Jumping Off the Bridge
“Jack,” she said, still looking at the file. He looked over at her briefly and then looked back at his own file.
“Hmm?” he said absently.
“Did you know Ethan Greene very well?” she asked, lowering the file to look at him.
He looked over at her and sighed, “Yes. Why?”
“He sounds interesting,” she mused, grinning at him.
He smiled into the coffee he was drinking, “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.” He paused, “He didn’t last long at Torchwood, though.”
At that moment Ianto wandered up, bringing Gwen a mug of tea. She looked surprised, since she hadn’t asked for it, but then thanked him for it and he sat down on the floor in front of them, making himself comfortable with his own coffee. “Who didn’t last long?” he asked, sipping his drink.
“Ethan Greene,” Jack said, without offering any explanation.
Ianto smiled at Gwen, “Ah, you discovered Ethan.” He and Jack shared a knowing look.
“What?” she said to them both, setting the file down on her lap.
Jack just shrugged, and Ianto looked back at Gwen, “Ethan had flair. Jack likes flair.”
“Sometimes,” Jack countered. “I wouldn’t call either of you full of flair, but I like you both okay.”
Ianto chuckled and Gwen asked, “Did his personality match the way he wrote these reports?”
Jack nodded, “You mean as if he were writing a teenage sci-fi novel? Yeah. Alec finally banned Ethan from writing his own reports. Made him send them through another agent first, to take out the drama. Looks like you found one of his originals.”
Gwen read from the file, “’Even though we managed to send the Hoix home, we all felt like we’d witnessed something life-altering, like a force had been left behind by the alien, and all of us changed by it in some way.’ Were you changed by the Hoix, Jack?” She asked with a grin.
He smiled at her. “Changed as in ‘killed by it’, yes. My backup team didn’t move fast enough. Changed spiritually? Well, Ethan was sort of looking for a spiritual change when he started with us. He kind of read into things a bit.”
“You think?” Ianto muttered, and then looked up at Gwen while pulling his knees up to his chest, “Ethan thought he was joining a cadre of super-heroes when he joined Torchwood.”
“How do you know, Ianto?” Gwen asked.
“You haven’t seen his Torchwood Diary?” Ianto asked, confused, “I thought that’s what we were talking about.”
Gwen held up the file, “Nope, just a report he wrote.”
Ianto laughed, “Oh, let me get it for you. It’s good reading.” As he stood up and walked away, he said over his shoulder, “And he had a crush on Jack. It’s amusing.”
Jack just rolled his eyes, “So many of the young ones did.” After a pause he added with a smirk, “Do.”
“I heard that,” Ianto called from Jack’s office.
Gwen laughed. She looked down at the file and sifted through it again, finding a couple of photographs tucked in behind the papers. There was a photo of the dead Hoix, and a photo of the team sifting through its belongings. Jack leaned over and pointed at a young man in the background.
“That’s Ethan. He must have been no more than twenty when he was hired.”
Gwen looked and saw a young man with straw-colored hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a crooked grin. He wasn’t even aware he was being photographed, just grinning at the team as they worked. He had a notebook in his hand, and he was wearing a green dress shirt and blue skinny tie, the fashion of the eighties. His hair was spiked with gel, and his sleeves were rolled up casually. Gwen thought he looked more like fifteen.
Ianto came back with a book in his hand, and he gave it to Gwen. “It’s interesting reading. His flourish gets old after a few pages, but he was intent on chronicling his time here.”
“Alec found him writing in it and made him agree to leave it here. Didn’t want nosy parents or boyfriends finding it,” Jack said, going back to his own reading.
Gwen took the journal and set it down next to her, placing the photograph back in the file and closing it.
“What happened to him?” She asked softly.
Jack was silent, so Ianto spoke up, “He died. Probably three or four years after he was hired? Twenty four, I think he was.”
“What happened?” Gwen asked, and Jack stood from the couch and walked into his office, claiming to need another file.
Ianto sighed and moved to the couch next to Gwen. He looked at the file in her hands, “Well, there was a rift alert one night, but it didn’t look too bad, according to the report. Alec was trying to get Ethan trained in the field- he’d been mostly research and support until a few months earlier - so he sent Ethan out with Jack and another agent, Erin Simpson, I think it was. Turns out the rift had thrown a couple of aliens they’d not encountered before out, and they were hostile, violent, and . . .” here Ianto took a deep breath, “Poisonous. Jack and Erin and Ethan did manage to get them sedated, but not before one of them stung Ethan. No one had seen that venom before and it was a particularly slow-acting but nasty kind. It took him three days to die, according to the report.” After a moment as Gwen sat trying to figure out how to react, Ianto added, “Jack stayed with him the whole time.”
