Memory Lane, Aydrdoon Valley

by Katta

The Doctor and Donna bring Jack and Ianto along for a holiday, but as usual, the holiday turns out to be anything but relaxing. This fic only follows canon up to Midnight. For the purpose of the story, nothing after that episode happened.

"I don't know why it bothers me so much," Jack said, running his fingers through his hair. He had done this so many times in the last half hour that it had utterly destroyed his usual well-groomed style. "She was just an animal."

"A very brave animal," the Doctor said. He was sitting on Ianto's desk, hands in pockets, watching Jack with a mournful gaze. "Clever, too. We owe her our lives, really."

Donna patted Jack's arm, for once at a loss for words – no one had ever instructed her in the proper condolence procedures for a pterodactyl.

Ianto re-entered the room with a cup of tea, which he handed over to Jack, briefly letting his other hand squeeze Jack's shoulder. "Please don't sit there," he told the Doctor. "I prefer my documents in order and unwrinkled."

The Doctor slid off the desk and gave the piles of paper a guilty shuffle. "Sorry."

"I sent the others home," Ianto said to Jack in a low and gravelly voice. His eyes were red-rimmed.

"Good, thanks." Jack shook his head. "I have to pull myself together. If I could do it last winter, I can do it now."

"What happened last winter?" Donna asked.

Everyone looked at her in silence. Jack sighed deeply and braced himself to speak, but in the end only gave a helpless gesture and rubbed his forehead.

"Sorry, forget I asked."

"We lost some team mates," Ianto said. "And Jack's... well. There were some other things."

There was another long silence. Jack slowly drank his tea. Ianto sat down and laid his hand on Jack's free one, entwining their fingers. Doctor leaned against the desk, giving the two of them the hurt puppy look. Donna looked from one to the other and finally took a deep breath:

"Well, if this is your idea of comfort, no wonder it's all becoming too much for you. Moping in the dark while loverboy fetches tea – no offence, but please. When was the last time either one of you had a proper holiday?"

They all stared at her, and she sat back, crossing her arms. "That's what I thought."

"I took Easter off," Jack said. "Four days, anyway, until that giant centipede thing. It's hard to find any time now that half the crew is new."

"We've got all the time in the world," Donna glared at the Doctor. "You! You rub off on people in all the wrong ways, the least you can do is allow them the good parts!"

The Doctor blinked, and his eyes widened with hurt. "What did I do!"

"He deserves a proper holiday!"

"Of course he d- no! Donna! You can't just randomly invite people!"

"You just killed his dinosaur!"

"I did not, and that's..." The Doctor's gaze met Jack's, and he silenced a long moment. "All right. Jack, Ianto, if you would like a holiday, I'm sure I can arrange it so you're both properly rested and back for lunch."

"Perhaps that place you took me," Donna said. "No, wait..."

"No," the Doctor said firmly, and with something close to terror in his voice. "Never that planet again."

"I know. I forgot."

"Plenty of other nice planets, though," the Doctor said, slowly starting to smile. "Oodles of them, all over the universe."

Jack smiled back, with a smidgen of a devil-may-care glint in his eyes. "I know some nice bars around Orion's belt."

"Oh, I bet you do. From Cavetown to Metropolis, knowing you. All right, Orion's belt it is. I know a few places myself."

Jack laughed and stood up, brushing the dirt off his coat. "Lead the way!" He noticed that Ianto was still seated, and turned back: "Are you ready?"

Ianto blinked. "You mean... now?"

"No time like the present. Right, Doctor?"

"Unless Donna has other plans," the Doctor said with a touch of sarcasm.

"Right now, Orion's belt, lovely," Donna said, taking Ianto's arm and dragging him towards the TARDIS, which stood in the corner, trying to look as if the Hub had always been equipped with a police box. "Come on!"

Ianto followed, the sudden infectious good mood of the others drawing a smile from him. It was replaced by astonishment, though, when he stepped inside the TARDIS. He looked around wide-eyed, so stunned that Jack had to gently nudge him aside to go in.

"Nice ride, isn't it?" Jack said in Ianto's ear.

Ianto swallowed. "It's..."

"Bigger on the inside?" the Doctor suggested.

"Beautiful."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and made a surprised face at Jack, pointing towards Ianto. "I like this one!"

Jack just laughed.

---

During the journey, the Doctor talked a mile a minute, explaining the basics of phone box travel to Ianto while Donna and Jack supplied amused commentary. After a while, though, the Doctor took on a puzzled expression that deepened into a frown, and he tapped the control panel softly. "Come on, now, old girl," he muttered, "what's this?"

"Something wrong?" Donna said, sounding rather like a backseat driver in a craggy old car.

"We seem to be heading in the wrong direction," the Doctor said. "She has us circling the Silver Devastation, which would be fine if we were talking about the year one million, but we aren't going anywhere near that far. These are the absolute outbacks of human society, it's like taking us to... Tajikistan..."

"Silver Devastation?" Jack's voice was choked. "Which century?"

"Haven't landed yet. Couple of thousand years."

The TARDIS spun around a few more times and then landed with a jolt. The Doctor grabbed the console to keep his balance.

"The year 5006, continent of New..."

"...Birka," Jack filled in, looking paler and more haggard than he had in the Hub. "Some holiday."

Everyone looked at him, understanding dawning on their faces.

"We'll try again," the Doctor said with deep sympathy. "She does this sometimes. Just let me get her started up, and we'll find those bars."

"No. If the TARDIS wants to send me home, I assume she has a reason." Jack took a deep breath and headed for the doors, Ianto's worried gaze following him all the way. He braced himself and reached for the handle. "Here goes."

He stepped out into an idyllic, pastoral setting, with high, bright green grass and a mass of striped blue-and-red flowers, as well as trees the shapes of oak with the leaves of palm trees. Some distance behind the TARDIS there were peaked, blue mountains. The rest of the landscape was flat, and on the horizon you could see the high outlines of a city. There were wide dirt roads leading in different directions, with high metal poles at regular intervals along the edges. Jack looked around, and his stiff posture eased a little.

The others stepped out behind him. Donna looked with mild appreciation at the nice surroundings, and though the Doctor still appeared troubled by the wrong turn, his gait became increasingly skippy with each step.

Ianto picked up one of the striped flowers and stared at it in amazement. "This is your home?"

"No," Jack said, still looking out at the landscape. "Must be in the temperate zone."

"It's nice," Donna offered.

"Yeah. It's designed to be pleasing to the eye." Jack turned towards the mountains. "Come on. If it's -06, it's safer to..."

"What's that?" Donna asked, squinting at the road leading from the city.

Three small, round vehicles zoomed from pole to pole above the road, one some distance in front of the other two, and as they drew closer, you could indistinctly hear the sound of shouting.

Jack spun around, and his face hardened. As the four of them watched, the two vehicles on the back caught up on either side of the first. One of them bumped it, hard. Jack drew his gun and started running towards the road.

"Don't!" the Doctor warned.

The lead vehicle wobbled, but kept going, and now the driver was visible as a small figure with brown coveralls and something flying from his head that was either pigtails or tentacles. There were two people in each of the other vehicles, dressed in much more colourful clothes. They jeered and shouted as they kept bumping, until finally the first vehicle turned over and its driver fell to the ground.

"Oh, no!" Donna said and started running too.

That was when Jack fired, hitting one of the pursuing vehicles so it sputtered and veered before having to land. The remaining vehicle made a U-turn and hovered.

All four of the TARDIS

"Mind your own business, old man!"

Jack laughed harshly. "This is my business!"

The others caught up with him, and now they could see that the drivers were young humans with model-like faces.

"This sludge was on our turf, that gives us the right..."

"It gives you no right," the Doctor said, stepping up before Jack. "Except to return home and take your friends with you. Preferably before my friend shoots out your other scooter."

"It's called a friz," Jack said.

"Of course. Friz."

"And let me assure you," Jack continued, still holding both gun and gaze steady on the drivers, "that hitting your friz would be an example of highest restraint compared to what I want to do with you."

The drivers thumped the controls, making their friz swoop down to land, while the ones already on the ground clenched their fists and charged, ready to fight. Ianto quickly stepped forward, knocking one of them out with a few quick moves, while Donna slowed the other one down by punching him hard on the nose.

"Four against one," she spat. "Creeps."

"Sludge lover," he growled.

"You bet," she said, punching him again.

He grabbed hold of her and started twisting her arm, and the two in the remaining friz jumped out to join in the fight. The Doctor took out the sonic screwdriver, typing in a code that made it send out a pulsating blue light. All four drivers stopped short and grimaced, holding their faces in pain. As did Jack.

"Frequency designed to cause vibrations in certain esters," the Doctor explained, turning the screwdriver off. "Terribly uncomfortable for anyone who's subjected themselves to silica-cyborg facial treatments, I'm afraid. Sorry, Jack."

"Oh, it was worth it," Jack said, straightening up again. "So, what's it going to be, guys? Another round of that?"

The drivers cursed, using phrases that made Donna look thoughtful, as if she memorized them for later, and the two still in the friz jumped out of it to help pick up their knocked-out mate. Their working friz barely had room for all four of them, but they squeezed into it and buzzed off.

"Well, that was fun," said Jack grimly, putting his gun back.

"Very sexy," Ianto said, sounding drier than ever. "Very Wild West."

Jack gave him a quick grin, and then hurried past the shot-out friz to the smaller one hanging aimlessly in the air, its driver lying face-down on the ground. The rest of them followed, kneeling down as Jack gently turned the driver over.

Up close, it turned out that the things on his head really were tentacles, surrounding a broad face with wide-set features and a thick hide. Eyelids fluttered and opened to reveal reddish-brown eyes that took on a look of panic and soon shifted into a human blue colour. Then the rest of the face rippled and shifted too, and for a moment there were two Jacks facing each other, before the alien Jack's visage slipped back into its previous shape.

"Sshh, it's okay," Jack said, stroking the alien's cheek. "We're friends. You don't have to do that."

"What did he do?" Donna asked. "He was you!"

"He's confused," Jack said. "I'm the nearest human face."

The Doctor had produced a stethoscope and was listening to the alien's heart. "Well," he said, tucking the stethoscope back in his pocket, "I'm no expert on your planet, but I think he'll be all right."

"Hear that?" Jack asked, smiling at the alien. "You'll be fine. We'll take you home, okay? What's your name?"

"Erk," the alien responded weakly.

"Nice to meet you Erk, I'm Jack Harkness."

The alien smiled back, before losing consciousness completely.

Jack leaned his head back, looking thoughtfully at the floating friz. "Good thing his friz is still working." He searched through the alien's pockets until he brought out something the size and shape of a stick of chalk, which he put between his thumb and forefinger and pressed together. The friz slowly descended.

"I'm afraid the rest of you will have to walk," he continued. "I'll make sure to hold a slow pace so you can all keep up."

"Keep up where?" Donna asked.

"Like I said, I'm taking him home." Jack started lifting Erk, and Ianto helped out, taking the legs as they moved him over to the friz and carefully placed him inside.

"How do you even know where he lives?"

Jack nodded towards the horizon. "Places like that – out in the open, nice terraformed surroundings – are always colonial. His home will be in the mountains."

They started walking, while Jack flew a few feet above the ground. Every time they passed a pole, the friz zoomed up to touch the top. It gave his flight a strange rhythm, like a flycatcher's.

"You never told me you came from a planet full of aliens," Ianto said. He sounded a tad reproachful.

Jack gave him an odd look. "No. I didn't. Anyway, he's a hybrid. Part human."

"Is that common?" Donna asked the Doctor. "This is the second time!"

The Doctor shrugged. "It's not uncommon. Even in your time, there are instances, and give it a few million years, it's all there is."

She grimaced. "I can't even imagine."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Jack said. He had to shout the final words of the sentence, since he was being drawn upwards by another pole.

As they entered the valley between the mountains, the trees became scragglier, the grass was replaced by something dark blue, damp, and moss-like, and the few tufts of flowers were small and pale in colour.

"So you've never actually been to these parts before?" the Doctor asked Jack, watching with scientific interest how the blue moss gave way under his feet, making him even bouncier than usual.

"No. I'm not even sure what settlement this is."

"Aydrdoon," Erk mumbled.

Jack broke out in a grin. "Hey kid, glad to see you're with us again! Aydrdoon, did you say? Then we're in luck. Aydrdoon Valley is pretty friendly to strangers, all things considered. So that would make the city – what? Thorbi?"

"Yeah."

"Not the best place for you to hang around, is it?"

"I changed my face. Kept eating... to stay that way."

"Doesn't seem to have worked as well as you planned," the Doctor pointed out from beside the friz.

