fic- More Than Chapter 4
Title - More Than
Chapter 4: Different
Author - coffee_n_retcon
Rating - T
Characters - Ianto/Jack, Ten, Tardis
Length - 2000 words
Summary - On Day Four Jack Harkness’ world crumbled. Six months later he gave up and ran. Now he's back with the Doctor, and together they discover something better, something More Than their wildest dreams.
Spoilers - Any and all, COE
Disclaimer - C'mon, if they were mine I'd take better care of them and feed them lattes and chocolate.
“No, Jack, Ianto is not a zombie.” The Doctor was really starting to feel more than a little tired.
“Brains…” Ianto couldn’t help moaning from where he was putting the final touches on their lattes.
“Not helping,” the Doctor couldn’t resist the smile that crept up on him in place of the frown.
“Sorry.” Ianto appeared with three mugs of triple shot latte, extra foam with chocolate shavings. “Can’t we just leave it at, ‘I’m not dead, I’m like the Doctor,’ and relax with our coffees?”
“Ianto is a Timelord?” Jack found he couldn’t stop staring.
“Yes Jack. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the better part of an hour now.” The Doctor began to rub small circles with the tips of his fingers into the aching spots on his forehead. Really, Ianto had taken the news in stride but Jack… Jack just seemed unable to cope.
“But Ianto… is a Timelord?”
“Yes Jack.” he sighed.
“My Ianto… from Newport… is a Timelord?”
“Well no, as I’m apparently a Timelord, it would seem to suggest that I’m not really from Newport after all.” Ianto offered brightly. “Well, not originally. I did grow up in Newport, if that’s counting for anything.”
“My Ianto… is-”
“Yes Jack!” the Doctor hissed. The soothing hands rubbing his back paused and patted his shoulder gently. When had Ianto started doing that? Oh and please! Don’t let him ever stop.
“It’d probably be better to just start at the beginning,” Ianto felt the Doctor relax into his back-rub. He looked to Jack and couldn’t help smiling at the expression he saw there, 50% bemused, 50% jealous. He winked and Jack’s expression shifted.
“You already know a little bit about my family.” Ianto began.
“I don’t know anything.” Jack answered brusquely before thinking. At the startled sadness that flashed across Ianto’s face, he took a breath and continued, “Its okay, Ianto. It’s not like I’ve told you much… anything really… about my family. But Rhiannon, she told us your father worked at Debenham’s.” Jack realized that he couldn’t help wondering what else wasn’t quite true. He fully appreciated that it didn’t change the way he felt about Ianto, he just wondered.
“You think I lied to you.”
It wasn’t a question, but Jack shrugged anyway, “Like I said, not like I’ve told you much, either.”
“Jack, Rhiannon’s father worked at Debenham’s.” Ianto gave the Doctor’s shoulders a final smoothing stroke before resuming his seat.
“And Rhiannon is your sis- oh.” Jack stopped assuming and finally started to listen again.
“It would seem I wasn’t even born in Wales at all.”
“My favourite Welshman isn’t Welsh?” Jack gasped in mock horror.
“Jack.”
“Sorry.” Jack smiled, “Please continue.”
“I didn’t lie, Jack. My father was a tailor. But before that…” Ianto paused. This was all so new to him as well. Bits and bobs of memories. Thoughts and feelings he’d had, but never understood.
The Doctor caught Ianto’s eye and grinned encouragingly at him. Jack couldn’t help but notice a subtle and yet striking similarity as Ianto returned the Doctor’s smile with one of his own. That grin, oh so rare before, was a thing Jack would have gladly given all his lives to behold. Now it flashed across Ianto’s face with an alarming ease and regularity. There was a joy in Ianto now, a hopefulness that mesmerized Jack no end. But at the same time, he couldn’t help but worry that something had changed, perhaps been lost, something of his Ianto. Jack’s Ianto. Still. Ianto was here. Ianto was alive. The wit, the understanding, the spark that had been was still there now. Even if it was just a little bit different, well Jack could accept that. His amazing Ianto Jones.
“I think the phrase you’re looking for is…” the Doctor smiled softly. “‘Once upon a time…’”
Ianto returned his gaze to Jack and started over with a slightly self-deprecating smile, “Once upon a time… there was a man. A single Timelord alone in the Capital of Gallifrey, alone and lonely in a city of millions. There was something about the Timelord race, the way they liked to observe… to watch…”
Jack didn’t say a word as both Ianto and the Doctor shot him warning glances. Ianto did reach over and close Jack’s mouth for him as he had apparently been on the verge of saying just that.
Ianto continued, “They never did approve of involvement, interaction. This Timelord was never quite like that, and as such, they didn’t quite approve of him either. So when he was younger, he used to travel… just like the Doctor does now. Exploring the universe. Having adventures.” He shot the Doctor a cheeky smile capped with a wink, “Getting into trouble… And like the Doctor, this Timelord didn’t like to travel alone.”
Jack couldn’t help but think that Ianto meant to say ‘didn’t like to be alone.’ Since meeting the Doctor, and especially since meeting Ianto, Jack found that he couldn’t help but agree with that way of thinking. Together was definitely better.
