Post-Mortem Epilogue: The Storyteller
Fic: The Storyteller
Epilogue to Post-Mortem, may be read as a stand-alone story (6/6)
Author: CrabbyLioness
Pairings: Team, Jack/Ianto
Summary: In the wake of Jack's disappearance, Ianto tries to figure out the mystery of Jack Harkness.
Rating: PG for adult themes.
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Not making a penny.
Part 1
Interlude
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Ianto frowned into the phone. "When can you send us down an expert, Steven?"
The voice on the other end sounded harassed. "You're joking, right? Ianto, I don't have anyone to send! We're shorthanded ourselves, and we've got disappearing hospitals, walking statues, and all sorts of other garbage to handle, and that's on top of the deal with Saxon. You've just got Wales to tend. We've got all of England to look after.
"I can't even send you a grunt, but the people you're asking for? Administrators? Mission leaders? Alien tech experts? Forget it. All the ones we've got are busy, and the ones who are in training won't be ready for at least a year and a half."
"What about U.N.I.T.?"
"They're busy taking care of Bane worldwide. All nonessential personnel have been recalled to Geneva. They say it's for extra training, but the rumor is there was a big cock-up at a Swiss lab they have to clean up."
"So what would you advise?"
Steven sighed. "Look, you didn't hear this from me, but if you want my advice the next time you find an emergency services bloke who doesn't freak out at the site of a Deevil --"
"Weevil."
"Weevil, right, draft him. That way at least you'll have someone with basic training and local area knowledge. I can't even offer you someone like that."
"That's how we got our last recruit."
"See? You already know how to do it! But I'm glad you called, Ianto. I need to talk to you. Torchwood One is looking for a new Supply Chief, and you would be perfect for the job."
"Me?" Ianto stared at the phone in surprise.
"Why not? You've already got the training, and from the horror stories you've been telling me over the past year Torchwood Three has given you the experience. You'll be back in London, back on the management track, and making over twice your current salary. So what do you say?"
Ianto took a deep breath to avoid stammering. "That's quite a promotion. I'm honored by your confidence in me. If I did this, who would you send down to take my place?"
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Ianto bit his lip to keep from prodding Steven.
"Think about it, Ianto. This could be your big break."
The door alarm sounded. "Thank you, Steven. I will. Well, here's the team. I have to go see to them now. Goodbye."
Ianto turned around to see Gwen and Tosh entering the Hub. "Who was that on the phone?" Gwen asked.
"That was Torchwood London."
Her face lit up. "Oh great! They found us the information on the Krynoids, then?"
"Not exactly. They offered me a promotion if I moved back."
"Congratulations! Who are they sending down to replace you?"
"Nobody. They seem to think Cardiff can manage with three people."
Gwen mouth fell open in amazement. "But we can't. We're barely making it with four. Ianto...."
"It's all right, Gwen. I'm not going to leave you in the lurch."
Tosh gave Ianto a "we'll talk about this over lunch" look. He nodded. "Now, who's up for coffee?"
He shouldn't have told her that, Ianto thought. It was a sign of his exhaustion that it had slipped out. "Look after the children," Jack had joked on occasion, beginning long before they became intimate. There was a grain of truth hidden inside that joke.
Ianto fixed the others their coffee and warmed himself a cup of milk. He resisted the urge to grimace. Owen was a good doctor, for all he had the bedside manner of a constipated hyena. He was especially good at diagnosis. If he said this course of treatment would help Ianto's stomach, Ianto had no reason to doubt him.
Poor Owen. Underneath his armor of cynicism he was even more tender-hearted than Gwen. He wanted so badly to heal everything that was wrong with the world, but he also wanted the world to have simple problems that he could heal by simple means. He hated that the world was full of complicated problems without easy solutions. It seemed to him grossly unfair, and left him in a perpetual sulk.
