A frog sat or stood or crouched on a concrete walkway near the entrance to a tourist center. It was mostly blue with green feet and little black speckles that were reminiscent of a reverse night sky, and it sat or stood or crouched in the corner drawing no attention and remaining unseen.
The water beyond the edge of the concrete walkway was vast, at least to a frog it was, and invited by its vastness a cold breeze that left the frog feeling very uncomfortable. Being coldblooded the frog much preferred warm areas and bright lights to heat its blood, but here on the quay it was cloudy and miserably cold. At least, for a frog.
A woman in boots and a black leather jacket approached the door the little frog was situated by and opened it letting out a bright and inviting warmth. She pulled the door open all the way and stepped inside, her heals clacking on the ground in a way the frog didn't much like at all. But the heat, the glorious heat of the tourist center, was so tempting and so so much better than the chilly walkway at the edge of the windy water that it felt it had no choice. So as the door was closing the frog leapt after the woman and through the doorway.
.oOo.
Gwen stepped through the blaring cog door and trotted down the steps to her workstation. "Morning all," she called out to a reply of muttered "morning" and a general lack of enthusiasm. "Wow, calm down, no need to get so excited," she said with a skeptical glance around at her coworkers.
"If you want coffee, then you're out of luck," Tosh informed her. "Owen broke the coffee machine trying to figure out how it works."
"It must be alien," the doctor told them, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded across his chest. "Not one bloody bit of it makes sense. God knows how Ianto gets it to do anything."
They were one week into Ianto's suspension and the lack of coffee, although, not the only problem they had faced, was certainly the most persistent. And now it appeared that the coffee situation had hit an iceberg of Titanic proportions.
Gwen groaned and collapsed into her chair. "Hasn't Ianto only worked here a few months longer than me? How did you all survive before he came along?"
"Travel mugs and Starbucks," Tosh told her.
"I hate travel mug coffee," Owen spat. "It's either way too hot or gets cold before you have a chance to drink it and then cleaning it is a whole other ordeal. Besides, my coffee tastes like shit."
"I can attest to that," Tosh muttered earning a glare from the doctor. She avoided looking at him, keeping her eyes fixed on the rift readings on her screen.
Gwen laughed lightly. "Well thank God I'm a morning person."
The statement got her a glare from both co-workers and a call of "boo" from the grouchier of the two.
The three of them settled into their work, punctuated by casual conversation and complaint, and the morning proceeded uneventfully. Jack remained in his office. Since the incident with the cyberwoman and the subsequently messy cleanup job that had taken place afterward Jack had been quiet and pensive. It had yet to be decided whether or not Ianto would remain under Torchwood's employment and the process of making the decision seemed to be taking all of the Captain's focus.
Of course this was merely a distraction and regular work had to continue around it. There was a steady stream of paperwork coming out of his office and the other three were left quite busy keeping up with it. The amount of work it took to explain the death of the pizza delivery girl alone was substantial and Tosh was currently occupied working out a cover up in what was normally Ianto's job. Owen had the unfortunate task of cataloguing and storing the multiple bodies. Jack apologized that he wasn't taking care of it, but he reasoned that his attention was needed elsewhere.
After the great excitement of the morbid discovery in the depths of the Hub, the team had taken on a rather sleepy countenance (and not just because of caffeine withdrawal). The rift had been moderately active, but nothing they couldn't handle, and things had been relatively normal. But there was a heaviness about them that they just couldn't shake. Even in their joking they lacked the joviality and heartiness they once had. They felt tired.
Around two in the afternoon the team was startled from their trance-like state by a sudden alarm from the computers. A quick check confirmed that something had fallen through the rift, just a small something, so Owen and Gwen took up their jackets and went to retrieve it. It didn't take them long and they were back within the hour. When they returned Gwen dropped back into her chair and Owen tossed the retrieved item at Tosh who barely caught it in time.
"Just a piece of junk," Owen told her. "No energy reading, no flashing lights, nothing. Piece of scrap metal probably."
Tosh turned it over in her hands, a thick ring of scuffed metal with no buttons or visible seams. It looked, as Owen had said, like a piece of junk. "Did you have any trouble with it?" she asked.
"None at all," Owen said, almost disappointedly. He slumped down into his own chair to resume a game of virtual poker he had been losing before the alert. "Either the aliens have evacuated Cardiff or we're having an easy day. Could you archive that for me? My penmanship is atrocious."
Tosh smiled, eager to please. "Of course," she promised. "It'll only be a second."
Owen just nodded slightly, attention completely captured by his computer screen.
True to her word Toshiko put the scrap through its paces. After a few more scans and tests to ensure that the artifact was completely and utterly useless (it was, there wasn't even any circuitry inside it) she bagged it, labeled it and filled out the paperwork. It was an arduous task, one she didn't enjoy or miss, but Tosh was never one to complain. Besides, Owen had asked for her help and it was her duty to help, wasn't it?
Things had been odd in the Hub of late, not just the obvious missing colleague or the disturbing notion that there really could be anything down in the depths of the subbasements and none of them would even know. No, there was something strange between her remaining coworkers. Jack had been distant, Gwen and Owen had been uncomfortable, and Tosh was certain that when they had come back from the retrieval the silence between them was charged. She would believe it that they hadn't spoken a word to one another during the excursion.
Everything had changed. Everything was always changing in some way around there. First Gwen's arrival, then Suzie's death, Gwen's further adoption into the Torchwood circle and finally the horrifying truth about their receptionist. Ianto had been around for such a short time too. It had only been a few months since he came traipsing into their lives, pterodon in tow. Jack was almost certainly regretting his decision to hire the young man.
But as she hiked down the stairs into the archives to put away the alien jetsam Tosh had to wonder if Torchwood could ever really have claimed any version of normalcy or consistency. Things changed so often and so radically that there was hardly time for anything to settle before some other storm hit.
Finally she came to the door of the archives where, if she recalled correctly, the space junk could be boxed up. It had been a while since she had last done this. Opening the door she was surprised to find Jack standing inside, his back to her and some sort of clipboard in hand.
"Jack?" Tosh asked. "What are you doing down here?"
He whipped around. His eyes were wide as he said in astonishment, "Tosh?" And then he disappeared.
