Archive of Our Own

The world is a blur of colour.

Blue, brown, green, black — they all swirl together until you blink the haze away and your vision clears, turning the pigments in front of you into defined and recognisable things.

Like clouds.

Like trees.

Like the stranger in a suit kneeling over your body.

Accidental time travel after a hyper-vodka blackout is a fairly rare occurrence in your world, but it isn’t so uncommon that you feel the need to panic when you end up in situations like this.

Especially when situations like this put you in close proximity to people as pretty as this person is.

They don’t seem like they’re about to arrest or kill you, so you figure that you’ll give yourself a pass on the whole alcohol-fueled time travel thing even though you promised to stop after the last time you did something like this ended in a fiery temple explosion. (You were completely faultless for that little mishap, and you’ll swear that until the day you die.)

You go to ask this person where and when you are, but they speak before you get the chance to.

“Jack?” the person says, like you’re supposed to know who that is.

“What?” The word comes out weak and quiet, and you wince as it barely manages to escape your lips. There’s a dryness to your throat, you realise, that’s almost as bad as the migraine assaulting your head, and with effort you manage to force the next few words out. “I don’t… who are you?”

“Jack, it’s me. Ianto,” the person — Ianto — says again carefully, and you realise that you’re supposed to be Jack. Whoever or whatever that is. You open your mouth to explain that no, your name is actually Javic and that you have absolutely no idea who this “Jack” is, but then your eyes slip past him and fall on something on the ground that stops the words from coming out at all.

You haven’t seen this in years, not since the Time Agency. By the stars, you barely saw it when you were still with the Time Agency; Maglin Shank had these things tucked away in some secure vault not even you could break into — not that you ever would want to steal something like this, even before two years of your life went down the drain in a snap of someone else’s fingers.

“Is that what I think it is?” you say, voice tight but without any trembling, a fact that you feel very proud of. “An Alphese memorija mind-wipe?”

You don’t have all the information, none actually, but there are some conclusions that seem pretty logical to make, especially after waking up next to a clearly used memory wiper with no idea of how you got there. It looks like — and you really hate that you have to think this — that someone stole your memory. Again.

You sit up, heart thumping so hard that you think it’s a miracle that it’s still contained in your chest. Like the last time you woke up like this, your first reaction is to panic, to demand immediate answers and tear apart your entire life to get them. But you force yourself to breathe. Doing all of that didn’t work last time, so this time you have to be smarter. And you will be smarter, because there’s no way that you're leaving wherever you are without the answers you should’ve gotten years before.

Round two, here you come.

“Is it?” you ask again, as if you need the confirmation. You don’t, anyone who has ever seen an Alphese mind-wipe in action knows what it is; you just want to see what the stranger knows about it. Or at the very least, pretends to know about it.

“I don’t even really know,” Ianto responds, eyes flickering nervously. Guilt, maybe? “When you saw it, you just said something about the Time Agency having a few of these. That they would use it to erase memories. You told me to stay back, that it looked like the Rift had knocked it around so you didn’t know if it was stable or not. When you bent down to look at it, the next thing I knew, it...moved. I don’t know how else to describe it, like a bubble or some kind of force field emerged and enveloped you whole. It all happened so quickly. You started screaming after it did, and I smashed it, trying to get you out.”

Their voice wobbles at the end, which seems genuine enough. It’s also oddly touching.

“You didn’t die,” Ianto adds as if that fact isn’t immediately obvious to you. Of course you didn’t die - you wouldn’t be here talking to him if you did. “Just passed out,” they continue, searching your eyes, and you think they don't find the spark of recognition they’re looking for because they hesitantly ask: “Do you… do you not remember? Did the machine erase parts of your memory?”

As their eyes pierces into yours, you know there’s a choice here to be made.

Ianto doesn’t seem like they’re lying, their sincerity painted right across their face. But the thing is, they don't even know your name, which is throwing up a big mauve sign that stops you from confessing the truth right then and there.

There’s a list of reasons why you don’t use your real name anymore, and one of the big ones is that you’re running a con. It’s something you started doing after the crown prince of Chlatterg XVI called for your head (after you made a very, very understandable mistake) and made any place in the seventy-eighth century pretty much inhabitable for you.

So maybe what really happened was that you were running a con on Ianto and the humanoid found out and decided to get even. Or maybe you were working with Ianto to con another person, who then decided to plant the Alphese mind-wipe for the two of you to find. There’s even a third possibility where Ianto’s telling the truth, that the whole memory loss business was really just down to a malfunction, but that still doesn’t explain why you were dealing with a mind-wipe in the first place.

Unfortunately, with the life you lead, all of these scenarios are equally likely, which means the only way you’re going to get the answers you want is by sticking around, keeping your cards close to your chest, and doing a whole lot of lying. And honestly? For you, that’s just business as usual.

As their eyes pierces into yours, you know there was only ever one choice that was going to be made.

You look at Ianto, putting on a sheepish smile that you hope looks genuine — it better, otherwise you might as well stop calling yourself a con man. “I do now,” you say with a wide smile, like the liar you are. “The last hour or so is kind of a blur, so it’s good that you stepped in. Could’ve been worse.” Then with calculated timing, you wince, reaching up to your head with an exaggerated motion. “Ouch. I think my head’s still a little scrambled.”

Ianto grasps your arms and helps you up, supporting your weight as you pretend to stumble around. “Hey, hey,” they say. “Let’s get you back to the Hub.” They lead you to the passenger’s seat of a nearby car, and the moment they shuts the door you collapse against the window, all signs of pretence fading away from your face.

You really hate losing your memories.

The Hub that Ianto mentioned turns out to be an underground lair, and while it’s unexpectedly cool, it only raises more questions than answers. You’ve always had preference for mansions over sewers, so you can’t see why you would have ever chosen to set up base in this “Hub” over any other place. Even the pterodactyl flying through doesn’t seem like an adequate enough justification for living in what amounts to be a damp concrete cave, though again, it is also very, very cool.

You give the past version of you some credit for that. It must’ve been difficult to get a real pterodactyl (and you’re assuming it’s real and not some hard light hologram or artificial lookalike), and you wonder what the story is behind that. Hopefully, it’s a fun one involving high stakes, cute bystanders, and monetary or physical rewards given out of gratitude.

You push the pterodactyl out of your mind as a new person enters into frame, their boots echoing off the metal grating of the floor as they carry a stack of paper into the main room of the Hub. This person is almost the complete opposite of Ianto — long hair instead of short, leather jacket and combat boots rather than a suit and tie, and an energetic air that opposes Ianto’s disquieting intensity.

What this person and Ianto do have in common though, is that they’re both equally cute. A gleeful, satisfied rush runs through you — it’s reassuring to know that pre-memory loss you still had good taste in something. (The whole “sewer chic” thing really put some doubt into your head.)

They spot you standing next to Ianto, and they grin, a toothy smile brightening up their entire face.

You wonder what this person’s name is going to turn out to be. Maybe they’ll be an Elwyn, though they also look like they could be a Nym. You could also see them with one of those more uncommon names like Mary. Or Javic.

(Hah.)

You decide that you’re going to call them Binky for now.

