Conspiracy Theories 16/?
The alarm went off, waking Jack from his sleep. He shook his bed partner lightly. “Time to wake up,” he said, jarring the man he’d been sleeping on top of. It was a strange reversal of their usual sleeping positions, but Jack paid no mind. “Come on, time to get up.”
The young man groaned slightly. “Wha’ time issit?” he asked in a voice slurred by sleep.
“Four.”
“A.M. or P.M.?”
“P.M.” Jack almost chuckled, despite his frustration with the other man. He knew that Ianto was miserable when he first woke up. While the rest of the team generally considered their admin and archivist to be a morning person, Jack could tell them that it took Ianto a full half-hour to be his usual perky self after anything longer than a quick catnap, such as the one he’d had in the middle of this whole mess. And perky required at least one cup of coffee.
Jack got out of bed and began dressing in his ever-present garb-Ianto called it his uniform, on occasion his costume-and watching as his lover slowly stretched and yawned. He looked every bit of his twenty-four years in the mornings, or afternoons as the case may be.
Yet, Jack reminded himself of why they needed to wake up right now anyway, and it had nothing to do with getting their internal clocks back on a reasonable schedule. “We need to talk,” he said to the other man.
“Coffee first,” Ianto said, climbing the ladder, still in only his boxers. It just went to prove how exhausted the young man must have been. Ianto just didn’t go up to the main part of the hub without getting dressed and ready for the day, and if he did, he at least had on his shirt and pants. Even knowing that no one was scheduled to be in for hours, Ianto would never have taken the risk that one of his teammates or Martha would see him in just his underwear. More so than usual, with Owen’s current state, there was a possibility of that happening.
Jack climbed the ladder from his room to follow the scent of the coffee being made.
Ianto took the same care that he did in everything, but Jack could tell he was distracted. His hands fumbled once or twice to find the right cup, and he saw him looking about for a spoon, though they hadn’t been moved from their place. Ianto was good at keeping a mask on, but Jack knew that he was out of sorts thanks to the whole debacle with Ron.
He wanted to stay angry at Ianto, he really and truly did, but seeing this, it made the anger fade, though not entirely, and it was replaced by a feeling of guilt for not having spoken to the younger man earlier.
The presence of the guilt didn’t mean that the anger didn’t manage to linger somehow, but the few hours rest and the chance to think had definitely helped.
“We have to be quick,” Ianto said. “I only have two hours until I have to meet up with Johnny.”
Jack nodded. “I know, and while you’re with him, I’m going to check out Ron’s house.”
Ianto looked Jack over. “Are you going to dress like that?”
“Are you going to dress like that?” Jack intoned, taking a good, long look at the man wearing so little.
Ianto did have enough of his usual snark in him to roll his eyes. “Jack, I have to treat Johnny like any other clean up operation. I have to get rid of the computer and find a cover story. Since my family know who you are, they might get suspicious if a man in period dress is seen coming from the house. It was why I asked.”
Jack nodded absently. “I guess so.” He looked down at his clothes.
“Beside that, you really shouldn’t wear that striped shirt with red suspenders. It doesn’t work. At all.” Ianto held out Jack’s striped mug to him.
Looking up from his clothes, Jack shrugged. “So no coat then?”
“You’re damned near pouting, Jack,” Ianto said as he made his cup of espresso. “No, you can’t wear the coat. Just like I’m not going to wear a suit.” Ianto took a moment to savor his coffee, though the scent and taste did not elicit the usual smile from the Welshman’s lips as he took that first tentative sip.
The captain had to admit that Ianto had become very good when it came to doing coverps and handling the retcon. That had become his job, and Jack knew that Ianto had done a considerably better job that Jack ever had with the drug, even if Jack himself had been the one to introduce it to Torchwood rather than watch them execute or ruin the credibility of witnesses.
“Should we notify the team for back up?” Ianto asked.
“They are all on call if we need them.”
