Remember Time Brings... [attn: Jack]

He grinned at the compliment. "Well, I do try awfully hard," he remarked-- what? He wasn't going to tell her she was wrong. And compared to what Torchwood had been when he'd joined up... well. Saying he'd done a lot with the place would be an understatement.

She smiled, tilting her head slightly. "I'm sure you do." Because that's what he did, right" "So you joined 'awhile ago'..." Rose started, pausing to let that part of the thought sink in before steering it into the right direction. "How'd you end up working here?"

"Always." Her next question surprised him a little, though he thought it probably shouldn't have. How he had come to work for Torchwood... oh, that was one hell of an explanation he didn't want to give. "It's a long story," he said, and it was the truth - it was a very long story. A hundred years old, give or take some time. "Long story short, I needed something to do and Torchwood was hiring."

It was a good enough facsimile of the truth. It'd have to do.

More vague answers and mysteries. He'd never been abject to telling long stories before, had he? She knew that line of thought wasn't really fair. Not your business, she reminded herself, though she wasn't entirely convinced.

"Lucky that then. Can't imagine the background check went well." Rose wasn't being entirely serious. What she was doing was gathering up the topics that got like treatment. Maybe she could find a link? It was worth a shot, even if doing so made her feel a little guilty.

No, Jack didn't usually object to telling long stories. Especially not long, involved, interesting stories... when they weren't important. There was a fine line between entertaining and important. Most lovers he'd had, a great many of the adventures he could remember from the Time Agency-- those were entertaining. How he got to Torchwood, how he came into command, those were important things, things he couldn't talk about because... well, for one thing, it wasn't something most people took very well. It was one thing to say 'you abandoned me and I used my Vortex Manipulator to get back to Earth' and quite another to say 'you made me immortal, abandoned me, I used my Vortex Manipulator to get back to Earth, and oh, I've been here for more than a hundred years.'

"Don't know that they did one," he replied to what she said, shrugging. No, he was pretty sure 'background check' hadn't entirely come into the picture at the time. 'Poke the funny immortal thing until you figure out what it is' had been more the order of the day. But of course, he couldn't say that.

"Ah." She couldn't help thinking that something about that was odd. The Torchwood she'd seen had been big on the secret organization thing, and she couldn't picture them not trying to find out about someone they'd hired. Though...hadn't Mickey got himself a job there, infiltrated it sort of? Maybe they really didn't. "Lucky that. Would've been hard to explain, yeah?"

"Yeah, I got lucky." He found that funny -- ironic-funny, not humorous-funny. He would have preferred the background check. "You don't think my background would make me uniquely suited to the job?" he asked, sounding slightly surprised but more amused. "I mean, if they would've been able to find my background." Which they wouldn't, because technically he didn't exist (well, hadn't, since the '40s)-- oh, aliases. Fun things.

"That'd be the problem, not finding it. They'd get suspicious. Unless you'd been around here long enough to get one they could find." Which, she figured once again via the lack of visible aging, he hadn't. She didn't bring that back up though. "But yeah, guess it would if they could hunt it down."

He thought about that, and shook his head. "Not really. Long enough for them to think I was a little weird, though." Yeah, understatement of the year, thanks Jack. "I'm glad they didn't find it, really. They were suspicious from the get-go... but I guess I didn't fit in so well then." It made a better joke if you knew he wasn't talking about the 21st century, but it worked anyway.

"Well, you more or less came out of nowhere right? You said you used your thing to get here. Probably for the better they didn't find out, yeah." Rose paused for a moment. "Wait... Long enough for it to be weird? How's that exactly?" It didn't make much sense to her.

"I've been here longer than overnight, you know." A lot longer than overnight. That was a vague, sort of stupid answer, so he added to it, "I overshot a little bit. Vortex Manipulator shorted out and I got stuck where I landed. America, for one thing."

"Well yeah, but just 'longer than overnight' isn't 'long enough to be weird.'" Rose thought out loud. "How much is a little bit?" She asked him with a raised eyebrow before pausing. "Sorry, I'm being a bit..." Nosy for one.

"It's okay." A shrug, and Jack smiled, inwardly giving in just a little. "It was a while ago. Victorian times. Corsets -- love those things, except the part where they can't really breathe.." He realized Rose was staring at him again and stopped talking.

She continued staring at him once he'd stopped. "Victorian times...are a bit more than awhile ago." Rose told him after a lengthy pause, voice verging on quiet. She looked up to meet his eyes. "...Jack?"

"Depends on your perspective.." Not that there was really much of a perspective for someone on a linear timeline in the 21st century that didn't put the late 19th century at more than a while ago. He met her gaze, finally saying, more seriously, "I've been here since the late eighteen hundreds. Like I said, I... missed."

"But that's over a hundred years..." She stated the obvious as she thought that through, looking at him confused. "You... How?" Her mind was having a rough time processing that. He was human, and the time definitely didn't add up in that case. "Some aim..." The joke was weak she had to admit, but that was almost the point.

"And looking good for it, right?" he asked with a grin, though it was short-lived and he shrugged. He wasn't sure he could explain it to her satisfaction, but he would give it a shot. "I'm not sure how exactly. On the Gamestation, I died-- then I woke up again. Haven't been able to die since." Not for lack of trying, evidently, he thought dryly.

"So you're...what, immortal?" Suspension of disbelief aside, it still seemed hard to wrap a thought around. What he said suggested it had happened on the Gamestation. Which didn't leave many suspects for cause, did it? "That's..." Rose wasn't exactly sure.

"Apparently. No signs it's going away so far." That a little flippantly, and then he smiled, almost gently, looking at her. "Impossible? Probably. I work around the facts." He had always been good at that. "It's not bad. Hell of a way to get seniority in an organization, but.." He put it lightly because he didn't want her to react badly. Desperately didn't.

"No, not that... Can't be if it's happening...happened?" Tenses made great distractions. Rose hesitantly tried a small smile in response to his last comment. "Guess it would be.." She still wasn't sure what she thought of it all but...better to try not to show that, right?

"No, so I guess 'really, really unlikely' is a better term for it." Jack shrugged. Then he sobered a little and touched her arm lightly. "You're okay? Sometimes people don't take this so well." People who weren't already aware, that is -- the Doctor had taken it very well; but then, he'd known from the get-go.

"Yeah." Rose answered him, a little too quickly. "Not like I haven't run into unlikely things before, right?" She tried to give him a reassuring look. "Just.." Trailing off wasn't the best way to convince him, she realized. "Letting it sink in."

"Yeah.. it's a little of a shock at first, I know." He smiled thinly, because if he didn't pretend all was well, then it would be entirely too obvious that it wasn't. He didn't want her to be upset over this. Of all people... "At least this time I get to tell instead of show, though," he added, as if an afterthought. Trying (probably unsuccessfully) to bring some levity to the situation.

After the moment it took for his last comment to sink in, Rose expression turned slightly aghast. She tried to hide it. "Definitely a good thing...yeah. That's..." She blinked, glanced away a moment and then looked back but let the word hang.

That was a bad reaction, and he reflected that he really should have expected that. Morbid humor about one's own mortality (or lack thereof) only worked around some people. He could get away with it sometimes with, say, Gwen, but that was about it. "Sorry," he said after a moment. He didn't try to explain - there was no good way to say, 'the last two times people found out about this it was because I'd been shot in the head'. "It's not as bad as it sounds, you know." As if saying that would make things better. Easier? Especially since it was a lie.