Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Torchwood'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

A/N: Okay, so there was a bit more I needed to address before plunging back into the canon-supplied storylines. Sorry – I had been focusing too hard on the storyline upcoming, I failed to take into account the threads whose time has come for cutting. 'Countrycide' will begin in the next chapter.

Synchronicity

Chapter Ten: Loose Ends

15 November, 2006
14:01

"So… How often do you actually get tourists in here, looking for information?" Brigit asked, thumbing through a stack of fliers on local attractions.

"Not often," Ianto admitted, "but it does happen from time to time. Mostly, what you will be doing is accepting deliveries, sorting mail – both regular post and email – and manning the fax machine."

Brigit smiled, returning the stack of fliers to their place. "So far, it sounds rather like what I did for Malcolm. All that's missing is taking dictation and answering the telephone."

Ianto motioned for her to join him behind the counter. "The captain answers his own phone and writes his own correspondence… mostly. What he doesn't deal with, I usually do."

"So, you're his second-in-command?" Brigit asked, watching Ianto boot up the computer.

Ianto shook his head. "No. I… My job here is… rather difficult to explain."

"Jenny said you were the archivist," Brigit said.

"Yes, I am that, but I've other duties as well." The computer let out a chiming noise. Ianto stepped aside and motioned for Brigit to take the stool that was tucked under the counter.

"What other duties?" Brigit asked, pulling out the stool and taking a seat. "Any I can help with? Not immediately, I mean – I'm sure it will take me a few days to get used to things. But once I get up to speed, if I have free time?"

"Don't worry about it. If you find yourself getting bored, there are innumerable small details which need tending to on any given day. Give it a week or two, and I'll provide you a list," Ianto said. "Now, has Tosh gone over basic computers with you?"

"Yes," Brigit replied. The next half-hour was spent in Ianto walking her through which programs she needed to monitor; specifically, the email accounts – both the one for the tourist office and the one that was for Torchwood. The Torchwood account received any email sent to a Torchwood domain address that was not listed as currently active. For example, if someone tried to send an email to Suzie's Torchwood account, it would be delivered to the general Torchwood account that Brigit would be responsible for sorting. Once Ianto felt Brigit had the basics down, he finished explaining her other duties.

Leaving her to her own devices, Ianto left to tend to the afternoon coffee distribution. As usual, he saved Jack's coffee until last. As he approached the office, Ianto could hear him speaking to someone. "…you have to agree, the vast majority of what they had been working on has since been rendered obsolete… No, I'm not saying that, General –" Ianto stepped into the office in the silence. Jack grinned at him and made 'gimme' motions at the coffee mug. Ianto handed over the coffee and Jack mouthed 'stick around'. "Do I have to remind you, General, that all Torchwood property is considered the personal property of Her Majesty? And I've got a complete list of what was in storage… Nope, not a computer file, General. Turns out one of the survivors has an eidetic memory and was intimately familiar with the contents of their archives…" Jack took a sip of his coffee and Ianto waited patiently. "Okay. I'll expect delivery at 1700. And General? If so much as a single circuit board is missing, expect to be called to London to explain the discrepancy in person." Jack hung up the phone, and Ianto could tell he was itching to throw it across the room.

"UNIT attempting to seize control of the technology in Belfast, sir?"

Jack sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "It's Torchwood Tower all over again, only on a smaller scale," he said, then stood and, coffee in hand, strolled over to the windows that overlooked the Hub. "Anyway, they're delivering what was salvageable in Belfast to us this afternoon. I'll need you and McEvoy to go through and make sure everything's there that ought to be there."

"Yes, sir," Ianto replied. "I take it that McEvoy is who has the eidetic memory?"

Jack nodded and took a drink from his mug. "Have you been doing something different with the coffee lately? It tastes… off. Not bad, just not quite the same."

"I changed out the tubing on the espresso machine," Ianto replied. "The old tubing was nearly clogged from mineral deposits. Otherwise, it's just the same as always."

