Jack cast a furtive glance a round him as he picked the lock on the door that would let him in to the hospital basement, shivering as the heavy metal door slammed shut ominously be hind him. Dark under ground spaces still made him want to throw him self at the walls and yell until he was hoarse and cause major havoc until he was as far a way as possible. Pushing the memories to the back of his mind as he so often did, the immortal blue eyed brunette searched a round the walls until he had found the light switch. The florescent strips flickered un certainly for a moment until they eventually shone a dim orange yellow colour; casting eerie shadows every where. After a moment to get his bearings, he headed towards where the cryo chambers where stored, his foot steps echoing loudly in the deserted place.

Am I doing the right thing? Jack wondered what if he stays the same? I would have to put him back in there. Or kill him. The thought scared him but he deliberately didn't change the subject. May be death really was the best thing for his brother now, what happened if in a hundred, a thousand years time no body was able to remember why he had been frozen in the first place? Then that would be another load of death on his al ready size able conscience, he knew what it was like to live with the memories of torture and he honestly would kill him self to get rid of the memories if it would actually be permanent. But he couldn't just kill the guy, he was his little brother! But you al ready killed your grand son, a snide little voice in his head pointed out, so what would make this time so different? Jack decided that now was definitely a good time to think a bout some thing else and shook his head to clear it of the painful memories that were re surfacing.

He care fully keyed in the necessary codes and instructions and effortlessly by passed the security system when it refused to accept his thumb print as he was, apparently, 'long deceased'. He almost cracked a smile at that. Almost. He stepped back as the ancient machinery hissed and stuttered and hurriedly cloaked him self in the black shadows and watched silently as his (much) younger sibling a woke and quickly extracted him self from the chamber once he had realised just what it was.

"Be careful." Jack announced his presence and stepped for ward as Gray stumbled clumsily over a dilapidated stool. "Your body's systems are going to take a while to start functioning normally a gain."

"What the fuck are you doing here?" the younger brunette snarled up at him angrily.

"Oh that's a nice way to say hi to your brother isn't it?"

"What the fuck am I doing here?!" Gray demanded.

"Well I was going to offer you the chance to go home but if you're going to be such a mekrittu then I'll just freeze you all over a gain." Jack spat out the insult, using his native language out loud for the first time in centuries.

"What do you mean home?!" his brother repeated. In return he nodded down towards his vortex manipulator.

"This thing is working a gain, I planned on taking you back to the Boeshane ten years after the invasion. But if you don't want to then you can just fuck off out my sight because I really can not be bothered if you try and kill every one on earth; haven't been for a long time now."

Gray stayed quiet and thought. He wanted to just go over to his big brother and hug him tight and beg for his forgiveness but he found that his feet were un willing to obey- as if they had been stuck in to the concrete floor. It wasn't his fault, a tiny voice sounded in side his head, it wasn't any body's fault you were kid napped and yet here he is still blaming him self for it over two millennia after the event. How many other people could say that their brother had been that loyal to them? Not many. You don't hate him; you never hated him, not really. Even if he did lose you on purpose then he was a thirteen year old boy whose home had just been invaded by monsters and life is all a bout survival. He promised that he would look after you and he couldn't just go back in time and stop it all from happening- you know that no body is allowed to cross their own time line.

And what's more Jack was hurting, he could see it in his eyes, a pain that had nothing to do with the deaths of Tosh and Owen which led Gray to wonder who else had died.

Ianto.

So obviously Ianto, the witty, handsome welsh man that had captured his elder sibling's heart in a way that no body else had. The sarcastic, gorgeous eye candy that had attracted the attentions of John Hart and that actually wasn't as easy as it sounded. "Ianto's dead isn't he?" no point in sugar coating it he decided as he gauged for a reaction. For a moment he honestly thought that Jack was going to cry until the shutters came down and his face be came devoid of all emotion.

"Yes." This time Gray felt tears welling up in his eyes.

"I'm sorry Blue." He whispered, if the immortal man was surprised at the mention of his child hood nick name then he didn't let it show.

"What for?" he asked, "Ianto dying or for killing two of my team?"

"Both."

"I know."

"And for burying you a live and for getting a bout your promise and being a crap brother and making John help me and placing bombs all a round Cardiff…" he trailed off as the tears really began to flow and Jack pulled him in to a hug, knowing what he was really sorry for.

"You're not a crap brother, don't you ever think that." He soothed gently, "I should never have broken my promise in the first place."

FLASH BACK

He woke up to the sounds of his baby brother crying and padded softly out of his bed and across the room to where Gray's bed was and sat cross legged next to the boy's head and shook his shoulder to alert him of his presence.

"Why are you crying?" he asked Gray.

"Bad dream." The younger snuffled miserably. "Lots of monsters came and Dad told you to run and keep me safe and you did and we were running fast but I couldn't run fast enough and you let go of my hand and the monsters got me."

"Well that was obviously not true then weren't it? I'm here, you're here, the only monsters are when Mum and Dad get angry and shout at us for trying to make snow and they aren't monsters really because they're Mum and Dad."

