The future is not what I expected it to be [For quitehomoerotic

[anightingalesang]

Parachute or not, Jack hit the ground hard, half stunned. He twisted enough to land properly without breaking anything, but it still jarred him and he disconnected from the chute on instinct and lay on the ground trying to get his bearings and catch his breath. Something had happened up there, something he couldn't fully describe. Already dizzy from the smoke and heat from his plane burning around him, it had seemed like the sky itself opened up, sucked him in. After struggling to even be able to eject from the burning cockpit, he figured he had to be delusional, must have hit his head on something, but now, staring up at the empty sky, he reassessed that. No planes. No wreckage. No enemy fighters. None of his men. Nothing but a few birds up against a leaden sky. He'd felt tossed around by the wind, felt pretty sure he'd blacked out for a while, but no way he'd gotten carried this far away from the fight without realizing it, was there?

Cautiously, he reached around to feel his head. Whatever had hit him hadn't done so hard enough to break skin or leave any knots he could feel. Pushing himself up to sitting, he started coughing, throat and lungs both raw with smoke. He felt like he'd been run over, caught in a tornado, tossed around with Dorothy's house and smashed into the ground under it for good measure, but he was alive.

The question was where.

It was silent, no sounds of fighting reaching him. God only knew how far he'd been blown off course, and the sense of unease, the image of the gaping hole in the sky wouldn't leave him. He managed to get to his feet, tugging off his helmet and goggles as he looked around. The terrain still looked like Wales, but nothing struck him as overly familiar. When he turned enough to catch a glimpse of the city on the horizon, though, he froze. Something was wrong, all right, very wrong. Because while there were a couple of familiar looking landmarks telling him he'd landed not so far outside of Cardiff, the city he was looking back on didn't look like the Cardiff he knew at all.

"What the hell is going on?"

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[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

A month can be a long time when you're getting over a loss. Jack was used to loss, but that didn't make it any easier. Each after the last, just as hard and as painful as the one before.

His team, Tosh and Owen, he should have protected them. He should have been there from the beginning. He should have been there for his brother. But he failed them. He failed them all.

He threw himself back into work, but what else could he do. It was what he knew; how he escaped.

It was an evening just like any other; as normal as an evening can be in Torchwood. He was alone in the Hub, sent Gwen and Ianto home. He knew they were tired, and though they protested, he knew they weren't like him.

He sat in the quiet and the calm as the computers ran their regular little checks. The electronic blips mixed with the sound of water dripping off in the distance. He could almost stop thinking in that quiet, or at least pretend to.

Stop thinking that is until the bleeps made themselves more pronounced. Rift activity.

Jack didn't have to stop and think, he just acted. Pinpointed a location and fired up the SUV. He drove himself out there, to a hill on the edge of the city, and pulled the SUV up with a ceremonial screech.

[anightngalesang.livejournal.com]

The approaching lights of the car had been fairly obvious in the evening gloom, though Jack wasn't certain they were actually headed toward him until they came up the hill. That gave him pause, but maybe it was some sort of retrieval team. He was still in Wales, after all, still in friendly territory...even if parts of it looked completely foreign. He was still trying to convince himself that the growth of the city, the many more lights in the distance, the height of the buildings could all be something rattled from hitting his head.

Other explanations didn't really present themselves, after all.

When the car came to a screeching halt, he shielded his eyes against the headlights to look at it. It wasn't like anything he'd seen before--some sort of modified Jeep, all fancied up. His other hand slid to check his sidearm, though he didn't pull it. Friendly territory, it wouldn't do to seem hostile in wartime, but he was pretty glad to find it still there, just in case.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

The rift threw out all manner of things: objects, creatures, people. Things from different times, different places. There never was a precedent for what to expect.

Jack didn't expect anything now.

As he stepped from the SUV he saw the silhouette of the man in the dim moonlight. The lights from the city beyond leaked colour that made shadows play upon his form.

"Hey there," Jack called out. "You okay over here?"

He appeared, for what Jack could see, to be wearing some sort of flight suit. But there was no plane or evidence of a crash. Nothing to say where (or when) this man had come from.

[anightngalesang.livejournal.com]

The voice sounded American, like his own, and familiar enough that he felt a shiver run over him. But with that head hit, he couldn't be certain of anything he was hearing. He moved toward the man, though, taking in the outline of his coat, the way he stood there. It had only been the night before that he'd seen such a form walking into another blinding light, and then disappear.

Clearly strange things were going to be the theme for the week.

For all that the question was there on his lips, wanting to try and put the name with the form and voice, he held back, uncertain, just stepping more into the light.

"My plane was hit. I think I must have gotten caught in some sort of strong draft to be blown this far back in. I don't suppose I could get a lift back to town?" As strange as the city looked, part of him was still clinging to the idea that he'd get back in to Cardiff, find his men, and all would be well. "I need to check on my men."