Fic: Doppelganger - Chapter 4, "Those We've Lost" [WIP 6/?]
Title: Doppelganger: Chapter 4, "Those We've Lost"
Author: heddychaa
Pairings: John/Ianto, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Alonso, Mickey/Martha, other canon relationships
Rating: R
Genre: Timey-wimey Post-CoE eventual fix-it
Disclaimer: "Doctor Who" and "Torchwood", including characters, concepts, and events, belong to their respective owners, including but not limited to Russel T Davies and the BBC. This is a work of fan-appreciation and no profit is being made.
Summary: Ianto Jones is searching for someone, and he's willing to risk and give anything if it brings him just one step closer. After materializing on an alternate Earth, the first person he happens upon is the smug and decidedly untrustworthy Captain John Hart, Time Agent. Hart seems to know what's going on in this world, and also knows more about Ianto himself than he's letting on, but most importantly he promises to take Ianto to Torchwood in London where he can continue his desperate search. However, when Hart's vortex manipulator takes them a crucial few months into the future, Ianto finds himself depending on him for much more than just directions . . . but at what cost?
A/N: Thanks as always to _lullabelle_ for beta-ing this fic. If it weren't for her, God knows what this fic would look like. You can assume any leftover errors are all me!
Chapter 4: Those We’ve Lost
He feels nothing, so he opens his eyes. Hart is standing there, one eyebrow arched, clearly on the verge of snickering. Jones hits the dimension jump again, more forcefully this time, his confidence shaken.
Nothing happens.
This time Hart does laugh, hands on his hips. A big hearty fucking Viking laugh, head thrown back to the sky. A few people milling about on the Plass turn to give the pair of them strange looks. Jones reacts in the only way that seems sensible, right now: he grabs Hart by the lapels of his coat and rams him up against the blue safety fencing so that they are nose to nose.
“What did you do?” he snarls. “What did you do?”
He shakes Hart bodily, so hard that the whole fence rattles.
“Oh, Eye-Candy,” Hart gushes, eyes rolling in their sockets in faux ecstacy.
“What did you just call me?” Jones demands, just before Hart pushes his upper body forward, smearing his mouth over Jones’ in an enthusiastic kiss.
Jones tears his head back, lips feeling bruised. He’s contemplating giving Hart a retaliatory punch to the stomach when Hart wraps a hand around the back of his head, pulling him close.
“That’s enough,” Hart warns, the tone of his voice tight-roping the edge of seriousness and unhinged joy. “You’re making a scene. We can’t afford for you to make a scene. Your toy’s broken, but I had nothing to do with it. I can, however, take you someplace to get it repaired, but you have to trust me.”
Jones’ grip on Hart’s lapels tightens, and he gives him a single, jerking shake, glowering directly into the other man’s dark eyes. “Why should I?”
“Because you have no choice. You can go on without me, but you’re going to be stuck on this Earth until you die, I promise you that.” Hart smirks.
“How do I know you’re not bluffing?” He hates this feeling of powerlessness; he doesn’t want to have to trust in anyone but himself and he doesn’t want to have to tie his fate to someone else’s, especially not someone as unpredictable as Hart.
“Do I look like the kind of man who bluffs?” Hart asks, a little incredulously. “Listen, I’ll be straight with you because I like you, Eye-Candy. I tracked you down because this wrist strap of mine pinged that dimension cannon of yours as being Non-Analogous Tech. It triggered that alarm even when a sky full of planets and streets full of Daleks didn’t. Do you know why?” Jones shakes his head ‘no’. “Nothing else like it exists on this world or in this timeline. It’s completely out of place, beyond everything else that somehow washes up on this backwater planet. Now what do you think the odds are that, on foot with nothing but that gun of yours and the clothes on your back, you’re going to be able to find someone who would be able to repair that kind of technology? Trust me or don’t, but you need me, Ianto Jones.”
Jones takes a deep breath. He’s done this before: worked with others while never growing too attached, gained their trust, integrated himself, been essential but unremarkable, waited patiently until he got what he wanted. A man always waiting on the next opportunity. He tucks the dimension jump into his pocket, resigning himself to his fate. “Fine,” he says. His tone says, “But I’m not happy about it.”
He doesn’t ask “And what’s in it for you?” because he already knows the answer. Alright, he can do that. He isn’t going to like himself at the end, but it’s either be ruthless or achieve nothing. That’s always been the trade-off for him.
They’re still standing there, Jones forcing Hart up against the fence, Hart with an overly intimate hand clasped at the base of Jones’ skull, when he feels the awful sensation of the vortex manipulator taking hold.
