sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 03:32 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 03:32 pm
Entry tags:
Condition of Release, 3/5
Title: Condition of Release
Part: 3 of 5
Rating: PG-13; R in the final chapter
Summary: Jack has studied the Cybermen for forty years, and he's damned if he'll let one take any of his people away from him without a fight.
Beta Credit:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
51stcenturyfox, misswinterhill, neifile7, and spiderine are winnars! :D
NOTE: The "Employee Statement" in this chapter was not written by me. It is taken from the BBC extras, archived at the Ianto's Desktop comm. To whom, I may add, I owe a debt of gratitude for their excellent historical timeline of the TW/DW universe.
CHAPTER THREE
Jack thought about Lieutenant Carstairs that afternoon, as he and Ianto stood on the dock and waited for the boat to pull up. To break free, one only needs a single crack, and then to see as much as possible. To distinguish truth from lie, one has to see everything.
Well, no better place to start than the Bristol Channel.
He'd offered to take Ianto home to get clothes, maybe some books, but Ianto had bluescreened so hard at the suggestion that it took five minutes to bring him back. Jack was going to go there tomorrow, to see what was so strange about Ianto's flat, but today, no. Enough for today. So Ianto had assurances that they had clothing at the facility, and books to read, and he'd seemed complacent enough with that.
"Officially," Jack said, watching the boat delicately slide into place against the mooring-posts, "you're on paid suspension from Torchwood. Don't worry about your job, we'll figure that out later. You're going to a secure facility but you're not a prisoner. If you want out, we'll figure out another way. Just tell one of the nurses and they'll call me."
Ianto was silent.
"Give me a sign, wave a flag or something," Jack said. Ianto turned to him and nodded. It was probably the best he could expect. "Are you curious at all? About where you're going?"
"P -- pa -- " Ianto stuttered, looking like he was struggling for control. "Part of me -- "
"Take your time," Jack said.
"Part of me thinks you're going to kill me," Ianto said, still looking forward. The boat's engine cut, and the captain waved at them, gesturing for them to come down. "You know. Dump me in the bay."
"Only part?"
"I'm not afraid. I don't think I can be. It's horrible," Ianto said, with a humourless laugh. "I can't feel anything, Jack."
"I've seen you show fear. I've seen you look ashamed, since it happened," Jack said, leading him down the steps.
"I have no context for this," Ianto's voice was flat. "No signs. Nothing is familiar."
"Hi-yo, Captain," the captain of the boat called. "Your usual?"
"Yep," Jack said, stepping aboard. He turned and made sure Ianto got down the short walkway safely. "Usual pay."
"He looks livelier than the others," the captain observed. "Right, there's tea in the galley, you know the way."
Jack led the way into the closet-sized kitchen aft of the bridge, pouring them each a cup of tepid tea from the strapped-in decanter. The engines kicked up and the boat pushed away again.
"Well, for the record," Jack said, sipping the tea and making a face, "I'm not going to kill you. I'm taking you to a medical unit run by Torchwood. You'll be kept away from the others, for your own safety -- they're not like you. They're not going to get better," he clarified, though Ianto didn't seem like he cared. "Sometime I'll explain all this to you. Just do what the doctors want you to do. I'll come check up on you."
Ianto nodded and placidly drank his tea. Outside, the sun was just beginning to set. By the time he left Ianto and made it back to Cardiff, it would just barely be dark.
God, what a long day.
***
Torchwood 1 Civilian survivor report No. 267. 2006:
I'm bloody lucky. I know that now, no offence. At the time, though...
I've been wounded in fighting before. I've seen others come off worse than me -- but this was different. Being marched towards those machines, seeing what they did to others, knowing there was nothing you could do about it -- well, the dreams are still there nearly every night.
They were just throwing us into those machines. That last moment before they threw me in I was thinking, I dunno, let's be calm, let's be proper, but who cares? I went into it screaming and it all clamped down and the knives.
And I was wondering -- I was really wondering -- I mean, like you do with an operation, you know -- surely they'll use drugs or something. Surely there'll be a bit of it where they've got to, because the body's just going to go into shock or something and die. So I was looking out for the needles, the really serious blow-me drugs that'd somehow make it all bearable. And I couldn't see them, and the poor sods before me just wouldn't stop screaming. But I went into it, I landed in it thinking there'll be drugs, there'll be drugs.
And there just weren't. And I was thinking please let it be quick. And I'd seen it before and I was thinking it had seemed fairly quick, but not really that quick. But then that first saw came down and cut through my leg. And it was quick. Bloody quick, I'll give it that. But not really quick enough. And then it stopped. Suddenly. All the power went, and the lights, and I could hear as the saw was tearing through my leg, I could hear it slowing down from that really sharp, quick whine, I could hear it slowing down like a record. And then it stopped. Most of the way through my leg.
And I just screamed. I think I realised I'd pass out soon. Just stuck there. In that much pain and fear and bloodloss and shock and darkness. But it took forever. And I can still remember myself struggling against it. That saw stuck in my bone. Like wiggling away at a loose tooth when you're a kid.
Statement continues on following page.
***
Jack was on the boat back to the mainland, having seen Ianto safely settled, turned over Owen's research, and explained to the head of the facility what to do with him, when they left the mobile dead-zone and his phone beeped. He checked it and found an email from Tosh.
UNIT reports all survivors are cleared. They're closing their case files. Thought you'd like to know. I've put Gwen on ideas for keeping the survivors monitored, like you said.
The Rift seems to be giving us a break. I don't think we'll have any activity for at least three days. I'm setting up a roster for on-call duty.
He smiled faintly and tapped out a reply.
thanks tosh
clear me off tomorrows roster
taking a sick day
iantos taken care of well looked after
He got a smiley face in return, and a single sentence: Enjoy your big drink.
Jack felt that after the day he'd had he deserved to enjoy his drink. He didn't drink often anymore -- pilot's rules, never within twelve hours of going on duty. And since Torchwood was, as it were, always on duty, that did usually keep him on water. But if the Rift was quiet...
He stepped onto the dock, remembering -- before the barrage, before gentrification, this whole area had been rife with bars, little places with sawdust on the floor where you could get drunk and get in a fight and fuck someone. Usually a woman, since trying it with the men often led to more fighting. But there had been two little places where men and women of a more flexible nature had gathered...oh, the roaring twenties, such a good time to be alive and handsome, even if life was a little more inconvenient than now.
He walked up past the Quay, past the Millennium Centre, stopping at a streetcorner to consider matters. Even in this Earthbound little century there was plenty of variety. So what did he want? He wanted a large glass of expensive alcohol, which meant somewhere upscale. Now: girl or boy, or something less binary? Boy, he thought, and -- while he didn't want to close off his options -- boys in straight bars were so much work. He'd worked enough for one day.
Upscale gay bar. Well, that narrowed down his choices considerably.
A cab cruised by slowly and he hailed it, giving the name of a place near the University. Too nice for the beer-and-chips crowd, too downtown for the closeted husbands. When it let him off he overtipped the driver and wandered inside.
It wasn't quite busy yet, but definitely filling up -- there were a handful of women in one corner, a few crowds of men here and there amongst the tables. Suzie had explained it to him once when he'd remarked on the fact that straight women in gay bars weren't likely to get much action; apparently sometimes it was nice to go out drinking somewhere you knew your arse probably wasn't going to get grabbed. Jack didn't understand the appeal of not having one's arse grabbed, but then he wasn't a woman, or of this century, so he accepted the explanation and made sure to smile harmlessly and leave them alone whenever he encountered them.
He ordered a whiskey, neat, "something expensive", and savoured it while he considered his new options. He wasn't accustomed to feeling guilt about sex, and the vague unease over how he'd treated Ianto still bothered him. He could pick out a likely boy with black hair and blue eyes and work it all out, both his guilt and his frustration, but he'd had enough of dark bent heads for one day. Maybe a blond. Or the dark-skinned man at the end of the bar -- whose boyfriend had just put his arm around his waist, with a glare at Jack. No, then.
"Tell me if you've heard this one," someone said to his left, and Jack turned to find a young man in a University t-shirt sitting next to him. "Hello, soldier."
Jack stared at him for a second, and then laughed.
"You'd be surprised how rare it is these days," he said. "People have no respect for the classics."
"It's a crying shame," the man agreed. Not as young as Jack had first thought -- he had shaggy brown hair, which made him look like an undergraduate, but there was a little too much age in his face, a few small lines around his eyes and mouth. You could cut his Valleys accent with a knife. "Now, ask me what my major is."
"Hmm." Jack narrowed his eyes. "Professor of literature."
The man looked delighted. "How'd you know? Have we met before?"
"I'm a little bit psychic," Jack told him, making a very serious face.
"Not really though."
Jack turned back to his drink. "Nah. It's the wrong bar for the science set, and you're not pretentious enough to teach film. Toss-up between history and literature. Lucky guess. 'Nother one," he said to the barman, sliding his empty glass across the counter.
"On my tab," the man added. The barman raised an eyebrow at Jack, who shrugged and nodded. "Professor Bill Quinn," the man said, offering his hand.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack answered, giving him his best grin.
"Captain of...the Air Force?" Professor Bill Quinn said.
"Now who's psychic?"
"I hate to tell you this, but you have tiny airplanes for cufflinks," Bill informed him. "You stationed over here?"
"Expatriate," Jack corrected, giving him a little toast with his new drink. "RAF."
"Been in Cardiff long?"
Jack grinned. "Yeah. Sometimes it feels like decades."
"Ahh, it's not so bad. Could be worse."
"Could be England," Jack said into his drink, which got the intended reaction; Bill cracked up laughing and clapped him on the shoulder. Jack smiled back at him. "So, Bill," he said, turning to face him completely. "I see two options."
"Oh?" Bill asked, intrigued now.
"Yeah. You could let me buy the next round and we could talk for another hour or so," Jack said, "or you could take me back to your place once I finish my drink and I'll prove to you just how much I appreciate the Welsh."
Bill raised an eyebrow. "You're very forward."
"Military efficiency," Jack replied.
"Can't fault that," Bill said thoughtfully. He rested a hand on Jack's thigh. "And I do support our men in uniform. Finish your drink."
Jack downed it in two gulps. Bill got that look, a look so many people in this century got around Jack: wondering what he'd got himself into and at the same time aware that he couldn't even consider backing down now.
He was a bossy bottom. And a screamer, which suited Jack to the bone.
"I feel very appreciated," Bill said, once he'd caught his breath (for the second time). "Very, very appreciated."
"Told you," Jack answered, not bothering to open his eyes. They'd pretty much destroyed the bed, but there was a pillow somewhere near his face. "Thank you, by the way."
"Hmm," Bill touched his chest, fingers idly exploring skin. "You did look like someone who'd had a rough day."
"Sometimes they're all rough," Jack mumbled sleepily. "Mind if I stay?"
"Are you kidding? I'm praying for a repeat performance tomorrow morning."
"Won't be a problem," Jack said, drifting off to the sound of Bill's pleased laughter.
***
Jack didn't like to think too much about what he saw the next day, after he'd left a very satisfied Bill to go break into Ianto's flat. Well, "break into;" he had keys to everyone's homes, but he also had a wrist strap that unlocked most doors.
