Chapter Five
In my head there's only you now
This world falls on me
In this world there's real and make believe
And this seems real to me.
Rose doesn't know where else to go, so she takes them to Pete's house, where there are less questions. Doesn't want to think about what they are saying back at Torchwood. She feels quite absurd, with Jack-but-not-Jack sitting next to her in her tiny car. She's just spilled a few years of past history to him that would land any normal person at a therapist with a half a dozen prescriptions, and he now knows more than she's told even Mickey. And what for? Will it change anything? Rose admits that she's not particularly sure. She is operating on gut instinct. Reaching for a connection. Bad Wolf. Can't just be a coincidence. Can it? The universe, she concludes, has got a twisted sense of humour.
"God," she says, half-laughing to herself. "This is so weird."
Jack glances at her sidelong. "If that's what you think, then I don't think you know the meaning of the word."
"You know what I mean," Rose protests. "And trust me," she assures him, " I've seen weird."
"I've seen things that'd beat the pants off your weird any day," he informs her, and grins slyly, ready to launch into a list of examples.
She remembers the stories that the other Jack used to regale them with, all colorful to say the least, and too bizarre to be anything but true. The Tardis filled with their uncontrollable laughter. She hadn't laughed that hard since. You can't get back through the looking-glass again.
"S'okay, I believe you." Pete's house looms ahead of them, and the car crunches on the gravel drive and rolls to a stop. "If you run into my mum," Rose adds as an afterthought, "Good luck." She catches a glimpse of her reflection in the window as she shuts the car door. Her roots need retouching, she thinks absently. Hair that she hasn't cut in over a year falls well below her shoulders, still blonde, out of habit.
Jack looks stricken, probably reasoning that he didn't sign up for mums at the Time Agency, and tries not to picture his ship sitting in Torchwood, closed off tight. He steals a glance at the strap tied around his wrist, unknowingly returned to him by Rose with his pile of clothing, and its smooth surface is completely blank. Curses softly underneath his breath before stepping out of the car, thinking that time, among other things, is going to catch up with him sooner or later.
The house is quiet, save for the tick of the clock in the hallway and the muffled sound of talking drifting through the downstairs. Jackie has gone out and left the television on. Rose automatically heads to the kitchen and puts the kettle on.
She sets the mug down on the table in front of Jack with a muted clunk. "English tea," he says, wrapping his hands around the warmth. "A universal constant in any century."
Rose cracks a smile. "Good to know." Eastenders plays on in the background in the warm, bright room. To Jackie's relief, television programmes were found to be nearly identical in this dimension.
Jack is silent for some time, gazing off into middle space. Rose rests her chin on the tabletop and watches him tentatively. "What are you running from?"
Jack demurs. "What makes you think I'm running from anything?" He looks at her appraisingly.
"Jus' a hunch." She shrugs, noncommital. "Maybe...I can help."
Jack shifts around in his chair. Any other day, and in any other situation, he'd have rather submitted to multiple kinds of torture than ask for help. And knows that volunteering any form of true information about himself is, uncompromisingly, a Very Bad Idea. Five years with the Time Agency had all but indelibly ingrained that. But any other day he wouldn't have been sitting in a twenty-first century Earth kitchen with a girl who claims to have seen the end of the world.
Screw that, he decides, resolutely. What, at this point, is there to lose? What is there to be cowardly about?
He puts his palms flat on the table, leans forward towards Rose. "What do you know about the Time Agency?"
"Not much," she admits. "When we met up with you - the other you, I mean - he told us 'e was - used to be, rather - a Time Agent. He thought we were with them." Her eyes turn sorrowful. "Said they erased his memories. Woke up an' two years of his life was gone. Didn't even know what he'd done...I wonder if he ever found out."
Jack shakes his head slightly. Not surprised. "That's what I'm running from, Rose." His voice is cold, contained. "But I can still remember."
Rose furrows her brow. "Remember what? What could be that bad?" She knows what memories can do. Had watched the Doctor as he was haunted by them, and now she simultaneously clings to and tries to forget her own.
