A/N: Yet another epically clever chapter title (note extreme sarcasm).

Samantha didn't know how long she slept for. After figuring out how to use the small computer that flipped open at Jack's desk, she found this thing called a search engine on the internet that popped up when she accidentally hit one of the keys. She found the most recent news articles. She did not read its contents - she didn't think she could handle knowing what all she had missed, didn't want to think about the endless stream of events that had happened without her.

Instead, she looked to the very top, toward the right for the date. It was just as Jack said - the year was 2007. She really was twenty years in the future.

She turned off the computer in one fluid motion, shutting it with a force. She didn't know how long she sat sunk in that chair before she felt an overpowering wave of exhaustion. She didn't know where it came from. She had been fighting a vague drowsiness ever since she woke up - or at least thought she woke up, before she realized she had never been asleep - but she had been so overwhelmed with not knowing where she was to being kidnapped and worrying about her brother. She hadn't had time to want to even think about taking a nap. Now that the excitement and the heat of the succession of moments passed, she felt the exhaustion catch up with her.

She found the room in the back that Jack had mentioned. It was small, almost like it was a closet with a bed shoved into it. It looked as if it had rarely been slept in. She wondered if this was where Jack slept and then deduced that since it was in the back of his office it must be. She didn't have time to convince herself not to fall asleep in a stranger's bed, didn't have time for her own experiences to surface to make her wary of his intentions. Before she knew it, she was lying on the bed and in what seemed like only seconds, she was asleep.

She awoke only once. She didn't know what it was that woke her, whether it was a sound outside the small room or a nightmare, but she sat up in a rush. Her eyes were practically sealed shut with matter and she was groggy and disoriented. She couldn't remember where she was or how she got there, but it did not seem to matter. Reeling from the vivid feelings the dreams produced, she couldn't hold back the sobs that choked out of her throat.

She did not want to go back to sleep, did not want to return to that state of vulnerability, but she was so tired, so unbelievably tired that she couldn't fight as she fell back against the bed, clutching the covers so hard that her knuckles turned white in the dark of the room. In moments, she was asleep.

When she woke up for the second time, she didn't want to get out of bed. She was well-rested, feeling physically better than she was before going to sleep, almost better than she had felt in months.

Then she remembered.

She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to go back to sleep, but she was rejuvenated now, at least physically, from however long she had slept, and her mind would not let her go back to sleep. Sighing, she resigned herself to the fact that she would have to face up to her predicament and could put it off no longer. She sat up, the bed creaking under the release of pressure, and sat there, rubbing her eyes to clear them and get her bearings about her.

She looked around for a clock, something to tell what time it was, or even what day, but the room was void of almost anything except for the small bed and a couple plastic crates with clothes slung over them. Running a hand through her hair, she stood up from the bed and walked out of the room.

The office was empty when she entered it, and the only sign that Jack had returned afterwards was the stacks of paper that he had re-stacked and re-organized into neat piles on his desk. Something that hadn't been there the night before now rested in the chair she had sat in last night. Confused, she searched through the contents of her backpack, wondering where it had come from. She didn't remember seeing it when she fell through the Rift. She stood there, looking at her notebooks and textbooks as if remnants from another life. She came to a picture that she had been using as a bookmark in her copy of Proust's Swann's Way. It was a picture that had been taken a year ago - or twenty one years ago, Samantha bitterly corrected herself - at their aunt's house for Christmas. Her aunt had taken the picture of Samantha, Charlie, and their dad next to the Christmas tree. She stared down at the picture, feeling a wave of grief that almost doubled her over.

Her family was gone. She didn't know where they were now, twenty years later, or if some of them were still even alive. She told herself that it was irrational to believe that any of them had died, at least of a natural death. Her dad was young when she had left, still in his mid thirties and her aunt was even younger in her late twenties. Charlie was only seven when she left.

My little brother is twenty-seven now, she thought.

She did the rest of the math in her head. Her father would be fifty-five in this time and her aunt would be forty-seven. They would not have aged much. Then there were her friends, her closest friends - Andrew, Elizabeth, and Drea. What had become of them? Where were they now, twenty years later, all the same age she should be right now?

"I thought I heard someone stirring around up here," a voice said from behind her. She didn't have to turn around to know it was Jack. Wiping her eyes, she folded the photograph and shoved it into her pocket, sliding the book back into her backpack.

