Fic: Clarity (TW, J/I/L, Gold dust fic for askance)
Title: Clarity 2/2
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto/Lisa, Gwen, OCs
Rating: R for sex and violence
Wordcount: 18,000
Author's Notes: This was written for askance in the help_haiti auction. She requested the following: post Gold Dust - how did Pen come to be born with such a big gap between her and her brother? Or maybe how her birth changes the family dynamic. There you go. Thanks to blue_fjords for the awesome beta work.
Summary: Ianto wonders what Evan will call him when he feels too old to say "Daddy". 'Papa' isn't any more mature. He will probably switch to "Father". And it is too late to get Evan to call him "Tad", not when he already calls Jack "Dad". It's one of many things that he thinks he would like to do differently. Like say, with another kid.
Part One
IANTO:
He's on field duty today. He gets to drive down to Rhoose with Ravi, because they had made a schedule: he and Jack trade off days at the Hub, and today is Jack's day to stay close to home, just in case Lisa goes into labour. It is a good plan, and ensures that neither of them go stir crazy at the Hub, and also it splits their resources. Aside from Gwen, Ianto is senior field agent, and so it's only natural that he go out, just not with Jack, because with their luck, Lisa's water would break while they were scaling Snowden in search of the last Gleeph ship that crashed to Earth.
He likes field duty, he tells himself as his hands clench the steering wheel and he waits for Ravi to get back from the public toilets. Ravi had had fifteen cups of tea, and now he is making the trip long and boring with stops along the way. It's not like Rhoose is that far, but the traffic has been murder, and they are no closer to getting to the location of the readings.
Next time he's making him piss in a bottle.
Ravi opens the door and tumbles inside, tossing a bottle of Irn-Bru at Ianto. 'For you, the spoils of war.'
Ianto rolls his eyes, but he tucks the bottle in the cup holder. If they broke down in the country (just the thought of it makes his skin crawl), they'd be happy for any extra supplies, and a bottle of warm Irn-Bru special might make all the difference. Once he and Gwen had been stranded for three days in a small box (Really, that was all. A box outside of time and space) with just three Flake bars and a can of Lilt, so it wasn't as if he didn't have perspective on the idea.
Rhoose is a nice little village, but they're more concerned with what is going on underneath it. Ianto and Ravi strap on the stab vests, not because they're afraid of bullets, but more because they are worried about errant weevils, and those fuckers, as Ravi says, come out of nowhere. Claire has reminded them for the millionth time that if their torsos get cut in the sewers and then gangrenous, she'd have to amputate.
Doctor humour.
They find the sewer access and dive in, Ravi chattering away about their find. Potential find.
'The thing is off the charts in the blue line levels and in the particle disbursement,' he says and Ianto is thankful that he knows everything, otherwise he might have no idea what Ravi is talking about. 'The last time it blipped was about six hours ago, and it was a pulse, like-' Ravi flutters the hand that's empty and it bangs into a pipe, coming away grungy with something, and he stares at it. 'Oh Jesus,' he swears, wiping his hand on his stab vest. Ianto sighs. Oh it's not as if he isn't going to have to soak them in bleach and possibly run them through an industrial wash anyway.
'Do try to be careful,' Ianto reminds him, which is ridiculous, as Ravi has ten years of this under his belt. Well, close to it. Oh dear god, ten years, and Gwen has more and Ianto, well. If he were a betting man, he would say that someone was due for something nasty.
It's the sewer. The sewer always makes him twitchy and, as Jack usually says in his best good ol' boy voice, "all creepified and the like".
'So then like, the green light level on that scanner I cobbled together last year, and-holy fuck, man, this place reeks-it goes off and it's a good thing that I made it, because the Mainframe's pivotal sensors wouldn't have got it on this level.'
Ianto hands Ravi a torch and they start the slow walk through the sludge. Ianto hadn't even bothered wearing his wing tips out of the Hub; he'd put on jeans and wellies before he even walked out the door. Jack calls this his half-and-half, because he's still got the shirt and tie and waistcoat on. Ianto likes to think that way he looks official from the waist up, for all the times he stands behind counters or talks to security officers whilst sitting in the SUV. Stealth official.
'There's only one thing that registers even close to this from the files, so it could be one of them or something completely new,' Ravi says, choosing to bring the torch up to Ianto's face so that he can see him, but it's quite bright. 'Oh, sorry, mate.'
Ianto waves a hand and they start off. He'll follow Ravi for now. No reason not to.
'If I'm right, it's a Thropnsphere, and if it's corroded and it's still loaded-'
Ianto remembers the last one they had. A massive grenade built to take out what Jack called "Battle Cruisers" in a war that hasn't even happened yet, the Thropnsphere creates a small vacuum, like a black hole, and impacts everything in it's range into, well, just in. Imploding is the word Ianto would use. Jack had had a few words for it, but none of them had been useful.
'Does Jack know this theory of yours?' Ianto asks lightly, and Ravi ignores him, which means the answer is no. Ianto would have preferred to have his and Jack's situations switched for practical reasons, now. The last sphere they'd had had been old, detonators damaged on the trip through the rift, and Jack had wired it as best he could to reduce the range of the blast from three city blocks to about three feet and they'd set it off in the countryside. Ianto had never thought that dirt could do that, but the image of it blinking in and then showering out just a dusting, a mist when the dull whump of the implosion had sounded, made him wonder what it would have done to a live creature, to a spaceship, to the three block radius of Butetown where they'd found it.
Jack would agree. He should be here. Ianto thinks about making the call. It's the smart thing to do. Jack should be here. Ianto and Ravi could stay while Jack drives here, and then once he was on the scene, Ianto could return to the Hub and someone would be there for Lisa if need be. In a pinch, should the deed occur in that rare two-hour window, Rhys or Gwen could be with her. It wasn't like babies were born within the first two hours of the water breaking, anyway. No there has to be a twelve hour labour, so that on birthdays Lisa can drag out the "I was in agony with you for thirty-nine hours" speech. That is the way of things.
He reaches up to his comm and ignores Ravi's mumbling about a measurement in yards. If it's close enough to be using yards, then they should start searching. The sphere is the size of a bocce ball, a comparison he only makes because that had been what Tosh had said the last and only time they'd found one.
He dials not the Hub line, but the other one in his touch dial on the headset-Jack's personal line.
It rings three times and then picks up. 'Hey Ianto,' Jack says, a little breathless. Ianto opens his mouth to talk, but Jack doesn't give him a chance, as if he had been the one to call in the first place. 'Don't want to alarm you, but-'
He sucks in a breath. 'It's started.'
Jack pauses and Ianto can tell he's walking through a hospital because he can hear the noises-the talking people, the faint tinny loudspeaker overhead, Lisa mumbling in the background. 'Yeah, and wow, it's, wow, man. The kid wants out like, now.'
Lisa's been at two centimeters for the last week, despite not being due for another four days. Ianto hates birthing math, based on a lunar cycle that he knows way too much about because he catches space scum for a living.
'Centimeters?' Ianto says as he steps over some debris and checks his watch. It's six fifty-eight. If they pack in now and head back, sphere or no sphere, they wouldn't get there until quarter till.
There's a mumble, Jack's hand is on the phone and then he's back. 'Eight. Seriously, I think-'
The phone cuts out and Ianto kicks the debris in front of him. It launches across the sewer and splats into a wall. Ravi looks up.
'Oi! That's nasty.'
Ianto runs a hand through his hair. 'Lisa's having the baby,' he says, as if he wants Ravi to make the call for him. They could come back for the sphere later. They could come back and find it gone. They could leave and come back later and it could detonate. It could be a dud.
Ravi stands and shrugs. 'What do you want to do?'
Ianto presses on his comm, and Gwen answers. 'Daddy-to-be, congrats!'
'Yeah,' he says, taking the scanner from Ravi and checking it again. It's here somewhere. 'Look, I lost Jack, can you tell him to-'
Gwen snorts into the phone. 'He's on speaker, here-' There is a plastic clicking of her fingernails on the deskphone and then Ianto hears Jack shouting to Gwen on the phone.
'-ost Ianto. Lis, Lis it's okay. Breathe-oh, okay, sorry-Gwen can you get Ianto? I-'
'Jack,' he says, 'How soon?'
