A/N: Soooo...I saw tonight's episode. I liked it. I really did. What I didn't like about it, I've mentioned in the author's note at the bottom because I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet. But apart from that it was a damn good episode.

Now, down to business!

Happy birthday to I've Lost My Profile Page, and to everyone else whose birthday was yesterday. And today, too, if anyone. Diem natalum!

Also, my thanks to my readers and reviewers! I don't care how repetitive it gets to thank you at the beginning of each chapter; I'm writing for you, and you're the reason I keep writing (it's not just for the review/crack; honest ;). So thank you!

Disclaimer: Do I really need to keep putting this here?

Rating: Yes

Spoilers: Not really


Chapter Seven: A Hard Man is Good to Find

After their work was done, after Gwen and Ianto had recovered from their exposure to that blasted tempograph, and after it was apparent that nothing else of interest was going to happen that day, Jack declared that he was going to go have a drink, and that everyone was invited to come along if they wanted. They'd all acquiesced; no one had wanted to go home just yet.

So the staff of Torchwood Three – all five of them – were gathered in their pub. They were sitting in a booth that was practically identical in every way to the one that Jack had found Gwen and Ianto at two nights before, but the biggest difference between that booth and this one was that most of the empties didn't belong to Gwen and Ianto. And it had a different picture above it, but no one was really looking at that.

Jack had stolen the seat at the top of the arch, with Gwen and Ianto on either side of him, Tosh and Owen on their respective ends, facing one another across the table. Tosh and Owen were smiling warmly at one another. Jack had to approve, however odd it seemed to see Owen smiling warmly at anyone.

In the middle of the table was an over-sized plate of nachos with all the toppings. It had been mightily picked over. All that was left now were a few chips, some baked-on cheese, and the odd jalapeño pepper, along with a blob of sour cream.

Jack had his arms around Gwen and Ianto, and was deep into a humorous story involving magic mushrooms and someone else's pizza, the police and – the reason for which no one there could figure out – a small hammer head shark. Everyone else were holding their bellies as they laughed. It was the general result when Jack started in with his famous opener, "did I ever tell you about the time..."

Eventually the story wound down, and Tosh and Owen (being on the end of the arch) went for more drinks.

"So," said Gwen as she polished off the last of her nachos. "The Dewey Decimal system? Really?"

Jack had the good grace to look embarrassed.

"It's a good system," he said defensively.

"For libraries," Ianto put in.

"But it makes a rather thin excuse," Gwen finished for him.

Jack looked from one to the other and then smiled disarmingly.

"Alright, you got me," he said. "I just wanted you and Ianto to talk."

"Like you wanted Tosh and Owen to talk?" Gwen challenged.

"Yeah. And it worked out nicely for them," Jack said. He gestured to the bar, where Tosh and Owen were leaning together. They had their heads close together. They couldn't see Owen's face, but Tosh's was lit up with a smile brighter than the sun; she was laughing at something Owen had said. They hadn't even gotten the attention of the bartender yet.

"It could have easily backfired," Gwen said.

"It didn't," Jack said firmly. He liberated one arm from around Gwen's shoulders and drained the rest of his drink.

Gwen shook her head, and finished off her own drink. She tried to ignore the sense of loss from the removal of his touch.

"So what did you want us to talk about?" she asked. Jack put his arm back around her shoulders.

"That picture, for one," Jack said, and marveled at how quickly Gwen's face went red.

"Oh," she said.

Ianto suddenly found his empty glass to be exceptionally interesting.

Gwen took a deep breath.

"What about it?" she asked. She looked nervously at Ianto, hoping that, maybe, he'd interject something into the conversation that would drag Jack off course. No such luck.

"Ianto sent it to you," Jack said.

"He did."

"And?"

"And...what?" she countered. "I haven't shown it to anyone, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm not worried about that," Jack said. "I don't care who sees it, really. Mostly. It's you I'm worried about."

"Me?"

