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I.
He sat cross-legged in the medical exam room, watching the doctor intently.
"The procedure is minor, quick, and easily reversible," she said. "It will not prevent all forms of reproduction, such as telepathic impregnation by thought-forms, but it is 100% effective contraception with humans and humanoids. It will not prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections. Do you understand, Private Sel-Ahn?"
"I do, ma'am."
"Was this procedure ordered by your superior officer, Private?"
"No, ma'am. It's elective."
"What is your reason for this procedure, then, Private? Gender dysmorphia? Medical? Personal? Religious?"
His eyes flicked to a holo in the corner about surrogate womb implants. It had an image of a dark-haired boy with laughing green-gray eyes. His hands tightened into fists, then uncurled again.
"Personal, ma'am," he said.
II.
Rose lay on her stomach, head propped up on her folded arms, looking at the egg that had once been Blon Fel-Fotch. "Do people still have kids in the 51st century? Like, the normal way? Or are you all grown in vats or something?"
Jack chuckled. "I'm going to assume you mean humans. A lot of what we do in the 51st century wouldn't seem normal to you. Some people are born in labs. Some people are born in surrogate wombs. I did that once for cash after I quit the army. Never doing that again." He grimaced and rubbed his stomach at the memory. "But where I'm from, we mostly did it the old-fashioned way. We couldn't afford anything fancy."
"Do you have kids, then?" said Rose, looking up at him.
Jack shook his head and smiled wryly. "Me? No. I get around, sure, but I'm careful. Got my contraceptive implant when I was sixteen. Reversed it for the surrogacy, but I put it right back after. I'm better off that way. Can you imagine me as a father?"
Rose reached out and stroked the eggshell with a fingertip. "I can, actually. Most important thing is to love your kids, right? You know how to do that. I know you do."
"Thanks, Rose," said Jack, reaching down to ruffle her hair. "But loving your kids isn't enough. You have to able to protect them, too. I get into too much trouble for that."
"The three of us get into trouble all the time, and I've never let that stop me from protecting you," Rose said.
(I give life, she said.)
(Later, much later, somewhere between the incinerations and the stampedes and the mutilations, he came back from death with a good-as-new reproductive system, with nothing to block the flow of his genetic material to any body that could shape new life from it.)
III.
"God damn you," Lucia said, as she pushed him into the wall, her Italian accent curling every word into a snarl, "teasing me like that, onboard a prison ship. I was trying to think of an escape plan, and you and your dirty mouth distracting me – " She kissed him, bruisingly, before he could come up with anything clever to say back.
Still holding Jack's wrists over his head in a one-handed grip, Lucia reached for a condom from her drawer and tore it open with her teeth. She didn't bother to check the expiration date.
IV.
"What do you want to do?" said Jack. "If you need it, we have some tech in the archives that can – "
He spoke as calmly as he could, but beneath it, he was panicking, and even as he panicked he thought, you fool, you should have known this would happen sooner or later.
"I know about the tech in the archives," Lucia said impatiently. "You don't think all women employed by Torchwood know about it? Reshmi told me, and I expect another female agent told her, going all the way back to when it first fell through the Rift. I'm not going to use it. I know how you look down on my religion, but I'm still Catholic. I'm having this baby."
More panic. "So that's it? You're done with Torchwood? What's it going to be, retcon or deep cover?"
"You want me to leave and forget you, is that it? You know why I'm here. I want to defend my planet. If my planet has my child in it, then I have all the more reason to stay."
"Of course I don't want you to leave. But you and I both know how dangerous this job is."
"And if I die, my child will always have a father, certo?"
"I don't think I'm anyone's first choice for a father."
"No. You're not. But a father is what you're going to be."
V.
"It's so nice to see you, Alice. I missed you."
"No!" Alice cried, stomping her foot. "I'm not Alice! I'm Melissa! Mummy calls me Alice but I'm not! Call me Melissa, Daddy!"
"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but it's not safe to use that name. There are some scary aliens out there, and you and your Mum have to make sure they can't find you."
