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Security forces marched in the streets of Cardiff. The United Kingdom had collapsed, as had so many governments across the planet, and even Unit. Crime ran rampant in the streets, sickness spread as water treatment facilities went down, along with most of the electrical grid. Store shelves sat empty. Want, need, and struggle had become daily life for the people of Earth. What had been the 21st century--the time when everything changes--was no more. It was the dark ages again, the beginning of the death for the human race.
The Doctor stood at the edge of Mermaid Quay that dark night in 2010, his eyes set on the now concrete-filled pit of what had been Torchwood Three. Sirens screamed across the city, the sounds of gunshots could be heard in the air--this was wrong. This was all wrong. Earth at the end of the first decade of the 21st century was not supposed to be like this. It had taken him time but he had finally found Martha to ask what had happened, what had gone so horribly wrong in such a short time--the governments of the world had betrayed their own people. They had agreed to hand over 10% of the Earth’s children to an alien race. Jack Harkness had managed to stop them, but in the process the Torchwood Hub had been destroyed, Jack’s lover had been killed, and his grandson sacrificed at Jack’s own hand to save the human race--but none of this should have happened. 2010 was the dawn of Britain’s Golden Age, not the beginning of the death of life on Earth--but this could be fixed. He knew that after talking with Martha. It could be fixed, but only with the help of one man.
Martha had told him Jack left months before for the stars. “Losing Ianto killed something inside of Jack,” she had said earlier in the day when the Doctor had at last found her at the free clinic that she and her husband, Tom Milligan, had begun to operate on the streets of London following the collapse of the government and the NHS.
“Ianto?” the Doctor had asked.
“Ianto Jones, he worked for Jack. He and Jack were lovers. They were--” for a moment her voice trailed away, her eyes going to her hands where they rested in her lap “--they were much more than that,” she said, her eyes rising to meet those of the Doctor again. “I knew they were together, but didn’t know how close they were. Jack stopped in one day when we were getting this place open and just started talking, like he had to get it out--Jack really loved him. He really, really loved him, and Ianto loved Jack. Ianto was the only person Jack ever really opened up to, the only person Jack said who ever came close to understanding him, the one person Jack trusted more than anyone else. Ianto stood by him, even after he found out Jack had been at the heart of handing the first group of children over to the 456 in 1965. Losing Ianto--it was like it killed Jack inside, like he would never be alive again--”
Ianto--Ianto Jones--the Doctor remembered the name, remembered a brief introduction over a computer screen what to him had been only a few months before. Ianto had been a handsome young man. At least Jack had--
…young… The thought stuck in the Doctor’s mind.
“When was Ianto Jones born?” the Doctor had asked, interrupting what Martha had been saying.
She gave him a strange look, and for a moment didn’t answer.
“When was he born?!” the Doctor asked again, taking hold of both her upper arms, his voice rising urgently.
“I don’t know, ’82, ’83, maybe--”
“But after 1965?” the Doctor asked again, his voice rising urgently. That was all the dividing line he needed--1965.
“Absolutely. Ianto couldn’t have been more than--”
“And was he anywhere near the Rift, near the Torchwood Hub, when the bomb went off inside of Jack?” he said, interrupting her again.
“Ianto was right there. Jack said Ianto didn’t want to leave him. Jack had to force him onto the invisible lift. Jack almost lost him then. Ianto barely made it out.”
The Doctor grabbed Martha into a hug then kissed her full on the mouth. “Martha Jones Milligan, you’re a genius!” he said, and leapt to his feet.
“What?” she asked--but the Doctor had already been running for the Tardis. There was work he had to do.
The Doctor knew the 456 by their real name. They were the scum of the universe, creatures in search of worlds who could be convinced to trade in their own young. The 456 always struck an initial deal, asking for a few children in exchange for an antivirus. That antivirus came at an enormous price. It altered the planet’s DNA, an alteration that would allow the 456 the ability to communicate through future generations of the planet’s children. The planet involved was doomed the moment the first deal was struck. The creatures could then return again and again, demanding more children on each visit, until there was no one left on the planet but a population too old to reproduce. That was what would happen here on Earth unless the Doctor could manage to stop it, the Doctor and--
He took the Tardis to the abandoned Valiant where she still sat in low orbit around the Earth, then used its computers to tap into the still-powered underground UK government servers to try to track the historical whereabouts of a single man, Ianto Jones in the window of time between the Hub’s explosion and the moment of his death. The government had been looking for Ianto and the other members of Torchwood Three. Surely--
“Yes!” the Doctor said with a moment of absolute satisfaction.
The Tardis rematerialized in an alley behind a row of abandoned warehouses in London a few minutes later, in a time that was actually almost a year in the past. One of the warehouses had once been a holding facility of Torchwood One. The Doctor stepped out onto the pavement and closed the door of the Tardis after himself, breathing deeply of the air this July 9th, 2009, the day Ianto Jones would either die or take the first step to save the entire human race.
He took his key to the Tardis and hung it around his neck on a cord. It would allow him the benefit of the Tardis’s perception filter, so that he could move about and not be seen. The Doctor could take no chance that even the sight of him might change the progression of the timeline that had brought him here. The result could be a paradox, even the end of reality itself--Ianto Jones was the only hope the human race had, not the Doctor. The Doctor just had to tell him that.
He made his way into the warehouse, toward the sound of what he could hear of footsteps passing quietly across a metal floor.
A soft male voice reached him. “This must have been eating away at you,” the man said, his words barely understood as the Doctor approached them. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Jack Harkness said.
“I tell you everything.”
“Yeah, so tell me, what should I have done?” There was challenge in Jack’s voice, his eyes set on the man the Doctor recognized immediately to be Ianto Jones.
“Stood up to them. The Jack I know would have stood up to them.” An indescribable look passed across Ianto’s features. “I’ve only just scraped the surface, haven’t I?” he asked quietly.
“Ianto, that’s all there is.”
“No, you pretend that’s all there is.”
“I have lived a long time. I have done a lot of things.” Jack was suddenly in motion, leaving him. “I’ve gotta go. I won’t be long.”
A look of hurt moved across Ianto’s features. “You’re doing it again,” he said, turning so his eyes followed his lover. “Speak to me Jack! Where are you going?”
