Things get weirder. What does Lyndel really want? And is something else happening?

twtwtwtwtwtwtw

Jack sighed, tired and worried. His resurrection headache hadn't gone away yet either, in fact it seemed to be getting worse. Something odd seemed to be happening in his brain. It was a neuronal equivalent of double vision, his thought's stuttered, like he'd already had them before he'd thought them. Extreme de ja vu. He probably did have Flyer venom in his system.

'Of course,' Lyndel said, 'the other option is to take you past the year 5098, but either way, you can't be anywhen before that time.' She tightened the grip on his hand.

'No!' Jack ripped his hand away. 'I belong here now. I'm not leaving my team.'

'I knew you wouldn't like it but you have to. For the greater good of the human race.'

'Bullshit.' He grimaced as the pain in his head racked up a notch. Maybe he shouldn't have shouted. There was something off. He felt Owen's hand light on his shoulder but kept his focus on Lyndel. 'How does ripping me three thousand years into the future help the human race?'

She looked at him. 'Head ache?' she asked in a tone reminiscent of his mother.

He felt her reach out inside his head. Automatically Jack relaxed slightly. His mother had been able to do this too. 'Yes.'

He felt tendrils of warmth seep into his head. 'Let me?' she asked. 'I'm good at this.'

Jack had been going to agree but before he'd even thought yes or no his brain was being filled with a viscous fog. It wasn't the cool soothing sensation he was expecting. His eyes shut as his higher functions slowed. This was different. As his body went limp he was aware, vaguely of Owen making a startled sound, but it was so far away. All the tension, all the worry, all the pain dampened. It was like his brain had been encased in dough. He floated in a warm ocean but even as he sank into it he recognised it for what it was, an immobilisation of sorts. Wrong, the small functioning part of his cortex twinged. It shouldn't feel like this. He shouldn't be paralysed. He fought to get out of it. He was trying to think with treacle forced into his synapses, electrical impulses slowed. It would have been so comfortable to sink into it, allow the pain to flow away and yet he retained just enough sense to realise that he had been invaded and it was wrong. His trust had been betrayed. He tried to gather his long unused psychic defences and force Lyndel and her soothing and tempting invasion out of his head.

Somewhere he was aware that Owen was shaking him, calling his name. JackJackJack. The sound reverberated on the inside but it came from outside his head, gave him a boundary to work towards. JackJackJack. A stinging slap on his cheek provided the focus he needed. He concentrated on the sting, found his outside and worked back in. He identified his boundaries and pushed electrical energy through his frontal lobes, sweeping backwards, cleaning impurities out. Prickles of pain blossomed inside his head as synapses sparked and pulsed, repelling the invading paralysis. The prickles joined, became stabs, became agonising waves as he pushed her influence out of his brain. The pain suddenly pulsed through his skull, much stronger, much worse than it had been prior to whatever she'd done, but she was gone from his head and he was back. He screamed, and found himself on his hands and knees on the floor.

Nausea crashed through him and he threw up, his head exploding with pain. He wouldn't have been surprised if the seams of his skull had blown apart and he died from it, but he didn't. His thought processes were his own again and when he could finally look up he was gratified to see that both Tosh and Gwen had their guns trained on his daughter. Owen was beside him looking worried and stopping him from pitching head first into the mess on the floor. Jack panted, head hanging, catching his breath, trying to ignore a headache that was of quite epic proportions. Fuck, he hadn't had to beat a mind meld like that for over a hundred years.

Owen wiped his face, caught the string of drool hanging off his lip and helped him to gingerly move away from the puddle of bile. Jack sat, rather abruptly on the floor. He leaned weakly back against the couch. 'It's all right Jack. Take your time.' Owen glared at Lyndel. 'It even looks like she's mucking with you again Gwen is going to shoot her in the foot. I'd like to see her try whatever that was with a slug through her boot.' He ran his scanner over Jack and narrowed his eyes. He put a hand gently to Jack's temple, his fingers cool and comforting. 'I don't know what happened but your brain is actually swollen.' Jack concentrated on just breathing.

The silence stretched out. No one seemed to know what to say. Jack worked on getting his body back under his control. Lyndel sat on the couch watching him, her face a familiar mask he often saw in his own mirror. Eventually Jack cracked. 'Why did you do that?' His voice was hoarse. He wondered how long he'd been screaming.

'I was taking away your pain.'

