Disclaimer: [Insert witty comment here] Torchwood doesn't belong to me.
Pairings: Jack Harkness/Lucia Moretti; Alice Carter/Agent Johnson
Written for crossing_hades, who won my services in a help_Japan charity auction, three years ago.
1. Alice, who was not yet Alice, but still Melissa, sat huddled on the floor between her bed and the wall. She rested her head against her raised knees, her body curled around the stuffed rabbit her father had given to her not even a week ago. She tried to ignore the loud voices that came from the next room but found it difficult. Despite the best efforts of her parents, she knew — heard — when they fought.
They fought a lot lately. She didn't need to hear the words they said to know her parents weren't happy. She didn't know why they weren't, didn't know why her mum was always so angry at her father. She didn't like it.
The yelling stopped. She peeked over her knees, her gaze firmly affixed to the door and waited. Not long after that, she heard a soft knock at her door, and then it creaked open. Her father appeared in the doorway and strode towards her. He crouched down in front of her, his funny old coat settling around him.
"Hey, sweetie," he said and used a hand to tuck a strand of her dark hair behind her ear.
"Hi, daddy," she whispered.
"You okay?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Are you going away?"
He sighed. "Yeah, sweetie. It looks like I am."
She uncurled from her body and threw herself at him. "I don't want you to go!"
"Oh, baby… I don't want to leave you. But your mom and I… we're having some problems and she… she thinks it would be best if I left."
Alice sniffled against his shoulder. "Are you going to come back?"
He hugged her tightly to her. "I'll always come to you, baby. Whenever you need me, I'll be there. I promise."
"Jack," her mum called from the door. She held her arms around herself and her face was drawn and pinched. She didn't look happy.
"Come on, Lucia," her dad said and he sounded angry. "Let me say goodbye."
Her mum snorted. "You're good at that. Don't go making promises you won't keep."
"Daddy?" Alice asked, confused by her parents.
"It's okay, sweetie," her dad said and stood up. Alice wrapped her legs around his waist, the bunny he'd given her and which she still held crushed between them. "I want you to be good for you mom. Can you do that?"
She nodded solemnly. "I promise."
He smiled and rubbed his nose against hers. "Good. I love you, Melissa." He kissed her on top of her head and held her almost too tightly for a moment before he carried her to the bed and laid her down upon it.
"Love you, Daddy," she said. Something crossed his face, something she didn't understand. Not then.
He leaned down and kisses her forehead before leaving. Her mum stood by her bedroom door, foot tapping while she waited for him to leave.
By the end of the week, Alice became Alice, and Melissa was left behind in Cardiff. She and her mum moved to Italy and her mum told her that her dad wasn't joining them because it wasn't safe.
Alice didn't quite believe her but she didn't know why her mum would lie. She held the image of her dad holding her tight to him when she couldn't sleep at night even as she clutched the stuffed rabbit he gave to her.
2. At sixteen, Alice believed herself to be an adult. Her mum disagreed, but then it seemed like she and her mum didn't agree on much of anything lately. "After another loud, screaming fight, Alice left their small flat, her satchel slung over her back, determined to find her dad."
It wasn't that she had lost her dad; she knew where he was. She just hadn't seen him since her mum had packed her up like so much as a piece of luggage and brought her to live in Italy. Eleven years and she still missed him, still didn't understand why her parents couldn't work out their problems — not that she even knew what they were.
Getting to Cardiff from Italy wasn't all that easy, but it also wasn't that difficult. Trains took her to Calais, and from there, she hopped onto a ferry to Dover. Another train — and many hours later — she reached Cardiff.
Alice didn't know where exactly her dad lived, but she did remember that he worked near the docks. She figured she could head down there and hopefully bump into him. By the time she got there, it was going on six and she hoped he'd still be around for her to bump into and not already home. She didn't quite fancy spending another night in a hostel, though she would since it'd be marginally safer than the streets.
She huddled into her jacket, holding close to her rucksack and tried to avoid meeting the eyes of the leering men who passed her in the street. She had no idea why her father would work down here. It certainly didn't fit with her image of her dad. Not the gallant-looking man who swept around in his old-fashioned coat, looking confident and sure. The docks were, in one word, derelict and she feared for her safety.
But, Alice was also sixteen and she believed that all she needed to do was find her father and he would make everything better. So, it was with the utmost surprise that she did find him. Just not the way she thought she would.