There's a long scream, and he knows that scream. It's Lisa in pain-mode. He's heard it a great deal over the years, and it still makes the muscles in his face twitch. His free hand curls and his nails dig into his palm. Ravi turns off his comm and makes a face, taking the scanner back. Ianto unclenches his hand long enough to give him the V.
'Whoa,' Jack says, 'I don't think we need barbecue tongs, man.' And then the sound of Lisa hitting him, even Ianto can hear that over her groaning and Jack's forced jocularity. Then he hears, clear as a bell, someone say, 'No mobiles in the delivery room.' And Jack says a rare curse word and the line cuts out.
Gwen snickers. 'The second one is always so fast,' she says, sounding rather smug, and Ianto remembers that she's already been there.
'How do you even know that?' he grumbles. 'You have some old wives handbook, right?'
Gwen laughs. 'It's issued with your uterus,' she jokes. 'But no. Do you want me to come out? I can be there soon if I speed, and it's no trouble. Besides,' she adds, 'even if you don't get there in time, you should be there to protect the nurses and keep Jack from lighting cigars in the hallways.'
Ravi gives him a thumbs up and Ianto feels his shoulders lighten. 'Yeah, he's full of jokes, that one. Lisa's probably removed his pancreas with her fingers by now.' It's true. Jack is a bad Lamaze partner not because he doesn't get it, but because he gets it a little too much. Lisa prefers Ianto's low key methods and the ability to back off. Jack likes the "We're in this together!" approach, which might work for some, but not the woman who is currently pushing a basketball through-
'Hey, I got it,' Ravi says bending down and flipping a metal sheet over, something rusted out and dumped, how did it even get down here?
'You,' Gwen says into Ianto's ear. 'I'm on my way.'
Ianto clicks out and watches Ravi pocket the scanner so that he can pick up what is, after some dusting off, definitely a Thropnsphere. Ianto sucks in a breath. 'Okay then, look Rav,' he says. 'I know that you're excited, but I've seen one of these in action, and we have to be very, very careful.'
Ravi turns the Thropnsphere in his hands. 'Yeah, I read all about the last one,' he says absently. 'This one is-'
The Thropnsphere beeps three times and the lights on the front of it fire up red and green stripes. Ianto's stomach dips and Ravi freezes.
'Just-' he begins before Ravi cuts him off.
'It's on,' Ravi whispers. 'Oh bollocks.' He drops his torch so that he can hold the thing in both hands.
Ianto backs away, hits the wall and thinks, no no, this isn't what he's supposed to do. He thinks about imploding and what that must feel like, but then something reminds him of everything else, and the mental plating that comes around his thoughts in times like this, it settles into place and he sucks in a breath.
'Okay Ravi, don't move. We need to know what the settings are, so turn it--' He rotates his empty hand so that Ravi can see. 'Right, good, turn it and look at the read-out on the side by your left thumb.' He steadies his light as much as he can, which is difficult because he suddenly has the shakes.
Ravi doesn't turn the sphere so much as he twists and bends his torso so that he can read the display. 'It says, "five point two three nine".'
Ianto blinks a great deal for a few seconds, processing. Five point two three nine feet? Miles? Kilometers? Five point two three nine minutes? Five point two three nine hours, furlongs, yards, some space measurement that he doesn't know?
'I don't-' he begins.
'It's in kilometers,' Ravi says.
'How do you know?'
Ravi lifts the sphere directly up, so that he doesn’t turn it, but Ianto can peek at the display. Right there: 5.239 km. Oh.
'That's why the readings were so insane,' Ravi murmurs, his face a little frightened, but still interested, ever the tech. 'Because it was on. Or dormant, or charging or something.'
Ianto shifts his torch to his other hand. 'We can find a way around this.'
Ravi presses a few buttons on it, biting his bottom lip so hard that the skin around it is white. 'I can change the perimeter of the blast, I think.'
'Can't you turn it off?'
'They don't make them with an off switch,' Ravi says quietly, as if he is turning something over in his mind. 'You should go. Head start.'
Ianto backs up for a second before he realises how ridiculous that is. 'They have to have a pin, like a grenade or something.' He watches Ravi press a few more buttons and the runner lights go from red to magenta. 'Ravi, you can hold on, and we'll get Jack-'
The Thropnsphere lets out a little whine like a charging camera flash and Ravi stabs the side of it with his fingers. 'Look, I can hold it off, but this little shit-' he presses another button down and his hands are starting to look like he's holding all the holes on a recorder. 'Is going to-oh.' The runner lights change from magenta to red again and then he starts to press the same button over and over. 'I get that now. You are clever, you thing…'
Ianto watches him and debates calling Gwen. His hand is reaching for his earpiece when Ravi grunts, the runner lights flash red on one side of the sphere and the green ones finally switch to a yellow tone. 'Oh, that's not,' Ravi says, talking to the machine. 'Why are you doing…? Oh.' His loose fingers roam over the surface of the bumpy metal sphere. 'God sometimes the future looks very scary, Ianto.'
Ianto snorts, because he agrees. So they can't turn it off. Could they drive it somewhere and get away fast enough?
Ravi stops pressing the button frantically and checks the display. 'I've got it down to feet, I think. But it could be meters, so you should go, because I can't be sure--'
'Oh. Could you just throw it? How far do you throw?'
Ravi smiles. 'Two of my fingers are holding down the distance settings. The switch is corroded, I can't even be sure that this is gonna do it, man.'
'But what if,' Ianto casts about, 'What if we found something to hold the switch down?'
Ravi sighs. 'Like what, chewing gum? I'm not MacGyver, this is real.' Ravi gestures with the sphere and one of the lights flickers. 'Oh it doesn't like that.'
'We could get a-'
'Ianto,' Ravi says, 'look, let's not make a big production number okay? Just go.'
'I'll call Jack, Gwen-'
'No.' Ravi looks up at his face then, dark curls flipping over his eyes. 'Call my girl.' Ianto reaches up for his earpiece and Ravi interrupts. 'No no, don't call her. I can't talk to her right-' He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, they are something Ianto has never seen before. 'Tell her I love her and I wanted her to have my kids. Tell her I said, "Nothing on earth, baby," she'll know what it means.'
Ianto nods. His hand is clenched so tightly he feels the skin break.
Ravi swallows. 'Tell her that I remember everything she said that night, when she thought I wasn't-' He glances down at the beeping Thropnsphere in his hands. 'Tell her that I wanted that house and she was right, we should have got it, because she was right. Tell her I said that she was always right, from beginning to end.'
Ianto's brain is on record, taking down everything just in case, but his mind is still working. 'For Christ's sake-' but the sphere beeps and whines, louder now, something shrill that sounds like a weapon charging, and Ianto knows that noise. He'd heard it before, from behind the safety of a blast shield, over tiny speakers three miles away, the last time one of these had gone off.
Ravi winks at him. 'You better kiss that baby,' he says, watching Ianto back away, a few more feet down the hall. 'Never had one meself,' he says, sliding into an old accent that it'd taken him years to shed, to smooth out, like painting over a Goya to make a Chagall. 'Always thought I'd have the t-'
The sphere doesn't need a big climax, it just flashes, and Ianto hears a whump like a body hitting a padded mat, and Ravi, and the five point two three nine feet around him disappears, pulls in, defies what should be logic and all science but actually is purest science, another way to make the laws of god useful for the wars of man. Cement dust and sewer water and blood punch out from the last little hole in the vacuum, a parting gift like the spray of the sea off the bay. Ianto feels it hit his face, grit and liquid and grease; it enters his frozen mouth, open like a gaped fish.
The ceiling above has been eaten away and the dirt above the sewer tunnels falls down through. There will be a hole, a cave-in. The floor under, five feet worth is gone, exposing dirt and tree roots and running water spilling about, sewer water sluicing through and into the hole to fill it. Even as he backs away until he hits the wall, Ianto is planning the call to the local government, the police, to get them here to prevent a collapse or injury from above.
His phone is ringing, a trill into the silence and water dripping and shifting dirt.
He presses the button with shaking fingers, not sure if he can wipe his face yet, his face with its covering of human oil and blood and other things.
Jack is breathless. 'Ianto!' he calls out loudly. 'Ianto!'
Ianto can feel himself sliding down onto the floor, and it's good that there's a wall behind him, because he's sure that he would be doing the same thing without it and that would be worse. 'Jack-' he starts, but Jack isn't listening, and in the background he can hear something high and shrill. Something that sounds like the shriek of the Thropnsphere as it had whined in Ravi's hands. But it's not, it's something else.