Jack turned back. “To call Frobisher. I can’t make the call from here ’cause they’ll be able to trace it--is that okay?” He was emotionally trying to distance himself from Ianto. The Doctor could see it.
“You’re the boss,” Ianto said quietly, obviously understanding the message Jack was trying to convey.
Then it seemed as if Jack couldn’t contain the words. “And just so you know, I have a daughter called Alice and a grandson called Stephen and Frobisher took them hostage yesterday.” Quiet emotion broke Jack’s voice with the words. He looked as if he were afraid he was severing something between them.
Jack turned and walked away as Ianto stared after him. Silence surrounded the young Welshman. The Doctor wanted to give him a moment as Jack disappeared from his sight, but there was no time. Each second he delayed was one more instance that either his presence or the presence of the Tardis might change something in the timeline.
He removed the key from around his neck and reached up to place a hand on Ianto’s shoulder at the same instant.
Ianto gasped and turned to see him. Recognition immediately washed across his features, along with what was obviously relief--Ianto thought the Doctor was here to help with the 456. Which he was. Just not in the way Ianto expected.
“Doctor! Jack just--” he took a step in the direction his lover had just gone.
“Ianto, you need to come with me,” the Doctor said, tightening his fingers on Ianto’s shoulder to keep him from going after Jack.
Ianto turned back to stare at him, obviously thinking the Doctor did not understand. “But --”
“That doesn’t matter right now.”
Ianto opened his mouth to speak again.
“Ianto--you’re going to die today when Jack goes up against the 456. You die, and your death kills something inside Jack,” the Doctor said, his words silencing Ianto in an instant. An indescribable look moved across Ianto Jones’s face, but the Doctor’s estimation of the young man went up ten-fold when his next words proved to be more about Jack than the circumstances of his own fate.
“Jack has lost lovers before--”
“You’re different, Ianto. You mean more to him than I think even he knows--that’s why you need to come with me.”
“But--” he looked in the direction Jack had gone again.
There was no time for this. If someone should see the Doctor here, or recognize the Tardis--
“Do you love Jack?” the Doctor asked. That was the one thing he knew already that would get through to this young man.
There was no hesitation in Ianto Jones’s answer. “Yes.” His eyes moved over the Doctor’s face.
“Then if you love him, help me save him. Help me save the entire human race--come with me.”
Ianto Jones followed the Doctor without another word.
Ianto listened for a long time to what the Doctor had to say to him. They were in the Tardis, sitting in the dark and quiet confines of the Torchwood Hub after a short trip in time. The Doctor had brought them here, to the recent past, to the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, July 6th, the morning before the night in which the explosion would kill Jack and destroy the Hub. Gwen would be home asleep with Rhys right now, and Ianto and Jack were in the midst of a night of pleasure and talk in Ianto’s flat and Ianto’s bed. In a few hours, the two of them would go to the hospital to retrieve the Hitchhiker. In a few hours, every child across the world would stop. In a few hours, the threat to the Earth would begin.
“So they come back again and again--the 456, whatever they’re called?” Ianto asked. The Doctor had told him of the world he had found six months after Jack left Earth, and of the 456, everything the Doctor knew about them, including that Jack had sacrificed his own grandson in an effort to stop them after Ianto’s death, a fact that had left the young man obviously shaken.
“Yes,” the Doctor answered him now with a nod. “The planet seals its fate with the first bargain that’s made. The creatures return to ask for more children the second time, more the third--10%, then 20, then even more--until the society implodes or there is no one left young enough to reproduce. The species dies out of old age, or is wiped out at the point they try to resist after that first exchange. The one opening the 456 needs is that first bargain, a way to introduce the antivirus into the DNA of future generations. That allows them to control the planet’s young on a massive scale. That’s the tool they need to control the governments of the world, terrorizing them with control of their own young. The planet’s fate is written from that point forward.”
“Then we need to stop Jack from handing the children over in 1965 in exchange for the antivirus,” Ianto said, matter-of-factly. “I need to stop him, to get him to stand up to them--that’s why you need me.”
The Doctor stared at him, quite surprised. Oh, he was finding he liked this young man! What a magnificent mind he had to go along with the good looks. The time Jack Harkness had spent with Ianto Jones must never have been boring.
“But how do we avoid my creating a paradox?” Ianto asked. The Doctor watched his mind working, Ianto’s brow furrowing as he thought through the possibilities. “If I go into the past to stop the entire situation from developing with the 456, then I’ve prevented the very thing that sent me into the past--or does it create an alternate universe from that point on, another reality with the altered outcome--”
The Doctor couldn’t help himself--he broke into a broad grin. “Ianto Jones, you’re clever! Oh, I love clever people!”
Ianto just stared at him, obviously taken aback. “Um, yes, well--” he said, suddenly all stiffness and uncomfortable dignity, which made the Doctor’s grin only widen further.
“Jack was here at your Torchwood Hub, at the Rift, when the bomb went off inside of him,” the Doctor said. “Martha said you were with him, that you barely made it out alive--”
“Yes--” Ianto said, slowly.
The Doctor could see his mind working again, Ianto Jones putting two and two together, coming up with--
“The explosion opened the Rift, didn’t it? That’s why the blast radius wasn’t as large as the computer had predicted. Part of the force of the explosion dissipated through the Rift.”
The Doctor nodded. “And anyone close enough to the explosion got a good dose of rift energy—harmless, actually, but there.” He reached over to swivel a monitor attached to the Tardis’s controls in his direction to study at it more closely. “From the look of this, you had to have been almost directly on top of the blast. Every cell in your body is saturated with energy from the rift.”
“Jack was right below me, watching to make sure I got out on the invisible lift,” Ianto said. His voice had become very different for a moment. The Doctor could tell it was an emotional memory.
“The Tardis is actually fueled with energy from your Rift and other rifts like it. That energy is basically time in flux--flexible space and time. Someone infused with that energy, sent to a time prior to their birth, would be completely free from the laws of paradox. They could change history as they know it, do something even to prevent their own birth, and not create a paradox or a parallel world or split things off into an alternate reality. The timeline he interfered in would simply take a different path.”
“So I could talk to Jack, get him to do things differently in 1965, get him to stand up to the 456 and not make the exchange of the children for the antivirus,” Ianto said.