When she left Italy for Cardiff, she'd envisioned a grand sort of reunion, with her father sweeping her up into his arms and holding her close, declaring that she would never have to return to Italy because he was still in love with her mum and he'd bring her back so they could have a complete and happy family again.
It was difficult to keep that in mind when she saw him embracing and kissing another man.
A man. Not a woman, but a man. And while Alice might have only been sixteen, she knew enough to see that the kiss was anything but platonic. Her father — and this upset her to a huge extent — was wrapped around another man and kissing him as if it was merely a prelude to other activities.
She ran. Tears blurred in her eyes as she fled away from the docks, away from her father and the truth she had seen. This must be why her mum had left him.
Alice stormed into the flat, ignoring the way her mum shouted and yelled and demanded to know where she had been. She threw her rucksack to the floor and stood before her mum, arms crossed against her chest and scowled. "Is that why you left dad? Because he's queer? Why didn't you tell me he was fucking queer?"
Her mum blinked, her mouth falling open and the litany of worry and anger stopping. "What?" she asked.
"You want to know where I went? I went to Cardiff, to see dad. And I saw him alright. He was fucking kissing another man. I can't believe he's a queer!"
"Alice…" her mum said and stretched out her hand to draw her into a hug. Alice stood stiff within her arms, the anger she had felt at seeing her dad in such a compromising position still with her. "Alice," she said again, "I left your father because we had a lot of issues. One day, when you're old enough, I'll tell you."
She snorted in reply. "Whatever." And she pulled away and stalked to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Throwing herself on to the bed, she allowed herself the time to mourn the broken dream she had.
3. Alice met Joe in the last year of university. She and her mum had moved back to Britain and lived outside York. They ran into each other — literally — at a pub and he offered to buy her a drink to replace the one spilled all over her. She ended up spending the rest of the night with him.
He was charming and smooth and she fell for him quickly. Her mum even liked him so when he asked her to move in with him, she didn't hesitate. He made her feel beautiful and loved and she dreamed of the future they would have together.
They moved to London not long after that and Joe embarked on his career with one of the banks there while Alice found a position in a PR firm. Her mum decided to stay in York, not that Alice objected to that. She didn't want to spend the whole of her life unable to live too far from her mum.
When Joe asked her to marry him not even two years later, she accepted. She and her mum traded off weekends of traveling to plan the wedding. She didn't even think about her father until her mum brought it up.
"Are you inviting your father?" she asked. She sat still as a statue, her voice deliberately disinterested as they reviewed the guest list one last time. Alice froze, unsure of how to answer.
"I don't know," she finally replied. "Should I?"
Alice had more or less ignored her father since discovering his proclivities towards the same gender as himself. She stopped phoning him as often as she once had and other than birthday and Christmas gifts, rarely interacted with him.
She hadn't seen him since she was sixteen.
Hadn't wanted to either.
Her mum put down the pen she was using and turned to face her. She looked serious and it frightened Alice with the intensity by which she spoke. "You once asked me why I left your father."
"I figured it was because he was, well… queer," she said.
Her mum shook her head and pursed her lips. "If it were that, I wouldn't have moved us to Italy. No, there was another reason why we left."
"Mum?" she asked and reached out to take her hand in hers.
"You remember how I told you if anyone from Torchwood came to you, you were to run in the opposite direction?" Alice nodded, eyes darkening as she recalled the instructions her mother had given her when she was a child. "Well, your father and I both worked for the Cardiff branch of the organization." Her mum smiled, a sad and lost little smile, and seemed lost in her memories.
"Mum?" Alice prodded and she started a bit.
"Right, well. Like I said, your father and I both worked for Torchwood and he just swept me off my feet. I mean, he was handsome and adventurous and so many other qualities. I fell for him and he for me. And when I got pregnant — you've never seen a happier man. He catered to my every whim and found me everything I wanted. And more that I didn't want," she said.
Alice frowned. It sounded as if her father was perfect. "What happened, mum?"
"Your father can't die," she said. Alice looked at her with wide eyes.
"What do mean, he can't die?" she asked. She wondered if her mum was suffering from dementia.
"Your father, for all intents and purposes, is immortal. He can be killed, but he comes back," she explained, with a shrug of her shoulders.
"That's impossible," Alice said.
