Fic: A Year Out of Time

[silver_sun]

Title: A Year Out of Time.
Author: the-silver-sun
Fandom(s): Torchwood and Doctor Who
Genre and pairings (if applicable): Action/Adventure/Romance. Ianto Jones/Andy Davidson.
Rating: R
Beta(s): santousha santoushaand  dvanulya. dvanulyaThank you for all your hard work.
Spoilers: First series of Torchwood, final two episodes of Doctor Who series three.
Warnings: Temporary major character death.
Word Count: 30,563
Summary: When PC Andy Davidson meets Ianto Jones the day after Harold Saxon is elected Prime Minister he has no idea of the devastation that is about to happen to Earth, or the fact that Ianto Jones will come to mean a great deal to him as they try to survive.
Notes: This is canon compliant for series one of Torchwood and series three of Doctor Who, but not afterwards.
Written for www.tardis-bigbang.livejournal.com


The world has gone nuts; it’s the only logical explanation. Or at least that’s Andy’s opinion as he glances at the newspaper headlines. Where they proclaim, with varying degrees of sensationalism, that the newly elected prime minister along with the president of the United States are going to meet with aliens on board some UN ship. It’s either that or the newspapers are printing the April fools day joke a month late.

It’s as mad as the news broadcast he’d caught the previous day that had claimed that Captain Harkness, but apparently not the rest of Torchwood, was a terrorist. It was obviously a load of bollocks, well unless extreme innuendo has become recognised form of terrorism while he wasn’t looking, and he’s pretty sure it hasn’t.

He’s also sure that if he could speak to Gwen he’d be able to find out just what the hell was going on. So far though all he’s managed to get is the voice mail on her mobile. He’s left her a few messages, but she hasn’t called him back. Not that that’s so unusual these days, he thinks with some annoyance, once she used to reply straight away, now he’s lucky if it’s the same week.

Paying the bored looking woman at the checkout, and wondering how people who work shifts ever managed before the advent of twenty-hour supermarkets, Andy starts his short walk home.

It’s not a bad morning really, Andy reflects as he opens his sandwich and eats as he walks. Five am in the Cathays area of Cardiff seems amazingly peaceful, especially after his last shift. Friday night on Queen’s Street, especially on a Friday where Cardiff City had been utterly panned by QPR, hadn’t exactly been quiet or fun.

He’s about three streets from his flat, and debating whether to or not he should text Darren and find out if he’s still got that spare ticket for the rugby match on Sunday when he hears a noise.

In an alleyway just across the road from him there is a shout followed by the sound of breaking glass and a series of growls which make the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

“I’m going to regret this, I just know it,” Andy mutters to himself as he looks around at the deserted street. Then, putting down his bag of shopping, he goes over to the alleyway to investigate.

Parked at the back of the alley is a large, black and very familiar SUV.

Bloody Torchwood.

Andy hesitates, knowing that he be better off just walking back out the alley and leaving them to it. It’s not like they’d tell me what was going on anyway, he thinks crossly.

But if he does take the chance he might be able to ask Gwen and find out what’s really going on. Making his decision he walks forward.

“I might have known it’d be you lot,” he says a little louder than necessary, knowing that Torchwood tended to go around armed and startling anybody who was armed was likely to be an incredibly stupid idea.

Appearing from around the side of the SUV is a man in a suit. A little out of breath he leans against the side of the vehicle as he approaches, saying, “You’re Andy Davidson aren’t you? Gwen’s friend in the police.”

“How’d you know that? And who are you?” He’s fairly sure that he’s not seen this guy before. When Torchwood showed up it was nearly always Jack and Gwen, with the occasional edition of either a grumpy Londoner or a quiet Japanese woman.

“Ianto Jones, Torchwood.” He starts to offer his hand to Andy to shake, but a look of pain crosses his face and he returns the hand to where it had been held against his side.

“Are you all right?” Andy asks stepping closer, trying to get a better look at him.

“Not exactly.” His voice is taut, pained. Closing his eyes he bites his lip for a moment before continuing, “I know you’re interested in what Torchwood does, Gwen’s told me as much.” Stopping again he takes a sharp breath, pressing his hand tighter against his side, “How would you like to find out?”

“What’s the catch?” Andy asks warily, wishing there was more light in the alley so that he can see how badly Ianto is hurt. Because Andy is pretty sure that he is hurt. “And where’s Gwen and the rest of you lot?”

“No catch.” He bites his lip again, “I just need you drive me down Roald Dahl Plas, and then help me unload the SUV.”

“Where’s Gwen?” Andy looks around again.

“Right now? Katmandu, probably.”

“What that curry place over in Splott? That’s closed.” He’d always suspected that there was some reason other than lack of money it was closed down. Maybe they’d been using dodgy meat or something. All the same it was a bit weird to go looking at it so early in the morning. But then, Andy supposes a bit weird is what Torchwood does really well.

“I mean the place, in Nepal. The Himalayas,” Ianto says with a weary resignation, like he’s explained it a dozen times already.

Andy’s heard desk sergeants use pretty much the same tone after a long night on duty; it’s still annoying to be on the receiving end of it. “Well there’s no need to be rude about it.”

Ianto sags against the side of the SUV, “Sorry, it’s just this really is important, please. Could you just drive me to the Plas?”

Light from one the street lamp catches Ianto’s hand as he sags and Andy can see the blood on it where it’s held tight against his side.

“You’re bleeding, I should take you to A&E.”

“You can’t, it’s too dangerous. They’d ask too many questions, and I can’t risk anyone finding out I’m still here.” Still leaning against the side of the SUV Ianto makes his way slowly round to the front passenger seat.

Andy is about to ask why it would be too dangerous when something in the back of the SUV growls and slams against the side of the vehicle causing it to shake.

“What was that?” Andy steps back, rather more shaken by the strange noise than he would like to admit. “What have you got in there? A bear?” He’s fairly sure that it isn’t, after all what would a bear be doing in an alleyway in Cardiff? Only it doesn’t sound like a dog, not even a really big, really angry one.

“You know a bear would be easier to explain. A lot easier.” Ianto seems almost amused, as he ignores the continuing growls and gets into the vehicle. “Could we get going now, please?”

“All right,” Andy says getting into the drivers seat. Although the interior is as heavily modified as the exterior Andy is pleased to note that the modifications don’t seem to have extended to the actual way in which it drives.

Ianto looks pale and drawn in the seat beside him, the odd blue lighting in the SUV doing nothing for his complexion. He bites back a gasp of pain as he tries to fasten his seatbelt, fingers slipping bloody across the catch.

“You sure you don’t want to get that seen to?” Andy asks as he gets the SUV in gear and slowly manoeuvres it out of the narrow alleyway.

Ianto looks at him through half closed eyes. “Didn’t say that, I said no hospitals. Everything I need is back at the…” He hesitates, eyes closing for a moment, “Back at where I work.”

“Is there anybody there that can help?” Andy looks down at where the blood has welled through Ianto’s fingers and started to stain the seat. It’s hard to tell just how much it there is or how bad the injury might be, he just hopes that he’s doing the right thing by taking Ianto back to wherever it is that they are going.

Ianto shakes his head, his voice with tight with something that isn’t all physical pain when he replies, “No, there’s just me. I’ll manage.” He gives Andy a pained smile, as he takes a handkerchief from his pocket and holds it over where he’s bleeding. “I always do.”

“So Gwen really is in Tibet?” Andy decides to change the subject, hoping to find out a bit more about what’s going on. It just doesn’t seem to him the sort of place that Gwen would go, and he can’t imagine her going on holiday with Rhys somewhere like that.

“Nepal. Yes.” Ianto grits his teeth as the SUV goes over a speed bump, “Just something that needed looking into. A case.”

The streets are almost completely deserted this early in the morning so it only takes a few minutes to reach the edge of Roald Dahl Plas.

“Turn left here.”

“The Millennium centre car park?” Andy gives him a questioning look.

Ianto nods, “lowest level, far left hand corner.” He takes a plastic key card from his suit pocket and hands it to Andy.

“To pay for parking?” Torchwood going by the rules? That, in Andy’s experience, would be a first.

“To get into our garage.” Ianto closes his eyes again, breathing slowly, trying to psych himself up for getting out of the SUV.

The car park is completely unremarkable and there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly interesting about the far left hand corner either. Just a roller shuttered door to what looks like it should be some kind of goods lift.

Leaving the engine running, Andy gets out and looks at the door. There’s a small swipe card slot just to the left of it, but nothing else. No controls, no indication as to what floor the lift is on or even how many floors there are.

The panel beeps as Andy swipes the card through it and the shutter rolls up to reveal a downward sloping corridor. Getting back in the SUV Andy gives Ianto a questioning look.

“The things we load and unload out of the SUV we tend to not want an audience for,” Ianto replies.

“But you’re showing me. Isn’t that against the rules or something?” Andy’s still not totally convinced that there isn’t some ulterior motive in getting him to come here. He can’t actually think what it might be, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, not where Torchwood is concerned.

“Maybe. It wouldn’t be the worst thing that I’ve done though.”

At the end of the corridor is a rather ordinary looking garage. It’s something of a disappointment after the rather hi tech interior of the SUV, although any thought of mentioning it is scrapped when there is another growl from the back of the SUV and something starts to slam violently against the walls, attempting to escape.

Ianto slowly gets out of the SUV, a hand still pressed tightly against his side. He sways slightly on his feet as he moves round the vehicle. Opening the rear passenger door he drags a bag across the seat until it falls out the SUV with a thump.

In the light harsh fluorescent lighting of the garage Andy can see the pain and tiredness on Ianto’s face. A face that is younger than Andy had first realised, one maybe younger than himself.

There’s not much time for thought though as there is another snarl from the back of the SUV, and what sounds like claws scratching and scrabbling against metal.

“Are you going to tell me what’s in there?” he asks, wondering if he’ll actually get a straight answer.

“An alien.”

So much for getting a remotely sensible answer. “Really?”

Ianto ignores Andy’s disbelieving look and tone, opening the duffel bag to retrieve an aerosol can, some netting and a very large syringe. “We call them weevils. They live in the sewers, and as long as they don’t cause trouble we leave them alone.”

“You’re not joking, are you?”

Ianto shakes his head, then looks as if he regrets the sudden movement. Leaning against the side of the SUV he closes his eyes and takes several deep, unsteady breaths.

“Are you all right?” Andy asks stepping closer, wondering if Ianto is going to pass out, throw up or possibly both.

“I will be. Let’s get this over with.”

Andy is about to ask just what it is that they are going to be doing when Ianto hands him the net.

“I’m going to open the door, when I do, throw the net over what comes out. I’ll do the rest.”

If the rest involved bleeding on it and possibly passing out Andy thinks Ianto has probably got it well covered. Anything else and he’s not so sure.

“Ready?” Ianto asks, hand already on the boot catch.

“As I’ll ever be.” Andy doubts that he’ll every really be ready to see an alien, if that is really what’s in there.

Ianto seems to take that as a yes and what happens next is mostly a blur, taking just a few seconds. The boot opens, and Andy throws the net and Ianto jabs the syringe into the back of the creature’s neck.

The first impression that Andy gets of the weevil even before it has stopped thrashing about in the net is the smell. The second, once it has stopped moving is that it’s probably one of the ugliest creatures that he’s ever seen.

Ianto is breathing raggedly as he puts the syringe back in the duffel bag before turning back to Andy. “That should keep him knocked out for about half an hour.”

It’s all too surreal, Andy decides as he drags the unconscious weevil into a lift and takes it down to what appears to be a cell block, while Ianto opens doors for him and gives directions. He’s sure there are questions that he should be asking, but at the moment nothing specific comes to mind.

Another weevil growls at them from its cell as they pass it, it sounds more questioning than threatening.

Just how many of these things are in here? Andy wonders as he tries to work out how he’s managed to live in Cardiff pretty much all his life and has avoided seeing one of these things until now. He’s always thought of himself as being more observant than that.

“That one’s Janet,” Ianto says a little breathlessly as they drag the still thankfully unconscious weevil into a cell.

“Janet? I suppose this one’s Brad.”

Ianto blinks at him, looking a little dizzy as he closes the door to the cell.

“Rocky Horror Show. You know Brad and Janet, and that guy in a corset who was really an alien.”

“Oh yeah.” Ianto leans weakly against the wall now that the alien has been secured, starting to shiver.

“Are you going to let me take you to A&E now, or would you prefer to expire quietly down here?”

Ianto’s mouth quirks into a pained smile, “Tempting, but no.”

“I hope you mean A&E,” Andy says as much to himself as to Ianto.

Ianto stumbles against him as they start walking, “So do I.”

By the time they reach the substantial metal door at the top of the stairs Ianto is leaning heavily on him, a thin sheen on perspiration on his face from the effort of keeping himself moving.

The door rolls aside to reveal a huge cavernous space that seems to be equal parts underground station and hi-tech office, with possibly a bit of mad scientist’s laboratory thrown in for good measure.

Andy is still trying to take it all in when something overhead screeches. Looking up he catches a brief glimpse of something large and airborne circling above them.

“What was that?” Andy flattens himself back against the wall, pulling Ianto with him.

“It’s just Myfanwy.” Ianto bites his lip, the sudden movement obviously having hurt more than he’s going to admit.

The creature circles lower before perching on a metal girder above them.

“It’s a dinosaur. Pterodactyl.” Aliens and dinosaurs, Andy thinks, are all a bit much to take in before breakfast.

“Pterodon actually. She’s won’t hurt us.”

Still a little dubious about having a dinosaur watching him, and possibly considering them as food, Andy glances up occasionally at the creature as they cross the open space.

Ianto is unsteady on his feet, his complexion almost grey with exhaustion as they walk down the steps into what Andy thinks looks suspiciously like an autopsy bay.

Once Ianto has sat down, Andy helps him to remove his suit jacket. Andy takes a sharp breath as he sees the amount of blood that has soaked through Ianto’s shirt. The cuts, gouges really, that have been made by the weevil’s claws are visible through gaps in the shredded material. Starting low on Ianto’s back, they curl downward around his side, ending just above his hip.

Looking around, Andy asks, “Have you got a first aid kit?” A first aid kit seems a little insubstantial for what he is being asked to do, but there isn’t anything else he can think of to ask for.

Ianto nods, looking like he’s still trying to concentrate on not passing out, before waving a bloody hand in the direction of one of the cabinets.

Opening what is most probably the most well stocked first aid kit he’s ever seen, Andy puts on a pair of latex gloves.

Ianto’s near silent stoicism in the face of what Andy thinks is probably quite a lot of a pain finally crumbles as Andy tries to peel the shirt away from where half-dried blood has stuck it to the cuts.

“Stop,” Ianto asks hoarsely, voice rough from trying to contain the pain.

“I can try to soak it off,” Andy offers, glancing over at the sink. He’s not sure that it’s going to be all that effective.

Ianto takes a shuddering breath, then shakes his head. “Just get me the packet in the drawer over there.”

The packet is of prescription strength painkillers. Turning it over Andy reads the instructions: no more than 2 tablets every six hours, not to be taken with alcohol.

Taking a single tablet from the packet Ianto dry swallows it, grimacing at the taste.

“You can take another one if you want.” Andy takes the packet back off Ianto.

“No. Last time Owen gave me these they knocked me out for hours. One will be enough.”

The wounds look deep enough that Andy is sure that they should probably be stitched. Even though there is a suture set in the first aid kit he doesn’t feel confident enough to use it. Because the last time he’d attempted to sew anything it had been a button back on a shirt, and it had fallen off again the next time he’d worn it.

There are a lot of steri-strips though, as well as bandages and some anti-sceptic sprays and gels. He just hopes that it’s enough to do the job.

Spraying antiseptic over the sluggishly bleeding wounds, Andy tries not to think of how much it must still hurt. “Are you really sure you don’t want to go to hospital?” Andy asks again, hoping that this time Ianto will say yes.

“I’m sure,” Ianto says through gritted teeth, the painkillers obviously not having totally kicked in yet.

Opening the first packet of strips Andy hesitates, feeling out of his depth. “It’s going to scar you know, if I do it like this.” He doesn’t really want to use scare tactics, not least because he’s fairly sure that he pretty bad at it, but he feels like he’s got to try one last appeal to common sense.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s not like anybody ever sees me.” Ianto hangs his head and concentrates on breathing evenly. “No one will care.”

There’s not much Andy thinks he can say to that. It’s the bleak certainty in Ianto voice, that he knows that there’s nobody who cares about him, that Andy finds the worst. He can’t imagine what it would be like to truly have nobody. There’s always been his mum and sister, his nan, auntie Ellen and her husband Dave. Not to mention the lads down the station, and Gwen.

As he works Andy notices other marks on Ianto’s skin, old scars that look like they might have been made by claws, a burn on one of his arms that probably isn’t more than a year or two old, and a small scar on his neck which Andy really doesn’t want to think about how it was received. There are bruises as well, some fresh, some faded to nearly healed yellowish blemishes.

Ianto stands stiffly as soon as Andy has finished securing the bandages that cover the steri-strips, the painkillers having finally kicked in.

Walking up the steps from the autopsy room Ianto leans heavily on the stair rail and then the walls as he makes his way to an oversized coffee machine. Reaching it he calls back to Andy, “Do you want milk or sugar?”

“Milk and one sugar.” Disposing of the gloves and washing his hands Andy follows Ianto over to where he’s loading the coffee machine with freshly ground beans. He watches him for a moment before saying conversationally, “this is crazy, you do know that? You’ve been mauled by an alien and now you’re acting like you’re working in Starbucks.”

