[fic] torchwood - club wales - pg13 - gwen, ianto (jack/ianto, gwen/rhys)
Here it is, internet. My Torchwood gen Ianto+Gwen BFF epic. The fic that was supposed to be about the Torchwood burn book and turned into who knows what. It is finally complete! I am posting it here for now, and I might crosspost it to some Torchwood communities in the morning. (If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears. I am so new to this fandom it's hilarious.)
Title: Club Wales
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairing: Gwen + Ianto friendship (with incidental canon pairings - Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys - and appearances by Tosh and Owen)
Rating: PG13 purely for language
Length: ~19,000 words (I know.)
Summary: In the wake of Jack's disappearance, Gwen finds comfort in a new friendship with Ianto. Gossip, bonding, and other hijinks of understanding ensue.
Notes: Somehow, my first Torchwood fic has turned into the longest fic I've ever written. Whoops? Thanks to neurotictealeaf, suchthefangirl, brienze, and queenriley for beta-ing and handholding. Love to krabapple for listening to me talk about this story for a solid week while she was trapped in a hotel with me, despite not being in this fandom, and to suchthefangirl who enabled encouraged me the whole way.
The story starts after "Day One" and finishes at the end of "Sleeper." There are lines that reference other S2 episodes, some more subtly than others. No S3 spoilers. I still have my fingers in my ears in regards to that. Broken into two parts because it's too frigging long for one LJ post.
***
About a week after she's started at Torchwood, Gwen finds a book on her desk.
She doesn't know where it came from, but it's all dark engraved leather, about the size of a paperback novel, like one of those expensive journals that twenty-somethings use in coffeeshops. There's a folded note sitting on top of it. Jack and Owen are following a lead and Tosh is talking them through the streets of Cardiff over the comms. She's not sure where Ianto is, but that's not out of the ordinary.
She picks up the note and turns it over in her hand. When she looks up again, Tosh is smiling at her and winks as she says, "No, Jack, I said the second left."
Gwen unfolds the paper and immediately recognizes Owen's messy scrawl.
Everything we know about Jack, the note says. Which isn't bloody much.
Underneath that, in Tosh's steady hand, Add to it at your discretion.
Tosh's attention has returned to her computer screen when Gwen looks up again, but she's still got that secretive little smile on her lips. Gwen looks down at the book, back at Tosh, and then hurriedly flips it open.
Owen's right in saying they don't have much. Only the first ten or so pages of the book are filled, mostly with Owen and Tosh's handwriting, but also with some she doesn't recognize. She assumes it belongs to Suzie Costello and tries her best to push that thought out of her mind so she can concentrate on what it says. Stories, anecdotes, facts that Jack must have absently let slip in conversation. There's frequently speculation (Talked at length about dancing in London during WWII, from Tosh. Possibly had a father or grandfather who served?) and occasionally commentary (Sex with a green tentacled alien, from Owen. That better well be bollocks, because even if he made it up, it's still bloody disgusting.), but when it comes down to it, there's more discussion than there is actual information.
It's a shame, really, because all Gwen wants is more information. She saw Jack get shot in the head and then stand up again as if nothing had happened. He died in front of her eyes and then came back in time to save her life. She has nothing but questions, but she knows that they're questions the others can't answer, things that aren't covered in their book.
She promised she wouldn't share Jack's secret with them, and she won't. But that doesn't mean she won't tell them everything else she knows and pour over any information they might have.
She absorbs herself in the book for the next ten minutes, until she feels a tap on her shoulder.
"Jack and Owen are on their way back," Tosh says. Then she points at the book and moves a finger to her lips. Gwen doesn't have to be told, but she appreciates the gesture, the camaraderie. It makes her feel like she's fitting in a little better than she did the day before, and she finds herself smiling as some of the tension in her shoulders dissipates.
***
Over the next few weeks, she learns nothing new about Jack, but several things about the book. She now knows that it was Owen and Suzie's idea, dreamed up one drunken night after a disastrous mission in which Jack was hurt but refused medical treatment, and that Tosh almost immediately took over the duty of organizing it and storing it, solely because the other two couldn't be bothered to put the time into it. She knows that the book lives in the bottom drawer of Tosh's desk, buried under a box of tampons and some complicated looking computer equipment, all things that Jack wouldn't dream of touching, and that everyone was free to take it out and work in it as long as they put it back and Jack was nowhere in the vicinity.
But nothing new about Jack.
She does notice, however, one incredibly conspicuous thing about the book, something she asks Tosh about almost immediately. Ianto Jones does not seem to have even the slightest hand in it. She knows Ianto has been here longer than her and she knows that he must see everything, what with the way he seems to almost anticipate their needs and then disappear into the background. She would think that he would be a wealth of information about Jack.
"We've told him about it," Tosh says, glancing over her shoulder even though they both know that Ianto is in the tourist office and Jack and Owen are in the cells. "He just... doesn't want to participate. I guess he doesn't have anything to add." Tosh smiles and shrugs and goes back to her computer, but the question niggles Gwen for the rest of the day.
It's later that week when she's paging through the book, trying to read between the lines, connect the dots to what she already knows, when Ianto puts a cup of coffee down by her elbow and makes the smallest, nearly indecipherable noise. It's silent in the Hub with Owen and Jack out hunting a Weevil and Tosh helping them remotely from the SUV, or else Gwen never would have been able to hear it.
"What's that?" she asks.
"Nothing," Ianto says, picking up her empty coffee mug, but his eyes flicker down to the book open on her desk.
"You can see it too, you know," Gwen says, holding it up to him. "Tosh said."
"No thank you," he says, and makes that little noise again, something that maybe would have been a snort if Ianto was less polite, less invisible.
"You don't care about Jack's past?" she asks. "It doesn't matter to you who he is?"
"He does his job," Ianto says, gathering more detritus and trash and adding it to his serving tray. He won't look at her. "He does his job well, for the most part, sloppy paperwork and incomplete reports aside. Sometimes there's a reason for people to have secrets."
He's gone after that, before she reacts, and she feels just the slightest sliver of guilt slide down her spine as she turns back to the book, maybe a little less determinedly than before.
***
She adds to the book off and on with Tosh and Owen filling in their own gaps. Jack does things that infuriate her, that leave her so close to sharing his secret that she closes her hand around a pen, but she keeps it to herself, out of loyalty or out of the odd connection she feels with Jack, the way she knows he looks at her when she's not looking. He looks at Ianto like that sometimes, too, and she wonders if that's why Ianto doesn't participate, if Ianto knows his secret as well.
Then, of course, she finds out that Ianto has secrets of his own.
She knows she should hate him, like Owen seems to, or fear him, like Tosh tries to hide, but she can't help but pity Ianto when his secrets come pouring out, when the wreckage of his girlfriend tries to kill them all. She knows about that kind of love, and his accusations ring a little too true; they do ignore him and take him for granted. They have treated him like nothing more than scenery.
She's surprised when Jack tells the team Ianto's on a four week suspension, but it makes an odd sort of sense. Jack understands secrets, obviously, and while Ianto's betrayal was deliberate, the destruction and pain he caused were not. And anyway, in the four long weeks without him, she, Owen, and Tosh have plenty of time to get used to the idea, to forget about Ianto's sins. Jack doesn't seem to have the luxury. He disappears for hours at a time and comes back brooding and quiet, hovering over Ianto's workstation or the coffeemaker.
It's not hard to figure out where he disappears to or why the disappearances stop when Ianto returns. Just another item on the long list of things that Jack will never explain himself. Ianto's mum as well, slipping seamlessly back into his role of secretary, butler, and general jack-of-all-trades. He continues to ignore their book of secrets. If he knows something about Jack, he isn't telling, and it's clear he thinks the rest of them shouldn't be telling either.
***
For a week, the book ceases to matter--the rift takes Tosh and Jack, then it's the end of the world, then, oh god, despite what Gwen's seen, Jack's dead, he's really dead, and he doesn't seem to be coming back.
But he does. Just long enough to forgive them, to reassure them, before he leaves again, disappearing nearly into thin air.
Suddenly, the book is all that matters.
Gwen and Tosh and Owen spend a whole night pouring over every story, adding everything they can think of, every detail of Jack's life that they had previously overlooked. Owen and Tosh drill her for forty minutes after she admits she had known about Jack's power of resurrection.
She almost forgets about Ianto, who announced, after their third hour trying to restore the CCTV footage, that he was going to clean up. It's not until after Tosh and Owen leave and Gwen has finished checking the CCTV one last time, that she remembers that Ianto is still at the Hub.
She switches from the recorded footage of the Plass to the internal cameras in the Hub and finds a shadow sitting in Jack's office, beyond the purview of the cameras. She spends a moment wondering if she should intrude, if he wants to be alone, before determinedly marching up the stairs. None of them should be alone, not really, and she can't shake the image of the relief and amazement on Ianto's face, just before Jack kissed him.
Ianto doesn't move as Gwen enters the office and crosses to Jack's desk. He's turning the pages of the book idly. She doesn't know what happened to his waistcoat and jacket, and seeing his tie undone, his collar unbuttoned, and his sleeves rolled up reminds Gwen, suddenly, that Ianto is so young. The suits, the sly comments, and his usually stony facade make him seem older than his years, almost old-fashioned in his propriety. It shakes Gwen to realize that he's barely twenty-four and has already seen more suffering than she can imagine. She tries to remember what she was doing at twenty-four. Partying, probably. Drinking, definitely. She'd already taken up with Rhys, but the idea of steady responsibility had seemed like something far away in the future.
She doesn't know how Ianto does it.
She's trying to think of something to say to him, something to make it better, to get that broken, gutted look to leave his face, but before she can put any of it to words, he speaks.
"I thought I was so much better than you lot," he says, a middle page of the book pinched between his index finger and thumb. "You were always smarter and fiercer and braver, better looking, too, but Jack chose me and I thought that meant something." He laughs, but it's a sad, soft sound. "I should have known better."
"Oh, sweetheart," Gwen says. Her hand hovers over his shoulder, not sure if he will welcome the touch. "He didn't leave because of you."
"No," Ianto says, shaking his head. "No, obviously not, but he didn't stay because of me, either, and even though I knew that it wasn't--" He seems to catch himself. He looks up at her with a brittle smile, looks at her properly for the first time. He has dark purple blotches under his eyes and looks sadly disgusted with himself. "But that's not what I meant. I thought he should be allowed his secrets. I thought if it was important, he would tell me. I thought I was better than you because I wasn't clambering after his past, when really, we should have been working together. I would have figured it out much sooner."
Gwen lowers herself slowly into the chair next to Ianto and bites her lip.
"What do you mean, figured it out?" she asks.
He laughs, softly, and flips through the book. "Owen writes, 'Once, when we went out for drinks after a bad fight, he started nattering on about how he had to see some doctor. I told him I could fix him up back at The Hub if he would just let me look at him for half a bloody second, but he just shook his head, kept saying that only the doctor could fix him. I don't think he was talking about me.'" He flips a few pages further. "From Tosh: 'Found an artifact that Jack called a sonic blaster. He told me a story about a doctor he knew and someone called Rose. It somehow involved bananas.'" He flips further still, just a little ways from the bookmark, one of the many pages they hastily filled once Jack had gone. "And you, of course: 'Jack said the only thing that could have gotten him to open the rift is the right kind of doctor. Not quite sure what that's supposed to mean.'"
Ianto closes the book and stares down at it for a moment. "There are a few others as well," he says. He looks up at Gwen again. "I never looked. I never cared to. It's right there, Gwen."
"What's right there?" she asks, because all she's taken from that is that Jack associates with a lot of doctors.
