DW/TW Story: Wonderland (3/5)
Title: Wonderland (3/5)
Rating: PG-15
Characters: ensemble
Pairings: Yes. Many.
Spoilers: Nu!Who 'verse up through CoE, possible casting spoilers for '09 Christmas special
Warnings: extreme self-indulgence, angsty emo (mostly Jack), character death (also mostly Jack), child endangerment, mentions of torture circa The Year That Never Was, sentence fragments, and believe it or not given the other warnings, massive amounts of fluff. It is deeply twee, interspersed with moderate horror.
Beta: With greatest thanks to brinshannara for the translation and my beloved Ab for the read-through.
Author's Note: I hadn't intended to write a sequel to " Six Hundred Seconds" (and in fact suggest that anyone who enjoyed that story avoid this one). But then I looked down into the rabbit hole, and lo, the bunnies living there were so very densely fluffy that they changed the orbits of nearby stars. Title in honour of said rabbit hole and not the Who novel.
Part One
Part Two
***
Part Three
***
Jack gasped back to life and took in his bearings. Dead. Formerly dead. Inside. House. Alice's house. Hall light in his eyes. Head. He raised a hand and poked at his forehead. No hole left.
"Why did you bring me inside?"
"I didn't want to have to explain you to the neighbours. Now get out." Alice stood over him, still angry. Johnson stood back. She had her gun out, though for once she looked unhappy about that fact.
Jack sat up carefully. His clothes weren't as messy as they could be had she shot him in the chest. Lois must have nagged her, too.
There was a rustle at the top of the stairs. Steven huddled, sleepy and confused, awakened by the gunshot. Jack watched him as he rubbed his eyes and yawned.
"I'll go," he said. "Johnson?"
"Hm?"
"See you Monday. Alice, love as always." He looked up the stairs. "See you later, Steven."
Steven yawned again. Jack let himself out.
The streetlights were bright here, but above him he saw only stars.
***
He puttered around his flat most of the night, taking a catnap in the living room to a Glenn Miller CD on repeat. Morning found him with a sore neck and a lighter heart than he'd had in months.
Sunday was quiet. Tosh didn't come in at all, no activity on the monitors. Jack took the time to go through more paperwork, including the report on the 456.
He spent the rest of the day occupied, first at the florist's, then driving from place to place. Emma's and Eugene's graves were empty. Emma was laid to rest in a UNIT vault somewhere, because their freezers were gone. Eugene had been obliterated. He left them flowers anyway. "Thanks," he said to each. "I'm sorry," he added, for Emma, who'd lived in the old timeline under another name but died in this one wearing her own.
Lucia's grave was also empty, which meant she was entombed forever beneath the Hub in the company of every Torchwood agent who'd left a body behind. He sat for a long time with her headstone anyway, tidying up the site, choosing not to chat. Dead was dead, and there was nothing beyond except what moved in the darkness.
The last grave was harder to find. The girl's last name, listed in the report, didn't give him a clue of her whereabouts now, and it had taken some time on the computer for Jack to track her down. When he reached the cemetery, he walked until he saw a grave piled with flowers and toys. His arm dropped. Hundreds of cards littered the site, as did fresh and wilted daisies and lilies and roses. Teddy bears in every color. He plucked one card from the ground. "Thank you, Maddy. Trissa Stone and her mom and dad." The handwriting was too neat to be a child's.
Parents. Their children had been ripped from their arms, almost sent to a fate worse than death, and a little girl Gwen had chosen had taken their place, had taken Steven's place. Jack set down his flowers with the rest.
"I promise," he said, and that was all. "I promise."
***
Monday morning, he texted Lois not to bother and got breakfast for everyone himself. The Rift was still quiet, so the agendas were light. Lois also handed out a sheet: "List of Acceptable Reasons to Kill JH."
"Excuse me?" Jack said, scanning the list. "Okay, I can see 'Possessed by alien consciousness.'"
"In your case, 'Acting strangely as though possessed by alien' is also a good reason."
"I disagree."
"You'll get better."
"'Trying to take over planet?'" Gwen asked. "He hasn't done that yet. Has he?"
"It's good to be prepared. Be sure to look at the unacceptable reasons list, please."
Jack read. "Because you're angry with him." "Because your significant other(s) is/are angry with him." "You want to open the Rift for any purpose." "You want to use his retinal print or fingerprints." "You want to take over the planet."
"Are these suspension-worthy offenses?" Johnson asked. "Just out of curiosity."
Lois said, "That's up to management."
Jack said, "Management says stop shooting me and we'll let it go."
"I avoided his clothes."
"Thank you," said Lois.
***
They spent the morning working in the remains of the archives, moving files up into the main part of the building while Gwen and Tosh worked on recreating their filing system. Jack found a sledgehammer and made an educated guess on the location of the next vault. Two hours later, he broke through to a collapsed room. He and Mickey managed to pull out three filing cabinets that were only partially crushed. Jack was pleased until they got one open and found a drawer full of nothing but receipts for Weevil food.
"Lunch," said Gwen over the comm at a bit past noon. Jack bounded up from where he'd been sitting on the floor, heart pounding. He'd been thinking about this since Saturday night. Every day, Monday through Friday and even the occasional weekend when Lisa would have to work, he'd have the chance to see Ianto again. Gwen wasn't talking him into hiring him or Lisa; the Doctor had been clear that Torchwood was dangerous, that Jack himself was dangerous. He could say hello, though, and chat over coffee, and listen to Ianto's voice again, his laugh. Jack would allow himself that.
Jack was wearing one of his best shirts today, though it had gone dusty from the files. He could change, but then he'd have to face questions about why he was trying to smarten up before going to the cafeteria.
As the lift hit the office level, Jack smelled pizza. "I thought … "
"Monday's pizza day," Tosh said, and she handed him a plate. "Unless you have something better to do?" She caught his eye.
"No," he said, tugging at his grimy shirt. "Pizza. Yum."
***
He found excuses to go for coffee, to grab snacks, to walk through the corridors. Sunrise Software was across the hall from Enfys Cruises, though the latter's door was locked. Jack paced outside the software company's door until he felt ridiculous.
Gwen's voice spat in his ear: "Play time's over. We've got an alien sighting."
Grateful for the distraction, Jack went back to work.
***
Tuesday morning, he spent extra time getting ready in his shower and after, choosing just the right shirt to show off his eyes, brushing his teeth after coffee at home so he wouldn't be going around with java breath. He was primping.
"Are you fixing your hair?" Jack teases him, slipping up behind him in the mirror.
"Just because you run a soapy hand over your head and call that shampoo does not mean I can't make myself look presentable for work."
Just for that, Jack ruffles his hair, and Ianto grumbles at him, working on his tie. He's distracted, as is Jack's intent, and messes up the knot. Jack considers grabbing the tie off his neck and using it for something much more entertaining, but the reflected glare in the mirror says he oughtn't.
He checked his hair one more time, and headed for the office.
Rift calls, all morning long, and into the afternoon. He gripped the steering wheel unhappily as Gwen called them from one mission to the next, finally splitting the team. Jack took Lois with him, because Gwen figured his experience and her lack of same would even out.
"Are you all right?" Lois asked, as Jack swore roundly at a blowfish who was giving them grief. He'd missed the weapon the 'fish was carrying and nearly gotten scorched for his trouble.
"Fine." He checked his watch. Three PM. "Low blood sugar."
"We'll have an early tea," she said. "As soon as we deal with this fellow." She checked the settings on the taser he'd allowed her, but her brow was furrowed. Lois really wasn't a weapons sort of woman. She could fight viciously with paper both real and electronic; firearms left her cold.
"Let me," he said, and took it from her with a friendly squeeze of her hand, fixing the charge. Still holding her hand, he helped her fire. "Just like that."
"Thanks."
Over a quick snack, he asked her about what had brought her to Torchwood. "Fuzzy memory," he said. "Remind me."
"I was working as a temp for Mr. Frobisher," she said, and took a sip of her tea. He'd finally read the report. Mr. Frobisher and his family had not been lucky in this timeline, either. "I met up with Gwen and Rhys while they were on the run, helped them get to you."
"Gwen offered you the job."
"When it all was said and done. You were both pretty broken up about, well, everything. You took some time away. She did, too, not as long. When she did, we got things organised, Gwen and me and Tosh and Mickey. Set up the new Hub. Johnson helped us go through the things they'd recovered from the blast. When you got back, you brought her on."
"The new team."
"It's Torchwood. We always go on. That's what you said."
"We always do."
***
Tuesday night, he broke down and looked up their current address. They were renting a place, had feelers out (that took a lot more digging) for house, had already purchased a dark blue minivan. "I was half-right," he said to himself. Now he'd know what vehicle to be watching for on the streets, in the parking lot. He wrote down the name of the nursery school Callie Jones attended, the closest parks to their home, child-friendly restaurants nearby.