"My team found that when they were doing a sweep of other anomalies that emitted Rift readings," Jack explained when he saw what she was looking at, "We thought you might want them back."

"Yeah," Samantha said, turning to face him. "Thanks."

Jack smiled by way of reply, but it faded as his gaze flickered to the book that was sticking out over the top of the backpack. Samantha followed his gaze, looking back at him strangely. Why was he so interested in a library book from 1987?

"Still got that book, then?" he asked casually.

"What do you mean still?"

Smiling knowingly, he shrugged. "Well, you will, at any rate."

"What do you mean? Will what?"

Jack said nothing, still smiling. Why did he always seem like he knew more than he was letting on? The thought was disconcerting. What did he - what could he? - possibly know that she didn't didn't?

"You slept a long time," he said, changing the subject. "Are you feeling better?"

"How long was I out?" Samantha asked instead of answering his question.

"Two days," he replied. "One of the side affects of the Rift, along with the disorientation and headaches from hell. How is that, by the way? Any better?"

She absently touched her head, which was still throbbing slightly, but not as badly as when she went to sleep - passed out was more like it. "Sure; if atomic blasts pulsating through your brain counts as better."

Jack laughed. "I'm sure Ianto's got some painkillers in the shop."

He turned and without waiting for her, started for the stairs. Samantha, guessing that he intended for her to follow him, started to make her way down the stairs, but stopped dead in her tracks.

She had not had an opportunity to fully take in her surroundings when she was brought in two days ago. The room was massive, looking as if it had been there for years, subject to the rust and decay of time. The stairs surrounding the top of the room seemed to go on forever, looking as if they exceeded above ground, as if they went past the surface, which, she knew, was impossible. She must have been further underground than she thought.

On the lower level of the room were three work stations, the focal point of each one being the very large, advanced computer screens that seemed almost flat and emitted blue light with endless strings of numbers and information, causing shadows to move where they were cast. Each was loaded with different types of work equipment. Sat at each one were three people, the ones that Samantha recognized from the night before. The man called Owen was donned in a white lab coat, while the girl called Suzie was shielded in an iron shield mask while she welded some type of equipment. The woman with glasses whose name Samantha missed sat in front of her computer screen, her eyes never leaving the screen as she typed at an almost impossible rate.

Samantha followed Jack down the stairs absently as she gazed around the room. It was unlike anything she had ever seen. Yes, she had been exposed to the modern technology at the Observatory, but twenty years had done a lot for technology's advancement. Despite the impossible situation she had found herself in, she found herself staring at it all in wonder.

"Right!" Jack said, clapping his hands gamely. "So, introductions. Samantha; Suzie Costello, second in command," he said, pointing to the woman in the welding mask. "Toshiko Sato," he pointed to the woman glued to her computer screen, "and Dr. Harper-oh, you two already met," he added with a mischievous smile.

Both Suzie and Toshiko looked up briefly from their work to wave at her. She noticed that Owen was looking at her warily before he stepped forward, surprising her by extending his hand.

"Right, sorry about the other night," he said nonchalantly as she took it, "Job specifications and all, you understand."

Samantha couldn't help but be slightly amused. "How's your leg?"

Suzie and Toshiko exchanged amused glances, silently giggling behind their hands. Jack laughed beside her.

Owen looked surprised before a ghost of a smile touched his eyes. "Well, I dunno. You nailed it pretty bad. Might have to chop it."

Samantha raised an eyebrow, but was unable to stop the smile that spread across her face.

"'Course, to be fair," Owen said, "Figured I'd try and give you the benefit of the doubt, you know, me having several advantages up on you at the time."

"Keep telling yourself that, Owen," Suzie said mockingly. "Don't believe a word of it," she added to Samantha, "He's been questioning his manhood for days, he has. Then again, he's always doing that."

Owen crossed his arms, the back of his neck turning red. "Right. Thanks, Suzie."

"All right, you lot," Jack said, reminding Samantha of a father breaking up an argument amongst feuding children, "You've got a code 7 on Lexington Street. Get to it."

The three comrades obediently dropped what they were doing and casually grabbed random items from their sections as they passed them on the way out. Jack watched them go with a small smile before turning to Samantha, nodding in the other direction as an indication to follow him.