Ianto stares at her for a moment and then abruptly sighs and shakes his head. "Of course," he mutters. "Of course he doesn't show any of you the bloody--because who cares about history, really, just shove it anywhere there's room, Ianto, it's not like there's a whole carefully alphabetized system that you spent six months cultivating out of nothing."
"Ianto, darling, you're not making any sense," Gwen says. She's becoming concerned that Ianto really has lost it, that all of this has taken its toll on him. He snaps out of it, though, shakes his head clear and focuses on her again.
"Did Jack tell you why Torchwood exists?" he asks her.
"Well...yes," she says. She's not sure where this is going, but she's going to trust him for a few more minutes before she suggests a trip home and a heavy sedative. "To protect the world against alien invasion. Something about how everything changes in the twenty-first century."
Ianto looks as though he's trying very hard not to roll his eyes. "That's Jack's version, I'm sure. But that's not the charter."
"We have a charter?" Gwen asks. She knows she shouldn't be surprised. She's aware that there are--were other divisions of Torchwood. The availability of Torchwood-penned support pamphlets and forms and releases for all manner of bizarre things tells her that much, but Jack's lackadaisical approach to anything resembling order sometimes has her forgetting that they're a crown-sanctioned organization.
"Yes," Ianto says, "we have a charter." He opens the middle drawer of Jack's desk and reaches underneath it, pulling out a key that was obviously taped to the bottom. He uses it to open the bottom left drawer and removes a yellowed folder, which he hands to her. She flips through it as he speaks, her eyes sliding over the words without reading them. She knows Ianto will tell her what's pertinent. "The Torchwood Institute was established by Queen Victoria in 1879 after a visit by a particular alien being whom she feared would be the downfall of the British Empire, if not life on Earth in its entirety. Torchwood was created to monitor all alien activity, but to focus on him in particular. His face changed, from time to time, as did his traveling companions, but he kept showing up using the same name."
Gwen holds her breath.
"The Doctor, Gwen," Ianto says softly. "He's called The Doctor. And I'm relatively sure that Jack's gone after him."
"You mean to try and capture him?" Gwen asks, though even as she says it, she knows it's not the truth.
"No," he says. "I think--I can't be positive, but the way he talks... that girl he mentioned to Tosh, Rose? She was with The Doctor when Queen Victoria first met him. She was one of his fellow travelers. She was--when Canary Wharf fell, The Doctor was there, and Rose Tyler was with him. She's listed as one of the dead in the official records. Gwen, I think that Jack is one of the Doctor's travelers."
Gwen laughs, even though she can tell from Ianto's expression that he's dead serious. It's absurd, the whole idea of it, Jack here, working at Torchwood, just so he could find the person Torchwood was established to get rid of.
"That--Ianto, that doesn't even make any sense. There's no way that a girl who met Queen Victoria could have been at Canary Wharf. She would have been--and Jack, Jack wouldn't--"
Ianto is just looking at her and she stutters to a stop.
"You've seen things here, Gwen. Time moving and changing and you know--Gwen, the things you've seen."
Gwen sits down, hard, on the other side of Jack's desk. It doesn't make sense, but that means nothing, really, because nothing that Gwen has seen since coming to Torchwood has made sense. Her boss has risen from the dead more than once; sense has long since gone out the window.
"Traveling through time and space," Gwen says quietly.
"He's always seemed out of his time, Jack," Ianto says. His voice is fragile, lost, and when Gwen looks at him again, his eyes are far away. "Anachronistic. He knew too much about the past, about the future. With all of time and space to visit, all of the universe at his finger tips, why would he ever come back here?"
Gwen wants to comfort him, but she can't, not really, not when the same thoughts are already flying through her own head. Instead, she reaches across the desk and lays her hand across it, palm up. Without looking at her, Ianto places his on top of hers and interlocks their fingers.
They sit that way for a long time.
***
They mutually come to the decision not to tell Tosh and Owen about what Ianto's figured out. They don't talk about it, so Gwen's not sure of Ianto's motivation, but for her part, she just can't see worrying them with it. Owen's torturing himself already, adamant that Jack is never coming back, clearly feeling the brunt of the blame for shooting Jack, for being the first to defect. Tosh is the opposite, looking up every time the cog door rolls open as if Jack just slipped out to the store and is due back any moment. Owen's heart is already broken and Gwen can't see breaking Tosh's as well. It's better that this is her and Ianto's burden to carry.
So much is, these days. Gwen has taken charge, though she's the least qualified. Tosh can barely interrupt lunch conversations to get everyone's attention; Owen can't be bothered with the mundane aspects of the job, the paperwork and planning and phone calls. Gwen has no problem shouldering all these things and, perhaps not surprisingly, Ianto picks up the slack.
She doesn't know how closely he worked with Jack, where "general support" melded with "personal assistant" and how much is in Ianto's job description and how much he took on because Jack is utter arse at keeping order, but Ianto knows everything. He knows the passwords, the safe codes, the agenda. He knows the contact information of everyone she needs to talk to regularly and is on a first name basis with all of their admin staff. He knows every procedure she's needed to review so far and has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of where things are in the Hub. Ianto could be running Torchwood 3, except that he hates firing his gun and has better things to do than give orders.
It leaves them spending more time together, which Gwen is grateful for. At first, she uses it as a subtle way of checking in on Ianto, who is almost living at the Hub, sleeping on the couch or in Jack's quarters almost as often as he's sleeping at home. Gwen confronts him about it with a cup of coffee and a sympathetic smile, but he brushes her off, rolling his eyes.
"I'm not--I'm not pining," he insists. "It's just more convenient, isn't it? We have the remote rift monitors, but it helps to be here. Gets things moving faster."
"You're sleeping in his bed, love," she points out warily.
"Only because it's more comfortable than that bloody couch."
It makes sense, she begrudgingly admits at his prompting. They're not quite sure how long Jack's been in charge of Torchwood 3--at least five years, maybe more--but in that time, there's always been someone at the Hub overnight, once everyone else had gone home. She's taken over as de facto leader, but Rhys would notice if she just stopped coming home at night. Owen would laugh if they asked him, and Tosh is still steadfast in her belief that Jack will reappear any second. Ianto is the most logical choice.
She understands, but that doesn't mean she agrees with it.
"C'mon," she says, extending a hand to Ianto one Thursday night. Rhys and Banana Boat are down at some pub watching the match, and Ianto looks like he hasn't seen the sun for days. He blinks up at her and glances back down to the paperwork covering Jack's desk. "You can finish that up tomorrow, yeah? God knows Jack never got it done on time and the Queen never showed up to complain."
"Jack is a bit more charming than I am," Ianto points out, but the beginning of a smirk is crossing his face and he's getting to his feet. "There's a chance she tried and Jack turned his pout on her."
Gwen shudders as Ianto pulls on his jacket. "There are some things that are beyond even Jack," she says, and she's rewarded by the sound of Ianto's laughter as he lets her pull him out of the Hub.
They end up at a little restaurant near the Plass. There's a house band inside, but the music is muted at their little table on the patio, tucked into a corner. Ianto pulls Gwen's chair out for her before taking his own seat, and for just a moment, Gwen thinks the sort of thoughts that would make Rhys jealous.
After Ianto has spread his napkin across his lap, he looks up at her and gives her a tight, but genuine smile.
"I'm fine, Gwen," he says. "Fine as can be reasonably expected. You don't need to check up on me."
"Did you ever stop to think that maybe I want to?" Gwen says, and then snaps her mouth closed. That hadn't been what she was planning on saying, but she can't deny that it's true. Jack had been the person at Torchwood that she talked to. When she couldn't talk to Rhys, when she didn't want to look at Owen for another minute, she could talk to Jack.
"I'm sorry," Ianto says quickly, picking up his menu and flipping it open, his expression shutting down, closing off. "I didn't mean to presume--"
She reaches across the table and grabs his hand, forces him to look at her.
"No," she says. "Ianto, please. Don't be sorry. It's just... we're in this together now, aren't we?"
He stares at her for a moment, frightened desperation flickering over his face for just a split second, and then he nods, extracting his wrist from her grip and then squeezing her hand.
"In that case," he says, "I'll order us a bottle of wine."
She tries to get him out at least twice a week, whenever they can cobble together a little time after hours. She mostly chooses nights that Rhys is out with his mates, and tells him, vaguely, that she's having a drink with a friend on the nights that he's home in bed. The more time she spends with Ianto, the less it feels like a lie. She's not even surprised when, the morning after Rhys proposes, she finds herself at the Hub two hours early with coffee from the cafe that Ianto likes.
She had considered calling ahead to make sure he was awake, but in the end, she just unlocks the tourist office door and goes down the long way, hoping that the proximity alarm will be enough warning.
By the time the gate is shutting itself behind Gwen, Ianto is stumbling out of Jack's office. He's dressed in blue plaid pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt, clutching a toothbrush. It's maybe the third time in as long as she's known him that she's seen him in something other than a suit.
"Is everything all right?" he asks as he stumbles on the stairs and hurries to meet her. She hands him a coffee, and if anything, he goes more tense. "The rift monitors have been quiet, is something--"
"No," Gwen assures him. "No, I just... wanted to talk to you before the others got here."
He frowns, but nods and leads her over to the couch. He places his toothbrush on the coffee table and sits cross-legged on one corner of the couch, coffee cradled between his hands. She sits on the other end, hands folded in her lap.
"Well?" he asks. "Is everything okay?" She bites her lip and glances down at her hands. She hadn't really planned on how to tell Ianto. She still isn't sure why she feels this bone deep need to tell him, to show him that she is living her life, that she's holding these two parts of her separate and level.
She tilts her head to the side and holds out her left hand for him to see.
"Oh? Oh!" He breaks into a smile. It's small, but it lights up his eyes. "Congratulations, Gwen." He takes her hand and kisses the back of it. "You must be very happy."
"I am," she says, letting out a little sigh of relief. "He loves me so much, Ianto. And I love him. And I just... he's a simple man, Ianto. He's not all flash and I used to wonder if just loving him was enough but... if anything, after all of this...." She trails off, frustrated with her own inability to vocalize her feelings. The thing between her and Jack, it was never concrete, it was never something that challenged her feelings for Rhys. It was different, though, and so much larger-than-life. It was the antithesis of her life with Rhys, and, if anything, that just proved how important it was to have normality to go home to.
The others don't have that, and for all her offering to set Tosh up on blind dates and teasing Ianto about the boy at the dry cleaners who seems to fancy him, she knows they probably never will.
"I understand," Ianto murmurs, and when she brings himself to look him in the eyes, she sees that he truly does.
"It feels selfish," she whispers.
"It's not," he insists. "You're allowed to have a life outside of this. If I had someone like Rhys, I would cling to him, too." He holds up his hands, coffee temporarily set aside, to keep her from the apology that she can feel on the tip of her tongue. "It's okay, Gwen," he says firmly. "Really. Jack was my choice. I knew I'd have to live with the consequences. This should be about you. Congratulations. We should have a drink, tonight, rift-permitting."
It's a Thursday, so they had tentative plans to have a drink anyway, but she understands the offer for what it is. She reaches across the couch and squeezes his hands between hers before leaning in to kiss his cheek.
"Go on," she says. "Go get dressed before the others get here. I'll go get some breakfast, yeah?"
"Thank you," he says. They get to their feet, and she's surprised to find herself pulled into his arms for a brief, awkward hug. He's a bit stiff, and she wonders how long it's been since he held someone like this. Still, it's the first time he's freely given affection, and she clings to it with tenacity.
He's a little flustered when he lets go, so she leaves before he can do something stupid, like apologize for the hug.
"I'll be sure to get that ham and cheese scone that you like," she calls over her shoulder and he nods his appreciation before hurrying down towards the showers, toothbrush once again clutched in his fist.