"Yes, you," he answered. He leaned closer to her, close enough that his breath was hot against her cheek. "I care about you, Gwen."

Gwen met his gaze evenly, her heart thudding in her chest. She was sure he could hear it. Hell, she was sure Ianto could hear it, and he was on the other side of Jack. She wasn't entirely sure how to respond, either to his line of inquiry or to his sentiments. Truth be told, the fact that he cared about her made her happy. Very happy. She decided to show it.

She smiled. He looked a little taken aback at that, as though he had been expecting her to argue rather than back down, but he smiled right back.

"Thank you, Jack," she said. She reached up and squeeze his hand.

He tightened his arms, drawing Gwen and Ianto closer to him.

"I care about both of you," he said.

With matching sighs, Gwen and Ianto leaned their heads on Jack's shoulders, and for a brief moment, they felt at peace.

"What we miss?" Owen asked as he and Tosh appeared with confused faces and arms full of alcohol.

Gwen and Ianto sat up in unison and scooted a little away from Jack, back to their previous seats. Jack just laughed.

"Did you bring the bottle?" he joked as Tosh began passing around the drinks in her hands, a blatant diversionary tactic. Tosh and Owen shared a quick look and then shrugged.

"Who ordered the Sex On A Beach?" Tosh asked, even though the answer was obvious and sitting at the other end of the table, grinning.

"Mine's the blue one," Gwen said. Owen handed her the blue girly drink. It had a paper umbrella in it. Ianto got another rum and soda, and Tosh and Owen each had a beer.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I earned the nickname Captain Jack Hard-ass?" Jack asked, and before anyone could tell him that, yes, they had heard it, he launched into the narrative. This one had hand gestures, and he nearly spilled his drink down Ianto's back.


Some time later, Gwen and Ianto had Jack all to themselves. Tosh and Owen had gone, each citing different reasons, but each watching the other. Tosh had been blushing, and with more than alcohol. Gwen was quite sure that the pair wouldn't part ways just yet.

She stretched. It was probably time to head home herself. Rhys would likely be wondering where she was. She realized that she hadn't called him yet, and figured she should probably get on that. In a minute. For now (and this was probably the alcohol thinking) she just wanted to sit by Jack a little while longer. She didn't want to go home. Just yet.

"We should probably settle up and get out of here," Jack said, echoing her thoughts. "There's a good chance our run of limited rift activity will end. We couldn't possibly be that lucky."

"You're right," Gwen said. She pulled some bills out of her pocket and dropped them on the table to cover her third of the tab. Ianto did the same, and Jack threw in his own third, plus tip.

They parted ways in front of the pub. Ianto and Gwen were going to cut up to one of the main roads and catch a cab to their respective flats, and Jack was bound for the Hub. Gwen found herself reluctant to leave. She realized that she was trying to think up excuses to return to the Hub with Jack. And Ianto to, if it came to it.

"Good night," Jack said, and kissed them both good-bye. He strode off down the road, greatcoat billowing around him. It made for a wonderful exit.

Gwen put her hand to her lips, her eyes wide. The kiss had been brief and chaste. And he had kissed Ianto first. But somehow, as she and Ianto set off up the road to find a cab, that one brief, chaste kiss had held the promise of more fire and passion than...

She stopped that thought. It was a dangerous thought. It was a true thought, but still. She had a hard enough time not comparing Rhys to Jack; she hardly needed more ammunition.


The first thing Jack did when he got back to the Hub was feed Myfanwy. The second thing he did was feed Janet. The third thing he did was go to his desk and pull open the drawer where he'd stuffed the tempograph's picture, and look at it.

It had fully developed.

He shouldn't be looking at it, he knew. Seeing glimpses of the future made people – himself included – do stupid things, either in an attempt to change what they'd seen, or bring it about. Added to this was the idea that things happened because you'd seen them happening, a strange sort of time loop that had given him headaches even when he had been with the Time Agency.

But at the moment, he didn't care about all that. He wanted to know what the picture showed.

