Fic: Symphony Eroica, Accompanied by the Shipwrecked
Title: Symphony Eroica, Accompanied by the Shipwrecked
Rating: PG for some very mild sexual discussion
Warnings: Set between 2.11 and 2.12, spoilers up to 2.12
Characters/Pairings: Ianto, Gwen genfic (no, really!), Jack/Ianto discussed
Summary: After the events of Adrift, Ianto tells Gwen a story.
“Ianto, it was you who gave me that GPS. Wasn't it?” Gwen had cornered him in the tourist office, chastened and apologetic yet still not quite ready to let the island and its inhabitants go.
Ianto looked up at her, then pressed on his earpiece. “Jack, I just saw something I think we need to check out...something odd in the newspaper...No, the trashy one, which probably means it's rubbish, but they've had real sightings in there before...Gwen is here, she can come with me...no, we'll take my car. We shouldn't be too long...I'll let you know when we get back....Of course....Yes....Okay.”
He smiled pleasantly, placed both hands firmly on the desk, and said, “Right, then, are you coming?”
“Coming where?”
“To investigate alien fauna.” He opened the door and held it for her. “Shall we?”
Gwen allowed herself to be escorted out the door and around the building to Ianto's car. He inquired after her parents and Rhys. Gwen teased him about finding leads in trashy yellow rags as very Men in Black. (“Excuse me. I look much better in a suit that Tommy Lee Jones, and you're certainly prettier than Will Smith.”) He mentioned a recent email he'd received from Martha. She told him about what Rhys had said to her after the debacle on the island, and fretted that she had completely burned her bridges with Andy. He didn't comment on the last, just gave her a quick, curious glance. They fell silent, until Gwen realized she had no idea where they were.
“Where are we going?” They seemed to be headed out to the airport.
“To the bird sanctuary.”
“Why are we going to a bird sanctuary?”
“To see the birds, of course.” Gwen had learned while Jack was away to not argue with Ianto-she would eventually find out what she needed to know. He would tell her in his own time, and he usually had a unique way of sharing information. It was like he was building a history, and he always built it so that she found out the answers to her questions before she could even think to ask. She noticed that his “work face” was gone, replaced by a relaxed expression she'd only seen once or twice before.
When they arrived, Ianto paid the admission charge for both of them. They walked down a gravel path towards a small arena, where a flying demonstration was advertised to start shortly. “I took one of their one-day falconry classes last year, just for fun. Shall we watch?” Gwen took a seat next to him, and they both enjoyed watching the falconers fly their birds. After the show, he stood up and said, “This way.” He led her to a row of mews populated by various hawks and falcons, and stopped outside of one cage separated from the others by about two meters. Inside was a large black bird with an ugly bald red face and a white beak.
“This is Matilda. She is a turkey vulture. She was found on board a cargo ship during a transatlantic voyage. She's so calm that they use her in the falconry lessons, and that's probably why she's still alive. The crew found her halfway across the Atlantic, and fed her scraps from the galley.
“Turkey vultures are native to North America. There aren't any birds like them in the whole of Britain, let alone the whole of Europe. The staff think that she was blown out to sea during a storm, possibly a hurricane,” he continued, “and she landed on board the ship. It's not uncommon.”
Gwen cocked her head at the bird. “Who brought her here?”
“The ship's captain himself called the hawk centre, and their volunteers picked her up.” He pointed at Matilda's chest. “See the drooping wing? Her breastbone is cracked. She can't fly. She can't be released into the wild here. She can't be taken back to America. The choices were to bring her here or euthanize her.”
Gwen frowned. The comparison to the people on the island was glaringly obvious, and just as obviously not the right answer. If she were talking to Owen or Tosh or Jack, she'd assume that was the extent of it (possibly with some ill grace, as she was already feeling chastened and they had a tendency to say I told you so), but this was Ianto. With Ianto, one had to look past the surface to solve the riddles he posed, both in terms of the stories he told and in terms of the man himself. It occurred to her that he had opened up more to her in talking about Matilda than he had since Jack left. Even though she had no idea what he wanted her to learn, his candor told her it was extremely important to him and she had best pay attention.
Ianto pulled the Hawk Centre brochure out of his pocket. “According to their brochure, it costs about five hundred pounds a year to keep one of their rescued birds. Most of that is spent on food and veterinary care.”
“So?”