“I don’t have time to sit and dwell on it. There’s too much too do, there always is. Anyway it wouldn’t help.” He glances down at the bandages, eyes looking a little unfocused now that the painkillers have kicked in. “And if this is the dress code for the Starbucks you go to you might want to consider finding somewhere else to get your coffee.”

“You’re mad.”

“Maybe I am.” Ianto smiles, and hands him a mug.

The coffee is worth waiting for, and is certainly better than the usual vending machine brew that he gets back at the station.

Sitting down on the sofa Andy stares into his coffee for a moment, trying to workout what to say now that the immediate danger seems to have passed. The only thing that comes to mind though is, “So what now?”

“I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.” Ianto doesn’t make eye contact, as he sits down awkwardly, trying not to put too much strain on his injuries. “I suppose I was going to retcon you.”

Whatever retcon is it doesn’t sound good, “Are you?”

“No. Actually I was thinking of offering you a job.”

“Can you do that?” Andy doesn’t want to be rude about it, but Ianto doesn’t really seem to be that high up in Torchwood to be making job offers.

“You didn’t panic when you saw your first alien and I don’t think you’re planning to tell everybody about what Torchwood does at the first opportunity. I doubt that Gwen will mind working with you again, and Tosh and Owen will probably be all right with it if it means us not being short staffed.”

“And Harkness, what will he say?” Given the contact that the police have with Torchwood and Captain Jack Harkness, and the fact that they never get told what’s going on, he’s doubtful that Harkness would be all that keen on giving him a job. It’s not totally out of the question though, he supposes, as they’d had recruited Gwen. But Gwen, to him at least, had always been a special case.

“Jack? I don’t know. He’s away, and we’re not sure when he’s coming back.” Ianto sighs, his tone of voice suggesting it’s probably more a case of if he comes back rather than when.

“He didn’t go with Gwen to the Himalayas then?” It still seems weird, the idea of Gwen being up a mountain somewhere.

“Maybe,” Ianto says sipping his coffee. “We got a call from the prime minister saying that there might be something Rift related opened up in the Himalayas, reports of people just appearing. We hoped one of them might be Jack.”

“He’s disappeared?” That hadn’t really been something he was expecting, although given the TV report he thinks that perhaps he shouldn’t be all that surprised.

“Well gone anyway. We’d gone out to get coffee and when we came back he was gone. He just left without a word.”

There is such an amount of loss in Ianto’s tone that it makes Andy wonder if there is more to the relationship between Ianto and Jack that just boss and employee. Given the rumours back at the station about all things that Jack has said, suggested or very occasionally got caught doing, it doesn’t seem all that surprising he’d get involved with one of his employees. “So why didn’t you go with Gwen and look for him?”

Ianto looks conflicted for a moment, deciding what he can tell Andy. “We decided one of us had to stay here, there wasn’t something quite right about the request, it felt too much like somebody was trying to get us all out of the way. Anyway the Rift still needs monitoring, and Myfanwy and the weevils can’t just be left.”

Andy’s not sure what the Rift is, and somehow he doubts the explanation is something that he really wants to hear or will, in all possibility, understand. “So let me get this straight. The prime minister has sent everybody apart from you to the Himalayas to look for your boss who went missing while everybody had gone out for coffee. But you couldn’t go because somebody had to stay here to feed the aliens and the dinosaur.”

Ianto laughs briefly before wincing and holding his side. “It sounds crazy doesn’t it?”

Crazy doesn’t even begin to cover it as far as Andy is concerned. The conversation starts to trail off as tiredness starts to take hold.

Ianto looks half asleep where he’s leaning back awkwardly on the sofa. Andy yawns and glances down at his watch. Nearly 10am. The broadcast with the PM and the US president would be on in a minute, providing it hadn’t been some kind of wind up. It’s odd to think that only a few hours ago he had thought that the whole alien thing the newspapers had been reporting was a load of rubbish. Now it’s suddenly reality. He wonders if he should be grateful that he’s been one of the few who’ve got an advance warning.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a TV down here?” He asks looking around at the numerous computer screens, wondering why a team of what appeared to be just five people needed so many.

Ianto opens his eyes, giving him a bleary, confused look, “Why?”

“The new PM, what’s his name, Saxon, he’s going to tell everybody about the aliens. I thought you’d be interested.”

“I guess that’s why he wanted us out of the way.” Ianto’s shoulders seem to slump, before he says a little sadly, “Jack always said that the 21st century is when it all changes. I never really thought he meant like this.”

“The 21st century is when it all changes? That’s a bit cryptic isn’t it?” Andy thinks for a moment before adding, “Anyway how did he know?”

“He just did. Jack always just did.” Ianto smiles faintly, as if remembering something that seems to mean more to him than what he’s just said.

“And you never asked how?” He’d thought that the whole cryptic, not telling the whole truth thing was something that Harkness reserved for dealing with the police or any other official body. Somehow he’d expected him to be a bit more open with the people he actually worked with.

“No. I…” He sighs, looking down at his mug of coffee, expression distant and a little sad. “Asking Jack questions rarely gets you any answers, and even if you do get one, it’s never the one you want.”

“I know a few DIs like that.” Andy finds himself smiling. “So where exactly is he anyway? I saw some news report saying him and a couple of doctors were terrorists?”

Ianto frowns, and then sighs, running his hands through his hair. “The Doctor, I should have known he’d be mixed up in this somehow.”

Getting up slowly, still a little unsteady on his feet, Ianto moves stiffly over to the nearest of the computer terminals and sits down. Switching it on, it only takes him a couple of minutes to get it tuned to the latest news broadcast.

The press conference seems fairly normal at first, especially considering it’s supposed to be about telling the world that aliens exist. Saxon and the US president stand together on the bridge of a ship, while Saxon’s wife stands in the background, looking glamorous but rather disconnected from everything that’s going on around her.

There’s no real indication of where this is happening. Somewhere neutral, Andy guesses, although he’d always thought that tended to be somewhere like Switzerland, and they weren’t really known for having ships, what with the whole being landlocked thing.

Ianto frowns as he watches the armed military personnel at the back of the bridge.

Leaning in a bit closer to the screen, Andy gives him a questioning look. There doesn’t seem to be anything odd about having security for something like this, although the fact that they are obviously armed does seem a bit unusual.

“They’re UNIT troops; they deal with alien threats,” Ianto says as he points at the red-bereted soldiers.

“I thought that’s what you lot do?”

“UNIT do as well. They deal with large scale incidents, threats of invasion, and things outside the UK.”

What happens next is almost too quick to follow clearly. A silver ball appears on screen next to the President, and a moment later he’s dead. The camera covering the press conference swings around wildly, finally focusing on hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the silver aliens streaming past the windows of the ship.

Ianto’s eyes are wide in horror as he covers his mouth with a hand. Keeping the press conference in one corner of the screen, he quickly brings up footage from one of the CCTV cameras in the city centre. For a moment it seems like nothing has happened, and then there is panic, people running for cover inside shops as the aliens descend.

It feels like watching a film. It’s too much to take in, and Andy finds himself staring at the screen open-mouthed, unable to express anything apart from blank horror as he sees people cut down in the street.

Abruptly the monitors go blank, sparing them the sight of the massacre that’s only just beginning. Overhead the lights flicker for a moment before they fail, leaving the cavernous space lit by nothing more than some red LEDs and what Andy thinks look a lot like a few strands of Christmas tree lights.

“What’s happening? Are we under attack? Have they got in here?” Andy looks quickly around for something, anything that he might be able to use to defend himself and Ianto. Not that he thinks it will do much good, but he feels that he should at least try.

“Not exactly.” Ianto’s voice sounds a little distant, disconnected. “We’ve gone into lockdown. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. We’re safe.”

“Safe?” Andy gives him an incredulous look, “There are people dying out there. We’ve got to help them, get them down here. We’ve got to do something.”

“Can’t. We’re in lockdown.”

“Well there must be a way to unlock it!” The once huge space seems suddenly small and confining, and Andy can start to feel panic set in, replacing the numbness with which he’d watched the initial attack.

“There’s not. Twenty-four hours, if there’s still power, it’ll open by itself.” Getting up from his seat Ianto sways for a moment, hands gripping the edge of the workstation.

“That’s stupid. There’s got to be a way.” Andy starts towards the door. “We could pry it open; there must be something we can use.”

“It won’t work,” Ianto says, rubbing a hand across his eyes. “We just have to wait.”

“My nan is out there!” He gestures at the door, wishing that he didn’t feel quite so helpless. His nan who every Saturday morning would be down at the market, her two fat corgis in tow as she checks the stalls for bargains. He’s glad his mam and sister have gone on holiday, hopefully these things, aliens, whatever the hell they are, won’t get as far as Greece.

“I’m sorry,” Ianto says faintly, still looking at the blank screen.

Sorry seems of very little use right now. Here he was stuck under ground while his family and the city that, as a police officer he was suppose to help protect, were cut down. “So what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. Lie down.” There’s a tremor in Ianto’s voice as he slowly lets go of the edge of the workstation.

“What sort of plan is that?” Andy snaps, hating how scared, angry and helpless he’s starting to feel. “I thought Torchwood was supposed to deal with this stuff. And what about that UNIT lot, what are they doing?”

Ianto gives him a bleary-eyed look as he sways on his feet, his face shockingly pale in the dim light, as he makes a grab for the edge of the workstation and fails.

Andy barely has time to wrap an arm about Ianto’s waist as his legs buckle, and he slumps against him.

Ianto’s cheek is cold and clammy where it rests against his neck. His pulse, when Andy feels for it, is faint and erratic.

Shock. Andy berates himself that he hadn’t even considered it as he helps Ianto stumble back to the tattered old sofa. He supposes it’s because Ianto has, until this point at least, seemed so calm, so in control, that he just took it for granted that he was going to be all right.

Whether the shock is because of the blood loss or the attack going on outside, or a combination of the two, Andy can’t tell. All he knows is he is woefully unprepared to deal with anything like this. His training is to keep people calm until a medical professional arrives - it’s not to go it alone.

Settling Ianto down as well as he can on the sofa, Andy quickly heads back down to where he’d found the first aid kit. Checking the cupboards, and wishing that he had a torch, he eventually finds what he’s looking for, a foil blanket.

Wrapping the blanket around him, Andy waits until Ianto feels warmer and his pulse running at something like what he thinks is a reasonable level, before deciding it’s time to try to call his nan and find out if she’s okay.

Andy is surprised to see that his hands are shaking as he gets out his mobile. There’s barely any reception down here, but he knows he has to try, if only to try to put his mind at ease.

The call finally connects to voice mail after ringing for long, tense minutes, and Andy can feel the despair start to mount. He decides to leave a message any way, because it seems the more hopeful thing to do. “Hi, nan, just a quick call to see if you’re all right. I’m okay, speak to you later.”

Slipping the mobile back in to his pocket, he sits down on the floor; his back leant against the end of the sofa. Behind him Ianto whimpers softly in his sleep, although whether it’s from pain, fear or both, Andy has no way of knowing.

Closing his eyes for a moment, Andy wonders how he’s managing to stay so calm through what has just happened, and what is probably still happening. He thinks that it might be that the enormity of it just hasn’t properly hit him yet, that he’s still too numb.

It’s hard to make sense of everything, of the destruction that has happened and how nothing is going to be the same ever again. He’s sure that having been awake for nearly twenty-four hours isn’t helping either.


* * *

It’s evening when Andy wakes, disturbed from a sleep that he hadn’t realised he’d fallen into by Ianto’s pained gasp as he tries to sit up.

The Hub is still lit by emergency lighting as Andy helps Ianto to his feet and walks him slowly over to where the toilets are.

Ianto still seems disorientated as Andy helps him walk unsteadily back to the sofa, where, as soon as he lies back down, he falls asleep again.

As the night progresses Ianto’s temperature start to slowly climb. By dawn, although it’s only his watch that tells Andy that it’s morning once more, Ianto is running a fever, his hair sticking damply to his pain creased forehead.

Twenty-four hours comes and goes without any of the Hub’s systems powering back up. While Ianto continues to lie on the sofa shivering and moving restlessly in his sleep, waking only when Andy rouses him give him more painkillers and some water.

Being trapped in the surprisingly well-hidden underground base of the country’s least secret secret organisation while aliens attack the planet is, Andy thinks, something that should only happen in a sci-fi film or a TV show. It certainly shouldn’t be happening to a PC from Cardiff whose most pressing concern, just a day ago, was whether he should go to a rugby match or not.

It’s not that he doesn’t believe that they are locked in. It’s just that he can’t sit around and do nothing; it’s not how he does things. Anyway, keeping busy means that he has less time to wonder how his family are, whether his friends have survived and if he’s going to get out of this alive.

There’s not much that’s accessible, most of the substantial metal doors having sealed themselves when the lockdown took effect. There’s an office, with a hatchway down to a cramped and barely furnished bedroom, which Andy can only imagine is used in emergencies. There is also a corridor with a couple of old arcade games machines, neither of which works due to the lack of power. And what appears to be an interview room. Andy can’t quite imagine how you’d interview a weevil or a pterodactyl, so he suspects that Torchwood must also deal with other, more talkative aliens.

There are lower levels as well as the garage and cells that the weevils are in, Andy’s sure of that. However, all doors remain stubbornly closed despite his efforts to open them.

It’s disheartening, the lack of success in finding anything useful or any way out. The constant twilight of the Hub’s back up lighting systems doesn’t help; neither does the constant fear that they might fail at any time, leaving them trapped in complete darkness.

Finishing his exploration of the Hub, he goes back to check on Ianto, hoping that the combination of painkillers and few hours rest will have helped.

There’s no improvement, and Ianto seems only half conscious of what is going on as Andy hands him a glass of water and puts a damp cloth on his forehead.

The afternoon drags on and by evening, Ianto’s temperature has continued to climb to the point that he is shaking, skin hot and dry as fever takes hold.

The cause of Ianto’s fever becomes obvious once Andy changes the bandages over the wounds; one of the claw marks is red, angry and inflamed.

Cleaning the wounds and putting on more antiseptic gel, before redressing it is, Andy finds, is one of the hardest things he's had to do. Not only because he feels ill equipped to deal with it, but because Ianto is so distressed by it.

Delirious, Ianto tries to fight Andy off, incoherently pleading with him not to eat him or convert him. Andy doesn’t know what Ianto believes is happening, and given the abject terror on Ianto's face and the fear in his voice, he’s glad that he doesn’t.

Andy doubts that the sofa is comfortable, but he's not been able to find any other way down into the cramped bedroom under the office apart from climbing through the hatchway. A hatchway that's not big enough for him to climb through while carrying Ianto, and he knows that there is no way that Ianto will be able to manage to climb down by himself.

The Hub echoes with the sound of dripping water, which Andy suspects is from the rain running down the fountain on the Plas above. The only other sounds are the occasional squawk from Myfanwy as she circles the Hub, seemingly confused at what is happening, and the jumbled words and cries from Ianto as he alternates between fever driven nightmares and near unconsciousness.

The fact that the Hub is cool, bordering on cold and Ianto is near naked seems to have little effect on reducing the fever that's raging through him.

Even with no medical training beyond a basic first aid certificate, Andy can see that Ianto is struggling to fight off the infection unaided. Andy knows what Ianto really needs is a doctor, access to a hospital and a course of antibiotics. Getting the first two are out of the question given their current situation, but the antibiotics might not be impossible given how well the first aid kit had been stocked.

Most of the cupboards in the autopsy bay are locked, and it seems to be nothing more than an exercise in frustration as he forces open cupboards and drawers to find nothing useful inside.

Eventually, as Andy is about to give up hope of finding anything that might actually help one of the cupboards proves to be some form of medicine cabinet. Most of the bottles and packets bear names that are unfamiliar, but there are a couple that are labelled as penicillin.

There aren’t any instructions, but Andy remembers from a couple of years ago when he’d cut his hand open trying to help a friend dismantle an old greenhouse, that he’d been prescribed penicillin and told to take two every six hours. He hopes these are something similar.

Putting the tablets and a mug of water down on the floor by the side of the sofa, Andy gently shakes Ianto’s shoulder. “You need to wake up for a minute, okay?”

“Hurts,” Ianto groans softly before slowly opens his eyes. Eyes that are too bright with fever and too unfocused for any real comprehension.

“Sorry.” Andy slips an arm under Ianto’s shoulders, trying to hold him a little more upright so that he can take the tablets without choking on them.

“It’s all right, Jack,” Ianto sighs, leaning against Andy, his eyes closing again. “You stopped them.”

“I’m not…” Andy stops as he sees some of the tension leave Ianto’s face as he settles against his arm. He doesn’t like the idea of lying to Ianto, but if it gives him some comfort, then he’ll do it.

Taking the cloth off Ianto’s forehead, Andy tips some of the water from the mug onto it, and wipes the sweat from Ianto’s face and neck, trying not to worry about just how limp Ianto feels against him.

“I never thought it would be aliens,” Andy says with a fake cheerfulness that he really doesn’t feel. He’s not sure that Ianto is listening or if he’ll understand what Andy’s saying, but the silence of the last couple of days has been getting to him. He knows that talking is probably as much for his own sanity as to try to reassure Ianto that he’s not alone. “I suppose it could be worse. At least it’s not zombies. Colin always said it would be zombies.”

“What with zombies?” Ianto asks, his voice a little slurred as he opens his eyes again.

