recklessthings | ♎ caroline forbes

[Caroline is also in this cursed Wal-Mart at two in the morning, because ...

Well, why is anyone at Wal-Mart at two in the morning. She's out of booze.

While she isn't as much of an alcoholic as some of her vampiric brethren, she still uses it for all the normal reasons: because she's bored, because she's lonely, because she's got blood cravings and won't be able to hit the blood bank until tomorrow. Standard operating fare for a creature of the night.

She's rounding the corner out of the liquor aisle, a few bottles in hand, when she's suddenly smacked into out of nowhere, sending her spinning backwards. (It's her fault, she should have been paying attention.)

Losing grip on one of the bottles and it smashes at her feet, sending whiskey and glass everywhere. She throws her hands up as she surveys the mess, but the person who hit her just keeps going. She turns to the retreating back and glares.]

Are you kidding me?!

[A burst of vampire speed carries her to the space in front of Jack's sycorax, pushing one hand against it's chest as she shoves it back.]

When you bump into someone, you say you're -

[It's at that point when she catches sight of the creatures face and realizes that's not your every day asshole human. In fact, it's very much not human at all, and the first thing that springs to mind is:]

Malivore monster.

Sycorax, actually.

[ not a golem, if his knowledge serves him correctly. he doesn't yet question how this woman managed to get ahead of the sycorax or stop him from fleeing, for him being stopped is far more important right now than adding to his growing list of cctv footage he needs to eradicate from every walmart system. cameras everywhere that couldn't always be disabled or overridden ahead of time was one of the worst parts of doing his job in the 21st century. cctv footage was as helpful as it was dangerous. ]

Escaped convict, [ he says to her, then to him, keeping his weapon trained on him: ] You're lucky I agreed to pursue you myself. You could have had a mob of angry Judoon trailing after you. Where would you rather be, in their custody or mine?

[And then there's a new guy that just starts ... talking and there are lot of things in what he says that sound like words but don't make any sense at all.

Sycorax. Filing that way to call Dorian about later.

She's more impressed that he's talking to her like he thinks she won't remember this later. Is that what they sound like when they just start talking in front of someone they're going to compel later?

She glances between the two of them before glancing to the Sycorax.]

I think he's talking to you. And I don't know what the Judoon are but maybe you should take his offer.

[ compulsion, retcon... it's all in the same make people forget about things they shouldn't have seen/overheard later. (would retcon even work on a vampire? probably not, he mixed the batch for living humans, not undead supernatural ones.) ]

I'd listen to the lady if I were you. You know as well as I do that if I ping our location, they'll be on you in a second and it's off to the nearest maximum security astronomical facility of their choosing.

[ in the end, the synorax isn't given a choice. when it (foolishly, though jack doesn't know how foolish that choice could have been) lunges at the woman, jack drops a portable prison cell at its feet, trapping it within the force field. ]

Should've surrendered.

[It's probably for the best that Jack was at the ready. Caroline's form of defending herself tends to be throwing people around, and that would likely have given the creature another chance to escape. She does stumble backward on reflex, not wanting to get in the way of whatever that is.]

In my experience, people never really do what's smart for them.

[Present company occasionally included.]

[ not only would it have given him another chance to escape, jack would've had to call in a favor with the CIA to get a clean up crew on putting this walmart back together and he would rather not. after the miracle and the reestablishment of torchwood, his relationship with the CIA is touch and go. there are only so many strings rex can (and is willing to) pull to get things done before people who remember start asking questions.

rex really should've let him retcon the surviving members of esther's department to erase all remaining knowledge of torchwood, himself, gwen, and rhys, but alas. rex claims he's got it under control, but jack's been keeping an eye on it. just in case. ]

What feels like right choice or gamble in the moment usually isn't the smart thing, and people don't always think with a clear head. Whether you're human or Sycoraxic.

[ holstering his gun, jack flips open the vortex manipulator on his wrist, taps in a message and— the alien in the bubble is beamed up to an unseen ship in high orbit in a flash of near-blinding light. the portable prison deactivates itself and jack bends down to retrieve the disk, pocketing it. ]

Thanks for the assistance. If you hadn't stopped him, he likely would've made it to the door.

Thank the bottle of whiskey he smashed.

[She glances down at her whiskey stained pants, making a face at the state of her two am store run outfit which is still likely more put together than anyone else's.]

These were brand new shoes.

[And this is all very fancy. She's probably going to get mind wiped any minute now.]

So let me guess. This is the part where you bring up a little silver stick with a bright flashing light and this all magically goes away?

[Would a neuralizer work on a vampire? Questions she never thought she'd have to ask herself.]

[ also, for the sake of meshing canons together and the fact that nobody in post-2011 doctor who canon recall the miracle, let's say that people just sort of forgot about it on their own as a way of the world righting itself or whatever to explain why nobody seems to remember that having been a big global crisis... ]

I'm with Torchwood, not the Men In Black — also, haven't been a thing since the 70s outside of movies. Those androids were decommissioned a long time ago.

Torchwood. Fancy.

[But yes, collective global amnesia works. And look, her pop culture understanding only goes so far for things that aren't straight up supernautral. Then her head tips to the side curiously.]

Wait, androids?

Androids. Did you think that was purely science fiction? Government agencies have been utilizing salvaged alien tech since the 1800s.

[ he busies himself with sending more messages through the vortex manipulator on his wrist that he realizes looks like an apple watch hidden in a gauntlet – or at least, that's what someone mistook it for once. funny how technology designs start eventually catching up. ]

Considering how much Hollywood gets wrong, it wouldn't surprise me.

