- 11 -
Owen opened the Rift, Jack and I returned to our own time, and it was almost immediately obvious that something had gone wrong. Reports started coming in from all over the world about time slips with Roman legionaries from 2000 years ago showing up, space craft over the Taj Mahal, and an outbreak of the Black Death in Cardiff. We'd been conned into fully opening the Rift, which released a gigantic, demonic being named Abaddon whose shadow meant death. Jack took it on himself, reasoning that since he couldn't die he might be able to cancel out Abaddon's power. And he was right. Abaddon vanished in a blaze of light, everything reset with those his power killed now alive again, and the time anomalies went away.
And all it cost us was Jack.
"When he'd been killed before he returned to life within minutes," I explained to Mary, "but not this time."
We were in my kitchen together, with me wolfing down breakfast while Mary watched indulgently. When I finally got home I'd been too tired even to don the pendant and talk to Mary. I collapsed on the bed fully clothed and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. When I woke I phoned the Hub then slipped the pendant on so that Mary would appear before me and we could talk.
"How long has it been?" she asked.
"Fifteen hours," I said, checking my wristwatch. "Gwen is keeping a vigil over him."
"You said you were conned into fully opening the Rift. Who by?"
"Bilis Manger."
"The harmless old queen who ran the Ritz dance hall?!"
"Not so harmless, it turns out. How well did you know him?"
"Apparently not as well as I thought. The bar at the Ritz was one of my favourite watering holes during the war, and Bilis was a reliable source of the sort of gossip that can give a private investigator the leads she needs. I was certainly glad I was there on the night in 1941 when a certain beautiful Japanese girl entered the bar."
I smiled at the memory, then frowned.
"That was our first kiss, for you," I said, "and my last. In the flesh, at least."
"So far, my love, so far. I'm blessed to have a very clever girlfriend, so when your reintegrator restores me you've got a lot more kisses coming your way. I may take you in my arms and never let you go."
"I can think of worse fates."
Mary regarded me thoughtfully.
"I know how confident I usually seem," she said, "how confident I usually am, but before I approached you in this time, in that other bar, my mouth was dry and I was as nervous as any schoolgirl trying to summon up the courage to ask another girl out on a date. That's how much it meant to me not to screw things up."
"I'd never have guessed, and in any case I'd already told you in 1941 how close we were, so you knew things were going to happen between us."
"Time is complicated and what we think of as 'the present' isn't always fixed."
"I wish I could speed up the growth of that damn crystal," I said, "but it's going to take as long as it takes. Which is what Gwen is saying about Jack's resurrection. She's absolutely convinced he will wake up eventually. I'm not so sure."
- 12 -
A few nights later Mary and I were walking hand in hand along an idyllic beach she had conjured up in her dreamscape, the ringed magnificence of Saturn filling the sky as the warm Pacific waters washed over our feet, when she turned and faced me.
"This seems the perfect place for this," she said.
"The perfect place for what?"
She dropped to one knee and held out a small box containing a ring.
"Toshiko Sato," she said. "Will you marry me?"
"I..I don't know what to say."
"Say yes."
"Yes, of course yes, but we can't legally get married, Mary, not yet."
"No, but it's obvious that legalisation of gay marriage in the UK is only a couple of years away so we can make it legal in the real world then. In the meantime there's nothing to stop us getting married in this one, and I don't want to wait."
And I realised that I didn't want to either.
"OK, let's do it!"
Mary stood up, took me in her arms, and we sealed the deal with a long kiss.
"I have a lot of planning to do," she said, excitedly, "to make sure everything is perfect and then, when the time is right, you and I are getting wed, Toshiko Sato."
When Jack woke up, we were all happy to have him back...and then he almost immediately vanished. It seemed like a sign, so that very night was the night Mary and I got married.
When I woke in the dreamscape Mary had created for us I gasped. We were clad in identical glowing wedding dresses with impossibly long trains that floated in the air behind us. And that wasn't all.
