"What are you doing?" the Doctor shouted over the wind as he struggled to escape from Jack's grip.
"I'll do it!" Jack shouted back. Wasn't it obvious? Of the two of them, he could survive the fall without having to regenerate and they could really do without any added complications.
"Donna's drowning down there!" He shouted into the Doctor's face. "I'll find her, I promise!" He let go of the Doctor's arms and ran forward, bracing himself for the onslaught of air as his feet left the surface.
Instead, there was nothing, just a muffled sound and a sense of smothering. He drew back and realised that the Doctor was beside him.
"I told you I'd do it!"
"Never mind that. We can't pass!" The Doctor reached his arms into the space immediately in front of them, feeling around.
"Some sort of barrier?"
"It can't go on forever!" The Doctor broke into a job as he moved along the cliff edge.
"It can!" Jack stopped him roughly. "Doctor, they can do anything! We need to do even more than that! Right now! I know you don't want to think weapons but..."
"There is something I can do."
"What?"
The Doctor's face was ashen as he pointed over the cliff edge.
"The spaceship. It's a mistake and I'm good at fixing those sorts of mistakes. A bit of tweaking and it was never here."
"And the catch?"
"Neither is Jenny. Literally. I banish her ship. I banish her out of existence. Forever." The Doctor took a deep, ragged breath. "Meanwhile, Donna's drowning down there. And the human race is dying."
Jack said nothing. There was absolutely nothing to say.
The Doctor turned away from Jack, holding the screwdriver in his hands, turning it over and over as if an answer might be written somewhere on its surface. He took a deep breath, glanced at Jack for a moment then aimed it in the directed of the sunken space ship.
"Doctor. Donna would never forgive you. She wouldn't want..."
"She's my friend!"
"Jenny is your flesh and blood! Seriously, Doctor, we'll find another way." Even as he said it, Jack as if the weight of the world was crashing down on him. The human race was at stake and he could see it reflected in the Doctor's eyes.
"It's not fair!" He heard himself shout without any idea of forming the words. "You can't be expected to make this sort of sacrifice!"
"That's what you've never understood, Jack." The Doctor's eyes were hard to look at.
"What? That we have to make sacrifices? Believe me, Doc..."
"No. That there's always another way."
The Doctor turned around, aimed the screwdriver at the TARDIS and closed his eyes.
"Doctor! What are you..."
Jack looked all around, as if somehow inspiration might be lurking behind a tree somewhere. The wind was picking up and somehow he fancied that the laughter was still there behind it all...childlike, wispy...
"Come and face us!" His skin crawled at the prospect.
A shape danced in front of them, a shadow and then more than a shadow. There was just a second to register that his command had been obeyed and then the world went black...
...a rush of air...
...and he was slammed back to Cardiff with a jolt that was concrete and cars and voices all at once.
"No!" He spun around, as if the cold water world of the forest might be lurking somewhere behind him
"Take me back!" He jammed his fingers toward his wrist device, trying to keep the images in his mind, only to realise that the Doctor still had it. People stared at him as they passed, increasing their steps as if to get as far away from the crazy man shouting at nothing as they possibly could.
Jack stared around him. At least they'd had a good grace to send him back to Cardiff and in what looked like, his own time. Surely there would be something, anything in the hub that might sort this mess out. He set off at a gallop and stopped dead.
Walking ahead of him was himself. And Ianto.
"Not quite my own time," he muttered.
He knew at once why he had been sent back to 2007. He and Ianto had been time-travelling. Clearly something they'd done...and he had a good idea what...was enough to banish him back to them.
But nothing bad had happened that evening. They'd saved that child, or whatever it was...he was no longer sure. They'd eaten in a restaurant and joked about bringing about the end of the world. Or had they? Suddenly the evening seemed hazy in his mind. He couldn't remember returning to their own time, to the hub.
Only they must have had. They'd had a lot to drink, that was it. He frowned, momentarily distracted, then ducked into a doorway. He'd wait until they heard the child cry out and disappeared into the alley and he'd try to figure this thing out...
