Jack was still at his desk when Suzie found him later in the evening. She stood outside the door and stared at her boss. He seemed absorbed in whatever it was he was looking at on the screen in front of him. She leaned on the door frame and waited for him to notice her.
"What can I do for you, Suzie?" Jack asked. He had been aware of her watching him for the last few minutes, but hadn't reacted to her scrutiny.
"You know, I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something different about you," she finally said as she cleaned the grease off of her hands. She had been polishing some metal work she had been working on in the shop. It was always hard to get the grease she used for lubrication off her hands. She continued to rub the soft cloth between her fingers as she took a seat in the chair opposite his desk. "I still would like to know what happened wherever you went."
"I know you would," Jack said. He didn't say anything else, and she scowled at his unwillingness to tell her or the others where he had been and what had happened. She had even cornered Andy in the basement looking for answers. He had protested and told her that he didn't have any more information than she had. It frustrated the hell out of her that Jack wasn't telling them anything. Turning off the CCTV, he focused on her fully. "And I've told you why I can't tell you."
She sighed as she stared at him. While he didn't look quite as careworn as he had when he first showed up, there was something elusive about him that made her antsy. It made her question why he had come back. What were his motives? Was he here for them, or just passing through again? She was of two minds as to what she really wanted.
Over the past few days as alarms had gone off, he had gone right back to being the leader he had been before he left. In some ways it had been a relief to step back and let him take control. She hadn't wanted to be the one to make the hard decisions, so having him here to do so took the strain off her. Relieved the strain of wondering if a decision she made was going to get one of them hurt. Or worse, killed. Just before Jack had returned she had been well on the way towards becoming a basket case about it. Owen helped some, but he had his own issues as well. She thought that perhaps that was why she was so scared Jack was going to leave again. Because it would leave her in charge, and she didn't want that. Didn't want the pressure of having to be the one to make the hard decisions. To be responsible.
Jack watched her and he could almost see the gears turning in her head as she stared at him. He wondered what she was thinking about as he watched her absently continue to rub the cloth over her hands well after all the grease had been removed. Her brow was furrowed as she continued to examine him and he shifted a bit uncomfortably, feeling as if she was trying to see into his skull.
"What can I do for you, Suzie?" He finally repeated as the silence began to make him feel uncomfortable.
"Don't leave us again," she replied, deciding to lay it all out on the table. "You may think we can function on our own, but the truth is we can't."
"Suzie…" Jack began, but she cut him off. She needed to get it all out and said so he would understand how much stress she had been under holding things together while he was gone.
"Hear me out Jack," she said as she put up a hand to forestall him. "I know whatever it was that made you leave must have been important. I know you. You wouldn't take off like that unless it was the end of the world or something like that. And I know I'm the only one you've told about your past. About what happened to you. And I know that if you can find your doctor, you have to go do it. To find those answers. I can't pretend to understand what it is like to live forever. To constantly see the people you care for die right in front of your eyes," she said passionately. He closed his eyes in response. "And I don't think that this doctor of yours is going to fix you. If he could, he would have already. He wouldn't have left you like this. No one could be that cruel.
"But while you were gone, someone had to take over. That was me, and I didn't want to do it. Wasn't ready to do it. To deal with the mess with UNIT and the government," she continued. "I stepped into the space because someone had to do it. It certainly wasn't going to be Tosh or Andy. Owen might have, but he would have been ten times worse with dealing with the bureaucratic red tape that comes with the position."
"I've looked at the records," Jack interrupted. He wanted her to see that she was qualified to take over. That she was a strong leader. She might not feel like it, but she had that natural ability. "You did a damn fine job while I was gone. Exactly what I would want and what I would expect, Suzie. You may not feel like you did, but looking at what happened over the last seven months I can see it. You made good decisions. Some of them were hard, and I know what strength that had to take to go there. You did good. Don't ever think you can't do it."
Suzie stared at him for a long moment. It was the most praise she had ever heard him say to her. "But I made mistakes," she protested, thinking of all the false starts she had had and the errors in judgment that had caused problems for the team. She was startled when Jack laughed.
