Has anyone else ever noticed how there's a lot of lasagne relaed plot in Torchwood? I thought there was, so I decided to make a story out of it, as is my way... This spans the latter half of the year Jack was away, and the first moments of KKBB - enjoy!

The Lasagne lay cold and congealing on the plate, no longer steaming. All that was audible a steady drip, drip, drip, coming from the kitchen tap. He should really fix that.

Rhys sat alone in the flat, its small space seeming large and cold simply because he was on his own. Gwen was still working. He still had no idea what she did. Usually he would watch telly while waiting for his girlfriend to come home, if he hadn't already given up and gone to bed, but tonight he thought he would wait up and time how long it took her to get in. He resisted the urge to phone her – recently she had started snapping at him that she was busy and that she would get home when she got home.

He wondered what he would say when she came in. The truth was that he was getting sick of all the secrets and moment's notice 'work' things she had. One small part of him remembered the dinner date they had had a while ago, and the tall, dark, handsome man called Jack who had interrupted. Gwen had introduced him as her boss, but Rhys couldn't help a stab of jealousy ripping through him, especially when he remembered that Gwen had immediately upped and followed him, forgetting all about their date. Was that where she was? With him? Was she cheating on him, shagging another bloke behind his back? No, not his Gwen. But sometimes, when he compared them standing in the bathroom mirror, and she looked so glamorous next to him, he did wonder why they were together.

The key was rattling in the lock and a moment later Gwen came in, looking irritated and tired. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and Rhys was sure she would be out the door again before he had woken up tomorrow.

'Rhys!' she started. 'What are you still doing up?'

'Waiting for you,' he replied jovially, looking pointedly at the clock on the wall. 'It's late, I was about to give up on you.'

'Oh, sorry, love,' she said, smiling weakly. 'There's just a lot on at work at the minute.'

'There seems to have been a lot on at work for the past few months, love,' Rhys pointed out.

'It's fine,' she snapped, then immediately apologised.

'It's OK, love. But are you sure Jack isn't working you too hard? You look dog tired.' At the mention of Jack's name Gwen's head had jolted up and she searched her boyfriend's eyes with a guarded expression in her own.

'What do you know about Jack?' she asked cautiously. It immediately made Rhys suspicious that something was going on.

'Nothing, love,' he answered, surprised by her tone. 'I was just wondering why –' he was cut off as Gwen fled the room, covering her face with her hands. She had started crying.

Gwen sat in the bathroom, forcing the tears to retreat. A wad of toilet paper was clasped in her hand and she only half listened as Rhys vainly tried to get her to open the door and tell him what was wrong.

He had left them. He had left her. He had gone and vanished without a trace, leaving them alone and leaderless for months. It was almost a year now. At first Gwen had been numbed by it; she had hardly spoken or slept or ate, and kept repeating over and over in her mind what happened? Why did he go? What did I do? Eventually though she had snapped out of it, and risen from her reveries to lead the team in the increasingly difficult struggle that Torchwood faced. The aliens were increasing in number, and Tosh was convinced that something was trying to manipulate the Rift to its own purposes. The others had given up on their Captain ever returning, had stopped mentioning him, but Gwen hadn't forgotten. She had always believed he would come back – after all, everything he had ever said to her showed her he loved Cardiff. He had had his life force drained by Abbadon to keep the city – and the world – safe. How could he have left after that?

Then her mind would always go off on another track: what if he hadn't gone willingly? What if something had reached down and plucked him away? And what if he couldn't get back? For all Gwen knew, he was trapped somewhere unable to escape, being tortured, and couldn't get a message to them. That was why she monitored all Rift activity personally, and scoured every communications channel for the merest trace of Captain Jack Harkness.

Now though, with his name having been spoken for the first time in months, she doubted for the first time. A darkness clouded the edge of her vision at all times, but now it threatened to swamp her entirely. A life without him – she had always thought it was Torchwood she couldn't live without, but it just wasn't the same without his broad smirk and blue eyes. His bunker in the Hub hadn't been occupied since he left, and Gwen often found herself down there, sitting on the bottom step and just imagining him in there when the others had gone home for the night. Another sob escaped her lips.

Gwen came home brighter and more lively than Rhys had seen her almost since that monster had been stomping round Cardiff. She was excited about something.

'Are you staying for dinner today?' Rhys asked. 'Only I did lasagne – hope you don't mind.'

'Sure, I'm staying in tonight,' she replied from the bedroom. There was a heavy thunk and the sounds of Gwen lugging something bulky around, so her boyfriend went through to investigate. The large black suitcase they used for their holidays was open and she was hurriedly piling clothes in.

'Are we going somewhere?' Rhys asked.

'I am, she replied. 'It's a . . .business conference. I'll be gone for a while,' she replied quickly.

'For special ops?' Rhys wasn't entirely convinced.

'Yeah, it's teambuilding or something – nothing big.'

'Err, how long will you be gone?'

'I don't know, a few weeks maybe?' Gwen supposed. Catching Rhys's silence she added quickly, 'Don't worry – I wouldn't go if it wasn't really important.'