It really was remarkable what Ianto had done with retcon procedures, and it just reinforced to Jack why he'd put him in charge of them anyway. There was no denying that the younger man held a particular emotional side that he showed around those he genuinely trusted, and he had a caring heart capable of matching that of Gwen’s, though in very different ways. Then, there was the fact that Ianto was anal-retentive when he wanted to be, something which seemed to be a more recent development, after talking to the Welshman's family, and he could probably use some psychiatric evaluation for why it had surfaced. But it benefited Torchwood and Jack alike, so who was he to argue?
“You can follow me to the locker room while I get changed. We can talk while we get ready. I want to know everything, Jack. All about Ron Llewellyn and Thom Fitzgerald. I've already told you that Ron visited me in the tourist office, and he obviously remembers things about Torchwood. He made no insinuation about anything but some anger at you for wiping his memories, that and pointed out rather easily that you must be keeping secrets from me.” Ianto finished his coffee, savoring the last sip despite having drunk it considerably faster than usual.
Jack followed Ianto into the locker room, making no lewd comments about the fact that his lover would be stripping in front of him. Really, Jack was being remarkably good, because even as angry as he'd been last night, he could still have rattled off a few dozen dirty remarks. He just knew Ianto well enough to know how they would be received.
“You said we needed to talk,” Ianto said. “So talk.” He opened up his locker with a few quick twists of the combination lock. He hardly even looked at it as it spun at his fingertips. That was impressive, particularly since Jack didn't think he used it very often.
“You were keeping things from me again,” Jack said, hiding behind his coffee mug as he took a drink. He tried to ignore the hurt that had bled into his tone at that. “And I was keeping things from you,” he amended when he saw Ianto's head snap from behind the locker door for a retort.
“What did you expect me to do?” Ianto asked. “I didn't trust Ron. I'm not an idiot.” He set some things down on the bench that ran lengthwise between the rows of lockers. “But he was the only one talking to me about this.” He slid out of his boxers, and to Jack's credit, he kept his leering to a minimum. “It really should have been you.”
Jack nodded, not missing how clipped Ianto's words were. He was trying to contain his anger, which was one emotion he always did remarkably well at hiding-save when he shot Owen in the shoulder. He must have been seething if it was bleeding through so easily now.
“How could someone have set a weevil on my family? Because I genuinely suspect that was done purposefully.”
“That would be Thom, or his research at least. I'm sure he holds a grudge against me, but I found CCTV footage of him delivering post when it happened.” He took a drink of coffee and swallowed. “In London.”
Ianto nodded and pulled on his boxers, followed by a pair of dark jeans. Jack loved the suits, because they made him want to do nothing more than ravage the polished demeanor that Ianto adopted in them, but Ianto was remarkably delicious in a pair of jeans, particularly ones that fit his ass as well as these did. In general, Ianto just looked good in whatever he wore because he had a sense of choosing the right clothing to fit his body. When fingers snapped in his line of sight and then pointed upwards, he knew he'd been caught ogling Ianto's behind.
“Ron might have the ability to lure them, though. Thom was working on that, figuring out how to draw the younger ones from the sewers. He was studying them.” Ianto pulled a charcoal gray t-shirt over his head and began running a comb through his hair. He left it more ruffled than usual, not that it mattered as he stuck a hat on to cover it. Jack knew the hat. It had been given to Ianto by an American friend during his brief stint at university. It had the red image of a rather goofy-looking cartoon American Indian, which if Jack remembered right was the team's name.
The hat could definitely go, in Jack's opinion. “I'm trying to look a little less like myself. My sister doesn't even know I own this.” He looked up at it ruefully. “For good reason.” Jack nodded. “Now, Thom... he was studying the weevils. Why?” Jack watched as he put on some deodorant and looked at his razor, seeming to think better of it. The stubble would further dissuade would-be witnesses from thinking he was Rhiannon's clean-cut little brother.
Jack sighed and began to talk as he removed his suspenders, as per Ianto's orders.
Thom smiled so hard he was certain that his face was cracking as he watched Eddie put the square peg in the square hole, successfully finishing the toddler puzzle for the tenth time that day. In all honesty, the weevil looked like he was growing incredibly bored with the lack of challenge. Thom would have to get something for him later today. Now that Ron had “adjusted” Thom's pay scale, getting the items necessary to work on his pet project was considerably easier than before. He glanced over at Riffraff and Brad. Riffraff seemed to remember what the pegs and board were for, but couldn't for the life of him remember which went where. Brad was in much worse shape, throwing the board against the wall and trying to eat the pegs, then throwing those as well when he realized they weren't edible.
