Title: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cardiff
By: ninefics
Word count: 1,531
Characters: All of Torchwood (Jack/Ianto)
Rating: Teen and above
Spoilers: Very slight for the end of Series 3 of Doctor Who.
Summary: Jack has some interesting news to share.
Warnings: ... I don't know how to break this to you, but I've just written MPreg. This story is also not full of hearts and flowers and bunnies and romance.
Author's Note: It's one of those "stories you'd never write" challenges.

Ianto had been confused by Jack's return from death, further confused by his almost immediate disappearance, and pushed to the point of anger by Jack's re-reappearance a week later.

When he strolled into the Hub, all smiles and songs, hugging Tosh and Gwen, then hugging Owen and tousling his hair, he was sure Jack was going to just give him a nod and ask for a cup of coffee.

Instead, for the second time, Jack had kissed him in front of everyone. Jack's hands slid from Ianto's face to his hair and his lower back, clutching Ianto like he was the only solid, stable thing in the room.

Ianto hugged him back and did not think about the lines around Jack's eyes or the scattering of grey hairs or the way he could feel Jack's spine sharply defined through his clothes.

"Hold all my calls," Jack said as he walked backward toward his office, still holding tight to Ianto's hand.



Jack had been back for almost three months now and things in Cardiff had been strangely quiet. There weren't as many Weevils turning up. Most of the artifacts they'd been finding were harmless – an assortment of alien children's toys and the occasional medical supply.

Tosh suggested that all the aliens were on summer holiday and Torchwood was getting the runoffs from the beaches and playgrounds. She had said it with such conviction that Jack was half-inclined to believe her. Especially when activity levels started to pick up again as it drew closer to autumn.

"School's back in session," Owen said with an exhausted sigh as he dropped something that looked like a flattened badger with wings, and teeth that were made for eating non-badger-type food.

Gwen carried in her own box of devices and set it on a work station. "Ew, don't just leave that lying there, Owen. Pick it up before someone steps on it. Or something eats it." She cast a glance upward.

"Jack, we're going to need some extra help around here," Owen said, pointing the badger-thing at him. "We're getting all sorts of stuff turning up everywhere, which means it's just a matter of time before we hit something really nasty, and if we're all out on scavenger hunts, who's going to take care of it?"

Jack turned to Ianto, who was already starting to assign numbers to Gwen's items. "Fancy a trip to London, Ianto? Torchwood is going to do a little recruiting."



It was raining and the windshield wipers beat out a steady rhythm that made Jack think of a foxtrot. ONE, two, Three, four... STEP, step, STEP, step. Squish, squish, squish, squish. A grin broke out across his face and he glanced to the side to watch Ianto as he drove through the dark night, covering the distance between Central London and Cardiff's City Centre.

For the first time in a long time Ianto had shed his suit jacket and his tie. Both were draped over the back seat, arranged carefully so they wouldn't crease. His shirt sleeves were neatly rolled up to his elbows. Jack took a moment to appreciate Ianto's forearms: the hair so fine it was almost imperceptible even against Ianto's pale skin, the subtle flex of muscle as Ianto piloted the Land Rover through rain-slicked streets, and the eerie, pale glow from the watch on Ianto's left wrist.

"I think Miss Jones will be a good fit," Ianto said, answering Jack's question before he asked it.

"She certainly knows how to handle herself in a fight."

"She apparently knows how to handle you as well, sir."

"She can do that," Jack agreed, grinning broadly. "Not as well as some people can. Not in the same way some people can." The grin turned into a leer.

"I try my best, sir."

Jack made the effort not to laugh. It would only encourage Ianto if he did.

"So," Jack started. He drew out the word, lacing it with the tone that meant "serious conversation ahead" and tried to read Ianto's facial expression in the glow from the console. "I guess you know I'm not from around here."

"Your accent was something of a clue." Dry, emotionless, almost cavalier – the trademarks of Ianto's sneaky wit. "As was your return from the morgue."

"Thank you, by the way, for not letting Owen start my autopsy."

"That was Gwen actually."

"Well, whatever. Whoever. I'm glad. Owen would just throw everything back in and it'd all end up in the wrong places. Can you imagine if my bladder went somewhere else? How would I pee? And good grief! What if he got things so shifted around I couldn't get an erection?"

A flicker of eyebrow and a quirk of lips. Ianto was thinking about Jack's cock.

"Pull over," said Jack. "I need to tell you a story."

Ianto's face remained calm through the whole saga of Jack Harkness. Jack omitted certain passages – things he thought Ianto might not want to hear – and underplayed a few others, but he explained as clearly as he could how he came to be in Cardiff. And then they were up to the tricky part.

