ver·i·si·mil·i·tude: n (formal): the appearance of being true or real; something that only appears to be true or real

He woke up the worst kind of uncomfortable. And, given that he was fully clothed and unfortunately alone, he could assume right away that last night hadn't been much fun.

With a groan, Jack levered himself to his feet. His head pounded unpleasantly. Christ, it isn't somebody's birthday, is it? He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten so hammered he blacked out. Probably not since his total bender in 1869, in fact.

Wondering how his team was faring, Jack made his way up out of the vaults. By the time he reached the Hub proper, his body seemed back to normal — but still he had no idea what had placed him by the Weevil cages in the first place.

The Hub looked normal for the middle of a busy workday: Tosh, Owen, and Gwen at computers, while Ianto's deft hands appeared to be at work with the infernal coffee machine. Nothing out of the ordinary…

"Jack," Gwen began when she caught sight of him, "how have we lost two days?"

Two days? "What do you mean?" Jack demanded.

"Lost forty-eight hours," Ianto confirmed. He set a white mug down at Gwen's hand. "None of us can remember a thing."

It wasn't just him, then. The entire team had… what, exactly? Two whole days?

"The system's blank," Tosh reported, sounding puzzled and mildly irritated. "the CCTV's been wiped… what's been going on?" She looked over at Jack. "What've we been doing?"

He wished he could come up with an answer for her, but… nothing. Total blank. Not even hazy images or thoughts… just nothing. Except…

Jack glanced again at Tosh's computer screen. A corrupted file was on display — nothing visible anymore except vague colors and what appeared to be red hair.

Leave well alone.

Jack took a deep breath, recognizing the trick. It was one thing he must have thought, over and over, as his memory was wiped: an old trick to leave yourself a message. It wasn't enough to trip any further memories, just those words: leave well alone.

"I don't know," he answered Tosh, his voice firm. He didn't know, and he wasn't in a hurry to find out.

As Ianto passed, Jack automatically reached for his blue-striped coffee cup. He looked down at it, and suddenly smiled. In the midst of the team's complete memory breakdown, with no recollection of forty-eight hours and no clues as to what the hell might have happened… Ianto fell back on the basics. Jack inhaled the familiar, soothing scent, ignoring Owen's grousing as he glanced around the Hub.

"Looks like Toshiko got herself a secret admirer," he remarked, gesturing at the enormous spray of white and green decorating the technician's desk. Tosh did a slight double-take, as if she honestly hadn't noticed them. Jack smiled a little. Straight to the computers, Tosh.

"Oh, yeah?" Owen asked, mildly curious.

Tosh poked about, coming up with a small white card. "'To Tosh,'" she read aloud. "'Love and apologies… Owen.'" She looked up at him, a wide smile blooming across her face. "They're from you!"

Owen snorted with laughter. "In your dreams, Tosh," he chuckled, doing up his jacket and missing the way her face fell. "I think someone's winding you up, darling. No, I don't do flowers," he claimed, reaching for the note. "And I definitely don't do apologies," he added. Jack rolled his eyes at them, and left them to it.

He found Ianto on the upper levels, methodically checking things over in the greenhouse lab. He waited on the catwalk, looking out over the Hub. Everything seemed fine to him. World was still there. His phone wasn't ringing wildly, so he assumed that there wasn't a current apocalypse. His team seemed fine: confused, but physically and mentally sound — down in the medical bay, Owen's equipment flashed and hummed as various tests ran with blood samples and the Hub's internal body scans. Everyone was functioning normally even with the memory tampering. So, unless something changed drastically in the next few hours, Jack intended to leave well alone.

Jack looked over to find Ianto leaning on the railing next to him. "Something a bit odd," the young man murmured. He held up a slip of paper with a single handwritten line on it. "I found this in my pocket."

Frowning slightly, Jack read over the few words printed in his own hand. "Huh," he said helplessly. He frowned a little deeper, and ran a speculative — and purely concerned — look over his archivist. "I hope you weren't alone in a dangerous situation…"

Ianto shrugged and pocketed the note. "Well, if I was, I seem to have gotten out of it just fine." He smiled. "Maybe I got to be James Bond for two days. A mission so secret, I had to Retcon everyone afterward."

Jack chuckled and nudged the younger man's shoulder. "I like to think I'd know better than to indulge your spy fantasies."

One perfectly arched eyebrow rose. Jack wondered, not for the first time and not without delight, how one incremental movement could be so downright filthy.

Before the conversation could go any further, Owen called to them across the Hub. His lab results were in, and they had all the answer they needed: Retcon. All but Jack had traces of the amnesia drug in their blood — Owen insisted on checking Jack's blood sample, too, and Jack allowed a needle to be stuck in his arm for the sake of thoroughness. Obviously, they couldn't remember if they'd taken the drug themselves or been forced too. However, the medical tests were as far as Jack was willing to investigate. He shut down Tosh's attempted recovery program, and made Gwen promise not to try to pump information out of Rhys when she got home.

