Disclaimer: Characters and situations owned by the BBC.
Timeline: Immediately post-The Doctor Falls for Missy, post Adrift, pre-Exit Wounds for the Torchwood Team. Spoilers accordingly for all broadcast Doctor Who episodes and the first two seasons of Torchwood.
Thanks to: My wonderful beta Kathyh, coming through in a pinch.
The woman who'd come through the Rift looked utterly human, but it took Owen no more than a check on her heartbeat to realise she was anything but. She was in a bad state; unconscious, dark hair and clothes somewhat frizzled and smelling of recent smoke, and the fact that the clothing in question looked downright Victorian made him wonder whether they were dealing with a displaced time traveller again. This inevitably reminded him of Diane, but that particular wound had scarred by now; at any rate, he wouldn't want Diane to return and find him now, would he? Not when he'd effectively turned into a zombie, without the brain craving.
They'd found the woman where spikes of Rift energy had registered, not very far from the Hub, but they were able to shoo the tourists away with tales of filming. Bringing her to a hospital ceased to be an option when Owen noticed the existence of not one, but two heartbeats. The significance of this would have been lost on him if he'd depended on Jack for his intel; of all of Jack's secrets, anything related to his Doctor, including the latter's physiology, had never made it into any Torchwood files. But Martha Jones had shared some of the relevant UNIT files when Owen had asked her about the Doctor during the weeks she'd spent with them. It wasn't simply scientific curiosity, though it was definitely that as well. Being dead and still walking around gave you a whole new perspective on people who apparently turned dying and getting reborn into a party trick.
The team sent out to investigate would have been Owen and Gwen but for the fact that Gwen was still reeling from her experience with Nikki, the mother whose son had been driven mad by his experiences due to the Rift, and Jack wanted to go easy on her for a while, so he'd come with Owen instead. This made things easier.
As soon as Jack was informed about the two hearts, he turned white.
„Same species as your Doctor, am I right?" Owen asked, watching him. He could count the times he'd seen Jack shocked, honestly, unironically shocked, on one hand. Usually, Jack didn't do that particular emotion. But he did now.
„No," Jack replied. „There aren't any of them left except for him. Well, there was one other, but I saw that bastard die and stay dead with my own eyes. So this must be…"
The noise Jack's sentence melted into was a mixture between laughing and crying. He didn't need to be told they had to get the woman into the Hub as quickly as possible; he gathered her up and carried her, practically racing so that Owen, who wasn't carrying anything but a small tool kit, could barely keep up. Usually the sight of Jack with an unconscious woman in his arms would have rated at least one sarcastic aside about the romantic pose, but she was a patient, and an alien one to boot, so Owen focused on the task at hand, trying to recall all the UNIT files had said. No antiplatelets like Aspirin, but for some reason ginger beer was useful in cases of poisoning and irregular heart rhythms. For all he knew, the woman could have simply inhaled too much smoke, since she obviously had been close to a burning, but when Jack had picked her up, Owen could see a scorch mark in her back that was far too tiny and precise to be anything but a shot.
He used his scanner as soon as they had her in the sickbay. Whatever she'd been shot with did not leave a bullet and looked more like a laser. More disturbing was the fact her physiology was going haywire; people shortly before a heart attack had less erratic readings. Then again, UNIT files notwithstanding, Owen simply didn't have much of a baseline to compare this to. In the end, he threw everything at her he could think of and tried to question Jack in between administering ginger beer, courtesy of Ianto. He also tried not to think too hard about the chance to witness what the files had called „regeneration", which even Martha hadn't, despite travelling with the Doctor for a while. That the temptation not to do his best to keep the woman alive so he could study such an event close up was there, he couldn't deny. But he remembered dying too well, the pain, the horror of the nothingness engulfing you, and how Jack bringing him back hadn't improved on the nightmares and memories thereafter one bit. Inflicting something like this on a patient deliberately would mean betraying one of the few things he still believed in.
Jack muttered something about how regeneration should have kicked in by now yet he could see no sign of it, and how maybe this was the last one, which started a whole new series of worries. He told Owen to step back and then did something even more like a cheesy romance film than his sweeping her up and carrying her around had been. He kissed her. And there were literally sparks.
„Oh, come on," Owen muttered, but was fascinated and had the presence of mind to record this with his instruments. Jack was apparently transferring some kind of energy with a golden glow, but it couldn't be electricity, because none of the med lab's equipment showed any signs of being affected.
The woman's readings stabilized; her vitals weren't human, but the lower body temperature at least was something Martha's files had declared regular and normal, and the pulse driven by two hearts at last became regular.
„Artron energy," Jack said, interpreting Owen's look correctly. „Though I like to think it's mainly my irresistible personality."
Owen scanned him as well; Jack's metabolism was unique, but by now so familiar he could tell whatever he'd done had exhausted Jack, and that Jack should ideally recuperate now. Naturally, he wouldn't, so Owen didn't bother suggesting it. He did notice that Ianto was lingering in the doorframe and probably had been for a while. Tea Boy didn't look surprised, so he'd known Jack could do something like that, but that particular brand of Jonesian deadpan expression carried an undertone of distaste, if Owen wasn't mistaken.
