Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ianto sank to his knees in the middle of the stone circle and took a deep, deliberate breath. He had been anxious since he had stumbled over Jack in the Hub two hours ago, surprised that he was not alone. Sleep was not easy to find for him since Canary Wharf and sometimes it was easier to accomplish his work when he was alone in the Hub after everyone else had gone home.

Meeting Jack in the middle of the night was not what troubled Ianto, though. He was aware that Jack had a room under his office in which he lived most of the time. It had been the rose petal in Jack’s hand and the haunted look in his eyes that made Ianto worry.

Opening the connection to the Otherworld came easy and his brethren surrounded him in the circle before he could even call for them. Knowing that they watched over him, even though he was technically not one of them anymore, was the most comfort he had ever felt in this life. The life of a human was difficult in ways that he had not remembered, but he would never regret making this sacrifice.

“You are very troubled, brother,” the Others said.

Ianto sighed. “Jack Harkness met us before, and some of us visited him earlier. I need to know why, and I want to know how he met us.”

Scattering of wings filled the air and Ianto dropped into a vision of what for him was the past. The town and the train awoke an echo of memories, but his human body was unable to hold most of the memories he had of the Otherworld. He had only regained the most important memories, those pertaining to his task, and losing a Chosen One to an accident and the drunken carelessness of a handful of soldiers was sadly not important at all.

Ianto’s head dropped forward as the vision faded. He felt torn between the vindication he felt as one of the Others and the grief he felt as a friend for Jack to have lost all of his men, even those who had not been responsible for the accident. He had never been part of the fraction that wanted and needed to punish those hurting their Chosen Ones, but he had shared their joy over it, nevertheless. Growing up in a second human life had given him a second perspective on those choices and it was not the first time he struggled with it.

“Why are you provoking him right now?” Ianto asked. “It’s been a very long time for him since those events.”

“And he forgot!” the Others hissed. “He’ll try to take another Chosen One from us!”

Ianto closed his eyes tightly. “Provoking him won’t help with that at all. And I need to keep a good relationship with him!”

“He needs to keep away from our Chosen One!” the Others said.

“Agreed.” Ianto sighed. “They are here in Cardiff?”

It was no surprise, really. The unusual weather pattern he had discussed with Jack briefly was a good indication that the Others were here, were watching over a Chosen One. Ianto had not been worried about that until this night, had thought it would go unnoticed by Torchwood. They did not investigate missing person cases, even though at least Jack and he were aware that some of them were taken by the Rift.

“They are,” the Others agreed. “They’ll join us soon. They are hurting, they are lonely, they are unhappy.”

They always were. Ianto’s most vivid memory of his first life as a human was the cold at the end of it, and the relief to not be alone anymore, though in retrospect he knew that he had not been as alone as he had felt. It was not the objective circumstances the Others cared for, though, but only ever the circumstances as the child perceived it for themselves. 

“We need to be careful with Torchwood,” Ianto said. “I need them, we need them. You know that as well as I do. There is no Torchwood in London anymore, so it will be this team here that will be involved in whatever is to come in London. I can’t fall out with Jack.”

“So, keep him away from our Chosen One!”

Ianto sighed. “He wouldn’t even look at a missing child if you hadn’t told him he needed to look!”

“He’ll look at the Predator, and he’ll know,” the Others said.

Ianto shuddered. “Is the Chosen One safe?”

“Yes. But other children are not. They’ll be safe, though.”

Ianto nodded. At least now he knew what he could expect in the days to come. Someone preying on children would wind up dead, and with the way the Others killed, of course Torchwood would be called to that scene. Jack had seen it happen to his men, Ianto was sure he would have recognized it even without the reminder the Others had sent him earlier.

“We didn’t try to kill Jack.” Ianto frowned. “We only killed his men.”

“We knew him to be the Immortal One,” the Others said. “We debated to keep killing him. It would have become tedious and boring.”

Ianto huffed, and for a moment he allowed himself to grin. “Yes, it would have.” Boredom was the most terrible thing that could happen to them, something he would never forget, though he had learned to enjoy the moments in which he had to do nothing.

He was distracted by a sound outside of the circle. He turned his head instinctively, but he was so emerged in the Otherworld that he was unable to see anything.

“A friend of the Immortal One,” the Others chattered. “A Believer, a Keeper of the old knowledge. She comes here often, searching for us. Sometimes we allow her to see us.”

“Let me handle Jack,” Ianto pleaded. “Don’t involve his friend or our team. Even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to keep the Chosen One back, you know that. He won’t kill them. The most he’ll do is try to talk them out of it. He can’t hide them from us.”

“He won’t listen to you!” the Others cried.

“Do you really see that?” Ianto asked. “Have you ever let it play out without any interference by you?”

The scattering of their wings was the only answer he received.

“That’s what I thought,” Ianto muttered. “I have a purpose here! As far as we know I’ll only be able to accomplish my task with the help of Torchwood. Making their leader our enemy won’t help!”

“Or maybe Torchwood is the reason for your task!” the Others said. “We don’t know. We can’t see! But we know their past. We know their crimes. We know the Immortal One’s crimes!”

Ianto dragged his fingers through his hair. There was no arguing with them, and in the end, he had known that even before he had come here. He remembered the certainty about the knowledge they possessed, the inability to feel doubt over their own actions. The Others may be the connection between the human world and the Otherworld, but they were so far removed from the reality of the human world that there was no comprehension in them for the ways of the humans.

“I’ll need to tell him what I am and why I’m here,” Ianto decided. “I can’t keep this secret any longer.”

“You can’t trust him!”

Ianto huffed. “The problem is that he needs to trust me! We know the threat will come from outside of Earth. He won’t be responsible for that. Torchwood tries to protect us from those threats. He won’t ever trust me or work with me if he learns later what I am, not if he’ll deal with us in the next days and I keep this secret.”

“Don’t!” The Others wailed. “He’ll hurt you! He’ll disappoint you!”

“He comes from a place of a very bad experience with us. I won’t be surprised to find myself in a cell for a while,” Ianto agreed.

He would call his relationship with Jack barely a friendship, though up until now he had thought they were headed in that direction. They had met in the direst circumstances Ianto had ever experienced, in either of his lives. He had heard plenty about Jack while he had worked for Torchwood One, but the first time he had met him, Ianto had carried the bodies of his colleagues out of the ruins of Torchwood Tower while desperately searching for survivors, and especially for Lisa.

Jack had offered him a place in Cardiff before Ianto had even truly acknowledged what had happened in London, and what the fall of Torchwood One could mean for his task. Ianto had accepted the offer, not only because he knew he would need Torchwood when the time came, but also because of the silent companionship and compassion Jack had shown in the three days they had spent in the ruins of the tower searching for survivors and destroying remnants of the Cyberman technology.

Ianto shook his head. “You really haven’t left me any choice. Let’s hope the friendship that is already there will be enough for him to give me a chance.”

The Others wailed unhappily, but Ianto ignored them. He had to believe in the good he had seen in Jack despite the atrocities they often encountered in their job because if Jack would not listen to Ianto, everything he had done in the last twenty-four years would have been in vain.

***

Ianto hesitated for hours, backing out two times of a conversation with Jack in the early morning. He valued Jack’s opinion and his friendship; talking with him had given Ianto more than once an insight into human and alien behaviour that he sorely lacked. It was not as easy as he had thought in the beginning to leave behind his life in the Otherworld, and there were still moments when human behaviour was completely foreign and startling to him. For some reason, Jack was able to give him explanations for it without even noticing.

Ianto’s fear to lose this combined with the warning of the Others let him back away from any chance he got to talk with Jack until the very last moment it would do any good to finally come clean. An hour before their usual lunch break, Jack had left the Hub with Gwen and when they had come back after lunch, he had called a meeting over the pictures Estelle Cole had made of the stone circle the night before.

Gwen was laughing away the idea of fairies, and Owen was not too far away from doing the same. Toshiko was a little bit more open to the idea, or maybe she was only holding back her opinion because Gwen and Owen were loud enough in voicing it. Ianto kept quiet for most of the meeting after he had distributed coffee to everyone. Jack was clearly desperate and afraid, gearing up for a catastrophe to happen, and Ianto could not even fault him.

The meeting dissolved without any kind of satisfying outcome for Ianto. There had been no chance to insert anything good about the Others in the conversation, and no one seemed to take Jack’s concerns into consideration. Sometimes Ianto wondered how long it would take for this team to break apart, as the dynamic between them was toxic in so many ways.

He followed Jack to his office. “I need to talk to you.”

Jack nodded and pointed to the chair when Ianto kept standing in front of the door after he had closed it. He rubbed a hand over his forehead when Ianto hesitated to follow the invitation. “You are the only one who hasn’t yet ridiculed or at least doubted my concerns.”

“I share them, though for very different reasons.” Ianto sighed, but he finally sat down in the chair beside Jack’s desk. “I should have talked to you first thing in the morning, but … You won’t like what I have to say, and I’m not keen to be confronted with your fury.”

Jack frowned. “And why should I be angry at you?”

“I’ve kept a huge secret, and I really didn’t intend to tell you any time soon, but the circumstances have changed. And your fear of the Others—“ Ianto closed his eyes. “—the Fairies, I mean, is playing a big part in my hesitance.”

“You have met them already,” Jack whispered.

Ianto straightened his back and looked at Jack until their gazes met. “I am one of them. Was one of them. I’ve never been sure where that line is exactly, and it gets harder to determine the older I get.”

Jack stared at him, face blank and pale. “I can’t follow you.”

Ianto smiled sadly. “I was first born in 1864, and I joined the Others when I was nine. I decided to give human life a second shot and was born again in 1983.”

Jack didn’t move, didn’t show any sign that he had even heard what Ianto had said.

“The shadow in the circle on your friend’s pictures, that’s me. I was there last night to talk with the Others after I saw you with the rose petal.” Ianto averted his gaze. “I’m sorry for what happened to you back in Lahore, and for the reminder they gave you last night.”

Jack shook his head slowly. “This is not a laughing matter, Ianto! I don’t know what you think you know about Lahore…”

“You were there with a group of twenty soldiers,” Ianto interrupted him. “Three of them got drunk one evening and run over a child, killing them and hiding it. When your group left, you didn’t even know what had happened, you only learned about it during the investigation later. You were on a train, and your men were happy because you were on the way home. They should have spent two months with their families, before getting their new assignment. But then you drove into a tunnel, and when you came out again, you were the only one still alive, everyone else had seemingly suffocated on rose petals.”

Jack shuddered. “I know there is a file somewhere in the archive about this.”

Ianto shook his head. “I haven’t found that yet. I saw what happened when I asked the Others last night why they had sent you that warning. There are some that are still deeply hurt and offended, for lack of a better word, by that event.”

Jack scowled. “It’s been nearly a hundred years!”

Ianto inclined his head. “And you are still hurting because of it as well. Time is different for us in the Otherworld. Time is passing, of course, but not as linear as here. It’s quite possible that for some it’s still a very recent memory.”

“You know, I don’t believe a word of what you are saying!”

Ianto sighed. “Yes. Otherwise, I would already face your gun.”

“Let’s say you are telling the ruth and haven’t lost your mind, which really wouldn’t be a surprise after what you went through in London.” Jack braced his arms on the desk, leaning forward. “Why tell me anything about it? And why would you even come back from the life you chose as a child?”

Ianto smiled. “So, you do believe it’s our choice?”

Jack huffed. “I believe the so-called Chosen Ones are tricked into believing it’s their choice and I very much doubt they are ever allowed to recognise that.”

Ianto stared at him. “I would have died mere weeks after leaving if I hadn’t chosen the Otherworld in my first life.”

“Is there a reason you are avoiding my questions?” Jack asked with raise eyebrows.

“A threat is looming on the horizon. Something from outside of Earth that will threaten much more than just a couple of Chosen Ones.” Ianto swallowed. “We can’t see what it is. We aren’t able to access that point in time. It was eventually decided that we needed someone here as a human, and not a child because no one would listen to a child or tell them anything. I offered my services. As the only things we could determine were that it would begin in London and that Torchwood would be involved, I did my best to be recruited by One as soon as I was old enough.”

“And so, you searched out a place on my team after One fell.”

Ianto shook his head. “I’m much more human than I’m … fairy at this point in time. My task was the last thing on my mind when we met. All I wanted at that moment was to find Lisa, hopefully alive. I only remembered my task after we had already buried Lisa and I had followed you here.”

Jack eyed him silently and Ianto knew he was still not believing him. As soon as Jack lost this eery calmness he would start to believe him and stop contemplating if Ianto needed a psych evaluation. Ianto was not entirely sure how to handle the situation because he had ever only expected to be confronted with anger and fury.

