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redfiona99Title: Whiskey, Hotel, Echo, November
Fandom: Torchwood and Marvelverse
Disclaimer: The characters aren’t mine, they’re Marvel’s and the BBC’s. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Jack Harkness and Steve Rogers
Rating: PG-13, mentions of canonical character death.
Notes/Warnings: Spoilers for Endgame and Children of Earth, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” also isn't mine. Having to ignore Miracle Day, my apologies.
Sequel to “And yet they say you shouldn't meet your heroes” - https://archiveofourown.org/works/34127452
Summary: Too many time agents end up anachronic
~~~~
Jack never expects to see Steve Rogers again, feeling blessed to have come across him once.
He most definitely didn’t expect to see him when he's called to an emergency at the Malvern Hills. It was during one of those periods when Torchwood One hates Torchwood Three more than they hate Torchwood Two and wouldn't normally call on them to help but Torchwood One were busy cleaning up after a different alien invasion and Torchwood Three were the nearest to the scene so they got to handle this one.
Seeing Captain Rogers under a cover identity as obviously false as Captain Smith was even more unexpected.
"What's so funny?" asked the local liaison, a thoroughly unpleasant ex-military man who Jack was looking forward to retconning when this was all over, when Jack smirks on first hearing the name
"I knew Captain Smith in the war," was Jack's answer.
There was the inevitable tidying up after the emergency was over, this time it was just an artefact, no aliens, and that's easier to work around in terms of what he knew, what he knew Rogers knew and what Rogers thought Jack knew than an alien would have been. Especially as he didn’t know how much Rogers knows in the here and now, because this time period wasn't covered all that well by any of the history books Jack had read.
"So *Smith*, rumours of your death might have been greatly exaggerated."
"Something like that."
"And the truth?"
"Classified."
Jack, knowing what he did, was willing to accept that. The Jack that Rogers thought he knew would definitely accept that. "You've kept my secret, I'll keep yours." Rogers tipped his hat as he walked away, and Jack thought that was that, and that it could have gone worse.
~~~~
The next meeting went worse.
Jack had been summoned to London, which was never a good thing. The train to London had been delayed, passenger opinion divided on whether it was due to mechanical failure or a strike and the conductor was too busy to tell anyone. Of course it was raining.
He knew he'd only been called in for a dressing down, and he was right. He was also aware that someone had been trailing him from Headquarters back towards the centre of London. Torchwood One had been in the Docklands even before the regeneration project. Aliens didn't care too much about property prices, not until after they got onto the housing ladder at least.
Whoever it was wasn't particularly good at following people, trying too hard to not be seen. Jack had two options as he saw it, lose the tail, difficult but not undoable in the twisted maze that the East End was, or catch the tail to find out who it was and why they'd been sent. The trick with the second option was letting the tail get close enough while still making sure it was you that caught them, not them that caught you.
Jack quickly stepped into the next shop doorway, which didn't work, his tail stepped into the doorway of one of the shops Jack had just walked past. It told Jack two things, that the person following him really isn't good at it, and there definitely is someone following him. Anyone competent at tracking would have carried on past Jack, because the trick to this isn't to hide but to be unseen because you've blended into the background.
Jack waited in the doorway deciding his next move. Jack knew he should be quick because there's no way someone would spend so long looking at the window of a ... what did the store sell anyway? There was an alleyway just before the last junction he passed. He could turn around, walk that way, duck into the alleyway, and hope that whoever it was would be foolish enough to follow him into it.
Jack took that option despite the risks because, well, injuries just don't worry him the same nowadays, and anyone who was this bad at trailing someone was probably going to fall for the "lure into an alley" trick.
He walked, not slowly, but making sure not to look hasty, back in the direction he'd come from. He tried to make it looks like he's concerned about something, like maybe he's forgotten his umbrella. Luck was on his side and someone walked between him and his tail just as he darted into the alley, giving him time to set the trap before his tail followed him.
The fight was over quickly but Jack realised he'd made a miscalculation even before that. His tail may have been a useless spy, but he was fast enough that Jack was barely landing any punches and strong enough that anything that did land didn't even slow the other guy down. Jack was full expecting to have to regenerate a stoved-in head when he realised who it was.
"Captain Rogers?"
This was not the Steve Rogers Jack had met in the war, it wasn't even the Rogers Jack had met again a couple of years before. This was a Steve Rogers who'd seen other things. "You knew what would happen and didn't say anything." Then more quietly, "you could have stopped it." Jack doesn't have to ask what Rogers is talking about. He's found out about the time travel. Jack can also guess how he found out about the other lie Jack hadn't been telling; there's a magic round people who've been touched by the Doctor, a star dust, and Rogers was covered in it.
Something in Jack comes very close to breaking, because he can see the hurt he's caused even if it was for the best. He released his hold on Rogers's lapels. The urge to explain himself to someone who wouldn't tell. "You wouldn't have believed me, even if I'd told you." Rogers looked like he was going to argue. "And you wouldn't have wanted me to do anything that would have stopped you stopping the Chitauri."
The naming of the aliens seemed to convince Rogers that Jack wasn't just talking out of his hat.
"We need to talk."
"Yes, we do."
Rogers, because bless him, he had even less skill at subterfuge than Jack, wanted to stay in the alley, missing that that would make them more suspicious. To Jack's mind, there were only two places you'd want a conversation like this, in a wide-open park, where you'd spot anyone following you, or in a pub where there's enough hubbub to hide anything you might say.
