Archive of Our Own

Time and Again

Captain Jack Harkness had just stepped off the transport pad, preparing to introduce himself to the folks who had answered his signal when he heard it, the first and last sound he wanted to hear right now, the groan of the TARDIS. For a brief moment, he wanted to run, to find a way to transport out, or back or anything, except there was nowhere to go but back, and he was too tired to run. He just stood there, waiting for the door to open, or it to just fade away, not sure which he wanted more.

Jack didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the door. He didn’t have his key anymore, buried as it was somewhere in the ruins of the hub. She would probably let him in if he asked, but he couldn’t find it in him to care. Then the door opened, and the Doctor stepped out. “I don’t know what we’re doing here. This isn’t where the…Jack? What?”

“Doctor,” he said. There was no inflection in his voice, one way or another, and that more than anything told the Time Lord that something was wrong, something was radically wrong.

“Jack,” the Doctor said slowly, drawing it out into two syllables in that way he had when he wasn’t exactly sure what to say. but wanted to bide a little time. “What are you doing here? Not that I am sure what I am doing here. There is something wrong…time has gone a little…” he paused in the middle of what probably would have been one of his long rambles and looked at Jack, really looked at him. There was none of the charm, no smile, not a flirtatious grin in sight. He hadn’t even reached out for a hug, and that just wasn’t the Jack Harkness he had grown to know and well…he didn’t exactly know what they were to one another, but at the very least they were good friends. He took a moment and looked at the other man, double checked the year, and where they where, and then checked again. “What’s wrong?”

“What makes you think…” Jack tried to say, but it stuck. He tried to open his mouth, make a joke, say something saucy, but the words just wouldn’t come. Instead he stood there on board a ship bound for somewhere away from Earth, from Gwen and Torchwood, and the dead, so many dead. Away from Ianto and Stephen, and Tosh and Owen and Suzie. He opened his mouth but all that came out was a keening sound before the world went grey around him and his last thought was to wonder how close that pained scream sounded on the outside to the one his grandson made as he killed him.

“Looks like he’s coming around, Doctor.” The voice was unfamiliar to him, but at least he knew where he was. He could hear the hum of the TARDIS and part of him wanted to wrap himself in her warmth and just cry, but he knew he didn’t deserve that luxury, not after what he had done.

“That’s fine, Christina, best leave us now,” the familiar voice of the Doctor pierced the heavy clouds around him.

“Are you sure? What about the time…”

“Yeah best. The other thing, well, let me get this sorted first.” There was the sound of the door opening and then closing, but Jack didn’t open his eyes. Maybe, just maybe if he pretended long enough he would fall back to sleep, or die. Maybe the Doctor would give up and leave him alone and he could sneak away, though that was unlikely. “Jack, I know you’re awake. It’s just us now, why don’t you open your eyes and talk to me.”

Slowly he opened his eyes. No wonder the room felt familiar, the same room he had lived in when this was his home. The lights were dim, and the Doctor was leaning against the door, his blue suit standing out against the white, as if he was preparing to keep Jack there by force if necessary. What did he say, he wondered to himself. He had tried to help and ended up doing nothing but bringing death and destruction to those who loved him. Hell, to those who didn’t even know him. How did he face the man who had made him what he was, and tell him he failed?

“Are you going to say anything Jack? Or should I just stand here and talk? I can you know. Talk for the Galaxy, that’s me, several galaxies, and still not run out of things to say. Did you know that there’s a planet out there that actually has a competition for inanity? And it’s not Earth, not but what that’s mostly what’s on the tele down there, that and the sport, but still even those blokes on reality television would have trouble in this contest. Not that I have ever entered, could though, probably win. Rather like you with flirting. Of course I have no doubt that you could win a contest in that if you chose to...” the Doctor continued to talk, wittering on about one thing or another, from one subject to the next until Jack thought his head would explode.

“Just leave me alone,” he burst out finally, unable to take another word. Instead he rolled over toward the wall, and burst into tears. He lay there crying all the tears he had wanted to cry for the last six months, but had been unable to let go. After a few moments, he felt the bed dip, and there was a hand on his back, long thin fingers just still, offering comfort that he knew he didn’t deserve. He tried to crawl away further across the bed, but the time lord just followed, his hand never moving from its place on his back. Jack wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, the TARDIS had this way of making everything seem timeless, but finally he ran out of tears and was reduced to just sobbing, and gasping. A big old fashioned handkerchief appeared in front of his reddened eyes, and he knew there was no choice but to take it.

“Now, mop up, and I’ll get us a couple of cups of tea and you can tell me what happened, alright?”

