x x x

Chapter 4: Like Being Hauled Over Broken Glass

x x x

The sun was just beginning to rise, a glimmer on the horizon shedding a soft glowing light over the deserted street, when Captain Jack Harkness came back to life again. She inhaled sharply, and immediately hissed at the pain, closing her eyes tightly against the light. Was it too much to ask to wake up in the dark? Apparently so.

The first thing she realised about her latest death was that her spine had been snapped at the small of her back, paralysing her below the waist and forcing her to use her arms to pull herself up into a sitting position, on top of the decorative stone bench she had landed on. The terrible cracking sounds from her back were sickening, and it took another few seconds after her resurrection for that to heal properly... now that really hurt.

Groaning tiredly at the residual echoes of that pain, she slid down onto the seat of the bench itself, glancing up at the roof she had fallen from. He was long gone, that may have been a quick death but it was a damaging one... would have taken some time to come back. It was sunrise, after all, and it hadn't even been close when she died.

And only now did it finally sink in. She had died... about the single most important thing that she was supposed to avoid for the next nine months.

Her hand moved automatically to her abdomen, as she leaned her head back against the ornamental bit of stone that had done the majority of the damage upon landing, and fought against the instinct to cry. It had not been that long, two weeks (sixteen days, if you wanted to be specific) spent on the TARDIS since it had happened, before she had come back to Earth. Why the hell should she be crying for the loss of something most people wouldn't even know existed so soon?

But she had really liked the idea... a Time Lord child. Her Time Lord child. Damn, but she wished she'd stayed dead herself, if this had destroyed that possibility.

As it was, she would just have to make John wish he was dead, as well... because if death was too good for her, he certainly deserved far worse.

With that resolution, she won the battle against the threatening tears. Just in time, too, as the sound of tires screeching around the corner drew her attention, and she looked up to see the SUV roaring down the street. Owen was driving, and the door opened as the vehicle skidded to a halt right next to her. She stood quickly and ran to jump aboard. Owen floored the accelerator before the door could close behind her, setting her coat flapping wildly as they drove off.

Ianto caught her arm and pulled her all the way into the SUV, while Gwen slid the door shut.

"What did he do?" she asked them, glancing at each of the four with concern. None of them looked like they'd been seriously injured, which at least was something good, even if it failed to make her feel any better.

"Shot me!" Owen announced from the driver's seat, "Nothing serious, but bloody painful." Tosh nodded in agreement, at this. So she had been there, probably left to tend to Owen's injury, rather than daring to leave Owen alone so she could chase John down.

"Poison... sort of." Gwen said. On closer inspection she did look quite pale, but knowing what Jack knew about John's taste in poisons, it was more likely from fear than any lingering side-effect, "And for the record, I didn't let him kiss me." the emphasis showed that he had kissed her anyway. So he had used one of the contact-toxins, she idly wondered which one.

She glanced to Ianto, as the SUV took a sharp turn on its way back to the Hub. "Just threatened me... then told me the others were in danger. I went to save them." Jack smiled at that, but it didn't reach her eyes. There was nothing Ianto could have done to stop what had happened on the rooftop, anyway, he had definitely done the right thing.

"What about you?" Gwen asked her, now, "You look pretty shaken up."

Jack shook her head, "He killed me." that was all they needed to know.

The three in the back of the SUV exchanged surprised looks. It seemed that while none of them had trusted this man, the fact remained that he was an old... friend? Lover? Even she didn't know for sure anymore... of Jack's, and none of them, Jack included, had expected him to actually kill her.

She felt the SUV swerve slightly, as if Owen had been shocked enough by this to lose his concentration on the road. Really, he had no reason to be, Jack had died many times before, and even if they hadn't expected John to kill her, it still shouldn't illicit that sort of reaction, "How?" he asked.

"Roof." she said bluntly, and everyone flinched. She glanced at each of them in turn, seeing their sympathy, then averted her eyes, now staring at the floor. They couldn't possibly know what this really meant, and she would never tell them, either.

x x x

The SUV skidded dramatically to a halt outside the tourist office, and they all leaped out immediately. Jack took the lead as they entered the elevator down to the main floor of the Hub.

"Plan?" Ianto asked, checking his gun for ammunition. The other three were doing the same, though Jack seemed confident enough without the reassurance of her own weapons.

"Dramatic entrance. You four." Jack said, clearly in command again. Gwen nodded in agreement without a word.

"Why us?" Owen asked.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" she said, flashing a cold and humourless smile in his direction.

"Element of surprise, times two, then?" Tosh offered.

The elevator doors opened, and Jack gestured with both hands for the others to go ahead. Guns in hands, the four Torchwood team members hurried out into their own base.

Ianto could hear Jack's even footsteps following behind them, at a slower pace. When they rounded the corner at the entrance to the medical/autopsy room and saw John Hart, Gwen held up her hand to Jack, to indicate he was there. Then they all stepped forward, guns raised, and almost in perfect synch they all cocked their guns, making enough noise to draw the Time Agent's attention.

