Floodgates

Jack watched as Jenny's form flitted back through the foliage. Beside him, the Doctor stood, poised to move as soon as she was completely out of sight.

"You know, I nearly ran into myself a few times in Pompeii...it's the creepiest feeling, like..." Jack stopped when he saw the Doctor's expression.

"Yeah...maybe it's a story for another time..." He turned back to see Jenny disappear completely into the trees. They left their own shelter and hurried down the slope to where their Donna and Jenny were huddled. The Doctor bent swiftly over to touch Jenny's face.

"What's wrong with her?" Jack asked. The proper question probably would look more like what's right with her?

Jack had seen whole worlds destroyed before, starting with his own. Sometimes it seemed to him that in every time he had forged an existence, destruction came sooner or later, whether from internal or external forces. It was a given. You lived in spite of, rather than in fear of. You learned to curse the forces of destruction with the mere fact of your survival.

(Of course that got complicated when your survival really was a given.)

But this was something else. This version of Earth was hard to even breathe in. He couldn't blame Jenny for being unable to take it.

Her eyes opened and he watched her focus on the Doctor. Was it his imagination or did her eyes look different? Jenny had a very direct look most of the time. Her eyes were bright and intense, ready to soak up every piece of information she was given. Now, she was unfocused, almost dream-like. Like a young child in the throes of night terrors of the worst sort.

"Please take me back," she said weakly.

"Send them back," Jack said quietly to the Doctor, indicating Donna as well. He almost laughed at the indignant look on her face. Not that he was usually the type to believe in dreams but these creatures had the concept of nightmares down to a fine art and if someone close to Donna was dreaming about her drowning, then it didn't take a genius to figure that removing her from somewhere surrounded by floodwater might be a smart move.

Except that the genius beside him didn't seem to get that.

He didn't mind admitting it...these creatures really got to him. They were so completely intangible. That sound in the distance. It could be wind. It could be wind created by them. It could be laughter as they flitted in and out of trees, keeping their prey in their line of sight. If he and the Doctor had any form of protection against them, Donna and Jenny didn't and clearly something in Jenny seemed to be extremely vulnerable to them.

It was always harder to fight an enemy that you couldn't clearly define.

If the Doctor didn't appear to fully appreciate the danger they were in, it fell to him to keep them all safe to the best of his ability.

"We can't," the Doctor was saying and his voice was gentle as he addressed Jenny.

"You've got this far. If there's any hope of helping, we need to know what's happened."

"Then we'll go, you and me," Jack said, "let them go back to the TARDIS." He watched as Donna stiffened, as if preparing to resist but she said nothing, maybe torn between wanting to stay and wanting to help Jenny. She looked troubled.

"We're getting nearer, aren't we?" the Doctor asked.

Jenny nodded dully.

"How would she know?" Donna asked before Jack had a chance to.

The Doctor didn't reply. He was holding the sonic screwdriver out in front of him and staring straight ahead as if he could see something that they couldn't.

"Can you walk?" he asked Jenny.

"She can't stand!" Donna said tartly.

"She's got to!"

Donna opened her mouth, presumably to give him an earful but Jack found himself shaking his head at her. Many, many prior experiences had taught him that when the Doctor acted out of character, it really was better just to go with it.

They made their way carefully along the edge of the river. From time to time, Jack could see the others reacting in the same way to the strange sounds around them just as much as he was. It was almost as if the whole forest and everything in it was alive. Well, of course it was. It was a forest. But it wouldn't have surprised him to see evidence that everything in it, plants, trees and skies were somehow in league with the creatures who controlled it.

"Doctor, is there any point in asking why we're trying to find out what happened here, here? Wouldn't it easier just to go back and see what's in store for us?"

"Because it's not."

"What?"

"I told you. Something happens in our future and creates this." He waved an arm around them. "But it's not meant to happen. It's caused a wound in time, if you like. There's got to be evidence of it around here and we've got to find it quickly. We've been brought here for a reason."

"Yeah. To kill us slowly."

"Jack, they're asking for our help, albeit for their own self-preservation."

"Yeah, because they're usually so helpful to us, stealing children and all. Only this time we seem to be the Chosen Ones."

