Everything changes

by Soledad

Fandom: Torchwood AU, with inevitable elements of Dr. Who.

Genre: Action-adventure, Angst, Drama, Romance.

Rating: Adult. Please read at your own discretion.

Disclaimer: Dr. Who and Torchwood – settings and characters – belong to the BBC. I am just borrowing them. No copyright infringement intended and no money made. The first chapter contains modified scenes from "The Last of the Time Lords" and "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang", obviously, but from there, the story goes off in a different angle. A very different one.

Timeline: Right before and during "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" for Torchwood. Spoilers for the 3rd series Dr. Who finale "Utopia/The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords".

Series: This is the first instalment of "Sleeping Dragons" a completely alternate Series 2 of Torchwood.

Summary: When Jack returns from his fateful adventure with the 10th Doctor, he finds a radically changed Torchwood. Would he fit in?

After an idea of aeshna_cyanea.

Chapter 01 – Homecoming

They were back in Cardiff, after a whole year of living nightmare; and it was a beautiful, sunlit afternoon, the Bay glittering in the sunshine and Roald Dahl Plass full of tourists, as if nothing had happened. Which, as far as these people were concerned, had not. Only the three of them, standing at the rails by the Pinhead Building and looking out over the Bay, could remember – although, frankly, Jack would have preferred not to.

Martha, as radiant as always, but her beautiful eyes strangely haunted, was watching the people hurrying over the Plass after their business thoughtfully.

"Time was, every single one of these people knew your name," she said to the Doctor softly. "Now they've all forgotten you."

"Good," the Doctor said with emphasis, and Jack couldn't help but agree with him. It was unfair that no-one else would know how the Doctor and Martha saved the world between the two of them, but it was better so, for everyone involved.

"Well, that would be my clue, then," he said, looking at the water tower that, unknown to most people, ran down to the underground base of Torchwood Three. His base. "Time to go back to work."

"I really don't mind, though," the Doctor answered Martha; then he turned to Jack. "Come with me."

To say that Jack was surprised by the offer would have been the understatement of the century. After having been abandoned and rejected – repeatedly! – by the eccentric Time Lord, he was now being offered the status of a companion?

Granted, he had travelled with the Doctor before – with a different one, one who had accepted him (the mortal version of him anyway) with all his shortcomings and valued him for what he could do. Mostly things the Doctor wouldn't (or couldn't) do himself, but nonetheless.

This incarnation, however – he still wasn't quite sure what to except from this new Doctor. He certainly hadn't expected this: an invitation to return to the stars.

Still, it wasn't easy for him to voice his refusal in a way the Doctor would actually understand.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," he said simply. "I can't."

The Doctor actually seemed hurt. Jack would have bet that not many people had ever rejected his offer in all those nine hundred years he had supposedly lived.

"I had plenty of time to think that past year, the Year That Never Was," he explained. "And I kept thinking about that team of mine. I can't abandon them; they need me. They would never be able to manage this job without me. Like you said, Doctor, responsibility."

The Doctor seemed genuinely hurt. For a moment, they remained in awkward silence, with Martha watching them out of the corner of her eye; then the Time Lord nodded briskly.

"Right," he said. "Defending the Earth. Can't argue with that," he extended his hand as if wanting to shake Jack's, but exposed the vortex manipulator instead.

"Hey!" Jack protested. "I need that!"

The Doctor shook his head. "I can't have you walking around with a time-travelling teleport," he explained, producing the sonic screwdriver and manipulated something on the device. "You could go anywhere – twice," he gave Jack a sidelong look and added. "The second time to apologise."

Jack tried very hard not to be insulted – and failed. After all that he had gone through, mostly on behalf of the Doctor, the Time Lord still had the cheek to patronize him? It simply wasn't fair.

"What about me, though?" he asked, hating the slightly whiny undertone of his own voice. "Can you fix that? Will I ever be able to die?"

"Nothing I can do," the Doctor replied with a crooked smile. "You're an impossible thing, Jack."

Well, wasn't that just wonderful? After a century and more of waiting and several hundred deaths, many of them thanks to his association with the Doctor, was that all the Time Lord could tell him? That he was an impossible thing? Suddenly, he couldn't wait to leave… to leave them both to go off on some new, mad adventure, regardless of the collateral damage on their wake.

