Chapter Summary: Jenny comes to the rescue, and Jack flirts.
Author's Note: There's some deviation from Torchwood canon, and it will eventually deviate from Doctor Who, too, since there does have to be an eventual reunion, yeah? Which has some timey-wimey potential effects that'll be a blast to explore.
Beta: GoingToTheTardis
Jack groaned as he came fully awake in a jail cell.
He sat up and reached to check his weapons. The gun he'd been using was gone, of course; his captors had rudely decided to avoid setting his loaded weapon next to him on the cot. His backup, though, was still in place, as usual. They'd left him in his clothes, too.
The cell was concrete, made of large, rough bricks, and the door was the standard set of metal bars. From where he sat, he couldn't see anyone else.
He rubbed his temples. It wasn't exactly like death was easy, but it was taking him a bit longer than usual to recover from this one. Maybe it was lingering effects from the teleport. He hadn't been teleporting regularly for nearly a century, after all, and the effects were usually worse without practice. Add in the lack of warning and then the minor matter of being shot to death, and Jack was feeling a little worse for the wear.
He stood and walked to the door of the cell, looking out and seeing no guards in the hall. He could see a couple other cells, but not their occupants. The one directly across from him seemed empty.
Jack studied the locking mechanism on the door. It was relatively simple, as far as these kinds of locks went, but it probably wouldn't give way to the small weapon he'd been able to retain.
"Anyone out there?" he called through the bars. There was no immediate response. "Probably don't speak my language, anyway," he muttered.
Of the technology he missed most from before his last, poorly executed jump through time, a good universal translator topped the list.
He eyed the lock again.
Well, a good translator and maybe the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
Torchwood had some great tech, of course, but it was still ages behind what he was used to, and he hadn't had even the rudimentary translator on him when he'd been investigating before the teleport, knowing his target spoke a language his was fluent in. He might have better gadgets if he'd agreed to work with Torchwood more regularly, but it just hadn't felt right, and he'd stuck to the occasional freelance work.
He'd had plenty of time to learn languages while hoping to find the Doctor, and he'd absorbed a good number of them. Between that and his fluency in body language, he usually got along fine. When the person he was trying to communicate with was receptive to his advances, things were usually better than fine.
In a jail cell, on a planet he didn't know, with nobody in sight? Not his best set of circumstances.
Then again, he'd dealt with worse situations, too.
Sighing, he put his gun back out of sight, turned, and started a search of the cell. He found a piece of bedspring he might be able to use to open the lock, but it would be a longshot. His best bet would be to wait and see what was going to happen.
It wasn't like he didn't have enough time.
At the sound of footsteps approaching, he turned back to the doorway as one of the locals approached. What had Jenny called them? Xark'nithians.
"Flurxixt snarth rexixith," the female guard grumbled at him.
"I don't have a clue what you're saying," he said, approaching the guard, disarming grin firmly in place. "Of course, that doesn't mean we can't get out of here and enjoy ourselves."
The guard tensed and scowled, clearly telling him off for his obvious flirtation.
"That's fine," said Jack. "Your loss. You can just let me outta here, and we don't have to do a thing. I'll just be on my way."
An unarmed Xark'nithian came through the hallway with a cart of food. He held a tray and looked warily at Jack, then at the guard, without approaching.
"Xart!" The guard gestured with her gun, motioning for Jack to step away from the bars.
He took a single step backward, holding up his hands and watching as the person holding the food put it through the bars at an angle, some sort of clear wrap keeping most of the food in the tiny tray. Jack took a shuffling step forward as the assistant withdrew, pointing his head toward the food but keeping his attention on the guard, who was watching the assistant ready food for the next cell.
The guard had keys on her belt, and she was standing close enough that Jack could reach them if he was subtle enough about it. He slid his hand through the bars and brushed against cool metal before the guard spun around, yelling, aiming her weapon and readying it.
"Okay, okay," said Jack, backing away again. "I had to try, you understand."
The guard kept her weapon trained on him until the assistant had finished. Jack waited until they left to approach his food, a black, smelly mush he decided he wasn't yet hungry enough to eat.
He set it next to his cot and lay down on his back, hands under his head. He found himself wondering about Jenny. There was something about her that attracted him, not that attraction was such an unusual thing for him, but she had something about her, something familiar, maybe, but he was sure he'd remember her if they'd met.
She was something, though. Looks, humor, and ass-kicking all in one tight little package? Hopefully, she'd made it away safely after he'd been taken down.
He sat up again at the sound of quick footsteps and saw the object of his thoughts approaching the jail cell, keys in hand. He joined her as she unlocked the door.
"Hello, Blondie," he said, turning his charm on full blast. "Fancy seeing you here."
"I have a name, you know," she said, her lips pulled up to one side and lessening some of the annoyance in her words. "Might want to use it since I'm the one saving you."
~O~O~O~
Jack chuckled.
