Rose and Jack had helped Gwen clear up the rocks, petals, and branches from her house before Jack drove them all back to the hub.

Very little was said, all three of them lost within their own thoughts and they'd barely entered the Torchwood building and pulled off their coats when Tosh's voice rang out across the hub.

"What's the weather forecast for today?"

"Long sunny spells," Ianto called back, poking his head around the corner of the kitchen area, "why?"

"It's happening again," Tosh answered, "I can't understand it. It's going crazy," she muttered, hands flying over her keyboard and brows furrowed but Jack just shook his head and shrugged back into his coat.

"Just leave it, let's go," he ordered, and they were moving. Rose pulled her coat back on, careful not to jar her ribs, as she followed Jack and Gwen back to his vehicle.

As they entered the mid-morning traffic, Rose could hear Tosh still tapping away on her laptop in the backseat, measuring who-knew-what as she tracked the precise location of the unusual weather phenomenon and read off directions to the Captain.

"It's a school, Jack," Tosh eventually said, "but the weather's settled again now. It's already over. We missed it."

"Do you think it's the chosen one?" Rose asked, turning to study the side of Jack's face, but his jaw just tensed before he shook his head.

"I don't know," he muttered, and Rose bit her lip as they flew through traffic.

By the time they pulled up at the school, there were already parents leading the children out of the building, and a quick glance around suggested that the students had been dismissed for the day, before lunchtime.

Jack led the way into the building quickly, flashing his Torchwood ID at reception and getting directed to one of the teachers who had been present on the playground.

Tosh and Owen took the lead in questioning the woman as she clutched at a blanket, hands tight against the fabric and wide-eyed as she told them about sudden gale-force winds that ripped across the playground.

As she talked, she led them through the school as though she couldn't bring herself to stand still, and Rose got the distinct impression that if they tried taking her somewhere to sit down, the poor woman would just end up pacing anxiously.

Whatever she'd seen had shaken her to her core.

"Gwen's still outside," Rose murmured to Jack after they passed through the front reception, and he frowned, glancing around quickly to confirm her words.

"If she's not back in a few minutes, go after her. But be careful," he added, keeping his voice soft and Rose nodded.

"...Was anyone hurt?" Owen was asking when Rose refocused on the teacher once more, but the woman shook her head.

"No, two children were almost scared to death, but they're okay," she told them, just as Rose heard running footsteps approaching.

She tensed at the sound and then tensed further when she saw the splash of barely controlled fear in Gwen's eyes.

"What is it?" Jack asked after taking one look at Gwen. He'd clearly seen the same fear Rose had spotted, and she watched his concern rise as quickly as her own had.

"I saw them," Gwen admitted softly.

"...there was little Jasmine in amongst it all. She hadn't been touched, and the sun was shining down on her. It was... it was like an aura. Like something protecting her."

The teacher's words drew Rose's attention, and she could see Jack's focus wasn't far behind her as he smoothly cut into Tosh and Owen's questioning.

"Who is Jasmine?"

"Jasmin Pearce. She's a pupil of mine," the teacher told them, hands clenching reflexively around the edges of the blanket.

"Where is she now?" Jack pressed again, and the dazed woman answered quickly, her voice still shaking.

"We're sending all the children home. We have to."

"Thank you," Rose said softly, resting a warm hand on the woman's arm as Jack nodded and moved away.

Shifting into a light jog to keep up with Jack jarred her aching ribs, but Rose held back the soft hiss of pain not wanting the Captain to worry.

"We think Jasmine's the chosen one, then?" Gwen asked, just as Rose managed to fall into step with them, and Tosh and Owen followed just behind as Jack nodded.

"Yeah," Jack answered, his eyes hard and Rose nodded.

"Tosh, can you get Jasmine Pearce's address?" she asked and smiled when the techie barely smothered a scoff.

"The route's already plugged into the car's GPS," she said, blushing when Rose shot her a grin.

