Going Travelling

By the time Ianto returned from buying the milk, Jack was gone from the sofa and only the Doctor was still sitting there, fully clothed now to Ianto's relief.  He couldn't remember shaking the hand of a naked man before.  He made the coffee and handed a mug to the Doctor.  "You're here to take him away from us, aren't you?"

The Doctor smiled briefly, as if deciding whether Ianto was someone he liked.  "The choice is his."

"Is that your hand in the jar in his office?"  A nod confirmed it.  "Then you're going to take him away from us."  And how could it be otherwise?  This was the Doctor, the man of legend, the man rumoured to have been at the heart of the solution to the Torchwood London disaster.  For Ianto, that time had been traumatic enough.  But Owen had told him of their desperate journey to the capital when it had all kicked off, the expression on Jack's face when it had become obvious that it was already over, that whatever had happened was all at an end.  But worse than that, he'd said, was the devastation in Jack's eyes when Owen had bumped into him during their rushed search of the facility, coming up from steps leading down into the equipment storage area.

"I asked, 'Is there anything down there?' and he said, No, 'I was too late again."

It was becoming obvious who he'd been too late for.  "Were you responsible for sealing the rift at Torchwood, London?" 

"Yeah, that was me."  The cheer seemed forced somehow, and vanished completely when he continued, "Did you lose people?" 

The question was so gently placed he could feel just the faintest prick of tears.  "I lost my girlfriend."

"I am sorry.  I lost a dear friend too." 

Ianto sipped his coffee, left it a minute or two before asking, "How did you lose Jack?"

"Ah.  That was….  Actually, that's probably something he should tell you himself."

"What's something I should tell the beautiful Ianto myself?"  Jack smiled as he bounced up the metal steps, fresh from the shower.  The Doctor's face lit up like the sun when he saw him, and leaning back Ianto watched Jack snag a kiss as he walked past.

"Do you know you've got a pterodactyl flying around in the rafters?"

"That's Myfanwy."

"Where did you get it?"

"That's a very long story.  So, one at once?" 

Jack dropped into the couch, looking from the Doctor to Ianto, and he honestly couldn't remember ever seeing his boss happy, never mind this happy.  He stood, poured him a coffee and handed him the mug.  "I asked the Doctor where he lost you."

A shadow passed over his smile, but didn't stay.  "That's an even longer story.  But I guess it starts with where he found me."

"You can't tell that!"

"Sure I can."

"Do they know you were a conman?"

"No.  But I think I've done enough to convince them that I've changed."

The Doctor shrugged.  "Of course you have.  And it's not like you were a very good conman…."

"Hey!"

Ianto listened to the exchange, and maybe it was because he knew Jack would soon be leaving, but this felt precious, like a snapshot of time to be treasured.  He didn't push, waited, and the story came out in pieces, told by the legend and the new love of Ianto's life, soon to be gone.  Back in the Blitz, which would make Jack so much older than he looked, but then Ianto had started to suspect he was much, much older even than that.  A con Jack had been pulling regarding some alien ship, one which had almost wiped out the population of London.  Jack and the Doctor had met, and Jack had travelled with him and his companion, Rose, the dear friend, the Doctor said, he'd lost in London.  And in that moment of shared grief for Jack and his friend, Ianto left them alone.

~

"Who are they?"

Jack was sitting behind his desk, feet up, while the Doctor stood at the glass windows of his office and watched the Torchwood team file in for work, chatting about something on television last night, some late-night movie.

"The dark haired Welsh girl, that's Gwen Cooper, she gives us our human angle; Owen Harper, he's the brainchild of the outfit; Toshiko Sato, she's our alien tech specialist.  And you've already met Ianto Jones, anguished dark hero."

"And with a crush on you."

Jack frowned, smiled, shook his head.  "Ianto?  No.  He's… he's lost someone close to him."

"He said.  In the London invasion."

"Almost, not quite."

"Another long story?"  Jack shrugged apologetically.  "How about an easier question.  Are you staying here, or coming with me?  I know you're doing something here, I know you've built a team here and a life…."

