Title: Memory and Time (2/?)

Author: Emma

Characters: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, 10th Doctor, Torchwood Three, others

Rating: Starts PG, but hey, it’s got Jack and Ianto in it!

Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?

Spoilers: None. This takes place in my Homecoming AU, twelve years after Invincible Summer

Summary: Something is trying to mess with Jack’s time line…

Author’s Note: This is the first fic I’ve ever written where I can’t plot out the number of chapters in advance. It might fit into my usual frame, it might not. Sorry.

          After making sure the Doctor was settled down in the infirmary with Toshi standing guard, Jack headed for the conference room. It had been sheer luck he had been in Cardiff at all. For the past twelve years, at the direct command of the King, he had been executive director of Torchwood, dividing his time between London and Cardiff and making frequent visits to Scotland, Italy, and the new satellite facility in Bermuda. Not that the commute was difficult. Ianto liked to use the trips to get in what he called his “time and space target practice.” Jack could recall several mornings spent pleasurably in bed when he still got to his breakfast meeting with time to spare.

            He started up the stairs automatically before he remembered that Gwen had moved the conference room to one of the largest storage bays; with Torchwood Three at full strength, they had needed more space. The old conference room was now John’s domain, where he and mainframe worked their magic. The new one was half-meeting-half-war room and all Gwen. There were biscuits and sugary drinks on the sideboard and above it a blowup of a CCTV shot showing Ianto, Toshiko, and Gwen battling it out in a ferocious game of Scrabble while Owen and Jack stood around harassing them. Jack remembered that day vividly. It had been Toshiko’s birthday, a few weeks after he had returned to Cardiff, and it had been the first time he had felt truly welcomed back by the team as a whole.

            “You all look very happy.” Andy had come to stand behind him. “Gwen laughed and cried when we found it.”

            “We were. It was a perfect day.” He turned away from the photo, blinking back tears, and threw his arm over Andy’s shoulders. “So, skinny, how are the kids?”

            Andy accepted the change of subject with a smile. “Little Jack left for rugby camp this morning. Marty is off to London with Tish.”

            “I still say you should have found better names for them than Jack and Martha.”

            “Oh, pipe down. Nobody asked your opinion.” The former policeman pointed at the head of the table. “Sit down, Captain. I’ll go start the coffee.”

            People had been drifting in, and there were grins on many faces as they witnessed the exchange. Everyone knew Jack had moved mountains to help Andy and his partners conceive and was insufferably proud of the results.

            Ianto walked in arm in arm with Gwen. The difference between them startled Jack every time he saw them together, even though intellectually he understood what was happening.  Chronologically, they were two years apart, but now Gwen could pass for Ianto’s mother. Not that she had aged badly; in her mid-sixties, she still had the beauty and vivacity that had attracted him so many years before, but it had mellowed into a matronly elegance. Of course, she could still strip the hide off an errant subaltern at sixty paces, but now she did it without raising her voice. To the younger generation of Torchwood, Jack was “the Captain,” but she was “M” – a combination of Judy Dench’s legendary character in the James Bond films, and “mum” – and they prayed every night never to screw up so badly as to attract her personal attention.

            Once they had all settled into their accustomed places, Jack noticed there was an empty chair to Ianto’s right. He gave his partner a questioning look. Ianto shrugged.

            “She wishes to speak to us directly.”

            As he spoke the air over the empty chair seemed to shimmer, then, suddenly, she was there. Jack nearly swallowed his tongue. It was Donna Noble, and yet it wasn’t. She had been distilled and refined, becoming a creature of the Vortex, as alien as a haemavore or a Time Lord. He wondered in dismay if Ianto would ultimately become something as regal, beautiful, and distant as she was.

            *Don’t be daft.* Her “voice” was still very much Donna. *Everyone changes, even you. Doesn’t mean we grow apart.*

            *Miss you, Red.*

            *Why? I’m always here. Just reach.*

            Jack grinned. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Doctor’s TARDIS. Or he is her Doctor. The jury’s still out on that one. So what happened, Red?”

            “He decided he wanted to spend some time studying gamma bursts in the Agya Boundary.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s always getting mad fancies like that. We were halfway there when we got an SOS from a planetary system in the outskirts of what used to be Gallifreyan space. Whoever it was used the old Gallifreyan command code, so of course we went to investigate. Middle of nowhere, I’ll have you know. Seven-planet system, with only one that could support anything higher in the food chain than an amoeba. The habitable one was no prize, either. Highly eccentric orbit, made it hotter than the Sahara over most of the planet and colder than the innermost circle of Dante’s hell at the poles. There was a single human settlement in a little peninsula sticking out like Italy into the only body of water larger than a puddle.”

            Jack, who at the beginning of the speech had been in his usual slouch, chin on hand, was now sitting rigidly straight. “What the hell were you doing in the Boeshane, Red?”

