A/N: Thanks to Gwen Harkness for pointing out several mistakes in previous chapters. Just to clarify : Samantha is not from America, but Bristol, as explained coincidentally in this chapter. Sorry again for any confusion.
"What happened after I left?"
The question had been nagging at the surface of her mind ever since she had found out she was in 2007, yet it was only then that she had mustered up enough nerve to ask.
She and Jack were in his office later that evening. He had told her to wait for him earlier while he dealt with a technological malfunction with some sort of monitor that kept going off, alerting them to a potential alien invasion, Toshiko explained, though she quickly assured them that it was a false alarm. He had just entered the room and started to sit down at his desk when she voiced the question.
Jack looked up at her, as if expecting the question. Wordlessly he bent down behind his desk, shuffling around the drawers until he produced a newspaper that looked as if it was from decades ago. It was crinkled at the edges, slightly yellow from the affects of time, and some of the words were faded. He flipped through it until he got to the middle of the several large pages and set it down on his desk facing her. He pointed to the top of the page in the upper right corner.
It was an obituary.
'Samantha Elizabeth McKay was officially declared dead on April 17th, 1994, seven years following her abrupt disappearance on January 17th, 1987 at 2:20 p.m., when her younger brother reported her disappearance. No leads were ever found involving her abduction and there was no substantial evidence or suspects involving her disappearance (for more information, see pg. 12). She is survived by her father, Walter, 42 and her brother, Charlie, age 14.'
Below was a picture of her father, looking a few years older, with the edges of his face beginning to wrinkle and shades of gray appearing in his hair, and a teenage boy who she automatically identified as her brother seven years later.
Through trembling hands, she flipped to the twelfth page.
'Charlie McKay was seven years old when he reported his older sister, Samantha's disappearance outside his baby-sitter's house. He reported her walking him to his baby-sitter's house from school one afternoon when all of a sudden, what he described as a blinding white light to investigators surrounded his sister before she disappeared without a trace. From there, he ran the few houses down to his baby-sitters, where he hysterically told his story to the Samuel and April Collins, who took his claim of the white light to be the headlights of a car when they reported it to the police.
'Despite prompting by the police that the light was caused by a vehicle's headlights as they tried to get a lead concerning the car description, McKay was insistent that there had been no vehicle in sight.
'Controversy has surrounded this case for the past seven years. Conspiracy theorists have labeled this event as a close encounter. Skeptics have labeled it as a hoax from an attention seeking adolescent, turning real life abduction events into a made up story, or a distraught boy suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. No explanation has ever been confirmed, yet the case has now been officially labeled as a vehicular abduction and closed.'
Samantha suddenly felt as if she had been splashed with cold water. Everything that had happened to her within only a few seconds a few days ago had really been a few decades. She had disappeared. Her family thought she had been abducted. Her family had been mocked and ridiculed by the media for twenty years because of her.
She set the paper back down on his desk, running her hands through her hair.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just so…"
"Mad?" Jack offered.
Samantha laughed bitterly. "Yeah."
Then a thought occurred to her. "How long ago was Torchwood set up?"
Jack looked at her, his eyebrows furrowed. "A while," he answered carefully. "This branch is over two hundred years old. Why?"
"So the people who worked here before you monitored the Rift, yeah?"
Jack nodded, unsure of where she was going with this.
"So what did they do when the Rift opened? Then, I mean?"
"They interviewed your brother, then they took readings from where the Rift opened in London. Since the Rift is in Cardiff, it was an anomaly in itself, how it could spread so far, so fast, and then disappear without a trace. It turned out the hurricanes in Cardiff from a couple days before had disturbed the underwater plates, making them temporarily spread to various parts of Bristol. Upon further inspection, we found that there were seven main points of extrapolation."
Samantha bit her lip. "So how many people went through?"
"One."
'Figures.'
"Seven points of time and space opened for those few moments," Jack went on. "But mostly, they were in uninhabited areas, or temporarily empty areas. We knew that you had gone through the Rift, so we looked for opening points all over the country. Torchwood is also part of a chain or organizations, so we sent alerts to every other Torchwood."
"And how many are there?"
"The Crown has set up no less than two Torchwood bases on every continent, save for Great Britain. Each base monitors one half of their dichotomic assignements. Each Torchwood, is also set up on a Rift in time and space. There are Rifts all over the world. The only continent that doesn't have one is Australia, and that's only because they're so small that the probability of them having had one was so small. It could still happen though. At any rate, if you had come out of the Rift and into the same time period, we would have known. The only thing that we could deduce was that you were either in the future or on another planet."
Samantha said nothing, letting that sink in.
"Naturally, that was out of our hands, but you were one of the many we've put into the database, just in case. Protocal, you know."
Jack's eyes were so full of sympathy, so full of pity. It hurt her to look at him. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.
"Really?" Her tone was more doubtful than hostile.
"If I could give it all back to you, I would."
"You don't even know me."
His silence made a chill run up her spine. It was as if his lack of agreeing with her was a form of counter-argument, like he really did know her.
"Still," he said after a beat. "I know what you're going through."
She fought the urge to lash out at him, to tell him that he had no right to say that when he had no idea what she was going through, but she had had enough emotional breakdowns to last her a lifetime, so she bit her tongue.
"I was left in a time that wasn't my own," Jack went on, surprising her, as if he knew perfectly well what she wanted to do. "I was abandoned, by my friend, when I needed him the most. I was lost, alone, and broken, in a time where I knew no one and no one knew me."
Samantha looked up at him, as if seeing him as a different person. Suddenly, she felt closer to him, more connected than she had before. They had a link now, something that made them alike in a way that no one else could understand. Then she felt small, insignificant, because she still had her family. He didn't.
"I'm sorry," she said, but the words seemed inadequate, like there was something more to say even though she didn't know what it was.
He nodded. "It was a long time ago. The point is, I got through it. I got through it and so will you."
"How?" she asked. "How did you get through it?"
Jack fixed his gaze on her with those penetrating blue eyes. "I got up each morning. I went through the day. I faced the world. It was hard, but I did. Then I found myself outside, amongst the people who had no idea what was going on around them every day, and it was better. I wasn't even thinking about it. It snuck up on me. It got better for me, and it will get better for you."
Samantha said nothing, but his words gave her hope. For the first time since that whole mess started, she felt hope that maybe, just maybe, she could find some way to live her life. She might not get the life she had planned for herself, but maybe she could make another one.
Life is what happens when you're too busy making plans. Her father quoting John Lennon echoed in her mind, like a memory from long ago when in actuality, it was only a few days for her. That was his life motto, one he lived by faithfully. His obsession with the Beatles's diminished his credibility in the philosophy department, but the point still stood with him.
"I hope so," was all she said.
Jack did not say anything for a while. When he did speak, his voice was even.
"I'll take you to your brother's when you're ready," he said. "You can stay here for a couple of days if you want. Just say the word."
She nodded and he turned to leave the room. "Jack?"
He turned back to her, raising his head expectantly.
"Thanks."
He smiled. "No problem."
A/N: Reunion should be up next.
Not sure exactly if there are more Torchwoods outside of the U.K., or if they ever elaborated on this on the show, so that bit about two Torchwoods on every continent was creative license, or in my case license, but it just seems odd to me that there would only be one Rift in time and space on a planet this size, so I'm just assuming there are more.
