Author's Note: It's absolutely wonderful to see everyone back and reading this! Here's the next chapter, sorry for taking so long. I'm really excited about this one and where it is going to go. Thanks to all of my reviewers and silent stalkers, and my beta, love ya'll!

Follow me on twitter at /kausingkayn

Check me out on LJ as kausingkayn

It had been two days, and she was still unconscious.

She was still unconscious, and her wounds were almost gone.

The past two days, Jack had watched her. The rift had been mostly silent, with only a few minor aliens to come through, which he assigned members of his team to take care of. Sometimes, being the boss was a good thing.

He had been the only one to see first hand, to watch as her wounds slowly disappeared. To see her skin crawl and move and grow at a painstakingly low rate, covering the lacerations, erasing any sign that she had ever been hurt. He asked Owen about it, the first time he noticed. The medic just shrugged, ran some more tests, then declared that she was doing it, mentally telling her skin cells to 'hurry up and to the bloody job already.'

Jack wasn't sure what to think of the girl. She was so young and innocent looking. Yet, from what Owen's reports have come up with, she was anything but. In fact, she was probably the most dangerous person in the hub, and more thank likely one of the most dangerous alien things. And that made Jack think about what would happen when she woke up.

"Jack."

It was Owen. Again. The Captain turned and gave the medic a small smile, which disappeared when he realized that the other man was carrying another clipboard. A clipboard that probably contained even more bad news about their latest arrival. "Please tell me it's something good."

Owen opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again before ducking his head to re-read the information on the file. "I did a few more tests, more mental that physical. She's not mature yet."

Jack raised his eyebrow. "I could tell that from just looking at her, Owen. You're loosing your touch."

The medic rolled his eyes. "You know full well what I'm saying. Her… 'powers' aren't fully developed. I thought she was staying unconscious because of the wounds, not wanting to confront the pain directly. However, I realized that the healing and whatever the hell else she's been doing, it takes a lot of power. Power that, when awake, is used to run other things."

"So you're saying, when she matures, she can do all of this without being asleep?"

Owen shrugged. "Dunno. I've only had two days to do tests, and some are unreliable at best because of her chemical make up. "

The Captain frowned and nodded to Owen, his arms crossing over his chest as he thought about their situation. Then he turned toward where the computers were set up. "Tosh?"

"Yes, Jack?" The computer experts voice yelled back.

"Any luck?" Jack had asked her to record the rift signature from where the girl came through, and monitor any recent activity in hope that another portal would open up, allowing them access to her real world, and maybe a chance to get her back to where she belonged. The others were a bit hesitant at that concept at first – the place the girl came from was where her wounds were inflicted. But Jack knew what he was doing, and knew what happened to people who were out of their time – their world. It never ended good.

"No, nothing. I'll set up a programme that I've been working on to track it for me, but I don't think there's much of a chance anymore."

Jack didn't reply, instead, he turned back to stare down into the medical bay, watching. What was he to do? She was a ten year old girl, he surely couldn't lock her up in the cells, nor could they send her home. Jack thought about Flat Holm island. He could keep her there forever. But was that fair? Was that the right thing to do?

Jack stood up straight and closed his eyes for a second longer than would be deemed normal for a blink, then walked down the steps into the bay, keeping his eyes on the young girl. He approached the side of the table and leaned over, his elbows hitting the cool surface of the slab as he studied her face, thinking deeply about her future.

She blinked.

Jack let out a loud cry of surprise and fell backwards, crashing into one of Owen's medical carts. The sensors that were monitoring her started to go haywire, all sorts of alarms going off. It took only seconds for the rest of the team to reach the autopsy bay, guns out and pointing at the child. After realizing that she was awake, Owen lowered his gun and handed it to Ianto before running down the steps, morphing into the role of the doctor and checking her pulse, her vital signs, reading the information that the machines had to give.

