The Man in the Tower (Part 6)
Summary: Torchwood Tower Three is a place where Earth sends useful exiles: a Prime Talent, a technopath, and a biokinetic, drifting around in a station at the cross points of three universes and six galaxies. Then a man named Captain Jack Harkness falls through a tear between universes, and finds three very familiar faces on the other side.
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Word count: ~ 1,900
Warnings: Angst, weirdness, sap.
A/N: I'm sorry for the long delay, but my brother and I always take this week to ourselves. It would have been our mother’s birthday, except she died giving birth to us. Rather bittersweet. I just…haven’t been in the mood to write. Apologies.
Chapter Six
Archie in Torchwood Tower Two is the first to notice that something’s happening. But that's as Ianto had expected, because Archie is the nearest Prime and likes to do a quick check on the other Towers and Outposts in his range when he comes off shift.
It’s sheer bad luck that he’s coming off shift at the very moment that the barrier between the worlds is it its weakest.
First it’s a glancing touch of minds, full of concern. Then Archie reaches for him, tries to touch his thoughts. Ianto tightens his grip on Jack's hands, stepping closer until they're breathing the same air and the heat from Jack's skin is as tangible as a kiss. “Here we go,” he murmurs, closing his eyes. “Ready?”
There's no verbal response, but Ianto has never felt either Owen or Tosh so certain of anything except each other. Jack's nod is just as swift, and that means there's no reason to keep hesitating.
Taking a deep breath, Ianto calls up his shields and slams them into place around the Tower.
It takes fifteen seconds before Archie tries to breech the field of psychic force, and another ten after that before he calls the Brigadier and Captain Magambo to help him. Three other Primes follow within another ten seconds, and the force they bring to bear on Torchwood Tower Three would be enough to topple even the most heavily defended planets.
But Ianto is one of the most powerful, precise, and stubborn Primes since the very first, and his shields are too strong for anyone to so much as dent.
By the time they've gathered their strength, Ianto has already unraveled the walls separating the universe, and the Void gapes empty and daunting before them.
A hand at the back of Ianto’s head pulls him forward, until Jack's forehead rests against his own. Ianto blinks his eyes open to see Jack watching him, a small smile on his lips, blue eyes so very bright and hopeful. Even though Ianto can't read his mind-can't even sense his mind-he doesn't need to in order to understand what Jack is trying to tell him.
I believe in you.
You can do this.
A breath, another, a third, a fourth, and each one is a bolt of courage down Ianto’s spine. He slides his fingers through Jack's, weaves their hands together, and focuses only on the two of them.
The whole world-shouting Primes, steadfast friends, hated Tower-falls away.
Another breath, and Jack and Ianto are the only ones who exist in all of time and space. It doesn't matter that Ianto can't touch his mind, because Ianto can touch Jack, and that's even better. He can touch Jack's immense will, his deep grief, his grim wisdom, his boundless caring, the love he has for every person, no matter how broken or battered or flawed. They're all beautiful to him, and Ianto can sense that. He wraps his mind around Jack, anchors his heart and soul and everything that has ever made him Ianto to the love that he feels for Jack and that Jack feels for him.
It’s like submerging himself in a river of surging golden light, like leaping from the top of Torchwood Tower One without any way to catch himself, like dying in the same instant as he’s reborn.
Ianto takes another breath, and he’s never breathed before. He’s never felt the touch of skin on skin, or seen the blue brilliance that is Jack's eyes. This is the first time, and the last time, and every possible time in between, all condensed into the space of time between heartbeats.
Oh, Ianto thinks.
The Void is the opposite of everything, the converse of existence. It gapes before them like the open mouth of some vast grave, a jagged scar of nothingness that is never supposed to touch life. It’s like a wound torn in the universe, revealing organs and bones and blood that usually lie hidden from sight.
But here and now, wrapped in Jack and buoyed by light and love and life, steeled by cold certainty and driven by burning conviction, Ianto doesn't fear it.
The lines between Jack and him are blurring, wiped out by the thundering surge of power rising in Ianto’s veins. They're merging, fading into one another, and that should be frightening, too. But Ianto can't be scared, not with Jack's mind right against his, the very first trace of Jack-thoughts bleeding into his own. And with those thoughts comes an image, an open plaza-
(The Plass, Jack tells him without words, without needing to be asked.)
-with a water tower and a secret hidden beneath, and a Rift running through it. There, they think together. Aim there.
A whisper, a thought, a touch of will as vast as all of space and time, and the other Primes battering at the borders never, ever stand a chance.
