'Doctor McKintock will see you now, Mister Jones,' the receptionist called out.

Ianto checked his watch and noted with some admiration that she was actually on time. For someone in the medical profession that was so rare. He expected to have to wait at least twenty minutes. The replaced the barely thumbed copy of last month's National Geographic, having no particular interest in it beyond using it as a way to pass the time. There had however been an interesting article about some evidence of previously undiscovered mammalian creatures - bears, the article surmised - living in the forests of Norway. He made a mental note to get in touch with the Pforplian clan living there and to remind them to stop teasing the locals with fake footprints and marks on trees. Norwegians, in his experience, had very little sense of humour and assumed it was something of scientific significance rather than a cruel prank on that part of the aliens settled in those parts. Well, no one had ever said running Torchwood would be easy.

He pulled open the door and let himself inside. A short woman with mousey blonde hair sat behind a simple desk in one corner of the room. She stood only long enough to extend her hand and introduce herself formally. No doubt as a psychologist she was assessing whether he'd give her a dead fish handshake or a bone cruncher. He did neither, simply giving her his usual firm but relaxed greeting. 'Do you prefer Angie or Dr McKintock?'

'Dr McKintock is fine,' she replied. 'Or even Doc, once we get to know each other a bit better.' He took it as a sign that a first name basis was reserved for gatherings at the pub and not any sort of professional engagement. 'Now Mister Jones…'

'Ianto is fine,' he interjected.

She didn't seem bothered by the interruption, simply continuing to refer to the papers on her desk. 'There was no medical history file for you. A little odd,' she added, flicking through the largely empty sheaf of paper that basically just spelled out his birth record and inoculations. 'Everyone has at least some medical history.' She let the puzzlement of that particular mystery slide for now. 'Is this your first time seeking professional counselling?'

Ianto settled himself in the chair opposite. 'You could say that.'

'I'm professionally obligated to start our conversation with the question: do you currently feel you are at immediate risk of causing harm to yourself or anyone else on account of your mental state?'

Ianto tried to keep his expression neutral and not smirk. 'It's highly doubtful, unless you count anyone messing with my coffee machine at work.:

'Ah, I see you have a sense of humour. Dry, of course.'

'No, really,' Ianto insisted. 'Physical harm is a distinct possibility.' Being polite about it hadn't worked, so he was forced to use the direct approach whenever someone mucked around with it. It was harsh but effective.

She looked momentarily perplexed as she opened her notebook and poised the pencil over it. 'Okay, apart from workplace appliance interference, you are otherwise psychologically safe. Do you want to tell me how long it's been now that you feel you're ready to access support?'

Ianto leaned back in the chair and blew out a breath, trying to count up the time. 'Oh, I guess it's been, what, eight years?'

'That's a long time,' she agreed. 'How have you been coping all this time?'

He gave a small shrug of his shoulders. 'Denial and avoidance mostly. Whole weeks and months can go by without thinking about it, but that usually just makes it worse when I do start thinking about it again. That's why I'm here.'

She made sure to meet his eyes. 'Well, accepting you need help is always an excellent first step towards healing. If you're comfortable, why don't you tell me a little bit about how this all began and how it's affected you.'

Ianto pointed over to a set of much more comfortable looking armchairs settled in the opposite corner. 'Could we maybe sit and talk over there?' he asked. 'Only it's a bit of a long story.'

She nodded. 'Of course. Can I make you a cup of tea? You did ask to book a two hour session. Or do I take it you're only a coffee person?'

'Tea would be lovely,' he replied. 'But just black. No milk or sugar.'

'A purist,' she observed, getting up to switch on a small kettle on the back table.

'No, just often out of milk or sugar.'

'You're dressed very formally,' she added, dropping two teabags into a pot whilst she waited for the kettle to boil. 'Patients don't usually dress so formally for this sort of thing.'

'I came straight from work.'

'And where do you work?'

'That would be classified by the Official Secrets Act. Sorry.'

'Don't be,' she said, apologising for what must have felt like a forward question. She poured the water into the teapot and carefully placed the lid on. 'Sounds stressful.'

'It can be,' he confessed, waiting until she carried the pot over and set it between them on yet another small table and adding two cups before sitting in the dark green armchair.

'Good tea takes time to brew properly,' she explained. 'Why don't you start while we wait.'

Ianto nodded in agreement. 'Okay. So, I suppose we should go back to 2008. I was working on an assignment with my husband, then my boss, now my second in command…' He paused, catching the confused look on her face as the notebook on her lap was forgotten. 'Yeah, like I said, long story, anyway, there was this job and just as we were finishing up, my husband-'

'Boss,' she clarified.