"One of the things I did when I realised they'd stolen two years of my life was I had a few... modifications made to my body. Partly to flaunt the fact that I was no longer a Time Agent, and some of the modifications allow me to... do a few things that a guy shouldn't be able to do. Like... carry a baby. Like, to term. As in pregnancy.

"See, what they did was install an artificial womb and ovary. The modification was originally created for infertile women and for men who wanted to have children but for whatever reason there was no female available. A guy who wanted to be a single dad, a man with a male partner, a man whose female partner wasn't healthy enough or able to take the time off work... you know, the usual."

He couldn't tell if Ianto had turned slightly green, or if the blue from his watch and the amber from the dash were causing the discolouration.

"Anyhow, it's supposed to be triggered by a combination of chemicals. You take this one pill and then you take this other pill and they combine and transmit a signal that tells the robo-ovary to release an egg and then the sperm and the egg meet and things happen and cells divide and.... however many months later, there's a cesarean birth!"

"And all this has suddenly become important to share with me because...?" Ianto asked, despite the very large knot in his stomach that was telling him the answer.

"Ah. See. There's supposed to be a chemical trigger. Apparently there's also intermittent failure in the ovary's wiring. Probably caused by being dead for three days. Maybe because I've had it way longer than the warranty covers. Believe me, I am way outside of the warranty range."

"So what you're telling me is..."

"Yep," Jack gave a resigned sigh. "Oh yep."

Ianto pursed his lips and sat in quiet contemplation. "Owen is going to enjoy this far too much."



"Are you certain?" Owen asked for possibly the seventeenth time.

"Yes," Jack repeated. Behind him, Ianto heaved a great sigh, turned on his heel, and left to do something... anything... else.

"But it's just not possible," Gwen said.

Tosh shook her head slowly. "Look around us. Is any of this possible? Jack and I ended up in Cardiff during World War Two. He was dead for three days. We deal with alien technology all the time. I don't know why anything shocks us any longer."

"But are you certain?"

Jack leaned back in his chair and put one hand over his eyes. "Yes, Owen, I am absolutely certain."

"But you haven't got ovaries! Or a womb. Or the right sort of hormones to support a fetus. Are you sure it's not cancer? An alien implant? A bomb in your ribcage?"

"It's not." Jack pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars. "Look, I've got this... experimental, artificial womb," he half-lied. "Complete with an artificial ovary. It's not supposed to work accidentally. It has to be triggered by a combination of chemicals, but apparently the wiring went faulty because I was dead or something, and then I had sex (both Tosh and Gwen blushed and looked away), and there you have it."

"But are y—"

"Yes!" Jack nearly shouted. "Look, if someone's going to go through the hassle of having this whole process done, you're going to want to know that it worked, right? So the... womb-thing releases a harmless dye when the cells start to divide. If you pee purple? Start picking out names."

Tosh looked at Jack. "This is a good thing, right?"

"I honestly don't know."


Two months later and Jack was finally forced to admit he needed to stay closer to the Hub. The artificial womb was expanding slowly but steadily, pressing on his lungs, stomach, and bladder. He was sure other organs were being affected, but the lungs, stomach, and bladder were the ones staging the protest.

"Your blood pressure is elevated," Tosh said.

"Because I'm bored." Jack threw a pencil across the room and watched as the pteradactyl dove for it. It narrowly avoided smacking into a wall and sailed gracefully back to a perch. Pencil shavings drifted down to the floor. "I hate this. I can't run without getting winded. Every time I try to touch a piece of technology someone smacks my hand away. Gwen keeps fussing over me, and Owen won't stop laughing and telling me I'm getting fat."

"Gwen is nesting on your behalf, and you are getting fat." Tosh said plainly.

"So not helping."

"Well, it's true. If it helps, you just look like a man who's enjoyed too many good meals and not a man that's inexplicably pregnant?"

"Speaking of inexplicably pregnant men," Owen called from across the room, "I picked up a few films for you. Give you a little something to do while you're on house arrest." He sauntered over and dropped two DVD cases on the desk next to Jack's feet.

"Rabbit test... and Junior? Oh thanks, Owen. Next time someone has to dig through shit to find an artifact, it's going to be you."

"It's always me anyway, innit!" Owen objected, throwing his hands up in the air. He grabbed his coat and headed for the door. "Speaking of artifacts, I'm going to pick up Gwen. Her car's broken down."

Jack threw another pencil and watched as it immediately became a chew toy. "The last time this happened it wasn't nearly this boring."

Tosh's eyebrows raised, but she remained silent.



It was nighttime. Jack had run out of pencils and had already wasted five minutes sweeping the remnants off the floor. Everyone had gone home for the night, except Ianto who was studiously not looking at Jack. It would have been worrisome if it weren't so typically Ianto.

