Chapter Text
Torchwood Hub
Cardiff, Wales
A normal day in Cardiff. Some Weevils to track down, a strange weather disturbance to clear up. Nothing too unusual.
Deep in the Torchwood Hub, Captain Jack Harkness sits at his desk, sipping coffee and lazily doing some paperwork. He’s thinking about lunch, and about how boring normal days can be. He hasn’t had too many boring days in his admittedly long life, and thankfully Cardiff keeps him busy. But the days where there are nothing to do leave him with too much time for thinking.
When you’ve lived as long as he has, and done and seen as much as he has, it’s not always a good idea to let your thoughts wander.
Across the room, Gwen Cooper logs off of her computer. “That’s it,” she reports. Looking around the quiet area, she frowns a bit. “Now what do we do?” Gwen’s not really one for quiet, either. Torchwood has corrupted her.
“Wait for another Weevil,” Jack suggests.
Gwen smiles. “I’d rather not do that, thanks.”
“Ianto’s downstairs.” Jack watches her carefully. Sometimes, even after all this time, Gwen gets quiet and sad if the Hub is empty and they’re alone. The time after their coworkers were killed stays with her. Jack considered it a good day the first time Gwen willingly used Tosh’s old workstation.
“Is he arranging his tourist brochures, then?”
“Probably.”
Gwen glances at her watch. “I’ll just go and see if he’s hungry. I could do with some lunch. You?”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
Before lunch arrives Jack heads out for a routine alien disturbance. It turns out to be a false alarm. By the time he gets back to the Hub, lunch is already there.
“You could have waited for me,” he complains.
“We could have,” Gwen agrees.
“There’s a slice of pizza left,” Ianto offers, indicating the table.
Jack snorts. “Sausage.” He picks up the slice, now stone cold, and bites into it.
Gwen giggles. “Remember how mad you were, Jack, when you realized Owen had been ordering pizza under the name Torchwood?”
Jack shakes his head. “Of all the -”
A screech from overhead makes them all look up.
Gwen starts. “Is that coming from in here?”
“The Rift,” Ianto begins, but Jack holds up his hand.
They hear the screech again, and it’s a lot closer.
“The pterodactyl,” Ianto says almost under his breath. “What’s gotten into her?”
“It’s not her feeding time,” Jack says, greatly concerned.
The screech fades away, signaling the dinosaur’s flight back to the heights of the building.
“That was weird,” Jack states. “Ianto, make sure you feed her soon. We don’t need her paying us a visit.”
Three days later the computers start to flash, turning off and on repeatedly.
“Some Rift action coming across,” Gwen reports.
“Some?” Jack asks from his desk.
“Yeah. Minor stuff.” Gwen pauses. “Or not.”
Gwen is tracking the signals but everything returns back to normal before she can record any information. “Lost it,” she reports.
“So was it the Rift or not?” Jack demands.
“That wasn’t Rift activity, Jack,” Gwen tells him.
“What was it?”
“Something strange is going on,” Ianto states. He clearly does not like the prospect.
“Well, if it’s not the Rift it’s gotta be something else,” Jack says, peering over Gwen’s shoulder.
Gwen continues to gaze at her monitor. “These readings just don’t make sense, Jack.”
“This is Cardiff. A lot of stuff here doesn’t make sense.”
Ianto shakes his head. “You can say that again.”
Later that day Gwen pauses while writing a report. “What is that?” she asks in alarm. This is becoming a disturbing trend.
An ominous sound is coming from somewhere above. They all look upwards.
Jack stands up. “What is that? It’s not the pterodactyl again.”
Ianto comes in downstairs. “Do you hear that?” he demands. “Whatever it is just scared away a group of students from Melbourne.”
“The bird,” Jack begins in extreme irritation. “Ianto, I thought I told you-”
“It’s not the pterodactyl, I just fed her yesterday. And she wouldn’t make this kind of noise.”
A vibration passes beneath their feet, causing everything in the room to shake violently. Ianto pitches forward.
Gwen makes a grab for her chair, trying to track the activity. “Is this an earthquake?”
Jack is standing as still as he can with the room shaking all around him. “It doesn’t feel like an earthquake.”
“The Weevils are going crazy in the cells,” Ianto reports, checking the cameras.
Gwen stands up. “I’ll go-” She stops as the roaring gets closer.
“This can’t be good,” Ianto mutters.
“Look out!” Gwen exclaims.
A crack of light flashes into the room. They all shield their eyes and wait.
A beam of energy opens up right in front of them. Ianto involuntarily takes a step forward.
“Stay back!” Jack snaps. He’s taken out his gun, though he has no idea what’s happening.
Something drops to the floor, and the beam of light closes up as if it had never been there.
They move forward as one, cautious but quick, guns drawn.
There is a figure lying on the floor. Ianto stands above it, gun at the ready, as Gwen moves to it. Jack covers them both with his gun, just in case.