“The end of the world. Colin said it would be zombies. Liz on traffic said it would be a meteor strike or something like that.” They’d had some odd conversations in the station canteen in the early hours of the morning as they’d tried to catch up on coffee fuelled paper work. Andy wonders if Colin is disappointed or relieved that it’s aliens rather than zombies. Either way he hopes that Colin is still around to be relieved or disappointed at anything.

“Not Suzie?” Ianto frowns, squinting into the darkness of the Hub. “There’s not another glove?”

“I don’t think there’s any gloves.” Andy’s not sure what someone called Suzie or gloves might have to do with zombies, or even if that’s what Ianto means.

Taking two of the tablets out of the packet, he tries to reassure Ianto. “I’ve not seen any.”

“Good.” Ianto grimaces at the taste of the tablets, but swallows them as Andy holds the mug of water so he can drink.

“Do you want to try and eat something?” Andy asks once Ianto has finished the water.

Ianto shakes his head and mumbles something that Andy can’t quite catch, before putting an arm around him. “Don’t go.” Ianto sounds lost as he holds on tightly to Andy’s shirt.

“I won’t.” Hoping that he’s doing the right thing, Andy lets Ianto hold onto him until he falls asleep.


* * *


There doesn’t seem to be any improvement between the first and second doses, and Andy worries that he’s not given Ianto enough. Or that he’s given him too much. Or that he’s just left it too late for the medicine to do Ianto any good.

Time seems to drag, minutes stretching out until they feel like hours, but eventually Ianto’s fever breaks. His temperature gradually reduces over the course of the day, and by the following morning, although still a little feverish, Ianto is lucid.

Ianto still looks sick and exhausted as he sits up and looks around at the dimly lit Hub. His expression is as much one of confusion as it is of concern, as he asks, “How long?”

“Nearly three days,” Andy says, as he walks over from where he’d been checking their dwindling food supply and sits down on the sofa beside him.

“There’s still no power?”

“I know.” Andy hands him a couple of cereal bars. Not the healthiest of choices Andy knows, but there’s not much else that he can offer him.

“I should get up, check the fuses. If the power has been out this long…”

“If it’s been out this long it can wait a bit longer,” Andy says firmly, not wanting Ianto to push himself too hard too soon. “You should try to eat something.”

Ianto nods and slowly unwraps one of the cereal bars. “All right, but then I’m getting up.” He glances down at himself, seeming to notice for the first time that he’s mostly undressed. “And I’m finding some clothes.”

Andy not sure that it’s a good idea for Ianto to be getting up yet, not when only a day before he’d been so sick and delirious that he’d thought Jack was there. But short of physically forcing Ianto to lie back down and rest, Andy knows there’s not really anything that he can do.

As soon as Ianto’s finished eating he gets up. Moving stiffly and occasionally stopping to lean against the wall, Ianto refuses any assistance from Andy as they slowly make their way to Jack’s office.

The fact that Ianto has a spare set of clothes where he works doesn’t surprise Andy. It was a fairly usual thing back at the station as well, so that you had something to change into after getting out of uniform.

The fact that Ianto’s spare set of clothes are hung up next to his boss’s, and that Ianto smiles slightly as he picks up a tie that’s fallen on the floor, saying quietly, “And you said you didn’t have it,” makes Andy almost sure that his earlier suspicion, that there really had been something going on between Ianto and Jack, had been correct.

Not that it’s any of his business, Andy decides, as Ianto gets dressed. Although he has to admit that, despite never really having any feelings in that direction himself, he can see why somebody would be attracted to Ianto.

The fuse box, which proves to be on the opposite side of the Hub, is behind a nondescript metal panel, and Andy thinks that he could have searched for days without ever finding it.

Andy keeps close as Ianto starts to flick switches in the fuse box. Repairing electrics has never really been Andy’s thing. The idea that only a small amount of plastic coating on the wires separates him from several thousand volts has always been enough to make him leave it to a professional.

When none of the switches seem to work, Ianto picks up the voltmeter that’s lying at the bottom of the fuse box. The lights on the meter stay resolutely blank as he tests the current across the wires.

“The national grid seems to be off, or at least any part of it which connects with Cardiff. Nothing is going to power up,” Ianto says frustratedly as he closes the panel to the fuse box with rather more force than is necessary.

“There’s no way out then?” The hope that Andy had been clinging to, that somehow Ianto would just flick a switch and they would be able to get out, is dashed.

“There’s no way of powering up all the systems, but,” Ianto starts walking towards the office, “there should be a couple things in the safe that we can use.”

Opening the safe, Ianto hands Andy two angular metal objects before closing it again.

There’s nothing about the objects that Andy finds recognisable as any form of technology that he’s seen before. Turning them over in his hands, he’s not even sure how or if you plug them in or even if they are switched on or not.

Ianto smiles slightly at his confusion. “They’re alien if you’re wondering.” He points to the slightly larger of the two devises. “That one is a power cell, the other is for opening locks.”

“Do they work?”

Ianto frowns as he takes the power cell back from Andy, saying, “They should do. There’s not much of a charge left in this one. But there should be enough to get one of the computers working for a couple of hours or so.”


* * *


“We’ve got power,” Ianto says with an exhausted smile, looking like he might not have the energy to get up from where he’s lying half under one of the workstation.

After so long trapped underground, Andy’s first instinct is to rush outside and find out what’s been going on. That and to phone his nan and mum and find out if the rest of the family is all right. Fortunately, he supposes, his next instinct, the one that says find out what you’re going to be facing, wins out.

Helping Ianto to his feet, Andy asks, “Can we still tap into the CCTV or get the TV going?”

“I don’t know. But I can try.”

All the TV stations that they try stay resolutely blank. Andy tells himself that it’s probably just because the transmitter over at Wenvoe is down. The luck with the CCTV feeds is little better; the one and only view that seems to work is that of the steps outside the Sennedd building.

Normally on a sunny weekday afternoon he’d expect to see at least a few tourists hanging about. Except there is nothing. Even the seagulls seem to have deserted the bay, giving the whole scene an eerie, deserted air about it.

“It doesn’t mean anything.” The words are confident, but there is a slight waver in Ianto’s voice that lets Andy know that he’s just as worried as he is.

“I suppose there could be a curfew, or maybe everybody is just staying inside. I suppose there’s not much to come down here for on a weekend unless it’s for tourism.” Andy wishes he could sound more confident about it, maybe then he’d actually believe what he’s saying.

Not that Ianto appears to really be listening, as he nods distractedly and starts to try to hack into the national CCTV network.

After an hour or so with no success Ianto finally admits defeat and switches the computer off to conserve what little power they have.


* * *


Using the other power cell, it’s easy enough to leave the Hub. It’s getting to the exit that takes time.

Ianto stops several times as they climb the seemingly endless steps up to what Andy realises, once they get there, is the rather rundown looking tourist office just off the Plas.

“Where is everybody?” Andy asks quietly. He’s not sure why he’s whispering, although perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that the once busy city, a city that has been his home for his entire life, is now completely silent.

Stray pieces of litter drift aimlessly across pavement, while cars sit empty and still, their owners gone. There are dark stains on the concrete and in places the shop windows are broken, signs, Andy knows, of a struggle.. He’s almost grateful the CCTV cut out when it did, that he didn’t have to see the massacre of people that he was supposed to protect.

Behind him Ianto still looks tired and ill as he leans against a wall, keeping himself mostly hidden in the early evening shadows.

Andy glances down the street to where a car is a twisted wreck, the bonnet split by a lamppost it had obviously hit with some force. Smears of dried blood still cling to the shattered windscreen, the glass littering the pavement around it. It’s hard, Andy finds, not to think about which family had lost somebody dear to them in the crash. It’s a thought that becomes bleaker as he wonders if anybody is actually left alive to mourn them. He turns back to Ianto, asking, “Do you think they’re all dead?”

Ianto shakes his head slowly. “No. I think that they’ve been taken. Rounded up and taken somewhere.” He shivers and digs his hands into his coat pockets, looking cold and exhausted from their relatively short walk.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s too quiet for people to still be here.” Ianto looks around, his expression as bleak as his tone. “And it doesn’t smell nearly bad enough for them to all be dead.” He shivers, closing his eyes as if remembering something that he really doesn’t want to be remembering.

It’s only the haunted look in Ianto’s eyes that stops Andy from telling him just how cold what he’s just said sounded. He’s seen some of the older detectives in CID get a look like that sometimes. He doesn’t want to know what it is that can make somebody his own age get that look.

There’s a slightly awkward silence between them before Andy says, “We need to get some more food.”

The supplies that they have are limited and Andy knows that soon they’ll have to get more. Getting more, however, means stealing, looting from abandoned shops and supermarkets. Andy thinks that as a police officer he should be more against the idea than he is.

“There’s a Tesco not far from here.” Ianto looks around, checking roads and buildings. “I think we can get to it and stay mostly out of sight.”

Mostly, Andy decides, will have to do. It’s not like they really have much of a choice.

It’s not far to the small supermarket, and there’s no sign of any of the aliens as they go inside.

Some of the food is already off, the meat and frozen food having spoiled when the freezers shut down. Most of the rest is still all right, although the bread and fruit probably only has a few more days until it goes the same way.

Andy wonders if he should make a list of what they are taking, so that when all this is over he can pay for it. It seems to make sense for a moment, before the reality that nothing is ever going to be the same again hits him.

He’s not sure if it’s a laugh or a sob that escapes him, the terrible absurdity of their situation suddenly overwhelming. Holding a hand over his mouth, scared of the aliens maybe hearing him, Andy leans against the shelving, feeling tears run down his face.

Ianto puts a hand on his arm, his tone carefully neutral as he says, “We shouldn’t stay too long.”

Nodding, Andy wipes his eyes, grateful that Ianto has chosen not to ask him what’s wrong or make a big deal out of it.

Ianto gives his arm a small squeeze, then turns away and starts putting some cans into a carrier bag.

“Are you sure?” Andy asks, looking at the can of macaroni cheese that Ianto has picked up. “It’s going to taste awful cold.”

“There are a couple of camping stoves in storage back at the Hub. We can heat it up on that.”

They are both silent on the way back, lost in their own thoughts. Andy considers trying his mobile again now that they’re outside, but a quick glance at the display says that there is no reception and that the battery is almost gone.

By the time that they are back in the Hub, Ianto is almost shaking with tiredness, even though they have walked slowly and Andy has carried the bags. Letting Ianto rest for a while, Andy unpacks their food.

By the time that he’s done Ianto is dozing, curled up on the sofa where he’s spent most of the past few days.

Taking the device that Ianto had previously used to open the doors, Andy decides that it’s time for him to find the stove that Ianto had mentioned.

It doesn’t take too long to find the camping stove now that he can easily open most of the doors that he finds. He’s not sure why a supposedly top-secret organisation, based in a city, would actually need camping equipment, or why so much of it seems to be damaged. But he’s grateful that they do.

Andy doubts if he’ll be able to make the coffee anywhere near as good as the cup that Ianto had offered him that first morning in the Hub, but decides that any form of coffee is better than no coffee at all.

Their coffee and food heated, he sits down next to Ianto.

It’s surprising, Andy decides, how much of a difference simple things like having a hot drink or meal can make to how you feel.

The look of surprise and gratitude, and the quietly murmured thanks Ianto gives Andy as he hands him the food is been slightly unexpected. It makes Andy wonder when Ianto last had anybody who looked after him, or even cared about him.

The realisation that if he hadn’t met Ianto, then he’d have been at home asleep when then aliens attacked, Andy finds disturbing. There are too many questions that scare him and that he doesn’t want to know the answer to, like would he have woken up and tried to fight them? And if he had, whether he’d still be alive? Or would he have hidden, alone and scared until he’d disappeared along with everybody else in Cardiff?

The food suddenly seems less appealing, and the need to talk, and to reaffirm the fact that he’s not alone, more important. Turning to Ianto, Andy asks, “Do you think that the aliens have taken everybody away? Or just the people in Cardiff?”

“I don’t know.” Ianto puts down his fork. “If they know about the Rift, maybe they decided they should remove everybody from here just in case they try and use it.”

“That’s the second time you mentioned this Rift. What is it?”

Ianto sighs, picking half-heartedly at the remainder of his macaroni cheese. “Short answer is, it’s a tear in time and space. Aliens, people displaced in time and pieces of technology wash through, and occasionally things get taken.”

“And you can use it?” Andy asks hopefully. He’s not actually sure what use it might be to them, but anything that they can use seems like an improvement over their current situation.

“No,” Ianto says sharply. “Torchwood thought that they could, once. It didn’t work. We can’t control it, and I’m not going to try.”

The look on Ianto’s face dissuades Andy from asking any more. It’s obvious to him though that Ianto knows rather more about the Rift and any attempts to control it than he has said.

“Maybe everybody was evacuated to somewhere safe,” Andy says with an optimism that he really can’t bring himself to feel as he tries to turn the conversation in a more positive direction. “You said UNIT deals with aliens; maybe they’ve managed to stop them.”

“If UNIT were going to help, I think we’d have seen some sign of them.”

“Maybe they’re busy?” Andy takes his phone out his pocket, and looks at the almost empty battery indicator. “I’ve still got a signal, if you want to call them.”

“Don’t you find that suspicious?” Ianto asks, taking the phone from Andy.

“That it still works?” The fact that his phone is still working has been something that Andy has taken for granted; there doesn’t seem to be any good reason why it should stop working until the battery runs out.

“That Archangel is the only network still operating?” Ianto points to the small symbol next to the reception bar before handing the phone back to Andy.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Andy says, feeling like he’s missing the point of this conversation. “Is it important?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I think it’s suspicious that Saxon was responsible for the construction of the Archangel network. It was Saxon who tried to get Torchwood out of the way before all this started, and it was him who called the press conference, and had arranged for UNIT to provide security for it.”

Put like that, Andy decides, it does start to seem very suspicious indeed. “So what are we going to do?”

“We need to find out what’s going on, and if it is Saxon who’s behind this, we need stop him.”

“How?” It seems like such an impossible task that Andy’s not even sure where or how they can start.

“I don’t know.” Ianto sips his coffee, looking determined. “But we won’t be the only ones. People aren’t going to just sit around and let everything they know be destroyed. They’ll fight back.”

Putting his plate down on the floor, Andy finishes his coffee before saying, “Okay, so if there’s no TV, and all the phone networks apart from Archangel are down, which means we can’t use the Internet either, how are they going to contact us?”

“Radio would probably be their best option.”

“But they’d be heard, wouldn’t they?”

Ianto frowns, thinking for a moment before answering, “Maybe not. If they use frequencies not commonly available on a standard radio.”

“If they don’t use normal radio frequencies how are we going to hear them?” Andy asks, picking up their plates and mugs.

“There should be some of the old radio frequency scanning equipment in storage from before the system became computerised. I doubt if any of it has been used since the seventies, but it should still be functional.”


* * *


Knowing what they are looking for and actually finding it, Andy discovers, are two very different things. The storage rooms aren’t lit, and the slow search by torchlight takes nearly two days before they find partially dismantled pieces of the radio scanning equipment.

Transporting it all up to the main part of the Hub is slow as well. With Ianto unable to lift any of the heavier parts and tiring easily, Andy finds that most of the work is up to him.

After the first day of carrying heavy boxes up dimly lit stairs, Andy decides that they need some kind of timetable if they are going to do this effectively. Times when they can rest and eat, so that they don’t end up burning themselves out.

Actually getting all the pieces of the radio scanner reassembled, and then connecting it to car battery taken from SUV, takes another two days.

While Ianto works on the radio, Andy checks and organises their supplies, and makes sure that Ianto remembers to eat and take the remaining antibiotics. Andy also takes over feeding the weevils and Myfanwy. The weevils, Andy finds, are easy to cater for, eating just about anything that he offers them. Myfanwy is more awkward, but tinned fish seems to work the best, and on Ianto’s advice the occasional bar of dark chocolate.

Eventually the radio scanner is ready. It’s almost anticlimactic, Andy thinks, as he listens to the static crackles as Ianto slowly moves the dial, noting the frequencies of every static crackle just in case it’s someone broadcasting.

As more days pass, checking the radio changes from being a source of hope to a demoralising one. Andy suspects that neither of them wants to be the first to say that maybe there isn’t anybody else out there, that as long as they don’t speak about it, it somehow makes it not true.

Andy feels a little guilty for letting Ianto do more than his share of listening. He tries to rationalize it by telling himself that he’s only doing it so that Ianto doesn’t put too much strain on his injuries, but he knows he can’t use that reason indefinitely. Eventually, Andy knows, he’s going to have to admit that the reason he’s spending less time on the radio is because the lack of success is making him more miserable every time he tries and fails to make contact with anybody.

Andy watches as Ianto takes off the headphones, his fingertips rubbing hard against his temples, trying to relieve the headache that usually went along with several hours on the radio.

As much as Andy has grown to hate the radio, he knows that Ianto won’t take a break unless he takes over.

Getting a bottle of water from their supplies, Andy walks over to Ianto and puts it down in front of him, before picking up the headphones. “Want to take a break?”

Ianto nods wearily and accepts the bottle. “There’s nothing,” he says despondently. “Just nothing. I thought there’d be…something.”

“Maybe they aren’t broadcasting all the time. We might have just missed it for today.” Andy wishes he sounded more optimistic. He thinks that maybe if he did, he might be able to convince himself that there actually is some purpose to what they are doing, rather than just getting headaches from listening to static for hours on end.

“Maybe you’re right.” Ianto doesn’t sound convinced either.

“Get some rest; I’ll wake you if we get anything.”

Ianto nods before going over to the sofa and lying down, an arm across his eyes.

The airwaves seem to be as empty as they have been since they started their search, and Andy is considering telling Ianto that maybe they should look for some other way of contacting people, when he gets a signal.

