This only partially follows season 2 canon of Broadchurch. I'm going to avoid most of it and pretend a lot of stuff didn't happen and never existed. Like that French spaceship thing that people seem to think actually happened.

Rose Tyler woke to the sound of not only the chirping of her alarm, but also the ringing of her phone. Thinking the call could only be from one of her boys trying to make sure she was getting ready to wake up, she ignored the caller id and took to immediately growling into the phone, "Seriously? My alarm just went off! I get it, 'punctuality is the virtue of the lonely' and all that, but I only accidentally slept in that one time because you lot and your bloody fu-"

"Morning, sweetheart."

Nearly choking on the rest of her sentence, Rose coughed a few times before clearing her throat and trying to 'doll-up' a sugary sweet voice, "Dad!" She winced, coughed again, and then tried for a casual tone, "Morning." She even put a tight smile on her face until she remembered that she was alone and on the phone.

"Everything alright?" Rose could almost imagine Pete's eyebrows furrowing with concern. It took her longer than she would have liked to realize why.

She remembered, with a smack to her forehead and curse muttered under her breath, that she had forgotten to call her dad last night.

"Yeah, fine. I'm sorry I forgot to call. You know how the first day usually goes."

"And how was this 'usual' first day?"

"Are you asking as my dad or as my boss?"

There was a short pause before Pete responded, "Both. Your boys gave me their first day rundowns and now I'm waiting on yours."

It was standard for all Torchwood agents to give their 'first day briefs' to their district heads when working alongside outside workforces. It was a safety precaution and general protocol for many reasons; especially when clearance papers were involved. But most importantly, Torchwood needed to know the likelihood of dealing with an alien crisis (as in some cases, some calls to Torchwood are only thought to involve aliens). The only reports they need to worry about afterwards were the annual stacks of paperwork.

Clearing her throat yet again before giving a sniff, Rose thought back on the day before.

Well, she thought. First there was the new dead body thing. There was the whole getting up early thing. And then there was the whole duplicate of the love of her life thing. And then first thing, she belittled him and called him by his first name. Finally, to top it all off, the whole there being absolutely no lead in the case thing.

But Rose couldn't say most of that.

"Other than no leads in the case- which could have the potential to change after the interrogations and questionings that I'll be leading with the DI today and whenever else needed throughout the investigation- we are convinced that there is definitely alien involvement in some way here. I don't know how many interrogations or questionings we will get through today but I'm sure they'll be more as the case carries on. Leeke was found in the autopsy report of the newly found body. There's no way of telling how exactly it got in the victim's system, but there are what appears to be entry wounds for needles. Otherwise, with such a clean trail- or should I say no trail- there's definitely something wrong. We have not met with their chief super yet, as she was out yesterday, like we were told, but we should be meeting with her by the end of the week, hopefully today, but you know. We were given a private workspace in a conference room or something of the like. The town meeting that I attended with the DI didn't give way to any warning signs or concerns for outbreak but the townspeople are definitely not calm. This is apparently their first murder since the, uh.. That last case with the little boy," the same little boy that paparazzi thought less important, at the time, than the sudden appearance of Rose Tyler. Supposedly a never before heard of heiress-to-be was much more pleasing to the public than more death after the final destruction and lose of all the Cybermen. Sick bastards.

"And we have nothing from the CCTV feeds yet. We have the second victim arriving at his home, but not leaving. I can't speak for the boys, but I personally have not viewed the CCTV footage for the first victim. But I have listened to the interrogation tapes. All in all, not too bad for a first day for us, I think fifth or six for them, which I suppose for them isn't as great since, as said, we have no leads. Also, the case is currently being called the 'Wolmer Case' or well, 'Wolmer and Lamb case' I suppose, so I'm thinking that we may need to change that."

A hum rang through the other end of the phone.

"And as my daughter… how was your first day?"

Rose took a moment to consider her response before coming to the firm decision, "I'm going to have a better day today."

Alec Hardy came to Broadchurch all those years ago as a punishment; well, penance, and stayed for mostly the same reason. Okay, so he stayed for a lot of shite reasons that caused a lot of shite. Now he's torturing himself.

Well. No. That's not really true.