She tells the others later that day, in between a rift alarm that pops up just as Ianto is drying his hair and a lengthy conference call with UNIT about a strange signal they intercepted before a small plane crashed outside of Swansea. They congratulate her blandly, emptily, and she's not entirely sure what she expected, but it just serves to make her feel more guilty. Ianto touches her knee under the table as he changes the subject before the ensuing silence can get too awkward.
They miss their pub date, thanks to a hostile alien that keeps them busy until nearly two am. Ianto drives all three of them home afterwards, and now that work is behind them, the car ride is almost painfully silent. Tosh and Owen both mutter stilted good nights before dashing into their respective buildings. Gwen watches them go and fights back a wave of nausea.
"They'll be fine," Ianto says quietly. "It's just a surprise. We've all been so insular since he left, and they're still so sure he's--"
He stops himself and clears his throat.
"Anyway," he says. "It's just a shock to be reminded there's life outside of this place."
"I'm not abandoning Torchwood," she tells him. She's surprised that her voice doesn't falter.
"I know that," he says. "They know it too. It's not selfish to want to be happy, Gwen. Not at all."
When they reach her building, Ianto bends over the console and gives her another awkward hug. "I really am happy for you," he says, and he waits in the car until she's inside her building before slowly turning around and heading back to the Hub. She watches him go until the tail lights of his car are far in the distance and the sound of the motor has faded away. She wonders if Ianto has always known her this well, watching from the shadows, or if this is another gift that Jack's disappearance has given her.
***
The others begin to notice their closeness, though she doesn't realize it until the afternoon Ianto picks up the thread of a conversation from their dinner the night before, a night spent sitting on the floor in front of Ianto's television with Italian take-away and one too many bottles of wine after he declared that he needed a break from the Hub before he went mad.
"Pyradanteen," Ianto says, apropos of nothing, but Gwen laughs and claps her hands together a moment later. They're sitting, all four of them, around the boardroom table, sharing a pizza.
"That's it, that's the one, you're a doll," she says, and Ianto smirks.
"What are you talking about?" Tosh asks, curious, hesitant smile on her face. "Pyradanteen, isn't that the race that held up the museum a few months ago?"
"Yeah," Gwen says, patting the back of Ianto's hand, "we were trying to remember it last night for about two hours."
"And Tea-boy couldn't get it straight off?" Owen asks. "I thought you were supposed to know everything. What else do we keep you around for?"
"I was slightly impaired," Ianto says, shoulders straight and proper as he takes a neat bite of pizza, napkin hanging from his collar. Gwen laughs again, because "impaired" means "utterly sloshed and unable to stand."
"You could have just searched the mainframe," Tosh suggests.
"We weren't here," Gwen says. "We were at Ianto's. And I wouldn't let him turn on his laptop if he was too drunk to untie his shoes."
"I could have untied my shoes just fine, thank you very much," Ianto says, nose just slightly turned up. "I just preferred to leave them on."
"Of course you did, sweetheart," Gwen says, though it's clear that she believes no such thing. "And the throwing up, that was just because you had a bit of a bug, right?" Ianto flicks a bit of pepperoni at her, face still impassive, and she giggles again.
It's then that she realizes that Owen and Tosh are staring at the two of them.
Tosh breaks first, looking down at her pizza and picking at the crust. "So, you two go out a lot, then?"
"Now and again," Ianto says quietly, evasively, his attention back on his own lunch.
"If it gets late and we're both working," Gwen adds, as if that doesn't describe every night at Torchwood.
"You just going to keep shagging your way to the top?" Owen sneers. "First Jack, now he's gone, so you move on to Gwen?" Gwen is appalled, but Ianto doesn't rise to the bait.
"Yes, actually, it's in the fine print of my job description," he says. "All in service of Queen and Country, yes? At least the condoms can legally be added to my expense reports, unlike the ones you try to add to yours every quarter."
Tosh looks torn between laughing and taking Ianto at his word. It's not until Ianto winks at her that she relaxes fractionally and smiles. Her smile is still stilted, and Gwen knows she should feel bad about that, knows that Torchwood is all Tosh has and that Gwen should try to include her, but she can't help but cling selfishly to her time with Ianto. She doesn't know exactly what she's been feeling since Jack's departure, but she knows Ianto is the only one who understands it.
"So what do you two discuss at your little Club Wales meetings?" Owen asks. "Besides Jack's dick, of course."
"It's nothing," Gwen insists, though she can practically see the catty reply on Ianto's tongue. "If we're both working late, we get dinner or have a drink. That's all." Owen doesn't look convinced and Tosh is still hurt, but it's the best that Gwen can do for the moment. She can feel Ianto's gaze, but she doesn't look at him, just places her palms flat on the table and says, "Anyway, what have we got on that disturbance in the harbor?"
She tries harder, after that, to spend time with Tosh, to relax a bit with the whole team. Tensions run high, as they always do thanks to a combination of her poor choice to sleep with Owen, Tosh's unfortunate crush, and Owen and Ianto's rivalry, but, in the end, they're the only thing they have left and they have their anger towards Jack to unite them when things get rough.
Which is good, it turns out, because it's not long after when Harold Saxon firmly suggests they investigate some inconsistencies in the Himalayas and their despair reaches a harsh crescendo.
The fight about traveling is bad enough--Gwen thinks they need to go, Owen insists they shouldn't be away from the rift. Tosh seems more concerned about what will happen if Jack comes back, but generally agrees that it looks likely that Saxon will be the new PM and it's best to be amenable to the new administration. All that aside, he's head of the MoD, and while Torchwood doesn't, strictly, have to answer to them, they usually don't ask for help unless it's important. Ianto doesn't engage in the debate, but afterwards, when they're leaving the Hub to pack their bags before their flight, he takes her by the elbow and says once, softly, "It doesn't feel right."
It's the only time that Gwen questions the choice to investigate.
They spend one day traveling to Pakistan, hopping from plane to plane to helicopter, and one day getting a very vague briefing from one of Saxon's attachés. After that, they're left to their own devices, scouring the mountainside for evidence of rift activity that Saxon swears UNIT claims is linked to their rift, to Abbadon.
More than anything, that's what convinced Gwen they needed to go in the first place. Abbadon was their doing--their mutiny, their mistake. They need to atone for it, and if that means mucking about on a mountain in the middle of the Himalayas....
They find nothing on top of nothing for days. They climb and they investigate and they scan. They nearly freeze in the wind and snow. They rarely speak. Tensions run high. Gwen starts to feel like a bow string drawn back as far as possible, and by day six of their search--over a full week away from the rift--she's sure she'll snap any moment. She can feel it in the others, too: Ianto won't make eye contact with anyone, Owen is nearly vibrating with frustration, and Tosh startles at every noise.
In a way, they're lucky that's the day that Tosh loses her footing and twists her ankle.
It's not too bad, Tosh's injury. A pulled muscle more than anything else; there's no sprain, no break, nothing a few days of rest won't cure. They're all tired, though, and looking for any excuse to stop their fruitless searching and pack up their camp. Gwen tries to radio the UNIT outpost a few kilometers away, but gets nothing but static. It's slightly disconcerting, but the radio isn't always reliable, and in the end, they decide it will be easier to make the short hike into the settlement.
It takes them ten minutes to find out why Saxon's UNIT contingent is gone.
"He shot the US President?" Owen asks for the third time. The old man sitting at the desk of what could politely be called an inn, nods for the third time.
"And then his wife shot him," he says. "The soldiers left very quickly."
"He shot the US President?" Owen asks again, and Gwen gently pushes him out of the way.
"Is there somewhere around here we can get something to eat?" she asks. The old man nods again.
"My wife will make dinner," he says. He points to a large room with a fireplace across the hall. "Go. Sit. She will bring it to you."
The four of them look at each other. Harold Saxon is dead. They're in a tiny inn in Pakistan. The rift has been abandoned for over a week, and all as some ploy to--what? Get them out of the country? Out of Saxon's way?
Gwen knows she should say something inspiring or wry, something to boost everyone's morale, but that's where Jack excelled. Jack was the one with the words of wisdom, Jack had all the charisma. All four of them would follow Jack into hell, and it took two days of haranguing for her to get the others to follow her to the bloody mountains. She can't be inspiring, not now, not when all she wants to do is sleep for a week.
Ianto is the one who breaks the spell. He simply shrugs and walks into the other room, dragging his pack behind him. After a moment, Gwen and Tosh follow him. Owen isn't far behind. They're in the middle of nowhere, cut off from everything. Gwen can try and get a real radio call into someone tomorrow. Until then, there's not much else they can do.
They pass the time until dinner with silence, broken only occasionally by Owen's awed, "He shot the US President." When their dinner does come it's warm and rich and wonderful, miles better than the reheated camp food they've been eating for the past week. It's the food more than anything that leaves her homesick for Rhys and home cooking and real beds, and even once the innkeeper's wife clears the plates away, Gwen still can't bring herself to speak. This whole mission has been a disaster, and while the blame falls squarely on her shoulders, she's just too tired to deal with it.
They remain silent when the woman reappears with four mugs and a heavy kettle, but once it's on the table, Ianto moves for it with a nearly robotic efficiency. He pours them each a cup and prepares it to their usual specifications. They accept graciously, even Owen, although he pulls a whiskey bottle from his pocket as soon as Ianto sits down and pours a measure into his mug. He doesn't offer to share.
"If Jack were here, he'd have some sort of story," Tosh says. She forces a smile and sips her tea, staring down at the surface and avoiding all of their gazes. Gwen doesn't want to think about Jack, but Tosh is right, of course. Jack had a story for everything and most of them were bawdy.
"He was good at that," Ianto says. Gwen doesn't miss the way he accidentally-on-purpose brushes his foot against Tosh's. "He told the most wonderful stories."
Owen snorts and doesn't even try to hide the second measure of whiskey he pours into his tea. "Trust you to get off on Jack's rude stories about shagging aliens."
Ianto rolls his eyes. "You know, not all of his stories were about sex, as hard as it is to believe. He used to talk about other worlds, other times... things I'm sure he saw in his travels that I just assumed at the time he was making up. He showed such reverence to them, like each one was... precious...." Ianto is far away, all of a sudden, and Gwen glances around the table. Tosh is watching him with wide eyes, but Owen's hands are in fists. The whiskey bottle is no longer stashed in his pocket, but open on the table and obviously getting more attention than his chilling tea.
This isn't going to end well.
"You think you're one of those stories now?" Owen asks. It takes Ianto a moment to come back to earth, but he frowns at Owen once he does.
"Excuse me?" he asks.
"One of Jack's conquests," Owen nearly spits. "You think he's sitting around a table wherever he's fucked off to, saying, 'Oh, yeah, I fucked this kid in Wales. Pretty, but dumb as shit.'"
Ianto goes rigid.
"Owen," Gwen says warningly.
"Is that what you were aspiring to be all those months you followed him around like a puppy? To be immortalized in one of his smutty bullshit stories? Do you really think you're that different from all of the other Torchwood lapdogs he's fucked?"
"That's enough, Owen!" Gwen snaps. Tosh is staring between Owen and Ianto, biting her lip. Ianto's gone white, hand clutched around the mug of tea in front of him.
"He didn't care about you!" Owen shouts. Gwen knows, she knows that this is more about Owen's own feelings of failure, his own inability to please Jack. But it's Ianto's heart he's breaking and it needs to stop. "He didn't care about any of us, and he didn't stay behind for you or take you with him, so where do you think you stand with him, eh?"
Gwen hears the breaking glass before she even realizes Ianto's thrown his cup. Owen looks shocked, momentarily, and glances over his shoulder to wet spot on the wall behind him where the mug shattered. He turns back, sneering.
"Why am I not surprised?" Owen said. "That's twice you've tried to kill me and twice you've missed."