"Wanna stay at Torchwood," said Alice, her baby voice distorting the name to Tuch-wuhd. "You fight scary aliens at Torchwood, Daddy. You would say 'Boo!' and all the aliens would say 'Ahh!' and go away!"
"Torchwood isn't safe for you, Alice," Lucia said. "Let your Daddy fight the aliens by himself."
"But I want Daddy!" said Alice, clinging to Jack's leg.
"You'll still get to see me, sweetheart," said Jack, ruffling her hair. He looked up at Lucia with a beguiling smile. "Right, Mary?"
"Of course," said Lucia, glaring back.
VI.
Jack held Liam's hand as he waited on the street corner.
"Vincent mentioned you had a daughter, but you never talk about her," said Liam. His eyes flicked toward their joined hands. "Are you sure this is OK? Picking her up… together?"
Jack squeezed his hand. "I want you here." He leaned down and caught Liam's mouth in a kiss. Over the sound of Liam's pleased hum, he heard a car pull up by the kerb. Perfect timing.
The car door opened, and Alice tumbled out, crying, "Daddy!"
Jack pulled away from Liam so he could pick her up and twirl her around. "Aha! How's my girl?"
Lucia rolled down her window and leaned out to say, "Have her back at this corner by seven or I'll have your hide."
"Yes, ma'am," said Jack. Lucia rolled up her window and drove away.
Jack put Alice down and beamed. "You've grown since I last saw you! If we let our visits get this far apart, the next time I see you you'll be taller than Liam here."
"It hasn't been so long! Just since Christmas," Alice said.
"Oi! I thought you were finished with the short jokes, Jack!" said Liam.
"I can't help it. You're just so wee and adorable. Hey, Liam, say hello to Alice. Alice, this is Liam."
"Nice to meet you, Alice," said Liam, extending a hand to shake.
"Are you in Torchwood?" said Alice, giving Liam's hand a few pumps.
"I am."
"Do you fight aliens with Daddy?"
"I do."
Alice nodded solemnly. "OK. Can we have lunch, Daddy? I'm hungry."
Jack took them to a cafe in a bohemian-minded neighborhood where he and Liam wouldn't raise too many eyebrows. Alice ate a ham sandwich and told Jack about a magic show she saw at her friend's birthday party, and Liam charmed her by showing her how to palm a coin.
"That's a good move," Jack said approvingly. "You can use that to palm a card in a poker game. Ever played poker, Alice?"
Which is how the three of them ended up playing poker in the cafe, after the waiter had cleared away their plates, using bottle caps as chips.
"You played that card already! You're cheating, Daddy!" Alice cried.
"Yup," said Jack, unrepentant. "Did you see how I did it, Liam?"
Liam punched him in the shoulder. "You've got it up your sleeve, you sly old dog!"
"Can we call it fair if I show you how?" Jack asked Alice.
"Still not fair," said Alice. "But show me!"
It was time for Liam's shift monitoring the Rift spikes, and he boldly gave Jack a goodbye kiss as he left. Jack and Alice walked hand in hand back toward his flat.
"You kiss Liam like you used to kiss Mummy," Alice said.
"That's because I like your Mum very much," said Jack. "And I like Liam too."
"Mum doesn't like you," said Alice. "She says you're dangerous. I don't think you're dangerous. You just like to do exciting things like fight aliens. I've never seen a boy kiss another boy before."
Jack considered this. "Your Mum told you not to talk about aliens in front of people who aren't Torchwood, right?"
Alice nodded.
"That's because aliens are dangerous, and it makes trouble if you talk about them with people who don't know how to handle them. Well, there are lots of people who think boys kissing other boys is the same way. They think it's dangerous, so they don't talk about it or let people see it. Your Mum is right about aliens, Alice, but anyone who says that it's dangerous for people who like each other to kiss is wrong. So don't listen to anyone who says that. Anyway, now that you know about it, you might see more of it than you think. You remember your Mum's lessons about noticing things, right?"