“It’s -” Gwen crouches down beside it and then looks over her shoulder at Jack.
Jack blinks in surprise. “Huh.”
Jack Harkness has lived a long time and seen a lot in that time. There’s not too much that can surprise him these days.
He’s surprised now.
“One male,” Gwen reports. “Human, by the look of him. Young.”
“Are you sure he’s human?” Ianto wants to know. He’s still training his gun on the figure, just in case.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gwen snaps. “What else would he be?”
“You work here and you’re asking that?” Jack says. “Really, Gwen, I expect more from you. Let’s get him to an exam table.”
The boy is unconscious when Ianto lays him down on the table. The area is no longer Owen’s domain, but Gwen can never stand here without picturing him there. She knows she should be over that by now, Jack and Ianto both are, but sometimes it’s just too hard.
Ianto quickly takes the boy’s blood pressure, checking under his eyelids and listening to his heartbeat.
“Clothes are modern enough,” Gwen states, looking over the jeans and t-shirt, the beat-up shoes.
Jack is watching Ianto. “‘Modern enough’? What’s that mean?”
“It means they look normal,” Gwen says patiently. “Unless you’re aware of some other species who wear cotton and denim?”
Jack considers this. “Not any who look human,” he says finally. Ianto shakes his head slightly and ponders the boy’s blood pressure.
“He’s not hurt. The landing may have knocked him out.”
Even as Ianto speaks, the boy starts to revive. He opens his eyes and rubs them with his hand. Leaning up on one arm, he looks around him in bewilderment. “What’s going on?”
“Lie back.” Ianto pushes him back onto the exam table. “Your blood pressure’s pretty low.”
“What’s your name?” Jack asks him.
The boy frowns and blinks. He looks about twelve years old, with unruly brown hair and brown eyes. There are freckles scattered across his nose. Looking at the adults standing around him, he searches each face, looking confused. “Am - am I in trouble?”
“Why would you think you’re in trouble?” Jack counters.
“Why are you asking my name?”
“You’re somewhere you shouldn’t be,” Ianto says. “We’d just like to know how you got here.”
The boy looks more confused than before. “What?”
“You didn’t use the door to come in,” Gwen says lightly. “We’d like to know how you managed it.”
“I was at Torchwood,” the boy says, his voice rising at the end to make it a question. “Where are we?”
“Torchwood,” Jack says flatly.
“I don’t know any of you. This isn’t Torchwood. Let me go!”
Jack leans forward. “What’s your name, kid?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything. I demand you call the authorities.”
“I am the authority. Which Torchwood were you in?”
“What do you mean, ‘which one’? There’s just the one.”
“Right - and we’re it.”
The boy shakes his head. “You’re not,” he says firmly.
“There was a flash of light before you arrived here,” Jack continues. “Did you do that? Did you bring yourself here?”
“Did you come through the Rift?” Ianto asks.
“That wasn’t the Rift,” Gwen says. “It was something else. How did you manage it?”
“Manage what? I don’t even know where we are.”
“This is Torchwood,” Gwen tells him. “Just as he said. My name’s Gwen. This is Jack and that’s Ianto.”
The boy sits up all the way on the table. His skin is so pale the freckles on his face stand out. He looks like he’s going to be sick.
“Where are we again?” he asks.
“Cardiff,” Ianto answers. “Wales.”
“And, and this is a Torchwood?”
“This is Torchwood, period,” Jack says, looking at him closely. “Are you going to quit stalling and tell us what you know? For starter’s, what’s your name?”
The boy swallows hard. “Could I have something to drink?”
Seated around the conference table, they drink tea and quiz the boy. He is not cooperating and won’t give them any information.
“You’re here now,” Jack says, barely keeping his patience intact. “Somehow you harnessed enough energy to come here. How did you do it? Where did you come from?”
“I already told you. I was at Torchwood.”
“And we’ve told you before - this is Torchwood. This is the only Torchwood left.”
The boy finishes his tea and licks his lips. He looks around thoughtfully and seems to brace himself. “You’re the only Torchwood on this world.”
“This world.” Ianto repeats the words. “Are you saying you’re from a different world? Aliens with their own Torchwood?”
The boy shakes his head. “I’m not an alien.”
A memory floats up to the surface of Jack’s mind. A small room filled with deadly radiation at the end of the world. A harsh red light and a man standing on the other side of a door. A young woman, laughing up at him.
“You’re human like us,” Jack states, although he hasn’t been as strictly human as the others in quite some time. “You’re from Earth.”
“Of course I’m from Earth.”
“You’re just not from this Earth,” Jack continues without missing a beat. “There are worlds parallel to us out there, and you and your Torchwood belong to one of them.”
“That’s pretty far-fetched, Jack,” Ianto says.
“Is it? Tell me your name, kid.”
There is a moment of silence, with Jack and the boy playing a staring contest and Gwen and Ianto looking thoroughly perplexed.
