TW: Ghost Story (PG-13) 17/18
Title: Ghost Story 17/18
Author:
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing and Characters: Jack/Ianto, The Doctor, Torchwood, the other Torchwood, OCs, A THOUSAND ELEPHANTS, et cetera.
Length: 70,000
Spoilers: Oh, let's say the whole Rusty era of DW+TW, just to be safe.
Ghost Story
by Mad Maudlin
17. eye and knocking heart
I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while; in a way, that was a blessing. I needed that time to become an I, to sort out the different bits of myself that had suddenly come crashing together. The parts that knew how a body worked and the part that knew how Time worked. The parts that had never had a heart of his own and the part that didn't know what to do with two of them. The parts that were human and the parts that were ghost.
I was Eiron of Gallifrey, sure. But I was also Ianto Jones. I was, singular and whole, but also the sum of my parts. Think of it like one of those optical illusions, the figure and the ground, where sometimes you're looking at two faces and sometimes a single cup. Or the one with the hag and the pretty girl, the drawing of two people-that's far more appropriate. I was a single set of lines that just happened to make two extremely different people, depending on the way you chose to look-but the lines themselves always remain the same.
(I'm also fairly certain that a purely human brain would've exploded from the strain of it all, so don't worry if it doesn't make sense to you.)
So I drifted, and occasionally dreamed, and tried to put myself together. I was aware of people around me, but I wasn't very communicative-too easily distracted by memories and sensations and shiny objects. I knew I was moved at least twice, but I didn't recognize anyone or anything. I didn't have the energy or concentration to climb out of bed, much less carry on a conversation, though as I recall I attempted both. Time passed, but I couldn't do much more than pass with it, surfing the hours as I came together at the seams.
-\-\-\-\-\-
And then one morning I woke up clear-headed and calm. There wasn't anything gradual about it; if my arms and legs still felt like cooked spaghetti, well, I'd been bedridden, and mostly dead before that. And if my mind wasn't exactly functioning at full speed-if I was still liable to get distracted by a shiny object-it had more to do with the sheer newness of everything than any major malfunctions in my psychological makeup. Well, mostly.
I sat up and took my bearings: I was in a small, windowless room that locked from the outside, shabby but clean. My bed took up most of the space, but there was a table and chairs pushed against the wall, and a surveillance camera in a ceiling corner, winking at me. Whoever had brought me here had set up an IV and a forest of monitors, including two EKGs, one on either side of my chest. When I started pulling off leads, all the machines burst into shrill alarms.
A moment later, the door unlocked and two soldiers burst in-one had a rifle and one had a syringe. They stopped short when they saw me sitting up. "Er, hello," I said, and had to clear my throat; I had a feeling about four or five days had passed. "Could one of you perhaps get me some trousers?"
-\-\-\-\-\-
They brought me a set of loose scrubs and paper slippers, which at least enabled me to get to the toilet across the hall and back. They brought me a meal on a tray, which I managed to eat most of, though my stomach felt rather dubious about the whole "food" idea at first. And, thus fortified, they brought me a visitor, one who I recognized immediately.
"Ashton Down," I said aloud, the moment I saw the woman who'd sealed Jack in concrete. "How did I end up here again?"
"I assure you, Mr. Jones, this time around, you're here for your own protection." She sat down across the table from me. "I don't know about Torchwood, but in London we tend to notice when the dead don't stay where they're put."
Somebody had brought me coffee, which wasn't very good-by which I mean it wasn't very good coffee, and I probably shouldn't have been drinking it in my current condition. I set my cup aside and tried to look her in the eye, tried to look confident. I may have pulled off slightly mad. "And to what do I owe that act of kindness, Ms....?"
"Agent. Agent Johnson." She poured her own cup of coffee from the carafe, and while her voice was level, she also was looking at her drink and not me. "I suppose you could say it was a favor to the man who saved the world."
It too me a moment to realize she wasn't talking about me. "You mean Jack? He did it?"
She nodded, still not looking up. "He found a means to drive them off. For good, it seems, though I'm sure that's what they thought the last time."
"Is he here?" I asked without thinking. A part of me knew that he wasn't-the same part with a sense of the turning Earth knew that Jack was nowhere nearby, though I couldn't have explained quite how. But now that I was thinking clearly, I wanted to see him, knew I needed to see him and tell him everything that had happened, had been happening his whole life. I wanted to see him and touch him and hear his voice, not sobbing or grieving, one more time.
Johnson took a deep breath. "Captain Harkness sacrificed his grandson's life to repel the 456. He left this facility late Friday afternoon. His current whereabouts are unknown."
Steven. I flinched away from the thought of it. Part of me hadn't known he existed until a few days ago, but the other part-I had watched him grow up, bought him bicycles and Lego blocks, held him in my arms. I remembered it all so clearly, memories drawn straight from Jack's mind, as if I'd been the one to carry him on my back and call him soldier. Not quite ten years old. Never to make it that far.
And Jack, Jack who had already been weighed down with enough grief and guilt for ten lifetimes, who'd blown up not so long ago, and been buried alive for a second time, which was twice too often for any one man...of course he'd disappear, after doing something like that. Of course he'd run off to wallow, hide, lick his wounds. I couldn't really blame him. "What about...what about me?" I asked, rubbing my eyes. "Does he know I'm...?"
She shook her head. "I didn't get the report myself until late Friday evening. You apparently revolutionized the life of several low-ranking officers at a military hospital, and arrangements were made to transfer you to a more secure facility."
I looked around the grim gray room, barely more than a cell itself. "I take it you made certain I didn't get there?"
"My men have removed all the documentary evidence," she said. "There's not a scrap of paper or a pixel of data to show that you were among those taken out of Thames House."
"Except for the bit where we were being broadcast live to the Prime Minister," I pointed out.