"It's a long story." He stands up, tense, paces a few feet across the glossy floor. "The Time Agency began well before my time, but it wasn't - isn't- until the fifty-first century that they've gained most of their authority. I couldn't know what I was signing into at first. We became so powerful...well, you know how dangerous it can be - tampering with time. All of that control. The Agency became corrupt, or had been for years. Beyond corrupt. We were just... following orders."
Rose is remembering the Reapers, the consequences. Satellite Five. How easy it was to mistakenly think that you can wander through time and leave no tracks. Or make no mistakes. And how easy it was to alter events and leave and never look back.
"How corrupt?" she asks, pushing away a tinge of fear.
Jack paces back and forth restlessly, sits back down again. "History is being rewritten all the time, out of our hands, right? We can't know what will happen at any particular point in the future because time isn't linear. But if you can, what's to stop you from manipulating it?"
Nothing, Rose thinks. What was there to stop us?
"They have more control than you can imagine. Shaping events in their own favor only makes them more powerful, and we were all blind to it. I don't even know how deep it goes." Something remarkably uncomplicated, given the resources, but immeasurably dangerous.
"An' that's why they're after you? To erase what you know?"
"If they've decided to just erase my memories," Jack tells her grimly, "I'll be lucky." No more orders, just flying at breakneck speed on the edges of time and space, away from everything.
Rose digs a fingernail into the surface of the table. Remembers the Jagrafess all too clearly. "Controlling humanity, and everyone jus'...obeys. Why doesn't it ever change?"
"Not just humans." Jack shakes his head, almost apologetic. "Everything. Every planet that you and I have set foot on. That's what I'm dealing with, Rose." He closes his eyes briefly, a tired gesture. "Something I helped to bring about."
"Not everything." She narrows her eyes. "Not me. Not Torchwood. We don't have any files, any information on the Time Agency. I've looked."
"Of course you don't," he says. "There is no Torchwood in the fifty-first century. Your institute is in ruins, courtesy of the Time Agency."
Rose boggles at him slightly, thoughts racing. "They can't have. This is Torchwood. It's mine, it's..." She is well aware of how absurd she sounds. The Torchwood she had helped rebuild was supposed to protect and grow and succeed and watch over humanity long after she was gone. Was supposed to be limitless. Something that would be allowed to last.
"Your name was in what was left of the files we found," Jack adds as an afterthought. "Rose Tyler."
Her shoulders sag. "I guess I need to reevaluate my definition of forever."
Jack grins ironically. "There is no such thing, sweetheart." What is infinite? It all comes to an end eventually. Worlds and wars and people and planets. Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies.
The light outside has faded quickly, the windows dark, night is setting in earlier and earlier in the wake of winter. She is already wondering what she can possibly do. You don't just give up, you don't just let things happen.
"I'm sorry," Rose tells him, genuine. "I know what is to run. And lose something." She pauses, and is now resolute. "What can we do?"
"If I knew," Jack tells her, "I'd be doing it, and not crashing into Southend."
The front door opens and closes with a resounding bang; Jack looks up sharply. "Rose?" Jackie's breathless voice sails in, breaking through the somber air. "Rose? Are you in here? I just popped 'round to Anne's for tea." Still shouting. "Have you been outside, love? Had to come home before it got worse."
She appears in the doorway, looking slightly disheveled, the baby ensconced contentedly on her hip. "Oh," she says, stopping short upon seeing Jack. "Who're you, then?" Another strange man her daughter has brought home is cause for some suspicion.
"Jack. From work," Rose says, in a tone that doesn't invite further questions. Jack smiles charmingly, on cue. "Before what got worse?"
"Oh, you must've got home a while ago, then. It's snowing out, can you believe that? Snow! The roads were getting awful, really, I would've stayed at Anne's a bit longer but as it was getting so dark..." She continues chatting amiably and sets to pulling the curtains closed, but Rose has already bolted for the front door and flings it open to the swirling cloud of white.
tbc
