Ianto Jones and the Airship Pirates (Part 2)
Rating: R
Word count: ~ 7400
Warnings: Passing mention of severe off-screen injury, on-screen OC death, slight violence, and acute angst.
Summary: Being a tale of misadventure, clockwork, and true love.
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: In the time between updates, I’ve learned why it’s a good idea to pay far more attention while riding a bicycle in the city. Since I managed to dislocate my shoulder, fracture my wrist and two ribs, and break three fingers-all on my dominant side, of course-my current speed is not so much chicken-peck as slug-crawl, and updates are going to slow accordingly. Ugh. I'm sorry. -.-‘
Ianto Jones and the Airship Pirates
Being a Tale of Misadventure, Clockwork, and True Love
The paperwork takes three days to go through. On the fourth day, just as the sun is rising, Rajesh Singh appears on Ianto’s doorstep, dressed as immaculately as ever and carrying a sheaf of papers under one arm.
“Jones,” he says when Ianto pulls open the door, squinting blearily in the pale light. He’s yet to sleep and is sure it shows, beard-scruff and mussed hair and oil everywhere, bits of metal shavings still falling off his clothes. In contrast, Singh is the perfect picture of an Imperial Engineer, right down to his flawlessly shined shoes.
Ianto hates him just a bit for that.
“Singh,” he answers as cordially as he can manage, and steps out of the doorway. “Won't you come in? I've just put on a pot of tea.”
Singh inclines his head and follows Ianto down the hall, removing his hat and gloves as they walk. “Much obliged, Jones. It’s quite cold for March.”
“Unseasonably,” Ianto agrees, ushering the engineer into his kitchen-a rough, bare room, as the majority of Ianto’s house is devoted to his various workshops. It’s a comfort that Singh doesn't glace twice at his surroundings; no engineer or mechanist worth their clockwork would waste room on a parlor when it could be used to house a laboratory. Instead, he takes a seat on one of the rough wooden stools immediately, and accepts the cup Ianto pushes across the table to him.
“Assam,” Ianto offers in response to his questioning glance, taking his own seat. “What brings you out my way, Singh? Is the palace not keeping you busy enough?”
Singh snorts softly into his tea. “Hardly. But one of my assistants keeps an ear out for gossip, and she informed me that a records clerk came across an adoption notice yesterday. You're next in line to be Earl of Castlehaven, then?”
This is the start of it, apparently. Ianto lets out a slow breath and sinks back on his stool, cradling his cup between his hands. “So Rupert has informed me,” he acknowledges dryly.
“One could do worse,” Singh says cryptically after a moment. He’s not looking at Ianto, but riffling through his stack of papers. As Ianto watches curiously, he tugs one out and tosses it onto the tabletop like a challenge.
“Chief Mechanist,” he says after a moment, when Ianto makes no move to reach for it. “Torchwood is in need of the best, and while you might still be a social exile, you're a gifted mechanist with training as an engineer, and that's useful. If you agree to take the position, I can bring First Admiral Hartman around.”
“You can?” Ianto asks, honestly doubtful. First Admiral Hartman is a ferocious woman, ambitious and driven to the point of blindness. Her sole aim in life is to succeed the throne now that the king has died, and she’ll do anything to make it happen. It doesn't help that the only other contender is the king’s fiery bastard daughter, raised as a stage actress and married to a newly accredited prosthetics surgeon. The common people want the daughter, but the nobles see Hartman as the only choice to preserve their ranks.
For Hartman, Torchwood is her last, grand gesture before she appears at the council to choose the heir. Should the flight succeed, she’ll doubtless be crowned the next Queen.
If the flight fails, if anything at all goes wrong, Amy Pond will take her late father’s throne.
It stands to reason that Hartman will be more single-minded than ever, obsessed with perfection until that fixation becomes deadly-both for herself and those around her. She’ll expect her crew to perform like no other, and punishment for failure to meet her expectations will likely be harsh. But if they succeed…
Ianto’s name will always carry a taint of shame among those who know just what he did. It will even bleed over to the title Rupert has shared with him, and that's something Ianto cannot allow. Hartman’s glory, should she win, will become her crew’s glory, and even if all of Ianto’s deeds won't be overlooked, the majority will.
It’s an entirely selfish motivation, but Ianto grasps it to his heart with all of the determination in his body. A chance. One chance. That's all he needs.
Singh looks at Ianto, and there's a weary sort of acknowledgement in his eyes, but he nods nevertheless. “Indeed. She wishes to have the best, and I've agreed to help procure them.” He drains his teacup and stands, laying three more sheets of paper out in front of Ianto before turning away. “Send these to the assignment division in the palace no later than noon the day after tomorrow if you want the position.”
Halfway to the door, hat in hand, and he pauses without turning around. “Forgive me for speaking plainly, Jones, but at this point in time I truly don't see anything for you to lose. You've nothing as it is now. How could anything in the future be worse?”
He’s is all but out the door before Ianto finds his voice to retort, “There's always something worse, Singh.”
“And only a coward would let that keep them from walking forwards,” Singh answers without missing a beat. “We went to the Academy together, Jones; I never took you for a coward then.”
The door closes behind him with a soft thump, and the house suddenly tumbles back into silence. Ianto sits at the kitchen table, hands clenched into fists beside his cup, and slowly breathes out.
Singh is right.
Ianto is many things, but a coward isn’t one of them.
*.~.*.~.*
Jack Harkness is brilliant, bold and larger than life, and Ianto falls into his sphere of influence as though drawn by some great magnet. The lieutenant comes every day, wandering around as Ianto and the other mechanists keep up the clockwork and fix the numerous small problems that arise. Once, he even accompanies Adeola and Ianto to the engineering deck and hovers cheerfully on the outskirts of the minor civil war that breaks out over power output and efficiency.
It’s a little terrifying how quickly Ianto comes to gravitate towards him, how very like Ianto’s sun Jack becomes without even trying.
But then, Ianto’s never loved before, and first loves are always at least a little destructive. Of course, Ianto is entirely new to the concept of love for anything but machines and mechanisms and automata, and entirely unaware of just what it is that sends his heart into triple-time when Jack Harkness smiles at him.
He’s been working all night-one of the cogs cracked and threw off the entire system it was a part of, which knocked out the starboard rudder system and sent both Navigation and Engineering into fits of mixed indignation and horror-covered in grease and sweat and other sticky, disgusting things when Jack appears around the corner, hands tucked in the pockets of his neat black trousers.
Ianto hates him, just a bit, for looking that clean.
(He doesn't know it yet, but this is a theme with most mechanists, and a sentiment that Ianto himself will repeat many times in the future.)
But Jack takes Ianto’s oil-stained hand in his clean one, smiles so brightly, and Ianto loses all coherency of thought. Moreover, he doesn't care. All his life, his mind has defined him, but right now, under the force of Jack's bright blue eyes, Ianto cannot physically care any less than he does. Jack is just everything, and that is…
Terrifying, true, but also amazing.
“Come on,” Jack says with a bright smile, more lovely than any human being has any right to be, and pulls Ianto off of his back and up to his feet. “We’re just about to break upper cloud cover. You have to see it.”
“I don't see why,” Ianto objects, even as he allows Jack to drag him through the doorway. Adeola watches him go with amusement clear on her face, Myfanwy twisting about her ankles as a cat, but she says nothing to stop them.
Ianto isn’t entirely certain if he’s disappointed or glad.
The deck is blustery, the wind cold and fierce despite their lack of speed. The few passengers who have ventured out are bundled up tightly, looking more like overstuffed dolls than people. Jack shoots Ianto a quick grin, inviting him to share in the amusement of a sailor, already well adapted to the cold. Ianto laughs a bit, because it is funny, seen from that angle.
“Breaking cover!” one of the sailors passing across the deck calls, and as one most of the passengers turn for the doors. For those who have lived their entire lives sandwiched between two layers of clouds, breaking through either stratum is unnerving and a little frightening-especially the lower level, below which lie the scorched and barren Wastes, the remnants of another age.
But Jack never hesitates, pulling him around the forecastle before releasing him in favor of the rungs set into the metal. He climbs like a monkey-or, Ianto thinks with amusement, like a sailor-straight up, and pauses at the top to look back at Ianto.
“Coming?” he asks cheekily, and then disappears onto the roof of the forecastle.
It’s a challenge. Ianto knows it is, knows he’s being baited, but he is physically incapable of not accepting.
With an aggravated sigh, he follows Jack, even as the airship begins to rise.
The top of the forecastle is flat, with a low railing running around the edge in a perfunctory safety measure. Jack's on the far side, hanging on to the wrought metal as the ship angles upwards, engines thrumming as it ascends. Ianto picks his way across the tilted expanse, wary of his footing, to join him. In a movement that is as natural as it is unexpected, Jack reaches out a hand as soon as Ianto is close enough, hooks it around his waist, and pulls him against the heat of his side.
