promises made have turned to all apologies -;- open to capnhotness
You're a liar, Ianto Jones.
Ianto sinks into his chair and empties the contents of his pockets onto the desk, playing the scene with Jack over and over again in his mind, each time successively more painful. Jack is ... more broken now than he was when he left. Charged now with the task of looking through the CCTV footage from the Valiant, Ianto ( Read more... )
He feels ... ridiculous. Of course it's Ianto. Who else would be calling the cordless extension Ianto left for him? There isn't an adequate excuse, really, he should have remembered and realized and connected the two events in his mind, been more sure of himself and the solution he should have worked out, but there's too many pieces missing to make cause-and-effect logic workable anymore, it seems.
"Thank you," Jack answers and wonders if it's because he really does feel grateful, somewhere, under the sinking sense of dread or if the phrase is just one that's stuck in his vocabulary as something necessary and compulsive. "No, I ... I think I can find my way. I don't want to, uh, bother anybody." There's something decidedly undesirable about being that person - the crazy guy in the basement - that can't find his way out of a wet paper bag. Independence, despite every uncertainty coursing through his system, would be a nice change from the way he's spent a whole year of his life.
Feeling ridiculously proud at his ability to multitask, Jack leans the cordless against his shoulder while he slips out of bed and locates his shoes. "Let's, uh ... let's use teamwork?" he suggests, as lightly as he can make his voice be, while lacing the boots. "Just tell me which way to go and I'll find you."
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Ianto looks down at his desk as Jack speaks, absorbing the words with the sheer joy of being able to hear his voice, even as melancholy-wrong as it all is. He leans back in his chair, picking up the awful, framed picture of the two of them that Fred had taken at his parents' house - forever ago, like everything else - and smiles just a little in spite of himself. The desire for independence on Jack's part is a good sign, isn't it? He sets the picture back down, heartened by the sight of Jack smiling, even if frozen in time.
"Down the hall and take a left." Giving the directions is easy for Ianto, he feels he's been there often enough in the last few days to have the way memorized. (Had gone there enough when so many lay dead and dying ...) "When you get away from the infirmary, the corridor will take you down to the command center. If you look straight ahead from there, my office is at ten o'clock."
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"Left," he echoes, the inflection of his voice only changing slightly as he steps out of the infirmary an down the hall as indicated. At the appropriate juncture, he hangs a left. Obviously intent on not hanging up the phone - it's a little unnerving to be out of the only other room he's known since the Valiant and, really, those familiar Welsh vowels are more of a comfort than might have otherwise been indicated by his extreme over-reaction to Ianto's earlier attempts at contact - Jack makes a few random observations about the installation as he walks.
"Huh," the Captain eventually concludes, pausing at the entrance to the command center and staggering back a step. His head spins a little with something akin to deja vu, the command center feeling unexpectedly familiar. "Feels like ... I've been here before," Jack comments, again feeling ridiculous, as he steadies himself and enters the command center. From there, he finds Ianto's office relatively easily and knocks on the door before entering.
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Patient now to a fault, Ianto contentedly remains on the phone with Jack as he waits for his approach, listening to the background noise of people and the blessed sound of his lover's breathing. He desperately wants to tell Jack that, in a sense, he has been here before, but that would only compound the difficulty in the situation, so he checks himself and holds his tongue.
Ianto is standing when Jack enters. He hangs up the phone, offering the captain a small smile of encouragement, and walks around the desk. He consciously keeps outside Jack's bubble of now-present personal space, and reaches to turn the monitor around so that he can see. "I went through the footage of the launch day," he explains. "And I found this clip."
Ianto leans down and clicks the button on his mouse to make the few seconds - just the ones in which Ears disappears - replay.
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It would compound the difficulty in the situation. Jack hasn't even come to terms with the idea that the year that he experienced on the Valiant, by a mere technicality, never actually happened. Telling him now, while it's all still a messy jumble in his head, that there's another, even more technically removed timeline, would only serve to disorient him further. For now, really, he's content to think that maybe, in some far removed way, he's been to this Torchwood installation before and just can't remember. It doesn't explain why he immediately thinks, upon entering Ianto's office, that a certain bookcase should be moved a few feet to the right, but there's a lot of things he feels that have absolutely no logical explanation.
He hangs up the cordless and lets it dangle from his hand as he leans back against the closed office door and watches the few seconds of footage Ianto plays for him. It's ... harder to process than he thought it might be, those few frames from aboard the Valiant and seeing Ears disappear, and Jack lets his attention drop entirely to the floor as he tries to fight back an unnecessary level of panic to it. After a moment of struggling with his ragged breathing and racing pulse, Jack manages to speak, "Thanks, I ... I don't know what that - but it's - it's an explanation."