“Don’t you have somewhere else you should be, some planet that needs saving?” he asked bitterly.

“There is something I need to do, yes, but it can wait for just a little while.” Then he was gone out the door. Jack sat up, his head pounding from the tears, throat raw with the grief he had been holding back for so long. He wondered how long it had been since he had eaten or slept, but it didn’t matter. What could it do, kill him? He dragged himself up from the bed and into the bathroom to splash some water on his face. If he knew the Doctor, and he probably did about as well as anyone who had traveled with him, he would be back at any minute.

When the Doctor returned, he was sitting on the edge of his bed trying to figure out what he had to say or do to get himself out of here. Part of him, the traitorous voice in the back of his head whispered that this was a time machine and they could go back, there had to be a way to save them all, but he knew that was impossible, meddling with time only ever caused worse problems, and he couldn’t even begin to consider all the consequences. Besides, where had the Doctor been when the Earth had needed him? Why hadn’t he saved them, saved him? But it didn’t matter, he would just tell him something and get the hell out, out to the stars, out to somewhere where no one knew him, and he knew no one, some place he could be alone and not hurt anyone again.

“Here we are, nice cuppa tea, just what the Doctor ordered,” he said. He handed Jack the cup and a plate of chocolate biscuits that he used to like when Rose bought them. He idly wondered if they were the same one, stuck in a cupboard since the last time. Jack took one and crammed the whole thing in his mouth, almost choking as he remembered Ianto teasing him about how he put things in his mouth. He took a big gulp of tea and swallowed the too hot liquid down with the wheat and chocolate, all turned to sawdust in his mouth. It was a fight to get it down, his stomach almost rebelled at the intrusion of food after he didn’t know how long. The Doctor just pulled up the chair from the desk and sat himself in it and waited.

“Thanks for the tea service, Doc,” he said, trying to sound light. “Now if you’ll just point me to the door, it’s been great seeing you, but…”

“I don’t think so, Jack,” the Doctor said kindly. “Now, are you going to tell me what happened?”

“They died, Doctor. They died and it is all my fault.”

The Doctor sat there for a moment, trying to digest both the words, and the strange swirls of time that were eddying around his friend. He had wondered why the TARDIS chose to bring him here, but now he was thinking that she was right, not only was it the right thing to do, but perhaps the two problems were one and the same. If not, he could fix the other later, right now, his friend needed him. After all, if anyone understood guilt it was him. “Tell me,” he said, voice quiet but forceful.

Jack opened his mouth and started to talk. Once he started, it all came out, a long, painful string of mistakes, horror and pain. When the words began it was suddenly like he couldn’t stop them, each horrible little detail from 1965 to the sacrifice of his own beautiful grandson, all for the good of people who neither knew nor cared about what happened outside their safe little lives. For six months he had been running, from his friends, his family, and from himself. But no matter how far he walked, how much distance he put between himself and London and Cardiff, he couldn’t make himself forget. He thought about retcon, except it didn’t work on him. He had tried it once, a long time ago, and all it gave him was a hellacious hangover and a case of dry mouth that had lasted almost a month, but all of his memories remained intact. Somewhere along the line, he started crying again, and at some point the Doctor had moved from the chair to the bed, sitting next to Jack with an arm around his shoulders. Finally, when he couldn’t hold himself up anymore, when he couldn’t say another word, the Doctor held him while he shivered and burbled.

Finally, after what felt like forever, but was probably only a couple of hours, Jack stopped. He felt…empty, as if there was nothing more inside of him, no emotion, no pain, no joy, just a big hole where his insides used to be.

“Jack,” the Doctor said, pulling him up to look in his eyes. “I am so sorry. Sorry I wasn’t there to help. But Jack, this is all wrong.”

“I know, you told me before, I am wrong.”

“No Jack, that isn’t what I mean. This, the 456, children talking in unison, governments making deals to give away a whole segment of the population, it's all wrong, and if you had been thinking clearly, you would have known that. What kind of rubbish history did they teach at the time agency?”

“What… I…Huh?” Jack said. He was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and the words were failing to penetrate his obviously thick skull.

“Jack,” the Doctor said, his long, thin hands holding his head in place so he was forced to look him straight in the eye. “This… all of this was not meant to happen. When the Dalek's came through, they caused a big hole in the fabric of space/time, I believe I might have mentioned it at the time, yeah?” Jack nodded, there wasn’t much else he could do. “Time was wounded. Mostly we fixed it, put the walls between the parallel worlds back up and all that. The rest were mostly small things, little things that would heal themselves or didn’t matter like whether the lights on the spaceports in the Jagra Brigade are blue or orange. This, though, this I have been tracking, a giant twist in the fabric of time around Earth, a whole different future, rippling out, distorting everything from here…to Boeshane and back. I was coming to try and sort it when the TARDIS locked on to you.”