"Your father's impossible then," she said.
"Did you know?" Alice asked, feeling a morbid curiosity at entertaining this train of thought.
"I did. We all did," Lucia said. "All of Torchwood knows of the agent who cannot die. He's been around for decades."
Alice frowned. "Then why…?"
"Why bother marrying him?" Lucia finished for her. Alice nodded her head. "I thought I loved him. I thought I could handle it."
"Handle what?" Alice asked.
"Aging. Your father looks the same now as he did when I first met him. And he looks the same as he did when he first joined Torchwood, way back at the turn of the century."
"Mum…" Alice said.
"I know you must think I'm barmy," Lucia said. "I don't blame you, but I'm telling you the truth because you deserve to know. I left your father because I couldn't deal with him. "I was getting older and he … he still looked the same..."
She looked up and stared her daughter in the eye. She smiled and gently said, "You don't believe me, do you?"
Alice shrugged and looked away. "How can I? It sounds… well, it sounds impossible."
Lucia nodded, as if she understood what Alice thought of all this and perhaps she did.
In the end, Alice didn't send her father an invitation. At the church, she saw the back of a tall man, dressed in a World War II era great coat, leave as she and Joe headed up the aisle as man and wife.
She wondered what would have happened if she had invited him after all.
4. Alice saw her father face to face for the first time since her mum had taken her away all those years ago when he came and visited her at hospital after the birth of her son. He gave her a sad smile, averting his eyes so as to not see her expression. He looked at Steven with such love and sadness that the acrimonious words ready at the tip of her tongue fell silent.
"He's beautiful," he said. "Like you were."
"Thank you," she said because it was polite and she loved her son, thought he was the most perfect of sons. Joe had left to head back to bed for the night and had taken her mum to the hotel on his way home. Somehow, she did not think it a coincidence that her father had shown up as soon as everyone else had left.
"Do you need anything?" he asked after several moments of silence.
"No," she said and felt the awkwardness of the situation acutely. "I'm pretty much set."
"Good," he said and nodded his head as if he'd just inquired about the weather. He had his hands stuffed into his pockets as if he were afraid what he would do were they free.
"Do you… do you want to hold him?" she finally asked. She felt ashamed when she saw the look of pure pleasure on his face as he walked forward. Ashamed that she had cut him out of her life so fully once her mum had told her the truth about him. Was it his fault that he couldn't stay dead? Should that truly keep her from pursuing a relationship with him?
"Are you sure?" he asked even as he gently took Steven from her arms and cradled him to his chest. He looked down at her child with an expression of pure love. It humbled her. Made her wonder if he had gazed at her with the same expression when she was born.
5. At her mum's funeral, she introduced her dad to Joe as her half-brother. Jack – no longer dad but Jack – took it all in stride and didn't correct her. Alice felt too numb to care about whether she had hurt his feelings or not. Didn't stop to think that maybe he mourned her mum as much as she did. She didn't want to know.
For the first time in her life, she understood why her mum had left Jack rather than remained by his side. He looked the same as ever, young and full of life. Nothing like her mum, who even before the cancer ravaged her body, had gained gray hair and lines that showed how she had lived her life. Who had started to slow down and had considered moving closer to Alice in case something happened and then suddenly hadn't thought of much else when told the diagnosis.
As the minister consigned her mum to the earth and intoned the prayers for the dead, Alice stood numbly with Steven clutching her skirts and Joe manfully by her side. Jack kept his distance, a part of the family and apart, giving truth to the statement that Alice and he merely shared a father and not a mother. She dropped a handful of dirt into the grave and wondered whether Jack could have helped her mum, kept her from dying.
She wouldn't ask.
And later, when Jack tried to comfort her, she pushed him away. Her mum was dead and whatever made him the impossible thing he was hadn't transferred over to her. Nothing he could say to her would make her feel better. It didn't matter it wasn't logical. All that mattered was that he served as a reminder that while life went on for her and for Joe and little Steven and her mum, her father remained unchanging.
6. Alice refused to countenance Jack's presence when the government released her boy's body to her for burial. Nothing anyone said could change her mind. They said Jack hadn't had any other choice, that her boy had saved Earth, but none of that mattered to her.
What mattered was that her father had taken her son – his grandson – out of her arms and used him to defeat the aliens. And killed him.
Steven was dead and Alice wanted nothing to do with Jack.
