Chapter Text
Delayed shock, Jack Harkness decided, was horrible. Delayed shock when it came to the death of his lover and his grandchild, both by his own hands, was possibly one of the worst things Jack had ever felt in his entire life. That was saying something, coming from a man of twenty-one centuries in age.
Jack sat in the flat of one Ianto Jones, deceased, and wondered what the point was. What the point of existing really was, because at the moment, it felt like there was none. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there were thoughts of the grandfather paradox. It just might work with him. Universal Facts like Jack might successfully cause and maintain that paradox. Then again, Universal Facts like Jack might be able to survive that paradox, too.
Burying his face in his hands, Jack took in deep breaths and tried not to scream. This was sacred ground; hallowed halls where Ianto Jones once walked. They didn’t deserve to be tainted by Jack’s rage against the universe, against all of time and space. They didn’t deserve to be tainted by Jack. Jack made this mess. Jack killed Ianto. Ianto was dead.
Nothing mattered anymore.
There was a wicked part of him, a sick, twisted, treacherous, vile part of himself that he hated so much it made him ill, reminded him that this wasn’t the end. Jack would eventually move on, get over Ianto, and face more heartbreak. Jack took in more deep breaths, still withholding that scream, and cursed every single fibre of that wretched part of him.
Eventually, Jack was able to pull his face from his hands and look at that same spot on the wall he had been staring at for the past month. As soon as Jack had been released from the clutches of the government after what tied as the worst day in Jack’s very long life, he had come home to Cardiff, home to Ianto’s flat, and cleaned up the mess that the “anti-terrorist” operatives had made when they had searched the flat roughly four days before. Once Jack had, to the best of his abilities, returned the flat to its near impeccable state, he had sat down in the very centre of the sofa and stared directly ahead and let the tears fall. Jack returned every day for the past month to do the same thing every day; sit on the sofa and stare at the wall and miss Ianto Jones.
An hour passed before Jack realised, the small clock on the wall chiming out a mocking tune, scolding him for another hour spent without its owner. Jack glared at it, as if it would stop if he just directed all of his hurt, anger, and rage in its direction. It did not stop.
He reached out a hand and stroked the cushion of the sofa absently. If Ianto were here (though he wouldn’t be, not at this hour of the day), they’d probably be eating, having sex, watching telly, or a combination of some of those. Instead, Jack was alone, not eating, having sex, or watching telly, because food and telly didn’t interest him anymore and because sex was off the table. Point blank.
There was a loud knock on the door. Jack started. That was not one of the sounds of Ianto’s flat. Ianto’s flat sounded like the ticking of that stupid clock and Jack’s quiet sobs. But, for a single, shining moment, Jack thought that Ianto would come through the door, grumbling about the dismal weather (“Bloody Cardiff,” Ianto had always muttered). The moment passed as quickly as it came, as Jack remembered that Ianto had never needed to knock for access to his own damn flat.
Jack struggled to keep in the fresh wave of tears. Stupid of him, to be fooled like that. Now he didn’t want to get the door, or even bother to wonder who was on the other side.
Unfortunately, the pounding on the door forced him to get up. At the very least, he had to tell whoever it was to go away and leave him in peace.
The sight of Gwen Cooper on the other side of the door nearly made him slam it shut. He was not in the mood to talk to her. He was far too emotionally and mentally tired to talk to her. Physically, too, now that he was thinking about it. He was exhausted. Also, Gwen was carrying curry, and he did not want that in the flat. Ianto’s scent was already beginning to fade, and Jack wasn’t about to let curry chase it away faster than Jack was ready for.
“That is not coming in,” Jack stated, looking at the bag.
“Fine by me,” Gwen said hastily. “Just let me in.”
He frowned at her for a second, then noted the pallor of her face and stepped aside to let her sprint to the bathroom. He stooped down to collect the bag she had dropped outside the door. He wasn’t planning to bring it in, but he didn’t want the food spilling out over the hall floor. The least he could do was set it upright for Gwen to pick up on her way back out after she finished heaving her stomach out into Ianto’s toilet.
Actually, the sound of Gwen’s gagging was making him feel rather nauseous. Add to that the smell of the curry, and…
Jack found himself sprinting to the loo after Gwen.
“Move,” he ordered her.
She gave him a confused look, but thankfully managed to scoot out of the way of the toilet before the contents of his roiling gut emerged.
By the time he was finished, he was certain he had nothing left in his stomach. He hadn’t been eating much lately, and he couldn’t quite stop retching until that not-much was completely out of his system. He rested his forehead on the edge of the bowl and spat into the putrid liquids below. God, now it reeked of vomit. He’d have to clean the toilet with those harsh cleaning products, the ones that stank so much it burnt nose hairs. That was really going to flush out Ianto’s scent, wasn’t it? The whole place was going to smell of bleach and curry and Ianto's wonderful smell would be long gone…
A tentative touch to his shoulder had him jerking away from the toilet. Gwen pulled the hand back slowly, watching Jack very carefully. Jack belatedly realised he was heaving out quiet sobs, and he raised his own shaky hand to swipe tears and excess vomit from his face.
“Jack…” Gwen started.
“Don’t.”
Gwen ignored his pleas, just like he thought she would. “You have to let this place go.”
“No, I don’t. Flat’s under my name, now.” It was true. Changing the rent was the first things Jack did when he could finally bring himself to do things.
“Rhiannon wants to collect his things.”
“She can’t have them.”
“Jack…”
“Torchwood policy,” Jack said, purposefully omitting that they’d forgone those policies when Tosh died. Tosh… she was his fault, too. “They go in storage.”
“Then put them there,” Gwen challenged.
“No.”
“You can’t live here. It’s not health—”
“I don’t live here,” he said stubbornly. He lived in the re-pilfered SUV—not that he’d tell Gwen that.
“I don’t care, Jack,” she sighed. “I don’t care if you sleep in his bed, on his roof, or ten miles away. You can’t keep coming here like this.”
“Why not?” he asked.
Then she began to spout some bullshit about it not being what Ianto would have wanted, while Jack did his best not to listen. He didn’t want to hear it. He focused on anything in the room but Gwen. Ianto’s ugly shower curtains. The chipped tile three away from the door. The lingering traces of vomit that wafted through the air, because Jack forgot to flush after he’d finished throwing up his guts.
Jack found himself over the toilet bowl again, dry heaving this time.
“Are you alright?” Gwen asked when he had calmed himself down.
His laugh echoed in the toilet bowl, sounding broken and sad even to his own ears. He sat up again, this time taking care to flush the toilet.
“I’m serious,” Gwen said. “I’ve never seen you sick before. Ever.”
He gave a halfhearted shrug.
“If there’s something wrong with you, I’d like to know.”
“What good is it going to do?” he asked wearily. “Not like it’ll kill me.”
And if it did, it wasn’t as if he would mind.
“Actually, it can kill you,” she said. “Just because you don’t stay that way, doesn’t mean it doesn’t.”
Jack flinched. Ianto used to say the same thing. Jack could still hear that harsh tone Ianto had used one night after a careless run-in with a Weevil.
“Please,” Gwen said. “Humour me.”
Jack wanted to ask what the point was again but didn’t bother. The quickest way to stop a badger from badgering was to let it think it badgered itself out.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m tired. My stomach feels weird. Food has been less appealing than usual. It’s probably just a bug. I’ve had it for a week, it should go away soon. Happy?”
“No, not particularly,” she said. She sounded weird. Jack looked over at her. She looked weird.
“What?” he asked.
“Is…” She hesitated, the odd look not leaving her face. “Is there anything else?”
Jack frowned. “I mean, I’ve been needing to piss a lot, but I didn’t think you needed to hear that.”
Gwen stared at him for quite some time. It was very uncomfortable, because they were still sitting on the tiles of the bathroom, and because Gwen had never stared at him like that before. It was unnerving.
“Stay here,” she said abruptly, getting to her feet.
“What?” He got up and followed her out of the bathroom. “Weren’t you just telling me I should stop staying here?”
“I know what I said,” she said. “And that applies to every other day but today. Just… for today, right now… stay right here.”
“Why? Where are you going?” he asked, still following her back to the front door.