“As for why I’m telling you this now,” Ianto continued eventually, “there is a Chosen One in Cardiff. And it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed, even without the Others’ warning to you last night or your friend witnessing our meeting in Roundstone Wood. We’ll be called to investigate the death of a Predator, today or tomorrow I would expect.”

“Predator?” Jack asked.

“A paedophile in most cases,” Ianto explained. “They won’t have harmed the Chosen One, but they’ll already have tried. We don’t hunt them as long as they haven’t come near a Chosen One.” 

Sometime during his teenage years in this life, Ianto had started to wonder if that was something they should change because there were monsters worth hunting for every single child they had hurt or would hurt, even if they never crossed paths with a Chosen One.

Ianto raised his hand to stop Jack when he opened his mouth. “I have no interest at all to try to save that bastard. And I guess it will be something that will prove my story. Not telling you what I am when we are bound to encounter the Others would be a mistake. They expect you to interfere with the Chosen One, and frankly, I can’t see a single way to convince you to just let it happen, to not interfere, even though I would very much like to ask you exactly that.”

“In my eyes, those fairies aren’t any better than that paedophile you were talking about,” Jack ground out.

Ianto flinched.

“Is that really a surprise for you?”

“No.” Ianto sighed. “It’s still very unkind to be compared to a Predator.”

“I think I should send you to therapy,” Jack said after a moment of silence.

Ianto shrugged. “We all should be in therapy after what happened with Suzie. But in this case, it won’t change anything.”

Jack frowned, but they were interrupted by Gwen knocking on the door. She didn’t wait for Jack to acknowledge her before opening the door and leaning into the room without stepping in. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I just got a call from Andy. They have a dead prisoner they would like us to take a look at.”

Ianto crossed his arms as Jack’s gaze turned to him.

“And why did he call you for that?” Jack asked, his gaze fixed on Ianto.

Gwen hesitated a moment. “He was alone in the cell, was talking about invisible things following him, and he didn’t kill himself.”

Jack’s eyes turned icy. “Tell Owen we start in ten minutes. Tosh will stay here to monitor the Rift and Ianto will accompany us for a change.”

Chapter Text

Ianto watched Jack and the rest of the team on the other side of the table and couldn’t help the small smile playing around his lips. Jack’s game was very obvious, but Ianto was not concerned at all to be seated alone at one side of the table, with everyone else on the other side and between him and the door. The rest of their team had clearly been confused by this seating arrangement until Ianto had started to repeat what he had already told Jack before they had gone to inspect the predator’s body.

What made Ianto worry was the still missing fury in Jack, but he was sure that would come sooner rather than later. Though, Gwen and even Owen looked as if they would easily make up for it, while Toshiko watched him confused and worried.

“Sounds more like your trauma from London finally caught up with you and you have lost your mind,” Owen said, shaking his head.

Ianto rolled his eyes. “Good to know that Jack and you share the same opinion about my seemingly oh so fragile mental health. But I think there may be at least some kind of proof.”

“Really?” Jack asked with raised brows.

Ianto turned his gaze to Toshiko. “Could you bring up the Cottingley photos? Specifically, the one with the older girl standing in the bush and looking at the fairy to her left, right in front of her face?”

“Of course.” Toshiko started to type on her tablet without hesitation and Ianto turned around to the monitor behind him. “There it is.”

Ianto nodded. “Zoom in on the fairy’s face.” It was a little bit of a gamble because he had no idea how much the image would resemble him. He had vague memories of the fun it had been to play with the two girls, allowing them to capture them on some but not all of their photographs. Neither of them had been a Chosen One, but they had been Believers and Keepers of knowledge their whole life, even though the fame the photographs had brought had become a nuisance in their later life.

The image on the screen focused on the fairy, zooming in on its face until it nearly filled the whole screen. It was blurry, but Ianto recognised himself in it without a problem. “And now bring up a photo from my file when I was eight or nine. I know One acquired photos of me at every possible age.”

“Why?” Gwen asked aghast.

Ianto shrugged. “I never questioned it, but they gathered a very comprehensive file of everyone’s past.”

“Control,” Jack said darkly. “The more you know about someone the easier it is to control them, and Yvonne Hartman was an expert in that.”

It took a moment longer for Toshiko to find the picture he had requested, but as soon as it was opened right beside the one already on the screen Ianto turned back around to his colleagues, finding shock and surprise on all of their faces. There was no missing the similarities and Ianto hoped it would be enough to convince them.

Gwen was the first one to shake herself loose from it. “You asked Jack earlier if he believed you now after Owen found the rose petals with Goodson. Did you know they were going to kill that man?” She sounded disdainful and appalled, and the way she was looking at him matched that impression.

“I knew there was someone who’d tried to harm the Chosen One, yes.” Ianto shrugged. “I didn’t know his name, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have bothered to try to find him. He was a paedophile, Gwen. I’m not sad at all that he won’t be able to harm another girl.”

“The accusations against him could never be proven,” Gwen said irritated. “And even if they were true, the due process…”

“The girl he was suspected to have molested didn’t want to talk and there was no physical evidence that could be connected to him, that is the reason he was let go.” Ianto stared at her, cold fury burning in him over the fact that she dared to defend that man. “The other three girls who he abducted and raped for several hours were never connected with him in any way because that monster learned enough out of his first attempt to choose girls he had never officially met before and whose parents didn’t even know they were missing until they were found by strangers after their ordeal.”

“Son of a bitch,” Owen muttered, while Toshiko pressed her hands against her mouth and Jack sucked in a breath.

Gwen only frowned at him. “How did you even get that idea?”

“Because the Others showed me as soon as I had stepped inside that cell.” Ianto still felt nauseated, but thankfully they had only shown him the moments in which Goodson had lured them into his car and when the girls had been found alone and broken in abandoned streets. “They searched his past, and they did it because they think it could help me.” If the Others had done it before killing the Predator, Ianto was sure they would have found a completely different crime scene.

“Not to see if Goodson’s victims could become a Chosen One?” Jack asked scathingly.

Ianto shook his head. “They couldn’t. Someone carrying that kind of hurt can’t step into the Otherworld. I know we tried once and it failed badly, but I can’t remember any details.” When he thought about it, he could remember the pain that had reverberated through all of them; because for a moment she had been one of them and there was nothing they didn’t share with each other. He suspected that this was the reason she had been unable to join them in the end, because they hadn’t been able to bear her pain or soothe it.

Gwen huffed. “That’s still no reason to kill him! He should have been…”

Ianto interrupted her again, “What exactly do we gain from discussing this? He is dead, and I hope the police can make a connection to the open cases of the girls so that they’ll at least know the monster that hurt them is dead and won’t hurt them again, as little as that will do.”

“Ianto is right, there is no reason to discuss that man any further,” Jack agreed, focusing on Ianto. “Who is the Chosen One?”

“I have no idea.” Ianto shrugged. “And they won’t show me, even if I were inclined to ask. We can probably assume it’s a girl because his other victims were girls. But if you find her or not, your interference won’t make any difference except making the Others angry.”

“What or who exactly are the Others?” Toshiko asked.

“All of us were once Chosen Ones,” Ianto said. “Children who are or at least feel abandoned and forgotten. You can’t imagine what a relief it is to feel the embrace of the Others in such a situation. Not feeling alone and cold anymore because we share everything.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. He was still connected enough to them to feel that embrace, but it didn’t quite give him the same comfort anymore it had done even during his childhood in this life. The connection had grown distant, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Ianto blew out a breath. “I realised in the last couple of years that all of us being children when we step into the Otherworld leads to a very black and white worldview. The Others never lose that immaturity regardless of how long they have already been in the Otherworld. We protect the Chosen Ones because we feel there is no one else to do it, and in many cases, the only way to protect them from those who mean them harm is to remove those threats permanently.”

“And by that you mean they kill them,” Owen muttered.

“I won’t ever regret the death of someone like Goodson,” Ianto said. “In other cases, I’ve never agreed with their choices. Just because we share everything doesn’t mean we are of one mind all the time. But we seldom interfere in others’ plans. Though, as long as the Chosen One doesn’t actually come to harm there are enough games to play to scare other humans away from them.”

“Games to play?” Jack scowled.

Ianto shrugged. His choice of words was deliberate, but he didn’t much care to discuss that part with them. He felt they wouldn’t understand the difference anyway. “If you would leave the Chosen One alone, they would leave you alone.”

“That’s why they came into my dreams last night?” Jack asked.

Ianto sighed. “That was more a problem in the difference of time for the Others and time in this world. They already saw your reaction to Goodson’s death, so they sent you a warning but messed the time up. They wanted to convince me that I shouldn’t tell you what I am, but they haven’t shared with me what they saw about your reaction to it.” He wished they had because Jack’s continued calmness was starting to freak him out.

“If it was so great being one of them, why did you come back? And how did you manage to fake your background so successfully?” Owen asked, while Jack only stared at Ianto.

“I didn’t fake anything. I lived through everything you can find in my file, my life just didn’t start with my mother getting pregnant. After we had made the decision that I would come back for another life, we searched for a young woman who wished for a child but wouldn’t have been able to bear one without our intervention. That’s what we always do when someone decides to come back to a human life, though normally they barely regain any memories of the Otherworld or their first life. Some of us get bored after a while and there is no other end to our life in the Otherworld.”

“But you didn’t get bored,” Toshiko said.

Ianto smiled and inclined his head. “No. Maybe it would have happened someday, but I came back with a purpose. We are still not sure what that task will be exactly, though. The Others can’t see what will happen, and that alone is disconcerting, but we know that there will be a threat to all children on this planet. As I told Jack already, we only know that it will start in London and that Torchwood will be involved. It will be two years from now, give or take a couple of months.”

“This is absurd!” Gwen said. “All of this!”

“You can believe in aliens but not in fairies?” Ianto asked.

“Oh, I believe just fine that there are some … beings out there abducting children, but I don’t believe that the children are becoming one of them,” Gwen said. “And I think you have lost your mind!”

“Yeah, I’m not convinced that’s not what’s happening here either,” Owen muttered.

Ianto rolled his eyes and looked at Jack who had not stopped staring at him for most of the conversation.

“What were you hoping to accomplish by working for Torchwood?” Toshiko asked. “One was big enough that you would have maybe never been involved with the team handling whatever you think is coming.”

“I was trying to work my way up,” Ianto sighed. “But I think the events I’m here for will be big enough to be impossible to be ignored by anyone. We were never able to pinpoint the exact moment when it became widely known that the humans are not alone in the universe, but it will happen soon as well. A threat to every single child on this planet, that has to be immense. And we are sure it’s only the children not some overall threat to the whole planet.”

“Why are we even listening to this nonsense?” Gwen asked agitated. “We need to find that child they want to take!”

“It’s her choice,” Ianto said quietly. “And I believe she already made the choice. The Others have been active in Cardiff for weeks. And the Chosen One will have been contemplating joining the Others for months, maybe even a year. And she’ll have known the Others for most of her life.”

Every child knew the Others while they were young enough, most of them just forgot with time. And for those who remembered, it was only vague memories, no more than shadows. Even someone who became a Keeper of the old knowledge would never fully remember their connection to the Others during their childhood.

“How would you know that?” Gwen asked.

“Because I felt them, and I saw the strange weather patterns appearing. Jack and I saw the record of the one from yesterday last night, and I assure you it appeared in the moment when the Predator tried to abduct the Chosen One because our control over the weather is for most Chosen Ones the most appealing game.”

“Predator?” Toshiko asked.

“Goodson. We don’t care for names, not for our own and even less for those in this world. When I started to remember my life in the Otherworld, it was difficult for a while to remember that I needed to listen when someone called me by my name. We know each other by how we feel, not by our names.”

“Instead, you give those that matter in some way a title,” Toshiko said.

Ianto shrugged. “Something like that.”

“You need to tell us who that girl is!” Gwen demanded.

Ianto laughed. “I don’t need to do anything. And I already told you that I don’t even know who she is. The only reason I told you what I am is so that I wouldn’t risk an adverse reaction, especially from Jack, when you would inadvertently find out about it later after this encounter with the Others. If there hadn’t been a Chosen One in Cardiff targeted by a Predator, you would have never even known they were here.”

“And you think we’ll ever trust you again?” Gwen asked.

“Ianto hasn’t really done anything to us,” Toshiko said.

“He is complicit in a murder and a child abduction! And he lied to us!”

“I was sitting right here beside you when Goodson was killed,” Ianto reminded her. “And arguing about keeping secrets would be very hypocritical by everyone here, including you, Gwen. So don’t even start with that.”

Gwen turned around. “Jack!”

Jack shrugged. “He isn’t wrong with either. Though, I’m more inclined to believe that they are influencing him than that he has lost his mind or is telling the truth.”

Ianto laughed. “I started to wonder why you are still this calm. I had expected to see a gun or two pointed at me at this point.” He suspected Gwen wasn’t far away from it and judging by the way Toshiko was watching her, he was not the only one thinking that.

