Jack looked up, a smile half-formed on his face until he saw the gun. Gwen saw Ianto wince as Jack's grip on him tightened, obviously desperate to protect him yet unable to let himself lose any contact with him, even for a single second.

"Put the gun down, Gwen," he demanded, but his usual authoritative tone was lessened by his horse voice that cracked as he spoke. His face was red and puffy, tear tracks still damp on his cheeks, but his stare was hard and angry.

"I can't, Jack," she replied, her voice wavering as she spoke. She kept her aim straight, though.

"Put the gun down," he ordered again.

"No."

"It's okay," she heard the None-Ianto murmur soothingly, but Jack wasn't listening.

"Put it down!"

She saw him reach for his holster at his side but didn't draw his gun. Instead, he started to wrestle with Ianto, tugging at him so they switched positions. Ianto was resisting slightly to the rough handling and hissing words at Jack too low for Gwen to hear. In the struggle, Gwen saw that Jack's holster was empty.

"Stop, Jack!" she pleaded, trying to keep her aim on her target. "Please, just calm down!"

"Put the fucking gun down!" Jack yelled, turning to look at her again. Despite the venom in his voice, his eyes showed pure fear at a level that Gwen had never seen him display before.

"Beth, I need you to get behind me now," she whispered harshly at the frozen woman who was still stood at her side. Jack's holster may have been empty, but he always carried his gun unless he was in the Hub. She doubted he'd changed in the six months since she'd last seen him. And whilst he might have been the best shot of all of them, no doubt due to his decades of practice, Gwen knew how much a person's emotions could affect their performance.

Beth took one last look at Gwen's gun and warily moved behind her. "You're not going to shot him, are you? I mean, he hasn't done anything, has he? He's just…" she said faintly.

"Not unless I have to," Gwen reassured her. It didn't matter that she couldn't kill him; shooting him would break her heart, possibly for the last time, but she knew she would do it. That was the type of person Torchwood turned you into. That was the type of person Torchwood had turned her into.

It was then that a taxi pulled up at the car park. Gwen sighed and tightened her grip on the gun. More civilians were the last thing she needed right now.

"All right, lover?" she heard a familiar voice call, overly cheerful despite the gun his wife was holding. "Thanks, mate," Rhys said to the driver and gave a wave as the taxi pulled away.

Rhys Williams hadn't understood that much from the short, rushed phone call from Gwen, but he heard the words 'Torchwood' and 'Captain Jack bloody Harkness' clear enough to know that there was trouble brewing.

He both pitied and hated the man. He'd lost his lover and grandson in the space of 24 hours, but he'd also abandoned Gwen without a word. Sure, he sent presents occasionally, letting them know that he was still watching them from wherever he was now, but in Rhys's opinion, he was still an utter bastard. He never knew whether Gwen would hug him or punch him if he ever returned, but he hadn't expected her to point a gun at him.

"Rhys," Gwen hissed, not turning to face him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Making sure you're okay of course," he replied nonchalantly as he took in the sight of Jack on the ground, from where, he assumed, she'd punched him upon his return. She'd always had a brilliant right hook. "Doing all right down there, Jack?" he asked with a smile as he came over to stand at Gwen's side. "Bet you're regretting coming back at the moment, eh?"

He hadn't taken much notice of the man in the distinctive greatcoat, more concerned for how Gwen had ended up pointing a gun at him. It wasn't until he was at her side that he spotted the man who was sheltered in Jack's protective embrace. The greatcoat fell away slightly as Jack jerkily tried to protect the man whose funeral Rhys had attended a lifetime ago.

It wasn't Jack that Gwen was pointing a gun at, it was Ianto Jones.

Rhys breathed an almost silent 'fuck' as the blood drained from his face. He wasn't like he had been best mates with the man, not like Gwen had been, but they had grown close, especially after the deaths of his colleagues last February. Ianto had been a good bloke, slightly uptight and seemingly oblivious to social norms, but he had been well-meaning. He'd been a good friend and cared so much for Gwen and she had loved him fiercely in return.

He watched as Ianto tried to calm Jack, though never once protesting the rough treatment he was receiving.

"Bethan, I need to you go with Rhys, now," Gwen said. "Take shelter behind one of the cars over there, all right?"

Rhys held out his arm to the shaken young woman still peering at the gun in Gwen's hand. He tried to pretend that everything was okay, that this was just another ordinary day. That Gwen wasn't pointing a loaded weapon at her formerly dead best friend. Bloody Torchwood. "Come on love, let's get you away from all these mad people and their guns. I swear they're not usually like this. I'm Rhys by the way, Rhys Williams, Gwen's husband."

Beth quietly introduced herself and let herself be led away to a safe distance.

"Okay, Jack," Gwen called out. "Just step away from him for me. I know you don't want to, but I need you to let him go."

"You don't know anything," Jack seethed, having pinned Ianto to the ground and was now almost lying on top of him.

"It's okay, Jack," Ianto murmured, but Gwen could see him wince in pain as Jack's grip tightened further.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," Jack said to him. Then he said something so softly that Gwen couldn't hear. Ianto quietly replied. For a moment, the two of them froze, no longer struggling together on the ground but instead softening, almost to the point of relaxation. But then the moment was gone. "I'm not going to let you hurt him," he said turning to look at her again. "I may care for you, Gwen Cooper, but I will rip your skin from your skull before I let you take Ianto away from me."

