Chapter Two

Ianto woke up in the dark to his mobile ringing and a dull ache in his head. He flung his hand out to Jack's bedside table, landing on either side of the singing, vibrating bit of machinery before finally grabbing it, flipping it open and pressing it to his ear.

"Ianto Jones."

"Ianto? It's Andy."

Ianto looked at the time on the screen of the phone and huffed an aggravated sigh. "PC Davidson, unless the world is currently ending I suggest you call back at some point after the sun has risen."

Andy went on as though he didn't hear him. "There's been – uh – an incident. I thought Torchwood might want to take a look."

Ianto slung an arm over his eyes. "Incident?"

"A meteor kind of thing crashed in the woods just outside Cardiff. Big green fireball. Scared some of the locals."

"Meteor kind of thing," Ianto repeated.

"Yeah."

"Andy, why didn't you call Gwen?"

Andy sounded embarrassed. "She wasn't – ah – wasn't answering her mobile."

Ianto smirked. "You've made her angry, haven't you?"

"Can you please just come out here? The police don't know what to do with it."

"Fine," Ianto groaned, rolling over. "You're to have coffee for us."

"Thought that was your job."

"Watch it." He hung up.

He slipped out of the bed and padded over to Jack's wardrobe, not bothering to turn on the light, knowing his way around through repetition. He had an extra suit there, among Jack's clothes, tucked away between his dated trousers and suspenders and shirts. He pulled it free and dressed in the dark, trying to ignore the ache at the back of his head.

At the top of the ladder, Ianto beheld Jack slumped over his desk, his head in his arms. Ianto came toward him and reached out, meaning to shake him awake, but he stopped, catching sight of his own arm. The four black marks. He remembered.

He looked at Jack for a moment, sleeping at his desk. The guilt that had been on his face last night. As thought it were his fault he had gone back to that particular moment. The sadness of it washed over Ianto in a very slow, gentle wave.

That was something that he had not intended to reveal. He knew that Jack would find out eventually, but he would keep it quiet. He wouldn't talk about it. Because if Jack was good at anything, he was good at not talking about things. And that was often for the best.

Quietly, Ianto said, "Jack."

Jack stirred lightly, his forehead creasing.

"Jack," Ianto said, a bit louder, though still gently. "Jack, wake up. We've had a call."

Jack took in a breath and opened his eyes, and Ianto was immediately reminded of the way he looked when he came back to life. That breath. A sudden, complicated mixture of feelings pervaded his stomach as Jack blinked at him and sat up.

Jack rubbed the place between his eyes. "Dozed off," he said, with a yawn. "What time is it?"

Ianto swallowed the unexpected emotional rush and managed to sound natural as he said, still quietly, "Four thirty."

Jack groaned, leaning back in his chair. "I might as well have stayed awake." He looked at Ianto. "You feeling all right?"

"Fine," Ianto said. "Headache. Nothing I can't manage." He went to the coat tree and took Jack's greatcoat down. "Shall we go?"

Jack sighed. "Suppose we have to." He stood up and let Ianto slip the coat over his arms.

Ianto was about to settle the coat on his shoulders automatically when he caught himself and stepped back, pulling his hands away. Jack turned, brow furrowed. When it struck him, he smiled – it was dazzling. Ianto felt his butterfly-stomach feeling redouble at the sight of it.

"Guess we're so used to that, by now," Jack said, and his voice was uncharacteristically soft.

He picked up his keys. "Come on. Let's go."

- - -

Jack called Gwen from the SUV on the way to the site – "Wouldn't want to deny her the joy of this little adventure" – and she met them there, her hair still bed-mussed and her eyes half-closed.

"You drove in that condition?" Ianto asked, accepting a coffee from a nameless police grunt. He took a sip. It wasn't terrible. He let his eyes follow the kid back through the crowd outside of the police tape.

"You bastards called me out here," Gwen mumbled into the lid of her coffee. She couldn't seem to raise her head any higher.

"Retribution for Davidson waking me up," Ianto replied sunnily, scanning the crowd for Jack. He spotted him speaking to a police sergeant, who looked incredibly angry. Jack did have that effect.

The conversation subsequently ended with the sergeant turning on his heel and storming away, and Jack returned to them, looking pleased.

"All ours," he said, and lifted the police tape to let them through.

The hole that the thing had made was impressive. It extended about nine feet in diameter, eight feet down into the wet earth. Whatever it was, it sat at the center, infinitely less impressive; two feet in diameter, the height of Jack's knee. It glowed green through some cracks in the outer shell. It reminded Ianto of a prop from a bad 70's science fiction movie.

Gwen moved a bit of blinking Torchwood kit over the surface of the meteor. "No radiation," she said, moving to the other side carefully, her shoes nearly lost in mud. "High rift energy, though."

Jack nodded. "This thing would never have made it through the atmosphere. Way too small. It must have fallen through."

Ianto squinted up at the sides of the crater. "How are we going to get it out?"

Jack grinned and looked at Gwen. "Think you can bully your ex-partner into rounding up some young and able bodies for us?"

Gwen took a moment to glare at him before resignedly scaling the crater. Ianto followed, Jack falling in behind him. At the lip, Ianto caught sight of Gwen and Andy – Andy looking the way Andy normally looked when he spoke to Gwen: half annoyed, half in love. Ianto pulled himself up to the surface and looked behind him, reaching out to help Jack out.

