Counting the Days Chapter 1
Six hours since Jack left
Owen went home for the night after a vicious, long-winded rant that boiled down to ‘the fuckin’ bastard can come back in ‘is own time, I’m not gonna wait around for ‘im.’
I guess he’s got over his guilt for shooting Jack, then.
Part of Ianto felt guilty for joking about what had happened, but privately he agreed with Owen’s sentiment.
After Owen left, Gwen, Tosh, and Ianto decided that at least two people needed to stay on call in the Hub. Tosh’s Rift activity monitors had been damaged when Abbadon had disappeared and time was rewritten-- and they still hadn’t gotten a good explanation for that. Tosh was running a systems check on the predictor to see exactly what they needed to fix, so she had to remain in the Hub. After a short argument Ianto was able to force Gwen out the door, saying that Jack was probably on some rooftop anyway and subtly reminding her that Rhys was waiting for her to get home. She finally left, though she insisted that they call her the moment Jack showed up so she could give him a right bollocking.
Once the cog door closed, the silence in the Hub seemed oppressive. Ianto and Tosh traded anxious looks. Tosh went back to her analysis of the footage where Jack raced across the Plass screaming. Ianto made up a bed for Tosh in the overnight rooms, which were a short jog away from the main Hub. When he got back, he made her a coffee, then began to work on the massive back-up of reports regarding the 1940’s trip, the opening of the Rift, and Abbadon. With the pair of them working quietly, the Hub seemed both eerie and oppressively normal.
He tried not to think about it.
At ten, Tosh sighed and took off her glasses to massage her eyes. Ianto walked over.
“You should get some rest,” he offered, wishing he had something in his hands. After a moment’s hesitation, he touched her shoulder. She looked up at him gratefully.
“Thanks Ianto. Wake me up later so I can take over for you, alright?”
“Of course.”
During his shift, Ianto got a lot of work done, and there was barely a peep out of the computers monitoring the patch they’d slapped onto the Rift Manipulator. He’d need to work on that tomorrow- or today, rather, Ianto thought, checking the time. It was nearly four. He woke up Tosh and waited until she was working avidly again, and then went to sleep: not in the spare room, but in the hubby-hole under Jack’s office.
One day since Jack left
The next day was an exercise in frustration. Tosh and Gwen spent all day making calls and searching for Jack, but there were no responses to any of their inquiries. Tosh kept working on the CCTV cameras around the Millennium Center, which had all gone down for about a minute just as Jack disappeared, but the Rift was quite shaky after Abbadon and the Rift soon required all of her attention.
There were multiple false-alarms, but any time the Rift opened they had to be there in case something came through. For Ianto, the day was filled with driving-- thankfully with Owen, who had no problem taking the wheel so Ianto could remain in contact with the others. By four o’clock, however, he was getting rather tired of it. They collected an alien corpse, an odd contraption that Tosh theorized was a rotating fan from a planet where the air was thicker than Earth’s, a laptop from 1999 and a Weevil fresh from the Rift. The latter managed to rip Ianto’s favorite tie beyond salvaging.
He and Owen stayed for Rift-watching duty, and the Owen basically told Ianto not to bother him at all except for coffee while he autopsied a Nidarian they’d found a week before. Actually, that was exactly what he’d said.
Ianto slept first, in the room off the Hub, because that was where Owen would look for him. When he was woken up-- early-- he remembered his decision to look more carefully over the Rift Manipulator. He worked on that until Tosh came in to help.
Two days since Jack left
A pile of flowers fell through the Rift, and it was only when Gwen and Owen brought them back to the Hub for analysis that they discovered Ianto and Tosh were both allergic. Owen prescribed medication and the pair spent the day in the Hub blessing each others’ sneezes and trying to avoid getting snot on their computers.
Tosh managed to get a fuzzy feed from the cameras that had gone dark, enough to show Jack leaping at a disappearing box. The moment he saw it, Ianto’s heart jumped into his throat. He heard himself explain to the others about the Doctor and his time traveling box as though someone else were speaking, feeling like the world had dropped out from under him.
He worked through the rest of the day in a state of shock, and got very little done. The girls insisted Ianto go home that night, but he was called in anyway to take care of a Weevil that had appeared only a few blocks from his apartment. It was a good thing they’d all taken to carrying a few extra supplies in their cars. By the time he brought it back to the Hub, it was six in the morning, and he collapsed for a few hours on the sofa.
Three days since Jack left
Ianto finally overcame the shock from Jack’s leaving, the flurry of activity from the still unsettled Rift, and the incessant pounding in his head from lack of sleep, and noticed something that had been staring him in the face for days.
Since Jack had left, Ianto had been experiencing an emotional firestorm which he was repressing with all the zeal of a crooked politician. Part of the near-ritualized suppression was that he refused to think of anything related to Jack except in the stiffest, most Torchwood-related terms. So, naturally, the scene where he dropped his work on Jack’s pet hand’s refrigeration unit and ran to kiss his… to kiss Jack was on the no-fly list for his brain. That was why he hadn’t looked at the hand’s machine since Jack had left.
That was why he hadn’t noticed that the hand was missing.