Ianto is up from the table and on top of Owen before Gwen can even think to stop him, not that she's entirely sure she would, given the chance. He punches Owen once, in the jaw, hard enough to knock him to the ground.
"Didn't miss that time," he says, and then turns on his heel and marches out of the dining room and up the stairs.
She can't blame Owen; they're all aggravated and tired. Still, she's too angry to deal with him at the moment and has no problem letting Tosh help him off the floor and leaving the table without another word.
She finds Ianto in the corridor their rooms are in. He's leaning against the wall, forehead and palms pressed against the plaster, breathing ragged. He flinches when she touches his back.
"It's just me, love," she says softly, though she's not sure if she's any more welcome than Owen would be at the moment.
"Sorry," he says. His voice is rough and deeper than usual. He doesn't turn around.
"Nothing to be sorry about," Gwen says. "Owen is a bastard."
"Jack is a bastard," Ianto replies. "Jack is a fucking--" His hands fist against the wall and he whirls around so fast Gwen just narrowly misses being smacked in the face. He presses his back against the wall. His eyes are red-rimmed and wet, and he wipes at them with barely contained fury. "If we ever do see him again, I'm going to shoot him."
"You don't mean that," Gwen insists. She touches his shoulder tentatively, and when he doesn't pull away, she starts to rub his arm.
"I know," he says, and he laughs. It's a painful sound. "I wish I did. He just--he left us, Gwen. We're in the bloody Himalayas, all four of us away from the rift all on account of nothing. We're exhausted, we're running ourselves ragged, and all so he can have a bloody holiday out in the universe. He left us. He left--"
He left me, Gwen knows he wants to say. She knows because she thinks the same thing when she's lying in bed, unable to sleep as worst case scenarios run through her mind, as she wonders how the hell she justifies ordering these people around on a daily basis, how she can take their lives in her hands.
"I know," Gwen says. "I know. He's a bastard." She wants to wrap her arms around Ianto, shield him from this, but she knows he won't allow it. She knows there's no point. The damage was done weeks ago, when Jack left, or maybe even longer, when Lisa died. Before that, when Canary Wharf fell. For all she knows of his past, he's been this damaged since he was a child. He still manages to cope every day, to put on an immaculate suit and take care of their needs without blinking an eye. It's his choice and she can't stop him, but she wishes she knew how to tell him that he's not alone.
"Oh, Ianto," she says softly. She gives in to the impulse to hug him, wraps an arm around his back and rests her head on his shoulder.
"I miss him," he whispers as he gently puts his arms around her, slightly stiff as if he doesn't quite know how to accept the comfort she's offering. "Isn't that sick?"
"It might be," she replies, "but I do too."
And that's where they stand. Sick and twisted for missing someone they're sure has abandoned them, tied up in some warped variant of Stockholm Syndrome. She knows Jack isn't coming back. She knows that Ianto knows, too. And yet, regardless of that, neither of them will give up hope.
Sick, indeed, she thinks darkly, and she's startled by how Ianto-like that thought is.
"Get your things," she says to him once he finally pulls away and goes about straightening his jumper, refusing to meet her eyes.
"Pardon?" he asks.
"You're switching with Tosh," she says, "if only because if I'm suck in a room with Owen, I might kill him too."
Ianto hesitates, relief warring with reluctance across his face. "I appreciate the offer," he says finally. "And I would very much like to take you up on it but... this needs to end. Owen and I. We need to sort this, and if we don't do it before we get back to Cardiff, I don't know if we ever will."
Gwen frowns and gently grasps his elbow until he looks at her again. "Are you sure that's wise, Ianto? I mean, the two of you... I don't want you to get hurt." She pauses. "Either of you," she clarifies, "but I know Owen is...."
"Owen is a bastard," Ianto says gently, echoing her earlier statement and covering her hand with his, "but we need to keep working together. We probably won't kill each other, but if you hear gunfire... well, I suppose it's my turn, so try and rescue me before I bleed out."
The humor is forced, but something in his expression causes her to nod her head slowly and squeeze his elbow.
"Be careful," she says. He nods and gently takes her hand off of his arm.
"We'll come to an understanding," he says. "We have to." She's not sure if he's trying to convince her or himself.
They retire to their separate rooms, Gwen lying fully clothed on her bed and listening to the sounds of the inn, the occasional chatter from the other side of the lone window in the room. It's not long before she hears two set of footsteps trooping up the stairs, and the door to her room opens and closes quickly, Tosh ducking into the darkness without comment.
Gwen rolls over, torn between straining to listen to the sounds on the other side of the wall and trying to block it out. The words wash over her--Owen's raised voice and Ianto's quiet, sharp responses. There are low shouts and thumps, more harsh words, and eventually, Gwen falls asleep to the muffled cacophony of the argument next door, quiet sobs that she'll never admit to hearing.
The following morning, Ianto and Owen are sitting in the room with the fireplace when Gwen comes down for breakfast. Ianto has a scratch high on his cheekbone and a split lip. Owen's left eye has blossomed into a spectacular bruise that trails down his face nearly far enough to meet the darker bruise on his jaw. They're not speaking, but the tension between them isn't as sharp as it's been in the weeks since Jack left. She sits across from Owen and takes Ianto's hand under the table.
"Back to Cardiff, then?" she asks. Ianto squeezes her fingers. Owen goes so far as to offer her a weak, forced smile.
"Someone's got to keep their eye on the Weevils," Owen says.
"You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Ianto replies.
Gwen doesn't realize how tense she is until Owen snorts and snaps back, "Don't get me mixed up in your fantasies, Jones." She feels her entire body relax incrementally. She starts to think the four of them can really get through this on their own.
"I'll go get Tosh and make the call, then," she says, getting up from the table.
"Yes, wouldn't want to keep Janet waiting," Ianto says. She doesn't miss the rude gesture that Owen makes at him as she heads upstairs, and she's still grinning wildly when she knocks on the door to wake Tosh.
***
The first time Ianto gets shot is one of the most terrifying moments of Gwen's life. Worse than seeing Suzie shoot herself, worse than seeing Jack stand up after Suzie shot him, worse than watching the faeries disappear with a little girl. It's almost as terrible as seeing Jack fall to Abbadon, almost as bad as Rhys dying under her hands on that same night, or the few terrifying moments she was strapped to a cyber conversion unit. One minute he's standing beside her, pointing his gun at a fleeing alien, a walking, talking blowfish and the next he's on the ground, blood pouring out of his chest and staining his shirt, the wound so close to his heart, so close to where she thinks the heart must be at any rate. She freezes, unsure of what to do, how to handle it, all of her training running out of her head as she panics. She only sees her friend, wheezing in pain and bleeding out onto the concrete and she can barely move to cover the wound as she screams into her comm for Owen. She can hear the fish running away, the roar of an engine on the street around the corner, but none of that matters when Ianto's blood is staining her hands.
"It's okay, love," she says over and over again. "It's okay, you'll be okay, darling, I swear."
"Oh god," Ianto sobs, his hands wrapping around her arm. "Oh god, oh god, it hurts!"
She hears shoes slapping against wet pavement, and suddenly Tosh and Owen are there, Owen shoving her out of the way to kneel next to Ianto. Ianto's hands stay wrapped around Gwen's arm, though, even as Owen pulls back his shirt and starts to work on the wound. She's glad that Owen snaps at Tosh to help him, tells her to hand him things and hold a torch for him, because Gwen can barely cope with wiping the tears off of Ianto's face and begging him to stay awake. She's already lost Jack--she can't lose Ianto too. She can't bear to look at the dark hole in his chest and she's so fucking grateful when Owen puts a thick wad of gauze over it and orders Tosh to get the SUV so they can get him back to the Hub.
The wound isn't as bad as Gwen had feared when she heard the shot and saw Ianto hit the ground. It was too high to hit any vital organs and, miraculously, did very little internal damage. He'll be fine in a few weeks' time, save for an impressive looking scar, and Owen predicts he'll make a full recovery.
For the moment, though, he's in a tremendous amount of pain and drugged to the gills. The three of them--Tosh, Owen, and Gwen--are standing around his bed in autopsy, trying to decide the best way to proceed.
"I can stay here," Owen says. Both Gwen and Tosh turn to him in shock. "What?" he says. "We may not get along, but I'm still his doctor. He can't even use the bloody toilet by himself, we can't very well leave him alone!"
"I'll stay with him," Gwen says, touching his forehead, brushing back the cowlick at the front of his head that always seems to pull away from the rest of his hair. "It's my fault. I can stay."
"No," Tosh says. "Gwen, you should get home to Rhys. I can stay with him. There were some programs I wanted to work on anyway. I can just as well do them here."
Gwen laughs. "He'd be so embarrassed, having all of us argue over him like this," she says, cupping the side of his face and brushing his temple with her thumb. Ianto stirs at the movement, turning his face towards her and struggling to open his eyes.
"Jack?" he murmurs, his accent thicker than usual. All three of them cringe in unison.
"He's not here, sweetheart," Gwen says. She pets his hair again. "I'm sorry."
"Oh." She watches Ianto try and focus on her, his pupils blown, his eyelids threatening to close. "When'll he be back?"
"Soon," she lies. "He'll be here soon. Go back to sleep. We'll sit with you, okay?" He's unconscious again before she's finished speaking. Gwen can't bear to look at Owen or Tosh.
"Okay," Owen says. "We'll do it in shifts. I'll stay tonight so Gwennie can get back home to loverboy. Gwen can sit with him in the morning and I'll try and get some shut eye, aliens permitting. Tosh can stay with him tomorrow night, and hopefully he'll be lucid by then." Owen pulls a stool over to the bed and grabs a stack of reports from a shelf behind him. "Besides, it gives me some time to catch up on some of those reports he's been fucking nagging me about."
She meets Tosh's gaze over the bed and shrugs. Tosh shrugs back. It's as good a plan as any. Someone needs to be awake and alert to keep an eye on the rift, so it makes sense to watch Ianto in shifts. Still, as she leans over and kisses his forehead, she can't help but feel as though she's failed him somehow. By not stopping the blowfish, by not pushing him out of the way, by not producing Jack from thin air to care for him....
Tosh kisses him, too, and then takes Gwen's hand and leads her back up to their workstations.
"It's not your fault," she says, as they gather their purses with not-so-subtle glances back to the autopsy bay.
"I was right next to him," she says. "I was the one who ordered him to come with me, I was the one who--"
"You weren't the one who pulled the trigger," Tosh says. She gives Gwen a weak smile. "I know the two of you are--are close. I know he means a lot to you since Jack left. But don't blame yourself. He'll be fine."
She tries to return Tosh's smile, tries to believe that as she wraps her coat around herself and heads up to her car. It's not easy. There are still flakes of Ianto's blood under her fingernails. She can still hear the sound he made when the bullet hit his chest.
Rhys is making dinner when she gets home, surprised to see her before eight or nine. The surprise turns to concern when he sees the look on her face, the way she runs straight for the kitchen sink to wash her hands for the twelfth or thirteenth time since leaving the alleyway.
"What's wrong?" he asks. She wants to laugh. There's a list of things a mile long, but she can't tell him any of them. She can't say, My boss abandoned us, I was put in charge of an organization I barely understand, I have the fate of the world on my shoulders, I can't connect to any of my old friends anymore, and my best friend in my new life is an emotionally repressed secretary who just got shot by a giant walking blowfish while following my orders.
What she says is, "Tough day at work." She voice wavers. "My... a friend got hurt. He'll be okay. But." She examines her fingernails closely and blinks back tears. Rhys' arms come up around her, pulling her close and petting her hair.
"It's okay, love," he says. "It's over now."
No, she thinks as she puts her head on his shoulder and sobs. No, it's just beginning. Ianto is the first, yes, but she knows the life-span of a Torchwood employee can't be that long. The others joke about it. Now that Jack is gone, she's going to have to send these people, her friends out to be killed over and over again. There will be more injuries. There will be deaths. They'll be on her hands.
