Archive of Our Own ^beta

About a week after she's started at Torchwood, Gwen finds a book on her desk.

She doesn't know where it came from, but it's all dark engraved leather, about the size of a paperback novel, like one of those expensive journals that twenty-somethings use in coffeeshops. There's a folded note sitting on top of it. Jack and Owen are following a lead and Tosh is talking them through the streets of Cardiff over the comms. She's not sure where Ianto is, but that's not out of the ordinary.

She picks up the note and turns it over in her hand. When she looks up again, Tosh is smiling at her and winks as she says, "No, Jack, I said the second left."

Gwen unfolds the paper and immediately recognizes Owen's messy scrawl.

Everything we know about Jack, the note says. Which isn't bloody much.

Underneath that, in Tosh's steady hand, Add to it at your discretion.

Tosh's attention has returned to her computer screen when Gwen looks up again, but she's still got that secretive little smile on her lips. Gwen looks down at the book, back at Tosh, and then hurriedly flips it open.

Owen's right in saying they don't have much. Only the first ten or so pages of the book are filled, mostly with Owen and Tosh's handwriting, but also with some she doesn't recognize. She assumes it belongs to Suzie Costello and tries her best to push that thought out of her mind so she can concentrate on what it says. Stories, anecdotes, facts that Jack must have absently let slip in conversation. There's frequently speculation (Talked at length about dancing in London during WWII, from Tosh. Possibly had a father or grandfather who served?) and occasionally commentary (Sex with a green tentacled alien, from Owen. That better well be bollocks, because even if he made it up, it's still bloody disgusting.), but when it comes down to it, there's more discussion than there is actual information.

It's a shame, really, because all Gwen wants is more information. She saw Jack get shot in the head and then stand up again as if nothing had happened. He died in front of her eyes and then came back in time to save her life. She has nothing but questions, but she knows that they're questions the others can't answer, things that aren't covered in their book.

She promised she wouldn't share Jack's secret with them, and she won't. But that doesn't mean she won't tell them everything else she knows and pour over any information they might have.

She absorbs herself in the book for the next ten minutes, until she feels a tap on her shoulder.

"Jack and Owen are on their way back," Tosh says. Then she points at the book and moves a finger to her lips. Gwen doesn't have to be told, but she appreciates the gesture, the camaraderie. It makes her feel like she's fitting in a little better than she did the day before, and she finds herself smiling as some of the tension in her shoulders dissipates.

***

Over the next few weeks, she learns nothing new about Jack, but several things about the book. She now knows that it was Owen and Suzie's idea, dreamed up one drunken night after a disastrous mission in which Jack was hurt but refused medical treatment, and that Tosh almost immediately took over the duty of organizing it and storing it, solely because the other two couldn't be bothered to put the time into it. She knows that the book lives in the bottom drawer of Tosh's desk, buried under a box of tampons and some complicated looking computer equipment, all things that Jack wouldn't dream of touching, and that everyone was free to take it out and work in it as long as they put it back and Jack was nowhere in the vicinity.

But nothing new about Jack.

She does notice, however, one incredibly conspicuous thing about the book, something she asks Tosh about almost immediately. Ianto Jones does not seem to have even the slightest hand in it. She knows Ianto has been here longer than her and she knows that he must see everything, what with the way he seems to almost anticipate their needs and then disappear into the background. She would think that he would be a wealth of information about Jack.

"We've told him about it," Tosh says, glancing over her shoulder even though they both know that Ianto is in the tourist office and Jack and Owen are in the cells. "He just... doesn't want to participate. I guess he doesn't have anything to add." Tosh smiles and shrugs and goes back to her computer, but the question niggles Gwen for the rest of the day.

It's later that week when she's paging through the book, trying to read between the lines, connect the dots to what she already knows, when Ianto puts a cup of coffee down by her elbow and makes the smallest, nearly indecipherable noise. It's silent in the Hub with Owen and Jack out hunting a Weevil and Tosh helping them remotely from the SUV, or else Gwen never would have been able to hear it.

"What's that?" she asks.

"Nothing," Ianto says, picking up her empty coffee mug, but his eyes flicker down to the book open on her desk.

"You can see it too, you know," Gwen says, holding it up to him. "Tosh said."

"No thank you," he says, and makes that little noise again, something that maybe would have been a snort if Ianto was less polite, less invisible.

"You don't care about Jack's past?" she asks. "It doesn't matter to you who he is?"

"He does his job," Ianto says, gathering more detritus and trash and adding it to his serving tray. He won't look at her. "He does his job well, for the most part, sloppy paperwork and incomplete reports aside. Sometimes there's a reason for people to have secrets."

He's gone after that, before she reacts, and she feels just the slightest sliver of guilt slide down her spine as she turns back to the book, maybe a little less determinedly than before.

***

She adds to the book off and on with Tosh and Owen filling in their own gaps. Jack does things that infuriate her, that leave her so close to sharing his secret that she closes her hand around a pen, but she keeps it to herself, out of loyalty or out of the odd connection she feels with Jack, the way she knows he looks at her when she's not looking. He looks at Ianto like that sometimes, too, and she wonders if that's why Ianto doesn't participate, if Ianto knows his secret as well.

Then, of course, she finds out that Ianto has secrets of his own.

She knows she should hate him, like Owen seems to, or fear him, like Tosh tries to hide, but she can't help but pity Ianto when his secrets come pouring out, when the wreckage of his girlfriend tries to kill them all. She knows about that kind of love, and his accusations ring a little too true; they do ignore him and take him for granted. They have treated him like nothing more than scenery.

She's surprised when Jack tells the team Ianto's on a four week suspension, but it makes an odd sort of sense. Jack understands secrets, obviously, and while Ianto's betrayal was deliberate, the destruction and pain he caused were not. And anyway, in the four long weeks without him, she, Owen, and Tosh have plenty of time to get used to the idea, to forget about Ianto's sins. Jack doesn't seem to have the luxury. He disappears for hours at a time and comes back brooding and quiet, hovering over Ianto's workstation or the coffeemaker.

It's not hard to figure out where he disappears to or why the disappearances stop when Ianto returns. Just another item on the long list of things that Jack will never explain himself. Ianto's mum as well, slipping seamlessly back into his role of secretary, butler, and general jack-of-all-trades. He continues to ignore their book of secrets. If he knows something about Jack, he isn't telling, and it's clear he thinks the rest of them shouldn't be telling either.

***

For a week, the book ceases to matter--the rift takes Tosh and Jack, then it's the end of the world, then, oh god, despite what Gwen's seen, Jack's dead, he's really dead, and he doesn't seem to be coming back.

But he does. Just long enough to forgive them, to reassure them, before he leaves again, disappearing nearly into thin air.

Suddenly, the book is all that matters.

Gwen and Tosh and Owen spend a whole night pouring over every story, adding everything they can think of, every detail of Jack's life that they had previously overlooked. Owen and Tosh drill her for forty minutes after she admits she had known about Jack's power of resurrection.

She almost forgets about Ianto, who announced, after their third hour trying to restore the CCTV footage, that he was going to clean up. It's not until after Tosh and Owen leave and Gwen has finished checking the CCTV one last time, that she remembers that Ianto is still at the Hub.

She switches from the recorded footage of the Plass to the internal cameras in the Hub and finds a shadow sitting in Jack's office, beyond the purview of the cameras. She spends a moment wondering if she should intrude, if he wants to be alone, before determinedly marching up the stairs. None of them should be alone, not really, and she can't shake the image of the relief and amazement on Ianto's face, just before Jack kissed him.

Ianto doesn't move as Gwen enters the office and crosses to Jack's desk. He's turning the pages of the book idly. She doesn't know what happened to his waistcoat and jacket, and seeing his tie undone, his collar unbuttoned, and his sleeves rolled up reminds Gwen, suddenly, that Ianto is so young. The suits, the sly comments, and his usually stony facade make him seem older than his years, almost old-fashioned in his propriety. It shakes Gwen to realize that he's barely twenty-four and has already seen more suffering than she can imagine. She tries to remember what she was doing at twenty-four. Partying, probably. Drinking, definitely. She'd already taken up with Rhys, but the idea of steady responsibility had seemed like something far away in the future.

She doesn't know how Ianto does it.

She's trying to think of something to say to him, something to make it better, to get that broken, gutted look to leave his face, but before she can put any of it to words, he speaks.

"I thought I was so much better than you lot," he says, a middle page of the book pinched between his index finger and thumb. "You were always smarter and fiercer and braver, better looking, too, but Jack chose me and I thought that meant something." He laughs, but it's a sad, soft sound. "I should have known better."

"Oh, sweetheart," Gwen says. Her hand hovers over his shoulder, not sure if he will welcome the touch. "He didn't leave because of you."

"No," Ianto says, shaking his head. "No, obviously not, but he didn't stay because of me, either, and even though I knew that it wasn't--" He seems to catch himself. He looks up at her with a brittle smile, looks at her properly for the first time. He has dark purple blotches under his eyes and looks sadly disgusted with himself. "But that's not what I meant. I thought he should be allowed his secrets. I thought if it was important, he would tell me. I thought I was better than you because I wasn't clambering after his past, when really, we should have been working together. I would have figured it out much sooner."

Gwen lowers herself slowly into the chair next to Ianto and bites her lip.

"What do you mean, figured it out?" she asks.

He laughs, softly, and flips through the book. "Owen writes, 'Once, when we went out for drinks after a bad fight, he started nattering on about how he had to see some doctor. I told him I could fix him up back at The Hub if he would just let me look at him for half a bloody second, but he just shook his head, kept saying that only the doctor could fix him. I don't think he was talking about me.'" He flips a few pages further. "From Tosh: 'Found an artifact that Jack called a sonic blaster. He told me a story about a doctor he knew and someone called Rose. It somehow involved bananas.'" He flips further still, just a little ways from the bookmark, one of the many pages they hastily filled once Jack had gone. "And you, of course: 'Jack said the only thing that could have gotten him to open the rift is the right kind of doctor. Not quite sure what that's supposed to mean.'"

Ianto closes the book and stares down at it for a moment. "There are a few others as well," he says. He looks up at Gwen again. "I never looked. I never cared to. It's right there, Gwen."

"What's right there?" she asks, because all she's taken from that is that Jack associates with a lot of doctors.

Ianto stares at her for a moment and then abruptly sighs and shakes his head. "Of course," he mutters. "Of course he doesn't show any of you the bloody--because who cares about history, really, just shove it anywhere there's room, Ianto, it's not like there's a whole carefully alphabetized system that you spent six months cultivating out of nothing."

"Ianto, darling, you're not making any sense," Gwen says. She's becoming concerned that Ianto really has lost it, that all of this has taken its toll on him. He snaps out of it, though, shakes his head clear and focuses on her again.

"Did Jack tell you why Torchwood exists?" he asks her.

"Well...yes," she says. She's not sure where this is going, but she's going to trust him for a few more minutes before she suggests a trip home and a heavy sedative. "To protect the world against alien invasion. Something about how everything changes in the twenty-first century."

Ianto looks as though he's trying very hard not to roll his eyes. "That's Jack's version, I'm sure. But that's not the charter."

"We have a charter?" Gwen asks. She knows she shouldn't be surprised. She's aware that there are--were other divisions of Torchwood. The availability of Torchwood-penned support pamphlets and forms and releases for all manner of bizarre things tells her that much, but Jack's lackadaisical approach to anything resembling order sometimes has her forgetting that they're a crown-sanctioned organization.

