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"Jack!" Rose cried out before she could stop herself, and Harkness looked up from the Doctor on the floor, his face morphing from thundercloud to sunrise in an instant.

"Rose! Oh my god, are you a sight for sore eyes! You have NO idea!" He bounded up the ramp and swept her up into his arms, ignoring the two strangers as he swung her around twice before setting her down again and planting a kiss on her lips. "I thought I'd never see you again. Or, wait, when is this? Oh, crap, are we out of synch?"

Rose was staring in confusion. She looked from him to her husband, just pulling himself off the TARDIS floor. "Doctor, this... this is Jack."

The Doctor nodded. He hadn't stopped staring at the intruder. "You are NOT the same Jack I just spoke with."

Jack shook his head. "No, I saw you talking to the old me."

The Doctor's jaw dropped. "You're crossing your own timeline?" Jack nodded. "Jack, you KNOW that's forbidden – that's the first law of time travel, one you've quoted to me many times!"

"How else am I going to find out what happened to me during those two missing years? I can't let it go, Doc. I couldn't ever just let it go. It's been eating at me all these decades – centuries. I know something very important happened. I've got to know what."

"The missing years..." the Doctor repeated, understanding. "You mean the other Jack..." he gestured out the TARDIS door.

Jack nodded, and checked his watch for the date. "In about two weeks, he's going to wake up on a freighter, three days out of this spaceport, with two missing years."

"How do you know it was two whole years?" Rose had always wondered about that. "If you're a time traveler, how do you know...?"

"I'm a Fiorellan," he answered, as if that meant something. When it obviously didn't, he added, "We know how old we are." Very oddly, for him, he actually got a bit flustered. "Look, call it... tree rings, OK? Mental tree rings. I woke up with two years worth of them that I didn't have in my last previous memory, and couldn't account for." Obviously changing the subject, a puzzled look crossed his face, and he looked back and forth between the other two. "When are you guys? – in your timelines? How far out of synch are we?"

Rose looked iffy, but the Doctor had an easy answer. "The last time I saw you, I passed you a note in a bar." It was the note introducing him to Alonzo, but he didn't want to say too much, for several reasons.

Jack nodded, understanding the reference. "A lot of water has passed the bridge since then, but that's the last time I saw you, too."

"So there's your answer, Jack," the Doctor went on, rubbing his sore jaw. "I never told you because I didn't know. I'm on this end of history, too."

"Gotcha..." Jack inhaled, then went on. "Sorry about that punch, then, Doc. I'm a bit raw about all this. But if we're still in synch with each other..." His puzzlement grew, and he looked back at Rose. "I thought you were in the other universe."

She grinned. For once, she was the one with the explanation. "I'm a duplicate, too, Jack, of the original Rose. Not the exact same process, but a similar one that duplicated the Doctor that time. And I came back, to be with him."

He started to grin, but it twisted into wistfulness instead. "So happy endings are possible?" he asked softly.

"Sometimes," she answered as softly.

He took a deep breath, but before he could reply, something drew his eyes beyond her, to the other occupants of the console room. A cute brunette had backed up towards the hallway door, both hands held tightly over her mouth, tears streaming down her face, staring at him with tragic eyes. Once he saw her, he couldn't seem to tear his eyes away.

"Jack," said the Doctor in a sad, quiet voice. "This is my daughter, Jenny."

"Jenny?" The name caught his attention, but he didn't look away. He tried to blow it off, still staring. "Heh. Another Jenny."

"No, Jack. Not another one. She's my daughter." That did pull his eyes around, and he looked piercingly at the Doctor, before understanding dawned. The Doctor nodded. "She's regenerated."

Jack turned swiftly back. "Jenny? You're..." he motioned vaguely towards the TARDIS door, and she nodded, not dropping her hands. He took a very deep, shuddering breath. She couldn't decipher his look. He walked slowly over to her, stopping just a foot away, an embrace away, but his arms stayed stubbornly at his sides. Voice low, he said hesitantly, "I don't remember what happened – what's going on out there... Were we...?"

Jenny swallowed hard, choking back tears, and lowered her hands a bare inch. "I thought so. I thought I knew you. I mourned you for years..."

Diverted from feelings to words, his head jerked slightly. "You thought... something's going to happen out there, and you thought I died?"

She shook her head, almost violently. "You did die. I saw the whole thing."

The Doctor spoke up behind him. "Jack, we've got a major paradox situation here. Not just one, but several different alternate futures seem to be stacked up on top of each other, intersecting in the next few days. One of them has your death – which means none of us will be here. In others, Jenny dies – or regenerates – and if not for her, none of the four of us will be here. We're trying to figure it all out." He sighed. "It sure would have been easier if you could have told us your side."

