A Question of Time

It would be safe to say that Jack Harkness was not having the best day of his life… even though it had the most amazing start. He’d fallen asleep after the best sex of his entire life… which was, in fact, saying quite a lot… only to wake up on a space station.

After several hours of running for his life and doing a lot of thinking on his feet, Jack found himself helping Rose and the Doctor stop the Daleks from destroying the human race.

Without even getting to talk with the Doctor about what had happened between the two of them, Jack found himself running through the station, trying to buy the Doctor enough time to save the Earth… all while having nothing more to work with than a few guns and a ragtag group of humans to help him.

Jack knew that, in order to buy the Doctor enough time to make a difference, he’d most likely have to pay with his life… and of course, the one time Jack didn’t want to be right he was.

The last thing he’d done before dying at the hands of the Daleks was pray that the Doctor had figured out a way to stop them… and the only thing he knew he’d regret was the loss of the Doctor…

But then Jack’s eyes opened and he gasped for breath, coughing up bile as he realized that he was lying on the floor of the Game Station, covered in sweat and blood but alive.

He didn’t know what to think, except that perhaps it was all some sort of dream, just random bolts of whatever dancing through a dying brain… but the dream didn’t end. Jack kept breathing; he kept living.

You couldn’t survive a blast from a Dalek’s weapon, not even if it grazed you. Jack knew this from the stories, from the classes he’d taken when he was a rookie Time Agent… but somehow he’d done just that.

Deciding that the Doctor would be able to figure it all out, Jack got to his feet after only a few seconds of struggling with weak limbs. He quickly made his way through the station, heading towards the control room where the TARDIS was parked.

Only to find an empty space where the blue police box should have been. Jack swore that his heart stopped beating when he saw that empty space. “Doctor!” Jack screamed as he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. Jack’s arms clutched at his side as he sat on the floor of the Game Station, shaking like a newborn babe.

And at that moment Jack realized what had happened… or at least his part in what had happened.

He’d died.

He’d been killed by the Daleks and while he was dead, the Doctor had figured out a way to destroy the Daleks and save the Earth. But the Doctor hadn’t known that Jack would come back to life…

The Doctor had thought that Jack was dead for good… dead and gone, nothing more then a pile of dust and lingering memories.

Jack wrapped his arms around himself, trying not to shiver as he thought about the situation he was currently in… trapped on a space station thousands of miles and hundreds of years from anywhere he could call home and anyone he knew. Slowly Jack looked down at his clothing, his hands straying towards the wristband which he hadn’t known he was wearing… the one that he’d gotten from the Time Agency.

Without thinking about what he was doing, Jack flipped open the cover of the technology on the wristband and turned it on, his mouth falling open when he saw that the tiny machine had power… just enough power for one jump through Time and Space.

He didn’t even have to think for one second about where to go. He had one jump, one chance to meet up with the Doctor… and Rose Tyler was the only stable thing in both his and the Doctor’s lives. Rose had a mother, a mother who lived in London, a mother who wasn’t going to vanish anytime soon.

With shaking hands Jack programmed the wristband, reading the destination aloud to himself. “London, England, Earth, 2007.” Jack paused for the smallest second to make sure that everything was set correctly and, looking around the empty space station, he sighed and offered up a prayer to a God he had never believed in before that day.

Then he pressed the last button.

Jack screamed in pain as he body was ripped back and forth, gasping in pain as the Time Vortex shoved him around, since he didn’t have a ship to protect him. Jack found himself fighting the urge to throw up at the same time that he was fighting to stay conscious.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Yvonne Hartman was standing in front of her desk at Torchwood One, watching as the day’s experiments with the “ghosts” ended. Taking off the sunglasses which stopped the blinding light of the Ghost Shift from damaging her eyes, Yvonne looked around the room at her employees…. And, as frequently happened, Yvonne found that her eyes lingered on one Ianto Jones, a young Welshman who had only recently joined Torchwood.

When Ianto’s eyes met her own, Yvonne smiled suggestively at the dark haired man, only to sigh in frustration when he didn’t respond to her advances. Before Yvonne could do any further thinking on the subject of Ianto’s unresponsiveness to her advances, there was a sudden loud noise, something like a mix between the sound of a clap of thunder and the sound of a waterfall. Following this noise there was a brillent white light and a violent wind swept through the room.

It wasn’t until the light vanished and the members of Torchwood regained their sight that they realized that a man was lying prone on the floor, smack dab in front of Ianto Jones.

Immediately Yvonne started barking out orders which her employees rushed to obey…all except for Ianto, who was more concerned with the health of the stranger who had practically fallen into his lap. The stranger looked normal enough; that was to say that he looked like a human and was dressed appropriately. Ianto was leaning down to check the man’s pulse when the stranger’s eyes snapped open and the man sat up, looking around with curious eyes.

Ianto watched at the stranger blinked in confusion, before turning to Ianto with a frown on his face. “Who are you? Where am I?” the man asked, before seeming to change his mind. “More important, when am I?”

“I’m Ianto Jones… you’re in London,” Ianto explained, helping the man to stand.

“In a restricted area,” Yvonne noted, stepping forward as two armed soldiers entered the room, their guns drawn.

The man sighed, rolling his eyes as he muttered something under his breath which Ianto couldn’t quite catch. “And the date?” the man asked, turning back towards Ianto.