After the trial of Joe Miller and the long waited close of the Sandbrook case, Alec had taken to rehabilitating himself by staying close to his daughter and relearning how to take care of himself.

But now his penance is over, his daughter is off to university, and he is still divorced, emotionally unsatisfied (but mostly stable), and hasn't gotten laid in- well- he jokingly (bitterly) considers himself to almost be a monk. He's gone so long without that he just automatically ignores women. Well, he's friends with Miller- Bensen, but she's… Bensen. And sure, after his own divorce, he might have had a one night stand, just once or twice, just to see. Just because a few shots of alcohol convinced him he needed it. And he might have tried to proposition Becca Fisher that one time.

He now shudders at the thought and scrunches up his nose every time he find himself near her.

And aright, he has gotten some looks from women and he has looked at some women, but he's a pure blooded bloke. He can't really help it. But he just… He's not content, but he's not discontent. And he was able to finish helping his daughter grow up, and he's finished the Sandbrook case, and he's not dying anymore. Isn't that enough? The rest of it- the loneliness and the part of him that will only ever been mended, but never healed- he will live with it all, and himself, if it's the closest to content he can get to.

He's alive, what more does he need?

Well, for starters, he needs something to do with his time. And payment. After spending over a year on paid leave (not to mention that bloody awful temporary teaching position) as he tried to recuperate and rebuild (or rather just build) his life, he was ready to go back into the field. Still having kept in contact with Ellie, she had told him that she had talked to the chief super who had agreed to talk with Alec about reinstating. She also told him that the small blue house he had briefly vacated was to be put up on the market again soon.

He still isn't entirely sure why he agreed. Sometimes he tells himself that he went back to Broadchurch because he truly didn't know anywhere else.

His welcome back consisted of a BBQ with the Bensen and Latimer families. Well, a begrudgingly accepted dinner with the Bensen family that actually turned out to be a BBQ including the Latimers. They didn't look as surprised as he did, but at least they looked just as uncomfortable.

The rest of the town greeted him with looks of either confusion or blank stares. For a brief moment after his first week back, he considered shaving his beard entirely just to fuck with everyone, but decided that it would leave him too vulnerable and he wasn't ready to part with the safety blanket just yet. He can smile, laugh, even joke now; the beard and pacemaker stood as talismans and remembrances that he was no more the man he was before Sandbrook, than he was the man before he left Broadchurch. This Alec Hardy is still being discovered.

God, when the hell did he change from cynical to philosophical?

See, this is why he needed to busy himself with work again, though nowhere near as busily as he used to.

He just has to hope that this case goes better than his last two murders.

Working alongside with Torchwood could go any which way, really. Alec isn't really sure what to think of that, and isn't entirely sure that he wants to think about it, anyways- especially since thoughts of Torchwood keep leading him back to thoughts of Rose Tyler- so he focuses on getting ready for the day, instead.

It is with a firm decision that he tells himself that he will figure this lady out in all due time.

Mickey Smith- not Rickey the idiot- sang to himself in the shower as means of distracting himself from worrying about Rose and the DI. He would be lying if he said that a few times the day before, that he hadn't looked over at the Doctor's look-a-like and imagined he was just the man, himself, pulling some big comical practical joke. That maybe all his time spent in the parallel world was just him hallucinating. Maybe he had accidentally gotten drugged and Rose and the Doctor were just playing along. Maybe he had gotten hurt on one of his more dangerous trips with the Doctor and Rose and fell unconscious long enough- and with enough powerful drugs- to have made this whole thing up and somehow he had sent Rose and himself into his head to try to pull him out. But that just couldn't be right. He knew it wasn't right because he hadn't once gotten hurt while travelling in the TARDIS.

So then, once he had finally decided that he was, in fact, still and truly in the parallel world, he came to the conclusion that maybe he had gotten hurt during a Torchwood call. But that couldn't be true because he had always woken back up and healed nicely whenever his missions had gotten him hurt.

In the last and final conclusion, Mickey Smith had come to the firm decision that all of this really was a big fat comical joke; but rather than it being played on him by the Doctor, it fell to the already heavily weighed down shoulders of Rose Tyler, and he'd be damned if he and the boys didn't take extra precautions to help hold her up.

