Gwen felt a little flutter of excitement in her stomach, the same world-changing thrill she always felt when in the presence of something alien to Earth. No matter what the danger, the buzz was always there.

There had been times when she had enjoyed the kick that danger brought: the sheer, unadulterated joy of facing death or injury and surviving it. That sensation could become addictive. She had never seen herself as a thrill-seeker, but she could understand the attraction. Facing down death, beating it, was better than sex. Not that she would ever tell Rhys that, but it did go some way to explain why Captain Jack Harkness was so incredibly hot.

One of the first times they had used the alien Resurrection Glove to bring a dead man back to life for just a minute or two had been on a murder victim in a rain-lashed Cardiff back alley. And Jack had used those precious, stolen moments of life to ask the man what was it like? What was there? What was waiting in the darkness?

The answer, of course, was: you really, really don’t want to know.

And, gradually, Jack had come to realise that he genuinely didn’t want to know. Because whatever waited there, in that undiscovered country, should remain undiscovered. It was dark and endless and utterly unforgiving. And it scared him – because although he may never encounter it, he knew the people he loved more than anything else would. They always did.

Ianto would die. He would slip out of Jack’s arms forever one day – into the cold, black embrace of death, never to return.

And Gwen. When Jack closed his eyes he could picture her lying on a mortuary slab, white as plaster. Those big, beautiful eyes would never open again, never see him, never understand him.