A/N: Oh, wow, this is it! The last chapter! (Well, in a way. It'll be continuing, just… elsewhere.) As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I never expected people to like this story as much as some of you have, and I've really appreciated the feedback. I'm glad that you've stuck with the story all this way, and I hope you enjoy the last chapter!

P.S. Sorry the last few paragraphs are so... explainy. But I couldn't see any other way to bring this chapter - and this story as a whole - to a close.

(And no, after all this time, I still don't own anything, except Cate.)

October 17, 2008

I've decided that all Torchwood employees should keep, at the very least, this one simple thing in mind: no matter how ordinary the day seems to be, it can always go completely insane at any moment.

Today was one of those days. It was mid-afternoon, and Ianto and I had been sitting in the info center for about an hour; we hadn't had any customers, and had started playing "I Spy" to keep ourselves occupied. I was in the middle of trying to guess the third item that Ianto had picked when Gwen's voice came over the intercom.

"Cate?" she asked.

A bit surprised that the message seemed to be only for me, and not Ianto, I slid my chair over to the speaker. "Hey, Gwen, what's up?"

"There's someone in the Hub who'd like to see you," Gwen said.

Ianto and I exchanged a puzzled look, and shrugged at each other. I didn't know anyone in Cardiff besides the Torchwood team (and Rhys, but close enough), so I couldn't figure out for the life of me who might be coming to visit. "Um… Okay," I responded to Gwen. "Who is it?"

"Hold on," Gwen answered, and the intercom switched off. A few seconds later, Gwen was back, saying, "Well, both Jack and the visitor don't want me to tell you; they'd rather it be a surprise. But Jack wants me to assure you that the visitor is a friend, and that you'll be happy that he or she came to visit."

"He or she?" I repeated. "You can't even tell me their gender?"

"Nope," Gwen laughed. "It's all very hush-hush over here, and I've been sworn to secrecy."

"Alright, then, I suppose I'll be right over," I answered. I turned off the intercom and looked over at Ianto. "Does this sort of thing happen often?" I asked him.

"What, you mean, mysterious visitors to the Hub, coming to call for someone who doesn't even know anyone else in town?" he responded. I nodded. "Nope. This is a first. Which is impressive, seeing as just about everything else imaginable has happened at Torchwood," he finished with a smile.

I got up to head over to the connecting passageway to the Hub, but Ianto wasn't entirely done. "Oh, and Cate, I'm sure that everything's fine with this visitor of yours, but all the same…" he paused. "This is Torchwood. Just don't let your guard down. And if anything gets dangerous, just shout for me, alright?"

I smiled at him. "Thanks, Ianto," I said. "I'll definitely keep that in mind." With that, I opened the door to the passageway and walked over to the Hub.

At first glance, I didn't even see my mysterious visitor; there was no one extra in the Hub, just Owen, Tosh, and Gwen. I heard Tosh clear her throat. I looked over at her, and she nodded towards Jack's office with a smile. Redirecting my gaze to follow Tosh's nod, I immediately realized who my guest was – and just as quickly let out a tiny squeak (I think it was meant to be an, "Oh!" of understanding, but it didn't quite work.). I was at Jack's door in a flash, and was about to knock when my visitor stood up and opened the door for me.

"Hello, Cate!" the Doctor said with that thousand-watt smile of his. He shook my hand. "Nice to see you again! Er," he paused, "it is 'again,' isn't it? Please tell me you've already met me."

Still slightly in shock that the Doctor was at the Torchwood Hub in the first place, I answered uncertainly, "Well, we talked through a mirror…"

"Perfect! That's what I meant. I got a little worried when Jack said it was still October. I was aiming for November." Seeing the confusion on both my and Jack's faces, the Doctor explained, "The last time we met, Cate, you said it was October of 2008 when you'd left. Well, that gave me thirty-one days to choose from. If I picked a day too early, you wouldn't have actually gone yet, and that just would have messed everything up. I figured that if I just arrived in November, then you definitely would have gone already. I missed November, but it looks like I lucked out anyway."

"Oh. Right," I said. I took a couple of seconds to let it all sink it, then smiled at him. "Well, okay, hello! Nice to see you again, too!"

Jack walked over to me from behind his desk. "The Doctor already told me everything that happened," he said seriously.

