Author's Note: Hello there! Sorry I've been inactive for a little while. I'm considering moving to LiveJournal rather than continuing to upload here. I just like the setup there more. I might also just update on both sites. Don't quite know yet. If you're interested, the "Homepage" link on my profile goes to my LJ. I'll keep those of you who care posted on whether I'll be going exclusively to LJ in the future. Anyway, thanks! The title of this fic comes from Hans Christian Anderson's "The Brave Tin Soldier". Hope you enjoy it.

Tosh slammed the passenger door of the SUV. "It's freezing."

"Yes, well." Ianto closed the driver door and came around the back to open the boot. "End of November."

She met him there, holding her wrap tightly around herself. "Why is it that we're always sent out when it's 10 degrees?"

"Because we are eternally meant to be the brunt of Nature's cruel jokes." Ianto closed the boot with one hand, holding a kit case in the other. He looked at her. "Or bad luck. Your guess."

It was late in the afternoon; the light was remarkably gold and heavy, and it fell against the SUV, the cracked pavement, the old warehouse before them as though with a Midas touch. It occurred to Ianto that it was always warehouses; never quaint little homes with central heating and someone offering coffee. The Rift always decided to cough up its detritus in the most abandoned of places; forests, fields, and warehouses. Alleys, if it was feeling innovative. He started for the chained doors and heard Tosh fall into high-heeled step behind him. At the door he asked, "Have you got-"

She pulled the lockpick device out of her pocket and shook it back and forth before him. "Never leave home without it," she said, and stepped around him to place it against the padlock.

Ianto grinned, leaning against the cool metal siding beside the door. "The last time we had to do this, Owen shot the lock off."

"Owen does love his guns." The device flashed red a few times, then turned green. The padlock fell open. Tosh carefully removed the rusted chain that was wound around the door handles and threw it aside. She reached back and pulled out a gun, turning her head to look at Ianto with raised eyebrows. He pulled his own gun, flicking the safety off with one hand and raising it beside his head, pointed up. He nodded. Tosh pulled the door open and Ianto leaned into the doorway, sweeping the expanse of metal and concrete with his eyes and his arm. There was nothing there. He relaxed and stepped inside.

It, of course, smelled terrible, as any large, empty building by the bay would smell. Only home to pigeons and corpses, places like this. They split up in a practiced way, Tosh taking one side of the nearly endless room and Ianto taking the other. It was a scene strangely lit; holes in the ceiling poured the heavy-gold sunlight in small spotlights scattered throughout the room, but otherwise it was twilight dark, requiring Ianto's eyes to adjust in order to see properly.

"Ianto," Tosh called; he heard the click of her torch and looked in her direction. The beam of light was focused on a small, round something sitting just outside a pool of sunlight. They both approached it slowly, Tosh stowing her gun carefully, Ianto not taking that chance just yet – there was no telling what the thing was; no matter how small they were, mysterious things tended to want to kill them. He kept his gun trained on it, even as Tosh bent to examine it, bringing her torch in closer to it. "It looks like a golden miniature pineapple. First place trophy at an alien Largest Fruit competition?"

"Must belong to Jack, then." He bent down to get a better look at it. "Do you recognize those symbols?"

Tosh shook her head, then brushed her hair out of her eyes, concentrating on the thing. "It isn't anything I've seen before. It might not even be an alphabet. Just designs."

Ianto made a low 'hmmm' sound and stowed his gun into his jacket, before reaching out to pick the thing up. It was light, feeling almost hollow, and as though it was made of metal and wood at once. He straightened up and brought it into the beam of sunlight through the roof. "It could be some kind of container, or-"

ThenumberofpeopleonplanetEarthis6,831,122,536-37-38-39 – nineplanetsinthesolarsystem – 129,345,564,609galaxiesintheuniverse – infiniteuniversesinfinitetimeinfinitespace –

Ianto dropped the artefact and clapped his hands to his ears, crying out in pain, but it didn't stop –

Whatishedoingwhatdidthethingdotohim-

"Ianto? Are you all right?" Tosh put her hands on his shoulders, trying to look into his face, but he broke her hold and stumbled away, because at that touch every single thing Tosh was thinking or feeling or had ever thought or felt was projected into Ianto's brain as though played on a screen on the inside of his skull. "Ianto! Ianto, what's wrong?"