Jack constructed a slingshot out of twisted paperclips, a pen, and an elastic. He crumpled up a piece of paper and took careful aim. The paper thunked directly between Ianto's shoulders and plopped to the floor. Wordlessly, Ianto picked it up and disposed of it.

"Sir?" He asked finally.

"I'm bored," Jack said and hated how petulant he sounded. Even more, he hated the fact that "I'm bored" was becoming his mantra.

"You've got those films from Owen," Ianto said unhelpfully.

"My back hurts."

"How does that affect your ability to watch a film?" Ianto took Junior from the case and put it in the drive of Jack's computer. He pulled a chair over and sat next to Jack.

"You're angry, aren't you."

"No, sir."

"No?"

"I'm a little hurt that you didn't trust me enough to tell me."

"It's a little hard to mention an artificial womb. I mean, it's not like I ever thought this would happen, so I didn't see the point."

"I mean where you're from. Why you're here. You could have mentioned any of that a long time ago."

"I know. I'm sorry." He meant it.



In the seventh month, Owen started following Jack's every move.

"But how will you know," he asked and Jack wished Owen were occasionally a little less skeptical, because this was nearly as bad as Owen demanding to know how Jack knew he was up the stick. At least he'd finally stopped asking Jack if he was sure it was even human.

Owen and Tosh had spent roughly eighty nearly-uninterrupted hours working on adapting existing Earth technology and bits of alien technology into something that they hoped would work as a kind of sonogram, but after several winged-badger-things met a variety of gruesome ends, they decided it really wasn't worth trying it out on Jack.

Gwen kept showing him printouts of baby items and lists of names and asking him if he had put any thought into where the baby would be roomed and how would he manage to juggle both parenthood and a career, and shouldn't he really be doing something like shopping for little booties and tiny shirts.

Tosh routinely reminded him about his blood pressure and scolded him for sneaking coffee.

When he finally snapped at them and limped toward his new room (relocated on the main floor of the hub because the ladder leading into his den below his office was impossible to navigate), Owen shrugged and blamed it on the hormones Jack didn't have.



"I think Evan is a good name," Jack said as he reached over and pressed the button on the chess timer.

Ianto made his move and pressed the clock again before Jack had time to withdraw his hand. Their fingers touched briefly; neither man reacted.

"Evan Harkness," Ianto said. He nodded his approval of the name.

Jack mistook the nod for approval of his next move and hit the clock. "Evan Jones."

Ianto smiled slyly. "Check mate." He dropped Jack's king.



"I don't want to do this while you're awake," Owen protested.

"You can't put me under to do it."

"It's not going to harm the fetus if I do," he argued, "and I'll feel much more confident."

"Owen, if you put me under, I'll be unconscious."

"Thats sort of how it works, yeah."

"If I'm unconscious I won't have conscious control over my body and that accelerated healing thing? Will make this really difficult. If I'm awake I can convince myself not to fix it right away."

"He has a point," Tosh offered. She was scrubbed and ready for the procedure and was offering Owen his mask and gown.



The blade slid across Jack's abdomen, silently parting the skin. Red welled up along the incision and Jack tried to prop himself up on his elbows. Owen glanced at Gwen, who was standing near the wall. "D' you mind helping out, love? Just hold his head down. Apparently he thinks this is a spectator event. Speaking of spectators, where's Ianto gone off to? You'd think he'd want to be here for this, seeing as how it's his fault and all."

"Shut up and cut, Owen." Jack growled.

Gwen stroked his forehead. "You should relax."

"Ianto isn't here because there's a few things I asked him to take care of. Gotta get ready for the little bundle of joy, right?" He sounded anything but joyful. Jack Harkness was all business.

The entire process took roughly fifteen minutes, and with the aid of a mirror, Jack told Owen which wires and tubes to sever to prevent any future accidents. Then Jack relaxed and let his body heal itself while Tosh tended to the baby.

Gwen wrapped it in a soft blanket, kissed its fuzzy head, and took it out to Ianto.

"It's a boy," she beamed as she handed it to him. "He's lovely."

Ianto held it carefully and gave it an odd half-smile. "His name is Evan," he said.

Gwen burst into happy tears.

The others joined them and Ianto placed the baby in the cot Gwen had given them as a gift. "I assume a celebratory glass of champagne is in order?" He began handing round the glasses.

"To Evan Jones," Jack said as he raised his glass. The staff echoed his salute. Jack glanced over the rim of his glass and caught Ianto's eye. Ianto gave a barely perceptible nod.



The next morning, as the staff of Torchwood filtered in, no one asked about the baby.

The next morning, in a hospital just outside of Cardiff, a young couple were greeted with the news that their newborn son's lungs had successfully inflated, he was off the ventilator, and he would be ready to go home in just a few days. They wept for joy when the nurse brought the tiny, pink, flailing thing to them.