Jenny learned a new word that day.
She opened her eyes and sat up quickly when she realised that she was lying on the ground. Had something else happened? Were they really under attack now? She had reached into her jacket before remembering, yet again, that weapons were no longer much of an option.
"Morning!" Jack said as he caught sight of her. He sounded far more cheerful than she would have expected.
"What happened?"
"You fell asleep on the job. Pity. You missed a fine sight."
"I never just fall asleep." She got to her feet and made her way to the TARDIS door where Jack was standing. To her right, Donna was leaning over the controls, looking traumatised.
"Never again," she muttered.
"That a promise?" the Doctor asked. He bounded over to Jenny and put an arm around her shoulders.
"Look out. We're landed. Can you see anything?"
Jenny squinted.
"Darkness?"
"We're in London, 3009."
"What? We're back there? What happened?"
"Some brilliant driving on Donna's part! And if I may say so myself..."
"And yet again, he takes all the glory," Jack said, but he was smiling.
"It's your spaceship, Jenny, look! We intercepted it at the point where you got out of it...that's why I made you sleep. Couldn't have two of you on the loose again! And we gave it a slightly softer landing."
"Didn't feel softer," Donna said, "is no one down there going to wonder where a giant spaceship came to land in the middle of some street?"
"They'd wonder more about floods and devastation, wouldn't they? Besides, for all you know, it's fairly commonplace by then! Point is, we've put things right, well, as right as we can."
Jenny could almost feel the impact of her heart sinking. "If I told you straight away about what happened with the ship, you could have put it right before anything happened?"
"Don't worry about it," the Doctor said, "we'll save the lecture for when we're somewhere safer. Besides, and don't remind me of this when I'm doing the lecturing...some things are meant to be part of a bigger picture." He gave Jack a sideways glance as he said that.
"So it's all back to normal now?" Donna asked tentatively, "Nerys and her baby...and all the others. Can I go and see her?"
"'Fraid not," the Doctor said, "at least not yet. I've offended our friends out there, Donna. I've injured them. And now, I've confined them for quite a while to certain particular times. They won't want to catch sight of me anytime soon. So, in order to let things settle down, we need to keep away for a bit. Even without us around for them to chase, I have a feeling Torchwood will be reporting on strange weather patterns for a while. We need to keep that to a minimum."
"What if they take revenge on us by hurting people out there?"
"It's not how they work. They slip in and out of time...symbiotic relationship, remember? This will pass and they'll move around as they've always done, in search of their ghosts and energy and Chosen Ones. Sometime in the future, we'll encounter them again but something tells me that was always a possibility."
"You keep looking at me when you talk like that," Jack said.
"Keep an open mind, Jack, that's all I'm saying..."
"That's never all you say..."
"You can't declare war on them and you can't reason with them. You'll have to find a way to co-exist and let's face it, you've plenty of time to do that."
"Comforting words!"
Jenny stepped tentatively outside the TARDIS door. The night was dark, darker than it should have been, given that this was a city at night. Lights shimmered in the distance but in front of her, her spaceship was nothing but a large bulk of black. She reached out and put her hand on it, trying to feel the old familiar surge of exhilaration as they connected. Nothing. She looked up at the stars, picturing herself somewhere up there, crouched in an escape pod with no idea where she was going to land.
It should have been terrifying but a part of her had always been so excited at the prospect of landing. Maybe it was the sheer fact of having no expectations. Sure, she'd been lonely. If she could have, safely, met that other self of hers right now, she would tell her that around the next corner was Earth and the Time Agency and Clara and a path back to where she'd begun.
With a sigh, she turned back to the TARDIS and froze...
...Something was making its way quietly to the door.
"Jack! Shut the door! Now!" She sprinted to the TARDIS and before he had a chance to register her words, she grabbed the door, slammed it and kept her hand firmly on the handle, keeping them all inside.
"Jenny!" Jack sounded furious. "Get inside!"
Most likely she had seconds before her father forced her hand with the screwdriver. Jenny turned her head and faced the creature.
"Please let us go," she said and somewhere inside, she marvelled at the fact that her first point of contact was words, not combat. Not that combat would be much use. You only had to look at the fairies to sense their power. It emanated like light from their bodies and as tall and solid as this one looked, there was that sense that it was completely intangible too. It could disappear, change shape, shimmer from one reality to the next without drawing a breath.
The creature didn't reply. Instead, its hands, long fingered and graceful, reached out towards the TARDIS...
...and picked it up as if it weighed nothing.
Jenny's grip was wrenched from the door and she toppled over sideways
"Please! Let them go! We didn't mean you any harm!"
"You caused great harm to our world and to us."
"I know. I'm sorry."
The creature regarded her for a long moment and with its other hand, reached down and touched her hair. Jenny held her breath, forcing herself not to move.