"Leave well alone," he told them firmly.

Retreating to his office, Jack immediately found a small book bound in dark green leather sitting on his desk. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Sometime during the two missing days, Ianto's diary had been left on his desk. Jack glanced furtively out the window. The archivist seemed engrossed in Tosh's computer screens, helping her cross-reference what little hard data they had to make sure nothing dangerous had come through the Rift when they couldn't remember it. With a grin, Jack sat down behind his desk and applied himself to the day's project.

By early evening, Jack announced that the work day could end for Torchwood. Nothing else had cropped up in their timid investigations, so they dropped it completely. The only other item of interest Jack found in his office was a strangely carved box, inside a plastic evidence bag. It hadn't been labeled dangerous — in fact the sticker claimed it was just a wooden box — so Jack took it out, weighing it in his hands. It felt a little too heavy to be ordinary wood, but maybe it was just dense.

Something clattered to the floor. Jack looked down, then bent to retrieve the little piece of hard wood which had fallen from the bag. It was intricately, painstakingly carved, in a similar shape to the carvings on the box…

Soft leather shoes scuffed the floor, and Jack looked around. "Did you, um, call?" Ianto asked. He'd put his suit jacket back on, preparing to leave for the night.

Ah, yes. Jack smiled slightly and held up the leather journal. "Found your diary," he remarked mildly.

"Yeah, been looking for that," Ianto replied in clipped tones, stepping forward to reach for it. Jack knew it wasn't nice to just hold it there, letting his smile grow, but… well, Ianto was damn cute when he blushed. Jack grinned when the young man snatched the book from Jack's hands and spun around quickly to leave the room.

"And, for the record?" Jack couldn't resist teasing. Ianto stopped. Jack grinned. "Measuring tapes never lie," he said in a knowing voice. Quick footsteps just barely masked the sound of a whispered curse.

Jack chuckled softly, looking back down at the desk. Something caught his eye, and he hollered for Ianto again.

Instantly the dark head popped back around Jack's door, though he knew he was just waiting for the opportunity to actually escape. Jack made it quick, and held up the plastic evidence bag the box had rested in.

"Who's Adam?"

"Don't know," Ianto replied decisively, gave him a little smile, and skedaddled.

"Hm," Jack murmured. He let the bag — labeled "Adam's Property" across the top in Sharpie — fold itself in half, and then set it aside. Once again he picked up the box and the loose piece, bemused. He spotted a carving on the box which looked like an exact match to the one in his hand — sure enough, it slotted right it like a 3-D puzzle.

And nothing happened.

Jack waited for a moment, expectant. Then, with a disappointed sigh, he set it on his desk and started toward his office door to catch Ianto.

A slight hydraulic hiss made him turn around. Wood, in his experience, did not make that noise on its own.

The box had split and slid open, revealing another carved wooden rectangle. Jack was reminded of those little nesting dolls, except that the top of this interior box was open.

Jack picked up the container, somewhat more carefully than he had before — but nothing alarming happened. There seemed to be something inside it, but he couldn't see for the shadows in the container. He tipped it over, let the contents run out over his hand.

Sand. Soft and cool and yellow, with the silky sting of tiny granules across his skin. Jack found himself frowning at the sand as it pooled in his palm and trickled through his fingers.

An inexplicable shiver crawled up his spine, like that old saying… as if someone had walked over the grave he'd never have. The sand felt familiar somehow…

Could just be all the sand he'd felt over the years. It had been a lot, after all. Lots of memories associated with sand… he'd grown up with it, back on the Peninsula. He'd died an awful lot on it, during the wars, at Normandy…

Lots of memories.

Jack brushed the sand off his fingers; leaving it in a pile on his desk, he strolled out of his office. "So, that whole diary thing doesn't automatically rescind my invitation, does it?" he called to Ianto.

The young man shot him an exasperated glance as he pulled his coat on. "If I said yes, would it teach you a lesson about snooping where your presence is not, in fact, desired at any time?"

Jack pouted a little. "It was just sitting on my desk," he protested. "For all I knew, it was something I'd written to myself about the missing two days."

Ianto snorted. "More like something you left for yourself to find after you wiped your own memory."

Jack shrugged, not bothering to deny that possibility. "So…"

Ianto straightened the collar of his coat, checked the pockets for his keys, and raised one eyebrow at Jack before striding purposefully through the cog door.

Taking the eyebrow for what it was, Jack grabbed his coat and ran after Ianto with a grin.

~fin~

Author's Note: yep, that's all! I had fun with this, so I'm happy that a few people seemed to like reading it. Thanks again to you lovely people who reviewed. See ya next time.