Lois would be sure to tell him when he'd crossed over the line to break local stalking laws, so he had no intention of letting her know about his activities. To be safe, he made all his notes in a language that wouldn't be around for another twelve centuries or so.
Anyway, he had no intention of driving over to their rental. He wasn't the "radio over his head playing pop songs" type. Besides, Ianto hated pop music.
Jack just liked to know.
He spent most of the night working on more of the sub-basement by himself. The collapsed room bordered another vault. He spent hours moving rubble away from the most likely-looking wall, and a few more trying to make holes into the next room. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, and he couldn't even tell what level they were in to figure out what would be nearby. He simply wanted to see what he could still find that hadn't been burned, crushed, flooded, confiscated or stolen. He'd rebuild their past, if he could.
He hefted. He sweated. He worked. It filled the hours until he fell into the spare bed and slept fitfully for a short slice of the night.
***
Wednesday was his day.
The morning was slow. Johnson took the one call they had, wanting some alone time. Jack let her go. Gwen had a doctor's appointment. She warned him over the phone not to cause trouble or break anything permanent while she was out. He said he'd try. Instead, he helped Tosh and Mickey do more wiring. Gwen wanted to extend their internal CCTV to the new rooms Jack had been opening, in case something they managed to wake up down there decided to come through and pay them a visit. Jack was pretty sure everything down there was dead and not coming back, but he wouldn't bet someone else's life on it, and anyway, it gave him more reasons to keep excavating in his spare time.
Johnson and Gwen were still out at lunchtime, and Jack had no intention of waiting. "Time for a break," he announced with far more cheer than needed.
"I want to finish up here," Tosh said. "You go ahead."
"I'll help," Mickey said. "It'll get done faster. You go on, mate. Lois hates eating alone."
Jack clapped Mickey on the shoulder. "Meet us there."
He made an exaggerated bow to Lois in the office. "Lunch, Miss Habiba?"
"Delighted, Captain Harkness." She got her purse and took his arm.
In the café, he glanced around casually and spotted the table he wanted. Lois didn't need persuading, as she had been almost as happy as Gwen to spend her lunch breaks cooing over babies, and sure enough, there was a baby to be cooed over.
"May we join you?" Jack asked, and sat down next to one of his favorite people in the universe without waiting for a response. Lois smiled shyly and sat down across from them.
"Hello," she said. "Lisa already off?"
"Yup," said Ianto, cuddling a little boy on his lap who couldn't have been more than a year old.
Bren said, "Ianto, this is … "
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said, grabbing his hand and shaking it. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. … ?"
"Jones. Ianto Jones." His eyes sparkled, and of course Lisa must have told him about their conversation. "Lisa tells me you run a gay cruise line."
"Looking to take a holiday?"
"Booked solid right now, sorry. Maybe next week?"
"I'll pencil you into my calendar."
"I can't wait."
It was so easy to fall into their pattern. Ianto had been a flirt, even back in the old days, before Jack had known half of it was to keep him from guessing what was in the basement. He had to be careful not to go so far yet, to layer in things his Ianto would have known and found funny or sexy or both.
"So who's this chap?" Jack asked, poking at his food as he remembered he was supposed to be eating.
"This is Kyle. Kyle, can you say hi?" He rubbed his son's back. "Say hi." The toddler stared at him wide-eyed, then grabbed a chip off his father's tray and tried to cram it into his mouth.
Bren cooed, as if on cue. "What a dearie!" She made more gooey noises, which sent the child even more wide-eyed and ducking for cover in Ianto's chambray shirt. "Lois, love, where's Gwen today?"
"Had to see the doctor. She'll start her weekly visits soon."
"Weekly?" said Jack. He hadn't been involved in much of the medical side of Lucia's pregnancy, hadn't even been allowed in the room when Alice had been born.
"She'll have to go on leave soon," said Bren. "She can't have much stress this late."
As opposed to running for her life, almost getting blown up, and shooting people during her first trimester, Jack supposed. Gwen had mentioned leave, and also how much stress she was under.
"We've tried to keep her workload light," Lois said, and dabbed her mouth with her napkin.
"That's good," Ianto said. "Hopefully your boss will be understanding, not make her work late, or do anything too dangerous."
"I thought Gwen was the boss," Bren said.
"My mistake. I could've sworn she'd mentioned a pig-headed employer who didn't know his bottom from an alligator." Bottom? Oh. Little kid learning to talk. No swearing. Jack suddenly wondered how many swear words he could teach the kid in an hour. He'd managed almost three dozen with Alice one very boring Sunday.
"That's corporate," Lois said. "You know how it goes."
"Yeah," said Jack. "One day, they're sending memos on how they want reports organised alphabetically by date, the next they're overrun by Cyb … " he paused, "cyber crime." At Bren's confused look, he added, "So I've heard."
"All done," came Lisa's voice from behind him, and he and Ianto both turned around at once. She carried the tiniest bundle he'd ever seen huddled against her red blouse. The baby really was new.
"Could you?" Ianto held Kyle out to Bren, who made more indistinct noises while Ianto took the baby from Lisa. He kissed Lisa on the cheek. "That was fast."
"She fell asleep. You're going to have to come back in a few hours."
"All right." He tucked her into the stroller seat, then plucked Kyle from Bren's arms. "Thank you." Kyle was less easily buckled in, demanding his mother instead. Jack watched, a little fascinated, a little horrified, completely forgetting to eat. This was another world to him, yet Ianto moved in it as easily as a dolphin in water.
"Don't normally see you here," Lisa said, noticing Jack at last.
"I'm trying to be more social. Lois says it's good for me."
"That reminds me," said Lois. "I should make another list."
"Fantastic." And now Kyle was buckled in, and Ianto was giving Lisa another kiss, and he was leaving. Leaving! After all that, he was walking away and up the ramp Jack had built. He had other things to do, a life to lead, and Jack's sole place in it was to be the man who was rude to Lisa last week.
"Time we should be getting back," said Bren. "If you're ready, dear."
Lisa nodded. "Lois, see you later. Captain."
Lois went back to her lunch. Jack looked down at his and didn't recognise it, made himself take a bite. He heard laughter. He turned his head, and saw Tosh covering her mouth to stifle her own laugh. She and Mickey had come to the café after all, and had a table to themselves. He was smiling, she was having a good time.
Later, when they were alone for a moment in the office, he asked her, "Have fun?"
"It's a good day for second chances." Her eyes were bright, and he was happy for her.
"You're right," he said, and he kept a close eye on the parking lot camera for a dark blue minivan to come back. The baby had to wake up eventually.
***
Ianto didn’t bring the stroller when he returned in the afternoon. Jack watched him on the camera, carrying just the tiny bundle. Perhaps the other two were with a sitter? Jack switched the view to the café, waited for Lisa to take the baby again. A stray worry: would Ianto go with her wherever she went in back to nurse?
Nope. Tradeoff. Coffee. Bingo.
"Back later," Jack said to Lois as he scooted out of the office past her. He didn't hear her reply.
A minute later, he had a semi-decent cup of coffee in his hand and headed straight for where Ianto sat, holding his own cup reverently. Jack wondered if Lisa knew she shared his heart with Columbian beans.
"Ianto Jones," he said, slipping into the seat across from him. "You're missing a pram."
"The other two are with my sister."
"I'm sure Rhiannon's have a splendid time with them." That got him the attention he'd been looking for.
"You've been doing research."
"I make a point of knowing things about people who know things about me."
"So you can arrange amnesia for us?"
"Only when necessary. You're not a threat. Lisa's not a threat. We don't have a problem."
"You say that now. You didn't hear what she had to say about you last week."
"I was rude last week. That was my fault. Can you give her my apologies?"
"No, but you can feel free to do it yourself. She'll be back soon."
"Not that soon. She just left a minute ago, and the baby will be hungry." He paused. "What's the baby's name?"
"You didn't do enough research, then." Ianto drank his coffee. "Isabelle."
"That's pretty."
"Who are you?"
"Captain Jack Harkness. We met earlier."
"Yes. We did." Ianto looked around, saw more people in the café. "Do you have time to take a walk? I'd rather not have this discussion here."
Jack said, "Come with me." He could get to the roof from the regular lift if he used the right code. As he punched in the top button, he surreptitiously pressed his wrist strap.
Ianto swallowed as the door opened; he'd never been good with heights. "It'll be fine," Jack said. "I won't let you fall off the roof."
"Or push me?"
"Nah. Make too much of a mess." They walked out together, falling into step, and Jack tried to stay cool. "Privacy, as requested."
"All the better to kill people with?"
"So suspicious. You were the one who wanted to talk."
"I did. So who are you?"
"We went over this."
Ianto walked towards the edge, looked over. Jack could see the faint pulse at his throat quicken, and pushed away memories of kissing and licking and loving that spot where the life beat so close to the surface. Ianto pulled his coat a little closer against himself in the breeze.