Rogers wanted to go to a park, despite being in East London, and despite the weather being such that he'd get wet feet. James in Torchwood Two taught Jack an excellent word to describe the way the weather is - it's dreich. Dreich, neither of them have an umbrella, and they will both look ridiculous.
Possibly make that even more ridiculous, given that the landlord of the first likely looking pub that Jack took them to took one look at Rogers's blue ensemble and said, "we don't serve the likes of you in here."
"What, Americans?" said Jack, trying to smooth things over.
"Why didn't you say so?" said the landlord, nodding them in. It's something Jack's found, the Brits'll accept "is American" as a reason or explanation for almost anything.
Jack ordered them a pint each, explaining to the landlord that his friend was over for a visit, and since they don't have them in the US, he wanted him to experience a 'British pub'. "And you've brought him in here? Poor sod." The landlord laughed as he handed over the second pint. Jack had picked this pub particularly, guessing from the outside that it would be busy enough but not too much. Too much and it would have been so loud they'd have to shout at each other, too quiet and everyone would have heard what they said. He'd tried not to choose anywhere too rough, sure, it's not the Ritz, but it's not the sort of East End pub even Jack knows to avoid.
They waited, trading banalities about the weather and breakfast until the initial interest their arrival and accents brought goes away.
Jack didn’t ask about the Doctor, no matter how much he wanted to, mostly because Rogers deserved this conversation to be about his justifiable anger. Jack has had the start of the conversation waiting for years.
"I will be born three thousand years from now on a planet orbiting a star that's so far away that you can't even see its light from Earth, and that's the least interesting thing about me." Jack figured it’s best to get everything over in one go, drip feeding Rogers the information was only going to make it more difficult for both of them. "I joined something called the Time Agency, then a series of things happened that left me stuck in 1890s Cardiff." It was a very dry summary, but none of it was actually a lie, not the way the whole truth would have been. "You know about the other thing," which was one way to describe what at this point seemed to be actual immortality, "and now you how I got here."
"And what, you just happened to know who I am?"
"You're on the syllabus." Rogers looked like he didn’t know what to say, and Jack can't blame him. "The time travel and everything." Jack used to think Captain America was being held up as an example; nowadays, Jack wasn’t sure whether Steve Rogers was supposed to be an example, a cautionary tale or a way of telling the junior agents that it could have been worse.
"I'm going to have to believe you. I do, you know. You've never lied to me, you've not told me the truth, but you haven't lied, and I know the difference, and I know that the life we lead means there has to be a difference." Jack nodded; it was a fair summary. "I understand that I had to ... you couldn't tell me what would happen to *me*. But it's not just me. I mean, Bucky, you two seemed to get on, could you not have stopped it," Jack wasn’t sure if he meant Bucky or all the things Bucky did afterwards. It was a measure of the man that Rogers was happy to accept the things he'd gone through but not what happened to someone else.
"I couldn't have stopped that for reasons I still can't tell you." Rogers had to go into the ice to save the world from the Chitauri, and Barnes has to become the Winter Solider for something that Rogers hasn't done yet.
"You mean, this isn't it."
"'But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep,"
"And miles to go before I sleep." Rogers knows the quote, of course, and knows what it means for them both. Jack was never sure when he'd get to sleep, only that it'll be after Rogers, but for now, they both have to keep watch and keep the world ticking over.
They sat there in silence. Rogers's fingertips slid over the pint glass rim as he was thinking.
"Is there any way to stop it?" There were so many things that 'it' could be.
"No." The answer was the same no matter what 'it' was. "It's not going to stop you trying, but no. Normally, no matter what you do, it still happens. Sometimes trying to fix it makes it worse, sometimes you get Time Agents swooping in to keep the wrong thing happening because it prevents a worse thing later, sometimes you stop it happening now and it happens next week instead. History isn't an event, it's a wave, it'll crash down sometime because it has to."
"How do you keep going? Why do you still keep going, if you think it's all going to happen anyway?"
"I tell myself that what I'm doing now makes sure history turns out the way I remember it."
"The sniper on the ridge!" Rogers reeled like he'd just realised something. "Morita swore someone shot a guy fighting him from the German lines. We all just chalked it up to friendly fire. Was it you?"
"When I come from, Jim Morita did not die that day. For all I know, he'd have beaten the guy himself, but I can also tell myself it always happened."
Here would normally be when the other person in the conversation asked when they died, or when someone they cared about died, but Rogers, second time around, he already knew that, or knew what it was when he left the future. It was nice not to be asked.
The silence was heavy, and uncomfortable, but not unpleasant, not really. Rogers was trying to come to terms with what he'd heard, and that took time.
"So, what are the rules?" Jack looked up confused so Rogers continued. "The way I see it, I know something about the future, or what it used to be before I came back,” Jack presumes Steve told himself the same comforting tale, that he’s always been sent back and he’s just closing the loop, not opening a whole new path of history every time he does something. It wasn’t worth the headache of thinking otherwise. “How do I stop myself telling you anything, whether it's true or not anymore?”
It was a question that had plagued the Time Agency. Too many agents ended up anachronic, caught between what they remembered their present to be and how it was when they came back from their missions. All agents ended up anachronic, to some extent, it was inevitable, but a lot of the changes were small, which is why Jack didn’t feel wrong describing history as waves, and it was quite rare that people got stuck in the difference. But people did.