“Parallel worlds,” Gwen says. She’s heard that before, somewhere. “Is that where you came from?”
“Why did you come here?” Ianto asks. “Another world or not, what brought you here to us?”
“Nothing brought me here!” the boys says indignantly. “I mean, something did, because I’m here, but I didn’t do it.”
Jack leans forwards, rests his arms on the table. “What do you know about that beam of light?”
The boy can only shake his head. “I was at Torchwood.”
“The Torchwood on your planet,” Jack says, just so they’re clear.
“Is there another?” The boy is clearly stalling for time now.
“Yes, there’s us, right here. Are we going to go round and round on that or can you accept the fact that you’re here with us and move on?”
The boy scowls but shrugs an agreement. “I was with my dad. At Torchwood. On Earth,” he adds with enough sarcasm to leave no doubt what he thinks of Jack so far.
“And what happened?” Gwen asks. “Was there an attack? An accident or something?”
“No. I went to one of the...one of the labs. They’ve been working on a... thing. Nothing top secret or anything.”
“What was it called?” Gwen asks urgently.
The boy is silent.
Jack sighs loudly. “Look kid, you can play evasive all you want, but the more you tell us, the more likely we can figure this out and send you on your way.”
The boy seems to consider this. “It’s called a beacon,” he says finally.
“Did the beacon activate somehow? Did you touch it?”
“No. I don’t know what it does. I walked away ‘cause it was pretty boring. I don’t know anything else about it. There was a table in the same lab, a table with a black box on it. I didn’t touch it. But when I got close it exploded. Or something. And then I got here.”
“And your dad?” Ianto asks him. “Where is he?”
A troubled look crosses the boy’s face. “I don’t know. He wasn’t there when it happened.”
“Last time it was a dimension cannon and dimension jumpers,” Jack says to Gwen and Ianto. “They were strong enough to bring people from the other world over to this one.”
“Could this be something similar?” Gwen is appalled at the mere suggestion. Not because of the technology, but simply because of the memory of what happened the last time people crossed parallel worlds to come to this one and what happened afterwards.
“No telling what that Torchwood’s gotten up to.”
“But why did it bring him here?” Gwen asks. “From Torchwood to Torchwood, one world to another.”
“It could just be a coincidence,” Ianto suggests.
“Seems pretty unlikely for a coincidence,” Gwen disagrees. “But to attempt to open up the dimensions - why would they be doing that?”
“It’s got to be a mistake, a malfunction or something,” Jack says. “How the hell did you manage it, kid?”
“You can’t seriously think this child is from another dimension or universe or world,” Ianto protests.
“Ianto, after everything we’ve seen, you’re questioning this?” Jack asks. “After all that’s happened here?”
“I’m not questioning the existence of things, Jack. But this child engineering it is a bit far-fetched.”
“Jack?” Gwen says. “What do you think?”
Jack looks at the boy. “I think someone will be looking for you.”
Six hours later the Hub is busy. Gwen, Ianto and Jack are taking readings on Rift activity, quizzing the boy on everything he can remember about the device.
Martha Jones arrives in the midst of all this, breezing into the Hub and looking startled to find a young boy the center of so much commotion.
“Hello!” she says. “I was just on my way through back to London!” She’s taken aback by the lack of response. “What’s going on?” she asks. “Is this a new recruit?”
Jack gives her a quick kiss of greeting. “Good to see you again, Dr. Jones. What’s the occasion?”
Martha looks puzzled. “Occasion for what?”
“For stopping by on your way through back to London.”
“Jack, are you feeling okay? I got a message to get here as soon as I could! I was coming home from holiday.”
“A message? From who?”
“Well, I don’t know! I sent Tom on ahead home. I’m due back at the hospital tomorrow, Jack. If this is your idea of a cute joke, I don’t have time for it.”
“Martha, wait.” Jack grabs her arm and helps her out of her coat. “We didn’t send you any message. I know how you feel about working a normal job. But since you’re here, stay a minute, give us your input?”
“What’s going on?”
Jack quickly fills her in on what’s been happening. Martha nods slowly, accepting the parallel world theory without a pause.
“We’re not sure what’s happening just yet,” Gwen concludes. “Any ideas you have would be appreciated, though.”
Martha hesitates. “I really don’t have a clue,” she confesses. “I haven’t had any dealings with this sort of thing for a long time.”
“You didn’t notice any unusual activity out there?” Jack asks.
Martha smiles wryly. “‘Unusual’ for me is not what it used to be. But no.”
Ianto stands up, claiming Martha’s attention. “I’ve looked him over, but a trained doctor would be helpful in this case. Would you mind?”
“Of course.” She looks at the boy. “I’m Martha. Mind if I take a listen to your heart?”
The boy considers her for a moment and shrugs.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Martha murmurs, and ushers him to an exam table.
“My name’s Martha,” she says again as she puts on a stethoscope. “What’s yours?”
He doesn’t respond. Martha listens to his heartbeat and his breathing.