"Could be it," Jack shrugged, dismissing the topic. He turned and faced Ianto. "What do you think of our new help?"

Ianto took a moment to gather his thoughts, then said, "Miss Doyle seems competent. Over-enamored with the delete button on the computer keyboard, but otherwise should be a decent fit for the office upstairs."

Jack chuckled. "If you'd ever had to type anything on a typewriter, you'd be just as in awe of the delete button as she is."

"I suppose so, sir," Ianto allowed, inwardly wondering just why Jack was looking for his opinion. "Miss McNamara appears to be adjusting well, as is Mr. McEvoy. Miss McNamara, however, has mentioned she would appreciate field agent training, as has Mr. Cullen."

Jack nodded. "I've got Jenny working with them on hand-to-hand and in the firing range. What about Dr. O'Kelly?"

"Owen has mentioned that he's rapidly getting caught up on the last thirty years of medical advancements, but otherwise I've not had much contact with him."

Jack took another drink and ambled over to his desk. Leaning against it, he asked, "And you? You think you can face going home?"

The question slammed into Ianto like a bus. He closed his eyes, thinking of the boxes of his and Lisa's things that crowded his small flat, awaiting the day they could pick out their own place – the day that would now never come. "I don't know, sir," Ianto said, his voice low and rough. "Does it stop?"

"Stop?"

"Hurting."

The sound of Jack setting his half-full mug down reached Ianto's ears. Moments like an eternity later, and he could smell his boss' distinctive spicy-sweet scent, feel the furnace-like heat of his hands on his shoulders. "No," Jack said, matter-of-factly. "It doesn't stop. You just learn how to live with it."

The scent and heat grew in intensity as Jack pulled Ianto into a hug that should have been awkward, but wasn't. It wasn't flirty, it wasn't sexual. It was a simple expression of comfort, a tangible reminder that Ianto was not as alone as he felt.

"I don't think there's any room for interpretation on this," Owen said, paging through the past three days' worth of readouts on the various monitors attached to Joyce. "Everything's dropping – even his EEG readings are falling. Slowly, yeah, but it's still a noticeable decline."

"Damn near miraculous he lived this long," Liam replied, looking over Owen's shoulder. "I wasn't expecting him to still be breathing when the rescue team showed up."

Owen sighed and clicked over to a similar set of readouts for O'Sullivan. "On the upside, our other patient seems to be doing well. All the breaks have set and are beginning to mend, and the swelling's gone down in his brain."

"Might want to consider keeping him under," Liam said. "I know Connor. He's the sort who can't sit still for more than a couple of seconds at a stretch. Being bed-bound would drive him insane within six hours, tops."

Owen shook his head. "No, we're reaching the end of my ability to keep him sedated. All the breaks, save his leg, were simple hairline fractures. As long as he takes it easy, he should be fine."

"I'm not disputing that, simply saying he's not going to be particularly happy about it."

Owen let out a scoff of laughter. "I don't know anyone who's happy about broken bones." He shut off the computer monitor and looked over at O'Sullivan. "Still, once he wakes, I think we can move him to a rehab facility."

"Shoving problems onto others, Dr. Harper?"

Owen shook his head. "Nope. Just need the space. It's unusual I manage more than two or three days in a row without needing to dissect something with tentacles or stingers or claws… or all three."

Liam took a seat on a rolling stool, his long legs treating it more like a normal chair, with his feet flat on the floor, rather than resting on a cross-brace the way Owen's did when he used the seat. "I must admit the prospect of getting to study some of the alien biologics that Torchwood comes across is an intriguing prospect."

"You've not had the pleasure?" Owen's sarcasm was definitely in attendance.

Liam shook his head. "No. I had plans to visit the London branch next year, where I would have had the opportunity to see some of their specimens, but…" he gave a small half-shrug.

