Title: The 12th Hour (epilogue [3/3])
- Characters: the Doctor, Ianto, Jack, two OCs (Jack/Ianto±Doctor)
Rating: PG
Summary: This Doctor keeps his word. Now it's time to start anew.
Notes: ._. I need a British beta.

If one were to go here: (http:// www. wingeo .com/ patterns/ 300series/ patrn325 .jpg) Ianto's coat is the 1850s design...without the bowtie. And for reference, this chapter only took nine months to finish. Procrastination is the friend that the "with friends like these..." adage was made for.

- b - e - g - i - n -

Jack almost felt a privilege of sorts, watching the Doctor sift around his scavenged things. How many people could claim they had been in the company of more than two incarnations of the roguish Time Lord? His Doctor had been all he had known for a good part of his life until he met the next face of the line-up; they were two entirely different personalities with the one same tang that left an indeniable impression: both were cut from the same cloth.

And this Doctor, his Time Lord/Tea-boy trail mix, had that tang as well. It mirrored his predecessors in the way he spoke, and how he spoke of them, somehow different between faces but simply...him.

Of course, now he understood what Sarah Jane had said about the Doctor having once been eccentric and flamboyantly attired. His Doctor had not been (oh how the leather looked on that man), the succeeding version had been...well, he only appeared well dressed until you saw his shoes and wondered what back-lot tramp alley he was coughed up from. Jack had begun to wonder what this Doctor had been like, personally and visually before donning Ianto's suit, and if any of the posh wear had somehow managed influenced the fashion monstrosity he was wearing.

The dress coat was circa mid-19th century, tucked like a waistcoat but sturdier, cut from pinkish-red suede (of all material, of all the shades), and had curving tails to the knees. Had the rest of his outfit been similar to the time period, Jack wouldn't have been tempted to call him a Frankenstein of time. The rest was just a black tee and pale beige cargo pants teeming with pockets Jack already joked were bigger on the inside. One leather glove on the left hand, simple black trainers, and metal-rimmed rider goggles dangling from around his neck.

He painted an odd picture of mish-mash, but if the universe could produce a creature capable of pulling off both formal and so-informal-it-is-almost-trashy-gaudy wear, this man was it; who was Jack to criticize? The Doctor made it doable. Ianto made it doable.

"I'm surprised you were even able to hook half this stuff up to the hetherary batterix." The Doctor looked back at him. "How long did it take?"

"Nine, ten months." Jack grinned for the Time Lord's benefit. "It wasn't like I had to worry about much else."

The Doctor faced forward again and Jack's face masked over. "Wireless receptors, grainy picture-- oh, Moira's coming back down."

Jack was expecting Mallory to follow shortly after--they never seemed far from each other--but no second body was forthcoming, even as Moira hit the third monitor of five. "I did the best I could."

"Which is impressive that it only took you that long." The Doctor stood up from his crouch and spun on his heels with a sober look. "Anything else you want brought up?"

There was not much left to begin with. What Jack had salvaged was not comparable to what had been left behind, not even a tenth of the equipment they had had. Half was unrepairable, and the rest was too huge and integrated into each other to work outside the ship. "Few odds and ends." He swept his arm about the small space, which had grown slightly bigger with the removal of several things. "I can get them myself."

Which was silent, secret code for: "I don't want you to see. Not yet."

The Doctor nodded, ambiguous to whether he caught what wasn't said or not. "What about your ship?"

"No." No, he did not want to go back there. It was a scorched ruin now, deliberately so. The soil was too compact to crack and too dry to hold; erosion was this planet's natural environmental state, and he'd used it. Burned his crewmates--and one lover--properly and let nature take its due course. The half-year wind season for the top surface was due in a week, and if last year's had not blown the remnants to fragments of metal and calcium, this year's surely would. "There's nothing there."

"If you feel that way." One of the things Jack had not prepared for was having to share this space with two people. The way Jack had fashioned had really only been meant for himself with little room to spare (which meant he wanted to go as deep as possible while conserving energy in his nameless tool, but Jack only said it like that to himself). And no amount of extra space caused from missing tech could prevent the inevitable when more than two occupied the tunnel and the one deeper in wanted out.

Jack flattened himself up against the stone as manly as he could, but the effort barely changed what space was left open for the Doctor to squeeze through. At the first brush, Jack was suddenly very sure he should have filed out first. Even after last night, when the Doctor had explained to the girls who Jack was (in vague detail, as he was always wont) and pacified Moira with a reason why he had had Jack's head in his lap, only for the two of them to talk some more without the girls, the ground they walked on was still sketchy. It would never be whole again, if Jack really thought about it (and he already had), and even something as casual as this felt awkward.

Doctor. Ianto. Doctor. Ianto.

Matters only turned worsebettercomplicated when the Doctor stopped midway between them to look at Jack while no berth of space remained between them. Even here, with the Doctor pressed up against him, he remained infallible for all the universe to fear, not a trace of his age on the surface like when there was penultimate doom thereabouts.

Jack itched. To move away, to press back deliberately, to make a joke. He had made peace with the idea of unknowningly having the Doctor under his roof at some point (it took considerably longer to come to terms he had been sleeping with him, however), but the static in the air around them brimmed thick with the past. And it wasn't like in the TARDIS.

"Sorry," murmured the Doctor.

An acknowledgment was not forthcoming, but instead Jack's hand raised to hook a finger into the goggles dangling from his throat. With a tug, and not looking the Doctor in the eye, he said, "I've been meaning to ask about these."

