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Most days, Fee Hopkins dressed like a man. It served a triple purpose: it hid her baby bump, it put a rare smile on her face when a memory of her husband would resurface, and it allowed her to chase aliens across the city without sexism slowing her down. The last reason was the salient reason, because no matter how defiant she was of gender stereotypes, she could not allow a screaming match with a bigoted local to cost lives. Just because the country was at war, hanging by a thread to its collective sanity, didn’t mean the Rift showed Cardiff any mercy.
When the war had broken out, Fee had been a bright-eyed twenty-something of the opinion that finding a caveman in her parents’ kitchen that fateful evening had been a blessing. She finally was in a position to prove herself, running on patriotism and tenacity and not much else, given how often she fell asleep on Jack’s paperwork. Fee now looked back on that young girl as a naive fool who should’ve let destiny—and all the rest of the otherworldly experiences she had experienced since that night—leave her alone. But they hadn’t, and now she had a team of five reporting to her—for whom she felt a faint sense of pride as they survived against all the odds, threats alien and human alike.
She could not, however, be proud of herself. The leadership position had been far from her's when this nightmare started and half the team had been shipped off to the front lines. Half of what remained favoured munitions jobs to contribute to the war effort, and then Tiffany Ellis had disintegrated in her hands after absorbing an unknown charge that hadn’t even been fired at her. Surely if Tiffany has thought about it, she could’ve pushed Fee away or counted on her to save her own skin or done anything other than smile through the pain of her body turning against her as Fee sobbed.
The leadership position had been a nightmare ever since she’d inherited it. It did not help that she was all alone, bar the coming baby. The morning sickness had started less than a week after Wade’s honorary medals had arrived in the post, infinitely more colourful than the standard letter of condolences that followed. She was a widower, an expecting mother and Torchwood.
Most days, Fee Hopkins dressed like a man. Today was another one of those days. Fee didn’t like to admit it, but in one of Wade Hopkins’ old knee-length coats with threads unravelling at the sleeves, she felt safer and stronger than she did in her neat-as-a-pin standard-issue pinafore.
And, judging by the two men at her door, she was going to need a bit of that strength. One of them was baby-faced with untidy brown hair, and the other seemed to propped up against him face-first with his eyes shut and a familiar smile on his face. The untidy one was outfitted peculiarly in a bow tie that clashed with his braces and tartan get-up.
“Ah, Fee! You’re home,” the long-haired stranger exclaimed with an unsettling amount of happiness and familiarity. His smile was full of grandeur she felt the situation didn’t qualify for. “I believe you know the captain.”
Cautiously, Fee approached him and Jack: now recognisable, although his coat looked worse for wear and his stubble was a shock to the system. With her left hand, she located her penknife in Wade’s coat pocket. “Knew him. Who are you?”
A sense of relief settled on the stranger’s face as she stepped closer. “Just passing by. I was investigating a hole in time and space before I bumped into Jack. Not that he’ll remember that I was ever here.”
Fee raised an eyebrow. “Retcon?” Did this mysterious man—who haunted doorstops at night with unconscious co-workers from four years past—have access to one of Torchwood’s most closely guarded secrets?
“Old-fashioned alcohol, and the benefit of hindsight. I forgot that his tolerance to the stuff isn’t what it will be, but then again nothing is as I remember it. Not yet. Timey-wimey shenanigans. Makes it all the more exciting when it all falls into place.”
She took a deep breath before releasing it with a groan and removing her hand from her pocket, knife-free. “Fine. If I take Jack off your hands, will you leave me alone… sir?”
“You can’t just let me give him to you just like that,” the man complained loudly. “You have to put up a fight or something. Ask more questions. You don’t know me!”
“Try me. I hunt aliens for a living. A drunk stranger who somehow knows me has turned up on my doorstep with a man who I saw last in hospital with a bullet wound in his head. I’m really tired, probably making half of this up, and I imagine it’s not going to start making sense if I bombard you with questions. Take it or leave it.”
