Tosh's heels clicking quickly on the Hub's pavement, conferring her excitement and rush, is what he remembers first from that moment, when Jack came back to life. Everything after that moment is not even a thought in his head, but it's there, pulsing as painfully as hope.

"Well, we have to do something!" Gwen says, emphasizing the last word like her life, or possibly someone else's, depends on it.

Something, anything, even looking for a needle in a haystack would be better than just standing here, helpless, looking around like that could assist us somehow, with nothing but the confidence that Jack was here a minute ago, and now he's not here anymore.

"Oh, really? That's a helpful statement. What do you suggest we do, miss know-it-all? It's not like we have any clue as to what went on in here when Jack disappeared," Owen spits, angry and grumpy. "We don't even know whether he has disappeared! He could have been kidnapped, he could have left, could have changed form, he could have disintegrated completely. Bollocks, there may not even be a Jack anymore! I think it's fair enough to say we can count no possibility out. So face it, princess, we have absolutely no clue, no lead to start from."

Think up something, Gwen, think of anything that I can't find a major flaw in and I'll do it. I'll cling to it as badly as you would.

"Actually," Tosh interrupts, "we do have a lead." Owen raises one eye brow, but doesn't turn to look directly at her. "A form of, anyhow. Alright, think about it this way. It's like a game where we have a goal but can't reach it, because we don't know anything about the way leading up to it. What we do know is the goal itself, so we have to start there. Jack's our lead. We need to somehow find a signal unique to him and trace that..."

I can do this, I can figure something out. If anyone can right now, it's me. I just need to work out the right equations. Everything else will come. It has to.

Owen clears his throat a little. "That could work. We could try and restore the computer system, see if during the rift opening, the system's monitors registered some form of distinguished energy pattern for Jack."

"Alright," Gwen nods, "this could be a really good idea. So that's one direction we have. Owen, you and Tosh can start checking the system to see if all the monitor data bases are functioning properly. Meanwhile, I'll start some research. There was a weird gust of wind. It was so sudden and nothing inside the hub should produce anything like it, so… Ianto, maybe you should check around the lower levels to make sure everything's alright?"

Ianto stands by the table where, since the day he started his job, they had always kept a severed hand in a container. "It's empty".

Gwen's words, over and over again. Something's taken him. Jack's gone.

He walks through each room of the hub, making sure they're all in the same state in which he left them. He makes the rounds again and again, because there's not much he's going to contribute to elsewhere and he needs to be pre-occupied. He does it until he's certain they've all gone home. He walks past the computer screens that Tosh left running, past the books Gwen left open at her desk, past the handy tools Owen left lying around the floor. Some people were offered the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. He's not one of them, although in this quiet, deadly darkness, he knows he holds the keys to another realm all the same.

Whatever he can, he puts back into place. What can be turned off, he does. The hub has its secret life at night, but not this night. He stills it as much as he can, before he slips into Jack's quarters, out of his suit, and into Jack's bed. He makes sure not to occupy the whole of the bed.

He can hear Jack singing in his mind. In the shower, after another exhausting alien chase, he was often singing. Now it echoes and reverberates through Ianto's thoughts. Same lilt, same tunes, everything as it sounded when Jack was actually there, about to step into the shower. He would turn the water on, would get out of his clothes in a hurry, so frantic that one could think those garments were infected with the plague. He would leave them in a messy pile behind him and walk into the shower like someone stepping in front of an audience, bare and in love with life itself.

How could Ianto help joining in? Clothes put aside neatly, coat straightened and folded with anti-wrinkle precision, he would join Jack when the Captain had his torso already soaped up. Two firm lips would be squeezed against Jack's neck and Ianto would be able to feel the notes wash through him. He would lick his own lips greedily and, with a hint of Jack's taste and soap in his mouth, he would bite Jack's ear, demanding his attention.

The tune would be interrupted abruptly.

Whatever tune it may have been, it was always Jack's ode to having survived another day. Ianto should have patiently listened, but Jack was himself an ode, and Ianto was eager to sing as well.

Moving his left hand through Jack's water-thickened hair, embracing the body in front of him with his right, feeling how the weight shifted and Jack was leaning into him. Ianto would move his fingers from the hair down, then up, the palm of his hand drawn across Jack's cheek, strumming that soft hum of approval out of him, ending the motion with the sweet note of a finger at the Captain's already slightly parted lips. Jack would draw him in, suck on his finger delicately, while Ianto would caress his face, the water stream would be nice and warm and nothing could touch them. Ianto would bow his head in awe of having such a moment and in the process, he would lean forward, raising his right hand to guide Jack's hands to the wall.

There was no need for preparations, not during those times. He'd take Jack as is and wordlessly, he was thanked for this. His head would sink between Jack's shoulder and neck, scribbling the score to his master piece, just as he would enter Jack's flesh with the knowledge he would either find all answers there, or would no longer need any. Jack would sigh, right in his ear and ever so softly. He would take it as his cue to start the build up of this harmony.

Ianto can't remember how far or how long his hands would roam across Jack's body, how playful he'd allow himself to be, touching spots and testing sensitivities as he drove on, relentless, into Jack, setting up an ever increasing pace. Faster and harder, deeper if it's at all possible. What mattered was when Jack would lessen some of the support he was getting by clutching at Ianto's hips, or reaching for a roaming hand, joining them on Jack's cock. Faster, and harder, and deeper, and faster yet, because life is mad and is to be played out madly, until Jack would come with a gasp, never a shout, and feeling the convulsions, so would Ianto.

The water would wash over them as they stayed there, panting. Sooner or later, Jack would turn, still in Ianto's arms, and kiss him, demanding something more. They'd kiss and whatever it was Jack was asking, Ianto was always obliging, opening further and further to Jack's explorative tongue. When Jack would pull out of the kiss, laughing about nothing in particular, Ianto would carefully pull out of Jack's body, watching his come mixing with the water.

That was his Jack and that's how the Captain moves within him now. Bloody Jack, who had to go and get himself kidnapped or who couldn't help but disappear on him, who had possibly waited for this all along, chasing aliens and toying with death only as means to pass the time. What does it matter? Jack, who was simply gone, yet before that, he was warmly singing Hallelujah in the shower. Their shower.

Ianto feels like he can cry right now, cry in a way he had never cried before, or scream, throw stuff around or punch something so hard that he would break instead of his inanimate victim. He does none of these things. The ghost of a neck pressing back against his lips almost materializes. He thinks of Jack, sees him smiling, and before he knows it, he's asleep.