Jack grabbed his hand without thinking.

He disappeared the second their skin made contact.

Behind him, Ianto heard Gwen stop talking. He slowly turned his head to look at her, and met her glare with an apologetic smile.

- - -

Jack was somewhere with very terrible wood paneling. That was what he noticed first. Next, the sound of crying.

He turned around. Chairs arranged in rows. People huddled in little groups, sitting down, standing. Wearing black.

A casket at the top of the room.

Did Ianto have no good memories?

Jack hesitated, unsure of what to do. Was there a way that he could avoid seeing whatever he was meant to see?

The decision was taken out of his hands when Ianto walked through the door.

Even at sixteen, Ianto looked remarkable in a suit. That upright posture, that purposeful way of walking, all incredibly familiar but still so incredibly different.

The look on his face, though, was exactly the same.

Jack realized that here, today, at this moment, was when Ianto perfected his pleasant, emotionless mask.

He moved through the groups, shaking hands, whispering back and forth short, sympathetic conversations, and he never wavered. Not for a second.

Even as he stood next to his father's coffin, looking down at the too-bright morticians' makeup, Ianto's formal expression did not slip once.

Jack came closer, getting a better look at him. Wanting to catch something, anything, that would show what he was feeling. He came around to Ianto's side and looked.

His eyes.

The incredible weight in his eyes as he stared down at his father's body. It was a weight that Jack knew well; the only way that Jack had been able to tell what Ianto was feeling, after Lisa.

Jack reached out to touch Ianto's arm, but the world dissolved again before he got there.

- - -

Jack materialized with his feet halfway over the lip of the crater, but this time Gwen caught him, pulling him backwards before he was able to fall.

"Well, you got out of hauling the thing," she muttered. "Good for you."

Jack looked at Ianto, off to the side, directing the lifting of what they were apparently now referring to as The Thing into the SUV. He looked over and saw Jack, and a private sort of grin touched his lips, only to fade when Jack met his eyes. He quickly looked away from the expression on Jack's face.

Gwen, beside him, asked suddenly, "What's wrong?"

Jack shook his head. "Nothing."

She grabbed his arm before he could wander away. "Where did you go?"

He looked at her. "Do you really think that's your business?"

Her eyes widened, surprised, then turned stormy with anger. "It isn't yours, either!"

"Yeah," he said. "But I can't help it."

He walked off.

- - -

The ride back to the hub was silent. Jack had sent Gwen home to sleep and come in at a reasonable hour – she'd gone off angry, and Ianto wasn't certain why, but he could manage a guess, taking into consideration the look she'd given Jack before she'd left. He stared down at his hands in his lap, aware of Jack's unwavering gaze out at the dark road. Behind them, The Thing glowed dully in the backseat.

As though having come to some sort of decision, he turned his head purposefully to look at Jack, and felt the words Where did you go? at the base of his throat. Then, Jack's words from the night before echoed through his head.

You don't have to explain.

He looked away, out of the window, at the slowly brightening streets.

Jack said, "Your dad's funeral."

Ianto looked at him, surprised. He said nothing else. He didn't take his eyes away from the road.

Ianto looked away again, aware of both of their breathing in the heavy silence.

- - -

They rolled The Thing into the hub on a dolly. It was, apparently, superdense – much heavier than its size warranted. It took them a few tries to lift it onto a table, and when they finally managed it, Jack told Ianto he could go back to sleep.

"I'll stay up." He looked at his watch. "I've slept enough."

Jack looked at him, but said nothing. He turned back to The Thing – the meteor, the glowing rock – Ianto would have thought of a name for it, that being his presumed specialty, if he had not felt suddenly invasive. Unwelcome. Jack's silence, his forced focus, filled the area around him, and pushed Ianto out.

He left the room.

Jack felt him go, then heard the clink of cups somewhere in the hub. He sighed quietly and relaxed against the table, leaning on his arms. This was not going to work.

He'd never been curious before – at least, not actively. Ianto was private. It had hardly occurred to Jack that he had a reason to be curious; the important parts of Ianto were here, physical, almost constantly close by. But, now. Forced in front of him. The things he didn't know. The things he didn't want to know.

He slowly began to examine The Thing, absentmindedly hooking it up to a bit of alien technology that Torchwood picked up in the 80's, able to detect foreign energy levels.

It was – cheating. That's what it was. The things that Jack had seen, those were moments that are shared in hesitant, hushed voices, in the dark. The types of conversations that he might have with Ianto, at some point. Just not yet.

(A low beeping began as the machine turned on.)

And maybe never. Because Jack could never reciprocate that sort of thing. There were so many things about himself, his past, that he could never explain.

(The beeping grew louder.)

He heard footsteps and the clink of china approaching, and turned to see Ianto carrying a tray with coffee and toast. He raised his eyebrows at Jack and nodded at The Thing. "Figured it out yet?"

"Not yet."

(And louder.)

Ianto's brow creased. "What's that beeping?"

Jack looked surprised, then turned to look at the readout on the energy detector.

It was cycling to a point where the machinery could no longer measure it.

Jack looked at Ianto, eyes wide.

Fear flashed across Ianto's face.

Jack quickly reached out and touched Ianto's cheek.

Ianto vanished.

The Thing exploded.