Chapter Nineteen:
Day Three, Part Three:

"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution"

Oscar Wilde


"…the man… he's coming, he's coming…he's …he hasn't changed, he's just the same!"

"Clement MacDonald. Just another name. It was easier if you didn't know the names."

Wendy eased herself between Jack and Clem, eyeing the former with suspicion. "What do you mean, 'easier' Jack?" she wanted to know.

"Easier to do the job."

"What job?" Sara asked him, her eyes narrowed.

"He's the man," Clem repeated. "But…but he hasn't changed…that's impossible…it's impossible, he hasn't changed…he's the man…! It was him, he took us…he took us into the light!"

"What are you talking about, Clem?" Gwen stood up, moved towards Clem and Wendy, towards Jack. "What is he saying Jack?" she wanted to know. "Were you there? In nineteen sixty five? Did you see what happened?" she asked him, confusion becoming clarity, as she searched for an answer that made sense out of what Clem was saying, what Jack was saying.

"I was there," he told her.

"What happened?" Sara asked, still standing several metres away. "What did you do?"

"I gave them twelve children."

Tim sagged into his seat, a look of devastated horror on his face… Martha looked like she was going to be ill; Nerys was ill. The others stood, slack jawed…disbelief etched onto their faces.

"No," Abby broke the silence. "You wouldn't do something like that. We're the good guys—come on," she looked around at the rest of them. "We're the good guys here."

"Abbs…" Gibbs laid a hand on her shoulder.

(Jack had no idea why Leroy Jethro Gibbs was there, he just recognized him from his picture in a file. He supposed it didn't really matter. And anyway, Abby was still talking: )

"We're the good guys, Gibbs!" she insisted. "Tell him, Jack! We fight the bad aliens. It's a mistake, that's all. Clem was a just little kid when it happened, he made a mistake. He knew you were there and he just thought you the one handing them over, but you weren't. You were there to stop them! Tell him Jack!"It was more a plea than a statement. "Tell him you were there to stop it!"

"There's no mistake, Abby," he told her calmly. "I wasn't there to stop it. I gave them the children. In nineteen sixty five, I gave—"

"No! You're the hero, Jack! You're the dashing hero! Dashing heroes don't do that!"

"I'm not a hero, Abbs. I did it. I gave them the kids."

"You bastard," Sara breathed; she looked like she was going to hit him; he wished she would. Anything would have been better than the look on her face, on all their faces, the hurt in her voice, the shattered trust, shattered faith.

"No, I don't believe it," Abby clung desperately to the belief that he couldn't possibly be anything but what she wanted him to be. "I won't believe it!" she pulled away from Gibbs and ran outside. Bobby followed after her, casting a dark look in Jack's direction as he went. He looked up to Jack just as much as the rest of them…

Jack searched out the one face in the crowd he'd been avoiding, the one pair of eyes he was the most afraid to look into…

"Wh-why Jack?" the thin whisper of Ianto's voice cut through the him. "Why did you do it?"

He closed his eyes, hesitating, wanting to say the right thing, the one thing that would make his partner understand, the thing that might make him stop looking at him like that. Stop hating him. But there wasn't one thing—there wasn't anything. There was no answer. "It's complicated," he finally told him. Told all of them.

"How bloody complicated could it have been, Jack!" Gwen cried out. "You just handed over twelve children—and what, hoped for the best! There had to be a reason!"

"It…it was an exchange," he said, sounding even to himself as if he was trying to rationalize it, make it somehow less horrific. Less monstrous. "That's all, just a simple exchange."

"What sort of exchange?" Martha wanted to know. She was looking at him as if didn't recognize him, as if she didn't know him any more. As if she wondered if she ever had. "What was worth the lives of twelve children?"

Jack opened his mouth to try and answer her, try and explain, but Clem cut him off: "You are in every nightmare I've ever had!"

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry," he stepped forward. If he could just make him believe… if he could make him understand, make them all understand… he glanced towards Ianto again, but the look on his face was too much to bear.

Moving faster than anyone would have expected, Clem grabbed for the gun at Gwen's side. His hands were shaking but at the range of less than two metres, his aim didn't have to be good. The bullet hit Jack square in the chest…the world went black… there was peace…just a moment of peace…

Every time Jack died, a part of Ianto went with him, as he lost himself to the fear that this would be the one time he wouldn't come back again. Just a bullet, he told himself, it was just a bullet this time. A bullet was nothing. Jack could survive a bullet.

