If We Shadows Have Offended (Think But This, and All Is Mended)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~ 2,500
Warnings: Canary Wharf and all the angst/death/trauma that implies.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: This one got away from me a bit. Idk, I guess it’s fine. Your thoughts? (Too much focus on OCs, not enough on the team, too much angst, Jack/Ianto/the team too sappy?)
If We Shadows Have Offended (Think But This, and All Is Mended)
Torchwood One falls on a Tuesday.
The Ghost Shifts are fairly well known, though some attempt has been made to hide them from the other Torchwood branches, because even Yvonne Hartman can't conceal something completely in a building with nearly a thousand people. And everyone sees the ghosts, scattered throughout the city as they are.
Nearly everyone sees the Cybermen when they come, an invasion force like none other the world has ever known, thick across every continent.
Eight hundred and twenty-two people die in Torchwood Tower, over half of them partially converted.
Ianto, arriving battered and bruised from fighting off Cybermen in Cardiff, but drafted nevertheless to help sift through the rubble and recover Torchwood’s alien tech, looks over the smoldering ruins with horror curling in his gut.
This could have been us, he thinks, twining a hand in Mielikki's ruff as she presses heavily back against his leg. If we hadn’t gone to Cardiff, this would have been us.
There’s a soft sound from his left side, a hiss from his right, and suddenly Tosh is curled around his arm, Suzie is pulling him close. Ranmaru folds himself around Mielikki as Veremoren perches on the snow leopard’s head, and a black rat winds between her paws.
“Oh, God,” Tosh whispers, and her voice is bleak with dread.
“Somehow, I don't think God has anything to do with this,” Owen answers, and his voice is equally bleak as he surveys the lone, small tent set up to help treat the survivors. There are far too few people in it, barely a handful compared to anything, but especially compared to all the people Ianto knows should have been working here today.
A hand slides between Tosh's full-body press and Suzie’s tight grip, touching Ianto’s shoulder in wordless sympathy. He glances up into Jack's tight-lipped, lined face, for once not boyishly youthful or full of gleeful energy. The Captain looks old, far older than a man in his late thirties has any right to be, and tired.
“Captain,” he manages after a moment, and is surprised to find that his voice doesn't shake. But then, none of this is real yet. It can't be. Practically everyone Ianto knows works at Torchwood London, in the secretarial department or the Archives or the science departments. On a Tuesday, at midday, they would have all been here. And now…
Now, Ianto wishes more than anything that at least some of them will have skipped out on work, taken an early lunch, fallen sick-anything, anything so long as it means they weren’t here when the invasion started.
It’s a fairly futile hope, as far as such things go, and Ianto is well aware of it. But it’s one of the few things keeping him going right now. Once the reality of what has happened here sinks in, there will be nothing for his mind to do but shut down.
As used to grief as Ianto is, as used to death as Torchwood has made him, this is a disaster on a scale he’s never before witnessed, and it’s incomprehensible.
And perhaps it’s the same for Jack, but he’s their leader for a reason, and he draws back after a moment, drawing his coat up around himself as though it can shield him from the coming horrors. “All right. Suzie, find the UNIT group in charge of containment and figure out what they've done so far. I don't want them leaving with a single piece of Torchwood tech. Tosh, start looking for the Archives-they were built like a bunker, so there might be something still intact. Owen…” His mouth tightens, gaze drifting over the medical tent and its heartbreakingly few occupants. “I don't think there's anything you can do over there. Help Tosh; maybe see what volunteers they're willing to give you from UNIT for the salvage work. Ianto, check the survivors. I want to know who's still alive.”
His coat snaps on the rising breeze as he turns away, heading for someone who looks official and exhausted in the uniform of a general high up in UNIT. Ianto watches him go for a moment, then looks down at Mielikki. She looks back up at him, pale blue eyes the mirror of his own, and equally filled with sad, resigned determination.
Of all the jobs Jack could have given them, this is perhaps simultaneously the kindest and most cruel.
Nevertheless, Ianto wouldn't want anyone else to do it for him. Couldn't let anyone else, because he knows these people, even if only in a smile-at-them-in-the-hall-in-passing sort of way.