“First to throw that curry out,” she said, picking up the offending bag and holding it gingerly, away from her nose. “And then… well. Just stay here.”
Then she hurried down the hall, Jack watching her go until she turned the corner to the stairs and walked out of view. Jack, baffled, stepped back into the flat and closed the door.
“What?” he asked again, as if someone would tell him what the hell was going on.
After a while of standing near the door, he began to wonder if she was ever going to come back. He returned to his spot on the sofa, this time taking a risk and curling up on his side, planting his face in a pillow. Smelled like Ianto. But for how much longer? Jack wished there was a way to bottle Ianto’s scent. He also just wished Ianto was here. Christ, he would do anything, give anything, to have Ianto back.
Gwen did return. She held a small bag, one that didn’t smell of curry or any other food, and she scowled down at Jack on the sofa.
“Loo,” she told him.
“What?”
“Loo,” she repeated. “Now.”
Too bewildered to argue, Jack got up from the sofa and trailed behind her back into the bathroom. When they were in there, Gwen reached into her bag and pulled out a long, thin box. Jack’s eyes went wide, and he temporarily lost the ability to speak. Gwen reached out and grabbed his hand, placing the box in it and curling his fingers around it. She gave the hand a reassuring pat, then let it go, and Jack just held it there, staring at the pregnancy test.
“What?” he asked, for what felt like the billionth time.
“Jack, people do not have a stomach bug for a week,” Gwen told him gently.
“So you think I’m pregnant?”
“You just described my symptoms to me,” Gwen said. “This is Torchwood. It’s a possibility.”
Jack wanted to point out that “this” wasn’t Torchwood anymore, because Torchwood died the very second Ianto did. He wanted to inform her that “this” was, in fact, a fifty-first century thing, if it was anything at all. And it wasn’t. He wasn’t pregnant.
“Just take the test,” Gwen said. “For me. Please.”
Jack looked between her and the test a few times, then relented. Badgers and their badgering, he remembered. Just have to let them badger it out.
Gwen left him in the bathroom to do his business alone. Jack took the opportunity to think through the lunacy of it all. Pregnant? No. No way. For starters, he’d never been pregnant before, and he couldn’t get pregnant; he’d had an operation before he’d joined the Time Agency to ensure the safety of the timelines. Jack supposed that could have been reset when he turned immortal, when Rose gave him an overabundance of life. But even then… it had been a century and a half of fucking and making love that he’d had since then. So why now? Jack thought about it and realised there also were those nearly two thousand years buried alive, filled with celibacy and a constant cycle of healing, healing, healing. He hadn’t been conscious for most of it, but he knew there came a point where he was healing before the dirt could crush his chest in again. Maybe it was enough to restart something in him.
“Jack?” Gwen called from the other side of the door. “Have you even started yet?”
Jack glanced down at the test again. All that supposing and theorising would mean nothing if he was not actually pregnant. And he wasn’t. Was he?
The test said to wait three minutes. Those three minutes felt longer than all those years beneath the dirt. Three minutes of this sort of anxiety were more than two thousand years of atonement.
When the time came, he called Gwen in to look at it. He couldn’t bring himself to look. Gwen seemed to understand, because she didn’t comment, merely picking up the test with caution and glancing down at it herself. He surveyed her carefully, but her face never let up.
“I’d ask who the father is,” she said eventually, “but I don’t think even you could be that heartless for it to be anyone else but… him.”
Jack felt the floor rise up to his knees, felt gravity tear him downwards. He tried his hardest not to keel over sideways, but it was a close thing.
“No,” he breathed. “No, no no no no.”
“Sometimes,” Gwen continued, as if he hadn’t collapsed in front of her, “sperm can stay in the system for a few days. Whenever you two must have found a chance, it… it must have stuck.”
Jack wanted to point out that he’d been obliterated after their last time together. Blown to smithereens, with only a fucking arm left to grow back from. But there was no point in saying it, was there? It didn’t change the fact that Ianto was the last person he had sex with, didn’t change the fact that Jack was still pregnant.
Oh, god.
“Listen, I called Martha while you were waiting,” Gwen said after a very long silence. “She’s coming down to um… to check it out.”
“And what if I hadn’t been…” He didn’t say it out loud. He couldn’t. That would mean it was really real.
“She wanted to pay her respects, anyway,” she said quietly. “She was sorry she missed the funeral.”
Jack knew Gwen’s eyes were on him, studying him for his reaction. He didn’t have one to give her. She knew he couldn’t go to the funeral. Jack had killed Ianto. He didn’t deserve to stand over the body of his lover to mourn, not when Jack had made that happen. Maybe that made him a coward. He didn’t care. He already knew he was a coward, anyway.
“Come on,” Gwen said after another silent stretch.
She reached a hand down. Jack stared at it until she thrust it at him again, then took it and let her help him to his feet.
“We are getting out of here,” Gwen said. “We are going to my flat, we are going to get some food in you, then we are going to wait for Martha to visit. And then we are going to find you somewhere else to stay.”
Jack wanted to object, and it must have shown on his face, because Gwen was having none of it.
“You are finding a new place to say,” she reiterated vehemently. “Then we’ll see where we go from there.”
She took his hand and dragged him from the bathroom without another word. He couldn’t even bring himself to protest it. He just tried to cling onto whatever thoughts that could stick in his brain.
He caught a glimpse of the pregnancy test before she pulled him out of the bathroom, and it mocked him by simply existing, this thing of white plastic, expecting him to be happy as it blatantly told him “you are pregnant!” with two lines that Jack could not erase.
Rhys Williams did not bat an eye when Gwen brought Jack home to him. Jack thought that was very generous of him, considering, well, their entire history together. However, the hissed “What do you mean, pregnant?” that was louder than Rhys probably realised was not at all unexpected. Jack watched with little interest as Gwen shushed her husband and related to the best of her ability what had occurred in the past hour or so.
Jack sat on their sofa, rifling through the various magazines littered on the coffee table. One was about motherhood. Jack dropped that one instantly and reached for one on… home improvements? Whatever. It was better than the other one.
Gwen and Rhys returned their attention to him, the present him, and asked him what he felt like for dinner. Rhys was eyeing him warily, probably still confused about the whole pregnancy ordeal while also unwelcome to the idea of feeding Jack Harkness. Jack couldn’t blame him. He scrounged up whatever politeness he had to say he wasn’t hungry, thanks, and they didn’t have to feed him. Gwen glared at him and told him under no circumstances was he skipping dinner, and Rhys loudly mentioned that he was in the mood to make shrimp scampi, which pleased Gwen enough to get her off her angry rant and made Jack feel a little less like he was intruding on their lives.
The scampi was good, and neither Gwen nor Jack ran to the toilet. Oddly enough, Jack wanted curry now. Or fish and chips. Or both. Yeah, both. The cravings didn’t start this early, did they?
Jack immediately shut down that train of thought. He was not thinking about babies. He was not thinking about this baby. He wasn’t even thinking about the fact that there was a “this baby.”
“Thank you for dinner,” Jack said at what felt like the appropriate moment. “I should probably leave you two in peace now.”
He stood up while Gwen yelled at him to sit back down and as Rhys made some not-really-protests.
“You’re staying here,” Gwen told Jack. “Sit down and drink your fucking water.”
Rhys and Jack raised their eyebrows at the tone and language, and Jack lowered himself back into his seat. Gwen glared at him until he took his glass and drank another sip of water.
“There,” Gwen said. “Now. We don’t really have much room for you, but you can sleep on the sofa tonight.”
Jack opened his mouth, but Gwen held up a hand before he could get a word in.
“Martha’s coming here tomorrow to check you out. You can run off to god knows where afterwards, but for now, you’re staying put,” Gwen said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack mocked.
Gwen glared harder and he lost his bravado.
“Thank you,” he said, sincerely and quietly. “Really.”
“You’re welcome,” Gwen replied. Rhys just took a sip of his wine.
The evening wore on slowly. Jack supposed that happened, when one was waiting anxiously for something. He was waiting for Martha to come tell him this was a fluke, a prank, a lie. Something, anything other than the truth, because the truth was too much for Jack.
