Title: As Far As We Can
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG/ PG-13 for violence
Summary: Jenny Hawkins thinks she's a normal 21st century girl. But all of that changes when she wakes up on an alien planet three thousand years later and told that she's the general of an army. Which is the truth, her old life or her new one? And who is this Jack Harkness?
Disclaimer: Don't own Jack Harkness, or anything else from Torchwood that might pop up, do own everything else. Short, sweet, to the point.
Chapter 1:
The skies were bright red with missiles exploding, each blast dripping a fiery trail down to the ground. On the ground, entire fields were being blasted with every type of weapon imaginable, ending with nothing but charred dirt.
She ran as fast as she could through the battlefield, her movements being tracked by rounds of gunfire. She threw herself behind a short hill, just narrowly avoiding a grenade. She started reloading her gun, her chest still heaving with exertion, and turned to the man crouching next to her.
"We can't keep this up, Jack," she said, "They're slaughtering us."
"Your soldiers are expecting you to fix this," he replied, not turning his eyes away from the carnage over the hill.
"They're also expecting me not to get them killed," she snapped, "We retreat."
He shrugged. "I follow your orders, General. I'll sound the call."
He straightened slightly, and a grenade tore through his chest.
I awoke with a gasp to find that I was lying in bed. I sat up, rubbing my eyes and looking at the clock. 4:15 in the morning. I groaned and flopped back down. The memory of the dream quickly faded, leaving only a vague sense of horror.
It wasn't vague enough to let me go back to sleep, unfortunately. I lay in bed tossing and turning for twenty minutes, before I muttered, "screw it," and rolled out of bed.
Pulling on my bathrobe, I strolled down to the kitchen to find my mother already there, sipping a cup of coffee.
"Morning, Mum," I grunted.
"You're up early, Jenny," Mum said, casting an appraising eye over my flyaway hair and bedraggled bedclothes.
"Bad dream," I said, dragging myself over to the kitchen table and plopping in a chair.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Eh." I shrugged. "Don't really remember it."
Mum set her cup of coffee down and put on a comforting expression. "Well, dear," she said, "It's only a dream. It's not like-"
I laughed, "Yeah, I know, Mum," I said, "It's not like, at the tender age of nineteen, I've been exposed to the horrors of life."
Mum pretended to look offended. "I wasn't going to say that."
"Yeah, you were."
She smiled. "Yes, I was. It's just, you've been having these nightmares for months now. I'm getting worried. Maybe you should see-"
"I don't need to see a counselor, Mum," I interrupted, "I'll be fine. I think…" I hesitated, looking at her carefully, "I think they all started after we last visited Dad's grave."
Mum froze, her eyes almost filling with tears. She blinked them back and said, "I know, Jenny. I miss him too." Her lips lifted in a watery almost-smile. "It's been five years, yet it still feels like it was yesterday."
"Yeah," I said, my own eyes filling up with tears, "I know."
We both sat there in silence for a minute, each quietly sniffling and trying to regain control of ourselves.
"Well," I said, when I felt relatively normal again, "I'm going to go watch television before I have to get up for real."
"What are you doing for the holiday?" Mum asked, picking up her coffee again.
"Meeting with Sadie," I said, dropping dramatically onto the couch and picking up the remote.
"Well, have fun," she said, and I turned on the television.
Five minutes later I was asleep.
Grenades and bullets were screaming all around her and she barely noticed, sprinting through the battlefield.
"Mum," she screamed, and her throat felt like it was burning. When was the last time she had had water? It didn't matter. "Mum!" she screamed again.
An arm snapped around her waist, holding her in place. She fought against it, still screaming.
"It's too late," he said, "You can't go out there, there are land mines everywhere. They've got her."
She didn't stop struggling. "I have to save her," she said, "It's my fault she's even in this mess."
She felt him sigh against her back. "No, it's mine," he said, "I'll go."
She stopped struggling, thought for a second, then nodded. He released her and ran through the battlefield.
A hand on my shoulder jolted me awake. I jumped, and someone laughed right next to my ear. I looked up to see Sadie grinning down at me, as bouncy as the hair that stuck out from the sides of her head, and as bright as the sun streaming through the windows.
"Sleepy?" Sadie said, laughing.
"I guess," I said, rubbing my stiff neck, "What time is it?"
"Why, it's Howdy-Doody time!" Sadie said with a manic grin.
I shot her a half-amused, half-annoyed glance. She relented, and said, "It's nine. Your mum told me you got up early. Bad dreams?"
"Yeah," I said, getting up and heading to my room.
Sadie followed close on my heels, like a pet dog or a really obsessive mother hen. "What were they about? Do you want to talk about it? I am totally here if you want to talk about it."
I smiled, and said, "There's nothing to talk about, Sades. I don't even remember them. They just leave me with a weird feeling."
"Weird feeling?"
"Yeah, like-" I paused, pulling clothes out of my closet, and trying to think of a way to describe it, "Like, have you ever felt that there's something missing, or that something bigger is happening all around you and you're just missing it? Like, someone looks at you funny in a shop, or you see something out of the corner of your eye, but isn't there when you look straight at it."
Sadie raised a skeptical eyebrow. "No," she said slowly, "but I think that's called paranoia."
I sighed. "Whatever, it's just a feeling. Now would you turn around while I change?"
Sadie rolled her eyes.
Five minutes later we were out the door, Sadie throwing a hasty, "Bye, Mrs. Hawkins!" in the general direction of the kitchen. We headed to our favorites chip shop, Sadie teasing me about all manner of things under the sun.
"What you need," she said, throwing an arm around my shoulders, "is a boyfriend."
