Author's Note: The Cocky Undead, I'm going to start watching for you in everything I post now. It's always awesome to see familiar names, because then it means I have shared fandoms with people. Yay! But, to everyone else, HI! (you can't see it, but I'm waving). Anyways, I just want you guys to know that THIS particular story marks a lifetime achievement award for me: it is the FIRST in a category here on fanfic. However, if you would like more, there are some lovely fluff pieces on AO3 I would recommend. Onward!

"Where did you last see him?" John asked, stepping back into his penthouse, leaving the door open as an obvious invitation to follow.

Jane clutched her bag to the point she was white knuckling it, one hand inside on the pistol there as a form of a security blanket. At least John seemed to prefer knives, which meant that as long as she kept her distance and a fair amount of furniture between then, she should be able to shoot him before he gutted her.

With that comforting thought, she took a deep breath, and stepped into the apartment.

Of all the things she was expecting to find, nothing wasn't one of them. No blood trail, or bodies littering the floor. No obvious blinking neon sign saying that the apartment's current occupant was the most notorious serial killer in history.

And definitely a step up in refinery compared to the last apartment he hijacked. She couldn't help the low whistle of appreciation as she glanced around what was obviously a million-dollar condo. Everything was glistening white and stainless steel, with not a single item out of place and floor to ceiling windows on the far wall that overlooked the city skyline.

"You seem have made yourself at home in the twenty-first century rather quickly," she mused, catching sight of a closed door at the end of the hall.

"It's an era where psychopaths and killers are celebrated," he scoffed, ignoring her pointed stare at the closed back room. He opened the fridge, pulling out a bottled water before turning back to her. "What's not for me to like?"

Jane glanced back at him, giving him a sardonic look before settling on the arm of the sofa, well out of arms reach and with the entirety of the kitchen counter between them. "We don't celebrate them," she corrected. "We mention them in history, and not in a good light."

John laughed outright at that. "Oh sure," he said, twisting off the bottle cap. "Says the country that elected a man who said he could assault women, and shoot someone in Times Square – whatever that is – and no one would stop him." He took a long drink, still smirking as he put it down. "I see why he likes you. You're both idealistic fools."

Jane, not about to rise to the bait, didn't answer, instead raising an eyebrow. "Yesterday at four in the afternoon," she said.

"What about it?"

"You asked when the last time I saw HG was. Yesterday, at four in the afternoon," she repeated.

"Was that as he was going out the door?" John asked.

Jane shook her head. "No. It's the last time he was seen on camera. He was going into Central Park, but there's minimal camera coverage in there. He's seen on one, and after that…" she held hands up, indicating they were empty. "Nothing."

John, to his credit, didn't even bat an eye. "Central Park is rather famous for people disappearing into, isn't it?"

"You know, I'm still trying to get HG to understand Google. How are you picking up on all of this so fast?" Jane asked, voicing something that had been bothering her since the first time he'd called her.

John glanced down at the water bottle on the counter, and something dark flickered across his eyes. When he looked up, however, there was nothing amiss. He was the same John Stevenson as always – cold, calculating, and cruel. "You think I'm not smart enough to figure out technology?" he asked, offering a brittle smile. "I walk around here and I see infants on phones. Everything is designed for morons to be able to use. HG and I have been friends for years. Didn't you wonder what our common ground might be?"

"Obviously not your sparkling personality," Jane muttered.

"We were smarter than everyone else of our time," John said. "Wells used his genius to theorize about his idyllic future, and I used mine in surgery."

"You mean butchery?" Jane said, offering him her own mockingly sweet smile.

Instead of being insulted, John merely chuckled. "You're some sort of historian, right? Can you honestly tell me the difference between them in 1893?"

Ouch. Score one for Jack the Ripper.

"Didn't think so. To the point at hand. You said Central Park was the last place you saw him?" John clarified.

She nodded.

Without saying a word, John suddenly moved from behind the counter, moving purposely towards her and for a moment, Jane panicked – all she could think of was when he'd kidnapped her from her own apartment and she reached for her gun– but he didn't even look at her.

