The Rift was being good for once, the morning clear up was negligible and dealt with by each of them on their way into work, Weevil sightings were nil – obviously the recent rain had provided them with enough of whatever they ate that humans were safe from becoming breakfast. Gwen had taken the opportunity to go shopping, again and Owen was catching up with a particularly messy post-mortem and he was loving it. Tosh would have liked everyone to think she was working on the new algorithm she had shouted loudly about as everyone had come in, but she was having more fun teaching the newly named Barney, after the only other purple creature Ianto could think of – a kiddies dinosaur, tricks for pieces of duck. So far he had managed the roll over and die and a back flip, though on reflection that could have been a happy coincidence due to the fact the purple creature had backed down the step and fallen very gracefully.

Ianto, as always, had passed round coffee as required and then disappeared down into the achieves so no one had commented when instead of taking the left hand fork he had veered right. The files he had carried out of Jacks office also seemed normal because he always cleared up after the boss and his administrative nonsense, the files had returned in the same bag they left in carried in before anyone else had arrived. Ianto returned the carefully chosen saccharine files to the correct filling cabinet and instead opened the top drawer of the oldest looking cabinet and pulled the first five out before carefully closing and locking the door, replacing the key beneath his shirt, next to his skin. He then returned to the artifacts room and returned some of the pieces the team had been playing with recently to their boxes, he was looking forward to finding out what various pieces might do and where they came from. So much knowledge had been lost from London, the knowledge that put things into order and a true archivist craved order. His reverie was broken by the buzz from his mobile, he took the message quickly and walked out of the high ceilinged vault setting the lock out of habit and jogged back to the main Hub.

"I'm off to collect our guest." He shouted upto the office and the Hub at large before nearly tripping over Barney. He snatched the SUV keys and disappeared.

He parked the heavy black vehicle and walked into the beautiful hotel entrance with a spring in his step. The thought that he was going to be able to help Jack face a few of his demons, that Jack would even let him in was over riding the fears he had about what this woman was about to reveal. He was floating so high on his own personal cloud that he walked straight past his passenger until she shot out a gloved hand and caught the cloth of his sleeve. He stopped in his tracks and took a look at the body connected to the hand. Wearing an immaculately cut black skirt suit, three quarter length sleeves, a slight slit in the straight pencil skirt showed a little of the sheer fabric of the thin stocking but the eye was drawn away by the grey embroidery, shot with a little silver thread. The tight black leather boots were polished just enough to show care but not as much as to appear military and her hair was swept up in a classic pleat, with no outward sign of what was holding it up. Ianto cast a professional eye over the cut of the cloth, he was certain that it hadn't been in her purchases with Gwen, Jack had made him go through the bags to see if anything could explain her dire condition, and everything marked it as high-value couture

.

"Bonjour Mademoiselle, votre voiture est ici" he said in perfect French, truly he was wasted at Torchwood sometimes.

"Merci" she intoned and started to put on another new and exquisite woollen coat, Ianto went to assist as her shoulder was still stiff, he would have to ask about that. He escorted her quietly from the building, noting the extreme deference exhibited by all of the staff, sycophantic in fact. He opened the door and gave a helping hand as she glided into the passenger seat of the SUV, unlike Gwen who took it like a climb up Everest every time she got in the car, and closed the door before getting in the drivers side and starting it up with the imprint of his right index finger – a lesson on security from their jaunt into the wilds of Wales. He clicked his seat belt and turned his head slightly to view the lonely looking woman sat next to him, somehow in the vast, beefy space that was the inside of the SUV she looked very fragile.

"Who do they think you are actually?" he asked as he swung out of his chosen parking space.

"Very rich daughter of a European Princeling, or possibly love child of an Arab Sheik, whatever they are only bothered about the money." She sighed "Never mistake toadying for friendship."

Ianto chuckled, he had worked in a hotel during his university years to try and pay some of the bills and knew exactly what she was saying.

"Did you get a good nights sleep?" asked Ianto to make conversation

"I spent a lot of time thinking, but I feel much more rested. Based on the experiments Owen and I conducted yesterday I have a few more days till things are back in equilibrium, I wasn't expecting to sleep like a baby."

"I noticed your shoulder looked stiff." Said Ianto looking ahead at the empty road that followed the side of the Bay, the less salubrious bits that were yet to be gentrified, but that wasn't the question he wanted to ask, he wanted to know why she had spoken to him yesterday and why they were now alone.

"Hip's worse, boy when Torchwood do a number on you they want you to remember."

He carefully pulled the car off the main road onto a patch of waste ground looking out over the Bay and turned off the engine.

"Have you had breakfast?" he asked tilting his head at a burger wagon parked in one corner of the makeshift car park. "They make the most amazing breakfast baps, but the coffee is straight from the bottom of the Bay."

