"Have you ever given it much thought?" Gwen asked.
Ianto tried not to listen to her conversation with Tosh—he wasn't part of it, after all—but she talked so loudly.
"No," Tosh said firmly.
Gwen shrugged. "Yeah, it all seems a bit like nonsense sometimes."
"It's not nonsense," Tosh said. "It's just not always correct."
"And sometimes it is?"
"Well…" Tosh sighed, and Ianto heard her chair squeak as she turned to face Gwen. "There really is no scientific basis for the concept of soulmates, but it hasn't yet been refuted. What is science? Just looking at facts, right? Well, it's a fact that people have soulmates—at least, ways of identifying them."
"But there's nothing said about how to identify a soulmate?" Gwen asked.
"Nothing. Just that you know the year you meet them." She laughed shortly. "We all have the year somewhere on our bodies… sometimes it's inconvenient, especially if you're into quick shags… or if you believe that having a set soulmate limits your free will—I had a roommate who thought that once, maybe fifteen years ago? Well, she just ignored it."
"Really?" There was a note of resistance—maybe even disgust—in Gwen's voice. Ianto imagined her looking down at the top of her hand, where her year of meeting was written. "But how? I know everyone's year is different, but I can't imagine being able to ignore mine."
"If you think about it, it's just like an unwanted tattoo. Except it's one that you're born with and can't ever get rid of." A pause as Tosh shrugged. "In the end, it's really up to you to choose to ignore it, or to let it lead you to a partner."
"Yeah."
Personally, Ianto had thought that knowing the year he was going to meet his soulmate was daunting. Comforting at times, certainly, but mostly scary. There was no clue about compatibility, and besides, how many people did one meet in a year?
"I think it just narrows the dating pool a bit."
Ianto glared at Jack, who had just come up behind Gwen and Tosh, and was standing with his hands on his hips—probably thinking at he looked impressive. He did look impressive, Ianto had to concede.
But he knew full well that Jack wasn't so flippant.
"So you agree with Tosh, then?" Gwen asked. "That it's all bullshit?"
"I never said that." Tosh lifted her hands defensively. "I said that there's a possibility of it being bullshit."
"Easy mistake to make," Gwen decided; Ianto didn't agree, but knew that debating the legitimacy of soulmate accuracy was a long conversation for another time and between more informed people.
"On a certain level, yes," Jack said. "We're free creatures. Like Tosh said, it's more like guidance."
"So you haven't found your soulmate?" Gwen guessed.
"I found the soulmate the universe tells me I should have found, yes." Jack held out his arm. "2006, see?"
"But you don't agree with it?" Gwen looked crestfallen; Ianto thought that if she'd wanted positive reassurance about love, Torchwood wasn't the place to go to.
"I don't see how that's our business," Owen said loudly. He frowned as they all looked at him. "What, I'm not allowed to say what I think? I'll say it anyway. Soulmates are personal. Wrong or not, that's up to you: you can take the suggestion or leave it. Get your heart broken anyway. It's just the year you're meeting. No time, date, place… but it's not anyone else's business."
He looked at them all angrily—and defensively—for a few moments, then stalked away with a huff. Ianto felt strangely uncomfortable, and could see that Gwen, Tosh, and Jack did, too.
Ianto stood up with a sigh and walked over, finally ready to put in his two cents. "He's right. No one can tell you about our soulmate except yourself."
Gwen smiled at him, though traces of a thoughtful frown remained on her face. Tosh, too, smiled, then stood up and excused herself; Ianto noticed her heading in the direction Owen had left.
"It's just… one of Rhys's mates was talking about it yesterday. You know…" Gwen gestured to her arm, which proudly displayed the year she and Rhys had met. "Said it was all a load of rubbish and that people who believed in soulmates were kidding themselves. I just wanted a scientific opinion."
"Did it help?" Jack wondered.
"I think so." She gave another grin, and it was now the usual hopeful and confident one that Ianto knew so well. "I know that Rhys is my soulmate. And maybe it's a coincidence that we met on the year it was predicted, but I love him."
Jack grinned back, but his eyes left Gwen and met Ianto's. "And, jokes aside, I think the universe made a good call with my soulmate, too."
Ianto saw Gwen walk away out of the corner of his eyes and made a note to thank her for the privacy.
"I met my soulmate right when I was supposed to," he said with a grin, then leaned forward to kiss him, knowing that while his soulmate could have been anyone he'd met in 2006, it was Jack.