Erk looked down over the side, frowning. He still seemed very woozy. "You're off-worlders?"

"That would be us," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Off-worlders. From off this world."

"I thought so. You're too scrawny for a colonial."

Donna chortled, and the Doctor did his best to look affronted.

"So, do all colonials look like them?" Ianto asked.

"Most do, nowadays." Erk tried to sit straight up, watching the others. "Where are you from?"

"Earth," Ianto said. "Um. It's this little..."

"Earth? The original?" Erk closed his eyes. "Cool." Opening them again, he peered at Jack. "Not you, though."

"I was born on the Boeshane." There was a levity in Jack's voice that didn't quite match his expression. "Do you know it?"

Erk nodded. "Posh. Used to be, anyway."

"I never thought of it that way. I guess, yeah."

"So why are you helping me?"

Jack paused before answering, with some strain, "I'm a Time Agent."

Ianto's gaze shot up to Jack's face in surprise, but Jack didn't look back at him. His expression was tight, and he stared straight ahead.

Erk was either too dizzy to notice anything was wrong, or too polite to point it out. "What does the Time Agency want with me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Jack said cheerfully. "Maybe you're really, really important and I can't tell you how, because it'll end the universe."

Erk chuckled. "Great. Fame at last."

---

They walked for over an hour before they reached the town, which consisted mainly of houses sticking out from the mountain sides like strange growths. From a distance, the town looked open, with its borders marked only by the same kind of poles that followed the road. Coming closer, though, they could see a slight shift in colours along the line of the border. There was a tall egg-shaped gate at the end of the road, and Jack steered the friz to it, easing down to a smooth landing.

The gatekeeper looked human, apart from his reddish eyes, but he still seemed alarmed at the sight of them. "What's going on?"

"There were some colonials giving young Erk here a bit of trouble," Jack said, flashing a wide smile. "Seems he's been sneaking into Thorbi. We just wanted to make sure he got home all right. I think he's got a concussion."

The gate watcher stared at them in silence for a few seconds, and then pressed a button. "Medical unit to gate 14, we have a suspected bashing." After receiving confirmation on his message, he stepped out of the gate onto the road, still somewhat apprehensive as he went over to check on Erk.

Jack stepped out of the friz and waited, still smiling, as the gatekeeper looked Erk over and asked him some simple questions.

"Lucky you lot were there," the gatekeeper said once he was satisfied that Erk knew his name and the date. He sounded less suspicious than before, but still asked, "How come you were?"

"Pure chance," Jack said. "We got a bit lost."

"We're off-worlders," Donna filled in. "Not colonials."

The gatekeeper glanced at her, and relaxed at what he saw. "Ah yes. You would be."

The Doctor's mouth twitched, and Donna preemptively elbowed him.

"Lost, you say?" the gatekeeper asked, now focusing his attention back to Jack. "You seem right at home."

"'S a Time Agent," Erk mumbled.

"That's right, I am," Jack said, his smile widening. "A local, but not quite where I'm supposed to be."

'Time Agent' didn't have the same relaxing effect that 'off-worlder' did, but the gatekeeper gave a grudging nod and sat down on the edge of the friz.

"So, does this sort of thing happen often?" the Doctor asked.

"Not as often as during the war, no, but there's been a bunch lately. Some hard-nosed politicians advocating purity." The gatekeeper shrugged. "This place is safe, and so is Murmoth, but I wouldn't want to be a hybrid living in a colonial town. Not even with shape blockers."

"Shape blockers?"

"To stop the shape shifting. We hybrids can camouflage ourselves - " To emphasize his point, the gatekeeper turned himself into the Doctor as he spoke, then to Ianto, Donna and Jack in turn. " - But sooner or later we revert to our born form. Unless you force the body into one particular shape using shape blockers. There are parts of the planet where it's done to infants, even. Kids grow up colonial, no one's the wiser. Not until someone decides to run the right tests, anyway. Hell of a thing to put a child through, if you ask me. And of course the creatures always knew."

"Creatures?"

"The medical unit's coming," Jack said, nodding past the gate.

The medical unit was oval with a covered roof. It was about three times the size of a friz, with one door on each end, and the staff climbing out all wore loose-fitting blue uniforms. Apart from that, they all looked very different from each other, ranging from a completely human appearance, if not as perfectly sculpted as the colonials', to faces and limbs even more alien than Erk's.

They were a lot less guarded than the gatekeeper, and said their hellos in a tone that was friendly, if by necessity rather brisk. They put sensors on Erk's limbs, head, and chest and lifted him in the air rather like a friz, floating him the short way into their vehicle.

"Can we come along?" Donna asked.

"Sorry, love," one of the medics said. "We need the space. Anyway, you need to get your badges. Don't worry, though, we'll take good care of him, and you can come see him later."

He nodded at her and jumped into the medical vehicle after Erk.

"Badges?" Donna wondered.

"Ah, yes," the gatekeeper said, interrupting his conversation with another of the medics. "If you mean to enter the town, you need to be put into the registry and provided with guest badges. Just hang on, and I'll fix some for you."

He finished up the conversation and sent the medical team on their way before returning his attention to the others. "So what's it going to be, are you going in?"

"Yes," Donna said.

"Really?" Ianto asked.

She stared at him. "You don't want to go inside?"

"I don't know. I've never done this before. What's the plan? Are we running off on a whim, is that it?"

"That's usually it," Jack said.

"So you want to go inside?"

"It doesn't matter." Judging by his troubled expression, it mattered a great deal.

Ianto and Donna both turned to the Doctor, who was sticking his fingers into the coloured air next to the gate and watching them bounce back.

"What?" he asked, seeing their eyes on him. "Oh! Well, go inside, of course. I'm always in favour of going inside."

"Now he tells me," Jack said with the shadow of a smile.

"We're going inside," Donna told the gatekeeper.

"Very well." He stepped back into his booth in the gate and pushed some buttons. "Name and residence, please."

"Donna Noble, London, Earth."

"Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones, both of Cardiff, Earth," Jack said, "and the Doctor..."

"London, Earth sounds good," said the Doctor.

The gatekeeper pushed some more buttons, looked at a couple of screens, and then his look of concentration deepened into one of concern. "Donna Noble and the Doctor?"

"That's right."

"I have warrants for you two."

This was met by a quadruple "What!?"

"To arrest us?" Donna asked, her voice shrill with shock and indignation.

"Just for information. I'm supposed to contact a Lidor Maryam Trevald Auslevya the Historian if I see you."

"But we've never even been here before!" Donna's eyes searched the Doctor's for assistance, but he looked as confused as everyone else.

"Must be because of something we haven't done yet," he offered.

"Then how about we don't do it at all and get the hell out of here?"

"I'm sorry, I can't allow that," the gatekeeper said. "I'll have to call my superiors and have them take you to the nearest guest quarters. Until this matter has been cleared up, you'll be required to remain there. I'm sorry."

"Oh, brilliant," Donna said, much more quietly, but still with a touch of hysteria. "We get thrown into jail. Of course we do. I don't know why I'm surprised."

"It's not a jail," Jack said.

"Oh, don't even talk to me," she snapped to him. "This is all your fault. If it wasn't for the TARDIS wanting to sort out your issues, whatever they are, we wouldn't even be here!"

"If I recall correctly, you were the one to invite me."

"For a holiday, not for jail!"

"Ma'am, there's no need to worry," the gatekeeper said. "Your friend is quite right, it's not a jail. I'm sure you'll be comfortable; we just need to sort this out. Now, if you'll excuse me..." He took out a small device and sprayed some green-tinted gas, which quickly gathered together in a sphere around the travellers.

The doctor patted the sphere. "Same material as the town wall. Fascinating."

Donna sat down with her knees up and leaned her head back. "This is officially my worst holiday ever. Including that time in Salmouth when there was a flood."

---

The guest quarters were comfortable, even Donna admitted that once she'd made the Doctor cut the wobbly king-size jelly bed in half with the sonic screwdriver so she could push the halves to different ends of the room. She sat down on the one furthest from the door and gave it a trial bounce. "Not bad for jelly."

"Last century's model," the Doctor said. He was looking out of the window, leaning as much as he could to the right so he'd get the best possible view. "Sturdy and cheap, really all you'd need from a bed, but of course it has no luxuries." Getting tired of the awkward position, he took up the screwdriver and tried to get the window open.

A piercing siren sound was the only result, but even so, he kept trying until Donna shouted, "Stop doing that!"

The Doctor turned the screwdriver off, looking sheepish. "It seemed worth a try."

The door yanked open, and Kari, the policewoman who had led them to their rooms, stepped inside. She crossed her arms. "What's going on?"

Her dark face was no different from a human's, apart from a thick hide that made her deep scowl look even grimmer. The tentacles around her head had been transformed into snakes and were pointing forward, alert and hissing. Whether her shapeshifting abilities included venom or not, the effect was undeniable.

"Nothing," the Doctor assured her, raising his hands. "I was only toying with the window."

She watched him in silence, her expression not changing at all until Jack burst in from the common bathroom – then it took on a slight exasperation, and the snakes drifted back into tentacles.

"What was that?" Jack asked.

"He tried to open the window," Donna said.

"You need a badge for that."

"Absolutely, yes," the Doctor said, scratching his ear, "but I had the screwdriver, and well, I thought, it doesn't seem a complicated mechanism..."

"I have spoken to Auslevya Lidor," Kari said. "He is on his way. He explained that you are his friends and that there's no reason why you shouldn't have badges, as long as he can find you when he arrives." She took four small squares from her pocket.

"Oh, finally!" Donna said. "Who is he, though? Did he say?"

"No." Kari slapped a badge onto Donna's chest, and then one on the Doctor's. "Enjoy the window."

She stopped in front of Jack, her slate-grey eyes fixed on him.

"I don't get a badge?" Jack asked with a smile.

"I would like another word with you, Cardiffya Jack," she said. "The Time Agency is a major diplomatic player, after all. Can we speak in your room?"

"By all means. I think Ianto still has all his clothes on. Though he may have wanted to surprise me. Would you mind terribly?"

"No. Come on."

Jack grimaced at the other two and left the room with Kari.

"God!" Donna threw herself back on the bed and rolled her eyes. "That one's a barrel of laughs."

"I think her face doesn't do smiles," the Doctor said, stepping up to the window again. He fingered his badge. "Now, how do I go about doing this?" As he touched the window frame, the pane slid aside, opening the room to the sounds of the town below. "Oh, that's all? You just have to wear the badge to make things work. That's interesting."

"I'm glad we got them. Though it's funny – now I don't feel the least bit like leaving." She yawned. "Just knowing that we can is enough. Anyway, we have to wait until she's done with Jack. Can't very well leave him and Ianto behind."

"Oh, I'm sure they would manage."

---

Ianto's and Jack's room was identical to the other one, except that they had left the jelly bed as it was. Jack lay sprawled on it as he answered Kari's questions, while Ianto sat in a soft alcove in the wall, pretending to study the interactive tourist guide.

"You have given your residence as Cardiff, Earth," Kari said, "but according to the patient, you are Boeshanya."

"That's right."

"Which is?"

"I was born in the Boeshane, but I live in Cardiff."

"I looked it up. It's an arcane name for North Bristol."

"What!?" Ianto exclaimed, pushing his tourist guide aside.

"I didn't want to tell you," Jack said, making an apologetic face. "Sorry, but the English sort of... buy you guys out."

Ianto cursed in Welsh, causing Jack to grin.

"If it's any consolation, the Federation of Mediterranea kick their asses in the 42nd century and take over the entire British Isles."

"It's really not."

Kari waited patiently for the discussion to pause. "I take it you're living in the past?"

"That's right. 21st century."

"And the Time Agency has a plan for that?"

"I can't tell you. Sorry."

"When was the last time you visited the Boeshane?"

Jack's smile tightened. "In my time or yours?"

"Yours."

"Ages."

"Can you be a bit more specific?"

"When I was eighteen." The smile was completely gone now.

"And which year was this?"

Jack sat up, causing the bed to wobble so much he had to brace himself against the wall. "Is there a purpose for this?"

"I was under the impression that Amber was the only Boeshanya Time Agent."

"That's the thing with the Time Agency. What's true at one time isn't necessarily true at any other."

"You're from the future?"

"Again, meaningless distinction."

"I don't believe it is."

Jack swung his legs down on the floor. "Am I being accused of something? Because if I am..."

"What do you want with us?" Kari asked, a sudden heat in her voice.

"Nothing!" He threw out his hands in frustration and took a few steps forward. "We got lost. That's the truth. I'm only trying to show Ianto the universe."