"I doubt anyone is interested in discussing much of what they did or saw these past few days," she said dryly. "The spin machine is in full swing, just like all the incidents before now. Mass repression."
I toyed with my coffee cup for a bit. It was still halfway a marvel to live in a body I could move and control, halfway a marvel to be moving and breathing at all. "So what happens now?" I asked her, watching my own hands, the flexing of tendons and bones.
She watched me for a moment, and then put two plastic bags on the table. One held my clothes, the clothes I'd died in, and the other a jumble of my things. "You were never here," she said quietly. "A helicopter is waiting to take you to Cardiff, or wherever you'd prefer to go."
I blinked at her, probably looking rather stupid. "Just like that? You'll let me go?"
She looked back at her coffee. "In the past week, I have shot one of my own agents, killed the same man three times over, watched my government offer up children to aliens and then helped kill a child to stop them. I took an oath to protect the state, once, and suddenly I find that oath...open to interpretation."
I could sympathize, I really could. "Thank you," I told her, and even meant it.
She stood up, but hesitated. "I've read the Sullivan Papers, Mr. Jones," she said. "I know what it means when a man has two hearts and a tendency to glow in the dark."
"Do you," I said, grabbing the second bag and tearing open the bar-code sticker that sealed it. The watch was inside, cold and quiescent, nothing but a piece of machinery now. I still couldn't open the damn thing.
"But as I said, you were never here," she continued. "So there's nothing for me to report to my superiors at the moment."
I supposed it was the most I could expect from her, a favor and a warning in one. "We all have our duties," I said. "Though if you're ever looking to relocate to Cardiff..."
That drew a small, bitter laugh out of her. "I don't think so, Mr. Jones. I've had my fill of aliens for the time being."
I pulled my mobile out of the plastic bag and switched it on; there was hardly any battery left. For a few moments I thought about trying to ring Jack-but no, if he really wanted to go to ground it would take more than a phone call to dig him out again. Besides, now that I thought about it rationally, if I talked to him, I would have explain it all. And when I explained-after the week he'd had, after such a long time--
Better to leave him be, for now. Letting him think me dead for a while longer couldn't exactly make things worse. Besides, there was someone else I needed to speak to almost as badly.
I dialed, and the phone rang twice...three times...connected. "Hello?"
My mouth had suddenly gone dry, and I fought the urge to cough into the phone. "Hi, Rhi," I said awkwardly "Listen. There's, uh, there's been a mistake..."
-\-\-\-\-\-
I'm sure you can imagine how the conversation with Rhiannon went. Talking to Gwen was little better, with fewer hysterics but more active suspicion; once I was done reciting every password I'd ever used in Torchwood, though, we worked out a story to explain why I'd been "falsely" reported dead. It was n't a very good story, but it would at least work for Rhiannon and Johnny, who were the only ones who really needed to know.
"But Ianto, I saw you with my own eyes," Gwen said. "How is this possible?"
"I promise, I'll tell you everything when I get there," I said. "It's...a bit complicated. Have you been in touch with Martha at all?"
"Yeah, she's stuck in New York with a bunch of screaming generals right now, but she's on her way to Cardiff next thing." She sighed. "She's offered to help...you know...clean up properly."
"Well, God knows we're going to need it."
One of Johnson's men showed me to a room of showers and left me there with a toothbrush, a razor and a towel. I cleaned myself up and then spent a few moments looking into the dented steel mirror; just looking. Time Lords were supposed to change their appearance when they regenerated, or so I always understood, but my face hadn't changed; the cuts and bruises from the explosion had healed, but that was about it. Though of course, I was a unique case, what with the Chameleon Arch thing and the body-swapping thing and the dead thing. There probably weren't any rules for things like me.
I studied my face for a long time, just getting used to it being my face looking back at me. Even knowing that Jack's body was originally mine didn't mean I'd ever thought of his face as my own, but it was the one I'd been living in for such a long time...and really, his memories were as much a part of me as my own, another piece of my puzzle.
Ianto, Eiron, and Jack. The Three-Fold Man, like I said before.
Except, if in some sense I was Jack, then why did I miss him so badly?
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
I'd asked Rhi to meet me at the heliport, and she was there with both the kids and, for some reason, Gwen. I saw her hand fly to her mouth as soon as I climbed out, but she managed not to break towards me until I was safely away from the helicopter.
Of course, when she did run to me she caught me in a bear hug and started sobbing into my shoulder. I held her back, but I'd already said my last words to her, back in London; I couldn't think of anything more intelligent to say than, "Hey. I'm here."
She pulled herself together enough to say, viciously, "You bastard," but didn't let go.
"I'm sorry," I told her. "I really am. For all of it."
"You're the worst brother in the world," she added.
"What if I gave you twenty quid?"
She laughed, sounding a little hysterical, and finally pulled her face up to look at me. Definitely not the first tears today; her eyes were red and she wasn't wearing mascara. "Oh, god, Ianto..."
"I know." I gave her a squeeze, and yes, it was good to see her again-nothing like an alien invasion to bring a family closer together. But I also couldn't help but wonder if she was going to notice a certain irregularity in my heartbeat. That thought forced me to step back, and turn to the others, though Rhi kept a vise-grip on my arm and I let her.
I wasn't sure what to expect from the kids, but Mica, apparently taking her mum's example, seized me around the legs as held on tight. David was much too cool for that, but he did approach me without sticking a hand out for cash. "Dad got arrested," he declared.
"What for?" I asked Rhi.
"Standing up to those soldiers," she said. "They're the ones who sent him to the hospital, though, aren't they?"
"Are you a spy?" David asked.
"No," I said. "Mica, love, could you let go?"
She looked up at me. "I scared the bad men away."
"That's...really good." Jack might've been a part of me, but I still didn't have his easy manner with children. I wasn't sure if I should pick her up or bribe her to let go.