"Okay, then," he said, his voice dropping ever so slightly. "It's good seeing you, Jenny."
Ignoring the way he turned her name into a caress, she rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's get out of this place." She opened the cell door, releasing Jack, who looked pretty good for someone who'd been dead or nearly so just hours earlier. "The guard will be coming back through any time now." In forty-five point three seconds, she specified silently, having quickly tired of the odd reactions her sense of time seemed to spark in people. They didn't really have time for her to explain that particular ability at the moment.
"Not exactly much here for them to guard," commented Jack as they began walking briskly past empty cells.
"This isn't where they keep people, not really, just the ones headed for execution. They keep long-term prisoners elsewhere," she said. "We're headed there next."
"Won't that have more guards?" he asked.
"Yeah, most likely." They came to a T in the hallway, and she checked left before they turned right. "Can't exactly rescue everyone else without risking it, though."
"So you're planning a major rescue mission. Right now. Unarmed." Only slight skepticism tinged his tone. Instead, he sounded… "Oh, I am so turned on right now."
Jenny laughed in surprise. "Really not the time, Jack. And anyway, I never said I was unarmed. I just don't use weapons unless they're needed."
"I'll get back to asking where you're hiding a weapon later," Jack said, "but what's the plan here? We get everyone out of their cages, where are they gonna go that the guards won't just round them up again?"
"We'll need a diversion," she said. "One of us can distract the guards while the other unlocks the cells. There are air vents that we can lead the prisoners to, and they lead right back to the surface."
"And the guards won't just follow them up?"
She shook her head. "They don't climb, the locals. They hardly even look up, which is how I got away."
Jack made a thoughtful noise. "Any ideas why don't they work with 'up'?"
"Found a few books that helped answer that for me, after I picked up a bit of the language," she explained as she checked out another T junction and then kept walking. "Early in their history, they faced a lot of underground predators, so they kept their attention downward, ready to jump away. On top of that, there were these giant birds that would snack on them, but only if they came up close enough to the tree branches."
"So no moving higher, hmm?" Jack asked.
"Right. As long as they kept their attention and their feet on the earth, they were safe. Once they built cities, they made sure the ground was covered in this thick concrete," she said, patting a wall, "and they kept the city dense, less ground to cover up."
"And in the meantime, if we need to escape, we just need to go up."
"Exactly." She grinned.
"Okay, then," he said. "You know where everything is, so I'll handle the diversion. How much farther 'til-"
Jenny held up a hand to interrupt him, slipping into military hand signals to indicate that she'd heard a sound, that they were very close, and that they needed to be quiet.
A slight narrowing of his eyes and a decisive nod indicated that he'd understood, and she smiled again before making her way down the hall more carefully, retrieving her weapon and ignoring the feel of Jack's eyes on her.
She moved almost silently, inherent knowledge combining with years of practice, until she saw a guard's back in the section she and Jack were approaching. She pointed him out to Jack, who nodded and indicated the start of another hallway across from where the guard stood, then quirked an eyebrow in question.
Jenny nodded again, and Jack signed, using a combination of military signals and other signs to ask a question: Kiss for good luck?
Jenny rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, then back down to the smirking captain. She reached for him, using her free hand to pull his face toward hers, planting her lips firmly on his cheek and then suppressing a laugh at his look of surprise. Her eyes darted toward the guard again, then she looked back at Jack and pointed in the direction of the branching hallway.
Jack stood straight, bringing his feet together and giving her a smart salute. Jenny held back another chuckle as he turned and sauntered up to the guard while she watched, mostly hidden from the guard's line of sight, hugging the curved wall.
Her focus was split only slightly, multitasking one of her specialties, as she considered her current partner. The pull of him was still there, as was the repulsion that had caused a slight churn in her stomach as she'd pressed her cool lips to his warm skin, but the repelling force was already lessening, reminding her of the time she'd been trapped in a pile of refuse for a few hours; at first, the smell had been nearly unbearable, but then she'd gotten used to it, and it had almost faded away.
Of course, it had burnt out her ability to smell anything properly for the next day and a half, but still, maybe it would keep being easier to be around him if, for whatever reason, they stuck together.
She watched him tap the guard on the shoulder.
"Hi," he said suggestively when the man turned. Jack grabbed the guard's gun, looked over the guard's shoulder, and then ran at full speed down the adjacent corridor. The guard followed, pulling a spare gun off his belt, then three more guards followed behind, all clamoring about the escaped prisoner.
Jenny waited a few seconds before sneaking into the now-clear hallway, sending a silent wish for luck in Jack's direction and moving to the first occupied cell. She took the keys off her belt and unlocked the door as quickly as she could without making too much noise, then motioned for the captive to stay quiet and follow her. She repeated the process until the eighteen occupied cells had been emptied, then led the various species to the access panel and watched as they climbed toward freedom and the empty room above.
She looked around after the last captive had started the climb, but not seeing Jack, she closed the door and went off in search of her companion once more.