A loud screech traveled from the roof of the base down to the lower lever. Samantha's head jerked up to the ceiling, where she saw the last thing she had ever expected to see in her life. She instinctively backed against the railing, staring at the pterodactyl flying in the seemingly endless ceiling.

"What the hell-?" she stammered, "There's a-you've got a-"

Jack laughed. "Mfawnwy. Don't worry, she's harmless. We domesticated her, so she only eats animals."

"Last time I checked, we were animals," Samantha said incredulously.

"Animals with no intelligent thought process, then," Jack replied humorously.

Samantha was still not convinced. Reluctantly, she released her grip on the railing and followed after Jack, her eyes still following the creature from millions of years ago that was only a mere twenty feet above her.

"Did it-did she come through the Rift, too?" Samantha asked.

Jack's stride did not falter, but she could see his face darken as he answered.

"Yeah."

He led her to a room on the lower level with a large table surrounded by five chairs. He motioned for her to sit down before he said something unintelligible into some sort of communications device that reminded Samantha of the advanced technology she had seen on science fiction shows but did not expect to be released for consumer-ism for decades, more so than just twenty years. He sat down across from her.

A moment later a man Samantha had not seen before entered the room carrying a bag of take-out along with a carrier tray with two cups of coffee.

"Samantha, Ianto Jones," Jack said as he entered the room.

Ianto smiled. It was a professional, polite gesture, but Samantha couldn't help but notice the forcefulness behind it, as if it took effort for him to manage it. "Pleasure to meet you," he said formally as if he were speaking to a colleague instead of a random stranger who just happened to fall into their jobs.

Samantha forced a smile as he began laying the food out on the table before them. Jack gladly accepted the coffee and food, but before Samantha could so much as thank Ianto, he had slipped quietly from the room.

"Help yourself," Jack said, "You're probably hungry. You haven't eaten in two days. Well, either hungry or nauseated, though those effects should have worn off by now."

Samantha looked down at the cartons of Chinese food lying on the table. She felt suddenly like she was forgetting something. Then she remembered - the last words she and her father had exchanged.

"-I'll be home in time for dinner. I thought I'd pick something up. Chinese?"

Samantha found that she was suddenly starving and ate almost a whole pint of vegetables and rice, each bite a bit of manna to her empty stomach, before the uncomfortable quenching of her stomach forced her to stop.

"Better?" Jack asked, a smile of amusement on his face.

Samantha nodded. "Yes. Thank you."

She started to take a sip of coffee, but the cup stopped short of her lips as a piece of information she had absorbed the other night in Jack's office surfaced.

"There's Retcon in this," Samantha said, "Isn't there?"

Surprise flickered across Jack's face. "How do you know about-? Ah," he added when realization crossed over his face. His surprise turned into a knowing smile. "Why would you think that?"

She looked down at the table, averting his eyes. "I've seen too much. I know too much. I can identify you and your people, I know where your base is, I know what you do. I'm a liability," she added.

Jack did not reply at first and she took his silence as affirmation.

"I thought it was a bit sloppy of you, to be honest. You didn't exactly try and conceal any of this from me."

Jack said nothing at first, just sat back, his smile never leaving his face as he regarded her.

"We didn't put anything in your drink," he said after a pause. Samantha looked up in surprise.

"You-didn't?"

"We don't Retcon people who've fallen through the Rift," Jack answered her, "They have to make new lives for themselves with the realization that they're in a different time. Erasing their memories would only put us at a risk of exposure, as well as get them thrown into the nearest Section."

Samantha believed him. She didn't know why, she just knew that if they wanted to drug her, they had multiple opportunities before that and they didn't. She took a hesitant sip as a sign of trust before pushing it away.

"So what happens to me now?"

Jack leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table in a 'getting-getting-down-to-business' sort of way.

"You've got two options," he started with a professional tone to his voice. "One: you can start all over, in a new time, a new city, be a new person. You're still young enough to go into the foster system, but I don't think you'd want that. We can set you up with a new identity, a job, a place to live, everything you'd need. You'll have to make a whole new life for yourself."

That was more or less what she had expected to hear, but it still didn't make her any less overwhelmed. She bit her lip, considering. "And the second one?"