Thankfully, Gwen rescued me. "Come on, love, let's get Uncle Ianto into the car before he falls over," she said, and briefly made eye contact with me. "He's just got out of hospital himself, you know."
"Mum said you were dead," David said.
"Even mums make mistakes," I said.
Rhiannon laughed shakily. "Don't start that, now, they don't listen to me anyway..." She pried Mica loose and hefted her up. "Gwen here gave us a ride, seeing as you lost Johnny's car and all."
"I didn't lose it," I said, although I realized I also hadn't asked Agent Johnson what had become of it. I looked at Gwen; she shrugged. Two lost cars in the space of five days was probably some kind of record. "I'll get it back," I promised.
Gwen hugged me, too, briefly, and then steered me into the back of the car with the kids. "Come on, get in. D'you want to go back to yours, or--?"
"He's coming home with us," Rhi said as she helped Mica with her seatbelt. "I'm not letting this one out of my sight, not after this weekend."
Gwen caught my eye again, but I shook my head; I had put Rhiannon through hell this week, and there are lots of ways to atone. "I'll be fine," I said out loud. "Rhi's cooking hasn't killed anyone yet."
David and Mica giggled. Rhi rolled her eyes at me. Gwen just gave me a skeptical smile and got behind the wheel. "If you're sure, then," she said.
"Right now I feel like I'm going to sleep for the rest of the week," I said. "So it doesn't much matter where I do it. I'll catch you up later."
And to prove my point, I ended up falling asleep in the car on the way there, halfway through a rambling update on everything I'd missed since the disaster at Thames House. And again, on the couch, after a bone-crushing hug from Johnny ("Hey, big hero! Where's my car?") and tea that Rhi all but forced down my throat. I'd had a rough day five days. I think naps were allowed.
I woke up with Mica sprawled across me to watch Blue Peter. She said, "Hi," without taking her eyes off the screen, after I attempted and failed to move.
"Hi yourself," I said. "Where is everyone?"
"David went to the Singhs to play Halo and Mum and Dad went with Aunt Gwen to get your car 'cause you lost Dad's car," she said. "I'm s'posed to keep an eye on you."
I pointed out, "You're six."
Mica nodded, still not looking at me.
I at least got her to shift to a mutually agreeable position, and we watched the end of the program together. When the adverts came on, it was like a switch flipped; she squirmed around in my lap until she was facing me. "Your chest sounds funny," she declared.
"How do you mean?" I asked, but then she poked me on the right side, making a ump ump ump noise deep in her throat. "Oh. That's...because I've been sick."
"Oh." She studied me with a solemn expression that made her look...not older, because she was so tiny, but timeless. Definitely more serious than a six-year-old should ever be. "Mum said you saved the world."
I tried not to flinch, because when the world had really needed saving I'd been clinically dead. "Your mum also said I was dead," I pointed out. "Mums make mistakes sometimes."
"Then who saved it?" Mica asked, eyes wide.
"A friend of mine."
"Was it your boyfriend?"
I swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat, even as I retroactively cursed Rhiannon and her sense of timing. "No," I said. Stopped, thought about it. "No, actually...it was a boy. A little boy David's age. His name was Steven."
"Oh," she said again, still looking solemn. Then she curled up against my chest again, resting her head between my hearts, and I let her. Steven's death had saved her life, after all, and David's and millions of others; at least some of them should know his name.
-\-\-\-\-\-
I explained things to Rhi and Johnny, when the kids were in bed, as little as I could get away with. And I told them that up front. "There's a reason we keep it all a secret. Several reasons. You saw some of them last week. I'm not going to tell you anything that I think might put you in danger."
"It's our kids they was taking," Johnny said. "Don't we deserve to know what's going on?"
"Maybe," I said. "But that doesn't mean it's safe to tell you. And honestly, in my experience, people are happier not knowing."
"And the kids are happy eating pizza for every meal, but that doesn't mean we let them," Rhi said.
"I just need you to trust me," I said.
They both looked at me like I was speaking Japanese. "Ianto, we had soldiers in our house looking for you, people were spying on us and you stole my car," Johnny said, squinting through a pair of black eyes. "If we didn't still trust you, we wouldn't have let you in, would we?"
"That's extremely touching, thank you," I told him.
"Oh, don't start, you two," Rhi said. She poured more coffee. "Just tell us what you can, okay? I don't think that's asking much."
So I told them I wasn't really a civil servant, but I didn't say Torchwood. I told them that Jack was missing but I didn't tell them why. And I convinced them that aliens exist, but I didn't go so far as to admit I was one. After all, that sort of thing had gone so well for Jack so many times in the past, hadn't it? I'll have to tell them something eventually, of course-in weeks or months or maybe even years to come. I might even tell them the truth. But just then, I couldn't bring myself to upset the fragile peace we'd come to, especially considering what it had nearly cost. I didn't want to burn that bridge before I came to it.
Instead I spent the next few days napping excessively, and helping Rhiannon stuff envelopes, and calling London in search of Johnny's car. I didn't critique Rhi's cooking or argue with Johnny or complain about the neighbors (much). I even let David try to teach me Wii Sports, with roughly the consequences to my dignity one might expect. In short, I made an effort to actually get to know my family. I wanted to make the most of the time we had.
-\-\-\-\-\-
And then Martha arrived, and it was time to talk.
We met up at the hotel, because Gwen claimed she still didn't feel safe at home, no matter how many times she swept the place for bugs. "As if we needed more to worry about in this job, after the aliens and monsters and whatnot," she sighed. "At least those don't tend to follow us home."
"Well, not with compact microphones," I pointed out.
Rhys came with us, which I could hardly object to when he also brought coffees, and Martha gave hugs all around as soon as we came to her room. "I'm so, so sorry," was the first thing she said.
