Two updates in one day, so make sure you're reading chapter five before this one!

Jack and Jenny finish their conversation and their trip to Earth and form a plan (or not) to rescue the missing agents and retrieve what they need for the vortex manipulator.

Beta: GoingToTheTardis with guest services from ScullyWolf (except then I went and fiddled, so any errors are even more mine than usual)

"Yeah, but I've never been able to find any trace of them." Jenny sat back on her heels, her body still angled toward his. "He was a Time Lord. He called himself the Doctor."

"You're kidding me, right?"

Jenny sat up straight, feeling exposed now that Jack's mood had changed without any apparent cause. Unless…

"Have you heard of them? Time Lords?" She had never really been able to find any information about her own race, and she only knew the tiny, cryptic details she'd gotten from her father. She and Jack had so much in common, it really shouldn't surprise her that he'd be the one who had some of the information she'd been searching for.

"Not just Time Lords." He watched her closely. "You know the guy who left me? That was the Doctor."

Jenny stared. It was impossible that the universe was this small.

"Talk about fate, huh?" Jack continued watching her, with myriad emotions crossing his face. "The Doctor's daughter. Seriously?"

She nodded slowly. Sometimes, in her wildest imaginings, she'd thought maybe she would find someone who'd heard of the Doctor, but for it to be someone who'd actually traveled with him? Not to mention…

"He left us both, apparently," she said.

Jack's arms went around her quickly, warm and comforting.

"He'd never have left you on purpose, Jenny. I'm sure of it. I don't know what happened, not when he left either of us, but there's no way the man I knew left his daughter behind."

"He did, though." She took a breath. "It does make a bit more sense, if he thought I was dead. Why would he expect me to come back?"

Jack made a sound of agreement, though he held himself still, and Jenny pulled back far enough to eye him.

"I'm not sure on this, okay?" he said. "And even if the information's right, something must have happened, because there's no way he would have left without making sure."

"Making sure of what? What information?" Jack really didn't want to say whatever he was thinking, did he?

"I think the Doctor changes bodies instead of dying. At least, that's my guess, based on some of the stuff I've found in Torchwood's files. I don't have complete access to their system. I don't technically have access to most of the stuff I've read."

So the Doctor had known, then, that she could come back to life, and still he'd left her? As if reading her thoughts, Jack shook his head.

"Like I said, if I'm right, I'm sure something happened to take him away. He wouldn't have left you on purpose."

The certainty from this man who'd traveled with him, who seemed to know the Doctor and have his own reasons to distrust the Doctor's motivations, went a long way toward soothing years of hurt.

"Believe me," Jack went on, "I've seen how hard he fights for those he cares about, and there's no way he didn't care about you."

"Okay." Her mind was a jumbled mess of thoughts about what might have happened, what had happened, what might happen in the future. "Do you know how to find him?"

Jack grimaced. "I know about where to look, but not really when. The times I know he was there, I can't exactly show up, since I was already there." He looked startled a moment before he continued. "Speaking of paradoxes, when were you born for the Doctor? I mean, what did he look like?"

"I don't know. Brown? Brown suit, brown eyes, brown hair. Skinny."

Jack nodded. "And did he travel with anyone?"

"Yeah, he had these two women with him-"

"Rose?"

"No. Donna and Martha."

He frowned slightly. "Alright. Well I mean, that sounds like the version of the Doctor I was assuming came after the one I traveled with, only I can't imagine him without Rose."

"But we should be able to find him, figure out what happened to us, yeah?"

Jack blinked at her. "Yeah, I hope so. Sorry, you look a little bit like Rose. If I didn't know how you were born, I'd think you were theirs."

"I'm definitely not, but that's odd." She settled her hands on his chest, and his grip relaxed further, his hand absently stroking her lower back. "What's any of that got to do with a paradox?"

"Oh. Well, I figured you're staying with me until you find him, but we need to make sure he doesn't meet you before you're even born in his timeline."

"Right." That made sense. Jenny had read plenty about time travel, some that felt right and some that didn't, but she hadn't had much in the way of actual experience. "So I'm staying with you, then?"

"I mean, I'm not gonna force you to." He sounded unsure, his hands pausing their movement.

"No, I'd like to stay with you, if you don't mind that I'm the Doctor's daughter."

He grinned, looking like his normal self for the first time since they'd started talking. "Believe me, that's really not a problem."

She smiled in return, sliding her hands until she found a place that made him gasp. "Still gonna do this, then?"

His reply was immediate. "Oh, yeah."

~O~O~O~

The two weeks passed quickly. The ship did much of the piloting on its own, and Jack filled Jenny in on the Doctor, relating the stories, good and bad, most from his own experience but a few from the Torchwood archives.