“You can try,” the Doctor told him. “You’re the only one who can. He may not listen to you. He’ll be a Jack you’ve never met, a Jack who doesn’t know you--it was 44 years ago, Ianto; he may be very different from the man you know now.”
“No, I know him. I’d know him at any time in the past.” There was absolute assurance in Ianto’s voice.
The Doctor doubted that. Ianto was very young, and perhaps very naïve. Jack Harkness had lived a very long time.
Ianto’s eyes were on him. “I may not know everything about Jack’s past, but I do know him,” he said, as if he had known exactly what the Doctor had been thinking. The assurance was still in his voice.
The Doctor nodded, even though he wasn’t convinced. “You need to know, Ianto--if you do change events as they originally played out, through influencing Jack or anyone else in 1965, everything you know in your life could change. Jack will have met you long before your birth. His life could proceed completely differently from 1965 onward. He might never have taken over Torchwood Cardiff. You might never have gone to work for him. If nothing else, your timeline together will be different--he will have met you long before you even lived, that is if you even live in the new timeline. You may never have been born, or could have died at a young age--and the man you are now, the one who travels to 1965, will simply cease to exist once the timeline is changed.”
Ianto was silent a moment. “We don’t have any choice,” he said. “Millions of children could be tortured, hooked up to the 456 to give them a fix. Every human being on Earth could be lost if we don’t--and Jack would have to live for eternity knowing he was at the start of it.”
Ianto looked away for a moment. The Doctor could see his mind working, Ianto thinking through the possibilities.
“But we might be able to minimize the differences between the new timeline and this one,”
he said, bringing his eyes back to the Doctor again, “the changes Jack might inadvertently make, if we could make him forget.”
The Doctor looked at him curiously.
“We have this thing that Jack developed--Retcon, an amnesia pill. If I could get one to Jack, convince him he will need to take it as soon as things are settled with the 456, he could live the next 40-plus years without remembering we met, without any influence our meeting might have on the timeline.”
“Jack has had memories taken from him before,” the Doctor said, thinking of the two years the Time Agency had stolen from Jack. “He would never agree to--”
Ianto shook his head. “I know him. I can convince him it’s necessary.”
The Doctor looked at him skeptically. “Ianto, you know your Jack. I don’t think you realize how different a Jack of 44 years ago might be.”
“He’s still Jack--I know him,” Ianto said again.
The Doctor sighed and nodded. Not only young and naïve, but stubborn, as all young people were apt to be. “Alright, you can give it a try. I suppose you have the--what did you call it?--Retcon?--here at Torchwood?”
Ianto nodded. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.” And he went through the Tardis doors and out into the darkness of the Hub.
The Doctor stared after him, hoping Ianto Jones was as clever as he seemed to be--and hoping more than anything else that Ianto knew Jack Harkness as well as he thought he did.
Ianto reached to shut down what had been Tosh’s computer station ten minutes later. He stood staring at the monitors after they went dark.
“Done,” he said quietly to himself. Then he closed his eyes. “God, let this work,” he prayed softly. “Please, God, let this work.”
He heard the Doctor call his name from the doorway of the Tardis, an unsetting sound here in the Hub where he was so accustomed to Jack calling his name instead.
“I’ll be right there,” he called to the Doctor in return. His hand went to the bottle of amnesia pills in his jacket pocket. “Please, God, let this work,” he whispered again, his eyes touching on the now-dark computer monitors. “Please, Jack, find me again.”
The cold November air cut directly through Ianto’s suit and shirt to chill his skin the moment he materialized in the Scottish countryside in 1965. His senses swam, causing him to stumble as he shook his head to try to get his bearings. He had made the trip forty-four years into the past by way of what the Doctor had called a transmat beam, the beam having been generated by the Tardis and powered by the Doctor doing a controlled opening of the Rift. Ianto had to make the trip alone, without even the Tardis for transportation--only he was outside the laws of paradox due to the rift energy that infused his body. He was alone in what he would have to do. Only he--and the Jack of 1965--could change the future.
He had materialized standing on a road that stretched into the darkness. Scrubby trees and grass stretched away from either side of the roadbed. There were no lights in sight, no structures, no other human beings--Ianto waited, wrapping his arms around himself to try to trap in the little warmth his own body was generating, wondering how long it would be before Jack passed along this particular stretch of road tonight on his way to the first meeting with Ellen Hunt about handing the children over to the 456.
Faint headlights bobbed into sight in on the road in the distance, the sound of an engine reaching Ianto’s ears a moment later. He waited, standing in the center of the road, dropping his arms to his sides, feeling a sudden and almost overwhelming sense of deja’ vu as he realized how reminiscent this was to the night he had stood in the middle of a dark Cardiff road waiting for Jack back when Ianto had been stalking him, waiting to ask Jack to help him catch a pterodactyl.
The lights slowed as they drew near, finally coming to a halt with a quiet sound of worn brakes only a few feet short of Ianto, the dark bulk of a jeep behind them. Ianto waited, not moving until the driver’s door opened and a man stepped out. It was Jack.
“Nice suit. Strange cut to it though,” Jack said, looking him over as he came around to stand before the headlights staring at Ianto. He was wearing what looked as if it could have been the same military coat that had been destroyed in the explosion, buttoned fully up the front now. His hair was combed neatly back in the style Ianto had seen him wear in innumerable old photographs. He was definitely Jack. And yet he wasn’t.
There was no recognition in his eyes as he looked at Ianto, no warmth. No love. Ianto realized suddenly that some part of him had hoped there would be something at least, some spark of familiarity between them even across time, some way in which they would know each other--but this was not his Jack. This was not even the Jack he had stalked and conned into giving him a job at Torchwood, or the Jack who had once threatened to execute him if Ianto would not execute Lisa one awful night. There was a coldness in this Jack’s eyes, a lack of feeling, anger--and desire; oh, yes, there was desire, the one thing inarguably familiar in this Jack’s eyes.
But even that was different, and suddenly an unexpected itch of worry moved up Ianto’s spine. He remembered all too well some of the stories Jack had told him.
“Hello, Jack,” Ianto said, and watched as the surprise moved over this Jack’s features.
“Do I know you?” He was moving now to slowly circle Ianto before the headlights glare, looking him over. Ianto turned to follow him with his eyes. “No, no,” Jack said after a moment, “you I don’t think I’d forget.” There was obvious appreciation in his voice.
