torchwoodinstitute | Well Hello There

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Well Hello There

When: Any Time
Where: Anywhere
Who: Captain Jack Harkness + You

You've seen him before, maybe even since you were a child. When he appears, it's always been right there, at the edge of your vision, watching you. Sometimes he says hello in passing as he crosses the street. Sometimes he just smiles when you spot him and ducks into a shop or moves around the corner. He comes and goes from your life, never threatening, never tangible.

Until today.

Today he moves towards you purposefully. He has bright blue eyes and dimples when he smiles. He'd not aged a day since you first started to see him. He smells like the best thing in the world to you. He offers his hand. "Hi. I'm Captain Jack Harkness," he says.

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"Right," Charles murmured, but a second later, he was overwhelmed. He staggered visibly, eyes squeezing shut as he tried to focus through it all, tried to understand just what he was 'hearing' floating around him. He didn't even go after any individuals, purely listened as if he was in a crowded room, but even that was almost too much.

Too many languages he couldn't understand, things he should have been but he didn't understand the minds behind them, too many things he couldn't name or had any understanding of.

It was even difficult to turn off, returning his barriers to their normal closed ranks around him. At this point, he had stopped completely, breathing having picked up, almost as overwhelmed as when he had first arrived with none of the nausea.

Jack was a huge fan of letting people experience their mistakes to the fullest. How else were they ever to learn? He watched Charles for a moment before the pain crested to levels no one should experience before he put his hand against his arm and drew him into a shop. It wasn't exactly quiet or I crowded but it was darker and less red and contained. That was an important thing for a telepath.

"Charles, look at me. There you go," he said soothingly as he moved his hand to Charles' neck, thumb brushing his jaw. If the voices didn't stop, Jack had a backup waiting on the balls of his feet. One lean forward and a bit down would connect their lips and Jack's life force was intense enough to give way to some transference of energy. It ought to be more than enough to give Charles the boost to keep his barriers up if he couldn't do it himself.

Before this, Charles would have said he had excellent control of his abilities with the same way any young man would when he was in the prime of his younger years, all spitfire and ego. Now, it felt like he was forcing his natural barriers back into place step by step, staring at Jack with eyes that were utterly determined despite the pain singing through his head. Still, he would manage, oblivious to the people side-eyeing him in the store as he shook slightly under Jack's hand from the mental strain, lips thin and pale as his head bent, trying to catch his breath as his hand fell back to his side.

Bastard. He was pretty sure Jack knew that could happen and was letting him fumble his way through all of this. No exchange of emotion came from Jack's touch, no bright spots of worry or laughter or anything at all. Still only a cold steel wall that still confused him.

"I've got it," he whispered, though it was with strain still in his voice.

"I knew you would." That Charles could stay afloat in all of this spoke to the quality of his control. Jack touched him for only as long as he needed to, and once he felt Charles swallow and cease shaking, he let his hands drop and straightened up again.

"So. Garden or aquarium? I'm really pushing for the aquarium. It's pretty neat."

Yep. Charles just had a break down and Jack was spouting about a life threatening ride being neat.

Oh, fantastic. Charles took and let out another breath, trying to get his mind back completely under his control before he rubbed his face, then gave Jack a bit of a hard look. His temples were throbbing and here Harkness was giving him some spiel about this aquarium ride? Another breath out before sighing.

"Aquarium it is." He wasn't about to try to his powers any time soon, not until he was better at keeping himself filtered from the change between human and... other aliens.

"There's a good man," Jack laughed, patting Charles on the shoulder. Some parents threw their kids out of the nest to learn to fly or die trying. Jack was one of those.

The Aquarium was nothing like Charles had ever seen before. The whole thing was breathable with the fish swimming through the air in little pockets of water that could join with others or meld back into the walls where the 'tanks' were. Jack looked around appreciatively as kids of all kinds chased schools of clown fish and tears of a clown fish across the atrium.

Charles stood in awe of the Aquarium for several long minutes, just trying to watch everything and take in the impossibility of it all, before something registered with what Jack had said and what he was seeing. An amusement park. Children.

"...is this a children's ride?" Charles questioned, brow raising towards Jack with a mixture of amusement and 'really?' combined into one. This somehow didn't look nearly as death defying as the other had been suggesting since they'd arrived.

"For the young, the young at heart and young at third liver," Jack said, quoting the slogan of the place. He nudged Charles lightly and headed up the stairs around the outer edge of the atrium. The stairs were made of the same bubble-water that the fish were swimming around in, and they had to stop for several minutes while an octopus-like creature with seventeen arms slowly strolled passed.

It was rude, Jack explained, to step on the animals.

Once they were to the top, he took Charles down through exhibit hallways for different sectors of space where fish were evidently native to and up a ramp to the Aquarium Experience ride. A bored looking man with two heads and four arms reminded people periodically not to swallow any water that might seep into the ride and then ushered groups of two onto a sleek black ski lift.

Third liver-- right. Just going to accept that. Charles followed Jack up, and couldn't help but stare at the octopus-creature in awe. Nothing like it existed on Earth, or maybe an octopus was a very, very distance relative, but the stop gave him every excuse to gawk like a child as a smile started to come to his lips.

Unlike the children mostly just excited to get on the 'ride', Charles would try to peer at as many of the different exhibits as Jack would allow him to, trying to learn as much as quickly as possible about places that he never would have even dreamed existed. It took effort not to stare at the 'man' who was directing them on the ride, wondering what on-- well, off! Earth that sort of alien was.