The woman opened her eyes, and belatedly, it registered what a looker she was. They were of a bright, icy blue, and transformed her face from interesting to striking. She seemed to take in her surroundings immediately, and yet she showed no sign of confusion, as nine out of ten people waking up in such circumstances would have done.
„Doctor," Jack said, sounding relieved and happy in a way that was different than his usual easy going manner, „did you miss me, or why did you pick my colours to regenerate into? I thought you were going for ginger."
Well, if Jack's Doctor could change bodies, he could presumably also change gender, but Owen still found it amazing Jack didn't at least consider it might be someone else. Even if the species had died out by now. They did get visitors from the past through the Rift, after all.
The woman pursed her lips. „Been there, done that," she replied in a distinctly Scottish accent. Okay, Owen thought, that's it. Body and gender-changing aliens, fine. But accepting there was a Space Glasgow was pushing it. „I'm over ginger now." She paused, and there was something very odd in her tone as she continued. Cool amusement, even a taunt. „Handsome Jack."
For the second time in a day, Owen saw Jack thoroughly, deeply shocked. He actually turned white and took a step back. This was so utterly unlike the reaction Owen had expected. Since when did Jack pass up an opportunity to flirt back? Since when did he react to a compliment about his looks as if he was a child meeting a paedophile? Owen looked at Ianto, who'd gone rigid but seemed to be just as confused, and that was when Jack drew his gun and pointed it at the woman.
„You," he said, and the visceral loathing in his voice wasn't something Owen had heard from Jack before, not in years of working for him and, for a time, specializing in trying to tick him off. By now, Ianto, following Jack's lead, had drawn his gun as well. Owen had his hands full of medical equipment, which told him the woman's pulse didn't change. Which meant she had to be at least a little insane. Even professional soldiers and Mafia killers, no matter how well trained they were, couldn't control that tiny physical response to being threatened by a lethal weapon. They might not move a facial muscle, but their heart rate, that was something different again. The woman, whoever she was, was still connected to Owen's instruments, and she truly showed no more reaction than if Jack had waved his finger at her.
„Me," she confirmed. „You know, I could have played him for you, if I'd wanted to." She switched her tone to an exaggerated, quick babble. If anything, the Scottish accent deepened. „Stop it, Jack. We've got things to do, people to save. Hand over that insult to actual time travel in wrist watch form so I can use it, there's a good lad." As abruptly as she started, she stopped and slowed down again, adding in her former mode of speech. „I'm getting good at this, aren't I? Shame he couldn't hear."
„What are you doing here?" Jack said, and if anything, the hate in his voice intensified.
„I told you," the woman said, a bit impatiently. „It's part of the new me. I'm telling the truth. Like it or not, I do have people to save. Or, well, the Doctor to save. The others are collateral, though I admit Comic Relief is growing on me, and I have some pesky irritating feelings about poor Exposition. I think I owe her. At any rate, I'll try to save them as well. But I really need your vortex manipulator to do it, Captain."
„You are unbelievable," Jack said. „Owen, step away from her."
Now, belatedly, there was a slight acceleration of her pulse. „Is this about me not saying thank you?" she asked, eyebrows raised „I don't remember you standing on formalities. But fine. Thank you very much for saving my life despite me killing you one or two… or well, three hundred times. I won't do it again. Now can you please get the vortex manipulator? You can come along, if you don't believe me. In fact, you'd better. I do recall you being good at shooting people. Want to have a go at Cybermen near a black hole?"
„I told you to step away," Jack said to Owen, ignoring her. His gun didn't waver. Owen was very conscious he was partially blocking Jack's aim, and Ianto's, too, for that matter.
„I heard you the first time," he replied. It wasn't that he doubted this woman was dangerous; anyone making Jack Harkness behave this way would be, and if she truly hadn't lied, her words proved her a sadistic killer to boot. But they had just done their best to save her life, and so she was still Owen's patient. Not to mention that even if she wasn't the Doctor, she still seemed to be a member of the same species, presumably the „bastard" Jack has assumed to be permanently dead, and letting Jack kill one of the only two surviving aliens of their kind just wasn't something Owen was prepared to do. At least not without exhausting other alternatives first.
„This is the Master," Jack said. „Harold Saxon. You can't remember, because that time was reversed, but he ruled Earth for a year and made all your homegrown dictators and psychopaths look like beginners. I witnessed him wipe out Japan simply because he could."
„Also because of all the really bad karaoke," the woman interrupted. „And a pesky assassination attempt or two. If we're getting technical. That bomb disguised as a teletubby really ticked me off, I remember that much. You see, I liked teletubbies."
Out of the corner of his eye, Owen saw Ianto trying to circle around him to get an unblocked shot, and he pressed the woman down, covering her with his upper half just in case.
„I appreciate the gesture," she murmured, smiling up at him, „but are you sure they won't shoot you? You're already dead, after all. And really, Jack, raising zombies? Tsk. What would the Doctor say? Let's find out. Look, you can try to kill me once we've done so. Though I have to say, any attempt by you or someone else now is bound to be an anticlimax. Given I did my damned best to kill myself twice over…"
„Okay," Owen interrupted, addressing Jack, not least because his motivation to save the woman's life was more tested the longer she talked, „she's insane and bad news, alright. But you don't have to kill her, Jack. We could put her into storage with the other cryo sleepers if she truly is too dangerous to keep imprisoned."
