A/N:

Thank you for all the lovely reviews!! They are SO appreciated.

Before I can move forward w/ Jack and Ianto (and yes, Cade… although no, he's not going to get his head bit off by a galactic praying mantis, much as he deserves it), I have to finish off the Doctor story-arc (we'll be seeing him again, though, I think).

I've put notes on former Companions at the end of the chapter rather than here at the beginning. Read if you like, skip if you don't care… either way, I hope you enjoy.

PS: I will eventually write about Gwen's day with the Doctor... I just have to come up w/ something REALLY good for it and at the moment my mind is on Jack and Ianto.


As the cog door rolled back, admitting them into the Hub, Ianto stopped dead in his tracks, his brows furrowing in a deep frown. Standing there in the empty space between his desk and Gwen's was a big, blue, Mackenzie Trench-style police box, its paint cracked and weathered as if it had just come from some street corner (never mind that there weren't any police boxes in service any more.)

Next to him, Jack grinned broadly at the sight.

"I take it you know what this is about?" Ianto questioned.

Still grinning, Jack went up to the door and knocked. "Doctor? Are you in there?" he called.

Doctor…? Ianto wondered. The Doctor. His Doctor? This was his ship…? It had to be, nothing else made sense (not that this necessarily made sense.) Who would travel around time and space in a Mackenzie Trench police box? Or a ship that looked like one at any rate.

The door opened. "Jack," the Doctor answered the Captain's toothy grin with one of his own. "Just the man I wanted to see. Ianto, you don't mind if I borrow your boyfriend for a moment do you? Good," before Ianto could respond, the Doctor yanked Jack inside by the collar. The door slammed shut.

Panic took hold of Ianto for a long, silent, terrible moment.

But nothing seemed to be happening. Or at least the police box remained where it was, not that Ianto had any idea what he was actually expecting it to do.

…………………………………………………………..

"Yes?" Jack queried when the Time Lord finally let him go.

"We need to talk."

"All right." Jack draped his suit jacket over the rail and leant against it, watching the Doctor; he was definitely not happy about something. However, it was late and he had plans that involved Ianto and bed but not a lot of sleeping, which made Jack equally unhappy at the moment, seeing as he was in here and Ianto was out there. "What exactly have I done this time?"

"This time, I like that, very accurate," the Doctor muttered.

Jack shot him a look.

The Doctor returned it. "Johnny Chess," he said.

"What about him?"

"Playing dumb doesn't suit you, Captain."

Jack moved around to the other side of the railing, so it was no longer between he and the Doctor. He leant back against it, facing the other man. "I spent a long time waiting for you. When I got bored, I went looking instead of just sitting around, waiting. Loved the blond hair, by the way. The suit however… I mean, I know it was the nineteen eighties, but…" he let his voice trail off, grimacing, playfully.

The Doctor was clearly not amused. He glared balefully in the Captain's direction.

"I only saw that you once," he admitted. "Although it's a shame about paradoxes because as much as I hated the suit on you, it wouldn't have looked great crumpled up at the foot of my bed," he favoured the Time Lord with a lascivious grin.

The Doctor cleared his throat.

"Sorry. Where was I?"

"Tegan and Johnny's wedding," the other man's tone was flat.

"Right. Wedding. I swear weddings bring out both the best and the worst in people, don't you think?"

"Jaaaaaack."

"I was there. I saw you. I knew you were you… well, either that or Tegan had a really eccentric Uncle who walked around with celery pinned to his lapel. What was up with that anyway?"

"Get on with it, Harkness."

Jack realized he was pushing the Time Lord too far. Even the best of friendships had their limits and he supposed he could understand why the Doctor was a little upset with him, given the circumstances. He shoved his hands in his pockets and met the other's gaze. "Yes, I was there looking for you, but I was also there making sure Tegan Jovanka would be all right. I had no idea who her husband was until I met his parents."

"What do you mean, 'be all right'?" The Doctor wanted to know.

"Dalek invasion, maybe?"

"That was over."

"How about Torchwood, then?" Jack asked him pointedly.

"What?"

"Think about it, Doctor. Torchwood has been around since 1879. Don't you think that at least one or two of your former Companions have ended up on their radar?"

The Doctor became visibly pale. "I never thought about it."

