51st century & beyond
The TARDIS materializes on the fringes of the slightly shabby city, behind a cluster of trees and, ironically, the fifty-first century equivalent of a phone box, something like a high-powered sort of communications booth that's more likely to scan your retina than to politely request the drop of a fifty pence piece ( Read more... )
Oh, he's not wearing his wedding band, is he? But he still seems to know her, so that means he's not been picked up by the Doctor before they met and before he was -- well, Mr. Jones is getting a little sympathetic look from Donna. "Yes!" she says, getting drawn back to the Doctor once they finish their weird sort of hellos and reintroductions. "You and him! Him and you! And me. And tea. Come on in, boys. I'll put the kettle on."
Because the Doctor loves tea and Ianto might need a cup. Or maybe she'd just feel better knowing he had one.
"God, it feels like it's been ages, Doctor. How's your funny old life? Ianto, why're you rattling around in time and space with this prat?" She means this in the most loving way possible and ushers them both into the kitchen. The flat itself is neatly kept, except the few bits of obviousness that she keeps it with a man who doesn't know the meaning of the word 'closet.' Or tie rack. Shoe box. Hamper. Recycling bin, as well, since there's an empty jar of marmalade (if you can decipher the alien language on the label) sitting on the counter that she hastens to clear off.
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Upon that sympathetic look, Ianto isn't quite certain what he should be feeling. Getting sympathy from someone who doesn't know the situation might be a little unfair to the person who's extending the gesture. He's fairly certain that if Donna knew why he's not wearing the wedding band any longer, she'd firmly plant herself on Jack's side of the argument ... which has, generally, been the habit of nearly everyone involved thus far.
"I ... needed a bit of a vacation," he replies, after a moment spent trying to think of something good. "I figured going around with the Doctor and finding the aliens myself would be a little bit of a switch up from hanging 'round Cardiff waiting for them to come to me." That's a little bit of humor on his part, and admittedly somewhat weak, but it at least signifies that he's trying, which he's been assured by various people is a good thing.
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The Doctor, of course, refuses to admit that he was getting a bit lonely with no one at all for company. Oh, he'd thought a few times about looking people up, but had ultimately decided that his last few - and by few, we mean 'several' - companions had moved on to something (and someone) else. They'd all wandered off to pair off in some fashion or another: Rose with the other him in the parallel universe, Donna with Lee, Martha with Tom (he's expecting that wedding invitation any day now!), even Jack with Ianto. Which had explained his surprise upon running into a rather solitary Mr. Jones in Cardiff not so long ago.
"He was stalking me," the Doctor confides to Donna with a self-confident sniff. "There I was in Cardiff, minding my own business - well, mostly minding my own business, I might've been doing a little minding of someone else's - and there he shows up, complete with his luggage. Really, this whole secret-protector-of-earth thing just isn't working for me any longer. I need to either regenerate or start wearing a funny costume. Maybe a cape. Oh, and a mask, can't forget the mask ..."
Here, he trails off, but continues making a special point of unconsciously getting in the way of, well, everything.
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"Changes things up nicely, I'm sure," she agrees, noting the hesitance before his full answer and the sad attempt at humor in the response. Poor bloke. Must've been just recent, too. And now he's off running about with the Doctor? His poor broken heart's not going to take it.
Donna gives the Doctor a once-over, really trying to sum him up as he is now, because she's not sure how long it's been for him since she last saw him, though it's only been a few months for her. He could've been swanning off for ages, getting into all sorts, and she wouldn't know except for that dangerous look he gets sometimes when he's not got anyone to pull him back from the edge.
"Oi!" she shouts, budging the Doctor out of the way and towards the vicinity of the kitchen table. "I forgot how nerve-wracking you are in the kitchen, hovering about like some great, tall ... hovering ... beanpole." Donna gives him a mocking little sneer, then points at the table. "Sit. And if you're really nice I'll let you take apart that thing they call a toaster 'round here. It don't toast so much as compress bread molecules into coal, seems like."
Donna puts the kettle on and gives Ianto an endearing look that's entirely dissimilar to the friendly annoyance she'd favored the Doctor with. "Hungry, love? You've got to remind him that humans eat at all and in a regular fashion."
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Truth be told, Ianto actually finds something rather soothing about Donna's presence, even though her personality might best be described as a bit brash. She embodies many of the qualities of various strong women who are or have at some time been a part of his life, from Lisa to Gwen to even his mam - though he'd never, ever tell a woman like her that she reminded him of anyone's mother, especially his own.
