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Title: Epilogue
Author: Jewels
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: BBC's. Not mine.
Summary: The Universe is a bit like an etch-a-sketch. Give it a good hard shake and it'll reset. What do four people from Torchwood do when they find their history at odds with the history of the world? Taking the Doctor Who history-erasure get out of jail free card to its conclusion.
Word Count: 3,118

Note:
So there I sat. Eating lunch, as a lot of people do nearly every day, and was absently thinking about the latest Doctor Who series, and how it provided a nice and convenient retcon for any of Moffat's predecessor's storyarcs and well... my brain started following things through to their natural conclusion somewhere here. I'd been thinking about doing an AU that took off somewhere mid-second series, just because, you know, I can, but in lieu of that, have this. I never got into the whole fix-it fic thing, but I suppose, in my head, I like to think the characters weren't all thrown out of the pram.

This was meant to be a short vignette type thing, more to make me feel good about actually managing to finish something than anything else. I've got about three very long stories on the boil, and it's nice to feel the satisfaction of completion once in a while. Also, it's kinda one of my last dips into the water of TW writing, I think. In my head, everyone's alive and happy, and will remain so. :)

~*~

Gwen Cooper stirred her coffee with a cheap wooden stirring stick, even though the sugar she'd dumped into the mug had no doubt long since dissolved. It gave her something to do with her hands other than clench them, something to look at other than the people she sat with.

"Jack," she said, with finality, after the silence had stretched out for what seemed like an eternity.

"Jack," Ianto Jones agreed. His coffee was black, unsweetened, and untouched.

Toshiko Sato had ordered a tea and kept topping it up to the lip from the little white teapot on the table. "Jack," she said, and nodded thoughtfully.

Owen Harper, his hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, looked at Gwen's drink and frowned. "You know, you really shouldn't be drinking caffeine so far along in your pregnancy."

"Shut the hell up, Owen!" Gwen slammed her fist down on the table in a moment of pure irritation. It made all the mugs not held onto jump, and heads swivelled towards them all around the cafe. Ianto, Tosh and Owen politely ignored her outburst. They'd learnt early on that comments about hormonal shifts in pregnant women would not be appreciated.

As quickly as her ire had seized her, it subsided. Gwen sat back in her chair, and absent-mindedly patted her oversized belly. Slowly, the noise level of the other cafe patrons returned to normal levels. "Fucking Jack," she mumbled, and tossed the stirrer to the table, where it sat in a little puddle of coffee, looking lost and alone.

"If only," Ianto said, with a faint sigh, and sipped at his coffee. He grimaced, whether at the taste or the fact that it was probably only lukewarm at this point being debatable.

"He left again," Tosh said, quietly. She took a single sip of her tea, set it down in the saucer, and topped it off again from the pot. "I'd really hoped... that he was here to say."

"Jack Harkness," Owen said. His voice was heavy with bitterness, and half suppressed grief. None of them had ever truly understood Owen's strange relationship with Jack. Some days Owen seemed to hate him, and on others... "Jack fucking Harkness. Just ups and disappears. No explanation. Don't even know why."

"My head hurts when I think about it," Gwen admitted, and sighed. The baby kicked her internal organs firmly, and she shifted, trying to remember if she'd scoped out where the toilets were on their way in. "Like... he had a reason. I just don't remember very well."

"You were the last to speak to him, weren't you?" Tosh looked at her curiously, and tilted her head. "What did he say?"

Gwen hesitated before she spoke. "He said-" She broke off, scrunched her eyes shut for a moment, then shook her head sharply. "I can't remember. I must have been half asleep. It was the middle of the night, I think."

Ianto's gaze raised from his drink to meet her eyes momentarily, casting his eyes down again quickly. He didn't need to say anything. She could feel the faint resentment that came from him. Why was she the last one to speak to him? Why not him? Why had Jack not bothered explaining to him why he was leaving again?

Gwen had already decided she needed to keep a close eye on him, worried for him. So far, though, he had been going about his duties in a fashioned that could only be described as subdued. None of them knew why Jack had left. Only that one day he was there, and the next he wasn't.