'My boss's brother turned up after years of thinking he was dead. Actually, that's not true. I didn't think he was dead. I didn't even know Jack - my husband, boss - even had a brother. I'm probably just assuming Jack thought he was dead. I suppose I never really asked.' He grimaced. 'Bit of a sensitive subject.'

She took up her pencil and notebook again and started making a few notes. 'How long since the two of them had last connected?'

Ianto took the initiative and leaned over to start pouring tea whilst she was still scribbling. 'They were separated as children. Jack was thirteen, his little brother Gray was nine.'

She put her pencil down for a moment as he offered her one of the two teacups. 'Thank you. And what were the circumstances that led to them being separated?'

'They grew up in a remote community. Invasionary forces attacked the village. Their father was killed trying to get their mother out of the village. Jack and Gray were told to run and hide. They ran. They were under fire. Somewhere in the confusion Jack lost his hold of Gray's hand and Gray was believed to have been abducted. Jack's mother survived and they continued to live there for a few years, but Jack never stopped trying to find out what happened to Gray.'

'That must have been incredibly traumatic; to lose a father and a brother like that,' Angie surmised. 'And to find out now that he's been alive this whole time.'

'That's not the worst part. The…' Ianto paused, trying to find a word for it, 'forces, that took Gray… they tortured him, brainwashed him, turning him against his own family.' Ianto clasped his own mug of tea, taking a slow sip. Saying it all out loud like this wasn't as easy as he'd thought. He swallowed and felt it burn on the way down, still too hot to really be drinking it.' So, when he came back, out of the blue, a grown man, bitter, resentful, murderous…'

'Woah, okay I'm going to have to stop you there,' she said, holding up a hand. 'This is pretty heavy stuff, and we haven't even gotten to the part about how this is affecting you. No offence, Mister Jones, but professionally speaking, I think I need to refer you through to a more qualified psychologist.'

Ianto gave a slow shake of his head. 'No. I want you.'

'There are better psychologists out there. Trauma specialists. Pick up any professional journal and you'll find them.'

Ianto set his tea back down on the table and leaned forward slightly so that she'd take what he said next very seriously. 'I don't want some overpriced, self-absorbed psychologist who drives a hundred thousand pound car, takes three appointments a week and plays golf on Wednesdays. I want someone who's actually going to help.'

'I'm not published.'

'People who do real work don't have time for research and publishing.' He changed tact. 'You use a pencil to take notes.'

The statement threw her, eyebrows knitting together. 'So?'

'Not a fancy ink nib or a monogrammed ballpoint. Just a pencil. A plain ordinary pencil. Twelve to a box for a pound.'

She sat up straight, her posture growing a little defensive. 'Who's psychoanalysing who here?'

Ianto didn't let the comment ruffle him. He'd been in far tighter negotiations than this. 'I spent a long time researching you. And about fifty other psychologists in the field across twenty different countries.' He let the statement hang in the air.

'That's a lot.'

'It was. But when you have a job as important as the one I have, you need to be sure you have the right person.'

'So, this is what, like an interview? All of this was just a set up to see if I cut it?'

He tipped his head in acknowledgement. 'Of sorts. You started your career with the Met in their forensic psychology division.'

'I was only there a year. I didn't cut it.' The contrition and bitterness were both evident in equal measures,

'I don't think resigning to care for your dying mother counts as not cutting it. Or the hours you put in at the local youth shelter every week since she passed away.'

'I did it to take my mind off things, until it just became a habit I couldn't break. Watching someone suffer from cancer like that.' She shook her head at the memory. 'You can't imagine.'

'My mum died from lung cancer when I was twenty six. Believe me, I know exactly how awful it is.' He sighed. 'I guess I threw myself into my work just like you did. It's just easier to have an excuse not to think about it.'

She slowly nodded but her eyes stared off into the distance like she'd hardly heard him. He gave her a few minutes to contemplate their joint denial and the mourning they'd probably never done. 'So, who is this patient? Not you, obviously. You're perfectly well-adjusted, so it would seem.'

'Well, thank you. In this job, that's not an easy thing to have achieved.' He didn't always feel like he had.

'What job is that? You said Official Secrets but I can't imagine you're recruiting me without me needing to be read in on… whatever this is.'

Now they were finally getting to the business end of things. 'Ever heard of an organisation called Torchwood?'

She snorted. 'That's just an urban myth. Be serious.'

'I am. It's no myth.'

