Keeping Time: Part 3

"Urgh!" Ianto held his handkerchief against his forehead in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding. He hated head wounds. They bled too much and he was wearing his favourite shirt today too. "I'm too bloody old for this."

Peter poked him in the ribs. "Shut it, mate. You're only four years older than me."

"Yeah, but I've been doing this longer."

"And you've got the grey hairs to prove it."

Ianto patted his hair. "Oi! Only on the sides."

"A few other places too…"

Ianto raised his eyebrows. "You don't seem to mind."

Before Peter could give his retort, Tim sauntered out of the building, smirking.

"Did you get him?" Peter asked as he helped Ianto to his feet.

"Of course. He's knocked-out and tied up. I need help carrying him though."

"I miss Alfie," Peter whispered in Ianto's ear. "Too smug this one is."

Ianto grunted in agreement. "You help him. I'll get the SUV."

"Driving with a head wound doesn't sound like a good idea," Peter said.

"I've driven with worse," Ianto responded and jogged to the SUV parked around the other side of the building. He got in and checked the gash on his forehead. It needed stitches for sure. He turned on the com in the car. "Sayru, everything all right?"

"Brilliant. Crisis diverted here. You?"

"We got it. Well, Tim got it."

"Is he gloating?"

"Of course."

"Git."

"You're going to love this one," Ianto said. "The alien spits acid."

"Bloody hell! Where's it from?" she said, excitement dripping from her voice.

Sayru, Ianto's tiny ball of fire, had gone from their medical expert to an all-around Torchwood life-time member. Ianto imagined that he could pick her up and over his head with one hand - not that he would ever attempt it and find himself facing her wrath. She was a great force, feisty, intelligent, and a natural born leader. He'd watched her - without any weapons at all - take down aliens three times her size as easily as she broke into encrypted databases with one hand, while sipping from her coffee mug with the other.

Ianto adored her, and she was undoubtedly his second.

"Don't know," he said. "Get Dylan in for the autopsy."

"Hello, Ianto Jones."

Ianto jumped in his seat and scrambled for his gun until he saw who was peering into the car.

"Ianto, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Sayru. It's an old… er, colleague. I'm signing off. See you back at the house." He shifted in his seat, facing the window. "Hello, Doctor. How are you?"

"I've been better, and, by the looks of you, I reckon you could say the same."

"This is nothing. Just another day at the office. So… it's been two years for me. How long for you?"

"I don't know," the Doctor replied distractedly. "I lost track of time, but it couldn't have been more than a few days."

"When you focus on something, you really focus on it."

"Jack's important."

"To you?"

The Doctor looked dumbfounded and quite uncomfortable at the question. "Er, yes, but…"

Ianto finally realised why the Doctor was here. "You found him."

"Yes."

"Where?"

"A very long time from here."

"Is he in trouble?"

"Yes."

"How bad?"

"Dire."

"What's your definition of dire?" Ianto asked.

"The universe going boom is my broadest definition of dire."

"And you need Torchwood's help?"

The Doctor placed his hand on the open window of the SUV. "Not Torchwood, Ianto Jones. You. Only you."

"Could you say that with slightly more drama? I think it came across a bit too nonchalant to really get my attention."

"Ianto, where are you?" Peter's voice shouted through Ianto's earpiece. "This tranquiliser isn't going to last forever!"

"I have to go and help them," Ianto said stiffly.

The Doctor put his hand through the window and held Ianto's forearm. "I can't do this. Do you know how difficult that is for me to admit? I can't fix Jack with my cosmic superior intellect or clever tricks."

"Why does Jack need to be fixed? How did he break? And how do I fix him?"

"Jack needs only something that you can give him. It has to be you."

"Why me?"

"Trust me. You'll understand eventually."

"God, I hope to hell that I don't sound like that when I talk to my team."

"You do. We all do. It comes with the job. Well…?"

"You'll take me to him." Ianto pointed to the sky. "Up there."

"Way beyond just 'up there.'"

"For how long."

"As long as you want."

"Ianto!" Peter bellowed. "What's going on? Is everything all right?"

"Yes! Yes!"

"Excellent!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Not you," Ianto hissed at him. "Peter, everything's all right. I'll be one minute." He ripped out his com unit and threw it on the passenger's seat. "I still don't understand. How are Jack and the universe in trouble?"

"Oh, are you talking to me now?" the Doctor said sardonically.

Ianto huffed and rolled his eyes.

"I can explain on the way."

"Are you afraid if you tell me now that I won't come?"

"Yes."

Ianto scrubbed his hands over his jaw. "I can't make a decision like this right now. I have things to take care of." He started the car and put both hands on the wheel, but didn't pull away.

"If you decide to come, meet me at Cardiff Bay Station tomorrow at midnight," the Doctor said. "It'll give you time to put things in order."