When... when had that been? Gwen struggled to recall the exact date. The day. Her lips thinned as her memory failed, and she reached up to rub her forehead as the tension there threatened to bring on a headache. "We should probably get back to work," she said, dubiously.

Her three colleagues looked at her, their faces showing the same uncertainty that she knew hers did. The problem was that they honestly had no idea what they were there to do.

~*~

The Hub existed. They arrived every day. They sat at their stations. They faced the great machinery at the heart of the underground base, and none of them knew why they were there. It was their job, and they were being paid, but there was no reason why they were there. Torchwood's mandate was to gather technology, to protect humans from threats past, present and future, to advance humanity to the stars. But why Cardiff? There had to be a reason.

Their current working theory was something had altered their memories, making them forget why they were there. Owen had checked them all thoroughly for retcon, and couldn't find any traces in their blood. The fact remained that there was nothing in Cardiff that would require a team of secret alien hunters hiding underground.

Toshiko often spent hours now, standing by the machinery and stroking its cool exterior. "I remember coming here every day," she told Ianto, as her fingers trailed through the water running down the metal sides. "I remember working. I remember... I don't remember. But I remember."

Tosh knew she sounded distressed, but Ianto made no move to soothe her. It was something they all felt. Everything felt wrong. Tosh had examined the machinery and knew that it was designed to contain and manipulate a space time distortion of some sort, but there was no sign of any such thing in Cardiff, nor that there had ever been. Why would the Hub have been built if that was the case? Why would they come in every day?

Jack would know. They all realised that. If Jack were there, he'd know why nothing felt right anymore.

"Jack once called himself a 'fixed point in the universe'," Ianto murmured thoughtfully, and mimicked her touching of the machinery. "If the timeline had changed, he'd know about it. Said he could feel it in his joints." He laughed, faintly, but it was a sad sound, and Toshiko was driven to turn away from the machine and wrap her arms around his midsection in a brief, spontaneous hug. He was clearly surprised, but hugged back after a moment's hesitation.

"Sorry," she muttered, and withdrew. "I think I'm going to go and check on... something. I'm sure there's something around here that needs checking on."

"Right," Ianto said, as she awkwardly resettled her sleeves. "And I'm going to go write an email. I have an idea for someone who might be able to help us."

Tosh looked at him curiously. "Who? It's not like there's anyone else in Torchwood other than us."

"Actually, there is one other person."

~*~

There weren't a lot of people getting off the train, but there was a steady stream, and Ianto scanned the faces, looking for anyone who might be the man he was looking for. There was a teenage couple, nauseatingly fawning over each other and forcing other passengers to step out of the way when they were too busy putting their tongues down each others' throats to watch where they were going. There was a dark haired man in a tie-less business suit, a long coat over the top. He looked like he hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and it gave him a slightly scruffy air. Not an unattractive one, Ianto decided, letting his eyes linger on the man for a moment before reminding himself that he was here for a reason and turning his attention away to scan the passengers again. There was an older man in his sixties who walked with a bit of a shuffle-

"Ianto Jones?"

The slightly scruffy dark haired man that Ianto had glanced over and dismissed stood in front of him, smiling politely. "Yes?"

The man held out his hand. "We spoke over email. Harry Fairfax."

It took a moment for Ianto to realise that he was staring quite rudely at the man, before he shook himself and took the man's hand. His skin was dry, warm, and his grip was firm. "Sorry, I was expecting-"

"My grandfather?" Harry Fairfax's hand disappeared into his coat pocket, and reemerged with a small square of black plastic. He handed it to Ianto. "He died last year, I'm afraid. I took over the running of Torchwood House full time, although I'd been running it for years in truth. My grandfather was a very strange man. I think it's all the years of being surrounded by alien technology that did it."

The card was a Torchwood identity card, with the data stored holographically. Ianto swiped his thumb across the surface, and it displayed the truth behind what Harry Fairfax claimed. Ianto gave him the card back. "I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Fairfax," he said.

