Author's Note: So this was getting longer than I intended, which means you get 'stuff' this chapter and 'fluff' next chapter. It's settling into a rhythm.

Ianto wrapped his arm around Jack's shoulders and just rested his wrist on his shoulder, not pulling him closer because of the armrest in the way. Jack had tried to persuade him to sit in the back row, but Ianto had been insistent that he actually wanted to watch this; he'd bribed Jack by promising to take him to the cinema when he got back from Australia, to one of the ones with sofa-seats in the back row so that they could snog like teenagers through a film neither of them actually wanted to see. Tonight, though, he hoped to learn something about the city he'd grown up in, from the old film reels and from Jack.

"Have you ever been here before?" he asked quietly as another couple were led in to sit in the row behind them.

Jack shook his head and rested his closer hand on Ianto's thigh. "Never really had time, or I never thought I did. Ironic, really."

"Time management's not one of your strong points," Ianto pointed out, bringing his hand up off Jack's shoulder to brush through his hair once. "You need a PA."

"Why do I need a PA?" Jack asked. "I have you."

Ianto sighed and swatted the back of his head, then redraped his arm. "Hush, child. I think it's about to start."

Jack kissed his cheek, just a gentle brush of lips, and returned his attention to the screen. "We should do this more often."

"You should come to London," Ianto suggested in a whisper. "We could see a show on the West End."

The couple behind them shushed them fiercely and they both pulled contrite faces at the screen, settling down to watch. Ianto took Jack's hand in his free one after a couple of minutes, and Jack tipped his head sideways to rest against Ianto's.

When the footage of Cardiff's familiar streets, so different to how they'd been in Ianto's lifetime, but not to Jack's, changed to a circus or travelling show, Ianto felt Jack stiffen against him and heard a murmur rise in the theatre. He looked at Jack, who was staring fixedly at the screen, and then followed his gaze. The circus images progressed, and it seemed like a happy lifestyle, for a freakshow. Ianto tensed suddenly and felt Jack's attention on him. "Jack, that was you."

"I remember the cameras," Jack told him in a hushed voice, reminding him of the couple sitting behind them. "I'll tell you later?"

He nodded, wanting to look around at Jack, but the footage was fascinating. A life lost, one of Jack's many lives, lost to time. "God, he's creepy."

"Who?"

"This guy, the ringmaster, I assume," he nodded at the screen. "Just came up."

"We didn't have a ringmaster."

Ianto shrugged. "Someone else's then. Maybe there's more than one set of footage. It's on a loop, it'll come around." He waited and several of the clips did show again, including Jack, but not the ringmaster. "Must have been even more out of place than this... there we go." The footage shut off and he looked to Jack again, leaning in to kiss him to get the worried look off his face. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just... I have too much past, you know?" he shook his head. "It keeps coming back to bite me in the ass."

"You do have a very fine arse," Ianto teased, trying to distract him. "Do you want to..."

"I want to go and talk to the managers, see what they have to say about that footage." He looked apologetic at Ianto. "It'll only take ten minutes, and our reservation's not for half an hour."

"That's fine," he sighed internally and pecked Jack on the lips again. "We might as well ask, but it's probably nothing."

Fifteen minutes later he'd changed his mind about that, but the cannisters were in the boot of his car and he and Jack were on their way to their dinner reservation. "Do you want to call Tosh and Owen in?" Ianto asked when Jack shifted again. "We can go straight there instead..."

"No." Jack shook his head and turned a rueful smile on Ianto. "No, it's fine. I want to go out for dinner, take you home and ravish you," Ianto rolled his eyes. "And maybe tell you tales of the carney."

"Okay," Ianto couldn't spare Jack more than a glance because of the treacherous road conditions, but he saw Jack's smile. "Our night."

"Our night. Our reward for saving the world."

Jack told him stories as they lay awake in bed, curled around each other and with an extra duvet thrown on top against the winter's chill. He talked about life on the road, living as part of the carnival with their initial distrust, about being drawn into the group and then having to leave them, watching the lifestyle dying to the arrival of the cinema. Just another thing that Jack had lost during his insanely long life. Ianto wondered, again, how Jack was sane, or if it was just an act that he had yet to learn to see through.

"You're nearly asleep, aren't you?" Jack asked after a pause, running his fingers through Ianto's hair.

"Hmm, keep talking." He nuzzled Jack's chest and rested his cheek against it again. "I like it."

"I'm running out of things to say."

Ianto chuckled. "You'll never run out of things to say. Make something up. Tell me a story."

He fell asleep to the sound of one of Jack's tall tales, not knowing whether to believe it or not, and dreamed of living in a carnival made up of dancing aliens.

