Jack's whispered apologies turned to quiet sobs. He buried his face into Ianto's chest, who'd also closed his eyes and let his silent tears leak from his eyes into Jack's hair. Lost in their own world of grief, neither of them seemed to remember that there was anyone else in the room.

Not that it mattered; no one had really known what to say after that. Gwen had sat silently as tears streamed down her face as Jack recounted what had happened. By the time, he'd reached the end, her knuckles were white as she grasped Rhys's hand tight, her other hand still resting softly on Ianto's shoulder.

Even Mickey had turned back to his computers to hide his damp eyes. Martha, face also wet with tears, looked over at Gwen, who just shook her head. The four of them knew that there was nothing they could say to ease the pain.

Eventually, Gwen loosened ger grip on her husband's hand, who winced as he shook it out and stretched it.

"Good practice, that," Mickey said with false cheer, nodding in Rhys's direction. "For the birth."

Martha swatted him on the arm for his effort, but Rhys chuckled good naturally. He passed Gwen her ever-present bag and she grabbed her well-used packet of tissues. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose noisily, but Jack and Ianto didn't stir.

"I think they've fallen asleep," Rhys commented quietly as she peered over at the two men huddled together on the bed. He took the tissues that Gwen offered him and wiped his own face before handing them over to Mickey who handed the last one to Martha.

"I think so," Martha whispered. "It'll probably do them some good. You said that Jack didn't sleep last night?"

"No, I don't think so," Gwen replied in the same hushed voice. "He stayed up all night watching Ianto. Earlier, whilst we were out, he told me he was scared that if he closed his eyes, Ianto would disappear again. I guess we know why now."

"Hmm. No wonder the poor blokes exhausted," Rhys added.

Martha nodded in agreement. "I think we should leave them to get some rest."

"Are you sure that's safe?" Gwen asked.

"I can hook up a camera from here," Mickey told them. "These two laptops have got them built-in. Though, the state the captain's in, I doubt he'll even think about such things. I'll leave the software running too and see what happens when they're alone. We can remotely monitor it whilst we're away."

In the end, Rhys went downstairs and asked the front desk if there was anywhere they could go for some privacy. Almost as skilled in lying as Gwen was these days, he spun a sob story about a sudden illness in the family and they were looking somewhere they could gather to discuss what was going on whilst the two exhausted men slept upstairs. The young lady on the desk was quite taken by the tale and offered up the use of a small conference room in the hotel for no extra cost despite Rhys's protests.

Martha stayed behind with Jack and Ianto whilst the others gathered downstairs, using the time to take some more scans of the two men. She was careful not to disturb them, making sure all her tests were as unobtrusive as possible, but it looked like they were both out for the count.

As soon as she'd finished, she quickly wrote them a short note on the pad of paper provided by the hotel to tell them where they'd gone. She propped it up against the landline on the bedside table, so they'd see it when they awoke. She also covered them with the blanket she found in the wardrobe and with one final check, she closed the door softly behind her and went to join the others downstairs.

They had a lot to talk about.

"Right then, what have you got?" Gwen asked Martha as soon as she sat down.

"Honestly, I don't know," she sighed. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that it was definitely Ianto. Everything matches up to the backup files I have for him. There are no anomalies. I've run almost every scan I can think of, completed three different chameleon tests, and nothing. Absolutely nothing."

"And what about Jack?" Rhys asked.

"Same as ever, as far as I can tell. I haven't done blood works and the like yet, but I wouldn't expect there to be any change from the usual. Gwen?"

Gwen pulled out a small scanner from her rucksack and handed it over. "Here. I spoke to Jack alone whilst those two were getting breakfast. Wouldn't tell me a thing. But his paranoia about something happening to Ianto… I don't know. Something's not right."

Martha nodded. "He always was very protective of you all, but this… this is something else entirely."

"Well, Ianto did die in his arms. Tosh too, only six months before that," Rhys pointed out. "And Owen. You know how much he blamed himself for their deaths. God knows he wasn't right after. Neither was Gwen." He took her hand and squeezed it gently. "But it was worse for Jack, what with Gray being his long lost kid brother."

"And Ianto died because of what Jack did that first time with the kids," Mickey said. "They came back because of him."

"They came back because they were monsters," Gwen snapped at him. "It wasn't Jack's fault. He didn't have a choice. And he didn't have a choice when it came to Ianto either. Ianto would have gone in there and stood up to them no matter what because that was who he was!"

"But I bet that's how Jack feels!" Mickey said, holding up his hands in surrender even as he rushed to defend himself. "I don't think that, obviously. If he'd have refused, the government would have just sent someone else and done god knows what to him to keep him away, but Jack won't see it like that. He'll think it's his fault, that he let them take the kids in the first place, that he didn't work it out sooner, that Ianto came in with him to Thames House, and that Ianto died. On top of all that guilt, he then had to use his grandson to stop the 456. He worked it out, he pressed the button and had to kill him to save every other child. Fuck knows what that would do to anyone, let alone Jack."

"Mickey's right," Martha said hesitantly. "And this scanner didn't pick up any differences between when Jack was with Ianto compared to when he was alone with Gwen. I think that perhaps this possessiveness is coming from Jack alone, trying to cope with the events of the last year. I don't think it's been influenced by Ianto. Well, not knowingly. Jack's acting like that because he doesn't want to lose him again."

"More like he doesn't want anyone else to get hurt because of him," Rhys said. "First he runs off and doesn't plan on coming back so when the next thing goes wrong it can't be his fault. Then he closes the Rift. Torchwood's no longer needed. He's no longer needed. A bit of his guilt is eased because that means he can disappear and not have to worry about the rest of us left behind."

"Only he wouldn't have just disappeared. He'd have committed suicide, or at least the closest thing to it in his situation," Martha said, shaking her head.