It seemed normal at first, until you stood in it and really looked for a couple of minutes. Slowly, as Jack inspected the living room, it coalesced into a nightmare of right-angles and precision. Everything was ordered to within the quarter inch, spotlessly clean, and terrifyingly square. A row of uniform-sized packing boxes were stacked along one wall, edges aligned perfectly with each other. The sofa -- he measured, to be sure -- was precisely an inch away from the wall on one side and an inch away from the side-table on another. The silverware, when he investigated the kitchen, was stacked with care and arranged by size in the drawer. The folds on the window-drapes were symmetrical. Ianto's closet looked like the racks in a mid-range men's clothing store. His books were all the same size; no doubt anything that hadn't fit into the parameters was still in a packing box. The bed had a throw on top that was perfectly centred, as was the digital alarm clock on the bedside table.
Ianto had seemed tidy but he'd shown no signs of any compulsive disorder. Even if there was a possibility he'd been hiding something like that, Jack knew better. She had done this. Had made Ianto do it. Keep everything precise, measured, controlled. That was what Cybermen did. No room for mess or emotion.
He made a note to hire some movers and have Tosh find Ianto somewhere new to live. There was no way he could want to come back to this. Just thinking about it made Jack's throat close up and his skin itch.
***
Jack had regular reports from Flat Holm once a month, and urgent memos if they were needed, which occasionally they were. They came from the head of the facility, but he knew that most of the notes were written up by his assistant, Dr. Stone. He sent his new request directly to her, and she didn't fail him. At the end of each day, in his inbox, would be a few lines about Ianto -- mostly whether he was responding, and how well, what he'd eaten or was reading or was doing. Jack had made it clear he was to have run of the island except for the area with the other...patients, and Dr. Stone reported on his movements inasmuch as she could track them.
The Rift was suspiciously quiet, that first week. If it weren't for an increase in weevil sightings and a few dumpings of space-trash here and there, Jack would have been downright concerned. Still, it was a rest, and they all needed it, especially down a man. The coffee suffered. So did they all, when it became clear that nobody had thought to restock the loo rolls. As it turned out, Gwen did not take kindly to being sent out for supplies.
If they were curious as to where Ianto had gone, or when he would be back, they didn't ask. True, they had more devious ways of attempting to find out, but Jack was on to most of those and knew they wouldn't find anything.
At the end of the week, Jack went back to Flat Holm, with a shipment of supplies for the facility and a bouquet of flowers for Dr. Stone. He asked one of the nurses to take them to her; he had rounds to do first. Captain's Inspection, the nurses called it. As difficult as it was, nightmarish really, Jack wasn't the one who had to live here, and the least he could do was show his face to the people he had for all intents and purposes imprisoned.
Better than what they'd had. He just had to keep reminding himself. Ten years ago, they'd have been executed or kept in the cells. That was old Torchwood's way.
When he was done speaking to the ones that would talk and smiling at the ones who would smile and trying to get a glimpse of the ones who hid, he found Dr. Stone waiting for him in the kitchen, part of the wing totally locked away from the patients (fire, knives, glass; no, best not let them in the kitchen).
"Captain," she said, smiling warmly. "Thank you for the flowers."
"My pleasure," he told her, kissing her cheek. She laughed and rubbed it away. "Everything seems..."
"Normal?" she asked, with a tilt of her mouth. Flat Holm made them cynical so quickly.
"Up to standards," he told her.
"I'm glad to hear it. I expect you want to look in on Mr. Jones."
"Thank you for the reports," he said, as she led him through another secure doorway and down a hall. The entire facility had once been a barracks for the battery stationed here during the war; the doctors and nurses had what used to be the officers' quarters, and he'd had the enlisted mens' housing reworked for the patients. The last wing was ammunition and supply storage, and that was where they found Ianto: at one end of a long narrow room, eating an apple and sitting on a sofa below one of the few windows, reading in the natural sunlight, the dangling cage-covered bulbs dark.
"He looks healthy," Jack observed, watching him through the doorway. Ianto hadn't looked up.
"I think Dr. Lamar likes working with someone who's not a lost case," Dr. Stone said, crossing her arms. "Ianto responds well. Dr. Lamar spends a lot of time with him."
"Not neglecting -- "
"There's not much there to neglect," Dr. Stone said. "Captain, most of these people are beyond the help of a psychiatrist, even one as good as Dr. Lamar."
"I know that."
"He's not neglecting anyone," she sighed. "Ianto is just...clearly the best part of his day. He wants to be better, poor lad. Well, they all do, but Ianto knows he can be."
"Has he asked about the rest of the patients?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so. He doesn't ask much of anything."
Jack nodded. "Gimme a moment with him."
"Take all the time you need. Lunch in half an hour if you want."
Jack waited for her footsteps to die down and the distant sound of a door closing before he stepped into the room. Ianto kept reading. Jack coughed softly, not wanting to scare him, but got no reaction. Ianto had, he'd noticed, stopped chewing the bite of apple in his mouth.
"Ianto," he said. "Ianto?"
Bluescreen. Apparently Dr. Lamar had not made that much progress.
Still, as Jack tried to decide what to do next, Ianto closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. His eyes opened. He swallowed the apple in his mouth and looked up.
"You startled me," he said, not looking at all startled.
"Sorry."
Ianto closed the book and stood, setting it on the arm of the sofa. He looked down at the apple and then placed it very delicately on the floor.
It was awkward, like visiting his men in the hospital after they'd been shell-shocked in the Great War. One never knew what to say.
"Good book?" Jack asked. Ianto glanced at it.
"Read it before," he said.
"They treating you well?"
"Well, they're treating me," Ianto allowed. His lips twitched. "It's not contagious."
"Sorry?"
"You won't catch it if you come closer than shouting range."
Jack grinned. "That was almost funny, Ianto."
"One tries," Ianto replied, as Jack walked forward. "They said you'd be visiting. You never told us about this place."
Jack shrugged. "Very few would understand."
"That's what the doctors say."
"Dr. Lamar?"
Ianto nodded. "He's good, I guess. He's good at spotting when I..." he waved a hand. "I do it less now."
"Progress."
"Yup." Ianto shoved his hands in his pockets. "Can I -- " he started, and then stopped abruptly. Jack raised his eyebrows. "Sorry, I was about to ask if I could get you a coffee."
"Social niceties," Jack said. "We fill the silences with them."
"Usually more appropriate ones." Ianto gave him a square look. Jack shrugged.
"Do you have everything you need here?" he asked. "Anything you want?"
"I don't suppose we get wi-fi in the middle of the Bristol Channel," Ianto said, but there was a real wistfulness in his voice. "I'd like...something, sometimes I worry -- "
Jack waited for him to finish.
"I know what we do. Sometimes I wonder if Cardiff is still there. I'd like to be able to...look in on the world outside."
"The doctors have a server. I'll make sure you get a laptop," Jack said.
"Thank you."
"No posting things anywhere, and no email. You look in, you don't open the doors. Your access'll be monitored."
"So, no pornography then," Ianto said, and then looked immensely pleased with himself. Jack grinned.
"That was an original thought, wasn't it?" he said. "You just said that without even thinking and it was all you, huh?"
"It was," Ianto said. Jack laughed.
"Watch all the porn you want, it'll give the nurses a show and probably do you good," he said, clapping Ianto on the shoulder. Ianto looked down at his hand, then back up at him, and Jack cut it off before it could start.
"Don't -- say it," he said. The mischief faded from Ianto's eyes, the horrible fake flirtation.
"No, I suppose not," he answered. "Thank you, Jack."
"I'll be back in a week," Jack told him. "Look after yourself."
He turned to go, but stopped in the doorway for a look back. Ianto had settled in the corner of the sofa again, but he wasn't reading; the book sat closed on his lap, the apple ignored on the floor. He was just sitting, staring at the wall.
***
The second week Jack visited, Ianto was in the kitchen, talking with Dr. Stone. His face lit up when he saw Jack.
"They said you were here," he said. Jack spread his arms -- here I am! -- and Dr. Stone laughed.
"What, no flowers this time?" she asked.
"Hey, it's only been a week, did you already kill the last bunch?" Jack replied. Dr. Stone patted his arm and gave Ianto a significant look.
"Shall I let you talk?" she asked, but she wasn't asking Jack. Ianto paused, but he didn't shut down; instead, after a moment, he nodded. Dr. Stone disappeared through the door into the ward, closing it carefully behind her.
"How's the pornography working out?" Jack asked. Ianto shook his head sharply. "What?"
"We shouldn't go there," he said, struggling with the words. He gave Jack a suddenly uncomfortable look. Oh -- oh. Breaking conditioning, breaking programming -- best not to flirt, even in jest.
"Okay," Jack said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Not going there. But -- you're good?"
"Better," Ianto said. "I've stopped doing the thing." He waved a hand at his face, made a blank expression. Ah. No more bluescreens. That was progress. "Mostly, anyhow."
"That's good," Jack said. The kitchen seemed very dim, suddenly, and very small. The pull of sunlight was always a temptation in this place. "Do you get aboveground much?" he asked.
"They say I can. I haven't really. Just up to the gun emplacements."
Jack grinned. "Feel like a walk?"
They left through the staff quarters -- Jack wasn't ready yet to escort him through the ward -- and came up not far from the eastern cliffs. When he'd bought Flat Holm he'd been out here all the time, as often as he could get away, and he'd specifically gone looking for one or two things.
He led the way down a narrow path to the cliffs, Ianto picking his way behind him, and then along the edge to where an iron stake protruded a few feet from the ground. He'd driven it himself as a marker, and that first time as a hitch for his climbing gear before he'd found the steps cut into the rock, steps invisible from anywhere but nearly on top of them. Some Welsh smuggler had been very artful indeed at his craft.
Ianto let out a surprised yelp when Jack rapidly disappeared down the stairs, and when Jack turned to look up he saw Ianto's face peering down after him. He waited until Ianto had taken a few hesitant steps, as if he couldn't believe it wasn't some kind of optical illusion, and then continued.
"Two hundred years ago," Jack said into the wind, as they descended, "Flat Holm was a smuggler's base. Customs could see them from here -- " he pointed to the coast, visible in the distance, "but they couldn't do a thing about it. Y'know why?"
"I couldn't guess," Ianto called back. "Bloody hell I'm going to fall to my death."
"You're fine. They couldn't do anything about the smugglers because they didn't have a boat to get to the island!" Jack laughed, stepping onto firm ground again. Ianto followed in a shower of limestone chips.
"Perhaps they weren't trying very hard," Ianto suggested.
"Maybe that, too. So..." Jack walked his hand along the cliff face as he went, "the smugglers set up a camp and dug a mineshaft, and used it to store buried treasure."
Here was the mineshaft, the entry of it worn smooth by two hundred years of weathering; further on was a cave mouth, but the shaft angled into it before branching out into a network of tunnels that riddled the island. It was Flat Holm's secret, which was a good trick, since Flat Holm had been occupied by one form of troublemaker or another since the Bronze Age. He took a penlight out of his pocket and led the way through the shaft to the cave, listening to be sure Ianto's footsteps followed his. A curve around, a few steps forward, avoiding old glass bottles and rotten remains of tea crates --
And there it was. The edge of the cave mouth, a perfect sheltered view of the Cardiff shoreline, a warm pocket of comfort out of the wind. Ianto came to stand behind him a little, a bottle in one hand.