They went straight from the school to the girl's home address, and Rose just hoped that they would make it before anyone else died.

All of the team seemed lost in their own thoughts, and the silence in the car was stifling.

Rose could almost feel every second ticking past, every moment wasted even though Jack was driving well past the speed limits and taking every dangerous corner he could to reach the child in time.

As the car slid to a halt, brakes screeching, and the second SUV pulled up hard just behind them, Rose was one of the first with her feet on the ground and running for the house.

She could already hear screaming coming from the garden. Jack was close on her heels, and everyone else was right behind them.

Stepping into the garden through the open side gate was like entering the edges of a small tornado and the wind whipped Roses hair around her face as she took in the beginnings of the destruction.

Some people were fleeing, but most were too scared or disorientated, and the Torchwood team began pushing the screaming guests towards the side gate they'd entered through, sending them running and removing potential victims from the scene.

Remembering the attack on Estelle, Rose shifted her eyes to the side slightly, and the faeries changed from blurred shadows to fully formed beings.

Their spindly long appendages and translucent wings were once more fully visible to her and she shouted at the rest of her team over the gusts of wind that tried to steal her voice.

"Don't look directly at them!"

As they took her advice there were gasps and curses as people began to see the faeries all over the garden, one of them, in particular, pinning a man to the ground, its hand over his mouth as he struggled to breathe.

It lifted its gaze and met her eyes and somehow Rose knew that this had been the one to traumatise Estelle the night before.

Its lips peeled back, offering a terrifying mixture of a snarl and a smile as it pulled its hand away from the man's face before plunging its whole arm deep down his throat.

The man was retching, gagging, convulsing, but the creature dug deep, its arm vanishing into the body beneath it until everything below its elbow was buried deep in the humans' body, its cruel gaze never leaving Rose.

Beside her, another leapt forward, grasping at Jack and climbing his body like it would a tree, and Rose struggled for a moment to remain focussed, knowing Jack couldn't die.

Her priority wasn't saving her friend, but she was still grateful when Gwen pushed Jack aside and away from the creature.

"These people never harmed you!" She shouted into the wind and another faerie pause in its lunge across the grass.

"This one struck out child," came the whisper, its voice sounded like a thousand haunted souls escaping from the single pair of lips, "he must be punished."

The creature still crouched over the man slowly began to remove its arm from his body, blood-red petals erupting from his mouth and throat as he lay, unmoving, on the grass.

With a snickering snarl, the faeries began to take off, leaping into the air one by one, the buzzing hum of their wings filling Roses' ears even as their movements became too rapid to track and they reverted to the shadows caught only out of the corner of the eye.

The gusts of wind departed with them, and Rose's eyes flickered around the garden.

While the girls' mother had been screaming for her partner, and even the rest of the Torchwood team now moved to check on him and the other guests, Rose couldn't help but notice that no one was checking on the girl Jasmine, as she stood alone by the garden shed.

She watched her mother and the strangers move towards the man on the grass, and Rose saw the flash of sadness on the girl's face before she spun around in her pretty white dress and marched between two bushes, with Rose following close behind her.

Between the bushes, Rose found what looked like a newly built fence, with a very fresh faerie sized hole in it, and quickly followed after Jasmine as the girl led the way into the forest that backed onto her house.

There was a fairly steep slope from the back of the garden that went up and led directly into the depths of the forest proper, and Rose followed Jasmine in silence until they came to the top.

She wasn't masking her steps, and the girl had to know she was following, but Jasmine didn't stop or turn to face her until they reached the borders of the forest at the top of the hill and the loud fluttering of wings made Rose pause.

Rose only hesitated a moment, before she took several long strides, moving to stand beside the abandoned child without hesitation and placing a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Jasmine. What's going on here, sweetheart?" Rose asked gently, and she didn't miss the surprise in the girl's eyes at her question, or the bright red mark on her cheek from a slap.

The faeries hadn't been lying.