'But Torchwood…' She leaned forward conspiratorially. 'That's meant to be extraterrestrial intelligence.'

'More like Earth's tourist bureau,' Ianto conceded, 'but close enough. And what I said before? About my husband and his brother? That was all true by the way. I'm asking you to help him. Gray.'

'Right. Okay.' She slipped her notebook down the side of that chair, abandoning it completely. 'So, let's take a step back then. You said he suddenly turned up after all these years and then…?'

'Then he wanted revenge. To kill Jack for abandoning him. Short story is we detained him for his own good and everyone else's safety.'

'He's been in a psychiatric institution for eight years?'

'No. He's been at Torchwood for eight years. Locked away, sedated, forgotten. I can't live with it anymore. Maybe Jack can. I don't know. I want to try and help him. I want you to try and help him. To work through what happened to him in those intervening years. Unravel all the hatred and loathing.'

She pursed her lips, considering it with an air of reluctance mixed with intense curiosity. 'Speaking to your husband would help. Patients often shut off emotional connections to family by eliminating their past. Anything I can use to reacquaint Gray with those childhood memories.'

Ianto shook his head. 'Sorry, but I can't do that. Jack doesn't know I'm doing this.'

'Isn't that wrong?'

'Maybe. But Jack is… how to explain it. Jack has let this weigh down his existence for as long as I've known him, and that amount of time is barely scratching the surface of what he's lived. He might have tried to lock it all away but it's always there. He's never going to be whole until he can get the forgiveness he needs from the only person left who can give it.'

'I'm sorry, but you seem to be implying your husband is quite a bit older than you.'

And now came the pointy end of things, Ianto thought, having to give up the whole truth. There was always retcon if this didn't pan out how he thought it would, but he really hoped it wouldn't come to that. Angie McKintock was right at the top of his candidate pile, a full mile ahead of the next best option. 'Only in the sense of how long he's lived,' he carefully replied. 'He actually doesn't look much older than you or I.'

'But…'

'Like I said. This is Torchwood. You'll need to get to grips pretty quickly with the fact that not much of it makes sense and pretty much anything is possible. Jack isn't from Earth. He's not even from this century. His family grew up three thousand years in the future on a distant colony world. The creatures that abducted Gray and attacked their village were aliens. Time travel is possible,' he said before she could interject with more questions. He just needed to get it all out in the open and then deal with the fallout. 'Jack got caught up in a technology far beyond anything you or I could imagine. It made him immortal. In his lifetime, it's been a hundred and fifty years of conscious existence since he was separated from Gray. For Gray, accounting for time travel, it's been maybe thirty years, but thirty years of torture and mental manipulation. And that doesn't account for the eight years we've kept him frozen in stasis.'

She raised her teacup to her mouth and didn't stop drinking until it was totally empty. 'This is a lot to wrap my head around.'

'You're handling it well,' Ianto said, not downplaying the compliment. 'I need you to be there when I wake him back up from stasis. I don't know how he'll react. Last time he came back he set off bombs across the city, unleashed a plague of terrifying creatures that can tear a man to shreds, buried his brother alive for two thousand years and caused the deaths of two of my closest friends. I imagine you remember the 2007 Cardiff bombings and the nuclear meltdown at the Turnmill Power station? That was Gray. A whole city and hundreds of people killed just so Gray could hit Jack where it hurt most.'

Angie's eyes went wide. He could tell she remembered them well. And had several patients who suffered from PTSD as a result. 'Jesus.'

He nodded. 'This time he'll be under sedation when we unfreeze him, just to keep him compliant. He'll remain at Torchwood for the duration of his treatment.'

She looked suddenly unimpressed by his suggested strategy. A prisoner, you mean. I don't know if you've been inside a psychiatric facility recently, but we don't lock people up and keep them doped up on drugs anymore.'

Ianto was taken aback. 'You want him let loose, knowing what I just told you?'

'No. Only…'

His blue eyes bored into hers. 'What?'

'Being locked up in a cell isn't conducive to healing troubled youths. They need warmth and nurture, even if they don't know they do, or want it, or rebel against it.'

'I need him secure twenty four hours a day,' Ianto replied, setting down one of the non-negotiable aspects of their agreement. 'But, I can arrange for the accommodations to be less spartan and confrontational.' Sometimes he forgot that Gray was technically family and that he wouldn't ever treat a member of his family like that.