'Don't bullshit me,' Jack snapped. This woman with her oh so familiar face was a total stranger to him but he still knew her on so many levels. Disconcerted didn't begin to cover how he was feeling.

'Well it wouldn't have hurt if you didn't fight it.'

'You didn't let me out when I struggled. That's not healing. Did they teach you that in the Intelligence Agency?' He was so angry. She was an Admiral in the Intelligence Agency; the one Agency that no-one messed with. The Agency staffed by geeky misfits and true psychopaths. What had happened to his Lyndel that she had become one of those? She had Lyndel's face and so he'd automatically been disposed to trust her. She was fifty percent her useless selfish father and most of her life he had tended to forget that. Just for a moment he entertained the idea that she wasn't really his daughter, but he knew that was foolish. It was her all right. 'That wasn't a healing, that was an immobilisation.' Suddenly knew what she'd been going to do. 'Gwen, take her wrist strap.'

Lyndel's eyes widened. So did Gwen's but she asked no questions and moved forward. Jack was grateful for that. 'Keep your gun on her and don't let her touch that strap.'

He blinked, trying to quell the tears that threatened. 'All you had to do was hold my hand, touch me somewhere and poof, we'd have been out of here.' He swallowed down the lump. 'You weren't even going to give me a choice.'

'There is no choice.' Her voice was like ice.

Jack forced himself to ignore the pain and think. 'Right, let's get a few things straight shall we? Is there really anyone monitoring your thoughts?'

Lyndel looked smug. 'No.'

'Thank you. Tosh, reverse the lockdown.'

'You might not want to do that.' She gave him another of his mother's looks. The "I'm mother and I know best look." The one that said "because I'm mother that's why." 'The Flyers may well be back.'

Tosh looked up. 'Flyers? The creatures that had Jack and Ianto earlier this evening?'

Gwen was thoroughly pissed off. 'Why not just say that? Why make up a story like that?' She dropped the wrist strap in Jack's lap. 'I trusted you,' she said to Lyndel. Her gun didn't waver.

'And that was the point.' The wrist strap was warm with the body heat of its wearer. Jack stroked it. Wrist straps were so much more than tools; the leather was far from practical and was symbolic of life, history and tradition. This one belonged to his daughter. His daughter that he hadn't expected to see again for three thousand years, the one he'd never forgotten. The daughter he loved. The daughter who had used complex mind control to try and kidnap him.

'Lesson number one,' Owen muttered under his breath. 'Never trust anyone from Jack's future past.'

Sighing Jack struggled up and got himself back on the couch. His head felt like it was about to come off his shoulders but he couldn't give in to things yet. He leant back, turned sideways so he could watch his beautiful and dangerous daughter. He needed to hear her reasons. She had saved Ianto from certain death after all. She hadn't had to do that. He glanced across at the bed but all he could see of Ianto was the top of his head, the covers pulled up and tucked around him. He was out cold but the heart monitor showed a normal rhythm. He was simply asleep, healing.

He closed his eyes and ground his fingers into his temples. 'Talk,' he gritted out. He felt Owen's hand on his wrist, taking his pulse, then opened his eyes in surprise as his sleeve was pushed up. Before he could blink Owen had stabbed a hypodermic into his bicep and he gave a small squawk of surprise.

'Morphine,' Owen told him. 'Figured you could use it. Not enough to knock you out; should just take the edge off things. Plus an anti emetic. It will take a few minutes to work though.'

'Thank you.' He turned back to Lyndel. 'Talk.'

She glanced down at the puddle of vomit on the carpet, she didn't like it, but he couldn't tell if it was simply the vomit itself that upset her or her part in making him sick. Then she glared at him and it hurt him to see in her the small girl she used to be. That was the look she'd given him on being sent to bed early for sneaking out to play with friends when she should have been home doing chores.

'5098?' he prompted.

She sighed and seemed as if they were going to have a stand-off. There was that ten year old again. He was nearly derailed. Shielding himself like mad he didn't know if she were acting or genuine. He had to get on top of this conversation. 'You can spend some time in a cell if you'd prefer. We have an interrogation suite too. You know I'm sure, if you've been reading up on me, that I'm very good at interrogation.'

'You couldn't make yourself do that to me.'

'You're right,' Jack said matching her tone. 'I couldn't. And while it would absolutely destroy me to let it happen,' his voice was very bleak, 'I could allow someone I'd trained to do it for me.' He nodded towards Owen. And that was a big heartbreaking case of double dare, but none of his team broke.