Oh, yes, the desire was there.
“But the suit--”
“Don’t tell me you had a suit fetish even back in the 1960’s,” Ianto said, intending to rattle Jack with the words.
They worked. He watched as Jack stopped to stare at him.
“I’m from the future, Jack, your future.”
Jack stared at him a moment longer, then began the slow circling again. Ianto suddenly knew how an animal being stalked for a kill felt, a feeling he knew damned well this Jack had wanted to convey.
He shook that thought out of his mind.
“My future?” Jack asked. “So--if you’re the ghost of Christmas future, do I also get the ghosts for present and past?--and if I’m dreaming, I’d really prefer you naked--”
And suddenly Ianto realized what Jack was doing, the same damned thing Ianto had seen him do so many times before, to so many people--Jack was trying to put him off guard, to get under his skin and make him make a misstep. It was the very thing his Jack used flirtation and innuendo for in the future.
“You know, that’s an unfortunate choice of word--ghost--considering that I died in your arms the 9th of July 2009 because of a choice you make tonight,” Ianto said.
He saw the look that passed across Jack’s features--Jack looked as if he had been slapped, a look Ianto had never once seen on his Jack’s face in the years he had known him. Surprise warred with suspicion which warred with disbelief. He had stopped in his circling. He simply stared at Ianto now--but he was listening.
“You’re on your way to a meeting now with a woman named Ellen Hunt, though you don’t know her name at this point in history. It’s easier for you if you don’t know their names,” Ianto added, knowing this was his chance. He had to get through to Jack. “You’re meeting her at a location a group of aliens known as the 456 have designated for a trade the government has agreed to make--12 children in exchange for an antivirus that is supposed to protect against the Indonesian flu.”
Jack’s eyes moved over his face in the darkness. Suspicion was written in every line of his stance.
“The government wants you to make the trade because they think you don’t care--but the Jack I know does care, and this had to be eating away at him every day from the moment he made that trade to the time I knew him,” Ianto said.
Jack just stared at him.
“If you follow through with what they want, you’ll make the trade, and for forty-four years you’ll tell yourself that it was worth it--12 children in exchange for the lives of millions who might have died of the flu. For forty-four years you’ll live with it every day, telling yourself it’s in the past, that it’s over--but the 456 come back on the 6th of July, 2009. They come to demand 10% of the world’s children--10%, Jack, millions of kids, because of the bargain made here in 1965. And they’ll come back again and again after that, demanding more and more kids each time, kids that they feed off of for a drug high, until there are no kids left and everyone else dies of old age--”
“How do you know all this?” Jack demanded.
“Because I lived through a major part of it before--” he caught himself before he could mention that the Doctor had pulled him out of the timeline hours before his death to send him here. This Jack was still waiting to meet up with his Doctor again, and Ianto didn’t think distracting him with mention of the Time Lord would be a good idea. “The antivirus the 456 will provide does nothing but rewrite a portion of human DNA. Children born to inoculated parents will be susceptible to control by the 456--imagine every child on Earth stopping at once, Jack, every child speaking in unison, speaking in English around the world, every one of them saying ‘we are coming’ over and over again at exactly the same moment, and you can imagine how terrorized the people were. Governments started planning what children they could hand over, how they could do it, and how they could cover their own backsides in the process--in the UK they were going to hand over kids from the estates, the least desirable, the ‘lowest achieving’--”
“The government wouldn’t do that,” Jack said, but he was obviously shaken.
“Yes they would. They did--and they tried to kill us to keep us from stopping them.”
“Us?”
“You, me, and a woman named Gwen Cooper, we’re Torchwood.”
“Torchwood?” Jack sounded skeptical. Ianto knew how he had disapproved of most of their policies through most of the century.
“We’re not the Torchwood you’ve known. You change things completely when you take over.”
“When I take over?” Jack said--and to Ianto’s surprise, he laughed. Ianto could suddenly see every inch of ground he might have gained with this Jack had just been lost in an instant. This Jack would never believe he would be the leader of Torchwood. “I don’t have time for this.” He turned and started back for the open driver’s door of the jeep. Ianto closed the distance between them to put his hand on Jack’s arm--he couldn’t let him just drive away. This was too important.
“Jack, please--”
Jack turned suddenly to knot his hands into the front of Ianto’s jacket and slam him hard back against the side of the jeep. “Who sent you here!?” he demanded, his face only inches from Ianto’s.
“Jack--”
“Who!?” Jack shouted again, pulling him away from the side of the jeep just to shove him hard back into it again, trying to frighten him. For a moment Ianto had to wonder if this Jack would hurt him if he didn’t receive an answer he would accept. Jack had told him he had been a torturer in the past, that he’d been damned good at it--but this was still Jack, his Jack, the man Ianto loved, even if he was a Jack living forty-plus years in the past before Ianto should have met him.
“I know you,” Ianto said quietly.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Jack said from between gritted teeth. The look in his eyes was cold and should have been frightening.
“I do know you--” and he called Jack by the name Jack’s parents had given him.
Jack released him in an instant, shoving away from him to stand staring at Ianto from a few feet away. There was something far beyond surprise on his face. “What--?” He seemed unable to complete the words. Ianto knew how long it had been since this Jack had heard anyone say that name.
Ianto repeated it quietly, stepping closer to Jack, watching Jack almost unconsciously take a step further back. He was shaken. “It’s your name--the same as your grandfather, and his father before him.”
Jack was suddenly studying his face in the darkness, his eyes moving over Ianto’s features. Ianto realized suddenly the almost desperate hope that had occurred to Jack, and his heart broke a little that he had to tell him:
“No, Jack, I’m not your brother, Gray,” he said gently, and watched the impact of that other name move through Jack, the fresh stab of guilt at a childhood incident for which Ianto knew Jack would never forgive himself. “I’m Ianto Jones. You and I are together in the future. We’re lovers. We’re--” But he really didn’t know what he should call them. Gwen and others who saw them together thought they were a couple. Ianto wanted to believe they were as well, even if Jack would never confirm it--but Jack said he hated that word. “We’re close friends, Jack. We tell each other things we would never tell anyone else. You told me the name you’d been born with, in the middle of the night one night after we’d been--” He didn’t know what words to use to this younger Jack--that they’d been having sex? Making love? Fucking each other senseless? They certainly did all those things and many more. “I didn’t ask you, you just--told me. You asked me to say it. You wanted to hear my voice say your real name.”