“There,” he says as the world around them is overwhelmed by deep grey vapor, and Ianto follows his pointing finger to where he can see the faintest hint of brightness. It’s growing larger, stronger, and Jack's fingers lace through his clockwork ones just as they break through the clouds and into the open air.
The brilliance of the unfiltered sun is like a slap in the face, and the crisp, nearly tangy clear air all but burns as it fills Ianto’s lungs. His gasp is soundless, his voice stolen by the sudden expanse of roiling grey clouds falling away beneath them and the fiery radiance of the setting sun in a vast breadth of azure-blue.
Ianto’s never seen the open sky before, and here, now, like this-
Then Jack turns to face him, kisses him sweetly, fiercely, and there's nothing in the whole world that could ever make this better.
*.~.*.~.*
The paperwork goes in on time, well ahead of the deadline, and Singh sends a messenger with the conformation one hour after it lands on the assignment division’s desk. Ianto sees the boy off, a coin for his trouble clutched in one sweaty hand, and then seizes his coat off the stand by the door and heads out. He barely takes the time to put on his gloves, settle Myfanwy on his shoulder, or jam his hat onto his head before he’s striding into the busy street. It’s hardly his usual time to be about, but his mind is buzzing and his blood is humming through his veins with an odd mixture of horror and excitement.
He’s done it.
He’s done it.
There is a cold wind rising, a storm brewing around the city, but Ianto makes for the wall regardless. It’s dangerous, a risk to be on the wall whenever the weather takes an ill turn, but like this Ianto doesn't want to be anywhere else. He mounts the stairs at a near run, one flight, two, four, six flights, all the way to the top.
One step up onto the wide top of the barrier wall and the wind howls in Ianto’s ears, fierce and freezing. He steels himself against it, crossing to stand right before the crenellations, where the wall falls away and all that's left is a breathtaking expanse of clouds gathering below, spread out like a pewter carpet. Far away, so far that it’s barely a speck on the horizon, is another mountaintop rising above the clouds, another city bravely pushing up into the aether.
It’s brisk and beautiful and a little humbling to stand here, so high above the city, with even the birds below him. Ianto sucks in a long, deep breath that's so cold it burns his lungs and then lets it out with all of the anxiety and fear and consternation he’s been hoarding in his heart for the past few days.
With a deep, humming thrum that Ianto can feel all the way to the marrow of his bones, a sleek and silver airship rises from the left and sweeps out into the grey-dark sky, dipping to just barely skim the clouds before rising once more into the atmosphere above the city.
Ianto watches it go with a faint smile, a deep surge of want swelling in his chest. There's a mechanist somewhere on that ship, surrounded by gears and sprockets and springs, immersed in the mechanics that allow such a great beast to fly. And soon, Ianto will be in the same position, will be a mechanist on an airship just as he’s always wanted. Torchwood will take off from the docks in just that way, soaring out into the blue sky high above the treacherous, deadly Wastes below, and Ianto will be the reason for her flight.
Once again, Ianto acknowledges that Singh is far more correct than Ianto would usually admit to.
He’s no coward, and with his dreams-perhaps a little tarnished, a little worn, but all the more beautiful for that-so close to within his reach, he can't even begin to recall what he was afraid of.
The clouds below are seething, deep steel grey edging towards black, and those above are equally dark. Thunder rumbles ominously, and in the distance a flicker of blue-white light illuminates the other mountaintop. If he listens hard, Ianto can just make out the warning bells on the docks as they start to ring, telling ships to either land or retreat above the second layer of clouds.
A moment later, something wet strikes Ianto’s cheek. There's a pause, breathless and tense, and then the heavens open up and drench the city in an instant.
Taking a long, slow breath, Ianto raises his head to the rain and closes his eyes. There’s something marvelous about the first few drops of rain in a storm, something fresh and inimitable, and even if no amount of water will ever be able to wash the city entirely clean, it certainly helps. And, from this height, standing up above everything else, Ianto can pretend that it’s good and perfect and lovely, because it certainly seems that way beneath the breaking storm.
Torchwood is set to launch in four days. Ianto can't remember the last time he looked forward to anything quite so much.
*.~.*.~.*
The pirates take them entirely by surprise.
The only warning that Ianto gets is a heavy banging on the door of the Mechanism Room. He turns his head halfway from the system he’s working on, trying to divide his attention enough to see who it is while not blowing out this entire arrangement or overbalancing Myfanwy, who’s sleeping draped across his shoulders. Perched on the catwalk’s railing beside him-as he always seems to be nowadays-Jack frowns a little and rises to his feet, even as Adeola leaves her own work and stalks to the heavy steel door, jerking it open with a snapped, “What?”
The sight of a tall, heavy, filthy man pointing a pistol in her face is entirely unexpected, for all of them.
Jack goes for his gun, but before he can even aim the pirate has an arm locked around Adeola’s neck and the muzzle of his pistol pressed tight against her temple. The sound of it cocking is entirely too loud, even over the hum of the surrounding clockwork.
“Try,” the pirate invites with a sharp smile that is all teeth. “Let’s see who’s faster, sailor.”
Jack bares his teeth in return, but lets his pistol fall to the decking with a clatter, and then kicks it away. Beside him, Ianto gets up, every muscle tight. This isn’t his ship, and this isn’t his crew, but they're still his friends. They're the first people besides Rupert who have been able to look past the clockwork arm and the mechanist’s trappings to see the young man beneath. The thought of losing any of them is more than Ianto can bear.
Other pirates file in behind the first, armed to the teeth and clearly covetous of the perfectly spinning clockwork. Ianto grits his teeth to keep from saying anything, and clutches Myfanwy close as she worriedly slips down from his shoulder to the crook of his elbow. Jack puts a hand on his shoulder, too, and Ianto wryly acknowledges just how well Jack has come to know him in the past three weeks to realize just how stupid Ianto is willing to be when the things he loves are threatened.
Of course, Jack likely isn’t aware that he’s included in that group. Ianto hasn't been able to tell him, hasn't found a time to say anything when it wouldn't be sappy or soppy or out of place. He doesn't even know if Jack will accept it-and if such a sentiment is entirely unwanted, unwelcome, what will Ianto do then? What-?
A rifle jabs toward his chest, and Ianto has to resist the very strong urge to roll his eyes at the pirate motioning him on. Thankfully, Jack is able to look properly intimidated, and shoves Ianto forward none too gently as the raiders march their prisoners out into the corridor.
They're deposited, along with half of the engineers and most of the other mechanists, in one of the large empty supply rooms. It’s completely bare of everything except some dust, with a single vent high up on the wall and a few weak lights clustered around the corners. The first pirate-a leader of some sort, or at least someone fairly high up the food chain, Ianto suspects-grins nastily at them, waves the supply room key beneath their collective nose, and swaggers back out. The door closes behind him with a click and then a thump of the tumblers locking, even as Adeola lunges forward with a growl.
Ianto takes some comfort in the fact that she’s not entirely sensible when it comes to her clockwork, either.
Perhaps luckily, Gareth catches her by the shoulders before she can get more than a few feet, holding her back until, still seething but rather more contained, she subsides. Even Ianto is a little awed at her language, though, and he lived on the streets. She’s very creative.
But Jack isn’t looking at her; he’s watching the door with a grim set to his mouth. When Ianto shoots him a questioning glance, he returns the steady gaze and asks flatly, “What are the chances of raiders like that having a qualified mechanist along with them?”
Adeola and Gareth trade glances, and Adeola draws herself up. “Not good,” she answers after a moment. “One mechanist, maybe, and if we’re lucky. But the Canary is an old bird. It takes more than one mechanist to run her. More than one engineer, too.” She nods over at the group of engineers, all of whom have congregated around their chief.
The man nods back, looking equally unhappy with this turn of affairs. “I’d say we’ve got two hours-three, tops, and then only with a lot of luck-before something blows that can't be fixed.”
“How many of them are there? Did anyone see?” Jack asks, and it’s easy to see why he’s already a lieutenant when he’s only a few years older than Ianto. It feels natural that he be the one to take charge-even if, in this case, Ianto doubts having a leader will do much of anything at all.
Then Myfanwy chirrups softly from under his arm, and Ianto stills, even as his mind immediately goes racing ahead.
All right. That could work.
He drops to his knees on the metal floor, setting the automaton down gently before turning to his clothes and beginning to strip off his layers as quickly as possible. It’s only when the lack of noise registers that he looks up to find that everyone is watching him-rather incredulously, most of them-and flushes crimson.
Damn his pale complexion, anyway.
“Ianto?” Jack asks mischievously. “If this is the part where you suggest ‘we’re all about to die, let’s get busy’ sex, I admire your enthusiasm, but you should really have a bit more faith in-”
“Die,” Ianto growls, certain that his ears are blindingly scarlet, even as the others smother chuckles. “I've an idea on how to get us out of here.”
Jack has the nerve to bloody pout. Ianto does not understand why he loves this man.
