sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 03:25 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 03:25 pm
Your Face Is Turned, 9/9
Title: Your Face Is Turned
Part: 9 of 9
Rating: R
Summary: Lo Boeshane has a promising career ahead of him as he enters his first year of Fleet Officer Training, but the war is still with him and life at Quantico Station can be difficult. Meanwhile, Ianto Jones is just trying to figure out why the Doctor kidnapped him to the fifty-first century and why Jack abandoned him at a school for the Fleet's military elite. He suspects it may have something to do with Lo, but his attempts to help the troubled young veteran may damage his own timestream beyond repair.
CHAPTER NINE
Readjusting was hard.
It shouldn't have been, but in some ways it was more difficult for Ianto to return to his own time than it had been to live in the other. There was so much more freedom in that century than in this, and it wasn't just about sex -- people talked more openly, smiled at strangers, were easy with each other. It was like he'd had some kind of binding about his throat that had been lifted while he was gone, and now the binding was back, and it took him time to learn not to choke on it.
Jack helped, because Jack had never been bound that way, never let himself be bound. Gwen too, because Gwen was affectionate and friendly by nature, and not afraid to smile at strangers. It was still hard.
He found he missed his porterminal, and re-learning to use telephones instead of scroll screens was frustrating. Everything he saw he compared to what he had seen, and often found it wanting. The feeling would fade, he suspected, if he had time for it to fade in. But every hour was one hour closer to the ninth of July and his death sentence, the one weight he couldn't share with Jack because Jack couldn't know. He tried not to think about it. He'd had his year, or near enough anyway; he'd had two weeks by the seaside with Lo, and he had ten - nine - eight precious days with Jack and Gwen.
It was strange, too, that he had seen traces of Jack in Lo, and now saw traces of Lo in the man he'd become. Jack had the same quick, sharp smile that Lo had, when he was amused by something. The same childish enthusiasm too, tempered by maturity and experience but still there, and possibly the salvation of Jack's sanity. When Jack was hurt by small things, there was a little flicker of Lo's self-protective bravado in his posture. Ianto found that he felt almost indulgent towards Jack sometimes; much more sure of his footing with him, at any rate. Just as well. Now was not the time to back down, not with so little time left.
Quietly, when work was slow and whenever Jack wasn't there, he put his affairs in order. There wasn't much. Everything would be boxed up and stored by Torchwood anyway. He had a bit of savings, that could go to Rhi and her kids, and his server file at Torchwood was already tidily indexed and cross-referenced. He left a letter for Gwen and one for Jack, in his desk at home where Gwen would find them.
And then, with four days to go on his death sentence, some dickhead blew up the Hub.
Suddenly Ianto wasn't simply waiting -- he was fighting for his life, his and Gwen's and Rhys's and the child they hadn't even had time to celebrate properly. And Jack, Jack too, Jack's survival, because Jack would always come back but what he came back to was cement and horror, and Ianto just couldn't fucking be having with that. He had painstakingly assembled the man Jack Harkness was to be, putting each piece of broken Lo Boeshane into place with care and no small amount of love, and that was his. Jack was his to protect.
He lost track of time, after the explosion. He wasn't sure what day it was, didn't care, didn't even think about the execution that was coming. Not even that morning, not until he and Jack walked into an empty room with an alien in a giant glass tank who fed on kids, little kids, another thing Ianto was not prepared to have anything to do with anymore.
Jack was making a speech of some kind when Ianto realised it was the ninth of July. And still there was no time to think of it, because he had a job to do. And then the lights went out, and the horrible deep voice of the 456 told them about the virus.
It took Ianto a second to realise that this was how he died. Here, facing the monster. As deaths went he supposed it was sort of pointless, but at least he was going to die with his boots on.
He waited for something -- a cough, a flush in his cheeks, the dizzy white mist that had heralded his last brush with delirium, but there was nothing. Jack ran; Ianto could hear him yelling futilely for gas masks, for help that was already too late. Jack returned and they tried threats, they tried gunfire; the glass was impermeable.
This was how Ianto Jones died.
Except...
He still didn't feel sick. Jack's face was flushed; he was panicking, and Ianto realised with a distant clarity that it wasn't Jack's fear of his own death, or on account of the screaming they could hear outside.
"We've gotta get you out of here," Jack said, grabbing Ianto by the shoulders. "I can survive anything -- "
"I feel all right," Ianto said, looking from Jack to the big glass cell.
"You breathed the air -- " Jack looked around wildly. "There's gotta be an antidote..."
The voice of the 456 rang in the chamber.
"You said you would fight," it taunted.
"Not him," Jack said. "I take it back, don't take him -- "
"Jack..." Ianto said, and Jack turned back to him. "Listen, it's all right, I knew..."
"No, no no no -- " Jack started, still clinging onto his arm, which was just as well since about that time Jack's legs gave out. Ianto went down with him, holding him, watching with confusion and adrenaline-driven elation as Jack fell, and he didn't.
"It's all right," he whispered, stroking Jack's hair. "I love you."
"You'll die," Jack murmured.
"Maybe," Ianto said. "Don't talk."
But Jack was past talking, and after a minute more his pulse stopped threading under Ianto's palm.
He'd risked the world for Ianto, just now. Anything to avoid what Jack had blithely told him and he had blithely repeated to Lo: Love them anyway, and take the hit when it comes. When push came to shove, Jack hadn't been able to. Not this time.
Best think about what that meant later.
Ianto looked up at the cell. He didn't feel sick. He felt better than he had when he was dying of infection in Quantico's hospital, actually. Better than he had last time he'd had a cold.
He kissed Jack's lips, let the body slip out of his hands, and stood up again, cocking his head at the 456's tank.
"Well," he said consideringly. "This is interesting."
"You cannot win," the 456 bellowed, but it sounded uncertain. "The remnant will be disconnected."
A high whine of noise began, almost overwhelming, and Ianto wasn't sure what it was but he was sure it wasn't good. So he pressed his lips together and raised his gun -- not at the glass again, but at the power box that was routing electricity to the door locks. The door locks...on the tank.
After all, it didn't matter now. Everyone in the building was a walking corpse, even him.
He fired at the power box. The horrible screech stopped; the doors swung open, and there was a hiss of gas in the air.
"What," the 456 said. It sounded confused now. "What -- what -- what what what what -- "
There was no time to take Jack with him, much as he might want to. Jack would come back, he always did. Ianto bolted through the room, down the hallway ahead of the hissing, smoking gas, down the stairs ahead of it, down another hallway, running aimlessly really, because pretty soon the virus had to catch up with him. He ran past bodies -- nothing new there; in Canary Wharf he'd pulled Lisa over the tops of piled bodies, the dead he'd known in life -- until he saw movement.
There was a man in a hazmat suit.
"You fucker," he shouted, barreling into him, knocking him over. He straddled him, one hand on his throat, and he was inches from punching in the plexi faceplate when he stopped himself. That was murder, unnecessary murder, and there were too many dead already. "Where did you get it?"
"Don't kill me!" the man shrieked.
"Where did you get it?" Ianto demanded again, fetching up the oxygen tube and threatening to tug. The man flailed towards an open door, and Ianto rose and ran again. By god if the virus did somehow fail to kill him he wasn't going to die inhaling toxic gas.
There was a respirator there, just a strap-over number, but Ianto pulled it on and fixed it over his mouth. The tinned filtered air tasted like iron.
And then Ianto Jones didn't die.
Which was as perplexing to him as to anyone else, really.
***
When Clem started to scream, Gwen honestly thought he was going to die.
She could hear the bleating, buzzing noise, she suspected everyone could, but Clem clearly had a different reaction. He was clutching his ears, screaming, blood oozing around his fingers and down his face, and Gwen though, this is it, he's going to die in my arms.
Suddenly, as if someone had hit a mute switch, the squeal stopped. Dead. No fade-out, just ringing silence and the sound of Clem's harsh breathing. She eased him down slowly, a limp weight in her arms, but he wasn't unconscious. His eyes were open, unfocused. She took his pulse -- not exactly slow, but slowing.
"He's alive," she said, to the dark-haired woman who had held them both at gunpoint a few minutes before -- before seeing the tapes, before learning who the good guys really were.
"He's bleeding out his ears," the woman replied.
"Well, then bloody well help me," Gwen shouted. "Or do you only have guns and no doctors?"
One of the soldiers raised his hand. "EMT, ma'am," he said to the woman.
"Do what you can," she said. "Get him in the truck. We have medical facilities in London, that's the safest place for him. You," she added to Gwen, who reluctantly released Clem to the soldiers. "Ride with me. And bring that laptop!" she said, as she walked out.
***
It took time to clear the gas and air from Thames House, to test if the air they would vent was still carrying the virus, to make sure when they opened it the outside world would be safe.
The troops went in first, clearing every room, reinforcements behind them picking up the bodies and carrying them to a canteen where there was space to lay them out. Medics checked each body, covering them with red blankets. The few civilians allowed entry wept or puked or simply stood and watched. The soldiers didn't have time for that; that would come later, some of them suspected.
The last room they cleared was the room with the glass tank, and the soldiers stopped outside to rock-paper-scissors for who would have to go first. The loser groaned but stepped to the front; rifles up, they entered.
"I'm not armed," a voice said. A man was kneeling in the middle of the floor, bent quietly over another man's head resting in his lap. Two handguns and a respirator lay nearby. "Don't shoot, I'm not armed."
Beyond him, the tank that had been fogged and filled with gas was clear now. Ichor and bile striped the inside of it. There was a slumped, oozing mass in the middle, all stumpy limbs and claws and horrible white eyes in misshapen heads. Near the door, but on the outside of the tank, was a very small body.
"I took him out," the man said, looking towards the body. "It seemed the respectful thing to do."
One of the soldiers knelt by the child's body, checked it, found it dead. She turned back to the others and shook her head. None of them wanted to inspect the contents of the glass tank very carefully.
Slowly, the man inched backwards, laying his companion's head gently on the ground. He stood up, arms raised.
"How'd you survive?" a soldier asked.
"I don't know," the man said. "I just did."
"What's your name?"
"Ianto Jones. That's Captain Jack Harkness," he added, tipping his head at the man lying dead on the floor. "We work for Torchwood."
One of the soldiers stepped forward. "We need to collect the Captain's body, Mr. Jones."
Mr. Jones nodded, lowering his arms. "Can I help?" he asked.
"You'll have to go to decontamination," the soldier by the child's body said. "We'll look after him," she promised, as kindly as she could, because who knew how unbalanced this Jones was. "We'll make sure he's treated with respect."
Mr. Jones gave her an odd, twisting smile. "He'll appreciate that," he told her. "Please show me where to go."