"He died in his sleep. There are worse ways to go. And please, call me Harry." The card went back in his pocket, and Harry started to follow after Ianto as they walked towards the car park. "I admit that I was dying with curiosity after you emailed me. My grandfather always used to talk about Cardiff, and Jack Harkness."

Ianto looked sharply at Harry, but the man seemed to not be being derogatory in any way, not like he remembered the people of London being towards Jack Harkness. Why would they have-

Ianto shook off the contradictory recollections with what was starting to be a lot of practice, and said, "Oh?" in as mild a fashion as possible.

"Yes," Harry looked thoroughly amused. "Apparently, he once paid The House a visit, and spent half of it attempting to seduce my grandfather, who was seventy four at the time. He didn't find it very funny, but my grandmother didn't stop laughing for a fortnight."

He lacked the intensity Ianto was used to seeing in Torchwood employees. The knowledge that they were responsible for the future tended to loom large in everyone's minds. It didn't help that Torchwood tended to recruit outcasts, overachievers and genius-level intellects. It made for a group of highly strung individuals. Harry, by contrast, seemed relaxed, laid back. The open buttons at his collar seemed to be mocking Ianto with their lassitude.

He'd sent the email to Torchwood House, asking about aberrations in records regarding Torchwood Cardiff and any information they might have about timeline changes leaving partially intact memories. There weren't exactly a lot of people that they could consult with. UNIT might have had a few specialists, but the two organisations tended to avoid each other as much as possible, and temporal physics wasn't a subject much researched at the average University. It had been a long shot, not expecting much in the way of a response, and he'd been surprised to find that Harry Fairfax had been willing and eager to end into a discussion on the matter. Eventually Harry had offered to come down to Cardiff to discuss it in person.

Ianto wasn't sure what could be gained from looking around the empty Hub, but there was no harm in allowing him to do so.

Gwen was manning the tourist office when they entered, as she most often did these days. Ostensibly it was because it was far more comfortable upstairs than down, and she wanted the warmth and fresh air that the cold and damp Hub couldn't manage. Her status as 'the pregnant one' was used as the trump card in all health matters, but Ianto was privately convinced that it was simply because she hated being down there, like all of them did. The feeling of wrongness got worse the closer you were to the machinery in the middle of the Hub. She greeted Harry with a smile and a handshake and an offer of tea—the last was politely declined—and said she looked forward to hearing what he had to say. Tosh and Owen had found some excuse to leave the Hub, possibly a shopping run to the nearest supermarket, and so the place was empty as Ianto gave Harry a quick tour.

"I checked our records," Harry told Ianto as they finished their tour in the artefact vaults and started to head towards the surface again, "According to the files at Torchwood House, there's nothing in Cardiff of interest. And yet, there is a major installation here. The files give no indication of why there should be a contradiction, and we have all the files." Torchwood House had the main backup, one of several, for all the data systems of the Institute. It also had hard copies of everything that wasn't digital. The British Library could only dream of the shelves hidden beneath the unassuming Victorian mansion.

"Tosh says that the machine," Ianto gestured vaguely towards the device that the Hub was focused around, "Was designed to manipulate time and space."

"Hmm," Harry said. He scratched absently at the stubble on his face. "I wonder. There was never anything here. But what if there was before."

Ianto frowned and started to ask, but Harry held up his hands. "Give me a moment to explain. I have a theory, but it's a little weird. And when I'm done with that, I have what might be a bit of an odd proposition for you."

~*~

"A paradox."

"Four of them. Us." Ianto looked at the three who sat on the bench looking out over the water. He himself hadn't been able to bring himself to sit, instead pacing back and forth as he explained it. "Four living paradoxes. Five, if you count the Hub. None of us should be here. And yet we are."

"So we should be, what, dead? Non-existent?" Owen looked as agitated as Ianto was sure he did himself. "Little atoms of nothingness floating through the cosmos?"

Gwen stroked her belly in an apparently absent-minded expression of anxiety.