"Yes," Ianto says, "we have a charter." He opens the middle drawer of Jack's desk and reaches underneath it, pulling out a key that was obviously taped to the bottom. He uses it to open the bottom left drawer and removes a yellowed folder, which he hands to her. She flips through it as he speaks, her eyes sliding over the words without reading them. She knows Ianto will tell her what's pertinent. "The Torchwood Institute was established by Queen Victoria in 1879 after a visit by a particular alien being whom she feared would be the downfall of the British Empire, if not life on Earth in its entirety. Torchwood was created to monitor all alien activity, but to focus on him in particular. His face changed, from time to time, as did his traveling companions, but he kept showing up using the same name."

Gwen holds her breath.

"The Doctor, Gwen," Ianto says softly. "He's called The Doctor. And I'm relatively sure that Jack's gone after him."

"You mean to try and capture him?" Gwen asks, though even as she says it, she knows it's not the truth.

"No," he says. "I think--I can't be positive, but the way he talks... that girl he mentioned to Tosh, Rose? She was with The Doctor when Queen Victoria first met him. She was one of his fellow travelers. She was--when Canary Wharf fell, The Doctor was there, and Rose Tyler was with him. She's listed as one of the dead in the official records. Gwen, I think that Jack is one of the Doctor's travelers."

Gwen laughs, even though she can tell from Ianto's expression that he's dead serious. It's absurd, the whole idea of it, Jack here, working at Torchwood, just so he could find the person Torchwood was established to get rid of.

"That--Ianto, that doesn't even make any sense. There's no way that a girl who met Queen Victoria could have been at Canary Wharf. She would have been--and Jack, Jack wouldn't--"

Ianto is just looking at her and she stutters to a stop.

"You've seen things here, Gwen. Time moving and changing and you know--Gwen, the things you've seen."

Gwen sits down, hard, on the other side of Jack's desk. It doesn't make sense, but that means nothing, really, because nothing that Gwen has seen since coming to Torchwood has made sense. Her boss has risen from the dead more than once; sense has long since gone out the window.

"Traveling through time and space," Gwen says quietly.

"He's always seemed out of his time, Jack," Ianto says. His voice is fragile, lost, and when Gwen looks at him again, his eyes are far away. "Anachronistic. He knew too much about the past, about the future. With all of time and space to visit, all of the universe at his finger tips, why would he ever come back here?"

Gwen wants to comfort him, but she can't, not really, not when the same thoughts are already flying through her own head. Instead, she reaches across the desk and lays her hand across it, palm up. Without looking at her, Ianto places his on top of hers and interlocks their fingers.

They sit that way for a long time.

***

They mutually come to the decision not to tell Tosh and Owen about what Ianto's figured out. They don't talk about it, so Gwen's not sure of Ianto's motivation, but for her part, she just can't see worrying them with it. Owen's torturing himself already, adamant that Jack is never coming back, clearly feeling the brunt of the blame for shooting Jack, for being the first to defect. Tosh is the opposite, looking up every time the cog door rolls open as if Jack just slipped out to the store and is due back any moment. Owen's heart is already broken and Gwen can't see breaking Tosh's as well. It's better that this is her and Ianto's burden to carry.

So much is, these days. Gwen has taken charge, though she's the least qualified. Tosh can barely interrupt lunch conversations to get everyone's attention; Owen can't be bothered with the mundane aspects of the job, the paperwork and planning and phone calls. Gwen has no problem shouldering all these things and, perhaps not surprisingly, Ianto picks up the slack.

She doesn't know how closely he worked with Jack, where "general support" melded with "personal assistant" and how much is in Ianto's job description and how much he took on because Jack is utter arse at keeping order, but Ianto knows everything. He knows the passwords, the safe codes, the agenda. He knows the contact information of everyone she needs to talk to regularly and is on a first name basis with all of their admin staff. He knows every procedure she's needed to review so far and has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of where things are in the Hub. Ianto could be running Torchwood 3, except that he hates firing his gun and has better things to do than give orders.

It leaves them spending more time together, which Gwen is grateful for. At first, she uses it as a subtle way of checking in on Ianto, who is almost living at the Hub, sleeping on the couch or in Jack's quarters almost as often as he's sleeping at home. Gwen confronts him about it with a cup of coffee and a sympathetic smile, but he brushes her off, rolling his eyes.

"I'm not--I'm not pining," he insists. "It's just more convenient, isn't it? We have the remote rift monitors, but it helps to be here. Gets things moving faster."

"You're sleeping in his bed, love," she points out warily.

"Only because it's more comfortable than that bloody couch."

It makes sense, she begrudgingly admits at his prompting. They're not quite sure how long Jack's been in charge of Torchwood 3--at least five years, maybe more--but in that time, there's always been someone at the Hub overnight, once everyone else had gone home. She's taken over as de facto leader, but Rhys would notice if she just stopped coming home at night. Owen would laugh if they asked him, and Tosh is still steadfast in her belief that Jack will reappear any second. Ianto is the most logical choice.

She understands, but that doesn't mean she agrees with it.

"C'mon," she says, extending a hand to Ianto one Thursday night. Rhys and Banana Boat are down at some pub watching the match, and Ianto looks like he hasn't seen the sun for days. He blinks up at her and glances back down to the paperwork covering Jack's desk. "You can finish that up tomorrow, yeah? God knows Jack never got it done on time and the Queen never showed up to complain."

"Jack is a bit more charming than I am," Ianto points out, but the beginning of a smirk is crossing his face and he's getting to his feet. "There's a chance she tried and Jack turned his pout on her."

Gwen shudders as Ianto pulls on his jacket. "There are some things that are beyond even Jack," she says, and she's rewarded by the sound of Ianto's laughter as he lets her pull him out of the Hub.

They end up at a little restaurant near the Plass. There's a house band inside, but the music is muted at their little table on the patio, tucked into a corner. Ianto pulls Gwen's chair out for her before taking his own seat, and for just a moment, Gwen thinks the sort of thoughts that would make Rhys jealous.

After Ianto has spread his napkin across his lap, he looks up at her and gives her a tight, but genuine smile.

"I'm fine, Gwen," he says. "Fine as can be reasonably expected. You don't need to check up on me."

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe I want to?" Gwen says, and then snaps her mouth closed. That hadn't been what she was planning on saying, but she can't deny that it's true. Jack had been the person at Torchwood that she talked to. When she couldn't talk to Rhys, when she didn't want to look at Owen for another minute, she could talk to Jack.

"I'm sorry," Ianto says quickly, picking up his menu and flipping it open, his expression shutting down, closing off. "I didn't mean to presume--"

She reaches across the table and grabs his hand, forces him to look at her.

"No," she says. "Ianto, please. Don't be sorry. It's just... we're in this together now, aren't we?"

He stares at her for a moment, frightened desperation flickering over his face for just a split second, and then he nods, extracting his wrist from her grip and then squeezing her hand.

"In that case," he says, "I'll order us a bottle of wine."

She tries to get him out at least twice a week, whenever they can cobble together a little time after hours. She mostly chooses nights that Rhys is out with his mates, and tells him, vaguely, that she's having a drink with a friend on the nights that he's home in bed. The more time she spends with Ianto, the less it feels like a lie. She's not even surprised when, the morning after Rhys proposes, she finds herself at the Hub two hours early with coffee from the cafe that Ianto likes.

She had considered calling ahead to make sure he was awake, but in the end, she just unlocks the tourist office door and goes down the long way, hoping that the proximity alarm will be enough warning.

By the time the gate is shutting itself behind Gwen, Ianto is stumbling out of Jack's office. He's dressed in blue plaid pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt, clutching a toothbrush. It's maybe the third time in as long as she's known him that she's seen him in something other than a suit.

"Is everything all right?" he asks as he stumbles on the stairs and hurries to meet her. She hands him a coffee, and if anything, he goes more tense. "The rift monitors have been quiet, is something--"

"No," Gwen assures him. "No, I just... wanted to talk to you before the others got here."

He frowns, but nods and leads her over to the couch. He places his toothbrush on the coffee table and sits cross-legged on one corner of the couch, coffee cradled between his hands. She sits on the other end, hands folded in her lap.

"Well?" he asks. "Is everything okay?" She bites her lip and glances down at her hands. She hadn't really planned on how to tell Ianto. She still isn't sure why she feels this bone deep need to tell him, to show him that she is living her life, that she's holding these two parts of her separate and level.

She tilts her head to the side and holds out her left hand for him to see.

"Oh? Oh!" He breaks into a smile. It's small, but it lights up his eyes. "Congratulations, Gwen." He takes her hand and kisses the back of it. "You must be very happy."

"I am," she says, letting out a little sigh of relief. "He loves me so much, Ianto. And I love him. And I just... he's a simple man, Ianto. He's not all flash and I used to wonder if just loving him was enough but... if anything, after all of this...." She trails off, frustrated with her own inability to vocalize her feelings. The thing between her and Jack, it was never concrete, it was never something that challenged her feelings for Rhys. It was different, though, and so much larger-than-life. It was the antithesis of her life with Rhys, and, if anything, that just proved how important it was to have normality to go home to.

The others don't have that, and for all her offering to set Tosh up on blind dates and teasing Ianto about the boy at the dry cleaners who seems to fancy him, she knows they probably never will.

"I understand," Ianto murmurs, and when she brings himself to look him in the eyes, she sees that he truly does.

"It feels selfish," she whispers.

"It's not," he insists. "You're allowed to have a life outside of this. If I had someone like Rhys, I would cling to him, too." He holds up his hands, coffee temporarily set aside, to keep her from the apology that she can feel on the tip of her tongue. "It's okay, Gwen," he says firmly. "Really. Jack was my choice. I knew I'd have to live with the consequences. This should be about you. Congratulations. We should have a drink, tonight, rift-permitting."

It's a Thursday, so they had tentative plans to have a drink anyway, but she understands the offer for what it is. She reaches across the couch and squeezes his hands between hers before leaning in to kiss his cheek.

"Go on," she says. "Go get dressed before the others get here. I'll go get some breakfast, yeah?"

"Thank you," he says. They get to their feet, and she's surprised to find herself pulled into his arms for a brief, awkward hug. He's a bit stiff, and she wonders how long it's been since he held someone like this. Still, it's the first time he's freely given affection, and she clings to it with tenacity.

He's a little flustered when he lets go, so she leaves before he can do something stupid, like apologize for the hug.

"I'll be sure to get that ham and cheese scone that you like," she calls over her shoulder and he nods his appreciation before hurrying down towards the showers, toothbrush once again clutched in his fist.

She tells the others later that day, in between a rift alarm that pops up just as Ianto is drying his hair and a lengthy conference call with UNIT about a strange signal they intercepted before a small plane crashed outside of Swansea. They congratulate her blandly, emptily, and she's not entirely sure what she expected, but it just serves to make her feel more guilty. Ianto touches her knee under the table as he changes the subject before the ensuing silence can get too awkward.

They miss their pub date, thanks to a hostile alien that keeps them busy until nearly two am. Ianto drives all three of them home afterwards, and now that work is behind them, the car ride is almost painfully silent. Tosh and Owen both mutter stilted good nights before dashing into their respective buildings. Gwen watches them go and fights back a wave of nausea.

"They'll be fine," Ianto says quietly. "It's just a surprise. We've all been so insular since he left, and they're still so sure he's--"

He stops himself and clears his throat.

"Anyway," he says. "It's just a shock to be reminded there's life outside of this place."

"I'm not abandoning Torchwood," she tells him. She's surprised that her voice doesn't falter.

"I know that," he says. "They know it too. It's not selfish to want to be happy, Gwen. Not at all."