The mood improves drastically at Hub 3 by midmorning with Rhys’ arrival. He’s brought two stacks of takeout coffee along, and he has no qualms with cutting Lois’ awkward cake into ridiculously oversized slices and passing it out to everyone despite their varied initial protests. They drag whatever chairs the warehouse contains to form a semi-circle around the cake, and sit knee-to-knee, eating their cake with their fingers because Lois had apparently forgotten forks.
Rhys regales them with tales of his son’s ability to use his penis like a squirt gun, which Mickey thinks is just a bit too much information, thanks, but the self-depreciating humour paired with a convincing pantomime of being sprayed in the face gets them all laughing. Martha tells them all how Mickey had proposed, exaggerating (Mickey thinks) how awkward and nervous he’d been about the whole thing. This leads, naturally, into a raucous retelling by Gwen of how Rhys had risen to her defence at their wedding, armed only with a chainsaw.
“Like Army of Darkness!” Mickey bursts.
“Just like that!” Rhys agrees, slapping his knee for emphasis.
“Aw mate that’s brilliant,” Mickey congratulates, and suddenly they are all toasting each other with their takeout coffee cups. They toast Rhys’ curry and his chainsaw. They toast Lois’ promotion. They toast Gwen and Rhys’ new baby and his excellent aim. They toast Gwen’s ability to make string diagrams, Martha’s Creative Writing degree (an in-joke, apparently), and Martha toasts Mickey’s good taste in wives, because nobody there knows him well enough yet to have developed a repertoire of in-jokes about him. Jack would, but Jack’s not here. It goes on like that, and they do their best to ignore the pain and distrust and trauma of the last few months, do their best to ignore why they are in these flea market surroundings in the first place, do their best to ignore Jack’s empty “office” overhead. Do their best to ignore the photo of Ianto Jones, whose face is so familiar to Mickey: so familiar and yet so different. Ianto Jones who died fighting the 456.
“And to those we’ve lost,” Gwen says, gently, and the laughter dies down into sad smiles. “To Tosh,” she starts.
“To Owen,” Martha continues.
“To Ianto Jones,” Mickey says, and they all look at him, surprised, “And to Jack, wherever the fuck he is.”
“Wherever the fuck,” they all echo, smiling but speaking solemnly. They raise their cups.
They rematerialize still clinging to one another in the same position they’d been in back in Cardiff. Ianto lurches forward, disoriented, knocking their foreheads together with a loud crack. John casts a look around, running a hand along the holsters on his hips. They’re in one of his favourite haunts, a dingy dark bar full of some of the most attractive, cruel, and well-connected people the 51st century has to offer.
Ianto rubs his forehead, eyes squelched closed, and groans, “You know, for some futuristic time agent, Captain, your technology isn’t exactly refined.” John gives him a noncommittal pat on the shoulder in lieu of comfort.
“A ‘Captain’ now, is it? That’s a good one,” says the bartender, a gorgeous blonde whose face seems to flicker, undecided, between being twenty and thirty years old, a little like the buzz of florescent lights. She leans over the counter, the tits all twenty.
“Captain John Hart,” he introduces, flashing a cheeky smile and sidling up to the bar. Ianto follows suit, still rubbing his forehead irritably as he hops onto a barstool.
“Captain John Hart,” she repeats. “I like that! Kind of old-fashioned, like ‘Horatio Hornblower’. Goes with the coat. And how about him?” She jerks her head to Ianto.
“Ianto Jones. I’m Torchwood,” Ianto introduces, hunching over the bar.
“Torchwood?” the bartender asks, a snicker in her voice, obviously recognizing the reference but not believing it. “Where the hell did you pick him up, John?”
“Twenty-first century Earth. He’s an antique!” John wiggles in his seat proudly, as though he’s acquired a cute new puppy.
“Dunno if I like him,” the bartender admits. “Doesn’t really seem like your type, don’t you think? What happened to that other bloke? You know, the muscular one? I liked him.”
“Of course you did,” John snorts. “Everyone loves him.”
She rolls her eyes, waving him on.
“He’s dead,” John continues, keeping his voice casual. “Or so I hear, anyway. I’m not going to believe it until I see the body. And maybe not even then.”
“Oh, shit,” the bartender says, and pours them both two shots of a hyper-blue liquor. “I’m sorry, John.”
“Don’t be. Occupational hazard.” John downs both shots, shivering in delight. Nothing on Earth compares.
“Yup,” Ianto agrees, and does both of his shots in quick succession, wincing at the aftertaste, which makes the bartender giggle girlishly at his expense.