“The rescues are largely tended by volunteers, who have to spend two months in rescue training, and who are frequently called out in the dead of night to pick up sick or injured birds. The birds are dangerous, so they need special handling. They are also fragile. It's a massive undertaking, in terms of time and money.” His voice was very matter-of-fact and neutral; he could have been reading the weather report. “Somebody had to see a problem, have an idea to solve it, and have the will to make it happen.” He stepped back a pace from Gwen and waited.
“I still don't follow you.”
“Somebody had to believe that even though she was lost and broken she was still worth saving. Somebody had to work very hard so that she could be saved, even though she doesn't belong here.” As her posture radiated doubt and confusion, he finally sighed and connected the dots for her. “Jack, Gwen. Jack. He started the facility on his own initiative, found the site, had it rehabilitated, hired the nursing sisters, and arranged for the transport and safety of the victims. Jack did all that.”
“But...oh, he did say something like that, but...I...” That thought had never occurred to her, not once.
“He knows every one of them by name. Whenever a new one arrives, he goes to visit as soon as he can.” A moment of silence. “They were being held in cages like Weevils before he took over. Did he tell you that? I knew about that because I do all the logistics for the island and I've seen the records.” Ianto's turned to face the vulture.
Gwen sighed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “There still is no excuse for not allowing them to at least contact their families, or for jailing them with no contact from the outside world. Even if they can never see their families again, the postal service works just fine.”
Without turning back to her, he said, “Remember what I said about not being able to send Matilda back to America? That she may be carrying some kind of disease or parasite?” Ianto lowered his voice, lowered it to the point that Gwen had to step closer to hear him. “Some of the people in there are paradoxes waiting to happen. The things they know have the potential to rip the fabric of space and time apart! They literally cannot be allowed back into society if we want to keep having a society, and that includes postcards. That's even assuming that these people are well. You now know that they are not.”
After that, Ianto raised his voice to a more normal conversational pitch. “That was part of what I wanted to show you, but not the main part. I wanted you to...to see what Jack has done. Jack is the only man on the planet who could possibly understand what has happened to them and could do something about it. And he did it. The kindness, the mercy, the love it took to even think of it, let alone do it, is staggering, and he did all of it.”
That stopped Gwen cold. She suddenly felt very small. All the colour drained out of her face, and she walked slowly, carefully to a nearby bench and sat down. She folded her hands across her lap and bent her head, looking as if she might cry. Ianto ghosted over and sat down next to her. He was almost but not quite close enough to touch.
“There's more to it than that,” he continued, toying with the brochure. “We both know he was born in the future. He may know of something that could fix them in the future, something that will be invented in, I don't know, three hundred years. Because he can't cause a paradox, he can't say anything to anybody about it, he can only watch them suffer in silence. Hellish, I would imagine.
“I wanted you to think about how you've treated Jack. I've heard you accuse him many times of not having a heart, or of having no compassion. You've been looking at him through a dirty window, Gwen. He doesn't show his compassion in the same way as you do, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.”
Gwen looked up at him, and two tears spilled down her cheeks. “Ianto, I...”
“Shhh.” He put a finger to his lips. “Since you started at Torchwood, he has killed eight times that I know of. Some of them were human, some of them were alien. One of them was Lisa.” Ianto paused, took a deep breath, and ran his free hand through his hair. Gwen put her head back down, wondering if she should say something, but then he continued, “I loved her beyond reason. And in hindsight, if I'd been rational, I would have killed her too. Believe me when I say he knows the names of every being who suffers at his hand, and he never forgets any of them.” Ianto paused again, letting his words sink in. “He mourns many of them. I know he has a picture of me and Lisa in his desk drawer.”
Gwen turned to face him, trying to come up with words and failing miserably. Ianto put down the brochure and, after taking one of her hands into his own, stroking the back of it with his thumb, he finally looked up into her eyes.
“Do you remember the Weevils in the fight club, or the Arkan cruiser that entered the atmosphere the night Lisa died? Or Myfanwy? Any alien we come across, so long as it isn't doing any harm, we let go free. We don't even bother Weevils unless they come out of the sewers and start molesting people. That is Jack's doing. I know, I was at Torchwood One and I saw how things used to be. At Torchwood One, Myfanwy would be a stuffed trophy head on somebody's wall. Weevils were shot and incinerated.” Gwen didn't think she could shrink down any more than she already had, but Ianto's earnest, gentle voice and pleading eyes were cutting her like knives. She moved to take her hand away; he let her. They sat side by side, faces down, thinking. Gwen was so lost in thought that she didn't notice Ianto picking a small yellow blossom from the tree next to her and tucking it into his pocket.