"My mother died when I was nine. Not long before she did, she took my sister and me to a playground. I remember because it was the last good day for her. After that, she was in and out of hospital and in a month, she was gone."
"I'm sorry," Jack said.
"Did you kill her?"
"What? No!"
He sighed. "Good. Because I remember you there, when I was nine, in your coat." He gestured at Jack's greatcoat. "You put it on me when I was cold. There was another man there, talking to my mother. Then you were both gone, and she was sick. I'd always wondered."
"It's not what you think."
"I don't know what to think. You were there at our wedding. I saw you, looking not a day older, wearing that same coat. I didn't remember you, not at first, but I pieced it together after Lisa's dad passed away a few months later."
"I swear I didn't kill him either."
Ianto looked at him, head tilted in that way he had while he processed some new factoid. "I don't think you did. But you're always there when my world tilts. So I'm asking, who are you, and why are you following me? Who am I going to lose now?"
"No one. I'm not … " Tosh had remembered. Why wouldn't he? "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not here to hurt anyone."
"You hurt people all the time. Usually aliens."
"Well, they're no sewer rats, but they fill the day."
"The gargoyles were worse."
"High up?"
"Yeah."
"Lisa figure out you're an adrenaline addict yet, or are you still claiming you've got no interest in danger?"
"Excuse me?"
"Ianto Jones. Show him porn, take him to an exclusive, and expensive, club, you hardly get more out of him than a snarky comment about padding. However," Jack said, stepping up onto the ledge, "let him do some petty shoplifting, take him someplace dangerous, show him a monster with extra teeth," Jack was ticking off on his fingers now, "put his life at risk, or, God helps us all, tell him the apocalypse is coming round again? Then," he jumped down again and walked so close to Ianto he could feel the warmth from his coat, "he can barely keep his trousers up."
"You have the strangest researchers working for you."
"Private study."
"I'm flattered. Also worried."
"Good."
"Lisa told me all about you, you know, about what her boss used to say."
"Yvonne was a fool."
"Lisa thought so too. You were a minor folk hero among the One staff."
Jack stopped short. "Really?"
"Minor. Very minor."
"Robin Hood?"
"You might have rated just above Cornish pixie."
"I can build on that."
"You're not, let's get this clear, an actual pixie, fairy, angel or alien? Right?"
"Human born and bred." Not from this planet, but Ianto didn't need to hear the whole story today.
"I'd been banking on the angel theory."
"You don't believe in angels."
"It was a theory. I notice you haven't denied it was you either time."
He hadn't. "Can I deny it now?"
"No. Now I'd call you a liar. Before, I'd have been talked into being confused. The sun in my eyes, maybe, or an emotional time that had gotten mixed up in my head."
"Are you sure you're not confused now?"
"I'm sure. It was you. You've been following me for over fifteen years."
"That's one way of looking at it. Time travel's another."
His face went sickly. Jack quashed the impulse to grab him and hold on till the vertigo passed. "Puke over there," he said instead.
"I'll be fine," Ianto said, and proved the lie by staggering and veering close the ledge. Jack did grab him then, drew him into his shoulder.
"Shouldn't have brought you here. You hate heights."
Ianto pulled back, but towards the door instead of the pavement below. "Why do you know things about me? Why are you following me? Who are you?"
Jack opened his mouth, and he almost told him. Everything. Who he'd been, what they'd been. His name. This was his second chance.
Ianto fumbled in his coat pocket and pulled something out. "And what is this?" He put something cold in Jack's hand. A broken stopwatch.
Jack closed his hand around it. This Ianto had no idea. He'd never lost Lisa, never sold his own soul in a failed attempt to bring her back, never had to shut her cold, dead body and the bodies of too many friends away for storage after he'd carefully cleaned away the blood and the mess, never had to feel that cold sink so deeply into his bones that he'd look for comfort and warmth anywhere, as the hands on the clock ticked away his life.
This Ianto had never been broken until he thought the only person who could put him back together was Jack. Fucking Peter fucking Sheffield, anyway.
Just as the Doctor had arranged. Just as his mother had begged. And every minute Jack spent there with him brought him closer to being that same broken man.
"You're not safe, Jack. No one who is with you is safe."
"It's nothing. Dropped it, is all. You can keep it," he said, giving the watch back, but Ianto wouldn't take it.
"No, thanks." Jack put it back in his pocket. Something to look at and slowly go mad over.
"We should go. Lisa will be wondering where you are."
"She knows I'm with you."
"Then we'd really better get you back."
"I still don't know anything about you. Why were you there, with my mother?"
"I can't tell you that." His mother had never told Ianto or Rhi about her time with the Doctor. It wasn't Jack's secret to offer him now. "She knew she was sick, if that's what you wanted. She asked us to keep an eye on the two of you. Protect you." There. Close enough to true, anyway.
"I've never seen the other fellow again. He's your … ?"
How to answer that? Nights, or days, on the TARDIS, the three of them delighting in each other. A century gone now, for Jack, and horror on the Doctor's face every time he tried not to see what Jack had become. "My friend. He's around."
"Here?"
"Don't worry about it. Go home. Go be with your perfect little family. Forget this place. Forget me. Go be someone else away from aliens and giant rats. Take care of your kids."
He punched the button for the lift. Ianto came up behind him, saying nothing. Maybe he was still absorbing everything. His Ianto had been wonderful at digesting information for hours, quietly working on something else until he was ready, and then creeping up behind Jack with a half-smile and a cup of coffee and the perfect comment on what they'd been discussing.
This wasn't that comment.
"What else do you know about me?" The lift door opened. They stepped inside.
"Hm?"
"You know things about me. What else?"
The sex things came first to Jack's mind, the sensitive places Ianto liked to be touched, the filthy things he wanted growled into his ear as they moved against each other. But that wasn't what he needed to hear right now.
"I know about your father. He was brilliant, but he went to pieces when your mother got sick. He made up stories about his job when you were little, because you didn't understand, and then you told yourself stories when he stopped trying and pulled inside himself after she was gone.
"I know you didn't touch coffee until your last year of school. When you did, it was like finding religion.
"I know that you've spent your whole life feeling like a piece of you is missing. You think you can fill it when you fall in love, and you're less empty when you do, but you still wake up in the middle of the night and hear an echo, and you're sure you always will."
He risked looking at him now. Ianto's eyes were as wide as his son's had been. "Who are you?" he asked again, as the door opened at the ground floor.
"Captain Jack Harkness." The lie had become the reality, now and forever. "Go home, Ianto Jones."
He placed a hand on his shoulder, guided him back to the café. Lisa sat at the table holding Isabelle.
"I found this in the hallway," Jack said. "I think it's yours."
"Thanks," she said. "I was wondering where it had wandered off to." She stood up as they came over. "Do you want to hold her?"
Jack was confused, then realised she was talking to him. "Uh, sure." His arms were suddenly full of baby, and he looked into the sleepiest eyes he'd ever seen. Isabelle was tiny and awash in new baby smell. "Hello," he said, startled.
"You're an impossible thing, Jack."
Jack rocked the impossible thing in his arms. She shouldn't exist. Her brother and sister shouldn't exist. Her mother should have died years ago. Her father should have died last September. And here was a whole new world that contained all of them.
He'd created this.
"Hello," he said again, and watched her unfocused eyes until Ianto finally took her from his arms to take her home.
***
In the middle of clearing out the newest room he'd uncovered, the Rift alarm sounded. Jack half-crawled over the rubble back to the sub-basement and touched his ear. "Checking on it now." Technically a lie, but he was already jogging through the passages back to the lift, and it was another thirty seconds until he was calling up data on a console.
"Who's there?"
Tosh was first to respond; the rest chimed in tiredly. It was almost 2 AM. "Tell him yourself," he heard, barely, in a voice that was probably Johnson.
"Okay. Metallic object, half a metre long. Car park. I'll check it out. Stay ready."
"I can come," Mickey said.
"I'll let you know if I need you." His old team, he'd have chased them out of bed, harangued them to move faster, and brought them all to some site in the middle of nowhere to discover it was some kind of lost football. Alien football, but football.
Jack grabbed his coat and hurried to the SUV. The satnav took him straight to the site. Jack took readings from inside before he opened the door. He'd run directly into danger countless times, only to be groused at, usually by Tosh but Gwen and Ianto both took their turns, because he'd failed to notice the big blinking warning light sitting there all handy on the dash. He told himself it was out of fondness, and not just because they were tired of waiting for his corpse to reanimate so they could get on with things.
No immediate danger pinged on the readouts. Jack pulled on the heavy work gloves from under the seat. In this timeline, they must have also had enough of the side effects of touching strange artifacts.
"Jack, I swear that if you don't stop touching that RIGHT NOW, when this is all done, I will cut off your hands just to see how long they take to grow back."
It should be funny, since it's his face saying it in his voice, but he hears the edge of panic in the voice, and he flashes a grin since no one would buy a mumbled apology. Jack's body-switched before, and he knows there's etiquette, and that the others are freaking out wearing new faces and forms, but really, he's going to have to show them the fun parts before this wears off tomorrow.
