Rating: T (R)
Spoilers: Journey's End (Doctor Who), Exit Wounds
A/N: a big thank you to everyone who has reviewed! You made my day. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, there are definitely a few more to follow. Oh, and Solsbury Girl, I hope I'm not going on too long with a good thing. Your reviews are awesome, I hope you'll like this chapter even though you don't think I can improve on this. Enjoy!
Oh, and, reviews are love.

--

Strike ...

In the morning he went down to the morgue, taking his morning coffee and sitting on the floor against the wall, drinking it slowly. At last he looked up at drawer 47, and said softly, "Hi, Tosh."

He drank some more coffee in silence.

"Thank you for that. For saving them. I always said you were brilliant, but maybe I haven't said it often enough. I miss you around the hub."

He finished his coffee, put the mug down on the floor next to him and rested his arms on his knees.

"I know you would just push your glasses back, or your hair behind your ear, and tell me it was your job, or all in a day's work, but I wouldn't have had anything to come back to if it weren't for you. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

His voice trailed off in the silence of the morgue, and for a moment he was fighting the choking tears that seemed so much closer to the surface the last few months. When he regained control of himself, he continued.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. Or for Owen. I'm sorry you never got the chance at happiness you deserved. I never could offer you enough, getting you out of that place, bringing you into this. I wish you could have had freedom, Tosh."

--

He didn't know how long it was until he heard a voice.

"Jack?" Martha was coming towards him, a frown on her face, her heels clicking on the concrete floor of the morgue.

Before she reached him, he struggled up, his muscles stiff from disuse. "I'm fine," he replied, trying to ease the alarm in her eyes. "I was just... talking to a friend."

She looked at the drawers, each only identified by a number, and looked back at him. The alarm had faded from her eyes, the frown had not left her face. "Are you all right, Jack?" she asked sincerely.

He nodded, sending her a crooked grin that he knew didn't reach his eyes. "I'm fine. I will be fine."

She raised her eyebrows at that, but let the subject rest. Instead she said, "I saw Ianto when I came in, he was here early." She gave him a smile and a suggestive glance. "Is that because he was here early, or because he was here all along?"

On any other day, Jack might have grinned, but the previous night was not a good memory. He managed a smile. "He was here all along," he admitted.

"So you two are still --?" Martha said hesitantly, trying to gauge from his reaction what was going on.

Jack nodded slowly. "Yep, we're still."

Martha broke into a grin. "I'm glad," she said, seeming to want to say more, but not continuing.

Jack shrugged. "It is what it is."

The frown returned to Martha's face. "Jack --," she still seemed to be hesitating, but continued this time, "Gwen told me, what happened with your brother."

The memory of Gray, never truly in the background when he was in the morgue, or anywhere else if he were truly honest with himself, was slammed into the forefront of his mind by Martha's unexpected comment. For a moment, he was lost among the memories of earth, choking, eternity, the endlessness of everything, and the pain of coming back. Martha put a hand on his arm, and he jerked away instinctively, but it did the trick of snapping him out of the memory loop he threatened to get stuck in. "Sorry."

"You're not fine, are you, Jack?" she asked softly, her voice low with emotion.

He shrugged again, not truly wanting to admit his weaknesses to her even though there had been a time when she'd seen him at his worst.

"You'll probably never do it," Martha said, holding his eyes, "but my door is always open to you if you want to talk. I know your secrets, you don't need to explain anything to me."

Jack managed a smile that wasn't patronising or insincere, and she returned it. "I appreciate the offer, Martha, I really do."

"You probably talk to Ianto," she said quickly, "I didn't think."

The smile slid off his face. He remembered how well that had gone when he'd first got back, after cleaning up the hub, after dealing with Tosh's and Owen's deaths, dealing with Gray, after saying goodbye to John Hart, Jack had only held it together long enough to say goodnight to Gwen before collapsing. Ianto had sat up with him, that night, and three nights that followed, falling asleep at his desk during the day in the process, but nonetheless not giving up. It had taken those four nights, before Jack had been able to hold himself together longer than just during the day, those four nights until Jack had felt able to sleep in a bed without panicking, without panicking at the bunker being underground, at the blankets that were constricting him, even at Ianto's closeness.

It was also Ianto who'd cleaned up his office after he'd trashed it a week later, in a fit of rage at the injustice of Tosh's and Owen's deaths. This, too, had happened after hours, because Jack had tried desperately to keep a semblance of normality during the day, a semblance of normality that really only Gwen saw, but somehow it had been still important to him to function as a team leader.

If he were honest with himself, Ianto had also borne the brunt in other ways, when they were in bed together. For months, Ianto had made no demands, just giving whatever Jack needed, and not complaining when Jack was far from gentle. Jack had eventually realised that he was going too far before Ianto'd had to stop him, but he knew it had been a close shave, and their relationship was still recovering from it.

