Five months earlier:

A little sweaty, Jack ran naked down to the stream for a quick bath. The house is exactly the same as Sean and he had left it that morning. Except now Ianto was there and it smelled like their lovemaking. Jack made his excuses to Ianto after the young Welshman returned to his state of death.

Jack thought Ianto was done, that it would be the last time he would see him, and like Eugene, who Jack was convinced didn't leave the world for darkness, faded as he thought Ianto would.

Ianto stood in front of him six hours and ten minutes later. Jack tilted his head at the man.

"Ianto shouldn't you be saying good bye or something? I mean you're still there." Slowly Jack walked over to his once lover and tentatively reached for his face. Smiling at the outcome he said. "Transparent, and I'm going to be the only one to see you. Nice. Let me guess, Sean?"

"Maybe he is more aware of you than you think. I would imagine that someone like him would feel what you are going to do. So I think I figured out what you are going to do as well. Oh, he did give me the choice. "

In the past, Jack recalled that Ianto Jones knew everything, and what he didn't know he was willing to learn. This could be an advantage. Ghost Reconnaissance was not a bad business proposition. Ianto was still helping Jack, even in his current state. But what was he on about with Sean?

"Level with me for a second here. I don't want any puzzles from you; I'm too tired to figure them out right now. Sean gave you a choice, he told you that it would be for 6 hours and after that you could stay or go. But the cost of staying was his life; obviously he meant that you could live again. But you didn't take him up on it, because that isn't who you are." Jack smirk at the look in Ianto's wide eyes.

"I would assume from my talks with him that Sean wouldn't have let me have that choice if he knew I would allow him to die. So as a reward, he has decided to let me stay, I would think to help you. But I'm still unsure how he knew that you would need that help."

Jack started to laugh and he was laughing so hard, that he started to cough. "Because I told him that I work better alone, that I could get more done if I didn't have to worry about others. That was days ago, one night after we… well you know. Anyway he asked me if I preferred to do things by myself. I told him that if I was afraid that something was going to happened to him that yes I would rather go it alone and hope he would be okay with it. He was fishing for something. He might have seen something or felt something that made him think that I would go on by myself soon." Jack stopped trying to remember exactly what it was that Sean saw in him that gave so much away. It was making his head hurt trying to understand Sean's abilities.

"He seems to be aware of a lot of things Jack. I'm sure he knows that you would never want him in harm's reach again and at the mercy of those malcontents. He might just have put the pieces together himself. And knowing that, decided since we were partners of a fashion in the past that you would need me. For he is the one keeping me here. After all, he summoned Liam, Elaine and myself to the field. I was also sent to do some digging but I don't know who did that. That was not Sean."

The statement hung in the air between the two men.

He started to dress. Jack watched and felt a stir in his groin. "Damn, I hate you Ianto, you are too beautiful."

"Jack, we are never to be together again. I'm sure if you can see that, but I have an ending, so let's move on. Let's get back to Sean." He winked at his Captain as he buttoned his shirt.

"Can't a guy look at his dead lover and get excited anymore? You act like it is something new." The pillow Ianto threw at Jack was from this patch of time and it did hit him in the face. "Okay, I get it. So you can touch things just not be touched. Sean is starting to really confuse me. Anyway, that is where I need you for one more mission. Feeling a bit Bondish, Mr. Jones?"

The eye roll was a trademark of the young Welshman. He never would refuse Jack. "More like Ianto Jones: Ghost Detective. Well it is a step above a wedding fairy, it has some perks, and I get to work with you a little longer. Sure, why not go slipping unseen in the places where others can't go? Now I'm more like a spy. I would be honored." Smiling he buckled his belt as Jack got up to leave.

"Give me a moment by myself, okay Yan?"

"Of course." Jack didn't see the smile fade as he left the house. If he still could, Ianto thought, he would cry. But dead things don't have tears, at least not this one. The time for tears already past.
Liam cried like a baby when he thought Sean was dying and he couldn't help him. Ianto had shed so much in his life that he refused to let death find him weeping.