Halfway back to London, his phone rang; It was Jack. "Hey, missing me already?"

"Always," Jack teased, but his heart clearly wasn't in it. "We've had some suspicious deaths here. Can I pencil you in for an early morning conference call?"

"Yes, of course. Do you want me to turn around, would that be easier?"

"No, it's okay, I know how busy you are over there. I just think we'll need your local knowledge on it, with Gwen out of town. Do you know the name of her contact at the police?"

"Andy Davidson, his mobile number's in that file I left for you," he smiled thoughtfully. "If you take him out to persuade him, take him for chips and a pint; coffee's not his thing."

"Philistine."

"I couldn't agree more." He smiled to himself and shook his head. "He's not that high up, though. We could do with getting him moved up through the ranks so that he's in a better position to negotiate. Or you could try Kathy."

"She hates me."

"I know she does, I'm the one who usually has to deal with her," he sighed. "Do you want me to call her?"

"If you could. I'll try Andy." Jack's voice had lightened, and Ianto couldn't help laughing. "What?"

"Maybe you should buy her dinner and tell her something?" he shook his head. "Never mind. Our hands will be forced sooner or later."

"I get the feeling that you'll be the one doing the forcing," Jack growled playfully. "Drive safely, I'll speak to you later."

"Later," he agreed, hitting the speed-dial for Kathy Swanston almost instantly.

"Ally," Ianto called, shrugging his coat off and juggling his bag between his hands to get it off. "I need to conference call with Cardiff this morning. Can you get on to Peter? I need that file by tonight. And can you take my meeting with Gordon this morning?"

"What, me?" she stuttered.

"Yes, you," he pulled his chair out and dropped into it, starting his computer up. "It's only Gordon. The information you'll need is all in this file," he dug it out of his drawer and held it out to her. "Read through it and you'll be fine."

"I hate you."

"I'll live," he laughed. "You will be fine, Gordon will be gentle. Tell him that he's got to come here if he wants coffee."

"Ianto..." she clasped her hands together and batted her lashes. "Coffee, please?"

"Yes, sure." Gesturing her over, he stood up and steered her into his chair. "Get me Cardiff on the call."

He made the coffee and listened to her setting up his computer and the call. "Jack, I've got Ianto for you. Or will have once the coffee's done?"

Jack laughed, and the sound was distorted by the webcam and less than brilliant speakers. "Well, lucky for some. I'm connecting us to Kathy Swanston right about... Kathy, are you with us?"

"I am, can I prompt you for an introduction?"

Ianto smirked to himself.

"All in good time, Kathy," Jack drawled. "Analyn is Ianto's assistant in London; he'll be joining us shortly. Analyn, Kathy is one of our contacts within the Cardiff police force."

"By which he means the only person who'll talk to them."

"Something like that."

Shaking his head, Ianto set Ally's mug on her desk and beckoned her out of his seat. He settled down and stretched his legs out under the desk, wrapping his long, cold fingers around the hot mug and leaning back in the chair. "Kathy, it's good to see you again."

She looked harassed, as she always did when talking to Jack, and gave him a tight, insincere smile. "Ianto, good of you to join us at last. Can we get on now?"

"By all means," he flicked his gaze to Jack's half of the screen and sat up slightly straighter. "What can you tell me?"

"We have six victims," Jack started, causing Kathy to sit back and fold her arms, glaring at him. "The police have opened an investigation, but they've not found anything. I pulled some strings, and Kathy is in charge of the case now."

"Even I'm not labouring under those illusions, Jack," she scoffed. "Get on with it."

Jack raised an eyebrow, but did as instructed. "They're not dead... but they're not alive either."

"Not alive like..." Ianto started, but Jack cut him off.

"Not like that, no," Kathy's eyes moved from side to side, presumably looking between the two of them. It must have looked strange for her, both of them gazing deeply slightly off-centre of the camera. "But... not entirely unlike that."

"Their bodies are completely dehydrated, and they're not breathing," Kathy added curtly. "But their hearts are working just fine."

"So they're in comas."

"No, they're dead," Jack said with a slight shrug. "They just haven't noticed yet."

"Right..." Ianto tapped his fingers against his mug and took a sip. "Do you have any leads?"

"We're looking for anything that refers to 'they came out of the rain'," Jack informed him, frustration colouring his voice. "But we're down to three, and we've not got time to go through every report that features the weather."

"Where did that phrase come from?" Ianto asked, brow furrowing in thought.