One of the other soldiers took his arm in one gloved hand and led him away.
"LIVE ONE!" he yelled, leading Ianto down the stairs to the command post that had been hastily set up on the main floor. "GOT A LIVE ONE HERE. DECON AND MEDICS REQUESTED. COMING DOWN."
A flurry of activity; gloved hands reached out, masked faces took Mr. Jones away. They shoved him into a portable chemical-accident shower with his clothes still on, sprayed him with antibiotic soap and any other chemical they could think of, made him strip and throw the sodden clothing into bags and wash again. Out of the shower, into a hastily-erected little tent where more gloved hands prodded at him and jabbed him with needles while the masked faces asked questions. Mr. Jones answered quietly, said he didn't know, wasn't sure, couldn't tell, hadn't anything to add. They gave him a blanket to dry himself on, a long-sleeved shirt and a set of scrubs to wear, a pair of military boots a size too large, and another blanket to wrap around his shoulders when he asked them, please, he was very cold.
He was handed over to another doctor, told to sit in a chair, sat quietly -- and then looked up sharply.
A dark-haired woman was passing through the medical staff, shoving anyone who got in her way, shaking off anyone who tried to restrain her. She came to Mr. Jones and knelt down in front of him.
"I thought you were dead," she said.
"So did I," Mr. Jones replied.
"Are you sick? Do they know?"
"No, I'm not," he said, and then smiled wistfully. "I'd kill for something to eat, though."
The woman laughed, holding both his hands in hers. "And a cup of hot coffee?"
"Yeah, that too."
"Ianto," the woman said, standing. "Where's Jack?"
Mr. Jones looked down the hall, towards the makeshift morgue. "Lying in state," he said quietly.
***
When Jack woke, it was with a soft breath, a reluctance that he didn't understand for a second, until he saw Gwen looking down at him.
The virus. The cell. Ianto, holding him, waiting with a kind of strange serenity for his own death.
Ianto was dead.
"Hi," Gwen said softly. She leaned back as Jack struggled upright --
And saw Ianto. Standing. Speaking with a man, a guard, twenty feet away. All around them were bodies, uniform rows of red-covered bodies, but Ianto wasn't one of them. Ianto was standing up. Talking to a guard. Wearing a hideous pair of green scrubs that didn't suit him at all. Drinking from a paper cup.
He gasped out something that he wanted desperately to be Ianto's name, groping blindly for Gwen's hand and finally finding it. Gwen helped him to his feet, hugging him tightly. The blanket was pooled on the ground, the red blanket, a pool of --
Ianto turned to look at them then, and a smile spread across his face. He said one last soft word to the guard, handed the man his empty cup, and hurried over, tugging on the scrub shirt as if it were his waistcoat. Ianto, straightening an imaginary waistcoat. Alive.
"What...?" Jack asked, confused, looking to Gwen for answers. She shook her head, hapless. "How...?" this time he asked Ianto, who looked faintly embarrassed.
"Very good questions," Ianto said. "Been asked them a lot in the last two hours."
Jack stumbled forward and threw his arms around Ianto's neck, almost toppling over before Ianto balanced them. He held on tightly, wondering if Ianto would drop dead in front of him if he let go, and knowing this would probably feature in his nightmares for some time to come.
"Natural immunity, they think," Ianto said in his ear. "They've taken about a gallon of blood. I have an immunogen."
"Very romantic," Jack replied. He heard his voice crack.
"Sorry, should I have brought flowers?" Ianto drawled. Jack drew back and kissed him, tried to kiss death away, knew he probably tasted like it himself, he always did after dying. The guards coughed and looked away. Ianto looked peeved.
"I was really getting used to people not being weird about this," he said, and disentangled himself from Jack. "There's no time right now. The 456 are not happy."
"Why aren't they happy?" Jack asked.
"Well, I killed their ambassador," Ianto said. "You wouldn't remember, you were busy being useless."
"I was heroically dead," Jack said reproachfully.
"Chop chop," Gwen added, giving Jack a shove towards the door. "World to save, aliens to kill."
***
Torchwood had become a magic word.
Torchwood, Ianto heard people whisper, had two men who survived the Thames House massacre. Torchwood was unkillable. Torchwood had blackmailed the Prime Minister into giving them the power to negotiate with the aliens, and then Torchwood had killed the alien ambassador. What next? Martial law, all of London under the command of Captain Harkness? What kind of men were they? If aliens were real, then why not immortals, and was that why Jones looked so young?
Torchwood got them out of Thames House, got them into Agent Johnson's facility -- and there was something precious there to Jack, Ianto knew because Jack disappeared for ten brief minutes and came back looking like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He didn't pay it much mind really, at the time; he was busy meeting with the facility's medical staff, getting up-to-date on Clem. Brain-dead wasn't precisely the term for it, but he breathed and had a pulse and that was about it. The doctors weren't very confident there was much going on upstairs, or ever would be again.
Aside from dubiously "saving" Clem's life, killing the ambassador of the 456 changed nothing, Ianto could see that now. All it had done was cut off their method of communication with the 456, and if the children weren't delivered up then tomorrow the world would die. But it had been a message they'd had to send, and perhaps the 456 would be more fearful now. Perhaps Jack's bluff would work.
Ianto didn't count on it. Jack was good. He wasn't save-six-billion-people-with-a-card-trick good.
The thing was, Agent Johnson and her troops, unnamed, unnumbered, were on their side now, and the Prime Minister was effectively neutralised, and so now it was Torchwood's job to fix the cock-up they had all started.
And Jack was, pretty clearly, out of ideas.
"We can't do anything if we can't communicate," he said, pacing angrily in the little canteen of this secret military facility hidden god-knew-where. "We can't communicate without bringing another one down; all they can do is yell at us through the kids. They're fucking invulnerable."
Ianto thought of the Jack he'd seen with the grey in his hair and the lines on his face, the Jack who had told the galaxy that the Flyers were defeated. He knew the Flyers had no vulnerabilities, and yet somehow they had been beaten by a blockade in a star system so far from here it would be three thousand years before anyone reached it.
"Jack," he said softly. Jack turned to him. "What happened at the Cineve Blockade?"
Jack stared at him as if he'd just said something obscene.
"When the war ended," Ianto continued. "I know -- I know you were part of ending it. What happened?"
Jack closed his eyes, tilting his face up a little as if he were trying to contain a fresh wave of rage.
"Is this important?" he asked tightly.
"It might be," Ianto ventured. "They were invulnerable too, weren't they?"
"What are you talking about?" Gwen asked. Jack held up a hand.
"Two years before the Blockade, I was taken alive," Jack said, breath short and fast. "When I escaped, I brought back intel on the functional biological weaknesses of the Flyers. I -- "
He stopped and gave Ianto a very direct look, and just for a moment it was Lo, not Jack, staring at him.
"I had inside information," Jack said, realisation dawning. "Inside...biological information. We don't need to blow them out of the sky. We just need to blow their brains out."
"Well, that's...catchy," Ianto observed, as Jack began to pace again.
"The 456 communicate on a radio frequency," Jack said. "Gwen says when they tried to kill Clem, they used a broadcast -- something that could hurt him even though he was synced with them."
"I heard it too. So?"
"So if it can hurt someone linked to them," Jack said, "it can hurt them. AGENT JOHNSON," he yelled, and she looked up from where she was speaking with the new shift of soldiers. "I need a broadcast rig, as powerful as you've got."
"We have an analysis room," she replied, gesturing behind her. "Recording, broadcast, reception."
Gwen gave Ianto a look that said she clearly was wondering about Jack's sanity. Ianto nodded -- but what is there to do? -- and rose when she did to follow him.
***
There were moments, for Jack -- sometimes on a case, sometimes just in the course of living a life far longer than it should have been -- where it seemed as if the entire universe became clear. He knew the way of everything, he understood everything, and he was pleased to know it. He feared the moment, as much as he loved it, because he was afraid someday that moment would come and never leave. In his elation and all-powerful truth-seeing he would destroy something, because nobody actually could see the entire truth of all. Not even the Doctor.
He had felt it when he'd given himself up to Abbadon, when he had died with John Ellis, when he'd stood for the first time on Flat Holm Island and envisioned what it could one day be.
Working on the transmission that had nearly killed Clem, he felt it again: such godlike clarity and precision. He could destroy them. All he needed was a conduit, some way to connect back to the 456 with enough strength to really make himself heard. All he needed was --
A child.
He could see, too, that this was how a god could break something fragile, because reports were coming in that the 456 were demanding the children now, now, now, and if they didn't get them as payment for the death of their ambassador they would unleash chaos on the Earth now, now, now, and somewhere out there, perhaps even in London, children were being rounded up.
The only child close enough was Steven.
He had given children to monsters before, for the good of the world. He had given children to these monsters before, and to a fate much worse than death. He knew what it was like to fail to save someone -- not just the failures of Torchwood, but the moment when the monsters came no matter what you did, and took no matter how hard you fought. For just a second, he teetered on the edge, and then Gwen laid a hand on his arm.
"Jack, what is it?" she asked. His senses were so sharp her voice roared in his head.
Steven. Oh god, not Steven.
He could smell everyone in the room. He could hear soldiers breathing. And, in the background, he could hear Ianto speaking on his mobile in a hushed voice, inaudible except that Jack always heard Ianto (always now). Ianto was frightened, telling his sister that they were in danger, telling her to take Johnny and the children and run and hide, anywhere they could.
He'd made that call once. To Alice, when she was living in London, when Canary Wharf imploded. Take Steven and run far away. Come to Cardiff, I'll protect you. Go anywhere, just run from London. Please, for the love of god, just this once do as you're told...
The terrible clarity faded, and Jack felt a twinge of pain in his right arm. Once, a long time ago, he had mangled it almost beyond repair, running from the Flyers. He had survived war and time and torment to bring a daughter into this world and he had died for this world (for her) so many times. He'd let go of his brother's hand once; not ever again.
Which closed that door, and so Jack was left standing in an empty corridor of no possibilities.
Except for one.
"Clem," he breathed softly. He heard Ianto's phone snap shut, and Gwen inhale to speak. "Gwen, take Ianto, get Clem. Bring him here to me."
"Why?" Gwen asked.
"He's going to save the world," Jack replied.
***
It was one of the more horrible deaths Ianto had seen, and that was saying something, considering he'd scrubbed Suzie's blood from the Plass and cradled his dead girlfriend in his arms. Clem bled from every orifice, unmoving except for the subtle sonic vibration and the terrible sound of the transmission -- the high squeal that overrode everything. Clem, transmitting a single tone back to the 456, and Ianto devoutly hoped their brains were dribbling out their ears for Clem's horrible sacrifice.