"There wasn't anything you could do," Gwen said. "Don't go blaming yourself."
"I'm the one who insisted on a honeymoon without mobiles," Martha said, and dragged a couple chairs over to the end of the bed so we could all sit down. "And I also mean that UNIT officially apologizes for the mishandling of the situation. Never thought I'd say I missed Colonel Mace, did I?"
She caught us up on everything that had happened on UNIT's end, and their follow-up projects-mostly trying to figure out how the 456 had hidden their ship, if they'd actually had one, or how they'd got here if they hadn't. We caught her up on everything starting from the bomb to our brilliant plan to confront them. "Jack thought they were bluffing," I explained. "Shock and awe and all that. He figured they needed us to round up the kids for them and wouldn't be stupid enough to destroy the same resource they were trying to harvest."
"It wasn't a bluff, though," Martha said.
I had a sudden, visceral memory of gasping on the floor, numb hands, numb feet, strong enough that I had to shut my eyes against it. "No."
There was silence. When I opened my eyes again, all three of them were looking at me. "What happened, Ianto?" Gwen asked quietly.
I let out the breathe I'd been holding. "It's complicated."
"You said that before," she said, insistent without being strident. "You said you'd explain, too, and I've been waiting all week."
She didn't say I deserve to know, but she could've. She did. I took a deep breath and fished the pocket watch out of my waistcoat. "Okay. Martha, I think you know what this is."
She took it from me, turned it over, and blurted, "Oh, no."
"What?" Gwen asked, eyes going wide.
Martha's eyes flicked rapidly between me and the watch, as if one of the two were going to suddenly mutate while she wasn't looking. "I swear, I'm going to start searching people for these things," she muttered.
"What is it?" Rhys asked. "It looks like just a fob watch."
"It is, sort of," Martha said. She held it up by the chain, like a hypnotist. "It's part of a machine called a Chameleon Arch-Time Lord technology, the Doctor's people. It sort of...aliens can use it to disguise themselves as humans."
Everyone's eyes snapped over to me. "Are you saying you've secretly been an alien this entire time?" Gwen demanded.
"No, I'm saying Jack's secretly been an alien this entire time." Three pairs of eyes bulged terrifyingly wife. I sipped my coffee. "I did say it was complicated."
To them, I explained everything. Well, almost everything. Some secrets weren't really mine to tell, and some were still too close to the surface, and some were so hard to explain that I glossed them over instead of getting bogged down in the details. I referred to myself in the third person a lot, for lack of more adequate pronouns. I used gestures.
And in the roaring silence when I was done, among the wide eyes and slightly open mouths, I added, "I'm still me, you know. Still Ianto. Just, I also happen to be an alien who's been living in Jack's pocket for two thousand years, so if some of this didn't make sense, it's not my fault." I quickly slurped my coffee to stop myself rambling on even more.
"Hold on," Martha said, and went into one of her bags. She came up with a stethoscope. Without being asked, I unbuttoned my jacket and waistcoat so she could listen to my chest, one side and then the other, frowning a little with concentration. When she had finished, she sat back and exhaled sharply. "Two hearts," she announced. "Only one kind of alien that I know of fits that description."
"Well, shit," was Gwen's succinct answer. She was staring at me-she and Rhys both were-and I didn't blame them. I concentrated on buttoning up my waistcoat again, not sure what I was meant to say to that. I had the absurd urge to apologize.
Martha filled the silence, though, so I didn't have to. "So, if you're...I mean, can you tell us where Jack is?" she asked. "Because UNIT's set up a trace and found nothing at all."
"I have some of his memories," I said. "Not everything. Nothing after the bombing, really. And after that...I don't think we'll find him unless he wants to be found." And he might not want that, not right now. At least he didn't have his wrist strap with him, which ensured he wouldn't be teleporting anywhere, but short of that...well, Earth was a large planet, and he'd had a five-day head start.
"Rhiannon doesn't know, does she?" Gwen suddenly asked. "About you."
I shook my head. "I haven't told her, no. I'm not planning to."
"So why'd you tell us?" Rhys asked.
"You deserve to know what happened," I said. "And...if there's still going to be a Torchwood after all this, you need to know."
Martha frowned. "You don't really think this is the end of Torchwood, do you?"
"Jack's gone, the Hub's gone, I've had an abrupt change of species and Gwen...may not want to stay on much longer," I said.
"I'm pregnant," Gwen translated, chin raised. "And the next person who says I can't do this job and be a mum is going to get kicked."
"We've been talking about it," Rhys said, and took Gwen's hand in a show of solidarity. "Probably leave me bald before I'm forty, but knowing what's out there..."
"Unless you want to quit?" Gwen asked me. "After...all this?"
I blinked at her. Of all the possible questions she could've asked me- "No," I said. "No, of course not." Whatever it my say about my mental health, I couldn't imagine leaving Torchwood-not after two years, not after two thousand. In all honesty, I'd been more afraid of Torchwood leaving me.
"Then we're settled," Gwen said, and grabbed my hand with her free one. "We're going to put Torchwood back together, we're going to keep doing our jobs, and we're going to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again," she said firmly. "And for the record, I don't care if you're a Weevil under that suit as long as you keep making the coffee, all right?"
"I think I can manage that," I said. I suppose after everything else we'd seen, I shouldn't have expected Gwen to be put off by a few revisions to my DNA; and even if her optimism rang a bit false, even if it was nothing but empty rhetoric, the fact that she said the words at all meant something. It gave me a starting point, a place to stand.
"What about Jack?" Martha asked. "Do you think he's going to come back?"
They all looked at me. In the spirit of empty rhetoric, I shrugged. "We've managed without him before. We'll manage again, if we have to."
Gwen squeezed my hand, smiling weakly at me. "Then let's get started."
