GOOD OLD LONDON TOWN - Part 1

The three hour trip to London passed mostly in silence, though it was weary more than awkward. Ianto drove and Jack looked introspectively out his window. Hart had made him resort to being someone he liked to tell himself he wasn't anymore. He hadn't had to actually hurt Hart. Hart had known that he would, at that point, and that had been enough to loosen his tongue. The reason he had been reluctant to give that information to Gwen and Buffy, even though he'd gone there to have them save London from the potential explosion? If he was the only one that knew, they'd have had to bring him along. Jack had made it plain how much that was never going to happen. Hart's presence was hard enough on the team without, basically, locking them up with him. Not to mention the fact that this mission would be a big enough pain in their asses without having to babysit a rogue Time Agent who more than likely had ulterior motives.

Ianto pulled up in front of a small hotel. It was discreet and tucked away on a small London street. They weren't there to be noticed. Jack could see the closest Tube Station from his seat in the car and they weren't far from the city's famous tourist areas, but they weren't right in the middle of any of them either. He approved, but he'd never doubted Ianto's abilities when it came to logistics. The man simply had a rare gift for organizing things.

Gwen and Buffy were in one room, Jack and Ianto in another across the hall from them. Jack told Gwen and Buffy to come across the hall in about half an hour, once they'd all had a chance to settle in. They had to discuss the plan for the next morning. When he entered his own room, Ianto had already quietly started putting their things away and setting up his laptop on the table. Jack slipped his coat off and dropped it on the bed.

He watched Ianto for a moment while he crouched on the other side of the table, unplugging the small hotel coffee maker so he could plug in the laptop. He stood up and stopped short when he realized Jack was just sort of... staring at him.

"Are you alright?" he asked a little warily.

"Yep," Jack answered, still just watching him.

He glanced down a little self-consciously, straightening his waistcoat slightly, rumpled as it was from him crawling around under the table.

Jack didn't even try to stop his first genuine smile of the afternoon at that. It was so him. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he offered.

"Oh," Ianto said, looking, truthfully, a little relieved. He glanced around at the bags and cases littering the area and finally had Jack unpack some of the equipment.

III

Buffy's nap in the car had left her feeling groggy and in desperate need of caffeine. At least the hotel had provided a small complimentary bag of coffee to go with the coffee maker, which Buffy immediately attacked while Gwen made a quick call to the Rhys. It was cute, really, how the two of them interacted, and she could see the leaps and bounds that had been made in their relationship when she compared the now to Jack's stories. (It had also been made clear to her through those stories just how deeply Jack felt for Gwen, and she could see why.)

"How's the hubby?" Buffy asked casually as she perched on one of the beds while listening to the little sputters coming from the coffee pot. If only it would work faster...

Gwen smiled happily, still in her newlywed phase for the most part, and replied, "Worried, but better now than I've rung. Told him I'd call again when we when were heading back."

"Bet he wasn't too happy about that," Buffy teased knowingly, remembering the early months of her relationship with Spike, when they'd both been off on separate escapades and been overly worried about the other. It had taken some leaps of trust on both their parts, but now they were at a point in their life together when they could go days without speaking to each other, even weeks, and not completely freak out over it. Besides, when they finally did get to talk to or even see each other... Well, absence didn't exactly make the heart grow fonder, but it did make the sex better.

Lowering herself into a chair by the window, Gwen shook her head, still smiling, and laughed quietly. "He's getting better though, I have to say. Few months ago, he'd have complained himself senseless. He nearly turned blue once."

Buffy laughed with amusement as she reached for two coffee cups that were, thankfully, perfectly clean. "I'd have paid to see that!"

III

Ianto loosened his tie absently, opening the top button of his shirt with a flick of his thumb, as he connected one of Tosh's souped up scanners to the computer. Jack was mildly disappointed.He liked being the one who made Ianto look all rumpled and undone. Still, it was a little warm and stuffy in the room and the computer equipment was only going to exacerbate that. He walked over to the window and slid it open. Their rooms were on the fifth floor and the open window afforded them the sound of cars and people on the street below, but not too loudly.

"I don't know if that'll pick up anything while the Warp Star is dormant," Jack said with a nod towards the scanner, but it's worth a try."