Ianto had also lower his gun, and had placed both of the weapons he was holding into his waistband, not wanting to miss anything because he had slipped out and put them away.

Tosh and Gwen did the same, staying silent, waiting to see what would happen next.

But the girl on the gurney didn't notice any of this. She didn't glance toward Owen and his flitting around, nor up at the three standing above her. No, she only stared at Jack, a sad, scared look of her face. She had turned her head and was watching him, and for a moment the irony flashed through Jack's mind. Then, she gave a hint of a smile, and parted her lips. "Save me, Jack Harkness."

Then her eyes fluttered closed, and the machines stopped beeping. Owen froze and glanced at the Captain long enough to see the surprised look on his face before checking to see that everything was back to normal – which it was.

"She – she knew me." Jack whispered, still lying on the floor where he had landed.

Owen shook his head. "Jack, remember, I told you that she was still consciously aware. She could have heard us talking."

But Jack shook his head and staggered to his feet, still staring at the girl like she would come back awake and say his name again. Then he glanced up and met the eyes of Gwen, and it was obvious that she had heard. Obvious that all of them had hear the four simple words that the girl had said.

Jack pushed the feelings out of his head and stared at the medic, a determination in his eyes. He now knew what to do.

"Owen," Jack whispered when he was close enough so that the others couldn't hear him. "I want you to retcon her."

"Retcon, Jack?" Owen asked, caught off guard by the request. Jack flinched from the loudness of the medics voice, and gestured for him to lower his voice. Owen rolled his eyes and glanced up, seeing that the rest of the team had left already, and turned his attention back to Jack.

"Didn't you hear her? 'help me.' That's what she said, and that's what I'm about to do."

"I don't think that meant to wipe her memory!" Owen hissed.

But Jack's mind was already made up. "She was in pain Owen. A ten year old little girl in pain, and she asked me to help her. How else do you suggest for us to help?"

But Owen also knew Jack's other motive. "She sure as hell didn't sound like any ten year old I know – "

" – And that would be how many, exactly?" Jack interrupted.

Owen ignored him. "And retconning her would also erase any training she has ever had with her brain or body, which means she will forget how to heal, how to induce unconsciousness while still remaining aware – She'll forget how to use her 'powers,' which renders her harmless. You're scared of her, Jack – and you want to fix that."

Jack jutted his chin out and took a stance which told Owen that he had been insulted – insulted, but not wrong. "I'm still waiting for other suggestions."

The medic sighed and shook his head, knowing that Jack was being nice. The man could order him to do it – even though Owen still wouldn't comply. Or, the Captain could just do it himself. But he was asking, and while Owen resented it, he also respected it. "Fine. I'll give her our special dose, but it's not in pill form, it's liquid. She'll remember basics, language, minor comprehension skills, blah blah blah. Shouldn't be a problem, with a brain like that, she'll catch on quick."

Jack nodded, already knowing this information, but not saying so. He knew that Owen knew that as well, and was only saying it out loud to comfort himself. The Captain didn't blame him.

Jack watched as Owen pulled a large syringe from a locked drawer of one of his carts, and squirt some liquid out experimentally. It was fine. Then he glanced at the girl on the table, closed his eyes, then opened them and jabbed the needle into the girl's arm, piercing a vein. Owen injected the liquid into her system, watching at the syringe grew dry.

It was done.

--Torchwood--

"I can't wait to see the hub again! I wonder if it is any different in this dimension…" Katylin said excitedly as she stared out of the windows of the SUV, taking in the sights of Cardiff that she had been away from for so long.

Jack stayed uncharacteristically quiet, choosing to stare straight ahead at the road, driving the actual speed limit as he thought about what had just happened.

"There are hundreds –if not thousands– of parallel universes for this planet, and they are on a straight collision course for this universe, the original one." If what she had said was true, then they were in for a lot of trouble. He knew that there had to be one or two parallel universes out there somewhere – hell, he had been to several in his years. But to have them crash into the original timeline – the one where the events that were meant to be would unfold without hitch – lets just say that there is a reason that these other dimensions were called parallel and not perpendicular.