When they reach her building, Ianto bends over the console and gives her another awkward hug. "I really am happy for you," he says, and he waits in the car until she's inside her building before slowly turning around and heading back to the Hub. She watches him go until the tail lights of his car are far in the distance and the sound of the motor has faded away. She wonders if Ianto has always known her this well, watching from the shadows, or if this is another gift that Jack's disappearance has given her.

***

The others begin to notice their closeness, though she doesn't realize it until the afternoon Ianto picks up the thread of a conversation from their dinner the night before, a night spent sitting on the floor in front of Ianto's television with Italian take-away and one too many bottles of wine after he declared that he needed a break from the Hub before he went mad.

"Pyradanteen," Ianto says, apropos of nothing, but Gwen laughs and claps her hands together a moment later. They're sitting, all four of them, around the boardroom table, sharing a pizza.

"That's it, that's the one, you're a doll," she says, and Ianto smirks.

"What are you talking about?" Tosh asks, curious, hesitant smile on her face. "Pyradanteen, isn't that the race that held up the museum a few months ago?"

"Yeah," Gwen says, patting the back of Ianto's hand, "we were trying to remember it last night for about two hours."

"And Tea-boy couldn't get it straight off?" Owen asks. "I thought you were supposed to know everything. What else do we keep you around for?"

"I was slightly impaired," Ianto says, shoulders straight and proper as he takes a neat bite of pizza, napkin hanging from his collar. Gwen laughs again, because "impaired" means "utterly sloshed and unable to stand."

"You could have just searched the mainframe," Tosh suggests.

"We weren't here," Gwen says. "We were at Ianto's. And I wouldn't let him turn on his laptop if he was too drunk to untie his shoes."

"I could have untied my shoes just fine, thank you very much," Ianto says, nose just slightly turned up. "I just preferred to leave them on."

"Of course you did, sweetheart," Gwen says, though it's clear that she believes no such thing. "And the throwing up, that was just because you had a bit of a bug, right?" Ianto flicks a bit of pepperoni at her, face still impassive, and she giggles again.

It's then that she realizes that Owen and Tosh are staring at the two of them.

Tosh breaks first, looking down at her pizza and picking at the crust. "So, you two go out a lot, then?"

"Now and again," Ianto says quietly, evasively, his attention back on his own lunch.

"If it gets late and we're both working," Gwen adds, as if that doesn't describe every night at Torchwood.

"You just going to keep shagging your way to the top?" Owen sneers. "First Jack, now he's gone, so you move on to Gwen?" Gwen is appalled, but Ianto doesn't rise to the bait.

"Yes, actually, it's in the fine print of my job description," he says. "All in service of Queen and Country, yes? At least the condoms can legally be added to my expense reports, unlike the ones you try to add to yours every quarter."

Tosh looks torn between laughing and taking Ianto at his word. It's not until Ianto winks at her that she relaxes fractionally and smiles. Her smile is still stilted, and Gwen knows she should feel bad about that, knows that Torchwood is all Tosh has and that Gwen should try to include her, but she can't help but cling selfishly to her time with Ianto. She doesn't know exactly what she's been feeling since Jack's departure, but she knows Ianto is the only one who understands it.

"So what do you two discuss at your little Club Wales meetings?" Owen asks. "Besides Jack's dick, of course."

"It's nothing," Gwen insists, though she can practically see the catty reply on Ianto's tongue. "If we're both working late, we get dinner or have a drink. That's all." Owen doesn't look convinced and Tosh is still hurt, but it's the best that Gwen can do for the moment. She can feel Ianto's gaze, but she doesn't look at him, just places her palms flat on the table and says, "Anyway, what have we got on that disturbance in the harbor?"

She tries harder, after that, to spend time with Tosh, to relax a bit with the whole team. Tensions run high, as they always do thanks to a combination of her poor choice to sleep with Owen, Tosh's unfortunate crush, and Owen and Ianto's rivalry, but, in the end, they're the only thing they have left and they have their anger towards Jack to unite them when things get rough.

Which is good, it turns out, because it's not long after when Harold Saxon firmly suggests they investigate some inconsistencies in the Himalayas and their despair reaches a harsh crescendo.

The fight about traveling is bad enough--Gwen thinks they need to go, Owen insists they shouldn't be away from the rift. Tosh seems more concerned about what will happen if Jack comes back, but generally agrees that it looks likely that Saxon will be the new PM and it's best to be amenable to the new administration. All that aside, he's head of the MoD, and while Torchwood doesn't, strictly, have to answer to them, they usually don't ask for help unless it's important. Ianto doesn't engage in the debate, but afterwards, when they're leaving the Hub to pack their bags before their flight, he takes her by the elbow and says once, softly, "It doesn't feel right."

It's the only time that Gwen questions the choice to investigate.

They spend one day traveling to Pakistan, hopping from plane to plane to helicopter, and one day getting a very vague briefing from one of Saxon's attachés. After that, they're left to their own devices, scouring the mountainside for evidence of rift activity that Saxon swears UNIT claims is linked to their rift, to Abbadon.

More than anything, that's what convinced Gwen they needed to go in the first place. Abbadon was their doing--their mutiny, their mistake. They need to atone for it, and if that means mucking about on a mountain in the middle of the Himalayas....

They find nothing on top of nothing for days. They climb and they investigate and they scan. They nearly freeze in the wind and snow. They rarely speak. Tensions run high. Gwen starts to feel like a bow string drawn back as far as possible, and by day six of their search--over a full week away from the rift--she's sure she'll snap any moment. She can feel it in the others, too: Ianto won't make eye contact with anyone, Owen is nearly vibrating with frustration, and Tosh startles at every noise.

In a way, they're lucky that's the day that Tosh loses her footing and twists her ankle.

It's not too bad, Tosh's injury. A pulled muscle more than anything else; there's no sprain, no break, nothing a few days of rest won't cure. They're all tired, though, and looking for any excuse to stop their fruitless searching and pack up their camp. Gwen tries to radio the UNIT outpost a few kilometers away, but gets nothing but static. It's slightly disconcerting, but the radio isn't always reliable, and in the end, they decide it will be easier to make the short hike into the settlement.

It takes them ten minutes to find out why Saxon's UNIT contingent is gone.

"He shot the US President?" Owen asks for the third time. The old man sitting at the desk of what could politely be called an inn, nods for the third time.

"And then his wife shot him," he says. "The soldiers left very quickly."

"He shot the US President?" Owen asks again, and Gwen gently pushes him out of the way.

"Is there somewhere around here we can get something to eat?" she asks. The old man nods again.

"My wife will make dinner," he says. He points to a large room with a fireplace across the hall. "Go. Sit. She will bring it to you."

The four of them look at each other. Harold Saxon is dead. They're in a tiny inn in Pakistan. The rift has been abandoned for over a week, and all as some ploy to--what? Get them out of the country? Out of Saxon's way?

Gwen knows she should say something inspiring or wry, something to boost everyone's morale, but that's where Jack excelled. Jack was the one with the words of wisdom, Jack had all the charisma. All four of them would follow Jack into hell, and it took two days of haranguing for her to get the others to follow her to the bloody mountains. She can't be inspiring, not now, not when all she wants to do is sleep for a week.

Ianto is the one who breaks the spell. He simply shrugs and walks into the other room, dragging his pack behind him. After a moment, Gwen and Tosh follow him. Owen isn't far behind. They're in the middle of nowhere, cut off from everything. Gwen can try and get a real radio call into someone tomorrow. Until then, there's not much else they can do.

They pass the time until dinner with silence, broken only occasionally by Owen's awed, "He shot the US President." When their dinner does come it's warm and rich and wonderful, miles better than the reheated camp food they've been eating for the past week. It's the food more than anything that leaves her homesick for Rhys and home cooking and real beds, and even once the innkeeper's wife clears the plates away, Gwen still can't bring herself to speak. This whole mission has been a disaster, and while the blame falls squarely on her shoulders, she's just too tired to deal with it.

They remain silent when the woman reappears with four mugs and a heavy kettle, but once it's on the table, Ianto moves for it with a nearly robotic efficiency. He pours them each a cup and prepares it to their usual specifications. They accept graciously, even Owen, although he pulls a whiskey bottle from his pocket as soon as Ianto sits down and pours a measure into his mug. He doesn't offer to share.

"If Jack were here, he'd have some sort of story," Tosh says. She forces a smile and sips her tea, staring down at the surface and avoiding all of their gazes. Gwen doesn't want to think about Jack, but Tosh is right, of course. Jack had a story for everything and most of them were bawdy.

"He was good at that," Ianto says. Gwen doesn't miss the way he accidentally-on-purpose brushes his foot against Tosh's. "He told the most wonderful stories."

Owen snorts and doesn't even try to hide the second measure of whiskey he pours into his tea. "Trust you to get off on Jack's rude stories about shagging aliens."

Ianto rolls his eyes. "You know, not all of his stories were about sex, as hard as it is to believe. He used to talk about other worlds, other times... things I'm sure he saw in his travels that I just assumed at the time he was making up. He showed such reverence to them, like each one was... precious...." Ianto is far away, all of a sudden, and Gwen glances around the table. Tosh is watching him with wide eyes, but Owen's hands are in fists. The whiskey bottle is no longer stashed in his pocket, but open on the table and obviously getting more attention than his chilling tea.

This isn't going to end well.

"You think you're one of those stories now?" Owen asks. It takes Ianto a moment to come back to earth, but he frowns at Owen once he does.

"Excuse me?" he asks.

"One of Jack's conquests," Owen nearly spits. "You think he's sitting around a table wherever he's fucked off to, saying, 'Oh, yeah, I fucked this kid in Wales. Pretty, but dumb as shit.'"

Ianto goes rigid.

"Owen," Gwen says warningly.

"Is that what you were aspiring to be all those months you followed him around like a puppy? To be immortalized in one of his smutty bullshit stories? Do you really think you're that different from all of the other Torchwood lapdogs he's fucked?"

"That's enough, Owen!" Gwen snaps. Tosh is staring between Owen and Ianto, biting her lip. Ianto's gone white, hand clutched around the mug of tea in front of him.

"He didn't care about you!" Owen shouts. Gwen knows, she knows that this is more about Owen's own feelings of failure, his own inability to please Jack. But it's Ianto's heart he's breaking and it needs to stop. "He didn't care about any of us, and he didn't stay behind for you or take you with him, so where do you think you stand with him, eh?"

Gwen hears the breaking glass before she even realizes Ianto's thrown his cup. Owen looks shocked, momentarily, and glances over his shoulder to wet spot on the wall behind him where the mug shattered. He turns back, sneering.

"Why am I not surprised?" Owen said. "That's twice you've tried to kill me and twice you've missed."

Ianto is up from the table and on top of Owen before Gwen can even think to stop him, not that she's entirely sure she would, given the chance. He punches Owen once, in the jaw, hard enough to knock him to the ground.

"Didn't miss that time," he says, and then turns on his heel and marches out of the dining room and up the stairs.

She can't blame Owen; they're all aggravated and tired. Still, she's too angry to deal with him at the moment and has no problem letting Tosh help him off the floor and leaving the table without another word.

She finds Ianto in the corridor their rooms are in. He's leaning against the wall, forehead and palms pressed against the plaster, breathing ragged. He flinches when she touches his back.

"It's just me, love," she says softly, though she's not sure if she's any more welcome than Owen would be at the moment.

"Sorry," he says. His voice is rough and deeper than usual. He doesn't turn around.

"Nothing to be sorry about," Gwen says. "Owen is a bastard."

