"Would you like the good news or the bad news?" Asked Owen with a cocky grin on his face.
"I'll buck the trend and go for the good news first." Said Ianto from his prone position on the examining couch. He had been prodded and scanned for what felt like hours as Owen showed off all his alien toys to his new doctor pal.
"You'll live, nothing broken that won't mend," he paused for dramatic effect, "As long as you rest for a few days. That means nothing strenuous, no Weevils, no cleaning like a maniac and definitely no, you know, Jack." Said Owen looking slightly disturbed.
Ianto made a noise that could only be described as a harrumph.
"Is that the bad news?"
"No the really bad news is if you think it hurts now you have no idea." Said Jenny coming over to help him up. Ianto tried to wave away the help but quickly found out that his body wasn't going to co-operate. When Jenny finally helped him to a sitting position he had a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.
"Vomit on these Louboutins and you will be spending the next three weeks trawling the world to replace them, these babies don't come cheap or easy." She said putting a steadying hand on his shoulder and smiling at him.
"So last season." Said Ianto smiling weakly, swallowing the feeling of nausea.
Jenny wrapped his ribs tightly to try and reduce the bruising and protect the tender area that had taken so many blows from the booted foot.
"How's the patient?" Asked Jack laying nonchalantly against the door jamb. Owen nearly dropped the tray of used instruments he had been carrying, for a split second he worried that his hearing was starting to go but quickly realised, when he put his mind to it, Jack could sneak up on a cat without waking them.
"Better than you by the looks of it." Said Owen regaining his composure.
Even though Jack had showered and changed he still looked rough, pale and haggard. Ianto reached out a hand and Jack moved over to take it. Even though he tried to block her view she saw it shaking as their hands merged, gently Jack pulled Ianto against him and whispered into his hair,
"I'm sorry." Ianto squeezed his hand, there was no point in telling him it wasn't, they'd had that argument too many times and he was too tired.
"Can I go home now?" asked Ianto quietly, there was a double bed with a thick duvet out there with his name on it and he felt he could sleep for the next 24 hours.
"Ah more bad news, can't let you go home alone and we need to check on you hourly. Never trust a concussion." Ianto looked with puppy dog eyes at Jenny who was looking back with the sort of steely eyed hardness only years of medical training could give you.
"I'll go home with him." Said Jack as if it was an abnormal thing.
"No offence mate but you two alone" Owen raised an eyebrow "besides I know what happens to you when you lose that much blood, one whiskey 'to numb the pain' and you wouldn't feel it if Krakatau went underneath you."
"God I remember that." Said Jenny in a far away voice.
"The earth moved for me that night." Said Jack grinning and beginning to chuckle, which quickly turned into a slight hacking cough.
Ianto rolled his eyes at that little exchange and noted in his memory for more probing later.
"Well Owen can come back to my place then."
"Unfortunately Ianto my job tonight is saving the world because no one else is in a fit state to do so, you can stay here in the medical bay, Jack you go hide in your bunker and I can be available for all stray Weevils, rift activity and extraneous aliens."
"I hope you're not including me in that." Said Jenny arching an eyebrow
"Besides" said Owen ignoring the comment and waving a hand expansively "if you go home you will end up cleaning something and making it worse again."
Ianto gripped Jacks hand again, he knew immediately what was going through Iantos mind, the corridor below this one had seen Lisa's final stand, Ianto had dragged Dr Tanizaki here to hide the body. Even now it gave him nightmares and Jack regularly had to wake Ianto from an unconscious fight with the events of that night, they were so vivid he could feel the warm blood of the failed conversion dripping through his fingers, remember the feel of the polished metal fused with the skin of his once vibrant girlfriend.
"Ok how about a compromise, Owen you carry saving the world from here, Ianto and I go back to his place and we take Jenny to baby sit us both."
"How about a different compromise." Said Jenny realising that Ianto would rather half kill himself rather than stay here. "We all go back to my place where there is no cleaning, no cooking and no worries about Weevils invading."
"Three in a bed, kinky." Scoffed Owen
"No Owen, I'm not in the Travel Lodge, suites have more than one room and room service on tap."