“Sounds normal enough,” she says lightly. “Is there something wrong with your tongue? Do you know how to talk?”
“Of course I do.”
“Oh. You didn’t answer me. I assumed you were either being incredibly rude or you weren’t able to talk.”
He frowns.
Martha shines a light into his eyes. “Anyway, like I said, I’m Martha,” she continues, just like they’ve been having a normal conversation all along. “Just got back from a week in the French Alps. My husband and I went on a skiing holiday. Had loads of fun, between the snow and the hot chocolate.” She smiles a bit, but he continues to stare at her.
“What did you say your name was?”
“I need to get home,” he says.
“Where is home?”
Again, he doesn’t answer her. Looking over his shoulder at Gwen and Jack, who are conferring over a computer monitor, he shakes his head.
“Do you know where home is? Where your family is?”
For the first time he looks straight at Martha. He’s only a boy, and he looks uncertain and frightened.
“What is it?” she asks gently.
He starts to speak and then shakes his head.
Martha finishes her exam and leaves him sitting on the table.
“He looks fine,” she reports to Jack. “No signs of trauma. Perfectly healthy. What’s wrong with him? Why won’t he tell me his name?”
“He won’t tell us anything,” Gwen says. “Just that he was in Torchwood when he was suddenly brought here somehow.”
“If he came from Torchwood - any Torchwood - there are people there who will be looking for him,” Jack states. “His father was there - he’ll notice that his kid is gone.”
“What makes you think that anyone else can cross over or come through and find him?” Martha asks.
Jack holds her gaze for a moment. “Martha Jones, you’ve done some amazing things in your day. You know what’s possible with a bit of faith and a dash of hope.”
Another surprise guest comes knocking. This one gets a look of annoyance from Jack and puzzled interest from Gwen and Ianto.
“I picked up all this strange activity on my scanners,” Mickey Smith tells them, ignoring the lack of a greeting. “Figured this was the place to be.”
“What scanners are those?” Gwen asks.
Jack looks decidedly ungrateful. “We’ve got a spike of something, yes. There was no need for you to come down and help out, though.”
“You don’t have enough manpower as it is,” Mickey tells him. “Three of you against the Rift? How much longer can you do your job properly that way? How many disasters have been caused because you couldn’t handle it all?”
Jack is almost speechless with rage. “What do you know about my team and how we do things here?”
“I know that it’s long past time you hired some more help to replace-” Mickey doesn’t get to finish his sentence. Ianto hits him in the back of the knees with a chair.
“You look tired,” Ianto says shortly. “Have a seat.”
Jack starts towards Mickey. Gwen stops him with a hand on his chest.
“You don’t get to make comments about my team, Mickey Smith,” Jack tells him.
Mickey sits down slowly. “Something is happening, Captain, and we don’t want to be caught by surprise.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Gwen asks.
“And where did you come down from again?” Ianto asks suspiciously.
Mickey rolls his eyes. “You know I’m not gonna say.”
Jack manages to stop himself from giving a rude reply. Whatever Mickey Smith has been doing since landing back on this world, it’s secretive and mysterious. It is also, for the most part, far away from Cardiff and Torchwood, so he doesn’t press.
As long as he keeps his comments about Torchwood to himself, he can stay.
For a while.
“So what’s going on?” Mickey asks.
“You mean you don’t know?” Sometimes Jack just can’t help himself. To be nice to Mickey Smith now would just be a shame.
“I know something’s going on,” Mickey retorts. “Something big. That’s why I contacted Dr. Jones to meet me here.”
Martha stalks over to him. “You contacted- how did you get my number?” she demands. “How were you able to even find me?”
“I have my resources. We-”
“I was skiing with my husband! I can’t believe you sent me a message to come here! I can’t believe I did it! You are a -”
Ianto clears his throat and gestures to the boy. “We’ve a guest.”
Mickey turns around. “So? Who-”
There is no warning. No Rift settings going off, no loud noises. A beam of light appears in the middle of the room, startling them all. The light recedes, and out of the column of fading energy emerges a man. He wears dark jeans and boots, a black jacket over a white shirt. A black gun is strapped across his chest and braced against his hip. His face is grim.
The assembled Torchwood crew and guests momentarily stunned. Finally Jack starts to move.
“Stay back!” the man snaps. He holds them off with his hand as his gaze sweeps the room.
A tense silence lasts for several seconds. Martha takes a slow step forward.
“Stay back!” he repeats.
Another beam of light, another figure. A woman, dressed in jeans and a red jacket, holding a gun in both hands. Her partner exhales loudly.
“Where were you?” he demands angrily. “Stop off to buy a pair of shoes?”
The woman is scanning the assembled group, a look of tension and on her face. “There you are.” She looks relieved.
The boy had been standing beside Gwen. Now he’s watching the newcomers with cautious eyes.
“It’s okay,” the woman tells him. “Everything’s okay now. We’ve come to take you home.”
