Hitting the Ground Running: Chapter Thirty-Two
Title: Hitting the Ground Running
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Primarily Jack/Ianto, with other secondary pairings mentioned
Chapter: 32/?
Word Count: 3096
Summary: AU. Majorly AU. Ianto Jones first encountered Torchwood as a teenager trying to leave his old life behind. However, when Torchwood Three gets rather violently restructured at the start of the millennium, he’s got a new assignment in Cardiff. The only thing he wasn’t prepared for was his new boss.
Disclaimer: …You really think it’s mine? Much as I might wish it was, it isn’t. I will go on the record and say that, unlike the show’s creative team, I firmly believe in happy endings.
Notes: I’ve flipped the order of some of the events in this episode in order to make them fit the fic better, but I don’t think it really changes it all that much…
Chapter Thirty-Two
In Which Ianto Reads his Diary, Loses it, and Inevitably Has it Returned to Him
Ianto woke up feeling boneless and content, and he snuggled back further into Jack’s embrace, smiling as his lover kissed the back of his neck tenderly. “Morning, love.”
“Good morning, yourself,” Jack replied. “Mmm, do we really have to go into work? This is nice.”
“The Rift doesn’t take care of itself,” Ianto replied, blinking as the words echoed in his brain like déjà vu…like he’d said them many times before.
“We have more than enough people to look after it,” Jack protested. “Come back to bed.”
“No, Jack; we need to get moving,” Ianto laughed happily and kissed Jack, pulling him up and out of bed. “Come on.”
“Mr. Jones, you’re no fun,” Jack pouted, and Ianto slapped his arse on the way to the washroom as Jack squawked in protest and dashed in after him, the two of them giggling like schoolchildren as they got into the shower.
And as normal and natural as it should have felt, Ianto couldn’t shake the feeling that something was really, really wrong.
000
“Who the Hell is this?”
And really, Ianto thought, Gwen’s predicament should have been the second clue that something was horribly, horrible wrong. Gwen never joked with people about things like that, and once it was revealed that she had even forgotten her fiancée...
That was something Gwen would never do, not in a million years, and Ianto made it his new official task to figure out what was going on.
“It’s strange. She’s overcome Retcon before, so there’s really no way it could be something like that,” Owen was saying from down in the autopsy bay, staring at Gwen and adjusting his glasses. Ianto had a quick mental flash of Owen sweeping off a pair of sunglasses, dressed in a leather jacket and snug-fitting denims, and wondered where that had come from.
Truth be told, he’d never seen Owen without the glasses, and the other man would probably need to have his mind severely messed with before he put on anything made of leather. He closed his eyes as strains of a conversation fluttered through his mind, Owen’s voice in his head sounding far more snarky than he could ever remember hearing it:
~ “Thought you’d want to have some fun. You never actually have any of it. Besides, we paid to get in here; may as well make the most of it.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“And you wouldn’t have me any other way.” ~
He opened his eyes, the strange moment gone, and focused back on the matter at hand, managing to catch the end of Toshiko’s question: “So…what? Stress?” she surmised, leaning on the rail in a way that only emphasized the cut of her shirt and how low it was. “I’ve heard that stress can sometimes trigger gaps in a person’s memory.”
“Yes, but Rhys is a little more than a gap, Tosh,” Owen was gazing at her like a love-sick puppy, a warm smile on his face that she half-returned before looking back at Gwen. “I just can’t…it has to be alien somehow, but I have no ideas.”
“I’ll keep looking through the archives; see if there’s anything that can do that,” Tosh pulled back from the rail and sauntered over to her computer.
“Never seen anything like this before, then?”
Ianto turned around sharply, surprised to see Adam there. “Not so…it’s like the only thing she’s forgotten is Rhys. What kind of device can make you just…forget a person ever existed?” he asked aloud.
“Who knows? But that’s what we’re here for, right? To figure this stuff out?” Adam clapped his shoulder. “So what’s bugging you? You seem…off today.”
“Nothing," Ianto sighed and shook his head. “It’s just…a feeling.”
“What sort of…feeling?”
“Just…like even though everything’s perfectly normal, there’s something really weird going on. And I don’t just mean Gwen forgetting Rhys,” Ianto admitted, turning to the red-haired man, who gave him a smile and shrugged.