.oOo.
His feet on his desk, pen in mouth and paperwork in hand, Jack was the picture of studious. He had even gone the extra mile to furrow his brow. Any onlooker would think that the report he was going over was his top priority and deeply involving. But Jack was only looking at it so intensely as his mind kept wandering and this was the third or fourth time he had needed to reread this paragraph. Something about self-replicating lizards? Who could tell, Owen's penmanship was atrocious.
Much to his relief and dismay, distraction was popping up all over today.
It came in the form of his door flying open and three stunned faces staring in at him.
"Jack, you're here!" Tosh exclaimed.
"Yes, I am," Jack replied, setting down his work with an amused smile.
"And you've been here all afternoon?"
Jack looked around at them uncertainly, the smile faltering a little. "Yes?"
Owen and Gwen looked thoroughly unimpressed. "Well, this was a waste of time," Owen griped.
"Are you sure it was him you saw?" Gwen asked Tosh.
"Yes, I'm sure," Tosh said determinedly. "It was Jack."
"What was Jack?" asked Jack. "What's going on?"
"Tosh had an… encounter down in the archives," Owen told him. "I suspect it's just her mind playing tricks."
"But it wasn't!" Tosh insisted. "I went down into the archives to put away the artifact Gwen and Owen brought back and when I got there you were in the room. I called to you and you turned around and then you vanished."
"I… vanished."
"Yes!" Tosh nodded enthusiastically. "You were standing there and then suddenly you weren't."
Jack grinned and swung his feet down from his desk. "Now that is interesting."
Tosh smiled with relief. "You believe me then."
"Of course," Jack told her as he got up. "This is Torchwood, I'll believe anything." He pushed past them out of the room and the three of them followed him down the stairs. "Besides, I've been waiting for something interesting to do today."
They arrived at Tosh's computer station and Jack asked her to pull up the security footage of the archives when it had happened. She did and they all watched in hushed amazement as a grainy Jack appeared on the screen. The camera was pointed away from the door, but they could tell when Tosh entered as the other Jack turned suddenly with a look of amazement on his face, said something and then, just as Tosh had said, disappeared.
"Okay, I'm starting to believe you," Owen said, leaning over Tosh's shoulder.
"Go back a bit," Jack told her. She did and as the other Jack disappeared their current Jack pointed at the screen. "Did you see that? What was that?"
Tosh went back again and then moved forward frame-by-frame. In one frame Jack was there and four frames later he was gone. Three frames in the middle were composed mostly of static, a distorted image of the archives with a Jack-esque figure standing by the shelves.
"What's happening?" Gwen asked.
Tosh shook her head, at a loss for words.
"We only have visual," Jack muttered. "Was there anything else? Noises, smells, feelings? Something we couldn't see off-camera?"
Tosh thought for a moment. "I felt dizzy," she told him. "Not fall-down dizzy, but just a little disoriented."
"Nothing else?" She shook her head. "Check for rift activity. We need to go check out that room."
Five minutes later the team was down in the archives. Jack stood by the door inspecting something on his wristband as Owen and Gwen wandered around the boxes and shelves with their scanners out. Tosh joined them with the report that no there hadn't been any rift activity, at least nothing that would merit seeing a second Jack.
"What were you doing down here again?" Jack asked.
"I was cataloguing a piece of metal Owen and Gwen found out near the Millennium Centre," she replied, pointing to the bagged ring where she had dropped it in her hurry to get back up to the main area of the Hub. "We scanned it, though, it couldn't have done anything. Shouldn't have at least."
"We're surrounded by alien tech," Owen called over from where he was scanning a filing cabinet. "Any one of these devices could have gone off if it was deactivated improperly. We don't know half of what's down here or a quarter of what it does."
Jack nodded. "He's right. It could have been anything down here. This place is huge."
They gazed around the room. All they could see were shelves and boxes and cabinets. Artifact after artifact and not a clue what any of them could do. This wasn't the only room either. The archives were a series of rooms containing Rift technology spanning centuries. Even if Jack could remember what each and every item was supposed to do it would take ages to find it and figure out what brought into being a second Jack.
"It would help if we knew what kind of replication this was," Jack told the team. "Alternate universe collision, time disruption, general individual duplication, and so on."
"Happen often, does it?" Gwen asked wryly.
"More than you'd think," he told her, completely serious. "More importantly, we need to know if this was a one time thing. I don't want a bunch of me's running around the place causing confusion."
"Believe me, Jack, that's the last thing any of us want," Owen snarked.
After a vigorous going-over with scanners and other devices they came to the conclusion that something had indeed happened in this room. "There's a 23% rise in radiation and a 24% rise in electrical energy," Gwen read off her hand-held.
"We can assume these numbers were higher during the actual event," Tosh said as she tucked away her own. She looked a little shaken. "How much higher is yet to be seen."
"Tosh can you set the system up to run a full sweep of the Hub to look for anomalies like these?" Jack asked. The group started back up towards the main floor. "We need to keep a lookout for more occurrences."
"I can try, but it will take some time. And monitoring the entire hub like that could take more energy than we have." She thought hard. "But I could keep a rolling sweep over the Hub going. We wouldn't be able to see everything all at once, but we can get regular updates from all levels."
"Perfect." They emerged from the stairwell and Jack hurried off to his office. "You start work on that. Owen, look through the archive catalogues to see if there's anything down there that might have caused it. We need to locate the cause and isolate it before we can to anything real about it. And Gwen?" She looked up expectantly and Jack gave her a toothy grin. "Weevils need feeding."
With that he shut the door leaving Tosh busy, Owen smirking and Gwen with her mouth hanging open. "You heard him, P.C. Cooper," Owen leered, "Go feed the pets."
Gwen looked to Tosh for sympathy, but the computer genius was already hard at work and completely tuned out to the world around her. So, admitting defeat, Gwen went to feed the pets.
.oOo.
"Feed the weevils," Gwen muttered bitterly. "Just because I'm new, no doubt. I have skills. Essential skills. But no, I have to feed the weevils because Jack bloody Harkness says to."