When Clem was dead, when the soldiers confirmed that the 456 were no longer transmitting, it was as if a light went out in Jack. Ianto found him sitting in a corridor, looking at nothing. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Ianto offered Jack his hand and pulled him to his feet, leading him away.
They left everything to sort itself out, for once. Gwen joined them as they walked out of the building, but left again, saying she was going to Cardiff to find Rhys. She gave Jack a hug he barely returned, kissed his forehead, shot Ianto a look that very clearly said fix him, and walked away. Somewhere, no doubt, someone was paying a high price for being willing to sacrifice all those children on the altar of global safety, but it would not be them, and they did not have to mete out the punishment. Let Whitehall sort Whitehall.
Ianto realised that it was still the ninth of July. He could still die. Probably, he reasoned, from the most ignoble of things. Food poisoning, or being run over by a lorry. But he had been willing to die once already today, so if he was going to die, well, that would just have to happen. The world was safe, at least.
He took Jack to the nearest hotel he could find before he remembered they had no money. The reception clerk was a good-looking young man with wide eyes and a bright smile for a handsome doctor still in his scrubs and his soldier boyfriend, especially when he heard they'd just been robbed. He told them he could find them a room if they'd call down with their new credit card number in the morning. Ianto smiled his most charming smile, the man blushed, and then there was the still sterile silence of a hotel room, and Jack sitting quietly on the bed.
"That was murder," Jack said, as Ianto busied himself turning down the blankets.
"You've done it before," Ianto answered. Jack looked at him sharply. Ianto shrugged. "You will again. That's Torchwood."
"I never wanted to force you to it," Jack said.
"That's a lie," Ianto told him. Execute her or I'll execute you both.
"You should be dead," Jack announced.
"So glad you feel that way," Ianto said, kneeling in front of Jack and undoing his shoelaces, pulling his boots off.
Jack seemed so lost, but coddling him wasn't going to help. Jack Harkness was not Lo Boeshane; he had the core of strength one gained from seeing all Jack had seen, and Ianto was not inclined to feed his self-pity, not today, not when he was still humming with life when he should be dead on the floor in that horrible makeshift morgue. Not when he could still be dead before the day was through -- aneurysm, heart attack, erotic asphyxiation, there were no end of ways to go.
He set the shoes aside and took Jack's hands.
"If you don't stop being a right arsehole I am going to make you sleep on the sofa," he said, quite seriously. Jack blinked at him. "Quit sulking. I have been waiting for sex for four days and it's making me very impatient."
It was like watching a sunrise, a little; there was an almost visible glow that rose in Jack's eyes, something about the way his face shifted imperceptibly right before he smiled.
"Lock the -- "
"Locked," Ianto said.
"Take off your -- "
"You first," Ianto replied, but he was already pulling the scrub shirt over his head. Jack shrugged out of his coat, letting it fall on the bed, and began working industriously on his cufflinks. Ianto stopped bothering with his undershirt and pulled Jack's belt off instead.
"Do we have any -- "
"Nope," Ianto said cheerfully, and elbowed Jack's thigh so that he'd lift his hips.
"Fuck," Jack said.
"Probably some lotion in the bath, this is a nice hotel," Ianto told him, and pulled Jack's trousers and pants down and licked a long slow line up Jack's cock. Jack's whole body jerked, and Ianto forgot about the possibility of dying any minute, because this was right. More right than the Jack he'd known three thousand years away, even more right than Lo: Jack's hands in his hair, Jack moaning as Ianto hummed around his cock.
Ianto ducked his head and then pulled back, gave him a smile, did it again. That was right -- the world was falling back into place, his world. Fucked up and dangerous and exhausting, but his world all the same.
Jack tugged on his hair, pulling him up, and they tumbled onto the bed together. Jack was still in his shirt, Ianto still mostly dressed, Jack's cock hanging out of the trousers which were tangled around his thighs. Jack pushed down and Ianto pushed up and Jack laughed, oh god, Jack laughed, Lo's laugh, Levy's laugh --
And there was a knock at the door.
"Ignore it," Jack said, and sucked on his neck.
"I plan to," Ianto answered, trying to get his shirt off.
The knock again, and a faint voice. "Dr. Jones?"
"Ignooooore it," Jack crooned, groping him roughly through the scrubs.
"Dr. Jones?"
Ianto let his head fall back.
"He won't go away," he said, and squirmed out from under Jack and ran to the door.
This was it, he thought, as he opened it. This was how he died. There would be someone behind the door with a gun or a bomb or --
A shaving kit?
It was the young man from downstairs, and he was holding a cheap shaving kit.
"I thought you might need some toiletries," the man said. He took in Ianto's rumpled shirt, his wet lips, his rather apparent erection, and looked hopeful. "Or a hand...?"
"Any other time," Ianto said, taking the shaving kit out of his hand. "Any other time, but just the toiletries for now, please."
"I'm off at six!" the man called, as Ianto closed the door and bolted it and threw the shaving kit in the general direction of the bathroom.
Jack was lying on the bed, clothing kicked to the foot of it, staring at him like he was the only thing in the world. Ianto very precisely pulled the undershirt over his head, took off the borrowed military boots and the scrub trousers. And Jack...watched.
"You didn't die," he said, as Ianto crawled on top of him and kissed him. "You should have died."
"I'll make a note," Ianto replied. Jack drew his legs up and tilted his hips, glorious friction, living flesh. Jack wouldn't last long, he never did if he'd died recently, but Ianto had been running on fear and fury for almost a week and all he wanted was one -- goddamn -- orgasm with his boyfriend --
Jack yelled when he came, digging his fingers into Ianto's shoulders, and Ianto bit down on the tense muscles standing out in Jack's neck, tasting salt. He felt Jack's come on his stomach and groaned through his own climax.
He rolled over, mostly so that Jack could breathe freely, and stared at the ceiling. After a minute he turned his head. The bite mark on Jack's throat was livid. Some of the skin was broken. Ianto raised a hand to touch it, concerned.
"Leave it," Jack said, eyes still closed. "Reminds me I'm alive."
The sun rolled down through the sky eventually, shining in their west-looking window. Sun dappling their bed was a kind of luxury Ianto hadn't expected. Jack found a tiny tube of lubricant tucked in the shaving kit and fucked him sore, brilliantly hard. Thoughtful man, that desk attendant, they really should ask him up, but six o'clock came and went quietly while Ianto napped, off and on. And then it was seven, eight, nine -- Jack ordered room service, accepted delivery of it with no trousers on, ate most of it himself. Ten o'clock; Ianto had a shower, enjoying the way really scrubbed-clean skin felt after. Eleven o'clock found Jack curled around him on the bed, touching him everywhere like he still couldn't believe it. Eleven-thirty, and Jack slept.
Ianto watched the cheap hotel clock-alarm tick over. Midnight. Half-twelve. One am. It was one in the morning on July the tenth and he was still alive and the universe hadn't ended.
Jack woke briefly when Ianto rolled over, turning away from the clock.
"Youwake?" he mumbled.
"Go back to sleep," Ianto said.
"Should sleep," Jack slurred, nosing against his ear, licking it clumsily. "You should. Tense? Blowjob?"
"No, thank you," Ianto told him. Jack smiled, a little blurry still.
"Polite," he announced, and dropped back down into unconsciousness. Ianto closed his eyes and let himself drift away as well.
***
In the morning, there was work to do.
They had left things long enough, and a few stolen hours was all well and good, but UNIT had heard about what Torchwood had done, and thrown their weight in, offering Jack anything he needed (including, thank god, paying their hotel bill). Whitehall was furious, but Gwen still had all the files, and if anyone wanted to try and challenge the combined might of UNIT and Torchwood, Gwen's finger was hovering over the send key.
Jack found he was enjoying himself, in a bizarre sort of way. Conducting operations like this, cleanup for a job done messily but well, leading a dance with people who had been out to kill him a day before and got their comeuppance...yes. Jack found that very satisfying indeed.
When he couldn't be in two places at once, Gwen went and yelled the shit out of whoever he aimed her at, and in the background (as if he could be in two places at once) Ianto quietly made arrangements, brought food, ran off the unimportant, marshalled the bureaucrats. He'd disappeared early in the morning and found a suit somewhere, and he looked every inch the young professional.
Perhaps a little too professional. Jack knew what Ianto looked like when he was lying-by-appearance.
When he brought Jack lunch, a cheap sandwich and an expensive fancy dessert, Jack caught his wrist as he moved away.
"I need you," he said, and Ianto nodded and sat down, taking out the PDA he'd commandeered from someone and been using all morning to kick a little Torchwood ass. "Not for that," Jack said. Ianto tucked it away again. "Just sit with me."
"Jack?" Ianto said, looking perplexed.
"Remind me that not everyone in the world is out to get me today," Jack said, taking a very satisfyingly large bite of the sandwich. Ianto studied the grain of the small wooden table they were sitting at.
"I need to tell you something," Ianto said quietly. Jack gave him a nod. "When I was -- at Quantico -- "
-- their code for the future because when I was in the future apparently "sounded stupid" to Ianto --
"I saw my employee record from Torchwood. I learned when I was going to die," Ianto finished.
Jack suddenly had trouble swallowing.
"You shouldn't know that," he said, when he finally managed it. "No one should."
"It was yesterday," Ianto told him.
Jack frowned.
"I was supposed to come back and die, yesterday, or time would rip, or fracture, or something," Ianto said. "There was a flux...thing...I don't get it, but there were these two...reports, and one of them said I died yesterday and the other didn't have a date for my death, and it seemed like a pretty big problem so...I thought you should know."
"Why didn't you -- no, stupid question," Jack cut himself off. "Of course you couldn't say."
Ianto shook his head.
"Yesterday," Jack repeated. "You've known for weeks it would be yesterday."
"Probably when you died, I was supposed to," Ianto said. "If I didn't, time was supposed to go all sideways. Got a theory, sort of, if you want to hear it."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but you're not dead and time didn't fracture," Jack said. "And yeah, I do."
"I got sick at Quantico. An infection, from the cut," Ianto said, indicating his right arm. There was a long dark scar running up the inside of his forearm, but it would fade in time. "When I was better, they gave me some shots. Just to boost my immune system, the medic said. Maybe...I don't know, Jack. The virus...maybe I was immunised."
Jack watched him over the edge of his sandwich. "Could be," he said slowly. From what he'd seen of the autopsy reports, the virus had been an accelerated version of something he was familiar with from another time, another place -- Star Twelve Influenza, a terrible way to die.