"Your age is indefinable," it said, "a child and not a child."
"I'm not a child."
"You could join us."
"What?"
The creature replaced the TARDIS on the ground and fixed Jenny with its piercing glare.
"You could come and be part of us. You would be nurtured. You could live forever."
"I need to go with them," Jenny said, reaching out for the TARDIS door and in the same instant, Jack pulled it open from the inside. At the sight of them, he stopped Jenny could see that he was fighting with himself to stay still.
"She's not a Chosen One," he said to the fairy and it sounded like his teeth were clenched with the effort of talking calmly, "but if she's important to you, protect her. Let her stay with us. Someday you might be glad of it."
Around them, lights were forming, dozens and dozens of them. With a sinking feeling, Jenny realised that it was more fairies.
"If you take me, will you let them go?"
"No!" Jack turned to the fairy and his face was hard and set, "that's non-negotiable."
"Jack, if it's the only way to..."
Jenny stopped as the creature moved again, and bent towards her. Jack shouted something but in the same instant, they were moving, pushed by some immovable force...pushed towards each other...
...and back inside the TARDIS.
Jack slammed the door shut and rounded on her.
"What the hell do you think you were doing?"
"S'ok," the Doctor sounded breathless as he raced back to the controls, "we've really got to get out of here now. You did a good job, both of you. They'd have declared war at the sight of me."
Jenny smiled at Jack, hoping she didn't look too smug.
"So, we travel as far as we can...call it a little holiday," the Doctor said, "and no time-travelling. Not yet. Give the timelocks a chance to take hold. Soon as we land, the TARDIS needs a break. Badly." As he said the words, the TARDIS stirred to life with a violent shudder. The lights flickered ominously.
"How will we know if everything's ok?" Jack asked, "you know...any mistakes that any of us might have made. Unintentionally."
"Oh, I'll know," the Doctor said darkly.
Jenny found herself crying. It happened so quickly that she had no control over it. Turning away from them, she sobbed into her hands as a hurt she'd never known before started somewhere in her abdomen and moved its way upwards. It was like nothing she'd ever felt...and something in her mind urged her to scream or break something or run away from it as fast as she could.
The Doctor put an arm around her and the firmness of his grip was strangely comforting.
"Don't know why I'm crying," she sniffed.
"I do," he said quietly, and he looked around the TARDIS. "You did something amazing on Messaline, Jenny, connecting yourself to that ship. You were part of it and it was part of you. You touched it out there, didn't you?"
She nodded. "I felt nothing. It was like it was...gone."
"It was part of you," he repeated.
"Can you bring it back? Or could we go back sometime and see it?"
Gently, he shook his head.
And that was how Jenny learned another new word...grief.
Wiping her eyes furiously on her sleeve, she tried to force her voice into something resembling lightness.
"Have you changed your mind about fairies, Donna? Maybe not quite friendly little spirits after all? Donna!"
The last syllable caught in her throat as she ran forward.
Donna was lying motionless on the floor.
Wednesday
"That was...that was..." Ianto staggered to his feet and looked around him.
"Shaky," he finished quietly.
"Yeah well, it got us here," Jack said, pressing a button on his Vortex Manipulator as he hoped against hope that the Doctor hadn't got some sort of tracker on it.
Beside him, Ianto was staring transfixed at the street in front of them.
"You ok?" Jack asked. Travelling this way, for the first time, could scramble your brains a bit.
"You've teleported, Ianto! What do you think?"
"Torchwood hub to Cardiff Bay. Hope I can stand the excitement."
"Come on!" Jack punched his arm lightly, "this is the first of many! It's just...technically speaking, I'm not supposed to be doing this. And you know me, usually I would say, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and take you time travelling but...it's kind of complicated and there's all sorts of rules about not interfering and at least here, we're in no way conspicuous."
"We just appeared out of thin air. That could be classed as conspicuous."
"We weren't seen! No one takes any notice of anything when it's cold like this. Come on, let's take a walk."
"We're supposed to be hunting for Weevils in the docks."
"You see any Weevils, I'll hunt for them!"
"Great." Ianto brushed himself down. "So, in the future, maybe, everyone will travel like this. No more cars or buses..."
"Or walks on piers like this...enjoying the fresh air."
"It's pretty strange sometimes, thinking that you might actually know stuff about the future."
"More fun hearing you speculate though. Come on, I know this great Italian place down here. My treat...you can tell me what you think the future will bring and I'll tell you if you're right."
"And I'll tell you when you're lying."
"Hold on." Jack put out his arm to stop Ianto walking. "Did you hear something?"
"What? No...oh...that sounds like..."
"Yeah, doesn't it? Think we found our Weevil."
"And lost our appetites."
"Never mind, you've teleported and that's pretty amazing."
"Feels like a typical day to me," Ianto muttered, as they turned and ran back up the pier.