He tried another smile, and her scowl slowly eased, giving way to an inscrutable blankness. She crossed the distance between them and slapped a badge on his chest. "Here's your guest badge. And another for your husband."

"We're not technically..."

Ianto closed the tourist guide and gracefully jumped out of the alcove to accept his badge. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Have a nice stay. I'll be seeing you." She nodded curtly and left the room.

Jack stared at the door, and then shook his head and lay back down on the bed again. "I don't know whether to take that as a threat or a promise."

"Yes, it must be very confusing to encounter people who refuse to flirt with you."

Jack's eyes narrowed, meeting Ianto's innocent expression, and then he lunged forward, grabbing Ianto and tossing him onto the bed. He kissed him and tickled him until they were a tangled, laughing mess of half-clad limbs.

Jack relaxed and let go of control. Ianto rolled him over on his back, pinned his arms to the wall and kissed him on the neck. Jack chuckled and closed his eyes, only to open them a second later when the weight over his body suddenly went away. Ianto was standing up and heading for the door.

"What's wrong?"

"We got our badges," Ianto said and put on his jacket. "Let's go."

"We were just getting started!"

Ianto pointed at the window. "Alien planet out there. And the restaurants in the tourist guide sounded really good."

Jack fell back on the pillow. "Frickin' first time tourists."

"Are you coming or not?"

"We don't even have any money!"

Ianto smirked. "Since when do you need money to get anything you want?"

"Point." Jack got out of bed and pulled on his shoes. "You owe me, though."

"Gladly, as long as I get my alien restaurants."

Jack shook his head mournfully as they headed down the corridor. "I can't believe I'm coming second to fried patjeekr."

---

If it had been up to Jack, they would have grabbed some food at the nearest stand, but Ianto demanded a good look around the market place, followed by a meal at one of the restaurants mentioned in the tourist guide. The restaurant was advertised as "traditional" and had a large buffet table in the middle of the room. Around the wall there were similar alcoves to the ones in the guest quarters bedrooms, except bigger. Every alcove had a bench carved into the wall itself, and a table in front of it. Jack and Ianto were directed to a two-person table, and the shape meant they were sitting almost side by side rather than opposite each other, which complicated conversation but facilitated flirting.

Patjeekr, according to Jack, was the local specialty, and he insisted with malicious glee that Ianto had some. It turned out to be rather tough with a pinkish hue, and might at some point have belonged to an animal, but Ianto didn't ask and Jack offered no explanation. He smirked when Ianto poked at the things, and expertly spiked one on his two-pronged fork, still smirking as he chewed.

Ianto tried spiking the patjeekr too, and had to make three attempts before one stuck on his fork rather than sliding away. Once he had managed to put it in his mouth, he chewed with some pleasure, and gave Jack an appreciative nod.

"It's not the worst meal in the universe," Jack admitted once he had swallowed his piece. "Good exercise, if nothing else."

Ianto nodded again, his mouth still full. He looked around the room at the different groups of people, some with individuals easily mistaken for humans, others where everyone was clearly alien – and not all of them looked the same even from one moment to the next.

Jack grinned, a grin that widened as Ianto did a double-take and studied one of the nearby groups closer. The members were deep in conversation, and it seemed that two of them were retelling some kind of anecdote, imitating not just the voices of the people involved, but the faces too. The shifts in features were sometimes very minute, but also sometimes drastic, tentacles growing and disappearing.

"How do they recognise each other?" Ianto asked quietly, still watching the shapeshifters.

"Clothes, mannerisms... sheer trust?" Jack shrugged. "Hybrids can only hold a form for ten-fifteen minutes anyway – well, longer in here, because they're eating, and that boosts energy and so on, but that's about the scale of it."

One of the members of the group in question turned and gave the two of them a disapproving glance. Jack winked at him, and the disapproval slowly turned into a pleased blush.

"Jack," Ianto warned, rolling his eyes.

"Hey, you're the one rudely staring at the locals. I'm just mitigating the effects."

Ianto quickly looked away, which made Jack laugh.

"I was kidding. Though it's funny to see you so interested. I figured you'd be more jaded. After all, you've seen plenty of aliens before."

"Yes, but never in their natural habitat."

"Habitat, huh? Well, thank you, David Attenborough."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean... That was insular of me, wasn't it?"

"A little bit," Jack said in a flat voice and with a sarcastic half-smirk.

"I didn't mean you."

"Because I'm human?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"It really makes that much of a difference?"

Ianto paused, his eyes wandering through the room, taking in the customers one by one. "I'm not sure. I'm used to thinking of aliens in terms of whether or not they're threats to Earth. Not seeing them at home just being people."

"There are people out there who'd say the same of humans," Jack said seriously.

"I suppose there must be."

Their meals were turning cold, but neither one of them noticed.

"What kind of hybrid are they?" Ianto asked. "Part human, part – what?"

"Dweller."

"Say what?"

"Holy dwellers of land and sea. Amphibian species, highly intelligent. I've been told they're excellent lovers." Jack was back to a flippant attitude, but it sounded a bit strained.

Ianto made no attempt to call him on it. "You haven't found out for yourself?"

"They retreated to the ocean a few decades before the war."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

Jack gave him an odd look. "You are?"

"Shouldn't I be?"

"I guess that depends which side you're on."

Ianto met Jack's gaze with narrowed eyes. "I wasn't aware I needed to be on a side."

"You don't."

"So which side are you on? The colonials?"

Jack stood up. "You know, regardless of what the TARDIS may think, I'm not in the mood to discuss local politics." He grabbed his plate. "Come on. You have to try the frozen Necbange. Second-best dessert in the world."

"What's the b... don't even tell me."

"You, my friend," Jack said with a wicked grin, "are much too spoiled."

"If you say so. All right, where's that Necbange?"

---

Donna half-heartedly clicked through the tourist guide before declaring the town a dump. She closed the guide and tossed it aside. "There's not even any shopping," she said. "They don't mention shopping. What kind of tourist guide doesn't mention shopping?"

"It's pretty much a backwater, as these places go," the Doctor agreed, flipping the tourist guide open again.

He spent the next twenty minutes explaining why the tourist guide was even more misleading than such things usually are, pointing out that it glossed over most of the planet's history, not to mention the history of nearby solar systems, and that it vastly elevated the few noticeable attractions of the area.

When he showed no intention of stopping talking, Donna sighed and stood up. "I'm having one of those soundwave showers."

"Oh, you should!" he agreed enthusiastically. "You absolutely should. Wonderful things, soundwave showers."

The Doctor kept reading the guide, but without anyone present to prattle to, he soon lost interest and put it away. Instead, he did a thorough examination of the room. The furniture was robust, and a closer look at the wardrobe proved that it had been made by a leading 49th century manufacturer – hopelessly passé at this point, but if the owners held on to it another century they might earn themselves a pretty penny. Maybe he should leave them a discreet tip, couldn't harm the timeline.

The building itself, on the other hand, was a shoddy piece of work. Second-rate heating system that would break apart within a decade and leave the room either freezing or scalding. At least it was highly unlikely to happen while the two of them were still staying there. He reinforced the joints just to make sure. The main walls were solid enough, but the material would soon be out of date and impossible to maintain. All in all, he muttered to himself, the kind of place that would be a condemned ruin within 20 years, taken over by those unfortunates the tourist guide conveniently forgot to mention.

He was fidgeting with the lighting system when someone knocked on the door.

"Just a moment, officer!" he shouted cheerfully, assuming it was one of the policemen from before. He jumped down from the table and moved it back out of the way. The room had no chairs, only alcoves, which left little to stand on for ceiling examinations.

The man on the other side of the door didn't look like a policeman. For one thing, there was no signs of hybridism in his appearance. More importantly, instead of the padded red-and-black uniform he wore plain black clothes of a nondescript kind that fit into half the different eras of humanity.

"Hello!" the Doctor said, smiling at the man, who looked rather nervous. "Who might you be?"

"I-I'm Lidor Maryam Trevald Auslevya the Historian," the man said, reaching out a hand. "I'm l-looking for D-d-d..."

There was a piercing shriek from the bathroom that made the Doctor jump, though the man smiled as if it was the most beautiful sound he had heard in his life. Seconds later, Donna burst into the room, holding her dress in front of her still nude body.

"Oh my God!" she shouted, grinning just as widely as their visitor. "Lee!"

Their visitor stepped inside, and Donna let her dress drop to give him a thorough bear hug. The Doctor coughed, and discreetly closed the door. Not that either of them noticed.

"Lee!" Donna touched Lidor's – Lee's – face, his arms, his chest. "I can't believe it! You're a real person!"

Lee laughed and took her face in his hand. "R-real enough."

"How!? I mean, how did you find me!"

"I left your d-description with every p-p-p-police station in the g-g-g..."

"You did? Oh, you wonderful man, you..." She pulled back. "Wait, that was you? You turd!" She punched his arm lightly, though she laughed while she did so.

With air now between their bodies, Lee glanced down, and so did she, realizing her state. She picked up the dress from the floor and started pulling it over her head, still talking. The Doctor did his best to look in another direction, but Lee kept watching her and laughed heartily.

"You could have told them I was your wife, you know. They thought we were criminals or –" her head popped up from the dress "– close to it. We've been confined to this place for hours. All right, this past hour we could have left, but where is there to go, really?"

His laughter ebbed to a sad smile, and he pointed out, "You're not m-m-m-m..." Giving up on the word, he held up his hand, fingers spread.

She held up her own, as ringless as his, and nodded, her enthusiasm muted. "Yeah. I guess we're not. God, all those years, and it's all nothing!" Her smile returned, perhaps somewhat less brilliant than before, but still wide enough. "Except you. I thought I imagined you."

He grinned. "No such l-luck."

She hugged him again and then declared proudly to the Doctor: "This is Lee!"

"So I've gathered," the Doctor said. He waved at Lee. "Hello! I'm the Doctor."

"I've read ab-b-bout you," Lee said. "There are r-records going b-back to the Hug-g-g-guenots."

"No further? That's a bit sloppy."

Lee looked interested and dug around in his pockets until he could fish out a small electronic pad which he quickly unfolded. "W-when was your first enc-c-c-c-c... meeting with h-humanity?"

"Oh, I don't really like to talk about those old times," the Doctor hedged. "Anyway, who's to say? Timelines and all that, and once you get back to the stone age there's no saying what's first or after. Then there's the whole definition of 'humanity' – I've met primates who easily could have been ancestors to you lot. Come to think of it, your face has something familiar about it..."

"Oi, no distracting my man," Donna said, moving in between Lee and the Doctor. "We have a lot of catching up to do."

Lee gave her an adoring smile, and the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Brilliant. As if Jack and Ianto weren't enough."

---

Having tried the dessert, Ianto declared Jack's sexual prowess clearly inferior, and they bickered about this during their (very short) walk through the downtown areas.

Once they were back at the guest quarters, Ianto lagged behind and told Jack, "You go ahead. I have some things to discuss with the staff."

"Why?"

"I'm curious to know how this kind of establishment is run."

Jack groaned. "You're letting a perfectly good room go to waste. Plus, you're doing it to spite me. That's bad karma, just you wait and see."

"I'm ever so worried."

"Okay, I'll just go to a bar then and see if there's anyone I can pick up."

"Hm," Ianto said. "How do you think the Doctor would feel about dropping you on a deserted moon for a month?"

Jack made a grimace that was uncharacteristically serious. "Bitch."

"I'll be just a moment, I promise."

"I'll hold you to that."

Jack disappeared, and Ianto knocked on the door to the caretaker's office and stepped inside. "Hi. Excuse me, I have some questions, and I wonder if perhaps you could help me out."

The caretaker had a pinched little human face and large, webbed hands that he clasped together in a benevolent gesture. "Certainly. I do hope your stay here is to your satisfaction."

"Yes, definitely," Ianto hurried to say. "It's great. I was wondering... who might I talk to about the war?"

The caretaker's polite expression took on a worried note. "The war?"

"Yes. To find out more about it."

"No one, would be best."

"But..."

"Don't take this the wrong way, sir, but looking like you do, asking questions about the war – it could get very unpleasant."

"I see." Ianto straightened his tie, flustered. "That was one of the things I didn't know. But of course, if you fought the colonials..."

"We didn't." The caretaker sighed and gestured towards a alcove. "Very well, have a seat. I'm no expert, but I can't send you back out there without even rudimentary knowledge of these matters. What is it you want to know?"

Ianto sat down. The alcove was softer than any he'd tried so far, almost like the jelly beds.

"What started it?"

"There was an incident by the Northern sea borders. A scuffle between young gangs of colonials and dwellers – two colonials were taken out to the sea and drowned. That was what caused the first missiles to be fired, but it was an excuse, not the reason."

