A/N: Never before have I been so obsessed with a piece of fic so I thank all of you for sticking with this crazy story. Thank you for leaving comments behind because they have been fuel to keep this going, especially this past week which has been stressful for both sides of my family. (My maternal grandfather was in the hospital, but is better now. And my paternal step-grandmother, who was an eccentric woman, passed away after a long illness.)

A/N2: For those of you who were wondering about the tea on the baby TARDIS. That was a reference to Doctor Who "Christmas Invasion," which was David Tennant's first episode as the Doctor -- you know, that scene where the tea gets spilled into the TARDIS, and then, lo and behold, the Doctor gets all better and saves the day. Yeah, I was probably stretching things with that bit. Anyhoo, back to your epilogue.

Of course, The Doctor wasn't too happy about the turn of events. To begin with, he thought Ianto was wrong, so very wrong. And then, add the existence of the baby TARDIS -- one that had been activated…

"I mean, really, who decides to sprinkle tea on their knick-knacks? Then, they get all…" the Doctor waggled his fingers about as he searched for the right work, "sticky and such."

"It just spoke to me," Ianto said.

"Mmm… right, of course," the Doctor muttered.

"Well, that's my story, and I am sticking to it."

"Right, right, you and your dodgy genetic enhancements." The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair as he paced around the Hub. "Well, at any rate, it decided you should keep on living since you fed it. If you had just left it alone…"

"I didn't realize tea would have this effect."

"Spilt tea on my TARDIS saved my life once," the Doctor mumbled. He became wistful for a few seconds.

"What was that?" Jack asked.

"Nothing."

"If there was someone like you out there…" Jack said. "Obviously someone who isn't homicidal like you-know-who, but a good friend and companion, wouldn't you be happy?"

"Ooooh, Jack. Ask yourself if you really want to go there," the Doctor warned. He sighed and crossed his arms while glaring at the pair of them. "Can't do anything now. Too much history has been affected. You're stuck like that."

Ianto was a more than a little frightened and also just the slightest bit glad to hear that, but he hid both emotions behind a neutral expression. "I see."

"But I can do something to stop the problem from growing worse."

With those words, the Doctor quickly disabled Jack's teleportation feature on his Vortex Manipulator. He, then, grabbed the baby TARDIS. "And I'm taking this with me for safe keeping. Trust me, it's for the best."

Ianto lunged for the Doctor, but Jack held him back. During the scuffle, the Doctor entered his blue box and disappeared.

"You just let him go!" Ianto yelled.

"We can't raise her," Jack said. "We're not Time Lords."

That was true, but Ianto still felt as though his heart has been ripped from his chest. He angrily stomped around the Hub, picking up trash (fucking Johnson and her bloody caramel wrappers and would it hurt Rita to carry her own coffee mug back to the kitchen) while Jack hid in his office waiting for the storm to pass. Once he did a full sweep of the hub's main room, Ianto rode up the lift to the newly rebuilt tourist office and went outside to toss the rubbish into the dumpster.

When he reentered, he stopped short. The tourist office was bigger on the inside, causing Ianto's heart to flip with an intense feeling of joy. He put in his comm and said, "Jack, you have got to come up here."

"Why? What's going on?"

Ianto reached out to stroke the large branches of this impossible thing before him. Her stay with the Doctor was apparently good for her; the older TARDIS guided her through her growing pains -- well, at least that's the best Ianto could reckon. It was a feeling he got from her, just like the one that told him that she was here to stay. "Our baby is home."

~~o0o~~

Over the next few years, using scraps of alien tech as well as a few odds and ends from abandoned factories, they created a suitable home for their girl as well as sturdy vessel that allowed them to time travel without the headaches Ianto associated with Jack's Vortex Manipulator. However, their first few trips result in inconvenient break downs -- one of which stranded them in Chicago during the Jazz Age for six months. Luckily, they got back before the team noticed they were gone. On other trips, they aimed for one place, but landed in another. That was how they ended up in India, where they watched Alice pass out school supplies to a mob of eager children, mostly orphans, some the offspring of prostitutes. They stood outside the gates, but made no attempt to make contact. She didn't notice them. Jack didn't mind since he didn't want to ruin the moment. The children seemed to adore her, and she seemed to be at peace. Jack wrote down the name of the school, and when they got back, he made a sizeable donation in Stephen's name. He received a form letter thanking him for his generosity, signed by Jacob Hunt. It took seven years for Alice to sign the letter herself. The ink was smudged.

Of course, looking after their TARDIS didn't mean that they neglected their Torchwood duties. While monitoring the rift was always their biggest priority, it was not uncommon for Jack and Ianto to play the role of mediators between the government and alien groups. However, they never went into a meeting unprepared, and they always made sure they could evacuate the building in case things got ugly. They also took it upon themselves to draft the official alien amnesty policy for the UK that became the model for other countries, though they were never given credit for it, not that they wanted, nor needed, the attention. Being immortal always meant living in the shadows and being a secret only shared by a handful of elite government officials and a small circle of friends. To the rest of the world, Ianto and Jack were the stuff of urban legends -- as in a friend of a friend heard about someone who knew something about Ianto Jones, but that information could never be corroborated.