He couldn't answer, because everything was suddenly so huge – the warehouse was built in the thirties, they used to store bodies there in the war, Jack told Tosh something like that once, he could see it there, in her mind, that connection – the perfume Tosh was wearing was sent by her mother for Christmas, Tosh hadn't spoken physically to her mother in years, part of her contract, part of the way she could get out of prison –

And on and on, filling his head, the space between his hands, pressed now to his temples. He fell to his knees, trying to breathe through the waves of information that just kept coming and kept coming.

Tosh watched, horrified, as Ianto slumped over and curled into himself, crying out in intervals on the stone floor. Then, finally, she snapped out of it, and reached for her mobile, dialing the second it was open. One ring, then an answer. "Jack! Come quickly. It's Ianto, something's wrong-" After the word 'Ianto', she was talking to a dead line. She tucked the phone away and hurried over to him, careful not to touch him, and keeping one eye on the artefact.

- - -

"His heart's overworking." Owen tapped the display of Ianto's heart rate on the screen beside the autopsy table, unconsciously half-time to the quick staccato beeping. "That's all that's physically wrong with him. Well, that and-" He pressed a few buttons, and the screen showed something akin to what feeds out of a polygraph machine. "The ECG shows that he's got some serious brain activity going on. Way more than normal for a human." Owen looked up at Jack, who was looking down at Ianto's pale, pained face, his arms crossed. "Jack." Jack looked up. "Unless we figure out what's happening to him in the next forty-eight hours, his heart's going to wear itself out. And there's no telling what kind of brain damage he might have already."

Jack seemed to take this rather well. He looked steadily back at Owen. "Is there any way we can lighten it a little bit? Ease it up enough to let him explain what happened?"

Owen frowned, looking down at Ianto. "Drugging him might do it. Slows down neural activity. Might slow him down enough to get him talking. Take the edge off of his heart, at least."

Jack nodded. "Do it, then."

Owen turned to his cabinet of medical supplies and began to prepare the injection. "What're we doing with the artefact?"

"Gwen and Tosh are searching the archives for similar items or symbols that match the ones carved into the outside of it." Jack rested his fingers on the white sheet spread beneath Ianto, just shy of touching the very slight indented curve above his hip. He couldn't touch him; any time someone touched him, he cried out in pain. But his fingers could remain a hair's breadth from that place, and it was maybe enough.

Owen turned back around with the injection gun poised, then pulled up Ianto's trouser leg to bare skin. He held the leg down with his gloved hand, and Ianto moaned at the touch. "Sorry, mate," Owen said quietly, then injected the drug into Ianto's system and let go. He set the injection gun on the metal supply cart and leaned against the wall, waiting for it to take effect. Jack didn't move his eyes from Ianto's face, or his fingers from the sheet.

The effect was slow. Ianto's tense body began to inch-by-inch relax; his legs, his hips, his torso, his neck, and finally his face, losing its rigidness, but not the whispers of some internal pain. His eyes drew open and he blinked slowly up at the ceiling, taking breaths that seemed to go on forever. Jack leaned over him, into his line of sight. He smiled. "Hey."

Ianto closed his eyes again, squeezed tight, with a grimace that passed in a moment. He took another breath. Opened them. Kept them open, looking up at Jack. "Hey."

"How're you feeling?"

"I feel-" Ianto thought; reached for something to explain it. "I feel everything."

Jack blinked, staring down at him. "How do you mean?"

"Everything," Ianto said again, his voice vague, his eyes slipping, distant. "I can feel time and space. I can see it, all of it." Jack met Owen's eyes over Ianto. Was it delirium? Brain damage? Owen shook his head; he didn't know. Ianto continued, "It hurts." His face flushed red, his breath coming sharper. "It's too much."

"I'm giving him another one," Owen said, and quickly reloaded the injection gun, despite the frown Jack threw at him. "Whatever it is, it could fry his brain. System overload." He watched the expression on Jack's face change from the entirely expected concern he'd worn for the last hour, to an entirely unexpected light of understanding – and a brief, intense panic, smoothed over with difficulty. Jack nodded curtly, and Owen dosed Ianto again. His expression cleared. The lines in his brow smoothed. He let out one slow breath and his eyes slipped closed. The beeping of the heart monitor slowed slightly. Owen looked across Ianto's now-peaceful body at Jack, who looked miles away. "You know what this is, don't you?"

Jack snapped back to himself. He frowned. "Team meeting."

- - -

"What exactly happened, Tosh? Can you remember anything else?"

