Title: The Angel of Death (8/?)

Author: Emma

Characters: Jack Harkness, others

Rating: Starts PG. That's all I know.

Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?

Summary: Far in the future, Jack meets someone he never expected to see again

Author's Note: I don’t know where this came from. I really don’t.

Part One is here; Part Two is here; Part Three is here; Part Four is here; Part Five is here; Part Six is here; Part Seven is here

The station's conservation biosphere was built around a four-story chinese pagoda with a great deal more historical authenticity than Mulligan's saloon. The garden itself, on the other hand, overflowed with flowers and trees in a way utterly foreign to a traditional Chinese garden. Streams of chrysanthemums in pink, purple, orange, yellow, and white played the role of rivers and were spanned with delicate arched bridges. Peonies were massed along a wall pierced by a Moon gate, and wide-mouthed jars filled with water held lotus and chinese water chesnuts. Flowering plums and white pines were spaced throughout; wooden benches had been placed under them, providing stunning simulated mountain views.

Ianto kicked off his shoes and wriggled his toes in the grass. “This is wonderful.”

“Thank Ai-Shi McPierce. She was an environmental engineer hired by the Corporation to maintain the habitats. When she married Tom McPierce, he told her she could have anything she wanted.”

“One hell of a wedding gift.” Ianto pulled up his knees, wrapping his arms around them. “What did Tosh mean when she said Leah Davidson was one of yours?”

Jack was getting used to Ianto's blunt way of asking what he needed to know. “I went back to Earth about forty years after I left. Looked Gwen up. Head of Torchwood, near retirement, Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire, and wasn't her Welsh soul horrified by it. Rhys had retired and he grew roses and mothered every team member's kids.” He smiled. “They had three kids. Dewydd Owain, Gwyneth Toshiko, and Pryce Ianto.”

He slid down from the bench to sit on the ground next to Ianto. “Andy Davidson had joined Torchwood, too. Head of Torchwood Cardiff, CBE, married to a nice Welsh girl, two boys, Meirion and Ifan.” He grinned at the memory of the tongue-lashing he had gotten from the ginger-haired former cop. “Gwen also sprung a surprise on me. I had these friends, Mickey and Martha.They married after Martha's first husband, Tom, died. Gwen had hired them to manage medical services for Tochwood. They had Francie, Martha's and Tom's daughter, and two boys of their own, Will and Jack. They named the poor kid after me. Can you believe that?”

Ianto chuckled. “I'm sure that with that sort of interitance he must have had an interesting life. So you keep track of your friends' descendants?”

“It's a little more complicated than that. I didn't stay long that trip, but I did go back several times. One of the times it was...” he took a deep breath, “to leave my twin sons with Gwyneth.”

He turned his head to look at Ianto, but saw only a calm expectation. “I met an old partner. A former lover. John Hart. I was in one of my periodic death spirals, and he pulled me out of it. I wasn't planning to sleep with anyone, so I hadn't kept up with my contraceptives. I got pregnant. We both wanted the babies but we knew they wouldn't be safe with us.” Jack rubbed his eyes to keep from crying. “Once they were born, I took them to Earth to be raised by people I trusted.”

“What were their names?”

“Emrys and Blaidd. Gwyneth had married a young UNIT commander by name of Alexander Chesterton...”

“Emrys and Blaidd Chesterton were your sons.” Ianto flopped onto his back, laughing. “The two men most responsible for the human diaspora to the stars were your sons.”

Jack started to pout, then laughed too. “They had help, believe me. Their parents and uncles grew up in a tight group under Rhys's eye, and Gwyneth did the same for their generation. When I used to tell my team back then  the twenty-first century is where it all changes I didn't realize that we were going to be directly responsible for it!”

Ianto rolled over on his stomach. “And in some cases those children married one another and their descendants have been intermarrying every since. How many lines, Jack?”