His face breaks out in a grin. “I knew you’d come get me.” He runs to the woman and is swept up in a hug.
His movement breaks the spell, and Jack, Martha, Ianto and Gwen all speak at once.
“Doctor!”
Mickey comes closer. “Rose?”
It is indeed the Doctor and Rose, but it’s the Doctor and Rose who belong to the other, parallel universe. They haven’t seen their Doctor in some time, but this isn’t him. He’s not wearing a brown suit and long brown coat. He has the same face and hair, but the look on his face is still dark and deadly serious.
Rose’s hair is much longer than Jack remembers it ever being. She looks impossibly young and impossibly pretty. He smiles at her and she smiles back, a happy, sunny smile just like she used to give to him.
“We’ve come for my brother,” Rose says. “He was caught up in a trans-dimensional time warp.”
Mickey blinks. “Is this Tony? Little Tony?”
“He was in the wrong place at the right time,” Rose continues. “Something swept through Torchwood.”
“Freak accident,” the Doctor adds. “Luckily we were able to follow him.” He looks around at his surroundings. “To here, of all places.”
Under the circumstances, Jack decides to overlook this jab at Torchwood. “You gonna stand there pointing your guns at us all day?” he asks.
Rose carefully sets her gun down. The Doctor relaxes his stance.
“They’re only for show, to be honest.” He nods at them. “Captain. Martha, Mickey. Gwyneth! Hello.”
“It’s Gwen,” Rose corrects him.
He grins. “Sorry. You’re very like her.”
Gwen would love to ask what he’s talking about, but she suspects she won’t get a chance.
“You look fantastic, Rose,” Jack says.
“You, too, Jack,” Rose says. “We’ve missed you.” Her gaze moves to Mickey. “It’s good to see you both again.”
“Says you,” the Doctor murmurs.
“Yes, says me,” she says firmly. “Hold on, Tony. We’re going home.”
“Lovely to see you all,” the Doctor says to the room in general. “Our love to the family.” He picks up Rose’s gun. “Rose?”
“Ready.”
There is no warning. One moment they are there, standing together, the next they have disappeared.
Mickey rubs his jaw. Jack stares fixedly at the spot where Rose and the Doctor had just been standing.
Ianto is standing with his hands in his pockets. “Interesting day,” he remarks.
“That’s one word for it,” Martha says.
Jack comes to his senses and glances around at them, looking annoyed. “Didn’t the Doctor once say that travel between parallel worlds is impossible?”
Tony Tyler appears in the Hub three weeks later, emerging from the same beam of light as before.
A sharp crack of sound sets off the alarms, and the familiar figure lands on the floor, thrown out of a column of energy.
“Again?” Jack asks in disbelief. It’s bad enough that Martha has left Cardiff for London and Mickey refuses to leave Cardiff, but now the cause of Mickey’s extended stay has just popped in for a visit.
Tony sits up. “Hey.”
He didn’t know what had happened. One moment he’d been at football practice, the next he was there at Torchwood. He’s still wearing his school jersey.
“I wasn’t near Torchwood or anything,” he complains. “I was about to kick the ball and now I’m here.”
“This is not right,” Gwen murmurs.
“You’re telling me,” Jack agrees.
“How old are you?” Mickey demands, staring hard at the boy.
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen - you can’t be thirteen. You were just a baby when I left.”
“Time moves differently back home.” The boy is obviously repeating something he’s been told many times before but he manages to say it like he’s a leading expert on the matter.
“How?” Ianto asks, almost involuntarily.
“How what?”
“How does time move?”
“It just does. It moves. It’s moving at a different speed than the time on your world. Sometimes it’s ahead and then sometimes it slows down for a while.”
“And what do you know about how time moves?” Gwen asks, amused.
He doesn’t smile back at her. “Enough.”
He doesn’t ask how old Mickey thinks he should be, doesn’t try to figure out how much time may have passed since Mickey left to return to this world. Even though they know his identity, he doesn’t volunteer much.
This is a boy who knows his way around Torchwood, Jack thinks to himself. Whatever he’s been taught or seen, he knows enough not to talk about it unnecessarily.
Jack’s just not sure if that’s good or bad.
“You’re Rose Tyler’s brother, then,” Ianto states, just so they’re all clear. “She came and got you last time. Does she know to come now?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t at my practice.”
“Does she work for Torchwood? For your Torchwood?”
Tony looks at Mickey. “You’re Mickey Smith.”
“That’s right. Do you remember me?”
“No. But my mum has pictures of you at home. She said you went back to the parallel world. Is that where we are?”
“This is the world we were born on. Me, your mum and your sister. The world you and your dad were born on is parallel to this one. I came back home.”
The boy nods. “Mum stayed with dad and me.”
“What about Rose?” Jack asks, because he has to know. “Did she stay?” Obviously, she stayed, along with the other Doctor, but Jack needs to know for certain that she’s happy and all right. Ever since he learned that she was trapped on a parallel world, he’s worried and wondered about her the way an older brother would worry about his sister. The last time they were together left no opportunities to talk.
