A/N: Apologies if I have got the Japanese wrong in this chapter. And yes, there is a bit of foreshadowing going on…
Old Friends and New Thoughts
Jack had intended to open the door to Toshiko and make some extremely witty remark. Something along the lines of 'did you miss us?' or 'long time no see'. Ianto had vanished into the kitchen while muttering about various recipes under his breath and hadn't surfaced by the time the doorbell went. Since it was almost exactly half an hour since they had spoken to Toshiko, Jack was pretty certain it had to be her so he sauntered over and threw the door open with a large grin on his face.
"Hey, Tosh, did you- oof!"
One hundred and twenty five pounds of Japanese female slammed into him and wrapped herself around him in a bear hug that threatened to squeeze all the oxygen out of him. Jack staggered back a few paces and looked down in amusement to where Tosh had buried her face in his chest and was making growly noises. He rubbed a hand against one shoulder while hugging her with his other arm.
"Gomennasai, imouto," he whispered gently.
She left off growling and looked up at him, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. "Shimpai shinai-de, o-nichan," she said with a shaky smile. Then she mock scowled. "But you had better not do it again."
The exchange seemed to centre her and she pushed away from Jack, looking him up and down. Jack smiled to himself as he closed the door and ushered her into the main room, knowing what she was going through. He was still getting used to the face that looked back at him from every mirror. After over a hundred of years of looking more or less exactly the same, it was still a shock to see a markedly younger version of himself making faces at him. He'd caught Ianto watching him at times with an expression of intense wonder on his face but he hadn't said anything. It was still too new, too wonderful, and while Ianto hadn't changed as dramatically Jack still loved to see the way his lover was remembering what it was to be young again.
"You're looking good," he commented as he studied her.
Toshiko laughed and did a mock twirl. She was wearing black linen trousers and an emerald green booty blouse in muslin. Some discreet gold jewellery, high-heeled ankle boots and a large leather-look shoulder bag completed the look. She gave Jack a mischievous look. "I might say the same for you! Where's Ianto?"
"Here," Ianto said, coming out of the kitchen with a tray loaded down with coffee and biscuits. He hastily put it down and braced himself as she homed in on him, enveloping him in the same bone-crushing hug she had given Jack. "Oh, I missed you, cariad," he said fervently.
"I missed you too, Ianto, so much," Tosh said fervently. "I never realised how close we were until I woke up and you weren't here for me to talk to."
Ianto dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. "I'm here now. Both of us are."
"And we want to know all about what's happened to you," Jack said with a grin.
They went to sit on the large curved sofa in front of the TV screen and Ianto put the tray on the coffee table in front and served everyone. Tosh gave a shaky smile as she saw vanilla creams on the plate.
"I was so happy when I discovered they had vanilla creams on this side of the dimensional barrier but how come you have some? I only gave you half an hour's warning."
Ianto reddened. "I saw them in the shop and thought of you so bought them as a sort of memorial. Stupid, I know," he mumbled into his coffee.
Tosh reached out and grasped one of his hands. "No, not stupid," she said quietly. "Just thoughtful. Which is just like you. Even as a teenager," she added teasingly.
"I'm just a teenager physically," Ianto objected in relieved amusement.
"Amen to that!" Jack said. "Let's hear it for youthful stamina," he continued with a cheerful leer.
"Shut up, jack," Tosh and Ianto said in perfect unison. There was a moment of startled silence before they all dissolved into laughter while surreptitiously wiping away the tears that threatened.
"So you woke up..?" Jack prompted.
Tosh nodded but paused to take a sip of Ianto's coffee and then sigh with pleasure. "You do something to the coffee, Ianto Jones," she observed. "I've had some very good coffee on this world but it somehow always just missed the mark. This-" she hefted up the mug, "-is like coming home."
Ianto inclined his head in acknowledgement of the comment but couldn't help blushing. He wasn't sure what he did do that made such a difference but he was always pleased with the result. "Good to know that I haven't lost my touch," he said. "Not one word, Jack," he went on to warn without missing a beat.
Jack closed his mouth and pulled a face before grinning. Tosh shook her head fondly. This was just like old times and she couldn't help wanting to laugh out loud all the time. She wondered if she had made a mistake in not contacting Owen the way she had wanted to, so very desperately, but she knew that that very desperation had been the clue that she should keep away.
"I woke up here five years ago." She saw their startled reactions and gave them a rueful smile. "I know. Owen's only been here three years and I'm guessing the two of you are recent arrivals. I think…" She paused and bit her lip. "I think whoever or whatever brought me here knew that I needed time to figure out who I am and what I wanted from life. What with the terrorists and UNIT and my mother dying and my having the worst luck when it came to relationships and then my, well, dying…" She paused and took a deep breath.
