Hart took the passenger seat in the SUV, while Ianto sat in the back and kept his gun trained on the renegade’s head.  Each time Hart gave Jack a direction he also gave him a touch, ostensibly to alert him to an upcoming turn, but Ianto watched like a hawk and understood the psychology of it perfectly: every time Hart made their contact personal, Jack was fractionally less likely to kill him.  Finally, Hart’s hand was left on Jack’s thigh.

“You can keep your hands to yourself, or you can sustain a non-fatal but horrendously painful gunshot wound,” Ianto told him reasonably.  “Once again, your choice.”

Hart’s hand was reluctantly withdrawn.

“Didn’t even realise I was doing it.  That’s the problem when something – someone – is so familiar.”

“Well, if extreme pain will help you focus…”

Ianto must have sounded like he meant it because Hart shifted in his seat, staring out of the side window, and keeping his hands very much to himself.  So he remained as he talked Jack through a pointlessly complicated journey to a secluded, detached bungalow on the outskirts of Lisvane.  Everything looked normal enough, but Jack and Ianto weren’t taking any chances, on high alert as they thoroughly checked the bungalow’s exterior and garden for any nasty surprises.  Hart strolled along in their wake, smiling and shaking his head at their efforts.

“Where are the people who live here?” Jack demanded, amending that to lived here, past tense, because he wasn’t fooling himself about John Hart’s methods for a second.

“Bit of an accident,” Hart replied with a casual shrug.

“What kind of an accident?”

“Fatal kind.”

“How many fatalities?”

Ianto was already using his PDA to check Torchwood’s database.

“Brian and Alison Kenning.  They had three children: eight, seven, and five years old.”

Ianto glanced at Jack with undisguised concern, knowing that his partner would assume responsibility for these deaths, as he had every other recent victim of Hart’s crimes.  Jack’s attention, however, was completely on Hart.

“Why?” he asked, face grim.

Hart gave a short laugh.

“Come on, Jack, you know me.  You know me.”

“I know what you’ve become.”

“We’re the same.”

“No, we are not!” Jack all but screamed, as furious as Ianto had ever seen him.  “We.  Are.  Not.”

Ianto saw a flash of reciprocal anger on Hart’s face, but it was quickly replaced with a manufactured nonchalance, the main purpose of which seemed to be keeping Jack as pissed off as possible.  It made no sense to Ianto but, then again, neither did Hart.

“Shall we go in?” Hart asked, offering to let them lead and playacting disappointment when Jack made it plain he wasn’t about to take that stupid a risk.  “Such little faith,” Hart observed, and let himself into the bungalow, allowing Jack to herd him into the living room.

Aside from the kind of disorder that indicated a thorough search, the room appeared to be as the family had left it; as per the entry hall, there were no indications of any traps having been laid.

“Excuse the mess,” Hart said as he kicked some of the family’s scattered belongings to the far corners of the room.  “Wasn’t expecting company.”

And neither Jack nor Ianto were expecting what might very well be the truth in the midst of Hart’s lies.  Everything indicated that Hart hadn’t considered he’d be tracked back to this place and, consequently, it had been left undefended.

“Search the other rooms,” Jack told Ianto.  “Be careful.”

Ianto nodded and left.

“Very sweet,” Hart observed in his absence.  “How much you trust him.”

“I have no reason not to.”

“”Y’know…”  Hart’s voice softened.  “That could be us.”

“No.”

“We were good together, business and pleasure.”

“How could I ever trust you again?  You’ve infected me with something that ensures I’ll always doubt my own judgement.  But worse than that?  You’ve condemned Ianto to a living death for no better reason than spite.  Shoot myself on a regular basis and, one day, I’ll find myself the cure, but Ianto doesn’t have the luxury of time.  Even if it were possible to forgive what you’ve done to me, I could never, never forgive what you’ve done to him.”

“But he’s…”

“Same way I can never forgive you for what happened to Gray.”

“What!  It wasn’t me that pulled the trigger.”

“You allowed him to be released from cryo, and that got him killed.  Maybe, at some point in the future, he could have been helped, he could have been treated and rehabilitated.  One day I might have had my brother back, but you’ve put an end to that dream.”

“That’s not a dream, that’s a fantasy.  He was beyond help.”

“You think I don’t know that?  You think it matters?  Sometimes hope is all we have and you took mine away.  You want us to be together?  How can that happen when, every time I think of you, I wish I’d never known you.”

“I saved your life.”