“We’ll have to confine you to a cell while we are searching for the girl,” Jack decided after a moment of silence.

Ianto inclined his head. “At last, something I was expecting from this conversation!”

“Don’t you think that’s a little bit harsh?” Toshiko asked.

Owen nodded. “I think Ianto should be thoroughly examined, especially if you think someone is influencing him.”

Jack shook his head. “Do you really think you’d find anything when they are able to hide themselves from all of our other instruments? No, as long as we are searching for the Chosen One it’s best to make sure Ianto is in a safe place where he can’t harm our investigation or us or himself. The child has to be our priority.”

Ianto sent Toshiko a reassuring smile. “I’ve no problem with it. As I said, I was expecting it.” He stood up because he suspected Jack would prefer to get him out of the way for the rest of the meeting if he thought him compromised.

“Try to find all information of unusual weather patterns of the last months while I bring Ianto to his temporary quarters. That will be the easiest way to track them and to hopefully find the girl.” Jack didn’t turn his gaze away from Ianto while he gave those instructions. “Lead the way, Ianto.”

Owen leaned back in his chair just as Ianto reached the door. “Hey, tea boy. Your rule about the coffee won’t stand as long as you aren’t able to make us any, right?”

Ianto smiled, more relieved about that simple question than he would have expected. “Of course it stands. Bring strange coffee into the Hub and I won’t make you any for a week! And touch my darling on your own risk.”

He had taken over the responsibility for all coffee made for the team on his second day in Cardiff. He may be a little bit of a coffee snob, and he had been appalled by the coffee machine he had found in the kitchen on his first day. He had hauled in a new one the next day, had forbidden everyone else to even touch it, and punished everyone who thought to bring coffee from the outside with not making them any for the rest of the day. Ianto had used it as a distraction in the beginning, but it had become a comfort for him and this huge thing among the team.

Owen groaned. “Fine. Let’s hope this situation is resolved soon enough.”

Ianto left the room more light-hearted than he had expected. Toshiko had been more curious than anything else, and Owen’s immediate fury from the beginning and the scepticism he had shown later already had to be overcome for the most part. That left him with Gwen’s open anger and Jack’s still much to calm demeanour, but it was still only half the team he had to worry about.

He felt Jack following with barely any space between them. Ianto kept his silence until they were on the staircase leading down to the floor with the cells. “For the sake of full disclosure, I should mention that those cells won’t really hold me.”

“Yeah?” Jack’s voice sounded gruff, but Ianto refrained from turning around to him.

“I’m connected enough to the Otherworld that I can still use it to travel,” Ianto said. He would need the help of the Others for that, but they wouldn’t hesitate to come if he called them. He could feel some surrounding him even now, but he knew the one thing they wouldn’t do would be revealing themselves to his team without dire need, and making the team believe in what Ianto had told them would never be rated that way.

“In other words, you are just humouring me, and you will just be gone the next time someone comes down to check on you?” Jack asked.

Ianto stopped and turned around. “No. I’m telling you that I’m respecting your decisions and your worries. I’ll stay where you put me barring any emergencies. I meant what I said to Gwen. I explained myself to you—specifically you, Jack—in the hope that we’ll be able to regain some kind of trust between us. I chose this life so that we—the Others, I mean, could help defend Earth against what we feel is coming. We hope with me as part of this timeline they’ll be able to finally reach that point in time as well, as soon as I have reached it naturally.”

“And after that’s done?”

“I’m here to stay,” Ianto said. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back before I even agreed to this second life. I planned to build a life outside of Torchwood after my task is fulfilled. And after I met Lisa, I had hoped that we would build this life together. But now—I don’t know. Maybe I’ll even stay here with this team if you will have me. It’s far from perfect, but I still feel much more comfortable here than I ever did in London.”

Jack eyed him silently for an uncomfortably long time before he pointed down the hallway to the cells without saying a single word for the whole time until he closed the door of the cell Ianto had stepped into without hesitation. Ianto watched him as Jack left, expecting him to stop again and say something, anything, but he didn’t even turn around for a last time before he was out of sight. Maybe there was finally the anger rising that Ianto had expected for hours now.

Chapter Text

Ianto knew that Toshiko was bringing him supper and water long before she was anywhere near the floor with the cells. Some of the Others were watching his team and keeping him informed, though he had not asked them for it. He thought that he should protest about that breach of privacy, but for the moment it meant he knew what was happening with them, so he let it slide.

“I really don’t think you should be here!” Toshiko said as soon as he could see her. “Jack is overreacting!”

“He is not,” Ianto said softly. “He thinks I’m compromised, but that you also have a more important problem to solve first. And in other circumstances, I would agree that finding a child we think is in danger would be the most important thing.”

“But not now because you think there is no saving the girl?”

Ianto sighed. “She doesn’t want to be saved, and in the end in this case it’s her decision. There have been Chosen Ones who decided to stay here in the end, but it’s rare.” He didn’t think it would bring anything to argue that there was no saving needed in his opinion, he wouldn’t get anyone to agree with him.

Toshiko frowned at him for a moment. “I hate to do this, but I need you to step back so that I can open the door and can put all of this inside for you.” She nodded down at the tray she was carrying, a carton of take-away, two bottles of water, and a book gathered on it.

Ianto grinned. “That’s not necessary.” He winked at her and a gentle nudge to the Others was enough for them to help step into the Otherworld inside his cell and out of it right beside Toshiko. “I told Jack that no cell would hold me, but I don’t think he believed me.” He took the tray from Toshiko, turned to where he knew the camera was hidden and nodded at it before he returned to his cell the same way he had left it.

Toshiko stared at him, blinking, and clearly lost for words.

Ianto laughed. “I’ll stay put because I really don’t want to alienate any of you. Partly because I know I’ll need to work with you when the day comes for which I’m here, but also because I really like you.”

“What is the Otherworld?” Toshiko asked.

“Before I got into Torchwood’s archives, I would have said the concept of another dimension would describe it the best.” Ianto put the tray on the floor beside the door and sat down on the cot, facing his friend. “But I don’t think anymore that it’s accurate. The Otherworld is connected to Earth specifically, not to the whole universe. I have come to think that the answer for its existence is found more in mythology and the occult, than in physics.”

Toshiko frowned thoughtfully. “Are the fairies … the Others the only ones in the Otherworld?”

Ianto shook his head. “No. It’s populated by all kinds of creatures. Some are peaceful and others are not, but the Others have strength in numbers and their connection to Earth. As far as I know, we are the only ones who can come here, but that could be wrong. We aren’t exactly … we don’t care how anything works. Mostly we care for our games.”

“A collective mindset of children,” Toshiko murmured.

“Yes,” Ianto agreed. “And some of us can be vicious when throwing a tantrum.”

“You have grown up, but you don’t think it’s wrong to search for Chosen Ones.”

“We don’t search for them, they find us,” Ianto said. “The … barrier between this world and the Otherworld is thin for children, as their mind is still much more open for the things they can’t explain. The older I get the more work it is to keep connected to the Otherworld. Many very small children play with us without ever becoming a Chosen One. It’s their circumstances in this world that make them a Chosen One, that make them cling to us and eventually prefer our company over the life they lead here.”

“You could try to change their circumstances here instead of taking them away!”

Ianto shrugged. “We all were once a Chosen One, Tosh. We all remember the relief of being welcomed in the Otherworld, and that memory is reinforced with every single Chosen One joining us because we share their joy as soon as they step into our embrace. I understand where you are coming from, why it seems to be so horrible to you, but in the end, for this argument, I’ll be always one of the Others.”

“Who were you before?” Toshiko asked.

“An unimportant child of a saddler. His youngest child, and the one whose birth had taken his wife from him. He never loved me less than my siblings, but most of my siblings detested me for the loss of our mother. I was the one to care for our father when he fell ill, even though I was barely eight years old. I would have died on tuberculosis as he did if I hadn’t joined the Others.”

Toshiko bit her lip. “What was your name?”

“I have no idea.” Ianto smiled, but he knew it would not reassure her. “As I said, names are unimportant to us. My name was the first thing I forgot, and I didn’t hold on to the names of my family for long either. The only memory important enough to take into the otherworld and later into this second life was the love my father had held for me.”

Toshiko wrapped her arms around herself and turned her head away. “All of this sounds awful, Ianto!”

“But it’s not.” He sighed. “We are happy. And few of us are ever really missed by those we leave behind. I know that goes against everything society teaches us about the roles of parents, about a mother’s or father’s instinct, but there are enough people on this planet who aren’t made to be a parent, or sometimes they are just not made to be the parent of that specific child.”

Toshiko shook her head, but when she looked back at Ianto again, she changed the topic, “You said the Otherworld was connected to Earth but not the universe. Can you explain that?”

Ianto nodded. “First you need to know that time is … different in the Otherworld. Here we are stuck in our timestream and barring extenuating circumstances our only choice is to go forward in time. For the Others, it’s more like … a big lake. I’ve seen the future and I’ve seen far into the past, as far back as to the beginning of humanity when humans and the Others still co-existed and every adult learned how to seek the connection to the Otherworld.”

Toshiko’s eyes were shining with curiosity, but she was only nodding when Ianto paused.

“It’s not too far into the future when humans will start to explore the universe,” Ianto continued. “Families will leave Earth to live on other planets. We lost a Chosen One this way because their parents took them from Earth mere days before they would have joined us. We lost all connection to them as if they would’ve died, and that hurts so much. Ever since, we have encouraged our Chosen Ones to join us as soon as possible if they come from a time where leaving Earth is a possibility. We haven’t lost another one to that.”

“Maybe they did die when they left Earth. There could have been an accident.”

Ianto shook his head. “They came back to Earth later in their life, and they made an effort to reconnect with us.”

“How?” Toshiko asked.

“Maybe I’ll show you later,” Ianto smiled. 

Toshiko nodded eagerly. “I would like that. Can I ask one more question?”

Ianto laughed. “You can ask as many questions as you like, and I’ll try to answer them as good as I can.”

Toshiko smiled. “I’m not sure how long it will take for Jack to come down here if I avoid work any longer. You said earlier that the Others hadn’t shown you Jack’s reaction to coming clean with us. But something in how you said that made me think they had shown you other possibilities.”

“They didn’t show me, but they had looked at different timestreams, different possibilities of what could happen. And they did warn me.” Ianto shrugged. “It’s … one of the things I’m unable to wrap my head around since I’m a human again. We are influencing the events on this world, but we can look at different possibilities, we can even interfere with different possibilities and watch how they play out if we do one or the other thing.”

“There are theories that every decision anyone makes creates a new dimension, a new alternate reality, and that therefore there exist infinite realities,” Toshiko said absent-minded. “What you are describing would fit into that theory.”

Ianto shrugged. “I have no idea. I didn’t spend much time trying to figure out how all of that worked. I have a responsibility here. We are sure the threat I’m here to face is coming from outside of Earth, because Torchwood is involved and because we are unable to see any of it. So, I concentrated my efforts to get onto Yvonne Hartman’s radar. She had other uses for me than making me a scientist.”

“Maybe we can try to figure this out together,” Toshiko suggested. She leaned forward eagerly, nearly bouncing on her feet in excitement.

Ianto smiled brightly. “I would love that. And thank you, Tosh.”

She frowned. “I understand the worry of the others but … you are still our Ianto. Learning that there is a little bit more to your past doesn’t change who you are!”

***

Toshiko’s words soothed Ianto more than he had expected he needed, even hours later when she had long returned to her work and left him alone in his cell. It gave him hope the rest of the team would eventually come around as well, even though their current actions did not support that.

Being confined to the cell was boring, and even the book Toshiko had bought him didn’t provide any distraction. Ianto may have learned to enjoy a couple of hours of doing nothing, but that only worked when he was at a place he enjoyed, which was not his current situation. The Others had sensed his boredom and restlessness before he had even become aware of it and those watching his teammates had offered to show him what they saw. Ianto had hesitated for all but ten minutes after he had finished his meal before he had agreed to that.

Ianto had followed Toshiko for a while and looked into Owen for just a moment, who was at the coroner’s office which held onto the Predators body to perform the autopsy there. There should be nothing outside the norm with the body aside from the rose petals filling up his lungs and throat, and with the suspicion that the Predator was involved in police cases, Ianto had been able to convince Jack to leave the body with them and only alter the contents of the autopsy report concerning the cause of death.

Looking into Jack and Gwen was a lot more interesting and informative. Jack had spent most of the afternoon working through everything Torchwood’s files could provide about Ianto, while Toshiko and Gwen had been tasked with searching and analysing unusual weather patterns. Ianto had no idea what exactly Jack was searching for, but he took it as an indication that Jack wouldn’t just decide Ianto was a threat that needed to be eliminated.