"But I don't...know what to think," Ianto said. "I don't even know how to worry about this."
"You came back..." Jack considered it, looking down. Ianto had come back to them knowing he would die, and he hadn't run away, hadn't done anything to protect himself. Carrying that weight all alone, because he had to, for ten days. Knowing when he followed Jack into the room with the 456's ambassador that he was going to die. He had come home and fucked and drank coffee and driven around Cardiff knowing he was going to die.
Well, everyone was, after all. Everyone but Jack.
"I don't pretend to know everything," Jack said slowly.
"Liar," Ianto replied. Jack caught him smiling.
"Okay. I might pretend, but I don't actually. I think...you knew, and you still came here and put your face to it and accepted it," Jack said. "I remember what you looked like while I was dying. You were waiting for it."
Ianto nodded.
"So maybe...that was your reward," Jack tried that to see how it sounded, found it sounded less stupid in his mouth than in his head. "You didn't fight it, you just did the job you had to do, and time took its own course. It does that," he added. "Once in a long while, it does. Are you worried about dying, or worried about destroying the fabric of time?"
"Well, both," Ianto said. "The second one a bit more."
Jack smiled at him. "Brave one," he murmured.
"No choice," Ianto said, looking away. Jack saw him frown. He followed his gaze to where, in the middle of a crowd of UNIT soldiers and well-dressed politicians, a dark-haired woman in jeans and a black shirt was leading a young boy towards them.
"Shit," Jack breathed. Ianto looked at him.
"Should I -- "
"No, stay here," Jack said, as Alice approached. "Too late to run, anyway."
Jack set his sandwich aside and stood up uncertainly, wondering if he was going to get a hug or a slap in the face. Either seemed on offer. He wondered if Alice knew herself.
"Uncle Jack!" Steven yelled, and broke away from her, running into his arms. He swept the boy up in a bear hug -- god, he was so delicate, children were so breakable. He could feel Steven's heartbeat against his chest as Steven wrapped his arms around Jack's neck. Someone had given the kid some kind of toy action figure which he was clutching tightly, ramming it into the back of Jack's head. Jack closed his eyes, uncaring. He might not get to see him much, might not get to see Alice very often, but Alice was his daughter and he loved her and her son beyond life.
I'd die for you, he promised silently, as he always did, because as useless as the promise was, it was still all he could offer.
Steven squirmed out of his hug and he let the boy down to the ground again. The child promptly ran around the table and began playing at the other end of it, sending his action figure on half-narrated adventures amongst the paperwork, complete with sound effects and exploding paperclips.
"Alice," Jack said. She gave him a look he didn't understand (god, so many of those over the years) and glanced at Ianto.
"Alice Carter," she said, offering her hand.
"Ianto Jones," Ianto replied, rising to shake it. He glanced at Jack.
"This is my daughter," Jack said quietly, so that Steven wouldn't hear. Alice looked annoyed. "It's fine. Ianto's one of us. Torchwood," he added, lest she think he just happened to have kids all over. He didn't. Lucia had been special.
"Pleasure to meet you, miss," Ianto said, and looked like he meant it. Maybe he did.
"I wanted to let you know Steven and I are going home," Alice told him, turning away from Ianto. "I need to get him back in school, back to the regular routine."
Jack tried to smile. "So. See you in a month?"
She looked away. Jack kept the smile in place.
"Two months?" he asked.
"Sorry, dad," she said softly.
"Right." Jack went to Steven and gathered him up in his arms, kissing his cheek. "Be safe, kid," he said, and set him down. Alice took his hand, leading him away.
"We're going on the train!" Steven yelled over his shoulder at Jack, as they walked away. Jack gave him a wave, watched them disappear into a knot of UNIT soldiers.
There was a long silence.
"So," Ianto said. "Your grandson."
"Don't. Say. Anything," Jack said, even though he knew Ianto would.
"He's adorable, Jack. You must be the proudest grandfather in the whole care home," Ianto grinned.
"I am not old," Jack told him.
"You found a grey hair the other day. I distinctly remember your noise of undisguised horror."
"Hey, you're the one sleeping with me."
"Maybe I have a thing for older partners."
Jack groaned and sat down in his chair. He glanced at Ianto, who despite his teasing looked...rather thoughtful. As if there had been an edge to it that he hadn't noticed.
"I can see where the trouble lies," Ianto said, and sat down too. "Your life is more complicated than any single person knows, isn't it?"
"You should see my taxes," Jack told him.
***
Meeting Alice, and Jack's legitimately adorable grandson, was enough happy families probably for a lifetime, Ianto thought.
That was before Rhiannon called, two weeks after Ianto didn't die, and things got really bizarre.
"Rhi, hi," Ianto said, answering his mobile in the little kitchen nook at their new temporary offices in downtown Cardiff. It was hard to get used to working somewhere with windows, but UNIT was rebuilding their Hub for them and in the meantime they had to work somewhere. "Sorry, now's not a great -- "
"Thirty thousand quid," Rhi said, with no preamble. "Ianto, two blokes in uniform just came to the front door and gave me thirty thousand quid."
He'd meant to call her about that, he really had. Jack had arranged it, with a wave of the little data chip all those nasty recordings were stored on.
"Sorry, yeah, meant to warn you," he said.
"Is this some kind of scam? They said it was for services to the Crown." Rhi sounded furious, which was odd, because if someone gave him thirty thousand quid, he'd have had to sit down for a while. (As it was, since he was paid to risk his life on a daily basis, no special bonus for him.)
"Yeah, it's, you know. We thought it'd be nice," Ianto said, as Jack approached. "For your car, and all."
"My car wasn't worth that much," Rhiannon told him. "This is some kind of hush money, isn't it."
Ianto pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, Rhi, it's a reward."
"All I did was give my stupid little brother a car."
"In so doing, helping to serve the people of Great Britain," Ianto said, trying to elbow Jack off as he draped himself over his shoulders, eavesdropping without shame. "Look, do you not want the money?" Ianto asked.
"I don't want to be paid off!"
"It's not like that!" Ianto insisted. He turned and mouthed "Geroff!" at Jack, who took the opportunity to slide the phone right out of his hand.
"Hi, is this Rhiannon Davies?" Jack asked. Ianto turned to stare at him in horror. "Nice to meet you! Captain Jack Harkness. I'm your brother's boss."
Jack's eyes got really wide, then.
"Well, yeah, I guess puttin' it to him is one way of saying it," he said. Ianto closed his eyes. Maybe if he wished hard enough, this would end up a terrible dream. "I...I'll...yes, I understand completely. Absolutely. He didn't? Shame on him. You didn't tell her I was American!" Jack said gleefully to Ianto. "Sorry, you know how Ianto is, no head for details."
Ianto reached for the phone, but Jack grappled him back.
"Well, there was a little departmental mishap, you know how these things are," Jack was saying, holding Ianto more-or-less at arm's length. "So while we were -- uh, budgetless -- you stepped in and helped supply our organisation with some very necessary tools. The Crown wanted to compensate you for filling a civil service role as volunteers. No. I understand. Definitely not. No, tax-free," he said, as Ianto stopped struggling to recover his phone. Jack might actually be getting through to her. "I think that's a great idea. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Da -- "
Jack paused.
"Well, that sounds nice. Sure. Ianto knows where it is," Jack said. "Great. No, thank you. Goodbye."
He hung up the phone and offered it to Ianto.
"She is now prepared to accept our compensation for work performed," he said.
"'I know where it is'?" Ianto asked.
"Rhiannon's coming to town tomorrow," Jack said, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking smug. "We're meeting her for coffee at that place you like."
"No, Jack."
"Why not? She seems nice."
"I'm pretty sure she just asked you if you were the one putting it to me."
"Well, unless you've got another man hanging around that I don't know about, that's pretty accurate. I mean, except when you're putting it to me," Jack said. He gave Ianto his filthiest grin. "You could put it to me right now if you want. The Rift is slow and my office is pretty soundproof."
"You are not distracting me," Ianto pointed a finger at him. Jack licked it. "Stop it!"
"Come on, you got to meet my daughter," Jack said, edging closer, sliding an arm around his waist. Ianto tried to make it awkward, but Jack had a way of ignoring awkwardness which just made one feel childish. "Rhiannon seems nice."
"You didn't grow up with her."
"She's okay with a handsome American bloke putting it to her brother," Jack murmured into his neck. "She said if I hurt you her man'd gut me."
"I'd be far more afraid of Rhi than her husband," Ianto told him, giving up and leaning back against the counter, taking Jack's weight against his chest. Jack was so warm. Had to be the coat.
"Part of her job, I suppose," Jack said. "Family and stuff. Really, what's there to be afraid of?"
Ianto pressed his face to Jack's shoulder. "It makes it so real, Jack."
"Well?"
"I don't know what we are, even. Here, it makes sense. Out in the world, sometimes..."
"Would it be easier if we put a name to it?"
Ianto sighed. "No. That's the thing. It wouldn't. Just a different kind of difficult."
"Hm. So we'll go, I'll charm your sister, she'll brag to all her friends about your gorgeous boyfriend, Gwen'll call us a couple, you'll get confused and anxious about it, and we keep on. Sound good?"
"You can't have me your whole life," Ianto said. "But I can have you for all of mine."
"Yeah."
Ianto considered this. "I don't know how long that is."
"We're not supposed to," Jack replied. "This is how it's supposed to be. So that we know we have to live here and now. Hey," he added, leaning back. "Should I get a haircut before tomorrow? I don't want to be an embarrassment. GWEN!" he yelled, before Ianto could reply. "I'm going out to make myself prettier."
"Good trick!" Gwen yelled back. "Ianto going too?"
"He's pretty enough, he's just coming along to look intimidating," Jack said. "We'll be back in an hour. Hold things down?"
"Course," Gwen answered, walking into the kitchen. "Have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"That means I can buy high heels," Jack said, rubbing his hands.
"Absolutely not. I'm the girl, I get to have the nicest shoes," Gwen told him. "Go on. Bring lunch back."
Ianto followed Jack past her, out into the world outside Torchwood, into Cardiff. Cardiff was theirs to protect, and if they didn't always save everyone, then they at least saved what they could. They deserved what they could get in the way of joy as recompense.
Jack glanced at him, reached out, and took his hand. A couple of people turned to look at them as they walked. Yes, well, Torchwood. No labels, no shame, no fear. Everyone died someday, so he'd better make the most of it.
Ianto didn't let go of Jack's hand.
END
When a Captain trim and neat
Wants to slip me something sweet,
Then his sweets mean we must meet by Cardiff Bay,
And I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion;
Yes I'm always true to you, darling, in my way.