...from the back, they made a smart couple.
And there it was. The thin cry. He watched himself stop and listen and Ianto's lips move as spoke. It was hard to understand why the Doctor was so repelled by the idea of running into himself...well, apart from the obvious dangers. Jack found it fascinating.
They had gone into the alleyway. He started to follow and stopped. Once around the corner, there would be nowhere to hide.
"Come on Doctor...tell me what to do," he muttered.
After a few minutes, he heard muffled voices and footsteps. He pressed himself back into a doorway.
A small girl ran out, the girl from the wall.
She spotted him straight away and stopped to regard him, smiling slightly, the smile telling Jack that this really was not and had never been, a child.
"What do you want?" he asked roughly.
Now, the second child had joined him and they both stared at him silently. Jack turned and walked away, aware that he and Ianto could be in close pursuit.
They followed him.
After the next corner, he faced them again.
"What do you want?"
"You said you wanted us to face you," the first one replied calmly.
"Why here?"
"This is where we found you. We were searching for the time-travellers who destroyed our world. You time-travelled and we found you. You lifted me from the wall and I had your imprint. We've met many, many times before and after that moment."
The words sent a chill through Jack.
"Why here?" he repeated.
Now the two children spoke to him in one voice.
"We told you. We will meet again and again. Your fate is linked with ours. Therefore, you couldn't perish with your friends."
"What do you mean, perish? The Doctor is putting it right if you'll give him a chance!"
"He has put it right. He destroyed his time machine."
"He what?"
"The explosion of time energy will restore to the world to how it was."
"He couldn't..." Jack stared at the two impassive faces, feeling as if his insides were melting into nothing.
"If that's true...if he's really done that, you can bring them back here. You owe him!"
"We owe him nothing. Every ounce of that energy, destroyed or whole, injures us."
"Really? So if I'm that important to you, I order you to bring them back right now! I can destroy you too."
"You have no power over us."
As they spoke, the two children raised their hands. A shower of hailstorms began to fall around them.
"Cute," Jack said flatly.
The hailstones began to turn to ice. Big blocks of ice. From somewhere nearby, there was a scream and a screech of brakes. Under his feet, Jack felt ice begin to form. The temperature was dropping rapidly.
He pulled the nearest child in close to him and with the other hand, pointed his gun directly at her head.
"Don't think I won't," he said quietly and looked directly into her eyes...
...and nearly screamed as he dropped her.
The face staring back at him was Estelle's.
"I'll kill you," he said, recovering himself and trying not to meet her eyes. "I don't care if you can't be killed, I'll find a way."
Now they were changing again. The two children resumed their proper forms, the graceful, grotesque forms of fairies.
Ice was beginning to form on nearby windows.
"Walk away," one of them said, "turn and walk away from here. You'll be returned to your own time. Life will continue. The ice will melt."
"And my frends?"
"Forget them."
There were sounds of panic from the streets now. The traffic appeared to be at a standstill and people were shouting. A sheet of ice now covered the whole pavement they stood on.
"Ok." Jack took a deep breath. "I'm going. Melt the ice."
They stared back, as if daring him. If anything, the air was getting colder. The hailstones were beginning to resemble small rocks.
He walked away from them and out on to the street. People were frantically trying to get in and out of cars but the doors seemed to be frozen and stuck. They slithered and slipped on the ice as they tugged at door handles. Others struggled on the pavement, trying frantically to find a grip, dodge the falling ice and keep themselves upright. He stayed close to the wall as he moved forwards, searching the white coloured buildings around him. Cardiff was almost unrecognisable.
But the people he was looking for weren't. Standing at the door of the restaurant, they looked just as worried as he remembered.
"Jack! Ianto!" he shouted and set off towards them at a shaky sprint.
They turned in one movement. Their eyes met his.
The sky began to darken rapidly apart from a flash of lightening that, for a moment, seemed to split the whole world in two.