“March 11th, 2007,” Ianto replied, since Yvonne wasn’t going to answer.

The man instantly smiled and looked as if the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders. “I made it,” he laughed, before moving over to the windows and looking down on the city. “I actually made it!”

“Who are you?!?” Yvonne practically screamed, crossing her arms in front of her.

“Jack Harkness,” Jack replied, turning towards the doors. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find someone.”

Before Jack could move towards the doors he was stopped by the two soldiers that Yvonne had called in earlier. Jack Harkness looked back at Yvonne, who was smirking at him.

“Jack Harkness… there was an American Captain with that name. He went missing during the Blitz and his disappearance was rather… unusual,” Yvonne stated, looking down at her nails as Jack frowned and Ianto blinked in confusion. “You wouldn’t happen to be our missing Captain… would you?”

“That…” Jack smirked, “would be impossible,” Yvonne practically growled at the mysterious man’s answer.

“Yvonne…what are you talking about?” Ianto asked, stepping slightly in front of Jack Harkness as he confronted his boss.

“Captain Jack Harkness was known to have traveled with the Doctor… Torchwood‘s number one enemy,” Yvonne replied before pointing at a metallic braclet that Jack Harkness was wearing on his left arm. “That wristband is most likely alien technology. It, and any information that he may possess, now belongs to us.”

Jack laughed before he flipped the wristband open and held it up for Yvonne to see. “It’s broken. The jump was too much for it to handle.” Jack smirked as the crestfallen look on Yvonne’s face. “And I really really don’t think that you want to detain one of the Doctor’s companions.”

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and looked over his shoulders at the two soldiers who were blocking the room’s exit. “Especially one who knows sixteen different ways to kill someone… with a teacup.” Everyone in the room gulped, except for Ianto, who seemed to be trying not to laugh. Jack simply smiled and leaned towards Ianto.

“Twenty if there’s tea in it,” he added in a mock whisper.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Several hours later, after a few long and violent arguments and a few more threatening remarks from Jack Harkness, the lost time traveler found himself following Ianto Jones back to his modest apartment.

Torchwood wouldn’t allow Jack Harkness to leave, which would deprive the institute of possible valuable information… however, Torchwood was also afraid of the repercussions of detaining the time traveler. So Yvonne had ordered that Jack Harkness be ‘cared for’ by Ianto Jones… meaning that Jack would be living with the young Welshman.

Almost as soon as the two men were alone, Ianto had told Jack he could leave and promised to lay a false trail to keep Torchwood off the time traveler's back… Jack had almost accepted the offer, but then he realized that the Doctor would show up on Torchwood’s radar a lot quicker than Jack could even hope to find the Time Lord.

After all, any place on Earth where there were aliens or alien technology, the Doctor was soon to follow… eventually.

After several days passed in Ianto’s company, Jack found himself and the young man becoming fast friends… despite working for Torchwood One under Yvonne Hartman, Ianto had a generally positive view of the universe, and he loved to hear Jack’s stories about his adventures with the Doctor and Rose.

Jack had been living with Ianto for a month when, one warm summer morning, he woke up in a cold sweat and only just made it to the bathroom before he found himself throwing up what felt like everything he’d ever eaten.

Ianto wanted to take Jack to a hospital, or at least to a doctor… but then Jack pointed out that he wasn’t a ‘normal’ human. His 51st century body was just too different from Ianto’s body, or any other human on Earth.

Jack attempted to lay Ianto and his own concerns to rest by saying that he was just suffering from a bad case of time-sickness. It was a well known fact that traveling through time, without a ship to protect you, was…well, stupid.

Two weeks passed with Jack waiting to recover from his time-sickness… two weeks of Ianto forcing Jack to rest, so all the two did was tell each other stories… Ianto mostly told stories that had been handed down in his family, while Jack told Ianto more stories about his travels with the Doctor and, eventually, about the time before, when Jack was a con-man and even before that, when he was a Time Agent.

It was when Jack told Ianto about his ‘relationship’ (for lack of a better word) with the Doctor that an idea entered the ex-Time Agent’s mind… an idea that Jack didn’t think was possible.

One day when Ianto was reporting to Torchwood, Jack slipped out of the house and found a nearby convenience store… as calmly as he could, he bought the little throw away test and tried not to blush when the cashier wished him good luck. By the time that Ianto came back to the apartment, Jack knew exactly what was ‘wrong’ with him.

“You know that I’m, originally, from the 51st Century,” Jack sighed, as he attempted to explain himself to Ianto. “Things are… well, different. Through advances in genetic manipulation, alien technology and interbreeding with different alien races, some men can… well, they can become pregnant and give birth,” As Ianto blinked in shock, Jack closed his eyes, attempting to fight off the painful memories that were rushing back to haunt him.

“I was fifteen… I knew I could conceive, but I thought it wouldn’t happen to me,” Jack laughed softly. “So of course I got pregnant by my first boyfriend, who couldn’t run away fast enough. I…I had a miscarriage.” Jack’s voice cracked and he quickly wiped away the tears which were forming in the corners of his eyes. “The miscarriage damaged my body…the doctors said I could never get pregnant again.”

“You think that the doctors were wrong,” Ianto realized.

“I don’t just think, I know they were wrong.” Jack held up the tests for Ianto to see. “The first thing you learn when you travel with the Doctor is to expect the unexpected…” Jack sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I’m pregnant with the Doctor’s child.”

TBC