That night, he didn’t sleep. He never did anymore, because the one person who could get him to sleep was gone and buried, and because if he tried on his own, the nightmares would overwhelm him. Instead, he laid himself out on Gwen’s sofa and studied the ceiling intently, trying out that Venusian monk meditation technique he had never quite mastered. The last time he tried this was three nights before his last day on the Valiant. He still sucked at it, he concluded five hours later, when he accidentally sent himself too close to sleep.
Jack realised very quickly that one of the worst ways to wake up was screaming at a close friend, telling them to run, because some unknown entity created of Jack’s worst fears was going to kill them. Martha, bless her heart, took this very well, considering everything.
“I think I’ll be alright,” Martha assured him when the fog in Jack’s mind cleared. She helped him sit up on the sofa, seating herself down next to him as he shook the last images of his dream out of his system. “You okay?”
“Venusian meditation. One wrong move and trance becomes deep sleep.” Jack aimed his tone toward jocular and light, far from the shaky, panicked feelings that still clung tight to him.
“Must’ve been a very deep sleep,” Gwen said from behind him.
Jack prided himself on not jumping twelve feet in the air, managing to merely turn to face her without so much as a flinch.
“You were out for a good ten hours,” Gwen finished. “Had to shake you awake.”
“Oh,” Jack said.
Well, that beat the last time he tried it. He had only been seven hours into his accidental nap before the Master got bored of him and shot him through the head. Actually, that might have been the worst way to wake up: through death.
“Ready to run some tests?” Martha asked.
No.
“Sure.”
“Good,” Martha said. “I know Owen—”
Jack winced.
“—used to have that Bekaran deep tissue scanner,” Martha continued, having either ignored or not seen Jack’s reaction, “but we don’t have one of those at UNIT.”
“UNIT knows about this?”
“No, no,” Martha reassured him. “I didn’t think you’d want them to know. Hell, I didn’t want them to know. But I did manage to nick a few things from under their nose.”
Martha pulled a bag onto her lap and started rifling through it. First, she pulled out a med kit that she set aside on the coffee table, followed by a handful of crinkled wrappers (from sticking plasters to cookies), a small box whose contents Jack couldn’t even begin to guess at, a file labelled “Capt. Jack Harkness” that was stuffed with papers (Jack wanted to phone up UNIT to yell at them for a good few hours about privacy and the invasion of), and finally, something that looked an awful lot like that singularity scalpel of Owen’s.
“You’re not blowing my innards up,” Jack immediately said.
“Relax,” Martha said, rolling her eyes. “It’s just a Tellernian hand scanner. All it’ll do is scan.”
“Right,” Jack said.
He kept a suspicious eye on the so-called “scanner” as Martha primed it. Once, Owen had accidentally tested the singularity scalpel on himself and blew up his own appendix. Thankfully, it was after he had died the first time; therefore, it had caused him no lasting problems. Still, the clean-up had been rather disgusting, and Owen had bitched for three days after the event. It was not something Jack was willing to repeat.
“Okay,” Martha said after a short while. She stood up and motioned for him to stretch out on the sofa. “It’s quickest if you’re lying flat.”
“Maybe I should lay on the floor, then. I’m far too long for the sofa.” Jack was well aware that he was stalling.
“Doesn’t matter,” Martha said. “Take your pick.”
Jack floundered a bit, unsure whether he preferred the safety of the floor or the comfort and shielding of the sofa. Eventually, Martha rolled her eyes and told him to stop fidgeting so she could do her job, and so he laid out on the sofa and stayed absolutely still.
Martha ran the scanner over his full body first, then repeated that over him again, again, again, each pass getting shorter, until the scanner had a layout of his internal organs. Then she localised over his stomach, letting it get a read on the thing inside of him.
“You can sit up now,” Martha said after roughly fifteen minutes.
Jack returned to a seated position as Martha began to pace, going over the readings.
“Sorry,” she said. “Takes a little bit to translate. If you want, you can see the baby’s picture while we wait.”
“I want to see it,” Gwen said when Jack didn’t respond. He blinked. He’d forgotten she was still here.
Martha handed it over to Gwen. Jack expected a squeal or an adoring sigh, but she was thankfully silent. She gazed down at the screen of the scanner with a bland yet scrupulous expression, then passed it back to Martha. Jack’s attention went along with the scanner back to Martha.
“Oh. Okay,” Martha said when the scanner beeped. “You ready for this?”
Definitely not.
“Yeah.”
“Congratulations,” Martha said, taking the easy way out and not looking up from the readings on the scanner. “You’re officially pregnant.”
The world crashed down around Jack’s ears, but that didn’t stop Martha from dragging it down lower.
“Your baby is, as far as I can tell, completely healthy, all on track for being a normal embryo of exactly six weeks.”
“Six weeks?” Jack managed to choke out.
“That’s only a week younger than mine!” Gwen exclaimed.
Jack glanced back at her, but there was nothing on her face that stated she was already planning ahead to joint birthday parties or playdates. There was only confusion wrought on her face.
“But you blew up!” Gwen went on. “How could a baby survive that? That’s impossible, Jack!”
Jack was beyond caring if it was impossible or not. It was here, and therefore completely possible, so did it really matter if had disobeyed the laws of the universe not once, but twice? Three, four times, even?
“I’m an impossible thing,” Jack quoted.
Silence fell, partly because Gwen was still trying to work it out to herself, partly because Martha was staring sadly down at him.
“You know he didn’t mean that, right?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.”
“He’d understand this, though,” she said. “I could call him. He could—”
“No,” he interrupted. “He couldn’t even save… no. Just no.”
Martha studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
The silence settled again. Martha hid behind the safety of her scanner, Gwen began to look thoughtful, and Jack tried to let it all sink in.
There was an embryo inside him. An embryo that would soon be a foetus. An embryo that would soon be a foetus, that would eventually become a baby. A child. A whole new human being created by and from and for Jack. A whole new life for Jack to fuck up, just like he had fucked up everyone else’s.
“I shouldn’t have kids,” he whispered when he could find his voice.
Gwen and Martha’s eyes were on him in an instant, Gwen’s accusatory and Martha’s startled.
“Jack,” Gwen started. “You—”
“I just killed my grandson, for god’s sake!” he shouted. “I murdered him! Steven! My own flesh and blood! I shouldn’t have kids! Kids should stay as far away from me as they can; I shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them!”
Martha had a whole year of practising her impassive face, and Gwen had long learned not to subject Jack to her pity, so the two of them just stared at him with just a hint of reproach between them.
“It’s your choice,” Martha said eventually.
“Neither of us will think of you any differently,” Gwen added, though Jack knew that was a lie, because he also knew about Gwen’s July of 2004. But she played it on her face well, and Jack could almost believe that she wasn’t feeling now what she did when she had to make her own choice. “It’s okay.”
“Just… think of it quickly,” Martha said. “I brought something, just… just in case.”
Gwen looked sharply at Martha, possibly of the mind that this wasn’t something that could be rushed into, that this must be thought out thoroughly. But Jack didn’t need to think about this. Sure, he was a shit person and an even shittier father, who shouldn’t be allowed within the same vicinity as children, lest he destroyed their lives just as he did his own grandson’s, but… this thing inside him, this child… it was Ianto’s.
All Jack had left of Ianto Jones could be boxed up in less than a day, shoved into a storage facility and never thought of again. All, that is, except this child. And this child was worth ten thousand times more than an old sofa and throw pillows. Could Jack really take that from the world? From himself? No. This child had to live, if only because Ianto Jones deserved to.
“I can’t keep it,” Jack said, “but I also can’t deny it the chance to live. I can’t do that to Ianto’s memory.”
Some of the tension seemed to ebb from Gwen, and he wondered if she was thinking the same thing. He doubted she would be willing to let go of the last thing she had of Ianto, even if she would have outwardly supported Jack, had Jack’s choice differed.
Martha, on the other hand, merely nodded and patted his hand gently. She didn’t understand, not the way Gwen did, but he still appreciated the sentiment all the same. She had cared about Ianto, too, even if she hadn’t loved him the way either Jack or Gwen had.
Gwen’s hand went to Jack’s shoulder, using it to stabilise her as she leaned over the back of the sofa to peer at the scanner still in Martha’s hands.
“Does that thing say if it’s a girl or boy?”