He turned his head slowly to look up at them, and after only a second he warily said, "Okay." drawing out the word, showing uncertainty and a bit of fear, slowly standing up and turning to face them directly. There was a small metal pyramid in his left hand, but other than that as yet unidentified item, he appeared to be unarmed. "Pretty and resilient." he sighed, shaking his head in some form of resignation, before muttering, "Is that even fair?"

"Maybe you didn't realize." Gwen said, with all the authority she had conjured in Jack's absence, "You can beat, shoot, threaten, and even poison us, and we keep coming back. Stronger every time."

Hart seemed to regain some of his flair, when she said this, and with far too casual a tone, he began to point out quite smugly, "Well, I think you ought to know, your boss is splayed out on the..."

But he trailed off, his expression dropping from confidence to total amazement, as Jack stepped into the room behind them. Even Ianto could tell she was angry, and he wasn't looking at her. There was just this... almost tangible air of rage radiating from her as she stepped down to stand between Gwen and Owen.

"...pavement." A few seconds of stunned silence, and in a breathless voice, which wavered slightly showing some fear as well as shock, Hart all-but-whispered, "Now that's impressive. Seriously, you can earn a fortune in the Vegas galaxies with an act like that." he laughed nervously, but Jack just glared, "Go on, how's it work?"

She slowly walked down the steps, past Gwen and Ianto, past Hart, though she turned as she passed him so that she never had her back to him. "I can't die." she informed him, backing up towards one of the machines in here which, while Ianto knew was medical in some way, only Owen had ever showed knowledge of what it was actually for. She pressed a couple of buttons, placing her palm on what looked like a scanner, and read the screen there.

"No. But really?" Hart asked, disbelieving.

Jack's eyes lowered as if whatever she had just read was Very Bad. Capital letters required. Then turned off the machine and looked up at Hart with pure malice. That was the very expression that the more sane alien invaders tended to run away from screaming, with their (most often metaphorical) tails between their legs.

"No. But really, you can't kill me." she said coldly, stepping away from the machine, towards Hart. "No matter how many times you try." Now she was right in front of him, looking him in the eyes, in that way where her gaze actually darted from one eye to the other, as if trying to read him. "I can't die." Ianto watched with a scowl as she reached out and put her hands on Hart's shoulders. Hart leaned closer to her, as if expecting her to want to kiss him. "Ever."

Very suddenly, she tightened her grip on his shoulders, to stop him backing away, and jerked her knee up, hard, into Hart's groin. Ianto winced... he may not like this man, but that's still painful to even watch.

Jack took one step back as Hart collapsed to the ground, groaning in pain, and dropping the unidentified pyramid-shaped object, which skittered to a stop on the ground in front of Ianto. Very cautiously, Ianto knelt down- his gun still trained on Hart, like the other three- and picked up the metal pyramid, glancing briefly at it as he stood up.

"You've never... ow!" Hart choking back a whimper of pain, looking up at her, completely shocked, "Never done that to me before."

"You've never done anything to deserve it before." she said, now seeming a great deal calmer. The anger was still there, but it seemed to have been appeased for now.

"This... because I killed you?" he asked, breathless from the pain.

She snorted, holding her right hand out in an offer to help him stand. "I can't die." She repeated, that dark rage still in her eyes, as he reached out and caught her arm with his left hand, allowing her to pull him very shakily to his feet, "What makes you think that was the murder I was-" and again with the element of surprise, she punched him in the gut, hard, with her left fist, "-offended by?" Hart doubled over again, but this time Jack held him up as he fought to breathe again.

Ianto glanced at the other three team-members, briefly. The girls seemed a bit too smug, as if Hart really deserved the worst pain a man could experience. Owen was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, obviously not pleased with the form of punishment he had witnessed... but he was watching carefully, as if he was calculating something that Ianto clearly hadn't picked up on. Then he glanced at Ianto, sensing his gaze, and the cold gleam in his eyes said he agreed with the girls, Hart had that one coming.

Ianto was surprised, he had thought out of the four of them that it would be Owen who had the greatest problem with witnessing this kind of violence. Owen clearly knew something that Ianto did not.

Ianto hated not knowing things.

Looking back to the two Time Agents, Ianto saw Hart was now staring at Jack in mild shock, but he seemed to have just enough common decency not to say anything too flippant, given his current predicament. A couple of tense seconds passed, during which Hart painfully forced himself to stand up straight and face Jack with what must be the closest pass for apology that he was capable of showing in his eyes. What had he done?

Then Gwen asked a very different but equally relevant question, "What's in the canisters?"

"Yeah, start singing, choir boy." Owen said with a cold grin.

John shot Owen a very resentful glare for the joke, but then answered, "Yeah, all right." with a defeated sigh he began the explanation, "That woman I told you about? Had herself an Arcadian diamond, the rarest gem in the Damascene Cluster. Just when I'd got my hands on her, she only generates her own personal riftstorm. God, I hate technological geniuses."

"You said this was a dying woman's request." Tosh pointed out, angry disbelief in her tone, as if she had actually thought one word from Hart's mouth could ever be entirely truthful. Ianto, Owen and even Gwen expressed various levels of impatience with Tosh for being so oblivious to the fact that Hart had been trying to scam them from the start.