Chapter One
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Eighteen
Author:
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing and Characters: Jack/Ianto, The Doctor, Torchwood, the other Torchwood, OCs, A THOUSAND ELEPHANTS, et cetera.
Length: 70,000
Spoilers: Oh, let's say the whole Rusty era of DW+TW, just to be safe.
Ghost Story
by Mad Maudlin
17. eye and knocking heart
I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while; in a way, that was a blessing. I needed that time to become an I, to sort out the different bits of myself that had suddenly come crashing together. The parts that knew how a body worked and the part that knew how Time worked. The parts that had never had a heart of his own and the part that didn't know what to do with two of them. The parts that were human and the parts that were ghost.
I was Eiron of Gallifrey, sure. But I was also Ianto Jones. I was, singular and whole, but also the sum of my parts. Think of it like one of those optical illusions, the figure and the ground, where sometimes you're looking at two faces and sometimes a single cup. Or the one with the hag and the pretty girl, the drawing of two people-that's far more appropriate. I was a single set of lines that just happened to make two extremely different people, depending on the way you chose to look-but the lines themselves always remain the same.
(I'm also fairly certain that a purely human brain would've exploded from the strain of it all, so don't worry if it doesn't make sense to you.)
So I drifted, and occasionally dreamed, and tried to put myself together. I was aware of people around me, but I wasn't very communicative-too easily distracted by memories and sensations and shiny objects. I knew I was moved at least twice, but I didn't recognize anyone or anything. I didn't have the energy or concentration to climb out of bed, much less carry on a conversation, though as I recall I attempted both. Time passed, but I couldn't do much more than pass with it, surfing the hours as I came together at the seams.
-\-\-\-\-\-
And then one morning I woke up clear-headed and calm. There wasn't anything gradual about it; if my arms and legs still felt like cooked spaghetti, well, I'd been bedridden, and mostly dead before that. And if my mind wasn't exactly functioning at full speed-if I was still liable to get distracted by a shiny object-it had more to do with the sheer newness of everything than any major malfunctions in my psychological makeup. Well, mostly.
I sat up and took my bearings: I was in a small, windowless room that locked from the outside, shabby but clean. My bed took up most of the space, but there was a table and chairs pushed against the wall, and a surveillance camera in a ceiling corner, winking at me. Whoever had brought me here had set up an IV and a forest of monitors, including two EKGs, one on either side of my chest. When I started pulling off leads, all the machines burst into shrill alarms.
A moment later, the door unlocked and two soldiers burst in-one had a rifle and one had a syringe. They stopped short when they saw me sitting up. "Er, hello," I said, and had to clear my throat; I had a feeling about four or five days had passed. "Could one of you perhaps get me some trousers?"
-\-\-\-\-\-
They brought me a set of loose scrubs and paper slippers, which at least enabled me to get to the toilet across the hall and back. They brought me a meal on a tray, which I managed to eat most of, though my stomach felt rather dubious about the whole "food" idea at first. And, thus fortified, they brought me a visitor, one who I recognized immediately.
"Ashton Down," I said aloud, the moment I saw the woman who'd sealed Jack in concrete. "How did I end up here again?"
"I assure you, Mr. Jones, this time around, you're here for your own protection." She sat down across the table from me. "I don't know about Torchwood, but in London we tend to notice when the dead don't stay where they're put."
Somebody had brought me coffee, which wasn't very good-by which I mean it wasn't very good coffee, and I probably shouldn't have been drinking it in my current condition. I set my cup aside and tried to look her in the eye, tried to look confident. I may have pulled off slightly mad. "And to what do I owe that act of kindness, Ms....?"
"Agent. Agent Johnson." She poured her own cup of coffee from the carafe, and while her voice was level, she also was looking at her drink and not me. "I suppose you could say it was a favor to the man who saved the world."
It too me a moment to realize she wasn't talking about me. "You mean Jack? He did it?"
She nodded, still not looking up. "He found a means to drive them off. For good, it seems, though I'm sure that's what they thought the last time."
"Is he here?" I asked without thinking. A part of me knew that he wasn't-the same part with a sense of the turning Earth knew that Jack was nowhere nearby, though I couldn't have explained quite how. But now that I was thinking clearly, I wanted to see him, knew I needed to see him and tell him everything that had happened, had been happening his whole life. I wanted to see him and touch him and hear his voice, not sobbing or grieving, one more time.
Johnson took a deep breath. "Captain Harkness sacrificed his grandson's life to repel the 456. He left this facility late Friday afternoon. His current whereabouts are unknown."
Steven. I flinched away from the thought of it. Part of me hadn't known he existed until a few days ago, but the other part-I had watched him grow up, bought him bicycles and Lego blocks, held him in my arms. I remembered it all so clearly, memories drawn straight from Jack's mind, as if I'd been the one to carry him on my back and call him soldier. Not quite ten years old. Never to make it that far.
And Jack, Jack who had already been weighed down with enough grief and guilt for ten lifetimes, who'd blown up not so long ago, and been buried alive for a second time, which was twice too often for any one man...of course he'd disappear, after doing something like that. Of course he'd run off to wallow, hide, lick his wounds. I couldn't really blame him. "What about...what about me?" I asked, rubbing my eyes. "Does he know I'm...?"
She shook her head. "I didn't get the report myself until late Friday evening. You apparently revolutionized the life of several low-ranking officers at a military hospital, and arrangements were made to transfer you to a more secure facility."
I looked around the grim gray room, barely more than a cell itself. "I take it you made certain I didn't get there?"
"My men have removed all the documentary evidence," she said. "There's not a scrap of paper or a pixel of data to show that you were among those taken out of Thames House."
"Except for the bit where we were being broadcast live to the Prime Minister," I pointed out.