She hates Jack Harkness. She fucking hates him.
***
Part Two
Title: Club Wales
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairing: Gwen + Ianto friendship (with incidental canon pairings - Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys - and appearances by Tosh and Owen)
Rating: PG13 purely for language
Length: ~19,000 words (I know.)
Summary: In the wake of Jack's disappearance, Gwen finds comfort in a new friendship with Ianto. Gossip, bonding, and other hijinks of understanding ensue.
Notes: Somehow, my first Torchwood fic has turned into the longest fic I've ever written. Whoops? Thanks to neurotictealeaf, suchthefangirl, brienze, and queenriley for beta-ing and handholding. Love to krabapple for listening to me talk about this story for a solid week while she was trapped in a hotel with me, despite not being in this fandom, and to suchthefangirl who enabled encouraged me the whole way.
The story starts after "Day One" and finishes at the end of "Sleeper." There are lines that reference other S2 episodes, some more subtly than others. No S3 spoilers. I still have my fingers in my ears in regards to that. Broken into two parts because it's too frigging long for one LJ post.
***
About a week after she's started at Torchwood, Gwen finds a book on her desk.
She doesn't know where it came from, but it's all dark engraved leather, about the size of a paperback novel, like one of those expensive journals that twenty-somethings use in coffeeshops. There's a folded note sitting on top of it. Jack and Owen are following a lead and Tosh is talking them through the streets of Cardiff over the comms. She's not sure where Ianto is, but that's not out of the ordinary.
She picks up the note and turns it over in her hand. When she looks up again, Tosh is smiling at her and winks as she says, "No, Jack, I said the second left."
Gwen unfolds the paper and immediately recognizes Owen's messy scrawl.
Everything we know about Jack, the note says. Which isn't bloody much.
Underneath that, in Tosh's steady hand, Add to it at your discretion.
Tosh's attention has returned to her computer screen when Gwen looks up again, but she's still got that secretive little smile on her lips. Gwen looks down at the book, back at Tosh, and then hurriedly flips it open.
Owen's right in saying they don't have much. Only the first ten or so pages of the book are filled, mostly with Owen and Tosh's handwriting, but also with some she doesn't recognize. She assumes it belongs to Suzie Costello and tries her best to push that thought out of her mind so she can concentrate on what it says. Stories, anecdotes, facts that Jack must have absently let slip in conversation. There's frequently speculation (Talked at length about dancing in London during WWII, from Tosh. Possibly had a father or grandfather who served?) and occasionally commentary (Sex with a green tentacled alien, from Owen. That better well be bollocks, because even if he made it up, it's still bloody disgusting.), but when it comes down to it, there's more discussion than there is actual information.
It's a shame, really, because all Gwen wants is more information. She saw Jack get shot in the head and then stand up again as if nothing had happened. He died in front of her eyes and then came back in time to save her life. She has nothing but questions, but she knows that they're questions the others can't answer, things that aren't covered in their book.
She promised she wouldn't share Jack's secret with them, and she won't. But that doesn't mean she won't tell them everything else she knows and pour over any information they might have.
She absorbs herself in the book for the next ten minutes, until she feels a tap on her shoulder.
"Jack and Owen are on their way back," Tosh says. Then she points at the book and moves a finger to her lips. Gwen doesn't have to be told, but she appreciates the gesture, the camaraderie. It makes her feel like she's fitting in a little better than she did the day before, and she finds herself smiling as some of the tension in her shoulders dissipates.
***
Over the next few weeks, she learns nothing new about Jack, but several things about the book. She now knows that it was Owen and Suzie's idea, dreamed up one drunken night after a disastrous mission in which Jack was hurt but refused medical treatment, and that Tosh almost immediately took over the duty of organizing it and storing it, solely because the other two couldn't be bothered to put the time into it. She knows that the book lives in the bottom drawer of Tosh's desk, buried under a box of tampons and some complicated looking computer equipment, all things that Jack wouldn't dream of touching, and that everyone was free to take it out and work in it as long as they put it back and Jack was nowhere in the vicinity.
But nothing new about Jack.
She does notice, however, one incredibly conspicuous thing about the book, something she asks Tosh about almost immediately. Ianto Jones does not seem to have even the slightest hand in it. She knows Ianto has been here longer than her and she knows that he must see everything, what with the way he seems to almost anticipate their needs and then disappear into the background. She would think that he would be a wealth of information about Jack.
"We've told him about it," Tosh says, glancing over her shoulder even though they both know that Ianto is in the tourist office and Jack and Owen are in the cells. "He just... doesn't want to participate. I guess he doesn't have anything to add." Tosh smiles and shrugs and goes back to her computer, but the question niggles Gwen for the rest of the day.
It's later that week when she's paging through the book, trying to read between the lines, connect the dots to what she already knows, when Ianto puts a cup of coffee down by her elbow and makes the smallest, nearly indecipherable noise. It's silent in the Hub with Owen and Jack out hunting a Weevil and Tosh helping them remotely from the SUV, or else Gwen never would have been able to hear it.
"What's that?" she asks.
"Nothing," Ianto says, picking up her empty coffee mug, but his eyes flicker down to the book open on her desk.
"You can see it too, you know," Gwen says, holding it up to him. "Tosh said."
"No thank you," he says, and makes that little noise again, something that maybe would have been a snort if Ianto was less polite, less invisible.
"You don't care about Jack's past?" she asks. "It doesn't matter to you who he is?"
"He does his job," Ianto says, gathering more detritus and trash and adding it to his serving tray. He won't look at her. "He does his job well, for the most part, sloppy paperwork and incomplete reports aside. Sometimes there's a reason for people to have secrets."
He's gone after that, before she reacts, and she feels just the slightest sliver of guilt slide down her spine as she turns back to the book, maybe a little less determinedly than before.
***
She adds to the book off and on with Tosh and Owen filling in their own gaps. Jack does things that infuriate her, that leave her so close to sharing his secret that she closes her hand around a pen, but she keeps it to herself, out of loyalty or out of the odd connection she feels with Jack, the way she knows he looks at her when she's not looking. He looks at Ianto like that sometimes, too, and she wonders if that's why Ianto doesn't participate, if Ianto knows his secret as well.
Then, of course, she finds out that Ianto has secrets of his own.
She knows she should hate him, like Owen seems to, or fear him, like Tosh tries to hide, but she can't help but pity Ianto when his secrets come pouring out, when the wreckage of his girlfriend tries to kill them all. She knows about that kind of love, and his accusations ring a little too true; they do ignore him and take him for granted. They have treated him like nothing more than scenery.
She's surprised when Jack tells the team Ianto's on a four week suspension, but it makes an odd sort of sense. Jack understands secrets, obviously, and while Ianto's betrayal was deliberate, the destruction and pain he caused were not. And anyway, in the four long weeks without him, she, Owen, and Tosh have plenty of time to get used to the idea, to forget about Ianto's sins. Jack doesn't seem to have the luxury. He disappears for hours at a time and comes back brooding and quiet, hovering over Ianto's workstation or the coffeemaker.
It's not hard to figure out where he disappears to or why the disappearances stop when Ianto returns. Just another item on the long list of things that Jack will never explain himself. Ianto's mum as well, slipping seamlessly back into his role of secretary, butler, and general jack-of-all-trades. He continues to ignore their book of secrets. If he knows something about Jack, he isn't telling, and it's clear he thinks the rest of them shouldn't be telling either.
***
For a week, the book ceases to matter--the rift takes Tosh and Jack, then it's the end of the world, then, oh god, despite what Gwen's seen, Jack's dead, he's really dead, and he doesn't seem to be coming back.
But he does. Just long enough to forgive them, to reassure them, before he leaves again, disappearing nearly into thin air.
Suddenly, the book is all that matters.
Gwen and Tosh and Owen spend a whole night pouring over every story, adding everything they can think of, every detail of Jack's life that they had previously overlooked. Owen and Tosh drill her for forty minutes after she admits she had known about Jack's power of resurrection.
She almost forgets about Ianto, who announced, after their third hour trying to restore the CCTV footage, that he was going to clean up. It's not until after Tosh and Owen leave and Gwen has finished checking the CCTV one last time, that she remembers that Ianto is still at the Hub.
She switches from the recorded footage of the Plass to the internal cameras in the Hub and finds a shadow sitting in Jack's office, beyond the purview of the cameras. She spends a moment wondering if she should intrude, if he wants to be alone, before determinedly marching up the stairs. None of them should be alone, not really, and she can't shake the image of the relief and amazement on Ianto's face, just before Jack kissed him.
Ianto doesn't move as Gwen enters the office and crosses to Jack's desk. He's turning the pages of the book idly. She doesn't know what happened to his waistcoat and jacket, and seeing his tie undone, his collar unbuttoned, and his sleeves rolled up reminds Gwen, suddenly, that Ianto is so young. The suits, the sly comments, and his usually stony facade make him seem older than his years, almost old-fashioned in his propriety. It shakes Gwen to realize that he's barely twenty-four and has already seen more suffering than she can imagine. She tries to remember what she was doing at twenty-four. Partying, probably. Drinking, definitely. She'd already taken up with Rhys, but the idea of steady responsibility had seemed like something far away in the future.
She doesn't know how Ianto does it.
She's trying to think of something to say to him, something to make it better, to get that broken, gutted look to leave his face, but before she can put any of it to words, he speaks.
"I thought I was so much better than you lot," he says, a middle page of the book pinched between his index finger and thumb. "You were always smarter and fiercer and braver, better looking, too, but Jack chose me and I thought that meant something." He laughs, but it's a sad, soft sound. "I should have known better."
"Oh, sweetheart," Gwen says. Her hand hovers over his shoulder, not sure if he will welcome the touch. "He didn't leave because of you."
"No," Ianto says, shaking his head. "No, obviously not, but he didn't stay because of me, either, and even though I knew that it wasn't--" He seems to catch himself. He looks up at her with a brittle smile, looks at her properly for the first time. He has dark purple blotches under his eyes and looks sadly disgusted with himself. "But that's not what I meant. I thought he should be allowed his secrets. I thought if it was important, he would tell me. I thought I was better than you because I wasn't clambering after his past, when really, we should have been working together. I would have figured it out much sooner."
Gwen lowers herself slowly into the chair next to Ianto and bites her lip.
"What do you mean, figured it out?" she asks.
He laughs, softly, and flips through the book. "Owen writes, 'Once, when we went out for drinks after a bad fight, he started nattering on about how he had to see some doctor. I told him I could fix him up back at The Hub if he would just let me look at him for half a bloody second, but he just shook his head, kept saying that only the doctor could fix him. I don't think he was talking about me.'" He flips a few pages further. "From Tosh: 'Found an artifact that Jack called a sonic blaster. He told me a story about a doctor he knew and someone called Rose. It somehow involved bananas.'" He flips further still, just a little ways from the bookmark, one of the many pages they hastily filled once Jack had gone. "And you, of course: 'Jack said the only thing that could have gotten him to open the rift is the right kind of doctor. Not quite sure what that's supposed to mean.'"
Ianto closes the book and stares down at it for a moment. "There are a few others as well," he says. He looks up at Gwen again. "I never looked. I never cared to. It's right there, Gwen."
"What's right there?" she asks, because all she's taken from that is that Jack associates with a lot of doctors.
Ianto stares at her for a moment and then abruptly sighs and shakes his head. "Of course," he mutters. "Of course he doesn't show any of you the bloody--because who cares about history, really, just shove it anywhere there's room, Ianto, it's not like there's a whole carefully alphabetized system that you spent six months cultivating out of nothing."