"You can go back to your family."

Now that really wasn't she had expected to hear.

"Just like that?" she asked doubtfully. "Just pop up after twenty years of being thought of as dead and waltz right back into their lives, like nothing happened?"

Jack shrugged, undeterred by her sarcasm. "More or less. I'll talk to your brother, explain everything to him. For all intents and purposes, he's your only remaining family who has the potential to be a guardian for you."

Samantha felt a nagging urgency in the pit of her stomach, like he wasn't telling her everything. "What if he doesn't accept it?"

Jack did not reply at first. "We'll deal with that when the time comes," was all he said.

Samantha couldn't let it go. "Jack," she said expectantly.

He regarded her quietly for a moment.

"If he can't accept what has happened, then we'll Retcon him so he has no recollection of any of the information. As for you, it'll be back to option one, but as of right now, it's your choice."

Samantha felt her breath catch in her throat. A part of her was anxious to see them again, to see that they were all right, yet a part of her didn't think she could face them after all this time. Something, though, still didn't sound right.

"What about my dad?" she asked.

Jack said nothing at first, but she saw his face fill with the knowledge of something he did not want to have the knowledge of. Pity filled the edges of his face, bordering remorse.

"I'm sorry."

Samantha felt like she had been hit in the stomach. The revelation that he did not need to say dropped like a falling brick. She suddenly couldn't breathe, couldn't feel anything but the overwhelming grief in her chest.

"I'm so -" Jack started, but Samantha did not let him finish.

"No," she said, and when she spoke, her voice was firm despite the strain her voice conveyed. "How is that - how did he - ?"

"He's not dead," Jack said quickly, as if he knew what she was going to ask.

Samantha felt herself stop, the hysterics leaving her silent. "He's - he's not?"

Jack shook his head, but the solemnity was still etched on his face. "No. He's still alive."

"Where is he?" Samantha asked. It wasn't until the words were out of her mouth that she suddenly needed to see him.

"Maybe now isn't the time for this," Jack said.

"No," Samantha said angrily, "You can't just say something like that and expect me to leave it at that. Tell me," she demanded.

Jack's silence, while brief, allowed Samantha's mind to imagine horrors.

"He's in Royal Hill nursing home," Jack stated formally.

His words were like a blow to Samantha's gut. The constriction of her throat returned, the panic in her chest. "He's - "

Jack nodded.

"But what...?"

"He's in critical condition," Jack said, "He's rapidly regressing into total mind deterioration."

"He's - he has - ?"

Jack nodded severely. "Yes. Alzheimer's."

Samantha felt her throat close up. She could feel the shock of what he was saying wearing off as the dam behind her eyes began to get unbearably heavy.

"When?" she somehow managed to get out.

Jack hesitated at first. "It started about six months ago. According to the medical reports, he started forgetting little things - days of the week, who was prime minister - but after a while, he forgot his life, his friends..."

"And us?"

Pity on his face, Jack nodded.

Samantha felt herself go cold instantaneously. Feeling seemed to desert her. All she could do was sit there, staring down at the table, avoiding Jack's eyes, trying to comprehend what he was telling her.

My father is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's. My younger brother is twenty years older than me, living on his own, working, living a life each day that I never had a chance to live.

Suddenly, she found that she couldn't just sit there, not in the same room as the man who was telling her what was tearing her world apart. She stood up, her chair scraping the floor, echoing in the silence of the room. She stared at him only briefly before she turned and walked away from him.

"Samantha," Jack said suddenly, regarding her warily. "What are you doing?"

Samantha stopped at the threshold. When she spoke, her voice was quiet.

"Please," she asked him. "I can't...Just leave me alone. It's...this is too much. I just—I can't."

Without waiting for his answer, she left him standing there, making her way through the base. She remembered it all clearly from a few nights before, so she did not have to pause to wonder where she was. She found the way she had been brought in and walked through the cold, damp corridors that led to the tourist office. The man who she had met briefly, Ianto Jones, was sat behind the front desk, leafing through stacks of paperwork. He looked up when she entered, but she walked past him and out the shop door, ignoring his protests.

When she found herself outside, she had to cover her eyes to adjust to the light. She had no set foot in the sunlight for almost three days, since she fell through the Rift. Once her eyes adjusted to the light, she squinted up at the sun. Judging from the position of the star, she guessed it to be mid-morning.