Alice nodded again. "She says people ignore things because they're too afraid to see them, but I mustn't be afraid."
"That's right." Jack pointed at a street sign. "Here we are, Alice. This is my street. Let's go up to my flat. I have some great alien toys to show you."
"Do you still have the one that tickles?" said Alice, as she followed Jack up the stairs to his flat.
Jack smiled. Alice had loved that one. She'd used it to tickle him until he was rolling on the floor. "No, doll. I had to return it to the Torchwood archives."
He unlocked his door. He glanced at his desk. Yes, the front right drawer was open, just a little. "Here we are. Sit tight for a few minutes while I go dig up the best toys."
Jack took his time fetching the holographic whirligigs from his room. When he came back, Alice had the photo in her hand: Lucia, smiling, holding Alice. Jack had taken the picture. Smile, he'd said, wiggling his fingers to catch the baby's eye.
"That's Mummy," said Alice. "The back says Lucia and Melissa. Mummy's name is Mary. Who's the baby? Is that my sister? Does she get to live with you and go to Torchwood?"
"That's you, sweetheart," Jack said, touching his fingertip to the round baby face in the photo.
Alice frowned at the photo. "Then why did you write the wrong names on the back?"
"Those used to be your names, back when your Mum still worked for Torchwood. Torchwood protects its own, but when she left Torchwood, she lost that protection. So she protected you by changing your name from Melissa to Alice. That way it's harder for anyone dangerous who knew her when she was Torchwood to find you now. So you shouldn't talk about your old name or your Mum's where anyone can hear."
"Daddy, why do you work for Torchwood if it's so dangerous? Why did Mummy?"
"Some people have to do dangerous things to keep everyone else safe."
"But I don't want you to be hurt, Daddy!"
"I can't be hurt, doll. I'm not like other people. Nothing can kill me, ever."
Alice looked down at the photo, then back up at her father. "Mummy says anyone can be killed."
"Not me. I'll show you." He opened another drawer in his desk and took out a black-and-white photo of him with Gerald and Harriet, from the World War I days.
Alice stared at the photo, and took it from him to look closer. "That's ancient. How old are you, Daddy?"
Jack took a moment to figure it in his head. "One hundred and sixty five."
Alice's eyes were huge. "Wow."
Jack tugged on the photos to take them from Alice, but she gripped them tight.
"I want to show Mummy," she said.
"She wouldn't want you to carry these around. Too risky," Jack said. He looked at her face, framed in dark curls, pinched a little around her blue eyes. It could have been a little boy's hurt face, three thousand years and half a galaxy away. He opened his mouth to tell her she shouldn't say anything to Lucia. It would spare Alice pain, in the end.
But then, it might be another four months before he saw her again. Or longer.
"I have more photos I could show you," said Jack. "Ask your Mum to let me stay with you a while, and I'll let you see whole albums full."
You selfish old bastard, he thought.
VII.
The new dress he bought her was streaked with pale thick blood, ruining the lace trim at sleeves and hem. He stared at the tear at the neck of the dress, and when his eyes moved up to her face, he forced them back down. The sound of her sniffles and the shake of her shoulders was damning enough.
"Why don't you go take a shower," he said softly, "and change clothes, and I'll have some tea ready when you're done."
"Yes, Daddy," she whispered. She hasn't called him that since she was ten, insisting on the more adult Dad.
In a minute, Jack heard the hiss of the shower. He opened Alice's purse, discarded in a pool of sticky blood by the door, and threw out the camera he found there. He washed the blood off his hands in the sink. He put the kettle on, took out the teapot, the strainer, the teacups, the Darjeeling, and arranged it all on his little kitchen table. He steeped the tea, not too long for Alice's cup, strained it out. He added a splash of milk to each cup.
Then he reached into his pocket, felt around for the hard-edged shape of the pill. It dissolved in her tea in seconds.
Alice came back, her hair curling with damp, in a worn old jumper and jeans. She sank into the chair across from Jack and angled her face over her teacup, taking in the warmth.