The spray he'd developed worked to subdue the three, though Eddie required far less than his fellows, but Thom wasn't stupid enough not to realize that it hurt them, which wasn't really his goal. Unfortunately, these things would come in small steps.
He had managed to develop the spray as well as find the right pheromone blend-thanks to Torchwood technology and stumbling across an unexpected sex frenzy between adult weevils-to draw out the pubescent weevils.
Eddie had been a pure surprise, his sibling, Thom assumed, was accidentally killed when they struck it with one of the Torchwood vehicles. Thom had discovered Eddie roaming nearby a few days later, sniffing the spot where the other weevil had fallen and letting out a noise that could only be defined as a cry. There were still times, months later when Eddie made the same noises and looked so pathetic he couldn’t stand it.
At the moment, though he was getting an exasperated look from the alien, or a close approximation of it. “We’ll get you something else to do, Eddie. Promise.”
It was then that Thom heard heavy footsteps approaching the subbasement cells. He couldn’t even begin to pretend that it was Ron, the only other person who knew he was there. Ron walked very lightly and had a tendency to sneak up on people. That meant someone was going to stumble across his project and very likely cost him everything he’d done over the last several months. The very best thing that could happen now was that one of his teammates would see it and think it was interesting enough to keep quiet or simply blackmail him for keeping his secret. He already had an arrangement close enough to that with Ron, both keeping one another’s secrets.
“There should be plenty of room down here for the new arrivals,” a voice said, one that Thom was certain he recognized.
“I’m not talking about physical space.” The owner of that voice had to be Harkness. The American accent betrayed him. “I’m talking about the conditions they’ll be kept in, Alex. They aren’t animals. They’re human beings no matter what they look like now.”
Thom now had no doubts that the other person was in fact Alex Hopkins, which meant he was in for a lot of trouble. He contemplated running, but it wouldn’t matter. Alex would know it was him. Instead, he just stood, trying to prepare in his mind what to say.
“What exactly are you doing here?” Alex asked. “And what is this?”
Thom steeled himself for the two men’s questions, for Alex’s growing fury and Harkness’ confusion.
“I know we talked about this before,” he said, “but I don’t think you realized the potential. If the weevils have the capacity to do some of these things, it proves at some point they are really intelligent. Perhaps not geniuses, but considerably better than simple animals. What if we could do something about it? We can find out if this is something natural for them, something that happens because they’re here. If we can fix this… we could-”
“We could what, Thom?” Alex asked mockingly. “We could have a moderately intelligent to highly intelligent alien running loose on the streets of Cardiff capable of ripping our ruddy throats out.”
“We could find a way to communicate with them,” Thom argued.
“And what? Negotiate?” Alex shook his head. “No. Clean this up now, and then we’ll discuss whether or not you get to stay on with Torchwood.”
Thom watched as Alex left. Harkness stood there a moment. “It seems like a good idea. I’m sorry.”
Really, when Alex finally went crazy, Thom would have been certain that he would have been in good hands with Harkness in charge. That hadn’t been the case, and for it, he lost years of his life and his professional career. For however happy he was with his wife and son, he regretted what he lost professionally because of a sequence of events that was finished off by Captain Jack Harkness and Suzie Costello.
“So, you finally get to see Beauclaire,” Ron announced as they drove up to the ancient wrought-iron gates. “First ever non-regular team member, to my knowledge.”
“You’ve been here before?” Thom asked as he scrubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“Alex had training here once or twice,” Ron said. “And at some point, we all used it to impress a date. Then retcon him or her afterwards.”
“Who did you try to impress?” Thom wasn’t overly surprised that Ron had brought a woman to the rolling estate east of Cardiff. The tech expert had always been self-serving. Sometimes, Thom questioned just what it was that brought Ron in to Torchwood, save for the pay. That, if you were team, was remarkable, from what he’d heard.