„What? You're not freezing me," she said indignantly while Jack simultaneously said: „I don't want to kill her."
„The hell you don't," Owen retorted.
„I want to interrogate her first," Jack said. By now, the rage and hate in his voice had turned to cold determination. „Because whatever her true reason for being here, you can bet on it being a long and complicated scheme to attract the Doctor's attention at the expense of thousands, if not millions of innocent lives. This is what she does. This is what she's always done, through the millennia. So I say we skip the part where innocents die and get the truth out of her first. If she's already put things into motion, we need to stop them." He looked at her and added, full of contempt. „Just so you know, the one thing I won't do is try to contact the Doctor. No matter what you do or say. So you might as well tell the truth. Then I'll accept Owen's suggestion, and it's only going to be cryo sleep. Otherwise, I'll show you a bit of what you taught me about interrogation."
„I am telling the truth, you dunderhead," the woman exclaimed, annoyed, though Owen felt slight tremors on her skin. „Good lord, do gooding is hard. Time was when I'd have killed the lot of you and taken what I wanted, but no…"
Before Owen knew what was happening, she'd rolled both of them from his surgery couch, and had disconnected herself from any instruments. Except for the cable she'd flung across his neck.
„…I'm reduced to hostage taking", she ended. „How humiliating. Look, Captain Fixed Point, I'll snap his neck if I have to. And he won't die, after what you did. He'll exist with a broken neck, sitting in a wheel chair and drooling. Believe it or not, I remember your pets from that year. You care for them, and you've already made this one's life a mess. Now give me the vortex manipulator, I'll be on my merry way and you can celebrate your survival with a team orgy, how about that?"
It wasn't that long ago that Owen had done his best to test the limits of his new state, and he hadn't known whether he was afraid to die again or to live in the grey, tasteless existence that was all his body was now capable of. What she threatened to do, though, convinced him that he very much wanted to keep what he had. It also made him wonder about the Hippocratic oath, and previous occasions when he'd broken it. He'd liked the tormented space whale a hell of a lot more than he did this woman.
Jack hesitated. Great, Owen thought. He keeps saving me when I don't want him to, and now he's drawing the line?
„You'll do that and worse to millions if I let you lose on the universe again," Jack said tonelessly. His speech was oddly slurred. Owen had a bitter taste in his mouth, when he'd thought he wouldn't be able to taste anything ever again. Then he smelled something, and it wasn't the cold smoke still clinging to the hair and clothing of the woman holding him. It came through the ventilation system, and he recognized it at once.
Gwen was away for a week with Rhys due to her recent experience, but Tosh was in the Hub. She must have been watching through the internal security system, and taken action. Owen watched as the sleeping gas they'd discovered worked on the majority of aliens and humans alike knocked out Jack, Ianto and, blessedly, the woman holding him, though she noticed what was happening only a few moments after Owen did, and started to move towards the door, her hold on him undiminished, before she collapsed and took him down to the floor.
He thought nothing of using her body as a cushion, which softened the impact; even a twisted ankle would be permanent for him now, so Owen had figured out ways to avoid sudden falls. Then he carefully, so it wouldn't pull tighter, removed the cable around his neck. A part of him noted down that his theory of being immune to gas now appeared to be true; it came with the not needing to breathe anymore part, but that wasn't a method he'd tried in the mixture of depression and wild rage that had engulfed him immediately after Jack had brought him back. Then he checked Jack, Ianto, and after a moment the alien woman - the Master, and what kind of a name was that? - as well. They had all gone under, but otherwise appeared to be alright.
Owen hit the intercom. „That was brilliant, Tosh," he said.
„I try", she replied, sounding more pleased than necessary about the compliment, and Owen felt the old mixture of affection and anger Tosh tended to evoke in him. He knew she loved him. He'd never understood why, other than Tosh subconsciously feeling the need to punish herself, and it made him furious that she should want to. But these days, they were actually quite good at friendship, possibly because even Tosh had to know he wasn't capable of more, not now, if he ever had been.
Once he'd left the room, he asked her how much she'd heard, and filled her in on some details she'd missed. Then they tried to decide what to do.
„Jack knows her," Tosh said. „We don't. If she's really that dangerous, and planning something…"
„….we do need to find out, of course we do. But he doesn't want to interrogate her, Tosh. Well, he wants that, too, but mainly he wants to torture her."
„Jack wouldn't," she protested, though Owen saw the doubt in her eyes. There had been borderline cases, one only this year, during a foiled invasion. The thing was, though; in no case of threatened violence, Owen had had impression that Jack wanted to cause pain, that his goal had been anything other than saving the day. It wasn't Jack's style to be cruel for its own sake. Owen, who wasn't into physical violence but at irregular intervals lashed out with a cutting remark which he knew would hurt whoever it was directed at, admired this about him, though sometimes it frustrated him; it made Jack difficult to argue with. This woman, though, and the way Jack hated her...
