It's all AU.

He'd meant to just step outside for some air. It had been an eventful day, though in his experience, weddings usually ended up being pretty dramatic, even without alien intervention. This one, though...Jack shook his head, and chuckled, looking up at the night sky. Rhys had a lot to cope with, and yeah, he was probably good enough for Gwen. If he kept trying hard.

Taking a sip from his champagne glass, he turned to head back into the building, intending to go back to the function room and supervise the clear-up operation.

Only the building he went back into wasn't the one he'd just left. He looked around, recognized New New (he'd not quite identified how many times) New York through the window, shrugged, and lifted his glass in the direction of the back of the nearest (familiar-looking) person. "Here's to you."

Jamie stared at the fading grin in the tree with something between horror and confusion. He backed up several paces, asking the person he bumped into, "Did I see that?"

There was something about new jeans that just made Jack relax more. New, comfortable jeans that also made his ass look the promised 25 (he still wasn't sure if that was age or a score out of 10) were even better.

He'd still got the coat, but he'd abandoned the formality of slacks, shirt, braces and vest in favor of those jeans and a t-shirt.

He was feeling pretty nostalgic.

Which probably explained why he'd gone in search of a TARDIS and, having tracked one down, was stroking her casing gently, forehead resting against the wood in silent communication.

From an outside perspective, it probably looked incredibly odd.

Jack really wasn't having a great day.

Since getting back, he'd encountered two versions of himself. One an updated version of Brant who he still very definitely was in love with, in a slightly wary and confused way, and the other a past he really wished he didn't think he'd been like.

Rooftops were out, since that just raised the probability of running into another version of himself.

Drinking was out. Period.

So he headed out through the lobby of the hotel, determined to find somewhere he could simply re-adjust.

Except that he very nearly ran into someone on his way out, hands rising automatically to catch them, steadying himself at the same time. "Damn. Sorry. Are you okay?"

Jack pinned the big piece of paper with his survey chart on up on the notice board in the lobby of the hotel, stuck a couple of marker pens in the tray at the bottom, and stood back to make sure everything was there.

( The Survey – cut for length )

It all seemed to be there. Jack nodded, and went off to the TARDIS to get some sleep.

Jack had slept (some), adjusted, settled, worked through his hangover (emotional and physical), and decided to greet the new day by...well. Standing on a roof. He hadn't indulged in a while, and it helped to clear his head.

He stood on the edge of the roof, toes of his boots over the guttering, and stared across the hotchpotch skyline, not looking back when he heard footsteps behind him. "If you're thinking about pushing me," he said conversationally, "I'm gonna come back and haunt you. And I make one hell of a corporeal ghost."

It was late.

It was always late, but this was a late Jack spent alone. A late night he couldn't look Ianto in the face, because he wouldn't understand. No one could understand. No one he could contact from 21st century Cardiff.

He'd been back in the 1940s, again, World War Two for the fifth time, and it was still beautiful. Still somewhere he wouldn't mind getting trapped, except for the responsibilities to his team and...to his namesake. If that was the right word for a man whose name he'd stolen without ever knowing the true worth of the man.

Well, now he knew. Now he'd seen, danced, kissed, loved and lost, all in one night, and better to have loved and lost, right? He'd believe that again soon.

Draining the last of the brandy from his tumbler, he set the glass down on his desk, pushed his chair back, and ran his fingers over the photograph one final time before adding it to the pile in the tin box and locking it away in the drawer. Reports of disturbances were already coming through, but with any luck, there were purely after effects of Owen tearing the rift open to retrieve them.

An urgent beep from the direction of Tosh's desk called to him, and Jack sighed, pocketed the key to his cabinet, and went out of his office to check on it. Intended to check on it.

Ended up in a familiar looking bar that he recognised within heartbeats, along with a slew of memories that...shit. Shit. Brant.

Jack and Brant and Ianto.

Now he really needed a drink. He crooked a finger at the android behind the bar, ordered a New Canaan brandy, knocked it back in one swallow, regretted it, and ordered another, turning to survey the inhabitants of the bar while waiting for a refill.

After leaving the Doctor - and still with too much to think about and less chance of being able to avoid doing so - Jack wasted no time in finding the bar.

Not so much for the fact that he needed a drink, but more because that's where Brant said he'd been headed, and considering the overload of information Brant had just had to deal with, Jack was more than a little concerned.

It wasn't empty, of course, but it was pretty quiet, and easy to spot Brant sat at one end of the bar chatting to the server. Jack hooked out a stool next to him, slid onto it, and let his arm fall around Brant's shoulders. "Hey."

Jack had too many things to think about. Immortality, the Doctor, Brant...yeah, that one was taking up most of his mind. Falling in love with a kid who'd barely left home, who he'd only ever encounter in a place outside time, and by all accounts, who he wouldn't remember when he went back to Cardiff.

He'd fallen out of the habit of getting blind drunk to escape thinking, and although he was pretty sure he'd be able to lay his hands on recreational drugs somewhere in this place, he'd been there, done that.

That left him with his usual retreat.

Get somewhere high and avoid thinking about any of it.

It was probably coincidence that took him back to the balcony where he'd first met Brant.

Emma had hit the reverse sequence on the Manipulator, left the Jack who wasn't hers and sent herself into the Vortex, planning to go home.

And well, this quite clearly was neither home nor the 51st century, she realised, looking at the street the Vortex had chosen to deposit her in.

She pressed a few buttons, but the Manipulator insisted on making the noise that meant, "I've no idea where or when we are."