In the evening, after Jack had told the others to go home, Gwen stayed behind, bidding her time with work she would not have needed to do right at this moment until Jack and she were alone.

“You have a boyfriend waiting for you at home,” Jack said, clearly irritated with her staying back.

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Yes, and Rhys won’t hurt when I’m home twenty minutes later. I wanted to talk to you about this whole nonsense Ianto spouted.”

“We already talked about Ianto at length earlier.”

For a moment Ianto wondered if he should ask the Others to also show him the conversation that had taken place right after Jack had brought him to the cells, but he dismissed it. He should probably not listen to this conversation either. Watching them while they worked more or less silently was one thing and nothing he would not have seen for himself on a normal day, while staying for their conversation was a clear breach of privacy. But he wanted to know what Gwen had to say so he didn’t cut his connection to the Others sitting in the main area of the Hub.

“And we were going in a circle over and over again when we should have come to a clear decision!” Gwen crossed her arms and looked at Jack with a frown. “I think all of you are overlooking how much of a threat Ianto is. He wasn’t hiding his abhorrent lack of respect for human life at all!”

“In case you missed it, you are the only one here feeling sorry for Goodson,” Jack said.

“There is still no proof that he was any kind of threat to even a single child!” Gwen said. “You have all condemned him on the basis of something Ianto claimed to be true. I don’t think we can trust a single thing he has ever said!”

Jack laughed. “Because there was something about his past you didn’t know? Then you should pack your things and go back to working for the police because you can’t trust Owen, Tosh, or me either. Oh, and we couldn’t trust you as well, in this case.”

“He isn’t human!”

“All scans I did show that he is completely human. I’m still trying to figure out if he is influenced by them or if this is a late reaction to what Ianto went through in London,” Jack said. “I’m not sure which problem would be easier solved.”

“He knew Goodson would die, didn’t he?” Gwen asked agitated. “He asked you if you believed him now while he stood over that body! We could have tried to save that man if Ianto had…”

“No,” Jack interrupted her. “There is nothing we can do to protect anyone from the fairies. There is no room we could build to keep them out. And regardless of how many people we could have put in the same room as Goodson, there would have always been at least one more of them than we would have been.”

Gwen frowned. “I thought you didn’t know much about them!”

“I know this, and I don’t doubt it.” Jack shook his head. “I tried to find out as much as I could about them after I lost my whole unit to them. Earth’s myth is shrouded with them, not always in the same form or name, but if you dig deep enough you can find similarities.”

“And that Ianto is complicit in helping them abduct children?” Gwen asked, nearly shouting now. “You can’t just let him get away with something like that! If he is helping them now, he has helped them before!”

She was right with that, Ianto thought. He had helped soothe the Chosen Ones, protect them and welcome them into the Otherworld, even a couple of times since he had come back to a human life. He would always help a Chosen One find their way to the Otherworld if there was a need for his help. He would never regret it either, but he had long ago accepted no other human would ever understand his stand in this. He wouldn’t try to convince any of them, he only hoped he could lead them to a place at which they would just accept his opinion about it.

“You really believe he is one of them?” Jack asked.

“Didn’t you monitor the feed showing the cells at all today?”

“No.” Jack drew out the word, staring at her with a raised eyebrow. “There is an alarm set that would inform us if there was movement outside of the cells. And Ianto knows how he can access the internal communication system if he needs something.”

“And that alarm was of course shut down when Tosh was down there, flirting with him. He left the cell, and she didn’t have to open the door for it. He just walked through it. I bet Tosh didn’t tell you. She was too fascinated by his little stories.”

“So, you spied both on Tosh and Ianto?” Jack asked.

Ianto suddenly didn’t feel guilty anymore about spying on Gwen in return.

“So what?” Gwen asked. “I thought it was a mistake allowing her to bring him down the food in the first place, but you ignored me when I pointed out that Tosh was too involved with him and wouldn’t be able to keep the needed distance! Did she tell you that he left his cell or not?”

“Ianto warned me that it was possible,” Jack said.

Ianto wondered if Gwen noticed that Jack had not answered her question, but he doubted it in the face of her rage.

“And you didn’t try to confine him in a more secure manner?”

Jack sighed. “That he actually left his cell only confirms that he does have some kind of contact with the fairies, and we are back to me telling you that there is no room we could secure against them. And that he returned to his cell shows what he said about his motives is at least not completely wrong.”

“Or maybe he is just trying to deceive us long enough to betray us in the moment from which he gains the most!”

“Go home, Gwen,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Rhys is waiting for you, and there is really nothing here for you to do.”

“And who’ll keep an eye on Ianto while no one is in the Hub?” Gwen asked.

“I live here, the Hub is never deserted at night.” Jack crossed his arms. “And if you missed it, going home was an order given to you by me as your boss. I’ve heard your opinion about Ianto, and I may consider it, but in the end, I’m the one to make the decisions here.”

Gwen took a startled step back, and Ianto was not surprised that she had not expected to be dismissed in this way. She was much too used to speaking her mind at every opportunity whenever she found something to argue about and without any regard if it was the right time and place to do so. Ianto had wondered since the first day when Gwen had joined their team why Jack let her get away with it.

It was clear that Gwen was preparing to launch another protest, but Jack’s phone ringing interrupted her.

“Go home,” Jack repeated, before he answered the call with a short, “Yes?”

“Jack.” The voice was quiet, but the Others heard enough of it that Ianto could identify a woman, and he even heard the shaking in her voice. “You were right, they are bad.”

Jack paled. “Estelle! Where are you?”

“At home. And I think they are here.”

“Stay inside!” Jack instructed, already running to the door. “Lock your doors and don’t open them until I’m there!”

Ianto sat up abruptly, severing his connection to those watching Jack and Gwen. “Bring me to the Keeper, right now!”

“The Immortal One won’t leave the Chosen One alone!” the Others complained.

“The Keeper has nothing to do with this!” Ianto shouted angrily. “Bring me to her now!”

Chapter Text

Ianto stepped out of the Otherworld in a small backyard and right into the artificial rain the Others had created, though it could just have started. The first thing he saw was Estelle Cole rising her hands over her head, half-turned to the door of her terrace, which was closed, and Ianto suspected it was also locked from the inside.

“Stop it!” Ianto growled.

Cole flinched and turned to him. “Who are you?” She sounded weak and fearful, and stopped in a cough.

Ianto ignored her. “She didn’t do anything to you! Back away!”

He could practically hear their fury in the flutter of the Others’ wings and the rain got only stronger. “The Immortal One wants to take the Chosen One! His friend wants to take you! We’ll take their friend in return!”

Ianto shook his head. That was not at all how he had understood Gwen’s part in her conversation with Jack, but he had no idea what the Others had seen in whatever future they had looked into. And he was sure they had investigated the future to come to this conclusion, but it was outside their understanding that what they had seen wouldn’t necessarily happen to him.

He stepped to Cole and pulled her into his arms to protect her from the rain. He could not do much against the rain, but he could protect a small area around himself from any kind of weather even now. Cole gasped for air and didn’t hesitate to press her forehead against Ianto’s chest as she noticed that she was protected from the water now.

“She is a Keeper of the old knowledge!” Ianto shouted. “Do you have any idea what would happen if other Keepers heard of this?”

“Nothing would happen!” the Others hissed.

Ianto laughed. “Really, you think we alone would be enough to keep the connection between our worlds open? It’s as much those who still believe in the Otherworld that keeps the connection as us coming from here. If we lose this connection in this time, it will ripple out through all of time, and you know it! No Chosen One will ever find us again and we will be confined to the Otherworld. That will get boring fast!”

He knew appealing to anything else would not penetrate them as angry as they were at Jack. Their own safety, their own comfort would be the only thing they would care for. They snarled, but they didn’t say anything against it, though the rain didn’t lessen either.

“You need to stop lashing out against Jack!” Ianto demanded. “He has no chance to keep the Chosen One away from us, and you know that! She has already made up her mind, hasn’t she? You already feel the connection to her, don’t you? Nothing anyone could say would make her change her mind now.”

“You don’t feel her?” Their voices were quiet and shaking in shock. For a moment the rain lessened before it came back in full force and a wind arose that Ianto had barely a chance to stand up against. “You are losing your connection to us!”

“We knew that would happen,” Ianto said. “Doesn’t change that I’m here to protect us! It was a sacrifice I was willing to make for us, for you, and you are risking everything because you suddenly find it amusing to bait Jack! He doesn’t even know who the Chosen One is yet! Chances are he won’t even find out if you just left him alone! Missing the right time once I get, missing it twice is intent!”

They hissed at him, and he could feel wings hitting his face, though they didn’t show themselves.

“You are risking everything for this little feud you think you have with Jack!”

“The Immortal One will never accept you as you are! No one will ever accept you as we do!”

“Oh.” Ianto blinked. The Chosen One had always ever been an excuse, he realised, at least for most of them. “Really, that’s it? You are jealous because I find new connections in this life in which I’m trapped? You think I wouldn’t want to come back if I had a choice?”

“You were quite eager to leave!” they cried, but the rain at least started to subside. The wind was still pressing against them, but Ianto didn’t budge, even though he’d had to adjust his stance.

“Taking care of others is what I always did,” Ianto nearly whispered. “You knew that about me, even before I joined you. Now I’m taking care of you the only way I ever could. I couldn’t just sit by and let all of us be destroyed. You knew that before we even knew how big of a threat was coming our way.”

“He won’t accept you,” they repeated, wailing. “You could still come back.”

Ianto shook his head. He could not remember that there had ever been this kind of desperation when one had left them to return to a human life. But then, the connection to them had always been severed early on, leaving only flimsy memories and childhood fantasies for those who had left and nothing for the Others. He had spent most of his childhood as connected to them as any other Chosen One was shortly before they joined them. The connection may have become strained since he had reached adulthood, but he was still as connected to them as a Chosen One who had just become such.

“I can’t,” Ianto whispered. “It’s been too late for years, and you know that. We don’t even know if I could have come back as a child. It’s not meant to be this way. Those who come back to this world are trapped here. That’s why we don’t let them regain much of their connection and search for parents who dearly wish for a child. They can’t become Chosen Ones again. We can’t take them back.”

“You shouldn’t have left!”

“And then we all would have died.” Ianto took a deep breath. They had felt that, although they had not been able to determine anything tangible about the events. “I’ll fight to keep my connection to you for as long as possible. I don’t want to lose it either, you know. But it’s a stupid, stupid thing to attack a Keeper. Someday being a Keeper will be all that’s left for me.”

“You are ours!”

They sounded petulant now, and Ianto couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ll always be a Chosen One. But you need to trust me about the things concerning this world.”

The wind stopped abruptly, and Ianto felt that they had retreated. He closed his eyes and sighed before he took a step back from Cole. Her white hair was hanging in her face and her wet clothes were clinging to her, but she looked up at him full of wonder instead of the horror and fear he had expected after being attacked by the very beings that she had loved for her whole life. She had not inherited her knowledge from her family as most Keepers did, but had searched it out for herself, had spent many years on it and had made connections in the knowledge no one else had done in generations.

“I’m sorry for this,” Ianto murmured, struggling for a moment with the knowledge the Others had left behind about her.

“You are a friend of Jack?” Cole asked.

Ianto sighed, wondering how her fear from earlier could have just vanished. “I really hope we can get back to that place, yes.” He looked to the door that was still locked. “Do you have a spare key hidden away for your front door?”

Cole shook her head. “No, but Jack has a key. Is he on his way here as well?”

“I guess.” Ianto shrugged. “He doesn’t know I came here, I’m pretty sure he won’t be happy to see me here, Mrs Cole.”

“Estelle, please. Someone who has saved my life has more than earned to use my given name.”

He smiled and inclined his head. “I’m Ianto.”

“Oh.” Suddenly Estelle looked at him full of sorrow. “Jack talked about you. I mean, he tried to not use names, but it slipped through once after he came back from London. I’m very sorry for what happened there to you.”

Ianto felt his smile getting strained. “Thank you. I didn’t realise Jack saw you so often. Or that he shared so much with you.”

Estelle nodded, but she looked at him with a frown. “The fairies talked to you as if you were one of them. How is that possible? And they called Jack the Immortal One.”

“I am one of them,” Ianto agreed, hoping she would just forget the comment about Jack if he ignored it. He could not imagine Jack would be happy if his secret would be revealed to her. “And we were all once human children, which is the reason that Jack is so incensed about us. I don’t think he really believes that the Chosen Ones become one of us, but I also don’t know what he thinks happens to them. I came back to protect us, or at least help protect us from a threat to this world, but I don’t know yet what it is that we need protection from.”

“Those that spoke to you sounded—“ Estelle chuckled. “—like a child throwing a tantrum.”