Finally tearing his eyes away from Jenny's, Jack turned back, echoing the sigh. "I wish I could. You have no idea how much. But I don't have a clue. I searched my room, of course, but I was always careful not to leave anything lying around."

The Doctor pounced, aggravated again. "How can you be so careless, Jack? Coming so close to yourself – you're risking major paradoxes right there! Hell, you may be the reason all this is coming together like this! What if the old you sees the new you?"

"I'm not that stupid, Doc. I've been wearing a shimmer non-stop since I got here last week, set to the man I bought it from, a hundred years ago and half a galaxy away. And I've been very, very careful tailing the old me around, never coming close enough to touch." He shook the Doctor's concerns off. "Tell me what you do know; what's going to happen the next two weeks?"

Quickly, the Doctor outlined the coming events and their variations. "Let me get something straight. You – the old you – " He shook his head, exasperated. "Let's just call him Jordan, OK? Jordan's still a Time Agent, right?"

"As far as I know. I never formally quit, I just never reported in anywhere after I woke up on the freighter. For all I knew, they'd put me on it."

"OK, we know that someone from seventeen years ahead is pulling the strings, changing things so that the Devron Group comes out on top." He'd included what happened to them up ahead in his briefing. "Could it be someone in the Agency? In other words, what side is Jordan on? Is he here to make the changes, or prevent them?"

Jack sighed. "If you'd asked me that before I came here the first time, while I was still an agent, I would have said to prevent them, no question. But now... It wasn't long after this, after I left, that the Agency started to unravel, and was eventually disbanded. The whispers were that it was because of some rogue elements within the Agency, trying to arrange things their way. It's possible that the rot is already there. I might have been told that I was preventing changes, when actually I was making them. If that makes sense."

"It does, but it doesn't quite fit here. The changes we've seen are from good to bad; innocent people dying when they shouldn't have – a lot of people. Would that have been something you would have done in your days as an agent?"

"You mean, was I ever an assassin? Bluntly, yes. But never of innocent bystanders. I can't see any scenario in which I would have done that myself." Jack paused, shaking his head. "I just wish I could figure out why I'm here, what my mission was!"

Joshua had been silent ever since Jack had arrived, listening on several levels. Now he spoke up. "Maybe we can find that out."

They turned to him, Jack only really noticing him for the first time. He didn't quite perk up, but he immediately said "Hi, there."

"Jack." came the Doctor's voice, low and intense, and Jack rolled his eyes – and then his whole head. Before he could protest, the Doctor went on. "Every time I ever told you 'not now' – I never meant it. Not like I do this time. Not now."

"You don't even know what I'm thinking."

"How could I not?"

"I'm thinking that of all of us, this young man is the one with the best chance of doing exactly what he just proposed: getting close to – Jordan, and finding out what he's up to." He'd decided that talking about the old him in the third person was just easier.

"Exactly," Joshua agreed. "Doctor... it wouldn't even take that much time. All I have to do is get close to him for a few minutes, and I can probably get what we need from his mind."

Jack started shaking his head at that, though. "No, you won't, son. Nobody could read my mind – not then, not ever. Time Agents had the best mental shields ever."

"Oh?" Joshua's brows arched high over amused eyes. "Then who's Zander?"

Jack was gobsmacked. "Who?" he asked weakly.

"The guy I remind you of? And why do I keep hearing church bells?"

Jack's face was comical – he'd not even been consciously aware of the associations the young man had just pulled out of his own mind. His jaw dropped, while Joshua's grin got huge. "Oh-ho!" he cried, then Jack rapidly cut him off.

"OK, OK, I get the point!" he spluttered. "You'll do." He turned to the Doctor, who was trying not to grin too widely. "Like I said. Send him in. He's got the best chance."

Rose stirred into action, stepping close to Joshua. "You're sure you can do this? You'll be OK?"

He smiled down at her, understanding what she was asking. "Just one drink. I'll be fine, Mama Rose." I can handle one quick encounter with the lecherous old fool. He looked back at Jack. "Where can I find him right about now?"

Jack checked his watch. "Try the Tavaria Tavern, six blocks south. Don't follow him if he leaves, though, he'll be heading out to dinner with Jenny in an hour or so." Gazing back intently at Joshua, he let his eyes flick sideways at the Jenny standing a few feet away, then back, silently asking. Find out what my feelings for her really are.

Joshua nodded.