A/N:

Again, many, many thanks to those of you who contnued to read and review. Reviews make the Muses happy ;-)

And a huge thank you to the darling Kitsa, for continuing to let me bounce ideas off her.

The first bit of this is another one of those private little fantasies I've wanted to indulge in for a long, long time…


Chapter Twelve:
Day Two, Part One

"The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart."
Robert Green Ingersoll


"I'm afraid you can't be here, Mr Gibbs," NCIS Director Leon Vance seemed to take particular delight in placing emphasis on Gibbs' civilian title. Mister. He was no longer anybody to the Navy, nobody to NCIS, he was just another retired Marine.

So why was he was looking at him with a glib look of his own? That smirk… it was like Leroy Jethro Gibbs knew something he didn't. And of course he did.

McGee stepped forward so he was standing exactly shoulder to shoulder with his old boss. "Maybe not, Director, but we can," he said in a far bolder tone than Vance would have ever expected, nodding slighlty back at Abby to include her in his 'we'.

Standing behind them, Abby Scuito beamed with pleasure and pride. That was her Timmy taking charge.

"I beg your pardon?" Director Vance inquired.

Tim handed over his ID. "In accordance with Torchwood Three's agreement with UNIT—and subsequently the United States Government, as you are a part of the United Nations," he reminded Vance, needlessly, "I'm commandeering the use this NCIS facility, Sir," He spoke in the most authoritative tone he could muster, the sort of tone he hoped would make Jack—and hopefully Gibbs—proud of him.

Vance blinked. He took the ID out of McGee's hand and stared at it, still refusing to believe what he was seeing. There was no way someone like McGee worked for Torchwood… not that he knew what exactly Torchwood was, but one heard rumours...but still...

"And by the way," Abby told him in a smug little tone, "Gibbs is with us"

"You can't—" Vance began to object.

"Oh, I think they can," Gibbs told him. All day they'd watched the news, children all over the world saying the same thing, over and over. We are coming. No one knew what it meant, who the message was from—who it was for. Abby and McGee had been in touch with their boss, this Jack Harkness. But for Abbs to really feel useful, she needed to be doing something and that meant she needed a lab, a computer more powerful than his laptop.

He regarded NCIS director Vance. "Of course if you'd like to take it up with your boss," he suggested in a casual tone. "Or try to get someone from UNIT on the line," he shrugged. "But I'm thinking they're all kinda busy right now."

Tim plucked his ID back from the still-dazed Director's hand. "We'll do everything we can to stay out of your way, Sir," he assured him, although it was clearly a hollow promise.

"Director Vance!" someone called—woman, young. No one Gibbs knew, Tim or Abby, either. "Look," she pointed towards the large screen in the middle of the room. Someone had diverted the news feed.

"We are coming to you live from London where it's happening again," the reporter stated. Even she looked frightened.

The camera panned to a group of school aged children standing in the street.

"We are coming. We are coming. We are coming. We are coming—back."

The room was quiet enough to have heard a pin drop on the carpeted floor...

……………………………………………..……......................………………

I was going to fix the coffee. We'd kiss. We'd make up. We'd save the world. Everything would be fine. Everything was supposed to be fine!

Ianto suppressed another bitter sob as he crawled out of the rubble; he had several new bruises, a few scrapes, a cut on his cheek. He barely felt any of it…he barely felt alive even though his heart was still beating, he was still breathing in the dust and smoke filled air. Everything was gone… the Hub, the tourist office…Jack there was nothing left… nothing left of him. He crumbled to the ground, clutching at the wrist strap…fumbling to slide the ring onto his finger. He had to make three tries before he found one it fit on.

The explosion had rocked the ground under his feet and Jack had been at its epicentre. All around him there were little fires—not so little fires—bits of burning debris. Please come back to me like you promised you would. I'm not ready to lose you either. I need you. I love you so much.

Smoke burned in his lungs… the memory of that look on Jack's face, those blue eyes, trying so hard to convince him that he'd be all right, but he hadn't believed it himself. Jack hadn't believed everything he was saying. He wasn't sure he'd believed anything he was saying.

He knew he had to get his head on straight, he had get up and get moving, had to get out of there, find a safe place to figure out who had done this to them. Figure out what to do next. But all he could think of was a bomb ripping his husband apart from the inside out and he couldn't make himself move from the spot he'd fallen to.

His eyes found a dark patch of sky through the smoke and tears. "Please send him back to me. Please…" Don't let our last conversation have been me being petty and stupid.

He forced himself to his feet and surveyed the area, desperate for some sign Jack had made it out of there, that he was still alive. If he could just find him, find some part of him, anything... He had to be there when he came back, he had to hold him through whatever torture he was going to go through when his body put itself back together again.

He had to get to his children, he had to make sure they were safe. They needed him. Seren. Jason. Jason wasn't being affected by whatever was affecting the other kids… oh God, how long before somebody notices that? He had to get home…but he couldn't leave…

"Gwen!" He hollered into the smoke filled night. "GWEN! SARA!" Jack…oh God, Jack… he sobbed.