He shook his head.  "Down at Torchwood in London, I saw you leave.  I got down into storage just in time to see the TARDIS de-materialise.  Again.  Broke my heart.  Again.  So if you're asking me if I can watch you leave again, the answer's no.  There are so many cracks in me, Doctor… too many more and I'll shatter. So… when do we have to leave?"

"Twenty four hours."

"I need to tell them."

The Doctor nodded.  "There are some things that need fixing in the TARDIS…."

"Oh no."  Jack wiggled his finger in warning.  "You're not stepping foot inside that thing without me.  Knowing you both you'll take off without me - you won't mean to but you will."

For a long time, the Doctor looked at him, as if reassessing.  Then he reached out, combed his fingers through Jack's hair and kissed him.  "I'm sorry, I didn't know how much…."

"That's okay.  Neither did I until you were gone."

"I give you my word I won't leave without you."

Jack nodded.  "Still, it'd be good to see the old girl again."

~

One step inside the TARDIS and Jack was home.  He stood with the Doctor's arms around his waist and took in the colours, the feeling of safety, the sounds deep in the bowels of the ship, breathed in the atmosphere.  "She missed you."

"I missed her."  He felt a kiss to the back of his neck and the Doctor stepped out from behind him. 

"Make yourself comfortable.  Or make yourself useful."

They spent the next few hours working, fixing little things that weren't exactly broken, but weren't exactly functioning as they should do.  With grease all over his hands Jack had found himself lying under the central console, grinning up into the complex circuitry, reaching into it, like something powerfully sexual yet at the same time impossibly intimate.

"Stop flirting with my ship!"

"Sorry," he laughed, "I can't help it.  She's such a tease."

"Then you were made for each other."

"You're telling… ouch!"  Jack pulled his hand out of the workings of the time vortex converter, sucking on his finger.  "Maybe not.  She just burnt me."

"She's just leaving her mark on you."

"I think she's already done that."  Jack slid out from under the console.  "Can you hear something?"

"Yeah, a dragging sound like wet dog on concrete.  I thought it was the TARDIS but I'm not so sure now."

"I'll take a look."  Jack pointed pointedly.  "No taking off."

"I don't think she's going anywhere with half her insides hanging out."

"Thank you for that imagery."  Stepping out into the mortuary, Jack listened for a second before starting off towards the basement corridor where the sound, more like a corpse being dragged through water, seemed to be coming from.  As he turned towards the now unused room with its heavy wooden door he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and felt the streak of pain to the back of his skull before he lost consciousness.

~

Gwen was reading all about Jack's new, or more accurately, old friend when her computer monitor flickered twice, then went black.  She reached around the back of it, checking for the power cable, glancing up when the lights started to flicker too.

"Tosh…."

There was fear in her voice when the other woman reported, "Power drain.  It's just like… oh God…."

Owen was out of his seat in a heartbeat, heading straight for the armoury, calling out as he went, "How many girlfriends have you got down there, Ianto?"

Gwen crossed from her station to Toshiko's.  "Where's Jack?"

"No idea."

"Can you stop the drain?"

"No.  Not from here.  It needs to be stopped at source."

Gwen took a couple of deep breaths before she grabbed two communicators from the desk and put one in her own ear, swapping the second one for a gun handed to her by Owen.  "If you lose comms, switch the power off immediately.  Understand?"

Toshiko nodded, and Gwen smiled her thanks before setting off with Owen down to the basement.

The man, the stranger, the Doctor, literally ran into them as they stepped into the cold brick corridor.  "What's going on?"

Gwen had a second to decide whether he could be trusted.  Any friend of Jack's… but she had a weird feeling that he was much more than that.  "It's the same as before, with the cyberwoman…."

He glared at her from behind his dark-rimmed glasses and frowned, an ugly expression.  "What cyberwoman?"

"It's a long story."

"Everything always is."

"Is Jack with you?"

"He was… we heard something and he went to investigate."

Gwen felt the blood drain from all the un-important parts of her body and she started to run, with the Doctor at her side, to the end of the passageway and the wooden door beyond which the nightmare contraption had been left as it was.

