Doctor Who One Shots and Crossovers!

The Hand in the Jar

Summary: How Captain Jack Harkness came to have the Tenth Doctor's hand, and what the team thought of the new addition to the Hub. 

I know I promised this book wouldn't just become Torchwood One-shots.....but here we are. I hope you enjoy : ) 

Captain Jack Harkness was looking straight up when it happened - it was a wonder he didn't notice it.

It was Christmas day 2005, and he was pacing the streets of London below the giant spaceship that had appeared out of seemingly nowhere. Sycorax, he thought, as he observed the intricate details of the craft. It had been a hectic day - he had given the team the day off, and it had seemed unfair to call them in for something which seemed so insignificant at first. It will be fine, he had reasoned, I'll head to London, check this little thing out, and be back in Cardiff by Monday. And better still, everyone will get that day off they've been moaning about.

When he had arrived in the capital, it became very clear that this was absolutely not insignificant - even when the people had left from the rooves, and it seemed as though everything was going to be ok, there was still a huge alien spaceship hovering menacingly over the city - not his city, granted, but a city, and he had a duty of care. And so he came to be pacing beneath the ship, wondering how the hell he was going to get up to it. And that was when it happened - the hand. He really should have noticed a disembodied hand plummetting hundreads of metres down, but that's how it is with these things sometimes - he didn't notice until it hit him in the face.

Jack got to his feet - the momentum of the hand had been great enough to knock him over - and ran a hand (his hand, not the severed one) through his hair to fix it while he peered down at the offending limb on the pavement. He decided it would be best to touch it, and then he could work out who's it was, and what had happened to them. He wrapped it in a cloth and gingerly picked it up, retreating to the SUV, where he had haphazardly stranded it in the middle of the road.

Once inside the vehicle, he used an alien device he found abandoned on the back seat - remember to tell the team NOT to leave valuable Alien tech lying about, especially where someone could sit on it and have their ass burned off - and scanned the hand with a gentle beep. He waited for a few seconds, and when the results came through, he leapt from the car so fast he cracked his head on the door frame - rapidly worsening the blossoming head ache, and flattening his hair for the second time in as many minutes - and gazed up at the now disappearing form of the space ship (it was leaving at least, that was a positive). The person he had been hunting for for the last century and a half - the person who had all the answers, and to whose body the hand belonged, could be on that ship. And the opportunity to speak with them had slipped through his fingers once again.

He paused in frustration for a second, staring up at the sky in irritation, before a stroke of inspiration hit him, and he was back into the SUV - a bit slower this time, he would need his head intact for his amazing idea.

************

"Has he finally gone insane?" Muttered Owen, as he watched Jack in his office, shifting items about to find a spot for the latest addition to the mad mix of items in his office. Jack had a habbit of collecting weird alien stuff (and then keeping it in unorganised chaos, which drove the uber-organised archivist up the wall) but this was definitley one of the stranger things.

Tosh shrugged in response - she was too busy with her work to really listen.

"I mean, what does he even need a hand in a jar for anyway?" Continued Owen, genuinely baffled.

"Maybe it has sentimental value?" Added Suzie, but even she sounded unconvinced.

"How can a severed hand have sentimental value?" Said Owen.