A/N: Ok, I do understand that we are in the middle between last Christmas and the next Christmas, and is not really the time for a Christmas story but I couldn't write for a while since I've been quite busy, and when I wasn't busy I was in a lot of pain to be grateful enough to just be able to get out of bed. So here is a Christmas story near the summer. It will probably have a couple of more chapters. I don't plan on dragging it until he next Christmas I promise.

I was walking around, just a face in the crowd
Trying to keep myself out of the rain
Saw a vagabond king wear a styrofoam crown
Wondered if I might end up the same
There's a man out on the corner
Singing old songs about change
Everybody got their cross to bare, these days

'These Days'- Bon Jovi

Being in a haste to flee the Hub meant he hadn't really thought about borrowing a car, or making sure he had money for a taxi. Despite the lack of public transport, the Bay was still buzzing with people mailing about, between the mostly closed shops and the occasional open café, even this late in the afternoon. The rain had stopped and Ianto decided that he would walk to Cardiff Central to take a bus to Cromwell Estate. He would usually take the train from Cardiff Bay if he was tired but the walk wasn't that long and the trains from Cardiff Bay weren't running anyway. Going down 'Lloyd George Avenue 'the groups of people started to get less frequent the more distance he got from the Bay. Ianto was almost sure that once he got near the Cardiff Central the buzz of crowd will be back, but for now he enjoyed the almost solitary feeling. The rain had stopped, but a wet snow was falling from the sky and trying unsuccessfully to cover the ground. It melted into water in the puddles before it even got the chance to touch the ground.

His thin soiled dress shoes probably weren't the best choice because his feet were beginning to feel as if they were getting frostbite inside the cold leather. Well he should be grateful that he could still feel them, he supposed. Maybe he should have taken the bus or a taxi after all because the thick coat didn't seem to do much to keep him warm when his feet were freezing. But he was so annoyed when he left the Hub, he need to clear his head before he got to Rhiannon's dinner knowing that there probably will be enough of provocation to his nerves, unless aunt Aldyth didn't come, very unlikely, unless she had finally snuffed it. And his cousin Miranda was going to be there, which since she had married, and recently had a baby will be new fuel for aunt Aldyth and her obsession to make him take the right turn in his life.

Miranda, who had married in London a couple of years ago, and pretended to be better than them all, as if she didn't know where she had come from. Not, that it was anything different than what he did really, and now he felt like such a hypocrite. After all, wasn't he the one who played a valley boy dressed up in expensive suits? Well, at least, he maybe have an apartment in the new reconstructed side of the docks, but he didn't insist on living in Essex and pretending that uncle Huw and aunt Aldyth's money and titles still existed. And maybe that's better. Ianto had more trouble imagining being addressed as Lord Jones, than understanding all the systems Tosh had installed into Mainframe.

The sun was well settled now and the late afternoon looked more like a night. The big avenue was brightly lit by halogen sights, hotels and street lamps, but some of the smaller roads were already starting to look dark and not a little suspicious. Looking at some of them and knowing what kind of creatures might be lurking in the dark there, not all of them Weevils, he decided against taking a short cut to the station. Suddenly the quietness of the place didn't feel that comfortable, he could hear the crunch of the occasional stone under his shoes loud and clear. Picking up his pace, Ianto hoped to make it to 'St Mary Street' before his already fried nerves had flared even further. Maybe from there he could take the bus to Cromwell Estate and not bother with the train after all.

Seriously this is ridiculous, he thought to himself. As if he had never been around dark streets in a lot worse situations than this. On the corner with Penarth road his eyes fell on a group of people dressed as Santas. Seriously who was standing around street corners dressed as Santa at a time only a few lonely souls were around? They didn't even sing Carlos or something, just stood there holding their trumpets, trumpets that couldn't look any more fake. Ianto was sure he had seen them in London once or twice and could never understand them. Shaking his head he ignored them and continued on his way. Admittedly they were very peculiar, but he'd seen stranger things, so by the time he reached the roundabout he had put the strange Santas out of his mind. There was another musician there, a much more real looking that the Santas, and although not strictly looking cheerful singing Christmas Carols, he played his saxophone with some real passion. The man looked sad and lonely, standing on the pavement on the roundabout in an evening where everyone was supposed to be around the family table in a nice, dry, and warm room. Ianto suddenly felt like a right idiot, complaining about where he had to go and whose company he had to tolerate, while this man here just stood in the rain and played this amazing jazz tune that could pull on the strings of someone's heart. Finishing the tune the man lowered his sax and smiled at Ianto.

"Merry Christmas," he said cheerfully despite all evidence that the Christmas for him wouldn't be any more merry than any other day.

Ianto could just nod numbly not knowing what to say. Was returning a cheerful 'Merry Christmas' appropriate? Or was his silence now even worse. At the end he opted for the easier way, the one that he always used when he didn't know what to say to people like this or to his nephews. He took out his walled and threw some crisp banknotes in the saxophone case. It felt wholly inadequate, but staying around chatting with the man or inviting him for a quick supper in a near café wasn't something Ianto would do. That's why he thought that the whole Christmas idea was stupid, it just made the lonely people feel even more alone, and the one that suddenly for a day feel charitable think better of themselves. As if one day of being charitable, would make the fact that didn't give a shit for the suffering through the rest of the year better.