'Oh man, Ianto,' Jack says, and it takes Ianto a second after that to realise that the sound is a baby. 'Oh, Ianto, it's a girl, and she's gorgeous.'
***
JACK:
He hasn't been to Ravi and Sandy's in years, never had a need to, really, and some part of him feels bad for that. Sandy hasn't been told anything, and the last three nights at Torchwood have been spent deciding what to do about all of that. Jack had suggested Retcon, only for the peace it might bring, but Gwen and Claire had vetoed him, offended that he had even mentioned it. He hadn't been set on it, and that level of Retcon usually caused more damage than it took care of, really, but he couldn't help but put it forth in an attempt to squeeze better answers from them all.
Gwen's solution, the last call, had been to tell Sandy. What else could they say? Sandy knows their faces, knows their names. She's been to their houses for dinners. Someday she would come calling, desperate for her husband, probably at a very unfortunate moment.
Jack had been reminded once again why he didn't like people in Torchwood having families.
Then the framed picture of his own had reminded him of just how hypocritical he is.
Gwen had stood in front of his desk, looking at Penny's little snapshot, a smile playing on her face, before she'd handed it back. 'Girls are trouble,' she'd said ruefully.
He'd shrugged. He'd had a girl before, but he hadn't reminded her of that because he hadn't really been a good father to Alice, so what would he know about girls? Then he had stood and said. 'Let's get this over with.'
He'd tucked Penny's picture into the front pocket of his shirt anyway. Just for today.
Now he stands on the veranda with Gwen, and they ring the doorbell, waiting for Sandy to open it. When she does, her face is a mess, red and blotchy. Her hair is tied in a ratty tail, and her clothes are rumpled and stained with coffee spills.
It's been three days. She has to know by now.
Jack watches Sandy's face, and he doesn't even pretend to be brave, to be macho, when Gwen's hand falls to her side and reaches for his, squeezing it. He needs it too, when Sandy examines their faces and what she sees tells her everything she needs to instantly know; her eyes harden a little, and her eyes dart to the SUV, as if she has to see that he wasn't coming, that they are there in their big government vehicle.
Jack is reminded of another time when this news was delivered by telegram. He doesn't enjoy being a typed piece of paper.
Her face crumples, and he tries to place where he's seen that before; Sandy's knees tremble but don't buckle. 'No,' she says softly. 'No, oh no, no no.'
Gwen reaches out a steadying hand. 'Sandy, we-'
'Oh no no no no don't-' Sandy retreats back into the house, leaving the door open, off on some mad tear that her brain is navigating for her body on auto-pilot. Jack can hear her mumbling. 'No no nono no…'
Gwen glances at him, and they venture inside. He'd like nothing more than to leave it to Gwen, but that's not right, not precisely her job (though one day it could be, right?), even though she's done this before with the police.
The house is a mess, in that way that houses get when the person there hasn't left in days and can't be arsed to clean up because they have better things to do like call their husband's now-imploded mobile repeatedly and his place of employment nonstop. Dishes are piled up in the sink and several days' worth of newspapers are flattened, open and picked through, as if Sandy has been searching for a missing persons report, something strange, something odd, maybe a glimpse of Ravi in the background of a crime scene photo.
They follow Sandy's voice to the back bedroom of the house, where she is in the middle of pulling on a pair of jeans and sticking her arm into a clean sweatshirt while stuffing her feet into a pair of tied trainers. 'You'll take me to hospital and let me see him, and I don't care what's wrong with him, it doesn't matter. I need to see him-'
It hits Jack then--the point hasn't been made because no one has said anything yet. He had taken it for granted that he knew about Ravi, but Sandy thinks that he's been hurt, albeit badly.
'Oh, Sandy,' Gwen says softly, 'Sandy, Sandy,' and Sandy looks up at her, her face taut, eyes wild, and Jack realises too that under all of this, she already knows.
'Which hospital?'
Gwen reaches out with one hand, but it doesn't connect with anything. 'Sandy, luv, I'm sorry but he's, well he's-'
'It was fast,' Jack says, because they have to cut through the crazy look in her eyes so she can get to the next part. Sometimes people are amazingly predictable, and Ravi hadn't married Sandy because she was a shrinking violet, no, quite the opposite, when her eyes widen in his direction, and she gets both her arms through the sleeves and working again. 'He didn't feel any pain. But he's dead,' he finishes.
He sees her coming a mile away, but stealth isn't her plan. She's flailing arms and anger, radiating in waves, and screaming and hatred and suspicion and knowing and violence, and he's willing to grab at her half-heartedly as she gets in a few good punches and swings to his chest and Gwen hovers behind her, unsure whether to pull her off or let Jack restrain her. He'll let it go on for a few seconds anyway.
Years ago he'd taken this beating from Owen, and then Gwen, and before her from a mother, a mother who'd watched the last good thing in her life skip off into a forest, never to be seen again. He deserves this beating, he thinks, deserves it because he'd let them go.
Or not, because that had been Ravi's job. Or not, because Ravi had been foolhardy, though who could have seen it coming, really? Or brave, because he'd done the right thing, saved everyone in a five-kilometer radius, saved Ianto, too, mustn't forget that. In his most horrible hour, Ravi had chosen to preserve life, and Jack has never been so selfishly grateful for that.
And perhaps that is why he deserves this beating, because Sandy would have preferred that Ravi had killed five-kilometers worth of people, killed Ianto, that's what she would want, even if later she might rethink that; for now, she would kill fifty people, a hundred, just to bring him back.
Jack knows the feeling.
Gwen pries Sandy off him, and he staggers back into the wall, arms crossing to protect his stomach as Gwen holds Sandy's arms and she kicks with her legs. Jack pulls the syringe from his pocket, the syringe he hadn't told Gwen about, and uncaps it, sinks it into Sandy's neck, watching as she slumps before he can even get the plunger fully depressed.
Gwen takes Sandy's weight well, but she mumbles a grunt of surprise, and when Jack helps her relocate Sandy to the sofa, she turns on him. 'What the hell was that?'
He caps the syringe and slips it into his pocket. 'Claire gave me a sedative.'
'Jesus, Jack,' Gwen breathes, but she doesn't argue further.
An hour later, Sandy is awake again and sitting huddled in an afghan that Jack remembers seeing in the Hub once. Had Ravi nicked it? No matter. Her hands cradle an undrunk mug of tea, and she stares at the floral patterns of the wallpaper border above the wainscoting.
They tell her what they can, and there's no harm in it, really, not that she'll blab to the press, and who would believe her anyway? They'll compensate her as much as she wants, relocate her if she wishes, paint her a whole new life if she demands it, or even if she just asks for it.
And since they had told her how he had died, Jack doesn't understand her next few words. 'Rav told me,' she said softly, 'he said that if he died you'd keep the body.' Her eyes bracket to his. 'I want it back.'
Jack wants to be direct with her, but he isn't sure how to do it delicately. Gwen does it for him. 'I'm very sorry, but, the way he…there is no…there's nothing for us to keep, even, but if we did have him, we would hand him over,' she says, and Jack lets her lie, because the first part is true, so it doesn't matter about the second. Maybe Gwen believes it. Maybe in this new Torchwood Gwen wants to shape, they will bring their dead home in caskets, caskets draped with a flag. Whose flag, he doesn't know. Torchwood should have a flag.
It would have a weevil on it, maybe a TARDIS, in a red circle with a slash. He should ask Ianto to mock one up, just for kicks. No, no he shouldn't.
Sandy doesn't believe them, and he doesn't try to dissuade her. She's not thinking clearly. Gwen presses her, says things about Ravi and what he wanted. She tells her what he told Ianto, word for word, and she cries, but for Jack it is all a distant panorama, supposedly wide and detailed but fuzzy and distant, ranging in scope like the dull hum of a nature special playing on the telly.
He is wondering about the future, and what Sandy will do. It isn't as if he's hasn't had to deal with the New World Torchwood before, but when the Hub had exploded and they had built above ground, Ravi and Gwen and Melissa (and later Claire) had stuck their heads out of the bomb shelter and decided that they liked the feel of it all up here, and this, in front of him, this sobbing wife who knows virtually everything, could tell virtually everything (if she could find someone to listen), is something he can't deal with. It's complicated.