“I’m not fooling myself about Gray, about how damaged he was, he was always going to be a threat to me and the people I hold dear.  But if, instead of using your knowledge to score points, you’d’ve told me about Gray and his circumstances, it’s likely that all of this could have been avoided.  Gray would be alive now, as would Toshiko and Owen and countless others, and this city – my city – would still be in one piece.”

“And me?”

“I’d be glad you’d come back into my life, instead of looking forward to seeing you dead.”

For the first time it seemed as if Hart was seriously considering his actions and their consequences.

“I didn’t exactly plan it this way.”

“Excuses won’t cut it.  You cost me Gray, I will not let you cost me Ianto too.”

“Jack, I…”

As Hart stepped toward Jack, Jack unsubtly retreated, face distorted with revulsion.

“Don’t.  You think I want you near me looking like that?”

“It was this or die.”

“Your point?” Jack asked caustically.

“This can be cured.  Find the right nanogenes outside of this retarded planet and I’ll be back to normal.”

“I don’t care about you being cured.  If Ianto isn’t cured, you and your shiny makeover will become intimate friends with the mortuary sooner rather than later.”

Hart wandered to the nearest armchair and sat, perched on the edge, elbows on knees, chin on knotted fingers, as he mulled over his situation.  Eventually he leant back and stared at Jack.

“What’s it worth?  The cure for…”  Hart nodded in the direction that Ianto had taken.  “What’s it worth to you?”  Jack didn’t answer, he just carried on staring at Hart with increasingly familiar contempt.  “It’s not here, but I know where I can get it.  We can get it.”

“Where is it?”

“The planet of origin.  With a fast ship it’s a week or so away.  Ianto might be getting dozy by the time we get back, but once he has the antidote…”

“Hey!” Jack interrupted.  “Right now, I’m not crazy.  I am not giving you a ticket out of here.”

“Watch him wilt away to nothing then, but when you get tired of fucking his mindless body, don’t accuse me of not offering to help.”

Jack couldn’t deny the reflexive action that brought his Webley up, the target being that inviting spot between Hart’s brows.  His finger was poised on the trigger when Ianto appeared in the doorway.

“Jack, I—”

“What is it?”

“Don’t mind me,” Ianto said amiably as he quickly assessed the situation.  “Carry on, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

A smile twitched at the corners of Jack’s lips and he lowered the gun fractionally.

“You find anything?”

“Most of the rooms don’t appear to have been touched, just this one, the kitchen and a bedroom.  But there’s an attic hatch in the utility room and a fairly rank smell coming from it.”

“The family?”

“I haven’t checked yet, but I’m assuming so.  The access is fairly cramped and I didn’t want to chance it being the one part of the building with a trap laid.”

“Okay.”  Jack waved Hart to his feet.  “After you.”

“You must be joking, can you imagine what it’s like in there?”

“We don’t have to imagine, thanks to you we get to find out.”

Not so much swagger in his walk now, Hart reluctantly went to the utility room and paused, staring at the hatch.  The smell was pretty much unbearable with it closed; despite the necessity, no-one was looking forward to it being opened.

“Can’t we just raze this place?” Hart asked Jack.  “Make a nice funeral pyre, plus…give you a bit of peace of mind over those non-existent traps.”

Another waft of foul odour and, just for a moment, Jack looked sorely tempted, however:

“Get up there.  Now.”

A jab from the Webley’s muzzle to the small of Hart’s back emphasised Jack’s order, and Hart groaned in anticipation of what was to come; he released the hatch and the access panel swung down, a blast of fetid air making all three men gag.  Wiping watering eyes, Hart brought down the ladder and, with a last, accusing look at Jack, started up.  Gesturing for Ianto to stay put, Jack kept close behind Hart, ensuring that he wouldn’t have time to gain any kind of advantage from being the first to higher ground, and certainly wouldn’t have the time to arm himself in any way.  But Hart did nothing other than lead Jack into the attic, and the only action he took was the obvious one of covering his nose and mouth the best he could to keep out the foulness.

“Where’s the light switch?” Jack gasped as he stepped off the top rung of the ladder.

“Never found it,” Hart choked in response.

“Ianto!  Any torches down there?”

They listened to the sound of drawers and cupboards opening and shutting.

“I’ve found a couple.  You want me to come up?”

“Afraid so.”

Ianto hurried up the ladder, immediately handing a torch to Jack and, ignoring Hart’s waiting hand, keeping the second for himself.  Both torches were switched on, but within a second both went out.  Not the kind of coincidence Jack took kindly to.