"Some help you are," she said, closing the flap. Looking up, she saw someone approaching her. "Hi, Emma Harkness," she greeted, using Jack's standard line, and offering her hand. "I don't suppose you could tell me what's going on here, could you?"

It was going to have to happen sooner or later, Jack supposed.

Only so many roofs available to stand on, only so many places to get perspective, and too many of his analogues to be able not to coincide with them. After all, he'd already met his later self, his earlier pregnant self, and ...one that wasn't quite himself and he wasn't going to think too hard about that one.

Sooner or later, they'd end up on the same roof. At least it was flat and spacious, but his preferred gazing spot was occupied.

Moving forwards, he stood next to the man, mirroring his position, hands clasped loosely behind his back. "Nice coat for stargazing in."

Back and forth, all this shifting back and forth. There had to be a way to stabilize something so that doors didn't randomly open and let people stumble in and out, between the limbo of this place and hours or days or years somewhere else.

But that would take Tosh, at the very least. And Jack for guidance. Or to shake his head and tut when they messed it up again, but it had to start somewhere.

And Jack, in his greatcoat, just down the corridor ahead of her, was where she'd start. "Jack!" She ran to catch up.

After he'd finished eating, he'd gone to claim a room.

He walked around the hotel for a bit before he took a room, getting a feel for the layout of the place and looking out all the windows. In the end he'd settled on a room at the very end of the hall, on the top floor. He locked the windows and door, and content that he was as secure as he was going to make himself, took a shower and a nap.

He woke up stiff, groggy and nauseated. He took a leak, another shower, and a moment to appreciate the water's heat (and pressure).

Clean and more awake, Jack went back downstairs. A quick trip through the kitchen to grab a package of crackers, and he headed out of the hotel and into the town. He stopped to open the crackers and glance at the sky. He snorted softly, and started walking again. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he knew when he'd found it.

The library.

He finished eating his crackers just as he found it. He dropped the generic cellophane wrapper into the rubbish bin, pushed the door open and walked in. Ten minutes later he was in a chair, stack of books at his side and another open in front of him and thinking he'd kill for a decent computer.

Five minutes after that he glanced up and looked into his own face.

"Shit, this just keeps getting better."

( Cut for length )

Folding the report carefully, he tucked it into the pocket of his waistcoat. Now, all he had to do was find out the rest of the information. He chose a seat in the hotel lounge where he had a decent view of the lobby as well, and settled down to wait. He had an idea of who to look for - the Master, or the Doctor, or Jack - but he wasn't certain who he'd run across first.

He ignored the one Jack, noting peripherally that he was dealing with Owen, waiting for the next person whose face was familiar to cross his path.

It was late 'evening' according to both his biological clock and the slow return of the stars outside when he found Jack outside.

Even from behind, and even realizing that there was more than one version of him floating around, there was something more than the coat that told Brant that it was 'his' Jack. He resisted the urge to reach out mentally, and instead paced slowly toward him. "Hey," he said, calm and quiet and from a reasonable distance. "You planning on coming back inside tonight, or are we galaxy-gazing."

Him going away wasn't one of the options.

Once he was finished talking with Susan, Jack only had one thought in his mind. The Doctor. His Doctor was here, somewhere here, and probably the only person in all of space and time that might possibly be able to tell him what the hell had happened to him.

Why he couldn't die.

If there was anything he could do to change that.

Hell, it's enough to send his feet in the direction of the bar. Might even be enough to have him break his habit and even drink something with alcohol in it.

The sight of a very familiar, and much missed back covered in a very familiar leather jacket, and the back of a head sporting very familiar ears standing near a much (or at least frequently) missed dartboard stopped his heart and breath for a moment, settling a low ache in his chest.

Definitely something with alcohol in it. Shit, this place was going to be hell on his carefully maintained liver. Collecting a beer from the bar and resisting the urge to ask if they knew how to mix a decent pan galactic gargle blaster, he made his way over to the dartboard and took a seat safely out of the line of fire.

He spotted the coat before the man. It was distinctive, striking and appealed to him on both counts. The man, when he noticed him, was similar. It wasn't until he got to the eyes that his head cocked to the side and he went from glancing to looking, and from looking to approaching. Not that the 'decision', as it was, wasn't impulsive.

"Are you Jack?" he asked.

It wasn't so much an active search as it was an acute awareness that with multiple people popping up, from various points in the timeline, that there was a possibility that there was more than one of him here. With the length of his timeline, the possibility wasn't even a remote one. It didn't even take an accident and anonmaly like this town for it to happen.

So, when he saw himself on the edge of town he wasn't surprised. Lack of surprise did not save him from a moment of intense disorientation at seeing himself from the outside - and behind. It did keep his footsteps from faltering as he stepped into place beside the other Jack.

"Nice view."

In the middle of the night, most people would be inside where it was considered safe, especially in an area where they were unsure of the quality of the residents. But Susan wasn't most people. So instead of being inside of the hotel building safe in one of its many rooms, she was seated cross legged on the ground, leaning back on her hands with her face tilted up and upwards toward the sky, studying the star formation with a confused yet curious and enraptured expression. None of them were familiar (odd considering she knew the constellations for several different galaxies and galactic positions by heart), but that didn't stop them from being beautiful.

Rowan walked through his office door, munching on a piece of toast, juggling his coffee, and a report.

Unfortunately the door he walked through did not lead him into his office. It led him into a brightly lit room with disco balls and thrumming music. Piece of toast still in his mouth, Rowan looked right. Rowan looked left. Rowan sighed around the toast and muttered "Bugger"