She chuckled and followed him out of the car and over to the hatch in the side of the white van, there were a few local trades men and delivery drivers scattered round munching on the second breakfast of the day, their wives would wonder how they never lost weight on their diet of skimmed milk and muesli. Ianto ordered as Jenny stared over the Bay coming back quickly with a piping hot meal in a bun.

"We used to have these regularly but we sort of went off them after an incident a while ago, Tosh never really liked them." He said cryptically then biting into the thick bun, stepping back to avoid the egg yolk now dripping from the bread. She said nothing, working her way round the bun in a far more lady like fashion, the suspense was killing him.

"Err you said you had something to tell me, about Jack, yesterday as you left."

"Sorry to disappoint you Ianto, the man is an enigma, I probably can't tell you more than you already know. What I said was I wanted to talk about Jack, big difference."

Ianto contemplated the philosophy of what she had just said trying to hold back his disappointment, that combined with the break through of the night before and he thought he would crack the Jack problem. He finished the last morsel of bread and wiped his fingers on the paper napkin before screwing it up in a ball and missing the bin.

They walked slowly to a bench, mistakenly new age in a place that was still "under development" and sat so they could still see the SUV.

"Before I go off on one I need to check I'm not off the mark completely, you are more than just colleagues aren't you?"

Ianto shifted a little uncomfortably, he never liked that question, the answer was of course yes but it was the clarification afterwards he always hated. Were they partners, was he in love, was Jack even bothered about him apart from a physical need, the relationship wasn't developed enough to even dare voice the question. He decided on the easy reply

"We have indulged in recreational activities together."

"And you have no idea where you stand." She finished his thought for him.

Ianto looked intently at the gravel of broken bricks for a few seconds and nodded very slightly.

"I have no idea what drives Jack, I can't answer questions about his past in the main and I have no idea where he actually comes from and I only know one person, no perhaps two that might." She looked at him "I have to be really careful what I say here because I get the feeling he keeps his cards close to his chest, as is his right, and I suppose I do know more about him than average, well up to when it all happened." Ianto inclined his head a little and reminded Jenny of one of her previous cats a beautiful white tomcat who would sit and listen to her prattle on all day as if for all the world he understood what she was saying.

"What I'm trying to say is I'm probably the only person you will ever meet that can claim to be older than him,"

"Probably" interrupted Ianto

"Probably the only person or probably older?" she asked and then realised it didn't matter. "Look living while those you know and love around you die brings a unique set of challenges and I don't know if Jack has had enough time to grasp that yet, but I think it's bothering him, so I think you might be the one to help him see what he needs."

Ianto suddenly grasped why she had metaphorically pulled him to one size, she'd done this before which could mean another person with more than one birthday card from the Queen, or she'd done this for Jack. He mulled this over in his mind and the cogs clicked to discard the later, they hadn't met in the best part of ninety years and he had spent about five years actively avoiding another one of her guises. So that left him with the thought that there were more extra-terrestrials living out there, the Institute in him wanted to hunt them down, the slightly re-constructed Three in him wanted to find them and ask more questions to fill in the gaps, well gaping holes, in the database.

"Earth to Ianto." She said touching him on the arm, "If it's too much for you to take in right now you can get in touch later."

Ianto shook his head, this was like gold dust anything to give him a head start chipping away at Jacks heavy shield. "Why don't you want to help him through this?" he asked

"This isn't a quick fix and I don't want to hang around for the moment and it strikes me you are in this one for the long haul. That's really important when your personal long haul is forever."

Ianto nodded and looked across the Bay, the Plass was hidden from view at the moment but he knew Jack was there, like he had been for the last 150 years on and off and would probably be there for 150 more, unless the 21st century really was when it all happened.

"I've never wanted to pry, what Jack does is upto him, I tell him everything and he tells me nothing. I always thought it was because he didn't want to jinx the future but now I think he might have hidden from himself."

"When you are different to everyone else you try to fit in, normal people do not talk about what it was like to wear a corset every day, normal people don't want to know what it's like to grow old and they don't want to hear it from someone who isn't about to go through the same thing. All humans want to think they are unique but in reality for most people it is just a recurring loop."

Ianto digested the last statement, he could have taken it as a slight against the dominant species on the planet, of which he was a part, but after a few years of Torchwood he took it in the spirit it was given.

"So were you special where you came from?" asked Ianto wanting to avoid the more obvious question she was leading up to.

"Don't think so but you don't take much notice during situation normal. From what I remember it was a fairly sterile life, perhaps we were more advanced and had lost the pleasures of life, perhaps we never developed them, matches were chosen for genetic variability, work happened at an efficient pace, pleasure was regimented, it was a bit like the Jetsons, jumpsuits that didn't waste cloth, everyone was the same size because that was the most healthy. So imagine being picked up as the planet is exploding to be dropped in the middle of 16th century France, not understanding any spoken or written language and seeing something that looked like you but changed so quickly."