What they saw when they kicked open the door was a sight Gwen knew she would not ever forget.  Jack was clamped into the cradle, the torturous mechanical arms slicing away at his face, limbs and torso.  He wasn't screaming, and there was something terrible about the absence of that sound from the cacophony of whirring metal.  Blood was being splattered around the room like some ancient slaughterhouse; Jack's blood, as his body was torn up and prepped for the upgrade.

She could feel Owen at her shoulder as the Doctor pushed passed them both.  "JACK!"

Gwen stared in horror as he lunged for and grabbed two of the moving arms of the machine, snapping them off the central hub like they were twigs off a tree. 

"Tosh!" Gwen yelled into her comms device, "Cut the power!  Cut it NOW!"

The Doctor reached for the third arm, yelled in pain as the circular bone saw cut through his hand, and snapped it hard from its mooring as he wrenched the long needle of the forth from Jack's stomach.

A second later, the power was cut, the sounds faded along with the lights, the red emergency backups coming online.

"Jack…."  Frozen in place Gwen could only watch as the Doctor produced something from his pocket, something that glowed blue at the tip, and used it to release Jack from the clamps, dragging him out of the cradle and lying him down on the cold floor.

His face was a mess, a flap of skin and flesh hanging from his skull along with his left eye, still attached by some miracle by the optic nerve.  A four-inch tube of metal was sticking out of the right side of his head, the only part of the cyber-conversion that looked to have been completed.  The arms of his blue shirt were dark with blood, the legs of his grey trousers equally as drenched.  His chest was a criss-cross of cuts, deep, where the network of tubes designed to support his new existence was to have been installed.

But worse than any of what was visible was what Gwen could hear - the sounds he was making now, the ineffectual gurgling in his throat, the bubbling of blood from his mouth.

On his knees with Jack's wrecked head in his lap, the Doctor's voice trembled as he spoke, "Jack… listen to me.  I'm going to pull this tube from your head and you'll die.  You'll regenerate then, come back to life.  At least… I hope you will.  But I know you wouldn't want to live like this, so…."  She watched him wrap a bloody hand around the metal sticking into the side of Jack's head.  "Please come back to me, Jack."  He took a breath and pulled.

She took a step forward out of instinct, stopped herself and held himself in check, waiting, watching as Jack died and the Doctor held the ravaged body close to him and waited himself.  Behind her she could feel Owen trembling, hear him saying over and over, "He just killed him, he just killed Jack, he just killed him…."

The Doctor stroked his hand over Jack's forehead, over his head, spreading the blood through the dark hair, and she heard him over Owen, "Come back, please, Jack.  Come on."

And then a fourth voice joined the quiet throng - a voice that overwhelmed the others.  "Oh, no… please, no…."  Ianto, sounding as lost and as despairing as he had been that night, the night they'd killed Lisa.

The Doctor glanced up, and Gwen was stunned by what he said and did.  "This isn't your fault, Ianto."  Lifting his hand from Jack's head, the blood black in the red light, he beckoned the other man into the room.  "He wouldn't want you to take the blame for this."

Ianto remained in the doorway, shaking his head slowly, eyes filling with tears.  Gwen reached out, found his hand and grabbed it.  "He's going to be okay."

"How's he going to be okay?" that was Owen, the shrill question signalling his own fall over the edge into panic.  "He's dead!  He killed him!"

The Doctor looked at him.  "Owen, you have to trust me."

But Gwen was watching the inert, blood-soaked form of their fallen leader and he wasn't moving, wasn't healing.  "It was what Jack would have wanted," she told them in a voice that was threatening to break.  "You know he wouldn't have wanted to become one of those things…."

"How did he end up in there in the first place?!"

Owen's question snapped Gwen's head up, snapped her out of it.  It was a good question.  An excellent question.  How?  There was no one in the room who shouldn't have been.

"We need to search the hub."

"Let me come with you."

She looked at the strange face of the man cradling Jack's body.  "You have to stay with him."

