Title: Making a choice
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,030 words
Content notes: Spoilers for episode 2.12 - Fragments
Author notes: Written for Challenge 219 - Amnesty and Challenge 5 - Five things
Summary: Jack is left with a difficult decision to make.


Jack sat at the desk and idly tapped a pen on its surface, staring out into nothingness. Three days in a row and absolutely nothing had happened. It was unheard of, this complete inactivity of the rift. The twenty-first century is when everything changes, that's what Alex had said to him. Was this what he meant? Surely not. Then again, maybe it was. He couldn't get used to the hub being so deathly silent. Whenever he came here, there was always chatter and laughter. Alex liked to keep the team in high spirits since so much of what they did was often dark and difficult. For the first time in a long while, Jack felt like part of the team. They were a good bunch of people, and he enjoyed having a laugh with them at the pub after a brutal day.

But there'd be no more nights at the pub now. They were all gone and only he was left team now. Alex had apologised that he couldn't help Jack, having already murdered the rest of the team before pulling the gun on himself. The locket still sat on the desk along with all of Alex's papers. Jack had wanted to throw it into the sea, but it wasn't worth the risk of someone else finding it. Whatever Alex had seen inside of it had to be kept under lock and key. It was cursed, that much was certain. Not that he'd ever believed in curses, but he wasn't about to open it to disprove the theory.

Tap, tap, tap. He clicked the pen over and over on the desk. What the hell did he do now? Perhaps he should just walk away and let this place disappear into history. It was a graveyard, and that was how it should remain, undisturbed.

Then he remembered that Torchwood was far wider reaching than just him here in Cardiff. Torchwood One in London had been pulling the strings for a hundred and thirty years. They weren't just about to shut up shop on account of a few deaths. If anything, they'd just love the chance to come down here and poke around, seeing what kind of technology they could get their hands on. Just the thought of that made Jack feel nauseous. He didn't think he could just hang around and wait for them to turn up. It reminded him of those gatherings for the reading of great grandpa's will; all the money hungry distant relatives clawing for their share of the estate. Torchwood One would be no different, pawing through the collected treasures of a century's worth of hard work.

He leaned forward on the desk and sighed. It felt strange sitting here on the wrong side as he liked to think of it. He'd been on the opposite side more times than he could count, sharing a scotch with Alex and laughing about their near misses. Hadn't they joked about the one day it wouldn't be a near miss anymore? He didn't feel like laughing now, and the bottle of scotch was long gone. After spending that entire first night putting the bodies of his friends into the morgue and mopping up the blood which seemed to be everywhere, he'd taken the bottle downstairs with him and drunk the lot of it, finally passing out cold on the morgue's concrete floor. When he woke up, there was no hangover, only the dread in the pit of his stomach at wondering what came next.

Even now he was still wondered. He clicked the pen again and idly drew the number one on the notepad in front of him, as if starting a list. What came first?

That was easy. He had to stay here, in Cardiff. His Doctor was coming for him and this was where he had to be if he had any hope of reuniting with him. The century had turned twice now. Surely it wouldn't be much longer, though he disliked the psychic arts and their misleading messages. He couldn't just go now. There was too much riding on the answers he needed and the fact that there was only one person who could give them to him. And he really wanted to see Rose again. She'd been like a little sister to him. If he could go traveling again, he wanted to do it with her and the Doctor.

Right, so that settled his immediate question. Cardiff it was. He made a little tick mark next to it, as if that ratified the notion, and then penned a two.

Torchwood. What to do about Torchwood? He'd worked here for so long that it felt strange to walk away from it now, after he'd finally started to enjoy what he was doing. Torchwood was his, so Alex had said. Was that really true? Could he simply elect Jack to suddenly be in charge just like that? Even if he wasn't, who knew more about the rift and what came through it than him? He'd seen things from his Time Agency days that people on Earth couldn't even dream about. And there were creatures down here that needed to be fed and cared for. He couldn't just let them go free. If he walked away now, who would look after them? More shockingly were the two humans he found locked up down there. It had taken some digging through their database to find out why they were here, but once he read the files, he understood. People taken by the rift and then returned. They were wounded and scarred, mentally unsound. They should have been in a hospital, but what hospital would take them? It disturbed him that they'd been down here and he had no idea. He'd assumed the rift was stable enough that it only went one way. Why hadn't Alex ever told him? Because you were just an employee, Jack. And not always the most reliable one. He couldn't leave them here for those monsters in London to torture and experiment on, that much he knew. That thought alone settled it for him. He couldn't let London take over the work they'd been doing here. Someone had to be here to make sure of it, and since he had nowhere else to go, it might as well be him. He added another tick next to the number two. Now that he'd settled that, he felt more confident, gripping the pen with purpose.