I realized that that must mean that the Doctor told him about my stealing (well, borrowing, really) the Vortex Manipulator. Afraid that Jack was going to be angry with me, I opened my mouth to protest-slash-explain-myself, but Jack cut me off with a laugh. "Don't worry! You're not in trouble. Don't get me wrong, under any other circumstances you most certainly would be, for nicking my stuff without asking; but, in this case, I'm just really impressed that you took the initiative to fix what had gone wrong, especially when no one here believed that anything was wrong at all. You couldn't get our support, so you did it on your own. And that's what Torchwood is all about: protecting the world from the threats no one else believes exists. It was a bit reckless, sure, but hey, who am I to reprimand anyone for being reckless?" he said with a wink and a roguish smile.

His smile softened, though, as he continued. "You have certainly proved that you would have made a very valuable employee when you started going out on missions with us. Not that you weren't already valuable, but, you know. The point is, we'll miss you around here, Cate."

"Miss me?" I asked worriedly – was I being fired? "I thought you said that I wasn't in trouble?"

Jack didn't answer me immediately, which would have worried me if it weren't for the fact that in place of an answer I was getting a steadily growing smile – from both Jack and the Doctor. I looked back and forth between the two of them, but neither was giving anything else away. "What?" I asked. "What did I miss? Am I… not fired?"

Jack chuckled, then finally spoke. "No, you're definitely not fired. In fact, we'll be more than happy to still consider you an employee if you choose to leave – you'll just be taking a rather long unpaid vacation. And, of course, you can feel free to come back whenever you'd like, even if just to say hello."

I had an idea of what he was alluding to, but I refused to believe it until I heard it in no uncertain terms, preferably straight from the horse's mouth. "Thanks, Jack, that's very nice of you, but… Where am I going?"

"Well, Cate," the Doctor said with a grin, "I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."

Fighting back to urge to scream, "YES!!" rather loudly, I settled for a much calmer, "Are you serious?"

"Completely serious!" the still-grinning Doctor answered. "Like Jack said, you've more than proven yourself – you came to my rescue! Besides," he said, his broad smile slipping slightly for the first time during the conversation, "I've been travelling on my own for a while now. It would be nice to have some company again."

"Well, how could I say no to that?" I answered. "Not that was going to say no anyway," I added quickly. "You really want me to come with you?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yup!"

"Then yes! Definitely! I'd love to!" I beamed. "I always thought that it'd be amazing to travel with y – Oh," I stopped my rave short. "Right. You don't know about that."

"That you're from another dimension where all of this is a TV show? Or, rather, a couple of TV shows?" the Doctor said.

"Um. Yeah." I looked at Jack for an explanation.

"I told him," Jack said. "He asked me if I had any idea why you were the only one to remember him, and the best explanation I could come up with was that you're from a different dimension. So of course, I had to explain that statement."

"I should say," I laughed. "Is that really why I was the only one to remember you, though?" I asked the Doctor.

"I don't think we'll ever know for sure," he responded. "But it seems to be the only logical explanation. Since you technically never existed here, maybe you were exempt. I mean, you wouldn't have just all of a sudden forgotten me if you were still in your original dimension; the show probably just would have gotten cancelled or something. So you remembered me here, too. That's all I can figure."

I shrugged. "Sounds good to me!"

Jack smiled and rubbed his hands together. "Well. It's been a quiet day – except for this, anyway. I'll bet everyone's pretty much done with their paper work, so I say we close up early and head to that pub down the street for a bit of a going-away party."

I had to laugh. "Torchwood throws going-away parties?" I asked.

"It's not exactly company policy, I guess. Then again, we've never really had anyone go away; at least, not all nicely, like this." He smiled. "Besides, in a way, it's not actually 'Torchwood' throwing you a going-away party – it's me, and the rest of the team."

"And me," the Doctor put in, raising a hand slightly. "Well, sort of. I'm also the one taking you away, so I'm not sure if I count."

"We'll count you in, Doctor," Jack laughed, while I giggled in the background. "So really, it's just some friends, throwing their other friend a going-away party – it's not any of our faults that the only friends you've had time to make here are your colleagues!"

About forty-five minutes later, the entire Torchwood team (plus Rhys and the Doctor) had gathered at the pub for my "party." It was absolutely brilliant; I had a great time, and I'm going to miss these guys so much. But, I've still got all of their cell phone numbers in my phone, and they all have mine; so, they're hardly unreachable. And, just in case that wasn't enough, it turns out that I'll have something to remember each of them by: they'd all gone and bought me going-away gifts! Apparently, the Doctor had called Jack a few days ago (conveniently – if unsurprisingly – Jack had given Martha his number before Martha gave her phone to the Doctor), checking to make sure that I was there and that November (or, you know, now) would be a good time to find me. In the days since that call, Jack and the rest of the team had planned this party (that Jack had earlier made out to be an impromptu decision, that liar!) and even bought me gifts!