“…don’t think you’re alone. We are going to fight back. It might not be an easy fight or a quick one, but if we all work together we can succeed.” Making a note of the frequency Andy hits the record button before hurrying over to Ianto.

“There’s somebody on the radio,” Andy says excitedly as he shakes Ianto’s shoulder. “She’s talking about fighting back, that we’re going to win.”

Getting up quickly, Ianto listens to the remainder of the message with a look of relief and amazement on his face.

As the message ends Andy can see tears in Ianto’s eyes. Putting his hand on Ianto’s arm, Andy stands there for a moment, just trying to take in the fact that after so long without any contact with the outside world, they aren’t alone.

Wiping his eyes, Ianto sounds a little choked as he says, “That was Tosh. She’s all right.”

“Tosh? Who was with Gwen? Can we talk to her?” The realization that they’re not alone had been amazing, but this Andy decides is on another level. It’s almost like finding out that his family is okay.

“Yes, and no, this is only a receiver.” Ianto picks up the piece of paper that Andy has written the frequency down on. “Tosh will have set up a system so that she can scan for incoming radio transmissions. She’s brilliant like that.”

“So we need a short wave transmitter?” Andy asks, suddenly wishing that he knew a lot more about radios.

“Ideally a transceiver, then we wouldn’t have to run two different machines,” Ianto says a little distractedly as he checks the connections for the radio scanner.

“Do we have one?” Andy asks eagerly.

“No, but a shop that supplied amateur radio enthusiasts would probably be our best option to find one.”

“Any idea if there’s one of those in Cardiff?” Andy asks. He doesn’t know, but then amateur radio has never been something that’s interested him. He’s sure that Colin would have probably known; it was the sort of strange information that Colin always seemed to know. It’s what had made him so popular on the pub quiz team.

Ianto shakes his head. “No. But there’s a yellow pages in the tourist office.”

The walk up the almost endless seeming flights of stairs is every bit as tiring as Andy remembers it. The fact that Ianto doesn’t have to stop and rest as often as the last time, Andy decides is a good sign that everything is healing as it should.

While Ianto checks the yellow pages, Andy flicks through the stacks of tourist leaflets. Event lists for the Millennium Centre vie for space with leaflets about exhibitions at the castle, maps of the city centre and bus timetables.

Andy is about to ask Ianto if he’s had any luck when one of the leaflets for an exhibition at the Nation Museum of Wales catches his eye. Signal fires to Wi-Fi: Communication through the ages.

“What do you think?” Andy asks, putting the leaflet down in front of Ianto.

Picking it up, Ianto reads through the leaflet before saying, “I probably shouldn’t be suggesting this to a policeman, but I think we’ve got a museum to break into.”


* * *


The journey to the museum in Cathays Park is nerve wracking. Hurrying between buildings and hiding in shadows, then watching and waiting to see if they’ve been seen, makes what once would have been a forty-minute walk taking nearly an hour and a half.

The streets around the park and the National Museum are the same as those around the Millennium Centre. Cars sit abandoned, while the signs of a struggle can be seen in the broken windows, the dark stains on the pavements and the debris left behind as Saturday morning shoppers had run for their lives.

The museum, it turns out, doesn’t need to be broken into, as it had been open when the aliens had attacked.

The museum feels eerie as they search for the correct exhibit, their footsteps echoing on the tiled floors. Ianto moves slowly along the line of display cases, reading each label as he goes. Pausing occasionally, he checks some of the radios against what’s written in his notebook, then shakes his head and continues searching.

Andy tenses at the sound of breaking glass, expecting alarms to sound, even though the rational part of him knows that there hasn’t been any power to the alarms for over a week.

Turning around from where he’s been keeping watch on the corridor, Andy sees Ianto clearing the last of the glass from the front of one of the display cases.

Once Andy has reassured himself that nobody has heard them, he looks at the radio.
It consists of three unremarkable -looking metal boxes, one of which has a label on it proclaiming it to be a World War Two German SE 108/10 transceiver.

“Do you think it still works?” Andy shines his torch on the rather battered radio unit.

“I don’t know,” Ianto says with a sigh, turning the middle one of the three boxes over his hands, before putting it back in the display case. “The battery unit is dead.”

“It’s all been for nothing then?” Andy can’t keep the disappointment from his voice. He’d been so sure that this had been it, that finally something was going to go their way.

“Maybe not.” Ianto puts the remaining two boxes into the backpack he’s brought with him. “We can take it back with us, and I should be able to wire it up to an alternative power source.”

The walk back to the Hub is equally as fraught as their journey to the museum, and they have to hide several times as they see the aliens fly overhead. They are always too fast to get a good look at, but he supposes that he should be grateful that they always seem to be in a hurry as it means that there is less chance of the aliens spotting them.


* * *


“Well, this is it,” Ianto says to Andy as he switches the transceiver on. Holding down one of the buttons he speaks into the microphone. “Hello, Tosh. I hope you’re getting this. If you are, reply on the same band you used last Thursday.”

Standing behind Ianto, Andy wonders if Ianto feels as nervous and excited about this as he does. He supposes that Ianto must do as they wait for a reply.

It seems strange to be using an old World War Two radio like the SE 108/10 transceiver to contact resistance groups. It makes Andy think of Saturday teatimes around at his Auntie Ellen’s house watching ‘Allo, ‘Allo. Not that he’s trying to think about his relatives; at the moment he’s still clinging to the idea that no news is good news and that they’ve all managed to escape to somewhere safe.

It’s odd, now that Andy thinks of it, that a comedy set in one of the darkest periods of recent history had been such a success. It makes him wonder if in sixty years or so, people will make comedies about what they are living through now. He hopes so, because if they do, that would mean that they have somehow managed to win. And that, more than anything, Andy finds, is a thought worth holding on to.

A minute later there’s a reply. “Ianto? Is that you?” Tosh sounds cautious, like she’s almost not daring to hope she might be right.

“Yes. Tosh, are you all right?”

“Yes. I didn’t know if you…I mean we left you alone. One of use should have stayed with you.”

“It’s all right, I’m all right.” Ianto reassures her. “And I’m not alone. I met up with Andy.”

“Andy?”

“Andy Davidson, he used to work with Gwen.” Ianto pauses for a moment, before closing his eyes and asking a little unsteadily, “Gwen and Owen, they’re still with you aren’t they? They’re all right?”

The fact that Gwen might not be all right isn’t something that Andy’s considered, it just doesn’t seem possible. Andy’s hand grips the back of Ianto’s chair tighter, his breath catching until Tosh replies.

“Yes, they’re still here and still arguing about the best way to do things,” Tosh says fondly.

Letting out the breath he’d been holding Andy feels shaky and wrung out, the initial surge of relief at finding out Gwen is still alive tempered with the fact this may be the only time that he gets good news like this.

“It’s nice to know some things don’t change,” Ianto says, sounding as emotional as Andy feels. “Where are you?”

“It’s probably not a good idea to say, just in case we’ve got any unwelcome listeners.” There is the sound of paperwork being moved about before Tosh speaks again. “I’ve got an idea. Can you get to storage room two?”

Ianto looks confused for a moment, then smiles, saying, “Would this plan involve the Helixian frequency modulator? The one that you’d been working on before…” He stops, covering his mouth with his hand.

It’s at moments like this that Andy wonders how, given all that has happened, they are still functioning. Putting his hand on Ianto’s shoulder, Andy stands quietly behind him, offering what support he can.

Andy knows it’s not the first time that either of them has suddenly been overcome with the horror of everything that has happened, nor does he think it will be the last.
This silent reassurance that they’re not alone has become their method of coping. They don’t talk about it afterwards or even acknowledge that it happened, and Andy suspects that Ianto is as much lost for words to describe how he feels as Andy himself is.

“Before all this. Yes,” Tosh says gently, when Ianto doesn’t continue. “I’ve still got the decoding equation for it on my laptop.”

“Tosh, you’re brilliant. We should tell you that more often.” Ianto still sounds a little choked up as he finally replies.

As the conversation becomes more technical, and Ianto seems more composed, Andy stops listening, deciding that his time is probably better spent doing something that he actually understands.

Giving Ianto’s shoulder a small squeeze, Andy leaves Ianto to his discussion with Tosh and goes to find a couple of torches and some spare batteries so that everything will be ready when they start to search storage room two.


* * *


Finding and then connecting the Helixian frequency modulator, which Andy decides looks like a Rubik’s Cube with added flashing lights, proves to be almost as time consuming as getting the original radio scanning equipment to work.

However, once it is done, having a relatively secure method of communication seems worth all the long hours and frustration of trying to fit together two very different technologies.

Tosh’s nightly broadcasts soon become their eyes and ears to the world, providing them with information that Andy thinks that they would never have otherwise known. Information such as the fact that Harold Saxon has started calling himself the Master, and that he is the one responsible for bringing the aliens, the Toclafane, to Earth.

There is news of the human cost as well. That in the initial attack a tenth of the world’s population had died, and in the days that had followed many more had perished attempting to fight back.

There will have been more deaths than that, Andy’s sure of it. Shock, lack of medical care, disease and even suicide would all still be adding to the death toll. It’s loss of life on a scale that Andy is thankful he can’t imagine.

The haunted look in Ianto’s eyes as he listens makes Andy wonder once again just what sort of things Ianto has seen, what nightmare situations he’s lived through. It makes Andy want to be able to do something to help, to drive away the sadness that so often seems to cling to him. But where to begin escapes him.

There is some good news though, like the existence of resistance groups. And the knowledge that, despite the fact that any groups that are found are ruthlessly crushed, more and more seem to take their place.

The news that there are resistance groups in the UK is tempered with the knowledge that none of them are near Cardiff, or even in Wales. Although neither of them talk about it. Andy is sure that Ianto is just as disappointed as he is that none of the groups are close enough for them to join up with.


* * *


It’s almost a month after their first contact with Tosh when they get the news that there’s a resistance group based in or very near to Southampton.

They listen to the minimal information that Tosh has on the group; that they appear to be reasonably well organised and that they have some form of radio equipment although they don’t know how to use it properly.

Once Tosh has finished relaying her information, Ianto switches off the radio to conserve what power they have, and turns to Andy asking, “So what do you think we should do?”


* * *

The option of staying where they are and hoping that another, nearer resistance group forms is barely discussed.

Getting to Southampton, Andy knows, will be difficult. Once it would have only been a few hours drive away;, now it’s a hundred and forty miles of the unknown.

Tosh has provided them with as much information as she can on the current state of the UK. But the fact that she’s several thousand miles away, having crossed from Nepal into China, means that the information is sketchy at best.

The decision to travel on foot as far as the Severn Bridge isn’t an easy one, especially given the amount of time that it will take. Eventually though, after some discussion, they decide that a full night of walking more than outweighs the risks associated with being in the only moving vehicle in Cardiff.

There’s a lot to arrange before they leave, and Andy finds that every waking moment seems to be filled with finding or organising something. Their route out of Cardiff needs to be planned, food that’s light to carry and easy to prepare has to be found, and despite Andy’s initial reluctance, there’s weapons training to complete as well.

Despite the fact that they are going to join a group of people who are fighting back against the Master and the Toclafane, the idea of being armed, and of shooting and possibly killing somebody, hasn’t been something that Andy’s allowed himself to think about.

The gun feels strange and heavy in Andy’s hand as he practices on the firing range, the sound and smell of the gunfire louder and stronger than he’d thought it would be.

Andy doubts he’ll ever be more than a very average shot, but Ianto reassures him that average is good enough, pointing out that average means better than fifty percent of other people.

It’s the sense of normality and even fun that Ianto brings to these training sessions that makes Andy decides that Ianto is actually quite a good teacher. The rather hands- on approach that Ianto takes to weapons training is something of a surprise to Andy, given how reserved Ianto usual is. However, having Ianto standing behind him, Ianto’s hands over his own as he takes his first few shots, doesn’t feel as awkward as Andy thought it would.

One of the last jobs that needs doing is releasing the weevils and Myfanwy, as there is no way to leave enough food for them in the Hub for whatever amount of time Andy and Ianto are gone. Especially as neither of them knows if they will ever be coming back.

Releasing the weevils is easy, relatively speaking. A tranquilliser is hidden in their food, and once it has taken effect, he and Ianto carry the sedated weevils up from the cells to the Millennium Centre car park. From there, Ianto assures him, the weevils will be able to find their way back in to the city.

Myfanwy is harder, and Andy is sure that he can see confusion in her eyes as the drugs he’s put in her food take effect.

Ianto’s mood seems sombre as well as he helps Andy carry Myfanwy up the stairs and through to tourist information office to lay her on the edge of the Plas.

Watching from the relative safety of the office, Andy waits with Ianto until Myfanwy comes round. It’s not a long wait, and Myfanwy squawks as she slowly circles the Plas, gaining height, as the sun rises across the bay.

“Just something in my eye,” Ianto says a little too quickly to be convincing, as he turns away from watching Myfanwy leave.

“She’ll be all right.”

Ianto nods, still not looking at Andy. “Of course she will. We should finish packing.”


* * *


There’s a strange, nervous excitement to packing, Andy thinks. It feels like an odd cross between going on his first holiday abroad and his first day out on the beat.

The radio transceiver and the power cell are amongst the last things to be packed. The alien power cell is now full charged after using the car batteries from most of the vehicles parked in the Millennium Centre car park. It had been a slow job done over several nights, but a necessary one as Andy knows that it means that they’ll have all the power they need for the radio while they make their way to Southampton. It also is a lot lighter than carrying several batteries around with them, which would have been the only other alternative.

Locking the door to the tourist office, having previously secured the entrance down to the Hub inside, Ianto slowly runs a finger across the worn and faded woodwork before turning to Andy and nodding.

Now that they’re finally leaving Cardiff, there doesn’t seem to be anything left to say, or nothing that Andy thinks he could put into words. The fact that neither of them might ever see Cardiff again hasn’t been something they’ve spoken about, although Andy is sure that they’ve both thought it.

They leave the Hub soon after dark, the only illumination as they walk though the deserted city is a half moon that is frequently hidden by clouds.

Following the railway line as far as the outskirts of Newport, they keep to the south of the town, crossing the river Usk by the first bridge they come to.

There are a few lights still on in Newport, and the decision not to investigate and find out if they belong to people who have survived the Toclafane attack is a difficult one.

Andy knows why they don’t: the people could be working with the Toclafane. It had been one of the harder pieces of news to take in that Tosh had told them, that some people were choosing to work with the Master and the Toclafane in subduing the rest of the world’s population.

The farmland beyond Newport seems strange and exposed after they have spent so long in the city. The cover provided by the occasional farm building and by small groups of trees seems insubstantial compared to the rows of shops and houses in Cardiff and Newport.

The sun is just starting to come up as they reach Llandevenny, a village a couple of miles short of the Severn Bridge. Although there has been no sign of the Toclafane so far, they decide to stop and wait until evening before attempting to cross the Severn.

Sheltering in a barn on the edge of Llandevenny, Andy is glad that they’ve stopped. Fifteen miles of walking combined with the unfamiliar weight of a backpack on his shoulders, and the constant fear that might be spotted at any moment, has been exhausting.

After eating a cold meal from their supplies, not wanting to chance a fire because of the risks of being seen, and of setting light to the hay stacked around them, they secure the door to the barn the best they can and try to sleep.

Andy wakes once during the day. Lying wrapped in his sleeping bag, he blinks a few times in the bright sunlight that’s streaming through a gap in the door of the barn, trying to work out what has woken him.

Ianto is sitting up, head resting on knees drawn up to his chest, his breathing shaky enough that Andy wonders for a moment if Ianto is crying.

“What’s wrong?” Andy asks quietly, hoping that there is nobody outside near enough to hear them.

Lying down, Ianto rolls over so that his back is facing Andy before he replies, “It’s nothing. I just don’t like the countryside.”

A nightmare, Andy decides, knowing that they’ve both had a few since the Toclafane have taken over. He wonders if he should go over to Ianto, and try to reassure him that it was just a dream. Only Andy doubts if Ianto would appreciate it, so he just watches and waits until Ianto has fallen in to what appears to be a nightmare free sleep, before going back to sleep himself.



* * *


Ianto is still quiet and a little more withdrawn than usual as they leave the barn and continue toward the Severn Bridge, and Andy wonders if he did the right thing in not trying to find out what had been wrong.

The sun is low on the horizon as they cut across county, approaching the bridge from the shoreline, so that they have a good view of it without easily being seen.

Crouching down behind a low wall that runs along the edge of the farmland, Andy watches as men and women in military fatigues patrol the Severn road bridge, while the Toclafane flit overhead.

Going around them and over land would add miles to their journey, but even attempting to cross the bridge looks like suicide. And turning back would be admitting defeat before they’ve even really begun, and Andy doesn’t think either of them are ready to do that.

Beside him Ianto nudges his shoulder, nodding his head towards the shoreline. “What do you know about boats?”

Andy scans the shoreline where a few small rowing boats are moored along a jetty. “They float, that’s about it. Why?” He’s not sure why he’s bothering to ask why, it’s pretty obvious what Ianto is thinking: that they should cross the Severn estuary by boat.

“It’s about three and a half miles across the estuary here, we could probably row across in a hour or so.” Ianto sounds a little doubtful, as though he doesn’t quite trust his own plan to succeed. “The only problem is the tides.”

“Only the tides.” Andy can’t help but smile. “There’s the army with machine guns over there and aliens who want to kill us, and you’re worried about the tides?”

