Ianto closed the Hub and hummed softly as he made his way to Jack's shop, coffees in hand. He just hoped he'd left his cellphone at Jack's and not lost it somewhere else. He grinned as Jack held the door open for him, and kissed him before pouncing on the coffee.

'Hello Ianto.'

'Jack.' He kissed Jack back before handing Carys her coffee.

'Brilliant, thanks for this.' She grinned as she sipped her coffee and sighed happily, disappearing back into the office.

Jack shook his head. 'I've only ever met one other person who seemed to like paperwork as much as that girl.'

Ianto laughed softly. 'Impossible, oh, have you seen my phone?'

'When did you last have it?'

'I thought I had it this morning when I left, but I don't remember.'

'It's probably in the flat upstairs. Doors unlocked if you need to go up, I can help you look if you like...' Jack winked suggestively as Ianto rolled his eyes.

'I doubt I'd get much done if you helped, I might just go up and have a look for it myself.'

'Oh, you may as well take the dry cleaning up with you, I didn't get time to take it upstairs, we've had a busy afternoon.'

'More of the Cardiff Grannies?'

'I swear, Clive was a popular man.'

Ianto just laughed softly as he headed to the back of the shop and the door to the stairs, scooping the dry cleaning up along the way. He let himself into the flat and hung the shirts up before looking for his phone, he found it on the floor by the bed. He also saw a book he hadn't noticed before. Pulling it out he saw it was a diary and put it on the table beside Jack's side of the bed. It must have over balanced as it fell to the floor and a photo fell out. He picked it up and smiled, it was him and Jack wearing tuxedos. Jack must have gotten it from the paper.

He turned the photo over and frowned. The date written on the back was impossible, it hadn't happened yet. He opened the diary and his frown deepened as he read the neat writing that looked so much like his own. He flicked though pages and felt a growing sense of dread pooling in the pit of his stomach. There had to be an explanation for this, it wasn't possible. It must be a joke. As he read the words written in the pages of the diary he felt his heart breaking.

Jack checked his watch, he wondered where Ianto was, he must have found his phone by now. He checked Carys was alright by herself and headed up to the flat. He found Ianto sitting on the end of the bed reading the diary and he felt the world drop away from under his feet again. He hadn't been able to let the diary go and he never meant Ianto to find it. 'You ah, found your phone then.'

'Among other things.' Ianto looked up from the pages before him. 'And this?' Indicating the diary. 'What the fuck is this Jack?'

'It's a diary.'

'Whose diary? I mean it's my handwriting but it's impossible, it isn't my life written in these pages. I don't even keep a diary. But if I was going to keep one, some of this is what I'd have written.'

Jack closed his eyes. 'Ah.'

'Ah? What's going on?'

Jack took a deep breath and considered what he was going to say, he'd never wanted to have this conversation with Ianto and because he couldn't let go of the diary he was now having to tell the young man the impossible. And it was tearing a hole in his soul. 'I lost someone ten years ago, that someone, was. You.' He started speaking faster. 'It wasn't you, you obviously, but it was you in another reality, one where you did go to London and we ended up working together and you must think I'm insane.'

'I'm not sure what I think.'

Jack sighed, Ianto was still here, that was a good sign. They'd get though this, it would be fine. He didn't feel fine. 'There are multiple realities.'

Ianto looked at Jack expectantly, wondering if there was an explanation for this that he could believe. His first instinct was Jack had set this all up and was psychotically stalking him for whatever fucked up reason he had to justify this. He'd questioned how determined Jack had been when he'd said from the beginning that he was straight but the man had chased him anyway. But this explanation was a bit unbelievable so far and Jack looked like he was in genuine pain. 'Why do I get the feeling that your multiple realities is just the tip of the ice berg. Not that I don't think you're completely insane and in need of some serious medicating.'

Jack felt like his whole body was shaking and on fire as he leaned against the wall just to stay on his feet. Words he hadn't ever wanted to say were being torn from his soul. 'I.' He stopped. Where did he even start? 'I need a drink.' He walked out into the sitting room and poured a whiskey, he was expecting to see Undine but she wasn't there. Did she not know this was going to happen, or was it one of the things the universal mafia or whoever it was she worked for had forbidden her to mention.