They sat silently on the couch and soon Jack returned with another file. He sat down heavily on the couch and looked over at Gwen, “You should read his journal. It’s funny and informative. I gave it to the others to read when they were first hired - it’s a good look at the way Torchwood used to be - but I forgot to give it to you.”
Gwen looked at the journal in her hands and opened to the first page. It had, in very dramatic and bold, swoopy handwriting, the following words: “Torchwood Three: According to Ethan Greene” and below it there was a pencil drawing of a Welsh dragon and the Torchwood logo. As she looked down the page, she couldn’t help but laugh when she read a small inscription at the bottom: “My Adventures With Aliens.”
Ianto leaned over to see what she was looking at and he grinned, “Yeah. It’s like that all the way through. He couldn’t have been more thrilled with his job.”
She thumbed through the pages, which were filled with a scrawling but legible handwriting and lots of pencil drawings of various people and aliens. Ianto leaned over and flipped to a particular page, pointing at the drawing there and winking at Gwen. It was a drawing of Jack, not wearing his greatcoat but rather a vest and his usual trousers, with a wicked grin on his face. It was a startling likeness and Gwen put her hand to her mouth, covering a grin. Ianto just laughed. “I told you, he had a crush on Jack. He was a good artist, too, don’t you think?”
Jack leaned over to see what they were looking at and grinned as well, “He was good at lots of things,” he said slyly, winking at Ianto.
Gwen laughed and then asked, “Why did he get hired so young, Jack? Twenty seems too young.”
Jack leaned back and sighed, “Yeah, well, he was a good artist and he was very observant. He’d gathered his own little portfolio of drawings of weird things he’d seen around Cardiff, and he hung around the Plass a lot, reading and studying. He was in University when he was hired. Alec talked to him from time to time and realized how good he was at research. His flair for the dramatic aside, he could take a grainy photo and figure out how it matched something in the archives almost as good as Tosh’s computers can now. Plus he was intuitive and made connections that the others just didn’t see nearly as fast.” Jack paused to drink some more coffee and look away for a moment. He added, “He was obnoxiously cheerful and drove us crazy most of the time, but he meant well and was good at what he did. Torchwood One wanted to steal him but Alec wouldn’t give. He knew he’d found someone good.”
Ianto leaned back and frowned suddenly, “Why the field? He doesn’t go into that in his journal. Why couldn’t Alec leave him in research if he was so good?”
Jack looked sharply at Ianto and his face darkened. He didn’t answer right away, but finally said, “That was my fault. I caught him in the firing range one night after everyone else left, practicing when he didn’t have clearance to use the guns. But he was really good at it; I ran him through every weapon we had and he was better than most of the other agents. I told Alec about it and suggested he was missing out on a good field agent.” He sighed, “Two months later he was dead.”
Ianto and Gwen looked at Jack, who had leaned forward and was staring at his hands. They looked at each other and both sighed at the same time. Gwen spoke first, “Hardly your fault, Jack. He’d probably have been discovered sometime, and chances are he knew you hung around the Hub and would ‘catch’ him.”
Ianto nodded, “Jack have you read the diary?”
Jack shook his head, “Not all of it, and not for a while.”
Ianto continued, “Well, he talks about being a field agent from the beginning. Explains how it works, why he wants to be one, how he practiced shooting in his spare time so he could impress Alec some day. It wasn’t your fault; it’s what he wanted.”
Jack leaned back and ran his hand over his face. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and finally Jack stood up to walk away. After a couple of steps he turned back to Gwen and Ianto and looked them each in the eye and said, “It just seems like I get people into trouble.”
Gwen looked up at him and smiled, “You get yourself into trouble, Jack. Us idiots just tend to follow you.”
Ianto added, “My mam used to ask me whether I’d follow my friends if they jumped off a bridge. I don’t think she’d ever met anyone like you, Jack.”
Jack smiled at them, “I really ought to stop jumping off of bridges, then, don’t you think?” and he walked away, closing his office door behind him.
Gwen leaned into Ianto’s shoulder, “God, I hope he doesn’t stop jumping.”
Ianto chuckled, “It does keep things more interesting around here, that’s for sure.”
They both looked back at the diary, and Gwen said, “A crush on Jack, eh?”
Ianto grinned, “Oh yeah. You should skip to the part where Jack propositions him after work. He doesn’t go into too much detail, but you can practically see him blush on the page.”
“Jack’s good at making people blush,” Gwen said, flipping through the book.
“That and getting people killed, apparently,” Ianto said with a sigh, and he stood to leave.
Gwen looked up at him and said, conspiratorially, “Yeah, but we’re the ones who jump off the bridge.”