"I was sent to investigate them, years back. That's why I was on that footage," he explained, somewhat hesitantly with Kathy listening. "They're called the Night Travellers. But we never found anything on them during that investigation, it was like they knew we were looking for them. They took themselves elsewhere and we were constantly playing catch-up. Then the cinema came, and they disappeared for good."

"Can we just get something clear?" Kathy interrupted. "From what Jack's told me, not that I'm saying I believe it, but... Are we looking at something like the Holy Wood debacle?"

"What?"

"Yes," Ianto said firmly. "Jack, read Pratchett. Kathy, pretty much. They were trapped on the film, and they've used a weak point to come through."

"Are you two saying that this is in a book?"

"Sort of," Ianto agreed. "Are you thinking..."

"Can you get onto UNIT? See if they have any reports of similar incidents. It may be that it was inspired by a real event. Do you think we could meet with the author?"

Ianto grinned despite himself. "Well, it probably won't be soon enough for this case, but if UNIT confirm that it was influenced then... it would be sensible to go and..." he trailed off.

"Ianto?" Jack asked when the pause dragged out into a stop.

He shook his head and closed his eyes. "From out of the rain... They came... and the carnival. Christina."

"Is he always like this?" Kathy sounded somewhere between frustrated and dubious.

"Not normally. Ianto, who's Christina?"

He shook his head again to clear it. "She was a friend of my nan's after Nan was sent to Providence Park. I... used to talk to her more than my nan."

"And she use to talk about the carnival, and the rain?"

"Yeah, they... they took her family. She's still there, Jack; you should go and talk to her."

"I will do, thanks. Shall I send her your love?"

He smiled. "Please, and tell her that I'll come and see her soon. I haven't been able to in too long."

"And your nan..."

"Died, whilst I was in London first time," his smile flickered. "Back on topic, Jack."

"I'm sorry. Okay. So I'll go out to see Christina. Jonathon, the boy from the cinema, has my number in case anything else weird happens there."

"And what can we do?" Kathy asked.

"Not a lot, I'm afraid," Ianto sighed. "We just have to get it sorted quickly and hopefully bring them back safe."

"Hopefully..." her voice was as dry and cold as a morgue.

"They're practically dead," Jack pointed out, even as he pushed himself out of his chair. "We have to push them one way or the other, and we have to hope that we can push them the right way."

"The youngest victim is five."

"And I'd rather we saved them all," Jack snapped and sat back down again, and Ianto ran one hand through his hair whilst the other clutched his mug. "But I'm not going to leave them in some half-life limbo. Ianto."

"Jack?"

Jack smiled at him and nodded slightly. "I'll get Tosh to send you what we've got, then it can be combined with anything UNIT have got."

"Okay, keep me informed."

"I will do. See you later. Kathy, I'll call you if anything comes up." With that, his side of the screen went black.

Kathy seethed. "So nothing's changed, then? It's just that it'll always be me who gets told to butt out?"

He shrugged and put down his now empty mug. "We told you more than we would have six months ago. Surely anything at all is an improvement."

She pursed her lips. "I'm sure I'll speak to you again, Mr Jones."

"Doubtless," he concurred, and then she was gone too. He paused for a moment, then pushed himself out of his chair and went through to the next office. "Jacs, what are you working on at the moment?"

She looked up at him and gestured to the carved block in front of her. "Doing the translations on this. Want me to shelve it for the moment?"

"Yes please. I need you to contact UNIT and get their archive files on the Night Travellers." He paused to consider the best way to go about it. "I'll send you the basic file we have, then you can go over it and know what you're looking for."

"Right you are. Is this part of an ongoing?"

"Yep," he popped the p and sighed. "Probably won't be by the time we're done, but we'll do our best."

"I'm on it."

"Thanks, Jacs," he smiled and returned to his own office, to the work he needed to do before the weekend. "Bloody Torchwood."

The previous night's rain had drifted over to London by the early afternoon, and Ianto could feel it weighing down on his mood; it was making him especially twitchy because of his research matter of the day. UNIT's archives had provided them with more information than Jacqui could deal with on her own, and so she was sitting on the other side of his desk, going through the files with him. They hadn't realised that the Night Travellers were once corporeal entities, because their experiences with them had been with them using film to come through. He'd sent their overall report to Jack a few hours before, whilst he was on his way back from visiting Christina, and now he and Jacqui were combining the two sets of files into one coherent report.

"Do you think..."

"They'd need a bloody big flash, sweetheart," Jacqui sighed without looking up. "He'll be fine, and Owen will definitely be fine."

Ianto laughed breathily and shook his head. "You're right. I just need to..."