"I doubt anyone is interested in discussing much of what they did or saw these past few days," she said dryly. "The spin machine is in full swing, just like all the incidents before now. Mass repression."
I toyed with my coffee cup for a bit. It was still halfway a marvel to live in a body I could move and control, halfway a marvel to be moving and breathing at all. "So what happens now?" I asked her, watching my own hands, the flexing of tendons and bones.
She watched me for a moment, and then put two plastic bags on the table. One held my clothes, the clothes I'd died in, and the other a jumble of my things. "You were never here," she said quietly. "A helicopter is waiting to take you to Cardiff, or wherever you'd prefer to go."
I blinked at her, probably looking rather stupid. "Just like that? You'll let me go?"
She looked back at her coffee. "In the past week, I have shot one of my own agents, killed the same man three times over, watched my government offer up children to aliens and then helped kill a child to stop them. I took an oath to protect the state, once, and suddenly I find that oath...open to interpretation."
I could sympathize, I really could. "Thank you," I told her, and even meant it.
She stood up, but hesitated. "I've read the Sullivan Papers, Mr. Jones," she said. "I know what it means when a man has two hearts and a tendency to glow in the dark."
"Do you," I said, grabbing the second bag and tearing open the bar-code sticker that sealed it. The watch was inside, cold and quiescent, nothing but a piece of machinery now. I still couldn't open the damn thing.
"But as I said, you were never here," she continued. "So there's nothing for me to report to my superiors at the moment."
I supposed it was the most I could expect from her, a favor and a warning in one. "We all have our duties," I said. "Though if you're ever looking to relocate to Cardiff..."
That drew a small, bitter laugh out of her. "I don't think so, Mr. Jones. I've had my fill of aliens for the time being."
I pulled my mobile out of the plastic bag and switched it on; there was hardly any battery left. For a few moments I thought about trying to ring Jack-but no, if he really wanted to go to ground it would take more than a phone call to dig him out again. Besides, now that I thought about it rationally, if I talked to him, I would have explain it all. And when I explained-after the week he'd had, after such a long time--
Better to leave him be, for now. Letting him think me dead for a while longer couldn't exactly make things worse. Besides, there was someone else I needed to speak to almost as badly.
I dialed, and the phone rang twice...three times...connected. "Hello?"
My mouth had suddenly gone dry, and I fought the urge to cough into the phone. "Hi, Rhi," I said awkwardly "Listen. There's, uh, there's been a mistake..."
-\-\-\-\-\-
I'm sure you can imagine how the conversation with Rhiannon went. Talking to Gwen was little better, with fewer hysterics but more active suspicion; once I was done reciting every password I'd ever used in Torchwood, though, we worked out a story to explain why I'd been "falsely" reported dead. It was n't a very good story, but it would at least work for Rhiannon and Johnny, who were the only ones who really needed to know.
"But Ianto, I saw you with my own eyes," Gwen said. "How is this possible?"
"I promise, I'll tell you everything when I get there," I said. "It's...a bit complicated. Have you been in touch with Martha at all?"
"Yeah, she's stuck in New York with a bunch of screaming generals right now, but she's on her way to Cardiff next thing." She sighed. "She's offered to help...you know...clean up properly."
"Well, God knows we're going to need it."
One of Johnson's men showed me to a room of showers and left me there with a toothbrush, a razor and a towel. I cleaned myself up and then spent a few moments looking into the dented steel mirror; just looking. Time Lords were supposed to change their appearance when they regenerated, or so I always understood, but my face hadn't changed; the cuts and bruises from the explosion had healed, but that was about it. Though of course, I was a unique case, what with the Chameleon Arch thing and the body-swapping thing and the dead thing. There probably weren't any rules for things like me.
I studied my face for a long time, just getting used to it being my face looking back at me. Even knowing that Jack's body was originally mine didn't mean I'd ever thought of his face as my own, but it was the one I'd been living in for such a long time...and really, his memories were as much a part of me as my own, another piece of my puzzle.
Ianto, Eiron, and Jack. The Three-Fold Man, like I said before.
Except, if in some sense I was Jack, then why did I miss him so badly?
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
I'd asked Rhi to meet me at the heliport, and she was there with both the kids and, for some reason, Gwen. I saw her hand fly to her mouth as soon as I climbed out, but she managed not to break towards me until I was safely away from the helicopter.
Of course, when she did run to me she caught me in a bear hug and started sobbing into my shoulder. I held her back, but I'd already said my last words to her, back in London; I couldn't think of anything more intelligent to say than, "Hey. I'm here."
She pulled herself together enough to say, viciously, "You bastard," but didn't let go.
"I'm sorry," I told her. "I really am. For all of it."
"You're the worst brother in the world," she added.
"What if I gave you twenty quid?"
She laughed, sounding a little hysterical, and finally pulled her face up to look at me. Definitely not the first tears today; her eyes were red and she wasn't wearing mascara. "Oh, god, Ianto..."
"I know." I gave her a squeeze, and yes, it was good to see her again-nothing like an alien invasion to bring a family closer together. But I also couldn't help but wonder if she was going to notice a certain irregularity in my heartbeat. That thought forced me to step back, and turn to the others, though Rhi kept a vise-grip on my arm and I let her.
I wasn't sure what to expect from the kids, but Mica, apparently taking her mum's example, seized me around the legs as held on tight. David was much too cool for that, but he did approach me without sticking a hand out for cash. "Dad got arrested," he declared.
"What for?" I asked Rhi.
"Standing up to those soldiers," she said. "They're the ones who sent him to the hospital, though, aren't they?"
"Are you a spy?" David asked.
"No," I said. "Mica, love, could you let go?"
She looked up at me. "I scared the bad men away."
"That's...really good." Jack might've been a part of me, but I still didn't have his easy manner with children. I wasn't sure if I should pick her up or bribe her to let go.