“You mean none of this…” he started, eyes starting to clear for the first time since he had practically fallen into his arms.

“Was never meant to happen, not only was never meant to happen, but shouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t happen. This one event, if I leave it could cause incalculable damage to everything. Earth isn’t even set for first contact for ages, well not you ages, but you know what I mean. This has to be fixed, or the future is in grave danger.”

Jack dragged himself off the bed and stood straight, all the pain that had been wearing him down was still there, but now it was bearable if only because there was an answer. He stood parade ground straight like the soldier he was and always had been. “What do you need me to do?”

“Now hold on a moment. First I need to check some things, sort out exactly where the problem started. For now, you need food, and sleep, and a shower wouldn’t go amiss either. Blimey, what have you been doing to yourself?” he said as he watched a little ghost of the Harkness smile almost appear.

“I lost my way for a little while.”

“Happens to all of us,” he said with a wink. “But the trick with running, in the end you can’t help but take yourself along. Now, get cleaned up and I will see if we can’t scare up something to eat. Fish and Chips, extra salt and vinegar?”

“Sure, unless you want to help me wash my back?” Jack quipped, almost his old flirty self.

“JAAACK,” the Doctor said, rolling his eyes, but there was still a smile there.

“Suit yourself,” he said, pulling the braces down off his arms as he moved toward the bathroom.

The TARDIS kitchen was conveniently just across the hall when Jack exited his room after what seemed like a two hour shower. He had forgotten what it felt like to be properly clean. It just hadn’t seemed important anymore after Ianto’s death, nothing had. Now he was pressed and dressed well enough for a military inspection. His clothes, which he had thought were good enough, were waiting, freshly laundered or replaced, he was never completely sure with the TARDIS -shirt starched, pants creased, even his coat looked as new as when he first put it on.

There was a dark haired woman in the kitchen laying the table. She looked up and smiled as she saw him. “Hello,” she said. “We didn’t really get much of a chance for introductions earlier.”

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he said holding out a hand with a smile.

The Doctor looked over from where he was making the tea just in time to see him. The smile was a little thin, and the usual flirtatious tone seemed a bit perfunctory, but he was definitely better. “Stop it,” he said, more out of habit that anything else. Familiarity, that was what Jack needed right now.

“I was just saying ‘hello’,” he responded as usual.

“I don’t mind. Christina,” she said with a smile. The doctor just rolled his eyes and carried over the tea.

“No coffee, Doc?” he said, though the word almost got stuck in his throat. Every time he drank a cup, it was like acid burning down his throat, but it was just another penance he put himself through.

“You know how rubbish I am at that stuff, and the last time you made coffee in here it ate the pot. The way you like it would melt Sontaran deck plating.”

The meal passed pleasantly enough. He tried to focus on the food and not what the Doctor had said. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust him, he did, but he was afraid to believe completely. When dealing with time, anything could happen. At first he approached his food cautiously, unsure what his stomach would do. Then hunger overtook him. He managed to eat all his meal, plus seconds, and then some pastries that the Doctor produced from somewhere, like all the food, he wasn’t a hundred percent unless it was something they specifically bought while they were out, where it came from. Finally, full for the first time in what seemed like ages, he leaned back in his chair. “So what’s the plan?” he asked.

“Well,” the Doctor said. “First, you finish that mug of tea and get some sleep.”

“Doc,” he started to protest, but suddenly the mug in his hand started to feel heavy. “What the… Why?” Suddenly he felt like he was made of lead, his eyes wouldn’t stay open and he tried to drag himself up, but the Doctor caught him.

"Sorry Jack, can't have you running around disrupting things as I am fixing them,” the Time Lord said, catching him under the arm as he handed the mug off to Christina. “Besides old friend, some things you don't need to remember.” Jack opened his mouth to protest, but everything had gone black.

“What did you do that for?” Christina asked as she helped him lever the tall man across the hall to his room. “And couldn’t you wait til he was back in his room?”

“Two reasons, first, Jack wants desperately to help.” They put the unconscious man down on the bed, and the Doctor started to drag off his customary flight boots.

“And we couldn’t use the help?”

“Not Jack’s help. We are going back in time, to a time when at least one version of Jack is already there. The closer he is to himself in the time stream, the more chance of a paradox, especially when the fabric of time is already weak there. When you add the Cardiff Rift to that, the situation is dangerous enough as it is.”

