A/N: Thank you!! You all know how nervous I get when I post something new, right? This was something I wasn't going to write, honestly, it just sort of crept up on me…

I'll post more once I'm done making the sweet potato gnocci for Thursday… and do my homework for tomorrow (it's pretty easy, I just have to actually sit down and DO it. Blegh. I'm so glad this class is almost over.)

Chapter Two: Settling In Out of Time

"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in a stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across the eternal seas of space and time"

Henry Beston

Their quarters were spacious, simple. It was fully furnished with things that Ianto could clearly identify. Sofa...chairs...coffee table... lamps... in the bedroom there was a big double bed... dressers... the view from both the bedroom and living room windows was breathtaking. They were on the forty first floor of a sixty story building. It was one of three in the complex with the city sprawled out lazily around them. Ianto fell immediately in love with the apartment. They even had their own private little balcony...

Despite their invitation for the Doctor to hang around for a few days… at least have dinner with them… he declined, suggesting that Jack and Ianto had enough settling in to do on their own, they didn't need a 'third wheel' hanging about.

They had Martha's phone, if they needed him for anything they could call.

"We'll be fine," the Captain assured him as he walked the Doctor out; Ianto was in the bedroom unpacking. "He's just a little out of his element."

"I'm sure he'll be right as rain in a few days."

Jack glanced over his shoulder towards the bedroom wishing suddenly that he'd given more thought to how this was going to affect Ianto. All he had considered was the end result… how much he knew Ianto wanted his own children. How he would do anything to make the younger man happy, give him something that that much more closely resembled a normal life.

Maybe Ianto was right, there was no such thing…

The Doctor gave Jack a long appraising look. "Second thoughts, Captain?" he queried.

Jack stepped out into the hallway and hit the pressure plate on the wall behind him, causing the door to slide shut and ensuring that they wouldn't be overheard. "I never wanted to do this again," he admitted in a quiet tone, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I never wanted get pregnant … or get anybody else pregnant." He didn't want to bury more children… "Being here… now…" he shrugged, but allowed himself to voice his fears, hoping that getting them out in the open would make him feel less afraid. "I know it's going to be almost fifty years before there's a Time Agency to worry about, but if anyone from my own time even suspects I'm in the neighbourhood…"

"I promise you, Jack, this is a quiet year. A quiet little corner of the galaxy. Nothing of any significance happens here… not now… pretty much never. I picked the most boring little world I could think of for you and Ianto."

Jack chuckled. He and the Doctor had discussed at length when and where the Time Lord was willing to take them. "All right. I'll stop worrying about it," he promised. "Thanks."

The Doctor fixed him with a stern look. "Are you sure you really want to do this? Because if you're not one hundred percent absolutely certain…"

Jack shook his head. "I would do anything to make him happy, Doc."

"What about what makes you happy?"

He smiled. That was an easy one. "He makes me happy. And as anxious as I am about being so close to my own time, I get a whole year here with him without having to worry about alien threats or 'rift gifts.' That makes me very happy."

"All right. If there's anything you need, you call me, Jack. I mean that. I'll be here."

"I know. And I will. We'll be fine. Like you said, he'll be right as rain in a few days," it was difficult to tell which one of them he was really trying to convince.

The Time Lord nodded and took his leave, hoping he had done the right thing by agreeing to bring them here… maybe he would drop back in on them in a couple of months, just to set his mind to rest that all was well… Ianto would adjust. After all, he was married to Jack… that had to mean he was… flexible… to say the least…

Smirking quietly to himself, the Doctor strolled back towards his TARDIS musing over what he was going to do to occupy himself for the next twelve months… not that he couldn't nip in and pop right back twelve months from now, but somehow that just didn't seem like a whole lot of fun.

"Wonder what Cardiff is like this time of year…" he smiled as the TARDIS doors swung shut.

……………………………………………………………..

Jack found Ianto standing in front of the dresser drawer, holding a shirt. Just, holding it. Staring.

"You ok?"

"I think… it's starting to hit me," he turned. His face was pale.

"Sweetheart?" the older man crossed the distance between them, resting his hands on the other's arms. "Talk to me…" Ianto was shaking.

"This is the year 4992, Jack. I… I've been dead for three thousand years…"

Jack drew him into his arms; he remembered the first time he'd travelled to the future… it hadn't hit him as quickly as it was hitting Ianto, or nearly as hard, but he was pretty sure he remembered looking out at an alien sky, thinking about everything he'd left behind… thinking just what Ianto was thinking now. The memory had been buried until a second ago… "You're not dead, Sweetheart, you're right here," he gave Ianto's arms a gentle squeeze.

"But I am dead, Cariad. Everyone I know is dead. My mother… Nerys… my brothers… everyone we knew… the whole team. Myfanwy. Janet. They've been gone for so long that nobody even knows they existed…"

"You know they existed. So do I. We'll be back in a year…only a week for the rest of them. Gwen won't even have time to plan a proper baby shower," he repeated the very thing she'd been moaning about for a week already.

Ianto didn't smile. "What if something happens before we get back?"

"They'll be fine. Gwen and Bobby can hold down the fort for a week without us there to hold their hands." He had left the two of them collectively in charge. Gwen had promised she wouldn't do any field work while he was gone and Bobby had promised not to let her.

Ianto shook his head. "But what if something happens to the Doctor? What if he isn't here to take us back? What if…"

"He'll be fine… he's been doing this a long time, Yan. He'll be here."

"Jack. What if something happens to him?"

"I'd find a way to get us home. I promise."

Ianto's expression changed to something Jack couldn't read.

"What is it?"

"This is your home, Jack," he explained. "Your time, your era. This is when you're from. I realize it's a different planet, a whole galaxy away from where you'll be born, but you could get to your home planet from here. You'll still be alive in eighty or a hundred years. You could go home. You could pick up right where you left off… nobody would ever know…"

Jack held him tighter; he brushed his lips against his partner's forehead. "This is when I'm from, but it isn't my home, not any more. My home is with you. In Cardiff. In the twenty-first century. That's where I belong."

The breath caught in the younger man's throat. "I love you so much. Sometimes I think you have no idea…"

Jack held his fingers lightly over his lips, silencing him. "I do know. I love you too. More than I know how to tell you sometimes."

"You just did, Cariad." He leant in… Jack met his kiss half way… moments later they were in a tangled heap on the bed, unpacking long forgotten…