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Ianto leans back to sit on the desk and turns the monitor back around, everything they needed, essentially, played out in those few seconds. Now he's left to hang in the uncertainty of silence. Will Jack go away now, then, off to chase after another Doctor? Ianto nods tightly, looking down to study his hands with fingers entwined as if they have suddenly become the most interesting thing available.
"The Doctor explained it as a paradox," he notes, although he has no particular interest in assisting Jack in leaving again. "Perhaps it has something to do with everything ... going back." Ianto exhales a sigh, looking up again, afraid of what he might see. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
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Something Ianto says catches Jack's attention and his brow knits with a sort of confused concentration. "Yeah, it was ... a paradox. The Toclafane, they were humans from the end of the universe. The Master needed a paradox machine to keep the universe from correcting itself when they came back to - destroy - their ancestors." While the entire statement was slow, stilted, and very difficult for him to say, Jack nevertheless gets it all out and exhales a relieved sort of a sigh afterwards. That's progress, right?
"Where ... is the Doctor? He should've - he would've been worried ... " About Ears, about Jack himself, about the state of the world. It's just occurred to the Captain that he's been here a while (how exactly long he's unsure) and he's not yet seen the Time Lord. It's disappointing - more than that, somewhere near heartbreaking - and Jack can't help but feel a little ... used. Is that right?
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Ianto's expression remains remarkably indifferent as Jack asks after the Doctor, even though guilt is steadily gnawing at him at the mention of the Time Lord. What if this makes Jack worse, he wonders, chastising himself for his hasty actions. What he did to the Master was one thing, and one entirely called for, particularly given Jack's current state, but the Doctor ... the Doctor had been an unfortunate casualty. He had gotten in the way, and in the Torchwood fashion, Ianto had acted first, to ask questions later. Now, those questions are awkward and unwelcome in arising.
"The Doctor left," Ianto replies quietly, keeping his voice low so that he can hold it steady. Lying should come seamlessly to him by now, should it not? He's already lied about one Time Lord, here now he can lie about another. "He's gone, took the Master with him. I'm sorry."
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Gone. For a long series of moments, Jack says absolutely nothing. What can he say? It's like ... Game Station all over again, except instead of being knee-deep in Dalek dust, he's in over his head, drowning in his own mind, shattered into thousands of tiny shards and he can't - he doesn't know how - to deal with it. Is it because he broke, under all that pressure from the Master, and let him know everything? Did he fail, did he let the Doctor down, did he do wrong? Is this his punishment?
He did fail. He did break. He did forget, under that extreme circumstance, what the Doctor told him, what he was holding onto, everything. Of course he left, of course he took the Master with him.
"No, it's ... it's all right," Jack says at long last, once he's sorted it all out logically (or something like that) in his mind. That makes sense, then, that the Doctor would leave. He hasn't been abandoned, not again, just ... gotten was he deserves, maybe. "I just - I needed his help to ... to find Ears."
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Anything belongs on Jack's face except what's there - loss, pain ... Ianto wants to help, but has no idea where to begin. The Doctor doesn't deserve the sort of devotion that Jack has given him. Ianto is acutely aware of what occurred in a far-removed series of events. Jealousy, abandonment; he can still feel the sympathetic aching as if he'd only been told of it yesterday. And so, nearly as easily as breathing, he lies again.
"He wanted to get the Master away from here," he says, and it's only half a lie - half of it is truth, the Doctor had expressed his desire to leave. The only difference is that he hadn't left the way he intended ... and he may have actually bothered to say his goodbyes, first. "Martha spoke to him before he left." That's not entirely a lie either. Ianto says it with an inflection that suggests, perhaps, there's hope that the Doctor left behind some message for Jack.
He hates this, really, the lying, the hurt, and at the same time cannot help the welling of selfish resentment. "I'll do what I can to help you. We have resources, maybe we can figure something out."
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"I bet he did," Jack remarks, more bitterly than he anticipated being, and slumps back fully against the door with a wave of unanticipated nausea. It seems familiar, feeling this way about the Doctor (and the Master), but he can't place it. It's just ... an extraneous emotion, just pulled from the ether, without attachment to any actual events that he can readily recall. But why? And ... what, actually, because it's churning his stomach in a sick, almost betrayed way, but there's something else that's eating at him and he doesn't know what.
He looks up from the floor, finally, and makes an attempt - and a somewhat decent one - at eye contact, as if the idea of the Master being gone (even with the Doctor, even in a way that makes him feel so sick) is a relief. "Thank you." This time, maybe for the first time, he actually means it and can actually feel his own appreciation behind the words, however small. "I ... should start by finding my things." Jack motions to his wrist - vortex manipulator - and taps at the cordless phone to indicate his mobile. "Any idea?"
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Jack is looking for the missing Time Lord - to the point of wanting the Doctor's help. Which means, quite simply, that he's leaving again. How long will it be this time? Days, months, another hellish year?
Don't go. Please.