Tony is silent, measuring his words. Jack can’t help but be impressed with his caution. Some kids would be talking their heads off about everything they knew. Not this one.
“She stayed with us,” Tony says finally, having decided nothing bad could happen with that information. He fidgets in his seat. “Do you have anything to eat?”
Four hours later a beam of light opens up and two figures appear.
“Bloody hell! Torchwood again!”
“Tony?” Rose calls out.
“Rose!” Tony hurries over to her.
“What is going on?” Jack demands. “Don’t you dare fly away until you’ve answered me,” he warns the Doctor, who is watching him in amusement.
“Oh, we wouldn’t dream of it,” the Doctor assures him with a smirk.
“We don’t know what’s going on,” Rose says, sweeping hair out of her eyes. “He just disappeared from the field.”
“And he reappeared here, apparently,” the Doctor finishes. “Again.” He looks around. “You lot working on anything that could pull someone across dimensional space?”
“Hardly.”
The Doctor eyes Jack narrowly.
Jack raises an eyebrow in response. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe me.”
“No, I believe you. Torchwood’s not competent enough for something of that order. Not for a successful completion of it, anyway. Nice to see you again. Ready, Rose?”
“Yes.”
“Wait!” Jack yells.
“Bye!” Rose and the Doctor call out together.
Tony waves.
A flash of light, and they’re gone.
“Those are the people you traveled around with?” Gwen asks Jack.
Jack shakes his head. “You had to be there to believe it.”
Two weeks later it happens again. Tony appears, holding an apple and looking absolutely bewildered.
“Dad?” he calls.
Gwen drops her lunch in surprise. “Tony!”
“I was having lunch with my dad. Just lunch! And now I’m here.”
“This is insane,” Jack says in exasperation.
Another flash of light comes eight hours later.
Rose is there, covered in blood.
“Tony?” she demands.
“He’s here, Rose,” Jack says. “Are you okay? What’s happened?” Mickey is already moving towards her with a medical kit.
Rose can hardly breathe. “Tony was with my dad. He disappeared. We tracked him to...a different place, a different world. Then he disappeared again. I followed him here. Please, don’t.” She pushes Mickey away. “Is he here?” she demands wildly. “Where is he?”
“Tony’s right here, Rose,” Jack says, gesturing to the boy. He takes hold of her arms and tries to steady her.
“Tony.” Rose smiles faintly. “Not him. Where-” She breaks off as a stream of energy blazes beside her.
When it fades the Doctor collapses at her feet.
“No!” Rose drops to her knees. It is clear that the blood covering her belongs to him.
“Ow,” he murmurs. “Is he here?”
“Yeah.” Rose takes cloths from Mickey and wipes blood away from his face. Her hair covers her face as she leans over him.
“Scalp wound,” Ianto says. “It’ll bleed a lot, but it’s not serious.”
“Oh, Mr. Jones,” the Doctor mutters. “I’ll show you what’s not serious.” He braces himself up on one elbow and reaches up to feel his head. He wears a silver wedding band on his left hand.
Rose pushes his hand away to check for herself. She wears a smaller, identical silver ring on her left hand.
“What happened?” Jack asks, kneeling down beside them.
“Tony went someplace else first. I don’t know where. We followed him, and the Doctor landed, I don’t know, wrong. He forced me to move on ahead of him.” Rose holds bandages in place against the bleeding as Ianto wipes the wound clean.
“Easy! We had to find the boy. And now we’ve got to leave. We can’t stay any longer than necessary.”
“Let me sew you up,” Ianto says.
“Leave it. I’ll be fine. Let’s go, Rose, while we still can.” The Doctor makes his way to his feet, swaying slightly but remaining upright. Rose slips her arm around his waist, keeping him steady. For a brief second he turns his face into her hair and she squeezes her eyes shut, resting her cheek against his shoulder.
“Ready?” he asks her.
“Take my hand,” Rose tells her brother.
“Mum is so gonna kill you this time,” Tony says.
“I’ve no doubt about that,” the Doctor agrees.
Jack rebuilt Torchwood by himself. He recruited Gwen and Ianto, and Owen and Tosh and Suzie. He’s saved the world a few times, the universe more than once. He’s proud of what he’s done.
So why can’t he get rid of one annoying human?
“Things are quiet here. Feel free to take off whenever you want.” Jack may have helped save the universe with Mickey, but he’s drawing the line at having him in the Hub.
“We don’t know what’s causing those disruptions. I’m staying.”
“I’m ordering you to leave.”
“My orders are to stay until this is resolved.”
“Your orders - orders from who?”
“Can’t say, not gonna tell you.” Mickey moves to his computer as he sees something on the screen. “I’m here for the long haul, Captain.”