After a time he rose to his feet and offered her his hand. Blinking back more tears, Gwen stood up. He offered her a handkerchief from his breast pocket and turned to admire the vulture while she composed herself. After another long moment, she laid her hand on his arm and tentatively handed him the handkerchief. Idly he folded it and stuffed back into his breast pocket, then offered her his elbow and escorted her away. They stopped by the washrooms so Gwen could rinse her face and fix her makeup before thanking the staff and leaving. Ianto dropped two ten-pound notes in the donation box on the way out.
-----
On the ride home, Ianto called Jack to say it had been a false alarm, and mentioned that he and Gwen were going to stop at Tesco. As they wandered down the aisles gathering milk, tea, biscuits, and other little sundries, Gwen asked Ianto, “So, how long...I mean, um...”
Ianto looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“How long have you known?”
“About the island?”
“No, about Jack. About what you told me about Jack.”
Ianto drew in a deep breath and blew it out gustily before answering. “I knew he was different the moment I met him. I didn't realize just how different he is until much later.” They continued down the aisle. As they turned the corner, he added, “That's not entirely true. It wasn't the first time I met him, more like the third, but close enough that it's not significant. I'm still learning just how different he is.”
Ianto pushed the trolley down to the next aisle, tossing in a sudoku book and a couple of science magazines.
“Who are those for?”
“The sudoku is for Tosh and the science magazines are for Owen,” replied Ianto.
“Have you always gotten them that?”
“It's my job, Gwen. I take care of these kinds of things.” He smiled as he looked down into the trolley, a charming, unforced smile whose existence kept his words from sounding patronizing. “Suzie always liked those books of logic puzzles. Owen can't eat anymore, but when he was properly alive I kept a stash of Cadbury Flake in the pantry for him. You never had a particular addiction so far as I could tell, so I never brought you anything. If you see anything you like, let me know.”
“And Jack?”
Ianto didn't look at her. “The kind of things Jack wants can't be bought in a store. I give them to him as best as I can, when I can.”
Just as a host of filthy possibilites blossomed into Gwen's mind, Ianto tossed a packet of serviettes into the trolley. Ianto looked up, caught her expression, and smirked at her. “You're thinking something pornographic, aren't you?”
Gwen blushed. Busted. “It's hard not to, around Jack. He practically invites it most of the time, and when he doesn't you still think it anyway.”
Ianto huffed with laughter, then grew serious. “We do do that. You would know,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “But that's not what I meant. The things Jack wants can't be bought anywhere for any price.”
Now Gwen was intrigued. “That would rule out sex.”
“That would rule out sex.” Ianto stopped talking as they approached the till; clearly he didn't want to have this conversation in front of a stranger. A few minutes later, Gwen helped him carry the packets out to his car. Once the packets were safely in the boot and people were safely in their seats, he started talking again.
“Jack is old, Gwen. He looks young enough, but he is older than any human being on the planet. He is old enough that material possessions don't have any intrinsic value to him. They may have some sentimental value, like that coral on his desk, or a useful purpose, like that wrist strap, but otherwise? He has no use for them. I won't say more than that, as we both like to keep our private lives private, and our relationship is definitely private. Despite being caught out on occasion.”
Gwen giggled at the memory. Ianto's eyes twinkled. He gave her a quick, naughty expression before saying, “We do try to keep our relationship out of the office, but it can be difficult considering Jack lives there.” The twinkle abruptly disappeared, and he grew sober again. “Anyway, the things Jack wants are the kind that have to be given freely. Trust, faith, forgiveness, that sort of thing. A smile, perhaps, or a moment of your time.”