Thankfully for Jack's continued existence, Adeola comes to crouch beside Ianto, dark eyes interested. “How? Did you grab any-?”
Ianto shakes his head, cutting her off before she can get her hopes up. “No, nothing except for what comes built in.” He tugs his shirt the rest of the way off, dropping it to the ground with the rest of his upper layers, and the room goes very, very quiet.
“A prosthetic,” Adeola murmurs, instantly entranced. She reaches out to run her fingers over the bare metal framework, skimming over the delicate clockwork systems beneath. “I thought you were just augmented. This is…”
“By the Doctor,” Ianto finishes, already knowing what she’s going to say. The Doctor’s work is distinctive, after all. “With a few of my own modifications, of course.”
The grin Adeola flashes at him is entirely understanding. She’s a mechanist too, after all.
“Got something to cut through the door on that thing?” Jack asks mildly, leaning over the pair of them and ignoring the affronted glares he gets for his remark. He’s gotten remarkably good at brushing such things off, though, as they tend to land on him whenever he says something unforgivably ignorant on the subject of mechanisms or engines.
At length, Ianto rolls his eyes again and goes back to his arm. “No,” he answers, detaching the small, slender key from where it’s attached to his wrist bone-for a certain value of “wrist bone,” of course.
And “his.”
Myfanwy sees the key and immediately sits up with a bright chirp, eyes fixed on it unwaveringly as every other gaze in the place turns to her.
“No,” Jack says. “We’re not using the clockwork cat to play ‘fetch the jailer’s keys, there's a good girl.’ That’s a terrible plan, Ianto.”
Ianto’s second glare is no less withering than the first. He ignores the lieutenant and instead turns to Myfanwy with a smile. “Come on, my lovely. Are you ready?”
She pounces into his lap, and really, that's answer enough. Ianto strokes her head, then slides the key into the nearly invisible slot in the center of her chest and turns it carefully.
With a grinding and creaking of sprockets and springs, the cat’s shape folds in on itself and then expands, the silken-fine fur sliding away to be replaced with silver and gold feathers. Fifty seconds is all it takes before the hissing cogs stop, and a small nightingale sits at Ianto’s feet, fluttering her wings.
Ianto lets out a slow breath of relief, as he always does-because there's so much that could go wrong, and if something did, he’s not entirely certain he could stand it. Then he smiles at the nightingale now perching on his knee and murmurs, “Myfanwy, be a dear and grab the keys, would you?”
Myfanwy whistles her agreement and launches herself into the air, flutters out through the vent, and is lost to the darkness.
Ianto takes a breath, steels himself for whatever he might see when he looks up-he and Jack have never been intimate, never taken that final step, because Ianto was never entirely certain of just this reaction-and raises his head.
Jack regards him for a long moment, blue eyes unreadable.
And then he grins, wide and full of devilish wickedness, white teeth flashing. “So. Do you think you could make a weapon out of that thing?”
The question takes a second to register. Ianto glances down at his arm, up at Jack, and then back down. He thinks it over, and at long last offers up a grin of his own. It’s not a nice expression.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promises, and starts tweaking.
*.~.*.~.*
There is a woman made of clockwork in the engine room, thin and tall-much taller than Ianto, who is certainly not short-with long hair that is more salt than pepper. Ianto stands in the doorway for a moment, watching as she leans over a particularly intricate section of clockwork, head tilted slightly to one side as she listens. Her skin is pale, nearly translucent, and Ianto can see the gears and mechanisms beneath it, little smears of gold and bronze and silver that rise to the surface and then subside again.
Perched on his shoulder in nightingale form, Myfanwy gives a quiet chirp and shakes out her wings with a clatter of metal feathers. The sound is soft, but the woman startles regardless, spinning around in surprise. Her eyes widen as they settle on Ianto, and she takes a quick step back, dropping her gaze.
“Hello,” Ianto greets her gently. “I'm sorry for startling you. No one informed me that there was already an automaton looking after things here.”
Warily, the woman raises her head, the polished blue chalcedony of her eyes narrowing. She looks at Ianto for a moment, shifts her gaze to Myfanwy, and her eyes widen again. “Mechanist,” she says in surprise, and dips into a bow. “Forgive me. They did not say they had found Torchwood a mechanist. I was not expecting you.”
“Miscommunication on several parts, it seems,” Ianto says cheerfully enough, dropping his satchel and traveling bag off to the side; he won't be going home again, not with the amount of work remaining before the launch. His nerves are all thrumming with excitement and a little bit of trepidation; the flight is tomorrow, and while he’s overseen the placement of nearly every gear and spring on the Mechanism Deck, there has never been an airship like Torchwood before. The design has never been fully tested, and they're about to fly her right across charted space and out into the Unknown beyond the farthest mountaintop-city.
At her slightly raised eyebrow, which clearly communicates her expectation, Ianto realizes he’s forgotten the important bit of his introduction entirely, and quickly adds, “I'm Ianto Jones, Chief Mechanist.”
(And isn’t that title still a thrill to rival the launch? Ianto has to wonder if the awe will ever entirely fade. Somehow, he rather doubts it.)
“I am called Mainframe,” the automaton woman responds, folding her hands before her. “And I am the control unit for Torchwood. Let us work well together.”
“Control unit?” Ianto stills at the foot of the ladder leading up to the catwalk and looks back at Mainframe. “I know proposed hiring or building one in the original plans, but I never thought it would be approved. You're-”
“An older model unit from a United Intelligence Taskforce ship, updated by Rupert Howarth,” Mainframe finishes. “He completed his work on me two months ago, and I was sent here to accustom myself to Torchwood before the launch.”
Ianto rolls his eyes. Of course Rupert has had a hand in this. Content with viewing Ianto’s success from the docks, indeed.
“Well met then, Mainframe,” he says after a moment. “It will be an honor to fly with you.” He offers a hand, smiling, and Myfanwy flutters excitedly on his shoulder.
Mainframe blinks at Ianto for a long moment before dropping her gaze to his hand. Tentatively, she reaches out to grasp it, but the motion is unfamiliar, as though she’s only seen it done before, and never participated herself. Still, her grip is strong, and Ianto returns it equally.
“Mechanist,” she says simply as they separate, and there's wry humor and acknowledgement and appreciation all mixed up in her pale blue eyes. “I had forgotten.”
Ianto offers her a slightly weary smile, because he knows very well what she means. Mechanists and automata are both regarded warily, held at a distance even in a world that has been built up upon their shoulders. Automata are feared because they are machines that have the appearance of souls, at the very least, and mechanists because they are the ones who can give the automata the appearance of souls in the first place. It is an uncomfortable thing, especially when mechanists are rarely seen, and so often elevated to gods or monsters, or a strange mix of the two, in the people’s eyes.
With a sharp thump that makes them both turn, the message tube in the wall drops down, revealing a red canister bearing an alert from the Bridge. After a heartbeat, Mainframe scoops it up and opens it.
“They want a test run, to see if all systems are working properly,” she says, scanning Hartman’s sharp, imperious script. “No flight, just a start-up. Fifteen minutes to prepare.”
Myfanwy launches herself into the air as Ianto leaps up onto the ladder and starts to climb quickly. “Send back our acknowledgement,” he calls. “Then let’s get this beast in the air, what do you say?”
Even as he sets foot on the catwalk, three more messages drop down-a green canister from Engineering, blue from Navigation, and another red. Mainframe laughs, bright as bells and sweet as smoothly spinning clockwork. Somewhere high above their heads, gongs are ringing to signal a launch preparation, and Ianto strides down the length of the walkway, pulling levers and turning wheels, inputting the specifics that Mainframe calls up from below. Torchwood hums beneath his tall black boots, bright and eager, and Ianto breathes with the buzz of the churning gears as they start up, filling the deck with noise.
Perfect, he thinks, and it is.
*.~.*.~.*
Despite all misgivings-none of them Ianto’s, of course; he knows very well what she’s capable of-Myfanwy crawls back through the vent in short order, this time as a cat, with Ianto’s tool bag in her teeth.
Ianto has never been so glad that she can make the bird-to-cat transition by herself-a safety feature he included to keep any other cats from eating her, which apparently has other uses besides the immediately obvious.
It feels natural to turn to Jack, arching a brow in wordless demand. Jack's return stare is equally mulish, but he looks away after a few moments with a mutter of, “Well, it’s not the key.”
Ianto rolls his eyes, but steps under the vent and holds out his hands. “Let it go, Myfanwy, there's a girl. I’ll take care of it.”
Myfanwy meows, muffled through her grip on the leather, but doesn't release the bag. Instead, she clumsily launches herself out of the vent, and Ianto’s heart entirely stops for the second and half it takes for her to collide with his chest.
“Oomph,” he grunts, staggering back, because Myfanwy is steel and silver and copper rather than flesh and bone, with all the weight difference that implies. He lands on his arse on the floor, dignity bruised more than any other attribute, and has to clamp down on the urge to roll his eyes yet again.