"There's nothing I can do for him.  He'll either wake… or he won't.  You need me.  I know cybermen."  With infinite gentleness, the Doctor laid Jack's body on the floor.  "Ianto, get over here."  It surprised Gwen when he did as he was told, kneeling down next to Jack.  "Hold his hand."  Surprised her too that he nervously picked up one bloodied hand from the sticky red pool in which he was kneeling and held it both of his own.  "Good man.  Don't let go."

With one last look, the Doctor rose and holding what looked like a screwdriver out in front of him like a weapon, he lead her and Owen back out into the corridor.  Comms were down because the power was out, and they swept the basement quickly before hearing a single shrill scream from up stairs.  They raced up, stopping short of where Toshiko was backed up against her workstation, the expression on her face as she turned to stare at them telling them everything they needed to know.  Sweeping around, Gwen saw the collapsed body of a not-even-half converted cyberman lying on the floor just to Toshiko's right.  The left side of his face was half-flesh, half-metal, the eye gone, the eye-socket not yet completed, the skin stretched and torn over the cybernetic implant in his cheek.

"He just… came at me… then dropped there.  I don't know if he's dead or just… inactive."

Kneeling in front of her, the Doctor said, "Then let's make sure."  He put the blue glowing end of whatever that was that he had in his hand against the side of the broken man's head and Gwen heard a faint, high-pitched whining sound.  That was all.  "He's dead now."

Toshiko was sliding off her stool cautiously, with Owen close by.  "Who the hell is he?"

She didn't recognise him.  "I've no idea."

Then Toshiko - "Where's Jack?"


Ianto looked up, an uncertain smile on his face, as they entered the red-lit room.  "He's breathing."

All Gwen could hear was Ianto's own, clutched breaths, and she watched as the Doctor crouched down, lifted Jack's other hand and pressed his fingers into the sticky wrist.  "There's a pulse."  He beamed up at Ianto.  "Strong and regular.  See!  Told you he was going to be all right!"  He smacked the Welshman on the shoulder, hard enough to rock him slightly.

"But… he was dead."  Beady eyes settled on Owen, standing once again behind Gwen's shoulder.

"Then it's magic, or a miracle.  Or both."

"Doctor…."  Immediately the man's attention was with Jack, holding his hand, leaning over him into his line of sight.  Gwen watched the happy expression soften.

"Hey, welcome back."

Jack tried to move and the Doctor gently stilled him.  "Easy.  You haven't completely healed yet."  That was an understatement.  Except for the fact that he was alive instead of dead, everything else was the same.  It had to hurt.  And that fact seemed to creep over Jack slowly.

"Oh, Gods…."

"Oh.  No.  Jack…."  The Doctor nailed her with an urgent glance.  "We need something to knock him out."

"Please…."

"The pain will do that."  It hurt Gwen to say it but it had to be true.  "We don't have any drugs around…."

"My eye… what's wrong with my eye?  Doctor?"

"There's the knock-out stuff we use on Myfanwy." 

She turned to look at Owen, opened her mouth to tell him he was an idiot, when she heard the Doctor say, "Perfect, get it," over Jack's increasingly loud and nonsensical cries.

"Doc… please… feels like… I'm falling apart."  Gwen could hear him grinding his teeth, could only watch as he tried to touch his face and was stopped by the two men holding him down.  "My eye….  Oh Gods…"

Owen left at a running pace and all she could do was watch while Jack gritted his teeth to stop his own chatter and clung to Ianto and the Doctor, his injuries not looking at all better than they had done when he'd been dragged out of the cradle.  The couple of minutes it took Owen to return felt like hours.  She kept wishing Jack would just pass out but he seemed to keep fighting it, seemed to want to stay awake.

Finally the darts and the dart gun were in the Doctor's hand.  "Believe me, Jack," he said as he loaded one dark into the short barrel, "this is going to be better for you in the long-run."

"Anything.  Just make it stop."

The dart entered Jack's thigh and delivered its payload.  His right eye rolled to the back of his head as all the tension left him and he slumped on the ground.

"I need light," the Doctor told them, "and somewhere to work."