That morning, that very morning, on one of the more obscure frequencies Gwen was monitoring, she had heard confirmation of a Captain Jack Harkness in Tibet. She had traced the line, of course, to make sure it was real, and the signal seemed to originate somewhere in the Himalayas. She had called a conference in the boardroom that Ianto had relocated, and with little persuasion needed, the team had decided to go find their boss – even if it was to, as Owen put it, just to wallop him one for leaving them in the first place. They were going to leave tomorrow in a special jet borrowed from UNIT.

'When are you leaving?' Rhys asked.

'Tomorrow morning,' came the hurried reply. Gwen was now throwing most of her warmer clothes into the suitcase, and routing around for gloves, scarf and hat in the drawers. 'Have you seen my thermals?'

Rhys shrugged his shoulders and returned to the kitchen. If this business conference meant Gwen was more of her old self he wasn't going to complain.

Rhys had a plan. Gwen had been gone for weeks, and it wasn't until she was fully removed from his life that he realised how much she was a part of it. He was going to ask her when she got back. He would make Lasagne for her – not the crappy ASDA stuff that tasted like cardboard, but the proper stuff made from scratch from mince and cheese and vegetables and stuff. It was Rhys' best dish, passed down from generation to generation of Williams' - and Lasagne over a candlelit table would be the perfect way to ask her to marry him.

Gwen didn't want to go home. She was too tired to cry, but she felt empty, like a hole had been punched in her chest. They had spent weeks trailing over mountains, passing through beautiful, 

rugged terrain looking for him, but it had proved a false alarm. Almost all of her hope at his return was spent, and she didn't think she possessed the energy to face her boyfriend. How could she keep her composure in the face of such massive disappointment?

Squaring her shoulders, she pushed her key into the lock. I can do this, she thought. Her eyes opened to see Rhys, grinning broadly, standing next to their little table, which was lit by two candles and set with the fancy cutlery she hadn't seen in ages.

'What's all this?' she asked, confused at the gesture. It wasn't an anniversary or anything, as far as she could remember, so what was going on?

'I thought we could celebrate you coming home,' he said happily, pulling out a chair for her. She sat numbly, wishing that she could have just been left alone to get her thoughts together. At the Hub, she had to lead with strength, and never show any weakness in front of them – it made her more appreciative of what he had gone through when he had been there. Still, Rhys had put all this effort in; she couldn't let him down. So she sat.

'How's the lasagne?' he asked after a while.

'It's good,' she assured him.

'You've hardly touched it.'

'I'm just tired, that's all.'

'Oh, well why don't you come onto the sofa and tell me all about it?' he suggested, and began to clear the plates away. The ring was in the kitchen.

'Gwen, love, can I ask you something?' he asked tentatively. She nodded tiredly at him as she sat down. Nerves tingled as adrenalin began to pulse through his body. What if she said no? What if she said yes? He bent down on one knee and watched Gwen's eyes grow wide. He reached back to retrieve the ring box from where he had put it and. . .

Pain spasmed down his back, paralysing him. Hurriedly Gwen helped him onto the sofa where he lay prone, in agony. He panted through it, trying to form the words through a haze of pain, but Gwen was shushing him.

'Gwen,' he gasped. 'Will you marry me?'

She was shocked. Frozen to the spot. Whatever she had expected it wasn't this. Suddenly it was all too much, the failed trip to the Himalayas too raw in her mind. She ran from the room in tears.

Seeking refuge once more in the bathroom, she went through it all in her head. She couldn't help but compare Rhys to her once-boss – Jack's back wouldn't have twinged; he would have taken her to the most expensive restaurant in the city, or something even more spectacular, to propose.

That's fantasy, she chided herself. Jack is gone – he left you and he's never coming back for you. This was her chance to move on, to regain some of her old life – sure, it would be a minute fraction of what she could have shared with Jack, but it would be something.

'Excuse me, have you seen a blowfish driving a sports car?'

They had cornered the alien in a house, where it had critically injured one person and made a hostage of another. She should shoot. She should put a bullet though its eyes.

The shot rang out and the blowfish collapsed, dead; it had been shot crisply between the eyes.

'Hey kids,' Jack grinned. 'Did you miss me?'

A tempest of emotions flooded Gwen's body. Hope, joy, grief, fear, wonder, solace, all at once. She wanted to weep with relief and roar and rage in fury at the same time. How could he leave them for a year and then return as if nothing had happened? That year had changed her, inside and out – and it was his fault. She had moved on with the assumption that he had left for good, and now that future with Rhys seemed precarious and repulsive in her eyes. Rhys or Jack? The man she loved or 

the man she was in love with? The one who had stayed loyally by her side or the one who had left them all to struggle? Jack had devastated Gwen's soul just by leaving, and now she was at a loss what to do. Did she have the strength to break Rhys' heart?

Review please! Also, please go read my story 'We Found Torchwood 4!' I promise it's really funny and brilliant... (looks hopeful)