"And if I don't, what will happen?"

"I really don't know that."

"You can't tell me or you really don't know?"

"I really don't know. When it comes to Jack Harkness, anything could happen."

Ianto pulled away, but slammed on the brakes, stuck his head out the window, and yelled, "Doctor, if I want to come back and ask you to retcon me, will you?"

"Do you really want that?"

"I may."

"I promise, Ianto. I'll take away all memories of it, if that's what you want or there's a third option."

"What's that?"

"You could travel with me."

Ianto and Sayru stood quietly gazing at the alien through the glass cell door. The alien glared back at them, not blinking.

Without warning, Peter's voice on the intercom burst through the silence. "Ianto, there are people in the tourist office looking for you."

The alien growled and retreated to the corner, pressing its back against the wall.

"I'll be right there."

The tourist office had changed little in the eighteen years since Ianto had been with Torchwood. Once, Alfie had taken down the beaded curtain, and Ianto had thrown a fit, dug it out of the rubbish bin, and put it back in its proper place. After Alfie died, Ianto had insisted that all Torchwood operatives took turns doing administrative tasks. They rotated manning the office, as well as fetching food, and making coffee.

Peter was standing at the counter with his gun hidden behind it, cocked and ready to use. A young girl stood in the centre of the room flanked by two very large, bald men in long black coats. Ianto wondered if bald men were simply attracted to the job of body guard or if body guards simply shaved their head for a more menacing look. If it was the latter, which logic told him that it was, he agreed that it was a very effective practice.

The young girl looked the model of pure innocence. She wore a long white Victorian era lace dress. Her long brown hair was pulled off her face by a satin blue ribbon, and her shoes were black patent leather.
It was the first time that he had ever seen her, but he knew that this was the girl he had read about in both the official Torchwood archives and the special book for Torchwood Leaders.

"Hello, Mr Jones," she said.

"Hello," he said. "You seem to know who I am, but, forgive me, I don't know who you are."

"Yes, you do. You just don't know my name. No one does."

"Jack called you Lily."

She blinked in an odd way, slow and methodical. "Why would he do that? That's not my name."

"He thought it was rude to you refer to you as 'that creepy little girl.'"

She giggled and it sent an eerily shiver down Ianto's spine. "The Captain always amused me. Lily - I like that. You can call me Lily. But…" She turned her piercing stare to Peter. "Only you… and the Captain, of course."

Ianto looked at Peter and jerked his head towards the door leading back to the Hub.

Peter eyed the two bodyguards. "Are you sure?"

Ianto nodded and Peter left, but Ianto knew he was right behind the door, and obviously so did Lily. She stared at it until Ianto went over, jerked it open, and assured Peter that he'd be all right.

He returned to stand directly in front of her, purposely not looking at her guards and only at her.

"Your eyes are a much prettier blue in person," she said, capturing Ianto's eyes with her mesmerizing gaze. "Blue is my favourite colour. The Captain's eyes are blue too, but not as pretty as yours."

"In person? You've seen me not 'in person' before?"

"Many, many times over the years, even before you were born."

"I'm assuming your visit so soon after the Doctor's isn't a coincidence."

"There is no such thing as a coincidence," she responded.

"Right. Is there something that I can do for you, then?"

"The Captain owes me a favour."

"And you want me to deliver him your request?"

"No. I want you to repay it."

Ianto raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. "How?"

"Go with the Time Lord to the Captain."

"Is that a request or a demand?"

"Neither."

"Shouldn't you already know what I'm going to do?"

"I do."

Ianto knew better than to ask what he was going to do. She wouldn't tell him. Instead, he asked, "Then why bother to come at all?"

"Because I was part of the plan."

"Whose plan?"

"I don't know. It's only the path that I see."

"Then you know what Jack is going to do?"

"When it comes to the Captain, I don't know."

"No," Ianto said, shaking his head. "Jack told me that you read his cards. Jack said that you knew his future."

"I knew the future, not his future. I can see the Captain in the future because other people exist around him. I can see their futures as a result of his actions. I can see him in their futures, but I can never see his future because he has none."

"Bloody hell that's –"

"Language," the body guard on Lily's right scolded.

Ianto ignored him. "Everyone who exists has a future!"

"The Captain survives only in history, not the future."

"I don't understand."

She stared at Ianto for a moment, blinking so slow that Ianto could almost believe that he heard a click in his head each time her eyelids descended. "Jack isn't on a path because he doesn't exist. He is an alternate universe within this one and our universe cannot accept him as existing; therefore, he doesn't."

Ianto felt saddened by the thought of Jack trying to exist when the world itself didn't want him to. "That's… that's just cruel. Why can't it just accept that Jack is alive and get on with it?"