He thinks of his own family for a second, and of course that seems so uncomplicated because he's looking at it from the inside. He doesn't know Sandy like he knows Lisa and Ianto; she's a wild card, unpredictable, Emily Holroyd would have called her a threat to the Empire. So would have Yvonne, but in a different manner.
Good thing both those bitches are dead, then.
So Jack slips her more sedative when she's not looking, just enough to make her mellow, and Gwen calls Ravi's sister over in Adamstown, and they wait for her to show, explain their cover story-Ravi was in an accident on location at Blaidd Drwg, and crisis averted, but he's dead and they can't release the body. Radiation. It's been cremated. If Sandy tells a different story, Jack figures, little good it will do her, and anyway, say what he wants about footballer's wives, they know how to tow the party line when it counts, and Sandy's not stupid. He doesn’t know how he can tell what she'll do, he decides, but Gwen is willing to run on a tank of hunches, so he'll let that engine idle.
***
He drops Gwen off at the Hub and heads home. Gwen will cover for him for a few hours, so he can sit with Ianto, who is on enforced admin leave for the rest of the week. Lisa and Penny had come home the day after, and Ianto has been sleeping with the baby on the sofa while Lisa recovers, waking her long enough to get her to breastfeed and then they all pass out on the bed. Jack has lost track of how many times over the past three days he has found them all asleep, the baby barely attached to her breast.
He can't imagine the whole breastfeeding thing, doing it. It's bad enough, he thinks, that one has to surrender their body for nine months, but then you're supposed to keep on keeping on for another six to eighteen months or something. It dictates what you eat and drink and carves sections out of your day and oh, maybe he's just jealous.
He locks the doors of the SUV and heads up the indoor stairwell to the lifts. He's not jealous. Much.
Jack presses the button for the lift with his palm, then stands in front of the bank there, not realising that he's swaying until he catches sight of himself in the wall of mirrors at the end of the hallway. Maybe he's a little tired, too. Weary. That's a good word for it. Funny how some words sound like they feel, like sensual onomatopoeia.
Ianto is sitting on the sofa, Penny in his arms, and Jack hangs his coat up, checking his watch. It's one-fifteen, so Evan is still in school, but he'll fetch him later. Evan knows that he's supposed to be on his best behaviour, not just for Mummy, but for Daddy, who has been through Something Bad, and he knows that Uncle Ravi is dead.
Jack wonders if he should take Evan to the funeral. Will there be a funeral? That's what New World Torchwood does, right? Ravi's family will expect one, even if the casket is empty. Is this something they should do for Evan, so that he can understand the nature of life? Death? Grief? To cement in his head that Ravi is gone and not coming back? Jack will have to ask Lisa later, because right now he's not doing anything but sliding onto the sofa and reaching out for his baby girl.
She's warm when Ianto hands her over, and Jack doesn't want to hold her long, just enough, really. Just enough to smell her, to bury his nose in the crook of her neck and shoulder, to hear her wet mouth noises. It's true, he says, he's not good with kids, his hands are huge, he tells them, and that's all a lie, a joke to cover up the irrational belief that when they are this small, they are vulnerable to the elements and Jack is an element of peril. It's a superstition that he chooses to believe because he can't seem to shake it, so he'll hold her and kiss her and rock her, but he doesn't want to get too close, not until she can fend better for herself.
It's a thing. He'd explained it one night to Ianto, who had taken it better than he'd figured he would, and then proceeded to make Jack change Evan's diaper.
Lisa had remembered one thing, though, and despite his threats of Bettina and Agnes and Phlegm, he'd picked Penelope on his own, and he doesn't have to explain it to Ianto or Lisa; they don't ask and he won't divulge it. It's important, but not important in that way. And some day if she wants to know, he’ll tell her about her possible grandmother on some distant planet, not even born, not even a thought to be born.
Ianto takes Penny back and tucks her head into the bend of his elbow. Jack bites the inside of his cheek.
'Sandy isn't going to be a problem,' he tells Ianto.
Ianto doesn't look at him. 'I should think not,' he mumbles. 'Sandy is incredibly bright and level-headed.' He blinks and strokes one index finger down Penny's cheek, and she turns her head towards him, her little peanut brain on auto-pilot. Jack finds himself wondering already what she'll be when she grows up.
'She wanted the body,' Jack says, leaning down to unlace his boots so he can kick them off and curl his feet under him. His toes are inexplicably chilled.
'Of course she did. That's natural, wanting to see it, to prove it.' Ianto doesn't look at him still, and Jack wonders if he is angry. Why would he be? Angry at himself? Or sad? Or depressed? Or-none of them has been getting enough sleep, for more than the obvious reasons. Jack doesn't bother to say any of that, or the obvious thing about Ravi's body, because Ianto had watched it collapse out of existence.
'If it were me,' Ianto says, 'would you bury me? Or lock me in the morgue?' Jack doesn't even want to answer, doesn't even start, actually, before Ianto continues. 'Don't answer that. Just-you should let Lisa have a say in it, whatever it is.' He smiles at Penny's sleepy face. 'I have a will, you know, burial notes and things. Adoption papers prepped for you and Evan, and now Pen. You two are both bollocks at planning everything.'
Not entirely true. 'This is morbid,' Jack says. Entirely true.
'Not denying that, but necessary. I just…'
Jack throws one arm behind Ianto on the sofa and leans in. 'Then stop.'
'If…ah, you're right. Watch her eyes,' he says, distracted, and then he holds her up, just a little, in the air and those eyes open, bright and clear, and Jack sees Lisa reflected like a miniature portrait. 'I keep trying to get her to smile, but it's too soon,' Ianto says to him, laying Penny back down in the cradle of his arms and readjusting his feet up on the coffee table so that his knees are drawn up.
Jack watches Ianto's face, wondering what it had looked like, to see that happen, to see it happen so suddenly, to someone he was close to. Ravi had been with them for ages, since the last Hub. Ravi had, unlike Claire, known Lisa before, in her wheelchair. Ravi, whose wedding they'd all gone to. Ravi, who had left behind a legacy of projects and folders and computer programmes laced with hip-hop bombs that explode into bass and treble when they hit on the wrong thing in the computer. Jack wonders how long they'll be weeding his little jokes out of the system. Probably forever.
Just this morning he'd input his password incorrectly five times in a row, and his monitor had treated him to a song about 'lady lumps' that he could have gone for the rest of his very very very long life without hearing ever again.
They'd got Tosh out of the coding, but only because most of her work had exploded. Jack is slightly grateful for that because he isn't sure that he could deal with debugging both their codes at the same time. Not unlike the time he'd been digging in Owen's drawers in the old Hub and come up with a handful of scalpel.
He hears snoring and looks at the baby monitor sitting on the coffee table. Ianto laughs. 'She says she doesn't snore,' he reminds Jack.
Jack laughs. 'What do people do? Record it?'
Ianto lays his head back and closes his eyes for a second. 'She'd deny it. Even if we got visual.'
He's completely right, and recording the one you love snoring is not the way to your beloved's heart. That is a trip to the sofa bed, which they both know. Besides, after this long, well, it’s hardly a surprise.
'I was thinking,' Jack says, reaching out a finger and touching Penny's palm so that she closes her little digits around it, a Venus hand kid. 'We could get a dog. Wouldn't it be neat to have a dog?'
Ianto lifts his head, blinks again at Penny's closed eyes and lifts her minutely so that he can lay his lips along her forehead, the smooth brown skin of her perfect face, and he smells her. Jack hears the inhalation of his nose and when he breathes out, it ruffles her hair. Jack wants to do the same to him, to reach up and press his lips into Ianto's hairline, to kiss him gently there in a way that is so familiar. He wants to cradle the back of Ianto's head in his hand and lift his nose to smell the hair on his head.
Instead, he leans in and kisses Penny's perfect automaton fingers, jostling them back and forth in false joviality. Outside the gulls scream on the railing, and they look at them for a second before Ianto turns his face towards Jack's and blinks, as if he is surprised, as if something has just occurred to him.
'Jack,' he says slowly, and the hand under Penny's head shifts as he raises her up and lays her on his chest, her tiny puffy face snuffling into his collar. His eyes harden with certainty in his mind and he presses his other hand to Penny's little back, holding on for dear life. 'Jack, we have to get out of Torchwood.'