Binky drops the stack of papers onto a nearby desk (theirs, you presume, judging by the pictures of friends pinned to the monitor) before approaching you and Ianto, who is carefully lifting a container box holding the Alphese mind-wipe onto another desk. This one is less personalised than the woman’s, though there’s a few suit ties that can be seen tucked underneath in the lower shelves of the desk that makes you think that this one is his.

It also makes you think about which desk is yours, and you take advantage of the time where the woman’s attention is solely captured by the container box to quickly peek around.

One nearby desk has a lab coat covered with pins draped over the back of its chair, and you immediately dismiss it — in no elongated con would you ever pretend to be a medical doctor. Too risky to pretend to be something requiring specialised knowledge for more than a few days.

You can spy something resembling a proper office past that desk, but it’s too far away to examine it closely, so you move on. Besides, it seems unlikely that you would have an entire office to yourself when the room you're standing in seems designed to have everybody working close together. In fact, there are a number of desks nearby, though most of them are dusty and unused. Besides the one with the white lab coat draped on it, only two other desks show signs of life.

One of them has a dusty welding helmet laying on it, and that’s really all that’s there. The desk itself is devoid of pencils and papers, appearing from a quick observation like someone tried cleaning it all up but then didn’t know what to do with the hunk of metal so they decided it was easier to leave it behind.

It makes you want to say the last desk, one with a few scattered electronic parts neatly laying across, is yours, but there’s a shred of doubt that bubbles up inside that stops you from going over there and laying claim. You’ve never known yourself to be so methodically neat with your toys, preferring to mess around with electronics only when strictly necessary and often in ways that would make trained engineers scream.

Though what other desk could be yours? You would bet good money that the one with the lab coat and the welding helmet belongs to other people.

You’re about two seconds away from stepping into the breach and dropping yourself into the desk chair with false ease when Binky drops a hand on your shoulder, gazing at you with concern that matches the intensity that you saw in Ianto’s eyes when you first woke up.

Again, you find yourself oddly touched by how much these strangers seem to care about you. The last time someone cared about your health was Maglin Shank during your Time Agency days, and it wasn’t like she was actually concerned about you. You’re ninety-nine percent sure Shank kept tabs on your injury list because she wanted to be the first person to hear of your death so she could properly celebrate.

Good ol’ Maglin Shank. You’ll never have another boss like her. (And that’ll probably increase your life expectancy.)

“You okay, Jack?” Binky asks, calling you by a name that isn’t yours, and you are once again pushed back to reality with the stark reminder that these people are not really your friends, even if they may act like it.

“You know me,” you say, laying one of your hands on top of theirs, “I’m always okay.”

It’s a deflection, but it also seems to be the thing that’s expected of you, judging by the fond eye-roll that they give you.

“Ianto?” they ask, and you get the sense that they trust the other person to say what you (or “Jack”) will not.

Interesting. Maybe they’re sleeping together. Or maybe all three of you are sleeping together. (Oh, you hope it’s definitely the latter.)

“He was dizzy the entire car ride back,” Ianto responds immediately.

You weren’t, the headache caused by the mind-wipe disappearing faster than a natural one would, but it was a good excuse to avoid conversation while you tried to figure things out.

For example, you narrowed down the century to either the twentieth, twenty-first, or twenty-second based on Ianto’s clothes and the outside architecture. (Your clothes — the anachronistic greatcoat and suspenders — made that deduction harder than it should’ve been.) You also figured that you were probably on Earth — Ianto and everyone else that you saw through the car windows looked human, and aside from the pterodactyl, you haven’t seen even a glimpse of another species. The weight of the planet’s gravity also gives it away slightly — there’s no metallic tang in the air that signals an artificial field and there’s no extra bounce to any of your steps that would imply a weak surface gravity.

But it’s not like you’re going to tell the two people in front of you any of that.

“Nonsense,” you say, “I was just overcome by being in the presence of someone as pretty as you, Ianto.” A small smile starts fighting its way across Ianto’s face at your words, and in that moment, there’s nothing more you want to see but Ianto’s face light up with laughter. It would be unexpectedly stunning, you think, like a ray of sunshine piercing through the atmosphere of a planet that only ever experiences thunderstorms. “No, not pretty,” you amend, in pursuit of this goal. “Charming? Gorgeous? Out of this world? Worthy of the hallowed halls of Florigneira?”

“Florigneira?” Ianto asks, corners of their mouth a little more upturned than before.

“It’s a building in the ninety-eighth century which houses the most beautiful faces on the planet,” you explain. “Like a museum. Residents get wined and dined for their entire lives. It’s considered one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a citizen.”

“That... sounds horrible,” Ianto says, scrunching up their nose. To your disappointment, their change of expression means the smile that was beginning to break out across their face is gone.

“Yeah,” Binky agrees. “What if they don’t want to go? Do they have a choice? Also who decides who is pretty or not? That’s so subjective.”

“Um,” you say, the only word that comes to mind. Honestly, you did not expect the two of them to react like this. It’s kind of refreshing, though. And also surprisingly, super hot.

“Oh, of course,” Binky says, seeing the blank look on your face. “Let me guess. You didn’t think of any of that — you just tried to break in, right?”

You shrug sheepishly, feeling like a child chastised by their parents. “The Alphese mind-wipe!” you hastily declare, moving the conversation away from you. “It’s damaged, but I’m thinking that if I play with it long enough then I can restore it.”

“Is it worth doing that?” Ianto questions, hesitance clear in their tone. “Earlier, you said it was dangerous. Maybe we’re better off storing it in the Archives and leaving it alone.”

It’s something that you should probably agree with to avoid raising their suspicions, but there’s a slim chance that you might be able to use the mind-wipe to reverse whatever memory loss damage it inflicted onto you.

So instead of agreeing, you say, “I think it might be more dangerous if it’s left in this state. It’s a delicate piece of technology in the first place, and now it could be even more unpredictable.”

There’s still a clear glimmer of hesitation in Ianto’s eyes and you think they’re going to argue against it again, but to your amazement, he simply nods, though he doesn’t look completely happy about it. “I expect you’ll want some coffee while you work on that?” he asks, already moving away from you and Binky. “I’ll bring it to your office.”

So that answers the question of which desk is yours. Now you’ve just got to figure out what Binky’s real name is.

Ianto doesn’t even look back behind him as he throws out another question: “Want some too, Gwen?”

And oh, look — how convenient. There’s another important question answered.

This whole thing is going to be a breeze.

Apparently, Jack — and you’re still trying to remember that Jack is you and you are Jack — drinks coffee black. That’s another surprising development (at what point in your timeline did you start preferring something bitter over something sweet?) but the rippling movement of Ianto’s arm muscles underneath their suit jacket as they set the coffee mug down on your desk entirely makes up for the uncomfortable, biting aftertaste that the drink leaves in your mouth.

If you had any more idea of who Ianto was as a person and his relationship with Jack, you would’ve cleared off your desk that instant and asked him to pin you down to its surface with those arms. But because you don’t have any clue who Ianto is any more than you do Jack, the only thing you could do is nod your head in thanks.

What a damn shame. Still, just because actual desk sex is off the table (hah) doesn’t mean you can’t spend a few minutes thinking about it. Maybe that Gwen person would want to be involved, too…

Twenty minutes pass by the time you realise that you’ve gotten off-tracked and your pants are a little tighter than they were before. But on the plus side, even though you’ve wasted time that could’ve been spent researching when and where you are, you also now know pretty much how many positions you, Ianto, and Gwen could go through before someone’s stamina wears out. So, hey, it basically breaks even.