“No,” Martha said. “Testosterone doesn’t get produced until about week seven. I could check back in a week or so to see if it’s being produced or not.”
“Later.”
“What?”
“Later,” Jack repeated. “My gestation will take longer.”
“Really?” Martha asked.
“Yeah. Don’t know much of the science behind it, never really paid it any attention,” Jack said. “Failed year seven biology.”
“Let me guess, too busy staring at a nice pair of tits?” Gwen asked, squeezing his shoulder.
Jack smirked, though he felt no warmth behind it. “Two, actually.”
“I’m going to need you to tell me more about this,” Martha said. Jack looked up to see her face as serious as her tone. “Really. There’s no pregnancy I can base this off of in the twenty-first century. You’re going to have to give me a little help, here. I have to know what I’m dealing with.”
Jack held up his hands. “Like I said, I failed year seven biology. And also year seven history. So this’ll be a little rusty, but from what I remember, in the forty-third century, there was more of a push for—”
“Spare me the history lesson,” Martha cut through. “Just the things I need, please.”
“Alright.” Jack sat forward, sliding from beneath Gwen’s hand to rest his elbows on his knees as he wracked his brains for as much as he could remember. “Typical gestation period is forty to forty-five weeks. I think it averages at forty-two, but anything between forty and forty-five is good. Before forty, not so much.”
“So, mine’ll be out earlier,” Gwen said.
“Would have been anyway. You’re seven weeks along.”
“Oh, hang on, does that mean that scanner can check for testosterone production in my baby?”
“Why not before forty?” Martha asked, ignoring Gwen.
“Something about development? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that drastic, but I did know of a family that lost a boy from an early birth.” Jack’s mother cried for nearly two days after hearing about her nephew. “They tried again later, with a different parent. That one came out alright.”
“Anything else?”
“The babies tend to be smaller,” Jack said. “It’s harder to fit in a my body. Hips don’t change that much in thirty centuries.”
Jack tried to think of anything else, but all he could think of was how all his three uncles died the same day his dad did. His cousin went off and died at war. Everyone around him died.
“Are you sure it’s healthy?” Jack said.
“Scanner said so. I’m sure it’s fine,” Martha said. “Especially since you’re helping me help you. Can you remember more?”
He shook his head. “Not now. But if I do, I’ll let you know.”
“Good,” she said. “Well, if there’s nothing else?”
Jack and Gwen shook their heads.
“I’m going to head out, then,” Martha finished. “Anyone want to join me in visiting the gr—”
Gwen made a pointed coughing noise and Martha stopped short. Jack could feel both of their eyes on him, but he made no motion to acknowledge either of them.
“Right,” Martha said. “I, um… I guess I’ll go alone, then.”
Martha bade them both goodbye with hugs and kisses to their cheeks. Jack told her to give his regards to her family, and she told him he could do that himself. Martha congratulated Gwen, because Gwen was actually happy to be pregnant, and then she left, taking her bag and her scanner and her warmth.
“I should go, too,” Jack said as the door closed behind Martha.
“You don’t have to.”
“I should go and clean up,” Jack said. “Don’t want to leave Ian—the loo like that.”
Gwen’s hand found its way to his shoulder again.
“I took care of it,” she said softly.
He glanced up at her, confused.
“While you were sleeping,” she went on. “I don’t… I don’t want you going back there, Jack.”
“I rent the place.”
“I know,” she said. “I met your neighbours, and I told them if they ever saw you there, they were to call the police.”
“You did what?”
“And then I called Andy and told him that, should that ever happen, he was to lock you up until I came to get you.”
“You can’t do that!” Jack cried. “That’s—”
“Illegal? Unjust? Never stopped us before.” Gwen sighed. “Look, this… this thing you’re doing… it’s not healthy. It’s not okay. You’re not okay.”
Jack looked away. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” she retorted. “You’re absolutely not. And if you were, I would slap you, because if you were okay after all of this, then you never deserved Ianto.”
“I didn’t deserve him, anyw—”
Then she really did slap him. The blow hit him across the back of his head, and he reeled away from her with a yell. It stung a little, but he was more shocked than anything. Gwen Cooper was hardly of the sort to stoop to unnecessary violence.
“Don’t you dare, Jack Harkness,” she snapped. “Don’t you fucking dare spit on Ianto’s memory like that. He loved you; any blind fool could see that! He decided you were worth it. Denying him that choice disgraces him more than pissing on his bloody grave.”
She took a step back then, placing her hands on her face. Jack watched the heavy rise and fall of her shoulders, listened to the quick sniffs and tiny huffs, and wondered if she had ever allowed herself to truly grieve in this past month.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She swiped a hand across her eyes, shaking her head.
“Don’t be,” she said. “It’s not your fault. I’m just…”
She threw a hand in the air, as if it would somehow articulate what she “was just.” Jack understood the sentiment, so he rose up and walked around the sofa to take her in his arms.
“I miss him,” Gwen cried into his shoulder. “I bloody miss him, Jack. So much.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Me, too.”
Gwen sobbed into him for a good long while and Jack just held her, trying to cling on to the one good thing he had left. He had one precious thing that hadn’t yet been taken from him. He realised now that there was only one thing he could do to ensure her continued safety.
“Promise me you won’t go back there,” she whispered when she had cried it all out. “Promise me you’ll try to move forward.”
“I will,”’ Jack assured her. “I will.”
“Good.”
She pulled from his embrace, wiping away the last traces of snot and tears from her face. She smiled pathetically at him, and he returned it without any feeling behind it.
“So,” she said. “How do you feel about going down to the—”
“Gwen.”
“What?” she asked, her smile faltering at the look on his face.
“You were right,” he said. “I can’t stay here.”
Her face creased into a sad frown. “I didn’t mean here here, I just meant—"
“I know. But I can’t… this place is like a graveyard, Gwen.” He shook his head. “Everywhere I look, there’s a ghost.”
“You don’t have to leave,” she said.
“But I do,” he said. He reached out and stroked a hand down her cheek. Maybe someday she’d understand he did this for her. “Have a wonderful life, Gwen. Don’t let it drift.”
He kissed her cheek just as her breath hitched, and he left her before her tears could breach through again. He closed the door softly behind him, knowing he took the coward’s way out. Wasn’t that what he always did? Wasn’t that what he was? Captain Jack Harkness: conman and coward. He’d conned four brilliant people into loving him, and now he was ducking out like a coward before he could finish the last of them off.
In the crisp autumn air outside, he took a deep breath, settling the tears and fears back down where they belonged. Out of sight, out of mind. He took his first step into lonesome freedom, and, feeling Gwen’s eyes on him through the window, kept walking onwards until he could no longer feel her hurt mingling with his own.
Maybe he would come back for her someday. Maybe he wouldn’t. He was not certain of anything anymore. All he knew was that he had to go, get out of here. Give himself another thirty-nine weeks off of fighting the ghosts that always haunted him, rip off the bandage of Gwen’s need for him. Give birth and then… well, who knew? A restart on life wasn’t an option, not when the one person who could give him that was dead, but maybe he could hide himself better after this was all said and done.
He called a cab, had the driver take him to the SUV, then got into his own car and drove to Ianto’s flat.
Just as Gwen had said, Ianto’s neighbours were on the lookout for him. The old lady who lived next door, the one Jack had used to flirt with when she told them to “keep it down over there!” was the one to approach him.
“That lady said to call the police if you ever showed yourself around here again,” she said. “How come she’s saying that? Did you kill that Mr. Jones?”
Oh, if only she knew.
“It was an empty threat,” Jack reassured the old woman. “She just doesn’t want me moping around here anymore. And I won’t be. I’ve just come to grab my things and go. You’ll never see me again, I promise.”
The old woman eyed him warily, but eventually pursed her lips and walked away. Jack sighed quietly to himself as the door to her flat snapped shut behind her, unlocking the door to Ianto’s flat.
It smelled like bleach. Maybe that was because Jack was expecting it to. At any rate, it didn’t smell of Ianto anymore. Jack took one moment to mourn the loss, then marched himself to the bedroom to grab the few clothes that hadn’t gone up with the Hub, the few pairs of shirts, pants, trousers, his braces and belts that he’d stored in Ianto’s wardrobe and dressers. He nabbed his old toothbrush and toothpaste from the bleach-filled bathroom, then stuffed it all in one of Ianto’s old travelling bags. Everything else he could buy on the go.
