A/N: Hello all, we're nearly at the 100th reviewer. (: Exactly 99 reviews thus far, whey-hey! I never expected this to get up to 100, honestly, so I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has ever reviewed this, especially repeat reviewers. It really makes my day that something that started as a hobby has gotten fairly popular. I've been listening to a lot of musicals recently - I'm totally obsessed - and I am so tempted to name this after 'Come What May' from the Ewan McGregor Moulin Rouge. But I can't, I have to save that for the next one. This is named after 'Northern Downpour' by Panic! At The Disco, in light of the recent snow. Believe me, the next chapter will be a treat - it will feature PC Andy, Rhys and KARAOKE. Not sure how yet, but I promise IT WILL. Also, another note on End Of Time Part II (I'll make it cryptic so people who haven't seen it won't be spoilered): ALONSO? REALLY?! I heart him in Being Human, but as Alonso he looks about twelve. Just...no. Anyways, enough of me. Enjoy.


Eyes open.

Glance at clock. 4 am.

Early again. Ah, well.

Get up.

It was disconcerting, waking up so early. She'd been doing so for several weeks now, since she joined Torchwood, and couldn't figure out why. Maybe it was just the job. Maybe it was just her. Who could tell?

Regardless, Daria sloughed off the heavy duvet and stretched, hearing her spine click into an upright posture, along with her shoulders and elbows. As she stood, her knees clicked too. Wincing, she laughed nervously. Just how cold was it in her flat, anyways?

Walking calmly through to the kitchen, wrapped up in her huge pyjamas, she turned up the thermostat, rubbing her hands together as she drifted to the kettle, setting it whistling as it boiled water. Today feels like a loose-leaf tea day, she mused idly as she dug out her token teapot and container of loose Darjeeling. Now where did I put the tea-strainer?

Daria squeaked and muttered a curse as her phone beeped impatiently from the countertop, contrasted with the unpleasant sound of vibrations against faux-marble. She scrambled for it, flicking onto the new message.

It was, surprisingly, a colleague. Ianto, specifically. The message read simply, 'Are you awake?'. Being the medic of the Torchwood team, Daria had known Ianto suffered from erratic bouts of insomnia, and had known – reading his files, which seemed somewhat…abridged – that he was in peak physical condition. His insomnia, it seemed, linked back to previous traumatic experiences; not surprising, considering one of them had been Canary Wharf; the event everyone tried to forget.

The file had been written in another's clinical hand, a strangely neat print; she guessed it was the previous medic's, Dr. Owen Harper. The notes on stressful experiences were very carefully impartial, but when she'd read them, she saw the words were scratched into the page fiercely, as if in anger. She wondered at how small the file was, and how most of it was concerned with his mental condition – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression were the highlights.

With a sigh, she texted back a brief but friendly, 'Yes, why? x' and began opening the curtains of her flat tiredly. Light flooded the open-plan space, reflected off of the white, snow-filled clouds and the landscape, covered in a thick coat of the stuff. Daria smiled briefly; even now, the idea of a 'snow day' sent a tiny thrill through her, reminiscent of childhood.

Glancing in the mirror, she grinned, and attempted to flatten her hair. As if on cue, the kettle whistled, closely followed by a buzz at her door. Probably best to answer the door first, Daria thought, especially at this hour. Looking at the small screen showing who wanted to get in, she was surprised to see a sheepish-looking Ianto stood on the front porch, blowing at his hands to keep them warm. He was as immaculately dressed as usual, and looked straight into the lense, with a small smile, as if he could see her.

Wordlessly, she picked up the phone, and said, "Ianto?"

"Daria. May I come in?"

"Of course…"

She pressed the button to unlock the door, and, watching as Ianto gave a small smile as he entered, put the phone down, waiting to answer the knock at her door.

Sure enough, there it was, and she opened the door with a smile, "Come in, Ianto. I just got up." The Welshman smiled politely and entered, and she shut the door behind him. As he passed, she smelt a familiar smell on him – Jack. Silently, she wondered why Ianto was here.

"I'm making tea," she said blithely, and at Ianto's somewhat questioning look, she smiled, "I drink tea at home, and coffee at Torchwood. I can make a decent cup of tea, but my coffee is appalling compared to yours."

Ianto hummed appreciatively as he eyed the teapot, quietly stewing in the corner, "Well, you do it properly. What type is it?"