~

With Jack's hand held tightly in his and Jack's blood all over his clothes, the Doctor stared at Ianto sitting on the stone bench across from him in the autopsy room, in just the same state of disarray.  Together they'd patched Jack up as best they could, sewn skin to skin, popped his eyeball back in, removed bits of metal from his body, replenished the blood he'd lost.  Now all they could do was wait; for the ultra-powerful sedative to wear off, for his whatever energy was in his body to heal him. 

"Who was he?  The man next to Toshiko's desk?"

Ianto looked up, and his voice was flat, devoid of emotion when he answered.  "Dr Tanizaki.  He was here to help me save Lisa.  She killed him.  I hid his body and in the chaos…."

"Sorry… who's Lisa?"

"My girlfriend."

"I thought you said you lost her in the London invasion?"  He listened while Ianto explained in broken words and around swallowed tears what had happened only a matter of days before. 

The Doctor just listened.  Who was he to comment?  Who was he to accuse this man of betrayal when he himself had done the same thing just by a different method?  Ianto's regret was clear in every word he said, and Jack's homicidal reaction obvious in his story.  But Jack had faced off cybermen before on a different world, the Doctor knew, and he was never going to be happy about one being kept in the place he'd looked upon as his home, his one place of safety in the entire universe.  Not any longer.  The TARDIS would be his home as long as he wanted or needed it to be.

Bereft of anything to say, he checked Jack's injuries.  The cuts to his legs and arms were starting to close, but he'd seen how quickly a bullet wound to the head had healed and this was nothing close to that speed.

"The cyberwoman… Jack said she… killed him, twice.  Something like that… would have drained him.  And this…" Ianto indicated the mess to Jack's face, "must be taking its toll, even if he can't actually die."

Twice.  The Doctor had seen people killed by cyberman before.  Painful deaths, with internal tissue and skin burnt, the heart going into arrhythmia, every muscle contracting, splitting, blood clotting; the body finally paralyzed while the organs fail, the eardrums rupture, the sinuses explode and death comes as a welcome relief.  Twice.

"You need to dismantle the conversion unit," he told Ianto in a tone harder than he meant it to be.  "Take it apart, melt it down, bury it.  It shouldn't be here, it doesn't belong here, not in this place, not even in this dimension.  The cybermen have been wiped out all over the universe.  They can't be given even the slightest of chances to rebuild themselves."

Ianto nodded, looked straight at him.  "Do you understand why I did it?"

"Do I understand why you put the lives of your friends and co-workers, the lives of everyone in this city, this country, this world at risk?  The life of a man I've travelled galaxies to find?"  The Doctor nodded.  "I think at this moment I would tear the universe apart for Jack."

"And I think he would do the same for you."

"I think he might already have tried to."

The fingers held in his hand flexed and immediately he was on his feet, pulling the blanket they'd used to cover Jack up over his whole body, making sure again that he was the first thing Jack saw when he opened his right eye, his left still too swollen to see out of.

Jack saw him, groaned once, rolled onto his side and threw up over the edge of the slab, narrowly missing Ianto's shoes.

~

"Leave it."  The Doctor batted Jack's hand away from his face.

"It's uncomfortable."

"Ianto and I had to do some quick surgery and I'm not a…" he shrugged, "well, I suppose I am.  But not a medical one."  He watched Jack sit back on the couch.  The swelling in his face was down, but the tear and the stitches were still obvious and he kept picking at the terrible injury.

"Why do you call yourself Doctor?"

"You know, it's been so long, I don't think I can remember."

"Liar." 

He raised his hand again and the Doctor grabbed it.  "Right.  Give me the other one too."

"What?"

"You can't be trusted with them, so I'll be taking charge of them until you're healed.  You've got mine, it seems fair." 

Jack presented his other hand too, and when the Doctor took it, he laced their fingers together.  "Ianto did it all because he was in love."

The Doctor nodded.  "I think he loves you a little."

"They all do.  I can't help it.  It's what I am, what I do, it's who am I.  I've always had this affect on people, even when I'm not trying…."