“OK, so he’s just going to sleep it off here?” she said, pulling a blanket over the sleeping man.

“Actually no, I need to find a place to stash him on Earth.”

“OK,” she said slowly, obviously waiting for the rest of his plan, arms crossed, head cocked to one side.

He took a deep breath and explained. “Jack is unique. He is a fixed point in Time, accident, long story, but the point is, he is immortal, or as near to as it is possible to be, or well at least until and unless something comes up that requires him to use his life force to keep an entire planetary population alive, but that doesn’t matter, this is what does. Something horrible happened to him down there and with any luck we are going to fix it. If he is on Earth, then when the time line snaps back into place, none of it will ever have happened to him.”

“So, if he’s there, he won’t remember?” she said.

“Well, I wouldn’t say won’t remember, exactly. Jack’s been a time traveler for a long time, was a time agent once, he’s sensitive to fluctuations in time. He will know something happened, but what and how much it is difficult to say, and it’ll fade pretty quickly, nothing but a bad dream. It’s the least I can do for him, I owe him my life, or at least one of my lives, at least, possibly two. Now, let’s find a place in Cardiff to stash him. I wonder if his lover’s address is listed in the directory…”

Jack Harkness woke like coming back to life. He wasn’t completely sure what it was that woke him, but he could feel it all around him, the presence of time, chronon particles shifting and falling back into line like an elastic band snapping back into place. He could almost taste it, that little tickle that told him something had changed, but everything in the apartment seemed right. He took a moment to get his bearings, everything seemed in order, the room was dark but he could make out the shapes of furniture all in its accustomed space, nothing obviously out of place. Next to him, Ianto Jones slept the sleep of the exhausted and for once, it wasn’t his fault.

He laid back and popped open his wrist strap. Massive chronon readings but no alarms. That was odd, a major spike in time radiation, but nothing happening to trip the monitors. Jack thought about slipping out of bed to check the computer in the other room, see if the hub registered anything, but something stopped him. Something dark was nagging at the edge of his consciousness, like a dream but not. It sent a chill through the immortal, the feeling that they used to call a goose walking over your grave, and he knew somehow that something had changed, something huge and horrible and now it was all right, and all he wanted to do was grab Ianto and hold him tight. Fear, the fresh fear of loosing the man next to him, the man that no matter how hard he fought it, he could not seem to keep from falling for. Suddenly there was a clear picture, just a snippet, Ianto dying in his arms, whispering his love. He could feel it, the words he wanted to say, the fear that if he said them somehow that would seal his fate.

Shaken, Jack reached out and pulled the younger man into his arms. Ianto muttered something sleepy in what may have been Welsh, may have been English, hell, it could have been Cantonese for all he could tell. But it didn’t matter, all that mattered was that he was here, alive and breathing, in his arms. Come the morning, they would talk. He wasn’t sure what had changed, but Jack knew he had been given a second chance, and this time he wasn’t going to screw it up, or waste time. He could hear Ianto’s voice whispering in the back of his mind, “the world is always ending.” With another shiver, he pulled the sleeping man even closer, as if he was trying to mold the two of them together.

“Jack?” the younger man questioned sleepily. “Alright?”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

Something in the tone of his voice was more than enough to bring the young man fully awake. “Jack, what is it?”

“Nothing I…” He stopped. Here it was, not three minutes after he made a promise to himself not to waste this chance and already he was falling back into old habits. Jack looked into the sleepy blue eyes that were becoming clearer every moment. “In the morning, I want us to talk.”

“Is there something wrong, Jack, did I…” Ianto said, now even more awake and startled.

“No,” he said, reassuringly, kissing the top of his head. “Nothing like that, I just thought…there is so much of my life, so many questions I know you have. I just thought it was time that we got to know each other better.”

“I thought we knew each other pretty well.”

“Ianto, you know I…I love you,” he said softly.

“I know. We will talk later, yeah?”

“Yeah, now sleep.”

Mr. Greene, Prime Minister for Great Britain, was head down over the stack of red dispatch boxes as usual when the door to his office opened. “I don’t need anything, thank you. You can go,” he said peevishly, not even bothering to look up. The number of papers that needed to be read, signed, and filed somewhere was as usual, prodigious, and if he had a hope of getting anything else done, it was in being left alone for at least an hour.

“No, Mr. Greene, I don’t think I can.”