Tosh shook her head, the deep frown that she'd been wearing since they found her sitting by Ianto in the warehouse growing deeper still, setting into her face like concrete. "We were talking about the designs on the outside, and he picked it up and brought it into the light to get a better look at it. Then he dropped it and put his hands over his ears, then he fell down." She hunched over the conference table, looking guilty. "It happened so quickly. We thought it must be harmless."

"Lesson one, Tosh," Owen said, leaning back in his chair, "we don't assume that."

"Not helping, Owen, thanks." Gwen gave him a freezing sort of look.

Owen ignored her. "Jack, you know more than you're letting on. Out with it."

Jack stared down at the palms of his hands, open on the table in front of him. "I haven't seen this myself before. Not in person. But I know of it happening." He shook his head. "He said 'I can feel everything'. That isn't supposed to happen. Not to a human."

"What is it, though?" Gwen was tapping the fingers of one hand against the back of the other, looking at Jack with concerned concentration.

"The time vortex. Time and space. Everything that ever has happened, everything that ever will happen, everywhere. All universes. Somehow, that thing – whatever it is, it put all of that information into his head. And it's still pouring in, from everything." Jack sat back, eyes scanning to Tosh and Gwen. "You two haven't found anything similar to it on the system?"

Gwen shook her head. "There's nothing like it. There really isn't much to go to – the machines don't even know what it's made of."

"And why would something so unassuming have that kind of power?" Tosh asked, thought drawing lines across her forehead. "Is it a weapon?"

"Jack, the question is, how are we going to fix him?" Owen leaned past Gwen to get a better look at Jack. "Whatever it is, it's gonna kill him, no matter how much depressant we pump into his system. Eventually something's going to blow, either his brain or his heart."

"I assume it doesn't have an 'off' switch?"

Tosh shook her head. "No buttons, no latches – it's a complete surface, no breaks at all. There's no obvious way to manipulate it. Could we destroy it?"

"It might kill him." Jack met Owen's eyes, which hadn't moved from his face. "You have something in mind." Not a question.

Owen spread his hands palms-down on the table, even spaces between each of his long fingers. "Retcon."

"Jack, no, you can't do-"

"Gwen, when we need your expert medical opinion, we'll ask politely for it." Owen gave her a smile that was vaguely reminiscent of a toad. She glowered, but was silent, her hair falling into her face as she crossed her arms over her chest – almost petulant, but not quite. Owen continued, "It's our best option. It doesn't have to be a long way back. Just to earlier in the day, before he touched the – whatever it is. Should do the trick, make it like he never felt any of it."

Jack gave him a measured look, his face expressionless. "Is there any chance that it might hurt him?"

"Jack!" Gwen rose halfway out of her seat, leaning over the table. "You can't just give him retcon!"

"Yes," Owen answered him, as though Gwen hadn't spoken. "There's always the chance of that. But it's more likely that what's happening right now will hurt him than dosing him with retcon will."

Jack took a breath. He nodded. "All right. Let's do it."

Owen stood and went for the door, Tosh behind him. Jack rose and turned, but Gwen caught his arm and turned him to face her with a strength that was surprising. "Jack, how can you possibly do this to him?"

Jack looked at her, his face very clear, very open, and in that openness also somehow not present. Somehow distant. "How else can we help him?"

"Figure the artefact out!" Her hand tightened on his arm, her eyes searching his face for some conciliatory flash. "Keep looking. You can't take eight hours away from him without trying everything else, not if there's still time to find another way."

"There isn't time." He put his hand on her wrist and squeezed gently, removing her hand from his arm. "Owen has no idea how long it's going to take for him to burn out. I know," he said, as she opened her mouth to argue. "I know how wrong this is, to retcon him without him knowing. But we have to." He met her eyes, letting go of her wrist. "Okay? We have to do it to save his life."

Gwen took a few breaths through her nose, nostrils flaring slightly, searching her mind for something, anything, that would stop him from doing it. There was nothing. She drooped slightly, her hands falling to her sides. "All right."

- - -

One little white pill, swallowed with a slow tip of water from a glass in Jack's hand, worked down the throat by over-relaxed muscles. Like making someone eat while they're sleeping. "There isn't a reaction to combining depressants and B-67?"

"None that we've seen." Owen snapped his gloves off and threw them into the bin. "Though we haven't really had to retcon anyone who was this loaded." Owen caught the glance Jack threw him and shook his head. "It should be fine. Just keep an eye on him, make sure he's still breathing normally."

