Chapter Twelve

Jenny was scared for the first time since she was on Messaline. She didn't know how to get back to the 61st century. She didn't know where Roland was. Even if he did make it back to the Gatehouse he didn't have the shuttle and he wouldn't be able to get from 21st century Cardiff to 19th century...wherever she was. She stopped to listen in on some nearby villagers and heard someone tell one of the survivors that they were in Anglesey, just a few miles from the village of Moelfre.
"Anglesey, then," she thought. "That's not too far from Cardiff. It's in Wales. But how will anyone find me?"

Hours after the sun had risen Jenny was still waiting by the shore. The villagers and survivors had gone back to Moelfre and she was left alone on the coast. She stood and walked closer to the cliff line and looked into the sea. Below was a mess of wreckage and a group of men attempting to retrieve the bodies of the drowned. She wondered if they'd found Jack yet, but decided she didn't really want to know.
Shivering, she looked away and began to ponder her situation once more. Her best option seemed to be to go to Moelfre and stay there until she figured out a way to escape. Perhaps in a few decades' time they'd have invented enough materials for her to cobble together a vortex-whats-it. She had watched Roland assemble the time window, and she assumed the process was similar.
Just as she was about to go ask one of the men which way Moelfre was, an electric crackle echoed behind her. She turned to see Jack, in all his soaking-wet glory, standing behind her. He looked up at the day lit sky in a perplexed manner and realized that he must have set his vortex manipulator to the wrong time. "Oh. Uh... how late am I?" he asked. When he saw the stunned expression on Jenny's face he winced, readying himself for any possible reaction.
Jenny didn't know what to do, or how to feel, so she followed her soldier's instincts and hit him hard in the arm. "It's been ten hours, you idiot!" she yelled. "I thought you were dead."
They stared at each other silently for a moment, trying to determine the others thoughts. The shock began to wear off and a strong feeling of relief came over Jenny. She tried to hold it back for the sake of dignity, but failed and reached out to hug him with a smile. "Don't you ever do that to me again." Jack began to apologize but Jenny interrupted. "Just shut up and take me home."

The vortex manipulator was set to Cardiff, the 20th of December, 2006, and Jenny grabbed onto Jack's wrist. They vanished in a puff of what looked like purple electricity and reappeared in the Torchwood Hub. This particular portion of the underground lair was not flooded, and Jenny remembered that Jack had sealed off the room they had been in before the rift could destroy the others.
After putting his portable rift manipulator (as Jenny assumed it was called) into a desk drawer and taking his coat back, Jack escorted Jenny through a back exit. They emerged from what appeared to be a tourist house, in a different area of Cardiff. "We'll have to walk a ways to get to your ship," Jack apologized, "but I admit a car wouldn't have done much good with such a crowd around. You caused quite a stir, you know."
"Sorry about that," Jenny said. "I don't know my history very well. I didn't stop to think that spaceships might be uncommon."
"Don't worry, it's a common mistake for beginning time travelers. I've been there myself."
"You have?" Jenny looked up at him with wonder in her eyes. He had seemed more like an arrogant official agent with a costly education than an experienced traveler when she first met him. Now that she thought about it, the whole time they were on the Royal Charter he had the manner of someone who had been through the same situation before. Much like her father when he had tried to stop the fighting on Messaline.
"I have," Jack replied. "In fact, there was a time when I had a firm opinion of how time worked. I thought I knew everything about its inner workings and how to bend it to my will. I had been trained to believe that it was like the script of a play, that you could go back and rewrite it according to your will. But then I met a more experienced space traveler, who learned everything from experience, and not some government agency.
"He taught me that time had a mind of its own. It has a will, and a knowledge of how things must be. If you try and change those fixed points, it creates a catastrophe. While, if you try to change other things, time might just let you. Like this moment, here and now. Time has no particular will as to what happens now. It's just us talking, and as long as our conversation doesn't change a major event, we can say and do whatever we want."
Jack stopped walking and looked Jenny in the eyes. "You're a lot like that traveler, in a way. You're not experienced at all, but you have a connection to time. You can see how it flows, and you don't have a set opinion of it. You're still learning."
Jenny scoffed and looked away from Jack. "That's ridiculous. If I had a connection to time, I would've understood what happened on the Royal Charter, but I still don't get it."
"Jenny, it's like I said. You're still learning. Do you remember when we were in front of the rift, and you told me about the sea? That it smelled older? That was your connection to time. There's no way that any amount of experience can tell you how old the sea is without proper analysis."
"I... but...how do you know all this?"
Jack smiled and put an arm on Jenny's shoulder, guiding her down the street as he talked. "That traveler I mentioned... he was a Time Lord, like you. In fact, I think you have more in common than that." He glanced down at the green shirt and leather jacket she was wearing. "You even look like him, when you have certain expressions on your face. Both of him, actually. This new version of him that was spotted last Christmas seems to have a similar spirit to yours."
"Both? Christmas? What do you mean?"
Jack laughed. "Perhaps we should continue this conversation another time."

When they reached Roald Dahl Plass, they saw that the crowd had slowly begun to move away from the area. Government officials were crowding the area and even sending policemen back to the station. When they saw Jack and Jenny trying to sneak past into the building, an intimidating agent with sunglasses and a Bluetooth pulled them aside.
"This is a restricted area. We need you to move along."
Jack pulled a wallet- a very wet wallet- from his pocket and held an ID up for the agent to see. "I'm Captain Jack Harkness, and this is now official Torchwood business. You and your men can stand down."
Jenny watched as the agent flinched and turned away. Within moments nearly all of the agents had left, and one of the few remaining guided them to an elevator that led to the roof where Jenny had parked her shuttle.
"That was very suave," Jenny commented as the elevator rose to the top floor. "Were you trying to avoid an awkward situation or just showing off?"
Jack cleared his throat and shifted on his feet. "A bit of both actually."
"Thought so," Jenny said with a smirk. The elevator opened with a 'ding' and revealed the uppermost part of the stairs she had climbed down when she first arrived. They walked through the stairwell entry onto the roof and Jenny saw that her shuttle was still in the same spot. It was relatively undisturbed aside from a few scratch marks by the door where the agents had attempted to pry it open.
Jack didn't say anything until Jenny opened the door and climbed in. "Before you go," he called. He began writing something on a notepad that had been concealed in his pocket. Jenny assumed he had grabbed it when they arrived in Torchwood, because it was too dry to have been there when they were on the Royal Charter. He tore off the page when he was done and handed it to her. "Those are exact coordinates for a landing dock in the Torchwood base, so you don't cause a commotion next time. No one really uses it, so there should be plenty of room for you to park. Oh, and... install a portal control in your ship so you don't break the rift again, would you?"
"Aye, captain," Jenny teased as she took the paper. With a friendly nod she closed the shuttle door and hopped into the pilot's chair. Jack took several steps back and shielded his eyes as the ship lifted into the air, stirring up dust and dirt from the neglected rooftop. The shuttle swerved and dove through the portal, displaying how excited its pilot was to head home.
As Jack walked toward the stairwell entry he mumbled to himself about the loads of paperwork he'd have to do. The public eye wouldn't forget this event for at least a good long week.