He tried not to look as if he was picking up his pace, as if he was hurrying, trying to escape the company of that man. He could have deceived the man, or any other pedestrian around, but he couldn't lie to his consciousness, and trying to escape made him feel even worse for himself. Was he becoming too insensitive to anything that didn't threated the peoples life, because Ianto was sure that there was a time he would have returned the greeting. Now though, if the man wasn't bleeding or wasn't being attacked by something, he just ran away from them.

"No one should be alone at Christmas." The man's voice came behind him, soft but strong enough to be carried towards him by the wind.

"I'm not, I'm just going to meet with my sister," Ianto answered and then regretted it. Was it too much of a gloating that he wouldn't be alone? He didn't want to face this part of his consciousness, so he visibly picked up his pace, not bothering to hide it from the man anymore. The man was finally left far enough behind that Ianto couldn't see him as anything but a dark figure in the background, but the words followed him even in his escape.

No one should be alone at Christmas, and he had just left Jack in the Hub. Did Jack even have a family to go to at Christmas? Or did he spend all this Christmases on his own in the silent Hub with only Myfanwy for company. He remembered, Jack asking him in the morning about going to the family dinner with Ianto, surely if he had a family he wouldn't ask about this, and he had brushed him off so carelessly. God, he was a terrible person. Maybe Jack was used to it by now; surely it wasn't the first or even the worst time.

Ianto was more than glad to lose sight of the street musician, not because the man was bad, but because he played on his consciousness too much. He was glad despite there being another group of the peculiar Santas, or maybe they were moving. He almost ran right on top of one of them, who didn't even bother to apologise or at least acknowledge Ianto's apology.

Gwen was almost sure that for once the Rift will be considerate enough to give Torchwood their needed holiday. Because if Ianto could take half of the day off and go to his sister, surely Gwen could take it as well and go home early to have the Christmas dinner with Rhys, as she had promised. Of course it wasn't to be, and since she was in the Hub at the time the alarm blared, she was the one to have to accompany Jack, Gwen was sure he would flat out refuse to call Ianto. There was a time, Gwen knew, time when she would have ran alongside Jack without sparing Rhys a second though, no matter the name of the holiday. Times and dynamics in the team had changed so much since that kind of days. Then she loved Jack, now she was sure that her loyalties in love lay with Rhys. Of course she still loved Jack, but now she knows that she wasn't in love with Jack.

Jack, maybe it was good that she was here after all, the poor man was alone and no one should have to be today. Gwen wondered if she ought to invite him at their dinner with Rhys, but it would just be awkward and Jack would never accept anyway. She cursed Ianto in all the languages that she had picked up working with aliens, and not only because he was the one who should be here with Jack working, but because he was the one who should have invited Jack to a family dinner. The stupid grump, and that was another thing that had changed in her mind, Gwen used to think that Jack was the one to keep their relationship unspecified and at arm's length. Guess the team becoming smaller, closer and knowing each other better put some things in perspective, Gwen though. Not that it was time for epiphanies right now, when Jack was looking worried and was talking about Ianto and some kind of pilot fishes. What had Ianto to do with pilot fishes, Gwen wasn't sure, but it came to show her that she ought to pay more attention because she had not heard a sensible word out of what Jack had said. She could strip pieces out of Ianto tomorrow when he comes back to work for leaving Jack alone. What did Ianto have to fear anyway, she could understand Jack's reluctance to keep a relationship, but Ianto…

Jack was gesturing a little frustrated now so Gwen shook herself mentally and tried to focus on what Jack was saying.

"Whatever is following these pilot fish is going to be something big, and the three of us are not enough," Jack was saying, and if he had explained what these pilot fish were and why she hadn't seen them she had missed it and didn't dare to ask. "So, this time the moment you find them shoot first and then ask questions."

He looked at her probably expecting her to argue, and she would have, fiercely, once upon a time. Now thought she knew better, with only the three of them, they had not enough force to allow bleeding hearts. And that thought stopped her for a moment at her tracks and knocked the metaphorical wind out of her, she had just accepted Jack's command to shoot a living thing without so much as a token protest. When had she changed so much, wasn't it her who was employed to change Torchwood and make them more human, was it going the other way around? Torchwood was changing her, and she wasn't sure if it hadn't started before they lost Tosh and Owen, because it was easy to lie to herself that this change had started only as a reaction to this. But Gwen never liked to lie to herself, and she wasn't going to start now. She knew that she was losing the humanity that Jack was prising her so much about. Instead of her making Torchwood more human and less broken, it was Torchwood which was breaking her piece, by little piece, and shaping her into the person everyone else working there had become. Maybe that was the reason for Ianto's and Jack's hesitation to look into new employees. They didn't want to break another person, because Torchwood was inevitably going to break them.

She stood up and checked her gun to make sure that it was loaded and would not jam in the wrong moment.

"Where are they?" she asked feeling ready. All thoughts and doubts pushed at the back of her mind to be examined later, after the job was done.

"On Penarth road, but they are moving towards the junction between Penarth and St Mary's Road. They're either surveying, or have a moving target which they are following. "