick blonde hair and ran her fingers through it a few times before allowing it to settle round her shoulders and gathering her things. She was exhausted and she had an early train to catch. Besides, maybe a good nights sleep would clear her head.