He remembered how surprised his Jack had seemed to be at what he had found himself doing on that night that was still so far in the future to this Jack of 1965. The two of them had been lying tangled together in Ianto’s bed, duvet and sheets kicked to the floor, both their heads on Ianto’s pillow. Jack said he had told that name to no other person in the long years since he had left the Boshane Peninsula.
Ianto looked at Jack now, this man who stood staring at him in the darkness of a Scottish countryside, a man who he knew was bored at this point in his life by the endless progression of days, by the ceaseless waiting to find the Doctor again, by the hurt of the Doctor’s abandonment, by the confusion as to what he was and why he could not die, why he had to continue on living as everyone else died around him. This Jack was alone, so completely alone, lost in a world and a history he could not escape, tired of simply existing--and Ianto loved him. He loved him because this was Jack. He loved him because Ianto Jones had long ago thrown aside any limit to how much he could love this one human being.
He reached to touch Jack’s face, seeing the surprise move through Jack’s eyes. Ianto brought his body closer, then pressed his lips to Jack’s--and Ianto was kissing him, pouring everything he felt for Jack Harkness into that kiss, everything he had never been able to say, everything he would never be able to tell him. He felt Jack’s arms go around him then tighten--too tight, far too tight--but it didn’t matter. Desperation suddenly filled both of them, Teeth clashed together, lips bruising lips, and they were dragging at clothes, exposing skin to the cold November air, skin that immediately pimpled into gooseflesh--but that didn’t matter either. Ianto pushed Jack back against the side of the jeep, Jack’s trousers thrown now into the grass alongside the roadbed, Ianto’s pooled down around his ankles, his suit jacket and Jack’s coat both unbuttoned and shoved back out of the way. Jack’s legs were hooked over his arms, Ianto supporting Jack’s weight to keep him from falling, a position Jack always called ‘heavy lifting’--and he entered Jack, quickly and with little finesse, with nothing for lubricant but spit and Ianto’s own precum. Jack gasped with discomfort but Ianto gave him little chance to adjust or complain, crushing Jack’s mouth beneath his--and Ianto was taking him, driving Jack up and back against the side of the jeep again and again. It was over far too quickly, the need too raw, Ianto coming with a shout, Jack’s cum shooting between them to stain Ianto’s waistcoat and tie without either of them having once touched his cock.
He allowed Jack’s weight to slip from his arms a moment later, his cock slipping from Jack’s body, until they were both standing and upright, leaning against each other in the cold night air. Jack drew back enough to look at him, his face different now. Believing. “How did you get here?” Jack asked quietly, his hands coming up to touch Ianto’s face, his eyes studying Ianto as if trying to memorize the moment.
“I can’t tell you,” Ianto said “--but you have to believe me. This is too important. The entire world--”
“I believe you,” Jack said, and kissed him. This time the kiss was soft and sweet--so like his Jack could be when wrapped in the afterglow of sex. “But your coming here, Ianto, changing the timeline that you come from--” There was concern in his voice, worry, the thought of the paradox in time he thought Ianto could be creating.
“It’s okay--I can’t explain everything, but it’s okay. There won’t be a paradox. The timeline I came from has to be changed. Things went wrong--oh, God, so completely wrong--”
“You died--” and there was hurt in Jack’s eyes, as if this Jack had known him for more than the brief time they’d had together here.
“More than that. You managed to stop the aliens in 2009 when they returned the first time. You did it after I died by doing something horrible, taking the only choice you thought you had to save millions--” He knew Jack would not ask what that horrible thing had been. The man he had been at this point in history already had enough horrors eating away at his soul, as Ianto well knew. “But that won’t be the end,” Ianto said. “They’ll be back, again and again. The Earth will give in and sell their own children to survive, or the 456 will wipe them all out--all because of the antivirus they’re allowed to introduce into Earth’s population here in 1965 that will make future generations of the Earth’s children open to their control. You have to stop them Jack.”
“What do you need me to do?” Jack asked. But Ianto had suddenly become aware of the passage of time around them, the minutes ticking past, Jack now beyond doubt late for his meeting with Ellen Hunt. The two of them were standing here on a country road in Scotland in the freezing air, two half-naked men obviously in the moments after sex. Anyone could happen along--and time was moving far too fast.
Ianto pulled out of Jack’s arms and reached down to tug his trousers up, to situate himself then zip up, not bothering with tucking his shirt in or fastening his belt as he went to grab up Jack’s trousers from the scrubby grass alongside the road. He handed them to Jack.
“You have to stand up to the 456,” Ianto told him as he watched Jack re-dress. “I don’t know how much you know yet about the mission they’re going to ask you to take, but they want you to deliver 12 children to the aliens in exchange for an antivirus. You’ll have to take the mission. You can’t take the chance of refusing only to have someone else take over and go through with it. You have to pick up the children at the orphanage, but instead of handing them over to the 456, you need to find someone you can leave them with, someone you trust to find them homes, to help them disappear. You need to show up at the rendezvous with an empty bus and you have to stand up to the aliens. Tell them they won’t have a single child from Earth, not ever, not now and not in the future--Jack, I don’t know what they’ll do to you,” Ianto said, knowing he could be sending Jack to a horrible death. Jack would resurrect, but that did not mean he didn’t suffer each time.
He moved to put his arms around Jack again. Jack was fully dressed now, shirt tucked and great coat buttoned up, ready to walk into the heart of darkness because Ianto asked him to do it. “What happens to you when I do this, when the timeline changes?” Jack asked against his hair after pressing a kiss there.
“We’ll meet again in the future. We have to,” Ianto said, not answering the question about the man Ianto was now, standing here in Jack’s arms--but Jack knew. Ianto could feel it. Jack’s arms tightened around him as if he couldn’t let go.
Ianto let himself be held a second, then looked up at Jack.
“You have to go. You’re late. You have to make this meeting,” he said, trying to memorize Jack’s face now as he stared up at him.
Then he reminded himself of what he had to do. He moved his arms from around Jack to reach into his jacket pocket and pull out the bottle of amnesia pills.