Thankfully, Gwen rescued me. "Come on, love, let's get Uncle Ianto into the car before he falls over," she said, and briefly made eye contact with me. "He's just got out of hospital himself, you know."
"Mum said you were dead," David said.
"Even mums make mistakes," I said.
Rhiannon laughed shakily. "Don't start that, now, they don't listen to me anyway..." She pried Mica loose and hefted her up. "Gwen here gave us a ride, seeing as you lost Johnny's car and all."
"I didn't lose it," I said, although I realized I also hadn't asked Agent Johnson what had become of it. I looked at Gwen; she shrugged. Two lost cars in the space of five days was probably some kind of record. "I'll get it back," I promised.
Gwen hugged me, too, briefly, and then steered me into the back of the car with the kids. "Come on, get in. D'you want to go back to yours, or--?"
"He's coming home with us," Rhi said as she helped Mica with her seatbelt. "I'm not letting this one out of my sight, not after this weekend."
Gwen caught my eye again, but I shook my head; I had put Rhiannon through hell this week, and there are lots of ways to atone. "I'll be fine," I said out loud. "Rhi's cooking hasn't killed anyone yet."
David and Mica giggled. Rhi rolled her eyes at me. Gwen just gave me a skeptical smile and got behind the wheel. "If you're sure, then," she said.
"Right now I feel like I'm going to sleep for the rest of the week," I said. "So it doesn't much matter where I do it. I'll catch you up later."
And to prove my point, I ended up falling asleep in the car on the way there, halfway through a rambling update on everything I'd missed since the disaster at Thames House. And again, on the couch, after a bone-crushing hug from Johnny ("Hey, big hero! Where's my car?") and tea that Rhi all but forced down my throat. I'd had a rough day five days. I think naps were allowed.
I woke up with Mica sprawled across me to watch Blue Peter. She said, "Hi," without taking her eyes off the screen, after I attempted and failed to move.
"Hi yourself," I said. "Where is everyone?"
"David went to the Singhs to play Halo and Mum and Dad went with Aunt Gwen to get your car 'cause you lost Dad's car," she said. "I'm s'posed to keep an eye on you."
I pointed out, "You're six."
Mica nodded, still not looking at me.
I at least got her to shift to a mutually agreeable position, and we watched the end of the program together. When the adverts came on, it was like a switch flipped; she squirmed around in my lap until she was facing me. "Your chest sounds funny," she declared.
"How do you mean?" I asked, but then she poked me on the right side, making a ump ump ump noise deep in her throat. "Oh. That's...because I've been sick."
"Oh." She studied me with a solemn expression that made her look...not older, because she was so tiny, but timeless. Definitely more serious than a six-year-old should ever be. "Mum said you saved the world."
I tried not to flinch, because when the world had really needed saving I'd been clinically dead. "Your mum also said I was dead," I pointed out. "Mums make mistakes sometimes."
"Then who saved it?" Mica asked, eyes wide.
"A friend of mine."
"Was it your boyfriend?"
I swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat, even as I retroactively cursed Rhiannon and her sense of timing. "No," I said. Stopped, thought about it. "No, actually...it was a boy. A little boy David's age. His name was Steven."
"Oh," she said again, still looking solemn. Then she curled up against my chest again, resting her head between my hearts, and I let her. Steven's death had saved her life, after all, and David's and millions of others; at least some of them should know his name.
-\-\-\-\-\-
I explained things to Rhi and Johnny, when the kids were in bed, as little as I could get away with. And I told them that up front. "There's a reason we keep it all a secret. Several reasons. You saw some of them last week. I'm not going to tell you anything that I think might put you in danger."
"It's our kids they was taking," Johnny said. "Don't we deserve to know what's going on?"
"Maybe," I said. "But that doesn't mean it's safe to tell you. And honestly, in my experience, people are happier not knowing."
"And the kids are happy eating pizza for every meal, but that doesn't mean we let them," Rhi said.
"I just need you to trust me," I said.
They both looked at me like I was speaking Japanese. "Ianto, we had soldiers in our house looking for you, people were spying on us and you stole my car," Johnny said, squinting through a pair of black eyes. "If we didn't still trust you, we wouldn't have let you in, would we?"
"That's extremely touching, thank you," I told him.
"Oh, don't start, you two," Rhi said. She poured more coffee. "Just tell us what you can, okay? I don't think that's asking much."
So I told them I wasn't really a civil servant, but I didn't say Torchwood. I told them that Jack was missing but I didn't tell them why. And I convinced them that aliens exist, but I didn't go so far as to admit I was one. After all, that sort of thing had gone so well for Jack so many times in the past, hadn't it? I'll have to tell them something eventually, of course-in weeks or months or maybe even years to come. I might even tell them the truth. But just then, I couldn't bring myself to upset the fragile peace we'd come to, especially considering what it had nearly cost. I didn't want to burn that bridge before I came to it.
Instead I spent the next few days napping excessively, and helping Rhiannon stuff envelopes, and calling London in search of Johnny's car. I didn't critique Rhi's cooking or argue with Johnny or complain about the neighbors (much). I even let David try to teach me Wii Sports, with roughly the consequences to my dignity one might expect. In short, I made an effort to actually get to know my family. I wanted to make the most of the time we had.
-\-\-\-\-\-
And then Martha arrived, and it was time to talk.
We met up at the hotel, because Gwen claimed she still didn't feel safe at home, no matter how many times she swept the place for bugs. "As if we needed more to worry about in this job, after the aliens and monsters and whatnot," she sighed. "At least those don't tend to follow us home."
"Well, not with compact microphones," I pointed out.
Rhys came with us, which I could hardly object to when he also brought coffees, and Martha gave hugs all around as soon as we came to her room. "I'm so, so sorry," was the first thing she said.