When they stepped up onto the black ski lift, Charles was almost vibrating with excitement. "This is incredible," he said brightly, looking to Jack. "Absolutely brilliant. I never would have dreamed it would all someday lead to this."

"Humanity is amazing," Jack said, feeding off of Charles' excitement. "The things the human race is and will be able to accomplish is amazing." He just won't mention how the last of the race ends, or how time and the universe ends. It was a fixed point, like him. Unchangeable across all realities.

It was enough to make people go mad and as Jack had a very long life to keep on living, he'd rather be as sane as possible for the majority of it.

As they moved forward, a bubble of air surrounded them from where the top of the ski lift was attached to the rail above them and they were sent off into the water. A joystick popped up between them and Jack gestured for Charles to take command. They could view the exhibits from the inside.

Charles' smile grew more and more as he looked around, despite the fact that there was still a headache curled around his temples, trying to figure out where to even look first. However, when Jack gestured towards the joystick, Charles looked more than a little uncertain for the first ten seconds or so. The joystick looked a bit like something he had seen on a home computer, but somehow far more advanced. He himself had never used one, so at first, he wasn't entirely certain what to do with it other than the most obvious of touching it.

Once he figured out it moved them, his brows went up and he cautiously started trying it out, wanting to get it under control before really trying to go anywhere. When he felt a little more confident with it, their bubble finally took off properly into the water.

"Do you do this often? Take people from their timeline and bring them to a resort park?" A joke as much as it was serious, trying to learn more - anything, really - about this man he was with.

The answer was a simple no and a not so simply yes, so Jack only smiled and then pressed his own lips closed with his fingers. Swallowing water would lead to explosion after all and while that could happen through the nostrils too, it was better to safeguard one’s mouth on the ride.

He’d answer questions – possibly – later. Or maybe not, it was hard to tell with Jack.

For now, he put his feet up on the bar of what looked like a roll cage keeping people away from the bubble’s edges and let Charles drive them along through the exhibits.

From time to time, little fish would swim through their air bubble inside of their water bubbles or catch a ride in their wake. The other pods floated along behind and in front of them, most going in crazy patterns as the kids driving them enjoyed themselves. There was a lot to see and a lot to explore. The universe was filled with strange sea life.

The look Charles gave in return to Jack's mimed silence could practically be a cry of 'bullshit', but he said nothing and turned his eyes out to something he had never seen before. A world beyond worlds, where while children were being children, he could still witness things he never dreamed of.

He pulled them up along side of a bubble filled with what almost looked like tiny fish-people from a distance, but when he got closer up, they looked a lot more disturbing than that. Hugely graceful in their bubbles but entirely benign despite their ugly appearance, with dome-shaped eyes bulging and hands ending in claws. Mostly they looked excited to be swimming around one another, chasing each other, until they spotted Charles, then they decided to stare back at him curiously.

Blink. Charles wasn't sure if they would do anything to him, but as their bubble moved in more, he did glance to Jack with a raised brow as they clearly were curious about the two in the big air bubble.

Just because Man was the only intelligence on Earth didn't mean that there weren't a variety of other intelligences out there. Once they made their way safely, without explosions, to the dry area of the aquarium again, the Captain didn't mind answering Charles' questions about the two curious creatures he had noted back in the Alpha Nebula exhibit.

"They're staff," Jack laughed. "One looks like a guy I use to date actually. He was really sweet when he was male but a little catty when he was female. You have to be careful with the gender swappers. And you think being bipolar might be bad!"

It was impossible to tell if Jack was making anything up or even exaggerating because he just took Charles to an aquarium on Mars. Crazy!

If Jack was joking, he was doing a damn fine job of completely bowling Charles over in the moment. Normally, there would be no question as Charles would have immediately scanned over Jack's thoughts without a second thought about it, but given his earlier attempt to scan outward and Jack's natural defenses, Charles would have to accept certain things with perhaps a grain of salt, but as truth. Jack seemed to have yet to lie to him, so it did earn him some credibility with Charles.

"You're not serious," Charles did comment back, trying to fathom the idea a partner that switched genders. It also told him something that he wasn't sure how it settled with him. Was it that in the future, the dating of other genders was more acceptable? For Charles, the Stonewall riots had only occurred a few years before and unrest was still powerful from it. "...Could he- she- ah, it- come out of the water?"

"I'm both always and never serious," Jack joked, hands in his pockets. There was something truly wonderful about Charles' complete confusion and his willingness to learn and accept, to observe but also to ask questions. It was a good way that Jack had come to expect in the people he wanted to keep on the Torchwood roster.

It didn't matter where or when a potential agent was from, they simply had to possess a lot of wonder.

"He could come out of the water," Jack said. "Using something a little bit like an aquarium on legs. When you care for someone, you make it work. Even when it's just physical, you make it work!" he laughed and led Charles down the stairs towards the cafeteria.

So you're full of shit, yet you weren't lying about the future. About time travel. Charles thought to himself, watching Jack with a curious eye. Really, this whole trip was almost equal parts fascinating, terrifying, and incredible. Here he was, incredibly far in the future, on a planet people did not, could not, travel to in his time. Hearing Jack talk about this... partner of his was very strange.

He gave a small smile as he listened, trying to imagine it but could not. Jack was a very different sort of gentleman than any he had known, even other mutants.

"...what do you want me to do with you, in this... agency of yours? I know nothing about the future other than what you've shown me.. or is that typical?"

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Well Hello There

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