Ella Fitzgerald - Always True | Sendspace mirror
Part: 9 of 9
Rating: R
Summary: Lo Boeshane has a promising career ahead of him as he enters his first year of Fleet Officer Training, but the war is still with him and life at Quantico Station can be difficult. Meanwhile, Ianto Jones is just trying to figure out why the Doctor kidnapped him to the fifty-first century and why Jack abandoned him at a school for the Fleet's military elite. He suspects it may have something to do with Lo, but his attempts to help the troubled young veteran may damage his own timestream beyond repair.
CHAPTER NINE
Readjusting was hard.
It shouldn't have been, but in some ways it was more difficult for Ianto to return to his own time than it had been to live in the other. There was so much more freedom in that century than in this, and it wasn't just about sex -- people talked more openly, smiled at strangers, were easy with each other. It was like he'd had some kind of binding about his throat that had been lifted while he was gone, and now the binding was back, and it took him time to learn not to choke on it.
Jack helped, because Jack had never been bound that way, never let himself be bound. Gwen too, because Gwen was affectionate and friendly by nature, and not afraid to smile at strangers. It was still hard.
He found he missed his porterminal, and re-learning to use telephones instead of scroll screens was frustrating. Everything he saw he compared to what he had seen, and often found it wanting. The feeling would fade, he suspected, if he had time for it to fade in. But every hour was one hour closer to the ninth of July and his death sentence, the one weight he couldn't share with Jack because Jack couldn't know. He tried not to think about it. He'd had his year, or near enough anyway; he'd had two weeks by the seaside with Lo, and he had ten - nine - eight precious days with Jack and Gwen.
It was strange, too, that he had seen traces of Jack in Lo, and now saw traces of Lo in the man he'd become. Jack had the same quick, sharp smile that Lo had, when he was amused by something. The same childish enthusiasm too, tempered by maturity and experience but still there, and possibly the salvation of Jack's sanity. When Jack was hurt by small things, there was a little flicker of Lo's self-protective bravado in his posture. Ianto found that he felt almost indulgent towards Jack sometimes; much more sure of his footing with him, at any rate. Just as well. Now was not the time to back down, not with so little time left.
Quietly, when work was slow and whenever Jack wasn't there, he put his affairs in order. There wasn't much. Everything would be boxed up and stored by Torchwood anyway. He had a bit of savings, that could go to Rhi and her kids, and his server file at Torchwood was already tidily indexed and cross-referenced. He left a letter for Gwen and one for Jack, in his desk at home where Gwen would find them.
And then, with four days to go on his death sentence, some dickhead blew up the Hub.
Suddenly Ianto wasn't simply waiting -- he was fighting for his life, his and Gwen's and Rhys's and the child they hadn't even had time to celebrate properly. And Jack, Jack too, Jack's survival, because Jack would always come back but what he came back to was cement and horror, and Ianto just couldn't fucking be having with that. He had painstakingly assembled the man Jack Harkness was to be, putting each piece of broken Lo Boeshane into place with care and no small amount of love, and that was his. Jack was his to protect.
He lost track of time, after the explosion. He wasn't sure what day it was, didn't care, didn't even think about the execution that was coming. Not even that morning, not until he and Jack walked into an empty room with an alien in a giant glass tank who fed on kids, little kids, another thing Ianto was not prepared to have anything to do with anymore.
Jack was making a speech of some kind when Ianto realised it was the ninth of July. And still there was no time to think of it, because he had a job to do. And then the lights went out, and the horrible deep voice of the 456 told them about the virus.
It took Ianto a second to realise that this was how he died. Here, facing the monster. As deaths went he supposed it was sort of pointless, but at least he was going to die with his boots on.
He waited for something -- a cough, a flush in his cheeks, the dizzy white mist that had heralded his last brush with delirium, but there was nothing. Jack ran; Ianto could hear him yelling futilely for gas masks, for help that was already too late. Jack returned and they tried threats, they tried gunfire; the glass was impermeable.
This was how Ianto Jones died.
Except...
He still didn't feel sick. Jack's face was flushed; he was panicking, and Ianto realised with a distant clarity that it wasn't Jack's fear of his own death, or on account of the screaming they could hear outside.
"We've gotta get you out of here," Jack said, grabbing Ianto by the shoulders. "I can survive anything -- "
"I feel all right," Ianto said, looking from Jack to the big glass cell.
"You breathed the air -- " Jack looked around wildly. "There's gotta be an antidote..."
The voice of the 456 rang in the chamber.
"You said you would fight," it taunted.
"Not him," Jack said. "I take it back, don't take him -- "
"Jack..." Ianto said, and Jack turned back to him. "Listen, it's all right, I knew..."
"No, no no no -- " Jack started, still clinging onto his arm, which was just as well since about that time Jack's legs gave out. Ianto went down with him, holding him, watching with confusion and adrenaline-driven elation as Jack fell, and he didn't.
"It's all right," he whispered, stroking Jack's hair. "I love you."
"You'll die," Jack murmured.
"Maybe," Ianto said. "Don't talk."
But Jack was past talking, and after a minute more his pulse stopped threading under Ianto's palm.
He'd risked the world for Ianto, just now. Anything to avoid what Jack had blithely told him and he had blithely repeated to Lo: Love them anyway, and take the hit when it comes. When push came to shove, Jack hadn't been able to. Not this time.
Best think about what that meant later.
Ianto looked up at the cell. He didn't feel sick. He felt better than he had when he was dying of infection in Quantico's hospital, actually. Better than he had last time he'd had a cold.
He kissed Jack's lips, let the body slip out of his hands, and stood up again, cocking his head at the 456's tank.
"Well," he said consideringly. "This is interesting."
"You cannot win," the 456 bellowed, but it sounded uncertain. "The remnant will be disconnected."
A high whine of noise began, almost overwhelming, and Ianto wasn't sure what it was but he was sure it wasn't good. So he pressed his lips together and raised his gun -- not at the glass again, but at the power box that was routing electricity to the door locks. The door locks...on the tank.
After all, it didn't matter now. Everyone in the building was a walking corpse, even him.
He fired at the power box. The horrible screech stopped; the doors swung open, and there was a hiss of gas in the air.
"What," the 456 said. It sounded confused now. "What -- what -- what what what what -- "
There was no time to take Jack with him, much as he might want to. Jack would come back, he always did. Ianto bolted through the room, down the hallway ahead of the hissing, smoking gas, down the stairs ahead of it, down another hallway, running aimlessly really, because pretty soon the virus had to catch up with him. He ran past bodies -- nothing new there; in Canary Wharf he'd pulled Lisa over the tops of piled bodies, the dead he'd known in life -- until he saw movement.
There was a man in a hazmat suit.
"You fucker," he shouted, barreling into him, knocking him over. He straddled him, one hand on his throat, and he was inches from punching in the plexi faceplate when he stopped himself. That was murder, unnecessary murder, and there were too many dead already. "Where did you get it?"
"Don't kill me!" the man shrieked.
"Where did you get it?" Ianto demanded again, fetching up the oxygen tube and threatening to tug. The man flailed towards an open door, and Ianto rose and ran again. By god if the virus did somehow fail to kill him he wasn't going to die inhaling toxic gas.
There was a respirator there, just a strap-over number, but Ianto pulled it on and fixed it over his mouth. The tinned filtered air tasted like iron.
And then Ianto Jones didn't die.
Which was as perplexing to him as to anyone else, really.
***
When Clem started to scream, Gwen honestly thought he was going to die.
She could hear the bleating, buzzing noise, she suspected everyone could, but Clem clearly had a different reaction. He was clutching his ears, screaming, blood oozing around his fingers and down his face, and Gwen though, this is it, he's going to die in my arms.
Suddenly, as if someone had hit a mute switch, the squeal stopped. Dead. No fade-out, just ringing silence and the sound of Clem's harsh breathing. She eased him down slowly, a limp weight in her arms, but he wasn't unconscious. His eyes were open, unfocused. She took his pulse -- not exactly slow, but slowing.
"He's alive," she said, to the dark-haired woman who had held them both at gunpoint a few minutes before -- before seeing the tapes, before learning who the good guys really were.
"He's bleeding out his ears," the woman replied.
"Well, then bloody well help me," Gwen shouted. "Or do you only have guns and no doctors?"
One of the soldiers raised his hand. "EMT, ma'am," he said to the woman.
"Do what you can," she said. "Get him in the truck. We have medical facilities in London, that's the safest place for him. You," she added to Gwen, who reluctantly released Clem to the soldiers. "Ride with me. And bring that laptop!" she said, as she walked out.
***
It took time to clear the gas and air from Thames House, to test if the air they would vent was still carrying the virus, to make sure when they opened it the outside world would be safe.
The troops went in first, clearing every room, reinforcements behind them picking up the bodies and carrying them to a canteen where there was space to lay them out. Medics checked each body, covering them with red blankets. The few civilians allowed entry wept or puked or simply stood and watched. The soldiers didn't have time for that; that would come later, some of them suspected.
The last room they cleared was the room with the glass tank, and the soldiers stopped outside to rock-paper-scissors for who would have to go first. The loser groaned but stepped to the front; rifles up, they entered.
"I'm not armed," a voice said. A man was kneeling in the middle of the floor, bent quietly over another man's head resting in his lap. Two handguns and a respirator lay nearby. "Don't shoot, I'm not armed."
Beyond him, the tank that had been fogged and filled with gas was clear now. Ichor and bile striped the inside of it. There was a slumped, oozing mass in the middle, all stumpy limbs and claws and horrible white eyes in misshapen heads. Near the door, but on the outside of the tank, was a very small body.
"I took him out," the man said, looking towards the body. "It seemed the respectful thing to do."
One of the soldiers knelt by the child's body, checked it, found it dead. She turned back to the others and shook her head. None of them wanted to inspect the contents of the glass tank very carefully.
Slowly, the man inched backwards, laying his companion's head gently on the ground. He stood up, arms raised.
"How'd you survive?" a soldier asked.
"I don't know," the man said. "I just did."
"What's your name?"
"Ianto Jones. That's Captain Jack Harkness," he added, tipping his head at the man lying dead on the floor. "We work for Torchwood."
One of the soldiers stepped forward. "We need to collect the Captain's body, Mr. Jones."
Mr. Jones nodded, lowering his arms. "Can I help?" he asked.
"You'll have to go to decontamination," the soldier by the child's body said. "We'll look after him," she promised, as kindly as she could, because who knew how unbalanced this Jones was. "We'll make sure he's treated with respect."
Mr. Jones gave her an odd, twisting smile. "He'll appreciate that," he told her. "Please show me where to go."
