Chapter Four

A/N: Sorry for not posting this earlier; I've been a bit behind. Again, my apologies!!

Magdalene shivered, hugging her knees, as she felt the cold wafting from the iron walls of the cell she'd been deposited in. This hateful place! she thought angrily, clenching her jaw as she stared at the wall. With all its hateful people.

She'd been taken forcefully by the four people, shoved into the back of the horseless carriage, and whisked away to this wretched place. She'd hardly noticed the landmarks they'd passed; she was too busy trying to feel scared.

Trying.

No matter how she tried, she couldn't feel scared of what lay ahead. The only emotions she was capable of feeling were sadness and anger at her captors. They could sell her to slavery, execute her for crimes she didn't commit, keep her in this dratted cell for the rest of her life, but she couldn't manage to feel one grain of fear.

And that vexed her beyond belief.

So she sat, for hours on end, alone in the cold metal dungeon, letting the loneliness seep into her soul and make her feel as cold on the inside as she did on the outside.

She had just managed to doze off (to dreams of red blood and howling dogs) when she heard a door slamming behind her. She jerked awake, cricking her neck. Moaning slightly, she turned her head and saw the leader- Jack- staring down at her haughtily, his arms crossed.

She just stared right back at him, trying to show through her dull eyes the anger she felt toward him. She wanted him to be perfectly aware of how thoroughly pissed off she was. Keeping an innocent person locked up in a substandard cell for hours without hide nor hair of an explanation! she thought, continuing to glare at the man.

'Stand up,' the man ordered her in his authoritative voice.

Generally, Magdalene was remarkably obedient. She wasn't usually the rebellious type- that honor she had always left for Fionn.

But in that moment, she felt anger boiling in the pit of her stomach, and refused to obey him. She sat stubbornly on the floor, maintaining eye contact with a cold glare.

'I told you to get up,' he repeated, his voice growing sharper.

She sneered at him. 'I'm no dog, to be ordered about.' She began to mimic him, saying in a high-pitched voice, 'Fetch. Sit. Stay. Roll over. Play dead.' She dropped the mockery and resumed her glaring. 'I'm not doing it,' she declared.

'Fine,' he responded, more levelly than before. 'Stay seated. That's an order.'

It was as though he knew Magdalene would do what he wanted her to do if he ordered her to do otherwise. Gritting her teeth, Magdalene rose slowly to her feet, never breaking eye contact with Jack.

It was only after she had stood up that she noticed the smile on his face, and realized that she'd just let him win.

She was tempted to sit right back down again, but decided that the action would only make her seem more childish. So she pushed her shoulders back, through her loose black hair over her shoulder defiantly, and held her head snobbishly high.

'How did you come to be here?' he inquired, eyes boring into hers.

A rather exquisite shade of blue, she found herself thinking. Rather like Niall's. The connection almost made her start weeping.

'You and your rabble dragged me here,' she answered, trying to keep her voice calm, but unable to keep her gaze away from those eyes. If she focused only on the blue irises, she could almost pretend she was talking to Niall. That was, she could convince herself of this… until he talked again.

'You know perfectly well what I mean,' he admonished her, giving her a stern look rather like her father used to give her when she and Fionn used to sneak into the kitchens for late-night snacks in their youth. The expression made her feel like a naughty little girl, so she bit her lip and directed her gaze to the floor. This show of submission from her seemed to soften him slightly. At least, he sounded less sharp when he asked, 'Where were you before you arrived in Cardiff?'

'Cardiff?' she repeated, looking back up at him. The strange emotions she'd just experienced vanished and she felt herself fall back to earth with a thump. The emptiness was back, memories of her childhood pushed back into the back of her head. 'This is Cardiff?'

Jack nodded.

Magdalene raised her eyebrows delicately. 'I can't seem to stomach it,' she remarked dryly.

Jack only gave the faintest smile to acknowledge that he'd heard her. 'Where were you previously?'

'Being chased by hunting dogs through the forests of the land in which I was the sole surviving heir after killing my fiancée who had just recently murdered my lover,' she said without a hint of irony.

