Chapter Text
Wales, 2011
For most creatures in the universe time is a rather simple concept, what’s done is done, what’s happening matters and what’s to come is uncertain. That’s how it works for animals, plants, bacteria and the likes. The self-aware species however, complicate matters. They start to think about how time works, what it is. They theorize on how to stop it, how to travel through it and how to change it after it has flowed past them.
The real question is: what happens when you reach those individuals who believe that they’ve truly mastered time? How powerful is someone who can go back and rewrite all his mistakes or can go forward and influence what he’ll become.
It ended, or rather continued because nothing ever truly begins or ends, with two men, one young, one old, standing on top of a dune, looking down on a small family playing by the beach.
“So? How was she?” The young one asked.
“She was great, getting married actually.”
“Agent Matheson?”
“Oh yeah, poor guy didn’t stand a chance.”
“I thought she wasn’t CIA anymore?”
“No, you’re right. She just…went out to find him again, I guess. Oh, and get this! She’s a writer.” The older man held out a paperback to his companion, who reluctantly accepted it and after reading the back, snorted.
“A brave Captain from World War II takes on a time-traveling parasite in an epic adventure through the universe? Christ, just what your ego needed: A book written solely to stroke it.”
“You’re just jealous she didn’t include you.-” The other man teased. “-It’s quite a tale though, isn’t it?”
“That it is.”
They turned to the scene before them: A father and a mother, building sandcastles with their young daughter.
“How is Gwen?” The Captain asked, nodding to the woman on the beach.
“Alright, as far as I can tell. She’s got a pretty intense job with Cardiff’s finest, but nothing our Mrs. Cooper can’t handle.”
“Good, that’s good.”
A brief silence took over the conversation. For a moment, the woman on the beach looked up but made no note of the men, and returned to her own business soon enough.
“Do you ever…regret letting her go?” The younger asked.
“Nah, not really. Not after everything that’s happened.”
“Do you think she’ll join Torchwood this time?”
“I don’t expect her to. Alex has very strict job requirements, but who knows? She might surprise us.”
A soft breeze blew past them, and ever so slowly, the tides came up to take back all the sandcastles that family made.
“Well,-” The Welshman said. “-we should go.”
“Right. Our big appointment at U.N.I.T.”
“Can’t let Ms. Sato wait. She’s been in that prison for far too long already.”
“Lead the way, Agent Jones.”
“Thank you, Agent Harkness.”
And with a brief flash, two men who didn’t exist used machines that were never invented to travel into a future no-one could have predicted.
Fin