Instead, he continued past her, uncaring or just oblivious to her cardiac arrest inducing panic, and through the closed door at the end of the hallway, shutting it behind him.

She breathed a sigh of relief before he emerged once more, carrying a leather jacket in one hand as opposed to his usual suit, and he closed the door behind him.

"Well, let's go then," he said, heading for the front door.

He must've noticed her staring at the mysterious door, because he rolled his eyes as he heaved a melodramatic sigh. "It's the bedroom. What do you want, a tumble in the sheets before we go and find your missing suitor?"

Jane felt her cheeks flush a violent crimson. "What?" she protested. "No. But you can't blame me for wondering how you came by this condo considering how you came by your last place."

"I didn't kill anyone to get it, if that's what you're insinuating," he said. "I've come by a better strategy for obtaining lodgings since then."

Jane put a finger to her lips in mocking contemplation. "Oddly enough, I don't believe you."

"Go take a look then," he said irritably, gesturing towards far door. "Go on, and maybe you can stop hyperventilating every time I stand near you, or this is going to be a long walk."

Maybe it was because he offered it so willingly, or maybe it was because she had to find something to convince herself that she wasn't making the worst mistake in human history, trusting the Ripper to find a man he loosely called 'friend' and not kill her in the process, but she stood, gave him a pointed glare, and backed her way down the hall without ever taking her eyes off him.

John didn't move, but he did look exasperated.

She slowly twisted the knob, pushing her back against the door to push it open, and glanced quickly over her shoulder through the opening.

"Huh," she said, taken aback.

It was perfectly normal. Silk sheets on an unmade bed devoid of bloodshed, and no one tied to the headboard with an electrical cord. Considering the absolute order to the rest of the apartment, the fact that the bed wasn't made was out of place, but she would take it as a win. She poked her head quickly around the door to see into the open concept bathroom, and when she saw nothing suspicious there, she slowly closed the door behind her.

"Satisfied?" John asked irritably. "No corpses – fresh or otherwise."

"Maybe you just got better at hiding them," she snapped.

"Oh for the love of…" he hit his head against the edge of the open door. "Really? Have I ever tried to hide what I do? Historically or otherwise? No. Because moving bodies is how people find you. Leave them there for someone else to find, and you have a much higher probability of getting away with it because then they have to prove your presence. If I'd killed anybody for this place, rest assured, they'd still be here."

Jane did find that oddly reassuring. Until she glanced back at the fridge, and her imagination got the better of her.

Apparently, she didn't hide it well, because John made a face. "That's revolting. No."

"Some researchers suggest you were at least partially cannibalistic," Jane protested. "Something about a missing liver…I think."

John pulled a lip back in obvious disgust. "They also said I only murdered five whores between August and September of 1888. Now, my patience is growing thin, and we haven't even left the apartment yet. I think we can both agree that one thing the historians didn't get wrong is my temper. So – for the last time – shall we?" He yanked open the door, emphatically gesturing for her to go ahead of him.

She hesitated briefly, before forming a V with her index and middle fingers, pointing from her own eyes to his, before she stepped through the door.

John made a face, mimicking the movement. "What the bloody hell does that even mean?"

"So what exactly is it that you think you're going to find that we couldn't?" Jane asked, keeping her arms folded across her chest as John stood in the middle of the path intersection they'd last seen HG at.

"Apparently something, because you risked your life to come and find me," John said flippantly. With his dark aviator glasses on, she couldn't quite tell what he was looking at.

At least, other than the few times some rather becoming young women would walk by, obviously checking him out and him returning the favor.

"This is exactly the spot that he disappeared from. Well, it's the last time we saw him on camera, anyway," she clarified. "But there wasn't anyone with him, and all he did was turn that corner," she pointed, "and then he just never shows up again on the next camera."

John nodded absently, still looking at the ground. What he thought he could see on tarmac was a mystery, but she didn't ask. "How far is the next camera?"

"On this path?" Jane said. "About a hundred feet. Fifty if he decided to keep going straight. And another hundred back the way we just came."

