They made the trip to London in a little over three hours, arriving just before lunch. For as much as Ianto scoffed at Jack for his driving in the city, on open roads the Welshman had no problem pushing the speed limit. At first they sat in companionable silence, but unlike Ianto, Jack wasn't much for silence, and he still had a lot of questions.

"So do you have any other plans in London?"

Ianto glanced sideways at him and turned down the stereo. The strains of John Coltrane faded away. "I thought I'd go to the Wharf first, find a nice place to eat for a late lunch, and then…" He trailed off with a shake of his head.

"Then what?" asked Jack, genuinely curious. "It can't be anything embarrassing like visiting your favorite strip club or something. Not that I'd mind, but you don't seem—"

"No, it's nothing like that," Ianto said, but then a crooked grin snuck onto his face. "Although there was a good one not far from work. The Sin Bin."

"Ianto Jones, I'm shocked!" Jack laughed. "And you are definitely taking me there, like it or not."

"It is my birthday, Jack," Ianto reminded him, but he was smiling. These were the times Jack liked best: just being with Ianto, talking and teasing, listening and laughing. It was what drew him to Ianto as much as the man's quiet strength and good looks.

"Right. So what's the big secret, then?"

"I thought I'd ride the London Eye," said Ianto, and Jack groaned.

"I know, I know—it's overrun with tourists, especially this time of year. But Lisa was afraid of heights, she refused to ride anything. And then last year, last summer…" Ianto stopped as he swallowed to continue. "She said when we made it back to London the first thing she wanted to do was ride the Eye. Get over her fear, because nothing was worse than what happened at Canary Wharf."

Jack looked out the window and sighed to himself. Again it came back to Canary Wharf. It was looking to be a rather depressing birthday, but Jack was glad Ianto had invited him along, because he couldn't imagine the man facing such memories alone. He reached out and squeezed Ianto's hand.

"Then the Eye it is. I've never been on it."

"You've got your roofs," Ianto pointed out.

"Exactly. Great view, and all for free."

They hit the traffic that was mid-day London then, and it took a while to get down to the river where Torchwood One had dominated the skyline. Jack could sense Ianto tensing up the closer and closer they got, his fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly, his face set in a grim mask. They left the Audi in a local car park and walked down to where the tower had once stood…only now it was gone, razed after the battle as if it had never existed.

Jack kept a careful eye on Ianto. His jaw was locked, his eyes unblinking as he stared at the sight—a fenced in hole of dirt and debris—where so many of his friends and coworkers had died that horrible day both the Cybermen and the Daleks had come through the void. He stood stiffly and silently for the longest time, a statue unable to look away, until Jack finally touched him lightly on the arm, and Ianto jumped. He wiped uneasily at his face, as if exhausted already.

"Sorry, I just didn't know what to expect," he said softly. "I knew they had torn it down, but actually seeing it, seeing that gaping hole…" He shook his head, as if he couldn't believe any of it had ever happened. "I'm glad it's gone. Too many people died there to do anything else."

"But you survived," Jack murmured, putting his arm around Ianto's shoulder and pulling him close. Ianto allowed himself to be held, and Jack noticed that he was shaking. "Do you want to leave?"

Ianto took a deep breath and shook his head again. "No, I want to sit for a while. Think. Process. Remember."

"All right." Jack led him to a bench on the pavement not far away, where they sat quietly for a long time. He was starting to get worried, that Ianto had come back to revisit his past too soon, when Ianto finally spoke.

"I know you've seen a lot of strange and terrible things in your life, Jack, but this…this was horrible. Staggeringly horrible." His voice was barely a whisper.

"I can't imagine what it was like," Jack replied, gazing around him at the area where so many people had died—people Ianto had known. "I've fought Daleks—hell, one even killed me, the first time."

Ianto glanced at him in surprise. "That's how it all started," Jack said softly. "But that's my story, not yours. And I've fought Cybermen, but I've never fought them together. And I've never seen the conversion process, never lost friends and coworkers to it."