Why is it that he wants to be a mechanist again?
Adeola appropriates his tools before he can offer to take care of the lock himself, and her fingers are nearly as quick as Ianto’s street-trained ones. She’s quiet, too, so whoever’s outside has no warning at all when Jack gives the nod, and she throws the door open with all her strength.
Five pirates left on guard, and Jack takes one of them immediately. Gareth, surprisingly scrappy for an Academy-trained, Society-born mechanist, takes another, and the Chief Engineer goes after a third as Jack moves on to his next opponent. But the fifth pirate is apparently smarter, or luckier. He goes after Jack's unprotected back, long knife flashing dully in the corridor’s dimness.
Ianto hits him with a burst of incredibly concentrated light from his mechanical arm, powerful enough to cut through steel, and the pirate tumbles down with a thud, never to move again.
Jack half-turns, casting Ianto a brilliant smile that Ianto returns, heady with victory, and then waves them on down the hall and towards victory.
The pirates on the bridge never know what hits them.
And when they win, when the raiders are all rounded up by a gaggle of very unhappy and rather harried mechanists and engineers, desperate to return to their deck, when the captain shakes Jack's hand and promises him a recommendation to whichever ship he wants, when Jack turns to Ianto and smiles so widely, so brilliantly-
Well.
Ianto smiles in return, and when Jack invites him into his cabin with a winsome smile and warm hands and careful, calculated kisses, he doesn't resist at all.
When he wakes up in the morning to an empty bed, to a docked ship and no Jack Harkness anywhere to be found, he thinks that maybe his heart wouldn't be quite so shattered if he’d resisted just a little bit, regardless of the outcome.
*.~.*.~.*
Of course, it doesn't go smoothly. Ianto’s been around airships long enough not to expect it to, however, and just sighs and rolls his eyes at the dozens of new problems that crop up one after another. They're nothing serious, nothing that will halt the launch tomorrow afternoon, but they're inconvenient and take time to fix, and it’s time that could be better spent on other things. Like sleeping.
Several hours after midnight, he and Mainframe surface from the latest round of tweaks and touch-ups to feed themselves and scrub off the top layer of oil and grime. Ianto takes his damp towel and settles himself on the lowest stair, trying not to let his weariness get to him. Torchwood is a marvelous beast, an airship grander than any other, but she’s enormous, and while she’s been touted as so advanced she can all but fly herself without the aid of a crew, a mechanist and a control unit are still as necessary to her as air.
With a soft exhale and a hiss of tired gears, Mainframe sinks down to the floor in front of him, tall brown boots scraping over the grating as she stretches out her long legs. Her dark grey corset’s come loose over the course of their work, and Ianto absently reaches out to tighten it for her. She tosses him a quick smile over one shoulder, and murmurs, “If you would be willing to re-braid my hair as well, I would not complain.”
Ianto smiles back, tying off the laces and touching one shoulder where it’s left bare by her sleeveless red vest. Her skin is smooth, but he can feel the gears beneath it humming away. “It would be my honor, Madame Mainframe.”
He’d rather forgotten what it was like, working with a human-form automaton. Easy is the first word that comes to mind. Or perhaps comfortable is closer to the truth. Unlike working with a human engineer, he doesn't have to try to be anything but what he is, and that's truly a lovely feeling. It’s all right that she sees him speaking to the vast, intricate arrays of clockwork that power Torchwood. It’s fine if she sees the way he touches the metal and wood and stone of the great gear-driven motors-reverently, carefully, more tender than a lover and more awed than a worshiper in some hallowed temple. Mainframe understands, because she is a mechanist’s creation, a being shaped by the force of that awe and reverence into what she is now.
“The mainspring will hold, no matter what Hartman puts it through,” she says after a moment, as Ianto’s fingers card through her graying hair, separating it into three sections. “Though I am worried about-”
“The torque on Gear IV? Yes, I’d say it could be putting out more. Maybe an alignment problem-I tried to oversee all the placements myself, but Martha sent me home whenever I’d been here over twenty-four hours.” Ianto frowns, fingers weaving the strands together absently. “We’ll have to take a look at that. If the setting’s off, it could be a disaster later.”
Mainframe turns her head slightly to study Gear IV, a mid-sized cog that stands as tall as Ianto. “We should be able to reset it ourselves, without calling in an engineer,” she agrees after a moment. “Should I check it first?”
“That would likely be best.” Ianto nods, tying off the braid with a strip of leather. “No sense in doing all the work unnecessarily, if alignment’s not the problem.” He hesitates, judging for a moment, and murmurs, “But…let’s give it a minute.”
He’s tired, still running low on sleep from the past few days and a long visit with Rupert yesterday morning, settling affairs. Rupert is an oddball of an earl, and at this point he’s so far out of touch with Society that his heir can escape being taken on the social rounds and presented before the lords like some particularly clever performing monkey-one of the reasons Ianto agreed in the first place. However, the Academy needed to be notified, and the solicitors had descended like a plague to change Rupert’s last will and testament.
Ianto doesn't want to think of a time when he’ll be the Earl of Castlehaven, and Rupert will be dead. He agreed to be named heir for all of the wrong reasons, and can't help the slivers of guilt worming their way into his heart because of it.
But it’s done, and Ianto isn’t going to change his decision-likely couldn't even if he tried, at this point, knowing Rupert and how well he knows Ianto.
“Very well,” Mainframe agrees, and there's amused sympathy on her face as she looks up at him. As an automaton, she doesn't know weariness the same way Ianto does, though it’s a gross exaggeration to say she doesn't know it at all. As Ianto settles back against the metal stairs, she stands, stretching out limbs and joints. “Take a moment, Jones. I will check the gears again.”
There is a pod off to one side of the deck, with a hatch made of the finest, clearest glass. Mainframe steps into it, synthetic skin already retracting like a tightly fitting suit finally peeled back. She turns, settling against the padded back of the pod, and the glass slides down over her with a soft hiss. The automaton woman closes her eyes, and Ianto finds himself holding his breath regardless of how he trusts Rupert’s mechanical skills. Control units are always vulnerable to the slightest flaws in their pods.
But nothing awful happens. Mainframe simply takes a deep breath and lets it out, and Torchwood breathes with her. The engines thrum, the gears tremble, and the ship awakens around them with a hum that Ianto can feel all the way to his bones.
Control units are incredible, even among the human-form automata, Ianto allows with a shaky sigh as Myfanwy swoops out of the darkness to alight on his shoulder. They are able to use the pods to expand their awareness to every single inch of their ship, from the smallest spring to the greatest steam engine, and then control it. Such automata are the reason the airships in the Fleet can be so complex, so intricately wrought. And mechanists are the ones responsible for these incredible creatures, for building and maintaining them.
The only thing Ianto has ever wanted to be as much as a mechanist is a control unit.
Ianto counts six minutes of silence, and then a drum of paper set into the wall beside the control pod begins to unscroll to the thudding of type keys. He pushes himself to his feet and takes it as it unrolls, studying the shorthand code that is Mainframe’s diagnostic. Gear IV is fine, it seems-all it needs is a bit more oil to turn smoothly. There is, however, a problem on the Engineering Deck, which is lessening the amount of power their engines generate and forcing the clockwork up here to turn more slowly than is ideal.
Feeling vindictively satisfied, Ianto waves his thanks to Mainframe and stalks over to the message tube, plucking a white canister from the rack to compose a politely scathing message to Rajesh’s engineers. Perhaps even Rajesh himself, if he’s still there-Ianto doesn't tolerate sloppiness from anyone, especially in regards to his mechanisms.
*.~.*.~.*
There's no more risk of Ianto not surviving. He’s settled in this life now, mechanical arm and all, and regardless of disappearing lieutenant-lovers and broken hearts, he’s a mechanist. He knows better than anyone that life will go on, differences or no.
Perhaps that’s why he falls into everything with Lisa so very quickly. She’s bright and beautiful and quick-witted, and there's a certain turn to her smile that reminds Ianto inexorably of Jack. She’s lovely of her own accord, but that similarity is enough to break Ianto’s heart all over again, in the same moment that it eases the ache.
Perhaps that's why, when she falls ill, Ianto turns to that final, forbidden practice forbidden to all mechanists and engineers who might be mad enough to consider it and skilled enough to attempt it.
He builds a mechanical body, gives it a human heart, and tries to think of it as Lisa.
Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but the similarities, as ever, are enough to shatter Ianto one more time when she’s taken and destroyed for the grave crime of existing, of being created by Ianto’s hand.
There might not be any recovery from this breaking, though, if Yvonne Hartman and the Council have anything to say on the subject of human experimentation and rogue mechanists.
Ianto is simply unable to find it within himself to care.
He keeps on not caring until Rajesh Singh approaches him with a rough outline of plans for the greatest airship to ever take to the skies, and then Torchwood takes over his mind and, just perhaps, clockwork ends up saving his life once more.