Jack nodded, then put a hand on Ianto's arm. No reaction. A good sign? "You can go," he said, not looking up at Owen.

Owen went, but stopped at the bottom of the medical bay stairs, turning back, a little awkward, palm tapping on the railing. "Jack," he said, and Jack looked up. "Look, mate. It's gonna be all right." Jack's passive face was unchanging, but there was something behind it, maybe, that appreciated the reassurance. He nodded. Owen shuffled his feet a bit, looked at his watch, and left. Jack pulled a stool over and sat, listening to the eerily rapid blips from the heart monitor in the still room, staring down at his own folded hands.

-----------------

When Ianto woke up the next day, it was with a gasp that put Jack's life-breath to shame, followed by an incredible cry. Jack held him down to the table by his arms when he began to flail, bucking as though in the throes of a seizure, throwing off the sheet that Jack had covered him with in the night. Jack looked over his shoulder and shouted, "Owen!" but the medic was already running, jumping the last four steps and collecting what he needed to calm the thrashing body. The injection gun deployed with a short hiss, and the convulsions lost force, grew shorter, finally drained away and left Ianto panting with his eyes closed, his forehead beaded with sweat. Jack ran a hand down his own face. "It didn't work."

"No," Owen said, bringing up Ianto's ECG. "It really didn't." The lines were unchanged from the day before. "What the hell is that thing?"

"We're gonna find out." Jack's face hardened; it was the first time Owen had seen Jack take on an actual facial expression since the previous afternoon. "Take Gwen and go to the place that they found it. Try to find anything that might have come through with it."

"What, like instructions?"

"Just go!"

Owen set down the injection gun and turned for the stairs, casting Jack a dark look before he disappeared out into the hub, calling for Gwen. Jack stepped back over to Ianto. He looked like he was sleeping; dreaming. His eyes moved behind his eyelids, face still drawn as though in pain. Jack slowly reached a hand toward Ianto's face, fingers centimeters away from his cheek before Ianto's mouth opened in a short gasp, only relaxing when Jack pulled away. Jack looked at his hand, looked at Ianto, then turned and went up the stairs, out into the hub.

Tosh was working at her station. When Jack approached, she ducked her head slightly – but he still caught the dark circles under her eyes. He leaned against her desk, guilt for shouting at Owen softening his posture. "Have the others gone?"

Tosh nodded. "I don't know if they'll find anything, though, Jack."

"You and Ianto didn't get a chance to search the place completely. They might come up with something. It's worth a try." He watched her nod again. "I need you to keep searching the database for something that matches. There has to be something. Follow any possible connections you find." Tosh hesitated – then, once again, a nod. Jack turned and started off.

Tosh called after him, "What are you going to do?"

He looked over his shoulder. "I'm going to talk to him."

- - -

Owen slammed the driver door and hunched into his jacket, his hands in his pockets. "It's bloody freezing out here." Gwen said nothing, her lips pressed into a thin line, and she moved toward the warehouse doors, left unlocked in their hasty exit the day before. The day was grey and overcast, turning every color dull and metallic, letting nothing shine. She jerked open the door and peered inside, one hand on her gun. Nothing. Owen followed her in, clicking on his torch and tracing his eyes over the distant beams of the ceiling. "This place is a wreck, isn't it?"

She took out her own torch, highlighting the walls, the floor. "What are we looking for?"

"Well, Jack said 'anything'. But I'm betting on 'absolutely nothing'." He kicked a decayed newspaper, sweeping his eyes left to right. "I'll tell you what, though," he said after a minute, "you and I are getting it next."

Gwen's brow furrowed and she glanced at him. "What d'you mean?"

"Well," Owen said, his voice taking on that amused airiness it did whenever he deigned to explain something, "Think about it. Tosh got her little mind reader necklace. Ianto's got the whole of time and space crammed between his ears. It's only a matter of time before you and I start hearing voices. Torchwood's legacy of telepathy."

Gwen's face cracked into a grin despite herself. "You'd use it to pick up women."

"You'd use it to find out everything that ever happened to everyone you know."

"Jack first."

"Obviously."

Gwen frowned suddenly, sweeping her light across the concrete floor. "Tosh said that she couldn't read Jack's mind. Like there was nothing there."

"I knew the bastard was braindead."

"I don't know," Gwen stopped to examine a bit of metal; some siding, nothing. She straightened up. "Maybe it has something to do with how old he is."