At the start, it was left to each individual agent's judgement. If the situation was significantly worse when they got back from a mission, they were to send a message back to shortly before they left via a short-range hopper, single mission use civilians, and abort the mission.
But people are people, and it was easy enough to say there'd been no major change, like maybe the Colonel dyed her hair black instead of blonde now, or her asymmetric fringe was the other way round, when the change had been quite major indeed.
The big case, or the big case they Agency had found out about, there must have been others, was a Time Agent who'd lost his wife. Went back, tried to fix some small thing not more than eighty years before his now, and in the world he came back to, his wife was still there. And the worse that the world was now was only slightly worse, it wasn't like there was a previously non-existent interplanetary civil war or an outbreak of Rigelian flu where there hadn't been before. No, it was a subtly worse, air more polluted, technology maybe three, four years behind where it should have been and falling further behind. The agent hadn't thought the difference was enough worse to be noticed. And it probably wouldn't have been, except someone else had been sent on a mission three hours before him and noticed the difference.
The Agency tried not to talk about that whole situation.
Agency R&D used it as an excuse to spend a lot of money. For once it was well spent, because that was when they came up with the wrist recorders. Little discs that fitted in a slot behind their wrist teleporters and recorded history as it was when you left, so there was an actual truth to compare to. Inviolable records of what was when the agent left, that they were to review on their return and decide if the new now was better or worse than the then now. A whole team of recorder readers worked to check the results and send a hopper back if necessary.
Of course, the agent that disrupted that system managed to run out the door, pick up her reanimated son, and stay on the lam for six years, far too long to send a hopper back. They couldn't just send a note, no, for some reason Jack never understood, it had to be something living that got sent back (and yes, they had suggested a dog, but apparently that wouldn't work either). Eventually, the head of the Agency had fallen on his metaphorical sword and sent himself back as the hopper. That was his existence for six years wiped, a real sword might have been kinder.
That was when they started sending people in pairs. Jack thought that he and John might have been less ... everything and all they were to each other if they hadn't been paired up so often and so long. While the chrono-recorders were inviolable records of what was when the agent left, once a mission was over, the old truth got buried and you had to deal with the new one. When there was only one other person who remembered the little things that you remembered, like the really good tortilla place that had never existed in the new now, you became too reliant on them.
And no matter how good the wrist recorders were, they weren't available to them here and now. They'd have to go far more low tech.
"We need something simple and memorable. You remember your NATO alphabet?" If Rogers was like any other solider, he'd have it tattooed into his mind. Jack had the added joy of having to remember different versions at different times and making sure that the word that sprung to his lips when he needed it for an emergency wasn't something that it couldn't possibly be at the time.
The variations in the NATO alphabet had other advantages; Torchwood had managed to catch a shapeshifter because he'd been so much better at remembering the right words than David ever had been.
"Sure."
"So we call North Italy Alpha, Malvern Beta and this is Charlie. Next time you see me, you greet me with Delta. Next time I see you, I greet you with Delta. Even if they don't match up, it means we know we can only talk about things up to the latest one we both share."
"It's simple. I like it."
They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about the old days, the parts they couldn't talk about at the time but can now, and, "so what did happen with whatever his name was at Malvern after I left? Because he was not easy to work with."
There was a longer gap to meeting Delta. In-between times, Rogers made it as far as Cardiff, but Jack had been away on a mission, and was only told when he'd got back. Jack had never thought there'd be a day where he was glad to have missed Rogers but it was 1966, and Jack wasn't sure he could look Rogers in the face after the 456. It was the right thing to do, the whole world vs twelve children, but it didn't mean it was good.
He still felt that mission in his bones when he does meet Rogers again. Meeting Delta was really similar to the Malvern mission. Rogers was on a SHIELD mission; Jack was covering for Torchwood One. They were trying to figure out how to write up the paperwork, because they both agreed SHIELD could do with not knowing about Torchwood and vice versa.
"You can keep the technology, if I get to keep the knowledge of a time rift spitting out here." Well, it had spat out there. Jack was reasonably sure the technology Paul had given him to seal the fault line would stop it happening again. But it would be too easy to trace the faultline back to Cardiff if Jack let Rogers write it up. The tech that the rift had spat out was less of a problem, the rift must have linked this place with somewhere only a couple of years ahead, and it was within the bounds of something a particularly advanced tinkerer could have made with what was already available.
That worked for Rogers because he'd been sent here because Hydra types had been after the electronics in the technology.
"Actually, I meant to say, thanks for looking after Falsworth. Peggy said someone had rescued him from a sticky situation in March. The description sounded like you, the coat and everything."
Jack stopped what he was doing, "I stopped the assassin aiming for Dernier. I've not seen Falsworth since the war." Cue both of them radioing in to their respective organisations that something was going on, while trying desperately not to mention the source of their information.
Meeting Echo was when things got interesting.
Jack noticed that Rogers looked much older, even before he said anything. It was one of those moments where Jack felt his age, or lack of aging. Rogers's super serum had extended his lifespan, yes, but even it had its limits, and Jack had forgotten that and had enjoyed someone who looked to be almost as unchanging as himself.
Jack saw Rogers looking so much older and said "Echo", only to hear "Victor" in reply.
"What do you mean 'Victor'?"
"I'm really looking forward to telling you when I can."
It stalled their conversation, because there's so many questions that Jack wanted to ask and knows he shouldn't, and so much Rogers wanted to say but can't.