"Been called that before," he said with a forced laugh and started to leave, bitter disappointment weighing down heavily on his heart. Then stopped for a moment to mock-salute them. "Sir. Ma'am."

The Doctor gave him a two-finger salute in reply and Martha grinned. Jack turned to leave again but stopped a second time.

"But I keep wondering…what about aging," he said hesitatingly. "'Cause I can't die but I keep getting older. The odd little grey hair, you know? What happens if I live, say… for a million years?"

"I really don't know," the Doctor admitted. Jack chuckled bitterly.

"Okay, I admit to vanity. Sorry. Yeah, can't help it. Used to be a poster boy when I was a kid back on the Boeshane Peninsula," his eyes clouded with memories. "Tiny little place. I was the first one ever to be signed up for the Time Agency. They were so proud of me. They Face of Boe they called me," he chuckled again, this time more genuinely. "Well, I'll see you, then. Hopefully."

With that, he hurried across the Plass towards the water tower, not wanting to see the TARDIS leave. As firm as his decision was, that might prove too much.

He never saw the Doctor and Martha staring after him in stunned disbelief.

The first surprise came when he stepped onto the paved slab of the invisible lift and tried to activate the machinery with the help of his wristband.

The lift didn't react at all.

He tried again. And again. And again. No change.

Finally, he decided that the lift must be malfunctioning or out of order and took the scenic route through the tourist office. He would have preferred not to run into Ianto first, having reconsidered (and partially regretted) his past behaviour towards the young man during the Year That Never Was, but it couldn't be helped. He needed to go through the tourist office, which meant going through Ianto. It was that simple.

He only hoped that he'd get the chance to redeem himself in Ianto's eyes, and do everything rightly, this time.

All the bigger was his second surprise, when he entered said tourist office – and failed to recognize it. Ianto's blank, neatly ordered little place was gone; replaced by something that looked like the reception of an old-fashioned little hotel from the 1950s. Plus, the place now had a decidedly feminine touch, with knick-knacks and the usual souvenirs for sale among the brochures and leaflets, CDs with traditional Welsh music lining one shelf, and even potted plants in the one corner that actually did get some sunlight around mid-day.

Alice must have felt like this when she fell down that rabbit hole.

The likely source of all these changes, a twenty-something blonde girl wearing a very elegant, charcoal-grey costume with a pink-and-cream silk blouse, was talking on an old fashioned phone – one with a real porcelain receiver – to someone. She had a slight Bristol accent.

"No, sir," she was saying when Jack entered. "Director Jones is not in at the moment; he'd been called away to investigate some unusual founds in Splott. No, Doctor Sato isn't available, either, I'm sorry. She's cloistered herself with an experiment and won't leave her lab until it has run its cycle."

Tosh had a lab now? Since when has she been called Doctor Sato by anyone? Granted, she did have two PhDs, but she never made a big deal out of them. And what kind of director had Ianto become? And whom was the girl talking to anyway, giving away information about Torchwood Three's inner affairs?

"I'm sorry, Sir Archibald, but there's nothing I can do right now," she was saying, still apologetic but with a hint of steel in her voice. "We've packed the data storage disks for you, but I cannot send them to Glasgow before Director Jones would have signed the transfer papers."

Archie! She was talking to Archie, the one-man Torchwood Two team! Since when did Torchwood Two and Torchwood Three have such a close co-operation? Not in his time, for sure! He always found the old-fashioned Scotsman, well… a little strange.

The girl fed Archie a few vague promises, then hung up and turned to Jack with a polite smile.

"What can I do for…" she trailed off, her eyes widening in recognition. "Captain Harkness?"

Now Jack recognized her, too. It was Emma Louise Cowell, the time-replaced girl from 1953… but what was she doing here? Wasn't she supposed to go to London and become a fashion designer?

"In the flesh," Jack said with a forced grin. "I haven't expected to find you here, though. I thought you were in London."

"I found that I didn't like London so much," she admitted. "So I came back to Cardiff and sought out this place again, since there were the only people I knew. Mr. Jones said they could use someone to run the cover shop, and here I am, all shop-girl now. And the personal assistant of Mr. Jones."

Jack didn't quite understand why Ianto would need a personal assistant, but right now, he had more urgent questions to ask.