"I know, sweetheart, I know," she replied with a tremor in her voice. She was desperately aware of how volatile the situation was. "I understand. But I'm not going to hurt him so long as he cooperates. And he is, isn't he? Because Ianto likes rules."

Ianto – fuck, the imposter, why was this so hard? – craned his neck up and shot her a dirty look over Jack's shoulder. She ignored him. She wasn't addressing him, rather the broken man who had somehow brought his lover, or at least something that looked and sounded like him, back from the dead.

"I bet Ianto knows the procedures even better than you do," she continued.

"Torchwood is gone!" Jack spat. "It's over. There are no procedures – not anymore."

"But some of them are helpful, yeah? Ianto was always telling us off for ignoring them, remember? Because some of them are there for a reason, that's what he always used to say. So, if you let him go for a moment, we can check that he's safe."

"He is safe! He's Ianto. Why wouldn't he be safe? And I'm going to keep him safe," he insisted, then turned back to Ianto. "I'm not letting you go again."

Gwen didn't like the sound of that. She knew Jack could be possessive, god knows how fiercely protective he could be of them all, but this didn't sound right. Whatever this fake Ianto was, it was almost certainly affecting Jack's responses. The broken man before her wasn't the Captain Jack she remembered. Grief changed everyone, but this wasn't Jack. This couldn't be Jack.

So, she changed her angle. "How about we check he's okay, then? It can't be that comfy down there for him, can it, with you laying on top of him like that? So how about we give him a bit of space, so he's not crushed beneath you, and we make sure he's not hurt."

That seemed to work. Jack glanced back at her briefly, still eying the gun that she hadn't lowered, before turning back to Ianto. He pulled him up, so he was sitting propped against a large section of rubble they had been sat on earlier and ran his hands repeatedly over his face and torso. Ianto glanced at her and gave her a slight smile before turning his attention back to the man crouched in front of him. Jack was murmuring gentle apologies and promises too low for Gwen to hear in full. his hand brushed repeatedly over the small upside-down Y-shaped cut on Ianto's cheek. It was new, and still bleeding slightly. Gwen noticed it was also in the exact same place as the scab had been on Ianto's cheek when he'd died.

Now Gwen had managed to get Jack to back away from Ianto, if only slightly, she didn't have a clue what to do next. Jack was right; Torchwood was gone. The old procedures were no good to her when she didn't have access to containment cells, a bioanalyser, a diagnosticator, a mind probe, or even something so simple as a first aid kit.

She may have lead Torchwood for four months when Jack had disappeared, but she'd always had the others to support her. Owen had led in the field, Tosh had coordinated them, and Ianto made sure they got everything they needed. She just made sure they took care of themselves. She reminded them of their purpose. She reminded them that although they may not have been working as effectively as they had when Jack had led them, they were still here, protecting Cardiff. She reminded them of all the good that they were doing. She also made sure that they got enough sleep and took them out for drinks after tough days. She would never have survived those long months without her friends. But that Torchwood didn't exist anymore. They were all dead. All except her. She had no one else to turn to.

Gwen found herself crying silent tears of grief as she remembered all she had lost. She longed to throw down her gun and run to Ianto, to cling him to him and Jack and make them promise that they'd never leave her again. But she couldn't do that. She would always be Gwen Cooper of Torchwood. She still had to do the right thing, no matter how much it hurt.

But for the first time that night, her arm trembled. Tears were running thick and fast now, blurring her vision. She finally lowered her gun, knowing that she'd be a crap shot with the tears blinding her vision. She didn't put it away, though.

"It's going to be okay," she told Jack. "We're going to make sure he's okay, together. Both of us, yeah?"

Jack didn't reply, still focused on Ianto. He seemed to have calmed slightly for the moment, though.

Gwen crept closer. "But you're right, Torchwood is gone. We're going to need some help."

Jack started to protest, but Ianto was quietly reassuring him. She didn't know what to make of this Not-Ianto. It was so hard to remember that this couldn't possibly be her Ianto, but she also knew that it couldn't be him.

"Come on," he was telling Jack gently. "You know she's right. And anyway, I'm not staying down here all night. It's damp."

Jack choked, torn between tears and laughter.

"I can ring Martha?" It was more a plea than a question. "She'll be able to make sure he's okay. Far better than any doctor at A&E."

He murmured something under his breath, something about a nightingale – his nickname for Martha that he'd never explained to her.

"She and Mickey could probably be here by morning. I think they're still in the country. And in the meantime, we've got a sofa going spare at home. It's not the most comfortable of things, but it's got to be better than staying down there."

"I'm sure I've slept on worse," Ianto chuckled. The corner of his lip curled up with the hint of a smirk. "And anything's better than that atrocity Jack calls his bunk."

"Hey!" he protested indignantly.

"What? It's all saggy in the middle from where you use it to climb up the ladder. And you never take your boots off first!"

"Sorry," Jack said weakly, his eyes downcast.

Ianto lent forward and kissed his cheek. "It's okay. It doesn't matter anymore."