Owen wanted everything clear-cut. He either couldn't or didn't want to grasp that joy could bring sorrow, pain could bring pleasure, love could bring heartache. Unfortunately the world refused to resolve itself into a children's TV show for his sake; and Owen had grown up bitter, confused, angry, scared, very smart, and extremely dangerous. He hid his disappointment behind a endless quest for distraction by sex, booze, and video games. While regular life was bad enough, Torchwood was even worse. Torchwood was nothing but an endless series of complicated problems, most of which couldn't be dissected into nice little checklists on his autopsy table.
As he worked, Ianto reflected on the ironies of his job. Because Torchwood Three was so small, he had to wear many hats. He was both the Security Chief for the Hub and the janitor, the provider of sustenance and the disciplinarian. As the Archivist he was supposed to preserve all the fragments of facts and assemble them into something resembling the truth; as the cover-up expert he was supposed to arrange fragments of facts into lies. He knew no one at Torchwood One would have allowed him to hold such contradictory titles. Were they smart enough to realize the power it gave him?
Perhaps not. Probably they didn't think about it at all, and expected him to do the same. Just go along, do what he was supposed to do, and pay no attention to the bigger picture. Or if they did think about it they would be sure it would drive him mad, for no one could hold two contradictory positions and stay sane. And they were right. But if you embraced both sides of the contradiction, you could transcend it and find yourself in a whole new territory above and beyond the world that considered such things opposites. Once you did that you took on a new role with a new name. Thus Ianto was not the Security Chief and the janitor, he was the Castellan. He was not the provider of sustenance and the disciplinarian, he was the Guardian. He was not the Archivist and the cover-up expert, he was the Storyteller. It was his power to decide which stories were told and which ones were discarded, his judgement on which fragments of facts were preserved and which ones were obliterated. No, they would probably be extremely uncomfortable if they realized what Ianto's real job title was and how much power he really had, which is why he took care never to tell them.
Except for Jack. Jack laughed at contradictions. He was the embodiment of Whitman's hero: "Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then, I contradict myself./ I am large, I contain multitudes."
It was Jack who had encouraged Ianto to take on so many varied titles. Jack had kept placing Ianto in front of newer and stranger experiences, and had grinned like a maniac whenever Ianto had simply accepted them and gone on about his work.
He had done Gwen the same way. She had grinned back and asked for more until they met the cannibals. Something happened there besides her getting shot and falling into Owen's bed. She had pulled away from Jack and his endless novelties, and Jack had stopped grinning at her all the time.
From what Suzie had said, Jack had done the same with Owen and herself. According to her, Owen had been in tears after his first Weevil and Jack had pulled back on him then. Tosh had always been treated a bit more gently, Suzie added.
Ianto had always come up with some answer for Jack's challenges, even if it wasn't always the answer Jack had wanted to hear. He had flirted back when Jack had flirted with him, stringing Jack along for Lisa's sake, never letting him get close enough to risk finding out about Lisa or far enough away to risk reassessing Ianto. He had matched Jack word for word on that horrible day that Lisa died, until her final death took all his words away. Wordless, he had shown up the next day, understanding on a gut level how much stock Jack would set in that gesture.
Later, he had learned how pleasant it could be to turn the tables and set the challenges for Jack to meet.
Unbidden, images came to mind of intimacies shared, of turns taken, of lingering kisses and laughter. No. This was not the time nor the place.
He had done what he could do for Jack while Jack was here, and after Jack disappeared. The night before the others had searched Jack's flat, he had removed the photo albums, the letterbox, the black silk kimono Jack had given him for his birthday, and a few other items too personal for their eyes. It was a simple matter to rearrange what was left so their absence would not be noted, he had done that job often enough for Torchwood. Jack's private computer files and the primary interface were now buried so deeply in the core of the alien computer Tosh would never find them. They had enough clues left to piece together what they needed to know, and he had prompted them when necessary. He was proud of how little prompting they had needed.
It wasn't much of a gift, but Jack deserved what little privacy Ianto could give him. Ianto knew of nothing else Jack valued on a personal level that Ianto could do for him now. And now was not the time nor the place for that line of thought either.