At the words “trust” and “faith” and “forgiveness,” Gwen's smile fell away. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window. Part of her wanted to shoot back at Ianto that she trusted Jack too, to accuse him of not possibly being able to know all this about Jack, but then she remembered all the little things she had seen them do together since he returned. All the little things that, on their own, seemed insignificant...taken as a whole they painted a different picture, a picture of a very caring, if still developing, partnership. Ianto had every reason to know all of this about Jack, and given how little Jack spoke of himself, he most certainly would have had to figure it out on his own. And trust? She certainly hadn't acted like she trusted Jack lately. Her cheeks flamed as the implications of this entire expedition hit her-the entire conversation hadn't centered on Jack as the leader of Torchwood Three, it was centered on Jack as Ianto's friend and lover. Perhaps even beloved. Despite his claim that he was keeping his and Jack's private business to himself, he had gifted her with a glimpse of the intimacy between them, something she felt she had no right to see.
The traffic of Cardiff whizzed by. “How badly have I hurt him?”
There was a long silence before Ianto answered. “I don't know. He didn't say anything to me, and since it's a work thing between you and him, not him and me or you and me, I didn't press.”
They arrived at the car park shortly after. Ianto popped open the boot of his car, and as he reached in for the grocery packets, he looked over to her and said, “One more thing. He loves you. No matter what happens, what you do, he loves you. He loves all of us far more than we ever suspected before he left. He loved Owen enough to bring him back from the dead, and don't think for a second he wouldn't have done that for you.”
With that final, amazing observation, the casual, open, intimate Ianto vanished, replaced by the pleasant butler persona that he always wore in the office. “Now then, shall we get this inside?” Gwen winced at the transition; it marked the end of what had been a most extraordinary-and humbling-conversation.
As the Hub door rolled back, Jack stuck his head out of his office. “Gwen? Ianto? What was it?”
Ianto looked back up at him and replied, “It was a bird, Jack. Just a strange-looking bird with a broken wing. That's all.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's note: "Eroica" is the common name for Symphony #3 in E Flat Major by Ludwig van Beethoven. The Eroica symphony (Eroica is Italian for "heroic") has four movements: a heroic overture, a funeral march, a much faster third movement, and massive, powerful outpouring of music at the finale. From Wikipedia: "Music critiic J.W.N. Sullivan writes that the first movement is an expression of Beethoven's courage in confronting his deafness, the second, slow and dirgelike, depicting the overwhelming despair he felt, the third, the scherzo, an "indomitable uprising of creative energy" and the fourth an exuberant outpouring of creative energy." I thought that it suited Jack's reaction to learning of the Rift victims and his subsequent actions to a tee.
Comments are always appreciated.
Rating: PG for some very mild sexual discussion
Warnings: Set between 2.11 and 2.12, spoilers up to 2.12
Characters/Pairings: Ianto, Gwen genfic (no, really!), Jack/Ianto discussed
Summary: After the events of Adrift, Ianto tells Gwen a story.
“Ianto, it was you who gave me that GPS. Wasn't it?” Gwen had cornered him in the tourist office, chastened and apologetic yet still not quite ready to let the island and its inhabitants go.
Ianto looked up at her, then pressed on his earpiece. “Jack, I just saw something I think we need to check out...something odd in the newspaper...No, the trashy one, which probably means it's rubbish, but they've had real sightings in there before...Gwen is here, she can come with me...no, we'll take my car. We shouldn't be too long...I'll let you know when we get back....Of course....Yes....Okay.”
He smiled pleasantly, placed both hands firmly on the desk, and said, “Right, then, are you coming?”
“Coming where?”
“To investigate alien fauna.” He opened the door and held it for her. “Shall we?”
Gwen allowed herself to be escorted out the door and around the building to Ianto's car. He inquired after her parents and Rhys. Gwen teased him about finding leads in trashy yellow rags as very Men in Black. (“Excuse me. I look much better in a suit that Tommy Lee Jones, and you're certainly prettier than Will Smith.”) He mentioned a recent email he'd received from Martha. She told him about what Rhys had said to her after the debacle on the island, and fretted that she had completely burned her bridges with Andy. He didn't comment on the last, just gave her a quick, curious glance. They fell silent, until Gwen realized she had no idea where they were.
“Where are we going?” They seemed to be headed out to the airport.
“To the bird sanctuary.”
“Why are we going to a bird sanctuary?”
“To see the birds, of course.” Gwen had learned while Jack was away to not argue with Ianto-she would eventually find out what she needed to know. He would tell her in his own time, and he usually had a unique way of sharing information. It was like he was building a history, and he always built it so that she found out the answers to her questions before she could even think to ask. She noticed that his “work face” was gone, replaced by a relaxed expression she'd only seen once or twice before.
