2032

After the last week, Jack shouldn't have been even slightly surprised to feel the familiar warmth in his bed. Over the last eleven years, that presence had become more familiar to him than the feeling of waking up alone.

J.J. was seventeen—a man grown most standards—but he'd never grown out of this.

Seven days ago had been Annabelle's first day of weapons training at Torchwood—a safety nightmare when the student is a teenager and her instructor is a childhood friend. Four days ago, J.J. lost a fight to Ganbri in training and lost badly, with a cracked rib to prove it. Two days ago, J.J. had been asked to watch Jemma, and he dropped her when she absentmindedly kicked his injured rib. Last night, Jack had walked in to find Edmund towering over the paralysed Alreesh, staring down at him with a single finger planted on the boy's forehead.

Edmund retreated his hand when Jack pulled a gun and yelled at him and, while the Ghost relaxed down into his usual crouched stance and smiled, J.J. fled the room. Claims of being fine are difficult to believe when the person making them is saying the words between gasps for air and throwing up. J.J. insisted that Edmund didn't hurt him but refused to say what had really happened. Later, he claimed he couldn't remember what happened.

Jack sighed as he sat up, careful not to move too suddenly, and got a good look. As expected, J.J. was curled up near his feet, facing the door and sleeping soundly. He hadn't grabbed himself a blanket. He never did. He claimed that he always forgot, but Jack knew that he did it on purpose because he would tell himself that he'd go back to his own bed. He never did that either.

Jack carefully laid a couple of pillows against J.J.'s back, leaving something for him to feel so that he wouldn't wake up, and silently crept out of the bed. He learned very quickly after adopting J.J. that owning at least one fur blanket was an absolute must. He'd spent a fortune on them over the years, especially in the beginning. The blankets would get shredded and chewed, sometimes destroyed within a week, but at least it allowed the poor boy to sleep.

He could still remember that first night. Hours awake, listening to him cry, watching his tiny body tremble from head to toe with stress that he didn't know how to release. Even when he would finally doze off, he'd awaken with such a start, kicking and panicking as though he were being dragged off into the darkness.

"He's never spent a moment of his life away from his Mother," the Doctor had explained when Jack called him at 4 AM, exhausted and desperate. "Just hours ago, he still had a mother, Jack."

Under the Doctor's advice, he took the closest thing to a fur blanket that he owned at the time and picked up that terrified child, cradling him against his chest. Slowly, he tugged the blanket tighter and tighter, stopping J.J. from thrashing about and hurting himself, cocooning him until he could barely move. As he watched that tiny, unbelievably brave little boy slowly calm down and fall asleep to the sound of Jack's heartbeat in his ear, he knew that he'd never be the same again.

They weren't of the same blood or even the same species but, quite suddenly, they were family.

J.J. was far too big to pick up or cradle anymore, but Jack did the best he could. He gently laid the blanket over him, his frame was still so small despite the fact that he wasn't a child anymore. He brushed a long black curl away from his boy's face and looked for signs that he may have harmed himself in whatever panic drove him from his room. There was a small cut on the back of his hand, where he had likely caught it on one of his fangs, but not much else.

It was nice to see him sleep. The muscles in J.J.'s face never relaxed when he was awake. He was always tense, always watching. It broke Jack's heart to know that, after all these years, J.J. was still so afraid. Not many people knew that about him. They called him Nista at headquarters, like a proper military man, and admired his strength and ability. They called him fearless.

That made Jack smile.

"What would they say if they knew that you still crawled into my bed at night?" Jack wondered aloud, tugging the blanket in around J.J.'s shoulders. "My little soldier."

J.J. was not fearless. He never was. Not even as a child charging across a war zone and attacking men four times his own size was he, for even a split second, fearless. Jack had never known another person in his life who was so afraid, but he'd never known anyone who was so brave either.

He was born into a world where his mere existence was a miracle because no one was expected to live long enough to bear a child. Mothers were as good as demi-goddesses for the simple fact that they had survived pregnancy. Alreesh were hunted like animals and eaten for the simple joy of it. It was a dangerous world for a child and every lesson needed to be learned at once if the child wanted to survive.

J.J. was a survivor. That was the part that people forgot. He was not a victim—never a victim—but he was still a survivor. He had watched his siblings and other family die, one by one, and devoured their flesh or else risked starvation. He devoured his own mother when she died too. Jack knew that if he lifted the blanket to look, there would be a leather bracelet around his wrist with a single, thin strip that was much older and more ragged than the rest woven in.

This child had seen horrors that most people only saw in nightmares and movies, with the luxury of knowing that it wasn't real. This child had fought fiercely for his own life and performed acts of bravery that plenty of full-grown men would have been completely unable to measure up to. J.J. had learned the hard way that fear and action were the only things that kept him alive.

Jack had had conversations with some of the others in which they explained that J.J. spoke about death as if he didn't care. He expected to die, and to do so young and violently. They thought it was strange or sometimes they just laughed about it and said he was crazy. Jack could only shake his head and wonder why they didn't understand.

J.J. didn't want to die—he was terrified of dying—but battles need to be fought. Bad people still need to be stopped. Lives still need to be saved. The hard-learned lessons of his childhood never became lighter, the scars that he bore never grew shallower, and the fear that sat in his heart never went away. But he stood up anyway. Just as he had when he was only six, he put all of his weaknesses away for another time and turned his fear into a strength that drove him.

And he was the best, Jack thought proudly. The very best.