End Part II
Word count: ~ 7400
Warnings: Passing mention of severe off-screen injury, on-screen OC death, slight violence, and acute angst.
Summary: Being a tale of misadventure, clockwork, and true love.
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: In the time between updates, I’ve learned why it’s a good idea to pay far more attention while riding a bicycle in the city. Since I managed to dislocate my shoulder, fracture my wrist and two ribs, and break three fingers-all on my dominant side, of course-my current speed is not so much chicken-peck as slug-crawl, and updates are going to slow accordingly. Ugh. I'm sorry. -.-‘
Ianto Jones and the Airship Pirates
Being a Tale of Misadventure, Clockwork, and True Love
The paperwork takes three days to go through. On the fourth day, just as the sun is rising, Rajesh Singh appears on Ianto’s doorstep, dressed as immaculately as ever and carrying a sheaf of papers under one arm.
“Jones,” he says when Ianto pulls open the door, squinting blearily in the pale light. He’s yet to sleep and is sure it shows, beard-scruff and mussed hair and oil everywhere, bits of metal shavings still falling off his clothes. In contrast, Singh is the perfect picture of an Imperial Engineer, right down to his flawlessly shined shoes.
Ianto hates him just a bit for that.
“Singh,” he answers as cordially as he can manage, and steps out of the doorway. “Won't you come in? I've just put on a pot of tea.”
Singh inclines his head and follows Ianto down the hall, removing his hat and gloves as they walk. “Much obliged, Jones. It’s quite cold for March.”
“Unseasonably,” Ianto agrees, ushering the engineer into his kitchen-a rough, bare room, as the majority of Ianto’s house is devoted to his various workshops. It’s a comfort that Singh doesn't glace twice at his surroundings; no engineer or mechanist worth their clockwork would waste room on a parlor when it could be used to house a laboratory. Instead, he takes a seat on one of the rough wooden stools immediately, and accepts the cup Ianto pushes across the table to him.
“Assam,” Ianto offers in response to his questioning glance, taking his own seat. “What brings you out my way, Singh? Is the palace not keeping you busy enough?”
Singh snorts softly into his tea. “Hardly. But one of my assistants keeps an ear out for gossip, and she informed me that a records clerk came across an adoption notice yesterday. You're next in line to be Earl of Castlehaven, then?”
This is the start of it, apparently. Ianto lets out a slow breath and sinks back on his stool, cradling his cup between his hands. “So Rupert has informed me,” he acknowledges dryly.
“One could do worse,” Singh says cryptically after a moment. He’s not looking at Ianto, but riffling through his stack of papers. As Ianto watches curiously, he tugs one out and tosses it onto the tabletop like a challenge.
“Chief Mechanist,” he says after a moment, when Ianto makes no move to reach for it. “Torchwood is in need of the best, and while you might still be a social exile, you're a gifted mechanist with training as an engineer, and that's useful. If you agree to take the position, I can bring First Admiral Hartman around.”
“You can?” Ianto asks, honestly doubtful. First Admiral Hartman is a ferocious woman, ambitious and driven to the point of blindness. Her sole aim in life is to succeed the throne now that the king has died, and she’ll do anything to make it happen. It doesn't help that the only other contender is the king’s fiery bastard daughter, raised as a stage actress and married to a newly accredited prosthetics surgeon. The common people want the daughter, but the nobles see Hartman as the only choice to preserve their ranks.
For Hartman, Torchwood is her last, grand gesture before she appears at the council to choose the heir. Should the flight succeed, she’ll doubtless be crowned the next Queen.
If the flight fails, if anything at all goes wrong, Amy Pond will take her late father’s throne.
It stands to reason that Hartman will be more single-minded than ever, obsessed with perfection until that fixation becomes deadly-both for herself and those around her. She’ll expect her crew to perform like no other, and punishment for failure to meet her expectations will likely be harsh. But if they succeed…
Ianto’s name will always carry a taint of shame among those who know just what he did. It will even bleed over to the title Rupert has shared with him, and that's something Ianto cannot allow. Hartman’s glory, should she win, will become her crew’s glory, and even if all of Ianto’s deeds won't be overlooked, the majority will.
It’s an entirely selfish motivation, but Ianto grasps it to his heart with all of the determination in his body. A chance. One chance. That's all he needs.
Singh looks at Ianto, and there's a weary sort of acknowledgement in his eyes, but he nods nevertheless. “Indeed. She wishes to have the best, and I've agreed to help procure them.” He drains his teacup and stands, laying three more sheets of paper out in front of Ianto before turning away. “Send these to the assignment division in the palace no later than noon the day after tomorrow if you want the position.”
Halfway to the door, hat in hand, and he pauses without turning around. “Forgive me for speaking plainly, Jones, but at this point in time I truly don't see anything for you to lose. You've nothing as it is now. How could anything in the future be worse?”
He’s is all but out the door before Ianto finds his voice to retort, “There's always something worse, Singh.”
“And only a coward would let that keep them from walking forwards,” Singh answers without missing a beat. “We went to the Academy together, Jones; I never took you for a coward then.”
The door closes behind him with a soft thump, and the house suddenly tumbles back into silence. Ianto sits at the kitchen table, hands clenched into fists beside his cup, and slowly breathes out.
Singh is right.
Ianto is many things, but a coward isn’t one of them.
*.~.*.~.*
Jack Harkness is brilliant, bold and larger than life, and Ianto falls into his sphere of influence as though drawn by some great magnet. The lieutenant comes every day, wandering around as Ianto and the other mechanists keep up the clockwork and fix the numerous small problems that arise. Once, he even accompanies Adeola and Ianto to the engineering deck and hovers cheerfully on the outskirts of the minor civil war that breaks out over power output and efficiency.
It’s a little terrifying how quickly Ianto comes to gravitate towards him, how very like Ianto’s sun Jack becomes without even trying.
But then, Ianto’s never loved before, and first loves are always at least a little destructive. Of course, Ianto is entirely new to the concept of love for anything but machines and mechanisms and automata, and entirely unaware of just what it is that sends his heart into triple-time when Jack Harkness smiles at him.
He’s been working all night-one of the cogs cracked and threw off the entire system it was a part of, which knocked out the starboard rudder system and sent both Navigation and Engineering into fits of mixed indignation and horror-covered in grease and sweat and other sticky, disgusting things when Jack appears around the corner, hands tucked in the pockets of his neat black trousers.
Ianto hates him, just a bit, for looking that clean.
(He doesn't know it yet, but this is a theme with most mechanists, and a sentiment that Ianto himself will repeat many times in the future.)
But Jack takes Ianto’s oil-stained hand in his clean one, smiles so brightly, and Ianto loses all coherency of thought. Moreover, he doesn't care. All his life, his mind has defined him, but right now, under the force of Jack's bright blue eyes, Ianto cannot physically care any less than he does. Jack is just everything, and that is…
Terrifying, true, but also amazing.
“Come on,” Jack says with a bright smile, more lovely than any human being has any right to be, and pulls Ianto off of his back and up to his feet. “We’re just about to break upper cloud cover. You have to see it.”
“I don't see why,” Ianto objects, even as he allows Jack to drag him through the doorway. Adeola watches him go with amusement clear on her face, Myfanwy twisting about her ankles as a cat, but she says nothing to stop them.
Ianto isn’t entirely certain if he’s disappointed or glad.
The deck is blustery, the wind cold and fierce despite their lack of speed. The few passengers who have ventured out are bundled up tightly, looking more like overstuffed dolls than people. Jack shoots Ianto a quick grin, inviting him to share in the amusement of a sailor, already well adapted to the cold. Ianto laughs a bit, because it is funny, seen from that angle.
“Breaking cover!” one of the sailors passing across the deck calls, and as one most of the passengers turn for the doors. For those who have lived their entire lives sandwiched between two layers of clouds, breaking through either stratum is unnerving and a little frightening-especially the lower level, below which lie the scorched and barren Wastes, the remnants of another age.
But Jack never hesitates, pulling him around the forecastle before releasing him in favor of the rungs set into the metal. He climbs like a monkey-or, Ianto thinks with amusement, like a sailor-straight up, and pauses at the top to look back at Ianto.
“Coming?” he asks cheekily, and then disappears onto the roof of the forecastle.
It’s a challenge. Ianto knows it is, knows he’s being baited, but he is physically incapable of not accepting.
With an aggravated sigh, he follows Jack, even as the airship begins to rise.
The top of the forecastle is flat, with a low railing running around the edge in a perfunctory safety measure. Jack's on the far side, hanging on to the wrought metal as the ship angles upwards, engines thrumming as it ascends. Ianto picks his way across the tilted expanse, wary of his footing, to join him. In a movement that is as natural as it is unexpected, Jack reaches out a hand as soon as Ianto is close enough, hooks it around his waist, and pulls him against the heat of his side.