Those thoughts now get pushed to the side (unfortunately) because you’ve got some real work to do. The Alphese mind-wipe is placed carefully next to the desk, and there’s even an open computer sitting in front of you, but these are all options that you ignore. Like any good former Time Agent, the thing you do is reach for your vortex manipulator; it’s familiar weight on your left wrist, providing such a feeling of familiarity and comfort that you’re fairly sure that if you woke up without it you may not have been so calm.

It’s been on your wrist so long that you hadn’t even needed to see it when you first woke up to know that it was there. But now, alone at last, you give it your full attention, fiddling with it in an attempt to glean any information you can like last jump coordinates or any pre-programmed information only to be accessed during times of emergency.

Both, frustratingly enough, are useless.

The last time jump coordinates are recent — from just over a year ago and only a hundred and fifty miles away — so it’s doubtful that those coordinates have much of a story behind them.

The latter, the message only to be accessed during times of emergency, is even more useless than the coordinates and you can’t even be mad because it’s entirely your fault. The emergency information, which you remember programming yourself after an occurrence that led to one of your many scheduled executions (and also a fabulous night with your executioners), beams up from your vortex manipulator in a soft light hologram, only saying: Remember to Wrap It Before You Tap It.

It’s sound advice, but not the slightest bit helpful in your current predicament.

And even worse, you realise with horror, the vortex manipulator itself is useless.

It’s broken. Destroyed. Un-usable. Some of the functions still work, like messaging and scanning for life forms, but the time travel part of it is just gone — you can’t even do something as basic as teleport. Maybe if it had looked like the coils had burnt out naturally, you would shrug off this setback more easily, but the more you examine your beloved, the more it looks like someone had tampered with it. It’s not that you can’t time travel because the electronics are fried — it’s because the entire function is locked away. How someone could even manage to do that, you don’t even know.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. First, the memory loss. Now, the damaged vortex manipulator.

Now you’re starting to panic.

Immediately, your attention turns to the computer laying open on the desk. Your hands fly across the keyboard, drinking in recent news, emails, files — anything that might provide some pieces to the ever-growing puzzle of your life.

A few answers come quickly. It's the early twenty-first century on Earth — pretty much what you expected. Cardiff, your exact location, also makes a lot of sense considering that it houses the infamous space-time Rift.

Other things require more explanation. Like the word which keeps curiously popping up in most documents: Torchwood.

(It sounds vaguely familiar, and you feel like it has to do with something from your Time Agency days. Or maybe it just sounds familiar because you once went to a bar with the same name. Who knows.)

For an organisation that has an eye-staggering amount of money attached to it (the bank statements are easy enough to locate), you expect to find a lot more information about what it does than you actually do. The infospace (actually, doesn’t the twenty-first century call it the Internet?) only talks about Torchwood in hushed tones — rumours and unconfirmed sightings written in the depths of now-defunct forum pages.

The actual Torchwood documents aren’t any better at giving you the information you want to know. There’s a few references to a Torchwood charter sprinkled about, but no actual information about where this charter can be found or what it contains.

Similarly, information about “Jack Harkness” is hard to come by. The only record of anyone with the same name dates back to 1941 — too long ago to be of pertinent use, though it might explain why you woke up in a blue greatcoat instead of something more period appropriate.

The most you’ve found directly on Torchwood’s servers is a memo sheet filled out by yours truly — the handwriting is neater than usual, but the way the i’s are spelled is unmistakably you.

However, the lack of truly helpful information on the memo sheet wants to make you take out your unnecessarily antique gun and empty its entire clip into the screen because not only are the words “Who is Captain Jack Harkness?” written down, it is also directly followed by “Wow, there’s a leading question — one day maybe I’ll find some answers.”

That’s some classic Javic Piotr Thane enigmatic bullshit that you never expected to be on this side of.

The rest of the information on the memo sheet only ends up being slightly less useless. So apparently, Torchwood is something you started, or at the very least are in charge of. That’s what’s implied, though there’s really nothing beyond this single piece of paper to suggest that. Records of your tenure with Torchwood are at best spotty, increasingly looking like someone went through Torchwood’s database and wiped any records of you clean. (Another act of sabotage meant to keep you in the dark?)

The most helpful documents end up being the mission reports. From these, you glean that Torchwood is largely concerned with the Rift — what comes through, what is taken away, etc.

That makes sense; it’s a smart idea to keep an eye on something as unpredictable as the Rift. And who knows? Maybe it’ll spit out a ship that’s capable of taking you away from this backwoods time and planet.

It hasn’t yet (the archive documents show that it hasn’t, anyway), but you see that the archives are still full to the brim of alien technologies that some collectors would kill to have their hands on. And that would also go for a pretty penny on the black market…

Huh. Looks like you just found the reason Jack Harkness was at Torchwood.

“Feeling better?” Ianto asks as he scoops out a generous helping of kung pao chicken onto his plate.

The two of you are sitting in the kitchen of his small flat, digging into takeout containers while some old-timey jazz record plays in the background.

It had been a surprise when Ianto had stopped by the door to your office with the assumption that you were going to accompany him home, but with him staring at you with a face like that and you needing to keep up with your pretense? Who were you to say no?

Plus now, you’re pretty sure that you have a better chance of getting him into bed than you ever did before.

“All the dizziness is gone. Promise,” you reply, washing down your mouthful of chow mein with some water. You wish there was something stronger than that, but Ianto had automatically placed a glass of tap water down next to your plate and you hadn’t wanted to bring up the fact that your superior fifty-first century physiology meant that drinking after head injuries wouldn’t harm the brain as much as twenty-first century physiology would.

But it was sweet that he cared.

The conversation dies down after that, with the both of you busy stuffing down the steaming hot food as fast as humanly possible. You take the time to examine Ianto more closely as he sits across from you. Despite the archive notes flowing with helpful information, you still have no idea what to make of this man.

Here’s what you got: Ianto Jones, born August 19th, 1983, the lone son in the family with the only other Jones child being an older sister named Rhiannon. Able student but not exceptional. One minor conviction for shoplifting in his teens. Number of temporary jobs, mainly a drifter, until a few years ago when he joined the Torchwood Institute in London as a junior researcher.

That sounds perfectly normal, right? But oh yeah, get this — he also hid a Cyberman in the Hub for months.

A Cyberman. Something that does nothing but kill and convert. What kind of person tries to protect that?

Apparently one named Ianto Jones.

The archive notes say that it was done out of love — the converted being Ianto’s girlfriend Lisa Hallett — and you don’t know whether to be terrified of Ianto or to think him clinically insane. But you know this: a man who is willing to destroy the world because of love is a man who is very dangerous indeed. And a dangerous man is capable of anything, of doing things like planting mind-wipes and tampering with vortex manipulators.

And yet, even knowing all this, you find yourself not wanting it to be him.

It’s a bad thought, one a former Time Agent shouldn’t be so stupid to think. Wanting is bad. Wanting means you overlook things, get your hopes up, become sloppy, make mistakes.

You’ve learned not to want for anything. It’s easy, when everything you would consider wanting is buried in the remains of your personal timeline or buried in an unmarked plot. It’s less easy, when there are people around you, full of life and love and hope right where you think you can grasp it if you ever wanted to.