“Ianto, get out of—”

His words were cut short as the ladder folded back into the attic so violently that it caught his thighs and sent him falling into the darkness.  The hatch door slammed shut, leaving the room virtually without light.

“On consideration…” Hart’s amused voice emerged from the gloom, “…that could have been classed as a trap.”

Keeping his gun trained on the last place he’d seen Hart, Ianto edged over to what appeared to be a masked dormer window.  As he reached it and found, to his dismay, that it had been painted black as opposed to being covered with something that could be pulled away, a fluorescent light flickered on over their heads.  Blinking against the sudden flood of brightness, Ianto took a fast and guarded look around what proved to be a completely empty room before turning to Jack; his partner was struggling to his feet, grimacing at the pain in his legs, and he welcomed Ianto’s timely helping hand.  As one they looked to where Hart stood, casually studying them.

“This life you’ve made,” he said, almost wistfully, to Jack.  “Am I meant to be happy for you?  Inspired?  Should I have followed your lead and become a minor god amongst men – not hard when you’re surrounded by far lesser mortals, I suppose, but ultimately…”  Hart sighed and shook his head.  “Get me out of here, Jack.  Get us out of here.”

“I belong here.”

“But that’s just it,” Hart protested, “you don’t!  How can a man so full of life exist in a society that hasn’t yet discovered how to live?  In our timeline, the one we should be observing, these creatures are barely upright.  You may get petulant about me damaging a few but, if you’re honest, you’ll admit to yourself that I’m merely culling the dregs of a too-imperfect race.”

There was a tense pause before Jack spoke.

“Where are the bodies?”

“Bodies?” Hart repeated.  “Oh, the bodies, the family.  Come off it, I’m no amateur, I don’t clutter up my workspace with corpses.”

“The smell…”

“Well, that’s this thing.”

“What?”

Hart strolled further into the room.

“Like I said…”  He waved a hand into the emptiness.  “This thing.”

The air in the room seemed to tremble and billow before them; it was as if a curtain was gradually shaken away, and the reason for the stench shimmered into view.  An alien, humanoid in shape, was manacled to the farthest wall.  More than manacled: it was clamped and nailed into place.  It’s entire body had been mutilated, cables and circuit boards had been brilliantly, if barbarically, wired into place: sewn into flesh, screwed into bone, some areas were even welded to create what had to be agonising junctions of metal and seared skin.  The skull had been stripped of its scalp and now wore a nightmare wig of high-tech fibres that had been introduced to the brain.  Inconvenient parts of limbs or torso had been hacked away and were either hanging from the creature, or scattered at its feet, rotting and maggot-laden.  The source of the stomach-churning smell.  Hart’s weapons were jammed into apertures cut in the creature’s neck and gut, evidently powering some part of this obscene operation, and a power light flickered as the alien attempted to look at Jack with the eye that wasn’t welded to his cheek and sprouting a dozen wires that disappeared into a jury-rigged contraption attached to a trailing telephone point.

“My God,” emerged from Jack in a horrified whisper, “what have you done?”

“You don’t recognise the race?  Try harder.  You should know, even if this thing isn’t looking its best at the moment.”

As Jack stared, Ianto swallowed down bile and leant into his side.

“What can we do for it?” he murmured.  “It must be in such agony.”

“First we have to understand what’s happening here,” Jack replied, voice growing firmer as he managed to steel himself against the appalling sight before him.  Aware that Ianto was armed and covering Hart, Jack very deliberately put away his gun, displaying his empty hands to the alien.

“Let me explain,” Hart began with a flourish.  “This is my personal interface to the world.  Eye Candy, meet a representative of the Jukulka.  They’re actually a bunch of real bastards so you can channel some of that pity back into your reserve tank.”

“Jukulka,” Ianto repeated with a frown, trying to recall the details attached to that vaguely familiar name.

“Famed – and usually avoided – throughout the universe, they’re a bunch of vile, self-serving mercenaries.  But…they have rather amazing mental abilities and a physiology that’s part mechanoid, but organic mechanoid, if you can wrap your stunted little mind around that extraordinary concept.  These creatures are worth their weight in…you name it.  Normally they carry equipment to interface themselves into any particular civilisation’s version of the internet, but we had a bit of a tussle and this one’s gear got damaged so…desperate times, desperate measures.  This may not be tidy, but it’s very effective.”