There was a sadness to Rogers, heavy round the eyes, which Jack assumed was due to aging and knowledge that nothing, except maybe Jack, was forever, or something Rogers had done between Delta and Victor, but it got heavier the longer Rogers looked at him. And he kept looking at Jack, tilting his own head this way and that. Jack had never liked that look when people got it looking at him. "What?"
"I met you ..."
"You can't tell me." Why would Rogers try to tell him about something he can't fix?
"No, not you in the future. You from before. Before Alpha." There was a pause, and that despairing look was back. "What happened?" That was why Rogers was looking at him like he'd seen a particularly tragic ghost; he'd met the boy who'd been the shining, happy face of the Boeshane peninsula.
"I don't know." Rogers raised his hands to Jack's shoulders to try and comfort him. Jack shrugged him off. There's nothing to be comforted about, he is what he is, and there's also far too much ever to be able to be comforted. "It's not like Barnes, who was underneath all of that all that time." Jack knows he can talk to Rogers about this now, now that's Rogers is in his second time around, "There's whole huge gaps in my memory. I remember leaving Boeshane, but I don't remember arriving of Decion Alpha. I'm a farm boy from Boeshane, tiny backwater place on an agricultural planet, no way I shouldn't remember landing on the sparkling jewel of the Federation. I remember my Agency training, don't remember my first mission. I don't remember whatever it was that lead to the original investigation by the Time Agency. I'm sure I did it, I don't get to pretend that the Agency was the Boy Scouts, and it could have been a mission that was the right thing to do when we left to do it but wrong by the time we did it, or it could been some of the work I did off the books because the pay was not that good. But I don't know what it was. I don't remember meeting you back then," Rogers looked like Jack had punched him, looked worse than he'd done after the few hits Jack had managed to get on him in London, "and I'm sure I would have done." Because any version of Jack would have done. "Whatever it was, they took years of my memories, and apparently you're in that."
It was a good visit, but that future meeting in their pasts hung over the whole thing.
Foxtrot or whisky, depending whose timeline you were in, went far better. It was 2008, and Steve, now looking all his age, had flown over to Cardiff. Jack trusted his team enough that he introduces Steve to them as an old war buddy, and when Owen inevitably raises the question of why does this old man know about Torchwood, Jack invents something plausible that isn't quite a lie about Steve finding out about them in World War II.
At the end of the day, Jack took Rogers up to the top of the Plas because it was an amazing view, and it was a gift Jack could give him without any danger of contaminating the time streams.
Rogers stood, leaning against the invisible barrier.
"Thank you for introducing me to them." There was that wistful smile again. "Years from now, you tell me that they're the best team you ever worked with. I can see that." Jack didn't worry that that phrase meant it would all end badly, because years from now could be any amount of time for the two of them, between the Doctor, the Agency and the Infinity Stones, time travel has them in its grip.
"I've come to ask another favour, one of those that relies on you being ... you." Which is a nice way of phrasing "not going to die any time soon". "I've got to go into the ice soon, because I'm coming out of it." And there can't be two Steve Rogers running around, because the one about to wake up has to go back in time to come here and now. Jack suspected that was the reason why Torchwood Three were so determined he couldn't be in Cardiff during the war, even if he doesn't know how they knew (finding that out is in his future).
"I need someone to wake me up in 2023. I can't tell you how I know it's already happened, and I need to ask your forgiveness for not warning you about some of the things that are going to happen. There's one thing, and if you never forgive me, I will understand, but I can't tell you about it because the technology gets used to save the universe." There was a pause. "I understand what you meant back in that pub in London now." The second pause was shorter. "I need someone to wake me up in 2023 and you are the one person I know will be there."
"Give me a when and a where, and the code to the icebox. If I can do it, I will do it."
Jack holds to that vow, even after Steven. It was the only time he returned to Earth in a thousand years, and he did it and he left again. He can't forgive himself so how can he forgive Rogers for making the same decision. He finds out later that the signalling technology used to broadcast the signal to the 456 was used as part of Stark's tech that built the time travel device.
Jack was far enough away in time that he didn’t even feel the snap or the unsnap when they happened, and it was years later before he came back to Earth again. Time doesn't heal all wounds, but the frailty of human memory does, even if you're probably immortal. It goes from being a searing lightning bolt through him every time he thinks of Steven, of family, of Earth, to being a constant jittering pain, like a metal wire against a filling.
He came back because a very old friend sent out an emergency beacon.
He solved that problem, painfully, but a life debt is a life debt.
Jack was ready to go, fly away again, because just because it doesn't hurt as much doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, when he was pulled into another disaster because there's aliens involved, and no one else around who could help.
He'd have been relieved whoever came to help when the sixteenth hour of the siege began, but it was Steve, young again, who pulled him out from behind the rubble he'd surrounded himself and the polarized hyperflux box with. Everything's going to be alright, Jack'll live, save the box, give it to Torchwood, keep it safe.
Steve was the one who shouted for a medic, even if the bleeding wouldn't have been enough to kill most people, never mind Jack, and pressed the wound bandage down.
"We really need to stop meeting like this. Echo."
"Golf. And you wouldn't believe it if I told you why." If this Steve hasn't gone back yet, maybe there's a chance to fix it. Or maybe there isn't. But it has to be worth a try. This is evidence that their future isn't set because Jack had never, in years of lectures and study, never mind off the books research after Alpha, found anything that said that Steve Rogers was active in the 2020s.