"Jack is a bastard," Ianto replies. "Jack is a fucking--" His hands fist against the wall and he whirls around so fast Gwen just narrowly misses being smacked in the face. He presses his back against the wall. His eyes are red-rimmed and wet, and he wipes at them with barely contained fury. "If we ever do see him again, I'm going to shoot him."

"You don't mean that," Gwen insists. She touches his shoulder tentatively, and when he doesn't pull away, she starts to rub his arm.

"I know," he says, and he laughs. It's a painful sound. "I wish I did. He just--he left us, Gwen. We're in the bloody Himalayas, all four of us away from the rift all on account of nothing. We're exhausted, we're running ourselves ragged, and all so he can have a bloody holiday out in the universe. He left us. He left--"

He left me, Gwen knows he wants to say. She knows because she thinks the same thing when she's lying in bed, unable to sleep as worst case scenarios run through her mind, as she wonders how the hell she justifies ordering these people around on a daily basis, how she can take their lives in her hands.

"I know," Gwen says. "I know. He's a bastard." She wants to wrap her arms around Ianto, shield him from this, but she knows he won't allow it. She knows there's no point. The damage was done weeks ago, when Jack left, or maybe even longer, when Lisa died. Before that, when Canary Wharf fell. For all she knows of his past, he's been this damaged since he was a child. He still manages to cope every day, to put on an immaculate suit and take care of their needs without blinking an eye. It's his choice and she can't stop him, but she wishes she knew how to tell him that he's not alone.

"Oh, Ianto," she says softly. She gives in to the impulse to hug him, wraps an arm around his back and rests her head on his shoulder.

"I miss him," he whispers as he gently puts his arms around her, slightly stiff as if he doesn't quite know how to accept the comfort she's offering. "Isn't that sick?"

"It might be," she replies, "but I do too."

And that's where they stand. Sick and twisted for missing someone they're sure has abandoned them, tied up in some warped variant of Stockholm Syndrome. She knows Jack isn't coming back. She knows that Ianto knows, too. And yet, regardless of that, neither of them will give up hope.

Sick, indeed, she thinks darkly, and she's startled by how Ianto-like that thought is.

"Get your things," she says to him once he finally pulls away and goes about straightening his jumper, refusing to meet her eyes.

"Pardon?" he asks.

"You're switching with Tosh," she says, "if only because if I'm suck in a room with Owen, I might kill him too."

Ianto hesitates, relief warring with reluctance across his face. "I appreciate the offer," he says finally. "And I would very much like to take you up on it but... this needs to end. Owen and I. We need to sort this, and if we don't do it before we get back to Cardiff, I don't know if we ever will."

Gwen frowns and gently grasps his elbow until he looks at her again. "Are you sure that's wise, Ianto? I mean, the two of you... I don't want you to get hurt." She pauses. "Either of you," she clarifies, "but I know Owen is...."

"Owen is a bastard," Ianto says gently, echoing her earlier statement and covering her hand with his, "but we need to keep working together. We probably won't kill each other, but if you hear gunfire... well, I suppose it's my turn, so try and rescue me before I bleed out."

The humor is forced, but something in his expression causes her to nod her head slowly and squeeze his elbow.

"Be careful," she says. He nods and gently takes her hand off of his arm.

"We'll come to an understanding," he says. "We have to." She's not sure if he's trying to convince her or himself.

They retire to their separate rooms, Gwen lying fully clothed on her bed and listening to the sounds of the inn, the occasional chatter from the other side of the lone window in the room. It's not long before she hears two set of footsteps trooping up the stairs, and the door to her room opens and closes quickly, Tosh ducking into the darkness without comment.

Gwen rolls over, torn between straining to listen to the sounds on the other side of the wall and trying to block it out. The words wash over her--Owen's raised voice and Ianto's quiet, sharp responses. There are low shouts and thumps, more harsh words, and eventually, Gwen falls asleep to the muffled cacophony of the argument next door, quiet sobs that she'll never admit to hearing.

The following morning, Ianto and Owen are sitting in the room with the fireplace when Gwen comes down for breakfast. Ianto has a scratch high on his cheekbone and a split lip. Owen's left eye has blossomed into a spectacular bruise that trails down his face nearly far enough to meet the darker bruise on his jaw. They're not speaking, but the tension between them isn't as sharp as it's been in the weeks since Jack left. She sits across from Owen and takes Ianto's hand under the table.

"Back to Cardiff, then?" she asks. Ianto squeezes her fingers. Owen goes so far as to offer her a weak, forced smile.

"Someone's got to keep their eye on the Weevils," Owen says.

"You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Ianto replies.

Gwen doesn't realize how tense she is until Owen snorts and snaps back, "Don't get me mixed up in your fantasies, Jones." She feels her entire body relax incrementally. She starts to think the four of them can really get through this on their own.

"I'll go get Tosh and make the call, then," she says, getting up from the table.

"Yes, wouldn't want to keep Janet waiting," Ianto says. She doesn't miss the rude gesture that Owen makes at him as she heads upstairs, and she's still grinning wildly when she knocks on the door to wake Tosh.

***

The first time Ianto gets shot is one of the most terrifying moments of Gwen's life. Worse than seeing Suzie shoot herself, worse than seeing Jack stand up after Suzie shot him, worse than watching the faeries disappear with a little girl. It's almost as terrible as seeing Jack fall to Abbadon, almost as bad as Rhys dying under her hands on that same night, or the few terrifying moments she was strapped to a cyber conversion unit. One minute he's standing beside her, pointing his gun at a fleeing alien, a walking, talking blowfish and the next he's on the ground, blood pouring out of his chest and staining his shirt, the wound so close to his heart, so close to where she thinks the heart must be at any rate. She freezes, unsure of what to do, how to handle it, all of her training running out of her head as she panics. She only sees her friend, wheezing in pain and bleeding out onto the concrete and she can barely move to cover the wound as she screams into her comm for Owen. She can hear the fish running away, the roar of an engine on the street around the corner, but none of that matters when Ianto's blood is staining her hands.

"It's okay, love," she says over and over again. "It's okay, you'll be okay, darling, I swear."

"Oh god," Ianto sobs, his hands wrapping around her arm. "Oh god, oh god, it hurts!"

She hears shoes slapping against wet pavement, and suddenly Tosh and Owen are there, Owen shoving her out of the way to kneel next to Ianto. Ianto's hands stay wrapped around Gwen's arm, though, even as Owen pulls back his shirt and starts to work on the wound. She's glad that Owen snaps at Tosh to help him, tells her to hand him things and hold a torch for him, because Gwen can barely cope with wiping the tears off of Ianto's face and begging him to stay awake. She's already lost Jack--she can't lose Ianto too. She can't bear to look at the dark hole in his chest and she's so fucking grateful when Owen puts a thick wad of gauze over it and orders Tosh to get the SUV so they can get him back to the Hub.

The wound isn't as bad as Gwen had feared when she heard the shot and saw Ianto hit the ground. It was too high to hit any vital organs and, miraculously, did very little internal damage. He'll be fine in a few weeks' time, save for an impressive looking scar, and Owen predicts he'll make a full recovery.

For the moment, though, he's in a tremendous amount of pain and drugged to the gills. The three of them--Tosh, Owen, and Gwen--are standing around his bed in autopsy, trying to decide the best way to proceed.

"I can stay here," Owen says. Both Gwen and Tosh turn to him in shock. "What?" he says. "We may not get along, but I'm still his doctor. He can't even use the bloody toilet by himself, we can't very well leave him alone!"

"I'll stay with him," Gwen says, touching his forehead, brushing back the cowlick at the front of his head that always seems to pull away from the rest of his hair. "It's my fault. I can stay."

"No," Tosh says. "Gwen, you should get home to Rhys. I can stay with him. There were some programs I wanted to work on anyway. I can just as well do them here."

Gwen laughs. "He'd be so embarrassed, having all of us argue over him like this," she says, cupping the side of his face and brushing his temple with her thumb. Ianto stirs at the movement, turning his face towards her and struggling to open his eyes.

"Jack?" he murmurs, his accent thicker than usual. All three of them cringe in unison.

"He's not here, sweetheart," Gwen says. She pets his hair again. "I'm sorry."

"Oh." She watches Ianto try and focus on her, his pupils blown, his eyelids threatening to close. "When'll he be back?"

"Soon," she lies. "He'll be here soon. Go back to sleep. We'll sit with you, okay?" He's unconscious again before she's finished speaking. Gwen can't bear to look at Owen or Tosh.

"Okay," Owen says. "We'll do it in shifts. I'll stay tonight so Gwennie can get back home to loverboy. Gwen can sit with him in the morning and I'll try and get some shut eye, aliens permitting. Tosh can stay with him tomorrow night, and hopefully he'll be lucid by then." Owen pulls a stool over to the bed and grabs a stack of reports from a shelf behind him. "Besides, it gives me some time to catch up on some of those reports he's been fucking nagging me about."

She meets Tosh's gaze over the bed and shrugs. Tosh shrugs back. It's as good a plan as any. Someone needs to be awake and alert to keep an eye on the rift, so it makes sense to watch Ianto in shifts. Still, as she leans over and kisses his forehead, she can't help but feel as though she's failed him somehow. By not stopping the blowfish, by not pushing him out of the way, by not producing Jack from thin air to care for him....

Tosh kisses him, too, and then takes Gwen's hand and leads her back up to their workstations.

"It's not your fault," she says, as they gather their purses with not-so-subtle glances back to the autopsy bay.

"I was right next to him," she says. "I was the one who ordered him to come with me, I was the one who--"

"You weren't the one who pulled the trigger," Tosh says. She gives Gwen a weak smile. "I know the two of you are--are close. I know he means a lot to you since Jack left. But don't blame yourself. He'll be fine."

She tries to return Tosh's smile, tries to believe that as she wraps her coat around herself and heads up to her car. It's not easy. There are still flakes of Ianto's blood under her fingernails. She can still hear the sound he made when the bullet hit his chest.

Rhys is making dinner when she gets home, surprised to see her before eight or nine. The surprise turns to concern when he sees the look on her face, the way she runs straight for the kitchen sink to wash her hands for the twelfth or thirteenth time since leaving the alleyway.

"What's wrong?" he asks. She wants to laugh. There's a list of things a mile long, but she can't tell him any of them. She can't say, My boss abandoned us, I was put in charge of an organization I barely understand, I have the fate of the world on my shoulders, I can't connect to any of my old friends anymore, and my best friend in my new life is an emotionally repressed secretary who just got shot by a giant walking blowfish while following my orders.

What she says is, "Tough day at work." She voice wavers. "My... a friend got hurt. He'll be okay. But." She examines her fingernails closely and blinks back tears. Rhys' arms come up around her, pulling her close and petting her hair.

"It's okay, love," he says. "It's over now."

No, she thinks as she puts her head on his shoulder and sobs. No, it's just beginning. Ianto is the first, yes, but she knows the life-span of a Torchwood employee can't be that long. The others joke about it. Now that Jack is gone, she's going to have to send these people, her friends out to be killed over and over again. There will be more injuries. There will be deaths. They'll be on her hands.

She hates Jack Harkness. She fucking hates him.

***

She ends up at the Hub earlier than usual the next day. She wakes up in the quiet hours of the morning, Rhys still snoring away beside her, and can't quite deal with not being there any longer. She knows Owen would have called if there was a problem, but she needs to see Ianto. She needs to touch his forehead and hold his hand and coax him into opening his eyes.