"What was the..."

"They didn't like each other." The caretaker rubbed his large, watery eyes. "As I said, I'm not an expert, so I can't begin to explain the whys and wherefores, but the relationship between dwellers and colonials had gone from bad to worse during the past century. They wanted a war."

"And the hybrids were on the dwellers' side?" Ianto supposed.

"No. No, we weren't on anyone's side, for the most part." The caretaker took on a hard expression that fit his narrow face poorly. "The dwellers declared us traitors and drove us out. The same thing happened in the colonial cities. Of course, their hybrids had been forced to use shape blockers for so long, a lot of them just stayed, pretended to be colonial themselves. At least until the creatures came."

"The creatures always knew," Ianto said, repeating what the gatekeeper had told them earlier that day.

"That's right."

"Who were they?"

"Offworld mercenaries. Well, I say mercenaries... I was already safe in Aydrdoon by that point, so I never saw one, but from what I hear, they were little more than beasts. You couldn't reason with them, just tell them who you wanted dead and what you'd give them for the kill. Both sides used them, to kill each other and to kill our kind. Mostly our kind."

"I'm sorry."

"The stories you hear... I've been told that sometimes with a hybrid on shape blockers, they wouldn't go for the kill, but take the poor soul with them, to test what kind of harm they could do and what effect it would have on the blockers."

Ianto frowned, deep in thought.

"It may have been rumour, I don't know," the caretaker added. "Either way, the creatures took over the war – came dangerously close to taking over the planet. In the end, the dwellers and colonials..."

There was another knock on the door, and Jack stepped in, dressed in only a robe.

"...signed a truce and drove them out," the caretaker finished, looking rather puzzled.

"Jack!" Ianto stood up. "Why are you dressed like that?"

"I came to see if you wanted to join me in the sauna," Jack said. He gave the caretaker an amiable smile that barely covered a core of suspicion. "What have you two been talking about?"

"Oh, just local culture," Ianto said quickly. "Sure, I'll join you in the sauna. Sounds like fun."

The caretaker now looked positively alarmed. "Sir, if you don't mind me saying, that man is not your husband."

Ianto turned beet red. "Oh, no, we're not married, we just... um..."

He was saved the need to explain further when Jack struck him in the back of the head, rendering him unconscious.

"I shall have to inform my superiors," Jack said, and his features returned to the grim ones of Kari, the policewoman, "of the appalling attitude you take to police work."

The caretaker stood up, and his lips formed a very thin line. He bowed briskly and told her, "You can inform them that this is a guest quarters, and we are not in the habit of betraying our guests. Unless you have evidence that Cardiffya Ianto has committed a serious crime..."

Kari scoffed and prodded Ianto with her toe before bending down to pick up his badge. "He'll be down for a while. Now stay out of my business, little man."

---

Once Kari had stepped into the elevator and the doors had closed, she shapeshifted again, taking on Ianto's face, down to the expression he had worn when she entered the office.

'Ianto' walked briskly through the corridor, but slowed his steps when he neared Jack's door. He held out his badge to open the lock, and nodded at Jack who was lying on the bed.

"Took you long e.... what are you wearing?" Jack jumped out of the bed and grinned. "Not that I mind."

"Hello, darling. I found the sauna. Would you like to join me there?"

Jack pressed closer. "Oh, but why go so far when we have all the commodities right here?"

They drew nearer still, leaning in for a kiss, and then Jack snorted and withdrew, pulling a small gun from his back pocket. "All right. Enough's enough."

'Ianto' cocked his head. "Jack?"

"Cute, sweetheart, but not remotely convincing. Who are you, where's Ianto, and what kind of game are you playing?"

Kari shifted back to her own shape, and Jack's eyes widened.

"Officer! Wouldn't have expected you to use the Mata Hari technique." He ran his free hand down her cheek. "Or is this a personal visit? If you want to join in, all you have to do is ask."

"Consider this asking," she said and kissed him.

He was still holding the gun, but let it drop slightly as he kissed her back. She sucked on his lips, let his tongue into her mouth, and then bit down, hard.

He recoiled with a yelp. "Rough, huh?"

Kari produced a small vial from her belt and spit into it, her saliva mixed with his blood. She screwed the top on and stuck the vial back in her belt.

"Thank you for your cooperation," she said, holding out her hand.

Jack shook it reluctantly. "I guess it's more fun than syringes. Is this really how you conduct official police work?"

"Is this really how you conduct official Agency work?"

"Touché." He tentatively felt his tongue. "I think it's gonna swell."

"Gargle with something, that should help."

She opened the door, and he asked, "So, where is Ianto?"

"As far as I know, still in the caretaker's office. His head might be a bit sore."

Jack's mouth twitched. "Please tell me you mean the one between his shoulders."

She tossed him Ianto's badge. "Good day, Cardiffya Jack."

After she closed the door, he stood there staring at it for a minute, frowning hard. Then he sighed, licked the blood off his lip, and went to look for Ianto.

---

"...And they were so upset about their pterodactyl that I thought they needed a holiday, and the Doctor agreed. Not that it's been much of a holiday so far."

To emphasize Donna's words, it started to rain. She shook her head and laughed in a "go figure" sort of way, pulling Lee with her under a storefront canopy.

"I hope it's just water," she said, "and not acid or anything."

"J-just water," he assured her.

"Good." Her laughter died. "This is your planet?"

He nodded, his eyes resting on her face.

"I don't really know anything about you, do I? Your name isn't even Lee."

"It's a n-nickname."

"Yeah, all right, but it's a nickname for Lidor, isn't it? Which is a completely different name. You're not Lee McAvoy. I wasn't Mrs. McAvoy. I mean, if I'd properly married you, not just in some computer program, I wouldn't be Mrs. McAvoy, I'd be Mrs... whatever."

"Lidor Maryam Trevald Auslevya the Historian."

"How come you can't say my name, but you can say all of that?"

He shrugged and gave her a lopsided smile. "P-practice?"

"Yeah, well, you'd better start practicing my name too, is all I'm saying. So, Lidor Maryam Trevald Auslevya the Historian, which one is your surname?"

He bit his lip, looking troubled. "I d-don't h-have one."

"You don't have a surname?" she teased. "All those names and not a surname?"

"Only the r-richest c-c-c..." He took a deep breath. "C-c-col-l..."

"Colonials," she filled in, and then her eyes widened and she took a step back. "You're a hybrid?"

He nodded, face sad and shocked as if she'd hit him.

"But you can't be! You look just like me! Like a human!"

"Sh-sh-sh-shape b-b-b-b...." He struggled with the words, agitated.

"Oh, come here." She closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around herself, snuggling in close with her hands on his hips and her face against his neck.

Slowly, his tense muscles relaxed into her touch.

"I'm a 21st century Earth girl," she said, kissing his hand. "Got some old-fashioned ideas I have to sort out, that's all."

He sighed quietly, kissed her hair, and they stood in silence for a while.

"I'm on shape blockers," he eventually said, his stammer almost unnoticeable. "Auslev's a mixed town now – one of the few mixed towns – but when I was a boy, it was still colonial. All hybrid babies were put on shape blockers, to be raised 'pure'."

"I've been told about those," she said. "How's it done? How do they stop you from... you know?"

He hesitated. "It's unpleasant."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not now. When it's done, yes, I've been told it hurts. It's an extensive p-procedure. Apart from the b-blockers themselves, there's s-s-surgery..."

"And they do it to babies? I can't even imagine." She looked up and caressed his face. "Well. Can't argue with the end result."

He laughed softly. "You..."

"What?"

"You're so Donna."

"One and only." She peered at him. "You're the same too, in some ways. I remember this."

"What?"

"That we'd stand like this, and you'd relax, and we'd talk."

He smiled. "I always felt so comfortable, coming home to you."

"It was good, wasn't it? It's weird, though, I've never lived in a house like that, with nice dinners and bedtime stories. In my dreams, maybe... you know, the dreams where I wasn't queen of a small European country, or a really important heart surgeon, or an explorer in the Amazon... shut up!" She punched him lightly, because he was shaking with laughter.

"Twenty-first century life," he said, his voice taking on a wistful note. "Quite an experience. Twentieth century, possibly. Some of the technology would indicate twentieth."

She rolled her eyes. "Historians."

"I'm just saying, that telephone for instance, was very twentieth century."

"Oh, that phone! Do you remember when Ella..." She halted, swallowing a sob.

He closed his eyes and held her tightly.

"I hate it," she whispered. "You're real, why couldn't..."

"I s-s-saw their f-f-faces in an art-t-ticle."

"You what?"

"About the f-f-founder's f-f-f... Family. There w-was a p-p-p...."

"God!" Her expression turned to one of pain. "She put her brother and sister in, didn't she? Not the real ones, of course, they were busy living their lives. Just her memory of them, so she wouldn't be so alone with all the adults. I don't suppose there were any children in the library that day – it wasn't really what you'd call a child-friendly place. And she repeated them over and over to save memory and, well, she was sickly, wasn't she? I suppose she might not even have known all that many children."

He frowned. "Who?"

She told him, quietly so no one would hear, the things the Doctor had told her about the core of the library. When she was done, he just stood there, thinking.

"Doesn't really make things better, does it?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"So," she said in a lighter tone, jerking her chin. "If you don't have a surname, what are all those names for? Just your parents having a lark?"

"Lidor – my name," he said, hugging her close. "Maryam – my mother's. Trevald – my father's. Auslevya..."

"The town," Donna filled in. "Historian – your profession. Is everyone named like that?"

"Yeah."

"So I'd be – what? Donna Sylvia Robert London the Temp?"

"Londonya."

"Londonya. Right. They keep calling me that, Londonya Donna. It's rather pretty. And if I married you, we'd both still be – ?"

"All of those things. Although," he blushed slightly, "sometimes when a r-rich woman marries a p-plebe, her f-family will adopt him."

She snorted. "Oh, brilliant! We should definitely do that. You'd have to watch out for my mother, though. She'd eat you alive... mister Noble."

---

The hospital looked like all hospitals for humanoids have looked since the invention of the corridor, but the Doctor still peeked into the different rooms with quite some interest. Because of this, it took him twice as long as necessary to walk the short distance to room 28.

Erk was lying in bed listening to some pipe music, and his face had a much deeper hue than the day before, not so grey.

"Hello there!" the Doctor said, throwing a quick glance at the humoral machine next to the patient closest to the door before he walked up to Erk. "You look ever so much better today!"

Erk gave him a blank look, followed by a spark of recollection. "You're one of the offworlders!"

"That's right, I am."

"The scrawny one."

"Yes, if you must, the scrawny one."

Erk gave a wide grin with dimples that cut deep in his thick hide, and he pressed a button in the wall to turn off the music. "Hello. And, you know, thanks."

"Oh, you're welcome, you're welcome. Glad we could help. It's not the safest pastime you've chosen for yourself. Whatever were you doing in that town?"

"There was a concert," Erk said, closing his eyes. His face took on a blissful expression, not unlike that of certain Buddha statues.

"Ah, a lover of culture! Should have known from the pipe music. The 4980's have never been my favourite period, but to each their own. Was it really worth getting your head bashed in, though?"

"Oh, yes!" Erk said with conviction. "Anyway, I'm not hurt that bad. They're just keeping me here for observation."

"I see, it's that kind of hospital. Yes, that makes sense." The Doctor knocked lightly on the various medical instruments built into the wall. "Huh!"

"Most of those aren't even plugged in," Erk said.

"No, but they have them. You can tell a lot about a hospital by which kind of treatments they have available. Do they bathe the patients in light or cover them in darkness? Feed medicine through large bottles or little white pills? Are parasites brought in to feed on the patients, or are the patients hooked up to various machines – as in this case?"

Erk looked a little seasick. "And what are the machines telling you?"

"That this is a terribly primitive time and place. But then, I already knew that." He lit up. "I shouldn't worry, though. They'll be keeping you sufficiently alive."

"You're a snob!" Erk looked positively delighted at this discovery. "A time snob!"

"Maybe a little bit," the Doctor admitted. "I've seen such a lot of it, it's hard not to make comparisons."

"Are you a Time Agent too, like your friend?"

The Doctor didn't point out that Jack hadn't been a Time Agent in several... well, millennia. "No, I'm strictly freelance. Works best that way, I've found."

Erk asked cautiously, "Is he in some sort of trouble? Your friend? The police were here..."

"Oh, no, no trouble, not really." The Doctor waved it away. "They're just a bit curious about his motives."

After a second of pondering this, Erk blinked. "What, all this because he's a wettie?"

"He's a what now?"

