By the time they returned to the hotel room, Ianto was rebuttoning his shirt. Jack raced to his side, sunk on the bed next to him and snaked an arm around his waist. This time, he was careful not to squeeze too tight, mindful of Ianto's sore chest.

"One black coffee – quite good but not as good as yours – and a bacon sarnie. Sorry, it's a bit cold, but I also got some of those pastries you like."

"Thanks, I'm starving," Ianto replied, leaning in, and giving Jack a quick kiss.

"Martha?" Jack asked.

"Okay, I haven't completed everything yet, but he looks okay. A few bruised ribs and cuts and scrapes, but from what Ianto's told me he's been through in the last twelve hours, I'd say he's been extremely lucky."

"You told her?!" Jack accused in a sharp hiss, before rolling his eyes to the ceiling and sighing. "Of course you did."

But his outburst was practically drowned out by Gwen's loud question.

"You're telling me that's Ianto?" she said as she pushed her way to Martha's side. "No, no, no. That can't be right. Ianto's dead. Our Ianto's dead! That's not him!"

"Gwen-" Martha tried to interrupt as Gwen bent over the screens set up on the desk and scrolled through the data she'd collected.

"It's not him, Martha. I know it's not him. It can't be him."

"It is!" Jack snapped. "He is. I got him back. And stop talking about him like he's not in the room."

"Ianto's dead, Jack. He's been dead for six months. And that, that thing, it may be a bloody good clone or reproduction or whatever, but it's not him!"

Life wasn't a fairytale. Torchwood had soon destroyed any lingering fantasy that remained embedded since her childhood. Gwen knew that 'and they all lived happily ever after' was a load of bollocks. Love at first sight was often just lust. Fairies were not beautiful and kind but gruesome and cruel. And the power of love was not enough to bring someone back from the dead, no matter how strong the delusion. She knew that this wouldn't end happily.

"Martha," Jack demanded, turning to look at the medic with eyes blazing with righteous fury. "Tell her."

She took a deep breath before she started. "I don't know what you've done, Jack, but there's a hundred per cent match to the blood sample that was kept on file at Torchwood Three. All 48 chromosomes are present and accounted for with no trace of tampering. Fingerprint analysis is also a match along with palm prints that show known scaring on both hands. One healed displaced fracture on the right tibia bone, a raised four-inch scar on the left side of his lower back, a light scar consistent with a healed gunshot graze on his upper left arm-"

"Okay, so he's a clone of Ianto," Gwen interrupted.

"He's not," Jack snapped back.

Gwen turned back to Martha. "I don't think so," Martha said hesitantly. "I mean, I can't rule it out completely, but I don't think he's a clone. Most clones on file like the Sontarans or Zygones need a living mind of the being they are impersonating to access core data like memories, and we know Ianto died. But from what Ianto's told me about what happened, if he is a clone, he's not like one that we've ever dealt with before."

Gwen rounded on Ianto. "So, what are you, then, huh? Because I'll tell you what, it's not nice to go round impersonating my friends."

"Don't talk to him like that! He's not impersonating anyone, he's not a clone, and he's not done anything wrong!"

"And you can shut up Jack Harkness! Sit down and shut up. You've made it clear to me already that you won't tell me what you've done, so unless you start telling me what's going on right now, you can button it!"

"Gwen…" Rhys said cautiously. Her glare quickly silenced anything else he had to say.

"So, what will it be, huh? Which one of you is going to tell me what's going on?"

Ianto swallowed his mouthful. "Jack…"

"No."

"Gwen's my friend, too. She deserves to know what's going on." He sighed, looking at each of them in turn. "They all do."

Jack lent forward, pressing the heel of his hands into his eye sockets. "I can't do it. I just can't do it."

"Can't do what?" Martha asked, crouching down, and resting her hand on his thigh.

"Don't make me, please. Not again."

"Jack, you haven't told us anything…"

"But he told me," Ianto whispered. He cleared his throat. "I made him tell me what he did. I, uh, didn't have the best reaction. It's my fault."

"It's not. It's my fault," Jack said in a shaky voice. "It's all my fault."

"But they already know I'm dead. I didn't. They'll understand."

"You're not dead. You're not dead."

"I think Martha pretty much confirmed that, yeah."

"Martha?" Gwen asked.

"Slightly higher heart rate and blood pressure than I would like, and his core temperature's still a bit low, but other than that, yeah, he's fine. The modulated Birkhan scanner shows that he's alive at a cellular level, but I haven't done a complete brain scan. But until I learn any different, I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be normal, though. The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is the bruising. It's far more pronounced than it should be at this stage for not having cracked or broken anything. As I said, he had a lucky escape."