"Yeah, she was dying. I shot her." Hart answered bluntly, "Thought my luck had changed when I found it had ended up here. So, I'm thinking fifty-fifty? Even split, good deal, right?"

Jack's expression was one of deep disappointment, and some degree of pity, as she answered this, "I knew right from the start that you were lying about what you were after, but if you had just pulled your petty little scam and left in peace, without hurting anyone here... I would have let you take the whole damned thing." she said sadly.

She turned and walked away from Hart, only pausing to accept the pyramid thing that Ianto held out to her, before leaving the room.

x x x

Jack was staring at the pyramid-thing that John had found. It was glowing now, as it sat on her desk. Everyone else was present, waiting for her to decide what to do with it. The rest of her team were behind John, weapons still ready, just in case he tried something.

An Arcadian diamond wasn't just practically priceless, it was a remnant of a lost planet, destroyed in a war even the Agency had failed to retrace. Maybe she should keep it herself? Not for monetary gain, just for the historical connections.

After some deliberation on that subject, she finally came to a conclusion, "Open it."

John scowled, but seemed to know better than to play games with her right now. He stepped forward, piecing the artefact together carefully, "Right." he lowered the triangle he had put together around the pyramid, "This should give us the location of the diamond." and as he dropped it into place, a hologram of a very beautiful woman was projected from the device. "There she is." he said, smiling faintly at the hologram, with something that might be interpreted as affection.

"The woman you murdered." Gwen said coldly.

"Not a very exclusive club." Jack muttered darkly. John- quite wisely- took a step away from her, looking very uncomfortable at the moment.

Now the hologram spoke, her voice soft and melodious, "You've travelled several galaxies for this. Well done."

"Thank you, gorgeous." John said, but a glare from Jack made him back off yet another step.

"Except..." the hologram continued with a cruel smile, "There's no diamond."

"What?" John asked, scowling. Jack smiled darkly. Somehow, she really wasn't surprised.

"Only this." the hologram said, taking a step forward, towards the artefact. The pyramid snapped open, showing golden lights inside, while the base separated, with an ominous click.

"No, no, no." John complained, shaking his head as something levitated out of the pyramid, glowing as it turned around in the air, "No, no, no, no, no. There's got to be a diamond. It's all about the diamond!" but now the levitating object was transforming, shifting into a disk shape with lights that now glowed red, and bits of metal that looked quite claw-like around the edge. "What the hell is that-?"

The disk flew at John, striking the right side of his chest. Those claws sliced through his shirt and dug into his skin, securing it there. Jack watched with detached interest. It didn't look friendly, but it only had sensors for John, so she saw no reason to intervene as he tried in vain to remove the disk from his chest.

Now the hologram spoke again, smiling cruelly in John's direction, "It's an explosive device, which will latch on to the DNA of whoever killed me. It'll detonate in ten minutes." Jack noticed Ianto take out his stopwatch, and start the timer on it, as the hologram continued, "It can't be removed without exploding, so..." she laughed cruelly, "Don't bother trying. Goodbye, lover."

"No, wait!" John shouted, in vain at the hologram, genuinely afraid, now.

"See you in hell." she added, before fading out.

"She can't be serious!" Gwen said, clearly stunned, "Ten minutes?"

"Get it off me!" John yelled at the room in general.

"Actually, nine minutes... fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight..." Ianto said, in answer to Gwen's question, reading off the stopwatch, and completely ignoring John. He held up the timepiece in question for the team to see, smiling far too innocently, "Always at the ready."

"Okay. How big is this explosion likely to be, Jack?" Gwen asked, leaning over the desk as she spoke. Taking charge... and also ignoring John.

Jack had been watching the entire thing with sadistic amusement, but now that there was an explosive device that could take out half of Cardiff, she was no longer so calm about it. John deserved this woman's vengeance from beyond the grave- though Jack would personally have chosen something more long-term-torturous, rather than ten-minutes-then-you-die- but the rest of the city really didn't need to be caught in the blast wave.

"That technology... that size." she answered, looking at Gwen, and joining the rest of the team in the fine art of ignoring John Hart, "Big."

"So, we should really get him out of the city." Owen said, nodding. Utterly unconcerned for the life of the man who had shot him.

"Nine minutes, thirty-seven." Ianto supplied helpfully.

"You've got to help me!" John said, panicked as he turned to Jack, genuine fear in his eyes, "Please."

She stood up slowly, glaring at him, "Why?" He actually hoped that she would help him- why she should still eluded even her- and now she was leaving him hanging. She didn't really want him dead, that would be too kind to him, but she wanted to see his fear for a moment longer.

John, however, did not have the patience to be taunted, and this became all too clear as he pulled a face, showing resentment and anger, and struck Jack across the face.

By the time Jack had picked herself up from where the force of that blow had sent her falling over the chair and onto the floor, John had grabbed Gwen, using her as a human shield as he retreated out of the office.