"Ianto, darling, you're not making any sense," Gwen says. She's becoming concerned that Ianto really has lost it, that all of this has taken its toll on him. He snaps out of it, though, shakes his head clear and focuses on her again.
"Did Jack tell you why Torchwood exists?" he asks her.
"Well...yes," she says. She's not sure where this is going, but she's going to trust him for a few more minutes before she suggests a trip home and a heavy sedative. "To protect the world against alien invasion. Something about how everything changes in the twenty-first century."
Ianto looks as though he's trying very hard not to roll his eyes. "That's Jack's version, I'm sure. But that's not the charter."
"We have a charter?" Gwen asks. She knows she shouldn't be surprised. She's aware that there are--were other divisions of Torchwood. The availability of Torchwood-penned support pamphlets and forms and releases for all manner of bizarre things tells her that much, but Jack's lackadaisical approach to anything resembling order sometimes has her forgetting that they're a crown-sanctioned organization.
"Yes," Ianto says, "we have a charter." He opens the middle drawer of Jack's desk and reaches underneath it, pulling out a key that was obviously taped to the bottom. He uses it to open the bottom left drawer and removes a yellowed folder, which he hands to her. She flips through it as he speaks, her eyes sliding over the words without reading them. She knows Ianto will tell her what's pertinent. "The Torchwood Institute was established by Queen Victoria in 1879 after a visit by a particular alien being whom she feared would be the downfall of the British Empire, if not life on Earth in its entirety. Torchwood was created to monitor all alien activity, but to focus on him in particular. His face changed, from time to time, as did his traveling companions, but he kept showing up using the same name."
Gwen holds her breath.
"The Doctor, Gwen," Ianto says softly. "He's called The Doctor. And I'm relatively sure that Jack's gone after him."
"You mean to try and capture him?" Gwen asks, though even as she says it, she knows it's not the truth.
"No," he says. "I think--I can't be positive, but the way he talks... that girl he mentioned to Tosh, Rose? She was with The Doctor when Queen Victoria first met him. She was one of his fellow travelers. She was--when Canary Wharf fell, The Doctor was there, and Rose Tyler was with him. She's listed as one of the dead in the official records. Gwen, I think that Jack is one of the Doctor's travelers."
Gwen laughs, even though she can tell from Ianto's expression that he's dead serious. It's absurd, the whole idea of it, Jack here, working at Torchwood, just so he could find the person Torchwood was established to get rid of.
"That--Ianto, that doesn't even make any sense. There's no way that a girl who met Queen Victoria could have been at Canary Wharf. She would have been--and Jack, Jack wouldn't--"
Ianto is just looking at her and she stutters to a stop.
"You've seen things here, Gwen. Time moving and changing and you know--Gwen, the things you've seen."
Gwen sits down, hard, on the other side of Jack's desk. It doesn't make sense, but that means nothing, really, because nothing that Gwen has seen since coming to Torchwood has made sense. Her boss has risen from the dead more than once; sense has long since gone out the window.
"Traveling through time and space," Gwen says quietly.
"He's always seemed out of his time, Jack," Ianto says. His voice is fragile, lost, and when Gwen looks at him again, his eyes are far away. "Anachronistic. He knew too much about the past, about the future. With all of time and space to visit, all of the universe at his finger tips, why would he ever come back here?"
Gwen wants to comfort him, but she can't, not really, not when the same thoughts are already flying through her own head. Instead, she reaches across the desk and lays her hand across it, palm up. Without looking at her, Ianto places his on top of hers and interlocks their fingers.
They sit that way for a long time.
***
They mutually come to the decision not to tell Tosh and Owen about what Ianto's figured out. They don't talk about it, so Gwen's not sure of Ianto's motivation, but for her part, she just can't see worrying them with it. Owen's torturing himself already, adamant that Jack is never coming back, clearly feeling the brunt of the blame for shooting Jack, for being the first to defect. Tosh is the opposite, looking up every time the cog door rolls open as if Jack just slipped out to the store and is due back any moment. Owen's heart is already broken and Gwen can't see breaking Tosh's as well. It's better that this is her and Ianto's burden to carry.
So much is, these days. Gwen has taken charge, though she's the least qualified. Tosh can barely interrupt lunch conversations to get everyone's attention; Owen can't be bothered with the mundane aspects of the job, the paperwork and planning and phone calls. Gwen has no problem shouldering all these things and, perhaps not surprisingly, Ianto picks up the slack.
She doesn't know how closely he worked with Jack, where "general support" melded with "personal assistant" and how much is in Ianto's job description and how much he took on because Jack is utter arse at keeping order, but Ianto knows everything. He knows the passwords, the safe codes, the agenda. He knows the contact information of everyone she needs to talk to regularly and is on a first name basis with all of their admin staff. He knows every procedure she's needed to review so far and has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of where things are in the Hub. Ianto could be running Torchwood 3, except that he hates firing his gun and has better things to do than give orders.
It leaves them spending more time together, which Gwen is grateful for. At first, she uses it as a subtle way of checking in on Ianto, who is almost living at the Hub, sleeping on the couch or in Jack's quarters almost as often as he's sleeping at home. Gwen confronts him about it with a cup of coffee and a sympathetic smile, but he brushes her off, rolling his eyes.
"I'm not--I'm not pining," he insists. "It's just more convenient, isn't it? We have the remote rift monitors, but it helps to be here. Gets things moving faster."
"You're sleeping in his bed, love," she points out warily.
"Only because it's more comfortable than that bloody couch."
It makes sense, she begrudgingly admits at his prompting. They're not quite sure how long Jack's been in charge of Torchwood 3--at least five years, maybe more--but in that time, there's always been someone at the Hub overnight, once everyone else had gone home. She's taken over as de facto leader, but Rhys would notice if she just stopped coming home at night. Owen would laugh if they asked him, and Tosh is still steadfast in her belief that Jack will reappear any second. Ianto is the most logical choice.
She understands, but that doesn't mean she agrees with it.
"C'mon," she says, extending a hand to Ianto one Thursday night. Rhys and Banana Boat are down at some pub watching the match, and Ianto looks like he hasn't seen the sun for days. He blinks up at her and glances back down to the paperwork covering Jack's desk. "You can finish that up tomorrow, yeah? God knows Jack never got it done on time and the Queen never showed up to complain."
"Jack is a bit more charming than I am," Ianto points out, but the beginning of a smirk is crossing his face and he's getting to his feet. "There's a chance she tried and Jack turned his pout on her."
Gwen shudders as Ianto pulls on his jacket. "There are some things that are beyond even Jack," she says, and she's rewarded by the sound of Ianto's laughter as he lets her pull him out of the Hub.
They end up at a little restaurant near the Plass. There's a house band inside, but the music is muted at their little table on the patio, tucked into a corner. Ianto pulls Gwen's chair out for her before taking his own seat, and for just a moment, Gwen thinks the sort of thoughts that would make Rhys jealous.
After Ianto has spread his napkin across his lap, he looks up at her and gives her a tight, but genuine smile.
"I'm fine, Gwen," he says. "Fine as can be reasonably expected. You don't need to check up on me."
"Did you ever stop to think that maybe I want to?" Gwen says, and then snaps her mouth closed. That hadn't been what she was planning on saying, but she can't deny that it's true. Jack had been the person at Torchwood that she talked to. When she couldn't talk to Rhys, when she didn't want to look at Owen for another minute, she could talk to Jack.
"I'm sorry," Ianto says quickly, picking up his menu and flipping it open, his expression shutting down, closing off. "I didn't mean to presume--"
She reaches across the table and grabs his hand, forces him to look at her.
"No," she says. "Ianto, please. Don't be sorry. It's just... we're in this together now, aren't we?"
He stares at her for a moment, frightened desperation flickering over his face for just a split second, and then he nods, extracting his wrist from her grip and then squeezing her hand.
"In that case," he says, "I'll order us a bottle of wine."
She tries to get him out at least twice a week, whenever they can cobble together a little time after hours. She mostly chooses nights that Rhys is out with his mates, and tells him, vaguely, that she's having a drink with a friend on the nights that he's home in bed. The more time she spends with Ianto, the less it feels like a lie. She's not even surprised when, the morning after Rhys proposes, she finds herself at the Hub two hours early with coffee from the cafe that Ianto likes.
She had considered calling ahead to make sure he was awake, but in the end, she just unlocks the tourist office door and goes down the long way, hoping that the proximity alarm will be enough warning.
By the time the gate is shutting itself behind Gwen, Ianto is stumbling out of Jack's office. He's dressed in blue plaid pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt, clutching a toothbrush. It's maybe the third time in as long as she's known him that she's seen him in something other than a suit.
"Is everything all right?" he asks as he stumbles on the stairs and hurries to meet her. She hands him a coffee, and if anything, he goes more tense. "The rift monitors have been quiet, is something--"
"No," Gwen assures him. "No, I just... wanted to talk to you before the others got here."
He frowns, but nods and leads her over to the couch. He places his toothbrush on the coffee table and sits cross-legged on one corner of the couch, coffee cradled between his hands. She sits on the other end, hands folded in her lap.
"Well?" he asks. "Is everything okay?" She bites her lip and glances down at her hands. She hadn't really planned on how to tell Ianto. She still isn't sure why she feels this bone deep need to tell him, to show him that she is living her life, that she's holding these two parts of her separate and level.
She tilts her head to the side and holds out her left hand for him to see.
"Oh? Oh!" He breaks into a smile. It's small, but it lights up his eyes. "Congratulations, Gwen." He takes her hand and kisses the back of it. "You must be very happy."
"I am," she says, letting out a little sigh of relief. "He loves me so much, Ianto. And I love him. And I just... he's a simple man, Ianto. He's not all flash and I used to wonder if just loving him was enough but... if anything, after all of this...." She trails off, frustrated with her own inability to vocalize her feelings. The thing between her and Jack, it was never concrete, it was never something that challenged her feelings for Rhys. It was different, though, and so much larger-than-life. It was the antithesis of her life with Rhys, and, if anything, that just proved how important it was to have normality to go home to.
The others don't have that, and for all her offering to set Tosh up on blind dates and teasing Ianto about the boy at the dry cleaners who seems to fancy him, she knows they probably never will.
"I understand," Ianto murmurs, and when she brings himself to look him in the eyes, she sees that he truly does.
"It feels selfish," she whispers.
"It's not," he insists. "You're allowed to have a life outside of this. If I had someone like Rhys, I would cling to him, too." He holds up his hands, coffee temporarily set aside, to keep her from the apology that she can feel on the tip of her tongue. "It's okay, Gwen," he says firmly. "Really. Jack was my choice. I knew I'd have to live with the consequences. This should be about you. Congratulations. We should have a drink, tonight, rift-permitting."
It's a Thursday, so they had tentative plans to have a drink anyway, but she understands the offer for what it is. She reaches across the couch and squeezes his hands between hers before leaning in to kiss his cheek.
"Go on," she says. "Go get dressed before the others get here. I'll go get some breakfast, yeah?"
"Thank you," he says. They get to their feet, and she's surprised to find herself pulled into his arms for a brief, awkward hug. He's a bit stiff, and she wonders how long it's been since he held someone like this. Still, it's the first time he's freely given affection, and she clings to it with tenacity.
He's a little flustered when he lets go, so she leaves before he can do something stupid, like apologize for the hug.
"I'll be sure to get that ham and cheese scone that you like," she calls over her shoulder and he nods his appreciation before hurrying down towards the showers, toothbrush once again clutched in his fist.
She tells the others later that day, in between a rift alarm that pops up just as Ianto is drying his hair and a lengthy conference call with UNIT about a strange signal they intercepted before a small plane crashed outside of Swansea. They congratulate her blandly, emptily, and she's not entirely sure what she expected, but it just serves to make her feel more guilty. Ianto touches her knee under the table as he changes the subject before the ensuing silence can get too awkward.