"Would you be happy with that?" Jack asked Ianto quietly as if he was talking to a child with a grazed knee. Ianto nodded gently into Jack's side, Jack looked at Owen who just cocked an eyebrow and shrugged.
"If you get into trouble call Gwen." Said Jack as he finally peeled Ianto off him and letting Jenny finish dressing him.
"She's looking after Tosh."
"Lucky Tosh" said Jack without a hint of sarcasm.
"Luck Rhys, three of them in that flat, I doubt he will come out alive." Said Ianto dead pan "Just think of all the wedding dresses and tiaras she can talk about."
They all pondered that thought with various expressions of horror.
The hotel staff all smiled politely at the rich bitch when she requested room service for herself and her two ever so drunken men friends, did you see how they had to hold each other up as they got in the private elevator? Did you catch the fact she never touched them once? Daddy wouldn't like it if he knew would he? At least one of the junior porters thought about downloading the CCTV footage but he wasn't sure how to without his old IT class notes, the next time he looked the tape was curiously blank. They all wished they knew who she was so they could shop her to 3am. Pity it was so quiet inside they just had to make it up instead.
Ianto was starting to seize up quickly, going out into the cold, sitting in the SUV had taken their toll and he hissed as he was lowered gently onto one of the myriad of sofas. He looked around as Jack fussed about him with cushions, so this was how the other half lived. He batted Jack away as he tried to add yet another cushion, it upset his sense of atheistics to take away all the artfully displayed pillows.
"Let me die in peace Jack." Said Ianto wearily "And in luxury."
"Food will be here in about 35 minutes, just enough time for a bath if you want it." She said smiling at Ianto
"Yes please." Said Ianto levering himself slowly from the cloying stuffiness that Jack had turned the couch into. Jack went forward to help him but Ianto scowled hard enough to make him step back.
"You should have someone with you in case, you know." Said Jack not really wanting to point out that there was still the outside chance that Ianto could fall unconscious and drown himself.
"I'll be fine Jack." He said limping very slowly over the carpet towards the sound of running water.
Jenny held Jack back with a simple touch on the arm,
"He'll call in a minute when he works out he can't get his arms high enough to get his t-shirt off." She said quietly
"I nearly lost him again didn't I?" he replied just as quietly
"No Jack you were both doing your job, serious injury and occasional death is an occupational hazard and both were narrowly avoided today." Jack gripped her shoulder before resting his head on it. The moment was broken when Ianto called plaintively just as predicted, Jack snapped to attention then nearly stumbled as the low blood pressure caught up with him. Jenny held him upright till the moment passed and he waved her away,
"Go on and I'll pretend like you're just good friends." Jack smiled his patented lopsided grin.
Ianto pushed the food round his plate in an attempt to make it look like he had eaten something, the pain killers had taken away any appetite he once had. Jack raised an eyebrow and on Ianto's nod spiked two water chestnuts continuing hovering the plate when Ianto pushed it away, resurrection often made him ravenous.
"Where's the best place you've been?" asked Ianto, a question he had asked Jack before and never got a straight answer from.
"Different places at different times." She replied, my God thought Ianto, they're all the same.
"Ok I'll rephrase the question, where is the best place and era you've been in?"
"Ah, much easier to answer, America after the Civil War had settled, the land grabs, the gold rushes, it was so exhilarating, so unstuffy, so unlike Europe." She smiled wistfully.
"I fancied me a piece of Oklahoma too, but a bullet got in the way." Chipped in Jack, Ianto raised an eyebrow at Jenny and she gave a quick smile at him.
"I thought that you were unstoppable."
"Now I know that but do have any idea what gasping your last and then finding two minutes later that you aren't dead does to the psyche?"
"I didn't till a few days ago."
They all ruminated quietly on that thought, except Jack who wasn't the quietest eater in the world.
Jenny excused herself from the table and then returned with a small wooden box, not dissimilar to the one that contained the remains of her old cat. Ianto prayed it wasn't more ashes but she opened it to show jewellery and carefully took out each piece and laid them in a line. Three wedding rings, one so thin that Jack couldn't bring himself to pick it up in case it broke, a rosary so worn it was hard to tell if it was made of jet or wood worn to a shine, an exquisite cameo, which on closer inspection was Jenny's profile, a whole collection of other jewellery and in her hand another ring.