"But," Owen said. "Yeah. That's a good definition of life in Torchwood. All the plans and dreams you can conceive of, but there's an explosion or a crashed space ship or a pending invasion – 'cause UNIT's about as useful as a coffee enema to a horse when things get serious – or a piece of alien tech's taken over one of your coworkers or…" he trailed off with a sheepish expression as he realized he was devolving into a rant. "Yeah. I get it."

The older doctor twitched his eyebrows in a way Owen had come to learn had meant 'neutral agreement'. "I'm sure," he stated. "Do you ever get the chance to study living alien specimens? Or is all the work done postmortem?"

"Mostly, it's autopsies," Owen confirmed. "But every now and again, I get a live one. Not often, though, not unless you count Jenny."

One of Liam's eyebrows crept towards his hairline. Owen had dubbed the expression as 'the hell you say' face. "That little blonde girl?"

Owen snorted. "Don't let her hear you call her that, mate – she'll lay you flat." He rubbed lightly at the eye she'd blackened on her first day. "But yeah."

"She seems human," Liam said, obviously interested.

A slight chill ran down Owen's spine. Is it the novelty or is he interested for more nefarious reasons? Unfortunately, it was too late for Owen to take back his words. He turned the monitor for the med-bay computer back on and pulled up Jenny's file. "Only on the surface," he said, setting the computer to project the information on the brick wall.

Liam spun the stool around and looked up at the image displayed – the x-ray revealing Jenny's two hearts and extra ribs. "Fucking hell," he muttered, scooting the stool back a few inches to get a better look. Owen pulled up the images from his Bekaran deep-tissue scanner. It showed, in excessive detail typically limited to illustrations in textbooks, the various systems within the scanned subject. Currently, it displayed Jenny's scan as a composite of all her inner systems, excluding her musculature. "Fucking hell," Liam repeated, standing and examining the displayed image. "She's got four of everything she should have two of, and two of everything else."

"Yeah, I noticed that myself," Owen dryly replied. "But it's not quite accurate. She doesn't have a few things we have," he manipulated the image and used a laser pointer to draw Liam's attention to the pertinent areas. "For example, she doesn't really have lungs. There's this area here, behind and between both hearts, that acts as a lung, drawing air in and out, but see these tubes here," he dragged the red dot along green-colored tubes that he had initially assumed to be part of her circulatory system. "Air gets drawn in and circulated like blood. And here?" he indicated one of several small green splotches that were only slightly off from where a human's lymph nodes would be located. "Those are storage areas for oxygen. Without trying, Jenny can hold her breath for five minutes."

"Fascinating," Liam muttered. He turned and strode the few feet over to Owen's side. "May I?" he gestured to the computer.

Owen turned off the projector and stood. "Go ahead. The file's got a lock on it, so you can't change anything."

While Liam immersed himself in Jenny's scans, Owen set about straightening the med-bay, keeping an eye on the older man as he did so. I really hope he's only curious. I don't want to have to shoot him. The thought of retcon never entered his head.

At half-past four that afternoon, Sean Joyce's readouts all hit zero.

Two trucks arrived right on time, carrying what had been salvaged from the Torchwood Belfast office. It took nearly three hours for the UNIT soldiers to finish off-loading everything and moving the majority of the junk into an empty storeroom. Five boxes, however, made of sturdy metal and cold to the touch, were hauled directly to the main level of the Hub. They contained the bodies of those who had not survived the explosion.

As the UNIT soldiers hauled the final two caskets off of the lift and through the cog, Deirdre – Kieran on her left, Teague on her right, and Liam standing behind her – closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and sang, "Of all the money that e'er I spent, I spent it in good company."

Kieran joined in on the next line, his singing voice a vibrating bass. "And all the harm that e'er I've done, alas it was to none but me."

Brigit, who'd been following the soldiers, joined in next, with a faintly flat alto. "And all I've done for want of wit, to mem'ry now I can't recall." She joined the other Belfast survivors. Deirdre wrapped a sticklike arm around her shoulders, and Teague followed suit with an arm around her waist.