7. "Your father is back," Liz informed her. Alice stiffened in her arms before forcing herself to relax.
"Oh?" she said and strove to sound uninterested.
"Mmm… he popped up in America or something like that," she said.
Alice shrugged. "Who knows with him?"
"Alice…" Liz began and paused. It surprised Alice, if only because Liz Johnson never seemed to let anything get to her. Confidence tended to exude from her. That same lack of shame had led her to pursue the mother of the boy used to defeat the '456' – never mind her own actions in the whole affair.
For some perverse reason, it did not bother Alice to be involved with – in love with, really – the woman who tore her son from her arms and gave him to her father. She couldn't give anyone a proper answer for why she was with Liz, but there it was.
"Alice," Liz said again, "do you want me to get in touch with him for you?"
No need to define the 'him' in question. Jack had left her alone after she told him to do so. Last she heard, he had fled the planet. Must be nice to have the ability to just up and go.
"How can you ask me that after what he did?" Alice asked and pulled away from her lover. She huddled into herself, grasping her arms around her waist and turned a cold eye to Liz.
Liz looked surprised, maybe even a little hurt by her actions but quickly composed herself. "I know what he did. What I don't understand is why you shun him for his actions but not me."
"You're not my father."
8. Dying did not hurt. It did not scare her or make her anxious. She welcomed it, welcomed the knowledge that soon, she'd be at peace.
Like her mother, cancer ravaged her body. She had stopped treatments after the doctors admitted they could do nothing else. She wanted to spend the rest of her days in comfort, rather than the distress brought on by the medication.
Alice thought she had lived a good and full life. She still missed her son, wondered at times what Steven would be like if he'd not been the last casualty in a war that no one liked to admit happened. She hoped he would be proud of her, just as she hoped her mum would be, too.
She wondered if the cancer was her punishment for not protecting Steven. For falling in love with Liz, who for all her good qualities, still tried to kill her father and later helped him kill her son.
She hated when her thoughts turned to that.
"Melissa," a male voice said and she turned her head to see Jack, her father. He looked the same as ever, though she could perhaps see a bit of tiredness around his eyes.
"No one's called me that in a very long time," she finally said. She watched as he slowly made his way to kneel down next to her.
"We named you after one of Lucia's best friends at Torchwood," Jack said.
She didn't know how to respond to that. "Why are you here?" she asked.
"Isn't it enough that you're my daughter?" he asked.
She snorted. "You've not been much of a father."
He winced but nodded. "I know. I… I regret what I did, you know."
"Taking Steven from me?" she asked and even all these years later, the bitterness of his actions still echoed in her memory.
Jack nodded. "I wish we had had more time to find some other way."
She couldn't fault him on that.
"I heard you took up with that Johnson lady," he said after another awkward silence had descended. He sounded equal parts bewildered and hurt. She supposed it made sense; Liz had done her best to kill him and his team, no matter that she had later turned on her handlers to help him rid the Earth of the '456.'
"You have no right to comment on that," she said and her reply sounded sharp and defensive, even to her own ear.
"I guess I don't have a lot of rights with you," he admitted.
"Jack…" Alice began and sighed. "You took your grandson from my arms and used him to get rid of those bastards." She shook her head with remembered pain. "I don't know how you live with that."
"Badly," he said. "There is so much I regret, Melissa. So much. I wish things were different."
"They're not," she said.
He nodded. "Do you need anything from me?"
"No," she said.
He reached out towards her and hesitated. She watched him with a stony expression. "Despite everything, you're my little girl. And I will always love you."
"Bye, Jack," she said and tried her best to ignore the disappointment and hurt that flooded his face. Still, he stood and bent to kiss her head before leaving.
As she watched him leave, she wondered why he had come.
9. The gravestone bore the name she had adopted and not the one with which she'd been born. It was simple, not ostentatious, containing just her name and the dates of her birth and death. Nothing about who she'd been.
Jack placed the bouquet of flowers at the base of the tombstone and sighed. His daughter was dead and she would not grant him any forgiveness for his actions. She was dead and the last part of the '456' died with her. No one save the odd historian would remember what happened that day. No one would know what he did, of what he lost.
"Good bye, Melissa Harkness," he whispered. With a flick of his finger, he opened his wristband and hit the button with the pre-set coordinates. It was time for him to go.
/fin