Lily's tiny lips curved into a smile. "Of course, it would be hard for you to understand. You just need to understand that you can set it right again."

"I don't even know what I'm supposed to set right."

"Yes. You do. You have to set our Captain right."

"What if I don't?"

"They'll be nothing."

"Nothing?"

"When I see forward, I only see nothing."

"For whose future? Mine? Yours? The Doctor's?"

"Everyone's."

"You're going?" Martha asked.

Ianto shifted the phone to his other ear. "I don't know. I think so. I just don't know if I'll be back."

"You won't," she said confidently.

"How do you know that?"

"Because I know Jack and the Doctor and you won't be back."

"You came back."

"I'm not you."

"What does that mean?"

"Remember what you told me about feeling off the last few years?"

"Yeah."

"It's because you're not supposed to be here. You belong somewhere else. And that off feeling was your gut, Ianto. Your instincts knew it. You're just figuring it out now."

"Ianto!" Alan ran through the front yard with his younger brother, Geoffrey, chasing behind him. "You came! You came to my birthday party!"

"Of course, I did," Ianto said, patting Alan on his back. "It's not every day you turn ten."

The boys babbled incessantly, over each other as well, trying to fit in everything exciting that had happened to them since the last time that they had seen Ianto. They followed him into the house, one on each side of him, retelling the tale of the recent tragedy that had befallen their pet turtles. When they stepped inside, Alan yelled, "Da, Ianto's here!"

Rhys stepped out of the kitchen. He wore an apron that said, 'Burnt to Perfection,' and a huge grin. He weaved and dodged through a slew of children to get to Ianto.

"Ianto, mate, it's good to see you."

"Hey, Rhys."

They patted each other on the back in their customary manly greeting.

"Ianto!" Gemma, Rhys's wife, walked out of the kitchen with her arms extended wide. When she reached Ianto, she stood on the tips of toes to greet him with a hug. "Are you alone?"

"Don't you start," Rhys said warningly, but with a domestic playfulness shared only between partners.

Gemma started to respond, but a crash followed by a child's scream, distracted her. "Oh, bugger," she said, running off to the kitchen.

"Let's escape," Rhys said. After a stop off in the kitchen to grab two bottles of ale, he led Ianto outside to the garden, which was decorated with paper lanterns, fairy lights, and blue and white balloons. He popped open the bottles, handed one to Ianto, and slumped down in a wood folding chair that looked like it had come from IKEA. "I'm knackered. The wife had me dashing around all week getting ready for this thing."

The back door flew open, banging against the wall. A train of children, looking like they ranged in ages from six to twelve, ran into the garden and back into the house again, squealing and laughing. Rhys yelled after them to behave. He was trying to sound and look annoyed, but Ianto saw the joy in his eyes. This was the life that Rhys had always wanted, and Ianto was thrilled for him. Rhys's life had always given Ianto a sense of comfort and security, knowing that someone that he cared about had a normal life that Ianto would never know.

The garden had changed a lot since Ianto had last been there. The plastic toddler playthings had been replaced with a wooden swing set. The ground around the fence was lined with bright flowers in various states of bloom. Ianto pointed at a massive barbeque grill built into brick in the corner. "That's cool."

Rhys beamed with pride. "Yeah. I built it myself."

"It's brilliant, mate. Do you use it a lot?"

"Loads." Rhys patted his stomach. "Gemma says that I need to lay off the steak. Can't help myself though."

Ianto smiled and sipped his beer. Rhys leaned forward in his chair, looking serious. "You look… something you want to talk about?"

"I… I'm going away."

"For how long?"

"I don't know. Maybe for good. Or I could come back and not remember where I'd been, so if I don't mention it…"

Rhys sat back, frowning. "You'll let me know, if you decide not to come back, that you're all right?"

"I don't know if I'll able to… maybe through Martha."

"Will it be your choice not to come back?"

"Yes. Unless I die."

Rhys frown deepened. "I don't like the sound of this."

"Don't worry too much. I'll be in good hands."

"Whose?"

"It's a long story."

"You mean you can't tell me."

"It's for your own good."

Rhys's face reddened. "I hate that, Ianto. You know that."

"I know. I… I just need you to understand one last time, mate."

Maybe it was something in Ianto's voice or in his face or both, but Rhys relaxed. "So, you can't tell me where you're going, who you're going with, when or if you'll be back, or why you're going in the first place… and I can't mention it to anyone – that about right?"

"That's right."

"Look at me. After all these years, I'm finally getting it."

Ianto grinned and raised his bottle. Rhys raised his and they clinked them together. "You've got it."

"Is there a chance you'll be happier in this place that you're going?"

"I don't know."

Rhys chuckled. "It's good to know that I'm not the only clueless one."