Gwen had been hiding the gifts at her apartment (where, I have no idea, because I never saw them), and Rhys brought them with him when he came to the pub. Because they had been in charge of keeping the gifts, it was Gwen who got everyone's attention at the table to give them out. I tried to protest, saying that they didn't have to get me anything, but Gwen (and the rest of the team) would have none of it.

"Maybe we didn't have to, but we wanted to, so we did," Gwen smiled in response to my objections. "And we're not taking them back, so you're just going to have to deal with it!"

"Well, if you insist," I smiled back. "Thanks, everyone, really!"

"No problem," Gwen said. "Now, we figured, you're going to really have your own bedroom now, a proper one, not just a guest bed in our little flat. And even though Jack assured us that this… TARDIS, was it?" Jack, the Doctor, and I nodded. "Right, this TARDIS has everything you need for your bedroom, we still thought that you might want some of your own stuff, anyway. So, we got you these."

The Doctor caught my eye; he had his eyebrow raised in a, "Well, this is new!" expression. I tried not to laugh – too much. Poor Doctor; none of his other companions had ever gotten a party before (not to my knowledge, anyway). He wasn't used to this kind of fanfare.

All thoughts of chuckling at the Doctor's amazement at humans, however, were pushed from my mind when the gifts started coming. They were so thoughtful! Gwen and Rhys had bought me a bed-set, complete with sheets, a pillowcase, a blanket, and a comforter. (And although they couldn't have known this when they bought it, it even looks as if the color – deep green – will go quite nicely with the TARDIS's particular shade of coral.) Tosh bought me a cute throw pillow in a slightly lighter shade of green (I say "cute" because it has a smiley-face stitched onto it!); the color of the pillow almost exactly matches the throw blanket I got from Owen (probably because it was suggested by Tosh, but in the end Owen liked the idea and decided to go with it). Ianto, ever practical (but not to the point where it takes away from being sweet), bought me a new diary, for when this one runs out – he said he keeps a journal, too, so he knows how nice it is to have one waiting.

And Jack's gift? He bought me a very pretty, engraved-metal picture frame. As I opened the gift, he stood up, and explained that his plan was for us to take the picture that would fill it tonight, at the pub; we would be able to develop it at the Hub before I left, if the Doctor and I didn't mind taking a five-minute detour (there's a machine at the Hub for photo-developing, given the top-secret nature of most of the pictures Torchwood takes). So, we all got together, and had the Doctor take a group shot of the whole team, plus Rhys. (I also managed to get a picture with everyone individually before the night was done – what can I say, I'm a picture person. I kept a scrapbook back home, and the tendency to want photos is hard to shake.)

That group photo – a nice, big one that came out beautifully – is now happily sitting in its frame, perched on the chest of drawers across from my bed (I've taped the other photos to the wall behind the chest, until I can find frames for those, too). This bed, of course, is happily decked out in its brand-new sheet set, and decorated by the matching throw pillow and throw blanket. The diary, too, has its place here – it's lying on the desk on the other side of the room, waiting to be used.

As for me? Well, I'm sitting on my new bed with its new sheets, leaning against the smiley-face pillow with the throw blanket covering my feet, glancing at the pictures from tonight's party every time I look up from what I'm writing in my old diary (looking forward to the day when I can start using my new one). Yup, I'm in my brand-new bedroom, on the TARDIS, relaxing after a fun night with my friends. My time at Torchwood has been amazing, and I'll miss Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh, Owen, and Rhys so, so, so much. But, like every companion before me has realized, I wouldn't trade the experience that I'm about to have for anything.

You'd think that I'd know what to expect, traveling with the Doctor, after having seen the TV show; but really, all that's done is taught me that there's no way I'll ever know exactly what to expect, not with the Doctor. But, I'm about to find out – the Doctor's just called for me from the control room, saying it's time to go. Where, I don't know – when, I don't know – but there is one thing that I can be absolutely certain of:

It's going to be fantastic.

A/N 2: The End! For Torchwood, that is (though that's definitely not to say that the team won't be at least mentioned occasionally!). This story will continue in the Doctor Who section from now on, under the very similar title, "The Impossible Journey of Cate Thomas."

Thanks again for reading, and for all the reviews, and I hope you'll follow me – and Cate – for her travels with the Doctor!