The predominant image was still Gwen's startled face. Jack smiled at that; she was so cute when she was surprised. Behind her was Ianto, caught in the act of telling Gwen to put down the tempograph. The rest of the room they'd been sitting in was covered in smaller images, images branching from larger into smaller ones, like fractals. The possible futures.

He dug in his drawer for a magnifying glass.

In the top, right hand corner, a very pregnant Gwen was smiling at someone, but Jack couldn't see who. Spiraling off from that were a myriad of images, many of them too small to see, but most of them involving babies.

In the top left hand corner were Gwen and Ianto. Kissing. While he watched.

Jack's eyebrows shot up into his hairline and threatened to set up camp and not come back down. And here he'd thought that that was an impossible thing, and suitable only for fantasy material when he was alone in the Hub and terribly bored.

"Interesting," he murmured to himself. He stared at that for a good long while before he managed to shake himself free of it and look at the fractal images spinning away from it. All three of them were in those images, laughing, fighting (aliens and each other), being domestic – together. A happy future overall, it seemed. He stared at that corner for a while, a little happy that this was a possible future, but knowing that there was a very, very slim chance that it would ever come about. Sighing, he moved on to the third image.

It was in the bottom left hand corner of the main image. Rhys. He looked happy. He was sitting at a bar, next to a redheaded woman with green eyes (also smiling). They were toasting something. Immediately next to that were several smaller images, all of Rhys and this redhead. In some they were kissing, in some they were just sitting there. And in one, almost too small to see, they were standing in front of the altar.

Jack sat back in his chair, and put his hands behind his head.

This was precisely why people shouldn't see the future, he mused. Because now he wanted to go out and find that redhead and, in some way, influence events so that she and Rhys would meet. Something occurred to him, and he sat up again, scanning the picture before him. It was like playing "Where's Waldo" with a keleidoscope. Eventually he found what he was looking for, tucked away in in the very bottom of the right hand corner, so small that it seemed almost to go unnoticed. Gwen and Rhys' wedding.

He sat back again.

It had never been determined whether the size of the image of the potential futures had anything to do with the chance of them coming to fruition. The trouble that the tempograph had caused the last time was such that further experimentation on it was deemed unnecessary, and it was locked away. That had been before Gwen had been recruited.

He examined the images some more. There was another, just above the one of Gwen's wedding, a tiny picture with its own tiny images spiraling away. He could just make out Gwen, wearing what looked like the same clothes that she'd had on at the pub. There was a figure standing next to her, on a street corner. Ianto? Perhaps. He had his arm up, probably calling for a taxi. Gwen was smiling.

Jack frowned. The fact that Gwen was smiling wasn't what made him frown. Beneath the larger image was its fractalized image. Squinting, Jack could barely make it out.

His eyes went wide, and he dropped the picture and magnifying glass. He sprang from his chair. On the way by, he pulled his coat off the hook so quickly that the coat rack toppled, landing with a crash behind him as he bolted for the door. He would have taken the lift for speed if he hadn't needed the SUV.

The door couldn't roll back fast enough.


Gwen came to in the back of a car. She looked around, staring blearily around her as she tried to determine her surroundings. Someone was talking in the front seat. She recognized the voices.

"Jack?"

Jack was driving, and couldn't look around. Ianto peered around from the front seat.

"She's awake," he said. He had a small cut on his forehead.

"What's going on?" Gwen asked.

"A common mugger," Jack growled. "All the aliens in the universe come through our door at all hours, and you almost get stabbed by a common mugger. In Cardiff!"

"He hit you on the head from behind, with a half-brick in a sock." Ianto explained when Jack's fuming rant had faded into a mutter, "and tried to get me to hand over my wallet at knife point. And then Jack showed up."

Ianto glanced at Jack, a mixture of worry and relief colouring his features.

"What about the mugger?" Gwen asked, trying to sit up in the swaying car. She gave up after minute, after Jack swerved suddenly, apparently avoiding a car that wasn't going fast enough for his liking.