Still, as he clutched onto his cooling, lifeless body, cradling his head in his lap while Gwen and Wendy tried to talk Clem down, he was terrified he'd never see those blue eyes again, see his smile, hear his laugh. A moment ago he had been so angry. He was still angry. But for right now, he just wanted him back.

Clem surrendered the gun to Gwen. He was shaken, appalled at himself for having taken a life. He wasn't a killer, it wasn't in his nature, but he'd finally come face to face with the monster that had haunted him his whole life… he sobbed into her arms.

"Shhh, it's all right, Clem, you'll see," Gwen held onto the frightened old man, looking over his shoulder at Ianto. At Jack.

Ianto met her gaze, shook his head. There was no sign yet. But it was just a bullet… Just one bullet… Suddenly the body in his arms jolted. Jack gasped for air. He clutched wildly onto him like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. He pulled him closer, held him tighter; Jack had never held onto him so desperately before, there had never been so much fear in his eyes. He was trembling.

"I'm here," the Welshman whispered, softly. "I'll always be here, remember?"

He nodded, but didn't move, just clung to him a few moments more, grateful he hadn't woken up alone. He wouldn't have held it against the younger man if he'd let him lay there alone in the dark, not this time.

Terrified of what he'd just seen, Clem ran away, despite Gwen's assurances that it was all right, perfectly normal, in fact. She went after him.

Gibbs watched Jack Harkness get up. There was red splatter on his chest—blood. A lot of blood. He hadn't wearing a ballistic vest, he hadn't just been knocked down by the impact of the bullet. The bullet had gone through him, through his heart, or at least darned close. He should be dead. He had been dead. Wound like that, that distance, no way it wasn't nearly instantly fatal. He'd presumed that was why the two doctors in the room had stayed where they were…well, that and not wanting to get themselves shot while the gunman was talked down and disarmed. Whatever the guy had been through, it had left him more wound up tight, paranoid. Delusional… except that no had contradicted his story about Harkness being there in nineteen sixty five.

Abby and Chase had come running back just as soon as the gunshot rang out. Gibbs watched her stalk up to Harkness now, anger brewing in her green eyes.

"Tell me there's an explanation, Jack," she ordered, jabbing a finger in his chest, practically where he'd been shot. "Tell me you had a reason. A really, really, really good reason."

She didn't seem the least bit surprised that he was alive and on his feet. In fact, Gibbs reflected, she hadn't reacted much at all when she saw him lying their dead in Ianto Jones' arms. That was very uncharacteristically Abby, unless of course she knew something he didn't.

He turned towards his other former colleague. "McGee, would you care to explain something to me?" he said, because it wasn't just Abby. No one else seemed the least bit surprised by Jack Harkness standing back up after having been fatally wounded except for him and the guy who had shot him.

"He can't die," Tim stated simply.

"Come again?"

"He said I can't die," Harkness answered him, crossing the distance between them.

Abby was on his heels, hanging on like a pit bull, refusing to give up until she got her answer. "Jack!"

He turned back to her. "Yes, Abby, I had a reason. There was a new strain of flu, Indonesian flu, it was going to mutate. It would have killed upwards of twenty five million people. They offered us a cure. In exchange for twelve children. We took the deal."

"I can't believe you didn't mention any of this before," said Ianto, his voice a ghost of a whisper. He'd followed him over, but he wasn't looking at him. He didn't seem to be looking at anyone at all.

"I didn't know it was them, I didn't know they'd come back. They didn't talk through the children last time."

Ianto looked up at him, meeting his gaze then. "That isn't what I meant, Jack."

"Wait a minute, what do you mean 'was going to mutate'?" Martha interrupted, her brows furrowed together in a deep scowl. "How could anyone know what was going to happen? You of all people, Jack…"

"There was research to back up the aliens' claims," he told her. "And they delivered the formula for the vaccine. I—I thought—"

"You thought that if you bargained with terrorists they'd just go away and you'd never have to deal with them again?" Gibbs questioned him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did," he answered. His tone was as bitter as the other's was scathing. In Gibbs' place, he would be saying the same thing and he knew it.