"What happened to the invisible lift? He asked. "I couldn't make it work; is it broken?"

"Oh, no, the lift is fine," Emma reassured him hurriedly. "It's your access codes that have been deactivated, that's all."

"What?" Jack couldn't quite believe his ears. Emma shrugged.

"Well, you were missing, Captain, and nobody knew whether you intended to come back or not. Mr. Jones couldn't take the risk of some impostor infiltrating the Hub, using your access codes."

"What do you mean Ianto couldn't take the risk?" Jack demanded. "You speak of him as if he were the boss here."

"Cause he is," Emma replied calmly. "The Queen established him as the new Director of Torchwood Three, only six weeks after your… erm… departure."

"Torchwood Three doesn't have a Director," Jack said. "It hasn't had one since the death of Alex Hopkins."

Emma shrugged. "It has one now," she replied simply.

Jack was a little shocked by the news that the Queen had replaced him, just like that. But he had to admit that Her Majesty had been well within her rights. Even if he did not take the Year That Never Was under consideration, he'd been away with the Doctor for months. Out of touch with his team, without any way for them to know where he'd been and whether or not he'd ever be back.

Still, it was not a pleasant feeling, being written off like that.

"So, can I get an audience with Director Jones, then?" he asked with barely veiled sarcasm. He knew Ianto was damn good at anything he put his mind to, but the new title reminded him uncomfortably of Yvonne Hartman and Torchwood One.

Of course, he realized with a jolt, Ianto had worked for Torchwood One. He had spent three of his most formative years at Headquarters. It wasn't really surprising that he would return to old, well-known structures, now that he had been put in charge. Especially considering his own tendency to a well-ordered routine.

Nonetheless, Jack found the similarities unsettling.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be glad to see you again," Emma said, "but he really isn't in at the moment. In fact, he isn't even in Cardiff. He's gone to Torchwood House to inspect the secondary Archives there. We don't expect him back before Thursday. I just couldn't tell Sir Archibald that, or he'd have gone out to Torchwood House to pester him during his work, and Director Jones really likes to work undisturbed."

Well, that definitely sounded like the Ianto Jack knew.

"Who's in charge while he's away?" he asked.

"In theory, that would be Doctor Sato," Emma said, "but she's busy at the moment. They are running a test on a new security system with her lab assistant."

"Tosh has a lab and an assistant now?" Jack was truly baffled. "Since when?"

"Director Jones has hired some new personnel, as you can see," Emma explained. "We're still quite understaffed, though. Which is why all the others are out at the moment. We're having a Blowfish incident."

"Let me guess," Jack grinned. "Burglaries, joyriding stolen vehicles, pick-pocketing, gobbling up food without paying for it, molesting women by talking to them in really bad poetry, and all other sorts of havoc wrought."

"Something along those lines, yeah," Emma agreed ruefully.

"I thought so," Jack said. "It's like an addiction with their people, really. Now, can you give me the co-ordinates of its last location?"

"What for?" she asked in surprise.

"I've dealt with this species before," Jack said, grim memories of his joining Torchwood in the first place resurfacing. "My team has not. They might need me."

Emma hesitated for a moment, then she shrugged and fed the coordinates into his wrist strap by reactivating his access codes.

"If Director Jones fires me for this, you're going to find me a new job," she warned him.

Jack didn't even listen to her. He was half-way out of the shop and jogging across the Plass already.

At the same time, Torchwood Three's new field team – sans the three most experienced team members, unfortunately – was moving through the streets of Cardiff in the SUV, in hot pursuit of a red convertible, driven by a bipedal creature with an oversized fish head of the same colour. The pursuit was made considerably easier by the target due to the fact that the top of the car was down and rap music was blaring from the radio. Not to mention the passers-by who were staring at the convertible and its unusual driver open-mouthed.

Sara Lloyd, a tough blonde recently transferred from SOCO after nine years spent with crime scene investigations, was sitting in the back seat and had skeletal scans and DNA typing on her computer. Sally Jacobs, another pretty blonde, though a few years younger, sat next to her and was calmly putting bullets in her gun magazine. She came from UNIT, had survived the Sycorax invasion – narrowly – and wasn't frightened by scary aliens any longer. Especially if scary aliens looked like fish in a suit.