"Exactly." The Doctor smiled slightly, as if Jack had given the right answer to an important question.

"That's not good, Doctor."

"It's all we've got at the moment. The TARDIS couldn't have gotten here without their help. We're in...well, it's not quite a clear timeline. It's muddied and shadowed. No one should ever have to time travel on a shaky path like this one. It's hard to even think about it." He shook his head slightly as if trying to clear it of something.

Jack stared at the Doctor.

"Is that what's affecting Jenny?"

But the Doctor shook his head. Jack looked around in frustration.

"I mightn't be able to see these timelines but let's not forget that in our present, these creatures are destroying the world."

"Something else is about to do that. And..." He held out a hand to stop Jack walking as the sound of rushing water began to get clearer and clearer. "I think we've found it."

All of a sudden, they had reached the top of the hill and it really was sudden...the sort of the height that startles a climber into realising that there really is a sheer drop waiting for them only feet away.

"Careful," the Doctor said as Jack walked forward. "The ground's quite unsteady."

They approached the edge together and looked down.

"It's like a sea," Donna said in complete bewilderment.

"Floodwaters," Jack said, moving closer to her, "and some sort of crater."

"But there's waves and rocks!"

"That's not rocks," the Doctor said, squinting and shielding his eyes from a sudden glow of white sunlight.

Jack knelt down to try and see better. From this distance, the object certainly looked like a cluster of rocks, especially with the way the waves seemed to crash and break around it, as if launching a never-ending attack. But no...now that he looked...was that metal?

"It's a spaceship!" He and the Doctor exclaimed the words in unison.

"A crashed spaceship." Jack almost felt dizzy. "Could it cause this much damage?"

The Doctor shrugged. "From far enough away, it could. Especially if it crashed through a time portal."

"Why don't you know?" Jenny's voice behind them sounded cracked, as if she hadn't used it in a very long time.

"What?" Jack turned around to her.

"You know what it is."

"Tell me what you mean," he said, keeping his voice as gentle as he could. There was definitely something seriously wrong with Jenny.

"I didn't do it."

"You keep saying that," Donna said to her, "I didn't do it. I didn't do anything. What is it you think we're accusing you of?"

Jenny straightened and took a deep breath. She glanced at the spaceship and then looked at the Doctor. There was a strange smile on her face, an expression of triumph, of something proved right. Jack looked at the Doctor in bewilderment.

The Doctor had that look in his face, the sad look of someone lost, as he stared back at his daughter as if she was a completely unknown entity.

And in the second that she sprang forwards, and with the grace of youth and the eyes of someone, something ancient, locked her arms around Donna and pulled her downwards, Jack realised that she was.

...................................................................

Two Days Later

"This is how it happens.

There's a woman called Donna who has left this comfortable life on planet Earth and given it all up to travel with you. There's a man called Jack who has given up all his travels and adventures to live on Earth and protect it from harm because he thought you'd like him to.

And one day the three of you travel together and you find me and we travel together and we laugh at the fact that I can time travel, that I travelled time and space to find you and eventually that we found each other. We laugh at my mistakes, the fact that I could hardly control that rocket ship, the fact that I often landed worlds away from where I wanted to be.

You know what a time portal looks like. Mostly it's invisible to anyone else, even if they crash into it, or fall through it. You also know that a ship that travels in time is far more vulnerable to a time portal than one that doesn't. The energies recognise one another, reach out to each other.

I didn't know that.

And you probably know what happens when a rocket ship, with all that uncontrollable energy and a complete novice inside, crashes into a time portal over the planet Earth and falls through it. How the pilot might have been lucky enough to get into the escape pod so that she falls in one direction, away from the wreckage of the ship. She lands centuries into the future where the Time Agency is waiting for her and that's ok because she can go on and look for you.

You never asked me what happened to the rocket ship.

I couldn't have told you anyway. I didn't know.

I didn't know that the time energy inside the ship would react with what was going on outside of it. I didn't know that the force in which it would land on Earth would be enough to destroy almost the entire planet.

I didn't know that it would land in the 21st century.

I didn't know that its timelines would become distorted and twisted because it was never meant to happen.

This is all I do know:

How to fight and how to die.

I was never meant to be born.

You know that."