The Doctor looked down as well, as though confused about what could possibly be draped dashingly across the hollow of his throat. "Oh that. It's a gift of sorts," he admitted. "Never going to regret getting marooned on a windy desert planet again."

Jack raised his eyes in time with the Doctor, the Doctor catching his gaze before he could avert it. "I've taken people out of their time and carted them around the entire cosmos," the Doctor explained unneedingly; Jack vaguely knew this bit. "And then there were the ones I never looked twice at. Perfectly good people, very pleasant. I left them where they were, and it would only cross my mind to pick up some people and not others. I've taken people with me that I didn't want to, only because others asked. A few I've regretted taking on, one or two I've regretted not keeping, when I realize they're worth something in the heart.

"You can call me 'Ianto', Jack, but you need to remember this: I didn't take the girl who lead me through the sands of Jargha Teppenhaim Minnick. I didn't take her because I didn't think to take her, even though I shared two adventures with her on her homeworld. It's where Ianto and I differ. He would have seen her desire to come with me. I ignored it entirely. Don't get us confused, Jack."

"Never." And he meant it, in that moment. Though his own conviction was betrayed when the hand slipping away from the goggles reached up instead of falling down. The Doctor did him the privilege of choosing now not to turn away, let alone leave, as Jack let a single knuckle caress down his cheek.

The skin was soft, and Jack recalled a dozen lovers at once that were all buried in time. And he could lose this one just as easily, he knew. The Doctor before him now was the last remaining artifact of his Torchwood, in the narrow scope of things. A timeless piece that would not last forever; but maybe perhaps, a second chance?

"So," he said conversationally, "why the twins then? What did they do?"

Jack's hand did not move and neither did the Doctor's cheek as he spoke with much exasperation toward his companions. "There was this convention in their time that I found myself attending. Ever hear of the Rundel Trap Trade?"

Jack had been in China during the twenty-third century. "Not off-hand."

"Much like the name sound, it's all about the bigger, better trap. Mouse traps, ant traps, small aminals, big animals, behemoth animals, flying traps, mechina traps, computer viral traps, personal home traps, bank traps, and the odd handcuff or twenty." Jack grinned cheekily. The Doctor did not chastise him. "I wound up cracking each one that got in my way, had a high class menagé of suits chasing me down, thinking I'd some special device--sonic screwdriver count? Probably--and the whole time, I was stuck with Moira by the finger. She and Mallory were there demonstrating their reinvented Chinese finger traps."

The image startled him; Jack laughed heartily, and it was a sound he hadn't made in years. Even to him, it sounded rusted. "I think..." he tried, then cleared his throat and tried again. "I think I need an encore of that occasion?"

The Doctor's expression was suffering. "Do you know what it's like with that girl when you don't know her? It's quite like it is now, except she makes fewer demands. Being trapped by the finger with her is an experience I will never repeat if I can help it."

"So why take them?"

"You learn a lot about a person when your fingers are stuck together and you're running from security. She's brilliant; they both are. ...And I've never had twins before. It seemed like the time."

"Doctor!"

Both snapped their heads toward the entrance, Moira's cry clear. She had booked it down the side of the cliff, if timing was anything. Jack sighed audibly at the interruption; the Doctor finished passing past him, and Jack could only follow.

Moira stood in the center of the landing, not too close to the edge lest she fall and not too close to the cave lest it mess up her green-and-blue hair by proximity. Hands on her hips, one hip cocked up, and a scowl to win a man's favor: Jack suspected this was the sort of attitude the Doctor suffered through all day long. "We stowed his last kit, we tweaked the calcium rods, oiled the dulfer iconogram, and hacked together the HS4-9000 and a Playstation 2 we found in the back. Are we ready to go yet?"

"Another two hours. Maybe less," the Doctor said casually, giving Jack a side-long glance. Jack dipped his chin a fraction, a thank-you. The Doctor stepped away from him to lead Moira back upward, her face falling into pure dismay as she suddenly realized she had to go back up so soon.

Jack grinned effortlessly when their backs were turned. But right before their feet touched the path, he called, "Ianto."

So solid was that one word on his tongue, it resonated off the walls and into the open drop, like a word of power. Both the Doctor and Moira looked at him, Moira confused, and the Doctor expectant.

"D'ol eesis kanka nopoi ro magtakach."

The Doctor's sudden smile was great, stretching the corners of his mouth to a point where it didn't look fake. He said nothing in return, instead continued to lead Moira back to the TARDIS, while Jack's ears caught her asking, "What did he say to you?"

"Something about a beach in Joisi...."

Jack about-faced back into his hovel. Two hours, more than enough time to make the one last trip to the TARDIS Jack had implied earlier. But there was more to it. Two hours was enough to say his last peace before turning his back on this rock forever. He had time to deliver one more full-fledged passage ceremony for his lost crew, apart of the evolved religion humans had adopted as of the 39th century. Still not religious himself, he owed it to them.

But now, he would do it with a smile of his own.

You're still a fine piece of work.

- e - n - d - i - n - g - n - o - t - e - s -

I had thought, this was it. Hooray, I finished something multi-parted! Turns out I want to write more, at least to get to a point where Ianto!Doctor and Jack have reconciled. But that's only because I realized one twin had love-rival potential (I was bowled over when I realized it; how dare a woman get between my ghei, you know?), and I went, "...Okay, let's do more."

So if anyone's interested, there will eventually be semi-sequels, trying to get to get to that ultimate goal: Janto version 2.0. ...Not for a while, as the note at the top can suggest.