“You’re telling me…”

“I’ve been everywhere, Ianto Jones.  If there’s been any scrap of technology involved, I’ve been there, with you, every step of the way.  Web-cam in your flat?  Then, yes, you certainly have been haunted,” Hart chuckled at Ianto’s indignant expression.  “None of your precious machines can keep out thought, can they?”

“You stole its nanogenes,” Jack observed.  What remained of the alien’s undamaged skin showed too many similarities to Hart’s to be coincidental.

“You have no idea of how many tricks this beauty had up its sleeve.  It’s not all about the technology either.  Know what you can filter from it’s venom sacs?  Here’s a clue, works like…”

Hart clicked his fingers to attract the alien’s attention, then pointed at Ianto; the toxin infecting him was activated and worked with frightening speed, barely giving Jack time to catch him as he collapsed.  Jack gently lowered Ianto to the floor, cradling him and tapping his cheek in a desperate attempt to keep him alert.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Hart continued smugly.  “It’s almost as if they have a telepathic link with their own venom.  No, on second thoughts…it’s more like e-mail.  That’s how those remotes work: a drop of venom on the contacts, this thing primed and waiting for a prompt, press the button, the mail’s sent and received and – in an example close to your heart – your brother’s liberated, thought free, and ready for his killing spree.  It’s brilliant.  And it’s deadly, in more ways than one.  Kill the alien and, right now, with him engaged, the transferred shock will kill your preferred sex toy.  Leave the alien alive, and watch Mr Jones sleep all the way to his grave.  And do I even need to point out that, if you kill me, my associate here will take decisive action.”

“Ianto, c’mon, stay awake, please, for me.”

“That won’t work, you fool.  Pleading’s hardly going to defeat millions of years of Jukulka evolution.”

“This is about you and me, leave Ianto out of it.”

Desperation and frustration contorted Hart’s face.

“But I can’t move you, Jack, can’t sway you.  All I have left is manipulating your pawns to get your attention.”

“Stop this,” Jack hissed furiously.

“Make it worth my while.”

“What do you want?”

“You,” Hart replied without hesitation.  “What we can achieve together.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”  A barely-there gesture from Hart, and Ianto became a dead-weight in Jack’s arms, any last trace of consciousness completely gone.  “No,” Jack groaned to himself, “Ianto.”

“Don’t think this thing’s got much life left in it.  Shame if it died before…”

“We don’t negotiate unless Ianto is awake.  I mean it.”

There was a stilted pause; Jack didn’t notice any kind of instruction from Hart to the alien this time, but Ianto shuddered in Jack’s arms before his eyes flickered half-open.

“Jack?” he murmured.

“It’s okay, it’ll be okay.”

With a supreme effort, Ianto managed to make an arm work, caressing Jack’s hand with a trembling touch.

“How are you controlling it?” Jack asked Hart, although he never looked away from Ianto.

“Don’t know really,” Hart answered, too easily it seemed to Jack.  He looked to Hart, and found him preoccupied with gazing at him and Ianto, at their very evident intimacy.  “A by-product of its own telepathic abilities?  Something to do with the nanogenes, maybe.”

“And why does it give you whatever you want?”

“It thinks I’ll let it live when I’m done here.  Give it back it’s nanogenes, and—  Why, Jack?” Hart effectively interrupted himself.  “Why him?”

“Why not you, you mean?”

“There isn’t much in this universe that I want, but most of those things I can’t have without a business partner.  Without you.  And now, with what you’re capable of…”

“No.  Plain enough for you?  No.  Find someone else.”

“I can’t recreate those years we spent together with anyone else.”

“That doesn’t suggest a purely business relationship.”

“Yes, all right, I want it all.  I can’t waste time starting from scratch with someone new, I can’t even find anyone that makes me stop and consider investing that amount of effort.”

“And I’m the easy option?  Hate to break it to you, but if you’re hoping to flatter me back into your life you’re aiming a little wide of the mark.”

“I can be honest with you.  And I respect you.”  Hart grit his teeth at Jack’s derisive snort.  “I respect you.  Everyone else…  See, this thing, for example, this thing was a business partner,” Hart continued, indicating the alien and ignoring the disgust on Jack’s face that he’d do this to someone he actually knew.  “We’ve known each other for a good few years.  Since I found you, we usually met up on Earth.”

“I’d’ve known.  Our monitoring system…”

“You would have noticed the activity, of course, but you wouldn’t have noticed the Jukulka – any of them, not just this one – same way as you didn’t notice me when I used their methods.”