"A wettie. You know, a colonial who likes to... get wet." Erk squirmed a little in his bed.

The Doctor gave him a long, reproachful gaze. "I'll pretend I have no idea what you're on about, shall I?"

"I didn't mean it as a bad thing," Erk hastened to add. "I mean – he was amazing."

"Um... yes, right, uh," the Doctor said, rather taken aback at Erk's fervour. "I'm sure they'll figure that out soon enough. Jack often improves upon closer acquaintance. Right before you start wanting to hit him in the head again."

Erk chuckled. "I'll take your word for it, I guess." Rather shyly, he asked, "He didn't want to come?"

"I'm sure he would," the Doctor said, rather awkwardly, and started fiddling with the medical instruments again. "He's been... busy. I'll tell him you asked."

Erk lay his head to the side and squinted. "Are you making your face turn that colour, or does it just happen?"

"You're a very cheeky young man!"

A smile played on Erk's lips. "I was only asking. What about your other friends?"

"They're busy too. Donna found an old, well, whatever, and Ianto – anyway. I, on the other hand, had some time and thought I should make sure you were all right."

"I appreciate it. Do you want to listen to some music?"

The Doctor winced. "Well, I can't claim to be a big fan of the pipe..."

"What about bando-kora?"

"Oh, I love bando-kora! They still have that? I thought it went out of style centuries ago."

"It's fusion bando-kora."

"Brilliant! Bring it on!"

They were on the third bando-kora tune when Kari stepped into the room, looking at the Doctor with utmost suspicion. "What are you doing here?"

"Listening to music with my good friend Erk," the Doctor said airily. "Erk's a big lover of music. Isn't that right, Erk? He's got an eye for the good things in life. Or an ear, I guess you could say."

"This is witness tampering."

"Not at all, it's a cultural experience. And witness of what, exactly?"

Kari crossed her arms, and her tentacles stiffened. Hissing snakes seemed seconds away.

"All right, all right," the Doctor said and stood up. "I'll leave you to it, then."

Erk made a whimpering sound. His face went ashen white and broke out in spontaneous rashes. "I've already told you everything I know!" he whined.

"Unless of course," the Doctor amended, sticking his hands in his pockets, "you would prefer to have lunch with me. What say you, officer?"

"I'm working."

"So let's make it lunch and interrogation."

Kari scowled at him, and he gave her a wide, dopey grin. Slowly, her tentacles settled back down. "Very well. I could use another word with you."

---

They settled in the hospital cafeteria and ordered blelav – deep-fried moss, which had the characteristics of being completely tasteless, yet with an unmatched capacity to clog your arteries. The Doctor looked at it as if it was a dear old friend who had deeply let him down by being such a bland meal. He then extended the look to Kari's notepad, which she placed next to her plate.

"You really intend to work, don't you?" he asked mournfully.

"I don't have time for mere social interactions."

"You had time to bite Jack. Mind you, not that I disapprove. In my opinion, someone should have bitten Jack a long time ago. Might have done wonders for the man."

"I see," she said, making a note.

"See what?" the Doctor asked, stretching his neck. "I most certainly do not!"

She closed the pad. "Do what?"

"Act just like Jack!"

"You both talk at length to avoid answering any question."

"The problem is," he said, pointing his fork at her, "that your questions are boring and pointless. Furthermore, you know they are, because there is absolutely no way you believe that Jack is a spy. You're too intelligent for that."

"My conclusions belong to myself and the city police," she said calmly. "Not to you."

"I know, I know." He tossed a piece of blelav into the air and caught it in his mouth. "Did you ever see the film Ninotchka?"

"Film? No."

"Pity. It's a classic. Well, it was a classic, quite some time ago. Mostly forgotten now, which it really shouldn't be, because it's great fun. I love the scene with the eggs. You remind me of the leading lady."

"Do I, now?"

"In a good way. You know, she was once appointed the most beautiful woman who ever lived. Mind you, this was thousands of years ago, long before Earth had any notion of..."

She sighed and interrupted: "Are you trying to make me uncomfortable?"

He looked wounded. "I'm trying to make small talk."

"I have no desire for small talk."

"You make that very clear, yes."

"Why did you ask me to lunch?"

"I was bored. My companions are going off without me, and this planet is depressing me. It's so wrong, and it's the wrong kind of wrong, the kind of wrong I don't know what to do about. Daleks and Cybermen, those are the easy kind of wrong. Plans of world domination or world destruction, no problem, they can be averted. But this planet is seeped in tiny little wrongs, bad ideas just marinating the place, and I know it'll all be better soon enough, but meanwhile we're having a holiday here, and it's depressing."

"Well, I'm so sorry the failures of my planet are destroying your mood," she said with some heat.

He grinned. "At least you're not denying them."

"Denying what?" she snapped. "That I live on a planet where children are in mortal danger for going to the wrong concerts? How could I?"

"The human race," he said thoughtfully. "I've always liked them. Sometimes I wonder why. If it's any consolation, you lot will last longer than they will. A couple of thousand years, and everyone on this planet will be some kind of hybrid."

"You mean all the colonials will be dead?"

"Dead? No, no, of course not! Well, yes, dead, in the sense that everyone dies, but not killed dead. They'll be intermarried. Every single one."

She looked highly doubtful of this prospect.

"You don't believe me! Well, you should. In fact, by the time the last so-called pure human in the entire universe meets her maker, Silver Devastation hybrids will still be around. Of course, you won't be known as hybrids by then, but as... well. Never mind. Wouldn't want to spoil you."

"You're joking!"

"Not at all. It's inevitable, really. The bad ideas have to go first, that's all."

"The day colonials see us as anything but a contamination..." she started scornfully.

"Ah-pah-pah." He shook his head. "You're making things too easy. It's not just colonials."

"We were speaking of colonials, weren't we?"

"We were speaking of bad ideas."

"Fine," she scoffed. "I know it's the same thing with the dwellers. Don't you think I do? My mothers and I were driven out of the sea as traitors."

"Still too easy," he said, shaking his head.

She stared at him. "Us?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Is that so surprising?"

"We never waged war on anyone!"

"I know you didn't." His voice grew darker, more urgent. "I've done my homework. In the last stage of the war, the colonials and dwellers asked the hybrids – begged, even – to join the truce and help drive the mercenaries out. Nearly every hybrid settlement said no. The mercenaries targeted you more than anyone, and still you said no. Oh, Aydrdoon was safe enough, but it was safe only because they could find easier meals out in the open. If they had taken over the planet, once everyone else had died, you would have died too. You must have known that."

She watched him in silence.

"So there you have it," he said. "Death, rather than dealing with your enemies. Loving your hatred of them more than loving life. What's that, if not a bad idea?"

"It wasn't my choice," she said, her voice quivering.

"No, I don't suppose it was." He took a deep breath. "See? I'm not immune. They seep in, the bad ideas – counting ancestors to see who's a bad guy."

"It's hard not to, when your life is on the line."

"Course it's hard. It's supposed to be hard. And I'm not absolving you, you know. This ridiculous pursuit of Jack – just Jack, not me, or Donna and Ianto. Because of where he was born."

"It's my job to be suspicious of colonials," she said. "I do it, so that they – " She nodded at the civilians standing in line for their meal. "– won't have to. So tourists like you can be met with a friendly smile. So those of us who have been mutilated into human form can be given the same treatment as everyone else."

"You know, I could almost buy that, if I thought for a second that you really believed Jack to be dangerous, but you don't. You just resent him being here."

"Yes. I do." Her face hardened into the dark, matte rock of the mountains. "He could go to any place in the galaxy. He has that choice. Instead, he chose this town, where his perfectly chiseled, cosmetically designed face is bound to make people nervous. Because he can. He sashays into town like he owns it, and nobody here has the power to stop him."

"He sashays into every place like he owns it," the Doctor pointed out.

"Any other planet, I don't care. He doesn't get to do it here."

The Doctor sighed.

"Go on," she goaded him. "Call it a bad idea. Pretend that the past doesn't matter."

"What about your ancestors?" he asked. "Their ancestors – everyone in this town. Living proof that there used to be colonials and dwellers who loved each other. That's your past too."

"I can't afford to be sentimental."

"I'm not sure you can afford not to."

She made an impatient sound, but her face slowly faded into its usual texture and colour. "Go off and fight against world destruction, Doctor. I'm sure you could do some good there."

Despite the deep sadness in his eyes, he laughed. "Yes. I told you, I'm out of my depth."

"I wouldn't expect anything else," she said with a surprising touch of gentleness.

He absent-mindedly scooped up the last few pieces of cooling moss from his bowl and ate them. "Would it make any difference if I told you Jack wasn't the one who chose this place?"

"Who, then?"

"The TARDIS. My ship. She has her own ideas sometimes. We were aiming for Orion's Belt."

"What's in Orion's Belt?"

"Bars, mostly."

She closed her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, and opened them again, standing up. "Thank you for your company. I must get back to work."

He stood up too. "I didn't upset you or anything, did I?"

"No. I'm tired and I have to work." She put down her notepad, still mostly unused, and straightened her vest. Giving the Doctor a final nod, she said, "Enjoy yourself."

---

Donna was the first one to actually use the sauna, and she came back with rosy cheeks and dripping hair that she quickly styled and fixed as soon as she was back in the room.

"You couldn't have brought my vanity case?" she asked the Doctor, pursing her lips to put on lipstick. "Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful you went back to the TARDIS for some clothes, but this place doesn't have a very good selection of makeup, and I want to look my best."

"We could always move back to the TARDIS," he pointed out. "We can still explore the planet, but there's no reason we have to stay in these quarters or even this town."

"Hm, that's a thought," Donna said. She sat down on the bed and bounced up and down a couple of times slowly. "Or, we could get my vanity case, and I'd still have the jelly bed and the soundwave showers and would not have to go round five right corners in order to go to the loo in the morning."

"Do you mind the five right corners terribly? I could get you a different room. I think Mel's is mostly empty, she needed a lot of space for her aerobic thingys."

Donna held up a hand. "I'm not even going to touch the subject of how many rooms you have full of women's clothing from all the little friends you've Some people do get rid of these things! And whoever left her leather bikini in your spare parts closet... That reminds me, how would you feel about a day at the beach?"

"Come again?"

"Beach. Day at. I'm trying to really get off on a good start with Lee – and yes, I know, after all I said about dating aliens, big laugh on me. Thing is, this town is pretty crappy with the nice romantic venues. So I thought, well, let's not ask to much, he could take me fishing, which is what we did on our first date – in the fake universe. As it turns out, you can't fish here. It's not allowed, what with the sea being full of aliens. But you can go swimming, there are designated beaches. Of course, at first Lee tried to claim that the water was too cold, not even 300 degrees, but then he translated that into normal degrees, and quite frankly, the man's a wimp. The water's fine, the beaches, by his own admission, are lovely, and we should go."

"You want me on your date with Lee?" he asked slowly.

"Idiot. I want everyone to go. We're here for a holiday! Have you taken a look at Jack lately? He's more wound up than when we arrived, and Ianto's hovering over him like some hovering... thing... helicopter!"

"Helicopters do hover," the Doctor agreed.

"And Ianto. Helicopters and Ianto. It's ugly. We should go."

The Doctor contemplated this notion. "Yes," he said at long last, smiling softly. "We should."

---

To the human eye, the beach gave the impression of being the negative of a photograph, with brick red bushes and blue-grey sand between the black rocks. All you had to do to counter the impression, though, was to lift your eye to the sky, which was just the right shade of blue for Earth on a summer day, reflecting itself in the sea below.

"Oh, it's gorgeous," Donna said, stepping out on the sand, then yelped when Jack promptly lifted her back to the rocks.

"Not so fast, sunshine. This isn't Malibu; the sand is rougher than it looks. Fall over here, and you can get yourself some nasty little cuts."

"Oh," she said, staring at the beach as if it was going to bite her. A second later, she gave Jack a disparaging look. "Nice try. Then how come that sunbather is lying straight on the sand?"

"Because of this." Jack fished a large spray can from his shoulder bag. "You don't need sunblock on this planet, but sand repellent is absolutely essential for anyone with your delicate skin – or mine, for that matter. You should spray it over every inch of your body – even the ones covered by the swimsuit."

He was still holding his arm around Donna's waist, and she relaxed slightly into his touch. Lee coughed in a rather marked way.

"All right," Jack said with a grin, letting go slowly. "No need to get territorial, Sparky, we were just talking."

Donna stuck her hand in Lee's and gave him a reassuring smile. "So where do I get changed?"

He nodded towards a large, one-floor building some distance to the right, on a cliff hanging over the sea.