With a glance at Suzie, Veremoren takes wing and flutters away. Suzie tosses a speaking look after him, but leans in and, in a moment of startling sweetness, presses a quick kiss to Ianto’s cheek. She says nothing, though, turning away to follow her dæmon. Tosh disentangles herself as well, though it’s obviously reluctant, and calls Ranmaru away with a gesture. She and Owen fall into step, huddled just a little closer than normal, as though proximity will protect them from the surrounding horrors. It’s telling, Ianto thinks, that Bronwyn has no compunctions about climbing up on Ranmaru’s back.
“They're good friends,” Mielikki says quietly, wrapping her tail around Ianto’s ankle. “We’re lucky that…”
She trails off, but Ianto doesn't need her to finish the sentence. He understands, and drops to his knees to bury his face in her shaggy mane. It’s a gesture of weakness that he would otherwise never show, but here, now, he thinks that anyone watching will forgive him.
“Yes,” he answers into her soft, thick fur. “So very, very lucky.”
*.~.*.~.*
The med tent is well equipped, and prepared to hold far more than the seventeen people Ianto can see within. Of those seventeen, six lie prone in the cots, unmoving, while another four are being attended by pale-faced doctors. Of the remaining seven, Ianto sees three he knows distantly, three he knows well, and one he knows very well.
“Alice,” he says, and there’s a sob of relief building in the back of his throat, harsh and bitter and full of everything he will never bring himself to say.
Yvonne Hartman’s secretary looks up, eyes widening in shock, and then releases a strangled cry and throws herself forward into his arms. Ianto catches her, the same way Mielikki wraps herself around Takurua, Alice’s Tasmanian Devil dæmon. She’s so slight in his arms, bird-boned and fragile, shaking through her sobs.
“Oh, God, Ianto,” she’s whispering, too fast and too breathy, voice breaking far too often. “I was in the front when the alarms went off. If I’d been up there, if Ms. Hartman hadn’t sent me to courier something to-”
“Shh, shh,” Ianto murmurs back, wrapping his arms all the way around her. “Hush, Alice, you survived and that's all that matters. You got out safely, you’ll be fine.”
It’s a lie, of course, but it’s comforting, and she quiets to nearly noiseless sobs, even though she’s still trembling against his shoulder. Ianto raises his head and offers small, sad smiles to Chandni, Robbie, and Sarah, the other secretaries he knows. It makes sense that more of their department would survive than of others, as the secretaries are-were often out on errands and their department was on the main floor.
Chandni sinks down to the canvas floor beside him, cradling her glass lizard dæmon close. “Most of us who got out were near the doors,” she says, and there's something broken in her voice-not shattered, not destroyed, but sharp and vicious and angry, liable to tear and cut and make the ones responsible bleed. “We could hear the alarms, and managed to get outside before-” She breaks off, wordless in the face of overwhelming fury, and Ianto remembers that she had a husband who worked on one of the top floors. They’d only been married a year.
Sarah puts a hand on the other woman’s shoulder, leaning into her side. She’s pale but composed, viciously so, her grief only visible in the new lines around her mouth and eyes. They're young, all of them, Ianto realizes with a sudden start. Not a single person in this tent is over fifty, and only the UNIT doctors are over forty. Torchwood attracts the young and brilliant, and this is the result. Sarah raises her eyes to Ianto’s, and he can see that she knows it, sees it, as well. Her dæmon Eridanus may take the form of a Purple Emperor butterfly, but the two of them are anything but flighty and silly.
Robbie simply nods, silent and shaken. There's a bandage around his head, and his arm is in a cast. When he sees Ianto’s look, he smiles weakly and explains, “The Tower started coming down around us. Talitha and I got hit by some debris.” The fingers of his good hand are curled tightly in his Irish setter dæmon’s fur, and Talitha has her head wedged under his arm.