“Gorgeous bird named Tara,” he said. He looked up at the building slowly coming into view. “She would never have been quite so willing if it had been in this state.” Ron tutted as he drove the van up to the garage doors. He pulled out what looked like a door opener that he’d modified. With a press of the red button, he opened the doors and smiled as they pulled the dark van down into the garage.
“At least, if we do have to go into Cardiff for anything,” he said, “we won’t be noticed. You should see the absolutely absurd thing that the Torchwood team drives around now. It’s this giant black SUV with Torchwood actually written on it. Some secret organization.”
“Harkness always said that the 21st century was when everything would change. Maybe he doesn’t see the point in keeping Torchwood a secret.”
That earned him a disapproving look from Ron, so Thom felt as though he needed to explain himself. “I have lived in London over the last few years. Do you realize that at Christmas, many people don’t like to actually be outside because of the insane things that have happened at Christmas in London? It’s getting harder and harder to pretend there isn’t something else out there. I won’t defend him on much, but that is a case where I can actually understand him. The days of Torchwood being a secret organization are coming to an end, I think.”
Ron parked the car and got out, not making a comment on Thom’s defense of Harkness. “Help me with the tech.” Thom did as told and began loading the computer equipment into the Torcwood-owned mansion.
“I’m surprised this place has fallen into such disrepair,” he said as he looked at the cobwebs and dust that had built up in the garage.
“Only actual members of Torchwood could know about it, and that was only passed on verbally,” Ron said as he balanced a monitor against the wall, pressing his body into the box as he keyed in the code to give them access to the mansion. “Even if Jack knows Beauclaire exists, he doesn’t know where it is in order to send maintenance men here.”
“No written records?”
“None that I was aware of,” Ron said as he walked through the now-open door. “And I’ve seen the CCTV footage of the night Alex killed everyone. It wasn’t information that he passed along to Jack. Not that he really passed along more than handing over leadership.”
Thom took in the layout of the mansion. It was a mix of an old family home, probably one that had been passed down from generation to generation, but how it had ended up in Torchwood hands, Thom wasn’t sure.
“She used to oversee Torchwood,” Ron said. Thom realized that the other man was gesturing with his head to a portrait of a stern-looking woman in her thirties. “Lorna Winters. She knew what Jack Harkness was, that he couldn’t die. She feared him, so she wanted a place that he couldn’t go. Somewhere that he couldn’t go or even know about.”
And the other man smiled.
Thom wanted revenge, but he had to question how far Ron would go.
When Johnny heard the car pulling up in front of him the house, he paused. He’d been waiting for Ianto to arrive, so he had to admit that he was surprised when he looked out the front window to see an abnormally large black SUV park in front of the house. He couldn’t quite make out the wording on the side from where he was, but it looked suspiciously like what he was suspecting: Torchwood. The massive black vehicle looked so like what he would have anticipated for an organization like the one he’d been reading about, yet he would have anticipated it to be a bit more subtle.
Ianto go out of the driver’s side and walked over to the front walk. He didn’t look like his polished self. If Johnny wanted to, he would almost believe that Ianto had really been through one hell of a night as he’d claimed.
When Ianto walked up to the house, Johnny opened the door for him.
“You can come in,” Johnny said.
“Thanks so much for not trying to have this conversation out in the front lawn,” Ianto said with his usual biting sarcasm. Johnny had to admit that he looked exhausted, sounded it, too.
“So we’re going to talk and you’re going to tell me about Torchwood. No lies this time.” Ianto opened his mouth and looked fully ready to argue that it hadn’t been a lie. “Ianto, I don’t believe in coincidences like you working at two places that just so happen to have conspiracy theorists thinking are Torchwood. There just isn’t any way.”
Easily brushing by Johnny, Ianto headed to the kitchen.
Ianto sighed. “Fine. You want the truth. I work for Torchwood and it is everything that the conspiracy theorists say it is. We fight aliens.”
“Bugger off,” Johnny said.