One of the other soldiers took his arm in one gloved hand and led him away.
"LIVE ONE!" he yelled, leading Ianto down the stairs to the command post that had been hastily set up on the main floor. "GOT A LIVE ONE HERE. DECON AND MEDICS REQUESTED. COMING DOWN."
A flurry of activity; gloved hands reached out, masked faces took Mr. Jones away. They shoved him into a portable chemical-accident shower with his clothes still on, sprayed him with antibiotic soap and any other chemical they could think of, made him strip and throw the sodden clothing into bags and wash again. Out of the shower, into a hastily-erected little tent where more gloved hands prodded at him and jabbed him with needles while the masked faces asked questions. Mr. Jones answered quietly, said he didn't know, wasn't sure, couldn't tell, hadn't anything to add. They gave him a blanket to dry himself on, a long-sleeved shirt and a set of scrubs to wear, a pair of military boots a size too large, and another blanket to wrap around his shoulders when he asked them, please, he was very cold.
He was handed over to another doctor, told to sit in a chair, sat quietly -- and then looked up sharply.
A dark-haired woman was passing through the medical staff, shoving anyone who got in her way, shaking off anyone who tried to restrain her. She came to Mr. Jones and knelt down in front of him.
"I thought you were dead," she said.
"So did I," Mr. Jones replied.
"Are you sick? Do they know?"
"No, I'm not," he said, and then smiled wistfully. "I'd kill for something to eat, though."
The woman laughed, holding both his hands in hers. "And a cup of hot coffee?"
"Yeah, that too."
"Ianto," the woman said, standing. "Where's Jack?"
Mr. Jones looked down the hall, towards the makeshift morgue. "Lying in state," he said quietly.
***
When Jack woke, it was with a soft breath, a reluctance that he didn't understand for a second, until he saw Gwen looking down at him.
The virus. The cell. Ianto, holding him, waiting with a kind of strange serenity for his own death.
Ianto was dead.
"Hi," Gwen said softly. She leaned back as Jack struggled upright --
And saw Ianto. Standing. Speaking with a man, a guard, twenty feet away. All around them were bodies, uniform rows of red-covered bodies, but Ianto wasn't one of them. Ianto was standing up. Talking to a guard. Wearing a hideous pair of green scrubs that didn't suit him at all. Drinking from a paper cup.
He gasped out something that he wanted desperately to be Ianto's name, groping blindly for Gwen's hand and finally finding it. Gwen helped him to his feet, hugging him tightly. The blanket was pooled on the ground, the red blanket, a pool of --
Ianto turned to look at them then, and a smile spread across his face. He said one last soft word to the guard, handed the man his empty cup, and hurried over, tugging on the scrub shirt as if it were his waistcoat. Ianto, straightening an imaginary waistcoat. Alive.
"What...?" Jack asked, confused, looking to Gwen for answers. She shook her head, hapless. "How...?" this time he asked Ianto, who looked faintly embarrassed.
"Very good questions," Ianto said. "Been asked them a lot in the last two hours."
Jack stumbled forward and threw his arms around Ianto's neck, almost toppling over before Ianto balanced them. He held on tightly, wondering if Ianto would drop dead in front of him if he let go, and knowing this would probably feature in his nightmares for some time to come.
"Natural immunity, they think," Ianto said in his ear. "They've taken about a gallon of blood. I have an immunogen."
"Very romantic," Jack replied. He heard his voice crack.
"Sorry, should I have brought flowers?" Ianto drawled. Jack drew back and kissed him, tried to kiss death away, knew he probably tasted like it himself, he always did after dying. The guards coughed and looked away. Ianto looked peeved.
"I was really getting used to people not being weird about this," he said, and disentangled himself from Jack. "There's no time right now. The 456 are not happy."
"Why aren't they happy?" Jack asked.
"Well, I killed their ambassador," Ianto said. "You wouldn't remember, you were busy being useless."
"I was heroically dead," Jack said reproachfully.
"Chop chop," Gwen added, giving Jack a shove towards the door. "World to save, aliens to kill."
***
Torchwood had become a magic word.
Torchwood, Ianto heard people whisper, had two men who survived the Thames House massacre. Torchwood was unkillable. Torchwood had blackmailed the Prime Minister into giving them the power to negotiate with the aliens, and then Torchwood had killed the alien ambassador. What next? Martial law, all of London under the command of Captain Harkness? What kind of men were they? If aliens were real, then why not immortals, and was that why Jones looked so young?
Torchwood got them out of Thames House, got them into Agent Johnson's facility -- and there was something precious there to Jack, Ianto knew because Jack disappeared for ten brief minutes and came back looking like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He didn't pay it much mind really, at the time; he was busy meeting with the facility's medical staff, getting up-to-date on Clem. Brain-dead wasn't precisely the term for it, but he breathed and had a pulse and that was about it. The doctors weren't very confident there was much going on upstairs, or ever would be again.
Aside from dubiously "saving" Clem's life, killing the ambassador of the 456 changed nothing, Ianto could see that now. All it had done was cut off their method of communication with the 456, and if the children weren't delivered up then tomorrow the world would die. But it had been a message they'd had to send, and perhaps the 456 would be more fearful now. Perhaps Jack's bluff would work.
Ianto didn't count on it. Jack was good. He wasn't save-six-billion-people-with-a-card-trick good.
The thing was, Agent Johnson and her troops, unnamed, unnumbered, were on their side now, and the Prime Minister was effectively neutralised, and so now it was Torchwood's job to fix the cock-up they had all started.
And Jack was, pretty clearly, out of ideas.
"We can't do anything if we can't communicate," he said, pacing angrily in the little canteen of this secret military facility hidden god-knew-where. "We can't communicate without bringing another one down; all they can do is yell at us through the kids. They're fucking invulnerable."
Ianto thought of the Jack he'd seen with the grey in his hair and the lines on his face, the Jack who had told the galaxy that the Flyers were defeated. He knew the Flyers had no vulnerabilities, and yet somehow they had been beaten by a blockade in a star system so far from here it would be three thousand years before anyone reached it.
"Jack," he said softly. Jack turned to him. "What happened at the Cineve Blockade?"
Jack stared at him as if he'd just said something obscene.
"When the war ended," Ianto continued. "I know -- I know you were part of ending it. What happened?"
Jack closed his eyes, tilting his face up a little as if he were trying to contain a fresh wave of rage.
"Is this important?" he asked tightly.
"It might be," Ianto ventured. "They were invulnerable too, weren't they?"
"What are you talking about?" Gwen asked. Jack held up a hand.
"Two years before the Blockade, I was taken alive," Jack said, breath short and fast. "When I escaped, I brought back intel on the functional biological weaknesses of the Flyers. I -- "
He stopped and gave Ianto a very direct look, and just for a moment it was Lo, not Jack, staring at him.
"I had inside information," Jack said, realisation dawning. "Inside...biological information. We don't need to blow them out of the sky. We just need to blow their brains out."
"Well, that's...catchy," Ianto observed, as Jack began to pace again.
"The 456 communicate on a radio frequency," Jack said. "Gwen says when they tried to kill Clem, they used a broadcast -- something that could hurt him even though he was synced with them."
"I heard it too. So?"
"So if it can hurt someone linked to them," Jack said, "it can hurt them. AGENT JOHNSON," he yelled, and she looked up from where she was speaking with the new shift of soldiers. "I need a broadcast rig, as powerful as you've got."
"We have an analysis room," she replied, gesturing behind her. "Recording, broadcast, reception."
Gwen gave Ianto a look that said she clearly was wondering about Jack's sanity. Ianto nodded -- but what is there to do? -- and rose when she did to follow him.
***
There were moments, for Jack -- sometimes on a case, sometimes just in the course of living a life far longer than it should have been -- where it seemed as if the entire universe became clear. He knew the way of everything, he understood everything, and he was pleased to know it. He feared the moment, as much as he loved it, because he was afraid someday that moment would come and never leave. In his elation and all-powerful truth-seeing he would destroy something, because nobody actually could see the entire truth of all. Not even the Doctor.
He had felt it when he'd given himself up to Abbadon, when he had died with John Ellis, when he'd stood for the first time on Flat Holm Island and envisioned what it could one day be.
Working on the transmission that had nearly killed Clem, he felt it again: such godlike clarity and precision. He could destroy them. All he needed was a conduit, some way to connect back to the 456 with enough strength to really make himself heard. All he needed was --
A child.
He could see, too, that this was how a god could break something fragile, because reports were coming in that the 456 were demanding the children now, now, now, and if they didn't get them as payment for the death of their ambassador they would unleash chaos on the Earth now, now, now, and somewhere out there, perhaps even in London, children were being rounded up.
The only child close enough was Steven.
He had given children to monsters before, for the good of the world. He had given children to these monsters before, and to a fate much worse than death. He knew what it was like to fail to save someone -- not just the failures of Torchwood, but the moment when the monsters came no matter what you did, and took no matter how hard you fought. For just a second, he teetered on the edge, and then Gwen laid a hand on his arm.
"Jack, what is it?" she asked. His senses were so sharp her voice roared in his head.
Steven. Oh god, not Steven.
He could smell everyone in the room. He could hear soldiers breathing. And, in the background, he could hear Ianto speaking on his mobile in a hushed voice, inaudible except that Jack always heard Ianto (always now). Ianto was frightened, telling his sister that they were in danger, telling her to take Johnny and the children and run and hide, anywhere they could.
He'd made that call once. To Alice, when she was living in London, when Canary Wharf imploded. Take Steven and run far away. Come to Cardiff, I'll protect you. Go anywhere, just run from London. Please, for the love of god, just this once do as you're told...
The terrible clarity faded, and Jack felt a twinge of pain in his right arm. Once, a long time ago, he had mangled it almost beyond repair, running from the Flyers. He had survived war and time and torment to bring a daughter into this world and he had died for this world (for her) so many times. He'd let go of his brother's hand once; not ever again.
Which closed that door, and so Jack was left standing in an empty corridor of no possibilities.
Except for one.
"Clem," he breathed softly. He heard Ianto's phone snap shut, and Gwen inhale to speak. "Gwen, take Ianto, get Clem. Bring him here to me."
"Why?" Gwen asked.
"He's going to save the world," Jack replied.
***
It was one of the more horrible deaths Ianto had seen, and that was saying something, considering he'd scrubbed Suzie's blood from the Plass and cradled his dead girlfriend in his arms. Clem bled from every orifice, unmoving except for the subtle sonic vibration and the terrible sound of the transmission -- the high squeal that overrode everything. Clem, transmitting a single tone back to the 456, and Ianto devoutly hoped their brains were dribbling out their ears for Clem's horrible sacrifice.