„Leaving morals aside," Owen said, „you can't find out the truth if you mainly want to punish the person you're interrogating for what they did to you. And if she really killed him hundreds of times…"
„You killed him," Tosh interrupted him. She'd never brought that up before, and he immediately fell silent. „And he never wanted to punish you."
No, Owen thought, he wanted to punish me before I killed him. After, he just forgave me, and I still don't know how I feel about that.
Tosh looked at him, gaze not accusatory, just with that deep honesty that was hers, and Owen found himself saying: „He saved me that day, Tosh. He keeps doing that. And that's why I can't let him torture that woman, even if she's evil incarnate. Let us save him for a change."
Tosh bit her lip, and then she nodded. She had her own history with Jack; Owen had never asked what it was, but he did have a few educated guesses.
„We still need to figure out what she's planning, though," Tosh said.
Owen looked at his watch, but based on the nature of the gas Tosh had flooded his med lab with, they still had at least an hour until Jack and Ianto woke up. As for the gender-switched former PM of Britain, her alien physiology made this anyone's guess, so he'd put her in one of the monitored cells, just to be on the safe side. On the screen, she appeared to be still sleeping, but if he was her and awake, he'd fake this.
„I think," he began, stopped, and then told himself there was no need to fear looking naive in front of Tosh, „I think she might be telling the truth."
„But why?" Tosh asked, startled, her entire face a question mark. „She nearly crippled you!"
„Because she was right. She could have pretended to be the Doctor, and Jack would have given her anything without knowing any better. He was convinced that was who she was, that was who he wanted to see. Whom he always wants to see, let's not kid ourselves. Until she taunted him with a phrase he obviously recognised, and she knew he would before she said it, I was watching her. She was being a bitch about it, but I think - I think she actually wanted to be honest."
„Doctor Owen Harper," the woman said. She'd stopped pretending to be asleep as soon as he'd come near the bulletproof glass separating the Torchwood holding cells from the floor. „Believe it or not, I do remember. Your entire merry band tried to free Handsome Jack during that year and died, did you know that? Coming back from the dead is a bad habit for humans. You need to be a Time Lord to do it well."
„Would you?" Owen asked, which seemed to surprise her.
„Dearie, it comes with the territory. I thought your gallant leader had made it clear what I was."
„I didn't ask whether your species would," Owen replied. „Just whether you would. From what I could tell, you were dying when you arrived here, not regenerating. Did you really try to kill yourself?"
She rose in one sinewy motion. „Don't insult me. I don't try. I'm the most expert killer you'll ever meet, and I killed myself with style. Twice. It's just that death and I just can't make it work. We keep breaking up. That, and I do have someone other than death to be with. Rather urgently."
Irritating as the sing-song taunting and the superior attitude were, it hadn't escaped Owen's notice that she had deflected the question about whether or not she'd have regenerated.
„Why did you come here?" he asked. „I don't believe you just fell into the Rift by coincidence wherever you were before and just happened to emerge from it at a place where someone could help you. Aren't you a professional time traveller?"
Her eyes narrowed. „It's not a profession, it's an art. And I do it exceedingly well." She hummed a little. „I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real."
Having gone through suicidal depressions himself, and recently, too, Owen recognized the Plath quote. It made him wonder, not for the first time, how much of her smug supervillain attitude was an act, or whether the act was the occasional glimpse of sanity beneath.
„You could try answering my questions if you really have somewhere else to be urgently," he said. „Just a suggestion, Ms. Saxon."
She shook her head. „Harry Saxon was so last century," she said. „If I've learned anything recently, it's that I'm well and truly done with that life." She put her left hand on her breast and widened her eyes in a mockery of sincerity. „And that's the truth."
„Well, I'm not calling you Master," Owen returned. „There are rules against enabling pathological narcissists."
„Presumably rules by other narcissists who are just jealous they can't pull it off as well. You may address me as Missy, Dr. Zombie, if you must. And to answer your question. Yes. I did know what I was doing when I felt that crack opening where I was, and used what strength I had to fall into it. Circumstances were… dire. But the Rift has artron energy, and so does Captain Billowy Coat. There isn't much I don't know about his physiology after a year of testing it."
Owen tried very hard not to imagine what „testing" meant if the subject was an immortal being. He still remembered Jack lying in front of him, still, so still, and the sickening mixture of horror and vicious satisfaction at realizing he'd gone through with it, had actually shot Jack Harkness. He wanted to ask her how she managed to live with herself, except for the part where he thought that for all her studied flippancy, she'd told the truth about having done her best to kill herself very recently.
„Can we get to the part where you help me behind Jack's very sturdy back?" Missy asked softly.
„What makes you think I'll help you at all?"
Impatiently, she waved a hand. „Please. If he were awake, he'd never allow you to talk to me. Enough time has passed for him to wake up unless you've dosed him again, ergo, you're planning to help me. If it helps to speed up proceedings, I can tell you again my intentions are as boringly good as they can be. Your planet is welcome to manufacture its own catastrophes for the next century or three. I just want to return to keep my best friend from killing himself without me."