"Darjeeling," Daria replied, with a smile, "I'm trying new things."

She put the teapot onto a tray with the strainer, milk jug, cut lemon and sugar bowl, and carried it carefully to her dining table, gesturing with a nod of her head for him to sit. He took off his coat and jacket and hung them on her otherwise unused coat hooks before he sat.

Thankful she'd put a bra on, she ran back to the kitchen and got two teacups and saucers from a tea-set she'd gotten for her sixteenth birthday, and set one in front of Ianto, "Do help yourself. Can I get you anything for breakfast?" He shook his head, "God, no. Food doesn't sit well with me this early." Daria smiled, "Me neither."

As Ianto poured himself some tea expertly, she studied his face for signs of distress. He looked tired, certainly, and had seen Jack recently – the smell clung to him like a second skin. There was a quiet reservation about him, as if something was weighing on his mind, and he was trying to figure out just how to say it. Suddenly, he got up, searching in the inside pocket of his jacket, until he retrieved a paper file, and handed it to her.

"I daresay you noticed that my medical file was incomplete," he said, as Daria flipped it open, reading its contents, "and so I thought I should complete it. Jack won't like it, but he'll just have to deal with it."

Well. It was expansive, she had to admit. Ianto sat quietly, adding lemon to his tea and nothing else, and waiting for it to cool – such a normal thing to do, for someone who was so very…unusual. There was a date of death here, and she guessed (judging by the very alive archivist sitting opposite her) that that condition had not lasted long. He'd died on the day she'd seen Andy fighting the army, from a deadly virus. She gasped quietly – so he's one of the casualties of Thames House!

Daria turned over silently, reading on. An organization, unnamed but based somewhere called the Basement, had revived him. He could heal supremely quickly, he was faster and stronger than any human, and his biology was not entirely human anymore. Ianto would not age, nor could he die – or at least, he couldn't die easily. She glanced up at him, and saw him carefully measuring her reaction. She looked down again to avoid his searching gaze.

This answered some questions, but brought up many more. Why Ianto? Who were these people? How had this affected Ianto's mind? It doesn't feel like the right time to ask any of those questions, she mused, eying his white-knuckle grip on the tea-cup handle. Silently, she put her cold hand on his startlingly warm one, and he loosened his grip. May as well go with an unrelated question, she smiled.

"Why doesn't Jack have a medical history?" Daria asked, pouring herself some tea and adding milk and a teaspoon of sugar, and stirring it slowly. Ianto raised his eyebrow.

"That's what you want to know?"

She sighed, placing the spoon back on the tray and cupping her hands around her drink to warm them, "Ianto, I'm just glad I have your medical record. It's not my place to ask questions unless they're necessary. None of mine are relevant to your health, so I didn't ask them. Simple," she finished, sipping her tea. Damn, I'm good.

Ianto let out a breath that he seemed to have been holding for some time, "You are a freak of nature. Why didn't you ask Jack about his file?"

"I did. He…what's the word…blanked me."

This drew a laugh from the Welshman, "That doesn't surprise me. Well, Daria," he began, slowly, "Jack isn't from…around here. Like Charlton, except from the future. 51st century, to be exact. And he met his man – The Doctor – and somehow, I forget how, Jack got revived from death. Only the girl who did it – Rose, her name was – filled him up with too much life. So now, he can't die. He can be killed, but he doesn't stay dead," here Ianto took a breath, sipping at his tea, "hence the lack of medical history. If we filled out every time he died, his file would take up whole cabinets."

Daria guessed her expression probably embodied complete awe and shock, "Oh, wow."

Ianto nodded, and she smiled; he seemed to now be a strange, light creature now that this was off his chest, so she risked asking him another question, "What does Jack think of us, honestly? He seems…" She tried to put it into words, and came up with nothing, "…the only way I can put it is as if he's already lost us. Like he's still sad about something else that happened and he's just getting sadder now that Charlton and I have joined the team."

The young man opposite her frowned, a slight wrinkle appearing in between his brows. He took a long time to figure out his answer, before finally saying slowly, "He thinks that you're both fantastic. Really brilliant. He'd love to consider you two friends, but he's afraid that if he does, that will set off some automatic trigger that gets both of you killed. He's scared to be back at that place, having to find more people to replace you. Now," he finished, draining his cup, "let's go and get Charlton. I think I need to tell him all of this, too, and I need back-up. I think a trip to McDonald's for a breakfast bagel is in order."