("You could have stopped Owen from shooting him."
"How?"
"You could have. It's your fault for giving Owen ideas about shooting people."
"Jack pulled the gun on him that day, not me."
"But you pulled the trigger.")
Ianto opened the financial record and worked on balancing the books. He got into an argument with Owen over their expenses until Gwen insisted they break for lunch. Truth to tell, Ianto enjoyed the daily turf battle with Owen far more than he should. It felt good to have an outlet for his frustration.
He ordered sandwiches for lunch and let Tosh drag him out to a bench overlooking the bay. She made him tell her about the call from London, not that that took much work.
"Are you going to take it?"
"It's not as tempting as it would have been a year ago. Of course, that's partly because I know all the more qualified people ahead of me are dead." He grinned, and Tosh punched his arm.
"Ow!"
"That's nothing to joke about!" Tosh said, frowning.
"Beats screaming."
"You've got a point there," she conceded. "So what are you going to do?"
Ianto thought a bit. "Gwen asked me if I wanted to leave Torchwood over Jack."
"What?" Tosh asked, surprised.
Ianto nodded. "Apparently the fact that I worked for Torchwood for years before I met Jack is irrelevent. She thought losing Jack would be enough to make me change my career choice." He rolled his eyes.
Tosh hesitated. "It's not just that, Ianto. You've been through so much lately. First Canary Wharf, and then you've been widowed twice in one year."
"More than that, if you count each of Jack's 'deaths' individually. Less, if you don't count them at all. But what would you call what he does if not dying? 'Non-breathing periods?' 'Temporary cessations of organic functions?' He'd give a hospital ethicist roll-over fits."
"Stop avoiding the question."
"You said you joined Torchwood because you wanted to help people and make a difference. So did I. I thought I had to leave Wales to do that. I scraped the dung off my heels, got a degree, went up to the smoke, flattened out my accent, and people still assumed I was a hick or a junkie.
"Then I found out I could save the world without leaving home. I liked that. I suppose it shouldn't matter, but it's nice that the people we save don't turn their noses up at us for the way we talk. They turn their noses up at us for being Torchwood." Ianto grinned again, and this time Tosh joined him.
"Now London wants me to come back, and they won't send anybody to replace me. It's like Cardiff, the Rift, and Wales don't matter. Torchwood Three doesn't matter. My people don't matter. That doesn't sit well with me. I'm needed here. With only the four of us I've never been needed more in my life."
Tosh nodded. "So this isn't about Jack?"
"No. It's about me. 'Ianto Jones, defender of Snowdonia.' How's that for egotistical?"
Tosh grinned again, looked down at her lap, then after a moment looked back up. "Do you think Jack will come back?"
"I don't know. I can believe Jack would leave me, we've only been together a short time. But it's hard to believe he would leave Torchwood."
Tosh touched his arm. "He cared about you, Ianto. He wouldn't have kissed you like that in front of everyone if he didn't care."
Ianto smiled wryly. "Didn't stick around to make good on that, did he? Kissed and told and left."
"What will you do if he comes back?"
Ianto stared across the water, frowning. He sighed. "Jack forgave me what I did for Lisa. He gave me a second chance even though he didn't want to. I have to give him a second chance even if I don't want to. I'm not going to let him be a bigger man than me.
"But how much of a second chance he gets depends on him. I'm not going to be his bloody doormat."
Tosh laughed. "That sounds fair. Come on, let's take a walk before we go back."
Ianto stood and gathered up their debris. He knew he wasn't being entirely honest with Tosh, but she would respect his limits.
Tosh was the only one who didn't treat him differently after finding out about his personal relationship with Jack. Sure, they now went out once a week, but that was something they had been building toward and would have done earlier if Jack hadn't come up with other ways to fill Ianto's evenings.
Gwen and Owen -- well, they had been the reasons Ianto hadn't wanted to go public in the first place. They were both taking it better than he feared. As he figured, Gwen was concealing her resentment behind a layer of concern, but without Jack to fuel the resentment her concern had turned into pity.