She gets dressed in the pale grey light and leaves a note for Rhys. On her way in, she stops at Ianto's favorite cafe, waiting patiently outside as the shopgirls sweep the floor and take the chairs off of the tables, before they unlock the door at precisely 6:30. She buys enough coffee and breakfast to feed everyone three times over, including most of Ianto's favorites, though she knows, logically, he's in no condition to eat.

When she gets to the Hub, she takes the invisible lift down and finds Owen sitting in autopsy with his feet resting on a cabinet. He's watching a film on his laptop and looks as though he's ready to doze off at any moment.

"Hello," she says, stepping up to the railing. She holds out a coffee and the box of pastries.

"It's not even seven," he mutters, but accepts both and puts the box on an operating tray, hunting through for a doughnut.

"Are you complaining about getting off early, then?" she asks.

"No," he says, "Just making sure you know you're a nutter." He stands and stretches, rubbing his eyes with the hand not holding a doughnut. "He's fine. Woke up a couple of times in the night. I just gave him another shot. He'll need a new one just before lunch. It's the blue syringe just there. You know how to shoot it into his IV bag?"

"Yes," she says. She picks her way down to Ianto's bed and lays her purse on the floor.

"Around eleven," he says. "If he wakes up and he's hungry, he can have some soup or toast. No coffee, no matter what he says and how hard he turns those bloody huge eyes of his on you. I doubt he'll be up for much talking anyway. He barely knew where he was the last few times he woke up." He pauses and then leans over the box of pastries again like he's trying to be casual. "He keeps asking for Jack."

She doesn't know how to reply to that.

"Right, well!" Owen says brightly. "I'm off! Call me if the world's ending, yeah?"

"Sure. Get some rest, come in this afternoon if you want, but as long as it's quiet, I think we deserve some time off."

Owen raises a hand in acknowledgment as he heads up the steps and out of autopsy. Gwen sits next to Ianto's bed and takes his hand, listening to the rustling sounds at Owen's desk, followed by footsteps across the Hub, and finally the proximity alarm as the cog door rolls open and then closed.

She turns her attention back to Ianto and stares at him patiently, waiting for him to wake.

Tosh comes in around eight and sticks her head into autopsy in greeting. She comes down long enough to run a gentle hand through Ianto's hair before returning to her desk with a plate of pastries. Around eight-thirty, Ianto wakes up again, briefly, and asks for Jack and then some water before falling back asleep. Gwen's heart only breaks a little when she assures him that Jack will be there soon.

Tosh brings her reports to read close to ten, and at ten-thirty, Owen calls in to make sure the world isn't ending and to remind Gwen that Ianto gets a shot at eleven.

Ianto sleeps.

The rift is quiet, thankfully, and other than a blip in Bute Park that ends up being harmless space junk, they have nothing to do. Gwen reads through a backlog of reports and signs everything that's highlighted for her to sign. She looks through Tosh's rift predictions for the next month, and finally breaks down and pulls a mystery novel out of her bag, one hand still tightly clinging to Ianto's. It's after noon, and he's still sleeping, though something about him has shifted, slightly. He seems to be sleeping naturally now, peacefully. It's no longer the heavy sleep of the drugged, and Gwen hopes that when he wakes next, he'll be a bit more lucid. She honestly doesn't know how many more times she can bear hearing him ask for Jack.

True to her prediction, when Ianto opens his eyes just a little bit after one, she can already see that the drugged haze has left them.

"Oh god," he groans softly. "What happened?"

"You were shot," Gwen says. She smoothes his hair back and adjusts her grip on his hand. "Last night. The blowfish?"

"Oh god," he groans again. "Shit. Last night? What time is it?"

"It's just after one," she says. "In the afternoon," she clarifies before he can ask.

"Wonderful," he mutters and closes his eyes again. "Is everyone else all right?"

"We're fine," she says. She has to swallow past a sudden lump in her throat. "We're all fine. Scared shitless for you, but we weren't hurt."

"And the blowfish?"

She lets go of his hand and tucks the blanket more securely around him. "It doesn't matter. We're just happy you're awake and coherent."

His eyes open again and he pins her down with a look. "Gwen...."

"He got away," Gwen admits, adding, "Ianto, it doesn't matter!" when he swears under his breath.

"You shouldn't have--"

"Don't even!" Gwen snaps, her hands fisting in the blanket. "Don't you dare, Ianto Jones! You were bleeding out on the concrete, do you have any idea what was--we couldn't just leave you there! You're more important than that!"

"Am I?" Gwen almost doesn't hear him, and when she does figure out what he's said, she has to resist the urge to hit him or shake him.

"Of course you are, you idiot!" she nearly shouts instead. "We care about you, Ianto! All three of us have been sitting up with you! Owen was here all night, and Tosh and I have been here all morning! We're your friends! We love you, Ianto!"

He closes his eyes and covers his face with his free hand, breathing deeply.

"I'm sorry," he finally manages to say. "I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry, Gwen. I know you--I know all of you care. I'm just... not used to it, I suppose."

"Well, get used to it," she says firmly. "We're not letting you go that easily."

He relaxes back into the pillow and sighs, removing his hand from his face and picking at the edge of the blanket. It's the blanket from Jack's bed, grabbed in a rush last night when they couldn't find anything else to keep him warm. Gwen felt odd going down there without Jack, without Ianto, but she wanted to make the bed in autopsy comfortable and familiar, so she didn't have much other choice.

He's still too pale, paler than usual, and exhausted. There are bags under his eyes and his eyelids are puffy and red. He should probably be in a hospital or his own bed, but, even if she didn't know he would refuse anyway, she selfishly wants him nearby.

"I... Gwen, I haven't--I just wanted to..." She looks up at her name and stares at him, strokes at the back of his hand and his blankets to urge him to continue. "I wanted to thank you. For... being there. Since Jack's been... since Jack left." He clears his throat and looks away from her, eyes focusing on the ceiling, the shelving, the railing above, anywhere but her face. "I know the three of you were... well, if not friends, I know you... got along well. And I just had Jack. And that was fine, but then Jack... well, I'm glad you've been there. I'm glad I've become a part of it all. I'm glad I've had you." He's blushing when he looks at her again. "I'd think that's probably the drugs talking, still, but I don't think I've thanked you yet, so...."

"You don't have to thank me, Ianto," Gwen says. There's another stubborn lump in her throat. Not for the first time, she wonders what Ianto's life must have been like up to this point, what could have made him so hesitant to trust those around him, to accept love and friendship. "It's what friends do."

"I know," he says, "but I'm thanking you anyway."

She nods and adjusts his blankets again, for lack of anything else to do with her hands. After a moment, Tosh appears and takes her turn doting and fussing, leaving Gwen to step out into the Hub to breathe. She won't let herself cry, not again, but she takes deep, greedy lungfuls of air and once she's sure her voice will be steady, she calls Owen with an update. Ianto is fine. All four of them are fine, and that's all she can ask for right now.

***

Ianto's bedridden for the rest of the week, though he only stays in bed for four days. He declines the offer to stay with Tosh and declines again when Gwen offers him the pullout couch in her flat or to stay with him at his. He rambles around the Hub once he's off his IV and tries to do as much work as he can get away with, stopping only when Owen or Gwen makes a comment.

When he gets too tired to archive or make coffee, he sits on the couch or in the chair in Jack's office and dozes or reads reports. Gwen can tell he's itching to be useful however he can be, and by the end of that first week, Owen begrudgingly says he can return to work on light duties, as long as he stays in the Hub or the tourist office for at least another week.

Owen still hovers, though, making rude comments about their matching scars to hide his concern. Gwen hovers, too. She sits with him when he's dozing on the sofa and writes her reports from the other side of Jack's desk when he's working in the office. When he starts to look tired, she encourages breaks, asking him silly questions about his favorite foods, his favorite spots in town, if he played sports as a child. She learns that he loves summer fruit, is mildly allergic to prawns, a list of his favorite pubs, and that he played rugby until he was old enough to protest and started guitar when he was old enough to rebel.

She doesn't intend to ask him about Jack--Jack being a subject best left until several drinks into a night out--but she catches him fiddling with one of Jack's old earpieces, one that's split in two, but still sitting on the desk. When Ianto smirks and rolls his eyes, she can't help but prompt him into the story.

"It's nothing," he insists with another eyeroll. "I'm just remembering--" He stops and laughs, the tips of his ears turning red. "I broke this one night," he says. "I stepped on it."

Gwen doesn't get the humor. "On purpose?" she asks.

"Yep," he says. "He tried to take a call while we were... otherwise engaged." He twirls it between his fingers. "It's possible I forcibly removed it from his ear and stepped on it to end the call." The red is spreading down into his cheeks. "He had me handcuffed to the ladder. I was a bit peeved I didn't have his full attention. I certainly had it after that."

Gwen can't help staring at him in fascination. "If he had you handcuffed to the ladder, how did you get the earpiece out?" she asks.

"Didn't use my hands," he says. It takes her a moment to figure out what he means, and once she does, she can't stop staring at his mouth.

"Oh," she says, feeling her own ears burning.

"Yeah."

"He answered a call while trying to--while--"

"Yep. He may be gorgeous, but he occasionally has terrible bed manners. Hogs the covers, too, and more than once left a sticky mess that I ended up cleaning up. I swear, that man would live in his own filth if I didn't follow him around cleaning up after him."

She wrinkles her nose. "How did you stand it?"

Ianto gets a faraway look in his eyes, the earpiece still twirling between his fingers. "He's... very, very good at it," he says. "Very... adventurous. But also...." His hands still and he stares down at them. "He's... caring. Attentive. It's not just about getting off, it's about the enjoyment in getting someone else off. It's not so much about emotion with him. To Jack sex is... sex is something fun and he goes out of his way to make it fun for everyone involved."

He's full on blushing when he looks up at her, but she knows that she is, too. She's been wanting to know about what Jack's like in bed for weeks, but she was afraid to ask. She's not sure this is the answer she was expecting, but it also makes sense, in an odd way. Although...

"Not about emotion?" she asks. "He never...?" She's not sure what she's asking. Jack's already proven how much Ianto didn't mean to him, how much they all didn't mean to him, but she'd hate to think of Jack using Ianto as nothing more than a plaything for the months they were together.

"Not entirely," Ianto corrects. "He was affectionate. He cared. And I cared about him. But it's not...." He frowns, a furrow appearing between his eyebrows. "There was no illusion that we were sleeping together for anything other than a mutually beneficial physical release. At least... at first. And then...."

He trails off. Gwen lets them sit in silence.

"I don't know," he finally says. "At the end there, when he was... when I thought he was dead... and then he kissed me like that, in front of everyone...."

Gwen holds his hand across the desk. When Ianto speaks again, it's a quiet question about a case that Tosh is working on. He doesn't mention Jack again for the rest of the day.

The next day, however, Gwen comes in to find Ianto at the coffeemaker in his pajamas. He's humming to himself, mood a little brighter than it's been since his injury, and he has a smile for her when she sticks her head into the kitchen area to greet him.

"Bit of a late start this morning," he says. "I'll leave this on the desk and take a shower before the others come in."

She smiles in thanks and heads back to the office, intent on tackling some of the paperwork she's been avoiding. She's not surprised to see the light on, but she is surprised that the top of the desk has been cleared off, save for one very familiar leather-bound book. She had forgotten about it weeks ago, ever since that first night after Jack's disappearance, when she combed it for answers that only Ianto seemed able to parse together. She thinks Tosh and Owen have forgotten about it too. She wonders if Ianto's had it this whole time.

She runs her fingers over the now-familiar engravings and then opens it to the bright pink post-it note that's been inserted about halfway through.