“There,” he says as the world around them is overwhelmed by deep grey vapor, and Ianto follows his pointing finger to where he can see the faintest hint of brightness. It’s growing larger, stronger, and Jack's fingers lace through his clockwork ones just as they break through the clouds and into the open air.
The brilliance of the unfiltered sun is like a slap in the face, and the crisp, nearly tangy clear air all but burns as it fills Ianto’s lungs. His gasp is soundless, his voice stolen by the sudden expanse of roiling grey clouds falling away beneath them and the fiery radiance of the setting sun in a vast breadth of azure-blue.
Ianto’s never seen the open sky before, and here, now, like this-
Then Jack turns to face him, kisses him sweetly, fiercely, and there's nothing in the whole world that could ever make this better.
*.~.*.~.*
The paperwork goes in on time, well ahead of the deadline, and Singh sends a messenger with the conformation one hour after it lands on the assignment division’s desk. Ianto sees the boy off, a coin for his trouble clutched in one sweaty hand, and then seizes his coat off the stand by the door and heads out. He barely takes the time to put on his gloves, settle Myfanwy on his shoulder, or jam his hat onto his head before he’s striding into the busy street. It’s hardly his usual time to be about, but his mind is buzzing and his blood is humming through his veins with an odd mixture of horror and excitement.
He’s done it.
He’s done it.
There is a cold wind rising, a storm brewing around the city, but Ianto makes for the wall regardless. It’s dangerous, a risk to be on the wall whenever the weather takes an ill turn, but like this Ianto doesn't want to be anywhere else. He mounts the stairs at a near run, one flight, two, four, six flights, all the way to the top.
One step up onto the wide top of the barrier wall and the wind howls in Ianto’s ears, fierce and freezing. He steels himself against it, crossing to stand right before the crenellations, where the wall falls away and all that's left is a breathtaking expanse of clouds gathering below, spread out like a pewter carpet. Far away, so far that it’s barely a speck on the horizon, is another mountaintop rising above the clouds, another city bravely pushing up into the aether.
It’s brisk and beautiful and a little humbling to stand here, so high above the city, with even the birds below him. Ianto sucks in a long, deep breath that's so cold it burns his lungs and then lets it out with all of the anxiety and fear and consternation he’s been hoarding in his heart for the past few days.
With a deep, humming thrum that Ianto can feel all the way to the marrow of his bones, a sleek and silver airship rises from the left and sweeps out into the grey-dark sky, dipping to just barely skim the clouds before rising once more into the atmosphere above the city.
Ianto watches it go with a faint smile, a deep surge of want swelling in his chest. There's a mechanist somewhere on that ship, surrounded by gears and sprockets and springs, immersed in the mechanics that allow such a great beast to fly. And soon, Ianto will be in the same position, will be a mechanist on an airship just as he’s always wanted. Torchwood will take off from the docks in just that way, soaring out into the blue sky high above the treacherous, deadly Wastes below, and Ianto will be the reason for her flight.
Once again, Ianto acknowledges that Singh is far more correct than Ianto would usually admit to.
He’s no coward, and with his dreams-perhaps a little tarnished, a little worn, but all the more beautiful for that-so close to within his reach, he can't even begin to recall what he was afraid of.
The clouds below are seething, deep steel grey edging towards black, and those above are equally dark. Thunder rumbles ominously, and in the distance a flicker of blue-white light illuminates the other mountaintop. If he listens hard, Ianto can just make out the warning bells on the docks as they start to ring, telling ships to either land or retreat above the second layer of clouds.
A moment later, something wet strikes Ianto’s cheek. There's a pause, breathless and tense, and then the heavens open up and drench the city in an instant.
Taking a long, slow breath, Ianto raises his head to the rain and closes his eyes. There’s something marvelous about the first few drops of rain in a storm, something fresh and inimitable, and even if no amount of water will ever be able to wash the city entirely clean, it certainly helps. And, from this height, standing up above everything else, Ianto can pretend that it’s good and perfect and lovely, because it certainly seems that way beneath the breaking storm.
Torchwood is set to launch in four days. Ianto can't remember the last time he looked forward to anything quite so much.
*.~.*.~.*
The pirates take them entirely by surprise.
The only warning that Ianto gets is a heavy banging on the door of the Mechanism Room. He turns his head halfway from the system he’s working on, trying to divide his attention enough to see who it is while not blowing out this entire arrangement or overbalancing Myfanwy, who’s sleeping draped across his shoulders. Perched on the catwalk’s railing beside him-as he always seems to be nowadays-Jack frowns a little and rises to his feet, even as Adeola leaves her own work and stalks to the heavy steel door, jerking it open with a snapped, “What?”
The sight of a tall, heavy, filthy man pointing a pistol in her face is entirely unexpected, for all of them.
Jack goes for his gun, but before he can even aim the pirate has an arm locked around Adeola’s neck and the muzzle of his pistol pressed tight against her temple. The sound of it cocking is entirely too loud, even over the hum of the surrounding clockwork.
“Try,” the pirate invites with a sharp smile that is all teeth. “Let’s see who’s faster, sailor.”
Jack bares his teeth in return, but lets his pistol fall to the decking with a clatter, and then kicks it away. Beside him, Ianto gets up, every muscle tight. This isn’t his ship, and this isn’t his crew, but they're still his friends. They're the first people besides Rupert who have been able to look past the clockwork arm and the mechanist’s trappings to see the young man beneath. The thought of losing any of them is more than Ianto can bear.
Other pirates file in behind the first, armed to the teeth and clearly covetous of the perfectly spinning clockwork. Ianto grits his teeth to keep from saying anything, and clutches Myfanwy close as she worriedly slips down from his shoulder to the crook of his elbow. Jack puts a hand on his shoulder, too, and Ianto wryly acknowledges just how well Jack has come to know him in the past three weeks to realize just how stupid Ianto is willing to be when the things he loves are threatened.
Of course, Jack likely isn’t aware that he’s included in that group. Ianto hasn't been able to tell him, hasn't found a time to say anything when it wouldn't be sappy or soppy or out of place. He doesn't even know if Jack will accept it-and if such a sentiment is entirely unwanted, unwelcome, what will Ianto do then? What-?
A rifle jabs toward his chest, and Ianto has to resist the very strong urge to roll his eyes at the pirate motioning him on. Thankfully, Jack is able to look properly intimidated, and shoves Ianto forward none too gently as the raiders march their prisoners out into the corridor.
They're deposited, along with half of the engineers and most of the other mechanists, in one of the large empty supply rooms. It’s completely bare of everything except some dust, with a single vent high up on the wall and a few weak lights clustered around the corners. The first pirate-a leader of some sort, or at least someone fairly high up the food chain, Ianto suspects-grins nastily at them, waves the supply room key beneath their collective nose, and swaggers back out. The door closes behind him with a click and then a thump of the tumblers locking, even as Adeola lunges forward with a growl.
Ianto takes some comfort in the fact that she’s not entirely sensible when it comes to her clockwork, either.
Perhaps luckily, Gareth catches her by the shoulders before she can get more than a few feet, holding her back until, still seething but rather more contained, she subsides. Even Ianto is a little awed at her language, though, and he lived on the streets. She’s very creative.
But Jack isn’t looking at her; he’s watching the door with a grim set to his mouth. When Ianto shoots him a questioning glance, he returns the steady gaze and asks flatly, “What are the chances of raiders like that having a qualified mechanist along with them?”
Adeola and Gareth trade glances, and Adeola draws herself up. “Not good,” she answers after a moment. “One mechanist, maybe, and if we’re lucky. But the Canary is an old bird. It takes more than one mechanist to run her. More than one engineer, too.” She nods over at the group of engineers, all of whom have congregated around their chief.
The man nods back, looking equally unhappy with this turn of affairs. “I’d say we’ve got two hours-three, tops, and then only with a lot of luck-before something blows that can't be fixed.”
“How many of them are there? Did anyone see?” Jack asks, and it’s easy to see why he’s already a lieutenant when he’s only a few years older than Ianto. It feels natural that he be the one to take charge-even if, in this case, Ianto doubts having a leader will do much of anything at all.
Then Myfanwy chirrups softly from under his arm, and Ianto stills, even as his mind immediately goes racing ahead.
All right. That could work.
He drops to his knees on the metal floor, setting the automaton down gently before turning to his clothes and beginning to strip off his layers as quickly as possible. It’s only when the lack of noise registers that he looks up to find that everyone is watching him-rather incredulously, most of them-and flushes crimson.
Damn his pale complexion, anyway.
“Ianto?” Jack asks mischievously. “If this is the part where you suggest ‘we’re all about to die, let’s get busy’ sex, I admire your enthusiasm, but you should really have a bit more faith in-”
“Die,” Ianto growls, certain that his ears are blindingly scarlet, even as the others smother chuckles. “I've an idea on how to get us out of here.”
Jack has the nerve to bloody pout. Ianto does not understand why he loves this man.