“Aw, you’re just paranoid. Nothing’s going to happen,” Adam chuckled and Ianto gave him a semblance of a smile.
“You’re right. I must be more stressed than usual, that’s all. Coffee?”
“Of course,” Adam nodded and Ianto walked away, not looking back.
If he had, he would have seen Adam’s smile falter and a cold, calculating look creep into the young man’s eyes.
000
He wandered back in with the coffee to see Adam and Tosh kissing rather heatedly, and he passed a cup off to Owen as the man visibly blanched and tried to edge by the couple, muttering to Ianto, “That’s the second time I’ve found them doing that today,” before sneaking back down to the med bay.
Ianto sighed and dropped onto the couch, smiling at Gwen as she joined him a few moments later. They watched their co-workers for a while, Gwen giggling discreetly as Owen tried to give Tosh a rodent-shaped screen cleaner.
“He’s like a little puppy, bringing her sticks. When’s he gonna realize he’s got no chance?” Gwen asked in a whisper, grinning madly.
“Love’s blind, apparently. He’s idolized her for years, now,” Ianto replied, wincing when another memory…was it a memory?...flashed into his mind:
~“I know you like him.”
“What? What gave you that idea?
“It’s…fairly obvious to anybody not named ‘Owen.’”
“…Oh. Well, okay, then. It’s just…I feel invisible around him. It’s like he barely notices me…I mean, we get along fine but he doesn’t see me as a woman, you know? I’m just a friend.”
“He notices you more than you think, Tosh,” he promised her, reaching to hold her hand as she gave him a tiny smile. ~
“Ianto?” Gwen said, and he blinked and turned to her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just…thinking,” Ianto said quickly, and that was certainly true. But where had that come from? It felt so…real…and yet…Owen had always chased after Tosh, hadn’t he? Tosh was never interested in Owen, so why…
Putting it into the mental file he’d labeled, quite succinctly, as ‘Weird Stuff,&;rsquo; he decided he’d think about everything more in detail later.
000
“Hey, you,” Jack came up behind him, pulling him back to rest against his chest and nipping at his neck. “Saw Tosh and Adam earlier. Thought we could do the same thing…if you know what I mean.”
“Sir, you know perfectly well what my policy is about sexual acts in the workplace,” Ianto chided, freezing when Jack also stilled.
“We’ve…never really talked about it, so no,” Jack sounded confused, and Ianto winced as another memory crept into his mind:
~“We’ll try to refrain from such activities during work hours in the future. Won’t we, sir?” he asked, arching his eyebrow as Jack looked ready to protest.
“Uh…yeah. Of course we will. After-hours only,” Jack nodded.~
“Oh. Well, we’ll have plenty of time for this later,” Ianto spun around and smiled wickedly, capturing Jack’s lips in a teasing kiss. “Right now our priority is to help Gwen.”
“Right,” Jack still looked perplexed, but he shrugged and went on his way.
What’s wrong with me? Ianto thought worriedly. First Gwen starts acting strange, and now him? And why did…why did even this…thing with Jack feel wrong? They’d been together for years, so why did it feel like they shouldn’t be?
Why…a sudden flash of inspiration hit him and he rushed up to the tourist office, digging his diary out of the drawer in the desk and flipping through it, turning to the entry he’d put in about a week ago (he was obviously angry when writing it; there wasn’t even a date attached).
***Dealt with the aftermath of the space-cow today. Poor thing showed up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I can’t even think about how many creatures that has happened to.
I feel blessed that we found Myfanwy before anybody could exploit her in any way, and I only wish we could have done something for the alien (although, to be fair, the cost of feeding it would eat up our budget like nobody’s business).
In other news, Jack is being an…I believe Owen would kindly call it an ‘ignorant git,’ and I have to say that I share his sentiments. How he hasn’t yet noticed that I got shot is beyond me, although he seems to know every minute detail about Gwen and her life.
As much as it pains me to admit it, perhaps Owen is right; maybe I was just some sort of hard-to-get prize for Jack and now that he’s won me, he has no need for me…
No. No, I refuse to believe that. I know he’ll come around, eventually, and it may sound soppy to write that I’ll wait until he does, but I’m not giving up on him.
I love him.