Daria grinned, standing, "Give me a second to spray some dry shampoo in my hair and get dressed, and I'll meet you at the door."


Charlton had never been so thankful for being dressed early than when he received a knock on the door straight after, and came face to face with Ianto Jones and Daria Morris.

"Breakfast?" Ianto questioned with that small quirk of the lips Charlton was starting to like a whole lot.

Fuck, he thought. No. Don't think that way about the guy. He's your boss'…whatever they are. It was funny, really; Charlton was a liberal guy, definitely. It was hard not to be, when one day you just appear in the year 2000, and everything is different. But generally, he didn't feel a whole lot towards guys. Or for that matter, girls. He'd mainly kept to himself – had a few steady girlfriends, but no one stuck around. The mix of old and new things in his life was generally too much to understand.

However, there was this…tug, in the pit of his stomach, when he appraised Ianto, and watched Ianto appraise him. Likely Ianto was just taking in his outfit – black chinos, black t-shirt, standard black and white Converse – but even if he didn't have some strange fascination with Ianto, there was something very nice about the fluid lines of Ianto's suits. In a very manly sort of way, obviously.

He ran a hand through his wayward curls, "Thank you. I'd like that," and pulled on a black hoodie and black blazer. At the pair's questioning looks, he shrugged, "I like to wear black. It's a colour that's always the same, always 'fashionable', no matter what place – or time – you're in." Charlton tried to ignore the pensive look Ianto gave him – it made him feel strange.

They ended up in a McDonalds – he liked McDonalds early in the morning, because a) the breakfast menu was awesome, and b) it was the first 21st century place his adoptive mother had taken him to. McDonalds held many happy memories for him.

So as he settled into his Tropicana and Oats-So-Simple, and watched Daria hurl hash browns into her mouth, he was fairly surprised to hear that Ianto was effectively immortal. And that Jack was too, but in a different way – the character Ianto had described, The Doctor, was what most interested him.

"Have you met him? The Doctor?" he questioned, stirring his porridge, "I know he didn't make Jack the way he is, but he sounds like…an interesting character."

"A couple of times," Ianto commented, looking into Charlton's eyes unreservedly, "The first time, we weren't on great terms, but the second time, we were. You're about right with the 'interesting character' description – I've never met anyone like him."

Charlton snorted, "That's Torchwood, though, isn't it?"

Suddenly a shadow fell over their booth. He looked up, to take in Jack standing there, staring resolutely at Ianto. Ianto stared resolutely back. Jack pouted, "You told!"

"Yes. Yes I did," replied Ianto, taking a bite out of a hash brown, "And?"

"But we said we were going to do it together!" Jack said, sliding into the seat next to Ianto and taking the hash brown from his hand, biting into it before handing it back, "And also, you totally ditched me. Not that I didn't like the little note you left," he leered, and a small blush sprung up on Ianto's neck, "that was fine."

A thousand different ideas as to what the note was ran through Charlton's mind at once. Ianto looked sharply at him as if he'd overheard, but he brushed it off. There was no way Ianto could have known. That was when Ianto said, so quietly under his breath that he could only just hear it, "You'd think so."

And Charlton silently had an internal freak-out.

To cover up his inner turmoil, he smiled at Jack, "I don't really see why this is such a problem. Daria and I knowing, that is. We're hardly going to tell anyone. All that mattered to Daria was that the medical records were accounted for," here Daria grunted an affirmative response, around her mouthful of quarter-pounder, "and frankly it doesn't change my job either way. Though I'd like to know about the Doctor, and that blue box of his."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a distant memory stirred from the day he'd disappeared. A blue box on a corner – unusual, but disregarded. Then a flash of light, and quietly, a bizarre siren, like scraping a violin's bow across piano wires.

He blinked, and saw Jack was staring at him again, "Is it important that you know about him?"

"Maybe. I don't really know," Charlton replied, offhandedly, choosing to back away from the subject, shrinking into himself, "whether anything can explain what happened to me. I'll consider anything."

And there was that look again, from Ianto. That considering, weighty look. He shifted uncomfortably, and looked forward to the solitude of his desk job.