Out of the SUV, the night air was chilly. Jack approached the impact crater, about the size of a medium pothole, in the middle of the empty carpark. He flicked on the recording equipment, rattled off the date and time, and took several shots of the object and closer readings. Nothing. This was looking more "football" than "body-switching device."
He examined the object, saw what appeared to be a catch, and fumbled with it until it opened. Inside, an iridescent globe sat, protected by the metal case. He scanned again, found a faint energy reading, and picked it up carefully. As he turned it over, he saw the markings on the bottom, recognising them with amusement.
***
"Denakadian recording device. Proprietary tech, very nice." He set it down in the middle of the table among the bags and plates.
"What's it for?" Gwen asked.
"Anything. It records pictures, sounds, smells, no sensations. That's a later model than this one. Those were fun. The porn industry was completely revitalised."
Mickey said, "It's an alien porno?"
"This one? Nah. It's someone's family pictures. I went through it last night. Lots of vacation slides, couple of childbirth memories. Fifty centuries from now, give or take."
Lois picked it up. "So we'll file it under 'What I Did On My Alien Summer Vacation.'"
"Sure. Be sure to tag it as future info. I don't think there's massive spoilers for things now, but we can't be too careful."
"Right," said Johnson. "You're the only one who gets to know the future on this team."
***
Lunch was pre-empted by the arrival of a Rift refugee, an old man from fourteenth century Russia, if his clothes and language were right. Jack escorted him to the holding facility, unable to recall enough of the language to make conversation and relying on Tosh's pocket translator.
"Somewhere safe," he managed to get across. It would be much harder to explain the rest, that the man's family was gone, everything he knew. Even if the nurses could coax his original location out of him somehow --- an almost impossible task --- the shock of what the place had become since would kill him. Living in the past, without creature comforts that had become normal, this was hard on visitors from times yet to be. Jack felt it all the time. Much worse, though, was being surrounded by impossible buildings and people, with no context and no words to explain other than "magic."
The medical tests, necessary, were administered at Flat Holm. He gasped and whined as the blood samples were drawn, and again as he was vaccinated against the maladies the other residents had brought with them and given antibiotics to treat the growing infection from the rotten teeth in his mouth.
Jack stayed with him as he settled into his new room, which had been emptied of too many items that would just confuse him. He could be given a radio eventually, and if his mind didn't snap, a television tuned to stations the nurses felt were acceptable. If he could read, they would put out feelers for books, but as the man settled into a chair, Jack was certain he'd spend the rest of his short life right there, too frightened and confused to do more.
***
Friday morning was spent reorganising their artifacts after the Denakadian photo album, stored too close to an Argellian memory feedback cluster, exploded. Not much was damaged, other than the two devices, but Jack wanted to go through their stores to make certain it wasn't going to happen again. That had been one of Ianto's tasks, inherited from a woman named Delyth Jenkins, who'd blown up rather messily when she hadn't been careful enough one morning shortly after Tosh joined. Jack had taken over the job on the basis that if he blew up, it was only temporary, but he'd been grateful to pawn it off once he recognised Ianto's OCD tendencies.
Lunch was cut short by another Rift alarm, which went off just as they were sitting down. Had he not been so disappointed, Jack would have been amused by the excuses they all suddenly came up with. Bren was turning into an issue. Jack had done some quick research, found out she was the head of the tiny software company, that she'd gone to school with Lisa's brother. Jack didn't like the idea of his people running into her every day. Despite his still-lingering desire to ship Ianto and Lisa as far away from him as he could, both could be trusted with the occasional conversational slip or sudden unexplained departure. Bren was unknown, untrusted, and as far as Jack was concerned, unwanted.
None of that mattered at the moment as they sped towards the address in the satnav. Lois was along for another training mission, and looked deeply uncomfortable. She gave him a sick smile as they reached the site and checked their readings.
Tosh's voice came over the comm: "This one's hot. Get the suits."
Two hours and a half-dozen minor radiation burns later, they had their newest acquisition in a thick, lead vault under the building. Jack was still swearing as the skin on his hands knit when he saw Dr. Sheffield waiting patiently out in Lois' office, flipping through a magazine. "You're late," he said amicably.
"We had work to do." The phone rang at Lois' desk.
"You always do."
Lois said, "Jack, it's for you. UNIT."
"Is it Martha?"
"No."
"Can I get out of seeing him?" he said, aiming his thumb at Peter.
"Also no."
"Then handle it."
"If you're ready," Dr. Sheffield said, and stood up, heading for the back office with the couch. Jack watched him go, enjoying the view, and then followed as Lois put on her professional voice.
"Have you recovered your memory?" Sheffield asked once the door to the back office was closed.
Jack lounged in the chair. "Nope. We've talked everything out, and I've got enough similar memories to function. It's fine."
"Still no idea of who might have done this to you?"
"Tosh has a theory."
"Does she?" He looked over his glasses at Jack. Jack wondered what she'd told the doctor during her session this week.
"She's working on it."
Sheffield made a note. Jack watched the bend of his arm, the way his lips moved so slightly as he wrote. A good lip reader could find out his most secret writings just by observing close enough, and now Jack hoped the contact lenses had survived in this timeline too.
"Would you like to talk about this week?"
"The week's been fine. We found another Rift refugee."
"Tell me about him."
Jack did.
***
The weekend was busy. Jack tried not to worry about the rise in Rift activity this week, but part of him wondered how responsible he was. He found himself obsessively digging into his coat pocket for the watch, holding it like a talisman when he wasn't otherwise busy driving or shooting or dragging in some monster or wrapping up another wound. (They needed a doctor. Lois ought put that at the top of one of her lists and circle it in red.) His fidgeting got so bad that Mickey teased him about playing pocket pool.
"Not in the car," Johnson said from the front seat.
"Turn here," Lois said, navigating. "What's this mean when it blinks?"
"That it's not working again," said Mickey, taking the reader out of her hands and smacking it on the side. "Here."
"Thanks." Lois examined it further. "Ten of them, three blocks from here." Johnson turned down another alley.
"Everyone ready?" Jack said. "Good. Go!"
***
Martha called Sunday night. "Got hold of him," she said after hellos and a bit of banter.
"Great. I need to talk to him."
"I told him. He said no."
"No what?"
"He didn't say. Did you ask him a question?"
"The one I had was a 'What' type, and I hadn't asked him yet."
"He also said go eat a banana. That's not a sex thing, right?"
"Not in this case. Just 'no' and 'go eat a banana?'"
"There was some swearing. Well, swearing for him. Did you mess up the twenty-third century?"
"Another question I'd love to ask him."
***
Monday morning, Lois was the only one to arrive on time, which was to say she was there before Jack came in not especially late. He helped her gather her agendas before she finally convinced him, as sweetly as possible, that he was in her way, so instead he sat down and went over the automatically-generated reports from the previous night after he'd gone home.
"I'm going to let the lease run out on my flat," he said to her as he downed his first coffee of the day. "Might as well move in here."
"You can't," said Lois. "Policy. 'Torchwood employees may use temporary sleeping quarters but must maintain separate living arrangements.'"
"Did I write that one, too?"
"You signed it."
"Why?"
"On Dr. Sheffield's advice. He said it's unhealthy for someone, even you, to live at work. I believe he also indicated part of your overcompensation had to do with not having a proper life outside of work."
"I never overcompensate!"
"Of course not," Gwen said, puffing a bit as she sat down at the table.
"Why can't I live here? I can keep an eye on things better. It's not like I sleep anyway."
Gwen frowned. "How long have you not been sleeping?"
"I never sleep," he said, which wasn't true but close enough.
"I can call Martha."
"Dr. Sheffield gave me something already. Don't worry about it." He handed her a muffin.
"Muffins!" Mickey said, coming in. "Excellent!"
***
The police alert came in at eleven, hostage situation. "Not one of ours," Tosh said. Jack, bored with the report he was writing, flicked his monitor over to listen anyway while he worked.
" … the Pili Pala Day Nursery … "
He was already on his feet. "We're going. Get in the car. Now!"
"What?" said Tosh. Heads popped comically out of the office spaces. "It's not an alien, is it?"
Gwen came out of her office. "Jack?"
He had his coat on and was grabbing the SUV keys. "That's where Lisa's daughter goes to school."
"I'm coming."
"Stay here," he said irritably, as Mickey and Johnson pushed past them to get the SUV ready. Lois came in through the office door ready to go.
"Lois," Gwen said, "Love you. You're going to be useless."
"Tosh and I can coordinate from here," Lois said, and went to the monitor beside Tosh's.
"Come on," Gwen said.
"Out the front," he replied and led her out past the office.
Sure enough, Lisa was standing in the foyer, mobile slack at her side, face gone still with shock. Jack took her hand, covered it with his other one.
"Need a ride?"
