Ianto loved afternoons like this. Just him and the archives. Some people surfed, others communed with nature; some even liked to spend an afternoon at the firing range shooting things made out of paper, but for him, his happy place was down between the dark and slightly musty rows of hundred year old timber shelves.

There was always more to do down here. Sometimes it was a right pain, other times he chose willingly to bury himself in the detritus of the ages. There was always the chance that you would stumble across something amazing, or at least in Ianto's little world, something very interesting.

Since today's venture required no specific task for him to complete, he had the run of the place, choosing for himself what he felt like spending several hours doing. Today, it was the Torchwood personnel files that struck his fancy. Even more fascinating than what Torchwood had unearthed over the years were the curious stories of the people who worked here, making those amazing discoveries. He sometimes wondered what kind of person it was that could do a job like this. It took all sorts he supposed, but there was always some underlying thing that connected them all. They all had their quirks, but they all had a passion for the job as well. No doubt there'd been a few like him over the years. What fun they might have had if they could have travelled in time and stopped to have a cup of tea together and share their stories. Ianto certainly had a few of his own to tell.

Of course, with the many files tucked away in their dusty cabinets came tales of loss and sorrow as well. Torchwood agents rarely lived very long, and most died well before their time, often in brutal and horrific ways. Most were of an age with Ianto, which reminded him all too often that this job was probably going to kill him as well in the not too distant future.

He put those thoughts aside as he strolled across to the bank of stark grey metal filing cabinets, bending to open the second drawer from the bottom, pulling out an armful of files and carrying them over to a nearby desk where he could work. They weren't too badly out of order, and didn't need his usual brand of highly systematic ordering to put them to rights. This was more a case of browsing for interest's sake than any real work.

He shuffled them around, splaying them across the surface of the desk, putting them back in the correct order of surname. They were only slightly out of order - more a rush job of someone putting them back than it was a case of outright dyslexia, though there did appear to be some heated disagreement about whether surnames prefixed as McSomeone should be filed as Mac or Mc.

In between two files he found a thin leather satchel with a stiff brass clip. It wouldn't open at first, but after a bit of gentle persuasion, Ianto finally managed to work it out of its clip. He was intensely curious to see what was inside and why it had been tucked in between the crush of otherwise mundane manila files.

The leather flap pulled back to reveal another manila file inside. With a flutter of excitement, he hoped he'd finally found the long lost sections of Jack's own personnel file. It, like all the others, did indeed exist, but Ianto knew it was thin on details, and that there just had to be more than what had been left available for any Torchwood agent to uncover if they knew where to go looking.

As he extracted the thin file, a photograph slipped out from inside and fluttered onto the desk. It was a small black and white shot, no more than four inches square, but it was the picture itself that caused Ianto's hand to fly to his mouth in shock. It was him, unequivocally, standing there looking serious, just as he always did in photographs.

More shocking was what was in the background of the shot. He knew Cardiff well enough to recognise its historic landmarks, but in the location he'd identified immediately there was a huge Marks and Spencer store missing, with all its shiny glass windows and gaudy plastic mannequins. A vintage automobile was just out of focus in the corner of the shot. It was him, but the period backdrop was all wrong.

He dropped it and began tugging out the few pages inside the file. His own handwriting smacked him between the eyes as he picked up the first page of yellowing paper with a slightly shaky hand.

"Hello, there. Guessing the time lock on that satchel has finally done its job and found you tucked safely away in 2007. Balls if it hasn't. Oh well. Not much more I can do now other than tell you what you need to know.

Firstly, yes, it's me. Ianto Jones, Torchwood agent. I'm….well, I'm you. You're me. None of this has happened to you yet, of course. This is me, writing to tell you that it will. The picture in the file, as you've probably already guessed, is Cardiff 1928. Just before the stock market crash, but don't be getting any ideas about stowing away your pennies here before it all goes pear shaped. You've got bigger problems.

So, I can't tell you exactly how I got here. Needless to say I was following Jack's golden rule of not touching anything you don't know what it does. Yet here I am, and I suspect that it was intentional. There are things happening here right now that I need to fix. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't panic. This is meant to happen for a reason. You'll be happily minding your own business until the moment you find yourself here, back in time. A good thing you wear those suits. It helped me fit in a treat when I first arrived. Pinstripe is very in vogue right now. See enclosed newspaper clipping."

Ianto pushed aside the pages and found the cutting. It was the same photo replicated in newsprint, confirming the date at the top from the newspaper itself - the South Wales Echo, March 9th 1928.