You can already tell that Ianto Jones is one of these people. You can see it in the way he moves through the world, everything he is being held together by sheer strength of will and invisible string as if the bones and skin of his body isn’t enough.

You can see it even now as he sits in front of you, and you wonder if just the sheer proximity to him would be enough to unravel the person you made yourself become and uncover the boy who you left on the shores of Boeshane all those years ago.

“You’re staring,” Ianto says, polishing off his plate. “Have I got something on my face?”

“Nope,” you say, throwing him a grin. “Just admiring the view.”

Ianto rolls his eyes, though you can tell that he’s flattered. “You know,” he idly comments. “You’ve been awfully complimentary today. Any reason why?”

“What, I’m not allowed to say nice things anymore?”

He narrows his eyes. “You want something.”

“Me? I never want anything when I’m with you.”

“You’re hiding something,” he guesses again.

“What do I have to hide?” you ask him, like everything you’ve ever said since you’ve woken up hasn’t been one gigantic lie.

He stares at you, eyes still narrowed, as if he can peer into your mind and draw out everything you’ve been hiding. He can’t, you’re pretty sure. The archive notes hadn’t made him out to be anything other than a normal twenty-first century human.

But maybe someone went through his records and cleaned them out like they did yours, because he sits back in his chair, eyes dawning in comprehension.

Your entire body tenses as he opens his mouth.

“You want to get out of dinner with Rhys and Gwen!” Ianto declares, slapping his hands on the table.

“What? No!” you protest, but only half-heartedly. Inside, your body is flooding with relief.

“Yeah, you do,” Ianto insists. “You always try to butter me up like this before trying to get out of it. But come on! It’s just one dinner. We deserve just a normal night, the four of us, without the world ending.”

You hesitate, just long enough for your reluctance to seem real. “Well, okay,” you relent. “No bailing on dinner, then. But dessert better be delicious.”

“If Rhys doesn’t let Gwen anywhere near the oven, dessert will be delicious,” Ianto says, grinning. “And all this talk of dessert reminds me, we haven’t had ours tonight yet.”

“Oh yeah?” You arch an eyebrow. “Have something in mind?”

Ianto grins suggestively, looking towards the hall that leads to his bedroom and then back at you. A matching grin slowly creeps onto your face, too.

This man might be a Cyberman-protecting, memory-stealing psycho, but oh, do you like the way he thinks.

The next few days pass without much fanfare. Ianto and Gwen are still as unsuspecting as the day you — this version of you — met them, the Alphese mind-wipe gets slowly repaired, and you’re able to find opportunities to “liberate” alien technologies buried deep in the archives.

A Jeridan energy taser gets you a credit chip worth half a million. (It’s broken, but the buyer doesn’t know that.)

A sixty-eighth century calculator goes to one of those amateur alien hunters, and in exchange, they give you a run down on twenty-first century pop culture and promise to refer you to other potential clients.

You’d almost be worried that your disappearances from the Hub to conduct these exchanges would raise suspicion, but Gwen and Ianto don’t seem concerned at all. In fact, any panic that you felt from potentially being caught disappeared after the first time when Ianto noticed you re-entering the Hub, and instead of grilling you on where you went, he just nodded and asked: “Roof?”

And it’s all smooth spacefaring from there.

It’s a little startling, how “roof” seems to elicit complete understanding and no elaboration, but hey, you’ve never been the one to look a gift automaton in the mouth.

One time when you disappear for some “roof” time, you try standing on the tallest one you can find to see what all the fuss is about.

That day, you look down upon the sprawling mass of the city, watching all the people who will never know what lurks between the superficial surface of the city. It takes just five minutes of that for you to nod your head in perfect understanding.

“Roof” is obviously code for something.

Later that same day, you have your first nightmare since waking up in Jack Harkness’ life.

You’re fourteen again, standing on the sands of Boeshane and reliving the day your entire world fell apart, and Dad is telling you to run, to take Gray and keep him safe. He’s turning around to go back and get Mom and all you want to do is scream no, staypleasepleaseplease but your mouth stays glued shut.

Against your will, your body takes off running, Gray’s hand enclosed in yours. Against your will, Gray’s hand starts to fall out of yours.

You know what happens next and you brace for it, your dream body so tense you have no idea how you haven’t woken up in a fit of panic yet.

But your fourteen year-old self doesn’t continue running. To your surprise and gradually building terror, you stop on the sand.

The bodies on the sand disappear.

The screams fade.

You turn around.

You’re somewhere in the Hub and a much older Gray is standing in front of you and he’s yelling how much he hates you and how much all the pain he’s ever experienced is your fault. The depth of his loathing bursting out of the eyes that he inherited from Dad makes you flinch and you want to look away because you can’t bear all that resentment and hostility being directed at you but it’s a dream so you can’t do anything but look back and you’re apologizing and apologizing and apologizing and—

You jolt awake, rolling out of bed and onto your feet before you remember where you are. Not on Boeshane or in the Hub. Not with the ghost of your brother lost somewhere out in the universe.

You’re not at any of these places. Instead, you’re on Earth in the twenty-first century, lost and alone yourself.

Well, maybe not totally alone, you consider, as you watch Ianto on the other side of the bed groggily blink awake, any fatigue of his disappearing the moment he spies you standing.

“Is everything all right?” He sits up, examining your face for any clues. “Was there a Rift alert?”

You shake your head, trying to get your ragged breathing under control before you reply. “Nothing like that. I just…”

Comprehension dawns on his face. “You had a nightmare.”

You shrug, refusing to say it out loud.

He doesn’t push it. Instead, he just looks at you, and the amount of sympathy and understanding that you can see in his eyes makes it almost too hard for you to look back at him.

He pats the space in the bed next to him, the place you were sleeping just a few moments ago, and after a moment of hesitance, you climb in. He puts an arm around you, careful to give you warmth without it being too suffocating.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks softly. It’s just a question, but the way he says it makes it also a promise to listen without any judgement or criticism.

Oh, it’s tempting. You do, oh, you so do. And not just about the nightmare. You want to tell him the truth about the memory loss and everything after.

At this point, you’re not even sure why you’re still lying. Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper are decidedly not evil masterminds. They’re just people who care about other people.

And for whatever reason, they care about you.

Ianto puts a sandwich in your coat pocket just in case you ever get hungry during the day, and Gwen lets you always choose the music in the car.

They smile when they see you because they’re happy that you’re here. And you smile back, bigger and more genuine every time, because guess what? You’re happy, too, for the first time in a long while.

You saw the relief in Ianto and Gwen’s eyes when you told them that your memory was fine — how can you take that away now? How can you also take that from yourself? You’ve got something good going on.

With the Rift nearby and the Torchwood archives full of valuable tech, you’ll never run out of things to sell. With Ianto and Gwen, you’ll never be lonely. It’s selfish, but you’ve always been good at being selfish. (Too good at it, maybe.)

You draw closer to him.

“No,” you whisper, “Just you being here is enough.” It’s the first thing you’ve said to him that isn’t a complete lie.

“This is Artie MacDonaldson,” Gwen says, standing at the front of the conference room, the light from the screen casting a shadow in her face. “Or should I say this was Artie MacDonaldson. He died yesterday of natural causes.”