The PM looked up, the door was closed and there was a man standing before him. A bolt of fear shot through him. He was one of the most powerful men in the country, with legions of staff, bodyguards, and functionaries of all sorts, and still the man scared him in a way nothing ever had before. The man wasn’t particularly imposing, tall and thin, brown hair, and a blue suit with a brown top coat. No, it wasn’t that, it was something about the eyes, brown, shot through with something gold. The oncoming storm, he had once seen him called in a file that crossed his desk. Looking at the photo, he hadn’t understood, now he did, and he wondered what it was he had done to call it down on his head and how to fix it.

“We need to talk.”

“Mr….er….Doctor, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call you,” he said, trying to sort out the protocol and whether to press the panic button.

“Just Doctor is fine, and we are going to have a chat about Captain Jack Harkness and Torchwood.”

John Frobisher was a man in a hurry. The early call from the PM to report on the latest UNIT communiqués, had been a bit of a surprise and left him, or rather his PA scrambling for the right facts and figures before he dragged himself across London. He was just climbing the stairs to Mr. Greene’s private offices when the door opened, and man stepped out, a man he had only seen in photographs.

“Ah, Mr. Frobisher, just the man I was looking for.”

“Sir?” he questioned, not completely sure how to react to this man who was something of a legend.

“Just a word, that’s all,” he said, taking the man’s arm and leading him into the first door he could find. "Mr. Frobisher, I have been told you are a good man, but you’re not a politician, perhaps you should remember that when dealing with them." With that, the man, the Doctor, patted him on the shoulder and disappeared leaving him gapping like a carp in a disused conference room.

Jack leaned back in his desk chair and reflected on changes as he watched the monitor replaying the earlier chronon spike. It had been huge, but dissipated relatively quickly after that, and nothing appeared to be wrong. Still they would keep an eye on it. He could see Ianto coming across with two full mugs of coffee and couldn’t help but smile. It had been good, talking, surprisingly so. He had always avoided it like the plague, actually more than the plague after that Spanish flu epidemic had flattened him after the First World War, definitely a death he was in no hurry to repeat though. But it had been nice to open up.

“So, you’re a father then,” Ianto said quietly.

“Grandfather, actually, Stephen, he’s 9 and Lucy, named for her grandmother, she’s just gone 5. I don’t really see them much. My daughter isn’t all that comfortable with it. Lucia, my wife, she didn’t take it very well.”

“The whole not dying thing is a bit off putting at first, I am sure.”

“Oh, that didn’t bother her much at all. She worked for Torchwood, you see. Not dying is something of a plus around here.” The younger man nodded. “No, it was the not aging that caused the problem. When she got older and started looking like she was dating a younger man, that’s when it fell apart. I think she blamed me, certainly she did everything she could to separate herself and Alice from me.”

“And your daughter?”

“I don’t know. I like to think she doesn’t hate me, but sometimes it seems as if she blames me for not being there, even though she told me to stay away. Still, she calls, sometimes, sends pictures of the children. Her husband walked out on them just about the time Lucy was born. Not that he wasn’t always a tosser, but it was hard not to go after him and put the fear of Torchwood in him,” Jack smiled, faintly. He had considered it, but Alice knew her father too well and told him that he had best stay away from Joe as she didn’t want him back anymore, anyway. Especially since she had caught him shagging his assistant across the desk when she came by to visit, 8 months pregnant and feeling bad enough about herself as it was. He hadn’t completely ruled it out five years later, but the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. Jack was pretty sure the man knew that Cardiff was one city he had best stay away from if he wished to keep some anatomical parts that were near and dear to him.

“Do you…” he asked cautiously. “Do you see them?”

“Sometimes” Jack said, dragging himself back. “Not as much as I would like, but there are difficulties. Alice told them I was their uncle. She reckons that they are too young to understand.” Even as he felt the sadness well up inside, Ianto’s hand came across the table and covered his. He sat there looking at the two hands, distinct and different, but so much better together.

“Do you want to?” Ianto asked. “See them, I mean.”

“They’re the only family I have,” he said slowly, measuring his words. “Except maybe you?” the last word was pitched as a question more than anything else, still not completely sure that Ianto had thought this all through, that he really wanted to tie himself to a man who would live forever, long after he was gone.

“Obviously,” the younger man said, leaning over and pressing a kiss to the hand that Jack held on the table before them.

“Thought you could use this,” Ianto said, bringing the blue striped mug in and placing it in his lover’s hand. The young man looked a little nervous for some reason and Jack smiled encouragingly at him as he sat tentatively on the edge of the desk.

“Always, so what’s on your mind?”

“Nothing, just wondering how those readings look.”