As he left the house Jack was trying to gather together what he knew about Sean. It was these thoughts that Jack focused on. The mere idea that Sean would have given his life for him to be with Ianto had been upsetting to him. Sean thought so less of his value in this world. Yet Jack has seen nothing short of miracles that happened when the young man was around. The things he could do were so far above anything that he had seen or known about.

Ianto the bird landed near the stream on a log and chirped at Jack, making him look at the bird. "Really, do you think even the Doctor could understand Sean? He barely understands me."

Ianto the bird chirped again and scrunched his eyes at Jack.

"Yes I'm going and I know it will hurt him if I don't explain it to him. I'd rather he was safe my friend, do you understand? I seem to be spending a lot of time talking to things that don't talk back. But you have to hear me out on this." He splashed the water over the lather on his body and then shivered realizing he was cold. "I'm in love with Sean, and Ianto the Welshman was once my lover, but he like me realized that everything has its time. Well except me. I'm apparently timeless. Sean gets that, he asks for nothing, for that I will give him all of it. So you can keep that thought safe for me, my friend, for when I come back. Sean can have his own life. One where no one will hurt him ever again." Jack shook the water out of his hair and his body, and naked he stood ready to begin the next phase.

"As you once loved me?" The overwhelming smell of honeysuckle accompanied by a female voice made Jack whip his head around.

"Elaine?" Jack could do nothing but stare at his long dead wife. "You were the only one who had that title." He absentmindedly said out loud.

"Excuse me? Oh, the marriage. I was surprised to learn that from Ianto. Oh, and the fact that you also liked men. I never would have imagined you were so… flexible." She giggled the musical sound that Jack could only remember in troubled dreams.

"Elaine, what are you doing here?" She frowned. "Wait, not that I'm not happy to see you, it is just that I didn't think that I would be able to ever see you again." He checked her up and down. She was still beautiful. Red flowing hair swirled around her head like a strawberry halo, crowned with the evening moonlight. Jack remembered his evenings out here with his wife. And like any man, he reacted to the stirring thoughts.

"Jack, now is not the time to be 'standing at attention!' You always had the worst timing." She giggled.

"What? My timing was always impeccable! Always. Well, there was that time with your father in the garden at your house. I think he was more impressed that I stood still that long, while The Vicar and his wife passed by the fountain. If I remember correctly, I did block the view with the head of the dolphin." His smile was reminiscent as he thought of all the times he had spent with his Elaine. They were very wild at the beginning of their courtship.

"We were just lucky that the Vicar was half blind and his wife had an addled mind."

"You were lucky I was in the middle of act two of that play that day, Elaine. And the Vicar was deaf as well. You were giggling up a storm. So was your father. Those were great times, my love. What went wrong?" He closed his eyes as the pain washed over him. All the good times wiped away by the memory of her lying there, leaving this world all alone with no one to say goodbye to.

"You are who you are, my love. Nothing can change that, but I see that Sean can, and Ianto, he is a charmer. You have to understand Jack, we were part of it, and so is Sean. Part of the journey that is your life and the part with me is finished along with that of Ianto." As Elaine walked towards Jack, she made the gesture to caress his cheek.

Closing his eyes, he felt the ghostly touch of his wife. He let his mind remember the feelings they had for each other and the grace of this woman who shared in his passion for life.

His eyes opened to hers, warm and loving as she stood before him. He was aware that she needed to tell him something. That was why she was here before him.

"It rains when he's sad now, Jack. His fear is that he will lose you. He seems strong, but Sean will do things against his own feelings all the time. He learned from Liam to protect the things they love. From what I gather he believes that adage that if you love something that you have to let it go."

Capturing his blue eyes, she held his gaze.

"Then I should go back to him. Tell me, will he understand why I have to go, that it is better he stays safe, here and gets well?"

"He will in time, and though it seems he trust you to come back, he still has enough human weakness to believe otherwise. In the end it will be up to you how much you will tell him." She smiled remembering how hard it was for Jack to tell the whole truth. Who he was made sure of that, an immortal man could never tell others the full truth.