Ianto grinned and nodded, and went to fix Jack some more coffee. Gwen opened the journal and began to read with a smile on her face.
“Hmm?” he said absently.
“Did you know Ethan Greene very well?” she asked, lowering the file to look at him.
He looked over at her and sighed, “Yes. Why?”
“He sounds interesting,” she mused, grinning at him.
He smiled into the coffee he was drinking, “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.” He paused, “He didn’t last long at Torchwood, though.”
At that moment Ianto wandered up, bringing Gwen a mug of tea. She looked surprised, since she hadn’t asked for it, but then thanked him for it and he sat down on the floor in front of them, making himself comfortable with his own coffee. “Who didn’t last long?” he asked, sipping his drink.
“Ethan Greene,” Jack said, without offering any explanation.
Ianto smiled at Gwen, “Ah, you discovered Ethan.” He and Jack shared a knowing look.
“What?” she said to them both, setting the file down on her lap.
Jack just shrugged, and Ianto looked back at Gwen, “Ethan had flair. Jack likes flair.”
“Sometimes,” Jack countered. “I wouldn’t call either of you full of flair, but I like you both okay.”
Ianto chuckled and Gwen asked, “Did his personality match the way he wrote these reports?”
Jack nodded, “You mean as if he were writing a teenage sci-fi novel? Yeah. Alec finally banned Ethan from writing his own reports. Made him send them through another agent first, to take out the drama. Looks like you found one of his originals.”
Gwen read from the file, “’Even though we managed to send the Hoix home, we all felt like we’d witnessed something life-altering, like a force had been left behind by the alien, and all of us changed by it in some way.’ Were you changed by the Hoix, Jack?” She asked with a grin.
He smiled at her. “Changed as in ‘killed by it’, yes. My backup team didn’t move fast enough. Changed spiritually? Well, Ethan was sort of looking for a spiritual change when he started with us. He kind of read into things a bit.”
“You think?” Ianto muttered, and then looked up at Gwen while pulling his knees up to his chest, “Ethan thought he was joining a cadre of super-heroes when he joined Torchwood.”
“How do you know, Ianto?” Gwen asked.
“You haven’t seen his Torchwood Diary?” Ianto asked, confused, “I thought that’s what we were talking about.”
Gwen held up the file, “Nope, just a report he wrote.”
Ianto laughed, “Oh, let me get it for you. It’s good reading.” As he stood up and walked away, he said over his shoulder, “And he had a crush on Jack. It’s amusing.”
Jack just rolled his eyes, “So many of the young ones did.” After a pause he added with a smirk, “Do.”
“I heard that,” Ianto called from Jack’s office.
Gwen laughed. She looked down at the file and sifted through it again, finding a couple of photographs tucked in behind the papers. There was a photo of the dead Hoix, and a photo of the team sifting through its belongings. Jack leaned over and pointed at a young man in the background.
“That’s Ethan. He must have been no more than twenty when he was hired.”
Gwen looked and saw a young man with straw-colored hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a crooked grin. He wasn’t even aware he was being photographed, just grinning at the team as they worked. He had a notebook in his hand, and he was wearing a green dress shirt and blue skinny tie, the fashion of the eighties. His hair was spiked with gel, and his sleeves were rolled up casually. Gwen thought he looked more like fifteen.
Ianto came back with a book in his hand, and he gave it to Gwen. “It’s interesting reading. His flourish gets old after a few pages, but he was intent on chronicling his time here.”
“Alec found him writing in it and made him agree to leave it here. Didn’t want nosy parents or boyfriends finding it,” Jack said, going back to his own reading.
Gwen took the journal and set it down next to her, placing the photograph back in the file and closing it.
“What happened to him?” She asked softly.
Jack was silent, so Ianto spoke up, “He died. Probably three or four years after he was hired? Twenty four, I think he was.”
“What happened?” Gwen asked, and Jack stood from the couch and walked into his office, claiming to need another file.
Ianto sighed and moved to the couch next to Gwen. He looked at the file in her hands, “Well, there was a rift alert one night, but it didn’t look too bad, according to the report. Alec was trying to get Ethan trained in the field- he’d been mostly research and support until a few months earlier - so he sent Ethan out with Jack and another agent, Erin Simpson, I think it was. Turns out the rift had thrown a couple of aliens they’d not encountered before out, and they were hostile, violent, and . . .” here Ianto took a deep breath, “Poisonous. Jack and Erin and Ethan did manage to get them sedated, but not before one of them stung Ethan. No one had seen that venom before and it was a particularly slow-acting but nasty kind. It took him three days to die, according to the report.” After a moment as Gwen sat trying to figure out how to react, Ianto added, “Jack stayed with him the whole time.”