"Oh, right!" she said and started walking, hand still in Lee's.

The Doctor threw one last appreciative glance at the view before following along, while Ianto lagged behind, watching the sea.

Jack put his hands on Ianto's shoulders, "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yes." Ianto didn't sound as if this brought him any pleasure. "What are the red flags for?"

The change in Jack's posture was almost imperceptible. "That's the border. Don't cross it."

After a breath, Ianto nodded, loosening himself from Jack's touch. "I won't."

When the two of them caught up with the others, Donna had already peeked into the house, and was now turning back, wide-eyed. "One changing room!" she said. "One!"

Lee looked alarmed at her agitation. "W-would..."

"There are men in there!"

That made Lee stop short, and not because of his stammer. He quickly put his hand up to his mouth, but couldn't quite cover the twitch of his jaw.

"Yes," Jack said amiably. "There are men in there. There are also, however, single-person stalls, if you prefer. Just look straight ahead and aim for the little doors."

"I'll be scarred for life," she said with distaste, but she followed his advice and quickly disappeared into a stall.

Lee shook his head, his eyes still resting lovingly on the door to Donna's stall. "For a mo-moment there, I th-thought..."

"Yeah," Jack said and kicked off his shoes. "That's the twenty-first century for you. Whatever else you are, you're always going to be a bloke. Feel warned."

Ianto, too, showed some hesitation to the naked bodies around him, though possibly that had less to do with the women than with the aliens. There were people here of every kind, not just the more extreme variations of the betentacled, spindly-limbed, and thick-skinned ones, but also the occasional four-legged or many-eyed one.

The Doctor started taking off his suit and watched with some interest the long tights that adorned the legs of nearly everyone in the room. "Should we warn Donna that her bikini may be a bit nonstandard?"

"Nah, they're used to off-worlders wearing strange things," Jack said, causing an affronted glance from the blue, yellow-eyed woman next to him. He gave her a radiant smile as he snapped off his suspenders and unbuttoned his shirt. "Hello there!"

She took on a purple tone, muttered a shy "hello" and quickly looked in the other direction.

Ianto had finally started taking off his clothes, but lost momentum when he saw what the Doctor was wearing under his suit. "Um."

"What?" Jack asked, looking over, and then burst into laughter. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"

The Doctor put on an innocent expression. "You did say off-worlders wear all sorts of things."

"Yeah," Jack said, still laughing, "but I haven't seen one of those since the 1920s. Where did you even find it?"

The Doctor looked down at his striped, one-piece swimsuit. "1920s, quite possibly. No, I think it must be a bit older than that – World War One, most likely."

"Well, I'm glad someone was enjoying World War One. Good thing I didn't take you up on that offer to borrow some used swim wear from the TARDIS."

"I still maintain that getting new ones was completely unnecessary. The TARDIS wardrobe has a wide selection of clothes for every time period."

"Uh-huh. Like that time my pants got scorched and it insisted on throwing me kilts."

"It got a bit confused," the Doctor admitted, and added sheepishly, "Truth be told, it's better at women's clothes."

"Women's clothes would have been a step up – they're a lot easier to put on."

"I'd love to see you in a dress, sir," Ianto said levelly.

He had now changed into his new pair of tights, and Jack got a glint of the devil in his eyes. "I love seeing you in that. You forgot this, though." He again fished out the can of sand repellent and thoroughly sprayed Ianto all over, including under the tights.

"Are you sure these tights are the right size?" Ianto asked, his voice somewhat strangled.

"I'm sure they're exactly the size I want them to be," Jack said. He was still spraying, and admonished Ianto: "No, don't close your eyes."

"Oh. Okay," Ianto said, opened his eyes wide, and turned his face in the direction of the spray. The stream hit him straight in the eye, making him yelp and jump back.

Lee winced in sympathy, and Jack laughed a little, wiping Ianto's tears of pain away.

"There's a slight difference between 'don't close your eyes' and 'please make sure to expose the eyes as much as possible'. You just have to keep them open and – no, don't blink, just – hey! Don't make me go Clockwork Orange on you."

Ianto obediently kept his eyes open while Jack sprayed at his face from a foot away.

"There," Jack said. "That's more than enough. Now you can blink, spread it out a bit."

"Don't I get any?" the Doctor asked in a petulant whine.

"Of course you do." Jack winked at him. "Do you want me to help put it on?"

"I think I can manage, thanks," the Doctor said, his tone haughty but his face in a mad grin.

"Suit yourself," Jack said, throwing him the can.

The Doctor gleefully sprayed himself all over, occasionally pulling the old-fashioned swimsuit one way or the other to Jack's encouraging cat calls, and then threw the can to Lee, who promptly threw it back to Jack.

"Y-you f-first. I thought I'd m-make sure that D-donna..."

Jack's eyebrows flew up. "The stall's a bit small for that. But hey, best of luck!"

After Jack was finished, Lee disappeared into Donna's stall with the can, and even through the noise of various groups of people chatting, the occasional giggle could be heard from inside.

Ianto looked very thoughtful. "Why didn't we get a private stall?"

"Because we have more self-control than those two crazy kids," Jack said solemnly.

The Doctor snorted. "That will be the day."

"And because it would be really cramped and it's more fun in the water anyway." Jack goosed Ianto and jogged off towards the exit. "Come on!"

The sand repellent clung to the skin like an ultra-thin, glistening stocking, and created much the same sensation of clothed distance between skin and surroundings.

The Doctor tread lightly through the sand and watched his own footsteps with some interest. "Pym stone," he said, picking up some sand to rub between his fingers. "Solid enough in rock shape, but the pebbles and sands are very brittle and splinter easily. Walk across pym pebbles and you'll have oodles of little sharp needles stuck in your feet. I imagine that's one reason the original inhabitants of this planet have such thick skin. Trust the human race to adapt, though. Very practical, this spray. I wonder if it works against fire."

"Nope," Jack said. "Found that out the hard way. But it's great when you've dropped a glass on the floor."

"It would be, wouldn't it? I think I'll make sure to stock a few cans in the TARDIS." He started whistling 'Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play,' turning his pale face towards the sun.

Jack laughed. "Come on, race you!"

Ianto took only a split second to start running after Jack. The Doctor kept his steps slow for a moment, lapping up his surroundings, before he ran after the others. Even so, he was the first one in the water, the other two jumping in right after.

For the first few paces, the water only reached up to their knees. Then there was a sudden dip, and Jack went under with a whoop.

"You're quick on your feet, Doctor," he panted when he resurfaced, "but how are you as a swimmer?"

With that, he swam away with long strokes. The Doctor rolled his eyes and shouted, "Does everything have to be a challenge with you?"

"I don't know!" Jack shouted back. "Make some suggestions!" He made a beckoning wave and added, "Hey, Ianto!"

Ianto swam off, and the Doctor closed his eyes and lay down on his back in the water, alone – until two splashes nearby sent him rocking on the waves.

"Don't fall asleep," Donna's voice said in his ear.

He peered at her. She was entrenched in Lee's arms, both of them treading water.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Are you having fun?"

He grinned. "Always."

"Hey, loverboy!" Jack called from where he and Ianto were swimming. "Didn't take you long!"

Lee looked stricken. "W-w-we d-d-did...."

Donna put a reassuring hand on his arm and called out to Jack, "Oh, shut up you slag!"

Jack laughed. "Come on over!"

Lee raised his eyebrows.

"Go ahead," Donna said, gently loosening herself from his touch. "I'll be right over."

Though he seemed a bit doubtful of the idea, Lee didn't protest, swimming off to Jack and Ianto with strokes that would make an Olympic judge nod and smile.

The Doctor let his feet sink and repositioned himself upright, treading water. "I really am all right, you know."

"Never said you weren't."

Very slowly, a wicked grin spread over his face. "So, care to explore these waters?"

---

The area closest to the shore had very little to explore, beyond swimmers, pretty stones, the occasional mollusc, and far too many insects for Donna's liking.

"How come all planets have bugs?" she asked, waving away the water flies.

"Aw, nothing wrong with a few bugs," the Doctor said. "Not teeny-tiny little adorable bugsies like these."

"Well, I'd rather not inhale them!"

"So stay under water," he suggested, and dived.

Further along, there were fewer swimmers, but a lot more of everything else, including vegetation and things that, failing another word, one might call fish. Donna accidentally stepped on some kind of shellfish, large and sharp enough to pierce through her cover and the skin of her foot. She resurfaced to go "Ow!" and noticed something that quickly made her dive down again and pull the Doctor with her to the surface.

"Hey!" he protested, shaking his wet hair from his face. "I had just found the most interesting..."

"Doctor, the flags," she hissed. "They're on the wrong side!"

That caught his interest, and he looked off at the flags in the distance, with groups of swimmers even further off. "So they are," he said. "Oh, well."

He prepared to dive back down, but Donna yanked him up. "We have to get back."

She started swimming, but he caught her foot and pulled her back.

"Oh, don't be a spoilsport," he said.

"I've had both Jack and Lee tell me how important it is that I stay on the right side of the flags, and they weren't joking around!"

The Doctor laughed. "These aren't sharks, Donna! There were dwellers on the beach. You saw them! Reasonable enough people."

She hesitated. "I suppose."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

Donna pursed her lips, watching the swimmers by the horizon, and then made up her mind and dived.

Without a doubt, the scenery was much more interesting than by the beach. Long, seaweed-like things – animal or plant was impossible to say – waved their long appendages around the swimmers' feet, and a rock formation turned out to be a pile of retriever-sized lobster creatures that scuttled away when Donna and the Doctor came near.

The surface had fewer flies now and instead a kind of tiny flecks resembling jellyfish, but there were no other major differences, and so the two of them mostly stayed under water, exploring. Donna had to go up for air more often than the Doctor, and it was on her way down from one such breather that she found herself face to face with a giant squid.

She screamed, involuntarily letting her air out and the water in. Coughing and gagging, she tried to kick back to the surface, but an arm caught her and held her tight. The arm was long and narrow, with a webbed hand, but The rest of the squid rippled into humanoid shape too, as did a large rock by the bottom. The rock-turned-dweller swam up to the squid-turned-dweller, staring at Donna's struggles before turning its attention to her captor. Some kind of understanding passed between their large, stern faces, because they both shot up at once, dragging Donna back into the air.

She had almost passed out at that point, but the second dweller thumped her hard and impatiently in the back until she coughed up the water and could draw some shaky breaths.

"You are out of your territory," her captor told her, though not a muscle in his face moved.

"Off... off-worlder," she gasped.

The grip tightened. "That is no excuse!"

"Hello there!" The Doctor's head popped out of the water, and he quickly swam over.

The second dweller reacted immediately, zooming up to the Doctor and locking his arms behind his back.

"Oh, no need for that," the Doctor said, sounding hurt. "We were only exploring. Donna, are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm... fine." She still had to cough between the words, but managed a smile, as well as a kick at her captor's shin. Unfortunately, the water slowed the movement, and the leg was slippery enough that her foot just slipped off. The dweller seemed entirely untroubled by her effort.

"You cannot explore here," said the dweller who held the Doctor, his face just as still as the other dweller's.

The Doctor looked absolutely thrilled. "Hey, would you look at that? Advanced telepathy. Handy! I wish I could do it so easily; it's always a bit of an effort for me, I'm afraid. Were we disturbing the wildlife? We wouldn't want to harm anything, of course. Still, they looked sturdy enough. I love your crustaceans. The size of them! Magnificent!"

"Be quiet, fool." Despite the fact that the dweller's voice was telepathic, he still managed to make it rumble. "I can't make sense of your rambling mind."

"I can," the other one said. "He is not a conqueror, but where he goes, there is death and barren lands. We would do best to drown him now and serve him to the scavengers."

"Oh, no, that would be overkill, wouldn't you say?" the Doctor protested, although his expression was one of sadness and guilt.

"If you do anything of the kind," Donna shrieked, "I will hack you into pieces, frog-brains!"

Her captor shook her to shut her up. "His little friend is harmless."

"Not so harmless if she tells the colonials," the one holding the Doctor pointed out. "Can we afford to kill them? Would they be searched for?"

His friend started replying, but froze and warned, with a force that pierced the mind and caused the Doctor and Donna to writhe in pain: "Colonials!"

Within seconds, more dwellers started popping up in all directions, and there were soon at least half a dozen, pouncing on the two approaching swimmers and dragging them closer.

"Lee!" Donna shouted, straining to get free.

Lee gave her a worried, quivering smile, while Jack yelled, "What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time, Doctor?"

"It all just looked so interesting," the Doctor replied, smiling despite their situation.

The largest of the dwellers slowly swam up to Jack and asked, "How dare you cross into these waters?"