***
TBC
***
Part Four
Rating: PG-15
Characters: ensemble
Pairings: Yes. Many.
Spoilers: Nu!Who 'verse up through CoE, possible casting spoilers for '09 Christmas special
Warnings: extreme self-indulgence, angsty emo (mostly Jack), character death (also mostly Jack), child endangerment, mentions of torture circa The Year That Never Was, sentence fragments, and believe it or not given the other warnings, massive amounts of fluff. It is deeply twee, interspersed with moderate horror.
Beta: With greatest thanks to brinshannara for the translation and my beloved Ab for the read-through.
Author's Note: I hadn't intended to write a sequel to " Six Hundred Seconds" (and in fact suggest that anyone who enjoyed that story avoid this one). But then I looked down into the rabbit hole, and lo, the bunnies living there were so very densely fluffy that they changed the orbits of nearby stars. Title in honour of said rabbit hole and not the Who novel.
Part One
Part Two
***
Part Three
***
Jack gasped back to life and took in his bearings. Dead. Formerly dead. Inside. House. Alice's house. Hall light in his eyes. Head. He raised a hand and poked at his forehead. No hole left.
"Why did you bring me inside?"
"I didn't want to have to explain you to the neighbours. Now get out." Alice stood over him, still angry. Johnson stood back. She had her gun out, though for once she looked unhappy about that fact.
Jack sat up carefully. His clothes weren't as messy as they could be had she shot him in the chest. Lois must have nagged her, too.
There was a rustle at the top of the stairs. Steven huddled, sleepy and confused, awakened by the gunshot. Jack watched him as he rubbed his eyes and yawned.
"I'll go," he said. "Johnson?"
"Hm?"
"See you Monday. Alice, love as always." He looked up the stairs. "See you later, Steven."
Steven yawned again. Jack let himself out.
The streetlights were bright here, but above him he saw only stars.
***
He puttered around his flat most of the night, taking a catnap in the living room to a Glenn Miller CD on repeat. Morning found him with a sore neck and a lighter heart than he'd had in months.
Sunday was quiet. Tosh didn't come in at all, no activity on the monitors. Jack took the time to go through more paperwork, including the report on the 456.
He spent the rest of the day occupied, first at the florist's, then driving from place to place. Emma's and Eugene's graves were empty. Emma was laid to rest in a UNIT vault somewhere, because their freezers were gone. Eugene had been obliterated. He left them flowers anyway. "Thanks," he said to each. "I'm sorry," he added, for Emma, who'd lived in the old timeline under another name but died in this one wearing her own.
Lucia's grave was also empty, which meant she was entombed forever beneath the Hub in the company of every Torchwood agent who'd left a body behind. He sat for a long time with her headstone anyway, tidying up the site, choosing not to chat. Dead was dead, and there was nothing beyond except what moved in the darkness.
The last grave was harder to find. The girl's last name, listed in the report, didn't give him a clue of her whereabouts now, and it had taken some time on the computer for Jack to track her down. When he reached the cemetery, he walked until he saw a grave piled with flowers and toys. His arm dropped. Hundreds of cards littered the site, as did fresh and wilted daisies and lilies and roses. Teddy bears in every color. He plucked one card from the ground. "Thank you, Maddy. Trissa Stone and her mom and dad." The handwriting was too neat to be a child's.
Parents. Their children had been ripped from their arms, almost sent to a fate worse than death, and a little girl Gwen had chosen had taken their place, had taken Steven's place. Jack set down his flowers with the rest.
"I promise," he said, and that was all. "I promise."
***
Monday morning, he texted Lois not to bother and got breakfast for everyone himself. The Rift was still quiet, so the agendas were light. Lois also handed out a sheet: "List of Acceptable Reasons to Kill JH."
"Excuse me?" Jack said, scanning the list. "Okay, I can see 'Possessed by alien consciousness.'"
"In your case, 'Acting strangely as though possessed by alien' is also a good reason."
"I disagree."
"You'll get better."
"'Trying to take over planet?'" Gwen asked. "He hasn't done that yet. Has he?"
"It's good to be prepared. Be sure to look at the unacceptable reasons list, please."
Jack read. "Because you're angry with him." "Because your significant other(s) is/are angry with him." "You want to open the Rift for any purpose." "You want to use his retinal print or fingerprints." "You want to take over the planet."
"Are these suspension-worthy offenses?" Johnson asked. "Just out of curiosity."
Lois said, "That's up to management."
Jack said, "Management says stop shooting me and we'll let it go."
"I avoided his clothes."
"Thank you," said Lois.
***
They spent the morning working in the remains of the archives, moving files up into the main part of the building while Gwen and Tosh worked on recreating their filing system. Jack found a sledgehammer and made an educated guess on the location of the next vault. Two hours later, he broke through to a collapsed room. He and Mickey managed to pull out three filing cabinets that were only partially crushed. Jack was pleased until they got one open and found a drawer full of nothing but receipts for Weevil food.
"Lunch," said Gwen over the comm at a bit past noon. Jack bounded up from where he'd been sitting on the floor, heart pounding. He'd been thinking about this since Saturday night. Every day, Monday through Friday and even the occasional weekend when Lisa would have to work, he'd have the chance to see Ianto again. Gwen wasn't talking him into hiring him or Lisa; the Doctor had been clear that Torchwood was dangerous, that Jack himself was dangerous. He could say hello, though, and chat over coffee, and listen to Ianto's voice again, his laugh. Jack would allow himself that.
Jack was wearing one of his best shirts today, though it had gone dusty from the files. He could change, but then he'd have to face questions about why he was trying to smarten up before going to the cafeteria.
As the lift hit the office level, Jack smelled pizza. "I thought … "
"Monday's pizza day," Tosh said, and she handed him a plate. "Unless you have something better to do?" She caught his eye.
"No," he said, tugging at his grimy shirt. "Pizza. Yum."
***
He found excuses to go for coffee, to grab snacks, to walk through the corridors. Sunrise Software was across the hall from Enfys Cruises, though the latter's door was locked. Jack paced outside the software company's door until he felt ridiculous.
Gwen's voice spat in his ear: "Play time's over. We've got an alien sighting."
Grateful for the distraction, Jack went back to work.
***
Tuesday morning, he spent extra time getting ready in his shower and after, choosing just the right shirt to show off his eyes, brushing his teeth after coffee at home so he wouldn't be going around with java breath. He was primping.
"Are you fixing your hair?" Jack teases him, slipping up behind him in the mirror.
"Just because you run a soapy hand over your head and call that shampoo does not mean I can't make myself look presentable for work."
Just for that, Jack ruffles his hair, and Ianto grumbles at him, working on his tie. He's distracted, as is Jack's intent, and messes up the knot. Jack considers grabbing the tie off his neck and using it for something much more entertaining, but the reflected glare in the mirror says he oughtn't.
He checked his hair one more time, and headed for the office.
Rift calls, all morning long, and into the afternoon. He gripped the steering wheel unhappily as Gwen called them from one mission to the next, finally splitting the team. Jack took Lois with him, because Gwen figured his experience and her lack of same would even out.
"Are you all right?" Lois asked, as Jack swore roundly at a blowfish who was giving them grief. He'd missed the weapon the 'fish was carrying and nearly gotten scorched for his trouble.
"Fine." He checked his watch. Three PM. "Low blood sugar."
"We'll have an early tea," she said. "As soon as we deal with this fellow." She checked the settings on the taser he'd allowed her, but her brow was furrowed. Lois really wasn't a weapons sort of woman. She could fight viciously with paper both real and electronic; firearms left her cold.
"Let me," he said, and took it from her with a friendly squeeze of her hand, fixing the charge. Still holding her hand, he helped her fire. "Just like that."
"Thanks."
Over a quick snack, he asked her about what had brought her to Torchwood. "Fuzzy memory," he said. "Remind me."
"I was working as a temp for Mr. Frobisher," she said, and took a sip of her tea. He'd finally read the report. Mr. Frobisher and his family had not been lucky in this timeline, either. "I met up with Gwen and Rhys while they were on the run, helped them get to you."
"Gwen offered you the job."
"When it all was said and done. You were both pretty broken up about, well, everything. You took some time away. She did, too, not as long. When she did, we got things organised, Gwen and me and Tosh and Mickey. Set up the new Hub. Johnson helped us go through the things they'd recovered from the blast. When you got back, you brought her on."
"The new team."
"It's Torchwood. We always go on. That's what you said."
"We always do."
***
Tuesday night, he broke down and looked up their current address. They were renting a place, had feelers out (that took a lot more digging) for house, had already purchased a dark blue minivan. "I was half-right," he said to himself. Now he'd know what vehicle to be watching for on the streets, in the parking lot. He wrote down the name of the nursery school Callie Jones attended, the closest parks to their home, child-friendly restaurants nearby.
