There was a woman, sporting a long, gray raincoat and walking through puddles of water in the street, rushing past the houses with a trembling hand and a pale, ghostly face as she clung on to the coats of strangers, begging for help.
"Have you seen this man?" she asked whoever crossed her path, pressing the small, wrinkled photograph of herself and a certain Joseph Milton in their faces.
They laughed at the camera, happy ghosts of a dream so unreal it almost never happened.
"Have you seen him? Please, think!"
Her doubtful friend stood behind Abigail with hesitating hands, not knowing whether to step in.
Helen felt embarrassed, yet at the same time she sympathized with Abigail's sadness.
She watched, as Abigail did, the confused and uncomfortable faces of the pedestrians who passed them by and looked at the picture without recognising the sad eyes of Joseph Milton, laughing away his doomed existence as if smiles could end wars.
Abigail's agitated, desperate state slowly scared the people away, leaving her to wonder if it all had been a dream, or a hallucination.
Still she had no answers, except the strange description of the stranger who accompanied her lover down that lonely street…
Owen's eyes were fixed on the square screen, his pale face lit up by a bright, blue hue.
Jack walked past him, but he never even noticed.
The dead man didn't even move once, except for his fingers, which he used to scroll down the page, reading countless news-articles over and over again, unable to believe the truth in the journalist's words.
Jack grabbed his blue coat as Mickey walked towards the doorway.
"Planets in the sky?" Owen exclaimed, chuckling as he tried to imagine the hilarious chaos of ordinary people fleeing from the Dalek fleet. "You've got to be fucking kidding!"
He didn't believe one word of it, even after all the shit he's seen before.
Owen turned around.
He was seeing shadows in the corner of his eye, but he was too busy, too focused, not bothered, to glance at it and reveal its true identity to him.
The incredible news that the Earth was not alone was still spinning in front of his eyes as he gazed at the empty Hub.
"Jack?"
His voice echoed through the emptiness; he was gone.
Owen lifted himself halfway out of his chair and into the air, preparing to leap from his chair when the shadows would not answer him.
He clutched the sides of his chair as anger built up inside him.
"JACK!"
The Earth may not be alone, but Owen was.
"Owen Harper," Mickey Smith said. "Is he a friend of yours?"
Mickey rolled his eyes, smiling. "What am I saying? You're friends with everyone."
Jack smiled, but without the enthusiasm which gleamed from inside him like it always had.
Mickey noticed it and found it weird.
"Not with everyone," Jack spoke softly and he gazed fiercely at the horizon.
A chilly morning breeze was blowing in their faces as Mickey and Jack stood on Jack's favourite spot on the roof.
They looked down on the busy world below, watching how all the people in the city moved on with their careless lives, not looking up at the sky anymore; its novelty had worn off, its blue beauty taken for granted like it was before and the world spun round like it always had.
Its moon smiled down upon them, glad of their return and the restoration of gravity and orbital paths; it had been helpless without its bigger brother.
The humans had repaired the damage and buried the dead, and now they continued their lives like before, not knowing who had sacrificed their lives so they could keep on working, eating, sleeping, loving, shouting, kissing, driving, laughing, cursing, killing, and just plain living.
"You haven't even mentioned him once to me," Mickey said as the wind buzzed in his ear and sunlight burned his face.
"Before today, I mean. You hadn't told me anything."
'Did I need to?" Jack asked, slightly turning his head to look back at Mickey, who stood behind him.
"Not even Gwen or Ianto said anything," Mickey went on. "Why?"
Jack didn't answer him.
Mickey didn't like being ignored.
"Look, I'm just asking…"
"You're not even a full member of Torchwood, Mickey!" Jack snapped. "I'm not even supposed to be talking to you!"
Mickey subtly backed down.
The sun was climbing through the sky, reaching its highest point of the day as the Earth kept turning, moving the shadows as it always had as the yellow star shone brightly from afar.
But Jack knew that too would find its end someday, sometime.
A time would come when all the stars in the universe would go out, and no-one would be able to stop it.
The end is inevitable, and that is only natural.
Immortality would be over within the blink of an eye.
And they were just getting started, one day at a time.
Jack smiled. "You know what day it is, Mickey?"
Mickey looked confused, but interested, and he slowly shook his head.
"No," he answered honestly.
'It's Monday," Jack spoke, just before Mickey remembered.
"A new day, a beautiful day, which'll only happen once."
"Unless you own a time-machine," Mickey quipped.
Jack laughed; tears started welling up in his eyes, filled with a happy sort of sadness.
"You've changed, Jack," Mickey said.
"Everything's changed," Jack said, seriously, but kind, as sunshine reflected in his tears.