Mickey Smith was driving the SUV in a breakneck style that usually made older Torchwood members like Ianto or Toshiko remember the driving style of Jack Harkness with nostalgia, with a decidedly nervous-looking ex-PC Andy Davidson in the passenger seat. Not that Andy would have been opposed to fast driving on principle; he just preferred to be the one who did said fast driving, which, he often stated, would be better for all of them arrive to their destination in one piece.

"Found the species on record, but no indigenous name," Lloyd told the others. "It's simply listed as Blowfish. DNA-type says some sort of land fish. There's no autopsy record attached, either."

"Strange," Andy commented. "If Torchwood has already run into one of its kind…"

"The only report has been filled in the 1870s," Lloyd replied, "by Captain Harkness himself. I guess Torchwood wasn't that big on autopsies, back in the Victorian era."

"We still aren't that big on autopsies," Sally Jacobs said. Lloyd shot her a wry look.

"It's hard to perform an autopsy with our only medic on suspension," she pointed out. "I hope Mr. Jones manages to find us another doctor, soon, I'm detecting high levels of algae, by the way."

"Perhaps our fish dude is a vegetarian," Mickey commented, chuckling over his own joke.

"That's unlikely, considering he's just raided a sushi bar," Andy replied. "Shooting holes into the ceiling a dozen times, too."

"Who's afraid of the big scary fish, then?" Mickey grinned. "Of the big fish with the gun?"

The others ignored him with practiced ease. His sense of humour was irritating at the best of times – and today was not one of those times.

"Did he have any special weapons?" Jacobs asked.

"No, he apparently had a very ordinary hand gun," Andy replied. "Detective Swanson says it was a .38. It's a good thing that we have such a reliable police liaison – it makes so much easier to get useful information."

"Do we need special weapons?" The gun clicked as Sally pulled the slider back and put a bullet in the chamber. "Besides, what are we going to do when we catch it?"

Andy shrugged. "Dunno; put it into one of the empty cells, I s'pose. Captain Harkness would know how to deal with it, of course, but…"

"…but Captain Harkness ain't here, is he?" Mickey scowled. "Captain Harkness has disappeared. Fat lot of good Captain Harkness is."

"And you're whining again," Andy pointed to the red taillights in front of them. "Blowfish ahead."

"Hold on!" Mickey yelled and stepped on the gas.

With tires screeching, the SUV caught up with the red convertible. Mickey reached for his seat belt with one hand, gripping the wheel with the other one tightly.

"Hold the wheel," he said to Andy.

The ex-PC stared at him in shock. "Are you bloody insane?"

"Hold the wheel!" Mickey shouted again.

He released his seat belt and relinquished the steering wheel to Andy, who thanked the fates for his years with the police, which had involved lots of fast driving. That didn't mean that he'd not be royally pissed with Mickey and his hare-brained ideas.

"Ianto is so tearing you a new one for this stupid stunt!" he growled, but took over nonetheless, knowing that Mickey was the best shot of them all, now that Tosh and Ianto were otherwise engaged. Which had been the reason to bring him in the first place.

The tires screeched madly as he drove from the passenger seat. Mickey sat up out the window, aimed and fired at the convertible repeatedly. The first shot missed the target entirely; the second one ricocheted off the metal. The third shot finally took the tire out. The car exhausted flares and veered around the corner, out of their sight.

Mickey sat back down in the driver's seat and smugly blew on the tip of his smoking gun.

"Ladies and gents, that was Mickey Smith, defending the Earth from the alien menace," he announced.

Andy gave him an exasperated look. "This is a single Blowfish, Smith, not a Cyberman army," he said patiently. Like everyone else within Torchwood Three, he could have recited Mickey's heroic deeds in that parallel universe and during the Battle of Canary Wharf by heart by now.

"A Blowfish that's just managed to give us the slip," Jacobs added sourly.

"It can't have gone far just yet," Andy replied, rolls down the window on his slide. "Slow down!"

They've come to an intersection with a traffic light and crosswalk. There were no other cars on the street, just an old lady with a cane walking slowly up to the crosswalk. Andy leaned out of the window.

"Excuse me," he asked politely, "have you seen a blowfish driving a sports car?"