"This is Lothlorien," I said, marvelling at all the waterfalls, "as depicted in the Peter Jackson movies. It's the perfect venue, but how did you know?"
"You have all the books and the DVD Extended Editions of all three movies on a shelf in your flat," said Mary, grinning. "Only serious fans have those. Oh, and the wedding band is the Beatles in their youthful prime."
Mary took my hand and we glided down the aisle together to where Galadriel was waiting. We passed between family and friends, both living and departed, all of whom were happy for us. At the altar we turned and faced each other, holding hands.
"Since time immemorial it has been the tradition of both humans and elves to pledge themselves to that other who shares their heart," said Galadriel. "It is that union of two as one, both physical and spiritual, that we are here to celebrate today. This being so, do you Mary take Toshiko as your wife, to love and to cherish her for all the days together that fate has allotted you?"
"I do," said Mary.
"And do you Toshiko take Mary as your wife, to love and to cherish her for all the days together that fate has allotted you?"
"I do," I said.
"The in the name of Eru and the Valar, I declare you wed. You may now consummate your union."
And with that we both slowly rose off the ground, spiralling around each other as we rose ever upwards. Far below us the Beatles began to play and all the wedding guests began to dance together, their chairs fading away. Mary and I soared up into the clouds, eventually settling on one, our wedding gowns turning to mist and drifting away, leaving us naked. On that fluffy cloud we made love for the first time as a married couple.
It was the happiest day of my life.
- 13 -
Time passed. I moved out of the old flat I'd been renting in Pontcanna since arriving in Cardiff and into a modern apartment I bought in a new development on the bay itself. It was a big improvement and only a few minutes walk from the Hub. The others were puzzled when I'd always turn down opportunities to socialise by saying I wanted to have an early night... but oh those early nights! Meanwhile, we learned to run things without Jack...
...and then he returned.
"When we asked him where he'd been he said he'd found his doctor," I told Mary later, "and then almost immediately someone from his past shows up. Captain John Hart was charismatic, and also a complete bastard." "Sounds like Jack."
"At least Jack hasn't tried to kill us."
"Yet."
On my computer pad I called up CCTV footage of the restaurant confrontation between the pair for Mary to see.
"Anyway, it turns out they both used to work for something called the Time Agency and that John had found someone called Gray, who Jack had been looking for. And he won't give us anything about all this either. Can you believe it?"
"Of Jack Harkness? Absolutely."
"And yet if anything you have more secrets than he does. You've told me so many stories from your life over the past few months. You're my very own Scheherezade."
"That's sweet," she chuckled, "but I hope it won't be 1001 nights until the reintegrator is ready."
Mary and I were deliriously happy, and I thought we'd have decades together. Then everything changed.
It began on the eve of an annual event. Mary and I were dancing to Abba in my apartment. Unable to touch except in her dreamscape we might be, but dancing was something normal we could enjoy together in the real world.
"So Tommy Brockless gets thawed out tomorrow," said Mary, noting that I'd circled the day on my calendar. "This will be what...your third day with him?"
"Fourth," I said, smiling at the thought of seeing him again.
Tommy was a soldier put on ice in 1918, Torchwood having used alien cryogenics since Victorian times. Instructions left by our predecessors had told us we'd need him one day, but not why. A buzzer sounded. "Looks like I have a visitor," I said, turning down the music and checking the doorbell camera. "It's Jack. He's never called here before. I wonder what he wants?"
I found out when the lift brought him up to the apartment a few minutes later. He was not alone. Mary shouted a warning.
"Adam! Oh no, Toshiko, look out..!"
But it was Jack who grabbed me.
"Adam's here to help," he said.
"Hello, Lady Mary," said Jack's companion.
He could see Mary! How could he see Mary? He placed a hand on my shoulder.
"You will throw the pendant out of your window where it will shatter on the pavement below, then you will show Jack around your apartment, forgetting I was ever here. You will also forget ever knowing that Mary survived, just as Jack now has."
And so I did.