Everyone had drawn their guns, and Jack quickly joined them, as they all followed him out into the main Hub area, weapons trained on him. Everyone shouting over each other, Owen yelling for John to let Gwen go, Gwen called for Jack to help her, but John found a very effective way to silence them.

He released his hold of Gwen, to reveal that she was now handcuffed to him.

"What've you done?" Gwen yelled, trying to pull away from the handcuffs.

"It's... uh... hypersteel." John said, with noticeable hesitation for thought, "Impermeable, deadlock sealed. No way to undo them. Unless you have this key." and he held up the key in question, before promptly swallowing it.

Jack seriously considered going and finding a pair of bolt-cutters, and testing his claims regarding the handcuffs' quality... but time really was of the essence here. Too bad injuring him would probably set the explosive off, or she might try cutting the key out of his stomach. Understanding what he was up to, Jack lowered her gun. He just wanted insurance, to live himself, to force them to try to help him... and shooting him now wouldn't do anyone any good.

Gwen turned on John now, her free hand on his neck, as if she was trying to strangle him... very ineffectively, "You are unbelievable!"

John rolled his eyes and said very quickly, "And yet, you still find me strangely attractive." before turning to Jack, "Now you had better find a solution pronto or she'll be blown up with me!"

"Would shooting him stop the DNA trigger?" Owen asked, his gun still trained on John.

Jack put her hand on Owen's shoulder, to calm him down, "No."

"So! What are we gonna do now, team?" John asked, his infuriating self-confidence returning now that he had the insurance he wanted, "You certainly don't want this pretty little one getting all blown up, now do you?"

"Nine minutes, four seconds." Ianto noted.

"Tosh?" Gwen asked, glancing at the other woman as she spoke, "The rift predictor program, have you perfected yet?"

"Pretty much." Tosh answered, confused.

"What?" John asked, looking between the two, not knowing what this was about any more than Tosh seemed to.

"Anything in the next few minutes?" Gwen asked. But now Jack understood. In Gwen's mind, the plan had not changed, John would still be removed from the city and Gwen herself would become collateral damage.

"Gwen, no." she said sharply.

"What's she talking about?" John asked, looking from Gwen to Jack, now, trying to figure out what was going on.

"If we're in the rift when that disc explodes, the city will be safe." Gwen answered, and Jack shook her head, trying to deny this as an option. There had to be another way.

"How does that save us?" John asked, clearly thinking exactly the same thing as Jack, for far more selfish reasons.

"It doesn't." Gwen answered, slightly shakily.

A few seconds of tense silence followed, interrupted rather pointed by Ianto, "Eight thirty-two... thirty-one..." he sounded incredibly tense, and still had his gun trained on John.

"You're bluffing." John told Gwen, trying to make it sound like an order, as if he was commanding her to admit it even if it hadn't been true until now.

"Try me." Gwen replied coldly.

"The car park where he arrived." Tosh announced, eyes wide as if she really did not believe Gwen was about to do this, "The crack in the rift is still active up there."

"That's where we're going." Gwen announced, grabbing John's arm and dragging him towards the exit.

"Somebody better start doing something!" John shouted, desperately.

"Cut his hand off!" Ianto suggested, loudly, and far too eagerly.

"That would activate the bomb." Tosh pointed out hurriedly.

Jack was about to follow them, but Owen caught her arm to stop her, motioning for her to follow him, instead. The shouting continued, as Gwen was now yelling something at John most likely along the lines of telling him to hurry up and move. Jack hesitated, but Owen was insistent, and led her away from the others.

Reluctantly, she allowed him to do so, "What is it?" she hissed at him, as he led her down into the medical/autopsy room. Owen didn't look at her as he began grabbing things from around the room, but he did just spare the breath to answer her.

"I have an idea." he pulled out an empty vial from one of the cabinets, and handed it to Jack, before rooting through a cupboard to pull out a machine of some sort. He was moving with near manic speed, likely brought on by the adrenaline of a time-limit being involved. Usually, Owen was far more the calm and methodical type, about his work.

"What's this idea, then?" Jack asked, holding the empty vial she had been handed, and eyeing it sceptically.

"Thing locks onto DNA." Owen explained. At least his voice remained calm, even though he was now diving for the refrigerator with far more energy and haste than felt entirely necessary, "Mess up his DNA, mess up its hold on him." Owen pulled out a tray, which contained vials of blood. Very quickly sorting through these, he handed one to Jack, "Here, mix these up." he commanded, already searching through the vials for another one.

Jack opened the vial of blood and poured it into the large empty vial, frowning as she did so. Just because she could survive bleeding to death, did not mean she liked the sight or smell of the stuff. Owen handed her a second one, and she added that to the first. She didn't bother to question him... if she'd learned anything from the years working here with Owen, it was that the young doctor really did know exactly what he was doing, far more often than not.

Which was more than could be said for another Doctor she knew, who would act on instinct significantly more often than on logic and fact.

Five different samples of blood now put together into a single vial, Owen snatched the mixture from Jack's hands, and put it into the machine, setting it to spin... to mix the blood together properly.