Drew Graham was having a fairly good morning. Unlike two nights prior, he had gotten a good amount of sleep the preview night. He may have been somewhat disoriented, but with his wedding drawing close by four months, he was becoming less and less satisfied by the mornings that he woke up without his wife-to-be. Not that he minded travelling for his Torchwood work, but he was really started to miss his Eliza.

Because of this mission, she was going to have to choose how to decorate the placement cards without him. At least there's some perks to being a travelling Torchwood agent.

Brushing back the bush of curly hair from his face, Drew readied himself to head out of his hotel room and meet with the team.

Jake Simmons, a soft smile gracing his face, had just ended the phone call with his husband- the one he had woken up early just to hear the voice of, despite having had talked last night- by the time he knew the rest of the Torchwood team would be starting to wake.

Ellie Bensen's morning started the same as any other: wake up after the second snooze of her alarm clock, she showered, dressed, then went to make she her boys were up and getting ready for school before she went downstairs to start breakfast.

Eventually, her boys came down to eat.

Tom caught his bus with just enough time to give his mum a peck on the cheek, and a big sloppy kiss to the curly mop of hair on top of his brother, Fred's, head. About an hour and a half later, Ellie shuffled little Fred out the front door, and together they sat on the front stoop, waiting for his own bus.

Once her boys were gone, Ellie took a moment to appreciate the steadiness of the solitary quiet by closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths. Then she went back inside her house to make her second cup of coffee of the morning as she readied herself to leave for work.

She had an intriguing feeling about the day- not the same intriguing feeling she had about the Torchwood team; but something similar enough and it made her antsy to get going.

"Forensics shows that there's signs of leeke both within Lamb's home and where his body was found."

"Right, but that's what I don't understand." Rose shook her head. "Why's there leeke in their homes? 'Cos there were traces at Wolmer's house, too, I thought? And that just doesn't make sense, unless they were killed at their homes."

"But that can't be right." Alec scratched at an eyebrow. "We have footage of Wolmer leaving his house."

"But do we have footage of Lamb?"

"Yeah."

Jake tapped away on his tablet a few times before facing the screen towards Rose. Alec leaned in towards her and took out his glasses to get a better look. With a greater deal of will power than Rose knew was necessary, she held herself stubbornly in place and kept her eyes on the screen. It was bad enough when he walked in this morning wearing a blue suit that reminded her of the color of the TARDIS.

Having pulled up and fast-forwarded through CCTV footage, they were able to see Alfie leaving his house through a backdoor and heading straight towards a field.

"But that's the opposite direction of the lot."

Now having five sets of eyes on her, Ellie swallowed thickly as she motioned at the screen.

"See, I've lived here just about most of my life, so I know these parts. And that empty lot, which hasn't been used for anything in years, mind you, is all the way on the other side of Broadchurch. The way he's walking, when he reaches the other end of the meadow, he'll be near the front of my house, which faces the end of Broadchurch that that lot is in, but also the back of his house."

"When was that lot last used for something? And what for?"

"I don't know; you'd have to pull up the records."

"Already on it," Drew mumbled, though stayed focused on his own device.

It took him a few minutes, but eventually Drew found what he was looking for.

"It used to just be a parking lot. The whole land around is a park, just about, with a large children's playground a while down in one way, and the beach down another. Says here that they built parking lots closer to both the park and beach. But there's a walkabout in the surrounding woods all around it, so you could start hiking down any trail and it wouldn't matter where you parked. You could come in from any which direction. I guess most people stopped using the parking lot, or just started using it less and less, hence the low lack of CCTV cameras in the area. Or so I would guess. We could scope the area and do some alien tech scans, but it looks like there's going to be a lot of land to cover, so it will take time."

For a long stretched minute after Drew stopped talking, the room fell quiet, aside from the even rhythms of everyone's breathing.

Licking her lips, Rose eventually came to a decision as to how to proceed, and turned to look at Alec, waiting for him to catch on and meet her eye. Their gazes held steady in the absent silence.

Finally, with the corners of her lips twitching upwards, Rose spoke, "Ever scan for aliens before?"