Teague's voice was hard to hear among the others, but though it was quiet, it was a rather nice tenor. "So fill to me the parting glass, good night and joy be with you all."

The soldiers laid the last casket next to the others then stood back, berets in hand, as Liam joined in with a surprisingly powerful baritone. "Of all the comrades that e'er I've had, are sorry for my going away." He laid one hand on Kieran's shoulder and the other on Teague's.

Kieran took Deirdre's hand in his own as they sang the next line. "And all the sweethearts that e'er I've had, would wish me one more day to stay."

Owen and Jack carried over the stretcher containing Sean Joyce and laid him next to his fellows as the survivors continued the song. "But since it falls unto my lot, that I should rise and you should not, I'll gently rise and I'll softly call."

Jack and Owen stepped back among the UNIT soldiers. "Good night and joy be with you all," the group sang. Deirdre finished with a repetition of, "Good night and joy be with you all," that raised gooseflesh on most of the listeners.

Everyone stood as though frozen until the faintest echo of the song had faded. The UNIT soldiers left. The group from Belfast maintained their version of a 'group hug' for nearly a solid ten minutes. Liam was the first to break away. "Let's get them put to bed," he said.

Owen stepped forward to help, but Kieran stopped him. "No, lad – let us. You just let us know how and where they belong."

Nodding, Owen did just that.

Jack headed up to his office and dialed up Malcolm's new mobile number. "Come by," he said once his old friend had answered. "Pick up Eva from the house."

"Jack?"

"We got the bodies from Belfast today. I think you should all be together," Jack explained. "There's a decent pub a ten minute walk from here."

"Hell, Jack – that sounds like a fine idea, indeed. I've needed a decent drink ever since I got here. Eva and me, we'll be there in half an hour. Maybe less."

It was only fifteen minutes before Malcolm arrived with Eva. They immediately gravitated to Brigit, Deirdre, and Teague – Liam and Kieran had declined assistance from the younger three. Jenny, Tosh, and Ianto were lurking in the background. Jack was pretty sure they wanted to help, but were at a loss as to how.

Or, he thought, in Ianto's case, feeling guiltily jealous. They've got each other to lean on. He still feels alone, I'm sure. Jack pushed aside the thought and picked up his desk phone to make one more call.

When he was done, he headed downstairs. Owen stepped over when he beckoned to him. "Can O'Sullivan be left for the night?"

Owen nodded. "Yeah," he said. "He should actually be waking up sometime late tomorrow. Why?"

"'Cause I think we all need a night off. I already checked Tosh's rift program and it seems like it should be another quiet night."

Owen frowned and shook his head. "Go if you want to, but I think I'll stay. Quietly double-check everything," he kept his voice pitched for Jack's ears alone and jerked his chin towards where Kieran and Liam were lifting the last casket to take to the morgue. "Also need to clean up in the med-bay. Get things situated…"

"If you're sure…?"

Owen nodded. "Yeah, Jack. I'm sure. Besides, you know I'm not a real friendly drunk. Last thing any of them needs is me picking a fight."

Jack decided that Owen had a point. "Call me if there's any rift activity."

At approximately nine-thirty that night, Jack herded 'his' people towards his personal favorite drinking establishment. He'd rented their 'party room' and opened a tab with the owner to cover all drinks for the night. It was the least he could do.

16 November, 2006
06:25

Owen's back did not appreciate having spent the night on the Hub's sofa, but a mild muscle-relaxant managed to unkink most of the knots. He checked on O'Sullivan – the man was still improving, and Owen mentally adjusted his projected wake-up to mid-afternoon at the latest – then busied himself gathering bottles of water and single-dose packets of Panadol. He left one of each at everyone's workstations, then headed up to Jack's office.

Jack was already awake. He was obsessively cleaning the coral he kept on his desk, using a fine-bristled paintbrush. "Jack," Owen said, his tone somewhere between 'what are you doing' and 'have you lost what little mind you've got left'.

Jack looked up. "Morning, Owen. Sleep well?"

