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Chapter Four: An Ordinary Life

Princeton, NJ (USA):

Robert's apartment looked so normal. It was like he'd just gone out for a bite to eat or up to the corner store for something he'd forgotten. He's always forgetting something… Allison ignored the tightness in her gut and shut the door behind her, sagging against it a moment. She remembered the last time she'd been here, the day of the Atmos 'accident.'

She wiped the tears away and walked around his living room. Yesterday's paper was still on the coffee table. There was an empty coffee cup sitting on top of it. She half expected him to come walking out of the bedroom…

But the bedroom was empty. The dresser drawers were all open. Empty. The only thing she found in the closet was a blouse she'd left here last week, a pair of her jeans.

She bit back more tears tears. He was gone. She'd known before she had arrived that he was gone, but seeing it hurt because, she knew in her heart that he wasn't coming back.

Her toothbrush, right where she'd left it. Her deodorant. Some make-up. The earring she'd lost in his bed the night they…

She sagged against the bathroom door and cried. The tears were, in part, brought on by how much she missed him, but mostly she was crying because she had only just realized the impact her life had had on his. A toothbrush. A few articles of clothing. A lost earring. That was all there was to their relationship, all that was left of the last year of her life. Was this all people meant to each other?

I want to spend the rest of my life with you… His words. The look on his face when he'd said them. But how could he want to marry her? He wasn't even responsible enough to put his dirty cup in the sink before taking off in the middle of the night! What was he going to do with his furniture, the food in his cupboards? I hadn't appeared as if he'd taken more than a handful of CD's, maybe a couple of books from the shelf, one or two movies. What was he going to do with the rest of it? Let it sit and collect dust?

Or did he expect her to deal with it? There was no one else she could think of, but it wasn't her responsibility, it was his, only he was half a world away in Wales.

Allison picked herself up off the bathroom floor and walked back into the living room. She'd lent him a CD a few weeks ago. A DVD. She collected them and put them with the rest of her things. Not even enough stuff for a box…

The knock at Robert's door startled her and for half a second her breath caught. But Robert wouldn't knock on his own door. She opened it to find Foreman standing there.

He smiled, "Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"He's gone. He left this morning, I think."

Foreman's brows knit together, "He said he wasn't leaving until tomorrow… wait. He left and you're still here?"

"I just came to get my things."

"You're not going with him, are you?"

"I have a life, Foreman. It's here. Here is where I belong." Suddenly she was aware of the way he was looking at her and why. She'd made that statement standing the doorway of Robert's apartment. "You know what I meant."

"Yeah. I think I do. I guess I'll see you at work."

"Foreman," she caught his arm. "Just say it."

"I think you're making a mistake. Happy?"

"I love my job. I love my life. I don't want to move half way around the world just to follow somebody else's dream."

"Which one of us are you trying to convince, Allison?"

She stopped; he never called her by her first name. "Well it doesn't matter. He left."

Foreman just continued looking at her.

"I made my decision. Time to move on." She gathered up her few belongings and took a last look around before setting her key on the counter near the door.

…………………………………………………….

Cardiff, Wales (UK):

"Damn," Bobby cursed as the body shattered under his touch. He shot an apologetic look to Liz Shaw, but she didn't seem offended by either the curse or sudden dust cloud. "Sorry," he said anyway.

"Right. I'll just go see if I can find a dustpan," Ianto commented from the living room doorway.

"Oiy, what a mess," Gwen joined them. "Is… erm… was that our victim?" she asked as Ianto ducked out of the kitchen.

"It was," Liz confirmed.

"Sorry," Bobby muttered again.

"Should've been there for the mess I made on my first day," Gwen gave him a smile. "Come on, let's get that lot bagged up. There's nothing here of any interest except him."

"You sure?" Bobby asked her.

"I was with the police for a few years, I know how to search a house, mate," her tone was indignant.

"Sorry," he said yet again. Then he realized she was smiling. Teasing him. He'd seen a good deal of good natured banter being tossed around by the rest of them, even in the face of something like this… or maybe especially in the face of it. He was having a hard time imagining coming to work every day and seeing stuff like this.

"Here we are," Ianto returned with a broom and dustpan; when the rest of them gave him a glare he asked "What?" with a slightly hurt expression. "Would you prefer I go look for a vacuum, then?"

"That'll do just fine," Liz took it from him, "Although I must say this is the most unconventional crime scene clean up I've ever been party to," she handed the broom to Robert. "You sweep, I'll bag."

"How's it coming…?" Jack came in the back door. "Oh. Well."

"I took photos," Bobby offered up hopefully.

"Right. Good thinking. Gwen, Ianto, anything?"

"Ordinary house belonging to an ordinary man who lived an ordinary life," said Gwen.

"So why did he die such an extraordinary death?" Jack wondered aloud.

………………………………………………………….

"You sure you don't want to get some sleep?" Liz asked as she and Bobby began laying the bags out on the exam table.

"I got some sleep on the plane," he lied. He'd most of the trip reading UNIT files because every time he shut his eyes, he saw Allison's face, heard her voice telling him she didn't love him. Working was better than remembering the last time they'd laughed together, the last time they'd cried. It was better than sitting around wondering how he could ever have misjudged her feelings so badly. "I'm fine, really," he said in response to the mother-hen look he realized Liz was giving him.

"All right, but if you get tired, I want you to go lie down and take a nap. It's not as if this poor fellow is going anywhere or getting any worse."

"I suppose there's that – unless whatever did this to him is still out there."

"There's a rather unsavoury thought," Liz agreed. "And probably not how you'd imagined starting a new job."