"We're just trying to bring our friends back," Jack said, the attempt at a careless tone not hiding his shaking voice. "Please. They're tourists, they didn't know."

There were thoughts of "drown them!" "flog them!" though with so many people crowding and pushing each other, it was impossible to know who was thinking what.

The large dweller spread all his tentacles out like the rays of a painted sun, and the thoughts of the others ebbed into a low murmur. Whoever he was, it was clear he had some significant power.

"A death in these waters could well cause another war. Our children are finally learning what safety means. We can't risk that."

Jack drew a breath of relief.

"Not unless we have to," the dweller added, lifting Jack's face up with his long, webbed hand. "I can't read your mind, colonial."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I have died more times than I can count," Jack admitted. "I was changed, against my will, into something... new." He looked at the Doctor, a flicker of a smile playing on his face. "An impossible thing."

"Hm." The dweller's eyes rested on Jack for another beat, before moving over to Lee. "This one is no secret. A traitor, mutilated and weak. He cannot change his shape to fit his surroundings, or use telepathy. His colonial voice is broken and shameful. He has no fortune, no influence, and spends his days in futile dreams of days long past."

"It's not like you're any sort of prize, you bloated toad!" yelled Donna.

This made the Doctor burst into laughter, and the angry and dejected look on Lee's face gave way for a tiny smile. Jack, however, still looked serious.

The large dweller looked from one to the other, and finally settled on the Doctor. "You."

"Me," the Doctor agreed.

"Your woman and her traitor consort are of no consequence. You are. Do you vouch for the colonial?"

"I do, yes."

"We shared our land and lost it. These waters are ours and ours alone. His kind are not welcome here. Off-worlders are allowed through diplomatic channels if their mission is of sufficient importance. Breaching the borders because you want to look at the wildlife is unacceptable. Do you understand?"

The Doctor started speaking, halted, thought about it, and then nodded lightly. "Yes."

For a full minute, the dweller searched the Doctor's face, and presumably the mind behind it. "I have no desire to end as your people did... Doctor." He cocked his head. "And I see the history of another ancient race in your mind."

"The Silurians," the Doctor murmured.

"It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth."

The Doctor laughed mirthlessly. "Yours and mine both. Turns out all right in the end, though."

"And we? If we let you go, what happens to us?"

"That's not the sort of thing I can say with any certainty."

The dweller grabbed the Doctor's head with both hands and a mass of tentacles, and watched it intently. Finally he let go, with a disgusted flick and a shudder that ran through his entire body.

"The future as you have seen it is not pleasant," he said. "It is, however, acceptable." He threw a long, sideways look towards Jack, and then nodded at his fellow dwellers. They all let go of their prisoners, though remained close enough to grab them again, if needed.

"You will leave now," he said, once again addressing the Doctor. "Do it discreetly, and pray that no one sees you return and gets any ideas. We will not be this lenient twice."

"I do..."

"Don't."

"...wish you'd consider some other options in dealing with the colonials."

"Just leave it, Doctor," Jack muttered.

"Other options beyond breeding with them? Go away, little man."

"Very well, you don't have to tell us twice."

"I believe I just did."

The Doctor grinned. "Yeah, you did, didn't you?"

"Eë, Mere, you two guard them back."

With that, the large dweller dived back into the waves and swam away, as did all but two of the others. The Doctor looked after the disappearing figures, thoughtful, until Jack yanked him away.

"All right, all right, I'm leaving. That was interesting, though, wasn't it?"

"Not the word I'd use." Jack's voice was still unsteady.

Lee swam fast but kept doubling back for Donna, and it was clear that if the remaining two guards hadn't forced them to keep swimming, he wouldn't ever let go of her.

"So who was that, then?" the Doctor asked the guard next to him. "Your leader."

"To other kinds," the guard said, "he is known as Enki the General."

Jack halted his laps, alarmed, until the other guard prodded him in the back and forced him to go on.

"Enki, like the god," the Doctor said. "Fitting! So what do you think my chances are of approaching him through the proper channels? I have a feeling that under better circumstances, we could have some very giving conversations."

---

Ianto asked no questions when the others returned, and got no explanations – unless one counted the way Jack kissed him hard and murmured, "Thank you for staying."

There was no quarrel; in fact, no one said much of anything when they quickly got re-dressed, nor during the somber friz trip back to Aydrdoon. Jack sat staring out at the landscape. Lee, at the helm, made no attempts to verbalize the hard angles and jerky motions of his driving, and when Donna tried to discuss what had happened, he waved her off, until she finally gave up. Even the Doctor was more subdued than usual and seemed lost in thought.

By the city wall they stepped out of the friz, which was taken away mechanically through a long corridor. Donna put her hand on Lee's shoulder. "Sweetie..."

He caught her hand in his, took a deep breath and said slowly, "I couldn't lose you again."

Her eyes welled up, and she pulled him into a hug. "Oh, come here, you big oaf!"

With that, they seemed to have resolved the issue and instead started kissing so intently that passing strangers gave them odd glances.

The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets. "Right, then. I'll be going up to the room. Donna?"

Donna broke loose long enough to say, "Oh. Um, tomorrow morning? Tomorrow morning, I swear."

He grinned. "All right, see you then." To Lee, he added, "Take care of her now!" and bounced up the stairs to the guest quarters.

Lee looked affronted. "Me!?"

"He's winding you up, love," Donna said affectionately.

"'T-take care of her'! When he's th-the one who t-took you..."

"Hey!" she said, hitting Lee's chest lightly for emphasis. "I took myself. He did what he always does." She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Get used to it. Now, how do we get that friz back?"

He punched in a code at the end of the corridor, and the friz showed up at the end of it, zooming back towards them. "I guess I'll have to get used to it," he said softly.

Jack remained in the street until Lee and Donna had left, and Ianto waited with him. At long last, Jack sighed and said, "Okay, then," and headed up the stairs.

It was only once they were up in their room and undressed for the night that Ianto asked, "What happened?"

Jack lay back on the bed on top of the covers and sighed. "You saw what happened. They were caught by border guards."

"Yes, and..."

"And we got lucky. One of the guards was an old war hero who didn't want to start a diplomatic incident by drowning a bunch of clueless tourists. They let us go, and that was that."

"Would they really have drowned you?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Things like that happen. People are drowned, or beaten, or taken prisoner. The dwellers really don't like intruders."

"But there were dwellers on the beach," Ianto said, "they seemed..."

"Oh, for God's sake!" Jack flew up from the bed, his voice rising more with every word. "That beach is a designated mixed area! People come there knowing what they're going to find, and most of them will be pretty mellow about planetary relations compared to their kinsmen. It's like expecting that nice guy you met at the pub to still be a nice guy after you've broken into his home. And his home is the Kremlin during the cold war!"

Ianto raised his hands in a defensive gesture. "Don't take it out on me."

Jack let out a harsh scoff and sat down on the bed, fists clenched.

Very slowly, Ianto sat down too. "You've been in worse trouble than that, and from what you've told me about the Doctor..."

"Yeah," Jack admitted. He rubbed his forehead hard, but the frown remained. "I don't know. I spent twenty years cruising every civilisation known to man and then some. Human, alien, it didn't matter, it was all just a big smorgasbord of adventure and fun. And then I find myself landed on Earth, where everyone's obsessing about these really unimportant differences."

"Why, thank you."

"I didn't mean you. I thought... I thought I was over it. That I could just deal with every situation as it came. But I come back here, and it's like being nineteen again. Logically, I know that they're just people. Sure, people who hate the look of me and want me dead, but hey –" a quick grin, almost a grimace "– what else is new? But that's not what it feels like. When they want to kill me, I... It's like I don't have the right to be here. To be anywhere. Like they're this primeval force trying to wish me out of existence, and for some reason, it matters."

"The monsters under the bed."

"No," Jack said quietly. "Just the guys who sent the monsters."

Ianto twirled the edge of the bed cover between his fingers, thinking. "You know, I've been wondering, about your brother..."

Jack let out a desperate laugh that was more than half sob. "What, this day hasn't been crappy enough? Let it go, Ianto."

"Yeah. Sorry." Ianto pulled down the covers and got into the bed properly, lying an arm around Jack's shoulders to guide him down as well. Slowly, he ran his nails across Jack's collarbones, and then down the chest.

Jack's eyes drifted half-closed, and a smile flickered on his lips. "Do you think you can make me forget that this mess ever happened?"

"Yes, sir," Ianto said, kissing him lightly. "I know I can."

---

There was a knock on the door as Jack and Ianto was going out to lunch, and it stopped both men short in surprise. Knocks on the door were rare – the front door, at least. Donna and the Doctor usually knocked on the bathroom door, provided that the bathroom wasn't in use, and for all the comforts of the guest quarters, it didn't have room service.

Finally, Jack shrugged and went to open the door, giving a brief nod as he saw Kari on the other side of it. "Officer."

"Amber Bless Franklin Boeshanya the Agent," she said, stepping into the room. "Do you know that you're months away from crossing your own timeline?"

"Months and half the galaxy," he replied with a smile and closed the door behind her. "It took you this long to figure it out? What kind of lab have you been using?"

"The first five couldn't make head or tails of your blood. Are you on drugs?"

"No, just life."

"Funny."

His smile remained and his voice was amiable, but something in his posture made Ianto take a step closer, protectively. "Not after the first century or so."

Her habitual scowl deepened, as if she feared he might be taking the mickey out of her, but then she waved it away. "That's not the interesting part."

"Of course not," he agreed. "What happened at the sixth lab?"

"They isolated the disturbance – and found the blockers."

He nodded lightly, but his smile died away, and he sat down.

"I knew you were Amber, of course," she said. "What are the odds of a hole like the Boeshane ever having another Time Agent? But the blockers... I just checked on a hunch. I didn't expect to find anything."

"Good hunch."

"How the hell did you fool the Time Agency?"

"I didn't."

"Right," she said sarcastically. "You just waltzed in there, told them that you're a hybrid, and somehow that escaped the attention of every journalist on the planet."

"There are two reports on the Boeshane massacre," Jack said, and there was no levity in his expression anymore. "The first one states my brother as missing, not dead. The clerk was a friend of my family and agreed to change it. The Time Agency are thorough. They found the original report, did the blood work, the whole thing. I asked them to be discreet, and they were."

"Just like that?" she asked, and the scorn had a note that was almost wistful.

"This is a tiny planet," he said, almost pleading with her. "The Time Agency is huge. I had the right scores, education, and – sorry to say – looks. What's a different bloodstream? They didn't care. Outside this godforsaken place, nobody cares!"

"Oh, really?" She had paled considerably, and her eyes were glowing. "Then have you told your Earthling lover the truth? That you're not human?"

Ianto had sat down in the window alcove and stayed out of the conversation so far, but now Kari was looking straight at him, and he answered truthfully: "I had my suspicions, but no. He never told me."

"I am," Jack insisted. "To all intents and purposes, I am. For crying out loud, he's from the 21st century, none of this shit is even on his radar!"

"'This shit'? You really think of yourself as colonial, don't you? Playing the celebrity, having young ones swoon when you enter the room – and you don't have to tell anyone you're really a hybrid, because it's such a tiny little thing. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that if any of your colonial pals knew, they'd flay you alive!"

"Shut up," he said, not very loudly, but with "What do you know? I don't even get a year in the agency before someone connects the dots, and let me tell you, the people of Boeshane were the only ones who stood by me. They were still proud of me, while your kind were busy calling me a colonial whipping boy!"

"Oh, and you're not one?" There were strange ripples in her eyes as she continuously shifted away the welling tears. "Don't worry, Agent, I won't tell anyone. I'd be ashamed to count you as my kinsman."

With that, she stormed out. Jack closed his eyes and slumped forward, taking deep, shivering breaths. After a moment's hesitation, Ianto left his alcove and sat down on the bed behind Jack, hugging him from behind.

"Sorry about this," Jack mumbled.

"You know it doesn't matter to me, right?" Ianto asked. "It wouldn't matter even if you looked like... whatever you really look like."

"I really look like this. I have since I was a baby. That other part of me, it's just..."

"Jack," Ianto whispered, shaking his head.

"I won't like what you're going to say," Jack warned him.

"I didn't like you shooting my girlfriend." Even after all this time, there was a quiver in Ianto's voice.

"Touché."

"I think it's time to stop being nineteen."

Jack grimaced and leaned back into Ianto's touch, which hardened in a fierce embrace. They sat like that for a while, and then Jack nodded and stood up, taking his coat from the hanger.

"I can probably catch her at the station," he said.

"You do that."

"Don't run off anywhere."