~~~~
The End
Fandom: Torchwood and Marvelverse
Disclaimer: The characters aren’t mine, they’re Marvel’s and the BBC’s. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Jack Harkness and Steve Rogers
Rating: PG-13, mentions of canonical character death.
Notes/Warnings: Spoilers for Endgame and Children of Earth, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” also isn't mine. Having to ignore Miracle Day, my apologies.
Sequel to “And yet they say you shouldn't meet your heroes” - https://archiveofourown.org/works/34127452
Summary: Too many time agents end up anachronic
~~~~
Jack never expects to see Steve Rogers again, feeling blessed to have come across him once.
He most definitely didn’t expect to see him when he's called to an emergency at the Malvern Hills. It was during one of those periods when Torchwood One hates Torchwood Three more than they hate Torchwood Two and wouldn't normally call on them to help but Torchwood One were busy cleaning up after a different alien invasion and Torchwood Three were the nearest to the scene so they got to handle this one.
Seeing Captain Rogers under a cover identity as obviously false as Captain Smith was even more unexpected.
"What's so funny?" asked the local liaison, a thoroughly unpleasant ex-military man who Jack was looking forward to retconning when this was all over, when Jack smirks on first hearing the name
"I knew Captain Smith in the war," was Jack's answer.
There was the inevitable tidying up after the emergency was over, this time it was just an artefact, no aliens, and that's easier to work around in terms of what he knew, what he knew Rogers knew and what Rogers thought Jack knew than an alien would have been. Especially as he didn’t know how much Rogers knows in the here and now, because this time period wasn't covered all that well by any of the history books Jack had read.
"So *Smith*, rumours of your death might have been greatly exaggerated."
"Something like that."
"And the truth?"
"Classified."
Jack, knowing what he did, was willing to accept that. The Jack that Rogers thought he knew would definitely accept that. "You've kept my secret, I'll keep yours." Rogers tipped his hat as he walked away, and Jack thought that was that, and that it could have gone worse.
~~~~
The next meeting went worse.
Jack had been summoned to London, which was never a good thing. The train to London had been delayed, passenger opinion divided on whether it was due to mechanical failure or a strike and the conductor was too busy to tell anyone. Of course it was raining.
He knew he'd only been called in for a dressing down, and he was right. He was also aware that someone had been trailing him from Headquarters back towards the centre of London. Torchwood One had been in the Docklands even before the regeneration project. Aliens didn't care too much about property prices, not until after they got onto the housing ladder at least.
Whoever it was wasn't particularly good at following people, trying too hard to not be seen. Jack had two options as he saw it, lose the tail, difficult but not undoable in the twisted maze that the East End was, or catch the tail to find out who it was and why they'd been sent. The trick with the second option was letting the tail get close enough while still making sure it was you that caught them, not them that caught you.
Jack quickly stepped into the next shop doorway, which didn't work, his tail stepped into the doorway of one of the shops Jack had just walked past. It told Jack two things, that the person following him really isn't good at it, and there definitely is someone following him. Anyone competent at tracking would have carried on past Jack, because the trick to this isn't to hide but to be unseen because you've blended into the background.
Jack waited in the doorway deciding his next move. Jack knew he should be quick because there's no way someone would spend so long looking at the window of a ... what did the store sell anyway? There was an alleyway just before the last junction he passed. He could turn around, walk that way, duck into the alleyway, and hope that whoever it was would be foolish enough to follow him into it.
Jack took that option despite the risks because, well, injuries just don't worry him the same nowadays, and anyone who was this bad at trailing someone was probably going to fall for the "lure into an alley" trick.
He walked, not slowly, but making sure not to look hasty, back in the direction he'd come from. He tried to make it looks like he's concerned about something, like maybe he's forgotten his umbrella. Luck was on his side and someone walked between him and his tail just as he darted into the alley, giving him time to set the trap before his tail followed him.
The fight was over quickly but Jack realised he'd made a miscalculation even before that. His tail may have been a useless spy, but he was fast enough that Jack was barely landing any punches and strong enough that anything that did land didn't even slow the other guy down. Jack was full expecting to have to regenerate a stoved-in head when he realised who it was.
"Captain Rogers?"
This was not the Steve Rogers Jack had met in the war, it wasn't even the Rogers Jack had met again a couple of years before. This was a Steve Rogers who'd seen other things. "You knew what would happen and didn't say anything." Then more quietly, "you could have stopped it." Jack doesn't have to ask what Rogers is talking about. He's found out about the time travel. Jack can also guess how he found out about the other lie Jack hadn't been telling; there's a magic round people who've been touched by the Doctor, a star dust, and Rogers was covered in it.
Something in Jack comes very close to breaking, because he can see the hurt he's caused even if it was for the best. He released his hold on Rogers's lapels. The urge to explain himself to someone who wouldn't tell. "You wouldn't have believed me, even if I'd told you." Rogers looked like he was going to argue. "And you wouldn't have wanted me to do anything that would have stopped you stopping the Chitauri."
The naming of the aliens seemed to convince Rogers that Jack wasn't just talking out of his hat.
"We need to talk."
"Yes, we do."
Rogers, because bless him, he had even less skill at subterfuge than Jack, wanted to stay in the alley, missing that that would make them more suspicious. To Jack's mind, there were only two places you'd want a conversation like this, in a wide-open park, where you'd spot anyone following you, or in a pub where there's enough hubbub to hide anything you might say.