            “We didn’t know we were there, Jack. All we knew is that we had landed in the middle of some kind of attack. The Doctor identified the attackers as being related to Reapers.”

            “Reapers?”

            She waved her hand and all the monitors in the room showed a nightmarish creature resembling a winged scorpion, with multiple limbs and a fanged mouth in the middle of their chest.

            “Reapers are Time’s garbage men. They clean up paradoxes.”

            “That’s not what attacked us,” Jack said.

            “No. This was.”

            Another image appeared. This time the creature had no chest mouth, and the multiple limbs were gone. Instead, the beak, the wing struts, and the sting at the end of the tail had become knife-sharp and lined with rows of serrated teeth, and two massive human arms ended in clawed fingers. The only sound in the appalled silence was a long string of Welsh curses from Andy.

            “He jumped in, of course,” TARDIS continued her tale. “When hasn’t he? He managed to avoid the creatures and get to the settlement. I was… surprised. It was so easy, almost as if they were ignoring him. And there was something so familiar about it… Then I remembered. One night, soon after he joined us, Jack had a nightmare. I could not wake him by normal means, so I entered his mind. I saw what happened to him when he was a child. And once I remembered, I knew.”

            She looked at Jack, and he was shocked to see tears running down her face. “If he had succeeded, your future as it exists would have disappeared. I followed as many probability lines as I could, and they all ended in disaster. So I called the Doctor back. I told him he had to let the monsters do their worst.”

            Jack felt encased in ice. The logical, adult part of him understood her reasoning, but the child who had lost father and brother couldn’t accept it. Blindly he reached out and found Ianto’s hand. His lover took his in a fierce, loving grip, sending wordless reassurance and support through the link.

            “It was a deliberate attempt to change Jack’s future,” John said slowly, as if trying to follow multiple probabilities of his own. “Someone lured the Doctor there using bait they knew he couldn’t ignore.”

            “Yes.”

            “So there is something about Jack that makes him very dangerous to someone. And it’s someone big enough to play games with Time Lords. Couldn’t be too many of those around.”

            “But why?” Jack was genuinely baffled. “At worst, I’m the Doc’s muscle. At best, I’m the guy trying to help the human race through a major transition point. But it happened without me. Hell, I read about it in history books. The only thing I do is just kind of keep things moving.”

            “Jack.” TARDIS’s tone of voice told the Captain she was on the verge of giving him a very Donna-like clip on the ear. “Wake up and smell the Vortex. You are not a man. And don’t give me that arch look. You are a Fact, capital F. You influence Time just by existing. Everything you do causes ripples.”

            “Huh?”

            “Ok, follow here, Captain Gorgeous. You were supposed to die at the Game Station. Rose changed your destiny, big time. Now, if she had just resurrected you, your timeline would have kinked a little, but no harm done. Instead she made you immortal. She made you into a being over which Time has no authority. It has to move around you, because it can’t move you. You generate probability lines like a New Year's fireworks display generates light and smoke. Capisce?”

            John gave a low whistle. “So that’s it. Jack can’t be changed or destroyed as he is now. But…”

            “If his timeline can be changed before he gets to the Game Station, everything he has done afterwards disappears.” Ianto sat bolt upright, letting go of Jack’s hand, and turned to the other TARDIS. “You said you had followed the probability lines. What was the best possible outcome?”

            “You were shot as a traitor when Torchwood found out about Lisa. Gwen was killed in the line of duty at twenty-nine. Martha and my Other were trapped at the end of time with no way to return to Earth.”

            “If that’s the best, don’t for God’s sake tell us the worst.” Gwen took a big gulp of her coffee, and then made a face. “Cold. I don’t suppose we can assume that they will give up with one try?”

            “Unlikely.”

            “So first, we need to find out what are the other weak points in Jack’s mortal timeline and figure out a way to protect them.” John tapped something into his i/o cube. “And second, we need to find out who’s doing it, and why.”

            “I have some ideas about that.”

            The Doctor stood in the doorway, supporting himself with one arm around Toshi’s shoulders. He was wearing some of Andy’s clothes, which looked a little short and ridiculous on his lanky frame. He looked pale and a little shaky but his eyes were looking around in his usual inquisitive fashion.

            “Nice place. Much better than that old fish bowl upstairs. And the Sontaran equipment, very nice retrofit, salvaging always works doesn’t it? Oh, thanks,” he said to Jonas, who had offered his seat, “I’m still a little unsteady. Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, I have some ideas.”

            “Doc,” Jack said, “focus here. What ideas?”

            “About your timeline. It occurred to me that if they had failed to keep you from reaching the Game Station, they could try it the other way.”

            “Other way?”

            “Rose, Jack, Rose! They can keep Rose from going back. So all we have to do is go back and find Rose right at that moment and…”

            “No.” John held up a hand. “That would be too chancy, too small a window of opportunity. Whoever planned this is thorough and methodical. The best way to stop Rose from going to the Game Station is to keep her from meeting you at all.”