Author's Note:So after the longest hiatus since Harper Lee, I have returned. I am trying to crank this story out for NaNoWriMo, but it is honestly so long since I last touched it that I have lost track of most of the characters. I will try to get them back, but I'm also using the opportunity to bring in some Doctor Who characters, because why not?

And so, if anyone is still reading and you're sitting comfortably, let us begin.

The streets of London were packed with Boxing Day sales shoppers, eager to snap up a bargain, like the whole city hadn't nearly been flattened by a cosmic cruise liner. A steady, persistent rain was falling, slicking the streets so that they reflected the drapes of silver and gold, and the crowd scuttled along in black under black umbrellas, the monochrome lifted by brightly coloured, bulging carrier bags. Ianto leaned his head against the window and sighed, and the twinkling lights flared into halos in the sudden fog on the glass. The car's engine purred; a deep, expensive sound that growled power without being so gauche as to admit it. A headache was throbbing in his temples, lodged where it had been since their time jump the previous night, and no amount of sleep, caffeine or painkillers had touched it,

Soon they were out of the shopping district and into the parks, and the car swept along faster, lights changing for it automatically, and soon they were gliding through the gates at the Tower of London. They closed smoothly behind, no tourists today to disturb them, and as soon as the car pulled to a halt Ianto opened the door and swung out, grabbing his bag and umbrella and scanning the area for some figure of authority. Brigadier Kate Stewart approached him, hand outstretched, ignoring the rain. "Director Jones, Captain Harkness. We're glad you could make it at last."

He ignored the implied censure and shook her hand. "Good to have you back in the UK, Ma'am. I hope you're well?"

"Very, thank you." She smiled at him tightly. "I don't think we've actually been introduced properly... although I know Jack, of course."

"Who doesn't?" He smiled politely. "Honour to meet you at last, Ma'am. There have been a lot of changes around here, but I hope we'll have you along with us."

"One way or another, I'm sure. Jack, hello," she said, giving him the slightly wary smile of one who has turned him down in the past. "Still as handsome as ever."

"And you don't look a day older than you did the day we met."

"Oh hush. I was eighteen. I never get asked for ID any more." She rolled her eyes and led them down the ramp into the basements beneath the building. "Well, that's a lie, but never in Aldi." She swiped her pass on the door and let Jack and Ianto do the same. The panel glowed radioactive green and, with an unassuming click, the door swung open on well oiled hinges. It was quite a contrast to the ear-piercing, hangover baiting sirens in Cardiff. So too were the sterile lines of the corridor, the painfully neat desks and the number of people milling about trying to look like they were busy and important instead of just curious or clueless. Jack nodded approvingly and Ianto tried to hide a grin. "You're the last, gentlemen, so we should probably start debriefing. Osgood, two more coffees, please."

Ianto helped Jack with his coat and handed it off to a frighteningly young soldier, who took it and Ianto's and whisked them off to some hidden cupboard. A young researcher, eyes huge behind her even bigger glasses, brought two coffees over and hovered, trying to be helpful. Ianto ignored her and made his way through to the main office, where an incident board was filling up with reports and CCTV footage. Most of it looked, at a glance, to be pointless trivia, and the whole amounted to not a lot.

Ally was at the board, pinning up print outs, and she gave him a look that confirmed his suspicions. "Ianto, Jack, Merry Christmas. I think."

"Merry Christmas, Ally," he murmured. "How are you getting on?"

She looked at the board and puffed her cheeks out. "We're getting."

Colonel Oduya cleared his throat and joined them at the board. "We're getting a significant number of sightings of the Doctor. There was a tour group visited the planet last night, and he was with one of them. Whatever happened, he was involved. Unfortunately, there has been no communication from the vessel, and it's now out of range. We have as-yet unconfirmed sightings of him returning to the planet after it departed, and one possible alien left behind. We're seeking to confirm this, so we can establish whether there is a potential threat."

"I'll try calling him again later," Jack promised. "He's not answering his phone at the moment. Might still be busy."

There were raised eyebrows and the odd grumble around the room and Ianto tried not to smile. "So what do we actually know for definite? Apart from the Doctor?"

There was a significant silence, until Kate said what they were all thinking. "Very little, quite honestly. The ship sent out a Mayday signal, and we think it was acknowledged, but that signal was too distant and complex for us to decode yet. We're working on it. It's a cruise liner called the Titanic, and it does a fly past of Earth once a year. Comes closest on Christmas Day and then heads off again. They have a permit for one hundred short-duration visits each year. Orbit to ground teleportation, with return no more than half an hour after their arrival. It's worked so far, and we keep a few undercover agents in the arrival location to ensure it runs smoothly. Until this year, there had been absolutely no problems. They're good for the economy. One visitor donated ten thousand pounds to an art gallery she visited to use the toilet."

"Is this common? Are we a constant attraction for rich tourists from across the universe?" Ianto asked.

"Well, they're not common, but there's about two dozen arrangements in place across the those, twenty have been set up in the last decade. We're making waves, and attracting attention, good and bad."

"This wasn't an attack though, was it? Do we have any evidence to suggest it was anything other than a malfunction?" Jack shrugged as disbelieving faces turned towards him. "One that nearly wiped out life on Earth as we know it, admittedly, but crashing a cruise ship into a planet is different, especially as they ultimately didn't."

"Are you suggesting that we treat the near destruction of the planet as an unfortunate accident?" Oduya asked.

Jack shrugged. "We did the last time the Titanic crashed."

"Normally, I'd agree with you. But there is the sticky issue of the Doctor. Does he ever turn up when there isn't trouble?"

"I hope so," Ianto said. "He's invited to our wedding. And how many years' worth of photos of him buying milk without a disaster happening are there?"