"I'll stick with braindead, thanks." He stopped and looked over at her. "We aren't going to find shit here."

"We have to try." She brushed past him. "Keep looking."

- - -

When Ianto woke up again, it was somewhere dark, and that was a relief. The light, the sound in the medical bay held too much that could give impressions, too many things that held information between their atoms. The dark was good. It left impression to touch, smell and sound, which were duller and easier to deal with.

"You're awake," Jack said from beside him.

"I am that." Jack's room. From the smell of Jack in everything and the sounds of the hub upstairs, information began to whisper around the corners of his mind, to collect and grow louder in groups, pile against each other, too many things to take in. His breath quickened; he bit back a cry. And then hands were placed on either side of his head – warm hands, gentle.

"Concentrate on me," Jack said, and Ianto did, picking through the input of the room to find Jack, following it through his hands and into his mind. And all of the other input stopped. It was like a large, white, radiant screen had been fitted into his head, blank and calm and perfect.

"How are you doing that?"

"Learned it a long time ago. Kind of a meditation trick." He shifted on the bed a little bit and gently pulled Ianto's head into his lap, placing his hands at a better angle against his temples. "Good for government meetings and long queues. It's mostly you doing it, though. Concentrating on one thing. That thing just happens to be what I'm concentrating on, which is nothing."

Ianto let the quiet of his mind lull him for a few minutes, such a relief to the barrage of before. Finally, letting out a slow breath, he asked, "What happened?"

"We don't know yet. Do you remember the artefact you and Tosh found?"

Ianto grinned, his eyes closed. "First place in the alien Largest Fruit competition. Tosh said that."

Jack smiled a little. "Do you know what it really is?"

Ianto took a moment, thinking about it. Then he said, "No. Do you?"

"No. Gwen and Owen are trying to find something in the warehouse that might have come with it. Tosh is working on finding out where it might have come from." Jack started to rub absent-minded circles into Ianto's temples, and he relaxed further, moving a hand to rest against Jack's leg.

"What did it do to me?"

"It-" Jack would never know how to clarify this properly. The idea was too complicated, and any boiled-down explanation would lose the whole of it. And he also hardly knew. "It gave you the ability to see – everything. The time vortex."

"I knew that," Ianto said. "But how? And why?"

Jack shrugged. "I don't know. This happened to a friend of mine, before. She took the vortex into her head on purpose. It's always the people-" I love.

Ianto's hand tightened on Jack's leg. Jack felt an almost electric bounce of surprise travel through his arms and into his head and back again. Then Ianto cracked a smile. "Heard that."

"Jack!" Tosh's voice, shouting from the hub.

Jack looked up at the manhole cover, then down at Ianto. "I'm gonna give you another dose of depressant. All right?"

"You won't hear me complain."

Jack slowly removed his fingers from Ianto's temples. A brief change of expression flashed over Ianto's face, but Jack was quick with the injection, and it passed, leaving Ianto once more peaceful. Jack lifted him up slightly and put him back against the pillows, then slipped off of the bed and climbed the ladder into the hub. The light there hurt his eyes for a moment, after the total darkness of his room, but that passed quickly with the anxious look on Tosh's face as she stood in his office doorway.

"I've found something," she said. "Come see." She walked quickly for her station, and he followed. "I was trying to find any kind of break in the structure – I knew there must be something, it has to be some kind of the device, and devices have controls. So I was examining it, and the computer completed a search for something and made a default sound, and a compartment opened." She gestured at the artefact, sitting on her desk, now with part of the outer shell hanging open as though on a hinge. "It must be activated by certain frequencies. The sound the computer made was a B-flat. That note must open it." Jack bent closer to look at the symbols on the inside face of the shell. "I ran the language through the computer. It doesn't recognize the origin."

"I do," Jack said quietly.

"What?" Tosh asked, surprised, turning to look at him.

His face was serious, his eyes almost sad. "I recognize the writing." He'd seen these symbols and others like them thousands of times, etched into doors, equipment, flashing strange and circular on the screen of the TARDIS control room. Gallifreyan. The Time Lord language. He straightened and looked at Tosh. "You can go home, if you want."

Tosh's face clouded with confusion. "What do you mean? Where's the writing from?"

