Author's Note: This story is going to be about four chapters long (edit: lies, six), which is, I think, a goodish length for my first multichaptered fanfic. I should have them all up over the course of the next week and a half. It takes place after "Exit Wounds" and the season finale of Doctor Who season 4, but obviously before CoE. This really kind of requires you to have seen the tenth episode of the third series of Doctor Who, "Blink". Much of it will be lost on you otherwise.
P.S. Title comes from "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot.


Jack swiveled his body around, his torchlight sweeping over damp, rotting wallpaper. "Who's there?" His voice carried through the empty house. "If it's rats, I'll scream," he added with a smile, listening for another sound. Hearing nothing, he moved on, into the next room. Outside, the wind moaned and around him the abandoned house seemed to lean, like it was just about to tip over. This worried him vaguely, but the rift activity detector in his pocket was still beeping its subdued staccato, and really, if the house fell on him, what damage could it do?

Another sound. Like the first, a sort of shuffling. He spun, drawing his gun and holding it below the torch. "Show yourself!"

He waited. There was nothing. Brow creased, he holstered his gun and turned back around.

The torch tumbled to the ground with a crack and rolled a few feet away. It lit a rotting table leg, a warped, broken saucer, something stone, but no Jack Harkness.

The room was empty but for the light. And then, with a few shuddering flashes, the light went out.

- - -

"Ianto, do you know where Jack is?"

Ianto had to juggle the four coffees and bag of pastries he was carrying to tap the comm in his ear. As a result, his reply was rather cross. "Are you under the impression that I have him tagged, Gwen?"

He was walking across the Plass toward the Tourist Center. He was late, so it was just as well that Jack wasn't in the hub. Not that he'd have had much to say on the matter.

"Well, aren't we chipper this morning? Are you almost in?"

"Opening the door now," he said, with effort, again trying to juggle the drinks and open the door without dropping anything.

"See you in a minute, then."

He got inside and set the bag down, tapping off the comm and hanging his coat and keys up. Jack's keys, he noticed, were gone. He took the bag and drinks and pressed open the hidden door, then went off down the hall.

As the cog door rolled back to let him through, Martha was just coming out of the medical bay. When she caught sight of Ianto, she made a beeline for him and he offered out one of the coffees.

"Oh, brilliant," she said, accepting it with both gloved hands. "You have no idea how much I need this right now."

"Rough morning?" he asked, depositing the other food on the table in front of the sofa.

"That body we picked up last night is a lot more complicated than it looks." She looked back toward the medical bay with an expression of dread. "It'll probably take me all day to figure out how it worked when it was alive, never mind what killed it."

Ianto glanced toward Jack's office. "So Jack isn't here?"

Gwen said from behind him, "Oh, now you're interested?"

He turned. "Yes, now that my hands aren't full of your breakfast." He gestured at the table. She looked, then descended upon the pastries, all-forgiven.

"You're welcome," he said, with humor.

"Gwen says Jack sleeps here," Martha said, sitting on the sofa. "Couldn't he have found a flat or something? He doesn't have to guard the place."

Ianto, his face pinking very slightly with the image of Jack's toothbrush sitting in Ianto's bathroom at that very second, busied himself by going into Jack's office and peering down into Jack's quarters. (Jack liked to call it his Manhole. Ianto didn't think there were enough muscles in his face to sustain the eyeroll that name deserved.)

"We've checked," Gwen called, "he's not there."

Ianto came back out. "He'll show up," he said simply, moving for the stairs. "He's a big boy."

"As you're well aware!"

"See if I bring you breakfast again!" Ianto called back, rolling back the door and leaving.

- - -

When, at noon, Jack still hadn't returned from wherever he was, Gwen called Ianto up in the Tourist Center. "Have you heard from Jack yet?"

"Would've told you if I had." His forehead creased and he tapped a pen against the desk. "I'll check the CCTV from last night. See when he left."

"All right. Call if you find anything." She sounded worried. It wasn't helping.

"Will do," he said, then tapped off and turned to the computer screen to pull up the CCTV feeds. He ran them back twelve hours.