It had been her least favourite part of Ianto being gone: caring for the beasts. Cleaning up after them had been bad enough, but feeding them was a nightmare. In both hands she held buckets full of what she could only guess was meat for the now four resident weevils who would no doubt be hungry. The stench from the meat alone was enough to make her gag and she didn't want to think about where it probably came from.
Opening the door turned out to be more challenging than she realized when she discovered she had no free hands, but using quick wit and clear thinking (and a button on the wall) she got through into the Vaults.
When the door opened there was a major ruckus. All four of the weevils were shouting and banging against their enclosure walls. "All right," Gwen called out, "keep your panties on, I'm coming."
She set down the buckets to open up one of the cells when a voice made her jump. "You can't get rid of me, Gwen," said a man's voice, rough and desperate. The weevils banged on their windows and the window of the cell next to her banged as well, but it was definitely not a weevil. Human hands were pressed against the glass and a face hovered over them, trying to see Gwen around the corner. "I'm still in your head. I'm in all of your heads."
Shocked and cautious, Gwen moved to the opposite side of the hall before sidling over to get a look at the man in the cell. He had red hair, wore a leather jacket and looked decidedly mad, eyes wide and lips pulled back. But when she came to a halt in front of him he frowned. "You don't know me," he said quietly. Then he slammed his hands against the glass again, exciting the weevils. "Why don't you know me?" he screamed. Over and over he screamed the phrase, his voice raised above the roaring weevils and banging glass.
Gwen's vision began to swim and a deep uneasiness took over her stomach shooting dizziness through her head as the man continued to shout and bang, demanding answers for questions she didn't understand. And then it all stopped. The shouting and banging ceased at the same time as her disorientation suddenly passed. Looking up she discovered that she was all alone in the Vaults, just her and four angry weevils who all seemed just as confused as she was.
.oOo.
"Jack," called Tosh. She stared intently at her computer screens, an image frozen in front of her. Jack appeared behind her asking what she needed. "Look at this," she told him, pointing to the image. It was a freeze-frame of the other Jack down in the archives, shocked expression burned onto his face. "I was waiting for the computer to catch up with my modifications and I thought I'd take a look at the film again, and I found something I didn't notice before." She hit a button and the image came to life, the Jack disappearing just as he had before.
The current Captain Harkness shrugged. "What am I seeing?"
Tosh backed up again and pointed to the shelves. "There," she said. "That set of boxes." She jumped a few frames ahead to where the man had vanished and again pointed to the boxes.
"They've changed," Jack exclaimed. He turned to her, bewildered. A small smile slowly formed on his lips. "The boxes changed."
Before either of them could comment on this revelation they were interrupted by Gwen bursting through the door at the far end of the Hub. She barreled across the room to them, heels clacking on the cement floor and her face told them all they needed to know.
"Jack, there was someone in the Vaults!" she cried, grabbing hold of his sleeve. "There was a man in one of the cells. I don't know who he was, but he knew me. Jack, what is going on?"
"Tosh, care to explain," Jack expertly passed the duty just as Owen joined them from his own computer.
Tosh smiled. She loved showing off, though she would never admit it. They all knew she was the smartest of them, but sometimes it paid to remind them every now and again. "I was reviewing the footage we got from the archives where I first saw the other Jack," she began, "when I came across an interesting bit of information." She played the scene for them. "Did you see it?" she asked, savouring the complete lack of understanding and the chance of explaining it that she so rarely got these days. "These boxes here," she told them, much in the way she had told Jack, "switch places from before and after Jack disappear."
She played the image again and watched the realization dawn on Owen and Gwen's faces.
Owen's face quickly dropped to a frown. "That's fantastic, Tosh, but what does it mean?"
"It means," Jack interrupted, "that our dashing intruder was no intruder at all."
"For God's sake, Jack, cut the mystery crap and tell us," Gwen pressed.
"Not only do the boxes trade places, but there are some files added to the shelf above them as well. This means that out visitor was not a man, but a location." He looked about at confused faces and exchanged a weary glance with Tosh. "This Jack isn't the only thing to appear in our archives," he tried again. "He brought with him an entirely new room. Tosh didn't walk in on a second me, but a second set of circumstances, a set in which I was in the archives instead of in my office."
"Judging by the fact that there are new files," Tosh continued for him, "and the general state of the place, I'd say we've just seen a glimpse of another time. The future or the past, either of which would explain why he was so surprised to see me. Although I suppose it could also be a separate reality entirely."
"Are you saying the Rift just opened up a hole in spacetime in our basement?" Owen asked.
"Possibly," Jack replied, obviously getting excited. "And also no."
"Um-"
"Possibly to the hole in spacetime, no to the Rift," he clarified.
"The readings we took down there didn't show any signs of Rift activity," Gwen joined in. She was slowly beginning to understand, but it was all still a little hazy. "And the Rift monitor didn't go off either, did it."
"No it didn't," Tosh confirmed with a grin. "Which means we're dealing with something else, something that might not have come through the Rift. And if you've just seen another one of these… occurrences, then that means this could keep happening until we find the reason."
"In other words, Owen." Jack sent the doctor a wide smile. "Any luck with the artifacts?"
Owen sighed and pulled up a chair from the next workstation over. "None at all. Not just because those files are damn near impossible to navigate, I haven't been able to find a single thing like this. Although I guess now we know more I'll have to go looking again, won't I?"
Jack smiled almost apologetically. "It's the only option we have at the moment."
"But wait," Gwen broke in, focused intensely on her thoughts. "If these are just holes in time, does that mean that the things we see will or have already happened?"
"It seems logical," Tosh said with a nod. "Although it's only a theory, we have no way of knowing for sure."
"Then who the hell was that I saw down in the Vaults because it certainly wasn't one of us."
They all turned to Tosh who turned to her computer. The image from the Vaults was shoddy, the camera down there needed replacing, but there was no missing the man in the cell. One frame the cell was empty, the next a red-haired man was sitting cross-legged on the floor. The weevil in the adjoining cell could be seen breaking into hysterics almost immediately and the man looked up sharply as though he had thought he was alone in his prison.
"Who the hell is that?" Owen asked, repeating Gwen's own question.