"Buried treasure?" he asked, holding it up. It was empty, but undeniably had once held some form of booze.
"Brandy and tea. Taxable contraband," Jack told him. "Put it down and come look."
Ianto joined him at the edge, staring out at the water and the dim coast. After a while, watching out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw him visibly relax.
"How are you?" Jack asked softly. Ianto took a while to reply.
"Miserable," he said.
"Bad as that?" Jack asked, honestly surprised.
"My girlfriend was slaughtered in front of me. The thing that killed her made me -- it -- you know about that," Ianto said. "All my friends are dead. I live in a munitions storage room. I will never...ever...be normal again."
"Normal is overrated," Jack said.
"Normal is who I was. Even in London, at Torchwood. I will never be the same as who I was. I will always be some patched-together thing from whatever she left of me. So yeah, Jack. Bad as that," Ianto finished, but there was no real malice in his voice.
"But you feel," Jack said. "Pain. Anger. Fear of death," he added lightly. Ianto snorted. "You were happy to see me. That was real. All that's better than before."
"You'll forgive me if I remain unconvinced," Ianto said. Jack glanced at him and could see -- in his face, in the way he held himself, a thing he remembered. When you wanted to die but just couldn't quite be fucked to make up your mind. Not that Jack had any choice in the matter in his own case.
"Let's go back," he said. "You know the way now. Come here if you want. Spit in the sea, throw bottles on the rocks, stare at the coast, whatever."
Ianto nodded and followed him back, up the hidden steps, across the cliff and down into the barracks complex. Jack left him there with the promise he'd be back the following week.
***
Two days later, Ianto showed up in the Hub.
Jack, who had been looking forward to an hour of quiet in which to enjoy his breakfast before the others arrived, just about jumped out of his skin when the proximity alert sounded. He wiped his mouth, grabbed a shirt from the back of his chair, and ran out into the Hub barefoot, pulling the shirt over his head.
And there was Ianto Jones, wearing a suit, hair immaculate, looking around as if he'd expected it to change.
Jack gaped. "How did you get here?"
Ianto looked at him. "How did you?" he asked, and walked past Jack towards the main atrium. The response made no sense.
"How the hell did you get off Flat Holm?" Jack demanded, following him -- oh, cold steel on bare feet. Ianto was crossing the walkways over the pool, heading for his worktable.
"Unlike customs two hundred years ago, I had a boat," Ianto replied. His voice was dangerously flat. Jack grabbed his shoulder and turned him around and saw -- not total blankness, but enough to know that Ianto had checked out, and autopilot was filling in.
"Do they know you're here?" Jack asked. "They should have called me."
"Don't know," Ianto said, and tried to pull away. Jack held on, grabbed Ianto's other arm and kept him there. Ianto waited patiently to be let go.
Jack leaned in, studying his eyes. There was a lurking panic in them.
"I know," he said, "that you are in there."
It seemed to work. Ianto blinked, looking around him. Back at Jack, and then around again. Jack waited.
"Oh, bollocks," Ianto said, closing his eyes. Jack let him go.
Just then, he heard his phone ringing, back in his office, halfway across the Hub.
He took Ianto's wrist and dragged him back, dug in his coat for a pair of handcuffs and cuffed him to the arm of a chair. Ianto looked at him, perplexed, and tugged; the chair rolled.
"Very effective," he drawled. Jack answered the phone on its final ring.
"Harkness," he barked.
"Captain, Ianto's gone missing," Dr. Stone's voice, panicked. "Dr. Lamar thinks he might have -- "
"He's here," Jack said, before anyone could even put the words into the air. "He came to the Hub. What the hell kind of crackerjack operation are you running over there?"
"I don't know how he got away," she protested. "He's not under guard like the other prisoners, you said he could come and go. I know he was here at lights out last night. We had to -- "
She stopped suddenly. Jack had a very, very bad feeling.
"You had to what?" he asked.
"It was going to go in today's report, I swear," she said. "It happened after I sent yesterday's."
"What happened?" Jack asked. He glanced at Ianto, who had calmly seated himself in the chair he was handcuffed to.
"He got into the ward through the kitchen," she said. "Someone left the door unlatched. It was one of Benjamin's bad nights, and you know how he sets the others off when he really wants to -- "
Jack covered his face with his hand. "Yeah. I know."
"We got Ianto out, but someone had to explain it to him, and I was busy trying to calm Benjamin down, so one of the nurses -- "
The nurses. Who didn't actually know what Flat Holm was all about.
"I get the picture," Jack said. "Look, just -- tell them he's here and he's fine. I'll call Lamar later. You find whoever left the kitchen door unlatched, I want their name and I want them confined to quarters until I can come chew them out myself."
"Yes, Captain."
Jack hung up and ran a hand over his face again, up into his hair. Ianto watched him. He looked almost...afraid.
"So," Jack said finally. "You've been in the ward."
"Are they aliens?" Ianto asked. "They look like people. Most of them. But they don't sound like people."
This was not the time nor the place he wanted to explain the science of the Rift to Ianto. He shook his head.
"They're survivors of the Rift," he said, hoping that would work well enough. "We take them there, we take care of them, we do what we can."
"But by we," Ianto said, as if he were working out a logic puzzle, "you mean you. Because that's not the kind of thing Owen or Tosh would shut up about, and I don't think Gwen would still work here if she knew."
"Few would understand," Jack said dully, echoing what he'd said to Ianto that day in the munitions room. "You obviously didn't."
Ianto looked around him again, as if he were wondering where he actually was.
"It's better than the alternative," Jack offered. It sounded weak to his own ears, even if it was true. Ianto shrugged. Jack studied him. God, even his tie was knotted perfectly. "Where'd you get the suit?"
"Keep a spare upstairs in the information centre," Ianto said.
"How'd you get the boat?"
"One of the nurses has a boyfriend with a motorboat," Ianto replied. "He comes to visit. I nicked it."
"Well, that's going to stop," Jack said.
"He's the nurse who left the door unlatched, so I imagine so," Ianto remarked. There was still something unsettlingly calm about his demeanor.
"So you saw that," Jack said, fitting everything together, "and you ran away...and came here."
"Can you undo the handcuffs?" Ianto said in a strained voice.
"Yeah," Jack came around the desk and unlocked them. The key had been on the edge of the desk, well within Ianto's reach, the whole time. Jack crouched next to the chair, looking up. "So, I guess now we ask: what to do with you, Ianto Jones?"
"I thought it was the wind blowing past my window at night," Ianto said quietly, rubbing his wrist. "Turns out it was people screaming."
"So no more Flat Holm."
Ianto shook his head.
Jack stood up, leaning back on his desk. "Okay. Let me find my shoes and I'll take you home."
***
"This is not my flat," Ianto said, standing in the garden of the little rented house in Cathays.
"Did you really want to go back to that?" Jack asked. Ianto shuddered.
"No," he said. "Did you find this?"
"Tosh did. You can afford it. We moved your stuff," Jack explained, passing him the key. "So...boxes, mostly. And I'm cheap, so the movers probably broke your plates. They were ugly plates," he added.
"Beggars, choosers," Ianto murmured, unlocking the front door. "For two pounds at a charity shop I wasn't going to complain."
The furniture, the landlord of Ianto's flat had said, came with the flat; there was nothing to move really but boxes, so Ianto's first view of his home was pretty much haphazard piles of cardboard. He explored it nevertheless, like a cat, acquainting himself with a new place, poking into the corners and studying his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His hands drifted out as if to place imaginary razor, toothbrush, comb, then clenched and pulled back. Jack pretended not to notice how precise the placements were. In the bedroom, an unfamiliar bed; Ianto glanced at Jack, who gave him an unrepentant look.
"Chairs aren't necessary. Beds are," Jack said. "I took it out of your salary."
"Oh." Ianto closed the bedroom door, walking back into the kitchen. "Thank you."
"You're still on suspension," Jack added, following him. "I don't care how ingenious that little escape plot of yours was. Two weeks isn't enough time."
"How long, then?" Ianto asked, playing with the flap of one of the open boxes. He reached in and took out a plate, whole and unbroken, holding it up for Jack to see. "Bad luck, I'm afraid."
"How long do you think?" Jack asked. "I don't know what you need."
"Dr. Lamar was going to suggest I come back, but I don't think he meant quite like this," Ianto said, setting the plate aside. "He says the best thing for me is to talk to people. Limited conversation to be had, on Flat Holm."
"Then you should do that," Jack said. "Take a few weeks. Unpack. Find a good local. Chat up your neighbours."
Ianto took another plate delicately out of the box and set it on top of the first. "That place. The island. You do realise it's a confined little piece of hell?"
So, not quite done with Flat Holm yet. Jack leaned against the counter.
"People have such middle-class ideas of hell," he complained. "It looks like hell because the walls are painted, the food is hot, and the patients are kept clean and safe, but they're still sick."
Ianto took a knife out of the box, studied it, set it across the plates. A big knife. Jack eyeballed it, but Ianto was already pulling glasses, wrapped in brown paper, out of the bottom.
"It looks like hell because all that window dressing makes the insanity more apparent," Jack continued. "Whereas real, actual hell is locking those people away with a bucket for shit and a bucket of food and not caring if they mix the two up."
Ianto looked up sharply.
"Real hell is being ordered to shoot a sixteen-year-old because it's less trouble than finding a way to give a boy who exhales cyanide gas some kind of life," Jack added. "That's what we used to do, Ianto, before I was head of Torchwood. So you tell me. Giving you apples to eat and people to help you, or letting you bluescreen and rot in the cell next to Janet's for the rest of your probably very short life. Which one would you prefer?"
Ianto looked down at the box. His lips curled a little. "Bluescreen. I hadn't heard that one. Bluescreen of death? Hard drive frozen, operating system broken? Am I close?"
"You're changing the subject."
"No, it's apt. Trust you," Ianto said. He looked up at Jack, sidelong. "I can stay here."
"Yes."
"When can I come back to work?"
"You tell me. Honestly," Jack said, when Ianto opened his mouth. "When you are honestly ready to come back, tell me."
"Until then?" Ianto asked. Jack gave him a blank look. "Until then, am I in quarantine?"
"Quarantine?" Jack asked, baffled. Ianto chewed on his lip.
"Will you come visit me here, or is that done now that I'm not at Flat Holm?" he asked.
Jack considered it. He hadn't actually made a plan. And it was heartbreaking, watching Ianto struggle to ask. On the other hand...
"When you want to see me," he said, "call me. Any hour of the day. In the meantime, try to find some peace."
Ianto nodded. Jack pushed away from the counter and headed towards the door.
"It's a nice house," Ianto called, when Jack was in the entryway. Jack paused, and Ianto leaned past the kitchen doorway to catch his eye. "Thank you. It's a nice house."
Jack gave him a smile. "I'll tell Tosh you said so."
***
A few days later, Jack got the first call. He was in the middle of bagging a weevil, and when his earpiece buzzed he thought it might be Tosh. He tapped it and said, "Harkness Exterminators, no vermin too toothy."
There was a pause before the caller replied. "...Jack?"
"Ianto Jones," Jack said cheerfully, tightening the hood over the weevil's head. "Good timing."