Now Jack knew something was up, it was in the way his spoke, nervousness deepening the Welsh accent he loved so much, swallowing the g’s and the h’s in a way that would be pleasantly distracting if there wasn’t something else going on. “Fine, looks like everything is fine. Now, what’s wrong?”

“It’s just, bit of a coincidence really, what with us talking this morning. My sister called me. Seems I missed Micah's birthday this year, I think there were weevils involved. I thought, perhaps I’d best go ‘round this weekend, do something. Not that I usually do, you know, but card, couple pounds, still…”

“And?” he said, reflecting that in some ways, Ianto was as willing as he was to talk about his life.

“She said we need to talk. She said…she said I’d been seen, we’d been seen, out to dinner, the French place.”

“Ahhh,” he said. While the twenty first century and its labels and hang ups still confused him, Jack knew that this was a delicate point, especially with his young lover who was so very careful to keep everything hidden away from most of the rest of the world. “Does it bother you, her knowing?” he asked.

“I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I feel about it. My sister and I, well we haven’t been that close, not in years, ever really. I suppose I just suddenly feel the need to fix that, and I don’t know why. So I thought I would go out there, see them, the kids, take Micah out for an ice cream or the cinema, that sort of thing. Then Rhi and I can talk.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, trying to break through what was obviously a tough subject for the young man. Not that he was sure he wanted to start that, getting involved was one thing, even falling in love, but family, that was another thing entirely.

“I do,” he said. Jack kept his gaze steady while his heart fell into his shoes. It had been a long time since he had done the whole meet the family thing. Did it mean he was supposed to take Ianto to meet Alice and the kids? How would his daughter react to meeting her father’s lover, his much younger male lover? Not that Alice didn’t know about his preferences, he was fairly sure that was in the list of faults her mother had been all too glad to pile on his head after she had thrown him out, no longer able to look at him as she continued to age. Ianto took his hand and dragged his focus back. “I do, but not this time. I need to talk to her, sort some things out.”

Jack heaved an inward sigh of relief while smiling at the young man. “If you are sure,” he said, leaning forward to kiss the young man, hiding his relief against his lover. Behind him, the alarm rang, announcing Gwen’s return after a brief foray to retrieve the forty fifth century equivalent of a video machine that had fallen through the rift and been sold by a street boy. “Saved by the bell,” he said, hollering for her to come up. Since it was only the three of them, meetings were frequently in his office if they were informal.

Gwen entered the room waving a carrier bag with her booty. “Got it, five pounds, and a tablet of retcon.” 

“Great. Ianto,” he said, looking at the younger man who was standing straightening his jacket.

“Think I know what to do with that,” he said, taking the bag from her.

“And you need to call Clement McDonald up at Torchwood 2, see if he knows anything at all about that chronon spike.”
 “Sorry, sir, I’ll be busy archiving this, and then I have to go shopping, Janet and Myfanwy don’t feed themselves you know, and we are low on coffee.” That announcement more than any other was guaranteed to free Ianto from any other duties as the other two couldn’t contemplate working without coffee.

“OK, Gwen then, you have a way with people anyway,” he said giving her his most winning grin. Clem was nice enough, but he was hell to get off the phone.

“Alright then, what am I meant to be asking…” The alarm that cut through the air,also brought Jack to his feet and out the door like he was shot from a cannon, with Ianto and Gwen right on his heels as he raced to the monitor and called up a camera. There sitting next to the invisible lift was a sight that Ianto had alternatively longed for and feared, a blue police box circa 1960’s, sitting right in the middle of Roald Dahl Plas as if it belonged there, people walking by it as though it was not even there.

“Well guys, looks like we have company. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the man who saves the world more often than we do.”

They stood on the Plas, three of them together, watching the people wandering, tourists taking pictures, just another ordinary day, except for the blue police call box sitting silently before them. Ianto Jones straightened his tie again, and brushed at invisible wrinkles in his perfectly pressed suit. He wanted to meet the Doctor, really he did, or at least he thought he did. The Doctor was a legend at Torchwood One, and that alone was enough for him to be curious, but it was more than that. Jack’s relationship with the Doctor was complicated, the man who had changed him, abandoned him, then returned to him. He thought Jack might be in love with him, but Jack had the room in his heart for a lot of love. It didn’t make Ianto any less nervous, or if he was honest with himself, less jealous, he couldn’t help it.