When Clem was dead, when the soldiers confirmed that the 456 were no longer transmitting, it was as if a light went out in Jack. Ianto found him sitting in a corridor, looking at nothing. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Ianto offered Jack his hand and pulled him to his feet, leading him away.
They left everything to sort itself out, for once. Gwen joined them as they walked out of the building, but left again, saying she was going to Cardiff to find Rhys. She gave Jack a hug he barely returned, kissed his forehead, shot Ianto a look that very clearly said fix him, and walked away. Somewhere, no doubt, someone was paying a high price for being willing to sacrifice all those children on the altar of global safety, but it would not be them, and they did not have to mete out the punishment. Let Whitehall sort Whitehall.
Ianto realised that it was still the ninth of July. He could still die. Probably, he reasoned, from the most ignoble of things. Food poisoning, or being run over by a lorry. But he had been willing to die once already today, so if he was going to die, well, that would just have to happen. The world was safe, at least.
He took Jack to the nearest hotel he could find before he remembered they had no money. The reception clerk was a good-looking young man with wide eyes and a bright smile for a handsome doctor still in his scrubs and his soldier boyfriend, especially when he heard they'd just been robbed. He told them he could find them a room if they'd call down with their new credit card number in the morning. Ianto smiled his most charming smile, the man blushed, and then there was the still sterile silence of a hotel room, and Jack sitting quietly on the bed.
"That was murder," Jack said, as Ianto busied himself turning down the blankets.
"You've done it before," Ianto answered. Jack looked at him sharply. Ianto shrugged. "You will again. That's Torchwood."
"I never wanted to force you to it," Jack said.
"That's a lie," Ianto told him. Execute her or I'll execute you both.
"You should be dead," Jack announced.
"So glad you feel that way," Ianto said, kneeling in front of Jack and undoing his shoelaces, pulling his boots off.
Jack seemed so lost, but coddling him wasn't going to help. Jack Harkness was not Lo Boeshane; he had the core of strength one gained from seeing all Jack had seen, and Ianto was not inclined to feed his self-pity, not today, not when he was still humming with life when he should be dead on the floor in that horrible makeshift morgue. Not when he could still be dead before the day was through -- aneurysm, heart attack, erotic asphyxiation, there were no end of ways to go.
He set the shoes aside and took Jack's hands.
"If you don't stop being a right arsehole I am going to make you sleep on the sofa," he said, quite seriously. Jack blinked at him. "Quit sulking. I have been waiting for sex for four days and it's making me very impatient."
It was like watching a sunrise, a little; there was an almost visible glow that rose in Jack's eyes, something about the way his face shifted imperceptibly right before he smiled.
"Lock the -- "
"Locked," Ianto said.
"Take off your -- "
"You first," Ianto replied, but he was already pulling the scrub shirt over his head. Jack shrugged out of his coat, letting it fall on the bed, and began working industriously on his cufflinks. Ianto stopped bothering with his undershirt and pulled Jack's belt off instead.
"Do we have any -- "
"Nope," Ianto said cheerfully, and elbowed Jack's thigh so that he'd lift his hips.
"Fuck," Jack said.
"Probably some lotion in the bath, this is a nice hotel," Ianto told him, and pulled Jack's trousers and pants down and licked a long slow line up Jack's cock. Jack's whole body jerked, and Ianto forgot about the possibility of dying any minute, because this was right. More right than the Jack he'd known three thousand years away, even more right than Lo: Jack's hands in his hair, Jack moaning as Ianto hummed around his cock.
Ianto ducked his head and then pulled back, gave him a smile, did it again. That was right -- the world was falling back into place, his world. Fucked up and dangerous and exhausting, but his world all the same.
Jack tugged on his hair, pulling him up, and they tumbled onto the bed together. Jack was still in his shirt, Ianto still mostly dressed, Jack's cock hanging out of the trousers which were tangled around his thighs. Jack pushed down and Ianto pushed up and Jack laughed, oh god, Jack laughed, Lo's laugh, Levy's laugh --
And there was a knock at the door.
"Ignore it," Jack said, and sucked on his neck.
"I plan to," Ianto answered, trying to get his shirt off.
The knock again, and a faint voice. "Dr. Jones?"
"Ignooooore it," Jack crooned, groping him roughly through the scrubs.
"Dr. Jones?"
Ianto let his head fall back.
"He won't go away," he said, and squirmed out from under Jack and ran to the door.
This was it, he thought, as he opened it. This was how he died. There would be someone behind the door with a gun or a bomb or --
A shaving kit?
It was the young man from downstairs, and he was holding a cheap shaving kit.
"I thought you might need some toiletries," the man said. He took in Ianto's rumpled shirt, his wet lips, his rather apparent erection, and looked hopeful. "Or a hand...?"
"Any other time," Ianto said, taking the shaving kit out of his hand. "Any other time, but just the toiletries for now, please."
"I'm off at six!" the man called, as Ianto closed the door and bolted it and threw the shaving kit in the general direction of the bathroom.
Jack was lying on the bed, clothing kicked to the foot of it, staring at him like he was the only thing in the world. Ianto very precisely pulled the undershirt over his head, took off the borrowed military boots and the scrub trousers. And Jack...watched.
"You didn't die," he said, as Ianto crawled on top of him and kissed him. "You should have died."
"I'll make a note," Ianto replied. Jack drew his legs up and tilted his hips, glorious friction, living flesh. Jack wouldn't last long, he never did if he'd died recently, but Ianto had been running on fear and fury for almost a week and all he wanted was one -- goddamn -- orgasm with his boyfriend --
Jack yelled when he came, digging his fingers into Ianto's shoulders, and Ianto bit down on the tense muscles standing out in Jack's neck, tasting salt. He felt Jack's come on his stomach and groaned through his own climax.
He rolled over, mostly so that Jack could breathe freely, and stared at the ceiling. After a minute he turned his head. The bite mark on Jack's throat was livid. Some of the skin was broken. Ianto raised a hand to touch it, concerned.
"Leave it," Jack said, eyes still closed. "Reminds me I'm alive."
The sun rolled down through the sky eventually, shining in their west-looking window. Sun dappling their bed was a kind of luxury Ianto hadn't expected. Jack found a tiny tube of lubricant tucked in the shaving kit and fucked him sore, brilliantly hard. Thoughtful man, that desk attendant, they really should ask him up, but six o'clock came and went quietly while Ianto napped, off and on. And then it was seven, eight, nine -- Jack ordered room service, accepted delivery of it with no trousers on, ate most of it himself. Ten o'clock; Ianto had a shower, enjoying the way really scrubbed-clean skin felt after. Eleven o'clock found Jack curled around him on the bed, touching him everywhere like he still couldn't believe it. Eleven-thirty, and Jack slept.
Ianto watched the cheap hotel clock-alarm tick over. Midnight. Half-twelve. One am. It was one in the morning on July the tenth and he was still alive and the universe hadn't ended.
Jack woke briefly when Ianto rolled over, turning away from the clock.
"Youwake?" he mumbled.
"Go back to sleep," Ianto said.
"Should sleep," Jack slurred, nosing against his ear, licking it clumsily. "You should. Tense? Blowjob?"
"No, thank you," Ianto told him. Jack smiled, a little blurry still.
"Polite," he announced, and dropped back down into unconsciousness. Ianto closed his eyes and let himself drift away as well.
***
In the morning, there was work to do.
They had left things long enough, and a few stolen hours was all well and good, but UNIT had heard about what Torchwood had done, and thrown their weight in, offering Jack anything he needed (including, thank god, paying their hotel bill). Whitehall was furious, but Gwen still had all the files, and if anyone wanted to try and challenge the combined might of UNIT and Torchwood, Gwen's finger was hovering over the send key.
Jack found he was enjoying himself, in a bizarre sort of way. Conducting operations like this, cleanup for a job done messily but well, leading a dance with people who had been out to kill him a day before and got their comeuppance...yes. Jack found that very satisfying indeed.
When he couldn't be in two places at once, Gwen went and yelled the shit out of whoever he aimed her at, and in the background (as if he could be in two places at once) Ianto quietly made arrangements, brought food, ran off the unimportant, marshalled the bureaucrats. He'd disappeared early in the morning and found a suit somewhere, and he looked every inch the young professional.
Perhaps a little too professional. Jack knew what Ianto looked like when he was lying-by-appearance.
When he brought Jack lunch, a cheap sandwich and an expensive fancy dessert, Jack caught his wrist as he moved away.
"I need you," he said, and Ianto nodded and sat down, taking out the PDA he'd commandeered from someone and been using all morning to kick a little Torchwood ass. "Not for that," Jack said. Ianto tucked it away again. "Just sit with me."
"Jack?" Ianto said, looking perplexed.
"Remind me that not everyone in the world is out to get me today," Jack said, taking a very satisfyingly large bite of the sandwich. Ianto studied the grain of the small wooden table they were sitting at.
"I need to tell you something," Ianto said quietly. Jack gave him a nod. "When I was -- at Quantico -- "
-- their code for the future because when I was in the future apparently "sounded stupid" to Ianto --
"I saw my employee record from Torchwood. I learned when I was going to die," Ianto finished.
Jack suddenly had trouble swallowing.
"You shouldn't know that," he said, when he finally managed it. "No one should."
"It was yesterday," Ianto told him.
Jack frowned.
"I was supposed to come back and die, yesterday, or time would rip, or fracture, or something," Ianto said. "There was a flux...thing...I don't get it, but there were these two...reports, and one of them said I died yesterday and the other didn't have a date for my death, and it seemed like a pretty big problem so...I thought you should know."
"Why didn't you -- no, stupid question," Jack cut himself off. "Of course you couldn't say."
Ianto shook his head.
"Yesterday," Jack repeated. "You've known for weeks it would be yesterday."
"Probably when you died, I was supposed to," Ianto said. "If I didn't, time was supposed to go all sideways. Got a theory, sort of, if you want to hear it."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but you're not dead and time didn't fracture," Jack said. "And yeah, I do."
"I got sick at Quantico. An infection, from the cut," Ianto said, indicating his right arm. There was a long dark scar running up the inside of his forearm, but it would fade in time. "When I was better, they gave me some shots. Just to boost my immune system, the medic said. Maybe...I don't know, Jack. The virus...maybe I was immunised."
Jack watched him over the edge of his sandwich. "Could be," he said slowly. From what he'd seen of the autopsy reports, the virus had been an accelerated version of something he was familiar with from another time, another place -- Star Twelve Influenza, a terrible way to die.
"But I don't...know what to think," Ianto said. "I don't even know how to worry about this."