[Like vampires. Oh, so many things wrong with how they portray vampires. And then, since they're just standing here chatting in an aisle at two a.m. she holds up the bottle of whiskey she didn't drop.]

Caroline Forbes.

Captain Jack Harkness. Pleasure is all mine, Miss Forbes. Please, allow me—

[ he holds out his hand for the whiskey, intending on paying for it. the least he can do for involving her in the pursuit of an alien criminal. (that, and he needs to hover in her orbit for a bit until he can slip her retcon.) ]

[She will never say no to free whiskey. She hands it over with a nod, before glancing around over her shoulder, trying to see if there's anyone she might have to compel later.

But, it's late enough that the cameras will probably be the bulk of Jack's problems.]

By all means.

[ he leads the way up to the cashier and pulls out a company credit card, which serves two purposes: one, the obvious transaction and two, pinging the hub back in wales to tell the newbies which walmart to target for cctv footage erasure. ]

So, [ jack asks, handing her the bag as they walk towards the exit. ] What state am I in? I didn't have time to check the coordinates before the last jump.

You are in Georgia.

[Because she's helpful like that. Caroline happens to be on the road herelf, traveling between a New Orleans meeting with the French Quarter witches back to home and her daughters in Mystic Falls.]

Just under the South Carolina border.

Georgia, [ he repeats, giving a low whistle and a shake of his head as the doors part and they walk out into the parking lot. ] I don't think I've ever been this far south along the East Coast. Last state I visited was California and that was a good twenty or so years ago.

[ a beat. ]

Linearly speaking. [ because it's been more than twenty years for him. a couple centuries, more like. ]

[Given that she spends a lot of her time hanging out with really old people who have had their life interrupted by daggers and what not, the idea of being slightly out of time isn't a foreign one.

Not traveling linearly through time, however is new.]

Is that a problem you have often? Needing to qualify how linearly long it's been since you've been somewhere?

[She's just curious.]

Not always, but... sometimes. Hazards of time travel.

[ he does this, when he's intending on retconning people. because he knows (or assumes, in caroline's case) that they won't remember anything he tells them. it's a rare moment of freedom for him to say whatever's on his mind and state the truth instead of a version of it that he paints for the sake of those around him. whether that's pretending to be an american expat in wales or claiming to bear a striking resemblance to a great grandparent when presented with a picture of himself from the early 1900s. ]

Time travel.

[Interesting. While she's sure there's some kind of time travel spell somewhere that doesn't involve a pocket dimension and an ascendant, there's a horrifying flash of her student witches finding it and wreaking havoc on the timeline.]

Huh. You really do learn something new every day.

[And here she thought immortality would be boring.]

[ he stops near one of the cart returns, not really sure whether he's walking given that he teleported in and didn't exactly bring a car with him. ]

You know, most people are at least skeptical, if not surprised by the notion of time travel, alien tech, and actual alien convicts.

[She gives a small shrug, before turning to face him more. Her car is not that far away, but they'll get there when they get there.]

You know, I've been having the kind of year where things that aren't supposed to be real have been actually turning out to be real, so I figure, why not go with it. I'm a modern woman, living in a weirdly supernatural world.

[Then she smirks.]

At least it wasn't a dragon.

[Because that day was a doozy.]

[ he leans back against the railing of the cart return, considering her. ]

I'd say I know the feeling, but... I don't think I actually do. Maybe the "supernatural" part, but even then— This has always been a part of my world. Where I'm from, we've had interstellar and temporal travel capabilities for centuries. Aliens are your neighbors and their technologies have been shared with other species for longer than's been documented.

[ aka he is very much not from this time. not even from this planet. jack is (mostly) human but he didn't step foot on earth until he joined the time agency. ]

—wait, did you say dragon?

Oh yeah. Posing as a woman in human form. She torched an entire bus of people just outside Mystic Falls, and we thought she was some kind of pyromancer, but apparently, it was a full on scales and wings dragon.

[She wasn't actually there for it, but Hope and Ric were and that was the first sign that they had of something bigger being at play.]

I originally thought your Sycorax guy came from the same place the dragon did.

Nah, he's from a world thousands of lightyears from here. Earth is a popular hideaway spot for renegade criminals; they seem to think that because humans in this century haven't ventured past their own moon that it'll stop their pursuers from actually pursuing them, not realizing that agencies like Torchwood exist to do the tracking down for them.

[ in most cases. there are still those who don't bother to make contact and just descend upon the planet without a care for the damage they'll do in the process. ]

And then you have those who come here for fun. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've had to tell some teenager taking their parents ship out for a joyride to get out of the atmosphere because they were spooking the locals.

[And that makes her laugh.]

Oh, teenagers. Never change.

[At least somewhere in the universe there were teenagers who get to make terrible life choices, rather than horrible life or death ones.]

Good to know that even when they're not from Earth, their impulse control is still questionable.


	✔ Cʀᴏssᴏᴠᴇʀs/AU ✔ Aᴄᴛɪᴏɴsᴘᴀᴍ ✔ Pʀᴏsᴇ	✔ Pɪᴄᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴍᴘᴛs ✔ Oᴛʜᴇʀᴡᴏʀᴅʟʏ ✔ Sᴛᴀʀᴛᴇʀs	♥ F/M, F/F ⏰ Lᴇɢᴀᴄɪᴇs-ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟɪᴀɴᴛ

legacies era for flavor

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