"I hope you never do. It's unimaginable, the nightmare that Torchwood One became so quickly. They were so fast, so efficient. There was no way to stop them, there were so many of them." He paused for another breath. "They just set up their…their factories and started converting everyone they could, any way they could. You could hear the screaming all around you, smell the blood everywhere you went. Feel the terror, the shock, the loss of humanity in the very air."

"You never told me how you survived."

"That's because I'm not proud of it."

Jack turned to him in surprise. "Not proud of it? Ianto, only twenty-seven people made it out of there alive, you—"

"Twenty-eight," Ianto corrected.

"Twenty-eight," Jack said. "You have nothing to feel guilty about, if that's what you're thinking."

"Of course I do," said Ianto, looking away. "But not because I survived. Because I didn't fight."

"Tell me," said Jack. Ianto needed to let this out, here and now, in order to move on. Jack couldn't believe this was how they were celebrating the man's birthday, but it had been Ianto's choice to come to London, and now they had to see it through to the end.

"I was with eight others working on cataloguing some new tech from the warehouse when it all started. Rupert seemed to sense something was wrong immediately. Communications were down, but we could hear the battle coming closer and closer, the guns, the screams. Two of us scouted out and saw what they were doing with the conversion process, so Rupert told us to get help. To get out and tell someone what was really going on inside. U.N.I.T., the army, anyone. It was like he knew Torchwood was fighting a losing battle, since most of us were just worker bees—scientists, researchers, office assistants. What did we really know about fighting aliens? We read about it, that's all. Played with their toys."

"So you went for help?"

"We tried. We were on the thirty-fifth floor. It took hours of sneaking through back stairways and ducts and empty offices. There were several minor skirmishes, that's how I got the scar on my leg. We lost two men, David and Mark, when we ran into a Dalek. The rest of us finally made it to the basement, bruised and bloody, where there were tunnels that would let us out by the river. We looked up, but it was all over. We heard this great rushing noise, felt the pull as everything was sucked back into the building and disappeared." His voice shook. "But by then Torchwood was dead."

Jack took his hand and squeezed, his own heart racing from the picture Ianto painted of that terrible day. "It's not your fault you were too late. There was nothing else you could have done."

"It was so, so quiet then, Jack. Dead silence." Ianto laughed bitterly. "Because most everyone was dead. Hundreds missing, pulled into the void. Others left behind in half converted pieces, arms and legs and even faces torn off. It was…worse than anything I've seen in my entire life. It was like hell on earth."

"Yet you went back in?" Jack asked gently, and Ianto nodded, his eyes distant.

"They tried to stop me, but once the screaming started, I had to find her. I didn't know whether she was dead or alive, but I made my way best as I could toward anyone I could hear. There were several of them, half converted and in such desperate, burning pain. But I couldn't help them all, I had to get Lisa out."

"You did what you had to do," Jack said. "And you did good."

Ianto's head whipped around, his eyes haunted once again. "Did I, Jack? Maybe if I hadn't been sneaking around trying to escape I could have saved her sooner. Instead I found my girlfriend had been half converted into a soulless robot. How is that good?"

"You weren't trying to escape, you were going for help, and you fought like hell to get out and get that help." Jack could see Ianto did not believe him, but he continued anyway. "You couldn't have stood up to them alone, or with any of the others. They killed almost 800 people that day, Ianto. You would just be another dead body—or worse."

"Like Lisa," Ianto murmured.

"Like Lisa," Jack agreed. They were silent for another long moment.

"Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't have been better off forgetting it ever happened," Ianto said softly, looking down at his hands. "If I should have taken the Retcon and gone off to live a normal life, forgot all about it and moved on with life like the rest of London. But I still had Lisa, and I couldn't abandon her." He sighed. "And now, after all that, Torchwood is too much a part of who I am to forget it all."