Owen had showed a not completely surprising aptitude to torture. The Hippocratic oath could be broken for the greater good. He felt Lyndel's mind try to edge its way back in to his, but he was prepared now and repelled it. She must have tried it on his team too and they wouldn't have been able to resist. Sadly they all believed him capable of carrying out that threat, they'd seen him threaten to execute Ianto after all. He had executed Mary right in front of them. Owen knew he would be able to extract information from Lyndel and he had no emotional involvement with her. His team believed the threat so Lyndel did too. She gave in.

'In 5064,' she said quietly, 'you discovered a way to defeat Flyers in battle.' She gave a sad smile when Jack gasped. 'The Flyers can't work out how it's done but over forty years later, the time I'm in now, they're nearly completely wiped out, the whole species just about gone. The whole of the human race, plus several others owe you a huge debt. However, just when we thought we could relax, stop worrying about Flyers, whatever they have that passes for an intelligence agency discovered that it was you who figured it out. They need to know what you know, how you learnt what you did to exploit their weak point. They set out to track you down.' She grimaced and gestured towards the still figure on the bed. 'I was just a bit late. Last night they found you.'

The pain was easing now but Jack was finding it really hard to think. 'No that's wrong. In 5064 I was still with the Time Agency. I didn't do anything like that. Are we talking about something I'm going to do? Because if I'm going to discover this I do need to be around for the lead up, don't I? Otherwise I'll never work it out.'

'No Lee, ah Jack. You already worked it out.'

Oh shit. In spite of Owen's anti emetic injection his stomach lurched. Lyndel watched him with a small smile on her face as he made the connections. He couldn't keep his eyes off her. 'One day in 5066,' he was speaking to his daughter now, not the Admiral, 'when you were sixteen years old I woke up with my mind wiped of two years worth of memories? That was it?' He heard his voice rise in pitch but couldn't stop it. 'That was why?' He felt his team gather behind him. They knew the story. He thought he'd done something appalling, had been so ashamed, was so angry with the agency for wiping two years from his life and two years from his time with his daughter that he'd left the agency and turned rogue. Someone had a hand on his shoulder. He hadn't gone back to see his family because he thought he had a price on his head. He'd never seen his mother again. He hadn't seen Lyndel… until now. He felt like he'd just plummeted down the rabbit hole.

Lyndel nodded. 'You were a hero. You should have been fettered and praised. Instead they had to make you run, disappear. The Flyers couldn't be allowed to get to you. So they cooked up a plan to piss you off enough that you'd leave on your own and cover your traces. It was that or kill you outright.' She gave a wry grin. 'You obliged in spectacular fashion. It took us years to find you. I've seen the records of some of what you got up to. You were very inventive.'

'Thanks,' Jack said drily. The strange de ja vu was back. He'd felt something like it before.

'To their credit,' she continued although Jack couldn't see any credit in what the Time Agency had done, 'they imagined in a few years the war would be over and that after a few years of running amuck in out of the way places you'd get bored and come back, they could make things right. At least that's what they've told me, but they know we're related. No one ever dreamed it would take this long to get on top of the slimy bastards. But now, when we thought we had them on the run they turn around and discover temporal displacement and suddenly they can go anywhere and anywhen they want to.' She let out a snort. 'And here we all are.'

Jack wondered if he were going into shock. He didn't feel he was quite here, or he was here twice, he wasn't quite sure. 'But I had a mind wipe. Those two years are completely gone.' Jack couldn't hold back the shudder. It was only a few hours ago that the Flyer's dreadful mind probe had worked its way physically into his brain. 'I don't think they could get anything from me.'

'The combined Agencies have decided that we can't risk them finding a way of reversing the wipe. The decision was made to bring you in. We did hope to do it before they found you. Obviously.'

'Oh obviously.' Suddenly it was all too much. He sighed deeply, incredibly fatigued. He was still in pain, his brain was cross wired. He felt ill. He nodded at Gwen. 'It's nearly five am. Take the Admiral down to the cells. Give her a blanket and a pillow, something to eat. Don't talk to her, don't trust her and don't let her touch you. If you feel a niggling from your conscience as you go to do something, stop and take notice. It's probably because you're about to do something you know you shouldn't and you're under the influence of foreign mind control. It's a classic symptom.' He made sure to look deeply into Gwen's eyes. 'Do you understand me?'