“Because that’s basically what we are,” Ianto agreed. “I didn’t know how difficult it seems to be for the Others to let me go. Maybe I could have handled the situation better and you wouldn’t have been dragged into it. I’m sorry this happened.”

Estelle patted his arm with a bright smile. “I don’t have a problem being saved by a handsome, young man! Is it true what your friends said about Jack?”

“That he won’t accept me?” Ianto asked, even though he knew what she was asking for. “Or that he would try to hold the Chosen One back?”

Estelle raised her brows. “You know exactly what I’m asking for. When I was a very young woman, during the war, I fell madly in love with a soldier. I had dreamed of sharing my life with him, but I was told he died in Germany. A couple of years ago a young man came to visit me, looking exactly like my soldier in ‘42 and much too young to be his son if he had died when I had been told about it. He still told me he was my soldier’s son, sharing his father’s name even. I always thought I was imagining things about their similarities. I wondered sometimes if it was possible for them to be the same, but that couldn’t have been more than a silly thought, right? Expect now the fairies called him immortal.”

“I don’t think I’m the one you should ask this question,” Ianto said quietly. “If it’s true or not, it’s not my secret to tell.”

Estelle stared at him for long, silent minutes, and that was only stopped when Jack shouted her name first from the other side of the house and then from inside long before he rushed to the glass door they still stood in front of and hastily opened it. 

Jack rushed to Estelle, grabbing first her shoulders before raising his hands to cup her cheeks. “Are you alright?”

Estelle nodded with a smile. “Yes. Your friend here saved me.”

“What are you doing here?” Gwen asked.

Ianto looked from Jack and Estelle to Gwen, who stood in the open door, her gun raised and aimed at him. She watched him with a grim face, and Ianto was neither surprised that she had accompanied Jack here despite being told to go home nor that she felt it needed to aim her gun at him. He suspected Jack would join her as soon as his imminent worry about Estelle was soothed.

Before Ianto could answer, Estelle stepped between them. “Put that gun away, young lady! How dare you come into my home and threaten my guest?”

“I don’t think you know who this man is, Mrs Cole,” Gwen said, without changing her stand, even though her gun was now aimed at Estelle. “He should be in one of our cells, that’s where we left him.”

Jack grabbed Gwen’s arm and pushed it aside. “Take care at who you point your gun!” he hissed, before turning his head to Ianto. “But Gwen’s right. What are you doing here?”

“Ianto stopped the fairies when they trapped me in the rain,” Estelle said quietly. “He stood suddenly right behind me and argued with them. He shielded me from the rain until they went away.”

“I bet he sent them after you in the first place!” Gwen growled.

“How did you know to come here?” Jack asked, still pushing Gwen’s arm to the side.

Ianto pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers and rocked back on his heels. “I listened to your little discussion with Gwen and knew I had to act as soon as I heard what Estelle said to you when she called.”

“You spied on us?” Gwen asked angrily.

Ianto grinned at her. “You are not the only one who is able to do such a thing. I’ve a little advantage over you, of course, as I don’t need any cameras. If I ask nicely the Others show me what they see and hear, and Jack was right when he told you that there is no place anyone could keep them out of.”

Jack stepped in front of Gwen and Ianto suspected that she had tried to free her arm from his grip as Jack growled, “Put your gun away, Gwen. It won’t do you any good here!”

“I think you should change out of these wet clothes, Estelle,” Ianto murmured while Gwen hissed something to Jack that wasn’t loud enough for him to understand. He hoped Estelle would get out of the way until the volatile situation between him, Gwen, and Jack was cleared up.

Estelle crossed her arms over her chest and raised her chin without turning to him or stepping aside. “I don’t think I trust this woman enough to leave her alone with my saviour. And I’m not the only one in need of a change of clothes, though I fear I don’t have anything that could fit you, Ianto.”

Ianto sighed but didn’t argue with her. “And to spare you your next question about how I got here, Jack, it’s what I told you when you brought me down to the cells. I can use the Otherworld to travel, which means I’m as limitless in reaching any place I want as the Others are.”

Jack turned to him and took a step back from Gwen. “Why did they attack Estelle?”

Ianto noticed that Jack was now holding Gwen’s gun, and while he still contemplated that, Estelle was the one to answer Jack’s question, “Because I’m your friend. They said something about you taking away their Chosen One and I assume your colleague here taking away Ianto. They wanted to repay you in the same way.”

“I didn’t know they would do this,” Ianto said. “I would have warned you and would have tried to stop them earlier.”

“I thought you shared everything,” Gwen spat.

“So, you were not only watching Tosh and me but also listening in on us?” Ianto asked before he nodded. “We do share everything. But that’s more of an emotional base. We aren’t sharing our thoughts, at least not all the time. Each of us is still an individual, we still possess our own mind. If we would need to be of one mind for every decision we made, there would never be anything accomplished. There are a lot of us, you know?”

“How many?” Jack asked wearily.

Ianto shrugged. “Few chose to come back to a second human life as I did. Everyone else is still with us, regardless of at which point in time of the timeline of this world they joined us.”

Gwen crossed her arms. “I still don’t believe you that you didn’t know about this attack.” She turned her head to Jack. “I told you we need to find a way to securely confine him.”

“Leave my property,” Estelle said, cutting off Jack’s reply. “I don’t care who you think you are, or what you think you know. Ianto saved my life, and I won’t stand you threatening him on my property. You aren’t welcome here any longer, Miss Cooper.”

“Estelle…” Jack started, but it ended in a sigh. “No, you are right, of course. Go finally home, Gwen, you shouldn’t have come with me in the first place. I’ll repay you for the cab now and in the morning as soon as you are at work tomorrow.”

Gwen gasped. “Jack!”

“Come along, Ianto,” Estelle ordered. “We’ll go and find dry clothes for us. If I come back down and you are still here, Miss Cooper, I’m calling the police.”

Ianto turned his head away trying to hide his smile, but he followed Estelle into the house without protest after the old woman had glared long enough at Gwen for her to step out of the door. He had no problem letting Jack deal with Gwen, especially as Jack didn’t seem to share her suspicions against him, at least for the moment.

He followed Estelle through the living room into the hall, before he said, “You don’t need to search anything for me. I’ll just go home for a moment to change and come back here. I’m sure Jack has still a lot to say about the attack and my role in it.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to live anywhere near here,” Estelle said with a frown.

Ianto grinned. “I’m not. Space is of no concern if I use the Otherworld to travel. I don’t do it often, but today is a special day.”

“You are coming back?” Estelle asked.

“I’m not letting you alone to deal with Jack’s reaction.” Ianto smiled sadly. “I’m sure he thought the whole time driving here he would find you dead. And he would have if I hadn’t watched him when you called him.”

Estelle shuddered. “Yes, I … that is … I’ll expect you to be back soon!”

Ianto nodded. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.” 

He did not wait for any other reaction, and the Others didn’t hesitate when he silently called for their aid. He didn’t talk to them, although he could feel them nudging at him. Ianto felt something would change between him and the Others after the revelation from earlier, but he did not feel prepared to deal with it now. He needed to deal with Jack and the rest of his team first, and then he would need to figure out what he thought about the Others’ disappointment before he could deal with them directly.

He changed into jeans and a sweater because it would be more comfortable if he would need to return to the cell later and threw his suit carelessly over the rack in his bathroom to let it dry. He had no idea what to expect of Jack, but he was sure his focus had only been on Gwen because she had not cared to lower her gun when Estelle had stepped in front of it. Ianto could not imagine that the threat against Estelle would not make Jack mistrust him even more.

Chapter Text

Ianto stepped right into Estelle’s living room as he returned. Jack stood in front of the closed door to the terrace, his back to the room and judging by his stance and the tightness of his shoulders he was keeping watch. Gwen was nowhere to be seen, but her disabled gun lay on the table in front of the sofa. Ianto had no idea how to face Jack, so he kept quiet and stared at him, getting lost in his thoughts and his worries.

He flinched when Jack suddenly turned to him. “I have no idea what to do with you, Ianto. How can I be sure that Gwen isn’t right? I can wish as much as I want that you are the man I got to know in the last couple of months, but there is no guarantee for anything anymore.”

Ianto shrugged. “There never is.” He was convinced it would be easier to handle Jack’s anger when it finally came than any of this.

Jack inclined his head, a small smile tugging on his lips. “True.”

“I can only repeat what I told you earlier. I never intended to deceive you. There was just no reason or opportunity to bring it up,” Ianto said. “And I didn’t know that you’d had an encounter with us in the past until last night.”

“Maybe we both need to accept that we were wrong, Jack,” Estelle said as she came into the room. “You never explained to me why you feared them so much, and I never asked because I didn’t want to hear it. I’ve spent a lot of time searching for all the hidden information about the fairies I could find, and I know most of my sources you would never even look at let alone trust.”

“My whole unit was killed by them because three of them had killed a Chosen One in a drunken accident. I don’t know why they didn’t kill me,” Jack said.

Ianto lowered his gaze as Estelle said, “Because they couldn’t, probably? Was that back during the war?”

It took Jack a couple of long seconds before he asked, “What?”

“They called you the Immortal One when Ianto spoke to them,” Estelle said. “And I have long wondered about the inconsistencies in the stories you have told me.” She sighed as she sat down. “I never dared to ask, but I kept wondering. You knew things no father would ever share with his son, I believe. And sometimes you look at me as if … as if we were back in London again.”

“I don’t know what…” Jack trailed off, dragging his fingers through his hair, and Ianto felt he shouldn’t be here for this conversation.

“Why did you search me out?” Estelle asked. “After all those years?”

“I missed you,” Jack whispered. “I had seen you a couple of times in the town, and I think you saw me at least once as well. I thought I could at least steal a little bit of the friendship back we shared back then and that … your end was near enough you wouldn’t have a chance to notice that I’m not ageing.”

Ianto winced uncomfortably, but Estelle laughed. “I’m glad you did. I’ve enjoyed our friendship very much, and I don’t want to miss it.”

“That’s not how people normally react,” Jack said warily.

Ianto couldn’t hold himself back to say, “Normal people also don’t step in front of a gun to protect someone they just met minutes earlier.”

“Someone who saved my life,” Estelle reminded. “Don’t bring that woman back here, Jack. I didn’t miss how she rolled her eyes about me during or after my presentation. I didn’t say anything then because I didn’t want to be rude to your friend. And could you put this thing away, please?” She gestured to the gun on the table.

Jack sighed. “I don’t have anywhere to put it. I gave Gwen the car so she wouldn’t need to wait for a cab.”

Ianto blinked, only noticing now that Jack wasn’t even wearing his coat. He had probably stormed out of the Hub and only remembered to take the keys to the SUV with him because he had needed the car. It had been clear that his panic was overtaking him even only in the short moment Ianto himself had needed to react to Estelle’s call for help.

Estelle huffed, stood up and stomped to a narrow shelf beside the fireplace. She took a jewel chest, emptied it on the shelf, and shoved it at Jack as she returned to the sofa. “Put it in here and don’t forget to bring the chest back. I haven’t had a need for guns in my house since the war.”

Ianto tried to hide his laughter in a cough, but the unimpressed look Estelle sent him told him that he had failed. He decided to come back to his conversation with Jack she had interrupted earlier. “If you don’t know what to do with me, does that mean I should just return to my cell?”

“Cell?” Estelle asked scandalized.

Jack rolled his eyes. “What good would that do? It’s better to put you to work than to give you even more time to spy on us. And … I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wouldn’t have asked you to come to Cardiff if you hadn’t convinced me in London that you were a good man. That you worked for One was more of a hindrance to that invitation than anything else could ever be.”

“The two of you could sit down like civilised people,” Estelle muttered.

“Or we could get out of your hair to clear this situation up,” Ianto suggested.

Estelle shook her head. “I would appreciate the company after the scare from earlier. If you don’t mind, of course.”

Ianto nodded and sat down in the armchair, leaving Jack the spot beside Estelle on the sofa. He felt floored by Jack’s words, wondering why he had misjudged Jack so much. He had not expected this kind of quiet acceptance, and it felt anticlimactic that even now after his friend had been attacked by the Others Jack was still this calm. 

Ianto did not trust the calmness, though.

Estelle watched Ianto, while Jack finally followed her instruction to put Gwen’s gun away. “You have been awfully nervous and quiet since you came back.”

“He is waiting for an explosion from me,” Jack said without looking at either of them. “Ianto expects me to leash out because that is what he witnessed in London the last time I was confronted with something out of my nightmares. None of us were the best in those days.”

Ianto nodded in silent agreement, even more confused now about the lack of such a reaction from Jack.

Estelle eyed Jack with a frown, even after he had sat down beside her. “Are you holding yourself back because of me?”

“No.” Jack shook his head, blowing out a breath. “The difference between London and now is that the Cyberman and the Daleks had only one goal concerning our planet: to destroy it and to kill every single life on it, human or not. As much as I … detest the fairies, I know they won’t destroy our whole world, if only because they depend on it as much as we do.”