The whole crew had seen when J.J. got cornered by three Weevils and took them down on his own. Most had seen him rush to disarm an explosive that Edmund had accidentally triggered, risking himself to save others when his agile legs could have easily carried him to safety. Everyone had heard of the man that rivalled Doug's size who had been aggressively harassing Annie and of the multiple injuries he'd been sent to the hospital with.

But Jack was there when the battles were over and all the heroic deeds were done. He was there when the sun was set and the curtains were drawn and J.J. was forced to let that weakness back in.

He didn't cry or panic like he did when he was a child, but he still shook. Jack would sit with him for hours sometimes, talking to him and pretending that he didn't notice the way the poor boy's body quaked and his voice trembled. Sometimes his eyes would grow wide and his breathing would speed up and Jack would have to remind him that his teeth had grown and that no one could hurt him now.

If only J.J. knew the kind of hellfire that would engulf whatever fool was stupid enough to try to hurt him.

If only Jack had more of his own hellfire.

He sighed.

If only hellfire were enough.

He climbed back into bed, carefully removing the pillows he'd placed and letting his legs return to the same space that they occupied before. J.J. shifted in his sleep, pressing his back firmly against Jack's legs. The only safe way for an Alreesh to sleep is with his family guarding his back.

Jack sat forward and put out a hand, letting it rest on his boy's head. When J.J. was little, he would take this time to pull out all the bits of grass and things that he always got stuck in his hair. Now he ran his fingers through his hair just for the sake of old habits.

"Jack?"

He paused, raising his hand enough to break contact. "I'm here," he answered quietly.

J.J. took a deep breath, saying nothing for a moment. ". . . I should be in my own bed."

"Not if this is where you can actually get some sleep. I don't mind." He smirked and added, "And I won't tell."

"I'm seventeen," J.J. muttered uneasily. "I'll be eighteen soon."

"You're seven," Jack answered with a teasing chuckle. "You'll always be seven to me. Even when you're old and wrinkly, you'll still be seven." He let his hand rest on his child's head again, gently picking at his hair and giving it gentle tugs, just like he used to when he was small until he fell asleep.

He watched in the dark as J.J.'s hands shifted under his blanket, bringing his wrists up so that he could hook his bracelet around one of his teeth. He realized that he had misunderstood what J.J. was saying.

J.J. had spent almost twice as many years with Jack than he had with his own people—his own family. If he were still with them, it wasn't likely that he'd still be alive. Aside from the dangers of their world and any of J.J.'s actions in the past, dropping Jemma the other day as he had would have meant a death sentence. The cracked rib he'd received two days earlier would have made him less capable of hunting or defending himself, and likely would have meant an end to his life within the week. The angry way he scolded Annie three days before that would have meant a death so swift that he never would have finished the sentence. They would have killed and eaten him for that if his Mother had allowed it.

And would she have allowed it?

"Go on," Jack offered, encouraging him to say whatever was on his mind.

J.J. shifted again, pulling the bracelet out from his teeth so that he could turn his head. His golden eyes reflected light in the dark when he looked directly at Jack.

"I chose you," he said simply.

"I know," Jack answered. "I chose you too."

Jack knew that he didn't want to ask out loud. He knew how that boy's head worked. He knew he felt guilty and ashamed. He knew he would be wondering if his Mother would still consider him worthy of the food it kept to keep him alive. He knew that he couldn't help but be afraid that somewhere, in the dark, there were teeth waiting to teach him the price of his mistakes.

"You've made me proud, kid. And I'd choose you again, even if you don't sleep in your own bed," Jack added trying to sound light hearted, pressing his leg firmly against J.J.'s back. "Now close your eyes. Get some sleep."

J.J. had never called him 'dad'. Not once. And he would wrinkle his nose up when someone else called Jack his father. If J.J.'s real father was still alive, he would be running off of the energy from what he had consumed of his son's body while proudly claiming that he was honouring his memory.

He didn't need to be called 'dad'. All he needed to know was that J.J. still trusted him enough to keep him safe at night. They weren't bound by blood and chance—they were bound by something much stronger. They chose.

He put his hand back down on J.J.'s head, twiddling with his hair until his breathing grew deep and even. Jack found his heart pounding full of fury in his chest, glaring into the dark as though he were daring those teeth to try and take his boy. It pounded like that when he pulled the gun on Edmund, not caring that he was a creature that could walk through walls, cross the void without a ship, or rip holes in the fabric of reality. He might defy every law that the universe had laid out but harming Jack's child was one that not even the great and mysterious Ghost of Saint Edmund's Hall could break without consequence.

As far as Jack was concerned, the only threat to his child that he didn't yet know how to fight was time itself. There were only decades left—a fleeting moment—and no gun would stop that.

Jack set his jaw and his heart kept pounding, loudly screaming at the universe with a simple two-beat rhythm: Me first.

You'll have to get through me first.

He still had decades left—more than he needed—and he knew an expert when it came to cheating death. He knew two experts when it came to controlling time.

He could find a way. If he had been born a simple mortal human and become who he was now, then he had proof that it was possible. J.J. didn't want to die, and he was relying on the man he chose to be his guardian to keep him safe—in his sleep, in the dark, before the teeth of would-be killers, and in the face of impossibly powerful beings—J.J. was relying on Jack to save him when he couldn't save himself. And he would do it.

He would do it all because, blood or not, that boy was his son.

And not even Time itself was allowed to harm his son.