Gwen looked a little confused. 'I think so. You're saying that if Lyndel tries to make me do something I shouldn't…'

'Like not locking the cell door,' Tosh suggested.

Gwen nodded in agreement, 'then I should have some clue that this isn't actually my idea because?'

'You'll feel some niggle telling you not to do it,' Jack completed for her.

'So I was under mind control each time I used to get smashed at the pub,' Owen muttered. Tosh snickered.

'Quite likely.'

'It's all right,' Tosh told Gwen. 'Keep your com open and I'll monitor you all the way there and back.'

'You're over reacting,' Lyndel protested.

'Not really.' Jack tried to keep a bored look on his face. 'You attempted to immobilise and kidnap me. If anything I'm treating you very lightly.' He suppressed a shudder of horror. If he hadn't been able to fight back and more importantly if his team hadn't been on the alert and stopped her from touching him he would be three thousand years from here right now, and probably with very little chance of getting back. 'What happened to you?' he asked sadly. He just had to know.

'What do you mean?'

'He means you're a callous bitch,' Owen said coldly. 'The Lyndel Jack's told us about wouldn't do what you tried to do tonight. For god sake, he's your father.'

'Mother,' Lyndel corrected. 'He's my mother.'

'All right, we know that. He's your parent. He loves you and look what you've done to him.' Owen was pointing both hands at him, exhibit A. 'He's in pain. You've hurt him.'

'I hurt him.' Lyndel's voice became shriller. 'How do you think my childhood went? It was bad enough growing up with everyone thinking that the person who gave birth to me was my father…'

Jack's felt his stomach drop. What the hell had happened? He'd done everything in his power to give Lyndel a happy childhood. He was a child himself, only sixteen years old and so traumatised by war and the manner of her birth. He'd tried so hard, him and his mother. He thought they'd succeeded. He didn't remember Lyndel wanting for anything. He remembered happy times. Why didn't she? He must have gasped because the others all turned to look at him. On top of everything else she was ripping his heart out. 'But it was worse than that. He left me.' She turned to Jack. 'You left me. You promised you'd come back and you never did.'

'But…' Jack stuttered.

'Hang on,' Gwen bulldozed in. 'You said yourself, the Time Agency made him run away.'

There was a glistening of tears in Lyndel's eyes. 'But you sent me a message and you promised. You said that one day, in a few years from then you would come back. You promised.' She sighed sadly. 'I believed you. You always kept your promises.'

'In this message, was I dressed like I am now?' Jack tried to keep his voice firm.

Lyndel nodded.

Jack didn't understand. 'Sweetheart I'm still coming. Tosh here sent that message to you about six months ago in linear time. I fully intend to turn up and be part of your life again in about 5066. At this stage it looks as if I'll have to take the long route but I fully intend to come.'

'I'm from 5098,' Lyndel said coldly. 'You never came.'

Jack thought he was going to implode. 'I…I…' He seemed to be losing the ability to answer. His headache was phenomenal. He tried to mentally squint, to knit together the double thought processes… He gave a gasp. He knew what that feeling was. Everyone was staring at him again. 'Can you feel it?' he asked Lyndel. 'The duality? Ever since you've been here? That's why my headache's got worse.'

'What?' all three of the others asked at once.

'Gods,' Lyndel blanched and suddenly looked very unsure of herself. 'I wasn't sure,' she whispered. 'I have only basic physical temporal training. I'm quite good on the theory but I hadn't felt it before and I wasn't sure.' She looked at Jack, and he was pleased she looked frightened. She'd created a temporal paradox here tonight. Who knew what might happen next.

'What the fuck are you on about?' Owen demanded.

'My visit here has created a duality in time,' Lyndel said sadly. 'I don't know what I did to cause it and I certainly didn't intend to.'

'And we don't know what the outcome will be,' Jack said quietly.

'You've changed time?' Tosh asked excitedly.

'Yes.'

Owen stood, hands on hips, glaring belligerently. 'And you know this… how?'

Lyndel nodded at Jack. 'Lee and I can feel it.'

'Massive de ja vu,' Jack said. 'With knobs on. Two different versions of events rubbing up against each other and just slightly out of sync but glued together by whatever caused them to spin off. If you are time sensitive you can feel it.'

'So what's going to happen?' Owen asked.

