'Are you sure you don't want me to stick around a while longer?'
Jack looked up from his desk to see Gwen, her leather jacket already zipped up to the neck and her keys in her hands.
'Wouldn't it just break your heart if I said yes?' He grinned at her, despite the cramp in his neck from poring through the results of the database search that she had given him.
'Don't know about break my heart, but Rhys might come and break your face.' She tossed her long hair over one shoulder. 'He's cooking coq au vin tonight.'
Jack raised an eyebrow.
'Don't even think it, Jack.' Gwen warned him. Leaning on the doorframe, she looked reluctant to go but, as much as Jack felt like he could use the company on what was shaping up to be a long and frustrating night of staring at information and still finding no answers, he knew Gwen had the one thing that should be protected at Torchwood. A real life.
He'd seen what they did for a living destroy too many people who'd not let themselves focus on the real world, the one that had given them life and that had existed for them long before they'd ever heard of the Rift or Weevils or Captain Jack Harkness. Sometimes it was too easy to allow the strangeness of the things they dealt with daily to outshine the bland beauty of normality. But it would be normality that kept them sane, and what they would have to go back to if they lived long enough. He glanced at his watch, almost surprised by the time.
'It's ten o'clock. He's cooking dinner now?'
'It may have taken him a while, but Rhys has finally worked out that we don't work normal hours. When I say I might be working a bit late, he knows not to expect me till about now.'
'You'd better not disappoint him then.'
Gwen lingered, a small line of concern furrowing her pale brow. 'You sure you'll be OK?'
Jack smiled. Gwen was more than a little bit addicted to Torchwood herself. Her wanting to stay was part concern and part that need to be at the centre of the excitement, even if there was nothing happening. He'd seen it in her face the first time she'd ever come into Torchwood's range, peering over the edge of that multi-storey car park at them, still just a uniformed police officer. She'd come a long way since then. But that curiosity had only intensified with all she'd been through. She was tough, and Jack liked her. He liked her a lot.
'I'll be fine. Look, Ianto got me pizza! I won't starve while you're nibbling on Rhys's coq au vin.' He winked as she rolled her eyes. 'And anyway,' he continued, shrugging as his eyes dropped to the pieces of paper spread across his desk, some with scribbled notes on, others printed from the computer, 'I need some quiet thinking time to try and get to the bottom of all this.'
Gwen's face darkened. 'Let's hope whatever it is takes the night off. We need to catch this one, Jack. And quickly.'
'And we will.' He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. 'Now scoot.'
Slapping the side of the wall as a goodbye, Gwen turned and within a few moments Jack heard the thick door to the lift slide shut, leaving him alone in the Hub. He stood behind his desk, the silence threatening to suffocate him for a moment, as if he'd been entombed once again in an early grave.
Sitting down heavily, already frustrated with the work ahead, he rustled some papers and for a brief moment wished he had asked one of the others to stay for a while, if only to sleep as he worked. Just to have the comfort of knowing there was another living being close by.
He shook the feeling off. It was just self-indulgence and self-pity, neither of which traits Jack had any patience with. He knew only too well from experience that having people with him wouldn't ease his deep-seated loneliness. He was different and, however much his team loved him and respected him, he would never be one of them. He couldn't die. That changed the way people looked at you.
Involuntarily, he glanced through the glass and towards the stairs. The ground at the bottom had been scrubbed clean, but for him would always be crimson stained against the clinical white from where Toshiko had bled to death, gutshot and still intent on saving the rest of them. If he could have taken her death, he would have and, although both Gwen and Ianto knew this, he knew they also couldn't help but perceive him as different. Alien in his own right. In many ways he was a freak. He had the one thing that most humans envied, but to him it felt like an endless curse.
He stared at the screen and listened to the hum of silence.
Silence.
Blood beat faster through his eternal veins.
'Silence… Now there's a thing…' he muttered softly under his breath. All self-pity gone as soon as it had come, his fingers whirred over the keyboard, his sharp eyes peering up through his fringe, focused on the state-of-the-art flat-screen monitor.
What if… he wondered. What if the stories were true… With renewed vigour, his fingers punched at the keys.
Loneliness, isolation, sound, emotion, shape-shifting. He typed the words into a new search, highlighting a space in the far reach of the universe on the on-screen map. He wasn't really sure that the race or even the planet existed; he'd only heard of them through rumour and legend. But if they did… If they actually did, then maybe he had a chance of figuring out what they were dealing with.
The untouched pizza grew cold as Jack worked, his eyes never leaving the screen. It was shaping up to be a long night.