"I'm sorry, Tosh," Jack said quietly, taking her hand. "I wasn't the best of bosses-"
"Stop that right now, Jack Harkness!" Tosh said fiercely. "If it hadn't been for you giving me a sense of purpose and the two of you being my friends I would probably have been a basket case ages ago. I… I never really got on that brilliantly with Gwen," she continued, reddening slightly. "We were too different and I think I bored her. And Owen, well, you know what I was like with Owen."
She paused and used the excuse of needing to refill her mug as an excuse to collect her thoughts. "When I woke up and found myself in a house in Penarth with my mother and I realised I was aged 18 and had a place in Cardiff University I really thought I had lost my mind. Then I wondered if this was some kind of bizarre afterlife. Okasan was much calmer about it than I was. She reasoned that we should just live our lives until we found out what was happening and in the meantime we had one another."
"We've been given places in the university as well," Ianto said.
Tosh nodded. "I did think about not attending because I doubted there was anything I could learn there but in the end I decided to give it a try and I was glad I did." She blushed again. "I never fitted in the first time I went to university. I was too introverted and looked down at the other students for not studying hard enough. This time I knew that life has to be lived and I had a much better time. Plus this world did have things to teach me. And it gave me access to resources so I could build some scanners to try and find out what was going on."
Jack shook his head and saw the same rueful admiration on Ianto's face. People tended to underestimate Tosh because she was so quiet and unassuming but she was every bit as tough and stubborn as Ianto or even Jack. "There's no Rift," he said.
"No, there isn't," Tosh agreed. "That was a bit of a shock. There's no Torchwood or UNIT, either. But there is something," she finished triumphantly.
Jack and Ianto both blinked. "What?"
Tosh dug into her bag and brought out what looked like a sleek PADD and a sheaf of papers. "I've been here for five years, remember, and I've run regular scans." She unfolded the papers to show graphs and readouts. "There's an energy signature-"
"That's nothing to do with us now, Tosh," Jack interjected.
Tosh blinked, giving Jack a surprised look. "Maybe not officially, but there isn't really anyone else to look into it, since the powers-that-be haven't been looking for this kind of thing. We could-"
"No!"
Tosh stopped abruptly and Ianto stiffened in his seat. That single, brittle, explosive denial told him that Jack was nowhere near as calm and settled as he had tried to make himself out to be.
"No," Jack repeated, less forcefully but with equal intensity. "Leave it, Tosh, please."
"But-" Tosh began in bewilderment before she caught Ianto's frantic motions for her to drop it.
"I lost Owen and then I lost him again and you as well," Jack said, his voice becoming ragged. "I lost Gray and I came so damn close to losing Ianto." He gave Tosh a haunted look, his eyes a little wild. "I can't go through that again, Tosh. I just can't."
Tosh's eyes widened with understanding. "Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry. I never really had to grieve for Owen because you brought him back and when I died I woke up here almost immediately. I forgot that you both had time to grieve Owen and myself." She frowned and turned to look at Ianto. "But what's that about nearly losing Ianto?"
Seeing the way Jack's hands were trembling slightly, Ianto took a deep breath and started to tell her what had happened since her death. She went white when she heard that Ianto had been dying in the chamber at Thames House when the alien woman had appeared and given them their second chance. Her jaw nearly hit the floor when Ianto dropped the bombshell that Jack was no longer immortal.
"Jack, I don't mean to sound disbelieving, but are you sure?"
Jack visibly shook himself and gave her a small smile. "Pretty sure. Any marks I get stay and I heal at a normal human rate. I cut myself as well and it took about the right amount of time to heal."
Ianto cleared his throat. He was used to Jack's continued joy over the amount of time it took a lovebite to fade but he had been a little bit unsettled over Jack's fascination over the time it took the small glass cut to heal. He had nightmares about Jack wanting him to cut him or harm him in some other way and fervently hoped that this was just a passing thing. "Naturally we don't want to take it too far," he said and hoped like hell that he had kept the fear out of his voice. He realised that he hadn't when Jack shot him a penetrating look before coming over to sit beside him.
"I'm not going to do anything drastic, Ianto," he promised, reaching out to grab Ianto's hand. "I know I used to say how I wanted to die for good but now I know I have the one life and a second chance I want to live that life." He pulled back to include both of them in his gaze. "I want to do all the things I've missed out on. I never really had a childhood much past ten and I joined the military instead of going to university. I was too dislocated while I was a Time Agent to do things you'd consider normal and then I was a conman and constantly on the move which didn't really change when I was with the Doctor. I sort of thought about being normal when I was stranded in Victorian Wales but it didn't take me long to realise I was immortal and then Torchwood found me."