Jack bit his tongue on reminding the Time Lord that he didn't seem to think about anything when he abandoned them. It wasn't just him, he'd heard Sarah Jane's story and even if he liked to think of her as the exception rather than the rule, Jack knew from experience what it felt like to be the Companion left behind. "Sarah Jane, Jo and Liz had UNIT…"

"Liz… Elizabeth Shaw…. And Jo… Grant…?" The Doctor blinked. "And Sarah Jane Smith? You know them? You've met…?"

"Actually it's Jo Cummings, now, but yes, I've met them."

"What happened to… whatever his name was…" he waved his hands almost dismissively of the young man Jo had run off with (a young man who, he realized, wouldn't really be young any more.)

"Married. Divorced. Re-married." Jack shrugged. "They say over fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, you know."

"So exactly how close have you gotten to my former Companions, Jack?"

He smiled, "Liz designed the tranq gun I used to subdue our Drollavan friend the other night. She came down and helped us out for a while after… we lost a couple of people a few months ago."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor told him in a genuinely sincere tone.

"Me too," Jack studied a spot on the wall behind the Doctor's head for a moment before returning his gaze to the Time Lord's face.

"So how well did you say you knew Liz?" he pressed the earlier question.

Jack flashed a wry half-grin. "She turned me down flat," he assured the other man. "Every time."

"Smart girl, Liz. I always knew she was brilliant. And she has great taste in men. She thought I was dashing," the Doctor postured.

Jack chuckled at him, "And Ianto thinks I'm vain.

"You are."

Jack humphed. "And before you ask, I only met Jo in passing," he added, before the Doctor grilled him further on the subject of former Companions.

"For you that's all it takes."

He just shook his head and continued, "What I was getting at is that they had UNIT, so Torchwood wasn't going to mess with them. Tegan didn't have that protection."

"But how did you know about her?"

Jack shrugged, "Torchwood did. I have no idea how they put it together… although I suppose the Dalek invasion might have had something to do with it. You know they never knew you didn't always look the same," Jack told him, then. "I never told them anything."

"You didn't even know."

"By the third time I'd seen you coming out of the TARDIS looking different than I remembered you, I'd figured it out, Doctor," Jack told him in a dry tone.

"Just how many times have you seen me?"

"Enough. Glad your fashion sense has improved… loved the scarf, though," he winked.

The Doctor gave him a long hard look. "Do you have any idea the kind of paradox you could have been caused if I'd seen you, even once, even just for a second, before we actually met?"

"Excuse me, former Time Agent, remember?" Jack responded in a sarcastic tone, pointing to his own chest. "I think I know just a little bit about temporal paradox."

"Forgive me if I don't have a lot of faith in your Time Agency, Jack."

"Yeah, well, me either. But the point is, I know how not to create a paradox and what can happen if you do. I was just looking for you. The right you. I wanted you to fix me."

"I am sorry about that," the Doctor told him in that same sincere tone he'd used a minute ago. "Some things just can't be undone."

"I didn't know that at the time. I just… I needed something to hang on to," Jack looked around the control room. He'd spent so many happy months here… and then it was all just gone. He'd been left behind and he didn't know why, what he'd done wrong or even why he was still alive. "Being able to talk to other people who'd been through what I'd been through… being able to help them… that gave me something to cling to when I started to doubt I'd ever see you again."

"You really helped, didn't you? Tegan…?"

"And Victoria."

"Victoria… ? Victoria Waterfield? But that was centuries ago!"

"Not for her."

"Wait… she was… she was barely nineteen years old when I left her…" the Doctor eyed him suspiciously.

"And I never touched her," he swore.

"Why not?"

"Because I knew you'd kill me."

The Doctor grinned, "Smart man."

Chuckling, Jack pushed himself off the banister. He came to stand next to the Doctor, but he didn't meet his gaze, he looked at the TARDIS console instead. "I told you I could be bigger on the inside than the outside, too." His tone was distant… thoughtful… as if he was lost in memory.

"You remember that?"

"It's one of the few things I remember from… before."

"Before? Before what?"

Jack ran his fingers gingerly, almost lovingly, along the smooth, warm control panel. She was as much the reason for his immortality as Rose was. "I remember snippets of conversations… feelings… hurt. Love. But sometimes I wonder just how much I lost."

"What happened?"

Jack turned and looked at him again, letting their gazes meet, wondering if the Time Lord saw anything there he hadn't seen before. "I'm about two thousand years older than I was the last time you saw me, Doctor."