"There wasn't anything you could do," Gwen said. "Don't go blaming yourself."
"I'm the one who insisted on a honeymoon without mobiles," Martha said, and dragged a couple chairs over to the end of the bed so we could all sit down. "And I also mean that UNIT officially apologizes for the mishandling of the situation. Never thought I'd say I missed Colonel Mace, did I?"
She caught us up on everything that had happened on UNIT's end, and their follow-up projects-mostly trying to figure out how the 456 had hidden their ship, if they'd actually had one, or how they'd got here if they hadn't. We caught her up on everything starting from the bomb to our brilliant plan to confront them. "Jack thought they were bluffing," I explained. "Shock and awe and all that. He figured they needed us to round up the kids for them and wouldn't be stupid enough to destroy the same resource they were trying to harvest."
"It wasn't a bluff, though," Martha said.
I had a sudden, visceral memory of gasping on the floor, numb hands, numb feet, strong enough that I had to shut my eyes against it. "No."
There was silence. When I opened my eyes again, all three of them were looking at me. "What happened, Ianto?" Gwen asked quietly.
I let out the breathe I'd been holding. "It's complicated."
"You said that before," she said, insistent without being strident. "You said you'd explain, too, and I've been waiting all week."
She didn't say I deserve to know, but she could've. She did. I took a deep breath and fished the pocket watch out of my waistcoat. "Okay. Martha, I think you know what this is."
She took it from me, turned it over, and blurted, "Oh, no."
"What?" Gwen asked, eyes going wide.
Martha's eyes flicked rapidly between me and the watch, as if one of the two were going to suddenly mutate while she wasn't looking. "I swear, I'm going to start searching people for these things," she muttered.
"What is it?" Rhys asked. "It looks like just a fob watch."
"It is, sort of," Martha said. She held it up by the chain, like a hypnotist. "It's part of a machine called a Chameleon Arch-Time Lord technology, the Doctor's people. It sort of...aliens can use it to disguise themselves as humans."
Everyone's eyes snapped over to me. "Are you saying you've secretly been an alien this entire time?" Gwen demanded.
"No, I'm saying Jack's secretly been an alien this entire time." Three pairs of eyes bulged terrifyingly wife. I sipped my coffee. "I did say it was complicated."
To them, I explained everything. Well, almost everything. Some secrets weren't really mine to tell, and some were still too close to the surface, and some were so hard to explain that I glossed them over instead of getting bogged down in the details. I referred to myself in the third person a lot, for lack of more adequate pronouns. I used gestures.
And in the roaring silence when I was done, among the wide eyes and slightly open mouths, I added, "I'm still me, you know. Still Ianto. Just, I also happen to be an alien who's been living in Jack's pocket for two thousand years, so if some of this didn't make sense, it's not my fault." I quickly slurped my coffee to stop myself rambling on even more.
"Hold on," Martha said, and went into one of her bags. She came up with a stethoscope. Without being asked, I unbuttoned my jacket and waistcoat so she could listen to my chest, one side and then the other, frowning a little with concentration. When she had finished, she sat back and exhaled sharply. "Two hearts," she announced. "Only one kind of alien that I know of fits that description."
"Well, shit," was Gwen's succinct answer. She was staring at me-she and Rhys both were-and I didn't blame them. I concentrated on buttoning up my waistcoat again, not sure what I was meant to say to that. I had the absurd urge to apologize.
Martha filled the silence, though, so I didn't have to. "So, if you're...I mean, can you tell us where Jack is?" she asked. "Because UNIT's set up a trace and found nothing at all."
"I have some of his memories," I said. "Not everything. Nothing after the bombing, really. And after that...I don't think we'll find him unless he wants to be found." And he might not want that, not right now. At least he didn't have his wrist strap with him, which ensured he wouldn't be teleporting anywhere, but short of that...well, Earth was a large planet, and he'd had a five-day head start.
"Rhiannon doesn't know, does she?" Gwen suddenly asked. "About you."
I shook my head. "I haven't told her, no. I'm not planning to."
"So why'd you tell us?" Rhys asked.
"You deserve to know what happened," I said. "And...if there's still going to be a Torchwood after all this, you need to know."
Martha frowned. "You don't really think this is the end of Torchwood, do you?"
"Jack's gone, the Hub's gone, I've had an abrupt change of species and Gwen...may not want to stay on much longer," I said.
"I'm pregnant," Gwen translated, chin raised. "And the next person who says I can't do this job and be a mum is going to get kicked."
"We've been talking about it," Rhys said, and took Gwen's hand in a show of solidarity. "Probably leave me bald before I'm forty, but knowing what's out there..."
"Unless you want to quit?" Gwen asked me. "After...all this?"
I blinked at her. Of all the possible questions she could've asked me- "No," I said. "No, of course not." Whatever it my say about my mental health, I couldn't imagine leaving Torchwood-not after two years, not after two thousand. In all honesty, I'd been more afraid of Torchwood leaving me.
"Then we're settled," Gwen said, and grabbed my hand with her free one. "We're going to put Torchwood back together, we're going to keep doing our jobs, and we're going to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again," she said firmly. "And for the record, I don't care if you're a Weevil under that suit as long as you keep making the coffee, all right?"
"I think I can manage that," I said. I suppose after everything else we'd seen, I shouldn't have expected Gwen to be put off by a few revisions to my DNA; and even if her optimism rang a bit false, even if it was nothing but empty rhetoric, the fact that she said the words at all meant something. It gave me a starting point, a place to stand.
"What about Jack?" Martha asked. "Do you think he's going to come back?"
They all looked at me. In the spirit of empty rhetoric, I shrugged. "We've managed without him before. We'll manage again, if we have to."
Gwen squeezed my hand, smiling weakly at me. "Then let's get started."
Chapter One
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Eighteen