"And to see everyone again! Owen, Tosh, Gwen, Tad – even though they don't actually remember me, I'm pretty sure I did a good job giving the details in the diary – Jack?" Katylin stopped her energetic babbling and gave a worried glance to the Captain, who was still staring straight ahead.

He broke his gaze and turned his head toward Katylin for a few short seconds, aggravation shooting through his features before he once again reverted his attention to the road. "What?"

"You seem…distracted." She said, genuine worry laced through her voice, causing Jack's hands to grab the wheel even tighter.

"Well, it's kind of hard to concentrate when you just learned that the universe is going to end." He said snarkily.

Katylin raised her eyebrow in a way that almost mirrored Jack's own expression of doubt. "I know you, Jack. You don't freak out about that kind of stuff. At least, not outwardly."

Jack slammed his hand into the steering wheel, and cursed under his breath as the car went out of control for a few seconds. He righted it, then took a deep breath to calm himself. It didn't work. "No! That's the thing – you don't know me! You know some other Jack from some other time line, who isn't me!"

Katylin frowned and sat back in her seat, running her hand through her hair and adopting an annoyed look that Ianto would give him when trying to explain something supposedly simple, and Jack just couldn't understand. "It's not – you are – the thing is…god, why is this so bloody hard!"

Then she shook her head and straightened back up, glancing at Jack. "It's complicated, it really is. I didn't actually understand it until a short while ago, and even now I'm not sure some times. Just, lets get back to the hub first and I'll explain it to everyone at once. I think that'd be easier."

Jack sighed and slowed down the SUV. They were almost back to the hub, and there were several things that he had neglected to inform Katylin of. "It's not going to be that easy…"

Katylin shot him a hard look, and Jack actually felt himself squirming in his seat – Him, Jack Harkness, squirming.

"I…I never let them read your diary."

Silence filled the car, minus the obvious rev of the engine, and the occasional sound that came from outside of the SUV. "What do you mean."

Jack winced at the razors that were in her voice. "I never told them. And frankly, I don't think they needed to know. There are things that happen – or don't happen, that they never need to know about." Like the year that never was.

"Oh, and I, your own daughter, was one of those things?!" She was loud now, angry, hurt. She knew that the man she was looking at wasn't the same person who had cleaned her cuts and bruises, who tucked her in at night and held her when she had cried. The man who had saved her. But he was, in a sense. In a strange, confusing way.

"Look, Katylin. I'm the boss, ok? And sometimes, boss' have to make decisions that they aren't always proud of, but are the right thing to do."

"And how, exactly, is not telling your team about a child that they raised for six years the right thing to do." She tilted her head. "Unless…."

Jack frowned deeply. He remembered from one of the passages that he read – no, scratch that – all of the passages that he read, that she was very smart for someone of her age, especially in places pieces of the puzzle together.

"It's Tad, isn't it." Katylin said, and from the way Jack reacted, she knew she had hit the nail on the head. "You didn't want him to know about me, because you didn't want him to get it stuck in his mind that you actually love him – or, excuse me, loved him in another dimension."

Jack yanked the wheel to the side, throwing Katylin off balance for a moment as he sloppily pulled into the SUV's designated parking spot at the Roald Dahl Plass. The look on his face made it obvious to Katylin that he didn't want to talk about it anymore, and she didn't press him. Instead, she reached for the handle of the car, surprised when she heard the small click as the doors were locked. She looked at Jack, confusion written on her face, dread replacing it when she saw the pained look on his face.

"There's something else I need to tell you."