"Intracardiac injection. Fastest way to get it into his system." Owen said, distractedly watching the machine spin. Only a few seconds later, he stopped it, taking out the vial of mixed blood.

Jack picked up a syringe with a suitably large needle for the type of injection Owen had specified, and handed it to him, "This better work."

Owen smiled grimly, taking the syringe and quickly drawing up the blood, "Trust me, I'm an improviser."

She knew that should make her laugh, but the situation was too dire and her mood too dark, right now. Once the blood was drawn up, she took the syringe, and ran out of the autopsy room, Owen right on her heels.

x x x

Jack Harkness had never been known for driving 'safely'. Great speed and a lot of tyre-screeching was more Jack's style. But damned if she wasn't good at it in spite of this apparent recklessness. The red convertible sports-car was not her first choice, but rather the closest vehicle under Torchwood jurisdiction that she had seen when she had run out of the Hub. It was the one that the blowfish had stolen.

They reached the car park building in under three minutes, and Owen spent the entire journey up to the roof swearing loudly, and clinging onto the dashboard for fear of being thrown out of the vehicle by the speed and sharp turns. They roared up onto the roof, and Jack hit the breaks mere feet from the SUV, pulling on the handbrake and jumping out of the car- not bothering with the door- before it actually came to a complete stop.

Owen followed half a second later, once the car actually had stopped moving.

"Thirty seconds." she heard Ianto's voice announce as she charged towards John and Gwen.

"Er, what's she doing?" John asked, looking more than a little bit nervous... but almost as soon as the words had left his mouth she was on him, knocking Gwen to the ground at the same time as him. Jack held him down with one hand, and without any hesitation she stabbed the syringe into his chest.

He groaned in pain, trying to fight her off, "Get off me!" but she managed to inject all of the blood before he pulled her hand away.

She dropped the now useless syringe and stood up quickly. The disk was still armed, and still attached to John's chest, with absolutely no evidence of any change, "Owen, it's not working!"

"Eighteen seconds!" Ianto informed them.

"What are you doing?" Gwen shouted up at him, kneeling next to John only because she couldn't stand while handcuffed to the man that was still laying on the ground.

"Trying to confuse the disc." Owen told her quickly.

"Why hasn't it worked, Owen?" Jack demanded- almost shrieked- as she backed away from John, beginning to panic, quite completely terrified at the imminent prospect of losing one of her team on top of everything else that had happened today.

"I don't know!" Owen shouted.

"Fifteen seconds!"

"Jack, do something!" Tosh yelled.

Gwen got to her feet, pulling John up by the front of his coat, "I've got to go, Jack." she said, the only one of them to remain calm.

Reluctantly, Jack conceded it as the only remaining option, and helped her pull John to his feet. The disk chose that moment to detach itself, falling to the ground as John stood up.

"Eight... seven..."

While Gwen held the slightly unsteady John upright, Jack knelt and picked up the disk, which she could easily tell was still armed.

"Six..."

The others were now all running away towards the cars, as Jack turned to the golden-red glow of the rift.

"Five... four..."

With all her strength, she threw the disk at the rift.

"Three..."

And saw it disappear there, before turning and running with the others.

"Two..." Ianto was already back by the SUV, with Tosh and Owen, as Jack grabbed Gwen and John, pulling them away from the imminent blast faster than they would have been able to move otherwise.

"One!"

BOOM!

The explosion sounded a bit like a nuclear bomb going off, up close... and Jack, having past experience of such an explosion at close range, knew exactly what that sounded like. A shockwave of golden light burned at Jack's eyes when she turned to see it from the cover they had only just reached in time.

A moment later, the sky darkened. Day had instantaneously turned into night. Jack quickly checked her watch- which told her that it was the previous night, around the time that they had detected the rift spike that John had arrived on- then glanced at where the rift energy had been. "What the hell?" she asked.

"Jack, what's going on? Why's it gone dark?" Gwen asked. For all the leadership skills and bravado she had developed in Jack's absence, now she was turning back to Jack again.

"The rift's reverted to the moment he came through." she said, slightly stunned at this, even though it was quite obvious to her what had happened, "Everything's jumped back to the beginning of the night."

Gwen glanced at John, sounding rather smug as she pointed out, "Like you were never here."

John pulled on a mask of false bravado, clearly very pleased with his own continued existence, "Rewind. Now that could be a good thing, am I right?" he was looking at Jack as he said it, and she frowned at him for it. Yes, she understood his insinuation, but the odds against it were phenomenal.

Gwen glanced from one to the other, clearly completely oblivious to exactly what was implied there, before she turned to Owen and asked, "What was in the syringe?"

"Torchwood DNA." Owen answered.

Gwen frowned, confused, "What?"

"DNA samples from the five of us, fused and injected into his heart." Owen explained, as if such drastic measures really were an everyday occurrence. Well, they were Torchwood, so it wasn't that great a stretch really, "Temporarily corrupted his DNA coding, confused the disc."

John looked sceptical, "You mean, there's a bit of all of you inside of me?" he asked, stunned, "Sweet goddesses, that's all I need." he added in mock horror.