END
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto/Lisa, Gwen, OCs
Rating: R for sex and violence
Wordcount: 18,000
Author's Notes: This was written for askance in the help_haiti auction. She requested the following: post Gold Dust - how did Pen come to be born with such a big gap between her and her brother? Or maybe how her birth changes the family dynamic. There you go. Thanks to blue_fjords for the awesome beta work.
Summary: Ianto wonders what Evan will call him when he feels too old to say "Daddy". 'Papa' isn't any more mature. He will probably switch to "Father". And it is too late to get Evan to call him "Tad", not when he already calls Jack "Dad". It's one of many things that he thinks he would like to do differently. Like say, with another kid.
Part One
IANTO:
He's on field duty today. He gets to drive down to Rhoose with Ravi, because they had made a schedule: he and Jack trade off days at the Hub, and today is Jack's day to stay close to home, just in case Lisa goes into labour. It is a good plan, and ensures that neither of them go stir crazy at the Hub, and also it splits their resources. Aside from Gwen, Ianto is senior field agent, and so it's only natural that he go out, just not with Jack, because with their luck, Lisa's water would break while they were scaling Snowden in search of the last Gleeph ship that crashed to Earth.
He likes field duty, he tells himself as his hands clench the steering wheel and he waits for Ravi to get back from the public toilets. Ravi had had fifteen cups of tea, and now he is making the trip long and boring with stops along the way. It's not like Rhoose is that far, but the traffic has been murder, and they are no closer to getting to the location of the readings.
Next time he's making him piss in a bottle.
Ravi opens the door and tumbles inside, tossing a bottle of Irn-Bru at Ianto. 'For you, the spoils of war.'
Ianto rolls his eyes, but he tucks the bottle in the cup holder. If they broke down in the country (just the thought of it makes his skin crawl), they'd be happy for any extra supplies, and a bottle of warm Irn-Bru special might make all the difference. Once he and Gwen had been stranded for three days in a small box (Really, that was all. A box outside of time and space) with just three Flake bars and a can of Lilt, so it wasn't as if he didn't have perspective on the idea.
Rhoose is a nice little village, but they're more concerned with what is going on underneath it. Ianto and Ravi strap on the stab vests, not because they're afraid of bullets, but more because they are worried about errant weevils, and those fuckers, as Ravi says, come out of nowhere. Claire has reminded them for the millionth time that if their torsos get cut in the sewers and then gangrenous, she'd have to amputate.
Doctor humour.
They find the sewer access and dive in, Ravi chattering away about their find. Potential find.
'The thing is off the charts in the blue line levels and in the particle disbursement,' he says and Ianto is thankful that he knows everything, otherwise he might have no idea what Ravi is talking about. 'The last time it blipped was about six hours ago, and it was a pulse, like-' Ravi flutters the hand that's empty and it bangs into a pipe, coming away grungy with something, and he stares at it. 'Oh Jesus,' he swears, wiping his hand on his stab vest. Ianto sighs. Oh it's not as if he isn't going to have to soak them in bleach and possibly run them through an industrial wash anyway.
'Do try to be careful,' Ianto reminds him, which is ridiculous, as Ravi has ten years of this under his belt. Well, close to it. Oh dear god, ten years, and Gwen has more and Ianto, well. If he were a betting man, he would say that someone was due for something nasty.
It's the sewer. The sewer always makes him twitchy and, as Jack usually says in his best good ol' boy voice, "all creepified and the like".
'So then like, the green light level on that scanner I cobbled together last year, and-holy fuck, man, this place reeks-it goes off and it's a good thing that I made it, because the Mainframe's pivotal sensors wouldn't have got it on this level.'
Ianto hands Ravi a torch and they start the slow walk through the sludge. Ianto hadn't even bothered wearing his wing tips out of the Hub; he'd put on jeans and wellies before he even walked out the door. Jack calls this his half-and-half, because he's still got the shirt and tie and waistcoat on. Ianto likes to think that way he looks official from the waist up, for all the times he stands behind counters or talks to security officers whilst sitting in the SUV. Stealth official.
'There's only one thing that registers even close to this from the files, so it could be one of them or something completely new,' Ravi says, choosing to bring the torch up to Ianto's face so that he can see him, but it's quite bright. 'Oh, sorry, mate.'
Ianto waves a hand and they start off. He'll follow Ravi for now. No reason not to.
'If I'm right, it's a Thropnsphere, and if it's corroded and it's still loaded-'
Ianto remembers the last one they had. A massive grenade built to take out what Jack called "Battle Cruisers" in a war that hasn't even happened yet, the Thropnsphere creates a small vacuum, like a black hole, and impacts everything in it's range into, well, just in. Imploding is the word Ianto would use. Jack had had a few words for it, but none of them had been useful.
'Does Jack know this theory of yours?' Ianto asks lightly, and Ravi ignores him, which means the answer is no. Ianto would have preferred to have his and Jack's situations switched for practical reasons, now. The last sphere they'd had had been old, detonators damaged on the trip through the rift, and Jack had wired it as best he could to reduce the range of the blast from three city blocks to about three feet and they'd set it off in the countryside. Ianto had never thought that dirt could do that, but the image of it blinking in and then showering out just a dusting, a mist when the dull whump of the implosion had sounded, made him wonder what it would have done to a live creature, to a spaceship, to the three block radius of Butetown where they'd found it.
Jack would agree. He should be here. Ianto thinks about making the call. It's the smart thing to do. Jack should be here. Ianto and Ravi could stay while Jack drives here, and then once he was on the scene, Ianto could return to the Hub and someone would be there for Lisa if need be. In a pinch, should the deed occur in that rare two-hour window, Rhys or Gwen could be with her. It wasn't like babies were born within the first two hours of the water breaking, anyway. No there has to be a twelve hour labour, so that on birthdays Lisa can drag out the "I was in agony with you for thirty-nine hours" speech. That is the way of things.
He reaches up to his comm and ignores Ravi's mumbling about a measurement in yards. If it's close enough to be using yards, then they should start searching. The sphere is the size of a bocce ball, a comparison he only makes because that had been what Tosh had said the last and only time they'd found one.
He dials not the Hub line, but the other one in his touch dial on the headset-Jack's personal line.
It rings three times and then picks up. 'Hey Ianto,' Jack says, a little breathless. Ianto opens his mouth to talk, but Jack doesn't give him a chance, as if he had been the one to call in the first place. 'Don't want to alarm you, but-'
He sucks in a breath. 'It's started.'
Jack pauses and Ianto can tell he's walking through a hospital because he can hear the noises-the talking people, the faint tinny loudspeaker overhead, Lisa mumbling in the background. 'Yeah, and wow, it's, wow, man. The kid wants out like, now.'
Lisa's been at two centimeters for the last week, despite not being due for another four days. Ianto hates birthing math, based on a lunar cycle that he knows way too much about because he catches space scum for a living.
'Centimeters?' Ianto says as he steps over some debris and checks his watch. It's six fifty-eight. If they pack in now and head back, sphere or no sphere, they wouldn't get there until quarter till.
There's a mumble, Jack's hand is on the phone and then he's back. 'Eight. Seriously, I think-'
The phone cuts out and Ianto kicks the debris in front of him. It launches across the sewer and splats into a wall. Ravi looks up.
'Oi! That's nasty.'
Ianto runs a hand through his hair. 'Lisa's having the baby,' he says, as if he wants Ravi to make the call for him. They could come back for the sphere later. They could come back and find it gone. They could leave and come back later and it could detonate. It could be a dud.
Ravi stands and shrugs. 'What do you want to do?'
Ianto presses on his comm, and Gwen answers. 'Daddy-to-be, congrats!'
'Yeah,' he says, taking the scanner from Ravi and checking it again. It's here somewhere. 'Look, I lost Jack, can you tell him to-'
Gwen snorts into the phone. 'He's on speaker, here-' There is a plastic clicking of her fingernails on the deskphone and then Ianto hears Jack shouting to Gwen on the phone.
'-ost Ianto. Lis, Lis it's okay. Breathe-oh, okay, sorry-Gwen can you get Ianto? I-'
'Jack,' he says, 'How soon?'