“You have to promise me something first, though,” Ianto said, opening the bottle to shake one out into his palm and hand it to Jack. “When everything is over, once everything is settled with the 456 and you know the 12 children are safe, you have to take this. It’s an amnesia pill. It will make you forget everything that’s happened--”
“No,” Jack said. Ianto saw that he was going to turn his palm over and drop it onto the roadbed. Ianto stopped him, closing Jack’s fist over it and cupping his fingers around Jack’s hand.
“You have to. You can’t remember what happened here tonight. You can’t remember meeting me--”
“No, Ianto--”
“You can’t remember,” Ianto said again, more insistently, tightening his fingers around Jack’s even further. “Remembering could change your actions, the way you live your life for the next 40 years, alter the timeline too much from the one where you and I know each other. We might never meet if you change the timeline too far. I might not even exist--it has to proceed as close as possible to the original, with the single exception of the exchange of the kids for the antivirus in 1965. You can’t remember me, Jack. We have to meet each other fresh, as if you’ve never known me before--we’ll find each other again. We have to.”
He could see what this was doing to Jack. Ianto knew what it was doing to himself.
“I love you,” Ianto said, releasing Jack’s hand to reach up to touch his face. Words he had never been able to give to his own Jack. “Whether you remember me or not for the next 40 years--I love you.”
Ianto stuck his head through Jack’s open office doorway. “You’re right, he’s back,” he said with a grin, then turned to go back to the computer terminals in the central part of the Hub.
Behind him he could hear Jack laugh where he had been talking to Gwen, then slap his hand on his desk. “I said so,” Jack said, then Ianto could hear him following after him.
Gwen was right on his heels. “Who’s back?”
Jack came to stand alongside Ianto. On the monitor before them, Rupesh Patanjali was walking on the Plass as if looking for something. He had papers tucked up under one arm.
“What’s he doing?” Jack asked.
“Waiting, just like you said,” Ianto answered. “He’s been there twenty minutes.” He smiled over at Jack.
“Persistent--” Jack remarked.
“Good sign--” Ianto agreed.
“Dogmatic--”
“Always a plus--”
“Oh, Christ, never work with a couple, you two talk like twins--now, tell me who he is?” Gwen demanded.
Ianto glanced over at Jack, unable to keep from feeling that same intense jolt of happiness he felt anytime someone referred to them as a couple. He answered. “Rupesh Patanjali, he saw the Hitchhiker. He’s the bodies-going-missing man.”
“Dr. Patanjali,” Jack said with a shrug to Gwen. “We need a doctor.” It had taken Jack long enough to agree to expanding the staff. He had teased Ianto in the SUV that he might give Patanjali a chance simply because he was cute.
“I don’t share--remember that, Jack Harkness,” Ianto had warned him, and had received a smile in return, followed by a kiss when the SUV had stopped at the next intersection.
“What” Gwen asked now, “and you just let him follow you?”
“Ask about Torchwood and most people point towards the Bay,” Ianto told her.
“Oh,” then Ianto watched Gwen clue in. Jack kept smiling, looking at the screen. Ianto knew Jack was waiting for her to let loose on the both of them. “You bastards,” she laughed, “that’s exactly what you did to me the first time we met.”
Ianto grinned and looked over at Jack.
“Well, sod that,” Gwen said happily. “I’m promoting myself to recruitment officer.” And she ran off.
Ianto watched her go, then turned back to look at the monitor, noticing from the corner of his eye when Jack shoved his hands down into his trouser pockets in an identical manner to how Ianto was already standing. Ianto rolled his shoulders up nervously and took a deep breath, hoping to use the opening Gwen had given them to see if he could nudge Jack to clarify a few things.
“She’s calling us a couple now,” Ianto said as casually as he could manage. Back in the hospital, Jack had said, ‘Well, we are…’ when Ianto had brought up the subject, but they had been unable to continue the conversation while dealing with the Hitchhiker--not that discussing their feelings was a thing that either of them ever did easily. At least they were alone now. Gwen would undoubtedly keep herself occupied for a while with Rupesh Patanjali as Torchwood’s new self-named ‘recruitment officer.’
“What’s your problem?” Jack said irritably, looking over at Ianto.
“I’m just saying.” Ianto met his eyes, uncomfortable now.
“I hate the word couple,” Jack said, taking his hands out of his pockets and turning to walk away.
Disappointment shot through Ianto--the more he tried to clarify things, the more he seemed to be pushing Jack away. He opened his mouth to tell Jack that he hated the word couple, too--but Jack’s wrist strap beeped, silencing him and drawing Jack’s steps up short.
Jack turned all the way around to look at him, the clear thought passing between them that no one communicated to Jack via the wrist strap except for John Hart--Jack’s ex-lover who Ianto dearly hoped neither of them ever had to see again for the rest of eternity.
Jack crossed back to where Ianto still stood, as if wanting his support, not pressing the receive button on the wrist strap until he was at Ianto’s side.
When Jack’s own holographic image winked into existence before them instead of John’s, Ianto could do nothing but stare with surprise.
“Hey, Jack!--looking good, I’m sure,” the holographic Jack said with a grin.
Ianto turned to look at Jack, who looked as surprised as Ianto felt. A puzzled look filled his expression. “I never--” Jack said, opening his right hand in an obviously confused gesture, instinctively keeping his left arm level so the holographic image wouldn’t shake.
“Oh, you left this message for yourself, alright,” the holographic Jack continued, as if they were having a live conversation. “You just don’t remember because of this amnesia pill I’m about to take to keep from inadvertently changing the timeline.”
And he was displaying what had to be a dose of Retcon between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand before letting the arm drop back to his side.
“You see, I had to leave this message because I just couldn’t take a chance on not being with him in the future, on not finding him. I had to make sure you knew what he did, the risk he took for you, for the whole world.”
Him?--Ianto wondered, looking over at Jack. Exactly what ‘him’ was the holographic Jack talking about? A stab of jealousy moved through Ianto. The Jack in the message was obviously from the past, from the combed-back hairstyle and the cut of the military uniform he was wearing.
Jack was staring at the image of himself intently. Ianto returned his own eyes to it again.
“If you’re there, Ianto Jones--thank you,” the hologram said, to Ianto’s complete and utter shock.