“What methods?”

“Always bring a decoy.  Something neutral, disinteresting enough to have alerted you to Rift activity but something that’ll make you glad that nothing dangerous came through.  I went for inanimate objects, bits of space junk, occasional fifty-first century reminder of home for you, but the Jukulka use other aliens.  Every so often you pick up something that can’t remember its own name?  That’ll be a reluctant decoy that experienced a little Jukulkan tinkering to make it more amenable.”

“Wait.  Did you bring them here?” Jack demanded.  “Did you introduce the Jukulka to Earth?”

“They’re always on the lookout for new business arenas, and it was convenient for me.  The venom was one of many past transactions.  I thought one day I’d send you into a coma, then step in and become the saviour who could revive you.  I even managed to fool myself that your people would accept losing you if it meant saving you.”

“Partner or bounty?  Which is the truth?”

“Bounty?”

“Which world are we looking at, which race?  Which bounty made all this worthwhile?”

Hart released an abrupt laugh.

“Oh, that bounty.  You fell for that?  Well…suppose I did put on a good show.”

“It sounds pretty credible to me.”

The innocent expression on Hart’s face fell away.

“All right.  It’s an option.  But only if you make all other possibilities unworkable.”

“What then?  If you’d put me in a coma and had to bring me around?”

“This thing would’ve done it for me.  Woken you with a thought, maybe even made a few memory adjustments to stop you being difficult.”

“And then…?”

“I allowed the two of you to wake up this morning, I hope you appreciate that.”

“And then?” Jack pressed.

“We could have had a wild time; I can’t fathom why you prefer to be shackled to that.”  Hart pointed accusingly at Ianto.  “We had fun, Jack, we were fun.  More than that, we were legendary.  Remember when we…”

As Hart wallowed in their past glories, enthusing about deeds that Jack would have willingly paid to forget, Jack focused on the alien.  The telepaths he’d personally encountered ranged from barely able to interpret the number you were thinking of, to those that could mentally dissect another mind with terrifying brilliance.  Jack had had several run-ins with the Jukulka, long ago, and he’d never been aware of this ability in them.  But he suspected that there might only be a single way to get Ianto out of this in one, conscious, compos mentis piece.  He began to think to the alien, frantically pushing thoughts at it, anything and everything that might touch its unfamiliar soul; Jack offered it his mind and his being, battering it with memories of love and so, so much loss, being totally open about his feelings for the debilitated young man now at its mercy.

“…and when we got back?  All we had to do was convince Commander Stewart that it was suicide.  As if someone’s going to literally slice themselves to death, but that idiot fell for it.  Ician emeralds, that was.  If it sparkles in the sun I’m a sucker for it.  After you went off, there was a holy palace on Croff where they were hoarding these blessed stones for the final coming of some deity or other.  Well, I…”

Jack forced long-abandoned memories of Hart to the surface of his mind, and then to the alien, all the reasons why he’d had to get away from him, the deceit, the cruelty, the complete disregard for all life other than his own.  He recalled the sensation of being murdered by Hart such a short time before, he let the creature experience what he’d felt as he was shoved off a multi-storey building to plummet helplessly to the ground; he shared his utter hopelessness over this irredeemable man.  Wondering if any of this was getting through, despairing that it simply wasn’t enough, Jack concocted a new scenario in his mind, picturing himself and Ianto helping to save and heal the Jukulka, protecting it from Hart’s ongoing attempts at brutality.  And Jack believed the scene he was creating, knowing that once the alien’s nanogenes were recovered, it really would have a chance of survival.

Another weak, fumbling touch from Ianto, and Jack refocused on him, seeing the anguish on his face and wondering what exactly Hart had been talking about.  Whatever, it was a past Jack had fled from, it was immaterial.  Now was all that mattered.  He leant down to place a gentle kiss on Ianto’s brow, wanting to comfort, to draw comfort, but also knowing that the alien would sense his fear that this kiss may be their last, a final goodbye.

“Don’t ignore me,” warned Hart, infuriated by Jack’s undivided attention to Ianto.  “You want me to kill him?”  Hart snatched up Ianto’s gun from where it had dropped when he’d started to pass out.  “If that’s the only way to…”

“You don’t want to do this,” Jack interrupted, “any of this.  I recognise what’s happening to you because you’re me, how I became when I arrived here, angry, bitter, lashing out because I felt lost and abandoned.”