He paused and sighed. "I'd watch other people sometimes and wonder what it was like to just be ordinary. To do ordinary things and have an ordinary life. I always used to dismiss it, thinking I'd be bored to tears in a week or so but now I've got the chance. I can be a student. Do all the stuff that older people disapprove of students doing. Ianto and I can go backpacking around Europe or Lemuria if we want to. I can have hobbies that don't involve weird alien tech or life-and-death situations. I can be just another face in a crowd."
The other two gazed at him, hearing the wistful note in his voice. Ianto felt like crying. Jack had sometimes mentioned something like that, saying that he could hire new staff and then he and Ianto could go off into the sunset, but Ianto had always assumed that he was joking and laughed. Now he wondered how much of it had been joking and how much a carefully disguised plea. If Ianto had said yes, would Jack have followed through? Ianto would never know, probably, but his heart ached for his battered immortal lover, who had never dared to beg people to let him step down from the pedestal they had put him on. He leaned forward and gave Jack a gentle kiss.
"You could never be just another face in the crowd, Jack," he murmured. "You'll always be someone special, no matter how hard you try to be otherwise." To his utter surprise, Jack blushed fiercely.
"We can do normal," Tosh said equally quietly. She gave Jack a reassuring smile. "I didn't think I could do normal either, not after what I'd seen and done, but I got used to not looking for aliens out of the corner of my eye. And I made friends and we did silly things like go to the beach."
Ianto laughed as he saw Jack's mood shift from vulnerable to hopeful in seconds. Sometimes he could read his lover like a book. "Let me guess: you'd like to go to the beach?"
"It could be fun," Jack said before a gleam of mischief entered his eyes. "And you could wear Speedos!"
"No, I could not!" Ianto said, revolted.
"Aw, c'mon, just for me?" Jack wheedled.
"Absolutely not," Ianto said firmly.
Later on, while Jack was happily surfing to buy them swimming gear – which Ianto had demanded he had a right of veto on – Tosh helped Ianto to put together a meal. Ianto made sure that Jack was safely out of earshot before turning to her.
"What kind of readings, Tosh?" he asked quietly.
Tosh shot him a wary look before also looking to check that Jack couldn't hear them. "Jack wasn't interested," she pointed out.
"I know, and I respect his wishes, but I also know him a little better than he knows himself. Right now he's high as a kite on being an 'ordinary mortal', but if something happens to risk other peoples' lives he's not the type to stand to one side. I'd rather have some warning."
She nodded thoughtfully as she buttered the slices of bread to go with the fish and salad that Ianto had prepared. "It's not the Rift. That much I'm certain of because I monitored it enough to know it in all its moods. This is more like a pulse. It comes and goes and there are sometimes months between incidents. I haven't been able to work out the cycle as yet but it's definitely there."
"Does it correlate with anything? Does this Cardiff have Weevils?" Ianto asked. It felt odd to be having a Torchwoodish conversation again.
"If there are Weevils they're a lot more effective in hiding than our population was because I haven't heard or seen anything," Tosh informed him as they started to carry things to the dining table. She lowered her voice still further so there was no chance of Jack hearing. "And yes, the energy seems to be linked to weather patterns. When it's climbing towards a spike there are thunderstorms. Thunderstorms local to the Cardiff area that appear no matter what the weather forecast says."
"No effect on people, though?"
Tosh shook her head. "Just the weather. And before you ask, I don't think it's anything to do with the fairies. There have been no reports of children vanishing at those times."
Ianto relaxed. The last thing he wanted was for them to have to tangle with something like their world's fairies without even the most minimal of equipment. Not that they could have done anything even if they were armed to the teeth, he corrected himself mentally.
"Thank Heaven for small mercies."
Tosh gave a tight nod of agreement but then they were distracted by Jack calling to them from the laptop. Ianto promptly rejected the first two choices that Jack had made for him, on the grounds that he did not want to make a complete fool of himself on the beach. He grudgingly agreed to the dark red aquashorts that were Jack's third choice, then paused and rolled his eyes when he saw the grin on Jack's face.
"Those were the ones you wanted me to have all along," he guessed. Jack's grin widened impossibly and Ianto suppressed the urge to cuff him around the ear. "Come on; let's eat while the salmon's still warm."
The meal was light-hearted and it didn't take long for Jack to home in on the fact that Tosh had a boyfriend. "Is he this universe's counterpart to our Andy Davidson?" he asked curiously.