He was ready to leave the flat for good when he took one last look around the place. This had been his last home, his refuge. He could still remember coming in late with curry one night as it snowed outside to find Ianto sprawled out on that sofa, fiddling with the carpet and not actually watching the crap show that was playing on the telly. Jack smiled at the sofa and the memory, but the smile quickly turned into a sob, and he spent a while gasping for air as his grief jumped up a another level.
That stupid grandfather clock went off at some point. Jack cleared his throat and stood up straight, shoving the grief back down. Without really thinking about it, he made his way to Ianto’s bookshelf and grabbed the framed photo of Ianto and Lisa on that picnic they’d taken back when they had first started dating. Ianto had told him about that trip once. One of Ianto’s happiest memories, Jack had always assumed. He unzipped the travelling bag and placed the photo on top of his things, promising silently to never forget either of them, to honour and guard their memories in the way he couldn’t have done when they were alive. Then he rezipped the bag, shouldered it, and left the flat. He locked the door to the flat, sealing in the last remnants of the happiest time in his life.
That night, he took the first train he could catch out of Wales.
“I’m surprised you came.”
Archie Wallace and the Torchwood House was the closest Jack had come to home in nearly six months. Jack smiled at him, and the smile was just as close to being genuine. But this wasn’t home, and it wasn’t a real smile, and that was still enough to make Jack’s heart ache.
“I’m surprised you wanted me,” Jack replied.
“Well, nobody else wanted to overhaul the Archives, and I’d take you over nobody any day.”
“You couldn’t get one of those UNIT sycophants down here?” Jack asked.
“The higher-ups say they can’t spare anyone.” Archie scoffed. “Bloody UNIT. Take over Torchwood and they don’t even want to run it properly.”
“Why do you think I fought them so long?”
“Aye, only to quit when it got tough.”
The barb stung, but Jack didn’t let it show on his face. “Well. You have to know when you’re beaten.”
Archie eyed him momentarily, then shrugged. “Just never thought that Captain Jack would be one to be beaten. Not with the way you always talked.”
Jack said nothing. He was tired of all these expectations. He couldn't be everyone’s saviour. Everyone who thought he could be wound up dead. Plus, that’s just a lot of pressure to put on a guy. No wonder the Doctor scarpered off before the 456 incident. Jack was still absolutely pissed about that and wished the Doctor had chosen literally any other event to sit out on, but he could understand the reason behind it.
“Still,” Archie said. “I’m glad you’ve come. Don’t want to be doing this on my own, that’s for sure.”
“What needs to be done?”
“They want the 'A' section on the first level reorganised.” He shook his head. “Expect it done within a week.”
Jack frowned. “But that’s—”
“Five entire rooms,” Archie sighed.
“And there’s only us?”
“There’s my cats, but I’m not sure they’d be helping much.”
Jack ran a hand through his hair. He supposed he had wanted a distraction. “Better get started, then.”
Archie showed him to one of the rooms in the Torchwood House. Archie always occupied the grandest bedroom when he came over to work on the Archives, and he gave Jack the option of either another of the grander rooms or another, blander room. Jack declined both, instead choosing a room that he knew to once have been Rose’s. The faint pull of Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf dragged him that way every time he visited. The staff hired to keep the house clean (just the house, of course, and not the Archives below; they weren’t paid enough for that) kept the rooms in the condition that they’d been back when Queen Victoria herself had visited that first time, and therefore there were still traces that a woman once lived in the room, possibly before Rose had occupied it. Jack was fond of it, though. Fond of Rose and the comfort she’d brought to the room, even if it was only for a short while. The sentiment had lingered, and Jack enjoyed it when he could. Right now, he could use a little enjoyment, no matter how slight.
The first thing Jack did after walking in the room was zip open his travelling bag to take out the picture of Ianto and Lisa. He allowed himself a moment to trace his fingers over Ianto’s face, over that smile of his. Then he set it on the dresser, next to the old candlesticks. He always did this first, when he chose a place to bunker down, whether it be for a day or a week. Ianto and Lisa always got set up before he did anything else.
He hung up his clothes and set out his few other belongings, then came out of the bedroom and made his way down to the Archives.
Archie was down there already, starting to sort through very first shelf in the first room.
“Remind me why we’re doing this again?” Jack asked, folding his arms and watching Archie pull out and then reshelve a file.
“They want the entire Archive resorted. Told them not to worry, that I’d have everything in that computer system your team had set up—”
Jack held back a wince. Toshiko and Ianto had worked hard on that. They’d treated it as if it were their own baby. Jack placed a hand over his stomach and tuned out of his thoughts.
“—but that wasn’t good enough for that UNIT lot. Said they wanted complete ease of access. So. Here we are.” Archie held out his hands, gesturing to the room. “They wanted to start last year around wintertime, but plans changed, so we’re starting it now. Doing the entire 'A' section, then the 'B' section later this year to get back on track. If this round doesn’t finish you off, I expect to see you then, too.”
“Not sure I’ll be around then,” Jack said.
Archie gave him a hard look. “Right. Well, there’s five rooms. Choose one and have it finished in two days.”
Jack threw him a salute. “Yes, sir.”
“None of that, now.”
Working in the Archives was every bit the distraction Jack had needed. There was hardly time to think as he pulled out misplaced files, filled in incomplete ones, reshelved the ones in stacks, and catalogued the missing files. It was gruelling work, if he was honest. He didn’t know how Ianto did it back then, and did it well, especially when it on top of the dozens and dozens of other tasks he had to complete every day.
Jack set down the file on Aldebaran and took a moment to himself. He put his hands to his stomach and rubbed a little. He had developed the habit of reaching for the baby whenever he thought of its father, though wasn’t sure if it was comforting or unsettling. It was probably a bit of both.
With a sigh, he picked up the file again and slotted it into the right spot on the right shelf, then picked up another file and glanced through it. He kept repeating the motion, over and over, until he was thinking solely of archiving, and not his missing archivist.
It took Archie four days to finish two rooms by himself, and three and a half days for Jack to finish his. They paired up to finish the biggest room ("Ap" through "Az") together, though they didn’t interact much. Archie started at 'Ap' and worked his way down, whereas Jack started at "Az" and cycled back up. Neither had much of a chance to talk to each other. Not until the second day, anyway.
A jarring, blaring noise startled Jack from the report on Augebanian wine and its effects on humans. He cast it aside on the nearest table and went off in search of the source of the noise. It was coming from the first room that was reorganised, and Jack went in to find Archie smacking an old computer. The noise cut off abruptly as Archie thwacked his hand down in a seemingly vital spot on the computer, then Archie sat down in front of it and began to read the bright blue screen.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
“Your Rift’s having a bit of a fit,” Archie said. “Not the first time it’s happened; I’ve been getting this back in Glasgow for about a month or so. This is the biggest it’s been so far. Whatever is happening to it, it’s happening soon.”
Jack’s brain was only processing one part of that information. “You’re getting Rift alerts?”
“Aye. Your boy set it up back when, just in case something happened to you lot.”
A jolt of something went through Jack, and his hand lowered to his stomach.
“You keep doing that,” Archie said, looking down at Jack’s hand. “What, did you eat him or something?”
Jack pointedly ignored his thoughts on cannibalism and instead glared at Archie.
“Look, all I’m saying is you’ve gained a few,” Archie said. “And here I was, thinking you couldn’t change.”
It was true; Jack’s abdomen was starting to swell to a very noticeable amount. Jack had been passing it off as beer gut for the past few months, but it was getting to the point where that alibi was starting to become transparent to strangers. Jack had been hiding it in his coat as of recently, though he couldn’t get by with that much longer, either. Very soon he was going to have to go wall himself in some hidey-hole, so as to not get spotted and questioned by the general public. Pregnancy for other sexes was not even thinkable until the forty-second century, and Jack was not about to upset timelines.
“What’s up with the Rift?” Jack asked, ignoring Archie’s looks.
“Don’t know. Haven’t bothered to check yet. I was planning on just letting it happen, then letting some bloody stupid conspiracy group come up with a cover for me when aliens fell down from the heavens.”