“The tides here are some of the strongest in the world; we time this wrong and we could be swept inland towards the bridge or out to sea,” Ianto says, as he looks at the tide line. “The tide is coming in at the moment. If we leave just before it starts to turn, then any of the movement inland should be cancelled out when the tide starts to go back out again.”

“All right,” Andy says quietly, looking at where a few boats are moored at a jetty a few hundred yards down the river from them.

The daylight is fading fast as they cautiously make their way down to the jetty, keeping the low sea wall between them and the patrols on the bridge.

The few boats that are moored along a small pier are exposed, and with the sun setting in the west behind them they both know that they would make easy targets to anybody who is watching.

There are a few boats though which have been dragged up onto the beach, their hulls resting in the shingle above the high water line. The tide is still coming in, the water lapping high on the shore as they ease one of the small boats down into the surf.

The sea, although Andy supposes it's technically still the river Severn here, is cold. The stiff breeze blowing in from the west makes the otherwise warm summer night feel chill.

The water is colder still he discovers as, after taking off his boots, he wades out into the shallows and steadies the boat as Ianto puts their packs and the radio aboard.

The splash of the oars is louder than Andy had thought it would be, and the first few minutes as they slowly pull away from the shore, he’s worried that somebody will hear them.

Neither of them are particularly sure how sharp the Toclafane’s hearing is, if indeed they actually have any hearing at all. What they are both sure of, though, is that right now would be a very bad time to find out.

As the last of the daylight fades, Andy glances back, suddenly needing one last glimpse of home. It seems strange to be leaving Wales. Not that he hasn't done it a thousand times before: it's just that the last time had been only a few weeks before this madness had descended. He and about a dozen of the other lads from the station had gone over to Ireland on a combined rugby and stag night weekend. It feels like a lifetime or more ago now.

The lack of light and the constant fear that they are about to be discovered make the journey seem almost endless. Andy is sure that they have been rowing for hours when he chances a quick glance at his watch. It’s almost disappointing to realise that it’s little more than an hour since they left the muddy beach just outside Newport.

Andy estimates that they are just over half way across the estuary when they feel the tide start to change, the pull against the oars getting stronger.

Each stroke of the oars takes more and more effort to keep the boat on course, and for the first time since they started rowing Andy is glad that they don’t have any light; he really doesn’t want to see the blisters that he can feel on his hands.

They are both almost shaking with tiredness as they drag the boat up on to the shore, the first faint glow of dawn starting to appear on the horizon.

There’s no sign of the Toclafane or any people as they shoulder their packs and make for the houses overlooking in the bay. They would have been expensive houses once, Andy thinks as they cautiously approach the nearest of them.

The door to the house is ajar, the carpet in the hallway inside stained with dried blood and strewn with children’s toys. Andy swallows hard. It’s hardly the worst sight that they’ve seen or probably will see, but anything with kids is hard. It was something that he’d learnt soon after joining the force. That no matter how bad something was, if it involved kids, it was always worse.

For a moment Andy considers asking Ianto if they can find somewhere else. However, the early morning sunlight that is starting to creep in through the windows soon puts pay to that idea. The need for safety and rest overcomes the fear of what he might find if they venture further into the house.

There is nothing else in the house though, just the debris of people leaving in a hurry.

Carrying their packs down to the small cellar under the house they secure the door. Getting out his sleeping bag, Andy decides that anything else like eating or working out exactly where they are can wait until tomorrow.


* * *


Andy wakes just before nightfall to the distant sound of a dog barking and the smell of coffee brewing.

Ianto is already awake, the map that they’ve brought with them spread out on the floor in front of him, as he waits for the coffee to brew.

Stiff and a little sore from the previous night’s rowing and from sleeping on the floor, Andy groans quietly as he gets to his feet.

Ianto looks round at the sound before giving Andy a sympathetic look and saying, “Not just me then?”

Andy shakes his head before helping himself to some of the coffee. It’s black and slightly bitter, and Andy wishes that he’d got some milk to put in it, but knows that’s probably not going to be possible for some time, short of finding a cow and learning how to milk it.

Drinking his coffee slowly, Andy wonders why it’s stupid little things that he’s started to miss the most. Milk is fairly high on the list, and so are bread and eggs. Not being able to have a normal breakfast, Andy decides, makes everything seem worse. “So where are we?”

Ianto points to a small town on the map that is just north of Weston-Super-Mare, saying, “Clevedon. The current pulled us at lot further south than I thought it would.”

The map shows the Severn widening dramatically after Weston-Super-Mare, and Andy knows that if they’d drifted beyond there then they might not have reached land at all. He’s glad now that he’d been too tired when they’d finally reached land to even consider how close they’d come to not making it.

“Do you think we should keep walking or do you want to try to find a car?” Andy asks, looking at the map and at the hundred or so miles that still lay between them and Southampton.

Taking some cereal bars out of his pack, Ianto hands a couple to Andy before shaking his head. “Until we find out if the roads are being watched like the bridge was, I think that we should stay on foot.”

Andy nods, knowing what Ianto has just said is sensible, sometimes Andy doubts Ianto is capable of suggesting anything that isn’t sensible; It’s disappointing though, the thought of miles of walking carrying a heavy pack.

Ianto looks at the scale of the map, and then at the distance between Clevedon and Southampton, saying, “Even if we can’t get a car, we should be able to average twenty miles a night or so on foot. We’ll be there in about five or six days.”

Hoping that it really doesn’t come to that, Andy finishes his breakfast.



* * *


If there’s anybody still living in Clevedon, they are keeping themselves well hidden, Andy decides, as he and Ianto make their way between rows of houses.

The M5 that cuts along the eastern edge of the town is just as deserted, the six lanes of asphalt looking strange and bare without any traffic on them. Once, Andy knows, it would have been busy with lorries and cars making their way to and from the port at Bristol.

Scrambling down the steep embankment at the side of the motorway, Andy is about to cross it when he sees the glow of headlights in the distance, and Ianto grabs his arm putting him back to hide amongst bushes at the slope.

Lying amongst the scrubby trees and long grass, his heavy pack feeling like it’s pressing him into the ground, Andy watches as a convoy of buses, escorted by military vehicles, pass by.

They are moving too fast for Andy to be able to see anything beyond the fact that the buses are occupied and that the soldiers, who are mostly travelling in the back of old open backed Land Rovers, are armed

As the last of the vehicles pass him, Andy notices that a struggle has broken out on board one of the buses. Glancing over at Ianto, Andy wonders if he should suggest doing something to help the man on the bus.

There’s no time to do anything as the bus and the jeep that’s driving along side it stop a few hundred yards up the motorway from where Andy and Ianto are hidden.

Three soldiers get out of the jeep and onto the bus. A moment later they drag a man from the bus and make him kneel in the road, his hands on his head.

They are too far away to clearly hear the conversation between the man and the soldiers, but the sound of the single shot that strikes the man in the head is shockingly loud in the otherwise still night.

Sick. Angry. Scared. Andy’s not sure which he feels the most. Closing his eyes, Andy tries to blot out the way the man had crumpled to the ground as the bullet struck.

“Just breathe, slow and steady, that’s it,” Ianto says, rubbing his hand across Andy’s back, trying to calm him. “It’s all right, you’re all right.”

Andy wants to tell Ianto that no, it’s not all right, that he’s just seen somebody murdered in front of him, but it’s too hard to form the words. Andy’s not sure when Ianto removed his pack for him, or when he started shaking, tears wet on his face.

The convoy has moved on and the motorway is dark and silent once more when Ianto helps Andy to his feet. Shivering, Andy finds he can’t look at the stretch of motorway where the body still lies, abandoned like so much road kill.

“I know it sounds awful, but it gets easier,” Ianto says quietly, as he helps Andy put his backpack back on. “The first time I saw someone die, I didn’t think I’d ever get it out of my mind. You do though.” Ianto looks away, his voice strained, “You realise that there are worse things than a quick death.”

Andy doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want it to get easier, to become desensitised to death like this, to any form of death; it just doesn’t seem right.

Still feeling shaky, Andy is grateful that Ianto stays close to him, occasionally reaching out to touch his arm as they cross the motorway and into the countryside beyond.



* * *


After three more nights of walking, and little more than thirty miles travelled since Clevedon, it’s obvious that their original estimate of five to six days to reach Southampton is going to be more like ten to eleven days at their current speed.

Taking a car is still out of the question as they’ve seen check points on many of the roads they’ve seen as they carefully make their way across country using footpaths and farm tracks wherever possible.

The decision to travel by day is taken after Ianto trips in the dark, his foot catching in a rabbit burrow as they cross a field. There’s no damage done, but Andy knows that it had just been luck that Ianto hadn’t ended up with a sprained or broken ankle.

Travelling by day, though, has its own problems, and the amount of time they have to spend hiding from passing Toclafane or having to detour from their planned route to avoid being seen increases dramatically.

Avoiding towns and villages adds miles to their route as well, and brings with it the added problem that their supplies, which they’d packed for a journey lasting about a week, start to run low.

There are opportunities to find food though, and despite the fact that Andy would be first to admit that living off the land isn’t something that he’s remotely skilled in, abandoned allotments and fields provide fruit and vegetables that even he can identify.

They are just over halfway to Southampton, crossing from Somerset into Hampshire, when they find a deserted farm, the rusted and crumbling outbuildings suggesting that it had probably fallen out of use well before the alien invasion. The overgrown cottage garden does yield a few fresh vegetables to supplement their dwindling supplies.

There are blackberries as well, growing wild in hedge at the edge of pond by the side of one of the farm buildings. Taking off his pack and handing it to Ianto, Andy carefully makes his way around the overgrown edge of the pond.

The bank crumbles without warning, and Andy falls into to the water with a startled shout, the stagnant water rushing into in his mouth.

A moment later Ianto is dragging him out, laying him down on the bank, and rolling him into the recovery position.

Coughing and spluttering, Andy lies on the ground, trying not to be sick at the disgusting taste and stench of the fetid water in his mouth and on his clothes.

“You all right?” Ianto takes one of the bottles of water from his pack, twisting the top of before handing it to Andy.

“I think so.” Andy coughs, still feeling sick. “You really don’t want to know what it tastes like.” He suspects what he’s fallen into is probably a drain from the old cowsheds. He supposes that he should be grateful that it’s not fresh, but somehow that seems to be of little comfort.

“Good to go?” Ianto asks after Andy has swilled his mouth out a few times with the water and used the remainder to rinse his face and hands.

Scrambling back to his feet, and trying to ignore the smell and the way the fetid water in his boots has soaked through his socks, Andy nods.

“There’s a camp site in about another six miles; it should have a shower block or a water point,” Ianto says, moving to stand upwind of Andy.

Those six miles, Andy decides, can’t be covered soon enough.


* * *


It’s nearly dark by the time that they arrive at what had once been Church Farm camp site. A quick inspection of the site reveals a small portacabin office, a combined shower and toilet block and a shed with a few pieces of gardening equipment. Nothing seems to have been used for weeks, the grass across the camp site having grown too long for anybody to easily pitch a tent.

Leaving his pack in the office, Andy is pleased to find that the water in the shower block is still working. The water is cold, but being able to have a proper wash feels like absolute heaven as Andy scrubs away the grime.

It’s two am when Andy wakes up, his stomach cramping painfully, and he has to make a dash for the bushes outside.

It’s when Andy has to run outside for the third time in little over an hour that Ianto wakes up.

“Andy?” Ianto asks, getting up and moving over to him, “What’s wrong?”

Rolling onto his side and bringing his knees up as close to his chest as he can, Andy tries to ease the growing discomfort inside him. The fact that it seems to have suddenly dropped about twenty degrees, leaving him cold and shivering, is doing little to help.

Andy’s stomach cramps again, and he bites his lip, not wanting to have to explain that he’d barely made it outside without messing himself. It’s too embarrassing for words.

Kneeling down beside him, Ianto places a cool hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“I think I caught something when I fell in the water. Feels like food poisoning or something,” Andy says, wondering just what you can catch from falling into stagnant water, or if he might be better off not knowing.

“Just try to rest,” Ianto says, the hand that he’d placed on Andy’s forehead moving to smooth back hair starting to dampen with sweat. “Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.”

Shivering, Andy hopes that Ianto is right.

The day passes, the slow passage of time measured by increasingly unpleasant and painful trips outside, and Ianto’s frequent requests for Andy to drink more water so that he doesn’t get dehydrated.

Andy wants to argue, to tell Ianto that drinking anything is making him feel worse, but he knows that Ianto is right.

The fact that Ianto is right doesn’t change the fact that water seems to go right through him, that no sooner has he drunk it than it already seems to be leaving him. And it hurts; from his stomach all the way down to his arse feels like it’s writhing and cramping. He’s not sure he’s ever felt this sick or miserable in his entire life.

As the day, or at least Ianto informs him that it has only been a day, draws to a close, Andy wonders if he’ll actually still be there to see the next.

Andy manages to get moments of sleep, his head resting on Ianto’s knee, the rough fabric of Ianto’s jeans somehow soothing against his hot skin. He’s sure that once he would have felt awkward lying with his head on another man’s knee. But it has gone past embarrassment now, past any thought of how undignified it is, down to just pure need for somebody to comfort him and tell him he’s not about to die.

Lying on the floor, every inch of him aching and his stomach feeling like it’s being twisted and tied in knots, Andy watches as Ianto contacts Tosh and then does their nightly scan of radio frequencies.

Morning eventually arrives after a night of uncomfortable and broken sleep that makes Andy feel like he hasn’t had a proper rest in days.

Opening his eyes, Andy sees Ianto emptying one of their backpacks and putting on his jacket.

There’s only one explanation that Andy can think of: Ianto is leaving him. It makes his stomach lurch in a way that has nothing to do with the sickness still plaguing him.

“You’re leaving,” Andy says accusingly, surprised at how weak and hoarse his voice sounds. It’s an effort to sit up, but Andy knows he can’t just let Ianto leave without a word.

“Not for long,” Ianto says, putting on the backpack and walking over to him. “We passed a town not far from here; there’ll be a chemists there.”

“I can’t…” Andy stops and closes his eyes, not wanting to disappoint Ianto, but he knows that there’s no way he’ll manage to get to the edge of the camp site, never mind walking across miles of open countryside.

“I know,” Ianto says, as he kneels down beside Andy. “I’m going to see what they’ve got. There must be something there that can help.”

Andy nods, and then wishes he hadn’t as the room seems to spin.

“I’m going to come back.” Taking Andy’s hand in his own, Ianto gives it a quick squeeze. “You’re going to be all right. Now try to get some rest.”

As soon as Ianto has left, Andy gets unsteadily to his feet and staggers the few feet to the door. Leaning against it, Andy watches Ianto go, the countryside seeming to blur in and out of focus the longer he looks.

Feeling sick and dizzy from the blurred and twisting landscape, Andy finally stops watching and stumbles back over to his sleeping bag. Collapsing onto it, his mouth and skin feeling dry and tight, Andy tries to ignore the headache that seems to be trying to rival the pain in his guts with its intensity.

Whether it’s sleep or unconsciousness that finally claims him he doesn’t know or care; either way it’s a welcome relief.

Andy’s not sure how much time has passed when he feels Ianto’s hands against his back, helping him to sit up. His throat feels parched, lips and tongue too dry to express the relief that Ianto’s kept his word.

“Just drink,” Ianto says quietly, holding a cup to his lips.

The liquid is salt and sweet and has that odd chemical fruit taste that pharmaceutical companies add to medicines designed for children. It makes Andy gag slightly, but he manages to drink about half of it, while Ianto talks quiet encouragement to him, reassuring him that he’s doing well and that he’s going to be all right.

Andy’s not entirely sure he believes it, but he’s too tired to argue. Lying back down, Andy is aware that Ianto still has a hand resting on his shoulder, until he falls asleep again.

Slowly the cramps and pounding headache recede, leaving Andy feeling weak and completely washed out, but thankfully not like he’s about to keel over and die any more.


* * *


They stay at the camp site three more days before Ianto decides that they should probably try and continue towards Southampton.

If their pace had been slow before, Andy knows that it’s now worse. Even though Ianto has taken the heavier pack, Andy finds that he has stop frequently to rest.

The fact that Ianto isn’t annoyed with him for slowing them down somehow makes it worse. There’s nowhere for Andy’s frustration at his own apparent uselessness to be directed apart from back at himself, which he finds just makes him feel even worse about it.


* * *


Leaning against the wall of the building where they’ve stopped for the night, Andy can see Southampton in the distance, the city and port still active if the moving lights of traffic and shipping are any indication.

It seems amazing that they are finally so close, that after days of travelling tomorrow they’ll reach their destination. It’s taken them far longer than their original estimate of five or six days, but between frequently having to detour miles out of their way to avoid military patrols and Toclafane, his own sickness and their slow progress afterwards, Andy is impressed that they’ve made it at all.

The distance they’ve travelled, Andy knows, pales in comparison with the hundreds of miles that Tosh and Owen have covered in the same amount of time. They’d listened on the radio while Tosh had described the port at Shanghai, and Owen complained about crossing the East China Sea, telling them he’d never complain about the countryside again as long as he never has to step foot on another boat, and finally as they’d reached the small harbour near Akune, Tosh’s excitement at being back in Japan after so many years away.

Andy wishes that Gwen hadn’t left Tosh and Owen at Shanghai, going south with a small group of resistance fighters to Vietnam in search of Martha. With no way of contacting her Andy wonders if he’ll ever hear from her again.