"My last engagement ring." She said handing over the piece firstly to Ianto. The band itself was tiny, at odds with the rest of her frame, but the stone was a small, lumpy nugget of gold.
"Klondike?" asked Jack as he appraised the gold, the con mans eye for the expensive came in useful at times.
"That was over a hundred years ago." Said Ianto quietly.
"That box contains something meaningful from every life, but I couldn't think of anything to keep from the last one." Ianto carefully picked through each of the small pieces, a veritable history of trinkets and jewellery from the past half millennium.
"You should have made some coal into a ring, you were in Newcastle weren't you?" said Ianto
"Nah no coal left up there now, besides I haven't bought anything in that box, they were all presents, they all have memories of the giver." Ianto half nodded continuing his appraisal of the contents, a bullet casing, a red enamelled cross of Great War Vintage.
"What do you keep Jack?" she asked conversationally. He looked like a startled colt for a second then composed himself
"Memories and photos, but they fade." The other two weren't sure which he meant, Jack realised he was under attack from all sides.
"None of the wedding rings is the right era." Said Ianto suppressing an ill timed yawn
"He was shot in a bar brawl the night before we should have been in church." She said picking at the side of her finger so she didn't have look at him. "Haven't found anyone to replace him yet, it's getting a bit lonely."
"Hence your one way ticket to the Rift?" Asked Jack
Ianto placed his hand over Jack's, he often got a little tetchy when people talked about suicide, originally he thought it was because it was the only option not available to him, then he had read the report about the Millennium incident.
"Yep, but perhaps I now realise God had a different purpose."
"You don't believe in all that mumbo jumbo do you?" Jack asked quietly.
"Three separate periods in post medieval convents, what do you think? Besides there has to be something out there for us mere mortals."
"Owen said there was nothing." Said Ianto quietly
"Owen isn't dead." Replied Jack and Jenny in unison.
"Ok that was slightly freaky." He replied "Telepathy, empathy, alien device not yet know to human?" counting off the possible reasons for this sudden duality.
"There is nothing. End of. Change the subject." Jack clamed up again cooling the atmosphere by around twenty degrees.
No one looked at anyone else
Ianto yawned stretched, instantly regretting it, whimpering slightly when his ribs pulled. Jack looked solicitously at him and caught his shoulders as he started to double over,
"I think it might be past your bedtime soldier."
"It's only eight thirty Jack." He said like a petulant school boy
"You've had a long and exciting day and if you don't go to bed I might take the TV out of your room." Said Jack in his best Dad voice.
"Come on, doctors orders." Said Jenny, "You know you want to."
Ianto nodded and found an arm round both sides, guiding him gently towards the second bedroom, after a slightly false start when Jack went the wrong way. After a quick final check over Jenny pronounced that she was nearly certain he should survive, but she would come and check on him in a few hours time.
"So much for his late night. Are you sure we should let him sleep?" asked Jack, acutely aware that it was all a bit academical as he was already snoring gently while holding onto his arm like a teddy bear.
"Old wives tale really but it never hurts to check it's not got a grain of truth." She smiled and dimmed the lights, "Glass of best poison out here if you can get free, just no molesting him ok."
Jack made sure that Ianto was going to be comfortable if he woke up and then kissed him lightly in the forehead, the way his heart skipped a beat he knew he couldn't bear to loose another person so special. After dwelling on this thought for a moment too long he carefully got up and shuffled lightly out of the room and back to the living room where a glass stood on the glass toped coffee table. He took a sip.
"Water?" he spluttered nearly spitting it back across the carpet
"You never used to drink anything else, they used to do impressions of you when they came back to the Institute, Gotta be ready." She said with a particularly bad American accent.
Jack laughed at the accent and the thought that he had been mocked for so many years behind his back.
"Well things change, I hang loose a little more often" she waved at the drinks cabinet, but Jack sat down with his water.