When they arrived, Ianto paid the admission charge for both of them. They walked down a gravel path towards a small arena, where a flying demonstration was advertised to start shortly. “I took one of their one-day falconry classes last year, just for fun. Shall we watch?” Gwen took a seat next to him, and they both enjoyed watching the falconers fly their birds. After the show, he stood up and said, “This way.” He led her to a row of mews populated by various hawks and falcons, and stopped outside of one cage separated from the others by about two meters. Inside was a large black bird with an ugly bald red face and a white beak.
“This is Matilda. She is a turkey vulture. She was found on board a cargo ship during a transatlantic voyage. She's so calm that they use her in the falconry lessons, and that's probably why she's still alive. The crew found her halfway across the Atlantic, and fed her scraps from the galley.
“Turkey vultures are native to North America. There aren't any birds like them in the whole of Britain, let alone the whole of Europe. The staff think that she was blown out to sea during a storm, possibly a hurricane,” he continued, “and she landed on board the ship. It's not uncommon.”
Gwen cocked her head at the bird. “Who brought her here?”
“The ship's captain himself called the hawk centre, and their volunteers picked her up.” He pointed at Matilda's chest. “See the drooping wing? Her breastbone is cracked. She can't fly. She can't be released into the wild here. She can't be taken back to America. The choices were to bring her here or euthanize her.”
Gwen frowned. The comparison to the people on the island was glaringly obvious, and just as obviously not the right answer. If she were talking to Owen or Tosh or Jack, she'd assume that was the extent of it (possibly with some ill grace, as she was already feeling chastened and they had a tendency to say I told you so), but this was Ianto. With Ianto, one had to look past the surface to solve the riddles he posed, both in terms of the stories he told and in terms of the man himself. It occurred to her that he had opened up more to her in talking about Matilda than he had since Jack left. Even though she had no idea what he wanted her to learn, his candor told her it was extremely important to him and she had best pay attention.
Ianto pulled the Hawk Centre brochure out of his pocket. “According to their brochure, it costs about five hundred pounds a year to keep one of their rescued birds. Most of that is spent on food and veterinary care.”
“So?”
“The rescues are largely tended by volunteers, who have to spend two months in rescue training, and who are frequently called out in the dead of night to pick up sick or injured birds. The birds are dangerous, so they need special handling. They are also fragile. It's a massive undertaking, in terms of time and money.” His voice was very matter-of-fact and neutral; he could have been reading the weather report. “Somebody had to see a problem, have an idea to solve it, and have the will to make it happen.” He stepped back a pace from Gwen and waited.
“I still don't follow you.”
“Somebody had to believe that even though she was lost and broken she was still worth saving. Somebody had to work very hard so that she could be saved, even though she doesn't belong here.” As her posture radiated doubt and confusion, he finally sighed and connected the dots for her. “Jack, Gwen. Jack. He started the facility on his own initiative, found the site, had it rehabilitated, hired the nursing sisters, and arranged for the transport and safety of the victims. Jack did all that.”
“But...oh, he did say something like that, but...I...” That thought had never occurred to her, not once.
“He knows every one of them by name. Whenever a new one arrives, he goes to visit as soon as he can.” A moment of silence. “They were being held in cages like Weevils before he took over. Did he tell you that? I knew about that because I do all the logistics for the island and I've seen the records.” Ianto's turned to face the vulture.
Gwen sighed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “There still is no excuse for not allowing them to at least contact their families, or for jailing them with no contact from the outside world. Even if they can never see their families again, the postal service works just fine.”
Without turning back to her, he said, “Remember what I said about not being able to send Matilda back to America? That she may be carrying some kind of disease or parasite?” Ianto lowered his voice, lowered it to the point that Gwen had to step closer to hear him. “Some of the people in there are paradoxes waiting to happen. The things they know have the potential to rip the fabric of space and time apart! They literally cannot be allowed back into society if we want to keep having a society, and that includes postcards. That's even assuming that these people are well. You now know that they are not.”
After that, Ianto raised his voice to a more normal conversational pitch. “That was part of what I wanted to show you, but not the main part. I wanted you to...to see what Jack has done. Jack is the only man on the planet who could possibly understand what has happened to them and could do something about it. And he did it. The kindness, the mercy, the love it took to even think of it, let alone do it, is staggering, and he did all of it.”