He needed redemption for Jack, but it shouldn't have to cost him someone else's soul to do it. Why else was it that the notion plagued him constantly yet Jack had managed to discard it as an impossible fantasy and done what he could to simply move on? He hadn't really moved on, he'd just locked it away inside himself, like so many things he'd done in his long life. Ianto wasn’t at that point yet. His own immortality was still a reasonably new concept and he didn't have the years of distasteful deeds under his belt that Jack had. Perhaps compartmentalising it was the only way to cope. Perhaps if this worked, Jack could also get some counselling. Somewhere along the way Ianto was going to have to confess what he'd been doing. Unless of course it didn't work - that Gray was beyond healing - and then Ianto would be the one having to live with the memories of having to put him back into stasis, knowing this time it would be forever. It was an unbearable kind of guilt even in its infancy when such a thing was only a future possible outcome. For now, the suggestion of a soft bed and something other than concrete walls and prison bars didn't seem like a huge ask. Not for family.

He cleared his throat, trying to get his own mind back on topic. 'I'll make some arrangements regarding accommodations. Everything else about this is strictly classified. You can't mention your work to anyone.'

Angie threw her hands up in defeat. 'I get it. Torchwood is meant to stay a myth.'

'Not just that. Your work will be too secret even within the confines of this facility. You will report to me and me alone. No one else will know you're here or what you're doing, other than me.'

'A secret within a secret?'

'It wouldn't be the first time in Torchwood's history. I can get you into the facility each day via a secure entry point, and you can leave the same way. You'll be in a restricted area of the hub where you won't be at risk of running into anyone else, or be logged as being inside the facility. Everything else you need will be provided. That is, of course, assuming you accept.' He really needed her to accept. He wasn't above begging and grovelling if he had to.

There was a slow nodding of her head as she let it all sink in and to consider it. He gave her whatever time she needed to weigh up what he was asking of her.

'I'd like to ask you a question, then,' she finally responded.

'Okay.'

'What makes you think he can be fixed?'

'As a psychologist don't you believe that everyone can be fixed?'

'You answered a question with a question. In my profession that counts as avoidance.'

Ianto smirked at being chastised. So few people ever called him out for avoiding answering a question. 'So I did. I need to believe that Gray can change. That once he was an innocent little boy who loved his older brother to pieces, and who will come to understand in time that his brother was not to blame for what happened to him. That he doesn't need to exact revenge upon a world to get back at him. Jack loves Gray even despite everything he's done. It breaks his heart that his little brother can't forgive him. If he truly thought Gray could never be whole again, why freeze him? Why not just kill him if it would be a mercy? It wouldn't be the first time he's killed. Jack's scared what will happen if he ever opens that Pandora's box again, but someone has to some time. Leaving him here in this halfway place between life and death is cruel.'

'And you don't think that saying those things directly to him will work?'

'I'm too emotionally invested. I admit that when it comes to Jack, I don't always see things as objectively as I'd like. And I have my own forgiveness issues to work through. Two of my best friends are dead because of what he did. I don't think I could look him in the eye and not want to understand why they had to die. Why I was meant to die as well. I know I'm asking a lot and it's a massive risk, but I've got a lot of years ahead of me and knowing he's frozen down there every day makes my stomach churn. Dead or alive, but not this. So, please. Will you help?'

'All the people you could have picked, you really want me.'

'I do. And you can walk away any time.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Like I could live with myself for giving up and walking away.'

'I could give you something that would help you forget it, Gray, me… Like none of it had ever happened.'

'More top secret drugs? You couldn't just take some yourself?'

'Nope. I have to just live with it, for better or worse. Isn't that what they say?'

'Okay.'

The abrupt response caught Ianto off guard. 'Really?' He wanted to lunge forward and hug her but that wouldn't be very professional for either of them. It was only a first step, but what a huge first step it might be. 'I'll start making all the arrangements. Anything you think you need or want, just name it. And payment, naturally. I think you'll find Torchwood is a very profitable client to have on your books. Under the name of Jones, of course.'

Angie stood and went back to her desk, flipping through her diary. 'Should I book you in for the same time next week?'

'That's not necessary. I think we can arrange things over the phone and email.'

'I don't mean for that,' she replied. 'I'm guessing that keeping this secret from your husband is going to be pretty difficult for you. It might be nice to have someone else you can openly talk to about it.'

Ianto conceded the point. If she got him talking about life with Jack he might never stop, but there was a change in the air that things were finally going in the right direction. And who knew, maybe she'd help him figure out a way to break the news to Jack. God knew he hadn't thought that far ahead yet and really didn't know how he was going to confess the biggest lie of all, worse than hiding Lisa in the basement. Now he was going to be hiding Gray. That could very well be unforgivable.

'Next Wednesday at three it is, then.'