He looked at Martha. "Like I said, I appreciate the offer. I might take you up on it."

She gave him a small smile. "Don't stay down here, Jack. I find it's easier if you stay among the living, no matter how much it hurts."

He nodded, picking up his coffee mug from the floor. "It hurts no matter where you are. But I'll come up with you."

--

When they arrived in the hub, Mickey was standing near the door, talking to Gwen and Ianto. His face was animated, his hands were moving to describe something, quite possibly the last couple of days' events. When they heard Martha and Jack approach, Gwen and Ianto turned to their leader, and from Gwen's raised eyebrows and the look in Ianto's blue eyes, Jack realised it would have been wiser to tell his team in advance that he was going to bring in new staff, instead of the two of them showing up the next morning unannounced.

"Right, good morning, everyone! I see you've all met. Gwen, Ianto, Mickey and Martha are going to be joining us, if that's alright with you two, of course."

Gwen and Ianto exchanged a look, then looked back at Jack. For a moment no one spoke, then Ianto said smoothly, "Okay, who's for coffee? You can put your coat up there," indicating the coat stand to Mickey's right hand side while moving off to the coffee machine, as Gwen said to Martha, "I'll show you where we are with the autopsies. I'm afraid there's a bit of a backlog."

Martha grinned at the other woman and moved off with her, calling over her shoulder, "Mine's still the same, Ianto."

Ianto gave her a thumbs up sign from across the hub and said something to Mickey that Jack couldn't hear.

He looked around the hub to find his team were talking animatedly. Voices were drifting up from the autopsy bay, the coffee machine was hissing in the background, there was movement, life. Jack realised he'd been missing it, and with a slight smile on his face moved off to his office.

--

Ianto came up to his office with his coffee twenty minutes later, depositing it on Jack's desk and hesitating a brief second before settling on the edge. Jack put down his pen and looked at his lover. Ianto's blue eyes were unreadable and he seemed reluctant to speak. "Something on your mind?" Jack asked lightly.

Ianto looked at his hands, before looking back at Jack. "I was just wondering, where did you pick them up? Mickey mentioned you and he go back a ways."

"Gossiping about the boss, are you?" Jack joked, but Ianto didn't respond to his jocularity. "Mickey and I have a history, that's a very, very long time ago. At least, it is for me."

Ianto's eyes softened for a moment, a look Jack was becoming accustomed to in him. "I know your life is complicated, Jack."

"Complicated doesn't cover it," Jack replied, feeling momentarily exhausted with the different timelines he had lived in and how they intersected. He shrugged it off. "We need new staff. Maybe I wasn't ready before, hiring new people, I don't know. But they both needed a change, I know them, they're reliable, and I don't want to spend a long time searching. It seemed like a good decision."

"It probably was," Ianto said quietly, holding his eyes. He gave Jack a small smile, and Jack felt his insides warm, in spite of the fact that he'd long been making decisions without consulting anyone, or without requiring anyone's opinion.

"Especially now, we need a full team." He looked at Ianto, knowing the last few days had had to have had their effect on the younger man.

Ianto nodded, getting up from his perching position and straightening his jacket. "I was just making sure..."

Jack looked up at him, Ianto suddenly seemed nervous. "Making sure of what?"

Ianto bit his lip. "I was just making sure you hadn't just hired one of your exes."

Jack blinked, his eyes involuntarily straying to Mickey working behind Tosh's old terminal on the hub floor. "Exes? Mickey Mouse? Uh, no. No way."

Ianto coloured, but smiled. "I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't want to pry, but I needed to know."

Before he could move away, Jack reached out and grabbed his wrist. The Welshman met his eyes. "Hey," Jack said softly, "you have earned a certain right to ask questions of me."

Ianto looked back at him, his eyes unreadable once more, then Jack felt Ianto's thumb caressing the inside of his wrist.

The intimacy of the gesture nearly made him shudder, and for a moment he couldn't tear his eyes away from Ianto's, wanting nothing more than to get up and pull the young man into his arms, hold him tight and not let him go until he felt secure again.

He suppressed the feeling, forced himself to look away, letting go of Ianto's wrist and trying not to think about the other man's closeness, about how easy it would be to just take five minutes and stop thinking. When he glanced back at Ianto, there was a frown of concern on his face. Jack gave him a reassuring grin and said, "We better get back to work, or we're gonna give the new staff a bad example."

Ianto nodded, pulling his professional mask back in place, and said, "Yep, I better start instructing Mickey on the mainframe."

Jack watched him walk out of the office. He felt like he was a long way from recovery, and the universe didn't seem to want to give him the time to heal. He brushed the thought away, and focused back on his work.

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