"You came back..." Jack considered it, looking down. Ianto had come back to them knowing he would die, and he hadn't run away, hadn't done anything to protect himself. Carrying that weight all alone, because he had to, for ten days. Knowing when he followed Jack into the room with the 456's ambassador that he was going to die. He had come home and fucked and drank coffee and driven around Cardiff knowing he was going to die.
Well, everyone was, after all. Everyone but Jack.
"I don't pretend to know everything," Jack said slowly.
"Liar," Ianto replied. Jack caught him smiling.
"Okay. I might pretend, but I don't actually. I think...you knew, and you still came here and put your face to it and accepted it," Jack said. "I remember what you looked like while I was dying. You were waiting for it."
Ianto nodded.
"So maybe...that was your reward," Jack tried that to see how it sounded, found it sounded less stupid in his mouth than in his head. "You didn't fight it, you just did the job you had to do, and time took its own course. It does that," he added. "Once in a long while, it does. Are you worried about dying, or worried about destroying the fabric of time?"
"Well, both," Ianto said. "The second one a bit more."
Jack smiled at him. "Brave one," he murmured.
"No choice," Ianto said, looking away. Jack saw him frown. He followed his gaze to where, in the middle of a crowd of UNIT soldiers and well-dressed politicians, a dark-haired woman in jeans and a black shirt was leading a young boy towards them.
"Shit," Jack breathed. Ianto looked at him.
"Should I -- "
"No, stay here," Jack said, as Alice approached. "Too late to run, anyway."
Jack set his sandwich aside and stood up uncertainly, wondering if he was going to get a hug or a slap in the face. Either seemed on offer. He wondered if Alice knew herself.
"Uncle Jack!" Steven yelled, and broke away from her, running into his arms. He swept the boy up in a bear hug -- god, he was so delicate, children were so breakable. He could feel Steven's heartbeat against his chest as Steven wrapped his arms around Jack's neck. Someone had given the kid some kind of toy action figure which he was clutching tightly, ramming it into the back of Jack's head. Jack closed his eyes, uncaring. He might not get to see him much, might not get to see Alice very often, but Alice was his daughter and he loved her and her son beyond life.
I'd die for you, he promised silently, as he always did, because as useless as the promise was, it was still all he could offer.
Steven squirmed out of his hug and he let the boy down to the ground again. The child promptly ran around the table and began playing at the other end of it, sending his action figure on half-narrated adventures amongst the paperwork, complete with sound effects and exploding paperclips.
"Alice," Jack said. She gave him a look he didn't understand (god, so many of those over the years) and glanced at Ianto.
"Alice Carter," she said, offering her hand.
"Ianto Jones," Ianto replied, rising to shake it. He glanced at Jack.
"This is my daughter," Jack said quietly, so that Steven wouldn't hear. Alice looked annoyed. "It's fine. Ianto's one of us. Torchwood," he added, lest she think he just happened to have kids all over. He didn't. Lucia had been special.
"Pleasure to meet you, miss," Ianto said, and looked like he meant it. Maybe he did.
"I wanted to let you know Steven and I are going home," Alice told him, turning away from Ianto. "I need to get him back in school, back to the regular routine."
Jack tried to smile. "So. See you in a month?"
She looked away. Jack kept the smile in place.
"Two months?" he asked.
"Sorry, dad," she said softly.
"Right." Jack went to Steven and gathered him up in his arms, kissing his cheek. "Be safe, kid," he said, and set him down. Alice took his hand, leading him away.
"We're going on the train!" Steven yelled over his shoulder at Jack, as they walked away. Jack gave him a wave, watched them disappear into a knot of UNIT soldiers.
There was a long silence.
"So," Ianto said. "Your grandson."
"Don't. Say. Anything," Jack said, even though he knew Ianto would.
"He's adorable, Jack. You must be the proudest grandfather in the whole care home," Ianto grinned.
"I am not old," Jack told him.
"You found a grey hair the other day. I distinctly remember your noise of undisguised horror."
"Hey, you're the one sleeping with me."
"Maybe I have a thing for older partners."
Jack groaned and sat down in his chair. He glanced at Ianto, who despite his teasing looked...rather thoughtful. As if there had been an edge to it that he hadn't noticed.
"I can see where the trouble lies," Ianto said, and sat down too. "Your life is more complicated than any single person knows, isn't it?"
"You should see my taxes," Jack told him.
***
Meeting Alice, and Jack's legitimately adorable grandson, was enough happy families probably for a lifetime, Ianto thought.
That was before Rhiannon called, two weeks after Ianto didn't die, and things got really bizarre.
"Rhi, hi," Ianto said, answering his mobile in the little kitchen nook at their new temporary offices in downtown Cardiff. It was hard to get used to working somewhere with windows, but UNIT was rebuilding their Hub for them and in the meantime they had to work somewhere. "Sorry, now's not a great -- "
"Thirty thousand quid," Rhi said, with no preamble. "Ianto, two blokes in uniform just came to the front door and gave me thirty thousand quid."
He'd meant to call her about that, he really had. Jack had arranged it, with a wave of the little data chip all those nasty recordings were stored on.
"Sorry, yeah, meant to warn you," he said.
"Is this some kind of scam? They said it was for services to the Crown." Rhi sounded furious, which was odd, because if someone gave him thirty thousand quid, he'd have had to sit down for a while. (As it was, since he was paid to risk his life on a daily basis, no special bonus for him.)
"Yeah, it's, you know. We thought it'd be nice," Ianto said, as Jack approached. "For your car, and all."
"My car wasn't worth that much," Rhiannon told him. "This is some kind of hush money, isn't it."
Ianto pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, Rhi, it's a reward."
"All I did was give my stupid little brother a car."
"In so doing, helping to serve the people of Great Britain," Ianto said, trying to elbow Jack off as he draped himself over his shoulders, eavesdropping without shame. "Look, do you not want the money?" Ianto asked.
"I don't want to be paid off!"
"It's not like that!" Ianto insisted. He turned and mouthed "Geroff!" at Jack, who took the opportunity to slide the phone right out of his hand.
"Hi, is this Rhiannon Davies?" Jack asked. Ianto turned to stare at him in horror. "Nice to meet you! Captain Jack Harkness. I'm your brother's boss."
Jack's eyes got really wide, then.
"Well, yeah, I guess puttin' it to him is one way of saying it," he said. Ianto closed his eyes. Maybe if he wished hard enough, this would end up a terrible dream. "I...I'll...yes, I understand completely. Absolutely. He didn't? Shame on him. You didn't tell her I was American!" Jack said gleefully to Ianto. "Sorry, you know how Ianto is, no head for details."
Ianto reached for the phone, but Jack grappled him back.
"Well, there was a little departmental mishap, you know how these things are," Jack was saying, holding Ianto more-or-less at arm's length. "So while we were -- uh, budgetless -- you stepped in and helped supply our organisation with some very necessary tools. The Crown wanted to compensate you for filling a civil service role as volunteers. No. I understand. Definitely not. No, tax-free," he said, as Ianto stopped struggling to recover his phone. Jack might actually be getting through to her. "I think that's a great idea. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Da -- "
Jack paused.
"Well, that sounds nice. Sure. Ianto knows where it is," Jack said. "Great. No, thank you. Goodbye."
He hung up the phone and offered it to Ianto.
"She is now prepared to accept our compensation for work performed," he said.
"'I know where it is'?" Ianto asked.
"Rhiannon's coming to town tomorrow," Jack said, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking smug. "We're meeting her for coffee at that place you like."
"No, Jack."
"Why not? She seems nice."
"I'm pretty sure she just asked you if you were the one putting it to me."
"Well, unless you've got another man hanging around that I don't know about, that's pretty accurate. I mean, except when you're putting it to me," Jack said. He gave Ianto his filthiest grin. "You could put it to me right now if you want. The Rift is slow and my office is pretty soundproof."
"You are not distracting me," Ianto pointed a finger at him. Jack licked it. "Stop it!"
"Come on, you got to meet my daughter," Jack said, edging closer, sliding an arm around his waist. Ianto tried to make it awkward, but Jack had a way of ignoring awkwardness which just made one feel childish. "Rhiannon seems nice."
"You didn't grow up with her."
"She's okay with a handsome American bloke putting it to her brother," Jack murmured into his neck. "She said if I hurt you her man'd gut me."
"I'd be far more afraid of Rhi than her husband," Ianto told him, giving up and leaning back against the counter, taking Jack's weight against his chest. Jack was so warm. Had to be the coat.
"Part of her job, I suppose," Jack said. "Family and stuff. Really, what's there to be afraid of?"
Ianto pressed his face to Jack's shoulder. "It makes it so real, Jack."
"Well?"
"I don't know what we are, even. Here, it makes sense. Out in the world, sometimes..."
"Would it be easier if we put a name to it?"
Ianto sighed. "No. That's the thing. It wouldn't. Just a different kind of difficult."
"Hm. So we'll go, I'll charm your sister, she'll brag to all her friends about your gorgeous boyfriend, Gwen'll call us a couple, you'll get confused and anxious about it, and we keep on. Sound good?"
"You can't have me your whole life," Ianto said. "But I can have you for all of mine."
"Yeah."
Ianto considered this. "I don't know how long that is."
"We're not supposed to," Jack replied. "This is how it's supposed to be. So that we know we have to live here and now. Hey," he added, leaning back. "Should I get a haircut before tomorrow? I don't want to be an embarrassment. GWEN!" he yelled, before Ianto could reply. "I'm going out to make myself prettier."
"Good trick!" Gwen yelled back. "Ianto going too?"
"He's pretty enough, he's just coming along to look intimidating," Jack said. "We'll be back in an hour. Hold things down?"
"Course," Gwen answered, walking into the kitchen. "Have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"That means I can buy high heels," Jack said, rubbing his hands.
"Absolutely not. I'm the girl, I get to have the nicest shoes," Gwen told him. "Go on. Bring lunch back."
Ianto followed Jack past her, out into the world outside Torchwood, into Cardiff. Cardiff was theirs to protect, and if they didn't always save everyone, then they at least saved what they could. They deserved what they could get in the way of joy as recompense.
Jack glanced at him, reached out, and took his hand. A couple of people turned to look at them as they walked. Yes, well, Torchwood. No labels, no shame, no fear. Everyone died someday, so he'd better make the most of it.
Ianto didn't let go of Jack's hand.
END
When a Captain trim and neat
Wants to slip me something sweet,
Then his sweets mean we must meet by Cardiff Bay,
And I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion;
Yes I'm always true to you, darling, in my way.
Ella Fitzgerald - Always True | Sendspace mirror