"I bought a sofa," Ianto said. There was a nervous edge to his voice. Jack hoisted the weevil over his shoulder and made for the SUV.
"That's good...?" he prompted.
"Can you come...help me?"
"You at home?"
"Yes."
"Be there in ten," Jack told him, and dumped the weevil in the back of the SUV. It'd be out for hours anyway.
He envisioned Ianto perplexed by some kind of Ikea furniture that needed two people to assemble. Could be fun. Or this was some odd pick-up line to do with christening a new sofa, which was unlikely but could be even more fun. Instead, when he knocked on the door, nobody answered.
"Ianto," he called. No reply. Jack let himself in -- door wasn't even locked -- and found Ianto sitting on a slightly battered sofa, head in his hands, phone still clenched in his fingers. It took him a second to figure out what was wrong.
The sofa was placed between two towers of boxes apparently serving as end-tables, and it looked...off, somehow.
He eyed the gap between sofa and wall, then the gaps between the arms of the sofa and the makeshift tables. They were precise and symmetrical, and Ianto was sitting in the exact centre.
"I can't move it," Ianto said.
"Can't be that heavy," Jack said cheerily.
"I can't. Move it."
Jack stood in front of him. "Did you put it there?"
Ianto nodded without looking up. Jack crouched and pulled his arms down, holding each wrist gently.
"Make me some coffee?" he asked. Ianto looked gratefully at him and stood, disappearing into the kitchen. Jack studied the arrangement -- it would look better tilted away from the wall anyway -- and shoved some of the boxes into a corner, yanking the sofa efficiently in front of them. There. Odd diagonal angle, weird misalignment with the boxes, and just slightly inconvenient if Ianto actually wanted to get at whatever was in them. Sorted.
He walked into the kitchen and was pleased to see a cluttery disarray here -- crumbs on the counter, dishes in the sink, pans on the stove. The expensive-looking coffee machine had pride of place, and Ianto was staring intently at the slow drip of it.
"Fixed it," Jack announced. "You'll stub your toes on it in the dark."
"Thanks," Ianto said.
"Glad you called." Jack watched him take the carafe out of the machine, pour out a cup, and add two spoonfuls of sugar. He left the sugar spoon in the coffee and passed it to Jack, who stirred. "So, you surviving?"
"Yep," Ianto said, replacing the carafe. "I was doing all right until just then."
"Flirting with the neighbours like you're supposed to?"
Ianto gave him a sardonic look. "Oh yes. I'm the social butterfly of the street."
"Give it time," Jack advised, drinking deep from the cup. "God, this coffee is good. Listen, I have a weevil in the boot, I can't stay. I'm glad you called, though. Want me to come back once I get it shifted?"
Ianto shook his head. "That's fine. I just...had a moment."
Jack noticed there was a table at the end of the kitchen, near the windows, with two chairs and a lamp standing nearby; it looked less orderly, more haphazard than the sofa. He leaned back out into the other room and saw a half-full bookshelf that he was sure they hadn't moved into the place. The books on it were of every size and colour, and apparently in no particular order.
"The sofa's the first big problem?" he asked. Ianto nodded. "Then you're fine."
"Fine," Ianto repeated, and smiled at Jack. "Sure. Thank you, again."
Jack took a last swallow and set his mug down. "No problem. See you in a few days, maybe? We'll get lunch? Call me."
Ianto walked him to the door, and Jack saw him look curiously, then approvingly at the sofa. Outside Jack paused, inhaled a breath of chilly Cardiff air, and felt very pleased. Time to go deal with the weevil.
***
Torchwood 1 Civilian survivor report No. 267. 2006:
Continued from previous page.
Eventually, after all the drugs and the counselling and everything I realised I was lucky. I'm still alive. I'm mostly intact. But sitting there in hospital, trying not to look at the stump, trying not to look at other people not looking at the stump.
Turns out there were drugs -- not painkillers really, just stuff they pumped into you, turning your brain to mush. Took a while to flush that out of the system. Learning how to think properly again.
There was a lot of talk with the doctors. They tried fitting me with an artificial limb, but I just screamed when they brought it near me. They'd take it away, we would talk rationally about it, and I'd say okay and be calm and they'd bring it back and I'd start screaming again.
And I was on an open ward by then, so it wasn't nice.
So, they let me out eventually, with my crutches. Told me to come back if I ever changed my mind, which is, I think, a neat little turn of phrase.
There was lots more counselling. Sat in a halfway house, with lots of stairs and weak tea.
But eventually I'm here. Living this quiet life. I've found the flattest, quietest bit of Norfolk, and I've got a bungalow, for god's sake -- I'm like my Uncle John. There's still counselling, of course, and every now and then someone like you comes along, just to check that everything's fine with my mind.
***
That night, despite his vague satisfaction with himself and the world around him, Jack had bad dreams. Not the worst dreams, those usually only came out to stab at him when he was already living in nightmares during the day, but bad enough. Rare to remember this: the heat of the train and the smell of unwashed soldiers, the slap of playing cards and whine of a harmonica. Still, the minor annoyances of military travel were really hardly noticeable, compared to Jack's pleasure at being with his men. They seemed happy, spirited even. But then came the darkness of the tunnel, the smell of flowers and the flap of wings, and the terrible understanding when the light returned that his men were dead, all of them, and Jack was trapped in a train car full of corpses.
He woke with a start, an inhale instinctive, to remind him that he was alive. But when he emerged from his safe little den beneath the office, he heard a clatter and found Ianto there, impeccable in a suit, moving about the darkened Hub as if he'd never left.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, before he thought of it.
"Neither should you," Ianto replied. The same nonsensical reply as the last time, throwing Jack's accusation meaninglessly back against him. But this time Ianto wasn't an escapee from an asylum, and he didn't seem to be running on autopilot. Jack joined him at the computer, resting a hand on his shoulder experimentally. Ianto glanced at it, processed it, turned back to his work.
"Whaddaya got?" Jack asked, keeping his voice neutral.
"Funny sort of weather patterns," Ianto said, calling up one of Tosh's climate trackers. Jack studied it.
"Weird," he said. "Microclimates?"
"Could be," Ianto answered.
"I'll put Tosh and Gwen on it when they come in," Jack said, but he had a bad feeling that the weather patterns and a nightmare about a slaughter in 1909 were not coincidental to each other. "Good work. Why are you here?"
Ianto kept working as he spoke, recording screenshots and readings to Tosh's shared folder. "Meant to get up and go for a run. Then I...put on a suit, and came here instead. Didn't mean to. Just sort of happened."
"You're not back yet."
"You said two weeks wasn't enough. Two and a half weeks seems like cheating," Ianto replied, head bent to his work. "But so long as I was here, I thought, may as well..."
"Yeah," Jack agreed.
"Should I go?" Ianto looked up at him. "I don't...think I want to."
Jack shook his head. "Stay for now. We'll see what the weather patterns are, do a briefing, send you home then." He bit his lip. "How's the sofa?"
"Very comfortable," Ianto said, with a hint of humour.
The others were hesitantly happy to see Ianto again; Gwen gave him a hug and Tosh kissed his cheek, and Owen grumbled about paid vacations but didn't actually antagonise him to his face, which some days was all one could hope for from Owen. Jack put Tosh onto the weather patterns, left Owen to his own devices in the morgue, saw Ianto was entertaining himself with minor repairs to the Hub, and took Gwen with him to see Estelle about the fairies.
Once they knew what they were dealing with, he had little time to worry about his stray lamb; he sent Ianto home, said to call if he had troubles, and went off to battle the fairies.
After they'd fought and lost, after Jack had given a child to the care of hellish, all-powerful nightmare creatures, Owen and Tosh went home (not together, more the pity) and Gwen lingered in the Hub only long enough to pack her things and close the file. None of them would speak to him or look at him, even. Jack was accustomed to the quiet of the Hub, but he wasn't accustomed to finding it lonely.
He was sitting at his desk, boots off, feet propped up, when the phone rang.
"Ianto," he said, answering it.
"Good guess," Ianto replied, down the line.
"Now's not really a great time."
"Gwen came to see me," Ianto said, and Jack sat forward.
"If you called to tell me you're not speaking to me either, you might as well have just come down and punched me in the face," Jack said tiredly.
"No," Ianto's voice held a trace of amusement. "She told me they'd closed the case, told me about what happened. I thought you might like dinner."
Jack opened his mouth and then realised what Ianto had said. "Uh."
"Just a thought..." Ianto trailed off uncertainly.
"Sorry, I wasn't expecting to be well-liked enough for dinner offers at the moment," Jack said, and then rubbed his eyes. "Ianto, if this is conditioning -- "
"No. At least, I think not. Doesn't taste like it."
"Okay, then." Jack exhaled. "Dinner would be great."
Great, perhaps not, but it was pleasant at least; Ianto had a few questions about the case, but mostly touching on the nature of the creatures rather than what Jack had done, for which Jack found he was grateful. Ianto talked about himself, too, about meeting the people down the street who had a new baby, talking to a bloke walking his dog, ordinary things that were not actually ordinary for either one of them. He said he was sorry about Estelle, which no-one had, not even Gwen.
Jack gave him a lift home, since he'd already burned up his Big Drink allowance for a couple of months at least, and Ianto had ordered a pint with dinner. It was an excuse, he thought, to prolong the evening, but Ianto didn't seem to mind.
When he pulled up outside Ianto's house, he was just turning to make a quip about dinner when Ianto leaned across the gearshift and kissed him.
The kiss was great, and Jack was really starting to enjoy it right when his admittedly erratic good sense kicked in. He pushed Ianto back, held him there with a hand, and got some eye contact.
"No, I don't think so," he said gently. Ianto's eyes were wide, but he recovered a smile.
"So you're all talk, is that -- "
"Ianto," Jack pulled his hand back. "Do you even know what you're doing?"
The smile fell away, and Ianto turned his head slightly. "You just looked like...I dunno." He rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I dunno, Jack."
"Was that programmed?"
"I don't know." Ianto glanced back at him. "Sometimes I want to -- fix things. Sometimes I just want something, and I don't know if it's me or her. Christ, it was easier when...at least I knew, then."
"If you don't know, then this isn't the time," Jack said. "You're not sure, I can't take that risk. I did too much damage already."
Ianto snorted, but Jack saw more pain than derision in his face. "You did damage. You."
"To you? Yeah, Ianto. I did."
Ianto was silent for a while. "So. No. For me, always no. Is that it?"
"For you, it's more complicated than that. For you, the answer is: solve your own problems before you solve mine," Jack said. "I'm a big boy, Ianto, I've been through worse than Gwen being mad at me. Work yourself out, figure out what you really want."
Ianto nodded, face turned away in profile but eyes darting back to him.
"Now. Are you okay?" Jack asked.
"Yeah. Fine." Ianto reached for his seatbelt, fumbling with the buckle.
"You want me to come in with you?"
Ianto shook his head, finally getting the belt undone. "I think that would be -- stupid."
"You sure?" Jack asked. "Look, I know you have no evidence of this but I do actually have enough self-control for both of us."
That got him a little smile. He smiled back.
"I'm fine," Ianto said. He looked like he almost believed it.
"Okay. I'll see you in a few days," Jack said. He let Ianto out of the car and made sure he was inside, then rested his forehead against the steering wheel for a few seconds, calming himself.