Emergency vehicles began arriving on the scene.

"Sara!" he called again. "Gwen! Can you hear me?"

Gun shots.

Fuck.

Ianto ducked for cover, just barely avoiding being shot. He hadn't been wearing his gun when Jack made him leave…

More shots rang out into the night, just missing him.

"Ianto!"

"Sara!" he spotted the American behind a pile of debris, concrete, twisted metal. He sprinted for her as bullets rained down around him. Shit! He cursed silently as hot lead zipped past his head, just missing him again.

Sara grabbed him and pulled him behind the temporary cover; they didn't have long. Whoever was shooting at them, they had to know they weren't armed.

"Have you seen Gwen?" he asked.

She shook her head. "We got separated in the blast. Ianto," her voice wavered, "what about Jack?"

He swallowed back the fear, the cold lump in his throat, and forced a smile. She hadn't been with them long enough to have seen Jack come back from the dead. He had. It didn't make it any easier, but he had to believe... "He'll be all right," he told her in the bravest tone he could muster. "But I have to get to him to, I have to be there. I promised him once that I'd always be there when he came back."

"Ianto—the bomb, it was—" there was nothing left of him, there couldn't be.

"I know," he told her. "It was inside him. It doesn't matter. He'll be back. He always comes back. That's why I need you to get to Seren and Jason."

"What?"

"I need you to get them and Ella out of the city. I need to know that they're safe."

"Ianto— " How could he hope to find him in the wreckage?

"I'll find a way," he told her, seeming to understand her expression perfectly. He met her gaze dead on. "Jack's not here right now. That puts me in charge and this is an order," said in just as firm a tone as he could muster. It paled compared to Jack's. "I need you to get Jason, Seren and Ella and get them out of Cardiff. Take them to Sarah Jane Smith. Her address is in the rolodex on Jack's desk at our house. And Sara—you can't let anybody see Jason, you can't let them see that he isn't being affected like the other children."

She wiped her hand over her cheek, smudging soot and salty moisture across her face. "Ok. Just promise me you'll be all right."

"I'll be fine. I've lived through the end of the world, remember? Twice, in fact," he forced a smile.

Sara forced one too. "Where do you want to meet up?"

"I'll contact you at Sarah Jane's as soon as I've gotten the rest of the team back together. You have to stay there," he said, seeing in her brown eyes that she was about to argue the notion, volunteer to come back and help. "You have to be where I can find you, Sara. We can't risk phones or…or much of anything, not until we know who did this."

…………………………………………………………

In New Jersey, Dr Martha Jones Milligan eased her rental sedan into the visitor's lot in front of the Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital, just as the the news report came across the radio. They were doing it again, all the children in the world were speaking in unison, only this time the message was a little different. "We are coming back." Her stomach bottomed out when she heard it. Before she got out of her car, she tried Jack's mobile. Again.

Again, all she got was his voice mail.

"Come on, Jack. Where are you?" she asked aloud. Frustrated, she hung up without leaving a message. She'd been trying his number for the last ten minutes.

……......................……………………………………………………………….

Sara Sidle made her way through the darkened city streets peering anxiously over her shoulder, gazing cautiously ahead, as wary of the CCTV system as she was of every passing car. She kept her head down and did her best to stay inside the shadows, while moving as quickly as she could to reach her first destination.

She paused a moment to listen before she peered around the tall fence at the quiet, narrow street beyond. She was near the University; it was early enough that students were still walking around, but the block seemed still. Two houses down, a dog barked. In the house across the street, someone was watching the television, she could see it through the parted curtains of the window.

A car approached…but didn't turn down that particular street. It looked like the kind of car a college student would drive—two passengers—young. Her heartbeat just a little slower once it was gone.

Carefully, she picked her way up the block towards the home of Gilbert Grissom. He had had moved to Cardiff less than a month ago to be with her. If the mountain can't go Mohamed, he'd smiled at her, when she asked him to explain exactly what he thought he was doing.

She hoped it was a recent enough move not to put him on anybody's radar… but how hard would it be to figure out? She'd been with the Las Vegas Crime Lab before moving to Cardiff a year ago—Gil had been her boss. They'd worked together for years, even if for the most part they'd kept their relationship a secret.

She moved to Cardiff a little over a year ago, took a job with Torchwood in December. Then Gil came over for a forensics conference in the spring; she was an attendee. Her hotel room had been registered in the name of Torchwood. Now Gil was living in Cardiff, having taken a job at the University.

No, it wouldn't take much to put the pieces together, Sara decided.

Instead of letting herself in the front door, she crept around to the back, keeping one eye on the guy watching tv across the street. He wasn't paying attention to anything outside.

She stopped on the back porch and looked in. Gil was in the kitchen, in his bathrobe, a mug of coffee in one hand, science journal in the other. She smiled for just a moment as warmth spread through her… she tapped lightly at the door.

"Sara—" he greeted her with a concerned look.

Suddenly aware of what she must look like, she ran her fingers through her hair, trying to work out the worst of the gnarls. "I can't talk."