John nodded thoughtfully, before abruptly striding off in the direction she'd pointed out as the route HG took according to the camera.

"So I have a hundred feet of possible places that HG could've veered off into?" he called over his shoulder.

Jane hurried after him, but remained at least fifteen feet behind him. He hadn't reached for the blade she knew he had since he'd first opened the door, and he'd been nothing but professional since leaving the apartment, but still.

It actually was incredibly unnerving how little he seemed like a serial killer, or even remotely threatening when he wasn't trying. It was like a switch he could throw, and when he wasn't in a blinding rage, he was almost human.

Like how he'd been at Jules's apartment when she was trying to teach him Google, or when he'd offered to clean the cut on her arm – even though he was the one she'd been trying to escape when she'd injured it.

"Yeah, about that. The problem is he doesn't reappear anywhere in the park – or leaving it, and all of the entrances and exits are recorded."

"Uh huh," he said, stopping abruptly in the middle of the path. "Since you're under the impression someone took him, you're going to have to assume this was planned. Did anyone else know about his predilection for wandering to clear his head?"

Jane shook her head. "I didn't even know. I was at work when he left."

John nodded, then stepped off the pavement into one of the many groves of thickly grown underbrush and trees. "He was always wandering off when no one was looking," he said, and Jane could detect a touch of fondness in the memory. "Worse, he never paid attention to where he was wandering. I don't know how many times I had to fish him out of the duck pond at Regents."

"How long have you known HG?" Jane asked, debating whether or not to follow John into the underbrush. Because following known serial killers, even well behaved ones, out of sight of witnesses, was not high on the list of smart things to do.

"I'm thirty, so…fourteen years? Fifteen? Something around there," his disembodied voice answered from the shadows. "Tell me, Jane, can you see me from where you're standing?"

Jane stood on her tippy toes, craning her head to try and peer over the large bushes or around the thick trees. She shook her head. "No."

"Well that answers that," John muttered, and melted back into view like a living shadow. "I could see you just fine. Actually, I could see you and that man up there," he said, pointing back the way they'd come. The man he indicated was just passing the intersection the cameras had last caught sight of HG. "So, if this was me, this is where I would wait. And I would've had a way to get HG to leave the path and come over without me having to go get him. After that, it wouldn't be too hard to feign an injury for him, and pretend like I was helping him home." He pointed at the cameras. "And I would enlist something that would get him out of sight as fast as possible without seeming out of place."

Jane stared at him, open mouthed.

John shrugged. "What? There's even evidence of someone waiting here for a while. The same set of shoe prints just wandering around in a circle just out of the line of sight. Even a couple of cigarettes, which is really stupid for someone who wants stealth to take their prey by surprise."

"How would they even convince him to leave the trail?" Jane protested, not quite sure why she was arguing with him. After all, she did specifically ask him to help for his insight.

John shrugged, hands in his pocket and lip curling up in disgust. "An injured puppy, or something equally saccharine. You've met the man – do you honestly think it would take anything more than 'could you help me find my glasses' for him to trip over himself to help?"

Jane couldn't help the fond smile. "No, it wouldn't."

John stared at her, the same look of disgust still on his face, until she shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny.

"What?" she asked, irritably.

He shook his head, before heading off back into the trees. "You two deserve one another."

It was meant as an insult, and she knew it, but she couldn't help the small grin.

"Come on, Jane," John called. "You want to find him sooner rather than later, yeah?"

"Where are you even going?" she asked, stepping into the copse of trees after the man.

"You said you checked the cameras, right? Well, they're only on the paths. Ergo, they didn't leave via a path."

She didn't think London south could sound like 'well, duh', but John managed it. The grove wasn't all that large, maybe only twenty or thirty yards thick, but it didn't open back up to another path. Instead, it opened to a clearing, where John now stood, again looking down.

"Any wheeled vehicles allowed in the park?" John asked. He indicated with a point of his foot to the tire marks in the dirt before they disappeared in the grass.