When humans began to colonize New Earth in earnest, Jack and Ianto adopted aliases while taking on more public duties. Because Ianto was renowned for his logistical skills, he became one of the Founding Parents of New Cardiff, the only one who asked to be kept out of the statue erected in the new Plass as well as the history books. The job was not as glamorous as it initially sounded since whatever plan he concocted for the fair allocation of resources never seemed to please everyone, and the opposition was always vocal and occasionally violent. Those were just the humans. Ianto also faced other alien groups who wanted to claim the planet as their own. Some were content to share, and Ianto was always in the front line when dealing with those who were not.

Yet, Ianto fared better than his partner. Jack stayed on Earth and played sheriff to a population that teetered on the edge of anarchy as the climate changed for the worse and resources began to dwindle. This separation was to be known as the dark era, and if it wasn't for their TARDIS, who allowed the lovers to escape for a few weeks within the span of five or ten minutes, Jack might have had a complete breakdown after watching people kill each other for a box of overripe fruit.

Let it never be said that these escapes weren't without moments of guilt. How could they bask in the glow of an island paradise when humanity was in turmoil? The answer was always a simple and rational one: because they had already endured so much, because they had so much more to endure. Unfortunately, simple and rational answers are not always comforting. In spite of their guilt, they learned not to take each other for granted and grew even closer as a result.

Yet, when the darkness passed (as darkness always passes), they both learned to look back at those years with satisfaction. They played their parts to keep humanity together. This was especially important to Ianto who for years had a nagging thought that he had come into this life strictly by chance. What he had done is bigger than himself, and he could hold his head up high because he made damn sure that his life mattered beyond his role as Jack's eternal lover. Not too shabby for a person who didn't think that there was anything particularly special about him to begin with.

It's now 3245, and he's still fighting the good fight, running his elite counter-terrorism unit with Jack. He's still protecting the rift, a different one of course. In fact, he named the city New Cardiff because of the rift that runs though it, and earlier in the week, the two rifts linked together, allowing pieces of the 21st Century to his current time and vice versa. (Unfortunately Manu's younger brother got caught in a fluctuation and inadvertently caused a car wreck in 2010 Cardiff. The poor kid was guilt ridden no matter how many times they told him that the accident was supposed to happen. If there was ever a time to dole out the Retcon…) But then, they got the signal, and everything stopped. Life had come full circle, and it led him back to the Caput-sihil Corporation in the city of Palenque on a planet called Ba'ak where, currently, Ianto Jones stares at himself, not at a reflection, but at the physical manifestation of his old self. In other words, Ianto stares at the man who died in Jack's arms at Thames House all those years ago.

Echo places the last enzyme disk in the pod and she gives Ianto the signal. The King pushes the button, and the body dissolves. There doesn't seem to be any point at keeping the body around anymore; therefore, after spending the last thousand years as a Popsicle, the former Ianto Jones can finally be sent into the ether.

Yet, it's hard not to think about his weaker moments when he thought about disposing of his body too soon so that it would never be cloned because it doesn't matter how many bullets he's taken for other people (and he's lost count by now) or how many times he saves the world, they always leave him in the end. Although he kept track of his family's bloodline, he never keeps in touch with any of them any more. With each passing generation, their DNA resembles Rhiannon's less and less, and the faces become stranger and stranger to the point where he doesn't feel a connection to them. Then, there are his friends and colleagues. Having had no natural children of his own, they become his surrogate family, and yet, he trains them to lay down their lives to save their home. He lost three soldiers this year alone; one of them died as the direct result of his orders. For the weeks following the incident, Jack had to hold him until he fell asleep.

In spite of all that, he needs other people. While his relationship with Jack is admittedly co-dependant, there are some roles that they cannot fulfill for each other: a doting mother, a proud father, a loyal brother. Add to that list, a loving sister. They also seek out the boisterous friend who demands more out of them, the quiet friend who listens to them without judgment, and the cantankerous friend who tells them how it is. Jack is his refuge and his home, but those are the people who remind him what he's fighting for.

One of those people is Echo, who offers him her arm as they walk out of the cryo room. "It was odd seeing you so young."

"I think I've aged well."

"Yes, you have. You still look very young. What I meant it that it's in the eyes… It's hard to explain… You were an old soul back then. It was obvious that you'd seen a lot, but not as much as you've seen now." She stops in the middle of the hallway and shakes her head. "Grrr, that sounds stupid."

"Not at all."

"I liked the suit," she says. "Why don't you ever wear pinstripes anymore?"