Owen and his bloody "Daddy" issues were the bigger problem. Owen was still looking for the magical One Role of Power he could assume that would make all his problems disappear and that he never had to take off. He could never decide if he wanted to be like Jack or rebel against Jack or be fucked by Jack, and he made such a big fuss over it. Not that he would last long in Jack's bed, with Jack's love of games and the glee with which he changed roles in a heartbeat. That was another place where Jack came up with something new at every turn, most of them involving some variation of "butch in the streets, fem in the sheets" and just picture Owen trying to wrap his mind around that. It was dizzying, intoxicating --
Time and place. Time and place. The Hub doesn't look after itself, you know.
Owen wanted everyone else to play the parts he gave them as well, and he had assigned Ianto the role of "annoying kid brother you ignore most of the time." He was always going to be upset to find out that Jack and Ianto had written new roles for themselves. Under normal circumstances it would have only rubbed salt in that wound for Jack to kiss Ianto like a lover, then turn around and kiss Owen like a child, in front of everyone. But circumstances hadn't been normal, even for Torchwood.
(Keeping secrets, dead, brought to life, dead again, brought to life again, kissed in front of everyone and then vanished. If his life was going to descend into goddamn panto, why the hell couldn't it have been a Disney or a Miyazaki or even a fucking Spielburg? Something with a happy ending.)
With Jack there, Owen would have been making cutting remarks and whining accusations of favoritism every five minutes. Without Jack there, Owen was running around trying to do three jobs at once (and he was shit at multi-tasking) and making crude but timid passes at Ianto to find out what Jack had seen in Ianto's trousers. Not that he was going to get anywhere, Ianto had standards.
So yes, Gwen and Owen were taking Ianto and Jack's affair much better than Ianto expected. Of course, they were behaving themselves because of the larger-than-life Jack-shaped hole in their world. If it weren't for black comedy there would be no comedy in Ianto's life at all.
Ianto sighed. For all his other faults, at least Owen was showing up every day, usually sober. That should count for something. It had counted in Jack's book.
(And speaking of which, where's Jack? Huh?)
He spent the rest of the day trying to climb the mountain of paperwork the Hub managed to generate and dealing with phone calls. Whenever he had a few minutes alone in the Archives, he looked for more information about Jack, adding to the bulging folder in his desk. He pieced his finds together and collated them, making a tidy summary. When he got home at night he took the summaries home to his flat, pulled out the box of Jack's personal possessions, and looked for patterns.
It was the same thing he did every night on those rare occasions when he didn't work late or go out with Tosh. It was standard research really, spreading out the documents, noting their provenance and original order, and figuring out how they best made sense. The problem was that the pieces could fit various stories depending on how they were interpreted. Emphasize this and de-emphasize that and Jack Harkness was a hero. Turn it around and he was a traitor.
It was too much like his job as Torchwood Three's "fixer"/cover-up expert -- re-arranging the facts to create a believable lie. Ianto refused to lie to himself again. He had already done enough of that with Lisa to last a lifetime.
Of course there was always the "go with your gut" approach. The problem was his gut was located right between his heart and his groin, and they both had strong opinions on the subject of Jack Harkness.
So Ianto looked at pictures and reread letters from friends and lovers dead before his parents were born. He tried to absorb the information without making excuses or casting blame. It was hard. There were nights when he raged at Jack, nights when he wept, and nights when he wasn't sure what he was feeling except that it hurt.
He put the box away for another night. It was time he got to bed. He had plenty of work to do in the morning. If he stayed busy enough, worked hard enough, got tired enough, and occasionally drank enough, he didn't notice the empty space in his bed.
************
Thus ends Post-Mortem. Series to be continued in....