And this was why Archie oversaw Torchwood Two, and not Three.
“Can you find out what it is?” Jack asked.
Archie shrugged. “Sure. Don’t know why you care. Not like you’ve been taking care of the Rift, anyway. That’s what UNIT’s for now.”
“Call it curiosity,” Jack said. Or a reason to go home.
If Archie saw through his thinly veiled excuse, he didn’t say. He tapped away slowly on the keyboards, pecking his index finger one key at a time. This was why Toshiko and Ianto had always loathed to interact with the man.
“It says the readings match up with files…” Archie squinted at the still very blue screen. “H519-12-b.”
“I’ll go look for it.”
“Hold on, you’ve seen the state of this place. What makes you think you’ll find it? It’s probably not even in the H section, for all we know.” Archie bent over to type again. “I’ll look through those digital records.”
Jack waited impatiently as Archie slowly pulled up files H519-12-b, his fingers curling around the frame of the chair Archie sat in. When the file came up, he sped through the words, taking it all in at twice the speed Archie did.
“The… House of the Dead. Well. Sounds like a lovely vacation spot, now, doesn’t it? Kids these days.” Archie made a disgusted noise. “All those bloody weirdos with their witchcraft and séances.”
“How long until the Rift fully opens?” Jack asked.
“Oh, I’d say a couple of days, at least. How come?” Archie’s brows knit together. “You’re not actually thinking of attending, now, are you?”
“Says that there’s a being from before time,” Jack said. “Siriath. Could be dangerous. UNIT might not be enough.”
“What, and you’ll stop it? On your own?”
Jack kept on reading, noting the parts on death feeders and bending time. He was aware that Archie was eyeing him carefully.
“This isn’t because of that boy of yours, is it?”
Jack said nothing.
“Jack…” Archie sighed. “This won’t get him back.”
“Who said anything about that?” Jack stood up straight. “I’m fixing the Rift. If I happen to see someone from my past, then that’s just a side effect.”
“Wait, hold on, fixing the Rift?”
“Yep.” He reread the part on the two worlds colliding in on each other. Just one explosion, and the Rift would go away for good. “It’s not like we want UNIT mucking about in there, is it?”
Then he sighed. “Been nice seeing you, Archie. Sorry to cut and run like this, but… Cardiff calls.”
“Jack, you can’t just go!” Archie called as Jack turned on his heel and walked away. “This is lunacy! One of those conspiracies! Jack!”
Jack took the lift up from the Archives and to the Torchwood House. He cornered a maid and told her that he’d be departing soon; no need to make two dinners. Then he went to his room, packed his things, took down the photo of Ianto and Lisa, and took his leave.
It was time to go home.
He was on his knees, staring at the spot that the House of the Dead used to be. The woman was still ranting and raving about her satnav and how she couldn’t be in the wrong place, she just couldn’t! Jack was just keeping himself from falling to bits.
Ianto didn’t have to have taken down Siriath. Jack could have had him in his arms right now. What had Ianto said? It would have been a shame to get him back, only to lose him again? A touch careless? Well. That about said it.
Jack stood up and brushed off his knees.
“Goodbye, Ianto,” Jack said to the ether.
Then he got himself a cab, rode back to his hotel, got to his room, and then broke down as he cradled the picture of Ianto and Lisa to his chest. Ianto would have told him how much of a teenage girl he was acting. Jack would give anything to hear Ianto tease him about it. Jack had gotten close, so fucking close, only to let Ianto slide through his fingers again. Archie had told him this was lunacy. He had been right. Jack was going mad, and the only remedy was Ianto Jones, now blown to bits, with any last remaining part of him sealed inside the Rift for good.
Jack gave himself the night to grieve, and the following day to pull himself back together. It was hard, losing someone twice, especially when the someone was Ianto and when the two times were so close together and the reuniting was so brief. Then again, Jack was certain that if he got Ianto back for any amount of time, it would always be too soon to lose him again.
The next night was when he finally sat up, took a deep breath, and reached for his mobile. He searched briefly through the numbers saved on it, then chose the one who would understand the best. He held the mobile to his ear and waited.
“Hello?”
“I was hoping this was still your number.”
“Fuck you, Jack Harkness,” Gwen said, but she sounded more tearful than cross.
“Hi, Gwen,” he said.
If he was honest, her voice made him feel a little better. She was slice of what was left of home, and someone who felt something close to what he was feeling: a great pool of emptiness where happiness should be instead.
“Where have you been?” she asked. He was glad the question wasn’t “why did you leave me?”
“Around,” Jack said. “Italy, France, Russia, China, America, Argentina… lots of places.”
“Christ,” she said. “You really did go, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Cardiff had been choking him. Little did he know, so was the rest of the world. “Can I ask you a favour?”
“Anything.” The conviction in her voice should have been terrifying. “What do you need?”
“My wrist strap.”
“Jack—”
“I know you have it. I just want it back.”
“Alright, fine. It’s a bit singed, mind you.”
Jack grimaced. “How singed?”
“I’d say you’d need to completely replace the leather.” There was a rustling on the other end of the phone. “Yeah. The strap’s a goner. Want us to do it for you?”
The way she said “us” meant “Rhys.” It was tempting, to make Rhys to do something ridiculously simple for him, but…
“No,” he said. “It’s fine. I just want it back. I feel naked without it.”
“I bet,” Gwen laughed. “When do you want it?”
“Soon as you can give it to me. I can meet you somewhere.”
“Knowing you, it’d probably be on the top of some solitary hill somewhere, all alone in the dark, moping your sorry arse off.”
Jack was thankful he didn’t have to force a smile on his face just to appease her. The one good part of phone calls: nobody saw him. “Yeah.”
“There’s a café near my house. A little quaint, but it’s cute—”
“No.” No coffee. Both for baby reasons and for… Ianto reasons. “His flat.”
“Jack, we’re not—”
“I need to put his things in storage,” he said.
There was a short pause.
“Alright,” Gwen said quietly.
“Tomorrow,” Jack said. “At noon.”
“Okay.”
Jack hung up before the conversation could go any further, then phoned Rhys separately to ask (or beg) him to take out Ianto’s furniture before then. After shouting at Jack for a while for mucking about with his schedule on such a short notice, Rhys agreed, if only because he loved his wife and didn’t think she should overexert herself pushing a sofa while pregnant.
Then he called up some room service and ate the hotel’s lukewarm food. He inhaled it with gusto, not because it was good, but because this baby was one hungry little bastard. When it was finished, he laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Used to be that he couldn’t eat and then try to sleep, because digestion would keep him awake. Now, he couldn’t sleep because baby got fussy around bedtime and kicked him quite a bit.
“Knock it off,” Jack sighed after a particularly unpleasant jolt.
Ears were fully developed around this stage, Martha had told him a while ago. However, this baby did not like using its ears, apparently, because another sharp kick came through.
“You can’t be doing gymnastics already,” Jack told it.
It didn’t kick, but it moved again, and Jack sat back up.
“How about I tell you a story,” Jack said. “Will that calm you down?”
After a moment of thought, Jack recalled a poem his mother had recited to Jack and Gray when they refused to settle down for bed. It was about a yellow fish who tried to become a person, only to find he was much better off being a fish. He couldn’t remember all the words, but he remembered the meter, so he wound up saying a bunch of “something somethings” to a beat that didn’t fit very well with English.
By the time he was done, baby was still fussing and not at all ready to let Jack pass out, no matter how weary Jack was.
Jack turned to the digital clock on the bedside table, which taunted him with its late hour. He sighed. Back before he was pregnant, it didn’t matter that it was this late. Now, Jack was tired all the time as the baby drained his energy away, and all he wanted was some sleep, where he wouldn’t have to think about Cardiff and the Rift and Ianto.
Jack’s eyes slid over to the picture of Ianto and Lisa. They smiled at him and he reached out, taking them in his hands again. He brushed a thumb over Ianto’s face.
“This was your father,” Jack told the baby. “You almost met him. Maybe you heard him yesterday. He had a nice voice, didn’t he? Much better vowels than mine.”
Actually, there had once been a Vortan that Ianto had disarmed using only the power of his voice. Well, Gwen too, but the Vortan had appreciated the timbre of Ianto’s soft voice over Gwen’s. And it had absolutely hated the way Jack had talked.