While there was no mistaking the man in the cell, none of them could ever recall encountering him before in their lives. Even when he turned his face almost directly in the cameras direction upon Gwen's entrance his pixilated features were foreign to them. They watched as he stood, shouted and banged on the glass, and they watched as he grew confused, banged some more and then disappeared.
"This isn't good," Jack mumbled. "We can only assume we haven't met that man yet, but we will. If Tosh is right and he's from our future…"
"This could have some serious consequences," Tosh finished.
Owen looked between them in a state of offended distress. "Are you talking about paradoxes?" he groaned. "You had better not be suggesting paradoxes."
"We can't know the future." Jack ran a hand over his face.
"Assuming this is our future," Gwen reminded them. "We still don't know for sure."
"It's not a chance we can take," Jack told them through gritted teeth. He straightened up from where he had been leaning on the back of Tosh's chair and cracked his back. "I hate paradoxes as much as the next guy, but if this is what we think it is then we've got a doozy on our hands."
"Can't we just retcon ourse-"
"Don't even finish that thought," Owen interrupted Gwen. "There is no way on this tiny blue marble that I am letting Torchwood mess with my head like that." He gave a pointed look to Jack who raised his hands in defense.
There was a quiet ping from the computer and Tosh whirled around. "Oh," she exclaimed, "the updates are completed."
"Does that mean we can start monitoring the atmospheric changes?" Jack asked.
"Yes we can," Tosh confirmed as she clicked away at her keyboard. "I just need to install one final bit of… There, finished." The screen changed to a flowing graph that was slowly panning to the right, its lines unchanging. "Any changes of the sort we detected in the archives and these readings will let us know. Of course, we really don't know if these are the only changes that will take place or if these changes were a direct result of Other Jack, but assuming they were we'll know if the same thing happens again."
"We don't really know much, do we?" said Gwen.
Jack sighed. "Well it's the best we've got for right now. So everyone keep your eyes peeled and tell us straight away if anything like this happens again. We need a full record of every encounter if we want any sort of accuracy on this. Owen, get back to those archives. With new parameters it should be easier to locate any piece of equipment that-"
"Yeah, yeah," Owen, waved him off as he rolled away to the other computers. "Alien artifacts and blah blah blah."
Jack smirked and then turned his attention to Gwen. "And as for you, Ms. Cooper, I don't believe I saw any weevils getting fed in that footage."
.oOo.
Owen was glad for the distraction of a case. Things had gotten too delicate for his liking.
That whole thing with the cyberwoman and Gwen, it was just too much. There was no more casual, not for the moment at least. Going out alone with Gwen to pick up the artifact, that weird ring thing, had been awkward. They carefully avoided conversation, keeping interaction completely professional, but he couldn't help but steal glances when Gwen wasn't looking.
It wasn't his fault of course, adrenaline had been high, they thought they were going to die, anything could have happened. Locked in a confined space like that was bound to bring to light any emotions that had been buried and Owen would be the first to admit he had been attracted to Gwen from the beginning. It had seemed like the feeling was mutual, firmly decided by the incident in the mortuary shelf.
But since then, she had avoided his gaze. Was it guilt? Shame? Why was she denying what they both knew was there, what they both knew would be an amazing thing?
Or maybe it was that prospect hat kept her eyes distracted, her mouth shut. Maybe she knew how fantastic they could be together and maybe, just maybe, she was afraid because she knew it was what she wanted. Owen hoped this was the case.
He desperately wanted Gwen to want him (although this he would not be admitting any time soon) and up until now he had thought that she did. Nevermind that weird kiss with Jack in some guy's living room when they were chasing the girl with the sex-crazed alien inside her head and nevermind the kiss Gwen had shared with the girl herself. Owen knew her kiss with his had been something else entirely. Maybe he had been a little overzealous, sure, but no more than she had been.
But now look, here he was with this great distraction to his problem and he was being distracted from the distraction by the problem and scrolled through five different files without taking in one bit of information. Using the hand he had been leaning his chin on, Owen slapped himself lightly muttering, "Focus, Harper, focus," and scrolled back up to look over the things he had missed.
Keeping in line with his current run of luck, none of the pieces were a match to what they were experiencing. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. This was useless. Ignoring the fact that there was more to look at in the archives than was humanly possible, not all of it had been digitally catalogued either and Owen was positive that even if what they were looking for was in there and was manageable, it didn't mean he would be able to recognize it if it fell off the shelf, rolled into the Autopsy Bay and bit him in the arse.
Basically this was an impossible task and there had to be a better way to do it.
He thought hard. The holes in time had started so suddenly, there must be a reason. What was new? What had changed?
"Hey Tosh!" he shouted. "What happened to that thing we picked up earlier today?"
Following the sound of clicking boots Tosh appeared. "I put it away in the Archives like you asked me to," she told him. "Why?"
"I was just thinking," he began, trying to look intelligent. "That was the last thing to come into the Hub before this all started. Is there any way that could have something to do with it?"
"I don't think so." She wandered over and leaned against his desk. "We've both scanned it, there was no energy, no internal machinery or computer. I don't see how it could have done anything, let alone rip holes in time and space." She cast a glance to his computer. "Not much luck with the search, then?"
Owen sighed again and slumped down in his seat. "I knew it was unlikely, but there is no possible way that I can make it through every single item that has ever come through the Rift. I just thought…"
"No, no you're right," Tosh said. A look Owen recognized was beginning to blossom on her face, a small smile and wide, distant eyes. "This would have to be something new. There's no way we wouldn't have seen anything earlier if we had been in possession of the cause before I saw the other Jack, unless it's been happening and we just haven't noticed, but a quick check of our security system should disprove that."
With several quick keystrokes, Tosh replaced the image of some sort of plasma in a jar (God knows where that came from or how long it had been down there) with a series of readings and video windows. "We can bring up the artifact from yesterday anyways and give it some more in-depth scans, just to be sure," she told him as she worked, information moving too quickly across the screen for Owen to process. "But I'm almost certain this is something else entirely."
"Something like what?" He surrendered his chair to her and continued to watch over her shoulder.
"I don't know, but we'll find it."
It wasn't long before Tosh had singled out three different artifacts that had been picked up in the last two weeks and vaguely fitting the description they were looking for. She emailed the selection to Jack and Owen was assigned the duty of scouring the physical archives for the alien tech.