They miss their pub date, thanks to a hostile alien that keeps them busy until nearly two am. Ianto drives all three of them home afterwards, and now that work is behind them, the car ride is almost painfully silent. Tosh and Owen both mutter stilted good nights before dashing into their respective buildings. Gwen watches them go and fights back a wave of nausea.
"They'll be fine," Ianto says quietly. "It's just a surprise. We've all been so insular since he left, and they're still so sure he's--"
He stops himself and clears his throat.
"Anyway," he says. "It's just a shock to be reminded there's life outside of this place."
"I'm not abandoning Torchwood," she tells him. She's surprised that her voice doesn't falter.
"I know that," he says. "They know it too. It's not selfish to want to be happy, Gwen. Not at all."
When they reach her building, Ianto bends over the console and gives her another awkward hug. "I really am happy for you," he says, and he waits in the car until she's inside her building before slowly turning around and heading back to the Hub. She watches him go until the tail lights of his car are far in the distance and the sound of the motor has faded away. She wonders if Ianto has always known her this well, watching from the shadows, or if this is another gift that Jack's disappearance has given her.
***
The others begin to notice their closeness, though she doesn't realize it until the afternoon Ianto picks up the thread of a conversation from their dinner the night before, a night spent sitting on the floor in front of Ianto's television with Italian take-away and one too many bottles of wine after he declared that he needed a break from the Hub before he went mad.
"Pyradanteen," Ianto says, apropos of nothing, but Gwen laughs and claps her hands together a moment later. They're sitting, all four of them, around the boardroom table, sharing a pizza.
"That's it, that's the one, you're a doll," she says, and Ianto smirks.
"What are you talking about?" Tosh asks, curious, hesitant smile on her face. "Pyradanteen, isn't that the race that held up the museum a few months ago?"
"Yeah," Gwen says, patting the back of Ianto's hand, "we were trying to remember it last night for about two hours."
"And Tea-boy couldn't get it straight off?" Owen asks. "I thought you were supposed to know everything. What else do we keep you around for?"
"I was slightly impaired," Ianto says, shoulders straight and proper as he takes a neat bite of pizza, napkin hanging from his collar. Gwen laughs again, because "impaired" means "utterly sloshed and unable to stand."
"You could have just searched the mainframe," Tosh suggests.
"We weren't here," Gwen says. "We were at Ianto's. And I wouldn't let him turn on his laptop if he was too drunk to untie his shoes."
"I could have untied my shoes just fine, thank you very much," Ianto says, nose just slightly turned up. "I just preferred to leave them on."
"Of course you did, sweetheart," Gwen says, though it's clear that she believes no such thing. "And the throwing up, that was just because you had a bit of a bug, right?" Ianto flicks a bit of pepperoni at her, face still impassive, and she giggles again.
It's then that she realizes that Owen and Tosh are staring at the two of them.
Tosh breaks first, looking down at her pizza and picking at the crust. "So, you two go out a lot, then?"
"Now and again," Ianto says quietly, evasively, his attention back on his own lunch.
"If it gets late and we're both working," Gwen adds, as if that doesn't describe every night at Torchwood.
"You just going to keep shagging your way to the top?" Owen sneers. "First Jack, now he's gone, so you move on to Gwen?" Gwen is appalled, but Ianto doesn't rise to the bait.
"Yes, actually, it's in the fine print of my job description," he says. "All in service of Queen and Country, yes? At least the condoms can legally be added to my expense reports, unlike the ones you try to add to yours every quarter."
Tosh looks torn between laughing and taking Ianto at his word. It's not until Ianto winks at her that she relaxes fractionally and smiles. Her smile is still stilted, and Gwen knows she should feel bad about that, knows that Torchwood is all Tosh has and that Gwen should try to include her, but she can't help but cling selfishly to her time with Ianto. She doesn't know exactly what she's been feeling since Jack's departure, but she knows Ianto is the only one who understands it.
"So what do you two discuss at your little Club Wales meetings?" Owen asks. "Besides Jack's dick, of course."
"It's nothing," Gwen insists, though she can practically see the catty reply on Ianto's tongue. "If we're both working late, we get dinner or have a drink. That's all." Owen doesn't look convinced and Tosh is still hurt, but it's the best that Gwen can do for the moment. She can feel Ianto's gaze, but she doesn't look at him, just places her palms flat on the table and says, "Anyway, what have we got on that disturbance in the harbor?"
She tries harder, after that, to spend time with Tosh, to relax a bit with the whole team. Tensions run high, as they always do thanks to a combination of her poor choice to sleep with Owen, Tosh's unfortunate crush, and Owen and Ianto's rivalry, but, in the end, they're the only thing they have left and they have their anger towards Jack to unite them when things get rough.
Which is good, it turns out, because it's not long after when Harold Saxon firmly suggests they investigate some inconsistencies in the Himalayas and their despair reaches a harsh crescendo.
The fight about traveling is bad enough--Gwen thinks they need to go, Owen insists they shouldn't be away from the rift. Tosh seems more concerned about what will happen if Jack comes back, but generally agrees that it looks likely that Saxon will be the new PM and it's best to be amenable to the new administration. All that aside, he's head of the MoD, and while Torchwood doesn't, strictly, have to answer to them, they usually don't ask for help unless it's important. Ianto doesn't engage in the debate, but afterwards, when they're leaving the Hub to pack their bags before their flight, he takes her by the elbow and says once, softly, "It doesn't feel right."
It's the only time that Gwen questions the choice to investigate.
They spend one day traveling to Pakistan, hopping from plane to plane to helicopter, and one day getting a very vague briefing from one of Saxon's attachés. After that, they're left to their own devices, scouring the mountainside for evidence of rift activity that Saxon swears UNIT claims is linked to their rift, to Abbadon.
More than anything, that's what convinced Gwen they needed to go in the first place. Abbadon was their doing--their mutiny, their mistake. They need to atone for it, and if that means mucking about on a mountain in the middle of the Himalayas....
They find nothing on top of nothing for days. They climb and they investigate and they scan. They nearly freeze in the wind and snow. They rarely speak. Tensions run high. Gwen starts to feel like a bow string drawn back as far as possible, and by day six of their search--over a full week away from the rift--she's sure she'll snap any moment. She can feel it in the others, too: Ianto won't make eye contact with anyone, Owen is nearly vibrating with frustration, and Tosh startles at every noise.
In a way, they're lucky that's the day that Tosh loses her footing and twists her ankle.
It's not too bad, Tosh's injury. A pulled muscle more than anything else; there's no sprain, no break, nothing a few days of rest won't cure. They're all tired, though, and looking for any excuse to stop their fruitless searching and pack up their camp. Gwen tries to radio the UNIT outpost a few kilometers away, but gets nothing but static. It's slightly disconcerting, but the radio isn't always reliable, and in the end, they decide it will be easier to make the short hike into the settlement.
It takes them ten minutes to find out why Saxon's UNIT contingent is gone.
"He shot the US President?" Owen asks for the third time. The old man sitting at the desk of what could politely be called an inn, nods for the third time.
"And then his wife shot him," he says. "The soldiers left very quickly."
"He shot the US President?" Owen asks again, and Gwen gently pushes him out of the way.
"Is there somewhere around here we can get something to eat?" she asks. The old man nods again.
"My wife will make dinner," he says. He points to a large room with a fireplace across the hall. "Go. Sit. She will bring it to you."
The four of them look at each other. Harold Saxon is dead. They're in a tiny inn in Pakistan. The rift has been abandoned for over a week, and all as some ploy to--what? Get them out of the country? Out of Saxon's way?
Gwen knows she should say something inspiring or wry, something to boost everyone's morale, but that's where Jack excelled. Jack was the one with the words of wisdom, Jack had all the charisma. All four of them would follow Jack into hell, and it took two days of haranguing for her to get the others to follow her to the bloody mountains. She can't be inspiring, not now, not when all she wants to do is sleep for a week.
Ianto is the one who breaks the spell. He simply shrugs and walks into the other room, dragging his pack behind him. After a moment, Gwen and Tosh follow him. Owen isn't far behind. They're in the middle of nowhere, cut off from everything. Gwen can try and get a real radio call into someone tomorrow. Until then, there's not much else they can do.
They pass the time until dinner with silence, broken only occasionally by Owen's awed, "He shot the US President." When their dinner does come it's warm and rich and wonderful, miles better than the reheated camp food they've been eating for the past week. It's the food more than anything that leaves her homesick for Rhys and home cooking and real beds, and even once the innkeeper's wife clears the plates away, Gwen still can't bring herself to speak. This whole mission has been a disaster, and while the blame falls squarely on her shoulders, she's just too tired to deal with it.
They remain silent when the woman reappears with four mugs and a heavy kettle, but once it's on the table, Ianto moves for it with a nearly robotic efficiency. He pours them each a cup and prepares it to their usual specifications. They accept graciously, even Owen, although he pulls a whiskey bottle from his pocket as soon as Ianto sits down and pours a measure into his mug. He doesn't offer to share.
"If Jack were here, he'd have some sort of story," Tosh says. She forces a smile and sips her tea, staring down at the surface and avoiding all of their gazes. Gwen doesn't want to think about Jack, but Tosh is right, of course. Jack had a story for everything and most of them were bawdy.
"He was good at that," Ianto says. Gwen doesn't miss the way he accidentally-on-purpose brushes his foot against Tosh's. "He told the most wonderful stories."
Owen snorts and doesn't even try to hide the second measure of whiskey he pours into his tea. "Trust you to get off on Jack's rude stories about shagging aliens."
Ianto rolls his eyes. "You know, not all of his stories were about sex, as hard as it is to believe. He used to talk about other worlds, other times... things I'm sure he saw in his travels that I just assumed at the time he was making up. He showed such reverence to them, like each one was... precious...." Ianto is far away, all of a sudden, and Gwen glances around the table. Tosh is watching him with wide eyes, but Owen's hands are in fists. The whiskey bottle is no longer stashed in his pocket, but open on the table and obviously getting more attention than his chilling tea.
This isn't going to end well.
"You think you're one of those stories now?" Owen asks. It takes Ianto a moment to come back to earth, but he frowns at Owen once he does.
"Excuse me?" he asks.
"One of Jack's conquests," Owen nearly spits. "You think he's sitting around a table wherever he's fucked off to, saying, 'Oh, yeah, I fucked this kid in Wales. Pretty, but dumb as shit.'"
Ianto goes rigid.
"Owen," Gwen says warningly.
"Is that what you were aspiring to be all those months you followed him around like a puppy? To be immortalized in one of his smutty bullshit stories? Do you really think you're that different from all of the other Torchwood lapdogs he's fucked?"
"That's enough, Owen!" Gwen snaps. Tosh is staring between Owen and Ianto, biting her lip. Ianto's gone white, hand clutched around the mug of tea in front of him.
"He didn't care about you!" Owen shouts. Gwen knows, she knows that this is more about Owen's own feelings of failure, his own inability to please Jack. But it's Ianto's heart he's breaking and it needs to stop. "He didn't care about any of us, and he didn't stay behind for you or take you with him, so where do you think you stand with him, eh?"
Gwen hears the breaking glass before she even realizes Ianto's thrown his cup. Owen looks shocked, momentarily, and glances over his shoulder to wet spot on the wall behind him where the mug shattered. He turns back, sneering.
"Why am I not surprised?" Owen said. "That's twice you've tried to kill me and twice you've missed."
Ianto is up from the table and on top of Owen before Gwen can even think to stop him, not that she's entirely sure she would, given the chance. He punches Owen once, in the jaw, hard enough to knock him to the ground.
"Didn't miss that time," he says, and then turns on his heel and marches out of the dining room and up the stairs.
