Disclaimer: I don't own either Doctor Who or Torchwood, though it truly pains me to say so. But if I did own either show, there would have been at least one crossover episode like this fic. :D

A/N: Thanks so much for all the great reviews, everyone! You have no idea how much I love hearing from you! :)


Chapter Two

"So, Doctor." Jack firmly shut the door to his office behind them, closing out the others. He could feel through the window their weighty stares on his back, as he had ever since he'd ushered the Doctor away and left them to clean up the mess. "How's Martha doing? I talked to her when she came…a while back, and she said she and her family were still recovering." He leaned against his desk, shoving both hands into his pants pockets.

The Doctor's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What were you about to say?"

Jack tried to play innocent. "Whadda you mean, Doc? I just said what I planned to say, and that's that."

"I wasn't born yesterday, Jack. I'm over nine hundred years old. It's not as easy as you think it is to pull the wool over my eyes," the Doctor stated severely, brow creasing. "What were you saying about Martha?"

"Oh, nothing." Seeing the expression on the Time Lord's face, he quickly held up his hands in defeat. "Fine, fine. I wasn't going to tell you, because you'd only overreact, but I had Martha come over from UNIT to check out a body that had died under strange circumstances."

The Doctor relaxed, pulling out his glasses and balancing them atop his nose. He picked up a glimmering paperweight from the corner of Jack's desk, studying it closely. "This is a Goordanian blood diamond. Extremely rare. You can even see the dark spots in the diamond, which are caused from atmospheric disturbances as the diamonds are created in the Goordanian equivalent of a thunderstorm." He set it back down, and picked up what appeared to be a tusk of a giant boar creature from Sector Nine of the planet Laguun. "And you know that I don't want Martha getting involved with this Torchwood business," he added pointedly. "Why do you think I recommended her to UNIT instead?"

"Ah. So it was you," Jack said knowingly, folding his arms.

"What?" The Doctor looked bemused.

"Just something Martha and I were talking about," he replied casually, leaving it at that.

The office remained silent for a few seconds as the Doctor examined more of Jack's collection, occasionally making an interested noise when he found something he liked. His attention was really captivated by the chunk of asteroid from deep space, which was full of golden dust from the third moon of Platuina. "So, what did you and her get up to, then?"

Jack's eyes widened minutely. "Not much, you know," he said carefully. "One of the team was, er, killed, so she had to fill in for a few days as our medic. Less than a week." The Doctor nodded absently, so Jack decided to blurt out the rest while he was at it. "Did a few autopsies, attended some meetings, helped Tosh out a little. Oh, and she became infected with alien parasites, went undercover, aged roughly sixty years, and was nearly killed by the grim reaper." He flashed a charming grin.

The Doctor nearly dropped the chuck of asteroid, fumbling frantically to regain his grip. "She did what?" he exploded.

"See? Overreacting."

"Jack."

"She's perfectly fine," Jack said. "Went home safe and in one piece." He decided not to mention the brief kiss she'd given him before leaving.

The Doctor shook his head, putting the asteroid carefully back into its correct place. Jack watched him for several seconds, then asked, "Well, where is she?"

It was the Doctor's turn to look wide-eyed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean your next companion. Surely you've got one by now, yeah?"

"Um…yeah, I…" The Doctor cleared his throat, and swallowed hard. "Can't tell you. Timelines and all that. You know how it is, of course."

Jack nodded reluctantly, sensing that there was something that the Doctor wasn't telling him. Something that he apparently didn't feel like talking about. He watched the Time Lord examine a jar of blue liquid, then grinned. "So, Doc. Are you here for business or pleasure? I'm kind of hoping it's pleasure."

The Doctor frowned at him over his glasses, then took them off and whisked them away into his coat pocket. "Business," he answered sternly. "And as a matter of fact, you've got one nasty creature headed your way out of the Rift."

Jack snapped his fingers dramatically, his expression disappointed. "And here I'd thought you'd come just to see me," he complained theatrically. "One look at this jaw line, and everyone comes back."

The Doctor wisely chose to ignore this. "Maybe you should call a meeting to order, or whatever it is that you do," he said. "Then I'll tell all of you about what's going to happen to Cardiff, what's going to happen to the world, if we don't stop it."

Jack nodded briskly. "Let's go." He and the Doctor strode out of the office, and all the others glanced up from their work stations. From the expressions on their faces, especially Ianto's, Jack assumed that they had been talking about their special visitor. "Okay, everyone. The Doctor tells me that there's a creature heading out of the Rift," he announced loudly, voice ringing throughout the Hub. "So…to the conference room."

Jack following closely, the Doctor started down to join the others. His eyes widened as he watched a pterodactyl swoop above their heads, near the top of the toweringly high roof. "Blimey, that's a pterodactyl," he said with mild interest. "It's a grade six crime against the Shadow Proclamation to own one of those things for your own personal gain."