Jasmine glanced up at her with a frown, seeming confused.

"No one's ever asked me before, they always just try to tell me," she muttered. "Don't be stupid, Jasmine. Faeries don't exist, Jasmine. Stop playing in the woods, Jasmine. Why did you ask, instead of tell?" She demanded, and Rose swallowed hard.

"Because I want to understand, and I think you might be the only one around here with all the answers," she explained softly.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, Jasmine nodded and opened her mouth as though about to speak, but she cut herself off quickly just as Rose heard footsteps running towards them, and Jack and Gwen came bursting through the underbrush after them.

"Do you know you're walking in a forest?" Jasmine asked, almost chastising the two new arrivals for their clumsy clambering through the nature around them, and Roses' eyes narrowed as the young girl turned to stare down Jack and Gwen, wisdom older than her years gleaming in her eyes.

"Well, you are," she told them. "It looks like a very old forest and it's magical. I want to stay in it," she declared, chin raising in defiance.

"You can see this forest?" Jack asked, still approaching Jasmine, but slower now, and cautiously.

"Yes," Jasmine confirmed, and Jack offered her a smile, still breathless from chasing after her.

"But it's not here. It's just an illusion, Jasmine. It is," he promised softly at the disbelieving wrinkle to her nose, "your friends are just playing a game with you."

Rose's head snapped up, from where she'd been watching Jasmine, to stare at her friend, surprised at the tactic he'd chosen to go with.

"You're a liar. Why does everyone lie?" Jasmine demanded, glaring at Jack now.

"You can't just go back to how things were, Jasmine," Gwen tried softly. "The forest can never come back."

Even as she spoke, Rose could see that Jasmine was starting to smile and easily corrected Gwen.

"Oh, but it can. When they take me to it." She turned her face up to stare at Rose, eyes glinting and Rose swallowed. "You understand, don't you? You haven't lied, yet."

Rose could see Jack staring at her, and she knew he wanted her to deny it, but that old wisdom in Jasmine's eyes didn't belong to a child of eight, and instinct told her that lying, breaking the girls' trust now, was dangerous, so she nodded.

"They can move through time," she said slowly. "Let you visit the forest of before, or go on and discover it when it takes over the land again" she theorized, and everything about Jasmine relaxed as she offered Rose a rare smile.

"You understand time," she stated simply, but Gwen and Jack weren't finished, and the girl turned her glare back on the pair as they shifted forward another cautious step.

"They promised to take you through time, did they?" Gwen asked, bending slightly so she could peer into the girl's face, her expression intent even as Jasmine nodded.

"But what about your mother, don't you want to stay with her?" Jasmine just stared at Gwen in silence, and Rose felt something in her gut twist as she realised she was siding with the child and the faeries.

Where was the girls' mother? Rose knew that Jackie Tyler would have been fighting the faeries off with her bare hands to keep Rose by her side, and she wouldn't have waited for a supernatural being to kill any man who laid a hand on Rose.

But Jasmine's mother was crying over the body of her partner, the man who'd hit her daughter.

Maybe she hadn't known, but the woman knew that Jasmine wasn't with her, wasn't safe, and the woman wasn't up here fighting to keep the young girl by her side.

"The Bad Wolf didn't stay with her mother," Jasmine finally answered Gwen's question, and Rose's eyes widened sharply, even as Gwen shook her head in confusion.

"What?"

The humming of faerie wings appeared again and Gwen leapt back from Jasmine. Even Jack tensed and straightened, but Rose just narrowed her eyes as the creatures landed on the tree above them, not bothering to hide their forms this time.

"Come on!" Jack pleaded, "The child isn't sure!"

"I am sure," Jasmine replied, growing angry again and then Jack lunged for her, pulling Jasmine against him and refusing to allow the faeries near.

"No!" Jasmine cried, and even Rose's jaw dropped in surprise as the girl was torn away and held prisoner.

"Jack!" She admonished, and he stared at her for a moment, shock on his features before they hardened and he turned back to the faeries.