He pulled a face. It made Fee want to smile nicely at him and retract her words. She didn’t. This man was decidedly unsettling in his mannerisms, to say the least.
The stranger's voice was indignant as he spoke. “I’m not drunk. Only had one ginger biscuit. But I suppose Amy will be wondering where I am. You see, I left her and Rory in the TARDIS, which is on that street-“ He tried to turn to point but Jack’s body shifted with the movement and he ended up with a faceful of the man’s infamous greatcoat. He made a mggfjggh noise, then with an exaggerated expression of annoyance, he rearranged Jack’s slumped form so that he had his back against the door. The captain was clearly incredibly drunk, because Fee had seen him jerk up from being sound asleep at the sound of someone breathing.
The stranger brushed himself down, straightened his bow tie and cleared his throat. “The street with the nice red telephone box on it.” He smiled as if this was an inside joke between the two of them. “Love a good telephone box, me. Better be going, wouldn’t want Amy to have grounds to guilt trip me into a trip to the Bahamas.”
Fee didn’t climb up the steps to her front door until he had passed her by. She checked Jack’s pulse point, vaguely aware she probably should’ve done that earlier. It was that damn man distracting her.
Said man coughed. Apparently, he wasn’t gone yet. “Fee? Don’t be alarmed if you see me around. You’ve been very patient with me, but it should start making sense soon. You’ll just have to wait a little while longer. And Jack’ll be needing an aspirin.”
She didn’t do him the courtesy of showing a sign of acknowledgment. According to his pulse, Jack was alive, but she had to admit aspirin was probably due. Then, in the morning, Jack could thank her by helping her figure out who on Earth—or any other planet—that stranger had been.
—
Fee was not accustomed to the sound of silence. High-pitched shrieks that made her ears ring, giggles that usually meant something dangerous was about to go down, and babbling she couldn’t make heads or tails of was more like it. Alex was not a quiet child by any means, and took any excuse to make a fuss.
But silence in the Hub, even after hours, was more frightening than finding the place covered in slime and her co-workers suspended from the ceiling screaming (which had happened less than a fortnight ago, and they still hadn’t caught the culprit).
“Alex?” Fee called, bending down to look under an empty desk for her wayward son. “Nick?”
There was no response from either the toddler or Torchwood’s secretary—Nicholas Forrester—who’d volunteered for babysitting duty. After a few seconds of silence, Fee removed her gun from its thigh holster and stuck it out in front of her protectively.
“There’s no need for that,” an indignant voice said, causing her to spin around to face a slim man with a shock of long mousy brown hair.
Fee narrowed her eyes at him before recognition hit her and she relaxed the hand holding her gun. “You. Where’s my son?”
“Hang on a minute-“ the stranger who wasn’t really a stranger said, eyebrows furrowed in confusion, before being interrupted by his companion. The effect was that Fee could make out neither of their words, but took the opportunity to observe the stranger’s friend. She had long legs and hair a different kind of ginger to Fee’s own, but the one thing that made her stand out to Fee was her cropped trousers and open shirt with its criss-cross pattern. It seemed she wasn’t the only one more comfortable in men’s clothing.
Fee holstered her gun again, out of sight, with a weighted sigh. “Where’s Alex? He’s small, fast and should be dressed in yellow. Makes him easier to spot.”
“He’s yours? Poor lad was off his feet when we arrived, put him to bed somewhere over there. I think it was in the guest room. Down a ladder. Why does Torchwood have a guest room down a ladder? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to come and stay.”
She was almost grateful when the redhead took over from her socially inept friend, until the inflection in her tone signified a question. “How do you know the Doctor?”
“Timely-wimey stuff,” Fee contributed, moving past them and making the way to her office. “Wait… did you say you’re the Doctor?”
The stranger—or the Doctor as he could now be known—raised an eyebrow. “Yes. I thought you knew me.”