Each one was in a different location in a different room, one in a box on the floor, one sitting on a shelf amidst some spilled liquid from the next shelf up and the third in a bag in the wrong section of the alphabet (although Owen had no idea how any of these things could be put in any sort of order). The final one took the longest to dig out and coming out of the archives he was alarmed to discover his eyes had adjusted to the darkness and were now aching in light he had no free hands to shield them from.
Squinting around he spotted two figures convening on the gangway over the water flowing from the tower and made his way over. But as his eyes blinked away the tears and overwhelming light it became clear the pair was not entirely right. It was Tosh and Gwen he found standing on the platform, but they were in a much different mood than had been lingering about them all for the past week and upon seeing him with the artifacts they took up surprised expressions.
"What're those for then?" Gwen asked with a laugh. "I know things are a little slow, but I never took you for someone to do something productive in your spare time."
Tosh sniggered a little and Owen looked at Gwen a little startled. Had something changed while they had been apart? Was Gwen suddenly okay with their relationship? Where had the awkward avoidance gone, the quiet electric charge, where had the distressing sexual tension scampered off to?
"These are the artifacts Tosh asked for," he told them.
Tosh frowned and studied the objects in his arms. "No I didn't," she said. "Are you okay, Owen?"
"Owen!" called another voice from behind him and Gwen and Tosh's faces immediately dropped. Jack jogged up behind him and slapped a hand down on his shoulder. "Find everything? Tosh wants to get going on the scans."
"Jack?" exclaimed Gwen.
The Captain smiled over at her, but frowned when his eyes fell on Tosh. "Oh no," he sighed.
"When the hell did you get back?" Gwen demanded. Her stance had become tense and there was a frightening fury thinly veiled in her tone.
Jack grimaced as he eyed her warily. "Come on, Owen, we need to get this sorted out."
He started away, Owen following after, understanding suddenly what was happening, but the two of them were stopped in their tracks when Other Gwen grabbed Jack's collar. "Not so fast, you're not disappearing on us again and you're certainly not taking Owen with you."
Alarm registered on the Captain's face at the feeling of her hand on him and the certainty in her tone. He glanced at Owen before he responded. "Gwen…"
"What, Jack? What could you possibly have to say that could make up for what you've done? Four months! Four bloody months and not a word, now here you are as if…" She trailed off as her wide-eyed gaze landed on something behind them. "Oh," she managed, and Owen and Jack felt a bit of uncomfortable deflation as their own Tosh appeared at their side.
Other Tosh observed her with interest as Tosh looked between them all with surprise. "I was coming to tell you the computer detected some anomalies, but I guess you knew that already."
"This must be from that whole amphibian situation," Other Tosh told Other Gwen quietly.
"Amphibian?" Owen asked.
"Don't," Jack warned him.
"And why not," he challenged. "They seem to know what's going on better than we do, why not ask them and stop this whole search nonsense."
"You know why."
"Oh, no, don't worry," Other Tosh told them, hands out in a reassuring manner. "I remember this, this is how it's supposed to happen. You come and find us and we tell you about the whole time shift thing."
"Time shift?" Jack asked. He was visibly curious, but it was obvious on his face that his better judgment was having a hard time letting him listen. An internal battle was waging and it wasn't clear which side of Jack's self would win.
"Yes," Other Tosh confirmed. "I'm supposed to tell you that this isn't a different reality, just a moment in the future. The two times are colliding, but for some reason I'm not supposed to tell you why."
"So this is past Jack?" Other Gwen inquired, not taking her eyes off her boss.
Other Tosh nodded. "He wouldn't know where our Jack was." A hint of disappointment emanated from the two women, but Other Gwen nodded her acceptance with a frown. "We're not around for long enough to ask him even if he did know," Other Tosh continued. "We should be disappearing soon. Oh!" she exclaimed and her eyebrows shot up. "I just remembered, Ianto wanted to know when this happened. I was supposed to tell him when they showed up, he wanted to…"
Jack, Owen and Tosh didn't hear the end of that thought. The dizziness took them suddenly and a great deal more intensely than it had before. Tosh stumbled and had to grab the railing, and Jack barely managed to keep himself upright, but grabbed onto Owen's waist anyways when he spotted the medic's knees buckle. The Other Gwen and Tosh vanished as the latter had predicted and as the remaining three straightened up their own Gwen came running up to them asking if they were all right and what had happened.
None of them were able to answer, still processing what they had encountered, each of them distracted by a different aspect of the meeting. Jack assured Gwen that they were okay and the four of them retreated to the couch and coffee table where Owen set down the artifacts he was still clinging to. None of them looked like they could have done this, but they were still eyed warily as the team took their seats around the pieces.
Jack was the first to speak. "These are them?" he asked. Owen and Tosh confirmed this silently, but Jack just shook his head. "Not this one," he told them, pointing to on of them, a smooth piece of metal shaped to fit nicely into a hand with four buttons near the top. "This one just lets you see. Gwen touched me, she grabbed my shirt, there was contact."
Gwen took the technology off the table and set it on the floor, removing it from the pool of possibility. They regarded the two remaining options. One was an angular device with shifting pieces that resembled an oddly shaped Rubik's cube, the other was two asymmetrical boxes linked by a thick cable and lined with lights that at the moment were unlit.
"So one of these then," Gwen asked. Her colleagues looked shaken and she could only wonder at what they had seen. What had brought into being such haunted expressions, especially that of Jack's.
Tosh nodded. "The other me, the one from the future I suppose, said something about an amphibian. Perhaps the creators were an amphibious species? We could do background checks on these and maybe confirm which one it is. Along with the scans I mean."
The others agreed and Jack assigned them each a job to do, granting Gwen some real work for once and letting the responsibility of feeding Myfanwy fall on Owen who had spent long enough staring at a computer screen. He then excused himself, once again distracted and distant, to his office where he claimed he would be doing his own research, the nature of which he did not divulge.
"We're not going home until we fix this," he told them. "I can't risk you three bringing this home with you." And they parted ways silently, each unnerved by Jack's demeanor and the gravity he was placing on the situation. More importantly, each lost in the information they had just learned from their future team members.