They sat silently on the couch and soon Jack returned with another file. He sat down heavily on the couch and looked over at Gwen, “You should read his journal. It’s funny and informative. I gave it to the others to read when they were first hired - it’s a good look at the way Torchwood used to be - but I forgot to give it to you.”
Gwen looked at the journal in her hands and opened to the first page. It had, in very dramatic and bold, swoopy handwriting, the following words: “Torchwood Three: According to Ethan Greene” and below it there was a pencil drawing of a Welsh dragon and the Torchwood logo. As she looked down the page, she couldn’t help but laugh when she read a small inscription at the bottom: “My Adventures With Aliens.”
Ianto leaned over to see what she was looking at and he grinned, “Yeah. It’s like that all the way through. He couldn’t have been more thrilled with his job.”
She thumbed through the pages, which were filled with a scrawling but legible handwriting and lots of pencil drawings of various people and aliens. Ianto leaned over and flipped to a particular page, pointing at the drawing there and winking at Gwen. It was a drawing of Jack, not wearing his greatcoat but rather a vest and his usual trousers, with a wicked grin on his face. It was a startling likeness and Gwen put her hand to her mouth, covering a grin. Ianto just laughed. “I told you, he had a crush on Jack. He was a good artist, too, don’t you think?”
Jack leaned over to see what they were looking at and grinned as well, “He was good at lots of things,” he said slyly, winking at Ianto.
Gwen laughed and then asked, “Why did he get hired so young, Jack? Twenty seems too young.”
Jack leaned back and sighed, “Yeah, well, he was a good artist and he was very observant. He’d gathered his own little portfolio of drawings of weird things he’d seen around Cardiff, and he hung around the Plass a lot, reading and studying. He was in University when he was hired. Alec talked to him from time to time and realized how good he was at research. His flair for the dramatic aside, he could take a grainy photo and figure out how it matched something in the archives almost as good as Tosh’s computers can now. Plus he was intuitive and made connections that the others just didn’t see nearly as fast.” Jack paused to drink some more coffee and look away for a moment. He added, “He was obnoxiously cheerful and drove us crazy most of the time, but he meant well and was good at what he did. Torchwood One wanted to steal him but Alec wouldn’t give. He knew he’d found someone good.”
Ianto leaned back and frowned suddenly, “Why the field? He doesn’t go into that in his journal. Why couldn’t Alec leave him in research if he was so good?”
Jack looked sharply at Ianto and his face darkened. He didn’t answer right away, but finally said, “That was my fault. I caught him in the firing range one night after everyone else left, practicing when he didn’t have clearance to use the guns. But he was really good at it; I ran him through every weapon we had and he was better than most of the other agents. I told Alec about it and suggested he was missing out on a good field agent.” He sighed, “Two months later he was dead.”
Ianto and Gwen looked at Jack, who had leaned forward and was staring at his hands. They looked at each other and both sighed at the same time. Gwen spoke first, “Hardly your fault, Jack. He’d probably have been discovered sometime, and chances are he knew you hung around the Hub and would ‘catch’ him.”
Ianto nodded, “Jack have you read the diary?”
Jack shook his head, “Not all of it, and not for a while.”
Ianto continued, “Well, he talks about being a field agent from the beginning. Explains how it works, why he wants to be one, how he practiced shooting in his spare time so he could impress Alec some day. It wasn’t your fault; it’s what he wanted.”
Jack leaned back and ran his hand over his face. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and finally Jack stood up to walk away. After a couple of steps he turned back to Gwen and Ianto and looked them each in the eye and said, “It just seems like I get people into trouble.”
Gwen looked up at him and smiled, “You get yourself into trouble, Jack. Us idiots just tend to follow you.”
Ianto added, “My mam used to ask me whether I’d follow my friends if they jumped off a bridge. I don’t think she’d ever met anyone like you, Jack.”
Jack smiled at them, “I really ought to stop jumping off of bridges, then, don’t you think?” and he walked away, closing his office door behind him.
Gwen leaned into Ianto’s shoulder, “God, I hope he doesn’t stop jumping.”
Ianto chuckled, “It does keep things more interesting around here, that’s for sure.”
They both looked back at the diary, and Gwen said, “A crush on Jack, eh?”
Ianto grinned, “Oh yeah. You should skip to the part where Jack propositions him after work. He doesn’t go into too much detail, but you can practically see him blush on the page.”
“Jack’s good at making people blush,” Gwen said, flipping through the book.
“That and getting people killed, apparently,” Ianto said with a sigh, and he stood to leave.
Gwen looked up at him and said, conspiratorially, “Yeah, but we’re the ones who jump off the bridge.”
Ianto grinned and nodded, and went to fix Jack some more coffee. Gwen opened the journal and began to read with a smile on her face.