That stopped Gwen cold. She suddenly felt very small. All the colour drained out of her face, and she walked slowly, carefully to a nearby bench and sat down. She folded her hands across her lap and bent her head, looking as if she might cry. Ianto ghosted over and sat down next to her. He was almost but not quite close enough to touch.
“There's more to it than that,” he continued, toying with the brochure. “We both know he was born in the future. He may know of something that could fix them in the future, something that will be invented in, I don't know, three hundred years. Because he can't cause a paradox, he can't say anything to anybody about it, he can only watch them suffer in silence. Hellish, I would imagine.
“I wanted you to think about how you've treated Jack. I've heard you accuse him many times of not having a heart, or of having no compassion. You've been looking at him through a dirty window, Gwen. He doesn't show his compassion in the same way as you do, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.”
Gwen looked up at him, and two tears spilled down her cheeks. “Ianto, I...”
“Shhh.” He put a finger to his lips. “Since you started at Torchwood, he has killed eight times that I know of. Some of them were human, some of them were alien. One of them was Lisa.” Ianto paused, took a deep breath, and ran his free hand through his hair. Gwen put her head back down, wondering if she should say something, but then he continued, “I loved her beyond reason. And in hindsight, if I'd been rational, I would have killed her too. Believe me when I say he knows the names of every being who suffers at his hand, and he never forgets any of them.” Ianto paused again, letting his words sink in. “He mourns many of them. I know he has a picture of me and Lisa in his desk drawer.”
Gwen turned to face him, trying to come up with words and failing miserably. Ianto put down the brochure and, after taking one of her hands into his own, stroking the back of it with his thumb, he finally looked up into her eyes.
“Do you remember the Weevils in the fight club, or the Arkan cruiser that entered the atmosphere the night Lisa died? Or Myfanwy? Any alien we come across, so long as it isn't doing any harm, we let go free. We don't even bother Weevils unless they come out of the sewers and start molesting people. That is Jack's doing. I know, I was at Torchwood One and I saw how things used to be. At Torchwood One, Myfanwy would be a stuffed trophy head on somebody's wall. Weevils were shot and incinerated.” Gwen didn't think she could shrink down any more than she already had, but Ianto's earnest, gentle voice and pleading eyes were cutting her like knives. She moved to take her hand away; he let her. They sat side by side, faces down, thinking. Gwen was so lost in thought that she didn't notice Ianto picking a small yellow blossom from the tree next to her and tucking it into his pocket.
After a time he rose to his feet and offered her his hand. Blinking back more tears, Gwen stood up. He offered her a handkerchief from his breast pocket and turned to admire the vulture while she composed herself. After another long moment, she laid her hand on his arm and tentatively handed him the handkerchief. Idly he folded it and stuffed back into his breast pocket, then offered her his elbow and escorted her away. They stopped by the washrooms so Gwen could rinse her face and fix her makeup before thanking the staff and leaving. Ianto dropped two ten-pound notes in the donation box on the way out.
-----
On the ride home, Ianto called Jack to say it had been a false alarm, and mentioned that he and Gwen were going to stop at Tesco. As they wandered down the aisles gathering milk, tea, biscuits, and other little sundries, Gwen asked Ianto, “So, how long...I mean, um...”
Ianto looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“How long have you known?”
“About the island?”
“No, about Jack. About what you told me about Jack.”
Ianto drew in a deep breath and blew it out gustily before answering. “I knew he was different the moment I met him. I didn't realize just how different he is until much later.” They continued down the aisle. As they turned the corner, he added, “That's not entirely true. It wasn't the first time I met him, more like the third, but close enough that it's not significant. I'm still learning just how different he is.”
Ianto pushed the trolley down to the next aisle, tossing in a sudoku book and a couple of science magazines.
“Who are those for?”
“The sudoku is for Tosh and the science magazines are for Owen,” replied Ianto.
“Have you always gotten them that?”
“It's my job, Gwen. I take care of these kinds of things.” He smiled as he looked down into the trolley, a charming, unforced smile whose existence kept his words from sounding patronizing. “Suzie always liked those books of logic puzzles. Owen can't eat anymore, but when he was properly alive I kept a stash of Cadbury Flake in the pantry for him. You never had a particular addiction so far as I could tell, so I never brought you anything. If you see anything you like, let me know.”
“And Jack?”