Fee didn’t slow down as she entered her office and descended the ladder into the Hub’s only bedroom. “You? Jack’s delusional friend? You’re the greatest single threat to our species? The reason Torchwood was established?”
The Doctor knelt down next to the top of the ladder to continue the conversation. His friend rolled her eyes and followed Fee down the ladder into the bedroom. It was a decent-sized box shape, with a double bed against one wall and filing cabinets covering the other.
The time-lord spoke with an air of annoyance. “I’m not delusional. You used my word. Timey-wimey is my word. Delusional people don’t make up words. People like me do. Me and Shakespeare. Birds of a feather. Okay, I see your point.”
“Never mind that,” Fee said, tone hushed as she tucked her son in. “Thanks for bringing him down here. I have to ask, though, we’re not in immediate danger, are we?”
The Doctor huffed. After a glare from his friend, he began to climb down the ladder in a way which made the whole process look like a nightmare. “Why does everyone always think that?”
His companion laughed. “It’s usually true.”
Fee looked up from her son to meet eyes with the Doctor. “A hole in time and space sounds like danger, Doctor.”
“How did you know about that? I didn’t think Torchwood was that sophisticated, not yet.”
There was a beat. Fee took a deep breath before sticking out her arm stiffly. “Let’s take this from the top. My name is Fee Hopkins.”
“I’m Amy Pond,” the other redhead volunteered, before being interrupted by the disturbance of the Doctor trying to open a rusty cabinet.
“Stop that!” Fee hissed, almost grabbing his hands to pull him away before thinking better of it and backing away. Amy had no such qualms about his personal space. “You’ll wake Alex!”
The Doctor looked offended and not at all apologetic. “The more the merrier. Why do you have these cabinets if they can’t be opened without causing pain?”
Fee was absolutely exasperated with him. “They’re before my time! Nobody actually ever wants to look in them. Half my team doesn't even know this room exists. The other half would have a gun against all of our heads for the fact I even thought about bringing you down here.”
“Lovely team you've got there. Ideal quality in an employee, that. Willing to shoot at any time, no questions asked. You’re lucky I need Torchwood to thrive in order to preserve the timeline, or I’d… think of something,” the Doctor threatened in a tone that wouldn’t sour milk.
There was a rustling noise and a head of dirty blonde surfaced from underneath the sheets with bleary eyes and a yawn that was comically innocent. “Whatta goin’ on?”
“Hey, Al,” Fee whispered gently, settling again at the end of the bed. With care, she re-arranged the pillows behind him. “These are my friends, Amy and the Doctor. You don’t need to worry about them, we’ll be out of your hair by the time you’re back to sleep.”
The word sleep seemed to be all it took for Alex to shake off his tired expression and stare open-eyed at her. He spoke with a childish accent. “Not sweepy. Where’s Nick? We didn’t finish pwaying.”
Fee’s eyebrows furrowed and she switched from her soft motherly voice to her stubborn Torchwood one in a flash. “Doctor, where’s Nick? He’s about your height, shoulder-length dark hair and heavily asthmatic. Dresses a bit like you, actually.”
“Heavily asthmatic? What’s he doing working for you?” the Doctor asked, scratching his head.
“Don’t dodge the question.” Fee sighed, stroking Alex’s hair in a veiled attempt to try to send him back to sleep. “Nick was the only good help we could get during wartime. Sometimes we need him to pretend to be in charge or we never get stuff done.”
Alex yawned. “I wike Nick.”
The Doctor shuffled awkwardly, now ransacking the bedside drawers by the bed, which were easier to open and probably far less likely to contain sensitive material. “You have notebooks with your logo printed on?”
“Answer the question.” Fee stood, exasperation giving anger flashing in her eyes.
The Doctor mumbled at first, then repeated himself. “I may have accidentally let Amy punch him when he found us.”
Fee let out a laugh that was more a release of fear than a sign of cheer. “On accident. Of course.”
Amy shrugged. “Complete accident.”
—
“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream… no?”
Alex screwed up his nose. “You weird.”