Jack laughed. "Then be sure not to tell anyone, Doctor. Myfanwy is actually pretty tame."

Before the Doctor could answer, Owen stepped forward to stare at him. "And how do you know that? Some sort of doctor of science or something?" He didn't exactly appreciate another doctor invading his turf, especially when Jack seemed so fond of him.

The Doctor's response was to leap backwards from the scowling medic, eyes growing to an enormously round size. He looked frantically over his shoulder at Jack, who was looking on with some amusement. "He's…he's dead, Jack! Stone dead! Deader than a corpse, but still walking!"

"Calm down, Doctor. This is Owen, the one I was telling you about. He died," Jack said casually. "Then we brought him back."

"You never told me that he was still alive dead. You just said dead dead," the Doctor blurted out, still having trouble wrapping his head round the situation. "And that's…that's impossible! You can't just 'bring someone back'. It's against the very laws of time and space!" He glared accusingly at Jack.

"Apparently it's not impossible, since I'm still here," Owen said flatly. "Just can't sleep, drink, or shag. I'd almost rather be dead dead."

"We used something called a Resurrection Gauntlet," Jack explained patiently. He intercepted the Doctor's question before he could even put it into words. "It's destroyed now, after it attacked Martha and, uh, aged her. So you can't see it. Sorry."

"I once encountered a device that could bring people back to life," the Doctor said musingly, brow furrowing. "It was on the planet Wet, and it often–"

Owen snorted. "Wet?" he said incredulously. "What kind of shit name is that?"

The Doctor looked defensive. "It rained a lot there."

"Riiiight," Owen said sarcastically, obviously not believing a word the other man spoke.

"Anyway," Jack proclaimed pointedly, looking mildly interested in what the Doctor had been saying.

"Oh, yes. Where was I? The planet Wet. The resurrection device wasn't actually a glove. It was a boot, and the person who wore it had to put their foot on the head of the one who was being resurrected. The act was eventually outlawed, since the dead started complaining about waking up with a muddy boot in their face." He shrugged. "I could sympathize with them."

Gwen cleared her throat. "Back here at Torchwood…"

Jack shook himself. "Right. Doctor, I forgot to introduce you to the team. I'm such a terrible host, so it's a good thing that you admire my jaw line." He winked, then gestured towards each member of Torchwood as he spoke. "Meet Gwen Cooper, Doctor Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, and Ianto Jones."

The Doctor nodded absently, not missing the distinctly hostile look that was aimed at him from Ianto. He was obviously intruding into some sort of territory. He turned back to the others, and raised his eyebrows as he stared bluntly at Gwen. "I asked you earlier but you never answered me and Ro…erm, never mind. Forget I just said that, actually. So your name is Gwen Cooper, you say?"

"Yes," she answered warily.

"Hmmm," was all he said after that. Gwen and Tosh exchanged a look.

"Right, then. To the conference room!" The Doctor clapped his hands enthusiastically. "Though from you, Jack, I'd have thought you'd name it 'the meeting chamber' or something equally dramatic." He strolled casually towards a wide door leading deeper into the Hub, then out into the corridor and to the left.

Jack laughed at the Doctor's joke, then added, "Other way, Doc."

The Doctor, heeding his words, stalked past the doorway again, heading right this time.

Gwen reached out and grabbed Jack's sleeve before he could follow the Doctor. "Jack," she said simply, waiting until he turned to face her.

The others stood directly behind her, wearing nearly identical expressions of suspicion and mistrust. Also, Jack noticed that Ianto looked just a bit jealous. Smirking at this, he asked, "What is it, Gwen? Don't tell me you've gotten a little taste of the jaw line, too."

"Enough about the bleeding jaw line," Owen said.

"We want to know more about this Doctor," Tosh said. "Who is he, and where did he come from?"

"And isn't he listed in the original Torchwood's datafiles as the reason that we were founded in the first place?" Owen demanded.

"He's a good friend of mine, and he's saved Earth millions of times," Jack said, casually not answering Owen's question. "We've even been to the end of the world together, and he stopped it. You can trust him. Now, let's not keep him waiting, yeah?" He then strode towards the meeting room, ignoring the strange looks the others exchanged as they reluctantly followed him. Ianto, on the other hand, veered off to get tea and coffee for the others.

By the time Jack, Gwen, Owen, and Tosh had all reached the meeting room, the Doctor was sitting at the head of the table. His trainers were propped up on the tabletop, arms folded behind his head as he gazed idly up at the ceiling. Gwen and Owen exchanged a glance, thinking Jack would make the mysterious Doctor shift out of his official chair, but the captain instead took a seat beside him.

"So, Doctor. Want to explain this mysterious threat that's supposedly coming out of the Rift?" Jack questioned in a laidback tone, reclining in his own seat. Before he could add anything else to his request, Ianto came into the room, artfully balancing in one hand a plastic tray with five chipped mugs resting atop it. "Now that's what I call service!" the captain declared enthusiastically, taking his personal mug from the tray. "Thanks, Ianto."