“But I’m not you, and I certainly don’t want to be what you’ve become.  You can change though,” Hart continued feverishly, “I’ll make you change.”

“This is insane – you’re insane – and if you can’t see how wrong this is then I don’t know what to do with you other than…”

“Nullification?” Hart sneered.  “And you think you’re so much better than me.”

“If killing you is the only way to stop you then you’re giving me no choice.  You’ve abused this creature and then been stupid enough to let it into your head, can’t you see that—”

All three of the men twitched in discomfort as an unpleasant sensation trickled through their minds, a dull tickle they would have scratched their brains raw to relieve if they’d had sufficient access.  Jack wasn’t sure if the alien was dying or opting out of these spiteful games but, to his heartfelt relief, Ianto began to stir, able to sit up with a little help from Jack, who was determinedly putting his own body in the line of fire.

“No,” Hart snarled at them, “stay where you are.”

Jack looked back at Hart, glaring contemptuously beyond Ianto’s gun and into Hart’s eyes.

“The creature’s dying, can’t you feel it?  You’re done here, it’s over.”

“Think I’m helpless without some monster?  This isn’t over.  At least not until there’s one more corpse on your conscience.”

Hart ducked to the left, aiming at Ianto’s head.  As he fired, Jack heaved Ianto aside; a bullet zipped through Jack’s clothes, taking no more than a sliver of skin off his shoulder.

Whether it was the uncontrollable burst of anxiety Jack felt for Ianto’s safety that prompted it, or the alien simply attempting to undo some of the damage it had done, before Hart could squeeze the trigger a second time he was gasping and fighting to stay upright, his free hand flying to his temple as a bolt of intense pain hit him.

Jack reached for his Webley and the movement, the obvious intent, reinvigorated Hart.  Once again the gun rose, sights now fixed on Jack, who he was more than willing to temporarily kill to get at Ianto.  Jack was blown onto his back by a single shot before Hart froze, his expression morphing from curiosity to shock to agony, and with a hideous scream that reflected the most excruciating inner torture, Hart buckled, falling to his knees.

Blood pouring from his nose and ears, he turned on the Jukulka, meeting its one functional eye with a truly manic expression.  Ianto may have been still recovering and struggling to find his feet, but he easily read Hart’s intent and lurched toward him, grabbing for the gun, only fractionally too late to prevent two bullets shattering the alien’s skull; Ianto was clubbed to his knees with the gun’s grip before further shots ploughed decisively into the alien’s ravaged torso.

Jack moaned quietly as he held his head in his hands, but it wasn’t anything to do with pain from the wound in his side; only as the creature lost its hold on life had Jack realised the depth of the connection that he’d made with it, experiencing the trauma of sharing another being’s death.

With the last nauseating tickle in his mind came a transferred mental picture, Ianto's brutal demise through John Hart’s eyes, and that vision was all Jack needed to pull himself together in record time.  He scrambled up to see Hart staggering to where Ianto had managed to crawl, gun gripped in two hands to quell ferocious trembling, ensuring that the weapon was pointed doggedly and lethally at its target.

It was as if every death Jack had ever witnessed due to Torchwood flashed before his eyes, and Ianto was not to be the next.  There was no further thought involved, sheer instinct kicked in as Jack’s overwhelming need to protect his partner came to the fore, and such was his mindless fervour to put an end to this that later he wouldn’t clearly remember the moment when he hollered for this madness to stop and emptied the Webley into Hart’s body.  Bullet after bullet ripped into the man’s head and chest, tearing through him at such close range, the gun clicking and clicking as Jack continued to fire even when he was out of ammunition.

“Jack.”  Ianto’s hands wrapped around Jack’s, easing his finger off the trigger and bringing the weapon down.  “It’s over.  He’s dead.”

Jack shook his head hard, trying to shift the impression that none of this was quite real; some of it wasn’t, of course, and it would be a while before he finally got past the fact that he wasn’t a dying Jukulka.  A concerned murmur from Ianto grounded him; with an emotional jolt, Jack fully recognised himself and his situation, and very nearly wept with relief as he accepted that the threat Hart posed was finally over and his people were safe.  In a daze, he reached out and clasped Ianto to him.

“Jack, your side.  Careful.”

“I’m healing, I’m okay, we’re okay.”

“Yes, but…”

Jack shushed Ianto and they clung to one another as they allowed themselves a little restorative peace.

“We should find those nanogenes,” Ianto mumbled in due course, despite giving no indication of wanting to move away.

