And the final member of the team. At last. This one took quite a while, is a bit weird, and ranks lower in my opinion. That was probably a stupid thing to say at the start, but you've all been loyal so far. And as a sort of excuse I have been very busy thinking about packing. Yes, thinking about packing, not actually packing.

Another round of thanks, this time to: L.A.H.H., Madame Cyanure, Eleanor Harkness-Jones, GallifreyenCultOfSkaro, insert-witty-comment-here, chironsgirl, Chalcedony Rivers, xladymercuryx and brionyjae.

Gwen

Owen looked at the results. He looked down at the substance. He looked back at the results.

"How…?"

It was a quiet day, as days at the Hub went, and Owen was working through his backlog of 'unidentified alien substances'. He hadn't expected it to be this easy.

He rechecked the results then prodded the powder in the Petri dish experimentally with a scalpel. Nothing happened.

Definitely…

"Ianto?" Owen's yell re-echoed around the Hub. He shouted his next words too, even though Ianto had appeared in front of him almost immediately, like a genie summoned from a bottle. "Why the hell is there coffee in my fridge?"

Ianto blinked. "Sorry? Why would I put coffee in your fridge?"

"That's what I asked."

"Are you sure it's the brand we use? Not something off-planet?"

"It looks like your stuff."

Ianto peered at the powder. "'My stuff' isn't tinged blue."

"It was next to something icky."

"There was some that went missing a few months back."

"When?"

"After Jack's booze-up."

"I still can't think why any of us would put it in my damn fridge. What kind of shit practical joke is that?"

"Could have been you. We were all pretty drunk. And you did kiss Tosh."

"Yeah, but we've only got Jack's word on that, haven't we? Claiming he can remember… Should see if he knows anything about this, just to test him."

"But he could just make something up. I could make something up. You could have done it as a joke, hiding my coffee."

"Yeah right. I'm not that childish. Not even when drunk. But you could have done it."

"Why would I have?"

"Good point, Ianto." Jack cut in. "Why would he hide his own coffee? You saw him in the morning."

"I saw three of him in the morning – 'cos your damn cocktails hadn't worn off!"

"Are we still arguing about this?" Tosh asked as she came up behind them. "I thought you'd stopped weeks back."

"New evidence." Owen raised up the Petri dish. "A sample of coffee found in my fridge."

"And what does that have to do with-?"

"Hi!" Gwen shouted cheerfully over the door alarms.

"You're late!" Owen shouted, attention instantly distracted to a new argument.

"Jack said I could come in late." Gwen replied breezily. "I asked a week ago."

"You never let me come in late." Owen whined, ever the petulant child.

"Owen, you don't have a relationship you're supposed to be keeping normal."

"Normal?" Ianto found himself querying.

"Well, vaguely normal." Gwen corrected. "Jack, can I still go home early tonight as well?"

"Why not just take the whole day off?" Owen suggested sarcastically.

Jack pondered briefly. "Don't see why not, unless something happens. We're not busy. You can all leave an hour early if you like."

He got a beam in reply from Gwen and a sort of half-scowl from Owen.

"This is of course on the condition that you do some work now."

No one moved. Jack felt that his authority was somewhat diminished.

"Nice earrings, Gwen. Are they new?"

Owen rolled his eyes in a very good impression of Ianto. The girls seemed to go through a daily ritual of complimenting each others outfits, but neither of them ever spared any comments for him.

"Yeah, Rhys got me them." Gwen gave one a flick. "I don't normally go for dangly, but since it's him…"

Jack coughed loudly. "I said 'This is of course on the condition that…'"

"Ok!"

Ianto watched Gwen bounce off and suppressed a sudden and bizarre urge to sing the Tigger song. "Is it their anniversary, or something?"

"They haven't had the wedding yet." Owen pointed out, for once showing a surprisingly developed knowledge about his co-workers' out-of-the-office activities. "Otherwise she would have shut up about the dress by now."

"An anniversary of their relationship." Tosh explained in more detail. "It could be."

"Or it's Valentine's Day and we've all missed it." Owen suggested.

"Birthday?"

Owen snorted at Tosh's timid proposal. "It can't be someone's birthday. Gwen would have sent me a reminder if it was."

They thought this one through.

"Hey!" Owen protested as Ianto seized the mouse at his workstation and commandeered the doctor's computer.

"It is her birthday." Ianto stated, bringing up the relevant files. "And this time we have genuinely forgotten."

"Ah." Was all Jack said.

Tosh bit her lip. "What are we going to do?"