"When did you become so insightful?" He wished he could kiss her. In his state he walked to a large rock by the side of the water and sat down. He didn't need her looking down at his crotch again.

"I had a long time to things about things. Jack, Sean will understand. I think him going through a little pain right now will strengthen your relationship. Ianto seems to think Sean won't react to your leaving. But he will feel the pain. It is best you just go. I know that it seems horrid, but the poor dear needs time to grow. You can't help him there". She heard a man's laugh coming towards the pasture. "I should go, I have someone waiting."

"I know you're here Elaine, come give Jack his present." Jack heard his voice say.

"Wait, you are with me? How is that possible?" He didn't need her to answer, Sean was responsible and he must have given her a present as well. "Sean blessed you with another chance with me. He is not deserving of me. He is so far above me." Jack looked at the ground as the thoughts spread like cancer through his mind.

"Oh I doubt that my love, Sean and you are made for each other." With that note, she vanished and the laughter paired and faded into the sounds of crickets.

Jack reflected on the evening. He was given more than anyone ever got. With more determination than ever, he swore he would protect his Angel so no one ever hurt him again. Letting Sean heal and grow in his abilities was the best gift Jack could think of giving Sean.

Jack would go after the psychopaths that hurt Sean. Paul Tabor was at the head of that list.

He pushed himself off the rock and went back to Ianto. It was time to get moving. Right now he didn't need self-pity; he needed to be functional.

Ianto was in the kitchen looking at the stove where the coffee pot was.

"One more cup would have been nice! Jack you look like you've seen a ghost. Oh wait, you are looking at one now." Jack walked past him and headed to the living room to redress himself. He was silent as he put on his socks and underwear while Ianto watched in the doorway.

"Since when do you wear underwear?" Ianto was trying to break the ice, but Jack didn't pay any attention to it.

Feeling rejected or jilted, Ianto looked at Jack. He seemed to be thinking about things and was barely aware that Ianto was there. Ianto grew concerned as if he had missed something.

"Ianto, I feel guilty. I feel like crap about it, but I still love you and would do this all again. All of it, I would do everything that we shared and had all over again. But now I know that I love Sean. I don't know what to do with this." He pulled the pair of blue denim jeans on and went for a black tee shirt.

"You're not going to mess it up. You're going to make it so you can have a life, one where there isn't too much Torchwood interference. You are going to give him a chance to do what he has to do. And he is going to give you the same. When it is all said and done, you will meet in the middle and just love each other, and nothing to interfere with it. At least that is my dream for you."

He smiled warmly at his Captain as he watched him slip the leather jacket on.

"You don't were the greatcoat anymore?" Ianto moved his head side-to-side trying to figure out who the oddly dressed man was in front of him.

"No, haven't since I left six months after you died. I just couldn't be that Jack anymore. I gave it to the captain of the ship I hitched a lift from. He had to cut out an extra arm hole but it looked good on him."

"Oh." Ianto sounded hurt and looked worse.

"Ianto, that was the old me. This is the new me. I'm no longer that man that you love. I could never be him again. He died that day with you. But I went on living, what was left of me. Sean brought me back to life; otherwise I would have been so lost. Walking through time without seeing the good that is still out there. He pulled me back here and gave me a purpose again. That is why I retired the coat for good. It carried too many old memories of that past life. I'm sorry." Jack wished he could hold his old love one more time. Ianto was visibly upset; it was hard enough that he was dead. But to not be able to comfort this man that once gave Jack such forgiveness was truly painful.

"Jack, I understand." He sucked in his breath. "Well, we should get a move on if we are to get to Cardiff sometime soon. I'll wait in the car. Make sure you blow the candles out." He vanished and left Jack with his thoughts for a bit.

Jack checked the house and with a turn of the key, begged Sean to understand. He would be back, and when he did return it would be the beginning of the rest of their lives together.