"The buyer is a collector. It might pick up other items he's got, if nothing else," Ianto pointed out. "Other things he perhaps shouldn't have..."

"Good thinking," Jack told him approvingly.

III

After a few more minutes of girl talk and a round of coffee that wasn't anything like Ianto's coffee, Buffy told Gwen she was going to pop downstairs to get some air and finish waking up. Grabbing her light coat, she headed out, riding down in the elevator with an elderly woman and her husband who commented on Buffy's 'charming' accent. The charming was dripping with sarcasm and she wanted to whack the woman in the head with something sharp, like she'd done to that demon at the Double Meat Palace.

She was so glad she'd moved up in the job world.

A slow stroll down the street allowed her to take in the sounds of the traffic on the street, the myriad of accents from the people she was passing, and a smell that just reminded her of London. She'd only been to the city twice before, both times involving helping to set up and then subsequently work out the kinks of the New Council's branch there, but she did remember the smell of the place. She blamed Spike for pointing it out to her in the first place.

III

Jack stood looking out the window and, even from that height, recognized Buffy down on the street. He frowned, briefly wondering where she was going, then glanced at his watch and decided he wouldn't say anything unless she was late for their meeting in ten minutes' time.

He turned away from the window. Ianto was still setting up all of Torchwood's delicate and complicated equipment. Again, Jack felt a small pang of disappointment, because all their Do Not Disturb sign was probably going to be keeping the Housekeeping staff from walking in on was their top secret junk. They were going to be in London long enough to track down their wayward Warp Star, then it was back to Cardiff with them. No rest for the weary.

Jack shook himself out of that train of thought. London always made him nostalgic for those relatively carefree days he spent there during the war, back when he was a 'free agent', after he left the Time Agency. Sure there were air raids and his cover as an airman required a certain amount of soldiering, but he still had a lot of free time. London was fun.

Jack watched Ianto work, his attention focused entirely on the task at hand, and wondered if his lover even remembered what that kind of fun felt like. Jack hadn't known him before Lisa. He'd often wondered what the younger man was like before he'd taken on that terrible secret.

Ianto finished his immediate task and looked up to find Jack watching him again. "What?" he asked suspiciously.

"I want to go out with you," he said plainly. "In London. But we don't have time."

A myriad of expressions passed across Ianto's face in quick succession before he finally settled on fiddling with the device he'd just connected with a pleased smile that he kept mostly to himself while he simply said "Oh."

III

Buffy wandered a bit further, then began to turn back - she really didn't want to be late, had just needed a few minutes to herself - when she noticed a little shop selling pastries at the corner. She didn't even know what time it was, but she figured a little snack wouldn't bother anyone, especially when who knew when they might have time to eat an actual meal in between saving London and whatever other disaster was overly likely to crop up.

Reaching into her pocket to pull out the money she'd stuffed in there when she'd left her apartment that morning, she pulled out the wadded bundle and was struggling to sort it out when a few coins dropped to the pavement with metallic clings. Two rolled away from her, disappearing under the shoes of passersby... but one circled back, rolling in front of her and finally coming to a stop. She frowned at it, crouching down and reaching out to pick it up...

Buffy froze, her hand held out above the coin. Just like in her vision, only... That wasn't good. She grabbed the coin and raced back to the hotel, not bothering with the elevator and instead flying up the stairs.

Jack caught that little secret smile and stepped closer, leaning across the corner of the table to set a tender kiss on Ianto's lips, which was returned immediately. He rested his fingertips along Ianto's jaw and was about to move around the corner of the table when the door flew open with a bang. Jack had left it propped open a crack with the deadbolt because they were expecting Gwen and Buffy for the meeting.

He didn't withdraw entirely at first, only turned his head to see who had felt the need to make such an abrupt and dramatic entrance.

Buffy was only very slightly out of breath, but there was a hint of panic in her expression. Her dreams had never been this easily understood before, or this quick to actually come to fruition. Hell, they weren't even dreams anymore. What had happened to change things so drastically? Was it because of her exposure to the Rift? It was the only possibility Willow had come up with that had made any real sense.

"We need to hurry," she told the two men who had obviously been in the middle of something, or maybe just the beginnings of the middle, she couldn't be sure. Either way, she was sorry to have interrupted, but there really hadn't been much of a choice. "Part of my vision just happened."