"He's your fiancé; you're supposed to worry," she tutted. "Now stop blaming yourself and pass me the 1974 report."

He did so and shook his head. "Can't help it, it's in my nature. Or it's in Jack's nature and he's passed it on to me."

"It's Torchwood culture: If the individual feels responsible for the welfare of others, they'll put more effort into it. It's why Greek soldiers were gay. How did Torchwood not know about this before?"

Ianto shrugged and finally raised his gaze from a more recent report. "In case you hadn't noticed, Torchwood and UNIT didn't have the most cordial of relationships until not that long ago. Neither officially knew the other existed." He bit his lip, whilst Jacqui let the silence drag on, coaxing him into saying more. "It was the downfall of One that did it. Jack always got on with UNIT better, because he travelled with the Doctor, like Alastair and Winifred. He kept an eye on the Doctor in the sixties but... couldn't make it obvious. So he just diverted Torchwood's attention from the upstart in their backyard. Then One fell, and Jack was suddenly in charge of all Torchwood, and UNIT expanded whilst Torchwood contracted."

"And a couple of years later, you come along and start setting the status quo in stone," she tapped the files in her hands on the desk to straighten it and put it back in its folder. "Do you think they'll split apart, or join together?"

"A bit of both," he mused absently, passing her another sheaf of papers. "Eventually there will be a local defence organisation, a global defence organisation, and a research organisation."

"Torchwood, UNIT and UNITwood."

He grinned. "Something like that."

"And your man will still be there," she said softly without looking up at him, although his gaze snapped to her guiltily. "Still defending the world, and telling stories of aliens and battles and carnivals and... and dashing men in suits."

"Doesn't seem fair, does it?" he licked his lips and dropped his gaze to the report he was reading again. "He's given me so much, and then I'll just leave him behind."

"That's life, Ianto."

"Sort of the opposite," he joked feebly. "Torchwood will have to look after him."

"Put it in the statues," she suggested. "You have that power."

The phone rang and he smiled at her as he reached for it. "I might just do that. Jones."

"Ianto... I..." his voice stuttered and he drew another deep breath.

"Jack, sweetheart, what's the matter?" He rolled his eyes when the endearment escaped, and knew that he'd just picked it up off Jacqui, but it was out there now. She gestured over her shoulder and he nodded, putting his palm flat in the middle of the report in front of her and mouthed 'thank you'. "What happened?"

Jack gave another shaky sigh and cleared his throat. "We stopped them; caught them on film and over-exposed it."

"And the victims?" his heart took up residence in his throat.

"Died. All of them. He took the lid off the flask and threw it, and Owen... he couldn't catch it, with his hand..."

"Shit." He rubbed his face and sat back further in his chair. "How many?"

"Eight, in the end. They got the couple who ran the cinema as well."

"Oh no." Ianto bit his lip; he'd spoken to them last night, talked about cinema and the history of Cardiff, and today they were gone. "What about Jonathan?"

"He's... coping, just about." This being the Torchwood definition of coping, which could be applied to someone who had just lost both of their parents to a supernatural being who had used their cinema to become real. Coping. "It's time Torchwood took responsibility. Tosh is looking after him tonight. I sent them home and... he might come and work for us, but I don't know yet."

Ianto didn't really know what he was saying when he opened his mouth. "Come to London."

"What?"

He thought back over the sentence, thinking that it had seemed perfectly clear to him. "Come here, to London. Give Tosh and Owen the night off, get UNIT to babysit and come here. When was the last time you had a proper night off, that didn't involve work of any sort?"

"At the conference?" Jack suggested hesitantly. "Or does that not..."

"Doesn't count, Jack."

"Well then... the night I got back."

Ianto rolled his eyes rather than sighing, which Jack would hear, and nodded to himself. That hadn't been a good night, for either of them, and Jack had desperately needed a night off to recover from his night off. It hadn't escaped Ianto's notice that he hadn't got one. "Well then, it's time you took one. Come here and let me look after you?"

"Why there?"

"Because if you come here, then I'll have finished work by the time you arrive and we won't get distracted by the Rift, or the temptation to be distracted by the Rift." He explained firmly.

Jack laughed. "Are you going to cook again?"

He considered this and nearly laughed. "I might have exhausted my repertoire, and I don't think even your constitution could cope with me experimenting. You'll come, then?"

"Yeah," Jack said, after a pause. "Owen and Tosh have already gone. I'll just get UNIT in and head to the station."

"Good. Come round to Downing Street; I'll wait for you here."

"Ianto..."

"Yes, Jack?" he smiled, recognising Jack's tone.

"I love you." The line went dead, and Ianto laughed despite himself.