'We can't tell,' Lyndel said. 'My being here has somehow changed something that impacts on the timeline I am part of. I haven't winked out of existence so that implies I still get born.'

'Of course you get born,' Jack growled. 'Because that's already happened in my past.' He was flagging rapidly. He couldn't cope with temporal physics right now.

'So whatever you've changed,' Gwen mused, 'it can't change any of the future that Jack's already been a part of?'

'I suppose.' Lyndel muttered. 'But whatever it is could still completely destroy my universe after he left.'

This was too much right now and anyway, whatever it was, it was already done. There was nothing they could do. 'I have to sleep,' Jack admitted, something they'd usually never hear from him. He could barely string a sentence together. 'Take her to the cells. It's late. We'll re evaluate in the morning.'

Gwen again gestured with her gun and the two women turned to leave the room. Lyndel suddenly pivoted to stare at the bed. 'Gods! That's it!' She flung herself at the bed, grabbing for the IV line and monitor cords as she went soaring across Ianto reaching for his throat.

All hell broke loose. Gwen and Owen grabbed for her. Ianto woke up screaming. Jack could see his eyes wide with fright and pain. Then Gwen had Lyndel on her knees on the floor, her gun grinding into the back of her skull. 'What the fuck are you doing?' Gwen hissed with that venomous voice that really meant business. Owen, from somewhere produced a set of flexi cuffs.

Jack was thanking all the gods he knew that Lyndel hadn't known enough about medical technology in this time period to realise that the monitor and IV weren't actually keeping Ianto alive. He knew exactly what she was doing. He waited till some of the hubbub quieted down. Tosh had climbed onto the bed and was cradling a confused and frightened Ianto in her arms. 'It's Ianto at the heart of the paradox,' Jack said sadly. He swallowed thickly. He was going to cry. 'He's the thing that Lyndel changed. He was supposed to die tonight.'

'Lee. You have to…' Lyndel entreated.

'No! I won't.' He buried his face in his hands. He might just have changed the rest of Lyndel's life. He had no way of knowing what the implications of this were. He might have condemned millions of people to death, or to not being born, but he wouldn't give up Ianto. 'I won't do that.' He couldn't kill Ianto for a possible future three thousand years from now. He buried his face in his hands.

'Get up,' Gwen ground out. 'Move.' She shoved her gun into Lyndel's face. 'Don't you touch him,' she growled as Lyndel used the edge of the bed to pull herself up. 'Don't you even look at him.'

'Lee?' Lyndel asked plaintively.

Jack couldn't look at her.

'Take her away.' Owen told Gwen. 'We'll work out what to do with her in the morning.'

As soon as Gwen had ushered Lyndel from the room Jack shut his eyes and sagged on the couch falling slowly sideways. He dug his fingers into his temples. Owen and Tosh were talking quietly over near the bed, getting Ianto sorted, putting the IV back in and reattaching the heart monitor. Jack was shaking with emotion and pain.

Gwen came back, the conversation around the bed became animated. Then it went quiet.

The room was very quiet. He'd just about got a handle on things enough to doze off when he felt a touch on his hand. His eyelid was levered open and a light shone in it. He screwed up his face and swore.

'Brain swelling seems to be slightly reduced,' Owen said drily. The girls were gone. 'Come on Jack, come to bed,' he sat him up. 'You've had a rough night.'

Jack snorted and winced as it increased the pressure in his head. 'Says the man who killed and revived his colleague five times to save him.' He glanced over at the lump that was Ianto in the bed and swallowed hard, drowning with emotion. 'And then had to pulverise my skull to remove the flyer mind probe.' Owen gave him a startled look. 'Cause I don't know any other way you could have got that thing off me. I don't imagine you've had an easy night either.'

Owen stared at him like he was an imbecile. 'You're the one with the headache,' he said mildly. He pulled him forward and helped him stand, the world seriously unsteady. 'Come on. You'll be much more comfortable in the bed and I'm sure the poor old tea boy will sleep better with you tucked in next to him.'

Jack's legs would barely hold him and he allowed himself to be lead to the bed. He sat on the side opposite Ianto, limp and unresisting as Owen undressed him. It was a relief to relinquish control. Owen pulled back the covers and he lay down with a sigh, turning automatically towards the unresponsive but alive and breathing body on the other side of the bed. Jack moaned, his eyes closing against his will as he wrapped himself carefully around Ianto. He might have dreamed it but he thought he felt a hand caress his cheek.