“So what brings the two of you to my little corner of the universe? I’m assuming it’s not the company.” She’s suddenly all business, her face flickering to thirty and staying there.
“Show him,” John instructs Ianto in a low tone.
Ianto produces the dimension cannon from his pocket, placing it on the bar and sliding it across with his first three fingers. The bartender picks it up, scrutinizing it.
“Where did you get this.” she asks him in a stage whisper, although it comes out less as a question than as an accusatory statement. She stares at it, eyes positively glittering under the neon lights of the bar, stroking the compact machinery.
“He scavenged it,” John replies, quickly before Ianto has time to say something stupid, or honest, or stupid and honest. “But it isn’t working. Can’t exactly just take it to a mechanic’s to get fixed, and even if the Time Agency wasn’t disbanded, if I brought it there they’d just seize it for themselves. But you, you know a lot of people, don’t you?”
She smiles, leaning over the bar and rolling her shoulders a bit like a cat getting ready to pounce. “They don’t call it ‘The Hive’ for nothing,” she agrees. John chuckles to himself. Star Wars references! They never get old.
“Yeah, I know someone,” she continues. “Manufactures off-license vortex manipulators for the black market. If he doesn’t know what to do with one of . . . those, I don’t know who will. But he isn’t cheap, and he doesn’t come when he’s called.”
John waves for her to pour them another round of drinks, which she does. Ianto puts a hand over his own glasses, making her smirk. “That’s fine, I need some time to earn some credits anyway. I’ve got enough for food and room, but that’s about it,” John replies, downing the shots.
“Need a little quick money? There’s a minor political assassination up for grabs on Sol 3. I was going to offer it to this Hath bloke who comes through every so often, but you know, if it goes sour at all it comes down on my head and my reputation, and I’d much rather trust you with it. Well, I don’t know about your new partner-shit, John, I wish--”
John puts up a hand to interrupt her. “Stop it. Don’t say his name. Don’t even mention him. Jones may not look like much, but he can handle his own.” He smiles over at Ianto, who merely quirks an eyebrow at him before returning his gaze to the bar.
“I hope you’re right. You fuck this up for me, ‘Captain’, I’ll run you out of here.”
And if you get run out of The Hive, you can’t run far enough. There isn’t anywhere you can go where her influence doesn’t stretch.
Go to Chapter 5: "Symbiotes".
View the Masterlist for full chapter list and complete header info.
Author: heddychaa
Pairings: John/Ianto, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Alonso, Mickey/Martha, other canon relationships
Rating: R
Genre: Timey-wimey Post-CoE eventual fix-it
Disclaimer: "Doctor Who" and "Torchwood", including characters, concepts, and events, belong to their respective owners, including but not limited to Russel T Davies and the BBC. This is a work of fan-appreciation and no profit is being made.
Summary: Ianto Jones is searching for someone, and he's willing to risk and give anything if it brings him just one step closer. After materializing on an alternate Earth, the first person he happens upon is the smug and decidedly untrustworthy Captain John Hart, Time Agent. Hart seems to know what's going on in this world, and also knows more about Ianto himself than he's letting on, but most importantly he promises to take Ianto to Torchwood in London where he can continue his desperate search. However, when Hart's vortex manipulator takes them a crucial few months into the future, Ianto finds himself depending on him for much more than just directions . . . but at what cost?
A/N: Thanks as always to _lullabelle_ for beta-ing this fic. If it weren't for her, God knows what this fic would look like. You can assume any leftover errors are all me!
Chapter 4: Those We’ve Lost
He feels nothing, so he opens his eyes. Hart is standing there, one eyebrow arched, clearly on the verge of snickering. Jones hits the dimension jump again, more forcefully this time, his confidence shaken.
Nothing happens.
This time Hart does laugh, hands on his hips. A big hearty fucking Viking laugh, head thrown back to the sky. A few people milling about on the Plass turn to give the pair of them strange looks. Jones reacts in the only way that seems sensible, right now: he grabs Hart by the lapels of his coat and rams him up against the blue safety fencing so that they are nose to nose.
“What did you do?” he snarls. “What did you do?”
He shakes Hart bodily, so hard that the whole fence rattles.
“Oh, Eye-Candy,” Hart gushes, eyes rolling in their sockets in faux ecstacy.
“What did you just call me?” Jones demands, just before Hart pushes his upper body forward, smearing his mouth over Jones’ in an enthusiastic kiss.
Jones tears his head back, lips feeling bruised. He’s contemplating giving Hart a retaliatory punch to the stomach when Hart wraps a hand around the back of his head, pulling him close.