“No, you bugger off,” Ianto said as he walked over the coffee machine, usually a welcome sight, knowing Ianto’s coffee. Instead, it felt far too normal for the conversation they were going to have. “I fight aliens. The kid in the mask wasn’t a mask. That was an alien. My girlfriend, Lisa, wasn’t killed in a bomb blast. She was killed by android-like creatures who wanted to convert her into an android like them. It went horribly wrong and instead, I went to work for Torchwood Cardiff to keep her alive, used Torchwood, manipulated Jack, then she was killed. By my team and by Jack. Lisa wasn’t really there, not mentally anymore. It wasn’t really her, but I didn’t know that at the time. As I came to accept it, I decided that I wanted to sleep with Jack, though we’d been flirting continuously, even snogging and groping one another while what I thought was Lisa was hidden in the bowels of our secret base which is beneath Millennium Centre.” The speech had been spouted by rote, but Johnny had heard the slight hitches and moments’ hesitations at some of the words.
“Stop trying to belittle me,” Johnny said, feeling the old anger rise in him that had been there when he’d first been with Rhiannon. He wanted to seriously injure his brother-in-law.
“Who is belittling?” Ianto said, looking over his shoulder at Johnny. “I am telling you the honest truth. Torchwood catches aliens. Owen, the guy who showed you the house isn’t an estate agent, but Torchwood’s doctor. Night before last, we were trying to round up a pharmaceutical company that was using aliens for the purpose of creating medicine, pesticides, any number of things. When we stopped them for their torture tactics on the aliens-we try to protect them as well as catch them when we can, the chief doctor at the place shot Owen and killed him. In front of all of us.”
The way Ianto’s body shuddered, Johnny was almost inclined to believe it. Almost. But, if this were true, there was no way that Ianto could just go on making coffee if he’d just witnessed the death of his co-worker. Not with the way his voice had held at least some emotion when he’d talked about the young woman he’d dated in London.
“Of course, Jack found tech to bring Owen back, but not as he was. He’s functioning, but his body can’t repair itself anymore. He’s a walking, talking corpse.” Ianto turned around to face Johnny, who had had enough and did finally deck him. Ianto took the punch with the ease of someone accustomed to dealing with physical pain. His body lurched with the force, but there was no real reaction from the younger man.
“You wanted the truth,” he said as he turned back toward the counter, his body language and tone again nonchalant, as though nothing had happened. He held out a cup of coffee. “If you don’t really want to hear it, then don’t ask for it.”
Johnny looked down at the coffee and then back up at his brother-in-law. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could trust him, but the coffee smelled fine, and he’d not had time to do anything to the coffee. They were his own beans and machine that Ianto had used. Hell, Johnny had been watching the whole time. He took the mug from the other man and looked to him.
“Where did you get the e-mail?”
“From one of the guys at work,” Johnny said. He had no intention of giving away the name of the friend who’d sent him the message.
“You’d been mentioning to your friends at work then?”
“I’d asked a few if they had ever heard of it. A couple said the same thing you had, that it was supposed to be about aliens, but that would be absolutely ridiculous.”
Ianto raised an eyebrow and had a cup of the coffee with him. “I know how it sounds… But it is a fact. Cardiff sits on a rift in time and space.” Ianto shrugged. The demeanor that his brother-in-law continued to present baffled Johnny. The words themselves, that this was about aliens, were absurd, like something out of science fiction. If he was trying to do this as a joke, not even Ianto could manage to keep a straight face with the utter bullshit that he was spewing out. “I’ve been dealing with Torchwood for a few years now. The amusement over the whole concept fades away quickly.”
Johnny was almost tempted to question if Ianto dabbled in psychic abilities as well as aliens.
“When did you get the e-mail?” Ianto asked.
“Last night.”
“And did you tell Rhiannon?”
“I don’t want to get her worried. She has worried about you often enough over the last few years. There seemed no reason to make things worse until we’d talked.”
“Always protecting her from me,” Ianto said with a wry smile.
“It would help if you didn’t always do something that she needed protecting from,” Johnny said as he took a sip of the coffee. “What do you do in Torchwood?”
