A/N: This went a direction I did not expect. This comes from a practice of mine to simply begin with a line of dialogue and let it unfold on the page, and it went somewhere I never saw coming. I can't decide if it works. Concrit would be most welcome.

Jack walked into his office with his nose in the file he had gone to the Archives for, and he almost tripped over Ianto, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Jack's desk with a stack of files strewn around his feet and a cup of coffee next to his knee. Jack stopped suddenly enough that he spilled some of the coffee that was in the cup in his own hand. Ianto looked up at him with an eyebrow raised.

"You weren't there when I left," Jack declared defensively.

Ianto nodded, "Right. But you left twenty minutes ago, so the floor seemed fair game."

Jack maneuvered himself around Ianto and eased himself into his desk chair, taking a sip of his coffee. After a moment, he asked, "What're you doing, Ianto?"

"Looking you up," Ianto replied, without looking up from his file.

Jack waited for an explanation, but none seemed forthcoming. He took another sip of his coffee. "Why are you looking me up in my own files?" he asked blithely.

"Wanted to see how far back you went," Ianto replied, still not looking up.

Jack thought for a moment. "You could just ask."

"Didn't seem polite," Ianto countered, his eyes still stuck on whatever file he had pulled up.

"How old is that one?" Jack asked, thinking a change of course might yield a more complete answer from the very young man sitting on his floor.

"1935."

"Am I actually in the file?" Jack queried, as his own recollection was that he had cleaned out traces of himself in these files pretty well.

"Not directly, but yes," Ianto replied, looking up with a gleam in his eye. "You took your name out, but the Director is complaining about reckless field work followed by inappropriate offers of clean-up help, which sounds suspiciously like you."

Jack chuckled, "You got me there."

"The Director accused you in another file of helping an alien instead of killing it."

"I tried as much as I could." Jack suddenly remembered a strange case with an alien diplomat who had landed on the wrong planet. That had been fun until the diplomat figured out that Jack was using his confusion for his own . . . entertainment. They resolved their issues in Jack's favorite ways, but then Jack had to get the alien off-planet before Torchwood killed it, which had landed Jack in some hot water. It was one time out of many. He looked back up at Ianto and asked, "Did you find anything earlier?"

Ianto shuffled through his papers and pulled up a file. "I think this one might be you." He handed the file to Jack and shrugged. Jack flipped the file open, read for a minute, and handed it back to Ianto with a sigh. 1870. "Yeah, That's me." He paused and added, "You really could just ask, you know."

Ianto shrugged and looked up from the files, "This is like a puzzle. Besides, I wasn't sure if you'd really want to talk about that far back."

Jack sighed, knowing Ianto was probably right. "Were you bored?" He deflected, or so he thought.

Ianto's mouth quirked up slightly, "A little," he answered, and he started picking the files up off of the floor and standing up, minding his coffee mug. "I don't think they liked you much back then," he commented as he gathered the papers and deliberately began putting them back in the cabinet.

Jack didn't answer, just sipped his coffee again. He didn't quite know how to answer right away. He watched Ianto file the folders of his life away quietly and then stated, "That was still early. Alice and Emily never really got the hang of me. I was really out of my time back then."

Ianto stopped for a moment, not looking at Jack, and then started filing again. "I found one where they killed you, just to see what you could take. They didn't call you Jack, though. Just 'the subject.' They seemed fascinated."

"That's one word for what they were," Jack said, a little bit harshly because, after all, they were bastards at the very least.

Ianto finally turned back to Jack and made his way slowly to the edge of the desk. Jack wondered why he was moving so slowly. The air was suddenly heavy, heavy with history, heavy with fear, heavy with guilt.

"They killed you over and over," Ianto said quietly, looking into Jack's eyes now.

Jack averted his gaze and looked down into his cup. "Yes." Over and over and over, really. The air at Torchwood had been heavy with blood back then. He looked back up at Ianto and shrugged. "It only lasted a while." He paused and took another drink of his coffee and added, "I was helpful to them."

After a moment's quiet hesitation, Ianto leaned down and picked Jack's cup up. "Get you a refill?"

Jack nodded and Ianto retreated from the office.

Later, when there were back at Ianto's flat and it was the middle of the night, and Jack was sated and Ianto was dozing with his head on Jack's chest, Jack found himself murmuring, "They didn't like me much back then."

Ianto stirred."When did they get the hang of you?" he mumbled, voice heavy with sleep.

Jack lay quietly in the dark of Ianto's bedroom, running his fingers absently through Ianto's hair, feeling the weight of his lover, and he gazed over at the wan light of the streetlight pushing its way through the curtains and into the bedroom and thought for a while. Ianto dozed off again, and Jack thought of 'it doesn't matter if you die, Harkness, you always come back anyway' and 'go get a shower Harkness, you have blood in your hair,' and 'Harkness, did you die tonight?' and 'How the hell did you recover from that? You're a monster,' and 'I'm leaving and taking her with me and you'd better stay away from us,' and 'Jack you're in charge now, I'm leaving this to you,' and he ignored Ianto's question and tried to sleep but he couldn't.

The next morning, after breakfast and showers and a quiet drive back to the Hub, Jack sat at his desk and waited for Ianto to bring him his coffee. Jack felt tired, dragged down, like his braces were too tight and his shirt was heavy, and he looked down at the task list he's just made for himself for the day and it looks far too long for one person to handle. He looked up as Ianto came into his office and set the cup on his desk near his elbow and then stepped back.

"Was there a Director you ever liked, Jack?" he asked, as if picking up their conversation from yesterday where it left off and making no apologies for it.

Jack hesitated, running through names and faces and anger and laughter and fear and longing in his mind before answering, "No. Not really."

Ianto looked surprised. "I thought you might have liked Alex, from what I've read. Seems like he treated you better, anyway."

Jack was quiet for a moment and remembered silence and blood and fear and a timepiece and a gun and a spatter and he answered, "No, he killed me, too." And Ianto nodded with understanding in his grey-blue eyes and retreated from the office, leaving Jack to his tasks.