Jack turned a look of complete puzzlement on Ianto. Ianto could only return it with an equal one of his own. How could Jack of--whenever in the past before they met--know anything about Ianto?
“If he’s not there--Jack, you should find him,” the image leaned forward, toward whatever it was that had recorded it. “You should be with him. He--I have a feeling he’s everything to you--that he was everything to you--will be--”
Then the image of Jack shook his head, obviously amused at the tangle of words.
“Time travel’s a bitch with the verb tenses, isn’t it?” he said to his future self.
Time travel?
Then to Ianto’s complete and utter embarrassment the hologram said, “God, he loves you so much.”
Ianto had never been able to say those words to Jack, although he knew Jack was fully aware of how Ianto felt about him. Ianto turned and took a step away, needing suddenly to get away before he had to hear more of what this Jack of the past had to say to his present self.
Jack turned to pin him in place with a single look before turning his eyes back to his holographic image.
“I guess I should start at the beginning if this is to make sense,” the hologram said. “You see, you’re receiving this message on the morning of the 6th of July 2009 because that’s the temporal date this thing--” he indicated his wrist strap “--picked up for the rift energy Ianto must have used to get here. It’s 1965 where I am, the date Ianto came to so he could fix the timeline. In the timeline he left, you--I--had participated in a deal here in ’65 to hand over 12 human children in exchange for an antivirus. The government was told the antivirus protects against the Indonesian flu, that it would save millions--what it did instead was change human DNA to let the aliens control future generations of Earth’s children. In Ianto’s timeline, the aliens returned in July 2009 to demand 10% of the world’s children, to feed off them for some chemical high the children could provide, and the governments of Earth agreed to make the exchange--”
Ianto felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him--10% of the world’s children? Millions of kids? Earth would never--
“Ianto died the 9th of July 2009 during the confrontation with the 456--” but suddenly the image wavered as present-day Jack took a step back at those words.
“Jack--” Ianto said, stepping closer to him. The 9th of July--three days away.
“I’m okay,” Jack said, his eyes locking onto Ianto, moving over his face.
No, he wasn’t okay, Ianto could see it.
“You’re not leaving my sight on Thursday,” Jack said, in no uncertain terms. He seemed to think a moment. “In fact, you’re not leaving my bed.”
The hologram seemed to be giving them a moment, as if the Jack of the past had known the effect to expect from those words.
After a moment he continued.
“I don’t know how Ianto got here, or how he knew what would happen on Earth after he would die. With his temporal signature being from the 6th of July, maybe someone pulled him out of time before his death--I just know he came to me. He told me that after he died I did something horrible to stop the 456, but it was for nothing. Whatever I did, it didn’t matter, because the human race was doomed from the moment I made that first trade here in 1965--Ianto stopped me. I didn’t make the trade. I stood up to them instead, like he asked,” the holographic Jack said.
Then there was sudden desperation in the recorded voice as the Jack of the past leaned toward the recording device, speaking to the Jack of now.
“Jack, if he’s not with you, he should be. Ianto Jones--he’s handsome, dark hair, south Wales accent, about 25 or 26 in 2009. He kept you from being part of the destruction of the human race, from having to live forever knowing you were at the start of it. If you have a soul, he saved what’s left of it, and he saved Earth in the process--find him.”
Ianto’s mind was reeling. For a moment he thought the hologram was finished, then it spoke again, this time its tone quiet.
“Ianto, if you’re there--we had only a few minutes beside that road, but it was--” the hologram’s words trailed away. “I love you. I may not remember for 40 years, but I love you. Always know that.”
Then he put the amnesia pill in his mouth and swallowed it dry, still staring at whatever device had recorded the image. He closed his eyes at last with a sigh. Then the image winked out.
Ianto stood staring where the holographic image of a 1965 Jack had stood just a moment before.
Jack sighed softly beside him. “I remember,” he said, what sounded almost like wonder in his voice. “Seeing the message I left--I remember everything now, you being there, you stopping me from going along with the trade with the 456. Ianto--” he said, an incredulous sound that made Ianto look at him at last.
Ianto looked away again immediately and cleared his throat, his mind spinning, trying to process everything they’d been told by the hologram.
He stepped away from Jack even as Jack said his name again. The nearby computer stations had begun to sound an alarm quietly at some point in the hologram’s message, signaling a faint energy reading picked up from the rift. Ianto moved toward the nearest keyboard to check on it, needing something to do, hitting a few keystrokes, then feeling a sense of horrible deja’vu wash over him as his own staticky image flickered onto the computer’s monitor screen.
“Oh--God, no,” he said, then reached quickly to try to hit the delete key, intent on erasing forever the message some other Ianto--some Ianto from another reality or time or the future--had sent to whoever for whatever reason.
Jack’s hand closed over his and stopped him, squeezing gently. Jack’s other hand then went to hit the enter key to start the message playing. Ianto could do nothing but stare at the screen, stare at himself--another him from some other time, in some other Hub, wearing a suit and tie that he knew he had never owned, a dried cut showing on this other Ianto’s right cheek.
“This message is for the leader of Torchwood Three--I hope Captain Jack Harkness,” this other Ianto said, taking a deep breath. “What I’m about to do--I’m not sure how much the timeline will change, and someone has to know what I know. I’m setting this message to transmit to the Rift in the moment the Doctor opens it to send me to the past. It should reflect back to whatever Torchwood exists in the new timeline, sometime on the day I send it. It’s important that you monitor a frequency you’ll find at 456 megahertz from this point forward, keep a watch on it. The governments of Earth must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to make a deal with the aliens who transmit at that frequency. The aliens will offer an antivirus, probably in exchange for a handful of Earth’s children. That bargain can never be made, no matter what kind of incentive the aliens offer, no matter the cure or the threat. If that first bargain is made, the antivirus they provide will alter human DNA to allow the aliens to control future generations of Earth’s children. The creatures will come back again and again. They’ll demand more children each time, millions of children at each visit, and the governments of the Earth will comply. Here, in my timeline, the government of the UK destroyed the Hub and tried to kill all of us to keep us from stopping them. The aliens use children as a chemical hit, a drug. The children never age. It’s an eternity in hell to provide these creatures a fix. The aliens will continue until there are no children left, until the only humans remaining on Earth are too old to reproduce, until the human race dies away. If you make that first bargain, you doom the entire future--you can’t do it. Not one single, solitary child. Not one. Ever.”