She can't blame Owen; they're all aggravated and tired. Still, she's too angry to deal with him at the moment and has no problem letting Tosh help him off the floor and leaving the table without another word.
She finds Ianto in the corridor their rooms are in. He's leaning against the wall, forehead and palms pressed against the plaster, breathing ragged. He flinches when she touches his back.
"It's just me, love," she says softly, though she's not sure if she's any more welcome than Owen would be at the moment.
"Sorry," he says. His voice is rough and deeper than usual. He doesn't turn around.
"Nothing to be sorry about," Gwen says. "Owen is a bastard."
"Jack is a bastard," Ianto replies. "Jack is a fucking--" His hands fist against the wall and he whirls around so fast Gwen just narrowly misses being smacked in the face. He presses his back against the wall. His eyes are red-rimmed and wet, and he wipes at them with barely contained fury. "If we ever do see him again, I'm going to shoot him."
"You don't mean that," Gwen insists. She touches his shoulder tentatively, and when he doesn't pull away, she starts to rub his arm.
"I know," he says, and he laughs. It's a painful sound. "I wish I did. He just--he left us, Gwen. We're in the bloody Himalayas, all four of us away from the rift all on account of nothing. We're exhausted, we're running ourselves ragged, and all so he can have a bloody holiday out in the universe. He left us. He left--"
He left me, Gwen knows he wants to say. She knows because she thinks the same thing when she's lying in bed, unable to sleep as worst case scenarios run through her mind, as she wonders how the hell she justifies ordering these people around on a daily basis, how she can take their lives in her hands.
"I know," Gwen says. "I know. He's a bastard." She wants to wrap her arms around Ianto, shield him from this, but she knows he won't allow it. She knows there's no point. The damage was done weeks ago, when Jack left, or maybe even longer, when Lisa died. Before that, when Canary Wharf fell. For all she knows of his past, he's been this damaged since he was a child. He still manages to cope every day, to put on an immaculate suit and take care of their needs without blinking an eye. It's his choice and she can't stop him, but she wishes she knew how to tell him that he's not alone.
"Oh, Ianto," she says softly. She gives in to the impulse to hug him, wraps an arm around his back and rests her head on his shoulder.
"I miss him," he whispers as he gently puts his arms around her, slightly stiff as if he doesn't quite know how to accept the comfort she's offering. "Isn't that sick?"
"It might be," she replies, "but I do too."
And that's where they stand. Sick and twisted for missing someone they're sure has abandoned them, tied up in some warped variant of Stockholm Syndrome. She knows Jack isn't coming back. She knows that Ianto knows, too. And yet, regardless of that, neither of them will give up hope.
Sick, indeed, she thinks darkly, and she's startled by how Ianto-like that thought is.
"Get your things," she says to him once he finally pulls away and goes about straightening his jumper, refusing to meet her eyes.
"Pardon?" he asks.
"You're switching with Tosh," she says, "if only because if I'm suck in a room with Owen, I might kill him too."
Ianto hesitates, relief warring with reluctance across his face. "I appreciate the offer," he says finally. "And I would very much like to take you up on it but... this needs to end. Owen and I. We need to sort this, and if we don't do it before we get back to Cardiff, I don't know if we ever will."
Gwen frowns and gently grasps his elbow until he looks at her again. "Are you sure that's wise, Ianto? I mean, the two of you... I don't want you to get hurt." She pauses. "Either of you," she clarifies, "but I know Owen is...."
"Owen is a bastard," Ianto says gently, echoing her earlier statement and covering her hand with his, "but we need to keep working together. We probably won't kill each other, but if you hear gunfire... well, I suppose it's my turn, so try and rescue me before I bleed out."
The humor is forced, but something in his expression causes her to nod her head slowly and squeeze his elbow.
"Be careful," she says. He nods and gently takes her hand off of his arm.
"We'll come to an understanding," he says. "We have to." She's not sure if he's trying to convince her or himself.
They retire to their separate rooms, Gwen lying fully clothed on her bed and listening to the sounds of the inn, the occasional chatter from the other side of the lone window in the room. It's not long before she hears two set of footsteps trooping up the stairs, and the door to her room opens and closes quickly, Tosh ducking into the darkness without comment.
Gwen rolls over, torn between straining to listen to the sounds on the other side of the wall and trying to block it out. The words wash over her--Owen's raised voice and Ianto's quiet, sharp responses. There are low shouts and thumps, more harsh words, and eventually, Gwen falls asleep to the muffled cacophony of the argument next door, quiet sobs that she'll never admit to hearing.
The following morning, Ianto and Owen are sitting in the room with the fireplace when Gwen comes down for breakfast. Ianto has a scratch high on his cheekbone and a split lip. Owen's left eye has blossomed into a spectacular bruise that trails down his face nearly far enough to meet the darker bruise on his jaw. They're not speaking, but the tension between them isn't as sharp as it's been in the weeks since Jack left. She sits across from Owen and takes Ianto's hand under the table.
"Back to Cardiff, then?" she asks. Ianto squeezes her fingers. Owen goes so far as to offer her a weak, forced smile.
"Someone's got to keep their eye on the Weevils," Owen says.
"You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Ianto replies.
Gwen doesn't realize how tense she is until Owen snorts and snaps back, "Don't get me mixed up in your fantasies, Jones." She feels her entire body relax incrementally. She starts to think the four of them can really get through this on their own.
"I'll go get Tosh and make the call, then," she says, getting up from the table.
"Yes, wouldn't want to keep Janet waiting," Ianto says. She doesn't miss the rude gesture that Owen makes at him as she heads upstairs, and she's still grinning wildly when she knocks on the door to wake Tosh.
***
The first time Ianto gets shot is one of the most terrifying moments of Gwen's life. Worse than seeing Suzie shoot herself, worse than seeing Jack stand up after Suzie shot him, worse than watching the faeries disappear with a little girl. It's almost as terrible as seeing Jack fall to Abbadon, almost as bad as Rhys dying under her hands on that same night, or the few terrifying moments she was strapped to a cyber conversion unit. One minute he's standing beside her, pointing his gun at a fleeing alien, a walking, talking blowfish and the next he's on the ground, blood pouring out of his chest and staining his shirt, the wound so close to his heart, so close to where she thinks the heart must be at any rate. She freezes, unsure of what to do, how to handle it, all of her training running out of her head as she panics. She only sees her friend, wheezing in pain and bleeding out onto the concrete and she can barely move to cover the wound as she screams into her comm for Owen. She can hear the fish running away, the roar of an engine on the street around the corner, but none of that matters when Ianto's blood is staining her hands.
"It's okay, love," she says over and over again. "It's okay, you'll be okay, darling, I swear."
"Oh god," Ianto sobs, his hands wrapping around her arm. "Oh god, oh god, it hurts!"
She hears shoes slapping against wet pavement, and suddenly Tosh and Owen are there, Owen shoving her out of the way to kneel next to Ianto. Ianto's hands stay wrapped around Gwen's arm, though, even as Owen pulls back his shirt and starts to work on the wound. She's glad that Owen snaps at Tosh to help him, tells her to hand him things and hold a torch for him, because Gwen can barely cope with wiping the tears off of Ianto's face and begging him to stay awake. She's already lost Jack--she can't lose Ianto too. She can't bear to look at the dark hole in his chest and she's so fucking grateful when Owen puts a thick wad of gauze over it and orders Tosh to get the SUV so they can get him back to the Hub.
The wound isn't as bad as Gwen had feared when she heard the shot and saw Ianto hit the ground. It was too high to hit any vital organs and, miraculously, did very little internal damage. He'll be fine in a few weeks' time, save for an impressive looking scar, and Owen predicts he'll make a full recovery.
For the moment, though, he's in a tremendous amount of pain and drugged to the gills. The three of them--Tosh, Owen, and Gwen--are standing around his bed in autopsy, trying to decide the best way to proceed.
"I can stay here," Owen says. Both Gwen and Tosh turn to him in shock. "What?" he says. "We may not get along, but I'm still his doctor. He can't even use the bloody toilet by himself, we can't very well leave him alone!"
"I'll stay with him," Gwen says, touching his forehead, brushing back the cowlick at the front of his head that always seems to pull away from the rest of his hair. "It's my fault. I can stay."
"No," Tosh says. "Gwen, you should get home to Rhys. I can stay with him. There were some programs I wanted to work on anyway. I can just as well do them here."
Gwen laughs. "He'd be so embarrassed, having all of us argue over him like this," she says, cupping the side of his face and brushing his temple with her thumb. Ianto stirs at the movement, turning his face towards her and struggling to open his eyes.
"Jack?" he murmurs, his accent thicker than usual. All three of them cringe in unison.
"He's not here, sweetheart," Gwen says. She pets his hair again. "I'm sorry."
"Oh." She watches Ianto try and focus on her, his pupils blown, his eyelids threatening to close. "When'll he be back?"
"Soon," she lies. "He'll be here soon. Go back to sleep. We'll sit with you, okay?" He's unconscious again before she's finished speaking. Gwen can't bear to look at Owen or Tosh.
"Okay," Owen says. "We'll do it in shifts. I'll stay tonight so Gwennie can get back home to loverboy. Gwen can sit with him in the morning and I'll try and get some shut eye, aliens permitting. Tosh can stay with him tomorrow night, and hopefully he'll be lucid by then." Owen pulls a stool over to the bed and grabs a stack of reports from a shelf behind him. "Besides, it gives me some time to catch up on some of those reports he's been fucking nagging me about."
She meets Tosh's gaze over the bed and shrugs. Tosh shrugs back. It's as good a plan as any. Someone needs to be awake and alert to keep an eye on the rift, so it makes sense to watch Ianto in shifts. Still, as she leans over and kisses his forehead, she can't help but feel as though she's failed him somehow. By not stopping the blowfish, by not pushing him out of the way, by not producing Jack from thin air to care for him....
Tosh kisses him, too, and then takes Gwen's hand and leads her back up to their workstations.
"It's not your fault," she says, as they gather their purses with not-so-subtle glances back to the autopsy bay.
"I was right next to him," she says. "I was the one who ordered him to come with me, I was the one who--"
"You weren't the one who pulled the trigger," Tosh says. She gives Gwen a weak smile. "I know the two of you are--are close. I know he means a lot to you since Jack left. But don't blame yourself. He'll be fine."
She tries to return Tosh's smile, tries to believe that as she wraps her coat around herself and heads up to her car. It's not easy. There are still flakes of Ianto's blood under her fingernails. She can still hear the sound he made when the bullet hit his chest.
Rhys is making dinner when she gets home, surprised to see her before eight or nine. The surprise turns to concern when he sees the look on her face, the way she runs straight for the kitchen sink to wash her hands for the twelfth or thirteenth time since leaving the alleyway.
"What's wrong?" he asks. She wants to laugh. There's a list of things a mile long, but she can't tell him any of them. She can't say, My boss abandoned us, I was put in charge of an organization I barely understand, I have the fate of the world on my shoulders, I can't connect to any of my old friends anymore, and my best friend in my new life is an emotionally repressed secretary who just got shot by a giant walking blowfish while following my orders.
What she says is, "Tough day at work." She voice wavers. "My... a friend got hurt. He'll be okay. But." She examines her fingernails closely and blinks back tears. Rhys' arms come up around her, pulling her close and petting her hair.
"It's okay, love," he says. "It's over now."
No, she thinks as she puts her head on his shoulder and sobs. No, it's just beginning. Ianto is the first, yes, but she knows the life-span of a Torchwood employee can't be that long. The others joke about it. Now that Jack is gone, she's going to have to send these people, her friends out to be killed over and over again. There will be more injuries. There will be deaths. They'll be on her hands.
She hates Jack Harkness. She fucking hates him.
***
Part Two