Ianto didn't look at her. “The kind of things Jack wants can't be bought in a store. I give them to him as best as I can, when I can.”
Just as a host of filthy possibilites blossomed into Gwen's mind, Ianto tossed a packet of serviettes into the trolley. Ianto looked up, caught her expression, and smirked at her. “You're thinking something pornographic, aren't you?”
Gwen blushed. Busted. “It's hard not to, around Jack. He practically invites it most of the time, and when he doesn't you still think it anyway.”
Ianto huffed with laughter, then grew serious. “We do do that. You would know,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “But that's not what I meant. The things Jack wants can't be bought anywhere for any price.”
Now Gwen was intrigued. “That would rule out sex.”
“That would rule out sex.” Ianto stopped talking as they approached the till; clearly he didn't want to have this conversation in front of a stranger. A few minutes later, Gwen helped him carry the packets out to his car. Once the packets were safely in the boot and people were safely in their seats, he started talking again.
“Jack is old, Gwen. He looks young enough, but he is older than any human being on the planet. He is old enough that material possessions don't have any intrinsic value to him. They may have some sentimental value, like that coral on his desk, or a useful purpose, like that wrist strap, but otherwise? He has no use for them. I won't say more than that, as we both like to keep our private lives private, and our relationship is definitely private. Despite being caught out on occasion.”
Gwen giggled at the memory. Ianto's eyes twinkled. He gave her a quick, naughty expression before saying, “We do try to keep our relationship out of the office, but it can be difficult considering Jack lives there.” The twinkle abruptly disappeared, and he grew sober again. “Anyway, the things Jack wants are the kind that have to be given freely. Trust, faith, forgiveness, that sort of thing. A smile, perhaps, or a moment of your time.”
At the words “trust” and “faith” and “forgiveness,” Gwen's smile fell away. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window. Part of her wanted to shoot back at Ianto that she trusted Jack too, to accuse him of not possibly being able to know all this about Jack, but then she remembered all the little things she had seen them do together since he returned. All the little things that, on their own, seemed insignificant...taken as a whole they painted a different picture, a picture of a very caring, if still developing, partnership. Ianto had every reason to know all of this about Jack, and given how little Jack spoke of himself, he most certainly would have had to figure it out on his own. And trust? She certainly hadn't acted like she trusted Jack lately. Her cheeks flamed as the implications of this entire expedition hit her-the entire conversation hadn't centered on Jack as the leader of Torchwood Three, it was centered on Jack as Ianto's friend and lover. Perhaps even beloved. Despite his claim that he was keeping his and Jack's private business to himself, he had gifted her with a glimpse of the intimacy between them, something she felt she had no right to see.
The traffic of Cardiff whizzed by. “How badly have I hurt him?”
There was a long silence before Ianto answered. “I don't know. He didn't say anything to me, and since it's a work thing between you and him, not him and me or you and me, I didn't press.”
They arrived at the car park shortly after. Ianto popped open the boot of his car, and as he reached in for the grocery packets, he looked over to her and said, “One more thing. He loves you. No matter what happens, what you do, he loves you. He loves all of us far more than we ever suspected before he left. He loved Owen enough to bring him back from the dead, and don't think for a second he wouldn't have done that for you.”
With that final, amazing observation, the casual, open, intimate Ianto vanished, replaced by the pleasant butler persona that he always wore in the office. “Now then, shall we get this inside?” Gwen winced at the transition; it marked the end of what had been a most extraordinary-and humbling-conversation.
As the Hub door rolled back, Jack stuck his head out of his office. “Gwen? Ianto? What was it?”
Ianto looked back up at him and replied, “It was a bird, Jack. Just a strange-looking bird with a broken wing. That's all.”
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Author's note: "Eroica" is the common name for Symphony #3 in E Flat Major by Ludwig van Beethoven. The Eroica symphony (Eroica is Italian for "heroic") has four movements: a heroic overture, a funeral march, a much faster third movement, and massive, powerful outpouring of music at the finale. From Wikipedia: "Music critiic J.W.N. Sullivan writes that the first movement is an expression of Beethoven's courage in confronting his deafness, the second, slow and dirgelike, depicting the overwhelming despair he felt, the third, the scherzo, an "indomitable uprising of creative energy" and the fourth an exuberant outpouring of creative energy." I thought that it suited Jack's reaction to learning of the Rift victims and his subsequent actions to a tee.
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