.oOo.
Gone. Other Gwen had said he was gone, demanded to know where to, and Jack was a little scared to find out himself. He couldn't think of any reason he would leave this team unless something major were to happen, but even then he would tell them. It sounded like his had been a sudden and unexpected departure. It was terrifying to speculate on what could drag him away from his century long home. What scared him even more was the thought that he would find what he was looking for and that maybe that was why he was gone.
Mortality was a common subject in Jack's thoughts. For a man who would never die, he contemplated it a great deal. No, never die was wrong; Jack died all the time. It was staying dead he couldn't do. The first time he had died he had seen something, felt something he was scared to feel again, but even more afraid he would never feel again. It was not something he could describe or even remember to its full extent, but it had been overwhelming and consumed him so entirely, and in every death he had experienced since that feeling had not returned.
Leaving of his own free will seemed like the farthest possibility, but the other option petrified him. It wasn't an abstract he wanted to examine, but everything that Other Gwen had said, the look on her face, had made it impossible to ignore. What had taken Jack from them? What had caused him to abandon the only place and people he cared about?
It was these thoughts that distracted him as he entered his office and made him miss entirely the fact that he was not alone.
It wasn't until after he had closed the door that Jack noticed movement. The trapdoor that led to his hidden bunk was wide open and a figure was climbing up the ladder, one he didn't recognize until it climbed out and turned around. He was stunned to come suddenly face to face with Ianto Jones, the other man looking equally stunned and very unkempt. His hair was sticking out in every direction and the suit Jack had become accustomed to had been replaced by a blue robe the Captain recognized as one of his own.
They stood staring at one another for several seconds before Ianto turned his head slightly and called down through the still open hatch, "Jack?"
"Yeah?" an all too familiar voice came echoing up from below.
"Could you come up here for a moment?"
Ianto and Jack never looked away from one another as there came the sound of feet and hands on the bars of the ladder and only when another Jack's head poked up from the hatch did Jack break eye-contact. Other Jack looked up at Ianto as he pulled himself out and asked, "What is it?" When the Welshman didn't return the gaze Other Jack followed it and upon seeing Jack watching from the doorway with a permanent expression of wary shock he raised his eyebrows and nodded. "I've been wondering when this was."
"What's going on?" Ianto asked with a frown, looking to his boss.
Other Jack, dressed only in boxers, came the rest of the way up, put an arm around Ianto's shoulders and gave him a reassuring squeeze. "Remember that frog thing I told you about?"
"The thing with the future stuff?"
"Yeah."
Recognition and understanding lifted Ianto's eyebrows and he turned back to Jack, regarding him with a cooler eye. "You didn't tell me about this one."
"Didn't seem appropriate at the time," said Other Jack with a shrug and a smirk.
Jack wasn't really sure what to do. The lack of clothes, close proximity and general camaraderie of the two men in front of him were obvious indicators of something he hadn't really considered since things around the Hub had gotten a little more intense. In all honesty he had never considered it as a serious option ever, only as an unattainable goal, a bit of harmless fun for both parties. But if what he was seeing was what he thought it was then things were certainly going to get more interesting around here.
Then again who knew how long from now these two existed. It could be a matter of weeks or a matter of years, Ianto looked like he had aged, but the man was in the midst of years where aging happened suddenly and unexpectedly, he was still quite young after all. This Ianto here before him had gained an attractive amount of weight while at the same time losing some of the babyishness to his face, stubble turning his jaw blue and aging him further. Without the suit it was even more difficult to tell, Jack hadn't seen him without it since that morning on the Plass back when Ianto was begging for a job.
Jack hadn't even spoken to the current Ianto since the incident, he didn't know how things could possibly change from what they currently were. He didn't know what he could possibly say to either Ianto.
"What's going on? Are the two of you…" he finally said, unable to think of a word to accurately describe what he thought they might be. What he hoped it might be.
"Yeah," Other Jack confirmed at the same time Other Ianto said, "Sort of."
They both smiled, one confidently and the other bashfully. "Don't worry about it so much," Other Jack insisted. "You'll figure it out, you always do." He winked and flashed his teeth then moved over to lean against the desk, Ianto coming to stand beside him.
"But, when?" asked Jack, still a little flustered.
"Anxious?"
Jack gasped out a laugh, attempting a bravado that had been momentarily startled out of him. "Not at all." He pointed a finger at Ianto who looked amused. "I knew I'd get you eventually."
"And you were trying, were you?" he retorted.
"Believe me, you'd know if I was trying."
Ianto rolled his eyes and smiled. "Right, well, as pleasant as this is, how long does this one last?" he asked Other Jack, "Because we've got work to do and I'm not wearing any pants."
"Neither am I," Other Jack pointed out.
"Yes, but he's seen that."
A glint of fondness, or maybe something more, shone in Other Jack's eye as he laughed, bringing his arm up to settle around Ianto's waist. "Not too long, if I recall correctly," he informed them. "Just enough time for us to have this conversation and for you to remember-"
"Wait, shit, when was this," Ianto suddenly interrupted. He whipped his head around to stare wide-eyed at Jack who was watching with interest and the vaguest feeling of apprehension. "Jack, you need to go. I'm about to do something very stupid and you need to stop it. My address is in the files and there's an extra key to my flat in the tourist office." The insistence in his voice injected dread into Jack's core and he listened intently to the instructions.
"What am I supposed to do?" he asked quickly. There couldn't be much time left for them to talk and he was perfectly aware of this. "Should I bring Owen, or-"
"No, just you," Ianto told him. "It's only you. You'll know what to do when you get there, but hurry, it'll be close." His face softened and when he spoke again the urgency had dissipated. "Talk to him, Jack. He needs someone right now even if he won't admit it. Be there and everything will be fine." He turned to Other Jack. "Have I forgotten anything?"
Jack watched Other Jack lean in and whisper something to his – what, significant other? – brushing his hand over Ianto's. Just a touch. Ianto nodded and stepped forward. To Jack's dismay the young man leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek, a single warm and tender kiss. He stepped back again and looked Jack softly in the eyes to say, "Thank you."