"Leave her alone! Find another chosen one!" He demanded, glaring up at the creatures now skittering through the branches, their movements anxious now that the child they protected was threatened, and the wheels in Rose's mind began to turn.

"She belongs with us," the faeries cried. "She is ours! She has always been ours!"

Jack shook his head, denying their words, "The child belongs here!"

"No, Jack," Rose said suddenly, and the faeries in the tree stilled, as Jack's eyes spun to settle on her in shock.

"Their words. It's not a claim, it's a statement," she clarified. "You named the child 'chosen one', but they didn't choose a human child," she explained, before meeting the ancient eyes shining out of the child's face, finally recognising it for what it was.

"She's always been one of them. Like a cuckoo egg in another bird's nest."

The faeries hissed and whispered, a cacophony of noises surrounding them, but they sounded distinctly pleased and Jack frowned, eyebrows furrowing as he considered her words.

"She lives forever. We live forever," the faeries whispered in unison.

"Suppose we make her stay with us?" Jack asked, and Rose shook her head. It would be like a human raising a Raxacoricofallapatorion, but Jasmine answered before Rose could, glaring up at Jack even as she struggled against his hold.

"Then lots more people will die."

"Did they tell you that?" Gwen asked, seeming appalled and Jasmine nodded.

"They promised," she said and Rose sighed.

"Have you ever tried taking a child from its mother, Gwen?" she asked gently, before turning her determined gaze on Jack. "If we try to keep her here, that's exactly what we'll be doing. This isn't right, Jack," she told him gently, and she could see the conflict in every line of his face.

"Come away, oh human child," the faeries sang and Rose shivered.

"Next time they'll kill everyone at my school like they killed Roy, and that man!" Jasmine shouted at Gwen, still struggling against Jack's grip.

"But what about your mother? The woman who raised you," Gwen asked, and Rose was suddenly angry at the emotional blackmail the woman was throwing at the girl and she growled.

"I don't see her here, right now, fighting for her daughter, do you?" Rose snapped, and Gwen flinched back, running her hands through her hair in frustration.

"If they want to, they can make great storms, and wild seas, or turn the world to ice. They can kill every living thing. Let me go!"

"How do you know these things?" Gwen cried, open shock and just a dash of fear on her face in response to the girl's threats, but Rose could hear the tone of Jasmine's voice changing, the whispers fading into her voice and mixing with her own tone, and she knew where the knowledge was coming from.

"They will kill you all. Just like they killed your friend," Jasmine tried again, aiming her words at Jack this time, her timeless eyes staring up at the Captain with a snarl on her lips, and Rose froze for a moment as everything clicked into place.

Quickly she moved to stand in front of Jack, drawing his attention from Jasmine to herself.

"Jack, do you trust me?" She asked softly, and Jasmine must have sensed something shift because for the first time since Jack had grabbed hold of her she stopped squirming in his grip.

Jack studied her for a long moment, long enough that Rose began to worry about the answer, but eventually, he nodded and she sighed in relief.

"Give her to me?" she asked, opening her arms and Gwen shook her head.

"Jack, you can't," she snapped, a hand on his arm and he paused.

Rose could see him biting his lip, and she saw the regret that entered his eyes at the question he clearly felt the need to ask, but Rose offered him a soft smile of forgiveness before it even left his lips.

"The child won't be harmed?" He asked, and Rose looked over her shoulder at the faeries, and eyebrows raised expectantly as she waited for their answer.

"We told you. She lived forever."

Still, he hesitated and Jasmine once more began to struggle.

"A dead world, is that what you want?" she snapped and Rose frowned.

"Threats will not get you what you want," she told her girl and was as surprised as Jack and Gwen looked when Jasmine fell silent at her words.

"What good is a dead world to you, anyway?" Gwen asked, "There'll be no more chosen one's."