"I love you, Jack."  It was the best way to shut his Captain up.  "I think I've loved you from the moment we danced."  Reaching for him, being reached for, as Rose stepped out of their way and a strong arm wrapped around his waist, one around his neck, and he was held against a hard body, moving to music that changed to suit them, from jazz band to a slow moving wordless ballad.

They'd never made love, not until last night.  Jack had flirted, the Doctor had flirted right back, keeping it light, ignoring what was between them until it was far, far too late, and all that Jack could do was steal a kiss and die for him.  But now that they had made love the Doctor knew how deep he was in with Jack, how much seeing him being converted, being ripped from him, from right under his nose, hurt and angered him.  And with him came all the anger in the universe.  He would protect Jack with his last breath and he was just as immortal.  In a way it might work….  The Doctor dismissed it.  They'd drive each other crazy.  Eventually.  But until then he wanted Jack's fire with him, at his side and buried inside him.

"Wow.  A Time Lord on my dance card."  A smile flicked across Jack's split lips.  "Not all time agents are so lucky."

"There just isn't enough of me to go around."  Raising his hand, the Doctor ghosted his thumb along what was now a line of raw scar tissue from Jack's forehead, down around his left eye, dissecting his lips and sweeping across to his jaw.

"Is it healing?"

"Slowly, yes.  You'll be gorgeous again soon."  Jack smiled the sarcasm back at him.

"If he'd managed to convert me…."

"I'd have put a bullet in your head."

"And if I'd come back again, and again?"

"I'd have taken your head off.  I doubt even you'd survive decapitation."  He sat back.  "Jack, about Ianto... he's got a world of guilt on his shoulders and you're leaving him…."

"I told you, I can't stay."

"I'm not suggesting you stay.  I'm feeling much too selfish to allow that now."

"Then what are you suggesting?"

"That depends on how fragile you're feeling, Captain."

~

The hub cleared out as the three members of the team with the most normal lives left to spend some time with them.  It was with some surprise that the Doctor watched Ianto start to clean up the general rubbish once they'd left.

"What will they do without you?"

Jack shrugged.  "I honestly don't know.  But I've given too much of my life away to people and causes.  I wasn't born to be trapped in one place, I need to be travelling, I need to be in space, and I need to be with you.  At least for a while."

"I know."

"Are you sure about this?"

"Are you?"

"Hey, I'm the flexible, 51st Century guy, remember?"

"And you don't think I've had a threesome in my long life?"

"I don't think that's how it's going to be."

"I know that too."

Jack smiled, kissed him, and pushing his hands into his pockets he ambled out of his office, completely healed, with only more memories to add to the vast array that haunted him.  The Doctor watched Jack approach Ianto, couldn't hear what he said but was amazed at how quickly he was able to bring first a smile, then a shy laugh to the man's face.  A hand on his arm, up to his shoulder, the other rising to caress his face.  Ianto froze when Jack kissed him; slowly, coaxing a response.  Then he shifted, moved his head and opened his mouth, and Ianto had his hand loosely at Jack's waist.

It was an incredibly erotic sight, watching Jack work his magic.  The Doctor had witnessed flirting before, even the odd returned touch from an interested party who'd never got much further.  But this was something else, this was something intensely sexual he could feel himself hardening, pulsing, wanting to do again what he and Jack had done the previous night.

Jack had persuaded Ianto to put down the bin bag and had moved them to the couch.  He said something, and they both looked across to where the Doctor was waiting.  That was his cue and he didn't need asking twice.  He joined them on the couch, seating himself behind Jack, sliding one hand along his thigh, the other arm loosely around his waist even as he leaned in to claim Ianto's mouth again, pinning him back against the cushion.  He could hear the soft moans coming from the Welshman's throat, reached between Jack's legs and squeezed his crotch gently, eliciting the same sound from his friend - companion - lover.  Jack made it look easy, unfastening the buttons of his own shirt before Ianto's, settling so they were side by face, face to face, skin to skin.  The Doctor was along for the ride and he knew it; not long from now he'd have Jack all to himself and there were a thousand rooms in the TARDIS to do this in, on a million worlds.