"You don't think I'm not capable of making mistakes?" He asked her with his hands spread out to indicate the area around them. "You don't think that sometimes I kick myself from one end of the Hub to the other when something goes wrong and I realize that I could have prevented it if I had just taking a different route? It comes with the territory, Suzie. Sometimes you make mistakes. The thing is to learn from them, or to use them to your advantage. Sometimes a mistake can be turned around when you look at it from a different angle. You've taken this team and kept it together, despite challenges from the government, the military and UNIT. You've gotten the job done for months on your own. Even kept the paperwork in order," he said as he put a hand on the pile of reports on his desk. "That's no small task. So give yourself some credit."
She was listening to him, he knew. And hopefully she was accepting that she could be a good leader. Even if she didn't feel like one. Hell, there had been enough times when he felt like he had been the worse leader that Torchwood had ever had, and that was saying something. She stared into his eyes and saw the sincerity of what he was telling her within them. It warmed her in a way she hadn't been expecting. He believed in her. Had left knowing that she would be strong enough to pick up the pieces and keep things running. Unconsciously she sat up straighter in her chair. Jack saw the change in her immediately, and wondered how his other self had interacted with her in the past. He needed for her to be strong. To keep that core that was important to her and hold onto herself in this world.
"Thanks," she finally said. He noticed that sometime during their conversation her hands had stilled and were resting in her lap. She was no longer nervous about him, or about herself and her place in this world.
"We good?" He asked her. She nodded. "Good. I mean every word I said, Suzie. You are amazing. Don't lose touch of that."
"I won't," she said. She pushed herself off of the chair. "I need to get back to what I was doing." She started to head out and turned back towards him, which made him tilt his head to one side as he waited for her to say whatever else it was she wanted to say. "I don't know what happened to you while you were gone, and I think it wasn't fun. But I like the way it's changed you. Thank you, Jack." Leaving him with his mouth hanging open in surprise, she turned and left his office.
Jack stared after her for several moments while he processed what she had said. Was he really that different? He thought back to the man he was at the start of the millennium. Before everything changed. If the Jack that occupied this reality was that same sort of person, then he would be secretive and not really wanting to reach out to the team. To feel when they were injured, or to care too deeply for them because doing so hurt. He had tried that route, and it had almost turned him into a zombie.
He stared pensively at his vortex manipulator, wondering where his other self was. Was he ever coming back? And if not, how would that affect the team when he eventually moved on? If he could move on, he voiced the thought internally. He turned and looked through the window out into the Hub. A Hub that was the same as it had been before Abaddon. Before Grey. Before everything had changed. And he looked at the people there that he had nurtured, giving them a better life than what they had before he had met them. And how in turn, each of them had made his life so much richer since they were in it.
He watched as Suzie moved over to where Toshiko was working. The two women put their heads together as the computer expert pointed out something on the screen to her team mate. The sight made Jack smile. Behind them off to the side, Andy was busy cataloging something that had come through the rift. There was no sign of Owen, but from the sounds that reverberated in the space, he knew that the doctor was playing his video game again. He had missed this. Missed the little things that he had taken for granted before. Missed the interactions with the people he worked with. People he cared for deeply. Andy looked up and peered in his direction, no doubt checking on whether he was in need of caffeine. Their eyes met and Andy smiled at him as he lifted his own mug. Jack shook his head slightly and the young man nodded before going back to what he was doing.
He rested his chin on his hand and thought. He really needed to find Ianto. From there, he could make decisions about everything else. Although if the other Jack came back, it was all a bit moot, anyhow. Jack decided the first order of business was to find the man in question. Once he had found him, he could assess what to do next. Nodding to himself, he pulled up Torchwood's interactive map of Cardiff and proceeded to scan the areas that Andy had pointed out to him before. He made a note of where they were, then made the determination that he was going out that night to hunt for Ianto. The problem would be losing Andy. He couldn't have the other man with him, so he was going to have to distract him with something. Something would come up he was sure, so he put it out of his mind as he went back to the pile of paperwork awaiting him.