Then of course there was why he was here, now. The last time the Doctor had shown up, the Earth had been moved to God knows where, Daleks had descended, and he had watched the man he loved transport off to save the universe. While he would have had it no other way, Jack was hardly the man to sit by while the world ended, still, what did he want now? At the moment things looked fine, perfectly normal in fact, but since when had that ever meant anything? Would he take Jack away, and for how long? So many thoughts floating around in his head while the police box sat there, silent and innocent.

“Have you gone bender?” his sister asked, her voice stolid with working class sensibility. He didn’t know what to say to her, it wasn’t easy to talk to the sister he so rarely saw, even though it was his choice to stay away.

“Can the children hear you?” he asked, not knowing what else to say, and because he could hear the sounds of a video game being played in the background.

“Micah don’t care, her friend from school has two Mum’s. You just don’t want to talk to me, you never do, not since Dad died,” her voice went from cajoling to accusatory in null point two seconds, just like Mum, but she was right. After he died, Ianto really just hadn’t known what to do, what to say, so he said nothing. He showed up with gifts, or more often money, for the kids on holidays, never stayed longer than a cup of coffee and then he went back to his life, to Torchwood. Maybe it was time he changed all that.

“It’s not like that, he’s my boss,” he said, though he knew his sister, and she wouldn’t let it go, and maybe it was time he let her in a little. But he didn’t know how to start.

“Your boss it is? But Tina said you were together, intimate like. I told her you’d had girlfriends before, but she said there weren’t no woman going to get her feet round that table. And she said he was gorgeous, like a film star. Now, look you, you going to tell me what’s going on? And don’t give me all that ‘bout you working. You just don’t want to come ‘round, you’re ashamed of us, too good for the estate now, is it?”

“No, it’s not that. I just…” he paused and thought about it. Just that morning, he and Jack had been talking about them, about their relationship with one another. He had told him he loved him again, reinforcing that the conversation in the middle of the night wasn’t a dream. And Ianto had finally been able to say it too. For all the nights he had wanted to, the nights he had woken up and whispered it to himself, now it was all out, and maybe that was the way it should be. “He is handsome though,” he said.

“Ohhh?” Rhiannan had said, suddenly all ears.

“It’s not men,” he told her, having difficulty finding the right words. “It’s him. It's just Jack. It's only Jack. I can’t explain.”

“Serious is it?” she asked. A day, a week earlier, he wouldn’t have known what to say to her, but now he knew better.

“Yeah, I think it is, yeah.”

The rest of the conversation had passed quickly, as he agreed to come round and have Micah and David out to the cinema and a hamburger restaurant or something, to make up for all the times he had missed. He didn’t know why now he felt the sudden need to reconnect, but then he knew it wasn’t just him, Jack was feeling the same way. That with the chronon spikes and the appearance of the Doctor was more than enough to set the rats in his stomach to dancing the Gay Gordon in full highland kit. But still the door remained closed. Ianto pulled out his trusty pocket watch. It had only been two minutes, though it felt like an hour or more.

Finally after an eternity, the door opened like a shot and out stepped the man himself, the Doctor, all spiky hair and brown suit. He gave it a disapproving tut, but only to himself. He was wearing no tie and his shirt open to show the tee shirt underneath and trainers with a suit and top coat? Clearly this was one of his more sartorially challenged incarnations. Behind him, a young woman with dark hair emerged as well, clearly as uncertain as they were about their reception.

The two men sized each other up for a moment, Jack stepping forward, his eyes hooded. The Doctor stepped aside to allow his companion out of the doorway, but kept his eyes on Jack and the rest of them.

“Doctor,” Jack said.

“Captain.” Then a smile broke out on his face like the sun coming out from behind the clouds and Jack reached out to pull him into a hug. “This your team then? Nice to meet you all in person,” he said, coming forward and shaking Ianto’s hand before he even knew what was going on, then turning to Gwen. She looked as struck as he did, her mouth open as the man bounced to her, and then turned away, throwing one arm around Jack’s shoulders and dragging him a little way off, babbling a mile a minute. Ianto caught the words time shift and paradox before he was dragging Jack out of their hearing over toward the water.

“I’m Christina by the way. I’d wait for an introduction but we’d have to get him to stop talking long enough to notice first.” They nodded and introduced themselves and stood awkwardly, waiting for the two men to come back. Finally after a few minutes, Gwen suggested they go across to the coffee shop and grab a cup if they were going to be anti social. Ianto declined, uncertain he was capable of trusting the Doctor alone with Jack and a working time machine, even if his companion was with Gwen, so he just told them to go on.