That kid was going to be the death of him.
Chapter Four
Part: 3 of 5
Rating: PG-13; R in the final chapter
Summary: Jack has studied the Cybermen for forty years, and he's damned if he'll let one take any of his people away from him without a fight.
Beta Credit:
51stcenturyfox, misswinterhill, neifile7, and spiderine are winnars! :DNOTE: The "Employee Statement" in this chapter was not written by me. It is taken from the BBC extras, archived at the Ianto's Desktop comm. To whom, I may add, I owe a debt of gratitude for their excellent historical timeline of the TW/DW universe.
CHAPTER THREE
Jack thought about Lieutenant Carstairs that afternoon, as he and Ianto stood on the dock and waited for the boat to pull up. To break free, one only needs a single crack, and then to see as much as possible. To distinguish truth from lie, one has to see everything.
Well, no better place to start than the Bristol Channel.
He'd offered to take Ianto home to get clothes, maybe some books, but Ianto had bluescreened so hard at the suggestion that it took five minutes to bring him back. Jack was going to go there tomorrow, to see what was so strange about Ianto's flat, but today, no. Enough for today. So Ianto had assurances that they had clothing at the facility, and books to read, and he'd seemed complacent enough with that.
"Officially," Jack said, watching the boat delicately slide into place against the mooring-posts, "you're on paid suspension from Torchwood. Don't worry about your job, we'll figure that out later. You're going to a secure facility but you're not a prisoner. If you want out, we'll figure out another way. Just tell one of the nurses and they'll call me."
Ianto was silent.
"Give me a sign, wave a flag or something," Jack said. Ianto turned to him and nodded. It was probably the best he could expect. "Are you curious at all? About where you're going?"
"P -- pa -- " Ianto stuttered, looking like he was struggling for control. "Part of me -- "
"Take your time," Jack said.
"Part of me thinks you're going to kill me," Ianto said, still looking forward. The boat's engine cut, and the captain waved at them, gesturing for them to come down. "You know. Dump me in the bay."
"Only part?"
"I'm not afraid. I don't think I can be. It's horrible," Ianto said, with a humourless laugh. "I can't feel anything, Jack."
"I've seen you show fear. I've seen you look ashamed, since it happened," Jack said, leading him down the steps.
"I have no context for this," Ianto's voice was flat. "No signs. Nothing is familiar."
"Hi-yo, Captain," the captain of the boat called. "Your usual?"
"Yep," Jack said, stepping aboard. He turned and made sure Ianto got down the short walkway safely. "Usual pay."
"He looks livelier than the others," the captain observed. "Right, there's tea in the galley, you know the way."
Jack led the way into the closet-sized kitchen aft of the bridge, pouring them each a cup of tepid tea from the strapped-in decanter. The engines kicked up and the boat pushed away again.
"Well, for the record," Jack said, sipping the tea and making a face, "I'm not going to kill you. I'm taking you to a medical unit run by Torchwood. You'll be kept away from the others, for your own safety -- they're not like you. They're not going to get better," he clarified, though Ianto didn't seem like he cared. "Sometime I'll explain all this to you. Just do what the doctors want you to do. I'll come check up on you."
Ianto nodded and placidly drank his tea. Outside, the sun was just beginning to set. By the time he left Ianto and made it back to Cardiff, it would just barely be dark.
God, what a long day.
***
Torchwood 1 Civilian survivor report No. 267. 2006:
I'm bloody lucky. I know that now, no offence. At the time, though...
I've been wounded in fighting before. I've seen others come off worse than me -- but this was different. Being marched towards those machines, seeing what they did to others, knowing there was nothing you could do about it -- well, the dreams are still there nearly every night.
They were just throwing us into those machines. That last moment before they threw me in I was thinking, I dunno, let's be calm, let's be proper, but who cares? I went into it screaming and it all clamped down and the knives.
And I was wondering -- I was really wondering -- I mean, like you do with an operation, you know -- surely they'll use drugs or something. Surely there'll be a bit of it where they've got to, because the body's just going to go into shock or something and die. So I was looking out for the needles, the really serious blow-me drugs that'd somehow make it all bearable. And I couldn't see them, and the poor sods before me just wouldn't stop screaming. But I went into it, I landed in it thinking there'll be drugs, there'll be drugs.
And there just weren't. And I was thinking please let it be quick. And I'd seen it before and I was thinking it had seemed fairly quick, but not really that quick. But then that first saw came down and cut through my leg. And it was quick. Bloody quick, I'll give it that. But not really quick enough. And then it stopped. Suddenly. All the power went, and the lights, and I could hear as the saw was tearing through my leg, I could hear it slowing down from that really sharp, quick whine, I could hear it slowing down like a record. And then it stopped. Most of the way through my leg.
And I just screamed. I think I realised I'd pass out soon. Just stuck there. In that much pain and fear and bloodloss and shock and darkness. But it took forever. And I can still remember myself struggling against it. That saw stuck in my bone. Like wiggling away at a loose tooth when you're a kid.
Statement continues on following page.
***
Jack was on the boat back to the mainland, having seen Ianto safely settled, turned over Owen's research, and explained to the head of the facility what to do with him, when they left the mobile dead-zone and his phone beeped. He checked it and found an email from Tosh.
UNIT reports all survivors are cleared. They're closing their case files. Thought you'd like to know. I've put Gwen on ideas for keeping the survivors monitored, like you said.
The Rift seems to be giving us a break. I don't think we'll have any activity for at least three days. I'm setting up a roster for on-call duty.
He smiled faintly and tapped out a reply.
thanks tosh
clear me off tomorrows roster
taking a sick day
iantos taken care of well looked after
He got a smiley face in return, and a single sentence: Enjoy your big drink.
Jack felt that after the day he'd had he deserved to enjoy his drink. He didn't drink often anymore -- pilot's rules, never within twelve hours of going on duty. And since Torchwood was, as it were, always on duty, that did usually keep him on water. But if the Rift was quiet...
He stepped onto the dock, remembering -- before the barrage, before gentrification, this whole area had been rife with bars, little places with sawdust on the floor where you could get drunk and get in a fight and fuck someone. Usually a woman, since trying it with the men often led to more fighting. But there had been two little places where men and women of a more flexible nature had gathered...oh, the roaring twenties, such a good time to be alive and handsome, even if life was a little more inconvenient than now.
He walked up past the Quay, past the Millennium Centre, stopping at a streetcorner to consider matters. Even in this Earthbound little century there was plenty of variety. So what did he want? He wanted a large glass of expensive alcohol, which meant somewhere upscale. Now: girl or boy, or something less binary? Boy, he thought, and -- while he didn't want to close off his options -- boys in straight bars were so much work. He'd worked enough for one day.
Upscale gay bar. Well, that narrowed down his choices considerably.
A cab cruised by slowly and he hailed it, giving the name of a place near the University. Too nice for the beer-and-chips crowd, too downtown for the closeted husbands. When it let him off he overtipped the driver and wandered inside.
It wasn't quite busy yet, but definitely filling up -- there were a handful of women in one corner, a few crowds of men here and there amongst the tables. Suzie had explained it to him once when he'd remarked on the fact that straight women in gay bars weren't likely to get much action; apparently sometimes it was nice to go out drinking somewhere you knew your arse probably wasn't going to get grabbed. Jack didn't understand the appeal of not having one's arse grabbed, but then he wasn't a woman, or of this century, so he accepted the explanation and made sure to smile harmlessly and leave them alone whenever he encountered them.
He ordered a whiskey, neat, "something expensive", and savoured it while he considered his new options. He wasn't accustomed to feeling guilt about sex, and the vague unease over how he'd treated Ianto still bothered him. He could pick out a likely boy with black hair and blue eyes and work it all out, both his guilt and his frustration, but he'd had enough of dark bent heads for one day. Maybe a blond. Or the dark-skinned man at the end of the bar -- whose boyfriend had just put his arm around his waist, with a glare at Jack. No, then.
"Tell me if you've heard this one," someone said to his left, and Jack turned to find a young man in a University t-shirt sitting next to him. "Hello, soldier."
Jack stared at him for a second, and then laughed.
"You'd be surprised how rare it is these days," he said. "People have no respect for the classics."
"It's a crying shame," the man agreed. Not as young as Jack had first thought -- he had shaggy brown hair, which made him look like an undergraduate, but there was a little too much age in his face, a few small lines around his eyes and mouth. You could cut his Valleys accent with a knife. "Now, ask me what my major is."
"Hmm." Jack narrowed his eyes. "Professor of literature."
The man looked delighted. "How'd you know? Have we met before?"
"I'm a little bit psychic," Jack told him, making a very serious face.
"Not really though."
Jack turned back to his drink. "Nah. It's the wrong bar for the science set, and you're not pretentious enough to teach film. Toss-up between history and literature. Lucky guess. 'Nother one," he said to the barman, sliding his empty glass across the counter.
"On my tab," the man added. The barman raised an eyebrow at Jack, who shrugged and nodded. "Professor Bill Quinn," the man said, offering his hand.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack answered, giving him his best grin.
"Captain of...the Air Force?" Professor Bill Quinn said.
"Now who's psychic?"
"I hate to tell you this, but you have tiny airplanes for cufflinks," Bill informed him. "You stationed over here?"
"Expatriate," Jack corrected, giving him a little toast with his new drink. "RAF."
"Been in Cardiff long?"
Jack grinned. "Yeah. Sometimes it feels like decades."
"Ahh, it's not so bad. Could be worse."
"Could be England," Jack said into his drink, which got the intended reaction; Bill cracked up laughing and clapped him on the shoulder. Jack smiled back at him. "So, Bill," he said, turning to face him completely. "I see two options."
"Oh?" Bill asked, intrigued now.
"Yeah. You could let me buy the next round and we could talk for another hour or so," Jack said, "or you could take me back to your place once I finish my drink and I'll prove to you just how much I appreciate the Welsh."
Bill raised an eyebrow. "You're very forward."
"Military efficiency," Jack replied.
"Can't fault that," Bill said thoughtfully. He rested a hand on Jack's thigh. "And I do support our men in uniform. Finish your drink."
Jack downed it in two gulps. Bill got that look, a look so many people in this century got around Jack: wondering what he'd got himself into and at the same time aware that he couldn't even consider backing down now.
He was a bossy bottom. And a screamer, which suited Jack to the bone.
"I feel very appreciated," Bill said, once he'd caught his breath (for the second time). "Very, very appreciated."
"Told you," Jack answered, not bothering to open his eyes. They'd pretty much destroyed the bed, but there was a pillow somewhere near his face. "Thank you, by the way."
"Hmm," Bill touched his chest, fingers idly exploring skin. "You did look like someone who'd had a rough day."
"Sometimes they're all rough," Jack mumbled sleepily. "Mind if I stay?"
"Are you kidding? I'm praying for a repeat performance tomorrow morning."
"Won't be a problem," Jack said, drifting off to the sound of Bill's pleased laughter.
***
Jack didn't like to think too much about what he saw the next day, after he'd left a very satisfied Bill to go break into Ianto's flat. Well, "break into;" he had keys to everyone's homes, but he also had a wrist strap that unlocked most doors.