The Tale of the Big Bad Wolf
1-When Martha Met Jack
2-Constellations of Blood
3-The Knight and the Sherriff
Fragment
Grounded
Truth or Dare
Golden Eyes
When Martha Met Jack
Epilogue to Post-Mortem, may be read as a stand-alone story (6/6)
Author: CrabbyLioness
Pairings: Team, Jack/Ianto
Summary: In the wake of Jack's disappearance, Ianto tries to figure out the mystery of Jack Harkness.
Rating: PG for adult themes.
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Not making a penny.
Part 1
Interlude
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Ianto frowned into the phone. "When can you send us down an expert, Steven?"
The voice on the other end sounded harassed. "You're joking, right? Ianto, I don't have anyone to send! We're shorthanded ourselves, and we've got disappearing hospitals, walking statues, and all sorts of other garbage to handle, and that's on top of the deal with Saxon. You've just got Wales to tend. We've got all of England to look after.
"I can't even send you a grunt, but the people you're asking for? Administrators? Mission leaders? Alien tech experts? Forget it. All the ones we've got are busy, and the ones who are in training won't be ready for at least a year and a half."
"What about U.N.I.T.?"
"They're busy taking care of Bane worldwide. All nonessential personnel have been recalled to Geneva. They say it's for extra training, but the rumor is there was a big cock-up at a Swiss lab they have to clean up."
"So what would you advise?"
Steven sighed. "Look, you didn't hear this from me, but if you want my advice the next time you find an emergency services bloke who doesn't freak out at the site of a Deevil --"
"Weevil."
"Weevil, right, draft him. That way at least you'll have someone with basic training and local area knowledge. I can't even offer you someone like that."
"That's how we got our last recruit."
"See? You already know how to do it! But I'm glad you called, Ianto. I need to talk to you. Torchwood One is looking for a new Supply Chief, and you would be perfect for the job."
"Me?" Ianto stared at the phone in surprise.
"Why not? You've already got the training, and from the horror stories you've been telling me over the past year Torchwood Three has given you the experience. You'll be back in London, back on the management track, and making over twice your current salary. So what do you say?"
Ianto took a deep breath to avoid stammering. "That's quite a promotion. I'm honored by your confidence in me. If I did this, who would you send down to take my place?"
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Ianto bit his lip to keep from prodding Steven.
"Think about it, Ianto. This could be your big break."
The door alarm sounded. "Thank you, Steven. I will. Well, here's the team. I have to go see to them now. Goodbye."
Ianto turned around to see Gwen and Tosh entering the Hub. "Who was that on the phone?" Gwen asked.
"That was Torchwood London."
Her face lit up. "Oh great! They found us the information on the Krynoids, then?"
"Not exactly. They offered me a promotion if I moved back."
"Congratulations! Who are they sending down to replace you?"
"Nobody. They seem to think Cardiff can manage with three people."
Gwen mouth fell open in amazement. "But we can't. We're barely making it with four. Ianto...."
"It's all right, Gwen. I'm not going to leave you in the lurch."
Tosh gave Ianto a "we'll talk about this over lunch" look. He nodded. "Now, who's up for coffee?"
He shouldn't have told her that, Ianto thought. It was a sign of his exhaustion that it had slipped out. "Look after the children," Jack had joked on occasion, beginning long before they became intimate. There was a grain of truth hidden inside that joke.
Ianto fixed the others their coffee and warmed himself a cup of milk. He resisted the urge to grimace. Owen was a good doctor, for all he had the bedside manner of a constipated hyena. He was especially good at diagnosis. If he said this course of treatment would help Ianto's stomach, Ianto had no reason to doubt him.
Poor Owen. Underneath his armor of cynicism he was even more tender-hearted than Gwen. He wanted so badly to heal everything that was wrong with the world, but he also wanted the world to have simple problems that he could heal by simple means. He hated that the world was full of complicated problems without easy solutions. It seemed to him grossly unfair, and left him in a perpetual sulk.