Jack stood up straight, turning to face Buffy entirely. "What do you mean?" he asked. "We don't even know where to look for the thing yet." He glanced past Buffy to the door, then looked at Buffy again. "Go get Gwen," he told her.

She nodded and turned without arguing, pulling out her key to quickly open the door across from theirs and call out, "Gwen!" to get the other woman's attention. Gwen looked up from the file she'd been reading and immediately stood, tossing the papers to the side and striding quickly across the room and out into the hall so both women could file into the other room.

Jack stood in the centre of the room with his arms crossed. Ianto was still on the far side of the table, hands on his hips. When Gwen and Buffy came in, Jack looked straight at Buffy.

"What exactly happened in your vision, and what part came true?" he asked without preamble.

Gwen shut the door behind them and Buffy fisted her hands in her long hair, dislodging her earpiece enough that she just unhooked it and tossed it angrily at the bed. Not the wall, the bed, so Ianto wouldn't kill her later. Taking a deep breath, she said, "I was... in the middle of a street, a big, busy street, with lots of people and traffic. I don't... know which one, but I knew it was London because of those stupid giant buses that kinda freak me out." She was on the verge of rambling, which was very unlike her, but this New Vision Girl thing was really giving her the wiggins. "I saw that gorgeous little gemstone rolling on the pavement toward me. I reached out to pick it up, but someone beat me to it. That someone being the Queen."

She looked at the three of them and made a frustrated noise at the back of her throat. "I know, it doesn't make much sense, but believe me, they're usually a lot more cryptic than that," she grumbled. "When I was downstairs, I dropped some change, and one of the coins... It did the exact same thing the Warp Star in my vision did. And, I know, it's not a direct translation, but it... It felt the same."

Buffy was left feeling stupid and wondering how much of it they would believe. These were people who dealt with science, not magic, and they had absolutely no reason to believe her. She felt like she was back in high school, back when the prophetic dreams had been at their high point and yet they'd still mostly been brushed aside. They were going to think she was an absolute idiot.

Whether they believed her or not, at this point, wasn't evident on any of their faces.

"Where did this happen?" he asked. "The thing with the coin. Just down the street?" He nodded towards the window for emphasis.

"Yeah," she said quietly, her shoulders hunching slightly under the weight of her own insecurities. Despite the years since, she still felt the pain of when the Scoobies had abandoned her during the last days of the War with the First. She was a twenty-eight year old woman who was terrified of being rejected again by her friends and teammates because they thought her incompetent and not worthy of their trust. "But I don't know if it's a location thing or just a sequence of events. It's different every time. And they're not usually so... straight-forward. I think the Rift might have... changed them. It would explain why I had this one while I was awake. As far as I know, that's never happened to a Slayer before." It only added to her uncertainty about the entire situation.

Jack nodded and turned to Ianto. "Do a scan for alien tech and start with the immediate area, working outwards from this location."

Ianto nodded and was doing it before Jack finished talking.

Jack looked at Buffy. "This is London. We're going to get some false hits just scanning for alien tech. There's all kinds of alien crap floating around this city. Ianto and I will look into that end of things. I want you to go with Gwen to the buyer's home address. See if he's there and, if he is, find out what he did with the item he bought. Don't mention the Warp Star until you find out whether he already found it or not. If it's still concealed, maybe you can slip it out of there with him being none the wiser. I was going to wait until tomorrow, because he'd be more likely to be home on a Saturday morning, but if your vision is trying to tell us something, maybe the message is that we don't have that kind of time."

Relief didn't even begin to describe what Buffy felt at Jack's words and Gwen's and Ianto's nods of acceptance. They weren't questioning her, calling her out on all the holes and possibilities that it could mean absolutely nothing. They were trusting their teammate and it... It meant the world to her.

"Thank you," she said to Jack after Gwen had turned to go back across the hall to grab their things. She started to leave as well, then suddenly turned back, a very serious expression on her face. "Jack, if we need backup... Torchwood isn't alone anymore." She was offering him something that only she would be able to offer, and only he had the power to take her up on it.

"I hope it won't come to that," Jack told her. "But I'll keep it in mind," he added with a reassuring smile.