Lois would be sure to tell him when he'd crossed over the line to break local stalking laws, so he had no intention of letting her know about his activities. To be safe, he made all his notes in a language that wouldn't be around for another twelve centuries or so.
Anyway, he had no intention of driving over to their rental. He wasn't the "radio over his head playing pop songs" type. Besides, Ianto hated pop music.
Jack just liked to know.
He spent most of the night working on more of the sub-basement by himself. The collapsed room bordered another vault. He spent hours moving rubble away from the most likely-looking wall, and a few more trying to make holes into the next room. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, and he couldn't even tell what level they were in to figure out what would be nearby. He simply wanted to see what he could still find that hadn't been burned, crushed, flooded, confiscated or stolen. He'd rebuild their past, if he could.
He hefted. He sweated. He worked. It filled the hours until he fell into the spare bed and slept fitfully for a short slice of the night.
***
Wednesday was his day.
The morning was slow. Johnson took the one call they had, wanting some alone time. Jack let her go. Gwen had a doctor's appointment. She warned him over the phone not to cause trouble or break anything permanent while she was out. He said he'd try. Instead, he helped Tosh and Mickey do more wiring. Gwen wanted to extend their internal CCTV to the new rooms Jack had been opening, in case something they managed to wake up down there decided to come through and pay them a visit. Jack was pretty sure everything down there was dead and not coming back, but he wouldn't bet someone else's life on it, and anyway, it gave him more reasons to keep excavating in his spare time.
Johnson and Gwen were still out at lunchtime, and Jack had no intention of waiting. "Time for a break," he announced with far more cheer than needed.
"I want to finish up here," Tosh said. "You go ahead."
"I'll help," Mickey said. "It'll get done faster. You go on, mate. Lois hates eating alone."
Jack clapped Mickey on the shoulder. "Meet us there."
He made an exaggerated bow to Lois in the office. "Lunch, Miss Habiba?"
"Delighted, Captain Harkness." She got her purse and took his arm.
In the café, he glanced around casually and spotted the table he wanted. Lois didn't need persuading, as she had been almost as happy as Gwen to spend her lunch breaks cooing over babies, and sure enough, there was a baby to be cooed over.
"May we join you?" Jack asked, and sat down next to one of his favorite people in the universe without waiting for a response. Lois smiled shyly and sat down across from them.
"Hello," she said. "Lisa already off?"
"Yup," said Ianto, cuddling a little boy on his lap who couldn't have been more than a year old.
Bren said, "Ianto, this is … "
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said, grabbing his hand and shaking it. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. … ?"
"Jones. Ianto Jones." His eyes sparkled, and of course Lisa must have told him about their conversation. "Lisa tells me you run a gay cruise line."
"Looking to take a holiday?"
"Booked solid right now, sorry. Maybe next week?"
"I'll pencil you into my calendar."
"I can't wait."
It was so easy to fall into their pattern. Ianto had been a flirt, even back in the old days, before Jack had known half of it was to keep him from guessing what was in the basement. He had to be careful not to go so far yet, to layer in things his Ianto would have known and found funny or sexy or both.
"So who's this chap?" Jack asked, poking at his food as he remembered he was supposed to be eating.
"This is Kyle. Kyle, can you say hi?" He rubbed his son's back. "Say hi." The toddler stared at him wide-eyed, then grabbed a chip off his father's tray and tried to cram it into his mouth.
Bren cooed, as if on cue. "What a dearie!" She made more gooey noises, which sent the child even more wide-eyed and ducking for cover in Ianto's chambray shirt. "Lois, love, where's Gwen today?"
"Had to see the doctor. She'll start her weekly visits soon."
"Weekly?" said Jack. He hadn't been involved in much of the medical side of Lucia's pregnancy, hadn't even been allowed in the room when Alice had been born.
"She'll have to go on leave soon," said Bren. "She can't have much stress this late."
As opposed to running for her life, almost getting blown up, and shooting people during her first trimester, Jack supposed. Gwen had mentioned leave, and also how much stress she was under.
"We've tried to keep her workload light," Lois said, and dabbed her mouth with her napkin.
"That's good," Ianto said. "Hopefully your boss will be understanding, not make her work late, or do anything too dangerous."
"I thought Gwen was the boss," Bren said.
"My mistake. I could've sworn she'd mentioned a pig-headed employer who didn't know his bottom from an alligator." Bottom? Oh. Little kid learning to talk. No swearing. Jack suddenly wondered how many swear words he could teach the kid in an hour. He'd managed almost three dozen with Alice one very boring Sunday.
"That's corporate," Lois said. "You know how it goes."
"Yeah," said Jack. "One day, they're sending memos on how they want reports organised alphabetically by date, the next they're overrun by Cyb … " he paused, "cyber crime." At Bren's confused look, he added, "So I've heard."
"All done," came Lisa's voice from behind him, and he and Ianto both turned around at once. She carried the tiniest bundle he'd ever seen huddled against her red blouse. The baby really was new.
"Could you?" Ianto held Kyle out to Bren, who made more indistinct noises while Ianto took the baby from Lisa. He kissed Lisa on the cheek. "That was fast."
"She fell asleep. You're going to have to come back in a few hours."
"All right." He tucked her into the stroller seat, then plucked Kyle from Bren's arms. "Thank you." Kyle was less easily buckled in, demanding his mother instead. Jack watched, a little fascinated, a little horrified, completely forgetting to eat. This was another world to him, yet Ianto moved in it as easily as a dolphin in water.
"Don't normally see you here," Lisa said, noticing Jack at last.
"I'm trying to be more social. Lois says it's good for me."
"That reminds me," said Lois. "I should make another list."
"Fantastic." And now Kyle was buckled in, and Ianto was giving Lisa another kiss, and he was leaving. Leaving! After all that, he was walking away and up the ramp Jack had built. He had other things to do, a life to lead, and Jack's sole place in it was to be the man who was rude to Lisa last week.
"Time we should be getting back," said Bren. "If you're ready, dear."
Lisa nodded. "Lois, see you later. Captain."
Lois went back to her lunch. Jack looked down at his and didn't recognise it, made himself take a bite. He heard laughter. He turned his head, and saw Tosh covering her mouth to stifle her own laugh. She and Mickey had come to the café after all, and had a table to themselves. He was smiling, she was having a good time.
Later, when they were alone for a moment in the office, he asked her, "Have fun?"
"It's a good day for second chances." Her eyes were bright, and he was happy for her.
"You're right," he said, and he kept a close eye on the parking lot camera for a dark blue minivan to come back. The baby had to wake up eventually.
***
Ianto didn’t bring the stroller when he returned in the afternoon. Jack watched him on the camera, carrying just the tiny bundle. Perhaps the other two were with a sitter? Jack switched the view to the café, waited for Lisa to take the baby again. A stray worry: would Ianto go with her wherever she went in back to nurse?
Nope. Tradeoff. Coffee. Bingo.
"Back later," Jack said to Lois as he scooted out of the office past her. He didn't hear her reply.
A minute later, he had a semi-decent cup of coffee in his hand and headed straight for where Ianto sat, holding his own cup reverently. Jack wondered if Lisa knew she shared his heart with Columbian beans.
"Ianto Jones," he said, slipping into the seat across from him. "You're missing a pram."
"The other two are with my sister."
"I'm sure Rhiannon's have a splendid time with them." That got him the attention he'd been looking for.
"You've been doing research."
"I make a point of knowing things about people who know things about me."
"So you can arrange amnesia for us?"
"Only when necessary. You're not a threat. Lisa's not a threat. We don't have a problem."
"You say that now. You didn't hear what she had to say about you last week."
"I was rude last week. That was my fault. Can you give her my apologies?"
"No, but you can feel free to do it yourself. She'll be back soon."
"Not that soon. She just left a minute ago, and the baby will be hungry." He paused. "What's the baby's name?"
"You didn't do enough research, then." Ianto drank his coffee. "Isabelle."
"That's pretty."
"Who are you?"
"Captain Jack Harkness. We met earlier."
"Yes. We did." Ianto looked around, saw more people in the café. "Do you have time to take a walk? I'd rather not have this discussion here."
Jack said, "Come with me." He could get to the roof from the regular lift if he used the right code. As he punched in the top button, he surreptitiously pressed his wrist strap.
Ianto swallowed as the door opened; he'd never been good with heights. "It'll be fine," Jack said. "I won't let you fall off the roof."
"Or push me?"
"Nah. Make too much of a mess." They walked out together, falling into step, and Jack tried to stay cool. "Privacy, as requested."
"All the better to kill people with?"
"So suspicious. You were the one who wanted to talk."
"I did. So who are you?"
"We went over this."
Ianto walked towards the edge, looked over. Jack could see the faint pulse at his throat quicken, and pushed away memories of kissing and licking and loving that spot where the life beat so close to the surface. Ianto pulled his coat a little closer against himself in the breeze.
"My mother died when I was nine. Not long before she did, she took my sister and me to a playground. I remember because it was the last good day for her. After that, she was in and out of hospital and in a month, she was gone."
