"I'm home!" Gwen announced, bursting through the front door. She expected to find Tosh there to greet her eagerly, but neither she nor Jack was anywhere in sight.
"Hello?" she tried a little louder, making her way to the interior of the house and trying not to imagine the dozens of horrifying situations Jack could have gotten her daughter into during the course of an entire day.
"There you are," Gwen said with relief upon finding Tosh and Jack sitting quite contentedly on the floor of Tosh's room, serving tea to some of her favorite stuffed animals.
"Hi Mummy," Tosh greeted her without turning around, intent on making sure her guests had enough imaginary tea in their toy plastic cups.
"Did you have fun with Uncle Jack?" Gwen asked, seating herself on the floor as well.
"Yes," Tosh responded enthusiastically.
"Really?" Gwen said, giving Jack a look of pleasant surprise. "What did you do?"
Tosh hesitated and looked to Jack for approval to continue.
"Go on," he encouraged her.
"You tell her," Tosh said, suddenly shy.
"No, you," Jack insisted.
"No, you," Tosh stubbornly repeated.
"No-"
"Would someone please just tell me?" Gwen interrupted, attempting to mask her impatience with a smile.
"We caught an alien!" Tosh blurted out.
"What?" Gwen exclaimed in horror.
"Calm down," Jack said, "it was only a weevil."
"Only a weevil!" Gwen angrily repeated. "Well, I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything different from Captain Jack Harkness. Honestly, I leave you alone with my daughter—my 3-year-old daughter—for one day, and you're off hunting down aliens. I can't even-"
Gwen stopped short as Jack and Tosh collapsed into a fit of giggles.
"Gotcha," Jack said with a grin, as Tosh returned her attention to her tea-serving duties.
"Would you like some more tea, Mummy?"
Jack walked the streets of Cardiff, grateful for the protection his greatcoat provided against the cold wind and for the chance to finally be alone with his thoughts. He made his way toward the harbor, as he would have done even if the Torchwood software he had downloaded onto Gwen's home computer hadn't revealed signs of rift activity at the site of the former Hub.
The building itself was gone, of course, filled in after the explosion and paved over so that it might as well never have existed, just another innocuous section of sidewalk in the vast concrete jungle of the city.
It seemed ridiculous to Jack to get upset about the loss of the Hub when the human costs of his last adventure had been so great, but he couldn't help but feel a twinge of sorrow when Gwen confirmed what he had already assumed: the Hub was gone for good, beyond any hope of restoration.
One of the many things Jack had learned from his experiences at Torchwood was that places can have memory too, sometimes better memory than people. But now that the Hub was lost, there would be no ghosts of former team members haunting the halls, no echoes of Owen or Tosh or Ianto to keep him company during the endlessly long and lonely nights.
"In my experience, ghosts don't make very good company, sir."
Jack didn't have to turn to know who was suddenly and inexplicably standing beside him, but he did anyway, just to verify with his eyes what his brain was insisting was there.
"What are you doing here, Ianto?" Jack demanded, his tone deadly serious.
"Keeping you company," Ianto replied with a playful half-smile calculated to forestall Jack's questions.
The look made Jack want to grab Ianto and pull him into his arms immediately, but the crisp night air allowed him to resist the urge and keep his focus for a moment longer.
"But you're dead," he insisted, not without a degree of uncertainty.
His memories of that day were powerful, but the evidence his senses were presenting him with was powerful too: the lilting sound of Ianto's voice, the eternal mischievous twinkle in his impossibly blue eyes, the ice crystals that formed every time his warm breath hit the cold air.
And now his hands gripping Jack's shoulders forcefully as Ianto became the one taking the initiative to pull Jack closer.
"Do I seem dead to you?" he asked, his smile gone, his face only inches from Jack's, his gaze piercing to the core of Jack's soul.
Ianto didn't wait for Jack to respond, but kissed him passionately so that Jack could feel the cold tip of Ianto's nose pressed against his eternally warm cheeks.
It was a bright flash of light that made Jack break off the kiss and look for the source of the illumination. When the light faded, he felt a sickening sense of horror as he recognized the figure that had materialized out of thin air He was on the verge of telling Ianto to run, but Ianto, it seemed, had already disappeared.
"You can't be here," Jack said to the man walking leisurely toward him. "It's impossible."
"But here I am," the man replied cheerfully.
"Leave now," Jack tried a different tack, drawing his pistol and speaking in his most threatening tone, "or I'll kill you."
"Come on, Jack, don't you have enough blood on your hands already?"
Jack reluctantly lowered his gun. As much as he hated to admit it, Captain John Hart was right.
A/N: Sorry for the long delay! Thanks to everyone for your reviews and everything; they're very encouraging. Concerning the ending of this chapter: I know Captain Hart isn't the most popular guy. But since everyone on Torchwood keeps getting killed off, I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the canon barrel, and I'd much rather him than PC Andy. Please share your thoughts in a review!
