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This planet used to be home to him, aeons ago now. One of the few places he did call home after leaving Boeshane, then the TARDIS.
It's exactly the same as when he was here all that time ago, perhaps because he rematerialised in that same time period, but it has stirred memories, disturbed the waters of the sea he hadn't ventured since the start of his journey.
It's been longer than forever, yet he's still too late.
And somehow, he has a ghost.
A ghost who makes him feel immense emotion, of pain and love and sadness and hope and loss.
A ghost who he feels knows more about him than he knows himself.
A ghost who follows him wherever he goes, and waits for him whenever he returns.
He knows, rationally, that ghosts are generally temporal imprints leaking through, or areas of high emotional energy pushing into the third dimension, but there's something about this one. A recollection deep down somewhere.
He finds it staring at him sometimes; a twinkling eye and a sad smile painting its face. There's a voice with it too, one inclined to speak another, older language than it's tongue was proficient in. It's a deep, velvety voice that's sung to him in the dark corners of his slumbering mind, one that's taken the side of common sense in his dilemmas, scolding him when he does anything unnecessary.
He knows that face, that man, but every time he tries to contemplate it, it falls just out of his grasp.
Goddess, he's old, unbelievably ancient, painfully exhausted. This is a mistake. All of it.
He's always had higher sensory ability then the average human from this time period, so he follows the echo.
It pains him that he can't really remember his time here. There's a shiver ghosting up his spine and he just can't grasp exactly why. There's something about this time and place, something raw and special and forgotten and he curses it just as he is cursed.
He used to keep diaries for the first couple hundred years. The ones containing his life for the very first two hundred or so were lost, buried in a haze, the scar covered with so much new matter that it just became unimportant.
All he knows about that time is that he was anchored somewhere, a constant in the rapidly changing times. He knows he started using the name "Jack Harkness" but he couldn't really remember why, where he got it from, so he stopped using it.
That's something about immortality: the sense of identity. How long until your memories and experiences are completely overwritten? How long until you become a different person, mind and soul, despite being stuck in the same body?
There's an ancient thought exercise of a ship - although not older than he is, in this time and place - a paradox, where each part had been replaced over time, sparking the question: is it still the same ship?
Is he the same man as Javic Thane, of Jack Harkness after the sum of his memories have warped and overwritten over the tens of thousands of years he's lived after being those people?
There's still a question to why he'd anchored himself here, quickly rectified whenever he caught up with the Doctor, as he did every so often - generally more in a world-ending situation rather than for tea, but it doesn't scratch the itching scar that should have healed so long ago he forgot where it came from.
He settles in a primitive hotel room overlooking a large body of water, drawn to it after spending so long on his home settlement, and realises that he's been here before, in this exact place so high up, gazing down at the small, strong people keeping this planet together.
It pulls at him, the surface world, so he takes the rickety, cable driven lift to the ground and walks outside. The chill of the crisp late autumn bites at his cheeks, and he remembers a garment, a coat long and blue-grey and warm, an embrace from a long lost lover.
He kept the coat for his long stint as Jack Harkness, retiring it when he moved on, packed it away and donated it to the Torchwood Archives.
He's not Jack Harkness, not anymore.
Most people in the universe knew him as Jack Harkness. It was an identity he'd curated for himself over almost three thousand years, over his personal linear timeline. Then it became too much, wearing a skin too saturated to keep track of.
He hasn't settled down - on a planet, with a partner, as a person - since.
And he doesn't know why he's returned to this backwater planet, back to this city, to this time period, but he knows why he's never returned properly before.
He's had fleeting visits on occasion. Generally in the distant past or the far future. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries was always a blind spot for navigation in Earth history, as the Time Agency preached long before he actually learned why.
Alongside the main space endeavours and first contact political periods, there were also several spatiotemporal anomalies present anchored to the planet itself, ranging from natural rifts to weak spots, a result of meddling with higher technology.
He's had his manipulator set to randomise spaciotemporal coordinates for the last few hundred years or so, to then let the trouble find him where he lands. He's good at this job he's given himself, and knows where to go to relax afterwards.
This is some kind of sick joke. The universe never gets bored of subjecting him to those. Navigating to twenty first century Earth, to twenty first century Cardiff is difficult even for a seasoned time traveller. He's here completely by accident, and it feels so foreign.
This was his home for almost two hundred years and it is like he's stepped into a whole new star system. People mill around him in hats and coats and it should feel like he's stood here a million times before but it just doesn't. The faces mean nothing to him, the language of snatched conversation doesn't even register except for the odd word.
This place used to be home to him. A long time ago.
He shakes his head to expel his musings and spots it again, watching him from the window of a café, eyes beckoning him inside and he stares right back.
The ghost doesn't really look like a stereotypical ghost, but even so, there's every chance it'll be gone the moment he blinks or looks away, and he's never paid it much attention before now so it seems a good time as any for analysis.
It's sitting, facing a cup of coffee, black and mostly full. It's dressed in a three piece suit, dark, pinstriped, complemented with a solid blue tie and white shirt. It wears a sombre smile on its lips as it watches him with careful eyes.
It's alluring.
He turns right around and marches back to his room, and doesn't look back.
As he leaves he hears a small chuckle on the wind, just as he has thousands of times before. He ignores how he feels as he walks bleak corridors to his temporary abode, and falls into bed with a warm arm holding him around his middle.
This is definitely not the first time he's ended up stranded in a dream world, but here he is, once again, restrained in his own mind past the realm of logic, and he isn't alone. He's happy here, supplied with images of a partner sharing a home and a bed and a life, and he feels so safe and sure.
They dance, limbs entwined in positions lost in time, deep blue moonlight painting art that only exists this once as they sway to the symphony of stars, constellations that can never exist.
They've done this waltz millions of times before, never once stumbling or missing a step, just perfect choreography guiding them around their dissolving dance hall, stepping over missing chunks of floor exposing the black and gold of the void below.
When he wakes, he is alone, the aching absence in his chest splitting the stitches over his heart and he sobs, the pale dawn too bright for his eyes.
He ventures back, more courageous this time as he steps inside the shop, only to find his ghost at the front this time, chatting with an older woman behind the register, and realises just how real he is. He's effortlessly engaged in conversation yet his demeanour has changed somewhat, attuned to the other man's sudden presence, and he finishes up his conversation before turning to face him.
He is patient as he watches him expectantly, optimism behind his eyes, and for a while, receives nothing in return except a stare back.
Then finally, he gains the will to moisten his lips and speak.
"I know who you are." He says, voice cracking on the last word.
"No, I don't think you do."
Then he kisses him, a hand holding his face, and he's been here before, he knows, and he just wishes he could remember.
When he pulls back he smiles, having missed that kind of contact, emotional and meaningful, for a long time, and is met with a question.
"How long has it been, since you left Earth?"
It's loaded, concealing several streams for deduction when provided with an answer and he tells him, then watches his brow furrow in calculation.
"It's okay that you don't remember. It's natural. And it doesn't change anything."
"But how? I don't even know your name."
He receives a smile at that.
"My name is Ianto."