Andy’s not sure what to make of the stories about Martha that have been passed to them by Tosh. Stories of a young woman who is travelling around the world collecting pieces of a weapon that can kill the Master. It all sounds a bit Hollywood, but given their current situation, Andy thinks it wouldn’t be the strangest thing to have happened.

Looking again at Southampton, the city only really visible now as a collection of lights as night draws in, Andy knows that finding the small resistance group amid the city and its suburbs will be difficult. Especially as they need to do it without alerting the Toclafane to either their presence or that of the people they are trying to find.

They’ve beaten the odds so far though, Andy tells himself as he goes back inside, and this won’t be any exception.

Ianto is already on the radio as Andy starts to make their evening meal. It’s not that Ianto can’t cook, if heating through cans of stew or beans can really be called cooking, it’s just that Andy likes having this one thing that he knows he’s better at.
The fact that Ianto appreciates it, usually accepting the food with a smile or a murmured thank you, has come to mean more to Andy than he can easily explain.

With the food ready, Andy is about to ask Ianto if he’s going to be much longer on the radio, when he sees Ianto rip off the radio headphones, and throw them aside.

“What is it?” Andy asks hurrying over and crouching down beside him, food forgotten. He’s not entirely sure he wants to know as he sees tears start to course down Ianto’s cheeks. “Ianto, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Tosh. She’s…” Ianto gives him a look of utter misery, his shoulders starting to shake with sobs he can’t keep inside. “She’s dead. I heard her die. The Toclafane…”

Once, Andy thinks, he would have felt more awkward in the face of such overwhelming grief, especially from another man. But there is no hesitation as he puts an arm around Ianto, letting him slump forwards to sob against his shoulder.

It’s not the first time that Andy’s had to reassure somebody who’s distraught at losing somebody they care about. You didn’t spend years on the police force without seeing and having to deal with situations like that. This is the first time, though, that he’s been close to that person and able to comfort them like this.

It startles Andy a little to realise how comfortable he is holding Ianto like this, feeling Ianto’s arms wrap around him, one of Ianto’s hands warm against Andy’s back where his t-shirt has ridden up.

Andy’s not had anybody hold him since before the Toclafane, and he suspects that it’s been even longer for Ianto. It’s more comforting than Andy ever remembers it being, the simple act of being held, and knowing that he’s not alone.

Although Andy doesn’t know Tosh as any more than a voice on the radio, she has been part of his life for the past two months, and the grief at her loss is still keen. With Ianto weeping against his shoulder, Andy feels able to shed tears of his own for the brave, brilliant woman who’d helped so many people by bringing them hope and information.

Ianto’s tears only stop when he falls into an exhausted sleep still huddled against Andy. Andy’s own tears have stopped, although the weariness and grief remain, obliterating all of his earlier excitement at having nearly reached Southampton.

Andy wonders if Ianto would mind if they stayed where they are tonight, just holding each other, and if maybe it could lead to other nights where they can fall asleep together.

It’s thoughts like this that have been occurring more and more often, and he doesn’t know what to do about them. All Andy knows is that right now, with Ianto hurting and vulnerable from the loss of his friend, would be a truly terrible time for him to choose to tell Ianto that he’s starting to have feelings for him.

Slowly, so that he doesn’t wake Ianto, Andy frees himself from Ianto’s grasp, needing to get away and try to understand what he’s feeling. Bundling up his coat and placing it under Ianto’s head as a pillow, Andy goes to sit on one of the boxes strewn about the office.

Andy knows that he’s started to think about Ianto differently. He’s not quite sure when it started to happen, just that it’s been going on for long enough that it seems part of him now. It’s still confusing; Ianto is a friend, the only person he’s got to turn to for anything right now, but Andy knows what he’s feeling is fast becoming more than friendship.

Andy is sure that he’s never really thought about men like this before, not seriously anyway. When he and the lads back at the station got changed in the locker rooms after a shift, he’d never really felt the need to watch all that naked flesh all that closely. Ianto is different though, and it shocks Andy that he wants to see Ianto naked, that he wants to touch him, kiss him, and to have Ianto kiss him back. It shocks him because he can’t remember ever having wanted anyone so badly before.

Andy wants to put it down to the fact that there aren’t any women available, that it’s because he’s spending so much time around Ianto, that it’s somehow just a situational thing. But even while Andy is trying to convince himself of this, part of him already knows that he’s lying.


* * *


After four days of trying without any success to find any trace of the resistance group, Andy wonders if perhaps they’ve been a bit naïve over the whole thing.

As evening falls Andy and Ianto decide to halt the search for the day, and restock on food from one of the out of town supermarkets on the edge of Southampton.

A lot of the food and other useful supplies have already been looted, but there’s still enough left, Andy decides, to stop them going hungry for a while.

Bending down to pick up some canned fish that has been knocked off of one of the shelves, Andy doesn’t realise that he’s not alone until there is the faint but unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked behind him.

“Turn around slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Putting down the tin, Andy does as he’s asked, his heart hammering as he expects to see a UNIT soldier behind him.

Holding the gun is a man in his late forties. The battered waxed jacket, untidy blond hair starting to go grey, combined with a strong Yorkshire accent gives Andy the impression of a farmer come to chase trespassers off his land.

The hope that Ianto has some how managed to hide or to escape is short lived as he walks slowly out from behind one of the shelves, followed by a woman with slate grey hair, a pink cardigan and a semi-automatic. It makes Andy think combat granny, and somehow, despite their situation, it’s still funny.

The woman gestures with her gun for Ianto to stand next to Andy, before she glances over at the man, saying, “What you think, Alex? You reckon UNIT sent them?”

Alex looks at them for a moment then smiles, shaking his head, “If this is what UNIT are sending then we’ve done a lot more damage than I thought.”

“We’re not UNIT,” Ianto says, giving Andy a look that says let me handle this, before stepping towards Alex.

“So who are you, and what are you doing here?” Alex moves his gun to point at Ianto.

“Ianto Jones,” Ianto says moving closer, still ignoring the gun that’s aimed at him, “and I’m here because I’m looking for you.”

“Are you now?” Alex asks cautiously, as he considers Ianto for a moment, before adding, “And how do you know who I am?”

“Yes. We,” Ianto glances round at Andy, “heard about you from Tosh. We’ve come to join you, to fight back.”

Alex lowers her gun. “We haven’t picked up any broadcasts from her for nearly a week.”

“You won’t, she’s gone,” Ianto says hollowly, eyes reddening as he holds back tears. “She was in Japan.”

“When it burnt,” Alex finishes sadly. “We’d hoped she’d got out.”

Ianto shakes his head. “I was talking to her when…” he swallows hard, “when it happened.”

It’s only the presence of the guns that stops Andy from going to Ianto and putting an arm round him. He knows that Ianto has been struggling since Tosh’s death, eating and sleeping less, the little rest that he does take is disturbed by nightmares.

“That’s rough.” Alex steps forward and puts and hand on Ianto’s arm. “She’ll be missed. She did a lot of good work, helped a lot of people.”

Ianto nods, “She was a good friend.”

“You knew her?” Alex sounds surprised,

“We worked together, a security company in Newport.”

Andy hasn’t until this point considered what they’re going to tell people about what they did before the Master and the Toclafane took over. It’s easier for him, he supposes; being in the police force is hardly an unusual job. Ianto though, Andy realises, can hardly say he worked for Torchwood, and explain what they did. The fact that Torchwood was supposed to help protect the UK from aliens and had failed to do so wouldn’t be looked on kindly.

Apparently satisfied with Ianto’s answers, Alex holsters his gun, before turning to Andy, asking, “And what about you?”

“Andy Davidson, I’m with…was with Cardiff police.” It feels strange to say was, like somehow by admitting it he’s confirming that his life as he once knew it is over. It’s not a feeling that Andy finds he’s remotely comfortable with.

“Takes some getting used to, don’t it?” Alex shakes Andy’s hand, saying, “I’m Alex Roberts, by the way, and this is Sue Jenkins.”

Sue frowns, finally lowering her gun, asking, “You trust them then?”

“Aye, I do.” Alex smiles, “They can come back to the farm with us, tell us what they know about what’s going on.”

Now that there aren’t any guns being pointed at them, Andy walks over to Ianto, putting a hand on his arm, needing make sure that he’s all right. He wants to tell Ianto that it was a bloody stupid thing to do, walking forward when Alex had been pointing a gun at him, that anything could have happened. It’s only the relief that it hasn’t which stops him.

“You okay?” Andy asks quietly, still a little wary of Alex and Sue.

“Yeah.” Ianto smiles tiredly, putting his hand over Andy’s.

Picking up his pack, Alex gives them a curious look and asks, “You two together?”

Andy feels his face flush slightly as he wonders if his feelings towards Ianto are so obvious, and if they are, why Ianto hasn’t said anything to him about it.

“Not like that. We just travel together,” Ianto says before Andy can answer, taking his hand off of Andy’s.

It’s the truth, Andy knows, but hearing Ianto say it makes his chest feel tight. It feels like rejection, a casual dismissal of everything that he’s feeling about Ianto.

“Don’t matter to me if you are,” Alex says, going over to the door and checking that their route is clear. “I just wanted to know if you want to bunk together, only we ain’t got much space back at the farm.”

Feeling more alone that he has since this started, Andy follows Alex, Ianto and Sue out of the supermarket.


* * *


The walk to the farm takes a couple of hours, although Andy suspects that is due in part to the fact that Alex has taken them there by a less than direct route.

The farm is set well back from any roads, the building itself mostly hidden amongst a group of tall evergreen trees. Even up close to the farm it still appears to be deserted, the only signs of life being a few chickens that scatter as they approach.

Inside there’s little at first to say that the house is occupied, although the more Andy looks, the more small things that indicate that it is become apparent. It’s the lack of dust on the floors, the way all the curtains have been secured closed so that nobody can look in, and the faint smell of cooking that should, if the house had been abandoned since the Toclafane attack, have faded by now.

Walking though the house, Alex stops in the kitchen and knocks on one of the doors.

After few moments there’s the sound of bolts being drawn back and the door is opened by a young woman wearing a scruffy green hoodie. She looks at Andy and Ianto for a moment, before shaking her head and saying to Alex, “They giving away free men at the supermarket now? I knew I shouldn’t have traded days with you.”

“You win some, you lose some, sweetheart,” Alex says, winking at her as she moves aside to let them down the steps into the cellar.

She laughs, swatting Alex on the arm. “You get worse, you really do.”

It’s so normal, light-hearted banter between friends, which Andy can almost imagine that he’s back in the canteen at the station listening to some of the PCs wind each other up after a long shift.

The cellars under the farmhouse, which Andy suspects would once would have been home to maturing cheeses and bottles of wine, have been turned in a busy but cramped living space.

Looking around, Andy can see that the cellar is home to more than the three people he’s already met, although how many actually live there he’s not certain. Although he knows that it must be at least six, as there are three people, two men and a woman, down here in addition to the three people he’s already met.

Curtains have been hung from the beams in the ceiling to offer the illusion of privacy, dividing off the living and working areas from those for sleeping.

Andy can feel everybody looking at him and Ianto as Alex walks with them down to the far end of the cellar, showing them to a small area of clear floor space.

“It ain’t much, but get your gear stowed and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team,” Alex says before going over to talk to the rest of the people.

It isn't so much an introduction, Andy decides, as everybody is asking them questions all at once, trying to find out what they know and if the rest of the country is in a better state than Southampton.
The fact that he can't provide any answers for them makes Andy feel like he has let them down somehow, although he knows that’s not the case.

After nearly three months of it just being the two of them, it seems strange to be surrounded by so many people again. Not that before all this started Andy would have called eight people a lot; now, though, it is.

That the group already has an established routine helps, although for the first couple of weeks Andy finds it hard to fit back into what feels like normal life. It makes him wonder just when he’d begun to think of checking for alien activity, foraging for food, and practising how to shoot to kill, normal life.

Evenings, once all other tasks are done but no one is yet ready to sleep, are spent talking or reading or playing cards in the dim lamplight.

Andy soon finds that nearly everybody seems to have their own horror stories of the attack. Alex and Sue, who'd both on board the same train, had seen the massacre of many of the other passengers. Mark, who'd fled the city after soldiers on the order of the Master, had started to round people up, taking any deemed to have useful skills and shooting the rest. Or Ted and Ruby, who'd hidden in the cellar of the pub they'd run together, too terrified to open the door and let in those being killed outside.

And some, like Lauren and her grandfather, Dave, had seen the sky split open and the Toclafane poured out to devastate the world. The farm, Andy finds out after they've been there a few days, actually belongs to Dave. Known to everybody, as far as Andy can tell, as Rainbow Dave, he'd bought the farm a few weeks before the Master had taken over with the intention of turning it into a self-sufficient commune. Or, as Lauren calls it, the retirement home for ageing hippies, a fact that Rainbow Dave doesn't dispute.

Andy thinks that under other circumstances he'd might have fancied Lauren, her personality reminding him a lot of Gwen when he'd met her on his first day on the force. The fact that he doesn't he feel anything more than friendship towards her, while his attraction to Ianto seems to grow more every day, confuses him. Andy knows he can't fool himself any longer, that what he's feeling towards Ianto isn’t just a product of the absence of women and them spending so much time together.

What he's going to do about it, though, he has no idea. There is almost no privacy in their cramped living arrangements to be able to talk privately with Ianto, and find out if he feels the same. Not that Andy knows what he'd say if there were, especially as he has no idea if any of what he's feeling towards Ianto is mutual. So Andy says nothing, telling himself that he's just waiting until he's sure that Ianto feels the same, and that it's nothing to do with the fact that idea of telling Ianto and being rejected upsets him more than he can say.



* * *


The days slowly drift into weeks and summer becomes autumn, and all the talk of fighting back starts to seem just that: talk.

It's not that Andy particularly wants to fight, if he's honest the idea the idea of fighting, and maybe even killing someone, makes him feel ill. It's just that it feels like they are losing, that every day
more people across the world die, and the Master's control over those that remain gets stronger as those who are left become too afraid and disillusioned to fight back.

That Ianto has taken up the role of Alex's second in command without any discussion or opposition from any of the rest of them doesn't surprise Andy. Ianto is clever, competent and works harder than anybody Andy has ever known. And that, in its own way, is a problem, as finding any time to spend alone with Ianto has become almost impossible.

It’s not until Ianto is late returning from one of his scouting missions with Alex that Andy finally admits to himself what he’s feeling for Ianto. That it isn't just some passing infatuation or desire to experiment brought on by the stress of seeing the world taken over by aliens. He's fallen in love with him, and fallen hard.

The day seems to drag. Alex and Ianto should have returned shortly before dawn; however, as the day passes and the sun sets, the fear that something terrible has happened starts to set in.

The thought that he might never see Ianto again, might never know what has happened to him, seems to settle like a lump of lead in Andy’s stomach. Sleep doesn’t come at all the first night. Laying on his camp bed, Andy listens to the soft sounds of people sleeping around him, trying not to look at where Ianto’s bed is silent and empty.

The next day is worse, as the rest of the group start to voice their concerns as to where Alex and Ianto are. And when night falls once more, Andy is the last to sleep. Waiting until he’s sure that nobody is left awake to see, Andy takes one of the pillows from Ianto's bed, swapping it with one of his own.

Lying down, Andy refuses to think about why he's just done what he's done, or what he's going to do if Ianto never returns.

It’s another two days before Ianto and Alex finally get back. Ianto is limping slightly, and Alex has scratches and bruises on both his hands, but they are otherwise unharmed, and eager to tell everyone what they have found out.

After making sure that Ianto is all right, Andy quietly replaces the pillow before Ianto notices it's missing, wishing that he could find the courage to tell him how he feels.

The news that they bring back with them, that one of the Master's rocket sites is located only thirty miles from them, seems to provide everyone direction and a new sense of purpose. What the rockets are actually for, whether it's attack, defence or for shipping people off to other planets, nobody seems to know or actually care. The fact the Master has ordered their construction seems like reason enough to try to destroy them.

It makes sense, Andy thinks, as he watches Alex and Ianto studying one of the many maps spread out on the table, deciding on the best routes of attack. Destroying the rockets is symbolic as much as it's practical; it's about giving people a victory and the will to go on fighting.

The idea to blow up the rockets comes from Ruby, and is soon chosen as their course of action. That Ianto and Alex know how to make explosives Andy finds disturbing in a fascinating kind of way. That most of the explosives are made from combinations of normally harmless seeming substances, the timers just old, mechanical alarm clocks is, Andy decides, the worrying part about it.


* * *


Eventually, in late January, all the plans are in place, and the bombs and timers constructed. Only Rainbow Dave remains at the farm as the rest of them set out under the cover of darkness.

It takes them two days to reach the rocket launch site. Walking through the night and taking refuge in abandoned houses by day reminds Andy of his and Ianto’s journey to Southampton.

It’s in a small woodland clearing a little over two miles from the edge of the rocket field that Alex calls a halt. Andy knows that this will be where they split up, each of them taking a gun, a bag of bombs and enough supplies to get back to the farm.

The knowledge that there’s a very real chance that not all of them will come back hangs heavy amongst them as they say their goodbyes. Andy says goodbye to Ianto last, waiting until they are the last two left, wanting to delay the moment as long as possible.

There’s so much that Andy wants to tell Ianto, especially as this could be his last chance, but as Ianto puts an arm around him, hugging him tightly, Andy finds himself too choked and emotional to get out a single word.

“Keep safe,” Ianto says quietly, releasing him, before walking into the night and leaving Andy alone.