Item number three. If he was staying here, things were going to change. They had been changing very slowly over the years, morphing with more modern ideals and attitudes, but there was so much that Torchwood could be if they stopped using the rift and what came through it as a means to an end. He needed to be the change he wanted to see.

There was something about all that time he'd spent with the Doctor that had changed the way he saw the world and what needed doing. It was one of the reason he'd never particularly liked working for Torchwood, back in the old days. Torchwood represented everything the Doctor worked so hard to fix. He wanted the Doctor to see that he was a changed man, and that there was no reason to be left behind here to rot away forever. He was so much better than what he'd been, but he could do more. If he took charge of things here, he could do so much more. Torchwood should be about protecting the planet from harmful things that came through through rift, but it should also offer help to those who ended up here by accident. Just because it was alien didn't make it an threat. He should know. Technically he supposed he was an alien, even if he was still basically human, albeit a more evolved iteration three thousand years from the future, and twice that many light years from Earth. Torchwood had been set up for the sole purpose of stopping the Doctor, but that was a stupid purpose, and completely counterproductive. The Doctor was no threat. Torchwood should be working in partnership with the Doctor to keep this world safe.

That brought him to point four. London. If anything was going to scupper his plans, it was Torchwood One. Technically they were meant to be equal in ranking, all of the various Torchwood bases across the globe, assuming any of them still existed, but there was no mistaking where London thought themselves to be in the ever shrinking machine that was the Torchwood Institute. If he was going to have any hope of doing what he planned, he'd have to get out from under their enormous thumb somehow. He had no idea how. He wasn't even sure he knew exactly what the protocol was for liaising with London. Was he expected to call them and tell them what had happened, or did he fax through the death certificates and let that be the end of it? Did he pen an email and let them know he was now in charge? How would that go down with the brass in the capital? He'd never bothered with any of that stuff, simply coming and going as he pleased, taking whatever work was thrown his way. Administration and politics was a whole new ball game and one he'd have to learn quickly if he intended his appointment to survive to the end of the week. If he was going to stay here and run things, there was no way in hell he was taking orders from them, that much he knew . If anything, he wanted to lock down the place so that they couldn't get their grubby little hands on anything that was being kept here. He knew enough from his long years of service that there were plenty of things that should never ever see the light of day. They were way too deadly and way too dangerous to be in any hands other than his own, and even then they needed to be locked up. Some things were far too tempting to try and use for good, knowing that in the end they'd simply corrupt. Even he wasn't immune to their alluring qualities and promises to make everything better.

That brought him to his final decision. He pressed the pen hard into the paper, drawing a number five and underlining it several times for good measure.

Torchwood was dangerous. That was without question. It was even more dangerous than his tenure as a Time Agent. Their job had been to uphold and enforce galactic law. There were certainly hostile situations, but they were armed with backup, and if need be, could have called on the wider reaching resources of the Shadow Proclamation if things got hairy.

Here there was no such protection, and no knowing what you might come face to face with every single day. It could be a weevil, intent in tearing you to shreds, or it might be a deadly plague, or a device capable of tearing time itself apart. Or, as he'd learned, it could be something that looked totally innocent, like an eighteenth century pendant locket. It could sit in a box for decades, completely harmless, until someone opened it up and looked inside it, sending them into a spiraling madness, killing everyone.

No more people were going to die, he decided. He wouldn't stand by and let another friend, colleague or lover become a victim of the rift. The job could kill you, but Jack was uniquely qualified on that front. Torchwood could throw whatever it wanted at him and he'd just keep coming back, like he always had. He wouldn't risk any other life but his own.

He set down the pen and looked around him at the office. It's yours now, Jack. All of it. It's up to you what happens next. He cast a glance down at the list of numbers and their invisible dot points. He reached across for the desk calendar and rearranged the old fashioned wooden and brass blocks, changing the date. January third, 2000. The twenty-first century really was when everything changed.