“That’s enough,” Hart warns, the tone of his voice tight-roping the edge of seriousness and unhinged joy. “You’re making a scene. We can’t afford for you to make a scene. Your toy’s broken, but I had nothing to do with it. I can, however, take you someplace to get it repaired, but you have to trust me.”
Jones’ grip on Hart’s lapels tightens, and he gives him a single, jerking shake, glowering directly into the other man’s dark eyes. “Why should I?”
“Because you have no choice. You can go on without me, but you’re going to be stuck on this Earth until you die, I promise you that.” Hart smirks.
“How do I know you’re not bluffing?” He hates this feeling of powerlessness; he doesn’t want to have to trust in anyone but himself and he doesn’t want to have to tie his fate to someone else’s, especially not someone as unpredictable as Hart.
“Do I look like the kind of man who bluffs?” Hart asks, a little incredulously. “Listen, I’ll be straight with you because I like you, Eye-Candy. I tracked you down because this wrist strap of mine pinged that dimension cannon of yours as being Non-Analogous Tech. It triggered that alarm even when a sky full of planets and streets full of Daleks didn’t. Do you know why?” Jones shakes his head ‘no’. “Nothing else like it exists on this world or in this timeline. It’s completely out of place, beyond everything else that somehow washes up on this backwater planet. Now what do you think the odds are that, on foot with nothing but that gun of yours and the clothes on your back, you’re going to be able to find someone who would be able to repair that kind of technology? Trust me or don’t, but you need me, Ianto Jones.”
Jones takes a deep breath. He’s done this before: worked with others while never growing too attached, gained their trust, integrated himself, been essential but unremarkable, waited patiently until he got what he wanted. A man always waiting on the next opportunity. He tucks the dimension jump into his pocket, resigning himself to his fate. “Fine,” he says. His tone says, “But I’m not happy about it.”
He doesn’t ask “And what’s in it for you?” because he already knows the answer. Alright, he can do that. He isn’t going to like himself at the end, but it’s either be ruthless or achieve nothing. That’s always been the trade-off for him.
They’re still standing there, Jones forcing Hart up against the fence, Hart with an overly intimate hand clasped at the base of Jones’ skull, when he feels the awful sensation of the vortex manipulator taking hold.
The mood improves drastically at Hub 3 by midmorning with Rhys’ arrival. He’s brought two stacks of takeout coffee along, and he has no qualms with cutting Lois’ awkward cake into ridiculously oversized slices and passing it out to everyone despite their varied initial protests. They drag whatever chairs the warehouse contains to form a semi-circle around the cake, and sit knee-to-knee, eating their cake with their fingers because Lois had apparently forgotten forks.
Rhys regales them with tales of his son’s ability to use his penis like a squirt gun, which Mickey thinks is just a bit too much information, thanks, but the self-depreciating humour paired with a convincing pantomime of being sprayed in the face gets them all laughing. Martha tells them all how Mickey had proposed, exaggerating (Mickey thinks) how awkward and nervous he’d been about the whole thing. This leads, naturally, into a raucous retelling by Gwen of how Rhys had risen to her defence at their wedding, armed only with a chainsaw.
“Like Army of Darkness!” Mickey bursts.
“Just like that!” Rhys agrees, slapping his knee for emphasis.
“Aw mate that’s brilliant,” Mickey congratulates, and suddenly they are all toasting each other with their takeout coffee cups. They toast Rhys’ curry and his chainsaw. They toast Lois’ promotion. They toast Gwen and Rhys’ new baby and his excellent aim. They toast Gwen’s ability to make string diagrams, Martha’s Creative Writing degree (an in-joke, apparently), and Martha toasts Mickey’s good taste in wives, because nobody there knows him well enough yet to have developed a repertoire of in-jokes about him. Jack would, but Jack’s not here. It goes on like that, and they do their best to ignore the pain and distrust and trauma of the last few months, do their best to ignore why they are in these flea market surroundings in the first place, do their best to ignore Jack’s empty “office” overhead. Do their best to ignore the photo of Ianto Jones, whose face is so familiar to Mickey: so familiar and yet so different. Ianto Jones who died fighting the 456.
“And to those we’ve lost,” Gwen says, gently, and the laughter dies down into sad smiles. “To Tosh,” she starts.
“To Owen,” Martha continues.
“To Ianto Jones,” Mickey says, and they all look at him, surprised, “And to Jack, wherever the fuck he is.”
“Wherever the fuck,” they all echo, smiling but speaking solemnly. They raise their cups.