Thankfully for Jack's continued existence, Adeola comes to crouch beside Ianto, dark eyes interested. “How? Did you grab any-?”
Ianto shakes his head, cutting her off before she can get her hopes up. “No, nothing except for what comes built in.” He tugs his shirt the rest of the way off, dropping it to the ground with the rest of his upper layers, and the room goes very, very quiet.
“A prosthetic,” Adeola murmurs, instantly entranced. She reaches out to run her fingers over the bare metal framework, skimming over the delicate clockwork systems beneath. “I thought you were just augmented. This is…”
“By the Doctor,” Ianto finishes, already knowing what she’s going to say. The Doctor’s work is distinctive, after all. “With a few of my own modifications, of course.”
The grin Adeola flashes at him is entirely understanding. She’s a mechanist too, after all.
“Got something to cut through the door on that thing?” Jack asks mildly, leaning over the pair of them and ignoring the affronted glares he gets for his remark. He’s gotten remarkably good at brushing such things off, though, as they tend to land on him whenever he says something unforgivably ignorant on the subject of mechanisms or engines.
At length, Ianto rolls his eyes again and goes back to his arm. “No,” he answers, detaching the small, slender key from where it’s attached to his wrist bone-for a certain value of “wrist bone,” of course.
And “his.”
Myfanwy sees the key and immediately sits up with a bright chirp, eyes fixed on it unwaveringly as every other gaze in the place turns to her.
“No,” Jack says. “We’re not using the clockwork cat to play ‘fetch the jailer’s keys, there's a good girl.’ That’s a terrible plan, Ianto.”
Ianto’s second glare is no less withering than the first. He ignores the lieutenant and instead turns to Myfanwy with a smile. “Come on, my lovely. Are you ready?”
She pounces into his lap, and really, that's answer enough. Ianto strokes her head, then slides the key into the nearly invisible slot in the center of her chest and turns it carefully.
With a grinding and creaking of sprockets and springs, the cat’s shape folds in on itself and then expands, the silken-fine fur sliding away to be replaced with silver and gold feathers. Fifty seconds is all it takes before the hissing cogs stop, and a small nightingale sits at Ianto’s feet, fluttering her wings.
Ianto lets out a slow breath of relief, as he always does-because there's so much that could go wrong, and if something did, he’s not entirely certain he could stand it. Then he smiles at the nightingale now perching on his knee and murmurs, “Myfanwy, be a dear and grab the keys, would you?”
Myfanwy whistles her agreement and launches herself into the air, flutters out through the vent, and is lost to the darkness.
Ianto takes a breath, steels himself for whatever he might see when he looks up-he and Jack have never been intimate, never taken that final step, because Ianto was never entirely certain of just this reaction-and raises his head.
Jack regards him for a long moment, blue eyes unreadable.
And then he grins, wide and full of devilish wickedness, white teeth flashing. “So. Do you think you could make a weapon out of that thing?”
The question takes a second to register. Ianto glances down at his arm, up at Jack, and then back down. He thinks it over, and at long last offers up a grin of his own. It’s not a nice expression.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promises, and starts tweaking.
*.~.*.~.*
There is a woman made of clockwork in the engine room, thin and tall-much taller than Ianto, who is certainly not short-with long hair that is more salt than pepper. Ianto stands in the doorway for a moment, watching as she leans over a particularly intricate section of clockwork, head tilted slightly to one side as she listens. Her skin is pale, nearly translucent, and Ianto can see the gears and mechanisms beneath it, little smears of gold and bronze and silver that rise to the surface and then subside again.
Perched on his shoulder in nightingale form, Myfanwy gives a quiet chirp and shakes out her wings with a clatter of metal feathers. The sound is soft, but the woman startles regardless, spinning around in surprise. Her eyes widen as they settle on Ianto, and she takes a quick step back, dropping her gaze.
“Hello,” Ianto greets her gently. “I'm sorry for startling you. No one informed me that there was already an automaton looking after things here.”
Warily, the woman raises her head, the polished blue chalcedony of her eyes narrowing. She looks at Ianto for a moment, shifts her gaze to Myfanwy, and her eyes widen again. “Mechanist,” she says in surprise, and dips into a bow. “Forgive me. They did not say they had found Torchwood a mechanist. I was not expecting you.”
“Miscommunication on several parts, it seems,” Ianto says cheerfully enough, dropping his satchel and traveling bag off to the side; he won't be going home again, not with the amount of work remaining before the launch. His nerves are all thrumming with excitement and a little bit of trepidation; the flight is tomorrow, and while he’s overseen the placement of nearly every gear and spring on the Mechanism Deck, there has never been an airship like Torchwood before. The design has never been fully tested, and they're about to fly her right across charted space and out into the Unknown beyond the farthest mountaintop-city.
At her slightly raised eyebrow, which clearly communicates her expectation, Ianto realizes he’s forgotten the important bit of his introduction entirely, and quickly adds, “I'm Ianto Jones, Chief Mechanist.”
(And isn’t that title still a thrill to rival the launch? Ianto has to wonder if the awe will ever entirely fade. Somehow, he rather doubts it.)
“I am called Mainframe,” the automaton woman responds, folding her hands before her. “And I am the control unit for Torchwood. Let us work well together.”
“Control unit?” Ianto stills at the foot of the ladder leading up to the catwalk and looks back at Mainframe. “I know proposed hiring or building one in the original plans, but I never thought it would be approved. You're-”
“An older model unit from a United Intelligence Taskforce ship, updated by Rupert Howarth,” Mainframe finishes. “He completed his work on me two months ago, and I was sent here to accustom myself to Torchwood before the launch.”
Ianto rolls his eyes. Of course Rupert has had a hand in this. Content with viewing Ianto’s success from the docks, indeed.
“Well met then, Mainframe,” he says after a moment. “It will be an honor to fly with you.” He offers a hand, smiling, and Myfanwy flutters excitedly on his shoulder.
Mainframe blinks at Ianto for a long moment before dropping her gaze to his hand. Tentatively, she reaches out to grasp it, but the motion is unfamiliar, as though she’s only seen it done before, and never participated herself. Still, her grip is strong, and Ianto returns it equally.
“Mechanist,” she says simply as they separate, and there's wry humor and acknowledgement and appreciation all mixed up in her pale blue eyes. “I had forgotten.”
Ianto offers her a slightly weary smile, because he knows very well what she means. Mechanists and automata are both regarded warily, held at a distance even in a world that has been built up upon their shoulders. Automata are feared because they are machines that have the appearance of souls, at the very least, and mechanists because they are the ones who can give the automata the appearance of souls in the first place. It is an uncomfortable thing, especially when mechanists are rarely seen, and so often elevated to gods or monsters, or a strange mix of the two, in the people’s eyes.
With a sharp thump that makes them both turn, the message tube in the wall drops down, revealing a red canister bearing an alert from the Bridge. After a heartbeat, Mainframe scoops it up and opens it.
“They want a test run, to see if all systems are working properly,” she says, scanning Hartman’s sharp, imperious script. “No flight, just a start-up. Fifteen minutes to prepare.”
Myfanwy launches herself into the air as Ianto leaps up onto the ladder and starts to climb quickly. “Send back our acknowledgement,” he calls. “Then let’s get this beast in the air, what do you say?”
Even as he sets foot on the catwalk, three more messages drop down-a green canister from Engineering, blue from Navigation, and another red. Mainframe laughs, bright as bells and sweet as smoothly spinning clockwork. Somewhere high above their heads, gongs are ringing to signal a launch preparation, and Ianto strides down the length of the walkway, pulling levers and turning wheels, inputting the specifics that Mainframe calls up from below. Torchwood hums beneath his tall black boots, bright and eager, and Ianto breathes with the buzz of the churning gears as they start up, filling the deck with noise.
Perfect, he thinks, and it is.
*.~.*.~.*
Despite all misgivings-none of them Ianto’s, of course; he knows very well what she’s capable of-Myfanwy crawls back through the vent in short order, this time as a cat, with Ianto’s tool bag in her teeth.
Ianto has never been so glad that she can make the bird-to-cat transition by herself-a safety feature he included to keep any other cats from eating her, which apparently has other uses besides the immediately obvious.
It feels natural to turn to Jack, arching a brow in wordless demand. Jack's return stare is equally mulish, but he looks away after a few moments with a mutter of, “Well, it’s not the key.”
Ianto rolls his eyes, but steps under the vent and holds out his hands. “Let it go, Myfanwy, there's a girl. I’ll take care of it.”
Myfanwy meows, muffled through her grip on the leather, but doesn't release the bag. Instead, she clumsily launches herself out of the vent, and Ianto’s heart entirely stops for the second and half it takes for her to collide with his chest.
“Oomph,” he grunts, staggering back, because Myfanwy is steel and silver and copper rather than flesh and bone, with all the weight difference that implies. He lands on his arse on the floor, dignity bruised more than any other attribute, and has to clamp down on the urge to roll his eyes yet again.