“I used to be a Junior Researcher, which meant a gopher for the research department in London. Then, I joined Torchwood Cardiff. I’m a field agent, admin and do general clean-up.”
“Clean up?” Johnny asked, though a part of his brain, a part that was beginning to feel a bit addled.
“Making sure when there’s an alien on the loose that a story gets ‘leaked to the press’ about an illegal pet panther getting loose in the city. Or creating stories to cover story when we have to make someone forget what actually happened. Covering up when someone is killed by an alien.”
He said this all with that same blasé tone, like Johnny might rattle off his own work duties in programming. There was darkness in Ianto’s eyes, however that made Johnny realize he was telling the truth. It was a horrific realization to come to. “You’ve become a ghoul.”
Ianto stopped mid drink of his coffee, as though there was something familiar in that statement. “It’s what happens in Torchwood.”
“I have to ask…” Johnny said, taking a pause so his brain could catch up. He blamed it on the information he’d been given and not something outside that could be affecting his thought processes. “Did you bring a gun into my home?”
“A stun gun that no one but Jack or I would have known how to even get the safety off, let alone operate,” Ianto said.
“And Jack?” he asked, the muscles in his jaw tight as he tried not to strike Ianto again.
“Always has his gun on him.”
“Where do the two of you get off bringing weapons into my house, around my son?”
“It’s part of my job,” Ianto said, setting down his coffee and reaching into his jean pockets. Johnny saw him putting on a pair of leather gloves.
“What are you doing?” Johnny asked.
“My job,” Ianto said. “I told you that I do the cleaning up. That includes coming up with cover stories whenever someone finds out about Torchwood and could endanger what we do.” And before Johnny knew what was going on, he saw Ianto pull back and punch him in the face. “I really am sorry I have to do this.”
Johnny reeled at the force of the other man’s punch. He wouldn’t have thought, to look at him or to have felt the force of one of Ianto’s punches before, he’d be so strong now. Sluggishly, he swung back at Ianto, but missed the other man.
“What did you give me?” he asked.
“It’s called retcon. It will make you fall asleep and forget the last day.” Ianto hit him again. “Of course, we need a reason for why this happens.”
Johnny blinked and did his best to fight off his brother-in-law’s blows as well as the effects of the drug.
“I never, never wanted to do this to family, but I am, as you said, nothing more than a ghoul and I’m too good at my job to let anyone, even you, Johnny, put the team at risk. I won’t watch someone else die and know I could have done something.”
Johnny was peppered with at least a dozen blows before the drugs finally took effect and he crumpled to his kitchen floor.
Ron had just finished hooking up some of the computers when a signal went off on his PDA. He smiled. Jack was so unbelievably predictable.
“What does that mean?” Thom asked, looking over at Ron, whose head snapped up almost immediately as the beeping signaled.
“Jack Harkness is trying to rob my home,” he said. He grabbed the PDA and smiled, watching the hidden camera footage from inside his modest house. “Heroes are so predictable. He’s checking right now to see if I am inspecting them at all.”
“But you were, weren’t you?”
“Of course,” Ron said, “but he should know by now that I have all of my memories back and I wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave a trail he could actually follow. Even his tech expert shouldn’t be able to follow it. She’s brilliant, mind you, but I’ve been able to find even her flaws. All they will find on my computers are the information for those ridiculous websites and conspiracy theories I became obsessed with. His hands tightened around the wire cutters he’d been holding, getting ready to hook up the network, It was just insult to injury that he’d been forced to be that pathetic idiot all thanks to the Retcon.
He looked over at Thom to see him frowning. “What?”
“You said that heroes are predictable. If he’s the hero, what does that make us?”
Ron nearly answered that they were the villains, of course. He’d come to terms with that as a definition for himself a very long time ago. He’d found, more often than not that what Torchwood did was not really hero-quality material. However, despite convincing Thom to dabble in some of the shadier dealings, he’d still been a bit too… light for Torchwood. He could never have been a regular team member, not without being broken.
It was strange that, despite everything, Thom hadn’t seemed to have lost the naïveté he’d possessed a few years before. Ron wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it remained. That made him choose his words carefully.