By the time she had finished, the mockery had almost entirely vanished from her voice. She was all coiled, single-minded intent. Owen recalled Harold Saxon from tv interviews during his election campaign, and once in person from a book signing; Gwen wasn't the only one who was hoarding a personal copy of „Kiss Me, Kill Me", the novel Saxon had published before replacing Harriet Smith as PM. It had been near impossible not to feel drawn to the man, right until the point when he killed the American President on public tv, which was the last sight anyone ever recalled of him, other than Jack, who'd told them today there had been an entire year of Saxon ruling the planet which had been reversed somehow. At no point during any of his public speeches had Saxon ever sounded the way Missy had done just now, serious and downright desperate.
"I believe you," Owen said, and he did. "But you see, I don't care whether your friend the Doctor lives or dies. I've never met him, and if what Jack said just a few hours ago is anything to go by, he's the reason you put humanity through hell in the past. On the other hand, I also believed you when you talked about all the people you've killed, including Jack. Call me old-fashioned, but I think mass murderers should be in prison."
"What about murderers who keep it to single digits, Dr. Harper?" She asked coldly, and he couldn't help himself; he flinched. The corners of her mouth quirked. Whether she'd only guessed or had actually known, possibly through whatever happened in that year, Owen had to admit that as hits went, this one was a bullseye.
"Don't feel too bad about staying in the amateur league," Missy said. "Incidentally, I did just spend time in prison. Nearly seven decades, I think, though it felt longer. How about you?"
Owen opened his mouth to say he was stuck in a body which hardly felt heat or cold anymore, let alone anything else, but that might give her even more insight, and even if Tosh's plan worked, he thought not revealing any more weaknesses to Missy was probably better than comparing ways in which life sucked.
"I'm in a prison right now, aren't I?" He returned instead. "Anyway, my problem is this. Storing you here in cryo sleep is out, because Jack would know, and then we're back at the beginning. Letting you go because you're better than me at witty banter would mean releasing a self confessed mass murderer on who knows how many people. I could kill you, since as you correctly said I'm already a murderer, and I didn't stop Jack earlier for your sake, I did it for his. It would save any future victims of yours and would mean he doesn't give into the temptation to torture you, so the one thing that's currently keeping me from doing it is the fact you were my patient, and I'm trying to decide whether you nearly crippling me cancels that out. Or I could hand you over to UNIT. That would piss Jack off, but he'd take it, and they must have experience dealing with you. We've got a friend there, Martha Jones."
Her wide mouth suddenly became a straight, thin line. "You don't want to do that," she said. "It would cause a massive temporal paradox, since they won't encounter this particular version of me for some years to come."
Owen didn't answer. He didn't intend to do any of the things he listed, though UNIT was a possible last resort. It was, however, important to him that she believed he would. Tosh's life could be depending on this woman considering what he actually wanted to suggest as the best of her options. So he didn't reply. Unfortunately, he couldn't truly outwait her. There was only so much time he could afford to keep Jack and Ianto unconscious. Never mind how pissed off Jack would be, the true reason was that Missy was unlikely to be the only problem troubling Torchwood for long.
Even if he did have the time, though, he suspected he'd lose a staring contest with this woman. The disdainful expression with which she regarded him now brought nothing as much to mind as his mother, and it wasn't a welcome memory. His mother, who could go from calm demeanour to complete evisceration in a matter of minutes, with or without the aid of alcohol. It must be the Mary Poppins look, Owen decided, and wondered whether that was why Missy had chosen this particular costume. Evoking either guilty or pleasant childhood memories in everyone she encountered would be a great psychological advantage.
"Do I look like I care about temporal paradoxes?" he asked at last, and was painfully aware it sounded less like a taunt and more like the sullen teenager he'd been the last time he'd been this close to a woman who'd threatened to break every bone in his body.
She surprised him with a sudden smile. "Actually, yes, given who you work for. Which, incidentally, is my point. You do care about Jack Harkness. Who is somewhat obsessively devoted to the Time Lord who isn't me, last time I checked. And I'll tell you right now, if the Doctor dies because either you or he keeps me from returning to where I left him, your precious hero with the impeccable jawline will fall apart until a jawline will be all that's left. There are a few things which keep that man going, and the idea that the Doctor is out there gallivanting about is one of them. It's why I could pull his insides out until he couldn't scream anymore, but I could never break him. Now, how's that for a motivation to help me?"
It was at any rate a good lead in to what Tosh had suggested, insisting this was the only plan she was willing to help him with. Owen pretended to think about it for a few moments longer, and then said: "It could be a good one. Depending on whether Jack agrees with the idea that you are in any way necessary to the Doctor's survival."
Her expression turned quizzical. "Well, he's hardly likely to change his opinion on yours truly if you wake him up now, so I fail to see…"
The last time Owen had opened the Rift on the instigation of an alien against Jack's expressed wishes, it had resulted in plagues, displaced historical figures and monsters all over Cardiff. He hadn't forgotten. But it had given him his admittedly somewhat insane idea. Then again, he suspected there was no sane way to deal with someone like Missy.