"Why is it only you who lives forever?" she said.
Jack swallowed his tea. Alice had never asked before – but then, she'd never seen anyone die before. "A golden goddess made me this way," he said, "because she loved me, and I'd died, and she couldn't bear it."
Alice set down her teacup with a sharp clink. "That's rubbish. I'm not a baby, Dad. Tell me the truth."
"That is the truth. There's a very clever writer who once said that any technology, once it's advanced enough, can't be told apart from magic. She was a goddess, Alice. She did what her heart told her."
Alice took another gulp of tea. "Did you love her more than Mum?"
"That's not the way love works," Jack said. "You don't get to choose how much. It just takes and takes, even when you think you can't give anymore."
He sank to his knees beside Alice's chair as she began to slump sideways. Her eyes were wide and staring, as wide as they'd been as the aliens attacked Jack and tore his skin off in strips. It was the same nightmare he'd promised himself would never repeat: Gray's shocked look of betrayal as Jack let his hand slip free.
VIII.
Jack looked up from folding his laundry as he heard a rhythmic sequence of knocks on the door, then a creak as it opened. He stopped folding and stepped out of his bedroom to kiss Elaine as she came in.
"The oddest thing just happened," she said into his cheek, "as I was walking here."
Jack tugged her down to sit halfway in his lap on the loveseat. "What was that?"
"I left the Plass, and went to get condoms, when I noticed someone following me." She laughed a little. "I was scared at first. That sort of thing gets me jumpy, ever since Vincent was possessed by that… thing, you know, 'Vanessa.' But then I cornered my stalker, and I realized it was a teenage girl."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "Really? No alien in disguise?"
"Well, you never know, but I don't think so," Elaine said. "So I asked her why she was following me, and guess what she said."
Jack nuzzled her neck. "Because you're gorgeous and she couldn't resist?"
Elaine threw back her head and laughed. He could feel her neck vibrate with it. "Nearly! 'Because I fancy you,' she said. She had this grin on her face, just like yours when you flirt. It was uncanny. Lovely blue eyes like yours, too. So I let her kiss me. What a laugh! She was so clumsy, and surprised, as if she hadn't expected to like it so much! Poor little baby queer. I was at least as scared when I first tried it with a girl, and I wasn't quite that young."
Jack pulled back a little so he could look Elaine in the eye. "What did you say she looked like?"
"Oh, about fifteen, curly black hair, tall for her age. Why?"
Jack felt the laugh building in his chest, then gave in. He sagged against Elaine, his whole body shaking with it.
"What? What's so funny? Jack, do you know this girl?"
"Her mother's going to have her guts for garters," he managed to choke out between laughs. "That little rascal."
She was in Cardiff and didn't come to see me. The laughter died slowly in his chest. But of course she wouldn't. Of course.
IX.
Jack missed the phone call, when it came. He was busy chasing Weevils through the sewers with Suzie, his first new hire as leader of Torchwood Three. When they finally locked away the Weevils and showered off the sewer muck, only then did Jack check his personal phone and hear the voicemail from Joe Carter.
"Come to St. George's Hospital. Alice delivered this morning. His name's Steven."
"I'm taking the day off, Suzie," Jack announced. "Call me only if the world's about to end."
Suzie smiles slowly. "Are you sure you trust me alone with the mainframe?"
"No," said Jack. "You have limited accesses. But they're good enough that you can monitor the Rift yourself."
He deactivated the GPS in the Torchwood van and drove to London. He paid a small fortune to park near the hospital. I'm here to see Alice Carter, he told the information desk, the new last name still unfamiliar on his tongue.
When he opened the door to Alice's room, Joe sprang up from his chair to greet him. "Uncle Jack! So good to have the whole family here," he said in his clipped American accent, pumping Jack's hand.