Ianto silenced Owen before he even had chance to begin. "We've got to give her something. She was the one trying to sort out all our birthdays out."

"Surprise party?" Tosh offered. "That way we can pretend that our not mentioning it now was deliberate."

Jack shook his head in sorrow. "Ah Toshiko, how we've corrupted you. But a good plan all the same. Someone get our birthday girl out of the Hub for an hour or two and I'll see what I can rustle up." He closed his eyes in sudden bliss. "And if I'm not mistaken that's the Rift Alarm now giving us the perfect excuse to get rid of her. Must have decided to be helpful for once. Ianto, take Gwen with you to sort it out and don't come back until I call you."

Ianto doesn't point out that the only thing the Rift Alarm can conceivably be mistaken for is an air raid siren, or that no one else knows where to find the party supplies at the supermarket. Instead he just heads for the door.

"Balloons! Alcohol! Cake!" Tosh scribbled frantically as Jack dictated energetically. "Icecream too. A big banner, those little buns, some kind of present…"

"What kind of present, specifically?"

"Um…"

Ianto woke up and attempted to run through the list of 'when, where, who, why?' in his head, but got stuck on the 'when'. He tries "Hello?" instead, out loud.

"Ianto? Are you ok?" Gwen's voice came from somewhere nearby.

He tried to formulate this one. "I'm in a cold dark place. My comms are gone, my gun is gone, and probably my phone too. I think my hands are tied to the wall. And I have a headache." He thought back to the question, head clearing. "So on the whole, probably not. How about you?"

"Same."

"Any idea…?"

"I think they gassed us."

"They?"

"Well, whoever did it. The last thing I remember is being in that warehouse."

"Yeah." Ianto thought back. From what he could tell he wasn't actually injured in any way, and being drugged would explain the headache.

"I don't suppose…?"

"What?"

"That escapism trick you pulled a while back…"

Ianto tried. "Not working. These people know what they're doing."

Gwen leant back against the wall. "So this is… what?"

"Err…" Ianto listed the possibilities. "Any of the usual: An attempt to get us out of the way, getting at Torchwood, getting at Jack, trying to obtain information, using us as a bargaining chip… nothing good. But at least we're out of the rain."

There was silence while Gwen took this in and then: "Why is it always us?"

"Sorry?"

"You know what I mean. Nine times out of ten when something like this happens it's one of us that's involved."

"Normally you, I think." Ianto could call to mind at least six instances, and those were just the more dramatic ones.

"What about those tall things with the pincers last week?" Gwen retorted. "When I rescued you?"

"Yeah, but they got Owen too."

"Still counts."

"Ok, but mostly you. Mostly us."

"Exactly."

"Maybe we look like targets?"

"Tosh looks like a bit like a target too, and she doesn't get weapons held to her head half as much as we do."

"Something alien then, or genetic, or…"

"You don't know."

"Nope."

"I hate being a damsel in distress."

"Seconded."

"You're not a damsel."

"Person in peril. Archivist in agony. Severely threatened secretary."

"That'll do."

"Chocolates and flowers. Girls always like those."

Tosh wrinkled her nose at Owen's generalisations. "Always?"

"Yep. And jewellery."

"You did seem to like the chocolates we bought you for your birthday." Jack mused. "And she's already got earrings. We don't want to look like we're competing with Rhys."

"Oh, what the hell. If it pisses off Mr Big Welshman then we can buy her a twenty-four caret gold ring, so long as Torchwood funds it."

"Actually, I think we'll just go with flowers and chocolates for now, but I appreciate the effort, Owen."

"Happy Birthday by the way." Ianto couldn't think of anything else to say. "I know I was supposed to save it for later, but…"

"Thank you. It was quite a happy one, until we got into this mess."

"I can't think of many people I'd rather be locked in a cell with, if I had the choice."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Owen just moans, and Jack makes improper suggestions the whole time."

"See, you are a pro at this. What about Tosh? I don't think I've ever been locked up with her."

"Tosh and me sing." Ianto peered into the darkness towards where her voice kept coming from. "Fancy a few round of 'Happy Birthday' to pass the time until our humiliating rescue?"

"It's my turn to drive."

Owen looked at Tosh in scorn. "It's never your turn to drive. We wouldn't get anywhere."

"It's my turn."

"Jack, you drove yesterday." Birthdays, Owen noted, appeared to make Jack act more childishly than usual. And they were taking him shopping.

"Who's boss?"

"I spy with my little eye…"

"We're sat in the dark."

"I can't spy with my little eye, something beginning with R."

"Rescue?"

"That was short. Noughts and crosses?"