"Not Jack as he is now," Owen said. "What you did to him was less than a year ago, wasn't it? Now, I'm a medic, so it probably wouldn't have occurred to me, but my friend with a degree in mathematics and physics who is listening in to this conversation has pointed out to me that if you came here deliberately, that means you can navigate through the Rift. Or at least make a good guess where a temporal crack is going to lead to. And if time truly is your art, then you probably have an idea about Jack in our future, too. Where he's going to be centuries from now. When he's had time to heal, and has lived through what happens next."
She put her hands on her hips. "My word. Humans and their idea of time.. it's like watching children finger paint. Do continue, though, it's entertaining, for now."
"I'll take Jack's vortex manipulator, if it's that thing on his wrist he always carries," Owen said. "But I won't give it to you. I'll give it to Tosh. You'll tell her how to program it for one particular destination - Jack, centuries from now. She'll go there and ask him what we should do with you. Using all the arguments you've given so far. Then she'll come back with instructions, and some proof for our present day Jack, because I really don't want to be retconned and fired, again. If she doesn't come back within the next few hours, our Jack can do with you what he wants."
When Tosh had first suggested it, Owen had protested, had insisted on being the one to go. Tosh, after all, had an actual life to lose. But she was resolute, and for all her quiet demeanour, Tosh could be as immovable as a rock if she'd truly made her mind up about something. "Besides," she'd said, "between the two of us, I at least have a chance to understand what this manipulator does. And - I've done it before. Time travelled. You know."
She had. Only a few months ago, when her soldier from a past war had needed to return to meet his awful end. When Owen had lost Diane, he'd gotten inventive at finding people to beat him up. Tosh, on the other hand, had fashioned her pain and guilt into another inspiration to help people. She was like that, always had been. There were times when he'd gladly have died for her because of that, and others when it made him want to shake her until she finally realised everyone needed some selfishness to survive. Whichever feeling dominated in him right now was beside the point, though, as he couldn't do any of this on his own, and Tosh had refused to co-operate unless he let her call the shots on who would track down Jack in the future.
Now the words were said, he felt even more like a stranger in his own body than usual. His pulse should race, his heart beat faster, the adrenaline doing its magic, he should have trouble controlling his breath so not to give away quite how desperately he hoped Missy would say yes. Instead, there was nothing to control but his facial expression as he stared at the woman in the cell.
"If I were you," she said at last, "I wouldn't put much faith in the ability of an older self to reason with a younger self. I speak advisedly. Do you truly trust your own judgment so little that you'd rather have someone else decide for you?"
Given some of his more catastrophic decisions, he'd have reason to, but then again, Jack had made mistakes a plenty on his own, and those were just the ones they knew of. No, what truly had driven him towards this particular solution in the end was something else.
"I can't judge you," Owen said. "What you did, what you are - it's beyond anything that ever happened to me. But Jack, he's the one you did at least some of it to, and he's witnessed more. And by the time you'll be sending Tosh to, he'll have lived long enough to be your peer."
There was definitely anger in her voice now, and paradoxically, it made her sound younger when she replied. "Let's get one thing straight. None of you apes are qualified to judge me, and I did not come here to be judged. I simply needed…oh, never mind. Should have picked that high school the Doctor was always on about. At least no one there would presume… fine. Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
When Diane had flown into the Rift, Owen had watched her disappear, had stared into the void she'd left convincing himself he could still see a dot on the horizon long afterwards, which, even without the Rift swallowing her up, would not have been possible anymore. Tosh, on the other hand, was there one second, and the next she was gone, with a brief flash after hitting the buttons Missy had indicated on Jack's vortex manipulator. Missy was still in the cell; Owen had no intention of testing her willingness to snap his neck and simply leave the Hub without time travel. In her situation, it would be the most practical thing to do, and so he made sure to keep bullet proof glass between them. It was a pity he couldn't scan her again now that she was recovering, though; all other aspects aside, she possessed a metabolism unlike any other he'd encountered, and he couldn't help but wonder whether whatever enabled Time Lords to change their entire physique was coded into their DNA or had been added later by outside means, and if the latter whether said outside means could do the same for members of another species.
It was better to speculate on this than to imagine Tosh being lost somewhere in time and space and never returning.
"I'm curious," Missy said. "Why did Captain Valiant bother to resurrect you if he was going to let me cripple you rather than giving me what I wanted? Is it you, or is it little old me, Dr. Zombie? At any rate, you made a lousy hostage. Should I have taken the pretty set decoration in a suit instead?"
If he was honest, Owen thought Jack might have hesitated longer for Ianto, and yet longer still for Gwen; with Tosh, he'd have shown the exact same reaction as he'd done with Owen. But informing Missy on what Owen's opinion of the Torchwood emotional hierarchy for one Jack Harkness was would have been the type of mistake Owen would have needed to be angry for to make, instead of worried about Tosh and half repulsed, half fascinated by Missy. So he settled for telling her something he also considered to be true, and which hopefully would not enable her to cause damage once she got out of this cell.
"It's you. And not just because he hates you. It's because he thinks you're that much of a threat to humanity. I think Jack would sacrifice his own life to save us, but I also think he'd throw each of us into molten lava if he thought there were no other means to save the world."