"I hadn't thought about it much really," he told her honestly as they both donned lab coats. "Although I suppose if I had, this wouldn't have been the first thing to spring to mind," he gave her a half smile and slid the mask into place before opening the first bag. The body was dust and charred bone fragments, most pieces not more than few inches long. He picked up a bit of jaw bone with a single blackened tooth still in it, puzzling over what had killed the man. "The heat necessary to burn human bone like this is what, over two thousand degrees Fahrenheit?"

"If you've got a couple of hours," Liz was examining another fragment under a large magnifying glass. "To do this in the sort of time period we're working with would require an awful lot more heat. Or possibly some sort of chemical reaction. What do you say we start by trying to answer that question and see where it leads us?"

"You're the expert."

She looked up at him, "Yes. But this is your lab now."

He swallowed. She was right, but having someone like Elizabeth Shaw defer to him… "All right." He thought for a moment and then suggested that they take one of the samples he'd collected before the body disintegrated and run it for a chemical analysis to see if anything unusual popped up.

…………………………………….

Up above, in the main Hub, Gwen was going through the victim's life on her computer. "Harold Miller, age fifty seven. Civil engineer. Widower. Survived by a daughter, divorced, and two grandchildren. I imagine the police have notified the family ?"

Jack nodded. He would have rather they didn't, not until he had some answers, but with the crowd outside Miller's house, it was inevitable that someone would call the daughter. "According to the neighbour, there was nothing unusual about the day – thanks," he smiled his infinite gratitude at Ianto for the coffee the younger man pressed into his hands.

"Thank you, Ianto," Gwen echoed the sentiment with a shy smile. It was the same shy smile she'd been favouring him with ever since it became obvious that he no longer left the Hub at night. "Mr. Miller didn't have so much as an outstanding parking ticket. I'll put together a file of his life anyway, but I don't think we're going to find any answers in his past."

"Random occurrence then?" Ianto inquired, taking a sip from his own mug.

"According to the neighbour, Selma Peterson, she saw a 'strange blue light' coming from Miller's kitchen and came over to check on him. The back door was unlocked, which was normal, apparently, so she let herself in. He was already in the state we found him in. She'd seen him just half an hour earlier taking something out to the bin."

"Oh, what a dreadful thing to walk in on," Gwen's tone was full of sympathy for the woman who'd found Miller. "What could turn a human being to a pile of ash in less than half an hour?"

"Spontaneous human combustion?" Ianto said then.

"There's no such thing. Is there?" Gwen looked up at Jack.

"No. Where does the daughter live?"

"Barry."

"All right. Ianto, tomorrow I want you and Bobby to go talk to her; lay on that considerable charm of yours," he added with a smile. He continued in a more serious tone, however, "I want to know if he came into possession of anything unusual in the last month, something he bought or found or someone gave him. Anything.

"Hopefully this is a one-time incident, but if it isn't, I want some idea of what we're really dealing with. Go back over rift activity for the past month, to see if anything lines up. I know it's been quiet, but maybe that's it, it's been too quiet. Then get some sleep. Both of you," he gave Gwen a look.

Before he left them to it, Jack placed his hand lightly on Ianto's hip, drawing the younger man just a couple of inches closer and loving the way Ianto half closed his eyes and smiled in response; they both knew they weren't going to get any closer than this until they were alone again.

While Gwen and Ianto went to work on their prospective tasks, Jack went over to Tosh's old station to look for any kind of alien energy signatures that might have shown up on the system in or around Miller's house tonight. There was a very distinct spike the corresponded with the time of Mr. Miller's death, but it wasn't anything he recognized. That worried him. He started working back through the system to see if anything like it had happened before and he just didn't remember, because two thousand years was a long time and he realized he couldn't always trust his memory. That worried him too.

……………………………………….

"Jack," Ianto laid a hand on the other's back. "It's late. Let's go to bed. Gwen left an hour ago," he added.

"So why are you still up?"

"Your Dr. Chase was keeping me occupied."

"I beg your pardon?"

Ianto chuckled; he'd chosen his words to illicit the response he'd just gotten. "I was planning on getting him into the system tomorrow but seeing as he's here today – which is I suppose yesterday now – I wanted to get that taken care of before driving down to Barry."

"It could have waited."

"Well it's done now. He and Liz are about to leave for the night as well. She's agreed to drop him by my flat, although I think that was mostly so I could drag you off to bed."

Jack's whole demeanor changed, "Oh really now? Is that a proposition?"

"Would you like it to be?"

Jack just laughed and accepted the kiss Ianto gave him. They barely noticed Liz and Bobby slipping out of the Hub…

……………………………………………….

Bobby looked around the immaculate little apartment. He could easily imagine a man like Ianto Jones living here. He dropped his bags in the bedroom and took a shower; the hot water felt good after a long day. By the time he fell onto the crisp cotton sheets, he was finally tired enough to sleep.

……………………………………….

Princeton, NJ (USA):

Allison Cameron stared at her computer screen and the email she'd written. She hit the 'cancel message' button. She was probably the last person Robert wanted to hear from right now.

She looked down at the folded piece of paper she'd found in the DVD she'd retrieved from his apartment.

Dear Allison,

I know it's over, please keep reading, this isn't one of those pathetic 'I want you back' sorts of letters. I realize there never was even an 'it' or an 'us' to begin with, so rather than being over, it just never was. But I do love you and your not loving me doesn't change a thing. I can live with that.

I just wanted to say goodbye and to thank you for being a friend. You're a beautiful woman, Allison. Don't be afraid to open yourself up to somebody. No one should live their whole life all alone and work isn't enough. Friends aren't enough. Find somebody and love them.

There is so much to the Universe that you don't see, that you don't know. So much out there, some of it beautiful, some of it terrible but all of it amazing. Find somebody to share it with.

If I don't see you again, have a good life. You deserve it.

Yours,

Robert