"Thank you, Owen." Gwen said, tiredly but sincerely.

"Your welcome." he answered, sounding just as tired, now that the adrenaline had worn off.

Jack turned on John, now, glaring hatefully, "Get the fuck off my planet." she ordered him.

"Your planet?" Ianto asked, sceptically, before John could retort.

Jack blinked, surprised at her own choice of words, but then shrugged, "Relative territories, between him and me? Yeah, this planet's mine."

Ianto nodded, seeming to accept this, but Gwen spoke now, pointing out a slight snag in the plan of getting rid of John, "Well, we've got to work out a way to get these off first." she held up her left arm, to show the handcuffs.

"Actually..." John said, far too cheerfully. He tilted his head back and reached into his own mouth, a slight choking noise- Jack found herself wishing he would really choke- and he pulled the key out of his mouth with a grin. "Old Artesian trick." he informed them, "Keep it in the lining of the throat. Has a lot of uses."

"You had that all along?" Gwen asked, angrily.

"You were my passport to survival." John said dismissively, as he unlocked the handcuffs, "No hard feelings." he glanced at Gwen with a smirk and added, "Well, not in that sense."

As soon as her wrist was free, Gwen took a step back and punched John across the face as hard as she could. Well he deserved it, and then some... Jack might have found it funny if she wasn't so genuinely mad at him, but she still gained some degree of cruel satisfaction from his pain.

As Gwen backed off, still glaring at John, Ianto could be heard to mutter to her, "Remind me never to get on your bad side."

Jack held out her hand to John, now, clearing her throat pointedly. When she had resurrected, her wrist strap had been absent... which meant that John had taken it. Only way he could have gotten into the Hub through the perception-filter lift, and she had made sure that he hadn't known about the tourist office.

After a few seconds, and with a miserable and resigned look on his face, John took the Vortex manipulator from inside his coat, and handed it over. Without a word, Jack put it back onto her arm, deliberately taking longer than really necessary to fasten the wrist strap, so that she didn't need to meet his eyes, no longer even wanting to look at him.

"If you need a new team member-" John started, stepping closer to her, so that their conversation was- relatively- more private. There was a hint of what had to be completely vain hope in his voice.

"No." Jack snapped.

"Really?" he asked, "I could-"

"No." she repeated.

"But-"

With a sharp and irritable sigh she turned her head to meet his eyes, glaring at him with all the anger she felt right now, "Is there a particular reason you don't understand that word?" she snapped. It was a low blow, an insinuated insult that she would never have considered applying to him before, but now she was just pissed off enough at him to say it anyway.

He stared at her, mouth opening and closing a couple of time as he tried to think of a response. Then he frowned, backing down from an obviously lost argument.

"Go now and you can harness the residual rift energy." she told him, her tone softening only slightly, as she indicated with the slight wave of a hand to the point where he had arrived and the disk had been destroyed.

"Look, I'm-" he started, but once more she interrupted him.

"Go." she ordered.

John bowed his head, and nodded, "Okay." he took a step back, eyes darting briefly up to meet hers, and Jack saw what looked like it might have been an apology there... but she couldn't be certain. Then he turned and walked away. When he reached the point where the rift had activated before, he turned back to face her and pressed a button on his own Vortex manipulator- if anyone deserved to have their time-travelling-space-hopper punctured, it was him and not Jack- causing the golden light to reappear behind him.

"Oh, by the way..." he said, now that he was physically out of range of any retaliation for his words, "I meant to tell you... I found Gray."

That hit her harder than anything else he had done all night. She couldn't even remember why that name was so very important, anymore- so long spent repressing the pain of the past- but she knew it was a deep emotional wound, and John Hart had just gone and ripped it wide open again.

She stared at him in open shock, as he smiled faintly and stepped back into the rift event, disappearing from this time and place. Part of her wanted to run after him, dive through that tear in the rift and catch him, force him to tell her everything... but the rift had already closed behind him, and her own Vortex manipulator was still broken.

She heard Gwen's voice as if from a great distance, as she continued to stare at the point where John had disappeared, "Who's Gray?"

She closed her eyes, mouthing the word 'no', and shaking her head slightly as she tried to remember the importance of that name, before answering the question, with a complete and utter lie, "It's nothing. Come on, let's get back to work."

x x x

It was late at night, when Jack walked into the Hub, alone. It felt almost creepy, so silent, deserted. She quickly crossed the main room, descending the steps into the medical/autopsy room. They only had the one room for both purposes, and gods help you if you got sick while there was a dead alien in for examination.

Glancing briefly around, seeing no signs of life here, and pretending not to notice the dead blowfish still on the autopsy table, she returned to the scanner she had used the previous night. Nervously, almost afraid of what a part of her mind had already reluctantly accepted- terrified of allowing such a weak and false hope to even exist- she placed her hand on the scanner, and read the screen.

But when she saw the image that appeared there, indicating a second life-sign in her abdomen, she smiled, feeling tears of joy and relief well up in her eyes for a moment, before quickly blinking them back, "Rewind... good thing." she whispered to herself. And it really wasn't the first time, was it? This might only have been one night, but the positive result somehow managed to feel at least as good as the last time Jack had played a part in reversing time itself.