“They were trying to pull Mary out,” Sarah adds, tipping Eridanus from one hand to the other. Ianto can't imagine treating Mielikki like a stress ball, but it seems to calm both of them a little. “She didn't make it, though.” Her voice is flat, unemotional, and if Ianto didn't know her quite as well as he does, he might be startled by her callousness. But Sarah used to be a field agent, and short of the world ending there's little that will get through her masks. Even this isn’t enough.
So broken, Ianto thinks, staring down at Mielikki and Takurua, still twined together like he is with Alice. Torchwood has broken us all.
“They'll probably offer you Retcon,” he says after a long moment, clearing his throat roughly. “If you need it, if you want it, I hope you take it. If not, I'm here. I’ll do anything you need me to. Just…don't let this break you.” It comes out shattered and so fractured as to scar his throat, but the words are spoken and can't be taken back. Ianto closes his eyes and presses his cheek to the top of Alice’s head, breathing in the smell of ashes and fire and blood and roses. He’s already lost enough today, nearly everyone he knew in London, friends and coworkers and casual acquaintances and Lisa, oh God. He hasn't thought of her in so long, and to only do so now-
It hurts. It hurts that it doesn't hurt as much as it should. She’s probably dead, but-
But Ianto never talked to her, not really, never even knew her, and though he hopes-wishes-she’s been spared, it doesn't ache as much as finding out that Mary’s dead, that Tim won't be playing any more practical jokes on anyone, that Amy and Lori and Michael and Mark will never work out their strange love rectangle, that the woman in the lobby café-mother of three, Ianto remembers, single, oh God-will never see her children again.
There's too much grief here, too many things to mourn. Ianto closes his eyes and holds Alice tight, breathes for her and the others and himself just a little, and hopes that there's nothing more left in his chest to crumble.
It’s a vain hope, useless and groundless and not nearly enough, but he keeps hoping anyway, even as his mental list of the dead grows longer and longer.
Sometimes, over the hours, the list feels like it will never end at all.
*.~.*.~.*
There's another reason for sending everyone away to their own tasks, Jack acknowledges. There's a part of him that has been dead or dormant for nearly two hundred years that's finally burst back to life, sweet and warm in his chest even as it twists and pulls and aches.
Amoria is here somewhere, and she’s looking for him.
Jack staggers over another pile of rubble in what was once a science lab, but is now a metallic grave for the partially converted. He’s turned off the power to this floor, stopped their breathing in the kindest way he could, but the sight still makes him want to retch. Cybermen, here, on this Earth-it’s another nightmare come to life, tempered only by the wild, anticipatory beating of his heart as he falls around another corner. He’s going too fast, not being nearly careful enough-the Cybermen converted from Torchwood One employees are still here, still dangerous-but he can't bring himself to care because she’s here and there's nothing in the world that will keep them apart any longer.
And then she really is there, dropping from the ripped-open ceiling like a feathered ghost, so pale in the smoky air, so big and fearsome and beautiful beyond all compare.
Amoria.
She hits him like a bowling ball, like a feathery projectile thrown from a great height, and Jack wraps her in his arms with a cry of relief and anguish and joy, because it’s not like regaining a lost limb, it’s like being whole again when he’s spent nearly two centuries in pieces scattered across the whole of time and space. It’s an awkward hug, because Amoria is big and her wings are everywhere and her claws are too sharp and she’s not nearly careful enough with her beak, but Jack is so far beyond caring about anything except her touch that it doesn't even register.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Amoria whispers to him, sharp and pained and so very, very sweet. “We tried to come back, he tried to bring me back, but the TARDIS wouldn't come. We're a fixed point and she needs time to adjust, but when she landed here I left and hoped I could find you on my own and-”
“Shh,” Jack tells her, cradling her in the crook of his arm the way he hasn't since Grey was taken. “Shh, Ria, it’s fine, you're fine, I'm here and I'm never letting you go again. Not again.”
And, even in the ruins of Torchwood One, standing in a graveyard and with the bodies of more than eight hundred people below him, Jack still means it.
It’s fine, and it will be from now on.
(For those interested, here are the team's dæmons: Mielikki, Amoria, Ranmaru, Veremoren, and Bronwyn.)