Jack looked over Joe's shoulder. Lucia was seated beside Alice, dressed in well-used black. "We've got to roll out the red carpet for our newest member, right?" Jack said. He disengaged from Joe and swept over to the opposite side of the bed from Lucia. Alice's hair was plastered in strips to her head with drying sweat, and there were dark bags under her eyes, but her mouth was soft and her breathing was easy as she rubbed circles into her son's back. She looked much like Lucia had, except when she looked up at Jack, her eyes were turned up at the corners, but narrowed, too: guarded, as Lucia's had not been back then, not yet.
Steven was pressed against Alice's breast so Jack couldn't see his face, but the wisps of hair on his head were as blond as his father's, and he was big and healthy, nearly nine pounds at a guess.
"How's our little one?" Jack said softly.
"My little one. I won't have you stealing him." Alice said it lightly enough that Joe would hear it as a joke, but her gaze on him was hard and steady. "He's very well."
"And you?"
"Twenty hours of labor. I've been better."
"She was magnificent," Lucia said fiercely, reaching out to squeeze her daughter's shoulder. She pinned Jack with a look, and he gave himself a moment to take in the sight of her, to catalog every new wrinkle on her face and gray strand in her hair. Fifty-five, she was only fifty-five. In the 51st century, no one got so thin-skinned and frail until they were 120 at least. Lucia was to die tragically young.
Not as young as she might have died if she'd stayed at Torchwood, he thought. Besides, better to die so young than not at all.
"She was," said Joe. "You should have a child of your own someday, Jack. It's like nothing else in the world."
"Oh, not me," Jack said gently, not looking away from Lucia and Alice. "I don't think I'm cut out for it."
"Sweetheart," Alice said, "could you find the nurse and ask her when we can go home?"
"I asked her two hours ago, love," Joe said.
"Ask again," said Alice. "I miss our bed."
Joe studied the three of them for a moment. Jack wondered what he thought their family was like, what lies Alice had told or made by omission to explain the dangerous currents that flowed beneath every word they spoke to each other. Then he smiled knowingly to Alice, as though they were the ones who shared a secret, and left.
"How's Torchwood?" said Alice.
"Alice!" Lucia hissed. She had gained some weight, Jack realized, as he stole another look at her. She had grown soft around the jaw, and filled out her battered black jacket in new ways.
"You didn't see him on New Year's, Mum. I told you what happened."
"And he chose to stay. Stockholm Syndrome, that's what it is. Or you just don't know how to do anything else, do you, Jack?"
"It's fine," said Jack. "My new agent's settling in well. She really knows her stuff."
"Good," said Alice. "Speaking of Torchwood, Steven is never to hear of it, understood? As far as he's concerned, aliens only exist on television."
"Perhaps he shouldn't see Steven at all," Lucia said.
"How am I supposed to explain that to Joe? Besides, Jack may have been a shit father, but he's still family. And I won't let him make any more of a cock-up with Steven than he did with me."
"I know I'm no good for him," Jack said to Lucia. This was what it felt like to argue with her, he remembered: the heat rising in his chest, the flush spreading across her cheeks, not so altered with the years. "I won't try to raise him. I'll just visit. Oddball Uncle Jack."
"Why do you two keep staring at each other like that? It's giving me gooseflesh," said Alice.
"I don't change," said Jack. "I look exactly the same as I did the day we met. Brings back old memories, right, Lucia?"
Lucia looked back at him defiantly. "Isn't it obvious? He's jealous. He sees every grey hair on my head and wishes it were his own."
Jack grimaced.
"But why?" said Alice, and she was as wide-eyed and open-faced as she had been when she was eight, asking endless questions about Torchwood and his past.
"New Year's," said Jack. "Everything is like that for me, just slower."
Alice stared at him, and a memory stirred of the look in her eyes when he'd first given her retcon. Betrayal. She clutched at Steven tightly, too tightly, and he stirred from sleep with a cry.
Joe came back in. "We'll have the discharge papers in a – oh, love, why is he crying?"
"He's just been shoved into a big world with too many bright lights," said Jack. "Does he need any other reason?"
He exchanged one more look with his daughter and his once-lover, and they settled back into the armor of their lies.