The stars and the thin sliver of moonlight provide the barest of illumination. It’s enough, though, for Andy to find his way to the edge of the rocket field and crawls in under the fence. Andy's never really seen himself as any form of action hero, but he has to admit there is something thrilling about it. Thrilling and absolutely terrifying. Despite the fear, Andy knows that he's going to do his best. He doesn't want to disappoint Alex or let the rest of the team down, but even more than that, he wants Ianto to be proud of him.

The rocket field is immense, the rockets themselves with their red and white painted exteriors looking like something taken from a comic book, a child’s representation of what spaceships should look like.

The eight charges and timers in his pack seem barely adequate as Andy nears the first of the rockets. Yet Ianto and Alex had assured him before they set off that the charges would be sufficient, and he’s not about to start doubting them now.

The charges, their timers already connected to them, are easy to attach to the base of the rockets, the peel off glue backing holding them in place.

With the first charge set in place and the timer running, it becomes a race to set the remainder and to clear the perimeter of the rocket field before the first of the charges detonates. Eventually the last timer is planted, and without waiting to see if the first detonates, Andy quickly makes his escape.

Skirting the edge of the rocket field, Andy feels his heart pounding as he crawls through the gap in the wire fence and climbs down into a drainage gully. Following it until he’s out of sight of the rockets, he makes his way through woodland before reaching open countryside.

The sound of the first blast tears through the still night air, but Andy doesn't look back or slow down, wanting to put as much distance between him and the rockets as possible now that the Toclafane and the guards will have realised that they are under attack.

Andy stops only when he can't run any more; breathless and legs aching, he takes refuge in a barn.
The barn is small, a low single-storey structure that had once been a feed store and a refuge from the elements when shepherds stayed out on the Downs with their flocks. Now all that remains is a building that almost certainly leaks when it rain, its contents just a few mouldering bales of straw.
It provides shelter though, and much needed concealment from the Toclafane that will soon be searching the surrounding area.

The night air is cold as Andy waits, a heavy frost starting to form on the ground outside the barn. Dawn is still three hours away, yet the glow in the sky from the burning rocket site lights up the countryside.

The sound of movement outside, footsteps on the half frozen grass, startles Andy and he draws his gun. Even now after months of carrying it, the gun still feels strange in his hand, and he’s ridiculously glad that he’s never had to shoot it in anger or even self-defence.

Looking around the door, Andy sees Ianto leaning against the wall of the barn. The sight of Ianto, his face smudged with soot from the fiercely burning fires, is one of the most welcome that Andy has ever seen.

“You made it,” Andy says, putting away the gun and stepping outside.

Startled and still breathing hard from running, Ianto stares at Andy for a moment before nodding and giving him a tired smile.

Once they're both inside the barn Andy helps Ianto take off his backpack. He can feel the warmth of Ianto's skin and see the flush to his cheeks. It's the closest he's been to Ianto in weeks, and before Andy has time to think what he's doing, he kisses him.

The kiss is brief, Ianto pulling away with a surprised gasp. Looking at Andy, eyes wide and shocked, Ianto raises a hand to touch lips still moist from their kiss. “Andy?”

Turning away, Andy feels like his face is burning, the sudden fear that he’s ruined the friendship between him and Ianto almost overwhelming.

“I’m sorry. I don’t…I mean I’ve never…oh crap.” Andy slams his hand against the rickety wooden partition, frustrated at how scared and out of control he’s feeling.

“It's all right. It was just a kiss. You've done nothing tonight that you should be ashamed of,” Ianto says reassuringly as he places a hand on Andy's shoulder. “It doesn’t have to mean anything, not if you don’t want it too.”

“And what if I do want this?” Andy leans forwards, his lips almost touching Ianto’s, wanting to close the distance between them, yet afraid that Ianto will pull away again.

Ianto smiles slowly, hand moving up from Andy's shoulder to rest against his neck. “I’m okay with that, too.”

It’s strange, Andy decides, kissing somebody of about the same height and feeling the faint scratch of stubble against his cheek. Strange, but very good.

At what point they progress from kissing to serious groping with hands inside unfastened jeans, Andy is not entirely sure, just that it feels like the best and most natural thing in the world. And by the time Ianto kneels down in front of him, his intention clear, Andy decides that any form of rational thought is probably overrated.

The wet heat of Ianto’s mouth, the cool pressure of his hands, combined with the fact that Andy hasn’t so much as jacked off in the past few weeks, mean that it’s over embarrassingly quickly. The release leaves him almost light headed and worried that Ianto will think he has no stamina.

Ianto’s mouth is red, lips swollen from their activity as he looks up at Andy. “You okay?”

Andy nods, not able to string any meaningful sentences together before pulling Ianto up for a kiss.

Ianto’s still hard and suddenly Andy’s obscenely nervous about what Ianto will want him to do. What if he wants to fuck him? Andy’s not sure he can cope with the idea of that, of having somebody inside him.

Andy remembers trying it once with Nerys, one of the barmaids at the Red Lion, but she said it hurt because he wasn’t doing it right, and they’d never tried it again. She was married to a fireman now, Darren or Derek or something like that, with twins on the way. Or at least she had been, before all this madness had descended.

“What do you…um want?”

“Just this.” Ianto takes Andy’s hand in own, guiding it down to the open front of his jeans. “If you’re okay with that?”

Andy nods. A hand job. He’s not sure whether he’s relieved or disappointed, or even what that says about him.

It’s totally alien and yet so familiar at the same time, the feeling of hard, sensitive flesh under his hand. As Ianto’s breathing becomes rapid, irregular, he places his hand over Andy’s, changing the pace, the movements becoming faster, sharper, until he comes with gasp.

The kisses are slower, slicker as they come down off the adrenaline high of the attack, and move behind one of the partitions so that they are not immediately visible to anyone looking in the barn. They are still holding each other, as tiredness catches up with them, and they fall asleep.


* * *


Morning comes far too quickly, and waking up with Ianto curled against him is a lot more disconcerting that Andy had ever thought it would be. It somehow cements what they’ve done, makes it more real and inescapable. It’s not that he regrets it. It had been good bordering on the bloody fantastic, but it’s still confusing.

Pushing Ianto’s arm off from where it’s draped around his waist, Andy gets up, shivering in the cold morning air. Picking up his jacket that he'd dropped on the floor in the course of his and Ianto's activities, Andy fastens it as tightly as he can, digging his hands into the pockets for warmth.
Cold and confused, Andy paces for a few minutes before stopping, to lean against the wall, as he tries to make sense of why, after he’s wanted this for so long, he’s still freaked out about it.

“Are you all right?”

Surprised, as he hadn't realised that Ianto was awake, Andy stares at him for moment before shaking his head. “No, the human race has been enslaved by the prime minister and a load of psychotic alien footballs, I’ve helped blow up a field full of spaceships and I’ve had sex with a man. So no, I’m not all right. I’m so far from all right you couldn’t even see it with telescope.” Andy stops as he can hear an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice and takes a shaky breath, trying to calm down.

Getting up, Ianto chews his lower lip of a moment before sighing and turning away from Andy. “We should meet up with Alex and the others.”

It certainly isn’t the reaction that Andy was hoping for, although if he’s honest, he doesn’t actually know what would be. However, Andy’s sure that complete dismissal of last night is most definitely not it. “Are we going to pretend last night never happened then?”

“Is that what you want?” Ianto asks hesitantly, turning back to Andy.

Andy shakes his head slowly. He’s still not sure what he wants, not really. But he knows what he doesn’t want; he doesn’t want last night to have never happened, and he definitely doesn’t want it to be the last time.

“I wasn't sure,” Ianto says, moving closer to him. “I mean you did just compare us, last night, to the world being taken over.”

“I didn't mean it like that. It's just...”

“Confusing. I know.” Ianto finishes for him, before smiling nervously and reaching out to take Andy’s hand in his. “I hadn't done anything like that before Jack, before last year.”

Ianto's admission that he's still relatively inexperienced in this type of relationship Andy finds somehow reassuring. He thinks it might be because Ianto understands just how difficult some of this is for him.

Andy looks down at where Ianto is holding his hand and smiles.



* * *

The attack on the rockets, despite its success in damaging much of the launch site, isn’t the victory that they’d been hoping for. And any thoughts of celebrating once they get back to the farm are squashed as the realisation that neither Sue nor Ted made it sinks in.

News of the Master’s reprisals against anybody found near the rocket site in the days following the attack shocks them with its indiscriminate brutality. Looking back on their plans, Andy wonders how he or any of the rest of them could have been so naïve as to think that their actions were only putting themselves in danger.

Nothing seems the same at the farm; everybody’s mood is subdued, and there’s no more talk of fighting back. Alex no longer organises them, choosing instead to go out alone, often for days at a time. Nobody asks him what he does, although the fact that when he returns it’s with more ammunition than he went out with and that the number of UNIT patrols have increased leaves Andy in little doubt that Alex is taking revenge for the loss of their friends on any soldier he finds.

Ianto takes over the day-to-day running of things, like making sure that the radio is still checked frequently, that they have enough supplies, and that the rotas for going out to gather intelligence or food are fair.

The initial fears that Andy had had about what people’s reaction would be towards his and Ianto’s relationship prove to be unfounded. Nobody comments when Andy and Ianto move their beds together, or on the few occasions when they find them kissing – Andy and Ianto are too careful about finding somewhere private for anybody to accidentally walk in on them doing anything else.

It’s after these stolen moments that Andy feels guilty, not for what he and Ianto have done – Andy doesn’t think he could ever feel guilty for loving Ianto - but that he can find happiness when everybody has lost so much. Even the knowledge that those who cared about him, his friends and family, wouldn’t want him to be miserable doesn’t always help. And Andy thinks that if it wasn’t for Ianto holding him when it gets too much, he might fall apart.

With fewer people, and Alex no longer really functioning as part of the group, Andy finds that he does get to spend more time with Ianto away from the farm. The combination of bitterly cold weather and the danger from increased number of military patrols means that nobody wants to go into Southampton if they can help it. It still needs to be done though, so Ianto usually volunteers to go alone. He rarely does though, as Andy takes every possible opportunity to go with him.


* * *

The cold dawn air is tinged with smoke as Andy and Ianto approach the farm after another largely unsuccessful trip into Southampton to gather supplies. It’s mostly wood smoke and petrol as far as Andy can tell, although there is something else underlying it, something damp and acrid that he can’t quite place, yet still sets his nerves on edge.

Andy is about to ask what he thinks when Ianto stops suddenly, his breathing become harsh and his grip on Andy’s arm tightening.

“What is it?” Andy asks, looking around, his voice barely above a whisper.

Ianto doesn’t reply. Swallowing hard he releases Andy’s arm and stumbles to the edge of the path before doubling over, retching.

Andy gives Ianto a moment before putting a hand on his back, steadying him, and asking, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Bodies. Burnt bodies,” Ianto says, wiping a hand across his mouth.

Andy’s stomach lurches at the thought of just who those bodies might belong to. “Are you sure?”

Starting to shiver, Ianto gives Andy a wild-eyed look. “It’s not a smell you can ever forget.”

It’s a sudden reminder of just how little Andy still knows about Ianto’s past, except that parts of it seem to have been truly horrifying.

Andy knows that they can’t just turn and run, although the fear of what he’s going to find makes it seem like a good idea. Drawing his gun and keeping Ianto close, Andy approaches the farm.

There are no signs of life around the farmhouse, and the windows are broken and the door smashed in. Off to the side of the house, and only just visible in the faint dawn light, part of the garden has been dug up, soil heaped up at one side of it. The mound of earth shields most of the pit behind it, and its blackened and unrecognisable contents, from view.

Nauseous and shaking, Andy can't bring himself to check how many bodies the pit contains. He wishes he could, so that he'd be able to spare Ianto from having to do it.

"Is it…"Andy swallows hard, the smell of burnt flesh so much stronger this close, “is it everyone?"

Ianto nods, his expression blank as stares at the slowly smouldering remains.

When Ianto doesn't move, Andy takes hold of his hand, “We should check inside, just to make sure.”

Ianto nods again, still looking shocked and numb, as he lets Andy walk him into the house, still holding his hand.

The interior of the farmhouse is a ruin; the furniture lies wrecked and haphazard around the rooms, while the walls are riddled with bullet holes.

“What do we do now?” Andy asks, letting go of Ianto’s hand as he looks around at the scene of devastation. It’s too much to take in, the death, the loss of the people that they had lived, worked and fought beside for the past five months.

Ianto shakes his head, looking around the cellar in a daze, before sitting down on one of the upturned beds.

“We got to get out of here,” Andy says, the fear that they could be discovered taking the place of the numbness that he’d felt outside.

“Why?” Ianto asks bleakly, holding Lauren’s green hoodie loosely in his hands.

“They might come back, that’s why.” Taking hold of Ianto’s arm, Andy pulls him to his feet, before starting to look around for anything that might be salvageable.

Ianto doesn’t move, he just stares at the bloody and bullet torn room, eyes fixed for a moment on the twisted metal that had once been a camp bed.

“Come on,” Andy says, his frustration clear as he doesn't want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in ruin of what had become his home.

“Why is it always me?” Ianto asks hollowly, as he turns to Andy, his eyes full of despair. “Why do I always live through it? I don’t want-”

“Stop! You just stop that right now.” Andy doesn’t want to hear any more, and afraid of what Ianto might say, he grabs Ianto’s shoulders and shakes him.

Ianto doesn’t react; instead he just looks blankly at Andy like he’s not quite sure what is going on.

Letting go of Ianto’s shoulders, Andy wraps his arms around him, wanting to reassure him that everything is going to be all right. He can’t bring himself to say it, because right now he can’t believe it himself.

“I can’t do this again,” Ianto says brokenly, as he sags against Andy. “I’ve seen all my friends die. London, Cardiff, now this. I’m always left behind.”

“I’m glad you are,” Andy whispers, holding Ianto close, feeling tears start to sting his eyes. “Otherwise I’d be alone, and…I don’t think I’d make it by myself.”

Ianto makes a choked noise and presses his face against Andy’s shoulder, starting to shake.

How long they stand there holding each other, Andy’s not sure, but eventually Ianto pulls away, and Andy knows that it’s time they should leave.

There’s no thought of staying at the farm, even if it were safe, and they pack in a daze, trying not look too closely at the blood and bullet holes around them. They leave the radio behind; it’s damaged beyond repair, and even if it weren’t, Andy’s not sure who they would be listening out for any more.

Taking food and bedding, they leave the farm and walk until dawn, lost in their own bleak thoughts, wanting to put as much distance between them and the horrors behind them as possible.


* * *


The February countryside is bleak and bare, affording them little cover as they walk back to Cardiff. The longer hours of darkness are the only thing that Andy can think of that’s in their favour.

Andy knows that the decision to return to Cardiff is more about them not knowing where else to go rather than it being part of any useful plan. For reasons that mostly escape him, it makes Andy think of animals who go home to die. It’s not a very comforting thought, but then very few of his thoughts have been comforting for some time. He doesn’t talk about it, because he’s sure that the last thing Ianto needs is him making their situation seem worse.

Although how much worse it can get Andy isn’t sure. Between the constant cold, fear of discovery and scarcity of supplies, he wonders just how much longer they can go on, and if they will ever reach Cardiff.

The days are spent huddled together, sharing body heat until they finally get warm enough to sleep. The few warm moments before sleep claims them have come to be Andy’s favourite part of the day, when he can pretend for just a little while that everything is all right.

Crossing the Severn by boat as they had done on their way to Southampton isn’t discussed, and they turn northwards, keeping to the east of Bristol. Andy knows that it will take longer to reach Cardiff this way, but there is nothing waiting for them there, so speed doesn’t really seem to matter. He also doubts that either of them have got the stamina for the hours of rowing in the cold that it would have taken anyway.


* * *


They are a few miles outside of Bath when the snow starts to fall. It’s light at first, just a few flakes, but gradually it gets heavier until it’s a struggle to keep on the rapidly disappearing path.

The open farmland offers no protection from the weather, and when they reach the edge of a railway cutting, they decide to chance climbing down to the tracks below so they are sheltered from the worst of the wind.

The railway cutting is steep, and the poor visibility and covering of snow makes the descent treacherous. Slipping and sliding, Andy is glad when they reach the bottom.

Following the railway line, Andy hopes that they will soon find some form of building alongside the track that they can shelter in until it stops snowing.

They walk until they reach the entrance to a tunnel. Stopping, Ianto stares at the tunnel entrance for a moment, before saying, “It's the Box Tunnel”

“Is that a good thing?” Andy asks. The name sounds vaguely familiar, although he can't quite place it.

Nodding, Ianto takes a torch from his coat pocket. Switching it on, he walks into the tunnel, saying, “Torchwood London used to keep a secondary archive here back when everybody was worried about the Cold War going nuclear. When GCHQ had the underground city at Corsham built, Torchwood decided they weren't going to be left out, and requisitioned some of the space for themselves.”

“There's an underground city?” Andy asks following Ianto inside, glad to be out of the biting wind and snow.

“It was supposed to be somewhere the government could run the country from if London got attacked. It never was more than a decoy site really.” Ianto sweeps the narrow beam of the torch across the walls of the tunnel. “About halfway along the main tunnel there's a branch line off to the archive.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I used to work in the archives in London, before...” Ianto stops and sighs. “Before I went back to Cardiff. All the archivists had to know about it just in case we were the only ones left for some reason. We'd send somebody down here once a month to check that they were still secure and that water wasn't leaking in or anything.”

“So you've been here before?” Andy asks, wondering if Ianto is going to tell him any more about the past he doesn't normally speak of.

“No, I didn't have clearance anywhere near high enough to be sent out alone to check places like this.”