"You know I really hate people touching my stuff." Owen's voice, from somewhere behind her, startled her. She turned around sharply, looking up to see him leaning over the railing behind her... with a perfect view of the screen she had just been reading. She was too surprised by his presence here to even comment on the obvious double-entendre in his words.

"Oh! Owen!" she said, tripping over her own voice a bit, as she hastily stood up and positioned herself between him and the screen, "I thought everyone had gone home." she added, defensively.

"Yeah, well." Owen shrugged, "Blowfish. Paperwork. Ianto'll have my head if I don't get it done by the next time he's going down to the archives."

Jack frowned, trying to figure out how to turn off the scanner behind her, without letting Owen see what she had been doing with it... that was assuming, of course, that he hadn't already seen it. The way her head turned to one side while she considered this, as if trying to look back over her shoulder at it, drew his attention, though.

"I saw it." he said quietly- a much softer tone than he usually ever employed- nodding to the scanner's screen, before starting to walk around towards the stairs. "Kinda wondered, since you were so adamant about no medical scans." he said with a frown.

When he reached it, Owen glanced at the scanner, more closely, "Only two weeks?" he asked, "Surprised you even noticed."

"Why'd you think I stayed female?" Jack asked sceptically, "It's because someone got very paranoid, and insisted on running scans before letting me turn back into a man."

"Serve you right." Owen grumbled, "Not surprised the first thing you'd do after getting turned into a girl is go out and get laid. Who was it, then? The Doctor?" he asked.

Jack shook her head, almost scoffing at the idea. The chances of anyone ever getting the Doctor into that sort of situation were pretty much non-existent, "No... but he definitely wasn't human. And the Doctor was the one who insisted on the scans." she said with a faint smirk.

"Not human." Owen grumbled, "Oh that's just great."

Jack laughed, "Relax. I'm told that aside from the end being less painful, I shouldn't notice too much difference." after a moment's thought she added, "Well... mostly. Fifty-fifty chance."

"Of what?" Owen demanded.

"Well, they weren't clear on the details... this is just an educated guess based on what they did say." Jack muttered, folding her arms defensively.

"Ah yes, 'they'." Owen said, remembering the conversation in the SUV after the blowfish incident, "Who are 'they', again?"

"The Doctor... and the man whose responsible for this." she said, gesturing to the scanner.

"The alien." Owen corrected.

"Details." Jack grumbled, "Look, there's a chance that it could read on a scanner as two heartbeats, without being... oh god!" she cringed, her hands moving to cover her eyes as if that could protect her from the truly terrifying thought that had just crossed her mind, "I just thought the word 'twins'." she whispered, peering out between her fingers, and slowly beginning to lower her hands again, "That's scary."

Owen pulled a face, somewhere between disgusted and sympathetic... but then he made the mistake of trying to be funny, "Well, since there seems to be some sort of Star Wars thing going on that you mentioned yesterday... we could call them Luke and Leia."

She hit him, very lightly upside the head, and snapped, "Not funny." She really wouldn't be surprised if the Master would find that comparison bloody hilarious, though. And if Owen tried calling her Padme, she really would have to hurt him.

Owen laughed nervously, rubbing the side of his head in a joking imitation of pain. Then after a couple of seconds he turned serious again, picking up on the practical point of her previous statement, "Two hearts?" he asked sceptically.

"Yeah." she said, nodding with a frown, her arms folded defensively again. This was not a subject that she was comfortable discussing, and Owen would not have been her first choice if she had wanted to talk about it. "Fifty-fifty chance, seeing as it's half-human."

There were a few other potential side-effect of the child's Time Lord heritage, but they were even less likely, and she found some cruel amusement in the thought of Owen's reaction to finding these out without being told, so she didn't mention it.

"Wonder what else he's got two of." Owen muttered, using the joke as a way of shaking off his surprise and curiosity at the thought of an alien with two hearts.

Jack laughed, knowing full well the answer to the obvious obscene thought there, but deciding to be awkward, "Ah... lungs, kidneys, hands, feet, eyes-" Owen glared at her, and she stopped the list, laughing even more.

"As Torchwood Three's resident doctor, I'm gonna have to give you the list of dos and don'ts." Owen said briskly, "No alcohol, smoking, drugs- including Retcon- caffeine, suicidal tendencies, or otherwise getting yourself killed again." all of this was said in a perfectly businesslike tone, and absolute seriousness.

"You can't take away my caffeine!" Jack declared, feigning horror and shock at the very suggestion. If she really had to, she could live without it, but she absolutely loved her coffee, and decaf just was not the same... even if it was made by Ianto.

"You're gonna have to stay back on missions." Owen warned, seriously, ignoring the caffeine remark in favour of the much more important point of not dying. "You were lucky, yesterday. That sorta thing is not likely to happen, ever again."

Jack nodded, "I didn't expect him to push me." she said quietly.

"Did you provoke him?" Owen asked.