"Still want to talk?" she asked, he swirled the contents of his glass and nodded
"When are you going to tell him Jack?"
"Tell him what?" he asked levelly
"What you keep in your box."
"Soon, perhaps"
"Does he even know about Marion?"
Jack put the glass down and closed his eyes.
"I haven't talked about her for 60 years, I didn't think anyone knew anymore." he looked her in the eye "Does he really want to know?"
"What you haven't even told him about your wife? Jack." She sounded exasperated, "It's a part of you, he seems to have come to terms with the whole immortality thing, you should give him some credit and tell him before he finds out some other way."
Jack swallowed, that bit he hadn't thought through when he gave him the key to the file room.
"I thought it would be easier for him to work it out himself, give him time"
"Easier for who Jack?" she said swigging her own G&T
Jack got up and walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large measure of a particularly old single malt and warmed it slightly in his hand, she rattled her own glass for a refill.
"My sage advise, take him away, pamper him and tell him straight. He knows you have a past, he doesn't care or he wouldn't be here anymore. Share the past like it is a good story book, which it is by the way - you should write it down, and let him see what you use to remind you of people and places." She sniffed the glass and took a sip as he sat next to her.
"What if I don't want to remember myself?"
"You can't forget what you have done, it forms part of you and every decision you make." Said Jenny, wrinkling her nose in concentration. Jack thought of how to phrase the next question taking a deep swig from the glass.
"Have you ever been so drunk that you lost a chunk of time, a few hours, a day perhaps?"
"I have lived through the sixties Jack."
"Well I have few holes like that, only one lasts for two years." He let that sink in before starting again, "I have tried everything to get it back but the only time I even get close is when someone close dies and I know it was my fault."
She reached over and touched his knee, he took another deep swig.
"It was worst when Marion died giving birth to my child, Estelle died because I didn't protect her, hell even shooting Suzie Costello to save Gwen stirred some devil in me only Ianto and his stopwatch could quell. It surfaced again when you were ill, like rats scraping at my brain, I saw the scratches and I knew I did that, I tortured you and hundreds of others to save my own skin, what did I do that was so evil the Time Agency had to wipe my memories?" he hands shook and he finished the glass off.
"You know I forgave you years ago for that, you didn't have much choice that was Torchwood." To drive home the point she reached round and hugged him till he sagged back with his eyes closed in utter defeat.
"Well as I see it you have two options, you either find a better way to bury it and never think about it again or you find out the truth and face the music."
"Is there a third option?" asked Jack a little scared at both thoughts.
"You don't have to make the choice alone, explain it, talk it through with Ianto, he then helps you make the choice and if he truly loves you he will respect and support you in that decision, that's what true love actually is." She looked over and could see him fighting to hold his eyes open.
"But what if I drive him away too, I haven't felt this much for one person before, when he, when he, " his voice hitched as he tried not to vocalise the demons running round in his head, "When he goes I can feel it will break my last barrier."
"And you think pushing him away sooner and knowing he is still out there broken by you instead of living a full and contented life together and dying of old age with his Toy boy lover is going to be better?"
Jack inhaled loudly suppressing a yawn "When you put it that way, being a 200 year old Toy boy will be interesting."
"Make your choice Jack, if you need professional help I know a few good empaths and mind seekers that can help."
Jack put his hand over hers and rubbed a calloused thumb over it.
"You're good at this, I could use that sort of skill."
"Oh no Jack, I'm not coming back, besides I promised myself a few years to see the world before it changes beyond recognition."
"Twenty First Century is when it all happens." Joked Jack sleepily
"I could tell you the formula for world peace right now and you wouldn't remember it in the morning would you?" She said plucking the dangerously loose glass out of his hand as his head lolled forward.
"Jesus, Owen was right." She said to herself, Jack was out like a light and already snoring gently. She stood and pulled his head down to the sofa, lifted his legs into a cramped but horizontal position. She covered him with a spare duvet and he immediately snuggled further into it, muttering something which sounded as if it was meant for Ianto. She took a step back thinking about Jacks comments on coming back to Torchwood, it was such a bad idea, but being bad could be so much fun.