He moved to the sofa and poured a glass of whiskey for Ianto and splashed a bit more into his as he watched Ianto move hesitantly across the room and sit on the bright orange covered little arm chair at the end of the coffee table. Jack pushed him a glass of whiskey and sighed as he found his own was now empty. He hadn't even tasted the soft caramel flavours, if he was going to drink it like this he should have started with the cheep stuff.

'I was the head of an organisation in Cardiff called Torchwood. In the reality I came from.'

'Right, so you can travel between realities, are you going to tell me time travel exists too?' Ianto watched Jack's face and shook his head. 'I don't believe it.'

'I can't prove it to you but yes, time travel does exist. I wasn't born on earth either.' He sighed as he sipped his whiskey. 'I don't know what I can tell you that you will believe. I don't even believe half of it myself and I've lived it, am living it. I lost everything.'

'Because I died?' He pulled the letter out. Reading it, in his own handwriting had broken his heart.

Jack nodded. 'You died in my arms and.' He felt tears welling up and a lump in his throat as it felt like he was swallowing cotton. 'You died and I was destroyed.' His voice a whisper as it broke. He knew he wasn't an attractive crier, some people could have tears running down their cheeks and look regal, sexy. He however wasn't that person as he dragged the back of his hand over his eyes. He tried to distance himself from the pain and the memories. Shared laughter and bitter arguments echoed in his memories and flashes of the Ianto he had known flew across his awareness.

'I didn't die.'

'You didn't, but the you that was you in my reality did. There are multiple realities -.'

'You said that already.'

'Sorry, I never thought I'd have to explain this, but I couldn't, I couldn't.'

Ianto put the diary on the table and sipped his whiskey. He hadn't read the entire thing, skimmed over passages and felt like he was intruding in his own mind. Jack clearly believed what he was saying but it couldn't be true.

'I don't really know how I ended up here, twelve years in my past in your reality. But I am. Some, one or thing, gave me a second chance at happiness, at life. And I took it.'

'By seducing me?'

Jack gave a bitter laugh. 'Because you totally resisted falling into my bed.' He shook his head. 'I'm sorry, I wish I knew what I was saying. It, the feeling of holding you as you died, I know it isn't you but it was you but not you and I know it does my head in and I'm the one who lived it.'

'You need to back up a bit Jack, this, it's impossible for me to believe.'

'See why I never wanted to have this conversation.' He took a deep breath and tried to organise his thoughts. 'Torchwood is an organisation that was set up by Queen Victoria to deal with, how did she put it, phantasamagoia.'

'Queen Victoria?'

'She didn't say that to me, it was Alice, no, Emily, it was definitely Emily.'

'The two women from the painting, that was painted in the 1800's? You expect me to believe that?'

Jack sighed softly. 'Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how to work that into this whole wonderful conversation. I wasn't exactly born here.'

'In Cardiff? I sort of worked that one out for myself. I might not have gone to uni but I'm not an idiot, I speak several languages.'

'I know, you used to speak French with one of your gran's neighbours, Italian, and the Jewish man who taught you the piano taught you German.'

'Now how the fuck do you know that!' Ianto leapt to his feet and stalked around the room. He shook his head. 'You can't know that.'

'But I do. I also know your father was a bit of a wanker and life at home wasn't great for you.' He watched Ianto's eyes grow dark. 'I could tell you which bones the man broke, I've seen the x-rays. Not yours of course, but my Ianto's.' He ran a hand through his hair. 'This is so fucked up.'

'Really?' Ianto sat down and finished the whiskey in his glass before topping it up again. 'Do continue with your impossible story.'

'You want impossible, I was born in the fifty first century and worked as a time agent, I met a time lord and travelled with him for a while. Until a series of events occurred where I grew a conscience and was made immortal and ended up stranded in Cardiff in the past.'

'And I'm supposed to believe this? What mental hospital did you escape from?'

'Oh I assure you, this is very real. The diary mentions it more than once.'

'I sort of skipped a few pages.'

'Maybe you should read it.'

'I'm not sure I want to.'

Jack nodded as he topped his glass and Ianto's up. 'He left it to me, on purpose. Tosh had said to me once, that she hoped I found out one day, what it had been like for him when I was away. Well I did.'