Rogers wanted to go to a park, despite being in East London, and despite the weather being such that he'd get wet feet. James in Torchwood Two taught Jack an excellent word to describe the way the weather is - it's dreich. Dreich, neither of them have an umbrella, and they will both look ridiculous.
Possibly make that even more ridiculous, given that the landlord of the first likely looking pub that Jack took them to took one look at Rogers's blue ensemble and said, "we don't serve the likes of you in here."
"What, Americans?" said Jack, trying to smooth things over.
"Why didn't you say so?" said the landlord, nodding them in. It's something Jack's found, the Brits'll accept "is American" as a reason or explanation for almost anything.
Jack ordered them a pint each, explaining to the landlord that his friend was over for a visit, and since they don't have them in the US, he wanted him to experience a 'British pub'. "And you've brought him in here? Poor sod." The landlord laughed as he handed over the second pint. Jack had picked this pub particularly, guessing from the outside that it would be busy enough but not too much. Too much and it would have been so loud they'd have to shout at each other, too quiet and everyone would have heard what they said. He'd tried not to choose anywhere too rough, sure, it's not the Ritz, but it's not the sort of East End pub even Jack knows to avoid.
They waited, trading banalities about the weather and breakfast until the initial interest their arrival and accents brought goes away.
Jack didn’t ask about the Doctor, no matter how much he wanted to, mostly because Rogers deserved this conversation to be about his justifiable anger. Jack has had the start of the conversation waiting for years.
"I will be born three thousand years from now on a planet orbiting a star that's so far away that you can't even see its light from Earth, and that's the least interesting thing about me." Jack figured it’s best to get everything over in one go, drip feeding Rogers the information was only going to make it more difficult for both of them. "I joined something called the Time Agency, then a series of things happened that left me stuck in 1890s Cardiff." It was a very dry summary, but none of it was actually a lie, not the way the whole truth would have been. "You know about the other thing," which was one way to describe what at this point seemed to be actual immortality, "and now you how I got here."
"And what, you just happened to know who I am?"
"You're on the syllabus." Rogers looked like he didn’t know what to say, and Jack can't blame him. "The time travel and everything." Jack used to think Captain America was being held up as an example; nowadays, Jack wasn’t sure whether Steve Rogers was supposed to be an example, a cautionary tale or a way of telling the junior agents that it could have been worse.
"I'm going to have to believe you. I do, you know. You've never lied to me, you've not told me the truth, but you haven't lied, and I know the difference, and I know that the life we lead means there has to be a difference." Jack nodded; it was a fair summary. "I understand that I had to ... you couldn't tell me what would happen to *me*. But it's not just me. I mean, Bucky, you two seemed to get on, could you not have stopped it," Jack wasn’t sure if he meant Bucky or all the things Bucky did afterwards. It was a measure of the man that Rogers was happy to accept the things he'd gone through but not what happened to someone else.
"I couldn't have stopped that for reasons I still can't tell you." Rogers had to go into the ice to save the world from the Chitauri, and Barnes has to become the Winter Solider for something that Rogers hasn't done yet.
"You mean, this isn't it."
"'But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep,"
"And miles to go before I sleep." Rogers knows the quote, of course, and knows what it means for them both. Jack was never sure when he'd get to sleep, only that it'll be after Rogers, but for now, they both have to keep watch and keep the world ticking over.
They sat there in silence. Rogers's fingertips slid over the pint glass rim as he was thinking.
"Is there any way to stop it?" There were so many things that 'it' could be.
"No." The answer was the same no matter what 'it' was. "It's not going to stop you trying, but no. Normally, no matter what you do, it still happens. Sometimes trying to fix it makes it worse, sometimes you get Time Agents swooping in to keep the wrong thing happening because it prevents a worse thing later, sometimes you stop it happening now and it happens next week instead. History isn't an event, it's a wave, it'll crash down sometime because it has to."
"How do you keep going? Why do you still keep going, if you think it's all going to happen anyway?"
"I tell myself that what I'm doing now makes sure history turns out the way I remember it."
"The sniper on the ridge!" Rogers reeled like he'd just realised something. "Morita swore someone shot a guy fighting him from the German lines. We all just chalked it up to friendly fire. Was it you?"
"When I come from, Jim Morita did not die that day. For all I know, he'd have beaten the guy himself, but I can also tell myself it always happened."
Here would normally be when the other person in the conversation asked when they died, or when someone they cared about died, but Rogers, second time around, he already knew that, or knew what it was when he left the future. It was nice not to be asked.
The silence was heavy, and uncomfortable, but not unpleasant, not really. Rogers was trying to come to terms with what he'd heard, and that took time.
"So, what are the rules?" Jack looked up confused so Rogers continued. "The way I see it, I know something about the future, or what it used to be before I came back,” Jack presumes Steve told himself the same comforting tale, that he’s always been sent back and he’s just closing the loop, not opening a whole new path of history every time he does something. It wasn’t worth the headache of thinking otherwise. “How do I stop myself telling you anything, whether it's true or not anymore?”
It was a question that had plagued the Time Agency. Too many agents ended up anachronic, caught between what they remembered their present to be and how it was when they came back from their missions. All agents ended up anachronic, to some extent, it was inevitable, but a lot of the changes were small, which is why Jack didn’t feel wrong describing history as waves, and it was quite rare that people got stuck in the difference. But people did.
