A/N: Okay, I may have lied before. Owen and Tosh are dead. Martha is working as Torchwood's medic, and Mickey returned to the alternate universe at the end of JE. And Donna still has her memory and is traveling with the Doctor. Got it? Good.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, there would be no chance of any of these rumors about Ten's final episode coming true.
On a clear night in Cardiff, a young man and slightly younger girl appeared out of a flash of light just off of a busy street. But as it was Cardiff, no one really noticed. The pair let out slight 'umphs' as they picked themselves up and brushed each other off, each looking the other over, checking for injuries. Satisfied with what they saw, they turned and took in their surroundings. And stared open-mouthed for several moments in complete silence.
Finally breaking out of her stupor, Jessie Tyler reached into a side pocket on her backpack and pulled out a small rectangular shaped device. She tapped on its screen repeatedly for several moments, her uncle keeping a watchful, rather shocked eye on their surroundings. Frustrated, Jessie shook the device with a growl.
"It'll take a bit of time for the GPS to calibrate with the satellites here," she said. Tony looked at her as she spoke. "Geography's the same, but everything here seems to operate on slightly different frequencies. Course, Mickey warned me that would happen." Sliding the GPS back into her backpack, she rested her hands on her straps and looked around. "Where do you think we are?"
Tony gestured up above them to a great dome-shaped building that looked to be a few streets over. "Well, that looks like Welsh," he said. Jessie grinned at him.
"How much you want to bet we ended up in Cardiff?" she asked. Tony just shook his head, processing the factors of their situation with a militaristic eye.
"Come on," he said. "We don't want to stay in one place too long. Not until we know better where and when we are." He led them out of the alley and in to the street, which was still fairly busy with people out and about, leading their lives. Again, the pair were struck by the sheer normalcy of it.
They walked down the main street for a few minutes in silence. Approaching the water front, they stopped at the sight and stared. "Oh," Jessie breathed. "Just look."
To the average person, there was nothing particularly spectacular about that night's view over the bay. But for Jessie and Tony, it was magnificent. "Christ," Tony said. "Didn't realize how happy I'd be just to see sky again." Jessie nodded her agreement as they slowly moved on, breathing deep the clean air.
Tony spotted a newspaper sticking out of a trash can, and grabbed it. Turning over the pages so that he could see the front, he adjusted it so that Jessie could see too. "Yep, Cardiff," he muttered. Jessie just shook her head and nodded. "But look at the date."
His niece did so, and her brown eyes widened. "But that's…that's only, what, six months after mum and dad returned home?" she said, doing the calculations in her head. Based on the stories they had been told, and everything else...she nodded, confirming it to herself. "Yep, about six months."
"But how's that possible?" Tony asked. "I know time travels a little faster in our world, and John said there could be some variation…but surely we shouldn't have been able to come back this far."
Jessie shrugged, one hand going back to absently stroke the side of her backpack. "Well…there were a lot of variables to take into account. And most of them we couldn't control. Frankly, I'm just glad we ended up in modern times at all."
Tony folded up the newspaper and put it back in the bin as they moved on. In the back of his mind he was trying to sort out what they would do for shelter for the night. It was already chilly, and glancing up at clock on a building, only a little after nine. They would need to find somewhere to settle soon. "Come on," he said. "We need to find somewhere to bunker down for the night."
Beneath their feet, something else was happening. The Torchwood Hub had been fairly quiet that day, until the alarm started blaring, alerting them of Rift activity. "We've got movement," Gwen called from one of the consoles. "Rift energy…possibly as many as two life forms came through. Bit hard to tell though…"
Jack came down from his office, leaning in over her shoulder. Studying the screen for a moment, he pushed back, heading for the exit. "Ianto, Gwen, with me. Martha, stay here in case anything changes. If we need you, we'll call." It didn't appear that the energy signatures were too far away from them, so if they did need their medic, it wouldn't take her long to get to them.
As the Torchwood team headed out, the two life forms they were tracking were breaking into a seemingly abandoned warehouse. Tony pried a board off the window, then gave Jessie a boost up. He swiftly followed her. Inside, they clicked on their torches, and surveyed the place out.
"Whew," Jessie said, bringing a hand to her nose. "It reeks in here."
"Yeah," Tony agreed. "But it's not underground. And it's not half as bad as…"
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Jessie cut in, with the tone of someone who recognized that they should be grateful, and was. Even the weird dead animal smell wasn't as bad as what they had been living in the past four years.
A sudden movement caught Jessie's eye, just outside the cover of her torch. She swung it back around in the direction she'd seen the movement. "Tony," she said cautiously. "You see that?"
"See what?" he asked softly, lowering his voice. His hand immediately went for the weapon at his side, his stance sliding into that of a trained solider. Jessie mirrored him, though she reached for her tazer instead of her energy pistol. They didn't know what they were facing, and she didn't want to accidently shoot an innocent hobo.
After a long moment, neither saw anything. "Maybe it was a cat," Tony said softly, only to be answered by a low growl. Finally, Jessie's torch caught the hunched figure she had seen before. Only now it was staring at them with beady eyes and very sharp teeth.
"That's no cat," she said as they began backing up.
"Can you make it back through the window?" Tony asked, all casualness gone. He didn't want to start shooting if the thing had friends that could charge them. Jessie glanced back at the way they had come in.
"Probably not…let me try the door." Backing to it, she kept one eye on the creature, and checked the door. "Shit," she muttered. The hinges were on the wrong side to kick it open. Turning so that she was again fully facing the creature, she sided up next to her uncle. "No joy. Game plan?"
Tony looked around as best he could without taking his eyes off the creature. There was a staircase off to their left…but going up would likely only get them trapped. Before he could come up with an idea, a loud sound on the door made him freeze.
Jessie whirled around to cover the door, while Tony kept his weapon trained on the creature. The door imploded inward, revealing a tall silhouette of a man. The man charged inside, followed by two others. One ran up to the creature and sprayed something in its face. As it roared, the tall man in the long coat glanced in Tony's direction.
"Out!" The man shouted. Jessie and Tony exchanged a glance and obeyed. A few feet outside the door, they stopped, still half covering the door.
"What do you think?" Jessie murmured. "Torchwood?"
"Torchwood," Tony affirmed. "Only they would be mad enough to charge into the face of that."
A few moments later, the trio emerged from the warehouse. Tony and Jessie lowered their weapons, but didn't put them away. Rose's warning was still fresh in their minds. "Well," the apparent leader said. "You two didn't waste any time getting into trouble."
Jessie and Tony exchanged a look. "So…you would be Torchwood, then?" Jessie asked. Might as well meet the problem head-on.
The man in the coat put his hands on his hips. "Captain Jack Harkness," he said. Jessie gave a sigh and relief and pocketed her tazer, as Tony relaxed and put away his gun.
"At least something's going well," Tony muttered. Jessie just smiled and stepped towards the captain.
"Well then, Captain Harkness…I think we have a lot to talk about."
A/N: Please review guys. Save a muse, send a review!