Buffy echoed Jack's smile with one of her own before leaving the room to follow Gwen down the hall. She'd grabbed the buyer's address in the room; it wasn't far from the hotel, they'd be able to take public transport. They hurried down the stairs and along the street until they reached a main road and hopped the first bus that happened by.

Ianto worked at the computer in silence until he found a couple of possible leads. They'd have to check them out in person. He got up and rebuttoned his top button and straightened his tie before grabbing his jacket.

It hadn't escaped Jack's notice that, while he didn't seem outright troubled, Ianto had been more quiet than normal since they'd left the Hub that afternoon. He didn't know if he should ask Ianto or Buffy what had happened, or if he should just tap into the Hub's security systems and watch it himself. Or if he should maybe leave it alone, which was what he'd been trying to do. Maybe Ianto was just tired; it had been a busy day. There'd been nothing aloof in the brief kiss he'd managed to initiate before Buffy had burst in. Maybe Hart's presence was making Jack paranoid. He grabbed his own coat off the bed and they headed downstairs.

III

Riding one of the giant red buses that freaked her out was not helping Buffy much in the staying calm in the face of an impending apocalypse. Once they'd gotten off at a very ritzy looking street, though, and she was back on her own two feet, she was much better. Much being a figurative estimation, of course.

"It's that one over there," Gwen said, pointing at a building down the street. They hurried forward, not wanting to waste any time in case it turned out to be a dead end. Gwen knocked on the door, a loud, solid sound that Buffy could hear reverberating in the wood.

She had a bad feeling about this.

Gwen was about to knock again when the door opened and a man who looked to be in his early thirties (very handsome, very fit, Buffy could see why Hart had dealt with him) appeared behind it. "Excuse me," Gwen began in her proper voice left over from her Police Constable days, "we don't mean to bother you, but are you-"

She hadn't even managed to finish the sentence before the man was running from the door and into the house. Buffy reacted after only a second of processing what was happening, taking off after him, dodging furniture and halls until she came to a back door that was still swinging from being flung open. She could hear Gwen clamoring behind her but couldn't stop to wait for her to catch up.

III

Jack and Ianto walked through the narrow streets, Ianto keeping an eye on the signals they'd picked up using his PDA. The first one took them to a small shop in an even smaller dingy side street, if it could be called a 'street'. It was more like an alley. Jack opened the door and stepped through first, immediately finding himself amongst shelves and carelessly stacked piles of bric-a-brac. The shop was dimly lit and dust danced in the beams of sunlight that did manage to infiltrate the inside of the shop. It smelled musty. He turned to look at Ianto.

"It's coming from the back," Ianto said, nodding towards the counter where a cash register sat, a beaded curtain not unlike the one in the tourist office covering the doorway behind it. Nobody was at the counter. Nobody had come from behind the curtain to greet what must have been the rare sight of customers walking through the door. Ianto tucked the PDA into his jacket and they both stepped towards the counter.

"Hello?" Jack called out. Nobody answered. Someone had to be here somewhere: the front door had been open. "Hello?" Jack called again, a little more forcefully. He looked at Ianto, who only shrugged in response. Jack lead him around the counter and cautiously pushed aside the beaded curtain. "Hello?" he called again, as they stepped into a narrow corridor that smelled just as musty as the shop, if not more so. A door was slightly ajar to the left. Jack pushed it open. It was a small toilet. They continued down the hallway. It ended at a small, dingy living space. There was a couch and an armchair and an old television on a rickety stand. A kettle sat on a folding table in one corner. A middle-aged man sat on the couch. He looked at them wide-eyed. Jack just raised an eyebrow at him.

"You can't be back here!" he man said, but he didn't get up and he looked a little frightened more than angry.

"Oh, I think we can," Jack told him.

The man's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Who are you?" he asked, a little more timidly.

"Torchwood," Jack replied simply.

The man's eyes widened and he didn't respond.

"Where is it?" Jack asked him firmly, but not forcefully.

The man's eyes flicked over to a cupboard near the folding table.

III

Okay, so. Plan A had just hopped a plane to Crapville. Buffy's instincts kept her moving as she did her best to analyze the situation.