Jack couldn't help but ghost his fingers over the spot where Ianto's lips had been. Something small inside his chest was doing somersaults and it took him a moment before he could respond. "You're welcome," was all he could think to say. Ianto gave an entertained smile and returned to his position leaning against the desk with the third man who shifted slightly closer.
"You're right, Jack. Lines like that and you'll have me in no time at all."
The familiar dizziness was starting to seep into Jack's mind and he supported himself against the door as it welled up and weakened his knees. Through blurring vision he spotted Ianto suddenly straighten up and call out, "Oh, I forgot, about the Brecon-" and they were gone. Jack stood alone in his office, momentarily dismayed, his mind retraced every detail it could remember of the two men that had been there just moments ago. It didn't last long, however, as the rushed instructions the Welshman had given him shot their way to the front of his mind.
Scrabbling to get his coat on, Jack burst out of his office and made a hurried beeline to the cog door. "Where are you going?" Gwen inquired.
"Out. I'll be back in a little while."
Owen leaned back in his chair to get a clear view of Jack. "I thought you said we weren't allowed to leave until we figure this out?"
Jack paused at the top of the stairs as the door rolled open, adjusting his coat to sit comfortably on his shoulders. "Exceptions can be made, Owen," he replied, giving the doctor a warning raise of the eyebrow. And then he disappeared through the doorway.
Owen exchanged a look with Gwen as though to say, "what was that about?" before returning to his work. Tosh hummed a discovery, stealing her colleagues' attention back. "What is it, Tosh?"
"The program's just done a sweep of this level. It's reading the tail-end of an anomaly from Jack's office." She looked to them curiously. "I wonder what he saw."
None of them saw the small blue frog hopping lightly through Jack's open office door.
.oOo.
If there was ever a reason to quit it was this, Owen thought bitterly. A full day stuck in the Hub, strange occurrences (as per usual), Jack had run off and it was well past dinnertime with no food to show for it. His stomach growled as though to prove the point and spiteful thoughts spewed through his head. When Jack came back he was going to have to answer for this.
In the mean time, food was priority.
There was a kitchenette area with a fridge, Owen knew, but he also knew that since Ianto had gone on suspension no one had done any shopping so all that remained in it was a single beer and two packets of soya sauce, hardly a feast. But in preparation for long nights and busy days he had made sure to stash some food in one of the mortician shelves in the autopsy bay.
Making sure no one was watching (couldn't have his little hidey-hole made public) Owen hopped down into the tiled alcove and opened up the correct shelf. It was looking a little barren, he would have to restock soon, but for the moment there was enough. Leaning in as far as he could, Owen grabbed around in the darkness until his hand found a packet of crisps and an energy bar. A winning combination, he thought dryly.
Returning to the light he turned to find an interesting spectacle. A little frog was sitting on his autopsy table, blue and green with black speckles. He frowned and leaned in to stare it in its little froggy eyes. The frog stared back, throat expanding and contracting with tiny breaths as it sat otherwise unmoving.
How did a frog get into the Hub?
"Hey Tosh," he called, depositing his snack on the desk, "c'mere a second, have a look at this."
"What is it, Owen?" came the response.
"I found a frog," he told her as he reached out to scoop it up.
The second his skin touched the clammy amphibian Owen knew he had made a mistake. An odd sensation spread up his arms, a soft prickling deep inside the bones, and the light around him dimmed. Looking up slowly he realized his surroundings had changed entirely. Rather than cool white tiles and fluorescent lights overhead, Owen found himself outside at night, somewhere on the Plas from the look of it. But all around his feet there was rubble, broken concrete and metal, shards of glass and strips of wire, as though a building had collapsed around him. In fact there was a small fire blooming about ten feet away, sparks flying from the ground around it.
A wind blew across the water, rustling his hair and clothes. The smell of something burning singed his throat and frozen in place he couldn't even cough. Standing silent and paralyzed he couldn't help but remember a similar circumstance from a few weeks ago when he found himself under a bridge with a woman sobbing about a problem from long ago. But this wasn't the past, this was the future, this was something yet to happen and looking around with only his eyes Owen could not see the water tower, the despairing knowledge of what he was standing in becoming more and more clear.
Movement caught his eye and jerking his head he could see a man in a suit running across the quay. The sound of sirens echoed in the distance, growing closer and louder, but they were drowned out by the sudden rata-tat-tat of an automatic from somewhere atop the buildings to his left and the man ducked, shielding his head uselessly with his arms. The gun startled Owen and he dropped the frog. It would have landed in the debris at his feet, but upon releasing it the destruction was replaced by the autopsy bay and the frog landed safely on the metal table.
Stunned and reeling from what he had just experienced, Owen was caught easily by the dizziness and disorientation he should have know was coming. Stumbling and crashing against a tray of medical equipment he fell to the floor, fighting the urge to vomit into the bin under his desk.
Tosh and then Gwen appeared at the stairs looking concerned. "Owen, what happened? Are you okay?" Tosh exclaimed.
He could only nod. Using the desk and carefully avoiding the table he lifted himself to his feet and stared warily at the frog. The frog stared into space. The others followed the medic's gaze and it took them a moment to comprehend what they were looking at.
"Owen," Gwen began cautiously. "Why is there a frog on your table?"
"I have no idea."
.oOo.
Jack stepped through the rolling cog door feeling conflicted. After spending nearly an hour at Ianto's flat talking with him he had been forced to excuse himself at a mysterious call from the team. For a long moment he had considered ignoring it and staying put with his youngest employee, but the problem they were facing at the Hub was important and the call held implications that the problem had progressed. Ianto had said it was okay for him to go, but knowing him it was difficult to tell if it really was okay.
Fiddling with the items in his pocket, Jack found his team gathered together around the table in the autopsy bay. They were all looking at something small and dark, and drawing closer he could make it out to be a frog. Okay, that was a little strange. But at the words of his and other's future selves he realized that this was probably what they had been referring to.
"Is that a frog?" he asked as he came down the steps.
Gwen glanced up at him as he came to rest beside her. "And where have you been?" she asked, sounding alarmingly similar to an old girlfriend Jack had once had.
"Running an errand," he replied cryptically. "I'll ask again, is that a frog."