“Anti-heroes, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t think two who genuinely want to seek revenge quite qualify for heroes now, do you?”
Thom shook his head, but still looked troubled. Ron wondered if being a father had kept him soft despite all that had been done to him. He had wondered if he should do it alone, but given the extent of his plans, he knew it would be difficult without someone’s assistance.
Ianto loaded the television into the back of the SUV, next to Ron’s computer equipment and Johnny’s. He’d also taken the DVD player and left the house in a state of disarray. On more than one occasion, Ianto had thought he would develop an ulcer from his work at Torchwood. This was the first time he felt it was certain.
He closed the back with a sigh and saw Jack looking at him. The captain started to open his mouth, but Ianto raised his hand. “You had better not be about to ask me if I’m okay. If you are going to ask me if I’m okay, I swear to God I will shoot you now and wait until you come back only to do it again.”
Jack nodded quietly and got into the driver’s seat of the hub. “Neighbors have been taken care of,” he said as Ianto joined him on the passenger side. “All were out of the area by the time we started clearing up the equipment.”
Ianto dumbly nodded, and looked out of the passenger window as Jack drove, as they got away with robbing his own family because that was the best story they could come up with. They would have to have Tosh install special filters on Johnny’s computer, ones that even Johnny wouldn’t be able to find and that would survive a complete system reset. They had to try to prevent anything about Torchwood getting through.
His mind was already racing a million miles a minute as he made a phone call to Andy, who had become their contact within the police department. “Hello Andy, this is Ianto Jones.”
He saw Jack looking over at him, mouthing the word ‘Andy?’ with a confused expression on his face.
“Oh, hey, Ianto. I just managed to get my arm out of the sling today and start work. I’m guessing this isn’t a social call, though, is it?”
“Unfortunately not,” Ianto said. “I need you to help us in a clean up. Just like you did sometimes a few months ago.” Jack’s questions on the policeman seemed resolved for now, but Ianto would haave to make sure he didn’t bring Andy up to Gwen.
Gwen hadn’t really known about it, but it had been difficult enough to come up with cover stories without having to go through all of the hassle that a police contact gave him. Andy was more than willing to help, and Ianto always gave him a few extra quid to thank him for it. The archivist was sure that Gwen still wouldn’t approve of getting her former partner to help, but it had seemed-and still did seem-a good idea at the time.
“What happened? I’m not going to have to tell someone they’ve lost family, am I?” Andy always hated that. Ianto always hated it when he had to do it.
“No. I need you to say a robbery has been reported at their residence, do a bit of investigating, and then later once we know their computer is clean, you can be the one to deliver the good news that they are getting their stuff back, all undamaged.”
“I think I can manage that. You’ve sent me on far worse.”
Ianto gave a faint nod, though he knew the PC couldn’t hear it over the cellular connection. “Just be careful with them. They’re family.”
“Whose family?” Andy asked. He was naturally curious, and it really was better for them to know so that he didn’t seem surprised if his or Jack’s name came up.”
“Mine.”
“Oh… And you just had to… I’m sorry, Mate.”
“It’s okay. Had to be done.”
“I’ll… I’ll do my best with them. I give you my word.”
“Thanks, Andy.” And with that, he hung up the phone. He could just imagine the police officer now trying to imagine a job where you had to be so cold as to set up your own family’s break-in. If only he knew that Ianto had not only done that, but given Johnny his fair share of bruises. “And now, Jack. As soon as we get back to the hub and haul all this shit inside, you’re going to tell me exactly why I’ve just completely robbed my family of their sense of security. In great detail. No sparing my feelings or your pride or your image. Got it?”
He was satisfied as he saw the captain nod. “Ianto, how did it go? Am I allowed to ask that at least?”
There was a part of Ianto that wanted to snap something back at him. “He called me a ghoul. I guess that’s the price of Torchwood. Being inhuman.”
Jack looked like he was ready to argue, but Ianto gave him a sharp look. Perhaps the captain just thought it better not to ask, knowing that the same man sharing the car with him had once called him a monster. Then again, Jack could have just figured out that this was not the time to reassure Ianto that he hadn’t become heartless thanks to his job.