Despite her words, asked her what was going on, if she was all right.

"It's better… I can't tell you, I'm sorry," she couldn't look him in the eye. "But I need your help."

He only barley hesitated before asking what she needed.

"Your car. Money. And I need to get my clothes out of your closet," she pulled her hair into a ponytail with the cloth covered elastic band she'd slid around her wrist earlier in the day.

Gil was frowning at her. "Sara, what's going on?" his tone was remarkably calm, although realistically, despite the events of the last thirty minutes, so was hers.

"The less evidence there is of my being here the better."

"Sara—" he reached towards her, but she pulled away. "You're hurt. You've got a cut—" he motioned towards her face.

She waved him away, although a brief touch of her fingers to her own cheek revealed dampness…blood. She didn't feel it. "I'll take care of it later. I promise," she said to the concerned look on his face. "Gil, something happened tonight."

"The children."

She shook her head; he poured her a cup of coffee and despite her resolve to remove evidence from his home, not leave it, she accepted, sitting down at the table before she fell down. The adrenalin was wearing off.

"It's more than the children," she told him, "but it's probably connected. Someone… someone tried to kill us tonight," she admitted, as much because she hated lying to him as because she couldn't think of a convincing lie anyway. She still regretted it, he looked stricken.

"What happened?" He sat down next to her and laid his hand on her arm.

"They planted a bomb in…" her gut twisted. They'd planted a bomb inside Jack. Inside him! Inside a live human being. They, whoever they were, had shot him, put a bomb in him, knowing exactly what was going to happen to him when it went off.

"Someone placed a bomb…?" Gil prompted.

She shook her head, unable to hold his gaze; tears welled up, but she refused to let them spill. It wasn't pride. She was afraid if she started crying, she might never stop. She'd seen enough dead bodies in her career as a crime scene investigator… and she'd seen what Ianto was holding when she left him. Jack's wrist strap, his wedding ring, He never took those things off. "It's not important where they put it," she lied, her voice, her whole body shaking. Hurt. Anger…whoever had done this…whoever did this was going to regret it.

"Sara, everybody got out all right…didn't they?"

"I…I don't know. I think so."

"What aren't you telling me?"

She hesitated…but there was every reason to believe he could become a target, too. "Gil, until we figure out who attacked us, I can't trust anybody. Neither can you. Not the police, the authorities, no one."

"You think…what?" He scowled, easily piecing together the things she wasn't saying. "You think the British government is somehow responsible?" clearly he doubted her theory.

"Whoever did this knew things about Torchwood that nobody else could know. It had to be someone who has access to classified files, someone who knows…" Jack. Someone who knew that Jack couldn't die. Someone who knew that and put a bomb into his stomach anyway. She took another deep breath to steady herself.

He said he couldn't die. But what if he was wrong? What if when they blew him up, they… she gave herself a mental shake. Jack had promised her that there would be days like this, days when she would have to follow orders even when she didn't like them. He'd promised her that she had his permission to yell at him all she wanted to later just as long as she did what he needed her to in the moment. She only hoped she could hold him to that promise this time.

"I need to get Jack and Ianto's family to safety," she told Gil, standing, getting herself under control. "And I need you to promise me you'll be careful until…until whatever is going on with the children is resolved. I don't know what's happening," she told him. "But we'll figure it out. Gil," she leaned in closer to him. "I don't know if you're—if because of me—anyone will come looking for you. So I need you to promise me that you'll get rid of as much evidence of my being here as you can."

"Your fingerprints are all over my house," he pointed out the obvious.

"I know. But they don't need to know…nobody needs to know exactly how important you are to me, Gilbert Grissom," she leant in pressed a kiss to his lips. His kiss was soft…it always amazed her how soft. She straightened, reluctantly. "Tomorrow morning I want you to call the police and report your car as stolen."

"Sara—"

"If anyone asks, you didn't see me tonight," she said, cutting him off. "You didn't help me. You haven't heard from me since we had dinner yesterday. Gil, I have no idea who's after us or why, but I won't be able to concentrate and do my job unless I know you're safe. Please. Promise me."

"All right."

…………………………………….....................……………………….

An officious looking woman in black gear surveyed the blast site, keeping her own people moving and the locals off the scene, making sure everything was going according to plan. Which it wasn't. She had no choice but to call in and report her lack of success.

"Target one has been eliminated. Targets two, three and four escaped. We don't know where the fifth target is."

"I thought you said you had this under control, Agent Johnson!" the middle aged civil servant spat into the phone, painfully aware that his family was within hearing range of the call. But at least, thank God, the girls had stopped saying that phrase, 'We are coming. We are coming. We are coming. We are coming—back.' "What about the rest of Torchwood?" he asked in a quieter tone.

"The teams deployed to the United States should be landing in just a few hours. We will round them up."

"You'd better." He cut the line and snapped his phone shut. The only chance they had of containing the situation was to get Torchwood out of the way. Life had been so much simpler when there were fewer of them to deal with.