"Never thought I'd feel sorry for the guy when I met him, but now…" Mickey sighed. "The bloke's got a bigger guilt complex than the Doctor."

Martha hummed her agreement.

"So, what about Ianto?" Gwen asked. "You said that if you didn't know any better, you'd believe that it was him? Because it can't really be him, can it? It can't really be Ianto?"

"I don't know. We still don't know how Ianto, the Ianto upstairs, came to exist. Medically and biologically, he checks out as our Ianto. But he's talking as if he was there in the pub with Jack. He's got severe pronounced bruising on his chest too as if he'd been in that pub when it was collapsing. He told me he'd gotten them when he was caught inside a collapsing building."

"I looked up this 'House of the Dead' online earlier," Mickey said. "It's legit. They were holding a séance there last night to celebrate the pub's long history before it closed, just like Ianto said. The plan is to turn the building into flats. Shame really."

Gwen snorted. "Chance would be a fine thing. There's nothing there, just a hole in the ground."

"But none of this explains how Jack got Ianto back," Martha sighed.

"Did Ianto tell you anything, Martha?" Gwen asked.

"Not really. He knew what the day and the date was when I asked him and knew that he'd died in September but didn't know when. He only knew that he'd died because Jack had told him; he's got no memory of it whatsoever. He knew that you were pregnant, too."

"Kind of hard to miss."

Martha smiled. "He knew that you were six months pregnant. He remembered that you'd found out by accident at Torchwood and that Rhys wasn't impressed that he and Jack knew before he did."

"So, he remembers the 456?" Rhys asked.

"I don't know. I didn't want to push him," she admitted. "I wasn't too sure what he remembered and didn't want to go too far whilst we were alone."

Gwen nodded. "It'd be better if I was there anyway."

"Gwen…" Rhys said in a low voice.

"Well, it's not as if Martha was there, was it?!"

"You're right," he admitted. "Sorry. I just don't like the thought of you being caught up in all of this."

"It's my job, Rhys. I don't have a choice. It's my job."

Mickey cleared his throat. "So, what do we reckon happened?"

"Jack went to The House of the Dead to see Ianto again," Gwen said. "He wanted to see Ianto one last time and Syriath gave him what he wanted."

"You think Ianto's a ghost?" Rhys asked. "But Ianto said he was already there when Jack arrived."

"I don't think we can trust Ianto at the moment. Not that it matters much if he's missing memories."

Rhys felt like it was down to him to ask the stupid questions, but it wasn't his fault that he was the only one who hadn't been employed by an organisation that's existence was fuelled by conspiracy theories and science geeks. "How can a ghost be missing memories? Better yet, how can he even be a ghost in the first place? He's not, you know…" He trailed off and pulled a face whilst gesturing something that even he didn't understand.

Luckily, Gwen was used to his ways. "It's not going to be like in Ghostbusters," she explained patiently whilst Mickey attempted to cover up his snort of laughter with a cough. "Syriath was pulling people out of time from before their deaths to manipulate the people there. Who else would you choose for Jack? What could be a better way to convince someone to leave than offering them the chance to be reunited with their lover once more?"

"Well, she succeeded in that," Martha sighed. "She got Jack to leave with the promise of them being together again, just like Ianto's father said."

"But Jack left the bomb behind," Mickey said. "That wasn't very well planned out, was it? And Ianto stayed in the pub with it. Why would he do that when that's the whole reason he was brought back?"

"Maybe he couldn't leave," Martha mused. "Perhaps Syriath's power only stretched so far into this universe, after all, the reports of hauntings seem to be only linked to the pub rather than the surrounding area. And I wouldn't exactly trust some kind of ancient being who wants to devour the universe to be telling the truth. She knew that Jack would only leave if he could take Ianto with him, so that's how she manipulated him. She told him he could."

"So how are they both here now then?" Mickey countered. "Jack must have gone in and dragged Ianto out. There's no way he'd have left Ianto in there. He's barely let go of the bloke since we've got here."

"But Ianto's got that bruising on his chest," Gwen said looking at Martha for confirmation. "The bomb must have gone off before they were clear of the building, then. The energy build-up caused the Rift to implode, taking most of the pub with it."

"And they both made it out without being pulled into the Rift?" Mickey asked sceptically.

"I think you're all missing the obvious. What?" Rhys asked when everyone turned to look at him. "This Syriath was trapped in the Rift, yeah? The Rift that Jack's supposedly closed with his box of rocks last night. So, if he managed to do it and Ianto's one of her ghosts, how is he still here? Shouldn't he have gone when Syriath lost her connection to this world?"

"Fuck," Mickey muttered.

"He's right," Martha said.

"Not just a pretty face, you know."

"Or something else happened. Perhaps Ianto, or Ianto's ghost as it were, did vanish with the pub and Jack found a different way to bring him back," Mickey said. "He said that the Pub was built in the perfect place for hauntings. What if the memories of Ianto were still there and Jack found a way to convert them into a body or something?"

"Is that even possible?" Rhys asked.

"Is it even possible for ghosts to exist in the first place?" Mickey countered. "Fuck knows. I don't have a clue. But if anyone could find a way to bring someone back from the dead, it'd be Jack. And it's not like he hasn't got the time for it, is it? How old even is he? Could we even tell how many years or decades had passed for him?"

Gwen shook her head sadly. "He was buried alive for almost two thousand years, but he physically looked exactly the same as he had before."

She didn't voice her concern that Mickey was right, that if anyone could bring someone back from the dead, it would be him. After all, he'd already done it before.

"We don't know anything," Martha sighed. "We need to question Jack again."

"And go back to Abergavenny," Gwen also sighed. "Rhys is right. There's something going on there."