"I've found a banner!" Owen yelled happily, startling a middle-aged woman with three kids. He hasn't stopped getting the 'why are you acting so immaturely?' looks since they entered the store, but at least he isn't the one looking for humorously- shaped vegetables.

"What age has it got on it?" Tosh asked, suspecting that something was wrong here.

"Actually, there's two. I can't decide between five and fifty. Hey, can we have the right number of candles on the cake? Bet it will melt before we get all forty going."

"She's not forty, Owen, and you know it."

"Forty-one then. Aha! Balloons!"

Jack appeared, looking disgruntled. "I've never seen a more boring set of vegetables."

"There's a conspiracy. Sainsbury's screen them."

"So, Mr Severely Threatened Secretary, who's on the rota for being interrogated this week?"

"Owen, I think, but he's not here."

"Of us two then."

"You."

"Me? But I was in that invasion we had in Penarth three weeks back."

"Yes, and what about that incursion we had last week in the Hub?"

"It was threatening the coffee machine, Ianto, not you! A short-sighted alien pointing a gun at a favourite kitchen appliance is not the same as one holding a knife to your throat."

"Psychological trauma."

"You know, sometimes I think Owen's right about you. What's that noise?"

"That's the aliens coming to get us. Jack would be louder. More gunshots, etcetera. Hopefully they'll explain what's happening."

"Right, I'm doing the talking then. I've got more experience at this."

"You finally admit it…"

Owen sniffed gingerly at a flower. It was the tenth one he'd tried, and he still couldn't see why Tosh thought they smelt nice. All they did was make him want to sneeze. And he couldn't understand why she thought they looked pretty either. Just a lot of bright colours.

Women were weird.

What he really really couldn't understand was how Tosh and Jack could manage to have such a looooong argument over the merits of roses versus lilies.

"Lilies symbolise death. You can't give her those."

"Yes, but red roses are all about romance, Jack. You were the one who didn't want to buy her jewellery."

"I never said they had to be red."

"Well, white's for purity, I think…"

Owen felt that he could comment for the first time in this conversation. "Gwen's not pure."

"Try and be nice, Owen."

"Go on, admit it. You know it's true."

"What about yellow?"

Tosh pulled a face. "Yellow looks horrible. And I've never been fond of pink. Let's get her something else instead."

"Thistles."

"I'm sorry? You want us to tell you what?"

"Which one of you does Jack Harkness care the most about?"

"Right." Gwen glanced across at Ianto, whom she could at least now see. He raised his eyebrows in reply.

Hey, at least this alien was vaguely humanoid. Not like the tentacled monstrosity that they'd dredged up from the bay on Tuesday.

"And you want to know this why?"

Ianto listened to the response carefully. "I'm guessing from your deep desire to murder Jack's favourite in as slow and painful a manner as possible that you're yet another person he's inconvenienced?"

"If I ever got that annoyed at Jack, I'd just kill him."Gwen theorised. "No need to bring other people into it."

"This is not a punishment. It is a warning."

"Then wouldn't it make more sense to leave the favourite as a guarantee of future good behaviour?"

"Ianto."

"Yes."

"You aren't helping. Shut up."

"Sorry."

Their captor made a noise that sounded like it was scouring its throat out with a wire brush, apparently in an effort to regain control of the conversation. "Which of you-?"

"He's never actually told us. I don't think he has a favourite."

Ianto nodded. "Jack doesn't think like that. Anyway, it's like parents and their kids. Even if he had a favourite he wouldn't be allowed to tell us."

The creature put on a face Gwen would describe as 'puzzled'. The nose was upside down. "So which of you should I kill?"

"How about neither of us?"

"No."

"Well, there was always a chance."

Tosh tried to conceal her awe as Jack steered them alongside the counter of Cardiff's most prestigious chocolatier's, addressing them as he went. "Which ones do you think she'd like?"

"Ah…" Tosh has been a closet semi-chocoholic since she was a child, and this was slightly overwhelming. She'd avoided this shop for years, knowing that once visited the temptation would be too great.

"See what Tosh likes and then work from there." Owen was ogling some brandy snaps.

"Um… Everything?"

Jack sighed, tempted by the idea. "Much though I love Gwen…"

"I couldn't allow you to buy her that much chocolate." Owen announced. "It would be unhealthy."

Looking round, Jack's eyes alighted on something promising. "How about a chocolate duck?"