At the start, it was left to each individual agent's judgement. If the situation was significantly worse when they got back from a mission, they were to send a message back to shortly before they left via a short-range hopper, single mission use civilians, and abort the mission.
But people are people, and it was easy enough to say there'd been no major change, like maybe the Colonel dyed her hair black instead of blonde now, or her asymmetric fringe was the other way round, when the change had been quite major indeed.
The big case, or the big case they Agency had found out about, there must have been others, was a Time Agent who'd lost his wife. Went back, tried to fix some small thing not more than eighty years before his now, and in the world he came back to, his wife was still there. And the worse that the world was now was only slightly worse, it wasn't like there was a previously non-existent interplanetary civil war or an outbreak of Rigelian flu where there hadn't been before. No, it was a subtly worse, air more polluted, technology maybe three, four years behind where it should have been and falling further behind. The agent hadn't thought the difference was enough worse to be noticed. And it probably wouldn't have been, except someone else had been sent on a mission three hours before him and noticed the difference.
The Agency tried not to talk about that whole situation.
Agency R&D used it as an excuse to spend a lot of money. For once it was well spent, because that was when they came up with the wrist recorders. Little discs that fitted in a slot behind their wrist teleporters and recorded history as it was when you left, so there was an actual truth to compare to. Inviolable records of what was when the agent left, that they were to review on their return and decide if the new now was better or worse than the then now. A whole team of recorder readers worked to check the results and send a hopper back if necessary.
Of course, the agent that disrupted that system managed to run out the door, pick up her reanimated son, and stay on the lam for six years, far too long to send a hopper back. They couldn't just send a note, no, for some reason Jack never understood, it had to be something living that got sent back (and yes, they had suggested a dog, but apparently that wouldn't work either). Eventually, the head of the Agency had fallen on his metaphorical sword and sent himself back as the hopper. That was his existence for six years wiped, a real sword might have been kinder.
That was when they started sending people in pairs. Jack thought that he and John might have been less ... everything and all they were to each other if they hadn't been paired up so often and so long. While the chrono-recorders were inviolable records of what was when the agent left, once a mission was over, the old truth got buried and you had to deal with the new one. When there was only one other person who remembered the little things that you remembered, like the really good tortilla place that had never existed in the new now, you became too reliant on them.
And no matter how good the wrist recorders were, they weren't available to them here and now. They'd have to go far more low tech.
"We need something simple and memorable. You remember your NATO alphabet?" If Rogers was like any other solider, he'd have it tattooed into his mind. Jack had the added joy of having to remember different versions at different times and making sure that the word that sprung to his lips when he needed it for an emergency wasn't something that it couldn't possibly be at the time.
The variations in the NATO alphabet had other advantages; Torchwood had managed to catch a shapeshifter because he'd been so much better at remembering the right words than David ever had been.
"Sure."
"So we call North Italy Alpha, Malvern Beta and this is Charlie. Next time you see me, you greet me with Delta. Next time I see you, I greet you with Delta. Even if they don't match up, it means we know we can only talk about things up to the latest one we both share."
"It's simple. I like it."
They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about the old days, the parts they couldn't talk about at the time but can now, and, "so what did happen with whatever his name was at Malvern after I left? Because he was not easy to work with."
There was a longer gap to meeting Delta. In-between times, Rogers made it as far as Cardiff, but Jack had been away on a mission, and was only told when he'd got back. Jack had never thought there'd be a day where he was glad to have missed Rogers but it was 1966, and Jack wasn't sure he could look Rogers in the face after the 456. It was the right thing to do, the whole world vs twelve children, but it didn't mean it was good.
He still felt that mission in his bones when he does meet Rogers again. Meeting Delta was really similar to the Malvern mission. Rogers was on a SHIELD mission; Jack was covering for Torchwood One. They were trying to figure out how to write up the paperwork, because they both agreed SHIELD could do with not knowing about Torchwood and vice versa.
"You can keep the technology, if I get to keep the knowledge of a time rift spitting out here." Well, it had spat out there. Jack was reasonably sure the technology Paul had given him to seal the fault line would stop it happening again. But it would be too easy to trace the faultline back to Cardiff if Jack let Rogers write it up. The tech that the rift had spat out was less of a problem, the rift must have linked this place with somewhere only a couple of years ahead, and it was within the bounds of something a particularly advanced tinkerer could have made with what was already available.
That worked for Rogers because he'd been sent here because Hydra types had been after the electronics in the technology.
"Actually, I meant to say, thanks for looking after Falsworth. Peggy said someone had rescued him from a sticky situation in March. The description sounded like you, the coat and everything."
Jack stopped what he was doing, "I stopped the assassin aiming for Dernier. I've not seen Falsworth since the war." Cue both of them radioing in to their respective organisations that something was going on, while trying desperately not to mention the source of their information.
Meeting Echo was when things got interesting.
Jack noticed that Rogers looked much older, even before he said anything. It was one of those moments where Jack felt his age, or lack of aging. Rogers's super serum had extended his lifespan, yes, but even it had its limits, and Jack had forgotten that and had enjoyed someone who looked to be almost as unchanging as himself.
Jack saw Rogers looking so much older and said "Echo", only to hear "Victor" in reply.
"What do you mean 'Victor'?"
"I'm really looking forward to telling you when I can."
It stalled their conversation, because there's so many questions that Jack wanted to ask and knows he shouldn't, and so much Rogers wanted to say but can't.