One time, we were in a restaurant near Bute Park, it said in Ianto's exceedingly neat handwriting. It wasn't a date, mind, rather a post-Weevil-hunt-and-shag-in-the-back-of-the-SUV (don't worry, I get it valet serviced on a regular basis) meal and Jack realized he'd left his wallet back at the Hub. He was adamant the meal go on the Torchwood expense account (thus my conviction that it doesn't count as a date), and refused to let me just put the meal on my card. He was convinced that he could charm the woman who owned the restaurant into letting him come back and pay the tab later. I don't know what was funnier, the look on Jack's face when he realized that he'd managed to meet the one person in the universe who his many wiles didn't work on, or the look on his face when threatened with a night spent doing dishes to compensate for the meal and the very pricey bottle of wine.

(I ended up paying myself. I didn't even bother submitting the expense report; the comic horror in his expression was more than worth it.)

She's giggling by the end of the story and only startles out of it when Ianto clears his throat from the doorway. He hands her a cup of coffee and then crosses over to the desk and holds up his key ring by the key to Jack's bottom right desk drawer, the key that she had a copy of on her own key ring. She understands the gesture for what it means--This is our secret now, yours and mine. She can imagine the snide remarks Owen would make and embarrassed blush that would grace Toshiko's cheeks if they read it themselves, but more than that, she understands that this is a little piece of Jack that Ianto could have saved all to himself, but one that he chose to share with her as well.

He winks at her as he disappears to take his shower and prepare for the work day. Paperwork forgotten, Gwen digs a pen out of the desk and starts to share an embarrassing story of her own.

***

Near the end of Ianto's week of light duties, a ship crashes out in the countryside and he ends up back in the field two days early. He handles himself well despite being precariously close to the area where he was held hostage by cannibals and having to face down a seven foot tall alien with some sort of blaster. On the car ride home, Owen declares him fit for active duty, which is rather moot considering he's in the middle of helping Tosh stitch together a gash in Owen's shoulder at the time.

Things continue on with as much normality as Torchwood ever saw. Owen and Ianto snipe at each other, Tosh regularly has to be pried out of the Hub when the hours get late, and Gwen becomes more used to giving orders and taking responsibility. She and Ianto still spend a handful of evenings together and write stories about Jack in the book that used to contain a very different kind of secret. She and Rhys plan their wedding. She and Tosh have lunch on the Plass and gossip about the boys. Nobody talks about Jack, not out loud, but the team stops walking on eggshells around each other, and for the first time, Gwen starts to believe that they can be fully functional in his absence.

One week goes by. Then two. Then, Gwen walks in on Ianto holding a carton and staring at the collection of knick-knacks on Jack's desk.

"What's up?" she asks him, looking from the carton to the desk and then up at the determined look on his face.

"It doesn't make sense," he says. He looks at her, chewing on his lip. "We should be using the office. I mean, I know you and I use it, but we shouldn't just... act like we're keeping it warm until he comes back. We should use it. Move our things up here so they'll be there when we need them, so you don't have to go running down to your workstation every time you need letterhead."

"You want to pack up Jack's things?" She's not shocked that someone has made the suggestion, but she's a little shocked that it's Ianto. Maybe she shouldn't be. He's the most practical out of all of them, and while she assumed that he sought Jack's office for the same comfort that she did, for the same anchor to their boss that she needed, maybe he's right in thinking that the time has come to cut ties.

"I can put them in storage, down in his room," he says. His fingers dance along the edge of the carton. "I just thought...."

He never tells her what he thought, the silence stretching out between them. He puts the box on the floor and gently, almost reverently runs his hands over several of the items littering Jack's desk.

"Do you love him?" she asks before she can help herself. She's been wondering for weeks now, but is mortified at her own gall, expecting Ianto to shy away from her question.

Her mortification turns to surprise when he doesn't even hesitate. "Yep," he says. "Don't you?"

"I--what?" she stutters. "Ianto, I'm engaged to Rhys."

"So?" he says. "That doesn't mean you can't love Jack. It's just different, that's all. You love Rhys, you love your best mate, you love your mum, right? Jack's just... a new category. One of a kind." He smirks. "Definitely one of a kind."

"More than I needed to know, love," she says, hesitant to admit that she knows exactly what he's talking about.

"Jack loved us all whole-heartedly," Ianto says, ignoring her jibe. "That's how he is. He loves everything. He loves everyone. He got under our skin, he made us care about him. If he was just our team leader, we wouldn't have gone this mad when he disappeared. He made us loyal and he made us love him."

Gwen frowns. It sounds like manipulation to her. "Loyalty and love... are you saying they're the same thing?"

Ianto shrugs. "Do I love him because I'm loyal to him or am I loyal to him because I love him? Does it matter? We all love Jack. Probably not in the same way, but, god, don't we all love him?"

She's wondering how to answer when she hears the distant alarm of a rift monitor. She and Ianto exchange a glance, and before they can even get to the door of the office, Tosh is jogging up the stairs.

"The blowfish is back," she says breathlessly, sparing a hesitant glance for Ianto. "He's held up a pub and stolen a sports car. I've got him on the CCTV--he's not being very circumspect."

Beyond Tosh, Gwen sees Owen checking his weapon and grabbing his coat. Behind her, she hears Ianto holstering his own gun. She turns and looks at him, but there's nothing but firm resolve in his return gaze.

"I'll shoot when I have to," he says, before she can question him. "Gladly," he adds under his breath.

"Okay then," she says. "Let's get to the SUV and finally put this one to rest."

"I have been craving sushi lately," Ianto mutters as he follows her out.

***

And then, of course, Jack is back, and though Gwen has replayed this moment in her head dozens of times, she's has no idea what to do or how to feel.

***

After John Hart leaves through the rift, they spend a few minutes squabbling about where they can go to avoid themselves. Jack settles it by telling them to get into the SUV and driving them off some place without explaining further. She should be a little disturbed by how quick they are to follow his every order now that he's returned, but she's just relieved that for once she doesn't have to solve all their problems on her own. Plus, she has to admit, as they pull up to one of the most posh hotels in Cardiff, that his ideas do occasionally have merit.

The spa treatment is wonderful, even more so because it's on Jack, and she can tell how contrite he is by the room service that's waiting for them when she and Tosh get back to their room. They lounge about in complimentary bath robes and pick at lobster tail and chocolate cake, sipping wine and talking idly about their lives, things they've read, Gwen's upcoming wedding, and anything that doesn't have to do with Torchwood. It's nice to spend time with Tosh being girly, or as girly as Tosh ever gets. She's been trying to do her best to socialize with her outside of work, but they've been so busy, and when it comes down to it, she's just more comfortable with Ianto these days.

She never would have guessed that six months ago, when she was hiding from his cyberized girlfriend.

When the conversation winds down, Tosh decides to opt for a nap. Gwen's not tired, not at all, in fact she's suddenly overcome with restless energy. The hotel room, the spa, the dinner, it all seems almost extravagant now. It's sensory overload, and it feels odd to be relaxing and not running for her life.

She tells Tosh she's going to go down to the pool, but finds herself wandering through the hallways towards Jack's room instead. There are things she needs to say to him, things about her and things about him and, surprisingly, things about Ianto, too, mostly because she knows that in his haste to take care of everyone else, Ianto will never take care of himself.

"A date," he had murmured to her as Jack booked their rooms at the front desk earlier. "He asked me on a proper date."

"What did you say?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "I said yes. I was too shocked to say anything else."

She stares at the door to 2212, her hand hovering to knock. She knows it's not her place to look out for Ianto, that he's more than capable of taking care of himself, but she wants to say something to Jack. Don't play around with him, maybe, or Be careful, please. It's ludicrous. Ianto knows what he needs, knows how to handle Jack, but she keeps thinking back to their tipsy nights curled together on the couch and the breaking point in the Himalayas. She remembers holding him as they hovered in the hallway, his eyes red and wet from tears wasted on a man who really doesn't deserve them.

She knocks.

She hears scuffling around from inside and a moment later, the door opens. The words she had planned on saying, however, fly out of her mouth, as Ianto is holding the door open.

Her eyes flick from him to the number on the door behind him, then back to him again. It's only then that she realizes that he's dressed only in boxers and a t-shirt that's a little too large in the shoulders.

"Oh," he says. "Gwen. I thought you'd be room service."

"I... ah, no," she says.

"Is that my waffles?" Jack calls, and Gwen leans to the side enough to glimpse Jack over Ianto's shoulder, sprawled across the bed and naked save for a sheet twisted around his legs and across his lap.

"No," Ianto calls over his shoulder. "It's Gwen."

"Does she have waffles?"

Ianto rolls his eyes spectacularly and raises an eyebrow at her. "Do you have waffles?" he asks, deadpan.

"No," she says.

"No," he tells Jack. "It seems you need to further hone your psychic abilities."

"Hey, my psychic abilities are fine, it's not my fault this century isn't evolved enough to pick up on them," Jack says, and Ianto rolls his eyes again, but Gwen can tell he's biting back a fond smile.

"Did you need anything?" Ianto asks her, leaning against the door frame. His hair is mused and a bit of stubble is starting to shadow his jaw. For the first time in knowing him, he looks his age.

"I, ah, wanted to talk to Jack, but it can wait," she says. Before she can stop herself, she adds, "I thought you were sharing with Owen." Because you and Jack were still rocky, she doesn't say.

"Well," he says. He lifts an eyebrow, and she's known him long enough to read I'm a twenty four year old man and I haven't had sex in months and this is about as much as I can take.

"Ah," she says.

His lip quirks upwards, as if to say, Oh, don't worry, he'll still pay. She smirks back at him.

"I'll leave you to it, then," she says, and Ianto inclines his head just slightly.

"Yep," he says. "See you later." Behind him, Jack pushes himself up onto his elbows and leers at Gwen.

"You could invite her to join us," he says.

"I could go sleep in Owen's room," Ianto replies without missing a beat.

"Bye, Gwen," Jack says. Impulsively, Gwen leans up and kisses Ianto's cheek.

"Have fun," she murmurs just loud enough for him to hear, and to her surprise, Ianto kisses her back.

"Thank you," he says, and those two words carry the weight of all of the anger and grief of Jack's disappearance and dizzying, immense relief of having him back. She holds his gaze until it slides from a frightened, exhilarated smile into a long-suffering smirk as he pulls himself together and turns back to Jack. Gwen pulls the door closed, suddenly embarrassed for intruding on this moment. She's not sure how she feels about Jack's return, still not sure how she feels about Jack, but her heart warms thinking about Ianto finally having the chance to say the things he's been thinking about since before Jack disappeared.

She goes back to her room, tip-toeing to the bed opposite Tosh, and finally allows herself to sleep. She'll have time to talk to Jack later. She'll have all kinds of time, now.

***

The problem, however, with unlimited time is that urgency seems to fly out the window. They go on a few investigations. Jack takes over most of the leadership role again and things slip back into the old routine, with slight changes. They're all skittish around Jack, still, afraid to let him go off on his own. Ianto keeps up with his coffee and cleaning duties, but he still comes out into the field. Owen is more gruff than usual. Tosh has retreated into her shell. But they're limping along, getting things done, and it almost feels normal. It feels so normal that Gwen is loathe to shatter the illusion by asking Jack for specifics, for explanations.

Ianto is too, Gwen knows. They're still writing in the book, though they've moved it to a drawer in the tourist office, and Ianto's stories have shifted from silly, embarrassing snippets of his relationship with Jack to frustrated rants written hard enough to leave impressions on the next five pages of the book. He's on edge, more and more each day that Jack is back, and when Gwen walks in on him tense and frustrated and curled over the computer in the tourist office, she rubs his shoulders in sympathy.