Jack had told Owen as much when Owen had signed on for Torchwood. It had been one of the reasons why Owen said yes at the time. After what happened to Katie, he'd felt like burning his old life down, and volunteering for an organisation where the members had a very low life expectancy seemed to fit right in with the programme. Later on, Owen with the increasing cynicism Torchwood brought out in him had decided Jack had been lying about the sacrificing his own life part, until, that was, Jack responded to being murdered with a hug. Until Jack came back to Cardiff for them instead of doing whatever he'd run away to do with the Doctor. Granted, now that Owen knew Jack had just gone through a year of murders and torture at that point, Jack's need to recover might also have factored into Jack's decision. But it wasn't like heading Torchwood was a vacation spot.
"Why did you do it?" Owen asked Missy, because no matter what reply Tosh would bring back - and Tosh would come back, he refused to consider the alternative - , Missy would be gone soon, and he did want to know. "Kill Jack so many times, torture him that much? I get wanting to find out whether his immortality had limits, believe it or not. I get that we're no more than lab rats to you. But didn't you get simply bored after a while? You - must have seen so much already. Know so much already, if you've lived all these lives in different bodies. Why waste time doing something schoolyard bullies would if they had chance to? Is cruelty really the one thing even immortals keep getting kicks from?"
"I'm not immortal. I just try my best," she said, but she said it automatically, tonelessly, and then she fell silent, turning away from him and examining the wall with that singular focus which was hers. He'd expected another mocking jab, and then perhaps an actual reply. His interest wasn't simply theoretical. Owen had no idea whether the strange state his bout with death had left him in would last weeks, days, or centuries. Whether his body would fall apart after a while, whether he'd make it to the point where artificial bodies and transfer of consciousness were an option. But as much as he was afraid of that sense of something lurking in the dark nothing which was the one memory of being dead that had remained with him, he also wondered what would become of him if he didn't die. Whether he'd grow so jaded that the only sensation still available would be hurting someone.
When he'd almost ceased to believe she would answer, she said, still with her back to him: "I did it because I could. I did it because mortal pets are one thing, but immortal ones, that's just cheating. I did it because in the long term, there's just one person I shall never tire of hurting, and me doing this to someone he cares about is hurting him like little else." Suddenly, she turned around and gave him a toothy, chilling smile. "One of these was a lie," she said. "Can you tell me which one?"
When he'd first started to practice surgery on living people as a doctor in training, it had felt a bit like this; the awareness that one wrong choice could result in ruin, the odd thrill of knowing what to do, having the right answers at his disposal, the moments of panic when doubt came, the adrenaline rush the combination of all gave him.
"You must have gotten tired of hurting that one person as well," Owen said. "Unless you lied earlier when you told me you killed yourself twice over. I'm no psychologist, but I do know a bit of what it takes to prefer ending it all to anything else."
Her smile dropped. "There is nothing you can know that could possibly apply to me, little man," she sneered. "If you want to gain perspective on how immortal beings think, try this for size. Whatever your glorious Captain will tell your friend about me, he'll be sending her back to her death. This is not a threat, by the way, it's a fact. She will die. So will you, again. So will everyone here, because you people have life spans like insects. For him, it will have already happened. He'll know when and where. He could, of course, warn her. He could try to prevent it from happening. But I'll bet you anything that he won't. Because to anyone surviving through centuries, let alone millennia, to anyone not bound by linear time, you are all already dead. You, Dr. Harper, are simply more literal about it, but you're all the walking dead. What an immortal does is deciding how long we let you walk."
Among the many disturbing things she'd said since waking up, this was more disturbing than most, not least for the way it resonated in him. He could believe it. He thought of Jack handing over a child to the creatures they'd called "fairies" for lack of a better term. He thought of the entity which had crossed over with him when Jack had brought him back through the resurrection glove, that entity that took twelve people before Owen could stop it, and which, if you didn't accept it as some personification of death, certainly qualified as an immortal being making arbitrary decisions about other life spans. Then again: Jack responding to a year of death and torture by returning to them, short lived beings that they were, and their quixotic work here at Torchwood was the opposite of the nihilism Missy had just described. He saw an opening then, and almost replied with a cutting "So that's your excuse", because aside from everything else, that speech had been Missy on the defensive, which meant he'd gotten to her, at least a little, and in any verbal sparring his instinct was to hit again in such a situation, just as the woman who formed him had done. But it was an instinct he'd gotten back to erratically controlling in recent months. Besides, he had wanted some insight on how an immortal being thought and felt from her, and she'd given it, no matter her motives.
"Then thank you," Owen said instead. "For letting me walk a little longer. You could have snapped my neck the moment Jack refused to hand over what you wanted, after all."
She blinked, and the sneer vanished just as the smile had. Missy tilted her head as if considering him anew. Whatever she was about to say next, though, Owen never heard, because that was the moment when in an explosion of light and the sound of compressed air, Tosh returned, holding something in her hand. He forgot about caution and rushed towards her, hugging her, which he hadn't done since manipulating her with a kiss so he could wrestle the Death-like creature on his own. She was wearing something different than what she had been only half an hour ago, when she'd activated the device, and her hair was loose instead of pulled up, too. Clearly, more time had passed for her than for Owen.