“We don’t call people weird, Alex,” Fee criticised, bending down to clean excess ice-cream from her son’s face. “Human or alien, okay?”
The wrinkles in his nose only became more pronounced. “Christopher says his mother says that aliens aren’t real.”
“Well,” the Doctor proclaimed flippantly, licking the last of his ice-cream from his fingers, “it’s our secret, Al.”
Fee smiled at the affectionate use of the nickname, and held her son’s hand as they continued down the road. They came to the corner before the playpark, and Alex let go in favour of running the rest of the way to his current favourite thing in the world—the swing set.
“You’re great with kids,” Fee observed. She waved encouragingly at Alex when he turned back briefly to check on her.
He sighed. “No, I’m not. I’m terrible with kids. Terrible with any kind of human really, even after all this time.”
Fee rolled her eyes, before settling on a bench next to the playground. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Even humans aren’t great with each other all the time.” She watched him sink into the seat next to her with a cocked head. “What is it?”
“All these visits,” he began, slowly and carefully, “have been me trying to deal with my own guilt. You died, right before my eyes, and I couldn’t stop it from happening. And then… it was so hard to say goodbye, what with Alex and…”
“Hey,” she whispered, putting a tentative hand in his shoulder. “It’s okay. You can let me go. Or not. I’ll still be here, in some shape or form, for you to keep visiting. There’s always a space for you here with us.”
She pretended not to hear him as he clenched his teeth, face painfully blank. “I wasn’t supposed to care this much.”
Fee wasn't meant to care either, but that wasn't how the world (not the world, she corrected herself as she looked over at the Doctor, the universe) worked.
—
“Torchwood really are too arrogant for their own good,” a familiar voice remarked, bringing a smile to Fee’s space in spite of her day.
“Excuse me, sir?” Jack drawled, coming into sight just behind the Doctor. His hair was thoroughly ruffled, and Fee couldn’t remember if it was like that before the explosion. Soot stained his cheeks, and he was definitely going to need a new shirt.
The effect of Jack's appearance was like a switch had been flipped. The Doctor stiffened and his tone became flat. “Torchwood. That’s you, right?”
Jack gave the time-lord a look up and down before correcting his posture. “That’s me, sir. But let Fee here take some of the credit for saving your pretty face too.”
“I have no doubt that she did more than you..?”
Fee tried not to shy away in a mixture of amusement and embarrassment at the exchange. Jack’s ultimate pick-up line was his name. The Doctor had dug himself into a deep hole, which he likely knew.
They were beginning to draw a crowd of the locals, some of them wearing the aftermath of the recent explosion along with their bewilderment and anger.
“Captain Jack Harkness.” There was a handshake in which they both lingered too long. Jack opened his mouth to speak, but a watching worker descended on his silence like a bloodthirsty shark.
“So you’re Torchwood? The ones that parade our streets and destroy our businesses in the name of protecting us?” the oil-stained worker demanded, the words not so much a question as an accusation.
Jack’s pause seemed to fuel the crowd gathering around him. “Yeah! That one is a girl, even!”
This cry was greeted with vicious mutterings. Fee took one look at the tottering mob and pulled off her loose cap in a grand, cinema-worthy movement that freed waves of ginger hair.
Silence fell. Jack took it as an invitation to address the crowd. “Yes, we’re Torchwood. Yes, our leader is Felicity Hopkins. An honest to God local heroine. And anyone who has a problem with that is probably also going to have a problem with us sitting by and laughing as aliens destroy your city. So either you back down and clear off, or I show you a piece of what we showed those aliens.”
There were noises of dissent, and the crowd spread like scared chicken. There was a sharp sound as Jack released his breath and wiped his face. The threats he’d made would never have been carried through, but Jack could be convincing enough to kill even his own mojo. He turned back to the Doctor with a smirk that was now entirely put-on. “Got a name?”
The Doctor shook his head with a mixture of disbelief and concealed humour.