"How did you cope?" asked Ianto, he was beginning to grasp why she wanted to talk to him.

"They thought I was some sort of idiot and sent me to a convent. They treated me very well, I learnt to understand human language and one of the novices taught me to read during some of the services and I was going on to become a Nun myself. Was a good place to be then you know, the only place women had a little autonomy."

"What happened?"

"Well someone noticed I still looked like the 13 year old that had been brought in years before hungry and dirty and decided I was probably the devil incarnate so they exorcised me, said a few prayers for my eternal soul and beat me to death with a crucifix, well they weren't to know it wouldn't work, and threw my body out of the Convent. Suppose I should be grateful they didn't know about vampires or I might have got a stake in the heart."

Ianto was horrified at the matter of fact tone she used to describe the horrors she had gone through. He had heard the same tone when Jack started talking about death, so matter of fact. Oblivious to Ianto's state she carried on.

"One of the best things that happened to me, crawled into a tourney field nearly got trodden on by the biggest damn horse you have ever seen and was rescued in true damsel style by Hervi. We worked it out together he and I, we started as man and wife, never had any children of our own but at that time parents died in battles, dysentery, small infections turned to septicaemia in the shake of a head so you picked up a waif and called it your own. Three sons and two daughters like that, we moved every few years, different tourney here, new court, squire for a lord there and as time moved on I became his daughter, then a nurse. We lived round here at the end, The Marches were a good place for a knight to ply his trade then the fog swallowed up all traces of you. It was hard watching them all grow old and leave me. I didn't think I would ever get over Hervi, I would go back to his tomb every few years, I had a carving of me put next to his on the top of the tomb, an empty coffin filled with everything that he had given me. Came in handy that, I was sent back to that area of France by the SOE I told people that I had an interest in medieval carving, I would sit and talk to him and I know he was listening because when I was running from the Germans I ran to the church and laid against the stone sarcophagus and it collapsed under my weight showering me with gold and centuries old trinkets, bought me some time and a different transport from the Nazi commander, they just starved me instead of shooting me."

Ianto digested what she was saying and wondered what it was supposed to mean to him and his relationship with Jack.

"How did this man, Henri, feel when he realised he was going to leave you?"

"Hervi" she corrected. "We were lucky in some ways I wasn't sure what would happen, in the best part of fifteen summers I hadn't aged a year so we knew I was different. Medieval France was still a place where you could believe in magic, that was when I started collecting myths and stories about a strange man in a blue box." She turned to look at Ianto and checked his face for understanding, as always Ianto was wearing his heart on his sleeve. "Be there for him, listen to him and remind him he is different and that's ok. Tell him often that the only time to worry about is now but if the past worries him and the future holds demons then you work them through together."

"Jack holds it all in, says he doesn't want to burden me with the past, I think he worries about changing the future too. I think he thought his Doctor would have all the answers but he doesn't talk about that, least not when he's awake."

"I've had long debates about time travel and it always comes down to the fact that if you are from the future any thing you do in the past would change how you got there so you can't change anything, so the future is as set as the past. Except if you're a Time Lord of course"

"The Quantum Paradox" said Ianto

"Ah you took notice during training, then you will also perhaps remember then that you were told that Torchwood had the perfect source of information."

Ianto's breath hitched as he realised what she was saying, if Jack truly was from the future he would have known that there were two wars ahead of him, the atom bomb was about to be invented and used and god knows what the 21st century did hold. He shivered.

"Information is currency, the exchange rate was pain, Jack had a high rate deposit account which the Institute didn't dare make too many withdrawals because when they did he froze the account."

"So that's how Jack, better known as Gerald, ended up at the Somme, hiding in plain sight." Said Ianto with his highly developed sense of reasoning and logic. "So what does all this mean?" asked Ianto as his reasoning high a brick wall at high velocity.

Jenny gave a small snort and rubbed her cold hands together.

"It means you're dammed if you do and damned if you don't – I told you I didn't have answers"

Ianto rocked forward and held his head in his hands, pulling at his hair as he processed the new information. He hadn't thought that Jack had a reason for holding back, he just thought it was Jack trying to be enigmatic. He also hadn't thought through the consequences for Jacks well-being. This was going to take some thinking about.

Ianto's phone beeped loudly as a message came thorough, he sat upright and pulled the phone from his inside pocket.

"Jack wondering where you are?" asked Jenny

"Yep, how'd you know that?" he asked

"Could feel the sort of angry tone coming through."

They both laughed as Ianto pocketed the phone again and sat back.

"Come on then driver, enough of the small talk it isn't exactly tropical out here." She rubbed a hand companionably over his shoulder. He stood and offered a hand to help her up, she straightened her skirt and they walked back to the SUV and set off for the bear pit.