The shields fall, sucked up in a vast maelstrom of psychic power, and Torchwood Tower Three is gone before the change can even register.
*.~.*.~.*
“Well. This can't be good.”
Amy shoots the Doctor a sharp look, just shy of withering. “You think?” she demands, even as her eyes shift back to the screen, and the vast, brown, hive-shaped ships encircling the Earth. “What are they?”
“No idea,” the Doctor answers after a beat, and it falls like a stone into the air around them.
Rory swallows, glancing between his companions. “Do we know what they want?”
The Doctor spins away, pacing across the deck of the TARDIS and raking his hands through his hair. His bowtie lies askew, almost vertical, but Amy hasn't the heart to fix it. “No!” he cries. “They haven’t put out any demands, they haven’t said anything, they've shot down everything that gets near them-”
“They're building their forces,” Amy cuts in, because it’s chillingly obvious. “And waiting to see how we’ll retaliate-or if we can.”
“An invasion,” Rory mutters, swallowing again. He offers a brave smile. “Makes you wonder what’s so great about this little mud-ball.”
A low buzzing fills the TARDIS, rattling their bones. The Doctor spins on his heel and races for the door, Amy half a step behind him. The three of them spill into the Plass, where the TARDIS had been recharging when the strange ships appeared, and stare upwards as hundreds of thousands of tiny brown pods spill out of the big ships in a swarm thick enough to darken the sky. Cardiff shakes with the hum of their engines as they descend locust-like on the planet below them.
“Oh, this is very much not good,” the Doctor mutters.
From somewhere beyond the normal plane of perception, something tears. The universe itself splits like a broken seam, and for a moment everything in existence holds its breath. Even the invaders seem frozen in primal terror.
Then, with a dull, ear-popping thud, a silver tower is suddenly there, right in the middle of the Plass, gleaming and alien.
Amy and Rory stare at it, glance at each other, and turn to look at the Doctor.
For once, even he doesn't have anything to say.
*.~.*.~.*
The Hive is the very first thing Ianto senses outside of Jack. They're a vast, looming presence in this condensed, contracted world that's so different from the sprawling, thrumming universe Ianto is used to. Ten ships, twenty, thirty, more-he never realized that there could be so many of them. Even when he knew the Queens had torn their way into this universe, he hadn’t guessed that all of them had crossed over, that every remaining Hive had come here, to this defenseless world.
Not so defenseless anymore, though.
“Outside,” Ianto says, and without any will behind it at all, the four of them are suddenly standing in the Plass, next to a funny little boxy thing that feels alive to Ianto’s mind. There are other people, a man and a woman and someone other, but Ianto ignores them, turning his face up to where the sky is turning black from the fighter drones descending en mass.
“Ianto?” Jack asks, stepping away from him just a little, though he doesn't let go of Ianto’s hand.
There are no Primes in this world, no Talents at all that Ianto can sense beyond Tosh and Owen. A few Potentials, here and there across the globe, minds waiting for just the right push to awaken completely, but for now they're dormant, and Ianto isn’t going to risk tapping into them when they aren’t even aware of what they are. The lack of other Talents isn’t so much debilitating as it is a shock, the sudden absence of what Ianto has always taken for granted.
But it’s all right, because there's still power boiling under Ianto’s skin, an echo of what brought them here, and he closes his eyes as it rises within him. This will be dangerous, just as much so as the crossing, but there's no other way.
This is the reason they're here.
“Tosh, Owen, can you help me?” he asks softly, and the response comes in the form of familiar hands finding his skin as Jack pulls completely away, turning to meet a flurry of approaching footsteps.
“Jack!” the other-man cries. “You got my message! Do you know these creatures? I can't get them to talk-”
“The Hive don't talk to any of their conquests,” Owen cuts in with a snort. “They just destroy.”
And just like that, everything snaps into place like a lock clicking home. The power inside of Ianto hardens and crystallizes as images of Lisa and Lleu and the last Hive invasion fall away. All that's left is this, and the knowledge that if Ianto and Tosh and Owen can't save the world, no one will be able to.
“Not this time,” Ianto whispers, and the world trembles.
Within the ships above them, the Queens start to scream.
Not this time.
*.~.*.~.*
The Hive ships shatter in the sky, as brittle as glass without the Queens to guard them. Ianto watches them fall, Owen and Tosh beside him and twisted through his mind until he nearly can't pick out their individual thoughts, and it probably should feel more like the genocide that it is.
But all Ianto can feel is relief, deep and wide as a river, and Jack's mind pressed right up against his soul.