From the silence following his speech Max surmised Gwen and Ianto were having a hard time processing what he'd just said. Clearly the concept of crossing timelines was foreign to them. He could only hope they had steep learning curves.
"What do you mean you're Jack? Jack is sitting right there. You can't both be Jack."
"Actually we can. It's one of the dangers of being a time agent. He's never explained any of this to you?" Max could read the answer in the look exchanged between Gwen and Ianto. Clearly his future self kept quite a few secrets. From the look Jack was now giving him, Max surmised there would be consequences to giving them away.
"I prefer to keep the past behind me, where it belongs." A not too subtle nudge that Max was unwelcome here. He felt a little insulted. What was it about Max that his future self disapproved of so much? Well screw him, Max wasn't exactly thrilled he was going to grow into such a tight ass.
"It doesn't matter what you prefer or you don't prefer. Your past is standing right here and you need to deal with it sooner rather than later. If you don't want to tell your team about me, fine. I'll tell them myself. The wrist strap Jack wears is what allows a time agent to move back and forth through time and space. The trouble with this kind of technology is that it makes for non-linear timelines. I have no way of knowing where and when my future selves will be. I can only remember where I have been."
"So you're saying this is my fault!" How nice, Jack had stopped ignoring him again.
"I'm saying one of us altered the timeline, and it wasn't me." Well technically it had been me, just not the me I am right now, but the me…Christ meeting yourself was confusing. Even if it wasn't potentially world-ending, Max still wouldn't recommend it.
"I'm sorry but how do you know the timeline's altered? Couldn't this, you two meeting, be how it was supposed to happen?" And Gwen moves to the head of her class. That had been the exact thing Max had hoped for. Two bad they'd both been wrong.
"If that was the case Jack would have remembered this encounter, because he would have lived it already. Something has been changed and this world will suffer the consequences. Which is why we need to go." If these people couldn't get with the program fast, they were all dead. Max wasn't going anywhere without them for two reasons,. The first and the more pressing of the two was that he no longer had the means to transport himself anywhere. The distant, but present second was that he liked these people. He wouldn't let them die if there was something he could do about it.
"No one's going anywhere. This is Torchwood. We don't run from fights." Gwen was doing the 'hands on her hips' thing again. He hadn't been lying when he'd asked Jack how he was able to resist her when she did that. It was a gesture of such stubborn willfulness Max wasn't sure if he'd wanted to violently shake her or take her right there in front of Ianto and Jack. If he'd had a little more time before the Reapers came, there would be no competition, but this was life or death.
"That's sweet, really it is, but I don't think you understand what Reapers are. Jack would you help me out here?" Max turned to face his future self, only to be looking down the barrel of a pistol. Max kept his voice light a flippant although inside he was terrified. Jack had pulled a gun on him. If there was one thing he knew about himself it was he never drew on something he wasn't prepared to shoot. "Hey Jack, what are you doing?"
"Protecting this planet." Max didn't like the sound of that.