“Over my dead -”
“Readings are all over the place,” Mickey interrupts. “Rift spiking...decreasing...spiking...decreasing...”
“Got it, thanks.” Jack stares at the monitor over Mickey’s shoulder.
“What’s going on? Doesn’t look like normal activity.”
“I think...something strange is going on.”
“That your expert opinion?”
“Shut up.” Jack shouts over his shoulder. “Gwen! Some activity we need to take a look at. Have Ianto get the car.”
“No need, Jack, “ Gwen says calmly. “It’s for you.”
“What?”
She shows him the CCTV monitor. The camera is trained on a spot outside the Hub. A police box is standing there, parked on the Rift.
“I got pulled out of space to right here,” the Doctor says, sounding pretty annoyed about it. “What have you lot been messing with, Captain?”
“We’ve not been messing with anything, Doctor. We’ve been tracking this for a while. Good to see you, by the way.”
“And you,” the Doctor says briefly. “What is it?”
“We have some theories,” Mickey begins.
“And? Theorize freely.” The Doctor puts on his glasses. “Show me.”
“It’s...unusual,” Jack says.
“Unusual enough to bring Mr. Smith by to help out?”
“Wait - do you know who he’s working for?”
“Not you, obviously.”
“Here are the readouts for the last few occurrences,” Gwen says hastily.
The Doctor scans them quickly. “Nothing here, is there? Nothing to indicate what would pull my ship out of time and space.”
“We have video footage,” Gwen continues. “This is what our internal cameras recorded,” she says, loading the first disk. “That was the first time.”
“First time?” the Doctor repeats.
“You’ll see.” Gwen engages the play function.
They all watch silently. The Doctor has a look of intense concentration on his face.
“Who is the boy?” he asks when the recording ends.
Jack, Gwen, and Ianto all turn to Mickey. He shakes his head frantically. They others indicate, silently, that he’s the one to break the news.
Mickey glares at them all. Why me? he pantomimes. You should do it. He’s pointing to Jack, who shakes his head. No way, Jack mouths. They turn from this interaction to find the Doctor watching them patiently.
“Is this not a good time?” he asks politely. “Perhaps I could just come back the next time the Rift opens up and deposits a child in your midst.”
Mickey takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders.
“The boy is Tony Tyler.”
The Doctor’s eyebrows go up. “Tony Tyler? I’ve heard that name before. Hang on. Tony Tyler. Tony...Tyler. Jackie’s son? From the parallel world?”
“The same, boss,” Mickey confirms, squirming uncomfortably. He knows what is coming.
“And that’s it? Where is he now? What happened? The walls between the universes should never have opened!”
“‘Should’ never have opened?” Jack asks swiftly. “Or ‘could’ never have opened?”
The Doctor turns to him in a fury, ready to demand just what Jack means by that, but Gwen breaks in. “There’s more,” she says quietly, and continues the disk.
On the monitor an energy beams opens up and reveals the other Doctor.
This world’s Doctor watches impassively for a few seconds before realization hits. His face darkens as he takes in his double, holding a gun on the Torchwood team. He shakes his head slightly in disbelief, almost not understanding what he’s seeing.
“When was this?” he asks tightly.
Gwen starts to answer, but then Rose appears on the screen.
The Doctor’s breath quickens and then goes back to normal. He watches as the pair take Tony and disappear.
“It happened again,” Gwen says. “And again.”
“Show me.”
Together they watch Tony appear in the Hub, holding an apple. Then they watch a bloody Rose appear, watch her Doctor fall at her feet.
“This is...not good,” the Doctor says after they’ve disappeared with Tony. “This is very, very bad.”
“Any ideas?” Jack asks.
“Not a clue at the moment, unfortunately. Is there a pattern to these?”
“Completely random, as far as we can tell.”
The Doctor considers this. “When was the last time?”
“Five weeks ago,” Gwen says.
“Right.” The Doctor runs his hand through his hair. “Right. If they break through again-”
A crack of sound is heard from below.
“Downstairs,” Mickey says, and quickly activates the monitors.
“Keep watch, Mickey,” Jack says, and heads for the door. “You were saying, Doctor?”
Tony is already there. “Blimey, I’m gettin’ tired of this.”
“So you’re Tony Tyler.” The Doctor is delighted to meet him.
Tony is staring at him with an incredibly fixed expression. “You look just like him,” he keeps saying.
“Yes, well, there’s a reason for that.”
“You look just like him.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Okay,” Mickey says briskly. “Took Rose six hours the first time. Second time it took four. Last time it was eight. Average of six hours of wait time.”
It’s nearly twenty hours before two people appear in the Hub in a flash of light.
The Hub is deserted.
“Hello!” Rose calls out. She’s dressed in dark green cargo pants, the pockets bulging. Her black jacket is shorter than the white t-shirt she wears underneath it. She’s wearing plain white trainers that are wet and muddy. Her blond hair is in a ponytail that hangs down almost to her waist. Her face is smeared in drying mud.