He sped through it, watching as he, Martha, Gwen and Jack came in, carrying the bulbous alien body that Martha was currently working on downstairs. After that, Martha leaving, then Gwen leaving, then some interesting footage in the hot house that Ianto would have to delete when Jack could give his electronic signature. Then Ianto leaving, and nothing for a few hours. Jack wandering around, Jack working at his desk, Jack trying to use the coffee machine (Ianto would be having words). Finally, at 2am, the rift activity alarm went off, and Ianto watched as Jack pinpointed the location on a workstation (Tosh's workstation) and left with a sweep of his coat.

Ianto sped the footage faster. 3am, 4am, 5am, 6am, 7am and Gwen showed up. Jack hadn't come back to the hub at all from that alarm. He tapped his comm. "Gwen, can you find out where the last location of rift activity was?"

"Sure," there was a pause. Then, "The last place recorded was where we found Martha's new friend."

Ianto frowned. "That's impossible. Check again."

He heard typing. A pause. "No, nothing. That's the last place. Why, Ianto? What's going on?"

"Jack went out for an alarm last night at two. The computer should have saved the location automatically."

"Well, it didn't."

Ianto sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. "Do you think there's any way we can get that information back?"

"We can try. I'm not great with this technology, you know that Tosh-" Gwen went quiet.

Ianto shook his head. "It's fine. We've got to try anyway." He peered at the screen. "I think Jack's in trouble."

- - -

Ianto was already undoing his tie as he pushed through his front door. His eyes ached from staring at a computer screen for the last ten hours. His hands hurt from typing. A headache radiated from the back of his skull to the bridge of his nose and back again. He hung his coat up and moved into the kitchen, draping his suit jacket and tie over the back of a chair and running a glass of water. He shook a few small white pills into his hand and tossed them into his mouth, followed by the water. Then he leaned his forehead against the hanging cabinets and breathed out.

They'd made no progress. The information didn't seem to have been tampered with, or maliciously wiped at all. It looked like a system error. An incredibly effective system error. Ianto knew that if Tosh were there, it would have taken her seconds to reestablish the files, but he, Gwen and Martha were useless in that area. Jack might have been able to find it, but, there you go.

Ianto filled his kettle and turned it on, then went for his tea things. It wasn't, he thought, so much the fact that Jack was missing. He'd been missing before. He'd always turned up at some point. He couldn't die, so there wasn't much to worry about in that respect. It was the matter of how long he might be gone. Ianto again thought of Jack's toothbrush in his bathroom.

They had become quite domestic. They didn't talk about it. Ianto thought that this could be a good thing or a bad thing, but truthfully he chose not to think much about it at all, because it made his head hurt. Ianto's shirts in Jack's drawers, Jack's toothbrush in Ianto's bathroom; it was like a trade. Space for space, moving from one place to the other and back again.

Ianto thought, pouring the now-boiling water into his cup, that he might like domestic.

But now, Jack was missing again. And Ianto had seen it on Martha's face today, too: what if it was with the Doctor again? That tended to be where Jack ended up when he was gone. And then he came back with stories that he couldn't tell. "Timelines," he'd say, or no excuse at all. Only that he couldn't say. Martha'd never said how she met Jack, and Ianto knew that she probably never would.

He took his tea down the hall with him, toward the bedroom, prepared to sleep in his suit if taking it off proved to be too difficult. He had his hand on the doorknob when out of the corner of his eye he saw a square of white lying on his doormat. How, he wondered, had he missed that?

He set his tea on the squat table by his front door and picked the object up. It was an envelope; it felt old and brittle between his fingers. On it was embossed a calligraphic Torchwood "T". He carefully unsealed the wax that held the flap closed and pulled out two folded sheets of yellowed paper.

He shook them open and began to read.

Then he fumbled for his mobile and dialed Gwen's number. She answered with a sleepy curse but he ignored her.

"I found Jack," he said.

She sounded more alert as she asked, "Where?"

Ianto paused to look at the date on the letter.

"1913."