Owen wanted everything clear-cut. He either couldn't or didn't want to grasp that joy could bring sorrow, pain could bring pleasure, love could bring heartache. Unfortunately the world refused to resolve itself into a children's TV show for his sake; and Owen had grown up bitter, confused, angry, scared, very smart, and extremely dangerous. He hid his disappointment behind a endless quest for distraction by sex, booze, and video games. While regular life was bad enough, Torchwood was even worse. Torchwood was nothing but an endless series of complicated problems, most of which couldn't be dissected into nice little checklists on his autopsy table.
As he worked, Ianto reflected on the ironies of his job. Because Torchwood Three was so small, he had to wear many hats. He was both the Security Chief for the Hub and the janitor, the provider of sustenance and the disciplinarian. As the Archivist he was supposed to preserve all the fragments of facts and assemble them into something resembling the truth; as the cover-up expert he was supposed to arrange fragments of facts into lies. He knew no one at Torchwood One would have allowed him to hold such contradictory titles. Were they smart enough to realize the power it gave him?
Perhaps not. Probably they didn't think about it at all, and expected him to do the same. Just go along, do what he was supposed to do, and pay no attention to the bigger picture. Or if they did think about it they would be sure it would drive him mad, for no one could hold two contradictory positions and stay sane. And they were right. But if you embraced both sides of the contradiction, you could transcend it and find yourself in a whole new territory above and beyond the world that considered such things opposites. Once you did that you took on a new role with a new name. Thus Ianto was not the Security Chief and the janitor, he was the Castellan. He was not the provider of sustenance and the disciplinarian, he was the Guardian. He was not the Archivist and the cover-up expert, he was the Storyteller. It was his power to decide which stories were told and which ones were discarded, his judgement on which fragments of facts were preserved and which ones were obliterated. No, they would probably be extremely uncomfortable if they realized what Ianto's real job title was and how much power he really had, which is why he took care never to tell them.
Except for Jack. Jack laughed at contradictions. He was the embodiment of Whitman's hero: "Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then, I contradict myself./ I am large, I contain multitudes."
It was Jack who had encouraged Ianto to take on so many varied titles. Jack had kept placing Ianto in front of newer and stranger experiences, and had grinned like a maniac whenever Ianto had simply accepted them and gone on about his work.
He had done Gwen the same way. She had grinned back and asked for more until they met the cannibals. Something happened there besides her getting shot and falling into Owen's bed. She had pulled away from Jack and his endless novelties, and Jack had stopped grinning at her all the time.
From what Suzie had said, Jack had done the same with Owen and herself. According to her, Owen had been in tears after his first Weevil and Jack had pulled back on him then. Tosh had always been treated a bit more gently, Suzie added.
Ianto had always come up with some answer for Jack's challenges, even if it wasn't always the answer Jack had wanted to hear. He had flirted back when Jack had flirted with him, stringing Jack along for Lisa's sake, never letting him get close enough to risk finding out about Lisa or far enough away to risk reassessing Ianto. He had matched Jack word for word on that horrible day that Lisa died, until her final death took all his words away. Wordless, he had shown up the next day, understanding on a gut level how much stock Jack would set in that gesture.
Later, he had learned how pleasant it could be to turn the tables and set the challenges for Jack to meet.
Unbidden, images came to mind of intimacies shared, of turns taken, of lingering kisses and laughter. No. This was not the time nor the place.
He had done what he could do for Jack while Jack was here, and after Jack disappeared. The night before the others had searched Jack's flat, he had removed the photo albums, the letterbox, the black silk kimono Jack had given him for his birthday, and a few other items too personal for their eyes. It was a simple matter to rearrange what was left so their absence would not be noted, he had done that job often enough for Torchwood. Jack's private computer files and the primary interface were now buried so deeply in the core of the alien computer Tosh would never find them. They had enough clues left to piece together what they needed to know, and he had prompted them when necessary. He was proud of how little prompting they had needed.
It wasn't much of a gift, but Jack deserved what little privacy Ianto could give him. Ianto knew of nothing else Jack valued on a personal level that Ianto could do for him now. And now was not the time nor the place for that line of thought either.