“Do you still think they are influencing me?” Ianto asked. “Or have you started to believe me?”

“How long exactly did you spy on me today?”

Ianto shrugged. “Most of the afternoon. I’ve learned to handle my boredom for the most part, but that was difficult today. For the Others, getting bored is the most dangerous thing that could happen, really. We are always searching for the next game to play.”

“Do you notice that you are changing the pronouns you use?” Estelle asked. “Sometimes you include yourself in the group when you speak about them and sometimes not.”

Ianto frowned. “I … I still am one of them. As much as they fear losing me, and as difficult as it has become to keep the connection to them as it is, I don’t think I’ll ever lose that connection completely, even if I should ever fully turn my back on them. Which will never happen as long as I remember them.”

“What is a Chosen One?” Estelle asked.

“The children they abduct,” Jack said darkly.

Ianto shook his head. “We don’t abduct them. They make their own decision. But yes, they leave this world to become one of us. When I joined them, I was nine, and it was 1873. I had found them when I was much younger, playing in the forest near our village. The Others were my only friends, but as long as my father lived, I never wished to join them. They never demanded it, and they stayed with me even after I had told them I wouldn’t leave my father.”

“Did they kill your father?” Jack asked.

Ianto sent him a scathing look. “No. Tuberculosis killed my father, and it would have killed me if I hadn’t decided to become one of them because I had caught it from him while I cared for him until his death. There was no hospital anywhere near our village and my siblings … looking back I know they had other responsibilities they couldn’t neglect, but back then I thought they had abandoned our father and me.”

Estelle frowned, biting her lip. “I thought … taking children was an unfounded accusation made against them. I’ve dedicated much of my research to cases of missing children who later turned up again after someone had claimed the fairies had taken them.”

“A couple of missing children every year are those who join us in the Otherworld. But in my experience, those are the cases that are quietly forgotten in a couple of weeks because not even the parents care much about it. No Chosen One has a connection to their family in this world that would hold them back. The children that find us and still have that connection to their family or to friends, don’t ever become Chosen Ones.”

“And what part do the fairies have in severing that connection?” Jack asked darkly.

“None.” Ianto shook his head. “I feel that you aren’t listening to me, Jack. There are thousands if not millions of children we play with every day. One or two dozen a year become Chosen Ones. Children still believe in what they can’t explain, so it’s easy for them to find us. Most of them forget about us someday. And some keep believing in us, even though they have lost their abilities to see us for the most part, even fewer dedicate themselves to learn about us even then. And barely any, compared to the overall number of children on this planet, chose to join us.”

“Did I play with you as a child?” Estelle asked.

Ianto smiled. “Yes.” His gaze dropped to the stones and other material Estelle had gathered on the table. Some of them could help open a connection to the Otherworld, but that was knowledge Ianto had thought was long forgotten. “Let me try something.” He arranged some of the stones and plants in a loose circle, putting anything on the floor that would be a hindrance including the chest containing the gun.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked leerily.

“Maybe we can get a small insight into the past,” Ianto muttered. It needed a little push from him and a helping hand from the Others, but then a small, transparent figure started to form in the circle he had built. A small girl dancing in a garden that was barely recognisable around her, joined by half a dozen of the Others in the small, glowing form they took on when playing with children.

“Oh.” Estelle pressed a shaking hand against her mouth. “How … That’s me! How are you doing this?”

“You have found out a lot about making a connection to the Otherworld,” Ianto said quietly. “And time for us is … different than here. If Jack had been born on Earth I would show you him as a child, even if that’s so far into the future we humans can’t even imagine it.” Ianto cocked his head and the girl changed to a boy, younger than the girl had been, swimming in a shallow river. “That’s me in my first life when I didn’t know yet that I would become a Chosen One.”

“How does it work?” Jack asked.

Ianto shrugged. “I have no idea, at least not in the way you want to know. I only know how to make it happen, but I don’t know how it works. If it’s physics or something else.” He looked up at Jack who was staring at the table with a mixture of wonder and distrust on his face. “Feel free to scan the circle I created.”

Jack startled and stared at him for a moment as if he had not thought about that himself yet before he fumbled his wrist strap open. Ianto didn’t expect anything to come from it because the scans Jack had taken in the afternoon at the police station had shown nothing either, and the presence of the Others had nearly been suffocating there. There they had pressed against him, sharing his fury over the Predator and his relief over his death. Now they still felt as distant as they had been since he had chased them away from their attack on Estelle.

“Nothing,” Jack confirmed with a frown after several minutes.

“It’s magic,” Estelle whispered, full of conviction. “Of course you can’t measure it with your instruments!”

Ianto smiled, and he let the display on the table vanish. It had taken more energy out of him than he had expected. “I think it’s more that no one ever bothered to find a scientific explanation for it. Those still believing in the Otherworld even as adults are seldom scientists. And the connection between the Otherworld and this world is confined to Earth and soon enough the explorations of humanity will turn away from their own planet and concentrate on the universe as a whole.”

“It is?” Jack asked surprised.

“Yes. I’ve already assured Tosh I’ll answer all her questions, I’m sure she won’t mind if you join us.”

Jack nodded slowly. “I’ll take you up on that.”

“Would you do the same for me?” Estelle asked hesitantly. “Though, I’m sure my questions will be much different to those of Jack.”

Ianto smiled brightly. “I’d love to answer every single of your questions. I would like to know how you learned so much as well.” He pointed at the things gathered on the table. “I thought it lost knowledge in this time what you would need to create a personal stone circle. I mean, this one only worked because I already have a profound connection to the Otherworld, but there is not much missing for you to accomplish on your own what I just did.”

“Could you teach me?” Estelle asked eagerly.

Jack frowned and shook his head. “Do you think that’s such a good idea? They already attacked you once.”

“They won’t do it again,” Ianto promised. “They know now that Estelle is under my protection. There will always be a couple of them near her now to warn me if those that try to leash out against you get this brilliant idea a second time. They knew even then it was wrong, but…”

“I think you need to keep in mind that in the end, you are dealing with children, Jack,” Estelle said.

“No normal child goes on a killing spree,” Jack muttered.

“Sometimes just because they don’t have the ability to do it,” Ianto said. “It’s awfully hard to protect yourself against people that are so much bigger than you. Especially when the only real protection you could get is the death of that person. Doesn’t mean they don’t wish they could. Most of them learn to deal with it while growing up, but there is no growing up in the Otherworld.”

“And they don’t just kill indiscriminately, do they?” Estelle asked.

“We don’t and we never have,” Ianto agreed. “We don’t much care for what is happening in this world as long as our Chosen Ones are safe. Sometimes we go overboard, and I’m sorry you were caught up in such a case, Jack. And that some of us are still holding it against you.”

“Did they try to provoke me with the attack on Estelle?” Jack asked.

Ianto bit his lip. He didn’t want to lie to Jack, but he also didn’t know how open he could or should be.

It was Estelle in the end who answered, taking the decision out of Ianto’s hands. “As far as I understood Ianto’s conversation with them, there were several reasons coming together. The two I told you about earlier, you threatening the Chosen One and your colleague threatening Ianto. But there is also some jealousy and misery over Ianto’s connection to them waning while his relationship with your team grows.”

Ianto rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I had no idea that the later one could be a problem. I don’t know how to deal with it, and I don’t think there will be any time in the next couple of days to think about it. I’m not the first one to return to a second life here, but I’m the first one we haven’t severed the connection to immediately because I’ll still need this connection and my memories for the task ahead of me.”

“And they just let people go when they want to have a second life?” Jack asked with raised brows.

Ianto smiled. “Of course. No one is a prisoner with us, Jack. It’s not easy to let them go, but they want to go because they have become unhappy and unsatisfied for one reason or another in the Otherworld. Most that go get bored with eternity, and all of us feel that in them. It’s always difficult to let go because we are very possessive of our own, but we do let them go without protest, and we always watch over them even if they don’t remember us and can’t make that connection again.”

“And now they are possessive of you,” Estelle said. “Can’t be easy to see you make a connection with someone they can’t stand.”

Ianto sighed. “I go to visit the circle in Roundstone Wood every other night as much as possible since I’m here to commune with them, and they haven’t once mentioned that there was a history between us and Jack. They weren’t happy that I left London, but I thought that was because we know what I’m here for will start to happen there.”

Estelle leaned forward eagerly. “Is your visit there the reason I could see them dance last night?”

“Yes, partly. If you go over your pictures, you’ll see a shadow in the circle. That’s me. I can connect with them anywhere, but at a place like the circle it takes no effort at all, gives even more energy back than it takes. I’ve used it to be able to skip on sleep a couple of times.”

“That can’t be healthy,” Estelle said with a frown.

Ianto laughed. “We have a busy job, even if I stay in our base most of the time and there is no threat of a world-ending event ahead of us.”

Estelle blinked, and then she turned to Jack. “Ianto said you weren’t born on Earth and that it happened far into the future!”

Ianto winced. He had not even thought about that comment, forgetting for a moment that it was not even common knowledge among their team. Estelle’s easy acceptance of Jack’s immortality and of the Others had made him forget that there were still secrets she was not privy to and that she probably should not know. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered sheepishly.

Jack stared at the table silently until Estelle closed her hand around his.

“I’m sorry as well,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t ask about any of this.”

Jack shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ve made it a habit of keeping all of this a secret for a very long time.” He turned his hand and laced his fingers with hers.

“Maybe I should leave you alone to talk,” Ianto said quietly.

“Yes,” Jack agreed without pause, ignoring Estelle’s protest. “I’ll see you in the Hub in the morning. I’ll stay here tonight. I would appreciate it if you could go by the Hub on your way home and check if everything is in order. I don’t remember if we locked it down properly.”

Chapter Text

The morning came much too early for Ianto’s taste, and the relief he had felt over Jack’s acceptance the previous night was soon pushed away by his worry about the rest of the team. Especially Gwen, of whom Ianto suspected that her biggest problem was not his missing sympathy for the dead Predator but that he was not entirely human. 

He had seen this behaviour in Torchwood One more than enough, and it had always made him uncomfortable. Coming to Cardiff and seeing that encounters with aliens could be handled in a more peaceful way had been a relief. Gwen bringing this attitude to the team was worrying, and Ianto resolved to talk to Jack about it as soon as the situation had calmed down a little bit.

Ianto was the first one in the Hub the following morning. Jack arrived only a short while after Ianto and they both worked silently after a short greeting until the rest of the team arrived, all surprised to find Ianto at his workstation. 

Gwen began shouting and threatening him before Owen and Toshiko even knew what had happened in the night, and she barely calmed down even after Jack had explained it. Their early morning meeting ended with Jack ordering Gwen into his office after sending the rest of them to take care of their work. 

Owen held Ianto back in the conference room when the others left with an inquiry Ianto had not expected at all, though maybe he should have. “I need to know if there is anything I need to consider in case of an emergency. This is something you do not hide from the person responsible for your medical care!”

Ianto blinked in surprise before he started to smile. “I’m a perfectly normal human concerning my biology.”

Owen frowned. “Are you sure? You were very vague yesterday, but I got the impression your creation wasn’t the result of your parents’ sexual intercourse.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Ianto nodded. “I don’t remember how my mother’s pregnancy in this life was created, but I am absolutely sure I’m completely human. You have my medical file and I’ll gladly donate some blood for you to run all the tests you’d like to run.”

“You said you searched for a woman who couldn’t get another child on her own,” Owen said.

“And that’s as much as I remember,” Ianto agreed. “I think it was more a problem of my father than my mother, to be honest. My father in this life always thought I wasn’t his son, though we did a DNA test in the late nineties to prove it to him. I don’t think he held it consciously against me, but it still tainted our relationship. Which was startling because in my first life the love my father had for me was the most precious and important thing for me. And I remembered that because I had insisted to keep that memory.”

Owen frowned. “You have repeatedly said you don’t remember things.”

“It would have been too much,” Ianto explained. “It would’ve driven me crazy. In the beginning, I didn’t have any memories at all. Those that were important to my task here came back to me over time. I’m not sure how much time I spent in the Otherworld, because frankly for most of us time is of no consequence, but I’m sure it was more than the century that went by in this world. There are a couple of other things I remembered over time because I chose to keep them.”

“How did that work?” Owen asked with a frown.

It was not easy trying to explain the collage of his memories concerning his first life and his time in the Otherworld. It had never felt artificial to him and gaining a new memory had never been any kind of shock. Other things he had learned because the Others had shown it to him, but those were no real memories for him. Ianto could understand Owen scepsis and confusion, but he doubted that anyone would ever be able to understand, regardless of how much he tried to explain.