"I guess." Gray agreed as he tried to follow his brother's quicksilver logic. "Thank you Blue." He told his elder brother, using the name that everybody on the peninsula told the young brunette in reference to his sapphire blue eyes. Only their parents had ever called him by his real name once when they told them off for trying to make snow.

"Hey it's what big brothers are meant to do right?" Blue asked him cheerfully, "And even if some monsters did come and Dad told me to keep you safe I'd make sure I'd never ever let go of your hand I swear on Mr Smokey." He nodded towards where his favourite teddy bear sat lopsidedly on his pillow. "And if the monsters did take you then I would join the time agency and learn to travel in time so I could get you back."

Just then they heard their Mum calling for them to come down for breakfast and they happily ran down the stairs, the nightmare all but forgotten.

So when the monsters did come and take Gray 7 years later Blue did join the time agency and although he couldn't just go back to that day and save his brother he never stopped looking for him.

And even when however many years later Gray killed Tosh he knew he didn't truly hate his brother because he remembered the promise the person that used to be Blue had made to him and he knew he would have honoured it if he could of, because his brother had never let him down.

END OF FLASH BACK

"You didn't break your promise." Gray whimpered, "You had two years of your memories as time agent wiped."

"How do you know?"

"John told me. You found out where I was and you were going got come and get me but the day before you were going to go they wiped your memory and couldn't remember any thing a bout it."

Jack pulled back slightly so that he could look his little brother in the eye. "I think you should tell me every thing you know from the beginning." He said seriously. Gray nodded and began his tale.

FLASH BACK

Gray sat on the floor next to his bed in John's apartment that was 'not small but cosy', flicking slowly through the con man's diary. Though why it was in an old fashioned note book was a mystery- he didn't quite believe it was because the elder man was 'attached to the past' and decided it was more likely because you could burn paper easier than a data pad. Either way once you had deciphered the al most illegible scrawl the old book actually made for some good reading.

MONDAY 22ND APRIL 5123= blimey, Boe aint half obsessed with the past! I looked through his drawer for some socks (couldn't be arsed to bung mine in the wash) and all I found in all of his drawers was a bout six or seven note books and data pads with stuff a bout Gray on. 'Part from one paper thing (I think they used to call them envelopes?) with an old photo of his family stuffed in. Gray looked a bit like Boe but shorter and masses of curly hair and their dad looked like an older version of both of them put together. His mum was sort of the sweet al ways baking or gardening mummy person. (She was a right bit of eye candy) with blonde brown hair that reached al most to her waist and green eyes.

WEDNESDAY 24TH APRIL= some thing weird's happening and I'm, pretty sure that it's the Agency's doing. For starters Boe didn't wake up until seven this morning and I'm usually not up until eight so that rouses suspicions. Then when I finally wake him up from a night mare (never got why he has so many, if I lost my little brother I wouldn't have given a flying fuck in space) he just puked and went back to sleep. Then he woke up an hour after- and I still hadn't finished cleaning up- he couldn't remember the past two years of his life. Wanted to know why the hell I was there because he thought we were still fighting over some thing. He said he felt sick a gain though I pulled him in to the bath room this time; vomit is much easier to clean off tiles.

FRIDAY 26TH APRIL= Boe's gone. He's left the agency al together, he left a note saying that he had to get out of here while he could and I should do the same and that he was going to search for Gray. Bloody idiot, he's al ready found him. He was meant to go get him yester day but he couldn't remember. He could be hundreds of years in the past affecting what I'm doing right now, he could be shagging my grand mother for all I know. I want him back. I'll go get Gray then we can be happy a gain, though I'll have to translate his note books from Boeminian first. Stupid cunt never makes it easy does he?

Gray fingered the dog eared picture stuck on to the page, he still felt angry.

END OF FLASH BACK

Gray looked on silently as his brother stared vacantly in to space as he tried to process what he had just been told. When he was still doing exactly the same thing five minuites later he started to wonder if he was OK. "Blue?" he tentatively broke the heavy silence. Jack looked a cross at him surprised; like he had for gotten he was even there. "Are we going home now?" he asked. some how he wasn't surprised when the immortal shook his head.

"Not to night. Tomorrow, some loose ends that I gotta tie up first." Gray nodded.

"Where are we going to sleep to night?"

"One of torchwood's safe houses."

"I thought that all houses were safe?" he replied in bewilderment as he tried to make sense of the comment. Jack shot him a look before remembering that for one they didn't have a word for' safe houses' in Boeminian and for two, despite John's brief (and probably sex oriented) up date of the universe, his brother's know ledge in certain areas were severely lacking.

"Safe house just means a house that spies or similar people can go to if they think they're in danger. I figured a house in the middle of no where is the last place they'll look if they discover that you're missing."

"They wouldn't think to look three thousand years in the future either." He pointed out with a smirk. Jack gave him a smile that for the first time reached his eyes before holding out his vortex manipulator and they disappeared from the basement in a flash of light.