Ianto's mind slipped sideways and he put the letter down for a moment. This was insane, but there was one very quick way to figure out if this was all just some crazy hoax. He flipped open his laptop, took a scan of the black and white photograph and ran it through their databases. There would be an article attached to the news clipping which had been carefully omitted. It would tell him exactly how he'd come to be photographed. The whole day's newspaper would be tucked away in their archive, right down to the sports pages and adverts for cold cream and shoe polish.

Despite the extensiveness of his search, all his efforts returned nil results. He huffed a sigh and picked the letter back up. It was unlike him to be so impatient with things so he kept reading.

"Oh, and just so you know I have - that is to say, you have, that is to say, we have - removed any records, so all you have to rely on is this letter. It would be too dangerous to tell you too much in advance. We can't create a paradox that could unravel time."

'Of course we can't,' Ianto said, grimacing at his own obvious cleverness. 'So, why bother writing me a letter and showing me a picture of something I'm not allowed to know about?'

"I know you'll have run a search on the news clipping and now be very annoyed and wondering why the bloody hell I'm even telling you this, but you need to know that when you arrive here it's not a mistake and that you'll need to keep your eyes and ears peeled. I can't say much, but I can tell you that the Committee is here, and they're just as dangerous as they are in 2007. I should also say that this is something of a self fulfilling prophecy, insofar as I'm writing to tell you this because I found this file myself before I ended up here, so my task is to make sure you get this so that we don't screw up our own timeline. I don't need to lecture you on the problematic matters of causality."

'That would be bad,' Ianto said, nodding and verbally agreeing with himself. It would be the first thing he'd do, but what did that mean? Had his future self removed the files, meaning he'd somehow get back, or had he remained stuck in the past and just removed the files when he got the chance before his younger self could uncover them?

He kept reading but there was no mention of when his future self was writing this letter. He might have flipped straight back into the future and carried on, or maybe he was going to die an old man decades before he was even born. The thought was unsettling. Why couldn't he have told himself something reassuring about his own fate? It was one thing to brief him on a job that needed doing - which for a Torchwood agent, would be nothing short of expected - but it'd be nice to know he was going to come out the other side of it okay. He was alive now to write the letter and lock it away in a sealed file, genetically programmed only to open for him at the right moment, so that was something he guessed. He hadn't died yet, he just didn't know what his life was going to look like.

"The most important thing is this: you must not tell Jack. Not a word. I can't stress how vital this is. He can't know about this file, what it says, or what might happen in the future."

Why not? Jack would be frantic at his disappearance, just as he'd been when Jack and Tosh had been suckled back into 1941. Perhaps that was the point. Jack wouldn't be stupid enough to open the rift though, right? Not even for him. Especially not for him. Screwing up all of time wasn't worth saving his life. Besides, they'd have to have precise coordinates in time and space to find him and open up the rift in the correct spot. They simply wouldn't have that unless Ianto somehow left it for them, hidden like this file had been until the future was ready to reveal it.

How many times had he been through these cabinets and never spotted it before? Even if he had, as he'd said in his letter, the buckle had been time locked - though he had no idea how he managed to find one let alone know how to make it work. Had it opened today because he'd been in proximity, or was it meant to happen now? And what did that mean about him getting sucked back in time? Was it happening today? Tomorrow? Three months from now? His letter didn't - or wouldn't - say. He didn't look much older in the photograph than he did now, but then again he hadn't changed much in years. Perhaps this thing was still ages away, at some point when he'd clean forgotten all about this, but at least would understand by then that it was all part of some self fulfilling path.

"Oh, and I should also mention that you should have no contact whatsoever with Torchwood in 1928. That's important too. Yes, they'll have some very neat and very handy tech, and yes, Jack will be there too, looking dapper as ever I should tell you, but you're on your own. I can't say why, but you're just going to have to trust me. It'll be fine. We make do. Don't we always? You'll be okay, the letter carried on. I'm okay, but I won't lie, it's also dangerous."

Ianto nodded unconsciously. He knew all about just how dangerous the Committee could be. They and he were old friends now, but knowing they were causing problems eighty years in the past was worrying too.

" This job is never easy, is it? But you're resourceful. You'll figure it out as you go. You're me after all, and I have every confidence in us, despite what the others might think. So, this is me, signing off to go and save the world from utter destruction. Give Jack a kiss for me. I. J."

Ianto picked up the yellowing newspaper and scowled at the mirror image scowling back at him in return. The absence of colour made him look even more dour and serious than usual. That face was his Torchwood face. Bloody hell. What had he just gotten himself into?