Ianto carefully represses the urge to panic, to fight the idea. Supportive. He has to be ... supportive. To help. To do whatever he can. This is not about him - it's about Jack. What he wants ... does it really matter? As long as he comes back, that's enough; it has to be.
Expression inexplicably brightening, Ianto rises from his seat on the desk and walks around it, for the narrow doorway resting subtly recessed into the wall. "I have something for you." He vanishes into the door, to return a second later with a rather familiar fuzzy dog on his heels and a more familiar blue-grey drape of wool over his arm. Feeling more pleased than he has in the last few hours, Ianto raises the greatcoat, letting the fabric fall so that it makes it apparent what it is, and waits, hoping with baited breath for some sort of positive reaction.
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Under normal circumstances, Jack might have noticed Ianto's ... reluctance to see him go. He might have realized that, actually, he's been gone a long time, that there's sixteen months of distance between them, and this decidedly isn't the reunion that Ianto was no doubt hoping for. If he'd been himself. But he isn't, he isn't remotely, and it's so obvious in the way he hardly notices any of this, hardly seems to think in the considerate way he would have before.
'Something' is a little ambiguous and, irrationally, he's beginning to hate ambiguity, associating it with an plethora of pain he doesn't want to remember. Yet, after waiting with baited breath on the edge of panic, Jack is relieved to find that ... it's just his greatcoat.
Inexplicably, Jack smiles. Then, after a moment of letting that response set in, he grins and reaches out to brush his fingers over the blue-gray wool. He doesn't know what to say, really, so he just ... lets his hand stray to Ianto's and tentatively curls his fingers around the other man's, trying for contact, really. That's good, isn't it? He can only hope it conveys how grateful and relieved and pleased he is, given how much he seems to be failing at communication now.
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That grin makes everything about this moment suddenly worth it. Something tightly wound inside Ianto begins to slowly uncoil as it sinks in for him, equal parts heartening and heart-breaking. Encouraging that Jack is smiling, wrenching that what once came so naturally should be so difficult to come by now. He's watching carefully enough to keep from starting when Jack's hand covers his, terribly afraid of doing something to shatter the delicate moment. His own smile appears naturally, although a little shy and a bit embarrassed, as he often seems when particularly pleased with having, apparently, done something good.
Ianto gingerly strokes Jack's fingers in a ghost of a caress, then he becomes self-conscious of doing too much and provoking the reaction of earlier. "Here, I'll help you with it on." He reluctantly lets go, and steps back to flip the lapels of the coat out, knowing instinctively from having held Jack's greatcoat for him so many times before which arm goes in first. "I've a few more of your things - your keys and mobile - I took the liberty of charging it. If you need the SUV, Tosh brought it from Cardiff."
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It feels like just enough - like any longer and he might have felt the urge to pull away himself - but as soon as Ianto reluctantly releases his hand, Jack feels as if he's missing something ... something important. It's just a tiny feeling, though - just a little nagging in the ghost of the touch left behind after Ianto's fingers are gone - and he begins to forget it, along with the way he might have wanted to try something else, under the current of confusion sweeping up his mind. On with his coat? It seems a little extraneous, wearing a coat inside, but at the same time ... the pull of the familiar wool and his lover's suggestion of it are too comforting to resist. Wordlessly, Jack slips his arms into the sleeves when the greatcoat is held up for him and shrugs into it with what must be the first effortless movement he's made since waking up. It's too easy, too right, and too much like coming home or finding a missing piece of a puzzle to ignore.
Jack turns and reaches for Ianto - falling into the honeytrap of some half-remembered motion, maybe - and only falters when he isn't entirely certain how to follow through, what to do with the hand hovering mere inches from his lover's face. Pushing past indecision, brow knitting into an expression on the confused side of lost, he settles for brushing his fingertips lightly through Ianto's hair, an awkward kind of motion for the distance they seem to still he standing at. "I'm sorry," he says after a confused pause. "This isn't how it's supposed to be, is it?"
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Everything feels a little more right as the coat settles on to Jack's shoulders, and Ianto takes a moment to fastidiously straighten the lapels - close, but not exactly touching - before he steps away, headed back out of that bubble of personal space. The smile lingers on his face as he tries to push away the creeping sadness, because this is progress, isn't it? And he can't expect everything to be better, to go back in a single day. He's had more than a week to try to regain his bearings - Jack had arisen from death and the slumber following to find himself here only hours ago.
Ianto studies his lover's face as he waits to see where the hovering hand will go, and leans unconsciously into the touch; he doesn't care that it's awkward, because it's something. "The year - it was - it changed all of us." And now he's being just as awkward and stilted, and that isn't what they need right now. He draws in a breath and goes on, more firmly, "It's undone, but we can't expect ourselves to just ... go back. I love you, Jack, I don't care how long it takes for us to make things right again."
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