Buyer Guy, whose actual name she couldn't remember, had gotten one look at her and panicked. She was certain it had been herself and not Gwen that had caused the flight response, and the only thing she could think of was that he hadn't been a very good boy and having the Head Slayer of the New Council show up on his doorstep... Well, she'd gotten that reaction before, so it wasn't anything new. Demons still scattered when she walked into a bar in Cleveland.

By now they were on the street, weaving through crowds of people who seemed particularly irate about being shoved to the side. He turned into an alley and Buffy followed, finally able to pick up a bit of speed without obstacles in her way... But halfway into the alley, grey and wet and smelling particularly horrible, the man stopped and turned, a gun held tightly in his hand, pointed straight at Buffy. She froze, nearly flailing as her body tried to keep moving forward, both hands held up in a surrendering gesture.

"Whoa, hey, what's with the gun?" she demanded, hoping to get some answers before he decided to give her the second bullet-induced trauma of her life. "We just wanted to talk."

"Talk?!" the man answered incredulously, and Buffy could see the way he was beginning to shake. "If they'd just wanted to talk, they wouldn't have sent you. I know who you are, I know who you work for!" He was starting to sound hysterical and Buffy couldn't begin to think of what to say.

Continuing in that trembling tone, the gun shook precariously as he said, "I didn't know when I bought it. I didn't know!" The words were starting to run together. "But I sold it, I sold it and it won't be my fault!"

Buffy could only stare in shock as the man suddenly turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger.

III

Jack walked out of the small, musty shop shaking his head. He turned the artifact over in his hands. It was an alien power source, but it wasn't dangerous. He'd seen loads of them. Still, can't have them just floating around London. He tossed it to Ianto as they emerged into the wider cross street. Ianto caught it easily as he stepped up beside Jack. He was frowning at his PDA, as the other two signals in the area seemed less likely than the one they'd gotten from the object he was holding. He looked at Jack and shook his head. Jack shrugged and they headed back to the hotel. They could continue widening the scan, but mostly he was hoping that Gwen and Buffy had managed to locate the buyer and retrieve the Warp Star. That would certainly make things a whole lot easier than their missions, as a rule, tended to be.

Gwen had lost Buffy after the third street the chased had turned onto, rather out of her depth in a city she didn't know anywhere near as well as Cardiff. It also didn't help that the two of them were easily faster than Gwen, which really was a bit of feat in itself. Pausing to catch both her breath and bearings, she lifted a hand to the comm device in her ear and tried contacting Buffy.

Nothing.

She tried again and still received no answer.

Alright... So maybe her own device had been damaged or something had malfunctioned? She tried again, this time with the others. "Jack? Ianto? Can you hear me?"

Jack was just following Ianto into their hotel room when Gwen's voice came over there comms. He looked at Ianto, then touched the device at his ear.

"Gwen? We can hear you. What's wrong? Did you find the buyer?"

"Found him," she confirmed, "but he took one look at us and fled. Buffy's pursuing, but I can't reach her. Thought it might be a problem with the comms.

Gwen took a look around and read off the name of the street she was on.

Jack now glanced at Ianto with a degree of worry. "Do you have any idea which way she went?" he asked Gwen.

Ianto, in the meantime, was putting the alien power supply down on the nightstand and noticed something on the bed, nestled between the top of the bedspread and the pillows. He reached over and grabbed it, just looking at it for a moment. Buffy's comm device.

"Jack," he said.

Jack turned. "Is that...?"

"Yes," Ianto practically growled. She took off her comm and, come to think of it, he had a vague memory of seeing her do it, but it hadn't really registered that she'd left the hotel without her comm.

Jack held out a placating hand. "Don't worry," he said, slipping his mobile out of his pocket. "We'll give her a call on her phone."

"She doesn't have a phone," Ianto said tightly.

Jack stopped mid-dial. "What?"

"She killed her phone this afternoon."

"She what?" Jack said more forcefully.

"She threw it at the wall in the archive," Ianto told him. "Smashed it into about a hundred billion pieces. She doesn't have a phone, she just had this." He held up the earpiece.

Jack ran a hand through his hair and cursed silently for what felt like a full minute. He touched his comm device again.

"Gwen, stay there. We're coming to you."