"No, it's our bloody problem is what it is," Owen spat. He stood with his arms crossed near his desk and watched the frog with distrustful eyes.
The frog croaked.
"Bloody animal," Owen muttered.
"From what we can tell, this is what's been causing our anomalies," Tosh supplied helpfully. "Our computers wouldn't have registered it as a foreign life form due to its size so we have no way of knowing how long its been in here. Since Owen found it there have been no odd readings from other areas of the Hub and we've seen a few things while we waited for you."
"Some very interesting things, I might add," Gwen added with a grin that sent a deep blush across Owen's cheeks.
"I obviously thought I was alone when that happened," he hissed.
"That does not explain why you were doing it," Gwen laughed.
"You'll have to tell me more about that later," Jack whispered to her much to Owen's chagrin. "So can we confirm that this is our source," Jack said louder.
"If we can catch it in the act," Tosh muttered, tinkering on her palmtop, "we should be able to get a clear reading, but it seems pretty certain to me."
"So we just have to wait for something to happen?"
Tosh nodded. "I've made adjustments to the computer to stop the sweeping scans and I've focused the scan on the main area and hopefully we'll be alerted of another occurrence before it happens."
"And what do we do if it is confirmed?" Gwen interjected. "We can't exactly release this into the wild."
"We can send it back through the rift the next time there's an opening," Jack told her. "Wherever this little guy came from, he can go straight back, its obviously not from Earth. Have you given it a scan already?"
"Yeah, the little bugger was messing up my equipment, though, so we couldn't get a clear reading on its physiology, but I'm assuming it doesn't match up to the average frog," Owen reported. "Not that I would know. Disgusting creatures."
Jack regarded the little visitor on the table. "How did it get in here anyways?"
"Probably came in with one of us," Tosh guessed with a shrug. "He's so small we wouldn't have noticed."
"Poor little guy was just looking for a place to keep warm, I'll bet," Gwen cooed.
"Poor little guy my arse," Owen griped.
"Oh come on, Owen, you have to admit he's pretty cute."
"He scared the hell out of all of us and created paradoxes. That's not cute, that's…" He searched for the word. "That's toxic. It's a toxic animal loose in our Hub and I want it gone."
"Well, we're about to find out just how toxic," Tosh said as he device pinged softly. "I'm getting a buildup of electricity and radiation, we should be seeing something soon."
"Thank god for that," Owen groaned. "If I had to sit through anymore ghosts of Christmas future I was going to go mental."
"Just one more, I think you can handle that."
Gwen shushed them and as they fell silent a voice called out from the floor above, "Yeah, I'll get on that as soon as I finish-" The Other Owen stopped dead in his tracks at the edge of the railing on the main floor. His eyes had been glued to his mobile, but they darted up quickly, taking each of them in one at a time. Then dropping his hands and giving a full-headed roll of his eyes he turned around and stormed out shouting, "Jack, I'm going home."
"But you just got here!" came Jack's voice from somewhere beyond their sight and as Owen walked out of their field of vision the four members of Torchwood felt the now familiar dizziness, supporting themselves on whatever was at hand.
Recovering quickly enough they turned to Tosh expectantly. "We have found our problem," she said triumphantly. Jack and Gwen cheered as Owen moaned, "Fucking finally."
Coaxing the frog into an air-holed containment box using a system of five layers of gloves and a small piece of meat, the group happily deposited the containment box in a cell in the Vaults, prepared to break it out at a moments notice and send it through the Rift.
"Thank God that's over with," Gwen exclaimed as Jack emerged from the depths of the Hub. "I was beginning to think I'd never get to leave again."
"Forget going home," Owen countered, pulling on his jacket. "I'm just happy I never have to sit through another embarrassing episode like that ever again. I was starting to get worried I wasn't I any of those things, but now I wish I really hadn't been."
"Look on the bright side, Owen," Tosh grinned. "At least now you know what not to do when you think you're alone in the Hub."
Exchanging much cheerier goodbyes than the hello's they had given that morning the team was finally able to go, leaving Jack behind. Once they had gone he made his way to the medical cabinet Owen kept where he pulled out a bottle. In it he deposited the retconn pills from his pocket, five in total of a very strong dosage. Enough to wipe years from a man's memory if it didn't kill him first.
Replacing the bottle he pulled out another, this one full of sleeping pills, and took out two as per the instructions on the label. Then he left the Hub as well. It was late, he knew, but Ianto would be awake and even if he didn't feel like talking Jack hoped he would be willing to listen.
.oOo.
The next day Owen strolled in a little late. The day before had been a nightmare of future sights and possible paradoxes, and today would no doubt be a boring regular day in the Torchwood offices. Just filing reports and typing up papers, nothing too drastic.
Almost immediately, however, he suddenly remembered the bodies he had been neglecting. Lying in shelves in his workplace ready to be transported to the proper morgue below were a scientist and a pizza delivery girl. A full week they had been taking up space, how had he forgotten to move them? Well, just a quick trip downstairs for each should be no bother.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and pulling it out Owen was pleased to find it was a text from a girl he had met in a bar a few days ago. Attractive, young and swarming with daddy issues, she was a real catch. He smiled to himself as he read the needy message and began to type out his own.
Jack leaned out of his office door as Owen passed by. "You're late," he said.
"So fire me."
Jack sighed. "Right, well I guess we've all earned a bit of a breather." He wandered back into his office calling out, "Oh and can you feed the frog? Tosh is busy and Gwen's not here yet."
Ghastly, thought Owen, what do frogs even eat? But there were still those bodies that needed attention, so drawing nearer the autopsy bay he called out, "Yeah, I'll get on that as soon as I finish-" He froze. This sounded familiar, far too familiar.
He shot his head up from his phone to discover four pairs of eyes staring back at him from the alcove. There was Tosh, Gwen, Jack, and glaring deeply from the corner by the desk was another Owen.
"Jack," Owen shouted as he turned around, "I'm going home!"
A/N
Sorry about the length, but it was too short to break into chapters (plus there were no good break points). There are so many fics that show what happened to Ianto during his suspension but none I could find showing the rest of the team so I decided to write one myself. I hope you enjoyed it, I certainly enjoyed writing it. R & R & have a good day - LL