"I'm glad you didn't," Jack said softly. "What we do is important, maybe even more important than Torchwood One. We're trying to stop it from happening again. And I need you." He meant it in more ways than one, and hoped Ianto understood that.

Ianto didn't answer right away. "I know. I guess I'm just feeling maudlin today. I wouldn't leave now, Jack. Don't worry."

Jack kissed him on the temple. Ianto did not usually like public displays of affection, but apparently he was deeply affected by being back at Canary Wharf because he accepted it unflinchingly.

"Good," Jack replied. "Because I'm not going anywhere, and I don't want you to either." They both paused to get a hold of strong emotions before Jack took a deep breath and continued. "Ready now?" he asked, and this time Ianto nodded.

"Yeah, I'm ready. And I'm hungry." He turned to Jack, his face slightly less lined than it had been earlier, as if telling even a part of his story—Jack knew there was still much, much more—had been purging, somehow. Jack wished he could do the same, but most of his own stories were even harder to tell.

"Then let's get something to eat," Jack said. "Any local favorites?"

"There was a Thai place not far from here," Ianto said, standing up and rolling his shoulders. "Should still be there. Good food."

"I think I know it. Let's go." They started to leave the area, heading west toward the river on Colonade Street, but they paused when a voice hissed at them from next to a nearby building.

"Wait! Don't go!"

They both stopped, looked at one another, and turned slowly. Jack let his hand slide casually down toward his waist where his Webley was slung, because he felt the hackles on his neck standing. Something about the voice sounded...wrong.

Standing behind them was a young woman. She had once been beautiful, but her lower face and jaw were twisted by hideous burn scars that ran down her neck, and her voice had that same raw, scraped quality to it. Her blue eyes were bright with an intensity bordering on madness, her ginger hair drawn into a tangled braid draped to the side. Ratty jeans and a dirty old jumper far too large for her small frame finished the unsettling look.

"You're one of them," she said, stepping toward Ianto. Jack pulled back his coat to let her see his gun as a silent warning, but she ignored him, and Ianto gave a subtle shake of his head.

"So are you," he said softly, barely moving. "You worked for Torchwood. I remember you. I remember your hair."

The woman's hands ran nervously over her braid and she narrowed her eyes at him. "It's okay," he continued softly, as if speaking to a spooked dog. "I'm not going to hurt you. You worked with Lisa—Lisa Hallett, in Human Resources, right?"

The woman nodded slowly. "I met you in the cafeteria, the week I started."

"That's right, Lisa introduced us. Your first day."

The woman's eyes teared up. "God, I was so excited to start working for Torchwood, to be a part of the ghost shifts. I didn't even make it a week."

Jack swore under his breath. Poor kid, she had started a new job only to see it decimated within days. He may not have liked Torchwood One, but those people did not deserve the fate that had fallen upon them because of the greed and ineptitude of people like Yvonne Hartman. He covered his revolver and let his hands down, though he stayed on guard. Ianto stepped forward.

"I'm Ianto," he said, still in that same, gentle voice. "Ianto Jones. I was in Research."

"You were Lisa's boyfriend," the girl nodded. "I remember, that's how she introduced you. As her boyfriend." The woman did not offer anymore, so Ianto took a deep breath and continued.

"Yes, I was. But I'm afraid I don't remember your name. Would you tell me?" He held out a hand to her.

The woman eyed him warily, as if revealing her name was too private, too secret to divulge. Or maybe she didn't remember, maybe she had gone mad. But then she stepped forward and reached out. Ianto took her hand, and with a surprising strength, she pulled him closer and murmured in his ear, just loud enough that Jack could hear.

"My name is Fiona. And you shouldn't be here, Ianto Jones. You shouldn't have come back."

Author's Note:

I told you not to expect fluff. Turn back now if that's what you want. Ianto's not having a good 25th birthday, sorry. But thanks for reading if you stick around! :)