Ghosts (ClassxTorchwood)

Captain Jack Harkness

Tanya's pov

I look around for something that can help to get rid of the forcefield and I spot a red blinking light in the top, left hand corner of the corridor.

"Guys I think that's a camera," I say uneasily.

Ram swears under his breath and grabs a fire extinguisher. April goes to stop him but he hits the light with his full strength behind it. There's an audible crack and then the light blinks out, taking the force field with it. Ram turns to us with a smug look but there is some uncertainty behind it, after all Bilis could have been watching us.

Miss Quill leads the way down the corridor towads the hall with Charlie at her side. They pause at the doorway as they look inside. Miss Quill signals to us and we slowly make our way inside, Charlie leading the way with his gun in his hand. We fan out across the room but it soon becomes clear that there is no-one here, just a machine in the centre of the room.

It has a central column which is made of glass and there are screens showing strings of numbers on them surrounding it. The central column is suspended over a base which has a circular indent in it.

Charlie and Matteusz approach it slowly and Charlie reads something off one of the screens. "It looks like it's monitoring the rift."

"Jack said something about a rift manipulator earlier, but he didn't think that there was one in Coal Hill, apparently Torchwood London was destroyed. Bilis must have made it." I say.

"As was Torchwood three. We believe that the impersonators were working with the time traveller so we dealt with them for you." I turn sharply at the sound of a voice behind us.

A woman in a blue dress with dark hair pulled up into a severe bun is standing at the entrance of the hall.

"Oh I'm sorry, I should probably introduce myself. I'm Dorothea Ames, your new headmistress." She says with a deceptively friendly smile.

"Who are you really? You can't just be any old human, Torchwood is a top-secret organisation." Miss Quill says, barely disguising the hostility in her voice.

"We are the governors, that is all you need to know for now."

"Look, we aren't really inclined to trust strangers at the moment," Ram says.

The headmistress' face hardens, "Then why did you trust those people claiming to be Torchwood?"

"If you knew half as much as you think you do you would know that we didn't trust them." I cut in," We only worked with them because we had no other choice."

"Hold on what do you mean you dealt with them." Charlie says, "Please tell me you didn't do anything stupid."

"Of course not, we just sent them somewhere else for a little while. I'm sure they'll be absolutely fine but you won't be seeing them again I'm afraid. Let's just say that they're going to run out of time before then." She says this as if she is saying that she ate breakfast but there is a darker and threatening undertone beneath it.

Jack's pov

I find myself standing in a dark alleyway with Gwen. To our left there's an empty road and to the left there's the end of the alley and the doorway into a pub. I move towards the road with Gwen but I stop her before we can step into view. It looks like we're in the 40s judging by the cars and the wartime signs.

"We need to try to fit in, "I say.

"Easy for you to say, you're dressed for the era," Gwen retorts as she removes her earpiece and puts her phone in an inside pocket of her jacket.

We make our way out of the alleyway and I instantly recognise the road that we're on, or rather I recognise the hall halfway up the road.

"Is that..." Gwen says, trailing off as she sees the expression on my face.

"Jack what happened in there? Because you weren't aright when you got back and you look like you've seen a ghost.

"Maybe I have." I reply as I see Tosh leave the building. She has a photograph in her hand, the rift manipulator base code. She makes her way up to a circuit box and opens it, slipping the photo inside. As she does she notices the missing part of the equation and the air raid sirens begin to sound. She stuffs it inside and stands, looking around her before running back into the hall.

Gwen is silent beside me but tears are streaming down her face. She's staring at the door to the hall and seemingly can't hear the sirens around us. However, when the first bomb falls she flinches.

I lead her towards the hall and as we enter I see Captain Jack Harkness step into the basement and close the door behind him. My heart clenches but I force myself to keep walking. It's not like I can speak to him and I can't afford to let myself get distracted.

I enter Bilis' office and begin to scout around for anything that could help us get back to our own time. However, I find nothing that could be of use. However, before I can tell Gwen to stop searching the siren signalling the all clear sounds and we rush out of the room and into downstairs to what I recognise as lover's corner. I smile for a second before hearing someone walking towards me and Gwen. I turn and see Captain Jack Harkness walking towards the corner and I quickly hide behind the sofa with Gwen before he can see me. We watch from behind the sofa as I hear myself speak.

"I thought you'd gone. This could be your last chance."

"That's why I came back,"

I remember this conversation vividly but hearing it is something else. I can remember the fear in his eyes as he finally faced up to everything and the pain of knowing that he would die tomorrow and there is nothing that I can do. I hear the other couple interrupt me and Jack and me and Gwen sneak out while they're distracted.

Once we're in an empty room upstairs, away from everyone else Gwen turns to me, "Who was he Jack?"

"That was Captain Jack Harkness," I pause, "The real Captain Jack Harkness."

"What do you mean? Who does that make you?"

"A conman. That research that you did on me after you first saw me, that was me that you found but it was also him. I was the one who went missing but he was the original. He dies tomorrow. It's a normal training exercise but they're attacked. He gets shot down. I falsified the records to make it seem like he was still alive."

"But didn't he have family that never knew he was dead, didn't he have anyone?" Gwen looks incredulous.

"I don't know."

A:N/ Sorry that this is a bit messy and all over the place. I was trying to get the word count up a bit.

The updates may start getting a bit further apart as I'm trying to sort out how I want to carry on with this story and I have a couple of different ways so I need to figure out what will work best.

As usual please vote if you liked it and thank you for reading.

-Annie