When he brought its absence to the attention of the others, Gwen said what they were all thinking- that Jack wouldn’t have taken the hand with him if he were about to go for a nice jaunt on a roof, it was far too delicate. Not that, at that point, they’d still been considering roofs as an explanation for Jack’s leaving. Not even their captain was that obsessed.
It was generally decided (over the course of an argument between Gwen and Owen and occasionally Tosh that continued, on and off, for almost eight hours while they all worked) that since Jack was going to be away for a while (the exact time was not generally decided) the organizational structure of Torchwood needed to be tweaked.
It was generally decided (over the course of an argument between Gwen, Owen and Tosh that continued for almost an hour straight in the boardroom) that Gwen would act as leader (exactly how much authority this gave her in certain matters, mainly pay, punishment and final word in disputes, was not generally decided).
It was generally decided that, in addition to their regular duties, Gwen would handle the Retconning of troublesome individuals and tactical leadership, Owen would be first call for reports of Weevil activities, and that Tosh was to take responsibility of all the research into the artifacts that came through the Rift, a task she’d normally split with Jack. It was generally decided that Ianto would handle the liaising that Jack, as Head of Torchwood, was expected to carry out.
It was generally decided by Ianto that the others had absolutely no idea of exactly how much effort went into liaising with a dozen or so related agencies and organizations, and why exactly Jack would pay his weight in gold to get out of a single conference call with UNIT.
That night, he and Tosh updated his file (the visible file that they would allow the other agencies to hack) to give him the authority to speak on Jack’s behalf. He spent his awake shift beginning to organize the information Jack had that he’d need to work with the other organizations.
Four days since Jack left
Liaising was the fucking worst job he’d ever had, and that included cleaning up after the Weevils, dodging Myfanwy’s claws during feedings and trying to get alien amniotic fluid out of the backseat of the SUV. The Zhiloid, of a violent but primitive alien race with several rows of sharp blue teeth, did not scare him as much as that man from Downing Street asking him to go over the Torchwood budget. Ianto was ready to scream, but managed to politely put the man off, for at least a few weeks.
Opening the files Jack had compiled for the budget was enough to produce a near-instantaneous headache, and Ianto quickly closed them before he started hyperventilating.
He stayed at the Hub again that night and readied the Zhiloid and it’s new baby (boy?) to be sent back through the Rift.
Five days since Jack left
His morning was taken up by a dozen phone calls and emails with various organization heads. Apparently even a few days without Jack Harkness yelling at them was enough to drive all the bigwigs into a tizzy, and it was now up to Ianto to assure them that all was well, the world was not about to end. The agreed upon explanation among the team was that Jack had gone abroad to work on a classified but extremely important situation that required his immediate attention for an undisclosed amount of time.
For some reason, the lack of sleep and proper nutrients was making Ianto’s sense of humour buzz out of control and he found that suddenly every quiet phrase he deadpanned was absolutely bloody hilarious. It apparently endeared him to several officials, who were ‘pleased to speak to someone other than that infuriating Captain.’ Ianto couldn’t help but agree with them, politely, and after that he found himself accomplishing more in a few hours of inter-agency communication and cooperation than Jack had in the past month.
By three in the afternoon, most of the calls were finished, and the rest of the day was Weevil hunting interspersed with fielding requests for additional meetings and calls. Ianto gritted his teeth and tried to be cordial, as much as he wanted to strangle some of the nit-picking bureaucrats.
Fifteen hours straight of Weevils and inter-agency politics. Ianto collapsed in Tosh’s guest room after driving her home and set the alarm to go off every second hour to monitor her concussion. It was not a good night’s rest.
Six days since Jack left
Despite having worked arguably well with five people, Torchwood was stretched thin with four, and what with Tosh needing a day to rest off her Weevil injuries, the remaining three were bleary-eyed and droopy-tailed. Ianto had neglected his usual work due to the influx of new responsibilities and took a few hours in the morning to get caught up with restocking the SUV, sending the team’s clothing to the launderers and cleaning the cells: a dozen small tasks that no one ever noticed until suddenly there was no more toilet paper in the washrooms or clean spoons in the kitchenette.
After a mid-morning false alarm from the Rift, Ianto yawned halfway through the MI5 Deputy Director’s droning explanation of why the man selling alien hardware to a possible terrorist group in Swansea was actually not under Torchwood jurisdiction, which didn’t help the image he was trying to establish. After ending the call, he moaned something to Gwen about waking him in a few hours as he collapsed onto the couch.
A half hour later the Rift flared, and he and Owen went out to discover what seemed to be the 40th century version of an egg timer.
He dragged himself out of bed at half three to let Gwen sleep, and made himself a strong coffee so he could see straight.
Seven days since Jack left
He was out of coffee.
Ianto stared at the empty container of beans in the kitchen.
There was no more coffee.
Usually, he went to pick up a refill on Thursdays, but when you were trying to deliver an alien baby that had a bigger mouth than a brain as its mother basically tried to claw you for the help, hot beverages were not the first thing on your mind.
There was no more coffee.
Ianto started sobbing quietly. Tosh heard over the com and gently told him to go home and get some sleep. For the first time in a week, Ianto slept for more than four hours in his own bed. He was woken up halfway into the fifth by a call from the coffee shop, asking if he wanted the usual order sent to his home address.
Chapter 2