After a few minutes of walking they reach the branch line. Following Ianto down, Andy wonders how many thousands of people travelled past it on the train without ever knowing it was there.

The branch line doesn't go very far before it ends at small station platform. Climbing up from the tracks, there is little to see apart on the platform apart from a single door with a modern keypad next to it.

“How secure do you think this place is?” Andy asks looking around, as there doesn't seem to be any indication that the facility has been used for sometime.

“I doubt anybody apart from me even knows this place exists any more,” Ianto says, typing a code on the keypad.

The door opens with a slight mechanical hiss to reveal a small, rather shabby-looking office. Andy's not sure what he's been expecting to see, but a small office with an antiquated computer and a few old filing cabinets hadn't really been it.

Smiling slightly at Andy's rather disappointed look, Ianto opens a door on the far side of the office saying, “The main storeroom should be though here.”

The storeroom reminds Andy of the warehouse at the end of one of the Indiana Jones films, where innumerable crates, all with secret, classified contents, are held in a secret underground store. It’s the sort of thing that he’d always told Colin back at the station was a load of old rubbish, when he started on about conspiracy theories and secret bases.
Most of the boxes have serial numbers hand-written onto old peeling labels, their brief description giving dates in the 20s and 30s for their discovery. Nothing seems to have been added to the store later than the 60’s, and Andy wonders if they just started a new and bigger storeroom somewhere else.

Very few of the items seems to have been identified, and many have are labelled broken or fragment. On the fifth row of shelving, mainly containing crates from the 50’s, one of the labels catches Andy’s eye. Shielding device. No power source. Untested. Recovered from crashed alien vessel, 27th July 1957.

Dragging the crate off the shelf, Andy places it on the floor before prising the lid open.

The object inside looks like a large, lumpy, blue crystal in a twisted metal housing, and Andy thinks that it wouldn’t look all that out of place in the window of some New Age shop that catered to gullible tourists.

Beckoning Ianto over from where he’s inspecting more of the crates, Andy picks up the crystal, saying, “What you make of this? Says it’s a shielding device.”

Taking the crystal from Andy, Ianto turns it over a few times before answering. “I've seen part of one of these before. There's a broken one back in the archives at the Hub.”

“Do you think this one works?”

“Maybe.” Ianto frowns, then hands the crystal back to Andy. “If I had the notes about the one back at the Hub, I might be able to get it to work.”

“It's not that heavy. We could take it back with it,” Andy suggests, before asking, “How much do you reckon it shields?”

“It came from a ship, so probably quite a large area.” Ianto looks thoughtful as he considers the possibilities. “If we could get it to work, it could probably shield most of the Hub.”

Looking down at the crystal, Andy tries to take in the implications of having somewhere secure to work from. It would mean that they can start to organise resistance against the Master again. Andy's voice isn't entirely steady when he speaks, memories of the carnage at the farm still too fresh. “If it does, we could start to let people know that there's somewhere they can come to, we could protect them.”

“Yes.” Ianto smiles and puts his hands over Andy's so that they are both holding the crystal. “Well get the radio working too, tell everybody that we're still here, and we're not going to give up.”

Andy nods, feeling too choked to reply.

They spend two more days checking the storerooms for anything that might be useful, but everything else seems to either be too large to carry, broken beyond repair or so alien that they can't even begin to imagine what it might be used for.

With the snow having partially melted and in need of restocking their supplies, Andy and Ianto leave the Box Tunnel and continue northwards to cross the Severn above Bristol, where they hope some of the smaller bridges are unguarded.


* * *


It's a long walk, but finally they reach Cardiff. It seems strange to be back there after so many months away. The empty city isn't the almost silent place that it had been in the immediate aftermath of the Toclafane invasion. With spring just starting flowers now grow unchecked in the gardens and on the verges alongside the roads, while bird song, no longer muffled by traffic, is clear in the early morning air.

Closing his eyes Andy can almost imagine that it's a spring day in the countryside, and that everything is all right with the world.

A screech overhead makes Andy open quickly them again. For a moment he can't tell what has made the sound, then Ianto points up to the Alto Lusso building, where Myfanwy swoops and dives in the early morning sun.

"She's all right," Ianto says, smiling and wrapping an arm around Andy. “She made it.”

Seeing Myfanwy alive, and apparently thriving, Andy thinks seems like a sign that their return to Cardiff is somehow meant to be.

They watch Myfanwy until she flies out of sight, before making their way down to the Bay.


* * *


The Hub is just as Andy remembers it; dimly lit, cool bordering on cold, and echoing with the sound of dripping water.

With Ianto working hard on the shielding device, it reminds Andy of their first few weeks together after the Master had taken over when they'd been trying to get the radio working.

Finding enough power to test the shielding device is difficult, and it takes several nights of charging the power cell from car batteries before they can attempt a test run.

Eventually though, it's ready. Positioning the device in the middle of the Hub, Ianto sets a timer connected to the power source, and then goes to stand with Andy at what they both hope is a safe distance.

The crystal in the shielding device and the power cell both glow for a moment, a shimmering dome forming over them, before the power cell flares brightly and then goes dark.

“Well at least we know how works now,” Ianto says, looking a little shaken as he checks the readings, before going over to the device and switching it off. “It's a temporal shield.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Andy asks, wondering if he'll ever understand enough about alien technology to not need to ask so many questions.

“It means it's as good as useless. We don't have anything with enough power to run it for more than a few seconds.” Ianto sighs, disconnecting the now empty power cell.

“What about the Rift? You said that had a lot of power.” Andy looks at the complicated mechanical arrangement at the bottom of the water tower, remembering what Ianto had said to him all those months before about Torchwood once trying to use the Rift. “Could we use that?”

“No!” Ianto gives Andy a horrified look. “That would only make things worse.”

“How could it possible make things worse?” Andy can’t be bothered to try to hide the frustration in his voice. This is, to his way of thinking, the last good chance that have of making a difference, and he can't understand why Ianto is disregarding something that might still give them a chance of success.

“You have no idea what trying to use the Rift could do.” Ianto shakes his head, looking determined that he’s not going to change his mind. “It’s not worth the risk.”

“So it would make things worse than a quarter of the world’s population being dead and the rest enslaved, would it?” Andy says, angry now that Ianto is sabotaging their best option for them keeping them and, once they find them, other people safe.

“They could all die! The whole planet could die.”

“They’re going to anyway!” Andy finally loses his temper and throws the clipboard that he'd been holding, ready to write down the test run results.

Ianto opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, shoulders slumping. “You're right.”

“I wish I wasn't,” Andy says, feeling the anger drain away, the full horror of what he's said sinking in.

When Ianto doesn't answer, Andy walks over to him. “Are we going to try then?” Andy asks quietly, resting his chin on Ianto shoulder.

Ianto nods. “I don't think we've got anything left to lose.”


* * *


The scanner radio is still functional, and although broadcasts are rare, they find the occasional piece of information about Martha and her journey around the world. There's never any mention of Gwen, and Andy wonders if she ever found Martha and if she's all right. He doubts he'll ever get to find out the truth, but maybe in this case not knowing is the better option; it still allows for hope.

There's news too that whatever Martha's plan is, it will take place on the first anniversary of the Master taking over.

Every day becomes a race to get the machine operational, the deadline early in May looming ever closer. Andy finds it a little crazy to be rushing the completion of something that may very well kill them, but having an end in sight, a date where one way or another it will be over, spurs both him and Ianto on.


* * *


There seems nothing remarkable about the anniversary as far as Andy can tell when it does arrive. The sun still rises across the city, the sea gulls are as noisy as ever and the radio is silent.

Minutes tick away slowly, and Andy begins to think that nothing is going to happen, or that they've somehow got the wrong date; Then the temporal sensors that Ianto has wired up around the Hub start to flash, and the shielding device comes online.

It's oddly beautiful, Andy thinks, as he watches what looks like a giant soap bubble expand to encompass the main area of the Hub. Everything outside the bubble seems slightly blurred, like it’s not quite connected to reality any more.

The bubble is stable for a moment, and then it starts to shrink: a moving, shimmering wall drawing closer and closer about them.

“It’s collapsing!” Ianto shouts pushing Andy back, away from the approaching wall. “Whatever’s happening, the shields aren't going to hold it.”

“Can't we give it more power or something?” Andy asks, feeling panic start to take over.

“I can try. If this goes wrong…” Ianto looks steadily at him, although the implication of their deaths hangs in his eyes.

“Then we’ll go together.” The certainty in his own voice surprises Andy; the realisation that he truly means it scares the hell out of him.

Running over to where the crystal is wired in, Ianto opens the power connections wide. The bubble around the Hub seems to solidify, becoming opaque; the effect is only momentary though, as it starts to shimmer again and then contract even faster than before.

“I think this is it,” Ianto says, returning to Andy's side, and putting his arms around him. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm not,” Andy whispers as he kisses Ianto, wanting his last memory of them together to be a good one.

It’s almost touching them when Andy closes his eyes, feeling Ianto’s hold on him tighten. There is nothing left to do but hope that whatever is about to happen to them happens as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

The wall of energy prickles slightly as it touches Andy's skin, but there is no real time to feel more than that as it's followed by a nearly concussive blast, like something breaking the sound barrier. Then everything goes dark.


* * *

It’s an effort to open his eyes, and Andy feels more exhausted than he can ever remember being.

All the computer screens around him are working, the lighting is on, and the Hub appears to be fully powered again. None of that seems to matter though, not when compared to the fact that Ianto is laying immobile in his arms.

Ianto is a dead weight as Andy rolls him over. Checking for a pulse with shaking fingers, terrified that he'll feel nothing, Andy is relieved to find it almost straight away. Needing Ianto to wake up and confirm that he's okay, Andy slaps his cheek lightly.

Ianto wakes with a gasp, clinging to Andy as he looks wildly about.

“It's all right. We survived,” Andy says, almost not daring to believe it, as he rubs Ianto's back trying to calm him down.

“Not doing that again,” Ianto says, resting his head against Andy's chest, looking too tired to move.

“What do you think just happened?” Andy asks, looking around the Hub, able to concentrate on their surroundings now that Ianto seems to be okay.

“I don't know.” Ianto yawns, then starts to stand up, holding on to Andy for support, “But we need to find out.”


Still holding each other, Andy's not sure that either of then would manage to stay on their feet otherwise, they look in disbelief at the computer displays: The last year has ceased to exist.

The news reports are low on the exact details, but what there is says that the Prime Minister had been behind the plot to kill the American President, and in the confusion following the President's death, Harold Saxon had been shot and killed by own wife.
There is no mention of aliens or Toclafane, or the name the Master.


* * *

The days following the time reversal pass in a blur, with nothing seeming quite real. Ianto calls Tosh, to tell her that their mission to the Himalayas had been a set up, and arranges for her, Owen and Gwen to return to Cardiff on the next available flight. Andy knows that Ianto hasn't explained to them what has happened, not wanting to risk the information over the phone network, but has said that he's got a lot to explain to them when they get back.

Ianto also contacts the Cardiff police and tells them that Andy is on immediate secondment to Torchwood, and will be for at least a month. Andy's not entirely happy with this, although he understands why – there is no way he can turn up on Monday morning and be able to explain any of what has happened to him – but it still feels like his normal life, that he wants to get back to, is being taken away from him.

It's only when Ianto tell him that the plane with Tosh, Owen and Gwen on board will be landing soon that Andy feels the sudden need to get away and be on his own.


* * *

Letting himself back into his flat, Andy is glad to be inside. The town centre had seemed to be full of loud, irritable people who all contrived to get in his way or otherwise make his journey as stressful as possible.

Locking the door behind him, Andy wonders if Cardiff has always been so chaotic or if it’s some strange left over from the year that hasn’t just happened.

It seems strange to be back, the flat not feeling as much like home as Andy had hoped it would. It’s been a year since he was last here. A year or a couple of days, Andy still not sure how to work it out;. whichever it is, it feels like a lifetime.

On the floor by the door is a postcard from his mum and sister, the bright, sunny beach on it seeming almost impossibly peaceful after everything that he has seen.

Picking it up, the words on the postcard seem to blur and waver in and out of focus. Andy blinks a couple of times, before he realises that it’s his own tears that are causing it.

Still holding the unread postcard, Andy sits down on the sofa. He feels shaky in a way that he hasn’t done since the massacre back at the farmhouse. It’s over, but nothing feels right.

Days pass, but the feeling of disconnection doesn't. The flat feels too warm, but opening the windows just fills it the space with noise, and Andy quickly closes them again. The city seems too crowded and noisy. Trips to the supermarket are done in the early hours of the morning when the streets are deserted and shops are quiet. While the whir of anything overhead has him looking for cover and reaching for the gun he no longer carries.

And then there’s Ianto. Everything about their situation has changed, yet his feelings remain the same. Andy doesn’t know how he fits into Ianto’s life any more, or how Ianto fits into his, or even if Ianto wants to.

It's confusing, and Andy wishes that it could just be the two of them again, that he didn't have to worry about what people would think of him, or about how his friends and family might react to their relationship.

Not that Andy has contacted any of his friends and family since the world reset itself. He knows that he can't tell then anything about what has happened, and because of that he can't explain why he looks thinner, tireder, why his eyes are haunted by what he's seen.

It makes no sense that everyday life should seem so hard.

It's nearly a week after leaving the Hub when Andy decides that his self-enforced isolation isn't helping him adjust back to normal life or come to any decision about his relationship with Ianto.

Andy hasn't been able to face going back there now that the rest of the Torchwood team have returned. He knows that it's not fair on Ianto leaving him to answer all the questions that they will surely have, including Ianto's decision that they'd both keep their memories intact, but he's sure he'll just make the situation worse.

Lying in bed, trying unsuccessfully to sleep, and missing how Ianto used to curl against him, holding him and keeping him safe while he slept, Andy watches as the clock ticks through the small hours of the morning.

Whether it's the lack of sleep that triggers the decision Andy isn't sure, but suddenly he knows what he has to do. Pulling on t-shirt and jeans and stopping only to grab his keys, Andy hurries out into the night.

The streets are deserted as Andy makes his way across the city, the early hour and the near torrential rain keeping everybody indoors. It feels good; the rain soaking into his clothes and the quietness of the night time city around him - it seems more real than anything else has in days.

A light is still on in Ianto’s flat as Andy stops outside. He hesitates, not knowing what he's going to say to Ianto after not having seen him for nearly a week. Or if Ianto will mind him dropping in, although Andy supposes that Ianto would never have given him his address had he not expected him to visit at some point.

All Andy knows is that if he runs away now, he'll always be running. Knocking on the door, he waits.

Ianto opens the door. He looks exhausted, waistcoat unbuttoned and tie hanging loose as he stares at Andy.

“I needed to see you,” Andy says, hoping that Ianto doesn't turn him away, although part of him thinks that it's what he deserves after having avoided Ianto for several days.

Ianto looks at Andy, then steps aside to let Andy indoors, saying, “You'd better come in.”

“Do you want a coffee or something stronger?” Ianto asks, as Andy follows him through into his front room.

“Stronger, if that’s okay,” Andy says, sitting down on the sofa, knowing that there's no easy way of saying what he feels. “I know it sounds awful, but I want what we had, just the two of us. It was simpler. I didn’t have to worry about what people would think.”

“It doesn’t matter what people think,” Ianto says, pouring them some whiskey from a decanter, before walking over to Andy and handing him a glass.

It's a nice whiskey, Andy thinks, but it doesn't make the situation any easier. “I’ve been avoiding everybody. My friends, my family. They can’t see me like this, because I can’t explain anything, and nobody but us even remembers.”

“Some other people remember,” Ianto says, sitting down on the sofa next to Andy. “The entire crew of a military vessel, the Valiant, know what happened. They were at the centre of the time reversal.”

“How did you find out?” Andy asks, wondering if he really wants to know.

“Jack told me. He was on board with them.” Ianto’s voice is strained, and he looks away. “He won’t tell me what happened, just that it’s all over. I don’t think he wants to remember. I can’t say I blame him.”

“He’s back then?”

“Yes.” Ianto looks down at his drink.

“Are you back with him?”

“I don’t know. He needs me, but…” Ianto trails off, looking tired and worn beyond mere words.

“What about you? What do you need?”

“Me? What do I need?” Ianto sounds genuinely surprised, and it occurs to Andy that Ianto isn’t used to anybody considering his needs, and that makes him angry.

“Yes, you. What do you want?”

“Honestly?” Ianto still looks a little wary of answering.

“What’s the point otherwise?” Andy snaps, knowing that it came out harsher than he’d ever intended.

“Not to be alone tonight.” Putting down his glass Ianto leans against him, head resting on Andy's shoulder. “I got so used to waking up with you. Since you've been gone, these last few nights, I…” He sighs, closing his eyes. “You’d think I’d sleep better now it’s all over, wouldn’t you?”

“Why? I’m not.” Andy puts an arm around Ianto before leaning over and kissing him. It's done on impulse, and Andy's not sure why he's done it, except that it feels like far too long since the last time.

“Are we still together?” Ianto asks, as Andy slowly pulls back from the kiss.

“If you want us to be.”

Ianto nods, then smiles, hands moving to stroke Andy's face and card through his hair before returning the kiss.

It's not a solution to their problems, but if they're together, Andy's sure that somehow they’ll get through this. It won't be easy, but they've lived through devastation that most of the world thankfully doesn’t remember, and survived when he'd thought it impossible; but with Ianto by his side, even if he has to share him with Jack, Andy is sure that he can.

Warm and safe with Ianto in his arms, Andy finally feels like they’ve made it home.