Ianto decided to do the noble thing. He was fairly sure that at the rate this conversation was going Jack and the others would turn up long before anybody actually got hurt, except maybe their alien friend from thinking too hard. Anyway, it had become rather a habit. Tosh called it 'being a gentleman'. Owen called it 'being a chivalry-obsessed idiot with a secret death wish', but he did it himself all the same.

"It's Gwen's birthday, if that helps you decide." Not the best self-sacrificing speech he'd ever made, but it'd have to do.

"No…"

The alien brightened up. "She's a newborn? Parents care more for newborns."

Ianto silently cursed the vagaries of the English language. "No, it's the anniversary of her birth. And we're not actually Jack's children. That was just an analogy. Like real life but not. Semi-true." He's still surprised that the alien wasn't reading out of some sort of Gobblydegook-to-English phrasebook: 'Section four: Death threats for beginners.'

They watched their interrogator try to bend its brain round this concept. "She's his half-child?"

"Half…? What? No."

"She's his child but you are not."

"Yes. No, no. Definitely no. Where are we, sorry?"

"Ah! She is your newborn and his! Human has two parents, yes? And she is your an-ni-ver-sa-ri."

"Um…"

Gwen is fed up of trying to follow. "If you're going to kill me can you just get on with it?"

"We still haven't heard from Gwen and Ianto." Tosh reminded them, with mixed traces of anxiety for the silence and excitement about the suprise party. She reached for another chocolate as she looked around the room. "Jack, have you called them yet?"

Owen paused in trying to put up a banner, his mind still engaged with the task of working out what exactly had possessed him to buy Tosh chocolates. Probably the way she was looking at them with puppy dog eyes, he decided. He definitely wasn't doing it again, not when it made her this hyperactive. "We're not quite ready."

"We will be by the time they get here."

"No, I haven't called them. Yet." Jack picked up the comms. "Ianto? Time to come home."

"No updates or anything." Tosh was checking the computers, double speed.

"He's not replying."

Owen stuck in the last drawing pin triumphantly. "Bet you a tenner they've gone and got themselves kidnapped."

Ianto was astounded. Astounded and very perplexed. How could an alien possess such immensely detailed information about what was happening in the Hub and yet not understand the very basics of human biology? Obviously the medical bay had not been one of the places being spied upon.

Next to him Gwen was experiencing very similar emotions. "So, you're going to hack me to death. With a teaspoon. A blunt teaspoon."

The teaspoon in question gleamed. If Ianto had been in a literary frame of mind he would have said that it did so menacingly.

"I mean, obviously I'm scared and everything, but do I get lunch breaks?"

"Right, this time I am definitely driving."

Ianto sat patiently. They couldn't be far off now. No one could take that long to walk round a supermarket.

It was a good thing that Gwen's torturer thought that suppressed giggling was the normal human pain response.

A distant crashing, albeit minus gunshots, heralded the arrival of the rest of Torchwood Three, followed by the traditional breaking down of the door in a way that would have pleased many pyrotechnics experts but was, in fact, unnecessary. All as usual. As far as Ianto was aware, however, the Torchwood break-in squad did not normally carry daffodils as a weapon of choice.

"So you knew that that would happen?"

"Of course. The Nyfolgomai are extremely allergic to flowers."

"Right. Daffodils in particular?"

"No. Those are just what we happened to buy for Gwen."

"For me? Thank you."

"Yeah, we didn't know what type to get and then we remembered you were Welsh. And they were on special offer."

"How… considerate of you, Owen."

"So was he another one of your exes?" Ianto questioned Jack.

"Father of an ex."

"What happened?"

"I bought her flowers."

"Ah."

"Yeah. I didn't know then. Nasty business. Had to leave in a bit of a hurry. That was him warning me not to go near her again. It's a cultural thing they have. And I'm sorry we didn't save you earlier."

"We were managing fine on our own."

"Gwen, you would have died of boredom if you'd stayed there much longer. And you're injured."

"Owen, there's a small red mark on the back of my little finger. It's hardly as though he managed to detach it."

"Exactly."

"Well, as long as I get time off for it."

Ianto chips in: "I have backache and psychological trauma."

"Ah, you'll both be fine." Jack swerved round a corner.

"You're heartless, you know that?" Gwen told him. "Today's my birthday and I've been kidnapped, imprisoned, tied up, tortured, nearly murdered…"

"Alright, alright. If I give you a chocolate duck will that make up for it?"

Gwen considered. "Ok."

"Too late."

"Sorry?"

Owen smirked. "Tosh has already eaten it. And you both owe me a tenner."

I have eaten my chocolate duck and the teaspoon wanted to appear in the cast list again. That is all you need to know.

Err… Sorry? I did say.