"From what? Death?" Mickey scoffed.

"It seems to appear so," Ianto replied with a smirk.

"Did you die?" Gwen asked him. "Or are you from another universe? A version of you died here, our version of Ianto, and Jack took you from somewhere else and brought you here. Is that how it worked? Or time travel? God, we'll have to send you back. But you can't know when you died, that'd change the future! Well, your future, our past. You can't know that."

Ianto shrugged. "I don't remember dying. But I must have done."

"So, how do you know that you did?" Mickey asked.

"Jack told me."

"Are you missing any other memories?" Martha asked, then snorted. "Sorry. Stupid question. 'Course you wouldn't know that. Jack?"

He looked up at her wearily.

"Could that have something to do with Ianto's, um, reappearance?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I don't know."

"Okay, so tell us what you do know. Maybe between us, we can work it out together."

He shook his head. "Ianto's back now, it doesn't matter."

"I'm not going to disappear, Jack. And neither are they. You telling them what happened isn't going to change what you already did."

"I can't," he pleaded, grasping Ianto's hand tightly. "Please, I can't."

"You don't want to relive it, do you?" Gwen said with a sigh. She sat down heavily into the armchair in the corner. "You don't want to think about what you did. You just want to run away from it all again."

Rhys squeezed his wife's shoulder as Jack eventually gave a slow nod.

"Well, tough luck. You can't keep running away. You just can't keep doing this, Jack. It's been six months, and nothing's changed for you, has it? You're still on the run, so it's time to face up to whatever it is you did this time, alright?"

Jack didn't answer. He stared at the floor, hands still tightly grasping one of Ianto's.

"Tell us what you did. Tell me."

He stayed silent.

Gwen knew that Jack had done so many things throughout his long life, so many terrible things. So had she. She locked them all away in her mind in that box marked danger, a box far too big yet crammed to the brim with so many awful memories. The near-misses and narrow escapes, the nightmares of what could have been and what almost was. Worst still was that smaller boxed tucked away inside it where the memories of Ianto and her dead friends now resided. She'd had locked all those harrowing moments away, fearing for the day when the seal would break because whenever she peaked inside that dark corner of her mind, it would take her weeks to wade her way back up to the surface again.

Ianto's return was threatening to destroy that lock like rust, a deep red stain that was eating away at her, every moment growing stronger whilst she weakened until she was consumed by it. It had only been 12 hours and the rot was already setting in.

But ever since she'd joined Torchwood, she'd always had someone to talk to. First, it had been Jack, the mysterious man who'd introduced her to this strange hidden world. But he was her leader, there was only so much he could do. Soon, she'd turned to Owen, which had been a mistake, but by the time she'd realised that Jack and Tosh had been trapped in the past until Owen had opened the Rift. Then Jack was back and then he was dead and then he was back again and then he was gone. For three long months, she had Ianto to herself, but she didn't mind sharing him when Jack returned. And when Jack and Ianto and Torchwood were gone, she still had Rhys and Martha.

She knew the second her brain caught up with her heart that Jack must have done something awful to get Ianto back from the dead. You couldn't bargain with death and not pay the price. Owen had been proof of that. But what could Jack have possibly done that was so terrible that he felt that he couldn't tell her, his best friend?

Then Ianto broke the silence. He spoke so quietly that he was almost inaudible, but still, everyone turned to look at him having heard his voice.

"Tell me a story," he said. "Tell me a story, just like you used to, yeah?"

Amazingly, after a moment of thought, Jack nodded. "Okay. Yeah. Okay."

"Really?" Ianto asked, seeming surprised that Jack had agreed.

Jack swallowed and nodded again. "Yeah."

"Okay," Ianto nodded to himself. "Right then," he said, standing up and guiding Jack to his feet too.

Gwen watched the familiar routine of Ianto divesting Jack of his greatcoat and hanging it with loving care on the coat hanger Martha handed him from out of the wardrobe. He also took off Jack's red braces and folded them over the back of her chair where his own waistcoat and suit jacket were already hanging.

"Do you mind if we…?" Ianto gestured back towards the bed.

"Sure, no problem," Martha said, sitting back down in the chair next to Mickey.

Rhys leant his weight against the back of the armchair Gwen was occupying in the corner of the room, whilst Jack and Ianto kicked off their shoes and settled themselves on the double bed, laying down on top of the covers. Jack curled himself into Ianto's embrace, head resting on his chest and their legs tangled together. Gwen noticed Jack's fingers slip between the buttons of Ianto's shirt to touch the bare skin over Ianto's beating heart.

"Once upon a time…" Ianto prompted in a soft voice in the quiet of the room.

Jack took a deep breath. "Once upon a time…"