She'd loved it when Jack looked through her closet, seeing that all her clothes were identical save for different colors of the same shirt, and told her she dressed very much like the version of her father that he knew.

The rest of their time was spent without words. Well, at least not of the words informational sort. Instructional, enlightening, and filthy, on the other hand…

Before Jack knew it, they were coming in for landing, Jack using codes he had "borrowed" from Torchwood in case of emergency, letting out a breath of relief when they worked to get them to Earth's surface.

They landed the cloaked ship in a field not too far from a road where Jack was able to call for a cab, Jenny carrying a suitcase with some clothing and a couple books, along with a few small weapons.

"Want me to carry that for you?" he offered while they waited for their ride.

Jenny just laughed.

They arrived at his apartment without incident. It was small, but after the confines of Jenny's ship, it seemed spacious.

"Right then, where's this place we need to break into?" Jenny said after tossing her suitcase on the bed.

She had her hands on her hips and looked ready and able to take on absolutely anything.

"We should probably make a plan first," he suggested.

She grinned. "Where's the fun in that? Besides, how'd that work for you last time?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. I met you, so it wasn't a total bust."

Jenny's cheeks pinkened, something Jack hadn't seen happen outside of bed. Well, outside of bedroom activities.

"Mission wise, though, not so much, right?" she said. "Let's go through the layout of the house first, since you know where everything is, but then the longer we wait, the less likely we are to rescue anyone."

"I guess that strategy went pretty well for you in the prison." He considered it, weighing his expertise and her own, as well as any alternative options. "Okay. I'll draw a sketch of the house and then check in with Torchwood, see exactly how many are missing by this point. Hopefully nobody was stupid enough to go in after I disappeared."

He grabbed some paper and a pencil, quickly drawing what he remembered, and she studied it while he made the phone call in the next room.

"Nobody else," he said, returning, attaching the vortex manipulator to his wrist where he should've left it in the first place.

"How many are we looking for, then?" she asked, rolling up the papers as they left and tucking them into a loop on her belt, something Jack found irrationally appealing.

"Three agents, two civilians," he replied. "It looks like the three other civilians who'd been missing, they were returned, no worse for the wear other than missing memory." He winced at the knowledge that Torchwood may have been the one to remove their memories, rather than the person who'd abducted them.

"And the person whose home we're entering?"

"Human, by all appearances. No clue how she got ahold of a teleportation device that strong, but I'm glad she did since we can use it." They climbed into a waiting cab. "Don't really know much else."

Jenny nodded. "All right, then. We don't want to kill her, not if we can help it."

"Of course not," agreed Jack amicably. "She only tried to get me killed."

"If she knew how to use the device," Jenny pointed out. "We don't know that she's harmed anyone else, and if the technology isn't hers, it's possible she doesn't really know how to control it."

"You're right," he responded. "Don't really like thinking about how much worse that could've been for me, though, if that's the case."

Jenny broke from her businesslike attitude long enough to squeeze his hand, and then she returned to her questioning.

"Tell me about the people who are missing. Do they have anything in common?"

Jack answered her questions as thoroughly as possible, impressed by her knowledge, her comfort with this sort of thing. He kept up with her, followed her logic and reasoning, he was happy to admit, but even though it was something he'd studied for much longer than she'd been alive, it was something she'd been born with, and it showed.

They drove past the house that blended in perfectly in the unassuming neighborhood. Nobody would guess this to be the scene of multiple disappearances involving alien tech. They got out of the cab several blocks away and walked back toward their destination.

"I'll go to the door since she isn't expecting me, doesn't already know who I am," said Jenny as they walked, and Jack nodded.

"And while she's distracted, I'll go straight to the basement to check for prisoners or cohorts, and I'll disable the device without breaking it."

"Exactly," said Jenny with a grin, and he stopped her before they were in sight of the house, pulling her toward him for a kiss designed to show her just how much he appreciated her, from her mind to her spirit to the sweet curves he slid his hands to.

She smacked the offending hands away, letting the kiss continue for several more seconds before pulling away with another smile. "We can continue that after we've saved the day. It's a little distracting right before."

"Yes ma'am," Jack agreed, winking at her. "It's all in a day's work, isn't it? Save the day, rescue the victims, defeat the bad guy, reactivate a busted vortex manipulator, get la-"

"Shh!" Jenny put a hand over his mouth and pulled him off the street and behind a large hedge, pressing her body against his rather delightfully. After a moment, she pulled back. "Sorry, I heard someone coming."

"Superior senses?" he asked.

"Of course." She glanced down the street, then back at Jack. "Are you ready?"

"I'll follow you anywhere," he said, letting his sincerity show through and resisting a smile when she blushed again.

"Okay then. Let's go."

Jack nodded and followed Jenny, ready to take her lead.