"Tough week, love?" she asks lightly, though they both know she's asking about more than the strange surge in rift activity.

"Yes," he mutters through gritted teeth. "There's too much to bloody do to justify me going out in the field, still. The archives are a mess, Myfanwy is getting tetchy without exercise, I need to re-order about fifteen different forms, and I can barely stand to look at the state of the common areas of the Hub." He pauses and slumps forward. "Jack hasn't mentioned anything about our supposed date since that first night."

Gwen has thought as much.

"I thought you weren't sure about that?" she asks.

"I wasn't," he admits. "It's just... it's weird, isn't it? Going on dates with Jack? Having him be my--because he would, then, if we were going on dates, wouldn't he? And I would be his--"

"His what?"

"Boyfriend," Ianto says, nearly stuttering over the word. He turns his head and looks up at her. "I have no idea what the bloody fuck is going on, Gwen."

Gwen wishes she had some sage advice. Ianto looks helpless and worn out, so she leans over and kisses his forehead.

"Go home," she says. "It's late."

"Jack'll be wanting--"

"Bugger Jack," Gwen says firmly. "Jack's got his head up his ass. Just because he's back doesn't mean he's not a bastard anymore. Go home and get some sleep and take a night to yourself. Rhys is meeting me for dinner in a bit and I know Owen's already snuck out."

"A little hard to take off the leadership hat, yeah?" he says wryly, staring up at her with a tired smile. She smacks his shoulder.

"Go, love," she says. "It's only six. You'll have a full night's sleep, even."

"Oh god," he groans, "Now you've gone and bloody jinxed it." He still gets to his feet and shuts down his computer, quietly collecting his things and straightening the stacks of papers. She leaves him to it and heads back down to collect her own belongings. Dinner with Rhys, a full night's sleep... she might even be able to have breakfast with him in the morning. Fifteen hours without thinking of Jack Harkness. She was going to take advantage of it.

***

"Told you," Ianto sing-songs to her over the comm the next morning once she gets into the SUV waiting below her flat. He's in the Hub, coordinating, apparently. Owen and Tosh are slouched in the car along with Jack and look about as happy about the hour as she is.

"Stuff it, Jones," she mutters. It's too early for it to be classified as morning, even, straddling that ethereal time between "early" and "late."

"Told her what?" Jack asks.

"Don't ask," Owen mutters. "It's a bloody Club Wales thing."

"Club Wales?" Jack asks.

"The police are only just arriving on the scene," Ianto says. "It was a burglary," he adds for Gwen's benefit.

"Why are they calling us in this bloody late, then?" she asks, but then says, "Mysterious circumstances," in unison with Ianto anyway.

"And we never turned off the call forwarding, so if anyone gets to complain about the time, I rather think it should be me," Ianto adds.

Gwen winces. Right. It had been her idea to redirect the main line at the Hub to their mobiles on alternating nights. "I meant to do that as soon as Jack was back. Sorry!"

"Not your responsibility," Ianto says over a burst of static. "At least it was Kathy."

"Ooo," Gwen says. "Kathy now, is she? I think she may fancy you, Mr. Jones."

"She says I'm 'debonair.' Much more polite and civilized than that obnoxious American, swanning about in that ridiculous coat."

"He is that, isn't he?"

"Right here," Jack says from behind the wheel. Gwen can tell he's going for light and amused, but there's a slight aggravation coloring his voice.

"Anyway," Ianto continues. "She's not there, she foisted it off on the night shift when she was leaving. Three victims, two of whom are the burglars. The ambulance is already on the way to take them to the hospital. I'll check the police bands to see if I can get anymore information about their condition. Ring if you need anything from my end."

"Thanks, sweetheart," Gwen says.

"Ah," Jack says. "Club Wales. I get it." He gives Gwen an unreadable look over his shoulder and then turns back to the road, gunning the engine and ignoring all of the traffic laws, as usual.

"It's nothing," Gwen says, but she bites back a little smirk at the flicker of jealousy that crosses his face, a part of her still bitter about two months left on her own. She holds onto that smugness as Jack pulls the SUV to a halt and it makes the late hour seem a little less exhausting as she gets to work.

***

They leave Owen to clean up the--Beth's body. Jack tells her, his tone clinical and cold, to wash up and meet Ianto in the conference room to give her statement for the official report. She thinks she's never hated him so much, except for all of the other times this has happened, all of the other times she's tried to open the team up to compassion, only to have it torn asunder right in front of her eyes.

Ianto is waiting for her with a laptop in front of him and a cup of tea sitting at the empty place across from him. It's chamomile, made with just the right amount of honey and set on a saucer next to two of her favorite chocolate biscuits. She feels nauseous rather than hungry, the memory of all of those bullets slamming into Beth's body still too close to the forefront of her mind, but she appreciates the effort. It's more than the others have done.

"Are you ready to begin?" he asks, and she can hear the Are you okay? hidden in those words. She steels herself and nods. "Alright. Start after you helped me get Jack out of the car."

She does. She tells him around settling Jack in his office, waiting for him to revive, about helping Owen out, making sure Tosh had a way to bypass Beth's implant in the cold storage casket. She relays the conversation she and Beth had up in the lab, only stuttering once or twice.

"She wasn't dangerous," Gwen insists. "She was just--she was just scared. She didn't want to hurt anyone."

"We didn't know that," Ianto says.

"Like bloody hell you didn't!" Gwen snaps, because it was obvious to anyone, anyone that Beth hadn't been a threat. "She wouldn't have hurt me!"

"Not right now," Ianto says. His voice is level and calm. He's not yelling, not flinching at the volume of her voice. "But in the future..."

"We could have figured something out!"

"She was afraid we wouldn't. She wanted this, Gwen."

"So we execute her?" she shouts. "Is that what Torchwood is? She was afraid, so we kill her?"

"It's not that simple," Ianto says, but he doesn't deny it further than that.

"Sometimes I can't believe I work somewhere so cruel," she whispers.

"We do what needs to be done," Ianto says, but his voice is kind, and when she covers her face with her hands, he doesn't hesitate in walking around the table and wrapping his arms around her to offer her the kind of comfort he's so reluctant to take for himself. She lets that thought wash over her, the knowledge that after stumbling through Torchwood for months, after trying to understand Jack, after the clusterfuck with Owen, she's finally found someone she can connect with.

"Hey," she says when she's stopped crying, "do you have any dinner plans?"

Ianto looks confused, but he shakes his head. "Probably pizza in between working in the archives," he admits. "You're welcome to join me."

"I was thinking you could join me," Gwen says. "Rhys is making pasta. He always makes too much. You should come over."

He stares at her for a long moment, his expression even more guarded than usual.

"Over to yours?" he asks. She nods. "For dinner?" She nods again. "With your fiance?" Another nod.

"Why not?" she asks. "He's always asking to meet my mates from work."

"Is that what we are?" Ianto asks.

"Of course," Gwen says gently. She touches the back of his hand. "Sometimes I feel like you're the only friend I have anymore."

She understands his confusion. She knows that by offering this, she might upset the balance of the two very distinct worlds in which she lives. She also knows that, in the past few months, Ianto has been as vital as oxygen. They've shared this precious, fragile thing born out of responsibility and fear and love for Jack. Now that Jack's returned, things won't be the same. There's a possibility that it will be better, better for all of them, that they'll grow as a team as they let Jack back into their lives by inches, but she and Ianto won't have this anymore, and part of Gwen is terrified of losing it.

Maybe Ianto is too, or maybe he just sees something in her eyes, because he nods.

"Sure," he says. "If you're certain Rhys won't mind. I suppose it's better he meets me than... well, anyone else, probably, knowing our social skills as a whole."

She laughs at that, if only because it's true. She can't imagine Rhys sitting down to dinner with Tosh or Owen or--god, Jack. But Ianto? That's not a stretch. Not really. It's surprisingly easy to picture Rhys and Ianto bantering about local issues or a rugby match or--Rhys' favorite topic these days--how much about the city is changing for the worse.

"Jack will want to see that you're okay," Ianto says, closing his laptop and filing some papers into a manila folder he has sitting next to him on the table. "And I'll need to do some sorting in the archives and enter some things I learned from Beth into the mainframe. An hour?"

"That would be perfect," Gwen says. Ianto smiles at her--a real, unguarded smile, not just one of his smirks--and stands.

"I'll see you then," he says, and disappears from the conference room. Gwen watches him go and then takes a deep breath. Time to collect herself. A quick trip to the ladies' to make sure her mascara hasn't run too badly and then she'll shut down for the night and go see Jack. It's been a bad day, but the end is salvageable, which isn't bad for Torchwood.

It isn't bad at all.

***

She's entirely calm by the time she sees Jack, which surprises her. He's brooding over Beth's broken arm blade, but when she tries to open him up with some gentle questions, he changes the subject rather abruptly. He had been shocked and almost angry over her engagement to Rhys, which was rich coming from someone who kept insisting that she not let her real life drift, coming from the man who had twisted both she and Ianto into knots before disappearing from their lives without so much as a goodbye. Now he seems to have no problem chatting with her about wedding plans before sending her home like some sort of doting uncle.

She'll never understand Jack Harkness.

She goes back down to her workstation after their chat and begins to power down for the night, marking e-mails to be read in the morning and setting emergency alerts to be forwarded to her mobile. She knows she doesn't have to do this now that Jack is back, but it's routine and comfortable. She inquires into Tosh's dinner plans and has the decency to feel guilty for inviting only Ianto over when Tosh gives her a bleak, "Oh, you know, I'll pick up a curry."

She says goodnight to Tosh and calls a goodnight into autopsy, where she knows Owen is still lurking. He mumbles a distracted goodbye and she heads upstairs to the boardroom, where she can see Ianto hunched over his laptop. She's about to call out to him, when Jack swoops in from the other doorway, hovering over Ianto's shoulder and waiting for acknowledgment. Gwen can feel the tension in the air and freezes where she is.

"Need anything, sir?" Ianto asks without looking up.

"Just wondering what you're up to," Jack says.

"I'm inputting the knowledge that Beth gathered about the Hub into the mainframe," Ianto says. He checks something on a print out next to him and then resumes typing. "She was able to gather certain bits of intel that bring light to the full use of some of our artifacts. She also had a better working knowledge of the Rift Manipulator than we do, though I'm not sure how much of what we were able to pull from her implant will be at all helpful."

"And you do need to know everything, don't you?" Jack says. There's no malice in it, and Ianto only hums softly in reply. Jack drifts around the room, poking and prodding at the notes and reports that Ianto's left around, until Ianto gets fed up enough to swat his hand away.

"If you're that interested in reports, sir, I believe there's still a stack on your desk from your absence that require perusal before archiving."

Jack winces at that, though she's not sure if it's the dismissal or the thought of work that bothers him.

"You know," he says, still shifting through Ianto's papers, "I can't help but notice that you've been a little... short with me today."

"That's quite a polite way of phrasing it, sir," Ianto says. "Owen's word of choice was 'bitchy.' I believe Gwen went with 'catty.'"

Jack snorts and picks up a file flipping through it. When he goes to put it back down, he freezes and frowns. When Gwen leans up on her toes to see what he's uncovered, it takes every piece of resolve that she has to stop from sprinting into the room and grabbing the book, their book, off of the table before Jack can get his hands on it. She can feel her face heating up as he lifts it off the table, obviously out of place with the rest of the official documentation, and flips it open to the pink post-it that they use to keep their place.