He settled on a bench, and tried to calm down. Jack and the Doctor were having what appeared to be a casual conversation with each other down by the water, but he couldn’t hear anything. It was hard, watching the two of them together. There was an easy camaraderie that spoke to time spent together, getting to know each other. He had never asked if they were lovers, but somehow he doubted it. Still it didn’t stop the little jealous niggle. Then there was what the Doctor was doing here. If he needed Jack to stop some universe shattering evil, it wasn’t as if he would expect him to stay just for him. He couldn’t ask him to, Jack was a hero and that was what heroes did. But it didn’t make it any easier. Finally, just when he thought that those rats were going to wear through his stomach and burst out like that creature from Alien ( he had always wondered if someone in Torchwood One was feeding ideas to the Scott brothers but had never been able to prove it,) the two men came back. They both seemed relaxed, no rushing to get to the TARDIS, no apparent need for tearing about preparing for invasion, just two blokes, walking across the Plas like any one of a dozen others.

“Everything all right, Sir?” he asked, trying for his best composed look.

“Fine, Ianto,” he said, as he reached for the other man, and pulled him into a tight hug. It wasn’t like Jack to do that in public, but right now he didn’t care if BBC1 was filming them to show to the entire world, all that mattered was the reassurance. He released him, but not completely, looping an arm around his waist to keep him pressed close. Ianto wasn’t sure about what the Doctor had told him, but he would sort that out later, when the alien was gone and it was just the two of them. “The Doctor just stopped by to reassure me about those readings we have been picking up. It seems he has been plugging up some anomalies left over from that Dalek incident.”

Ianto just nodded, reassured at least somewhat. He was still coming to terms with himself and Jack, allowing himself to be ok with the affection, but right here, right now, in front of the man who more than anything he feared would take Jack away from him, he reveled in the attention.

“Ianto Jones, you have no idea how glad I am to actually meet you in person so to speak. Jack has told me so much about you,” the Doctor said.

“So you won’t be needing him to save the universe right now then?” Ianto asked.

“Not that I know of, no.”

“Good, would hate to have to change the schedule.” The two women were returning from the shops, Gwen with a paper carrier full of drinks cups.

“You have a schedule? I love schedules, I used to keep a diary, well not a diary so much as a journal, well more like a date book but I forgot it, or lost it somewhere. Perhaps I could borrow him from you, Jack? Just to help me get sorted out? Though organizing through time is difficult, and particularly hard on the grammar. That’s the problem with time, non linear time that is…”
“Sorry, Doc, he’s all mine,” Jack said with a reassuring squeeze of the younger man. “I couldn’t get anything done without him.”

“Oh all right,” he said with a bit of a pout, before giving them a dazzling smile. “But perhaps a trip? Just one, any place any time, both of you of course.” Ianto felt the rats in his stomach take five and wander off. Jack’s arm around him reassured him, and for the first time since he had met the doctor, he felt calm.

“Ianto, what do you say? A new world, back in time, something completely different?”

“Yes, could take you off to the moon of Poosh, not lost anymore so they had to change all the charts, or somewhere sunny? There are some beaches out on the edge of the Draco system, two suns, you know? We could go for a few days and be back in five minutes?”

“Maybe, but…”

“The Rift, yeah, Doc, afraid we have some responsibilities here. We’re still two team members down and you know your driving is…”

“Oi, what’s wrong with my driving?” The two engaged in a brief verbal scuffle about time travel while Ianto thought about it. What would it be to travel in that little box, to see the stars with Jack?

“Perhaps one day,” Ianto said tentatively. “When we are back to full strength.”

“That reminds me, Jack, or rather Ianto, I suppose, this seems more in your line, I may have a couple of candidates for you, to fill out those vacancies.” Both men looked on in shock as the Doctor reached in to one of his pockets and withdrew several pencils, a handful of assorted coins, a slinky, a ball of string, and finally a piece of paper which he passed on to the young man.

“Lois Habiba, Commander Johnson, MI-5 ? Who are they?”

“Just a couple of people who might be just what you need.” Ianto nodded and secured the rather grubby paper in the pocket of his suit. Any recommendation of the Doctor should be enough to be considered.

“Off again, Doctor?” Jack asked, not letting go of the other man.

“Not immediately, no. Thought I would stick around for tea. That lovely place out in the bay still there?”

“Sure,” Jack said.

“Good, then you can show me this base of yours. You have a pterodactyl, you said?” Chattering along amicably, the Doctor started across the Plas, not even waiting for them to follow him.

“Do you ever get tired of following him?” Ianto asked as Jack pulled him along together.

“Never will, but it’s better if I can take you with me.” The immortal stopped and pressed a kiss to his lips, as the Doctor moved on and the sun set slowly in the bay.