"He won't be mugging anyone for a while," Jack said. Gwen had never heard that much grim satisfaction in someone's voice before.

"What did you do?" she asked, a little worried. Jack, when the mood took him, could deliver his own brand of justice swifter than an avenging angel. It could be somewhat troublesome. And, the part of her mind that was still a little tipsy from earlier piped up, really hot.

"I took care of him," Jack barked. "And now I'm taking care of you. We're going to the Hub."

"I think I'm alright," Gwen said, though her head was hurting something awful. She lifted a hand to the back of her skull. No blood, but there was a pretty good chance of a concussion.

"You're not alright," Jack said, in a voice that brooked no argument. He must be really pissed off, Gwen thought. The only time he used this tone of voice was when something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

"Shouldn't I be going to a hospital then?"

"We're going to the Hub. There's better equipment there."

"I think I have a concussion," Gwen said, thinking that maybe this would convince Jack, who seemed to be hell bent on swerving in and out of traffic, to perhaps go to the nearest hospital instead.

"Then we're going to have to keep you up all night," Ianto said, more as an attempt to lighten the mood than to suggest anything should happen.

"Yes, we are," Jack said, and then grinned and evil grin.

Gwen leaned back in the seat and tried to keep her stomach from spinning out of control. She hoped Jack would pay her the same courtesy with the car.

They reached the Hub in what Gwen figured was record time. This led her to believe that she hadn't been unconscious for that long – likely a good thing, considering how she'd been made unconscious to begin with. Jack parked the SUV in the garage and then tossed the keys to Ianto when he got out.

The back door opened. Jack's arms reached in and gentle hands grasped her and pulled her out. He swung her up into his arms with barely a hitch in his breath. He was strong. She looked up at him, certain her face was starting to go red again. She would have insisted on walking, but something in his face stopped her.

His jaw was set, his eyes hard. For an instant, he looked at her with such a possessive quality that her breath caught. His eyes flickered to Ianto, but the possessiveness didn't fade; it included him. If there had been an outside world to scream to just then, Jack's body language would have been screaming 'mine', with such force that even Gwen trembled a little to think of it. And then he looked back down at her.

His face softened. His arms tightened around her, pulling her close to his chest, encouraging her to wrap one arm around his neck and rest her head on his shoulder. She did so. Her hand automatically went to the soft hair at the nape of his neck and she wrapped her fingers around it. She felt the shiver run up his spine, felt him sigh out the breath that he must have been holding. She thought again of the warmth she had woken to two days before, of the sight of his bare behind vanishing into his office; of him standing, dripping in the middle of the Hub, wrapped only in a towel; his arms around her at the pub, and the quick, chaste kiss he'd given her in parting; her thoughts of yesternight, when she had realized that she loved him.

All of this in an instant, thought of more as emotions than actual images or words. It left her breathless.

He glanced at Ianto again, but this time it was to let him know that it was time to go down into the Hub. Ianto moved ahead, opening the various doors as he did so.

As Jack carried her down into the Hub, Gwen realized that the saying was true; a hard man is indeed a good thing to find.


A/N: So. They didn't solve the 'Rhys problem'. They compounded it.

But it was still a good episode.

But I knew they were going to do that! I just knew it! Those writers are going to get a whap upside the head if I ever meet them, because of what they did with the whole 'hug-from-behind-mirror-scene'. You know which I mean. Argh! And all the pointed comments! Don't they know that that wasn't how it was supposed to end?

And now, next week's episode has clowns in it, and I hate clowns. They give me the wiggins.

It was still a really good episode, though. Well written, despite the obvious bits they got wrong.

Right. Deep breath. Moving on! Thanks all, for reading. Next chapter will be along when its along :) Hope you liked this one...


PS: I've updated the ending of this, since I was never that fond of it as it was. It didn't quite end so much as stop, which is never a good way to leave a story. So sorry 'bout that; hopefully this works better.

SSA (March 8, 2008)