There was a sadness to Rogers, heavy round the eyes, which Jack assumed was due to aging and knowledge that nothing, except maybe Jack, was forever, or something Rogers had done between Delta and Victor, but it got heavier the longer Rogers looked at him. And he kept looking at Jack, tilting his own head this way and that. Jack had never liked that look when people got it looking at him. "What?"
"I met you ..."
"You can't tell me." Why would Rogers try to tell him about something he can't fix?
"No, not you in the future. You from before. Before Alpha." There was a pause, and that despairing look was back. "What happened?" That was why Rogers was looking at him like he'd seen a particularly tragic ghost; he'd met the boy who'd been the shining, happy face of the Boeshane peninsula.
"I don't know." Rogers raised his hands to Jack's shoulders to try and comfort him. Jack shrugged him off. There's nothing to be comforted about, he is what he is, and there's also far too much ever to be able to be comforted. "It's not like Barnes, who was underneath all of that all that time." Jack knows he can talk to Rogers about this now, now that's Rogers is in his second time around, "There's whole huge gaps in my memory. I remember leaving Boeshane, but I don't remember arriving of Decion Alpha. I'm a farm boy from Boeshane, tiny backwater place on an agricultural planet, no way I shouldn't remember landing on the sparkling jewel of the Federation. I remember my Agency training, don't remember my first mission. I don't remember whatever it was that lead to the original investigation by the Time Agency. I'm sure I did it, I don't get to pretend that the Agency was the Boy Scouts, and it could have been a mission that was the right thing to do when we left to do it but wrong by the time we did it, or it could been some of the work I did off the books because the pay was not that good. But I don't know what it was. I don't remember meeting you back then," Rogers looked like Jack had punched him, looked worse than he'd done after the few hits Jack had managed to get on him in London, "and I'm sure I would have done." Because any version of Jack would have done. "Whatever it was, they took years of my memories, and apparently you're in that."
It was a good visit, but that future meeting in their pasts hung over the whole thing.
Foxtrot or whisky, depending whose timeline you were in, went far better. It was 2008, and Steve, now looking all his age, had flown over to Cardiff. Jack trusted his team enough that he introduces Steve to them as an old war buddy, and when Owen inevitably raises the question of why does this old man know about Torchwood, Jack invents something plausible that isn't quite a lie about Steve finding out about them in World War II.
At the end of the day, Jack took Rogers up to the top of the Plas because it was an amazing view, and it was a gift Jack could give him without any danger of contaminating the time streams.
Rogers stood, leaning against the invisible barrier.
"Thank you for introducing me to them." There was that wistful smile again. "Years from now, you tell me that they're the best team you ever worked with. I can see that." Jack didn't worry that that phrase meant it would all end badly, because years from now could be any amount of time for the two of them, between the Doctor, the Agency and the Infinity Stones, time travel has them in its grip.
"I've come to ask another favour, one of those that relies on you being ... you." Which is a nice way of phrasing "not going to die any time soon". "I've got to go into the ice soon, because I'm coming out of it." And there can't be two Steve Rogers running around, because the one about to wake up has to go back in time to come here and now. Jack suspected that was the reason why Torchwood Three were so determined he couldn't be in Cardiff during the war, even if he doesn't know how they knew (finding that out is in his future).
"I need someone to wake me up in 2023. I can't tell you how I know it's already happened, and I need to ask your forgiveness for not warning you about some of the things that are going to happen. There's one thing, and if you never forgive me, I will understand, but I can't tell you about it because the technology gets used to save the universe." There was a pause. "I understand what you meant back in that pub in London now." The second pause was shorter. "I need someone to wake me up in 2023 and you are the one person I know will be there."
"Give me a when and a where, and the code to the icebox. If I can do it, I will do it."
Jack holds to that vow, even after Steven. It was the only time he returned to Earth in a thousand years, and he did it and he left again. He can't forgive himself so how can he forgive Rogers for making the same decision. He finds out later that the signalling technology used to broadcast the signal to the 456 was used as part of Stark's tech that built the time travel device.
Jack was far enough away in time that he didn’t even feel the snap or the unsnap when they happened, and it was years later before he came back to Earth again. Time doesn't heal all wounds, but the frailty of human memory does, even if you're probably immortal. It goes from being a searing lightning bolt through him every time he thinks of Steven, of family, of Earth, to being a constant jittering pain, like a metal wire against a filling.
He came back because a very old friend sent out an emergency beacon.
He solved that problem, painfully, but a life debt is a life debt.
Jack was ready to go, fly away again, because just because it doesn't hurt as much doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, when he was pulled into another disaster because there's aliens involved, and no one else around who could help.
He'd have been relieved whoever came to help when the sixteenth hour of the siege began, but it was Steve, young again, who pulled him out from behind the rubble he'd surrounded himself and the polarized hyperflux box with. Everything's going to be alright, Jack'll live, save the box, give it to Torchwood, keep it safe.
Steve was the one who shouted for a medic, even if the bleeding wouldn't have been enough to kill most people, never mind Jack, and pressed the wound bandage down.
"We really need to stop meeting like this. Echo."
"Golf. And you wouldn't believe it if I told you why." If this Steve hasn't gone back yet, maybe there's a chance to fix it. Or maybe there isn't. But it has to be worth a try. This is evidence that their future isn't set because Jack had never, in years of lectures and study, never mind off the books research after Alpha, found anything that said that Steve Rogers was active in the 2020s.
~~~~
The End
