Hi, here is Ianto we'll stay with him for a while. Hope you'll like it.

Beta-ed: TattoedLibrarian

The following morning Ianto discovered that Tosh hadn't slept the whole night trying to figure out what happened, she didn't know how to accept ignorance. Ianto ushered her out and home. She complied.

After that he was alone in the Hub. Everything was silent, except of humming of technology. For brief moment he felt intimidated, but then he straightened himself up. He knew how to deal with pain, to withstand it. This was just one more loss on the way, nothing more.

Ianto started a new list. List of things they could improve in the Hub. They had finances for that, and now they had a necessary reason to do so. When others came he already had a proposal for a staff meeting. When Tosh returned they listened to him and just nodded without enthusiasm.

"You deal with finances and maintenance anyway" said Toshiko "so we'll leave it up to you. Use as less outsiders as possible; we don't want to Retcon to many people. So back to Jack's disappearance" she turned towards Owen and Gwen and Ianto excused himself.

"So Tea Boy" Owen approached him later "how you're holding up?" His voice was almost polite. Ianto looked down at him and realized he had to deal with this somehow or they would tap around him looking for signs of distress.

"With what?" Ianto replied coldly.

"With your boss gone, and all" Owen waved his hand gesturing towards Jack's empty office.

"He's your boss too." Ianto said sternly. "How are you holding up?"

"Shaky, if you must ask" said Owen with a snort "I thought that listening to Jack was bad, but now I have to report to them."

"I won't have problem with that" said Ianto and turned towards the coffee machine "the head of Torchwood One was a woman."

"One hell of a bitch, if you ask me" Owen smiled and for a moment Ianto wondered if it was possible that Owen had slept with Yvonne. When he thought about it she would rather pick Owen over Jack, although he couldn't really picture Jack anywhere near Yvonne. Now, that he knew more, he thought that Jack would avoid Yvonne at any cost.

"What, Jack had sent you into meetings with her?" Ianto was fishing blindly.

"Every single time" Owen exclaimed "last time I was there she got me so wasted that Tosh ended up playing doctor in that strange London incident, I never saw those aliens, and she couldn't really explain it well. Of course she was able to describe the doctor that she had met to the letter."

"That's what Jack had said last to me." Gwen yelled from the bottom of the stairs. "He said that the right kind of doctor would tempt him to open the Rift."

"What would be right kind of doctor?" pondered Tosh behind her on the stairs.

Ianto cringed inside, he couldn't speak anymore. He started to make coffee.

Of course, he thought, that would explain it all, and it did made sense. Ianto busied himself in the kitchen. He listened what they were saying, and was somewhat surprised. It seemed that they didn't have a clue about the Doctor. The word had no meaning to them; they didn't even know it was a name. It was even stranger considering that The Doctor was Torchwood One's number one enemy, someone everybody knew about; The Doctor that they trained them to hate, and the same that saved them from the Cybermen and Daleks; the same one that didn't save Lisa. It was hard for Ianto to accept that he was the man to whom Jack ran to. That's why he didn't speak up and explain to them what happened and that Jack wouldn't come back. If he left the Doctor, it would probably be in the 51st century that he called home, the place with pheromones and rift manipulators, wrist straps that could tell when you were dehydrated. Last scene came up into his mind uninvited and he couldn't shake image of himself sitting in the chair while Jack unfastened his trousers, his mouth smiling.

Ianto fled to the archives. That brief moment scared him. He was used to controlling his thoughts and emotions; he could hide almost anything from anyone, which was crucial skill for his survival. But up there when he thought about Jack he couldn't shake it off and what was worse he couldn't keep working like nothing is going on. He looked around the front archive room. He used to spend so much time here sorting, searching, and researching. He neglected all that because of Jack. Now he could continue with his reorganizing of the archive bases. They desperately needed it. He decided to start on it right away. The first room took the whole afternoon. He was satisfied with that, he didn't think about anything while he worked.

Ianto smiled while he got up to the main floor. With his moving to another place, sorting archives and repairing damage that Rift caused in the Hub he would be able to work through it all.

Ianto was now ready to tell the others about The Doctor, he could pretend he found it down in the archives, but no one was there. He picked up his ear piece and found out they were out on a mission. The Rift pulled some new stunt. Obviously the Rift didn't care that Jack was gone.

Ianto sat on the Torchwood couch and observed the office floor mapping changes that it would require. While he was at it The Doctor issue pop into his mind and he couldn't shake it. Maybe it was just a coincidence. If it was, Ianto had no need to bring it up. He wasn't really excited to talk about it and walk them through Canary Warf and the Doctor's history with Torchwood One. Come to think of it again, it was really strange that they hadn't heard about the Doctor, or that there wasn't any record of him anywhere, not in the archives, anywhere. Not one picture. Was that intentional? It had to be.

Ianto sat behind the work station and brought up the CCTV footage that Tosh was analyzing. Ianto watched Jack as he ran through corridors, and then over the plaza. Everything he knew about Jack told him that he was excited and happy; he rushed to make it on time. It implied that this wasn't scheduled meeting. Jack was utterly surprised, if Ianto knew anything about how Jack looked when he's surprised. He was yelling on top of his lungs, and that wasn't weak sound. That meant he wasn't bothered that he was drawing attention to himself. He jumped in the last moment that camera filmed. That meant he was quite desperate to catch that someone, possibly the Doctor. Did it mean that the Doctor was running away from Jack? It wouldn't be surprising either. If Jack was the man who couldn't die, Ianto still hadn't gotten used to that notion; he surely would cause problems for the elusive Doctor.

That meant that maybe this was business, another mission, but Ianto didn't let himself feel hope. For Jack business and pleasure weren't exactly mutually exclusive.

Ianto studied Tosh's triangulation in attempt to get footage from the missing scene. Was it accidental that this exact square of space wasn't covered at any angle? Ianto went back a few days trying to find footage of that space, but he discovered that it was a blind spot, never on camera. That couldn't be coincidence. That's why when Ianto searched for the signature of the person that installed CCTV cameras on plaza he wasn't surprised to find Jack's recognizable signature.

After that Ianto gave up on trying seeing that spot, it was covered even from a satellite, there was a white spot in the middle of it all. Instead Ianto started to examine the people that were passing through. He got lucky and followed one of them to the car. He got the number and phoned the man. While the phone was ringing Ianto idly thought how he should have been promoted from junior researcher years ago. When he hung up there were no doubt. Jack has gone with the Doctor. The blue box that disappeared with a man hanging from it had seemed like it had been a neat trick for the witness, a magic show in the middle of a day.

Ianto couldn't help but worry. Jack was on the outside. But Jack couldn't die, he straightened himself up, and The Doctor must be a positive guy, if he interfered with Torchwood plans, he better be.

After others came back Ianto told them that he had talked to the eye witness who saw Jack jumping and disappearing into thin air. He had left out the blue box and the Doctor. Besides his reluctance to talk about the Doctor and Jack, Jack went through all sorts of trouble to hide Doctor and it wasn't up Ianto to betray his trust in him. Ianto began to realize how big of step Jack had taken when he let him in.