Blinking, she viewed her surroundings. Now that she wasn't being restrained and actually was able to take in the sights around her, she saw that instead of an empty alleyway, the tourist shop was located in an inhabited part of the city. People moved around her, hurrying to work, talking with their companions, or their attention focused on small little hand-held devices that they seemed to have surgically attached to their ears.

Samantha could not help but stare. These were people among her, yet they looked so different than they had just a few days ago, even though she knew twenty years had passed. The clothes, the hairstyles, even the facial expressions and the way people talked was different.

'You aren't in your own time anymore,' she had to remind herself, 'Things are going to be different now.'

She shook her head, trying to regain her bearings, before she started walking the streets, past the people, feeling lost and out of place amongst people who had no idea what was really going on around them.

Somehow, she ended up in front of the bay, leaning against the railing that bordered the concrete platforms separating land from water. She stared off at the water, hearing the waves overlapping over the cry of the passing seagulls overhead. The chilled morning wind snapped at her face, making her eyes water. She shivered, wishing she had brought her jacket before berating herself for such a trivial complaint. She was alone, twenty years in the future, with none of her family or friends knowing that she was even alive and she was worrying about catching a cold.

She didn't know how long she sat there, staring out into the bay, feeling the hot sun beating down hard on her yet being neutrally controlled by the cold wind. Thought after thought passed across her eyes, settling into the depths of her mind, giving her not one moment of reprieve. She thought about her father, so young and vital when she left him in 1987 yet who was now withering away in a nursing home with no memory of who she was. She thought about her brother, how lost and scared and alone he must have felt after her disappearance and who was now older than she. She thought about her aunt, her friends, her baby cousin who would never know her now. She thought about all that had been taken from her, all that she had loved. All she had lost.

Through Samantha's misery, she felt a presence not far behind her, but at a distance. It was unfamiliar, yet she knew who it was. When she spoke, her voice sounded odd in her throat, not having used it in hours. That much she knew - that she had been sitting, staring, allowing the misery to take her as the severity of her situation finally started to sink in, for hours. It was mid afternoon by then. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Not long," Jack said from beside her.

Samantha started slightly, sure that he had not been that close to her and also slightly disturbed that she had not heard him approach that quickly.

"Really," she said evenly, not believing it.

"Same as you," Jack answered honestly, "About..." he checked his watch. "Two hours."

Samantha did not say anything at first.

"I'm not going to run away," she said suddenly. Her eyes were still locked firmly on the water mingled with sky.

"What?" Jack raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"You don't have to watch me every second," she went on, unable to keep the irony out of her voice, "My family, my friends...they all think I'm dead. It's not like I have anywhere to go."

Jack sat down next to her on the bench by way of reply, a good distance away so as not to alarm her.

"I'm sorry," he said. He seemed to be saying that a lot.

Samantha did not say anything. She did not want his pity. She did not want his sympathy. What she wanted was for him to tell her that he could open the Rift and send her back to her own time, back to her life, back to her family, yet she knew that no matter how much she wanted it, it would never be anything more than a life she could never live again. That part of her life, that life, was over now.

"It's not fair," she said. No sooner did the words come out did the flood of emotion she had been struggling to hold in came pouring out.

Jack's hand was on her shoulder then. "I know."

His words only made her cry harder. Suddenly, with a tenderness that surprised her, he had her in an embrace. She started at first, but found that she had no strength to move away. It also felt good, having something real, some real human touch, to hold on to. Something she felt like she would never have again.

Warning bells went off in her head. How could she let this man, this perfect stranger, get so close so easily and so quickly?

Yet somehow, she felt like she knew him. She knew it was impossible and that she did not – could not - but somehow, this stranger, this man whose presence in her life had all but ruined it, made her feel surprisingly safe. Maybe it was with her recently aquired knowledge of the Rift, but she also felt that maybe there was more to this situation than she initially realized, that it was more complicated than she could even imagine.

And she felt that maybe she wasn't as alone in this as she thought.

A/N: Okay, I am REALLY trying to get past all this angsty stuff. I didn't intend to write this with so much drama, but I figured if I was sucked into a pan-dimensional vortex suspended in time and space, I'd be a little on the angsty side, too.