"Did anybody bother to ask why they wanted children?" Sara wanted to know. "They must have come here for a reason, right? Why did they want human children?"

"I—I don't know. It wasn't my call, I didn't make any of the decisions," he told her. "I just delivered them to the designated location."

"Why that group of kids, Jack?" Wendy asked in cool tone.

He swallowed. Her parents had died when she was young, she'd been raised in a state-run home, just like Clem MacDonald and those other children he'd given over to the 456. "Because they wouldn't be missed," he told her the truth he was sure already knew anyway. "Look I know how it sounds! Believe me, I know how it sounds." He looked for… but Ianto was gone. He hadn't even noticed him slip away as the others gathered closer around him, eager to hear his explanation.

He looked at each of their faces, not surprised by what he saw. Disappointment. Disbelief. Anger. Hatred. It was the disappointment that was the worst.

"I didn't make the arrangements," he said again. It didn't excuse his actions, but he at least owed them an explanation for his part in it. "I just did what they asked me to do. I did it because less than fifty years before I'd seen so many people I knew…loved… die of Spanish flu and there had been noting I could do. I thought… I thought it was a fair deal. I thought… twelve…twelve children in exchange for twenty five million people. I'm sorry."

"Who is 'they'? Mickey asked.

"What?"

"You said you took the kids to where they told you to. Who's 'they'?"

"Torchwood…?" Tim asked him, looking as if he was afraid of the answer.

"No," he promised him, wondering if he'd believe him, if any of them would believe anything he told them ever again. "It was the British government. They made the arrangements, contacted me, asked me to deliver the kids. I was just the driver."

"But you agreed." Sara told him. It wasn't a question, it was an accusation. "You knew what was going to happen to them, and you agreed anyway."

"Yeah. Yeah, I agreed anyway. But twenty five million people, Sara…"

She just shook her head, walked away. She didn't go far, but she kept her back to him.

"So that's why you took off outa here, earlier?" Mickey asked him. "Because you'd finally figured it all out. Only instead of tellin' us—"

"Instead of telling you, I tried to deal with it myself. That was a mistake. I'm sorry. I should have told you then that I knew what was going on out there. I just didn't know how."

"Fine, so you're sorry," said Bobby his tone brusque. "That doesn't change the fact that we've got this situation to deal with, here, today."

Wendy gave him a look; Tim and several others as well.

"What happened forty years ago... it already happened, it's in the past," the Australian reminded them. "We can't change it or fix it or undo what was done. But we can deal with today. We have to deal with today." He looked to Jack, "We need to figure out how to stop them, because this time they're asking for a whole lot more than just a dozen children, Jack. That means we need to know everything you do about this '456'."

The Captain nodded. Bobby was right. "I don't know much more than you do already," he told them honestly. "Let me get changed. I'll be right back. I'll tell you everything."

They parted for him, allowed him to pass. No one spoke to him. Looked at him.

He wasn't entirely surprised to find Ianto sitting on one of the crates near where they'd slept last night. He wondered if that was really the last night they were ever going to have together, because despite the fact that the younger man had lain out a fresh shirt for him, a fresh t-shirt, he didn't look up when he approached.

"Thought you might be needing these, Sir," he said as he stood up. His tone was light, brisk. Tepid.

"Please don't, not now."

"It looks like Gwen's gotten Clem calmed down," he observed, glancing back towards the others. He still wouldn't look him in the eye.

Jack looked over his shoulder as he peeled himself out of the blood soaked clothing. "Yeah. Looks like." He slid the fresh t-shirt on over his head. "Ianto, can—can we talk?"

"What's there to talk about, Sir?"

"Please don't—"

"I can't believe that you wouldn't share something like that with me, Jack," he snapped suddenly. "I tell you everything. Sometimes I wonder if you tell me anything."

"I… I tell you more than I've ever told anyone else. I just… how was I supposed to say that forty years ago I sent twelve kids to their deaths?"

"Than how about telling me how you did it, Jack," he suggested. "Tell me how the man I love, the man I have lived with for over two years, was ever capable of… of just following bloody orders! Did you see those things Jack?"

"I never even spoke to them," he admitted softly, ashamed... ashamed of so many things.

"Perhaps you should have."