Jack shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It's gonna be fine." Tosh clearly doubted that. She didn't move, only looked at him, not trusting this sudden turn. He sighed. "Really. Scout's honor." He held up a hand. "Go home. Sleep. I know you didn't sleep well last night. Call Gwen and Owen and tell them to give up the search and take off early."

"Jack, really." Tosh's expression begged to be answered. "What's going on?"

"Tosh, I'm sorry." And he looked it, too, like it hurt him to shove her out the door like this. "But this is something you can't know about. Please," he said. "Just – let me fix this. He'll be fine, if you let me fix it." Tosh wavered, looking past Jack, toward his office where below the floor Ianto lay. Then she looked back at him. She sighed.

"Fine. But I hate this, Jack. All of the secrets."

"I know." He reached around the computer and handed her her purse. "Thank you."

She shook her head. "Just get him better. Whatever you're doing, get him better." She turned on her heel and walked for the cog door. Jack watched as it rolled back and she stepped through, then as it rolled home and she was gone. He took his phone out of his pocket, thumbed down to 'M', and pressed 'Send'.

"Martha Jones," he said. "The voice of a nightingale."

- - -

He pulled the door closed behind him, the wind sweeping his coat around his shins, and looked to the sky. It was clear, not a cloud anywhere in the deep, abiding black, though rain still glistened on the stone of the Plass, in the lights. He tucked his hands into his pockets and walked towards the water tower, his footsteps echoing in the silence of the late hour. He stopped in front of the fountain, looking up its shining black height. "You know, I can see you."

Jack stepped from nowhere. "You ruined my mysterious entrance."

The Doctor looked at him and grinned. "I'm the one with the mysterious entrances, Jack Harkness."

"Big flashy box, real mysterious."

"Oi, watch it! You owe a lot to that big flashy box."

They met eyes. Smiled. Jack walked up and threw his arms around the Doctor. "It's good to see you."

"You, too, Captain." The Doctor pulled away. "Are we going to stand in the cold all night, or do I get to see your secret base?"

Jack grinned and walked back to the invisible lift. "Hop on."

"Your secret base has a secret entrance." The Doctor stepped onto the stone. "How secretive."

"This is just the visitors' entrance," Jack said, pressing buttons on his wrist strap.

"What's the main entrance, then? Big mansion? Cave?"

"Cardiff Tourist Information Center."

"Classy," the Doctor said, and the lift began to descend. When they'd gone past the ground level and into the hub, the Doctor leaned over the edge to peer down into the space. "Bit big, isn't it?"

"Believe me, it gets smaller the more time to spend in it." The lift settled and Jack hopped off, offering a hand to the Doctor, who accepted it and stepped off after him. This was where the seriousness of their situation kicked in; the Doctor knew it.

"Where's the device you found?"

Jack led him over to Tosh's workstation, gesturing to the thing lying slightly tilted on her desk. "We didn't know where it came from until our tech expert figured out how to open the little flap on the side." He watched as the Doctor leaned in closer, pulling out his glasses and looking at the writing. "We thought it might be a weapon, some kind of neurological-"

"Jack," the Doctor interrupted, picking up the device, running his fingers over the carved surface of it. "It isn't a weapon."

"What is it, then?"

The Doctor looked at him over the top of his glasses. "It's a toy."

Jack's face fell incredulous, his eyebrows narrowing in confusion. "A toy?"

The Doctor nodded. "A toy. Given to Time Lord children." He closed the open flap on the side and held it between his palms. "When they're born, Time Lords are surrounded by information. Everything's new and big and unfamiliar." He held the toy up. "This helps them make the world a little smaller. Helps them focus on their own thoughts instead of the thoughts of others, or the impressions they get from places or things." He looked at Jack, eyebrows knit together. "Where's the one who touched it?"

"Come on." Jack started for his office.

The Doctor set down the toy and followed, stowing his glasses back in his pocket. When Jack pulled up a manhole cover to reveal a hidden bedroom, the Doctor couldn't say he was exactly surprised. "Couldn't get a proper flat?"

"What? It's cozy!" Jack said, starting down the ladder. "And someone has to keep an eye on the rift." When they both reached the bottom, Jack flicked on the light to show Ianto, almost in the same position he had left him, too much depressant in his system for him to move much in his sleep. "Ianto Jones," Jack said quietly. "He found the toy with our tech, Tosh. Picked it up and collapsed. He said he could feel everything." Jack looked at the Doctor. "I thought of Rose. The way she absorbed the time vortex. Is this anything like that?"