And I promise that the next time the time is right, I’m not going to hold it in; I’m going to tell him. ***
The entry ended there, but Ianto had another memory flash; a gun going off, Jack ignoring him; he, Tosh, Owen and Andy in his flat…
He slammed the book shut. Why wasn’t Adam in his memory anywhere? Was he the one behind this?
If he was…if he was, then they had an enemy in their own ranks. An enemy one of them was involved with.
He was going to have to solve this one on his own for now, so he placed the diary carefully back in the drawer and slipped back down into the Hub.
000
After dropping a reluctant Gwen back at her place, Ianto sighed as his portable Rift monitor alerted him to a Weevil sighting. He opened his mouth to tell Jack, but the other man was staring across the street, as pale as if he had seen a ghost.
“Jack?”
“Sorry,” Jack shook his head. “You were saying?”
“Weevil sighting by the sewer in Rockall Street…”
But Jack was ignoring him again, staring at the empty sidewalk, and he turned to Ianto and asked in a hushed whisper, “Can you see him?”
“Who?”
Jack blinked a couple of times and shook his head. “Nobody. Sorry. Weevil, you say? I’ll drop you off and check out the sighting.”
“I could come with you,” Ianto offered, still feeling a little off-kilter around Jack. His diary had said they were currently having a lover’s tiff, so why couldn’t he remember any of it? “It’s been a while since we went hunting together.”
“I know,” Jack turned his face and kissed him. “But there’s something I’ve gotta do. I’ll catch up with you later.”
000
Back at the Hub, Ianto wondered what Jack had to do that was so important, but Tosh and Owen were arguing about the origins of a strange box that had come through the Rift a while ago, so Ianto chimed in.
“I think Jack brought it in.”
“No,” Tosh shook her head emphatically. “I’m sure Adam found it on an excavation a few months back.”
Which, Ianto knew immediately, was a lie: he knew Jack had found the box; they’d discussed it in detail when he’d brought it back in. “I’ll have a look in the diary; I like to log the interesting stuff,” he finally said, needing to investigate Adam a little more.
Tosh shot him an amused look before saying, “You write about artifacts in your diary?”
Ianto, deciding to play along, winked at her and said, in a low voice, “Among other things,” before turning on his heel and striding from the room. He knew he was right, but apparently he was still the only one who’d figured out that Adam was somehow messing with their minds. Those flashes of memory were real memories; they had to be: they felt real.
Owen wasn’t a nerd who wore sweater-vests and crept around hiding in the shadows, he was loud and brash and sarcastic and yep, thinking about it now, the leather jacket fit him like a glove.
Toshiko wasn’t a vixen; she was brilliant and quiet and hopelessly devoted to Owen (who, Ianto recalled, was slowly starting to return her feelings).
Gwen was…well, Gwen was remarkably the same, only without her memories of Rhys.
And Jack…Jack was just Jack, inevitable and unchanging and Ianto…the real Ianto…was definitely peeved at him about something…oh, right, the fact that he’d had a bullet put through his shoulder and Jack had somehow neglected to notice.
Regardless, Jack was his best bet at the moment, so he headed upstairs again to snag the diary. The way he saw it, the more proof he had that Adam wasn’t supposed to be there, the better.
000
Ianto shuddered as Jack came back into the Hub, clomping down the stairs with his usual lack of grace as Ianto quietly asked, “Jack?”
“Ianto,” he sounded surprised that anybody was there at all, but he chuckled and moved forward, his expression immediately changing to one of concern. “You look horrible. What happened?”
“I…” Ianto shook his head. Adam had tried; oh, how he’d tried to put those false memories in: But we know the rot in your heart. You crave flesh.
His head hurt; he felt…violated, but his psychic training had saved him in the end, rejecting the false memories until Adam had been forced to retreat, although where he was now Ianto could only guess. And Jack…this Jack, at least, had never ignored his pain, so even though he was technically still mad at him, right now he needed the other man’s arms around him more than he could ever remember.
And Jack didn’t ask anything else; just pulled him in tight, dropping back onto the sofa after a time and letting Ianto cling to him, fingers clutched in the familiar wool of his greatcoat. He had to say it, even if Jack…his real Jack…wouldn’t remember, he had to. “I love you,” he finally choked out, curling even closer.
“I know,” Jack’s voice was rough, and he cleared his throat. “I…”
“Don’t,” Ianto shook his head.