“His favourite companion was his last. They travelled for years together, near and far, forwards and back. Eventually, however, each felt they’d seen enough, travelled enough, and spent too long away from anything that could realistically be called ‘home.’ The Timelord returned to Gallifrey and a quiet life, but not before returning his companion back home to Newport. Each back where they were born, each met someone, each fell in love and each started a family.
“Things went as they should for everyone. They were happy, for a while at least. But then, things started to go… wrong. You know about the Time War?” Ianto smiled at Jack’s roll of the eyes, and took a sip of his latte before continuing. “The Timelord wasn’t exactly expected to go to the front lines, but he saw what was coming. The woman he had loved, she had been a fighter. She’d fought, and she’d already died. He couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t stop what was coming, but he could protect his only child. As such, he took his son as far from the battlefield as he could. He hid him in time and in space and even in who he was. The Timelord took him to Earth; to the one person he trusted most, to his old friend and his last companion, a man named Owain Jones.
“How old were you when this happened? How do you know all this?” Jack looked from Ianto to the Doctor. The Doctor just shook his head.
“I wasn’t quite three when my father made me human. As for how I know, I’m not really sure. I don’t even understand the mechanics of it all.” Ianto swirled the bits in the bottom of his mug and noticed how the last of the frothed milk resembled a tiny swirling galaxy before melting away, lost to the coffee.
“It’s called a chameleon arch.” The Doctor had finished his latte and stared longingly into the depths of his empty mug. “The process re-writes… well, re-structures, really, the DNA in one fell swoop. The Timelord self is stored away and becomes the key to restoration. Kept, in Ianto’s case, inside his stopwatch.”
Jack felt dazed, “No wonder you always seemed so protective of that watch. Why you always had it with you… When you told me that there were lots of things you could do with a stopwatch, I have to admit, this never came to mind.”
“It never came to mine, either. My father, well, my adoptive father, always told me to protect it. Made me promise to keep it safe and with me always.”
“And you always keep your promises…” Jack smiled and was thrilled to recognize the shy smile Ianto returned this time. Still Ianto. Still his.
“If that watch had ever been lost, Ianto would’ve been human… well, forever. Or until…” The Doctor never finished.
Jack looked between them eager to think of something other than what could have been, “You said this chameleon arc, that it re-structures the DNA? Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Arch. Chameleon arch. And Oh YES!” The Doctor answered with enthusiasm, but Jack knew him too well not to understand the implication of the tone. “It hurts beyond comprehension.”
“But he wasn’t even three. He was just a baby.” Jack gazed at Ianto as if expecting to still see traces of the pain left in the depths of his eyes.
Ianto smiled softly and placed a hand on Jack’s arm, “If he hadn’t done it, I would have died with him. With all of them.”
Jack chanced a glance at the Doctor, wondering how much he’d told Ianto about the end of the Time War. The glimmer of guilt and sadness that flashed in the Doctor’s eyes was mirrored in the blue of Ianto’s. Whether the Doctor had told him, or if he just knew, it didn’t matter. Jack sensed that Ianto understood. Only two.
What, exactly, he knew or had guessed Ianto never said. He did sense the change in the emotions in the room. “So! My father asked the one man in the universe he could trust, if he would take me, raise me as his own. Suddenly Rhiannon had a brother.”
“So when Rhiannon said your father worked at Debenham’s…”
“Her father, my adoptive father, my real father’s companion. I can’t explain it, Jack. Not even to myself. When I told you about my father, that he had been a tailor, I don’t know how I knew. I’d only ever known the Jones family. It’s not like I... It just felt right, when I said it, telling you what I did. No one had ever told me about my real father, least of all the Joneses. But as soon as I said it, I knew it was truth. All my life, it’s like I’ve had someone else’s thoughts floating around, just out of reach. When I was about 16 or so I really worried that I was schizophrenic.”
Ianto had said it with humor, but Jack could see that there was more truth to that than Ianto wanted to admit. He considered how life must have been for Ianto. Wondered if he’d always felt different. Apart. Alone.
“But Owain Jones, he really was so much like a father to me. When he could get time off, we used to go on adventures together. Really I think he must have been re-living his travelling days with my father. He used to especially love Saturdays when he could take me to the theatre…”
“The Electro!” Jack grinned.
“The Electro!” Ianto closed his eyes and pictured the old cinema. Jack noticed how the look of fond remembrance added a romantic aura to Ianto’s gorgeous features.
Both the Doctor and Jack watched as Ianto’s memories made him smile before he seemed to snap back to the present. He opened his eyes and smiled again, this time apologetically, for the lapse. Jack couldn’t help but notice how much and how little Ianto had changed. Ianto continued, “His favourites were always the old action films, Robin Hood and the like. I think he was trying to show me how his life had been, back when they roamed the galaxy. Show me people, characters who were like how my father had been. And maybe just a little, to re-live those times himself.”
“See! Just as I said, he’s brilliant!” Looking between his two companions, the Doctor found it easier to grin than it had been for a very long time. For the first time in so long, they truly were companions.
“What, like I’d ever disagree with that?” Jack looked back at Ianto and for a moment caught another glimpse of that same sad disbelief he always got whenever Jack complimented him. Jack could never understand how Ianto could be so smart, so gorgeous and so amazing, but always be the last one to see it in himself. Jack vowed that whatever it took, he’d find a way to banish that look from Ianto, forever. By the expression on the Doctor’s face, he seemed to have an ally.