"Not particularly," Owen replied. "We really need a new couch."

The captain let out a small chuckle. "Could be," he agreed. "Need anything in particular?"

Owen offered him the paracetamol and water. Jack took the water, but declined the painkiller. "No need. Only had the one drink all night."

"Surprising," Owen commented.

"Not really," Jack said, opening the bottle of water and taking a swallow. He then trickled a tiny amount into the gravel surrounding his coral. "I get drunk and I tend to babble. Somewhat of a security risk, that. So I don't drink much, particularly not in public."

"Suppose I can see the sense in that," Owen allowed. "But I can't see the sense in watering a piece of decorative coral. What the hell are you doing?"

"It's not really coral, Owen," Jack replied, focusing on using the paintbrush to remove microscopic flecks of dust from its porous surface. "Real coral needs a saltwater aquarium to live in."

"That was kind of my point, Jack," Owen said. "Why water a decoration?"

"She needs it, is why," Jack explained.

"'She'?" Even a deaf man could have heard Owen's skepticism.

Jack sat the paintbrush down and beckoned Owen closer. "Come here." Owen moved to the side of Jack's desk. Jack took his wrist and guided his hand to the coral's base. "Close your eyes and open your mind," he said.

Owen followed Jack's instructions, feeling marginally like an idiot, until his hand came into contact with the oh-so-very-not-a-chunk-of-coral. It wasn't sandpapery like the dried-out coral he'd seen in an aquarium gift shop years before. It was warm – warmer than being under a full-spectrum bulb could account for – and slightly moist and felt smooth, despite how it looked. There was a faint vibration coming from it, too.

"Can you hear her?" Jack asked, whispering.

Owen started to shake his head, but halted mid-motion. Just on the very edge of audibility, he could hear… something. Melodious and complex and jarring and right but not right with overtones of eternity punctuated by tinkling bells of now. "Is… Is that singing?" he asked, opening his eyes.

"Yeah," Jack replied, grinning. "She sings."

Owen reluctantly pulled his hand away. "Okay," he said. "So. Not coral."

"Nope," Jack agreed, picking up the paintbrush and returning to his task.

"Gonna tell me what she is, then?"

"Nope," Jack repeated, still grinning.

Owen rubbed his palm against his jeans and tried to shake off the strangeness. He wasn't too successful, but he'd also been working for Torchwood long enough to know that it would fade in time.

"Did you need something else?" Jack asked, after Owen failed to leave.

Dragging his gaze from the not-coral to Jack's face, he shook his head and forcibly refocused himself. Now's as good a time as any. The others won't be in until later, I'm sure. "Yeah," he said. "Tosh was digging in the archives a couple of days ago and asked me to check if she was hallucinating."

Jack looked up from the coral. "Why?"

"'Cause she found a picture she couldn't believe. Had me and Ianto both verify she actually was seeing what she thought she was."

"Oh?"

Owen rolled his eyes. "Don't do that."

"What?"

"Act like you have no idea what she might've seen, Jack."

Jack shrugged, "But I don't know what she saw, now do I?"

"Don't be an ass. It was a photograph, from 1907. You were in the background."

"Couldn't have been me," Jack tried to argue. "I mean – just how old do I look?"

Owen glared at his boss. "That's the reason we knew it was you, Jack. You look exactly the same now as in that photograph."

"Must've been misfiled then," Jack said.

It was a noble effort, plausible, Owen had to give him that. But ultimately untrue. "Bullshit. There's photos of you scattered through most of the files in the archives, Jack, with mentions of you going all the way back to 1899. Don't insult my intelligence." Jack just smirked at him. "Damn it, Jack – if I can handle a fucking brain-eating alien parasite killing Katie, if I can handle Jenny being an entirely different fucking species from the fucking future, don't you think I can handle whatever secret it is you've got floating around?"

Jack sat the paintbrush down again. "And just what do you think my 'secret'," he used finger-quotes around the word, "actually is?"