Tosh had been wearing a thoughtful look every since Ianto started speaking, nodding slowly along. "If Jack was... is... a 'fixed point' like you said, then whatever he did would always be what happened. Always."

"History changed," Ianto agreed. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. There was a stiff breeze blowing off the water and the tips of his fingers were starting to go numb. "And we changed with it. The spatial-rift that the Hub was designed around never existed. But Jack was here. So the Hub had to be here, because he was. And we had to be here, because he brought us all here."

"I knew it was Jack's fault somehow," Owen said.

"Owen," Gwen murmured, warningly. Owen sat back and folded his arms with a scowl.

"Why don't we remember then?" she asked. "If it happened, it happened, right?"

"But it didn't happen." Tosh leaned forward to look around Owen to speak directly to Gwen. "We're paradoxes, part of a timeline that doesn't exist anymore because that was Jack's timeline. Since he left, this timeline has been trying to fit us back into the normal flow of time, but we can't fit. We weren't supposed to be here, in Cardiff, but we are. So our brains try and fill in the gaps, but they can't. We're only Human."

"Is that why he left?" Ianto wondered. His fingers were tingling slightly. "Because something happened in his timeline that we don't remember? What if we died?"

"If history changed after he left, maybe it wouldn't matter if we were dead. We weren't dead in this timeline. Maybe that's why we're having so much trouble." Tosh sighed and shook her head. "My head hurts."

"So what do we do now?" Owen asked, and they all fell silent for a long time.

"Harry Fairfax had a proposal," Ianto eventually said. "He wants to turn the Torchwood Institute into a scientific research institute. And he wants us to help run it."

Owen snorted faintly. "Isn't that technically what we are now?"

"Technically," Ianto agreed, "He wants to make it less technical and more actual. Go legit. 'Mainstream'. The country doesn't need Torchwood as a group of secret alien technologists. There's only five of us all told. But we have technology, patents, financing. There's a lot that we could do. There are a lot of breakthroughs that could be made with Torchwood's knowledge and funding behind it."

Tosh's eyes lit up, and her voice held a note of excitement. "These days it's harder to get research funding if you can't generate a commercial reason why it's viable. Financing research for the sake of research..."

"We'd have to leave the Hub," Gwen interrupted.

Owen shrugged. "It's not like it's good for anything other than storage these days."

Gwen looked unhappy, but couldn't argue that point.

"Fairfax plans to have Torchwood House, up in Scotland, be the headquarters of the new Institute. It's currently mostly a library, but it wouldn't take much work to convert it. And it's above ground." Ianto took a deep breath. "I'm going. I can't stay here."

Gwen slowly shook her head. "I can't. The baby, Rhys..." She shook her head again, more definitely this time, and offered a small smile. "Besides. Someone has to stick around, just in case Jack shows up again."

Ianto couldn't look at her. "Then you're a stronger person than I am. He's left me twice now. I think it'd kill me if I tried to wait. I deserve more than that."

Tosh and Owen said nothing. Gwen hefted herself awkwardly to her feet, and hugged him. After a moment's hesitation, he returned the embrace. "No," she said, "You're the stronger one for realising that."

Tosh looked like she wanted to go. Her eyes had that excited light that had been missing from them for so long, ever since they had realised the wrongness of the world. Owen looked uncertain.

"Is there a deadline?" he asked.

Ianto shook his head. "Fairfax said it was an open invitation to move up there. No one has to decide now."

He nodded slowly, and looked at Tosh, who gave him a small smile. Ianto knew then that he'd eventually accept as well. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.

He took a deep breath of the chill air that stung his cheeks and made his lungs ache. He couldn't remember why he was in Cardiff, couldn't remember why he'd returned to a place he'd sworn never to come back to after he'd left. And yet, he knew there was a reason. And he knew that he'd realised that his place wasn't so much with Torchwood, but with Jack. And he couldn't remember why.

Maybe it was best if he moved on, tried to forget Jack Harkness and the paradox that was Torchwood Cardiff.

Yes. Probably for the best.

~ End ~