Author's Note: This is set after "Exit Wounds". Based on the last line of Jack's "Captain's Blog" for the episode from the BBC America website, the important parts of which I've included below.

"You will love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart."
- W. H. Auden

("Captain's Blog", BBC America Website:)

Staff: Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper died in the line of duty. I lost them. I failed them. It feels like a piece of me has been cut out. And while I can't die, losing people I love is much, much worse. Every time, you think this one won't hurt as much as the last, but it does, it gets harder every time.

Owen, Tosh - you were the best. I miss you.

Other Staff issues: The one glimmer of hope in all this? I still have Ianto and Gwen. Whatever the future throws at us, whatever madness the Rift vomits out next, whatever we have to face - Torchwood will be ready.

Capt. Jack Harkness.

Ianto, I know you're reading this over my shoulder, pretending to fix that damn shelf. So get over here and take me out somewhere.

(-BBC America)


"Where are we?"

"You asked me to take you somewhere." Ianto stopped at the top of the wide set of concrete stairs, looking down at Jack. "This is where I've taken you." He turned to the door and started to pull at the boards nailed across it.

Jack came hesitantly up the stairs. "This is illegal."

Ianto looked over his shoulder at him. "We're a secret government agency bound to defend the human race from alien threat."

"Fair point."

"Besides," Ianto said, pulling at the boards once more, "the police are a bit busy at the moment."

It was the very cusp of dawn, the yellow-pink light falling onto the corners of the brick building that they stood in front of; in the distance, sirens still rang, against looting, against fires, but slowly the city was coming back under control. Gray's destruction had not taken what he wanted it to; the city had not devolved to chaos, but stepped up in the face of a threat. On any other day, this would be something they were proud of. Any other day.

Jack looked around the empty street, his hands in his pockets, his posture slightly hunched. "Gwen's going to wear herself out, helping them."

"That's how she deals with things." A board came away, and Ianto threw it over the side of the stairs. "She'll go home to Rhys. She'll be fine."

Jack watched Ianto as he strained against the final board, his expression grimly determined. He asked the younger man quietly, "How do you deal?"

The board fell, and Ianto looked back at Jack. He met his eyes, then turned back and opened the tall, wide door. He stepped aside and swept an arm, gesturing Jack inside. Jack stepped across the threshold, and immediately started to cough as the stale, dusty air entered his lungs. Ianto came in behind him, holding his jacket sleeve over his own nose and mouth. "It'll pass in a minute," he said, then stepped around Jack, leading the way down a tiled hallway.

Jack traced his eyes over the walls. It was a school. Narrow lockers lined the hall, marked with dark graffiti, almost unreadable. What was readable was the standard fare of poor grammar and expletives; if this bothered Ianto, he didn't show it, moving with purpose past doors and litter and faded posters. Finally, at the end of the hall, he stopped next to an open door and looked inside. He looked at Jack, nodded, then went in. Jack watched him, hesitated, then followed.

The room was bathed in dawn sunlight. Empty of desks, the walls a faint yellow, the floor a dark wood. The chalk board at one side was crumbled and pock-marked. Other than it, there was nothing on the walls. Ianto stood at the center of the room, turned a slow circle as if to take everything in, then moved to sit on a low windowsill, which looked out to an empty field, and off into the Bay in the distance.

Jack looked around, standing in the same spot Ianto had without realizing it, doing the same slow turn. "Did you go to school here?"

"No," Ianto said, looking at Jack from his low perch. "My dad did. This place was closed down before I started nursery." He looked out of the window behind him, squinting a little against the sunlight. "I used to come here when I was a kid. To get away from my sister, and my dad." Jack turned back to look at him, surprised. "I'd sneak in through a broken window, through the basement, then up here. Whatever room had the most light." He shifted a little, slinging his elbows across his knees. "I'd bring a book, or a diary, and read or write until it got dark."

Jack watched him, taking in this story; imagining a young Ianto, sitting in that exact window, curled against the glass with a fantasy novel – Tolkien, probably – or holding a notebook against his knees, hunched the same way that Jack saw him sometimes now, a pen in his hand, concentrating. And Jack knew, suddenly, why Ianto was telling him this. He was sharing. He was giving Jack something that he needed; something normal. A childhood, lonely but not full of monsters. He felt gratitude rise in his throat, and tears at the back of his eyes, but he held them, standing still in the sunlight, listening, imagining.

"When my mum died, I came here more." (Ianto as a young teen, moving up to Asimov, Lovecraft - leatherbound, predated diaries.) "Some mates and I would nick beer from our fathers and drink in the middle of the day, after school. We did that mess in the hallway. They faded out, eventually. But I came back." Ianto was looking at Jack, now, watching his distant expression, taking in the still way that he stood, listening with everything that he had. "When Rhiannon and I would argue, or dad and I, or those two, I'd come here to get away. I kept a torch under the broken window. A stack of books in one of these rooms." His eyes wandered the walls, imagining himself, now. "When my dad died, I lived here for a few days. They thought I'd run away. I just needed to be alone." He took a breath. "Eventually, the city boarded up the window. They hung signs to keep people off of the property. I went off to London."

Jack nodded, looking at the floor. There was a pattern there; light, shadow, light, shadow. He held out his hand to catch the light, to scatter the dust motes within it. "Did you come here when Lisa died?"

Ianto nodded. A small smile touched his lips. "I got caught. Trespassing. Had to flash my Torchwood credentials."

Jack's lips twitched into a grin, his eyes still on his hand, in the light. He looked at Ianto. "And now you've brought me here."

Ianto met his eyes, his serious expression unrelenting, but somehow encompassing, pulling Jack into him, into the place. "This is how I deal."

"Isn't it usually alone?"

Ianto looked out the window for a moment. Then he stood up, came toward Jack, and put a hand on his arm. Standing in the light. "I don't know how you do it. I don't know what you do, when things are bad. But I know that it likely isn't pleasant." He looked into Jack's face, then looked around the room. "Mine – mine is, and it isn't." He looked back to Jack. "But this is what I do. And I'll share it with you, if you want it."

Jack looked into Ianto's face; took in the way the light fell across it, highlighting his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Showing how tired he looked. The sadness there, beneath the surface. He raised his hand and put it on the back of Ianto's neck; leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Ianto's forehead, his eyes slipping closed. "I'm sorry."

Ianto's hand moved from Jack's arm to his waist, matched by the opposite hand. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I took Tosh and Owen away from you. Away from Gwen."

"It isn't your fault."

The hand on the back of Ianto's neck tightened, then relaxed. Jack let out an almost imperceptible sigh. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

They stood so, letting the light shift around them. Letting it brighten and diminish as the day came on. Letting the sounds – far-off sirens, church bells, the bay – wash over them. Silent. Together.

Broken and unbroken.