There's a long scream, and he knows that scream. It's Lisa in pain-mode. He's heard it a great deal over the years, and it still makes the muscles in his face twitch. His free hand curls and his nails dig into his palm. Ravi turns off his comm and makes a face, taking the scanner back. Ianto unclenches his hand long enough to give him the V.
'Whoa,' Jack says, 'I don't think we need barbecue tongs, man.' And then the sound of Lisa hitting him, even Ianto can hear that over her groaning and Jack's forced jocularity. Then he hears, clear as a bell, someone say, 'No mobiles in the delivery room.' And Jack says a rare curse word and the line cuts out.
Gwen snickers. 'The second one is always so fast,' she says, sounding rather smug, and Ianto remembers that she's already been there.
'How do you even know that?' he grumbles. 'You have some old wives handbook, right?'
Gwen laughs. 'It's issued with your uterus,' she jokes. 'But no. Do you want me to come out? I can be there soon if I speed, and it's no trouble. Besides,' she adds, 'even if you don't get there in time, you should be there to protect the nurses and keep Jack from lighting cigars in the hallways.'
Ravi gives him a thumbs up and Ianto feels his shoulders lighten. 'Yeah, he's full of jokes, that one. Lisa's probably removed his pancreas with her fingers by now.' It's true. Jack is a bad Lamaze partner not because he doesn't get it, but because he gets it a little too much. Lisa prefers Ianto's low key methods and the ability to back off. Jack likes the "We're in this together!" approach, which might work for some, but not the woman who is currently pushing a basketball through-
'Hey, I got it,' Ravi says bending down and flipping a metal sheet over, something rusted out and dumped, how did it even get down here?
'You,' Gwen says into Ianto's ear. 'I'm on my way.'
Ianto clicks out and watches Ravi pocket the scanner so that he can pick up what is, after some dusting off, definitely a Thropnsphere. Ianto sucks in a breath. 'Okay then, look Rav,' he says. 'I know that you're excited, but I've seen one of these in action, and we have to be very, very careful.'
Ravi turns the Thropnsphere in his hands. 'Yeah, I read all about the last one,' he says absently. 'This one is-'
The Thropnsphere beeps three times and the lights on the front of it fire up red and green stripes. Ianto's stomach dips and Ravi freezes.
'Just-' he begins before Ravi cuts him off.
'It's on,' Ravi whispers. 'Oh bollocks.' He drops his torch so that he can hold the thing in both hands.
Ianto backs away, hits the wall and thinks, no no, this isn't what he's supposed to do. He thinks about imploding and what that must feel like, but then something reminds him of everything else, and the mental plating that comes around his thoughts in times like this, it settles into place and he sucks in a breath.
'Okay Ravi, don't move. We need to know what the settings are, so turn it--' He rotates his empty hand so that Ravi can see. 'Right, good, turn it and look at the read-out on the side by your left thumb.' He steadies his light as much as he can, which is difficult because he suddenly has the shakes.
Ravi doesn't turn the sphere so much as he twists and bends his torso so that he can read the display. 'It says, "five point two three nine".'
Ianto blinks a great deal for a few seconds, processing. Five point two three nine feet? Miles? Kilometers? Five point two three nine minutes? Five point two three nine hours, furlongs, yards, some space measurement that he doesn't know?
'I don't-' he begins.
'It's in kilometers,' Ravi says.
'How do you know?'
Ravi lifts the sphere directly up, so that he doesn’t turn it, but Ianto can peek at the display. Right there: 5.239 km. Oh.
'That's why the readings were so insane,' Ravi murmurs, his face a little frightened, but still interested, ever the tech. 'Because it was on. Or dormant, or charging or something.'
Ianto shifts his torch to his other hand. 'We can find a way around this.'
Ravi presses a few buttons on it, biting his bottom lip so hard that the skin around it is white. 'I can change the perimeter of the blast, I think.'
'Can't you turn it off?'
'They don't make them with an off switch,' Ravi says quietly, as if he is turning something over in his mind. 'You should go. Head start.'
Ianto backs up for a second before he realises how ridiculous that is. 'They have to have a pin, like a grenade or something.' He watches Ravi press a few more buttons and the runner lights go from red to magenta. 'Ravi, you can hold on, and we'll get Jack-'
The Thropnsphere lets out a little whine like a charging camera flash and Ravi stabs the side of it with his fingers. 'Look, I can hold it off, but this little shit-' he presses another button down and his hands are starting to look like he's holding all the holes on a recorder. 'Is going to-oh.' The runner lights change from magenta to red again and then he starts to press the same button over and over. 'I get that now. You are clever, you thing…'
Ianto watches him and debates calling Gwen. His hand is reaching for his earpiece when Ravi grunts, the runner lights flash red on one side of the sphere and the green ones finally switch to a yellow tone. 'Oh, that's not,' Ravi says, talking to the machine. 'Why are you doing…? Oh.' His loose fingers roam over the surface of the bumpy metal sphere. 'God sometimes the future looks very scary, Ianto.'
Ianto snorts, because he agrees. So they can't turn it off. Could they drive it somewhere and get away fast enough?
Ravi stops pressing the button frantically and checks the display. 'I've got it down to feet, I think. But it could be meters, so you should go, because I can't be sure--'
'Oh. Could you just throw it? How far do you throw?'
Ravi smiles. 'Two of my fingers are holding down the distance settings. The switch is corroded, I can't even be sure that this is gonna do it, man.'
'But what if,' Ianto casts about, 'What if we found something to hold the switch down?'
Ravi sighs. 'Like what, chewing gum? I'm not MacGyver, this is real.' Ravi gestures with the sphere and one of the lights flickers. 'Oh it doesn't like that.'
'We could get a-'
'Ianto,' Ravi says, 'look, let's not make a big production number okay? Just go.'
'I'll call Jack, Gwen-'
'No.' Ravi looks up at his face then, dark curls flipping over his eyes. 'Call my girl.' Ianto reaches up for his earpiece and Ravi interrupts. 'No no, don't call her. I can't talk to her right-' He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, they are something Ianto has never seen before. 'Tell her I love her and I wanted her to have my kids. Tell her I said, "Nothing on earth, baby," she'll know what it means.'
Ianto nods. His hand is clenched so tightly he feels the skin break.
Ravi swallows. 'Tell her that I remember everything she said that night, when she thought I wasn't-' He glances down at the beeping Thropnsphere in his hands. 'Tell her that I wanted that house and she was right, we should have got it, because she was right. Tell her I said that she was always right, from beginning to end.'
Ianto's brain is on record, taking down everything just in case, but his mind is still working. 'For Christ's sake-' but the sphere beeps and whines, louder now, something shrill that sounds like a weapon charging, and Ianto knows that noise. He'd heard it before, from behind the safety of a blast shield, over tiny speakers three miles away, the last time one of these had gone off.
Ravi winks at him. 'You better kiss that baby,' he says, watching Ianto back away, a few more feet down the hall. 'Never had one meself,' he says, sliding into an old accent that it'd taken him years to shed, to smooth out, like painting over a Goya to make a Chagall. 'Always thought I'd have the t-'
The sphere doesn't need a big climax, it just flashes, and Ianto hears a whump like a body hitting a padded mat, and Ravi, and the five point two three nine feet around him disappears, pulls in, defies what should be logic and all science but actually is purest science, another way to make the laws of god useful for the wars of man. Cement dust and sewer water and blood punch out from the last little hole in the vacuum, a parting gift like the spray of the sea off the bay. Ianto feels it hit his face, grit and liquid and grease; it enters his frozen mouth, open like a gaped fish.
The ceiling above has been eaten away and the dirt above the sewer tunnels falls down through. There will be a hole, a cave-in. The floor under, five feet worth is gone, exposing dirt and tree roots and running water spilling about, sewer water sluicing through and into the hole to fill it. Even as he backs away until he hits the wall, Ianto is planning the call to the local government, the police, to get them here to prevent a collapse or injury from above.
His phone is ringing, a trill into the silence and water dripping and shifting dirt.
He presses the button with shaking fingers, not sure if he can wipe his face yet, his face with its covering of human oil and blood and other things.
Jack is breathless. 'Ianto!' he calls out loudly. 'Ianto!'
Ianto can feel himself sliding down onto the floor, and it's good that there's a wall behind him, because he's sure that he would be doing the same thing without it and that would be worse. 'Jack-' he starts, but Jack isn't listening, and in the background he can hear something high and shrill. Something that sounds like the shriek of the Thropnsphere as it had whined in Ravi's hands. But it's not, it's something else.