"Jack sends his regards," she said, sounding a little giddy. "Also a message that's just for himself. As for her," she nodded towards Missy, "we're to let her go. Not with his current vortex manipulator, though. He's given me one for her to use. It's programmed in a way that will lead her to the Doctor she seeks, and then it will self destruct."
Owen wanted to ask her about what she'd seen of the future. Of anything from the trivial – were there finally flying hoverboards? – to the major: had humanity finally gotten over trying to wipe itself out, and was that the change Jack in the current day kept insisting would happen in the twenty first century? He wanted to ask her how she'd felt, meeting a Jack who had lived through so much time. Was he still anything like the man they knew?
He didn't ask any of it, both because there'd be time later, and because he was too glad she'd made it back alive. Now that she had, the many, many ways in which this could have gone wrong started to pile up in his imagination.
"Well," Missy said. "I suppose this puts me in debt to Handsome Jack twice over. How annoying." She pulled out sun-glasses from a pocket in her skirts, put them on, and tapped with one finger against one of the glasses. The sound that emerged was barely audible, but it somehow made the glass that separated the cell from the floor collapse into tiny particles in a matter of moments. Missy neatly stepped over them and stretched out her hand to Tosh.
"The device, please."
"How…" Owen began, and she waved her other hand at him. "Nicked these from a friend," she said, indicating the sun-glasses. "He's got several."
So she could have escaped at any point, with or without eviscerating him in the process. Why hadn't she? Because she was curious what Jack's future self would advise? Because she was bored, and play acting entertained her? Because she was truly shaken by whatever had happened to bring her to Cardiff in the first place, and possibly by encountering such a dark bit of her past as current day Jack symbolized?
Tosh had been startled by Missy's little display, too, though also fascinated by the technology employed.
"Is that sonic?" she asked, while handing over the second manipulator she carried.
"Obviously," Missy replied. "Close your mouth, Dr. Zombie, you look even more like a fish if you don't. And," she slapped the device from the future on her wrist, "try not to get yourself destroyed too soon. You could become interesting, and I might look you up again."
She vanished in a flash brighter than the one that had brought Tosh back while Owen held the breath he didn't need any more, then exhaled out of sheer habit.
"So he really has forgiven her?" he said, because he had yet to figure out how he felt himself about possibly having enabled the most dangerous being in the universe by not letting current day Jack shoot her, and just how much of his own self destructiveness was to blame for hoping she'd keep her word and he'd see her again.
"I wouldn't go that far," Tosh replied, and then her tone grew very serious. "He said there were things that needed to happen for which she was necessary. I asked him whether that meant she would save people now, or at least the Doctor she told you she wanted to go to, and Jack said "necessary" didn't always mean good things, just like without the plague, we wouldn't have gotten the Renaissance."
Owen thought about what Missy had said about immortal perspective, and grew a little colder.
Jack, current day Jack, was predictably furious when he woke up. So was Ianto, Whatever Tosh told Jack after insisting she needed to talk to him alone in order to give him the message from his future self, though, Owen never found out. While they were waiting, Ianto said, still seething: "He still has nightmares, you know. He never talks about them, but he still wakes up screaming sometimes. And you just let her walk out of here."
"Jack did," Owen corrected, neglecting to mention that Missy could and presumably would have left regardless of what future Jack had decided. He had a feeling that wouldn't change Ianto's opinion on the matter. Ianto threw his hands up.
"You need to use Jack now to go against Jack's orders? Sometimes I miss Torchwood 1. Yvonne Hartmann would have had you for breakfast a long time ago."
When he emerged from his office again, Tosh in tow, Jack had calmed down. He did pull Owen aside, though, and said: "I was bluffing when she took you hostage. I wouldn't have let her break your bones."
"You would have. You should," Owen said, though a part of him that was eternally a child and had been hurt when Missy had made her threat was absurdly relieved Jack should bother with the pretense. "Jack, twelve people died already because you didn't leave me dead. I really don't think I could cope if millions did."
Jack gave him a long look. "And yet you kept me from shooting her, and then risked Tosh's life for someone who already has killed millions."
Telling Tosh, or even Missy, that he didn't want Jack to become someone who'd use torture for his revenge was one thing, but Owen found he couldn't admit it to Jack himself. Jack loomed too much in his life already for him to have the power over Owen such an admission would bring.
"Would you believe me if I told you she reminded me of my mother?" Owen said instead, because that was a lie which had the benefit of not being completely untrue, and thus he could hope Jack, who like most good liars had experience at spotting them in others, would accept it.
Jack regarded him silently. He and Missy really had the same coloring, dark hair, blue eyes, and if he was quiet like this, you could tell there was something old behind Jack's immaculate face as well. Which was probably why Jack so rarely allowed silence to last when he wasn't alone and inevitably came up with a quip instead.
"Well," Jack said, true to form, and you could almost hear the shift back to his usual flippant manner, the happiness when he'd thought the woman he'd just saved with a kiss was the Doctor, the visceral hatred with which he'd regarded Missy, and the anger over hearing about her disappearance from Owen and Tosh, all those intense emotions fading into the placidly charming mask he usually wore, "I knew you had issues when I signed you up."
Then he leaned forward and briefly put his hand on Owen's shoulder. "But I was in need of a doctor. And that is what you are."