'Away?'

'It's a long story.'

'Really?'

'I thought the Doctor, the time lord, could tell me what had happened to me, why I couldn't die, well, I can die, but I don't stay dead. I come back, and I'm a bit older than I look. I thought he could fix me. No one can fix me. I left to get answers and was gone longer than I hoped I would be. It was, hard, on Ianto.'

'I was brought back from death and I died again.' Ianto quoted a line from the diary that had particularly effected him.

'Yeah, I was a bit of an arse at times. I couldn't deal with people knowing about us, I fucked up so many times.'

Ianto filed that away to examine later, this was all just so unreal.

'I had been alone so long I didn't know how to be, with, someone any more. So I made mistakes. My biggest mistake was never telling him how much I loved him.'

'So you magicked yourself into my reality and decided to seduce me.'

'It wasn't quite like that. I didn't know I could come here, I was brought here, I don't really understand it all myself.'

'So how did, he, die?'

'It was my fault.' Jack burst into tears. His head in his hands as he curled in on himself. He felt a hand on his shoulder and smelt Undine's perfume.

She sat next to Jack and pulled him into her arms.

Ianto jumped back and nearly dropped his glass of whiskey. 'Who the fuck are you? And where did you come from?' He didn't usually swear like this, this was all getting to be too much.

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. 'I can't answer that. You have enough to process without me adding that to the mix. I'm the one who brought him here. From his reality. He was broken and dangerous. You have no idea of what he is capable of.'

'Is that supposed to make me feel better about this? If what the two of you are saying is true, he's here with the sole purpose of seducing me because I'm his dead lover. How am I supposed to feel about that?' Ianto started pacing around the room. 'Oh, he was a bit of an arse who never said I love you, so you bring him here to make up for it, with me. If he can travel in time why didn't you just take him back and save this other Ianto? Why fuck up my world?'

'Time travel has rules Ianto, he couldn't go back into his past, it would have fractured the time line and disrupted everything.'

'So it's alright to disrupt my life is it?'

'What life? You were lonely and afraid you couldn't fall in love. You were just as broken as this man until I brought him here.' She stared at Ianto and never blinked once until he sat down and sighed.

'You can't know that.'

'Right now I know everything. And I know the two of you can work this through.'

'Do we work it out because we would have any way or because you tell us we can so we do to prove you right.'

'That's a tautology and you know it.'

'I don't know anything right now. You appear out of nowhere -.'

She cut him off. 'I don't exist independent of your reality, I had to come from some where, not no where.'

'You are a bit of a smart arse, you know that don't you.'

'Is that a rhetorical question?' She rolled her eyes. 'I'm not here for you, I'm here because he needed to be here so he didn't destroy the universe. Happy now?'

'Not really. Between the two of you and this damn diary, I'm being expected to believe that this man, who right now looks like he needs some serious psychiatric help, is here because I'm the alternate version of his dead lover. And don't interrupt me young lady.' Ianto warned. 'You brought him here because you think we are both so broken I wont mind that I'm his dead lover in another reality and here we can live happily ever after.'

'And he didn't think you would get it.'

'You are a very cynical young woman.'

She pointed at Jack who was sitting on the sofa with a blank look in his eyes as he rocked himself back and forward. His mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out as tears fell down his face. 'Look at him you moron, he's in pain.' She raked her hand though her hair and sighed softly as she tried to comfort Jack. 'He's an ex time agent, he used to be the head of a secret organisation called Torchwood, he worked with Tosh and Owen. And I'm breaking so many rules in telling you this but he's clearly in no fit state to do it.'

'Tosh and Owen?'

'They don't really just do research you moron. They chase aliens and retrieve alien technology and deal with the, god how does Andy put it, yeah, the spooky do stuff.'

'Andy?'

'He wasn't working for Torchwood in Jack's reality, that was a different police officer they recruited. Andy is a much better fit and causes less problems.'

'I've gone insane.'

'Well you can join the club then sunshine.'

'Snappy wee thing aren't you.'

She rose to her full height and looked at Ianto as she rolled her eyes. 'You have no idea.' She hissed. She hated seeing Jack like this. She just hoped they could bring him back.