'Nice joke,' he muttered sarcastically, not believing her. 'Want to try the truth this time?'

'That was the truth.'

He laughed, enjoying the joke that Magdalene didn't quite get. Seeing the blank, serious look on her face, he stopped. 'You mean that crap is the truth?' he asked, his eyebrows raised.

Magdalene didn't even bother to give him an answer. 'That place is known in my land as the New Realm. Only five hundred years old.'

'New?'

She nodded. 'The New Realm was created by political reformists from the Old Real, which has existed since Time began,' Magdalene explained.

'And do you know how you came to be here?' he asked.

Magdalene glared at him, ice-blue eyes shining with both irritation and dislike. 'If I knew that, I would get the hell back there! I would rather be torn to shreds by hunting dogs than kept in this wretched cell for the rest of my life!' During this whole exclamation, her face remained completely expressionless, but the passion and anger in her voice betrayed her emotions.

'Courage, a quick temper, and a whole ton of rashness,' Jack, ticking the attributes off on his fingers, summarized. 'I like it.'

Magdalene, unsure of what he meant, kept silent and stared straight ahead. 'How did I come to be here?' she asked dully, not caring all that much about the answer.

'There's a rift, a crack, in time and space, where things- and people- can fall through into other dimensions and times,' Jack replied, turning and pacing slightly, running a hand through his brown hair. 'We- meaning Tosh, Owen, Ianto and I- believe you fell through to Cardiff.'

Magdalene was silent, trying to process this information. 'So… I slipped through a crack in dimensions and landed here?' she asked, summarizing his main points.

Jack nodded.

'Are there parallel worlds?' she asked, feigning disinterest, but really interested.

Jack hesitated, but nodded after a moment.

'Philosophers in the New Realm used to speculate about parallel worlds. Is it true every action creates a new parallel world, where you made a different choice?' she asked. She wasn't quite sure why she was asking Jack this, but he seemed knowledgeable.

So, there exists a universe in which I am still living happily in the New Realm, with Fionn and Niall, not here in this awful place? I wish I could be there now!

The door at the end of the hallway opened again, admitting a shadowy figure. As she approached, she came into better light, and Magdalene recognized her. She was the woman who had helped her to the park bench last evening!

The woman met her eyes and Magdalene could tell she was also remembering the previous evening.

'Jack, what's going on?' she asked in a lilting accent.

'Questioning, Gwen.'

Gwen looked between Magdalene and Jack, then proceeded to roll her eyes. 'Oh, for fuck's sake, Jack, let her out,' she ordered. 'She's obviously harmless.'

Magdalene gave her a grateful look, though she wasn't sure Gwen saw it, as she was too busy letting her out of the cell.

'And how is it obvious?' Jack inquired, though he made no move to stop Gwen.

Gwen didn't look at him as she answered, 'I saw her yesterday evening; she was unconscious-'

'After coming through the Rift,' Jack filled in.

Gwen nodded. 'I helped her to a bench, and she made no move to suggest she was dangerous.'

'Sir, I swear to you,' Magdalene chimed in. 'I had no idea what I was doing when I fell through. I am not a threat.'

Jack's blue eyes met hers, wrenching her heart again. She wished Niall had survived to fall through with her. Then she wouldn't be so alone.

'All right,' Jack sighed. 'As much as I hate breaking protocol.' He nodded to Gwen. And with that, he left.

Gwen turned to smile at Magdalene, who was poised at the door of the cell, ready to break free. 'I'm sorry about this,' Gwen said with a wry smile. 'I hate seeing an innocent person behind bars.' The cell door opened, but Magdalene didn't trust it. What if it shut again?

Gwen seemed to notice her hesitancy, because she smiled slightly and said, 'It's all right to come out, you know.'

Magdalene leapt lightly into the hallway, closing her eyes and bracing herself.

Laughing again, Gwen turned to go. 'Ianto's made some coffee, if you want it,' she called back over her shoulder.

'Coffee?' Magdalene found herself asking, watching Gwen go in confusion. 'What's coffee?'