“We should.”

“How much can they repair?  Is the Jukulka beyond help?”

“In retrospect, I think it was before we even got here.”

“Poor thing.”

“Hart was right about that race being a bunch of bastards.”

“Then why did it let me go?  Why did it turn on Hart?”

“I was thinking to it, hoping its telepathy was that good.  I told it about us, and what we’d been through, what we’d lost, and…how I couldn’t bear to lose you too.  I pictured us freeing it.  Helping it.”

“You thought me alive,” Ianto whispered in awe.

“I suppose I did.  But, ultimately, it had to be about self-preservation rather than us.  The Jukulka aren’t known for their goodness.  If there’s a conflict and one side is recognized for its senseless and arbitrary cruelty, mercenary behaviour and over-zealous assassins, that’s where you’ll find them.”

“Are you sure Hart doesn’t have Jukulka blood in him?”

“He doesn’t – didn’t – even have that excuse.  Just a small player’s lust for unattainable power.  I underestimated him.  Forgot what he was capable of.  Or, perhaps…”  Jack paused in thought.  “Perhaps it wasn’t quite as simple as that.  Did you feel the creature in your mind?”

“I think so.  It was…  Can’t describe it.  Not nice.”

“If Hart has been living with that, who’s to know if he was entirely sane at the end?  Too much telepathic contact can be detrimental to an untrained mind.”

“The Jukulka’s longing to regain control of its situation, to escape, might have exacerbated Hart’s own feelings of being trapped and powerless.  Because Hart saw you as his escape route, his need for you grew out of all proportion.”

“I don’t mind reasons, but I won’t have excuses,” Jack warned.  “You sound as if…”

“Not excuses,” Ianto assured.  “Hart brought this all on himself.  The Jukulka…  If somebody imprisoned and tortured me like that, I think I’d go mad.  If I had the means I doubt I’d either want to, or be capable of, stopping myself inflicting that madness on the person responsible for my condition.”

“Yes, maybe that’s—”  Jack abruptly let the subject go, unable to cope with even the thought of Ianto in that situation.  He leant back slightly to study Ianto’s face.  “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.  Awake.  Other than a sore head, completely normal.”

“Good.”

Ianto reciprocated more cautiously.

“You okay?”

“My coat needs mending, I’m covered in blood, my side and legs hurt, but…”

“I meant…”

“I know what you meant.”  Jack gave Ianto a soft smile before returning to the situation in hand.  “This won’t be the easiest clean up.  You ready for it?”

Ianto glanced over at the alien.  He’d been eager to get his hands on Hart’s technology, but this wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting.

“Let’s just get it over with.”  A fortifying kiss later, Ianto wriggled out of Jack’s hold and to the window, forcing it open to let in a little fresh air.  “Call Gwen, she’s at Tom Caldwell’s, along with the other part we sent.”  Ianto chuckled at Jack’s bewildered expression.  “She’ll explain.  Give them my love, tell them I’m looking forward to seeing them.”

As Jack made the call, Ianto took a closer look at the Jukulka, but not for long: it was all he could do to keep from heaving at the mess Hart had made of it, and that was before the damage done by the bullets.  He moved on to Hart’s body, once again checking every potential hiding place, this time searching for the nanogenes rather than the antidote.  And, once again, the search proved fruitless, but then he noticed, a short distance from the body, a flat metal container that was definitely not of local origin.  Its position indicated that it could have been thrown from the body as it fell, but Ianto couldn’t take a guess as to where it had been dislodged from.  ‘Nanogenes?’ he mouthed to Jack as he held up the box, and at Jack’s nod he slipped them into Jack’s coat pocket.  Bracing himself he returned to the alien and was examining a makeshift drain that Hart had stabbed into its neck, when Jack joined him.

“Everyone says hi; Gwen and Rhys will be back tomorrow.”

Ianto pointed to the drain.

“Is this…?”

“That’s into the creature’s venom sac, yes.  Maybe if we get some venom in its pure form, Catherine will be able to use it to create a cure.”

“Yes.  We’ll, umm…  How do we do that?”

“You’re looking unusually green around the gills.  How about I take care of this?”

Ianto gratefully accepted the offer and, after having a fair amount of difficulty persuading the ladder and hatch to drop, escaped the attic and headed for the SUV and the supplies needed to deal with this particular aftermath.

When he returned he brought the camera with him, and let Jack take the necessary photographs for their reports and records.  He got on with bagging up Hart, and sorting through a pile of clothes and equipment heaped in the corner of the room.