'Oh man, Ianto,' Jack says, and it takes Ianto a second after that to realise that the sound is a baby. 'Oh, Ianto, it's a girl, and she's gorgeous.'
***
JACK:
He hasn't been to Ravi and Sandy's in years, never had a need to, really, and some part of him feels bad for that. Sandy hasn't been told anything, and the last three nights at Torchwood have been spent deciding what to do about all of that. Jack had suggested Retcon, only for the peace it might bring, but Gwen and Claire had vetoed him, offended that he had even mentioned it. He hadn't been set on it, and that level of Retcon usually caused more damage than it took care of, really, but he couldn't help but put it forth in an attempt to squeeze better answers from them all.
Gwen's solution, the last call, had been to tell Sandy. What else could they say? Sandy knows their faces, knows their names. She's been to their houses for dinners. Someday she would come calling, desperate for her husband, probably at a very unfortunate moment.
Jack had been reminded once again why he didn't like people in Torchwood having families.
Then the framed picture of his own had reminded him of just how hypocritical he is.
Gwen had stood in front of his desk, looking at Penny's little snapshot, a smile playing on her face, before she'd handed it back. 'Girls are trouble,' she'd said ruefully.
He'd shrugged. He'd had a girl before, but he hadn't reminded her of that because he hadn't really been a good father to Alice, so what would he know about girls? Then he had stood and said. 'Let's get this over with.'
He'd tucked Penny's picture into the front pocket of his shirt anyway. Just for today.
Now he stands on the veranda with Gwen, and they ring the doorbell, waiting for Sandy to open it. When she does, her face is a mess, red and blotchy. Her hair is tied in a ratty tail, and her clothes are rumpled and stained with coffee spills.
It's been three days. She has to know by now.
Jack watches Sandy's face, and he doesn't even pretend to be brave, to be macho, when Gwen's hand falls to her side and reaches for his, squeezing it. He needs it too, when Sandy examines their faces and what she sees tells her everything she needs to instantly know; her eyes harden a little, and her eyes dart to the SUV, as if she has to see that he wasn't coming, that they are there in their big government vehicle.
Jack is reminded of another time when this news was delivered by telegram. He doesn't enjoy being a typed piece of paper.
Her face crumples, and he tries to place where he's seen that before; Sandy's knees tremble but don't buckle. 'No,' she says softly. 'No, oh no, no no.'
Gwen reaches out a steadying hand. 'Sandy, we-'
'Oh no no no no don't-' Sandy retreats back into the house, leaving the door open, off on some mad tear that her brain is navigating for her body on auto-pilot. Jack can hear her mumbling. 'No no nono no…'
Gwen glances at him, and they venture inside. He'd like nothing more than to leave it to Gwen, but that's not right, not precisely her job (though one day it could be, right?), even though she's done this before with the police.
The house is a mess, in that way that houses get when the person there hasn't left in days and can't be arsed to clean up because they have better things to do like call their husband's now-imploded mobile repeatedly and his place of employment nonstop. Dishes are piled up in the sink and several days' worth of newspapers are flattened, open and picked through, as if Sandy has been searching for a missing persons report, something strange, something odd, maybe a glimpse of Ravi in the background of a crime scene photo.
They follow Sandy's voice to the back bedroom of the house, where she is in the middle of pulling on a pair of jeans and sticking her arm into a clean sweatshirt while stuffing her feet into a pair of tied trainers. 'You'll take me to hospital and let me see him, and I don't care what's wrong with him, it doesn't matter. I need to see him-'
It hits Jack then--the point hasn't been made because no one has said anything yet. He had taken it for granted that he knew about Ravi, but Sandy thinks that he's been hurt, albeit badly.
'Oh, Sandy,' Gwen says softly, 'Sandy, Sandy,' and Sandy looks up at her, her face taut, eyes wild, and Jack realises too that under all of this, she already knows.
'Which hospital?'
Gwen reaches out with one hand, but it doesn't connect with anything. 'Sandy, luv, I'm sorry but he's, well he's-'
'It was fast,' Jack says, because they have to cut through the crazy look in her eyes so she can get to the next part. Sometimes people are amazingly predictable, and Ravi hadn't married Sandy because she was a shrinking violet, no, quite the opposite, when her eyes widen in his direction, and she gets both her arms through the sleeves and working again. 'He didn't feel any pain. But he's dead,' he finishes.
He sees her coming a mile away, but stealth isn't her plan. She's flailing arms and anger, radiating in waves, and screaming and hatred and suspicion and knowing and violence, and he's willing to grab at her half-heartedly as she gets in a few good punches and swings to his chest and Gwen hovers behind her, unsure whether to pull her off or let Jack restrain her. He'll let it go on for a few seconds anyway.
Years ago he'd taken this beating from Owen, and then Gwen, and before her from a mother, a mother who'd watched the last good thing in her life skip off into a forest, never to be seen again. He deserves this beating, he thinks, deserves it because he'd let them go.
Or not, because that had been Ravi's job. Or not, because Ravi had been foolhardy, though who could have seen it coming, really? Or brave, because he'd done the right thing, saved everyone in a five-kilometer radius, saved Ianto, too, mustn't forget that. In his most horrible hour, Ravi had chosen to preserve life, and Jack has never been so selfishly grateful for that.
And perhaps that is why he deserves this beating, because Sandy would have preferred that Ravi had killed five-kilometers worth of people, killed Ianto, that's what she would want, even if later she might rethink that; for now, she would kill fifty people, a hundred, just to bring him back.
Jack knows the feeling.
Gwen pries Sandy off him, and he staggers back into the wall, arms crossing to protect his stomach as Gwen holds Sandy's arms and she kicks with her legs. Jack pulls the syringe from his pocket, the syringe he hadn't told Gwen about, and uncaps it, sinks it into Sandy's neck, watching as she slumps before he can even get the plunger fully depressed.
Gwen takes Sandy's weight well, but she mumbles a grunt of surprise, and when Jack helps her relocate Sandy to the sofa, she turns on him. 'What the hell was that?'
He caps the syringe and slips it into his pocket. 'Claire gave me a sedative.'
'Jesus, Jack,' Gwen breathes, but she doesn't argue further.
An hour later, Sandy is awake again and sitting huddled in an afghan that Jack remembers seeing in the Hub once. Had Ravi nicked it? No matter. Her hands cradle an undrunk mug of tea, and she stares at the floral patterns of the wallpaper border above the wainscoting.
They tell her what they can, and there's no harm in it, really, not that she'll blab to the press, and who would believe her anyway? They'll compensate her as much as she wants, relocate her if she wishes, paint her a whole new life if she demands it, or even if she just asks for it.
And since they had told her how he had died, Jack doesn't understand her next few words. 'Rav told me,' she said softly, 'he said that if he died you'd keep the body.' Her eyes bracket to his. 'I want it back.'
Jack wants to be direct with her, but he isn't sure how to do it delicately. Gwen does it for him. 'I'm very sorry, but, the way he…there is no…there's nothing for us to keep, even, but if we did have him, we would hand him over,' she says, and Jack lets her lie, because the first part is true, so it doesn't matter about the second. Maybe Gwen believes it. Maybe in this new Torchwood Gwen wants to shape, they will bring their dead home in caskets, caskets draped with a flag. Whose flag, he doesn't know. Torchwood should have a flag.
It would have a weevil on it, maybe a TARDIS, in a red circle with a slash. He should ask Ianto to mock one up, just for kicks. No, no he shouldn't.
Sandy doesn't believe them, and he doesn't try to dissuade her. She's not thinking clearly. Gwen presses her, says things about Ravi and what he wanted. She tells her what he told Ianto, word for word, and she cries, but for Jack it is all a distant panorama, supposedly wide and detailed but fuzzy and distant, ranging in scope like the dull hum of a nature special playing on the telly.
He is wondering about the future, and what Sandy will do. It isn't as if he's hasn't had to deal with the New World Torchwood before, but when the Hub had exploded and they had built above ground, Ravi and Gwen and Melissa (and later Claire) had stuck their heads out of the bomb shelter and decided that they liked the feel of it all up here, and this, in front of him, this sobbing wife who knows virtually everything, could tell virtually everything (if she could find someone to listen), is something he can't deal with. It's complicated.