They rematerialize still clinging to one another in the same position they’d been in back in Cardiff. Ianto lurches forward, disoriented, knocking their foreheads together with a loud crack. John casts a look around, running a hand along the holsters on his hips. They’re in one of his favourite haunts, a dingy dark bar full of some of the most attractive, cruel, and well-connected people the 51st century has to offer.
Ianto rubs his forehead, eyes squelched closed, and groans, “You know, for some futuristic time agent, Captain, your technology isn’t exactly refined.” John gives him a noncommittal pat on the shoulder in lieu of comfort.
“A ‘Captain’ now, is it? That’s a good one,” says the bartender, a gorgeous blonde whose face seems to flicker, undecided, between being twenty and thirty years old, a little like the buzz of florescent lights. She leans over the counter, the tits all twenty.
“Captain John Hart,” he introduces, flashing a cheeky smile and sidling up to the bar. Ianto follows suit, still rubbing his forehead irritably as he hops onto a barstool.
“Captain John Hart,” she repeats. “I like that! Kind of old-fashioned, like ‘Horatio Hornblower’. Goes with the coat. And how about him?” She jerks her head to Ianto.
“Ianto Jones. I’m Torchwood,” Ianto introduces, hunching over the bar.
“Torchwood?” the bartender asks, a snicker in her voice, obviously recognizing the reference but not believing it. “Where the hell did you pick him up, John?”
“Twenty-first century Earth. He’s an antique!” John wiggles in his seat proudly, as though he’s acquired a cute new puppy.
“Dunno if I like him,” the bartender admits. “Doesn’t really seem like your type, don’t you think? What happened to that other bloke? You know, the muscular one? I liked him.”
“Of course you did,” John snorts. “Everyone loves him.”
She rolls her eyes, waving him on.
“He’s dead,” John continues, keeping his voice casual. “Or so I hear, anyway. I’m not going to believe it until I see the body. And maybe not even then.”
“Oh, shit,” the bartender says, and pours them both two shots of a hyper-blue liquor. “I’m sorry, John.”
“Don’t be. Occupational hazard.” John downs both shots, shivering in delight. Nothing on Earth compares.
“Yup,” Ianto agrees, and does both of his shots in quick succession, wincing at the aftertaste, which makes the bartender giggle girlishly at his expense.
“So what brings the two of you to my little corner of the universe? I’m assuming it’s not the company.” She’s suddenly all business, her face flickering to thirty and staying there.
“Show him,” John instructs Ianto in a low tone.
Ianto produces the dimension cannon from his pocket, placing it on the bar and sliding it across with his first three fingers. The bartender picks it up, scrutinizing it.
“Where did you get this.” she asks him in a stage whisper, although it comes out less as a question than as an accusatory statement. She stares at it, eyes positively glittering under the neon lights of the bar, stroking the compact machinery.
“He scavenged it,” John replies, quickly before Ianto has time to say something stupid, or honest, or stupid and honest. “But it isn’t working. Can’t exactly just take it to a mechanic’s to get fixed, and even if the Time Agency wasn’t disbanded, if I brought it there they’d just seize it for themselves. But you, you know a lot of people, don’t you?”
She smiles, leaning over the bar and rolling her shoulders a bit like a cat getting ready to pounce. “They don’t call it ‘The Hive’ for nothing,” she agrees. John chuckles to himself. Star Wars references! They never get old.
“Yeah, I know someone,” she continues. “Manufactures off-license vortex manipulators for the black market. If he doesn’t know what to do with one of . . . those, I don’t know who will. But he isn’t cheap, and he doesn’t come when he’s called.”
John waves for her to pour them another round of drinks, which she does. Ianto puts a hand over his own glasses, making her smirk. “That’s fine, I need some time to earn some credits anyway. I’ve got enough for food and room, but that’s about it,” John replies, downing the shots.
“Need a little quick money? There’s a minor political assassination up for grabs on Sol 3. I was going to offer it to this Hath bloke who comes through every so often, but you know, if it goes sour at all it comes down on my head and my reputation, and I’d much rather trust you with it. Well, I don’t know about your new partner-shit, John, I wish--”
John puts up a hand to interrupt her. “Stop it. Don’t say his name. Don’t even mention him. Jones may not look like much, but he can handle his own.” He smiles over at Ianto, who merely quirks an eyebrow at him before returning his gaze to the bar.
“I hope you’re right. You fuck this up for me, ‘Captain’, I’ll run you out of here.”
And if you get run out of The Hive, you can’t run far enough. There isn’t anywhere you can go where her influence doesn’t stretch.
Go to Chapter 5: "Symbiotes".
View the Masterlist for full chapter list and complete header info.