"The grounds keeping vehicles for the park services," Jane immediately answered. "Which would explain how they would know that HG makes it a habit of walking through the park by himself. Or, at least, how they could be out here for long hours and no one question why the vehicles were here. And the vans are big enough to easily hide someone HG's size."

She pulled out her phone to dial Vanessa, to tell her what they'd found when suddenly John reached out and snatched it away from her.

"Hey!" she protested, trying to grab it back but he held it easily out of her reach. "Give it back!"

"Who are you calling?" John demanded, keeping the phone aloft.

"Vanessa," she explained. "She's the one who's been helping HG fix the time machine to adhere to your stupid deadline. And they're the ones that helped me figure out where he disappeared, so at least we knew where to look."

"And these people, this Vanessa," he spat the name like it was something rotted. "How are they going to react to you coming to me for help? I didn't offer my insights just to wind up in a cage somewhere while you and your merry band of idiots go and get him killed fumbling around in the dark looking for him."

"You have a better idea for finding out who had one of those trucks?" Jane demanded. "Let's hear it."

John frowned momentarily, and she could see the flicker of doubt run across his face before the confident smirk returned. "Tell me, Jane. Do they still have depots around for company transports?"

Now it was Jane's turn to frown, wondering what the hell it was that he was getting at. "You mean like a motor pool?"

John blinked. "Sure. Is that anything like a taxi depot?"

Jane winced. She'd somehow completely blanked on the fact that not even John Stevenson could catch up on the whole of modern terminology and phrasing in less than a month. It was a lot easier to remember with HG, and she often wondered if he was as awkward in his own time as he was in hers.

"Yes, it's like a taxi depot. If you give me my phone back, I could probably tell you where it's located." She held her hand out, palm up as she waited.

John gave her a warning look, cautioning without words what he would do if she decided to contact Vanessa instead, but handed the phone back without further argument.

As she looked for the motor pool for the Central Park services, she glanced up at John, who wasn't paying attention to her. Instead, he was watching the people as they walked by, but not paying any particular amount of interest to any of them.

"So, I get that you're smart, but HG is smart too – and he's obviously more technologically inclined than you are because hey – he built a time machine. But why does he seem to have so much more trouble with the learning curve for things like a phone? Or always seems surprised about how history turned out? I mean, 1890's weren't exactly the Golden Age of Man. Is how it all turned out really so surprising?"

John chuckled, not turning to face her. "HG's problem is that he thinks things ought to work a certain way, and that people think the way that he does, no matter how many times I try to tell him that no one thinks the way he does. So, he expects things to work the way he would've made them work, whereas I figure out how they actually work. I don't stop to wonder about the hows and the whys. In fairness though, as much as he annoys me with his obnoxiously optimistic outlook, it was always my favorite thing about him."

Jane didn't immediately answer. She hadn't really had the chance to ask HG about how he'd come to be friends with John, but she did notice he still called the older man a friend first before catching and correcting himself. He still didn't even reference him as the Ripper, just by his first name.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "Mine too."

John did look back at that, and for the briefest of moments, he genuinely smiled. "For the record, I like you better than his ex-wife."

"Thanks, I think. As long as you don't plan to murder me later to get back at him or whatever evil mastermind plan you have." She glanced down at her phone. "Looks like motor pool is nearby. Let's go."

Neither one noticed the man on the bench reach for his own phone, never taking his eyes off their retreating backs.

"They're on their way. I hope you know what you're doing," he said.

"We pay you for your observations, not your insights. Keep us updated on their status but remember -"

He growled. "Yeah, yeah, don't get caught. He's the bloody fucking Ripper. You think he's going to leave me alive long enough for you to fire me?"

"Fire you?" There was a quiet laugh. "Don't be so unimaginative. Death under the blade of the Ripper would be a blessing compared to what we'd do."

He winced, and thought back to the young man they had back at the lab. He had plenty of imagination. That was the problem.

"I'll manage."

There was a click and the line went dead.

He stared at the phone for a moment before shaking his head, slipping it back into his pocket before following after the two.

Author's Note: As always, read and review! I love hearing from people in a fandom! Especially such a fledgling one!