It seemed normal at first, until you stood in it and really looked for a couple of minutes. Slowly, as Jack inspected the living room, it coalesced into a nightmare of right-angles and precision. Everything was ordered to within the quarter inch, spotlessly clean, and terrifyingly square. A row of uniform-sized packing boxes were stacked along one wall, edges aligned perfectly with each other. The sofa -- he measured, to be sure -- was precisely an inch away from the wall on one side and an inch away from the side-table on another. The silverware, when he investigated the kitchen, was stacked with care and arranged by size in the drawer. The folds on the window-drapes were symmetrical. Ianto's closet looked like the racks in a mid-range men's clothing store. His books were all the same size; no doubt anything that hadn't fit into the parameters was still in a packing box. The bed had a throw on top that was perfectly centred, as was the digital alarm clock on the bedside table.
Ianto had seemed tidy but he'd shown no signs of any compulsive disorder. Even if there was a possibility he'd been hiding something like that, Jack knew better. She had done this. Had made Ianto do it. Keep everything precise, measured, controlled. That was what Cybermen did. No room for mess or emotion.
He made a note to hire some movers and have Tosh find Ianto somewhere new to live. There was no way he could want to come back to this. Just thinking about it made Jack's throat close up and his skin itch.
***
Jack had regular reports from Flat Holm once a month, and urgent memos if they were needed, which occasionally they were. They came from the head of the facility, but he knew that most of the notes were written up by his assistant, Dr. Stone. He sent his new request directly to her, and she didn't fail him. At the end of each day, in his inbox, would be a few lines about Ianto -- mostly whether he was responding, and how well, what he'd eaten or was reading or was doing. Jack had made it clear he was to have run of the island except for the area with the other...patients, and Dr. Stone reported on his movements inasmuch as she could track them.
The Rift was suspiciously quiet, that first week. If it weren't for an increase in weevil sightings and a few dumpings of space-trash here and there, Jack would have been downright concerned. Still, it was a rest, and they all needed it, especially down a man. The coffee suffered. So did they all, when it became clear that nobody had thought to restock the loo rolls. As it turned out, Gwen did not take kindly to being sent out for supplies.
If they were curious as to where Ianto had gone, or when he would be back, they didn't ask. True, they had more devious ways of attempting to find out, but Jack was on to most of those and knew they wouldn't find anything.
At the end of the week, Jack went back to Flat Holm, with a shipment of supplies for the facility and a bouquet of flowers for Dr. Stone. He asked one of the nurses to take them to her; he had rounds to do first. Captain's Inspection, the nurses called it. As difficult as it was, nightmarish really, Jack wasn't the one who had to live here, and the least he could do was show his face to the people he had for all intents and purposes imprisoned.
Better than what they'd had. He just had to keep reminding himself. Ten years ago, they'd have been executed or kept in the cells. That was old Torchwood's way.
When he was done speaking to the ones that would talk and smiling at the ones who would smile and trying to get a glimpse of the ones who hid, he found Dr. Stone waiting for him in the kitchen, part of the wing totally locked away from the patients (fire, knives, glass; no, best not let them in the kitchen).
"Captain," she said, smiling warmly. "Thank you for the flowers."
"My pleasure," he told her, kissing her cheek. She laughed and rubbed it away. "Everything seems..."
"Normal?" she asked, with a tilt of her mouth. Flat Holm made them cynical so quickly.
"Up to standards," he told her.
"I'm glad to hear it. I expect you want to look in on Mr. Jones."
"Thank you for the reports," he said, as she led him through another secure doorway and down a hall. The entire facility had once been a barracks for the battery stationed here during the war; the doctors and nurses had what used to be the officers' quarters, and he'd had the enlisted mens' housing reworked for the patients. The last wing was ammunition and supply storage, and that was where they found Ianto: at one end of a long narrow room, eating an apple and sitting on a sofa below one of the few windows, reading in the natural sunlight, the dangling cage-covered bulbs dark.
"He looks healthy," Jack observed, watching him through the doorway. Ianto hadn't looked up.
"I think Dr. Lamar likes working with someone who's not a lost case," Dr. Stone said, crossing her arms. "Ianto responds well. Dr. Lamar spends a lot of time with him."
"Not neglecting -- "
"There's not much there to neglect," Dr. Stone said. "Captain, most of these people are beyond the help of a psychiatrist, even one as good as Dr. Lamar."
"I know that."
"He's not neglecting anyone," she sighed. "Ianto is just...clearly the best part of his day. He wants to be better, poor lad. Well, they all do, but Ianto knows he can be."
"Has he asked about the rest of the patients?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so. He doesn't ask much of anything."
Jack nodded. "Gimme a moment with him."
"Take all the time you need. Lunch in half an hour if you want."
Jack waited for her footsteps to die down and the distant sound of a door closing before he stepped into the room. Ianto kept reading. Jack coughed softly, not wanting to scare him, but got no reaction. Ianto had, he'd noticed, stopped chewing the bite of apple in his mouth.
"Ianto," he said. "Ianto?"
Bluescreen. Apparently Dr. Lamar had not made that much progress.
Still, as Jack tried to decide what to do next, Ianto closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. His eyes opened. He swallowed the apple in his mouth and looked up.
"You startled me," he said, not looking at all startled.
"Sorry."
Ianto closed the book and stood, setting it on the arm of the sofa. He looked down at the apple and then placed it very delicately on the floor.
It was awkward, like visiting his men in the hospital after they'd been shell-shocked in the Great War. One never knew what to say.
"Good book?" Jack asked. Ianto glanced at it.
"Read it before," he said.
"They treating you well?"
"Well, they're treating me," Ianto allowed. His lips twitched. "It's not contagious."
"Sorry?"
"You won't catch it if you come closer than shouting range."
Jack grinned. "That was almost funny, Ianto."
"One tries," Ianto replied, as Jack walked forward. "They said you'd be visiting. You never told us about this place."
Jack shrugged. "Very few would understand."
"That's what the doctors say."
"Dr. Lamar?"
Ianto nodded. "He's good, I guess. He's good at spotting when I..." he waved a hand. "I do it less now."
"Progress."
"Yup." Ianto shoved his hands in his pockets. "Can I -- " he started, and then stopped abruptly. Jack raised his eyebrows. "Sorry, I was about to ask if I could get you a coffee."
"Social niceties," Jack said. "We fill the silences with them."
"Usually more appropriate ones." Ianto gave him a square look. Jack shrugged.
"Do you have everything you need here?" he asked. "Anything you want?"
"I don't suppose we get wi-fi in the middle of the Bristol Channel," Ianto said, but there was a real wistfulness in his voice. "I'd like...something, sometimes I worry -- "
Jack waited for him to finish.
"I know what we do. Sometimes I wonder if Cardiff is still there. I'd like to be able to...look in on the world outside."
"The doctors have a server. I'll make sure you get a laptop," Jack said.
"Thank you."
"No posting things anywhere, and no email. You look in, you don't open the doors. Your access'll be monitored."
"So, no pornography then," Ianto said, and then looked immensely pleased with himself. Jack grinned.
"That was an original thought, wasn't it?" he said. "You just said that without even thinking and it was all you, huh?"
"It was," Ianto said. Jack laughed.
"Watch all the porn you want, it'll give the nurses a show and probably do you good," he said, clapping Ianto on the shoulder. Ianto looked down at his hand, then back up at him, and Jack cut it off before it could start.
"Don't -- say it," he said. The mischief faded from Ianto's eyes, the horrible fake flirtation.
"No, I suppose not," he answered. "Thank you, Jack."
"I'll be back in a week," Jack told him. "Look after yourself."
He turned to go, but stopped in the doorway for a look back. Ianto had settled in the corner of the sofa again, but he wasn't reading; the book sat closed on his lap, the apple ignored on the floor. He was just sitting, staring at the wall.
***
The second week Jack visited, Ianto was in the kitchen, talking with Dr. Stone. His face lit up when he saw Jack.
"They said you were here," he said. Jack spread his arms -- here I am! -- and Dr. Stone laughed.
"What, no flowers this time?" she asked.
"Hey, it's only been a week, did you already kill the last bunch?" Jack replied. Dr. Stone patted his arm and gave Ianto a significant look.
"Shall I let you talk?" she asked, but she wasn't asking Jack. Ianto paused, but he didn't shut down; instead, after a moment, he nodded. Dr. Stone disappeared through the door into the ward, closing it carefully behind her.
"How's the pornography working out?" Jack asked. Ianto shook his head sharply. "What?"
"We shouldn't go there," he said, struggling with the words. He gave Jack a suddenly uncomfortable look. Oh -- oh. Breaking conditioning, breaking programming -- best not to flirt, even in jest.
"Okay," Jack said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Not going there. But -- you're good?"
"Better," Ianto said. "I've stopped doing the thing." He waved a hand at his face, made a blank expression. Ah. No more bluescreens. That was progress. "Mostly, anyhow."
"That's good," Jack said. The kitchen seemed very dim, suddenly, and very small. The pull of sunlight was always a temptation in this place. "Do you get aboveground much?" he asked.
"They say I can. I haven't really. Just up to the gun emplacements."
Jack grinned. "Feel like a walk?"
They left through the staff quarters -- Jack wasn't ready yet to escort him through the ward -- and came up not far from the eastern cliffs. When he'd bought Flat Holm he'd been out here all the time, as often as he could get away, and he'd specifically gone looking for one or two things.
He led the way down a narrow path to the cliffs, Ianto picking his way behind him, and then along the edge to where an iron stake protruded a few feet from the ground. He'd driven it himself as a marker, and that first time as a hitch for his climbing gear before he'd found the steps cut into the rock, steps invisible from anywhere but nearly on top of them. Some Welsh smuggler had been very artful indeed at his craft.
Ianto let out a surprised yelp when Jack rapidly disappeared down the stairs, and when Jack turned to look up he saw Ianto's face peering down after him. He waited until Ianto had taken a few hesitant steps, as if he couldn't believe it wasn't some kind of optical illusion, and then continued.
"Two hundred years ago," Jack said into the wind, as they descended, "Flat Holm was a smuggler's base. Customs could see them from here -- " he pointed to the coast, visible in the distance, "but they couldn't do a thing about it. Y'know why?"
"I couldn't guess," Ianto called back. "Bloody hell I'm going to fall to my death."
"You're fine. They couldn't do anything about the smugglers because they didn't have a boat to get to the island!" Jack laughed, stepping onto firm ground again. Ianto followed in a shower of limestone chips.
"Perhaps they weren't trying very hard," Ianto suggested.
"Maybe that, too. So..." Jack walked his hand along the cliff face as he went, "the smugglers set up a camp and dug a mineshaft, and used it to store buried treasure."
Here was the mineshaft, the entry of it worn smooth by two hundred years of weathering; further on was a cave mouth, but the shaft angled into it before branching out into a network of tunnels that riddled the island. It was Flat Holm's secret, which was a good trick, since Flat Holm had been occupied by one form of troublemaker or another since the Bronze Age. He took a penlight out of his pocket and led the way through the shaft to the cave, listening to be sure Ianto's footsteps followed his. A curve around, a few steps forward, avoiding old glass bottles and rotten remains of tea crates --
And there it was. The edge of the cave mouth, a perfect sheltered view of the Cardiff shoreline, a warm pocket of comfort out of the wind. Ianto came to stand behind him a little, a bottle in one hand.