"It's definitely a change, yeah." For his part, Ianto is actually still trying to work through the guilt of finding her comforting, though. His guilty conscience still hasn't quite let him go; in spite of having been forgiven for his transgressions, his own personal need for atonement has not yet been fulfilled.
"I'd hate to be a bother." Though he is a little hungry, less because the Doctor's forgotten the necessity of food and more because he'd had a hard time climbing out of bed in order just to join the Doctor in the console room, much less finding something to eat in the process.
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Being rather appropriately chastised, the Doctor slinks off to the kitchen table, but not without the toaster and a loaf of bread as an apparent project. He sets the things down on the table and shrugs off his overcoat, and is still a little thrown off to have Ianto suddenly behind him taking it off his hands. Well, whatever.
The Doctor settles in at the table, with Ianto soon following suit, and retrieves his sonic screwdriver and brainy specs from his pocket. The latter go on and he fiddles with the calibrations on the former. "Now, now! Name one time you ever went hungry while traveling with me!"
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"You two a bit of a match, aren't you?" Donna wonders, watching Ianto take the Doctor's coat. She wonders what will happen to the both of them, during one of the Doctor's more disagreeable moments, when he seems every bit as alien as he claims to be and full of the same guilty heartache that Ianto seems to wear rather unconsciously on his sleeve where his proper heart might've one day been. They're a sorry pair, she decides.
But shrugs it off for the moment to put both hands on her hips -- her curvy hips, Doctor, the ones that don't fit into a size five, thanks so much -- and stare at the Doctor's questions. "Watch it, you," she warns, though she's sure the Doctor has no idea what he's suggesting with the protest.
After finishing off her warning glare, Donna turns her attention to the fridge (well, whatever it is in the fifty-first century) and removes a few containers of leftovers. "Not much of a cook, mind, but you oughta try this. Not allergic to anything, are you? Doctor, you hungry? Well, you look like you could stand to eat something." Two plates are brought down from the cabinet and she begins portioning leftovers out to reheat them. Whatever it is, it's alien and primarily vegetable. Or so one hopes.
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Ianto feels like he should be doing something to help out, except that there's really nothing to do. Donna has the tea on to steep already, and the food is a mere matter of reheated leftovers, so he settles himself into a chair and sits idly after setting the Doctor's coat aside (helping people with their coats seeming to be a gentlemanly compunction he can't quite be broken of).
"No, I'm not allergic to anything," he replies, propping an elbow on the table and letting his chin sink into his hand. Ianto divides his attention between watching the Doctor fiddle with the toaster and Donna with the food, and tries his utter best not to look depressed, lonely, or in the least bit sad. He gets there to some extent, expression merely settling on something thoughtful and a little distant. "Thank you."
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In all honesty, for all his brilliance and genius and whatnot, the Doctor is rather daft, and he completely misses what Donna happens to be implying in her response. He gives a bit of an offhanded wave in response to the question of hunger, and Donna's statement about him needing to eat receives another miss. He's gotten preoccupied, now, with that toaster, sonic screwdriver humming happily away as it steadily goes from a solid bit of gadgetry into several more pieces than it rightfully looks like it should be composed of.
"So, where's old ... Lyle, Lee, Luke, was it?" he asks after an extended moment, question phrased as if he doesn't care in the least. (He does, of course.)
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"Lee -- " The Doctor knows her boyfriend's name, he's just trying to be flippant. " -- is at work. It's not quite half past three local time. He'll be home around quarter of five." Both plates fit rather neatly into a glorified fifty-first century microwave and she selects the temperature and time setting, then turns to lean a hip against the counter and give Ianto another thoughtful look. While a little chagrined that the Doctor took her seriously about the toaster (she really ought to have learned not to joke with him), Donna tries to ignore the too many pieces in favor of the sad Welshman the Doctor's keeping company with now.
"Did the Doctor tell you how we met? Me and Lee?" she asks, with a tiny little smile that isn't really the sort a romantically overwrought woman might give. A little sad, actually, and she might be wondering if it's the best course of conversation to steer Ianto towards. "We had a whole life together. Inside a computer core as data ghosts or whatever. Met, fell in love, married, had kids. Twins, boy and a girl." God, she misses them. Like a person shouldn't miss bits of programming. But they were her bits of programming and she loved them.
