Jack smiled softly as he saw the little parcel on his desk - neatly and carefully wrapped by deft fingers. He glanced out into the Hub, eyes searching for the shy smile that accompanied the gift every year since he'd hired her.
He remembered that day. The cold, dank, filthy cell, the hideous red jumpsuit, the unkempt hair, and above all the one thing she wanted to know… if her mother was safe.
He was the only person who'd confirm it to her. Didn't care that she wasn't meant to know; he knew all too well the pain of knowing someone you love had been captured, tortured… so screw UNIT, he'd told her. And he'd never forget the gratitude in those big, brown eyes. The gratitude that, with each year's passing, he allowed her a little more contact with her mother. The gratitude as he walked her out of that godforsaken shit hole to another life, to relative freedom.
He remembered it as if it was yesterday, not five years ago.
"You seem to know everything about me," she said. "If you're going to be my boss, can you at least tell me your name?"
"Captain Jack Harkness. Come on, we've got a long journey ahead of us. I'll arrange for your belongings to be brought to Cardiff - UNIT has handed everything over to me."
"Should I… call you Captain? Sir?"
He laughed. "Just call me Jack. Do you prefer Tosh or Toshiko?"
She smiled a little shyly. "I don't mind either."
"Okay, Either," he teased her gently. "We're stopping by my hotel room so you can have a shower and change into some proper clothes. I insisted you keep the jumpsuit so we can have a ritual burning of the hideous thing at some point." He ushered her into the SUV and drove her out, away from the prison. She held her breath, tense, as they went through the barrier, afraid they'd be stopped. But they weren't. Nobody followed them, looked askance, or asked questions. But he could see the fear in her, and gave her a reassuring smile. "No more prison," he said quietly. "That's over now."
She didn't speak as he drove to the hotel, just stared out of the window, tears dripping down her face as she cried silently. They'd almost broken her, but he hoped he could bring her back, keep her safe.
She trotted after him through the hotel reception, flinching at her reflection in the mirrored walls of the lift. When they got to his room, he handed her a pile of clean clothes and the room service menu. "We'll have lunch before we start. Decide what you want now, and I'll order it while you shower."
He could see her nervousness, the fear that she might somehow make the wrong choice or say the wrong thing, that her newfound freedom would be taken from her again. It hurt more than he wanted to admit; she was such an innocent, a loving and dutiful daughter manipulated into terrible acts and forced to witness the suffering of someone she loved.
Yeah, he'd been in a position like that, too. "Toshiko," he said softly, "I will die a thousand times before I let you go back to that place." She couldn't know just what he was promising, but it didn't matter. What mattered was the slight tremble of her lower lip, the sheen of tears in her eyes, the tiniest of smiles that signified that she finally understood she was safe. "Now, what would you like for lunch?"
"Something simple," she said quietly. "I've had so little… I don't want to make myself sick. Especially not if we've got a long journey ahead of us." She scanned the menu. "Chicken Caesar Salad would be good."
He nodded her towards the en suite. "Go scrub the prison out of your life," he said with a smile. "Hope the clothes fit, UNIT only gave basic measurements and I didn't want to go into your flat until you'd agreed to work for me. So I had to work with what I had."
"It's bound to be better than this thing," she said with a slight smile.
He stood by the window as she showered, staring out unseeing as he waited for her to reappear. Breaking her out of prison was one thing, but the suffering she'd endured had taken its toll on her; he knew she'd need a lot of support before she was able to interact with the world normally.
Finally she re-emerged out of a cloud of scented steam, looking as though she'd scrubbed her skin half-raw, her hair clinging in wet hanks around her face. The clothes were a little on the large side, but not impossibly so; she at least looked more relaxed in the simple black jeans and white kimono-style top. Holding the red jumpsuit between finger and thumb with a look of abhorrence, she asked, "What do I do with this?"
Pulling an evidence bag from his hold-all, he held it open. "Chuck it in there, we'll incinerate it later."
It wasn't long before room service brought their lunch up to the room. He tried to get her to talk as they ate, but she was still nervous and jumpy, and so very shy and awkward. So he told her a little about his travels in Japan - omitting the century he'd been there - and let her listen as she ate.
Finally ready to leave, he guided her back to the SUV again and set off for Cardiff. She slept most of the way, occasionally rousing when the traffic slowed. They made good time, arriving late in the afternoon.
As they drove through the outskirts of Cardiff, Jack glanced across at her. "I've organised a room for you at a hostel until you find somewhere to live, but you might prefer to stay at the Hub - the Torchwood base - until you find your feet a bit. It's not exactly the height of luxury, just a sleeping bag and a pillow on a mattress in an unused room - but you won't have to deal with anyone or anything other than me."