"Buried treasure?" he asked, holding it up. It was empty, but undeniably had once held some form of booze.
"Brandy and tea. Taxable contraband," Jack told him. "Put it down and come look."
Ianto joined him at the edge, staring out at the water and the dim coast. After a while, watching out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw him visibly relax.
"How are you?" Jack asked softly. Ianto took a while to reply.
"Miserable," he said.
"Bad as that?" Jack asked, honestly surprised.
"My girlfriend was slaughtered in front of me. The thing that killed her made me -- it -- you know about that," Ianto said. "All my friends are dead. I live in a munitions storage room. I will never...ever...be normal again."
"Normal is overrated," Jack said.
"Normal is who I was. Even in London, at Torchwood. I will never be the same as who I was. I will always be some patched-together thing from whatever she left of me. So yeah, Jack. Bad as that," Ianto finished, but there was no real malice in his voice.
"But you feel," Jack said. "Pain. Anger. Fear of death," he added lightly. Ianto snorted. "You were happy to see me. That was real. All that's better than before."
"You'll forgive me if I remain unconvinced," Ianto said. Jack glanced at him and could see -- in his face, in the way he held himself, a thing he remembered. When you wanted to die but just couldn't quite be fucked to make up your mind. Not that Jack had any choice in the matter in his own case.
"Let's go back," he said. "You know the way now. Come here if you want. Spit in the sea, throw bottles on the rocks, stare at the coast, whatever."
Ianto nodded and followed him back, up the hidden steps, across the cliff and down into the barracks complex. Jack left him there with the promise he'd be back the following week.
***
Two days later, Ianto showed up in the Hub.
Jack, who had been looking forward to an hour of quiet in which to enjoy his breakfast before the others arrived, just about jumped out of his skin when the proximity alert sounded. He wiped his mouth, grabbed a shirt from the back of his chair, and ran out into the Hub barefoot, pulling the shirt over his head.
And there was Ianto Jones, wearing a suit, hair immaculate, looking around as if he'd expected it to change.
Jack gaped. "How did you get here?"
Ianto looked at him. "How did you?" he asked, and walked past Jack towards the main atrium. The response made no sense.
"How the hell did you get off Flat Holm?" Jack demanded, following him -- oh, cold steel on bare feet. Ianto was crossing the walkways over the pool, heading for his worktable.
"Unlike customs two hundred years ago, I had a boat," Ianto replied. His voice was dangerously flat. Jack grabbed his shoulder and turned him around and saw -- not total blankness, but enough to know that Ianto had checked out, and autopilot was filling in.
"Do they know you're here?" Jack asked. "They should have called me."
"Don't know," Ianto said, and tried to pull away. Jack held on, grabbed Ianto's other arm and kept him there. Ianto waited patiently to be let go.
Jack leaned in, studying his eyes. There was a lurking panic in them.
"I know," he said, "that you are in there."
It seemed to work. Ianto blinked, looking around him. Back at Jack, and then around again. Jack waited.
"Oh, bollocks," Ianto said, closing his eyes. Jack let him go.
Just then, he heard his phone ringing, back in his office, halfway across the Hub.
He took Ianto's wrist and dragged him back, dug in his coat for a pair of handcuffs and cuffed him to the arm of a chair. Ianto looked at him, perplexed, and tugged; the chair rolled.
"Very effective," he drawled. Jack answered the phone on its final ring.
"Harkness," he barked.
"Captain, Ianto's gone missing," Dr. Stone's voice, panicked. "Dr. Lamar thinks he might have -- "
"He's here," Jack said, before anyone could even put the words into the air. "He came to the Hub. What the hell kind of crackerjack operation are you running over there?"
"I don't know how he got away," she protested. "He's not under guard like the other prisoners, you said he could come and go. I know he was here at lights out last night. We had to -- "
She stopped suddenly. Jack had a very, very bad feeling.
"You had to what?" he asked.
"It was going to go in today's report, I swear," she said. "It happened after I sent yesterday's."
"What happened?" Jack asked. He glanced at Ianto, who had calmly seated himself in the chair he was handcuffed to.
"He got into the ward through the kitchen," she said. "Someone left the door unlatched. It was one of Benjamin's bad nights, and you know how he sets the others off when he really wants to -- "
Jack covered his face with his hand. "Yeah. I know."
"We got Ianto out, but someone had to explain it to him, and I was busy trying to calm Benjamin down, so one of the nurses -- "
The nurses. Who didn't actually know what Flat Holm was all about.
"I get the picture," Jack said. "Look, just -- tell them he's here and he's fine. I'll call Lamar later. You find whoever left the kitchen door unlatched, I want their name and I want them confined to quarters until I can come chew them out myself."
"Yes, Captain."
Jack hung up and ran a hand over his face again, up into his hair. Ianto watched him. He looked almost...afraid.
"So," Jack said finally. "You've been in the ward."
"Are they aliens?" Ianto asked. "They look like people. Most of them. But they don't sound like people."
This was not the time nor the place he wanted to explain the science of the Rift to Ianto. He shook his head.
"They're survivors of the Rift," he said, hoping that would work well enough. "We take them there, we take care of them, we do what we can."
"But by we," Ianto said, as if he were working out a logic puzzle, "you mean you. Because that's not the kind of thing Owen or Tosh would shut up about, and I don't think Gwen would still work here if she knew."
"Few would understand," Jack said dully, echoing what he'd said to Ianto that day in the munitions room. "You obviously didn't."
Ianto looked around him again, as if he were wondering where he actually was.
"It's better than the alternative," Jack offered. It sounded weak to his own ears, even if it was true. Ianto shrugged. Jack studied him. God, even his tie was knotted perfectly. "Where'd you get the suit?"
"Keep a spare upstairs in the information centre," Ianto said.
"How'd you get the boat?"
"One of the nurses has a boyfriend with a motorboat," Ianto replied. "He comes to visit. I nicked it."
"Well, that's going to stop," Jack said.
"He's the nurse who left the door unlatched, so I imagine so," Ianto remarked. There was still something unsettlingly calm about his demeanor.
"So you saw that," Jack said, fitting everything together, "and you ran away...and came here."
"Can you undo the handcuffs?" Ianto said in a strained voice.
"Yeah," Jack came around the desk and unlocked them. The key had been on the edge of the desk, well within Ianto's reach, the whole time. Jack crouched next to the chair, looking up. "So, I guess now we ask: what to do with you, Ianto Jones?"
"I thought it was the wind blowing past my window at night," Ianto said quietly, rubbing his wrist. "Turns out it was people screaming."
"So no more Flat Holm."
Ianto shook his head.
Jack stood up, leaning back on his desk. "Okay. Let me find my shoes and I'll take you home."
***
"This is not my flat," Ianto said, standing in the garden of the little rented house in Cathays.
"Did you really want to go back to that?" Jack asked. Ianto shuddered.
"No," he said. "Did you find this?"
"Tosh did. You can afford it. We moved your stuff," Jack explained, passing him the key. "So...boxes, mostly. And I'm cheap, so the movers probably broke your plates. They were ugly plates," he added.
"Beggars, choosers," Ianto murmured, unlocking the front door. "For two pounds at a charity shop I wasn't going to complain."
The furniture, the landlord of Ianto's flat had said, came with the flat; there was nothing to move really but boxes, so Ianto's first view of his home was pretty much haphazard piles of cardboard. He explored it nevertheless, like a cat, acquainting himself with a new place, poking into the corners and studying his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His hands drifted out as if to place imaginary razor, toothbrush, comb, then clenched and pulled back. Jack pretended not to notice how precise the placements were. In the bedroom, an unfamiliar bed; Ianto glanced at Jack, who gave him an unrepentant look.
"Chairs aren't necessary. Beds are," Jack said. "I took it out of your salary."
"Oh." Ianto closed the bedroom door, walking back into the kitchen. "Thank you."
"You're still on suspension," Jack added, following him. "I don't care how ingenious that little escape plot of yours was. Two weeks isn't enough time."
"How long, then?" Ianto asked, playing with the flap of one of the open boxes. He reached in and took out a plate, whole and unbroken, holding it up for Jack to see. "Bad luck, I'm afraid."
"How long do you think?" Jack asked. "I don't know what you need."
"Dr. Lamar was going to suggest I come back, but I don't think he meant quite like this," Ianto said, setting the plate aside. "He says the best thing for me is to talk to people. Limited conversation to be had, on Flat Holm."
"Then you should do that," Jack said. "Take a few weeks. Unpack. Find a good local. Chat up your neighbours."
Ianto took another plate delicately out of the box and set it on top of the first. "That place. The island. You do realise it's a confined little piece of hell?"
So, not quite done with Flat Holm yet. Jack leaned against the counter.
"People have such middle-class ideas of hell," he complained. "It looks like hell because the walls are painted, the food is hot, and the patients are kept clean and safe, but they're still sick."
Ianto took a knife out of the box, studied it, set it across the plates. A big knife. Jack eyeballed it, but Ianto was already pulling glasses, wrapped in brown paper, out of the bottom.
"It looks like hell because all that window dressing makes the insanity more apparent," Jack continued. "Whereas real, actual hell is locking those people away with a bucket for shit and a bucket of food and not caring if they mix the two up."
Ianto looked up sharply.
"Real hell is being ordered to shoot a sixteen-year-old because it's less trouble than finding a way to give a boy who exhales cyanide gas some kind of life," Jack added. "That's what we used to do, Ianto, before I was head of Torchwood. So you tell me. Giving you apples to eat and people to help you, or letting you bluescreen and rot in the cell next to Janet's for the rest of your probably very short life. Which one would you prefer?"
Ianto looked down at the box. His lips curled a little. "Bluescreen. I hadn't heard that one. Bluescreen of death? Hard drive frozen, operating system broken? Am I close?"
"You're changing the subject."
"No, it's apt. Trust you," Ianto said. He looked up at Jack, sidelong. "I can stay here."
"Yes."
"When can I come back to work?"
"You tell me. Honestly," Jack said, when Ianto opened his mouth. "When you are honestly ready to come back, tell me."
"Until then?" Ianto asked. Jack gave him a blank look. "Until then, am I in quarantine?"
"Quarantine?" Jack asked, baffled. Ianto chewed on his lip.
"Will you come visit me here, or is that done now that I'm not at Flat Holm?" he asked.
Jack considered it. He hadn't actually made a plan. And it was heartbreaking, watching Ianto struggle to ask. On the other hand...
"When you want to see me," he said, "call me. Any hour of the day. In the meantime, try to find some peace."
Ianto nodded. Jack pushed away from the counter and headed towards the door.
"It's a nice house," Ianto called, when Jack was in the entryway. Jack paused, and Ianto leaned past the kitchen doorway to catch his eye. "Thank you. It's a nice house."
Jack gave him a smile. "I'll tell Tosh you said so."
***
A few days later, Jack got the first call. He was in the middle of bagging a weevil, and when his earpiece buzzed he thought it might be Tosh. He tapped it and said, "Harkness Exterminators, no vermin too toothy."
There was a pause before the caller replied. "...Jack?"
"Ianto Jones," Jack said cheerfully, tightening the hood over the weevil's head. "Good timing."
"I bought a sofa," Ianto said. There was a nervous edge to his voice. Jack hoisted the weevil over his shoulder and made for the SUV.