Across from you, Ianto nods, unsurprised. “Makes sense,” he comments. “He was ancient.”

You ignore him, leaning back in your chair. “Natural causes? What does that have to do with us?”

Gwen clicks to the next screen. “Because he had a Carson anti-grav devouver in his house. Paramedics found it when they came onto the scene. It looked suspicious so they called the police and then Andy called me.”

You make a mental note that “Andy” equals police.

“Okay,” you say, nodding. “So let’s pick it up and put it in the archives.”

“Already done,” Ianto says.

“So what’s the problem?”

“This,” he says, sliding yellowed sheets of paper across the conference room table. “I went down to file it in the archives next to the anti-gravs we already have, and I noticed that one of them was missing. I checked all over our archives for it, thinking that maybe it was just misplaced, but then I realized that the Carson anti-grav from MacDonaldson’s house was the one from our archives. Someone got it out of the Hub.”

“Are you sure?” you ask, even though you already know that he’s right. You remember giving old MacDonaldson that Carson anti-grav. “Maybe the one we have really is just misplaced or misfiled. Down there’s a mess.”

“It’s not in the Hub,” Ianto insists. “It was the same one. I would know. I had to go through the entire archives for the yearly audit only a couple months ago, right before—” he cuts off, coughing. “You know why.” (You don’t actually, but you make a note to see if you can find anything on the computer servers. It sounds important if Ianto can’t even stand to bring it up directly.)

“It’s not the only thing from the archives that’s missing,” Gwen adds.

You lean forward. “What else do you think is missing?”

Ianto taps the pieces of paper in front of you. “Here’s what I could find. A Trankenite Interferometer. A Jeridan energy taser. A Dyson sphere. Maybe there’s even more that I’ve missed.”

“We have to find these, Jack,” Gwen adds. “Some of this stuff is really dangerous. People could get hurt.”

Looking at their eyes, you know that there is no way that you’ll be able to dissuade them from this. Gwen and Ianto are clearly not going to budge.

“Both of you are right,” you agree amiably, though your smile is strained. “We should look into this.”

You press the pause button on your little side business.

It’s riskier now that Ianto and Gwen know what to look for, and to a certain extent, you feel guilty watching them painfully pour over documents and chase potential leads only to end up nowhere. Not guilty enough to tell them that you were the one who stole the tech or to stop planting red herrings for them to find, of course, but guilty nonetheless.

You can live with the guilt, of course. You always have — that’s nothing new.

“How is nobody talking?” Ianto asks, frustration seeping through every word that escapes his mouth. “Those guys — they’re always so eager to talk about aliens and whatever extraterrestrial technology they think they’ve gotten their hands on.”

You can feel Ianto burn holes into the ceiling with his stare as he lays next to you even though your eyes are closed. “Go to sleep,” you mumble. “It’s night. Worry about it tomorrow.”

“It just doesn’t make sense,” he continues, ignoring you. “They’re nervous about something. Maybe they were threatened to keep their mouths shut?”

“Or maybe they’re just a couple of guys who really don’t know anything,” you argue in return. “Everything they believe in comes from conspiracy theory sites, after all. How much can you expect them to know?”

“They always know more than what we give them credit for,” Ianto says, not sounding convinced by your argument. “You should go talk to one of them; you’re usually more persuasive than me and Gwen.”

Oh, Ianto doesn’t know how right he is. You were persuasive — extremely so — in the half a dozen private conversations that you had with former clients.

“Go to sleep,” you say again, and finally, he does.

Gwen throws a peanut at you, which you fail to dodge. It sticks in your hair, and she smiles wide, her eyes crinkling in amusement. It’s infectious, and you smile back at her, which means you fail to see the second peanut lobbed at you by Ianto.

“Hey!” you exclaim, shaking the peanuts out of your hair. “What is this, throw-peanuts-at-Jack day?”

It’s instinctive now to call yourself “Jack Harkness.” You kind of get the allure of being “Jack,” too. It’s tiring sometimes (all the time, truthfully) to be Javic Piotr Thane. To lie, to steal, to be forever running through the cosmos too afraid to look at the ashes of the destruction he left behind.

Jack Harkness seems like the kind of person who is better than all that.

“Nope,” Gwen says, laughing. “This is Gwen-and-Ianto-get-to-kill-time-throwing-peanuts-at-Jack-while-waiting-for-Andy-to-call day.”

Ianto lands another peanut in your hair while Gwen is talking, and he and Gwen high-five.

“Andy?” you ask. “Does he have something for us?”

“Hopefully some new information for us on the missing tech,” she replies, tossing a peanut into her mouth. “A lot of the stuff that’s gone could be really dangerous if the person doesn’t know how to use it. Like the Carson anti-grav or Dyson sphere? Any accidents from those aren’t going to be able to be hidden from the police. If—”

Her mobile rings, and Gwen grabs it immediately.

“Andy!” she says into the speaker. You sit there in silence, watching Gwen’s phone call carefully in the corner of your eye. “Oh,” she says after a minute, visibly deflating. “Thanks for checking. Let me know if anything turns up?” A beat passes. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks again. Bye, Andy.”

Gwen shuts the phone, turning back to you and Ianto.

“Yet again, we still have absolutely bloody nothing!” she exclaims, kicking at the floor in frustration. Her boot snags, or gravity just really hates her, because she loses balance and falls. In an instant, she’s back on her feet. “Not one word from either of you,” she warns, pointing her finger warningly.

Ianto nods, his lips pressed firmly together, though his shoulders move up and down silently.

You should probably follow his example, but you can’t help it. You never could.

“So,” you ask casually, trying to fight off an amused grin. “New boots? Or just your first day walking?”

Gwen doesn’t even hesitate as she drops her entire bag of peanuts onto your head. She barks out a laugh, basking in her triumph.

With that display, Ianto is unable to keep it in any longer. His lips unseal and he explodes, his laughter bouncing off the concrete walls and creating an echo effect that fills up the entire Hub.

You join in, laughing until tears sting your eyes and your stomach begins to hurt.

But you don’t feel the pain. All you feel is the joy.

“It’s a white male, about six feet tall, with a Mid-Atlantic accent,” Gwen recites as she sets plates on the table. “That’s all we know. It’s driving me crazy.”

You hum non-committedly in your chair, having already heard this information back at the Hub. You’re busy examining her flat and soaking in any extra pieces of information that you can gain from this dinner. (It’s a few days overdue, too, thanks to some trouble with the Weevils in Cardiff’s sewers.)

“What’s what now?” Rhys (Gwen’s husband) asks from across the table. He’s sweet with a good-natured smile, and even after a single conversation, you can tell that he balances out Gwen well.

“The person selling the missing archive tech,” Ianto supplies. “We tracked suspected buyers through past CCTV footage, which was hard and took a long time, but we ended up with some grainy shots of the exchanges. They’re not from great angles, unfortunately, so we don’t have a face. But we were able to use those pictures to convince some of the buyers, the amateur alien hunters, that in exchange for some more information on the guy we wouldn’t sic Torchwood on them.”

“Too scared of the bogeyman, eh?” Rhys says, laughing at his own joke. “You know who your guy sounds like? Captain America over there!”

(Oh, Rhys has no idea how right he is.)

You shrug and smile innocently. “Bet he doesn’t have my cheekbones, though.”