Why is it that he wants to be a mechanist again?
Adeola appropriates his tools before he can offer to take care of the lock himself, and her fingers are nearly as quick as Ianto’s street-trained ones. She’s quiet, too, so whoever’s outside has no warning at all when Jack gives the nod, and she throws the door open with all her strength.
Five pirates left on guard, and Jack takes one of them immediately. Gareth, surprisingly scrappy for an Academy-trained, Society-born mechanist, takes another, and the Chief Engineer goes after a third as Jack moves on to his next opponent. But the fifth pirate is apparently smarter, or luckier. He goes after Jack's unprotected back, long knife flashing dully in the corridor’s dimness.
Ianto hits him with a burst of incredibly concentrated light from his mechanical arm, powerful enough to cut through steel, and the pirate tumbles down with a thud, never to move again.
Jack half-turns, casting Ianto a brilliant smile that Ianto returns, heady with victory, and then waves them on down the hall and towards victory.
The pirates on the bridge never know what hits them.
And when they win, when the raiders are all rounded up by a gaggle of very unhappy and rather harried mechanists and engineers, desperate to return to their deck, when the captain shakes Jack's hand and promises him a recommendation to whichever ship he wants, when Jack turns to Ianto and smiles so widely, so brilliantly-
Well.
Ianto smiles in return, and when Jack invites him into his cabin with a winsome smile and warm hands and careful, calculated kisses, he doesn't resist at all.
When he wakes up in the morning to an empty bed, to a docked ship and no Jack Harkness anywhere to be found, he thinks that maybe his heart wouldn't be quite so shattered if he’d resisted just a little bit, regardless of the outcome.
*.~.*.~.*
Of course, it doesn't go smoothly. Ianto’s been around airships long enough not to expect it to, however, and just sighs and rolls his eyes at the dozens of new problems that crop up one after another. They're nothing serious, nothing that will halt the launch tomorrow afternoon, but they're inconvenient and take time to fix, and it’s time that could be better spent on other things. Like sleeping.
Several hours after midnight, he and Mainframe surface from the latest round of tweaks and touch-ups to feed themselves and scrub off the top layer of oil and grime. Ianto takes his damp towel and settles himself on the lowest stair, trying not to let his weariness get to him. Torchwood is a marvelous beast, an airship grander than any other, but she’s enormous, and while she’s been touted as so advanced she can all but fly herself without the aid of a crew, a mechanist and a control unit are still as necessary to her as air.
With a soft exhale and a hiss of tired gears, Mainframe sinks down to the floor in front of him, tall brown boots scraping over the grating as she stretches out her long legs. Her dark grey corset’s come loose over the course of their work, and Ianto absently reaches out to tighten it for her. She tosses him a quick smile over one shoulder, and murmurs, “If you would be willing to re-braid my hair as well, I would not complain.”
Ianto smiles back, tying off the laces and touching one shoulder where it’s left bare by her sleeveless red vest. Her skin is smooth, but he can feel the gears beneath it humming away. “It would be my honor, Madame Mainframe.”
He’d rather forgotten what it was like, working with a human-form automaton. Easy is the first word that comes to mind. Or perhaps comfortable is closer to the truth. Unlike working with a human engineer, he doesn't have to try to be anything but what he is, and that's truly a lovely feeling. It’s all right that she sees him speaking to the vast, intricate arrays of clockwork that power Torchwood. It’s fine if she sees the way he touches the metal and wood and stone of the great gear-driven motors-reverently, carefully, more tender than a lover and more awed than a worshiper in some hallowed temple. Mainframe understands, because she is a mechanist’s creation, a being shaped by the force of that awe and reverence into what she is now.
“The mainspring will hold, no matter what Hartman puts it through,” she says after a moment, as Ianto’s fingers card through her graying hair, separating it into three sections. “Though I am worried about-”
“The torque on Gear IV? Yes, I’d say it could be putting out more. Maybe an alignment problem-I tried to oversee all the placements myself, but Martha sent me home whenever I’d been here over twenty-four hours.” Ianto frowns, fingers weaving the strands together absently. “We’ll have to take a look at that. If the setting’s off, it could be a disaster later.”
Mainframe turns her head slightly to study Gear IV, a mid-sized cog that stands as tall as Ianto. “We should be able to reset it ourselves, without calling in an engineer,” she agrees after a moment. “Should I check it first?”
“That would likely be best.” Ianto nods, tying off the braid with a strip of leather. “No sense in doing all the work unnecessarily, if alignment’s not the problem.” He hesitates, judging for a moment, and murmurs, “But…let’s give it a minute.”
He’s tired, still running low on sleep from the past few days and a long visit with Rupert yesterday morning, settling affairs. Rupert is an oddball of an earl, and at this point he’s so far out of touch with Society that his heir can escape being taken on the social rounds and presented before the lords like some particularly clever performing monkey-one of the reasons Ianto agreed in the first place. However, the Academy needed to be notified, and the solicitors had descended like a plague to change Rupert’s last will and testament.
Ianto doesn't want to think of a time when he’ll be the Earl of Castlehaven, and Rupert will be dead. He agreed to be named heir for all of the wrong reasons, and can't help the slivers of guilt worming their way into his heart because of it.
But it’s done, and Ianto isn’t going to change his decision-likely couldn't even if he tried, at this point, knowing Rupert and how well he knows Ianto.
“Very well,” Mainframe agrees, and there's amused sympathy on her face as she looks up at him. As an automaton, she doesn't know weariness the same way Ianto does, though it’s a gross exaggeration to say she doesn't know it at all. As Ianto settles back against the metal stairs, she stands, stretching out limbs and joints. “Take a moment, Jones. I will check the gears again.”
There is a pod off to one side of the deck, with a hatch made of the finest, clearest glass. Mainframe steps into it, synthetic skin already retracting like a tightly fitting suit finally peeled back. She turns, settling against the padded back of the pod, and the glass slides down over her with a soft hiss. The automaton woman closes her eyes, and Ianto finds himself holding his breath regardless of how he trusts Rupert’s mechanical skills. Control units are always vulnerable to the slightest flaws in their pods.
But nothing awful happens. Mainframe simply takes a deep breath and lets it out, and Torchwood breathes with her. The engines thrum, the gears tremble, and the ship awakens around them with a hum that Ianto can feel all the way to his bones.
Control units are incredible, even among the human-form automata, Ianto allows with a shaky sigh as Myfanwy swoops out of the darkness to alight on his shoulder. They are able to use the pods to expand their awareness to every single inch of their ship, from the smallest spring to the greatest steam engine, and then control it. Such automata are the reason the airships in the Fleet can be so complex, so intricately wrought. And mechanists are the ones responsible for these incredible creatures, for building and maintaining them.
The only thing Ianto has ever wanted to be as much as a mechanist is a control unit.
Ianto counts six minutes of silence, and then a drum of paper set into the wall beside the control pod begins to unscroll to the thudding of type keys. He pushes himself to his feet and takes it as it unrolls, studying the shorthand code that is Mainframe’s diagnostic. Gear IV is fine, it seems-all it needs is a bit more oil to turn smoothly. There is, however, a problem on the Engineering Deck, which is lessening the amount of power their engines generate and forcing the clockwork up here to turn more slowly than is ideal.
Feeling vindictively satisfied, Ianto waves his thanks to Mainframe and stalks over to the message tube, plucking a white canister from the rack to compose a politely scathing message to Rajesh’s engineers. Perhaps even Rajesh himself, if he’s still there-Ianto doesn't tolerate sloppiness from anyone, especially in regards to his mechanisms.
*.~.*.~.*
There's no more risk of Ianto not surviving. He’s settled in this life now, mechanical arm and all, and regardless of disappearing lieutenant-lovers and broken hearts, he’s a mechanist. He knows better than anyone that life will go on, differences or no.
Perhaps that’s why he falls into everything with Lisa so very quickly. She’s bright and beautiful and quick-witted, and there's a certain turn to her smile that reminds Ianto inexorably of Jack. She’s lovely of her own accord, but that similarity is enough to break Ianto’s heart all over again, in the same moment that it eases the ache.
Perhaps that's why, when she falls ill, Ianto turns to that final, forbidden practice forbidden to all mechanists and engineers who might be mad enough to consider it and skilled enough to attempt it.
He builds a mechanical body, gives it a human heart, and tries to think of it as Lisa.
Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but the similarities, as ever, are enough to shatter Ianto one more time when she’s taken and destroyed for the grave crime of existing, of being created by Ianto’s hand.
There might not be any recovery from this breaking, though, if Yvonne Hartman and the Council have anything to say on the subject of human experimentation and rogue mechanists.
Ianto is simply unable to find it within himself to care.
He keeps on not caring until Rajesh Singh approaches him with a rough outline of plans for the greatest airship to ever take to the skies, and then Torchwood takes over his mind and, just perhaps, clockwork ends up saving his life once more.
End Part II