"They will find them, scattered throughout time. The planet doesn't need a future to have a past," Rose answered, and Jack sighed, finally letting go of Jasmine just long enough for Rose to gather the girl in her arms and pick her up.

"Jack, no!" Gwen cried, making a last desperate lunge for the girl, but Rose ignored her, turning to face the faeries. Now that she had Jack's trust, she trusted him to keep Gwen from interfering.

"You asked me what chance we have against them? For the sake of the whole world, this is our only chance?" She heard Jack explain to Gwen, sadness and defeat in his voice, even as he tried to mask it with anger.

"Alright, she is your child, I understand that," Rose called to the faeries up in the trees, and they trilled happily, one or two of them reverting to their small, silvery personas, and then Rose tightened her grip on the girl and let her face form a hard mask.

"Right now, though, she's my bargaining chip," she announced, and the faeries hissed angrily.

Rose could almost feel Jack freeze behind her, the shock in his silence was palpable.

"You're creatures of time, and you're telling me you can't sense a causal loop when you're in one?" She questioned, watching as their agitation cooled, and the tension that had gathered in Jasmine's frame faded as swiftly as it had arrived.

"I have something you want, and you took something that I want back," Rose called. Jack placed a hand on her arm, but she refused to take her eyes from the faeries.

"Rose, what the hell—"

"The life of the old one," the creatures above them whispered, and Jack's words died in his throat.

"Estelle," he muttered and Rose heard Gwen gasp.

"She's not a toy you can trade in!" The woman protested, and Rose finally glanced around.

"This is a deal I've already made, Gwen," Rose told her gently, before shaking her head. "I'm sorry."

The faeries would get Jasmine, whether they cooperated or not. Rose knew that and so did the faeries, but they also both knew that by restoring Estelle in exchange for Jasmine, they would both avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and Rose's request wasn't something that was difficult for the creatures to accomplish.

It was a mere moment of whispered deliberation before one of the faeries drifted towards Rose and Jasmine slowly, in its small, silvery form as an unspoken vow of peace.

"We promise, Bad Wolf. The girl for the life of the old one," the creature said, the whispers of a thousand other voices joining its own and Rose nodded, carefully crouching so she could place Jasmine's feet on the ground, releasing her to the faeries.

Jasmine took hold of the hand she was offered and paused before turning back to Rose, smiling.

Then her gaze drifted over to Jack and Gwen, offering them both a soft but heartfelt, "Thank you."

Her voice was thrumming now, with a thousand echoes just like the others, and her eyes were glimmering.

Her smile was bright and wide, and with her farewells made, the child turned and began skipping her way across the forest floor, slowly fading from view as the faeries shrunk back down to their small, glowing white forms.

Their silvery aura danced off flowers and leaves, before they gradually disappeared like sunlight on water, drifting through time to somewhere untouchable.

The woman who had raised the faerie child came staggering up the hill then, followed closely by Tosh and Owen. Just in time to watch Jasmine fade from view, to be replaced by a dancing silver light that, like the girl, vanished into the ether.

The woman ran after her, and Rose felt sorrow for her loss, but no remorse, and no regret. Like the cuckoo in another bird's nest, the girl hadn't belonged, and in doing the right thing, no matter how difficult, her actions had saved everyone. Including Estelle.

She had every intention of letting the woman vent her grief-fueled fury when she came charging back towards them, screaming incoherently, but Jack surprised Rose when he placed himself in her path, holding the hysterical woman until she collapsed to the floor.

Her grief had brought everyone to tears, and Rose could even see Jack's eyes filling with moisture as he sank to the ground with the devastated woman, holding her and whispering apologies on top of apologies.

Rose knew the moment when Gwen had finished filling in Tosh and Owen because she could suddenly feel the weight of their eyes latch onto her, but she had no defence against their shock, anger, and disgust at her decision.

Instead of struggling to give them answers that didn't exist, she swallowed back her own meaningless apologies and slowly turned to walk back to the house, and the parked SUV's, alone.