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Ianto isn't quite sure what to say to that ... just as he's not sure what to say to a lot of things anymore. His sense of social protocol has been knocked a bit askew, with the slow but steady alienation of most of the people in his life he'd felt the least bit comfortable with. Even Njoki, the last person he'd visited before leaving, had been a bit reserved, seeming less than satisfied with Ianto's decision to travel with the Doctor (but she has her own reasons for disliking Doctors in general, and Ianto can't blame her much for it after some of those experiences).
"What happened?" he asks at last, determining it's easier to allow the person who started the conversation to keep talking, than to attempt to carry it along himself.
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"Got rescued, fairy tale ended, that sort of thing," Donna answers, leaning up at the sound of a chime indicating the food is reheated. A moment later, she sets a plate down in front of Ianto with utensils and a glass of what looks to be milk, doing the same with a place at the end of the table between Ianto and the Doctor (though that setting gets two glasses and two sets of utensils, as if downright insisting the Doctor pick at her plate if he's going to be a contrary genius).
Before she sits, Donna brings three mugs of tea, as well as what is likely creamer and sugar, then takes up her chair at the table. "I almost walked out of the whole place without seeing him. Figured maybe he was part of the programming. But I looked back, just felt the urge, and there he was." Though she doesn't sound like a romantic twit, Donna does allow herself a bit of a wistful smile. "You can't really pick up the threads of a fake life, though, can you? Had to start again properly. And this is all new to us, though. He was held up in the computer core a good few years and I'm a bloody Londoner from the twenty-first century. In space. Totally mad."
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It all sounds a little too familiar for Ianto, and he's glad for the sudden distraction of food while he listens, so that he has a good excuse for breaking eye contact if he needs to. Fake lives, things that could have or should have been (but weren't, really) ... those are misleading, but he doesn't tell Donna that. Things seem to be going well for her and Lee, and there's no use bursting anyone's bubble simply because his has already evaporated. It makes him feel a little less foolish, in any case, for trying to salvage a relationship based on the memories of a year that never really happened, a year that was probably only as wonderful as it was because it was lacking the outside conditions of their real existence ...
Realizing his thoughts are turning a little maudlin, Ianto gingerly picks through the alien vegetables before daring to try a bite. He's not a picky eater, though, for the most part, and at least relieved that Donna didn't try to feed them some sort of alien meat. He'd hate to be rude. "No, no you can't," he replies with the sound of someone who has experience in the area, but he moves along briskly enough. "You seem to be adjusting well enough to the time period, at least. I think I'd be completely lost jumping thirty centuries ahead of myself, even with Torchwood under my belt."
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The Doctor is paying attention to the conversation, really; he can even hear it over the buzzing hum of his sonic screwdriver. He looks up every now and then but otherwise doesn't bother to interfere, however, and the end result might give the overall impression that he's not really paying attention. Instead, he's busy restructuring the bits of toaster, reassembling components and getting the thing pieced back into something resembling what it was before he opened it up and started taking it apart. And ignoring the fact that there are some pieces left over that probably should have gone back in.
Don't mind him, he's wandered off to plug the thing in now.
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Donna watches him thoughtfully, picking through her own dish in search of the orange bits of vegetable that remind her of water chestnuts. There's reddish bean things that she doesn't like, but Lee isn't around to steal them off her plate, so they just pile up on the side unnoticed. "Nah, it's not that much different. People are still people." Even blue people. It just takes a bit of getting used to.
She pauses, chewing thoughtfully on the orange crunchy veggie while wondering how far the conversation can logically go without addressing Ianto's obvious state of distress. "Jack's from the fifty-first century, yeah?" Donna asks, not particularly briskly. In fact, her tone is kind of calculated, but not obviously so. Just enough to let him know that she's on to his angst and they're going to Talk About It, whether he wants to or not.
The Doctor gets a wary little glance, but not much else. She should notice the bits of the toaster left strewn across the table, but she doesn't.
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The mention of Jack is definitely enough to make Ianto start to clam up, but he wears it well, as he's distracted enough by what the Doctor is doing to make his slow response a little more forgivable. He watches the Time Lord getting the toaster (or whatever it happens to be now) set up on the counter, then turns his attention back to Donna with a small, generally polite smile. "Yes, he is."
It's not a curt or rude answer in the least, or even one that particularly suggests he doesn't want to talk about it. There's just a little hint tacked on that suggests maybe it isn't that interesting of a subject, a sort of, why would you want to talk about something like that? Ianto doesn't even expect Donna to fall for it.
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