“These are the Jukulka’s belongings,” he told Jack.  “We should take a few pictures of the clothes for our database in case they’re a style we can look out for in future.  Samples for analysis too, on the off-chance that we can scan for the materials.  If they do visit this place regularly…”

Ianto’s voice trailed off as he pulled a clutch of fine plastic sheets from the Jukulkan version of a duffel bag.  Even if the language eluded him, Ianto recognised the format of the sheets easily enough: these were assignments.  This alien had apparently been in Wales on business, and that business appeared to include a clutch of assassinations.  More than that, three sheets down, Ianto recognised the targets.  He showed the picture he’d found to Jack.

“These are the people we wanted to take on Eleth, the couple who run the dry cleaners in Swansea.  Gwen said they were terrified at being tracked down and the rest of us thought they were being paranoid so long after leaving their world.”

“We’d have heard if they’d been hit.”

“This is…  How huge does a coincidence have to be before we accept it’s no longer a coincidence?”

“What are you thinking?”

“Were we set up?  Did we find these people for them, so they could be—”  Ianto came to an abrupt halt before turning away in distress.

“Ianto?”  When an immediate answer wasn’t forthcoming, Jack crossed to Ianto and laid a hand on his arm.  “What is it?”

“A decoy,” Ianto reminded him miserably.  “They use a decoy.”

It took a few seconds for Jack to understand the implications.

“You think…?”

“Eleth.”

“You can’t know that, her arrival could have been completely coincidental.”

“Too coincidental, don’t you think?  The same race as the couple in Swansea?”

“There was no guarantee we’d approach them.”

“But even the slightest chance we would…”

“Ianto, listen to me.  Hart said that these decoys couldn’t remember their own names, and Eleth was clever, she was bright, she was…”

“Perfect.”  The level of bitterness in Ianto’s voice was chilling.  “And what he actually said was that if the chosen decoy was reluctant, they’d be brainwashed to make them amendable.  Eleth wasn’t reluctant, she was desperate to escape her world and, yes, she was clever, she was bright enough to manipulate all of us.  A lost child, given to people in mourning, who are so eager to put something right that…”

“We’ll work out the timing, see if the Jukulka and Eleth could have arrived together.”

“The first time Hart approached me about making a deal, and therefore when he must have secured the ‘services’ of this creature, was the first evening that Eleth was at the Hub.  Whether, at that point, they were simply working together or Hart had him up here, it fits, Jack.  It fits perfectly.  Eleth was their decoy and, under the circumstances, they couldn’t have chosen better.”

“Ianto…”

“We need to move that couple away from Swansea, we don’t know who else has this information.”

“Okay.  But right now, let’s finish here.  I want this over with, all of it.  Later, we can…”

Ianto shrugged off Jack’s hand and sympathy, returning to his work silently and sourly, trying his best to bear the loss of faith in his own judgement without crumbling.  Jack watched, filled with sadness and reminded of times in his past when disillusionment seemed all that was left.  He could have put more of an argument forward, but he was uncomfortably sure that Ianto was right about Eleth, and ‘You get used to it,’ wasn’t exactly the kind of consolation anyone needed to hear under the circumstances.

As he returned to the Jukulka, Jack glanced down at Hart’s wrecked body, relieved that another of the dangers he’d unintentionally lured to Cardiff had been dealt with.  Relieved, yet…

“After what he’s done I’m beyond having pity for him, but this…  However I thought it would be, it’s an empty satisfaction,” he said to himself.

Ianto surprised him by answering.

“I understand that.”

“You do?”

“I do.”  Ianto’s tone was quite bleak, but the compassion was genuine.  “Even if it’s the ugliest building you’ve ever seen in your life, even if its substance is rotten through and through, you don’t want it demolished if it reminds you of home.”

Jack thought about that for several, heart-rending seconds, but it only took a moment longer for Jack to be hit with the realisation that, after so many rootless years, here was home, and now was home.  But most of all, here and now, Ianto was home.

“Hey,” he called softly.  Ianto looked questioningly in his direction.  “You know that thing I don’t get to say to you?”  Ianto almost smiled, and nodded.  “Know that I do.  More than you can imagine.”

Ianto considered that, and the almost smile became real – weak and impossible to maintain, but real.  The look they shared offered them the briefest respite from the blood and gore around them, and then it was back to business, albeit with marginally less heavy hearts.