“Or your modesty, I’m sure,” Ianto adds, amusement flickering on his face.

Gwen throws a towel at Rhys. “Oi, quit chatting and help me.” She walks behind you, and you hear the creak of the oven door open, the warm scent of lasagna filling the room.

Rhys jumps up from his chair, coming to Gwen’s aid. “Is it ready?”

She swats him away. “Yes, and I’ve got this. Go pour the drinks.”

Rhys reaches into the fridge and pulls out a bottle of wine. It’s nothing fancy, even going by twenty-first century standards and not your fifty-first century palette, but your mouth practically waters at the sight.

“Finally!” you say, grabbing the bottle out of Rhy’s hands. “Some alcohol around here. It was like I was living during Prohibition the last week.”

“Prohibition?” Ianto asks, sounding confused.

“The Roaring Twenties? Or was it the Raging Twenties?” you muse out loud. “But, you know, when alcohol wasn’t allowed.” You uncork the bottle, pouring yourself a generous amount.

“You’re going to drink tonight?” Ianto doesn’t sound confused anymore. He sounds alarmed.

“It’s fine,” you reassure him. It’s sweet that he still seems worried about you after your run in with the mind-wipe, but unlike the first night in his flat, you’re determined to drink something stronger than water. “It’s been a week. Haven’t felt dizzy since that first day. Also, I’ve held off long enough, don’t you think?”

You down your glass in three gulps, enjoying the sensation of wine in your mouth.

“Oh, that hits the spot,” you say, lifting up the wine bottle to examine it more closely. “I guess 2007 is a good year for wine. Who knew? I always thought it was a pretty unremarkable year.” You look up. “Anybody want some?”

For a few moments, nobody does anything but stare.

“Ianto,” Gwen finally says from behind you, her voice calm and steady.

Ianto silently takes the wine bottle from your hands and places it back on the table.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, but Ianto just shakes his head at you, lips firmly closed together. Clearly, he’s not going to answer any time soon so you turn around to ask Gwen.

The last thing you see is a frying pan being swung at you at the speed of light.

You wake up in a cell, Ianto and Gwen staring at you through the glass.

“Seriously?” you ask, groaning. “A frying pan? That hurt.”

Neither Ianto nor Gwen look the slightest bit sympathetic. It’s a bit insulting that they don't, really.

Gwen steps forward. “Who are you really?”

“It’s me!” you say, trying your best to sound convincing. “Jack Harkness.”

Gwen’s voice is dry and unamused. “Jack Harkness doesn’t drink alcohol.”

It takes you a few moments to wrap your head around that. Who knew future you was such a space scout?

“You’re right, I don’t normally,” you say, bluffing. “But sometimes it happens. Once in a hypersonic moon, I guess. Tossing me into a cell over that is a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?”

“Blue,” Ianto softly corrects, completely ignoring everything else that you said. “In the twenty-first century, we say ‘once in a blue moon.’” He shares a look with Gwen. “The mind-wipe. He said...he said that it was built to take away memories but that it hadn’t done anything to him.” He looks at you now, a grimace on his face. “But that was a lie. Wasn’t it?”

“C’mon,” you try desperately. “Why would I lie?”

Gwen hits the glass with her fist, and you jump back, surprised by the display of anger. “The missing archive tech!” she says, realization growing on her face. She turns back to Ianto, pointing at you. “It was him all along. Our suspect? White male, six feet tall with a Mid-Atlantic accent? Does that sound like anybody we know? I mean, how many people in Cardiff even fit that description!”

“Jack did once mention that he used to be something of a grifter,” Ianto quietly says. “Before he came to Torchwood.”

He won’t look you in the eyes now, and you can’t decide if Gwen’s anger or Ianto’s stoicism is worse.

“It’s not me!” you try to insist futilely. The gig’s up, but you can’t bring yourself to admit defeat. “Let me out and we can talk about this calmly. How about over dinner? We never got to finish the lasagna that Rhys cooked. Are we just going to let that go to waste?”

Gwen nods in thought. “Okay,” she finally says, in a complete turn from her earlier words. In a few clicks of the keypad, she opens the cell door.

“Gwen,” Ianto says, putting a hand on her arm, but she shrugs him off.

You smile, ready for act two, but before you can even step forward to exit the cell, she pulls out a gun from her pants, levelling it right at your forehead.

“Give me the only reason why I shouldn’t shoot you dead,” she says.

If her firm grip on the gun and steady breathing is any indication, then she’s not lying, which comes as sort of a surprise to you. Nothing about the last couple of days has made Gwen Cooper seem like the type to shoot a person in cold blood, especially when that person is a friend of hers.

“My charming good looks?” you suggest, trying to joke your way out of this situation. “My dashing wit? All good answers. And also? It’s kind of a really huge insult that you think there’s only one reason why you shouldn’t shoot me. I feel like I need to re-evaluate our friendship now.”

“Be serious,” Gwen says, the lines of her frown deepening. “Answer the question.”

“Oh, come on, this is ridiculous,” you protest. You turn to Ianto, gesturing at Gwen. “Tell her!”

His eyes bounce between you and Gwen, and there’s a second there where you think that maybe he’ll come to your defense, but he opens his mouth and says, “Answer it.”

The problem is that you can’t. Only one reason why she shouldn’t kill you? What, do you have some blackmail on her? It’s impossible to know without having the memories that were taken away by the Alphese mind-wipe. And Gwen knows that.

You slowly move a hand down towards your hip for your gun. It’s an old revolver, no match for Gwen’s more contemporary gun, but you think you can get off a few warning shots that will startle them enough for you to blaze past the cell entryway.

But there’s no gun. There’s nothing but air.

Swallowing, you realize that the weight of your vortex manipulator is gone from your left wrist, too.

You’ve got nothing.

Fighting your way out isn’t going to work and neither is convincing them to talk it out. So you do what you do best.

Bluff. Sow doubt. Run away.

“You’re not really going to kill me,” you say calmly. “You’re a good person, Gwen Cooper. Murder? That’s not something you do.” You glance at Ianto. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to walk out of here, and you’re going to let me. No one is going to die today.”

You lift a foot, preparing to slowly walk out, but before you can take a single step, Gwen fires three shots. They’re all just warnings — the bullets land inches in front of you rather than in you — but you get the message. Gwen Cooper will not hesitate to kill you.

“Fine! Fine!” you shout, raising your hands up in the air. “Don’t shoot!”

You don’t want to die. You really don’t want to die. But if it’s something you really have to do, you want it to be during an extravagant, history-making heist surrounded by pleasure androids while drunk on hypervodka, and not in a damp cell in twenty-first century Cardiff.

“Okay, you’re right. I lied,” you finally grudgingly admit, hoping that they won’t kill you right after they get the confirmation they’re looking for. (The Time Agency never treated traitors too kindly, you remember with startling clarity.) “I don’t have any memory of you two beyond the past week. The mind-wipe did, in fact, steal some of my memories.” You grin sheepishly. “Hi, I’m Javic Piotr Thane. Nice to officially meet you.”

Thankfully, Gwen doesn’t shoot. Mostly, because it seems, she’s too stunned by the revelation despite demanding exactly that out of him. She lowers her gun, her hands trembling. “Oh, God,” she says, staring at you like you’re a stranger.

Ianto just walks away without a word.