Owen shrugged. "Well, Tosh thinks you're from the future, like Jenny, with some sort of delayed aging. My vote is for alien." Jack laughed. More than just laughed – he all but roared with mirth. Owen sighed. "Fine," he said. "No need to press it, Jack. Just tell me where we're wrong."

"Oh, where do I begin? So close, and yet so very far from the truth." Jack said, scrubbing a hand across his face.

"Where'd we get it wrong?" Owen repeated, his tone clearly telling Jack that he wasn't going to let this go, and it was either come clean now, or Owen would wind up bringing it up in front of everyone. Jack was uniquely acquainted with that particular tone.

"First of all, I'm human… well, mostly."

"What does that even mean, 'mostly'?"

"It means, Owen, that my kep'kainu was Cassavalian." Seeing Owen's confusion, Jack took pity on him and explained, "My great-grandfather, Owen. Dad's mom's dad, to be precise." Jack leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up onto the corner. "You know, I would have bet money that this particular conversation wouldn't have happened had Jenny not shown."

Owen shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. You're not going to sidetrack me, not this time, Harkness. So, if your great-grandpa wasn't human, that'd mean you're part alien. That why you've apparently been around for the last hundred-plus years?"

Jack's smile faded. "No. Cassavalians are actually shorter-lived than humans. They tend to die of old age between thirty and forty years old, unless they take some drastic measures – convert bits of themselves to machine-based life."

"Go on," Owen urged.

"A bit you all managed to get right is that I'm from the future," Jack admitted. "A millennium before Jenny's time. The fifty-first century."

"Did you crash through the rift, too?"

Jack shook his head. "No. A very long time ago, I was a Time Agent. This," he indicated his wrist-strap, "was how I bounced from one time/place to another. I wound up stuck in the year two-hundred-one-hundred – that's a hundred and ninety-eight thousand years from now – and entered the coordinates for London, 2004, hoping to catch up with a friend of mine. It malfunctioned and I wound up here, in Cardiff, in 1869. Damn thing hasn't worked properly since."

"If that's true, and you really are, well, mostly human, then why haven't you died?"

"I have," Jack said, his voice flat.

"Bullshit."

"Nope," Jack replied, popping the P. "I just don't stay that way for long. Don't ask me how or why, but ever since I got here, I can't stay dead and I age so slowly that most people can't notice it."

Owen was tempted to call 'bullshit' again, but he knew Jack and had played poker often enough with the man to be familiar with his tells. He's not lying. Owen felt a little light-headed. "I suppose that explains why, regardless of the injury, you never see me about it."

Jack shrugged. "Less than fatal injuries usually heal within six hours or so. Faster, if I concentrate on it."

"And you don't stay dead. What does that even mean?" Owen asked, but he wasn't altogether certain he really wanted to know.

"Exactly what it sounds like, Owen," Jack replied, suddenly sounding weary. "I've died. More times than I can count, actually. I've been shot, strangled, hanged, starved, frozen, dismembered, stabbed, drowned, electrocuted –"

"Ianto's girlfriend," Owen muttered, closing his eyes. "Knew there was something fishy about that."

Jack sighed and removed his feet from his desk. Sitting properly, he calmly met Owen's eyes as they slowly opened. "This gonna be a problem?"

Owen's first impulse was to say 'no', but he took a moment to think about it. Eventually, he shook his head. "I don't think so, but… Gimme time, yeah?"

"Sure," Jack replied, picking up the paintbrush once more and returning to his not-coral.

Owen took that as his cue to leave.

A/N2: Do I have to note that I also don't own 'The Parting Glass'? Thought not – the version I quoted herein belongs to The Wailin' Jennys, but there are numerous versions out there for your listening pleasure. Be warned, however – I've yet to hear a version of it that doesn't invoke melancholia in its listeners.

And for us Americans, 'Panadol' is an overseas version of 'Tylenol', just so y'all know, of course.

Please lemme know what y'all think. Thanks in advance.