--xXx--

Ianto stared at the CCTV footage on his computer that was streaming from the parking garage of the Roald Dahl Plass. The footage was showing – particularly – the SUV, and the two people in it. Even with the tinted windows, Ianto could see what was going on inside, thanks to Tosh and a nifty program of hers that she had created about a year ago that would all but diminish the effects that tinted glass had on camera's. What the Welshman was seeing wasn't exactly comforting.

Jack was sitting in the drivers seat, turned toward the other occupant of the car, a woman. Ianto would say young, but it seemed as if she was older than he was, if only by a few years. The way the camera was situated, all Ianto could see was the back of Jack's head. But when he moved a bit, the Welshman could see the girl's face full on, and every time he did, he got a vague sense of familiarity, like a face in a crowd that he saw in the corner of his eyes and almost remembered.

When he first started watching it, she looked royally pissed off. However, the mood had quickly changed. Obviously, something that Jack had said made her very sad – sad enough to start sobbing into the man's chest. Ianto felt a twinge of – something – in his chest as he watched the protective way that Jack curled his arms around her and patted her head. Ianto couldn't see Jack's face, but if he could, he was sure that the Captain would be muttering some kind of empty reassurance.

"Who's that?" Gwen asked, causing Ianto to jump. He had been so intent on the feed that he hadn't heard the ex-policewoman come up behind him. The Welshman quickly minimized the screen and pulled up the facial recognition software, where he was running the mysterious girl's face through the system.

"Don't know." He said quickly as the small words at the bottom of the screen continued to flash '0 matches.'

Gwen shrugged and trudged away. Knowing Jack, they would find out soon enough. She had learned very quickly that where Jack Harkness was involved, every sentient being was either an ex or an enemy. Or both.

As soon as Gwen was out of sight, Ianto pulled the CCTV footage back on his screen and watched as the rest of the events unfold. It wasn't stalkerish, he told himself as he found himself glued to the screen. He was just doing his job, monitoring the CCTV just as Jack had asked.

It took almost half an hour, but finally the tears stopped, and the mysterious passenger in the car dried her eyes and gave a weak smile and a nod in the Captain's direction, and they stepped out of the SUV. Ianto exited out of the CCTV and shut down his computer, intent on heading to the archives to make it look like he was doing something important. However, Jack's voice stopped him.

"Ianto, can you get the conference room ready? And brew some of your coffee goodness, will ya? Make an extra cup."

"Yes, sir." Ianto mumbled, cutting off their link as he changed direction and angled toward the kitchen. That twinge he had gotten in his chest earlier had grown into a small ball of uncomfortableness that Ianto could only call jealousy, even though he knew there was nothing to be jealous of. How could one be jealous of another if the item of jealousness was never theirs to be jealous over?

By the time the cog door had rolled open, Ianto had the conference room set up, with steaming mugs of coffee set in front of everyone's respective seats. Gwen was already in the room, sitting in the chair to the left of Jack, a pad of paper and a pen situated in front her, ready for whatever was going to come. Ianto himself was standing out front of the room, strategically placed in the best spot to grab Jack and ask him a quick question before they all entered the conference room.

The mysterious woman came into his sight first. She had cleaned up well after half an hour of crying; most of the redness was gone from her eyes, and she had a slight smile grazing her lips. That smile grew almost tenfold as she caught sight of him, and Ianto found himself having to suppress a blush. She was pretty, now that he had a chance to see her in person and not on a computer screen. But she also had that look in her eyes that Jack had. The one that said that she had seen way too much for a person so young, only hers wasn't as intense as the Captains. That thought aside, it sent slight shivers through Ianto's spine. Once again, that sense of familiarity filled him, and he watched her as she entered the conference room.

Jack came next, and Ianto reached out, gently grabbing the sleeve of his coat to stop him. Instead of asking what he was going to, however, Ianto just gave one of his rare, cheeky grins. "Should I be jealous, sir?"

Jack chuckled. "You aren't the one with reason to be jealous this time, Yan."