Ianto reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He handed it to Rhys. "I set-up an account for the boys, for their future." Rhys tried to object, but Ianto wouldn't let him. "Don't argue with me. It's there and I won't need it where I'm going. If you don't use it, then it'll go to waste."

"You're talking like you know that you're not coming back."

"I reckon you're right. I've made up my mind. Things… things haven't felt right for a long time… here. I'm pressing my luck with time. I'm forty-two and..." He stopped himself. Rhys knew exactly how old most Torchwood members lived to be.

"You don't have to do this. I know you've done it for other people. You can leave it all behind. Meet a nice... um, person and settle down."

"It's not the life for me."

Rhys glanced at the door. "I love Gemma and the boys. You know that, right?" Ianto nodded. "But every day – every single bloody day – I think of her and I miss her. Sometimes, when it gets too hard to fight, I wonder what could've been if only she'd left and..." He shook his head. "No use dwelling in the past, eh?"

"No," Ianto said, thinking of his own past that he was about to face in a few hours. "But… I don't think things could've been different. If she had been different, you might not have loved and adored her so much."

Rhys nodded solemnly. "Before you leave I have a few things that I have to say."

"Rhys, you don't."

"I do. You've been a good mate all these years, Ianto. And I know you could've… made me forget all of the pain. I wanted to thank you for not doing that. Thank you. There were times – many, many times that I bloody well hated you for it, but you did the right thing."

"What about you-know-who? Have you forgiven him?"

"I'm not that healthy, mate… still hate that bloody bastard."

Leaving without giving his team some sort of explanation had never been an option in Ianto's mind. After over almost two decades, he could still remember how abandoned they had all felt when Jack left without a word.

What to tell them proved to be a more difficult decision. So he kept it at a higher level, only mentioning the Doctor, but not Jack. He didn't know why, but for some reason, he felt like he had to protect Jack.

He talked to Sayru first, turning over leadership to her. She listened intently and only asked questions after Ianto was finished.

"The Doctor didn't say what you had to do? He didn't give any more details."

"He's not the sharing kind."

"Are you're certain that you'll be safe with him? I've read the files…"

"Not any less safe than I am running this place."

"Too true," she said. "How long should I wait before I assume that you're not coming back?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"It won't take long then, will it?"

"It could take hours, days, months – I don't know. But the Doctor he can return me to anytime. I'll ask him to bring me back in the morning. I may be retconned though."

She drummed her fingers on the desk. "If you don't come back, we'll say that you're missing in action. That way if you decided to come back and, you must come back later, it'll make more sense. You could age too much if you're gone long."

Ianto had no doubt that he had made the right decision to hand Torchwood over to her. She was utterly brilliant.

"For a year... the procedures are clear," he said. "All MIAs must be listed as deceased within a year."

He got up from his chair and walked around to hug her. She hugged him back; the book Ianto had bequeathed her still clutched in her hand. He counted on her not letting it go until she had absorbed all of the information.

"One more thing," Ianto said, indicating her to sit down. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a file. He placed it in front of her, but placed his hand on top of it so she couldn't open it yet. "I know you've been wondering why I invited Tim to our team."

"Yeah. You could say that," she said, not trying to hide her contempt.

"This is Owen Harper's file."

She gaped at him. "Harper? I didn't put it together! Are they related?"

"Yes. Tim is his half-brother. He doesn't know about Owen."

"He doesn't know that he was a Torchwood operative."

"That – yes. But he doesn't even know that he had an older brother."

"Bloody hell. That's why you…?"

"Yes. Tim's just a bit lost, but he has what it takes to do this work. I'm certain of it. Don't try to change him, just try to shift his hostility towards something more productive and he'll be brilliant."

"Okay, Ianto."

He lifted his hand from the file. "Share this with him. He needs to know that his brother was a hero."

"Oh, Ianto…" Her voice cracked. It was the first time Ianto had seen her so emotional. She jumped up and hugged him again tightly. "I will miss you."

Ianto hugged Peter. "Make sure everyone eats," he whispered in his ear.

"I will."

"You're… er, not angry… I mean, we were just having a spot of fun, right?"

Peter pulled away, ran his fingers through the sides of Ianto's hair, and pulled him forward for a kiss. As far as farewell kisses went, and Ianto had had his share of them, it was a solid eight out of ten.

"Just a spot of fun – yeah," Peter said. "But I'll miss it just the same."

Tim frowned. "Sayru's in charge?"

"Don't give her a hard time," Ianto said warningly. "She can… what's it you kids say, 'make you her bitch?'"

"Sorry, mate," Peter chimed in. "No one has said that in, um, sixteen or seventeen years."

But Tim got the idea and rolled his eyes. "Doubt it."

Ianto grabbed Tim's hand and shook it firmly. "Take care of yourself, Tim Harper. I expect great things from you."