It's then that Ianto notices it's missing.

"Hey," Jack starts to say, "that's about--"

Ianto grabs the book out of his hands and snaps it closed before Jack can finish. Gwen sags with relief.

"That's private. Sir."

"That was a story about me!" Jack insists. He grins, catlike. "Ianto Jones, is that your diary?"

Ianto snorts and slides the book into his inner jacket pocket.

"Hardly," he says. "Believe me when I say I wouldn't leave my diary around where you could get at it. That belongs to Gwen. I'll make sure she gets it back."

"Why are you writing a story about me in a book that belongs to Gwen?" Jack asks, leaning heavily on the back of Ianto's chair and looking over his shoulder. Ianto, for his part, ignores Jack's presence completely.

"That's really no one's business but Gwen's and my own." He resumes typing.

"Gwen," Jack says. Gwen starts, wondering if he's addressing her, before Jack carries on. "You and Gwen seem to have gotten pretty cozy. I noticed your little Club Wales act earlier."

"I see you've been talking to Owen," Ianto says. He still doesn't look up. She can see the tension in his shoulders, hear the way he's hitting the keys of his keyboard just a bit too hard.

"Should I not be?"

"I don't normally recommend it, no," Ianto says. "But yes, Gwen and I have become friends. Shocking, I know. Who knew I could have something in common with someone whom I spend fourteen hours a day with and grew up an hour away from me?"

Jack frowns. "I'm just saying, you weren't that close when I left."

"And I'm just pointing out that I wasn't that close to anyone when you left and that gets rather lonely."

Jack is silent. Even Gwen has to suppress a flinch. She likes to think she's made up for ignoring Ianto now that they've developed this friendship, but she still feels guilty for the months he faded into the background. Even after throwing it in their face after Lisa, after pointing out that no one took the time to notice him, she still shifted right back into neglecting his presence. She won't let that happen again.

"Anyway," Ianto continues, "we didn't shag, if that's what you're asking. Mostly we talked and drank. We went shopping a few times. She has appalling taste in shoes."

Gwen would be offended if he hadn't said as much to her face when they were standing in the shop.

"Shopping and drinking?" Jack asks.

"Well, it's not all hunting aliens, is it?" Ianto's given up the pretense of typing and is pretending to read a report now, though his eyes aren't moving.

"So that's why you've been short with me? Because you and Gwen are friends?"

Ianto drops the report to the table and rolls his eyes hard enough that Gwen's surprised they don't roll right out of his head. "No, Jack, I'm short with you because I'm irate. Gwen has nothing to do with it."

"Does this mean you've changed your mind about our date?" Jack's aiming for casual, but misses by about a mile. His hands are wrapped around the back of Ianto's chair and his disaffected frown looks just a little desperate.

"I've changed my mind?" If Ianto's eyebrows go any higher, they'll disappear into his hairline. "I'm not the one who brought it up out of a bloody clear blue sky and then never mentioned it again."

"I was trying to give you time," Jack says. He reaches down and smoothes Ianto's hair back. "I came back for you."

"So you said," Ianto says, sliding just out of Jack's reach. "And I know you said that to Gwen as well, and I'm betting to Tosh and Owen, too." Jack flinches, clearly not expecting to be called out. "And that's fine," Ianto continues, "but I can't--I don't know what this is, Jack."

"I can be faithful," Jack says quickly. "There is such a thing as a monogamous relationship in the future."

"That's not what I'm asking," Ianto says, "but it's good to know."

"It just... I want it to be different this time, Ianto," Jack says. The desperation in his frown is starting to show in his voice. "It needs to be different. Before, it was... comfort. It was relief from all of those things hanging between us. We needed different things, then."

"It was never about what I needed," Ianto insists, but he looks down at the table again, fidgets with the folders there.

"Maybe that was our first mistake." Jack reaches out and touches Ianto's hand, stilling it, holding it there until Ianto looks up at him again. "I want this to be different. I want it to mean something. You're so young. It should mean something."

"Just because it should doesn't mean you can make it mean something, Jack," Ianto says. He doesn't look away. "It needs to come from both sides. You need to want it to mean something."

"Did I not just say I wanted it to mean something?"

"Does that mean that what we had before was meaningless?" Ianto does look away, now, turns fully out of Jack's grasp and back to his laptop. His tone reveals nothing, but she can tell by his posture that he's hurt.

"No, but before was different," Jack says. "Too much has happened for it to be the same now."

"Will I ever find out what actually did happen?" Ianto asks. Gwen holds her breath. She wants to know this too, down to her very bones. She had hoped Jack had talked about it with Ianto, had told someone about what had gone on during his absence. Apparently not.

The silence stretches out. Both she and Ianto are waiting.

"I can't tell you," Jack finally says. "Not now." Gwen exhales. Ianto's shoulders slump.

"Can't or won't?" he snaps.

"Can't," Jack says. He lifts a hand as if to touch Ianto again, but then thinks better of it and drops it back to his side. "Not yet. But I will, I swear. One day, when I'm strong enough, when I've had enough time...."

"When you're strong enough or when I am?"

"When I am. You've always been strong. Stronger than you should be. Please. I don't ask for much, Ianto, but give me this one thing. One night out. That's all."

Ianto laughs. There's a shade of hysteria to it, the first sign that his carefully constructed cool facade is going to crack. Of course, this is Jack. This is their shared foible. She knew he was going to crack the second Jack looked at him with those big, sad eyes. It's not a weakness, just an inevitability. He's held out longer than she would have.

"That's the problem," Ianto says. He finally shuts his computer and covers his face with his hands. When he pulls them away, he's smiling grimly. "You never ask. I would give you anything you asked for, Jack, but you never ask."

"I'm asking now. I'm asking for this." He puts his hands on Ianto's shoulders, holds him steady. Gwen inches forward involuntarily. "For dinner and a movie and a chance to show you."

"But why?" It's barely a whisper, soft and intimate and hardly even meant for Jack's ears. Gwen knows, now, that she's intruding on something that should be between the two of them, something more personal than the usual sarcastic banter they trade back and forth across the Hub. This is the reconciliation that Ianto's been waiting for, the conversation that's been putting him prematurely on edge since Jack returned. She shouldn't be listening to this.

"Because you're so, so beautiful and so, so young and you shouldn't have to die not knowing that you're one of the few things in the universe that can still surprise me," Jack says. He touches Ianto's cheek. "Because I don't have to hide from you, not really, not everything. Because you treat me the way no one else has treated me for a very long time."

"Jack..."

"Because I like you, Ianto Jones."

They stare at each other for endless seconds, the kind of stare that makes Gwen's stomach bottom out, even from outside of the room. There's a frantic edge to the stare, a heat that leaves her itching to interrupt before they pounce on each other and she becomes privy to much more than a conversation.

Ianto breaks first, closes his eyes and swears under his breath.

"Jesus," he says. "You can't do anything by halves, can you?"

Jack laughs, the big, booming, showy laugh he uses when he's tense or nervous. He reaches across the short distance and takes one of Ianto's hands in both of his.

"Is that a yes?" he asks, voice pitched low.

"Jack--"

"Just to a date," Jack amends quickly. "Just let me court you. Let me show you I can."

"Jack, believe me, I don't doubt you're fully adept at courting. And maybe you missed it in the middle of your big dramatic speech, but I already said that all you have to do is ask. For anything." He smiles wryly. "I'm quite pathetic when it comes to you, actually."

"Not pathetic," Jack says, kissing his knuckles before releasing his hand. "Just susceptible to my many charms."

"We all have our flaws," Ianto mutters, but he's still smiling just a little.

"Tonight, then!" Jack says. He jumps to his feet and puts his hands on his hips. "Take an hour, go home and get changed. I'll come pick you up. This can all wait until tomorrow."

Tonight. Gwen's heart sinks. She should have known it was too good to be true, and she's less surprised than she should be at how disappointed she is. Oh, she knows that she can duck down the hallway, out of earshot, and pretend she didn't hear anything. Ianto is nothing if not loyal. He'll stick to their plans. But she fears that would be the beginning of the end of their friendship, if it's not already destined to fade to nothing now that Jack has returned to re-fill the hole he left in the two of them. She has to tell him to go. There's no question.

"Tonight?" Ianto says. His mouth quirks into a slight frown. "Um, actually, I already made plans with Gwen."

Jack's face is hysterical as it shifts from surprise to confusion to suspicion to a forced kind of geniality. She almost wants to stay in the hallway for another few minutes just to see what he manages to say to Ianto.

She smiles and shakes her head to herself, and then pushes her way into the room. "Hello, boys," she says. Jack startles, but Ianto doesn't. He just looks at her and smiles, getting up from his chair. He glances over to Jack, who gives him one of those big-eyed looks, and then walks over to Gwen.

"Himself requests my presence for dinner," he says gravely. Gwen nods, schooling her features into similar sobriety.

"Well, you certainly can't ignore his wishes. Wouldn't want him to spend the whole night brooding on the roof," she says.

"You're right," he says. "It's not suitably windy to give the full effect of the coat. It would be a waste of a good brood."

"I am right here, you know," Jack says. Gwen's the first to crack a smile, which doesn't surprise her. Ianto could out deadpan the Queen.

"Go on," she says. She squeezes his shoulder. "Have fun. I'll bring you leftovers for lunch tomorrow. It will do you good to eat something other than takeaway."

"Are you sure?" he asks. "I mean, if you already called Rhys and--"

"Wait!" Jack interrupts, "You were having him over for dinner with Rhys?"

"It's okay, really," Gwen says. "Rhys won't mind. You can come over some other time. He loves cooking, just never sees the point in cooking much if it's just the two of us."

"I am sorry," Ianto says. "I was... oddly looking forward to it."

"Another time," she says. She takes his hands in hers and wills it to be true. Jack is back, Jack's taking Ianto out on a date, their free time is limited as it is, but she hopes with all her heart she'll be able to keep this from drifting. "Go on. Tosh and I will even lock up." She drops his hands and pushes him gently towards Jack, who is staring at them with an odd mixture of curiosity, pride, confusion, and jealousy. It's not a good look for him.

"Good night, Gwen," Jack says, laying a hand that's at least a little possessive on Ianto's shoulder. The gesture makes Ianto roll his eyes.

"Good night, Gwen," he says. She smiles a bit sadly and turns to leave the boardroom. This, she thinks, is the end of the abnormal normality of Jack's disappearance. This is the end of late nights at the Hub with Ianto, of the rush of adrenaline that came from giving orders in the field and running around the Hub with the other three, working things out on their own, cobbling together the sort of things that Jack knew instinctively from their own sets of knowledge. This is the end of a tiny chapter of her Torchwood life.

"Oh, Gwen?"

She turns at Ianto's call, pivoting on her left foot just as she reaches the door.

"Yes?"

"Are Rhys and Banana Boat doing their usual Thursday outing?" he asks. She nods. "Then we're still on for Thursday as well, yeah?"

She stares at him for a moment and then smiles.

"Definitely, sweetheart," she says. "Rift permitting, of course."

"Of course," he says. He smiles back, and digs the book out of his pocket before handing it to her. "And take this. Lock it up somewhere safe. Don't want it falling into the wrong hands, after all."

"Perish the thought, Mr. Jones," she says, and lets Ianto kiss her cheek, wrapping her arms around the book and giving Ianto a knowing smile.

She pulls the door open as Jack asks, "What's a Banana Boat?" and heads down to the main level of the Hub with a smile on her face, her fingers flicking the pink post-it back and forth in anticipation. Maybe it's not quite the end of the chapter after all.