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Chapter 1
I can't imagine how hard it must be, to be you
Adopting all your history, it's hard being me too
Jack was on the phone to the rest of the team almost immediately, Ianto getting ready to take the SUV to the location that the hologram was sent from.
“Right, the others will be back at the Hub, we’ll go get them and I’ll get the location to go from there.” Jack said, distracted. Ianto kept his mouth shut, though his mind was running at a thousand miles an hour. He simply nodded and pulled his coat on over his newly donned suit and tie.
It took them twenty minutes to round everyone up and stop everyone’s complaints and questions. Jack was just sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV and concentrating on his wrist strap, paying attention to very little else.
“Ianto, do you have any idea what’s going on?” Gwen asked eventually, Jack directing them every so often.
“Sorry, Gwen. I’m as in the dark about this as you are.” Ianto’s voice was curt and precise, though still polite. He was trying very hard to stop himself from making this even worse. Right now, they needed to sort this out. Questions could be answered later on.
“Alright, he’s at the Reunion Bar, less than five minutes away.” Jack said suddenly, snapping the strap closed and looking up, meeting Ianto’s eye with an apology and a promise – an apology for this sudden intrusion into their lives and a promise to explain it. Ianto nodded slightly, knowing that Jack would see, and put his foot down on the acceleration. Silently, Jack was rolling his eyes at the drama the stranger had caused. Reunion Bar… how fitting, he thought acidly.
They were at the bar in less than three minutes. Once they screeched to a stop, Tosh and Owen took one side, Gwen and Ianto took the opposite and Jack went through the main doors. The comms were on and everyone could hear just what Jack was saying to the visitor and what the visitor said to him.
“What are you wearing?” The man sneered, flicking his eyes over Jack’s outfit with an amused gloating in his eyes.
“Captain Jack Harkness, note the stripes.” Jack spat in reply, trying to keep his intense annoyance under control as he approached the bar. “Yourself?”
“Captain John Hart, note the sarcasm.” The other man grinned and wiggled his eyebrows, Jack rolling his eyes in return. So we’re both going by different names now, interesting, Jack thought with a grimace.
“Hey, I worked my way up through the ranks.” No matter what the other man said he was, after Jack had taken on his name, he’d made sure he’d earned his rank.
“I bet the ranks were very grateful.” John said with another sneer. After a moment, he sighed heavily and looked towards the bar wistfully. “I need a drink.”
Since he’d returned to Cardiff and learned the Doctor was coming, Jack hadn’t drunk much at all. He never wanted to be faced with a situation in which he couldn’t get to the Doctor because he was tied up drunk or otherwise. He could’ve lived with the anger at another person stopping him from getting to the TARDIS in time, but if it had been himself? Well, he’d never be able to look at himself again.
It was only then that Jack noticed just how much of the vodka John had managed to get through in those few moments of reflection. He glanced from his own bottle to the other and found a disturbing difference.
“So how was rehab?” Jack said wearily, watching as John finished the bottle off in one long gulp.
“Rehabs.” John grinned, wiping his chin free from the liquid that had escaped his lips. “Plural.”
“Drink, drugs, sex and?” Jack frowned slightly, gripping his bottle loosely as he took a swig of it.
“Murder.” John said sheepishly, grinning at Jack.
“You went to murder rehab?” Jack laughed loudly.
“I know, ridiculous. The odd kill, who does it hurt?” John smiled as he reached for another bottle of drink from behind the bar.
“You clean now?” Jack asked seriously. He didn’t want to risk his team running foul of John.
“Yeah. Kicked everything. Living like a priest.” John said with another smile, pulling the cap from the bottle with his teeth and scarfing half the bottle in one go. Jack rolled his eyes, instantly knowing that the man hadn’t stuck to any of his programmes.
“So, how's the Time Agency?” Jack said, suddenly interested. No matter how much he tried to avoid it, he felt drawn to his past now, wanting to know what had happened seemed logical to him.
“You didn't hear?” John put his bottle down abruptly and stared at Jack with something akin to pain in his eyes. “It’s, ah, shut down.”
“You're kidding.” Jack was in shock. The Time Agency had closed?
“No. There's only seven of us left now.” John looked away, a brooding expression on his face.
“Wow.” Jack let out a low whistle and stared at the bottle in his hand. There was a long moment of silence before he felt John’s eyes on him again.
“It's good to see you. It was never the same without you.” He murmured, leaning in towards Jack, a look Jack hadn’t seen from him for a long time smouldering in his eyes. With a sudden jerk, Jack remembered what he was here to do. Send John away.
Jack leaned in, leaving only inches between their lips, before speaking. “You need to go. I don't want you on my territory.”
“What?” John flinched back, looking both angry and incredulous. He slammed his bottle on the bar and pulled two handguns smoothly from their holsters. “Time was, you couldn't get enough of me on your ‘territory’.” He hissed at Jack, shooting straight into the glass panels in the doors at each end of the large room. “All right, everybody out!”
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TBC