The old lady stared at him for a moment, and then she pointed towards the road left from the corner.

"Thank you," Andy said with a friendly smile, and they took off again.

The old lady stared after them for a while before pressing the button to turn the traffic lights green. "Bloody Torchwood," she muttered under her breath.

"I can locate the car round that corner," Lloyd said, consulting his computer. "It's just stopped. It's right before us."

"Let's get out," Mickey stepped on the brakes abruptly; the others groaned as the seat belts were stretched to the limit, pressing deeply into their skin. Then they got out of the SUV and approached the convertible with their guns out – only to find it empty.

"Dammit!" Mickey swore. "Stupid fish dude is gone! Where is it? Where's it gone?"

"It has to be somewhere nearby," Lloyd moved around her hand-held scanner. "Look around the houses, he must have..."

She was interrupted by two gunshots, sounding from a nearby house. Ex-PC instincts kicking into high gear, Andy started running towards the house.

"Help him!" Lloyd shouted at Mickey and Sally. "He'll need reinforcements. Go! Go! Go!"

They all ran for the house.

Finding the right residence was not particularly hard – the front door was left wide open. Mickey stormed in first, shooting instructions to the others.)

"Andy, go left! Lloyd, go right! Sally take, centre! Positions!"

The others moved into position, without really listening to him. They were all ex-cops of some sort who didn't need a self-proclaimed freedom fighter to give them orders. They were just humouring him, as this was the easiest way to deal with his tempers.

They found the Blowfish standing at the back of the room, holding a gun on a teenaged girl – presumably the daughter of the house. Police training kicking in again, Andy snatched her mother and pulled her aside to safety. A man who must have been the girl's father was lying on the ground, choking, from the gunshot wounds.

Sally unwrapped her scarf to apply pressure on the wound and thus stop the bleeding. In Owen's absence, she acted as their field medic, since all UNIT personnel had been thoroughly trained in providing first aid. Mickey and Lloyd keep their guns on the Blowfish.

"Massive levels of adrenalin, mixed with approximately three grams of cocaine," Lloyd read her hand-held scanner, operating it with her free hand. "This fish is wired."

The Blowfish tilted his head to the side – although how he managed to do that without actually having a neck was everyone's guess – and looked at them with creepy, glassy eyes.

"So, this is Team Torchwood," he said. "The leftovers of the police, trying to wear the boots of a man they could never truly catch up with." He looked at Andy. "The beat cop, tired of walking the beat anymore; on the trail of a girl who only ever made fun of him." Now he turned to Sally. "The pretty girl who nearly walked off the roof, steered by the Sycorax like a mindless puppet," to Lloyd. "The scientist, with her cold devices and even colder heart."

Sally was shocked hearing those words from the bizarre alien. "How comes it knows so much about us?"

"The species is probably telepathic," Lloyd answered calmly. "I'd assume short-range telepaths; and likely better at it when on drugs."

The Blowfish ignored them and looked at Mickey with frightening intensity, his scratchy voice taking on a strange, sing-song quality.

"Which leaves me with the street kid, allowed to play with the grown-ups," he said. "So lost, without his girl… and without his master, the master of time, travelling in a little blue box. All of you... pretending to be so brave. All of you, so broken, so scared.

He laughed at them, then turned and kissed his hostage on the cheek, breathing in her scent.

"So, what about it, Ricky the idiot?" he asked. "Can you do it? How good are you? How sharp is your aim? What if you kill her?" he taunted. "What if I kill her first? Can you shoot, before I do? Can you? Dare you? Would you? Won't you?"

A bullet fired, interrupting the Blowfish's monologue, hitting him dead centre of his forehead and taking out a chunk of the back of his head, splattering blood and fish brains on the curtains behind him. The Blowfish groaned and fell to the floor, dead.

The mother pushed Andy aside to get to her daughter. Mickey looks at his gun, knowing that he hadn't fired. He slowly turned around – and found himself staring down the barrel of Jack's gun. His jaw hit the floor with an almost audible thud.

Jack grinned. "Hey Mickey, did you miss me? Haven't expected to find you here, of all places. We'll have a lot to discuss, once this mess has been dealt with," he looked down at the dead Blowfish and shook his head in exasperation. "Why must these guys always get shot before I could question them properly?"

~TBC~