"A mattress is a luxury when all you've had is a cold concrete cell. Let alone a pillow and a sleeping bag."
"You'd rather stay there than the hostel?"
"I'm not much of a people person. I like maths and computers and languages and codes and technology. But I don't think I could deal with other people right now."
He nodded. "I suspected you'd rather acclimatise for a day or so," he commented, taking the road to the Hub. "I'm not going to introduce you to the rest of the team just yet. I'll show you around so you don't get lost, but for this evening I thought we'd have a short walk along the bay if you feel like it, get a takeaway for supper, and just chill."
She shrugged. "Anything's better than a concrete cell." She followed him through the door in the underground garage that led into the Hub, and gave a slight gasp when he ushered her into a room. "What's this?"
"In the past, it was an interrogation room - but it's been out of use for a while. I've put a mattress up on the galleried landing, along with a lamp. Down here… well, there's only really the table and chairs, but I think there's an armchair somewhere in a storage room."
Her eyes were wide as she looked around her. Granted, it was no more aesthetically pleasing than the UNIT detention centre she'd been held at, but she had space and actual furniture, lights that she could control herself - and it was warm and dry and felt safe. Hesitantly, she went up the stairs to the mezzanine landing, and saw the mattress, pillow, and sleeping bag already set up for her, a pair of pyjamas on the pillow.
She looked down the stairs. "Would you mind if I… just… have a nap?" she asked tentatively.
He smiled. "Course not. You get comfortable, and I'll have a poke around the store rooms."
Forty-five minutes later, he'd located the armchair, given it a quick check to make sure it was still serviceable, and dragged it through the corridors, grateful it was on castors. He pushed open the door of the makeshift guest room and positioned the chair in the corner of the room, placing the little footstool that went with it in front.
Pleased with how inviting it looked, he turned his attention to the soft whimpering from the gallery. Taking the steps two at a time, he could see Toshiko curled up into a tiny ball, asleep but in the clutches of a nightmare. She looked so young, so vulnerable and childlike, that a surge of ferocious protectiveness hit him; he wanted to gather her up in his arms and hold her, comfort her, just as he used to with Alice when she was younger.
Putting the memories of his daughter gently to one side, he crouched beside the mattress and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Toshiko? Tosh?" She jerked awake, eyes wild and scared, her terror easing as her eyes locked on his. "Just a nightmare," he said soothingly. "You're safe here, okay?"
She nodded, the tension slowly leaving her.
"Come on, let's get some fresh air," he said with a smile, standing up. He showed her where the toilets and showers were on the way through the Hub, where her workstation would be, and how to work the cog door from the inside.
They ambled along the waterfront for a while, circling back to the Roald Dahl Plass to take the lift back down via a couple of shops to pick up bits and pieces to make the room more comfortable, and food for them to share.
As Tosh laid out food on the plates, Jack put together the reading lamp and stacked a few books on the single shelf. "Looks a bit more welcoming now," he said with a smile as he sat opposite her at the little table. "It'll tide you over until you have somewhere more permanent."
She returned his smile with a quiet one of her own. "What work will I be doing?" she asked as she tucked into the food with a sea air-enhanced appetite.
"There's a rift in time and space running through the city, and we get a lot of flotsam and jetsam, space debris, washing up around the place. Lots of alien artefacts. Primarily, you'll be working on them, trying to figure out what they do."
Her eyes lit up. "That sounds fascinating," she said.
He chuckled. "It'll certainly keep you busy. There'll be translations to do from alien languages into English, hacking into secure databases… never a dull day." He smiled indulgently at her obvious excitement. "But that's for tomorrow."
"How big is the team?"
"Just the four of us, at the moment - I'm recruiting new members so we're likely to go up to five. Suzie Costello is my second-in-command; she's our weapons expert. Sebastian Vaughan is the other team member. I'm looking for a full-time medical officer to complete the team."
They chatted a while, until it was obvious Toshiko could barely keep her eyes open.
"I'll leave you to it," Jack said quietly as he got up. "See you in the morning."
"Aren't you going to open it?"
He smiled quickly at Tosh, who'd come to stand in the doorway of his office. "Sorry. Zoned out for a moment." He carefully picked away at the tape, opening up the box that he knew would contain another netsuke for his collection. Five of them, there'd be now.
This time, though, there was a handwritten note as well - just three words that meant the world to him.
Can I stay?
He got up from his desk slowly, and held his arms out to her, hugging her tightly as she threw her arms around his neck in her inimitable childlike innocence. "Course you can, Tosh."