"How?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

The Time Lord leant against the TARDIS console, his hands tucked into his pockets, and nodded.

……………………………………………

Ianto sat outside the police box waiting for what seemed like forever.

When he couldn't stand the wait any longer, he walked over to the coffee station and started a pot of Jack's industrial strength brew, hoping maybe the scent of it would draw the older man out of the box. That's when he heard the noise.

Myfanwy swooped down out of her alcove shrieking as Ianto ran back into the Hub, just in time to see the police box dematerialized.

Ianto stood, numbly staring into the space where it had been, unable to move or think or even breathe properly. He'd promised… he promised and I believed him…

Trust… Jack had promised that he could be trusted…

The Welshman was only barely aware that the cup he'd been holding hit the floor with a loud crash, sending shards of glass everywhere.

And then he heard the noise again. The box reappeared in exactly the same spot it had been in before it vanished. Ianto still wasn't sure he was breathing… the door opened. Jack, looking exactly as he had a few minutes ago, popped his head out, "Would you grab the traq gun… Ianto? Are you ok?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," he shook himself, suddenly aware that there was a broken mug at his feet. "What erm… the tranq gun, Sir?"

"I need to tranq our Drollavan friend so the Doctor can take it home. Can't very well have an angry Drollavan rampaging around the TARDIS after all," he flashed a broad half-grin that made his dimples show.

"Ah. Of course." Ianto composed himself behind the mask of professionalism while at the same time trying in vain to peer past Jack and see just what was beyond the door. He couldn't make out a thing, however.

"In this century, maybe?" Jack asked when the younger man didn't move.

"Sorry. Right. Shall I meet you downstairs or…?"

"I'll need to tranq it as soon as we materialize around it," his tone was annoyingly matter of fact, making Ianto feel as if he should have known that all along.

Although Ianto was terrified of turning his back on the box again, fearing it would vanish for good this time, Jack along with it, he went to the medical bay like Jack had asked him to. Because even if he left me, I would forgive him.

When he returned a few moments later with the tranq gun and darts, not only was the box still there, but Jack was standing outside it, leaning up against it, his arms folded over his chest. He was smiling. "You didn't really think I'd leave you, did you?"

"I… didn't know what to think," the younger man admitted, unable to look at Jack's eyes.

Jack pulled him close, tilting the younger man's face so he had no choice but to meet his gaze. "I will never leave you, Ianto. I mean that," he pressed his lips to the younger man's.

Ianto yielded to him, pressing himself against him… "I'm sorry, Cariad," he whispered when their lips finally parted.

"Shhh… come on. I want you to see this. Oh yeah… and I'd like your help getting the rest of my stuff out of my room," he added with a wink.

"Your… what?" they were still talking about a box… right?

"My room. In the TARDIS. Come on," he pushed the door open with one hand, nodding for Ianto to go first.

………………………………………………………..

A/N

Companions mentioned:

Tegan Jovanka – travelled with the 4th and 5th Doctors; she left in 1984, after (yet another) Dalek attack on Earth. In some spin off materials, she is married to Johnny Chesterton (stage name: Johnny Chess), son of Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, companions of the 1st Doctor. (I haven't read all of the spin off material and its canonicity is debatable, so I'm just picking and choosing which bits I like. I DON'T like the story line that has Tegan having a nervous breakdown and thinking the Doctor was a delusion; although she left on tenuous terms, she's a strong, stubborn woman and not the sort, IMHO, to go mental. In my world, she and Johnny are still happily married… and this of course explains why Jack was so easily able to get tickets and back stage passes!)

Jo Granta companion of the 3rd Doctor; she was his assistant when he was stranded on Earth and working with UNIT, although eventually he got his TARDIS repaired and took her off to see the Universe for a bit. She left him to get married. Her divorce is also a part of spin off material.

Liz ShawAlso a Companion of the 3rd Doctor, and obviously one of my favourites, since I brought her in here.

Sarah Jane Smith– a Companion of the 3rd and 4th Doctors; she has her own show now, the Sarah Jane Adventures. Looking forward to seeing her on the Doctor Who season finale. '-)

Victoria Waterfieldhopefully remembered from earlier chapters ;-) She was a Companion of the 2nd Doctor.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Captain Jack Harkness, Stalker