Ianto looks down at his current suit; it's a sort of homage to the classic mid-28th Century suit, which was an homage to the 1960s. He's even taken to wearing a fedora these days. "I suppose I never thought about it," he says in answer to her question.

"Manu, Kalinda and I once put together a fashion timeline for you. Let's see… last century, you went through a leather phase. Then, before that, there was that space cowboy phase and before that, the military look, which was quite fetching. Of course, Kalinda liked you in those shirts with the names of old rock bands on them, back when you were scruffy."

"I think it's fun to reinvent myself every now and then."

"I suppose it keeps things fresh between you and the Big Man."

Ianto shrugs. "It helps." But it's not necessary when they have something more profound that keeps them together.

"However, he never changes."

"Nope. That look suited him then, and it suits him now."

"I suppose so, but it's this thing with you men, isn't it? You always have to look slightly out of time."

"That's because we are," he says in a stage-whisper.

"Right," she says. "You know, it was fun toying with you."

He narrows her eyes at her.

"Oh, come on," she protests. "Jack liked it."

"Hmm…" Ianto replies.

"You know it's true."

They walk outside where a car is waiting for her. He hesitates before opening the door for her.

He salutes her. "And how are things here at Torchwood Palenque?" She's officially been in charge for two months.

She salutes him back. "Good."

"We miss you. Damn you for earning that promotion."

"Hey, you boys are the ones who offered it to me."

They hug, and she slips into the car. As he watches his protégée drive into traffic, he remembers when Jack plucked her out of the Xaspertine fleet. She was pretty, but not the most gorgeous member of her company; she had plenty of ambition, but so did all of them. However, there was something about her that provoked an intense feeling of déjà vu in both him and Jack, or maybe they just liked her because she had one of those faces that made her appear like she was up to no good most of the time. It wasn't until he opened the time-locked container that everything about Echo fell into place. How she laughed her ass off when she found out that the Bosses had to go rescue themselves.

With a sigh, he looks around at the foliage that covers the city. He'd almost forgotten how beautiful it was, as well as the unique perfume in the air. Yet, in the midst of the florals and the spices, there's one scent that is satisfyingly familiar.

Ianto stops at the coffee cart outside the Caput-sihil building and carefully carries a tray with four cups of coffee to the building across the street. Then, he takes the lift all the way to the roof where Kirby, a bald pensioner who maintains the garden, greets him.

"Got a little something for you," Ianto says, handing the man a cup of coffee as a small token of appreciation for allowing him to park his ride in his little piece of urban Eden.

"Oh, that was kind of you," Kirby replies.

"Jack?"

"In that box of yours," the gardener says, pointing to the blue shed.

Ianto holds up the tray of coffee. "I'd better get this to him."

Kirby sits on his lounge chair and sips his coffee, gazing up at the window where the young Ianto Jones once looked out at him.

Ianto steps into the shed and says, "Hello, darling."

He places the coffee tray on the console and strokes the buttons lovingly, and TARDIS responds by purring sweetly. Ianto takes off his suit jacket and hangs it up on the chair. Then, kneeling down on the floor, he carefully pours the contents of one of the cups down into the grate, and the machinery whirrs and beeps with pleasure while sparks fly as the circuitry wakes up.

"You spoil her," Jack says as he enters the main control room.

"That's why she likes me best," he replies.

Jack gestures at the coffee on the tray and asks, "This for me?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, sometimes I get the feeling that you love her more than me."

Ianto chuckles. "How many times do I have to tell you? I love both of you equally, just in different ways."

Jack sits on the floor, next to Ianto. He kisses the younger man, nibbling on Ianto's bottom lip before using his tongue to open the stubborn man's mouth. Ianto pulls away, playing hard, which given their history is highly unnecessary and perhaps very adolescent, but he likes having Jack chase him. And when he relents… oh, Dear God… There are days when Ianto wonders if they are still together out of habit or because they have no idea how to function without each other anymore, but then Jack kisses him in a way that makes him melts.

"We don't have to be back in New Cardiff until Friday until noon," Jack says.

"What are you thinking?"

"A quick trip to the Mines of Nordex 5."

"Why would you want to take me to a pit in the ground?"

"So many reflective surfaces. It'll be like having sex in a hall of mirrors."

"Sold," Ianto says as he springs to his feet.

The men run around the console, pulling levers and turning knobs. Sometimes, Ianto doesn't know if these shenanigans actually do anything. For all he knows, the TARDIS is doing all of the work, but it's fun. And it makes his heart race. And he feels so alive. Jack pulls him close, like he's never gonna let go.

Yes, Ianto Jones could say that he stumbled upon this life or that he was forced into it. Yet despite being stuck in it, it's moments like these when he knows deep in his gut, he wouldn't change a damned thing. Jack presses his lips on Ianto's temple; the feeling is mutual.

A/N: Now, if RTD would only bring Ianto back and make him and Jack happy, I would accept the events of CoE. *sigh*