Jack shrugged with a practiced casualness. “Figured. Meet you back at the Hub, Fee.” With that, he strode off into the distance and the Doctor pinched his eyes shut. The tension in the air was so thick it could’ve been cut with a real, non-metaphorical knife.
That had been a display of raw history, even without Jack acknowledging the Doctor’s identity.
“He didn’t recognise you at all,” Fee remarked. “Either you’re a great liar or you owe me an explanation.”
The alien ran his fingers through his long hair with a wince. “I haven’t explained it yet? Sorry. I didn’t intend to muck the timelines up.” There was a pause. “Again.”
An eyebrow was raised. “So I’ll find out some enough?” He nodded. “That’s good enough for me. See you around.”
Fee followed Jack away from the Bay with a grin on her face and her hair whipping in the wind behind her. She never had liked boring.
—
The day Fee knew she was going to die started like any other. She got up, saw Alex off to school in an ankle-length dress, and arrived at the Hub in a waistcoat and trousers. She smiled at Nick and accepted a lukewarm cup of tea from Hilary graciously, because she wasn’t about to upset the girl on her death day.
In many ways, Hilary was an unwelcome reminder of Fee when she’d first joined Torchwood. The girl had a big heart and fierce sense of determination rivalled only by her ability to always say the right thing. The bombshell that was going to be dropped on her the next morning, that Torchwood was now hers, would undeniably leave its mark like it had on Fee. But she had come to see that she wouldn’t have had it any other way, and eventually so would Hilary after years of the thankless job.
It was odd to feel this happy in the face of the unknown. The unknown and the known, Fee supposed, given that she could factor in an appearance from the Doctor before whatever was next came.
She smiled a half-smile as she heard somebody close her office door behind her. “Doctor. Any parting advice?”
The time-lord all but tiptoed around to face her, his expression one of genuine upset. “Oh, Fee. I’m so sorry.”
Tilting her head to the side, her smile became a full one. “No, don’t be. I’ve made my peace with dying today. You’re the last thing I have to sort out before I go.”
“Don’t give up like this. You’re only…”
She held a laugh in. “Thirty-five, Doctor.” He opened and shut his mouth. “You don’t have to say a thing. You owe me nothing.” He began to protest, but she shook her head. “But from me and Alex… thank you, truly.”
“What for? You owe me nothing.”
“I owe you everything. During a time in which I was least sure that this world was worth fighting for, you gave me what I needed to plough on. You taught me that everything beautiful has to end, and I’ve had a good run with it, Doctor,” Fee said softly, then tried for humour. “I even speak like I’m an old woman. See listen here, youngster, make sure you behave for me.”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m really not young. Not at all.”
Fee met his eyes. “Sometimes, I think that you and Jack are the youngest of us all. I like that. I think they’ll make good last words.”
“There’s still time,” he whispered with the sad voice of a man who’d lost too much. “I’m… I didn’t know you were going to die. I came here to tell you that you’re the hole in time and space. The one I was looking for. All this time…”
“You still have time. Go back in your clever little box and give me all the goodbyes you like. But, you must understand, what has happened in the span of days for you had been unfurling my whole life. I have no more borrowed time, hole in time and space or not.” She took a deep breath. “And… I have a last request.”
The Doctor stared blankly at her. She continued. “Alex. Take him far enough away from this second war Jack told me about. I want him… I don’t want him to have to lose everything to find it again.”
It was almost poetic how her arm went numb just then. It was an ugly way to go, but then… she was Torchwood. It came with the job.
—
Jack was the lone mourner in the graveyard, staring at the three names set in stone next to each other.
Wade Hopkins. Beloved husband and brother.
Felicity Hopkins. Beloved mother and friend.
Alex Hopkins. Beloved son.
From a distance, a man with a bow tie watched. Because Jack wasn’t the only mourner. Not really. The time-lord turned and re-entered his TARDIS.
Maybe someday. But not yet.
As long as he had a time machine, he could keep running.