The baby must have done a summersault just then, because it felt… ugh. He blinked down at his stomach.
“What if I told you about your father?” Jack asked it. “Would you like that?”
If the baby was aware of him or his question, it had no response. Jack smiled. As long as it wasn’t protesting…
“One day, over in Bute Park, the Rift open wide and spat out a Vortan.” Jack frowned. “Can’t blame the Rift; I would’ve, too. Anyway, it was really, really mad, and your father made the terrible decision to provoke it…”
Before Jack knew it, he was falling asleep as he told the baby about how Ianto saved the day when Jack and Gwen had been poisoned that one time nearly a year ago. The baby was finally still, and Jack’s chest felt lighter than it had in months.
The flat was dusty. Rhys and his mates had stirred it all up when they’d taken out the bed, sofa, coffee table, and all the other furniture. Ianto would have been appalled by it all.
Jack ran his fingers over the bookshelf where the picture of Ianto and Lisa used to rest. The photo was currently back in his travelling bag, ready to be taken on the road in a moment’s notice. The bookshelf looked bare without it.
He blew at the dust, coughing as some flew back into his face. Ianto really would have hated the dust. He had always been more than a bit house-proud. He would have also been very cross that Jack was pulling books out of the bookshelf randomly, placing them in a box in no particular order.
Jack and Gwen worked silently, each of them taking their time to process boxing Ianto up and putting him away. It hurt Jack with each box he filled, but it was a necessary task. Ianto was really gone. The only thing Jack could have was the picture and the baby, and the baby was going far, far away as soon as it was physically possible. Jack wanted to do right by Ianto, and the best way he could do that now was to make sure his child lived longer than Ianto himself had.
Gwen worked in the kitchen, taking down all the pots and pans and organizing all the cutlery and plates. Jack took the sitting room and bedroom, putting away all the suits and the books and films. He had trouble with putting away one tie in particular; the red tie that always went with Ianto's “cute suit” was something Jack wasn’t ready to part with yet. It was actually the last thing Jack boxed up, and he only did so because Gwen was standing behind him, waiting for him to finish. Gwen would probably object to Jack pilfering a tie.
“It’s late,” Gwen said. “We’ve been working all afternoon.”
“Ianto would suggest pizza or curry by now,” Jack said.
“Ugh,” Gwen said. “Not in my tastes right now.”
“I’m feeling Thai.”
“Good enough for me. Rhys is coming to pick up the boxes soon.”
“He’d better,” Jack said.
“My feet and back are killing me.”
“Should’ve done this before we were seven months pregnant,” Jack said.
Gwen laughed. “If you’d have told me eight months ago that we’d end up pregnant at the same time, I would’ve shot you for being an imposter.”
Jack didn’t say anything, using the wall to help him sink down to sit on the floor of the nearly vacant bedroom.
“You’re still not keeping it, are you?”
“Why would I?” Jack asked. “Do you really want me to be responsible for the death of Ianto and his child?”
“It’s not your fault,” Gwen said.
He scoffed.
“It isn’t,” she repeated.
“He didn’t die in your arms, did he?”
“If he did, you’d still find a way to blame yourself.” She sighed when he didn’t respond. “Look, Rhys will be here in a minute. Let’s get you home and get you some Thai, alright?”
He glanced up at her, and her false smile faltered.
“You’re leaving again.”
“I came to finish things,” Jack told her. “Tie off loose ends.”
“And I’m one of those ends?” she asked.
“You’re better off without me.”
“Bollocks to that,” she said. “I think I can make that decision for myself, thanks.”
“Can you?” Jack asked.
She opened her mouth to reply, and it hung wide for a moment before she closed it again, shaking her head sadly to herself.
“Where will you go?” Gwen asked. “Space?”
Jack shook his head. For a while, he’d thought about it. The entirety of the Earth felt like a graveyard, not just Cardiff. But Ianto was a Welshman, through and through, and Jack can’t deny his child the right to his homeland.
“London,” Jack said. “I’m staying with Martha’s family for a while. When the baby’s born… there’s a family in Newport waiting for it. Then I’ll go back to space. Ought to be a transport coming by the solar system around then. If not…”
He shrugged.
“I can’t stay here, Gwen,” he concluded.
“You can’t just run away, either,” she said. “You can’t hide from everything. Yes, it sucks, and yes, it hurts, but that does not mean you get to run away forever. You have to face it.”
“You’re the one who told me I couldn’t keep going on the way I was.”
“Jack, that was not facing it. That was sitting in denial,” she said. “You needed to get up and… I dunno. Do something other than mope. But shoving your feelings away is not the way to go about it.”
“What else am I supposed to do, Gwen?”
“Accept it and move on,” Gwen said simply. Jack looked up to see tears forming in her eyes. “‘The end is where we start from,’ you said. Just start, Jack. Stop denying, stop running, and just… start.”
“Like you have?”
“Yes.” The tears were falling freely down her face now. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t. Sometimes I think that I can’t go on. But I have to. For Rhys, for my baby… for you. For Owen and Tosh and Ianto.”
Jack observed her for a moment. If she thought he could keep on going, she was mistaken, and therefore still thought him to be the hero she convinced herself he was. He hadn’t given her enough time to detach herself from his life. If he hadn’t already been convinced he needed to go to London, to Francine, Tish, and Martha, this would have sent him sprinting their way.
The front door creaked open in the background, followed by a “hello?” from Rhys. Jack slowly and carefully got back onto his feet. He took a step forward and kissed Gwen’s head.
“The Rift is sealed,” he whispered into her hair. “You won’t have to worry about it. I hope you are happy, Gwen Cooper.”
He moved away as Rhys entered the room. He thanked Rhys for the help, and Rhys brushed it off with complaints that his wife really shouldn’t have done this in her condition (Jack courteously did not mention that he was also quite pregnant).
“Besides,” Rhys said. “Not done yet. Still gotta load this lot in the lorry. You can thank me later.”
“He’s leaving,” Gwen said sullenly.
“What?”
“Take care of her, Rhys,” Jack said.
“I… she’s my wife!” Rhys exclaimed. “Of course, I’ll take bloody care of her!”
Jack raised his eyebrows at Rhys, who shut his mouth quickly. Jack turned to Gwen, gave her a wink and a salute, and then left the apartment as fast as he could without making it seem like he was fleeing.
He took the train to London. He had always loved trains. Something about the timelessness of the train astounded and comforted him. Trains would be there long into the future, even amongst the stars. Sure, by then they were merely attractions and not real transport, but that didn’t change the familiarity and the fun they held for Jack. There was always something special about stepping off onto another station to see something important. Or someone. Jack had almost run out of someones. Thank god for Francine and Tish Jones.
Martha was very grateful that she no longer had to chase him around the globe just to get scans of him every two weeks. Jack was very grateful that Martha no longer complained about chasing him around the globe just to get scans of him every two weeks, and that Martha had finally stopped asking him if he’d like to know the baby’s sex. She seemed to have finally got it into her head that he wasn’t going to get attached to it.
He was also completely grateful for the Jones family (the Martha Jones family, mind), who took very good care of him when Martha declared that he needed bedrest.
Francine, as always, was a little pushy about her care, and always made him work for his food. He spent a good long while slowly working at fixing her computer when she broke it. Completely broke it, actually. He had a fun time putting it back together piece by piece, sending her out to get the parts he needed and puzzling it all out himself. Tosh would have done it twice as fast and twice as well, but he did his best and was a little proud of himself at the turnout, considering he knew very little of twenty-first century computer models.
Tish, on the other hand, was willing to do whatever for him whenever he needed. All he had to do was ask, and she would do it. He tried not to abuse his power, because god knows most people had. Jack constantly reminded her that he was not her boss, and he was not going to torture her if she didn’t do it. She always said she knew that, but she wanted to help. He tried not to think about the fact that she’d taken time off her job for this. At least he didn’t have to feel bad for making her move back in with her mother; she’d done that a little after the Dalek incident, both to soothe Francine’s nerves and her own.