Ianto shrugged. “I have really no idea and I’ve never been interested in learning how it worked. I remember always knowing that I had been a little boy once before all my life, and that my father in that first life had loved me so very much. I also had always had contact with the Others. That I was here because I needed to do something I remembered shortly after I started school, and what it was exactly I remembered with fourteen.”

“That’s very young to be confronted with such a burden,” Owen murmured.

“It never felt like a burden,” Ianto said.

“But isn’t it? You went to London and joined Torchwood there because you think you don’t have any other choice but to follow that task which they gave you.”

Ianto shook his head. “It was my decision to come back for this. That’s something I also remember very clearly, and the Others didn’t let me go easily. I came here to protect them; I would have never left them for anything else.”

Owen shook his head. “And if that’s all just an illusion?”

Ianto couldn’t help but laugh, though he didn’t feel any kind of amusement. “So, you think they have some kind of influence on me and what I think is true isn’t true at all? Jack thought the same, and I’m not sure he has fully overcome that yet.”

“How can you be sure what you think you remember is true?” Owen asked. “What if they just chose you as a child for whatever reason and made you believe those memories to use you for whatever they need?”

“I can’t explain it, but I am sure,” Ianto said. “The connection I have to them and to the Otherworld is impossible to explain. I’ll have to ask you and Jack to just trust me in this one.”

“But we would need to trust them in the first place, and not you. I don’t know exactly where Jack met them in the past, but you won’t get him to trust them. And frankly, I don’t want to trust them. I don’t care for the man they killed, but I can’t ignore the taking away children thing.”

“And I don’t expect you to ignore or overlook it.” Ianto sighed and shook his head. “But all of you need to understand that you can’t stop it. This is one of those things no one of us can make any difference in.”

“Not even you?” Owen asked. “Couldn’t you ask them to leave that child alone?”

“It’s her decision. And please don’t even start with the argument that she is too young to make such a decision because that’s bullshit. She knows what she wants, and she would have started to let go of her connection to this world weeks ago.” Ianto ran his fingers through his hair. “Stopping her wouldn’t mean you saved her, you know? There is something very wrong in her life here to become a Chosen One.”

Owen shook his head with a frown.

“I guess we’ll see how it goes when you find her,” Ianto said. He had no doubt that the team would eventually find the girl and try to stop her. He just hoped he would be able to deescalate the situation when the time came.

***

They found a lead to the Chosen One shortly after lunch, when Toshiko found a report of a freak storm over the playground of a school on the other side of the town. Jack ordered the whole team to investigate the event and Ianto felt dread rising as he sat between Owen and Toshiko in the back of the SUV. He could understand his team’s determination, but everything they did would only antagonize the Others and change nothing for the Chosen One.

Toshiko had called ahead, and a teacher was waiting for them at the gate. The students had been sent home and a group of teachers were organising the clean-up of the schoolyard. Everything that was not tethered to the ground had been thrown over and especially in one spot even the heavy things like a wooden bench had been pushed away from their original place for several feet.

The teacher who had met them was one of the few who had been in the part of the yard where the storm had started, and it could not be missed that she was under shock while she told them what she had witnessed and showed them to the part that had taken the most damage. Ianto heard the flutter of wings in the air, but no one else seemed to notice it.

“The most disturbing thing was to see Jas in the middle of it all, but she was not being touched by the wind or the things being thrown around,” the teacher whispered. She had wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head while glancing at some hedges that had nearly been destroyed by the wind. “Two of her classmates were right beside her, scared to death, but Jas was just watching them with this little grin.”

“They bullied her, didn’t they?” Ianto said, lost for a moment in the image the Others showed him of the events that had taken place on this yard, not only today but for months if not years now. “They were cornering her, threatening her because they thought she had told on them. They had shoved her earlier, hard enough to make her fall.”

The teacher sighed. “We know there is a problem, but we never witnessed anything, and Jas didn’t talk. I saw she had fallen, and I had helped her up, but she said she didn’t know who had shoved her. There are too many students to keep track of every single one. How are we supposed to help if they don’t speak up?”

Ianto shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.” 

He wanted to because he felt the need to protect the Chosen One, but he knew it would be unrealistic and even unhealthy to expect every conflict of children in a school to be stopped. The extent it had reached with their Chosen One should have still been handled long ago and Ianto wanted to hope that this event would be a wake-up call for the teachers, but he didn’t believe in it. The two girls who had threatened the Chosen One would find another victim soon enough, and everything would start again because if they had learned one thing it was that they would get away with it. 

“Who is the girl that wasn’t affected by the storm?” Jack asked.

“Jasmine Pierce,” the teacher said absent-mindedly while she stared at Ianto. “How can you know what happened?”

Ianto smiled sadly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. And you really don’t need to know. Something like this won’t happen again, but maybe you and your colleagues need to make a plan how to handle a situation like Jasmine’s better.”

“I need you to give me Jasmine’s address,” Jack said. “We’ll need to talk with her and her parents.”

The teacher turned away from Ianto and to Jack, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t even have told you her name! You aren’t the police; you have no authorisation…”

“We think she and her family could be in danger,” Jack interrupted her.

Ianto could not help but snort, which earned him a scathing look from Jack and Gwen.

“You’ll need to talk with the principal about that,” the teacher said, finding her bearing for the first time since they had met her. “I can’t give away the address of a student to strangers!”

“I can get that information easily,” Toshiko muttered. “And as usual, there is nothing here that my equipment can detect.”

“No surprise there,” Owen muttered, rolling his eyes.

Jack nodded and looked to Ianto, who was not sure what Jack was searching for while he held his gaze. After several seconds, Jack turned to the teacher. “Thank you for your help, Ma’am. We won’t hold you up any longer.”

The teacher frowned. “Was I of any help, really?”

Jack smiled brightly. “You took the time to show us around, and that’s really all we needed. If there comes up anything else we need, we’ll contact your principal.”

Ianto turned around and walked back to their car without listening to the teacher, who had now overcome her shock at least enough to ask questions of them, trying to find out what had really happened with the storm earlier. Ianto was too caught up in the images the Others had shown him to pay any attention to it.

It took nearly five minutes for the rest of the team to join him. He was leaning on the side of the SUV while watching their approach. Owen seemed to be the only one unaffected by the situation, Gwen was pale and unable to look away from the destroyed schoolyard, Toshiko was working on her tablet with a frown and Owen dragged her out of the way of an obstacle more than once to keep her from tripping over it, and Jack was staring at Ianto with dark, furious eyes.

“It was the Chosen One who summoned this storm, not the Others,” Ianto said as soon as his team was near enough to hear him. “I think she’ll join us soon.”

Gwen huffed. “Sure, we just believe you that a little girl attacked her classmates.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “You did get the notice that they have been bullying her for months, yes? I wouldn’t call this an attack, but a self-defence gone a little bit too far. But my point is, if she is able to control the weather without the help of the Others, she is precariously close to joining us. It’s a matter of hours not of days.”

Gwen shook her head. “I don’t believe your little story for even a moment! If she was bullied, she should have gone to her teachers, or her parents and they would have solved it for her.”

“Sure, because that always works so splendidly for the one telling on others,” Toshiko muttered without looking up. “Wouldn’t have thought you would still be this naive after going through police training.”

“Excuse me?” Gwen asked appalled.

“No, I’m not excusing your naivety,” Toshiko said. She cocked her head and eyed Gwen thoughtfully through her eyelashes. “Or maybe your wilful blindness, because I wouldn’t be surprised if you were on the other side of this equation during your school years.” She finally raised her head to look at Jack. “And I have Jasmine Pierce’s address, so we shouldn’t waste any more time.”

Ianto found himself in the back between Toshiko and Owen again, and he rolled his eyes when Gwen turned around on the passenger seat to look at Toshiko after she had given Jack the information of where they needed to go. He had not expected Gwen to let it go, but he was getting tired of her confrontational nature.

“You can’t tell me you think scaring the other girls was the right thing for Jasmine to do!” Gwen said.

Toshiko sighed deeply. “Believe me, scaring them away is the only way to get rid of them. I’m small, Asian, and a nerd. Being shoved down is the least I had to deal with in school and going to a teacher or a parent never made it better but worse in most cases. Because telling everyone involved to apologise to each other just doesn’t work, and it never will.”

“They are kids,” Gwen said. “They fight and they make up again.”

“And looking at it from that angle is exactly the problem,” Toshiko said coldly. “If a grown woman shoved another one hard enough to make the woman fall, it would be called assault and the police would take care of it. And don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want the police involved in such a situation between two children but making perpetrator and victim apologise to each other for fighting is bullshit and doesn’t solve anything.”

“Enough,” Jack interrupted when Gwen started another protest. “Did you get any information about Jasmine’s family, Tosh?”

“She lives with her mother and her boyfriend of five years. Jasmine’s father died in a car accident, seven months before she was born, no contact with his family as far as I can see. Her maternal grandparents live in Inverness, so the contact there is sparse. No siblings, no aunts or uncles on her mother’s side. She isn’t involved in any after school activities as far as I can tell.”

“The relationship to her mother will be strained and distant,” Ianto said quietly. “And the relationship to her stepfather even more so.”

“You can’t know that!” Gwen insisted.

Ianto shrugged and didn’t bother to answer her. He had started to feel a new presence with the Others shortly after they had left the school. Part of him hoped they would reach her mother’s house only after she had already left this world so that he would not have to deal with his team trying to hold her back. But he also felt the Chosen One’s emotional turmoil and knew that the situation would be anything but peaceful when they finally arrived.

Chapter Text

As soon as Jack turned the car into the street of the Pierce’s house, Ianto knew that chaos was already raging and that there would be another death if he did not stop it. He pushed Owen out of the car before Jack had even killed the engine and took off in a run around the house. The Chosen One’s anger, fear, and fury made the air vibrate all over the backyard, and a storm was picking up right above their heads.

She was facing a man that Ianto instantly knew was her stepfather and shouting at him that he could not hold her back. There were several people gathered in the backyard, all of them backed away to the house or the fence by the wind. Only the Chosen One’s mother was fighting against the wind and slowly walking to her child and boyfriend.

“I’ve had enough of your antics,” the stepfather shouted.

He reached out a hand and the Chosen One stepped back at the same time as one of the Others slammed into the man. They had taken on a form as big as the stepfather, and the impact threw him to the ground. He was too shocked to react at first and as he raised his hands to defend himself, the Other was already pressing down their fist against his mouth, the other hand pressing against his forehead to keep the head down.

“Stop!” Ianto shouted. “He is no threat to her right now. He can’t stop you, Chosen One. No one can hold you back anymore.” He was hit with images of the man grabbing her at the arm, and the Chosen One biting him.

She turned to him and cocked her head with a frown. “How can you be one of them—us and be an adult?”

Ianto chuckled. “You’ll understand that part soon enough. You’re nearly there already. I can feel you as part of us.”

The Chosen One shook her head. “He closed the fence in the back. I can’t reach the forest now.”

“You don’t need to go to a special place to take the last step,” Ianto said softly.

“Roy!” The mother’s cry interrupted them as she finally reached the stepfather. 

The Other still kneeling above him backed away and Ianto flinched as he felt the Chosen One’s disdain rise in them. He would have felt the same about the mother alone by her display of ignoring her daughter surrounded by the Others for her concern about her boyfriend. He had expected nothing else from a Chosen One’s parent, but it was still a startling display.

The Chosen One watched her mother for a moment, who had fallen to her knees beside the stepfather and was helping him to sit up. Not once did she look at her daughter.

“Your friends want to hold me back.” The echo of the Others crept into her voice as the Chosen One spoke to Ianto. “They think they can convince me to stay.”

Ianto turned his head to look at his team. Owen and Gwen were ushering the last of the guests out of the backyard while Jack had pushed Toshiko behind him because they were facing two Others. Jack was glaring at them, but he did not try to push them away or get around them.

“They are stubborn,” Ianto said finally. “And they aren’t able to understand us. But we can’t hold that against them, really. It’s not their fault they are missing our connection to each other. There are very few at each point in time who are fortunate enough to find it.”

The Chosen One giggled. “They are jealous.”

Ianto shook his head grinning. “Not really. But they would be if they knew what they were missing.”

“I like you,” she declared. “I’ll come visit you.”

Ianto nodded. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“IANTO!”

He sighed. “There is nothing to do, Jack,” he called back over his shoulder. “She is already more there than here.”

Suddenly the mother’s attention turned from her boyfriend to him, still not to her daughter. “What are you talking about?”

“Your daughter made a decision, and my boss isn’t happy about it,” Ianto said with a shrug. He knew his team would expect him to have sympathy for the woman, but he didn’t care for the grief and guilt that would inadvertently come as soon as she understood that she was losing her daughter right in this moment.

“What?” The mother frowned and finally turned to her daughter. “Jas, what are…” She trailed off, Ianto suspected because she could not comprehend what she was seeing.