“I just don’t know how we missed this,” Ianto says, rubbing his face in frustration. He turns away from the screen that shows Jack — Javic Piotr Thane — pacing in his cell, unable to bear looking at it any longer. “We know him. We know him, and we missed every sign that said something was wrong. How could we have made a mistake this big?”

Gwen wraps Ianto in a hug, drawing him close enough that she can feel his chest rising and falling as he breathes. Voicing what’s on both of their minds, she says, “Maybe our mistake wasn’t missing all the signs but thinking that we know him well enough to know that they were there in the first place.”

“I don’t want that to be true, Gwen. I really don’t.”

“I know. Neither do I. But I had to say it.”

You’ve run through all of the sea shanties you know (which is a lot) when someone decides to finally grace you with their presence. The pounding footsteps that echo off the concrete floor are already a strong sign that this isn’t going to be a pleasant chat, but you’d prefer a game of pin-the-bullet-on-the-Javic over being trapped with nothing but your thoughts. It wasn’t always like this, you remember. But when it wasn’t always like this, you still had a family that was whole.

The footsteps come closer — it’s Ianto, looking as cute as ever in his suit.

He wastes no time with simple pleasantries.

“Is the mind-wipe fixed?” he demands. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me store it in the archives, right? Because you thought you could fix it and get your stolen memories back without us noticing.”

You nod, an impressed grin stretching out across your face. “Yeah,” you confirm. “That’s exactly it. You know, you’re hot when you do your whole detective routine. Both you and Gwen, actually. Has anyone told you two that? Or is that something that you both actively work on? Because, let me tell you, I get a real kick watching the Mueller and Scully dynamic you and Gwen have, but I am disappointed that there is a whole lot less sex than—”

“Oh, shut it,” he snaps, clearly not in the mood to deal with your quips. “Is it fixed or not?”

It is. Truth is, you fixed it two days ago, but couldn’t find the strength to kill the person you are now. You couldn’t bear to tear yourself from a home you thought you’d never be able to find again.

Looking at Ianto, you still can’t.

He’s still glaring at you, jaw clenched so tight you’re surprised you can’t see the veins in his neck. You don’t immediately respond, and he takes the time to add offhandedly, “Also, it’s Mulder and Scully. Not Mueller.”

You smile. “I love how pedantic you are,” you reply, ignoring Ianto’s question. “I think it’s number nine on my list of things I enjoy most about the twenty-first century. Number ten is—”

Ianto bangs on the glass partition that separates him from you. “Answer the question,” he says, annoyance dripping from his words.

“What?” you ask. “What’s the rush? Aren’t you enjoying our chat?”

“No.”

His deadpan voice and immediate response makes you laugh.

“Well, I am,” you say, still grinning. “But I always enjoy our conversations.”

“You mean just the ones you actually remember,” he shoots back sharply, eyes narrowed. He flinches, as if he were where the words were directed to instead of originating from.

You eye him with keener insight, respecting his anger for the first time. Your banter — it was a mistake. It made you comfortable; it made him anything but.

“You’re mad at me,” you say softly.

“No. I’m not,” Ianto says, very obviously lying. He won’t even look you in the eyes now. But that’s besides the point. You would know he was lying even if Ianto wasn’t sending off painfully obvious signs. A good liar means knowing both sides of the coin.

“Yes, you are,” you insist blandly.

“No, I’m not,” Ianto repeats again, eyes still nowhere near your face.

And then it clicks.

“No, you’re not,” you agree softly, and the easy acquiescence seems to surprise him because his eyes flashes upwards to meet yours. But you’re not finished. “You’re mad at Jack,” you say, and the almost imperceptible twitch of Ianto’s left eye tells you that you’ve hit it dead on. “You’re so mad you want to scream at him, but you can’t because he’s not here. I am.”

He nods, finally. “You’re not Jack,” he agrees. “You’re…”

“Javic,” you say, finishing his sentence. “An entirely different person than the one you knew.”

“Know,” Ianto corrects softly. He shakes his head, as if to clear it. “Why did you lie about not losing your memories when you woke up? I think you owe me that much.”

You probably do.

So you tell the truth.

“A long time ago, the Time Agency stole two years from me,” you say. “I don’t remember why, when, or how, but I do remember waking up one day with no idea what kind of person I was anymore. Last week, when I woke up on the ground with no memory of how I got there, all I could think about was those two years. I thought maybe you did this to me. So I stayed quiet, seeing what I could find out about you and this place. But all the things I found out… I knew that you or Gwen couldn’t have done it. But I kept up the lie because I liked being Jack Harkness. I liked who he was better than I liked who Javic Piotr Thane was.”

You suck in a deep breath before continuing. “I grew up on a tiny place called the Boeshane Peninsula. A single building on the shore, that kind of tiny. I had everything I ever wanted. A home. A family. But I lost all that.” You didn’t intend to go down this road, but now that you are, you can’t stop the words tumbling out. “I still see my brother in my dreams,” you whisper. “Gray. He’s always yelling at me to help him. To find him because he’s still alive. And I try. I look and look and look. All across the universe. But wherever I am, he isn’t.”

You direct your gaze firmly onto Ianto’s. “That’s what everything is about: the money, the cons, the running. I’m trying to find Gray. I need to find him. Pissing off the Time Agency while doing all of that is just a bonus.” You laugh sharply, injecting decades of bitterness and pent up anger into it. “I read some of the files. Lisa Hallet the Cyberman? I thought you were crazy or some kind of idiot. But I kept thinking about it, and now I think I understand. Lisa Hallet is your Gray. The one you would try to save no matter the consequences.”

“I learned my lesson,” Ianto says quietly. “Some people can’t be saved.”

“I never do,” you admit, though there’s only amusement laced in your words. “Learn from my mistakes, that is. Part of my charm.”

“What if Gray can’t be saved?” he asks, looking at you so intently that you feel the need to avert your eyes.

You shrug non-committedly.

He nods his head. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

“Would what?”

“Try to save Gray no matter the consequences. If he was here right now, you would do anything to help him. Even if it meant people would get hurt. Even if he couldn’t be saved, not really.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. This hypothetical talk means nothing, though. He’s not here.”

Ianto lets the silence lapse between the two of you. Finally, he speaks. “Yeah,” he replies slowly, his gaze centered somewhere down the corridor that leads away from the cells. “He’s not.”

A few more moments pass in silence before he turns back to you, his words coming out more urgently than you’ve ever heard them be. “I’m fairly certain Jack knows what happened to Gray.”

Your eyebrows shoot up in surprise, not expecting these words to escape his mouth.

“What?” you ask, heart beginning to pound. “How do you know? What makes you think that?”

“I don’t really know,” he continues. “But he’s just said some stuff about his family. His past. Nothing too concrete, just some offhanded references or remarks. But it sounded like he knew what happened to every single person.” His words come out faster, more firmly. “Is the mind-wipe fixed? Because if it is, then you could get all your memories back right now, and find out what happened. Otherwise you might never know.”

You hesitate. After all, it could be a trap; A lie meant to feed into your delusions and greatest wishes. It’s why cons work — they tell you everything that you want to hear and make you think you have more to gain than you have to lose. (You should know; you’ve been running them long enough.)

But then again, isn’t “Jack Harkness,” whoever he is, just a different version of you? One with more memories and a place to call home?