("You could have stopped Owen from shooting him."
"How?"
"You could have. It's your fault for giving Owen ideas about shooting people."
"Jack pulled the gun on him that day, not me."
"But you pulled the trigger.")
Ianto opened the financial record and worked on balancing the books. He got into an argument with Owen over their expenses until Gwen insisted they break for lunch. Truth to tell, Ianto enjoyed the daily turf battle with Owen far more than he should. It felt good to have an outlet for his frustration.
He ordered sandwiches for lunch and let Tosh drag him out to a bench overlooking the bay. She made him tell her about the call from London, not that that took much work.
"Are you going to take it?"
"It's not as tempting as it would have been a year ago. Of course, that's partly because I know all the more qualified people ahead of me are dead." He grinned, and Tosh punched his arm.
"Ow!"
"That's nothing to joke about!" Tosh said, frowning.
"Beats screaming."
"You've got a point there," she conceded. "So what are you going to do?"
Ianto thought a bit. "Gwen asked me if I wanted to leave Torchwood over Jack."
"What?" Tosh asked, surprised.
Ianto nodded. "Apparently the fact that I worked for Torchwood for years before I met Jack is irrelevent. She thought losing Jack would be enough to make me change my career choice." He rolled his eyes.
Tosh hesitated. "It's not just that, Ianto. You've been through so much lately. First Canary Wharf, and then you've been widowed twice in one year."
"More than that, if you count each of Jack's 'deaths' individually. Less, if you don't count them at all. But what would you call what he does if not dying? 'Non-breathing periods?' 'Temporary cessations of organic functions?' He'd give a hospital ethicist roll-over fits."
"Stop avoiding the question."
"You said you joined Torchwood because you wanted to help people and make a difference. So did I. I thought I had to leave Wales to do that. I scraped the dung off my heels, got a degree, went up to the smoke, flattened out my accent, and people still assumed I was a hick or a junkie.
"Then I found out I could save the world without leaving home. I liked that. I suppose it shouldn't matter, but it's nice that the people we save don't turn their noses up at us for the way we talk. They turn their noses up at us for being Torchwood." Ianto grinned again, and this time Tosh joined him.
"Now London wants me to come back, and they won't send anybody to replace me. It's like Cardiff, the Rift, and Wales don't matter. Torchwood Three doesn't matter. My people don't matter. That doesn't sit well with me. I'm needed here. With only the four of us I've never been needed more in my life."
Tosh nodded. "So this isn't about Jack?"
"No. It's about me. 'Ianto Jones, defender of Snowdonia.' How's that for egotistical?"
Tosh grinned again, looked down at her lap, then after a moment looked back up. "Do you think Jack will come back?"
"I don't know. I can believe Jack would leave me, we've only been together a short time. But it's hard to believe he would leave Torchwood."
Tosh touched his arm. "He cared about you, Ianto. He wouldn't have kissed you like that in front of everyone if he didn't care."
Ianto smiled wryly. "Didn't stick around to make good on that, did he? Kissed and told and left."
"What will you do if he comes back?"
Ianto stared across the water, frowning. He sighed. "Jack forgave me what I did for Lisa. He gave me a second chance even though he didn't want to. I have to give him a second chance even if I don't want to. I'm not going to let him be a bigger man than me.
"But how much of a second chance he gets depends on him. I'm not going to be his bloody doormat."
Tosh laughed. "That sounds fair. Come on, let's take a walk before we go back."
Ianto stood and gathered up their debris. He knew he wasn't being entirely honest with Tosh, but she would respect his limits.
Tosh was the only one who didn't treat him differently after finding out about his personal relationship with Jack. Sure, they now went out once a week, but that was something they had been building toward and would have done earlier if Jack hadn't come up with other ways to fill Ianto's evenings.
Gwen and Owen -- well, they had been the reasons Ianto hadn't wanted to go public in the first place. They were both taking it better than he feared. As he figured, Gwen was concealing her resentment behind a layer of concern, but without Jack to fuel the resentment her concern had turned into pity.