The Doctor shook his head, moving closer to the bed to get a better look at Ianto. "No," he said. "Well, yes. Yes and no." The Doctor looked up at Jack. "Rose absorbed the vortex as a sentient being. It gave her the power to take life, give life, control time and space." He gestured towards the hub upstairs. "The part of the vortex that's imprinted on that toy is only an afterimage. Not sentient, but still present." He frowned down at Ianto. "Your friend here took on a lot more than he could handle."

"Can you fix him?" The edge to Jack's voice was obvious; that nervous fear.

"Of course," the Doctor said, and Jack relaxed. The Doctor leaned over Ianto, resting his hands against Ianto's cheeks, fingers at either side of his ears. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Jack watched the Doctor, moving slightly to be able to see Ianto's face. It was clearing. All of the pain in his expression was draining away. The Doctor was muttering softly under his breath, encouraging, "That's right, you're fine, let it go."

And, finally, he stood back, looking down at Ianto. "He's fine. No damage." He looked at Jack. "He's a bit brilliant, though. Handled the effects of the toy much better than most humans would."

"Ianto isn't most humans." Jack moved closer to the bed and put a hand on Ianto's forehead, then ran it back through his hair.

The Doctor watched. "I take it you and he-" He trailed off.

Jack laughed, looking up. "He's a great dancer."

The Doctor grinned. "I think it's probably a bit more than that."

Jack sighed. "You might be right." He planted a kiss on Ianto's forehead, then straightened up again. "Thank you, Doctor. I'm sorry to have to call you back here."

The Doctor waved away the apology. "Don't mention it. Here to help. Defender of the Earth, all that, right?" He smiled. "Speaking of which, I should probably be off defending. Walk me back to the TARDIS?"

- - -

The Doctor had his hand on the door to the TARDIS when he turned around, remembering something. "By the way, he might not remember anything that happened since he touched the device. All normal, just a bit of a side effect of-" He stopped. Jack's face had fallen from relief to horrified realization in the span of the Doctor's sentence. "What's wrong? Jack?"

Jack shook his head. "It's – nothing. It doesn't matter." He swallowed whatever had brought on the change in demeanor and held out a hand. "Good seeing you, Doctor. Thanks again."

The Doctor shuffled the toy ("don't want you lot having trouble from this again") into the other arm and grasped Jack's hand. "No problem, Captain."

Jack held onto the hand a little longer, his eyes falling on the toy beneath the Doctor's arm. "You know," he said slowly, hesitantly, "Doctor, if that toy fell through the rift, then maybe that means the rift isn't effected by the time-lock on the Time War. You could-"

"Don't," the Doctor said. He released Jack's hand. "Just – don't. It's done. My people are gone."

Jack met his eyes, then nodded. "I'll see you around, Doctor?"

"See you around, Captain." The Doctor tipped a mock salute and slipped through the TARDIS door, then closed it behind him.

He looked down at the toy in his hands, softly radiant in the lights of the TARDIS. He leaned back against the door. He slid down it slowly, his coat pooling in tan waves around him as he sat, arms resting on his knees, holding the toy out in front of him. His childhood. His home.

Gone.

- - -

Ianto woke up to Jack sitting up beside him, staring off into the middle distance, still dressed, sitting over the blankets. He blinked a few times, trying to make the blur of the room come together into a cohesive image. He felt heavy and groggy, as though he'd been sleeping for days. And he didn't remember how he got here. "What happened?" he croaked.

Jack looked down at him, surprised, then smiled. "Mishap with some alien technology. Seems to have turned out okay."

Ianto huffed against the pillow. "Glad to see you were concerned."

Jack frowned, but it was gone in an instant, replaced by his stupid, cocky grin. "With a dashing hero like me around? Why worry?"

"You are quite dashing, I'll give you that." He grinned, closing his eyes again. "I had a very good dream."

"Yeah? What about?"

"Not sure. But it had to do with you and mindreading."

"Oo, kinky."

"Not that type of good, thank you, Jack."

"Okay. What type of good?"

Ianto opened one eye to look at Jack, then smiled softly. "It doesn't matter." He rolled over, pulling the blankets up to his ears. "I'm going back to sleep. Wake me up at Christmas and then explain what happened in more detail." This last came a bit muffled.

"You got it." Jack looked at the curve of Ianto's back beneath the blankets, watched the rise and fall of his breathing, and knew with miserable certainty what Ianto's dream was about.

He turned off the lights.