Ianto Jones sat at the brown table with the glowing middle in the Hub. Jack was explaining to the plan while a live video feed of Adam pacing around in the cells played on the monitor.
Ianto glanced at Toshiko momentarily. She was looking down at the table, her eyes red.
"Now I have to help you all go back," Jack said, walking around the table. "Find a memory that defines you. Rediscover who you are."
Tosh glanced at Jack with a mixture of hostility and curiosity. The team looked to Jack.
"If I'm wrong, he'll still be here when we're done with this." Jack said; his gaze fixed on the monitor.
He looked down and clicked a button, and the image of Adam was replaced by a swirling blue video feed.
"Let me take you back. Before we all met," Jack said. Ianto was not sure why, but his gaze instantly locked onto the blue screen. The lights darkened.
For a terrifying moment, he remembered his hands around the poor girls' throats in those dark alleys…
Ianto shoved that memory away and instead thought of his life before he met Jack and the rest of the team.
"Feel around for anything that makes you what you are," Ianto could hear Jack, but more as if he was becoming white noise.
"The hidden and the forgotten. Tell me where you are." Jack was certainly whispering now.
Ianto felt around, and was let memories take him back…
Gwen spoke first.
"College county. Rhys is sitting opposite me telling stupid jokes." Gwen laughed a bit.
"It's my birthday. I'm ten. Mum spends the whole day screaming, "Well, I love you because you're my son. But it doesn't mean I have to like you."" Owen let out a silent huff.
"Maths club." Tosh smiled. "Something so reliable about maths. Always the right answer."
"Dating Lisa. Falling in love," Ianto said, a gentle smile finding his lips and melting. "Never felt so alive,"
"She packs my bags. "That is the nicest thing you've done for me in years, mother,"" Owen said with a gentle grin.
"Kissing him in the super market. The look on his face," Gwen said.
"My first flat," Tosh said, his smile unwavering. "I don't have a flat warming. There is no one I want to invite,"
"I love him," Gwen said, her voice cracking a bit. Jack stepped back from the table, inhaling deeply. "But not in the way that I love you." Gwen finished, looking up to Jack. Jack stepped forward and offered her a tiny round pill.
"Take this." He walked behind Gwen to see Tosh. Gwen closed her fingers in a fist around the pill.
"Knowing there has to be more to life than this. Knowing that I am special. Waiting for someone to see it," Tears were coursing down Tosh's cheeks now. Jack put a hand on her shoulder, offering her the tiny pill.
"I saw it," he said with a gentle smile. He set it in front of Tosh and silently worked around the table to Owen as Tosh stared down at it.
"You save one life, a hundred lives but you see it's never enough," Owen said.
"Who'll save me?" Owen sounded like he was ten years old again, listening to his mother shout at him on his birthday. Jack put a hand on his shoulder and set the pill in front of him.
"I will."
Owen looked down at the pill. Jack moved quietly to his tea boy.
"Coming here gave me meaning again." Ianto looked up at Jack, his blue eyes showing the vulnerability he tried so desperately hard to hide with a rattling intake of breath.
"You," Ianto said simply, love in his eyes as he stared at the Captain. Jack's eyes were full of tenderness as he stroked the Welshman's hair and kissed him of the forehead. Ianto shut his eyes, savoring the feel of Jack's lips against his forehead, all the love held in that single gesture, as Jack pulled away, his hand still on the back of Ianto's neck as he set the pill down with a quiet thud on the table.
He gently touched Ianto's neck before taking his position at the front of the table again.
"You each have a short term amnesia pill. It'll make you forget Adam. We have to wipe the last forty-eight hours from our memories. Go back to who we were."
Ianto didn't even hesitate to put the pill in his mouth, downing it with a short sip of water. He let his head droop forward, thinking of Jack… and then he was asleep, in the process of forgetting everything that had happened.
But Ianto clutched on to that memory, of Jack kissing him, and didn't let it fade. No one knew, but Ianto never forgot the kiss.