He thinks of his own family for a second, and of course that seems so uncomplicated because he's looking at it from the inside. He doesn't know Sandy like he knows Lisa and Ianto; she's a wild card, unpredictable, Emily Holroyd would have called her a threat to the Empire. So would have Yvonne, but in a different manner.
Good thing both those bitches are dead, then.
So Jack slips her more sedative when she's not looking, just enough to make her mellow, and Gwen calls Ravi's sister over in Adamstown, and they wait for her to show, explain their cover story-Ravi was in an accident on location at Blaidd Drwg, and crisis averted, but he's dead and they can't release the body. Radiation. It's been cremated. If Sandy tells a different story, Jack figures, little good it will do her, and anyway, say what he wants about footballer's wives, they know how to tow the party line when it counts, and Sandy's not stupid. He doesn’t know how he can tell what she'll do, he decides, but Gwen is willing to run on a tank of hunches, so he'll let that engine idle.
***
He drops Gwen off at the Hub and heads home. Gwen will cover for him for a few hours, so he can sit with Ianto, who is on enforced admin leave for the rest of the week. Lisa and Penny had come home the day after, and Ianto has been sleeping with the baby on the sofa while Lisa recovers, waking her long enough to get her to breastfeed and then they all pass out on the bed. Jack has lost track of how many times over the past three days he has found them all asleep, the baby barely attached to her breast.
He can't imagine the whole breastfeeding thing, doing it. It's bad enough, he thinks, that one has to surrender their body for nine months, but then you're supposed to keep on keeping on for another six to eighteen months or something. It dictates what you eat and drink and carves sections out of your day and oh, maybe he's just jealous.
He locks the doors of the SUV and heads up the indoor stairwell to the lifts. He's not jealous. Much.
Jack presses the button for the lift with his palm, then stands in front of the bank there, not realising that he's swaying until he catches sight of himself in the wall of mirrors at the end of the hallway. Maybe he's a little tired, too. Weary. That's a good word for it. Funny how some words sound like they feel, like sensual onomatopoeia.
Ianto is sitting on the sofa, Penny in his arms, and Jack hangs his coat up, checking his watch. It's one-fifteen, so Evan is still in school, but he'll fetch him later. Evan knows that he's supposed to be on his best behaviour, not just for Mummy, but for Daddy, who has been through Something Bad, and he knows that Uncle Ravi is dead.
Jack wonders if he should take Evan to the funeral. Will there be a funeral? That's what New World Torchwood does, right? Ravi's family will expect one, even if the casket is empty. Is this something they should do for Evan, so that he can understand the nature of life? Death? Grief? To cement in his head that Ravi is gone and not coming back? Jack will have to ask Lisa later, because right now he's not doing anything but sliding onto the sofa and reaching out for his baby girl.
She's warm when Ianto hands her over, and Jack doesn't want to hold her long, just enough, really. Just enough to smell her, to bury his nose in the crook of her neck and shoulder, to hear her wet mouth noises. It's true, he says, he's not good with kids, his hands are huge, he tells them, and that's all a lie, a joke to cover up the irrational belief that when they are this small, they are vulnerable to the elements and Jack is an element of peril. It's a superstition that he chooses to believe because he can't seem to shake it, so he'll hold her and kiss her and rock her, but he doesn't want to get too close, not until she can fend better for herself.
It's a thing. He'd explained it one night to Ianto, who had taken it better than he'd figured he would, and then proceeded to make Jack change Evan's diaper.
Lisa had remembered one thing, though, and despite his threats of Bettina and Agnes and Phlegm, he'd picked Penelope on his own, and he doesn't have to explain it to Ianto or Lisa; they don't ask and he won't divulge it. It's important, but not important in that way. And some day if she wants to know, he’ll tell her about her possible grandmother on some distant planet, not even born, not even a thought to be born.
Ianto takes Penny back and tucks her head into the bend of his elbow. Jack bites the inside of his cheek.
'Sandy isn't going to be a problem,' he tells Ianto.
Ianto doesn't look at him. 'I should think not,' he mumbles. 'Sandy is incredibly bright and level-headed.' He blinks and strokes one index finger down Penny's cheek, and she turns her head towards him, her little peanut brain on auto-pilot. Jack finds himself wondering already what she'll be when she grows up.
'She wanted the body,' Jack says, leaning down to unlace his boots so he can kick them off and curl his feet under him. His toes are inexplicably chilled.
'Of course she did. That's natural, wanting to see it, to prove it.' Ianto doesn't look at him still, and Jack wonders if he is angry. Why would he be? Angry at himself? Or sad? Or depressed? Or-none of them has been getting enough sleep, for more than the obvious reasons. Jack doesn't bother to say any of that, or the obvious thing about Ravi's body, because Ianto had watched it collapse out of existence.
'If it were me,' Ianto says, 'would you bury me? Or lock me in the morgue?' Jack doesn't even want to answer, doesn't even start, actually, before Ianto continues. 'Don't answer that. Just-you should let Lisa have a say in it, whatever it is.' He smiles at Penny's sleepy face. 'I have a will, you know, burial notes and things. Adoption papers prepped for you and Evan, and now Pen. You two are both bollocks at planning everything.'
Not entirely true. 'This is morbid,' Jack says. Entirely true.
'Not denying that, but necessary. I just…'
Jack throws one arm behind Ianto on the sofa and leans in. 'Then stop.'
'If…ah, you're right. Watch her eyes,' he says, distracted, and then he holds her up, just a little, in the air and those eyes open, bright and clear, and Jack sees Lisa reflected like a miniature portrait. 'I keep trying to get her to smile, but it's too soon,' Ianto says to him, laying Penny back down in the cradle of his arms and readjusting his feet up on the coffee table so that his knees are drawn up.
Jack watches Ianto's face, wondering what it had looked like, to see that happen, to see it happen so suddenly, to someone he was close to. Ravi had been with them for ages, since the last Hub. Ravi had, unlike Claire, known Lisa before, in her wheelchair. Ravi, whose wedding they'd all gone to. Ravi, who had left behind a legacy of projects and folders and computer programmes laced with hip-hop bombs that explode into bass and treble when they hit on the wrong thing in the computer. Jack wonders how long they'll be weeding his little jokes out of the system. Probably forever.
Just this morning he'd input his password incorrectly five times in a row, and his monitor had treated him to a song about 'lady lumps' that he could have gone for the rest of his very very very long life without hearing ever again.
They'd got Tosh out of the coding, but only because most of her work had exploded. Jack is slightly grateful for that because he isn't sure that he could deal with debugging both their codes at the same time. Not unlike the time he'd been digging in Owen's drawers in the old Hub and come up with a handful of scalpel.
He hears snoring and looks at the baby monitor sitting on the coffee table. Ianto laughs. 'She says she doesn't snore,' he reminds Jack.
Jack laughs. 'What do people do? Record it?'
Ianto lays his head back and closes his eyes for a second. 'She'd deny it. Even if we got visual.'
He's completely right, and recording the one you love snoring is not the way to your beloved's heart. That is a trip to the sofa bed, which they both know. Besides, after this long, well, it’s hardly a surprise.
'I was thinking,' Jack says, reaching out a finger and touching Penny's palm so that she closes her little digits around it, a Venus hand kid. 'We could get a dog. Wouldn't it be neat to have a dog?'
Ianto lifts his head, blinks again at Penny's closed eyes and lifts her minutely so that he can lay his lips along her forehead, the smooth brown skin of her perfect face, and he smells her. Jack hears the inhalation of his nose and when he breathes out, it ruffles her hair. Jack wants to do the same to him, to reach up and press his lips into Ianto's hairline, to kiss him gently there in a way that is so familiar. He wants to cradle the back of Ianto's head in his hand and lift his nose to smell the hair on his head.
Instead, he leans in and kisses Penny's perfect automaton fingers, jostling them back and forth in false joviality. Outside the gulls scream on the railing, and they look at them for a second before Ianto turns his face towards Jack's and blinks, as if he is surprised, as if something has just occurred to him.
'Jack,' he says slowly, and the hand under Penny's head shifts as he raises her up and lays her on his chest, her tiny puffy face snuffling into his collar. His eyes harden with certainty in his mind and he presses his other hand to Penny's little back, holding on for dear life. 'Jack, we have to get out of Torchwood.'
END