"That's good...?" he prompted.
"Can you come...help me?"
"You at home?"
"Yes."
"Be there in ten," Jack told him, and dumped the weevil in the back of the SUV. It'd be out for hours anyway.
He envisioned Ianto perplexed by some kind of Ikea furniture that needed two people to assemble. Could be fun. Or this was some odd pick-up line to do with christening a new sofa, which was unlikely but could be even more fun. Instead, when he knocked on the door, nobody answered.
"Ianto," he called. No reply. Jack let himself in -- door wasn't even locked -- and found Ianto sitting on a slightly battered sofa, head in his hands, phone still clenched in his fingers. It took him a second to figure out what was wrong.
The sofa was placed between two towers of boxes apparently serving as end-tables, and it looked...off, somehow.
He eyed the gap between sofa and wall, then the gaps between the arms of the sofa and the makeshift tables. They were precise and symmetrical, and Ianto was sitting in the exact centre.
"I can't move it," Ianto said.
"Can't be that heavy," Jack said cheerily.
"I can't. Move it."
Jack stood in front of him. "Did you put it there?"
Ianto nodded without looking up. Jack crouched and pulled his arms down, holding each wrist gently.
"Make me some coffee?" he asked. Ianto looked gratefully at him and stood, disappearing into the kitchen. Jack studied the arrangement -- it would look better tilted away from the wall anyway -- and shoved some of the boxes into a corner, yanking the sofa efficiently in front of them. There. Odd diagonal angle, weird misalignment with the boxes, and just slightly inconvenient if Ianto actually wanted to get at whatever was in them. Sorted.
He walked into the kitchen and was pleased to see a cluttery disarray here -- crumbs on the counter, dishes in the sink, pans on the stove. The expensive-looking coffee machine had pride of place, and Ianto was staring intently at the slow drip of it.
"Fixed it," Jack announced. "You'll stub your toes on it in the dark."
"Thanks," Ianto said.
"Glad you called." Jack watched him take the carafe out of the machine, pour out a cup, and add two spoonfuls of sugar. He left the sugar spoon in the coffee and passed it to Jack, who stirred. "So, you surviving?"
"Yep," Ianto said, replacing the carafe. "I was doing all right until just then."
"Flirting with the neighbours like you're supposed to?"
Ianto gave him a sardonic look. "Oh yes. I'm the social butterfly of the street."
"Give it time," Jack advised, drinking deep from the cup. "God, this coffee is good. Listen, I have a weevil in the boot, I can't stay. I'm glad you called, though. Want me to come back once I get it shifted?"
Ianto shook his head. "That's fine. I just...had a moment."
Jack noticed there was a table at the end of the kitchen, near the windows, with two chairs and a lamp standing nearby; it looked less orderly, more haphazard than the sofa. He leaned back out into the other room and saw a half-full bookshelf that he was sure they hadn't moved into the place. The books on it were of every size and colour, and apparently in no particular order.
"The sofa's the first big problem?" he asked. Ianto nodded. "Then you're fine."
"Fine," Ianto repeated, and smiled at Jack. "Sure. Thank you, again."
Jack took a last swallow and set his mug down. "No problem. See you in a few days, maybe? We'll get lunch? Call me."
Ianto walked him to the door, and Jack saw him look curiously, then approvingly at the sofa. Outside Jack paused, inhaled a breath of chilly Cardiff air, and felt very pleased. Time to go deal with the weevil.
***
Torchwood 1 Civilian survivor report No. 267. 2006:
Continued from previous page.
Eventually, after all the drugs and the counselling and everything I realised I was lucky. I'm still alive. I'm mostly intact. But sitting there in hospital, trying not to look at the stump, trying not to look at other people not looking at the stump.
Turns out there were drugs -- not painkillers really, just stuff they pumped into you, turning your brain to mush. Took a while to flush that out of the system. Learning how to think properly again.
There was a lot of talk with the doctors. They tried fitting me with an artificial limb, but I just screamed when they brought it near me. They'd take it away, we would talk rationally about it, and I'd say okay and be calm and they'd bring it back and I'd start screaming again.
And I was on an open ward by then, so it wasn't nice.
So, they let me out eventually, with my crutches. Told me to come back if I ever changed my mind, which is, I think, a neat little turn of phrase.
There was lots more counselling. Sat in a halfway house, with lots of stairs and weak tea.
But eventually I'm here. Living this quiet life. I've found the flattest, quietest bit of Norfolk, and I've got a bungalow, for god's sake -- I'm like my Uncle John. There's still counselling, of course, and every now and then someone like you comes along, just to check that everything's fine with my mind.
***
That night, despite his vague satisfaction with himself and the world around him, Jack had bad dreams. Not the worst dreams, those usually only came out to stab at him when he was already living in nightmares during the day, but bad enough. Rare to remember this: the heat of the train and the smell of unwashed soldiers, the slap of playing cards and whine of a harmonica. Still, the minor annoyances of military travel were really hardly noticeable, compared to Jack's pleasure at being with his men. They seemed happy, spirited even. But then came the darkness of the tunnel, the smell of flowers and the flap of wings, and the terrible understanding when the light returned that his men were dead, all of them, and Jack was trapped in a train car full of corpses.
He woke with a start, an inhale instinctive, to remind him that he was alive. But when he emerged from his safe little den beneath the office, he heard a clatter and found Ianto there, impeccable in a suit, moving about the darkened Hub as if he'd never left.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, before he thought of it.
"Neither should you," Ianto replied. The same nonsensical reply as the last time, throwing Jack's accusation meaninglessly back against him. But this time Ianto wasn't an escapee from an asylum, and he didn't seem to be running on autopilot. Jack joined him at the computer, resting a hand on his shoulder experimentally. Ianto glanced at it, processed it, turned back to his work.
"Whaddaya got?" Jack asked, keeping his voice neutral.
"Funny sort of weather patterns," Ianto said, calling up one of Tosh's climate trackers. Jack studied it.
"Weird," he said. "Microclimates?"
"Could be," Ianto answered.
"I'll put Tosh and Gwen on it when they come in," Jack said, but he had a bad feeling that the weather patterns and a nightmare about a slaughter in 1909 were not coincidental to each other. "Good work. Why are you here?"
Ianto kept working as he spoke, recording screenshots and readings to Tosh's shared folder. "Meant to get up and go for a run. Then I...put on a suit, and came here instead. Didn't mean to. Just sort of happened."
"You're not back yet."
"You said two weeks wasn't enough. Two and a half weeks seems like cheating," Ianto replied, head bent to his work. "But so long as I was here, I thought, may as well..."
"Yeah," Jack agreed.
"Should I go?" Ianto looked up at him. "I don't...think I want to."
Jack shook his head. "Stay for now. We'll see what the weather patterns are, do a briefing, send you home then." He bit his lip. "How's the sofa?"
"Very comfortable," Ianto said, with a hint of humour.
The others were hesitantly happy to see Ianto again; Gwen gave him a hug and Tosh kissed his cheek, and Owen grumbled about paid vacations but didn't actually antagonise him to his face, which some days was all one could hope for from Owen. Jack put Tosh onto the weather patterns, left Owen to his own devices in the morgue, saw Ianto was entertaining himself with minor repairs to the Hub, and took Gwen with him to see Estelle about the fairies.
Once they knew what they were dealing with, he had little time to worry about his stray lamb; he sent Ianto home, said to call if he had troubles, and went off to battle the fairies.
After they'd fought and lost, after Jack had given a child to the care of hellish, all-powerful nightmare creatures, Owen and Tosh went home (not together, more the pity) and Gwen lingered in the Hub only long enough to pack her things and close the file. None of them would speak to him or look at him, even. Jack was accustomed to the quiet of the Hub, but he wasn't accustomed to finding it lonely.
He was sitting at his desk, boots off, feet propped up, when the phone rang.
"Ianto," he said, answering it.
"Good guess," Ianto replied, down the line.
"Now's not really a great time."
"Gwen came to see me," Ianto said, and Jack sat forward.
"If you called to tell me you're not speaking to me either, you might as well have just come down and punched me in the face," Jack said tiredly.
"No," Ianto's voice held a trace of amusement. "She told me they'd closed the case, told me about what happened. I thought you might like dinner."
Jack opened his mouth and then realised what Ianto had said. "Uh."
"Just a thought..." Ianto trailed off uncertainly.
"Sorry, I wasn't expecting to be well-liked enough for dinner offers at the moment," Jack said, and then rubbed his eyes. "Ianto, if this is conditioning -- "
"No. At least, I think not. Doesn't taste like it."
"Okay, then." Jack exhaled. "Dinner would be great."
Great, perhaps not, but it was pleasant at least; Ianto had a few questions about the case, but mostly touching on the nature of the creatures rather than what Jack had done, for which Jack found he was grateful. Ianto talked about himself, too, about meeting the people down the street who had a new baby, talking to a bloke walking his dog, ordinary things that were not actually ordinary for either one of them. He said he was sorry about Estelle, which no-one had, not even Gwen.
Jack gave him a lift home, since he'd already burned up his Big Drink allowance for a couple of months at least, and Ianto had ordered a pint with dinner. It was an excuse, he thought, to prolong the evening, but Ianto didn't seem to mind.
When he pulled up outside Ianto's house, he was just turning to make a quip about dinner when Ianto leaned across the gearshift and kissed him.
The kiss was great, and Jack was really starting to enjoy it right when his admittedly erratic good sense kicked in. He pushed Ianto back, held him there with a hand, and got some eye contact.
"No, I don't think so," he said gently. Ianto's eyes were wide, but he recovered a smile.
"So you're all talk, is that -- "
"Ianto," Jack pulled his hand back. "Do you even know what you're doing?"
The smile fell away, and Ianto turned his head slightly. "You just looked like...I dunno." He rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I dunno, Jack."
"Was that programmed?"
"I don't know." Ianto glanced back at him. "Sometimes I want to -- fix things. Sometimes I just want something, and I don't know if it's me or her. Christ, it was easier when...at least I knew, then."
"If you don't know, then this isn't the time," Jack said. "You're not sure, I can't take that risk. I did too much damage already."
Ianto snorted, but Jack saw more pain than derision in his face. "You did damage. You."
"To you? Yeah, Ianto. I did."
Ianto was silent for a while. "So. No. For me, always no. Is that it?"
"For you, it's more complicated than that. For you, the answer is: solve your own problems before you solve mine," Jack said. "I'm a big boy, Ianto, I've been through worse than Gwen being mad at me. Work yourself out, figure out what you really want."
Ianto nodded, face turned away in profile but eyes darting back to him.
"Now. Are you okay?" Jack asked.
"Yeah. Fine." Ianto reached for his seatbelt, fumbling with the buckle.
"You want me to come in with you?"
Ianto shook his head, finally getting the belt undone. "I think that would be -- stupid."
"You sure?" Jack asked. "Look, I know you have no evidence of this but I do actually have enough self-control for both of us."
That got him a little smile. He smiled back.
"I'm fine," Ianto said. He looked like he almost believed it.
"Okay. I'll see you in a few days," Jack said. He let Ianto out of the car and made sure he was inside, then rested his forehead against the steering wheel for a few seconds, calming himself.
That kid was going to be the death of him.
Chapter Four
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