“Torchwood,” her companion says with great loathing. “Again.”
“It’s better than that dark wet alley you landed us in before.”
“All you do is complain about my driving.”
“Learn to work the dimension manipulator and I’ll stop.”
He’s been slowly circling the room, searching for signs of life. Now he stops and looks back at her. “Stop nagging.”
He’s wearing dark trousers and boots and a long-sleeved blue t-shirt over a white t-shirt. A slice of white fabric hangs out below the hem of the blue shirt, which is wet and muddy. His trousers are filthy, as though he’s recently fallen into a mud puddle and been dragged backwards through it.
“I’m not nagging,” Rose denies.
“Oh, you are so nagging.”
“Those new trousers make your bum look big,” she says pleasantly, moving to the door.
“You’re lucky I can rise above comments like that.” He wrenches the door open, makes her wait while he scans the hallway.
“There’s no one here, Rose.”
“Can’t be. Where’s Tony?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
“Hello?” The voice comes from behind them.
He forces Rose out of the way and swings around. Behind him Rose raises a large black gun.
“Oi!” The man’s arms fly into the air. “It’s me! I’m Rhys. I’m looking for Gwen.”
“Oh. Yes. Come on out, Rose.”
She’s already there, setting her gun down.
“I’m sorry,” Rhys says carefully, “but who are you?”
“Oh, sorry! Doctor John Tyler-Smith. Hello.” He shakes Rhys’ hand enthusiastically. “And my wife, Rose.”
“Hello,” Rose says with a small wave of her hand.
“Er...hello.” Rhys pauses. “I’m looking for Gwen Cooper,” he says again.
“Us, too,” says Doctor John Tyler-Smith. “Well, not Gwen, but Torchwood personnel in general. Captain Harkness in particular.”
“You don’t know where they may have gone to?” Rose asks.
“Gwen’s not answering her phone. I can’t reach anyone.”
“That’s not a good sign,” the Doctor murmurs. Rose frowns and looks back at him.
“Right,” he says decisively. “Rhys, lovely to meet you. We need to be off.”
“What? No!”
He continues talking over Rose’s protests. “We’ve some fine-tuning to do. If they get back and they have a young boy with them, tell them to hold on to him. Well, as best as they can.”
“We can’t just leave him!”
He reaches out and runs his hand down Rose’s ponytail. He stops his hand at her waist. “We don’t know that he’s here, Rose. We’ve been led astray before.”
“I am not leaving without him,” she says. “There is no way that’s happening.”
“Rose...”
Rhys coughs. Having forgotten that he was there, the Doctor and Rose both start in surprise.
Rhys lifts a finger and points behind them.
Turning, they see Tony standing there.
Rose laughs in relief. “Hello. Come on.”
Tony shakes his head. “We can’t leave yet.”
Four hours earlier
Mickey has fitted Tony with a tracking device. There’s no guarantee that it will work, but it’s a good try.
Tony’s still not talking, a trait that’s not endearing him to Torchwood.
The Doctor seems to approve of Tony’s reticence. “Events have been radically changed by something like this,” he says. “The less we know the better.” He then proceeds to ignore his own claims by drilling Tony with questions that a young boy couldn’t possibly answer.
“Were you recently exposed to any atomic energy?” the Doctor is asking when Gwen calls out from her desk.
“Downstairs, Jack! Something may be coming through.”
“Stay on it,” Jack orders.
“Here.” The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to give the tracker a bit more power. “This should help you follow the signal, even if it’s farther out of range,” he says.
“What if I get beamed back home?” Tony wants to know. “Can you follow a signal that far?”
Jack manages not to roll his eyes at the question. “If you get beamed back home we’ll assume you’re fine.”
“Just assume? What if something bad happens on the way?”
“It hasn’t so far, has it?”
Tony looks annoyed. “Rose’s stories about you always made you seem cooler than this.”
“Your sister had an inexplicable fondness for the Captain,” the Doctor says. “It was hard to make her see reason, believe me.”
“Rose told you stories about me?” Jack’s not sure whether to be pleased or worried.
“A few.”
Mickey snorts. “I’d love to know what she had to say about you.”
Tony looks at Mickey. “She told me stories about you, too.”
This wipes the smirk off of Mickey’s face. “She did?”
“Those I would pay to hear,” Jack remarks.
“She probably left out all the good -” Tony’s sentence goes unfinished as he suddenly vanishes.
They track him down to a lower level, and they pull up short.
“Rose is here,” Tony says unnecessarily.
“Are you planning a longer stay this time?” Jack can’t help asking.
“There’s no time,” Rose says, apology in her voice as she looks at him. She is careful not to look at the Doctor or anyone else. “We need to leave.”
“You can’t, Rose. You need to tell us what’s going on.”
There is a world of sorrow in her eyes. “This isn’t the right time, Jack. I need to get him home.”
“But, Rose- ” Tony begins.
They disappear.