"I'm sorry," Jack said.
"Did you kill her?"
"What? No!"
He sighed. "Good. Because I remember you there, when I was nine, in your coat." He gestured at Jack's greatcoat. "You put it on me when I was cold. There was another man there, talking to my mother. Then you were both gone, and she was sick. I'd always wondered."
"It's not what you think."
"I don't know what to think. You were there at our wedding. I saw you, looking not a day older, wearing that same coat. I didn't remember you, not at first, but I pieced it together after Lisa's dad passed away a few months later."
"I swear I didn't kill him either."
Ianto looked at him, head tilted in that way he had while he processed some new factoid. "I don't think you did. But you're always there when my world tilts. So I'm asking, who are you, and why are you following me? Who am I going to lose now?"
"No one. I'm not … " Tosh had remembered. Why wouldn't he? "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not here to hurt anyone."
"You hurt people all the time. Usually aliens."
"Well, they're no sewer rats, but they fill the day."
"The gargoyles were worse."
"High up?"
"Yeah."
"Lisa figure out you're an adrenaline addict yet, or are you still claiming you've got no interest in danger?"
"Excuse me?"
"Ianto Jones. Show him porn, take him to an exclusive, and expensive, club, you hardly get more out of him than a snarky comment about padding. However," Jack said, stepping up onto the ledge, "let him do some petty shoplifting, take him someplace dangerous, show him a monster with extra teeth," Jack was ticking off on his fingers now, "put his life at risk, or, God helps us all, tell him the apocalypse is coming round again? Then," he jumped down again and walked so close to Ianto he could feel the warmth from his coat, "he can barely keep his trousers up."
"You have the strangest researchers working for you."
"Private study."
"I'm flattered. Also worried."
"Good."
"Lisa told me all about you, you know, about what her boss used to say."
"Yvonne was a fool."
"Lisa thought so too. You were a minor folk hero among the One staff."
Jack stopped short. "Really?"
"Minor. Very minor."
"Robin Hood?"
"You might have rated just above Cornish pixie."
"I can build on that."
"You're not, let's get this clear, an actual pixie, fairy, angel or alien? Right?"
"Human born and bred." Not from this planet, but Ianto didn't need to hear the whole story today.
"I'd been banking on the angel theory."
"You don't believe in angels."
"It was a theory. I notice you haven't denied it was you either time."
He hadn't. "Can I deny it now?"
"No. Now I'd call you a liar. Before, I'd have been talked into being confused. The sun in my eyes, maybe, or an emotional time that had gotten mixed up in my head."
"Are you sure you're not confused now?"
"I'm sure. It was you. You've been following me for over fifteen years."
"That's one way of looking at it. Time travel's another."
His face went sickly. Jack quashed the impulse to grab him and hold on till the vertigo passed. "Puke over there," he said instead.
"I'll be fine," Ianto said, and proved the lie by staggering and veering close the ledge. Jack did grab him then, drew him into his shoulder.
"Shouldn't have brought you here. You hate heights."
Ianto pulled back, but towards the door instead of the pavement below. "Why do you know things about me? Why are you following me? Who are you?"
Jack opened his mouth, and he almost told him. Everything. Who he'd been, what they'd been. His name. This was his second chance.
Ianto fumbled in his coat pocket and pulled something out. "And what is this?" He put something cold in Jack's hand. A broken stopwatch.
Jack closed his hand around it. This Ianto had no idea. He'd never lost Lisa, never sold his own soul in a failed attempt to bring her back, never had to shut her cold, dead body and the bodies of too many friends away for storage after he'd carefully cleaned away the blood and the mess, never had to feel that cold sink so deeply into his bones that he'd look for comfort and warmth anywhere, as the hands on the clock ticked away his life.
This Ianto had never been broken until he thought the only person who could put him back together was Jack. Fucking Peter fucking Sheffield, anyway.
Just as the Doctor had arranged. Just as his mother had begged. And every minute Jack spent there with him brought him closer to being that same broken man.
"You're not safe, Jack. No one who is with you is safe."
"It's nothing. Dropped it, is all. You can keep it," he said, giving the watch back, but Ianto wouldn't take it.
"No, thanks." Jack put it back in his pocket. Something to look at and slowly go mad over.
"We should go. Lisa will be wondering where you are."
"She knows I'm with you."
"Then we'd really better get you back."
"I still don't know anything about you. Why were you there, with my mother?"
"I can't tell you that." His mother had never told Ianto or Rhi about her time with the Doctor. It wasn't Jack's secret to offer him now. "She knew she was sick, if that's what you wanted. She asked us to keep an eye on the two of you. Protect you." There. Close enough to true, anyway.
"I've never seen the other fellow again. He's your … ?"
How to answer that? Nights, or days, on the TARDIS, the three of them delighting in each other. A century gone now, for Jack, and horror on the Doctor's face every time he tried not to see what Jack had become. "My friend. He's around."
"Here?"
"Don't worry about it. Go home. Go be with your perfect little family. Forget this place. Forget me. Go be someone else away from aliens and giant rats. Take care of your kids."
He punched the button for the lift. Ianto came up behind him, saying nothing. Maybe he was still absorbing everything. His Ianto had been wonderful at digesting information for hours, quietly working on something else until he was ready, and then creeping up behind Jack with a half-smile and a cup of coffee and the perfect comment on what they'd been discussing.
This wasn't that comment.
"What else do you know about me?" The lift door opened. They stepped inside.
"Hm?"
"You know things about me. What else?"
The sex things came first to Jack's mind, the sensitive places Ianto liked to be touched, the filthy things he wanted growled into his ear as they moved against each other. But that wasn't what he needed to hear right now.
"I know about your father. He was brilliant, but he went to pieces when your mother got sick. He made up stories about his job when you were little, because you didn't understand, and then you told yourself stories when he stopped trying and pulled inside himself after she was gone.
"I know you didn't touch coffee until your last year of school. When you did, it was like finding religion.
"I know that you've spent your whole life feeling like a piece of you is missing. You think you can fill it when you fall in love, and you're less empty when you do, but you still wake up in the middle of the night and hear an echo, and you're sure you always will."
He risked looking at him now. Ianto's eyes were as wide as his son's had been. "Who are you?" he asked again, as the door opened at the ground floor.
"Captain Jack Harkness." The lie had become the reality, now and forever. "Go home, Ianto Jones."
He placed a hand on his shoulder, guided him back to the café. Lisa sat at the table holding Isabelle.
"I found this in the hallway," Jack said. "I think it's yours."
"Thanks," she said. "I was wondering where it had wandered off to." She stood up as they came over. "Do you want to hold her?"
Jack was confused, then realised she was talking to him. "Uh, sure." His arms were suddenly full of baby, and he looked into the sleepiest eyes he'd ever seen. Isabelle was tiny and awash in new baby smell. "Hello," he said, startled.
"You're an impossible thing, Jack."
Jack rocked the impossible thing in his arms. She shouldn't exist. Her brother and sister shouldn't exist. Her mother should have died years ago. Her father should have died last September. And here was a whole new world that contained all of them.
He'd created this.
"Hello," he said again, and watched her unfocused eyes until Ianto finally took her from his arms to take her home.
***
In the middle of clearing out the newest room he'd uncovered, the Rift alarm sounded. Jack half-crawled over the rubble back to the sub-basement and touched his ear. "Checking on it now." Technically a lie, but he was already jogging through the passages back to the lift, and it was another thirty seconds until he was calling up data on a console.
"Who's there?"
Tosh was first to respond; the rest chimed in tiredly. It was almost 2 AM. "Tell him yourself," he heard, barely, in a voice that was probably Johnson.
"Okay. Metallic object, half a metre long. Car park. I'll check it out. Stay ready."
"I can come," Mickey said.
"I'll let you know if I need you." His old team, he'd have chased them out of bed, harangued them to move faster, and brought them all to some site in the middle of nowhere to discover it was some kind of lost football. Alien football, but football.
Jack grabbed his coat and hurried to the SUV. The satnav took him straight to the site. Jack took readings from inside before he opened the door. He'd run directly into danger countless times, only to be groused at, usually by Tosh but Gwen and Ianto both took their turns, because he'd failed to notice the big blinking warning light sitting there all handy on the dash. He told himself it was out of fondness, and not just because they were tired of waiting for his corpse to reanimate so they could get on with things.
No immediate danger pinged on the readouts. Jack pulled on the heavy work gloves from under the seat. In this timeline, they must have also had enough of the side effects of touching strange artifacts.
"Jack, I swear that if you don't stop touching that RIGHT NOW, when this is all done, I will cut off your hands just to see how long they take to grow back."
It should be funny, since it's his face saying it in his voice, but he hears the edge of panic in the voice, and he flashes a grin since no one would buy a mumbled apology. Jack's body-switched before, and he knows there's etiquette, and that the others are freaking out wearing new faces and forms, but really, he's going to have to show them the fun parts before this wears off tomorrow.