The Doctor pulled a face as he stared into the steam coming from his own mug as it was placed before him. With a small shudder, he pushed it away across the table, then looked towards Ianto. "Do you perhaps have any ginger tea in? I love ginger tea, me. Saved my life once, ginger tea did."

Owen, who had been staring longingly at the mugs, frowned at him. "What are you bleeding on about now? Ginger tea saved your life?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor said. "If Mick-Mick-Mickedy-Mick hadn't spilled the thermos of tea all over the inside of the TARDIS, I probably wouldn't have been able to finish regenerating properly. I might have come out with four and a half legs, or maybe even none!" He grinned brightly at the thought, though he still couldn't bring himself to look Owen in the eye.

"What's a…TARDIS?" Gwen asked cautiously, wrapping both hands around her mug, as though for protection from the grinning madman.

"Okay, enough chitchat. Ianto, have a seat," Jack interrupted. He briskly clapped his hands. "Doctor…?"

"Oh, yes. Right. Where was I?" The Doctor absently rubbed his nose, eyes scrunching up as he thought long and hard. "Right," he said again. "I was refueling the, er, TARDIS at the Rift. The TARDIS is my spaceship, by the way. It stands for Time And Relative Dimensions in Space, and before you ask, it's bigger on the inside."

"That's not scientifically possible," Tosh said.

"Maybe not for you lot. But it's easy for Time Lords," the Doctor stated pompously. "Very dimensionally transcendent, that was us."

"So Jack said there was some sort of creature?" Gwen asked, tactfully changing the subject.

"Yes, in fact. One very hungry Lohk, to be exact."

"What's a Lohk? Besides hungry?" Jack asked.

"The Lohk are from a species that was created before time itself. One that is basically feared by all life out there," the Doctor said, glancing round the table to meet the eyes of every member of the Torchwood team. Except Owen, that is. "They're unimaginably enormous, and tend to eat everything in their paths."

"Sounds nasty," Owen noted.

"Very."

"So this Lohk is headed out of the Rift, straight for Cardiff?" Ianto clarified.

"Yup. And once Cardiff has been sucked into its cavernous maw, the rest of planet Earth will shortly follow," the Doctor said. "That's why I decided that I could use Torchwood's help to stop it. Peacefully," he added as an afterthought.

"Wouldn't expect anything less from you, Doctor," Jack said, leaning back in his seat. "So, ideas? How can we peacefully stop this thing from eating the entire world?"

"When is it scheduled to get here?" Owen asked, frowning and clasping his hands on the tabletop before him.

"Not until late tonight or tomorrow morning, by my calculations. Traveling through the Rift without any sort of protection against the Rift storm doesn't tend to work out too well," the Doctor admitted. "And the Lohk is probably getting loads of temporal feedback. As for a plan…er, I haven't exactly got one yet. But I'm sure it won't take too long to develop one."

"I envy your enthusiasm, Doctor," Jack said flatly. "If we can't just use brute force on this thing, and you say it's pretty damn big, then how the hell are we supposed to stop it?"

"Welllll, like I said, I haven't exactly worked that out yet," the Doctor admitted. "But since I'm brilliant, I'm sure it won't take me long." He grinned cheekily.

Owen looked disgusted.

Something beeped shrilly, and Tosh reached into her pocket. Pulling out her handheld scanner, which seemed to do a bit of everything, she studied its small screen carefully. "There's been a Weevil attack downtown," she reported. "The Weevils apparently retreated to the sewers afterwards."

"Any casualties?" Jack stood, checking to make sure that his pistol relic still hung at its usual position on his belt.

"No. But several pedestrians have been taken to the local hospital for severe injuries," she answered him.

"Right, then. This Lohk thing is going to have to wait. Doctor, up for a little Weevil chase through the dark sewers?" Jack leered, not seeming to notice the jealous look Ianto gave him.

"What's a Weevil?" the Doctor asked suspiciously. He pushed his chair back and stood.

Jack grinned wickedly. "You'll find out, Doc. Toshiko, you stay here and try to find out anything you can about the Lohk. Ianto, see about cleaning up the mess from the alien eggs, yeah? And Gwen and Owen, you're with us."

"Right." Owen stood. He glanced at Ianto, then pretended not to notice the uncharacteristically hostile look on the other man's face.

"Okay, team. Let's move out," Jack announced dramatically.

"This could definitely prove to be interesting," was the Doctor's comment. He studied all the guns warily, then followed the other three as they headed for the cog wheel door.


Please be kind and review again, okay? Thanks in advance! :D

Edit: And thanks to JantoForever21 for pointing out the thing with Owen. I'm not sure how I missed it. O_o But it's fixed now!