"Really?" Ianto asked innocently. "I thought I'd go play with some locals."

Jack made a 'grr' sound, but he was actually smiling again. "Ask the Doctor if he wants to lunch with you. He could use the company."

"I'll do that."

"Okay. See you later."

After Jack had left, Ianto left the bed and went over to the bathroom, but by the second door he paused, and though he'd never been superstitious, he crossed his fingers.

---

The police station was a large octopus-shape with exits in every direction – from the arms, policemen in frizes and by foot kept rushing in and out, while visitors walked in through the doors in between. Jack headed straight for the nearest visitor's entry, but was stopped in the doorway by a stream of people going out.

"Hi," he said, holding up the door. "Hello, there. How do you do? I'm Jack."

Most of them just glared at him as they passed by, but a little pale lady with her slender tentacles braided into her grey-streaked hair smiled. "I'm Helen. Nice meeting you."

"You too, Helen."

It was only a brief moment before she followed her group away, but his steps were jauntier as he stepped inside, and his face looked for all the world carefree.

He kept the cheerfulness up as he approached the front desk and asked for Kari, a task complicated by the fact that he didn't know her family names, but the clerk was highly susceptible to flirting, and eventually they found her in the database.

Once he reached the office in question, though, he went grim and stuck his hands in his coat pockets. Though there was no actual door, the doorway was obscured by a thick protective field, and he braced himself before telling the identifier by the ceiling "Jack Harkness Cardiffya the Captain for Kari Manon Boglárka Nordseya the Police Officer."

The protections slid aside, letting him in. Kari was sitting by her desk, with three separate screens in front of her, and she was briskly punching some kind of codes into all three off them. Seeing Jack, she slid them aside, emphasizing her glare. "I'm working."

"What can I do?" The question was remarkably calm.

"About my work?"

"About whatever it is you want me to do."

She turned off the screens entirely and folded them into a stack on the desk. "Why would I want you to do anything?"

"Well, let's see. You bit me, stole my blood, had it tested at six different labs, and came back to me with the results. Call me crazy, but it seems like you want a reaction."

"I got a reaction," she pointed out, more acerbic than angry.

"You got a really crappy one."

She leaned as far back as the wall would allow, which wasn't much, and rested her chin on her fist, waiting.

"So there you have it," he continued. "I'm listening. Unless what you really want is for that other me, the newfangled young agent, to mend his ways somehow, because I'm sorry to say, but as far as I'm concerned, that ship has sailed."

"Why is this about me?" she asked. "Is that the way you see it? I'm making unreasonable demands on you, and you'd like to appease me?"

"I don't know what it's supposed to be about."

"No, you don't, do you?" She shook her head and gestured for him to sit down in the corner alcove, which he did, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"I don't understand how you can pretend it's nothing," she said. "You're the only hybrid in the Time Agency..."

"No. I'm the first hybrid in the Time Agency. There will be more."

"Really?" Her features softened at that.

Jack leaned forward, trying to draw her in with his words. "I know it doesn't seem like it, but things will change. I don't know how much or exactly how, because truth be told I never returned home, but I know it'll be better for you guys."

"'You guys.' You still think of yourself as colonial."

"No. This isn't my home anymore. The house is long gone. Most of my friends are dead – or will be. And what I went through... No, I was never a colonial. I was just never a hybrid either."

"You didn't know?" Her voice was low and level.

"I did, but it was just a story to me. I never met my grandmother, and my mom looked like anyone else's. Even after the war started, and my parents forbade me to talk about it, I don't think I properly understood. Not until the creatures took Gray. Maybe not properly until he..." He stopped, pain flashing across his face. "I wasn't raised like you."

"So?" she asked. "How many people here do you think were? I was the only one in my class who didn't have gills – I had to wear a mask to school. I didn't know many hybrids apart from my mothers, and I never saw a full-blooded colonial until the war. What do you think I have in common with people born here in Aydrdoon? Or your friend Lidor, for that matter? There isn't one right way to be a hybrid."

"Well, there seems to be a wrong one," he said bitterly. "Do you have any idea the number of messages I got telling me I had sold out on my people, that I should reconstruct the body I was born with, that my father was an abusive rapist, or my mother a lying whore... of course, that one I got from the colonials too. Seemed to be the only thing you could agree on. Everyone wanted something from me, though I guess some just wanted me dead. They were the easy ones."

"I'm not condoning any of that."

"Oh really?"

She stood up, resting her hands against the desk. "You're important, Amber. It doesn't matter that you're... that you were a conceited brat who cringed at the very sight of us. You're doing things no hybrid has done before. Your friend the Doctor claims that we'll grow to be dominant of this planet, and you make me believe it. Why do you want to deny us that? Why do you want to deny yourself that? You're our future!"

Her expression was so spirited that he stood up as well. He closed the distance between them and ran the back of his hand across the thick skin of her face, following every crack. "I'm a fixed point in time. You're the future, and it's going to be amazing. All right."

"All right, what?" she asked, suspicious.

"You can have me." He grinned, well aware of the double entendre. "That cringing brat. Call up a few reporters, tell them about the blockers, and what I told you about the double records. Someone's bound to run the story."

She smiled, a sudden, broad, gamine grin, and her eyes were dark and brilliant. "Are you sure?"

"It's going to happen. Might as well be someone like you behind it, comfort an old man's heart." He gently took her chin between his thumb and finger. "You know, my grandmother's one thing... but having a distant cousin of your calibre? That's a very appealing notion."

"Are you coming on to me?" The notion seemed to amuse her more than anything else, but she drew back so that the desk came between the two of them. Her features slid back into their usual inscrutability. "You're coming on to me by talking about how we're related. That's special."

"Distantly related," he pointed out.

She unfolded one of the screens and set it up. "All right, Amber, if you've had your epiphany, perhaps you'll let me get back to work."

"It's Jack."

"Jack. Cousin. Will you let me work? I'm investigating a series of traffic accidents in the same neighbourhood. We suspect that the land owner's not maintaining the roads properly. I really am busy."

He gave a good-natured guffaw. "You had maybe five or ten minutes head start. Are you telling me in that time, you dived straight into a case and got submerged enough that I was actually interrupting something?"

"What else was I supposed to do?"

He stared at her. "Don't you do anything except work?" he asked.

"Of course I do. I badger colonial whipping boys. What I don't do is brood over them."

Someone else might have accompanied that jab with a smile, or a raised eyebrow, but Kari was straight back in officer mode and didn't even look up. Jack grinned.

"I don't suppose we'll be seeing each other again," he said softly. "Crossing my timelines and all that."

The pace of her work slowed, then stopped, and she met his eyes. "I guess so. Well. I'll call those reporters tonight after work, shall I?"

"Yeah, you do that. Spare a friendly thought for that kid I was, okay?"

"Absolutely." She rose from her seat, walked around her desk, and sat down on the edge of it, a sign of trust in a world where everyone sat with their backs to the wall. Holding out her hand, she added, "Good luck, Jack."

He took her hand in both of his. "Good luck to you, Kari." For a second, he leaned forward, opening his lips for a kiss, but something halted him, and he drew back with just a final squeeze of the hands.

When he left the room, she had already picked up her work again.

---

After a quick conversation with Ianto, Jack went into the bathroom and knocked on the door to the next room. The Doctor bid him inside.

"I just wanted to say... oh, hi, Donna. Didn't expect to see you here."

Donna was sitting in the corner with her legs stretched out on the windowpane, and had been eating roast palm-oak seeds and listening to music. Now she threw a seed at Jack. "Oi! I'm not attached to Lee's hip!"

"Well, that's good, because it would have made some of your activities a little bit difficult."

She dug a whole handful of seeds from the bowl and threw them at him. He caught a couple in his mouth. "Don't waste those, you'll need the... energy." Suddenly serious, he fidgeted with his coat a little. "I'm not trying to interfere with anything. I mean, I'm fine with staying as long as you'd like."

"What are you talking about?" the Doctor asked. Some seeds had fallen on the table, and he swept them off and ate them.

"I'm pretty much done here."

The Doctor made a surprised grimace. "Really?"

"Yeah. Mission accomplished." Jack circled his shoulders as if shaking a load off them, and beamed. "Thank the TARDIS for me."

"I will," the Doctor promised.

"Well, good thing something's finally cheering you up, whatever it is," Donna said. "Good for you!"

"Thanks. I meant what I said, we don't have to leave right now. If you'd rather..."

"Oh, no problem!" she said. "I'll just check with Lee if there's anything he wants to pack."

They both stared at her.

"What?" Doctor asked flatly.

"Pack. I mean, I know he doesn't have much, but there's his research, and clothes of course. He's got some rather smart clothes, in a casual way."

"You can't just invite him along!"

"I already have. He said yes."

The Doctor sputtered incoherently, and Donna's eyes narrowed.

"Oh no, you don't," she said. "You don't strand me here in the West Side Story. No way."

"But..."

"Quick wedding in Chiswick," she explained. "My mother would never forgive me if she missed it, and I do want granddad to be there. It'll be nice for Lee too, genuine twenty-first century. Nothing big, though, done that once, never again, and we're not staying, because quite frankly, I've had enough of the place. Anyway, there's no knowing what our children will look like, is there? So after the wedding, we'll try to think of a nice time and place. Lee has a couple of suggestions, though if you've got any advice I'd love to hear it. I can't imagine it'll take long. Got to be hundreds of nice spots to choose from, yeah?"

The Doctor's eyes were very, very wide, and he looked to Jack, making a small pitiful sound.

Jack hid his mouth in his hand. "Sounds like you've got it all figured out."

"All right, then," Donna said, stepping into her shoes. "Oh, don't look at me like that," she added to the Doctor. "What did you think was going to happen?"

"I... don't know," he said weakly. "Not you house shopping all over the universe."

She crossed her arms, looking quite stern, though there was an uncertain quiver to her chin. "Are you kicking me out?"

"No! No, of course not!"

"Are you kicking Lee out?"

"Uh... no?"

"So it's all right, then?"

"Yes," he said, as if he didn't entirely trust his own judgement.

"Great!" She gave him a firm, happy hug. "Thank you so much! So, what about you, Jack?"

"Just plain old Cardiff for me," he laughed. "Unless we're invited to that wedding?"

"Oh, sure! Lee could use a couple of best men. Brilliant! I'll go talk to him then!"

She flew out the door, and it slammed shut behind her while she was still putting on her jacket.

"They've known each other for a week!" the Doctor said helplessly.

"Not in their timeline." Jack was still laughing.

"That was an artificial universe! What if they don't like each other?" The Doctor blanched. "What if they start having spats in the TARDIS? I can't do domestic quarrels."

"There's this practical little thing called a divorce, don't know if you've heard of it?"

"He's a historian," he complained. "That's one step below archaeologist!"

Jack gave the Doctor a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the way his body shook with laughter. "Be strong, Doctor. You'll survive somehow."

---

The TARDIS landed rather roughly on a Chiswick pavement, and all five passengers stumbled out. Donna lit up seeing her house, and rushed off, dragging Lee, who did his best to see as much of the view as possible during the short run.

Jack peered at a church tower some distance away. "Eight o'clock. I wonder what day it is."

"Friday," the Doctor said. "Supposed to be, anyway. I wanted you to lose as little time as possible."

"I'll call Gwen and tell her we won't be in," Ianto said, fishing his mobile from his inner pocket. "Might as well check the date at the same time."

"Good idea."

"What are we going to do about clothes?"

"That's a thought." Jack turned to the Doctor. "Considering what the TARDIS is like with pants I dread to ask, but, tuxedos?"

"Maybe?" the Doctor offered, looking doubtful.

Jack sighed. "Well, at least my ATM card will work again. I was getting tired of flirting my way to food."

"Oh, but you do it so well!" Ianto said, and then, into the phone, "Oh, hello, Gwen..."

He walked off some distance to hear better, which left Jack and the Doctor still lounging by the TARDIS door.

"Should we go and say hi?" Jack asked, nodding towards Donna's house.

"Yeah," the Doctor agreed without moving at all. "Definitely."

Quite a long pause later, the Doctor said, "So, straight back to Cardiff after the wedding, eh?"

"Yeah, duty calls. But that reminds me, I've been thinking. If anyone needs a holiday, it's that policewoman..."

"No," the Doctor said firmly. "Not you too! I'm not a taxi service."

"Suit yourself, but my guess is, it'll be pretty couply with Donna and Lee in there together. And when they leave, you're still going to need someone."

"She's so grim!"

"She's more fun when you get to know her."

"Really?"

"No. Still."

"I'm fine on my own."

Jack watched Ianto's silhouette in the morning sun as he put the mobile back down and started walking back.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Of course you are."