So he remained fully clothed while Jack stripped himself and Ianto, kissing every inch of skin his mouth could reach, touching the rest, skilled fingers drawing ever rougher, ever more nonsensical sounds from the other man.  The Doctor watched Ianto's long fingers curl and uncurl against Jack's head, hair crushed against his palm as Jack worked his nipples to hard buds with his teeth and lips, tugging on his erection with a gentle grip until Ianto was begging.

For one so many had regarded as sexless, the Doctor was diamond hard as he watched Jack pushing slowly but steadily into Ianto's body, listened to the soothing, encouraging sounds he made, drew in a breath and smelt the sweat and arousal so close to him he was able to touch it.  Almost of its own accord his hand curved around the firm orb of Jack's ass cheek, fingers tracing along his crack to his balls, on to where his cock strained forward and connected with Ianto.  The Doctor made a second connection with his hand, fingers teasing Ianto's stretched muscle, palm pressed into Jack's perineum, feeling Jack's slippery slide in and out, across his hand, bringing Ianto closer and closer to climax while holding back his own.

When it finally came, his howl soared up into the high ceiling, disturbing Myfanwy who added a higher-pitched cry to the noise.  His semen splashed against Jack's taut belly as his fingernails bit into the muscles of Jack's trembling arms.  And just after Ianto's peak, Jack came too, burying himself deep, pressing back against the Doctor's hand, yelling triumphantly, joyously, echoing his lover.  The Doctor moved, letting Jack drop practically into his lap while letting him stay close to Ianto, one leg rested over his thighs, mouth restless over his lips, fingers stroking through his hair.  And that was where they rested for a while, dozing, quietly talking, Jack making Ianto smile, making him laugh, making him feel like he was the most important thing on this world.  Maybe he was.

It was somewhere between night and day when Jack got up, got dressed, tucked a blanket around his sleeping friend, smiled at the Doctor and assured him that he was ready to leave. 

"What do you want to take?"

"Clothes.  I don't have anything else, except…" the Doctor saw his gaze roam over the glass and metal jar in the corner of his office, "… now I have you, I'll leave this here, just in case."  He didn't want to ask in case of what.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" 

Jack crouched by Ianto's side and kissed him.  "I have to.  I don't belong here."

"What will we do without you?"

Mussing Ianto's hair affectionately, Jack told him, "You're stronger than you think.  Lead them; all they need is to be pointed in the right direction."

"You think I'm the one to do that?"

The Doctor smiled to himself at the uncertainty in his voice; how often had he heard it, from so many ordinary people who'd turned out to be heroes?

Jack smiled too.  "Yes, Ianto, I do."

"But what do I tell them about you?"

A glance at him and the Doctor beamed back.

"Just tell them I've gone travelling.  And I'll come back soon to visit, but that's a promise to you, not to them."

Ianto's slow nod was to tell Jack that he understood.  "Goodbye, Jack.  Take care of yourself."

"You too.  Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Even the Doctor could see that there were tears in Ianto's eyes even as he joked, "That gives me a rather wide scope, doesn't it, Sir?"


There were no tears in Jack's eyes as they walked, arms hooked around each other's waists, down to the TARDIS, no regret as they locked the door and threw the lever that with one slight shudder started them on their way from Cardiff, Wales, Earth, to somewhere else, somewhere alien, somewhere hundreds of thousands of light years away.

They made love in the control room, Jack's bare ass inadvertently choosing their next destination when he sat on a row of small buttons on the console, distracted by the heat of the Doctor's mouth around his dick.

It was later, then, when the Doctor, poised at the door, watched Jack don his military coat and a red scarf that didn't match, and announced, "Captain Jack, welcome to Matsapatoenea, capital city of the region Matsapataya on the planet Org."

Jack was the first out, hands deep in his pockets, looking around the scene before he met the Doctor's slightly confused expression.  "Why does it look like Scotland?"

"Because it is!  Your arse doesn't make a very good route planner.  Look!  It's Torchwood House!  Let's go see if Myfanwy's in residence.  Not that I remember a pterodactyl…."  And clapping Jack hard on the back, mirroring his smile, they strolled together towards a new adventure.



fin



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