She nodded slowly, "Still didn't think he'd kill me." she muttered, a bit sulky at being told off by Owen of all people.

"Yeah." his voice softened, "Well... just try to be careful, okay?"

She nodded, "Okay."

x x x

It was now two days after John Hart had left, and Ianto was in a relatively good mood... mostly because the aforementioned psychopath had been banished from the Earth, at least for now. It was a quiet day, and everyone was busying themselves with the sort of work that the fate of the Earth didn't depend on. Mostly paperwork, or pet-projects.

Ianto was just about to brighten up his morning that little bit more, by pestering Owen over the fact that he still hadn't finished with that blowfish autopsy- what had their resident medic been doing all last night, when he was supposed to be writing that report, anyway?- when he was interrupted by Jack calling him over the commlink.

"Hey, Ianto... can I see you in my office for a minute?" she asked in a too-sweet tone that told Ianto instantly that she didn't just want to talk about work.

"Yes sir." he said, abandoning his quest to infuriate Owen, in favour of seeing what Jack wanted.

When he entered the office it was to a most unexpected sight... and either Jack was entirely shameless, she had planned the timing of this very well, or most likely both, because if anyone else had walked in right now...

She was perched on the edge of her desk, cross-legged, wearing nothing but the new coat she had acquired while she was away. Ianto strongly preferred the original coat, but he certainly wasn't complaining right now, as he stared at her in surprise. Admittedly, the coat was strategically placed so she wasn't showing off everything... but still, it left very little to the imagination.

"I thought you might want to get to know my new look." she suggested.

Ianto quickly locked the office door behind him, and stepped further into the room, "You're gorgeous." he said softly. And it was so true... she was practically perfect, really.

With the slightest shrug, the coat fell off her shoulders, and she hopped off the desk to stand right in front of him. He had been covertly admiring her, since she had returned to Earth... but now she was directly demanding his opinion. It felt strange to realise that she was now slightly shorter than him... but it didn't bother him at all, as he reached a hand out to lightly brush her hair back from her face.

She grinned, clearly pleased with this answer, and immediately closed the distance between them, kissing him eagerly. It was strange... her lips were softer, and her hands slightly finer as she ran her fingers through his hair... but the way she kissed, the way she touched him, it was most definitely still Jack.

She broke the kiss for a moment, to whisper in his ear, "I missed you." but then her hands moved down to his belt, and he caught her arms to stop her.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, concerned. He definitely wanted it- it didn't make the slightest difference to him what gender Jack was, she was still so damned irresistible- but he wasn't sure quite what to make of her behaviour. It wasn't what he'd expected at all. "It's highly unusual to have sex before the first date, you know." he added as a sort of nervous joke.

"Not like we haven't done this before." she countered, kissing his neck lightly.

Ianto really didn't want to protest, right now... the way she was kissing him was so familiar and felt so good... but his conscience got the better of him, and he pointed out, "Yes, but it's different, now."

Jack froze, looking up at him with a wounded expression, and quickly stepped back away from him, "Pathetic double-standard!" she snapped, brushing his hands away from her arms almost defensively, turning her head in a pointed and distinctly feminine gesture of refusing to look at him, "When a man wants sex all the time, he's a stud... but if a woman wants the same thing she's a slut."

It took a second or two for Ianto to properly process this statement... but when it sank in precisely what she was thinking, he was horrified, "God no! No, Jack, that's not what I meant at all!"

She gave him a questioning look, still managing to project the recently-kicked-kitten air with great efficiency, and he quickly explained.

"What I mean is... I thought the gender change would be a shock to the system. I can't imagine what it must be like... even going to the bathroom, let alone sex! I- I wasn't sure you'd be ready for this so soon." Jack seemed thoroughly stunned by the depths to which Ianto had considered her predicament, staring at him with amazement, as he continued, "When you asked me out on a date... I thought it was a way of telling me you wanted to take things slowly, until you got used to it."

Jack started at him a moment longer, and the silence had just started to feel uncomfortable when she suddenly laughed with relief, "I'm sorry... I shouldn't have snapped at you like that, it's just..." she seemed to think about this for a second, then, "In my time, there is no double-standard, on any level, between sexes... it always bothers me when I witness it in this century, I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions."

"So you wouldn't hold a door open for a woman, or offer to help her with heavy luggage, or anything chivalrous like that?" Ianto asked, knowing full well that Jack did do that sort of thing quite routinely.

"Yes, I would." she said with a nod, "But I'd do exactly the same thing for a man if I thought he'd appreciate it. Although I'll admit, in this century... that doesn't happen too often."

Ianto chuckled at this answer, and quickly moved in to kiss her once more.

She eagerly returned this kiss, and this time he didn't try to stop her when she started unbuttoning his shirt and kissing down his neck and shoulders, to his chest. After a minute or so, she leaned back to point out, "I promise you, Ianto, being female doesn't make the least bit of difference to my desire to fuck your brains out right now."

"I'm sorry, Jack." Ianto laughed, "I promise never to underestimate your sex drive ever again!"

x x x