"I don't really know for sure," Tosh confessed. "I never really paid any attention to him back then. One of his cousins was in my class and she was always talking about him. I thought the name sounded vaguely familiar but I had such a shock when he came to pick her up one afternoon and I saw who he was! There's definitely a physical resemblance but other that that, I don't really know."
"His background said he was an astronaut?" Ianto prodded.
Jack grinned. "Ianto wants to be an astronaut when he grows up," he mock-whispered to Tosh, then ducked as Ianto threw a coaster at him.
"Andy was always determined to be an astronaut," Tosh said with a smile. "He learned to fly as soon as it was legal and studied engineering before going to work as a shuttle engineer with HighRoad Enterprises. That's a private company that maintains a base on the Moon," she added when she saw their blank expressions. "They do a lot of research into artificial ecosystems and they have the contract for the ecosystems for the three far-range ships that are being built at the moment."
"The ones that will be heading for the outer planets?" Jack asked.
Tosh nodded. "It's Andy's dream to be on one of those ships but he's still fairly junior so the chances are slim. He applied to join the United Kingdoms Space Corps and has been flying for them for the past two years. He's flown to all the space stations and the Moon and is shortlisted for the next Mars mission." She flashed them a brilliant smile. "He arranged for me to go up to the Georgiana. That's one of the tourist space stations," she elaborated. "He gets concessions, like an airline pilot."
"You've been up in space?" Ianto hoped he didn't look and sound as jealous as he was.
"Yes, and it was wonderful!"
"Zero-g sex?" Jack asked with a waggle of his eyebrows. Tosh promptly went beetroot red and Jack practically fell off the chair laughing. "Let me guess: it was a total disaster?"
"It… took a while to figure it out," Tosh admitted.
"Never understood why people were so obsessed with it," Jack admitted. "It's murderously complicated to do unless you use a sleeping bag or something. One wrong move and you're drifting around looking a complete idiot."
"Sounds like you're speaking from experience," Tosh said slyly and Jack smiled.
"Well, I did want to see what all the fuss was about but I can hand on heart say that I prefer my sex in a gravity well of some kind. Does he treat you right?" he demanded.
Tosh blinked and then gave Jack a gentle smile. "Yes, Jack, he treats me very well. We were friends before we were lovers and we're trying to take it slow because if he gets the call to go to Jupiter he'll be away for at least two years. I have to say, though… I'd wait for him if that happened. He really is kind and generous and fun to be with."
"I'm glad," Jack said simply and Ianto echoed the sentiment. After all the bad luck she had had in the past it was good to see Tosh enjoying a steady relationship.
The conversation turned a little bit more general as they finished the meal and Ianto cleared the dishes away before bringing out more coffee. Tosh told them about the research project she was involved with. Jack was able to keep up with the hard science part while Ianto could ask intelligent questions about the computing aspect. They told her about the background they had been given and the courses they would be embarking on and Tosh nodded thoughtfully.
"Sounds good. You'll have lots of options to choose from and you won't have to settle for something because you need the money. She did something similar for my mother and me. The house was fully paid for, my mother had a substantial inheritance when my father supposedly died and I had won a small lottery which was more than enough to pay for my degree and for me to afford to rent a place of my own. I stayed with okasan at first because I wanted to be close to her and catch up on what we had missed but then I felt ready to spread my wings. Besides, okasan was being courted and I didn't want to cramp her style," she said with a twinkle.
"Tosh, is it okay if we tell Owen that you're here?" Ianto asked. "He said something about wanting to get together with us and-"
"Yes, I'd like that," Tosh agreed. "I was worried about doing it at first but now I'm settled and I have Andy while Owen has Katy so yes, I think this is a good time. I have missed him. I missed you all. My new friends are wonderful but old friends are even better."
"Amen to that," Jack said sincerely. His eyes gleamed. "Why don't we arrange for us all to have a day at the beach?" he said. "You could bring Andy and Owen could bring Katy and Leo and we could make a day of it. Maybe have a picnic or a barbecue. Or even a picnic and a barbecue!"
"Oh, Lord," Ianto said ruefully as he watched Jack gear himself up. "You had better say yes," he told Tosh, "because otherwise he'll only nag."
"Nag? I don't nag," Jack said in outrage. "I just point out how wrong everyone else is and how right I am! Hey, we could play Frisbee! I have always wanted to play Frisbee!"
Ianto sighed and rolled his eyes theatrically, enjoying the sound of Tosh's giggles and Jack's melodramatic plans. "I only hope the beach is ready for us," he murmured as he started to make lists of what they would need to bring.
OOO