“Hey, that’s a little unfair; you get to say it and I can’t,” the older man’s voice was gently teasing, and Ianto found it in himself to smile.
“Go ahead then, sir; I’m sorry for depriving you of such a momentous occasion.”
“Brat,” Jack said affectionately. “I love you, too.”
“I know,” Ianto echoed, leaning up to give Jack a slow kiss. “But there’s something else happening here: it’s Adam.”
“What about Adam?”
“He doesn’t exist.”
The look Jack gave him then was calculating, but Ianto knew that Jack believed him, and a second later he nodded. “Show me.”
000
When they had finished, Ianto was slumped in a chair at one of the computers and Jack was standing behind him, hands on his shoulders as they reviewed the CCTV footage. “So. He controls people by both touch and voice,” he said quietly. “What did he try to do to you?”
“Apparently while he can alter people’s memories so that he’s a part of them, he can also force false memories into people’s minds. He just didn’t count on my psychic training being quite so strong,” Ianto allowed himself a wry smile. “And perhaps trying to convince me I’m some sort of serial killer wasn’t the greatest idea.”
“So you…forced him out?”
“As best I could. I still know he exists, but I know which memories are false and which are real,” his voice lowered.
“So…we’re mad at each other?”
“I’m mad at you,” Ianto corrected.
“Oh. I don’t want you to be mad at me,” Jack said in a small voice, and Ianto reached up to take his hand.
“We’ll work through it, sir,” he promised.
“I know. I can’t lose you, especially not because I was an idiot,” Jack bent forward to kiss him, and it was rather awkward being upside-down, but he got the message across.
“I don’t want to lose you either, Jack,” Ianto stood up and turned around, pulling Jack into an embrace, but they broke apart as the main lights came on and Owen wandered in, carrying a rather impressive bouquet of flowers.
It was time to get to work.
000
“We have to take it, too, you know,” Jack said to Ianto in the stillness of the boardroom, watching Gwen, Tosh and Owen slowly succumb to the sedative after-effects of the Retcon.
“I do,” Ianto examined the tiny white pill and sighed. “I just…”
“Don’t want to go back to us hating each other?”
“Yeah,” he nodded as Jack took his hand. “We’ll work it out.”
“I know. I promise…and I know you won’t remember it, but I promise that, whatever I did, I won’t stop trying until we’re okay again,” Jack swore, bringing Ianto’s hand up to his lips and kissing his fingers.
“I believe you,” Ianto said quietly, and he did. “Well, no going back. See you on the other side,” he tossed the pill back, another blast of memory hitting him (Jack saying those exact words to him before shooting himself in the head, back when Ianto didn’t know he would come back…) before he felt Jack catch him and settle him comfortably in a chair, and the last thing he remembered as sleep took him was Jack tenderly kissing his forehead.
000
Ianto tried very hard not to think about what had happened over the last two days that they would have needed to forget in case he inadvertently called up the memories. Everybody seemed to be back to normal, and although Tosh was over the moon about the gorgeous flowers that were, apparently, from Owen (although he couldn’t for the life of him remember buying them) nothing else in the Hub had changed.
Except he couldn’t find his diary, and so, dejected, he headed up to check one more time in the tourist office before he saw it laying on the desk, and he hurriedly skipped to the last entry, unsurprised to find a Post-It note on the page in Jack’s untidy scrawl:
Ianto,
Thought you might like this back; can’t run the risk of anybody reading it, after all :P
PS: I overheard Owen call me an ‘ignorant git,’ and much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. I’m sorry, and I promise that we’ll have this conversation in person at your earliest convenience.
PPS: Oh, and for the record? Measuring tapes never lie.
~Jack
Ianto rolled his eyes at the last comment but couldn’t hide a smile as he read the entry over again. Jack would come around, he was sure of it.
He slid the diary back into the desk drawer and headed back down into the Hub.
Additional Notes:
I have…count it…ONE day of vacation left before I head back to school, so I thought I’d gift you all with an update :) I’ve found some renewed inspiration for this fic so writing is going rather smoothly at the moment and I can only hope school doesn’t screw all that up xP.
Once again, I’m overwhelmed at the positive response this fic has been receiving, and thank you all so much for your kind words and support :D
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