LITTLE MISS GALAHAD OVER HERE.

("how old are you?" he asks her.

"i'm nineteen," she says. she's not a child.

he's seen children half her age kill and be killed. when she publishes her article - not in the dinky little paper she'd been writing for, but a real outlet, one nines had told her to pitch to - he reads it. it's good work.)

he doesn't need an assistant. he doesn't need a writer. but it was fun, working with someone again. he'd forgotten how fun it was, working with someone ... he hadn't had that since doboj ...

nines takes rose to freetown, because the civil war is over and the elections are going to happen within a few years, so there's plenty of news but the likelihood that they're going to get killed is a little lower. rose takes to it like a fish to water. they're gone for about a year.

("i called, mum," rose tries to explain. "when i first left. you hung up!"

jackie makes an incoherent noise. the speechlessness doesn't last.

"here you are, going off with some pervy old man to africa -" her mum snaps, and rose interrupts.

"it was sierra leone, mum, not africa," she says. "not like, the whole continent. i was with a real journalist! i was perfectly safe."

nines chooses not to comment.)

they're in afghanistan when they meet jack. they rescue him from where he's holed up in a burnt-out jeep, close to death from dehydration. he's clever and charming and oddly sweet and quite handsome when he's not near dying. he's also fiercely loyal to them, since they've saved him.

when rose looks up captain jack harkness, she finds a picture of a dead american soldier with a face that isn't their jack, k.i.a. two months ago.

("it's stolen valor, yeah?" she asks nines.

nines is quiet for a long time. "might be," he says. "hard to say.")