The Chosen One was slowly fading away from this world as she found her way into the Otherworld. She smiled brightly at her mother and Ianto thought that she had not shared such a thing with her in a very long time. “You’ll be happier with me gone. And I’ll be happier with my friends. And you’ll have a new baby soon anyway.”

“No!” The mother surged forward, more crawling than walking the short distance to her daughter, and dragged her into her arms. “What are you talking about, Jas? This is madness!”

The Chosen One patted her shoulder awkwardly without returning the hug and Ianto felt how repulsed she felt by the much too foreign touch. She could not remember the last time her mother had hugged her, and Ianto shuddered as that realisation of hers hit him as hard as her. 

“I’ll come and visit my sibling,” the Chosen One promised. “And you won’t miss me.”

She faded away.

Her mother fell to the ground with a painful groan and Ianto staggered for a moment under the onslaught of the Chosen One’s memories and her pure joy. A Chosen One joining them was always a big event and for a while, they would all share her memories and her emotions with more intensity than they usually did. As Ianto found his bearing with a deep sigh, the Others seemed to vanish, but he could still feel them and one of them settled in their smaller form on his shoulder, invisible to everyone.

The mother cried for her daughter and wailed in denial. Ianto watched her impassively while her boyfriend crawled to her and tried to console her. He could not understand everything the man said, but it didn’t seem as if he cared much for the girl vanishing. He was worried for the mother but not for his stepdaughter, and Ianto knew now that it had always been the case.

“How could you just let her go?”

Ianto didn’t turn to Gwen or the rest of his team. “I don’t know why you still expect me to step in the Others’ way. I’ve told you time and again that it’s her choice, and that I accept her choice.”

There was a light giggle right beside his ear which confirmed for Ianto that it was the Chosen One who had settled on his shoulder. He suspected that some time had gone by for them because they were much calmer than someone who had just joined them normally was. There also wasn’t the echo of the chaos of emotions regarding their mother and their stepfather in them anymore that Ianto still felt from her joining them moments ago.

“You knew?” Suddenly the mother was in front of him, angry and red-faced. “What have you done with my Jas?”

Ianto shook his head. “I’ve done nothing. Your daughter chose to leave this world, and she didn’t lie when she told you she thought you wouldn’t miss her. And I know for certain that your man will be happy to see her gone.”

The mother raised her arms, hands fisted, but Jack caught her before they could impact with Ianto’s chest. “Give me my daughter back!” She struggled against Jack’s hold before she turned her fury against him, and Ianto winced as he watched Jack take the abuse without any outward reaction. He let her rage against him, not trying to calm her down in the slightest.

“You don’t know anything about this family!” Gwen said angrily.

“I know that this man told his stepdaughter yesterday he could understand why her father had run from her,” Ianto said, sending the man a scathing look. “And it wasn’t the first time he said something like that about a man who had died in a tragedy before he even knew he would become a father.”

The mother turned away from Jack, who had caught her when the wave of fury had left her, and her knees had buckled. “Liar,” she shouted.

Ianto raised his brows. “And even now, after losing your daughter, you are taking your man’s side. That is part of the reason she thought you wouldn’t miss her. And just before I joined this scene, he had grabbed her arm with so much force to drag her away from the fence in the back that it would have left bruises. He didn’t do that for the first time either!”

“Jas is a difficult child,” the stepfather protested.

Ianto huffed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have saved your life. The Other that attacked you earlier would have loved to suffocate you because Jasmine was afraid of you. A child her age doesn’t bite you just for fun. You were hurting her, and hurting you back was the only way she could think of to get away from you. She projected that need to hurt you back so strongly to us that the Others just reacted to it.”

The mother shook her head, tears still streaming down her face. “No, Roy is right. Jas has her problems, and sometimes…”

“You won’t have to deal with it anymore,” Ianto interrupted her. “So maybe she was actually right, and you won’t miss her all too much.”

“Do you have to be this cruel?” Gwen asked appalled.

Toshiko shook her head. “I mean, Ianto isn’t wrong. Mrs Pierce is so concerned with defending her boyfriend, she suddenly completely forgot to demand her daughter back.”

“I’m not surprised you are supporting Ianto after earlier,” Gwen spat.

“Enough,” Jack barked. “Wait at the car, Ianto. There is nothing left to do for you here.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “Gladly.”

*** 

It was late at night and Ianto knew he should have gone home hours ago. In the week since he had revealed his connection with the Otherworld to his team, Ianto had learned to prefer the slow hours of the night even more than usual, mostly because Gwen would not stop with her passive-aggressive approach of him. 

She had made it very clear to the whole team after the Chosen One had been gone what her real problem was. That the Others had chosen to demolish her flat in the night after the Chosen One had joined them had only made it worse. Ianto had shared the Others’ amusement, especially as the Chosen One, who was still spending many hours of each day with him, had related to him all the little pranks they had left hidden in Gwen’s flat aside from the obvious chaos.

Gwen had been furious, even days later, and was accusing Ianto of attacking her at least once a day. She took every opportunity she got to remind everyone that he was not human and that he should have no place in their team. Jack had basically given her an ultimatum to stop, but she did not seem to care much for that.

The most surprising thing about it all for Ianto was, that aside from Gwen no one else had accused him of helping the Others to abduct their Chosen One. Despite their discussion at Estelle’s house, Ianto still expected Jack to get angry about it, but all Jack had done was to ask him once if the Chosen One was regretting their choice.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Jack’s voice startled Ianto, but he raised his head with a small smile. “Neither should you,” he repeated the same answer he had given Jack in that night before the team had been confronted with the Others. At least this time Jack was not crushing a rose petal in his hand.

Jack laughed. “I live here most of the time. What’s your excuse?”

“Easier to do my work when Gwen is not glaring at me.”

“I had hoped she would calm down,” Jack muttered. “I don’t know where this hatred is coming from, though your friends didn’t help.”

“She has a problem with me not being fully human,” Ianto said. “There is nothing much we could do to change that. And it’s not exactly news that she doesn’t respect me, so I’m not surprised she isn’t even trying to get over this bullshit.”

Jack frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Ianto watched him with raised eyebrows. “You really didn’t notice? She fancies herself your second in command and me the errand boy around here.”

Jack shook his head slowly. “No, I really didn’t notice any of that. Why the hell would she think that?”

“The way you introduced me, Owen calling me tea boy, me staying back barring any emergencies.” Ianto shrugged. “And you hired her to replace Suzie, who you had introduced as your second in command. The thing is, Gwen doesn’t know anything about the history of our team, Jack. Or even our individual histories. And she isn’t interested in learning it. She has drawn her conclusions from what we put on display for her when we were testing her.”

They had all tried to educate her about their team dynamic, but because Ianto mostly stayed back in the Hub she had dismissed any notion about Ianto being more than their assistant. Ianto had tried to tell her about London to explain his reluctance to return to field duty, but she had always dismissed his attempts to talk to her.

“You told me she failed the test,” Jack muttered.

Ianto shrugged. Jack had agreed with him in that assessment. “And you still hired her, which we all understood after Suzie. But … we haven’t been able to straighten out how she views this team, and her not respecting me and thinking my job is actually her job will be a problem in the future. Even more so with her hostility because I once wasn’t human.”

“You think we should let her go?” Jack asked.

Ianto shrugged and ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. We are understaffed as it stands, and losing her would be the bigger problem, I think. On the other hand … She won’t listen to me if I ever need to step up and take your place. She wouldn’t have done it before, and now she never will.”

“You wouldn’t have needed to tell us anything,” Jack whispered. “You could have just taken a step back and let things happen, and we would never have been the wiser.”

Ianto snorted. “Yeah, and when I’d need your help in a couple of years you would have executed me on the spot.” 

He had no doubt that the Others would have attacked Estelle even without the added threat Gwen was for him and without their desperation about losing their connection to him. Sometimes he could still feel those that would like to hurt Jack for what had happened in Lahore, and they knew Estelle would be a perfect target to cut deep into Jack’s heart. If he would have let Estelle die, Jack would have never even entertained the thought to give him a chance.

Jack turned his head away and nodded. “Maybe. But you could also have found a way to get our help in whatever is to come without ever revealing your past.”

“It’s still not an argument Gwen will listen to,” Ianto said. “I kept a secret from her, and I’m not human. She won’t change her mind about it that both of those things are a big problem. She feels entitled to all our secrets, and I think a big part of that is that she thinks she is guarding your secret. And for the not being human part, to overcome that kind of xenophobia is hard work and she would actually need to want to overcome it.”

“So, what do we do about her?”

Ianto stared at Jack, honestly surprised by the question. He had expected a change in the team dynamic, and a change in his official role in the team, even after Jack had told Gwen off after they had returned from the Pierce’s house and again in the morning after, when she had complained about the Others’ attack on her. Jack asking him for advice was the last thing he had expected after he had waited for days now to be told that he was demoted.

“What did I say?” Jack asked confused.

“I wasn’t sure you would still want my opinion about these things,” Ianto confessed.

Jack frowned. “After me, you are the one with the most experience here. Of course I want your opinion.”

“You never asked before,” Ianto said. “And I didn’t feel that giving my opinion would be welcome. And now, with all you have learned about me recently…”

“You expected me to openly mistrust you despite all I have said about it.”

Ianto shrugged uncomfortably. There was nothing in anything Jack had done or said since the evening at Estelle’s house that supported this fear, but he was still unable to overcome it. He had cultivated that fear since he had met Jack in London, long before he had known about Jack’s past with the Others, based solely on how Jack had reacted to and spoken about the Cybermen and the Daleks.

Jack waved a hand between them. “This is something we need to fix. We need to trust each other. We need a way to build this trust.”

“That’s true for the whole team,” Ianto said quietly. “It’s difficult to build trust if there are so many secrets kept by everyone. Important secrets. Someday you will be killed in front of Toshiko or Owen, and they’ll learn your secret. Someday we’ll have to deal with some asshole from UNIT who won’t hold back their judgement over Toshiko, and Gwen and Owen will learn how she joined us and that she is basically a slave to Torchwood for three more years because the alternative is to go back to what UNIT calls a prison.”

“Toshiko doesn’t want to talk about it,” Jack said. “Don’t you think she is entitled to decide who knows about that and who doesn’t?”

“Of course.” Ianto nodded. “And you are entitled to that decision as well. But I’m not sure if either of you ever thought about how bad it can go if your secrets are revealed at the wrong moment, or by the wrong person.”

Jack rubbed his hand over his face. “I’ll think about it. And I’ll talk with Tosh about it.”

“Which still leaves us with the problem of Gwen,” Ianto continued. “And I have no idea either what to do about that. Maybe she will overcome her xenophobia in regard to me eventually if she has time to get to know me. She is very new to our job. But I also worry what will happen if she encounters any peaceful aliens, but her prejudices let her assume they are all our enemies.”

“We’ll need to watch her very carefully and try to educate her,” Jack decided. “And we need to come up with a solution if she won’t come around. We can’t have someone working for us who can’t deal with other sentient life forms. I’ve worked too hard to keep that kind of behaviour out of this team since I took over.”

Ianto sighed. “It’s hard to test for that without already revealing much of our work. But I’m thankful for how careful you are with it. London was … ripe with the kind of prejudice Gwen has shown against me. I’m partly surprised she hasn’t shown the same disdain for you, but I guess her crush on you trumps that.”

Jack snorted and shook his head, rolling his eyes.

Ianto ignored it. “And I know you said after Suzie’s death we should give Gwen time to find her place in the team, but I think we need to start looking for more personal.”

“You are still not keen on returning to fieldwork?” Jack asked.

Ianto shook his head. “I don’t think … that will happen any time soon. Though, I guess we’ll have to go on an outing where I don’t have much choice about staying back.” He raised the file he had studied before Jack had ambushed him. “In the last three months, seventeen people have gone missing in the Brecon Beacons. Including their vehicles and all other possessions.”

Jack frowned. “That’s not exactly in the range of the Rift.”

“No,” Ianto agreed. “But something could have come through the Rift, escaped our notice and settled there. I’ve kept an eye on the situation for a while now, and the police aren’t coming up with anything. I don’t think they even have a task force for it yet because there is no proof of any crime.”

Jack frowned. “Seventeen missing people in three months is not enough proof of a crime?”

Ianto shrugged. “Apparently. I thought we could make a little team bonding experience out of it, even if it just turned out we are chasing after a serial killer instead of an alien. And Tosh’s little program monitoring the Rift says the next couple of days should be quiet, so it won’t be such a big problem for all of us to leave Cardiff for two or three days.”

“An outing in that region would mean camping,” Jack said, a grin slowly forming on his face. “I can already hear Owen’s complains about it.”

Ianto laughed. “I’m sure that will turn from amusing to annoying very fast.”