“At last count, nine main branches. Don't ask about specific numbers. I gave up counting a while ago.” He rubbed his eyes again. “Some died without issue, as the obituaries say.”

Ianto took one of Jack's hands and brought it to his lips. “And each and every one of them hurt.”

Jack turned his hand over to grip Ianto's. “Yes.”

They sat quietly, holding hands. At first Jack tried to pretend to himself he was doing it to fool the ever-present eyes of station security, but quickly gave it up. He liked this, not only because it brought back happy memories, but because he was falling for this Ianto in his own right, or maybe it was that the two of them were blending into one in his mind.

“There she is,” Ianto murmured. Letting go of Jack's hand, he jumped up, waving. “Leah!”

The red haired woman in ship's fatigues waved back. “Ianto!”

She jogged over, with that skip-jump in her step that signalled someone who spent a lot of time in zero-gee. Jack noticed that the body was a good match to the face: short, compact, loose limbed, and curved in all the right places. When she reached them she threw her arms around Ianto.

“Isn't this fantastic? Mum and tad-cu will be so happy when I tell them I ran into you!” She turned to Jack. “He left in a hurry, you know.”

“Mea culpa,” he grinned at her. “I had business elsewhere. Let's sit.”

The flopped back down on the grass, Leah between them but backwards so she could face them. She started to say something but Jack shook his head. Keeping his hands out of sight on his lap, he punched a sequence into his wrist strap.

“Now we can talk. The security ears will hear one of those awkward conversations that happen when one family member introduces his lover to another.”

Leah snorted. “That AI of yours is really something, isn't she? Welcome to the family, Ianto. Considering the family tree, one more leaf won't be noticed. And it's very good to meet you, grandfather.”

“Grandfather?” Ianto asked.

“Well, after a few generations it's impossible to keep track of the greats so a long time ago we decided that Captain Harkness was just grandfather to everyone.” She grinned at Jack. “Although I do know the line of descent. Emrys, through a daughter of the Cooper-Williams line, through a daughter of the Milligan-Jones line through a son of the Davidson line, with a healthy sprinkling of others.”

Jack leaned over and pressed his lips on her forehead. “It's very good to meet you, grandaughter.”

She seemed momentarily stunned by the simple acknowledgment. Her eyes opened very wide, and the gesture was a vivid reminder of Gwen's. She reached up to twist one of her curls this way and that until she could speak. Jack wondered if her voice squeaked like Andy's would when he was emotional.

“All right, to business.” She sat up straighter, and her eyes took on a hardness Jack had often seen in his own. “I'm glad you're here, because I am at the end of my rope on this one. The crew is spooked and I'm not too far behind.”

“Tell us,” Ianto said.

“Well, first of all, why is Carlson handling this? They don't touch anything below a couple of million Coalition credits. This trip is peanuts compared to their usual contracts. Then, there's me. I am one of Carlson's best. Last year I brought them a clear profit of twenty million Ccs and I got a one-tenth bonus at fiscal year end to show for it. I don't get put on milk runs. So suddenly, I get a phone call from old man Carlson himself asking me to take it on, and he sweetens the pot with a half-million bonus? That's overkill, even for me.” She shrugged. “I took it. It was a lot of money and my last run had been a bitch, so I planned to catch up on my reading.”

“Didn't work out that way?” Jack asked.

“Well, yes and no. Everything was fine until we found ourselves with a ghost in the machine.”

Ianto stared at her as he she had grown an extra head. “A what?”

“It's what spacers call a malfunction in the systems that doesn't really affect anything.” Jack explained. “A weird sound, a strange process repeating itself but doing nothing, a nonsense phrase popping up.”

“Except,” Leah said, “that we did identify the ghost. One of our long-range telemetry units was transmitting as well as recording. And I know that frequency. Every one of us in the family knows that frequency.” She looked at Jack. “We are taught to recognize as part of our basic education.” Her eyes went as flat and dangerous as Jack's own. “My ship was transmitting a signal to the 456.”