March 7th 2011:

I've been finding out all these things that Liam did against the Project. He somehow improved on Sean, not the way we wanted improvement but the way he thought best for that horrid boy. Sean has been nothing but trouble since Liam fell in love with him. We should have pulled Liam from the experiment a long time ago. I mean before Sean was able to manipulate his heart. Liam should have loved me, but that is not why I'm mad.

The Creature suggested we bring Sean back into the lab. That we could fix all that went wrong with him. I told him that it would be too much effort to wipe his mind again. There is no way that imp would cooperate with the program, he is too pure in soul to kill. Liam saw to that with his love. I was foolish; I should have killed the brat when I had the chance.

Why is it always Sean in the spotlight?

I had an idea; we started research on another child. She is a 4 year old that was an AIDS baby. Poor thing doesn't stand a chance. Her mom, though part of the breeding program, left the man we chose for her and ran off while pregnant and went back to her old ways. The heroin monkey was on her back. Nice, we didn't have to give the child any illness like we did Sean.

After her mom died, her father didn't know that she existed. No tears like from Peter as he watched his son die. The son we gave him through our breeding program.

Sean was perfectly health until I gave him Leukemia. A simple bone graph in a broken leg and there it is, our experiment begins.

Peter was a problem. Sean was weak because he knew love from one parent. The Creature loved Sean and we had to keep hurting it into telling us the processes of how to make Sean into the weapon we needed. It didn't want to hurt something it cared about and that it helped create.

The Creature made me, oh what a mistake that was; he really thought he was doing something good. He approached me. UNIT was going to fire me, too many Jack Harknesses in my life. I got into so much trouble because of him. I gave away UNIT secrets to Torchwood. Well, the others got just the same. And I got sex. And off course a lot of jail time.

So on assignment, I am badly hurt, I lay there dying, bleeding out and I see my life pass before my eyes. It is then an angel asked if I wanted to live.

"Yes." And it heals me and improves me. I stop aging. I am given a purpose.

It tells me its story. I think of who would buy such a creature and make me in charge of the mad plan I have in my brain. The highest bidder wins and I am given a key position.

UNIT thinks I'm dead. The creature became our prisoner and will die in the grave we choose for it.

Sean is still with us, we take him out and make him do things against his nature and then wipe his mind. I like the fact that Sean always will think he killed Liam.

I killed Liam; I choked the life out of him with a thought. He begged up until the end for Sean's life. God, if just once he had asked for me to love him again, I would have let the brat off easy.

Now I just sit and wait until the time when the poison I feed him in the form of mood elevating drugs finish the job that a quick thought otherwise would have done.

Besides, the project is far from complete, and until the girl goes on line, Sean is allowed to live.

Still, that doesn't mean I can't fuck with him!

Paul Tabor
Head supervisor
The Project

Alice closed the sickening log she found in the system, from one of the many Project's abandoned facilities and began to download it onto the portable hard drive. It was one of several dead ends that her Dad seemed to be leading them on. Elizabeth Knowlens was no help. Of course, the fact that Jack was trying to beat the truth out of her only made the rest of the team cautious of his mental state.

It was also like they were being led to a certain location. She was getting those instincts her mother taught her to work out. The hairs on the back of her neck were sticking up. And she was feeling on edge again. It was like the same feeling she got with Steven during the 456. A sinking sensation that something was not quite as it seemed.

She watched her Dad as Steve slipped through her thoughts. Jack stopped for a moment and shared a look with his daughter. As if he knew she was still in some pain from Steven's loss, Jack nodded and went back to ripping apart another panel looking for something that would lead them to the truth.

Without thinking, he returned to the conversation he was having with what Gwen was calling his invisible friend. She didn't want think that her Dad was going insane. Alice was reminded of the movie "Harvey the invisible rabbit." But if an immortal goes insane, where do you lock him up?

