looking up at skies on fire

Anna nodded, silent now, jumpy and curious and excited all at once. She so hoped whatever it was was friendly. She'd never met a real alien before. ...well, not really. She didn't suppose the Weevil counted. It wasn't exactly intelligent.

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Gwen glanced at Anna one more time. Her gun at the ready, she whipped into the alleyway.

And came face to face with a man.

Well, gun to face, really, since she was aiming right at his head.

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The man couldn't help it. It was instinct. He let out a very loud yelp of fear and surprise.

"For the love of--please, put the gun away!" he cried, half-staggering back into the alley, whipping up his hands in the near-universal gesture of surrender. "I'm not armed, I promise! I'm not here to hurt anyone--I don't even know where "here" is!"

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Gwen ignored him, placed her hand on the man's chest and pushed him solidly to the side. She ran her eyes around the alleyway, her mind still on a razor toothed alien or a dinosaur or something, anything, that could have fallen through the Rift.

And then she looked back at the man. Well, that figures.

"Anna," she asked, keeping her eyes trained on the man, though she kept her gun not quite as close. "Are you going to tell me this bloke is where the residual Rift energy leads to?"

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"I am," Anna replied happily, looking up from the monitor, to their newfound stranger, and then to Gwen. "He doesn't look like an alien," she added, only slightly disappointed. "Do you normally get"--she took a moment to scrutinize the man's clothing--"blokes from Victorian England falling through?"

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The man was still holding his hands up; he looked very put-out by Gwen's treatment of him, and then Anna's academic evaluation of his home time, and altogether confused and off-balance.

"Oi," he protested, half-heartedly. "I'm not an alien."

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Gwen sighed. She poked him in the chest. Then she sighed again.

"Not all aliens look like, well, aliens, Anna," she said dismissively. She stared quizzically at the man. She wasn't exactly willing to dismiss him being a razor-toothed alien in disguised, but she wasn't going to make any assumptions until he had a proper, well, look-over. But he didn't seem particularly threatening.

"I'm Gwen," she said, giving him a kind smile. "This is Anna. You have any idea how you got here?"

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The man gave both Gwen and Anna a little nod of the head in greeting.

"Jack," he replied. Anna perked slightly. "And no, I haven't the faintest idea. I was simply walking home. There was this awful... I don't know how to describe it... I lost my equilibrium for a moment, and then I was face-down in the rubbish bags." He scratched his neck uneasily. "Where is 'here', exactly?"

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"Cardiff, Wales," Gwen said. She glanced over at Anna. "We have a general idea of how you got here, but you're going to have to come back with us. If you are from Victorian England, well, I'll have to say you're our first." She grinned, sensing Jack's discomfort, and patted him comfortingly on the arm.

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Jack's eyes widened, and he looked around with fresh astonishment. "Earth?" he sputtered. "B-But I can't be back here. I was told it wasn't allowed." He gave Gwen an anxious look. "If you please, what year is it?"

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Gwen cast a look at Anna and took a deep breath. "2006," she answered quietly.

Her heart went out to him then. He seemed confused - scared even. She wondered what could have happened that had caused him to be a victim of the Rift.

"What do you mean not allowed?" she asked carefully.

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His eyes widened a little at the date, but then he sighed.

"I was told--it would not cause a paradox, but that history had already been set. Too many people thought me dead. Returning home was out of the question. Even now I imagine it would be a bad idea."

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Anna had looked sideways back at Gwen, but swiftly returned her attention to their subject. The gears in her head had been going full speed ever since setting her eyes on the relic of a man in front of them, and just because because she couldn't shake the impression that there was something naggingly familiar about him. It was like being presented with an entirely new kind of archaeological mystery. And with that thought it took an effort not to wander off down the mental lane of inquiry over what exactly this type of study would even be called.

She let out a little noise of excitement. "You're not Victorian!" she blurted. "You're Edwardian. Was I wrong?"

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Gwen waved Anna off, and set her hand comfortingly on Jack's arm. She wasn't exactly trying to ignore Anna, but she felt maybe the weighting of Edwardian versus Victorian dress might be more suitable in the Hub over a cuppa, rather than in a creepy Cardiff alleyway.

"Regardless of where you're from or what you're doing here, I think it's all the more reason to get you back to the Hub."

She glanced at Anna, feeling a bit bad about giving her the the brush off. So she offered her a smile. "Don't you think?"

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Anna had indeed wilted slightly at the brush-off, but she would agree that the alley wasn't the best place for a conversation.

"I think he's harmless," she replied brightly, and jammed the Rift monitor into her coat pocket. Then she smiled at Jack. "We've got chocolate biscuits; do you like those?"

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To say that Jack was feeling overwhelmed would have been something of an understatement--he'd just inexplicably found himself back on his home planet, in his own future, in Cardiff, he'd immediately been set upon by two women with firearms, and now they wanted to take him somewhere and... feed him biscuits?

But he supposed it was better than floundering in the alley, amongst the rubbish bags. And the women looked like they knew what they were about.

"The Hub...?" he asked uncertainly.

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"Our, um, 'home base,'" Gwen offered in way of halfhearted explanation. "We're part of a team called Torchwood. We're here to help, I promise."

She gave him her comforting smile, hoping it was enough to convince him they weren't interested in dissecting or imprisoning him. Well, at least she and Anna weren't. She sure wasn't going to speak for Owen and Jack.

"Come on," she says, gesturing. "We'll show you around, make sure you're okay. Then we can figure out how to help you."

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Jack frowned a little at the mention of Torchwood--he was certain he had heard the name before, somewhere, somewhen--but he shook it off and gave Gwen and Anna a rather game smile.

"I believe you," he replied. "Lead the way, ladies."

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Gwen nodded towards Anna and guided Jack out of the alleyway and towards the Cardiff city.

She kept an eye on Jack, a little worried about his reaction to his surroundings, hoping he didn't wig out or bolt into to the street.

She's have to talk to Anna, buy time to figure out what was going on before Jack got back.

Gwen paused next to the road. "Uh, make sure you look both ways," she told him, gently, like a mother talking to a small child.

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Giving Gwen a mild reproachful look, Jack nevertheless eyed the traffic a little apprehensively. "I do know what a motorcar is, thank you," he replied. "I assume we'll be riding in one?"

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Gwen smirks. Motorcar? Is this guy for real?

"No," Gwen says, ignoring his little jaunt into the distant past. Though if this guy is Victorian, or Elizabethan, or whatever, it's a bit strange he knows about cars. She makes a mental note to grill him on that later.

"The Hub's in walking distance, just a bit through the city centre," she tells him, pointing in the direction of the Millennium Centre.

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"Lucky for all of us," Anna chimed in, practically vibrating with excitement and enthusiasm. She couldn't wait to get Jack sat down so she could start learning all about him. She was going to be the envy of historians the world over.

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Jack peered ahead into the distance and made a slight humming noise to himself--it was a remarkable-looking piece of architecture. Actually, he could say that for most of the buildings around them.

"Lead the way, then," he repeated.

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The small group made their way (to Gwen's relief, uneventfully) to the Millennium Centre. Gwen spent the time torn between amusement and admiration for Anna's enthusiasm for the whole situation. Gwen still had her reservations about Jack, but if nothing else, it was a relief to see Anna out of vaults, on a mission, and coming out of her shell.

Gwen steered away from the tourist office, and gave Anna a playful look.

"You think we should show our guest in through the back door?" she asked, gesturing towards the invisible lift.

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