Jack held his hands up. "Do we have any actual evidence that this was malicious?" There was silence and a lot of frowning at the board. "No. So let's assume, for now, that it was an accident and see what we can learn for it."

Colonel Blake stabbed a finger down on a sheaf of papers. "We needed the shields up and running again. The Jathaa sunglider, Torchwood demonstrated its capabilities on another Christmas Day, so why can't we use it again? Jones was wrong then, but we needed it today." There were sighs and uncomfortable shuffling, and he pressed on. "Another minute and it would have wiped out London, possibly the whole of the south of England. It was too close. It passed right over Buckingham Palace."

"The Doctor was on board," Ianto pointed out. "We couldn't have risked it."

"And next time he might not be, and we might not be so lucky." Blake glared at him. "We shouldn't restrict ourselves because of Torchwood's foolishness."

"I seem to recall that it was UNIT who decommissioned it," Ianto pointed out, "back in 2007. I wasn't party to the decision, but I'm open to reassessing it." He met Jack's eyes and nodded, acknowledging his shock. "We could have used it last Christmas as well."

"And then the Master would have had it. We need to weigh up the risks of it falling into the wrong hands again. Preferably take the Prime Minister out of the decision making process. I don't trust the British public any more." He leaned on the table and sighed. "We do need protection. But does it have to be a weapon?"

"That's rich, coming from Torchwood. Maybe we can repel them with the sheer force of your magnetic personality. We may have to reverse the polarity, of course," Blake joked. "What would you have us do, Harkness? Wish them away? It doesn't work, and you know that damn well."

"I know," he growled. "But don't let it be our only option. I don't trust it. Apart from anything else, we don't know enough about the system. Unless it's researched more fully we could end up doing the job and flattening London ourselves. Get the geeks on it, try to get something in place that doesn't rely on unknown technology."

No one could argue with that, and Kate sat down wearily. "Alright, let's go back to basics. Let's see what we have, and then we can see if we can fill in the gaps. For anyone who wasn't here yesterday, we'll fill you in on everything we have as we go. As you know, it's not a lot." She sighed again and started from the beginning, when the first pip was recorded on the radar.

# # #

Three hours later, they didn't have a lot more. Jack had managed to fill in a couple of the gaps, and one new report had confirmed the arrival of an alien having arrived on Earth and not yet left. A search party was searching for him to take him into custody, and Ianto's headache had spread to behind his eyes. He rubbed at them tiredly and nodded along, although he'd lost track of the analysis of the trajectory, which was apparently very important to the situation. he didn't know why and didn't much care, either. Jack's hand rested on the back of his neck and his thumb rubbed gently below his ear, and it eased some of the tension.

The report was wrapped up at last and Kate stood up, a little quicker than she would probably have liked. "There's lunch in the ante-room," she announced. "And tea and coffee, and if anyone needs the toilet they're down the corridor on the left."

She hurried off in that direction and Ianto smiled. "I don't know if I can face food yet, but I know I probably should. Why is it always Christmas?"

"Darkest day of the year. When else would you attack?" Jack smiled at him again and straightened up. "Come on, get some lunch. You've basically not eaten since yesterday morning."

"Jack, I didn't need reminding of that right before I ate. I am never using that thing again."

"It worked, though. If the Doctor hadn't fixed it, or whatever happened, we'd still be here. That's something."

"Yeah," he agreed. "It's something. We need to work on something less..."

"Less nausea inducing? Yeah, and bigger. I'll present it after lunch, then get Tosh on it when we get home. Sound good?"

"As long as you present it quickly." They joined the milling throng in the foyer and Ianto collected three plates and Ally. "Try the millefleurs. UNIT do amazing millefleurs."

"I'll remember that. Their chips are terrible." She smiled at him tiredly. "How was your Christmas, work excluded?"

"Better than yours, by the look of it. Tosh stayed over. It was nice. How was yours? Useful?"

She rubbed at her eyes. "Yeah, it was good. Dull as ditch water until we were about to clock off, of course. A lot of monitoring and everyone on edge. Impotently, as it turned out."

"Yeah, well that's UNIT," Jack muttered, earning a glare. "We're sitting ducks, really, for this sort of thing. For ground based attack's we're not doing much better."

"Well, I'm sure we all appreciate the Christmas cheer, Jack." Ianto squeezed Ally's shoulder. "You seem to be doing well. I'll hear back, I'm sure, but I'm proud of you so far."

"They all did very well," Kate told him, having arrived without his noticing. "Valuable additions to the team. If this was a sign of the future, your project may be the difference between our survival and destruction. We'll know which it is if Jack starts disappearing, like the Chrshire Cat, a little bit at a time. Although knowing Jack, it won't be the smile that goes last."

Jack chuckled and didn't argue. "It's good to see you too, Kate. How's your father?"

She sighed. "Hale and healthy and highly frustrating. He'd appreciate a visit, you know. He's in a home now, causing chaos."

"I'll make a note of it. Maybe you could come up and join us? We'll make a day of it, break him out of there and go out for dinner."

She laughed. "He'd love that. I know a back way. I'd like it too, thank you. It's good to see you out and about again. And happy."

"When did you get so grown up?"

"Oh, about thirty years ago." She touched his arm softly. "A lifetime ago."

Ianto cleared his throat and Kate blushed. "Don't worry, he has that effect on everyone. I'd like to talk through our proposals with you at some point, if you're going to be in London for a while?"

"I'm stationed here permanently for now. I'll get in touch with your PA, organise a meeting. I think my father would like to have his say as well." She rolled her eyes. "Doesn't he always?"

"He does, and I'd like to hear what he has to say." He dug a card out of his wallet and handed it over. "Drop me an email. Whenever's convenient for you."

"I'm flattered, Ianto Jones," she commented. "And I think I'm going to like you."