It doesn’t sound so terrible, giving up what you have now for all of that. (Except that’s the whole point of cons — they tell you everything that you want to hear and make you think you have more to gain than you have to lose.)

You know this. And yet—

“It’s fixed,” you confirm. “It’s ready to go. I just have to check the programming, but if you give me half an hour, I can do it.”

“Good,” he says, punching the keypad to let you out of the cell. “Come on.”

You step out, your skin crawling with an equal mix of anticipation and excitement. This might be the worst decision you’ve ever made, giving up the person you are now for the hazy outline of a half-written dream, but it feels right somehow.

Like Jack Harkness was always the person you were supposed to become.

Before you can walk down the corridor, Ianto holds a hand out, stopping you in your place. Your heart falls slightly, worried that this was all some elaborate trick to get your hopes up.

(This has always been your problem. Time and time again, you tell yourself everything that you want to hear and make yourself think you have more to gain than you have to lose.)

But he doesn’t take any of it back. Instead, he just looks at you and says: “Just so you know, you were wrong. Lisa Hallett isn’t my Gray. Jack is.”

The way he says it, gaze firmly locked on yours, makes you understand that it’s supposed to be a reassurance of some sort. But there’s something about it that makes the words escaping Ianot’s lips sound like a warning.

You’re standing in Jack Harkness’ office, staring at the Alphese mind-wipe on the desk before you. Gwen and Ianto are standing right outside the entryway that leads into the office, a safe distance away from the impacted radius of the tech.

You swallow, trying to drum up the courage to press the button that will give you all your memories back. But while it’ll do that, it’ll also be sending you to your death. Because you won’t be Javic Piotr Thane anymore. You’ll be an entirely new man, with new memories and motivations.

You hope that whoever he is, he’ll be a better man than you ever were. You have a good feeling that he will be — it’s not like that’s a very hard accomplishment to achieve.

You look up, giving a genuine smile to Ianto and Gwen, who have their hands clasped together.

“This was the best week of my life,” you tell them truthfully. “Thank you for everything.”

You press the button.

Ianto and Gwen watch as a translucent field envelopes Jack, his body freezing and eyes gazing nowhere in particular the moment it touches his body. The field surges with energy, expanding until it takes up the entirety of the office space and more, visibly vibrating as it ripples in the air. But despite the danger of possibly being sucked into the energy field, the border only a small step in front of their noses, neither Gwen nor Ianto make a move to step backwards as it dangerously inches closer. Instead, they keep their ground, too invested in what is happening in front of them to even think about themselves.

“I think it’s working,” Gwen says, her grip on Ianto tight.

“It better.”

“It will,” Gwen responds firmly. “Otherwise, we’ll try shooting him in the head and seeing if that resets everything.”

Ianto doesn’t laugh, too nervous to do anything but stare into Jack’s office and hold onto Gwen.

Finally, he asks: “Would you really? Shoot him, that is. I know what you just said was a joke, but if you had to...”

Gwen doesn’t hesitate for a moment. “Yes.”

Ianto inhales, his breath catching in his throat.

“It sounds bad, I know,” Gwen says, lips trembling. “Because it is bad. Even if that person can’t stay dead. That doesn’t make it any better. But that’s the truth. I would. To get Jack back. I would.” She sniffles, wiping away snot from her nose with the hand that isn’t holding onto Ianto. “I almost did today, remember? I shot in front of his feet, but at that moment, all I could think about was that I was ready. I could do it. I could shoot Jack and not hesitate. Because I thought it would be the right thing to do. And oh God, the fear in his eyes when I did. He could see it. He knew.” The tears start to freely fall from her eyes, and Gwen messily wipes them away. “And even now, I don’t regret any of it,” she admits. “I could do it again. What does that say about me, Ianto?”

“I lied to him,” Ianto bursts out in response, ignoring Gwen’s question. “He asked about Gray, and I lied. I said he wasn’t here. I knew that if he knew Gray was in the Hub, then Jack would go and wake him up.” Tears begin creeping into the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t do it for Cardiff or because I thought Gray might hurt people again. I did it because I knew Jack would leave and not come back. It was selfish, and I did it anyway.” He swallows hard, the vocalization of his confession doing nothing to lift the crushing weight off his chest. “His face when he was talking about Gray — you should’ve seen it. It wasn’t like how Jack looks when he talks about his time before Torchwood or Boeshane. It was crushing. And I knew that I had the power to fix it, to give him what he had spent his whole life looking for, and I didn’t.” A hysterical giggle erupts from his mouth. “I don’t regret it either. I feel terrible, but oh God, I don’t regret it for a moment.”

Ianto keeps laughing, loud and off-kilter, and eventually Gwen joins him, their intertwined laughs bouncing through the Hub.

“No one else will ever understand this but us,” Gwen says breathlessly, once they both quiet down. She sighs, a bit tired and wistful. “No one possibly could. Not even Jack. It’s just you and me, Ianto Jones.”

There isn’t much Ianto can say in response except to express agreement so he doesn’t say anything, letting the silence lapse between them. Gwen doesn’t move again to fill the space with words so they stand where they are, watching Jack’s body with equal intensity. There isn’t really much to watch — Jack’s body remains frozen while nothing else is.

Second pass, and then minutes, and then without warning, the translucent field draws back into the machine and Jack slumps down onto the floor, falling behind his desk.

“Jack!” Ianto cries, rushing into the office and over to his fallen body, Gwen right behind.

Grunting with effort, Ianto turns Jack onto his back, holding his breath as he waits for the person he knows to wake up.

“Did it kill him?” Gwen asks softly, kneeling down next to Ianto.

“No,” Ianto responds absently as he checks Jack’s pulse. “He just passed out. He should wake up soon if this time is anything like what happened last time.”

True to Ianto’s words, Jack’s eyes begin to flutter.

“Ianto?” Jack mumbles softly, his eyes beginning to open more fully.

“Jack?” Ianto whispers. “Do you remember what happened? Did it work?”

Jack doesn’t respond immediately, choosing to heave himself up using the desk. But once fully upright, he grins, stretching out his arms wide.

“Did it work?” he asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You tell me, Ianto Jones. If it didn’t work, how would I know that you were obsessed with Action Man growing up? That you had a goth phase and you still like to listen to Finnish black metal? Or that you prefer to watch James Bond movies in chronological order?

Jack turns to Gwen. “And if it didn’t work, then tell me, Gwen Cooper, how would I know that you had a monkey stuffed animal growing up named Bonzo? Or that the only food that you can successfully make is a pasta bake? Or that it takes six pints to get you drunk?”

Wordlessly, Ianto throws his arms around Jack, engulfing him in a deep hug.

“You’re back,” Ianto mumbles into Jack’s shoulder. “You’re back.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighs, squeezing Ianto back. “I am. I’m sorry I was gone. But I’m back.”

You don’t tell them that you only know about Ianto’s goth phase because of the CDs in his flat.

You don’t tell them that you learned about his childhood obsession with Action Man from a note you found in the Captain’s Log.

You don’t tell them that you only found out about Gwen’s childhood stuffed animal from Rhys.

You don’t tell them that you know about Gwen’s alcohol tolerance because Ianto once made an absent remark.

They don’t know that you aren’t telling them the things they don’t want to hear.

(You don’t know that they aren’t telling you the things you do.)