"I don't need a boyfriend," I said, sighing. We've had variations of this conversation ever since we had met nine years ago. "I'm too busy. I have work, I have to take care of Mum, you know she hasn't been feeling well, and-"
"Excuses, excuses," Sadie said, elbowing me in the side. I let out a grunt. "I bet if you had a boyfriend you wouldn't be so uptight. You'd have someone to compliment you on your gorgeous green eyes-"
"My eyes are blue, genius."
"Whatever. Your bountiful blue eyes, your luscious raven locks, your svelte figure…"
"I have short hair and no figure whatsoever." I elbowed her back in the side, and she kicked me in the shin.
Just as we were about to go into a spirited discussion in front of the shop, the world rolled. Like a blanket on a waterbed, it rolled, colors blending together and details blurring. I felt sick and I stumbled, closing my eyes and putting a hand to my head.
"Are you alright?" I heard Sadie ask, as if from far away. I looked up, and everything was normal again. I was lying on the ground with Sadie leaning over me, and several bystanders looking curiously at us.
"I'm fine," I muttered, pulling myself up and staggering inside the shop.
Sadie stood as close as possible to me, offering her shoulder to lean on. I felt significantly better after only a few seconds, and pulled myself up straight.
"I'm fine," I said again, more firmly this time.
Of course, it was just then that I tripped and stumbled into someone exiting the shop.
I apologized, and he looked at me with baleful eyes. "Young kids these days," he snorted, "No sense of propriety, no honor. I bet all you do is eat and sleep, waste your life away."
He was an older man, looked to be in his fifties or sixties, with striking silver hair and a huge bushy beard the same color. His light blue eyes glittered with annoyance and, strangely, a sense of familiarity.
"Excuse me?" I spluttered, "I don't even know you."
"I'll bet you don't," he grunted, "You don't even know who you are, do you? Spending every day as if it weren't a lie, as if it weren't all that there is? There's more out there, but you don't even look, don't even try to strain for the stars."
"What?"
He ignored me. "You don't belong here, little girl," he said, "and you need to realize that. You need to fight back."
I stared at him in confusion. "Who-"
Sadie interrupted me. "Jenny, who are you talking to?" She looked worried.
I pointed out the old man- but then I noticed he wasn't there.
"You were talking to the air?" she said as if she doubted my sanity.
"No!" I protested. "There was this guy, an old man-"
"Jenn," Sadie said, looking as concerned as I had ever seen her, "There was no one there. No old man, nobody."
I stared at the space where he had been, and felt a brief surge of fear rise up in me.
"Let's just get some chips," I muttered.
After we ate, Sadie decided that it would probably be best if I just headed on home. I couldn't really blame her. I felt shaky and clammy and awful, and I imagined I probably didn't look any better. So, we parted at the door of the shop and headed home our separate ways, Sadie warning me to be careful, and don't wander off.
I accepted her admonishments with an absentminded shrug and walked away, feeling a migraine pulsing in my head. I wondered if I was going crazy. Who sees an old man that's not there, hell, who sees the world ripple?
As if waiting for me to think an ironic thought, the world rippled again. When it straightened out, I found myself lying on my back on the sidewalk, breathing shallowly.
I pushed myself to a sitting position, the migraine twice as bad, now, and rubbed my face. I stood up slowly, my legs wobbly and feeling as if I hadn't used them for a month. I managed to walk ten shaky steps before I saw him.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, with only slightly graying hair and he wore a long, dark coat that went to his knees. I couldn't see his face or any other details, but I knew instinctively that he was the man from the dreams I couldn't remember.
It was as if the world ceased to exist as I walked towards him. I could still see the road, the sidewalk and the houses, but they all looked slightly blurred. There were no people walking by and no cars. There was no sound at all, except for my footsteps and ragged breaths.
I stopped right next to him, and he finally turned to look at me. I felt my eyes inexplicably fill with tears as he stared blankly in my direction.
"Jenny," he said in an American accent, "do you think this is right? That this is all you are?"
"Who are you?" I said, unable to think of anything else. He looked at me with a familiarity bred of long years of camaraderie, and it made me uncomfortable and comforted all at once.
"Jenny," he said again, "You need to wake up. We need you. We can't do this without you."
"I am awake," I said. "Aren't I?"
The man continued, as if he couldn't hear me. In fact, suddenly I knew that he couldn't hear me. He wasn't talking to the me on the sidewalk in London. He was talking to some other me, the one that he knew. I shivered.
He said, "You don't belong here. You've got to fight this, General. Come back."
"Why must I fight?" I asked, feeling a weariness that was both foreign and familiar settle over me.
Then he was gone, and everything was back to normal. A car drove by in the street.
I shook my head. "Weird," I muttered, and set off for home.
She was floating in a sea of glass and tubes, flying high on a wind of drugs and chemicals. She had something she needed to do. Somewhere she needed to go. Where? Why did it matter?
The clicks and whistles of an alien language filtered through her ears, then slowly faded out, to be replaced with the whispers of two people talking in English.
"There she is."
"God, she looks horrible."
"Don't get distracted, they'll come back at any minute. Help me get her out of there."
Soft hands, warm hands, lifting her up and pulling her away from the glass-and-tube sea. She fell into them, knowing they'd catch her.
"What do you think they did to her?"
"I don't want to know. I just want her back to normal."
"Let's sedate her, I don't want her to wake up while we're carrying her through this place."
"Good idea."
And then she floated into blackness.
I jolted awake, and realized I wasn't in my room. In fact, I wasn't anywhere I recognized. I clutched the strangely textured blankets closer to me and wondered what was going on.
Little did I know it, but I had just truly woken up for the first time in two months.