Out of the SUV, the night air was chilly. Jack approached the impact crater, about the size of a medium pothole, in the middle of the empty carpark. He flicked on the recording equipment, rattled off the date and time, and took several shots of the object and closer readings. Nothing. This was looking more "football" than "body-switching device."
He examined the object, saw what appeared to be a catch, and fumbled with it until it opened. Inside, an iridescent globe sat, protected by the metal case. He scanned again, found a faint energy reading, and picked it up carefully. As he turned it over, he saw the markings on the bottom, recognising them with amusement.
***
"Denakadian recording device. Proprietary tech, very nice." He set it down in the middle of the table among the bags and plates.
"What's it for?" Gwen asked.
"Anything. It records pictures, sounds, smells, no sensations. That's a later model than this one. Those were fun. The porn industry was completely revitalised."
Mickey said, "It's an alien porno?"
"This one? Nah. It's someone's family pictures. I went through it last night. Lots of vacation slides, couple of childbirth memories. Fifty centuries from now, give or take."
Lois picked it up. "So we'll file it under 'What I Did On My Alien Summer Vacation.'"
"Sure. Be sure to tag it as future info. I don't think there's massive spoilers for things now, but we can't be too careful."
"Right," said Johnson. "You're the only one who gets to know the future on this team."
***
Lunch was pre-empted by the arrival of a Rift refugee, an old man from fourteenth century Russia, if his clothes and language were right. Jack escorted him to the holding facility, unable to recall enough of the language to make conversation and relying on Tosh's pocket translator.
"Somewhere safe," he managed to get across. It would be much harder to explain the rest, that the man's family was gone, everything he knew. Even if the nurses could coax his original location out of him somehow --- an almost impossible task --- the shock of what the place had become since would kill him. Living in the past, without creature comforts that had become normal, this was hard on visitors from times yet to be. Jack felt it all the time. Much worse, though, was being surrounded by impossible buildings and people, with no context and no words to explain other than "magic."
The medical tests, necessary, were administered at Flat Holm. He gasped and whined as the blood samples were drawn, and again as he was vaccinated against the maladies the other residents had brought with them and given antibiotics to treat the growing infection from the rotten teeth in his mouth.
Jack stayed with him as he settled into his new room, which had been emptied of too many items that would just confuse him. He could be given a radio eventually, and if his mind didn't snap, a television tuned to stations the nurses felt were acceptable. If he could read, they would put out feelers for books, but as the man settled into a chair, Jack was certain he'd spend the rest of his short life right there, too frightened and confused to do more.
***
Friday morning was spent reorganising their artifacts after the Denakadian photo album, stored too close to an Argellian memory feedback cluster, exploded. Not much was damaged, other than the two devices, but Jack wanted to go through their stores to make certain it wasn't going to happen again. That had been one of Ianto's tasks, inherited from a woman named Delyth Jenkins, who'd blown up rather messily when she hadn't been careful enough one morning shortly after Tosh joined. Jack had taken over the job on the basis that if he blew up, it was only temporary, but he'd been grateful to pawn it off once he recognised Ianto's OCD tendencies.
Lunch was cut short by another Rift alarm, which went off just as they were sitting down. Had he not been so disappointed, Jack would have been amused by the excuses they all suddenly came up with. Bren was turning into an issue. Jack had done some quick research, found out she was the head of the tiny software company, that she'd gone to school with Lisa's brother. Jack didn't like the idea of his people running into her every day. Despite his still-lingering desire to ship Ianto and Lisa as far away from him as he could, both could be trusted with the occasional conversational slip or sudden unexplained departure. Bren was unknown, untrusted, and as far as Jack was concerned, unwanted.
None of that mattered at the moment as they sped towards the address in the satnav. Lois was along for another training mission, and looked deeply uncomfortable. She gave him a sick smile as they reached the site and checked their readings.
Tosh's voice came over the comm: "This one's hot. Get the suits."
Two hours and a half-dozen minor radiation burns later, they had their newest acquisition in a thick, lead vault under the building. Jack was still swearing as the skin on his hands knit when he saw Dr. Sheffield waiting patiently out in Lois' office, flipping through a magazine. "You're late," he said amicably.
"We had work to do." The phone rang at Lois' desk.
"You always do."
Lois said, "Jack, it's for you. UNIT."
"Is it Martha?"
"No."
"Can I get out of seeing him?" he said, aiming his thumb at Peter.
"Also no."
"Then handle it."
"If you're ready," Dr. Sheffield said, and stood up, heading for the back office with the couch. Jack watched him go, enjoying the view, and then followed as Lois put on her professional voice.
"Have you recovered your memory?" Sheffield asked once the door to the back office was closed.
Jack lounged in the chair. "Nope. We've talked everything out, and I've got enough similar memories to function. It's fine."
"Still no idea of who might have done this to you?"
"Tosh has a theory."
"Does she?" He looked over his glasses at Jack. Jack wondered what she'd told the doctor during her session this week.
"She's working on it."
Sheffield made a note. Jack watched the bend of his arm, the way his lips moved so slightly as he wrote. A good lip reader could find out his most secret writings just by observing close enough, and now Jack hoped the contact lenses had survived in this timeline too.
"Would you like to talk about this week?"
"The week's been fine. We found another Rift refugee."
"Tell me about him."
Jack did.
***
The weekend was busy. Jack tried not to worry about the rise in Rift activity this week, but part of him wondered how responsible he was. He found himself obsessively digging into his coat pocket for the watch, holding it like a talisman when he wasn't otherwise busy driving or shooting or dragging in some monster or wrapping up another wound. (They needed a doctor. Lois ought put that at the top of one of her lists and circle it in red.) His fidgeting got so bad that Mickey teased him about playing pocket pool.
"Not in the car," Johnson said from the front seat.
"Turn here," Lois said, navigating. "What's this mean when it blinks?"
"That it's not working again," said Mickey, taking the reader out of her hands and smacking it on the side. "Here."
"Thanks." Lois examined it further. "Ten of them, three blocks from here." Johnson turned down another alley.
"Everyone ready?" Jack said. "Good. Go!"
***
Martha called Sunday night. "Got hold of him," she said after hellos and a bit of banter.
"Great. I need to talk to him."
"I told him. He said no."
"No what?"
"He didn't say. Did you ask him a question?"
"The one I had was a 'What' type, and I hadn't asked him yet."
"He also said go eat a banana. That's not a sex thing, right?"
"Not in this case. Just 'no' and 'go eat a banana?'"
"There was some swearing. Well, swearing for him. Did you mess up the twenty-third century?"
"Another question I'd love to ask him."
***
Monday morning, Lois was the only one to arrive on time, which was to say she was there before Jack came in not especially late. He helped her gather her agendas before she finally convinced him, as sweetly as possible, that he was in her way, so instead he sat down and went over the automatically-generated reports from the previous night after he'd gone home.
"I'm going to let the lease run out on my flat," he said to her as he downed his first coffee of the day. "Might as well move in here."
"You can't," said Lois. "Policy. 'Torchwood employees may use temporary sleeping quarters but must maintain separate living arrangements.'"
"Did I write that one, too?"
"You signed it."
"Why?"
"On Dr. Sheffield's advice. He said it's unhealthy for someone, even you, to live at work. I believe he also indicated part of your overcompensation had to do with not having a proper life outside of work."
"I never overcompensate!"
"Of course not," Gwen said, puffing a bit as she sat down at the table.
"Why can't I live here? I can keep an eye on things better. It's not like I sleep anyway."
Gwen frowned. "How long have you not been sleeping?"
"I never sleep," he said, which wasn't true but close enough.
"I can call Martha."
"Dr. Sheffield gave me something already. Don't worry about it." He handed her a muffin.
"Muffins!" Mickey said, coming in. "Excellent!"
***
The police alert came in at eleven, hostage situation. "Not one of ours," Tosh said. Jack, bored with the report he was writing, flicked his monitor over to listen anyway while he worked.
" … the Pili Pala Day Nursery … "
He was already on his feet. "We're going. Get in the car. Now!"
"What?" said Tosh. Heads popped comically out of the office spaces. "It's not an alien, is it?"
Gwen came out of her office. "Jack?"
He had his coat on and was grabbing the SUV keys. "That's where Lisa's daughter goes to school."
"I'm coming."
"Stay here," he said irritably, as Mickey and Johnson pushed past them to get the SUV ready. Lois came in through the office door ready to go.
"Lois," Gwen said, "Love you. You're going to be useless."
"Tosh and I can coordinate from here," Lois said, and went to the monitor beside Tosh's.
"Come on," Gwen said.
"Out the front," he replied and led her out past the office.
Sure enough, Lisa was standing in the foyer, mobile slack at her side, face gone still with shock. Jack took her hand, covered it with his other one.
"Need a ride?"
***
TBC
***
Part Four