The thought of a cryogenic unit made Alice shiver. That was a fate she would not want for anyone mad or sane. As much as her mother would have enjoyed the entertaining thought of Jack Harkness' balls finally frozen along with the rest of him, she would never have enjoyed it really happening. Nor would Alice. With everything going on and everything at had happened, she was still his little girl and he was her Dad. Nothing would change that. She still loved him. As much as she still loved Steven and her mom, those were her truths. She would learn to live with that. So if he were mad, she would learn to accept it and help him until the day she couldn't.

'If only Steven really knew whom Jack really was to him. Would life have been better for us? I was wrong to take that way from both of them. Instead of creating a family, I made them both lonely.' The thought brought the image of Steven's sad face back to her when he waited for Jack at the window. She never had the heart to tell him when Uncle Jack wasn't going to show up. Maybe it would have been easier if Steven had known the truth.

What mattered now was getting past the mess that became her life and making a difference for all the Stevens out there, and to make sure it never happened again to a parent, the loss of a child in such away.

Jack raced past her again talking to his imaginary friend.

"Ianto, what do you want me to do?"

"Well, you could stop talking and I could read your thoughts. That way they won't keep looking at you as if you were insane." Ianto scanned the room as the others diverted their eyes away from Jack's ramblings.

"Did he just say Ianto?" Mickey asked Gwen. She nodded and looked at the scanning device he was holding to check his data. "Oh great, he is mad!" Gwen slapped him a warning with a glance not to draw attention to him and let Jack do whatever it was he was doing.

Jack blinked at Ianto and then smiled. "So, you can read my thoughts? Then you must know what I am thinking!" He smirked at the pink Welshman that stood before him.

"No I can't read you bloody thoughts, Jack! I used to wish I could." Ianto looked at his Captain for a brief moment. Then he looked at Alice. "Then we never would have wasted so much time trying to figure out what we were to each other. We would have just spent more time being."

It was the tone that Ianto had that made Jack sigh. He heard its sound before, a little bit frustration, with regret and despair. Jack felt ashamed that he let things get so bad between them. "I'm sorry and I will be forever that we never talked more. I'm glad we are doing it now. At least I know where I stand for once."

He smiled in the direction of nothing. Alice, Mickey and Gwen watched with fascination. Really, it was like Jack was talking to the dead.

"Do we ask him about this Gwen, Alice?" Mickey looked at the two women.

Both shook their heads no. It was better to let sleeping ghost things stay sleeping.

"If he wants us to know, he will tell us." Gwen perplexed face showed just at what a loss she was for the correct meaning of action with the Captain's sudden personality change.

"You bitch; you want to know just as much as the rest of us!" Alice stressed to her. She bore the Harkness grin of 'I knew it' as Gwen blinked at Alice's bluntness.

The alarm sounded its "beep, beep, beep," alerting the group that it had located another place belonging and once occupied by the group known as The Project.

"Jack it seems to be an old Cryogenics lab. Not far from here, maybe under an hour's drive," Mickey said.

"With your driving, that would be ten minutes." Ianto quipped.

Jack grunted at him and went to the laptop that Mickey was turning towards him for a view.

"Oh and you still grunt like a man in heat, just to let you know." Ianto was snickering as Jack glared at him before giving Mickey his full attention.

Ianto came up next to Jack to look at the information presented for them to read. "I know that place. I'll go ahead and snoop around. This way you will know if it is safe." He was enjoying the moment as Jack shot him a concerned look; it was almost like the past, but for one difference.

"Be careful Ianto, don't be heroic!" He looked at the man that was once his lover and pouted.

Before he could correct himself, Ianto turned and sarcastically said with a trace of pain. "I'm already dead Jack. Remember? They can't hurt me anymore." And with that, Ianto faded away.

Jack held a hand up to the empty place, unaware that the others were trying hard to not saying anything. It was he who spoke first as they need to know the truth. Besides Ianto needed time to find out what he could, secure the area so no one got hurt. It was the least the ghost could do for the others.

But as Jack was spilling his guts out to the loved ones in front of him, he was really wishing for Sean to be there as well. If the truth must be told then let it all come out.

End Chapter 29 TBC