1
It's just on dusk.
The crickets are letting off their lazy song of the day before the night frogs take over.
A baseball game being played under the lights behind the local high school.
The reassuring bubble covering the planet appearing like auroras borealis in the half light.
Locals fill the wooden bleachers. It's the regional playoffs. Everybody is here.
The Mayor Yvonne Hartman, the Pastor John Frobisher, the Fire Chief Oswald Danes, all the VIPs a small town has to offer.
Even the town sheriff has turned up for the end of the game. He parks his haver-cruiser in the overflow lot and comes down the hill to the diamond, keys jangling on his belt beside a holstered gun he never uses.
Jack Harkness is easy-going. Second-gen sheriff.
Pillar of the community.
Trading a dozen hellos, clapping some old timer on the shoulder who has his Planetary War Emblem proudly pined on his hat, giving the coach a thumbs-up about the score, he comes around the backstop to the little food stall.
Sets his hat on the counter.
Handsome.
Grinning with hometown pride.
"They're playin' well, Kev, they're playin' awful damn well. Win this one they could have a shot." Jack said to the Vendor, then nodded to his wife behind him "Hey Linda."
She nods hi and pours him a cup of coffee, on the house.
"Fryeburg's tough. They'd be next." Kev agreed.
"Fryeburg, yeah. Shit. Well, one at a time, one at a time..." Jack heads off, coffee in hand. "Thanks, Kev."
Jack leans on the sideline fence, sipping his coffee, watching the game. The star pitcher blows a fastball past the batter. Jack lets out a howl. "Scotty McLeod! You throw like you fly, son, too damn fast!"
He puts down his coffee so he can applaud the strikeout with both hands then picks it up again and takes another sip.
No one has yet noticed the stumbling man out in the shadowy woods beyond the outfield. Weaving like a drunkard, he walks right onto the playing field, oblivious to the game.
A man of fifty. Local pig farmer.
His name is Rhys Williams.
He is carrying a shotgun.
Heads turn, mouths falling open in the bleachers and dugouts, everybody staring in collective disbelief. It's surreal, a guy with a gun just walked past Pete Jenkins in left field.
"Rhys, what in God - ?" Jack drops his coffee and jumps the fence, goes out across the diamond to intercept him, hollering, waving his hands. "Rhys, whoa, Rhys, Rhys, whoa, whoa, whoa!"
Rhys Williams gets as far as the infield before Jack, cutting in front of him now, keeping ten feet of distance, finally gets his attention.
" STOP I SAID!" Jack roars and Rhys stops, glassy-eyed, head lolling sickly to one side. Jack keeps his gun holstered, tries to reason with him.
The players frozen at their positions on the field.
"What the hell you doing, Rhys? Huh? Got a ball game going on here. We're playing ball, you come out here with a gun?" Jack pants with confusion, "The goddamn hell you doing?"
Rhys casts a glance around the field.
A dizzying number of faces out there.
All eyes on him.
He wobbles a little, catches himself.
"Lay it down, Rhys, you're drunk." Jack soothes.
His gaze floats back to Jack and it's different than it was a moment ago. Harder. Deadly. Jack is not a man easily spooked, but that look sends a chill right through him.
"Lay it down!" Jack had his hand on his gun stock now, this is not looking good.
Rhys takes a wavering step forward. Jack draws his weapon. Rhys responds in kind, leveling his.
People gasp. Jack retreats a step.
Might be the first time in his life he's had a gun pointed at him by someone ready to use it.
"Don't do it, Rhys! Don't you do it!" Jack cries, but Rhys brings his eye to the sights, draws back on the trigger and Jack shoots first.
A single shot, but a deadly one.
Rhys Williams collapses midfield.
A body, face down in the grass behind the pitcher's mound, Sheriff Jack Harkness standing over it, astonished, holding in his hand the gun he never uses.
.
.
.
.
The stillness of long grass in the blue hush before dawn.
Beyond it, a traditional earth style white weatherboard house with an old barn that needs painting.
In the house a young man awakens to find his partner's side of the bed empty.
Runs a hand over the sheet, checking for body warmth. It's cold.
Strange.
He puts on a robe.
He comes downstairs in the darkened house. "Babe...?"
No reply.
Worried, he comes down the hall into the kitchen.
No sign of him.
He startles at a movement behind him.
It's just the door swinging back and forth in a draft.
He comes over to close it and sees, through the screen, his partner sitting alone outside in the shadowy dawn.
It's Jack out here, second-guessing himself.
His husband sits down quietly beside him, come to lend a sympathetic ear.
If he is one pillar of the community, Ianto is the other, a local standout who came back from med school to be the town doctor.
"He didn't give me a choice." Jack says softly.
Ianto shakes his head in reassurance of that fact.
Takes his hand for moral support.
Looks to the distance, reflecting. "You asked me once when we first got together if I thought less of you for staying here on this rock after high school and following in your dad's footsteps. I want you to know something. People like you, the ones that stay, are the reason why people like me come back."
Jack meets his gaze, heartened by that, and then places his hand gently, tellingly, on his midsection.
"You should be sleeping."