This other Ianto took a deep breath. His words to that point had been rushed, as if he were afraid of running out of time or being stopped before he could say all he need to say.
“Jack--Jack Harkness--if you’re there, I--” he fell silent a moment “--I wanted you to know, I love you. And if we’re not together, if I’m not there, please look for me. I’m Ianto Jones; I was born August 18, 1983, in Newport, Wales. In my timeline I worked for Torchwood London, and then for you at Torchwood Three following the battle of Canary Wharf. If I never exist once the timeline changes or I’m already dead--just know I loved you, Jack. You should know that--I love you.” And with no warning the image on the screen broke up into static.
Jack reached to shut it off. “Ianto--” he said, quietly once again, his voice very soft. Ianto felt naked, exposed before Jack--and not in a good way.
Ianto would not look at him. He did not know what to say. He just stared down at the keyboard before him, the one that in another reality another Ianto Jones had left a message for another Jack Harkness. That other Ianto had traveled to the past to save the human race. That Ianto had met Jack in 1965. That Ianto had had Jack fall in love with him after knowing him only a brief time. Jack had loved him enough to leave a message for himself that would wait forty-four years to try to make certain they found each other again--but they wouldn’t find each other. That Ianto Jones didn’t exist anymore. This Ianto wasn’t that man, and he had to wonder now if that was all he was to Jack--memories bleeding through the Retcon, feelings for a man Jack had loved, another Ianto Jones, and a stab of jealousy moved through him at his other self. No wonder he could get no kind of confirmation from Jack as to what they were to each other.
“That wasn’t me, Jack,” Ianto said at last, wishing he could be that man for Jack. He was surprised as the faint touch of a fantasy moved through his mind--standing in the darkness of a country road, kissing Jack, kissing him as if the entire world had depended on it. Because an entire world had.
He shook the fantasy away.
“Ianto--” Jack’s hands had come to rest at either side of his face, lifting Ianto’s gaze so Ianto had to look at him.
“It wasn’t me,” he said again, some part of him breaking inside--then he gasped as the fantasy returned unbidden and almost overwhelming this time, but added to it was what seemed almost a sense memory of chill air on skin, sending it into gooseflesh, the pleasure of sex, the feel of driving into the gripping heat of Jack’s body.
“You’re remembering, aren’t you?” asked a voice from behind them.
They turned to find the Doctor standing there, his hands shoved down into his trouser pockets.
The Doctor shook his head, smiling almost fondly, his eyes on Ianto where he stood now in Jack’s arms. “You clever, clever man,” he said.
“How--?” Jack began, his eyes scanning the Hub, obviously looking for the Tardis.
“I came in the front door; it wasn’t hard,” he said, motioning with his chin in the direction of the open cog doorway. “The Tardis is refueling above on the Plass,” he said.
But Ianto was fixed on what the Doctor had said to start with. “Remembering?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said, his smile broadening. He rose up on the balls of his feet, then dropped back down again. “You are a genius--do you know that, Ianto Jones?” He seemed absolutely delighted, staring at Ianto now with what almost looked like pride on his face. “You programmed a signal to transmit to the Rift at the very moment I opened it--I assume to Captain Jack,” he said, smiling at Jack. “Oh, I never expected that--you tied the two timelines together, Ianto Jones, the two realities, at least as far as you two are concerned.”
Ianto looked over at Jack, having no idea what the Doctor was talking about. He returned his eyes to the Doctor.
“Your bodies were both saturated with rift energy from the explosion here in the Hub in your original reality--rift energy, flexible space and time energy. It can bridge any point, any era, any reality, any time--even forty-four years in the past or multiple todays, including ones that no longer exist,” he said, excitedly. “That’s why it’s what fuels the Tardis. Rift energy doesn’t exist in any specific time or place--it is time itself. It has no beginning or end. It just is. Once the two of you were saturated with energy from the Rift, you had always been saturated with it, even before the moment of the explosion itself, throughout every moment of your lives--in both timelines,” he said, smiling and rising onto the balls of his feet again. “Ianto bridged the two by sending that signal to the Rift, something from the original timeline intentionally directed to this new one, and because you two are saturated with Rift energy, he effectively merged everything you two were in the original timeline to who you are now. The memories are all there, everything that made you the individuals you were in that original timeline, to the very moment Ianto left it on July 9th, what had originally been hours before his death. The memories may come gradually, but they’re there.”
Ianto looked at Jack.
“You clever, clever man,” the Doctor said one more time, rising up on the balls of his feet again, sounding as proud of Ianto as if he were his father--or, at least, the kind of father Ianto had always wished he’d had.
Ianto was paying him little attention, though. He could only look at Jack.
Other memories were touching his mind, racing past…Jack’s voice, “…so tell me, what should I have done?”
And Ianto’s, “Stood up to them. The Jack I know would have stood up to them.”
Jack telling him he had a daughter and a grandson.
Hushed words in the darkness of a Scottish countryside, decades in the past, “Whether you remember me or not for the next 40 years--I love you.”
So much still to discover about Jack--but there was time. They had plenty of time.
They were still just scraping the surface of their life together.
Epilog
The Doctor smiled, his eyes fixed on a monitor that afternoon in the Tardis, as he watched Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones walk arm-in-arm back in the direction of the Fake Tourist office that served as a front for Torchwood Three. They had walked him to the Tardis and he had tried to talk them into coming with him, but they had declined. There was a world they had to protect, after all, a fact which he had known, a world that had been put right again thanks to Ianto Jones, a world at the very dawn of Britain’s Golden Age.
He watched as a dark-haired woman joined them on the monitor--Gwen Cooper linking arms with Ianto Jones at his free side. After a moment two additional people joined them as well, a lovely Asian woman and a man who took her hand to intertwine their fingers securely--Toshiko Sato and Dr. Owen Harper, newly returned from their honeymoon trip in this changed timeline, eager to renew their push for Jack to expand the staff so they could all have more of a personal life.
The Doctor’s smile widened as he yanked a lever down to start the Tardis’s engines.
It was a good day, he thought to himself.
It was always a good day when everyone lived.