The Captain then entered the room and took his normal spot at the head of the table. Ianto followed him in, intending on sitting in his normal seat as well. Instead, he found the mysterious woman in his seat drinking his coffee sitting next to his Captain – he shook his head there, having allowed his min to go a bit far. The only outward sign of annoyance being a slight frown, Ianto sat in the chair next to Gwen and focused on Jack, fully expecting the man to fill them in. It was, instead, the girl who stood up and started to talk.

"Alright, so, I'm Katylin. Hi. I come from this alternate version of Earth, which – for future reference – is not the same as a parallel universe, ok?" She paused, and getting only blank stares, she continued. "Ok. As you guys obviously know, there is a rift in time and space right here – literally, right here. That rift tends to spit things through to this world that aren't meant to be here." Her voice grew a bit softer at that part, and she shot a look at Jack, who was having trouble making eye contact with her. Ianto noticed this, and his frown grew deeper.

"Anyway – those things that aren't meant to come through, they change things by causing events that weren't supposed to happen. In return, it changes the future. Changing the future – at least in that way – is one thing that cannot happen. Unless you want to cause a time paradox – which you don't, by the way." Katylin paused to let everything sink in. Gwen was scribbling everything down even though she had no idea about what was being discussed. Jack just sat there, his mind coming to the conclusion before Katylin was able to say it. Ianto was just sitting there, his head tilted slightly sideways, listening intently, like he always did.

Katylin gave a sad smile before returning to her talk. "So, to stop this paradox from happening, the rift fixes this little mistake by creating a parallel universe in which the events that weren't supposed to happen did happen – just not in this particular universe, the original universe." She realized that both Ianto and Gwen were confused, so she pulled on an easier explanation. "Have you ever felt Déjà vu? Or maybe feel like you remember something, but no matter how hard you focus on it, it just wont come? That's the exact moment in time when the parallel universe was created. If you crosschecked those feelings with rift activity, you'll find that they most always are connected."

"So our future, it's set in stone? We don't have choices?" Gwen asked, understanding the basics of what Katylin had just said, and not liking it one bit.

Katylin shrugged. "You have choices, and you make them – they just have already been predetermined or cause a parallel universe."

Ianto raised his eyebrow. "Fate: can't life with it, can't live without it."

Katylin giggled a little at his comment, gaining a strange look from the Welshman. She ignored it, and grabbed a piece of paper from Gwen's stack, and her pen as well. She drew one long straight line down the middle, running over it a few times to make it really dark. Then, lightly, she drew a lot of other, almost as straight lines above and below it. "The bold line is the original time line. All these others are parallel time lines – note the parallelism."

Then she stole another piece of paper and did the same thing, only instead of making the light lines parallel, she made them at an angle, all intersecting over the bold line at one particular point. "This is what is happening right now. It's the result of several things happening at once. One; there are way too many parallel universes, and they're getting crowded – in fact, I believe I created at least three of them trying to get here. The only way to escape is melding with the original time line. One or two of them doing that is ok, but all of the hundreds at one? Don't think so.

"Two: parallel universes are unstable and weak at best, since they don't have any real future to support them – I'll explain later – therefore, they are drawn toward fixed points in time, other things like them. Things that don't belong – were never meant to be." This time, she stared at Jack, who was looking at her as if she was a ghost. "I'm kinda surprised that this didn't happen sooner."

Ianto realized the stricken look on the Captain's face, but didn't say anything about it. "How long do we have?"

Katylin bit her lip in concentration and thought for a moment. She ran the equation through her head, adding in variables and probabilities and working it out. It only took her a few seconds. "A month, give or take a week."

The three let out a sigh of relief. That was the best news they had heard since she had shown up. A month – give or take a week – was plenty of time to prepare for the end of the universe. Especially since they had someone here to help them who seemed to know exactly what she was talking about.

"So…" Gwen asked. "How do we fix it?"

Katylin shrugged nonchalantly. "No idea."

And so, the problem presents itself. Review?