Both of them had confronted him about the baby, though. Well, not confronted, per se. More like offered themselves up. They both offered to raise it, Tish as her own and Francine as an adoptive grandchild. Jack, while immensely grateful to them both, had told them exactly what he had told Gwen. The baby deserved to grow up where Ianto’s heart lie, back in Wales. Tish immediately offered to move to Cardiff, but he still denied her. He was certain her sacrifice was mainly that: a sacrifice, no more, no less. She wasn’t ready to be a mother, both of them knew. She just didn’t want Jack’s kid to grow up with someone else. Jack told her that it wasn’t about him, anyway, and she gave him a long, sceptical look.
“You tell it stories,” Tish said one night as she sat on his bed. “But they’re never about you.”
Before he could object, she leaned in close to his very pregnant belly and began to tell the tale of how Jack had saved her from a beating from the Master. She smacked his head lightly every time he tried to cut her off or tell the baby that this was a highly fabricated tale.
“There,” she said when she had finished. “Now you know how great your dad is.”
Jack opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again at Tish’s dark look.
“You know, for all your talk about how great you are, you really don’t know your own worth, do you?” She shook her head. “Sometimes, I just wish you’d just… see.”
She got up from the bed and fled the room then, and he suspected she’d started crying, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.
He was in the bath when the baby dropped.
“Oh, that was not at all like what I remembered,” he said. “I don’t think I even felt it last time. Then again… different species.”
He patted a hand on his belly, then retracted it immediately. He shifted in the bathtub to grab a towel. He didn’t care about modesty, but he wasn’t about to expose the Jones women to something they didn’t need to see, not after they’d been so nice to him. He could use a little twenty-first century respect for two twenty-first century women.
“Hey, Francine?” he called.
Francine was there in an instant. He suspected she might have been lurking outside.
“Baby dropped,” he told her.
Her eyebrows raised. “Are you in labour?”
“Not… that I’m aware of?” he said, looking confusedly at her.
“All mine dropped right before I went to labour,” Francine said. “Should we call Martha?”
“I don’t know.”
They sat in silence for a moment, both of them watching the bulge of Jack’s stomach.
“Tish was an ugly baby,” Francine said abruptly.
“What?” Jack asked, startled and astounded.
“Ugliest baby I ever laid my eyes on, I thought,” Francine said. “Leo and Martha… both adorable little cherubs. Tish… not so much.”
Jack just stared at her.
“Then she grew up and I thought, oh. Not so ugly after all.” Francine looked him in the eye. “I look at baby pictures of her now and I can’t even fathom how I thought she was ugly. Then I realised, it wasn’t her. It was me.”
“I don’t see how—”
“I was so concerned with how I thought she should be and how I should be, that I never paid attention to how cute she really was.” She folded her arms. “No baby is perfect, Jack. No parent is, either.”
Jack held her gaze for a moment, and was fortunately saved anything as Tish stepped in.
“What’s going on?” Tish asked.
Jack grinned. “Your mother thinks you were an ugly baby.”
“What?” she asked, her eyes going wide. “Mum!”
Francine sighed heavily and turned to comfort her daughter, sparing Jack of her disappointed stare. Jack was not able to meet her eyes for the rest of the day.
When Jack went into labour late one night almost five days later, Tish “lost her shit” (as she would later say) and Francine argued with Martha over the phone for an hour before mentioning that Jack was trying to give birth.
“What?” Francine asked when he gave her his best death glare. “It’s not like you’re ready to give birth yet. Contractions aren’t close enough together.”
“Either they pull this thing out of me,” he said through gritted teeth, “or it comes out all Alien-style. Not pleasant for me or baby.”
Francine rolled her eyes. “You’re being melodramatic.”
“I’m in labour!”
“You know, I’m very glad to know that in the future, men face the same pains we do,” she said calmly to Tish.
Tish looked rather like she didn’t want to face the same pains women did.
Martha came very quickly after Francine’s call. She, too, berated her mother for making her wait. This was the first non-female pregnancy she’d had, she said, and she didn’t want something to go wrong. She wanted to survey the entire process, just in case. Jack raised no objections. Not until she brought in company.
“You said you weren’t going to tell UNIT,” he growled.
“I had no choice,” Martha told him. “I’m not an obstetrician. I can take care of you, but I don’t know how to take care of the baby.”
“Fine. Whatever. Just take it out.”
Then he clenched his jaw as another contraction came on.
After what felt like agonising ages, they finally decided it was time to take the baby out. Jack wasn’t sure about how Francine felt about a home birth when it was essentially a home operation, but it was happening whether she liked it or not. Martha gave him drugs to numb the pain (because she wasn’t a psychopath like the Master, who had gutted him willingly just to hear him scream), then sliced him open and rooted around his organs to find his womb. This was very close to his nightmares, he determined.
The baby was born on July ninth, at eight nineteen in the morning. It screamed and screamed, and Jack nearly passed out from sheer relief. He felt his body knit together as Martha made a noise of excitement and adoration. He didn’t look up at her. He didn’t want to see it.
“Jack,” Martha said. He could practically hear her happy tears. “It’s a little boy!”
“Placenta gets reabsorbed,” Jack told her, closing his eyes tight. Ianto’s son. “You don’t have to go looking for it.”
“Is that… possible?”
Jack shrugged. “Does it matter?”
Martha must have agreed, because she didn’t say anything else. The baby continued to shriek, and Jack heard Martha snip off the umbilical cord.
“Jack.”
He snapped his eyes open, looking up at the ceiling.
“Do you want to see him?”
Jack opened his mouth to say something, only to find he didn’t have anything to say. He took a deep breath instead, then closed his mouth.
“If you don’t… they’re going to have to take him now,” she told him. “Feed him and clean him up.”
He nodded, not taking his eyes off the ceiling.
“You won’t get to see him again.”
“I know,” Jack whispered.
That was for the best, wasn’t it? Protect the boy by keeping him as far away as possible. He would have a better, happier, safer life that way.
“Okay,” she said.
Her tone made his heart ache in ways he couldn’t explain, and the baby just continued to scream. Jack took in another deep breath as Martha’s footsteps made their way to the door to hand over the boy to the nurses Martha had brought along for that very reason. They were going to take the baby. This was the last moment he had with the being that had stuck with him for over forty-three months. Last moment with the last thing Ianto had left him. Jack screwed his eyes shut again.
“Wait.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the baby’s cries.
“Give him to me,” Jack said.
He managed to open his eyes and look at Martha. She looked at him for a moment, then nodded, walking back to him with the baby in her arms. Jack reached out for the boy and she placed him in Jack’s arms. The baby wailed as Jack pulled him in to his hold.
Jack didn’t know what Francine had been talking about; this was the most beautiful baby he had ever laid his eyes on. Barely minutes old and Jack could already see Ianto in him. The cute little nose, the tuft of black hair…
He only became aware that he was crying when Martha’s hand brushed his cheek gently.
“You have a right to keep him, if you want,” Martha told him.
He bent his head down and pressed his lips lightly onto the baby’s forehead. Oh… now that he was here, in Jack’s arms… Jack definitely wanted. He wanted this baby more than anything. But…
“You’re allowed to want him,” Martha said, as if she read his mind. “He’s your son.”
Jack glanced up at her, then down at the baby when the earnest look in her eyes was too much to bear.
She was right, wasn’t she? They’d all been telling him that, right from the start. Gwen urging him to move on without running away, Archie rebuking him for giving up, Tish and Gwen both reminding him he was allowed to be happy, Francine explaining to him about the initial fear of parenthood, Martha silently judging his stupid attempts to distance himself… and Ianto… Ianto thought his life was so important that he’d sacrificed his twice. Was it really for the best to give up Ianto’s son because Jack was both too scared to go on without him and too scared to keep holding onto him?
Would it even keep the boy safe?
Jack closed his eyes again and promised himself this. If he could honestly answer “yes” to both those questions, he’d let go right now, and hand the baby back to Martha. Two seconds into his consideration, he found that he probably couldn’t take his hands off the boy, even if the answer was “yes.” After all… this was his son, too. And that was all that mattered in the end.
“I want him,” Jack sobbed (later, he’d be a little embarrassed about that). “I want him.”
“Okay,” Martha whispered.
And for a perfect moment, Martha wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek on his head as he held his son close to him, weeping quietly because he loved and missed Ianto so much, and because he loved and cherished their son just as much.