Owen and his bloody "Daddy" issues were the bigger problem. Owen was still looking for the magical One Role of Power he could assume that would make all his problems disappear and that he never had to take off. He could never decide if he wanted to be like Jack or rebel against Jack or be fucked by Jack, and he made such a big fuss over it. Not that he would last long in Jack's bed, with Jack's love of games and the glee with which he changed roles in a heartbeat. That was another place where Jack came up with something new at every turn, most of them involving some variation of "butch in the streets, fem in the sheets" and just picture Owen trying to wrap his mind around that. It was dizzying, intoxicating --
Time and place. Time and place. The Hub doesn't look after itself, you know.
Owen wanted everyone else to play the parts he gave them as well, and he had assigned Ianto the role of "annoying kid brother you ignore most of the time." He was always going to be upset to find out that Jack and Ianto had written new roles for themselves. Under normal circumstances it would have only rubbed salt in that wound for Jack to kiss Ianto like a lover, then turn around and kiss Owen like a child, in front of everyone. But circumstances hadn't been normal, even for Torchwood.
(Keeping secrets, dead, brought to life, dead again, brought to life again, kissed in front of everyone and then vanished. If his life was going to descend into goddamn panto, why the hell couldn't it have been a Disney or a Miyazaki or even a fucking Spielburg? Something with a happy ending.)
With Jack there, Owen would have been making cutting remarks and whining accusations of favoritism every five minutes. Without Jack there, Owen was running around trying to do three jobs at once (and he was shit at multi-tasking) and making crude but timid passes at Ianto to find out what Jack had seen in Ianto's trousers. Not that he was going to get anywhere, Ianto had standards.
So yes, Gwen and Owen were taking Ianto and Jack's affair much better than Ianto expected. Of course, they were behaving themselves because of the larger-than-life Jack-shaped hole in their world. If it weren't for black comedy there would be no comedy in Ianto's life at all.
Ianto sighed. For all his other faults, at least Owen was showing up every day, usually sober. That should count for something. It had counted in Jack's book.
(And speaking of which, where's Jack? Huh?)
He spent the rest of the day trying to climb the mountain of paperwork the Hub managed to generate and dealing with phone calls. Whenever he had a few minutes alone in the Archives, he looked for more information about Jack, adding to the bulging folder in his desk. He pieced his finds together and collated them, making a tidy summary. When he got home at night he took the summaries home to his flat, pulled out the box of Jack's personal possessions, and looked for patterns.
It was the same thing he did every night on those rare occasions when he didn't work late or go out with Tosh. It was standard research really, spreading out the documents, noting their provenance and original order, and figuring out how they best made sense. The problem was that the pieces could fit various stories depending on how they were interpreted. Emphasize this and de-emphasize that and Jack Harkness was a hero. Turn it around and he was a traitor.
It was too much like his job as Torchwood Three's "fixer"/cover-up expert -- re-arranging the facts to create a believable lie. Ianto refused to lie to himself again. He had already done enough of that with Lisa to last a lifetime.
Of course there was always the "go with your gut" approach. The problem was his gut was located right between his heart and his groin, and they both had strong opinions on the subject of Jack Harkness.
So Ianto looked at pictures and reread letters from friends and lovers dead before his parents were born. He tried to absorb the information without making excuses or casting blame. It was hard. There were nights when he raged at Jack, nights when he wept, and nights when he wasn't sure what he was feeling except that it hurt.
He put the box away for another night. It was time he got to bed. He had plenty of work to do in the morning. If he stayed busy enough, worked hard enough, got tired enough, and occasionally drank enough, he didn't notice the empty space in his bed.
************
Thus ends Post-Mortem. Series to be continued in....
The Tale of the Big Bad Wolf
1-When Martha Met Jack
2-Constellations of Blood
3-The Knight and the Sherriff
Fragment
Grounded
Truth or Dare
Golden Eyes
When Martha Met Jack